After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,33
pajamas. That much is certain. But this is not my place. My body is numb all over. If I was asleep here, it was for a very long time, and very deeply. But I have no idea how long it could have been. Her temples begin to throb with the determined effort of thinking.
She wills herself out from under the covers, lowering her bare feet cautiously to the floor. She is wearing plain blue pajamas of glossy material. The air here is chilly. She strips the thin quilt from the bed and dons it as a cape. She tries to walk but is unable to move straight ahead. Her muscles cannot remember how to do it. But she pushes onward, one step at a time. The blank linoleum floor questions her with cold efficiency: Who are you? What are you doing here? But of course she is unable to answer.
She approaches a window and, resting her hands on the sill, strains to see outside. Beyond the glass, however, there is no scenery, only an uncolored space like a pure abstract idea. She rubs her eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to look out again. Still there is nothing to see but empty space. She tries to open the window but it will not move. She tries all of the windows in order, but they refuse to move, as if they have been nailed shut. It occurs to her that this might be a ship. She seems to feel a gentle rocking. I might be riding on a large ship, and the windows are sealed to keep the water from splashing in. She listens for the sound of an engine or a hull cutting through the waves. But all that reaches her is the unbroken sound of silence.
She makes a complete circuit of the large room, taking time to feel the walls and turn switches on and off. None of the switches has any effect on the ceiling’s fluorescent lamps—or on anything else: they do nothing. The room has two doors—utterly ordinary paneled doors. She tries turning the knob of one. It simply spins without engaging. She tries pushing and pulling, but the door will not budge. The other door is the same. Each of the doors and windows sends signals of rejection to her as if each is an independent creature.
She makes two fists and pounds on the door as hard as she can, hoping that someone will hear and open the door from the outside, but she is shocked at how little sound she is able to produce. She herself can hardly hear it. No one (assuming there is anyone out there) can possibly hear her knocking. All she does is hurt her hands. Inside her head, she feels something resembling dizziness. The rocking sensation in her body has increased.
We notice that the room resembles the office where Shirakawa was working late at night. It could well be the same room. Only, now it is perfectly vacant, stripped of all furniture, office equipment, and decoration. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling are all that is left. After every item was taken out, the last person locked the door behind him, and the room, its existence forgotten by the world, was plunged to the bottom of the sea. The silence and the moldy smell absorbed by the four surrounding walls indicate to her—and to us—the passage of that time.
She squats down, her back against the wall, eyes closed, as she waits for the dizziness and rocking to subside. Eventually she opens her eyes and picks something up that has fallen on the floor nearby. A pencil. With an eraser. Stamped with the name veritech, it is the same kind of silver pencil that Shirakawa was using. The point is blunt. She picks up the pencil and stares at it for a long time. She has no memory of the name veritech. Could it be the name of a company, or of some kind of product? She can’t be sure. She shakes her head slightly. Aside from the pencil, she sees nothing that promises to give her any information about this room.
She can’t comprehend how she came to be in a place like this all alone. She has never seen it before, and nothing about the place jogs her memory. Who could have carried me here, and for what purpose? Is it possible I have died? Is this the afterlife? She sits down on the edge of the bed and