in her dream. She and I are in two separate worlds, divided by an invisible boundary.
Just as quickly as it came on, my pounding heart settles back down to normal. And so does my breathing. I'm back to being invisible, and she's no longer listening. Her gaze falls back on Kafka on the Shore. Head in hands like before, her heart is drawn once more toward the boy in that summer scene.
She's there for about twenty minutes, then vanishes. Just like last night, she stands up, barefoot, noiselessly glides toward the door, and, without opening it, disappears outside. I sit still for a while, then finally get up. Keeping the light off, I go over in the darkness and sit down on the seat she just occupied. I rest both hands on the desk and absorb the afterglow of her presence. I close my eyes, scooping up her shivering heart, letting it seep inside mine. I keep my eyes closed.
There's one thing, I discover, the girl and I have in common. We're both in love with someone who's no longer of this world.
A short time later I fall into a restless sleep. My body needs rest, but my mind won't allow it. I swing like a pendulum, back and forth between the two. Later, though-I'm not even sure if it's light out or not-birds begin making a racket in the garden, and their voices pull me completely awake.
I tug on jeans and pull a long-sleeved shirt over my T-shirt and go outside. It's after five o'clock and nobody else is up. I walk out of the old-looking town, through the pine forest set up as a windbreak, past the seawall and out onto the beach. There's barely a breeze against my skin. The sky's covered with a layer of gray clouds, but it doesn't look like it's going to rain anytime soon. It's a quiet, still morning. Like a layer of soundproofing, the clouds absorb every sound the earth sends up.
I walk for a while on a path that parallels the sea, picturing the boy in the painting walking the same path, canvas chair in hand, sitting on the shore. I'm not sure, though, what scene along this shore the painting depicts. The painting only shows the beach, the horizon, sky, and clouds. And an island. But there are a number of islands along the shore, and I can't exactly recall what the one in the painting looked like. I sit down on the sand, face the sea, and make a kind of picture frame with my hands. I imagine the boy sitting there. A single white seagull flits aimlessly across the windless sky. Small waves break against the shore at regular intervals, leaving behind a gentle curve and tiny bubbles on the sand.
All of a sudden I realize-I'm jealous of the boy in the painting.
'You're jealous of the boy in the painting,' the boy called Crow whispers in my ear.
You're jealous of that pitiful, twenty-year-old boy mistaken for someone else and pointlessly murdered-what is it, thirty years ago? So insanely jealous it hurts. This is the first time you've ever been jealous in your life. Now you finally understand what it feels like. It's like a brush fire torching your heart.
You've never ever in your life envied anybody else, or ever wanted to be someone else-but right now you do. You want more than anything to be that boy. Even knowing that at age twenty he was going to be smashed over the head with an iron pipe and beaten to death, you'd still trade places with him. You'd do it, to be able to love Miss Saeki for those five years. And to have her love you with all her heart. To hold her as much as you want, to make love to her over and over. To let your fingers run over every single part of her body, and let her do the same to you. And after you die, your love will become a story etched forever in her heart. Every single night she'll love you in her memory.
Yup, you're in a strange position, all right. You're in love with a girl who is no more, jealous of a boy who's gone forever. Even so, this emotion you're feeling is more real, and more intensely painful, than anything you've ever felt before. And there's no way out. No possibility of finding an exit. You've wandered into a labyrinth of time, and the biggest problem of all is that you have no desire at all to get out. Am I right?
Oshima comes in a little later than yesterday. Before he does I vacuum the first and second floors, wipe down all the desks and chairs, open the windows and clean them, wash out the restroom, throw out the garbage, pour fresh water in the vases. Then I turn on all the lights and switch on the catalog computers. All that's left is to open the front gate.
Oshima checks my work and gives a satisfied nod. 'You learn pretty quick, and don't fool around, do you?'
I boil some water and make him some coffee. Like yesterday, I have a cup of Earl Grey. It's started raining outside, pretty heavily. You can hear thunder off in the distance. It's not yet noon, but it's like evening it's so dark.
'Oshima, I have something I'd like you to do for me.'
'What's that?'
'Can you get hold of the sheet music for 'Kafka on the Shore' somewhere?'
Oshima thinks it over. 'As long as it's on a music publisher's website, I imagine you could download it for a fee. I'll check it out and let you know.'
'Thanks.'
He sits down on a corner of the counter, puts the tiniest lump of sugar into his coffee cup, then carefully stirs it with a spoon. 'So you like the song?'
'Yeah, a lot.'
'I'm fond of it myself. It's a lovely tune, quite unique. Simple yet deep. It tells you a lot about the person who composed it.'
'The lyrics, though, are pretty symbolic,' I venture.
'From time immemorial, symbolism and poetry have been inseparable. Like a pirate and his rum.'
'Do you think Miss Saeki knew what all the lyrics mean?'
Oshima looks up, listening to the thunder as if calculating how far away it is. He turns to me and shakes his head. 'Not necessarily. Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly's wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.'
'So you're saying Miss Saeki maybe found those words in some other space-like in dreams?'
'Most great poetry is like that. If the words can't create a prophetic tunnel connecting them to the reader, then the whole thing no longer functions as a poem.'
'But plenty of poems only pretend to do that.'
'Right. It's a kind of trick, and as long as you know that it isn't hard. As long as you use some symbolic- sounding words, the whole thing looks like a poem of sorts.'
'In 'Kafka on the Shore' I feel something urgent and serious.'
'Me too,' Oshima says. 'The words aren't just something on the surface. But the words and melody are so inseparable in my mind, I can't look at the lyrics as pure poetry and decide how persuasive they are by themselves.' He shakes his head slightly. 'At any rate, she was definitely blessed with a natural talent, and had a real sense for music. She was also practical enough to grab an opportunity when it came along. If that terrible incident hadn't taken her out of circulation, I'm sure she would've developed her talent even further. In any number of ways it's a real shame…'
'So where did all that talent go?'
Oshima looks at me. 'You're asking where Miss Saeki's talent went after her boyfriend died?'
I nod. 'If talent's a kind of natural energy, doesn't it have to find an outlet?'
'I don't know,' he replies. 'Nobody can predict where talent's headed. Sometimes it simply vanishes. Other times it sinks down under the earth like an underground stream and flows off who knows where.'
'Maybe Miss Saeki focused her talents somewhere else, other than music,' I venture.
'Somewhere else?' Oshima, obviously interested, narrows his brow. 'What do you mean?'
I'm at a loss for words. 'I don't know… I just feel maybe that's what happened. Maybe into something intangible.'
'Intangible?'
'Something other people can't see, something you pursue for yourself. An inner process.'
Oshima brushes his hair off his forehead, locks of it spilling between his slender fingers. 'That's an interesting idea. For all we know, after Miss Saeki came back to town maybe she used her talents somewhere out of sight-as you said, for something intangible. But you have to remember she disappeared for about twenty-five years, so unless you ask her yourself there's no way of knowing for sure.'
I hesitate, then decide to just go ahead. 'Can I ask you something really stupid?'
'Really stupid?'
