Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

It was a different sense of isolation from what he normally felt in Japan. And not such a bad feeling, he decided. Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. There was nothing odd about it at all. The thought calmed him. He was in exactly the right place. His raised his hand to summon the waiter and ordered a glass of red wine.

A short time after the wine came, an old accordion player strolled by. He had on a worn-out vest and a Panama hat, and was accompanied by a pointy-eared dog. With practiced hands, like tying a horse to a hitching post, he tied the dog’s leash to a streetlight and stood there, leaned back against it, and began playing northern European folk melodies. The man was clearly a veteran street musician, his performance practiced and effortless. Some of the customers sang along with the melodies, too, and he took requests, including a Finnish version of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel.” His thin black dog sat there, not watching anything around it, its eyes fixed on a spot in the air, as if reminiscing. Its ears didn’t twitch or move at all.

Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language .

Olga was absolutely right, Tsukuru thought as he sipped his wine. Not just to explain to others, but to explain to yourself. Force yourself to try to explain it, and you create lies. At any rate, he knew he should be able to understand things more clearly tomorrow. He just had to wait. And if he didn’t find out anything, well, that was okay too. There was nothing he could do about it. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki would just go on living his colorless life. Not bothering anybody else.

He thought about Sara, her mint-green dress, her cheerful laugh, and the middle-aged man she was walking with, hand in hand. But these thoughts didn’t lead him anywhere. The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it.

He shut his eyes and gave himself over to the tones of the accordion. The monotonous melody wended its way through the noisy voices and reached him, like a foghorn, nearly drowned out by the crashing of the waves.

He drank only half the wine, left some bills and coins on the table, and got up. He dropped a euro coin in the hat in front of the accordion player and, following what others had done, patted the head of his dog. As if it were pretending to be a figurine, the dog didn’t react. Tsukuru took his time walking back to the hotel. He stopped by a kiosk on the way, and bought mineral water and a more detailed map of southern Finland.

In a park in the middle of the main boulevard, people had brought chess sets and were playing the game on raised, built-in stone chessboards. They were all men, most of them elderly. Unlike the people back in the pizzeria, they were totally quiet. The people watching them were taciturn as well. Deep thought required silence. Most of the people passing by on the street had dogs with them. The dogs, too, were taciturn. As he walked down the street, he caught the occasional whiff of grilled fish and kebabs. It was nearly 9 p.m., yet a flower shop was still open, with row upon row of colorful summer flowers. As if night had been forgotten.

At the front desk he asked for a 7 a.m. wake-up call. Then a sudden thought struck him. “Is there a swimming pool nearby?” he asked.

The desk clerk frowned slightly and thought it over. She then politely shook her head, as if apologizing for some shortcoming in her nation’s history. “I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid there is no swimming pool nearby.”

He went back to his room, drew the heavy drapes to block out the light, undressed, and lay down in bed. Yet still the light, like an old memory that can’t easily be erased, snuck into the room. As he stared at the dim ceiling he thought how strange it was for him to be here in Helsinki, not Nagoya, going to see Kuro. The uniquely bright night of northern Europe made his heart tremble in an odd way. His body needed sleep, but his mind, at least for a while, sought wakefulness.

And he thought of Shiro. He hadn’t dreamed of her in a long time. He thought of those erotic dreams, where he came violently inside her. When he woke up afterward and rinsed out his semen-stained underwear in the sink, a complex mix of emotions always struck him. A strange mix of guilt and longing. Special emotions that arise only in a dark corner unknown to other people, where the real and the unreal secretly mingle. Curiously enough, he missed these feelings. He didn’t care what kind of dream it was, or how it made him feel. He wanted only to see Shiro once more in his dreams.

Sleep finally took hold of him, but no dreams came.

The wake-up call came at seven, rousing him from sleep. He’d slept long and deeply, and his whole body felt pleasantly numb. He showered, shaved, and brushed his teeth, the numbness still with him. The sky was overcast, with a thin layer of clouds, but rain seemed unlikely. Tsukuru dressed, went down to the hotel restaurant, and had a simple buffet breakfast.

He arrived at Olga’s office after nine. It was a cozy little office, halfway up a slope, with only one other person working there, a tall man with bulging, fishlike eyes. The man was on the phone, explaining something. The wall was covered with colorful posters of scenic spots in Finland. Olga had printed out several maps for Tsukuru. The Haatainens’ cottage was in a small town a short way down the lake from Hämeenlinna, the location of which she’d marked with an X. Like some long canal, the narrow, meandering lake, gouged out by glaciers tens of thousands of years ago, seemed to go on forever.

“The road should be easy to follow,” Olga said. “Finland’s not like Tokyo or New York. The roads aren’t crowded, and as long as you follow the signs and don’t hit an elk, you should be able to get there.”

Tsukuru thanked her.

“I reserved a car for you,” she went on. “A Volkswagen Golf with only two thousand kilometers on it. I was able to get a bit of a discount.”

“Thank you. That’s great.”

“I pray everything goes well. You’ve come all this way, after all.” Olga smiled sweetly. “If you run into any problems, don’t hesitate to call me.”

“I won’t,” Tsukuru said.

“Remember to watch out for elk. They’re pretty dumb beasts. Be sure not to drive too fast.”

They shook hands again and said goodbye.

At the car rental agency he picked up the new, navy-blue Golf, and the woman there explained how to get from central Helsinki to the highway. It wasn’t especially complicated, but you did have to pay attention. Once you got on the highway, it was easy.

Tsukuru listened to music on an FM station as he drove down the highway at about one hundred kilometers an hour, heading west. Most of the other cars passed him, but he didn’t mind. He hadn’t driven a car for a while, and here the steering wheel was on the left, the opposite of Japan. He was hoping, if possible, to arrive at the Haatainens’ house after they’d finished lunch. He still had plenty of time, and there was no need to hurry. The classical music station was playing a gorgeous, lilting trumpet concerto.

There were forests on both sides of the highway. He got the impression that the whole country was covered, from one end to the other, by a rich green. Most of the trees were white birch, with occasional pines, spruce, and maples. The pines were red pines with tall, straight trunks, while the branches of the white birch trees drooped way down. Neither was a variety found in Japan. In between was a sprinkling of broadleaf trees. Huge-winged birds slowly circled on the wind, searching for prey. The occasional farmhouse roof popped into view. Each farm was vast, with cattle grazing behind fences ringing gentle slopes. The grass had been cut and rolled into large round bundles by a machine.