Kafka on the Shore

Chapter 20

It was already past eight p. m. when the eighteen-wheeler refrigerated truck pulled off the Tomei Highway and let Nakata out in the parking lot of the Fujigawa rest area. Canvas bag and umbrella in hand, he clambered down from the passenger seat to the asphalt.

"Good luck in finding another ride," the driver said, his head sticking out the window. "If you ask around, I'm sure you'll find something."

"Much obliged. Nakata appreciates all your help."

"Take it easy," the driver said, then waved and pulled back onto the highway.

Fu-ji-ga-wa, the driver had said. Nakata had no idea where Fu-ji-ga-wa was, though he did understand he'd left Tokyo and was heading west. No need for a compass or a map to tell him that, he knew it instinctively. Now if only a truck going west would give him a ride.

Nakata was hungry and decided to have a bowl of ramen in the rest area restaurant. The rice balls and chocolate in his bag he wanted to save for an emergency. Not being able to read, it took him a while to figure out how to purchase a meal. Before going into the dining hall you had to buy meal tickets from a vending machine, but he had to have somebody help him read the buttons. "My eyes are bad, so I can't see too well," he told a middle-aged woman, and she inserted the money for him, pushed the right button, and handed him his change. Experience had taught him it was better not to let on that he didn't know how to read. Because when he did, people stared at him like he was some kind of monster.

After his meal, Nakata, umbrella in hand, bag slung over his shoulder, made the rounds of the trucks in the parking lot, asking for a ride. I'm heading west, he explained, and I wonder if you'd be kind enough to give me a ride? But the drivers all took one look at him and shook their heads. An elderly hitchhiker was pretty unusual, and they were naturally wary of anything out of the ordinary. Our company doesn't allow us to pick up hitchhikers, they all said. Sorry.

It had taken a long time to make it from Nakano Ward to the entrance to the Tomei Highway. He'd never been out of Nakano before, and had no idea where the highway was. He had a special pass for the city bus line he could use, but he'd never ridden by himself on the subway or train, where you needed to buy a ticket.

It was just before ten a. m. when he packed a change of clothes, a toilet kit, and some snacks in his bag, carefully put the cash he'd hidden under the tatami in a money belt for safekeeping, and then, the large umbrella in hand, left his apartment. When he asked the city bus driver how he could get to the highway, the man laughed.

"This bus only goes to Shinjuku Station. City buses don't go on the highway. You'll have to take a highway bus."

"Where can I get a highway bus that goes on the To-mei Highway?"

"Tokyo Station," the driver replied. "Take this bus to Shinjuku Station, then take a train to Tokyo Station, where you can buy a reserved-seat ticket. The buses there will take you to the Tomei Highway."

Nakata wasn't at all sure what he meant, but went ahead and took the bus as far as Shinjuku. But when he got there he was overwhelmed. The massive station was jammed with people, and he had trouble moving through the crowds. There were so many train lines, too, that he couldn't figure out which one went to Tokyo Station. Since he couldn't read the signs, he asked a few passersby, but their explanations were too fast, too complicated, and full of place-names he didn't recognize. I might as well be talking to Kawamura, Nakata thought to himself. There was always a police box to ask directions at, but he was afraid they'd mistake him for a senile old person and take him into custody, something he'd experienced once before. As he wandered around near the station the exhaust and noise got to him and he started to feel sick. Avoiding the crowded sidewalks, he found a small park set between two high-rise buildings and sat down on a bench.

Nakata was at a complete loss. He sat there, muttering occasionally, rubbing the top of his close-cropped head. There wasn't a cat to be seen in the park. There were plenty of crows, though, squawking down and rummaging through the trash baskets. Nakata looked up at the sky a few times, and from the sun's position could guess the approximate time. Because of all the exhaust, perhaps, the sky was covered in a strange color.

At noon, office workers from the nearby buildings flooded out to eat lunch in the park. Nakata ate the bean-jam buns he'd brought with him, washing them down with hot tea from his thermos. Two young women sat down together on the bench besides his, and he decided to talk to them. How can I get to the To-mei Highway? he asked. They told him the same thing the city bus driver had said. Take the Chuo Line to Tokyo Station, then a Tomei Highway bus.

"Nakata tried that but it didn't work," Nakata admitted. "I've never been out of Nakano Ward before. So I don't know how to take the train. I just know how to ride the city bus. I can't read, so I can't buy a ticket. I took the city bus here, but don't know how to go any farther."

You can't read?! they asked, astonished. He seemed like a harmless enough old man. A nice smile, dressed neatly. Carrying an umbrella on such a fine day like this was a bit odd, but he didn't appear to be homeless. A pleasant face, especially those bright-looking eyes.

