“Who?” I asked. Now sweat pearled where the rain had dried on her forehead. I clutched a bolster as she stretched a hand to graze my temples, and shivered.
“My brother,” she murmured.
“No, Dr. Harrow. The other—who is the other?”
Smiling she drew me toward her, the bolster pressing against her thigh as she reached for the NET’s rig, flicking rain from the colored wires.
“Let’s find out.”
I cried out at her clumsy hookup. A spot of blood welled from her temple and I protectively touched my own face, drew away a finger gelled with the fluid she had smeared carelessly from ear to jaw. Then, before I could lie down, she made the switch and I cried out at the dizzy vistas erupting behind my eyes.
Aniline lightning. Faculae stream from synapse to synapse as ptyalin floods my mouth and my head rears instinctively to smash against the headboard. She has not tied me down. The hyoscine lashes into me like a fiery bile and I open my mouth to scream. In the instant before it begins I taste something faint and caustic in the back of her throat and struggle to free myself from her arms. Then I’m gone.
Before me looms a willow tree shivering in a breeze frigid with the shadow of the northern mountains. Sap oozes from a raw flat yellow scar on the trunk above my head where, two days before, my father had sawed the damaged limb free. It had broken from the weight; when I found him he lay pillowed by a crush of twigs and young leaves and scattered bark, the blossoms in his hair alone unmarked by the fall. Now I stand on tiptoe and stroke the splintery wound, bring my finger to my lips and kiss it. I shut my eyes, because they burn so. No tears left to shed; only this terrible dry throbbing, as though my eyes have been etched with sand. The sobs begin again, suddenly. The wrenching weight in my chest drags me to my knees until I crouch before the tree, bow until my forehead brushes grass trampled by grieving family. I groan and try to think of words, imprecations, a curse to rend the light and living from my world so abruptly strangled and still. But I can only moan. My mouth opens upon dirt and shattered granite. My nails claw at the ground as though to wrest from it something besides stony roots and scurrying earwigs. The earth swallows my voice as I force myself to my knees and, sobbing, raise my head to the tree.
It is enough; he has heard me. Through the shroud of new leaves he peers with lambent eyes. April’s first apple blossoms weave a snowy cloud about his brow. His eyes are huge, the palest, purest green in the cold morning sun. They stare at me unblinking; harsh and bright and implacable as moonlight, as languidly he extends his hand toward mine.
I stagger to my feet, clots of dirt falling from my palms. From the north the wind rises and rattles the willow branches. Behind me a door rattles as well, as my father leans out to call me back to the house. At the sound I start to turn, to break the reverie that binds me to this place, this tree stirred by a tainted wind riven from a bleak and noiseless shore.
And then I stop, where in memory I have stopped a thousand times; and turn back to the tree, and for the first time I meet his eyes.
He is waiting, as he has always waited; as he will always wait. At my neck the wind gnaws cold as bitter iron, stirring the collar of my blouse so that already the chill creeps down my chest, to nuzzle there at my breasts and burrow between them. I nod my head, very slightly, and glance back at the house.
All the colors have fled the world. For the first time I see it clearly: the gray skin taut against granite hills and grassless haughs; the horizon livid with clouds like a rising barrow; the hollow bones and nerveless hands drowned beneath black waters lapping at the edge of a charred orchard. The rest is fled and I see the true world now, the sleeping world as it wakes, as it rears from the ruins and whispers in the wind at my cheeks, this is what awaits you; this and nothing more, the lie is revealed and now you are waking and the time has come, come to me, come to me…
In the ghastly light only his eyes glow, and it is to them that I turn, it is into those hands white and cold and welcome that I slip my own, it is to him that I have come, not weeping, no not ever again, not laughing, but still and steady and cold as the earth beneath my feet, the gray earth that feeds the roots and limbs and shuddering leaves of the tree…
And then pain rips through me, a flood of fire searing my mouth and ears, raging so that I stagger from the bed as tree and sky and earth tilt and shiver like images in black water. Gagging I reach into my own throat, trying to dislodge the capsule Emma Harrow has bitten; try to breathe through the fumes that strip the skin from my gums. I open my mouth to scream but the fire churns through throat and chest, boils until my eyes run and stain the sky crimson.
