Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

There was still some time before the train opened its doors for boarding, yet passengers were hurriedly buying boxed dinners, snacks, cans of beer, and magazines at the kiosk. Some had white iPod headphones in their ears, already off in their own little worlds. Others palmed smartphones, thumbing out texts, some talking so loudly into their phones that their voices rose above the blaring PA announcements. Tsukuru spotted a young couple, seated close together on a bench, happily sharing secrets. A pair of sleepy-looking five- or six-year-old twin boys, with their mother and father dragging them along by their hands, were whisked past where Tsukuru sat. The boys clutched small game devices. Two young foreign men hefted heavy-looking backpacks, while a young woman was lugging a cello case. A woman with a stunning profile passed by. Everyone was boarding a night train, heading to a far-off destination. Tsukuru envied them. At least they had a place they needed to go to.

Tsukuru Tazaki had no place he needed to go.

He realized that he had never actually been to Matsumoto, or Kofu. Or Shiojiri. Not even to the much closer town of Hachioji. He had watched countless express trains for Matsumoto depart from this platform, but it had never occurred to him that there was a possibility he could board one. Until now he had never thought of it. Why is that? he wondered.

Tsukuru imagined himself boarding this train and heading for Matsumoto. It wasn’t exactly impossible. And it didn’t seem like such a terrible idea. He’d suddenly gotten it into his head, after all, to take off for Finland, so why not Matsumoto? What sort of town was it? he wondered. What kind of lives did people lead there? But he shook his head and erased these thoughts. Tomorrow morning it would be impossible to get back to Tokyo in time for work. He knew that much without consulting the timetable. And he was meeting Sara tomorrow night. It was a very important day for him. He couldn’t just take off for Matsumoto on a whim.

He drank the rest of his now-lukewarm coffee and tossed the paper cup into a nearby garbage bin.

Tsukuru Tazaki had nowhere he had to go . This was like a running theme of his life. He had no place he had to go to, no place to come back to. He never did, and he didn’t now. The only place for him was where he was now .

No, he thought. That’s not entirely true.

At one point in his life he did have a place he needed to go to. In high school, he had his heart set on going to an engineering college in Tokyo and majoring in railroad station design. That was the place he needed to go . And he studied hard to make sure he could do so. His academic advisor had coolly warned him that with his grades, he had only a 20 percent chance of getting into that school, but he’d done his best and somehow surmounted that hurdle. He had never studied so hard in his life. He wasn’t cut out for competing with others for rank and grades, but given a set goal he put his heart and soul into it. He exerted himself beyond anything he’d ever imagined, and the experience was a new, and precious, discovery for him of his own capabilities.

As a result, Tsukuru left Nagoya and ended up living alone in Tokyo. In Tokyo he longed to return to his hometown as soon as he could, even if only for a short time, to see his friends again. At that point Nagoya was the place he needed to go back to . He shuttled back and forth between two different places for a little over a year. But then, without warning, the cycle was broken.

After this, he no longer had a place to go, or a place to which he could return. His house was still in Nagoya, his mother and eldest sister still living there, his room the same as he’d left it. His other older sister was also living in the city. Once or twice a year he made an obligatory visit and was always warmly received, but there was nothing he needed to talk to his mother or sister about, and being with them never brought back any nostalgic feelings. What they sought from him was the Tsukuru of old , a person he had left behind and no longer needed. To revive that person, and present him to his family, necessitated that he play a role that made him uncomfortable. The streets of Nagoya now felt remote and dreary. There was nothing there he wanted, nothing that called up even a hint of warmth.

Tokyo, meanwhile, was just the place he happened to end up. It was where he had attended school, where his job was located. Professionally it was the place he belonged, but beyond that, the city meant nothing to him. In Tokyo he lived a well-ordered, quiet life. Like a refugee in a foreign land, not making waves, not causing any trouble, being ever cautious so that his residence permit was not revoked. He lived there as if he were a refugee from his own life. And Tokyo was the ideal place for someone seeking a life of anonymity.

He had no one he could call a close friend. A few girlfriends entered his life along the way, but they hadn’t stayed together. Peaceful relationships followed by amicable breakups. Not a single person had really climbed inside his heart. He had not been seeking that sort of relationship, and most likely the women he went out with hadn’t desired him that much either. So they were even.

It’s like my life came to a halt at age twenty, Tsukuru Tazaki thought, as he sat on the bench in Shinjuku Station. The days that came afterward had no real weight or substance. The years passed by, quietly, like a gentle breeze. Leaving no scars behind, no sorrow, rousing no strong emotions, leaving no happiness or memories worth mentioning. And now he was entering middle age. No—he still had a few years to go before that. But it was true that he was no longer young.

In a sense, Eri was a refugee from life as well. She too carried emotional scars, scars that had led her to leave everything behind and abandon her country. She had chosen a new world, Finland, on her own. And now she had a husband and two daughters, as well as her work making pottery, work in which she completely immersed herself. She had a summer cottage by the lake, and a small, chipper dog. She’d learned Finnish, and was steadily constructing her own little universe. That makes her different from me, Tsukuru thought.

He glanced at the Heuer watch on his left wrist. It was 8:50. Passengers had begun boarding the express train. One after another, people dragged their luggage aboard, plunking themselves down in their designated seats, stowing their bags in the overhead racks, settling down in the air-conditioned cars, sipping cold drinks.

He could see them through the windows of the train. He’d inherited the watch from his father. One of the few tangible things he’d received. It was a beautiful antique, from the early 1960 s. If you didn’t wear it for three days, the mechanism would wind down and the hands would stop. An inconvenience, but that’s what Tsukuru liked about it. It was a purely mechanical device, a piece of craftsmanship. No quartz or a single microchip inside, everything operated by delicate springs and gears. It had been working faithfully, without a rest, for a half century and was, even now, surprisingly accurate.

Tsukuru had never bought a watch himself, not once in his whole life. When he was young, someone inevitably gave him a cheap one, which he used without much thought. As long as it kept the right time, he didn’t care what he wore. That was the extent of his feelings for watches. A simple Casio digital watch did the trick. So when his father died, and he was given this expensive wristwatch as a keepsake, again it aroused no special feelings one way or the other. He had to make sure to wear it regularly, so it didn’t wind down, but once he got used to this, he found he had a great fondness for the watch. He enjoyed the weight and heft of it, the faint mechanical whir it made. He found himself checking the time more often than before, and each time he did, his father’s shadow passed, faintly, through his mind.