A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

  The ditch gave on to a ridge trail, both sides of which sloped down to dry hollows. Plump birds shuffled across the path through the leaves, losing themselves in the undergrowth. Here and there, brush azaleas blazed bright red.

  I walked around for an hour and lost all sense of direction. At this rate, I was hardly going to find the Sheep Man. I roamed the bottom of one dry hollow until I heard the sound of water. I sought out the river, then followed it downstream. If my memory served me correctly, there had to be a waterfall and near it, the road we’d walked up.

  After another ten minutes, I came across the waterfall. Splashing as it struck the rocks in the gorge below, lapping into frozen pools. There was no sign of fish, though a few fallen leaves traced slow circles on the surface of the pools. I crossed from rock to rock, made my way down below the falls, then crawled up the slippery opposite bank. I had reached the road.

  Seated on the edge of a bridge, watching me, was the Sheep Man. A big sailcloth bag of firewood was slung over his shoulder.

  “Wanderaroundtoomuchyou’llbebearbait,” said the Sheep Man. “There’sboundtobeoneaboutinthesepartsyouknow.

  Yesterdayafter noonIfoundtraces.

  Ifyouhavetowalkaroundyououghttoputabellon yourhiplikeus.”

  The Sheep Man shook a little bell fastened to his hip with a safety pin.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” I said after catching my breath.

  “Iknow,” said the Sheep Man. “I’veseenyousearching.”

  “Well then, why didn’t you call out?”

  “You’retheonewhowantedtosearchmeout. So I held back.”

  The Sheep Man took a cigarette out of his pocket and smoked it with great pleasure. I sat down next to him.

  “You live around here?”

  “Hmm,” said the Sheep Man. “Butdon’ttellanybody.Nobody knows.”

  “But my friend knows all about you.”

  Silence.

  “You know, it’s a very important matter.”

  Silence.

  “And if you’re friends with my friend, that makes us friends, no?”

  “Iguessso,” said the Sheep Man cautiously. “Iguessitprobably does.”

  “And if you’re my friend, you wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Think about it.”

  “Errno,” answered one perplexed Sheep Man. He licked his parched lips. “Ican’ttellyouI’mrealsorryIcan’ttellyouIcan’t.I’mnot supposedto.”

  “Someone’s put it to you to keep quiet?”

  The Sheep Man clammed up. The wind whistled through the barren trees.

  “Nobody’s around to hear,” I whispered.

  The Sheep Man looked me in the eye. “Youdon’tknowathing aboutourwaysheredoyou?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Welllistenthisisnoordinaryplacewegothere.

  Thatmuchyoushould keepinmind.”

  “But just the other day you told me this was such nice country.”

  “Forusyes,” said the Sheep Man. “Forusthisistheonlyplacetolive. Ifwewerechasedoutofherewe’dhavenoplacetogo.”

  At that, the Sheep Man shut up. He would not say another word on the subject. I looked at his sailcloth bag filled with firewood.

  “That your heating for the winter?”

  The Sheep Man nodded silently.

  “But I didn’t see any smoke.”

  “Nofireyet.Nottillthesnowsetsin.Butevenafteritsnows

  youwouldn’t beabletoseethesmokefromourfire.

  Wegotaspecialwayofbuildingfires.” He grinned, self-satisfied.

  “So when will the snow begin to pile up around here?”

  The Sheep Man looked up at the sky, then looked at me. “The snow’llcomeearlythisyear.Maybeanothertendays.”

  “In another ten days the road will freeze over?”

  “Probably.Nobodycomingupandnobodygoingdown.

  Wonderful timeofyear.”

  “And you’ve been living here how long?”

  “Longtime,” said the Sheep Man. “Reallongtime.”

  “What do you eat?”

  “Tubersshootsnutsbirdswhateverlittlefishandcrabs

  Icancatch.”

  “Don’t you get cold?”

  “Winter’ssupposedtobecold.”

  “If you need something, I’d be glad to share whatever I’ve got.”

  “ThanksbutI’mfinejustnow.”

  The Sheep Man suddenly stood up and started walking off in the direction of the pasture. So I got up to follow him.

