Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

In the next chapter, カヴァラからのフェリーボート (The Ferry from Kavala), Murakami rides the ferry from Kavala to Lesbos. It’s notable for the point of view which really focuses in on Murakami himself, and not his wife. He’s on the ferry and notices a group of young Greek soldiers. They’re always riding ferries, although he doesn’t have a good idea of where they’re going.

There’s a nice scene describing the young soldiers laughing and smoking cigarettes. Murakami writes them sympathetically because he’s been thinking about fighting ever since the Evros River incident, which happened the December of 1986 (the year prior).

He goes on a little aside about the futility of war before being brought back to his senses by a Greek man who points at the television:

The middle-aged Greek man seated at the table next to me says, Hey, look at the TV, it’s Japan. The news on the TV in the first-class lobby is showing the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Kabutocho. People with rigid looks on their faces are shouting something. They’re pointing. Their sleeves are rolled up, and they’re yelling into phones. But I’m unable to figure out what’s going on. “It’s money,” the Greek man says in broken English, “Money.” He pantomimes counting out money. I take it that stocks have crashed. But I can’t explain the details with my level of English. (* I realized this later, but this was Black Monday. When I think about it, I’m reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1929, Fitzgerald learned of the Great Crash when he was traveling in Tunisia. He describes it “like distant thunder.” Of course, Black Monday wasn’t anywhere close to the scale of the 1929 crash, but I still remember feeling a sort of sense of unease. I might’ve been thinking about war just at that moment, so the stock crash and everyone’s paralyzed faces on TV may have felt more darkly ominous than usual to me.)

隣のテーブルに座っている中年のギリシャ人が僕に向かってほら、テレビを見てごらんよ、日本だよ、と言う。一等船室のロビーのテレビのニュースが東京兜町の証券取引所の光景を映し出している。こわばった顔つきをした人々が何かを叫んでいる。指を上げている。シャツの袖をまくりあげて、電話に向かって何か怒鳴っている。でも何のことだか僕には理解できない。「moneyだよ、money」とギリシャ人が片言の英語で言う。そして金を勘定する仕種をする。どうやら株が暴落したらしい。でも詳しいことは僕の英語力では説明できない。（＊あとになってわかったことだが、それが例のブラック・マンデーだった。僕はこのときのことを思い出すたびに、スコット・フィッツジェラルドのことを考える。スコット・フィッツジェラルドは1929年の大暴落をチュニジアを旅行している時に知った。「まるで遠い電鳴のように」と彼は描写している。もちろん、ブラック・マンデーは規模として1929年の暴落とは比べ物にならなかったけれど、その時のなにかしら不安定な空気のことを僕はまだ記憶している。たぶんちょうどそのとき戦争のことを考えているので、株の暴落とテレビの画面に映る人々のひきつった顔が、僕には余計に暗く不吉に思えたのだろう） (296)

That’s essentially the end of the chapter. There’s a brief news segment on the TV about Prime Minister Nakasone stepping down for Prime Minister Takeshita. Red Dawn starts to play after the news. And Murakami returns to his cabin after eating a pear and crackers and drinking some brandy. He awakes in Lesbos.

This is an interesting chapter because of the F. Scott Fitzgerald connection and because Black Monday happens to be my birthday. So when I turned 6, Murakami was asleep on a ferry in the Aegean Sea.

I’m unable to track down the Fitzgerald quote, so that’s my translation of Murakami’s Japanese. If anyone knows where I might find that Fitzgerald writing (it seems to be his journal/diary rather than a piece of published writing), let me know!

Year 1: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year 2: Hotel Lobby Oysters, Condoms, Spinning Around and Around, 街・町, The Town and Its Uncertain Wall, A Short Piece on the Elephant that Crushes Heineken Cans
Year 3: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly
Year 4: More Drawers, Phone Calls, Metaphors, Eight-year-olds, dude, Ushikawa, Last Line
Year 5: Jurassic Sapporo, Gerry Mulligan, All Growns Up, Dance, Mountain Climbing
Year 6: Sex With Fat Women, Coffee With the Colonel, The Librarian, Old Man, Watermelons
Year 7: Warmth, Rebirth, Wasteland, Hard-ons, Seventeen, Embrace
Year 8: Pigeon, Edits, Magazines, Awkwardness, Back Issues
Year 9: Water, Snæfellsnes, Cannonball, Distant Drumming
Year 10: Vermonters, Wandering and Belonging, Peter Cat, Sushi Counter, Murakami Fucks First
Year 11: Embers, Escape, Window Seats, The End of the World
Year 12: Distant Drums, Exhaustion, Kiss, Lack of Pretense, Rotemburo
Year 13: Murakami Preparedness, Pacing Norwegian Wood, Character Studies and Murakami’s Financial Situation, Mental Retreat, Writing is Hard
Year 14: Prostitutes and Novelists, Villa Tre Colli and Norwegian Wood, Surge of Death, On the Road to Meta, Unbelievable
Year 15: Baseball on TV, Kindness, Murakami in the Asahi Shimbun – 日記から – 1982, The Mythology of 1981, Winning and Losing
Year 16: The Closet Massacre, Booze Bus, Old Shoes, Editing Norwegian Wood, Prophecy
Year 17: Athens Marathon 1987

Week 2 in Murakami Fest 2024. Murakami creates a pitch perfect Murakami mood in the chapter 雨のカヴァラ (Rainy Kavala).