And then I fall; the wires rip from my skull. Beside me on the floor Dr. Harrow thrashed, eyes staring wildly at the ceiling, her mouth rigid as she retched and blood spurted from her bitten tongue. I recoiled from the scent of bitter almond she exhaled; then watched as she suddenly grew still. Quickly I knelt, tilting her head away so that half of the broken capsule rolled onto the floor at my feet. I waited a moment, then bowed my head until my lips parted around her broken jaw and my tongue stretched gingerly to lap at the blood cupped in her cheek.
In the tree the boy laughs. A bowed branch shivers, and then, slowly, rises from the ground. Another boy dangles there, his long hair tangled in dark strands around a leather belt. I see him lift his head and, as the world rushes away in a blur of red and black, he smiles at me.
A cloud of frankincense. Seven stars limned against a dormer window. A boy with a bulldog puppy; and she is dead.
* * *
—
I cannot leave my room now. Beside me a screen dances with colored lights that refract and explode in brilliant parhelions when I dream. But I am not alone now, ever…
I see him waiting in the corner, laughing as his green eyes slip between the branches and the bars of my window, until the sunlight changes and he is lost to view once more, among the dappled and chattering leaves.
Haruki Murakami (1949– ) is a Japanese writer and translator whose work is both experimental and hugely popular, with translations into more than fifty languages. He has won nearly every award short of the Nobel Prize for Literature (for which he is said to be a frequent contender), including the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize. His work often moves between the realms of fantasy and realism, blending fables, allegory, whodunit mysteries, science fiction, and various elements of popular culture into unique visions. In an interview with New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, Murakami said, “Readers often tell me that there’s an unreal world in my work—that the protagonist goes to that world and then comes back to the real world. But I can’t always see the borderline between the unreal world and the realistic world. So, in many cases, they’re mixed up. In Japan, I think that other world is very close to our real life, and if we decide to go to the other side it’s not so difficult. I get the impression that in the Western world it isn’t so easy to go to the other side; you have to go through some trials to get to the other world. But, in Japan, if you want to go there, you go there. So, in my stories, if you go down to the bottom of a well, there’s another world. And you can’t necessarily tell the difference between this side and the other side.” Murakami’s first collection of stories in English translation was The Elephant Vanishes (1993), which includes “TV People,” a story that originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1990.
TV PEOPLE
Haruki Murakami
Translated by Alfred Birnbaum
IT WAS SUNDAY EVENING when the TV People showed up.
The season, spring. At least, I think it was spring. In any case, it wasn’t particularly hot as seasons go, not particularly chilly.
To be honest, the season’s not so important. What matters is that it’s a Sunday evening.
I don’t like Sunday evenings. Or, rather, I don’t like
everything that goes with them—that Sunday-evening state of affairs. Without fail, come Sunday evening my head starts to ache. In varying intensity each time. Maybe a third to a half of an inch into my temples, the soft flesh throbs—as if invisible threads lead out and someone far off is yanking at the other ends. Not that it hurts so much. It ought to hurt, but strangely, it doesn’t—it’s like long needles probing anesthetized areas.
And I hear things. Not sounds, but thick slabs of silence being dragged through the dark. KRZSHAAAL KKRZSHAAAAAL KKKKRMMMS. Those are the initial indications. First, the aching. Then, a slight distortion of my vision. Tides of confusion wash through, premonitions tugging at memories, memories tugging at premonitions. A finely honed razor moon floats white in the sky, roots of doubt burrow into the earth. People walk extra loud down the hall just to get me. KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUMB.
