After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,28
like me in any way: they’re a different kind of human being. They live in a different world, they think different thoughts, and their actions are nothing like mine. Between the world they live in and the world I live in there’s this thick, high wall. At least, that’s how I saw it at first. I mean, there’s no way I’m gonna commit those vicious crimes. I’m a pacifist, a good- natured guy, I’ve never laid a hand on anybody since I was a kid. Which is why I was able to view a trial from on high as a total spectator.”
Takahashi raises his face and looks at Mari. Then he chooses his words carefully.
“As I sat in court, though, and listened to the testimonies of the witnesses and the speeches of the prosecutors and the arguments of the defense attorneys and the statements of the defendants, I became a lot less sure of myself. In other words, I started seeing it like this: that there really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine. Or if there was such a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mâché. The second I leaned on it, I’d probably fall right through and end up on the other side. Or maybe it’s that the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of us, and we just haven’t noticed. That’s how I started to feel. It’s hard to put into words.”
Takahashi ran his finger around the perimeter of his coffee cup.
“So once I started having thoughts like this, everything began looking different to me. To my eyes, this system I was observing, this ‘trial’ thing itself, began to take on the appearance of some special, weird creature.”
“Weird creature?”
“Like, say, an octopus. A giant octopus living way down deep at the bottom of the ocean. It has this tremendously powerful life force, a bunch of long, undulating legs, and it’s heading somewhere, moving through the darkness of the ocean. I’m sitting there listening to these trials, and all I can see in my head is this creature. It takes on all kinds of different shapes—sometimes it’s ‘the nation,’ and sometimes it’s ‘the law,’ and sometimes it takes on shapes that are more difficult and dangerous than that. You can try cutting off its legs, but they just keep growing back. Nobody can kill it. It’s too strong, and it lives too far down in the ocean. Nobody knows where its heart is. What I felt then was a deep terror. And a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that I could never run away from this thing, no matter how far I went. And this creature, this thing doesn’t give a damn that I’m me or you’re you. In its presence, all human beings lose their names and their faces. We all turn into signs, into numbers.”
Mari’s eyes are locked on his.
Takahashi takes a sip of his coffee. “Am I being a little too grim here?”
“Don’t worry, I’m listening,” Mari says.
Takahashi returns his cup to its saucer. “Two years ago, there was this case of arson and murder in Tachikawa. A guy killed an old couple with an axe, grabbed their bank- book, and set fire to their house to get rid of the evidence. It was a windy night, and four houses burned down. The guy was sentenced to death. In terms of current Japanese legal precedent, it was the obvious sentence for a case like that. Any time you murder two or more people, the death sentence is almost automatic. Hanging. And this guy was guilty of arson, too. Plus, he was a real bastard. He had been locked up any number of times, usually for something violent. His family had given up on him years ago. He was a drug addict, and every time they let him out of jail, he’d commit another crime. In this case, he didn’t show an ounce of remorse. An appeal would have been rejected for sure. His lawyer, a public defender, knew from the start he was going to lose. So no one could be surprised when they came back with a death sentence, and in fact nobody was surprised. I sat there listening to the judge read the verdict, taking notes, and thinking how obvious it was. After the trial, I took the subway home from Kasumigaseki, sat down at my desk, and started putting my notes in order when all of a sudden I got