Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage (12 page)

Tsukuru hesitated but then spoke. “There’s something I need to correct about what I told you the other day.”

As she walked along Sara shot him a look, her curiosity piqued. “What’s that?”

“I’ve had relationships with several women, but nothing ever really came of any of them, for various reasons. I told you it wasn’t all my fault.”

“I remember.”

“During the last ten years, I’ve gone out with three or four women. All of them were fairly long-term, serious relationships. I wasn’t just playing around. And the reason none of them worked out was because of me. Not because there was any problem with any of the women.”

“And what was the problem?”

“It was a little different depending on the person,” Tsukuru said. “But one common factor was that I wasn’t seriously attracted to any of them. I mean, I liked them, and enjoyed our time together. I have a lot of good memories. But I never felt—swept away, overpowered by desire for any of them.”

Sara was silent for a while. “So for ten years,” she finally said, “you had
fairly long-term, serious relationships
with women you weren’t all that attracted to.”

“That’s about right.”

“That doesn’t strike me as very rational.”

“I’d have to agree.”

“Maybe you didn’t want to get married, or get tied down?”

Tsukuru shook his head. “No, I don’t think that was it. I’m the sort of person who craves stability.”

“But still there was something holding you back psychologically?”

“Maybe so.”

“You could only have a relationship with women you didn’t have to totally open up to.”

“I might have been afraid that if I really loved someone and needed her, one day she might suddenly disappear without a word, and I’d be left all alone.”

“So consciously or unconsciously you always kept a distance between yourself and the women you dated. Or else you chose women you could keep that distance from. So you wouldn’t get hurt. Does that sound about right?”

Tsukuru didn’t reply, his silence an affirmation. At the same time, though, he knew that wasn’t what was at the heart of the problem.

“And the same thing might happen with you and me,” Sara said.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s different with you. I really mean that. I want to open up my heart to you. I truly feel that way. That’s why I’m telling you all this.”

“You want to see more of me?” Sara asked.

“Of course I do.”

“I’d like to see more of you, too, if I can,” Sara said. “You’re a good person, honest and sincere.”

“Thank you,” Tsukuru said.

“So tell me those four names. After that, you decide. Once I find out more about them, if you feel you don’t want to see them, then you don’t have to go ahead with it. That’s entirely up to you. But apart from all that, personally, I’m curious about them. I want to find out more about these people who are still weighing you down.”

When he got back to his apartment Tsukuru took an old pocket notebook out of his desk drawer, opened it to the list of addresses, and typed the four names, addresses, and phone numbers from when he’d last seen his four friends into his laptop.

Kei Akamatsu

Yoshio Oumi

Yuzuki Shirane

Eri Kurono

As he gazed at the four names on the screen, and considered the memories those names brought back, he felt the past silently mingling with the present, as a time that should have been long gone hovered in the air around him. Like odorless, colorless smoke leaking into the room through a small crack in the door. Finally, at a certain point, he snapped back to the present, clicked the key on his laptop, and sent the email to Sara’s address. He checked that it had been sent and switched off the computer. And waited for time to become real again.

Personally, I’m curious about them. I want to find out more about these people who are still weighing you down
.

Sara is right, he thought as he lay down on his bed. Those four people are still stuck to me. Probably more tightly than Sara can ever imagine.

Mister Red

Mister Blue

Miss White

Miss Black

The night that Haida told him the story from his father’s youth, about meeting a jazz pianist named Midorikawa at a hot springs deep in the mountains of Kyushu, several strange things happened.

Tsukuru bolted awake in the darkness. A tapping sound had woken him, like the sound of a pebble striking a window. Maybe he’d only imagined it, but he wasn’t sure. He wanted to check the alarm clock on his nightstand, but he couldn’t turn his neck. His entire body was immobile. He wasn’t numb, it was just that when he tried to make his body move, he couldn’t. The connection between mind and muscles had been severed.

