Kafka on the Shore

Chapter 46

After Nakata's death, Hoshino couldn't pull himself away from the apartment. With the entrance stone there, something might happen, and when it did he wanted to be close enough that he could react in time. Watching over the stone had been Nakata's job, and now it was his. He set the AC in Nakata's room to the lowest possible temperature and turned it on full blast, checking that the windows were shut tight. The air in the room had that special solidity found only in a room with a corpse in it. "Not too cold for you, I hope?" he said to Nakata, who naturally didn't have an opinion one way or the other.

Hoshino plopped down on the living-room sofa, trying to pass the time. He didn't feel like listening to music or reading. Twilight came on, the room by degrees turning dark, but he didn't even get up to switch on the light. He felt completely drained, and once ensconced on the sofa couldn't rouse himself enough to get up. Time came slowly and passed slowly, so leisurely that at times he could swear it had stealthily doubled back on itself.

When his own grandfather died, he thought, it was hard, but nothing like this. He'd suffered through a long illness, and they all knew it was just a matter of time. So when he did die, they were prepared. It makes a big difference whether or not you have a chance to steel yourself for the inevitable. But that's not the only difference, Hoshino concluded. There was something about Nakata's death that forced him to think long and hard.

Suddenly hungry, he went to the kitchen, defrosted some fried rice in the microwave, and ate half of it along with a beer. Afterward he went back to check on Nakata. Maybe he'd come back to life, he thought. But no, the old man was still dead. The room was like a walk-in freezer, so cold you could store ice cream in there.

Spending a night in the same house as a corpse was a first, and Hoshino couldn't settle down. Not that he was scared or anything, he told himself. It didn't make his flesh crawl. He just didn't know how he should act with a dead man beside him. The flow of time is so different for the dead and the living. Same with sounds. That's why I can't calm down, he decided. But what can you do? Mr. Nakata's already gone over to the world of the dead, and I'm still in the land of the living. Of course there's going be a gap. He got up from the sofa and sat down next to the stone. He started stroking it with his palms, like he was petting a cat.

"What the heck am I supposed to do?" he asked the stone. "I want to turn Mr. Nakata over to somebody who'll take care of him, but until I take care of you, I can't. You want to clue me in?"

But there was no reply. For the moment the stone was just a stone, and Hoshino understood this. He could ask till he was blue in the face but couldn't expect a response. Even so, he sat beside the stone, rubbing it. He tossed out a couple questions, made an appeal to logic, and did his best to win the sympathy vote. Though he knew it was pointless, he couldn't think of an alternative. Mr. Nakata had sat here all the time talking to the stone, so why shouldn't he?

Still, talking to a stone, trying to get it to feel your pain-that's pretty pathetic, he thought. I mean, isn't that where they get that expression? As heartless as a stone?

He stood up, thinking he'd watch the news on TV, but thought better of it and sat down again beside the stone. Silence is probably best for now, he decided. Got to listen carefully, wait for whatever it is that's going to happen. "But waiting around isn't exactly my thing," Hoshino said to the stone. Come to think of it, I've always been the impatient type, and man have I paid for it! Always leaping before I look, always screwing things up. You're as antsy as a cat in heat, my grandpa used to tell me. But now I've got to sit tight and wait. Gut it out!

Everything was quiet except for the groan of the AC going full blast next door. The clock showed nine, then ten, but nothing happened. Time passed, the night grew deeper, nothing else. Hoshino dragged his blankets into the living room, lay down on the sofa, and pulled them over him. He figured that it was better, even asleep, to be near the stone in case something happened. He turned off the light and shut his eyes.

"Hey, stone! I'm going to sleep now," he called out. "We'll talk again tomorrow. It's been a long day, and I need some shut-eye." Man, he thought, was that an understatement. Long did not begin to describe it. "Hey, Gramps!" he called out more loudly. "Mr. Nakata? You hear me?" No reply.

Hoshino sighed, closed his eyes, adjusted his pillow, and fell asleep. He slept the whole night without a break, without a single dream. In the next room, Nakata slept his own deep, dreamless, stone-hard sleep.

As soon as he got up, just past seven the next morning, Hoshino went right in to check on Nakata. As before, the AC was roaring full blast, blowing cold air into the room. And in the midst of that chilled room, Nakata was still dead. Compared to the night before, death seemed to have a tighter grip on him. His skin had grown ashen, his closed eyes more fixed and solemn. He wasn't about to come back to life, suddenly sit up, and say, My apologies, Mr. Hoshino. Nakata just fell asleep. I'm sorry. No need to worry, I'll take it from here-and then deal with the stone. That was never going to happen. Nakata's checked out for good, Hoshino thought, and that's a fact.

