Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
After breakfast, the mother and son always sat in the lobby and read the newspapers—each methodically proceeding from one page to the next, top to bottom, as if they were locked in a fierce contest to see who could take the longest to read the whole thing. Some days it wasn’t newspapers but massive hardcover books. They seemed less like a mother and son than an old married couple who had long ago grown bored with each other.
At around ten every morning, my wife and I would take a cooler down to the beach. We’d lather up well with sunblock, then sprawl out on mats on the sand. I’d listen to the Stones or Marvin Gaye on a Walkman, while my wife plowed through a paperback of Gone with the Wind. She claimed that she’d learned a lot about life from that book. I’d never read it, so I had no idea what she meant. Every day, the sun would pop up inland, trace a slow path between the rafts—in the opposite direction from the helicopters—then sink leisurely beneath the horizon.
At two every afternoon, the mother and son would appear at the beach. The mother always wore a plain light-colored dress with a broad-brimmed straw hat. The son never wore a hat; he had on sunglasses instead. They’d sit in the shade below the palm trees, the breeze rustling around them, and stare off at the ocean, not really doing anything. The mother sat in a folding beach chair, but the son never got out of his wheelchair. Every now and then they’d shift slightly in order to stay in the shade. The mother had a silver thermos with her, and occasionally she poured herself a drink in a paper cup or munched on a cracker.
Some days they’d leave after a half hour; other days they stayed as late as three. When I was swimming, I could feel them watching me. It was quite a long way from the rafts to the line of palm trees, so I may have been imagining it. Or perhaps I was just oversensitive, but whenever I clambered up onto one of the rafts I got the distinct feeling that their eyes were trained in my direction. Sometimes the silver thermos would glint like a knife in the sunlight.
One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed. The sun rose in the east, set in the west, the olive-green helicopters zoomed in low, and I downed gallons of beer and swam to my heart’s content.
On the afternoon of our last full day at the hotel, I went out for one last swim. My wife was taking a nap, so I left for the beach alone. It was a Saturday, so there were more people there than usual. Tanned young soldiers with buzz cuts and tattooed arms were playing volleyball. Kids were splashing around at the edge of the water, building sand castles and shrieking in delight at each big wave. But there was almost no one in the water; the rafts were deserted. The sky was cloudless, the sun high overhead, the sand hot. It was after two, but the mother and son still hadn’t made their appearance.
I walked out until the water came up to my chest, then did the crawl, heading for the raft on the left. Slowly, testing the resistance of the water with my palms, I swam on, counting the number of strokes. The water was chilly, and it felt good on my suntanned skin. Swimming in such clear water, I could see my own shadow on the sandy bottom, as if I were a bird gliding through the sky. After I had counted forty strokes, I looked up and, sure enough, there was the raft right ahead of me. Exactly ten strokes later, my left hand touched its side. I floated there for a minute, catching my breath, then grabbed hold of the ladder and scrambled aboard.
I was surprised to find someone else already there—an overweight blond woman. I hadn’t seen anyone on the raft when I set out from the beach, so she must have got there while I was swimming toward it. The woman was wearing a tiny bikini—one of those fluttery red things, like the banners Japanese farmers fly in their fields to warn that they’ve just sprayed chemicals—and she was lying facedown. The woman was so obese that the swimsuit looked even smaller than it was. She seemed to have arrived recently—her skin was still pale, without a trace of a tan.
She glanced up for a second and then closed her eyes again. I sat down at the opposite end of the raft, dangled my feet in the water, and looked off at the shore. The mother and son still weren’t under their palm trees. They were nowhere else, either. There was no way I could have missed them; the metal wheelchair, glistening in the sunlight, was a dead giveaway. I felt let down. Without them, a piece of the picture was missing. Perhaps they had checked out of the hotel and gone back to where they came from—wherever that was. When I’d seen them a little earlier, in the hotel restaurant, I hadn’t got the impression that they were preparing to leave. They had taken their time eating the daily special and had quietly drunk a cup of coffee afterward—the same routine as always.
I lay facedown like the blond woman and tanned myself for ten minutes or so, listening to the tiny waves slap against the side of the raft. The drops of water in my ear warmed in the intense sun.
“Boy, it’s hot,” the woman said from the other end of the raft. She had a high-pitched, saccharine kind of voice.
“It sure is,” I replied.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I don’t have a watch, but it must be around two thirty. Two forty, maybe?”
“Really?” she said, and let out something close to a sigh, as if that might not be the time she was hoping for. Perhaps she didn’t care one way or another about the time.
She sat up. Sweat was beaded on her like flies on food. The rolls of fat started just below her ears and sloped gently down to her shoulders, then in one continuous series down her chubby arms. Even her wrists and ankles seemed to disappear inside those fleshy folds. I couldn’t help thinking of the Michelin Man. As heavy as she was, though, the woman didn’t strike me as unhealthy. She wasn’t bad-looking, either. She simply had too much meat on her bones. I guessed that she was in her late thirties.
“You must have been here a while, you’re so tanned.”
