Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage (9 page)

In front of the inn was a beautiful mountain stream
where one could catch lots of firm, colorful fish. Noisy birds were always skimming over the surface of the stream, their calls piercing, and it wasn’t unusual to spot wild boar or monkeys roaming around nearby. The mountains were a treasure trove of edible wild plants. In this isolated environment, young Haida was able to indulge himself in reading and contemplation. He no longer cared what was happening in the real world.

Two months into his stay at the inn, he began to chat with a guest who was staying there. The man appeared to be in his mid-forties. He was tall, with lanky arms and legs, and short hair. He wore gold-framed glasses, and he had a receding hairline, which made the top of his head as smooth as a freshly laid egg. He had walked up the mountain road alone, a plastic travel bag hanging from one shoulder, and had been staying at the inn for a week. Whenever he went out, he invariably dressed in a leather jacket, jeans, and work boots. On cold days he would add a wool cap and a navy-blue muffler. The man’s name was Midorikawa. At least that was the name he signed in the guest book at the inn, along with an address in Koganei City in Tokyo. He meticulously paid in cash every morning for the previous night’s stay.

(Midorikawa? “Green river.” Another person with a color, Tsukuru thought, but said nothing and listened to the rest of the story.)

Midorikawa didn’t do anything special. He spent time soaking in the open-air bath, took walks in the nearby hills, or lay in the
kotatsu
—the foot-warmer table—reading the paperbacks he’d brought with him (mostly mindless mysteries). In the evening he’d enjoy two small bottles of hot sake—no more, no less. He was as taciturn as Haida’s father, and never spoke unless absolutely necessary, though it didn’t seem to bother the people at the inn. They were used to these sort of guests. All of the people who came to this remote, backwoods hot springs were odd, those who stayed long term even more so.

One morning, just before dawn, Haida was soaking in the open-air hot spring next to the river when Midorikawa came to bathe and started talking to him. For some reason Midorikawa seemed to have taken a deep interest in this young odd-job worker. It might have stemmed, in part, from the time he saw Haida on the porch reading a book by Georges Bataille.

I’m a jazz pianist from Tokyo, Midorikawa said. I had some personal disappointments, and the daily grind was wearing me down, so I came alone to this quiet place deep in the mountains, hoping to rest up. Actually, I set out without any plan, and just happened to land here.

I like it, everything’s stripped to the bare essentials. I hear you’re from Tokyo too?

As he soaked in the hot water in the dim light, Haida
explained, as briefly as he could, his own situation.

How he’d taken a leave of absence from college and was traveling around the country. Besides, the campus was blockaded, he added, so there was no reason to stay in Tokyo.

Aren’t you interested in what’s going on now in Tokyo? Midorikawa asked. It’s quite a spectacle. One uproar after another, every day. Like the whole world’s turned upside down. Don’t you feel bad that you’re missing out?

The world isn’t that easily turned upside down, Haida replied. It’s people who are turned upside down. I don’t feel bad about missing that. Midorikawa seemed to appreciate the younger man’s curt, direct way of speaking.

I wonder if there’s anyplace around here where I might play the piano, Midorikawa asked Haida.

There’s a junior high school on the other side of the mountain, Haida replied. After school’s out for the day, they might let you play the piano in their music room. Midorikawa was happy to hear this. If it isn’t any trouble, he said, could you take me there? Haida relayed this request to the inn’s owner, who instructed him to escort Midorikawa to the school. The owner phoned the junior high to set it up. After lunch, the two of them hiked over the mountain. The rain had just stopped falling, so the
path was slippery, but Midorikawa, shoulder bag slung diagonally across his shoulders, strode quickly, surefooted, down the path. Though outwardly a city person, he was much more robust than he appeared.

The keyboard of the old upright piano in the music room was uneven, and the tuning was off, but overall it was tolerable. Midorikawa sat down on the creaky chair, stretched out his fingers, ran through all eighty-eight keys, then began trying out a few chords. Fifths, sevenths, ninths, elevenths. He didn’t seem too pleased with the sound, but appeared to get a certain physical satisfaction from the mere act of pressing down on the keys. As Haida watched the nimble, resilient way his fingers moved over the keyboard, he decided that Midorikawa must be a pretty well-known pianist.

