Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

"Do you have memories?"

Again she shakes her head and rests her hands on the table, this time with the palms faceup. She glances at them expressionlessly.

"No, I don't. In a place where time isn't important, neither is memory. Of course I remember last night, coming here and making vegetable stew. And you ate it all, didn't you? The day before that I remember a bit of. But anything before that, I don't know. Time has been absorbed inside me, and I can't distinguish between one object and whatever's beside it."

"So memory isn't so important here?"

She beams. "That's right. Memory isn't so important here. The library handles memories."

After the girl leaves, I sit by the window holding my hand out in the morning sun, its shadow falling on the windowsill, a distinct five-finger outline. The bee stops buzzing around and quietly lands above the windowpane. It seems to have some serious thinking to do. And so do I.

When the sun is a little bit past its highest point, she comes to where I'm staying, knocks lightly, and opens the door. For a moment I can't tell who I'm looking at-the young girl or her. A slight shift in light, or the way the wind blows, is all it takes for her to change completely. It's like in one instant she transforms into the young girl, a moment later changing back into Miss Saeki. Not that this really takes place. The person in front of me is, without a doubt, Miss Saeki and no other.

"Hello," she says in a natural tone of voice, just like when we passed in the corridor of the library. She's wearing a long-sleeved navy blue blouse and a matching knee-length skirt, a thin silver necklace, and small pearl earrings-exactly as I'm used to seeing her. Her high heels make short, dry clicks as she steps onto the porch, a sound that's slightly out of place here. She stands gazing at me from the doorway, as if she's checking to see whether it's the real me or not. Of course it's the real me. Just like she's the real Miss Saeki.

"How about coming in for a cup of tea?" I say.

"I'd like that," she says. And, like she's finally worked up the nerve, she steps inside.

I go to the kitchen and turn on the stove to boil water, trying to get my breathing back to normal.

She sits down at the dining table in the same chair the girl had just been sitting in. "It feels like we're back in the library, doesn't it?" she says.

"Sure does," I agree. "Except for no coffee, and no Oshima."

"And not a book in sight," she says.

I make two cups of herbal tea and carry them out to the table, sitting across from her. Birds chirp outside the open window. The bee's still napping above the windowpane.

Miss Saeki's the first one to speak. "I want you to know it wasn't easy for me to come here. But I had to see you, and talk with you."

I nod. "I'm glad you came."

Her trademark smile plays around her lips. "There's something I have to tell you." Her smile's nearly identical to the young girl's, though with a bit more depth, a slight nuance that moves me.

She wraps her hands around the teacup. I'm gazing at the tiny pearl piercings in her ears. She's thinking, and it's taking her longer than usual.

"I burned up all my memories," she says, deliberately choosing her words. "They went up in smoke and disappeared into the air. So I won't be able to remember things for very long. All sorts of things-including my time with you. That's why I wanted to see you and talk with you as soon as I could. While I can still remember."

I crane my neck and look up at the bee above the window, its little black shadow a single dot on the sill.

"The most important thing," she says quietly, "is you've got to get out of here. As fast as you can. Leave here, go through the woods, and back to the life you left. The entrance is going to close soon. Promise me you will."

I shake my head. "You don't understand this, Miss Saeki, but I don't have any world to go back to. No one's ever really loved me, or wanted me, my entire life. I don't know who to count on other than myself. For me, the idea of a life I left is meaningless."

"But you still have to go back."

"Even if there's nothing there? Even if nobody cares if I'm there or not?"

"That's not why," she says. "It's what I want. For you to be there."

"But you're not there, are you?"

She looks down at her hands clasping the teacup. "No, I'm not. I'm not there anymore."

"What do you want from me if I do go back?"

"Just one thing," she says, raising her head and looking me straight in the eye. "I want you to remember me. If you remember me, then I don't care if everybody else forgets."

Silence descends on us for a time. A profound silence.

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it plugs up my throat and makes it hard to breathe. I somehow swallow it back, finally choosing another. "Are memories such an important thing?"

"It depends," she replies, and lightly closes her eyes. "In some cases they're the most important thing there is."

"Yet you burned yours up."

"I had no use for them anymore." Miss Saeki brings her hands together on the table, her palms down the way the young girl's were the first time. "Kafka? I have a favor to ask. I want you to take that painting with you."

"You mean the one in my room in the library? The painting of the shore?"

Miss Saeki nods. "Yes, Kafka on the Shore. I want you to take it. Where, I don't care. Wherever you're going."

"But doesn't it belong to somebody?"

She shakes her head. "It's mine. He gave it to me as a present when he went away to college in Tokyo. Ever since then I've had it with me. Wherever I lived, I always hung it on the wall in my room. When I started working at the Komura Library I put it back in that room, where it first hung, but that was just temporary. I left a letter for Oshima in my desk in the library telling him I wanted you to have the painting. After all, the painting is originally yours."

"Mine?"

She nods. "You were there. And I was there beside you, watching you. On the shore, a long time ago. The wind was blowing, there were white puffy clouds, and it was always summer."

I close my eyes. I'm at the beach and it's summer. I'm lying back on a deck chair. I can feel the roughness of its canvas on my skin. I breathe in deeply the smell of the sea and the tide. Even with my eyes closed, the sun is glaring. I can hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore. The sound recedes, then draws closer, as if time is making it quiver. Nearby, someone is painting a picture of me. And beside him sits a young girl in a short-sleeved light blue dress, gazing in my direction. She has straight hair, a straw hat with a white ribbon, and she's scooping up the sand. Steady, long fingers-the fingers of a pianist. Her smooth-as-porcelain arms glisten in the sunlight. A natural-looking smile plays at her lips. I'm in love with her. And she's in love with me.

That's the memory.

"I want you to have that painting with you forever," Miss Saeki says. She stands up, goes to the window, and looks outside. The sun's still high in the sky. The bee's still asleep. Miss Saeki holds up a hand to shield her eyes and looks at something far off, then turns to face me. "You have to go," she says.

I go over to her. Her ear brushes against my neck, the earring hard against my skin. I rest both palms on her back like I'm deciphering some sign there. Her hair brushes my cheek. She holds me tight, her fingers digging hard into my back. Fingers clinging to the wall that's time. The smell of the sea, the sound of waves breaking on the shore. Someone calling my name from far, far away.

"Are you my mother?" I'm finally able to ask.

"You already know the answer to that," Miss Saeki says.

She's right-I do know the answer. But neither one of us can put it into words. Putting it into words will destroy any meaning.