One thousand nine hundred and seventy-one was the Year of Spaghetti.
In 1971, I cooked pasta to live, and lived to cook pasta. The steam rising from the pot was my pride and joy, and the tomato sauce bubbling from the pot gave me great hope in life.
I went to a cooking store and bought a kitchen timer, and a giant aluminum pot big enough for a German shepherd to jump into for a bath, then I went around the foreign supermarkets, collecting all sorts of spices with strange names. I picked up a spaghetti cookbook at the bookstore and bought a dozen tomatoes. I brought home every brand of pasta I could find, made every sauce imaginable. The mixture of onions, garlic, and olive oil swirled in the air, forming a light cloud that drifted through every corner of my tiny apartment, permeating the floors, ceilings, and walls, clinging to clothes, books, vinyl records, tennis rackets, and stacks of old letters. It was a scent you could probably smell from atop a Roman aqueduct.
This is the story of the Year of Spaghetti, 1971 AD.
As a rule, I cook spaghetti, and eat it, alone. I believe that spaghetti is a dish that should be enjoyed alone. I can't really explain why, I just know it is.
I always eat spaghetti with tea and a simple cucumber salad. I make sure I don’t miss anything. I arrange everything neatly on the table and enjoy a leisurely meal, glancing at the newspaper as I eat. From Sunday to Saturday, one Spaghetti Day follows another. A new Sunday marks the start of another Spaghetti Week.
Whenever I sit down to eat a plate of pasta—especially on a rainy afternoon—I always get the feeling that someone is about to knock on my door. Each time, I imagine a different person. Sometimes it’s a stranger, sometimes it’s someone I know. Once, I think of the girl with the slim legs I dated in high school, and once I imagine myself, from a few years ago, knocking on my door. Another time, it’s William Holden, holding Jennifer Jones’s hand.
William Holden?
However, none of these people actually dared to enter the room. They just hesitated outside, without knocking, like fragments of memory, and then slipped away.
Spring, summer, fall, I cooked and cooked again, as if cooking spaghetti were an act of revenge. Like a lonely, jilted girl throwing old love letters into the fireplace, I threw handful after handful of spaghetti into the pot.
I gathered up the trampled shadows of time, kneaded them into the shape of a German Shepherd, threw them into the pot of boiling water, and sprinkled salt on them. Then I stood guard over the pot, chopsticks in hand, until the stopwatch beeped mournfully.
The spaghetti was a cunning bunch, there was no way I could take my eyes off them. If I turned my back, they would probably slide off the edge of the pot and disappear into the night. The night was silent, waiting for the right moment to ambush the fleeing noodles.
Baked eggplant and cheese pasta
Spaghetti with Napoli sauce
Seafood pasta
Garlic pasta marinated in oil
Bacon Egg Spaghetti
Spaghetti with clams
And the other pitiful, nameless leftovers of pasta, thrown haphazardly into the fridge.
Born from a pot of boiling water, the spaghetti strands floated down the river in 1971 and disappeared.
I mourn all of them - all the 1971 spaghetti.
When the phone rang at 3:20 pm, I was lying on the tatami mats, staring at the ceiling. A pool of winter sunlight was pouring down on me. I lay there like a dead fly, empty, in the December sun.
At first, I didn’t realize it was a phone ringing. It was like a distant memory creeping into the air. But eventually, it took shape, and became the unmistakable sound of a phone ringing. It was one hundred percent a phone ringing in the middle of nowhere, one hundred percent real. Still lying there, I reached out and picked up the receiver.
On the other end of the line was a girl, a girl so vague that by four thirty she might have disappeared altogether. She was the ex-girlfriend of a friend of mine. Something had brought them together, this guy and this vague girl, and something had also caused them to break up. I admit, I had reluctantly played a role in their initial acquaintance.
“Sorry to bother you,” she said, “but do you know where he is now?”
I looked up at the phone, running my eyes along the cord. Sure enough, the cord was still attached to the phone. I tried to give a vague answer. Her tone sounded odd, and I knew I didn’t want to get involved in this mess, whatever it was.
"No one tells me where he is," she continued coldly. "Everyone pretends they don't know anything. But there's something important I need to tell him, so do it - tell me where he is. I promise I won't drag you into this. Where is he?"
