Norwegian Wood (37 page)
Authors: Haruki Murakami
“I guess so.”
“I explained why I was doing it and said, ‘So take off your clothes and sit down next to me and show him, too, Momo’ (her name’s Momo), but she wouldn’t do it. She went away shocked. She’s got this really conservative streak.”
“In other words, she’s relatively normal, you mean,” I said.
“Tell me, Watanabe, what did you think of my father?”
“I’m not good with people I’ve just met, but it didn’t bother me being alone with him. I felt pretty comfortable with him. We talked about all kinds of stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Euripides,” I said.
Midori laughed out loud. “You’re so
weird! Nobody
talks about Euripides with a dying person they’ve just met!”
“Well,
nobody
sits in front of her father’s memorial portrait with her legs spread, either!”
Midori chuckled and gave the altar bell a ring. “G’night, Daddy. We’re going to have some fun now, so don’t worry and get some sleep. You’re not suffering anymore, right? You’re dead, right? I’m sure you’re not suffering. If you are, you’d better complain to the gods. Tell ’em it’s just too cruel. I hope you meet Mommy and the two of you really do it. I saw your wee-wee when I helped you pee. It was pretty impressive! So give it everything you’ve got. G’night.”
W
E TOOK TURNS
in the bathtub and changed into pajamas. I borrowed a nearly new pair of her father’s. They were a little small but better than nothing. Midori spread out a mattress for me on the floor of the altar room.
“You’re not scared sleeping in front of the altar?” she asked.
“Not at all. I haven’t done anything bad,” I said with a smile.
“But you’re gonna stay with me and hold me until I fall asleep, right?”
“Right,” I said.
Practically falling over the edge of Midori’s little bed, I held her in
my arms. Nose against my chest, Midori set her hands on my hips. My right arm curled around her back while I tried to keep from falling off by hanging on to the bed frame with my left hand. This was not exactly a situation conducive to sexual excitement. My nose was resting on her head and the short-cut hairs there would give it a tickle every now and then.
“C’mon,
say
something to me,” Midori said with her face buried in my chest.
“Whaddya want me to say?”
“Anything. Something to make me feel good.”
“You’re really cute,” I said.
“Midori,” she said. “Say my name.”
“You’re really cute, Midori,” I corrected myself.
“Whaddya mean
really
cute?”
“So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up.”
Midori lifted her face and looked at me. “You have this special way with words.”
“I can feel my heart softening when you say that,” I said, smiling.
“Say something even nicer.”
“I really like you, Midori. A lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
“Like a spring bear,” I said.
“A spring bear?” Midori looked up again. “What’s that all about? A spring bear.”
“You’re walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring, and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, ‘Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?’ So you and the bear cub spend the whole day in each other’s arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?”
“Yeah.
Really
nice.”
“That’s how much I like you.”
“That is the best thing I’ve ever heard,” said Midori, cuddling up against my chest. “If you like me
that
much, you’ll do anything I tell you to do, right? You won’t get mad, right?”
“No, of course I won’t get mad.”
“And you’ll take care of me always and always.”
“Of course I will,” I said, stroking her short, soft, boyish hair. “Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine.”
“But I’m scared,” she said.
I held her softly, and soon her shoulders were rising and falling, and I could hear the regular breathing of sleep. I slipped out of her bed and went to the kitchen, where I drank a beer. I wasn’t the least bit sleepy, so I thought about reading a book, but I couldn’t find anything worth reading nearby. I considered returning to Midori’s room to look for one there, but I didn’t want to wake her up by rummaging around where she was sleeping.
I sat there staring into space for a while, sipping my beer, when it occurred to me that I was in a bookstore. I went downstairs, switched on the light, and started looking through the paperback shelves. There wasn’t much that appealed to me, and most of what did I had read already, but I had to have something to read no matter what. I picked a discolored copy of Hermann Hesse’s
Beneath the Wheel
that must have been hanging around the shop unsold for a long time, and left the money for it by the cash register. This was my small contribution to reducing the inventory of the Kobayashi Bookstore.
I sat at the kitchen table, drinking my beer and reading
Beneath the Wheel
. I had first read the novel the year I entered middle school. And now, eight years later, here I was, reading the same book in a girl’s kitchen, wearing the undersized pajamas of her dead father. Funny. If it hadn’t been for these strange circumstances, I would probably never have reread
Beneath the Wheel
.
The book did have its dated moments, but as a novel it wasn’t bad. I moved through it slowly, enjoying it line by line, in the hushed bookstore in the middle of the night. A dusty bottle of brandy stood on a shelf in the kitchen. I poured a little into a coffee cup and sipped it. The brandy warmed me but it did nothing to help me feel sleepy.
I went to check on Midori a little before three, but she was sound asleep. She must have been exhausted. The lights from the block of shops beyond the window cast a soft white glow, like moonlight, over the room. Midori slept with her back to the light. She lay so perfectly still, she might have been frozen stiff. Bending over, I caught the sound of her breathing. She slept just like her father.
The suitcase from her recent travels stood by the bed. Her white coat hung on the back of a chair. Her desktop was neatly arranged, and on the wall over the desk hung a Snoopy calendar. I nudged the curtain aside
and looked down at the deserted shops. Every store was closed, their metal shutters down, the vending machines hunched in front of the liquor store the only sign of something waiting for the dawn. The moan of long-distance truck tires sent a deep shudder through the air every now and then. I went back to the kitchen, poured myself another shot of brandy, and went on reading
Beneath the Wheel
.
