Kafka's Sweetheart

I often dream of a girl I knew in my childhood. She was a strange and mysterious girl who seemed to have neither name nor origin--a severed head floating in dense fog. The first time I met her was among the tangled weeds and overgrown grass of the elementary school courtyard. I had been waiting for my mother to roll up in our paint base blue Toyota. I dribbled a soccer ball through the uneven patches of vegetation, expecting my mother to be late. After all, the Toyota was an awkward beast of a car; my mother a clumsy fool of a woman.1

I had long since stopped minding her tardiness, and opted to enjoy the crisp air and sunny weather of early autumn instead. School had just begun and I was grateful. My soccer ball bounced off a particularly lumpy patch of earth and rolled to the sandaled feet of a girl a few meters away. I had never seen her before, although we seemed to have been around the same age. She was a slender girl with a pretty face. Her hair had been messily chopped short for the summer. She wore a loose blue dress that fell to her ankles and little plastic sandals with glass-studded butterflies. It seemed as if she had appeared out of nowhere.2

“Hey,” I called, “over here!”3

She bent over and picked up the ball. She raised it above her head with both hands and hurled the object at me. I was stunned when it hit me squarely over the top of my shaved head. 4

She pointed a finger at me said, “I’ll race you!” With that she turned and ran with all her might in the opposite direction, leaving me rubbing my head dazed and alone in the field.5

From that day on, I would see her everyday, and everyday she would challenge me in the same way. It didn’t matter where, school or home, she always seemed to be one step ahead of me. It was a bizarre relationship of one-sided rivalry, a hit-and-run childhood romance that left me breathless and empty-handed. Sometimes I would try to race with her, but I would always fall behind and lose sight of her. She was like Houdini, appearing and reappearing behind the nooks and crannies of alleyway garbage cans and manicured garden shrubbery. I never learned her name. I never tried to seek her out.6

She would always come to me.7

My father had been an average salary man whose profession involved marketing commodities that he himself didn’t know the uses of. Passive, quiet, and mild-mannered, he faded easily into the background static of my childhood. My memories of him consisted of a pile of thirty noodle stand coupons on the kitchen counter disappearing one by one by lunchtime everyday until there were none left. He was the bank check that my mother etched the electric bills on; a counterfeit parental and spousal unit that ran on black coffee and discount noodle stand entrees. It was no small surprise when he came home one day and announced that we were all moving to Tokyo—a decision all his own. My mother was furious.8

I was fourteen at the time. I was quiet and shy and completely absorbed in my own world. I had never gotten into a fight. I had never kissed a girl. I had never even raised my hand in class. The only person I ever interacted with was the mystery girl who continued to visit me everyday. I was completely detached from the world. I was apathetic to everything.9

The skies were marbled with clouds the last time I ever saw the girl. Like always, she appeared to me mysteriously, almost as if out of thin air. She had grown by then into a shapely young lady by then. She still wore dresses, often ankle-length. The dresses seemed to mock my manhood by saying, ‘I can beat you while wearing a dress.’10

“I’ll race you,” she said, and took off running. I stared at her retreating back seriously. I contemplated our relationship long and hard, from the minute we had first met to that final moment. Then, closing my eyes, I turned and ran in the opposite direction, straining my legs so that I would go as fast as I could.11

‘I’ll race you!’12

Now I am thirty-four and once divorced. I live in a small apartment in a so-so district of Tokyo. I write for magazines to pay my modest bills and rent. It’s nothing extravagant, just the occasional article that no one reads, the waste of pulp and ink stuck between the things people actually want to read. My last article was for a minor women’s magazine on the evolution of flower arrangement styles since the early 1920s. It showed up below another man’s equally ignored recipe for apricot pie and above recommendations for new and promising tampon brands. Writing is by no means a taxing job, and it pays well enough that I can spend just a handful of hours everyday mulling over the Internet researching unfamiliar and often boring topics. 13

The rest of my time is free to spend as I wish. I tend to sleep. I have spent fifteen hours sleeping everyday for the past three years. Sometimes I have wild and vivid dreams that wake me with a start. Other times I simply sink into a dark and dreamless abyss that consumes my mind and body. However, no matter what kind of sleep it is, it is always soothing, numbing, and never a waste of my time. It is like the legal drug every teenager should have found instead of heroin. Intoxicating and deep, the emptiness of sleep devours my life.14

