Kafka on the Shore (43 page)

"So tell me, how did your father die?"

"He was murdered."

"You didn't murder him, did you?"

"No, I didn't. I have an alibi."

"But you're not entirely sure?"

I shake my head. "I'm not sure at all."

She lifts the coffee cup again and takes a tiny sip, as if it has no taste. "Why did your father put you under that curse?"

"He must've wanted me to take over his will," I say.

"To desire me, you mean."

"That's right," I say.

Miss Saeki stares into the cup in her hand, then looks up again.

"So do you—desire me?"

I give one clear nod.

She closes her eyes. I gaze at her closed eyelids for a long time, and through them I can see the darkness that she's seeing. Odd shapes loom up in it, floating up only to disappear.

Finally she opens her eyes. "You mean in theory you desire me."

"No, apart from the theory. I want you, and that goes way beyond any theory."

"You want to have sex with me?"

I nod.

She narrows her eyes like something's shining in them. "Have you ever had sex with a girl before?"

I nod again. Last night—with you, I think. But I can't say it out loud. She doesn't remember a thing.

Something close to a sigh escapes her lips. "Kafka, I know you realize this, but you're fifteen and I'm over fifty."

"It's not that simple. We're not talking about that sort of time here. I know you when you were fifteen. And I'm in love with you at that age. Very much in love. And through her, I'm in love with you. That young girl's still inside you, asleep inside you. Once you go to sleep, though, she comes to life. I've seen it."

She closes her eyes once more, her eyelids trembling slightly.

"I'm in love with you, and that's what's important. I think you understand that."

Like someone rising to the surface of the sea from deep below, she takes a deep breath. She searches for the words to say, but they lie beyond her grasp. "I'm sorry, Kafka, but would you mind leaving? I'd like to be alone for a while," she says. "And close the door on your way out."

I nod, stand up, and start to go, but something pulls me back. I stop at the door, turn around, and walk across the room to where she is. I reach out and touch her hair.

Through the strands my hand brushes her small ear. I just can't help it.

Miss Saeki looks up, surprised, and after a moment's hesitation lays her hand on mine. "At any rate, you—and your theory—are throwing a stone at a target that's very far away. Do you understand that?"

I nod. "I know. But metaphors can reduce the distance."

"We're not metaphors."

"I know," I say. "But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me."

A faint smile comes to her as she looks up at me. "That's the oddest pickup line I've ever heard."

"There're a lot of odd things going on—but I feel like I'm slowly getting closer to the truth."

"Actually getting closer to a metaphorical truth? Or metaphorically getting closer to an actual truth? Or maybe they supplement each other?"

"Either way, I don't think I can stand the sadness I feel right now," I tell her.

"I feel the same way."

"So you did come back to this town to die."

She shakes her head. "To be honest about it, I'm not trying to die. I'm just waiting for death to come. Like sitting on a bench at the station, waiting for the train."

"And do you know when the train's going to arrive?"

She takes her hand away from mine and touches her eyelids with the tips of her fingers. "Kafka, I've worn away so much of my own life, worn myself away. At a certain point I should have stopped living, but didn't. I knew life was pointless, but I couldn't give up on it. So I ended up just marking time, wasting my life in pointless pursuits. I wound up hurting myself, and that made me hurt others around me. That's why I'm being punished now, why I'm under a kind of curse. I had something too complete, too perfect, once, and afterward all I could do was despise myself. That's the curse I can never escape. So I'm not afraid of death. And to answer your question—yes, I have a pretty good idea of when the time is coming."

Once more I take her hand in mine. The scales are shaking, and just a tiny weight would send them tipping to one side or the other. I have to think. I have to decide. I have to take a step forward. "Miss Saeki, would you sleep with me?" I ask.

"You mean even if I were your mother in that theory of yours?"

"It's like everything around me's in flux—like it all has a doubled meaning."

She ponders this. "That might not be true for me, though. For me, things might not be so nuanced. It might be more like all or nothing."

"And you know which it is."

She nods.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"About what?"

"Where did you come up with those two chords?"

"Chords?"

"The ones in the bridge in 'Kafka on the Shore.'"

She looks at me. "You like them?"

I nod.

"I found those chords in an old room, very far away. The door to the room was open then," she says quietly. "A room that was far, far away." She closes her eyes and sinks back into memories. "Kafka, close the door when you leave," she says.

And that's exactly what I do.

After we close up the library for the night, Oshima drives me to a seafood restaurant a little way away. Through a large window in the restaurant we can see the night sea, and I think about all the creatures living under the water.

"Sometimes you've got to get out and eat some decent food," he tells me. "Relax.

I don't think the cops have staked the place out. We both needed a change of scenery."

We eat a huge salad, and split an order of paella.

"I'd love to go to Spain someday," Oshima says.

"Why Spain?"

"To fight in the Spanish Civil War."

"But that ended a long time ago."

"I know that. Lorca died, and Hemingway survived," Oshima says. "But I still have the right to go to Spain and be a part of the Spanish Civil War."

"Metaphorically."

"Exactly," he says, giving me a wry look. "A hemophiliac of undetermined sex who's hardly ever set foot outside Shikoku isn't about to actually go off to fight in Spain, I would think."

We attack the mound of paella, washing it down with Perrier.

"Have there been any developments in my father's case?" I ask.

"Nothing to report, really. Except for a typical smug memorial piece in the arts section, there hasn't been much in the papers. The investigation must be stuck. The sad fact is the arrest rate's been going down steadily these days—just like the stock market. I mean, the police can't even track down the son who's disappeared."

