Kafka on the Shore

  "Of course we'll have to make some arrangements first. But it is possible. Or not impossible, I should say. I'm sure I can manage it."

  "How so?"

  "You like to read good books, to figure things out on your own. You look like you're in good shape physically, and you're an independent kind of guy. You like to lead a well-regulated life and have a lot of willpower. I mean, even the willpower to make your stomach smaller, right? I'll talk with Miss Saeki about you becoming my assistant and staying in the empty room here at the library."

  "You want me to be your assistant?"

  "You won't have to do much," Oshima says. "Basically help me open and close the place. We hire professionals to do the heavy cleaning or to input things on the computer. Apart from this, there's not a whole lot to do. You can just read whatever you like. Sound good?"

  "Yeah, of course it does...." I'm not sure what to say. "But I don't think Miss Saeki's going to go for it. I'm only fifteen, and a runaway she doesn't know anything about."

  "But Miss Saeki's... how should I put it?" Oshima begins, then uncharacteristically comes to a halt, searching for the right word. "A little different."

  "Different?"

  "She has a different take on things than other people."

  I nod. A different take on things? What does that mean? "You mean she's an unusual person?"

  Oshima shakes his head. "No, I wouldn't say that. If you're talking about unusual, that would be me. She just isn't bound by conventional ways of doing things."

  I'm still trying to figure out the difference between different and unusual, but decide to hold off on any more questions. For the time being.

  After a pause Oshima says, "Staying here tonight, though, is a problem. So I'll take you someplace else, where you can stay for a couple of days till we get things settled. You don't mind, do you? It's a little far away."

  "No problem," I tell him.

  "The library closes at five," Oshima says, "and I have to straighten things up, so we'll leave around five-thirty. I'll drive you there in my car. Nobody's staying there now.

  And not to worry—the place has a roof."

  "I appreciate it."

  "You can thank me after we get there. It might not be what you're imagining."

  I go back to the reading room and pick up where I left off in Poppies. I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop. Just before five I finish the novel, put it back on the shelf, then sit back down on the sofa, close my eyes, and think about what happened last night. About Sakura. About her room. What she did to me. All the twists and turns as events take their course.

  At five-thirty I'm standing outside the library waiting for Oshima. He leads me to the parking lot out around back and we get into his green sports car. A Mazda Miata with the top down. My backpack's too big for the little trunk, so we tie it down tight on the rear rack.

  "It's a long drive, so we'll stop along the way for dinner," Oshima says. He turns the ignition key and starts up the engine.

  "Where are we headed?"

  "Kochi," he replies. "Ever been there?"

  I shake my head. "How far is it?"

  "It'll take us about two and a half hours to get where we're going. Toward the south, over the mountains."

  "You don't mind going so far?"

  "It's okay. It's a straight shot, and it's still light out. And I've got a full tank."

  We drive through the twilit city streets, then get on the highway heading west.

  Oshima changes lanes smoothly, slipping in between other cars, effortlessly shifting gears. Each time the hum of the engine changes slightly. When he shifts gears and floors it, the little car's soon zipping along at over ninety.

  "The car's specially tuned, so it's got a lot of pickup. This isn't your ordinary Miata. Do you know much about cars?"

  I shake my head. Cars are definitely not my specialty. "Do you enjoy driving?" I ask.

  "The doctor made me give up any risky sports. So instead I drive. Compensation."

  "Is something wrong with you?"

  "The medical name's kind of long, but it's a type of hemophilia," Oshima says casually. "Do you know what that is?"

  "I think so," I say. I learned about it in biology class. "Once you start bleeding you can't stop. It's genetic, where the blood doesn't coagulate."