"You really mean to say you've never been outside Nakano Ward?" the girl with black hair asked.

"Yes. I've tried not to ever go out of it. If Nakata got lost, there's nobody who'd come looking for me."

"And you can't read," said the other girl, the one with dyed brownish hair.

"That's right. I can't read at all. I can understand simple numbers, but can't add."

"Hmm. I imagine it would be hard for you to take a train."

"Yes, it's very hard. I can't buy a ticket."

"If we had time we could take you to the station and make sure you get on the right train, but we have to get back to work soon. I'm really sorry."

"No, no need to apologize. I'll figure it out somehow."

"I've got it!" the girl with black hair exclaimed. "Didn't Togeguchi over in sales say he had to go to Yokohama today?"

"Yes, now that you mention it. He'd help out if we asked him. He's a little on the gloomy side, but not a bad guy, really," the brown-haired girl said.

"Since you can't read, maybe it'd be better to hitchhike," the black-haired girl said.

"Hitchhike?"

"Ask for a ride from somebody. Mostly it ends up being rides with long-haul truckers. Regular cars don't pick up hitchhikers much."

"Nakata's not sure what long-haul truckers are."

"As long as you go there it'll work out. I hitchhiked once when I was in college. Truck drivers are all nice guys."

"How far are you going on the Tomei Highway?" the brown-haired girl asked.

"Nakata doesn't know," Nakata replied.

"You don't know?"

"I'll know when I get there. So I'll start out going west on the To-mei Highway. After that I'll think about where I'll go. Anyhow, I have to go west."

The two girls looked at each other, but Nakata's words were strangely persuasive and they found themselves feeling kindly toward the old man. They finished their lunches, tossed their empty cans in the trash, and stood up.

"Why don't you come with us?" the black-haired girl said. "We'll figure something out."

Nakata followed them into a nearby building. He'd never been in such a large building before. The two girls had him sit at a bench next to the reception desk, then spoke with the receptionist and told Nakata to wait there for a while. They disappeared into one of the elevator banks in the lobby. As Nakata sat there, umbrella and canvas bag in hand, office workers streamed back inside after their lunch hour. Another scene he'd never laid eyes on before in his life. As if by mutual consent, all the people were well dressed-ties, shiny briefcases, and high heels, everyone rushing off in the same direction. For the life of him Nakata couldn't understand what so many people like this could possibly be up to.

After a time the two girls were back, acccompanied by a gangly young man wearing a white shirt and striped tie.

"This is Mr. Togeguchi," the brown-haired girl said. "He's about to drive to Yokohama. And he said he'll take you with him. He'll drop you at the Kohoku parking lot on the Tomei Highway, and hopefully you'll be able to find another ride there. Just go around telling people you want to go west, and when someone gives you a ride be sure to buy them a meal when you stop somewhere. Do you follow?"

"But do you have enough money for that?" the black-haired one asked.

"Yes, I have enough."

"Mr. Nakata's a friend of ours, so be nice to him," the brown-haired girl said to Togeguchi.

"If you'll be nice to me," the young man replied timidly.

"One of these days…," the black-haired one said.

As they were saying good-bye, the girls said, "Here's a little going-away present. For when you get hungry." They handed him some rice balls and a bar of chocolate they'd bought at a convenience store.

"I don't know how to thank you enough for all you've done," Nakata said. "I'll be praying that good things happen to you both."

"I hope your prayers come true," the brown-haired one said as her companion giggled.

The young man, Togeguchi, had Nakata sit in the passenger seat of the Hi-Ace van, then drove down the Metropolitan Highway and onto the Tomei. The roads were backed up, so the two of them talked about all kinds of things as they inched along. Togeguchi was bashful, and didn't say much at first, but after he got used to having Nakata with him he started talking, to the point where it wound up less a conversation than a running monologue. There were a lot of things he wanted to talk about, and he found it easy to open up to a stranger like Nakata, whom he'd never see again. He explained that he'd broken up with his fiancée a few months ago. She'd had another boyfriend she'd been secretly seeing all the while. He said he didn't get along well with his bosses at work and was thinking of quitting. His parents had gotten divorced when he was in junior high, and his mother soon got remarried to some sleazeball. He'd lent money from his savings to a friend who didn't give any indication he'd be repaying him anytime soon. And the college student who lived in the apartment next door blasted his music so loud he couldn't get much sleep.

