After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,39

much time with her, and we hardly talked at all, but I feel as if she’s living inside me now. Like she’s part of me. I don’t know how to put it.”

“You can feel her pain.”

“Maybe so.”

Takahashi broods over something for a while. Then he opens his mouth and says, “I just had an idea. Why don’t you look at it this way? Say your sister is in some other Alphaville kind of place—I don’t know where—and somebody is subjecting her to meaningless violence. She’s raising wordless screams and bleeding invisible blood.”

“In a metaphorical sense?”

“Probably,” Takahashi says.

“Talking with Eri gave you this impression?”

“She’s carrying around so many problems all by herself she can’t make any headway, and she’s searching for help. She expresses those feelings by hurting herself. This is not just an impression: it’s clearer than that.”

Mari stands up from the bench and looks at the sky. Then she goes over to the swings and sits in one. The night is momentarily filled with the crackling of the dry leaves under her yellow sneakers. She touches the swing’s thick ropes as if to gauge their strength. Takahashi also leaves the bench and walks across the dried leaves to sit in the swing next to Mari’s.

“Eri’s asleep now,” Mari says, as if sharing a confession. “She’s in a really deep sleep.”

“Everybody’s asleep now,” Takahashi says. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Mari says. “She doesn’t want to wake up.”

12

Shirakawa’s office.

Naked from the waist up, Shirakawa is lying on the floor, doing sit-ups on a yoga mat. His shirt and tie hang on the back of his chair, his glasses and watch are lined up on his desk. Shirakawa has a slender build, but he is thick in the chest, and his midsection has no excess flesh. His muscles are hard and well defined. He makes a very different impression when undressed. His breaths are deep but sharp as he quickly raises himself from the mat and twists his torso right and left. Fine beads of sweat on his chest and shoulders shine in the light of the fluorescent lamps. A Scarlatti cantata sung by Brian Asawa flows from the portable CD player on the desk. Its leisurely tempo feels mismatched to the strenuousness of the exercise, but Shirakawa is subtly controlling his movements in time with the music. This all seems to be part of a daily routine whereby he prepares for his trip home after a night’s work by performing a lonely series of exercises on the office floor while listening to classical music. His movements are systematic and confident.

After a set number of deep knee bends, he rolls up the yoga mat and stores it in a locker. He takes a small white towel and a vinyl shaving kit from a shelf and brings them to the lavatory. Still naked from the waist up, he washes his face and dries it with the towel, which he then uses to wipe the sweat from his body. He performs each movement deliberately. He has left the lavatory door open and can hear the Scarlatti playing. He hums occasional passages of this music created in the seventeenth century. He takes a small bottle of deodorant from his shaving kit and gives each armpit a quick spray, then ducks his head to check for odor. He opens and closes his right hand several times and experiments with moving his fingers a few different ways. He checks the back of the hand for swelling. It is not bad enough to be noticeable, but he still feels a good deal of pain from it.

He takes a small brush from the bag and puts his hair in order. The hairline has retreated somewhat, but the well-shaped forehead gives no impression that anything has been lost. He puts his glasses on. He buttons his shirt and ties his tie. Pale gray shirt, dark blue paisley tie. Watching himself in the mirror, he straightens the collar and smooths the dimple below the knot.

Shirakawa inspects his face in the mirror. The muscles of his face remain immobile as he stares at himself long and hard with severe eyes. His hands rest on the sink. He holds his breath and never blinks, fully expecting that, if he were to stay like this long enough, some other thing might emerge. To objectify all the senses, to flatten the consciousness, to put a temporary freeze on logic, to bring the advance of time to a halt