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

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“There’s no need to apologize,” she said. “If you want to leave me, that’s okay. I won’t say a thing. Do you want to leave me?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Can I explain what’s happened?”

“You mean about you and that woman?”

“Yes,” I said.

She shook her head emphatically. “I don’t want to hear anything about her. Don’t make me suffer any more than I already have. I don’t care what kind of relationship the two of you have, or what plans you’ve made. I don’t want to hear about it. What I do want to know is whether or not you want to leave me. I don’t need the house, or money–or anything. If you want the children, take them. I’m serious. If you want to leave me, just say the word. That’s all I want to know. I don’t want to hear anything else. Just yes or no.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You mean you don’t know if you want to leave me or not?”

“No. I don’t know if I’m even capable of giving you an answer.”

“When will you know?”

I shook my head.

“Well, then, take your time and think about it.” She sighed. “I don’t mind waiting. Take as long as you like.”

Starting that night, I slept on the sofa in the living room. Sometimes the kids would get up in the middle of the night and ask me why I was sleeping there. I explained that my snoring was so loud these days that their mother and I decided to sleep in separate rooms. Otherwise Mom wouldn’t get any sleep. One of the kids would snuggle up next to me on the sofa. And I would hug her tight. Sometimes I could hear Yukiko in the bedroom, crying.

For the next two weeks I spent every day endlessly reliving memories. I’d recall ever single detail of the night I spent with Shimamoto, trying to tease out some meaning. Trying to find a message. I remembered the warmth of her in my arms. Her arms sticking out of the sleeves of her white dress. The Nat King Cole songs. The fire in the stove. I called up each and every word we spoke that night.

From out of those words, these of hers: There is no middle ground with me. No middle-ground objects exist and where there are no such objects, there is no middle ground .

And these words of mine: I’ve already decided, Shimamoto-san. I thought about it when you were gone, and I made my decision .

I remembered her eyes, looking over at me in the car. That intense gaze burned into my cheeks. It was more than a mere glance. The smell of death hovered over her. She really was planning to die. That’s why she came to Hakone–to die, together with me.

“And I will take all of you. Do you understand that? Do you understand what that means?”

When she said that, Shimamoto wanted my life. Only now did I understand.

I had come to a final conclusion, and so had she. Why was I so blind? After a night of making love, she planned to grab the steering wheel of the BMW as we drove back to Tokyo and kill us both. No other options remained for her. But something stopped her. And holding everything inside, she disappeared.

What desperate dead end had she reached? Why? And more important, who had driven her to such desperation? Why, finally, was death the only possible escape? I was grasping for clues, playing the detective, but I came up empty-handed. She just vanished, along with her secrets. No probablys or in a whiles this time-she just silently slipped away. Our bodies had become one, yet in the end she refused to open up her heart to me.

Some kinds of things, once they go forward, can never go back to where they began, Hajime , she would no doubt tell me. In the middle of the night, lying on my sofa, I could hear her voice spinning out these words. Like you said, how wonderful it would be if the two of us could go off somewhere and begin life again. Unfortunately, I can’t get out of where I am. It’s a physical impossibility .

And then Shimamoto was a sixteen-year-old girl again, standing in front of sunflowers in a garden, smiling shyly. I really shouldn’t have gone to see you. I knew that from the beginning. I could predict that it would turn out like this. But I couldn’t stand not to. I just had to see you, and when I did, I had to speak with you. Hajime–that’s me. I don’t plan to, but everything I touch gets ruined in the end .

I would never see her again, except in memory. She was here, and now she’s gone. There is no middle ground. Probably is a word you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun.

Every day, I scanned the papers from top to bottom for articles about women suicides. Lots of people kill themselves, I discovered, but it was always someone else. As far as I knew, this beautiful thirty-seven-year-old woman with the loveliest of smiles was still alive. Though she was gone from me forever.

On the surface, my days were the same as ever. I’d drive the kids back and forth to the nursery school, the three of us singing songs as we went. Sometimes in the line of cars in front of the nursery school I’d see the young woman in the 260E, and we’d talk. Talking with her made me able to forget at least for a while. Our subjects were limited, as always. We’d exchange the latest news about the Aoyama neighborhood, natural foods, clothes. The usual.

At work, too, I made my usual rounds. I’d put on my suit and go to the bars every night make small talk with the regulars, listen to the opinions and complaints of the staff, remember little things like giving a birthday present to an employee. Treat musicians who happened to drop by to dinner, check the cocktails to make sure they were up to par, make sure the piano was in tune, keep an eye out for rowdy drunks–I did it all. Any problems, I straightened out in a flash. Everything ran like clockwork, but the thrill was gone. No one suspected, though. On the surface I was the same as always. Actually, I was friendlier, kinder, more talkative than ever. But as I sat on a barstool, looking around my establishment everything looked monotonous, lusterless. No longer a carefully crafted, colorful castle in the air, what lay before me was a typical noisy bar-artificial, superficial, and shabby. A stage setting, props built for the sole purpose of getting drunks to part with their cash. Any illusions to the contrary had disappeared in a puff of smoke. All because Shimamoto would never grace these places again. Never again would she sit at the bar; never again would I see her smile as she ordered a drink.

My routine at home was unchanged too. I ate dinner with the family and on Sundays took the kids for a walk or to the zoo. Yukiko, at least on the surface, treated me as she always had. We talked about all kinds of things. We were like childhood friends who happened to be living under the same roof. There were certain words we couldn’t speak, certain facts we didn’t acknowledge. But there was no unconcealed hostility in the air. We just didn’t touch each other. At night we slept separately–I on the sofa, Yukiko in the bedroom. Outwardly, that was the only change in our lives.

Sometimes I couldn’t stand how we were just going through the motions, acting out our assigned roles. Something crucial to us was lost, yet still we could carry on as before. I felt awful. This kind of empty, meaningless life was hurting Yukiko deeply. I wanted to give her an answer to her question, but I couldn’t. Of course I didn’t want to leave her, but who was I to say that? Me–the guy who was going to throw his whole family away. Just because Shimamoto was gone, never to return, didn’t mean I could blithely bounce back to the life I’d had and pretend nothing had happened. Life isn’t that easy, and I don’t think it should be. Besides, lingering images of Shimamoto were still too clear, too real. Every time I closed my eyes, every detail of her body floated before me. My palms remembered the feel of her skin, and her voice whispering in my ear wouldn’t leave me. I couldn’t make love to Yukiko with those images still implanted so firmly in my brain.