Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

There are people who drive luxury cars, but have only second- or third-rate sofas in their homes. I put little trust in such people. An expensive automobile may well be worth its price, but it’s only an expensive automobile. If you have the money, you can buy it, anyone can buy it. Procuring a good sofa, on the other hand, requires style and experience and philosophy. It takes money, yes, but you also need a vision of the superior sofa.

“Money’s no object here. This is war. Nobody would win a war if they stopped to calculate the cost.” “It’s not my war.” “Whose war don’t matter. Whose money don’t matter either. That’s what war is.”

The woman, two silver bracelets on the hand she dangled out the window, cast a glance in my direction. I could have been a Denny’s restaurant sign or a traffic signal, it would have been no different. She was your regular sort of beautiful young woman, I guess.

“As you get older, you don’t recover from things so easy.” “And as you get older, you also get tired?” “Yeah,” I said, “you get tired.”

The glass is sitting on the counter, untouched for a moment, just looked at. Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it’s time to drink.

I contented myself with whiskey, for medicinal purposes. It helped numb my various aches and pains. Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain; it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine.

There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.

brother !

“No, I really like his voice,” she said. “It’s like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.” After all the volumes that have been written about Dylan, I had yet to come across such a perfect description.

“I never expected someone as young as you to know Bob Dylan.” “I like old music. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix—you know.” “We should get together sometime,” I told her. She smiled, cocking her head slightly. Girls who are on top of things must have three hundred ways of responding to tired thirty-five-year-old divorced men. I thanked her and started the car. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again. I felt better for having met her.

Each place and person I shall lose forever; each face and feature I shall remember the rest of my life.