Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“That particular topic being me?”

Aka shot him a hard look and nodded. “It still made her uneasy. She hadn’t forgotten it. Apart from that, though, she seemed perfectly fine. She laughed a lot, and seemed to enjoy talking. And everything she said sounded normal. It struck me that moving to a new place had been great for her. But there was one thing. I don’t enjoy bringing this up, but—she wasn’t attractive like she used to be.”

“Wasn’t attractive?” Tsukuru repeated the words, his voice sounding far away.

“No, that isn’t quite the right expression,” Aka said, and thought it over. “How should I put it? Her features were basically the same as before, of course, and by all standards, she was definitely still a beautiful woman. If you hadn’t known her when she was a teenager, you’d think she was pretty. But I knew her from before, knew her very well. I could never forget how appealing she was. The Shiro in front of me now, though—she wasn’t.”

Aka frowned slightly, as if recalling that scene.

“Seeing Shiro like that was very painful. It hurt to see that she no longer had that burning something she used to have. That what had been remarkable about her had vanished. That the special something would no longer be able to move me the way it used to.”

Smoke rose from Aka’s cigarette above the ashtray. He continued.

“Shiro had just turned thirty then, and she was still young. When she met me she had on very plain clothes, with her hair pulled back in a bun, and hardly any makeup. But that’s not really the point. Those are just details. My point is that she’d lost the glow she used to have, her vitality. She was always an introvert, but at her core there had been something vital and alive, something that even she wasn’t totally aware of. That light, that radiance used to leak out by itself, emerging from between the cracks. Do you know what I mean? But the last time I saw her, it was all gone, like someone had slipped in behind her and pulled the plug. The kind of fresh, sparkling glow, what used to visibly set her apart, had disappeared, and it made me sad to look at her. It wasn’t a question of age. She didn’t get that way simply because she’d gotten older. When I heard that someone had strangled Shiro, I was devastated, and felt really sorry for her. Whatever the circumstances might have been, she didn’t deserve to die like that. But at the same time I couldn’t help but feel that the life had already been sucked out of her, even before she was physically murdered.”

Aka picked up the cigarette from the ashtray, took a deep drag, and closed his eyes.

“She left a huge hole in my heart,” Aka said. “One that’s still not filled.”

Silence descended on them, a hard, dense silence.

“Do you remember the piano piece Shiro used to play a lot?” Tsukuru asked. “A short piece, Liszt’s ‘Le mal du pays’?”

Aka considered this and shook his head. “No, I don’t recall that. The only one I remember is the famous piece from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood . ‘Träumerei.’ She used to play that sometimes. I’m not familiar with the Liszt piece, though. Why are you asking?”

“No special reason. I just happened to recall it,” Tsukuru said. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve taken so much of your time. I should be going. I’m really happy we could talk like this.”

Aka stayed still in his chair, and gazed straight at Tsukuru. He was expressionless, like someone staring at a brand-new lithograph with nothing etched in it yet. “Are you in a hurry?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

“Can we talk a little more?”

“Of course. I have plenty of time.”

Aka weighed what he was about to say before he spoke. “You don’t really like me very much anymore, do you?”

Tsukuru was speechless. Partly because the question had blindsided him, but also because it didn’t seem right to reduce his feelings for the person seated before him into a simple binary equation of like or dislike.

Tsukuru carefully chose his words. “I really can’t say. My feelings are definitely different from back when we were teenagers. But that’s—”

Aka held up a hand to cut him off.

“No need to mince words. And you don’t need to force yourself to like me. No one likes me now. It’s only to be expected. I don’t even like myself much. I used to have a few really good friends. You were one of them. But at a certain stage in life I lost them. Like how Shiro at a certain point lost that special spark…. But you can’t go back. Can’t return an item you’ve already opened. You just have to make do.”

He lowered his hand and placed it on his lap. He began tapping out an irregular rhythm on his kneecap, like he was sending a message in Morse code.

“My father worked so long as a college professor that he picked up the habits professors have. At home he always sounded like he was preaching at us, looking down on us from on high. I hated that, ever since I was a child. But at a certain point it hit me—I’ve started to talk just like him.”

He went on tapping his kneecap.

“I always felt I did a horrible thing to you. It’s true. I—we—had no right to treat you that way. I felt that someday I needed to properly apologize to you. But somehow I never made it happen.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tsukuru said. “That’s another situation where you can’t go back.”

Aka seemed lost in thought. “Tsukuru,” he finally said, “I have a favor to ask.”

“What kind?”

“I have something I want to tell you. A confession, you might call it, that I’ve never told anybody before. Maybe you don’t want to hear it, but I want to open up about my own pain. I’d like you to know what I’ve been carrying around with me. Not that this will make amends for all the pain you endured. It’s just a question of my own feelings and emotions. Will you hear me out? For old times’ sake?”

Tsukuru nodded, uncertain where this was going.

Aka began. “I told you how, until I actually went to college, I didn’t know I wasn’t cut out for academic life. And how I didn’t know I wasn’t cut out for company life, either, until I started working in a bank. You remember? It’s kind of embarrassing. I probably had never taken a good, hard look at myself. But that’s not all there was to it. Until I got married I didn’t understand how I wasn’t suited for marriage. What I’m saying is, the physical relationship between a man and a woman wasn’t for me. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

Tsukuru was silent, and Aka went on.

“What I’m trying to say is, I don’t really feel desire for women. Not that I don’t have any desire at all, but I feel it more for men.”

A deep silence descended on the room. Tsukuru couldn’t hear a single sound. It was a quiet room to begin with.

“That’s not so unusual,” Tsukuru said to fill in the silence.

“You’re right, it’s not so unusual. But to confront that reality at a certain point in your life is a hard thing. Very hard. You can’t just dismiss it with generalities. How should I put it? It’s like you’re standing on the deck of a ship at sea at night and suddenly you’re thrown overboard, alone, into the ocean.”

Tsukuru thought of Haida. About how in the dream—and he presumed it was a dream—he’d come in Haida’s mouth. Tsukuru remembered the utter confusion he’d felt at the time. Being thrown overboard, alone, into the sea at night—the expression hit the mark exactly.

“I think you just need to be honest with yourself, as much as you can,” Tsukuru said, choosing his words. “All you can do is be as honest and free as you can. I’m sorry, but that’s about all I can say.”