Текст книги "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage "
Автор книги: Haruki Murakami
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After holding forth at such length, Sakamoto stepped back into silence.
“That makes sense,” Tsukuru said. “I get the feeling it’s connected with the process of how the world’s counting systems have mainly standardized, moving from the duodecimal system to the decimal system.”
“Yes, that might have been a response to six and five fingers, digits, now that you mention it,” Sakamoto said.
“So how come you know so much about this?” Tsukuru asked Sakamoto.
“I took a class on genetics in college. I sort of had a personal interest in it.” Sakamoto’s cheeks reddened as he said this.
The stationmaster gave a merry laugh. “So your genetics class came in handy, even after you started work at a railway company. I guess getting an education isn’t something to be sneezed at, is it.”
Tsukuru turned to the stationmaster. “Seems like for a pianist, though, having six fingers could come in pretty handy.”
“Apparently it doesn’t,” the stationmaster replied. “One pianist who has six fingers said the extra ones get in the way. Like Mr. Sakamoto said just now, moving six fingers equally and freely might be a little too much for human beings. Maybe five is just the right number.”
“Is there some advantage to having six fingers?” Tsukuru asked.
“From what I learned,” the stationmaster replied, “during the Middle Ages in Europe, they thought people born with six fingers were magicians or witches, and they were burned at the stake. And in one country during the era of the Crusaders, anybody who had six fingers was killed. Whether these stories are true or not, I don’t know. In Borneo children born with six fingers are automatically treated as shamans. Maybe that isn’t an advantage, however.”
“Shamans?” Tsukuru asked.
“Just in Borneo.”
Lunchtime was over, and so was their conversation. Tsukuru thanked the stationmaster for the lunch, and he and Sakamoto returned to their office.
As Tsukuru was writing some notes on the blueprints, he suddenly recalled the story Haida had told him, years ago, about his father. How the jazz pianist who was staying at the inn deep in the mountains of Oita had, just before he started playing, put a cloth bag on top of the piano. Could there have been, inside the bag, a sixth right and left finger, preserved in formaldehyde inside a jar? For some reason maybe he’d waited until he was an adult to get them amputated, and always carried the jar around with him. And just before he performed he’d put them on top of the piano. Like a talisman.
Of course, this was sheer conjecture. There was no basis for it. And that incident had taken place—if indeed it had actually occurred—over forty years ago. Still, the more Tsukuru thought about it, the more it seemed like this piece of the puzzle fit the lacuna in Haida’s story. Tsukuru sat at his drafting table until evening, pencil in hand, mulling over the idea.
The following day Tsukuru met Sara in Hiroo. They went into a small bistro in a secluded part of the neighborhood—Sara was an expert on secluded, small bars and restaurants all over Tokyo—and before they ate, Tsukuru told her how he had seen his two former friends in Nagoya, and what they had talked about. It wasn’t easy for him to summarize, so it took a while for him to tell her the whole story. Sara listened closely, occasionally stopping him to ask a question.
“So Shiro told the others that when she stayed at your apartment in Tokyo, you drugged her and raped her?”
“That’s what she said.”
“She described it in great detail, very realistically, even though she was so introverted and always tried to avoid talking about sex.”
“That’s what Ao said.”
“And she said you had two faces?” Sara asked.
“She said I had another dark, hidden side, something unhinged and detached from the side of me that everyone knew.”
Sara frowned and thought this over for a while.
“Doesn’t this remind you of something? Didn’t you ever have some special, intimate moment that passed between you and Shiro?”
Tsukuru shook his head. “Never. Not once. I was always conscious of not letting something like that happen.”
“Always conscious?”
“I tried not to view her as someone of the opposite sex. And I avoided being alone with her as much as I could.”
Sara narrowed her eyes and inclined her head for a moment. “Do you think the others in the group were just as careful? In other words, the boys not viewing the girls as members of the opposite sex, and vice versa?”
“I don’t know what the others were thinking, deep down inside. But like I said, it was a kind of unspoken agreement between us that we wouldn’t let male-female relationships be a part of the group. We were pretty insistent about that.”
“But isn’t that unnatural? If boys and girls that age get close to each other, and are together all the time, it’s only natural that they start to get interested in each other sexually.”
