Haruki Murakami - After the Quake: Stories

Table of Contents

Liza! What was it yesterday, then? It was what it was. Thats impossible! Thats cruel!

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

radio:... garrison already decimated by the Vietcong, who lost 115 of their men...
woman: Its awful, isnt it, its so anonymous.
man: What is?
woman: They say 115 guerillas, yet it doesnt mean anything, because we dont know anything about these men, who they are, whether they love a woman, or have children, if they prefer the cinema to the theatre. We know nothing. They just say... 115 dead.

Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot le Fou

acclaim for haruki murakamis after the quake

Both mysterious and yet somehow quite familiar."

Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle

In these stories... Murakami proves himself to be almost as fantasticand as heroicas his creations. Elle

Trim, beautiful, diamond sharp, and profoundly layered in... mystical symbolism and daily absurdities. Murakamis evocations of grace and possible redemption are startling, dangerous, and moving. O, The Oprah Magazine

Haruki Murakami remains one of the most accessible Japanese writers for Western readers. Los Angeles Times

Spare yet richly mysterious and emotionally prismatic, these unpredictable tales explore the subtle ways the earthquake affected those who live far from its epicenter yet who are nonetheless shaken to their very core.... Haunting.

Booklist (starred review)

The stories here are well-crafted and lyrical.... They are sometimes absurd, sometimes quite funny, but they all have real epiphanies and real moments of feeling.

Rocky Mountain News

ufo in kushiro

Five straight days she spent in front of the television, staring at crumbled banks and hospitals, whole blocks of stores in flames, severed rail lines and expressways. She never said a word. Sunk deep in the cushions of the sofa, her mouth clamped shut, she wouldnt answer when Komura spoke to her. She wouldnt shake her head or nod. Komura could not be sure the sound of his voice was even getting through to her.

Komuras wife came from way up north in Yamagata and, as far as he knew, she had no friends or relatives who could have been hurt in Kobe. Yet she stayed rooted in front of the television from morning to night. In his presence, at least, she ate nothing and drank nothing and never went to the toilet. Aside from an occasional flick of the remote control to change the channel, she hardly moved a muscle.

Komura would make his own toast and coffee, and head off to work. When he came home in the evening, hed fix himself a snack with whatever he found in the refrigerator and eat alone. Shed still be glaring at the late news when he dropped off to sleep. A stone wall of silence surrounded her. Komura gave up trying to break through.

When he came home from work that Sunday, the sixth day, his wife had disappeared.

Komura was a salesman at one of the oldest hi-fi-equipment specialty stores in Tokyos Akihabara Electronics Town. He handled top-of-the-line stuff and earned a sizeable commission whenever he made a sale. Most of his clients were doctors, wealthy independent businessmen, and rich provincials. He had been doing this for eight years and had a decent income right from the start. The economy was healthy, real-estate prices were rising, and Japan was overflowing with money. Peoples wallets were bursting with ten-thousand-yen bills, and everyone was dying to spend them. The most expensive items were the first to sell out.

Komura was tall and slim and a stylish dresser. He was good with people. In his bachelor days he had dated a lot of women. But after getting married, at twenty-six, he found that his desire for sexual adventures simplyand mysteriouslyvanished. He hadnt slept with any woman but his wife during the five years of their marriage. Not that the opportunity had never presented itselfbut he had lost all interest in fleeting affairs and one-night stands. He much preferred to come home early, have a relaxed meal with his wife, talk with her for a while on the sofa, then go to bed and make love. This was everything he wanted.

Komuras friends and colleagues were puzzled by his marriage. Alongside him with his clean, classic good looks, his wife could not have seemed more ordinary. She was short with thick arms, and she had a dull, even stolid appearance. And it wasnt just physical: there was nothing attractive about her personality either. She rarely spoke and always wore a sullen expression.

Still, though he did not quite understand why, Komura always felt his tension dissipate when he and his wife were together under one roof; it was the only time he could truly relax. He slept well with her, undisturbed by the strange dreams that had troubled him in the past. His erections were hard; his sex life was warm. He no longer had to worry about death or venereal disease or the vastness of the universe.

His wife, on the other hand, disliked Tokyos crowds and longed for Yamagata. She missed her parents and her two elder sisters, and she would go home to see them whenever she felt the need. Her parents operated a successful inn, which kept them financially comfortable. Her father was crazy about his youngest daughter and happily paid her round-trip fares. Several times, Komura had come home from work to find his wife gone and a note on the kitchen table telling him that she was visiting her parents for a while. He never objected. He just waited for her to come back, and she always did, after a week or ten days, in a good mood.

But the letter his wife left for him when she vanished five days after the earthquake was different: I am never coming back, she had written, then went on to explain, simply but clearly, why she no longer wanted to live with him.

The problem is that you never give me anything, she wrote. Or, to put itmore precisely, you have nothing inside you that you can give me. You are goodand kind and handsome, but living with you is like living with a chunk of air.Its not entirely your fault, though. There are lots of women who will fall in lovewith you. But please dont call me. Just get rid of all the stuff Im leaving behind.

In fact, she hadnt left much of anything behind. Her clothes, her shoes, her umbrella, her coffee mug, her hair dryer: all were gone. She must have packed them in boxes and shipped them out after he left for work that morning. The only things still in the house that could be called her stuff were the bike she used for shopping and a few books. The Beatles and Bill Evans CDs that Komura had been collecting since his bachelor days had also vanished.

The next day, he tried calling his wifes parents in Yamagata. His mother-in-law answered the phone and told him that his wife didnt want to talk to him. She sounded somewhat apologetic. She also told him that they would be sending him the necessary forms soon and that he should put his seal on them and send them back right away.

Komura answered that he might not be able to send them right away. This was an important matter, and he wanted time to think it over.

You can think it over all you want, but I know it wont change anything, his mother-in-law said.

She was probably right, Komura told himself. No matter how much he thought or waited, things would never be the same. He was sure of that.