Харуки Мураками - First Person Singular - Stories

“Whatever. But do you think that’s all pretty fantastic? Urbane, stylish, and smart and all?”

I probably should have paid my bill and left as soon as I could. That was the best reaction in a situation like this. The woman, for some reason, was picking a fight. Challenging me. What compelled her to do that, I had no idea. She might have just been in a foul mood. Or else something about me struck her the wrong way, jangled her nerves, irritated her. The chance of anything good coming from an encounter with someone like that was next to zero. The wise choice would have been to politely excuse myself, smile and stand up (the smile was optional), quickly pay my bill, and get as far away as I could. And I couldn’t think of any reason not to. I’m not the type who can’t stand to lose, and I don’t like to fight when I can’t see the justice in it. I’m more into silent, strategic withdrawals.

But for whatever reason, that’s not what I did. Something stopped me. Curiosity, perhaps.

“Pardon me, but are we acquainted?” I ventured.

She narrowed her eyes and stared at me strangely. The frown lines next to her eyes deepened. “Acquainted?” she said, picked up her cocktail glass (this was her third drink, if memory serves), and took a sip of whatever it was inside—what, I had no idea. “ Acquainted ? How did you come up with that word?”

I searched my memory once more. Had I met this woman somewhere? The answer was—no. Clearly this was the first time I’d ever laid eyes on her.

“I’m thinking you must be mistaking me for someone else,” I said. My voice was strangely flat, expressionless. It didn’t even sound like me.

She smiled faintly, coldly. “Is that what you’re going with?” she said, and set the thin Baccarat cocktail glass back down on the coaster in front of her.

“That’s a lovely suit,” she said. “Though it doesn’t look good on you. It’s like you’re wearing borrowed clothes. And that tie—it doesn’t exactly go with that suit. It’s a little off. The tie is Italian, but the suit, I would say, is British made.”

“You certainly know a lot about clothes.”

“Know a lot about clothes?” She sounded a little taken aback. Her lips parted a fraction, and she gave me a hard stare. “Do you really need to say that? That goes without saying.”

Goes without saying?

I searched my mind for the people I knew in the apparel industry. I only knew a handful, and all were men. None of this made any sense.

Why would this go without saying ?

It crossed my mind to explain to her why I was wearing a suit and tie this evening, but I thought better of it. Explaining it wouldn’t blunt the attack mode she was obviously in. It might, in fact, have the opposite effect, and only pour oil on what seemed to be angry flames.

I drank the last drops of my vodka gimlet and quietly got down off the bar stool. This seemed like my chance to put an end to the conversation.

“I think you’re probably not acquainted with me,” she said. I nodded. She was right.

“Not directly,” she went on. “Though we did meet once. We didn’t talk much then, so I think you’re not really acquainted with me. And you were so very busy with other things then. As usual.”

As usual?

“I’m a friend of a friend of yours,” she said in a quietly firm tone. “This close friend of yours—this person who used to be your close friend, I should say—is quite upset with you, and I am just as upset with you as she is. You must know what I’m talking about. Think about it. About what happened three years ago, at the shore. About what a horrible, awful thing you did. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I’d had enough. I scooped up my book, only a few pages still unread, and stuck it in my jacket pocket. I’d long since lost any thought of finishing it.

I QUICKLY PAID MY BILL, in cash, and exited the bar. She didn’t say anything more, just followed me fixedly with her eyes as I left. I never once turned around, yet I felt her intense gaze on my back until I made it outside. That sensation, like being jabbed with a long sharp needle, penetrated the fine cloth of my Paul Smith suit to make a deep, lasting mark on my back.

As I climbed the narrow staircase to ground level, I tried to gather my thoughts.

How should I have responded? Should I have asked her, “What in the world are you talking about?” and demanded that she explain herself? What she’d said struck me as totally unfair, something I had no memory of whatsoever.

But somehow, I couldn’t. Why not? I think I was afraid. Afraid of learning that another me who wasn’t really me had, at a shore somewhere three years before, committed a horrendous offense toward a woman, someone I probably didn’t know. Afraid of having her drag out, into the light, something inside me, something completely unknown to me. Rather than face this, I chose to silently get up off my stool and make my getaway, all the while submitting to a torrent of what I could only see as groundless accusations.

Did I do the right thing? If the same thing happened to me again, would I act the same?

But this shore she mentioned—where could it be? The word had a strange ring to it. Was it by the ocean? A lake? A river? Or some other, peculiar assemblage of water? Three years ago was I next to some sizable body of water? I couldn’t recall. I couldn’t even grasp when three years ago had occurred. Everything she said sounded so specific, but at the same time symbolic. The parts were clear, yet the whole wasn’t in focus. And that very discrepancy unsettled my nerves.

At any rate, the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth. I tried to swallow it down but couldn’t, tried to spit out but was unable to. I wanted to get angry, plain and simple. There was no reason I had to endure that kind of preposterous experience. The way she treated me was completely unfair. Up to that moment, it had been such a pleasant, tranquil spring evening. But strangely enough, I couldn’t work up any anger. For the moment, a wave of bewilderment and confusion swept over me, swept any sense of logic away.

WHEN I GOT TO THE TOP of the stairs and out of the building, it was no longer spring, and the moon had disappeared from the sky. This was no longer the street I knew. I’d never before seen the trees lining the street. Thick, slimy snakes wound themselves tightly around the trunks, like wriggling living ornaments. Their scales rustled drily as they rubbed against the bark. The sidewalk was ankle deep in whitish ash, and there were faceless men and women walking along, exhaling a yellowish, sulfurous breath from deep within their throats. The air was bitterly cold, almost freezing. I turned up the collar of my suit.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the woman said.

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, whose previous recipients include Karl Ove Knausgård, Isabel Allende, and Salman Rushdie.

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