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

“And you’ve always been trying to escape that force?”

“I think so,” I said.

Her hand still rested on my chest “You poor man,” she said. As if she were reading aloud something written large on a wall. Maybe it really was written on the wall, I thought.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I know I don’t want to leave you. But I don’t know if that’s the correct answer. I don’t even know if that’s something I myself can choose. Yukiko, you’re suffering. I can see that I can feel your hand here. But there’s something beyond what can be seen or felt Call it feelings. Or possibilities. These well up from somewhere and are mixed together inside me. They’re not something I can choose or can give an answer to.”

Yukiko was silent for a long time. Every so often, a truck rolled by outside. I looked out the window but could see nothing. Just the unnamed time and space linking night and dawn.

“The last few weeks, I really did think I would die,” Yukiko said. “I’m not saying this to threaten you. It’s a fact. That’s how lonely and sad I was. Dying is not that hard. Like the air being sucked slowly out of a room, the will to live was slowly seeping out of me. When you feel like that, dying doesn’t seem like such a big deal. I never even thought of the children. What would happen to them after I died didn’t enter my mind. That’s how lonely I felt You didn’t know that did you? You have never seriously given it any thought, have you? What I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I might do.”

I didn’t say anything. She took her hand away from my chest and laid it in her lap.

“Anyhow, the reason I didn’t die, the reason I’m still alive, is that I thought if you were to come back to me, I would be able to take you back. It’s not a question of rights, or right or wrong. Maybe you are a hopeless person. A worthless person. And you might very well hurt me again. But that’s not what’s important here. You don’t understand a thing.”

“Most likely I don’t,” I said.

“And you don’t ask anything,” she said.

I opened my mouth to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out. She was right: I never did ask her anything. Why didn’t I? I had no idea.

“Rights are what you build from here on out,” Yukiko said. “Or rather, we build. We thought we’d constructed a lot together, but actually we hadn’t made a thing. Life went too smoothly. We were too happy. Don’t you think so?”

I nodded.

Yukiko folded her arms over her chest and looked at me. “I used to have dreams too, you know. But somewhere along the line they disappeared. Before I met you. I killed them. I crushed them and threw them away. Like some internal organ you no longer need and you rip out of your body. I don’t know whether that was the right thing to do. But it was the only thing I could do at the time…. Sometimes I have this dream. The same dream over and over. Someone is carrying something in both hands, and comes up to me and says, ‘Here, you’ve forgotten something.’ I’ve been very happy living with you. I’ve wanted for nothing and never had any complaints. Still, something is chasing me. I wake up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat I’m being chased by what I threw away. You think you’re the only one being chased, but you’re wrong. You’re not the only one who’s thrown away something, who’s lost something. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Maybe you will hurt me again. I don’t know how I’ll react then. Or maybe next time I’ll hurt you. No one can promise anything. Neither of us can make any promises. But I do still love you.”

I held her and stroked her hair.

“Yukiko,” I said, “tomorrow let’s begin again. It’s too late today. I want to start out the right way, with a brand-new day.”

Yukiko looked at me for a while. “I think that you still haven’t asked me anything.”

“I’d like to start a new life beginning tomorrow. What do you think?” I asked.

“I think that’s a good idea,” she said, a faint smile on her lips.

After Yukiko went back to the bedroom, I lay for a while on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. It was an ordinary apartment ceiling, nothing special. But still I stared at it closely. Every once in a while, a car’s headlights would shine on it I had no more illusions. The feel of Shimamoto’s breasts, her voice, the scent of her skin-all had faded. Izumi’s expressionless face floated across my mind. And the feel of the taxi’s window separating us. I closed my eyes and thought of Yukiko. Again and again I thought over what she had said. Eyes closed, I listened to the movements within my body. I might very well be changing. And I had to change.

I don’t know if I have the strength to care for Yukiko and the children, I thought. No more visions can help me, weaving special dreams just for me. As far as the eye can see, the void is simply that–a void. I’ve been in that void before and forced myself to adjust And now, finally, I end up where I began, and I’d better get used to it No one will weave dreams for me–it is my turn to weave dreams for others. That’s what I have to do. Such dreams may have no power, but if my own life is to have any meaning at all, that is what I have to do.

Probably .

As the dawn approached, I gave up trying to sleep. I threw a cardigan over my pajamas, padded out to the kitchen, and made some coffee. I sat at the kitchen table and watched the sky grow lighter by the minute. It had been a long time since I’d seen the dawn. At one end of the sky a line of blue appeared, and like blue ink on a piece of paper, it spread slowly across the horizon. If you gathered together all the shades of blue in the world and picked the bluest, the epitome of blue, this was the color you would choose. I rested my elbows on the table and looked at that scene, my mind blank. When the sun showed itself over the horizon, that blue was swallowed up by ordinary sunlight A single cloud floated above the cemetery, a pure white cloud, its edges distinct A cloud so sharply etched you could write on it A new day had begun. But what this day would bring, I had no idea.

I would take my daughters to nursery school and go swimming. The same as always. I remembered the pool I used to swim in during junior high. The smell of the place, the way voices echoed off the ceiling. I was in the midst of becoming something new. Standing in front of the mirror, I could see the changes in my body. At night, in the stillness, I swore I could hear the sound of my flesh growing. I was about to be clothed in a new self, about to step into a place where I’d never been.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I watched the single cloud over the cemetery. The cloud didn’t move an inch. It was stationary, nailed to the spot. Time to wake my daughters. It was well past dawn, and they had to get up. They were the ones who needed this new day, much more than I ever would. I’d go to their bedroom, pull back the covers, rest my hand on their warm bodies, and announce the beginning of a new day. That’s what I had to do. But somehow I couldn’t stand up from the kitchen table. All strength was drained from my body, as if someone had snuck up behind me and silently pulled the plug. Both elbows on the table, I covered my face with my palms.

Inside that darkness, I saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don’t know it is raining.

Until someone came and lightly rested a hand on my shoulder, my thoughts were of the sea.

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. The most recent of his many honors is the Franz Kafka Prize.