Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase

Asphalt roads threaded through the building complexes, here a parking lot, there a bus terminal. A gasoline station and a large park and a wonderful community center. Everything brand new, everything unnatural. On one side, the piles of soil hauled down from the hills for landfill loomed harsh and gray next to the areas which, not a part of the grand scheme, had been overtaken by quick-rooting weeds.

But what was there to say? Already it was a whole new game played by new rules. No one could stop it now.

I polished off my two beers and hurled the empty cans across the reclaimed land, toward where the sea used to be. I watched them disappear into the sea of windblown weeds. Then I smoked a cigarette.

I was taking my last drag when I saw a man, flashlight in hand, heading my way. Fortyish, gray shirt, gray trousers, and a gray cap. Probably a security guard for the area.

“You just threw something, didn’t you?” said the man.

“Yeah, I threw something.”

“What did you throw?”

“Round, metallic, lidded objects.”

The security guard put on a sour face. “Why’d you throw them?”

“No particular reason. Been throwing things from twelve years back. At times, I’ve thrown half a dozen things at once and nobody said a word.”

“That was back then,” said the security guard. “This is city property now and it’s against the law to discard rubbish on city property.”

I swallowed. For a moment something inside me trembled, then stopped. “The real problem here,” I said, “is that what you say makes sense.”

“It’s the law,” he said.

I sighed and took the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket.

“So what should I do?”

“Well, I can’t ask you go pick them up. It’s too dark and it’s about to rain. So do me a favor and don’t throw things again.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” said the security guard as he walked away.

I stretched out on the jetty and looked up at the sky. As the man said, it was starting to rain. I smoked another cigarette and thought over the encounter with the guard. Ten years ago I would have come on tougher. Well, maybe not. What difference would it make anyway?

I went back to the riverside road, and by the time I’d managed to catch a taxi the rain was coming down in a drizzle. To the hotel, I said.

“Here on a trip?” asked the old driver.

“Uh-huh.”

“First time in these parts?”

“Second time,” I said.

“I have a letter for you,” I said.

“For me?” she said.

The connection was bad, so we practically had to shout, which was not very conducive to communicating delicate shades of feeling. It was like talking on a windswept hill through upturned collars.

“Actually, the letter’s addressed to me, but somehow it seems to be meant more for you.”

“It does, does it?”

“Yes, it does,” I said. As soon as I’d said it, I knew this whole idiotic conversation was going nowhere fast.

She said nothing for a moment. Meanwhile, the connection cleared up.

“I have no idea what went on between you and the Rat. But he did ask me to see you, and that’s why I’m calling. Besides, I think it’d be better if you read his letters.”

“And that’s why you came out all the way from Tokyo?”

“That’s right.”

She coughed, excused herself, then said, “Because he’s your friend?”

“I suppose.”

“Why do you suppose he didn’t write to me directly?”

She did have a point.

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly.

“I don’t know either. I mean, I thought everything was over. Or isn’t it?”

I had no idea and I told her so. I lay back on the hotel bed, phone receiver in hand, and looked at the ceiling. I could be lying on the ocean floor counting fish, I thought. How many would I have to count before I could say I was done?

“It was five years ago when he disappeared. I was twenty-seven at the time,” she said, distant voice sounding like an echo from the bottom of a well. “A lot of things can change in five years.”

“True,” I said.

“And really, even if nothing had changed, I wouldn’t see it that way. I wouldn’t want to admit it. Once I did, I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. So as far as I’m concerned, everything’s completely changed.”

“I think I understand,” I said.

A brief pause hovered between us.

It was she who broke the silence. “When was the last time you saw him?” she asked.

“Spring, five years ago, right before he up and left.”

“And did he tell you anything? I mean about why he was leaving town … ?”

“Nope.”

“So he left you with no warning either?”

“That’s right.”

“And what did you think? At the time, I mean.”

“About him up and leaving like that?”

“Yeah.”

I got up from the bed and leaned against the wall. “Well, for sure I thought he’d give up and come back after six months. He never struck me as the stick-with-it type.”

“But he didn’t come back.”

“No, he didn’t.”

There was a slight hesitation on her end of the line.

“Where is it you’re staying now?” she asked.

I told her the name of the hotel.

“I’ll meet you there tomorrow at five. The coffee lounge on the eighth floor all right?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll be wearing a white sports shirt and green cotton slacks. I’ve got short hair and …”

“I’ve got the picture,” she said, cheerfully cutting me off. Then she hung up.

I replaced the receiver. What did she mean, she got the picture? I didn’t get the picture, but then again, there are lots of things I don’t know anything about. Age certainly hasn’t conferred any smarts on me. Character maybe, but mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.

I took a shower, washed my rain-soaked hair, and with the towel wrapped around my waist, I watched an old American submarine movie on television. The creaking plot had the captain and first officer constantly at each other’s throat. The submarine was a fossil, and one guy had claustrophobia. But all that didn’t stop everything from working out well in the end. It was an everything-works-out-in-the-end-so-maybe-war’s-not-so-bad-after-all sort of film. One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.

I switched off the television, climbed into bed, and was asleep in ten seconds.

The drizzle still hadn’t let up by five o’clock the next evening. The rain had been preceded by four or five days of crisp, clear early summer skies, fooling people into thinking the rainy season was over. From the eighth-floor window, every square inch of ground looked dark and damp, and a traffic jam stretched for several miles on the eastbound lanes of the elevated expressway.

As I stared out long and hard, things began to melt in the rain. In fact, everything in town was melting. The breakwater, the cranes, the rows of buildings, the figures beneath their black umbrellas, everything. Even the greenery was flowing down from the hills. Yet when I shut my eyes for a few seconds and opened them again, the town was back the way it had been. Six cranes loomed in the dark haze, trains headed east as if their engines had-just restarted, flocks of umbrellas dodged back and forth across the streets of shops, the green hills soaked up their fill of June rain.