Харуки Мураками - First Person Singular - Stories

“I WAS ONLY THIRTY-FOUR when I died,” Bird said to me. “Thirty-four!” At least I think he was saying it to me. Since we were the only two people in the room.

I didn’t know how to respond. It’s hard in dreams to do the right thing. So I stayed silent, waiting for him to go on.

“Think about it—what it is to die at thirty-four,” Bird went on.

I thought about how I’d feel if I’d died at thirty-four. When I’d only just begun so many things in life.

“That’s right. I’d only begun things myself,” Bird said. “Only begun to live my life. But then I looked around me and it was all over.” He silently shook his head. His entire face was still hidden in shadow, so I couldn’t see his expression. His dirty, battered saxophone hung from the strap around his neck.

“Death always comes on suddenly,” Bird said. “But it also takes its time. Like the beautiful phrases that come into your head. It lasts an instant, yet those instants can draw out forever. As long as from the East Coast to the West Coast—or to infinity, even. The concept of time is lost there. In that sense, I might have been dead even as I lived out my life. But actual death is a crushing. What’s existed until then suddenly and completely vanishes. Returns to nothingness. In my case, that existence was me .”

He looked down for a time, staring at his instrument. And then he spoke again.

“Do you know what I was thinking about when I died?” Bird asked. “My mind had just one thought—a single melody. I kept on humming that melody over and over in my head. It just wouldn’t let go. That happens, right? A tune gets stuck in your head. That melody was a phrase from the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 1. This melody.”

Bird softly hummed the melody. I recognized it. The solo piano part.

“This is the one Beethoven melody that really swings,” Bird said. “I’ve always liked his Concerto no. 1. I’ve listened to it I don’t know how many times. The SP record with Schnabel on piano. But it’s strange, don’t you think? That me—Charlie Parker—when I died I was humming, of all things, a Beethoven melody in my mind, over and over. And then came darkness. Like a curtain falling.” Bird gave a little laugh, his voice hoarse.

No words came to me. What could I possibly say about the death of Charlie Parker?

“Anyway, I need to thank you,” Bird said. “You gave me life again, this one time. And had me play bossa nova. Nothing could make me happier. Of course being alive and actually playing would have been even more exciting. But even after dying, this was a truly wonderful experience. Since I always loved new music.”

So did you appear here today in order to thank me?

“That’s right,” Bird said, as if reading my mind. “I stopped by to express my thanks. To say thank you. I hope you enjoyed my music.”

I nodded. I should have said something, but couldn’t for the life of me come up with the right response.

“ Perry Como Sings Jimi Hendrix , eh?” Bird murmured, as if recalling. And chuckled again in a hoarse voice.

And then he vanished. First his saxophone disappeared, next the light shining in from somewhere. And finally, Bird himself was gone.

WHEN I WOKE UP from the dream, the clock next to my bed read 3:30 a.m. It was still dark out, of course. The fragrance of coffee that should have filled the room was gone. There was no fragrance at all. I went to the kitchen and gulped down a couple of glasses of water. I sat down at the dining table, and tried once more to reproduce, if even a little, that amazing music that Bird had played just for me. I couldn’t recall a single phrase. But I could remember what Bird had said. Before they faded from memory, I wrote down his words, with a ballpoint pen in a notebook, as accurately as I could. That was the only action I could take. Bird had visited my dream in order to thank me—that much, I recalled. To thank me for allowing him the opportunity, so many years ago, to play bossa nova. And he grabbed an instrument that happened to be around and played “Corcovado” just for me.

Can you believe it?

You’d better. Because it happened.

It really did.

WHAT I FIND STRANGE about growing old isn’t that I’ve gotten older. Not that the youthful me from the past has, without my realizing it, aged. What catches me off guard is, rather, how people from the same generation as me have become elderly, how all the pretty, vivacious girls I used to know are now old enough to have a couple of grandkids. It’s a little disconcerting—sad, even. Though I never feel sad at the fact that I have similarly aged.

I think what makes me feel sad about the girls I knew growing old is that it forces me to admit, all over again, that my youthful dreams are gone forever. The death of a dream can be, in a way, sadder than that of a living being. Sometimes it all seems so unfair.

There’s one girl—a woman who used to be a girl, I mean—whom I remember well. I don’t know her name, though. And, naturally, I don’t know where she is now or what she’s doing. What I do know about her is that she went to the same high school as I did, and was in the same year (since the badge on her shirt was the same color as mine), and that she really liked the Beatles. Other than that, I know nothing about her.

This was in 1964, at the height of Beatlemania. It was early autumn. The new school semester had begun and things were starting to fall into a routine again. She was hurrying down the long, dim hallway of the old school building, her skirt fluttering. I was the only other person there. She was clutching an LP to her chest as if it were something precious. The LP With the Beatles . The one with the striking black-and-white photograph of the four Beatles in half shadow. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I have a clear memory that it was the original, British version of the album, not the American or the Japanese version.

She was a beautiful girl. At least, to me then, she looked gorgeous. She wasn’t tall, but she had long black hair, slim legs, and a lovely fragrance. (That could be a false memory, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t give off any scent at all. But that’s what I remember, as if, when she passed, an enchanting, alluring fragrance wafted in my direction.) She had me under her spell—that beautiful, nameless girl clutching With the Beatles to her chest.

My heart started to pound, I gasped for breath, and it was as if all sound had ceased, as if I’d sunk to the bottom of a pool. All I could hear was a bell ringing faintly, deep in my ears. As if someone were desperately trying to send me a vital message. All this took only ten or fifteen seconds. It was over before I knew it, and the critical message contained there, like the core of all dreams, disappeared. Just like most important things do that happen in life.

A dimly lit hallway in a high school, a beautiful girl, the hem of her skirt swirling, With the Beatles .

That was the only time I saw that girl. In the two years between then and my graduation, we never once crossed paths again. Which is pretty strange if you think about it. The high school I attended was a fairly large public school at the top of a hill in Kobe, with about 650 students in each grade. (We were the so-called Baby Boomer generation, so there were a lot of us.) Not everyone knew one another. In fact, I didn’t know the names or recognize the vast majority of the kids in the school. But, still, since I went to school almost every day, and often used that hallway, it struck me as almost outrageous that I never once saw that beautiful girl again. I looked for her every time I used that hallway.