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I would like to tell you about a young woman here.
Even if I have to admit that I know next to nothing about her.
I can't even remember her name and face.
And I'm pretty sure she doesn't remember my name or my face either.
When I met her I was in my sophomore year and not yet twenty years old.
She was roughly in her twenties.
We worked in the same restaurant at the same time.
At some point we spent a night together.
After that I never saw her again.
At nineteen, I was almost unaware of the movements of my heart, let alone those of other people.
Still, I imagined that I knew some of the nature of joy and sadness, even though I never fully understood their many nuances and their interrelationships, which made me feel uncomfortable and helpless.
Nevertheless, I would like to tell you about my encounter with this young woman.
I know one thing about her
And I know one thing about her - she wrote poetry and edited an anthology.
“Anthologie” is perhaps a little over the top, as it was just a booklet that was simply bound, even for self-publishing.
Still, some of the poems in it made an unusually deep impression on me.
Most of them were about love or death.
It was almost as if she wanted to demonstrate that opposites like this were inextricably linked.
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You and me
we are far from each other
is it not so?
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If I had on Jupiter
should change?
I put my ear
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on a stone pillow
he falls silent
the rushing stream
my blood
"I have to ask you something," she said when we were lying naked under the futon.
“I will probably call another man's name when I orgasm.
Do you mind? "
"Not really," I replied, even if I wasn't entirely sure.
On the other hand - why should I care?
Basically it was just a name.
And names usually didn't make much difference.
"What if I scream it out really loud?"
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"That would be uncomfortable, though," I said hastily, because I lived in a rotten old wooden house with walls as thin as waffles.
If she screamed here in the middle of the night, all the neighbors would know.
"Fine, I'll bite a towel then," she said.
As firm a towel as possible
So I got a clean towel from the bathroom that was as firm as possible to put it next to my pillow.
“Is that possible?” I asked.
She chewed the towel a little like a horse on a new bridle.
Then she nodded.
Our connection was entirely accidental.
I wasn't that keen on her, and she certainly wasn't too keen on me.
We worked for about two weeks that winter in a popular Italian restaurant not far from Yotsuya train station.
However, we worked in different areas so that there was never an opportunity for a proper conversation.
I was a dishwasher and kitchen helper and she was a waitress.
All the helpers except her were students, which probably made her behavior a little different from the others.
In mid-December she quit and someone suggested that they go back to a pub around the corner.
I was invited too.
It wasn't really a real farewell party.
We only drank draft beer for about an hour, ate a few snacks, and talked.
I learned that outside the Italian restaurant she had worked for a small real estate agent and bookstore.
She said she didn't get along with her superiors at any of her jobs.
She said she didn't run into anyone in the Italian restaurant, but she couldn't get by with the low pay, so she had to look for a new job even if she didn't feel like it.
Someone asked what she wanted to do.
"Doesn't matter," she said, rubbing her finger on the side of her nose (where she had two small birthmarks that looked like a constellation).
"I'm not getting anything great anyway."
It was eleven o'clock in the evening
I lived in Asagaya then and she in Koganei.
So we got on the Chuo train together at Yotsuya Station and sat down next to each other on a bench.
It was eleven o'clock in the evening and a wintry wind was blowing.
It was the time of year when you had to wear gloves and a scarf.
As the train approached Asagaya and I stood up, she looked up at me.
"Do you think I could maybe stay with you today?" She asked softly.
"Sure, but why?"
"Because there is still so far after Koganei," she said.
"But my apartment is very small and not tidy either," I replied.
"Never mind." She reached for the sleeve of my coat.
So I took her to my tiny, shabby apartment, where we shared a can of beer.
After we had emptied it very slowly, it took off naturally in front of my nose and slipped naked into my futon, whereupon I also crawled under the covers.
I had turned off the lights, but the flames from the gas stove lit the room.
We hugged each other awkwardly under the covers to warm ourselves.
We didn't speak for a while.
Probably embarrassed about our sudden nudity, we didn't know what to say.
But I felt our bodies gradually warming up and our tension easing.
It was an amazing feeling of intimacy.
“Maybe I'll call another man's name when I orgasm.
Do you mind? "
No matter what people say
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"Do you love him?" I asked when I handed her the towel.
"Yes, very much," she said.
"I love him very much.
I can't get it out of my head.
But he doesn't love me.
He actually has a girlfriend. "
"But you're still seeing him?" "He'll call me when he wants to sleep with me," she said.
"Like when you order something to eat."
I didn't know what to say about it, so I was silent.
She had been drawing patterns on my back with her fingertip for a while, maybe she was writing something.
"He said I had an ugly face but a great body." I didn't find her
ugly
, but I wouldn't have called her pretty either.
Now I can't remember her face or her figure.
It is impossible for me to describe how they look.
"But if he calls, do you go to him?"
“I can't help it, I love him,” she said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"No matter what people say, but now and then I at least want to sleep with a man."
I thought for a while.
At the time I had no idea what a woman actually meant when she said that sometimes she just wanted to sleep with a man.
