Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the Sun

“I don’t mind. Do whatever you like. But I do feel a bit weird being stared at like this.”

“But you are mine, right?”

“Yes.”

“So there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, is there.”

“Guess you’re right,” I said. “I’ve just got to get used to it.”

“Just be patient a little bit longer. This has been my dream for such a very long time.”

“Looking at my body has been your dream? Touching me all over, with all your clothes still on?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I’ve been imagining your body for ages. What your penis looked like, how hard it would get, how big.”

“Why did you think of that?”

“Why?” she asked incredulously. “I told you I love you. What’s wrong with thinking about the body of the man you love? Haven’t you thought about my body?”

“I have,” I said.

“I’ll bet you’ve thought about my body while you’re masturbating.”

“Yes. In junior high and high school,” I said, then corrected myself. “Well, actually, not too long ago.”

“It’s the same with me. I’ve thought about your body. Women do too, you know,” she said.

I pulled her close to me again and slowly kissed her. Her tongue slid languidly inside my mouth. “I love you, Shimamoto-san,” I said.

“I love you, Hajime,” she said. “There’s no one else I love but you. May I see your body a little more?”

“Go ahead,” I replied.

She gently wrapped her palm around my penis and balls. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “I’d like to eat it all up.”

“Then what would I do?”

“But I do want to eat it up,” she said. As if gently weighing them, she kept my balls in her palm for the longest time. And licked and sucked my penis very slowly, very carefully. She looked at me. “The first time, can I do it the way I want to? You’ll let me?”

“I don’t mind. Do whatever you want,” I said. “Except for eating me up, of course.”

“I’m a little embarrassed, so don’t say anything, okay?”

“I won’t,” I promised.

As I knelt on the floor, she put her left hand around my waist. She kept her dress on but with her other hand peeled off her stockings and panties. Then she took my penis and balls in her right hand and licked them. Her other hand she slid under her dress. Sucking on my penis, she began to move her other hand around slowly.

I didn’t say a thing. I figured this was her way. I watched the movements of her lips and tongue, and the languid motion of her hand beneath her skirt. Suddenly I recalled the Shimamoto I’d seen in the parking lot of the bowling lanes—stiff and white as a sheet. I recalled clearly what I’d seen deep within her eyes. A dark space, frozen hard like a subterranean glacier. A silence so profound it sucked up every sound, never allowing it to resurface. Absolute, total silence.

It was the first time I’d been face-to-face with death. So I’d had no distinct image of what death really was. But there it was then, right before my eyes, spread out just inches from my face. So this is the face of death, I’d thought. And death spoke to me, saying that my time, too, would one day come. Eventually everyone would fall into those endlessly lonely depths, the source of all darkness, a silence bereft of any resonance. I felt a choking, stifling fear as I stared into this bottomless dark pit.

Facing those black, frozen depths, I had called out her name. Shimamoto-san , I had called out again and again. But my voice was lost in that infinite nothingness. Cry out as I might nothing within the depths of her eyes changed. Her breathing remained strange, like the sound of wind whipping through cracks. Her regular breaths told me she was still on this side of the world. But her eyes told me she was already given up to death.

As I had looked deep into her eyes and called out her name, my own body was dragged down into those depths. As if a vacuum had sucked out all the air around me, that other world was steadily pulling me closer. Even now I could feel its power. It wanted me .

I closed my eyes tight And drove those memories from my mind.

I reached out and stroked her hair. I touched her ears, rested my hand on her forehead. Her body was warm and soft. She sucked on my penis as if trying to suck out life itself. Her hand, communicating in some secret sign language, continued to move between her legs, under her skirt. A short time later, I came in her mouth; her hand under her skirt ceased moving, and she closed her eyes. She swallowed down the very last drop of my semen.

“I’m sorry,” Shimamoto said.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” I said.

“The first time, I wanted to do it this way,” she said. “It’s embarrassing, but somehow I needed to. It’s a rite of passage for the two of us, I guess. Do you know what I mean,?”

I pulled her to me and rubbed my cheek against hers. Her cheek felt warm. I lifted up her hair and kissed her ear. And looked into her eyes. I could see my face reflected in them. Deep within her eyes, in the always bottomless depths, there was a spring. And, ever so faintly, a light The light of life, I thought Someday it will be extinguished, but for now the light is there. She smiled at me. The usual small creases formed at the corners of her eyes. I kissed those tiny lines.

“Now it’s your turn to take off my clothes,” she told me. “And do whatever you want.”

“Maybe I’m a little short on imagination, but I just like the regular way. Okay?” I said.

“That’s all right” she said. “I like it too.”

I took off her dress and her bra, set her down on the bed, and kissed her all over. I looked at every inch of her body, touching everywhere, kissing everywhere. Trying to find out everything and store it in my memory. It was a leisurely exploration. We had taken so very long to arrive at this point, and like her, the last thing I wanted to do was hurry. I held off as long as I could, until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I slowly slid inside her.

We fell asleep just before dawn. I don’t know how many times we made love, sometimes gently, sometimes passionately. Once, in the midst of it, when I was inside her, she became possessed, crying violently and pounding on my back with her fists. All the while, I held her tightly to me. If I didn’t hold her tight, I felt, she would fly off into pieces. I stroked her back over and over to calm her. I kissed her neck and brushed her hair with my fingers. She was no longer the cool, self-controlled Shimamoto I knew. The frozen hardness within her was, bit by bit, melting and floating to the surface. I could feel its breath, far-off signs of its presence. I held her tight and let her trembling seep inside me. Little by little, this is how she would become mine.

“I want to know everything there is to know about you,” I said to her. “What kind of life you’ve had till now, where you live. Whether you’re married or not Everything. No more secrets, ‘cause I can’t take any more.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything. So don’t ask any more till then. Stay the way you are today. If I did tell you now, you’d never be able to go back to the way you were.”

“I’m not going back anyway. And who knows, tomorrow might never come. If it doesn’t I’ll end up never knowing.”

“I wish tomorrow would never come,” she said. “Then you’ll never know.”

I was about to speak, but she hushed me up with a kiss.

“I wish a bald vulture would gobble up tomorrow,” she said. “Would it make sense for a bald vulture to do that?”

“That makes sense. Bald vultures eat up art, and tomorrows as well.”

“And regular vultures eat—”

“—the bodies of nameless people,” I said. “Very different from bald vultures.”