Haruki Murakami - after the quake

“You certainly are.”

Frog stretched his arms out wide, his big green webs opening like pale wings. “Don’t worry, Mr. Katagiri. Leave everything to me. By tomorrow morning, old Frog will have your problems solved. Relax and have a good night’s sleep.”

With a big smile on his face, Frog stood up. Then, flattening himself like a dried squid, he slipped out through the gap at the side of the closed door, leaving Katagiri all alone. The two teacups on the kitchen table were the only indication that Frog had ever been in Katagiri’s apartment.

The moment Katagiri arrived at work the next morning at nine, the phone on his desk rang.

“Mr. Katagiri,” said a man’s voice. It was cold and businesslike. “My name is Shiraoka. I am an attorney with the Big Bear case. I received a call from my client this morning with regard to the pending loan matter. He wants you to know that he will take full responsibility for returning the entire amount requested by the due date. He will also give you a signed memorandum to that effect. His only request is that you do not send Frog to his home again. I repeat: he wants you to ask Frog never to visit his home again. I myself am not entirely sure what this is supposed to mean, but I believe it should be clear to you, Mr. Katagiri. Am I correct?”

“You are indeed,” Katagiri said.

“You will be kind enough to convey my message to Frog, I trust.”

“That I will do. Your client will never see Frog again.”

“Thank you very much. I will prepare the memorandum for you by tomorrow.”

“I appreciate it,” Katagiri said.

The connection was cut.

Frog visited Katagiri in his Trust Bank office at lunchtime. “That Big Bear case is working out well for you, I presume?”

Katagiri glanced around uneasily.

“Don’t worry,” Frog said. “You are the only one who can see me. But now I am sure you realize that I actually exist. I am not a product of your imagination. I can take action and produce results. I am a real, living being.”

“Tell me, Mr. Frog—”

“Please,” Frog said, raising one finger. “Call me ‘Frog.’ ”

“Tell me, Frog,” Katagiri said, “what did you do to them?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Frog said. “Nothing much more complicated than boiling Brussels sprouts. I just gave them a little scare. A touch of psychological terror. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, true terror is the kind that men feel toward their imagination. But never mind that, Mr. Katagiri. Tell me about the Big Bear case. It’s going well?”

Katagiri nodded and lit a cigarette. “Seems to be.”

“So, then, have I succeeded in gaining your trust with regard to the matter I broached to you last night? Will you join me to fight against Worm?”

Sighing, Katagiri removed his glasses and wiped them. “To tell you the truth, I’m not too crazy about the idea, but I don’t suppose that’s enough to get me out of it.”

“No,” Frog said. “It is a matter of responsibility and honor. You may not be too ‘crazy’ about the idea, but we have no choice: you and I must go underground and face Worm. If we should happen to lose our lives in the process, we will gain no one’s sympathy. And even if we manage to defeat Worm, no one will praise us. No one will ever know that such a battle even raged far beneath their feet. Only you and I will know, Mr. Katagiri. However it turns out, ours will be a lonely battle.”

Katagiri looked at his own hand for a while, then watched the smoke rising from his cigarette. Finally, he spoke. “You know, Mr. Frog, I’m just an ordinary person.”

“Make that ‘Frog,’ please,” Frog said, but Katagiri let it go.

“I’m an absolutely ordinary guy. Less than ordinary. I’m going bald, I’m getting a potbelly, I turned forty last month. My feet are flat. The doctor told me recently that I have diabetic tendencies. It’s been three months or more since I last slept with a woman—and I had to pay for it. I do get some recognition within the division for my ability to collect on loans, but no real respect. I don’t have a single person who likes me, either at work or in my private life. I don’t know how to talk to people, and I’m bad with strangers, so I never make friends. I have no athletic ability, I’m tone-deaf, short, phimotic, nearsighted— and astigmatic. I live a horrible life. All I do is eat, sleep, and shit. I don’t know why I’m even living. Why should a person like me have to be the one to save Tokyo?”

“Because, Mr. Katagiri, Tokyo can only be saved by a person like you. And it’s for people like you that I am trying to save Tokyo.”

Katagiri sighed again, more deeply this time. “All right then, what do you want me to do?”

Frog told Katagiri his plan. They would go underground on the night of February 17 (one day before the earthquake was scheduled to happen). Their way in would be through the basement boiler room of the Shinjuku branch of the Tokyo Security Trust Bank. They would meet there late at night (Katagiri would stay in the building on the pretext of working overtime). Behind a section of wall was a vertical shaft, and they would find Worm at the bottom by climbing down a 150-foot rope ladder.

“Do you have a battle plan in mind?” Katagiri asked.

“Of course I do. We would have no hope of defeating an enemy like Worm without a battle plan. He is a slimy creature: you can’t tell his mouth from his anus. And he’s as big as a commuter train.”

“What is your battle plan?”

After a thoughtful pause, Frog answered, “Hmm, what is it they say—‘Silence is golden’?”

“You mean I shouldn’t ask?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“What if I get scared at the last minute and run away? What would you do then, Mr. Frog?”

“ ‘Frog.’ ”

“Frog. What would you do then?”

Frog thought about this a while and answered, “I would fight on alone. My chances of beating him by myself are perhaps just slightly better than Anna Karenina’s chances of beating that speeding locomotive. Have you read Anna Karenina, Mr. Katagiri?”

When he heard that Katagiri had not read the novel, Frog gave him a look as if to say, What a shame. Apparently Frog was very fond of Anna Karenina.

“Still, Mr. Katagiri, I do not believe that you will leave me to fight alone. I can tell. It’s a question of balls—which, unfortunately, I do not happen to possess. Ha ha ha ha!” Frog laughed with his mouth wide open. Balls were not all that Frog lacked. He had no teeth, either.

Unexpected things do happen, however.

Katagiri was shot on the evening of February 17. He had finished his rounds for the day and was walking down the street in Shinjuku on his way back to the Trust Bank when a young man in a leather jacket leaped in front of him. The man’s face was a blank, and he gripped a small black gun in one hand. The gun was so small and so black it hardly looked real. Katagiri stared at the object in the man’s hand, not registering the fact that it was aimed at him and that the man was pulling the trigger. It all happened too quickly: it didn’t make sense to him. But the gun in fact went off.

Katagiri saw the barrel jerk in the air and, at the same moment, felt an impact as though someone had struck his right shoulder with a sledgehammer. He felt no pain, but the blow sent him sprawling on the sidewalk. The leather briefcase in his right hand went flying in the other direction. The man aimed the gun at him again. A second shot rang out. A small eatery’s sidewalk signboard exploded before his eyes. He heard people screaming. His eyeglasses had flown off, and everything was a blur. He was vaguely aware that the man was approaching with the pistol pointed at him. I’m going to die, he thought. Frog had said that true terror is the kind that men feel toward their imagination. Katagiri cut the switch of his imagination and sank into a weightless silence.