Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“So Shiro told the others that when she stayed at your apartment in Tokyo, you drugged her and raped her?”

“That’s what she said.”

“She described it in great detail, very realistically, even though she was so introverted and always tried to avoid talking about sex.”

“That’s what Ao said.”

“And she said you had two faces?” Sara asked.

“She said I had another dark, hidden side , something unhinged and detached from the side of me that everyone knew.”

Sara frowned and thought this over for a while.

“Doesn’t this remind you of something? Didn’t you ever have some special, intimate moment that passed between you and Shiro?”

Tsukuru shook his head. “Never. Not once. I was always conscious of not letting something like that happen.”

“Always conscious?”

“I tried not to view her as someone of the opposite sex. And I avoided being alone with her as much as I could.”

Sara narrowed her eyes and inclined her head for a moment. “Do you think the others in the group were just as careful? In other words, the boys not viewing the girls as members of the opposite sex, and vice versa?”

“I don’t know what the others were thinking, deep down inside. But like I said, it was a kind of unspoken agreement between us that we wouldn’t let male-female relationships be a part of the group. We were pretty insistent about that.”

“But isn’t that unnatural? If boys and girls that age get close to each other, and are together all the time, it’s only natural that they start to get interested in each other sexually.”

“I wanted to have a girlfriend and to go out on dates, just the two of us. And of course I was interested in sex. Just like anybody else. And no one was stopping me from having a girlfriend outside the group. But back then, that group was the most important part of my life. The thought hardly ever occurred to me to go out and be with anyone else.”

“Because you found a wonderful harmony there?”

Tsukuru nodded. “When I was with them, I felt like an indispensable part of the whole. It was a special feeling that I could never get anywhere else.”

“Which is why all of you had to look past any sexual interest,” Sara said. “In order to preserve the harmony the five of you had together. So as not to destroy the perfect circle.”

“Looking back on it now, I can see there was something unnatural about it. But at the time, nothing seemed more natural. We were still in our teens, experiencing everything for the first time. There was no way we could be that objective about our situation.”

“In other words, you were locked up inside the perfection of that circle. Can you see it that way?”

Tsukuru thought about this. “Maybe that’s true, but we were happy to be locked up inside it. And I don’t regret it, even now.”

“Intriguing,” Sara said.

Sara was also quite interested to hear about Aka’s visit with Shiro in Hamamatsu six months before she was murdered.

“It’s a different situation, of course,” Sara said, “but it reminds me of a classmate of mine from high school. She was beautiful, with a nice figure, from an affluent family, raised partly abroad and fluent in English and French, always at the top of her class. People noticed her, no matter what she did. She was revered by everybody, the heartthrob of all the younger students. We went to a private all-girls high school, so that sort of admiration by underclassmen could be pretty intense.”

Tsukuru nodded.

“She went on to Seishin University, the famous women’s private college, and studied abroad in France for two years. A couple of years after she got back I had a chance to see her, and when I did, I was floored. I’m not sure how to put it, but she seemed faded. Like something that’s been exposed to strong sunlight for a long time and the color fades. She looked much the same as before. Still beautiful, still with a nice figure … but she seemed paler, fainter than before. It made me feel like I should grab the TV remote to ramp up the color intensity. It was a weird experience. It was hard to imagine that someone could, in the space of just a few years, visibly diminish like that.”

Sara had finished her meal and was waiting for the dessert menu.

“She and I weren’t all that close, but we had a few friends in common, so I’d run into her every now and again. And each time I saw her, she’d faded a little more. From a certain point on, it was clear to everyone that she wasn’t pretty anymore, that she was no longer attractive. It was like she’d gotten less intelligent, too. The topics she talked about were boring, her opinions stale and trite. She married at twenty-seven, and her husband was some elite government official, an obviously shallow, boring man. But the woman couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that she was no longer beautiful, no longer attractive, no longer the sort of person people notice. She still acted like she was the queen. It was pretty pathetic to watch.”

The dessert menu arrived, and Sara inspected it closely. Once she’d made up her mind, she closed the menu and laid it on the table.

“Her friends gradually stopped seeing her. It was just too painful to witness. Maybe it wasn’t exactly pain they felt when they saw her, but more a kind of fear, the kind of fear most women have. The fear that your peak attractiveness as a woman is behind you, and you either don’t realize it or refuse to accept it, and go on acting the way you always have, and then people snub you and laugh at you behind your back. For her, that peak came earlier than for others. That’s all it was. In her teens, all her natural gifts burst into bloom, like a garden in spring, and once those years had passed, they quickly withered.”

The white-haired waiter came over, and Sara ordered the lemon soufflé. Tsukuru was always impressed at how she never skipped dessert yet managed to keep her trim figure.

“I imagine Kuro could tell you more details about Shiro,” Sara said. “Even if your group of five was a harmonious, perfect community, there are always things that only girls can discuss between themselves. Like Ao told you. And what they talk about doesn’t go outside the world of girls. Sometimes it’s just chatter, but there are certain secrets we tightly protect, especially so boys don’t get wind of them.”

She gazed at the waiter, who was standing far off, almost as if she regretted ordering the lemon soufflé.

But then she seemed to reconsider and turned her gaze back to Tsukuru.

“Did the three of you boys have confidential talks like that?” she asked.

“Not that I recall,” Tsukuru said.

“Then what did you talk about?” Sara asked.

What did we talk about back then? Tsukuru thought about it, but couldn’t remember. He was sure they’d talked a lot, enthusiastically, really opening up to each other, yet for the life of him, he couldn’t recall a thing.

“You know, I can’t remember,” Tsukuru said.

“That’s weird,” Sara said. And she smiled.

“Next month I should be able to take a break from work,” Tsukuru said. “Once I get to that point, I’m thinking of going to Finland. I’ve cleared it with my boss, and there’s no problem with me taking time off.”

“When you’ve set the dates, I can arrange the travel schedule for you. Plane tickets, hotel reservations, and the like.”

“I appreciate it,” Tsukuru said.

She lifted her glass and took a sip of water. She traced the lip of the glass with her finger.

“What was your time in high school like?” Tsukuru asked.

“I didn’t stand out very much. I was on the handball team. I wasn’t pretty, and my grades were just so-so.”

“You’re sure you’re not being modest?”