Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

"Taking someone else with you, then, isn't an option either."

"You got it."

We pull into a rest stop restaurant for dinner. I have chicken and a salad, he orders the seafood curry and a salad. Just something to fill our stomachs, is the best you could say about it. Oshima pays the bill, and we climb into the car again. It's already gotten dark. He steps on the accelerator and the tachometer shoots way up.

"Do you mind if I put on some music?" Oshima asks.

"Of course not," I reply.

He pushes the CD's play button and some classical piano music starts. I listen for a while, figuring out the music. I know it's not Beethoven, and not Schumann. Probably somebody who came in between.

"Schubert?" I ask.

"Good guess," he replies. His hands at ten-and-two on the steering wheel, he glances over at me. "Do you like Schubert?"

"Not particularly," I tell him.

"When I drive I like to listen to Schubert's piano sonatas with the volume turned up. Do you know why?"

"I have no idea."

"Because playing Schubert's piano sonatas well is one of the hardest things in the world. Especially this, the Sonata in D Major. It's a tough piece to master. Some pianists can play one or maybe two of the movements perfectly, but if you listen to all four movements as a unified whole, no one has ever nailed it. A lot of famous pianists have tried to rise to the challenge, but it's like there's always something missing. There's never one where you can say, Yes! He's got it! Do you know why?"

"No," I reply.

"Because the sonata itself is imperfect. Robert Schumann understood Schubert's sonatas well, and he labeled this one 'Heavenly Tedious.'"

"If the composition's imperfect, why would so many pianists try to master it?"

"Good question," Oshima says, and pauses as music fills in the silence. "I have no great explanation for it, but one thing I can say. Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason-or at least they appeal to certain types of people. Just like you're attracted to Soseki's The Miner. There's something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realized novels like Kokoro or Sanshiro. You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart-or maybe we should say the work discovers you. Schubert's Sonata in D Major is sort of the same thing."

"To get back to the question," I say, "why do you listen to Schubert's sonatas? Especially when you're driving?"

"If you play Schubert's sonatas, especially this one straight through, it's not art. Like Schumann pointed out, it's too long and too pastoral, and technically too simplistic. Play it through the way it is and it's flat and tasteless, some dusty antique. Which is why every pianist who attempts it adds something of his own, something extra. Like this-hear how he articulates it there? Adding rubato. Adjusting the pace, modulation, whatever. Otherwise they can't hold it all together. They have to be careful, though, or else all those extra devices destroy the dignity of the piece. Then it's not Schubert's music anymore. Every single pianist who's played this sonata struggles with the same paradox."

He listens to the music, humming the melody, then continues.

"That's why I like to listen to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of-that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging. Do you know what I'm getting at?"

"Sort of…"

"I'm sorry," Oshima says. "I tend to get carried away on the subject."

"But there's all kinds and degrees of imperfection, right?" I say.

"Sure, of course."

"Comparatively speaking, which performance of the D major sonata do you think's the best?"

"That's a tough one." Oshima gives it some thought. He shifts down, swings over to the passing lane, swiftly slips pass a huge refrigerated eighteen-wheeler, shifts up, and steers back into our lane. "Not to frighten you, but a green Miata is one of the hardest vehicles to spot on the highway at night. It has such a low profile, plus the green tends to blend into the darkness. Truck drivers especially can't see it from up in their cabs. It can be a risky business, particularly in tunnels. Sports cars really should be red. Then they'd stand out. That's why most Ferraris are red. But I happen to like green, even if it makes things more dangerous. Green's the color of a forest. Red's the color of blood."

He glances at his watch and goes back to humming along with the music. "Generally I'd have to say Brendel and Ashkenazy give the best performances, though they don't do anything for me emotionally. Schubert's music challenges and shatters the ways of the world. That's the essence of Romanticism, and Schubert's music is the epitome of the Romantic."

I keep on listening to the sonata.

"What do you think? Kind of boring?" he asks.

"Kind of," I admit.

"You can appreciate Schubert if you train yourself. I was the same way when I first listened to him-it bored me silly. It's only natural for someone your age. In time you'll appreciate it. People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring. Go figure. For me, I might have the leisure to be bored, but not to grow tired of something. Most people can't distinguish between the two."

"You said you're an unusual person. Do you mean because of the hemophilia?"

"That's part of it," he says, and gives this devilish sort of smile. "There's more to it than that."

Schubert's long "Heavenly" sonata finishes, and we don't listen to any more music. We fall silent, each of us filling in the silence with our own random thoughts. I gaze vacantly at the passing signs. At a junction we turn south and the road heads into the mountains, one long tunnel after another. Oshima concentrates hard each time he passes another vehicle. We go by a number of slow-moving trucks on the road, and every time there's this whooshing moan of air, like somebody's soul is being yanked out. Occasionally I look back to make sure my backpack's still tied down okay.

"The place we're headed is deep in the mountains, not the most pleasant dwelling in the world," Oshima says. "I doubt you'll see anybody else while you're there. There's no radio, TV, or phone. Sure you don't mind?"

"I don't," I reply.

"You're used to being alone," Oshima comments.

I nod.

"But solitude comes in different varieties. What's waiting for you might be a little unexpected."

"How so?"

Oshima pushes up the bridge of his glasses. "I can't really say. It might change, depending on you."

We get off the highway and start down a small regional roadway. Along a side road near the exit there's a small town. Oshima stops at a convenience store and buys almost more groceries than we can carry-vegetables and fruit, crackers, milk and mineral water, canned goods, bread, pouch-packed instant food, mostly things that don't require much cooking. I start to take out my wallet, but he shakes his head and pays for it all.

Back in the sports car, we head down the road. I'm holding the bags that wouldn't fit into the trunk. Once we leave the little town everything is dark around us. No houses, and only the occasional car, the road so narrow it's hard for two cars to pass each other. Oshima flips on the high beams and races ahead, braking, accelerating, shifting from second to third and back. His expression is fixed as he focuses on driving, lips tight, eyes riveted on a point up ahead in the darkness, right hand clutching the top of the wheel, left hand poised for action on the gearshift knob.