“I wanted to have a girlfriend and to go out on dates, just the two of us. And of course I was interested in sex. Just like anybody else. And no one was stopping me from having a girlfriend outside the group. But back then, that group was the most important part of my life. The thought hardly ever occurred to me to go out and be with anyone else.”
“Because you found a wonderful harmony there?”
Tsukuru nodded. “When I was with them, I felt like an indispensable part of the whole. It was a special feeling that I could never get anywhere else.”
“Which is why all of you had to look past any sexual interest,” Sara said. “In order to preserve the harmony the five of you had together. So as not to destroy the perfect circle.”
“Looking back on it now, I can see there was something unnatural about it. But at the time, nothing seemed more natural. We were still in our teens, experiencing everything for the first time. There was no way we could be that objective about our situation.”
“In other words, you were locked up inside the perfection of that circle. Can you see it that way?”
Tsukuru thought about this. “Maybe that’s true, but we were happy to be locked up inside it. And I don’t regret it, even now.”
“Intriguing,” Sara said.
Sara was also quite interested to hear about Aka’s visit with Shiro in Hamamatsu six months before she was murdered.
“It’s a different situation, of course,” Sara said, “but it reminds me of a classmate of mine from high school. She was beautiful, with a nice figure, from an affluent family, raised partly abroad and fluent in English and French, always at the top of her class. People noticed her, no matter what she did. She was revered by everybody, the heartthrob of all the younger students. We went to a private all-girls high school, so that sort of admiration by underclassmen could be pretty intense.”
Tsukuru nodded.
“She went on to Seishin University, the famous women’s private college, and studied abroad in France for two years. A couple of years after she got back I had a chance to see her, and when I did, I was floored. I’m not sure how to put it, but she seemed faded. Like something that’s been exposed to strong sunlight for a long time and the color fades. She looked much the same as before. Still beautiful, still with a nice figure … but she seemed paler, fainter than before. It made me feel like I should grab the TV remote to ramp up the color intensity. It was a weird experience. It was hard to imagine that someone could, in the space of just a few years, visibly diminish like that.”
Sara had finished her meal and was waiting for the dessert menu.
“She and I weren’t all that close, but we had a few friends in common, so I’d run into her every now and again. And each time I saw her, she’d faded a little more. From a certain point on, it was clear to everyone that she wasn’t pretty anymore, that she was no longer attractive. It was like she’d gotten less intelligent, too. The topics she talked about were boring, her opinions stale and trite. She married at twenty-seven, and her husband was some elite government official, an obviously shallow, boring man. But the woman couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that she was no longer beautiful, no longer attractive, no longer the sort of person people notice. She still acted like she was the queen. It was pretty pathetic to watch.”
The dessert menu arrived, and Sara inspected it closely. Once she’d made up her mind, she closed the menu and laid it on the table.
“Her friends gradually stopped seeing her. It was just too painful to witness. Maybe it wasn’t exactly pain they felt when they saw her, but more a kind of fear, the kind of fear most women have. The fear that your peak attractiveness as a woman is behind you, and you either don’t realize it or refuse to accept it, and go on acting the way you always have, and then people snub you and laugh at you behind your back. For her, that peak came earlier than for others. That’s all it was. In her teens, all her natural gifts burst into bloom, like a garden in spring, and once those years had passed, they quickly withered.”
The white-haired waiter came over, and Sara ordered the lemon soufflй. Tsukuru was always impressed at how she never skipped dessert yet managed to keep her trim figure.
“I imagine Kuro could tell you more details about Shiro,” Sara said. “Even if your group of five was a harmonious, perfect community, there are always things that only girls can discuss between themselves. Like Ao told you. And what they talk about doesn’t go outside the world of girls. Sometimes it’s just chatter, but there are certain secrets we tightly protect, especially so boys don’t get wind of them.”
She gazed at the waiter, who was standing far off, almost as if she regretted ordering the lemon soufflй.
But then she seemed to reconsider and turned her gaze back to Tsukuru.
“Did the three of you boys have confidential talks like that?” she asked.
“Not that I recall,” Tsukuru said.
“Then what did you talk about?” Sara asked.
What did we talk about back then? Tsukuru thought about it, but couldn’t remember. He was sure they’d talked a lot, enthusiastically, really opening up to each other, yet for the life of him, he couldn’t recall a thing.
“You know, I can’t remember,” Tsukuru said.
