Free Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami Page A

air hung in layers of murky darkness out beyond the bar, warm and dank.
    “I really hadn’t planned on coming here tonight,” the Rat apologized, “but I woke up craving a beer. Be out of here before you know it.”
    J folded up the newspaper, put it on the counter, and brushed some cigarette ash from his trousers.
    “No need to drink and run. I’ll even cook something up for you if you’re hungry.” “Nah, that’s okay. Don’t bother. Just beer’s fine.”
    The beer was awfully good. He drank the glass in one go, then let out a satisfied sigh. Then he poured the remaining half a bottle into the glass, and fixed his gaze on the receding head of foam.
    “Care to join me in a drink?” the Rat inquired.
    To which J smiled uneasily. “Thanks, but I don’t touch the stuff. Not a drop.”
    “Oh, I didn’t know.”
    “It’s just my constitution. Can’t handle it.”
    The Rat nodded a couple of times, then sipped his beer in silence. Once again it startled him how little he knew about the Chinese bartender. J was a terribly quiet man. He never volunteered a single thing about himself, and if anyone ever asked, he’d cautiously pull out a ready answer, smooth and innocuous, as if out of a drawer.
    Everybody knew that J was a first-generation Chinese, which was not particularly rare as foreigners went in this town. In the Rat’s high school soccer club, one forward and one back had been Chinese. No one made much of it.
    “Kinda lonesome without music, huh?” said J, throwing the Rat the keys to the jukebox.
    The Rat chose five numbers, returned to the counter, and continued with his beer. An old Wayne Newton song flowed from the speakers.
    “Don’tcha have to be getting back home?” the Rat asked.
    “I don’t mind. It’s not like somebody’s waiting, ya know.”
    “Live alone?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    The Rat pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, straightened it out, and lit up.
    “There’s only a cat,” J said out of nowhere “An old cat, but a good friend to talk to.”
    “You talk things over, do you?”
    J nodded a few times. “Uh-huh. Been together a long time so we can read each other’s moods. I understand what makes the cat tick, the cat knows what makes me tick.”
    The Rat let out a soft grunt from behind his cigarette. The jukebox whirred, and “MacArthur Park” clicked into position.
    “So tell me then, what does a cat think about?”
    “All sorts of things. Just like you and me.”
    “Gee, that’s tough,” the Rat laughed.
    J laughed too, then reflected a moment and ran his finger along the counter. “Crippled in
    one leg.”
    “Crippled?” the Rat asked.
    “The cat, it’s lame. Four winters ago, I think. It came home all covered with blood. The
    poor thing’s paw was all pulpy like marmalade.
    The Rat set his glass down on the counter and looked J in the face. “What on earth happened to it?”
    “Don’t know. I guess it got hit by a car. But y’know, it was somehow worse than that. Getting run over by a tire wouldn’t do that. I mean, it looked as if it’d been mangled in a vise. Flat as a pancake. I’d almost bet it was someone’s idea of a practical joke.”
    “Come on,” the Rat said shaking his head in disbelief. “Who’d want to do that to a cat’s paw?”
    J tamped one of his filterless cigarettes over and over again on the counter, then put it to his lips and lit up.
    “You said it. Not a reason in the world to crush a cat’s paw. It’s a real well-behaved cat, never done anything wrong. Nothing anyone would have to gain by crushing its paw. It’s just senseless and cruel. But y’know, the world’s full of that kind of groundless ill will. I’ll never understand it, you’ll never understand it. But it exists all the same. You might even say it’s got us hemmed in.
    The Rat nodded once more, his eyes fixed on his beer glass. “I just can’t understand why.”
    “That’s all right. If you can let it go at not understanding, that’s the best