Kavala in 1982, via Wikimedia Commons.

He and his wife take a three hour bus ride from Thessaloniki and arrive at the harbor town Kavala, descending from the mountains into the town. Murakami is instantly at home: The town reminds him of Kobe with the harbor nearby and the mountains dropping down into the town. 海と山の間の距離は狭ければ狭いほどいい (The narrower the space between the water and the mountains the better), he notes.

He gives some historical background on the city, its role as the first place in Europe where St. Paul performed missionary work and as a sort of overrun middle point in conflicts between Europe and the Middle East. He arrives on October 18, the town’s independence day from Turkey after World War I.

He has a funny anecdote about eating breakfast at a Communist cafe (or at least one near a Communist headquarters) for the equivalent of 100 yen because the hotel breakfast was 500 yen.

They don’t really do much at all, which is kind of the point. Murakami has run his marathon both figuratively and literally. He finished the Athens Marathon, and he’s published Norwegian Wood. It’s time to take some time off. Yet he seems to be at a loose end, kind of itching for something to do.

Here are the final three paragraphs in the very short chapter:

We stayed in the port town for four days because I liked it quite a bit. For four days, we did almost nothing. We just kind of shuffled between the movie theater (We saw Brazil there, which was good), going on walks, admiring the view of the harbor from our hotel veranda, checking out the fish market, eating at the cheap, delicious psari taverna (seafood restaurant) near the market, and going on more walks. When it rained, we stocked up on wine and Papadopoulos biscuits at the neighborhood market and hunkered down in our room with a book.

It did rain a number of times. On rainy days, we would watch the rain from the taverna terrace and I’d get this…sense of exactly how far we’d come. I wonder why. All sounds were muffled, the overchilled bottle of white wine was sweating, and fishermen wearing yellow, rubber raincoats lined up to untangle a brightly colored fishing net. A black dog trotted around aimlessly like an attendant at a funeral. The waiter listlessly gazed at the newspaper. He was thin, with an odd beard that made him look like a magician. As I ate grilled mackerel, I sketched a man wearing a nylon windbreaker sitting two tables over. He was drinking a half liter of wine, eating squid, and tearing off pieces of bread which he stuffed into his mouth in an incredibly tedious manner. He kept doing it in that order. He would drink some wine, eat a piece of squid, and then stuff bread in his mouth. A cat stared up at him as he ate. I sketched this man for no reason in particular. We just literally had nothing to do on this rainy afternoon.

But it didn’t bother me. We had the harbor before us. The mountains behind us. Wine and biscuits awaiting us in the hotel room. And there was hardly anything about which I needed to concern myself. I’d run my marathon and gotten my airplane ticket refunded. I’d written my novel, and I still had a little time before the next one.

四日間我々はこの港町に滞在した。この町がけっこう気に入ったからだ。四日間、我々は殆どなにもしなかった。ただぼんやりとして、映画館に行き（『未来世紀ブラジル』もここで見た。面白かった）、散歩をし、ホテルのヴェランダに座って港を眺め、魚市場をのぞき、市場の近くの美味しくて安いプサリ・タヴェルナ（魚介レストラン）で食事をし、また散歩をした。雨が降ると近所のマーケットでワインとパパドプロス・クラッカーをたっぷりと買い込み、部屋に籠って本を読んだ。

時々雨が降った。雨の日に、タヴェルナのテラスで雨を眺めながら魚料理を食べていると、なんだか遠くまで来たんだなあ、という気がふとする。どうしてだろう？音がこもり、冷えすぎた白ワインの瓶が汗をかき、漁師たちは黄色いゴムの合羽を着込みみんなで一列に並んで鮮やかな色合いの漁綱のもつれをほぐしている。黒い犬が葬式の雑用糸みたいな格好で小走りにいずこへともなく走っていく。ウェイターは退屈そうにちらちらと新聞にめをやっている。痩せて、奇術師のような不思議な髭をはやしたウェイターだ。僕は鯵のグリルをを食べながら二つ向こうのテーブルに座ったナイロンのジャンパーを着たおじさんの姿をノートにスケッチしている。彼はすごくつまらなさそうにワインを半リットル飲み、イカを食べ、パンをちぎって口の中に詰め込む。それを順番通りにやる。ワインを飲み、イカを食べ、パンを口に詰め込む。猫が一匹それをじっと見上げている。僕はそのおじさんを特にいみもなくボールペンでスケッチしている。雨の午後に本当に何もやることがないのだ。

でも悪いきはしない。前には港がある。後ろには山がある。ホテルの部屋に帰れば、ワインとパパドプロスのクラッカーがある。そして僕には今のところ考えなくてはならないことが殆ど何もないのだ。マラソンは走り終えたし、航空券は払い戻してもらった。小説はもう書いてしまったし、次の小説までにはまだ少し間がある。 (291-292)

Ah, now that feels like a vacation. The man stuffing his face with bread and squid and wine feels like such a telling image. Like there’s no escape from want, from need, from desire. We must move forward with our infinite appetites. This isn’t high writing, but it’s Murakami at his strongest.