Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

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Amazon.com
The opening pages of a Haruki Murakami novel can be like the view out an airplane window onto tarmac. But at some point between page three and fifteen-it's page thirteen in Kafka On The Shore-the deceptively placid narrative lifts off, and you find yourself breaking through clouds at a tilt, no longer certain where the plane is headed or if the laws of flight even apply.
Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world¹s toughest fifteen-year-old." He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days-continuing his impressive self-education-and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu and the other characters.
To say that the fantastic elements of Kafka On The Shore are complicated and never fully resolved is not to suggest that the novel fails. Although it may not live up to Murakami's masterful The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Nakata and Kafka's fates keep the reader enthralled to the final pages, and few will complain about the loose threads at the end.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Previous books such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood have established Murakami as a true original, a fearless writer possessed of a wildly uninhibited imagination and a legion of fiercely devoted fans. In this latest addition to the author's incomparable oeuvre, 15-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from home, both to escape his father's oedipal prophecy and to find his long-lost mother and sister. As Kafka flees, so too does Nakata, an elderly simpleton whose quiet life has been upset by a gruesome murder. (A wonderfully endearing character, Nakata has never recovered from the effects of a mysterious World War II incident that left him unable to read or comprehend much, but did give him the power to speak with cats.) What follows is a kind of double odyssey, as Kafka and Nakata are drawn inexorably along their separate but somehow linked paths, groping to understand the roles fate has in store for them. Murakami likes to blur the boundary between the real and the surreal-we are treated to such oddities as fish raining from the sky; a forest-dwelling pair of Imperial Army soldiers who haven't aged since WWII; and a hilarious cameo by fried chicken king Colonel Sanders-but he also writes touchingly about love, loneliness and friendship. Occasionally, the writing drifts too far into metaphysical musings-mind-bending talk of parallel worlds, events occurring outside of time-and things swirl a bit at the end as the author tries, perhaps too hard, to make sense of things. But by this point, his readers, like his characters, will go just about anywhere Murakami wants them to, whether they "get" it or not.

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"Kafka Tamura," he whispered, staring at the wall, "I have to tell you what happened. If you don't already know."

Chapter 43

With all my baggage gone I can travel light now, forging on deeper into the forest. I focus totally on moving forward. No need to mark any more trees, no need to remember the path back. I don't even look at my surroundings. The scenery's always the same, so what's the point? A canopy of trees towering above thick ferns, vines trailing down, gnarled roots, lumps of decaying leaves, the dry, sloughed-off skins of various bugs. Hard, sticky spiderwebs. And endless branches-a regular tree branch universe. Menacing branches, branches fighting for space, cleverly hidden branches, twisted, crooked branches, contemplative branches, dried-up, dying branches-the same scenery repeated again and again. Though with each repetition the forest grows a bit deeper.

Mouth tightly shut, I continue down what passes for a path. It's running uphill, but not so steeply, at least for now. Not the kind of slope that's going to get me out of breath. Sometimes the path threatens to get lost in a sea of ferns or thorny bushes, but as long as I push on ahead the pseudo-path pops up again. The forest doesn't scare me anymore. It has its own rules and patterns, and once you stop being afraid you're aware of them. Once I grasp these repetitions, I make them a part of me.

I'm empty-handed now. The can of yellow spray paint, the little hatchet-they're history. The daypack's gone as well. No canteen, no food. Not even the compass. One by one I left these behind. Doing this gives a visible message to the forest: I'm not afraid anymore. That's why I chose to be totally defenseless. Minus my hard shell, just flesh and bones, I head for the core of the labyrinth, giving myself up to the void.

The music that had been playing in my head has vanished, leaving behind some faint white noise like a taut white sheet on a huge bed. I touch that sheet, tracing it with my fingertips. The white goes on forever. Sweat beads up under my arms. Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of the sky through the treetops. It's covered with an even, unbroken layer of gray clouds, but it doesn't look like it's going to rain. The clouds are still, the whole scene unchanging. Birds in the high branches call out clipped, meaningful greetings to each other. Insects buzz prophetically among the weeds.

I think about my deserted house back in Nogata. Most likely it's all shut up now. Fine by me. Let the bloodstains be. What do I care? I'm never going back there. Even before that bloody incident took place, that house was a place where lots of things had died. Check that-were murdered.