Nakata listened diligently, chiming in at appropriate points, tossing in an occasional opinion of his own. By the time their car pulled into the Kohoku parking area Nakata knew just about everything there was to know about the young man. There was a lot he didn't understand, but he did see the big picture of Togeguchi's life, namely that here was a poor young guy who, while trying to live an upright life, had his share of problems.

"Nakata's much obliged to you," he said. "Thank you so very much for the ride."

"I enjoyed it. Thanks to you, Mr. Nakata, I feel completely relaxed now. I've never talked to anyone like this before, and I'm happy I could tell you everything. I hope I haven't bored you with all my problems."

"No, not at all. Nakata's very happy, too, to be able to talk with you. I'm sure good things are going to happen to you, Mr. Togeguchi."

The young man took a telephone card from his wallet and handed it to Nakata. "Please take this card. My company makes them. Consider it a going-away present. I wish I could give you something better."

"Thank you very much," Nakata said, and carefully tucked it into his wallet. He had no one to phone, and didn't know how to use the card anyway, but he thought it was more polite to accept it. By now it was three p. m.

It took another hour to find someone willing to take him as far as Fujigawa. The trucker was a beefy man in his mid-forties, with arms like logs and a jutting belly, who was hauling fresh fish in a refrigerated truck.

"I hope you don't mind the fish smell," the driver said.

"Fish are one of Nakata's favorites," Nakata replied.

The driver laughed. "You're a strange one, aren't you."

"People tell me that sometimes."

"I happen to like the strange ones," the driver said. "People who look normal and live a normal life-they're the ones you have to watch out for."

"Is that so?"

"Believe me, that's how it goes. In my opinion, anyway."

"Nakata doesn't have many opinions. Though I do like eel."

"Well, that's an opinion. That you like eel."

"Eel is an opinion?"

"Sure, saying you like eel's an opinion."

Thus the two of them drove to Fujigawa. The driver said his name was Hagita.

"So, Mr. Nakata, what do you think about the way the world's going?" he asked.

"I'm very sorry, I'm not bright, so I have no idea at all about that," Nakata said.

"Having your own opinion and not being very bright are two different things."

"But Mr. Hagita, not being very bright means you can't think about things."

"But you did say you like eel."

"Yes, eel is one of Nakata's favorites."

"That's a connection, see?"

"Um."

"Do you like chicken and egg over rice?"

"Yes, that's one of Nakata's favorites too."

"Well, there's a connection there, too," Hagita said. "You build up relationships like that one after another and before you know it you have meaning. The more connections, the deeper the meaning. Doesn't matter if it's eel, or rice bowls, or grilled fish, whatever. Get it?"

"No, I still don't understand. Does food make connections between things?"

"Not just food. Streetcars, the emperor, whatever."

"But I don't ride streetcars."

"That's fine. Look-what I'm getting at is no matter who or what you're dealing with, people build up meaning between themselves and the things around them. The important thing is whether this comes about naturally or not. Being bright has nothing to do with it. What matters is that you see things with your own eyes."

"You're very bright, Mr. Hagita."

Hagita let out a loud laugh. "It isn't a question of intelligence. I'm not all that bright, I just have my own way of thinking. That's why people get disgusted with me. They accuse me of always bringing up things that are better left alone. If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you."

"Nakata still doesn't understand, but are you saying that there's a link between liking eel and liking chicken and egg over rice?"

"You could put it that way, I suppose. There's always going to be a connection between you, Mr. Nakata, and the things you deal with. Just like there's a connection between eel and rice bowls. And as the web of these connections spreads out, a relationship between you, Mr. Nakata, and capitalists and the proletariat naturally develops."

"Pro-le-what?"

"The proletariat," Mr. Hagita said, taking his hands off the steering wheel and making a wide gesture. To Nakata they looked as massive as baseball gloves. "The people who work hard, who earn their bread through the sweat of their brow, those are the proletariat. On the other hand you've got your guys who sit on their duffs, not lifting a finger, giving orders to other people and getting a hundred times my salary. Those are your capitalists."

"I don't know about people who are capitalists. I'm poor, and I don't know anybody great like that. The greatest person I know is the Governor of Tokyo. Is the Governor a capitalist?"

"Yeah, I suppose. Governors are more likely to be capitalists' lapdogs, though."

"The Governor is a dog?" Nakata remembered the huge black dog who took him to Johnnie Walker's house, and that ominous figure and the Governor overlapped in his mind.

"The world's swarming with those kind of dogs. Pawns of the capitalists."

"Pawns?"

"Like paws, with an 'n'."

"Are there any capitalist cats?" Nakata asked.

