A Wild Sheep Chase (39 page)
Read A Wild Sheep Chase Online
Authors: Haruki Murakami
I took a breath and hitched up my backpack, then set off down the gentle slope. At the next bend was a brand-new jeep. In front of the jeep, the Boss’s black-suited secretary.
The Twelve-O’clock Rendezvous“I have been waiting for you,” said the man in the black suit. “Albeit only for twenty minutes.”
“How’d you know?”
“The place? Or the time?”
“The time,” I said, setting down my backpack.
“How do you think I got to be the Boss’s secretary? Diligence? IQ? Tact? No. I am the Boss’s secretary because of my special capacities. Sixth sense. I believe that’s what you would call it.”
He was wearing a beige down jacket over ski pants and green Ray-Ban glasses.
“We used to have many things in common, the Boss and I. Things that reached beyond rationality and logic and morality.”
“Used to?”
“The Boss died a week ago. We had a beautiful funeral. All Tokyo is turned upside down now, trying to decide a successor. The whole mediocre lot of them running around like fools.”
I sighed. The man took a silver cigarette case out of his jacket pocket, removed a plain-cut cigarette, and lit up.
“Smoke?”
“No thanks,” I said.
“But I must say you did your stuff. Much more than I expected. Honestly, you surprised me. At first, I thought I might have to help you along and give you hints when you got stuck. Which makes your coming across the Sheep Professor an even greater stroke of genius. I almost wish you would consider working for me.”
“So I take it you knew about this place here from the very beginning?”
“Naturally. Come now, who do you think I am?”
“May I ask you something, then?”
“Certainly,” said the man, in top spirits. “But keep it short.”
“Why didn’t you tell me right from the start?”
“I wanted you to come all this way spontaneously of your own free will. And I wanted you to lure him out of his lair.”
“Lair?”
“His mental lair. When a person becomes sheeped, he is temporarily dazed out of his mind and goes into retreat. As with, say, shell shock. It was your role to coax him out of that state. Yet in order for him to trust you, you had to be a blank slate, as it were. Simple enough, is it not?”
“Quite.”
“Lay out the seeds and everything is simple. Constructing the program was the hard part. Computers can’t account for human error, after all. So much for handiwork. Ah, but it is a pleasure second to none, seeing one’s painstakingly constructed program move along exactly according to plan.”
I shrugged.
“Well then,” the man continued, “our wild sheep chase is drawing to a close. Thanks to my calculations and your innocence. I’ve got him right where I want him. True?”
“So it would seem,” I said. “He’s waiting for you up there. Says you’ve got a rendezvous at twelve o’clock sharp.”
The man and I glanced at our watches simultaneously. Ten-forty.
“I had better be going,” the man said. “Must not keep him waiting. You may ride down in the jeep, if you wish. Oh yes, here is your recompense.”
The man reached into his pocket and handed me a check. I pocketed it without looking at it.
“Should you not examine it?”
“I don’t believe there’s any need.”
The man laughed, visibly amused. “It has been a pleasure to do business with you. And by the way, your partner closed down your company. Regrettable. It had such promise too. There is a bright future for the advertising industry. You should go into it on your own.”
“You must be crazy,” I said.
“We shall meet again, I expect,” said the man. And he set off on foot around the curve toward the highlands.
“Kipper’s doing fine,” said the chauffeur, as he drove the jeep down. “Gotten nice and fat.”
I took the seat next to the chauffeur. He was a different person than the man who drove that monster of a limo. He told me in considerable detail about the Boss’s funeral and about his Kipper-sitting, but I hardly heard a word.
It was eleven-thirty when the jeep pulled up in front of the station. The town was dead still. Except for an old man shoveling away the snow from the rotary and a gangly dog sitting nearby wagging its tail.
“Thanks,” I told the chauffeur.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “By the way, have you tried God’s telephone number?”
“No, I haven’t had time.”
“Since the Boss died, I can’t get through. What do you suppose happened?”
“Probably just busy,” I suggested.
“Maybe so,” said the chauffeur. “Well now, take care.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
There was a train leaving at twelve o’clock sharp. Not a soul on the platform. On board only four passengers, including myself. Even so, it was a relief to see people after so long. One way or another, I’d made it back to the land of the living. No matter how boring or mediocre it might be, this was my world.
The departure bell sounded as I chewed on my chocolate bar. Then, as the ringing stopped and the train clanked into readiness, there came the sound of a distant explosion. I lifted the window all the way open and stuck my head out. Ten seconds later there was a second explosion. The train started moving. After three minutes, in the direction of the conical peak, a column of black smoke was slowly rising.
