1Q84: Book 3

by Haruki Murakami

I’ve never been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can’t read the whole of Proust.”

As he watched his father, Tengo started to have doubts about the difference between a person being alive and being dead. Maybe there really wasn’t much of a difference to begin with, he thought. Maybe we just decided, for convenience’s sake, to insist on a difference.

nothing surprised Tengo very much. Fuka-Eri and the crow exchanging opinions by the windowsill wasn’t hurting anybody.

Komatsu usually loved to have long talks on the phone. Tengo was, as it were, the wall against which Komatsu hit a tennis ball.

“Not such a bad way to go,” his friend said, without much emotion. What he was trying to say was This might sound a little insensitive, but depending on how you look at it, that’s not such a bad way to die. But he had left out such prefatory remarks. If you study for a few years in a mathematics department, you get used to that kind of abbreviated conversation.

If he remembers. This was one of the problems with math department graduates. When it came to areas they weren’t interested in, their memory was surprisingly short-lived.

“Horses sleep standing up. You’ve never seen that?” Tengo shook his head. “No, I never have.” “Their faces look like yours,” the middle-aged nurse said. “Go check out your face in the mirror. At first glance you can’t tell they’re asleep, but if you look closely you will see that their eyes are open, but they aren’t seeing anything.”

She didn’t seem drunk. Though people had their own ways of being drunk.

She wrapped her arms around his body and giggled. What was so funny? Tengo had no idea. Maybe somebody, somewhere, was holding out a sign that said Laugh.

most people in the world don’t really use their brains to think. And people who don’t think are the ones who don’t listen to others.

She had on a wool suit of indeterminate age, though no doubt it was already out of fashion by the time it was manufactured,

Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells.

I am who I am, no matter who or what I’m connected with – or not connected with.

“I don’t mind teaching,” the friend said. “I even enjoy it at times. But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself.” Tengo had often had an inkling of the same thing.

As much as he might try to lose himself in a crowd, he was as inconspicuous as a centipede in a cup of yogurt.

he was so utterly boring that talking with him gave you chest pains. Like the king whose touch turned everything to gold, every single word he uttered turned into insipid grains of sand.

For instance, he would propose an idea for discussion and debate it, taking both sides. He would passionately argue in support of the proposition, then argue – just as vigorously – against it. He could identify equally with either of the two positions and was completely and sincerely absorbed by whatever position he happened to be supporting at the moment. Before he had realized it, these exercises had given him the talent to be skeptical about his own self, and he had come to the recognition that most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. Subject and object are not as distinct as most people think. If the boundary separating the two isn’t clear-cut to begin with, it is not such a difficult task to intentionally shift back and forth from one to the other.

Perhaps, he mused, Finnish people liked to listen to Sibelius while in a sauna during their long nights. But in a tiny, one-unit bathroom of a two-bedroom condo in Kohinata, Bunkyo Ward, Sibelius’s music was too emotional, too tense.

A variety of people lived in the building, everyone from young, single working people, to college students, to couples with small children, to elderly people living alone – people from all walks of life. But all of them entered the frame of the lens, unaware they were under surveillance. Despite some differences in age and circumstances, every one of them looked worn out, tired of life. They appeared hopeless, abandoned by ambition, their emotions worn away, with only resignation and numbness filling the void left behind. As if they had just had a tooth pulled, their faces were dark, their steps heavy.

Ever since she could remember, she had always hated this thing called God. More precisely, she rejected the people and the system that intervened between her and God. For years she had equated those people and that system with God. Hating them meant hating God.

But this isn’t their God, she decided. It’s my God. This is a God I have found through sacrificing my own life, through my flesh being cut, my skin ripped off, my blood sucked away, my nails torn, all my time and hopes and memories being stolen from me. This is not a God with a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This God has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts. No reward, no punishment. This God doesn’t give, and doesn’t take away. There is no heaven up in the sky, no hell down below. When it’s hot, and when it’s cold, God is simply there.

There was an inexhaustible source of clouds in some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows.

Occasionally people would walk by quickly on the street in front. People who have finished work and are on the way home all walk the same way.

He listened to AM radio with an earphone to keep from getting bored. Most of the daytime programs appealed to housewives and elderly listeners. The people who appeared on the programs told jokes that fell flat, pointlessly burst out laughing, gave their moronic, hackneyed opinions, and played music so awful you felt like covering your ears. Periodically they gave blaring sales pitches for products no one could possibly want.

“People need routines. It’s like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.

“Mr. Kawana just passed away,” Tengo repeated, not comprehending. Was someone telling him he himself had just died?

“I’m sorry, but I may have to hold on to the Heckler & Koch,” Aomame said. “That’s fine. It’s my gift to you. If it gets troublesome to have, just toss it into Tokyo Bay. The world will take one small step closer to disarmament.”

Somehow the world survived the Nazis, the atomic bomb, and modern music.

The man didn’t respond. Either he didn’t want to answer or he felt there was no need. For whatever reason, people like this seemed to flock to Tengo.

Just as they had done on that December day twenty years earlier, in a classroom after hours, they stood silently side by side, holding hands. They were the only two people in the world. They watched the leisurely flow of cars before them. But they saw nothing. What they were seeing, what they were hearing – none of it mattered. The sights around them – the sounds, the smells – had all been drained of meaning.