* * * * * *15

The dreams started three months ago. In these dreams, I am a house in the middle of a large clearing in the woods. The windows are my eyes, bars blocking off stripes of my vision. The door is my large and gaping mouth, stuck forever in a type of silent screaming. The reptilian shingles are my hair, short and coarse, buzzed close to the skull for ease. I hear the inner workings of the house inside me. The ticking of the clock hanging above the mantle is the pulsing of my heart. The gurgle of the drainage is the churning of my stomach. The creaking of the floorboards is the slight and barely noticeable buzz of my thoughts. Around me is a dense fog that has wrapped itself firmly around me. Everything is obscured but the forest. Everything is silent but a faint whirling. 16

The sound is like the swish of a yo-yo being swung round and round by the end of the string. The strange sound approaches me, and soon I can make out the sound of stomping and panting. The stomping is otherworldly, unlike anything I have ever heard before, too heavy to be a mere footstep, too light to be a dangerous creature. Soon a silhouette comes into view through the mist. It is the outline of a young girl, shapely and pretty, in a billowing dress. As she approaches, I realize it is the nameless girl of my youth, running as fast as she can, beads of sweat perspiring down her brow. Her breaths escape her mouth fast and shallow, as she sprints around the house in circles. Her steps seem to shake the very earth, uprooting the trees around me.17

It is then that I realize something particular about her legs. They are mechanical—made entirely of gears and wires, kneecaps twisting and spinning, sending cinderblock feet ramming into the ground. She is like a windup toy from the waist down, legs reeling out of the control as she sprints around the foundation of the house. She circles me many times and begins to caw like a crow, “Race me! Race me!”18

Her stomping is insufferable, shaking everything inside me. The furniture overturns, dishes fall out of their cabinets, doors slam against the walls over and over again. Her feet make such a ruckus that the very slabs of wood that I am made of begin to fall apart, splintering into a thousand pieces and buckling under the weight of the roof. Slowly I begin to topple to the ground, all the while listening to her animalistic cry.19

“Race me! Race me!”20

* * * * * *21

It is three in the morning when the phone rings. I groan and turn over to my back, eyes opening languidly, and staring with dull interest at my ceiling. The ceiling looked low and oppressive even from the futon, my head a good one hundred seventy meters lower than it usually is. The streetlight filters through the slits of my blinds and cast wide, uneven stripes across my face. I squint at my alarm clock, and decide to let the answering machine handle the call. I mouth the words of my answering message as I turn onto my left side.22

“Hello? Hello?” calls a woman frantically, “Haruki? Haruki? Is that you? Oh God if it’s you, please answer me! Haruki? This is your wife! This Kimiko! Is that you? Please talk to me or show me a sign if you’re not dead! Please! Haru—“23

She is cut off by the beeping of my answering machine. I do not know what she is talking about.24

There is something otherworldly about the message, as if the woman is calling out for me from a great beyond. It is beyond the walls of the moldy nutshell of my apartment, beyond the fizzle and pops of the Tokyo nights. It is out of the city, and into the cold, piercing void of a place that still knows darkness. These thoughts lull me into a grim sleep filled with restless dreams of limbs, severed and sprouting from walls, grabbing at my body.25

“What do you want from me?” I shout.26

“To connect!” moans the bodiless voices, “to connect!”27

The flurry of arms melts into telephone wires, and suddenly I am the sole operator of a vast switchboard. The phone rings and I pick up.28

“Yes, this is the End of the World, how may I help you?” I answer instinctively.29

“Race me! Race me!”30

* * * * * *31

It is nearly two in the afternoon when I receive another call. I pick up the receiver.32

“Hello?”33

“Hello, may I ask who I am speaking with?” replies a pleasant feminine voice. I recognize it immediately as the woman who called last night, but I make an effort not to show it.34

“This is Ryo Murakami, how may I help you?” I respond politely.35

She pauses for a long while.36

“And you live in Tokyo, correct?” she says slowly, “If you don’t mind me asking.”37

“Yes, that is correct. I live in Nakano Ward.”38

“Are you living with anyone else?” she continues.39

“No, I am not,” I reply patiently, “I am the only one who lives here.”40

There is another long pause, this time her breathing transfers over the line, trembling and ragged, as if she has just seen a ghost. 41

“I see,” she says, slowly again, careful to enunciate every syllable. She breathes in deeply before resuming, “This is Kimiko Watanabe. I am calling from Takamatsu.”42

I nod gravely at this information though I know she cannot see me. Photographs of Takamatsu spring into my mind from my old history books. Scenes of solid Edo-styled castles, grand and severe, sitting like peaceful yet unmovable rocks in the middle of lakes appear behind my eyelids. Forest-covered mountains, lush and sweeping, provide the backdrop to the serene scene. The smell of sea salt assaults my nose as I see the Prussian blue of the ocean in the distance. I think of how pleasant it would be to visit Takamatsu someday, to be walk between the darkness nestled in the hearts of the ocean and the forest and the ancients.43

