Vintage Murakami Read Online Free PDF

would say, just waiting to be burned.
    I paused before this last barn, took a few deep breaths, cut over the crossing, and headed home. Running time: thirty-one minutes thirty seconds. I showered, ate breakfast, stretched out on the sofa to listen to one record, then got down to work.
    For one month, I ran the same course each morning. But—no barns burned.
    Sometimes, I could swear he was trying to get me to burn a barn. That is, to plant in my head the image of burning barns, so that it would swell up like a bicycle tire pumped with air. I’ll grant you, there were times that, well, as long as I was waiting around for him to do the deed, I half considered striking the match myself. It would have been a lot faster. And anyhow, they were only rundown old barns. . . .
    Although on second thought, no, let’s not get carried away. You won’t see me torch any barn. No matter how inflated the image of burning barns grew in my head, I’m really not the type. Me, burn barns? Never. Then what about him? He’d probably just switched prospects. Or else he was too busy and simply hadn’t found the time to burn a barn. In any case, there was no word from her.
    December came and went, and the morning air pierced the skin. The barns stood their ground, their roofs white with frost. Wintering birds sent the echo of flapping wings through the frozen woods. The world kept in motion unchanged.
    THE next time I met the guy was in the middle of December last year. It was Christmas carols everywhere you went. I had gone into town to buy presents for different people, and while walking around Nogizaka I spotted his car. No mistake, his silver-gray sports car. Shinagawa license plate, small dent next to the left headlight. It was parked in the lot of a café, looking less sparkling than when I last saw it, the silver-gray a hint duller. Though maybe that was a mistaken impression on my part: I have this convenient tendency to rework my memories. I dashed into the café without a moment’s hesitation.
    The place was dark and thick with the strong aroma of coffee. There weren’t many voices to be heard, only atmospheric baroque music. I recognized him immediately. He was sitting alone by the window, drinking a café au lait. And though it was warm enough in there to steam up my glasses, he was wearing a black cashmere coat, with his muffler still wrapped around his neck.
    I hedged a second, but then figured I might as well approach the guy. I decided not to say I’d seen his car outside; I’d just happened to step in, and by chance there he was.
    “Mind if I sit down?” I asked.
    “Please, not at all,” he replied.
    We talked a bit. It wasn’t a particularly lively conversation. Clearly, we didn’t have much in the way of common topics; moreover, his mind seemed to be on something else. Still, he didn’t show any sign of being put out by my presence. At one point, he mentioned a seaport in Tunisia, then he started describing the shrimp they caught there. He wasn’t just talking for my sake: He really was serious about these shrimp. All the same, like water to the desert, the story didn’t go anywhere before it dissipated.
    He signaled to the waiter and ordered a second café au lait.
    “Say, by the way, how’s your barn doing?” I braved the question.
    The trace of a smile came to his lips. “Oh, you still remember?” he said, removing a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his mouth. “Why, sure, I burned it. Burned it nice and clean. Just as promised.”
    “One right near my house?”
    “Yeah. Really, right by there.”
    “When?”
    “Last—when was it? Maybe ten days after I visited your place.”
    I told him about how I plotted the barns on my map and ran my daily circuit. “So there’s no way I could have
not
seen it,” I insisted.
    “Very thorough,” he gibed, obviously having his fun. “Thorough and logical. All I can say is, you must have missed it. Does happen, you know. Things so close up, they don’t