“That’s weird,” Sara said. And she smiled.
“Next month I should be able to take a break from work,” Tsukuru said. “Once I get to that point, I’m thinking of going to Finland. I’ve cleared it with my boss, and there’s no problem with me taking time off.”
“When you’ve set the dates, I can arrange the travel schedule for you. Plane tickets, hotel reservations, and the like.”
“I appreciate it,” Tsukuru said.
She lifted her glass and took a sip of water. She traced the lip of the glass with her finger.
“What was your time in high school like?” Tsukuru asked.
“I didn’t stand out very much. I was on the handball team. I wasn’t pretty, and my grades were just so-so.”
“You’re sure you’re not being modest?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Modesty is a wonderful virtue, but it doesn’t suit me. It’s true, I didn’t stand out at all. I don’t think I meshed well with the whole education system. I never was a teacher’s pet, or had any underclassmen who thought I was cool. There was no sign of any boyfriends, and I had a bad case of acne. I owned every Wham! CD imaginable, and always wore the boring white underwear my mother bought for me. But I did have a few good friends. Two of them. We were never as close a group as you five, but we were good friends and could tell each other anything. They helped me get through those dull teenage years.”
“Do you still see them?”
She nodded. “Yes, we’re still good friends. They’re both married, with children, so we can’t meet that often, but we do get together for dinner every once in a while, and talk nonstop for three hours. We tell each other everything.”
The waiter brought over the lemon soufflй and espresso. Sara dug right in. Lemon soufflй seemed to have been the right choice after all. Tsukuru looked back and forth between Sara, as she ate, and the steam that rose from her espresso.
“Do you have any friends now?” Sara asked.
“No, nobody I would call a friend.”
Only the four people back in his Nagoya days were what he could have called friends. After that, although for just a short time, Haida was something close to it. But there was nobody else.
“Aren’t you lonely without friends?”
“I don’t know,” Tsukuru said. “Even if I had some, I don’t think I’d be able to open up and share secrets.”
Sara laughed. “Women find that necessary. Though sharing secrets is only one function of a friend.”
“Of course.”
“Would you like a bite of this soufflй? It’s delicious.”
“No, you go ahead and finish it.”
Sara carefully ate the last bite of the soufflй, then put her fork down, dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, and seemed lost in thought. Finally she raised her head and looked across the table, straight at Tsukuru.
“After this, can we go to your place?”
“Of course,” Tsukuru said. He motioned to the waiter to bring the check.
“The handball team?” Tsukuru asked.
“Don’t ask,” Sara said.
· · ·
Back at his apartment, they held each other. Tsukuru was overjoyed to make love to her again, that she’d given him the chance to do so. On the sofa they caressed each other, then got into bed. Under her mint-green dress she had on tiny black lace underwear.
“Did your mom buy these for you too?” Tsukuru asked.
“You dummy,” Sara laughed. “I bought them myself. Like you need to ask.”
“I don’t see any more acne, either.”
“What did you expect?”
She reached out and gently took his hard penis in her hand.
But a little later, as he was entering her, his penis went limp. It was the first time in his life that this had happened to him, and it left him baffled and mystified. Everything around him became strangely quiet. Total silence in his ears, only the sound of his heart beating.
“Don’t let it bother you,” Sara said, stroking his back. “Just keep holding me. That’s enough. Don’t worry about anything.”
“I don’t get it,” Tsukuru said. “All I’ve been thinking about these days is making love to you.”
“Maybe you were looking forward to it too much. Though I am happy you were thinking about me like that.”
They lay in bed, naked, leisurely stroking each other, but Tsukuru still wasn’t able to get a decent erection. Finally, it was time for her to go home. They silently dressed, and Tsukuru walked her to the station. As they went, he apologized that things hadn’t worked out.
“It doesn’t matter at all, really. So there’s nothing to worry about,” Sara told him, tenderly. And she took hold of his hand. Her hand was small, and warm.
Tsukuru felt he should say something, but nothing came out. He just continued to feel her hand in his.
“I think there’s something still bothering you,” Sara said. “Going back to Nagoya and seeing your old friends for the first time in years, talking with them, learning all kinds of things at once—it must have shaken you up. More than you realize.”
He did feel confused, that much was true. A door that had been shut for so long had swung open, and a reality he had turned his eyes away from until now—a reality he never could have anticipated—had come rushing back inside. And these facts were still jumbled in his mind, unable to settle.
