Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Supposedly I raped Shiro in this very bed, Tsukuru suddenly thought. Drugged her, numbed her, ripped off her clothes, and forced myself on her. She was a virgin. She felt terrible pain, and she bled. And with that, everything changed. Sixteen years ago.

As he listened to the rain drum against the window, with these thoughts swirling around in his head, his room began to feel like an alien space. As if the room itself had developed its own will. Just being in there steadily drained away any ability to distinguish the real from the unreal. On one plane of reality, he’d never even touched Shiro’s hand. Yet on another, he’d brutally raped her. Which reality had he stepped into now? The more he thought about it, the less certain he became.

It was two thirty when he finally got to sleep.

On weekends Tsukuru went to the pool at the gym, a ten-minute bike ride from his apartment. He always swam the crawl at a set pace, completing 1,500 meters in thirty-two or thirty-three minutes. He let faster swimmers pass him. Trying to compete against other people wasn’t in his nature. As always, on this day he found another swimmer whose speed was close to his, and joined him in the same lane. The other man was young and lanky and wore a black competitive swimsuit, a black cap, and goggles.

Swimming eased Tsukuru’s accumulated exhaustion, and relaxed his tense muscles. Being in the water calmed him more than any other place. Swimming a half hour twice a week allowed him to maintain a calm balance between mind and body. He also found the water a great place to think. A kind of Zen meditation, he discovered. Once he got into the rhythm of the swimming, thoughts came to him, unhampered, like a dog let loose in a field.

“Swimming feels wonderful—almost as good as flying through the air,” Tsukuru explained to Sara one time.

“Have you ever flown through the air?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Tsukuru said.

This morning, as he swam, thoughts of Sara came to him. He pictured her face, her body, and how he’d failed in bed. And he remembered several things she’d said. Something is stuck inside you, she’d told him, and the natural flow of emotions you should have is obstructed.

She might be right, Tsukuru thought.

At least from the outside, Tsukuru Tazaki’s life was going well, with no particular problems to speak of. He’d graduated from a well-known engineering school, found a job in a railway company, working as a white-collar professional. His reputation in the company was sound, and his boss trusted him. Financially he had no worries. When his father died, Tsukuru had inherited a substantial sum of money and the one-bedroom condo in a convenient location near the center of Tokyo. He had no loans. He hardly drank and didn’t smoke, and had no expensive hobbies. He spent very little money. It wasn’t that he was especially trying to economize or live an austere life, but he just couldn’t think of ways to spend money. He had no need for a car, and got by with a limited wardrobe. He bought books and CDs occasionally, but that didn’t amount to much. He preferred cooking his own meals to eating out, and even washed his own sheets and ironed them.

He was generally a quiet person, not good at socializing. Not that he lived a solitary life. He got along with others pretty well. He didn’t go out looking for women on his own, but hadn’t lacked for girlfriends. He was single, not bad-looking, reserved, well groomed, and women tended to approach him. Or else, acquaintances introduced him to women (which is how he had gotten to know Sara).

To all appearances, at thirty-six he was enjoying a comfortable bachelor life. He was healthy, kept the pounds off, and had never been sick. Most people would see his life as going smoothly, with no major setbacks. His mother and older sisters certainly saw it that way. “You enjoy being single too much, that’s why you don’t feel like getting married,” they told Tsukuru. And they finally gave up on trying to set him up with potential marriage partners. His coworkers seemed to come to the same conclusion.

Tsukuru had never lacked for anything in his life, or wanted something and suffered because he had been unable to obtain it. Because of this, he’d never experienced the joy of really wanting something and struggling to get it. His four high school friends had probably been the most valuable thing he’d ever had in his life. This relationship wasn’t something he’d chosen himself, but more like something that had come to him naturally, like the grace of God. And long ago, again not through any choice of his own, he’d lost all of it. Or rather, had it stripped away.

Sara was now one of the very few things he desired. He wasn’t 100 percent certain of this, but he was powerfully drawn to her. And each time he saw her, this desire only grew. He was ready to sacrifice in order to have her. It was unusual for him to feel such a strong, raw emotion. Even so—he didn’t know why—when he had tried to make love to her, he hadn’t been able to perform. Something had impeded his desire. Take your time. I can wait , Sara had said. But things weren’t that simple. People are in constant motion, never stationary. No one knows what will happen next.

These were the thoughts that ran through his head as he swam the twenty-five-meter pool. Keeping a steady pace so as not to get out of breath, he’d turn his head slightly to one side and take a short breath, then slowly exhale under water. The longer he swam, the more automatic this cycle became. The number of strokes he needed for each lap was the same each time. He gave himself up to the rhythm, counting only the number of turns.

He suddenly noticed that he recognized the soles of the swimmer sharing the same lane. They were exactly the same as Haida’s. He gulped, his rhythm thrown off, and inhaled water through his nose. His heart was pounding in his rib cage, and it took a while for his breathing to settle down.

These have to be Haida’s soles, Tsukuru thought. The size and shape are exactly the same. That simple, confident kick was identical—even the bubbles the swimmer kicked up underwater, small, gentle, and as relaxed as his kick, were the same. Back when he and Haida had swum together in the college pool, he’d always kept his eyes riveted on Haida’s soles, like a person driving at night never takes his eyes off the taillights of the car ahead. Those feet were etched in his memory.

Tsukuru stopped swimming, climbed out of the pool, and sat on the starting platform, waiting for the swimmer to turn and come back.

But it wasn’t Haida. The cap and goggles hid his facial features, but now he realized this man was too tall, his shoulders too muscular. His neck was totally different, too. And he was too young, possibly still a college student. By now Haida would be in his mid-thirties.

Even though he knew it was someone else, Tsukuru’s heart wouldn’t settle down. He sat on a plastic chair by the side of the pool and watched the man continue to swim. His overall form, too, resembled Haida’s, almost exactly the same. No splash, no unnecessary sound. His elbows rose beautifully and smoothly in the air, his arms quietly entering the water again, thumb first. Smooth, nothing forced. Maintaining an introspective quiet seemed to be the main theme of his swimming style. Still, no matter how much his swimming style resembled Haida’s, this was not Haida. The man finally stopped, got out of the pool, tugged off his black goggles and cap, and, rubbing his short hair vigorously with a towel, walked away. His face was angular, not anything like Haida’s at all.