Kafka on the Shore Read online

  I go back to my room for my backpack, then hit the streets. I could just leave my stuff in the room, or in the hotel safe, but I feel better carrying it all with me. It's like it's a part of me already, and I can't let go.

  On the bus from the terminal in front of the station to the gym, I can feel my face tighten up, I'm so nervous. Suppose somebody asks why a kid my age is traipsing off to the gym in the middle of the day? I don't know this town and have no idea what these people are thinking. But no one gives me a second glance. I'm starting to feel like the Invisible Man or something. I pay the entrance fee at the desk, no questions asked, and get a key to a locker. After changing into shorts and a T-shirt in the locker room, I do some stretching exercises. As my muscles relax, so do I. I'm safe inside this container called me. With a little click, the outlines of this being—me—fit right inside and are locked neatly away. Just the way I like it. I'm where I belong.

  I start on my circuit training. With Prince blasting away on my Walkman, I put in a good hour of training, making my usual round of the seven machines. I thought for sure a gym in such a small town would be full of dated machines, but these are the latest models, with the metallic smell of brand-new steel. The first round I do with light weights, then increase the weight for the second circuit. I know exactly how much weight and how many reps work for me. Pretty soon I start to sweat and stop every once in a while to take a swig from the bottle and a bite out of a lemon I bought on the way over.

  Once I finish training I take a hot shower using the soap and shampoo I've brought along. I do a good job of washing my cock, not too many years out of its foreskin, and under my arms, balls, and butt. I weigh myself and flex my muscles a bit in front of a mirror. Finally I rinse out my sweaty shorts and T-shirt in the sink, wring them out, and stow them away in a plastic bag.

  I take a bus back to the station and have a steaming bowl of udon in the same diner as the day before. I take my time, gazing out the window as I eat. The station's packed with people streaming in and out, all of them dressed in their favorite clothes, bags or briefcases in hand, each one dashing off to take care of some pressing business. I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. In a hundred years everybody here—me included—will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. A weird thought, but everything in front of me starts to seem unreal, like a gust of wind could blow it all away.

  I spread my hands out in front of me and take a good hard look at them. What am I always so tense about? Why this desperate struggle just to survive? I shake my head, turn from the window, clear my mind of thoughts of a hundred years away. I'll just think about now. About books waiting to be read in the library, machines in the gym I haven't worked out on. Thinking about anything else isn't going to get me anywhere.

  "That's the ticket," Crow tells me. "Remember, you're supposed to be the toughest fifteen-year-old on the planet."

  Like the day before, I buy a box lunch at the station and take the train, arriving at the Komura Library at eleven-thirty. And sure enough, Oshima's there at the counter.

  Today he's wearing a blue rayon shirt buttoned to the neck, white jeans, and white tennis shoes. He's sitting at his desk, absorbed in some massive book, with the same yellow pencil, I guess, lying beside him. His bangs are all over his face. When I come in he looks up, smiles, and takes my backpack from me.

  "Still not going back to school, I see."

  "I'm never going back," I confess.

  "A library's a pretty good alternative, then," he says. He turns around to check the time on the clock behind him, then goes back to his reading.

  I head off to the reading room and back to Arabian Nights. Like always, once I settle down and start flipping pages, I can't stop. The Burton edition has all the stories I remember reading as a child, but they're longer, with more episodes and plot twists, and so much more absorbing that it's hard to believe they're the same. They're full of obscene, violent, sexual, basically outrageous scenes. Like the genie in the bottle they have this sort of vital, living sense of play, of freedom, that common sense can't keep bottled up. I love it and can't let go. Compared to those faceless hordes of people rushing through the train station, these crazy, preposterous stories of a thousand years ago are, at least to me, much more real. How that's possible, I don't know. It's pretty weird.

  At one o'clock I go out to the garden again, sit on the porch, and eat my lunch. I'm about halfway done when Oshima comes over and says I have a phone call.

  "A phone call?" I say, at a loss for words. "For me?"

  "As long as your name's Kafka Tamura."

  I blush, get to my feet, and take the cordless phone from him.

  It's the girl at the front desk at the hotel, most likely checking to see if I'm really doing research at the library. She sounds relieved to find out I hadn't lied to her. "I talked with the manager," she says, "and he said they've never done this before, but seeing as how you're young and there are special circumstances, he'll make an exception and let you stay at the rate the YMCA arranged for you. We're not so busy right now, he said, so we can bend the rules a bit. He also said that library's supposed to be really nice, so he hopes you'll be able to take your time and do as much research as you need to."

  I breathe a sigh of relief and thank her. I feel a little bad about lying, but there's not much I can do about it. I've got to bend some rules myself if I want to survive. I hang up and hand the phone back to Oshima.

  "You're the only high school student who comes here, so I figured it must be for you," he says. "I told her you're here from morning till night, your nose stuck in a book. Which is true."

  "Thanks," I tell him.

  "Kafka Tamura?"

  "That's my name."

  "Kind of strange."

  "Well, that's my name," I insist.

  "I assume you've read some of Kafka's stories?"