  "That's right. There're all kinds of hemophilia, and the type I have is pretty rare. It's not such a bad type of the disease, but I have to be careful not to get injured. Once I start bleeding I have to go to the hospital. Besides, these days there're problems with the blood supply in hospitals. Dying a slow death from AIDS isn't an option for me. So I've made some connections in town to supply me with safe blood, just in case. Because of my disease I don't go on trips. Except for regular checkups at the university hospital in Hiroshima, I hardly ever leave town. It's not so bad, though—I never did like traveling or sports all that much anyway. I can't use a kitchen knife, so doing any real cooking's out, which is kind of a shame."

  "Driving's a risky enough sport," I tell him.

  "It's a different kind of risk. Whenever I drive I try to go as fast as I can. If I'm in an accident driving fast I won't just wind up getting a cut finger. If you lose a lot of blood, there's no difference between a hemophiliac and anybody else. It evens things out, since your chances of survival are the same. You don't have to worry about things like blood coagulation or anything, and can die without any regrets."

  "I see."

  "Don't worry," Oshima laughs. "I'm not going have an accident. I'm a careful driver and don't push it. I keep my car in top condition, too. Besides, when I die I want to die quietly, all by myself."

  "Taking someone else with you, then, isn't an option either."

  "You got it."

  We pull into a rest stop restaurant for dinner. I have chicken and a salad, he orders the seafood curry and a salad. Just something to fill our stomachs, is the best you could say about it. Oshima pays the bill, and we climb into the car again. It's already gotten dark. He steps on the accelerator and the tachometer shoots way up.

  "Do you mind if I put on some music?" Oshima asks.

  "Of course not," I reply.

  He pushes the CD's play button and some classical piano music starts. I listen for a while, figuring out the music. I know it's not Beethoven, and not Schumann. Probably somebody who came in between.

  "Schubert?" I ask.

  "Good guess," he replies. His hands at ten-and-two on the steering wheel, he glances over at me. "Do you like Schubert?"

  "Not particularly," I tell him.

  "When I drive I like to listen to Schubert's piano sonatas with the volume turned up. Do you know why?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Because playing Schubert's piano sonatas well is one of the hardest things in the world. Especially this, the Sonata in D Major. It's a tough piece to master. Some pianists can play one or maybe two of the movements perfectly, but if you listen to all four movements as a unified whole, no one has ever nailed it. A lot of famous pianists have tried to rise to the challenge, but it's like there's always something missing. There's never one where you can say, Yes! He's got it! Do you know why?"

  "No," I reply.

  "Because the sonata itself is imperfect. Robert Schumann understood Schubert's sonatas well, and he labeled this one 'Heavenly Tedious.'"

  "If the composition's imperfect, why would so many pianists try to master it?"

  "Good question," Oshima says, and pauses as music fills in the silence. "I have no great explanation for it, but one thing I can say. Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason—or at least they appeal to certain types of people. Just like you're attracted to Soseki's The Miner. There's something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realized novels like Kokoro or Sanshiro. You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart—or maybe we should say the work discovers you. Schubert's Sonata
in D Major is sort of the same thing."

  "To get back to the question," I say, "why do you listen to Schubert's sonatas? Especially when you're driving?"

  "If you play Schubert's sonatas, especially this one straight through, it's not art. Like Schumann pointed out, it's too long and too pastoral, and technically too simplistic. Play it through the way it is and it's flat and tasteless, some dusty antique. Which is why every pianist who attempts it adds something of his own, something extra. Like this—hear how he articulates it there? Adding rubato. Adjusting the pace, modulation, whatever. Otherwise they can't hold it all together. They have to be careful, though, or else all those extra devices destroy the dignity of the piece. Then it's not Schubert's music anymore. Every single pianist who's played this sonata struggles with the same paradox."

  He listens to the music, humming the melody, then continues.

  "That's why I like to listen to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of—that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging. Do you know what I'm getting at?"

  "Sort of...."

  "I'm sorry," Oshima says. "I tend to get carried away on the subject."

  "But there's all kinds and degrees of imperfection, right?" I say.

  "Sure, of course."

  "Comparatively speaking, which performance of the D major sonata do you think's the best?"

