Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“You drove that Golf here?” Kuro asked. She pointed to the little navy-blue car parked off a ways.

“I did. From Helsinki.”

“Why did you come all the way to Helsinki?”

“I came to see you.”

Kuro’s eyes narrowed, and she stared at him, as if trying to decipher a difficult diagram.

“You came all the way to Finland to see me? Just to see me ?”

“That’s the size of it.”

“After sixteen years, without a word?” she asked, seemingly astonished.

“Actually it was my girlfriend who told me to come. She said it’s about time I saw you again.”

The familiar curve came to Kuro’s lips. She sounded half joking now. “I see. Your girlfriend told you it was about time you came to see me. So you jumped on a plane in Narita and flew all the way to Finland. Without contacting me, and with no guarantee that I’d actually be here.”

Tsukuru was silent. The boat went on slapping against the dock, though there wasn’t much wind, and just a scattering of waves on the lake.

“I thought if I got in touch before I came, you might not see me.”

“How could you say that?” Kuro said in surprise. “Come on, we’re friends.”

“We used to be. But I don’t know anymore.”

She gazed through the trees at the lake and let out a soundless sigh. “It’ll be two hours before they come back from town. Let’s use the time to talk.”

They went inside and sat down across from each other at the table. She removed the barrette and her hair spilled onto her forehead. Now she looked more like the Kuro he remembered.

“There’s one thing I’d like you to do,” Kuro said. “Don’t call me Kuro anymore. I’d prefer you call me Eri. And don’t refer to Yuzuki as Shiro. If possible, I don’t want you to call us by those names anymore.”

“Those names are finished?”

She nodded.

“But you don’t mind still calling me Tsukuru?”

“You’re always Tsukuru,” Eri said, and laughed quietly. “So I don’t mind. The Tsukuru who makes things. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki.”

“In May I went to Nagoya and saw Ao and Aka, one right after the other,” Tsukuru said. “Is it okay if I keep on using those names?”

“That’s fine. But I just want you to use Yuzu’s and my real names.”

“I saw them separately, and we talked. Not for very long, though.”

“Are they both okay?”

“It seemed like it,” Tsukuru said. “And their work seems to be going well, too.”

“So in good old Nagoya, Ao’s busy selling Lexuses, one after another, while Aka’s training corporate warriors.”

“That about sums it up.”

“And what about you? You’ve managed to get by?”

“Yes, I’ve managed,” Tsukuru said. “I work for a railroad company in Tokyo and build stations.”

“You know, I happened to hear about that not so long ago. That Tsukuru Tazaki was busy building stations in Tokyo,” Eri said. “And that he had a very clever girlfriend.”

“For the time being.”

“So you’re still single?”

“I am.”

“You always did things at your own pace.”

Tsukuru was silent.

“What did you talk about when you met the two of them in Nagoya?” Eri asked.

“We talked about what happened between us,” Tsukuru said. “About what happened sixteen years ago, and what’s happened in the sixteen years since.”

“Was meeting them also, maybe—something your girlfriend told you to do?”

Tsukuru nodded. “She said there are some things I have to resolve. I have to revisit the past. Otherwise … I’ll never be free from it.”

“She thinks you have some issues you need to deal with.”

“She does.”

“And she thinks these issues are damaging your relationship.”

“Most likely,” Tsukuru said.

Eri held the mug in both hands, testing how hot it was, and then took another sip of coffee.

“How old is she?”

“She’s two years older than me.”

Eri nodded. “I can see you getting along well with an older woman.”

“Maybe so,” Tsukuru said.

They were quiet for a while.

“There are all kinds of things we have to deal with in life,” Eri finally said. “And one thing always seems to connect with another. You try to solve one problem, only to find that another one you hadn’t anticipated arises instead. It’s not that easy to get free of them. That’s true for you—and for me, too.”

“You’re right, it’s not easy to get free of them. But that doesn’t mean we should leave them hanging, unresolved,” Tsukuru said. “You can put a lid on memory, but you can’t hide history. That’s what my girlfriend said.”

Eri stood up, went over to the window, opened it, then returned to the table. The breeze fluttered the curtain, and the boat slapped sporadically against the dock. She brushed her hair back with her fingers, rested both hands on the tabletop, and looked at Tsukuru, then spoke. “There could be lids that have gotten so tight you can’t pry them off anymore.”

“I’m not trying to force anything. That’s not what I’m trying to do. But at least I’d like to see, with my own eyes, what kind of lid it is.”

Eri gazed at her hands on the table. They were larger, and more fleshy, than Tsukuru remembered. Her fingers were long, her nails short. He pictured those hands spinning a potter’s wheel.

“You said I look very different,” Tsukuru said. “I think I’ve changed, too. Sixteen years ago, after you banished me from the group, all I could think about for five months was dying. Death and nothing else. Not to exaggerate or anything, but I was really teetering on the brink. Standing on the edge, staring down at the abyss, unable to look away. Somehow, I was able to make my way back to the world I came from. But it wouldn’t have been surprising if I had actually died then. Something was wrong with me—mentally, I mean. I don’t know what would be the correct diagnosis—anxiety, depression. Something like that. But something was definitely abnormal. It wasn’t like I was confused, though. My mind was perfectly clear. Utterly still, with no static at all. A very strange condition, now that I think back on it.”

Tsukuru stared at Eri’s silent hands and went on.

“After those five months were over, my face was totally transformed. And my body, too. None of my old clothes fit anymore. When I looked in the mirror, it felt like I’d been put inside a container that wasn’t me. I don’t know, maybe my life just happened to reach that stage—a stage where I had to kind of lose my mind for a while, where my looks and my body had to undergo a metamorphosis. But the trigger for this change was the fact that I had been cut off from our group. That incident changed me forever.”

Eri listened without a word.

Tsukuru went on. “How should I put it? It felt like I was on the deck of a ship at night and was suddenly hurled into the ocean, all alone.”

After he said this, he suddenly recalled this was the same description that Aka had used. He paused and continued.

“I don’t know if someone pushed me off, or whether I fell overboard on my own. Either way, the ship sails on and I’m in the dark, freezing water, watching the lights on deck fade into the distance. None of the passengers or crew know I’ve fallen overboard. There’s nothing to cling to. I still have that fear, even now—that suddenly my very existence will be denied and, through no fault of my own, I’ll be hurled into the night sea once more. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to form deep relationships with people. I always keep a distance between me and others.”

He spread his hands apart on the table, indicating a space of about twelve inches.

“Maybe it’s part of my personality, something I was born with. Maybe I’ve always had an instinctive tendency to leave a buffer zone between me and others. But one thing I do know is that I never thought this when I was with all of you in high school. At least that’s how I remember it. Though it seems so long ago.”