He started shivering from the cold, so he stepped out and shut the door, then went into the kitchen, brewed some coffee in the coffeemaker and drank two cups, made some toast and ate it with butter and jam. After eating he sat in the kitchen, smoked a couple of cigarettes, and gazed out the window. The clouds had blown away sometime during the night, leaving an unbroken sunny summer sky. The stone was in its customary spot next to the sofa. It didn't sleep a wink, didn't wake up, just crouched there, unmoving, the entire night. He tried picking it up and easily lifted it.

"Hey there," Hoshino said in a cheerful voice, "it's me. Your old pal Hoshino, remember? Looks like it's just you and me today."

The stone was-not unexpectedly-speechless.

"Ah, that's okay. Doesn't matter if you don't remember. We have lots of time to get to know each other-no need to rush."

He sat down beside the stone, started rubbing it, and wondered what sort of things you might talk about with a stone. Having a conversation with a stone was a first and he couldn't think of any appropriate topics. Best to avoid anything difficult this early in the morning, he figured. The day was long, and whatever popped into his head would be fine.

He gave it some thought and chose a favorite subject: girls. He reviewed each and every girl he'd ever slept with. If he stuck to the ones whose names he remembered, it didn't add up to all that many. He counted them off on his fingers. Six, all told. If I add the ones whose names I don't know, he thought, there'd be a lot more, but we'll put those on hold.

"I guess it's pretty pointless talking to a stone about girls I've slept with," he said. "And I suppose you aren't exactly thrilled to hear all about my exploits first thing in the morning. But I can't think of anything else, okay? Who knows, maybe some lighter topic'll do you some good for a change. FYI and all that."

Hoshino related some episodes in as much detail as he could recall. The first was when he was in high school, back when he was into motorcycles and getting into trouble. The girl was three years older than him and worked in a little bar in Gifu City. They pretty much lived together for a while. The girl was serious about the relationship, said she couldn't live without him. She phoned my parents, he remembered, but they were none too happy about it, and the whole thing was getting too intense, so once I graduated from high school I joined the Self-Defense Force. Right after I joined up I got stationed at a base in Yamanashi Prefecture, and the relationship fizzled out. I never saw her again.

"I guess lazy's my middle name," Hoshino explained to the stone. "And when things get sticky I tend to head for the door. Not to brag or anything, but I'm pretty quick on my feet. I've never followed anything to the bitter end. Which is sort of a problem, I suppose."

The second girl he met near the base in Yamanashi. He was off duty one day and helped her fix a flat on her Suzuki Alto. She was a year older than him and attending nursing school.

"She was a nice kid," Hoshino said to the stone. "Big breasts, a very warm person. And man, did she like to get it on! I was only nineteen, and we used to spend every day between the sheets. Problem was, she was jealous like you wouldn't believe. If I didn't see her on my days off she'd give me the third degree, ask where I went, what I did, who I was with. I told her the truth, but that didn't satisfy her. That's why we broke up. We were together for about a year, I guess… I don't know how you are, but I can't stand anyone getting on my case. I feel like I can't breathe, and it makes me depressed. So I ran away. The cool thing about the SDF is you can always hole up on base till the whole thing blows over. And there's nothing anybody can do about it. If you want to dump a girl with no problems, going into the SDF's your ticket. Good thing to remember. But it's not all roses-not with digging foxholes and piling up sandbags and crap."

The more he talked, the more Hoshino realized how pointless his life had been. Four of the six girls he'd gone out with had been nice. (The other two, if you looked at it objectively, had personality problems, he decided.) Most of them had treated him pretty well. No drop-dead beauties among them, though each was cute in her own way, and let him have sex whenever he felt like it. Never complained if he skipped foreplay and went straight to the main course. They fixed meals for him on his days off, bought him presents on his birthday, lent him money when he was a little short before payday-not that he ever remembered paying them back-and they never demanded anything in return. All this, and I was an ungrateful bastard, he concluded. I took everything for granted.

To his credit, he'd never cheated on any of them. But let them complain a little, try to win an argument, show a bit of jealousy, urge him to save some money, get a little overwrought, or express even a hint of worry about the future, and he was out of there. He always figured the most important thing about girls was to avoid any sticky situations, so all it took was one tiny wave to rock the boat and he was gone. He'd find a new girl and start over. He was sure most people did the same.

