Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

On the whole, I’m a regular guy. I say I understand when I do, and I say I don’t when I don’t. I try not to mince words. It seems to me a lot of trouble in this world has its origins in vague speech. Most people, when they go around not speaking clearly, somewhere in their unconscious they’re asking for trouble.

“You must not let fatigue set in,” she warns. “That is what my mother said. Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself.”

I wound up my purchases and pulled into my convenient neighborhood fast-food restaurant. I ordered shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer. The shrimp were straight out of the freezer, the onion rings soggy. Looking around the place, though, I failed to spot a single customer banging on a tray or complaining to a waitress. So I shut up and finished my food. Expect nothing, get nothing.

“Money’s no object here. This is war. Nobody would win a war if they stopped to calculate the cost.”

musical instruments are wonderful things. I do not know how to use them, I may not want to use them, I enjoy their beauty. It is enough for me. Is that strange?”

Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn’t have known.

All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, nowhere to get to. Is there not something marvelous about this? We hurt no one and no one gets hurt. No victory, no defeat.”

All three of them glanced up at me the moment I entered, but quickly found their wash and their magazine more interesting.

Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I’d move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I’d meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically—whether actually more realistic or not—I’d tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

“I wouldn’t know,” I said, I really wouldn’t. “ ‘I wouldn’t know’ seems to be a pet expression with you,” she observed. “Maybe so.” “And ‘maybe so’ is another.” I didn’t know what to say.

“We bought the house because my husband and I were planning to have kids. I paid back the loan with his life insurance.”

Four bombs in two short sentences. Such efficiency!

What the hell have you ever chosen? she’d say. And she’d be right. I’d never decided to do a single thing of my own free will.

Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek.

The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that energy was enough to warm my eyelids.

I wanted to think I gave the Professor and his chubby granddaughter and my librarian friend a little happiness. Could I have given happiness to anyone else? There wasn’t much time left,