  I nod. "The Castle, and The Trial, 'The Metamorphosis,' plus that weird story about an execution device."

  "'In the Penal Colony,'" Oshima says. "I love that story. Only Kafka could have written that."

  "That's my favorite of his short stories."

  "No kidding?"

  I nod.

  "Why's that?"

  It takes me a while to gather my thoughts. "I think what Kafka does is give a purely mechanical explanation of that complex machine in the story, as sort of a substitute for explaining the situation we're in. What I mean is..." I have to give it some more thought. "What I mean is, that's his own device for explaining the kind of lives we lead. Not by talking about our situation, but by talking about the details of the machine."

  "That makes sense," Oshima says and lays a hand on my shoulder, the gesture natural, and friendly. "I imagine Franz Kafka would agree with you."

  He takes the cordless phone and disappears back into the building. I stay on the veranda for a while, finishing my lunch, drinking my mineral water, watching the birds in the garden. For all I know they're the same birds from yesterday. The sky's covered with clouds, not a speck of blue in sight.

  Oshima most likely found my explanation of the Kafka story convincing. To some extent at least. But what I really wanted to say didn't get across. I wasn't just giving some general theory of Kafka's fiction, I was talking about something very real.

  Kafka's complex, mysterious execution device wasn't some metaphor or allegory—it's actually here, all around me. But I don't think anybody would get that. Not Oshima. Not anybody.

  I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world.

  When at five I'm about to leave Oshima's still behind the counter, reading the same book, his shirt still without a single wrinkle. Like always, a couple strands of hair have fallen across his face. The hands of the electric clock on the wall behind him soundlessly tick forwa
rd. Everything around him is silent and clean. I doubt the guy ever sweats or hiccups. He looks up and hands me my backpack. He frowns a bit, like it's too heavy for him. "Do you take the train here from town?"

  I nod.

  "If you're going to come every day, you should have this." He hands me a sheet of paper, the train schedule, it turns out, between Takamatsu Station and the station where I get off for the library. "They usually run on time."

  "Thanks," I say, slipping the sheet in my backpack.

  "Kafka—I don't have any idea where you came from, or what your plans are, but you can't stay in a hotel forever, right?" he says, choosing his words carefully. With the fingers of his left hand he checks the tips of his pencils. Not that it's necessary, since they're all as sharp as can be.

  I don't say anything.

  "I'm not trying to butt in, believe me. I just thought I might as well ask. A boy your age in a place you've never been before—I can't imagine it's easy going."

  I nod again.

  "Are you headed someplace else after here? Or are you going to be here for a while?"

  "I haven't decided yet, but I think I'll be here for a while. No other place to go," I admit.

  Maybe I should tell Oshima everything. I'm pretty sure he won't put me down, give me a lecture, or try to force some common sense on me. But right now I'm trying to keep my words to a minimum. Plus I'm not exactly used to telling people how I feel.

  "For the time being, then, you think you can manage?" Oshima asks.

  I give a short nod.

  "Good luck, then," he says.

  Except for a few minor details, I spend the next seven days in the same way.

  (Except for Monday, of course, when the library's closed, and I spend the day at a big public library.) The alarm clock gets me up at six-thirty every morning, and I gulp down the hotel's pseudo-breakfast. If the chestnut-haired girl's behind the front desk, I give her a little wave. She always nods and repays me with a smile. I think she likes me, and I kind of like her, too. Could she be my sister? The thought does cross my mind.

  Every morning I do some easy stretching exercises in my room, and when the time rolls around I go to the gym and run through the usual circuit training. Always the same amount of weight, the same number of reps. No more, no less. I take a shower and wash every inch of me. I weigh myself, to make sure my weight's staying steady. Before noon I take the train to the Komura Library. Exchange a few words with Oshima when I give him my backpack, and when I pick it up. Eat lunch out on the veranda. And read.

  When I finish The Arabian Nights I tackle the complete works of Natsume Soseki—there're still a couple of his novels I haven't read yet. At five I exit the library. So most of the day I'm in the gym or the library. As long as I'm in one of those two, nobody seems to worry about me. Chances are pretty slim a kid skipping school would hang out in either one. I eat dinner at the diner in front of the station. I try to eat as many vegetables as I can, and occasionally buy fruit from a stand and peel it using the knife I took from my father's desk. I buy cucumbers and celery, wash them in the sink at the hotel, and eat them with mayonnaise. Sometimes I pick up a container of milk from the mini-mart and have a bowl of cereal.

  Back in my room I jot down what I did that day in my diary, listen to Radiohead on my Walkman, read a little, and then it's lights out at eleven. Sometimes I masturbate before going to sleep. I think about the girl at the front desk, putting any thoughts of her potentially being my sister out of my head, for the time being. I hardly watch any TV or read any newspapers.

  But on the evening of the eighth day—as had to happen sooner or later—this simple, centripetal life is blown to bits.

