Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
When, twelve days later, Scheherazade went back to the boy’s house for the fourth time, there was a new lock on the front door. Its gold color gleamed in the midday sun, as if to boast of its great sturdiness. And there was no key hidden under the mat. Clearly, his mother’s suspicions had been aroused by the missing shirt. She must have searched high and low, coming across other signs that told of something strange going on in her house. Just possibly, someone had entered in her family’s absence. Quickly, she had the lock replaced. Her instincts had been unerring, her reaction swift.
Scheherazade was, of course, disappointed by this development, but at the same time she felt relieved. It was as if someone had stepped behind her and removed a great weight from her shoulders. This means I don’t have to go on breaking into his house, she thought. There was no doubt that, had the lock not been changed, her invasions would have gone on indefinitely. Nor was there any doubt that her actions would have escalated with each visit. It was a road leading to a catastrophe of some sort. Eventually, a member of the family would have shown up while she was on the second floor. There would have been no avenue of escape. No way to talk herself out of her predicament. This was the future that had been awaiting her, sooner or later, and the outcome would have been devastating. Now she had dodged it. Perhaps she should thank his mother—though she had never met the woman—for having eyes like a hawk.
Scheherazade inhaled the aroma of his T-shirt each night before she went to bed. She slept with it next to her. She would wrap it in paper and hide it before she left for school in the morning. Then, after dinner, she would pull it out to caress and sniff. She worried that the odor might fade as the days went by, but that didn’t happen. Like an undying memory of singular importance, the smell of his sweat had permeated his shirt for good.
Now that further break-ins were out of the question—which was okay with her—Scheherazade’s state of mind slowly began to return to normal. She daydreamed less in class, and her teacher’s words began to register. Nevertheless, her chief focus was not on her teacher’s voice but on her classmate’s behavior. She kept her eye discreetly trained on him, trying to detect a change, any indication at all that he might be nervous about something. But he acted exactly the same as always. He threw his head back and laughed as unaffectedly as ever, and answered promptly when called upon. He shouted as loudly in soccer practice and got just as sweaty. She could see no trace of anything out of the ordinary—just an upright young man, leading a seemingly unclouded existence.
Still, Scheherazade knew of one shadow that was hanging over him. Or something close to that. No one else knew, in all likelihood. Just her (and, come to think of it, possibly his mother). On her third break-in, she had come across a number of pornographic magazines cleverly concealed in the farthest recesses of his closet. They were full of pictures of naked women, spreading their legs and offering generous views of their genitals. Some pictures portrayed the act of sex: men inserted rodlike penises into female bodies in the most unnatural of positions. Scheherazade had never laid eyes on photographs like these before. She sat at his desk and flipped slowly through the magazines, studying each photo with great interest. She guessed that he masturbated while viewing them. But the idea did not strike her as especially repulsive. Nor did she feel at all let down having seen this side of him. She accepted masturbation as a perfectly normal activity. All those sperm had to go somewhere, just as girls had to have periods. In other words, he was a typical teenager. Neither hero nor saint. She found that knowledge something of a relief.
—
“When my break-ins stopped, my passion for him began to cool. It was gradual, like the tide ebbing from a long, sloping beach. Somehow or other, I found myself smelling his shirt less often and spending less time caressing his pencil and badge. The fever was passing. What I had contracted was not something like sickness but the real thing. As long as it lasted, I couldn’t think straight. Maybe everybody goes through a crazy period like that at one time or another. Or maybe it was something that happened only to me. How about you? Did you ever have an experience like that?”
Habara tried to remember, but drew a blank. “No, nothing that extreme, I don’t think,” he said.
Scheherazade looked somewhat disappointed by his answer.
“Anyway, I forgot all about him once I graduated. So quickly and easily, it was weird. What was it about him that had made the seventeen-year-old me fall so hard? Try as I might, I couldn’t remember. Life is strange, isn’t it? You can be totally entranced by the glow of something one minute, be willing to sacrifice everything to make it yours, but then a little time passes, or your perspective changes a bit, and all of a sudden you’re shocked at how faded it appears. What was I looking at? you wonder. So that’s the story of my ‘breaking-and-entering’ period.”
She made it sound like Picasso’s Blue Period, Habara thought. But he had a good idea what she was trying to explain.
She glanced at the digital clock next to the bed. The time for her to leave was drawing near. There was a pregnant pause.
“To tell the truth,” she said finally, “the story doesn’t end there. A few years later, when I was in my second year of nursing school, a strange stroke of fate brought us together again. His mother played a big role in it; in fact, there was something spooky about the whole thing—it was like one of those old ghost stories. Events took a rather unbelievable course. Would you like to hear about it?”
“I’d love to,” Habara said.
“It had better wait till my next visit,” Scheherazade said. “Once I get started it’ll take time, and it’s getting late. I’ve got to head home and fix dinner.”
She got out of bed and put on her clothes—panties, stockings, camisole, and, finally, her skirt and blouse. Habara casually watched the sequence of her movements from the bed. It struck him that the way women put on their clothes could be even more interesting than the way they took them off.
“Any books in particular you’d like me to pick up?” she asked, on her way out the door.
