Thinking about how many different breeds dogs and cats have developed into, and how nice it would be if someday humans would do so as well, I thought again about the woman I’d broken up with, and thought that it was for the good of both of us that we broke up, and pictured the day when humans would have evolved into as many different breeds as there are of dogs and cats, and thought, as to the breakup, that we had merely found one of the countless reasons for which we should break up. Perhaps the reason why we broke up was because I couldn’t find a reason to keep seeing her, and I thought such a reason was sufficient for a breakup. And I thought that everything that can happen in the world only happens because it can, that what happens is just that something among the things that can’t happen loses its possibility of not happening — everything that has happened up to this point could have not happened — that if there is a purpose to the world, it’s to make everything that can happen, happen. And I thought, as if coming to a conclusion, that my mind was made up while I was looking at a part of the massive steel structure called the Eiffel Tower out the window, and that I, having always pictured the end of my relationship with someone, had always pictured where and how my relationship with her would come to an end. And it seemed that the fact that I thought about her for a moment told me nothing as to if I still had feelings for her, or if the opposite were true, and that’s what I believed.
Looking at the Eiffel Tower, I tried to savor the pleasure a breakup brings — in the same way I sought some pleasure in returning home from a trip, looking at the empty house with no one there, and feeling that I was back to my original self, or in other words, my lone self — but without success.
I had already had a chance to break up with her before that. Late one night when we were in the city where we lived, we were sitting in a cafe, and she was telling me that she was breaking up with me. I’d already felt earlier that something between us had come to an end, and I wondered why the feeling that something had come to an end always came to me before something actually came to an end, and I quietly listened to her, thinking that perhaps it was because I always had in me a sense of anticipation for the end of something. Anyway, while it was raining, and while she was talking, a man who had been passing by outside the window came to a stop and looked at the window, and it turned out that he was someone I knew. I waved lightly at him when she stopped talking for a moment and looked elsewhere, but he didn’t seem to see us inside. He went off somewhere else after a little while, staggering as if drunk, but when I looked out the window a moment later, he was once again passing in front of it. For several minutes even after that, he kept going back and forth as if lost, or for some other reason, like an illusion, and I had a hard time focusing on what she was saying because of him, and accepting what was happening to me as something that was actually happening to me, and although it wasn’t necessarily because of that, we couldn’t break up that night.
I recalled some memories I had of her, for instance, how we picked acacia flowers together every spring and made liquor with them, and how she was always more daring than I was in every way, and how we talked about the fact that we didn’t have a single picture of one of us sitting and the other lying with his or her head on the other’s leg, against the backdrop of a landscape, and how I thought that we may never end up having a picture like that, although one of us said that he or she wanted a picture like that, and I felt a little sad thinking about the process and the results involved in meeting and breaking up with someone, in which the person seems indispensable at times when you’re seeing each other, but becomes irrelevant after you break up, and in the end, becomes almost completely removed from your mind, as if the person had never existed, but the sadness, too, like the joy that seems insufficient to be called joy even when I do feel joy, seemed insufficient to be called sadness, and I didn’t feel anything more special than that. One of my biggest problems was that I couldn’t feel any emotion fully. I must have come across something beautiful once, and felt that it was beautiful, if only in that moment, there must have been such a moment, but I didn’t have a clear memory of such a moment.
Looking at the Eiffel Tower I’d tried so hard not to see, I felt a sort of confidence rise in me, confidence that I’d fail in all my future relationships as well, although I didn’t know where the confidence came from, and thought that I could put a closure to our relationship by writing something about how I met and broke up with her, perhaps a novel about a relationship that turned into a failure, or never turned into a romantic relationship — thinking that sometimes, all you can do about something that’s come to an end is talk about it — and felt somewhat tempted to write a love story, but writing such a thing seemed a very unseemly thing to do. Anyway, a little while after we broke up, I saw her, no, someone who looked very much like her, walking side by side on the street with a man, holding hands, looking affectionate, and realized that I’d never walked with her like that, holding hands — I always felt awkward walking with a woman, holding hands, and offered my hand grudgingly as if I were about to shake off her hand — and thought that the fact could explain one aspect of my romantic relationships, and that perhaps I could write a story about that, but again I gave up.
I was deeply disappointed by the game the dog was playing, and in the end got up from the bench, went to a nearby park, and sat on an empty swing, picturing the playground near my house that I visited from time to time, and thought that I might be able to go home with a happy heart if I saw girls jumping ropes, or a dog being dragged away by someone against its will, past children running around columns of water spurting from the ground — once I went somewhere and saw someone climb an artificial rock wall in a park in the city and sincerely hoped that he would fall in the middle of climbing, and could end my journey and come home when, in the end, he fell to the ground — but there were no such sights to be seen. There were, however, children running around between columns of water spurting straight up in a nearby fountain, but the sight, which ordinarily may have drawn a different response from me, made me feel indifferent at that moment. But I was pleased to see instead a girl sitting on a bench eating ice cream. The ice cream in her hand was melting and trickling down her hand, and it was always pleasant to see a child licking melting ice cream. Was it because the ice cream was trickling down a child’s hand? Or did ice cream trickling down any hand bring me pleasure? Or did the pleasure come from my idea of ice cream melting in hand? I can’t be sure.
And by then I was feeling somewhat ridiculously good after passing a period of extreme bitterness resulting from the breakup, so I tried to make my somewhat ridiculously good mood ridiculously better, or keep it up, at least, but it wasn’t easy, and there was nothing around me that responded to my effort.
A Caucasian man who looked somewhat slow was sitting on a bench next to me, and I saw that he was plucking his nose hair very subtly, in his own way, as if he weren’t doing such a thing as plucking nose hair, as if he were concerned with what people around him thought, although he didn’t seem concerned, and what he was doing looked so subtle yet naïve that it made those who were watching him feel extremely frustrated. He somehow managed to pluck a few strands of his nose hair, and although it was quite understandable that he was concerned about not having plucked the rest, it was very unseemly that he was plucking his nose hair like that, while pretending not to, in a public place. He could have gone someplace without people and plucked the rest of his nose hair as much as he wished, to his heart’s content, but he didn’t. Plucking your nose hair in a public place like that should be legally banned, just as it’s legally banned to name or call a pig Napoleon in France. Seeing someone plucking his nose hair could make you aware of your own nose hair, even if it didn’t make you pluck your nose hair, which could stop your train of thought.