  Chapter 8

  U.S. ARMY INTELLIGENCE SECTION (MIS) REPORT

  Dated: May 12, 1946

  Title: Report on the Rice Bowl Hill Incident, 1944

  Document Number: PTYX-722-8936745-42216-WWN

  The following is a taped interview with Doctor Shigenori Tsukayama (52), professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, Tokyo Imperial University, which took place over a three-hour span at the GHQ of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. Documentation related to the interview can be accessed using application number PTYX-722-SQ-267 to 291. [Note: Documents 271 and 278 are missing.]

  Impressions of the interviewer, Lt. Robert O'Connor: Professor Tsukayama was quite calm and relaxed throughout the interview, as one might expect of an expert of his caliber. He is one of the leading psychiatrists in Japan and has published a number of outstanding books on the subject. Unlike most Japanese, he avoids vague statements, drawing a sharp distinction between facts and conjecture. Before the war he was an exchange scholar at Stanford, and is quite fluent in English. He is surely well liked and respected by many.

  We were ordered by the military to immediately undertake an examination of the children in question. It was the middle of November 1944. It was quite unusual for us to receive requests or orders from the military. The military, of course, had its own extensive medical branch, and being a self-contained entity that put a high priority on secrecy, they usually preferred to handle matters internally. Apart from the rare times when they needed the special knowledge and techniques that only outside researchers or physicians had, they seldom appealed to civilian doctors or researchers.

  Thus when they broached this we immediately surmised that something extraordinary had occurred. Frankly, I didn't like to work under military directions. In most cases their goals were strictly utilitarian, with no interest in pursuing truth in an academic sense, only arriving at conclusions that accorded with their preconceptions.

  They weren't the type of people swayed by logic. But it was wartime and we couldn't very well say no. We had to keep quiet and do exactly as we were told.

  We'd been continuing our research despite the American air raids. Most of our undergrads and grad students, though, had been drafted. Students in psychiatry weren't exempt for the draft, unfortunately. When the order came from the military we dropped everything and took a train to [name deleted] in Yamanashi Prefecture. There were three of us—myself and a colleague from the Psychiatry Department, as well as a research physician from the Department of Neurosurgery with whom we'd been conducting research.

  As soon as we got there they warned us that what they were about to reveal was a military secret we could never divulge. Then they told us about the incident that had occurred at the beginning of the month. How sixteen schoolchildren had lost consciousness in the hills and fifteen of them had regained consciousness thereafter, with no memory of what had taken place. One boy, they told us, hadn't regained consciousness and was still in a military hospital in Tokyo.

  The military doctor who'd examined the children right after the incident, an internal medicine specialist named Major Toyama, gave us a detailed explanation about what had transpired. Many army doctors are more like bureaucrats concerned with protecting their own little preserve than with medicine, but fortunately Major Toyama wasn't one of them. He was honest and straightforward, and obviously a talented physician. He never tried to use the fact that we were civilians to lord it over us or conceal anything from us, as some might do. He provided all the details we needed, in a very professional manner, and showed us medical records that had been kept on the children. He wanted to get to the bottom of this as much as anybody. We were all quite impressed by him.

  The most important fact we gleaned from the records was that, medically speaking, the incident had caused no lasting impact on the children. From right after the event to the present day, the examinations and tests consistently indicated no internal or external abnormalities. The children were leading healthy lives, just as they had before the incident. Detailed examinations revealed that several of the children had parasites, but nothing out of the ordinary. Otherwise they were completely asymptomatic—no headaches, nausea, pain, loss of appetite, insomnia, listlessness, diarrhea, nightmares.

  Nothing.

  The one
notable thing was that the two-hour span during which the children had been unconscious in the hills was erased from their memory. As if that part had been extracted in toto. Rather than a memory loss, it was more a memory lack. These aren't medical terms, and I'm using them for the sake of convenience, but there's a big difference between loss and lack. I suppose it's like—well, imagine a train steaming down a track. The freight's disappeared from one of the cars. A car that's empty inside—that's loss. When the whole car itself has vanished, that's lack.

  We discussed the possibility that the children had breathed in poison gas. Dr. Toyama said that naturally they'd considered this. That's why the military is involved, he told us, but it seems a remote possibility. He then told us, Now this is a military secret, so you can't tell anyone. The army is definitely developing poison gas and biological weapons, but this is carried out mainly by a special unit on the Chinese mainland, not in Japan itself. It's too dangerous a project to attempt in a place as densely populated as Japan. I can't tell you whether or not these sorts of weapons are stored anywhere in Japan, though I can assure you most definitely that they are not kept anywhere in Yamanashi Prefecture.

  —So he categorically denied that special weapons, including poison gas, were being stored in the prefecture?

  Correct. He was very clear about that. We basically had no choice except to believe him, but he sounded believable. We also concluded that it was highly unlikely that poison gas had been dropped from a B-29. If the Americans had actually developed such a weapon and decided to use it, they'd drop it on some large city where the effects would be massive. Dropping a canister or two on such a remote place wouldn't allow them to ascertain what effects the weapon had. Besides, even if you accepted the premise that a poison gas had been dropped on the spot, any gas that makes children fall unconscious for two hours with no other lasting effects would be worthless as military arsenal.