"The fifteen-year-old youth."

"Fifteen, with a history of violent behavior," Oshima adds. "The obsessed young runaway."

"How about that incident with things falling from the sky?"

Oshima shakes his head. "They're taking a break on that one. Nothing else weird has fallen from the sky—unless you count that award-winning lightning we had two days ago."

"So things have settled down?"

"It seems like it. Or maybe we're just in the eye of the storm."

I nod, pick up a clam, yank out the meat with a fork, then put the shell on a plate full of empty shells.

"Are you still in love?" Oshima asks me.

I nod. "How about you?"

"Am I in love, do you mean?"

I nod again.

"In other words, you're daring to get personal and ask about the antisocial romance that colors my warped, homosexual, Gender-Identity-Disordered life?"

I nod, and he follows suit.

"I have a partner, yes," he admits. He makes a serious face and eats a clam. "It's not the kind of passionate, stormy love you find in a Puccini opera or anything. We keep a careful distance from each other. We don't get together that often, but we do understand each other at a deep, basic level."

"Understand each other?"

"Whenever Haydn composed, he always made sure to dress formally, even to wearing a powdered wig."

I look at him in surprise. "What's Haydn got to do with anything?"

"He couldn't compose well unless he did that."

"How come?"

"I have no idea. That's between Haydn and his wig. Nobody else would understand. Inexplicable, I imagine."

I nod. "Tell me, when you're alone do you sometimes think about your partner and feel sad?"

"Of course," he says. "It happens sometimes. When the moon turns blue, when birds fly south, when—"

"Why of course?" I ask.

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time. It's just a natural feeling. You're not the person who discovered that feeling, so don't go trying to patent it, okay?"

I lay my fork down and look up.

"A fond, old, faraway room?"

"Exactly," Oshima says. He holds his fork straight up for emphasis. "Just a metaphor, of course."

Miss Saeki comes to my room after nine that night. I'm sitting at the desk reading a book when I hear her Golf pull into the parking lot. The door slams shut. Rubber-soled shoes slowly crunch across the parking lot. And finally there's a knock at my door. I open the door, and there she is. This time she's wide awake. She has on a pinstriped silk blouse, thin blue jeans, white deck shoes. I've never seen her in pants before.

"I haven't seen this room in a long time," she says. She stands by the wall and looks at the painting. "Or this picture, either."

"Is the place in the painting around here?" I ask.

"Do you like it?"

I nod. "Who painted it?"

"A young artist who boarded that summer with the Komuras," she says. "He wasn't very famous, at least at the time. I've forgotten his name. He was a very friendly person, though, and I think he did a good job with the painting. There's something, I don't know—powerful about it. I sat beside him the whole time and watched him work. I made all kinds of half-joking suggestions as he painted. We got along well. It was a summer a long time ago. I was twelve then. The boy in the painting was twelve, too."

"It looks like the sea around here."

"Let's go for a walk," she says. "I'll take you there."

I walk with her to the shore. We cut through a pine forest and walk down the sandy beach. The clouds are breaking up and a half moon shines down on the waves.

Small waves that barely reach the shore, barely break. She sits down at a spot on the sand, and I sit down next to her. The sand's still faintly warm.

Like she's checking the angle, she points to a spot on the shoreline. "It was right over there," she says. "He painted that spot from here. He put the deck chair over there, had the boy pose in it, and set up his easel right around here. I remember it well. Do you notice how the position of the island is the same as in the painting?"

I follow where she's pointing, and sure enough it's the same. No matter how long I gaze at it, though, it doesn't look like the place in the painting. I tell her that.

"It's changed completely," Miss Saeki replies. "That was forty years ago, after all. Things change. A lot of things affect the shoreline—waves, wind, typhoons. Sand gets washed away, they truck more in. But this is definitely the spot. I remember what occurred there very well. That was the summer I had my first period, too."

We sit there looking at the scenery. The clouds shift and the moonlight dapples the sea. Wind blows through the pine forest, sounding like a crowd of people sweeping the ground at the same time. I scoop up some sand and let it slowly spill out between my fingers. It falls to the beach and, like lost time, becomes part of what's already there. I do this over and over.

"What are you thinking about?" Miss Saeki asks me.

"About going to Spain," I reply.

"What are you going to do there?"

"Eat some delicious paella."

"That's all?"

"And fight in the Spanish Civil War."

"That ended over sixty years ago."

"I know," I tell her. "Lorca died, and Hemingway survived."

"But you want to be a part of it."

I nod. "Yup. Blow up bridges and stuff."

"And fall in love with Ingrid Bergman."

"But in reality I'm here in Takamatsu. And I'm love with you."

"Tough luck."

I put my arm around her.

You put your arm around her.

She leans against you. And a long spell of time passes.

"Did you know that I did this exact same thing a long time ago? Right in this same spot?"

"I know," you tell her.

"How do you know that?' Miss Saeki asks, and looks you in the eyes.

"I was there then."

"Blowing up bridges?"

"Yes, I was there, blowing up bridges."

"Metaphorically."

"Of course."

You hold her in your arms, draw her close, kiss her. You can feel the strength deserting her body.

"We're all dreaming, aren't we?" she says.

All of us are dreaming.

"Why did you have to die?"

"I couldn't help it," you reply.

Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love.

Pretty much the same sort of lovemaking as the night before. But with two differences.

After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again and drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. Finally it's a part of you.