Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

"There's not much for anybody to steal here, so maybe we don't need to be so worried about always locking the door," Oshima tells me. "But Miss Saeki and I don't like things done sloppily. So we try to do things by the book. This is our house, so we treat it with respect. And I hope you'll do the same."

I nod.

Next he shows me what to do at the reception desk, how to help out people coming to use the library.

"For the time being you should just sit next to me and watch what I do. It's not all that hard. If something ever comes up you can't handle, just go upstairs and ask Miss Saeki. She'll take care of it."

Miss Saeki shows up just before eleven. Her Volkswagen Golf makes a distinctive roar as it pulls up, and I can tell right away it's her. She parks, comes in through the back door, and greets the two of us. "Morning," she says. "Good morning," we answer back. That's the extent of our conversation. Miss Saeki has on a navy blue short-sleeved dress, a cotton coat in her arms, a shoulder bag. Nothing you could call an accessory, and hardly a hint of makeup. Still, there's something about her that's dazzling. She glances at me standing next to Oshima and looks for a moment like she wants to say something, but doesn't. She merely beams a slight smile in my direction and walks up to her office on the second floor.

"Not to worry," Oshima assures me. "She has no problem with your being here. She just doesn't go in for a lot of small talk, that's all."

At eleven Oshima and I open up the main door, but nobody comes for a while. During the interval he shows me how to use the computers to search for books. They're typical library PCs I'm already familiar with. Next he shows me how to arrange all the catalog cards. Every day the library receives copies of newly published books, and one of the other tasks is to log in these new arrivals by hand.

Around eleven-thirty two women come in together, wearing identical jeans. The shorter of the two has cropped hair like a swimmer, while the taller woman wears her hair pulled back. Both of them have on jogging shoes, one a pair of Nikes, the other Asics. The tall one looks around forty or so, with glasses and a checked shirt, the shorter woman, a decade younger, is wearing a white blouse. Both have little daypacks on, and expressions as gloomy as a cloudy day. Neither one says very much. Oshima relieves them of their packs at the entrance, and the women, looking displeased, extract notebooks and pens before leaving them.

The women go through the library, checking the stacks one by one, earnestly flipping through the card catalog, occasionally taking notes. They don't read anything or sit down. They act less like people using a library than inspectors from the tax office checking a company's inventory. Oshima and I can't figure out who they are or what they could possibly be up to. He gives me a significant look and shrugs. To put it mildly, I don't have a good feeling about this.

At noon, while Oshima goes out to the garden to eat his lunch, I fill in for him behind the counter.

"Excuse me, but I have a question," one of the women comes over and says. The tall one. Her tone of voice is hard and unyielding, like a loaf of bread someone forgot on the back of a shelf.

"Yes, what can I do for you?"

She frowns and looks at me like I'm some off-kilter picture frame. "Aren't you a high school student?"

"Yes, that's right. I'm a trainee," I answer.

"Is there one of your superiors I could talk to?"

I go out to the garden to get Oshima. He slowly takes a sip of coffee to dissolve the bite of food in his mouth, brushes the crumbs from his lap, and comes inside.

"Yes, may I help you?" Oshima asks her amiably.

"Just to let you know, we're investigating public cultural facilities in the entire country from a woman's point of view, looking at ease of use, fair access, and other issues," she says. "Our group is doing a yearlong investigation and plans to publish a public report on our findings. A large number of women are involved in this project, and the two of us happen to be in charge of this region."

"If you don't mind," Oshima says, "would you tell me the name of this organization?"

The woman whips out a business card and passes it to him.

His expression unchanged, Oshima reads it carefully, places it on the counter, then looks up with a blazing smile and gazes intently at the woman. A first-class smile guaranteed to make any red-blooded woman blush.

This woman, strangely enough, doesn't react, not even a twitch of an eyebrow. "What we've concluded is that, unfortunately, this library has several issues that need to be addressed."

"From the viewpoint of women, is what you're saying," Oshima commented.

"Correct, from the viewpoint of women," the woman answers. She clears her throat. "And we'd like to bring this up with your administration and hear their response, so if you don't mind?"

"We don't have something as fancy as an administration, but I would be happy to listen to you."

"Well, first of all you have no restroom set aside for women. That's correct, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right. There's no women's restroom in this library. We have one restroom for both men and women."

"Even if you are a private facility, since you're open to the public don't you think-in principle-that you should provide separate restrooms for men and women?"

"In principle?" Oshima says.

"Correct. Shared facilities give rise to all sorts of harassment. According to our survey, the majority of women are reluctant to use shared bathrooms. This is a clear case of neglect of your female patrons."

"Neglect…," Oshima says, and makes a face like he's swallowed something bitter by mistake. He doesn't much like the sound of the word, it would seem.

"An intentional oversight."

"Intentional oversight," he repeats, and gives some thought to this clumsy phrase.

"So what is your reaction to all this?" the woman asks, barely containing her irritation.

"As you can see," Oshima says, "we're a very small library. And unfortunately we don't have the space for separate restrooms. Naturally it would be better to have separate facilities, but none of our patrons have ever complained. For better or for worse, our library doesn't get very crowded. If you'd like to pursue this issue of separate restrooms further, I suggest you go to the Boeing headquarters in Seattle and address the issue of restrooms on 747s. A 747's much bigger than our little library, and much more crowded. As far as I'm aware, all restrooms on passenger jets are shared by men and women."

The tall woman frowns at him severely, her cheekbones jutting forward and her glasses riding up her nose. "We are not investigating airplanes.747s are beside the point."

"Wouldn't restrooms in both jets and in our library-in principle-give rise to the same sorts of problems?"

"We are investigating, one by one, public facilities. We're not here to argue over principles."

Oshima's supple smile never fades during this exchange. "Is that so? I could have sworn that principles were exactly what we were discussing."

The woman realizes she's blown it. She blushes a bit, though not because of Oshima's sex appeal. She tries a different tack. "At any rate, jumbo jets are irrelevant here. Don't try to confuse the issue."

"Understood. No more airplanes," Oshima promises. "We'll bring things down to earth."

The woman glares at him and, after taking a breath, forges on. "One other issue I'd like to raise is how you have authors here separated by sex."

"Yes, that's right. The person who was in charge before us cataloged these and for whatever reason divided them into male and female. We were thinking of recataloging all of them, but haven't been able to as of yet."

"We're not criticizing you for this," she says.