A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami Read Free Book Online

felt sorry for him.
    “Okay, I know what you’re trying to say,” I said, returning the lighter to the table, “but remember, I wasn’t the one who brought in the business, and it wasn’t my idea to do this work. You walked in with it. You’re the one who wanted to give it a go.”
    “There were pressing circumstances. We had nothing …”
    “It made money.”
    “Sure it made money. Let us move to a larger office and take on more staff. I got a new car, bought a condo, sent two kids to an expensive private school. Not bad for thirty years old, I suppose.”
    “You earned it. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
    “Who’s ashamed?” said my partner, retrieving the ballpoint pen that had flown across his desk and taking another few pokes at the middle of his palm. “But you know, it doesn’t seem real. There we were, the two of us with nothing but debts, trying to scrounge up translation work, passing out handbills down by the station.”
    “What’s to stop us from passing out handbills now if we wanted?”
    My partner looked up at me. “Hey, I’m not joking.”
    “Neither am I.”
    A silence fell between us.
    “A lot of things have changed,” my partner said. “The pace of our lives, our thinking. Above all, we don’t even know ourselves how much we really make. A tax accountant comes in and does all that awful paperwork, with exemptions and depreciations and write-offs and what not.”
    “The same as everywhere else.”
    “I know, I know. That’s what we’ve got to do and that’s what we’re doing. But it was more fun in the old days.”
    “For lo the shadows of a gaol untold, Do grow about our days now many fold.”
Lines from a poem suddenly popped out of my mouth.
    “How’s that again?”
    “Nothing, sorry. You were saying?”
    “I just feel like we’re engaged in some kind of exploitation.”
    “Exploitation?” I looked up in surprise.
    There were two yards between us, and with the different heights of our seats his head rose ten inches above mine. A lithograph hung behind him. A new lithograph I’d not seen before, of a fish with wings. The fish didn’t look too happy about its wings. Probably wasn’t sure how to use them either.
    “Exploitation?” I muttered to myself.
    “Exploitation.”
    “And who, pray tell, is doing the exploiting?”
    “Different interests, little by little.”
    I crossed my legs on the sky-blue sofa and fixed my gaze at the drama of his hand and ballpoint pen, now exactly at eye level.
    “In any case, don’t you think we’ve changed?” asked my partner.
    “We’re still the same. Not anyone or anything has changed.”
    “You really think so?”
    “I really do. Exploitation doesn’t exist. It’s a fairy tale. Even you don’t believe that Salvation Army trumpets can actually save the world, do you? I think you think too much.”
    “Well all right, maybe I do think too much,” my partner said. “Last week you—I mean we—wrote the copy for that magazine ad. And it wasn’t bad copy. It went over real well. But tell me, have you eaten margarine even once in the past couple years?”
    “No, I hate margarine.”
    “Same here. That’s what I mean. At the very least, in the old days we did work we believed in, and we took pride in it. There’s none of that now. We’re just tossing out fluff.”
    “Margarine is good for you. It’s vegetable fat, low in cholesterol. It guards against heart problems, and lately it doesn’t taste bad. It’s cheap and keeps well too.”
    “So eat the stuff.”
    I sank back into the sofa, stretching out my arms and legs.
    “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s the same whether we eat margarine or don’t. Dull translation jobs or fraudulent copy, it’s basically the same. Sure we’re tossing out fluff, but tell me, where does anyone deal in words with substance? C’mon now, there’s no honest work anywhere. Just like there’s no honest breathing or honest pissing.”
    “You were more innocent in the old