"Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murakami Haruki)
Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the sun
Haruki
Murakami
South of the Border, West of the sun
My birthday's the fourth
of January, 1951. The first week of the first month of the first year of the
second half of the twentieth century. Something to commemorate, I guess, which
is why my parents named me Hajime--"Beginning," in Japanese. Other than that, a
100 percent average birth. My father worked in a large brokerage firm, my mother
was a typical housewife. During the war, my father was drafted as a student and
sent to fight in Singapore; after the surrender he spent some time in a POW
camp. My mother's house was burned down in a B-29 raid during the final year of
the war. Their generation suffered most during the long war.
When I was born, though,
you'd never have known there'd been a war. No more burned-out ruins, no more
occupation army. We lived in a small, quiet town, in a house my father's company
provided. The house was prewar, somewhat old but roomy enough. Pine trees grew
in the garden, and we even had a small pond and some stone
lanterns.
The town I grew up in
was your typical middle-class suburbia. The classmates I was friendly with all
lived in neat little row houses; some might have been a bit larger than mine,
but you could count on them all having similar entranceways, pine trees in the
garden. The works. My friends' fathers were employed in companies or else were
professionals of some sort. Hardly anyone's mother worked. And most everyone had
a cat or a dog. No one I knew lived in an apartment or a condo. Later on I moved
to another part of town, but it was pretty much identical. The upshot of this is
that until I moved to Tokyo to go to college, I was convinced everyone in the
whole world lived in a single-family home with a garden and a pet, and commuted
to work decked out in a suit. I couldn't for the life of me imagine a different
lifestyle.
In the world I grew up
in, a typical family had two or three children. My childhood friends were all
members of such stereotypical families. If not two kids in the family, then
three; if not three, then two. Families with six or seven kids were few and far
between, but even more unusual were families with only one
child.
I happened to be one of
the unusual ones, since I was an only child. I had an inferiority complex about
it, as if there was something different about me, that what other people all had
and took for granted I lacked.
I detested the term
only child. Every time I heard it, I felt something was missing from
me--like I wasn't quite a complete human being. The phrase only child
stood there, pointing an accusatory finger at me. "Something's not quite all
there, pal," it told me.
In the world I lived in,
it was an accepted idea that only children were spoiled by their parents, weak,
and self-centered. This was a given--like the fact that the barometer goes down
the higher up you go and the fact that cows give milk. That's why I hated it
whenever someone asked me how many brothers and sisters I had. Just let them
hear I didn't have any, and instinctively they thought: An only child, eh?
Spoiled, weak, and self-centered, I betcha. That kind of knee-jerk reaction
depressed me, and hurt. But what really depressed and hurt me was something
else: the fact that everything they thought about me was true. I really was
spoiled, weak, and self-centered.
In the six years I went
to elementary school, I met just one other only child. So I remember her (yes,
it was a girl) very well. I got to know her well, and we talked about all
sorts of things. We understood each other. You could even say I loved
her.
Her last name was
Shimamoto. Soon after she was born, she came down with polio, which made her
drag her left leg. On top of that, she'd transferred to our school at the end of
fifth grade. Compared to me, then, she had a terrible load of psychological
baggage to struggle with. This baggage, though, only made her a tougher, more
self-possessed only child than I could ever have been. She never whined or
complained, never gave any indication of the annoyance she must have felt at
times. No matter what happened, she'd manage a smile. The worse things got, in
fact, the broader her smile became. I loved her smile. It soothed me, encouraged
me. It'll be all right, her smile told me. Just hang in there, and
everything will turn out okay. Years later, whenever I thought of her, it
was her smile that came to mind first.
Shimamoto always got
good grades and was kind to everyone. People respected her. We were both only
children, but in this sense she and I were different. This doesn't mean, though,
that all our classmates liked her. No one teased her or made fun of her, but
except for me, she had no real friends.
She was probably too
cool, too self-possessed. Some of our classmates must have thought her cold and
haughty. But I detected something else--something warm and fragile just below
the surface. Something very much like a child playing hide-and-seek, hidden deep
within her, yet hoping to be found.
Because her father was
transferred a lot, Shimamoto had attended quite a few schools. I can't recall
what her father did. Once, she explained to me in detail what he did, but as
with most kids, it went in one ear and out the other. I seem to recall some
professional job connected with a bank or tax office or something. She lived in
company housing, but the house was larger than normal, a Western-style house
with a low solid stone wall surrounding it. Above the wall was an evergreen
hedge, and through gaps in the hedge you could catch a glimpse of a garden with
a lawn.
Shimamoto was a large
girl, about as tall as I was, with striking features. I was certain that in a
few years she would be gorgeous. But when I first met her, she hadn't developed
an outer look to match her inner qualities. Something about her was unbalanced,
and not many people felt she was much to look at. There was an adult part of her
and a part that was still a child--and they were out of sync. And this
out-of-sync quality made people uneasy.
