Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
This is probably why I never married. I didn’t want to wake someone sleeping next to me with my screams in the middle of the night. I’ve been in love with several women over the years, but I never spent a night with any of them. The terror was in my bones. It was something I could never share with another person.
I stayed away from my hometown for over forty years. I never went near that seashore—or any other. I was afraid that, if I did, my dream might happen in reality. I had always enjoyed swimming, but after that day I never even went to a pool. I wouldn’t go near deep rivers or lakes. I avoided boats and wouldn’t take a plane to go abroad. Despite all these precautions, I couldn’t get rid of the image of myself drowning. Like K’s cold hand, this dark premonition caught hold of my mind and refused to let go.
Then, last spring, I finally revisited the beach where K had been taken by the wave.
My father had died of cancer the year before, and my brother had sold the old house. In going through the storage shed, he had found a cardboard carton crammed with childhood things of mine, which he sent to me in Nagano. Most of it was useless junk, but there was one bundle of pictures that K had painted and given to me. My parents had probably put them away for me as a keepsake of K, but the pictures did nothing but reawaken the old terror. They made me feel as if K’s spirit would spring back to life from them, and so I quickly returned them to their paper wrapping, intending to throw them away. I couldn’t make myself do it, though. After several days of indecision, I opened the bundle again and forced myself to take a long, hard look at K’s watercolors.
Most of them were landscapes, pictures of the familiar stretch of ocean and sand beach and pine woods and the town, and all done with that special clarity and coloration I knew so well from K’s hand. They were still amazingly vivid despite the years, and had been executed with even greater skill than I recalled. As I leafed through the bundle, I found myself steeped in warm memories. The deep feelings of the boy K were there in his pictures—the way his eyes were opened on the world. The things we did together, the places we went together began to come back to me with great intensity. And I realized that his eyes were my eyes, that I myself had looked upon the world back then with the same lively, unclouded vision as the boy who had walked by my side.
I made a habit after that of studying one of K’s pictures at my desk each day when I got home from work. I could sit there for hours with one painting. In each I found another of those soft landscapes of childhood that I had shut out of my memory for so long. I had a sense, whenever I looked at one of K’s works, that something was permeating my very flesh.
Perhaps a week had gone by like this when the thought suddenly struck me one evening: I might have been making a terrible mistake all those years. As he lay there in the tip of the wave, surely, K had not been looking at me with hatred or resentment; he had not been trying to take me away with him. And that terrible grin he had fixed me with: that, too, could have been an accident of angle or light and shadow, not a conscious act on K’s part. He had probably already lost consciousness, or perhaps he had been giving me a gentle smile of eternal parting. The intense look of hatred I had thought I saw on his face had been nothing but a reflection of the profound terror that had taken control of me for the moment.
The more I studied K’s watercolor that evening, the greater the conviction with which I began to believe these new thoughts of mine. For no matter how long I continued to look at the picture, I could find nothing in it but a boy’s gentle, innocent spirit.
I went on sitting at my desk for a very long time. There was nothing else I could do. The sun went down, and the pale darkness of evening began to envelop the room. Then came the deep silence of night, which seemed to go on forever. At last, the scales tipped, and dark gave way to dawn. The new day’s sun tinged the sky with pink, and the birds awoke to sing.
It was then I knew I must go back.
I threw a few things in a bag, called the company to say I would not be in, and boarded a train for my old hometown.
I did not find the same quiet little seaside town that I remembered. An industrial city had sprung up nearby during the rapid development of the sixties, bringing great changes to the landscape. The one little gift shop by the station had grown into a mall, and the town’s only movie theater had been turned into a supermarket. My house was no longer there. It had been demolished some months before, leaving only a scrape on the earth. The trees in the yard had all been cut down, and patches of weeds dotted the black stretch of ground. K’s old house had disappeared as well, having been replaced by a concrete parking lot full of commuters’ cars and vans. Not that I was overcome by sentiment. The town had ceased to be mine long before.
