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When I wake up, my pillow’s cold and damp with tears. But tears for what? I have no idea.
She’s like a spirit that’s sprung up from a happy chance encounter. An eternal, naive innocence, never to be marred, floats around her like spores in spring.
I knew from the first that the young girl who visited my room last night was Miss Saeki. I never doubted it for a second, but just had to make sure.
none of that changes the fact that what I saw here was her ghost.
While they’re still alive, people can become ghosts.
I see the fifteen-year-old girl inside her. Like some small animal in hibernation, she’s curled up in a hollow inside Miss Saeki, asleep.
“That’s what’s called a ‘living spirit.’ I don’t know about in foreign countries, but that kind of thing appears a lot in Japanese literature.
“The world of the grotesque is the darkness within us.
Until Edison invented the electric light, most of the world was totally covered in darkness. The physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two.
The darkness in the outside world has vanished, but the darkness in our hearts remains, virtually unchanged.
Sad to say, there aren’t any cases of a living spirit emerging to fulfill some logical premise or bring about world peace.”
“It would appear that people can’t become living spirits out of honor or love or friendship. To do that they have to die. People throw away their lives for honor, love, or friendship, and only then do they turn into spirits. But when you talk about living spirits—well, that’s a different story. They always seem to be motivated by evil.”
I’m not a starfish or a pepper tree. I’m a living, breathing human being. Of course I’ve been in love.”
Two unusual chords appear in the refrain. The other chords in the song are nothing special, but these two are different, not the kind you can figure out by listening just a couple of times. At first I felt confused. To exaggerate a little, I felt betrayed, even. The total unexpectedness of the sounds shook me, unsettled me, like when a cold wind suddenly blows in through a crack. But once the refrain is over, that beautiful melody returns, taking you back to that original world of harmony and intimacy.
The song’s direct and gentle at the same time, the product of a capable yet unselfish heart. There’s a kind of miraculous feel to it, this overlap of opposites. A shy nineteen-year-old girl from a provincial town writes lyrics about her boyfriend far away, sits down at the piano and sets it to music, then unhesitantly sings her creation.
I see her gazing at the painting, remembering the young boy, writing the poem she then set to music. It had to have been at night, when it was pitch-dark outside.
The Sphinx was the enemy Oedipus defeated by solving the riddle, and once the monster knew it had lost, it leaped off a cliff and killed itself. Thanks to this exploit, Oedipus got to be king of Thebes and ended up marrying his own mother. And the name Kafka. I suspect Miss Saeki used it since in her mind the mysterious solitude of the boy in the picture overlapped with Kafka’s fictional world. That would explain the title: a solitary soul straying by an absurd shore.
I copy down all the lines of the song in my notebook and study them, underlining parts that particularly interest me. But in the end it’s all too suggestive, and I don’t know what to make of it.
now he was more curious about Nakata himself. The things the old guy talked about, and even how he talked, were definitely strange, but in an interesting way. He had to find out where the old man was going, and what he’d end up doing when he got there.
He’d gotten into a lot of fights, both as a soldier and as a truck driver, but only recently had started to understand that this, win or lose, never accomplished very much.
Dinnertime came and the sleep marathon continued.
It was nine-thirty by the time he got back to the inn with his winnings, and he couldn’t believe his eyes—Nakata was still asleep.
Sure, he said he’d sleep a long time, so not to worry, but this was ridiculous! Hoshino felt uncharacteristically helpless. Suppose the old guy never woke up? What the hell was he supposed to do then?
You went to sleep at nine p.m. the day before yesterday, so you’ve been asleep something like thirty-four hours. You’re a regular Snow White.”
Police still didn’t have any leads in the murder of a famous sculptor in Nakano—no clues, no witnesses. The police were searching for the man’s fifteen-year-old son, who’d disappeared shortly before the murder.
It was only luck, maybe, that had kept him from stabbing his own father, because he’d certainly taken his share of beatings.
Hoshino felt at that instant was awful, unreasonably so. A huge flash of light went off in his brain and everything went white. He stopped breathing. It felt like he’d been thrown from the top of a tall tower into the depths of hell. He couldn’t even manage a scream, so hideous was the pain.
“I put your bones back in the right position. You should be fine for the time being.
“I’ve got to find the entrance stone.”
there’s no moon tonight—that’s the only difference. There’s a heavy cloud cover, and it might be drizzling outside. The room’s much darker than last night,
The girl is Miss Saeki when she was young—I have absolutely no doubt about it.
But I don’t register in her eyes, I can tell. I’m not in her dream. She and I are in two separate worlds, divided by an invisible boundary.
There’s one thing, I discover, the girl and I have in common. We’re both in love with someone who’s no longer of this world.
My body needs rest, but my mind won’t allow it. I swing like a pendulum, back and forth between the two.
“You’re jealous of the boy in the painting,” the boy called Crow whispers in my ear.
You’ve never ever in your life envied anybody else, or ever wanted to be someone else—but right now you do. You want more than anything to be that boy. Even knowing that at age twenty he was going to be smashed over the head with an iron pipe and beaten to death, you’d still trade places with him. You’d do it, to be able to love Miss Saeki for those five years. And to have her love you with all her heart. To hold her as much as you want, to make love to her over and over. To let your fingers run over every single part of her body, and let her do the same to you. And after you die, your love
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“From time immemorial, symbolism and poetry have been inseparable. Like a pirate and his rum.”
Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream,
“Nobody can predict where talent’s headed. Sometimes it simply vanishes. Other times it sinks down under the earth like an underground stream and flows off who knows where.”
Have you ever looked at your family register? That would give your mother’s name and age.” “Of course I have.” “So what did it say?” “There wasn’t any name,” I say.
I don’t know why, but the part of my memory where her face should be is dark, painted over, blank.”
“I felt like if I stayed there I’d be damaged beyond repair,” I say.
What exactly do you mean by damaged?” I search for the right words. First I look for the boy named Crow, but he’s nowhere to be found. I’m left to choose them on my own, and that takes time. But Miss Saeki waits there patiently. Lightning flashes outside, and after a time thunder booms far away. “I mean I’d change into something I shouldn’t.”
I look for the fifteen-year-old girl in her and find her right away. She’s hidden, asleep, like a 3-D painting in the forest of her heart. But if you look carefully you can spot her.
I’m living here, in this world where things are continually damaged, where the heart is fickle, where time flows past without a break.”
I wasn’t alone, but I was terribly lonely. Because I knew that I would never be happier than I was then. That much I knew for sure. That’s why I wanted to go—just as I was—to some place where there was no time.”
Strong and independent? I’m neither one. I’m just being pushed along by reality, whether I like it or not. But I don’t say anything.
I wrote a book on lightning once.” I don’t say anything. A book on lightning? “I went all over Japan interviewing people who’d survived lightning strikes. It took me a few years. Most of the interviews were pretty interesting. A small publisher put it out, but it barely sold. The book didn’t come to any conclusion, and nobody wants to read a book that doesn’t have one. For
“When I was fifteen, I thought there had to be a place like that in the world. I was sure that somewhere I’d run across the entrance that would take me to that other world.”
Suddenly, completely out of nowhere, I remember my father talking about how he’d once been struck by lightning.
