海边的卡夫卡 disc 1 -track04

My fifteenth birthday is the ideal point to run away from home. Any earlier and it’d be too soon. Any later and I would have missed my chance.

During my first two years in junior high, I’d worked out, training myself for this day. I started practising judo 1 in the first couple of years of grade school, and still went sometimes in junior high. But I didn’t join any school teams. Whenever I had the time I’d jog around the school grounds, swim or go to the local gym. The young trainers there gave me free lessons, showing me the best kind of stretching exercises and how to use the fitness machines to bulk up. They taught me which muscles you use every day and which ones can only be built up with machines, even the correct way to do a bench press. I’m pretty tall to begin with, and with all this exercise I’ve developed pretty broad shoulders and pecs. Most strangers would take me for 17. If I ran away looking my actual age, you can imagine all the problems that would cause.

Apart from the trainers at the gym and the housekeeper 2 who comes to our house every other day – and of course the bare minimum required to get by at school – I hardly talk to anyone. For a long time my father and I have avoided seeing each other. We live under the same roof, but our schedules are totally different. He spends most of his time in his studio, far away, and I do my best to avoid him.

The school I’m going to is a private junior high for kids who are upper class, or at least rich. It’s the kind of school where, unless you really blow it, you’re automatically promoted to the high school on the same campus. All the students dress neatly 3, have nice straight teeth, and are as boring as hell. Naturally I have zero friends. I’ve built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself. Who could like somebody like that? They all keep an eye on me, from a distance. They might hate me, or even be afraid of me, but I’m just glad they didn’t bother me. Because I had tons of things to take care of, including spending a lot of my free time devouring 5 books in the school library.

I always paid close attention to what was said in class, though. Just as the boy named Crow suggested.

The facts and techniques or whatever they teach you in class isn’t going to be very useful in the real world, that’s for sure. Let’s face it, teachers are basically a bunch of morons 6. But you’ve got to remember this: you’re running away from home. You probably won’t have any chance to go to school any more, so like it or not you’d better absorb whatever you can while you’ve got the chance. Become like a sheet of blotting 7 paper and soak it all in. Later on you can work out what to keep and what to unload.

I did what he said, as I almost always do. My brain like a sponge, I focused on every word said in class and let it all sink in, worked out what it meant and committed everything to memory. Thanks to this, I hardly had to study outside the classroom, but always came out near the top on exams.

My muscles were getting hard as steel, even as I grew more withdrawn 8 and quiet. I tried hard to keep my emotions from showing so that no one – classmates or teachers alike – had a clue what I was thinking. Soon I’d be launched into the rough adult world, and I knew I’d have to be tougher than anybody if I wanted to survive.

My eyes in the mirror are as cold as a lizard’s, my expression fixed 9 and unreadable. I can’t remember the last time I laughed or even showed a hint of a smile to another person. Let alone myself.

I’m not trying to imply I can keep up this silent, isolated 10 façade all the time. Sometimes the wall I’ve erected 11 around me comes crumbling 12 down. It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes, before I even realise what’s going on, there I am – naked and defenceless and utterly 13 confused. At times like that I always feel an omen 14 calling out to me, like a dark, omnipresent pool of water.

A dark, omnipresent pool of water.

It was probably always there, hidden away somewhere. But when the time comes it silently rushes out, chilling every cell in your body. You drown in that cruel flood, gasping 15 for breath. You cling to a vent 4 near the ceiling, struggling, but the air you manage to breathe is dry and burns your throat. Water and thirst, cold and heat – these supposedly opposite elements combine to assault you.

The world is a huge space, but the space that will take you in – and it doesn’t have to be very big – is nowhere to be found. You seek a voice, but what do you get? Silence. You look for silence, but guess what? All you hear over and over and over is the voice of this omen. And sometimes this prophetic voice pushes a secret switch hidden deep inside your brain.

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated 16 and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.