I walked down to the shore and climbed the steps of the breakwater. On the other side, as always, the ocean stretched off into the distance, unobstructed, huge, the horizon a single straight line. The shoreline, too, looked the same as it had before: the long beach, the lapping waves, people strolling at the water’s edge. The time was after four o’clock, and the soft sun of late afternoon embraced everything below as it began its long, almost meditative, descent to the west. I lowered my bag to the sand and sat down next to it in silent appreciation of the gentle seascape. Looking at this scene, it was impossible to imagine that a great typhoon had once raged here, that a massive wave had swallowed my best friend in all the world. There was almost no one left now, surely, who remembered those terrible events. It began to seem as if the whole thing were an illusion that I had dreamed up in vivid detail.
And then I realized that the deep darkness inside me had vanished. Suddenly. As suddenly as it had come. I raised myself from the sand and, without bothering either to take off my shoes or roll up my cuffs, walked into the surf to let the waves lap at my ankles. Almost in reconciliation, it seemed, the same waves that had washed up on the beach when I was a boy were now fondly washing my feet, soaking black my shoes and pant cuffs. There would be one slow-moving wave, then a long pause, and then another wave would come and go. The people passing by gave me odd looks, but I didn’t care. I had found my way back again, at last.
I looked up at the sky. A few gray cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless. They seemed to be there for me, though I’m not sure why I felt that way. I remembered having looked up at the sky like this in search of the “eye” of the typhoon. And then, inside me, the axis of time gave one great heave. Forty long years collapsed like a dilapidated house, mixing old time and new time together in a single swirling mass. All sounds faded, and the light around me shuddered. I lost my balance and fell into the waves. My heart throbbed at the back of my throat, and my arms and legs lost all sensation. I lay that way for a long time, face in the water, unable to stand. But I was not afraid. No, not at all. There was no longer anything for me to fear. Those days were gone.
I stopped having my terrible nightmares. I no longer wake up screaming in the middle of the night. And I am trying now to start life over again. No, I know it’s probably too late to start again. I may not have much time left to live. But even if it comes too late, I am grateful that, in the end, I was able to attain a kind of salvation, to effect some sort of recovery. Yes, grateful: I could have come to the end of my life unsaved, still screaming in the dark, afraid.
The seventh man fell silent and turned his gaze upon each of the others. No one spoke or moved or even seemed to breathe. All were waiting for the rest of his story. Outside, the wind had fallen, and nothing stirred. The seventh man brought his hand to his collar once again, as if in search of words.
“They tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but I don’t believe that,” he said. Then, a moment later, he added: “Oh, the fear is there, all right. It comes to us in many different forms, at different times, and overwhelms us. But the most frightening thing we can do at such times is to turn our backs on it, to close our eyes. For then we take the most precious thing inside us and surrender it to something else. In my case, that something wa
s the wave.”
—TRANSLATED BY JAY RUBIN
THE YEAR OF SPAGHETTI
1971 was the Year of Spaghetti.
In 1971 I cooked spaghetti to live, and lived to cook spaghetti. Steam rising from the aluminum pot was my pride and joy, tomato sauce bubbling up in the saucepan my one great hope in life.
I’d gone to a cooking specialty store and bought a kitchen timer and a huge aluminum cooking pot, big enough to bathe a German shepherd in, then went round all the supermarkets that cater to foreigners, gathering an assortment of odd-sounding spices. I picked up a pasta cookbook at the bookstore, and bought tomatoes by the dozen. I purchased every brand of spaghetti I could lay my hands on, simmered every kind of sauce known to man. Fine particles of garlic, onion, and olive oil swirled in the air, forming a harmonious cloud that penetrated every corner of my tiny apartment, permeating the floor and ceiling and walls, my clothes, my books, my records, my tennis racket, my bundles of old letters. It was a fragrance one might have smelled on ancient Roman aqueducts.
This is a story from the Year of Spaghetti, 1971 a.d.
As a rule I cooked spaghetti, and ate it, alone. I was convinced that spaghetti was a dish best enjoyed alone. I can’t really explain why I felt that way, but there it is.