Probably because our
houses were so close, literally a stone's throw from each other, the first month
after she came to our school she was assigned to the seat next to mine. I
brought her up to speed on what texts she'd need, what the weekly tests were
like, how much we'd covered in each book, how the cleaning and the
dishing-out-lunch assignments were handled. Our school's policy was for the
child who lived nearest any transfer student to help him or her out; my teacher
took me aside to let me know that he expected me to take special care of
Shimamoto, with her lame leg.
As with all kids of
eleven or twelve talking with a member of the opposite sex for the first time,
for a couple of days our conversations were strained. When we found out we were
both only children, though, we relaxed. It was the first time either of us had
met a fellow only child. We had so much we'd held inside about being only
children. Often we'd walk home together. Slowly, because of her leg, we'd walk
the three quarters of a mile home, talking about all kinds of things. The more
we talked, the more we realized we had in common: our love of books and music;
not to mention cats. We both had a hard time explaining our feelings to others.
We both had a long list of foods we didn't want to eat. When it came to subjects
at school, the ones we liked we had no trouble concentrating on; the ones we
disliked we hated to death. But there was one major difference between us--more
than I did, Shimamoto consciously wrapped herself inside a protective shell.
Unlike me, she made an effort to study the subjects she hated, and she got good
grades. When the school lunch contained food she hated, she still ate it. In
other words, she constructed a much taller defensive wall around herself than I
ever built. What remained behind that wall, though, was pretty much what lay
behind mine.
Unlike times when I was
with other girls, I could relax with Shimamoto. I loved walking home with her.
Her left leg limped slightly as she walked. We sometimes took a breather on a
park bench halfway home, but I didn't mind. Rather the opposite--I was glad to
have the extra time.
Soon we began to spend a
lot of time together, but I don't recall anyone kidding us about it. This didn't
strike me at the time, though now it seems strange. After all, kids that age
naturally tease and make fun of any couple who seem close. It might have been
because of the kind of person Shimamoto was. Something about her made other
people a bit tense. She had an air about her that made people think:
Whoa--better not say anything too stupid in front of this girl. Even our
teachers were somewhat on edge when dealing with her. Her lameness might have
had something to do with it. At any rate, most people thought Shimamoto was not
the kind of person you teased, which was just fine by me.
During phys. ed. she sat
on the sidelines, and when our class went hiking or mountain climbing, she
stayed home. Same with summer swim camp. On our annual sports day, she did seem
a little out of sorts. But other than this, her school life was typical. Hardly
ever did she mention her leg. If memory serves, not even once. Whenever we
walked home from school together, she never once apologized for holding me back
or let this thought graze her expression. I knew, though, that it was precisely
because her leg bothered her that she refrained from mentioning it. She didn't
like to go to other kids' homes much, since she'd have to remove her shoes,
Japanese style, at the entrance. The heels of her shoes were different heights,
and the shoes themselves were shaped differently--something she wanted at all
costs to conceal. Must have been custom-made shoes. When she arrived at her own
home, the first thing she did was toss her shoes in the closet as fast as she
could.
Shimamoto's house had a
brand-new stereo in the living room, and I used to go over to her place to
listen to music. It was a pretty nice stereo. Her father's LP collection,
though, didn't do it justice. At most he had fifteen records, chiefly
collections of light classics. We listened to those fifteen records a thousand
times, and even today I can recall the music--every single
note.
Shimamoto was in charge
of the records. She'd take one from its jacket, place it carefully on the
turntable without touching the grooves with her fingers, and, after making sure
to brush the cartridge free of any dust with a tiny brush, lower the needle ever
so gently onto the record. When the record was finished, she'd spray it and wipe
it with a felt cloth. Finally she'd return the record to its jacket and its
proper place on the shelf. Her father had taught her this procedure, and she
followed his instructions with a terribly serious look on her face, her eyes
narrowed, her breath held in check. Meanwhile, I was on the sofa, watching her
every move. Only when the record was safely back on the shelf did she turn to me
and give a little smile. And every time, this thought hit me: It wasn't a record
she was handling. It was a fragile soul inside a glass
bottle.
In my house we didn't
have records or a record player. My parents didn't care much for music. So I was
always listening to music on a small plastic AM radio. Rock and roll was my
favorite, but before long I grew to enjoy Shimamoto's brand of classical music.
This was music from another world, which had its appeal, but more than that I
loved it because she was a part of that world. Once or twice a week, she
and I would sit on the sofa, drinking the tea her mother made for us, and spend
the afternoon listening to Rossini overtures, Beethoven's Pastorale, and
the Peer Gynt Suite. Her mother was happy to have me over. She was
pleased her daughter had a friend so soon after transferring to a new school,
and I guess it helped that I was a neat dresser. Honestly, I couldn't bring
myself to like her mother very much. No particular reason I felt that way. She
was always nice to me. But I could detect a hint of irritation in her voice, and
it put me on edge.
