book club: all god’s children can dance
Esmerelda, Reuben, Santorri and Zach sit down to discuss incest and godhood. Yikes.
before the action starts:
psst. This is part 3 in a series. Catch up on the action with parts one and two. Or don’t. You’ll be fine.
scene iii
Esmerelda sits alone in the room. She chainsmokes, and checks her makeup in her compact, flipping it closed, opening it again.
The door opens loudly. Esmerelda jumps. Santorri enters, pulling earbuds out of their ears.
Santorri: Oh, sorry. Where is everybody?
Esmerelda: It’s nothing.
Santorri thinks nothing more of the interaction. Sits down.
Reuben and Zach enter together.
Zach: Hey everyone. How are you doing tonight?
ST: Fine.
ES: Fine.
Reuben takes his normal seat next to Esmerelda. Maybe imperceptibly, Esmerelda scoots away from him.
ZE: Hey everyone. I was just telling Reuben about my shed. It’s going to collapse. There are rat warrens all under it.
ST: Ew, rats?
ZE: I meant rabbits. Right? Anyway, I was looking at it and the rats have tunneled through the old concrete the beneath the door. The floor’s sagging and I’m afraid it will collapse on me. But anyway, what did you think of “all god’s children can dance”? Hi Esmerelda.
ES: Hi, dear.
ZE: What did you think?
ES: It was a sorta freaky one.
ST: This one is my favorite story in the collection, possibly one of my favorite short stories of all time. Definitely my favorite Murakami. It blends his signature twist of the real and the surreal. The sins of the mother and father are visited on the son. And does he get the satisfaction he deserved? Does he get the closure he so desperately needs? The incredible juxtaposition of, of…Is no one going to stop me?
ES: Not tonight. Sorry, dear.
ZE: What’s wrong?
Reuben: This is the one with baseball in it, right?
ES: Nothing.
ZE: Kind of.
RB: Right.
ES: So his mother’s religious, some newfound ladderdays cult.
RB: Latter day.
ES: That’s what I said. And our boy is a drunk. Can’t blame him, really. He wakes up hungover. And we learn his mom is on a religious trip.
RB: A pilgrimage.
ST: Did they say that? I don’t think they said that it was a pilgrimage.
ZE: —Let’s start at the start, shall we? “His head felt as if it had been stuffed with decaying teeth during the night.” That should have been the first line, not the third.
ST: Murakami likes to ground his reader, orient them to the story. Besides, he’s the published writer here, not you.
ZE: Ouch.
ST: So our protagonist wakes up hungover. He wants his mom to bring him a glass of water, and Murakami occasions that to tell us that she’s gone away with other believers for Kansai.
RB: The pilgrimage. I said.
ES: Aren’t they volunteers? After the earthquake. They’re like the Red Cross or the Salvation Army. Isn’t that where the earthquake happened?
RB: Kobe.
ST: Kobe is in Kansai.
RB: Oh.
ES: I don’t know how I knew that. I thought they said that.
ZE: They do say that. Just not yet.
ST: Anyway—He’s late. Yoshiya’s his name. He leaves for work. He comes back late that night and that’s when he sees the man with the missing earlobe. He starts following him and then we get some flashback.
ZE: Murakami has set up a nice story here. He’s given us a likable, flawed character, and set him on an intriguing path. Now he’s going to answer some questions for us and get us oriented.
RB: Before he dis-orients us.
ES: (chewing her fingernails) This is what I was talking about earlier, the breasts. This man is sick.
ZE: What do you mean?
ES: You know what I mean.
ZE: (gesturing) I know but won’t you tell them?
ES: Oh, if I have to. His mother would walk around the house naked, even when he was a teenager. This man is sick. The boy’s horrible mother makes him sleep in her bed. When he told her he didn’t want to be part of the whack-a-dos anymore she didn’t speak to him for two weeks, or bathe herself or anything, and so he feels like he can’t move out on his own or she’ll kill herself. Horrible woman. Horrible. And all she ever tells him about his father is that his father is The Lord. I didn’t know the Japanese had Christian nutbags, too.
RB: Not all Christians are like that, Essie.
ES: Oh, shuddup, Reuby. And don’t call me that.
ST: “ ‘Listen to me, Yoshiya. Someday our Lord, your father, will reveal Himself to you as yours and yours alone.’ ”
ES: His mother says that.
ST: No, the leader of the church group Mr Tabata does.
ES: Same diff.
ST: And I think you’re being too hard on the mom. Remember, she got pregnant when she was a teen, had an abortion, then got pregnant again, got another abortion. She was trying.
ES: Floozie.
ST: How old are you, nine-hundred? Floozie.
RB: Then the doctor has a go. He does her himself.
ZE: And he’s missing an earlobe.
ES: And she tells all this to her son, tells him the doctor is his father, but the doctor knows she’s a slut so he doesn’t accept the kid or assume any responsibilities. Isn’t that just like a man?
Santorri chuckles, perhaps in agreement.
ST: So she has to turn to the church.
ZE: And is that why she lies to her son? Says that he is Christ?
ES: (sarcastically) Is it a lie?
ST: “His mother’s faith was absolute, but Yoshiya was just as certain that his father was the obstetrician. There had been something wrong with the condom. Anything else was out of the question.” Yoshiya thinks pretty rationally for a guy who grew up being told he was Christ reborn. And I have to say, Mr Tabata is awful predatory of his mother. The doctor insists that the child must want to be born, despite all the abortions. He even is the one to name the baby for her: Yoshiya means, “for it is good.”
