Nocturnes

Crooners, music and nightfall.

'Vittorio steered us round another corner, and suddenly there was laughter and music, and we were drifting past a large, brightly lit restaurant. Every table seemed taken, the waiters were rushing about, the diners looked very happy, even though it couldn't have been so warm next to the canal at that time of year. After the quiet and the darkness we'd been traveling through, the restaurant was kind of unsettling.'

The excerpts are from Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro's latest collection of short stories. I've only managed the first story and it has already left its mark. What I saw as a story of two people in love but having to go their separate ways due to certain circumstances can also be seen as a story of how two people made use of each other to get ahead in life. Although I am in favor of the former perspective, regardless of the diversity in perspective, I think the story reveals the many feelings that are ancillary to love yet impossible to separate. Love will always be more complicated than what its four little letters reveal. Increasingly, it appears to be the case that it is not just enough to have that warm fuzzy feeling for someone else. You always need that and a little bit more. And there are, of course, the games we play and the battle of wills that are fought, but once it gets to that stage, all is already lost.

'I still don't get it, Mr Gardner. This place you and Mrs Gardner come from can't be so different from everywhere else. That's why, Mr Gardner, that's why these songs you've been singing all these years, they make sense for people everywhere. Even where I used to live. And what do all these songs say? If two people fall out of love and they have to part, then that's sad. But if they go on loving each other, they should stay together for ever. That's what these songs are saying. I understand what you're saying, friend. And it might sound hard to you, I Know. But that's the way it is.'