Kafka on the Shore (36 page)

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.

A short time later I fall into a restless sleep. My body needs rest, but my mind won't allow it. I swing like a pendulum, back and forth between the two. Later, though—I'm not even sure if it's light out or not—birds begin making a racket in the garden, and their voices pull me completely awake.

I tug on jeans and pull a long-sleeved shirt over my T-shirt and go outside. It's after five o'clock and nobody else is up. I walk out of the old-looking town, through the pine forest set up as a windbreak, past the seawall and out onto the beach. There's barely a breeze against my skin. The sky's covered with a layer of gray clouds, but it doesn't look like it's going to rain anytime soon. It's a quiet, still morning. Like a layer of soundproofing, the clouds absorb every sound the earth sends up.

I walk for a while on a path that parallels the sea, picturing the boy in the painting walking the same path, canvas chair in hand, sitting on the shore. I'm not sure, though, what scene along this shore the painting depicts. The painting only shows the beach, the horizon, sky, and clouds. And an island. But there are a number of islands along the shore, and I can't exactly recall what the one in the painting looked like. I sit down on the sand, face the sea, and make a kind of picture frame with my hands. I imagine the boy sitting there. A single white seagull flits aimlessly across the windless sky. Small waves break against the shore at regular intervals, leaving behind a gentle curve and tiny bubbles on the sand.

All of a sudden I realize—I'm jealous of the boy in the painting.

"You're jealous of the boy in the painting," the boy called Crow whispers in my ear.

You're jealous of that pitiful, twenty-year-old boy mistaken for someone else and pointlessly murdered—what is it, thirty years ago? So insanely jealous it hurts. This is the first time you've ever been jealous in your life. Now you finally understand what it feels like. It's like a brush fire torching your heart.

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 will become a story etched forever in her heart. Every single night she'll love you in her memory.

Yup, you're in a strange position, all right. You're in love with a girl who is no more, jealous of a boy who's gone forever. Even so, this emotion you're feeling is more real, and more intensely painful, than anything you've ever felt before. And there's no way out. No possibility of finding an exit. You've wandered into a labyrinth of time, and the biggest problem of all is that you have no desire at all to get out. Am I right?

Oshima comes in a little later than yesterday. Before he does I vacuum the first and second floors, wipe down all the desks and chairs, open the windows and clean them, wash out the restroom, throw out the garbage, pour fresh water in the vases. Then I turn on all the lights and switch on the catalog computers. All that's left is to open the front gate.

Oshima checks my work and gives a satisfied nod. "You learn pretty quick, and don't fool around, do you?"

I boil some water and make him some coffee. Like yesterday, I have a cup of Earl Grey. It's started raining outside, pretty heavily. You can hear thunder off in the distance.

It's not yet noon, but it's like evening it's so dark.

"Oshima, I have something I'd like you to do for me."

"What's that?"

"Can you get hold of the sheet music for 'Kafka on the Shore' somewhere?"

Oshima thinks it over. "As long as it's on a music publisher's website, I imagine you could download it for a fee. I'll check it out and let you know."

"Thanks."

He sits down on a corner of the counter, puts the tiniest lump of sugar into his coffee cup, then carefully stirs it with a spoon. "So you like the song?"

"Yeah, a lot."

"I'm fond of it myself. It's a lovely tune, quite unique. Simple yet deep. It tells you a lot about the person who composed it."

"The lyrics, though, are pretty symbolic," I venture.

"From time immemorial, symbolism and poetry have been inseparable. Like a pirate and his rum."

"Do you think Miss Saeki knew what all the lyrics mean?"

Oshima looks up, listening to the thunder as if calculating how far away it is. He turns to me and shakes his head. "Not necessarily. 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, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly's wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose."

"So you're saying Miss Saeki maybe found those words in some other space—like in dreams?"

"Most great poetry is like that. If the words can't create a prophetic tunnel connecting them to the reader, then the whole thing no longer functions as a poem."

"But plenty of poems only pretend to do that."

"Right. It's a kind of trick, and as long as you know that it isn't hard. As long as you use some symbolic-sounding words, the whole thing looks like a poem of sorts."

"In 'Kafka on the Shore' I feel something urgent and serious."

"Me too," Oshima says. "The words aren't just something on the surface. But the words and melody are so inseparable in my mind, I can't look at the lyrics as pure poetry and decide how persuasive they are by themselves." He shakes his head slightly. "At any rate, she was definitely blessed with a natural talent, and had a real sense for music. She was also practical enough to grab an opportunity when it came along. If that terrible incident hadn't taken her out of circulation, I'm sure she would've developed her talent even further. In any number of ways it's a real shame...."

"So where did all that talent go?"

Oshima looks at me. "You're asking where Miss Saeki's talent went after her boyfriend died?"

I nod. "If talent's a kind of natural energy, doesn't it have to find an outlet?"

"I don't know," he replies. "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."

"Maybe Miss Saeki focused her talents somewhere else, other than music," I venture.

"Somewhere else?" Oshima, obviously interested, narrows his brow. "What do you mean?"

I'm at a loss for words. "I don't know.... I just feel maybe that's what happened. Maybe into something intangible."

"Intangible?"

"Something other people can't see, something you pursue for yourself. An inner process."

Oshima brushes his hair off his forehead, locks of it spilling between his slender fingers. "That's an interesting idea. For all we know, after Miss Saeki came back to town maybe she used her talents somewhere out of sight—as you said, for something intangible. But you have to remember she disappeared for about twenty-five years, so unless you ask her yourself there's no way of knowing for sure."