“Nine days.”
“What an amazing tan,” she said. Instead of responding, I cleared my throat. The water in my ears gurgled as I coughed.
“I’m staying at the military hotel,” she said.
I knew the place. It was just down the road from the beach.
“My brother’s a navy officer, and he invited me to come. The navy’s not so bad, you know? The pay’s OK. They’ve got everything you want, right there on the base, plus perks like this resort. It was different when I was in college. That was during the Vietnam War. Having a career military person in your family then was kind of embarrassing. You had to slink around. But the world’s really changed since then.”
I nodded vaguely.
“My ex used to be in the navy, too,” she went on. “A fighter pilot. He had a tour of duty in Vietnam for two years, then he became a pilot for United. I was a stewardess for United then, and that’s how we met. I’m trying to remember what year we got married…Nineteen seventy-something. Anyhow, about six years ago. It happens all the time.”
“What does?’
“You know—airline crews work crazy hours, so they tend to date each other. The working hours and lifestyle are totally off the wall. Anyhow, we get married, I quit my job, and then he takes up with another stewardess and winds up marrying her. That happens all the time, too.”
I tried changing the subject. “Where do you live now?”
“Los Angeles,” she said. “You ever been there?”
“No,” I said.
“I was born there. Then my father was transferred to Salt Lake City. Have you been there?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” she said, shaking her head. She palmed the sweat from her face.
It was strange to think she’d been a stewardess. I’d seen plenty of brawny stewardesses who could have been wrestlers. I’d seen some with beefy arms and downy upper lips. But I’d never seen one as big as her. Maybe United didn’t care how heavy their stewardesses were. Or maybe she hadn’t been this fat when she had that job.
“Where are you staying?” she asked me.
I pointed out the hotel.
I explained how my wife and I were on vacation.
“A honeymoon?”
No, I replied. We’ve been married six years.
“Really?” she said, surprised. “You don’t look that old.”
I scanned the beach. No sign yet of the mother and son. The soldiers were still tossing a volleyball around. The lifeguard up on his tower was staring intently at something with his oversize binoculars. Two military helicopters finally appeared offshore and, like messengers in a Greek tragedy delivering inauspicious news, they thundered solemnly overhead and disappeared inland. Silently, we watched the green machines vanish into the distance.
“I bet from up there we look like we’re having a great time,” the woman said. “Sunning ourselves out here on this raft, not a care in the world.”
“You may be right.”
“Most things look beautiful when you’re way up high,” she said. She rolled over onto her stomach again and closed her eyes.
Time passed by in silence. Sensing that it was the right moment to leave, I stood up and told her that I had to be getting back. I dived into the water and swam off. Halfway there, I stopped, treading water, and turned back toward the raft. She was watching me and waved. I gave a slight wave back. From far away, she looked like a dolphin. All she needed was a pair of flippers and she could leap back into the sea.
In my room I took a nap, then as evening came on my wife and I went down to the restaurant as always and ate dinner. The mother and son weren’t there. And when we walked back to our room from the restaurant their door was closed. Light filtered out through the small frosted-glass pane in the door, but I couldn’t tell if the room was still occupied.
“I wonder if they’ve already checked out,” I said to my wife. “They weren’t at the beach or at dinner.”
“Everybody checks out eventually,” my wife said. “You can’t live like this forever.”
“I guess so,” I agreed, but I wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t picture that mother and son anywhere but right here.
We started packing. Once we’d filled our suitcases and stowed them at the foot of our bed, the room suddenly seemed cold and alien. Our vacation was coming to an end.
I woke up and glanced at my watch on the table next to my bed. It was one twenty. My heart was beating furiously. I slid off the bed down onto the carpet, sat cross-legged, and took some deep breaths. Then I held my breath, relaxed my shoulders, sat up straight, and tried to focus. I must have swum too much, I decided, or got too much sun. I stood and looked around the room. At the foot of the bed, our two suitcases crouched like stealthy animals. That’s right, I remembered—tomorrow we won’t be here anymore.
In the pale moonlight shining in through the window, my wife was fast asleep. I couldn’t hear her breathing at all, and it was almost as if she were dead. Sometimes she sleeps that way. When we first got married, it kind of scared me; every now and then, I thought maybe she really was dead. But it was just that silent, bottomless sleep. I stripped off my sweaty pajamas and changed into a clean shirt and pair of shorts. Slipping a miniature bottle of Wild Turkey that was on the table into my pocket, I opened the door quietly and went outside. The night air was chilly and it carried with it the damp odor of all the surrounding plants. The moon was full, bathing the world in a strange hue you never see in the daytime. It was like looking through a special color filter, one that made some things more colorful than they really are, and left others as drab and drained as a corpse.
I wasn’t sleepy at all. It was as if sleep had never existed, my mind was so totally clear and focused. Silence reigned. No wind, no insects, no night birds calling out. Only the far-off sound of waves, and I had to listen carefully to hear even them.
