the silence (from the Elephant Vanishes by Murakami)

The Silence

by Haruki Murakami

translated by Alfred Birnbaum

So I turned to Ozawa and asked him, had he ever punched out a guy in an argument?

“What makes you want to ask something like that?” Ozawa squinted his eyes at me. The look seemed out of character on him. As if there’d been a sudden flash of light only he had witnessed. A flare that just as quickly subsided, returning him to his normal passive expression.

No real reason, I told him, only a passing thought. Hadn’t meant anything by it, just asked out of curiosity. Totally uncalled-for, probably.

I proceeded to change the subject, but Ozawa didn’t exactly rally to it. He seemed to be somewhere else in his thoughts, holding back or wavering. I gave up trying to engage him in conversation and gazed instead out the window at the rows of silver jets.

I don’t know how the subject came up. We’d been killing time waiting for our plane, and he started talking about how he’d been going to boxing gym ever since he was in junior high school. More than once, he’d been chosen to represent his university in boxing matches. Even today, at age thirty-one, he still went to the gym every week.

I could hardly picture it. Here was this guy I’d done business with a lot; no way did he strike me as your rough-and-tumble boxer of close to twenty years. The guy was a singularly quiet fellow; he hardly ever spoke. Yet you couldn’t ask for anyone more clear-cut in his work habits. Faultlessly sincere. Never pushed people too far, never talked about others behind their back, never complained. No matter how overworked he was, he never raised his voice or even arched his brows. In a word, he was the sort of guy you couldn’t help but like. Warm, easygoing, a far cry from anything you could call aggressive. Where was the connection between this man and boxing? Why had he taken up the sport in the first place? So I asked that question.

We were drinking coffee in the airport restaurant, waiting for our flight to Niigata. This was the beginning of November; the sky was heavy with clouds. Niigata was snowed in, and planes were running late. The airport was full of people milling about, looking more depressed with each announcement of flight delays. In the restaurant, the heat was too high, and I kept having to wipe off the sweat with my handkerchief.

“Basically, no,” Ozawa suddenly spoke up after a lengthy silence. “From the time I started boxing, I never hit anyone. They pound that into you from the moment you start boxing. Anyone who boxes must absolutely never, without gloves, hit anyone outside the ring. An ordinary person could get into trouble if he hit someone and landed a punch in the wrong place. But if a boxer did it, it’s be intentional assault with a deadly weapon.”

I nodded.

“To be honest, I did hit someone. Once,” Ozawa said. “I was in eighth grade. It was right around the time I was starting to learn how to box. No excuse, but this was before I learned a single boxing technique. I was still on the basic bodybuilding menu. Jumping rope and stretching and running, stuff like that. And the thing is, I didn’t even mean to throw the punch. I just got mad, and my hand flew out ahead of me. I couldn’t stop it. And before I knew it, I’d decked him. I hit the guy, and still my whole body was trembling with rage.”

Ozawa had taken up boxing because his uncle ran a boxing gym. This wasn’t just the local sweat room; this was a major establishment that hand launched a two-time East Asia welter-weight champion. In fact, it’d been Ozawa’s parents who suggested he go to the guy to begin with. They were worried about their son, the bookworm, always holed up in his room. At first, the boy wasn’t keen on the idea, but he liked his uncle well enough, and, he told himself, if he didn’t like the sport, he could always quit. So all very casually, he got in the habit of commuting regularly to his uncle’s gym, an hour away by train.

After the first few months, Ozawa’s interest in boxing surprised even himself. The biggest reason was that, fundamentally, boxing is a loner’s sport, an extremely solitary pursuit. It was something of a discovery for him, a new world. And that world excited him. The sweat flying off the bodies of the older men, the hard, squeaky feel of the gloves, the intense concentration of men with their muscles tuned to lightning-fast efficiency—little by little, it all took hold of his imagination. Spending Saturdays and Sundays at the gym became one of his few indulgences.

