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HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949
...
His first work of non-fiction,
Underground, is an examination of the Tokyo subway gas attack
...
Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, John
Irving, and Raymond Carver
...
He
has translated Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and has
completed a study entitled Haruki

Also by Haruki Murakami in English translation

Fiction
DANCE DANCE DANCE
THE ELEPHANT VANISHES
HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD
A WILD SHEEP CHASE
THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE
SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN
SPUTNIK SWEETHEART

Non-fiction
UNDERGROUND

2

Haruki Murakami

NORWEGIAN WOOD
Translated from the Japanese by
Jay Rubin

This e-book is not to be sold
...
harvill
...
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,
hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser

4

I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through
dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg airport
...
So - Germany again
...
The melody never failed to send a shudder
through me, but this time it hit me harder than ever
...
Before long one of the German stewardesses approached and
asked in English if I were sick
...
"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure
...
"
She smiled and left, and the music changed to a Billy Joel tune
...

The plane reached the gate
...
I could smell the grass, feel the wind on my face, hear
the cries of the birds
...


5

The stewardess came to check on me again
...

"I'm fine, thanks," I said with a smile
...
"
"I know what you mean," she said
...
"
She stood and gave me a lovely smile
...

Auf Wiedersehen
...
"
Eighteen years have gone by, and still I can bring back every detail of
that day in the meadow
...
The October
breeze set white fronds of head-high grasses swaying
...
It almost hurt to
look at that far-off sky
...
We heard no other
sounds
...
We saw only two bright red birds
leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods
...

Memory is a funny thing
...
I never stopped to think of it as something that would make
a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that 18 years later I
would recall it in such detail
...
I was thinking about myself
...
I was thinking about the two of us
together, and then about myself again
...
And worse, I was in love
...
Scenery was the last thing on my mind
...
The smell of the grass, the faint chill of the wind, the line of the
hills, the barking of a dog: these are the first things, and they come
with absolute clarity
...
And yet, as clear as the scene may be, no one is in it
...
Naoko is not there, and neither am I
...
All I'm left
holding is a background, pure scenery, with no people at the front
...
I start joining
images - her tiny, cold hand; her straight, black hair so smooth and
cool to the touch; a soft, rounded earlobe and the microscopic mole
just beneath it; the camel-hair coat she wore in the winter; her habit of
looking straight into my eyes when asking a question; the slight
trembling that would come to her voice now and then (as though she
were speaking on a windy hilltop) - and suddenly her face is there,
always in profile at first, because Naoko and I were always out
walking together, side by side
...

It takes time, though, for Naoko's face to appear
...
The sad truth is that what I
could recall in 5 seconds all too soon needed 10, then 30, then a full
minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk
...
There is no way around it:
my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko
used to stand - where my old self used to stand
...
Each time it appears, it delivers

7

a kick to some part of my mind
...
I'm still here
...
Think about why I'm still here
...
There's no pain at all
...
And even that is bound to fade one day
...
Which is
why I am writing this book
...
To understand
...
I have to write things down to feel I fully
comprehend them
...
I have no idea whether there was such a
well
...
Once she had described it to me, though,
I was never able to think of that meadow scene without the well
...
I
can describe the well in minute detail
...
Nothing marked its perimeter no fence, no stone curb (at least not one that rose above ground level)
...
The stones of its collar
had been weathered and turned a strange muddy-white
...
You could lean over the edge and peer down to see
nothing
...
It was
deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the
world's darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density
...

She would speak that way sometimes, slowing down to find the exact
word she was looking for
...
"The one thing I know for sure is that it's around here

8

somewhere
...
"A deep well, but
nobody knows where it is
...
"
"The end
...
"
"Things like that must happen
...
Maybe once in two or three years
...
So
then the people around here say, "Oh, he fell in the field well'
...

"No, it's a terrible way to die," said Naoko, brushing a cluster of grass
seed from her jacket
...

You'd yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody would hear you, and
you couldn't expect anyone to find you, and you'd have centipedes and
spiders crawling all over you, and the bones of the ones who died
before are scattered all around you, and it's dark and soggy, and high
overhead there's this tiny, tiny circle of light like a winter moon
...
"
"Yuck, just thinking about it makes my flesh creep," I said
...
"
"But nobody can find it
...
"
"Don't worry, I won't
...

"Don't you worry," she said
...
You could go running all
around here in the middle of the night and you'd never fall into the
well
...
"
"Never?"
"Never!"
"How can you be so sure?"

9

"I just know," she said, increasing her grip on my hand and walking
along in silence
...
I'm always right
...
For example, when I'm really
close to you like this, I'm not the least bit scared
...
"
"Well, that's the answer," I said
...
"
"Do you mean that?"
"Of course
...
So did I
...
Deep within her own pattern
...
Then she
stretched to her full height and touched her cheek to mine
...

"Thank you
...

"I'm so happy you said that
...

"But it's impossible
...
It would be terrible
...
I could tell
that all kinds of thoughts were whirling around in her head, so rather
than intrude on them I kept silent and walked by her side
...

"Wrong how?" I murmured
...
I mean, suppose we got married
...
Who's going to watch over me
while you're away? Or if you go on a business trip, who's going to
watch over me then? Can I be glued to you every minute of our lives?
What kind of equality would there be in that? What kind of

10

relationship would that be? Sooner or later you'd get sick of me
...
I couldn't stand that
...
"
"But your problems are not going to continue for the rest of your life,"
I said, touching her back
...
And when they do,
we'll stop and think about how to go on from there
...
We're not running our lives according to some
account book
...
Don't you see? Why do you
have to be so rigid? Relax, let down your guard
...
Relax your body, and the rest of you
will lighten up
...

Naoko's voice alerted me to the possibility that I had said something I
shouldn't have
...
"You're not telling me anything I don't know
already
...
' What's
the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart
...
If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back
...
Why can't you see that?
How can you talk about watching over me if you can't see that?"
I said nothing
...
Really confused
...

Deeper
...
colder
...
How could you
have slept with me that time? How could you have done such a thing?
Why didn't you just leave me alone?"
Now we were walking through the frightful silence of a pine forest
...
As if
searching for something we'd lost, Naoko and I continued slowly

11

along the path
...

"I didn't mean to hurt you
...

Really, I'm sorry
...
"
"I suppose I don't really understand you yet," I said
...
It takes me a while to understand things
...
"
We came to a stop and stood in the silent forest, listening
...
Hands in pockets,
Naoko stood there thinking, her eyes focused on nothing in particular
...
"Do you love me?"
"You know I do
...
"
Naoko smiled and shook her head
...
One is for you to
realize how grateful I am that you came to see me here
...
I know it's going to save me
if anything will
...
"
"I'll come to see you again," I said
...
Will you remember that I
existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?"
"Always," I said
...
"
She walked on without speaking
...
A dog barked
again, closer than before
...
I followed two or three
steps behind
...
"The well might be
around here somewhere
...
We walked the rest of the way side by side
...

"I'll never forget you," I said
...
"
Even so, my memory has grown increasingly dim, and I have already
forgotten any number of things
...
What if I've forgotten the most important
thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all
the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?
Be that as it may, it's all I have to work with
...

This is the only way I know to keep my promise to Naoko
...
But I
couldn't produce a line
...

Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to
start - the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless
...
The more the
memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to
understand her
...

Naoko herself knew, of course
...
Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget
her, to remember that she had existed
...
Because
Naoko never loved me
...
I was 18 and a first-year student
...
The dormitory provided meals and other facilities
and would probably help their unworldly 18-year-old survive
...
A dorm cost far less than a
private room
...
For my part, I would have preferred to rent
a flat and live in comfortable solitude, but knowing what my parents
had to spend on enrolment fees and tuition at the private university I
was attending, I was in no position to insist
...

Located on a hill in the middle of the city with open views, the
dormitory compound sat on a large quadrangle surrounded by a
concrete wall
...
People said it was at least 150 years old
...

The paved path leading from the gate circumvented the tree and
continued on long and straight across a broad quadrangle, two threestory concrete dorm buildings facing each other on either side of the
path
...
However there was nothing dirty about
them, nor did they feel dark
...

Beyond the two dormitories, the path led up to the entrance
of a two-story common building, the first floor of which contained a
dining hall and bathrooms, the second consisting of an auditorium,
meeting rooms, and even guest rooms, whose use I could never

14

fathom
...
Broad green lawns filled the quadrangle, and
circulating sprinklers caught the sunlight as they turned
...
The complex had everything you could want
...
It was
run by some kind of fishy foundation that centered on this extreme
right-wing guy, and there was something strangely twisted - as far as I
was concerned - about the way they ran the place
...
The
proclaimed "founding spirit" of the dormitory was "to strive to nurture
human resources of service to the nation through the ultimate in
educational fundamentals", and many financial leaders who endorsed
this "spirit" had contributed their private funds to the construction of
the place
...
Some said it was a tax dodge, others
saw it as a publicity stunt for the contributors, and still others claimed
that the construction of the dormitory was a cover for swindling the
public out of a prime piece of real estate
...
They formed "study
groups" that met several times a month and included some of the
founders
...
I had no idea which - if any - of these theories was correct,
but they all shared the assumption that there was "something fishy"
about the place
...
Why I put up with it so long,
I can't really say
...

Each day began with the solemn raising of the flag
...
You can't have one without the other
...

The Head of the east dormitory (my building) was in charge of the
flag
...

His bristly hair was flecked with grey, and his sunburned neck bore a
long scar
...
Next to him stood a
student who acted as his assistant
...

He had the world's shortest crewcut and always wore a navy-blue
student uniform
...
I'm not even sure he was
a student, though you would think he must have been, given the
uniform - which quickly became his nickname
...
This creepy
couple would raise the banner of the Rising Sun every morning at six
...

The two would appear in the quadrangle at almost the exact moment
the radio beeped the six o'clock signal
...
Uniform held a ceremonial box of untreated
paulownia wood, while Nakano carried a Sony tape recorder at his
side
...
This he reverentially
proffered to Nakano, who would clip it to the rope on the flagpole,
revealing the bright red circle of the Rising Sun on a field of pure
white
...

"May Our Lord's Reign
...

"Until pebbles turn to boulders
...

"And be covered with moss
...
The two stood to attention, rigid, looking up at
the flag, which was quite a sight on clear days when the wind was
blowing
...
Down the banner would come
and find its place in the box
...

I didn't know why the flag had to be taken down at night
...
Or maybe it didn't
matter all that much and nobody really cared - aside from me
...
It was just something that happened to cross my
mind
...
Double
rooms were a little longer and narrower than nine-by-twelve, with an
aluminium-framed window in the wall opposite the door and two
desks by the window arranged so the inhabitants of the room could
study back-to-back
...
The
furniture supplied was sturdy and simple and included a pair of
lockers, a small coffee table, and some built-in shelves
...
The shelves of most rooms carried such items as transistor
radios, hairdryers, electric carafes and cookers, instant coffee, tea
bags, sugar cubes, and simple pots and bowls for preparing instant
ramen
...
One guy had a photo of pigs mating, but this was a farout exception to the usual naked women, girl pop singers or actresses
...

The filth of these all-male rooms was horrifying
...
Empty cans used

17

for ashtrays held mounds of cigarette butts, and when these started to
smoulder they'd be doused with coffee or beer and left to give off a
sour stink
...
It never occurred to anyone to sweep up and throw these
things in the bin
...
Each room had its own horrendous smell, but the components of
that smell were always the same: sweat, body odour and rubbish
...
In
retrospect, it seems amazing that these shitpiles gave rise to no killer
epidemics
...
The floor
and window were spotless, the mattresses were aired each week, all
pencils stood in the pencil holders, and even the curtains were washed
once a month
...
None of the
others in the dorm believed me when I told them about the curtains
...
They believed,
rather, that curtains were semi-permanent parts of the window
...

We didn't even have pin-ups
...
I had put up a nude shot, but my room-mate had pulled it
down
...
I wasn't especially
attached to the nude, so I didn't protest
...

"Oh, Storm Trooper likes to wank looking at this," I said
...

Everybody sympathized with me for having Storm Trooper as a roommate, but I really wasn't that upset about it
...
He did all the cleaning, he took
care of sunning the mattresses, he threw out the rubbish
...
He'd even point out when it was time for me to go to the barber's
or trim my nasal hair
...

Storm Trooper was studying geography at a national university
...
"
"You like maps?" I asked
...
When I graduate, I'm going to work for the Geographical
Survey Institute and make m-m-maps
...
This was one of the very first new impressions I received when I
came to Tokyo for the first time
...
Odd, though, that someone who wanted
to work for the government's Geographical Survey Institute should
stutter every time he said the word "map"
...

"W what are you studying?" he asked me
...

"Gonna put on plays?"
"Nah, just read scripts and do research
...
"
He said he had heard of Shakespeare but not the others
...

"You like plays?" he asked
...
"
This confused him, and when he was confused, his stuttering got
worse
...

"I could have picked anything," I said
...
I
just happened to pick drama, that's all," which was not the most
convincing explanation I could have come up with
...
"I like mm-maps, so I decided to come to Tokyo and get my parents to s-send
me money so I could study m-m-maps
...
I gave up trying to explain
myself
...
He got the
upper bunk
...
To
these he would add a uniform jacket and black briefcase when he went
to his university: a typical right-wing student
...
But in fact he was totally
indifferent to politics
...
What interested him were things like
changes in the coastline or the completion of a new railway tunnel
...
He'd go on for hours once he got started on a subject
like that, until you either ran away or fell asleep
...
Which is to say that that ostentatious flag-raising ritual was
not entirely useless
...
I sometimes got the feeling he must be taking out each
tooth and washing it, one at a time
...
Finally he'd do radio

20

callisthenics with the rest of the nation
...
He
took his jumping seriously and made the bed bounce every time he hit
the floor
...

"Hey, can you do that on the roof or somewhere?" I said
...
"
"But it's already 6
...

"Yeah, I know it's 6
...
I'm still supposed to be asleep
...
"
"Anyway, I can't do it on the roof
...
Here, we're over a storeroom
...
On the lawn
...
I don't have a transistor radio
...
And you can't do radio callisthenics without music
...
Mine was a
transistor portable, but it was strictly FM, for music
...
"Do your exercises but cut out the
jumping part
...
What do you say?"
"J-jumping? What's that?"
"Jumping is jumping
...
" "But there isn't any
jumping
...
I was ready to give up, but I wanted to
make my point
...
"I'm
talking about this," I said
...
I guess you're right
...
"
"See what I mean?" I said, sitting on the edge of the bed
...
I can put up with the rest
...
"

21

"But that's impossible," he said matter-of-factly
...
I've been doing the same thing every day for ten years,
and once I start I do the whole routine unconsciously
...
"
There was nothing more for me to say
...
Storm Trooper treasured
everything he owned
...

"Hey, Watanabe, why don't you just get up and exercise with me?"
And he went off to breakfast
...
I hadn't been trying to amuse her, but I ended up
laughing myself
...

We had left the train at Yotsuya and were walking along the
embankment by the station
...
The brief on-and-off showers of the morning had cleared up
before noon, and a south wind had swept away the low-hanging
clouds
...
This was an early summer day
...
Everyone looked happy in the warm
Sunday afternoon sun
...
Only
where two nuns in winter habits sat talking on a bench did the summer
light seem not to reach, though both wore looks of satisfaction as they
enjoyed chatting in the sun
...
Naoko had rolled the sleeves

22

of her light grey sweatshirt up to her elbows
...
I felt as if I had seen her
in that shirt long before
...
I didn't have that much to remember about Naoko at the
time
...
"Is it fun to live with
a lot of other people?"
"I don't know, I've only been doing it a month or so
...
"
She stopped at a fountain and took a sip, wiping her mouth with a
white handkerchief she took from her trouser pocket
...

"Do you think I could do it?"
"What? Living in a dorm?"
"Uh-huh
...
You could let a lot of things
bother you if you wanted to - the rules, the idiots who think they're hot
shit, the room-mates doing radio callisthenics at 6
...

But it's pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage
...
She seemed to be turning something
over in her mind
...
Now I saw that her eyes were so deep and
clear they made my heart thump
...
It was the first time the two of
us had ever gone walking together or talked at such length
...

"Uh-uh," she said
...
And
...
Then she sighed and looked down
...
Never mind
...
She continued walking east, and
I followed just behind
...

The plump cheeks that had been a special feature of hers were all but
gone, and her neck had become delicate and slender
...
And a lot prettier than I remembered
...

We had not planned to meet but had run into each other on the Chuo
commuter line
...

She had suggested that we leave the train, which we happened to do in
Yotsuya, where the green embankment makes for a nice place to walk
by the old castle moat
...
We had never really had much to say to each other
...
I could have closed the distance
between us, but something held me back
...
She wore a big, brown
hairslide, and when she turned her head I caught a glimpse of a small,
white ear
...

Sometimes it would be a remark I might have responded to, and sometimes it would be something to which I had no idea how to reply
...
She didn't
seem to care one way or another
...
Oh, well, I told myself, it was a nice day for a stroll
...

She turned right at Lidabashi, came out at the moat, crossed the
intersection at Jinbocho, climbed the hill at Ochanomizu and came out

24

at Hongo
...
It
was a challenging route
...

"Where are we?" asked Naoko, as if noticing our surroundings for the
first time
...
"Didn't you know? We made this big arc
...
I was just following you
...
Thirsty, I had
a whole beer to myself
...
I was exhausted from all
that walking, and she just sat there with her hands on the table,
mulling something over again
...
And we just
walked from Yotsuya to Komagome, I said to myself
...

"Surprised?"
"Yeah
...
I used to
do the 10,000 metres
...
You know our house - right there,
next to the mountain
...
"
"It doesn't show," I said
...
"Everybody thinks I'm this delicate little girl
...
" To which she added a
momentary smile
...
"I'm worn out
...
" "Still, I'm glad
we had a chance to talk
...

She was playing with the ashtray on the table
...
" she began, "
...
I mean, if it

25

really wouldn't be any bother to you
...
"
"Any right? What do you mean by that?"
She blushed
...

"I don't know
...
The soft hair on
her arms shone a lovely golden colour in the lights of the shop
...
I was looking for another way to put
it
...
Failing,
she sighed and closed her eyes and played with her hairslide
...
"I think I know what you're getting at
...
"
"I can never say what I want to say," continued Naoko
...
I try to say something, but all I get are the wrong
words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I
mean
...
I lose track
of what I was trying to say to begin with
...
One half is chasing the other half around this
big, fat post
...
" She raised her face and looked into my eyes
...
"They're trying to
express themselves and it bothers t can't get it right
...
"No, that’s not it either,"
she said without further explanation
"Anyway, I'd be glad to see you again," I said
...
"
We boarded the Yamanote Line, and Naoko transferred to the Chuo
Line at Shinjuku
...

"Tell me," she said as we parted
...
Tell you the truth, I know I
saw you a lot back then, but I don't remember talking to you much
...
"Anyway, can I call you on Saturday?"
"Sure
...
"
I first met Naoko when I was in the sixth-form at school
...
The school was so refined you were considered unrefined if
you studied too much
...
The two of them had been close almost from birth,
their houses not 200 yards apart
...
They were always
visiting each other's homes and eating or playing mah-jong with each
other's families
...
Naoko
would bring a school friend for me and the four of us would go to the
zoo or the pool or the cinema
...
I got along better with the
somewhat cruder girls from my own State school who were easier to
talk to
...

After a while, Kizuki gave up trying to arrange dates for me, and
instead the three of us would do things together
...

Introducing a fourth person into the mix would always make things a
little awkward
...
He was good at

27

occupying that central position
...
He would distribute his remarks and jokes fairly to
Naoko and to me, taking care to see that neither of us felt left out
...
It probably looked harder
than it was: he knew how to monitor and adjust the air around him on
a second-by-second basis
...

And yet he was not the least bit sociable
...
I could never understand why such a smart and capable talker
did not turn his talents to the broader world around him but remained
satisfied to concentrate on our little trio
...
I was just an ordinary kid who liked to
read books and listen to music and didn't stand out in any way that
would prompt someone like Kizuki to pay attention to me
...
His father was a dentist, known for his
professional skill and his high fees
...
"My
girlfriend goes to a girls' school, and she'll bring along a cute one for
you
...

The three of us spent a lot of time together, but whenever Kizuki left
the room, Naoko and I had trouble talking to each other
...
And in fact there was no topic of
conversation that we had in common
...
Naoko was not particularly
talkative, and I was more of a listener than a talker, so I felt

28

uncomfortable when I was left alone with her
...

Naoko and I saw each other only once after Kizuki's funeral
...
I tried
raising several different topics, but none of them led anywhere
...
She seemed
angry with me, but I had no idea why
...

Naoko might have been angry with me because I, not she, had been
the last one to see Kizuki
...
I would have swapped places
with her if I could have, but finally, what had happened had happened,
and there was nothing I could do about it
...
After lunch, Kizuki suggested we
skip classes and go play pool or something
...
When I won the
first, easy-going game, he became serious and won the next three
...
Kizuki didn't make a
single joke as we played, which was most unusual
...

"Why so serious?" I asked
...

He died that night in his garage
...
I have no idea how long it took him to die
...
His radio was
going, and a petrol station receipt was tucked under the windscreen

29

wiper
...
Because I had been the last one to see him, I was called in for
questioning by the police
...
The policeman had obviously formed a
poor impression of both Kizuki and me, as if it was perfectly natural
for the kind of person who would skip classes and play pool to
commit suicide
...
Kizuki's parents got rid of his red N-360
...

In the ten months between Kizuki's death and my exams, I was unable
to find a place for myself in the world around me
...
Nothing
about her really got to me
...
The girl asked me not
to go to Tokyo - "It's 500 miles from here!" she pleaded - but I had to
get away from Kobe at any cost
...

"You don't give a damn about me any more, now that you've slept
with me," she said, crying
...
"I just need to get away from this town
...
And so we parted
...
I would try to
forget her
...
Forget about green baize
pool tables and red N-360s and white flowers on school desks; about

30

smoke rising from tall crematorium chimneys, and chunky
paperweights in police interrogation rooms
...

I tried hard to forget, but there remained inside me a vague knot of air
...

It's a cliché translated into words, but at the time I felt it not as words
but as that knot of air inside me
...

Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate
from and independent of life
...
This
had seemed to me the simple, logical truth
...
I am here, not over there
...
Death was not the opposite of life
...

When it took the 17-year-old Kizuki that night in May, death took me
as well
...

Becoming serious was not the same thing as approaching the truth, I
sensed, however vaguely
...
Stuck inside this suffocating
contradiction, I went on endlessly spinning in circles
...
In the midst of life,
everything revolved around death
...
I suppose I can call it a date
...

As before, we walked the streets
...
Again, she talked only in snatches, but this didn't seem
to bother her, and I made no special effort to keep the conversation
going
...
We said nothing
at all about the past
...
Fortunately, Tokyo is such a big city we could never have
covered it all
...
She would lead,
and I would follow close behind
...
I remember her
most clearly this way, from the back
...
And she was always
dabbing at her mouth with a handkerchief
...
The more I observed these habits of hers, the
more I came to like her
...

Nearby was a narrow irrigation canal with clean, clear water, and
Naoko and I would often walk along its banks
...
It never seemed to concern
her that the two of us were in such close quarters together
...
She led a spare, simple life with hardly any friends
...
Back then,
she had dressed with real flair and surrounded herself with a million
friends
...

"Know why I chose this place?" she said with a smile
...
We were all supposed to go
somewhere more chic
...

Little by little, she grew more accustomed to me, and I to her
...
She saw me as a friend now, I concluded, and walking side by side
with such a beautiful girl was by no means painful for me
...
We forged straight ahead, as if our walking were
a religious ritual meant to heal our wounded spirits
...

Then came autumn, and the dormitory grounds were buried in zelkova
leaves
...
Having worn out one pair of shoes, I bought some new suede
ones
...
Nothing special, I
expect
...
We could face each other over coffee cups in
total silence
...
Once he had
a date with a fellow student (a girl in geography, of course) but came
back in the early evening looking glum
...
In July,

33

somebody in the dorm had taken down Storm Trooper's Amsterdam
canal scene and put up a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge instead
...
"He loved it," I reported later, which prompted
someone else to put up a picture of an iceberg
...

"Who-who-who the hell is doing this?" he asked
...
"But what's the difference? They're all nice
pictures
...
"
"Yeah, I s'pose so, but it's weird
...
Not many
things succeeded in doing that, so I talked about him often, though I
was not exactly proud of myself for using him this way
...
Making maps was the
one small dream of his one small life
...
Besides, the sight of Naoko's smiling face had become my
own special source of pleasure
...

Naoko asked me one time - just once - if I had a girl I liked
...
"She was nice," I said, "I
enjoyed sleeping with her, and I miss her every now and then, but
finally, she didn't move me
...
I
doubt if I can really love anybody
...

"Never," I said
...

When autumn ended and cold winds began tearing through the city,

34

Naoko would often walk pressed against my arm
...
She would
entwine her arm with mine, or cram her hand in my pocket, or, when
it was really cold, cling tightly to my arm, shivering
...
I just kept walking with my hands shoved in my
pockets
...
I felt sorry for Naoko whenever I heard that
sound
...
My warmth was not what she needed, but the warmth of
someone else
...

As the winter deepened, the transparent clarity of Naoko's eyes
seemed to increase
...
Sometimes
Naoko would lock her eyes on to mine for no apparent reason
...

I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something
she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could
not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever
turning into words
...
I wanted to hold her tight when she did these
things, but I would hesitate and hold back
...
And so the two of us kept walking the streets of Tokyo, Naoko
searching for words in space
...
They assumed, naturally
enough, that I had found a girlfriend
...
I had to face a barrage of stupid questions in the evening what position had we used? What was she like down there? What
colour underwear had she been wearing that day? I gave them the

35

answers they wanted
...
Each day the sun would rise and set, the
flag would be raised and lowered
...
I had no idea what I was doing or what I
was going to do
...
I made no friends at
the lectures, and hardly knew anyone in the dorm
...
There was nothing I wanted to be
...
She, at least, would be
able to understand what I was feeling with some degree of precision, I
thought
...
Strange, I
seemed to have caught her word-searching sickness
...
Most of the others were out, so the lobby was usually
deserted
...
What did I want? And
what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers
...

I read a lot, but not a lot of different books: I like to read my
favourites again and again
...
Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, but I didn't see
anyone else in my lectures or the dorm reading writers like that
...
With
my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance
deep inside me
...

At 18 my favourite book was John Updike's The Centaur, but after I
had read it a number of times, it began to lose some of its initial lustre

36

and yielded first place to The Great Gatsby
...
I would pull it off the shelf when the
mood hit me and read a section at random
...
There wasn't a boring page in the whole book
...
Urging others to read F Scott
Fitzgerald, although not a reactionary act, was not something one
could do in 1968
...
His name was
Nagasawa
...
We lived in the same dorm and knew
each other only by sight, until one day when I was reading Gatsby in a
sunny spot in the dining hall
...
When I told him, he asked if I was enjoying it
...
"
"This man says he has read The Great Gatsby three times," he said as
if to himself
...
"
And so we became friends
...

The better I got to know Nagasawa, the stranger he seemed
...
He
was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never
to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years
...

