Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage (8 page)

Haida got quite talkative when it came to music. He went on, delineating the special characteristics of Berman’s performance of Liszt, but Tsukuru barely listened. Instead, a picture of Shiro performing the piece, a mental image, vivid and three-dimensional, welled up in his mind. As if those beautiful moments were steadily swimming back, through a waterway, against the legitimate pressure of time.

The Yamaha grand piano in the living room of her house. Reflecting Shiro’s conscientiousness, it was always perfectly tuned. The lustrous exterior without a single smudge or fingerprint to mar its luster. The afternoon light filtering in through the window. Shadows cast in the garden by the cypress trees. The lace curtain wavering in the breeze. Teacups on the table. Her black hair, neatly tied back, her expression intent as she gazed at the score. Her ten long, lovely fingers on the keyboard. Her legs, as they precisely depressed the pedals,
possessed a hidden strength that seemed unimaginable in other situations. Her calves were like glazed porcelain, white and smooth. Whenever she was asked to play something, this piece was the one she most often chose. “Le mal du pays.” The groundless sadness called forth in a person’s heart by a pastoral landscape. Homesickness. Melancholy.

As he lightly shut his eyes and gave himself up to the music, Tsukuru felt his chest tighten with a disconsolate, stifling feeling, as if, before he’d realized it, he’d swallowed a hard lump of cloud. The piece ended and went on to the next track, but he said nothing, simply allowing those scenes to wash over him. Haida shot him an occasional glance.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to leave this record here.

I can’t listen to it in my dorm room anyway,” Haida said as he slipped the LP back in its jacket.

Even now this three-disc boxed set was still in Tsukuru’s apartment. Nestled right next to Barry Manilow and the Pet Shop Boys.

Haida was a wonderful cook. To thank Tsukuru for letting him listen to music, he would go shopping and prepare a meal in Tsukuru’s kitchen. Tsukuru’s sister had left behind a set of pots and pans, as well as a set of
dishes. These were his inheritance—as well as most of his furniture, and the occasional phone call from one of her ex-boyfriends (“Sorry, my sister doesn’t live here anymore”). He and Haida had dinner together two or three times a week. They’d listen to music, talk, and eat the meal Haida had prepared. The meals he made were mostly simple, everyday dishes, though on holidays when he had more time, he’d try more elaborate recipes. Everything he made was delicious. Haida seemed to have a gift as a cook. Whatever he made—a plain omelet, miso soup, cream sauce, or paella—was done skillfully and intelligently.

“It’s too bad you’re in the physics department. You should open a restaurant,” Tsukuru said, half joking.

Haida laughed. “That sounds good. But I don’t like to be tied down in one place. I want to be free—to go where I want, when I want, and be able to think about whatever I want.”

“Sure, but that can’t be easy to actually do.”

“It isn’t. But I’ve made up my mind. I always want to be free. I like cooking, but I don’t want to be holed up in a kitchen doing it as a job. If that happened, I’d end up hating somebody.”

“Hating somebody?”

“The cook hates the waiter, and they both hate the customer,”
Haida said. “A line from the Arnold Wesker
play
The Kitchen
. People whose freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody. Right? I know I don’t want to live like that.”

“Never being constrained, thinking about things freely—that’s what you’re hoping for?”

“Exactly.”

“But it seems to me that thinking about things freely can’t be easy.”

“It means leaving behind your physical body. Leaving the cage of your physical flesh, breaking free of the chains, and letting pure logic soar free. Giving a natural life to logic. That’s the core of free thought.”

“It doesn’t sound easy.”

Haida shook his head. “No, depending on how you look at it, it’s not that hard. Most people do it at times, without even realizing it. That’s how they manage to stay sane. They’re just not aware that’s what they’re doing.”

Tsukuru considered this. He liked talking with Haida about these kinds of abstract, speculative ideas. Usually he wasn’t much of a talker, but something about talking with this younger man stimulated his mind, and sometimes the words just flowed. He’d never experienced this before. Back in Nagoya, in his group of five, he’d more often than not played the listener.

“But unless you can do that intentionally,” Tsukuru
said, “you can’t achieve the real
freedom of thought
you’re talking about, right?”

Haida nodded. “Exactly. But it’s as difficult as intentionally dreaming. It’s way beyond your average person.”

“Yet you want to be able to do it intentionally.”

“You could say that.”

“I don’t imagine they teach that technique in the physics department.”

Haida laughed. “I never expected they would. What I’m looking for here is a free environment, and time. That’s all. In an academic setting if you want to discuss what it means to think, you first need to agree on a theoretical definition. And that’s where things get sticky. Originality is nothing but judicious
imitation
. So said Voltaire, the realist.”

“You agree with that?”

“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn’t fear boundaries, but you also should not be afraid of destroying them. That’s what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries. What’s really important in life is always the things that are secondary. That’s about all I can say.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Tsukuru said.

“Sure.”

“In different religions prophets fall into a kind of ecstasy and receive a message from an absolute being.”

“Correct.”

“And this takes place somewhere that transcends free will, right? Always passively.”

“That’s correct.”

“And that message surpasses the boundaries of the individual prophet and functions in a broader, universal way.”

“Correct again.”

“And in that message there is neither contradiction nor equivocation.”

Haida nodded silently.

“I don’t get it,” Tsukuru said. “If that’s true, then what’s the value of human free will?”

“That’s a great question,” Haida said, and smiled quietly. The kind of smile a cat gives as it stretches out, napping in the sun. “I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t. Not yet.”