I hesitate, then decide to just go ahead. "Can I ask you something really stupid?"

"Really stupid?"

I blush. "Totally off the wall."

"No problem. I don't necessarily mind stupid, off-the-wall things."

"I can't believe I'm actually saying this to somebody."

Oshima tilts his head ever so slightly, waiting for me to go on.

"Is it possible that Miss Saeki... is my mother?"

Oshima leans back against the counter, taking time to search for the right words.

The clock on the wall ticks away as I wait.

Finally he speaks up. "So what you're saying is that when she was twenty, Miss Saeki left Takamatsu in despair and was living alone someplace when she happened to meet your father, Koichi Tamura, and they got married. They were blessed with you and then, four years later, something happened and she ran away, leaving you behind. After this there's a mysterious blank, but then she shows up back in Shikoku. Do I have that right?"

"Yeah."

"It's not impossible. What I mean is, at this point I don't have any evidence to refute your hypothesis. So much of her life is a total mystery. Rumor has it she lived in Tokyo. Plus she's about the same age as your father. When she came back to Takamatsu, though, she was alone. How old did you say your sister is?"

"Twenty-one."

"The same age as me," Oshima says. "I'm not your sister—that much I know for certain. I've got parents, and my brother—all related by blood. A family way too good for me." He folds his arms and looks me at for a while. "I've got a question for you. 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.

He looks surprised. "No name? How can that be?"

"There wasn't any. No kidding. I have no idea why. As far as the family register's concerned, I don't have a mother. Or an older sister. There's just my father's name and mine on the register. Legally, I'm a bastard. An illegitimate child."

"But you actually had a mother and a sister at one time."

I nod. "I did, until I was four. The four of us lived together. It's not just my imagination. I remember it very clearly. The two of them left soon after I turned four." I pull out my wallet and show Oshima the photo of me and my sister playing at the shore.

He gazes at it for a moment, smiles, and hands it back.

"'Kafka on the Shore,'" he says.

I nod and put the photograph back in my wallet. The wind swirls outside, pounding rain against the window. The ceiling light casts a shadow of me and Oshima on the floor, where we look like we're having an ominous talk in some alternate world.

"You don't remember your mother's face?" Oshima asks. "You lived together till you were four, so you should have some memory of what she looked like."

I shake my head. "I just can't recall, not at all. I don't know why, but the part of my memory where her face should be is dark, painted over, blank."

Oshima ponders this for a while. "Tell me more about why you think Miss Saeki might be your mother."

"That's enough," I say. "Let's just forget it. I'm making too much of it."

"It's all right—go ahead and say what's on your mind," he says. "Then the two of us can decide if you're making too much of it or not."

Oshima's shadow on the floor moves in time with his movements, though it's slightly more exaggerated.

"There are an amazing amount of coincidences between me and Miss Saeki," I say. "They're like pieces of a puzzle that fit together. I understood this when I listened to 'Kafka on the Shore.' First off is the fact that I was drawn to this library, like fate reeling me in. A straight line from Nakano to Takamatsu. Very strange, when you think about it."

"Like the plot of a Greek tragedy," Oshima comments.

"Plus," I add, "I'm in love with her."

"With Miss Saeki?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Probably?" Oshima repeats, frowning. "Do you mean it's probably Miss Saeki you're in love with? Or that you're probably in love with her?"

I turn red. "I can't really explain it," I reply. "It's complicated and there's a lot of stuff I still don't get."

"But you're probably in love, probably with Miss Saeki?"

"Right," I say. "Very much."

"Probably, but also very much."

I nod.

"At the same time it's possible she's your mother?"

Another of my patented nods.

"For a fifteen-year-old who doesn't even shave yet, you're sure carrying a lot of baggage around." Oshima takes a sip of his coffee and carefully places the cup back on its saucer. "I'm not saying that's wrong. Just that everything has a critical point."

I don't say anything.

Oshima touches his temples and is lost in thought for a time. He crosses his slim fingers together in front of his chest. "I'll try to find that sheet music as soon as I can. I can finish up here, so why don't you go back to your room."

At lunchtime I take over from Oshima at the front counter. There are fewer visitors than usual, probably due to the steady rain. When he comes back from his break, he hands me a large envelope with a computer printout of the sheet music for "Kafka on the Shore."

"Convenient world we live in," he says.

"Thanks," I tell him.

"If you don't mind, why don't you take a cup of coffee upstairs. No cream or sugar. You make really good coffee."

I make a fresh cup and take it on a tray to the second floor. As always, the door to Miss Saeki's room is open and she's at her desk, writing. When I put the cup of coffee on her desk, she looks up at me and smiles, then puts the cap back on her fountain pen and rests it on top of the paper.

"So, are you getting used to things around here?"

"Bit by bit," I answer.

"Are you free now?"

"Yes, I am," I tell her.

"Why don't you sit down, then." Miss Saeki points to the wooden chair beside her desk. "Let's talk for a while."

It's starting to thunder again. Still far away, but gradually getting closer. I do what she says and take a seat.

"How old are you again? Sixteen?"

"Fifteen. I just turned fifteen," I respond.

"You ran away from home, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did."

"Was there some reason you had to do that?"

I shake my head. What should I say?

Miss Saeki picks up the cup and takes a sip while she waits for my answer.

"I felt like if I stayed there I'd be damaged beyond repair," I say.

"Damaged?" Miss Saeki says, narrowing her eyes.

"Yes," I say.

After a pause she says, "It sounds strange for a boy your age to use a word like damaged, though I must say I'm intrigued. What exactly do you mean by damaged?"