After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,3
finger on her right cheek.
The young man touches the deep scar on his own cheek. “Oh, this. When I was a kid, I was going too fast on my bike and couldn’t make the turn at the bottom of the hill. Another inch and I would have lost my right eye. My earlobe’s deformed, too. Wanna see it?”
Mari frowns and shakes her head.
The waitress brings the chicken salad and toast to the table. She pours fresh coffee into Mari’s cup and checks to make sure she has brought all the ordered items to the table. He picks up his knife and fork and, with practiced movements, begins eating his chicken salad. Then he picks up a piece of toast, stares at it, and wrinkles his brow.
“No matter how much I scream at them to make my toast as crispy as possible, I have never once gotten it the way I want it. I can’t imagine why. What with Japanese industriousness and high-tech culture and the market principles that the Denny’s chain is always pursuing, it shouldn’t be that hard to get crispy toast, don’t you think? So, why can’t they do it? Of what value is a civilization that can’t toast a piece of bread as ordered?”
Mari doesn’t take him up on this.
“But anyhow, your sister was a real beauty,” the young man says, as if talking to himself.
Mari looks up. “Why do you say that in the past tense?”
“Why do I…? I mean, I’m talking about something that happened a long time ago, so I used the past tense, that’s all. I’m not saying she isn’t a beauty now or anything.”
“She’s still pretty, I think.”
“Well, that’s just dandy. But, to tell you the truth, I don’t know Eri Asai all that well. We were in the same class for a year in high school, but I hardly said two words to her. It might be more accurate to say she wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“You’re still interested in her, right?”
The young man stops his knife and fork in midair and thinks for a moment. “Interested. Hmm. Maybe as a kind of intellectual curiosity.”
“Intellectual curiosity?”
“Yeah, like, what would it feel like to go out on a date with a beautiful girl like Eri Asai? I mean, she’s an absolute cover girl.”
“You call that intellectual curiosity?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“But back then, your friend was the one going out with her, and you were the other guy on a double date.”
He nods with a mouthful of food, which he then takes all the time he needs to chew.
“I’m kind of a low-key guy. The spotlight doesn’t suit me. I’m more of a side dish—cole slaw or French fries or a Wham! backup singer.”
“Which is why you were paired with me.”
“But still, you were pretty damn cute.”
“Is there something about your personality that makes you prefer the past tense?”
The young man smiles. “No, I was just directly expressing how I felt back then from the perspective of the present. You were very cute. Really. You hardly talked to me, though.”
He rests his knife and fork on his plate, takes a drink of water, and wipes his mouth with a paper napkin. “So, while you were swimming, I asked Eri Asai, ‘Why won’t your little sister talk to me? Is there something wrong with me?’”
“What’d she say?”
“That you never take the initiative to talk to anybody. That you’re kinda different, and that even though you’re Japanese you speak more often in Chinese than Japanese. So I shouldn’t worry. She didn’t think there was anything especially wrong with me.”
Mari silently crushes her cigarette out in the ashtray.
“It’s true, isn’t it? There wasn’t anything especially wrong with me, was there?”
Mari thinks for a moment. “I don’t remember all that well, but I don’t think there was anything wrong with you.”
“That’s good. I was worried. Of course, I do have a few things wrong with me, but those are strictly problems I keep inside. I’d hate to think they were obvious to anybody else. Especially at a swimming pool in the summer.”
Mari looks at him again as if to confirm the accuracy of his statement. “I don’t think I was aware of any problems you had inside.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I can’t remember your name, though,” Mari says.
“My name?”
“Your name.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t mind if you forgot my name. It’s about as ordinary as a name can be. Even I feel like forgetting it sometimes. It’s not that easy, though, to forget your own name. Other