The next Monday, I went as usual in the morning to visit Mr. Koyasu’s grave. Facing the gravestone, I spoke about the boy. How he was hoping to go to the town surrounded by a high wall. How he’d asked me to take him there. But it didn’t seem like I could make his wish come true. Because, first of all, I didn’t know how to get there.
As you are well aware, I told Mr. Koyasu, the boy is totally isolated here. The boy strongly believes that leaving this world to transition to that other town was the natural, happiest choice for him.
And perhaps it was, since this real world was no place for him. No one truly understood him, including his blood relatives. His unique, innate abilities might be put to better use in the world on the other side.
But the thing was—even assuming I could do that—I wasn’t at all sure that helping him make that transition was the right thing to do. Or even if I was qualified to do so. I mean, he was, all things said, just a sixteen-year-old boy. Even if they didn’t fully understand him, if their emotional bond was tenuous, it was certain that if he was gone his relatives—parents and brothers—would be left deeply saddened. That’s why Mr. Koyasu’s take on things would be so critical. If at this moment he could hear what I said, I wanted to get his candid advice. I was, frankly, baffled, unsure of a way forward.
After I finished speaking, I sat down on the stone wall in front of the gravestone, waiting for some sort of response. But, as I had half expected, there was none. Just clouds leisurely making their way across the sky, from the ridge of one mountain to the ridge of another. For some reason that morning I couldn’t even hear the sound of birds. Only the silence of the grave.
I spent a silent thirty minutes before the gravestone, like sitting alone at the bottom of a dried-up well, hugging my knees to myself. Nothing happened during this time. Only the gray clouds drifting by overhead, and the long hand of my watch making a half circuit of the face. The only things moving were these.
Occasionally I’d look up and cast a quick glance around me, but I didn’t spot Yellow Submarine Boy anywhere. No one else was at the cemetery. I got up from the stone wall, gazed up at the winter sky for a while, then redid my scarf and brushed off the bits of leaves from my duffel coat.
Mr. Koyasu’s soul had, I imagined, already left this world. A long time had passed since the last time I had seen him and spoken to him. And now Yellow Submarine Boy, too, was hoping to exit this earth. And after the two of them were actually gone (forever), I would have to remain here, living on. In what would no doubt be an insipid world, since I had grown fond of, and felt empathy toward, both of them.
As was my wont, on the way home I stopped by the nameless coffee shop near the station. I seemed well on my way to becoming one of those lonely middle-aged men who follow habits without really thinking about them. I sat at my usual spot at the counter, and ordered my usual black coffee and ate a plain muffin. (Blueberry muffins were sold out.) The woman behind the counter gave me her usual sunny smile.
Jazz guitar music was filtering out, quietly, through the speakers, but I didn’t know the name of the tune or of the musician. I half listened to the music, letting the hot coffee warm my chilled body, tearing off small pieces of the plain muffin and eating them. Plain muffins had their own merits too.
“I’ve been thinking for a while how wonderful your coat is,” the woman said to me. I looked over at the gray duffel coat on the seat next to me.
“This coat?” I said, a bit surprised. I folded up the morning paper I’d finished reading. “I’ve worn it for about twenty years. It’s heavy as armor, the design is out of date, yet it’s not that warm, really.”
“But it’s lovely. Everyone these days wears the same kind of down coat, so it’s refreshing to see yours.”
“Maybe you’re right. Though it’s not really suited to cold around here. I was thinking of buying a down coat before next winter. It’s so much warmer and lighter. This is my first winter here, and I didn’t know much about the climate.”
“I don’t know why, but I’ve always liked duffel coats. I find them attractive.”
“I’m sure the coat, too, would be happy to hear that,” I said, laughing.
“Are you the type who takes good care of things over the long haul?”
“Perhaps,” I said. No one had ever said that to me before, but now that she mentioned it, it might be so. Or maybe I just found it too much trouble to buy a replacement.
I was the only customer in the shop, and while waiting for water to boil for coffee she seemed happy to have someone to chat with.
“You said this is your first winter here, so I assume you’re not originally from this town?”
“I just moved here last summer and started living here then,” I said. “So I know next to nothing about the town. I’d lived in Tokyo until then.”
Other than the period when I lived in the town behind the brick wall, that is…
“Did you move here for work?”
“That’s right. There happened to be a job opening.”
“It’s like my situation,” she said. “I found a job and just moved here in the spring of last year. I lived in Sapporo before. And worked at a bank.”
“Yet you quit your bank job and moved here.”
“Quite a change in environment.”
“Did you know someone here?”
“No, I didn’t know anyone at all. Like you, I came here all by myself.”
“And started working at this shop?”
“Actually, I found this property online. A coffee shop for sale. For various reasons the owner needed to quickly sell it. He let it go for way below market value, so I bought it, with everything included, and moved here as the new owner.”
“Quite a bold decision,” I said, impressed. “Quitting a job in a bank in a big city, moving here by yourself to this far-off little town you knew nothing about, and starting a business.”
“There were reasons behind it. Like that boy who was here said? That Wednesday’s child was full of woe.”
“He didn’t say it. I did. That it’s a line from a nursery song. The boy just said you were born on Wednesday.”
“Is that how it went?”
“That boy basically only states facts.”
“Only states facts,” she repeated, sounding impressed. “That’s sort of amazing, isn’t it.”
She stepped away, turned off the gas, and began brewing some fresh coffee with the water she’d boiled. I stood up and put on my duffel coat. I paid the bill and was about to leave. But something held me back. I stopped and went back inside the shop and spoke to the woman making coffee behind the counter.
