Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

In Eri’s works, different again from her husband’s, color was simply a backdrop, its purpose to showcase the design, to give it life. The colors lightly, reticently yet effectively, served as background to the design itself.

Tsukuru picked up Edvard’s work, then Eri’s, comparing them. This couple must live in a nice balance in their real lives as well. The pleasant contrast in their artistic creations hinted at this. Their styles were very different, but each of them seemed to accept the other’s distinctive qualities.

“Since I’m her husband, maybe it’s not right for me to praise her work so highly,” Edvard said, watching Tsukuru’s reaction. “What do you call that in Japanese? ‘Favoritism?’ Is that the right word?”

Tsukuru smiled but didn’t say anything.

“I’m not saying this because we’re married, but I really like Eri’s work. There are plenty of people in the world who can make better, more beautiful pottery. But her pottery isn’t narrow in any way. You feel an emotional generosity. I wish I could explain it better.”

“I understand exactly what you mean,” Tsukuru said.

“I think something like that comes from heaven,” Edvard said, pointing to the ceiling. “It’s a gift. I have no doubt she’ll only get more skilled as time goes on. Eri still has a lot of room to grow.”

Outside the dog barked, a special, friendly sort of bark.

“Eri and the girls are back,” Edvard said, looking in that direction. He stood up and walked toward the door.

Tsukuru carefully placed Eri’s pottery back on the shelf and stood there, waiting for her to arrive.

When Kuro first spotted Tsukuru, she looked as if she couldn’t understand what was happening. The expression on her face vanished, replaced by a blank look. She pushed her sunglasses up on her head and gazed at Tsukuru without a word. She’d gone out for an after-lunch walk with her daughters, only to come back and find a man, a Japanese man by the look of him, standing next to her husband. A face she didn’t recognize.

She was holding her younger daughter’s hand. The little girl looked about three. Next to her stood the older daughter, a little bigger and probably two or three years older than her sister. The girls wore matching flower-print dresses and plastic sandals. The door was still open, and outside the dog was barking noisily. Edvard stuck his head outside and gave the dog a quick scolding. It soon stopped barking and lay down on the porch. The daughters, like their mother, stood there silently, staring at Tsukuru.

Kuro didn’t look much different from the last time he’d seen her, sixteen years earlier. The soft, full visage of her teenage years, though, had retreated, filled in now by more straightforward, expressive features. She’d always been robust and sturdy, but now her unwavering, unclouded eyes seemed more introspective. Those eyes had surely seen so many things over the years, things that remained in her heart. Her lips were tight, her forehead and cheeks tanned and healthy-looking. Abundant black hair fell straight to her shoulders, her bangs pinned back with a barrette, and her breasts were fuller than before. She was wearing a plain blue cotton dress, a cream-colored shawl draped around her shoulders, and white tennis shoes.

Kuro turned to her husband as if for an explanation, but Edvard said nothing. He merely shook his head slightly. She turned to look back at Tsukuru, and lightly bit her lip.

What Tsukuru saw in front of him now was the healthy body of a woman who had walked a completely different path in life from the one he’d taken. Seeing her now, the true weight of sixteen years of time struck him with a sudden intensity. There are some things, he concluded, that can only be expressed through a woman’s form.

As she gazed at him, Kuro’s face was a bit strained. Her lips quivered, as if a ripple had run through them, and one side of her mouth rose. A small dimple appeared on her right cheek—technically not a dimple, but a shallow depression that appeared as her face was filled with a cheerful bitterness. Tsukuru remembered this expression well, the expression that came to her face just before she voiced some sarcastic remark. But now she wasn’t going to say something sarcastic. She was simply trying to draw a distant hypothesis closer to her.

“ Tsukuru ?” she said, finally giving the hypothesis a name.

Tsukuru nodded.

The first thing she did was pull her daughter closer, as if protecting her from some threat. The little girl, her face still raised to Tsukuru, clung to her mother’s leg. The older daughter stood a bit apart, unmoving. Edvard went over to her and gently patted her hair. The girl’s hair was dark blond. The younger girl’s was black.

The five of them stayed that way for a while, not speaking a word. Edvard patted the blond daughter’s hair, Kuro’s arm remained around the shoulder of the black-haired daughter, while Tsukuru stood alone on the other side of the table, as if they were all holding a pose for a painting with this arrangement. And the central figure in this was Kuro. She, or rather her body, was the core of the tableau enclosed by that frame.

Kuro was the first to move. She let go of her little daughter, then took the sunglasses off her forehead and laid them on the table. She picked up the mug her husband had been using and took a drink of the cold, leftover coffee. She frowned, as if she had no idea what it was she’d just drunk.

“Shall I make some coffee?” her husband asked her in Japanese.

“Please,” Kuro said, not looking in his direction. She sat down at the table.

Edvard went over to the coffee maker again and switched it on to reheat the coffee. Following their mother’s lead, the two girls sat down side by side on a wooden bench next to the window. They stared at Tsukuru.

“Is that really you, Tsukuru?” Kuro asked in a small voice.

“In the flesh,” Tsukuru replied.

Her eyes narrowed, and she gazed right at him.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Tsukuru said. He’d meant it as a joke, though it didn’t come out sounding like one.

“You look so different,” Kuro said in a dry tone.

“Everyone who hasn’t seen me in a while says that.”

“You’re so thin, so … grown-up.”

“Maybe that’s because I’m a grown-up,” Tsukuru said.

“I guess so,” Kuro said.

“But you’ve hardly changed at all.”

She gave a small shake of her head but didn’t respond.

Her husband brought the coffee over and placed it on the table. A small mug, one she herself had made. She put in a spoonful of sugar, stirred it, and cautiously took a sip of the steaming coffee.

“I’m going to take the kids into town,” Edvard said cheerfully. “We need groceries, and I have to gas up the car.”

Kuro looked over at him and nodded. “Okay. Thanks,” she said.

“Do you want anything?” he asked his wife.

She silently shook her head.

Edvard stuck his wallet in his pocket, took down the keys from where they hung on the wall, and said something to his daughters in Finnish. The girls beamed and leaped up from the bench. Tsukuru caught the words “ice cream.” Edvard had probably promised to buy the girls an ice cream when they went shopping.

Kuro and Tsukuru stood on the porch and watched as Edvard and the girls climbed into the Renault van. Edvard opened the double doors in back, gave a short whistle, and the dog ecstatically barreled toward the van and leaped inside. Edvard looked out from the driver’s side, waved, and the white van disappeared beyond the trees. Kuro and Tsukuru stood there, watching the spot where the van had last been.