Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

  "Hello," Nakata said to the dark outline.

  The other person didn't say a thing.

  "Sorry to bother you, but my name is Nakata. I'm not an intruder."

  No reply.

  "This dog told me to follow him, so here I am. Excuse me, but the dog just went right into your house and I came after him. If you don't mind terribly, I'll be leaving...."

  "Take a seat on the sofa, if you would," the man said in a soft but strong tone.

  "All right, I'll do that," Nakata said, lowering himself onto the one-person sofa.

  Right next to him, the dog was still as a statue. "Are you... the Governor?"

  "Something like that," the man said from the darkness. "If that makes it easier for you, then go ahead and think that. It doesn't matter."

  The man turned around and tugged at a chain to turn on a floor lamp. A yellow, antiquish light snapped on, faint but sufficient for the room.

  The man before him was tall, thin, and wearing a black silk hat. He was seated on a leather swivel chair, his legs crossed in front of him. He had on a form-fitting red coat with long tails, a black vest, and long black boots. His trousers were as white as snow and fit him perfectly. One hand was raised to the brim of his hat, like he was tipping it politely to a lady. His left hand gripped a black walking stick by the round, gold knob.

  Looking at the hat, Nakata suddenly thought: This must be the cat-catcher!

  The man's features weren't as unusual as his clothes. He was somewhere between young and old, handsome and ugly. His eyebrows were sharp and thick, and his cheeks had a healthy glow. His face was terribly smooth, with no whiskers at all. Below narrowed eyes, a cold smile played at his lips. The kind of face it was hard to remember, especially since it was his unusual clothes that caught the eye. Put another set of clothes on him and you might not even recognize the man.

  "You know who I am, I assume?"

  "No, sir, I'm afraid I don't," Nakata said.

  The man looked a bit let down by this. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, I am. I forgot to mention it, but Nakata isn't very bright."

  "You've never seen me before?" the man said, rising from the chair to stand sideways to Nakata, a leg raised as if he were walking. "Doesn't ring a bell?"

  "No, I'm sorry. I don't recognize you."

  "I see. Perhaps you're not a whisky drinker, then," the man said.

  "That's right. Nakata doesn't drink or smoke. I'm poor enough to get a sub city so I can't afford that."

  The man sat back down and crossed his legs. He picked up a glass on the desk and took a sip of whisky. Ice cubes clinked in the glass. "I hope you don't mind if I indulge?"

  "No, I don't mind. Please feel free."

  "Thank you," the man said, gazing intently at Nakata. "So you really don't know who I am."

  "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't."

  The man's lips twisted slightly. For a brief moment a cold smile rose like a distorted ripple on the surface of water, vanished, then rose up again. "Anyone who enjoys whisky would recognize me right away, but never mind. My name is Johnnie Walker. Johnnie Walker. Most everyone knows who I am. Not to boast, but I'm famous all over the world. An iconic figure, you might say. I'm not the real Johnnie Walker, mind you. I have nothing to do with the British distilling company. I've just borrowed his appearance and name. A person's got to have an appearance and name, am I right?"

  Silence descended on the room. Nakata had no idea what the man was talking about, though he did catch the name Johnnie Walker. "Are you a foreigner, Mr. Johnnie Walker?"

  Johnnie Walker inclined his head. "Well, if that helps you understand me, feel free to think so. Or not. Because both are true."

  Nakata was lost. He might as well be talking with Kawamura, the cat. "So you're a foreigner, but also not a foreigner. Is that what you mean?"

  "That is correct."

  Nakata didn't pursue the point. "Did you have this dog bring me here, then?"

  "I did," Johnnie Walker replied simply.

  "Which means... that maybe you have something you'd like to ask me?"

  "It's more like you have something to ask me," Johnnie Walker replied, then took another sip of his whisky. "As I understand it, you've been waiting in that vacant lot for several days for me to show up."

  "Yes, that's right. I completely forgot! Nakata's not too bright, and I forget things quickly. It's just like you said. I've been waiting for you in that vacant lot to ask you about a missing cat."

  Johnnie Walker tapped his black walking stick smartly against the side of his black boots, and the dry click filled the room. The black dog's ears twitched. "The sun's setting, the tide's going out. So why don't we cut to the chase," Johnnie Walker said.

  "You wanted to see me because of this cat?"

  "Yes, that's correct. Mrs. Koizumi asked Nakata to find her, and I've been looking all over for Goma for the past ten days or so. Do you know Goma?"

  "I know her very well."

  "And do you know where she might be?"

  "I do indeed."

  Lips slightly parted, Nakata stared at the silk hat, then back at his face. Johnnie Walker's thin lips were tightly closed, with a confident look.

  "Is she nearby?"

  Johnnie Walker nodded a few times. "Yes, very near."

  Nakata gazed around the room, but couldn't see any cats. Only the writing desk, the swivel chair the man was seated on, the sofa he himself was on, two more chairs, the floor lamp, and a coffee table. "So can I take Goma home?" Nakata asked.

  "That all depends on you."

  "On Nakata?"

