"Barn Burning" by Haruki Murakami

 

The short story of Barn Burning caught me completely off guard. I wasn't prepared for it. It's one of those Murakami stories that you need to read, sit back for a while, ignore it for some time, then reread it in order for you to come up with an explanation that may/may not be close to what Murakami meant. 

It's a story about a married man who has a girl that is a friend (not a girlfriend). She works as an advertisement model and studies pantomime. The unnamed girl who is a friend of the narrator is a carefree, simple character who doesn't value what most people think of as important in a relationship (even a dealbreaker). Things like age or marital status or income to be of the same importance "as shoe size and vocal pitch and the shape of one's fingernails". She's young, having financial troubles. She lost her father about one year after she'd met the narrator. With the inheritance, she decided to travel to Algeria. When she returned to Japan, she brought with her a man she'd met in Algiers. One day, the couple decides to stay in the narrator's house. After some drinks, mixed with some weed smoking, the girl leaves the narrator and the Algerian man alone. Out of the blue, the man confesses that he burns barns from time to time. In fact, he already decided to burn one close to the narrator's place. The narrator searches for every barn in the area, but all of them are untouched. After a while, the narrator meets the Algerian man who tells him that he already burned the barn. He also informs the narrator that the girl went missing. 

Reading the story was a rollercoaster of a ride. At first, it began like any Murakami story, making expositions to the characters and the settings, etc. I thought it was another social-commentary story. Then the story turned to be a moody one when the three characters started partaking while Miles Davis was playing in the background. Then, out of the blue, the mood dissipated and turned into a mystery when the Algerian man stated that he burns barns. Then, it dramatically shifted into a psychological thriller when the girl was nowhere to be found.

There's a lot going on for sure. I think—and I'm not one hundred percent sure—that the man whom the girl brought with her from Algeria has something to do with her disappearance. Murakami can be really tricky when it comes to symbols and metaphors. The guy tailors his bespoke symbols and metaphors! The neglected 'barns' could mean anything. They, perhaps, mean literal barns, or people whose lives are in ruin, either by circumstance or by their own hands. The unnamed girl could be a barn that is "waiting to be burned". And when they are burned, there will be "no grief to anyone". They're nobodies, and no one will miss them. "They just...vanish. One, two, poof!"

I'm inclined to believe the latter since Murakami mentioned something in his epic 1Q84 about 'My body is my temple'.

My take on this short story is really dark. I could be wrong, terribly wrong. Even so, it didn't stand in my way having fun scratching my brain for answers.