First Person Singular: Stories

by Haruki Murakami

I wanted to get up from the bench and head off to the bus stop as fast as I could. But, for some reason, I couldn’t get to my feet. Time passed, and then suddenly the old man spoke. “A circle with many centers.”

I couldn’t say a thing, so the old man quietly repeated the words: “A circle with many centers.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. The old man silently stared at me. He seemed to be waiting for a better answer. “I don’t think they taught us about that kind of circle in math class,” I feebly added.

“Does that kind of circle really exist?” I asked. “Of course it does,” the old man said, nodding a few times. “That circle does indeed exist. But

everyone can see it, you know.” “Can you see it?” The old man

“But, when you put in that much time and effort, if you do achieve that difficult thing it becomes the cream of your life.” “Cream?”

“In French, they have an expression: crème de la crème. Do you know it?” “I don’t,” I said. I knew no French. “The cream of the cream. It means the best of the best. The most important essence of life—that’s the crème de la crème. Get it? The rest is just boring

“Think about it,” the old man said. “Close your eyes again, and think it all through. A circle that has many centers but no circumference. Your brain is made to think about difficult things. To help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn’t understand at first. You can’t be lazy

neglectful. Right now is a critical time. Because this is the period when your brain and your heart form and solidify.” I closed my eyes again and tried to picture that circle. I didn’t want to be lazy or neglectful. I tried to think of a circle with many centers but no circumference. But no matter how seriously I thought about what the man was saying, it was impossible for me at that time to grasp the meaning of it. The circles I knew had one center, and a curved circumference connecting points that were equidistant from it. The kind of simple figure you can draw with a compass. Wasn’t the kind of circle the old man was talking about the opposite of a circle? I didn’t think that the old man was off, mentally.

So I tried again to understand, but my mind just spun around and around, making no progress.

But the old man wasn’t there anymore. I looked all around, but there was no sign of anyone in the park. It was as if he’d never existed. Was I imagining things? No, of course it wasn’t some fantasy. He’d been right there in front of me, tightly gripping his umbrella, speaking quietly,

The small bouquet of red flowers, wrapped in cellophane, was beside me. Like a kind of proof of all the strange things that had happened to me that day. I debated what to do with it, and ended up leaving it on the bench by the arbor. To me, that seemed the best option.

stood up and headed toward the bus stop where I’d gotten off earlier. The wind had started blowing, scattering the stagnant clouds above.

Those very odd circumstances I experienced on top of that mountain in Kobe on a Sunday afternoon in late autumn—following the directions on the invitation to where the recital was supposed to take place, only to discover that the building was deserted—what did it all mean? And why did it happen? That was what my friend was asking. Perfectly natural

It was permanently unsolved, like some ancient riddle. What took place that day was incomprehensible, inexplicable, and at eighteen it left me bewildered and mystified. So much so that,

“But I get the feeling,” I said, “that principle or intention wasn’t really the issue.” My friend looked confused. “Are you telling me that there’s no need to know what it was all about?” I nodded.

Back then, it bothered me, too. A lot. It hurt me, too. But thinking about it later, from a distance, after time had passed, it came to feel insignificant, not worth getting upset about. I felt as though it had nothing at all to do with the cream of life.”

“The cream of life,” he repeated.

“Things like this happen sometimes in our lives,” I told him. “Inexplicable, illogical events that nevertheless are deeply disturbing. I guess we need to not think about them, just close our eyes and get ...

And, as I did when I was eighteen, on that arbor bench, I close my eyes and listen to the beating of my heart. Sometimes I feel that I can sort of grasp what

This circle is, most likely, not a circle with a concrete, actual form but, rather, one that exists only within our minds. That’s what I think. When we truly love somebody with all our heart, or feel deep compassion, or have an idealistic sense of how the world should be, or when we discover faith (or something close to

Your brain is made to think about difficult things. To help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn’t understand at first. And that becomes the cream of

your life. The rest is boring and worthless. That was what the gray-haired old man told me. On a cloudy Sunday afternoon in late autumn, on top of a mountain in Kobe, as I clutched a small bouquet of red flowers. And even now, whenever something disturbing happens to me, I ponder again that special circle, and the boring and the worthless. And the unique

What I couldn’t yet grasp were all the myriad phenomenon that lay in the space between happiness and sadness, how they related to each other. As a result, I often felt anxious and helpless.

says to me, there are just times when I’m dying to have a man make love to me.” I considered this. But back then it was beyond me to imagine what feelings this entailed—for a woman to want a man to make love to her. (And even now, come to think of it, I don’t entirely understand it.) “Loving someone is like having a mental illness that’s not covered by health insurance,” she said, in a flat tone, like she was reciting something written on the wall.

