A Wild Sheep Chase

by Haruki Murakami

“Very well,” she picked up where I trailed off, “she was the kind of girl who’d sleep with anyone, right?” “Right.” “But not with you, right?” There was an edge to her voice. I glanced up from the salad bowl. “You think not?” “Somehow, no,” she said quietly. “You, you’re not the type.” “What type?” “I don’t know, there’s something about you. Say there’s an hourglass: the sand’s about to run out. Someone like you can always be counted on to turn the thing over.”

2

In the beginning, she thought she was the one unfit for society and made me out to be the socially functioning one. In our respective roles, we got along relatively well. Yet no sooner had we thought we’d reached a lasting arrangement than something crumbled. The tiniest hint of something, but it was never to be recovered. We had been walking ever so peacefully down a long blind alley. That was our end.

3

“I don’t know how to put it, but I just can’t get it through my head that here and now is really here and now. Or that I am really me. It doesn’t quite hit home. It’s always been this way. Only much later on does it ever come together. For the last ten years, it’s been like this.” “Ten years?” “There’s been no end to it. That’s all.”

4