Of all her father's
records, the one I liked best was a recording of the Liszt piano concertos: one
concerto on each side. There were two reasons I liked this record. First of all,
the record jacket was beautiful. Second, no one around me--with the exception of
Shimamoto, of course--ever listened to Liszt's piano concertos. The very idea
excited me. I'd found a world that no one around me knew--a secret garden only I
was allowed to enter. I felt elevated, lifted to another plane of
existence.
And the music itself was
wonderful. At first it struck me as exaggerated, artificial, even
incomprehensible. Little by little, though, with repeated listenings, a vague
image formed in my mind--an image that had meaning. When I closed my eyes and
concentrated, the music came to me as a series of whirlpools. One whirlpool
would form, and out of it another would take shape. And the second whirlpool
would connect up with a third. Those whirlpools, I realize now, had a
conceptual, abstract quality to them. More than anything, I wanted to tell
Shimamoto about them. But they were beyond ordinary language. An entirely
different set of words was needed, but I had no idea what these were. What's
more, I didn't know if what I was feeling was worth putting into words.
Unfortunately, I no longer remember the name of the pianist. All I recall are
the colorful, vivid record jacket and the weight of the record itself. The
record was hefty and thick in a mysterious way.
The collection in her
house included one record each by Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby. We listened to
those two a lot. The Crosby disc featured Christmas songs, which we enjoyed
regardless of the season. It's funny how we could enjoy something like that over
and over.
One December day near
Christmas, Shimamoto and I were sitting in her living room. On the sofa, as
usual, listening to records. Her mother was out of the house on some errand, and
we were alone. It was a cloudy, dark winter afternoon. The sun's rays, streaked
with fine dust, barely shone through the heavy layer of clouds. Everything
looked dim and motionless. It was nearing dusk, and the room was as dark as
night. A kerosene space heater bathed the room in a faint red glow. Nat King
Cole was singing "Pretend." Of course, we had no idea then what the English
lyrics meant To us they were more like a chant. But I loved the song and had
heard it so many times I could imitate the opening lines:
Pretend you're happy when you're blue
It isn't very hard to do
The song and the lovely
smile that always graced Shimamoto's face were one and the same to me. The
lyrics seemed to express a certain way of looking at life, though at times I
found it hard to see life in that way.
Shimamoto had on a blue
sweater with a round neck. She owned a fair number of blue sweaters; blue must
have been her favorite color. Or maybe she wore those sweaters because they went
well with the navy-blue coat she always wore to school. The white collar of her
blouse peeked out at her throat. A checked skirt and white cotton socks
completed her outfit. Her soft, tight sweater revealed the slight swell of her
chest. She sat on the sofa with both legs folded underneath her. One elbow
resting on the back of the sofa, she stared at some far-off, imaginary scene as
she listened to the music.
"Do you think it's true
what they say--that parents of only children don't get along very well?" she
asked.
I mulled over the idea.
But I couldn't figure out the cause and effect of it.
"Where did you hear
that?" I asked.
"Somebody said that to
me. A long time ago. Parents who don't get along very well end up having only
one child. It made me so sad when I heard that."
"Hmm ...," I
said.
"Do your mother and
father get along all right?"
I couldn't answer right
away. I'd never thought about it before.
"My mother isn't too
strong physically," I said. "I'm not sure, but it was probably too much of a
strain for her to have another child after me."
"Have you ever wondered
what it would be like to have a brother or sister?"
"No."
"Why
not?"
I picked up the record
jacket on the table. It was too dark to read what was written on it. I put the
jacket down and rubbed my eyes a couple of times with my wrist. My mother had
once asked me the same question. The answer I gave then didn't make her happy or
sad. It just puzzled her. But for me it was a totally honest, totally sincere
answer.
The things I wanted to
say got all jumbled up as I talked, and my explanation seemed to go on forever.
But what I was trying to get across was just this: The me that's here now has
been brought up without any brothers or sisters. If I did have brothers or
sisters I wouldn't be the me I am. So it's unnatural for the me that's here
before you to think about what it'd be like to have brothers or sisters.... In
other words, I thought my mother's question was pointless.
I gave the same answer
to Shimamoto. She gazed at me steadily as I talked. Something about her
expression pulled people in. It was as if--this is something I thought of only
later, of course--she were gently peeling back one layer after another that
covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling. Her lips changed ever so
slightly with each change in her expression, and I could catch a glimpse deep
within her eyes of a faint light, like a tiny candle flickering in the dark,
narrow room.
"I think I understand
what you mean," she said in a mature, quiet voice.
"Really?"
"Um," she answered.
"There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't.
And time passing is one thing that can't be redone. Come this far, and you can't
go back. Don't you think so?"
I
nodded.
"After a certain length
of time has passed, things harden up. Like cement hardening in a bucket. And we
can't go back anymore. What you want to say is that the cement that makes you up
has hardened, so the you you are now can't be anyone else."
"I guess that's what I
mean," I said uncertainly.
Shimamoto looked at her
hands for a time.
