After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,43

at a garbage bag, intent on securing a share for the cats before the rats can mess things up or dawn brings the ferocious flocks of crows. Over half the neon lights are out, making the lights of an all-night convenience store that much more conspicuous. Advertising circulars have been stuffed under the windshield wipers of cars parked along the street. An unbroken roar of huge trucks reverberates from the nearby arterial. This is the best time for the truckers to cover long distances, when the streets are empty. Mari has her Red Sox cap pulled down low. Her hands are thrust into the pockets of her varsity jacket. There is a stark difference in their heights as the two walk side by side.

“Why are you wearing a Red Sox cap?” Takahashi asks.

“Somebody gave it to me,” she says.

“You’re not a Red Sox fan?”

“I don’t know a thing about baseball.”

“I’m not much interested in baseball, either,” he says. “I’m more of a soccer fan. So anyway, about your sister…we were talking before.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t quite get it, but you were saying that Eri Asai wasn’t going to wake up?”

Mari looks up at him and says, “Sorry, but I don’t want to talk about that while we’re walking along like this. It’s kind of a delicate subject.”

“I see.”

“Talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Anything. Talk about yourself.”

“About myself?”

“Yeah. Tell me about yourself.”

Takahashi thinks for a moment.

“I can’t think of any sunny topics offhand.”

“Okay, so tell me something dark.”

“My mother died when I was seven,” he says. “Breast cancer. They found it too late. She only lasted three months from when they found it till when she died. Just like that. It spread quickly; there was no time for a decent treatment. My father was in prison the whole time. Like I said before.”

Mari looks up at Takahashi again.

“Your mother died of breast cancer when you were seven and your father was in prison?”

“Exactly.”

“So you were all by yourself?”

“Right. He was arrested on fraud charges and got sentenced to two years. I think he was running a pyramid scheme or something. He couldn’t get a suspended sentence because the damages were big and he had an arrest record from the time he was in a student-movement organization. They had suspected him of being a fund-raiser for the organization, but he really had nothing to do with it. I remember my mother took me to visit him in prison once. It was freezing cold there. Six months after they locked him up, my mother’s cancer was discovered, and she was hospitalized immediately. So I became a temporary orphan. Father in jail, mother in hospital.”

“Who took care of you during that time?”

“I found out later my father’s family put the money together for the hospital and my living expenses. My father had been cut off from his family for years, but they couldn’t just leave a seven-year-old kid to fend for himself, so one of my aunts came to see me every other day, halfheartedly, and people in the neighborhood took turns looking after me—laundry, shopping, cooking. We lived in the old working-class area then, which was probably good for me. They still believe in ‘neighborhood’ over there. But for the most part, I think I was pretty much on my own. I’d make myself simple meals, get myself ready for school and stuff. My memories are pretty vague about that, though, like it all happened to somebody else, far away.”

“When did your father come back?”

“I think maybe about three months after my mother died. Under the circumstances, they approved an early parole for him. Obviously, I was thrilled when my father came home. I wasn’t an orphan anymore. Whatever else he might have been, he was a big, strong adult. I could relax now. He came back wearing an old tweed coat. I still remember the scratchy feeling of the material and the tobacco smell.”

Takahashi pulls his hand from his pocket and strokes the back of his neck several times.

“But even though I was with my father again, I never felt really secure deep down. I don’t know how to put it exactly, but things were never really settled inside me. I always had this feeling like, I don’t know, like somebody was putting something over on me, like my real father had disappeared forever and, to fill the gap, some other guy was sent to me in his shape. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“Sort of.”

Takahashi goes silent for a while before continuing his story.

“So