  “Why’d you take to hiding out up here?”

  “You’dlaughifItoldyou,” said the Sheep Man.

  “No, I wouldn’t laugh, I swear,” I said. I couldn’t imagine what there’d be to laugh about.

  “Youwon’ttellanyone?”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Ididn’twanttogoofftowar.”

  For the next few minutes, we walked on without a word between us.

  “War with whom?” I asked.

  “Dunno,” coughed out the Sheep Man. “ButIdidn’twanttogo. Anywaythat’swhyI’masheep.

  Asheepwhostayswherehebelongsup here.”

  “You from Junitaki-cho?”

  “Uhhuhbutdon’ttellanyone.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “You don’t like the town?”

  “Thetowndownthere?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’tlikeitatall.Toofullofsoldiers,” the Sheep Man coughed again. “Whereyoufrom?”

  “Tokyo.”

  “Heardaboutthewar?”

  “Nope.”

  At that the Sheep Man seemed to lose all interest in me. He remained silent until we reached the entrance to the pasture.

  “Care to stop by the house?” I asked the Sheep Man.

  “Gottalayinwintersupplies,” he said. “Realbusy.Maybenext time.”

  “I’d like to see my friend,” I said. “I’ve got something I have to see him about next week.”

  The Sheep Man shook his head forlornly. His ears flapped. “Sorry butlikeIsaidbeforeit’snotuptous.”

  “Well, then, pass the word on if you can.”

  “Hmm,” said the Sheep Man.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said. I turned to leave.

  “Ifyougooutwalking,” the Sheep Man called out as he departed, “makesureyoudon’tforgetthebell.”

  I headed straight back for the house as the Sheep Man disappeared into the woods to the east, the same as before. A winter-dark wordless green pasture stretched between us.

  That afternoon I baked bread. The Rat’s Bread Baking proved to be a thoughtfully written cookbook. On the cover was written: “If you can read, then you can bake bread.” It was no exaggeration. The smell of bread filled the house, making it warm all over. For a fledgling effort, it didn’t taste too bad either. There was plenty of flour and yeast in the kitchen, enough for bread the whole winter long, if it turned out I had to stay. And more rice and spaghetti than I cared to think about.

  That evening, I had bread and salad and ham and eggs, with canned peaches for dessert.

  The next morning I cooked rice and made a pilaf of canned salmon and seaweed and mushrooms.

  For lunch, it was cheesecake from the freezer and strong milk tea.

  At snacktime, I treated myself to hazelnut ice cream topped with Cointreau.

  In the evening, broiled chicken and a can of Campbell’s soup.

  I was putting on weight again.

  Early in the afternoon of the ninth day, as I was looking through the bookcase, I noticed one volume that seemed like it may have been read recently. It was the only one without dust on it, its spine protruding a bit farther out than the rest.

  I pulled it out and sat on the chaise longue to flip through it. The Heritage of Pan-Asianism. A wartime edition. The paper was cheap and gave off a stink when I turned the pages. The contents, as expected from a wartime publication, terribly one-sided. Real boring too; stuff to yawn over every three pages. On some pages, words had been crossed out. There was not a single line on the February 26th Incident.
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  Tucked into the book, toward the end, was a sheet of white notepaper. After the yellowing pages, that white sheet came as some kind of miracle. It marked, on the right page, an addendum to the book. A list of names, birthdates, and permanent residences of all the so-called Pan-Asianists famous and unknown. I scanned the list from top to bottom, and there around the middle was the Boss. The very same “sheeped” Boss in whose name I had been brought here. His permanent residence, Hokkaido—Junitaki-cho.

  In a daze, I set the book down in my lap. Words did not even form in my head. It was as if someone, or something, had given me a solid whack from behind.

  How could I not have figured it out? It should have occurred to me first thing. The moment I learned that the Boss was from a poor farming background in Hokkaido I should have checked up on it. No matter how skillfully the Boss had managed to rub out his past, there would have been some way to search out the facts. That black-suited secretary would surely have looked it up for me.

  Well no, maybe not.

  I shook my head.

