Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami Read Free Book Online

fixed on the clock as he watched the hands move forward. His feelings were wrapped in layer upon layer of thin membrane and his heart was still a blank, as he aged, one hour at a time.
    Tsukuru gradually began to eat again. He bought fresh ingredients and prepared simple, decent meals. Still, he regained only a little of the weight he’d lost. Over nearly a half year’s time his stomach had drastically shrunk, and now, if he ate more than a fixed amount, he threw up afterward. He started swimming again early in the mornings at the university pool. He’d lost a lot ofmuscle, got out of breath when he went up stairs, and needed to regain his strength. He bought new swim trunks and goggles, and swam the crawl every day, between 1,000 and 1,500 meters. Afterward he’d stop by the gym and silently use the machines to train.
    After a few months of decent meals and regular workouts, he’d mostly recovered. He had the muscles he needed (though he was muscular in a very different way from before). His posture became erect, not slouched, and the color returned to his face. For the first time in a long time, he even had stiff erections again when he woke up in the morning.
    Around this time his mother paid a rare visit to Tokyo. She found that Tsukuru had started to act and speak a little oddly, and, after he hadn’t been home for New Year’s, she decided to go to check up on him. When she saw how much her son had changed in the space of a few months, she was speechless. But Tsukuru attributed it to “normal changes you go through when you’re my age.” What he really needed, he told her, were clothes that actually fit him now, and his mother totally accepted his explanation. She’d grown up with a sister and, after her own marriage, was more familiar with how to raise her daughters. She had no idea how to raise a boy, and so Tsukuru convinced her that his changes were normal developments. She happily tookhim to a department store to buy new clothes, mostly Brooks Brothers and Polo, the brands she preferred. His old clothes they either threw away or donated.
    His face had changed as well. The mirror no longer showed a soft, decent-looking, though unthreatening and unfocused boy’s face. What stared out at him now was the face of a young man with cheekbones so prominent they looked as if they’d been chiseled by a trowel. There was a new light in his eyes, a glint he’d never seen before, a lonely, isolated light with limited range. His beard suddenly grew thicker, and he had to shave every morning. He grew his hair out, too.
    Tsukuru didn’t particularly like his new looks. Nor did he hate them. They were, after all, just a convenient, makeshift mask. Though he was grateful, for the time being, that it wasn’t the face he’d worn before.
    In any case, the boy named Tsukuru Tazaki had died. In the savage darkness he’d breathed his last and was buried in a small clearing in the forest. Quietly, secretly, in the predawn while everyone was still fast asleep. There was no grave marker. And what stood here now, breathing, was a brand-new Tsukuru Tazaki, one whose substance had been totally replaced. But he was the only one who knew this. And he didn’t plan to tell.
    Just as before, he made the rounds sketching railroad stations and never missed a lecture at college. When hegot up, he’d take a shower, wash his hair, and always brush his teeth after eating. He made his bed every morning, and ironed his own shirts. He did his best to keep busy. At night he read for two hours or so, mostly history or biographies. A long-standing habit. Habit, in fact, was what propelled his life forward. Though he no longer believed in a perfect community, nor felt the warmth of chemistry between people.
    Every morning he’d stand at the bathroom sink and study his face in the mirror. And slowly he grew used to this new self, with all its changes. It was like acquiring a new language, memorizing the grammar.
    Eventually he made a new