After trying out the piano, Midorikawa took a small cloth bag from his shoulder bag and gingerly placed it on top of the piano. The bag was made of expensive cloth, the opening tied up with string. Somebody’s funeral ashes, maybe? Haida thought. It seemed like placing the bag on top of the piano was his habit, whenever he played. You could tell by the practiced way he went about it.

Midorikawa hesitantly began playing “ ’Round Midnight.” At first he played each chord carefully, cautiously, like a person sticking his toes into a stream,
testing the swiftness of the water and searching for a foothold. After playing the main theme, he started a long improvisation. As time went by, his fingers became more agile, more generous, in their movements, like fish swimming in clear water. The left hand inspired the right, the right hand spurred on the left. Haida’s father didn’t know much about jazz, but he did happen to be familiar with this Thelonious Monk composition, and Midorikawa’s performance went straight to the heart of the piece. His playing was so soulful it made Haida forget about the piano’s erratic tuning. As he listened to the music in this junior-high music room deep in the mountains, as the sole audience for the performance, Haida felt all that was unclean inside him washed away. The straightforward beauty of the music overlapped with the fresh, oxygen-rich air and the cool, clear water of the stream, all of them acting in concert. Midorikawa, too, was lost in his playing, as if all the minutiae of reality had disappeared. Haida had never seen someone so thoroughly absorbed in what he was doing. He couldn’t take his eyes off Midorikawa’s ten fingers, which moved like independent, living creatures.

In fifteen minutes Midorikawa finished playing, took out a thick towel from his shoulder bag, and carefully wiped his perspiring face. He closed his eyes for a while as if he were meditating. “Okay,” he finally said, “that’s
enough. Let’s go back.” He reached out, picked up the cloth bag on the piano, and gently returned it to his shoulder bag.

“What is that bag?” Haida’s father ventured to ask.

“It’s a good-luck charm,” Midorikawa said simply.

“Like the guardian god of pianos?”

“No, it’s more like my alter ego,” Midorikawa replied, a weary smile rising to his lips. “There’s a strange story behind it. But it’s pretty long, and I’m afraid I’m too worn out to tell it right now.”

Haida stopped and glanced at the clock on the wall. Then he looked at Tsukuru. He was, of course, Haida the son, but Haida the father had been his same age in this story, and so the two of them began to overlap in Tsukuru’s mind. It was an odd sensation, as if the two distinct temporalities had blended into one. Maybe it wasn’t the father who had experienced this, but the son. Maybe Haida was just relating it as if his father had experienced it, when in reality
he
was the one who had. Tsukuru couldn’t shake this illusion.

“It’s getting late. If you’re sleepy I can finish this later.”

No, it’s fine, Tsukuru said. I’m not sleepy. In fact, he’d gotten his second wind, and wanted to hear the rest of the story.

“Okay, then I’ll continue,” Haida said. “I’m not very sleepy either.”

That was the only time that Haida heard Midorikawa play the piano. Once he had played “ ’Round Midnight” in the junior-high music room, Midorikawa seemed to lose all interest in playing again. “Don’t you want to play anymore?” Haida asked, trying to draw him out, but a silent shake of Midorikawa’s head was his only response. Haida gave up asking. Midorikawa no longer planned to play the piano. Haida wished he could hear him perform just one more time.

Midorikawa had a genuine talent. Of that there was no doubt. His playing had the power to physically and viscerally move the listener, to transport you to another world. Not the sort of thing one could easily create.

But what did this unusual talent mean for Midorikawa himself? Haida couldn’t quite grasp it. If you possessed a talent like Midorikawa did, was it amazingly blissful, or was it a burden? A blessing or a curse? Or something that simultaneously contained all of these components? Either way, Midorikawa didn’t seem like a very happy person. His expression switched between gloom and apathy. A slight smile would occasionally rise to his lips, but it was always subdued and a little ironic.

