South of the Border, West of the Sun: A Novel (Vintage International)

by Haruki Murakami

“What’s so interesting about the picture?” she asked. “I’m trying to fill in time,” I replied. “It’s been twenty-five years since I saw you last. I want to fill in that gap, even a little.” She smiled and looked at me quizzically, as if there was something weird about my face. “It’s strange,” she said. “You want to fill in that blank space of time, but I want to keep it all blank.”

“Boys that age are hard to like. You understand. Teenage boys are uncouth and selfish. And all they can think about is getting their hand up a girl’s skirt. I was so disappointed. I wanted what the two of us used to have.” “Yeah, but when I was sixteen I wasn’t any different—uncouth, selfish, and trying to get my hand up a girl’s skirt. That was me in a nutshell.” “I guess it was better I didn’t meet you then,” she said, and smiled. “Saying goodbye at twelve, meeting again at thirty-seven … maybe this is the best way for us, after all.”

Watching the children grow, day by day, I could feel myself aging. All by themselves, regardless of any plans I might have for them, my children were getting bigger. I loved my daughters, of course. Watching them grow up made me happier than anything. Sometimes, though, seeing them grow bigger by the month made me feel oppressed. It was as if a tree were growing inside my body, laying down roots, spreading its branches, pushing down on my organs, my muscles, bones, and skin, forcing its way outward. It was so stifling at times that I couldn’t sleep.

In my free time I listened to classical music and gazed out at Aoyama Cemetery. I didn’t read as much as I used to. My concentration was shot to hell.

On the counter, on the back of a match book, she’d left a message: “Probably I won’t be able to come here for a while,” the note said. “I have to go home now. Goodbye. Take care.”

they didn’t know the truth. That on a certain snowy winter day, if my plane had been grounded, I would have thrown them all away to be with Shimamoto. My job, my family, my money—everything, without flinching. And here I was, my head still full of Shimamoto. The sensation of holding her, of kissing her cheek, wouldn’t leave me. I couldn’t drive the image of Shimamoto from my mind and replace it with my wife. Just as I could never tell what Shimamoto was thinking, no one had a clue to what was in my mind.

“Honey, I had a call from my father this morning,” Yukiko said. “Busy as always. He said there’s this stock that’ll go through the roof, and we should buy as much as we could manage. Not your run-of-the-mill stock tip, he said, but something extra special.”

“Before you did all that, why didn’t you ask me?” “Ask you?” she said, surprised. “But you always buy the stocks my father tells you to. You’ve had me do it any number of times, haven’t you? You always tell me to just go ahead and do what I think is right. So that’s what I did. My father said there wasn’t a minute to lose. You were at the pool and I couldn’t get in touch with you. So what’s the problem?” “It’s all right,” I said. “But I want you to sell all the stock.”

my father’s doing this to help us out. Don’t you understand that?” “I understand. Yukiko, do you know what insider trading is? Do you know what it means when somebody tells you there’s a one hundred percent chance you’ll turn a profit?” “No.” “It’s called stock manipulation,” I said.

This isn’t like the kind of stock your father urged me to buy before. That kind of stock probably was going to make a profit. That was just welcome information, nothing more. And most of the time the stock did go up, but not every time. This time is different. This stinks. And I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

“I’ll call right now and have them sell every single share. Just stop being angry with me.” “I’m not angry.” Silent, I continued to eat. “Isn’t there something you want to tell me?” Yukiko asked, looking straight at me. “If something is bothering you, tell me. Even if it’s something that’s hard to talk about. If there’s anything I can do, just name it. I’m only an ordinary person, and I know I’m completely naive about everything—including running a business. But I can’t stand to see you unhappy. I don’t want to see that pained look on your face. What is it you hate about our life? Tell me.”

you sigh all the time,” she said. “Anyhow, something’s definitely bothering you. Your mind’s a million miles away.”

“I thought you’d never come here again,” I said. “Every time I see you, you say the same thing,” she said, laughing.

“Hajime, for a long time I’ve….,” she began, but fell suddenly silent as if reminded of something. I could tell she was searching inside herself for the right words. Which she couldn’t find. She bit her lip and smiled once more. “Anyhow, I’m sorry. I should have got in touch with you. But I wanted to leave certain things as they are. Preserved, so to speak. Either I come here or I don’t. When I do come here, I do. When I don’t … I’m somewhere else.” “There’s no middle ground?” “No middle ground,” she said. “Why? Because no middle-ground things exist there.”

“When they say ‘star-crossed,’ what do they mean?” “You know—lovers born under an unlucky star. Unlucky lovers. Here it’s referring to Romeo and Juliet. Ellington and Strayhorn wrote it for a performance at the Ontario Shakespeare Festival. In the original recording, Johnny Hodges’ alto sax was Juliet, and Paul Gonsalves played the Romeo part on tenor sax.” “Lovers born under an unlucky star,” she said. “Sounds like it was written for the two of us.” “You mean we’re lovers?” “You think we’re not?”

“Six months is a long time,” she said. “But most likely, probably, I’ll be able to come here for a while.”

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I’m gazing at a distant star,” I said. “It’s dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn’t even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.” Shimamoto said nothing.

“I have a small cottage in Hakone. It’s empty now, and there’s a stereo there. This time of night, we could drive there in an hour and a half.” She looked at her watch. And then at me. “You want to go there now?”

“Hajime,” she said. We were near Kouzu. “You don’t listen to jazz much outside the bar?” “No, I don’t. Mostly classical music.” “How come?” “I guess because jazz is part of my job. Outside the club, I like to listen to something different. Sometimes rock too, but hardly ever jazz.”

Again she turned to gaze at me. “Hajime,” she said after a while. “When I look at you driving, sometimes I want to grab the steering wheel and give it a yank. It’d kill us, wouldn’t it.” “We’d die, all right. We’re going eighty miles an hour.” “You’d rather not die with me?” “I can think of more pleasant ways to go.” I laughed. “And besides, we haven’t listened to the record yet. That’s the reason we’re here, right?” “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t do anything like that. The thought just crosses my mind from time to time.”

“When I was a kid and listened to this record, I used to wonder what it was that lay south of the border,” I said. “Me too,” she said. “When I grew up and could read the English lyrics, I was disappointed. It was just a song about Mexico. I’d always thought something great lay south of the border.”

As my fingers grazed hers, she looked up at me briefly, then down again. “South of the border, west of the sun,” she said. “West of the sun?” “Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana?”