Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

I stay where I am, in bed. My eyes open just a slit, and I don't move a muscle. For all I know she might come back, I think. I want her to, I realize. But no matter how long I wait she doesn't return. I raise my head and glance at the fluorescent numbers on the alarm clock next to my bed.3:25. I get out of bed, walk over to the chair she was sitting on, and touch it. It's not warm at all. I check out the desktop, in hopes of finding something-a single hair, perhaps?-she left behind. But there's nothing. I sit down on the chair, massaging my cheeks with the palms of my hands, and breathe a deep sigh.

I close the curtains and crawl back under the covers, but there's no way I can go back to sleep now. My head's too full of that enigmatic girl. A strange, terrific force unlike anything I've ever experienced is sprouting in my heart, taking root there, growing. Shut up behind my rib cage, my warm heart expands and contracts independent of my will-over and over.

I switch on the light and wait for the dawn, sitting up in bed. I can't read, can't listen to music. I can't do anything but just sit there, waiting for morning to come. As the sky begins to lighten I finally sleep a bit. When I wake up, my pillow's cold and damp with tears. But tears for what? I have no idea.

Around nine Oshima roars up in his Miata, and we get the library ready to open. After we get everything done I make him some coffee. He taught me how to do it just right. You grind the beans by hand, boil up some water in a narrow spouted pot, let it sit for a while, then slowly-and I mean slowly-pour the water through a paper filter. When the coffee's ready Oshima puts in the smallest dab of sugar, just for show, basically, but no cream-the best way, he insists. I make myself some Earl Grey tea.

Oshima has on a shiny brown short-sleeved shirt and white linen trousers. Wiping his glasses with a brand-new handkerchief he pulls from his pocket, he turns to me. "You don't look like you got much sleep."

"There's something I'd like you to do for me," I say.

"Name it."

"I want to listen to 'Kafka on the Shore.' Can you get hold of the record?"

"Not the CD?"

"If possible I'd like to listen to the record, to hear how it originally sounded. Of course we'd have to find a record player, too."

Oshima rests his fingers on his temple and thinks. "There might be an old stereo in the storeroom. Can't guarantee it still works, though."

We go into a small room facing the parking lot. There are no windows, only a skylight high up. A mess of objects from various periods are strewn around-furniture, dishes, magazines, clothes, and paintings. Some of them are obviously valuable, but some, most, in fact, don't look like they're worth much.

"Someday we've got to get rid of all this junk," Oshima remarks, "but nobody's been brave enough to take the plunge."

In the middle of the room, where time seems to have drifted to a halt, we find an old Sansui stereo. Covered in a thin layer of white dust, the stereo itself looks in good shape, though it must be over twenty-five years since this was up-to-date audio equipment. The whole set consists of a receiver, amp, turntable, and bookshelf speakers. We also find a collection of old LPs, mostly sixties pop music-Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder. About thirty albums, all told. I take some out of their jackets. Whoever listened to these took good care of them, because there's no trace of mold and not a scratch anywhere.

There's a guitar in the storeroom as well, still with strings. Plus a pile of old magazines I've never heard of, and an old-fashioned tennis racket. All like the ruins of some not-so-distant past.

"I imagine all this stuff belonged to Miss Saeki's boyfriend," Oshima says. "Like I mentioned, he used to live in this building, and they must've thrown his things down here. The stereo, though, looks more recent than that."

We lug the stereo and records to my room. We dust it off, plug it in, connect up the player and amp, and hit the switch. The little green light on the amp comes on and the turntable begins to revolve. I check the cartridge and find it still has a decent needle, then take out the red vinyl record of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and put it on the turntable. The familiar guitar intro starts to play. The sound's much cleaner than I expected.

"Japan has its share of problems," Oshima says, smiling, "but we sure know how to make a sound system. This thing hasn't been used in ages, but it still sounds great."

We listen to the Beatles album for a while. Compared to the CD version, it sounds like different music altogether.

"Well, we've got something to listen to it on," Oshima concludes, "but getting hold of a single of 'Kafka on the Shore' might be a problem. That's a pretty rare item nowadays. I tell you what-I'll ask my mother. She's probably got a copy tucked away somewhere. Or at least she'll know somebody who does."

I nod.

Oshima raises a finger, like a teacher warning a pupil. "One thing, though. Make sure you never play it when Miss Saeki's here. No matter what. Understood?"

I nod again.

"Like in Casablanca," he says, and hums the opening bars of "As Time Goes By."

"Just don't play that one song, okay?"

"Oshima, there's something I want to ask. Does any fifteen-year-old girl come here?"

"By here you mean the library?"

I nod.

Oshima tilts his head and gives it some thought. "Not as far as I know," he says, staring at me like he's looking into the room from a window. "That's a strange thing to ask."

"I think I saw her recently," I say.

"When was this?"

"Last night."

"You saw a fifteen-year-old girl here last night?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of girl?"

I blush a bit. "Just a girl. Hair down to her shoulders. Wearing a blue dress."

"Was she pretty?"

I nod.

"Could be a sexual fantasy," Oshima says, and grins. "The world's full of weird things. But for a healthy, heterosexual kid your age, having fantasies like that's not so strange."

I remember how Oshima saw me buck naked up at the cabin, and blush even more.

During our lunch break Oshima quietly hands me a single of "Kafka on the Shore" in a square little jacket. "Turns out my mom did have one. Five copies, if you can believe it. She really takes good care of things. A bit of a pack rat, but I guess we shouldn't complain."

"Thanks," I say.

I go back to my room and take the record out of the jacket. The record looks like it's never been played. In the record jacket's photo, Miss Saeki-she was nineteen, according to Oshima-is sitting at a piano in a recording studio. Looking straight at the camera, she's resting her chin in her hands on the music stand, her head tilted slightly to one side, a shy, unaffected smile on her face, closed lips spread pleasantly wide, with charming lines at the corners. It doesn't look like she's wearing any makeup. Her hair's held back by a plastic clip so it won't fall into her face, and part of her right ear's visible through the strands. Her light blue dress is short and loose-fitting, and she has a silver bracelet on her left wrist, her only accessory. A pair of slender sandals lie next to her piano stool, and her bare feet are lovely.

She looks like a symbol of something. A certain time, a certain place. A certain state of mind. She's like a spirit that's sprung up from a happy chance encounter. An eternal, naive innocence, never to be marred, floats around her like spores in spring. Time had come to a standstill in this photograph.1969-a scene from long before I was even born.

I knew from the first that the young girl who visited my room last night was Miss Saeki. I never doubted it for a second, but just had to make sure.

Compared to when she was fifteen, Miss Saeki at nineteen looks more grown-up, more mature. If I had to compare the two, I'd say the outline of her face looks sharper, more defined, in the photo. A certain anxiousness is missing from the older of the two. But otherwise this nineteen-year-old and the fifteen-year-old I saw are nearly identical. The smile in the photo's the same one I saw last night. How she held her chin in her hands, and tilted her head-also the same. And in Miss Saeki now, the real-time Miss Saeki, I can see the same expressions and gestures. I'm delighted that those features, and her sense of the otherworldly, haven't changed a bit. Even her build is almost the same.