Murakami’s Visit

Last weekend, I did a ten-hour shift with Norton. Remember him, the guy with the monkey lamp I told you about earlier? I hadn’t seen him in a while, and him being a fellow tsundoku, and a general popular culture enthusiast like myself, we had lots to process. Because of my two-week long date with the hot water bottle and some aspirin, I had literally been out to lunch, out of the ballgame, out to damn pasture, just – out of it, so I was being a dumb-ball ignoramus compared to all his meanwhile accumulated knowledge.

I had had to cancel four sets of movie tickets during my atchoo, and every time, hoping I would get well in the next twenty-four hours, I would only cancel one at a time, missing, in alphabetical order although not at all really, screenings of the following: Cinema Paradiso; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; In This Corner of the World, a one-time only special event, like Cinema Paradiso, in fact; The Post, and I am a huge All the President’s Men fan; and a second viewing of my favorite of the last several months, Call Me by Your Name. So I had no idea what was going on - which, according to Woody Allen at least, is one of the key points in being an intellectual.

Every time Norton and I meet up on the job, we are so busy comparing notes and taking minutes of what has been going on in our lives and what is new with TV-shows, books, films, and music, we hardly have time to tend to actual customers, and they all but need to take a number while we go over one more time just what the hell was wrong with Twin Peaks: The Return (me), or why everyone on this earth needs to read Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (him).

I was just relating to him the non-story of how I missed all my moments checking out the silver screen in the last fortnight, when it was pointed out to me that there were a few things missing from the getup of the day, and someone needed to go get stuff from the storage room downstairs. Being the self-appointed downstairs storage room caretaker – not in any freaky The Shining “You have always been the Caretaker” kind of way, just the usual Maintenance, and Putting Stuff in Order on the Shelves -manner – I volunteered. I like to have things neat and tidy – here the reference to the godawful Stepfather movies and the tagline “Let’s have a little order around here” is for once accurate - and I find that order is best maintained if I go myself, be it to the storage room, to the kitchen, or the bathroom in my home.

I was motormouthing about the horribly mediocre string of movies I had managed to watch at home, every single one of them worse than the other one, as I made my way towards the farthest corner of our shop. A few years ago I was in a similar situation, busy explaining something incredibly important to one of my fellow workers while walking at a brisk pace to get to point B, not looking ahead but behind me, and while at it, bumped into an oncoming customer so hard my left eyelid blackened and swelled thrice its normal size, and I had to take two weeks off work because I looked like pirate. Needless to say it hurt like hell, too. And you should have seen the other guy.

This time I managed to steer clear from harm’s way and made it to the Staff Only door without much damage. The Depreston party of bad movies still fresh in my mind, I used my key to open the door, and slipped inside.

The corridor to the storage space is narrow, cluttered with cleaning equipment, empty bottles that no one has had time to return in the kitchen yet, and all sorts of paraphernalia related to our work. Because of what we do, the light must be out at all times while the day is on-going, so I made my way in the shadows, towards the steep staircase, with the greatest of ease, having navigated these dark rooms myriad times before in the past. For example, I know, that if Hanks is working that day, he likes to have the unused rags he needs for cleaning and swiping spilt soda from the floor on the only small table surface available, the same one I use as a temporary landing for my load on my way back, when I have to free my hands to open the door, and I need to take that into consideration and place the boxes so that they are leaning against the wall and not right in the middle of the table, because the rag pile will be there and the boxes will tip and fall on the floor, and there I’ll be, in the dark, with my stuff scattered all over. Then again, if my girl Foster is working that day, she will have left the dustpan right in the middle of the corridor, and if I forget even for a moment it is her on the shift, I will walk straight into it and stumble, yet again, in the darkness. These points are what I like to call The Silent Wisdom of the Job.

I descended the staircase marked as a hazard in all the inspections and came to a small, makeshift door. We didn’t use to have a door right at the end of the dangerously steep staircase, but bureaucracy got involved and we needed to install one, for the dust, they said, but I like to think it performs the necessary duty of stopping short anybody’s tumble who has not descended the stairs before, in the darkness, may I remind, and hence missteps. To this day I have never heard of such an incident happening, though, but perhaps they have wanted to keep the tumbling down the short staircase and bumping into our makeshift door -stories to themselves.

I have some workmates who are afraid of the storage room and the darkness. I can relate, for I am afraid of everything, including the staircase and the storage room, and every time I open the small door and face the total darkness and coolness of the storage and take the three steps to get to the opposing wall where the light switch is waiting – the storage room lights can stay on day and night, there is no rule regarding that – to be turned on, I always picture a hand grabbing hold of the wrist of my outstretched arm. One has to reach out before one, because sometimes no one has had time to get organized down there, and the man-sized load is just waiting there to cause physical damage, the last obstacle in the way to walk straight into and draw blood. When I was a kid, my friend used to tell me the story of the Silver Glove, where the glove comes in the dead of night to strangle the child sleeping in her bed, and I don’t know, somehow I always think about the Silver Glove the moment before I touch the light switch, easily, because I know exactly where it is and never have to waver or hesitate.