One day as Haida was chopping and carrying firewood in the backyard, Midorikawa came over to him.

“Do you drink?” he asked.

“A little bit,” Haida replied.

“A little bit’s fine,” Midorikawa said. “Can you have some drinks with me tonight? I’m tired of drinking alone.”

“I have some chores to do in the evening, but I’ll be free at seven thirty.”

“Okay. Come to my room then.”

When young Haida arrived at Midorikawa’s room, dinner was already laid out for both of them, along with bottles of hot sake. They sat across from each other, eating and drinking. Midorikawa ate less than half of his dinner, mainly drinking the sake, serving himself. He didn’t say anything about his own life, instead asking Haida about where he had grown up (in Akita) and about his college life in Tokyo. When he learned that Haida was studying philosophy, he asked a few technical questions. About Hegel’s worldview. About Plato’s writings. It became clear that he had systematically read those kinds of books. Mysteries weren’t the only books he read.

“I see. So you believe in logic, do you?” Midorikawa said.

“I do. I believe in logic, and I rely on it. That’s what philosophy’s all about, after all,” Haida replied.

“So you don’t much like anything that’s at odds with logic?”

“Apart from whether I like it or not, I don’t reject thinking about things that aren’t logical. It’s not like I have some deep faith in logic. I think it’s important to find the point of intersection between what is logical and what is not.”

“Do you believe in the devil?”

“The devil? You mean the guy with horns?”

“That’s right. Whether he actually has horns or not, I don’t know.”

“If you mean the devil as a metaphor for evil, then of course I believe in him.”

“How about if this metaphor for evil takes on actual form?”

“I couldn’t say, unless I actually saw him,” Haida said.

“But once you saw him, it might be too late.”

“Well, we’re speaking in hypotheticals here. If we wanted to pursue this further, we’d need some concrete examples. Like a bridge needs girders. The further you go with a hypothesis, the more slippery it gets. Any conclusions you draw from it become more fallacious.”

“Examples?” Midorikawa said. He took a drink of sake and frowned. “But sometimes when an actual
example appears, it all comes down to a question of whether or not you accept it, or if you believe it. There’s no middle ground. You have to make a mental leap. Logic can’t really help you out.”

“Maybe it can’t. Logic isn’t some convenient manual you just consult. Later on, though, you should be able to apply logic to any given situation.”

“But by then it might be too late.”

“But that has nothing to do with logic.”

Midorikawa smiled. “You’re right, of course. Even if you find out, down the road, that it is too late, that’s different from the logic of it. That’s a sound argument. No room for debate.”

“Have you ever had that kind of experience, Mr. Midorikawa? Accepting something, believing it, taking a leap beyond logic?”

“No,” Midorikawa said. “I don’t believe in anything. Not in logic, or illogic. Not in God, or the devil. No extension of a hypothesis, nothing like a leap. I just silently accept everything as it is. That’s my basic problem, really. I can’t erect a decent barrier between subject and object.”

“But you’re so gifted, musically.”

“You think so?”

“Your music can move people. I don’t know much about jazz, but that much I can tell.”

Midorikawa grudgingly shook his head. “Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you’re lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent’s preferable to having none. But talent only functions when it’s supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus. All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose and fall off, or some connection in your body to break down, and your concentration vanishes, like the dew at dawn. A simple toothache, or stiff shoulders, and you can’t play the piano well. It’s true. I’ve actually experienced it. A single cavity, one aching shoulder, and the beautiful vision and sound I hoped to convey goes out the window. The human body’s that fragile. It’s a complex system that can be damaged by something very trivial, and in most cases once it’s damaged, it can’t easily be restored. A cavity or stiff shoulder you can get over, but there are a lot of things you can’t get past. If talent’s the foundation you rely on, and yet it’s so unreliable that you have no idea what’s going to happen to it the next minute, what meaning does it have?”