Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

"If it's okay, I'd like to go out for a while," I tell him right after we open up.

"Where to?"

"I need to go to the gym and work out. I haven't gotten any exercise for a while."

That isn't the only reason. Miss Saeki comes in to work late in the morning, and I don't want to run into her. I need some time to get my head together before I see her again.

Oshima looks at me and, after a pause, nods. "Watch out, though. I don't want to henpeck you, but you can't be too careful, okay?"

"Don't worry, I'll be careful," I assure him.

Backpack slung from one shoulder, I board the train. At Takamatsu Station I take a bus to the fitness club. I change into my gym clothes in the locker room, then do some circuit training, plugged into my Walkman, Prince blasting away. It's been a while and my muscles complain, but I manage. It's the body's normal reaction-muscles screaming out, resisting the extra burden put on them. Listening to "Little Red Corvette," I try to soothe that reaction, suppress it. I take a deep breath, hold it, exhale. Inhale, hold, exhale. Even breathing, over and over. One by one I push my muscles to the limit. I'm sweating like crazy, my shirt's soaked and heavy. I have to go over to the cooler a few times to gulp down water.

I go through the machines in the usual order, my mind filled with Miss Saeki. About the sex we had. I try to clear my head, blank everything out, but it's not easy. I focus on my muscles, absorb myself in the routine. The same machines as always, same weights, same number of reps. Prince is singing "Sexy Motherfucker" now. The end of my penis is still a bit sore and stings a little when I take a leak. The tip's red. My fresh-from-the-foreskin cock is still plenty young and tender. Condensed sexual fantasies, Prince's slippery voice, quotes from all kinds of books-the whole confused mess swirls around in my brain, and my head feels like it's about to burst.

I take a shower, change into fresh underwear, and take the bus back to the station. Hungry, I duck inside a diner and have a quick meal. As I'm eating I realize this is where I ate on my first day in Takamatsu. Which gets me wondering how many days I've been here. It's been a week or so since I started staying at the library, so I must have gotten to Shikoku about three weeks ago.

I have some tea after I'm finished eating and watch the people hustling back and forth in front of the station. They're all headed somewhere. If I wanted to, I could join them. Take a train to some other place. Throw away everything here, head off somewhere I've never been, start from scratch. Like turning a new page in a notebook. I could go to Hiroshima, Fukuoka, wherever. Nothing's keeping me here. I'm one hundred percent free. Everything I need to get by for a while is in my backpack. Clothes, toilet kit, sleeping bag. I've hardly touched the cash I took from my father's study.

But I know I can't go anywhere.

"But you can't go anywhere, you know that very well," the boy named Crow says.

You held Miss Saeki, came inside her so many times. And she took it all. Your penis is still stinging, still remembering how it felt to be inside her. One of the places that's just for you. You think of the library. The tranquil, silent books lining the stacks. You think of Oshima. Your room. Kafka on the Shore hanging on the wall, the fifteen-year-old girl gazing at the painting. You shake your head. There's no way you can leave here. You aren't free. But is that what you really want? To be free?

Inside the station I pass by patrolmen making their rounds, but they don't pay me any mind. Seems like every other guy I pass is some tanned kid my age shouldering a backpack. And I'm just one of them, melting into the scenery. No need to get all jumpy. Just act natural, and nobody'll notice me.

I jump on the little two-car train and return to the library.

"Hey, you're back," Oshima says. He looks at my backpack, dumbfounded. "My word, do you always lug around so much luggage with you? You're a regular Linus."

I boil some water and have a cup of tea. Oshima's twirling his usual long, freshly sharpened pencil. Where his pencils wind up when they get too short I have no idea.

"That backpack's like your symbol of freedom," he comments.

"Guess so," I say.

"Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents."

"Sometimes," I say.

"Sometimes," he repeats. "You know, if they had a contest for the world's shortest replies, you'd win hands down."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps," Oshima says, as if fed up. "Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real bind. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free."

"Including you?"

"Yeah. I prefer being unfree, too. Up to a point. Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it's true-all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though. They managed to maintain a fenceless civilization until the seventeenth century. They're dyed-in-the-wool free. They go where they want, when they want, doing what they want. Their lives are a literal journey. Walkabout is a perfect metaphor for their lives. When the English came and built fences to pen in their cattle, the Aborigines couldn't fathom it. And, ignorant to the end of the principle at work, they were classified as dangerous and antisocial and were driven away, to the outback. So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself."

I go back to my room and lay down my backpack. Next I head to the kitchen, brew up some coffee, and take it to Miss Saeki's room. Metal tray in both hands, I carefully walk up each step, the old floorboards creaking. On the landing, I step through a rainbow of brilliant colors from the stained glass.

Miss Saeki's sitting at her desk, writing. I put down the coffee cup, and she looks up and asks me to sit down in my usual chair. Today she has on a café-au-lait-colored shirt over a black T-shirt. Her hair's pinned back, and she's wearing a pair of small pearl earrings.

She doesn't say anything for a while. She's looking over what she's just written. Nothing in her expression looks out of the ordinary. She screws on the cap of her fountain pen and lays it on top of her writing paper. She spreads her fingers, checking for ink stains. Sunday-afternoon sunlight is shining through the window. Somebody's outside in the garden, talking.

"Mr. Oshima told me you went to the gym," she says, studying my face.

"That's right," I say.

"What kind of exercise do you do there?"

"I use the machines and the free weights," I reply.

"Anything else?"

I shake my head.

"Kind of a lonely type of sport, isn't it?"

I nod.

"I imagine you want to become stronger."

"You have to be strong to survive. Especially in my case."

"Because you're all alone."

"Nobody's going to help me. At least no one has up till now. So I have to make it on my own. I have to get stronger-like a stray crow. That's why I gave myself the name Kafka. That's what Kafka means in Czech, you know-crow."

"Hmm," she says, mildly impressed. "So you're Crow."

"That's right," I say.

That's right, the boy named Crow says.

"There must be a limit to that kind of lifestyle, though," she says. "You can't use that strength as a protective wall around you. There's always going to be something stronger that can overcome your fortress. At least in principle."

"Strength itself becomes your morality."