Kafka on the Shore (63 page)

The man never took his eyes—now vacant sockets—off Crow, and in between laughs managed to choke out a few words. "See, what'd I tell you? Don't make me laugh. You can try all you want, but it's not going to hurt me. You're not qualified to do that. You're just a flimsy illusion, a cheap echo. It's useless, no matter what you do. Don't you get it?"

The boy named Crow stabbed at the mouth these words had come from. His huge wings ceaselessly beat at the air, a few shiny black feathers coming loose, swirling in the air like fragments of a soul. Crow tore at the man's tongue, grabbed it with his beak, and yanked with all his might. It was long and hugely thick, and once it was pulled out from deep within the man's throat, it squirmed like a gigantic mollusk, forming dark words. Without a tongue, however, not even this man could laugh anymore. He looked like he couldn't breathe, either, but still he held his sides and shook with soundless laughter. The boy named Crow listened, and this unheard laughter—as vacant and ominous as wind blowing over a far-off desert—never ceased. It sounded, in fact, very much like an otherworldly flute.

I wake up just after dawn, boil water on the electric hot plate, and make some tea. I sit down beside the window to see what, if anything, is going on outside. Everything is dead quiet, with no sign of anybody on the street. Even the birds seem reluctant to launch into their usual morning chorus. The hills to the east are barely edged in a faint light. The place is surrounded by high hills, which explains why dawn comes so late and twilight so early. I go over to the nightstand where my watch is to check the time, but the digital screen's a complete blank. When I push a few buttons at random, nothing happens. The batteries should still be good, but for some unfathomable reason the thing stopped while I was sleeping. I put the watch back on top of my pillow and rub my left wrist, where I normally wear it, with my right. Not that time's much of a factor here.

As I gaze at the vacant, birdless scene outside, I suddenly want to read a book—any book. As long as it's shaped like a book and has printing, it's fine by me. I just want to hold a book in my hands, turn the pages, scan the words with my eyes. Only one problem—there isn't a book in sight. In fact, it's like printing hasn't been invented here. I quickly look around the room, and sure enough, there's nothing at all with any writing on it.

I open the chest of drawers in the bedroom to see what kind of clothes are inside.

Everything's neatly folded. None of the clothes are new. The colors are faded, the material soft from countless washings. Still, they look clean. There's round-neck shirts, underwear, socks, cotton shirts with collars, and cotton trousers. Not a perfect fit, but pretty much my size. All the clothes are perfectly plain and design-free, like the whole idea of clothes with patterns never existed. None of them have any makers' labels—so much for any writing there. I exchange my smelly T-shirt for a gray one from the drawer that smells like sunlight and soap.

A while later—how much later I couldn't say—the girl arrives. She taps lightly on the door and, without waiting for an answer, opens it. The door doesn't have any kind of lock. Her canvas bag is slung over her shoulder. The sky behind her is already light.

She goes straight to the kitchen and cooks some eggs in a small black frying pan.

There's a pleasant sizzle as the eggs hit the hot oil, and the fresh cooking smells waft through the room. Meanwhile, she toasts some bread in a squat little toaster that looks like a prop from an old movie. Her clothes and hair are the same as the night before—a light blue dress, hair pinned back. Her skin is so smooth and beautiful, and her slim, porcelain-like arms glisten in the morning sun. Through the open window a tiny bee buzzes in, as if to make the world a little more complete. The girl carries the food over to the table, sits in a chair, and watches me eat the vegetable omelette and buttered toast and drink some herb tea. She doesn't eat or drink anything. The whole thing's a repeat of last night.

"Don't people here cook their own meals?" I ask her. "I was wondering because you're making meals for me."

"Some people make their own, others have somebody make meals for them," she replies. "Mostly, though, people here don't eat very much."

"Really?"

She nods. "Sometimes they eat. When they want to."

"You mean no one else eats as much as I do?"

"Can you get by without eating for one whole day?"

I shake my head.

"Folks here often go a whole day without eating, no problem. They actually forget to eat, sometimes for days at a time."

"I'm not used to things here yet, so I have to eat."