“One of the things I like about boxing is the depth. That’s what grabbed me. Compared to that, hitting and getting his is no big deal. That’s only the outcome. The same with winning or losing. If you could get to the bottom of the depth, losing doesn’t matter—nothing can hurt you. And anyway, nobody can win at everything; somebody’s got to lose. The important thing is to get deep down into it. That—at least to me—is boxing. When I’m in a match, I feel like I’m at the bottom of a deep, deep hole. So far inside I can’t see anyone else and no one can see me. Way down there in the darkness, doing battle. All alone. But not sad alone,” said Ozawa. “There’s all different kinds of loneliness. There’s the tragic loneliness that tears at your nerves with pain. And then there’s the loneliness that isn’t like that at all—though in order to reach that point, you’ve got to pare your body down. If you make the effort, you get back what you put in. That’s what I learned from boxing.”

Ozawa paused a moment.

“Actually, I’d just as soon not talk about it,” he said. “I even wish I could wipe the story out of my mind entirely. But of course, you never can. Why is it you can’t forget what you really want to forget?” Ozawa broke into a smile. Then he glanced at his watch. We still had plenty of time. He began his deliberation.

The guy Ozawa hit was a classmate. Aoki was his name. Ozawa hated the guy from the very beginning. Why, he couldn’t really say. All he knew was that he hated his guts from the moment he set eyes on him. It was the first time in his life he despised anyone.

“But it does happen, right?” he said. “Maybe once, but everyone has that experience. You loathe someone for no reason whatsoever. I’m not the type to have blind hate, but I swear there are people who just set you off. It’s not a rational thing. But the problem is, in most cases, the other guy feels the same way toward you.”

“This kid Aoki was a model student. He got good grades, sat at the head of the class, teacher’s pet, all that. And he was pretty popular, too. Granted, we were an all-boys’ school, but everyone liked him. Everyone except me. I couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t stand his smarts, his calculating ways. Okay, if you asked me what exactly bugged me about him I wouldn’t be able to say. The only thing I can tell you is that I knew what he was all about. And his pride, that headstrong stink of ego he gave off, I couldn’t stand it. Purely physiological, like how someone’s body odor will turn you off. But Aoki was a clever guy and knew how to cover his scent. So most of the kids in the class thought he was clean and kind and considerate. Every time I heard how great people thought he was—of course, I wasn’t about to go against everyone—it burned me up.

“In almost every way, Aoki and I were polar opposites. I was a quiet kid and didn’t stand out in class. I was happy to be left alone. Sure, I had friends, but no real friends for life. In a sense, maybe I was too mature too soon. Instead of hanging around with my classmates, I kept to myself. I read books or listened to with my classmates, I kept to myself. I read books or listened to my father’s classical records or went to the gym to hear the older guys talk. I wasn’t much to look at. My grades weren’t so bad, but they weren’t so hot. Teachers would forget my name. So, you know, I was the type you never got to know. That’s how I was, never quite surfacing. I never told anybody about the boxing gym or books records.”

“With Aoki, though, whatever the guy did he was like a white swan in a sea of mud. The star of the class, his opinions valued, always on top of things. Even I had to admit that. He was amazingly quick-witted. He could pick up on what others were thinking, and he could redirect his responses to match in no time whatsoever. He had a well-tuned head on his shoulders. No wonder everyone was impressed with Aoki. Everyone but me.”

“I figure Aoki had to be aware of what I thought of him. He wasn’t dumb. I could tell he wasn’t too crazy about me. After all, I wasn’t stupid, either. I mean, I read more than anybody else. But you know, when you’re young you gotta show it, so I’m sure I came off stuck-up, even condescending. Plus, the way I kept to myself probably didn’t help.”

“Then once, at the end of the term, I got the highest marks on an English exam. It was a first for me, scoring the highest. But it wasn’t an accident. There was something I really wanted—I can’t even remember what it was anymore—and I made this deal with my folks that if I got the best grade in the class they’d buy it for me. So of course I studied like mad. I studied anything that could possibly be covered in the exam. If I had a spare moment, I went over verb conjugations. I practically memorized the whole textbook. So when I aced the test, it was no surprise. It was even predictable.”

“But everyone else was caught off guard. The teacher, too. And Aoki, I mean, he was shocked. He had always been the best student in English. The teacher even kidded Aoki about it when he announced the test grades. Aoki turned red. Probably thought people were laughing at him.”

“A few days later, someone told me Aoki was spreading a rumor about me. That I’d cheated on the exam, how else could I have scored so high? When I heard that, I got really pissed off. What I should have done was laugh and let it go. But a junior-high-school kid doesn’t have that kind of cool.”

