Харуки Мураками - First Person Singular - Stories

He squinted at me for a while, like some scruffy animal that had, after a long hibernation, crawled out into the sunlight.

“I’m guessing you are… Sayoko’s friend?” He said this before I got a word out. He cleared his throat. His voice was sleepy, but I could sense a spark of interest in it.

“That’s right,” I said, and introduced myself. “I was supposed to come here at eleven.”

“Sayoko’s not here right now,” he said.

“Not here,” I said, repeating his words.

“She’s out somewhere. She’s not at home.”

“But I was supposed to come and pick her up today at eleven.”

“Is that right?” her brother said. He glanced up at the wall beside him, as if checking a clock. But there was no clock there, just a white plaster wall. He reluctantly turned his gaze back to me. “That may be, but the fact is she’s not at home.”

I had no clue what I should do. And neither did her brother, apparently. He gave a leisurely yawn and scratched the back of his head. All his actions were slow and measured.

“Doesn’t seem like anybody’s at home now,” he said. “When I got up a while ago nobody was here. They must have all gone out, but I don’t know where.”

I didn’t say anything.

“My father’s probably out golfing. My sisters must have gone out to have some fun. But my mom being out, too, is a little odd. That doesn’t happen often.”

I refrained from speculating. This wasn’t my family.

“But if Sayoko promised she’d be here, I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” her brother said. “Why don’t you come inside and wait?”

“I don’t want to bother you. I’ll just hang out somewhere for a while and then come back,” I said.

“Nah, it’s no bother,” he said firmly. “Much more of a bother to have you ring the bell again and me have to come and open the front door. So come on in.”

I had no other choice, so I went inside, and he led me to the living room. The living room with the sofa on which she and I had made out in the summer. I sat down on it, and my girlfriend’s brother eased himself into an armchair facing me. And once again let out a long yawn.

“You’re Sayoko’s friend, right?” he asked again, as if making doubly sure.

“That’s right,” I said, giving the same reply.

“Not Yuko’s friend?”

I shook my head. Yuko was her taller kid sister.

“Is it interesting going out with Sayoko?” her brother asked, a look of curiosity in his eyes.

I had no clue how to respond, so I stayed silent. He sat there, waiting for my reply.

“It’s fun, yes,” I said, finally finding what I hoped were the right words.

“It’s fun, but it’s not interesting?”

“No, that’s not what I mean…” My words petered out.

“No matter,” her brother said. “Interesting or fun—no difference between the two, I suppose. Hey, have you had breakfast?”

“I have, yes.”

“I’m going to make some toast. Sure you don’t want any?”

“No, I’m fine,” I replied.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“How about coffee?”

“I’m fine.”

I could have done with some coffee, but I hesitated to get more involved with my girlfriend’s family, especially when she wasn’t at home.

He stood up without a word and left the room. Probably went to the kitchen to make breakfast. After a while, I heard the clatter of dishes and cups. I stayed there alone on the sofa, politely sitting up straight, my hands in my lap, waiting for her to come back from wherever she was. The clock now read 11:15.

I scanned my memory to see if we really had decided that I would come at eleven. But, no matter how much I thought it over, I was sure that I’d gotten the date and time correct. We’d talked on the phone the night before and had confirmed it then. She wasn’t the type to forget or blow off a promise. And it was odd, indeed, for her and her family to all go off on a Sunday morning and leave her older brother by himself.

Puzzled by it all, I sat there patiently. Time passed excruciatingly slowly. I’d hear the occasional sound from the kitchen—the faucet turning on, the clatter of a spoon mixing something, the sound of a cupboard opening and closing. This brother seemed the type who had to make a racket, whatever he did. But that was it, as far as sounds went. No wind blowing outside, no dogs barking. Like invisible mud, the silence steadily crept into my ears and plugged them up. I had to gulp a few times to unblock them.

Some music would have been nice. “Theme from A Summer Place ,” “Edelweiss,” “Moon River”—anything. I wasn’t picky. Just some music. But I couldn’t very well turn on the stereo in somebody else’s house without permission. I looked around for something to read but didn’t spot any newspapers or magazines. I checked out what was inside my shoulder bag. I almost always had a paperback I was reading in my bag, but not that day. As luck would have it, that was the day I’d forgotten to bring a book.

The only book I had in my bag that day was a supplementary reader for our school textbook, Japanese Language and Literature . I reluctantly pulled it out and started flipping through the pages. I wasn’t what you’d call a reader , who goes through books systematically and attentively, but more the type who finds it hard to pass the time without something to read. I could never just sit, still and silent. I always had to be turning the pages of a book or listening to music, one or the other. When there was no book lying around, I’d grab anything printed. I’d read a phone book, an instruction manual for a steam iron. Compared with those kinds of reading material, a supplementary reader for a Japanese-language textbook was far better.

I randomly flipped through the fiction and essays in the book. A few pieces were by foreign authors, but most were by well-known modern Japanese writers—Ryuˉnosuke Akutagawa, Junichiroˉ Tanizaki, Kobo Abe, and the like. And appended to each work—all excerpts, except for a handful of very short stories—were some questions. Most of these questions were totally meaningless. With meaningless questions, it’s hard (or impossible) to determine logically if an answer is correct or not. I doubted whether even the authors of the selections themselves would have been able to decide. Things like “What can you glean from this passage about the writer’s stance toward war?” or “When the author describes the waxing and waning of the moon, what sort of symbolic effect is created?” You could give almost any answer. If you said that the description of the waxing and waning of the moon was simply a description of the waxing and waning of the moon, and created no symbolic effect, no one could say with certainty that your answer was wrong. Of course there was a relatively reasonable answer, but I didn’t really think that arriving at a relatively reasonable answer was one of the goals of studying literature.

Be that as it may, I killed time by trying to conjure up answers to each of these questions. And, in most cases, what sprang to mind—in my brain, which was still growing and developing, struggling every day to attain a kind of psychological independence—were the sorts of answers that were relatively unreasonable but not necessarily wrong. Maybe that tendency was one of the reasons that my grades at school were no great shakes.

While this was going on, my girlfriend’s brother came back to the living room. His hair was still sticking out in all directions, but, maybe because he’d had breakfast, his eyes weren’t as sleepy as before. He held a large white mug, which had a picture of a First World War German biplane, with two machine guns in front of the cockpit, printed on the side. This had to be his own special mug. I couldn’t picture my girlfriend drinking from a mug like that.