"It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but
I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had
the baptism of time
...
"
"What kind of authors do you like?" I asked, speaking in respectful
tones to this man two years my senior
...

"Not exactly fashionable
...
If you only read the books that everyone else
is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking
...
Real people would be ashamed of
themselves doing that
...
The other guys are crap
...
"How can you say that?"
"'Cause it's true
...
I can see it
...
And besides, we've both read The Great Gatsby
...
"But Fitzgerald's only been dead 28
years," I said
...
"
No one else in the dorm knew that Nagasawa was a secret reader of
classic novels, nor would it have mattered if they had
...
He breezed into Tokyo University, he got
good marks, he would take the Civil Service Exam, join the Foreign
Ministry, and become a diplomat
...
His
father owned a big hospital in Nagoya, and his brother had also
graduated from Tokyo, gone on to medical school, and would one day
inherit the hospital
...
People treated him
with respect, even the dorm Head
...
There was no
choice in the matter
...
He knew how to stand at the head of the pack,
to assess the situation, to give precise and tactful instructions that
others would obey
...
Which is why it shocked everyone

38

that Nagasawa chose me, a person with no distinctive qualities, to be
his special friend
...
I had a definite interest in the strange, complex aspects of his
nature, but none of those other things - his good marks, his aura, his
looks - impressed me
...

There were sides to Nagasawa's personality that conflicted in the
extreme
...
He was both a spirit of
amazing loftiness and an irredeemable man of the gutter
...
I saw these paradoxical qualities of his from the
start, and I could never understand why they weren't just as obvious to
everyone else
...

Still, I think I always managed to view him in the most favourable
light
...
Not only would he never lie,
he would always acknowledge his shortcomings
...
And where I was concerned, he
was unfailingly kind and supportive
...
Still, I never
once opened my heart to him, and in that sense my relationship with
Nagasawa stood in stark contrast to me and Kizuki
...

There were several "Nagasawa Legends" that circulated throughout
the dorm
...

Another gave him a huge penis and had him sleeping with more than
100 girls
...
He told me so himself
...
"Swallowed 'em whole
...
"There
was some shit between the first-years and the third-years
...
As first-year
representative I went to work things out with the third-years
...
They had these wooden kendo swords, and
"working things out' was probably the last thing they wanted to do
...
Do what you want to me, but
leave the other guys alone
...
' "Fine,' I said, "Let's have 'em
...
And I swallowed 'em
...
The way it
slides down your throat and into your stomach
...
yuck, I get chills just thinking about
it
...

I mean, if I had puked 'em up, I would have had to swallow
'em all over again
...
All three of 'em
...

What else could I do?"
"Yeah, I guess so
...
Not even
the third-years
...
"
"I bet you are
...
I just went to the
dorm's communal shower with him
...
But
100 girls was probably an exaggeration
...
"I can't
remember them all, but I'm sure it's at least 70
...
Come with me
next time
...
"
I didn't believe him, but he turned out to be right
...
Almost
too easy, with all the excitement of flat beer
...
He was a great talker
...
I guess they
enjoyed being with somebody so nice and handsome and clever
...
Nagasawa would urge
me to talk, and girls would respond to me with the same smiles of
admiration they offered him
...
Compared with Nagasawa, Kizuki's
conversational gifts were child's play
...
As much as I found myself caught up in
Nagasawa's power, though, I still missed Kizuki
...
Whatever talents he had he would share
with Naoko and me alone, while Nagasawa was bent on disseminating
his considerable gifts to all around him
...


I was not too crazy about sleeping with girls I didn't know
...
I'd wake up and
find this strange girl sleeping next to me, and the room would reek of
alcohol, and the bed and the lighting and the curtains had that special
"love hotel" garishness, and my head would be in a hungover fog
...
It's the worst day of the month for
me
...
I would have preferred not to spend
the whole night with them, but you can't worry about a midnight
curfew while you're seducing women (which runs counter to the laws
of physics anyway), so I'd go out with an overnight pass
...

When I had slept with three or four girls this way, I asked Nagasawa,
"After you've done this 70 times, doesn't it begin to seem kind of
pointless?"
"That proves you're a decent human being," he said
...

There is absolutely nothing to be gained from sleeping with one
strange woman after another
...
It's the same for me
...
Hey, you know that thing Dostoevsky wrote on
gambling? It's like that
...
See
what I mean?"
"Sort of
...
The sun goes down
...
They
wander around, looking for something
...
It's the easiest thing in the world, like drinking water from
a tap
...
It's what they expect
...
It's all around you
...
"I can't imagine what it's like
...

His womanizing was the reason Nagasawa lived in a dorm despite his
affluent background
...
Not that it mattered much
to Nagasawa
...

Whenever he felt like it, he would get an overnight permission and go
girl-hunting or spend the night at his girlfriend's flat
...

Nagasawa did have a steady girlfriend, one he'd been going out with
since his first year
...
I had met her a few times and found her to be very nice
...
Quiet, intelligent, funny, caring,
she always dressed with immaculate good taste
...
She liked me, too, and
tried hard to fix me up with a first-year in her club so we could
double-date, but I would make up excuses to keep from repeating past
mistakes
...

Hatsumi had a pretty good idea that Nagasawa was sleeping around,
but she never complained to him
...

"I don't deserve a girl like Hatsumi," Nagasawa once said to me
...


43

That winter I found a part-time job in a little record shop in Shinjuku
...
For
Christmas I bought Naoko a Henry Mancini album with a track of her
favourite "Dear Heart"
...
She gave me a pair of woollen gloves she had knitted
...

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, blushing, "What a bad job!"
"Don't worry, they fit fine," I said, holding my gloved hands out to
her
...
"
Naoko didn't go home to Kobe for the winter break
...
I didn't
have anything especially fun to do in Kobe or anyone I wanted to see
...
On New Year's Eve we had rice cakes and
soup like everybody else
...

At the end of January, Storm Trooper went to bed with a raging fever
...
I had gone to a lot of
trouble to get my hands on some free tickets for a concert
...
But with Storm Trooper
tossing around in bed on the verge of what looked like an agonizing
death, I couldn't just leave him, and I couldn't find anyone stupid
enough to nurse him in my place
...
The fever stayed high for a day, but the
following morning he jumped out of bed and started exercising as
though nothing had happened
...
It was hard to believe he was a human being
...
"I've never run a fever in my life
...

This made me mad
...

"Good thing they were free," he said
...

It snowed several times in February
...
He hit his head against the
concrete wall, but he wasn't badly injured, and Nagasawa straightened
things out for me
...

The academic year ended in March, but I came up a few credits short
...
Naoko had all the grades she needed to begin the spring term of
her second year
...

Halfway through April Naoko turned 20
...
There was
something strange about her becoming 20
...
felt as if the only thing
that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back
and forth between 18 and 19
...
But she turned 20
...
Only the dead stay 17 for ever
...
After lectures I bought a cake nearby and
took the tram to her flat
...
I
probably would have wanted the same thing if our positions had been
reversed
...
The
tram had been packed and had pitched so wildly that by the time I

45

arrived at Naoko's room the cake was looking more like the Roman
Colosseum than anything else
...
Naoko
opened a bottle of wine
...

"I don't know, it's stupid being 20," she said
...
It
feels weird
...
"
"I've got seven months to get ready," I said with a laugh
...

While we ate I told her about Storm Trooper's new jumper
...
The jumper itself was a nice one, red and black with a knitted
deer motif, but on him it made everybody laugh
...

"W what's so funny, Watanabe?" he asked, sitting next to me in the
dining hall
...
"There's nothing
funny
...
"
"Thanks," he said, beaming
...
"I have to meet him," she said
...
"
"No way," I said
...
" "You think so?"
"I'd bet on it
...
"
We cleared the table and sat on the floor, listening to music and
drinking the rest of the wine
...

Naoko was unusually talkative that night
...
Each episode was a long one,
executed with the painstaking detail of a miniature
...
Each tale had its own
internal logic, but the link from one to the next was odd
...
I found
things to say in response at first, but after a while I stopped trying
...
After the last record I went back to the first
...

The cycle started with Sgt
...
Rain fell past the window
...
Naoko went on talking by herself
...
One of those things
was Kizuki, of course, but there was more than Kizuki
...
I
had never heard her speak with such intensity before, and so I did not
interrupt her
...
She had
been talking non-stop for more than four hours
...
I saw my chance and cut in
...
"Last
train's coming
...
Or, if they did, she was unable to
grasp their meaning
...
I gave up and, shifting to a more
comfortable position, drank what was left of the second bottle of wine
...
The curfew and the last
train would have to take care of themselves
...
Before I knew it, she had stopped
talking
...
She had not actually finished what
she was saying
...
She had been

47

trying to go on, but had come up against nothing
...
My words
might have finally reached her, taken their time to be understood, and
obliterated whatever energy it was that had kept her talking so long
...
She
looked like some kind of machine that had been humming along until
someone pulled the plug
...

"Sorry to interrupt," I said, "but it's getting late, and
...
Once that first tear broke free, the rest followed
in an unbroken stream
...
Never in my life had I seen anyone cry with such
intensity
...

Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms
...
My
shirt became damp - then soaked - with her tears and hot breath
...

Supporting her weight with my left arm, I used my right hand to
caress her soft, straight hair
...
In that position, I waited
for Naoko to stop crying
...
But Naoko's crying
never stopped
...
Was it the right thing to do? I can't tell
...
I suppose I'll never
know
...
She was in a heightened
state of tension and confusion, and she made it clear she wanted me to
give her release
...

Then I undressed
...
We explored

48

each other's bodies in the darkness without words
...
She clutched at my erection
...

And yet, when I went inside her, Naoko tensed with pain
...
Now it was my turn to be
confused
...
I went in as far as I could and stayed that way for a long
time, holding Naoko, without moving
...
Her arms tightened
around me at the end, when at last she broke her silence
...

When everything had ended, I asked Naoko why she had never slept
with Kizuki
...
No sooner had I asked the question
than she took her arms from me and started crying soundlessly again
...
Smoking, I watched the endless April rain
beyond the window
...
Naoko was sleeping with
her back to me
...
Whether she was
awake or asleep, all words had left her lips, and her body now seemed
stiff, almost frozen
...
I stared for a long time at her naked shoulder, but
in the end I lost all hope of eliciting a response and decided to get up
...
Half the caved-in birthday cake
remained on the table
...
I picked up
the things off the floor and drank two glasses of water at the sink
...
On the wall
above the desk hung a calendar, one without an illustration or photo of
any kind, just the numbers of the days of the month
...


49

I picked up my clothes and dressed
...
It had Naoko's smell
...
Please call me soon
...
I took one last look at Naoko's shoulder, stepped outside and
quietly shut the door
...
Naoko's house had no
system for calling people to the phone, and so on Sunday morning I
took the train out to Kokubunji
...
The windows and storm shutters were
closed tight
...
He had no idea where she had moved to
...
Wherever she was, they would forward it to her at
least
...
There was a lot I still
didn't understand, I said, and though I was trying hard to understand, it
would take time
...
For one
thing, we knew too little of each other
...
In any case, I wanted to see her again
and have a good long talk
...
She and I had needed each other more than
either of us knew
...
I probably
should not have done what I did, and yet I believe that it was all I
could do
...
I need you to answer this

50

letter
...

No answer came
...
There was an abnormal lightness to my body, and
sounds had a hollow echo to them
...
They were boring, and I never talked to my fellow students,
but I had nothing else to do
...
I stopped
smoking
...
"Dismantle the
University!" they all screamed
...
Dismantle
it
...
Crush it to bits
...
It would be a
breath of fresh air
...
I'll help if necessary
...

With the campus blockaded and lectures suspended, I started to work
at a delivery company
...
It was tougher than I thought
...
The pay was good,
though, and as long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the
emptiness inside
...
Nights without
work I spent with whisky and books
...

"You get the hell out," I growled
...
"
"I don't give a shit
...
"
He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed
...

In June I wrote Naoko another long letter, addressing it again to her
house in Kobe
...
At
least let me know whether or not I hurt you
...

That June I went out with Nagasawa twice again to sleep with girls
...
The first girl put up a terrific struggle when I
tried to get her undressed and into the hotel bed, but when I began
reading alone because it just wasn't worth it, she came over and started
nuzzling me
...
What kind of work did my
father do? Did I get good marks at school? What month was I born?
Had I ever eaten frogs? She was giving me a headache, so as soon as
we had finished eating I said I had to go to work
...

"Oh, I'm sure we'll meet again somewhere before long," I said, and
left
...
And yet it was all I could do
...
All the time I was sleeping with
those girls I thought about Naoko: the white shape of her naked body
in the darkness, her sighs, the sound of the rain
...
I went up to the roof
with my whisky and asked myself where I thought I was heading
...
A short
letter
...
But try to understand
...
Writing is a painful process
for me
...
I have decided to take a year off
from college
...
This will no doubt come as a surprise to you, but
in fact I had been thinking about doing this for a very long time
...
I was afraid even to pronounce the words
...
Whatever happened - or
didn't happen - the end result would have been the same
...
What I am
trying to tell you is, I don't want you to blame yourself for what
happened with me
...
I
had been putting it off for more than a year, and so I ended up making
things very difficult for you
...

After I moved out of my flat, I came back to my family's house in
Kobe and was seeing a doctor for a while
...
It's not exactly a hospital, more
a sanatorium kind of thing with a far freer style of treatment
...
What I need now is to rest my nerves in a
quiet place cut off from the world
...
Please believe that much even if you believe nothing else
...
I myself am the one who did that
...

For now, however, I am not prepared to see you
...
The moment I feel
ready, I will write to you
...
As you say, this is probably what we should do: get to know
each other better
...

I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I would be filled
with that same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko
herself stared into my eyes
...
Like the wind passing over my body,
it had neither shape nor weight nor could I wrap myself in it
...

I continued to spend my Saturday nights sitting in the hall
...
I would switch on a baseball game and pretend to watch it as I
cut the empty space between me and the television set in two, then cut
each half in two again, over and over, until I had fashioned a space
small enough to hold in my hand
...

At the end of the month, Storm Trooper gave me a firefly
...
In the bright room the firefly looked like
some kind of ordinary black insect you'd find by a pond somewhere,
but Storm Trooper insisted it was the real thing
...

"Fine," I said
...
" It had a sleepy look on its face, but it
kept trying to climb up the slippery glass walls of the jar and falling
back
...

"Here? By the dorm?"
"Yeah
...
This one made it over here
...

We were several weeks into the summer holidays, and he and I were
almost the only ones left in the dorm
...
Now that the training had ended, he was going back
to the mountains of Yamanashi
...
"I'm sure she'd love
it
...

After dark the dorm was hushed, like a ruin
...
With
so few students left, they turned on only half the lights in the place,
keeping the right half dark and the left lighted
...

I took my bottled firefly to the roof
...
A white
vest hung on a clothesline that someone had forgotten to take in,
waving in the evening breeze like the discarded shell of some huge
insect
...
The tank was still warm with the heat of
the sunlight it had absorbed during the day
...
The lights of Shinjuku glowed to the
right, Ikebukuro to the left
...
A dull roar of jumbled sounds
hung over the city like a cloud
...
I hadn't seen a firefly in years, but the
ones in my memory sent a far more intense light into the summer
darkness, and that brilliant, burning image was the one that had stayed
with me all that time
...
I gave the jar a few
shakes
...

I tried to remember when I had last seen fireflies, and where it might
have been
...
I could hear the sound of water in the darkness and
see an old-fashioned brick sluice gate
...
The stream it controlled was small enough
to be hidden by the grass on its banks
...
Hundreds of fireflies
drifted over the pool of water held back by the sluice gate, their hot
glow reflected in the water like a shower of sparks
...
I heard
the wind with unusual clarity
...
I opened my eyes to find the
darkness of the summer night a few degrees deeper than it had been
...
It seemed not to grasp its new
surroundings
...
It moved to the right until it found its
way blocked, then circled back to the left
...

Still leaning against the handrail, I studied the firefly
...
The wind continued sweeping past
the two of us while the numberless leaves of the zelkova tree rustled
in the darkness
...

Only much later did the firefly take to the air
...
It traced a
swift arc by the side of the water tank as though trying to bring back a
lost interval in time
...

Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained
inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness
behind my eyelids like a lost soul
...
My fingers
touched nothing
...


57

During the summer holidays the university called in the riot police
...
This
was nothing new
...
The
universities were not so easily "dismantled"
...
And in fact those students
who had sealed off the campus had not wanted to dismantle the
university either
...
And so, when the strike was finally crushed, I
felt nothing
...
The place
was untouched
...
I was thunderstruck
...
As if nothing had ever
happened, they sat there taking notes and answering "present" when
the register was taken
...
After all, the strike was
still in effect
...
All
that had happened was that the university had called in the riot police
and torn down the barricades, but the strike itself was supposed to be

58

continuing
...
I made a point of visiting those former leaders and asking why
they were attending lectures instead of continuing to strike, but they
couldn't give me a straight answer
...
The wind changes direction a little, and
their cries become whispers
...
This world is
a piece of shit
...

For a while I attended lectures but refused to answer when they took
the register
...
All I managed to do was isolate myself more than ever from
the other students
...
None of the other
students spoke to me, and I spoke to none of them
...
I decided to think of it as a
period of training in techniques for dealing with boredom
...

And though that second week in September had rolled around, there
was no sign of Storm Trooper
...
University had started up again, and it was
inconceivable that Storm Trooper would miss lectures
...
His plastic cup and toothbrush, tea
tin, insecticide spray and so on stood in a neat row on his shelf
...
I had picked up the habit of
neatness over the past year and a half, and without him there to take
care of the room, I had no choice but to do it
...

But he never came back
...
I went to the
dorm Head's room and asked what had happened
...
"You'll be alone in the
room for the time being
...
This
was a man whose greatest joy in life was to control everything and
keep others in the dark
...
This made the room seem a little more like my own
...
At
night I would drink alone and listen to music
...

At 11
...
m
...
The place was on a quiet backstreet and
was slightly more expensive than the student dining hall, but you
could relax there, and they knew how to make a good omelette
...
As I sat there eating by the window, a group of
four students came in, two men and two women, all rather neatly
dressed
...

Before long I noticed that one of the girls kept glancing in my
direction
...
I had no idea who she was, so I went on
with my lunch, but she soon slipped out of her seat and came over to
where I was sitting
...
Still I could not
recall ever having seen her
...

"Mind if I sit down?" she asked
...
"No, nobody's coming
...
"
With a wooden clunk, she dragged a chair out and sat down opposite,
staring straight at me through her sunglasses, then
glancing at my plate
...

"It is good
...
" "Damn," she
said
...
I've
already ordered something else
...
"
"Their macaroni and cheese isn't bad, either," I said
...
"
"Euripides," she said
...
"No god hearkens to the voice of lost
Electra
...
"
I stared hard at her
...
At last I remembered
her - a first-year I had seen in History of Drama
...

"Oh," I said, touching a point a few inches below my shoulder, "your
hair was down to here before the summer holidays
...
"I had a perm this summer, and it was just awful
...
I looked like a corpse on the beach with seaweed stuck
to my head
...
At least it's cool in the summer
...

"It looks good, though," I said, still munching my omelette
...
"
She turned away and held the pose a few seconds
...
It really looks good on you
...

Pretty ears, too, uncovered like that
...
Not one guy likes it, though
...
What's this thing that guys have for girls
with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all
think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most
feminine? I mean, I myself know at least 250 unclassy girls with long
hair
...
"
"I think you look better now than you did before," I said
...
As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another
cute student
...
She was like a small animal that has popped into
the world with the coming of spring
...
I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I
enjoyed watching it live and move
...

I nodded, still munching on my salad
...

"You're not lying, are you?"
"I like to think of myself as an honest man," I said
...
"
"So tell me: why do you wear such dark glasses?"
"I felt defenceless when my hair got short all of a sudden
...
" "Makes
sense," I said, eating the last of my omelette
...

"You don't have to go back to them?" I asked, indicating her three
companions
...
I'll go back when they serve the food
...
The wife took my dishes and brought milk
and sugar
...
"Why didn't you answer today when they
called the register? You are Watanabe, aren't you?
Toru Watanabe?"
"That's me
...
"
She took off her sunglasses again, set them on the table, and looked at
me as if she were staring into the cage of some rare animal at a zoo
...
" You talk like Humphrey Bogart
...

Tough
...
I'm just an ordinary guy like everybody else
...
I took a sip without
adding sugar or milk
...
You drink it black
...

"I just don't happen to have a sweet tooth
...
"
"Why are you so tanned?"
"I've been hiking around the last couple of weeks
...
Sleeping
bag
...
Noto Peninsula
...
" "Alone?"
"Alone," I said
...
" "Some

63

romantic company? New women in far-off places
...
How's a guy with a sleeping bag on his
back and his face all stubbly supposed to have romance?"
"Do you always travel alone like that?" "Uh-huh
...

"Travelling alone, eating alone, sitting by yourself in lecture halls
...
I don't go out of my way to
make friends, that's all
...
"
The tip of one earpiece in her mouth, sunglasses dangling down, she
mumbled, ""Nobody likes being alone
...
'
You can use that line if you ever write your autobiography
...

"Do you like green?"
"Why do you ask?"
"You're wearing a green polo shirt
...
I'll wear anything
...
I'll wear anything
...
Like
spreading plaster, nice and smooth
...

"My name's Midori," she said
...
But green looks terrible on
me
...
"
"Does she look good in pink?"
"She looks great in pink! She was born to wear pink
...
"
The food arrived at Midori's table, and a guy in a madras jacket called
out to her, "Hey, Midori, come 'n' get it!" She waved at him as if to
say "I know"
...
"Do you take lecture notes? In drama?" "I do
...
" "No problem," I said, pulling the
notebook from my bag
...

"Thanks," she said
...
"
"Meet me here at noon
...
I mean
...
"But you don't have to buy me lunch just because I'm
lending you my notebook
...
"I like buying people lunch
...
Day after tomorrow
...
Midori
...
"
From the other table, somebody called out, "Hurry up, Midori, your
food's getting cold!"
She ignored the call and asked me, "Have you always talked like
that?"
"I think so," I said
...
" And in fact no one had
ever told me there was anything unusual about the way I spoke
...
Then she
stood up with a smile and went back to her table
...

At noon on Wednesday there was no sign of Midori in the restaurant
...
I
finished at 12
...
Paying my bill, I went outside
and crossed the street to a little shrine, where I waited on the stone
steps for my head to clear and Midori to come
...
At two I went to my German

65

lecture
...
The only Midori
in the class was Midori Kobayashi
...
She lived in a
north-west suburb, Toshima, with her family
...

A man answered: "Kobayashi Bookshop
...

"Do you think she might be on campus?"
"Hmm, no, she's probably at the hospital
...
The hospital? Could
she have been injured or fallen ill? But the man had spoken without
the least sense of emergency
...
I thought
about a few other possibilities until thinking itself became too
problematic, then I went back to the dorm and stretched out on my bed
reading Lord Jim, which I'd borrowed from Nagasawa
...

Nagasawa was on his way to the dining hall, so I went with him for
dinner
...
The second round of upper level
exams for the Foreign Ministry had been held in August
...

"You take 'em, you pass
...
like
screwin' a chick
...
"When do they let you know?"
"First week of October
...
"
"So tell me, what kind of guys make it to round two? All superstars

66

like you?"
"Don't be stupid
...
Idiots or weirdos
...

I'm not kidding
...
"
"So why are you trying to join the Foreign Ministry?"
"All kinds of reasons," said Nagasawa
...
But mainly I want to test my abilities
...
I
want to see how high I can climb, how much power I can exercise in
this insanely huge bureaucratic system
...
"
"It is a game
...

Really, I don't
...
I could be a Zen saint
...
I want to see what I can do out there in the big,
tough world
...
Life doesn't require ideals
...
"
"But there are lots of other ways to live, aren't there?" I asked
...
"I could never get into Tokyo
University; I can't sleep with any girl I want whenever I want to; I'm
no great talker; people don't look up to me; I haven't got a girlfriend;
and the future's not going to open up to me when I get a literature BA
from a second-rate private university
...
"I'm too used to being who I am
...

The one thing I envy you for is having a terrific girlfriend like
Hatsumi
...
When dinner was over he said, "You know,

67

Watanabe, I have this feeling like, maybe 10 years or 20 years after
we get out of this place, we're going to meet again somewhere
...
"
"Sounds like Dickens," I said with a smile
...
"But my hunches are usually
right
...
We stayed
there drinking until after nine
...

"No I won't
...
"To be a gentleman
...
"To be a gentleman? A
gentleman?"
"You heard me
...
"
"You're the weirdest guy I've ever met," I said
...
And he paid for us
both
...
After a quick survey of the room convinced me she
wasn't there, I took my usual seat in the front row and wrote a letter to
Naoko while I waited for the lecturer to arrive
...
And every night I thought of you
...
University is incredibly
boring, but as a matter of self-discipline I am going to all my lectures

68

and doing all the assignments
...
I'd like to have a nice, long talk with you
...
And, if possible,
I'd like to go out walking with you side by side the way we used to
...
I won't mind
...

By then the lecturer had arrived, wiping the sweat from his brow as he
took the register
...
While not exactly fun, the lectures in his course
were always well prepared and worthwhile
...
He had been
talking for some 15 minutes when the lecture-hall door opened and in
walked Midori
...
After flashing a
"sorry I'm late" kind of smile at the professor, she sat down next to
me
...
Inside, I found a note: Sorry about Wednesday
...
They looked like some kind of
comedy team, one tall, thin and pale, the other short, round and dark
with a long beard that didn't suit him
...
The short one walked up to the professor
and said, with a degree of politeness, that they would like to use the
second half of his lecture for political debate and hoped that he would
cooperate, adding, "The world is full of problems far more urgent and
relevant than Greek tragedy
...
The professor replied, "I rather doubt that the world has

69

problems far more urgent and relevant than Greek tragedy, but you're
not going to listen to anything I have to say, so do what you like
...

While the tall student passed out his handbills, the round one went to
the podium and started lecturing
...
It had nothing to inspire confidence or arouse the passions
...
The true enemy of this bunch was not State Power but
Lack of Imagination
...

I nodded and stood, and the two of us made for the door
...
Midori
waved to him and said, "See ya later
...
"Are we going to be strung upon telephone poles if the
revolution succeeds?"
"Let's have lunch first, just in case
...
There's a place I want to take you to
...
Can
you spare the time?"
"Yeah, I'm free until my two o'clock class
...
The
minute we sat down they served us soup and the lunch of the day in
square, red-lacquered boxes
...


70

"Great food," I said
...
I've been coming here since school
...
They were so strict, we had to sneak out to eat
here
...
"
Without the sunglasses, Midori's eyes looked somewhat sleepier than
they had the last time
...

"Tired?" I asked
...
I'm not getting enough sleep
...
"Sorry about the other day
...
All of a sudden, in the morning
...
Did you wait long?"
"No big deal
...
"
A lot?"
"Way more than I need
...
"
Midori rested her cheek on her hand and smiled at me
...
"
"Not nice
...
"By the way, I called your
house that day and somebody told me you were at the hospital
...
"How did you get my number?"
"Looked it up in the student affairs office
...
"
She nodded once or twice and started playing with the bracelet again
...
I suppose I could have looked up
your number
...
I
don't feel like it now
...
"
"That's OK
...
"
"No, you're not prying
...
Like a monkey in the

71

rain
...
Let's get out
of here
...