  "Correct. It's all up to you," Johnnie Walker said, one eyebrow raised slightly. "If you make up your mind to do it, you can take Goma back home. And make Mrs.

  Koizumi and her daughters happy. Or you can never take her back, and break their hearts. You wouldn't want to do that, I imagine?"

  "No, Nakata doesn't want to disappoint them."

  "The same with me. I don't want to disappoint them either."

  "So what should I do?"

  Johnnie Walker twirled the walking stick. "I want you to do something for me."

  "Is it something that Nakata can do?"

  "I never ask the impossible. That's a colossal waste of time, don't you agree?"

  Nakata gave it some thought. "I suppose so."

  "Which means that what I'm asking you to do is something you're capable of doing."

  Nakata pondered this. "Yes, I'd say that's true."

  "As a rule, there's always counterevidence for every theory."

  "Beg pardon?" Nakata said.

  "For every theory there has to be counterevidence—otherwise science wouldn't progress," Johnnie Walker said, defiantly tapping his stick against his boots. The dog perked up his ears again. "Not at all."

  Nakata kept quiet.

  "Truth be told, I've been looking for someone like you for a long time," Johnnie Walker said. "But it wasn't easy to find the right person. The other day, though, I saw you talking to a cat and it hit me—this is the exact person I've been looking for. That's why I've had you come all this way. I feel bad about having you go to all the trouble, though."

  "No trouble at all. Nakata has plenty of free time."

  "I've prepared a couple of theories about you," Johnnie Walker said. "And of course several pieces of counterevidence. It's like a game, a mental game I play. But every game needs a winner and a loser. In this case, winning and losing involves determining which theory is correct and which theories aren't. But I don't imagine you understand what I'm talking about."

  Silently, Nakata shook his head.

  Johnnie Walker tapped his walking stick against his boots twice, a signal for the dog to stand up.

  Chapter 15

  Oshima climbs into his Miata and flips on the headlights. As he steps on the gas, pebbles shoot up, scraping the bottom of the car. He backs up, then turns around to face the road.

  He raises his hand in farewell, and I do the same. The brak
e lights are swallowed up in darkness, the sound of the engine fading. Then it's completely gone, and the silence of the forest takes over.

  I go back into the cabin and bolt the door shut from the inside. Like it was lying in wait for me, silence wraps itself around me tightly once I'm alone. The night air's so cold it's hard to believe it's early summer, but it's too late to light the stove. All I can do is crawl inside my sleeping bag and get some sleep. My mind's a little spacey from lack of sleep and my muscles ache from bouncing around in the car so long. I turn down the light on the lamp. The room dims as the shadows that fill the corners grow more intense.

  It's too much trouble to change clothes, so I crawl into my sleeping bag with my jeans and yacht jacket on.

  I close my eyes but can't fall asleep, my body dying for rest while my mind's wide awake. A bird occasionally breaks the silence of the night. Other sounds filter in too, things I can't identify. Something trampling on fallen leaves. Something heavy rustling the branches. The sound of a deep breath. The occasional ominous creak of floorboards on the porch. They sound like they're right near the cabin, an army of invisible creatures that populates the darkness and has me surrounded.

  And I feel like somebody's watching me. My skin smarts with the sense of eyes boring in on me. My heart beats out a hollow thump. Several times from inside the sleeping bag I open my eyes a slit and peer around the dimly lit room just to be sure no one else is there. The front door's bolted with that heavy bolt, and the thick curtains at the windows are shut tight. So I'm okay, I tell myself. I'm alone in this room and no one's gazing in at me through the windows.

  But still I can't shake the feeling that I'm being watched. My throat's parched and I'm having trouble breathing. I need to drink some water, but if I do I'll need to take a leak and that means going outside. I have to hold on till morning. Curled up in my sleeping bag, I give a small shake of my head.

  Are you kidding me? You're like some scared little kid, afraid of the silence and the dark. You're not going to wimp out on me now, are you? You always thought you were tough, but when it hits the fan, you look like you're about to burst into tears. Look at you—I bet you're going to wet your bed!

  Ignoring him, I close my eyes tight, zip the bag up to just below my nose, and clear my head. I don't open my eyes for anything—not when I hear an owl hooting, not when something lands with a thud on the ground outside. Not even when I sense something moving inside the cabin. I'm being tested, I tell myself. Oshima spent a few days alone here too, when he was about my age. He must have been scared out of his wits, same as me. That's what he meant by solitude comes in different varieties. Oshima knows exactly how I feel being here alone at night, because he's gone through the same thing, and felt the same emotions. This thought helps me relax a little. I feel like I can trace the shadows of the past that linger here and imagine myself as a part of it. I take a deep breath, and I fall asleep before I know it.

  It's after six a. m. when I wake up. The air is filled with a shower of bird calls.

  The birds busily flit from branch to branch, calling out to each other in piercing chirps.

  Their message has none of the deep echo and hidden implications of those the night before. When I pull back the curtains, every bit of last night's darkness has disappeared from around the cabin. Everything sparkles in a newborn golden glow. I light the stove, boil some mineral water, and make a cup of chamomile tea, then open a box of crackers and have a few with cheese. After that I brush my teeth at the sink and wash my face.