"Sometimes, you know, I
start thinking. About after I grow up and get married. I think about what kind
of house I'll live in, what I'll do. And I think about how many children I'll
have."
"Wow," I
said.
"Haven't you ever
thought about that?"
I shook my head. How
could a twelve-year-old boy be expected to think about that? "So how many kids
do you want to have?"
Her hand, which up till
then had laid on the back of the sofa, she now placed on her knee. I stared
vacantly at her fingers tracing the plaid pattern of her skirt. There was
something mysterious about it, as if invisible thread emanating from her
fingertips spun together an entirely new concept of time. I closed my eyes, and
in the darkness, whirlpools flashed before me. Countless whirlpools were born
and disappeared without a sound. Off in the distance, Nat King Cole was singing
"South of the Border." The song was about Mexico, but at the time I had no idea.
The words "south of the border" had a strangely appealing ring to them. I was
convinced something utterly wonderful lay south of the border. When I opened my
eyes, Shimamoto was still moving her fingers along her skirt. Somewhere deep
inside my body I felt an exquisitely sweet ache.
"It's strange," she
said, "but when I think about children, I can only imagine having one. I can
somehow picture myself having children. I'm a mother, and I have a child. I have
no problem with that. But I can't picture that child having any brothers or
sisters. It's an only child."
She was, without a
doubt, a precocious girl. I feel sure she was attracted to me as a member of the
opposite sex--a feeling I reciprocated. But I had no idea how to deal with those
feelings. Shimamoto didn't, either, I suspect. We held hands just once. She was
leading me somewhere and grabbed my hand as if to say, This way--hurry up. Our
hands were clasped together ten seconds at most, but to me it felt more like
thirty minutes. When she let go of my hand, I was suddenly lost. It was all very
natural, the way she took my hand, but I knew she'd been dying to do
so.
The feel of her hand has
never left me. It was different from any other hand I'd ever held, different
from any touch I've ever known. It was merely the small, warm hand of a
twelve-year-old girl, yet those five fingers and that palm were like a display
case crammed full of everything I wanted to know--and everything I had to
know. By taking my hand, she showed me what these things were. That within the
real world, a place like this existed. In the space of those ten seconds I
became a tiny bird, fluttering into the air, the wind rushing by. From high in
the sky I could see a scene far away. It was so far off I couldn't make it out
clearly, yet something was there, and I knew that someday I would travel to that
place. This revelation made me catch my breath and made my chest
tremble.
I returned home, and
sitting at my desk, I gazed for a long time at the fingers Shimamoto had
clasped. I was ecstatic that she'd held my hand. Her gentle touch warmed my
heart for days. At the same time it confused me, made me perplexed, even sad in
a way. How could I possibly come to terms with that warmth?
After graduating from
elementary school, Shimamoto and I went on to separate junior highs. I left the
home I had lived in till then and moved to a new town. I say a new town, but it
was only two train stops from where I grew up, and in the first three months
after I moved I went to see her three or four times. But that was it. Finally I
stopped going. We were both at a delicate age, when the mere fact that we were
attending different schools and living two train stops away was all it took for
me to feel our worlds had changed completely. Our friends were different, so
were our uniforms and textbooks. My body, my voice, my way of thinking, were
undergoing sudden changes, and an unexpected awkwardness threatened the intimate
world we had created. Shimamoto, of course, was going through even greater
physical and psychological changes. And all of this made me uncomfortable. Her
mother began to look at me in a strange way. Why does this boy keep coming
over? she seemed to be saying. He no longer lives in the neighborhood,
and he goes to a different school. Maybe I was just being too
sensitive.
Shimamoto and I thus
grew apart, and I ended up not seeing her anymore. And that was probably
(probably is the only word I can think of to use here; I don't consider
it my job to investigate the expanse of memory called the past and judge what is
correct and what isn't) a mistake. I should have stayed as close as I could to
her. I needed her, and she needed me. But my self-consciousness was too strong,
and I was too afraid of being hurt. I never saw her again. Until many years
later, that is.
Even after we stopped
seeing each other, I thought of her with great fondness. Memories of her
encouraged me, soothed me, as I passed through the confusion and pain of
adolescence. For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this
special place just for her, like a Reserved sign on a quiet corner table in a
restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her
again.
When I knew her I was
still twelve years old, without any real sexual feelings or desire. Though I'll
admit to a vaguely formed interest in the swell of her chest and what lay
beneath her skirt. But I had no idea what this meant, or where it might
lead.
With ears perked up and
eyes closed, I imagined the existence of a certain place. This place I imagined
was still incomplete. It was misty, indistinct, its outlines vague. Yet I was
sure that something absolutely vital lay waiting for me there. And I knew this:
that Shimamoto was gazing at the very same scene.
We were, the two of us,
still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected,
to-be-acquired reality that would fill us and make us whole. We stood before a
door we'd never seen before. The two of us alone, beneath a faintly flickering
light, our hands tightly clasped together for a fleeting ten seconds of
time.
Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the sun
Haruki
Murakami
South of the Border, West of the sun
My birthday's the fourth
of January, 1951. The first week of the first month of the first year of the
second half of the twentieth century. Something to commemorate, I guess, which
is why my parents named me Hajime--"Beginning," in Japanese. Other than that, a
100 percent average birth. My father worked in a large brokerage firm, my mother
was a typical housewife. During the war, my father was drafted as a student and
sent to fight in Singapore; after the surrender he spent some time in a POW
camp. My mother's house was burned down in a B-29 raid during the final year of
the war. Their generation suffered most during the long war.
When I was born, though,
you'd never have known there'd been a war. No more burned-out ruins, no more
occupation army. We lived in a small, quiet town, in a house my father's company
provided. The house was prewar, somewhat old but roomy enough. Pine trees grew
in the garden, and we even had a small pond and some stone
lanterns.
The town I grew up in
was your typical middle-class suburbia. The classmates I was friendly with all
lived in neat little row houses; some might have been a bit larger than mine,
but you could count on them all having similar entranceways, pine trees in the
garden. The works. My friends' fathers were employed in companies or else were
professionals of some sort. Hardly anyone's mother worked. And most everyone had
a cat or a dog. No one I knew lived in an apartment or a condo. Later on I moved
to another part of town, but it was pretty much identical. The upshot of this is
that until I moved to Tokyo to go to college, I was convinced everyone in the
whole world lived in a single-family home with a garden and a pet, and commuted
to work decked out in a suit. I couldn't for the life of me imagine a different
lifestyle.
In the world I grew up
in, a typical family had two or three children. My childhood friends were all
members of such stereotypical families. If not two kids in the family, then
three; if not three, then two. Families with six or seven kids were few and far
between, but even more unusual were families with only one
child.
I happened to be one of
the unusual ones, since I was an only child. I had an inferiority complex about
it, as if there was something different about me, that what other people all had
and took for granted I lacked.
I detested the term
only child. Every time I heard it, I felt something was missing from
me--like I wasn't quite a complete human being. The phrase only child
stood there, pointing an accusatory finger at me. "Something's not quite all
there, pal," it told me.
In the world I lived in,
it was an accepted idea that only children were spoiled by their parents, weak,
and self-centered. This was a given--like the fact that the barometer goes down
the higher up you go and the fact that cows give milk. That's why I hated it
whenever someone asked me how many brothers and sisters I had. Just let them
hear I didn't have any, and instinctively they thought: An only child, eh?
Spoiled, weak, and self-centered, I betcha. That kind of knee-jerk reaction
depressed me, and hurt. But what really depressed and hurt me was something
else: the fact that everything they thought about me was true. I really was
spoiled, weak, and self-centered.
In the six years I went
to elementary school, I met just one other only child. So I remember her (yes,
it was a girl) very well. I got to know her well, and we talked about all
sorts of things. We understood each other. You could even say I loved
her.
Her last name was
Shimamoto. Soon after she was born, she came down with polio, which made her
drag her left leg. On top of that, she'd transferred to our school at the end of
fifth grade. Compared to me, then, she had a terrible load of psychological
baggage to struggle with. This baggage, though, only made her a tougher, more
self-possessed only child than I could ever have been. She never whined or
complained, never gave any indication of the annoyance she must have felt at
times. No matter what happened, she'd manage a smile. The worse things got, in
fact, the broader her smile became. I loved her smile. It soothed me, encouraged
me. It'll be all right, her smile told me. Just hang in there, and
everything will turn out okay. Years later, whenever I thought of her, it
was her smile that came to mind first.
Shimamoto always got
good grades and was kind to everyone. People respected her. We were both only
children, but in this sense she and I were different. This doesn't mean, though,
that all our classmates liked her. No one teased her or made fun of her, but
except for me, she had no real friends.
She was probably too
cool, too self-possessed. Some of our classmates must have thought her cold and
haughty. But I detected something else--something warm and fragile just below
the surface. Something very much like a child playing hide-and-seek, hidden deep
within her, yet hoping to be found.
Because her father was
transferred a lot, Shimamoto had attended quite a few schools. I can't recall
what her father did. Once, she explained to me in detail what he did, but as
with most kids, it went in one ear and out the other. I seem to recall some
professional job connected with a bank or tax office or something. She lived in
company housing, but the house was larger than normal, a Western-style house
with a low solid stone wall surrounding it. Above the wall was an evergreen
hedge, and through gaps in the hedge you could catch a glimpse of a garden with
a lawn.
Shimamoto was a large
girl, about as tall as I was, with striking features. I was certain that in a
few years she would be gorgeous. But when I first met her, she hadn't developed
an outer look to match her inner qualities. Something about her was unbalanced,
and not many people felt she was much to look at. There was an adult part of her
and a part that was still a child--and they were out of sync. And this
out-of-sync quality made people uneasy.