Passing the station, I thought about Naoko and our endless walking
...
I realized that if I hadn't run into Naoko on
the train that Sunday in May, My life would have been very different
from what it was now
...
We
were supposed to meet
...
I didn't have any
basis for thinking this: it was just a feeling
...
Ivy clung to the walls, and pigeons huddled under the
gables, resting their wings
...

A great oak tree stood in the playground, and a column of white
smoke rose straight up beside it
...

"Do you know what that smoke is?" Midori asked me all of a sudden
...

"They're burning sanitary towels
...

"Sanitary towels, tampons, stuff like that," she said with a smile
...
The old caretaker collects them from all the receptacles
and burns them in the incinerator
...
"
"Whoa
...
"Whoa'
...
So, say 900 of them have started their
periods, and maybe a fifth of them are menstruating at any one time:
180 girls
...
"

72

"I bet you're right - though I'm not sure about the maths
...
180 girls
...
How could I have imagined what the old man
was going through? Midori and I went on watching the smoke
...
She gave her
head a little shake
...
But my parents thought it would look good for me
to go to this fancy place
...
You
know: that's what happens when you do well in primary school
...
' So that's where I ended up
...
All I could think about was getting out
...
That's how much I hated the place
...
"
"It's because I hated the place so much
...

If I'd let it get to me once I'd be finished
...
I'd crawl to school with a temperature of
103
...
When I
left they gave me certificates for perfect attendance and punctuality,
plus a French dictionary
...
I didn't
want to owe this school anything
...
"
"Why did you hate it so much?
"Did you like your school?"
"Well, no, but I didn't especially hate it, either
...
"
"Well, this school," Midori said, scratching the corner of her eye with
her little finger, "had nothing but upper-class girls - almost a thousand
girls with good backgrounds and good exam results
...
They
had to be rich to survive
...
For instance, if we went to Kyoto, they'd put
us up in a first-class inn and serve us tea ceremony food on lacquer
tables, and they'd take us once a year to the most expensive hotel in
Tokyo to study table manners
...

Out of 160 girls in my class, I was the only one from a middle-class
neighbourhood like Toshima
...
Well, no, there was one girl from way out in Chiba with the
farmers, so I got kind of friendly with her
...

She invited me to her house, though she apologized for how far I'd
have to travel to get there
...
It had this
amazing garden and two dogs like compact cars they fed steaks to
...
This is a
girl who would be driven to school in a Mercedes Benz if she was
late! By a chauffeur! Like right out of the Green Hornet: the hat, the
white gloves, the whole deal
...
Can you believe it?"
I shook my head
...
And under "parent's profession' it said "bookshop
owner'
...
Of course, they
were thinking of some monster bookshop like Kinokuniya
...
The door
creaks open and you see nothing but magazines
...
The local housewives buy them and sit at the
kitchen table reading them from cover to cover, and give 'em a try
when their husbands get home
...
And of

74

course the weeklies
...
Oh,
there are a few books, paperbacks, mysteries and swashbucklers and
romances
...
And How-To books: how to win at Go,
how to raise bonsai, how to give wedding speeches, how to have sex,
how to stop smoking, you name it
...
But
that's it
...

That's the Kobayashi Bookshop
...
Do you
think I'm lucky?"
"I can just see the place
...
Everybody in the neighbourhood comes
there, some of them for years, and we deliver
...
Nothing to spare for extras
...
It was a recipe for heartache
...
It's a miserable way to live
...
I know it's not easy for them to send me to a private
university in Tokyo, but there's just me, so it's not that big a deal
...
We live in a
typical house with a little garden and our car is a Toyota Corolla
...
It's easy
...
"
"You're joking?" said Midori
...
"
"It's true
...
Not that I have tons of money,
either
...
"
"Well, "most people' in my school were rich," said Midori, palms

75

resting on her lap
...
"
"So now you'll have plenty of chances to see a world without that
problem
...
"
"Hey, tell me, what do you think the best thing is about being rich?"
"I don't know
...
Like, if I suggested to a
school friend we do something, she could say, 'Sorry, I don't have any
money'
...
If I said "I don't have any money', it would really mean "I
don't have any money'
...
Like, if a pretty girl says "I look
terrible today, I don't want to go out,' that's OK, but if an ugly girl says
the same thing people laugh at her
...
For six years, until last year
...
"
"I hope so
...
"
She smiled with the slightest curl of her lip and smoothed her short
hair with the palm of her hand
...

"Yeah, I write map notes
...
Here there's so-and-so hiking
trail or such-and-such a legend, or some special flower or bird
...
It's so easy! Takes no time at all
...
All you
have to do is master a couple of secrets and all kinds of work comes
your way
...
It doesn't have to be anything at all, just some
tiny thing
...
Put in
one little episode like that and people love it, it's so graphic and
sentimental
...
"
"Yeah, but you have to find those "episodes'
...
"But if you're looking for
them, you usually find them
...
"
"Aha!"
"Peace," said Midori
...
Storm Trooper especially made Midori laugh, as he
seemed to do with everyone
...
There was nothing fun about the place, I told
her: "Just a few hundred guys in grubby rooms, drinking and
wanking
...

"Girls have periods and boys wank
...
"
"Even ones with girlfriends? I mean, sex partners
...
The Keio student living next door to
me has a wank before every date
...
"
"I don't know much about that stuff
...
"
"I guess the glossy women's magazines don't go into that
...
"Anyway, Watanabe, would you have
some time this Sunday? Are you free?"
"I'm free every Sunday
...
That's when I go to work
...
The shop itself
will be closed, but I have to hang around there alone all day
...
How about lunch? I'll cook for

77

you
...

Midori tore a page from a notebook and drew a detailed map of the
way to her place
...

"You can't miss it
...
Come at
noon
...
"
I thanked her and put the map in my pocket
...
"My German lecture starts at two
...

Sunday morning I got up at nine, shaved, did my laundry and hung out
the clothes on the roof
...
The first smell of
autumn was in the air
...
With no wind, the
Rising Sun flag hung limp on its pole
...
A student neighbourhood
on a Sunday morning: the streets were dead, virtually empty, most
shops closed
...

A girl wearing sabots clip-clopped across the asphalt roadway, and
next to the tram shelter four or five kids were throwing rocks at a row
of empty cans
...
Daffodils in autumn: that was strange
...

Three old women were the only passengers on the Sunday morning
tram
...
One of them gave me a
smile
...
I sat in the last seat and watched the ancient
houses passing close to the window
...
The laundry deck of one house had ten potted
tomato plants, next to which a big black cat lay stretched out in the
sun
...
I heard an Ayumi Ishida song coming from somewhere, and

78

could even catch the smell of curry cooking
...
A few more passengers got on
at stops along the way, but the three old women went on talking
intently about something, huddled together face-to-face
...
None of the shops along the way
seemed to be doing very well, housed as they were in old buildings
with gloomy-looking interiors and faded writing on some of the signs
...
A few of the
places had been entirely rebuilt, but just about all had been enlarged or
repaired in places, and it was these additions that tended to look
shabbier than the old buildings themselves
...
Everything looked blurred and grimy as though
wrapped in a haze of exhaust fumes
...
True, it was not
a big shop, but neither was it as small as Midori's description had led
me to believe
...
A
nostalgic mood overtook me as I stood in front of the place
...
I still had 15
minutes before noon, but I didn't want to kill time wandering through
the block with a handful of daffodils, so I pressed the doorbell beside

79

the shutter and stepped a few paces back to wait
...
I looked up to
see Midori leaning out and waving
...
"Lift the shutter
...

"No problem
...
I'm busy in the kitchen
...

The shutter made a terrific grinding noise as I raised it three feet from
the ground, ducked under, and lowered it again
...
I managed to feel my way to the back stairway, tripping
over bound piles of magazines
...
The interior of the house was dark and
gloomy
...

It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent
of old Polish films
...
I had to climb the steep
stairway with care to reach the second floor, but once I got there, it
was so much brighter than the first that I felt greatly relieved
...
To the right at the top of the stairs
was what looked like a dining room, and beyond that a kitchen
...
Midori
was preparing food
...

"There's beer in the fridge," she said with a glance in my direction
...
" I took a can and sat at the kitchen
table
...
On the table lay a small, white ashtray, a
newspaper, and a soy sauce dispenser
...


80

"I should have this done in ten minutes," she said
...

"Get good and hungry, then
...
"
I sipped my beer and focused on Midori as she went on cooking, her
back to me
...
Over here she tasted a
boiled dish, and the next second she was at the cutting board, rat-tattatting, then she took something out of the fridge and piled it in a
bowl, and before I knew it she had washed a pot she had finished
using
...
I watched in awe
...

"That's OK," said Midori with a smile in my direction
...
" She wore slim blue jeans and a navy T-shirt
...
She had
extremely narrow hips, as if she had somehow skipped puberty when
the hips grow fuller, and this gave her a far more androgynous look
than most girls have in slim jeans
...

"You really didn't have to put together such a feast," I said
...
"I was too
busy to do any real shopping yesterday
...
Really, don't worry
...
I don't know what it is,
but we like to entertain
...
Not that we're
especially nice or people love us or anything, but if somebody shows
up we have to treat them well no matter what
...
Take my father, for example
...
What for? To serve
guests! So don't hold back: drink all the beer you want
...

It suddenly dawned on me that I had left the daffodils downstairs
...
I slipped back downstairs
and found the ten bright blossoms lying in the gloom
...

"I love daffodils," said Midori
...
Do you know it?" "Of course
...
I played guitar
...

Midori's cooking was far better than I had expected: an amazing
assortment of fried, pickled, boiled and roasted dishes using eggs,
mackerel, fresh greens, aubergine, mushrooms, radishes, and sesame
seeds, all cooked in the delicate Kyoto style
...

"OK, tell me the truth now," Midori said
...

"You're from the Kansai region, so you like this kind of delicate
flavouring, right?"
"Don't tell me you changed style especially for me?"
"Don't be ridiculous! I wouldn't go to that much trouble
...
"
"So your mother - or your father - is from Kansai?"
"Nope
...
There's not a single Kansai person among my relatives
...
"
"I don't get it," I said
...

"My mother hated housework of any kind, and she almost never

82

cooked anything
...
I hated that even when I
was little, I mean like cooking a big pot of curry and eating the same
thing three days in a row
...
I
went to the big Kinokuniya in Shinjuku and bought the biggest,
handsomest cookbook I could find, and I mastered it from cover to
cover: how to choose a cutting board, how to sharpen knives, how to
bone a fish, how to shave fresh bonito flakes, everything
...
"
"You mean you learned how to make all this stuff from a book?!"
"I saved my money and went to eat the real thing
...
I've got pretty good intuition
...
"
"It's amazing you could teach yourself to cook so well without having
anyone to show you
...
I'd tell them I wanted to buy
decent knives and pots and they wouldn't give me the money
...
I saved up my
allowance and bought real professional knives and pots and strainers
and stuff
...
Don't you feel sorry
for me?"

83

I nodded, swallowing a mouthful of clear soup with fresh junsai
greens
...
I
bought it with money I was supposed to use for a new bra
...
Can you believe it? I'd wash my bra
at night, go crazy trying to dry it, and wear it the next day
...
The saddest thing in the
world is wearing a damp bra
...
To think I was suffering this for an egg fryer!"
"I see what you mean," I said with a laugh
...
I could run the family budget my way
...
So now I've got a relatively complete set of cooking
utensils
...
"
"When did your mother die?"
"Two years ago
...
Brain tumour
...
It was terrible
...
Finally
lost her mind; had to be doped up all the time, and still she couldn't
die, though when she did it was practically a mercy killing
...
It took every yen we had
...

I was so busy with her, I couldn't study, had to delay university for a
year
...
"How did this
conversation turn so dark all of a sudden?"
"It started with the business about the bras," I said
...

Eating my portion filled me up, but Midori ate far less
...
She cleared the table, wiped up the crumbs,

84

brought out a box of Marlboro, put one in her mouth and lit up with a
match
...

"I don't think I'll put them in a vase," she said
...
"
"I did pick them by the pond at Otsuka Station," I said
...
"You are a weird one
...
"
Chin in hand, she smoked half her cigarette, then crushed it out in the
ashtray
...

"Girls are supposed to be a little more elegant when they put out their
cigarettes
...
You shouldn't just cram it
down in the ashtray but press it lightly around the edges of the ash
...
And girls are never supposed to blow
smoke through their noses
...
"
"I am a lumberjack," Midori said, scratching next to her nose
...
I try it as a joke sometimes, but it never
sticks
...

"What's the difference? One tastes as bad as another
...
"I started smoking last
month
...
I just sort of
felt like it
...

She pressed her hands together on the table and thought about it for a
while
...

"How come?"
"It was a pain
...
I don't like having something control me that way
...

"Maybe so," I said
...
Never
have
...
"You make it obvious you don't
care whether people like you or not
...
"
She spoke in a near mumble, chin in hand
...

The way you talk is so unusual
...
"
I helped her wash the dishes
...
"So," I said, "your
family's out today?"
"My mother's in her grave
...
" "Yeah, I heard
that part
...
Probably on a drive
...
He loves cars
...
"
Midori stopped talking and washed
...

"And then there's my father," she said after some time had gone by
...

"He went off to Uruguay in June last year and he's been there ever
since
...
An old army
buddy of his has a farm there
...
We tried hard to stop him, like,
"Why do you want to go to a place like that? You can't speak the
language, you've hardly ever left Tokyo
...

Losing my mother was a real shock to him
...
That's how much he loved her
...
"
There was not much I could say in reply
...

"What do you think he said to my sister and me when our mother
died? "I would much rather have lost the two of you than her
...
I couldn't say a word
...
OK, he lost the woman
he loved, his partner for life
...
I pity him
...
I mean, that's just too terrible
...
"
"That's one wound that will never go away," she said, shaking her
head
...
We've
all got something just a little bit strange
...

"Still, it is wonderful for two people to love each other, don't you
think? I mean, for a man to love his wife so much he can tell his
daughters they should have died in her place
"Maybe so, now that you put it that way
...
"
I wiped another dish without replying
...

"So, have you heard from your father?" I asked
...
In March
...
Stuff like that
...
He did add near the end that once he's settled he'll send for
me and my sister, but not a word since then
...
"
"What would you do if your father said "Come to Uruguay'?"

87

"I'd go and have a look around at least
...
My sister says
she'd absolutely refuse
...
"
"Is Uruguay dirty?"
"Who knows? She thinks it is
...
She maybe saw a film like that
...
All she wants to do is drive through scenic
places in fancy cars
...
"
"I mean, what's wrong with Uruguay? I'd go
...
We have an uncle in the neighbourhood
who helps out and makes deliveries
...
A
bookshop's not exactly hard labour, so we can manage
...
"
"Do you like your father?"
Midori shook her head
...
" "So how can you follow him
to Uruguay?"
"I believe in him
...

How can I not believe in a man who gives up his house, his kids, his
work, and runs off to Uruguay from the shock of losing his wife? Do
you see what I mean?"
I sighed
...
"
Midori laughed and patted me on the back
...
"It
really doesn't matter
...
A fire
broke out near Midori's house and, when we went up to the third-floor
laundry deck to watch, we sort of kissed
...

We were drinking coffee after the meal and talking about the

88

university when we heard sirens
...
Lots of people ran past the shop,
some of them shouting
...
"Wait here a minute," she said
and disappeared; after which I heard feet pounding up stairs
...
Let's see, Brazil was over here, and Venezuela there,
and Colombia somewhere over here, but I couldn't recall the location
of Uruguay
...
I followed her to the end of the hall and
climbed a steep, narrow stairway to a wooden deck with bamboo
laundry poles
...
Huge clouds of
black smoke shot up from a place three or four houses away and
flowed with the breeze out towards the high street
...

"It's Sakamoto's place," said Midori, leaning over the railing
...
They went out of
business some time ago, though
...
A three-storey building blocked our view of the fire, but there
seemed to be three or four fire engines over there working on the
blaze
...

The usual crowd of gawkers filled the area
...
"The wind's blowing the other
way now, but it could change any time, and you've got a petrol station
right there
...
"
"What valuables?" said Midori
...
Emergency cash
...
I'm not

89

running away
...
I don't mind dying
...
I couldn't tell if
she was serious or joking
...

"OK," I said
...
I'll stay with you
...

"No way," I said
...
If you want to die, you
can do it alone
...
Of
course, if it had been dinner
...
Anyway, let's stay here and watch for a while
...
And if something bad happens, we can think about it
then
...
We drank and watched the black smoke rising
...
I asked her if she didn't think this might anger the
neighbours
...

"Forget it," she said
...
"
She sang some of the folk songs she had played with her group
...
She went through all the old standards "Lemon Tree", "Puff (The Magic Dragon)", "Five Hundred Miles",
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "Michael, Row the Boat
Ashore"
...
I worked on my

90

beer and listened to her sing and kept an eye on the fire
...
People were yelling and giving orders
...
I worried that we might be in the picture
...
A little kid
was crying for his mother
...
Before long
the wind began shifting unpredictably, and white ash flakes fell out of
the air around us, but Midori went on sipping and singing
...

I'd love to knit a scarf for you,
But I have no wool
...

"It's called "I Have Nothing'," Midori announced
...

I listened to this musical mess thinking that the house would blow
apart in the explosion if the petrol station caught fire
...

"How did you like my song?" she asked
...
"
"Thanks," she said
...
" "Yeah, I kind
of thought so
...
" "Yeah?"
"I didn't feel the least bit sad
...
"
"And I didn't feel sad when my father left, either
...
Don't you think I'm terrible? Cold-hearted?" "I'm sure you
have your reasons
...
Hmm
...
But
I always thought, I mean, they're my mother and father, of course I'd
be sad if they died or I never saw them again
...
I didn't feel anything
...
I hardly even think of
them
...
Sometimes my mother will
be glaring at me out of the darkness and she'll accuse me of being
happy she died
...
I'm just not very sad
...
I cried all night when my
cat died, though, when I was little
...
I couldn't see flames, and the
burning area didn't seem to be spreading
...
What could have kept burning so
long?
"But I'm not the only one to blame," Midori continued
...
I recognize that
...
"
"Do you think you weren't loved enough?"
She tilted her head and looked at me
...

"Somewhere between "not enough' and "not at all'
...
Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get
my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more
...
But they never gave that to me
...
If I tried to
cuddle up and beg for something, they'd just shove me away and yell
at me
...
So I made up
my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally 365 days a year
...
"
"Wow," I said
...
She watched the rising smoke for a

92

while, thinking
...
That makes it tough
...
I'm looking for selfishness
...
Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortbread
...

And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and
hold this strawberry shortbread out to me
...
That's what I'm looking
for
...

"It does," she said
...
There are times in a girl's
life when things like that are incredibly important
...
And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me
...
What a fool I've been! I should have known that you
would lose your desire for strawberry shortbread
...
To make it up to
you, I'll go out and buy you something else
...
"
"Sounds crazy to me
...
Not that anyone can understand me,
though
...
"For
a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly
...
"
"I've never met a girl who thinks like you
...
"But it's
the only way I know how to think
...
I'm just telling you what
I believe
...
I'm not trying to be different
...

When that happens, I feel like everything's such a pain!"
"And you want to let yourself die in a fire?"
"Hey, no, that's different
...
"
"What? Dying in a fire?"
"No, I just wanted to see how you'd react," Midori said
...
Really
...
That doesn't frighten
me at all, compared to the way I saw my mother and a few relatives
die
...
It's
in the blood, I guess
...
All that's left
is pain and suffering
...

"That's the kind of death that frightens me
...
I hate that
...
"
Another half hour and the fire was out
...
All but one of the fire
engines returned to base, and the crowd dispersed, buzzing with
conversation
...
Two crows had settled on nearby lamp-posts to observe
the activity below
...
Limp, she stared at the sky and
barely spoke
...

"Not really," she said
...

First time in a long time
...
I put my arm around her and
kissed her
...
The early autumn
sun cast the shadow of her lashes on her cheek, and I could see it
trembling in outline
...
I
would probably not have kissed Midori that day if we hadn't spent the
afternoon on the laundry deck in the sun, drinking beer and watching a
fire, and she no doubt felt the same
...
It was
that kind of kiss
...

The first to speak was Midori
...
I said
that I had sensed as much
...

"I do," I said
...

And then I realized that the brief spell of the early autumn afternoon
had vanished
...
She said she had to stay home in case the phone rang
...
When I spend the day alone,
I feel as if my flesh is rotting little by little - rotting and melting until
there's nothing left but a green puddle that gets sucked down into the
earth
...
That's how it feels to
me, waiting indoors all day
...
'As long as lunch is included
...
"I'll arrange another fire for dessert
...
I went
to the cafeteria afterwards and ate a cold, tasteless lunch alone
...
Two women students
next to me were carrying on a long conversation, standing the whole
time
...
From the direction of the student club building came the
sound of a bass voice practising scales
...
There were skateboarders
in the car park
...
In the quadrangle a helmeted girl
student knelt on the ground, painting huge characters on a sign with
something about American imperialism invading Asia
...
In his or her own way,
everyone I saw before me looked happy
...
But they did look happy on this
pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a
kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was
not truly part of the scene
...
Kizuki
died that night, and ever since a cold, stiffening wind had come
between me and the world
...
All I knew with absolute certainty - was that Kizuki's death had robbed me for

96

ever of some part of my adolescence
...

I sat there for a long time, watching the campus and the people
passing through it, and hoping, too, that I might see Midori
...

Nagasawa came to my room that Saturday afternoon and suggested we
have one of our nights on the town
...
I said I would go
...

Late in the afternoon I showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes a polo shirt and cotton jacket - then had dinner with Nagasawa in the
dining hall and the two of us caught a bus to Shinjuku
...
The girls tended to come in
pairs to this bar - except on this particular evening
...
Finally, two friendly-looking girls took seats at the bar,
ordering a gimlet and a margarita
...
Still, the
four of us enjoyed a pleasant chat until their dates showed up
...
A group of three girls occupied a table at the
back
...
So much for our "luck"
...
For some reason, the girls
were just not coming our way
...
30 Nagasawa was ready to give up
...

"No problem," I said
...
"
"Maybe once a year," he admitted
...
Wandering around
Shinjuku on a noisy Saturday night, observing the mysterious energy
created by a mixture of sex and alcohol, I began to feel that my own
desire was a puny thing
...
"I haven't seen a film in ages
...
"Do you mind?"
"No way," I said
...
"
"Nah, I really am in the mood for a film
...
"I'll make it up to you some time
...
I went into a fast food place for a
cheeseburger and some coffee to kill the buzz, then went to see The
Graduate in an old rep house
...

Emerging from the cinema at four in the morning, I wandered along
the chilly streets of Shinjuku, thinking
...
Before long,
the place became crowded with people who, like me, were waiting for
those first trains
...
I said it would be all right
...

My companions at the table turned out to be two girls
...
Neither of them was a knockout, but they weren't bad
...
I guessed they had just happened to miss the last train
...

One of the girls was on the large side
...
Her friend was a small girl with glasses
...
The
smaller one had a habit of taking off her glasses and pressing her eyes
with her fingertips
...
The large girl tilted her head several times, while the
small one shook hers just as often
...
I alternated passages of my
book with glances in their direction
...

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you might know of ally bars
in the neighbourhood that would still be serving drinks?"
Taken off guard, I set my book aside and asked, "After five o'clock in
the morning?"
"Yes
...
20 in the morning, most people are on
their way home to get sober and go to bed
...
It's kind of important
...
"
"But I have to catch a 7
...
"

99

"So find a vending machine and a nice place to sit
...
"
"I know this is asking a lot, but could you come with us? Two girls
alone really can't do something like that
...
20
in the morning
...

The girls told me they had become friends working at a travel agency
...
The small one had a boyfriend she had been seeing for a
year, but had recently discovered he was sleeping with another girl
and she had taken it hard
...

"It's too bad what you're going through," I said to the small one, "but
how did you find out your boyfriend was sleeping with someone
else?"
Taking little sips of sake, the girl tore at some weeds underfoot
...
"I opened his door, and
there he was, doing it
...
"
"No way
...
"
"I wonder why he didn't lock it?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"Yeah, how's she supposed to feel?" said the larger one, who seemed

100

truly concerned for her friend
...
Don't you think it's terrible?"
"I really can't say," I answered
...
Then it's a question of whether you forgive him or
not
...

A flock of crows appeared from the west and sailed over a big
department store
...
The time for the train to
Nagano was approaching, so we gave what was left of the sake to a
homeless guy downstairs at the west exit, bought platform tickets and
went in to see the big girl off
...
Neither of
us was particularly dying to sleep with the other, but it seemed
necessary to bring things to a close
...

She got in with me and did the same, the two of us stretched out and
guzzling beer in silence
...
Her skin was very fair and smooth, and she
had beautiful legs
...

Once we were in bed, though, she was like a different person
...

When I went inside her, she dug her nails into my back, and as her
orgasm approached she called out another man's name exactly 16
times
...
Then the two of us fell asleep
...
30
...
One
side of my head felt strangely heavy from having drunk at an odd
hour
...
Each scene felt unreal and strangely distant,
as though I were viewing it through two or three layers of glass, but

101

the events had undoubtedly happened to me
...

I ate a light lunch in Shinjuku and went to a telephone box to call
Midori Kobayashi on the off chance that she might be home alone
waiting for a call again today
...
I tried again 20 minutes later with the same results
...
A special delivery letter was waiting for
me in the letterbox by the entry
...


Thanks for your letter, wrote Naoko
...
Far from upsetting her, its arrival had made her very
happy, and in fact she had been on the point of writing to me herself
...
I could hear pigeons cooing in a nearby roost
...
Holding the seven pages of writing paper
from Naoko, I gave myself up to an endless stream of feelings
...
I closed my eyes and spent a long time collecting my
thoughts
...

It's almost four months since I came here, she went on
...
The more I've thought, the
more I've come to feel that I was unfair to you
...

This may not be the most normal way to look at things, though
...
Ordinary girls as young as I am are
basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not
...
"Fair" is a man's word, finally,
but I can't help feeling that it is also exactly the right word for me
now
...

In any case, though, I believe that I have not been fair to you and that,
as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply
...
I say this not as an excuse or a means of selfjustification but because it is true
...
So please try not to hate me
...
Which is precisely why I do not want you to hate me
...
I can't do what you
can do: I can't slip inside my shell and wait for things to pass
...
I often envy that in you, which may be why I led
you around in circles so much
...
Don't you
agree? The therapy they perform here is certainly not over-analytical,
but when you are under treatment for several months the way I am
here, like it or not, you become more or less analytical
...
"
Like that
...

In any case, I myself feel that I am far closer to recovery than I once
was, and people here tell me this is true
...
The one I
wrote you in July was something I had to squeeze out of me (though,
to tell the truth, I don't remember what I wrote - was it terrible?), but

103

this time I am very, very calm
...
How wonderful it is to be able to write
someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to
sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like
this is truly marvellous
...
I'm happy just to be able to feel I want to write to someone
...
It's 7
...
The place is silent, and it's pitch black
outside
...
I usually have a
clear view of the stars from here, but not today, with the clouds
...
They probably learn whether they want
to or not because there's nothing to do here once the sun goes down
...
Speaking to them, I realize how ignorant I was about such
things, which is kind of nice
...
In addition, the staff (doctors,
nurses, office staff, etc
...
It's such a wide-open
place, these are not big numbers at all
...
It's big and filled with
nature and everybody lives quietly - so quietly you sometimes feel
that this is the normal, real world, which of course it's not
...