By the time I finished the book, the sky was growing light. I made myself some instant coffee and used some notepaper and a ballpoint pen I found on the table to write a message to Midori: “I drank some of your brandy. I bought a copy of
Beneath the Wheel
. It got light out, so I’m going home. Good-bye.” Then, after some hesitation, I wrote, “You look really cute when you’re sleeping.” I washed my coffee cup, switched off the kitchen light, went downstairs, quietly lifted the shutter, and went outside. I worried that a neighbor might find me suspicious, but there was no one on the street at five-fifty-something in the morning. Only the crows were on their usual rooftop perch, glaring down at the street. I glanced up at the pale pink curtains in Midori’s window, walked to the streetcar stop, rode to the end of the line, and walked to my dorm. On the way I found an open eatery and had myself a breakfast of rice, miso soup, pickled vegetables, and fried eggs. Circling around to the back of the dorm, I gave a little knock on Nagasawa’s first-floor window. He let me in right away.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Nah.”
I thanked him, went up to my room, brushed my teeth, took my pants off, got under the covers, and clamped my eyes shut. Finally, a dreamless sleep closed over me like a heavy lead door.
I
WROTE TO
N
AOKO
every week, and she often wrote back. None of her letters was very long. Soon there were mentions of the cold November mornings and evenings.
You went back to Tokyo just about the time the fall weather was deepening, so for a time I couldn’t tell whether the hole that opened up inside me was from missing you or from the change of season. Reiko and I talk about you all the time. She says be sure to say Hi to you. She is as nice to me as ever. I don’t think I would have been able to stand this place if I didn’t have her
with me. I cry when I’m lonely. Reiko says it’s good I can cry. But feeling lonely really hurts. When I’m lonely at night, people talk to me from the darkness. They talk to me the way trees moan in the wind at night. Kizuki; my sister: they talk to me like that all the time. They’re lonely too, and looking for someone to talk to.
I often reread your letters at night when I’m lonely and in pain. I get confused by a lot of things that come from outside, but your descriptions of the world around you give me wonderful relief. It’s so strange! I wonder why that should be? So I read them over and over, and Reiko reads them too. Then we talk about the things you tell me. I really liked the part about that girl Midori’s father. We look forward to getting your letter every week as one of our few entertainments—yes, in a place like this, letters are our entertainments.
I try my best to set aside a time in the week for writing to you, but once I actually sit down in front of the blank piece of letter paper, I begin to feel depressed. I’m really having to push myself to write this letter, too. Reiko’s been yelling at me to answer you. Don’t get me wrong, though. I have tons of things I want to talk to you about, to tell you about. It’s just hard for me to put them into writing. Which is why it’s so painful for me to write letters.
Speaking of Midori, she sounds like an interesting person. Reading your letter, I got the feeling she might be in love with you. When I told that to Reiko, she said, “Well, of
course
she is! Even
I
am in love with Watanabe!” We’re picking mushrooms and gathering chestnuts and eating them every day. And I do mean
every
day: rice with chestnuts, rice with
matsutake
mushrooms, but they taste so great, we don’t get tired of them. Reiko doesn’t eat that much, though. For her, it’s still one cigarette after another. The birds and the rabbits are doing just fine.
Good-bye.
Three days after my twentieth birthday, a package arrived for me from Naoko. Inside I found a wine-colored crewneck sweater and a letter.
Happy Birthday! I hope you have a happy year being twenty. My own year of being twenty looks as if it’s going to end with me as miserable as ever, but I’d really like it if you could have your share of happiness and mine combined. Really. Reiko and I each knit half of this sweater. If I had done it all by myself, it would have taken until next Valentine’s Day. The good half is
Reiko’s, and the bad half is mine. Reiko is so good at everything she does, I sometimes hate myself when I’m watching her. I mean, I haven’t got one single thing I’m really good at!
Good-bye. Be well.
The package had a short note from Reiko, too.
How are you? For you, Naoko may be the pinnacle of happiness, but for me she’s just a clumsy girl. Still, we managed to finish this sweater in time for your birthday. Handsome, isn’t it? We picked the color and the style. Happy Birthday.
T
HINKING BACK ON THE YEAR 1969, ALL THAT COMES TO MIND FOR
me is a swamp—a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it’s going to suck my shoe off each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but an endless swampy darkness.
Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John Coltrane, who was joined now by so many others. People screamed there’d be revolutionary changes—which always seemed to be just ahead, at the curve in the road. But the “changes” that came were just two-dimensional stage sets, background without substance or meaning. I trudged along through each day in its turn, looking up only rarely, eyes locked on the endless swamp that lay before me, planting my right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right, never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction, knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time.
I turned twenty, autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing changed in any significant way. Unexcited, I went to my classes, worked three nights a week in the record store, reread
The Great Gatsby
now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my wash and write a long letter to Naoko. Sometimes I would go out with Midori for a meal or to the zoo or a movie. The sale of the Kobayashi Bookstore went off as planned, and Midori and her sister moved into a two-bedroom apartment near Myogadani, a more upscale neighborhood. Midori would move out when her sister got married, and take a unit by herself, she said. Meanwhile, she
invited me to their new apartment for lunch once. It was a sunny, handsome place, and Midori seemed to enjoy living there far more than she had over the Kobayashi Bookstore.