Haruki Murakami - after the quake

He continued to think seriously about asking Sayoko to marry him. On more than one occasion, he kept himself awake all night thinking about it, and for a time he was unable to work. But still, he could not make up his mind. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that his relationship with Sayoko had been consistently directed by others. His position was always passive. Takatsuki was the one who had picked the two of them out of his class and created the threesome. Then he had taken Sayoko, married her, fathered a child with her, and divorced her. And now Takatsuki was the one who was urging Junpei to marry her. Junpei loved Sayoko, of course. About that there was no question. And now was the perfect time for him to be united with her. She probably wouldn’t turn him down. But Junpei couldn’t help thinking that things were just a bit too perfect. What was there left for him to decide? And so he went on wondering. And not deciding. And then the earthquake struck.

Junpei was in Barcelona at the time, writing a story for an airline magazine. He returned to his hotel in the evening to find the TV news filled with images of whole city blocks of collapsed buildings and black clouds of smoke. It looked like the aftermath of an air raid. Because the announcer was speaking in Spanish, it took Junpei a while to realize what city he was looking at, but it had to be Kobe. Several familiar-looking sights caught his eye. The expressway through Ashiya had collapsed. “You’re from Kobe, aren’t you?” his photographer asked.

“You’re damn right I am,” Junpei said.

But Junpei did not try to call his parents. The rift was too deep, and had gone on too long for there to be any hope of reconciliation. He flew back to Tokyo and resumed his normal life. He never turned on the television, and hardly looked at a newspaper. Whenever anyone mentioned the earthquake, he would clam up. It was an echo from a past that he had buried long ago. He hadn’t set foot on those streets since his graduation, but still, the sight of the destruction laid bare raw wounds hidden somewhere deep inside him. The lethal, gigantic catastrophe seemed to change certain aspects of his life—quietly, but from the ground up. Junpei felt an entirely new sense of isolation. I have no roots, he thought. I’m not connected to anything.

Early on the Sunday morning that they had all planned to take Sala to the zoo to see the bears, Takatsuki called to say that he had to fly to Okinawa. He had managed at last to pry the promise of an hour-long one-on-one interview out of the governor. “Sorry, but you’ll have to go to the zoo without me. I don’t suppose Mr. Bear will be too upset if I don’t make it.”

So Junpei and Sayoko took Sala to the Ueno Zoo. Junpei held Sala in his arms and showed her the bears. She pointed to the biggest, blackest bear and asked, “Is that one Masakichi?”

“No no, that’s not Masakichi,” Junpei said. “Masakichi is smaller than that, and he’s smarter-looking, too. That’s the tough guy, Tonkichi.”

“Tonkichi!” Sala yelled again and again, but the bear paid no attention. Then she looked at Junpei and said, “Tell me a story about Tonkichi.”

“That’s a hard one,” Junpei said. “There aren’t that many interesting stories about Tonkichi. He’s just an ordinary bear. He can’t talk or count money like Masakichi.”

“But I bet you can tell me something good about him. One thing.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Junpei said. “There’s at least one good thing to tell about even the most ordinary bear. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Well, Tonchiki—”

“Ton ki chi!” Sala corrected him with a touch of impatience.

“Ah yes, sorry. Well, Tonkichi had one thing he could do really well, and that was catching salmon. He’d go to the river and crouch down behind a boulder and— snap! —he would grab himself a salmon. You have to be really fast to do something like that. Tonkichi wasn’t the brightest bear on the mountain, but he could catch more salmon than any of the other bears. More than he could ever hope to eat. But he couldn’t go to town to sell his extra salmon, because he didn’t know how to talk.”

“That’s easy,” Sala said. “All he had to do was trade his extra salmon for Masakichi’s extra honey.”

“You’re right,” Junpei said. “And that’s what Tonkichi decided to do. You and he had exactly the same idea. So Tonkichi and Masakichi started trading salmon for honey, and before long they got to know each other really well. Tonkichi realized that Masakichi was not such a stuck-up bear after all, and Masakichi realized that Tonkichi was not just a tough guy. Before they knew it, they were best friends. They talked about everything. They traded know-how. They told each other jokes. Tonkichi worked hard at catching salmon, and Masakichi worked hard at collecting honey. But then one day, like a bolt from the blue, the salmon disappeared from the river.”

“A bolt from the blue?”

“Like a flash of lightning from a clear blue sky,” Sayoko explained. “All of a sudden, without warning.”

“All of a sudden the salmon disappeared?” Sala asked with a somber expression. “But why?”

“Well, all the salmon in the world got together and decided they weren’t going to swim up that river anymore, because a bear named Tonkichi was there, and he was so good at catching salmon. Tonkichi never caught another salmon after that. The best he could do was catch an occasional skinny frog and eat it, but the worst-tasting thing you could ever want to eat is a skinny frog.”

“Poor Tonkichi!” Sala said.

“And that’s how Tonkichi ended up being sent to the zoo?” Sayoko asked.

“Well, that’s a long, long story,” Junpei said, clearing his throat. “But basically, yes, that’s what happened.”

“Didn’t Masakichi help Tonkichi?” Sala asked.

“He tried, of course. They were best friends, after all. That’s what friends are for. Masakichi shared his honey with Tonkichi—for free! But Tonkichi said, ‘I can’t let you do that. It’d be like taking advantage of you.’ Masakichi said, ‘You don’t have to be such a stranger with me, Tonkichi. If I were in your position, you’d do the same thing for me, I’m sure. You would, wouldn’t you?’ ”

“Sure he would,” Sala said.

“But things didn’t stay that way between them for long,” Sayoko interjected.

“Things didn’t stay that way between them for long,” Junpei said. “Tonkichi told Masakichi, ‘We’re supposed to be friends. It’s not right for one friend to do all the giving and the other to do all the taking: that’s not real friendship. I’m leaving this mountain now, Masakichi, and I’ll try my luck somewhere else. And if you and I meet up again somewhere, we can be best friends again.’ So they shook hands and parted. But after Tonkichi got down from the mountain, he didn’t know enough to be careful in the outside world, so a hunter caught him in a trap. That was the end of Tonkichi’s freedom. They sent him to the zoo.”

“Poor Tonkichi,” Sala said.

“Couldn’t you have come up with a better ending? Like, everybody lives happily ever after?” Sayoko asked Junpei later.

“I haven’t thought of one yet.”

The three of them had dinner together as usual in Sayoko’s apartment. Humming the “Trout,” Sayoko boiled a pot of spaghetti and defrosted some tomato sauce while Junpei made a salad of green beans and onions. They opened a bottle of red wine and poured Sala a glass of orange juice. When they had finished eating and cleaning up, Junpei read to Sala from another picture book, but when bedtime came, she resisted.

“Please, Mommy, do the bra trick,” she begged.