I play tennis and basketball
...
When
I'm absorbed in a game, though, I lose track of who are the patients
and who are staff
...
I know this will sound
strange, but when I look at the people around me during a game, they
all look equally deformed
...
Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way
he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and
feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it
doesn't happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case,
something else might go funny
...
It may well
be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities
...

As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being
hurt by them because we know that we are "deformed"
...
Just as Indians wear
feathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our
deformities in the open
...

In addition to playing sports, we all participate in growing vegetables:
tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, watermelons, strawberries, spring
onions, cabbage, daikon radishes, and so on and on
...
We use greenhouses, too
...
They
read books on the subject and call in experts and talk from morning to
night about which fertilizer to use and the condition of the soil and
stuff like that
...
It's great to
watch different fruits and vegetables getting bigger and bigger each
day
...


105

We eat freshly picked fruits and vegetables every day
...
Sometimes we go out and gather wild plants and
mushrooms
...
As a result of all this, I've gained over six pounds
since I got here
...

When we're not farming, we read or listen to music or knit
...
The record collection has everything from Mahler
symphonies to the Beatles, and I'm always borrowing records to listen
to in my room
...
As long as we're here, we feel
calm and peaceful
...
We think we've
recovered
...

My doctor says it's time I began having contact with "outside people"
- meaning normal people in the normal world
...
To tell the truth, I don't want to see my
parents
...
Plus, there are things I have to explain to you
...

Still, you shouldn't feel that I'm a burden to you
...
I can sense the good feelings you
have for me
...
All I am doing in this letter is
trying to convey that happiness to you
...
Please forgive
me if anything I've written here upsets you
...

I sometimes wonder: IF you and I had met under absolutely ordinary
circumstances, and IF we had liked each other, what would have
happened? IF I had been normal and you had been normal (which, of
course, you are) and there had been no Kizuki, what would have
happened? Of course, this "IF" is way too big
...
It's all I can do at this point
...

Unlike an ordinary hospital, this place has free visiting hours
...
You can even eat
with me, and there's a place for you to stay
...
I look forward to seeing you
...
Sorry this turned into such a long letter
...

After that I went downstairs, bought a Coke from the vending
machine, and drank it while reading the letter one more time
...
My name and address had been written on the pink envelope in
perfect, tiny characters that were just a bit too precisely formed for
those of a girl
...
The return
address on the back said Ami Hostel
...
I thought about it
for a
few minutes, concluding that the "ami" must be from the French word
for "friend"
...
I was afraid that if I stayed near the letter I would end up
reading it 10, 20, who knew how many times? I walked the streets of
Tokyo on Sunday without a destination in mind, as I had always done
with Naoko
...
When the
sun went down, I returned to the dorm and made a long-distance call

107

to the Ami Hostel
...
I asked if it might be possible for me to visit Naoko the
following afternoon
...

The same woman answered when I called back after dinner
...
I thanked her, hung
up, and put a change of clothes and a few toiletries in my rucksack
...
Even so, I didn't fall asleep until
after one o'clock in the morning
...
He was used to my taking short trips when I had free time,
and reacted without surprise
...
I made do with
coffee and a sandwich for breakfast and dozed for an hour
...
Following Naoko's
instructions, I took a city bus to a small terminal serving the northern
suburbs
...
35, I was told, and the trip would take a little over an hour
...

Back in the waiting room, I studied the map to see if I could find
exactly where the Ami Hostel was located
...
The bus would have to
cross several hills in its trek north, then turn around where the canyon
road dead-ended and return to the city
...
There was a footpath near the bus stop, according
to Naoko, and if I followed it for 20 minutes I would reach Ami
Hostel
...
The tightly packed city
streets gave way to more sparse housing, then fields and vacant land
...
When the bus entered the canyon,
the driver began hauling the steering wheel this way and that to follow
the twists and curves of the road, and I began to feel queasy
...
By the time the number of curves began
to decrease to the point where I felt some relief, the bus plunged into a
chilling cedar forest
...
The breeze flowing into the bus's open
windows turned suddenly cold, its dampness sharp against the skin
...
Broad, green farmland
spread out in all directions, and the river by the road looked bright and
clear
...
Some
houses had laundry drying in the sun, and dogs were howling
...
The road was lined with such
houses for a time, but I saw not a single person
...
The bus would
enter cedar forest, come out to a village, then go back into forest
...
Forty
minutes after leaving the city, the bus reached a mountain pass with a
wide-open view
...
There were only four passengers left now,
including me
...
The driver went off to one
side for a pee
...
I said yes to keep things simple
...
The driver got out, had a short talk with
our driver, and the two men climbed back into their buses
...
It was not immediately clear to me why our bus had had to
wait for the other one, but a short way down the other side of the
mountain the road narrowed suddenly
...

The villages along the road were far smaller now, and the level areas
under cultivation even narrower
...
They seemed to have just as many
dogs as the other places, though, and the arrival of the bus would set
off a howling competition
...
I slung my
rucksack over my shoulder and started up the track
...
I had been climbing
the gentle slope for some 15 minutes when I came to a road leading
into the woods on the right, the opening barely wide enough to
accommodate a car
...

Sharply etched tyre tracks ran up the road through the trees
...
The sound came
through with strange clarity, as if amplified above the other voices of
the forest
...

Beyond the woods I came to a white stone wall
...
The black iron gate looked sturdy enough,
but it was wide open, and there was no one manning the guardhouse
...
A few clues suggested the guard had
been there until some moments before: the ashtray held three buttends, a tea cup stood there half empty, a transistor radio sat on a shelf,
and the clock on the wall ticked off the time with a dry sound
...
The area just inside the gate was a car park
...

The car park could have held 30 cars, but only those three were parked
there now
...
He was a tall
man in his early sixties with receding hair
...
The number 32 was
painted in white on the bike's mudguard
...

"Go to the main building, please, and ask for Doctor Ishida," he said
to me
...
Then
take your second left - got that? Your second left - from the
roundabout
...
Turn right and go through
another bunch of trees to a concrete building
...

It's easy, just watch for the signs
...
It had a manicured garden
with well-shaped rocks and a stone lantern
...
Turning right through the trees, I saw a three-storey
concrete building
...
It was simple in design
and gave a strong impression of cleanliness
...
I climbed the stairs and went in
through a big glass door to find a young woman in a red dress at the
reception desk
...
She smiled and gestured towards a brown sofa,
suggesting in low tones that I wait there for the doctor to come
...
I lowered my rucksack from my back, sank
down into the deep cushions of the sofa, and surveyed the place
...
As I waited, I kept my eyes on
the floor's reflection of my shoes
...
" I nodded
...
It was as though everyone were taking a siesta
...

Before long, though, I heard the soft padding of rubber soles, and a
mature, bristly-haired woman appeared
...
Instead of
just shaking it, she turned my hand over, examining it front and back
...

"No," I said, taken aback
...
"
"I can tell from your hands," she said with a smile
...
Her face
had lots of wrinkles
...
Instead, they emphasized a certain
youthfulness in her that transcended age
...
When
she smiled, the wrinkles smiled with her; when she frowned, the
wrinkles frowned, too
...
Here was a woman in her late thirties who seemed not

113

merely a nice person but whose niceness drew you to her
...

Wildly chopped, her hair stuck out in patches and the fringe lay
crooked against her forehead, but the style suited her perfectly
...
Long and slim, she had almost no
breasts
...
She
looked like a kindly, skilled, but somewhat world-weary female
carpenter
...
I imagined that any minute now she was going to
whip out her tape measure and start measuring me everywhere
...
"Sorry, no," I said
...
"It would have been fun
...
Why all this talk about musical instruments?
She took a pack of Seven Stars from her breast pocket, put one
between her lips, lit it with a lighter and began puffing away with
obvious pleasure
...
Watanabe, wasn't it? - before you see Naoko
...
Ami Hostel is kind of unusual - you
might find it a little confusing without any background knowledge
...
"
"Well, then, first of all - " she began, then snapped her fingers
...
"
"You're right, I am
...
We can talk over food in the dining hall
...
"

114

She took the lead, hurrying down a corridor and a flight of stairs to the
first-floor dining hall
...
The day's menu listed a potato
stew with noodles, salad, orange juice and bread
...

"You obviously enjoy your food!" said my female companion
...
"Plus, I've hardly eaten anything all day
...
I'm full
...
"
"I will, if you really don't want it
...
It doesn't hold much
...
" She lit another Seven Star
...
Everybody does
...

"Are you Naoko's doctor?" I asked
...
"What makes you
think I'm a doctor?"
"They told me to ask for Doctor Ishida
...
No no no, I teach music here
...
But I'm just another patient
...
I work as a music teacher and help out in the office, so
it's hard to tell any more whether I'm a patient or staff
...

"That's strange," said Reiko
...
I like living
with her
...
Including you
...
"The first thing you ought to know is that this is no
ordinary "hospital'
...
We do have a few doctors, of course, and they give
hourly sessions, but they're just checking people's conditions, taking
their temperature and things like that, not administering "treatments'
as in an ordinary hospital
...
People enter and leave voluntarily
...
In some cases, people who need specialized therapy
end up going to a specialized hospital
...
"But what does this "convalescence' consist of?
Can you give me a concrete example?"
Reiko exhaled a cloud of smoke and drank what was left of her orange
juice
...
A regular
routine, exercise, isolation from the outside world, clean air, quiet
...
We're like one of those commune places you hear so much
about
...
"
A bundle?"
"Well, it's not ridiculously expensive, but it's not cheap
...
We've got a lot of land here, a few patients, a big staff,
and in my case I've been here a long time
...
Now, how about a cup of
coffee?"
I said I'd like some
...
She put sugar in hers,
stirred it, frowned, and took
a sip
...
The land was a donation
...
The whole place used to be the donor's
summer home about 20 years ago
...

"That used to be the only building on the property
...
That's how it all got started
...
The doctor's theory was that if you could have a
group of patients living out in the country, helping each other with
physical labour and have a doctor for advice and check-ups, you could
cure certain kinds of sickness
...
"
"Meaning, the therapy worked
...
Lots of people don't get better
...
The best thing about this place is the way
everybody helps everybody else
...
Other places don't work
that way, unfortunately
...
Here, though, we all help each other
...
They watch us from the
sidelines and they slip in to help us if they see we need something, but
it sometimes happens that we help them
...
For example, I'm teaching one doctor to play
the piano and another patient is teaching a nurse French
...
Patients with problems like ours are often blessed with special
abilities
...
You're
one of us while you're in here, so I help you and you help me
...
"You help Naoko
and Naoko helps you
...
"
"First you decide that you want to help and that you need to be helped
by the other person
...
You will not lie, you
will not gloss over anything, you will not cover up anything that might
prove embarrassing to you
...
"
"I'll try," I said
...
"
"Not while the sun's up," she said with a sombre look
...
" "Really?"
"Don't be ridiculous, I'm kidding," she said, shaking her head with a
look of disgust
...
I stay here
because I enjoy helping other people get well, teaching music,
growing vegetables
...
We're all more or less friends
...
I'm not like Naoko
...
I don't have any work to speak of, and
almost no friends
...
Oh, I'll read a paper in the library every once in a while, but
I haven't set foot outside this property all that time
...
"
"But maybe a new world would open up for you," I said
...
"But I've got my own set of problems
...
"
I nodded in response
...
She was pretty confused at first and we had our
doubts for a while, but she's calmed down now and improved to the
point where she's able to express herself verbally
...
But she should have received treatment
a lot earlier
...
Her family should have seen
it, and she herself should have realized that something was wrong
...
"
"They weren't?" I shot back
...

I shook my head
...
She's ready for some
honest talk with you
...
"There's one more thing you need to know," she said
...
Visitors can't be alone with patients
...
I'm sorry, but you'll just
have to put up with me
...

"But still," she said, "the two of you can talk about anything you'd
like
...
I know pretty much everything there is to know
about you and Naoko
...
We have these group sessions, you know
...
Plus Naoko and I talk about everything
...
"
I looked at Reiko as I drank my coffee
...
I still don't know whether what I did to Naoko in
Tokyo was the right thing to do or not
...
"
"And neither do I," said Reiko
...
That's
something the two of you will have to decide for yourselves
...

Maybe, once you've got that taken care of, you can go back and think
about whether what happened was the right thing or not
...

"I think the three of us can help each other - you and Naoko and I - if
we really want to, and if we're really honest
...
How long can you
stay?"
"Well, I'd like to get back to Tokyo by early evening the day after
tomorrow
...
"
"Good," she said
...
That way it won't cost you
anything and you can talk without having to worry about the time
...

"Naoko and me, of course," said Reiko
...
Don't worry
...
"Can a male visitor stay in a Woman's
room?"
"I don't suppose you're going to come in and rape us in the middle of
the night?"
"Don't be silly
...
Stay in our place and we can have some
nice, long talks
...
Then we can really
understand each other
...
I'm pretty
good, you know
...

"Naoko and I have already discussed this
...
Don't you think you
should just politely accept?"
"Of course, I'll be glad to
...
"You've got this funny way of talking," she said
...

Reiko smiled too, cigarette in mouth
...

I can tell that much from looking at you
...
You're one of the
ones who can
...
"
"What happens when people open their hearts?"
Reiko clasped her hands together on the table, cigarette dangling from
her lips
...
"They get better," she said
...

Reiko and I left the main building, crossed a hill, and passed by a
pool, some tennis courts, and a basketball court
...
Both
used their racquets well, but to me the game they were playing could
not have been tennis
...
They slammed the ball back and forth with a kind of strange
concentration
...
The young man, in the
end of the court closer to us, noticed Reiko and carne over
...
Near the court, a man with no
expression on his face was using a large mower to cut the grass
...
The same kind
of yellow bike the gatekeeper had been riding was parked at the
entrance to almost every house
...

"We have just about everything we need without going to the city,"
she said as we walked along
...
We get eggs from our own
chicken coop
...
We even have films at weekends
...
Clothing we order
from catalogues
...
"
"But you can't go into town?"
"No, that we can't do
...
Each person is completely free to leave this
place, but once you've left you can't come back
...
You can't go off for a couple of days in town and expect to
come back
...
Everybody would be
coming and going
...
What made them look strange it's hard to say, but that
was the first thing I felt when I saw them
...
It
occurred to me that this was what you might get if Walt Disney did an
animated version of a Munch painting
...
The road twisted
its way among them like the artificial practice course of a driving
school
...
The place was deserted, and curtains covered all the
windows
...
The women live here
...
That's 80
people all together, but at the moment there are only 32 of us
...
"I've been given special
permission to move around freely like this, but everyone else is off
pursuing their individual schedules
...
Each person makes up his or her own schedule
...
I forget
...
"
Reiko walked into the building marked "C-7", climbed the stairs at the
far end of the hallway, and opened the door on the right, which was
unlocked
...
It had no extra
furniture or unnecessary decoration, but neither was the place severe
...

The living room had a sofa, a table, and a rocking chair
...
Both tables had large ashtrays on them
...
A small night table
stood between the beds with a reading lamp on top and a paperback
turned face down
...

"No bath, just a shower, but it's pretty impressive, wouldn't you say?
Bath and laundry facilities are communal
...
My dorm room has a ceiling and a
window
...
"They're
long and harsh
...
It gets damp and chills you to the bone
...
Mostly you stay inside where it's
warm and listen to music or talk or knit
...
You'll see if you come here in the winter
...

"This will be your bed," she said, patting the sofa
...
You should be all right,
don't you think?"

123

"I'm sure I'll be fine
...
"We'll be back around five
...
Do you mind staying here alone?"
"Not at all
...
"
When Reiko left, I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes
...
That had been
autumn, too, I realized
...
I
recalled the smell of Kizuki's leather jacket and the racket made by
that red Yamaha 125cc bike
...
Nothing special
happened on the way, but I remembered it well
...

I lay there for a long time, letting my mind wander from one memory
to another
...

Some of them were pleasant, but others carried a trace of sadness
...
I opened my
eyes, and there she was
...
She was sitting on the arm of the sofa, looking at me
...
But it was the real Naoko
...

"No," I said, "just thinking
...
"I
don't have much time, though
...
I just
got away for a minute, and I have to go back right away
...
"It's cute
...
It suited her very well, as if she had always
worn it that way
...

"It's such a pain, I have Reiko cut it for me
...
"
"My mother hates it
...
It
was shaped like a butterfly
...
Not that
I had anything special to say
...
Otherwise, I'd have trouble getting to know
you again
...
"
"Well?" I asked
...
"But time's up
...
"
I nodded
...
It
makes me very happy
...
This is a special place, and it has a
special system, and some people can't get into it
...
I won't be crushed
...
We tell each other all kinds of things with
complete honesty
...
"I'll be honest
...
When I put my
arm around her, she rested her head on my shoulder and pressed her
face to my neck
...
Holding her, I felt warm in the chest
...


125

With Naoko gone, I went to sleep on the sofa
...
In the kitchen were the dishes
Naoko used, in the bathroom was the toothbrush Naoko used, and in
the bedroom was the bed in which Naoko slept
...
I dreamed of a butterfly dancing in the half-light
...
35
...
I had sweated in my sleep, so I dried my face with a
small towel from my rucksack and put on a fresh vest
...
I was facing a window in the building opposite,
on the inside of which hung several paper cut-outs - a bird, a cloud, a
cow, a cat, all in skilful silhouette and joined together
...
I felt as if I were living alone in an extremely well-cared-for
ruin
...
All wore hats
that prevented me from telling their ages, but judging from their
voices, they were not very young
...
An
evening mood hung over everything
...
Above the ridge floated a border of
pale sunlight
...
30
...
She seemed truly
embarrassed
...
Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, I told her
...
She was right, of course
...
I told Naoko about Storm
Trooper's sudden disappearance and about the last day I saw him,
when he gave me the firefly
...
"I wanted to hear more stories about
him
...
The world was at peace and filled
with laughter as long as Storm Trooper stories were being told
...

Naoko and I had fried fish with green salad, boiled vegetables, rice
and miso soup
...

"You don't need to eat so much as you get older," she said by way of
explanation
...
A few newcomers
arrived as we ate, meanwhile some others left
...
Where it differed was the uniform volume at
which people conversed
...
People were eating in groups of three to five, each
with a single speaker, to whom the others would listen with nods and
grunts of interest, and when that person had finished speaking, the
next would take up the conversation
...
I wondered if Naoko spoke like this when
she was with them and, strangely enough, I felt a twinge of loneliness
mixed with jealousy
...
The two listened with
an occasional "My goodness" or "Really?" but the longer I listened to
the balding man's style of speaking, the less certain I became that,
even in his white coat, he was really a doctor
...
No one stared
or even seemed to notice I was there
...

Just once, though, the man in white spun around and asked me, "How
long will you be staying?"
"Two nights," I said
...
"
"It's nice here this time of year, isn't it? But come again in winter
...
"
"Naoko may be out of here by the time it snows," said Reiko to the
man
...
I felt increasingly unsure as to whether or not he was a
doctor
...

"What do we talk about? Just ordinary things
...
Don't tell
me you're wondering if people jump to their feet and shout stuff like:
"It'll rain tomorrow if a polar bear eats the stars tonight!"'
"No, no, of course not," I said
...
"
"It's a quiet place, so people talk quietly," said Naoko
...
"There's no need to raise your voice here
...
"
"I guess not," I said, but as I ate my meal in those quiet surroundings,
I was surprised to find myself missing the hum of people
...
That was just the kind of noise I had become weary of in
recent months, but sitting here eating fish in this unnaturally quiet
room, I couldn't relax
...
People with a strong interest in a
specialist field came together in a specific place and exchanged
information understood only by themselves
...
I would do
that, I said, and after they were gone I undressed, showered, and
washed my hair
...
That had been only six
months ago, but it felt like something from a much remoter past
...

The moon was so bright, I turned the lights off and stretched out on
the sofa to listen to Bill Evans' piano
...
I took a thin metal flask from my
rucksack, let my mouth fill with the brandy it contained, allowed the
warmth to move slowly down my throat to my stomach, and from
there felt it spreading to every extremity
...
Now the moonlight seemed to be
swaying with the music
...

"Oh! It was so dark here, we thought you had packed your bags and
gone back to Tokyo!" exclaimed Reiko
...
"I hadn't seen such a bright moon for years
...
"

129

"It's lovely, though," said Naoko
...
"

Naoko brought a large, white candle from the kitchen
...
Reiko used the flame to light a
cigarette
...
The still shadows of the moonlight and the
swaying shadows of the candlelight met and melded on the white
walls of the flat
...

"How about some wine?" Reiko asked me
...

"Well, not really," said Reiko, scratching an earlobe with a hint of
embarrassment
...
If it's just wine or beer
and you don't drink too much
...
"
"We have our drinking parties," said Naoko with a mischievous air
...
"
"That's nice," I said
...
The wine had a clear, delicious
flavour that seemed almost homemade
...

She missed her fingering every now and then, but it was real Bach,
with real feeling - warm, intimate, and filled with the joy of
performance
...
"There are no pianos in
the rooms, of course
...
It's small and
simple and easy, kind of like a warm, little room
...
Eyes
on the candle flame, sipping wine, listening to Reiko's Bach, I felt the
tension inside me slipping away
...

"Request time," said Reiko, winking at me
...
"
Despite her protest, Reiko played a fine "Michelle"
...
"I really like that song
...
"It makes me feel like I'm in a big
meadow in a soft rain
...
Now and then as she
played, she would close her eyes and shake her head
...

"Play "Norwegian Wood'," said Naoko
...
It was a
coin bank, and Naoko dropped a ? 100 piece from her purse into its
slot
...

"It's a rule," said Naoko
...
It's my favourite, so I make a point of
paying for it
...
"
"And that way I get my cigarette money!" said Reiko
...
Again she played with real feeling, but never allowed it to
become sentimental
...

"Thank you," said Reiko with a sweet smile
...
"I don't know, I
guess I imagine myself wandering in a deep wood
...
That's why Reiko

131

never plays it unless I request it
...

She followed "Norwegian Wood" with a few bossa novas while I kept
my eyes on Naoko
...
Her eyes were the same deep clear pools they had always been,
and her small lips still trembled shyly, but overall her beauty had
begun to change to that of a mature woman
...
I felt moved by this new,
gentle beauty of hers, and amazed to think that a woman could change
so much in the course of half a year
...
Never again would she have
that self-centred beauty that seems to take its own, independent course
in adolescent girls and no one else
...
I
talked about the student strike and Nagasawa
...
I found it challenging to give
her an accurate account of his odd humanity, his unique philosophy,
and his uncentred morality, but Naoko seemed finally to grasp what I
was trying to tell her
...
All the while, Reiko went through
another practice of the Bach fugue she had played before, taking
occasional breaks for wine and cigarettes
...
"He is strange," I
said
...
"I guess I can't say I like him
...
He doesn't try to be liked
...
He doesn't try to fool anybody
...
"How many girls has he slept with?"
"It's probably up to 80 now," I said
...
Which is
what I think he's trying to accomplish
...
"
Naoko thought about my words for a minute
...

"So do I," I said
...
He's brilliant
...
"Oh, sure, I know all that,' he'd say
...
' He's that kind of guy
...
"
"I guess I'm the opposite of brilliant," said Naoko
...
"
"It's not because you're not smart," I said
...
I've got
tons of things I don't understand about myself
...
"
Naoko raised her feet to the edge of the sofa and rested her chin on
her knees
...

"I'm just an ordinary guy - ordinary family, ordinary education,
ordinary face, ordinary exam results, ordinary thoughts in my head
...
wasn't he the one who said
you shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinary man? You
lent me the book!" said Naoko with a mischievous smile
...
"But this is no affectation
...
Can you find something in me that's
not ordinary?"
"Of course I can!" said Naoko with a hint of impatience
...


134

Naoko remained silent for a long time, staring at her toes
...

"How many girls have you slept with, Toru?" Naoko asked in a tiny
voice as if the thought had just crossed her mind
...

Reiko plopped the guitar into her lap
...
"What kind of life are you leading?"
Naoko kept silent and watched me with those clear eyes of hers
...
I
had found it impossible to love her, I explained
...

"I'm not trying to make excuses, but I was in pain," I said to Naoko
...
It hurt
...
And I think that's why I slept with girls I didn't know
...
"You asked me that time why I had never slept with
Kizuki, didn't you? Do you still want to know?"
"I suppose it's something I really ought to know," I said
...
"The dead will always be dead, but we
have to go on living
...
Reiko played the same difficult passage over and over,
trying to get it right
...
She toyed with the butterfly shape in her
hands
...
So we tried
...
But it never worked
...
I didn't know why
then, and I still don't know why
...
I would have been glad to do anything he
wanted
...
"
Naoko lifted the hair she had let down and fastened it with the slide
...
"I never opened to him
...
I was just too dry, it hurt too much
...

So I used my fingers, or my lips
...
You know what I mean
...

Naoko cast her gaze through the window at the moon, which looked
bigger and brighter now than it had before
...
"I wanted to shut it up in my heart
...
But I have to talk about it
...
I
mean, I was plenty wet the time I slept with you, wasn't I?"
"Uh-huh," I said
...
I wanted you to hold me
...
I had never felt like
that before
...
"
"And not me," I said
...
"I don't mean to hurt you, but this much you
have to understand: Kizuki and I had a truly special relationship
...
It's how we grew up:
always together, always talking, understanding each other perfectly
...
The first time I had my period, I ran to him and cried
like a baby
...
So after he died, I didn't know how to
relate to other people
...
"
She reached for her wineglass on the table but only managed to knock
it over, spilling wine on the carpet
...
Did she want to drink some more? I
asked
...
Slumping forward, she buried her face in her
hands and sobbed with the same suffocating violence as she had that
night with me
...
When she put an arm across Naoko's shoulders, she pressed
her face against Reiko's chest like a baby
...
Maybe 20 minutes
...
"
I nodded and stood, pulling a jumper on over my shirt
...

"Don't mention it," she said with a wink
...
Don't
worry, by the time you come back she'll be OK
...

Beneath that moonlight, all sounds bore a strange reverberation
...
Behind me, every now and then, I would hear a crack or a
rustle
...

Where the road sloped upwards beyond the trees, I sat and looked
towards the building where Naoko lived
...

All I had to do was find the one window towards the back where a
faint light trembled
...
It made me think of something like the final pulse of a soul's
dying embers
...
I went on watching it the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny
light on the opposite shore night after night
...
I padded up the stairs
and tapped on the door to the flat
...


137

Reiko sat alone on the carpet, playing her guitar
...
Then she set
down the guitar on the floor and took a seat on the sofa, inviting me to
sit next to her and dividing what wine was left between our two
glasses
...
"Don't worry, all she has
to do is rest for a while
...
She was just a little worked
up
...

Reiko and I ambled down a road illuminated by street lamps
...
She picked up a basketball from under the bench and turned it
in her hands
...
I knew how to
play, I said, but I was bad at it
...