“There’s still something stuck inside you,” Sara said. “Something you can’t accept. And the natural flow of emotions you should have is obstructed. I just get that feeling about you.”
Tsukuru thought about what she had said. “Not all the questions I had were cleared up by this trip to Nagoya. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. It seems like it. I’m just saying,” Sara said. Her expression turned serious, and then she added, “Now that certain things have become clear to you, it may have had the opposite effect—making the missing pieces even more significant.”
Tsukuru sighed. “I wonder if I’ve pried opened a lid that I never should have touched.”
“Temporarily you might have,” she said. “There may be some pushback for a while. But at least you’ve moved closer to solving it. That’s what’s important. Keep going a little further, and I’m sure you’ll discover the right pieces that fill in the gaps.”
“But it might take a long time.”
Sara held on tightly to his hand, her grip surprisingly strong.
“There’s no need to hurry. Just take your time. What I want to know most of all is whether or not you’re hoping for a long-term relationship with me.”
“Of course I am. I want to be with you for a long time.”
“Really?”
“It’s true,” Tsukuru said firmly.
“Then I have no problem. We still have time, and I’ll wait. In the meantime, there are a couple of things I need to take care of.”
“Take care of?”
Sara didn’t respond, instead flashing him a cryptic smile.
“As soon as you can, I want you to go to Finland to see Kuro,” she said. “And tell her exactly what’s in your heart. I’m sure she’ll tell you something important. Something very important. I have a hunch.”
As he walked back alone from the station to his apartment, Tsukuru was seized by random thoughts. He had a strange sensation, as if time had, at a certain point, forked off into two branches. He thought of Shiro, of Haida, and of Sara. The past and present, memory and emotions, ran together as equals, side by side.
Maybe there really is something about me as a person, something deep down, he thought, that is crooked and warped. Maybe Shiro was right, that I have something unhinged and detached inside of me. Like the far side of the moon, forever cloaked in darkness. Maybe without realizing it, in a different place and different temporality, he really had raped Shiro and ripped her heart to shreds. Crudely, brutally. And maybe that dark, hidden side will one day outstrip the outer side and completely consume it. Tsukuru nearly crossed the street against the light and a taxi slammed on his brakes, the driver yelling an obscenity.
Back in his apartment he changed into pajamas and got into bed just before midnight. And right then, as if finally remembering to do so, he had an erection. A heroic, perfect, rock-hard erection. So massively hard he could barely believe it. He sighed deeply in the darkness at the irony of it. He got out of bed, switched on the light, took a bottle of Cutty Sark down from the shelf, and poured some into a small glass. He opened a book. After 1 a.m. it suddenly began to rain and gusts of wind began to blow. It was almost a storm, with plump raindrops pelting sideways against the window.
Supposedly I raped Shiro in this very bed, Tsukuru suddenly thought. Drugged her, numbed her, ripped off her clothes, and forced myself on her. She was a virgin. She felt terrible pain, and she bled. And with that, everything changed. Sixteen years ago.
As he listened to the rain drum against the window, with these thoughts swirling around in his head, his room began to feel like an alien space. As if the room itself had developed its own will. Just being in there steadily drained away any ability to distinguish the real from the unreal. On one plane of reality, he’d never even touched Shiro’s hand. Yet on another, he’d brutally raped her. Which reality had he stepped into now? The more he thought about it, the less certain he became.
It was two thirty when he finally got to sleep.
On weekends Tsukuru went to the pool at the gym, a ten-minute bike ride from his apartment. He always swam the crawl at a set pace, completing 1,500 meters in thirty-two or thirty-three minutes. He let faster swimmers pass him. Trying to compete against other people wasn’t in his nature. As always, on this day he found another swimmer whose speed was close to his, and joined him in the same lane. The other man was young and lanky and wore a black competitive swimsuit, a black cap, and goggles.
Swimming eased Tsukuru’s accumulated exhaustion, and relaxed his tense muscles. Being in the water calmed him more than any other place. Swimming a half hour twice a week allowed him to maintain a calm balance between mind and body. He also found the water a great place to think. A kind of Zen meditation, he discovered. Once he got into the rhythm of the swimming, thoughts came to him, unhampered, like a dog let loose in a field.