The dawn finally breaks, the wild wind subsides, and the surviving words quietly peek out from the surface. For the most part they have small voices—they are shy and only have ambiguous ways of expressing themselves. Even so, they are ready to serve as witnesses. As honest, fair witnesses. But in order to create those enduring, long-suffering words,

else to find them and leave them behind, you must sacrifice, unconditionally, your own body, your very own heart. You have to lay down your neck on a cold stone pillow illuminated by the winter moon.

Aside from me, maybe there’s not another soul in this world who remembers that girl’s poems, let alon...

Maybe the only reason I recall some of her poetry even now is because it’s linked to memories of her teeth marks on that towel. Maybe that’s all it is. I don’t know how much meaning or value there is in still remembering all that, in sometimes pulling out that faded copy of the poetry collection from my drawer and reading it again. To tell

the truth, I really don’t know. At any rate, those remained. While other words and memories turned to dust and vanished.

What I find strange about growing old isn’t that I’ve gotten older. Not that the youthful me from the past has, without my realizing it, aged. What catches me off guard is, rather, how people from the same generation as me have become elderly, how all the pretty, vivacious girls

used to know are now old enough to have a couple of grandkids. It’s a little disconcerting—sad, even. Though I never feel sad at the fact that I have similarly aged.

All this took only ten or fifteen seconds. It was over before I knew it, and the critical message contained there, like the core of all dreams, disappeared. Just like most important things do that happen in life.

A dimly lit hallway in a high school, a beautiful girl, the hem of her

skirt swirling, With th...

Later, I got to know a few women, and went out with them. And every time I met a new woman it felt as though I were unconsciously longing to relive that dazzling moment I’d experienced in a dim school hallway back in the fall of 1964.

That silent, insistent thrill in my heart, the breathless feeling in my chest, the

bell ringing gently in my ears. Sometimes I was able to recapture this feeling, at other times not. (Unfortunatel...

What pulled me in was the vision of that girl clutching the album as if it were something priceless. Take away the photograph on the album cover and the scene might not have bewitched me as it did. There was the music,

It was truly an astounding year for pop music, one that took your breath away.

I’ve heard it said that the happiest time in our lives is the period when pop songs really mean something to us, really

get to us. It may be true. Or maybe not. Pop songs may, after all, be nothing but pop songs. And perhaps our lives are merely decorative, expendable items, a burst of fleeti...

Her younger sister didn’t seem to like me much. Whenever we saw each other she looked at me with strange eyes, totally devoid of emotion—as if she were judging

whether some dried fish at the back of the fridge was still edible or not. And, for some reason, that look always left me feeling guilty. When she looked at me, it was as though she were ignoring the outside (granted, it wasn’t much to look

And as time passed, the memory of that hot springs town began to fade. No matter how vivid memories may be, they can’t win out against the power of time.

It was precisely because of her unusual looks that she was able to effectively engage her powerful personality—her power to draw people in, you might put it. What I mean is, it was precisely

the gap between her physical appearance and her refinement that created her own special brand of dynamism. And she was fully aware of that power, and was able to use it as needed.

In the opening of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and I think the same applies to women’s faces in terms of beauty or ugliness. I believe (and please take

When I write novels, I often experience the same feeling as that young man. I want to face people in the world and apologize to each and every one. “I’m sorry, but all I have is dark beer.”

that vague sense of unease I’d been feeling, that something just wasn’t quite right, was slightly out of joint. Like the contents didn’t fit the container, like the integrity of it all had been lost. I get that