By Alfred Brown
5.
“I have read 1Q84,” I said to Harukicat.
“Mmm, you have? Weren’t we just talking about it? You didn’t even know the name of the book then. You called it IQ84…”
“Yes, and you didn’t correct me. I suppose the 1 looked like an I, even when I looked up the Wikipedia article on it and quickly surmised a meaning of the title, I didn’t look too closely as I didn’t want it to reveal anything spoilerish, and still assumed it said IQ84.”
“Spoilerish,” he said, as if tasting something unpleasant, or at least unfamiliar, “I’m not familiar with that word.”
“Anyway, I wanted to tell you what I thought. While it was fresh in my head, I just finished the last page—I have to return the book, it is already overdue, and I haven’t slept, but there is nothing like the moments after you finish a book.”
“I suppose you are waiting for me to ask, ‘what did you think?’ Or, ‘Was it as good as the others?’ ‘Where would you rank it?’ That sort of thing… I actually have no interest in any of that, though. You, nonetheless, seem you have something to say. Or, more precisely, there is something you want to say.”
“Oh, sure there are the nagging questions… No, they aren’t really nagging, they came and went, nagging suggests they are still nagging. But I suppose if they even nagged at one point, they can still be called nagging… Anyway, if things had gone sourly for them, the protagonists, which is entirely possible with your narratives—just not in a traditional way… How should I put it, knowing you, they would never get killed, but they could easily end up lost in a miasma or something. And, also knowing you, it could never end with ‘and they lived happily ever after.’ You would never say anything so concrete, regardless of cliché. So, in fact, the outcome that did come, was the most happy possible for any story of yours. Perhaps you had to do this because of the nagging questions, your readers would say, if only they had done things differently, they wouldn’t have gotten screwed at the end by the forces working against them. Since they do so many things that are ‘unwise’—sure, the writer could do that, but the ‘professionals?’
“Namely, there are two moments that really stood out for me. One, when she killed the leader. Or should I say, Leader. If the Leader didn’t want his subordinates to chase after her, punish her, for taking his life… Well, couldn’t he just write a freaking note before she killed him? Surely his power is so absolute that they wouldn’t think him under duress to write it, surely his eloquence would make it clear that it was his wish. Or, barring that, he could have just asked her to give him her gun. She could leave, he could leave with the body guards, go back to his compound, and blow his brains out—if he didn’t know how, he’d know enough since he knows Anomame so well, to know that she could tell him how.
“The other was Tamura—forgive me if I get the names wrong, I watch anime with my friend all the time, as he is a fan, but I always get the names wrong. He said something about men’s names ending with ko and women’s with ma’s or something, but I’ve forgotten that too. Probably the other way around. Anyway, the capable gay security guy leaves the body in the apartment of the investigator and immediately gets the sakigake people to remove it… Why? Couldn’t he leave it there a little longer? It was cold. Sure, it would be nice if the investigator had a fridge, then he could put him there a la Walker, provided it was large enough. But no need in that chill you mention so often. The body could have at least waiting a day or two, assuming he didn’t want to take it out, which was supposedly so difficult. He could have brought in bags of ice. That is not conspicuous. After all, he knew the only thing keeping Anomame from agreeing to leave was seeing Tengo. He knew Tengo was nearby, and that the only connection was gone… He even knew that if he did let sagikake remove the body, there was a chance that they would make the connection. So, simply leave the body there, get Tengo, meet up with Anomame, bingo bango, they do whatever she wanted to. Then he can get the body removed. He knows confidently that no one knows he is there, no one will be looking for him, there is no reason to…
“Anyway, I’m guessing you realized about 20 of these moments occurring in your book. And I’m guessing you had maybe editors picking out 40 more, my guess is editors would like to do that kind of thing. And, now, I’m wondering if you gave it that happy ending because if you didn’t, your readers would balk over one of those 60 and be dissatisfied. But with a happy ending, the reader thinks, oh, it worked out for the best, so they must have been doing the right thing. Either that or you realized that after reading a behemoth like that people would be a lot more annoyed with an unhappy ending than if it was, say, a short story, as your short stories are far more likely to end on the lower end of the spectrum—which of course, as said, is always a narrow spectrum as you would never have them be happily/miserably ever after. Of course, my favorite short stories by you, do have the negative end of the spectrum… My favorite is the dwarf one, and I am fond of the tipping-the-car one as well. But especially the dwarf one. That is my favorite.”
“Please,” the cat pleaded with his paws up, “don’t tell me your favorites!”