Probably because our
houses were so close, literally a stone's throw from each other, the first month
after she came to our school she was assigned to the seat next to mine. I
brought her up to speed on what texts she'd need, what the weekly tests were
like, how much we'd covered in each book, how the cleaning and the
dishing-out-lunch assignments were handled. Our school's policy was for the
child who lived nearest any transfer student to help him or her out; my teacher
took me aside to let me know that he expected me to take special care of
Shimamoto, with her lame leg.
As with all kids of
eleven or twelve talking with a member of the opposite sex for the first time,
for a couple of days our conversations were strained. When we found out we were
both only children, though, we relaxed. It was the first time either of us had
met a fellow only child. We had so much we'd held inside about being only
children. Often we'd walk home together. Slowly, because of her leg, we'd walk
the three quarters of a mile home, talking about all kinds of things. The more
we talked, the more we realized we had in common: our love of books and music;
not to mention cats. We both had a hard time explaining our feelings to others.
We both had a long list of foods we didn't want to eat. When it came to subjects
at school, the ones we liked we had no trouble concentrating on; the ones we
disliked we hated to death. But there was one major difference between us--more
than I did, Shimamoto consciously wrapped herself inside a protective shell.
Unlike me, she made an effort to study the subjects she hated, and she got good
grades. When the school lunch contained food she hated, she still ate it. In
other words, she constructed a much taller defensive wall around herself than I
ever built. What remained behind that wall, though, was pretty much what lay
behind mine.
Unlike times when I was
with other girls, I could relax with Shimamoto. I loved walking home with her.
Her left leg limped slightly as she walked. We sometimes took a breather on a
park bench halfway home, but I didn't mind. Rather the opposite--I was glad to
have the extra time.
Soon we began to spend a
lot of time together, but I don't recall anyone kidding us about it. This didn't
strike me at the time, though now it seems strange. After all, kids that age
naturally tease and make fun of any couple who seem close. It might have been
because of the kind of person Shimamoto was. Something about her made other
people a bit tense. She had an air about her that made people think:
Whoa--better not say anything too stupid in front of this girl. Even our
teachers were somewhat on edge when dealing with her. Her lameness might have
had something to do with it. At any rate, most people thought Shimamoto was not
the kind of person you teased, which was just fine by me.
During phys. ed. she sat
on the sidelines, and when our class went hiking or mountain climbing, she
stayed home. Same with summer swim camp. On our annual sports day, she did seem
a little out of sorts. But other than this, her school life was typical. Hardly
ever did she mention her leg. If memory serves, not even once. Whenever we
walked home from school together, she never once apologized for holding me back
or let this thought graze her expression. I knew, though, that it was precisely
because her leg bothered her that she refrained from mentioning it. She didn't
like to go to other kids' homes much, since she'd have to remove her shoes,
Japanese style, at the entrance. The heels of her shoes were different heights,
and the shoes themselves were shaped differently--something she wanted at all
costs to conceal. Must have been custom-made shoes. When she arrived at her own
home, the first thing she did was toss her shoes in the closet as fast as she
could.
Shimamoto's house had a
brand-new stereo in the living room, and I used to go over to her place to
listen to music. It was a pretty nice stereo. Her father's LP collection,
though, didn't do it justice. At most he had fifteen records, chiefly
collections of light classics. We listened to those fifteen records a thousand
times, and even today I can recall the music--every single
note.
Shimamoto was in charge
of the records. She'd take one from its jacket, place it carefully on the
turntable without touching the grooves with her fingers, and, after making sure
to brush the cartridge free of any dust with a tiny brush, lower the needle ever
so gently onto the record. When the record was finished, she'd spray it and wipe
it with a felt cloth. Finally she'd return the record to its jacket and its
proper place on the shelf. Her father had taught her this procedure, and she
followed his instructions with a terribly serious look on her face, her eyes
narrowed, her breath held in check. Meanwhile, I was on the sofa, watching her
every move. Only when the record was safely back on the shelf did she turn to me
and give a little smile. And every time, this thought hit me: It wasn't a record
she was handling. It was a fragile soul inside a glass
bottle.
In my house we didn't
have records or a record player. My parents didn't care much for music. So I was
always listening to music on a small plastic AM radio. Rock and roll was my
favorite, but before long I grew to enjoy Shimamoto's brand of classical music.
This was music from another world, which had its appeal, but more than that I
loved it because she was a part of that world. Once or twice a week, she
and I would sit on the sofa, drinking the tea her mother made for us, and spend
the afternoon listening to Rossini overtures, Beethoven's Pastorale, and
the Peer Gynt Suite. Her mother was happy to have me over. She was
pleased her daughter had a friend so soon after transferring to a new school,
and I guess it helped that I was a neat dresser. Honestly, I couldn't bring
myself to like her mother very much. No particular reason I felt that way. She
was always nice to me. But I could detect a hint of irritation in her voice, and
it put me on edge.