  "That's a tough one." Oshima gives it some thought. He shifts down, swings over to the passing lane, swiftly slips pass a huge refrigerated eighteen-wheeler, shifts up, and steers back into our lane. "Not to frighten you, but a green Miata is one of the hardest vehicles to spot on the highway at night. It has such a low profile, plus the green tends to blend into the darkness. Truck drivers especially can't see it from up in their cabs. It can be a risky business, particularly in tunnels. Sports cars really should be red. Then they'd stand out. That's why most Ferraris are red. But I happen to like green, even if it makes things more dangerous. Green's the color of a forest. Red's the color of blood."

  He glances at his watch and goes back to humming along with the music.

  "Generally I'd have to say Brendel and Ashkenazy give the best performances, though they don't do anything for me emotionally. Schubert's music challenges and shatters the ways of the world. That's the essence of Romanticism, and Schubert's music is the epitome of the Romantic."

  I keep on listening to the sonata.

  "What do you think? Kind of boring?" he asks.

  "Kind of," I admit.

  "You can appreciate Schubert if you train yourself. I was the same way when I first listened to him—it bored me silly. It's only natural for someone your age. In time you'll appreciate it. People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring. Go figure. For me, I might have the leisure to be bored, but not to grow tired of something. Most people can't distinguish between the two."

  "You said you're an unusual person. Do you mean because of the hemophilia?"

  "That's part of it," he says, and gives this devilish sort of smile. "There's more to it than that."

  Schubert's long "Heavenly" sonata finishes, and we don't listen to any more music.

  We fall silent, each of us filling in the silence with our own random thoughts. I gaze vacantly at the passing signs. At a junction we turn south and the road heads into the mountains, one long tunnel after another. Oshima concentrates hard each time he passes another vehicle. We go by a number of slow-moving trucks on the road, and every time there's this whooshing moan of air, like somebody's soul is being yanked out.

  Occasionally I look back to make sure my backpack's still tied down okay.

  "The place we're headed is deep in the mountains, not the most pleasant dwelling in the world," Oshima says. "I doubt you'll see anybody else while you're there. There's no radio, TV, or phone. Sure you don't mind?"

  "I don't," I reply.

  "You're used to being alone," Oshima comments.

  I nod.

  "But solitude comes in different varieties. What's waiting for you might be a little unexpected."

  "How so?"

  Oshima pushes up the bridge of his glasses. "I can't really say. It might change, depending on you."

  We get off the highway and start down a small regional roadway. Along a side road near the exit there's a small town. Oshima stops at a convenience store and buys almost more groceries than we can carry—vegetables and fruit, crackers, milk and mineral water, canned goods, bread, pouch-packed instant food, mostly things that don't require much cooking. I start to take out my wallet, but he shakes his head and pays for it all.

  Back in the sports car, we head down the road. I'm holding the bags that wouldn't fit into the trunk. Once we leave the little town everything is dark around us. No houses, and only the occasional car, the road so narrow it's hard for two cars to pass each other.

  Oshima flips on the high beams and races ahead, braking, accelerating, shifting from second to third and back. His expression is fixed as he focuses on driving, lips tight, eyes riveted on a point up ahead in the darkness, right hand clutching the top of the wheel, left hand poised for action on the gearshift knob.

  A sharp bluff appears on our left side. It looks like there's a mountain stream down below. The curves get sharper, the road more slippery, and a couple of times the rear end of the car spins, but I decide not to worry about it. As far as Oshima is concerned, having an accident here most likely isn't an option.

  My watch shows a little before nine. I crack open my window and let the cold air rush in. Everything sounds different here. We're in the mountains, heading in deeper. I breathe a sigh of relief when the road finally cuts away from the bluffs and turns into a forest. Trees magically soar above us. Our headlights lick at the trunks, illuminating one after another. We've left the paved road behind, the tires squirting out pebbles that ricochet against the bottom of the car. The suspension dances up and down over the rough road. There's no moon out, no stars. A fine rain occasionally splashes against the windshield.

