After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,55
of waking up. You said something like that, right?”
“Right.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, but could she be in a coma or some kind of unconscious state?”
Mari falters briefly. “No, that’s not it,” she says. “I don’t think it’s anything life-threatening at the moment. She’s…just asleep.”
“Just asleep?” Takahashi asks.
“Uh-huh, except…” Mari sighs. “Sorry, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it.”
“That’s okay. If you’re not ready, don’t talk.”
“I’m tired, and I can’t get my head straight. And my voice doesn’t sound like my voice to me.”
“That’s okay. Some other time. Let’s drop it for now.”
“Okay,” Mari says with obvious relief.
For some moments, they don’t talk about anything at all. They simply walk toward the station. Takahashi quietly whistles a tune.
“I wonder what time it starts to get light out,” Mari says.
Takahashi looks at his watch. “At this season…hmm…maybe six forty. This is when the nights are longest. It’ll stay dark a while.”
“When it’s dark, it really makes you tired, doesn’t it?”
“That’s when everybody’s supposed to be asleep,” Takahashi says. “Historically speaking, it’s quite a recent development that human beings have felt easy about going out after dark. It used to be after the sun set, people would just crawl into their caves and protect themselves. Our internal clocks are still set for us to sleep after the sun goes down.”
“It feels like a really long time since it got dark last night.”
“Well, it has been a long time.”
They walk past a drugstore with a large truck parked out front. The driver is unloading the truck’s contents through the store’s half-open shutter.
“Think I can see you again sometime soon?” Takahashi asks.
“Why?”
“Why? ’Cause I want to see you and talk to you some more. At a more normal time of day if possible.”
“You mean, like, a date?”
“Maybe you could call it that.”
“What could you talk about with me?”
Takahashi thinks about this. “Are you asking me what kind of subject matter we have in common?”
“Aside from Eri, that is.”
“Hmm…common subject matter…put it to me like that all of a sudden, and I can’t think of anything concrete. Right this second. It just seems to me we’d have plenty to talk about if we got together.”
“Talking to me wouldn’t be much fun.”
“Did anybody ever say that to you—like, you’re not much fun to talk to?”
Mari shakes her head. “No, not really.”
“So you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“I have been told I’ve got a darkish personality. A few times.”
Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, “It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don’t think you have a particularly dark character.”
Mari thinks about Takahashi’s words. “I am a coward, though,” she says.
“Now there you’re wrong. A cowardly girl doesn’t go out alone like this in the city at night. You wanted to discover something here. Right?”
“What do you mean, ‘here’?”
“Someplace different: someplace outside your usual territory.”
“I wonder if I discovered something—here.”
Takahashi smiles and looks at Mari. “Anyhow, I want to see you and talk to you again at least one more time. That’s what I’d like to do.”
Mari looks at Takahashi. Their eyes meet.
“That might be impossible,” she says.
“Impossible?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You mean you and I might never meet again?”
“Realistically speaking,” Mari says.
“Are you seeing somebody?”
“Not really, now.”
“So you just don’t like me?”
Mari shakes her head. “I’m not saying that. I won’t be in Japan after next Monday. I’m leaving for Beijing. To be a kind of exchange student there until next June at least.”
“Of course,” Takahashi says, impressed. “You’re such an outstanding student.”
“I applied on the off chance they’d pick me—and they did. I’m just a freshman, I figured there was no way I could get in, but I guess it’s a kind of special program.”
“That’s great! Congratulations.”
“So, anyhow, I’ve just got a few days till I leave, and I’ll probably be so busy getting ready…”
“Of course.”
“Of course what?”
“You’ve got to get ready to leave for Beijing, you’ll be busy with all kinds of stuff, and you won’t have time to see me. Of course,” Takahashi says. “I understand perfectly. That’s okay, I don’t mind. I can wait.”
“But I won’t be coming back to Japan for six months or more.”
“I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. And killing time is one of my specialties. Give