I stared at it until the train cut a curve to the right and the smoke was out of sight.
“It’s all over,” said the Sheep Professor, “all over.”
“Over and done.”
“I suppose I should thank you.”
“Now that I’ve lost practically everything.”
“No, you haven’t,” the Sheep Professor shook his head. “You’ve got your life.”
“As you say,” I said.
The Sheep Professor threw himself facedown on his desk, sobbing, as I left the room. I had robbed him of his obsession, woeful though it had been, and whether I was right to have done it, I was never more unsure.
“She departed for somewhere,” said the proprietor of the Dolphin Hotel. “She made no mention of any destination. She seemed kind of sick.”
“Never mind,” I said.
I picked up the bags and checked into the same room as before. With the same view of the same unfathomable company. The
woman with the big breasts was nowhere to be seen. Two young male employees worked at their desks, smoking. One was reading lists of figures, one was drawing a broken-line graph with a ruler on a huge sheet of paper. Maybe it was because the big-breasted woman wasn’t there, but the office seemed like a wholly different place. Only the fact that I couldn’t figure out what kind of company it was remained the same. At six o’clock, all employees exited, and the building grew dark.
I turned on the television and watched the news. There was no report of any explosion on any mountain. But wait, did that explosion happen yesterday? What on earth had I done for one whole day? Where had I been? My brain throbbed.
Well, one day had passed in any case.
In just this way, one day at a time, I learned to distance myself from “memory.” Until that day in the uncertain future when a distant voice calls from out of the lacquer blackness.
I switched off the television and toppled over onto the bed with my shoes still on. All alone, I stared up at the stain-blotched ceiling. Reminders of persons long dead and forgotten.
The room changed colors to the pulse of neon lights. My watch ticked away by my ear. I undid the band and tossed it onto the floor. Traffic sounds came in soft chorus, layer upon layer. I tried to sleep, but without success. Who can sleep with such inexpressibleness?
I donned a sweater and headed out to town, stepping into the first discotheque I happened upon. I had three whiskeys-on-the-rocks while taking in the non-stop soul music. That helped give me a sense of the normal. And getting back to normal was everything. Everybody was counting on me to be normal.
Returning to the Dolphin Hotel, I found the three-fingered proprietor sitting on the chaise longue, watching the late night news.
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning at nine,” I said.
“Back to Tokyo, is it?”
“No,” I said. “I have one place to stop off before that. Wake me at eight, please.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Thanks for everything.”
“Don’t mention it.” Then the proprietor let out a sigh. “Father refuses to eat. At this rate, he’ll die.”
“He took a great blow.”
“I know,” said the proprietor sadly. “Not that my father ever tells me anything.”
“Give it time.”
The following day I took a plane to Tokyo-Haneda, then flew off again. The sea was shining when I arrived at my destination.
J was peeling potatoes the same as ever. A young female part-timer was filling flower vases and wiping off the tables. Hokkaido had lost its autumn, but autumn still held on here. Through the windows of J’s Bar, the hills were in beautiful color.
I sat at the counter and had a beer before the bar opened. Cracking peanuts with one hand.
“It’s hard to come by peanuts that crack so nice and crisp,” said J.
“Oh?” I said, nibbling away.
“So tell me, no vacation still?”
“I quit.”
“Quit?”
“It’s a long story.”
J finished peeling the potatoes, then dumped them into a large colander to rinse. “What will you do from here on?”
“Don’t know. I’ve got some severance money coming, plus my
half of the sale of the business. Not much really. And then there’s this.”
I pulled the check out of my pocket and passed it over to J, amount unseen. J looked at it and shook his head.
“This is unbelievable money, unbelievable.”
“You said it.”
“But it’s a long story, right?”
I laughed. “Let me leave it with you. Put it in the shop safe.”
“Where would I have a safe here?”
“How about the cash register?”
“I’ll put it in my safe-deposit box at the bank,” said J worriedly. “But what do you plan to do with it?”
“Say, J, it took a lot of money to move to this new location, didn’t it?”
“That it did.”
“Loans?”
“Real big ones.”
“Will that check pay off those loans?”
“With change to spare. But …”
“How about it? What say you take on the Rat and me as copartners? No worry about dividends or interest. A partnership in name is fine.”
“But I couldn’t do that.”
“Sure you could. All you got to do in return is take in the Rat and me whenever one of us gets into a fix.”
“That’s no different than what I’ve done all along.”