“Swimming feels wonderful—almost as good as flying through the air,” Tsukuru explained to Sara one time.
“Have you ever flown through the air?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Tsukuru said.
This morning, as he swam, thoughts of Sara came to him. He pictured her face, her body, and how he’d failed in bed. And he remembered several things she’d said. Something is stuck inside you, she’d told him, and the natural flow of emotions you should have is obstructed.
She might be right, Tsukuru thought.
At least from the outside, Tsukuru Tazaki’s life was going well, with no particular problems to speak of. He’d graduated from a well-known engineering school, found a job in a railway company, working as a white-collar professional. His reputation in the company was sound, and his boss trusted him. Financially he had no worries. When his father died, Tsukuru had inherited a substantial sum of money and the one-bedroom condo in a convenient location near the center of Tokyo. He had no loans. He hardly drank and didn’t smoke, and had no expensive hobbies. He spent very little money. It wasn’t that he was especially trying to economize or live an austere life, but he just couldn’t think of ways to spend money. He had no need for a car, and got by with a limited wardrobe. He bought books and CDs occasionally, but that didn’t amount to much. He preferred cooking his own meals to eating out, and even washed his own sheets and ironed them.
He was generally a quiet person, not good at socializing. Not that he lived a solitary life. He got along with others pretty well. He didn’t go out looking for women on his own, but hadn’t lacked for girlfriends. He was single, not bad-looking, reserved, well groomed, and women tended to approach him. Or else, acquaintances introduced him to women (which is how he had gotten to know Sara).
To all appearances, at thirty-six he was enjoying a comfortable bachelor life. He was healthy, kept the pounds off, and had never been sick. Most people would see his life as going smoothly, with no major setbacks. His mother and older sisters certainly saw it that way. “You enjoy being single too much, that’s why you don’t feel like getting married,” they told Tsukuru. And they finally gave up on trying to set him up with potential marriage partners. His coworkers seemed to come to the same conclusion.
Tsukuru had never lacked for anything in his life, or wanted something and suffered because he had been unable to obtain it. Because of this, he’d never experienced the joy of really wanting something and struggling to get it. His four high school friends had probably been the most valuable thing he’d ever had in his life. This relationship wasn’t something he’d chosen himself, but more like something that had come to him naturally, like the grace of God. And long ago, again not through any choice of his own, he’d lost all of it. Or rather, had it stripped away.
Sara was now one of the very few things he desired. He wasn’t 100 percent certain of this, but he was powerfully drawn to her. And each time he saw her, this desire only grew. He was ready to sacrifice in order to have her. It was unusual for him to feel such a strong, raw emotion. Even so—he didn’t know why—when he had tried to make love to her, he hadn’t been able to perform. Something had impeded his desire. Take your time. I can wait, Sara had said. But things weren’t that simple. People are in constant motion, never stationary. No one knows what will happen next.
These were the thoughts that ran through his head as he swam the twenty-five-meter pool. Keeping a steady pace so as not to get out of breath, he’d turn his head slightly to one side and take a short breath, then slowly exhale under water. The longer he swam, the more automatic this cycle became. The number of strokes he needed for each lap was the same each time. He gave himself up to the rhythm, counting only the number of turns.
He suddenly noticed that he recognized the soles of the swimmer sharing the same lane. They were exactly the same as Haida’s. He gulped, his rhythm thrown off, and inhaled water through his nose. His heart was pounding in his rib cage, and it took a while for his breathing to settle down.
These have to be Haida’s soles, Tsukuru thought. The size and shape are exactly the same. That simple, confident kick was identical—even the bubbles the swimmer kicked up underwater, small, gentle, and as relaxed as his kick, were the same. Back when he and Haida had swum together in the college pool, he’d always kept his eyes riveted on Haida’s soles, like a person driving at night never takes his eyes off the taillights of the car ahead. Those feet were etched in his memory.
Tsukuru stopped swimming, climbed out of the pool, and sat on the starting platform, waiting for the swimmer to turn and come back.
But it wasn’t Haida. The cap and goggles hid his facial features, but now he realized this man was too tall, his shoulders too muscular. His neck was totally different, too. And he was too young, possibly still a college student. By now Haida would be in his mid-thirties.