(And if I think about it, I still don't know.) "Falling in love is like a mental illness that your health insurance won't pay for," she said in a flat voice, as if reading the sentence off the wall .
"Aha," I said, amazed.
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"Well, as far as I'm concerned, you can also imagine someone else," she said.
"Are you in love with somebody?"
"Yes, yes."
“Then you could call her name when you come.
I don't mind. "
I was really in love with a woman at the time, but I couldn't deepen the relationship because of the circumstances.
So I wondered if I should call her name, which ended up being too silly to me that I just silently ejaculated into the other woman.
And before she could scream out the man's name, I hastily pushed the towel between her healthy, strong teeth that would have delighted any dentist.
I don't remember what the man's name was, only that it was very common and commonplace.
But I still clearly remember wondering how much such a common name could mean to someone.
Sometimes a name alone touches a person deep inside.
The next morning
The next morning I had an early university appointment where I had to hand in a work that was important for the intermediate examination.
Of course, I let him go (which later led to all sorts of problems, but that's another story).
Shortly before noon we finally got up, heated up the water, drank instant coffee and ate toast.
There were still eggs in the fridge that we cooked.
The sky was clear and cloudless, and dazzling morning light filled the room.
Chewing her toast with butter, she asked what subject I was studying.
Literature, I said.
Do I want to be a writer?
Not necessarily, I answered truthfully.
At the time, I actually had no intention of doing so.
It hadn't even crossed my mind, although tons of people in my department were saying they wanted to write novels.
After my answer, she seemed to have lost all interest in me (although this probably wasn't particularly great in the first place).
In the bright light of day, the towel, on which the marks of her teeth were clearly visible, seemed rather bizarre to me.
She must have bitten really hard.
She, too, seemed very different to me in daylight.
Hard to believe that the petite, bony woman in front of me should be the same one who moaned lustfully in my arms in the wintry moonlight falling through the window.
"I'm writing to Tanka," she said suddenly.
"Tanka?"
"You know what Tanka are?"
"Sure." Of course I knew that, even if these types of short poems were a strange world to me.
"But to be honest, this is my first time getting to know someone who writes Tanka." She laughed in amusement.
"But you know that there are such people?"
"Do you belong to one of these clubs?"
"No, not that." She shrugged.
“You can write Tanka on your own, right?
It's not like basketball or anything. "
"What kind of Tanka are you writing?" "Do you want to hear one?"
I nodded.
"For real?
Or are you just being polite? ”“ Really, ”I said.
That wasn't a lie.
I was genuinely interested in what kind of poems the woman wrote who just a few hours ago had moaned in my arms and, even if suffocated by the towel, called out the name of another man.
She hesitated.
“I am embarrassed to recite a tanka of mine so early in the morning.
If you really want to read my poems, I'll send them to you.
You just have to give me your address. "
It is sometimes the case with women
I scribbled my name and address on a piece of paper.
After a quick glance at it, she folded it four times and put it in the pocket of her pale green, rather worn coat, on the round collar of which was a silver brooch in the shape of a lily of the valley panicle.
It glittered in the sun shining through the window.
I don't know anything about flowers, but for some reason lilies of the valley have always been my favorite flowers. “Thank you for letting me stay with you.
I didn't feel like taking the train to Koganei by myself so late, ”she said as she left.
"It is sometimes the case with women."
We both knew we wouldn't see each other again.
She just hadn't wanted to take the train to Koganei the previous evening - that was the only reason for our night together.
A week later I received your "collection of poems" in the mail.
To be honest, I hardly expected that she would actually send it to me.
I thought she forgot about me (or wanted to forget about me as soon as possible) once she got to her apartment in Koganei.
But she had put the book in an envelope and, after she had addressed and franked it, thrown it in a mailbox or perhaps even bothered to get it to the post office.
So I was not a little surprised when I found the envelope in the mailbox one morning.
The title of the little book
The title of the little book was "On a stone pillow".
The name of the author was simply "Chiho".
So that was her name.
It was not clear whether Chiho was her real name or a pseudonym.
I should have heard her name at work, but I couldn't remember it.
Still, I was almost certain that no one had called her Chiho there.
There was no sender on the neutral brown envelope, nor did it contain a card or letter, just the slim collection of poems tied with a kind of white silk thread.
Nor was it made of cheap prints, but was professionally printed on thick, good quality paper.
Apparently the author had stacked the finished pages on top of each other, put the cardboard cover around them and carefully stitched the pages together with needle and thread to make this booklet to save the bookbinder.
I tried to imagine her guiding the needle in silence and alone, but I couldn't quite succeed.
The first page was stamped with the number
28
.
Apparently I was holding the 28th copy of a limited edition in my hand.
How many could there be in total?
There was no price anywhere.
Probably there hadn't been one from the start.
Instead of opening the little book straight away, I left it on my desk for a while, occasionally glancing at the cover.
It wasn't that I lacked interest, but I felt that reading a collection of poems by another person required a certain amount of mental preparation, especially since it was someone I was one with Had had intimate physical contact the week before.