“One noon recess, I confronted Aoki. I said I wanted to talk to him alone, away from everybody else. I said I’d heard this rumor, and what was the meaning of it? But Aoki could only show his contempt. Like, why was I getting all bent out of shape? Like, if by some fluke I happened to get the best score, why was I being so defensive, and what right did I have to act so uppity, anyway? After all, everyone knew what really happened, right? Then he tried to brush me aside, probably thinking that since he was in good shape and taller than me he had to be stronger, too. That’s when I hauled off and punched the jerk in the face. It was pure reflex action. I didn’t realize I’d slugged him square on the left cheek until a second later when Aoki fell back sideways and hit his head on a wall. With a hard conk. Blood was running out of his nose and onto his white shirt. He lay there, dazed, not knowing what had happened.”

“On my part, I regretted hitting him the instant my fist connected with his cheekbone. I shouldn’t have done it. I felt miserable. It was a totally useless thing to have done. Like I said, my body was still trembling with rage, but I knew I’d done something stupid.”

“I considered apologizing to Aoki. But I didn’t. If it had been anybody else but Aoki, I probably would have apologized. I simply couldn’t bring myself to apologize to the creep. I was sorry I hit Aoki, but not sorry enough to say I was sorry. I didn’t feel one iota of remorse toward the guy. Jerks like him deserved to get punched out. He was a worm, and worms get stepped on. Still, I shouldn’t have hit him. A truth I knew deep down, only too late. I’d already slugged him. I left Aoki there and walked off.”

“That afternoon, Aoki didn’t show up in class. Probably went straight home, I thought. But for the rest of the day, a horrible feeling ate at me. It didn’t give me a moment’s rest. I couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t read, I couldn’t enjoy a thing. I felt this murky substance coagulating in my gut, and it wouldn’t let me concentrate. It was like I’d swallowed something slimy. I lay in bed staring at my fist. And it dawned on me, how lonely I was. I hated Aoki even more for making me realize this.”

“From the next day on, Aoki ignored me. He acted like I didn’t exist. He went on scoring the highest on exams. Me, I never again poured my heart and soul into studying for a test. I couldn’t imagine what difference it would make. The idea of competing seriously with anyone bored me. I did enough schoolwork to keep my head above the water and did what I wanted to the rest of the time. I kept on going to my uncle’s gym. I was getting heavy into my training. For a junior-high student, I was beginning to show results. I could feel my body changing. Shoulders are broadening, chest thickening. My arms got firm, my cheeks taut. I thought, this is what it’s like to become an adult. I felt great. Every night, I stood naked in front of the big mirror in the bathroom, I was so fascinated with my body.”

“The following school year, Aoki and I were in different classes. I was glad not to have to see him every day, and I’m sure the feeling was mutual. So I thought the whole affair would fade away like some bad memory. But it wasn’t so simple. Seems Aoki was lying in wait to get his revenge. Waiting for the right moment to cut everything out from under me. The bastard was full of spite.”

“Aoki and I advanced together grade by grade. It was the same private junior high and senior high, but every year we were in different classes. Until the very last year—boy, did it feel ugly when we came face-to-face in that classroom. The way he looked at me, it pried open my gut. I could feel that same slime come oozing out again.”

Ozawa pursed his lips and stared down at his coffee cup. Then he glanced up at me with a slight smile. From outside the plate-glass windows came the roar of jet engines. A737 shot straight off like a wedge into the clouds and vanished from sight.

“The first semester passed pretty uneventfully. Aoki hadn’t changed a bit since the eighth grade. Some people don’t grow, and they don’t degenerate; they keep on exactly as they always were. Aoki was still at the top of the class; he was still Mr. Popular. Though to me, he was still a disgusting creep. We did our best not to look at each other. Let me tell you, it’s no fun having your own personal demon in the same classroom. But it couldn’t be helped. Half the blame was mine, anyway.”

“Then summer vacation came around. My last summer vacation as a high-school student. My grades were okay, okay enough to get me into an average university, so I didn’t really cram for the entrance exams. My folks didn’t raise a fuss, so I just studied as I always did. Saturdays and Sundays, I went to the gym. The rest of the time I read and listened to records.”

