I looked into her eyes.
They were like a deep spring in the shade of cliffs, which no breeze could ever
reach. Nothing moved there, everything was still. Look closely and you could
just begin to make out the scene reflected in the water’s surface…
I recalled clearly what I
had seen deep within her eyes. A dark space, frozen hard like a subterranean
glacier. A silence so profound it sucked up every sound, never allowing it to
resurface. Absolute, total silence. It was the first time I’d been face to face
with death. Eventually everyone would fall into those endlessly lonely depths,
the source of all darkness, a silence bereft of resonance. I felt choking,
stifling fear as I stared into a bottomless dark pit.
Facing those black,
frozen depths, I had called out her name…as I had looked deep into her eyes and
called out her name, my own body was dragged down into those depths. As if a vacuum
had sucked out all the air around me, the other world was steadily pulling me
closer. Even now I could feel its power. It wanted me.
Deep within her eyes, in
the always bottomless depths, there was a spring. And, ever so far off, a light.
The light of life, I thought. Someday it will be extinguished, but for now the
light is there. She smiled at me. “Now it’s your turn to take off my clothes,”
she told me. “And do whatever you want.”
- Haruki Murakami
(excerpt from South of the Border, West of the Sun)