I always drank tea with my spaghetti and ate a simple lettuce-and-cucumber salad. I’d make sure I had plenty of both. I laid everything out neatly on the table, and enjoyed a leisurely meal, glancing at the paper as I ate. From Sunday to Saturday, one Spaghetti Day followed another. And each new Sunday started a brand-new Spaghetti Week.
Every time I sat down to a plate of spaghetti—especially on a rainy afternoon—I had the distinct feeling that somebody was about to knock on my door. The person who I imagined was about to visit me was different each time. Sometimes it was a stranger, sometimes someone I knew. Once, it was a girl with slim legs whom I’d dated in high school, and once it was myself, from a few years back, come to pay a visit. Another time, it was none other than William Holden, with Jennifer Jones on his arm.
William Holden?
Not one of these people, though, actually ventured into my apartment. They hovered just outside the door, without knocking, like fragments of memory, and then slipped away.
Spring, summer, and fall, I cooked away, as if cooking spaghetti were an act of revenge. Like a lonely, jilted girl throwing old love letters into the fireplace, I tossed one handful of spaghetti after another into the pot.
I’d gather up the trampled-down shadows of time, knead them into the shape of a German shepherd, toss them into the roiling water, and sprinkle them with salt. Then I’d hover over the pot, oversize chopsticks in hand, until the timer dinged its plaintive tone.
Spaghetti strands are a crafty bunch, and I couldn’t let them out of my sight. If I were to turn my back, they might well slip over the edge of the pot and vanish into the night. Like the tropical jungle waits to swallow up colorful butterflies into the eternity of time, the night lay in silence, hoping to waylay the prodigal strands.
Spaghetti alla parmigiana
Spaghetti alla napoletana
Spaghetti al cartoccio
Spaghetti aglio e olio
Spaghetti alla carbonara
Spaghetti della pina
And then there was the pitiful, nameless leftover spaghetti carelessly tossed into the fridge.
Born in heat, the strands of spaghetti washed down the river of 1971 and vanished.
And I mourn them all—all the spaghetti of the year 1971.
When the phone rang at three twenty I was sprawled out on the tatami, staring at the ceiling. A pool of winter sunlight had formed in the place where I lay. Like a dead fly I lay there, vacant, in a December 1971 spotlight.
At first, I didn’t recognize it as the phone ringing. It was more like an unfamiliar memory that had hesitantly slipped in between the layers of air. Finally, though, it began to take shape, and, in the end, a ringing phone was unmistakably what it was. It was one hundred percent a phone ring in one-hundred-percent-real air. Still sprawled out, I reached over and picked up the receiver.
On the other end was a girl, a girl so indistinct that, by four thirty, she might very well have disappeared altogether. She was the ex-girlfriend of a friend of mine. Something had brought them together, this guy and this indistinct girl, and something had led them to break up. I had, I admit, reluctantly played a role in getting them together in the first place.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said, “but do you know where he is now?”
I looked at the phone, running my eyes along the length of the cord. The cord was, sure enough, attached to the phone. I managed a vague reply. There was something ominous in the girl’s voice, and whatever trouble was brewing I knew I didn’t want to get involved.
“Nobody will tell me where he is,” she said in a chilly tone. “Everybody’s pretending they don’t know. But there’s something important I have to tell him, so please—tell me where he is. I promise I won’t drag you into this. Where is he?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I told her. “I haven’t seen him in a long time.” My voice didn’t sound like my own. I was telling the truth about not having seen him for a long time, but not about the other part—I did know his address and phone number. Whenever I tell a lie, something weird happens to my voice.
No comment from her.
The phone was like a pillar of ice.
Then all the objects around me turned into pillars of ice, as if I were in a J. G. Ballard science fiction story.
“I really don’t know,” I repeated. “He went away a long time ago, without saying a word.”
The girl laughed. “Give me a break. He’s not that clever. We’re talking about a guy who has to raise a noise no matter what he does.”