The light came on as I knew it would, with no one grabbing my wrist this time, either. I turned around to face the enormous storage space that stretched underneath the length or our shop. And there he was. Just standing there, as if he had been just waiting for me to show. Which of course he had been. The man himself.

Haruki Murakami.

Only instead of his human form, he appeared before me in the shape of a giant washing machine. But I knew it was him, beyond a doubt. The way one knows when the steak is done. I knew.

I had no idea why Murakami was a washing machine. I could only think of how I needed do laundry at home, and how the Finnish director Kristian Smeds had had enemy soldiers appear as washing machines in his controversial theater adaptation of The Unknown Soldier some years back. After these two thoughts I was out.

“Hello”, Murakami said.

“Hello”, I said.

“Just what is that annoying knocking sound?” Norton asked. It was almost seven hours later.

“It’s the slush machine”, I answered promptly.

“What?”

“Yes, the slush machine”, I repeated.

“What are you talking about?” Norton demanded. “Someone is knocking on a door somewhere!”

“No, I’m telling you, it’s the slush machine. I had trouble believing it myself at first, when I heard it for the first time when I was alone here before hours, writing. You know how I like to write at that corner table over there? Well I could hear it distinctly, and I came out here to see if someone was trying to get in. That was when I realized it was coming from the slush machine.”

“You are crazy. There is someone knocking on a door somewhere, I am sure of it!”

“And I am telling you, it is the slush machine. Hey Hanks! Come out here!”

“Yeah, Hanks, come out here. Do you hear that knocking sound?”

“Yes. It is coming from the slush machine.”

“Ha-ha! So you have heard it too, so I’m not crazy!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, I heard it for the first time when I was just about to leave work, and I was here by myself, and at first I thought someone was trying to get back in. Only no one wasn’t, it was the slush machine.”

“That’s right, the slush machine!”

“You know, you two, you are a match made in slushie hell”, Norton grumbled.

The discussion concerning the mysterious knocking sound ended, fortunately for me, there. Because just like Hanks knew, I knew that it was the slush machine. It had always been the slush machine. But I could not help but wonder if it wasn’t Haruki Murakami after all, this time, knocking on the small makeshift door that leads to the storage room, asking me to come back in so we could finish our dialogue.

But I would not go back in, at least not that day. I need to tell you something important, he said. It is urgent, he said. I had no idea whether to be frightened or amused. I was curious, but only in the proverbial sense, as in curiosity having killed the cat, so I felt strongly about leaving well enough alone. But this is like from one of your books, I said. It is like I’m the only one in the world who knows that you are really a giant washing machine, and I feel like my whole being should be completely and elementally changed. But all I seem to want to do is call the Ghostbusters. Funny, he said. I think so, I said. I produced what appeared to be a lemon drop from inside my apron pocket, undid the wrapping, and put in thoughtfully in my mouth. See, I never keep anything like this inside my apron pocket, I said. I don’t think I have ever bought lemon drops in my entire life. So there must be some powerful sorcery going on. I was one step away from sticking my head inside the washing drum, trying to locate Mr. Murakami from inside. But he wasn’t inside anything. He was the washing machine. I truly had no idea how I was feeling about this revelation.

“Washing machine, washing machine, washing... machine!” I sang to myself at the counter. Norton, still sore from the two against one slush machine converse, looked at me sideways, in a mildly sarcastic glare.

“What is that, some kind of appliance ad?”

“Kate Bush. But you were telling me about your horrible night last night?”

“Oh, yes, and I see your Week of Mediocre Cinema, and raise you a Blah New Ice Cream Flavor and a Bad Viewing of the Pink Panther.”

“The old one or the Steve Martin one?”

“The old one. I don’t know, my friend really wanted to watch it, and it ended up being just – kind of torture for the both of us. Who remembered it entailed so much really crass and shitty humor? The times really have changed. It was almost impossible to watch. And don’t let me get started on the ice cream!”

“No! What about the ice cream?”

“I had been looking forward to tasting it the whole day, week, even. You know, finally Saturday night, let’s make a lovely dinner, let’s watch a wonderful movie, and yes, let’s eat some of that new artisan ice cream ‘For the Connoisseurs’. Connoisseurs, my ass! The weakest and lousiest tasting caramel macchiato I have ever sunk my teeth into.”

“I hear you, man. There is nothing worse than a disappointing dessert on a Saturday night. Add a bad movie and some hairspray and you’ve got my whole week! Did I tell you about the horrible ‘hand-made’ licorice I bought that ended up being grey?”

“Grey? Gross! No, what happened?”

“So I’m in my eighth day being sick, and I just had to get out of the house, I just had to. So I walk to my near-by grocery store - you know, there really isn’t a story there. So you read Men without Women, huh?”

“Yep! And you finally dug through Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman?”

“Yes, finally. Don’t you just hate it when something comes up, and an unfinished book just lies weeks and weeks and months, even, on your bedside table?”

“Yes. But at least you were in the middle of reading it! We still have some hope, don’t we?”

“You’re right. Not just tsundoku for us. For the most part, yes, but not always. Let’s celebrate! You run interference, I’ll steal some of Hanks’ fries.”

Thank you to Amy Sherman-Palladino and Kelsey Grammer