South of the Border, West of the Sun

by Haruki Murakami

“After a certain length of time has passed, things harden. Like cement in a bucket. And we can’t go back any more. What you want to say is that the cement that makes you up has set, so the you you are now can’t be anyone else.”

I loved to read and to listen to music. I’d always liked books and my interest in them had been fostered by my friendship with Shimamoto. I started to go to the library, devouring every book I could lay my hands on. Once I began one, I couldn’t put it down.

Reading was like an addiction; I read while I ate, on the train, in bed until late at night, in school, where I’d keep the book hidden so I could read during class.

I had almost no desire to talk to anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. In that sense I could be called a stuck-up loner. I disliked all team sports. I hated any kind of competition where I had to score points against someone else. I much preferred to swim on and on, alone, in silence.

It was a strange feeling. I was no longer alone, yet at the same time I felt a deep loneliness I’d never known before.

But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

She was basically an honest, pleasant girl, someone people liked. But our interests were worlds apart. She couldn’t understand the books I read or the music I listened to, so we couldn’t talk as equals about them.

She always gave me this lie-back-and-relax, Sunday-morning kind of feeling.

What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.

A simple change of scenery can bring about powerful shifts in the flow of time and emotions:

If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost for ever – something I couldn’t afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they’re seventeen.

I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed at me by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it’s a power that ensnares people and reels them in.

That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

I could correct the errors of my past. At first I was optimistic: I could pull it off. But in the end, no matter where I went, I could never change. Over and over again I made the same mistake, hurt other people and hurt myself into the bargain.

Work is just a boring obligation, I decided, and when I’m not working, I’m going to use my time the best way I can and enjoy myself.

“You are happy, aren’t you?” she asked. “I don’t know. At least I’m not unhappy, and I’m not lonely.” A moment later I added, “But sometimes the thought strikes me that the happiest time of my life was when we were together in your living room, listening to music.”

It wasn’t what I’d characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials. I could feel each single note of music, each line I read, seep down deep inside me. My nerves were as sharp as a blade, my eyes shining with a piercing light. And every time I heard that music, I recalled my eyes then, glaring back at me from a mirror.

“Probably,” she replied. A smile played around her mouth. A smile like a small wisp of smoke drifting quietly skyward on a windless day.

Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free the world’s reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.

In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound.

“What about you? Do you still read a lot?” I asked. “Yes, all the time. New books, old books. Novels and everything else. Trashy books, good books. I’m probably the opposite of you – I don’t mind reading to kill time.”

The work was a complete bore. Absolutely no room for using your imagination. I was sick of it. I couldn’t stand going to work any more. I felt as if I was choking, as if every day I was shrinking and one day I would disappear completely.”

You know, sometimes my bars feel like imaginary places I created in my mind. Castles in the air. I plant some flowers here, construct a fountain there, crafting everything with great care. People come in, have drinks, listen to music, talk and go home. They are willing to spend a lot of money to come all this way to have some drinks – and do you know why? Because everyone’s seeking the same thing: an imaginary place, their own castle in the air, and their very own special corner of it.”

“But you don’t know how empty it feels not to be able to create anything.” “I’m sure you’ve created more things than you realize.” “What sort of things?” “Things you can’t see,” I replied.

Things that have form will all disappear. But certain feelings stay with us for ever.”

some feelings cause us pain because they remain.

“People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you can forget, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That’s what can move the world. That’s art.”

She was quiet, as if gazing at some far-away landscape. Maybe it was me who was far away – far from her world, at least, with an unimaginable distance separating us. The thought made me melancholy. There was something in her eyes that evoked sadness.

I remembered the river clearly now. I went there in the autumn when I was in my first or second year at college. The foliage was beautiful, the surrounding mountains looking as though they were dyed in blood.

I looked into her eyes. They were like a deep spring in the shade of cliffs, which no breeze could ever reach. Nothing moved there, everything was still. Look closely and you could just begin to make out the scene reflected in the water’s surface.

For the first time in a long while, I looked deep into my own eyes in the mirror. Those eyes told me nothing about who I was. I laid both hands on the sink and sighed deeply.

Her eyes were listless as I looked deep into them. I could see nothing; they were as cold and dark as death.

“Are you always this kind to everybody?” “Not to everybody,” I said. “To you I am. I can’t be kind to everyone. There are limits to my kindness; even to how kind I can be to you. I wish there weren’t; then I could do so much more for you. But I can’t.”

“When I’m around, nothing good ever happens. You can count on it. If I’m involved, then things go bad. Things are going smoothly, then I step in and wham! they fall apart.”

Shimamoto had her own little world within her. A world that was for her alone, one I could not enter. Once, the door to that world had begun to open a crack. But now it was closed.

“Hajime, you can’t tell anything from photographs. They’re just a shadow. The real me is far away. That won’t show up in a picture.”

“the sad truth is that some things can’t go backwards. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can’t go back to the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that’s how it will stay for ever.”

Hard physical effort left no room to think and keeping my body always in motion helped me to focus on the trivia of daily life. Daydreaming was forbidden. I tried my best to concentrate on whatever I was doing. Washing my face, I thought about that; listening to music, I was all music. It was the only way I could survive.

The moments of time linking night and dawn were long and dark. If I could cry, it might make things easier. But what would I cry over? Who would I cry for? I was too self-centred to cry for other people, too old to cry for myself.

But what about my life? Was there any consistency, any conviction to speak of? I felt deflated, utterly lacking the will to move.

Strangely enough, she always appeared on quiet, rainy evenings.

“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 any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”

I can’t make it without you. I don’t ever want to lose you again. I don’t want to hear the words for a while any more. Or probably. You’ll say we can’t see each other for a while and then you’ll disappear. And no one can say when you’ll be back. You might never be back and I might spend the rest of my life never seeing you again. And I couldn’t stand that. Life would be meaningless.”

Something’s lacking. In me and my life. And that part of me is always hungry, always thirsting. Neither my wife nor my children can fill that gap. In the whole world, there’s only one person who can do that. You. Only now, when that thirst is satisfied, do I realize how empty I was. And how I’ve been hungering, thirsting, for so many years. I can’t go back to that kind of world.”

I recalled clearly what I’d seen deep within her eyes. A dark space, frozen hard like a subterranean glacier. A silence so profound it sucked up every sound, never allowing it to resurface. Absolute, total silence.

It was the first time I’d been face to face with death. So I’d had no distinct image of what death really was. But there it was then, right before my eyes, spread out just inches from my face. So this is the face of death, I’d thought. And death spoke to me, saying that my time, too, would one day come. Eventually everyone would fall into those endlessly lonely depths, the source of all darkness, a silence bereft of resonance.

I held her close and let her trembling seep inside me. Little by little, this is how she would become mine.

“Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything. So don’t ask till then. Stay the way you are today. If I did tell you now, you’d never be able to go back to the way you were.”

“If you love someone else, there’s not much anyone can do about it. You love who you love. I’m not enough for you. I know that. We’ve got on well together and you’ve taken good care of me. I’ve been very happy living with you. I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.”

I remembered her eyes, looking at me in the car. That intense gaze burned into my cheeks. It was more than a mere glance. The smell of death hovered over her. She was planning to die. That’s why she came to Hakone – to die, together with me.