Even though he knew it was someone else, Tsukuru’s heart wouldn’t settle down. He sat on a plastic chair by the side of the pool and watched the man continue to swim. His overall form, too, resembled Haida’s, almost exactly the same. No splash, no unnecessary sound. His elbows rose beautifully and smoothly in the air, his arms quietly entering the water again, thumb first. Smooth, nothing forced. Maintaining an introspective quiet seemed to be the main theme of his swimming style. Still, no matter how much his swimming style resembled Haida’s, this was not Haida. The man finally stopped, got out of the pool, tugged off his black goggles and cap, and, rubbing his short hair vigorously with a towel, walked away. His face was angular, not anything like Haida’s at all.
Tsukuru decided to call it a day, went to the locker room, and showered. He biked back to his apartment, and ate a simple breakfast. As he ate, a sudden thought struck him. Haida is also one of the things that’s blocking me inside.
He was able to get the time off that he needed to travel to Finland without any trouble. His unused vacation time had piled up, like frozen snow underneath eaves. All his boss had said was “Finland?” and shot him a dubious look. Tsukuru explained how a high school friend was living there, and he wanted to go visit. He figured he wouldn’t have many chances to go to Finland in the future.
“What’s there in Finland?” his boss asked.
“Sibelius, Aki Kaurismдki films, Marimekko, Nokia, Moomin.” Tsukuru listed all the names of famous Finnish things that he could think of.
His boss shook his head, obviously indifferent to all of them.
Tsukuru phoned Sara and decided on the departure date, setting the itinerary so he could take the nonstop Narita–Helsinki flight both ways. He’d leave Tokyo in two weeks, stay in Helsinki four nights, and then return to Tokyo.
“Are you going to get in touch with Kuro before you go?” Sara asked.
“No, I’ll do what I did when I went to Nagoya, and not let her know I’m coming.”
“Finland’s a lot further away than Nagoya. The round trip takes a long time. Maybe you’ll get there and find out she left three days before for a summer holiday in Majorca.”
“If that’s how it turns out, I can live with it. I’ll just do some sightseeing in Finland and come home.”
“If that’s what you want, fine,” Sara said, “but since you’re traveling all that way, how about seeing some other places while you’re there? Tallinn and Saint Petersburg are just around the corner.”
“Finland’s enough,” Tsukuru said. “I’ll fly from Tokyo to Helsinki, spend four nights there, and then come back.”
“I assume you have a passport?”
“When I joined the company, they told us to keep it renewed so we could go on an overseas business trip if one came up. But I’ve never had an opportunity to use it.”
“In Helsinki you can get around well using English, but if you travel to the countryside, I’m not so sure. Our company has a small office in Helsinki. Kind of a sub-branch. I’ll contact them and let them know you’re coming, so if you have any problems, you should stop by. A Finnish girl named Olga works there and I’m sure she can help you.”
“I appreciate it.”
“The day after tomorrow, I have to go to London on business. Once I make the airline and hotel reservations, I’ll email you the particulars. Our Helsinki office address and phone number, too.”
“Sounds good.”
“Are you really going to go all the way to Helsinki to see her without getting in touch first? All the way across the Arctic Circle?”
“Is that too weird?”
She laughed. “ ‘Bold’ is the word I’d use for it.”
“I feel like things will work out better that way. Just intuition, of course.”
“Then I wish you good luck,” Sara said. “Could I see you once before you go? I’ll be back from London at the beginning of next week.”
“Of course I’d like to see you,” Tsukuru said, “but I get the feeling it would be better if I go to Finland first.”
“Did something like intuition tell you that too?”
“I think so. Something like intuition.”
“Do you rely on intuition a lot?”
“Not really. I’ve hardly ever done anything based on it, up until now. Just like you don’t build a railway station on a hunch. I mean, I don’t even know if ‘intuition’ is the right word. It’s just something I felt, all of a sudden.”
“Anyway, you feel that’s the best way to go this time, right? Whether that’s intuition or not.”
“While I was swimming in the pool the other day, I was thinking about all kinds of things. About you, about Helsinki. I’m not sure how to put it, maybe like swimming upstream, back to my gut feelings.”
“While you were swimming?”
“I can think well when I’m swimming.”
Sara paused for a time, as if impressed. “Like a salmon.”
“I don’t know much about salmon.”
“Salmon travel a long way. Driven by something,” Sara said. “Did you ever see Star Wars?”
“When I was a kid.”