“Forgive me if this sounds strange, but last night,” she began, with a trembling voice, “I received a phone call that was undoubtedly from my deceased husband. Actually, this has been happening for several nights now, but last night was the first time I was able to trace the number.”44

“And you traced it back to my home?” I finish, not the least bit of humor in my voice. Somehow I know that she isn’t lying, but, at the same time, somehow I am not afraid. I am completely hollow inside.45

“Yes,” she replies gravely. “I traced it to your home.”46

* * * * * *47

I stand before a modest sized house in the outskirts of Takamatsu city. The house seems spacious compared to my apartment in Tokyo, despite the fact that the tiny square of lawn that is barely large enough for a grown man to stretch his legs in. A few children’s toys litter the miniscule yard—a Fisher Price plastic wagon, a few cheap action figures, and a stuffed cat—cluttering the space even more. The sun is setting in the west, casting a pleasant light over the homey-looking house. I ring the bell at the gate. Birds chirp somewhere in the trees as they ready for sleep. It is the first time I have heard birds this clearly in twenty years.48

I had caught the first bus to Takamatsu the morning after receiving Ms. Watanabe’s phone call. There was no reason for my actions, however. After all, I had never even met the woman before. It could have been possible that everything was simply an elaborate hoax; a twisted and bored housewife with nothing better to do than make up idle lies over long distance calls. Perhaps she wasn’t even calling long distance, perhaps she was right next door, now laughing hysterically behind drawn curtains. These thoughts pass through my head a few times, but I dismiss them each time. Somehow I know that this is right. Somehow I know that I was called for a purpose.49

Perhaps it is the mysterious running girl of my childhood?50

A young woman answers the gate. She appears to be much younger than me, a newly-made wife from the looks of her. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-six, and yet, there is an aged world-weariness in her eyes, an air of permanent tiredness that has set into her bones. She was pretty in a common housewife way, a way that radiated normality and mediocrity. It was a safe sort of beauty, nothing earth-shattering or mysterious, just simple and homey and completely forgettable.51

But no, this is not the running girl. 52

I smile and bow politely all the same.53

She introduces me to her son, a young boy no more than four or five-years-old. He stands staring at me defiantly, arms akimbo and legs apart, trying to defend his home from my intrusion. His eyes are large and doe-like, seeming to be completely black without any pupils. I compliment his candy-cane striped shirt. I had the same shirt when I was little as well. He blushes and hides behind his mother.54

Kimiko prepares a simple homemade dinner and we eat in relative silence. I take a bath while she washes the dishes. Everything seems natural between us, almost as if I am a husband returning from a long business trip. Thoughts like these remind me of married life, and I am swept with a sudden wave of nausea. Memories of my ex-wife light in my head, but I quickly snuff them out.55

It is only after she has tucked her son into bed that we begin to talk.56

“I am so glad that you could make it,” she says, as she sets down the tea that she has made. She pours me a mug and I accept it gratefully. “I’m sure it seemed like a strange request from a stranger.”57

“It is fine,” I reply, “It was only a short trip. Japan is, after all, so small.”58

“Yes,” she says, “Japan is so small and well-developed these days that it’s easy to go anywhere. It seems that everyone is connected to each other somehow.” She pauses as she sits down in one of the plush couches across from me. “And it seemed, that night, that there was some kind of obscure but absolutely necessary connection between us.”59

“Yes, it did seem that way to me as well,” I agree. “If I hadn’t felt as if there were some sort of fate playing between us, then I wouldn’t have come at all.” I sip my tea. The tea is quite fragrant and of good quality. “It seemed as if someone were playing operator and connected us together.”60

“Like my dead husband?”61

“Like your dead husband,” I affirm.62

“My husband died a year ago,” she begins as she sips from her cup. “It was a very mysterious death, however, and his body was never found. It is also unclear as to how he died or even why. The police speculated that he had committed suicide judging from the long list of possessions he left to us, the will written only a day before he disappeared. I think, somewhere in my heart, I agree with this, though only in the sense that he somehow ended his existence on earth by his own accord.63

“My husband and I were going through a painful separation at the time. I was spoiled and used to his full attentions. I was also from a lower class family when I was young, and my mother had been a prostitute for most of her life before she finally settled down with my step-father. Naturally I was unaccustomed to being a housewife. My husband was also stressed at work, and simply couldn’t spend as much time with me as I would have liked. I became jealous and suspicious, and eventually demanded a divorce.64

