Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo.He is the author of many novels as well as short stories and non-fiction.His works includeNorwegian Wood,The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,Kafka on the Shore,After DarkandWhat I Talk About When I Talk About Running.His work has been translated into more than forty languages, and the most recent of his many international honours is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J.M.Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V.S.Naipaul.1Elevator, Silence, OverweightTHE ELEVATOR CONTINUEDits impossibly slow ascent.Or at least I imagined it was ascent.There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished.It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all.But let’s just assume it was going up.Merely a guess.Maybe I’d gone up twelve stories, then down three.Maybe I’d circled the globe.How would I know?Every last thing about this elevator was worlds apart from the cheap die-cut job in my apartment building, scarcely one notch up the evolutionary scale from a well bucket.You’d never believe the two pieces of machinery had the same name and the same purpose.The two were pushing the outer limits conceivable as elevators.First of all, consider the space.This elevator was so spacious it could have served as an office.Put in a desk, add acabinetand a locker, throw in a kitchenette, and you’d still have room to spare.You might even squeeze in three camels and a mid-range palm tree while you were at it.Second, there was the cleanliness.Antiseptic as a brand-new coffin.The walls and ceiling were absolutely spotless polished stainless steel, the floor immaculately carpeted in a handsome moss-green.Third, it was dead silent.There wasn’t a sound—literally not one sound—from the mom…