I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.
Her eyes were narrow, but when she really looked at something they suddenly opened wide: two dark eyes, never timid, brimming with curiosity. He.
And most likely that was the future in a nutshell, Sumire growing ever more distant. It made me sad. I felt like I was a meaningless bug clinging for no special reason to a high stone wall on a windy night, with no plans, no beliefs.
There must be something in him, something fundamental, that disenchanted people. “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki,” he said aloud. I basically have nothing to offer to others. If you think about it, I don’t even have anything to offer myself.
Money was not a living thing. It wouldn’t run off anywhere if he left it alone. Probably.
Between us, I sensed a different vibe than the last time we’d met, something in the atmosphere was a little off.
There were two types of drinkers: those who drank to enhance their personalities, and those who sought to rid themselves of something.
Everyone’s got some burden to bear.
The moments of time linking night and dawn were long and dark. If I could cry, it might make things easier. But what would I cry over? Who would I cry for? I was too self-centered to cry for other people, too old to cry for myself.
Hey, you know that thing Dostoyevesky wrote on gambling? It’s like that. When you’re surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.
Are you seeing anyone these days?” I asked, changing the subject. “You mean, like a woman?” “Yeah.” Masahiko gave a small shrug. “I can’t say it’s going all that well. As usual. And things have gotten even rockier since I made this weird breakthrough.
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future.
Changing into shorts, he took a cold can of beer from the refrigerator and drank it, standing, while he heated a large pot of water. Before the water boiled, he stripped all the leathery edamame pods from the branch, spread them on a cutting board, and rubbed them all over with salt. When the water boiled, he threw them into the pot.
I looked up at the sky. A mother wants to make friends with her daughter. The daughter wants a mother more than a friend. Ships passing in broad daylight. Mother has a boyfriend. A homeless, one-armed poet. Father also has a boyfriend. A gay Boy Friday. What does the daughter have?
Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair.
By living our lives, we nurture death. True as this might be, it was only one of the truths we had to learn. What I learned from Naoko’s death was this: no truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning. Hearing.
To be able to grass something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. That’s the feeling I have, as someone who’s felt this, who’s experienced it.
The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grow stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter.” I tried to imagine growth rings inside me. But the only thing I could picture was a leftover slice of Baumkuchen cake, the kind with treelike rings inside.
I straightened up and looked out of the window at the dark clouds hanging over the North Sea, thinking of all I had lost in the course of my life: times gone forever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.
It feels like somehow our hearts have become intertwined. Like when she feels something, my heart moves in tandem. Like we’re two boats tied together with rope. Even if you want to cut the rope, there’s no knife sharp enough to do it.
You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside. Heavy things. That is how I can see it in you. There is no need to hurry, but you will be better off, at some point in time, if you bring it outside yourself.