All the more reason for the TV People to single out Sunday evening as the time to come around. Like melancholy moods, or the secretive, quiet fall of rain, they steal into the gloom of that appointed time.
* * *
—
Let me explain how the TV People look.
The TV People are slightly smaller than you or me. Not obviously smaller—slightly smaller. About, say, 20 or 30 percent. Every part of their bodies is uniformly smaller. So rather than “small,” the more terminologically correct expression might be “reduced.”
In fact, if you see TV People somewhere, you might not notice at first that they’re small. But even if you don’t, they’ll probably strike you as somehow strange. Unsettling, maybe. You’re sure to think something’s odd, and then you’ll take another look. There’s nothing unnatural about them at first glance, but that’s what’s so unnatural. Their smallness is completely different from that of children and dwarfs. When we see children, we feel they’re small, but this sense of recognition comes mostly from the misproportioned awkwardness of their bodies. They are small, granted, but not uniformly so. The hands are small, but the head is big. Typically, that is. No, the smallness of TV People is something else entirely. TV People look as if they were reduced by photocopy, everything mechanically calibrated. Say their height has been reduced by a factor of 0:7, then their shoulder width is also in 0:7 reduction; ditto (0:7 reduction) for the feet, head, ears, and fingers. Like plastic models, only a little smaller than the real thing.
Or like perspective demos. Figures that look far away even close up. Something out of a trompe-l’oeil painting where the surface warps and buckles. An illusion where the hand fails to touch objects close by, yet brushes what is out of reach.
That’s TV People.
That’s TV People.
That’s TV People.
* * *
—
There were three of them altogether.
They don’t knock or ring the doorbell. Don’t say hello. They just sneak right in. I don’t even hear a footstep. One opens the door, the other two carry in a TV. Not a very big TV. Your ordinary Sony color TV. The door was locked, I think, but I can’t be certain. Maybe I forgot to lock it. It really wasn’t foremost in my thoughts at the time, so who knows? Still, I think the door was locked.
When they come in, I’m lying on the sofa, gazing up at the ceiling. Nobody at home but me. That afternoon, the wife has gone out with the girls—some close friends from her high-school days—getting together to talk, then eating dinner out. “Can you grab your own supper?” the wife said before leaving. “There’s vegetables in the fridge and all sorts of frozen foods. That much you can handle for yourself, can’t you? And before the sun goes down, remember to take in the laundry, okay?”
“Sure thing,” I said. Doesn’t faze me a bit. Rice, right? Laundry, right? Nothing to it. Take care of it, simple as SLUPPP KRRRTZ!
“Did you say something, dear?” she asked.
“No, nothing,” I said.
All afternoon I take it easy and loll around on the sofa. I have nothing better to do. I read a bit—that new novel by Garcia Marquez—and listen to some music. I have myself a beer. Still, I’m unable to give my mind to any of this. I consider going back to bed, but I can’t even pull myself together enough to do that. So I wind up lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling.
The way my Sunday afternoons go, I end up doing a little bit of various things, none very well. It’s a struggle to concentrate on any one thing. This particular day, everything seems to be going right. I think, today I’ll read this book, listen to these records, answer these letters. Today, for sure, I’ll clean out my desk drawers, run errands, wash the car for once. But two o’clock rolls around, three o’clock rolls around, gradually dusk comes on, and all my plans are blown. I haven’t done a thing; I’ve been lying around on the sofa the whole day, same as always. The clock ticks in my ears. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. The sound erodes everything around me, little by little, like dripping rain. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. Little by little, Sunday afternoon wears down, shrinking in scale. Just like the TV People themselves.
