4 posts tagged with "Haruki Murakami"

That afternoon, like any other afternoon, was unremarkable, perhaps even a bit tedious. Faint motes of dust floated in the air, along with the hesitant warmth of impending early summer. I had just finished a rather uninteresting translation job and was walking home, headphones on, listening to Bill Evans's "Waltz for Debby." As I passed the Mixue Bingcheng on the corner, a sense of wrongness, like a small pebble dropped precisely into the calm surface of my consciousness, made itself felt.

The way my husband disappeared was like a drop of water falling on scorching asphalt on a summer afternoon – a sizzle, then evaporated without a trace. No argument, no warning, not even a hastily scribbled farewell note. He just vanished, along with his running shoes by the entryway, a few neatly ironed shirts in the closet, and the seven years we had shared. That was four years ago.

I heard the news in a jazz bar. The television was hanging in the corner of the bar, silently playing the news. The anchorwoman had a beautiful face, her lips moving, uttering words like "century baby" and "passed away." I stared at the scrolling subtitles at the bottom of the screen, confirming the authenticity of the news.

I felt the earthquake at 3:17 PM.

At that time, I was sitting at my computer, trying to finish the ending of my novel. Outside the window was the uniquely gloomy sky of Chengdu, like a gray towel soaked with water, pressing down heavily. The air was filled with the mixed smell of hot pot base and damp earth, the familiar scent of Chengdu.