Beer glass in hand, I looked J in the face. “I know. But that’s how I want it.”
J laughed and shoved the check into his pocket. “I still remember the very first time you got drunk. How many years ago was that now?”
“Thirteen.”
“Already?”
J talked about old times the next half hour, something he rarely did. Customers began to filter in, and I got up to leave.
“But you only just got here,” said J.
“The well-mannered child doesn’t overstay,” said I.
“Did you see the Rat?”
I took a deep breath, both hands on the counter. “I saw him all right.”
“That a long story too?”
“A longer story than you’ve ever heard in your whole life.”
“Can’t you give me the highlights?”
“Highlights wouldn’t mean anything.”
“Was he well?”
“Fine. He wished he could see you.”
“Do you suppose I’ll get to see him sometime?”
“You’ll get to see him. He’s a co-partner, after all. That’s money the Rat and I earned.”
“Well then, I’m glad.”
I stepped down from the barstool and took a whiff of the old place.
“Oh, and as I’m a co-partner, how about a pinball machine and jukebox?”
“I’ll have them here by your next visit,” said J.
I walked along the river to its mouth. I sat down on the last fifty yards of beach, and I cried. I never cried so much in my life.
I brushed the sand from my trousers and got up, as if I had somewhere to go.
The day had all but ended. I could hear the sound of waves as I started to walk.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. The most recent of his many honors is the Franz Kafka Prize.
Books by Haruki Murakami
Fiction
After Dark
After the Quake
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Dance Dance Dance
The Elephant Vanishes
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Kafka on the Shore
Norwegian Wood
South of the Border, West of the Sun
Sputnik Sweetheart
A Wild Sheep Chase
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Nonfiction
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
H
ARUKI
M
URAKAMI
AFTER DARK
Murakami’s trademark humor and psychological insight are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. Combining the pyrotechnical genius that made
Kafka on the Shore
and
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
international bestsellers, with a moving infusion of heart, Murakami has produced one of his most enchanting fictions yet.
Fiction/978-0307-27873-9
AFTER THE QUAKE
Set at the time of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Murakami’s characters emanate from a place where the human meets in the inhuman. An electronics salesman who has been abruptly deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package—and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who has been raised to view himself as the son of God pursues a stranger who may or not be his human father. A collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-71327-9
BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN
This superb collection of stories generously express Murakami’s mastery of the form. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.
Fiction/Short Stories/978-1-4000-9608-4
DANCE DANCE DANCE
As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Murakami’s protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls, plays chaperone to a lovely teenage psychic, and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75379-7
THE ELEPHANT VANISHES
With his genius for dislocation, Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald’s in the middle of the night; a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75053-6
HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD
Japan’s most popular fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West. Murakami draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his undemure granddaughter, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-74346-0
KAFKA ON THE SHORE
This book is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home—either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister—and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder.
Fiction/Literature/978-1-4000-7927-8
NORWEGIAN WOOD
Toru, a college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman. But their relationship is colored by the tragic death of their mutual best friend years before. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70402-4
SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN
Born into an affluent family, Hajime has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career. Yet a sense of inau-thenticity about his success threatens his happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76739-8
SPUTNIK SWEETHEART
A college student, identified only as “K,” falls in love with his classmate, Sumire. But devotion to the writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments—until she meets Miu, an older and more sophisticated businesswoman. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece, “K” is solicited to join the search party and finds himself beset by ominous, haunting visions.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-72605-7
UNDERGROUND
It was a clear spring day, Monday, March 20, 1995, when five members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo conducted chemical warfare on the Tokyo subway system using sarin, a poison gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide. The unthinkable had happened, a major urban transit system had become the target of a terrorist attack. In an attemp to discover why, Murakami talked to the people who lived through the catastrophe—from a Subway Authority employee with survivor guilt, to a fashion salesman with more venom for the media than for the perpetrators, to a young cult member who vehemently condemns the attack though he has not quit Aum. Through these and many other voices, Murakami exposes intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche.
Fiction/978-0-375-72580-7
WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING
While training for the New York City Marathon, Haruki Murakami decided to keep a journal of his progress. The result is a beautiful memoir about his intertwined obsessions with running and writing, full of vivid memories and insights, including the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical,
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the expanding population who find similar satisfaction in athletic pursuit.
Memoir/Running/978-0-307-38983-1
A WILD SHEEP CHASE
A twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard and appropriates its image for an insurance company’s advertisement. What he doesn’t realize is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-71894-6
THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE
The
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-77543-0
VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
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www.randomhouse.com