Out of respect.
At the weekend I finally picked up the little book.
I opened it and read it, leaning against the wall by the window, in the dim light of the winter afternoon.
The collection contained forty-two poems, one on each page.
There was no preface, an epilogue or a year of publication, only the tanka printed in large black letters on white paper.
While reading her poems
Of course, I wasn't expecting a literary masterpiece.
As I said, I just felt a certain personal interest.
I wondered what kind of tanka a woman wrote who, muffled by a towel, shouted another man's name in my ear.
However, as I read it, I found that some of the poems grabbed me.
I had no idea about Tanka (which hasn't changed since then), so I couldn't make an objective judgment about which ones were worth something and which weren't.
But apart from technical criteria, I liked some of the poems better than others, specifically eight.
They had
some
element that moved me deeply.
For example this:
If now
that is now
and me
this now
cannot escape
only the now remains
In the mountain wind
beheaded
dumb accumulates
at the foot of the hydrangea
the June water
I remembered
It was strange, but as I leafed through the little booklet and read the poems printed in large black characters aloud, her body appeared in my mind as I had seen it that night.
Not her unsightly figure in the glaring light of the next morning, but her body, shimmering in the moonlight, that I had held in my arms.
Her shapely round breasts, the firm little nipples, her sparse black pubic hair and her very moist genitals.
I remembered her biting into the towel with her eyes closed during the orgasm and longing for that other man's name.
A very common name that I had completely forgotten.
At the thought,
never to see you again
I think,
I can't help it
than to see you again
Will we meet again
or is it what it is
over
swept away by the light
crushed by shadows?
I wondered if she was still alive
As I said, I don't even remember the woman's name and hardly any of her face.
All I remember is the name "Chiho" on the cover of the collection of poems, her soft, defenseless body in the glow of the white, wintry moon that fell through the window, and the two constellation-like birthmarks on her nose.
Sometimes I even wonder if she's still alive.
I can't help but think that at some point she might have taken her own life.
Because many of her poems, or at least those in the conscious volume, revolved around the motif of death.
And for some reason that of beheading.
Perhaps she saw it as a symbol of death.
During the afternoon it falls
in the pouring rain
a nameless ax
and beheaded
the dawn
But I hope from the bottom of my heart that she is still alive somewhere in this world.
That she lives and continues to write poetry.
Why?
Why do I bother to think about such things?
Although nothing in this world connects my existence with hers.
We could walk past each other on the street or sit next to each other at a table in a cafeteria and (probably) wouldn't even recognize each other.
We met each other briefly like two straight lines that intersect at a certain point, only to diverge immediately.
Many years have passed
Many years have passed since then.
It seems strange (or maybe not), but in no time we humans are old.
Every moment brings our body irrevocably closer to its decline.
As soon as you close your eyes and open them again, you realize how much has disappeared in the blink of an eye, everything - whether it had a name or not - blown away from a night storm without leaving the slightest trace.
All that remains is a faint memory.
And memories are not very reliable.
Who can say with certainty what
really
happened
in the past
?
But if we're lucky, at least a few words will be saved.
In the depths of the night they climb a hill, crawl into small holes dug suitably for them, remain there very still and let the wild winds of time pass by.
And when the storm finally subsides at daybreak, the surviving words dare to emerge from the earth.
They are mostly quiet and shy and can only express themselves ambiguously.
Yet they are ready to bear witness.
Present yourself as honest and unbiased witnesses.
But to create such steadfast words or to find and leave them behind requires unconditional devotion with body and soul.
Someone has to lay their head on a pillow made of cold stone in the wintry moonlight.
In the wintry moonlight
Perhaps there is no other person in the world apart from me who remembers the poems of the young woman, let alone knows some of them by heart.
Perhaps the narrow, thread-bound booklet, with the exception of number 28, has meanwhile been forgotten, lost or has been sucked into the blackness between Jupiter and Saturn.
It is possible that the young woman (if she is still alive) has long since forgotten the poems from her youth.
Perhaps they are still so stubbornly anchored in my memory because the memory is linked to the prints of her teeth on the towel she bit into that night.
I don't know what the sense or value of keeping something like that and taking the faded booklet with the poems out of the drawer every now and then to read it again.
In all honesty, I have no idea.
But at least the poems stayed.
While other words and thoughts have turned to dust and gone.
Behead or
to be beheaded
put your neck down
on a stone pillow
and hello !, you turn to dust
The preceding story is taken from Haruki Murakami: “First person singular. Stories". The book will be published on January 26th. at DuMont. Translated from the Japanese by Ursula Gräfe. 224 pp., € 22. © 2021 for the German edition. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne, p. 7 ff.
Copyright © 2020 Haruki Murakami
Winner of the WELT Literature Prize in 2014: Haruki Murakami
Source: Dominik Butzmann
Haruki Murakami, born in 1949, is the most famous writer in Japan and has a fan base around the world. He has received numerous prizes, including the 2014 WELT Literature Prize.