  No way he wouldn’t have looked that up himself. The man was not so careless. He would have checked every possible angle, complicated or not. Just as he had done his homework on me.

  So he already knew everything.

  That was indisputable. And yet, he had gone to great lengths to convince me, or rather to blackmail me, in order to get me up here. Why? If it was something that needed doing, surely he was in a better position to do it and to do a crack job of it. And if I were for some reason to be a pawn, why wouldn’t he have told me the name of the place from the beginning?

  As I sorted through my confusion, I started to get mad. More and more, this had turned into one grotesque comedy of mishaps, and I didn’t think it was funny. How much did the Rat know? And while we’re at it, how much did the man in the black suit know? Here I was, smack in the center of everything without a clue. At every turn, I’d been way off base, way off the mark. Of course, you could probably say the same thing about my whole life. In that sense, I suppose I had no one to blame. All the same, what gave them the right to treat me like this? I’d been used, I’d been beaten, I’d been wrung dry.

  I was ready to get the hell off the mountain, but somehow that offered no satisfaction. I had gotten in too deep. It would have been so easy if only I could have cried. But crying wasn’t an option, because I felt that far ahead of me there was something really worth crying about.

  I went into the kitchen and got the bottle of whiskey. I could think of nothing to do but drink.

  Things the Mirror Shows,

  Things the Mirror Doesn’t

  The morning of the tenth day, I decided to forget everything. I had already lost what I was supposed to lose.

  In the middle of my morning run, it began to snow again. This time an opaque snow, a sticky, wet sleet edging toward ice flakes. Unlike the first loose snow, this one was nasty. It stuck to the body. I cut short my run, returned to the house, and drew a bath. While the bath was coming to temperature, I plunked myself down in front of the heater, but still I couldn’t get warm. A damp chill had seeped into me. I couldn’t bend my fingers and my ears burned and felt brittle, as if they would drop off any second. All over, my skin felt like cheap pulp paper.

  A thirty-minute soak in the tub and hot tea with brandy finally brought my body back to normal, although for the next two hours I suffered from intermittent chills. So this was winter on the mountain.

  The snow kept falling straight through until evening, covering the entire pasture in white. The snow let up just as night cloaked the world in darkness, and once again a profound hush drifted in like mist. A hush I could do nothing to deny. I put the record player on automatic repeat and listened to White Christmas twenty-six times.

  The snow did not stick for long. As the Sheep Man had predicted, the ground would not freeze for a while yet. The following day, my eleventh, was bright and clear. The prodigal sun bided its time, leaving the pasture a patchwork of snow, which gleamed in the sunlight. The snow that had collected on the roof’s gables came sliding down in would-be icebergs that broke up on the ground with an unnerving thud. Melting snow dripped outside the windows. Everything sparkled. Each droplet clinging to each tip of every oak leaf shone.

  I dug my hands into my pockets and stood by the window, gazing out. There things unfolded entirely apart from me. Unrelated to my existence—unrelated to anybody’s existence—everything was flowing. The snow fell, the snow melted.

  I decided to do some housecleaning, accompanied by the sounds of snow dripping and tumbling. Holed up as I was on account of the snow, my body needed to do something; besides, wasn’t I a guest in someone else’s house? I have never been one to object to cleaning and cooking.

  Still, cleaning a large house proved a lot harder work than I had imagined. Jogging ten miles was easy in comparison. I dusted every nook and cranny, then went around with the large vacuum cleaner to suck up the dust. I damp-mopped the wood floors, then got down on my hands and knees to wax them. It left me half out of breath, but thanks to having quit smoking, the other half of my breath managed to hold its own. None of that terrible rasping and catching in my throat.

  I went into the kitchen for a glass of cold grape juice and finished straightening up what remained in one bout of cleaning before noon. I threw open the shutters, and the newly waxed floors glittered. There was a wonderful, nostalgic melding of the rich earthy scent of the country and the smell of the wax.

  I washed out the rags I’d used to wax the floors, then put a pot of water on to boil. For the spaghetti, into which I mixed cod roe, plenty of butter, white wine, and soy sauce. A great lunch, complete with a woodpecker calling from the nearby woods.

