Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami Read Free Book Online Page B

wall metes out time without sound.
    "I am here for a purpose, I am told."
    "This is a very quiet town," she says, "if you came seeking quiet."
    I do not know.
    She slowly stands. "You have nothing to do here today. Your work starts tomorrow. Please go home to rest."
    I look up at the ceiling again, then back at her. It is certain: her face bears a fatal connection to something in me. But it is too faint. I shut my eyes and search blindly.
    Silence falls over me like a fine dust.
    "I will return tomorrow at six o'clock in the evening," I say.
    "Good-bye," she says.
    On leaving the Library, I cross the Old Bridge. I lean on the handrail and listen to the the River. The Town is now devoid of beasts. The Clocktower and the Wall that surrounds the Town, the buildings along the riverbank, and the sawtooth mountains to the north are all tinged with the blue-gray gloom of dusk. No sound reaches my ears except for the murmur of the water. Even the birds have taken leave.
    If you came seeking quiet —I hear her words.
    Darkness gathers all around. As the streetlights by the River blink on, I set out down the deserted streets for the Western Hill.
     
    Tabulations, Evolution, Sex Drive
    While the old man went back above ground to rectify the sound-removed state in which he'd left his granddaughter, I plugged away in silence at my tabulations.
    How long the old man was gone, I didn't really know. I had my digital alarm clock set to an alternating one-hour-thirty-minutes-one-hour-thirty-minutes cycle by which I worked and rested, worked and rested. The clock face was covered over so I couldn't read it.
    Time gets in the way of tabulations. Whatever the time was now, it had no bearing on my work. My work begins when I start tabulating and it ends when I stop. The only time I need to know about is the one-hour-thirty-minutes-one-hour-thirty-minutes cycle.
    I must have rested two or three times during the old man's absence. During these breaks, I went to the toilet, crossed my arms and put my face down on the desk, and stretched out on the sofa. The sofa was perfect for sleeping. Not too soft, not too hard; even the cushions pillowed my head just right. Doing different tabulation jobs, I've slept on a lot of sofas, and let me tell you, the comfortable ones are few and far between. Typically, they're cheap deadweight. Even the most luxurious-looking sofas are a disappointment when you actually try to sleep on them. I never understand how people can be lax about choosing sofas.
    I always say—a prejudice on my part, I'm sure—you can tell a lot about a person's character from his choice of sofa. Sofas constitute a realm inviolate unto themselves.
    This, however, is something that only those who have grown up sitting on good sofas will appreciate. It's like growing up reading good books or listening to good music. One good sofa breeds another good sofa; one bad sofa breeds another bad sofa. That's how it goes.
    There are people who drive luxury cars, but have only second- or third-rate sofas in their homes. I put little trust in such people. An expensive automobile may well be worth its price, but it's only an expensive automobile. If you have the money, you can buy it, anyone can buy it. Procuring a good sofa, on the other hand, requires style and experience and philosophy. It takes money, yes, but you also need a vision of the superior sofa. That sofa among sofas.
    The sofa I presently stretched out on was first-class, no doubt about it. This, more than anything, gave me a warm feeling about the old man. Lying there on the sofa with my eyes closed, I thought about him and his quirks, his hokey accent, that outlandish laugh.
    And what about that sound-removal scheme of his? He bad to be a top-rank scientist.
    Sound removal wouldn't even occur to your ordinary researcher. And another thing—you always hear about these oddball scientificos, but what kind of eccentric or recluse would build a secret laboratory behind a subterranean waterfall