The Strange Library

by Haruki Murakami

I’m not very good at giving anyone a clear no.

Why do I act like this, agreeing when I really disagree, letting people force me to do things I don’t want to do?

I felt sorry for the sheep man, so I entered the cell.

When something happens she imagines the worst, and it snowballs from there. So she either obsesses about all the bad things that can happen or else plants herself on the sofa and stares at the TV.

The sheep man has his world. I have mine. And you have yours, too. Am I right? “That you are.” So just because I don’t exist in the sheep man’s world, it doesn’t mean that I don’t exist at all. “I get it,” I said. “Our worlds are all jumbled together—your world, my world, the sheep man’s world. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don’t. That’s what you mean, right?” She gave two small nods.

“Can you tell me if my mother and my pet starling are all right? That’s got me very worried.” The old man frowned. “The world follows its own course,” he said. “Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The world follows its own course.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but I dutifully said yes when he had finished.

Shoes you can replace, but you can’t replace your brains or your life.”

My mother had set a hot breakfast on the table and was waiting for me when I got home. She didn’t ask me a thing. Not about why I hadn’t come home from school, or where I had spent the last three nights, or why I was shoeless—not a single question or complaint. It wasn’t like her at all.

My mother’s profile seemed to have darkened very slightly, as if shadows were gathering around her. But that may have been no more than my impression.

My mother died last Tuesday. She had been suffering from a mysterious illness, and that morning she quietly slipped away. There was a simple funeral, and now I am totally alone. No mother. No pet starling. No sheep man. No girl. I lie here by myself in the dark at two o’clock in the morning and think about that cell in the library basement. About how it feels to be alone, and the depth of the darkness surrounding me. Darkness as pitch black as the night of the new moon.