It was after the first year of separation that my husband suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing but a simple will behind. At the time my child and I were living under unfavorable conditions, but simple pride held me back from going back to my husband or my parents. We had trouble even coming up with enough money to buy simple furniture like beds and tables. I was prostituting myself out for money, since I had only gone to a trade school after junior high, and the pay from my hairdressing job wasn’t good enough to pay for both rent and a child. It was not the first time I had prostituted. In fact, I had met my husband through prostitution. He had been a customer, and we had quickly fallen in love. I decided to quit prostitution soon after we began seeing each other regularly. Luckily, I suppose, my husband’s death resulted in me gaining full possession of our house and all the material possessions it held.65

The circumstances of his disappearance were very odd. It seemed as if he had simply disappeared from the face of the planet. He had penned a list for me, telling me all of the possessions that were then mine. At the end of the list, he simply signed, ‘Good-bye,’ and that was that. It was as if he had decided to simply wrap up his existence and move on. Vaporized. Without a trace.66

The police decided that he must have committed suicide after several months of searching. I too felt as if he had left this world. Left, and severed all connection, though, not necessarily dead.”67

“If he is not dead…” I begin, perplexed.68

“He has disappeared,” she finishes. “It is not death. He has simply disappeared, or, at least severed all connection with this world and the people in it.”69

“Until last night,” I correct.70

She nods, “Until last night.”71

“So then, he has not disappeared?” I venture.72

“No,” she says, “I think he has. It’s just…he wanted me to find you for some reason. It was as if he intended me to bear to you a message. At least that is how I feel.”73

“Do you have any idea what that message is?” I ask.74

“No, I’m afraid I do not,” she says regretfully.75

“I see.”76

There is a long silence between us as we both ponder the strange events of the night before. Finally, she broke the silence.77

“I was actually glad that he disappeared,” she whispered, “though I loved him.” She breathed in a deep sigh before continuing. “But he threatened me. Not verbally or physically, of course. He had been a gentle man of good intentions. He has never laid a hand on me or my son. But somehow, my life with him was slowly threatening my existence. It was as if being his wife was slowly eroding away from my sense of being.78

I am not a woman accustomed to being kept inside. I have always just been trash; unwanted, unloved, unneeded. I had always been just a prostitute selling my body on the street corner. However, I was content with this. I had long since resigned myself to this fate. I suppose you could even say that I needed prostitution in order to define my existence. I was a prostitute.”79

She pauses again.80

“I am still a prostitute.81

Haruki threatened this idea, and I felt as if slowly I was losing sight of what I was. He was threatening the only connection to myself that I had.”82

“But couldn’t you have become a housewife instead of just a prostitute?” I ask, confused. “Could you not have chosen a new identity for yourself?”83

She shakes her head, “It is not as simple as merely choosing a title. It is your sense of self. Being a housewife was my connection to Haruki. Being a mother is my connection to my son. Being a strange woman who called you in the middle of the night is my connection to you. But what is my connection to myself?”84

I nod, understanding.85

“Haruki loved me, and I loved him very deeply. Yet, I felt as if I would be damaged beyond repair if I were to stay with him. I told him this a few weeks before he disappeared. He was angry at first, and then sad. He said that prostitution was not my connection to myself, but merely my connection to the world. He said that he would show me that self is not a connection to one’s past or future or even to other people. He said that he would find a way to fill the gap that was separating us.”86

“So,” I say, “where do you think he went?”87

“I think,” she replies, “he went to the End of the World.”88

* * * * * *89

I begin hiking in the mountains the next day at dawn. Takamatsu was famous for its lush green forests, and I was eager to take advantage of my impromptu vacation. I had never hiked before, however. In fact, I had hardly ever been out in nature before. I wasn’t even particularly fond of nature or the prospect of hiking. Yet, it seemed as if it was something I had to do, just like how coming to Takamatsu was something that had to happen. I pull my cap lower over my eyes to shield them from the sun. I have nothing with me but a baseball cap I had picked up at the bus station the day before and a bottle of water. I did not know the area, and there was no path into the forest.90

I looked up into the canopy of the trees and breathed in deeply. The wind rustled through the leaves, whispering raspy words into my ear.91

“Race me! Race me!”92

I understand now.93

I look ahead confidently and walk blindly into the dense forest. I do not know where I am going. I do not know how long I will be gone. I simply know that I am headed for the center, for the intangible core that sits like a lump of coal at the heart of the forest—the End of the World, the darkness within.94

“I will race you there.”95