After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,4

people’s names—even ones I have to remember—I’m always forgetting.”

He glances out the window as if in search of something he should not have lost. Then he turns toward Mari again.

“One thing always mystified me, and that is, why didn’t your sister ever get into the pool that time? It was a hot day, and a really nice pool.”

Mari looks at him as if to say, You mean you don’t get that, either? “She didn’t want her makeup to wash off. It’s so obvious. And you can’t really swim in a bathing suit like that.”

“Is that it?” he says. “It’s amazing how two sisters can be so different.”

“We live two different lives.”

He thinks about her words for a few moments and then says, “I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives. Take you and your sister, for example. You’re born to the same parents, you grow up in the same household, you’re both girls. How do you end up with such wildly different personalities? At what point do you, like, go your separate ways? One puts on a bikini like little semaphore flags and lies by the pool looking sexy, and the other puts on her school bathing suit and swims her heart out like a dolphin…”

Mari looks at him. “Are you asking me to explain it to you here and now in twenty-five words or less while you eat your chicken salad?”

He shakes his head. “No, I was just saying what popped into my head out of curiosity or something. You don’t have to answer. I was just asking myself.”

He starts to work on his chicken salad again, changes his mind, and continues:

“I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so I just wanted to know: up to what point do they resemble each other, and where do their differences come in?”

Mari remains silent while the young man with the knife and fork in his hands stares thoughtfully at a point in space above the table.

Then he says, “I once read a story about three brothers who washed up on an island in Hawaii. A myth. An old one. I read it when I was a kid, so I probably don’t have the story exactly right, but it goes something like this. Three brothers went out fishing and got caught in a storm. They drifted on the ocean for a long time until they washed up on the shore of an uninhabited island. It was a beautiful island with coconuts growing there and tons of fruit on the trees, and a big, high mountain in the middle. The night they got there, a god appeared in their dreams and said, ‘A little farther down the shore, you will find three big, round boulders. I want each of you to push his boulder as far as he likes. The place you stop pushing your boulder is where you will live. The higher you go, the more of the world you will be able to see from your home. It’s entirely up to you how far you want to push your boulder.’”

The young man takes a drink of water and pauses for a moment. Mari looks bored, but she is clearly listening.

“Okay so far?” he asks.

Mari nods.

“Want to hear the rest? If you’re not interested, I can stop.”

“If it’s not too long.”

“No, it’s not too long. It’s a pretty simple story.”

He takes another sip of water and continues with his story.

“So the three brothers found three boulders on the shore just as the god had said they would. And they started pushing them along as the god told them to. Now these were huge, heavy boulders, so rolling them was hard, and pushing them up an incline took an enormous effort. The youngest brother quit first. He said, ‘Brothers, this place is good enough for me. It’s close to the shore, and I can catch fish. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ His two elder brothers pressed on, but when they were midway up the mountain, the second brother quit. He said, ‘Brother, this place is good enough for me. There is plenty of fruit here. It has everything I need to go on living. I don’t mind if I can’t see that much of the world from here.’ The eldest brother continued walking up the mountain. The trail grew increasingly narrow and steep, but he did not quit. He had