Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Why do you think she developed an eating disorder?”

“It’s quite simple. She wanted to stop having periods,” Eri said. “Extreme weight loss stops you from having periods. That’s what she was hoping for. She didn’t want to ever get pregnant again, and probably didn’t want to be a woman anymore. She wanted, if possible, to have her womb removed.”

“Sounds pretty serious,” Tsukuru said.

“It was, very serious. That’s why the only thing I could do was cut you off. I felt really bad for you, and believe me, I knew how cruelly I was treating you. For me it was especially hard not to be able to see you again. It’s true. I felt like I was being ripped apart. Like I said before, I really liked you.”

Eri paused, gazing at her hands on the table as if gathering her feelings, and then she went on.

“But I had to help Yuzu recover. That had to be my highest priority. She had life-threatening issues she was dealing with, and she needed my help. So the only thing I could do was make you swim alone through the cold night sea. I knew you could do it. You were strong enough to make it.”

The two of them were silent for a time. The leaves on the trees outside rippled in the wind.

Tsukuru broke the silence. “So Yuzu recovered and graduated from college. What happened after that?”

“She was still seeing a counselor once a week but was able to pretty much lead a normal life. At least she didn’t look like a ghost anymore. But by then she was no longer the Yuzu we used to know.”

Eri took a breath, choosing her words.

“She had changed,” Eri finally said. “It’s like everything had drained out of her heart, like any interest in the outside world had disappeared. She no longer cared much about music. It was painful to see. She still enjoyed teaching music to children, though—that passion never left her. Even when her condition was at its worst, when she was so weak she could barely stand up, she managed to drag herself once a week to the church school where she taught piano to kids. She kept on doing that volunteer work alone. I think the desire to continue that project was what helped her recover. If she hadn’t had that work, she might never have made it.”

Eri turned around and gazed out the window at the sky above the trees. She faced forward again and looked directly at Tsukuru. The sky was still covered with a thin layer of clouds.

“By this time, though, Yuzu didn’t have that sense of unconditional friendship toward me that she’d had when we were younger. She said she was grateful to me, for everything I’d done for her. And I think she really was. But at the same time, she’d lost any interest in me . Like I said, Yuzu had lost interest in almost everything. And I was part of this almost everything . It was painful to admit. We’d been best friends for so long, and I really cared about her. But that’s the way it was. By then I wasn’t indispensable to her anymore.”

Eri stared for a while at an imaginary spot above the table, and then spoke.

“Yuzu wasn’t Snow White anymore. Or maybe she was too worn out to be Snow White. And I was a bit tired myself of being the Seven Dwarfs.”

Eri half unconsciously picked up her coffee cup, then returned it to the table.

“At any rate, by then our wonderful group—the group of four, minus you—couldn’t function the way it had in the past. Everyone had graduated from school and was busy with their own lives. It’s an obvious thing to say, but we weren’t high school kids anymore. And needless to say, cutting you off left behind emotional scars in all of us. Scars that weren’t superficial.”

Tsukuru was silent, listening intently to her words.

“You were gone, but you were always there,” Eri said.

Once more, a short silence.

“Eri, I want to know more about you,” Tsukuru said. “What brought you to where you are now—that’s what I’d first like to know.”

Eri narrowed her eyes and tilted her head slightly. “From my late teens until my early twenties, Yuzu had me totally under her sway. One day I looked around me and realized I was fading. I’d been hoping to get work as a writer. I always enjoyed writing. I wanted to write novels, poems, things of that nature. You knew about that, right?”

Tsukuru nodded. Eri had carried around a thick notebook, always jotting down ideas when the urge came over her.

“But in college I couldn’t manage that. Taking care of Yuzu constantly, it was all I could do to keep up with my schoolwork. I had two boyfriends in college but not much came of it—I was too busy spending time with Yuzu to go on dates very often. Nothing worked out for me. One day I just stopped and asked myself: What in the world are you doing with your life? I had no goals anymore and I was just spinning my wheels, watching my self-confidence disappear. I know things were hard for Yuzu, but you have to understand that they were hard for me, too.”

Eri’s eyes narrowed again, as if she were gazing at some distant scene.

“A friend from college asked me to go to a pottery class and I went along, kind of as a lark. And that’s where I discovered what I’d been searching for, after so long. Spinning the potter’s wheel, I felt like I could be totally honest with myself. Focusing on creating something helped me to forget everything else. From that day on, I’ve been totally absorbed in pottery. In college it was still just a hobby, but after that, I wanted to become a full-fledged potter. I graduated from college, worked part-time jobs for a year while I studied, then reentered school, this time in the industrial arts department. Goodbye novels, hello pottery. While I was working on my pottery, I met Edvard, who was in Japan as an exchange student. Eventually we got married and moved here. Life is a total surprise sometimes. If my friend hadn’t invited me to the pottery class, I’d be living a completely different life now.”

“You really seem to have a talent for it,” Tsukuru said, pointing to the pottery on the shelves. “I don’t know much about pottery, but I get a wonderful feeling when I look at your pieces, and hold them.”

Eri smiled. “I don’t know about talent. But my work sells pretty well here. It doesn’t bring in much money, but I’m really happy that other people need what I create.”

“I know what you mean,” Tsukuru said, “since I make things myself. Very different things from yours, though.”

“As different as stations and plates.”

“We need both in our lives.”

“Of course,” Eri said. She thought about something. The smile gradually faded from her lips. “I like it here. I imagine I’ll stay here for the rest of my life.”

“You won’t go back to Japan?”

“I’ve taken Finnish citizenship now, and have gotten a lot better at speaking the language. The winters are hard to get through, I’ll admit that, but then it gives me more time to read. Maybe I’ll find I want to write again. The children are used to Finland now and have friends here. And Edvard is a good man. His family’s good to us, too, and my work is going well.”

“And you’re needed here.”

Eri raised her head and looked fixedly at Tsukuru.

“It was when I heard that Yuzu had been murdered by somebody that I decided I could stay here the rest of my life. Ao called and told me. I was pregnant with my older girl then and couldn’t attend the funeral. It was a terrible thing for me. I felt like my chest was about to be ripped apart. Knowing that Yuzu had been killed like that, in some unknown place, and that she’d been cremated and was nothing more than ash. Knowing that I’d never see her again. I made up my mind then and there that if I had a girl, I’d name her Yuzu. And that I’d never go back to Japan.”