“Anyway, I would have been more displeased with a larger piece of fiction with more investment ending negatively. I suspect if Hard Boiled was the length of 1Q84, I would be more annoyed with that one.” I paused and drank my tea. It had gotten cold. It should have been coffee, that gets cold more often, but I don’t like coffee. I continued.
“The other thing I want to say is I liked the third section best. Not because of the translation difference. Which was slight, but I think maybe perceptible… Perhaps not, I only ‘perceived’ after I, out of curiosity, read the front where it said the first two parts were by one translator, Rubin I believe, and the last by Gabriel. I don’t have any real opinion on any of the translators. I get a feeling they each have their own style, but none of them move me in any particular way, which is perhaps how they should best be. Shadows. No, the reason I liked the third section was because of Ushikawa… I’m sure I’m getting that name wrong. Not because I liked his character that much. Not really. But I like detectives. And there was real detective work. You could see the thought processes. Like a good episode of Columbo, back in the 70s when the detective shows didn’t rely on DNA test and tool marking s to solve everything. Plot twists weren’t given by enhancing the image, but by a deduction that was made, one that could have been made by the reader/viewer, but wasn’t, those are the best. I think my favorite parts of the books were hearing him think out how he connected the dots.
“I had other parts I liked. I suspect you spent a lot of time working on that very moment when they hold hands on the slide. Those couple of paragraphs were wonderful. Of course you couldn’t end on it, and you couldn’t delay it, since clearly once they met that was the first thing they would do. I imagine you wrote those early in the book, and rewrote them very many times by the time you got to the point of them. But I don’t know. Mere conjecture.
“Another good thing was that it didn’t end with Amomame being just the story Tengo was writing. Of course I thought about that as soon as I heard he was writing a novel. Then I thought, no, Amomame was already introduced before. But then I thought, ah, but so was the End of the World introduced before the Hard Boiled guy could have even started that pathway. But then later you say that Tengo was writing about himself. So, that allayed my fears some. Still, even to the end, I was afraid there would be a last chapter, ‘and then Tengo put down his pen, having let his creation meet his alter ego. He could finish the story.’ Something like that. Actually more ambiguous than that, but still suggestive. Perhaps you still want to suggest that, but I will ignore that.” I took a long breath. I was afraid Harukicat was bored. Like he was reading some poorly written fanfic.
Haruki Murakami merely blinked his eyes and yawned, but it was the yawn cats make regardless of their interest. It was the yawn they make when they move from one comfortable position to another, hoping, perhaps it will be even more comfortable. He settled into that position. If it were more comfortable or not, he was not betraying.
“So, what is next?”
“Hmm, let’s see. I’ve read everything in the library. Fiction that is. I’ve read at least 10 of your publications now. I wanted to get the rest of the Rat Trilogy. Pinball is hard to get, expensive at least, I can’t spent 45 dollars. There is a version available online, not sure if you are aware of that. I have acquired it, as a back-up, in case they don’t have the book I plan to get in another library. The last of the trilogy is cheap, as it was published in America also, but I don’t want to purchase that book without the missing third of the trilogy. Having the first book by itself is okay, as it is your first book, beyond just being the first in the trilogy. So, next, if I can get it, is Dance, Dance, Dance. I have already read: Hear the Wind Sing, Hard-Boiled Wonderland, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, The Elephant Vanishes, Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart, After the Quake, After Dark, South of the Border, Blind Willow, and now 1Q84. In roughly that order.”
“Mm hmm, I see,” he said, “I, of course, was not asking that at all. But you must be a voracious reader.”
“Not really. I rarely read more than one book by any author. I read ‘the big four’ of Faulkner. Though of those I really only cared for Absalom Absalom and Sound and the Fury. The fact that he wrote As I Lay Dying in something like a week really irks me and not sure if that is clouding my judgment on it. He’s perhaps the only author I’ve read in my adult life more than one book by. When I was younger I read a lot of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams. But otherwise, I usually read only one book, the most famous one, by an author. I don’t read that often nowadays. Absalom Absalom alone took me a year to read, and it was the only novel I was reading.”
I started to think of other authors, but I was already embarrassed with some of the ones I had mentioned. Faulkner, no one can look down upon. But how would he feel knowing my favorite book was—true, for sentimental reasons, not because I read it recently and felt it had a lot of literary merit—Watership Down… That’s not even necessarily true, I had a lot of books I had attachment to. Looking at my bookcase, I saw Invisible Man, but I tried rereading that, and found I wasn’t able to finish it.
The afterglow of the book was diminishing. I was tired. I knew I couldn’t sleep, but it was time to switch gears. Harukicat yawned again, and it dawned on me, that he was trying to make me sleepy. I yawned back. This contented him, and he walked away.