Murakami, Haruki: Харуки Мураками

“If everybody’s telling me not to call them, then of course I won’t,” Tsukuru replied. The words slipped out, almost automatically. He had tried to speak normally, calmly, but his voice sounded like a stranger’s. The voice of someone living in a distant town, someone he had never met (and probably never would).

“Then don’t,” Ao said.

“I don’t plan on doing anything people don’t want me to do,” Tsukuru said.

Ao let out a sound, neither a sigh nor a groan of agreement.

“But if possible, I do want to know the reason for this,” Tsukuru said.

“That’s not something I can tell you,” Ao replied.

“Then who can?”

A thick stone wall rose. There was silence on the other end. Tsukuru could faintly hear Ao breathing through his nostrils. He pictured Ao’s flat, fleshy nose.

“Think about it, and you’ll figure it out,” Ao said, finally.

Tsukuru was speechless. What was he talking about? Think about it? Think about what ? If I think any harder about anything, I won’t know who I am anymore.

“It’s too bad it turned out like this,” Ao said.

“All of you feel this way?”

“Yeah. Everyone feels it’s too bad.”

“Tell me—what happened?” Tsukuru asked.

“You’d better ask yourself that,” Ao said. Tsukuru detected a quaver of sadness and anger in his voice, but it was just for an instant. Before Tsukuru could think of how to respond, Ao had hung up.

“That’s all he told you?” Sara asked.

“It was a short conversation, minimalist. That’s the very best I can reproduce it.”

The two of them were face-to-face across a small table in the bar.

“After that, did you ever talk with him, or any of the other three about it?”

Tsukuru shook his head. “No, I haven’t talked to any of them since then.”

Sara’s eyes narrowed as she gazed at him, as if she were inspecting a scene that violated the laws of physics. “None of them?”

“I never saw any of them again. And we’ve never spoken.”

“But didn’t you want to know why they suddenly kicked you out of the group?”

“I don’t know how to put it, but at the time nothing seemed to matter. The door was slammed in my face, and they wouldn’t let me back inside. And they wouldn’t tell me why. But if that’s what all of them wanted, I figured there was nothing I could do about it.”

“I don’t get it,” Sara said, as if she really didn’t. “It could have been a complete misunderstanding. I mean, you couldn’t think of any reason why it happened? Didn’t you find the whole thing deplorable? That some stupid mistake might have led you to lose such close friends? Why wouldn’t you try to clear up a misunderstanding that might have been easily rectified?”

Her mojito glass was empty. She signaled the bartender and asked for a wine list, and, after some deliberation, she chose a glass of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. Tsukuru had only drunk half his highball. The ice had melted, forming droplets on the outside of his glass. The paper coaster was wet and swollen.

“That was the first time in my life that anyone had rejected me so completely,” Tsukuru said. “And the ones who did it were the people I trusted the most, my four best friends in the world. I was so close to them that they had been like an extension of my own body. Searching for the reason, or correcting a misunderstanding, was beyond me. I was simply, and utterly, in shock. So much so that I thought I might never recover. It felt like something inside me had snapped.”

The bartender brought over the glass of wine and replenished the bowl of nuts. Once he’d left, Sara turned to Tsukuru.

“I’ve never experienced that myself, but I think I can imagine how stunned you must have been. I understand that you couldn’t recover from it quickly. But still, after time had passed and the shock had worn off, wasn’t there something you could have done? I mean, it was so unfair. Why didn’t you challenge it? I don’t see how you could stand it.”

Tsukuru shook his head slightly. “The next morning I made up some excuse to tell my family and took the bullet train back to Tokyo. I couldn’t stand being in Nagoya for one more day. All I could think of was getting away from there.”

“If it had been me, I would have stayed there and not left until I got to the bottom of it,” Sara said.

“I wasn’t strong enough for that,” Tsukuru said.

“You didn’t want to find out the truth?”

Tsukuru stared at his hands on the tabletop, carefully choosing his words. “I think I was afraid of pursuing it, of whatever facts might come to light. Of actually coming face-to-face with them. Whatever the truth was, I didn’t think it would save me. I’m not sure why, but I was certain of it.”

“And you’re certain of it now?”

“I don’t know,” Tsukuru said. “But I was then.”

“So you went back to Tokyo, stayed holed up in your apartment, closed your eyes, and covered up your ears.”

“You could say that, yes.”

Sara reached out and rested her hand on top of his. “Poor Tsukuru,” she said. The softness of her touch slowly spread through him. After a moment she took her hand away and lifted the wineglass to her mouth.

“After that I went to Nagoya as seldom as possible,” Tsukuru said. “When I did return, I tried not to leave my house, and once I was done with whatever I had to do, I came back to Tokyo as quickly as I could. My mother and older sisters were worried and asked me if something had happened, but I never said anything. There was no way I could tell them.”

“Do you know where the four of them are now, and what they’re doing?”

“No, I don’t. Nobody ever told me, and I never really wanted to know.”

Sara swirled the wine in her glass and gazed at the ripples, as if reading someone’s fortune.

“I find this very strange,” she said. “That incident was obviously a huge shock, and in a way, it changed your life. Don’t you think?”

Tsukuru gave a small nod. “In a lot of ways I’ve become a different person.”

“How so?”

“Well, I feel more often how dull and insignificant I am for other people. And for myself.”

Sara gazed into his eyes for a time, her voice serious. “I don’t think you’re either dull or insignificant.”

“I appreciate that,” Tsukuru said. He gently pressed his fingers against his temple. “But that’s an issue I have to figure out on my own.”

“I still don’t follow,” Sara said. “The pain caused by that incident is still in your mind, or your heart. Or maybe both. But I think it’s very clearly there. Yet for the last fifteen or sixteen years you’ve never tried to trace the reason why you had to suffer like that.”

“I’m not saying I didn’t feel like knowing the truth. But after all these years, I think it’s better just to forget about it. It was a long time ago, and it’s all sunk within the past.”

Sara’s thin lips came together, and then she spoke. “I think that’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous? How so?”

“You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them.” Sara looked directly into his eyes. “If nothing else, you need to remember that. You can’t erase history, or change it. It would be like destroying yourself.”

“Why are we talking about this?” Tsukuru said, half to himself, trying to sound upbeat. “I’ve never talked to anybody about this before, and never planned to.”

Sara smiled faintly. “Maybe you needed to talk with somebody. More than you ever imagined.”

• • •

That summer, after he returned to Tokyo from Nagoya, Tsukuru was transfixed by the odd sensation that, physically, he was being completely transformed. Colors he’d once seen appeared completely different, as if they’d been covered by a special filter. He heard sounds that he’d never heard before, and couldn’t make out other noises that had always been familiar. When he moved, he felt clumsy and awkward, as if gravity were shifting around him.