Of all her father's
records, the one I liked best was a recording of the Liszt piano concertos: one
concerto on each side. There were two reasons I liked this record. First of all,
the record jacket was beautiful. Second, no one around me--with the exception of
Shimamoto, of course--ever listened to Liszt's piano concertos. The very idea
excited me. I'd found a world that no one around me knew--a secret garden only I
was allowed to enter. I felt elevated, lifted to another plane of
existence.
And the music itself was
wonderful. At first it struck me as exaggerated, artificial, even
incomprehensible. Little by little, though, with repeated listenings, a vague
image formed in my mind--an image that had meaning. When I closed my eyes and
concentrated, the music came to me as a series of whirlpools. One whirlpool
would form, and out of it another would take shape. And the second whirlpool
would connect up with a third. Those whirlpools, I realize now, had a
conceptual, abstract quality to them. More than anything, I wanted to tell
Shimamoto about them. But they were beyond ordinary language. An entirely
different set of words was needed, but I had no idea what these were. What's
more, I didn't know if what I was feeling was worth putting into words.
Unfortunately, I no longer remember the name of the pianist. All I recall are
the colorful, vivid record jacket and the weight of the record itself. The
record was hefty and thick in a mysterious way.
The collection in her
house included one record each by Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby. We listened to
those two a lot. The Crosby disc featured Christmas songs, which we enjoyed
regardless of the season. It's funny how we could enjoy something like that over
and over.
One December day near
Christmas, Shimamoto and I were sitting in her living room. On the sofa, as
usual, listening to records. Her mother was out of the house on some errand, and
we were alone. It was a cloudy, dark winter afternoon. The sun's rays, streaked
with fine dust, barely shone through the heavy layer of clouds. Everything
looked dim and motionless. It was nearing dusk, and the room was as dark as
night. A kerosene space heater bathed the room in a faint red glow. Nat King
Cole was singing "Pretend." Of course, we had no idea then what the English
lyrics meant To us they were more like a chant. But I loved the song and had
heard it so many times I could imitate the opening lines:
Pretend you're happy when you're blue
It isn't very hard to do
The song and the lovely
smile that always graced Shimamoto's face were one and the same to me. The
lyrics seemed to express a certain way of looking at life, though at times I
found it hard to see life in that way.
Shimamoto had on a blue
sweater with a round neck. She owned a fair number of blue sweaters; blue must
have been her favorite color. Or maybe she wore those sweaters because they went
well with the navy-blue coat she always wore to school. The white collar of her
blouse peeked out at her throat. A checked skirt and white cotton socks
completed her outfit. Her soft, tight sweater revealed the slight swell of her
chest. She sat on the sofa with both legs folded underneath her. One elbow
resting on the back of the sofa, she stared at some far-off, imaginary scene as
she listened to the music.
"Do you think it's true
what they say--that parents of only children don't get along very well?" she
asked.
I mulled over the idea.
But I couldn't figure out the cause and effect of it.
"Where did you hear
that?" I asked.
"Somebody said that to
me. A long time ago. Parents who don't get along very well end up having only
one child. It made me so sad when I heard that."
"Hmm ...," I
said.
"Do your mother and
father get along all right?"
I couldn't answer right
away. I'd never thought about it before.
"My mother isn't too
strong physically," I said. "I'm not sure, but it was probably too much of a
strain for her to have another child after me."
"Have you ever wondered
what it would be like to have a brother or sister?"
"No."
"Why
not?"
I picked up the record
jacket on the table. It was too dark to read what was written on it. I put the
jacket down and rubbed my eyes a couple of times with my wrist. My mother had
once asked me the same question. The answer I gave then didn't make her happy or
sad. It just puzzled her. But for me it was a totally honest, totally sincere
answer.
The things I wanted to
say got all jumbled up as I talked, and my explanation seemed to go on forever.
But what I was trying to get across was just this: The me that's here now has
been brought up without any brothers or sisters. If I did have brothers or
sisters I wouldn't be the me I am. So it's unnatural for the me that's here
before you to think about what it'd be like to have brothers or sisters.... In
other words, I thought my mother's question was pointless.
I gave the same answer
to Shimamoto. She gazed at me steadily as I talked. Something about her
expression pulled people in. It was as if--this is something I thought of only
later, of course--she were gently peeling back one layer after another that
covered a person's heart, a very sensual feeling. Her lips changed ever so
slightly with each change in her expression, and I could catch a glimpse deep
within her eyes of a faint light, like a tiny candle flickering in the dark,
narrow room.
"I think I understand
what you mean," she said in a mature, quiet voice.
"Really?"
"Um," she answered.
"There are some things in this world that can be done over, and some that can't.
And time passing is one thing that can't be redone. Come this far, and you can't
go back. Don't you think so?"
I
nodded.
"After a certain length
of time has passed, things harden up. Like cement hardening in a bucket. And we
can't go back anymore. What you want to say is that the cement that makes you up
has hardened, so the you you are now can't be anyone else."
"I guess that's what I
mean," I said uncertainly.
Shimamoto looked at her
hands for a time.