"I suppose so," she says. "That's why I'm cooking for you."

I look in her face. "How long will it take for me to get used to this place?"

"How long?" she parrots, and slowly shakes her head. "I have no idea. It's not a question of time. When that time comes, you'll already be used to it."

We're sitting across from each other, her hands neatly lined up on the table, palms down. Her ten little resolute fingers are there, real objects before me. Directly across from her, I catch each tiny flutter of her eyelashes, count each blink of her eyes, watch the strands of hair swaying over her forehead. I can't take my eyes off her.

"That time?" I say.

"It isn't like you'll cut something out of yourself and throw it away," she says.

"We don't throw it away—we accept it, inside us."

"And I'll accept this inside of me?"

"That's right."

"And then?" I ask. "After I accept it, then what happens?"

She inclines her head slightly as she thinks, an utterly natural gesture. The strands of hair sway again. "Then you'll become completely yourself," she says.

"So you mean up till now I haven't been completely me?"

"You are totally yourself even now," she says, then thinks it over. "What I mean is a little different. But I can't explain it well."

"You can't understand until it actually happens?"

She nods.

When it gets too painful to watch her anymore, I close my eyes. Then I open them right away, to make sure she's still there. "Is it sort of a communal lifestyle here?"

She considers this. "Everyone does live together, and share certain things. Like the shower rooms, the electrical station, the market. There are certain simple, unspoken agreements in place, but nothing complicated. Nothing you need to think about, or even put into words. So there isn't anything I need to teach you about how things are done. The most important thing about life here is that people let themselves be absorbed into things. As long as you do that, there won't be any problems."

"What do you mean by absorbed?"

"It's like when you're in the forest, you become a seamless part of it. When you're in the rain, you're a part of the rain. When you're in the morning, you're a seamless part of the morning. When you're with me, you become a part of me."

"When you're with me, then, you're a seamless part of me?"

"That's true."

"What does it feel like? To be yourself and part of me at the same time?"

She looks straight at me and touches her hairpin. "It's very natural. Once you're used to it, it's quite simple. Like flying."

"You can fly?"

"Just an example," she says, and smiles. It's a smile without any deep or hidden meaning, a smile for the sake of smiling. "You can't know what flying feels like until you actually do it. It's the same."

"So it's a natural thing you don't even have to think about?"

She nods. "Yes, it's quite natural, calm, quiet, something you don't have to think about. It's seamless."

"Am I asking too many questions?"

"Not at all," she replies. "I only wish I could explain things better."

"Do you have memories?"

Again she shakes her head and rests her hands on the table, this time with the palms faceup. She glances at them expressionlessly.

"No, I don't. In a place where time isn't important, neither is memory. Of course I remember last night, coming here and making vegetable stew. And you ate it all, didn't you? The day before that I remember a bit of. But anything before that, I don't know. Time has been absorbed inside me, and I can't distinguish between one object and whatever's beside it."

"So memory isn't so important here?"

She beams. "That's right. Memory isn't so important here. The library handles memories."

After the girl leaves, I sit by the window holding my hand out in the morning sun, its shadow falling on the windowsill, a distinct five-finger outline. The bee stops buzzing around and quietly lands above the windowpane. It seems to have some serious thinking to do. And so do I.

When the sun is a little bit past its highest point, she comes to where I'm staying, knocks lightly, and opens the door. For a moment I can't tell who I'm looking at—the young girl or her. A slight shift in light, or the way the wind blows, is all it takes for her to change completely. It's like in one instant she transforms into the young girl, a moment later changing back into Miss Saeki. Not that this really takes place. The person in front of me is, without a doubt, Miss Saeki and no other.

"Hello," she says in a natural tone of voice, just like when we passed in the corridor of the library. She's wearing a long-sleeved navy blue blouse and a matching knee-length skirt, a thin silver necklace, and small pearl earrings—exactly as I'm used to seeing her. Her high heels make short, dry clicks as she steps onto the porch, a sound that's slightly out of place here. She stands gazing at me from the doorway, as if she's checking to see whether it's the real me or not. Of course it's the real me. Just like she's the real Miss Saeki.