Haida began staying over at Tsukuru’s apartment on the weekends. They would talk until late at night, at which point Haida would make up the fold-out sofa in the living room and go to sleep. In the morning he would make coffee and cook them omelets. Haida was very
particular about coffee, always using special aromatic beans, which he ground with a small electric mill that he brought along. His devotion to coffee beans was the one luxury in his otherwise poor, meager lifestyle.

To this new friend and confidant, Tsukuru opened up about all sorts of personal things. Still, he carefully avoided ever mentioning his four friends in Nagoya.

It wasn’t something he could easily talk about. The wounds were still too fresh, too deep.

Yet when he was with this younger friend he could, by and large, forget those four people. No,
forget
wasn’t the right word. The pain of having been so openly rejected was always with him. But now, like the tide, it ebbed and flowed. At times it flowed up to his feet, at other times it withdrew far away, so far away he could barely detect it. Tsukuru could feel, little by little, that he was setting down roots in the new soil of Tokyo, building a new life there, albeit one that was small and lonely.

His days in Nagoya felt more like something in the past, almost foreign. This was, unmistakably, a step forward that Haida, his new friend, had brought to his life.

Haida had an opinion on everything, and was always able to logically argue his perspective. The more time Tsukuru spent with this younger friend, the deeper his respect grew. Yet Tsukuru couldn’t understand why Haida was drawn to him, or was even interested in him.
But they enjoyed each other’s company so much that time spent bantering just flew by.

When he was alone, though, sometimes Tsukuru longed for a girlfriend. He wanted to hold a woman close, caress her body, inhale the scent of her skin. It was an entirely natural desire for a healthy young man. But when he tried to conjure up the image of a woman, and when he thought about embracing one, for some reason what automatically came to mind was an image of Shiro and Kuro. They always appeared, in this imaginary world, as an inseparable pair. And that always gave Tsukuru an inexplicably gloomy feeling. Why,
even now
, does it always have to be these two? he thought. They flatly rejected me. Said they never wanted to see me anymore, or talk to me ever again. Why can’t they just make a quiet exit and leave me alone? Tsukuru Tazaki was twenty years old at this point, but had never held a woman in his arms. Or kissed a woman, or held someone’s hand, or even gone on a date.

Something must be fundamentally wrong with me, Tsukuru often thought. Something must be blocking the normal flow of emotions, warping my personality. But Tsukuru couldn’t tell whether this blockage came about when he was rejected by his four friends, or whether it was something innate, a structural issue unrelated to the trauma he’d gone through.

• • •

One Saturday night, he and Haida were up talking late as usual when they turned to the subject of death. They talked about the significance of dying, about having to live with the knowledge that you were going to die. They discussed it mainly in theoretical terms. Tsukuru wanted to explain how close to death he had been very recently, and the profound changes that experience had brought about, both physically and mentally. He wanted to tell Haida about the strange things he’d seen. But he knew that if he mentioned it, he’d have to explain the whole sequence of events, from start to finish. So as always, Haida did most of the talking, while Tsukuru sat back and listened.

A little past 11 p.m. their conversation petered out and silence descended on the room. At this point they would normally have called it a night and gotten ready for bed. Both of them tended to wake up early. But Haida remained seated, cross-legged, on the sofa, deep in thought. Then, in a hesitant tone, something unusual for him, he spoke up.

“I have a kind of weird story related to death. Something my father told me. He said it was an actual experience he had when he was in his early twenties. Just the age I am now. I’ve heard the story so many times I can
remember every detail. It’s a really strange story—it’s hard even now for me to believe it actually happened—but my father isn’t the type to lie about something like that. Or the type who would concoct such a story. I’m sure you know this, but when you make up a story the details change each time you retell it. You tend to embellish things, and forget what you said before.… But my father’s story, from start to finish, was always exactly the same, each time he told it. So I think it must be something he actually experienced. I’m his son, and I know him really well, so the only thing I can do is believe what he said. But you don’t know my father, Tsukuru, so feel free to believe it or not. Just understand that this is what he told me. You can take it as folklore, or a tale of the supernatural, I don’t mind. It’s a long story, and it’s already late, but do you mind if I tell it?”

Sure, Tsukuru said, that would be fine. I’m not sleepy yet.

“When my father was young, he spent a year wandering around Japan,” Haida began. “This was at the end of the 1960s, the peak of the counterculture era, when the student movement was upending universities. I don’t know all the details, but when he was in college in Tokyo, a lot of stupid things happened, and he got fed up with politics and left the movement. He took a leave of absence from school and wandered around the country. He did odd jobs to earn a living, read books when he had the time, met all sorts of people, and gained a lot of real-life, practical experience. My father says this was the happiest time of his life, when he learned some important lessons. When I was a kid, he used to tell me stories from those days, like an old soldier reminiscing about long-ago battles in some far-off place. After those bohemian days, he went back to college, and returned to academic life. He never went on a long trip ever again. As far as I know, he’s spent his time since just
shuttling back and forth between home and his office. It’s strange, isn’t it? No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.”

That winter Haida’s father worked as general handyman at a small hot-springs resort in the mountains of Oita Prefecture in southern Japan. He really liked the place and decided to stay put for a while. As long as he completed his daily tasks, and any other miscellaneous jobs they asked him to undertake, the rest of the time he could do as he pleased. The pay was minimal, but he got a free room plus three meals a day, and he could bathe in the hot springs as often as he liked. When he had time off he lay around in his tiny room and read. The other people there were kind to this taciturn, eccentric Tokyo student, and the meals were simple but tasty, made with fresh, local ingredients. The place was, above all, isolated from the outside world—there was no TV reception, and the newspapers were a day late. The nearest bus stop was three kilometers down the mountain, and the only vehicle that could make it from there and back on the awful road was a battered old jeep owned by the inn. They’d only just recently gotten electricity installed.