  "Do you come here a lot?" I ask.

  "I used to. Now, with the job and all I can't come so often. My older brother's a surfer and lives on the shore in Kochi. He runs a surf shop there and makes surfboards.

  He comes here sometimes. Do you surf?"

  "Never tried it," I tell him.

  "If you have the chance, you should have my brother teach you. He's very good,"

  Oshima says. "If you meet him you'll see he's not at all like me. He's big, tan, kind of quiet, not so sociable, and likes beer. And wouldn't know Schubert from Wagner. But we get along really well."

  We continue down the road through thick woods, and finally turn off. Oshima stops the car and, leaving the engine running, climbs out and unlocks a kind of wire fence and pushes it open. We drive inside and proceed down another windy, bumpy road into a clearing where the road ends. Oshima stops the car, sighs heavily, and brushes his hair back with both hands, then kills the engine and sets the parking brake.

  The fan still hums, cooling off the overheated engine as steam rises from the hood, but with the engine off a heavy stillness falls over us. I hear a small stream nearby, the faint sound of water. High above us the wind rustles symbolically. I open the door and step outside. Patches of chill hang in the air. I have on a yacht jacket over my T-shirt and zip it up to my neck.

  There's a small building in front of us, a log cabin by the look of it, though it's too dark to see much. Just a dark outline floating against the background of the forest. The headlights still on, Oshima slowly approaches the cabin, flashlight in hand, walks up the porch
steps, takes out a key, and unlocks the door. He goes inside, strikes a match, and lights a lamp. He then steps out onto the porch, holding the lamp, and announces,

  "Welcome to my house." It all looks like a drawing in an old storybook.

  I walk up the steps and go inside. Oshima lights a larger lamp suspended from the ceiling. The cabin consists of a single big, boxy room. There's a small bed in the corner, a dining table and two wooden chairs, an old sofa, a hopelessly faded rug—a bunch of old furniture nobody wanted, it looks like, just thrown together. There's a cinder block and board shelf crammed full of books, their covers worn like they've been read a lot.

  There's also an old chest for storing clothes. And a simple kitchen with a counter, a small gas stove, and a sink but no running water. Instead, an aluminum pail I guess is for water. A pan and kettle on a shelf, plus a frying pan hanging from the wall. And in the middle of the room there's a black wood-burning stove.

  "My brother built this cabin almost all by himself. He took the original rough lumberjack hut and remodeled it completely. He's good with his hands. I was still pretty little then and helped out a bit, making sure I didn't get cut or anything. It's pretty primitive. No electricity. No running water. No toilet. The only modern convenience is the propane gas." Oshima pours some mineral water into the kettle and sets it to boil.

  "My grandfather originally owned this mountain. He was a pretty wealthy man in Kochi, with a lot of property. He passed away ten years ago, and my brother and I inherited almost the entire mountain. No other relatives wanted it. It's too far off the beaten track, and not worth much. If you were going to maintain it for harvesting trees, you'd have to hire people and it'd cost too much."

  I open the curtain at the window. All I can see is a wall of total darkness.

  "When I was just about your age," Oshima says, dipping chamomile tea bags into a pot, "I used to come here a lot and live on my own. Not see anybody else, not talk to anybody. My brother almost forced me to. Usually, with somebody who has a disease like mine, you wouldn't do that—too dangerous for them to be alone in some isolated spot. But my brother didn't mind." He leans back against the counter, waiting for the water to boil. "He wasn't trying to discipline me or anything, it's just what he believed I needed. Looking back on it, I can see it was a good experience, something I did need. I could read a lot, think things over. To tell the truth, after a certain period I hardly went to school. School and I had sort of a mutual hate relationship going. I was different from everybody else. Out of the kindness of their hearts they let me graduate from junior high, but after that I was on my own, basically. Just like you. Did I already tell you all this?"