I made one slow circuit of the cottage, then cut across the lawn. In the moonlight, the lawn, which was circular, looked more like an iced-over pond. I stepped carefully, trying not to crack the ice. Beyond the lawn was a narrow set of stone steps, and at the top a bar decorated in a tropical theme. Every evening, just before dinner, I had a vodka and tonic at this bar. This late at night, of course, the place was closed, the bar shuttered, and the parasols at each table all neatly folded up like slumbering pterodactyls.
The young man in the wheelchair was there, resting an elbow on one of the tables, gazing out at the water. From a distance, his metal wheelchair in the moonlight looked like some precision instrument made especially for the deepest, darkest hours of the night.
I had never seen the man alone before. In my mind, he and his mother were always a single unit—he in his chair, his mother pushing it. It felt odd—rude, even—to see him like this. He was wearing an orange Hawaiian shirt I’d seen before, and white cotton trousers. He was just sitting without moving, staring at the ocean.
I stood there for a while, wondering whether I should signal to him that I was there. But, before I could decide what to do, he sensed my presence and turned around. When he saw me, he gave his usual minimalist nod.
“Good evening,” I said.
“Good evening,” he answered in a small voice. This was the first time I’d heard him speak. His voice sounded a little sleepy but otherwise perfectly normal. Not too high, not too low.
“A midnight stroll?” he asked.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
He looked me over from top to bottom, and a faint smile came to his lips. “Same here,” he said. “Have a seat, if you’d like.”
I hesitated for a moment, nodded, then walked over to his table. I pulled out one of the plastic chairs and sat down opposite him. I turned to look in the same direction that he was looking. At the end of the beach were the jagged rocks, like muffins sliced in half, with waves slapping at them at regular intervals. Neat, graceful little waves—as if they’d been measured off with a ruler. Beyond that, there wasn’t much to look at.
“I didn’t see you at the beach today,” I said.
“I was resting in my room the whole day,” the young man replied. “My mother wasn’t feeling well.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“It’s not a physical thing. More of an emotional, nervous condition.” He rubbed his cheek with the middle finger of his right hand. Despite the late hour, his cheeks were as smooth as porcelain, not a trace of stubble. “She’s OK now. She’s sound asleep. It’s different from my legs—one good night’s sleep and she’s better. Not completely cured or anything, but at least she’s her usual self again. Come morning, she’ll be fine.”
He was silent for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I uncrossed my legs under the table and wondered if this was the right moment to leave. It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the right point in a conversation to say goodbye. But I missed my chance: just as I was going to tell him I had to go, he spoke up.
“There are all kinds of nervous disorders. Even if they have the same cause, there are a million different symptoms. It’s like an earthquake—the underlying energy is the same, but, depending on where it happens, the results are different. In one case, an island might sink; in another a new island is formed.”
He yawned. A long, formal kind of yawn. Elegant, almost. “Excuse me,” he said afterward. He looked exhausted; his eyes were blurry, as if he might fall asleep at any second. I glanced at my watch and realized that I wasn’t wearing one—just a band of white skin where my watch had been.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, “I might look sleepy but I’m not. Four hours a night is enough for me, and I usually get that just before dawn. So at this time of night I’m mostly here, just hanging out.”
He picked up the Cinzano ashtray on the table, gazed at it for a while as if it were some rare find, then put it back.
“Whenever my mother has her nervous condition, the left side of her face gets frozen. She can’t move her eye or her mouth. If you look at that side of her face, it looks like a cracked vase. It’s weird, but it’s nothing fatal or anything. One night’s sleep and she’s go
I had no idea how to respond, so I just gave a noncommittal nod. A cracked vase?
“Don’t tell my mother I told you about this, okay? She hates if anybody talks about her condition.”
“Sure,” I said. “Besides, we’re leaving here tomorrow, so I doubt I’ll have a chance to talk with her.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, as if he really meant it.
“It is, but I’ve got to get back to work, so what can I do?” I said.
“Where are you from?”
“Tokyo.”
“Tokyo,” he repeated. He narrowed his eyes again and stared out at the ocean, as if he’d be able, if he stared hard enough, to see the city lights of Tokyo out beyond the horizon.
“Are you going to be here much longer?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” he replied, tracing the handgrip on his wheelchair with his fingers. “Another month, maybe two. It all depends. My sister’s husband owns stock in this hotel, so we can stay here for next to nothing. My father runs a big tile company in Cleveland, and my brother-in-law’s basically taken it over. I don’t like the guy very much, but I guess you can’t choose your family, can you? I don’t know, maybe he’s not as terrible as I make out. Unhealthy people like me tend to be a little narrow-minded.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and slowly, delicately, blew his nose, then repocketed the handkerchief. “Anyhow, he owns stock in a lot of companies. A lot of investment property, too. A shrewd guy, just like my father. So we’re all—my family, I mean—divided into two types of people: the healthy ones and the sick ones. The functional and the dysfunctional. The healthy ones are busy making tile, increasing their wealth, and evading taxes—but don’t tell anybody I said that, OK?—and they take care of the sick ones. It’s a neat division of labor.”