“This might sound pretty forward of me,” I said. “But I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind me inviting you out sometime, for a meal or something?”
The words flowed out, entirely naturally. No hesitation, no reluctance. Though I did feel my cheeks redden.
She raised her face and looked at me. She narrowed her eyes, as if looking at something she wasn’t used to seeing.
“Sometime?” she asked.
“Today would be fine.”
“A meal or something?”
“Like, dinner, maybe.”
She pursed her lips ever so slightly, then said, “I close up shop here at six p.m. It takes about thirty minutes to straighten up everything, so I could go after that if that works for you.”
That would be fine, I said. Six thirty was a good time for dinner. “I’ll be back to get you at six.”
I left the shop and walked home. As I walked along, I reviewed each and every word I’d spoken to her, which felt strange. Until that moment came, I’d had no intention of inviting her to dinner, yet the words had come out of my mouth almost on their own. It had been a long time since I’d invited a woman out for a meal. What could have made me do that? Was I, maybe, attracted to her?
Maybe I was.
If so, though, I didn’t know what about her attracted me. I’d liked her in a vague sort of way for a while, but this wasn’t the kind of feeling that would move me to seek more—a more intimate connection or something. She was a woman in her mid-thirties who every Monday served me coffee and a muffin, that’s all. A slim figure who moved briskly as she worked, with a warm, winning smile.
Something about her must have particularly attracted me that day and led me to invite her out to dinner. Something in the abbreviated conversation we had must have propelled me to do that. Or maybe I was just tired of being alone and wanted someone I could have a pleasant conversation with. But that wasn’t all there was to it. Intuition told me that.
Whatever the motivation, it was a fait accompli. Half unconsciously, almost reflexively, I’d invited her out to dinner and she’d accepted. Many things in life are like that, though, if you think about it—moving ahead on their own without regard for the intentions or plans of the person involved. To take it a step further, I’d have to say that at this point I was bereft of any intentions or plans.
On the way home, I stopped by a supermarket, bought a week’s worth of food, and back home divided this up and arranged it in the fridge, and prepped meals to come. I then vacuumed the house, scrubbed the bathroom clean, changed the sheets and pillow covers on my bed, and washed the clothes that had piled up. And did some ironing while I was at it. The same procedure I followed every Monday. All the tasks done silently, and efficiently. Like always.
After three I’d finished up my chores, lugged my reading chair over to a sunny spot, and opened up a book I’d been reading. Somehow, though, I couldn’t focus. This was, after all, not a usual Monday. I’d invited a woman out to dinner. And—after a few seconds’ hesitation—she’d accepted. Was this really significant for me? Or was it simply some side episode, a little detour that had nothing to do with the larger flow of things? The larger flow of things—was such a thing even a part of my life?
I spent the time until evening vaguely considering all this. I switched on the radio, where I Musici di Roma was performing one of Vivaldi’s concertos for viola d’amore. I sort of half listened to it.
The radio commentator spoke between pieces:
“Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678 and composed over six hundred pieces in his lifetime. He was a popular composer in his time, also quite active as a superb violinist, though afterward he was completely ignored, a forgotten figure from the past. In the 1950s, however, his reputation once again grew, with the publication of his composition The Four Seasons, which proved popular, and over two hundred years after his death his name became, immediately, widely known throughout the world.”
As I listened to the music, I thought about being forgotten for two hundred years. Two hundred years was a long time. Two hundred years in which he was “completely ignored, a forgotten figure from the past.” No one knows, of course, what will happen in two hundred years. Or even in two days, for that matter.
All of a sudden I wondered what Yellow Submarine Boy was up to at this moment. How did he spend his time on days when the library was closed? If the library wasn’t open, he surely had time on his hands. Since, according to Mrs. Soeda, his father strictly limited his reading at home.
At times like that I couldn’t imagine how his brain processes operated. Maybe he took the massive amount of knowledge he’d amassed over the week, used that free time to organize it systematically and reorder it. He’d take the fragments he gathered from The Home Medical Encyclopedia and Wittgenstein on Language, connect them organically, intertwine them to transform them into one part of a massive “Pillar of Wisdom.” What would that pillar—assuming it really was formed—look like, and what scale would it be? Was this formed internally, not exposed to others’ eyes? I wondered. As an enormous input monument with no exit.
Maybe the order his father forced on him was the right thing to do (if you view the results, at least). It must have been necessary to put a temporary halt to reading (the input process) so the boy would have time to sort out the massive amount of knowledge he’d absorbed and store it in the proper order in the appropriate spot in his brain—like sorting out the food you buy in a supermarket and stowing it away in the fridge. But this was all pure conjecture on my part. The only one who knew what went on in his head was the boy himself.
Even so, I couldn’t help but shut my eyes and try to picture this Pillar of Wisdom (as it might be called) that this solitary boy had created within himself. Was it like some massive pillar in a limestone cave towering in the darkness deep below the ground? Unseen by anyone, rising up boldly in the inky darkness where no one’s feet had ever walked? In that sort of darkness, maybe two hundred years means nothing.
Perhaps by entering that town surrounded by a wall he might be able to effectively put that Pillar of Wisdom to good use. And find the right method to output this wisdom.
Yellow Submarine Boy…He himself was capable of becoming a freestanding, autonomous library. This thought struck me, and I exhaled deeply.
The ultimate personal library.