Murakami, Haruki - Харуки Мураками

“I’ve been with this company for fourteen years. The job’s fine, and I enjoy the work. I get along with my colleagues. And I’ve been in relationships with a few women. Nothing ever came of it, but there were lots of reasons for that. It wasn’t entirely my fault.”

“And you’re alone, but not lonely.”

It was still early, and they were the only customers in the bar. Music from a jazz trio played softly in the background.

“I suppose,” Tsukuru said after some hesitation.

“But you can’t go back now? To that orderly, harmonious, intimate place?”

He thought about this, though there was no need to. “That place doesn’t exist anymore,” he said quietly.

It was in the summer of his sophomore year in college when that place vanished forever.

This drastic change took place during summer vacation of his sophomore year, between the first and second semesters. Afterward, Tsukuru Tazaki’s life was changed forever, as if a sheer ridge had divided the original vegetation into two distinct biomes.

As always, when vacation rolled around he packed his belongings (though he did not have very many to begin with) and rode the bullet train back home. After a short visit with his family in Nagoya, he called up his four friends, but he couldn’t get in touch with any of them. All four of them were out, he was told. He figured they must have gone out together somewhere. He left a message with each of their families, went downtown to a movie theater in the shopping district, and killed time watching a movie he didn’t particularly want to see. Back at home, he ate dinner with his family, then phoned each of his friends again. No one had returned.

The next morning he called them again, with the same result: they were all still out. He left another message with each family member who answered the phone. Please have them call me when they get back, he said, and they promised to pass the message along. But something in their voices bothered him. He hadn’t noticed it the first time he called, but now he sensed something subtly different, as if, for some reason, they were trying to keep him at arm’s length. As if they wanted to hang up on him as soon as possible. Shiro’s older sister, in particular, was curt and abrupt. Tsukuru had always gotten along very well with her—she was two years older than Shiro, and though not as stunning as Shiro, still a beautiful woman. They often joked around when he called—or if not a joke, at least they exchanged a friendly greeting. But now she hurriedly said goodbye, as if she could barely wait to end the conversation. After he had called all four homes, Tsukuru was left feeling like an outcast, as if he were carrying some virulent pathogen that the others were desperately trying to avoid.

Something must have happened, something had taken place while he was away to make them create this distance. Something inappropriate, and offensive. But what it was—what it could possibly be—he simply had no clue.

He was left feeling like he’d swallowed a lump of something he shouldn’t have, something he couldn’t spit out, or digest. He stayed home the whole day waiting for the phone to ring. His mind was unfocused, and he was unable to concentrate. He’d left repeated messages with his friends’ families, telling them he was in Nagoya. Usually his friends would call right away and cheerfully welcome him back, but this time the phone remained implacably silent.

Tsukuru thought about calling them again in the evening, but then decided not to. Maybe all of them really were at home. Maybe they didn’t want to come to the phone and instead were pretending to be out. Maybe they had told their families, “If Tsukuru Tazaki calls, tell him I’m not here.” Which would explain why their family members sounded so ill at ease.

But why ?

He couldn’t imagine a reason. The last time the five of them had been together was in early May, during the Golden Week holidays. When Tsukuru had taken the train back to Tokyo, his four friends had come to the station to see him off, giving him big, hearty, exaggerated waves through the window as the train pulled away, like he was a soldier being shipped off to the ends of the earth.

After that point, Tsukuru had written a couple of letters to Ao. Shiro was hopeless with computers, so they normally relied on letters, and Ao was their contact person. Tsukuru always addressed the letter to Ao, who made sure that the letters circulated among the others. That way Tsukuru could avoid writing individual letters to everyone. He mainly wrote about his life in Tokyo, what he saw there, what experiences he had, what he was feeling. But always, no matter what he saw or did, he knew he would be having a much better time if the four of them were there to share the experience with him. That’s how he really felt. Other than that, he didn’t write anything much.

The other four wrote letters to him, jointly signed, but there was never anything negative in them. They just reported in detail on what they’d been up to in Nagoya. They’d all been born and raised there, but they seemed to be enjoying their college lives. Ao had bought a used Honda Accord (with a stain on the backseat that looked like a dog had peed there, he reported, the kind of car five people could easily ride in, as long as none of them was too fat), and all of them piled into the car to take a trip to Lake Biwa. Too bad you couldn’t go with us, Tsukuru, they wrote. Looking forward to seeing you during the summer, they added. To Tsukuru, it sounded like they meant it.

That night, after he still hadn’t heard from his friends, Tsukuru had trouble sleeping. He felt agitated. Random, senseless thoughts flitted around in his head. But all these thoughts were just variations on one theme. Like a man who has lost his sense of direction, Tsukuru’s thoughts endlessly circled the same place. By the time he became aware of what his mind was doing, he found himself back where he’d started. Finally, his thinking process got stuck, as if the folds of his brain were a broken screw.

He remained awake in bed until 4 a.m. Then he fell asleep, but he woke up again shortly after six. He didn’t feel like eating, and drank a glass of orange juice, but even that made him nauseous. His lack of appetite worried his family, but he told them it was nothing. My stomach’s just a little tired out, he explained.

Tsukuru stayed at home that day, too. He lay next to the phone, reading a book, or at least trying to. In the afternoon he called his friends’ homes again. He didn’t feel like it, but he couldn’t just sit around with this baffling, disconcerting feeling, praying for the phone to ring.

The result was the same. The family members who answered the phone told Tsukuru—curtly, or apologetically, or in an overly neutral tone of voice—that his friends weren’t at home. Tsukuru thanked them, politely but briefly, and hung up. This time he didn’t leave a message. Probably they were as tired of pretending to be out as he was tired of trying to contact them. He assumed that eventually the family members who were screening his calls might give up. If he kept on calling, there had to be a reaction.

And eventually there was. Just past eight that night, a call came from Ao.

“I’m sorry, but I have to ask you not to call any of us anymore,” Ao said abruptly and without preface. No “Hey!” or “How’ve you been?” or “It’s been a while.” I’m sorry was his only concession to social niceties.

Tsukuru took a breath, and silently repeated Ao’s words, quickly assessing them. He tried to read the emotions behind them, but the words were like the formal recitation of an announcement. There had been no room for feelings.