  I pull on a windbreaker over my yacht jacket and go outside. The morning light pours down through the tall trees onto the open space in front of the cabin, sunbeams everywhere and mist floating like freshly minted souls. The pure clean air pierces my lungs with each breath. I sit down on a porch step and watch the birds scudding from tree to tree, listening to their calls. Most of them move about in pairs, constantly checking to see where their partner is, screeching out to keep in touch.

  I follow the sound of the water and find the stream right away, close by. Rocks form a kind of pool where the water flows in, swirling around in a maze of eddies before rushing back out to rejoin the stream. The water is clear and beautiful. I scoop some up to drink—it's cold and delicious—and then hold my hands in the current.

  Back at the cabin I cook ham and eggs in the frying pan, make some toast using a metal net, and heat milk in a small pan to wash down my meal. After eating I haul a chair out to the porch, prop my legs up on the railing, and spend the morning reading.

  Oshima's bookshelf is crammed full of hundreds of books. Only a few are novels, chiefly classics. Mostly they're books on philosophy, sociology, history, geography, natural sciences, economics—a huge number of subjects, a random selection of fields.

  Oshima said he'd hardly attended school at all, so this must have been how he got his education.

  I pick out a book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. I have a vague notion of him as a Nazi war criminal, but no special interest in the guy. The book just happens to catch my eye, is all. I start to read and learn how this totally practical lieutenant colonel in the SS, with his metal-frame glasses and thinning hair, was, soon after the war started, assigned by Nazi headquarters to design a "final solution" for the Jews—extermination, that is—and how he investigated the best ways of actually carrying this out. Apparently it barely crossed his mind to question the morality of what he was doing. All he cared about was how best, in the shortest period of time and for the lowest possible cost, to dispose of the Jews. And we're talking about eleven million Jews he figured needed to be eliminated in Europe.

  Eichmann studied how many Jews could be packed into each railroad car, what percentage would die of "natural" causes while being transported, the minimal number of people needed to keep this operation going. The cheapest method of disposing of the dead bodies—burning, or burying, or dissolving them. Seated at his desk Eichmann pored over all these numbers. Once he put it into operation, everything went pretty much according to plan. By the end of the war some six million Jews had been disposed of.

  Strangely, the guy never felt any remorse. Sitting in court in Tel Aviv, behind bulletproof glass, Eichmann looked like he couldn't for the life of him figure out why he was being tried, or why the eyes of the world were upon him. He was just a technician, he insisted, who'd found the most efficient solution to the problem assigned him. Wasn't he doing just what any good bureaucrat would do? So why was he being singled out and accused?

  Sitting in the quiet woods with birds chirping all around me, I read the story of this practical guy. In the back of the book there's a penciled note Oshima had written.

  His handwriting's pretty easy to spot: It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It's just like Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just like we see with Eichmann.

  I try to picture Oshima sitting in this chair, his usual nicely sharpened pencil in hand, looking back over this book and writing down his impressions. In dreams begin responsibilities. The words hit home.

  I shut the book, lay it on my lap, and think about my own responsibility. I can't help it. My white T-shirt was soaked in fresh blood. I washed the blood away with these hands, so much blood the sink turned red. I imagine I'll be held responsible for all that blood. I try to picture myself being tried in a court, my accusers doggedly trying to pin the blame on me, angrily pointing fingers and glaring at me. I insist that you can't be held responsible for something you can't remember. I don't have any idea what really took place, I tell them. But they counter with this: "It doesn't matter whose dream it started out as, you have the same dream. So you're responsible for whatever happens in the dream. That dream crept inside you, right down the dark corridor of your soul."

  Just like Adolf Eichmann, caught up—whether he liked it or not—in the twisted dreams of a man named Hitler.


  I put the book down, stand up, and stretch. I have been reading for a long time and need to get up and move around a little. I take the aluminum pail by the sink and go to the stream to fill it. Next I take an armload of firewood from the shed in back and set it by the stove.

  In a corner of the porch there's a faded nylon rope for hanging out laundry. I pull out my damp clothes from my backpack, smooth out all the wrinkles, and hang them up to dry. I take everything else out of the pack and lay it out on the bed, then sit down at the desk and fill in my diary for the last few days. I use a pen with a fine tip and write down in small letters everything that's happened to me. I don't know how long I'll remember all the details, so I better get them down as fast as I can. I search my memory.

  How I lost consciousness and came to in the woods behind a shrine. The darkness and my blood-soaked shirt. Phoning Sakura, spending the night at her place. How we talked, how she did that to me.

  She'd said, I don't get it, you don't have to tell me that! Why don't you just go ahead and imagine what you want? You don't need my permission. How can I know what's in your head?

  But she got it wrong. What I imagine is perhaps very important. For the entire world.

  That afternoon I decide to go into the woods. Oshima said that going too far into the forest is dangerous. Always keep the cabin in sight, he warned me. But I'll probably be here for a few days, and I should know something about this massive wall of a forest that surrounds me. Better to know a little, I figure, than nothing at all. Empty-handed, I say good-bye to the sunny lot and step into the gloomy sea of trees.