"Sometimes, you know, I
start thinking. About after I grow up and get married. I think about what kind
of house I'll live in, what I'll do. And I think about how many children I'll
have."
"Wow," I
said.
"Haven't you ever
thought about that?"
I shook my head. How
could a twelve-year-old boy be expected to think about that? "So how many kids
do you want to have?"
Her hand, which up till
then had laid on the back of the sofa, she now placed on her knee. I stared
vacantly at her fingers tracing the plaid pattern of her skirt. There was
something mysterious about it, as if invisible thread emanating from her
fingertips spun together an entirely new concept of time. I closed my eyes, and
in the darkness, whirlpools flashed before me. Countless whirlpools were born
and disappeared without a sound. Off in the distance, Nat King Cole was singing
"South of the Border." The song was about Mexico, but at the time I had no idea.
The words "south of the border" had a strangely appealing ring to them. I was
convinced something utterly wonderful lay south of the border. When I opened my
eyes, Shimamoto was still moving her fingers along her skirt. Somewhere deep
inside my body I felt an exquisitely sweet ache.
"It's strange," she
said, "but when I think about children, I can only imagine having one. I can
somehow picture myself having children. I'm a mother, and I have a child. I have
no problem with that. But I can't picture that child having any brothers or
sisters. It's an only child."
She was, without a
doubt, a precocious girl. I feel sure she was attracted to me as a member of the
opposite sex--a feeling I reciprocated. But I had no idea how to deal with those
feelings. Shimamoto didn't, either, I suspect. We held hands just once. She was
leading me somewhere and grabbed my hand as if to say, This way--hurry up. Our
hands were clasped together ten seconds at most, but to me it felt more like
thirty minutes. When she let go of my hand, I was suddenly lost. It was all very
natural, the way she took my hand, but I knew she'd been dying to do
so.
The feel of her hand has
never left me. It was different from any other hand I'd ever held, different
from any touch I've ever known. It was merely the small, warm hand of a
twelve-year-old girl, yet those five fingers and that palm were like a display
case crammed full of everything I wanted to know--and everything I had to
know. By taking my hand, she showed me what these things were. That within the
real world, a place like this existed. In the space of those ten seconds I
became a tiny bird, fluttering into the air, the wind rushing by. From high in
the sky I could see a scene far away. It was so far off I couldn't make it out
clearly, yet something was there, and I knew that someday I would travel to that
place. This revelation made me catch my breath and made my chest
tremble.
I returned home, and
sitting at my desk, I gazed for a long time at the fingers Shimamoto had
clasped. I was ecstatic that she'd held my hand. Her gentle touch warmed my
heart for days. At the same time it confused me, made me perplexed, even sad in
a way. How could I possibly come to terms with that warmth?
After graduating from
elementary school, Shimamoto and I went on to separate junior highs. I left the
home I had lived in till then and moved to a new town. I say a new town, but it
was only two train stops from where I grew up, and in the first three months
after I moved I went to see her three or four times. But that was it. Finally I
stopped going. We were both at a delicate age, when the mere fact that we were
attending different schools and living two train stops away was all it took for
me to feel our worlds had changed completely. Our friends were different, so
were our uniforms and textbooks. My body, my voice, my way of thinking, were
undergoing sudden changes, and an unexpected awkwardness threatened the intimate
world we had created. Shimamoto, of course, was going through even greater
physical and psychological changes. And all of this made me uncomfortable. Her
mother began to look at me in a strange way. Why does this boy keep coming
over? she seemed to be saying. He no longer lives in the neighborhood,
and he goes to a different school. Maybe I was just being too
sensitive.
Shimamoto and I thus
grew apart, and I ended up not seeing her anymore. And that was probably
(probably is the only word I can think of to use here; I don't consider
it my job to investigate the expanse of memory called the past and judge what is
correct and what isn't) a mistake. I should have stayed as close as I could to
her. I needed her, and she needed me. But my self-consciousness was too strong,
and I was too afraid of being hurt. I never saw her again. Until many years
later, that is.
Even after we stopped
seeing each other, I thought of her with great fondness. Memories of her
encouraged me, soothed me, as I passed through the confusion and pain of
adolescence. For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this
special place just for her, like a Reserved sign on a quiet corner table in a
restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her
again.
When I knew her I was
still twelve years old, without any real sexual feelings or desire. Though I'll
admit to a vaguely formed interest in the swell of her chest and what lay
beneath her skirt. But I had no idea what this meant, or where it might
lead.
With ears perked up and
eyes closed, I imagined the existence of a certain place. This place I imagined
was still incomplete. It was misty, indistinct, its outlines vague. Yet I was
sure that something absolutely vital lay waiting for me there. And I knew this:
that Shimamoto was gazing at the very same scene.
We were, the two of us,
still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected,
to-be-acquired reality that would fill us and make us whole. We stood before a
door we'd never seen before. The two of us alone, beneath a faintly flickering
light, our hands tightly clasped together for a fleeting ten seconds of
time.
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