Lederhosen
By MURAKAMI Haruki
Translated by Alfread Birnbaum
"Mother dumped my father," a friend of my wifes was saying one day, "all because of a pair of shorts."
Ive got to ask. "A pair of shorts?"
"I know it sounds strange," she says, "because it is a straory."
A large woman, her height and build are almost the same as mine. She tutors electric an, but most of her free time she divides between swimming and skiing and tennis, so shes trim and always tanned. You might call her a sports fanatie days off, she puts in a m run before heading to the local pool to do laps; then at two or three iernoon its tennis, followed by aerobiow, I like my sports, but Im nowhere near her league.
I doo suggest shes aggressive or obsessive about things. Quite the trary, shes really rather retiring; shed never dream of puttiional pressure on anyone. Only shes driven; her body--and very likely the spirit attached to that body--craves vigorous activity, relentless as a et.
Which may have something to do with why shes unmarried. Oh, shes had affairs--the woman may be a little on the large side, but she is beautiful--shes been proposed to, even agreed to take the plunge. But iably, whes gotten to the wedding stage, some problem has e up and everything falls through.
Like my wife says, "Shes just unlucky."
"Well, I guess," I sympathize.
Im not in total agreement with the wife on this. True, luck may rule over parts of a persons life and luck may cast patches of shadow across the ground of our being, but where theres a will--much less a will strong enough to swim thirty laps or ruy kilometers--theres a way to overost any trouble. No, her heart was never set on marrying, is how I see it. Marriage just doesnt fall within the sweep of her et, at least irely.
And so she keeps on tut electric aing every free moment to sports, falling regularly in and out of unlucky love.
Its a rainy Sunday afternoon and shes e two hours earlier than expected, while my wife is still out shopping.
"Five me," she apologizes. "I took a rain che todays tennis, which left me two hours to spare. Id have been bored out of my mind being alo home, so I just thought...Am I interrupting anything?"
Not at all, I say. I didnt feel quite in the mood to work and was just sitting around, y lap, watg a video. I show her in, go to the kit, and make coffee. Two cups, for watg the last twenty minutes of Jaws. Of course, weve both seen the movie before--probably more than once?so her of us is particularly riveted to the tube. But were watg it anyway because its there in front of our eyes.
Its THE END. The credits roll up. No sign of the wife. So we chat a bit. Sharks, seaside, swimming.... Still no wife. We go on talking. Now, I suppose I like the woman well enough, but after an hour of this our lack of things in on bees obvious. The fact is, shes my wifes friend, not mine.
Im already thinking about popping in the video when she suddenly brings up the story of her parents divorce. I t fathom the e--at least to my mind, theres no liween swimming and her folks splitting up--but I uess a reason is where you find it.
"They werent really shorts", she says. "They were lederhosen."
"You mean those hiking pants the Germans wear? The ones with the shoulder straps?"
"You got it. Father wanted a pair of lederhosen as a souvenir gift. Well, Fathers pretty tall for his geion. He might even look