Hagita burst out laughing. "Boy, you are different, Mr. Nakata! But I like your style. Capitalist cats! That's a good one. A very unique opinion you have there."

"Mr. Hagita?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm poor and received a sub city every month from the Governor. Was this the wrong thing to do?"

"How much do you get every month?"

Nakata told him the amount.

Hagita shook his head disgustedly. "Pretty damn hard to get by on so little."

"That's not true, because Nakata doesn't use much money. Besides the sub city, I get money by helping people find their lost cats."

"No kidding? A professional cat-finder?" Hagita said, impressed. "You're an amazing guy, I have to say."

"Actually, I'm able to talk with cats," Nakata said. "I can understand what they say. That helps me locate the missing ones."

Hagita nodded. "I wouldn't put it past you."

"But not long ago I found out I couldn't talk with cats anymore. I wonder why."

"Things change every day, Mr. Nakata. With each new dawn it's not the same world as the day before. And you're not the same person you were, either. You get what I'm saying?"

"Yes."

"Connections change too. Who's the capitalist, who's the proletarian. Who's on the right, who's on the left. The information revolution, stock options, floating assets, occupational restructuring, multinational corporations-what's good, what's bad. Boundaries between things are disappearing all the time. Maybe that's why you can't speak to cats anymore."

"The difference between right and left Nakata understands. This is right, and this is left. Correct?"

"You got it," Hagita agreed. "That's all you need to know."

The last thing they did together was have a meal in a rest area restaurant. Hagita ordered two orders of eel, and when Nakata insisted on paying, to thank him for the ride, the driver shook his head emphatically.

"No way," he said. "I'd never let you use the pittance they give you for a subsidy to feed me."

"Much obliged, then. Thank you for such a treat," Nakata said, happy to accept his kindness.

Nakata spent an hour at the Fujigawa rest area asking drivers for a ride, but couldn't find anyone willing to take him. He didn't start to panic, though, or get depressed. In his mind, time passed very slowly. Or barely at all.

He went outside for some air and wandered around. The sky was cloudless, the surface of the moon clearly visible. Nakata strolled around the parking lot, which was filled with countless huge trucks, like giant beasts lined up shoulder to shoulder, resting. Some of the trucks had at least twenty giant tires, each one as tall as a man. So many trucks, all racing down the highway so late at night-what could they possibly be carrying inside? Nakata couldn't imagine. If he could read the writing on the sides of the trucks, he wondered, would he be able to figure it out?

After about an hour he spotted ten or so motorcycles parked in a corner of the lot where there weren't many cars. A clump of young men stood nearby in a circle, looking at something and yelling. Intrigued, Nakata approached them. Maybe they'd discovered something unusual?

When he got closer he saw that they had surrounded someone lying on the ground and were punching, kicking, and generally trying their best to hurt him. Most of the men were unarmed, though one of them had a chain in his hand. Another held a black stick that looked like a policeman's baton. They wore unbuttoned short-sleeved shirts, some in T-shirts, others in running shirts, most of them with hair dyed blond or brown, some with tattoos on their arms. The young man they were beating and kicking was dressed much the same.

As Nakata approached, tapping the asphalt surface with the tip of his umbrella, a couple of the men turned around and glared at him. They relaxed when they saw it was just some harmless old man. "Why don't you beat it, Pops," one of them growled.

Unperturbed, Nakata walked over even closer. The man on the ground seemed to be bleeding from his mouth. "Blood's coming out," Nakata said. "He might die."

Caught off guard, the men didn't react right away.

"Maybe we should kill you too, while we're at it," the one with the chain said. "Killing one or two-no skin off my nose."

"You can't kill someone for no reason," Nakata insisted.

"You can't kill someone for no reason," one of them mimicked, and his friends laughed.

"We got our reasons, pal," another man said. "And it ain't got nothin' to do with you whether we kill him or not. So take your worthless umbrella and hit the road, before it starts raining."

The man on the ground started crawling forward, and a young man with a shaved head came over and kicked him hard in the ribs with his work boots.

Nakata closed his eyes. He could feel something welling up inside him, beyond his control. He felt slightly nauseous. The memory of stabbing Johnnie Walker suddenly came back to him. His hand still remembered what it felt like to plunge a knife into a man's chest. Connections. Could this be one of those connections that Mr. Hagita was talking about? Eel = knife = Johnnie Walker? The men's voices sounded distorted, and he couldn't tell them apart anymore. Their voices blended together with the ceaseless drone of tires from the highway to make a strange tone. His heart surged blood to his extremities as night enveloped him.

