Excerpt from Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel. In these dreams, I'm there,
implicated in some kind of ongoing circumstance. All indications
are that I belong to this dream continuity.
The Dolphin Hotel is distorted, much too narrow. It seems more
like a long, covered bridge. A bridge stretching endlessly through
time. And there I am, in the middle of it. Someone else is there too,
crying.
The hotel envelops me. I can feel its pulse, its heat. In dreams, I
am part of the hotel.
I wake up, but where? I don't just think this, I actually voice the
question to myself: «Where am I?» As if I didn't know: I'm here. In
my life. A feature of the world that is my existence. Not that I particularly
recall ever having approved these matters, this condition,
this state of affairs in which I feature. There might be a woman
sleeping next to me. More often, I'm alone. Just me and the expressway
that runs right next to my apartment and, bedside, a glass
(five millimeters of whiskey still in it) and the malicious — no, make
that indifferent—dusty morning light. Sometimes it's raining. If it is,
I'll just stay in bed. And if there's whiskey still left in the glass, I'll
drink it. And I'll look at the raindrops dripping from the eaves, and
I'll think about the Dolphin Hotel. Maybe I'll stretch, nice and slow.
Enough for me to be sure I'm myself and not part of something else.
Yet I'll remember the feel of the dream. So much that I swear I can
reach out and touch it, and the whole of that something that includes
me will move. If I strain my ears, I can hear the slow, cautious
sequence of play take place, like droplets in an intricate water
puzzle falling, step upon step, one after the other. I listen carefully.
That's when I hear someone softly, almost imperceptibly, weeping.
A sobbing from somewhere in the darkness. Someone is crying for
me.