“Meanwhile, everyone else was going bug-eyed. Our whole school, junior high up through senior high, was a typical cram factory. Who got into what university, what ranking by how many matriculations into where—the teachers couldn’t talk about anything else. The same with the students. By senior year, everyone was hot under the collar, and the atmosphere in class was tense. It stank. I didn’t like it when I first started school there, and I didn’t like it six years later. Plus, to the very end, I didn’t make one honest friend. If I hadn’t taken up boxing, if I hadn’t gone to my uncle’s gym, I would have been pretty damn lonely.”

“Anyway, during summer vacation a terrible thing happened. One of my classmates, a kind named Matsumoto, committed suicide. He wasn’t a particularly outstanding student. To be frank, he made almost no impression at all. When I heard that he died, I could hardly remember what he looked like. He’d been in my class, but I doubt if we ever talked more than two or three times. Kind of gangly, poor complexion—that’s about all I could say about him. Matsumoto died a little before August fifteenth, I remember, because his funeral was on Armistice Day. It was a real scorcher. There was this phone call saying that the boy had died and that everyone had to attend the funeral. The whole class. Matsumoto had leapt in front of a subway, for unknown reasons. He left a suicide note, but all it said was that he didn’t want to go to school anymore. Nothing else. At least, that’s how the story went.”

“Naturally, this suicide had the whole school administration scrambling. After the funeral, the seniors were called back to the school and lectured by the headmaster about how we were supposed to mourn Matsumoto’s death, how we all had to bear the weight of his death, how we had to work extra hard to overcome our grief. The usual stock sentiments. Then we were asked if we knew anything about the reason Matsumoto committed suicide; if we did, we had to come right out and set the record straight. Nobody said a word.”

“I felt sorry for my dead classmate, but somehow it seemed pretty absurd. I mean, did he have to jump? If you don’t like school, don’t go to school. It was only half a year before you wouldn’t have to go to that miserable school, anyway. Why kill yourself? It didn’t make sense. The guy was probably neurotic, I figured, driven to the brink by all this cramming for entrance exams day and night. Not so surprising, if you think about it. One nut’s bound to crack.”

“After summer vacation ended and school started up again, I noticed something strange in the air. My classmates seemed to be keeping their distance. I’d ask somebody about something and only get these cold, curt replies. At first I thought it was nerves, since everyone was on edge, right? I didn’t think too much about it. But then five days later, out of nowhere, I was told to report to the headmaster. Was it true, he asked me, that I was training at a boxing gym? Yes, I was, but I wasn’t breaking any school rules doing it. How long had I been going there? Since the eighth grade. Was it true I struck Aoki with a clenched fist in junior high school? Yes, it was; I wasn’t about to lie. And was that before or after I took up boxing? After, but it was before I was even allowed to put on the gloves, I explained. The headmaster wasn’t listening. Very well, he cleared his throat, had I ever hit Matsumoto? I was stunned. I mean, like I was saying, I hardly ever spoke to this Matsumoto—why would I have hit him? Which is what I told the headmaster.”

“Matsumoto was always getting beaten up at school, the headmaster informed me. He often went home covered with bruises. His mother complained that someone at school, at this school, was rolling him for his pocket money. But Matsumoto never gave his mother any names. He probably thought he’d get beaten up worse if he squealed. And with all this bearing on him, the boy committed suicide. Pitiful, didn’t I think, he couldn’t turn to anyone. He’d been worked over pretty badly. So the school was looking into the situation. If there was anything I had on my mind, I was to own up. In which case, matters would be settled quietly. If not, the police would take over the investigation. Did I understand?”

“Immediately, I knew Aoki was behind this. It was his touch, this using something like Matsumoto’s death to his own advantage. I bet he didn’t even lie. He didn’t need to. He found out that I went to a boxing gym—who knows how?—then when he heard about someone beating up on Matsumoto, the rest was easy. Just put one and one together. Report how I went to a gym and how I’d hit him. It didn’t take much more. Oh, I’m sure he added in a few trimmings, like say, how he was scared of me, so he never told anyone about this before, or how I really bled him. Nothing that could easily be exposed as a lie. He was careful that way. Coloring plain facts just enough, shaping this undeniable atmosphere of implication. It was a skill he practiced.”

“The headmaster glared at me: guilty as charged. For him, anyone who went to a boxing gym was already suspected of delinquency. Not was I exactly the type of student teachers took to. Three days later, the police called me in for questioning. Needless to say, I was in shock.”

“They put me through a simple police interrogation. I said how I’d hardly ever spoken to Matsumoto. It was true that I had hit a fellow student named Aoki three years before, but that was a perfectly ordinary, stupid argument, and I hadn’t caused any trouble since. That was it. There is a rumor that you were hitting this Matsumoto, said the officer on duty. That’s all it is, I told him, a rumor. Someone who has it in for me is spreading it around. There is no truth, no proof, no case.”

“Word got around school that the police had questioned me. And the atmosphere in class grew even colder. A police summons was like a verdict—like, they didn’t haul people in for no reason, right? Everyone believed I’d been beating up on Matsumoto. I don’t know what nonsense Aoki was peddling, but everyone bought it. I didn’t even want to know what the story was; I knew it was dirt. No one in the entire school would speak to me. As if by consensus—it had to be—I got the silent treatment. Even urgent requests from me got a deaf ear. I was avoided like the plague. My existence was wiped from their field of vision.”

“Even the teachers did their best not to look in my direction. They’d say my name when they took roll, but they never called on me in class. Phys. Ed. was the worst. When the class split into teams, I wouldn’t end up on either side. No one would pair up with me, and the gym teacher would pretend it wasn’t happening. I went to school in silence, attended classes in silence, went home in silence. Day after day, a vacuum. After two or three weeks of this, I lost my appetite. I lost weight. I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d lie there, all worked up, my head filled with this endless succession of ugly images. And when I was awake, my mind was in a fog. I wasn’t sure if I was awake or asleep.”

“I even laid off boxing practice. My folks got worried and asked me what was wrong. What was I supposed to say? Nothing, I’m just tired. What good would it do to tell them? After school I hid out in my room. There was nothing else for me to do. I’d see these things play out on the ceiling. I imagined all kinds of scenarios. Most often, I saw myself punching Aoki out. I’d catch him alone and I’d pummel him, over and over again. I’d tell him what I thought of him—a piece of trash—and I’d knock the crap out of him. He could scream and cry all he wanted—forgive me, forgive me—but I’d just keep hitting him, beating his face to a pulp. Only after a while, punching away, I’d start to get sick. It was fine at first, it was great, it served the bastard right. Then, slowly, this nausea would creep up in me. But I still wouldn’t be able to stop beating Aoki up. I’d look up at the ceiling and Aoki’s face would be there and I’d be hitting him. And I wouldn’t be able to stop. Before long, he was a bloody mess and I felt like puking.”

“I thought about getting up in front of everyone and declaring outright that I was innocent, that I hadn’t done anything. But who was going to believe me? And why was it up to me to apologize to that bunch of turkeys who’d maw down anything Aoki said to begin with?”

“So I was stuck. I couldn’t give Aoki the beating he had coming, and I couldn’t explain myself. I had to put up and shut up. It was only another half year. After this semester, school would be finished and I wouldn’t have to answer to anyone. One half year more, sparring with the silence. But could I hold out that long? I doubted I could go one month. At home, I ticked off each day on my calendar—one more day down, one more day down. I was getting crushed. Thinking back on it now, I can’t believe how close I got to the danger zone.”

“My first hint of a reprieve came a month later. By accident, one my way to school, I found myself face-to-face with Aoki on the train. As usual, it was so packed you couldn’t move. And there was Aoki, two or three people away, over someone’s shoulder, facing me. I must have looked terrible, short on sleep, a neurotic wreck. At first, he gave me this smirk. Like, so how’s it going now, eh? Aoki had to know that I knew that he was behind everything. Our eyes locked. We glared at each other. But as I was staring the guy in the eye, a strange emotion came over me. Sure, I was furious at Aoki. I hated the guy; I wanted to kill him. But suddenly, at the same time, there in the train, I felt something like pity. I mean was this really the best this joker could do? Was this all it took to give him such airs of superiority? Could he actually be so satisfied, so happy with himself, for this? It was pathetic. I was practically move to grief. To think that this fool would be eternally incapable of knowing true happiness, true pride. That there existed creatures so lacking in human depth. Not that I’m such a deep guy, but at least I know a real human being when I see one. But his kind, no. His life was as flat as a piece of slate. It was all surface, no matter what he did. He was nothing.”

“I kept looking him in the face as these emotions went through me, and I didn’t feel like punching him out anymore. I couldn’t have cared less about him. Honest, I was surprised how little I cared. And then I knew I could put up with another five months of the silence. I still have my pride. I wasn’t going to let some smile like Aoki drag me down with him.”

“That was the look I gave Aoki. He must have thought it was a stare-down, which he wasn’t about to lose, and when the train reached the station we didn’t break our gaze. But in the end, it was Aoki who wavered. Just the slightest tremble of his pupils, but I picked up on it. Right away. The look of a boxer whose legs are giving out on him. He’s working them, only they’re not moving. And the stiff doesn’t get it; he thinks they’re still pacing. But his legs are dead. They’ve died in their tracks and now his shoulders won’t dance. Which means the power’s gone out of his punch. It was that look. Something’s wrong, but he can’t tell what.”

“After that, I was home free. I slept soundly, ate square meals, went to the gym. I wasn’t going to be defeated. It wasn’t like I had triumphed over Aoki, either. It was a matter of my not losing out on life. It’s too easy to let yourself get ground down by those who give you shit. So I held out for five more months. No one said word one to me. I’m not wrong, I kept telling myself, everybody else is. I held my chest up every day I went to school. And after graduating, I went to a university in Kyushu. Far from any of that high-school lot.”

At that, Ozawa let out a big sigh. Then he asked if I wanted another cup of coffee. No thanks, I said, I’d already had three.

“People who go through a heavy experience like that are changed men, like it or not,” he said. “They change for the better and they change for the worse. On the good side, they become unshakable. Next to that half year, the rest of the suffering I’ve experienced doesn’t even count. I can put up with almost anything. And I also am a lot more sensitive to the pain of people around me. That’s on the plus side. It made me capable of making some real friends. But there’s also the minus side. I mean, it’s impossible, in my own mind, to believe in people. I don’t hate people, and I haven’t lost my faith in humanity. I’ve got a wife and kids. We’ve made a home and we protect each other. Those things you can’t do without trust. It’s just that, sure, we’re living a good life right now, but if something were to happen, if something really were to come along and yank up everything by the roots, even surrounded by a happy family and good friends, I don’t know what I’d do. What would happen if one day, for no reason, no one believes a word you say? It happens, you know. Suddenly, one day out of the blue. I’m always thinking about it. Last time, it was only six months, but the next time? No one can say; there’s no guarantee. I don’t have confidence in how long I can hold out the next time. When I think of these things, I really get shaken up. I’ll dream about it and wake up in the middle of the night. It happens a little too often, in fact. And when it happens, I wake my wife up and I hold on to her and cry. Sometimes for a whole hour, I’m so scared.”

He broke off and looked out the window to the clouds. They’d barely moved. A heavy lid, bearing down from the heavens. Absorbing all color from the control tower and airplanes and ground-transport vehicles and tarmac and men in uniform.

“People like Aoki don’t care me. They’re all over the place, but I don’t trouble myself with them anymore. When I run into them, I don’t get involved. I see them coming and I head the other way. I can spot them in an instant. But at the same time, I’ve got to admire the Aokis of this world. Their ability to lay low until the right moment, their knack for latching on to opportunities, their skill in fucking with people’s minds—that’s no ordinary talent. I hate their kind so much it makes me want to puke, but it is a talent.”

“No, what really scared me is how easily, how uncritically, people will believe the crap that smile like Aoki deal out. How these Aoki types produce nothing themselves, don’t have an idea in the world, and talk so nice, how this slime can sway gullible types to any opinion and get them to perform on cue, as a group. And this group never entertains even a sliver of doubt that they could be wrong. They think nothing of hurting someone, senselessly, permanently. They don’t take any responsibility for their actions. Them. They’re the real monsters. They’re the ones I have nightmares about. In those dreams, there’s only the silence. And these faceless people. Their silence seeps into everything like ice water. And then it all goes murky. And I’m dissolving and I’m screaming, but no one hears.”

Ozawa just shook his head.

I waited for him to continue, but he was quiet. He folded his hands and lay them on the table.

“We still have time—how about a beer?” he said after a while.

Yeah, let’s, I said. We probably both could use one.