Read Online Killing Commendatore: A novel by Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel, Ted Goossen - Free Book Online Page A

your hands, every inch, even run your lips over them. In this way, as if I’d flipped a switch on my consciousness, I began moving between an ambiguous, vague rien and a vivid, living reality. The woman said her husband hadn’t made love to her in nearly two years. He was ten years older than she was, and busy with work, never returning home until late at night. She tried many ways of enticing him, but nothing seemed to rouse his interest.
    “I wonder why. I mean, you have such a lovely body,” I said.
    She gave a small shrug. “We’ve been married over fifteen years and have two kids. I guess I’m no longer as fresh as I used to be.”
    “You seem plenty fresh to me.”
    “Thanks. Though that makes it sound like I’m being recycled or something.”
    “Like recycling resources?”
    “Exactly.”
    “It’s a very precious resource, though,” I said. “Contributes to society, too.”
    She giggled. “As long as you sort everything correctly.”
    A little while later, we eagerly set out to sort out resources once more.
----
    —
    Truthfully I wasn’t all that drawn to her as a person at first. In that sense there was a different tone about our relationship than with the women I’d dated. She and I had almost nothing in common to talk about. There was hardly anything about our present lives, or our personal histories until then, that overlapped. I’m not generally a talkative person, so when we were together, she did most of the talking. She’d tell me personal things and I’d make the appropriate responses, giving my feedback, I guess you’d call it, though it was hardly a real conversation.
    This was a first for me. With other women, I’d always been attracted to their personalities. Physical relationships came later, something that accompanied the initial appeal…That was the usual pattern. But not with her. With her the physical came first. Not that I’m complaining. When I was with her I could enjoy the act in a pure, unfettered way. And I think she could, too. She came many times as we made love, and I came many times too.
    She told me this was the first time since she got married that she’d slept with another man. I had no reason to doubt her. And for me, too, this was the first time I’d slept with another woman since I got married. (No, actually there was one exception, when I shared a bed with another woman. Not that it was something I was looking for. I’ll get into that later on.)
    “But my friends the same age, all of them are married but most of them are having affairs,” she said. “They talk about it a lot.”
    “Recycling,” I said.
    “I never imagined I’d join them.”
    I gazed up at the ceiling and thought about Yuzu. Was she off somewhere, in bed with somebody?
----
    —
    After the woman left, I felt at loose ends. The bed still showed the hollows where she had lain. I didn’t feel like doing anything, so I lay out on a lounge chair on the terrace and killed time reading a book. All the books on Mr. Amada’s bookshelf were old, among them a few unusual novels that would be hard to get hold of these days. Works that in the past had been pretty popular but had been forgotten, read by no one. I enjoyed reading this kind of out-of-date novel. Doing so let me share—with this old man I’d never met—the feeling of being left behind by time.
    As the sun set, I opened a bottle of wine (drinking wine was my one and only luxury at the time, though of course this was inexpensive wine) and listened to some old LPs. The record collection was comprised entirely of classical music, the majority of which was opera and chamber music. All of them looked like they’d been lovingly cared for, without a single scratch. During the day I listened to opera, while at night I favored Beethoven and Schubert string quartets.
    Having a relationship with that older married woman, being able to hold a real live woman in my arms regularly, brought me a certain level of calm. The soft touch of a