Haruki Murakami - after the quake

“What in the world—?”

“Just say you understand,” Nimit said with the utmost gravity.

“I understand,” Satsuki said.

The old woman gave a gentle nod and spoke again to Satsuki.

“The man is not dead,” translated Nimit. “He did not receive a scratch. It may not be what you wanted, but it was actually very lucky for you that he was not hurt. You should be grateful for your good fortune.”

The woman uttered a few short syllables.

“That is all,” Nimit said. “We can go back to the hotel now.”

“Was that some kind of fortune-telling?” Satsuki asked when they were back in the car.

“No, Doctor. It was not fortune-telling. Just as you treat people’s bodies, she treats people’s spirits. She predicts their dreams, mostly.”

“I should have left her something then, as a token of thanks. The whole thing was such a surprise to me, it slipped my mind.”

Nimit negotiated a sharp curve on the mountain road, turning the wheel in that precise way of his. “I paid her,” he said. “A small amount. Not enough for you to trouble yourself over. Just think of it as a mark of my personal regard for you, Doctor.”

“Do you take all of your clients there?”

“No, Doctor, only you.”

“And why is that?”

“You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.”

“Tell me something, Nimit,” Satsuki said, taking off her sunglasses and leaning over the back of the passenger seat.

“What is that, Doctor?”

“Are you prepared to die?”

“I am half dead already,” Nimit said as if stating the obvious.

That night, lying in her broad, pristine bed, Satsuki wept. She recognized that she was headed toward death. She recognized that she had a hard, white stone inside herself. She recognized that a scaly, green snake was lurking somewhere in the dark. She thought about the child to which she never gave birth. She had destroyed that child, flung it down a bottomless well. And then she had spent thirty years hating one man. She had hoped that he would die in agony. In order to bring that about, she had gone so far as to wish in the depths of her heart for an earthquake. In a sense, she told herself, I am the one who caused that earthquake. He turned my heart into a stone; he turned my body to stone. In the distant mountains, the gray monkeys were silently staring at her. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.

After checking her bags at the airline counter, Satsuki handed Nimit an envelope containing a one-hundred-dollar bill. “Thank you for everything, Nimit. You made it possible for me to have a wonderful rest. This is a personal gift from me to you.”

“That is very thoughtful of you, Doctor,” said Nimit, accepting the envelope. “Thank you very much.”

“Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, I would enjoy that.”

They went to a café together. Satsuki took hers black. Nimit gave his a heavy dose of cream. For a long time, Satsuki went on turning her cup in her saucer.

“You know,” she said at last, “I have a secret that I’ve never told anyone. I could never bring myself to talk about it. I’ve kept it locked up inside of me all this time. But I’d like to tell it to you now. Because we’ll probably never meet again. When my father died all of a sudden, my mother, without a word to me—”

Nimit held his hands up, palms facing Satsuki, and shook his head. “Please, Doctor. Don’t tell me anymore. You should have your dream, as the old woman told you to. I understand how you feel, but if you put those feelings into words they will turn into lies.”

Satsuki swallowed her words, and then, in silence, closed her eyes. She drew in a full, deep breath, and let it out again.

“Have your dream, Doctor,” Nimit said as if sharing kindly advice. “What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone.”

He reached out and took Satsuki’s hand between his. His hands were strangely smooth and youthful, as if they had always been protected by expensive leather gloves. Satsuki opened her eyes and looked at him. Nimit took away his hands and rested them on the table, fingers intertwined.

“My Norwegian employer was actually from Lapland,” he said. “You must know, of course, that Lapland is at the northern-most tip of Norway, near the North Pole. Many reindeer live there. In summer there is no night, and in winter no day. He probably came to Thailand because the cold got to be too much for him. I guess you could call the two places complete opposites. He loved Thailand, and he made up his mind to have his bones buried here. But still, to the day he died, he missed the town in Lapland where he was born. He used to tell me about it all the time. And yet, in spite of that, he never once went back to Norway in thirty-three years. Something must have happened there that kept him away. He was another person with a stone inside.”

Nimit lifted his coffee cup and took a sip, then carefully set it in its saucer again without a sound.

“He once told me about polar bears—what solitary animals they are. They mate just once a year. One time in a whole year. There is no such thing as a lasting male-female bond in their world. One male polar bear and one female polar bear meet by sheer chance somewhere in the frozen vastness, and they mate. It doesn’t take long. And once they are finished, the male runs away from the female as if he is frightened to death: he runs from the place where they have mated. He never looks back— literally. The rest of the year he lives in deep solitude. Mutual communication—the touching of two hearts—does not exist for them. So, that is the story of polar bears—or at least it is what my employer told me about them.”

“How very strange,” Satsuki said.

“Yes,” Nimit said, “it is strange.” His face was grave. “I remember asking my employer, ‘Then what do polar bears exist for?’ ‘Yes, exactly,’ he said with a big smile. ‘Then what do we exist for, Nimit?’ ”

The plane reached cruising altitude and the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign went out. So, thought Satsuki, I’m going back to Japan. She tried to think about what lay ahead, but soon gave up. “Words turn into stone,” Nimit had told her. She settled deep into her seat and closed her eyes. All at once the image came to her of the sky she had seen while swimming on her back. And Erroll Garner’s “I’ll Remember April.” Let me sleep, she thought. Just let me sleep. And wait for the dream to come.

Katagiri found a giant frog waiting for him in his apartment. It was powerfully built, standing over six feet tall on its hind legs. A skinny little man no more than five-foot-three, Katagiri was overwhelmed by the frog’s imposing bulk.

“Call me ‘Frog,’ ” said the frog in a clear, strong voice.

Katagiri stood rooted in the doorway, unable to speak.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m not here to hurt you. Just come in and close the door. Please.”

Briefcase in his right hand, grocery bag with fresh vegetables and canned salmon cradled in his left arm, Katagiri didn’t dare move.

“Please, Mr. Katagiri, hurry and close the door, and take off your shoes.”

The sound of his own name helped Katagiri snap out of it. He closed the door as ordered, set the grocery bag on the raised wooden floor, pinned the briefcase under one arm, and unlaced his shoes. Frog gestured for him to take a seat at the kitchen table, which he did.