Free Vintage Murakami by Haruki Murakami Page A

personal style which enabled him to transform the most deeply reverberating sounds and the subtle gradations of light and color into concise, convincing prose. Securing his position as a writer little by little, he had developed a steady readership, and a fairly stable income.
    He continued to think seriously about asking Sayoko to marry him. On more than one occasion, he kept himself awake all night thinking about it, and for a time he was unable to work. But still, he could not make up his mind. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that his relationship with Sayoko had been consistently directed by others. His position was always passive. Takatsuki was the one who had picked the two of them out of his class and created the threesome. Then he had taken Sayoko, married her, fathered a child with her, and divorced her. And now Takatsuki was the one who was urging Junpei to marry her. Junpei loved Sayoko, of course. About that there was no question. And now was the perfect time for him to be united with her. She probably wouldn’t turn him down. But Junpei couldn’t help thinking that things were just a bit
too
perfect. What was there left for
him
to decide? And so he went on wondering. And not deciding. And then the earthquake struck.
    JUNPEI was in Barcelona at the time, writing a story for an airline magazine. He returned to his hotel in the evening to find the TV news filled with images of whole city blocks of collapsed buildings and black clouds of smoke. It looked like the aftermath of an air raid. Because the announcer was speaking in Spanish, it took Junpei a while to realize what city he was looking at, but it had to be Kobe. Several familiar-looking sights caught his eye. The expressway through Ashiya had collapsed. “You’re from Kobe, aren’t you?” his photographer asked.
    “You’re damn right I am,” Junpei said.
    But Junpei did not try to call his parents. The rift was too deep, and had gone on too long for there to be any hope of reconciliation. He flew back to Tokyo and resumed his normal life. He never turned on the television, and hardly looked at a newspaper. Whenever anyone mentioned the earthquake, he would clam up. It was an echo from a past that he had buried long ago. He hadn’t set foot on those streets since his graduation, but still, the sight of the destruction laid bare raw wounds hidden somewhere deep inside him. The lethal, gigantic catastrophe seemed to change certain aspects of his life—quietly, but from the ground up. Junpei felt an entirely new sense of isolation. I have no roots, he thought. I’m not connected to anything.
    Early on the Sunday morning that they had all planned to take Sala to the zoo to see the bears, Takatsuki called to say that he had to fly to Okinawa. He had managed at last to pry the promise of an hour-long one-on-one interview out of the governor. “Sorry, but you’ll have to go to the zoo without me. I don’t suppose Mr. Bear will be too upset if I don’t make it.”
    So Junpei and Sayoko took Sala to the Ueno Zoo. Junpei held Sala in his arms and showed her the bears. She pointed to the biggest, blackest bear and asked, “Is that one Masakichi?”
    “No no, that’s not Masakichi,” Junpei said. “Masakichi is smaller than that, and he’s smarter-looking, too. That’s the tough guy, Tonkichi.”
    “Tonkichi!” Sala yelled again and again, but the bear paid no attention. Then she looked at Junpei and said, “Tell me a story about Tonkichi.”
    “That’s a hard one,” Junpei said. “There aren’t that many interesting stories about Tonkichi. He’s just an ordinary bear. He can’t talk or count money like Masakichi.”
    “But I bet you can tell me
something
good about him. One thing.”
    “You’re absolutely right,” Junpei said. “There’s at least one good thing to tell about even the most ordinary bear. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Well, Tonchiki—”
    “Ton
ki
chi!” Sala corrected him with a touch of