No, not especially, he answered. What he really wanted, he thought, was for her to tell him the rest of her story, but he didn’t put that into words. Doing so might jeopardize his chances of ever hearing it.
—
Habara went to bed early that night and thought about Scheherazade. Perhaps he would never see her again. That worried him. The possibility was just too real. Nothing of a personal nature—no vow, no implicit understanding—held them together. Theirs was a chance relationship created by someone else, and might be terminated on that person’s whim. In other words, they were attached, and barely at that, by a slender thread. It was likely—no, certain—that that thread would eventually be broken. The only question was whether that would occur sooner or later. Once Scheherazade was gone, he would no longer be able to hear her stories. When their flow was broken, all the strange and unknown tales she should have told him would vanish without ever being heard.
But there was another possibility. He could be deprived of his freedom entirely, in which case not only Scheherazade but all women might be taken away from him. It was a very real prospect. Never again would he be able to enter the warm moistness of their bodies. Never again would he feel them quiver in response. Perhaps an even more distressing prospect for Habara than the cessation of sexual activity, however, was the loss of the moments of shared intimacy. To lose all contact with women was, in the end, to lose that connection. What his time spent with women offered was the opportunity to be embraced by reality, on the one hand, while negating it entirely on the other. That was something Scheherazade had provided in abundance—indeed, her gift was inexhaustible. The prospect of losing that made him saddest of all.
Habara closed his eyes and stopped thinking of Scheherazade. Instead, he thought of lampreys. Of jawless lampreys fastened to rocks, hiding among the waterweeds, swaying back and forth in the current. He imagined that he was one of them, waiting for a trout to appear. But no trout passed by
Translated by Ted Goossen
KINO
THE MAN ALWAYS SAT IN THE SAME SEAT, the stool farthest down the counter. When it wasn’t occupied, that is, though it was nearly always empty. The bar was seldom crowded, and that particular seat was the most inconspicuous and the least comfortable. A staircase in the back made the ceiling slanted and low, so it was hard to stand up there without bumping your head. The man was tall, yet, for some reason, he preferred that cramped, narrow spot.
Kino remembered the first time the man had come to his bar. His appearance had immediately caught Kino’s eye—the bluish shaved head, the thin build yet broad shoulders, the keen glint in his eye, the prominent cheekbones and wide forehead. He looked to be in his early thirties, and he wore a long gray raincoat, though it wasn’t raining and didn’t seem about to rain anytime soon. At first, Kino tagged him as a yakuza, and was on his guard around him. It was seven thirty on a chilly mid-April evening, and the bar was empty.
The man chose the seat at the end of the counter, took off his coat, hung it on a hook on the wall, in a quiet voice ordered a beer, then silently read a thick book. From his expression he seemed totally absorbed in what he was reading. After half an hour, finished with the beer, he raised his hand an inch or two to motion Kino over, and ordered a whiskey. “Which brand?” Kino asked, but the man said he had no preference.
“Just an ordinary sort of Scotch. A double. Add an equal amount of water and a little bit of ice, if you would.”
An ordinary sort of Scotch? Kino poured some White Label into a glass, added the same amount of water, chipped off ice with an ice pick, and added two small, nicely formed ice cubes. The man took a sip, scrutinized the glass, and narrowed his eyes. “This will do fine.”
He read for another half hour, then stood up and paid his bill in cash. He counted out exact change so that he wouldn’t get any coins back. Kino breathed a small sigh of relief as soon as he was out the door. But after the man had left his presence remained. As Kino stood behind the counter, preparing some dishes, he glanced up occasionally at the seat the man had occupied. It felt like someone was still there, raising his hand a couple of inches to order something.
The man began coming regularly to Kino’s bar. Once, at most twice, a week. He would invariably have a beer first, then a whiskey. (White Label, equal amount of water, plus a few ice cubes.) Sometimes he had two glasses of whiskey, though usually restricted himself to one. Occasionally he would study the day’s menu on the blackboard and order a light meal.
The man hardly ever said a word. Even after he started frequenting the bar, he never spoke other than to order something. He gave Kino a small nod each time he saw him, as if to tell him he remembered his face. He always came fairly early in the evening, a book, tucked under his arm, that he would place on the counter. Always a thick hardbound book. Kino never saw him read a paperback. Whenever he got tired of reading (at least, Kino guessed that he was tired), he looked up from the page and studied the bottles of liquor lined up on the shelves in front of him, as if examining a series of unusual taxidermied animals from faraway lands.
Once Kino got used to the man, though, he never felt uncomfortable around him, even when it was just the two of them. Kino never spoke much himself, and didn’t find it hard to remain silent around others. While the man read, Kino did what he would do if he were alone—wash dishes, prepare sauces, choose records to play, or page through the newspaper.
Kino didn’t know the man’s name, though the man knew he was Kino, since that was the name of the bar. But the man never introduced himself and Kino never bothered to ask. The man was just a regular customer who came to the bar, enjoyed a beer and a whiskey, read silently, paid in cash, then left. He never bothered anybody else. What more did Kino need to know about him?