She was right. The guy really was a bit of a dim bulb.
But I wasn’t about to tell her where he was. Do that, and next I’d have him on the phone, giving me an earful. I was through with getting caught up in other people’s messes. I’d already dug a hole in the backyard and buried everything that needed to be buried in it. Nobody could ever dig it up again.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You don’t like me, do you?” she suddenly said.
I had no idea what to say. I didn’t particularly dislike her. I had no real impression of her at all. And it’s hard to have a bad impression of somebody you have no impression of.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “But I’m cooking spaghetti right now.”
“What?”
“I said I’m cooking spaghetti,” I lied. I had no idea why I said that. But that lie was already a part of me—so much so that, at that moment at least, it didn’t feel like a lie at all.
I went ahead and filled an imaginary pot with water, lit an imaginary stove with an imaginary match.
“So?” she asked.
I sprinkled imaginary salt into the boiling water, gently lowered a handful of imaginary spaghetti into the imaginary pot, set the imaginary kitchen timer for twelve minutes.
“So I can’t talk. The spaghetti will be ruined.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I’m really sorry, but cooking spaghetti’s a delicate operation.”
The girl was silent. The phone in my hand began to freeze again.
“So could you call me back?” I added hurriedly.
“Because you’re in the middle of making spaghetti?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are you making it for someone, or are you going to eat alone?”
“I’ll eat it by myself,” I said.
She held her breath for a long time, then slowly breathed out. “There’s no way you could know this, but I’m really in trouble. I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” I said.
“There’s some money involved, too.”
“I see.”
“He owes me money,” she said. “I lent him some money. I shouldn??
?t have, but I had to.”
I was quiet for a minute, my thoughts drifting toward spaghetti. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’ve got the spaghetti going, so…”
She gave a listless laugh. “Goodbye,” she said. “Say hi to your spaghetti for me. I hope it turns out OK.”
“Bye,” I said.
When I hung up the phone, the circle of light on the floor had shifted an inch or two. I lay down again in that pool of light and resumed staring at the ceiling.
Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.
Now I regret, a little, that I didn’t tell the girl anything. Perhaps I should have. I mean, her ex-boyfriend wasn’t much to start with—an empty shell of a guy with artistic pretensions, a great talker whom nobody trusted. She sounded as if she really were strapped for money, and, no matter what the situation, you’ve got to pay back what you borrow.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to the girl—the thought usually pops into my mind when I’m facing a steaming-hot plate of spaghetti. After she hung up, did she disappear forever, sucked into the four thirty p.m. shadows? Was I partly to blame?
I want you to understand my position, though. At the time, I didn’t want to get involved with anyone. That’s why I kept on cooking spaghetti, all by myself. In that huge pot, big enough to hold a German shepherd.
Durum semolina, golden wheat wafting in Italian fields.
Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really loneliness?
—TRANSLATED BY PHILIP GABRIEL
TONY TAKITANI
Tony Takitani’s real name was really that: Tony Takitani.
Because of his name and his curly hair and his somewhat deeply sculpted features, he was often assumed to be a mixed-blood child. This was just after the war, when there were lots of children around whose blood was half American GI. But Tony Takitani’s mother and father were both one hundred percent genuine Japanese. His father, Shozaburo Takitani, had been a fairly well-known jazz trombonist, but four years before the Second World War broke out, he was forced to leave Tokyo because of a problem involving a woman. If he had to leave town, he figured, he might as well really leave, so he crossed over to China with nothing but his trombone in hand. In those days, Shanghai was an easy one-day’s boat ride from Nagasaki. Shozaburo owned nothing in Tokyo—or anywhere else in Japan—that he would hate to lose. He left without regrets. If anything, he suspected, Shanghai, with its well-crafted enticements, would be better suited to his personality than Tokyo. He was standing on the deck of a boat plowing its way up the Yangtze River the first time he saw Shanghai’s elegant avenues glowing in the morning sun, and that did it. He fell in love with the town. The light seemed to promise him a future of tremendous brightness. He was twenty-one years old.