Vintage Murakami by Haruki Murakami Read Free Book Online Page B

the road, like, ‘Oh man, this pack is so heavy, I feel like I’m gonna die! I don’t need this bucket anymore. I don’t need this boom box anymore.’ Like that. So Masakichi finds everything he needs lying in the road.”
    “Mommy knows just how they feel,” Sayoko said. “Sometimes you want to throw everything away.”
    “Not
me
,” Sala said.
    “That’s ’cause you’re such a greedy little thing,” Sayoko said.
    “I am
not
greedy,” Sala protested.
    “No,” Junpei said, finding a gentler way to put it: “You’re just young and full of energy, Sala. Now hurry and drink your milk so I can tell you the rest of the story.”
    “OK,” she said, wrapping her little hands around the glass and drinking the warm milk with great care. Then she asked, “How come Masakichi doesn’t make honey pies and sell them? I think the people in the town would like that better than just plain honey.”
    “An excellent point,” Sayoko said with a smile. “Think of the profit margin!”
    “Ah, yes, creating new markets through value added,” Junpei said. “This girl will be a real entrepreneur someday.”
    I T was almost two A.M. by the time Sala went back to bed. Junpei and Sayoko checked to make sure she was asleep, then shared a can of beer at the kitchen table. Sayoko wasn’t much of a drinker, and Junpei had to drive home.
    “Sorry for dragging you out in the middle of the night,” she said, “but I didn’t know what else to do. I’m totally exhausted, and you’re the only one who can calm her down. There was no way I was going to call Takatsuki.”
    Junpei nodded, took a slug of beer, and ate one of the crackers on the plate between them.
    “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m awake till the sun comes up, and the roads are empty this time of night. It’s no big deal.”
    “You were working on a story?”
    Junpei nodded.
    “How’s it going?”
    “Like always. I write ’em. They print ’em. Nobody reads ’em.”
    “
I
read them.
All
of them.”
    “Thanks. You’re a nice person,” Junpei said. “But the short story is on the way out. Like the slide rule. Anyhow, let’s talk about Sala. Has she done this before?”
    Sayoko nodded.
    “A lot?”
    “Almost every night. Sometime after midnight she gets these hysterical fits and jumps out of bed. She can’t stop shaking. And I can’t get her to stop crying. I’ve tried everything.”
    “Any idea what’s wrong?”
    Sayoko drank what was left of her beer, and stared at the empty glass.
    “I think she saw too many news reports on the earthquake. It was too much for a four-year-old. She wakes up at around the time of the quake. She says a man woke her up, somebody she doesn’t know. The Earthquake Man. He tries to put her in a little box—way too little for anyone to fit into. She tells him she doesn’t want to get inside, but he starts yanking on her arm—so hard her joints crack—and he tries to stuff her inside. That’s when she screams and wakes up.”
    “The Earthquake Man?”
    “He’s tall and skinny and old. After she’s had the dream, she goes around turning on every light in the house and looks for him: in the closets, in the shoe cabinet in the front hall, under the beds, in all the dresser drawers. I tell her it was just a dream, but she won’t listen to me. And she won’t go to bed until she’s looked everywhere he could possibly hide. That takes at least two hours, by which time I’m wide awake. I’m so sleep-deprived I can hardly stand up, let alone work.”
    Sayoko almost never spilled out her feelings like this.
    “Try not to watch the news,” Junpei said. “Don’t even turn on the TV. The earthquake’s all they’re showing these days.”
    “I almost never watch TV anymore. But it’s too late now. The Earthquake Man just keeps coming. I went to the doctor, but all he did was give me some kind of sleeping pill to humor me.”
    Junpei thought for a while.
    “How about we go to the zoo on Sunday? Sala