The History of Sight

Page 19 May–June 2008 Mitra continued from previous page the city’s inhabitants relinquish their autonomy and get sucked into the inexorable movement of street life. Characters try to control time: from her table by a window at Denny’s, Mari, a college freshman reading alone, glances down at the street below, which is flooded with people “trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward.” Mari tries to “buy herself more time” at this twentyfour -hour diner by ordering a sandwich . However, Mari has no control over time, just as she has virtually no control over her independence. She has come to a diner to escape from family and to read alone, but at night it seems that even those seeking isolation are drawn into the lives of strangers in the city. After dark, lives intersect, and strangers acquire dimension and humanity. Within the first two paragraphs of the novel, Murakami establishes an ominous tone. Though the “peak of activity has passed,” the “basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city’s moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.” The city’s moan signals a pervasive desperation that we sense in the novel’s characters as well. In this vast city, the camera hones in on Mari sitting in the diner. Mari isn’t instantly likeable by any means; when approached at the Denny’s by a young man, an acquaintance from the past, with a smile “meant to show he means no harm,” she “looks at him with eyes that could be looking at an overgrown bush in the corner of a garden.” She responds tersely to his conversation and seems constantly on guard. Unlike many novels, in which the reader is allowed access to the thoughts and emotions of the characters, we are never allowed to enter Mari’s mind or inspect her thoughts. We never feel entirely comfortable because we are voyeurs embarking on a sinister journey with strangers whose thoughts are off-limits to us. Murakami takes on the daunting task of creating character without interiority, and he rises to the challenge admirably, developing enigmatic but complex and compelling characters. Murakami tests our patience when it comes to the minutiae of his characters lives—even the most minor of details are sometimes withheld. For example, when Mari asks the young man conversing with her his name, he manages to dodge the question: “‘I don’t mind if you forget my name. It’s about as ordinary as a name can be. Even I feel like forgetting it sometimes.’” In fact, it isn’t until thirty-two pages into the novel that Kaoru, another stranger Mari encounters who owns a love hotel named Alphaville, reveals the man’s name. Murakami’s characters demand our faith and endurance. However, if we exercise patience, After Dark can be an immensely satisfying read. Initially, Mari is an impenetrable character. However, once Kaoru exposes Mari to a situation outside her comfort zone—one in which a young Chinese prostitute at a “love hotel” has been physically beaten by a Japanese businessman (her customer ), and Mari must translate her account of what happened—Mari’s vulnerabilities begin to emerge. She forms a strange connection with Kaoru, a “‘big hunk of a woman,’” and the battered Chinese girl whose story she translates. We soon discover during Mari’s conversation with the young man that her sister, Eri, has been in a deep sleep for a long time, and the details of Mari’s family life are gradually revealed. Though we cannot travel inside the minds of these characters, we come to embrace the strangeness of their circumstances. Even Eri, Mari’s beautiful sister (also referred to as “Sleeping Beauty” or “Snow White”) who we mostly see in slumber, comes alive as a character as she emerges, through conversation, as a complicated, haunted woman. Though the novel is slow in revealing the essence of its characters, Murakami maintains in his narrative a continual tension and suspense.At times, we are confronted with magical and unexplainable circumstances: a television flickers on in Eri’s room though it...