Chapter 2 Chapter 1 1970/11/25

◎Wednesday afternoon picnic A friend accidentally learned of her death from the newspaper and called to tell me.On the phone, he slowly read a passage from the daily newspaper.It's an ordinary report.It's like an article written by a fledgling reporter who has just graduated from university for practice. On a certain day of the month, on a certain street corner, someone's truck hits someone.A person is under investigation on suspicion of death due to business negligence. It also sounds a bit like a short poem on the front page of a magazine. Where will the funeral be held?I try to ask.

Well, I don't know.He said.First of all, does this girl have a home? Of course she also has a family. ◇ I called the police on the same day and asked for the address and phone number of her hometown, and then called her hometown to ask for the date of the funeral.As I don't know who said, as long as you are not afraid of trouble, most things can be figured out. Her home is in Shitamachi.I opened the district map of Tokyo, and marked the location of her house with a red ballpoint pen.It looked like it really was a residential area for ordinary people in Shitamachi, Tokyo.Subway, Guodian, bus routes, etc., overlapped in a mixed manner like spider webs that lost their sense of balance, several dirty rivers flowed through, and the chaotic and criss-crossed roads were tightly stuck to the ground like the crepes of cantaloupe.

◇ On the day of the funeral, I took the Toei tram from Waseda.After getting off at the station near the end, I looked at the district map, but the map can only play a role like a globe.So before trekking to her house, I had to buy cigarettes several times and asked for directions several times. Her home is an old wooden house surrounded by brown wooden walls.After passing through the door, to the left is a yard that is too small to serve any purpose.In the corner of the yard was an old pottery fire bowl that had lost its use, and fifteen centimeters of rainwater had accumulated in the fire bowl.The soil in the yard is black, wet and sticky.

She ran away from home when she was sixteen and has never returned since.This is also one of the reasons, the funeral was only my own family, and it was quiet.Most of the attendees were elderly relatives, and her brother or brother-in-law in his early thirties presided over the funeral. The father was a small man of about fifty-five, with a mourning badge wrapped around the arm of a black suit.Just stood by the door and barely moved.His pose is reminiscent of an asphalt road just after the flood waters. I silently bowed to him before going home, and he silently bowed to me. ◇ The first time I met her was in the autumn of 1969.I am twenty and she is seventeen.There is a small coffee shop near the university, where I often meet up with friends.Although the store is not very good, but when you go there, you can listen to hard rock and drink particularly bad coffee.

She sat in the same seat every time, leaning her elbows on the table and reading a book fascinated.Although she wears glasses that look like braces and has skinny hands, she doesn't know where she feels approachable.Her coffee is always cold, and her ashtray is always full of cigarette butts.Only the title of the book is different.Sometimes Mickey Spillane, sometimes Kenzaburo Oe, sometimes Allen Ginsberg Poems.In short, as long as it is a book, anything is fine.The students who came to the store would lend her books, and she gnawed the books from the beginning like gnawing corn.Because it was an era when many people wanted to lend books to others, so I think she was never short of books to read.

It was also an era of Doors, Stones, Byrds, Deep Purple, Moody blues.There was an explosive tension in the air, as if most things would collapse with just a little hard kick. Sometimes we drink some whiskey, make bad love, talk about inconclusive things, borrow or return books, and spend every day like this.So the not-so-bright 1960s came to an end with a rattling sound. ◇ I have forgotten her name. Although you can pull out the clippings of the death record and read it again, you can remember it, but the name is not important now.I forgot her name, that's all. When I met a friend from the past, I mentioned her by some chance.They also couldn't remember her name.By the way, didn't there used to be a girl who could sleep with anyone?what is her name?I completely forgot, I also slept with her a few times, I don't know how it is now?It would be strange if we ran across it by chance on the street.

Once upon a time, somewhere, there was a girl who could sleep with anyone. That's her name. ◇ Of course, if you want to strictly define it, she doesn't sleep with everyone.Naturally, she should have her own benchmark. Even so, from a practical point of view, she has slept with most men. Only once, out of sheer curiosity, did I ask her about the benchmark. Well she pondered for about thirty seconds.Of course not with everyone.Sometimes it's annoying too.However, it turned out to be because I wanted to meet all kinds of people.Or, to me it seems like a way of setting up the world.

Are you talking about sleeping together? Um. This time it was my turn to meditate. Like this, do you understand a little bit? A little bit.she says. ◇ From the winter of '69 to the summer of '70, I barely met her.Universities are closed and closed, student riots are incessant, and I have a few different personal troubles that give me headaches. In the autumn of 1970, when I visited that store again, the faces of the customers had completely changed, and she was the only one I knew.The rock-heavy music is still playing, but the tense, explosive air is gone.Only she and the bad coffee still taste the same as a year ago.I sat down on the chair opposite her, drinking coffee and talking about my former friends.

Most of them are no longer in college.One committed suicide, and the other disappeared.that kind of topic. What do you do in a year?she asked me. various things.I said. How much smarter has it been? A little bit. So, that night, I slept with her for the first time. ◇ I don't know much about her origin.It seemed that someone had mentioned it to me, and it seemed that she had heard it from her own mouth in bed.During the summer of her freshman year in high school, she had a big fight with her father and ran away from home (not even going to high school, by the way), or something like that.Where do you live?What do you live on?No one knows.