"How about coming in for a cup of tea?" I say.

"I'd like that," she says. And, like she's finally worked up the nerve, she steps inside.

I go to the kitchen and turn on the stove to boil water, trying to get my breathing back to normal.

She sits down at the dining table in the same chair the girl had just been sitting in.

"It feels like we're back in the library, doesn't it?" she says.

"Sure does," I agree. "Except for no coffee, and no Oshima."

"And not a book in sight," she says.

I make two cups of herbal tea and carry them out to the table, sitting across from her. Birds chirp outside the open window. The bee's still napping above the windowpane.

Miss Saeki's the first one to speak. "I want you to know it wasn't easy for me to come here. But I had to see you, and talk with you."

I nod. "I'm glad you came."

Her trademark smile plays around her lips. "There's something I have to tell you."

Her smile's nearly identical to the young girl's, though with a bit more depth, a slight nuance that moves me.

She wraps her hands around the teacup. I'm gazing at the tiny pearl piercings in her ears. She's thinking, and it's taking her longer than usual.

"I burned up all my memories," she says, deliberately choosing her words. "They went up in smoke and disappeared into the air. So I won't be able to remember things for very long. All sorts of things—including my time with you. That's why I wanted to see you and talk with you as soon as I could. While I can still remember."

I crane my neck and look up at the bee above the window, its little black shadow a single dot on the sill.

"The most important thing," she says quietly, "is you've got to get out of here. As fast as you can. Leave here, go through the woods, and back to the life you left. The entrance is going to close soon. Promise me you will."

I shake my head. "You don't understand this, Miss Saeki, but I don't have any world to go back to. No one's ever really loved me, or wanted me, my entire life. I don't know who to count on other than myself. For me, the idea of a life I left is meaningless."

"But you still have to go back."

"Even if there's nothing there? Even if nobody cares if I'm there or not?"

"That's not why," she says. "It's what I want. For you to be there."

"But you're not there, are you?"

She looks down at her hands clasping the teacup. "No, I'm not. I'm not there anymore."

"What do you want from me if I do go back?"

"Just one thing," she says, raising her head and looking me straight in the eye. "I want you to remember me. If you remember me, then I don't care if everybody else forgets."

Silence descends on us for a time. A profound silence.

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it plugs up my throat and makes it hard to breathe. I somehow swallow it back, finally choosing another. "Are memories such an important thing?"

"It depends," she replies, and lightly closes her eyes. "In some cases they're the most important thing there is."

"Yet you burned yours up."

"I had no use for them anymore." Miss Saeki brings her hands together on the table, her palms down the way the young girl's were the first time. "Kafka? I have a favor to ask. I want you to take that painting with you."

"You mean the one in my room in the library? The painting of the shore?"

Miss Saeki nods. "Yes, Kafka on the Shore. I want you to take it. Where, I don't care. Wherever you're going."

"But doesn't it belong to somebody?"

She shakes her head. "It's mine. He gave it to me as a present when he went away to college in Tokyo. Ever since then I've had it with me. Wherever I lived, I always hung it on the wall in my room. When I started working at the Komura Library I put it back in that room, where it first hung, but that was just temporary. I left a letter for Oshima in my desk in the library telling him I wanted you to have the painting. After all, the painting is originally yours."

"Mine?"

She nods. "You were there. And I was there beside you, watching you. On the shore, a long time ago. The wind was blowing, there were white puffy clouds, and it was always summer."

I close my eyes. I'm at the beach and it's summer. I'm lying back on a deck chair.

I can feel the roughness of its canvas on my skin. I breathe in deeply the smell of the sea and the tide. Even with my eyes closed, the sun is glaring. I can hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore. The sound recedes, then draws closer, as if time is making it quiver. Nearby, someone is painting a picture of me. And beside him sits a young girl in a short-sleeved light blue dress, gazing in my direction. She has straight hair, a straw hat with a white ribbon, and she's scooping up the sand. Steady, long fingers—the fingers of a pianist. Her smooth-as-porcelain arms glisten in the sunlight. A natural-looking smile plays at her lips. I'm in love with her. And she's in love with me.