Tsukuru went back inside, picked up the phone, and without thinking much about what he was doing, pushed the speed-dial number for Sara. The phone rang three times before he thought better of it and hung up. It was already late. And he would be seeing her tomorrow. Then he would see her and talk to her in person. He shouldn’t short-circuit the process before he saw her. He knew that. Still, he wanted to hear Sara’s voice, right now. The feeling welled up inside him so overwhelmingly that it was hard to suppress the urge.
He placed the record of Lazar Berman’s performance of Years of Pilgrimage on the turntable, and lowered the needle. He turned his attention to the music. The scene of the lakeside at H?meenlinna came to him. The white lace curtain rustling in the breeze, the sound of the little boat rocked by the waves, slapping against the pier. The birds in the forest patiently teaching their tiny bird babies how to chirp. The citrusy smell Eri’s shampoo had left on her hair. The dense weight of the life force, the will to survive, within the ample softness of her breasts. The hard phlegm spat out in the weeds by the dour old man who’d shown him the way. The dog wagging its tail excitedly as it leaped into the back of the Renault. As he traced memories of these scenes, the pain in his chest that he’d felt returned once more.
Tsukuru drank the Cutty Sark, savoring the fragrance. His stomach grew faintly warm. From the summer of his sophomore year in college until the following winter, when every day brought thoughts of dying and nothing else, he’d had one small glass of whiskey at night like this. Without it, he hadn’t been able to sleep.
The phone suddenly rang. He stood up from the sofa, gently raised the needle from the record, and stood in front of the phone. It had to be Sara. No one else would call him at this hour of night. She knew he’d called and was calling him back. As the phone rang a dozen times Tsukuru hesitated, unsure if he should answer. He bit his lip hard, held his breath, and stared intently at the phone, like a person standing far away, off studying the details of a difficult formula on a blackboard, trying to puzzle it out. But he could find no clues. The phone stopped ringing, followed by silence. A deep, suggestive silence.
To fill in the silence Tsukuru lowered the needle onto the record again, went back to the sofa, and settled in to listen to the music. This time he tried his best not to think of anything in particular. With his eyes closed and his mind a blank, he focused solely on the music. Finally, as if lured in by the melody, images flashed behind his eyelids, one after the next, appearing, then disappearing. A series of images without concrete form or meaning, rising up from the dark margins of consciousness, soundlessly crossing into the visible realm, only to be sucked back into the margins on the other side and vanish once again. Like the mysterious outline of microorganisms swimming across the circular field of vision of a microscope.
Fifteen minutes later the phone rang again, and again he did not answer it. This time he stayed seated, listening to the music, gazing at the black phone. He didn’t count how many times it rang. Eventually it stopped, and all he could hear was the music.
Sara, he thought. I want to hear your voice. I want to hear it more than anything. But right now I can’t talk.
Tomorrow Sara may choose that other man, not me, Tsukuru thought as he lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes. It’s entirely possible, and for her it may well be the right choice.
What kind of person this other man was, what sort of relationship they had, how long they’d been seeing each other—all of this Tsukuru had no way of knowing. And he didn’t want to know, either. One thing he could say at this point was this: he had very little he could give her. Limited in amount, and in kind, the contents negligible. Would anybody really want the little he had to give?