The room was swathed in darkness. Tsukuru had trouble sleeping when there was any light in the room, and always closed the curtains tightly when he went to bed, so there was no light filtering in from outside.
Still, he felt the presence in the room of someone else, concealed in the darkness, watching him. Like a camouflaged animal, whoever it was held his breath, hid his scent, changed his color, and receded into the shadows. Still, for some reason Tsukuru knew who it was. Haida.

Mister Gray.

Gray is a mixture of white and black. Change its shade, and it can easily melt into various gradations of darkness.

Haida was standing in a corner of the dark room, staring down at Tsukuru, who lay faceup on the bed. As if he were a mime pretending to be a statue, Haida didn’t move a muscle for a long time. The only thing that moved, possibly, were his long eyelashes. Therein lay a strange contrast: Haida chose to be completely still, while Tsukuru chose to move, but couldn’t. I have to say something, Tsukuru thought, I need to speak and break down this illusory balance. But his voice wouldn’t come. His lips wouldn’t move, his tongue was frozen. The only thing slipping from his throat was dry, soundless breathing.

What is Haida doing here? Why is he standing here, staring so intently at me?

This isn’t a dream, Tsukuru decided. Everything is too distinct to be a dream. But he couldn’t say if the person standing there was the real Haida. The real Haida,
his actual flesh and blood, was sound asleep on the sofa in the next room. The Haida standing here must be a kind of projection that had slipped free of the real Haida. That’s the way it felt.

Tsukuru didn’t feel that this presence was threatening, or evil. Haida would never hurt him—of this, Tsukuru felt certain. He’d known this, instinctively, from the moment they first met.

His high school friend Aka was very bright too, with a practical, even utilitarian intelligence. Compared to Aka’s, Haida’s intelligence was more pure iteration, more theoretical, even self-contained. When they were together Tsukuru often couldn’t grasp what Haida might be thinking. Something in Haida’s brain surged forward, outpacing Tsukuru, but what sort of thing that
something
was, he couldn’t say. When that happened he felt confused and left behind, alone. But he never felt anxiety or irritation toward his younger friend. Haida’s mind was just too quick, his sphere of mental activity too broad, on a different level entirely. With this knowledge, Tsukuru ceased trying to keep up with Haida.

In Haida’s brain there must have been a kind of high-speed circuit built to match the pace of his thoughts, requiring him to occasionally engage his gears, to let his mind race for fixed periods of time. If he didn’t—if he kept on running in low gear to keep pace with Tsukuru’s
reduced speed—Haida’s mental infrastructure would overheat and start to malfunction. Or at least, Tsukuru got that impression. After a while Haida would debark from this circuit and, as if nothing had happened, smile calmly and return to the place where Tsukuru lay waiting. He’d slow down, and keep pace with Tsukuru’s mind.

How long did Haida’s intense gaze continue? Tsukuru could no longer judge the length of time. Haida stood there, unmoving, in the middle of the night, staring wordlessly at him. Haida seemed to have something he wanted to say, a message he needed to convey, but for some reason he couldn’t translate that message into words. And this made Tsukuru’s younger, intelligent friend unusually irritated.

As he lay in bed, Tsukuru recalled Haida’s story about Midorikawa. Before Midorikawa had played the piano in the junior-high music room, he’d laid a small bag on top of the piano. He’d been on the verge of death—or so he’d said. What was in the bag? Haida’s story had ended before he revealed the contents. Tsukuru was intensely curious about what had been inside, and wanted someone to tell him its significance. Why did Midorikawa so carefully place that bag on top of the piano? This had to be the missing key to the story.

But he wasn’t given the answer. After a long silence
Haida—or Haida’s alter ego—quietly left. At the very end of his visit, Tsukuru felt like he caught the sound of Haida’s light breathing, but he couldn’t be sure. Like incense smoke swallowed up in the air, Haida’s presence faded and vanished, and before Tsukuru knew it, he was alone again in the dark room. He still couldn’t move his body. The cable between his will and his muscles remained disconnected, the bolt that linked them together having fallen off.