—
Kino had worked for a sports equipment maker for seventeen years. Back in college, he had been a standout middle-distance runner, but in his junior year he’d torn his Achilles tendon and had to give up on the idea of joining a corporate track team. After graduation, on his coach’s recommendation, he got a job at the sports equipment company. At work, he was in charge of persuading sports stores to stock his brand of running shoes and leading athletes to try them out. The company, a mid-level firm headquartered in Okayama, was far from well known, certainly no Mizuno or Asics, and it lacked the financial power of a Nike or an Adidas to draw up exclusive contracts with the world’s best runners. They couldn’t even pay to entertain famous athletes, and if Kino wanted to take a runner to dinner he either had to reduce his own travel expenses or pay out of his own pocket.
Still, his company made carefully handcrafted shoes for top athletes, with little regard for the bottom line, and that craftsman-like care eventually paid off, with quite a few athletes who swore by their products. “Do an honest job and it will pay off” was the slogan of the company’s founder, and that low-key, somewhat anachronistic corporate approach suited Kino’s personality. Even a taciturn, unsociable man like him was able to make a go of sales. Actually, it was because of his personality that coaches trusted him and athletes (though not all that many in total) took a liking to him. He listened carefully to each runner’s needs, what specifications they wanted in a shoe, and made sure the head of manufacturing got all the details. He found the job engaging, and satisfying. The pay wasn’t much to speak of, but the job suited him. Although he couldn’t run anymore himself, he loved seeing the runners race around the track, their form textbook perfect.
When Kino quit his job, it wasn’t because he was dissatisfied with his work but because he discovered that his wife was having an affair with his best friend at the company. Kino spent more time out on the road than at home in Tokyo. He’d stuff a large gym bag full of shoe samples and make the rounds of sporting goods stores all over Japan, also visiting local colleges and companies that sponsored track teams. His wife and his colleague started sleeping together while he was away. Kino wasn’t the type who easily picked up on clues. He thought everything was fine with his marriage, and nothing his wife said or did tipped him off to the contrary. If he hadn’t happened to come home from a business trip a day early, he might never have discovered what was going on.
When he got back to Tokyo that day, he went straight to his condo in Kasai, only to find his wife and his friend naked and entwined in his bedroom, in the bed where he and his wife slept. It was obvious what they were up to. His wife was on top, crouched over the man, and when Kino opened the door he came face-to-face with her and her lovely breasts bouncing up and down. He was thirty-nine then, his wife thirty-five. They had no children. Kino lowered his head, shut the bedroom door, left the apartment, lugging his shoulder bag stuffed with a week’s worth of laundry, and never went back. The next day, he quit his job.
—
Kino had an unmarried aunt, his mother’s attractive, older sister. Ever since he was a child, his aunt had been nice to him. She’d had an older boyfriend for many years (“lover” might be the more accurate term), and he had generously given her a small house in Aoyama. Back in the good old days. She lived on the second floor of the house, and ran a coffee shop on the first floor. In front was a small garden and an impressive willow tree, with low-hanging, leafy branches. The house was on a narrow backstreet behind the Nezu Museum, not exactly the best location for drawing customers, but his aunt had a gift for attracting people, and her coffee shop did a decent amount of business.
After she turned sixty, though, she hurt her back, and it became increasingly difficult for her to run the shop alone. She decided to close the business and move to the Izu Kogen Highlands, to a resort condo with attached hot springs and a rehabilitation center. “I was wondering if eventually you might want to take over the shop?” she asked Kino. This was three months before he discovered his wife’s affair. “I app
After he submitted his resignation at work, he phoned his aunt to ask if she’d sold the shop yet. It was listed with a real estate agent, she told him, but no serious offers had come in. “I’d like to open a bar there if I can,” Kino said. “Could I pay you rent by the month?”
“But what about your job?” she asked.
“I quit a couple of days ago.”
“Didn’t your wife have a problem with that?”
“We’re probably going to get divorced soon.”
Kino didn’t explain the reason, and his aunt didn’t ask. There was silence for a time on the other end of the line. Then his aunt named a figure for the monthly rent, far lower than what Kino had expected. “I think I can handle that,” he told her.
“I’ll be getting some severance pay,” he went on, “so I won’t make any trouble for you when it comes to paying.”
“That doesn’t worry me at all,” his aunt said decisively.
He and his aunt had never talked all that much (his mother had discouraged him from getting close to her), but they’d always seemed to have, strangely enough, a kind of mutual understanding. She knew that Kino wasn’t the type of person to break a promise.
Kino used half of his savings to transform the coffee shop into a bar. He purchased the simplest furniture he could find, and had a long, sturdy bar installed, and bought all-new chairs. He put up new wallpaper in a calming color, and installed lighting more in keeping with a place where people went to drink. He brought his meager record collection from home, and lined a shelf in the bar with LPs. He owned a fairly decent stereo—a Thorens turntable, a Luxman amp, and small JBL two-way speakers—that he’d bought when he was single, a fairly extravagant purchase back then. But he had always enjoyed listening to old jazz records. It was his only hobby, one that he didn’t share with anyone else he knew. In college, he’d worked part time as a bartender at a pub in Roppongi, so he was well versed in the art of mixing cocktails.