Free Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami Page B

fragrance, though. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt that way.”
    Iwata Midori became aware of herself standing under a streetlamp, smiling as she reconstructed the dialogue. She couldn’t have noticed Yano lurking in the shadows of the dark shrine, breathing quietly.
    “What kind of perfume is it?”
    “It’s called Mitsouko.”
    III
     
    Iwata Midori was a little surprised to find that she remembered practically every word of her conversation with the young man with the short hair. In her mid-twenties she’d been married to a man whose face she could no longer remember clearly. The divorce had been such a foregone conclusion that there was no way even to explain to friends who asked, “Why? What went wrong?” Not only had she forgotten what he looked like, she couldn’t recall if he’d been a trading company man or a securities firm man or Ultraman or what, and couldn’t care less anyway. She was unable to remember a single conversation she’d ever had with him. It wasn’t that they’d never talked, of course. He was the type of man who liked to talk at noisy sidewalk cafés rather than a quiet bar or a park at sunset or the bedroom at night. He would sit in the sunlight drinking his coffee—refill after refill—and going on and on about all sorts of different things. Not inherently boring subjects like baseball or model trains or board games, but subjects that most people would consider interesting—powerful childhood experiences, for example, or the proper approach to interpersonal relationships in the workplace, or what exactly were the things that made human life worth living—but Iwata Midori, walking along this dark, empty street, couldn’t bring back a single word of any of it. And yet she remembered every detail of the silly, desultory conversation she’d just had with a young man she’d met and danced with at a karaoke club. Part of it, of course, was merely a question of time. Eight years had passed since she’d split with her husband, their marriage having drained away as naturally and inevitably as sand in an hourglass, but it had been only half an hour or so since she’d permitted her dance partner a little kiss goodbye. Time was huge. In fact, maybe time was everything. Wasn’t that what they always said? That time heals all wounds (and “wounds all heels”)? But Iwata Midori wasn’t so sure. A lot of songs too were about time solving problems or healing wounds, but the truth was that problems were solved by somebody taking some sort of concrete action, and as for wounds—well, for physical wounds there were white blood cells and whatnot. And for wounds of the heart? The only way to stop obsessing about hurtful things was to focus your energy, and your hopes or whatever, on something else. It wasn’t that time did the work for you, it was just that the deeper the wound, the longer it took to heal.
    If I’d been trying really hard not to forget him, I’d probably remember some of the things he said , she thought. Or, then again, maybe not. In school I used to write down things I wanted to remember, things I’d heard or read that seemed really important, and now I couldn’t tell you what any of them were. And what do I remember about all those books that made me cry when I read them back in middle school? Nothing. Words themselves aren’t that important. Even if somebody says words that shock you, or make you want to kill them, or make you tremble with emotion, the words themselves you tend to forget in time. Words are just tools we use to express or communicate something. Or no, they’re not even tools, they’re more like means to an end. Maybe words are like money. Money’s just a tool for transactions, right? What’s important is the thing you buy with the money, not the money itself. So what’s important about words is the thing they communicate…which is—what?
    She was reminded again of the scene in that trashy novel. The adulterous protagonist, before going out