Sometimes from above me, sometimes from below, the forest tries to threaten me. Blowing a chill breath on my neck, stinging like needles with a thousand eyes. Trying anything to drive this intruder away. But I gradually get better at letting these threats pass me by. This forest is basically a part of me, isn't it? This thought takes hold at a certain point. The journey I'm taking is inside me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self, and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my own heart. The spiderweb stretched taut there is the spiderweb inside me. The birds calling out overhead are birds I've fostered in my mind. These images spring up in my mind and take root.

Like I'm being shoved from behind by some huge heartbeat, I continue on and on through the forest. The path leads to a special place, a light source that spins out the dark, the place where soundless echoes come from. I need to see with my own eyes what's there. I'm carrying an important, sealed, personal letter, a secret message to myself.

A question. Why didn't she love me? Don't I deserve to have my mother love me?

For years that question's been a white-hot flame burning my heart, eating away at my soul. There had to be something fundamentally wrong with me that made my mother not love me. Was there something inherently polluted about me? Was I born just so everyone could turn their faces away from me?

My mother didn't even hold me close when she left. She turned her face away and left home with my sister without saying a word. She disappeared like quiet smoke. And now that face is gone forever.

The birds screech above me again, and I look up at the sky. Nothing there but that flat, expressionless layer of gray clouds. No wind at all. I trudge along. I'm walking by the shores of consciousness. Waves of consciousness roll in, roll out, leave some writing, and just as quickly new waves roll in and erase it. I try to quickly read what's written there, between one wave and the next, but it's hard. Before I can read it the next wave's washed it away. All that's left are puzzling fragments.

My mind wanders back to my house on the day my mother left, taking my sister with her. I'm sitting alone on the porch, staring out at the garden. It's twilight, in early summer, and the trees cast long shadows. I'm alone in the house. I don't know why, but I already knew I was abandoned. I understood even then how this would change my world forever. Nobody told me this-I just knew it. The house is empty, deserted, an abandoned lookout post on some far-off frontier. I'm watching the sun setting in the west, shadows slowly stealing over the world. In a world of time, nothing can go back to the way it was. The shadows' feelers steadily advance, eroding away one point after another along the ground, until my mother's face, there until a moment ago, is swallowed up in this dark, cold realm. That hardened face, turned away from me, is automatically snatched away, deleted from my memory.

Trudging along in the woods, I think of Miss Saeki. Her face, that calm, faint smile, the warmth of her hand. I try imagining her as my mother, leaving me behind when I was four. Without realizing it, I shake my head. The picture is all wrong. Why would Miss Saeki have done that? Why does she have to hurt me, to permanently screw up my life? There had to be a hidden, important reason, something deeper I'm just not getting.

I try to feel what she felt then and get closer to her viewpoint. It isn't easy. I'm the one who was abandoned, after all, she's the one who did the abandoning. But after a while I take leave of myself. My soul sloughs off the stiff clothes of the self and turns into a black crow that sits there on a branch high up in a pine tree in the garden, gazing down at the four-year-old boy on the porch.

I turn into a theorizing black crow.

"It's not that your mother didn't love you," the boy named Crow says from behind me. "She loved you very deeply. The first thing you have to do is believe that. That's your starting point."

"But she abandoned me. She disappeared, leaving me alone where I shouldn't be. I'm finally beginning to understand how much that hurt. How could she do that if she really loved me?"

"That's the reality of it. It did happen," the boy named Crow says. "You were hurt badly, and those scars will be with you forever. I feel sorry for you, I really do. But think of it like this: It's not too late to recover. You're young, you're tough. You're adaptable. You can patch up your wounds, lift up your head, and move on. But for her that's not an option. The only thing she'll ever be is lost. It doesn't matter whether somebody judges this as good or bad-that's not the point. You're the one who has the advantage. You ought to consider that."

I don't respond.

"It all really happened, so you can't undo it," Crow tells me. "She shouldn't have abandoned you then, and you shouldn't have been abandoned. But things in the past are like a plate that's shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?"

I nod. You can never put it back together like it was. He's hit the nail on the head.

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