Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

Still, there's something in this photo of the nineteen-year-old that the middle-aged woman I know has lost forever. You might call it an outpouring of energy. Nothing showy, it's colorless, transparent, like fresh water secretly seeping out between rocks-a kind of natural, unspoiled appeal that shoots straight to your heart. That brilliant energy seeps out of her entire being as she sits there at the piano. Just by looking at that happy smile, you can trace the beautiful path that a contented heart must follow. Like a firefly's glow that persists long after it's disappeared into the darkness.

I sit on my bed for a long time, record jacket in hand, not thinking about anything, just letting time pass by. I open my eyes, go to the window, and take a deep breath of fresh air, catching a whiff of the sea on the breeze that's come up through a pine forest. What I saw here in this room the night before was definitely Miss Saeki at age fifteen. The real Miss Saeki, of course, is still alive. A fifty-something woman, living a real life in the real world. Even now she's in her room upstairs at her desk, working away. To see her, all I need to do is go out of this room and up the stairs, and there she'll be. I can meet her, talk with her-but none of that changes the fact that what I saw here was her ghost. Oshima told me people can't be in two places at once, but I think it's possible. In fact, I'm sure of it. While they're still alive, people can become ghosts.

And there's another important fact: I'm drawn to that ghost, attracted to her. Not to the Miss Saeki who's here right now, but to the fifteen-year-old who isn't. Very attracted, a feeling so strong I can't explain it. And no matter what anybody says, this is real. Maybe she doesn't really exist, but just thinking about her makes my heart-my flesh and blood, my real heart-thump like mad. These feelings are as real as the blood all over my chest that awful night.

As it gets near closing time Miss Saeki comes downstairs, her heels clicking as she walks. When I see her, I tense up and can hear my heart pounding. I see the fifteen-year-old girl inside her. Like some small animal in hibernation, she's curled up in a hollow inside Miss Saeki, asleep.

Miss Saeki's asking me something but I can't reply. I don't even know what she said. I can hear her, of course-her words vibrate my eardrums and transmit a message to my brain that's converted into language-but there's a disconnect between words and meaning. Flustered, I blush and stammer out something stupid. Oshima intervenes and answers her question. I nod at what he's saying. Miss Saeki smiles, says good-bye to us, and leaves for home. I listen to the sound of her Golf as it exits the parking lot, fades into the distance, and disappears.

Oshima stays behind and helps me close up for the night.

"By any chance have you fallen in love with somebody?" he asks. "You seem kind of out of it."

I don't have any idea how I should respond. "Oshima," I finally say, "this is a pretty weird thing to ask, but do you think it's possible for someone to become a ghost while they're still alive?"

He stops straightening up the counter and looks at me. "A very interesting question, actually. Are you asking about the human spirit in a literary sense-metaphorically, in other words? Or do you mean in actual fact?"

"More in actual fact, I guess," I say.

"The assumption that ghosts really exist?"

"Right."

Oshima removes his glasses, wipes them with his handkerchief, and puts them back on. "That's what's called a 'living spirit.' I don't know about in foreign countries, but that kind of thing appears a lot in Japanese literature. The Tale of Genji, for instance, is filled with living spirits. In the Heian period-or at least in its psychological realm-on occasion people could become living spirits and travel through space to carry out whatever desires they had. Have you read Genji?"

I shake my head.

"Our library has a couple of modern translations, so it might be a good idea to read one. Anyway, an example is when Lady Rokujo-she's one of Prince Genji's lovers-becomes so consumed with jealousy over Genji's main wife, Lady Aoi, that she turns into an evil spirit that possesses her. Night after night she attacks Lady Aoi in her bed until she finally kills her. Lady Aoi was pregnant with Genji's child, and that news is what activated Lady Rokujo's hatred. Genji called in priests to exorcise the evil spirit, but to no avail. The evil spirit was impossible to resist.

"But the most interesting part of the story is that Lady Rokujo had no inkling that she'd become a living spirit. She'd have nightmares and wake up, only to discover that her long black hair smelled like smoke. Not having any idea what was going on, she was totally confused. In fact, this smoke came from the incense the priests lit as they prayed for Lady Aoi. Completely unaware of it, she'd been flying through space and passing down the tunnel of her subconscious into Aoi's bedroom. This is one of the most uncanny and thrilling episodes in Genji. Later, when Lady Rokujo learns what she's been doing, she regrets the sins she's committed and shaves off her hair and renounces the world.

"The world of the grotesque is the darkness within us. Well before Freud and Jung shined a light on the workings of the subconscious, this correlation between darkness and our subconscious, these two forms of darkness, was obvious to people. It wasn't a metaphor, even. If you trace it back further, it wasn't even a correlation. Until Edison invented the electric light, most of the world was totally covered in darkness. The physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two. They were directly linked. Like this." Oshima brings his two hands together tightly.

"In Murasaki Shikibu's time living spirits were both a grotesque phenomenon and a natural condition of the human heart that was right there with them. People of that period probably couldn't conceive of these two types of darkness as separate from each other. But today things are different. The darkness in the outside world has vanished, but the darkness in our hearts remains, virtually unchanged. Just like an iceberg, what we label the ego or consciousness is, for the most part, sunk in darkness. And that estrangement sometimes creates a deep contradiction or confusion within us."

"Around your mountain cabin-that's real darkness."

"Absolutely," Oshima says. "Real darkness still exists there. Sometimes I go there just to experience it."

"What triggers people to become living spirits? Is it always something negative?"

"I'm no expert, but as far as I know, yes, those living spirits all spring up out of negative emotions. Most of the extreme feelings people have tend to be at once very individual and very negative. And these living spirits arise through a kind of spontaneous generation. Sad to say, there aren't any cases of a living spirit emerging to fulfill some logical premise or bring about world peace."

"What about because of love?"

Oshima sits down and thinks it over. "That's a tough one. All I can tell you is I've never run across an example. Of course, there is that tale, 'The Chrysanthemum Pledge,' in Tales of Moonlight and Rain. Have you read it?"

"No," I reply.

"Tales of Moonlight and Rain was written in the late Edo period by a man named Ueda Akinari. It was set, however, in the earlier Warring States period, which makes Ueda's approach a bit nostalgic or retro. Anyway, in this particular story two samurai become fast friends and pledge themselves as blood brothers. For samurai this was very serious. Being blood brothers meant they pledged their lives to each other. They lived far away from each other, each serving a different lord. One wrote to the other saying no matter what, he would visit when the chrysanthemums were in bloom. The other said he'd wait for his arrival. But before the first one could set out on the journey, he got mixed up in some trouble in his domain, was put under confinement, and wasn't allowed to go out or send a letter. Finally summer is over and fall is upon them, the season when the chrysanthemums blossom. At this rate he won't be able to fulfill his promise to his friend. To a samurai, nothing's more important than a promise. Honor's more important than your life. So this samurai commits hara-kiri, becomes a spirit, and races across the miles to visit his friend. They sit near the chrysanthemums and talk to their heart's content, and then the spirit vanishes from the face of the earth. It's a beautiful tale."