"If I were a girl," he said to the stone, "and was going out with a self-centered bastard like me, I'd blow my stack. I'm sure of it, now that I look back on it. I don't know how they all put up with me for so long. It's amazing." He lit a Marlboro and, slowly exhaling smoke, rubbed the stone with one hand. "Am I right or what? I'm not so good-looking, no great shakes in bed. Don't have much money. Not such a great personality, not too bright. A lot of negatives here. Son of a poor farmer from the sticks, a no-good ex-soldier-turned-truck-driver. When I think back on it, though, I was really lucky when it came to girls. I wasn't very popular, but I always had a girlfriend. Someone who let me sleep with her, who fed me, lent me money. But you know something? Good things don't last forever. I feel that more and more as time goes by. It's like somebody's saying, Hey, Hoshino, someday you're gonna have to pay up."

He rubbed the stone while relating his amorous adventures. He'd gotten so used to rubbing it that he didn't want to stop. At noon a school chime rang out, and he went to the kitchen to make a bowl of udon, adding some scallions along with a raw egg. After lunch he listened again to the Archduke Trio.

"Hey, stone," he called out right after the first movement ended. "Pretty nice music, huh? Really makes you feel like your heart's opening up, don't you think?"

The stone was silent.

He had no idea if the stone was listening, to the music or to him, but he forged ahead anyway. "Like I was saying this morning, I've done some awful things in my life. I was pretty self-centered. And it's too late to erase it all now, you know? But when I listen to this music it's like Beethoven's right here talking to me, telling me something like, It's okay, Hoshino, don't worry about it. That's life. I've done some pretty awful things in my life too. Not much you can do about it. Things happen. You just got to hang in there. Beethoven being the guy he was, he's not about to say anything like that. But I'm still picking up that vibe from his music, like that's what it's saying to me. Can you feel it?"

The stone was mute.

"Whatever," Hoshino said. "That's just my opinion. I'll shut up so we can listen."

When he looked outside at two, a fat black cat was sitting on the railing on the veranda, gazing in at the apartment. Bored, Hoshino opened the window and called out, "Hey there, kitty. Nice day, isn't it?"

"Yes, indeed, it is a fine day, Mr. Hoshino," the cat replied.

"Gimme a break," Hoshino said, shaking his head.

The Boy Named Crow

The boy named Crow flew in large, languid circles above the forest. After inscribing one, he'd fly off to another spot and carefully begin another, identical circle, each invisible circle following another in the air only to vanish. Like a reconnaissance plane, he scanned the forest below him, looking for someone he couldn't seem to locate. Like a huge ocean, the forest undulated beneath him and spread to the horizon in a thick, anonymous cloak of interlaced branches. The sky was covered with gray clouds, and there was neither wind nor sunlight. At this point the boy named Crow had to be the loneliest bird in the world, but he was too busy to think about that now.

He finally spotted an opening in the sea of trees below and shot straight down through it to an open piece of ground. The light shone on a small patch of ground that was marked with grass. In one corner of the clearing was a large round rock and a man in a bright red sweat suit and a black silk hat was sitting on it. He wore thick-soled hiking boots, and a khaki-colored bag lay on the ground beside him. A strange getup, though the boy named Crow didn't mind. This was who he was after. What the man had on was of little consequence.

The man looked up at the sudden flapping of wings and saw Crow land on a large branch. "Hey," he said cheerfully.

The boy named Crow didn't make any reply. Resting on the branch, he gazed, unblinking, expressionless, at the man. Occasionally he'd incline his head to one side.

"I know who you are," the man said. He doffed his hat and put it back on. "I had a feeling you'd be coming here before long." He cleared his throat, frowned, and spat on the ground, then stamped the spit into the dirt with his boot.

"I was just resting, and feeling a bit bored with no one to talk to. How about coming over here? We can have a nice little talk. What do you say? I've never seen you before, but that doesn't mean we're total strangers."

The boy named Crow kept his mouth shut, holding his wings close in against himself.

