Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Really? I wasn’t aware of that. What do you make, Edvard?”

“Pottery,” Edvard replied. “Pretty small scale compared to railroad stations. Why don’t you come in, Mr. Tazaki.”

“Aren’t I bothering you?”

“Not at all,” Edvard said. He held his hands wide apart. “We welcome anyone here. People who make things are all my colleagues. They’re especially welcome.”

No one else was in the cabin. On the table sat a coffee cup and a Finnish-language paperback left open. He seemed to have been enjoying an after-lunch cup of coffee while he read. He motioned Tsukuru to a chair and sat down across from him. He slid a bookmark into his book, closed it, and pushed it aside.

“Would you care for some coffee?”

“Thank you, I would,” Tsukuru said.

Edvard went over to the coffee maker, poured steaming coffee into a mug, and placed it in front of Tsukuru.

“Would you like some sugar or cream?”

“No, black is fine,” Tsukuru said.

The cream-colored mug was handmade. It was a strange shape, with a distorted handle, but was easy to hold, with a familiar, intimate feel to it, like a family’s warm inside joke.

“My oldest daughter made that mug,” Edvard said, smiling broadly. “Of course, I’m the one who fired it in the kiln.”

His eyes were a gentle light gray, well matched to his dark blond hair and beard. Tsukuru took an immediate liking to him. Edvard looked more suited to the forest and lakeside than to life in the city.

“I’m sure you came here because you needed to see Eri?” Edvard asked.

“That’s right, I came to see Eri,” Tsukuru said. “Is she here now?”

Edvard nodded. “She took the girls for a walk after lunch, probably along the lake. There’s a wonderful walking path there. The dog always beats them home, so they should be back soon.”

“Your Japanese is really good,” Tsukuru said.

“I lived in Japan for five years, in Gifu and Nagoya, studying Japanese pottery. If you don’t learn Japanese, you can’t do anything.”

“And that’s where you met Eri?”

Edvard laughed cheerfully. “That’s right. I fell in love with her right away. We had a wedding ceremony eight years ago in Nagoya, and then moved back to Finland. I’m making pottery full time now. After we got back to Finland, I worked for a while for the Arabia Company as a designer, but I really wanted to work on my own, so two years ago I decided to go freelance. I also teach at a college in Helsinki twice a week.”

“Do you spend all your summers here?”

“Yes, we live here from the beginning of July to the middle of August. There’s a studio nearby I share with some friends. I work there from early morning, but always come back here for lunch. Most afternoons I spend with my family. Taking walks, reading. Sometimes we go fishing.”

“It’s beautiful here.”

Edvard smiled happily. “Thank you. It’s very quiet, and I can get a lot of work done. We live a simple life. The kids love it here too. They enjoy the outdoors.” Along one of the white stucco walls was a floor-to-ceiling wooden shelf lined with pottery he’d apparently made himself, the only decoration in the room. On another wall hung a plain round clock, a compact audio set and a pile of CDs, and an old, solid-looking wooden cabinet.

“About 30 percent of the pottery on those shelves was made by Eri,” Edvard said. He sounded proud. “She has a natural talent. Something innate. It shows up in her pottery. We sell our work in some shops in Helsinki, and in some of them, her pottery’s more popular than mine.”

Tsukuru was a little surprised. This was the first he had ever heard that Kuro was interested in pottery. “I had no idea she was into pottery,” he said.

“She got interested in it after she turned twenty, and after she graduated from college she went back to school, at the Aichi Arts College, in the industrial arts department.”

“Is that right? I mostly knew her when she was a teenager.”

“You’re a friend from high school?”

“Yes.”

“Tsukuru Tazaki.” Edvard repeated the name, and frowned, searching his memory. “You know, I do remember Eri talking about you. You were a member of that really good group of five friends. Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s correct. We all belonged to a group.”

“Three of the people from that group attended our wedding ceremony in Nagoya. Aka, Shiro, and Ao. I believe those were their names? Colorful people.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Tsukuru said. “Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the wedding.”

“But now we’re able to meet like this,” he said with a warm smile. His long beard fluttered on his cheeks like the intimate flickering of a campfire flame. “Did you come to Finland on a trip, Mr. Tazaki?”

“I did,” Tsukuru replied. Telling the truth would take too long. “I took a trip to Helsinki and thought I’d take a side trip and see Eri, since I haven’t seen her in a long time. I’m sorry I couldn’t get in touch ahead of time. I hope I’m not inconveniencing you.”

“No, not at all. You came all this way, and we’re happy to have you. It’s lucky that I stayed at home. I know Eri will be really happy to see you.”

I hope you’re right, Tsukuru told himself.

“May I take a look at your work?” Tsukuru said, pointing to the pottery lined up on the shelves.

“Of course. Feel free to touch any of them. Her work and mine are mixed together, but I’m sure you’ll figure out which are which without me telling you.”

Tsukuru walked over to the wall shelf and studied the pottery one by one. Most were practical dining ware—plates, bowls, and cups. There were several vases and jars as well.

As Edvard said, Tsukuru could distinguish between his pieces and Eri’s at a glance. The ones with a smooth texture and pastel colors were Edvard’s. Here and there on the surface, the colors were darker or lighter, a subtle shading like the flow of the wind or water. Not a single one had any added design. The change in colors itself was the pattern, and even Tsukuru, a complete novice when it came to pottery, could tell that coloring like this required a high level of technical skill. The pieces had an intentional absence of any extraneous decoration, and a smooth, refined feel. Though fundamentally northern European, their pared-down simplicity revealed the clear influence of Japanese pottery. They were unexpectedly light to hold, too, and felt natural and right in his hand. Edvard had taken painstaking care with all the details, and they were the kind of work that only the finest craftsman could achieve. He never would have been able to display this kind of talent while working at a large company that dealt in mass production.

Compared to Edvard’s style, Eri’s was far simpler, hardly reaching the finely wrought subtlety of her husband’s creations. Overall there was a lush, fleshy feel to her pieces, the rims slightly warped, and a lack of any refined, focused beauty. But her pottery also had an unusual warmth that brought a sense of comfort and solace. The slight irregularities and rough texture provided a quiet sense of calm, like the feeling of touching natural fabric, or sitting on a porch watching the clouds go by.

In contrast to her husband’s work, Eri’s pottery featured patterns—like leaves blown on the wind. In some cases the design was scattered over the pottery, in others gathered in one spot, and depending on how the design was distributed, the pieces felt either sad, or brilliant, or even flamboyant. The exquisite designs reminded Tsukuru of fine patterns on an old kimono. He looked closely at each piece, trying to decipher each design, but he couldn’t identify what the configurations might signify. They were odd and unique figures. From a slight distance they struck him as leaves scattered on a forest floor. Leaves trampled by anonymous animals who were quietly, secretly, making their way through the woods.