How much of this is real? he wondered. This wasn’t a dream, or an illusion. It had to be real. But it lacked the weight you’d expect from reality.

Mister Gray.

Tsukuru must have fallen asleep again, but he woke up once more in a dream. Strictly speaking, it might not be a dream. It was reality, but a reality imbued with all the qualities of a dream. A different sphere of reality, where—at a special time and place—imagination had been set free.

The girls were in bed, as naked as the day they were born, snuggled up close on either side of him. Shiro and Kuro. They were sixteen or seventeen, invariably that age. Their breasts and thighs were pressed against him, their bodies smooth and warm, and Tsukuru could feel
all this, clearly. Silently, greedily, they groped his body with their fingers and tongues. He was naked too.

This was not something Tsukuru was hoping for, not a scenario he wanted to imagine. It wasn’t something that should be happening. But that image, against his will, grew more vivid, the feelings more graphic, more real.

The girls’ fingers were gentle, slender, and delicate. Four hands, twenty fingers. Like some smooth, sightless creatures born in the darkness, they wandered over every inch of Tsukuru’s body, arousing him completely. He felt his heart stir, intensely, in a way he’d never before experienced, as if he’d been living for a long time in a house only to discover a secret room he’d never known about. Like a kettledrum, his heart trembled, pounding out an audible beat. His arms and legs were still numb, and he couldn’t lift a finger.

The girls entwined themselves lithely around Tsukuru. Kuro’s breasts were full and soft. Shiro’s were small, but her nipples were as hard as tiny round pebbles. Their pubic hair was as wet as a rain forest. Their breath mingled with his, becoming one, like currents from far away, secretly overlapping at the dark bottom of the sea.

These insistent caresses continued until Tsukuru was inside the vagina of one of the girls. It was Shiro.
She straddled him, took hold of his rigid, erect penis, and deftly guided it inside her. His penis found its way with no resistance, as if swallowed up into an airless vacuum. She took a moment, gathering her breath, then began slowly rotating her torso, as if she were drawing a complex diagram in the air, all the while twisting her hips. Her long, straight black hair swung above him, sharply, like a whip. The movements were bold, so out of character with the everyday Shiro.

The entire time, both Shiro and Kuro treated it as a completely natural turn of events, nothing they had to think over. They never hesitated. The two of them caressed him together, but Shiro was the one he penetrated.
Why Shiro?
Tsukuru wondered in the midst of his deep confusion. Why does it have to be Shiro? They are supposed to be completely equal. They’re supposed to be one being.

Beyond that, he couldn’t think. Shiro’s movements grew faster, more pronounced. And before he knew it, he was coming inside her. The time elapsed between penetration and orgasm was short. Too short, Tsukuru thought, way too short. But maybe he’d lost any sense of time. At any rate, the urge was unstoppable, and, like a huge wave crashing over him, this urge engulfed him without warning.

Now, though, he wasn’t coming inside Shiro, but in
Haida. The girls had suddenly disappeared, and Haida had taken their place. Just as Tsukuru came, Haida had quickly bent over, taken Tsukuru’s penis in his mouth, and—careful not to get the sheets dirty—taken all the gushing semen inside his mouth. Tsukuru came violently, the semen copious. Haida patiently accepted all of it, and when Tsukuru had finished, Haida licked his penis clean with his tongue. He seemed used to it. At least it felt that way. Haida quietly rose from the bed and went to the bathroom. Tsukuru heard water running from the faucet. Haida was probably rinsing his mouth.

Even after he came, Tsukuru’s penis remained erect. He could feel the warmth and softness of Shiro’s vagina, as if it were the afterglow of actual sex. And he still couldn’t grasp the boundary between dream and imagination, between what was imaginary and what was real.