After Dark

by Haruki Murakami

You have to trust in time. That’s all you can do.

The district plays by its own rules at a time like this. The season is late autumn. No wind is blowing, but the air carries a chill. The date is just about to change.

Judging from her intent expression, the book might contain challenging subject matter. Far from skimming, she seems to be biting off and chewing it one line at a time.

She does not answer. She looks at him with eyes that could be looking at an overgrown bush in the corner of a garden.

And the other one,” he says, holding up another finger, “is that if you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.”

The mask possesses equal levels of sorcery and functionality. It has been both handed down from ancient times with darkness and sent back from the future with light.

“I’ll bet they think they can leave you alone because you’ve really got it together.” Mari does not respond to this remark. “But maybe sometimes you don’t really have it together,” Kaoru says.

“It’s true, though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night,” the bartender says, loudly striking a book match and lighting a cigarette. “You can’t fight it.”

The sound of the needle tracing the record groove. The languorous, sensual music of Duke Ellington. Music for the middle of the night.

“Okay. Do you want the long version or the short version?” “Medium.” “You got it. One medium-size answer coming up.”

“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

“Finally, no matter what I say, it doesn’t reach her. This layer, like some kind of transparent sponge kind of thing, stands there between Eri Asai and me, and the words that come out of my mouth have to pass through it, and when that happens, the sponge sucks almost all the nutrients right out of them. She’s not listening to anything I say—not really. The longer we talk, the more clearly I can see what’s happening. So then the words that come out of her mouth stop making it all the way to me. It was a very strange feeling.”

All information gives way to nothingness, all sense of place is withdrawn, all meaning is dismantled, and the two worlds are divided, leaving behind a silence lacking all sensation.

Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?

In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”

Everything, finally, unfolded in a place resembling a deep, inaccessible fissure. Such places open secret entries into darkness in the interval between midnight and the time the sky grows light. None of our principles have any effect there. No one can predict when or where such abysses will swallow people, or when or where they will spit them out.

Milk is a food of great significance in his life. He cannot ignore the slightest detail where milk is concerned.

The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water and river water struggle against each other at a river mouth, the old time and the new time clash and blend. Takahashi is unable to tell for sure which side—which world—contains his center of gravity.

Chilly shadows still lie over many streets sandwiched between tall buildings. Most of last night’s memories remain there untouched.

Here, too, a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper.