What I find strange about growing old isn’t that I’ve got older. Not that the youthful me from the past has, without my realizing it, aged. What catches me off guard is, rather, how people from the same generation as me have become elderly, how all the pretty, vivacious girls I used to know are now old enough to have a couple of grandkids. It’s a little disconcerting—sad, even. Though I never feel sad at the fact that I have similarly aged.
I think what makes me feel sad about the girls I knew growing old is that it forces me to admit, all over again, that my youthful dreams are gone forever. The death of a dream can be, in a way, sadder than that of a living being.
There’s one girl—a woman who used to be a girl, I mean—whom I remember well. I don’t know her name, though. And, naturally, I don’t know where she is now or what she’s doing. What I do know about her is that she went to the same high school as I did, and was in the same year (since the badge on her shirt was the same color as mine), and that she really liked the Beatles.
This was in 1964, at the height of Beatlemania. It was early autumn. The new school semester had begun and things were starting to fall into a routine again. She was hurrying down the long, dim hallway of the old school building, her skirt fluttering. I was the only other person there. She was clutching an LP to her chest as if it were something precious. The LP “With the Beatles.” The one with the striking black-and-white photograph of the four Beatles in half shadow. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I have a clear memory that it was the original, British version of the album, not the American or the Japanese version.
She was a beautiful girl. At least, to me then, she looked gorgeous. She wasn’t tall, but she had long black hair, slim legs, and a lovely fragrance. (That could be a false memory, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t give off any scent at all. But that’s what I remember, as if, when she passed, an enchanting, alluring fragrance wafted in my direction.) She had me under her spell—that beautiful, nameless girl clutching “With the Beatles” to her chest.
My heart started to pound, I gasped for breath, and it was as if all sound had ceased, as if I’d sunk to the bottom of a pool. All I could hear was a bell ringing faintly, deep in my ears. As if someone were desperately trying to send me a vital message. All this took only ten or fifteen seconds. It was over before I knew it, and the critical message contained there, like the core of all dreams, disappeared.
A dimly lit hallway in a high school, a beautiful girl, the hem of her skirt swirling, “With the Beatles.”
That was the only time I saw that girl. In the two years between then and my graduation, we never once crossed paths again. Which is pretty strange if you think about it. The high school I attended was a fairly large public school at the top of a hill in Kobe, with about six hundred and fifty students in each grade. (We were the so-called baby-boomer generation, so there were a lot of us.) Not everyone knew one another. In fact, I didn’t know the names or recognize the vast majority of the kids in the school. But, still, since I went to school almost every day, and often used that hallway, it struck me as almost outrageous that I never once saw that beautiful girl again. I looked for her every time I used that hallway.
Had she vanished, like smoke? Or, on that early-autumn afternoon, had I seen not a real person but a vision of some kind? Perhaps I had idealized her in my mind at the instant that we passed each other, to the point where even if I actually saw her again I wouldn’t recognize her? (I think the last possibility is the most likely.)
Later, I got to know a few women, and went out with them. And every time I met a new woman it felt as though I were unconsciously longing to relive that dazzling moment I’d experienced in a dim school hallway back in the fall of 1964. That silent, insistent thrill in my heart, the breathless feeling in my chest, the bell ringing gently in my ears.
Sometimes I was able to recapture this feeling, at other times not. And other times I managed to grab hold of it, only to let it slip through my fingers. In any event, the emotions that surged when this happened came to serve as a kind of gauge I used to measure the intensity of my yearning.
When I couldn’t get that sensation in the real world, I would quietly let my memory of those feelings awaken inside me. In this way, memory became one of my most valued emotional tools, a means of survival, even. Like a warm kitten, softly curled inside an oversized coat pocket, fast asleep.
I think what makes me feel sad about the girls I knew growing old is that it forces me to admit, all over again, that my youthful dreams are gone forever. The death of a dream can be, in a way, sadder than that of a living being.
There’s one girl—a woman who used to be a girl, I mean—whom I remember well. I don’t know her name, though. And, naturally, I don’t know where she is now or what she’s doing. What I do know about her is that she went to the same high school as I did, and was in the same year (since the badge on her shirt was the same color as mine), and that she really liked the Beatles.This was in 1964, at the height of Beatlemania. It was early autumn. The new school semester had begun and things were starting to fall into a routine again. She was hurrying down the long, dim hallway of the old school building, her skirt fluttering. I was the only other person there. She was clutching an LP to her chest as if it were something precious. The LP “With the Beatles.” The one with the striking black-and-white photograph of the four Beatles in half shadow. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I have a clear memory that it was the original, British version of the album, not the American or the Japanese version.
She was a beautiful girl. At least, to me then, she looked gorgeous. She wasn’t tall, but she had long black hair, slim legs, and a lovely fragrance. (That could be a false memory, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t give off any scent at all. But that’s what I remember, as if, when she passed, an enchanting, alluring fragrance wafted in my direction.) She had me under her spell—that beautiful, nameless girl clutching “With the Beatles” to her chest.
My heart started to pound, I gasped for breath, and it was as if all sound had ceased, as if I’d sunk to the bottom of a pool. All I could hear was a bell ringing faintly, deep in my ears. As if someone were desperately trying to send me a vital message. All this took only ten or fifteen seconds. It was over before I knew it, and the critical message contained there, like the core of all dreams, disappeared.
A dimly lit hallway in a high school, a beautiful girl, the hem of her skirt swirling, “With the Beatles.”
That was the only time I saw that girl. In the two years between then and my graduation, we never once crossed paths again. Which is pretty strange if you think about it. The high school I attended was a fairly large public school at the top of a hill in Kobe, with about six hundred and fifty students in each grade. (We were the so-called baby-boomer generation, so there were a lot of us.) Not everyone knew one another. In fact, I didn’t know the names or recognize the vast majority of the kids in the school. But, still, since I went to school almost every day, and often used that hallway, it struck me as almost outrageous that I never once saw that beautiful girl again. I looked for her every time I used that hallway.
Had she vanished, like smoke? Or, on that early-autumn afternoon, had I seen not a real person but a vision of some kind? Perhaps I had idealized her in my mind at the instant that we passed each other, to the point where even if I actually saw her again I wouldn’t recognize her? (I think the last possibility is the most likely.)
Later, I got to know a few women, and went out with them. And every time I met a new woman it felt as though I were unconsciously longing to relive that dazzling moment I’d experienced in a dim school hallway back in the fall of 1964. That silent, insistent thrill in my heart, the breathless feeling in my chest, the bell ringing gently in my ears.
Sometimes I was able to recapture this feeling, at other times not. And other times I managed to grab hold of it, only to let it slip through my fingers. In any event, the emotions that surged when this happened came to serve as a kind of gauge I used to measure the intensity of my yearning.
When I couldn’t get that sensation in the real world, I would quietly let my memory of those feelings awaken inside me. In this way, memory became one of my most valued emotional tools, a means of survival, even. Like a warm kitten, softly curled inside an oversized coat pocket, fast asleep.
by Haruki Murakami, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Adrian Tomine
