South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami

I've previously read other titles by Haruki Murakami such as Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and I've commented each time that the storyline was surreal and filled with very rich imagery - allegories of human melancholy, the search for true love, and the regret over circumstances that can't be changed. South of the Border, West of the Sun is somewhat different. It's a short story. Its tale is simple and there is nothing too surreal. What you read, you can identify with immediately. It's about love lost and found, and the hurt we inflict on our hearts when we yearn too much for the perfect relationship.

South centres around Hajime, a 37 year old successful owner of two jazz clubs, married with two kids and seemingly happy in a relationship with his wife, Yukiko. In the book, he talks about growing up and falling in love for the first time at the age of 12 with another young girl, Shimamoto who's precocious and fiercely independent. She's stricken with polio and walks by dragging her left leg, something that adds to her character and which leaves a deep impression on Hajime who calls it "a terrible load of psychological baggage ... that made her a tougher, more self-possessed only child than I could ever have been."

They spend a brief part of their childhood together listening to old Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby records and reveling in a shared understanding of what it's like to be the only child in their families. They hold hands once as she leads him somewhere. To him, the ten second clasp is a revelation that she is to him everything he wants to know and had to know; that there was another world where all this was possible.

Time passes however and elementary school comes to an end. Hajime moves to a different school in a different town and they slowly drift apart. He grows up, goes on to have many other relationships, graduates, and lands up at a boring job at a publishing company. Through it all, his thoughts often wander back to Shimamoto - wondering what became of her and how much he wants to see her again.

And true enough, one day, many years later he catches a glimpse of her on the crowded streets of Shibuya, dragging her leg. He follows behind closely, eager to talk to her but at the same time afraid. As she gets into a taxi, a man pulls Hajime aside, leads him to a nearby cafe and threatens him with consequences if he were to approach Shimamoto again. Hajime caves in and the man passes him an envelope with money before leaving the cafe. He keeps the envelope in his office desk - proof that it wasn't a dream. It really  happened - "Sometimes I put the envelope on top of my desk and stared at it. It really did happen."

Hajime eventually marries Yukiko. Her father helps to set him up with his own business, a jazz bar. Business is good and he opens a second bar. He starts his own family, two daughters and settles down into a routine.  "No matter what, I'd be damned if I'd ever return to the kind of life I had in my twenties - days of loneliness and isolation. This was where I belonged. Here was where I was loved and protected. And where I could love and protect others - my wife and my children - back. Being in this position was an unexpected discovery, a totally new experience."

All is good until one night, when he sees a beautiful woman sitting quietly in his bar, sipping a daiquiri. He speaks to her, makes small talk and only much later in the conversation does realise that it's Shimamoto in the flesh. They reminisce about their days together as children, he tells her he misses her even till now. She tells him the same. They talk till midnight when she decides it's time to go. She walks without dragging her leg - a surgery four years ago, she explains. She goes out of the bar to call for a taxi. He follows behind five minutes later. But she's nowhere to be seen anymore. Gone.

It's another four months before she reappears at the bar and they rekindle their relationship, spending hours on end walking and talking. Then she disappears again. And it becomes a pattern, her appearance and disappearance as she assumes the form of a fata morgana in Hajime's life. One wonders also about her own private life - what is it that she is running away from? What is it that keeps her from coming to see Hajime? She never divulges these circumstances and we never find out.

Slowly, he begins to crave for her, missing her, wanting her, dreaming of a life with her. He feels guilt towards Yukiko and his children. But his feelings for Shimamato are too strong to ignore. Suddenly, where he thought he belonged to suddenly wasn't anymore. Shimamoto became everything and everything else too. There was discontent and he was ready to let go of Yukiko and the children to be with Shimamoto.

Things come to a head one night when he spends a night with Shimamoto. He lets go of himself and embraces the rapture of being in the world he'd dreamed of with her. They make love; unleashing years and years of pent-up passion. They fall into slumber together but he wakes up alone. She's gone again. He gets out of bed and finds no trace of her. It's a mystery how she could have walked out of the house - or to where she could've gone, considering how isolated they were. But most symbolically, the gift of an old Nat King Cole record from her earlier in the evening is also missing. It's the same old record that they both listened to as children. Perhaps it is an allegory to a past that cannot be brought forward to the present.

We are left with questions. Is Shimamoto real or was she a dream? Does she represent a "what if" in Hajime's life that he is so obsessed with that the line between real and unreal becomes blurred? Is she merely an illusional matter he conjures up to fill up the void in his life?

South is a short read but it leaves a lasting impression on you. At one point in our lives, we do all wonder about the right one we were fated to meet and love, but somehow didn't. Some of us go on living, moving forward. While a few of us live but always looking backwards with half a heart in the present and the other half somewhere else - always trying to recapture a past that is long gone.