She sat on a chair in a rock music cafe all day long, drinking countless cups of coffee and smoking countless cigarettes, flipping through the book page by page, while waiting for the person who paid for her coffee and cigarettes to appear For us, it is a small amount), and then mostly sleep with that person. That's all I know about her. ◇ From that autumn until the following spring, once a week, on Tuesday nights, she would come to my apartment in a remote corner of Mitaka.She ate simple dinners I cooked, filled the ashtrays to the brim, and played FEN's rock and roll program at high volume, listening to it while having sex.When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I walked in the miscellaneous woods, walked to the ICU (International Christian University) campus, and went to the restaurant for lunch.Then drink weak coffee in the open-air cafe in the afternoon. If the weather is fine, you can lie on the grass on the campus and look at the sky.

Wednesday's picnic, she called it. Every time I come here, I feel like I'm really on a picnic. Really picnic? Well, the grassland is so big, it seems endless, everyone looks so happy She sat down on the grass and lit a cigarette after striking several matches. The sun rises and sets, people come and go, time passes like air.Always feels like a picnic, don't you think? ◇ I was twenty-one at the time, and I would be twenty-two in a few weeks.From the present point of view, it may not be possible to graduate from college, but even so, there is no good reason to drop out of school.For months, in a strange tangled state of despair, I was unable to take a new step. It's as if the whole world keeps moving and it's just me remaining in the same place.In the autumn of 1970, something reflected in the eyes.Everything seemed sad, and everything seemed to be fading rapidly.The sun's rays, the smell of grass, even the slightest sound of rain seemed to make me restless. I have dreamed of night trains several times.Always the same dream.The smell of cigarette smoke, the smell of toilets and people's exhalation are stuffy night trains.It was so crowded that there was not even a place to stand, and the seats had old vomit stains stuck to them.I couldn't bear it, stood up and got off at a certain station.It was a desolate place where even the lights of a house could not be seen.Not even a station clerk saw it.No clock, no timetable, nothing like that in a dream. ◇ During that period, I seemed to have made things difficult for her a few times.As for how to embarrass her, I can't remember now.Maybe I'm just embarrassing myself.But anyway, she didn't seem to mind, or (to put it more extreme) she was actually enjoying it.do not know why.In the end, I guess all she asked for from me was a little tenderness.Now that I think about it, I feel unbelievable.It feels sad as if your hand touched a wall floating in the air that your eyes can't see. ◇ I still remember that strange afternoon of November 25th, 1970 clearly.The leaves of ginkgo that were knocked down by the strong rain covered the trails between the miscellaneous forests, dyed yellow like a dry river.She and I put our hands in our coat pockets and walked back and forth on the road like that.There was no sound but the sound of two men's boots on fallen leaves and the shriek of a bird. What's on your mind?she asked me suddenly. Nothing great.I said. She walked a little forward, then sat down on the side of the road and smoked a cigarette.I also sat down next to her. Always have nightmares? Often have nightmares.But most of them are just dreams about not being able to get the change from the vending machine. She smiled and put her palm on my knee, then retracted it. You must not want to say it right? There must be no way to make it clear. She dropped the half-smoked cigarette on the floor and stomped it out carefully with her sneaker.I really want to say something, but there is no way to say it clearly.Do not you think so? do not know.I said. With a clattering sound, the two birds flew up from the ground and disappeared as if sucked into the sky without a cloud.We watched in silence for a moment in the direction in which the bird disappeared.Then, she used the dry twigs to draw some unidentifiable shapes on the ground. Sleeping with you often feels sad. I feel so sorry.I said. It's not your fault.And it's not because you were thinking about other girls when you hugged me.I don't care about this kind of thing.When I said this, she suddenly closed her mouth, and slowly drew three parallel lines on the ground.Can't figure it out. I didn't mean to close my heart.I paused for a moment before speaking.It's just that what happened in the end, even I can't grasp it well.I try to be as fair as possible about everything.I don't want to be unnecessarily exaggerated, and I don't want to be too realistic unless necessary.It will take some time though. How much time? I shake my head.Not sure.Maybe a year is enough, maybe it will take ten years. She threw the twig on the ground, stood up, and brushed the dead grass off her coat.Hey!Don't you think ten years seems like forever? yes.I said. ◇ We walked through the woods to the campus of the ICU, and sat at an outdoor cafe eating hot dogs as usual.At two o'clock in the afternoon, the video of Yukio Mishima was played repeatedly on the TV in the coffee shop.The volume was malfunctioning so it was barely audible, but anyway it didn't make a difference to us.We finished our hot dogs and had another cup of coffee.One student stood on a chair, turned the volume knob on the TV for a while, then gave up, got off the chair, and walked away.I don't know where it disappeared. i want you.I said. OK.she said with a smile With our hands in our coat pockets, we walked slowly back to the apartment. ◇ When I woke up suddenly, she was crying silently.The thin shoulders under the blanket trembled slightly.I lit the fire in the stove and looked at the clock.It was two o'clock in the morning.A snow-white moon hung in the middle of the sky. I waited for her to stop crying, then boiled a pot of boiling water, made black tea with tea bags, and the two of us drank the black tea.No sugar, no lemon, no creamer, just pure black tea.Then I lit two cigarettes and handed one to her.She sucked in the cigarette and spit it out again, three times in a row, and then coughed again and again. Hey, have you ever thought about killing me?she asked. you? Um. How could such a question be asked? With the cigarette still in her mouth, she rubbed her eyelids with her fingers. Just a little bit of a question. No.I said. real? real. Why do I have to kill you? That's right.She nodded as if she was bothered.However, it suddenly occurred to me that it would be nice to be killed by one person.While I was fast asleep. I'm not the type to kill. Yeah? I guess so. She smiled and stuffed the cigarette into the ashtray, took a sip of the remaining black tea, and lit a new one. I'm going to live to be twenty-five.she says.Then die. ◇ In July 1978, she died at the age of twenty-six.