"What is your strongest sport?" Reiko asked, wrinkling the corners of
her eyes with a smile
...
"
"I'm not so good at that, either," I said, stung by her words
...
"Don't get angry
...
I have things I like to do
...
Swimming
...
"
"You like to do things alone, then?"
"I guess so
...
I can't get into them
...
"
"Then you have to come here in the winter
...
I'm sure you'd like that, tramping around in the snow all day,
working up a good sweat
...

"Does Naoko often get like that?" I asked
...

"Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that
...
She's letting out her feelings
...
When your feelings build up and harden and die
inside, then you're in big trouble
...
Don't worry
...
It may hurt a little sometimes, and someone may get upset
the way Naoko did, but in the long run it's for the best
...
Like I
told you in the beginning, you should think not so much about
wanting to help her as wanting to recover yourself by helping her to
recover
...
So you have to be honest and
say everything that comes to mind, while you're here at least
...

"I've seen all kinds of people come and go in my time here," she said,
"maybe too many people
...
But in
Naoko's case, I'm not sure
...
For all I know, she could be 100 per cent recovered
next month, or she could go on like this for years
...
"
"What makes Naoko such a hard case for you?"
"Probably because I like her so much
...
I mean, I really like her
...
It may take
a very long time to undo them all, or something could trigger them to
come unravelled all at once
...
Which is why I can't
be sure about her
...

"The most important thing is not to let yourself get impatient," Reiko
said
...
Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't
get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread
before it's ready to come undone
...
Do
you think you can do that?"
"I can try," I said
...
Have you thought about that?" I nodded
...
"Especially for
someone your age
...
Without
deadlines or guarantees
...
"Like Naoko, I'm not really sure what it
means to love another person
...

I do want to try my best, though
...
Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other
...
"
"And are you going to go on sleeping with girls you pick up?"
"I don't know what to do about that either," I said
...
"
Reiko set the ball on the ground and patted my knee
...
If you're OK with that,
then it's OK
...

All I'm saying is you shouldn't use yourself up in some unnatural
form
...
The
years 19 and 20 are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and
if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that

140

age, it will cause you pain when you're older
...
So think about
it carefully
...
"
I said I would think about it
...
Once upon a time
...
Of course
...

"And I was cute, too
...
I
didn't have all these wrinkles
...
She thanked me
...
"I like to hear it, but I'm the exception
...

She slipped a wallet from her trouser pocket and handed me a photo
from the card-holder
...

"Isn't she pretty? My daughter," said Reiko
...
She's - what? - nine years old now
...
Reiko pocketed the
wallet and, with a sniff, put a cigarette between her lips and lit up
...
"I had talent, and
people recognized it and made a fuss over me while I was growing up
...
Not a cloud on the
horizon
...
But then one day something happened, and
it all blew apart
...
I practised for it
constantly, but all of a sudden the little finger of my left hand stopped
moving
...
I tried massaging it, soaking

141

it in hot water, taking a few days off from practice: nothing worked
...
They tried all kinds of
tests but they couldn't come up with anything
...
The problem must be
psychological
...
Probably pre-competition stress, he said,
and advised me to get away from the piano for a while
...
Then she bent her neck to
the side a few times
...

I thought I'd forget about that particular competition and really relax,
spend a couple of weeks away from the piano doing anything I
wanted
...
Piano was all I could think about
...
How would I live if that
happened? The same thoughts kept going round and round in my
brain
...
I
had started playing when I was four and grew up thinking about the
piano and nothing else
...
People paid attention to me for that one thing: my talent at the
piano
...
Total
darkness
...

"That was the end of my dream of becoming a concert pianist
...
My finger started to move shortly after I
arrived, so I was able to return to the conservatoire and graduate, but
something inside me had vanished
...
The
doctor said I lacked the mental strength to become a professional
pianist and advised me to abandon the idea
...
But the pain I felt was excruciating
...
Here I was in my early twenties and the
best part of my life was over
...
No more
applause, no one would make a big fuss over me, no one would tell
me how wonderful I was
...
I felt so
miserable, I cried all the time
...

"My parents walked around on tiptoe, afraid of hurting me
...
All of a sudden the daughter they
had been so proud of was an ex-mental-patient
...
When you're living with people, you sense what they're
feeling, and I hated it
...
So then, snap! It happened again - the jumble,
the darkness
...
Not this place: a regular insane asylum with
high walls and locked gates
...
I didn't
know what to do with myself
...
Seven
months: a long seven months
...
"
Reiko smiled, her lips stretching from side to side
...
He was a year younger than me, an engineer who worked in
an aeroplane manufacturing company, and one of my pupils
...
He didn't say a lot, but he was warm and sincere
...
Just like that - one day when we were having tea
after his lesson
...
He took me totally off guard
...


143

I said I liked him and thought he was a nice person but that, for certain
reasons, I couldn't marry him
...
I told him
everything - what the cause had been, my condition, and the
possibility that it could happen again
...
But when he
came for his lesson a week later, he said he still wanted to marry me
...
We would see each other for three
months, I said, and if he still wanted to marry me at that point, we
would talk about it again
...
We went everywhere, and
talked about everything, and I got to like him a lot
...
It gave me a
wonderful sense of relief to be alone with him: I could forget all those
terrible things that had happened
...
Life was still full of wonderful things
I hadn't experienced
...
After three months went by, he asked
me again to marry him
...
I've never slept with anybody, and I'm
very fond of you, so if you want to make love to me, I don't mind at
all
...
If you marry me, you
take on all my troubles, and they're a lot worse than you can imagine
...
And he
meant it
...
So I agreed to marry him
...
We got married, let's see, four months later I think
it was
...

He was from an old family that lived in a rural part of Shikoku
...
No wonder they opposed the marriage
...
We just went to the
registry office and registered our marriage and took a trip to Hakone
for two nights
...
And finally, I
remained a virgin until the day I married
...

"I thought that as long as I was with him, I would be all right," she
went on
...

That's the most important thing for a sickness like ours: a sense of
trust
...
If my condition
starts to worsen even the slightest bit - if a screw comes loose - he'll
notice straight away, and with tremendous care and patience he'll fix
it, he'll tighten the screw again, put all the jumbled threads back in
place
...
No more
snap! I was so happy! Life was great! I felt as if someone had pulled
me out of a cold, raging sea and wrapped me in a blanket and laid me
in a warm bed
...
I'd
get up in the morning and do the housework and take care of the baby
and feed my husband when he came home from work
...
It was probably the happiest time
of my life
...
And then, all of a sudden, snap! It happened again
...
"
Reiko lit a cigarette
...
The smoke rose
straight up and disappeared into the darkness of night
...

"Something happened?" I asked
...
Even now, it gives me a chill just to think about it
...
"I'm sorry, though, making you listen to

145

all this talk about me
...
"
"I'd really like to hear it, though," I said
...
"
"Well," Reiko began, "when our daughter entered kindergarten, I
started playing again, little by little
...
I started with short pieces by Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti
...
And my fingers wouldn't move the way they used
to
...
With my hands on
the keys, I realized how much I had loved music - and how much I
hungered for it
...

"As I said before, I had been playing from the time I was four years
old, but it occurred to me that I had never once played for myself
...
Those are all important things, of course, if you
are going to master an instrument
...
That's what music is
...
I would send my child off to kindergarten and hurry
through the housework, then spend an hour or two playing music I
liked
...

"Then one day I had a visit from one of the ladies of the
neighbourhood, someone I at least knew well enough to say hello to
on the street, asking me to give her daughter piano lessons
...
She had seen me at some point, too, and now she was pestering
her mother to let me teach her
...

"I turned her down
...
Besides, I was too busy taking care
of my own child and, though I didn't say this to the woman, nobody
can deal with the kind of child who changes teachers constantly
...
She was a fairly pushy lady and I could see she was
not going to let me off the hook that easily, so I agreed to meet the girl
- but just meet her
...
She was an absolute angel, with a kind of pure, sweet,
transparent beauty
...
She had long, shiny hair as black as freshly ground
Indian ink, slim, graceful arms and legs, bright eyes, and a soft little
mouth that looked as if someone had just made it
...
Sitting on my sofa, she
turned my living room into a gorgeous parlour
...
So, anyway, that's what she was like
...
"
Reiko narrowed her eyes as if she were actually picturing the girl
...
I could see straight away
she was a smart one
...
It was almost frightening
...
It just struck me how
frighteningly intelligent she was
...
She was so young and
beautiful, I felt overwhelmed to the point where I saw myself as an
inferior specimen, a clumsy excuse for a human being who could only

147

have negative thoughts about her because of my own warped and
filthy mind
...

"If I were as pretty and smart as she was, I'd have been
a normal human being
...
She was sick,
pure and simple
...
And while she was making
up her stories, she would come to believe them
...
She had such a quick mind,
she could always keep a step ahead of you and take care of things that
would ordinarily strike you as odd, so it would never cross your mind
she was lying
...
I certainly didn't
...
She lied about everything, and I never
suspected
...
"
"What did she lie about?"
"When I say everything, I mean everything
...
"When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up
a bunch of lies to go with the first one
...

When the usual mythomaniac tells lies, they're usually the innocent
kind, and most people notice
...
To protect herself,
she'd tell hurtful lies without batting an eyelid
...
And she would lie either more or less
depending on who she was talking to
...
Or if they did come out, she'd find an excuse or apologize in that

148

clingy voice of hers with tears pouring out of her beautiful eyes
...

"I still don't know why she chose me
...
Of course, it hardly matters
now
...
Now that I'm like this
...

"She repeated what her mother had told me, that she had been moved
when she heard me playing as she passed the house
...
She
actually used that word: "worship'
...
I mean,
to be "worshipped' by such a beautiful little doll of a girl! I don't think
it was an absolute lie, though
...
That must have been
what got her interested in me to begin with
...
And I'm not boasting
...
"
"She had brought some music with her and asked if she could play for
me
...
It was a Bach invention
...

interesting
...
Of course
it wasn't polished
...
Her sound was untrained
...
But she made it
work
...
And this was a Bach invention!
So I got interested in her
...

"Needless to say, the world is full of kids who can play Bach far better
than she could
...
But most of their performances
would have nothing to them
...
This girl's
technique was bad, but she had that little bit of something that could

149

draw people - or draw me, at least - into her performance
...
Of course, retraining her at that
point to where she could become a pro was out of the question
...
This turned out to be an empty hope, though
...
This
was a child who would make detailed calculations to use every means
at her disposal to impress other people
...
And she knew exactly
what kind of performance it would take to draw me in
...
I can see her doing it
...
Knowing all I know about her flaws, her
cunning and lies, I would still feel it
...
"
Reiko cleared her throat with a dry rasp and broke off
...

"Yeah
...
Saturday mornings
...
She never missed a lesson, she was never late, she was
an ideal pupil
...
After every
lesson, we'd have some cake and chat
...

"Don't you think we should be getting back to the room? I'm a little
worried about Naoko
...
"It's just that I was drawn into your story
...
It's a long

150

story - too long for one sitting
...
"
"I know," she said, joining her laughter with mine
...
"
We retraced our steps through the path in the woods and returned to
the flat
...
The bedroom door was open and the lamp on the night table
was on, its pale light spilling into the living room
...
She had changed into a loose-fitting blue gown,
its collar pulled tight about her neck, her legs folded under her on the
sofa
...

"Are you all right now?"
"I'm fine
...
Then she turned
towards me and repeated her apology
...
"
"A little," I said with a smile
...
When I sat down next to her, Naoko, her legs
still folded, leaned towards me until her face was nearly touching my
ear, as though she were about to share a secret with me
...

"Sorry," she said once more, this time directly into my ear, her voice
subdued
...

"Sometimes," she said, "I get so confused, I don't know what's
happening
...

Naoko smiled and looked at me
...
About
your life here
...
The people you meet
...
Wake up at six in the morning
...
Clean out the aviary
...
She took care
of the vegetables
...
In the
afternoon she could choose from among courses that might interest

151

her, outside work, or sports
...

"Reiko is teaching me piano," she said
...
We
all take turns as pupils or teachers
...
Unfortunately, I don't have anything I
can teach anyone
...

"I put a lot more energy into my studies here than I ever did in
university
...
"
"What do you do after supper?"
"Talk with Reiko, read, listen to records, go to other people's flats and
play games, stuff like that
...

"Autobiography?"
"Just kidding," Reiko laughed
...
Pretty
healthy lifestyle, wouldn't you say? We sleep like babies
...
It was a few minutes before nine
...
"
"That's OK
...
"I haven't seen
you in such a long time, I want to talk more
...
"
"When I was alone before, all of a sudden I started thinking about the
old days," I said
...
I think it was the first
year of the sixth-form
...
"Sure, I
remember
...
You brought me a
box of chocolates and they were all melted together
...
"
"Yeah, really
...
"
"All girls write poems at that age," Naoko tittered
...
The smell of the sea wind, the oleanders: before I knew it,
they just popped into my head
...
He came once,
and then he came with you, and that was it for him
...

And that first time he couldn't sit still and he only stayed about ten
minutes
...
He said he had a thing about
hospitals
...
"He was always a kid about that kind of stuff
...

But Kizuki just didn't get it
...
He
was just his usual self
...
"He was always like that
around you
...
I'm sure he
was very fond of you
...
He wasn't like that with me
...
He could
be really moody
...
It happened all the time
...
He did keep trying to change himself, to improve
himself, though
...

"He tried hard, but it didn't do any good, and that would make him
really angry and sad
...
"I've got
to do that, I've got to change this,' he was always thinking, right up to
the end
...
His best side was all that I could see
...
"He'd be thrilled if he could hear you say that
...
"
"And Kizuki was my only friend," I said
...
"
"That's why I loved being with the two of you
...
I could relax and stop worrying when the
three of us were together
...
I don't
know how you felt about it
...

"The problem was that that kind of thing couldn't go on for ever," said
Naoko
...
Kizuki
knew it, and I knew it, and so did you
...

"To tell you the truth, though," Naoko went on, "I loved his weak side,
too
...
There was absolutely
nothing mean or underhand about him
...
I tried
to tell him that, but he wouldn't believe me
...
I knew him too
well, he'd say: I couldn't tell the difference between his strong points
and his flaws, they were all the same to me
...
I went on loving him just the same, and I
could never be interested in anyone else
...

"Our boy-girl relationship was really unusual, too
...
If we happened to be apart, some
special gravitational force would pull us back together again
...
It was nothing we had to think about or make any choices
about
...
I'd go to his room or

154

he'd come to my room and I'd finish him off with my hands
...
It just happened as a
matter of course
...
I'm sure it would have shocked us
both if someone had accused us of doing anything wrong
...

We were just doing what we were supposed to do
...
It was almost as if we
owned each other's bodies jointly
...
We were afraid of my
getting pregnant, and had almost no idea at that point of how to go
about preventing it
...
We had almost no sense of
the oppressiveness of sex or the anguish that comes with the sudden
swelling of the ego that ordinary kids experience when they reach
puberty
...
Do you see what I mean?"
"I think so," I said
...
So if Kizuki had lived, I'm sure we
would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing
unhappy
...
She had
taken her hairslide off, which made the hair fall over her face when
she dropped her head forward
...
"The pain of growing up
...
Which is why
Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here
...
If we got hungry, we'd just pick a

155

banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms
...
We grew up fast and had to
enter society
...
You were
the link connecting us with the outside
...
In the end, it
didn't work, of course
...

"I wouldn't want you to think that we were using you, though
...
It just so happened that our connection with you was
our first connection with anyone else
...
Kizuki may be
dead, but you are still My only link with the outside world
...
We never meant to hurt you, but we
probably did; we probably ended up making a deep wound in your
heart
...
"
Naoko lowered her head again and fell silent
...

"Good
...

"I'd like to have some of that brandy I brought, if you don't mind," I
said
...
"Could I have a sip?" "Sure," I said,
laughing
...
Then she
went into the kitchen to make cocoa
...

I didn't have anything cheerful to talk about
...
A
few of those would have made everybody feel good
...
I felt sick just talking about something so gross, but Naoko
and Reiko practically fell over laughing, it was all so new to them
...
This was a lot of fun,
too
...

"If you feel like raping anybody in the middle of the night, don't get
the wrong one," she said
...
"
"Liar! Mine's the right bed," said Naoko
...
Why don't the three of us have a little picnic? I
know a really nice place close by
...

The women took turns brushing their teeth and withdrew to the
bedroom
...
It felt like an
awfully long day
...

Aside from the occasional slight creak of a bed, hardly a sound came
from the bedroom where Naoko and Reiko lay sleeping
...
Sleep came and carried me
into a mass of warm mud
...
Both sides of a
mountain road were lined with willows
...
A fairly stiff breeze was blowing, but the branches of the
willow trees never swayed
...

Their weight kept the branches from stirring
...
But they would not leave
...

When I opened my eyes, I felt as if I were seeing the continuation of
my dream
...
As if by reflex, I sat up in bed and started searching for the
metal birds, which of course were not there
...
She had drawn her knees up and was resting her chin on
them, looking like a hungry orphan
...
I
guessed from the angle of the moonlight that the time must be two or
three o'clock in the morning
...
She was wearing the same blue
nightdress I had seen her in earlier, and on one side her hair was held
in place by the butterfly hairslide, revealing the beauty of her face in
the moonlight
...

Naoko stayed frozen in place, like a small nocturnal animal that has
been lured out by the moonlight
...
Seeming utterly fragile and
vulnerable, the silhouette pulsed almost imperceptibly with the
beating of her heart or the motions of her inner heart, as if she were
whispering soundless words to the darkness
...
As if this were a signal to her,
Naoko stood and glided towards the head of the bed, gown rustling
faintly
...
I
stared back at her, but her eyes told me nothing
...
Our faces were
no more than ten inches apart, but she was light years away from me
...
A moment later, she brought her hands
up and began slowly to undo the buttons of her gown
...
I felt as if it were the continuation of my dream as I
watched her slim, lovely fingers opening the buttons one by one from
top to bottom
...
She had been wearing

158

nothing under the gown
...

Naked now, and still kneeling by the bed, she looked at me
...
When she moved - and she did so almost
imperceptibly - the play of light and shadow on her body shifted
subtly
...

What perfect flesh! I thought
...
Her breasts had
seemed hard, the nipples oddly jutting, the hips strangely rigid
...
It
aroused me that night and swept me along with a gigantic force
...
Holding Naoko in my arms, I wanted to explain to
her, "I am having sex with you now
...
But really this is
nothing
...
It is nothing but the joining of two bodies
...
By doing this,
we are sharing our imperfection
...
I just went on
holding her tightly
...
And that sensation both filled my heart for Naoko and
gave my erection a terrifying intensity
...
This flesh had been through many

159

changes to be reborn in utter perfection beneath the light of the moon
...
So perfect was
Naoko's physical beauty now that it aroused nothing sexual in me
...

She exposed her nakedness to me this way for perhaps five minutes
until, at last, she wrapped herself in her gown once more and buttoned
it from top to bottom
...

I stayed rooted to the spot for a very long time until it occurred to me
to leave the bed
...
It was 3
...
I went to
the kitchen and drank a few glasses of water before stretching out in
bed again, but sleep never came until the morning sunlight crept into
every corner of the room, dissolving all traces of the moon's pale
glow
...
She smiled at me and said "Good
morning"
...
I stood by and watched her as she put on
water to boil and sliced some bread, humming all the while, but I
could sense nothing in her manner to suggest that she had revealed her
naked body to me the night before
...
"Are you
OK?"
"I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep
...


160

"Not at all," I said
...

"He's just being polite," said Reiko, yawning
...

"How'd you sleep?" I asked Naoko
...
She wore a simple hairpin
without any kind of decoration
...
Buttering my bread or peeling my egg, I kept
glancing across the table at Naoko, in search of a sign
...

"I think he's in love with somebody," said Reiko
...

"Could be," I said, returning her smile
...

After breakfast, Reiko and Naoko said they would be going to feed the
birds in the aviary
...
They changed into jeans
and work shirts and white rubber boots
...
Two men in their forties, also apparently
sanatorium patients, were raking up leaves that had fallen in the
pathways
...
Cosmos were
blooming in the flowerbeds, and the shrubberies were extremely well
manicured
...

The women entered the shed by the cage and came out with a bag of

161

feed and a garden hose
...
Taking care to prevent any birds from flying out, the two
of them slipped into the cage, Naoko hosing down the dirt and Reiko
scrubbing the floor of the cage with a deck brush
...
The peacocks flapped around the cage
to avoid getting splashed
...
Reiko meowed at the parrot, which
slunk over to the far corner but soon was calling: "Thank you!"
"Crazy!" "Shithead!"
"I wonder who taught him that kind of language?" said Naoko with a
sigh
...
"I would never do such a thing
...

Laughing, Reiko explained, "This guy once had a run-in with a cat
...
"
When they had finished cleaning, the two set down their tools and
went around filling each of the feeders
...

"Do you do this every morning?" I asked Naoko
...
"They usually give this job to new women
...
Like to see the rabbits?"
"Sure," I said
...
Some ten
rabbits lay inside, asleep in the straw
...

"Isn't it precious?" she gushed
...
The warm, little ball
of fur cringed in my arms, twitching its nose
...
It was such a radiant smile,

162

without a trace of shadow, that I couldn't help smiling myself
...
I knew for certain that it
had been the real Naoko and not a dream: she had definitely taken her
clothes off and shown her naked body to me
...
I
helped them carry the tools and feed bag to the shed
...
"It's like
everything's starting out fresh and new
...
I live with those same
feelings clay aster day
...
"You're thinking about how it's
morning now or night and the next thing you know, you're old
...

"Not really," said Reiko
...
"
"Why not?" I asked
...
Then she tossed her
broom in and closed the door of the shed, whistling "Proud Mary" all
the while
...
Reiko suggested I stayed behind
with a book or something because the work would be no fun to watch
and they would be doing it as part of a group
...

"You're kidding," I said, taken aback
...
"You're so sweet
...

"I'll work on my German," I said with a sigh
...


163

"We'll be back before lunch
...
I heard the footsteps and voices of
a number of people walking by downstairs
...
For a bathroom that was being
shared by two women, its contents were incredibly simple
...
When I finished
trimming my nails, I made myself some coffee and drank it at the
kitchen table, German book open
...
It seemed to me
that the longest imaginable distance separated irregular German verb
forms from this kitchen table
...
30, took turns in the
shower, and changed into fresh clothes
...
This time the
guardhouse had a man on duty
...
The
transistor radio on the shelf was playing a sentimental old pop tune
...

Reiko explained to him that we were going to walk outside the
grounds and return in three hours
...
"You're lucky with the weather
...
It got washed out in that big rain
...
"
Reiko wrote her name and Naoko's in a register along with the date
and time
...
"And take care
...


164

"He's a little strange up here," said Reiko, touching her head
...
The sky was a freshswept blue, with only a trace of white cloud clinging to the dome of
heaven like a thin streak of test paint
...
Reiko led the way, with Naoko in the
middle and me bringing up the rear
...

We concentrated on walking, with hardly a word among us
...

I watched her long, straight hair swaying right and left where it met
her shoulders
...
The trail continued upwards so far that it was
almost dizzying, but Reiko's pace never slackened
...
Not having indulged
in such outdoor activities for some time, I found myself running short
of breath
...

"Maybe once a week," she answered
...

"We're almost there," said Reiko
...

Come on, you're a boy, aren't you?" "Yeah, but I'm out of shape
...

I wanted to answer her, but I was too winded to speak
...
The fields around us were filled with
white and blue and yellow flowers, and bees buzzed everywhere
...

The slope gave out after another ten minutes, and we gained a level
plateau
...
Reiko found a leaf and

165

used it to make a whistle
...
We walked on for some 15 minutes before passing
through a village
...
Waist-high
grass grew among the houses, and dry, white gobs of pigeon
droppings clung to holes in the walls
...
These dead, silent houses
pressed against either side of the road as we slipped through
...
"This was farmland around here
...
Life was just too hard
...
And the soil isn't particularly fertile
...
"
"What a waste," I said
...
"
"Some hippies tried living here at one point, but they gave up
...
"
A little beyond the village we came to a big fenced area that seemed to
be a pasture
...
We followed the fence line, and a big dog came running over
to us, tail wagging
...
I whistled and it came over to me,
licking my hand with its long tongue
...
"I'll bet he's close to 20," she said
...
He sleeps in front of the shop all day, and
he comes running when he hears footsteps
...
Catching its scent, the
dog bounded over to her and chomped down on it
...
"In the middle of October they put the horses and cows

166

in trucks and take 'em down to the barn
...
The "tourists'! Maybe 20 hikers in a day
...

The dog led the way to the café, a small, white house with a front
porch and a faded sign in the shape of a coffee cup hanging from the
eaves
...
When we took our places around a table on the
porch, a girl with a ponytail and wearing a sweatshirt and white jeans
came out and greeted Reiko and Naoko like old friends
...
"Hi," she
said
...

While the three women traded small talk, I stroked the neck of the dog
under the table
...
When I
scratched the lumpy spots, the dog closed his eyes and sighed with
pleasure
...

"Pepé," she said
...

"He's hard of hearing," said the girl
...
"
"Pepé!" I shouted
...

"Never mind, Pepé," said the girl
...
" Pepé
flopped down again at my feet
...

"Let's hear the radio," said Reiko
...
Blood, Sweat and Tears came on with
"Spinning Wheel"
...
"Now this is what we're here for! We don't have

167

radios in our rooms, so if I don't come here once in a while, I don't
have any idea what's playing out there
...

"No way!" she laughed
...

The pasture guy drives me into town and I come out again in the
morning
...

"You've got a holiday coming up soon, too, right?" asked Reiko
...
Reiko
offered her a cigarette, and they smoked
...

"I'll be back in May, though," said the girl with a laugh
...
After a commercial, it
was Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair"
...

"I saw the film," I said
...
"
"I don't know him," she said with a sad little shake of the head
...
" She
asked the girl for a guitar
...
The dog raised its head and sniffed the
instrument
...
A grass-scented
breeze swept over the porch
...

"It's like a scene from The Sound of Music," I said to Reiko as she
tuned up
...

She strummed the guitar in search of the opening chord of
"Scarborough Fair"
...


168

She had it down pat the third time and even started adding a few
flourishes
...
"I can usually play
just about anything if I hear it three times
...
The three of us applauded, and Reiko responded with a
decorous bow of the head
...

Her milk was on the house if she would play the Beatles' "Here Comes
the Sun", said the girl
...
Hers was not a full voice, and too much smoking had given
it a husky edge, but it was lovely, with real presence
...
It was a soft, warm
feeling
...
Then she
suggested to Naoko and me that we take an hour and walk around the
area
...
If you come back by three, that should be OK
...
I'm not a
chaperone, after all
...
And you came all the way
from Tokyo, I'm sure there's tons of stuff you want to talk about
...

"Let's go," said Naoko, standing up
...
The dog woke up and followed us for a while, but it
soon lost interest and went back to its place on the porch
...
Naoko would take
my hand every now and then or slip her arm under mine
...

"That wasn't 'the old days'," I laughed
...
"

169

"It feels like ancient history," said Naoko
...
I don't know, I was a bundle of nerves
...
"
"Never mind," I said
...
So if you want to take those feelings and smash
somebody with them, smash me
...
"
"So if you understand me better, what then?"
"You don't get it, do you?" I said
...

Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that's all
they do all day
...
So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the
world who enjoys trying to understand you?"
"Kind of like a hobby?" she said, amused
...
Most normal people would
call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a
hobby, that's OK, too
...

"How about Reiko?"
"I like her a lot," I said
...
"
"How come you always like people like that - people like us, I mean?
We're all kind of weird and twisted and drowning - me and Kizuki and
Reiko
...

"I don't see you or Kizuki or Reiko as "twisted' in any way
...
"
"But we are twisted," said Naoko
...
"
We walked on in silence
...

"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night so scared," said
Naoko, pressing up against my arm
...
I'll always stay twisted like this and grow old and waste away
here
...
It's horrible
...
"
I put my arm around her and drew her close
...
' When I hear him
saying that, I don't know what to do
...
don't take this the wrong way, now
...
"
"I ask Reiko to hold me
...
And I cry
...
Do you think it's sick?"
"No
...

"So hold me
...
Right here
...
The tall grass surrounded us, and we could see nothing but
the sky and clouds above
...
She was soft and warm and her hands reached out for me
...

"Tell me something, Toru," Naoko whispered in my ear
...

"Do you want to sleep with me?"
"Of course I do," I said
...
"
"Before we do it again, I want to get myself a little better
...
Will
you wait for me to do that?"
"Of course I'll wait
...

"If you're asking whether I have an erection, of course I do
...
"
"Is it difficult?" "What?"
"To be all hard like that
...
"
"Want me to help you get rid of it?"
"With your hand?"
"Uh-huh
...
It hurts
...
"Better?"
"Thanks
...

"What?"
"I wish you would do it
...
Then she unzipped my trousers and
took my stiff penis in her hand
...

She started to move her hand, but I stopped her and unbuttoned her
blouse, reaching around to undo her bra strap
...
She closed her eyes and slowly started moving her fingers
...
"Be a good boy and shut up,"
said Naoko
...
Naoko did
up her bra and blouse, and I zipped up my flies
...

"I owe it all to you
...
"
We cut across the meadow, through a stand of trees, and across
another meadow
...

"She was six years older than me, and our personalities were totally
different, but still we were very close
...
It's
true
...
"
Her sister was one of those girls who are successful at every

172

thing - a super-student, a super-athlete, popular, a leader, kind,
straightforward, the boys liked her, her teachers loved her, her walls
were covered with certificates of merit
...
"I'm not saying this because she's my sister, but she
never let any of this spoil her or make her the least bit stuck-up or a
show-off
...

"So when I was little, I decided that I was going to be the sweet little
girl
...
"I mean, you
know, I grew up hearing everybody talking about how smart she was
and how good she was at games and how popular she was
...
My
face, at least, was a little prettier than hers, so I guess my parents
decided they'd bring me up cute
...
They dressed me in velvet dresses and frilly
blouses and patent leather shoes and gave me piano lessons and ballet
lessons
...
She'd give me these cute little presents and
take me everywhere with her and help me with my homework
...
She was the best big sister anyone could
ask for
...
The same as Kizuki
...
She was 17, too, and she never gave the slightest hint she
was going to commit suicide
...
Really, it
was exactly the same, don't you think?"
"Sounds like it
...
And
she did read a lot
...
I read a bunch of them after
she died, and it was so sad
...
I cried a lot
...


173

"She was the kind of person who took care of things by herself
...
It wasn't a matter of pride, I
think
...
My parents were used
to this and thought she'd be OK if they left her alone
...
She did what needed to be done, on her own
...
This is all true, I mean it, I'm not
exaggerating
...

Instead of getting into a bad mood, she would become very subdued
...
She wouldn't be in a bad
mood, though
...
I'd tell
her all the little things - like what kinds of games I played with my
friends or what the teacher said or my exam results, stuff like that
...
After two days, she'd snap out of it just like that and
go to
school
...
My parents were worried at first and I think they went to a
doctor for advice, but, I mean, she'd be perfectly fine after two days,
so they thought it would work itself out if they left her alone, she was
such a bright, steady girl
...
He had also been
very bright, but he had stayed shut up in the house for four years from the time he was 17 until he was 21
...
My father said,
"Maybe it's in the blood - from my side'
...
When the
shaft was bare, she wound it around her fingers
...
"In autumn
when I was in the first year
...
On a dark, rainy day
...
I came home from my piano
lesson at 6
...
She told me to tell
my sister it was ready
...
Her room was
completely silent
...
I thought she was probably
sleeping
...
She was standing by the window,
staring outside, with her neck bent at a kind of angle like this, like she
was thinking
...
"What are you doing?' I said to her
...
'
That's when I noticed that she looked taller than usual
...
It
came straight down from a beam in the ceiling - I mean it was
amazingly straight, like somebody had drawn a line in space with a
ruler
...
I took in every detail
...
I looked at her face
...
I thought: I've got to
go right downstairs and tell my mother
...
But my
body ignored me
...
It was trying to lower her from the rope while my mind was
telling me to hurry downstairs
...
I just stayed that way, with my sister,
in that cold, dark place until my mother came up to see what was
going on
...

"For three days after that I couldn't talk
...
I didn't know what was
happening
...
"I told you in my letter,
didn't I? I'm a far more flawed human being than you realize
...
And
that's why I want you to go on ahead of me if you can
...
Sleep with other girls if you want to
...
Just do what you want to do
...
I don't
want to interfere with your life
...
Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every
once in a while, and always remember me
...
"
"It's not all I want, though," I said
...
" "I'm not wasting
anything
...
Will you wait for me forever?
Can you wait 10 years, 20 years?"
"You're letting yourself be scared by too many things," I said
...
You have to forget them
...
"
"If I can," said Naoko, shaking her head
...

"Then I can protect you from the dark and from bad dreams
...
"
Naoko pressed still more firmly against me
...

We got back to the cafe a little before three
...
There
was something wonderful about Brahms playing at the edge of a
grassy meadow without a sign of anyone as far as the eye could see
...

"Backhaus and Bohm," she said
...
Literally
...
I
sucked the music right out of it
...

"Do a lot of talking?" asked Reiko
...

"Tell me all about his, uh, you know, later
...
"Really?" Reiko
asked me
...

"Bo-o-o-ring!" she said with a bored look on her face
...

The scene in the dining hall was the same as the day before - the
mood, the voices, the faces
...
The balding
man in white, who yesterday had been talking about the secretion of
gastric juices under weightless conditions, joined the three of us at our
table and talked for a long time about the correlation of brain size to
intelligence
...
He pushed his plate aside
and used a ballpoint pen and notepaper to draw sketches of brains
...
This happened several times
...
Having finished his meal, he
repeated what he had told me the day before, "The winters here are
really nice
...

"Is he a doctor or a patient?" I asked Reiko
...
In either case, he doesn't seem all that normal
...
"Doctor Miyata
...
" "Mr Omura,
the gatekeeper, is pretty crazy, too," answered
Naoko
...
"He does
these wild callisthenics every morning, screaming nonsense at the top
of his lungs
...
And last year
they sacked a male nurse, Tokushima, who had a terrible drinking
problem
...

"Right on," said Reiko, waving her fork in the air
...
"
"I suppose so
...
"
Back in the room, Naoko and I played cards while Reiko practised
Bach on her guitar
...

"Straight after breakfast," I said
...
That way I
can get back in time for tomorrow night's work
...
It'd be nice if you could stay longer
...

"Maybe so," Reiko said
...
I totally forgot
...


178

"How about letting me borrow your young Mr Watanabe here?"
"Fine," said Naoko
...
Let's just the two of us go for another nighttime stroll," said
Reiko, taking my hand
...
Let's go all the way tonight
...
"Do what you like
...

The night air was cool
...
Looking up at
the sky, she sniffed the breeze like a dog
...

I tried sniffing too, but couldn't smell anything
...

"If you stay here long enough, you can pretty much tell the weather by
the smell of the air," said Reiko
...
Reiko told
me to wait a minute, walked over to the front door of one house and
rang the bell
...
Then she
ducked inside and came back with a large plastic bag
...

"Look," she said, opening the bag
...

"Do you like grapes?"
"Love them
...
"It's OK to eat them
...
"
We walked along eating grapes and spitting the skins and seeds on the
ground
...

"I give their son piano lessons once in a while, and they offer me
different stuff
...
I sometimes ask them
to do a little shopping for me in town
...


179

"Fine," said Reiko
...
"
"I'm willing to risk it
...
I want a roof, though
...
"
She turned left as we approached the tennis courts
...
Reiko opened the door of the nearest one,
stepped in and turned on the lights
...
"There's not
much to see, though
...

"I used to come here all the time for guitar practice - when I wanted to
be alone
...
I
did as I was told
...

"This is one habit I can't seem to break," she said with a frown, but
she lit up with obvious enjoyment
...
I ate my grapes, carefully peeling them one at a
time and tossing the skins and seeds into a tin that served as a rubbish
bin
...

"It was a dark and stormy night, and you were climbing the steep cliff
to grab the bird's nest
...
"Let's see, I think I had got to the point where I was
giving piano lessons to the girl every Saturday morning
...
"
"Assuming you can divide everybody in the world into two groups -

180

those who are good at teaching things to people, and those who are not
- I pretty much belong to the first group," said Reiko
...
Really
good
...
"
"I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I'm
much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself
...
I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the
matchbox
...
I don't mind at all
...
I got this clear in my
own mind, I'd say, after I started teaching this girl
...
It was only after I started teaching her that I began to
think of myself that way
...
That's
how well the lessons went
...
Plus she was going to the kind of
girls' school where anybody with halfdecent marks automatically got
into university, which meant she didn't have to kill herself studying,
and her mother was all for going easy with the lessons, too
...
I knew the first time I met her that she was
the kind of girl you couldn't push to do anything, that she was the kind
of child who would be all sweetness and say "Yes, yes,' and absolutely
refuse to do anything she didn't want to do
...

Then I would play the same piece several different ways for her, and
the two of us would discuss which was best or which way she liked

181

most
...
She would see for
herself what worked best and bring those features into her own
playing
...
I went on eating my grapes without a word
...
I used to think it was such a waste! I thought,
,if only she had started out with a good teacher and received the
proper training, she'd be so much farther along!' But I was wrong
...
There just
happen to be people like that
...
They end up
squandering it in little bits and pieces
...
At first you think they're amazing
...
You see them do it, and you're overwhelmed
...
' But that's as far as it goes
...
And why not? Because they won't put in
the effort
...
They've
been spoiled
...
They'll take some piece another kid has to work on for three
weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher assumes they've
put enough into it and lets them go on to the next thing
...
They never find out
what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a
crucial element required for character building
...
I myself
had tendencies like that, but fortunately I had a very tough teacher, so
I kept them in check
...
Like driving down the highway in

182

a high-powered sports car that responds to the slightest touch responds too quickly, sometimes
...
They're so used to praise it doesn't
mean anything to them
...
And you can't
force anything on them
...

And you don't let them rush ahead from one thing to the next: you
make them stop and think
...
If you do those things,
you'll get good results
...
Then
she took a deep breath as if to calm herself
...
Sometimes I'd show
her certain jazz piano styles - like, this is Bud Powell, or this is
Thelonious Monk
...
And what a talker she was!
She could draw you right in
...
She was a keen
observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny
...
Yes, really, that's what she was so good at stirring people's emotions, moving you
...
She tried to use it as skilfully and effectively as possible
...
She would manipulate people's
emotions for no other reason than to test her own powers
...
At the time, I had no idea what she was doing
to me
...

"It was a sickness," she said
...
She was like the
rotten apple that ruins all the other apples
...

She'll have that sickness until the day she dies
...
I would have
pitied her, too, if I hadn't been one of her victims
...
"
Reiko ate a few more grapes
...

"Well, anyway, I enjoyed teaching her for a good six months
...
Or
she'd be talking and I'd have this rush of horror when I realised the
intensity of her hatred for some person was completely irrational, or it
would occur to me that she was just far too clever, and I'd wonder
what she was really thinking
...
All I had to care
about was whether she practised or not
...
I liked her a lot
...

I just had this sixth sense that I'd better not talk about such things
...
She said she
wanted to know more about me, but I told her there was nothing to
tell: I'd had a boring life, I had an ordinary husband, an ordinary child,
and a ton of housework
...
It sent a thrill through
me when she did that - a nice thrill
...

"And then one day - a day in May, I think it was - in the middle of her
lesson, she said she felt sick
...
So I took her - almost
carried her - to the bedroom
...
She apologized for being a nuisance, but I assured her it was no
bother and asked if she wanted anything to drink
...

"A few minutes later she asked me to rub her back
...
Then she apologized and asked me
if I'd mind taking off her bra, as it was hurting her
...
She was wearing a skin-tight blouse, and I had to unbutton that
and reach behind and undo the bra hooks
...
Twice as big as mine
...
Of course I'm not paying
all that much attention at the time, and like an idiot I just carry on
rubbing her back
...
"
Reiko tapped the ash from her cigarette to the floor
...

"After a while she starts sobbing
...

"Nothing,' she says
...
"Tell me the
truth
...
I don't know what to do
...
And it hurts so much, I
just get like this
...
'
So I say, "You can talk to me
...
'
Things are not going well at home, she says
...
Her father is seeing another woman
and is hardly ever around, and that makes her mother half crazy and
she takes it out on the girl; she beats her almost every day and she
hates to go home
...
The sight is enough to make
a god weep
...
When she hears that, the girl throws her
arms around me and says, "Oh, I'm so sorry, but if I didn't have you I
wouldn't know what to do
...
If you
did that, I'd have nowhere to go
...
I mean, here's this picture-perfect beautiful girl
and I'm on the bed with her, and we're hugging, and her hands are
caressing my back in this incredibly sensual way that my own
husband couldn't even begin to match, and I feel all the screws coming
loose in my body every time she touches me, and before I know it she
has my blouse and bra off and she's stroking my breasts
...

This had happened to me once before, at school, one of the sixth-form
girls
...

""Oh, please,' she says, "just a little more
...
I have no
idea what to do
...
It's
as if I'm Paralyzed, I can't move
...
My body won't take orders
...
So here I am in the bedroom with the
curtains closed and a 13-year-old girl has me practically naked - she's
been taking my clothes off somehow all along - and touching me all
over and I'm writhing with the pleasure of it
...
I mean, it's insane, don't you think? But at the time
it was as if she had cast a spell on me
...

"You know, this is the first time I've ever told a man about it," she
said, looking at me
...
"
"I'm sorry," I said, because I didn't know what else to say
...
By then, I was
absolutely soaking wet
...
I had always thought of myself as sort of
indifferent to sex, so I was astounded to be getting so worked up
...

well, you know, I can't bring myself to put it into words
...
It was amazing
...
Like feathers or down
...
Still, somewhere in my foggedover brain, the thought occurred to me that I had to put a stop to this
...
I thought about my daughter, too
...
"Stop it now, please stop!' I shouted
...
Instead, she yanked my panties down and
started using her tongue
...
I just gave up
...
And it was
absolute paradise
...
She finally stopped, raised herself up and
looked into my eyes
...
She was 13, I was 31, but, I don't know,
looking at that body of hers, I felt totally overwhelmed
...
I could hardly believe I was looking at the
body of a 13-year-old girl, and I still can't believe it
...
Believe me
...

""What's wrong?' she says to me
...
I know you like it
...
I can
make you feel even better if you'll let me
...
I can make you feel
like your body's melting away
...
She was much better than my husband
...
"Let's do this once a
week,' she said
...
Nobody will find out
...
"
"But I got out of bed and put on my dressing-gown and told her to
leave and never come back
...
Her eyes were
absolutely flat
...
It was as if they were painted on cardboard
...
After she stared at me for a while, she gathered up her clothes
without a word and, as slowly as she could, as though she were
making a show of it, she put on each item, one at a time
...
She
brushed her hair and wiped the blood from her lips with a
handkerchief, put on her shoes, and left
...
It's true
...
"
"Is it true?" I asked
...
"Well, it is and it isn't
...
That's a fact
...
Maybe I
really was a lesbian and just hadn't noticed until then
...
Which is not to say I don't have the tendencies
...
But I'm not a lesbian in the proper sense of the
term
...
Know what I
mean?"
I nodded
...
Those are the only times it comes out in me
...
We go
around in the flat practically naked when the weather's hot, and we
take baths together, sometimes even sleep in the same bed, but
nothing happens
...
I can see that she has a beautiful
body, but that's all
...
We
made believe we were lesbians
...
Tell me
...
The two of
us got undressed and she tried caressing me, but it didn't work at all
...
I thought I was going to die laughing
...
She was so clumsy! I'll bet you're glad to hear
that
...
"
"Well, anyway, that's about it," said Reiko, scratching near an
eyebrow with the tip of her little finger
...
I could hear the dull beating of my heart from deep inside my
body
...
But I dragged
myself to the bathroom, knowing my daughter would be back soon
...
I scrubbed myself with soap, over and over, but I couldn't seem to
get rid of the slimy feeling she had left behind
...
That night, I asked my husband to
make love to me, almost as a way to get rid of the defilement
...
All I said to him was that
I wanted him to take it slow, to give it more time than usual
...
He concentrated on every little detail, he really took a long, long
time, and the way I came that night, oh yes, it was like nothing I had

189

ever experienced before, never once in all our married life
...
That's all it was
...
"But even this didn't help
...
And her last words were echoing
and echoing in my head
...
My heart was
pounding all day long while I waited, wondering what I would do if
she showed up
...
She never did
come, though
...
She was a proud little thing, and she had
failed with me in the end
...
I decided that I would
be able to forget about what had happened when enough time had
passed, but I couldn't forget
...
I couldn't play the
piano, I couldn't think, I couldn't do anything during that first month
...
The neighbours were looking at me in a strange way
...
They were as polite as ever with
their greetings, but there was something different in their tone of voice
and in their behaviour towards me
...
I tried not to let
these things bother me, though
...

"Then one day I had a visit from another housewife I was on friendly
terms with
...
She just showed up one day and asked
me if I knew about a terrible rumour that was going around about me
...
"I almost can't say it, it's so awful,'

190

she said
...
'
"Still she resisted telling me, but I finally got it all out of her
...
According
to her, people were saying that I was a card-carrying lesbian and had
been in and out of mental hospitals for it
...
They
had turned the story on its head, of course, which was bad enough, but
what really shocked me was that people knew I had been hospitalized
...
In addition,
they had investigated my background and found that I had a history of
mental problems
...
Can you believe it? She had done all this to back up her story, of
course, which her mother had to drag out of her
...

"Not that I'm blaming people for believing her
...
She comes home
crying, she refuses to talk because it's too embarrassing, but then she
spills it out
...
And to make
matters worse, it's true, I do have a history of hospitalization for
mental problems, I did hit her in the face as hard as I could
...

A few more days went by while I wrestled with the
question of whether to tell him or not, but when I did, he believed me
...
I told him everything that had happened that day - the kind
of lesbian things she did to me, the way I slapped her in the face
...
I couldn't have told him that
...
He said, "You're a married woman, after
all
...
And you're a mother
...
What a joke!'
"But I wouldn't let him go
...
I
knew
...
I had seen hundreds of sick people, so I
knew
...
Peel off a layer of that beautiful skin,
and you'd find nothing but rotten flesh
...
And I knew that ordinary people could never know
the truth about her, that there was no way we could win
...
First of all, who's going to believe that
a 13-year-old girl set a homosexual trap for a woman in her thirties?
No matter what we said, people would believe what they wanted to
believe
...

"There was only one thing for us to do, I said: we had to move
...
It was happening already
...
My
husband wasn't ready to go, though
...
And the timing was terrible: he loved his work, and he
had finally succeeded in getting us settled in our own house (we lived
in a little prefab), and our daughter was comfortable in her
kindergarten
...

I can't find a job just like that
...
It'll take two months at least
...
"This is going to finish me off
once and for all
...
Believe me, I know what I'm talking
about
...
So he suggested that I
leave first, go somewhere by myself, and he would follow after he had
taken care of what had to be done
...
I'll fall apart if I don't have
you
...
Please, don't leave me alone
...
Just a month, he said
...
There might be a
position he could take in Australia, he said
...
What could I say to that? If
I tried to object, it would only isolate me even more
...

"I couldn't hold on for a month, though
...
I took sleeping pills and turned
on the gas
...
It took a
few months before I had calmed down enough to think, and then I
asked my husband for a divorce
...
He said he had no intention of divorcing
me
...
"We can go somewhere new,
just the three of us, and begin all over again
...

"Everything ended when you asked me to wait a month
...
Now, no
matter where we go, no matter how far away we move, the same thing
will happen all over again
...
I don't want to do that any more
...
Or I should say I divorced him
...
I'm still glad I made him leave me
...
I knew I'd be like this for the rest of my life, and I didn't want
to drag anyone down with me
...

"He had been wonderful to me: an ideal husband, faithful, strong and
patient, someone I could put my complete trust in
...
And I had believed
in my recovery
...
He got me 99 per cent of the way there, but the other one per
cent went crazy
...
In one split second, everything turned into nothing
...
"
Reiko collected the cigarette butts she had crushed underfoot and
tossed them into the tin can
...
We worked so hard, so hard, building our world
one brick at a time
...

Everything was gone before you knew it
...
"Let's go back
...
"
The sky was darker, the cloud cover thicker than before, the moon
invisible
...
And with
it mixed the fresh smell of the grapes in the bag I was holding
...
"I'm afraid to get
involved with the outside world
...
"
"I understand," I said
...
I think you can go
outside and make it
...

Naoko was on the sofa with a book
...
Her fingers almost
seemed to be touching and testing each word that entered her head
...
The
lamplight enveloped her, hovering around her like fine dust
...

"Sorry we're so late," said Reiko, patting Naoko's head
...

"Of course," said Reiko
...
"
"Not at liberty to say, Miss," I answered
...
Then the three of us ate
grapes to the sound of the rain
...
I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us
could stay together
...

"OK, then, count me in," said Reiko
...
Thunder shook the place
from time to time
...
Reiko and I
sipped wine again, and when that was gone we shared the brandy that
was left in my flask
...

"Will you come to see me again?" she asked, looking at me
...

"And will you write?"
"Every week
...
"That I will," I
said
...
"
At eleven o'clock, Reiko unfolded the sofa and made a bed for me as
she had the night before
...

Unable to sleep, I took The Magic Mountain and a torch from my
rucksack and read for a while
...
Unlike the

195

night before, Naoko was the usual Naoko
...
Bringing her mouth to my ear, she whispered, "I
don't know, I can't sleep
...
Setting my book down and turning out the
torch, I took her in my arms and kissed her
...

"How about Reiko?"
"Don't worry, she's sound asleep
...
"
Then Naoko asked, "Will you really come to see me again?"
"Of course I will
...
I could feel the full shape of her breasts
against me
...
From shoulder to back to hips, I ran my hand over her
again and again, driving the line and the softness of her body into my
brain
...
I could see her
pale blue gown flash in the darkness like a fish
...

Listening to the rain, I dropped into a gentle sleep
...
You knew it was
raining only because of the ripples on puddles and the sound of
dripping from the eaves
...

As we had done the day before, the three of us ate breakfast then went
out to attend to the aviary
...
I put on a jumper and a waterproof windcheater
...
The birds, too, were avoiding the
rain, huddled together at the back of the cage
...

"Every time it rains it'll be a little colder now, until it turns to snow,"
she said
...
"
"What do you do with the birds in the winter?"
"Bring them inside, of course
...

"I really think I will go crazy if I have to hear that every morning
...
While I packed my
things, the women put on their farm clothes
...
They turned right and
I continued straight ahead
...
Naoko gave a little smile and
disappeared around a corner
...

Colours shone with an exceptional clarity in the rain: the ground was a
deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, and the people
wrapped in yellow looking like otherworldly spirits that were only
allowed to wander the earth on rainy mornings
...

The gatekeeper remembered my name and marked it on the list of
visitors as I left
...
"I
went there once
...
They serve great pork
...

"I didn't like much of what I ate in Tokyo, but the pork was delicious
...
"When was that, by

197

the way, when you went to Tokyo?"
"Hmm, let's see," he said, cocking his head, "was it the time His
Majesty the Crown prince got married? My son was in Tokyo and said
I ought to see the place at least once
...
"
"Oh, well then, sure, pork must have been good in Tokyo back then," I
said
...

I wasn't sure, I said, but I hadn't heard anything special about it
...
He gave every sign of wanting to continue
our conversation, but I told him I had to catch a bus and started
walking in the direction of the road
...
Every now and then as I
walked along I would stop, turn, and heave a deep sigh for no
particular reason
...
Yes, of course, I told myself, feeling sad:
I was in the outside world now
...
30, I changed straight away and left for the
record shop in Shinjuku to put in my hours
...
30 and sold a few records, but mainly I sat there
in a daze, watching an incredible variety of people streaming by
outside
...
Whenever I put on hard rock,
hippies and runaway kids would gather outside to dance and sniff
paint thinner or just sit on the ground doing nothing in particular, and
when I put on Tony Bennett, they would disappear
...
I couldn't imagine why anyone would want the kind of
sex paraphernalia he had there, but he seemed to do a roaring trade
...
In the game arcade across from us at another angle,

198

the cook from a local restaurant was killing time on his break with a
game of bingo that took cash bets
...
A girl with pale pink lipstick who couldn't have been more
than 12 or 13 came in and asked me to play the Rolling Stones'
"Jumpin' Jack Flash"
...
Then she asked me for a cigarette
...

Every 15 minutes or so I would hear the siren of an ambulance or
police car
...

The more I watched, the more confused I became
...
What could it possibly mean?
The manager came back from dinner and said to me, "Hey, know
what, Watanabe? Night before last I made it with the boutique chick
...

"Good for you," I said to him, whereupon he told me every last detail
of his conquest
...
"First, ya gotta give 'er presents
...
I mean really drunk
...
It's easy
...
Closing the curtains, I turned off the lights, stretched out
in bed, and felt as if Naoko might come crawling in beside me at any
moment
...
In the darkness, I returned to that small world
of hers
...
I thought
of her naked, as I had seen her in the moonlight, and pictured her
cleaning the aviary and tending to the vegetables with that soft,
beautiful body of hers wrapped in the yellow raincape
...
This seemed to clear my
brain a little, but it didn't help me sleep
...

I got out of bed and stood at the window, my unfocused eyes
wandering out towards the flagpole
...
What was Naoko doing now? I wondered
...
Let her be spared from
anguished dreams, I found myself hoping
...
E
...
The vigorous exercise cleared my head some more
and gave me an appetite
...
She had someone with her, a petite girl with
glasses, but when she spotted me, she approached me alone
...

"Lit
...

"Why don't you forget it and come have lunch with me?" "I've already
eaten
...
"
We ended up going to a nearby café where she had a plate of curry
and I had a cup of coffee
...
She seemed to enjoy the curry and
drank three glasses of water with it
...
"I don't know how many times I
called
...
I
just called
...
"

201

"You see what?"
"Nothing
...
"Any fires lately?"
"That was fun, wasn't it? It didn't do much damage, but
that smoke made it feel real
...
" Midori gulped another glass
of water, took a breath and studied my face for a while
...
"You've got this spaced-out face
...
"
"I'm OK," I said
...
"
"You look like you've just seen a ghost
...
"
"Hey, do you have "German and R
...
"Can you skip 'en: "Not
German
...
"
"OK
...
Come on, come drinking
with me and get a little life into you
...