Nakata looked up at the sky, then slowly opened his umbrella and held it over him. Very carefully he took a few steps backward, opening a space between himself and the gang. He looked around, then took a few more steps back.

The young men laughed when they saw this. "Hey, look at the cool old guy!" one of them said. "He's actually using his umbrella!"

But they didn't laugh for long. Suddenly, unfamiliar greasy objects began to rain down from the sky, striking the ground at their feet with a weird slap. The young men stopped kicking their prey and looked up at the sky. There weren't any clouds, but things were definitely falling one after another from a spot in the sky. At first in dribs and drabs, then gradually more and more fell, until before they knew it they were caught in a downpour. The objects pelting down from the sky were little black lumps about an inch and a half long. In the lights of the parking lot it looked like slick black snow falling on the men's shoulders, arms, and necks and sticking there. They desperately tried to yank the objects off, but couldn't.

"Leeches!" someone yelled.

As if given a signal, the men all shouted and raced across the parking lot to the restrooms. One of them, a young blond man, was knocked to the ground by a car he'd run in front of. He jumped up, slammed his fist on the hood of the car, and loudly cursed the driver. That was all, though, and he soon limped away toward the restrooms.

The leeches rained down hard for a time, then tapered off and stopped. Nakata folded up his umbrella, brushed off the leeches, and went over to see how the injured man was doing. A mound of the slimy creatures squirmed all around, so he couldn't get very close, and the man on the ground was buried in them. Looking closely, Nakata could see that he was bleeding from cut eyelids, and some of his teeth looked broken. Nakata knew this was too much for him to handle by himself, so he hurried back to the restaurant and told one of the employees that a man was lying in the parking lot, hurt. "You'd better call the police, or else he might die," he said.

Not long after this Nakata found a truck driver willing to give him a ride as far as Kobe. A sleepy-looking man in his mid-twenties, not very tall, with a ponytail, a pierced ear, and a Chunichi Dragons baseball team cap, he sat there in the restaurant, smoking and flipping through a comic book. A gaudy aloha shirt and oversize Nikes completed his wardrobe. He tapped his cigarette ashes into the leftover broth in his bowl of ramen, stared hard at Nakata, then gave a reluctant nod. "Yeah, okay. You can ride with me. You kind of remind me of my grandpa. The way you look, or maybe how you talk, kind of off the point… At the end my grandpa got senile and died. A few years ago."

He went on to explain that they should get to Kobe by morning. He was delivering furniture to a department store warehouse there. As he pulled his truck out of the parking lot, they passed a car accident. A couple of patrol cars were already at the scene, red lights flashing, and a policeman with a signal light was directing traffic. It didn't appear to be much of an accident. A few cars had collided, the side of a minivan was dented, a car's taillight broken.

The truck driver stuck his head out the window and exchanged a few words with a patrolman, then rolled up his window. "He said a pile of leeches fell from the sky," he said, unmoved. "They got crushed by cars, the road got all slippery, and some drivers lost control. So go slow and take it easy, he told me. On top of that some local gang of bikers beat up somebody. Leeches and bikers-what a weird combination. Keeps the cops busy, at least."

He drove carefully toward the exit. Even going slow the truck slipped a couple of times, and the driver straightened it out with a subtle twist of the wheel. "Man, it really looks like a whole bunch fell down, and it's damn slippery. But, boy-leeches, that's pretty gross. Ever had a leech stick to you?"

"No, as far as Nakata can remember, I don't think so," Nakata responded.

"I was brought up in the mountains of Gifu, and it happened to me lots of times. I'd be walking in the woods and they'd fall down from the trees. Go wading in the streams and they'd stick to your legs. I know a thing or two about leeches, believe me. Once they get stuck on you they're hard to pull off. If you pull off a big sucker your skin comes off and you'll have a scar. So the best thing is to burn ' em off. Awful things, the way they suck your blood. And once they're filled up they get all soft and mushy. Pretty gross, huh?"

"Yes, it certainly is," Nakata agreed.

"But leeches aren't supposed to fall down from the sky into some rest area parking lot. I never heard of anything so stupid! The guys around here don't know the first thing about leeches. Leeches don't fall from the sky, now do they?"

Nakata was silent and didn't respond.

"A few years back a huge number of millipedes appeared all at once in Yamanashi Prefecture, and cars were slipping everywhere. Just like this, the road got all slippery and there were a lot of accidents. They got all over the tracks and the trains couldn't run either. But even millipedes aren't going to rain down from the sky. They crawl out from somewhere. Anybody can see that."

"A long time ago I lived in Yamanashi. During the war."

"No kidding," the driver said. "Which war was that?"