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in a long time.” It didn’t sound like my voice. I had told the truth about not seeing him in a while, but the rest was a lie—I did know his address and phone number. Whenever I lie, my voice sounds weird.
She did not respond.
The phone was cold as ice.
Then everything around me turned to ice, as if I were in a JG Ballard sci-fi story.
“I really don't know,” I repeated, “He left a long time ago, without a word.”
The girl laughed. "Please. He's not that smart. We're talking about a guy who makes a lot of noise about everything he does."
She was right. My friend was a bit of a jerk.
But I wasn’t about to tell her where he was. If I did, he’d call me and complain. I didn’t want to get dragged into other people’s messes. I’d dug a hole in the backyard and buried everything that needed to be buried. No one would dig it up again.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"You don't like me, do you?" she said suddenly.
I don’t know how to respond. It’s not that I don’t like her. I don’t have any real impression of her. How can you have a bad impression of someone who doesn’t impress you at all?
“I'm sorry,” I repeated, “but I'm cooking spaghetti right now.”
"What?".
“I said I was cooking pasta,” I lied. I don’t know why I said it. But the lie had become so much a part of me that, in that moment, it didn’t seem like a lie at all.
I fill an imaginary pot with imaginary water, light an imaginary stove with an imaginary match.
“So what?” she asked.
I sprinkle imaginary salt into the boiling water, gently drop an imaginary handful of spaghetti into the imaginary pot, set an imaginary kitchen clock for eight minutes.
"Then I can't talk. The pasta will be ruined."
She said nothing.
"I'm really sorry, but cooking pasta requires concentration."
The girl remained silent. The phone in my hand started to freeze again.
"Can you call me back?" I added hastily.
“Because you were busy making pasta?” she asked.
"YES".
"Who are you cooking for, or are you eating alone?"
"I eat alone" - I replied.
She was silent for a long moment, then slowly exhaled. "You have no idea, but I'm having a really hard time. I don't know what to do."
"Sorry I can't help" - I said.
"It's all about money."
"I get it".
"He owes me money," she said. "I lent him some money. I shouldn't have, but I couldn't help it."
I was silent for a minute, my mind drifting to the pasta. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m still cooking the pasta, so…”
She smiled sadly. “Goodbye,” she said. “Say hello to the pasta for me. Hope it turns out OK.”
“Goodbye,” I replied.
When I hung up, the patch of sunlight on the floor had shifted a few centimeters. I lay back down in the pool of light and continued staring at the ceiling.
Thinking about a pot of pasta that never boils is really, really sad.
Now I kind of regret not telling her. Maybe I should have said something. I mean, her ex-boyfriend wasn’t much to write home about—a hollow-faced artist, a smooth talker no one trusted. It sounded like she was short on cash, and, no matter what, had to pay it back.
Sometimes I wonder what happened to her—the thought often comes to mind as I sit over a steaming plate of pasta. After I hang up, will she disappear forever, fading into the shadows at 4:30 p.m.? And am I somehow to blame?
But you have to understand my situation. I didn’t want to get involved with anyone. That’s why I kept cooking noodles, all by myself. In a pot big enough for a German Shepherd to jump in and take a bath.
Wheat stalks swaying in the fields of Italy.
Can you imagine how surprised the Italians would be, if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was...loneliness?
More information
In a 2002 interview with Haruki Murakami, his characters in this book were described as people searching for a way to understand life, with images of reality that are a bit confusing. Murakami explores the confusion, isolation and loneliness that one's perception of reality can create.
The concept of "hyper-reality" was proposed by French theorist Jean Baudrillard, it describes "something" when the real and the virtual are completely intertwined, there is no longer a clear separation, and people find themselves in harmony with the virtual and more distant from the real.
"In the short story 'The Year of Spaghetti', the act of cooking pasta represents the way the character's consciousness receives information from reality (buying spaghetti), interprets it according to his personal psychology (cooking spaghetti), and combines it with his own complex reality (eating spaghetti). The final result (cooked spaghetti) is considered an act of autobiography" - According to Jordan Eash.
*Translated from The Year With Spaghetti - the 14th short story in the short story collection Blind Willow • Sleeping Woman by writer Haruki Murakami, English translation by Philip Gabriel.