What do you say?"
"OK, let's go," I said with a sigh
...
quad at
two
...
We
each started with two vodka and tonics
...
"They don't make you feel
embarrassed to be drinking in the afternoon
...
"Sometimes, when
the world gets too hard to live in, I come here for a vodka and tonic
...
"I've got my own special little problems
...
Stuff
...
"

202

"I will
...

"Remember how, when you came over that Sunday, you kissed me?"
Midori asked
...
It was nice
...
"
"That's nice
...
"The way you talk is so weird!"
"It is?"
"Anyway, I was thinking, that time
...
If I
could switch around the order of my life, I would absolutely,
absolutely make that my first kiss
...

"Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still
haven't answered me
...
' I said after
giving it some thought
...
The people, the scene: they just don't seem real to me
...
"There was
something like that in a Jim Morrison song, I'm pretty sure
...
"
"Peace," said Midori
...

"You really ought to go to Uruguay with me," Midori said, still
leaning on the bar
...
"
"Not a bad idea," I said, laughing
...
I really, really want to do it
sometimes
...
And we'd all
live happily ever after, rolling on the floor
...

"I guess you don't really want lots of babies as tough as little bulls
yet," said Midori
...
"I'd like to see what they look like
...
"Here I am, drinking in the afternoon, saying whatever pops
into my head: "I wanna dump everything and run off somewhere
...
"
"You may be right
...
Here a shit, there a shit, the whole world is
donkey shit
...
You take it
...
I struggled with it until I cracked it open
...
I don't know how long
it's been since I had such a total sense of relief
...
The minute they see me they start telling
me what to do
...
"
"I don't know you well enough to force stuff on you
...
"That's how people live in the real world:
forcing stuff on each other
...
I can tell
...
You're not the type
...
Do you have any idea how many
people there are in the world who like to force stuff on people and
have stuff forced on them? Tons! And then they make a big fuss, like
"I forced her', "You forced me!' That's what they like
...
I just do it because I have to
...

"Do you want to get to know me better?" she asked
...
"
"Hey, look, I just asked you, "Do you want to get to know me better?'
What sort of answer is that?"
"Yes, Midori, I would like to get to know you better," I said
...
"
"Even if you had to turn your eyes away from what you saw?
'Are you that bad?"
"Well, in a way," Midori said with a frown
...
"
I called the waiter and ordered a fourth round of drinks
...
I
kept quiet and listened to Thelonious Monk playing "Honeysuckle
Rose"
...
The rich smell of coffee gave the
gloomy interior an intimate atmosphere
...

"I think I told you before, I'm always free on Sunday
...
"
"OK, then, this Sunday, will you hang out with me?"
"Sure," I said
...
I'm not sure exactly
what time, though
...
"No problem
...
"
"Well, first of all, I want to lie down in a big, wide, fluffy bed
...
And then, little
by little, you take off my clothes
...
The way a mother
undresses a little child
...
"

205

"Hmm
...
I
can't do this
...
' But you
don't stop
...

"I know that
...
"So
then you show it to me
...
Sticking right up
...

And I say, "Stop it! Don't do that! I don't want anything so big and
hard!"'
"It's not so big
...
"
"Never mind, this is a fantasy
...
There there, poor
thing
...
"
"Oh boy
...
When I tried to
pay, Midori slapped my hand and paid with a brand-new #10,000 note
she took from her purse
...
"I just got paid, and I invited you
...
"
"No no, I'm OK
...
" "Because it's so big and hard," I
said
...
"Because it's so big and hard
...
The layer of clouds that had darkened the sky was gone

206

now, and the late afternoon sun poured its gentle light on the city
streets
...
She said she
wanted to climb a tree, but unfortunately there were no climbable trees
in Shinjuku, and the Shinjuku Imperial Gardens were closing
...
"I love climbing trees
...

"I'm glad I ran into you," I said
...
"
Midori stopped short and peered at me
...
"Your
eyes are much more in focus than they were
...
"
"No doubt about it," I said
...
30 Midori said she had to go home and make dinner
...

"Know what I want to do now?" Midori asked me as she was leaving
...

"I want you and me to be captured by pirates
...
"
"Why would they do a thing like that?"
"Perverted pirates," she said
...

"So then they lock us in the hold and say, "In one hour, we're gonna
throw you into the sea, so have a good time
until then'
...
?"
"So we enjoy ourselves for an hour, rolling all over the place and
twisting our bodies
...
"
"Oh boy," I said, shaking my head
...
30 on Sunday morning
...
Somebody pounded on my door, yelling
"Hey, Watanabe, it's a woman!" I went down to the lobby to find
Midori sitting there with her legs crossed wearing an incredibly short
denim skirt, yawning
...
She did have
really nice legs
...
"I bet you just woke up
...
" "I don't
mind waiting, but all these guys are staring at
my legs
...
"
"Oh, well, it's OK
...
"
"That just makes it worse," I said with a sigh
...
I was in a cold sweat
...

"Do guys think about girls when they do that?"
"I suppose so
...
Nope,
I'm pretty sure just about everybody thinks about girls
...
"
"So I suppose they think about particular girls, right?" "Shouldn't you
be asking your boyfriend about that?" I
said
...
"Besides, he'd get angry if I asked him
about stuff like that
...
"
"A perfectly normal point of view, I'd say
...
This is pure curiosity
...
"Well, I do at least
...
"
"Have you ever thought about me while you were doing it?
Tell me the truth
...
"
"No, I haven't, to tell the truth," I answered honestly
...
You're cute, and sexy outfits look
great on you
...
"
"That's about the size of it," I said
...
"That's what I like about you
...
I'm asking you because we're
friends
...
And I want you to tell me later what it was like
...
"
I let out a sigh
...
Because we're just friends
...
"

209

"I don't know, I've never done it with so many restrictions before," I
said
...
"
"You know, Watanabe, I don't want you to get the wrong impression that I'm a nymphomaniac or frustrated or a tease or anything
...
I want to know about it
...
I want to find out
what guys are thinking and how their bodies are put together
...
"
"Case studies?" I groaned
...
He gets angry, calls me a nympho or crazy
...
Now, that's one thing I'm dying to study
...
"
"Do you hate getting blow jobs?"
"No, not really, I don't hate it
...
But can we talk about this next time? Here it is, a
really nice Sunday morning, and I don't want to ruin it talking about
wanking and blow jobs
...
Is your
boyfriend at the same university as us?"
"Nope, he goes to another one, of course
...
I was in the girls' school, he was in the boys', and you
know how they do those things, joint concerts and stuff
...
Hey, Watanabe
...
Just think about me, OK?"
"OK, I'll give it a try, next time," I said, throwing in the towel
...
When we transferred at

210

Shinjuku I bought a thin sandwich at a stand in the station to make up
for the breakfast I hadn't eaten
...
The Sunday morning trains were filled with
couples and families on outings
...
Several
of the girls on the train had short skirts on, but none as short as
Midori's
...

Some of the men stared at her thighs, which made me feel uneasy, but
she didn't seem to mind
...

"No idea," I said
...

Somebody'll hear you
...
This one's kind of wild," Midori said with obvious
disappointment
...
"
With all the cram schools around Ochanomizu Station, on Sunday the
area was full of school kids on their way to classes or exam practice
...

Without warning, she asked me, "Hey, Watanabe, can you explain the
difference between the English present subjunctive and past
subjunctive?"
"I think I can," I said
...
"It may not serve any concrete purpose, but it
does give you some kind of training to help you grasp things in
general more systematically
...
"You're amazing," she
said
...
I always thought of things

211

like the subjunctive case and differential calculus and chemical
symbols as totally useless
...
So I've always ignored
them
...
"
"You've ignored them?"
"Yeah
...
I don't have the slightest idea
what "sine' and "cosine' mean
...
"You don't have to know anything to
pass entrance exams! All you need is a little intuition - and I have
great intuition
...
' I
know immediately which one is right
...
Like the way a magpie collects bits of glass in a hollow
tree
...
It probably makes it easier to do some things
...
" "Metaphysical thought, say
...
" "What good does that do?"
"It depends on the person who does it
...
But mainly it's training
...
Like I said
...
She led me by
the hand down the hill
...
"
"I wonder," I said
...
I've asked hundreds of people what use the
English subjunctive is, and not one of them gave me a good,
clear answer like yours
...
They either
got confused or angry or laughed it off
...
If somebody like you had been around when
I asked my question, and had given me a proper explanation,

212

even I might have been interested in the subjunctive
...

"Have you ever read Das Kapital?"
"Yeah
...
"
"Did you understand it?"
"I understood some bits, not others
...

I think I understand the general idea of Marxism, though
...
"
"You know, when I went to university I joined a folk-music
club
...
But the members were a load of
frauds
...
The first thing
they tell you when you enter the club is you have to read Marx
...
' Somebody gave a
lecture on how folk songs have to be deeply involved with society and
the radical movement
...
It was worse than
the subjunctive
...
So I went to the next
week's meeting like a good little scout and said I had read it, but I
couldn't understand it
...

I had no critical awareness of the class struggle, they said, I was a
social cripple
...
And all because I said I
couldn't understand a piece of writing
...

"And their so-called discussions were terrible, too
...
But I would
ask questions whenever I didn't understand something
...
But nobody was
willing to explain anything to me
...

Can you believe it?"
"Yeah, I can," I said
...
I wasn't going to put up
with that
...
I'm working class
...
What kind of revolution is it that just throws
out big words that working-class people can't understand? What kind
of crap social revolution is that? I mean, I'd like to make the world a
better place, too
...
That's what I believe, and that's why I ask questions
...
"
"So that's when it hit me
...
All they've got on
their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they're so
proud of, while sticking their hands up their skirts
...
They marry pretty wives who've
never read Marx and have kids they give fancy new names to that are
enough to make you puke
...
They didn't understand a thing either, but they pretended to and
they were laughing at me
...
' Hey, Watanabe, I've got stuff that made me even madder than
that
...
I mean, talk
about sex discrimination! I decided to keep quiet for a change, though,
and showed up like a good girl with my 20 rice balls, complete with
umeboshi inside and nori outside
...
I got so furious I couldn't talk!
Who the hell do these ,revolution'-mongers think they are making a
fuss over rice balls? They should be grateful for umeboshi and nori
...
"So then what happened with your club?"
"I left in June, I was so furious," Midori said
...
They're scared to death somebody's gonna find
out they don't know something
...
You call that "revolution?"'
"Hey, don't ask me, I've never actually seen a revolution
...
They'd probably shoot me for
putting umeboshi in my rice balls
...
" "It could happen
...
I'm working class
...
And what is a revolution? It sure as
hell isn't just changing the name on city hall
...
Tell me, Watanabe, have
you ever seen a taxman?"
"Never
...
Lots of times
...

"What's this ledger for?' "Hey, you keep pretty sloppy records
...
' Meanwhile, we're crouching in the corner, and when suppertime

215

comes we have to treat them to sushi deluxe - home delivered
...
That's just
how he is, a real old-fashioned straight arrow
...
All he can do is dig and dig and dig and dig
...
"
"That does it, then
...

Love is all I'm going to believe in
...

"Peace," said Midori
...

"The hospital," she said
...
It's my turn to stay with
him all day
...
"He's been
screaming about going to Uruguay forever, but he could never do that
...
"
"How bad is he?" I asked
...

We walked on in silence
...
It's the same thing my mother had
...
Can you believe it? It's hardly been two years since she
died of a brain tumour, and now he's got one
...

Midori's father was in a semi-private room in the bed nearest the door
...

He lay on his side, limp, the drooping left arm inert, jabbed with an
intravenous needle
...
A white
bandage encircled his head, and his pasty white arms were dotted with
the holes left by injections or intravenous drips
...
For some ten seconds they stayed
focused on us, then drifted back to that fixed point in space
...
There
was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest trace of what had once
been a life
...
Around the dry lips clumps of whiskers sprouted like
weeds
...

Midori said hello to a fat man in the bed by the window
...
He coughed a few times and,
after sipping some water from a glass by his pillow, he shifted his
weight and rolled on his side, turning to gaze out of the window
...

"How are you feeling, Daddy?" said Midori, speaking into her father's
ear as if testing a microphone
...
he said, not so much speaking
the words as forming them from dried air at the back of his throat
...

"You have a headache?" Midori asked
...

"Well, no wonder," she said, "you've just had your head cut open
...
Too bad, but try to be brave
...
"
"Glad to meet you," I said
...

Midori gestured towards a plastic stool near the foot of the bed and
suggested I sit down
...
Midori gave her father a
drink of water and asked if he'd like a piece of fruit or some jellied
fruit dessert
...

A water bottle, a glass, a dish and a small clock stood on a night table
near the head of the bed
...
There
was food for the patient at the bottom of the bag: two grapefruits, fruit
jelly and three cucumbers
...
"I can't
imagine what my sister was thinking
...
"
"Maybe she misunderstood you," I suggested
...
I mean, what's a patient supposed to
do? Sit in bed chewing on raw cucumbers? Hey, Daddy, want a
cucumber?"
said Midori's father
...
The TV picture had gone fuzzy and she had called the
repairman; their aunt from Takaido would visit in a few days; the
chemist, Mr Miyawaki, had fallen off his bike: stuff like that
...

"Are you sure you don't want anything to eat?"
her father answered
...


218

A few minutes later, Midori took me to the TV room and smoked a
cigarette on the sofa
...

"Hey," whispered Midori with a twinkle in her eye
...
The
one with glasses in the blue pyjamas
...
I bet they're all bored
...

Maybe the excitement helps them get better faster
...
"
Midori stared at the smoke rising from her cigarette
...
I get angry
with him sometimes because he says terrible things, but deep down
he's honest and he really loved my mother
...
He's a little weak, maybe,
and he has absolutely no head for business, and people don't like him
very much, but he's a hell of a lot better than the cheats and liars who
go round smoothing things over because they're so slick
...
"
Midori took my hand as if she were picking up something someone
had dropped in the street, and placed it on her lap
...
She looked into my eyes for
some time
...
"Until five
...
"
"How do you usually spend your Sundays?"
"Doing my laundry," I said
...
"
"I don't suppose you want to tell me too much about her
...
It's complicated, and I, kind of, don't think I could
explain it very well
...
You don't have to explain anything," said Midori
...
I suspect anything you'd imagine would have to be
interesting
...
"
"You do?"
"Yeah, she's thirty-two or -three and she's rich and beautiful and she
wears fur coats and Charles Jourdan shoes and silk underwear and
she's hungry for sex and she likes to do really yucky things
...

But her husband's home on Sundays, so she can't see you
...
"
"She has you tie her up and blindfold her and lick every square inch of
her body
...
"
"Sounds like fun
...
And she thinks about it every day
...
You get in bed and she goes crazy, trying all
these positions and coming three times in each one
...
Young girls won't do this for you, will they? Or
this
...

"You think so? I was kind of worried about that
...
Take me to one next time, OK?"
"Fine," I said
...
"

220

"Really? I can hardly wait
...

That's my favourite
...
"
"You know what I like best about porn cinemas?" "I couldn't begin to
guess
...
"I love that "Gulp!' It's
so sweet!"
Back in the hospital room, Midori aimed a stream of talk at her father
again, and he would either grunt in response or say nothing
...
She had a round
face and seemed like a nice person, and she and Midori shared a lot of
small talk
...
I let my eyes
wander around the room and out the window to the power lines
...

Midori talked to her father and wiped the sweat from his brow and
helped him spit phlegm into a tissue and chatted with the
neighbouring patient's wife and the nurse and sent an occasional
remark my way and checked the intravenous contraption
...
30, so Midori and I stepped outside to
wait in the corridor
...

"Well, he's just come out of surgery, and we've got him on painkillers
so, well, he's pretty drained," said the doctor
...
If it went well, he'll
be OK, and if it didn't, we'll have to make some decisions at that
point
...
"Wow, that's
some short skirt you're wearing!"
"Nice, huh?"
"What do you do on stairways?" the doctor asked
...
I let it all hang out," said Midori
...

"Incredible
...
Do me a favour and use the lifts
while you're in the hospital
...

I'm way too busy as it is
...
A nurse was
circulating from room to room pushing a trolley loaded with meals
...
Midori turned
him on his back and raised him up using the handle at the foot of the
bed
...
After five or six swallows, he
turned his face aside and said (No more>
...
" Midori san he said
...
"Don't you have to pee yet?" he said
...
"
I agreed to go, but in fact I didn't much feel like eating
...
Long lines of chairs and
tables filled the huge, windowless underground cavern where every
mouth seemed to be eating or talking - about sickness, no doubt, the
voices echoing and re-echoing as in a tunnel
...
While I laid claim to a table, Midori bought two set meals
and carried them over on an aluminium tray
...
I ate about half of mine and left the rest
...

"Not hungry?" she asked, sipping hot tea
...

"It's the hospital," she said, scanning the cafeteria
...
The smells, the sounds,
the stale air, patients' faces, stress, irritation, disappointment, pain,
fatigue - that's what does it
...
Once you get used to it, though, it's no problem at all
...
It's
true
...
You
never know when you're going to have to , so its important to eat
when you can
"I see what you mean," I said
...
And they always say, "Oh, Midori,
it's wonderful you've got such a healthy appetite
...
'
But get serious, I'm the one who's actually here taking care of the
patient! They just have to drop by and show a little sympathy
...
If sympathy was all it took to clean up shit, I'd have 50 times
as much sympathy as anybody else! Instead, they see me eating all my
food and they give me this look and say, "Oh Midori, you've got such
a healthy appetite
...
I can be hurt, you know
...
I can feel so bad I want to cry, too
...
I don't

223

know if I can keep going to university for another three-and-a-half
years, and there's no way my sister can afford a wedding ceremony at
this rate
...

"Usually four," said Midori
...

Some member of the family has to be around to take up the slack
...
Still, she manages
to get here three days a week, and I come four
...
Believe me, it's a full schedule!"
"How can you spend time with me if you're so busy?"
"I like spending time with you," said Midori, playing with a plastic
cup
...
"I'll
take care of your father for a while
...
"
Midori thought about it for a minute and nodded
...
But do you know what to do? How to take care of him?"
"I've been watching
...
You check the
intravenous thing, give him water, wipe the sweat off, and help him
spit phlegm
...
Anything I can't work out I'll ask the nurse
...
"There's just one
thing, though
...

Don't let it bother you if
he does that
...

Back in the room, Midori told her father she had some business to take
care of and that I would be watching him while she was out
...
It might have meant nothing to
him
...
If he hadn't
been blinking every once in a while, he could have passed for dead
...
Other than that, he didn't move
a muscle, and made no effort to reply to Midori
...

After Midori left, I thought I might try speaking to her father, but I
had no idea what to say to him or how to say it, so I just kept quiet
...
I sat on the stool by
the head of the bed and studied the occasional twitching of his nose,
hoping all the while that he wouldn't die now
...

After all, I had just met him for the first time in my life, and the only
thing binding us together was Midori, a girl I happened to know from
my History of Drama class
...
Bringing my ear
close to his face, I could hear his faint breathing
...
She talked of nothing but
Midori, assuming I was her boyfriend
...
"She takes great care of her
father; she's kind and gentle and sensitive and solid, and on top of all
that, she's pretty
...
Don't ever let her go
...
"
"I'll treat her right," I said without elaborating
...
He's 17, she's 21, and neither of
them would ever think of coming to the hospital
...
They're terrible
...
"

225

At 1
...
Both men were
sound asleep
...
Yellow
and white chrysanthemums in a vase on the table by the window
reminded people it was autumn
...
The nurses continued to clip-clop up
and down the hall, talking to each other in clear, penetrating voices
...
I wished I had
something to read, but there were no books or magazines or
newspapers in the room, just a calendar on the wall
...
I thought about her naked, wearing only her
hairslide
...
Why had she shown herself to me like that? Had she
been sleep-walking? Or was it just a fantasy of mine? As time went by
and that little world receded into the distance, I grew increasingly
uncertain whether the events of that night had actually happened
...
They were too clear
and detailed to have been a fantasy, and too whole and beautiful to
have been real: Naoko's body and the moonlight
...
I helped him spit his phlegm into a tissue, and
wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel
...
I held the small glass water bottle so that he could sip
a little bit at a time, dry lips trembling, throat twitching
...

"Would you like some more?" I asked
...

he said in a small, dry voice - a voice even smaller
and dryer than before
...
" He answered
with a slight nod
...
It took an incredibly long time to get through half his food, at
which point he shook his head a little to signal he had had enough
...

"What about the fruit?" I asked him
...
I wiped the corners of his mouth with a towel and made
the bed level again before taking the dishes to the corridor
...

he answered
...
"It looked pretty bad
...
I wondered if he knew who
I was
...
He had probably mistaken me for someone else
...

"Beautiful day out there," I said, perching on the stool and crossing
my legs
...
Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you
can do on such a nice day
...
And the air
is bad
...
I don't mind ironing at all
...
And
I'm pretty good at it, too
...
I put
creases in everything
...
So Sunday is my day for laundry and ironing
...
Too bad: wasted a perfect laundry day
...
I'll wake up early and take care of it tomorrow
...
I've got nothing else to do on a Sunday
...
It's the one I'm in with Midori: History of
Drama
...
Are you familiar with Euripides?
He was an ancient Greek - one of the "Big Three' of Greek tragedy
along with Aeschylus and Sophocles
...
Anyway, that's
Euripides
...
I
really can't say which is better
...
Do you see what I mean? Lots of different
people appear, and they all have their own situations and reasons and
excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own idea of justice or
happiness
...
Obviously
...
And then what
do you think happens? Simple - a god appears at the end and starts
directing the traffic
...
' Like that
...
They call
this 'deus ex machina'
...

"But think about it - what if there were a deus ex machina in real life?
Everything would be so easy! If you felt stuck or trapped, some god
would swing down from up there and solve all your problems
...
This is
more or less the kind of stuff we study at university
...
Of course, I couldn't tell from those eyes
whether he understood anything I was saying
...

After all that talk, I felt starved
...
Now I was sorry I hadn't eaten

228

more at lunch, but feeling sorry wasn't going to help
...
The paper bag was still there with the
cucumbers and grapefruit
...
He didn't answer
...
Then I wrapped a
cucumber in nori, dipped it in soy sauce and gobbled it down
...
"Fresh, simple, smells like
life
...
A far more sensible food than kiwi
fruit
...
The sickroom
echoed with the sound of me munching cucumbers
...
I
boiled some water on the gas burner in the hall and made tea
...

he said
...
"With nori?"
He gave a little nod
...
Then I cut a bitesized piece of cucumber, wrapped it with a strip of nori, stabbed the
combination with a toothpick, dipped it in soy sauce, and delivered it
to the patient's waiting mouth
...

"How was that? Good, huh?"
he said
...
"It's kind of like proof you're
alive
...
When he had finished it, he
wanted water, so I gave him a drink from the bottle
...
Afterwards I emptied the jar
into the toilet and washed it out
...

"How are you feeling?" I asked
...
head> he said
...

"Well, no wonder, you've just had an operation
...
" he said
...

...
He stayed
silent for a time, too
...
He opened his
eyes wide and looked at me hard
...

he said
...

"Ueno Station?"
He gave a little nod
...
I assumed his mind
was muddled, but compared with before his eyes now had a terrible
clarity
...
This must have been a major effort for
him, the way the hand trembled in mid-air
...
He returned my grasp with what little strength he
could muster and said again
...
"I'll take care of the ticket and Midori, too
...
Then, with a
loud rush of breath, he fell asleep
...
As I was sipping the
hot liquid, I realized that I had developed a kind of liking for this little
man on the verge of death
...
I assured her it was
...

Midori came back after three
...
"I did what you told me,
didn't talk to anybody, just let my head go empty
...
I still have that draggy, tired feeling, but
my body feels much lighter than before
...
"
With her father sound asleep, there was nothing for us to do, so we
bought coffee from a vending machine and drank it in the TV room
...

"Watanabe, you're amazing," said Midori
...
"
"Or maybe you just have this knack for relaxing people
...
"A lot of people will tell you just the opposite about
me
...
Not that we had all that much to say to each
other
...
" "Was he quiet?"
"Very
...
He was awful," Midori said,
shaking her head
...
Threw a
glass at me and yelled terrible stuff - 'I hope you die, you stupid bitch!'
This sickness can do that to people
...
It was the same with
my mother
...
But that kind of thing is one of the features
of this particular sickness
...
You know it's just part
of the sickness, but still, it hurts
...
Then I remembered the strange
fragments that Midori's father had mumbled to me
...
"I wonder what that's all about?"
"And then he said, Please, and Midori
...
The order of
the four words is such a mess, who knows what he means? Does Ueno
Station mean anything special to you?"
"Hmm, Ueno Station
...
"The only
thing I can think of is the two times I ran away, when I was eight and
when I was ten
...

Bought the tickets with money I took from the till
...
I had an aunt in
Fukushima, I kind of liked her, so I went to her house
...
Came all the way to Fukushima to get
me - a hundred miles! We ate boxed lunches on the train to Ueno
...
Like about the big earthquake
of 1923 or about the war or about the time I was born, stuff he didn't
usually talk about
...

Hey, can you believe this? - my father was smack bang in the middle
of Tokyo during one of the biggest earthquakes in history and he

232

didn't even notice it!"
"No way!"
"It's true! He was riding through Koishikawa with a cart on the back
of his bike, and he didn't feel a thing
...
He still didn't
get it and, the way he tells it, he asked, "What the hell's going on
here?' That's my father's "fond recollection' of the Great Kanto
Earthquake!" Midori laughed
...
No drama whatsoever
...
I
don't know, when he tells those stories, you kind of get the feeling like
nothing important has happened in Japan for the past 50 or 60 years
...
It's so funny!
"So, anyway, on the train, he'd tell me these stories in bits and pieces
while we were riding from Fukushima to Ueno
...
' I was young enough to be impressed by stuff like that
...
"Yeah,"
said Midori
...
"
"Why not?"
"Lack of imagination
...
" "You are
so weird!" Midori said, cocking her head as though truly impressed
...

"Well, anyway, I think my father was trying to say he wanted you to
look after me
...
Intuitively
...
"
"You promised my father that? You said you'd take care of
me?" She looked me straight in the eye with a dead-serious expression
on her face
...
"I really didn't know what he
was saying, and - "
"Don't worry, I'm just kidding," she said with a smile
...
"
Midori and I finished our coffee and went back to the room
...
If you leaned close you could hear his steady
breathing
...
A flock of birds
rested on the electric wire outside, then flew on
...
She read my palm
and predicted that I would live to 105, marry three times, and die in a
traffic accident
...

When her father woke just after four o'clock, Midori went to sit by his
pillow, wiped the sweat from his brow, gave him water, and asked
him about the pain in his head
...
I went to the TV room and watched a little
football
...
To her father I explained, "I
have to go to work now
...
30
...

"Hey, Watanabe, I don't know how to put this, but I really want to
thank you for today," Midori said to me when she saw me to
reception
...
"But if I can be of any help, I'll come
next week, too
...
"
"Really?"
"Well, there's not that much for me to do in the dorm, and if I come

234

here I get to eat cucumbers
...

