Kafka on the Shore Read Online Free PDF Page A

say.
    "'In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion,'" she repeats, making sure of it.
    If she had paper and pencil, it wouldn't surprise me if she wrote it down. "So what does that really mean? In simple terms."
    I think it over. It takes me a while to gather my thoughts, but she waits patiently.
    "I think it means," I say, "that chance encounters are what keep us going. In simple terms."
    She mulls that over for a while, then slowly brings her hands together on top of the table and rests them there lightly. "I think you're right about that—that chance encounters keep us going."
    I glance at my watch. It's five-thirty already. "Maybe we better be getting back."
    "Yeah, I guess so. Let's go," she says, making no move, though, to get up.
    "By the way, where are we?" I ask.
    "I have no idea," she says. She cranes her neck and sweeps the place with her eyes. Her earrings jiggle back and forth like two precarious pieces of ripe fruit ready to fall. "From the time I'm guessing we're near Kurashiki, not that it matters. A rest area on a highway is just a place you pass through. To get from here to there." She holds up her right index finger and her left index finger, about twelve inches apart.
    "What does it matter what it's called?" she continues. "You've got your restrooms and your food. Your fluorescent lights and your plastic chairs. Crappy coffee.
    Strawberry-jam sandwiches. It's all pointless—assuming you try to find a point to it.
    We're coming from somewhere, heading somewhere else. That's all you need to know, right?"
    I nod. And nod. And nod.
    When we get back to the bus the other passengers are already aboard, with just us holding things up. The driver's a young guy with this intense look that reminds me of some stern watchman. He turns a reproachful gaze on the two of us but doesn't say anything, and the girl shoots him an innocent sorry-we're-late smile. He reaches out to push a lever and the door hisses closed. The girl lugs her little suitcase over and sits down beside me—a nothing kind of suitcase she must've picked up at some discount place—and I pick it up for her and store it away in the overhead rack. Pretty heavy for its size. She thanks me, then reclines her seat and fades off to sleep. Like it can barely wait to get going, the bus starts to roll the instant we get settled. I pull out my paperback and pick up where I'd left off.

    The girl's soon fast asleep, and as the bus sways through each curve her head leans against my shoulder, finally coming to a rest there. Mouth closed, she's breathing quietly through her nose, the breath grazing my shoulder at regular beats. I look down and catch a glimpse of her bra strap through the collar of her crewneck shirt, a thin, cream-colored strap. I picture the delicate fabric at the end of that strap. The soft breasts beneath. The pink nipples taut under my fingertips. Not that I'm trying to imagine all this, but I can't help it. And—no surprise—I get a massive hard-on. So rigid it makes me wonder how any part of your body could ever get so rock hard.
    Just then a thought hits me. Maybe—just maybe—this girl's my sister. She's about the right age. Her odd looks aren't at all like the girl in the photo, but you can't always count on that. Depending on how they're taken people sometimes look totally different.
    She said she has a brother my age who she hasn't seen in ages. Couldn't that brother be me—in theory, at least?
    I stare at her chest. As she breathes, the rounded peaks move up and down like the swell of waves, somehow reminding me of rain falling softly on a broad stretch of sea. I'm the lonely voyager standing on deck, and she's the sea. The sky is a blanket of gray, merging with the gray sea off on the horizon. It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.
    The girl wears two rings on her fingers, neither of which is a wedding or engagement ring, just cheap things