Харуки Мураками - First Person Singular - Stories

I’ll omit the rest of the article, which is simply a further description with all the suitable embellishments. The above gives you an idea of the kind of music I’m talking about. Of course it’s music that doesn’t actually exist. Or, at least, music that couldn’t possibly exist.

I’LL WRAP UP that story here, and talk about something that took place years later.

For a long time I totally forgot that I’d written that article back in college. My life after school turned out to be more harried and busy than I’d ever imagined, and that review of a make-believe album was nothing more than a lighthearted, irresponsible joke I’d played when I was young. But now, close to fifteen years later, this article unexpectedly reemerged into my life, like a boomerang you threw that whirls back to you when you least expect it.

I was in New York on business and, with time on my hands, took a walk near my hotel and ducked inside a small used-record store I came across on East Fourteenth Street. And in the section of Charlie Parker records I found, of all things, a record titled Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova . It looked like a bootleg, a privately pressed recording. On the front was a white jacket with no drawing or photo, just the title in sullen black letters. On the back was a list of the tracks and the musicians. Surprisingly, the list of songs and musicians was exactly as I’d made them up back in college. Likewise, Hank Jones sat in for Carlos Jobim on two tracks.

I stood there—still, speechless—record in hand. It felt like some small internal part of me had gone numb. I looked around again. Was this really New York? This was downtown New York—no doubt about it. And I was actually here, in a small used-record store. I hadn’t wandered into some fantasy world. Nor was I having some super-realistic dream.

I slipped the record out of its jacket. It had a white label, with the title and names of the songs. No sign of a record company logo. I examined the vinyl itself and found four distinct tracks on each side. I went over and asked the long-haired young guy at the register if I could take a listen to the album. No, he replied. The store turntable’s broken. Sorry about that.

The price on the record was $35. I wavered for a long time about whether to buy it. In the end, I left the shop empty-handed. I figured, it’s got to be somebody’s idea of a silly joke. Somebody, on a whim, had faked a record based on my long-ago description of an imaginary recording. Took a different record that had four tracks on each side, soaked it in water, peeled off the label, and glued on a homemade one. Any way you look at it, it was ridiculous to pay $35 for a bogus record like that.

I went to a Spanish restaurant near the hotel and had some beer and a simple dinner by myself. Afterward, as I was strolling around aimlessly, a wave of regret suddenly welled up in me. I should have bought that record. Even if it was a fake, and even if it was way overpriced, I should have bought it, at the very least as a souvenir of all the twists and turns my life had taken. I went straight back to Fourteenth Street. I hurried, but the record store was closed by the time I got there. On the shutter was a sign that said the store opened at 11:30 a.m. and closed at 7:30 p.m. on weekdays.

The next morning, just before noon, I went over to the store again. A middle-aged guy—thinning hair, in a disheveled, round-necked sweater—was sipping coffee and reading the sports section of the paper. The coffee seemed freshly brewed, for a pleasant smell wafted faintly through the store. The store had just opened, and I was the only customer. An old tune by Pharoah Sanders filtered through the small speaker on the ceiling. I assumed the man was the store’s owner. I thumbed through the Charlie Parker section, but that record was nowhere to be found. I was sure I’d returned the record to that section yesterday. Thinking it might have gotten mixed in elsewhere, I rifled through every bin in the jazz section. But as hard as I looked, no luck. Had someone else bought it since my visit yesterday? I went over to the register and spoke to the middle-aged guy. “I’m looking for a jazz record I saw here yesterday.”

“Which record?” he asked, eyes never wavering from The New York Times .

“ Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova ,” I said.

He laid down his paper, took off his thin, metal-framed reading glasses, and slowly turned to face me. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”

I did. The man said nothing, and took another sip of coffee. He shook his head slightly. “There’s no such record.”

“Of course,” I said.

“If you’d like Perry Como Sings Jimi Hendrix , we have that in stock.”

“ Perry Como Sings —” I got that far before I realized he was joking, even though he did so with a straight face. “But I really did see it,” I insisted. “I was sure it was produced as a joke, I mean.”

“You saw that record here ?”

“Yesterday afternoon. Right here.” I described the record, the jacket and songs on it. How it had been priced at $35.

“There’s gotta be some mistake. We’ve never had that kind of record. I do all the purchasing and pricing of jazz records myself, and if a record like that had crossed my desk, I would definitely have remembered it. Whether I wanted to or not.”

He shook his head and put his reading glasses back on. He went back to reading the sports section, but then, as if he’d had second thoughts, he removed his glasses, smiled, and gazed steadily at me. “But if you ever do get hold of that record,” he said, “let me listen to it, okay?”

THERE’S ONE MORE THING that came later on.

This happened a long time after that incident (in fact, quite recently). One night I had a dream about Charlie Parker. In the dream, he performed “Corcovado” just for me— for me alone . Solo alto sax, no rhythm section.

Sunlight was shining in from some gap somewhere, and Parker was standing by himself in a spot lit up by the long, vertical beam. Morning light, I assumed. Fresh, honest light that was still free of any superfluous meaning. Bird’s face, facing me, was hidden in deep shadow, but I could somehow make out the dark double-breasted suit, white shirt, and brightly colored tie. And the alto sax he had, which was absurdly filthy, covered in dirt and rust. There was one bent key he’d barely kept in place by taping the handle of a spoon to it. When I saw that, I was puzzled. Even Bird wouldn’t be able to get a decent sound out of that poor excuse for an instrument.

Suddenly, right then, my nose detected an amazingly fragrant aroma of coffee. What an entrancing smell. The aroma of hot, strong black coffee. My nostrils twitched with pleasure. For all the temptations of that smell, I never took my eyes off Bird. If I did, even for a second, he might vanish from sight.

I’m not sure why, but I knew then it was a dream. That I was seeing Bird in a dream. That happens sometimes. When I’m dreaming I know for certain— This is a dream . And I was strangely impressed that in the midst of a dream I could catch, so very clearly, the enticing smell of coffee.

Bird finally put lips to the mouthpiece and carefully blew one subdued sound, as if checking the condition of the reed. And once that sound had faded away over time, he quietly lined up a few more notes the same way. The notes floated there for a time, then gently fell to the ground. They fell to the ground, one and all, and once they were swallowed up by the silence, Bird sent out a series of deeper, more resilient notes into the air. That’s how “Corcovado” started.

How to describe that music? Looking back on it, this music Bird played just for me in my dream felt less like a stream of sound than like a momentary, total irradiation. I can vividly remember the music being there. But I can’t reproduce it. With time, it’s faded away, like the inability to describe the design of a mandala. What I can say is that it was music that reached to the deep recesses of my soul, all the way down to the very core. I was certain that kind of music existed in the world—music that made you feel like something in the very structure of your body had been reconfigured, ever so slightly, now that you’d experienced it.