Published in English in 1989 as "Sleep" (Portuguese Edition published 2013).
Sometimes the idea of wasting time by being
asleep goes through my mind. That I could or should be producing something
useful (like reading or making stuff); because sleep would be something useless. Reading,
watching, writing or doing any other activity at dawn. In some sleepless nights
during college, I did it and it seemed to have the power to prolong my life. I
sort of thought aloud: "Hey, life is passing, the hands of the clock are
cruel: Do not sleep! Or, sleep less and enjoy more."
I believed that this
was the thinking of a very few. Reading this Murakami, I once again identified myself
with some ideas of the main character. I tried an experiment. I read the first
page during the day, and I then stopped and decided to read it again after
midnight, thus trying to reproduce the unnamed character’s environment. I felt
a mixture of anxiety and peace in the quiet of the morning. In each author's
description regarding the activities and night life of the woman who did not
sleep for 17 days, the same scene materialized in front of me and I saw her in
the living room, holding Anna Karenina and a glass of Remy Martin. Like going
out at dawn and feeling the sense of danger and deliverance narrated in the Murakami’s story.
The description of the nightmare,
which occurred before the continuous wakefulness, is a striking moment: "Fiquei ali imobilizada, a ouvir a minha
própria respiração no seu rumor cavernoso, terrivelmente desagradável, como se
eu ocupasse todo o espaço de uma enorme caverna.” (I stood still, listening to my own labored
breathing, as if I were stretched out full length on the floor of a huge cavern).
The SFional manifested itself in the figure of a black figure in front of her:
"Pareceu-me distinguir vagamente no
escuro qualquer coisa aos meus pés, uma sombra negra.” (Just then I seemed
to catch a glimpse of something at the foot of the bed, something like a vague,
black shadow).
The adjectival death from lack of
sleep of the (un)happy woman: "Fechei
os olhos e experimentei recordar-me de como era ter sono, mas, dentro de mim,
existia apenas uma treva vigilante. Uma treva vigilante: isso fazia-me
pensar na morte.”(I
closed my eyes and tried to recall the sensation of sleeping, but all that
existed for me inside was a watchful darkness. A watchful darkness: what it
called to mind was death.)
“Se a morte não significasse uma condição de repouso para os comuns
mortais, como nós, que sinal de redenção poderíamos esperar nesta vida
imperfeita e carregada de tormentos?” (If the state of death was not to be a rest for us, then what was going
to redeem this imperfect life of ours, so fraught with exhaustion?). This excerpt
sent me to people in a vegetative state or in a coma and to a passage in
the Gospel of Matthew, 27: 52-52
(taken from my New King James Bible): "and
the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep
were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went
into the holy city and appeared to many."
Dying is associated with sleep in two other
literary works. William Shakespeare, Hamlet in Act III, scene 1, recites the
famous monologue:
"To die, to
sleep;
To sleep: perchance to
dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of
death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled
off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."
Also in chapter XIX of "The Posthumous Memoirs
of Bras Cubas" by Machado de Assis it’s said: "Fiquei só; mas a musa do
capitão varrera-me do espírito os pensamentos maus: preferi dormir, que é um
modo interino de morrer“(I was left alone, but the captain's muse had swept
away all evil thoughts from my spirit. I preferred going to sleep, which is an
interim way of dying.)
What about her final? It depends on
interpretation and imagination of each reader. I know what I thought, but I
won’t “verbalize” it here”…
Reading Murakami always puts my cognitive
fitness to the test. Murakami’s style depends largely on the ability/ sensitivity
of the reader to capture or see any meaning in the story.
NB: Fabulous images by Kat Menschik, whose
uncomfortable drawings are more than an apt follow-up to the words of Murakami,
as an extra addition to chilling sense of foreboding.
