idea of a life I left is meaningless.'
'But you still have to go back.'
'Even if there's nothing there? Even if nobody cares if I'm there or not?'
'That's not why,' she says. 'It's what I want. For you to be there.'
'But you're not there, are you?'
She looks down at her hands clasping the teacup. 'No, I'm not. I'm not there anymore.'
'What do you want from me if I do go back?'
'Just one thing,' she says, raising her head and looking me straight in the eye. 'I want you to remember me. If you remember me, then I don't care if everybody else forgets.'
Silence descends on us for a time. A profound silence.
A question wells up inside me, a question so big it plugs up my throat and makes it hard to breathe. I somehow swallow it back, finally choosing another. 'Are memories such an important thing?'
'It depends,' she replies, and lightly closes her eyes. 'In some cases they're the most important thing there is.'
'Yet you burned yours up.'
'I had no use for them anymore.' Miss Saeki brings her hands together on the table, her palms down the way the young girl's were the first time. 'Kafka? I have a favor to ask. I want you to take that painting with you.'
'You mean the one in my room in the library? The painting of the shore?'
Miss Saeki nods. 'Yes, Kafka on the Shore. I want you to take it. Where, I don't care. Wherever you're going.'
'But doesn't it belong to somebody?'
She shakes her head. 'It's mine. He gave it to me as a present when he went away to college in Tokyo. Ever since then I've had it with me. Wherever I lived, I always hung it on the wall in my room. When I started working at the Komura Library I put it back in that room, where it first hung, but that was just temporary. I left a letter for Oshima in my desk in the library telling him I wanted you to have the painting. After all, the painting is originally yours.'
'Mine?'
She nods. 'You were there. And I was there beside you, watching you. On the shore, a long time ago. The wind was blowing, there were white puffy clouds, and it was always summer.'
I close my eyes. I'm at the beach and it's summer. I'm lying back on a deck chair. I can feel the roughness of its canvas on my skin. I breathe in deeply the smell of the sea and the tide. Even with my eyes closed, the sun is glaring. I can hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore. The sound recedes, then draws closer, as if time is making it quiver. Nearby, someone is painting a picture of me. And beside him sits a young girl in a short- sleeved light blue dress, gazing in my direction. She has straight hair, a straw hat with a white ribbon, and she's scooping up the sand. Steady, long fingers-the fingers of a pianist. Her smooth-as-porcelain arms glisten in the sunlight. A natural-looking smile plays at her lips. I'm in love with her. And she's in love with me.
That's the memory.
'I want you to have that painting with you forever,' Miss Saeki says. She stands up, goes to the window, and looks outside. The sun's still high in the sky. The bee's still asleep. Miss Saeki holds up a hand to shield her eyes and looks at something far off, then turns to face me. 'You have to go,' she says.
I go over to her. Her ear brushes against my neck, the earring hard against my skin. I rest both palms on her back like I'm deciphering some sign there. Her hair brushes my cheek. She holds me tight, her fingers digging hard into my back. Fingers clinging to the wall that's time. The smell of the sea, the sound of waves breaking on the shore. Someone calling my name from far, far away.
'Are you my mother?' I'm finally able to ask.
'You already know the answer to that,' Miss Saeki says.
She's right-I do know the answer. But neither one of us can put it into words. Putting it into words will destroy any meaning.
'A long time ago I abandoned someone I shouldn't have,' she says. 'Someone I loved more than anything else. I was afraid someday I'd lose this person. So I had to let go myself. If he was going to be stolen away from me, or I was going to lose him by accident, I decided it was better to discard him myself. Of course I felt anger that didn't fade, that was part of it. But the whole thing was a huge mistake. It was someone I should never have abandoned.'
I listen in silence.
'You were discarded by the one person who never should have done that,' Miss Saeki says. 'Kafka-do you forgive me?'
'Do I have the right to?'
She looks at my shoulder and nods several times. 'As long as anger and fear don't prevent you.'
'Miss Saeki, if I really do have the right to, then yes-I do forgive you,' I tell her.
Mother, you say. I forgive you. And with those words, audibly, the frozen part of your heart crumbles.
Silently, she lets go of me. She takes the hairpin out of her hair and without a moment's hesitation stabs the sharp tip into the inner flesh of her left arm, hard. With her right hand she presses down tightly on a vein, and blood begins to seep out. The first drop plops audibly to the floor. Without a word she holds her arm out toward me. Another drop of blood falls to the floor.
I bend over and put my lips on the small wound, lick her blood with my tongue, close my eyes, and savor the taste. I hold the blood in my mouth and slowly swallow it. Her blood goes down, deep in my throat. It's quietly absorbed by the dry outer layer of my heart. Only now do I understand how much I've wanted that blood. My mind is someplace far away, though my body is still right here-just like a living spirit. I feel like sucking down every last drop of blood from her, but I can't. I take my lips off her arm and look into her face.
'Farewell, Kafka Tamura,' Miss Saeki says. 'Go back to where you belong, and live.'
'Miss Saeki?' I ask.
'Yes?'
'I don't know what it means to live.'
She lets me go and looks up at me. She reaches out and touches my lips. 'Look at the painting,' she says quietly. 'Keep looking at the painting, just like I did.'
And she leaves. She opens the door and, without glancing back, steps outside and closes the door. I stand at the window and watch her go. Quickly she vanishes in the shadow of a building. Hands resting on the sill, I gaze for the longest time at where she disappeared. Maybe she forgot to say something and will come back. But she never does. All that's left is an absence, like a hollow.
The dozing bee wakes up and buzzes around me for a while. Then, as if finally remembering what it's supposed to be doing, it flies out the open window. The sun shines down. I go back to the table and sit down. Her cup is sitting there, with a bit of tea left in it. I leave it where it is, without touching it. The cup looks like a metaphor. A metaphor of memories that, before long, will be lost.
I take off my shirt and change back into my sweaty, smelly T-shirt. I put the dead watch back on my left wrist. Then I put the ball cap Oshima gave me on backward, and the pair of sky blue sunglasses. Finally I tug on my long-sleeved shirt. I walk into the kitchen and drink a glass of tap water, put the glass in the sink, and take a final look around the room. At the dining table, the chairs. The chair the girl and Miss Saeki sat on. The teacup on top of the table. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. You already know the answer to that.
I open the door, go outside, and close the door. I walk down the porch steps, my shadow falling distinct and clear on the ground. It looks like it's clinging to my feet. The sun's still high in the sky.
At the entrance to the forest the two soldiers are leaning against a tree trunk like they've been waiting for me. When they see me they don't ask a single question. It's as if they already know what I'm thinking. Their rifles are slung over their shoulders.
The tall soldier is chewing on a stalk of grass. 'The entrance is still open,' he says. 'At least it was when I checked a minute ago.'
'You don't mind if we keep the same pace as before?' the brawny one asks. 'You can keep up?'
'No problem. I can keep up.'
'It'll be a problem, though, if we get there and the entrance is already shut,' the tall one comments.
'Then you're stuck here,' his companion adds.
