First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami

Author:Haruki Murakami [Murakami, Haruki]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

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CONFESSIONS OF A SHINAGAWA MONKEY

I met the elderly monkey in a small Japanese-style inn in a hot springs in Gunma Prefecture, some five years ago. The inn was rustic, or, more precisely, decrepit. It was barely hanging on and I just happened to spend a night there.

I was traveling around, wherever the spirit led me, and when I arrived at the hot springs town and got off the train, it was already past seven p.m. Autumn was nearly over, the sun had long since set, and the place was enveloped in that special navy-blue darkness specific to mountainous areas. A cold, biting wind blew down from the peaks, sending fist-sized leaves rustling down the street.

I walked through the central part of the hot springs town searching for a place to stay, but none of the decent inns would take guests after the dinner hour had passed. I stopped by five or six places, but they all turned me down, and finally, in a deserted area outside town, I ran across an inn that would take me that didn’t include a dinner charge. It was a totally desolate-looking lodging, a ramshackle place that might best be called a flophouse. The inn had seen many years go by, but it lacked all the charm you might expect from a quaint lodging of its age. Mismatched fittings here and there were ever so slightly slanted, as if slapdash repairs had been made. I doubted that it would make it through the next earthquake, and I could only hope that no tremblor would hit that day, or the next.

They didn’t serve dinner, but breakfast was included, and the fee for one night was incredibly cheap. Inside the entrance was a simple reception desk, behind which sat a completely hairless old man—devoid even of eyebrows—who took my payment for one night in advance. The lack of eyebrows made the old man’s largish eyes seem to glisten bizarrely, glaringly. There was a large brown cat, equally ancient, sacked out on a floor cushion beside him. Something must have been wrong with its nose, for it snored louder than any cat I’d ever heard. Occasionally the rhythm of its snores fitfully missed a beat. Everything in this inn seemed to be old, ancient, and falling apart.

The room I was shown to was small, like the little storage area where they keep futon bedding. The light on the ceiling was dim, and the flooring under the tatami creaked ominously with each step. But it was too late to be particular. I told myself I should be happy enough to have a roof over my head and a futon to sleep on.

I put my large shoulder bag, my only luggage, down on the floor and set off for town (this wasn’t exactly the type of room I wanted to lounge around in). I went into a nearby soba noodle shop and had a simple dinner. There weren’t any other restaurants open, so it was that place or nothing.

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