Midorikawa hesitantly began playing “ ’Round Midnight.” At first he played each chord carefully, cautiously, like a person sticking his toes into a stream, testing the swiftness of the water and searching for a foothold. After playing the main theme, he started a long improvisation. As time went by, his fingers became more agile, more generous, in their movements, like fish swimming in clear water. The left hand inspired the right, the right hand spurred on the left. Haida’s father didn’t know much about jazz, but he did happen to be familiar with this Thelonious Monk composition, and Midorikawa’s performance went straight to the heart of the piece. His playing was so soulful it made Haida forget about the piano’s erratic tuning. As he listened to the music in this junior-high music room deep in the mountains, as the sole audience for the performance, Haida felt all that was unclean inside him washed away. The straightforward beauty of the music overlapped with the fresh, oxygen-rich air and the cool, clear water of the stream, all of them acting in concert. Midorikawa, too, was lost in his playing, as if all the minutiae of reality had disappeared. Haida had never seen someone so thoroughly absorbed in what he was doing. He couldn’t take his eyes off Midorikawa’s ten fingers, which moved like independent, living creatures.
In fifteen minutes Midorikawa finished playing, took out a thick towel from his shoulder bag, and carefully wiped his perspiring face. He closed his eyes for a while as if he were meditating. “Okay,” he finally said, “that’s enough. Let’s go back.” He reached out, picked up the cloth bag on the piano, and gently returned it to his shoulder bag.
“What is that bag?” Haida’s father ventured to ask.
“It’s a good-luck charm,” Midorikawa said simply.
“Like the guardian god of pianos?”
“No, it’s more like my alter ego,” Midorikawa replied, a weary smile rising to his lips. “There’s a strange story behind it. But it’s pretty long, and I’m afraid I’m too worn out to tell it right now.”
Haida stopped and glanced at the clock on the wall. Then he looked at Tsukuru. He was, of course, Haida the son, but Haida the father had been his same age in this story, and so the two of them began to overlap in Tsukuru’s mind. It was an odd sensation, as if the two distinct temporalities had blended into one. Maybe it wasn’t the father who had experienced this, but the son. Maybe Haida was just relating it as if his father had experienced it, when in reality he was the one who had. Tsukuru couldn’t shake this illusion.
“It’s getting late. If you’re sleepy I can finish this later.”
No, it’s fine, Tsukuru said. I’m not sleepy. In fact, he’d gotten his second wind, and wanted to hear the rest of the story.
“Okay, then I’ll continue,” Haida said. “I’m not very sleepy either.”
That was the only time that Haida heard Midorikawa play the piano. Once he had played “ ’Round Midnight” in the junior-high music room, Midorikawa seemed to lose all interest in playing again. “Don’t you want to play anymore?” Haida asked, trying to draw him out, but a silent shake of Midorikawa’s head was his only response. Haida gave up asking. Midorikawa no longer planned to play the piano. Haida wished he could hear him perform just one more time.
Midorikawa had a genuine talent. Of that there was no doubt. His playing had the power to physically and viscerally move the listener, to transport you to another world. Not the sort of thing one could easily create.
But what did this unusual talent mean for Midorikawa himself? Haida couldn’t quite grasp it. If you possessed a talent like Midorikawa did, was it amazingly blissful, or was it a burden? A blessing or a curse? Or something that simultaneously contained all of these components? Either way, Midorikawa didn’t seem like a very happy person. His expression switched between gloom and apathy. A slight smile would occasionally rise to his lips, but it was always subdued and a little ironic.
One day as Haida was chopping and carrying firewood in the backyard, Midorikawa came over to him.
“Do you drink?” he asked.
“A little bit,” Haida replied.
“A little bit’s fine,” Midorikawa said. “Can you have some drinks with me tonight? I’m tired of drinking alone.”
“I have some chores to do in the evening, but I’ll be free at seven thirty.”
“Okay. Come to my room then.”
When young Haida arrived at Midorikawa’s room, dinner was already laid out for both of them, along with bottles of hot sake. They sat across from each other, eating and drinking. Midorikawa ate less than half of his dinner, mainly drinking the sake, serving himself. He didn’t say anything about his own life, instead asking Haida about where he had grown up (in Akita) and about his college life in Tokyo. When he learned that Haida was studying philosophy, he asked a few technical questions. About Hegel’s worldview. About Plato’s writings. It became clear that he had systematically read those kinds of books. Mysteries weren’t the only books he read.
“I see. So you believe in logic, do you?” Midorikawa said.