Killing Commendatore

by Haruki Murakami

“The way I see it,” Menshiki said, “there’s a point in everybody’s life where they need a major transformation. And when that time comes you have to grab it by the tail. Grab it hard, and never let go. There are some people who are able to, and others who can’t. Tomohiko Amada was one who could.”

At a certain point the process switched over to something close to autopilot. It’s important to bypass your conscious mind and get your eye and hand movements in sync. There’s no time to consciously process every single thing your gaze takes in.

We officially dissolved our marriage, and I couldn’t contemplate the thought of us remaining friends. We’d shared so many things during our six years of marriage. A lot of time, emotions, words and silence, lots of confusion and lots of decisions, lots of promises and lots of resignation, lots of pleasure, lots of boredom. Naturally each of us must have had inner secrets, but we even managed to find a way to share the sense of having something hidden from the other. With us there was a gravitas of place that only the passage of time can nurture. We did a good job of accommodating our bodies to that sort of gravity, maintaining a delicate balance. We had our own special local rules that we lived by. And there was no way we could get rid of all that history, jettison the gravitational balance and local rules, and live simply as good friends.

A string-section version of “Fool on the Hill” came over the sound system. Did John Lennon write that song, or Paul McCartney? I couldn’t remember. Probably Lennon.

Wrong!

That’s the moment I really enjoy. The moment when existence and nonexistence coalesce.

“There are plenty of things in history that are best left in the shadows. Accurate knowledge does not improve people’s lives. The objective does not necessarily surpass the subjective, you know. Reality does not necessarily extinguish fantasy.”

Most of those sent to Mauthausen were so-called incorrigible political prisoners or antisocial elements.

“You can just pretend,” she said. But it might not have ended with just that. It might not have ended with just pretend. And the reason for that lay inside me. I wish I could understand myself, too. But it’s not easy.

Side by side, the two cars resembled someone with crooked teeth laughing with his mouth wide open.

Yet even then I felt no envy toward that other man. Did that make me strange?

Memory can give warmth to time. And art can—when it goes well—give shape to that memory, even fix it in history.

felicitous

The gurgle of whiskey pouring into the glass was music to my ears. Like an old friend opening his heart to me.

With the flashlight my only ally, I stepped down into the inky blackness of the Path of Metaphor.

“If you give me paper, I can portray your likeness. My skill as a painter is the only other thing I carry with me.” The faceless man laughed. At least I think he did. A faint trill echoed in the emptiness.

CONTRAVENTION

When they walked side by side, the world brightened a little. As when Christmas and New Year’s arrive in tandem each year.

sobriquet

virulent