ES: That could be Yiddish.
ZE: And then we get back to the central action of the story. What did you all think of the structure of this one? It’s a little setup, a lot of backstory, and then some forward action, then yet another large flashback.
ST: It was interesting. I wanted to know what would happen when he met the man with the missing earlobe.
ZE: That kept you reading? (Zach writes something down in his notes)
RB: I thought it was fine.
ES: Pfft.
ZE: What’s that mean?
ES: It’s too much this and that, back and forth. Shirley Jackson says that’s jolting your reader around.
ST: Haruki Murakami can do whatever he wants—
ES: Shirley Jackson’s opinion matters, too, kid.
RB: Okay, enough. Let’s get through this. Murakami’s not jerking anyone around. The kid is watching the doctor read a newspaper about the earthquake and we learn his mother is volunteering with the earthquake. But it’s a pilgrimage—a mission. That’s the word I was looking for. She’s on a mission to help people. And then there’s another flashback.
ST: His mother would take him out to do missionary work once a week.
ES: It was just sloganeering.
ZE: What’s that?
ES: You know.
ZE: I know but tell them.
ES: They were just sloganeering for the church. She’d get dolled up and try to get people to join the Cult of Christ.
ST: Anyway—then we learn a little more about why he isn’t part of the faith anymore. “…the most fundamental and decisive cause was the unending coldness of the One who was his father: His dark, heavy, silent heart of stone.” One is capitalized. He means God. It’s a brilliant twist, a message, curled up within a feeling, nestled under the heart of the story, a little pearl of—
ZE: So back to the central action—
ST: Right. Sorry. We’re on a train and Yoshiya is watching his father read the paper. He gets off when they’re almost out of Tokyo and—get this, I love this, what a classic allusion to all the great sleuth stories that have come before—the doctor-father man gets into a cab and Yoshiya gets into another one and says “ ‘Follow that cab.’ ” Just incredible. Anyway—here’s where we cross over. Goodness, Murakami is so good. Just like this he bridges us from the real into the sur—
RB: Just get to it.
ES: Let the kid have some fun. We only exist up here on stage, in the rest: we melt into the ether of eternal forgettingness.
RB: Who wrote that?
ES: I did.
ZE: I did.
ST: I was just saying that we go from being in the real world—seamlessly, the way only Murakami can—into the surreal. He says, “Now there were hardly any houses along the road, which followed a riverbank and entered an area lined with factories and warehouses. The only things marking this deserted space were new lampposts thrusting up from the earth. Where a high concrete wall stretched along the road, the taxi ahead came to a sudden stop.” We’re in this bizarre, lifeless place. All I could see in my minds eye were these mercury lamps and this massive, gray wall.
ZE: Me too. It’s very effective.
RB: What’s surreal about that?
ST: Places aren’t like that.
ES: I’ve been places like that.
RB: There’s places like that here in Providence. Under 95, out by 6 and 10 under Federal Hill. I drove by it getting here.
ST: Okay, but is that somewhere a doctor would be at 10:30 in the night?
RB: Is that what makes it surreal?
ST: “He looked like a well-made mechanical doll being drawn ahead by a magnet.” That’s describing the doctor-father. They’re traveling on foot now. I can’t help but think of, in Killing Commendatore, when the narrator passes into the land of metaphor. Anyway—
ES: How did he not notice him if they’re the only two around?
ZE: Surreal, isn’t it?
ES: Oh, shut up. I’m with Reuben on this.
RB: I like this story.
ES: Oh, shut up.
RB: It’s kind of like a Raymond Carver.
ZE: Chandler. Interesting connection, Reuben.
ST: Can I get back to the story? Yoshiya pursues the man down a dark alley—so dark he can only hear the man’s footsteps. Then the sound disappears. He keeps going. He bumps into a metal fence. A piece is twisted aside and he gets through. He’s in a baseball field. In center field.
ES: “If Mr Tabata had been there, he would have said, ‘So you see, Yoshiya, our Lord reveals Himself to us in the most unexpected forms.’ ”
ST: And that’s the start of the epiphanic fugue which Murakami uses to complete the story.
RB: Kid, just tell them what happens.
ST: All sorts of things. Yoshiya reflects on how his girlfriend wanted to marry him, and he said no because he was the son of God. And Mr Tabata died, and on his deathbed confessed that he had violent and lustful thoughts toward Yoshiya’s mother. And Yoshiya admits to the reader, to himself, almost, but not to Mr Tabata, that he has those thoughts too. And he knows, if he could turn back in time, and meet his mother when she was young, that he would have knowledge of her.
ZE: So, is he his own father?
ST: I guess it’s all a confessional, leading up to this moment. Isn’t it? He’s admitting he would have sex with his mother if he could.
ES: He’s been abused. Don’t you see that?
ZE: Yes, Esmerelda. I think we all see that.
ES: (feebly) I was never like that with my son.
RB: You had a son? I didn’t know. I didn’t know you had a son.
”all god’s children can dance” is the third short story in the collection after the quake by Haruki Murakami. I get a commission if you buy it through this link. Instead, take it out from your local library or find it used in a trash heap.
Thanks for reading.