After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,54

leaves covering the ground. Moon up in the sky. He takes his own cell phone from his coat pocket and punches in a number.

The Alphaville room where Mari is. The phone rings. She wakes at the fourth or fifth ring and looks at her watch with a frown. She stands up and takes the receiver.

“Hello,” Mari says, her voice uncertain.

“Hi, it’s me. Were you sleeping?”

“A little,” Mari says. She covers the mouthpiece and clears her throat. “It’s okay. I was just napping in a chair.”

“Wanna go for breakfast? At that restaurant I told you about with the great omelets? I’m pretty sure they have other good stuff, too.”

“Practice over?” Mari asks, but she hardly recognizes her own voice. I am me and not me.

“It sure is. And I’m starved. How about you?”

“Not really, tell you the truth. I feel more like going home.”

“That’s okay, too. I’ll walk you to the station. I think the trains have started running.”

“I’m sure I can walk from here to the station by myself,” Mari says.

“I’d like to talk to you some more if possible. Let’s talk on the way to the station. If you don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mari says.

Takahashi cuts the connection, folds his phone, and puts it in his pocket. He gets up from the park bench, takes one big stretch, and looks up at the sky. Still dark. The same crescent moon is floating there. Strange that, viewed from one spot in the predawn city, such a big solid object could be hanging there free of charge.

“You’ll never get away,” Takahashi says aloud while looking at the crescent moon.

The enigmatic ring of those words will remain inside Takahashi as a kind of metaphor. “You’ll never get away…. You might forget what you did, but we will never forget,” the man on the phone said. The more Takahashi thinks about their meaning, the more it seems to him that the words were intended not for someone else but for him—directly, personally. Maybe it was no accident. Maybe the cell phone was lurking on that convenience-store shelf, waiting specifically for him to pass by. “We,” Takahashi thinks. Who could this “we” possibly be? And what will “we” never forget?

Takahashi slings his instrument case and his tote bag over his shoulder and starts walking toward the Alphaville at a leisurely pace. As he walks, he rubs the whiskers that have begun to sprout on his cheeks. The final darkness of the night envelops the city like a thin skin. Garbage trucks begin to appear on the streets. As they collect their loads and move on, people who have spent the night in various parts of the city begin to take their place, walking toward subway stations, intent upon catching those first trains that will take them out to the suburbs, like schools of fish swimming upstream. People who have finally finished the work they must do all night, young people who are tired from playing all night: whatever the differences in their situations, both types are equally reticent. Even the young couple who stop at a drink vending machine, tightly pressed against each other, have no more words for each other. Instead, what they soundlessly share is the lingering warmth of their bodies.

The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water and river water struggle against each other at a river mouth, the old time and the new time clash and blend. Takahashi is unable to tell for sure which side—which world—contains his center of gravity.

17

Mari and Takahashi are walking down the street side by side. Mari has her bag slung over her shoulder and her Red Sox hat pulled low over her eyes. She is not wearing her glasses.

“You’re not tired?” Takahashi asks.

Mari shakes her head. “I had a little nap.”

“Once after an all-night practice like this, I got on the Chuo Line at Shinjuku to go home, and I woke up way out in the country in Yamanashi. Mountains all around. Not to boast, but I’m the type who can fall fast asleep just about anywhere.”

Mari remains silent, as if she is thinking about something else.

“Anyhow, to get back to what we were talking about before…about Eri Asai,” Takahashi says. “Of course, you don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to. But just let me ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Your sister has been sleeping for a long time. And she has no intention