The man in the silk hat lightly shook his head. "Ah, I see. You can't speak, can you? No matter. I'll do the talking, if you don't mind. I know what you're going to do, even if you don't say a word. You don't want me to go any further, do you? It's so obvious I can predict what'll happen. You don't want me to go any further, but that's exactly what I want to do. Because it's a golden opportunity I can't let slip through my fingers-a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

He gave the ankle of his hiking boots a good slap. "To leap to the conclusion here, you won't be able to stop me. You aren't qualified. Let's say I play my flute, what's going to happen? You won't be able to come any closer to me. That's the power of my flute. You might not know this, but it's a unique kind of flute, not just some ordinary, everyday instrument. And actually I've got quite a few here in my bag."

The man reached out and carefully patted the bag, then looked up again at the boy named Crow perched on his branch. "I made this flute out of the souls of cats I've collected. Cut out the souls of cats while they were still alive and made them into this flute. I felt sorry for the cats, of course, cutting them up like that, but I couldn't help it. This flute is beyond any world's standards of good and evil, love or hatred. Making these flutes has been my longtime calling, and I've always done a decent job of fulfilling my role and doing my bit. Nothing to be ashamed of. I got married, had children, and made more than enough flutes. So I'm not going to make any more. Just between you and me, I'm thinking of taking all the flutes I've made and creating a much larger, far more powerful flute out of them-a super-size flute that becomes a system unto itself. Right now I'm heading to a place where I can construct that kind of flute. I'm not the one who decides whether that flute turns out to be good or evil, and neither are you. It all depends on when and where I am. In that sense I'm a man totally without prejudices, like history or the weather-completely unbiased. And since I am, I can transform into a kind of system."

He removed his silk hat, rubbed the thinning hair on top of his head, put the hat back on, and quickly adjusted the brim. "Once I play this flute, getting rid of you will be a snap. The thing is, I don't feel like playing it right now. It takes a lot out of me, and I don't want to waste any strength. I'll need all of it later on. But whether I play the flute or not, you can't stop me. That should be obvious."

The man cleared his throat once more, and rubbed the slight swell of his belly. "Do you know what limbo is? It's the neutral point between life and death. A kind of sad, gloomy place. Where I am now, in other words-this forest. I died, at my own bidding, but haven't gone on to the next world. I'm a soul in transition, and a soul in transition is formless. I've merely adopted this form for the time being. That's why you can't hurt me. You follow me? Even if I were to bleed all over the place, it's not real blood. Even if I were to suffer horribly, it's not real suffering. The only one who could wipe me out right now is someone who's qualified to do so. And-sad to say-you don't fit the bill. You're nothing more than an immature, mediocre illusion. No matter how determined you may be, eliminating me's impossible for the likes of you." The man looked at the boy named Crow and beamed. "How 'bout it? Want to give it a try?"

As if that was the signal he'd been waiting for, the boy named Crow spread his wings wide, leaped off the branch, and darted straight at him. He seized the man's chest with both talons, drew his head back, and brought his beak down on the man's right eye, pecking away fiendishly like he was hacking away with a pickax, his jet black wings flapping noisily all the while. The man put up no resistance, didn't lift a finger to protect himself. He didn't cry out, either. Instead, he laughed out loud. His hat fell to the ground, and his eyeball was soon shredded and hanging from its socket. The boy named Crow tenaciously attacked the other eye now. Once both eyes were replaced by vacant cavities, he turned immediately to the man's face, pecking away, slashing it all over. His face was soon cut to ribbons, pieces of skin flying off, blood spurting out, nothing more than a lump of reddish flesh. Crow next attacked the top of his head, where the hair was thinnest, and still the man kept on laughing. The more vicious the attack became, the louder he laughed, as if the whole situation was so hilarious he couldn't control himself.

The man never took his eyes-now vacant sockets-off Crow, and in between laughs managed to choke out a few words. "See, what'd I tell you? Don't make me laugh. You can try all you want, but it's not going to hurt me. You're not qualified to do that. You're just a flimsy illusion, a cheap echo. It's useless, no matter what you do. Don't you get it?"

The boy named Crow stabbed at the mouth these words had come from. His huge wings ceaselessly beat at the air, a few shiny black feathers coming loose, swirling in the air like fragments of a soul. Crow tore at the man's tongue, grabbed it with his beak, and yanked with all his might. It was long and hugely thick, and once it was pulled out from deep within the man's throat, it squirmed like a gigantic mollusk, forming dark words. Without a tongue, however, not even this man could laugh anymore. He looked like he couldn't breathe, either, but still he held his sides and shook with soundless laughter. The boy named Crow listened, and this unheard laughter-as vacant and ominous as wind blowing over a far-off desert-never ceased. It sounded, in fact, very much like an otherworldly flute.