re:mote voices

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Wednesday, April 27, 2005

“So what you’ve come to ask me,” I said, “concerns your husband’s late father?”

“No. It’s not about him,” she said. She shook her head slightly a couple of times to emphasize the negative. “It’s about my husband.”

“Is he also a priest?”

“No, he works at Merrill Lynch.”

“The investment firm?”

“That’s right,” she replied, clearly a little irritated. What other Merrill Lynch is there? her tone implied. “He’s a stockbroker.”

I checked the tip of my pencil to see how worn it was, then waited for her to continue.

“My husband is an only son, and he was more interested in stock-trading than Buddhism, so he didn’t succeed his father as head priest of the temple.”

Which all makes perfect sense, don’t you think? her eyes said, but since I didn’t have any opinion one way or the other on Buddhism or stock-trading, I didn’t respond. Instead, I adopted a neutral expression that indicated that I was absorbing every word.

WHERE I’M LIKELY TO FIND IT
by HARUKI MURAKAMI

# posted by remotepush @ 12:41 pm

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