In remembrance of me

Kafka on the Shore

I've just finished and enjoyed reading a book by Haruki Murakami. The translation from Japanese is faultless and, rare for me, it was a book I could hardly put down in spite of its strangeness. I guess, as usual, because it is about a boy with whom I could identify. It moved me, perhaps even changed me.

I won't explain the plot, indeed I don't claim to fully understand it - you'd be better reading the book yourself. If you do, I figure you'll either passionately love or hate it. The story is the portrait of the subconscious of a fifteen-year old, and tells of the indistinct borderline between reality and imagination, the power and importance of poignant memories, of love and rejection and release from family curse, of forgiveness and remembrance. It's depictions are tender, honest, human, sexually explicit (from a mature fifteen year old's perspective), disturbing, surreal, ridiculous, metaphorical, random, beautiful, dreamlike. As the story resolves towards the end of the book:

I burned up all my memories... all sorts of things including my time with you... that's why I wanted to see you and talk with you... while I still can... the most important thing is you've got to get out of here. As fast as you can.

But you don't understand - I don't have any world to go back to. No one's ever really loved me, or wanted me, my entire life.

Just one thing... I want you to remember me. If you remember me, then I don't care if everybody else forgets.

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it plugs up my throat and makes it hard to breathe: Are memories such an important thing?

It depends... in some cases they're the most important thing there is... Kafka? I have a favour to ask. I want you to take that painting with you... after all the painting is originally yours... You were there. And I was there beside you, watching you. On the shore, a long time ago... I want you to have that painting with you forever... A long time ago I abandoned someone I shouldn't have, someone I loved more than anything else... but the whole thing was a huge mistake. You were discarded by the one person who never should have done that - do you forgive me?

I do forgive you, I tell her... and with those words, audibly, the frozen part of your heart crumbles... Silently she lets go of me. She takes a hairpin out of her hair and stabs the tip into the inner flesh of her left arm, hard... I bend over and put my lips on that small wound... only now do I understand.

Farewell, Kafka Tamura, she says, Go back to where you belong, and live. Keep looking at the painting, just like I did.

As I read this I am reminded, a little obliquely, of: and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said "Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me." After the same manner also he took the cup, saying "this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me."

Human as we cannot help but be, we need the tangible bread and wine just as much as Kafka needed the picture to keep an important memory fresh. Lest we forget...