  I made short work of the spaghetti, washed up the dishes, then returned to the chores. I scrubbed the bathtub and washbasin, cleaned the toilet, polished the furniture. Thanks to the Rat, nothing was very dirty to begin with; a spray of furniture polish was about all that was needed. Next I pulled out a long hose and rinsed down the windows and shutters. With that, the whole house freshened up. After I washed the windows, my cleaning was done. I spent the remaining two hours before evening listening to records.

  As I headed up to the Rat’s room to borrow another book, I noticed the full-length mirror at the foot of the stairs. I’d overlooked it, and it was filthy. I wiped it down with a cloth, but no amount of wiping or glass cleaner would do the trick. I couldn’t understand why the Rat would let this one mirror stay so dirty. I hauled over a bucket of warm water and worked on the mirror with a nylon scrub, cutting through the hardened grease. There was enough grime on the mirror to turn the bucket water black.

  The crafted wooden frame told me it was an antique, probably worth a pretty sum, so I was careful not to work too enthusiastically.

  The mirror reflected my image from head to toe, without warping, almost pristinely. I stood there and looked at myself. Nothing new. I was me, with my usual nothing-special expression. My image was unnecessarily sharp, however. I wasn’t seeing my mirror-flat mirror-image. It wasn’t myself I was seeing; on the contrary, it was as if I were the reflection of the mirror and this flat-me-of-an-image were seeing the real me. I brought my right hand up in front of my face and wiped my mouth. The me through the looking glass went through the same motions. But maybe it was only me copying what the me in the mirror had done. I couldn’t be certain I’d wiped my mouth out of my own free will.

  I filed the word “free will” away in my head and pinched my ear with my left hand. The me in the mirror did exactly the same. Apparently he had filed the word “free will” away in his head the same as I had.

  I gave up and left the mirror. He also left the mirror.

  On the twelfth day, snow fell for the third time. It was snowing before I woke up. An awfully silent snow, this one neither hard nor sticky wet. Pirouetting down slowly from the sky, melting before it amounted to anything. The kind of tranquil snow that makes you close your eyes, gently.


  I pulled the old guitar out of the trunk room and, after tuning it with great difficulty, tried my hand at some old tunes. I practiced along with Benny Goodman’s “Air Mail Special,” and soon it was noontime. I made a sandwich of thick slices of ham on my homemade, already rock-hard bread, and opened a can of beer. After thirty minutes more of guitar practice, who should show up but the Sheep Man.

  “IfIbotheryouI’llleave,” said the Sheep Man through the open front door.

  “No, not at all. I was getting kind of bored anyway,” I said, setting the guitar on the floor.

  The Sheep Man whacked the mud off his boots the same as before, then came in. His body seemed to have filled out his thick sheep costume. He sat on the sofa opposite me, hand on the armrest and snuggled into position.

  “It’s not going to stick yet?” I asked.

  “Notyet,” answered the Sheep Man. “There’ssnowthatsticksand snowthatdoesn’t.Thisisnonsticksnow.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Thestickingsnowcomesnextweek.”

  “Care for a beer?”

  “Thanks.ButI’dreallyratherhaveabrandy.”

  I went to the kitchen, got him his brandy and me a beer, and carried it all back into the living room together with a cheese sandwich.

  “Youwereplayingguitar,” said the Sheep Man with interest. “Welikemusictoo.Can’tplayanyinstrumentthough.”

  “Neither can I. Haven’t played in close to ten years.”

  “That’sokayawplaysomethingforme.”

  I didn’t want to dampen the Sheep Man’s spirits, so I played through the melody of “Air Mail Special,” tacked on one chorus and an ad lib, then lost count of the bars and threw in the towel.

  “You’regood,” said the Sheep Man in all seriousness. “Proba blyloadsoffuntoplayaninstrumenteh?”

  “If you’re good. But if you want to get good, you have to train your ears. And when you’ve trained your ears, you get depressed at your own playing.”

  “Nahc’monreally?” said the Sheep Man.

  The Sheep Man took dainty little sips from his brandy snifter, while I drank my beer from the can.