Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

These autumn beasts crouch in a hush, each to each, their long golden fur radiant in the sunset. Unmoving, like statues set in place, they wait with lifted heads until the last rays of the day sink into the apple trees. When finally the sun is gone and the gloom of night draws over them, the beasts lower their heads, laying their one white horn to earth, and close their eyes.

All at once I was plunged into darkness, literally, without a single pinprick of light. I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t even make out my hand raised up to my face. I stood there dumbfounded, as if I’d been hit by a blunt object, overcome by the chilling realization of my utter helplessness.

What the hell could the Brass be thinking? You dig a hole and the next thing they say is fill it in; fill it in and they tell you to dig a hole. They’re always screwing with the guy in the field.

“You plan to present these findings to the world?” “Tosh,” said the old man, wiping his hands, “now why would I want t’let others in on something this much fun? I’m keepin’ it for my own personal enjoyment.”

“Work is no hardship. Better than having nothing to do,” I say.

Good value for life?

From now on you are the Dreamreader. You no longer have a name. Just like I am the Gatekeeper. Understand?” “Understood,” I say.

I look at her and say nothing. Her face comes almost as a reminiscence. What about her touches me? I can feel some deep layer of my consciousness lifting toward the surface. What can it mean? The secret lies in distant darkness.

“Still, I have the impression that elsewhere we may all have lived totally other lives, and that somehow we have forgotten that time. Have you ever felt that way?”

I wasn’t particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don’t have to die the next.

“We’re normal ordinary people, just like everyone else.” “Everyone may be ordinary, but they’re not normal.”

“To tell the truth, I do not know this thing called ‘mind’, what it does or how to use it. It is only a word I have heard.” “The mind is nothing you use,” I say. “The mind is just there. It is like the wind. You simply feel its movements.”

I made up my mind: I would do nothing.

She got out of bed and walked naked to the kitchen to mix two vodka tonics. While she did that, I put on my favorite Johnny Mathis album. The one with Teach Me Tonight. Then I hummed my way back to bed. Me and my limp penis and Johnny Mathis.

The Gatekeeper lays a giant hand on my back. “You have to endure. If you endure, everything will be fine. No worry, no suffering. It all disappears. Forget about the shadow. This is the End of the World. This is where the world ends. Nowhere further to go.”

As the autumn deepens, the fathomless lakes of their eyes assume an ever more sorrowful hue. The leaves turn color, the grasses wither; the beasts sense the advance of a long, hungry season. And bowing to their vision, I too know a sadness.

Different from the thundering of a waterfall, different from the howl of the wind, different from the rumble of a tremor. It may be described as the gasping of a gigantic throat. At times it groans, at times it whines. It breaks off, choking.

Before I begin my way back, I steal one more glance at the Wall. Beneath the snow-swept heavens, it rears up more stately, more perfect than ever. As I gaze up at it, I feel them peering at me. What are you doing here? they seem to say. What are you looking for? Questions I cannot answer. The short sleep in the cold has consumed all warmth in me, leaving my head swimming with abstract shapes. Do I occupy the body of another? Everything is so ponderously heavy, so vague.

I have lost so many things. I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting, away. Which part of me is thinking this? She holds my hand. “Sleep well,” I hear her say, from beyond a dark distance.

I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws.

“Is love then a thing of mind?”

“I will come as long as you need me.” Surely I do need her. Even as my sense of loss deepens each time we meet, I will need her.

Then she reaches out across the table and places her hand on mine. She smiles. A smile that promises spring. “Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams.”

The splendor of the fields, the glory of the flowers, I recited under my breath.

“That’s the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain.” She smiles. “That seems wrong.” “That’s the way it is,” I say.

My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless—a one-dimensional wafer.

PCA

A rasping, uneven rhythm, the shovels plunging into the soil, how clear it reaches inside here! The sound grows so sharp, the men are digging in my head. They are hollowing out my skull.

Smart

But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

I ordered a second draft, when I was hit by the long overdue urge to relieve myself. And piss I did. How could one bladder hold so much? I was in no particular hurry, so I kept going for a whole two minutes—with Bolero building to its enormous crescendo. It made me feel as if I could piss forever. Afterwards I could have sworn I’d been reborn.

“No, I really like his voice,” she said. “It’s like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.”

When have I last heard a song? My body has craved music. I have been so long without music, I have not even known my own hunger. The resonance permeates; the strain eases within me. Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.