Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase

“I will ask you one more time: tell me by what route you obtained the photograph,” the man said.

“I cannot say,” I said.

The man heaved a sigh. “I have attempted to talk to you honestly. Therefore I had hoped that you would talk to me honestly as well.”

“I am not in a position to talk. If I were to talk, it might pose problems for the person who provided it.”

“Which is to say,” interposed the man, “that you have some reasonable grounds to believe that some problems might come to this person in connection with the sheep.”

“No grounds whatsoever. I’m playing my hunches. There’s got to be a catch. I’ve felt that the whole time I’ve been talking to you. Like there’s a hook somewhere. Call it sixth sense.”

“And therefore you cannot speak.”

“Correct,” I said. Giving the situation further thought, I went on: “I’m something of an authority on troublemaking. I can claim to be second to none in the ways and means of creating problems for others. I live my life trying my best to avoid things ever coming to that. Which ultimately only creates more problems. It’s all the same. That’s the way things go down. Yet, no matter that I know it’s all the same, it doesn’t change anything. Nothing gets that way from the start. It’s only a pretext.”

“I am not sure I follow you.”

“What I am saying is, mediocrity takes many forms.”

I put a cigarette to my lips, lit it with the lighter in my hand, and took a puff. I felt ever so slightly more at ease.

“You do not have to speak if you do not want to,” said the man. “Instead, I will send you out in search of the sheep. These are our final terms. If within two months from now you succeed in finding the sheep, we are prepared to reward you however you would care to request. But if you should fail to find it, it will be the end of you and your company. Agreed?”

“Do I have any choice?” I asked. “And what if no such sheep with a star on its back ever existed in the first place?”

“It is still the same. For you and for me, there is only whether you find the sheep or not. There are no in-betweens. I am sorry to have to put it this way, but as I have already said, we are taking you up on your proposition. You hold the ball, you had better run for the goal. Even if there turns out not to have been any goal.”

“So that’s how it stands?”

The man took a fat envelope out of his pocket and placed it before me. “Use this for expenses. If you run out, give us a call. There is more where this came from. Any questions?”

“No questions, but one comment.”

“Which is?”

“This all has got to be, patently, the most unbelievable, the most ridiculous story I have ever heard. Somehow coming from your mouth, it has the ring of truth, but I doubt anyone would believe me if I told them what happened today.”

Almost imperceptibly, the man curled his lip. He conceivably could have been smiling. “From tomorrow, you’re on the case. As I said, you have two months from today.”

“It’s a tough job. Two months might not be enough. I mean you’re asking me to seek out one sheep from the entire countryside.”

The man stared me straight in the face and said nothing. Making me feel like an empty pool. A filthy, cracked, empty pool that might never see another year’s use. He looked at me a full thirty seconds without blinking. Then slowly he opened his mouth.

“It is time for you to be going,” he said.

It sure seemed that way.

“Will you be returning to your office? Or to somewhere else?” the chauffeur asked. It was the same chauffeur from the trip out, but his manner seemed a bit more personable now. Guess he took to people easily.

I gave my arms and legs a full stretch on the roomy backseat and considered where I should go. I had no intention of returning to the office. Technically I was still on leave, and I wasn’t about to try to explain all this to my partner. I wasn’t about to go straight home either. Right now I needed a good dose of regular people walking on two legs in a regular way in a regular place.

“Shinjuku Station, west exit,” I said.

Traffic was jammed solid in the direction of Shinjuku. Evening rush hour, among other things. Past a certain point the cars seemed practically glued in place, motionless. Every so often a wave would pass through the cars, budging them forward a few inches. I thought about the rotational speed of the earth. How many miles an hour was this road surface whirling through space? I did a quick calculation in my head but couldn’t figure out if it was any faster than the Spinning Teacup at a carnival. There’re many things we don’t really know. It’s an illusion that we know anything at all. If a group of aliens were to stop me and ask, “Say, bud, how many miles an hour does the earth spin at the equator?” I’d be in a fix. Hell, I don’t even know why Wednesday follows Tuesday. I’d be an intergalactic joke.

I’ve read And Quiet Flows the Don and The Brothers Karamazov three times through. I’ve even read Ideologie Germanica once. I can even recite the value of pi to sixteen places. Would I still be a joke? Probably. They’d laugh their alien heads off.

“Would you care to listen to some music, sir?” asked the chauffeur.

“Good idea,” I said.

And at that a Chopin ballade filled the car. I got the feeling I was in a dressing room at a wedding reception.

“Say,” I asked the chauffeur, “you know the value of pi ?”

“You mean that 3.14 whatzit?”

“That’s the one. How many decimal places do you know?”

“I know it to thirty-two places,” the driver tossed out. “Beyond that, well …”

“Thirty-two places?”

“There’s a trick to it, but yes. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing really,” I said, crestfallen. “Never mind.”

So we listened to Chopin as the limousine inched forward ten yards. People in cars and buses around us glared at our monster vehicle. None too comfortable, being the object of so much attention, even with the opaque windows.

“Awful traffic,” I said.

“That it is, but sure as dawn follows night, it’s got to let up sometime.”

“Fair enough, but doesn’t it get on your nerves?”

“Certainly. I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I’m in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life.”

“That sounds like a religious interpretation of a traffic jam if there ever was one.”

“I’m a Christian. I don’t go to church, but I’ve always been a Christian.”

“Is that so? Don’t you see any contradiction between being a Christian and being the chauffeur for a major right-wing figure?”

“The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve met God?”

“Certainly. I telephone Him every night.”

“Excuse me?” I stammered. Things were starting to jumble up in my head again. “If everyone called God, wouldn’t the lines be busy all the time? Like directory assistance right around noon.”

“No problem there. God is your simultaneous presence. So even if a million people were to telephone Him at once, He’d be able to speak with everyone simultaneously.”

“I’m no expert, but is that an orthodox interpretation? I mean, theologically speaking.”

“I’m something of a radical. That’s why I don’t go to church.”

“I see,” I said.

The limousine advanced fifty yards. I put a cigarette to my lips and was about to light up when I saw I’d been holding the lighter in my hand the whole time. Without realizing it, I’d walked off with the sheep-engraved silver Dupont. It felt molded to my palm as naturally as if I’d been born with it. The balance and feel couldn’t have been better. After a few seconds’ thought, I decided it was mine. Who’s going to miss a lighter or two? I opened and closed the lid a few times, lit up, and put the lighter in my pocket. By way of compensation, I slipped my Bic disposable into the pocket of the door.