* * *
—
The TV People ignore me from the very outset. All three of them have this look that says the likes of me don’t exist. They open the door and carry in their TV. The two put the set on the sideboard, the other one plugs it in. There’s a mantel clock and a stack of magazines on the sideboard. The clock was a wedding gift, big and heavy—big and heavy as time itself—with a loud sound, too. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. All through the house you can hear it. The TV People move it off the sideboard, down onto the floor. The wife’s going to raise hell, I think. She hates it when things get randomly shifted about. If everything isn’t in its proper place, she gets really sore. What’s worse, with the clock there on the floor, I’m bound to trip over it in the middle of the night. I’m forever getting up to go to the toilet at two in the morning, bleary-eyed and stumbling over something.
Next, the TV People move the magazines to the table. All of them women’s magazines. (I hardly ever read magazines; I read books—personally, I wouldn’t mind if every last magazine in the world went out of business.) Elle and Marie Claire and Home Ideas, magazines of that ilk. Neatly stacked on the sideboard. The wife doesn’t like me touching her magazines—change the order of the stack, and I never hear the end of it—so I don’t go near them. Never once flipped through them. But the TV People couldn’t care less: They move them right out of the way, they show no concern, they sweep the whole lot off the sideboard, they mix up the order. Marie Claire is on top of Croissant; Home Ideas is underneath An-An. Unforgivable. And worse, they’re scattering the bookmarks onto the floor. They’ve lost her place, pages with important information. I have no idea what information or how important—might have been for work, might have been personal—but whatever, it was important to the wife, and she’ll let me know about it. “What’s the meaning of this? I go out for a nice time with friends, and when I come back, the house is a shambles!” I can just hear it, line for line. Oh, great, I think, shaking my head.
* * *
—
Everything gets removed from the sideboard to make room for the television. The TV People plug it into a wall socket, then switch it on. Then there is a tinkling noise, and the screen lights up. A moment later, the picture floats into view. They change the channels by remote control. But all the channels are blank—probably, I think, because they haven’t connected the set to an antenna. There has to be an antenna outlet somewhere in the apartment. I seem to remember the superintendent telling us where it was when we moved into this condominium. All you had to do was connect it. But I can’t remember where it is. We don’t own a television, so I’ve completely forgotten.
Yet somehow the TV People don’t seem bothered that they aren’t picking up any broadcast. They give no sign of looking for the antenna outlet. Blank screen, no image—makes no difference to them. Having pushed the button and had the power come on, they’ve complet
ed what they came to do.
The TV is brand-new. It’s not in its box, but one look tells you it’s new. The instruction manual and guarantee are in a plastic bag taped to the side; the power cable shines, sleek as a freshly caught fish.
All three TV People look at the blank screen from here and there around the room. One of them comes over next to me and verifies that you can see the TV screen from where I’m sitting. The TV is facing straight toward me, at an optimum viewing distance. They seem satisfied. One operation down, says their air of accomplishment. One of the TV People (the one who’d come over next to me) places the remote control on the table.
The TV People speak not a word. Their movements come off in perfect order, hence they don’t need to speak. Each of the three executes his prescribed function with maximum efficiency. A professional job. Neat and clean. Their work is done in no time. As an afterthought, one of the TV People picks the clock up from the floor and casts a quick glance around the room to see if there isn’t a more appropriate place to put it, but he doesn’t find any and sets it back down. TRPP Q SCHAOUS TRPP Q SCHAOUS. It goes on ticking weightily on the floor. Our apartment is rather small, and a lot of floor space tends to be taken up with my books and the wife’s reference materials. I am bound to trip on that clock. I heave a sigh. No mistake, stub my toes for sure. You can bet on it.
All three TV People wear dark blue jackets. Of who-knows-what fabric, but slick. Under them, they wear jeans and tennis shoes. Clothes and shoes all proportionately reduced in size. I watch their activities for the longest time, until I start to think maybe it’s my proportions that are off. Almost as if I were riding backward on a roller coaster, wearing strong prescription glasses. The view is dizzying, the scale all screwed up. I’m thrown off balance, my customary world is no longer absolute. That’s the way the TV People make you feel.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 99