"I'd like to go drinking with you again," she said, cocking her head
slightly
...
And we'll talk about all the
usual disgusting things
...
"It's
you
...
"
"And you know what happens next," I said with a sigh
...
Right?" She laughed through her nose
...
We'll
come here together
...

I didn't go to the hospital that next Sunday, though
...

She called at 6
...
The buzzer letting me
know I had a phone call went off and I ran down to the lobby with a
cardigan thrown over my pyjamas
...

"My father died a few minutes ago," Midori said in a small, quiet
voice
...
"Thanks," she said
...
We're used to funerals
...
"
A kind of sigh escaped her lips
...
I don't want to
see you there
...


235

"Will you really take me to a porno movie?" "Of course I will
...
"
"I'll research the matter thoroughly
...
I'll call you," she said and
hung up
...
No calls, no sign of her
in the lecture hall
...
One night, I tried to
keep my promise by thinking of her when I masturbated, but it didn't
work
...
It seemed so ridiculous I gave up
...

I wrote a letter to Naoko on Sunday morning
...
I went to the hospital to visit the father of a
girl in one of my lectures and ate some cucumbers in his room
...
Five days later, though, he died
...
People leave strange, little memories of
themselves behind when they die
...
I think about the peacock and pigeons and parrots
and turkeys - and about the rabbits
...
It feels
good to think about you when I’m warm in bed
...
And I think how great it would
be if it were true
...
Just as you take care of the birds and the fields
every morning, every morning I wind my own spring
...
I tell myself, "OK, let's make this day another good one
...

Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring
...
It's because I think of you when I'm in bed
in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live
another good day
...

Today's Sunday, though, a day I don't wind my spring
...
Once I've finished
this letter and put a stamp on it and dropped it into the postbox, there's
nothing for me to do until the sun goes down
...
I do a good enough job on weekdays studying in the
library between lectures, so I don't have anything left to do on
Sundays
...
I
read books or listen to music
...
I can come
up with a pretty clear picture of the clothes you were wearing on any
particular walk
...

Say "Hi" from me to Reiko
...

When I had finished the letter, I walked a couple of blocks to a
postbox, then bought an egg sandwich and a Coke at a nearby bakery
...
The deepening of autumn had
brought an increased blueness and depth to the sky
...
A foul ball came rolling my way, and when I threw it
back to them the young players doffed their caps with a polite "Thank
you, sir"
...

After noon I went back to my room to read but couldn't concentrate
...
I wondered if her father had really been trying to ask me to
look after her when he was gone, but I had no way of telling what had
been on his mind
...

In any case, he had died on a Friday morning when a cold rain was
falling, and now it was impossible to know the truth
...
And then they had
burned him in an oven until he was nothing but ashes
...
What kind of life was that? I wondered
...
The Sunday crowds gave me some relief
...
I bought a copy of
Faulkner's Light in August and went to the noisiest jazz café I could
think of, reading my new book while listening to Ornette Coleman and
Bud Powell and drinking hot, thick, foul-tasting coffee
...
30 I
closed my book, went outside and ate a light supper
...
On Sundays, I
didn't wind my spring
...
I hadn't noticed that one of the glass partitions in a
record shelf was cracked
...
The shop
manager found some towels and tied them tightly around the wound
...
He was a pretty useless guy
most of the time, but he acted with surprising efficiency
...
People scurried out of the way for me
...
I felt no pain to speak of, but the
blood wouldn't stop
...
Back at the record
shop, the manager told me to go home: he would put me down as
having worked my shift
...
With my nerves on edge over the cut, I wanted to
talk to somebody, and I hadn't seen Nagasawa for a long time
...
"What the hell happened to you?" he asked
when he saw my bandage
...
He offered me a beer and I said no thanks
...
This'll be over in a minute," said Nagasawa, and he went
on practising his Spanish pronunciation
...
A Spanish woman recited
example sentences: "I have never seen such terrible rain!", "Many
bridges were washed away in Barcelona
...
"What awful sentences!" he said
...
"
When the programme ended, he turned off the TV and took another
beer from his small refrigerator
...

"No way
...
Sure you don't want a beer?"
"No, I really don't," I said
...
I passed!"
"The Foreign Ministry exam?"
"That's it
...
What a joke!"
"Congratulations!" I said and gave him my left hand to shake
...
"
"Of course, I'm not surprised you passed
...
"But it's nice to have it
official
...
Then they send you
overseas for a while
...

"I'll give you this fridge if you'd like it when I get out of here," said
Nagasawa
...
"
"Yeah, I'd like to have it, but won't you need it? You'll be living in a
flat or something
...
I'm gonna live the high life! Four years in a shithole like this is
long enough
...
You name it, I'll give it to you - the TV, the thermos flask, the
radio
...
I picked up the
Spanish textbook on his desk and stared at it
...
The more languages you know the better
...
I taught myself French and it's practically perfect
...
You learn the rules for one, and they all
work the same way
...
"
"Ah, the reflective life!" I said with a sarcastic edge
...
"
"You mean cruising for women?"
"No, a real dinner
...
To
celebrate my new job
...
"
"Shouldn't it just be you and Hatsumi?"
"No, it'd be better with you there
...
"
Oh no, it was Kizuki, Naoko and me all over again
...
"
"OK, if you both really want me to," I said
...

What's going to happen to her?"
"That's her problem
...

Feet on his desk, Nagasawa took a swig of beer and yawned
...
I've made that perfectly clear
to Hatsumi
...
I won't stop her
...
That's
what I mean
...

"You think I'm a shit, don't you?"

241

"I do
...
I didn't write the rules
...
I have never once deceived Hatsumi
...
I told her that straight from the start
...

"Isn't there anything about life that frightens you?" I asked
...
"Of course life frightens
me sometimes
...
I'm going to give it 100 per cent and go as far
as I can
...
That's how I
intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I'll stop and reconsider at
that point
...
"
"Sounds like a pretty self-centred way to live," I said
...
In
my own way, I'm working hard
...
"
"That's probably true," I said
...
Why the
hell don't these bastards do something? I wonder
...
"
Amazed at the harshness of his tone, I looked at Nagasawa
...
They're working their fingers to the
bone
...
It's just manual labour," Nagasawa said with
finality
...
"
"You mean, like studying Spanish while everyone else is taking it
easy?"
"That's it
...
I've got
English and German and French down pat, and I'm almost there with

242

Italian
...
There was one man who had probably never even thought
about starting Spanish lessons on TV He had probably never thought
about the difference between hard work and manual labour, either
...

"So, about that dinner of ours," said Nagasawa
...

Nagasawa picked a fancy French restaurant in a quiet backstreet of
Azabu
...
Some 15 prints hung on the walls of the
small chamber
...
He wore an expensive-looking grey suit
...

Hatsumi arrived 15 minutes later
...
When I complimented her on the colour of her dress, she told
me it was called midnight blue
...

"My old man always eats here when he comes to Tokyo," said
Nagasawa
...
I'm not crazy about these
snooty places
...
Turning to me, she asked, "Don't you agree?" "I guess so
...
"
"My old man usually brings his mistress here," said Nagasawa
...
" "Really?" asked Hatsumi
...


243

Eventually a waiter came and took our orders
...
The food arrived at a leisurely pace, which allowed
us to enjoy the wine and conversation
...
Most of the examinees were scum who might
just as well be thrown into a bottomless pit, he said, though he
supposed there were a few decent ones in the bunch
...

"It's the same," he said
...
" It was the same everywhere, he
added: an immutable law
...

Hatsumi then began talking about a girl she wanted to fix me up with
...
She was always telling me
about some "cute girl in my club", and I was always running away
...
I'll bring her along next
time
...
I'm sure you'll like her
...
"I'm too poor to go out with
girls from your university
...
"
"Don't be silly," she said
...
"
"Come on, Watanabe," said Nagasawa
...
You don't have
to screw her
...
"She's a virgin
...

"Exactly," said Hatsumi with a bright smile
...
But
really," she said to me, "don't give me that stuff about being "too
poor'
...
Sure, there are a few super-stuckup girls in every year, but the rest of us are just ordinary
...
"In my

244

school the cafeteria has three lunches: A, B, and C
...
Everybody gives
me dirty looks when I eat the A Lunch, and anyone who can't afford
the C Lunch eats ramen noodles for ? 60
...
You still think I can talk to girls from yours?"
Hatsumi could barely stop laughing
...

"Maybe I should go there for lunch! But really, Toru, you're such a
nice guy, I'm sure you'd get along with this girl
...
"
"No way," I said with a laugh
...
"
"Anyway, don't judge a book by its cover
...
Not everybody is looking for a boyfriend
with a sports car
...

"Watanabe's got a girl
...
"But he won't
say a word about her
...
A riddle
wrapped in an enigma
...

"Really," I said
...
It's just that it's
complicated, and hard to talk about
...

"See what I mean?" said Nagasawa, at work on his third whisky
...
When this guy decides he's not going to talk about
something, nobody can drag it out of him
...

"If you'd got on with her, we could have double-dated
...

"Enough of that kind of talk," said Hatsumi
...

"That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about," Hatsumi
murmured
...
He's sincere and caring
...
That's why I've been trying to fix him up
...
Like the time we swapped women once, way
back when
...

Hatsumi set her knife and fork down and dabbed at her mouth with
her napkin
...

"Tell her," said Nagasawa
...
" The mood was turning
sour
...
Knowing that made it all
the more difficult for me to go on sitting there
...
"It sounds very interesting!"
"We were drunk," I said
...
I'm not blaming you
...
"
"The two of us were drinking in a bar in Shibuya, and we got friendly
with this pair of girls
...
So, anyway, we, uh, went to a hotel and slept
with them
...
In the
middle of the night, Nagasawa knocked on my door and said we
should change girls, so I went to his room and he came to mine
...
"
"Anyway, I had a good reason for doing it," said Nagasawa
...
One was really goodlooking, but

246

the other one was a dog
...
I got the pretty girl,
but Watanabe got stuck with the other one
...

Right, Watanabe?"
"Yeah, I s'pose so," I said
...

She was fun to talk to and a nice person
...
I asked the girl if she minded, and she
said it was OK with her if that's what we wanted
...

"Was it fun?" Hatsumi asked me
...
"
"Not especially
...
Sleeping with girls that
way is not all that much fun
...

"I'm asking Toru," Hatsumi shot back at Nagasawa
...
"
"If you're in love with someone, can't you manage one way or another
with her?" Hatsumi asked after a few moments' thought
...
"
Hatsumi sighed
...
Nagasawa
was presented with his roast duck, and Hatsumi and I received our sea
bass
...
Nagasawa cut a slice of duck and ate it with gusto,
followed by more whisky
...
Hatsumi didn't
touch her food
...
You're not that kind of person
...

"Well," I said, "I've felt that way myself sometimes
...
"Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a
woman's skin, I get so lonely I can't stand it
...
"Watanabe's got this girl he likes, but for certain
complicated reasons, they can't do it
...
What's wrong
with that? It makes perfect sense
...

"You just don't understand a man's sexual needs," said Nagasawa to
Hatsumi
...
I've been with you for three years,
and I've slept with plenty of women in that time
...
I don't know their names, I don't remember their
faces
...
Meet 'em, do it, so long
...
What's wrong with that?"
"What I can't stand is that arrogance of yours," said Hatsumi in a soft
voice
...
I've never really been angry with you for sleeping around, have
I?"
"You can't even call what I do sleeping around
...


248

Nobody gets hurt," said Nagasawa
...
"Why am I not enough for you?"
Nagasawa kept silent for a moment and swirled the whisky in his
glass
...
That's another phase,
another question
...
If I've hurt you,
I'm sorry
...
I can only live with that hunger
...

That's what makes me me
...

"At least you shouldn't drag Toru into your "games'
...

"Neither of us is interested, essentially, in anything but ourselves
...

That's why we can think about things in a way that's totally divorced
from anybody else
...
The only difference
is that he hasn't realized this about himself, and so he hesitates and
feels hurt
...
"Are you trying to say that you have never felt those
things?"
"Of course I have, but I've disciplined myself to where I can minimize
them
...
"
"But rats don't fall in love
...
" Nagasawa looked at me
...
We
should have background music for this - a full orchestra with two
harps and - "
"Don't make fun of me
...
"
-We're eating," said Nagasawa
...
It ,night be
more civil for us to confine 'serious' talk to another occasion
...

"No," said Hatsumi
...
It's better with you here
...

"I don't mind, really
...
I finished my fish
...
Nagasawa had polished off his duck long
before and was now concentrating on his whisky
...
I
might as well have thrown a rock down a deep well
...
Nagasawa barely touched his dessert and coffee, moving
directly to a cigarette
...
"Oh boy," I
thought to myself as I finished my sherbet and coffee
...
Like everything she wore, her hands looked
chic and elegant and expensive
...

What would they be doing now? I wondered
...
I felt an intense desire to go back to that little
room of theirs
...
"That's what makes us different from
everybody else
...
But not me, and not Watanabe
...
Self and others are separate
...

"No," I said
...
I don't feel it's OK if nobody
understands me
...
But aside from those few, well, I feel it's kind of
hopeless
...
I do care if people understand
me
...
"It is the same! It's the difference

250

between a late breakfast or an early lunch
...
"
Now Hatsumi spoke to Nagasawa
...
"
"So is it a mistake for me to feel that I want to be understood by
someone - by you, for example?"
"No, it's not a mistake," answered Nagasawa
...
My system for
living is way different from other people's systems for living
...
That
was the first and last time I ever heard her shout
...
Nagasawa handed him a credit card
...
"I'm going
to see Hatsumi home
...
Great meal," I said, but
no one said anything in response
...
Then the three of us stood and went
outside
...

"Thanks, but I don't want to spend any more time with you today
...
Thank you for dinner
...

"I want Toru to see me home
...
"But Watanabe's practically the same as
me
...
There's always some part of him somewhere that's
wide awake and detached
...

Believe me, I know what I'm talking about
...
"Anyway," I said to
Nagasawa, "I'll make sure she gets home
...

Once inside the cab, I asked Hatsumi, "Where do you want to go?
Back to Ebisu?" Her flat was in Ebisu
...

"OK
...

"Shibuya," I told the driver
...
Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi
swayed
...
Every now and then her lightly made-up,
beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as though she had caught
herself on the verge of talking to herself
...
There were
any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa
could have made any of them his
...
It was nothing forceful
...
I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered,
without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation
could be that I was feeling
...
I had gone to Santa Fe
to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlour, drinking
beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset
...
In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of
Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what
that tremor of the heart had been
...
I
had forgotten the existence of such innocent, almost burnt-in longing:
forgotten for years that such feelings had ever existed inside me
...
And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I
almost burst into tears
...

Someone should have done something - anything - to save her
...
As so many of
those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in life and
decided - almost on the spur of the moment - to end it
...

It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had
happened
...
This is unbearably sad and painful, even to
me
...
I never wrote to
him again
...
Neither
of us said much
...
When the place
began to fill up, we went for a walk
...

There was a deep chill in the night air
...
I had no
destination in mind as we ambled through the nighttime streets, my
hands shoved deep into my pockets
...


253

"Do you know somewhere we could play pool around here?" Hatsumi
asked me without warning
...
How about you?"
"I play a little
...
"
"OK, then
...
"
We found a pool hall nearby and went in
...
The two of us - Hatsumi in her chic dress and I in
my blue blazer and regimental tie - clashed with the scruffy pool hall,
but this didn't seem to concern Hatsumi at all as she chose and chalked
her cue
...

We played two games
...
She crushed me
...

"You mean appearances can be deceiving?" she asked as she sized up
a shot, smiling
...
He had a
table in his house
...

He was a wonderful guy - stylish, handsome
...

He always used to boast how he once met Deanna Durbin in New
York
...
I managed to
squeeze out a point, then missed an easy shot
...

"No, it's because I haven't played for so long," I said
...
"
"How can you be so sure of the time?"

254

"My friend died the night after our last game together," I said
...
"I just never had
the opportunity to play after that
...
" "How did your friend
die?"
"Traffic accident
...
Watching her in
action - her carefully set hair swept back out of her eyes, golden
earrings sparkling, court shoes set firmly on the floor, lovely, slender
fingers pressing the green baize as she took her shot - I felt as if her
side of the scruffy pool hall had been transformed into part of some
elegant social event
...
At the end of the third game - in which, of
course, she crushed me again -my cut began to throb, and so we
stopped playing
...
"
"That's OK," I said
...
Really
...
" Hatsumi gave her a sweet smile
and thanked her as she paid the bill
...

"Not much," I said
...
"
"I know! You should come to my place
...
I've got disinfectant and everything
...
"
I told her it wasn't worth worrying about, that I'd be OK, but she
insisted we had to check to see if the cut had opened or not
...

"No way," I said
...
Don't stand on ceremony
...
"
Hatsumi's flat was a 15-minute walk from Shibuya towards Ebisu
...
Hatsumi sat me at the kitchen table and went to
the bedroom to change
...
Setting a
first-aid box on the table, she undid my bandage, checked to see that
the wound was still sealed, put a little disinfectant on the area and tied
a new bandage over the cut
...
"How come
you're so good at so many things?" I asked
...
Kind of like playing nurse
...
"
When Hatsumi had finished with the bandage, she went and fetched
two cans of beer from the fridge
...
Then she showed me pictures of the other
girls in her club
...

"Any time you decide you want a girlfriend, come to me," she said
...
"
"Yes, Miss
...
You think I'm an old matchmaker,
don't you?"
"To some extent," I said, telling her the truth, but with a smile
...
She looked good when she smiled
...
"What do you think about
Nagasawa and me?"
"What do you mean what do I think? About what?"
"About what I ought to do
...
"
"It doesn't matter what I think," I said, taking a slug of cold beer
...
Tell me exactly what you think
...
I'd find someone with a more
normal way of looking at things and live happily ever after
...
The way he lives, it never
crosses his mind to try to make himself happy or to make others
happy
...
To me,
it's already a miracle that you've been with him three years
...
He's fun, and he has lots of great
qualities
...
But in
the end, his ideas about things and the way he lives his life are not
normal
...
The same process that takes him higher
and higher leaves me going around in circles
...
Do you see
what I'm saying?"
"I do," Hatsumi said as she brought me another beer from the fridge
...
What are you going to do all that time?
Wait for him? He has no intention of marrying anyone
...
"
"So I've got nothing else to say
...

I slowly filled my glass with beer
...
"I was an only child, but all the time I was
growing up I never once felt deprived or wished I had brothers or
sisters
...
But all of a sudden, playing pool with
you, I had this feeling that I wished I had had an elder sister like you really chic and a knockout in a midnight-blue dress and gold earrings
and great with a pool cue
...
"That's got to be the nicest thing

257

anybody's said to me in the past year," she said
...
"
"All I want for you," I said, blushing, "is for you to be happy
...
You seem like someone who could be happy with just
about anybody, so how did you end up with Nagasawa of all people?"
"Things like that just happen
...
It's certainly true in my case
...
'
"I'm sure he would
...
If anything,
I'm sort of on the stupid side, and old-fashioned
...
All I want is to get married and
have a man I love hold me in his arms every night and make babies
...
It's all I want out of life
...
"
"People change, though, don't you think?" Hatsumi asked
...
And if he's away from me for a long time, his feelings for me
could change, don't you think?"
"Maybe, if he were an ordinary guy," I said
...
He's
incredibly strong-willed - stronger than you or I can imagine
...
If something
smashes into him, he just works to make himself stronger
...
What do you expect to get
from a man like that?"
"But there's nothing I can do but wait for him," said Hatsumi with her
chin in her hand
...

"Oh boy," I said with a sigh, drinking down the last of my beer
...
"
"I'm a stupid, old-fashioned girl," she said
...
Thanks for the bandage and beer
...
Hatsumi looked at me, looked at the phone,
and looked at me again
...
As I shut the door, I caught a
glimpse of Hatsumi picking up the receiver
...

It was 11
...
I went straight to
Nagasawa's room and knocked on his door
...
Nagasawa always got
overnight permission on Saturday nights, supposedly to stay at his
relatives' house
...
Oh no, I
thought, tomorrow is Sunday again! Sundays seemed to be rolling
around every four days
...
I stretched out in bed and stared at my calendar as dark feelings
washed over me
...
A fine
rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium
...
High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat
fly, unmoving
...
A skinny,
timid-looking brown dog that had wandered into the quadrangle was
sniffing every blossom in the flowerbed
...

My letter was a long one, and whenever my cut right palm began to
hurt from holding the pen, I would let my eyes wander out to the rainy

259

quadrangle
...
I described the
restaurant and the food
...

I wondered if I should write about Kizuki in connection with having
played pool with Hatsumi and decided to go ahead
...

I still remember the last shot Kizuki took that day - the day he died
...
Luck
seemed to be with him, though: the shot was absolutely perfect, and
the white and red balls hardly made a sound as they brushed each
other on the green baize for the last score of the game
...
For nearly
two-and-a-half years after that, I never touched a cue
...
I had always assumed that I'd be reminded of Kizuki
whenever I played pool
...
It was the pool hall we used to play in, and we had
often bet drinks on the outcome of our games
...
Back in my room, though, I came to think
of it like this: two and-a-half years have gone by since it happened,
and Kizuki is still 17 years old
...
The things that his death gave rise to are still there,
bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they
were new
...
Part of

260

what Kizuki and I shared when we were 16 and 17 has already
vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back
...
In fact, you are probably
the only one in the world who can understand
...
It's raining today
...
When it rains I can't do laundry, which means I can't
do ironing
...
About all I
can do is put the record player on auto repeat and listen to Kind of
Blue over and over while I watch the rain falling in the quadrangle
...
That's why
this letter is so damn long
...
I'm going to the dining
hall for lunch
...


261

There was no sign of Midori at the next day's lecture, either
...
I thought about calling her, but decided against it
...

That Thursday I saw Nagasawa in the dining hall
...

"Never mind," I said
...
I
have to admit, though, it was a funny way to celebrate your first job
...
"
A few minutes went by as we ate in silence
...

"I'm not surprised
...
"
"What's with all the apologizing?" I asked
...
"Hatsumi tells me you told
her to leave me
...

"Yeah, I s'pose so," said Nagasawa
...

"I know," he said with a sigh
...
"
I was sleeping the sleep of death when the buzzer rang to let me know
I had a call
...
I felt as if I had been sleeping with my head soaked in
water until my brain swelled up
...
15 but I had no idea
if that meant a
...
or p
...
, and I couldn't remember what day it was
...
It
was probably p
...
So, raising that flag served some purpose after all
...

"I don't know, what day is it?"
"Friday
...
18 p
...
"
So it was p
...
after all! That's right, I had been stretched out on my
bed reading a book when I dozed off
...
My head started
working
...

"Yeah, I'm free
...
Why don't you meet me in Shinjuku? I'll leave now
...

When I got to DUG, Midori was sitting at the far end of the counter
with a drink
...

"What're you drinking?" I asked
...
"
I ordered a whisky and soda, then realized there was a big suitcase by
Midori's feet
...
"Just got back
...
"
"On the same trip?!"
"Don't be stupid
...
I went to Nara with my boyfriend, and then took off to
Aomori alone
...
"You must have had a
terrible time, what with the funeral and everything
...
We've had plenty of practice
...
They bring the
sake, order the sushi, say comforting things, cry, carry on, divide up
the keepsakes
...
A picnic
...
We were drained, my sister and
me
...
We didn't have any tears left
...

Except, when you do that, they start whispering about you: "Those
girls are as cold as ice
...
I know we could have faked it, but we would
never do anything like that
...
My sister and I are totally different types, but when it
comes to something like that, we're in absolute sync
...

"So then, after the funeral ended and everybody went home, the two of
us drank sake till the sun went down
...

You have no idea how great it felt!"
"I can imagine
...
We slept for
hours, and if the phone rang or something, we just let it go
...
Finally, after we woke up, we ordered sushi and talked
about what to do
...
We'd been killing ourselves for months and we deserved a

264

break
...
" Midori clamped her mouth shut and rubbed her ears
...
"
"That's OK," I said
...
"
"Yeah, I've always liked that place
...
"
"And did you fuck like crazy?"
"No, not at all, not even once," she said with a sigh
...
A
real gusher
...

"Hey, it's not funny
...
I think all the stress threw me off
...
It wasn't my
fault, though
...
And, well, mine
are kind of on the heavy side anyway
...
Make sure you keep away from me then
...

"OK, I'll wear a hat for a couple of days after my period starts
...
That should work," she said with a laugh "If you see me on the
street and I'm wearing a red hat, don't talk to me, just run away
...
I wish all girls would do that," I said
...
It was just awful! We had a big fight and I haven't seen him
since we got back
...
So I went to Aomori
...
They're nice
...
Ever been there?"
"Never
...
I was thinking how nice it would be if I could have
you with me
...

"What do you mean "How come?'?!"
"Just that
...
"You don't have to think about
me
...
"Meaning I'm not
allowed to think about you if I've got a boyfriend?"
"No, that's not it, I just - "
"Now get this straight, Watanabe," said Midori, pointing at me
...
So watch what you say to me
...
Once
I get started, I'm good for the whole night
...
"
I nodded and kept quiet
...
Somewhere behind the sound of a sloshing shaker and
clinking glasses and the scrape of an ice maker, Sarah Vaughan sang
an old-fashioned love song
...
"
"Tampon incident?"
"Yeah, I was out drinking with him and a few of his friends about a
month ago and I told them the story of a woman in my neighbourhood
who blew out a tampon when she sneezed
...


266

"Yeah, all the other guys thought so, too
...
Such a wet blanket!"
"Wow
...
"Like, he gets mad if I wear
anything but white underwear
...
" It seemed
incredible to me that a guy like that would want a girlfriend like
Midori, but I kept this thought to myself
...

"Nothing
...
I told her
about it in a low voice that wouldn't carry to the others around us
...
"How'd it go? Was it
good?"
"Nah, I got embarrassed halfway through and stopped
...
"
"Damn," she said, shooting a look of annoyance at me
...
Think about something really sexy
...
Hey, I know what! Next time I'll get on the
phone with you: "Oh, oh, that's great
...
Stop, I'm gonna
come
...
"
"The dormitory phone is in the lobby by the front door, with people
coming in and out all the time," I explained
...
"
"Oh, too bad
...
"I'll try again by myself one of these days
...
"I will," I said
...
"Maybe I'm just not Innately
...
"It's more a question of attitude
...
The
soft touch of fingers all over
...
" "I'll keep that in mind
...

"A really filthy S&M one
...
It was the
only place we could find in the paper that was showing S&M stuff
...
Our timing
was good: the S&M film was just starting as we took our seats
...
The men made the
older one to do all kinds of awful things by threatening to rape the
sister, but soon the older sister is transformed into a raging masochist,
and the younger one gets really turned on from having to watch all the
contortions they put her through
...

"If I were the younger sister, I wouldn't get worked up so easily," said
Midori
...
"
"I'm sure you would," I said
...
"
Midori's eyes were glued to the screen
...
She kept reporting her thoughts to me: "Oh my God,
will you look at that!" or "Three guys at once! They're going to tear
her apart!" or "I'd like to try that on somebody, Watanabe
...

When the lights went up during the intermission, I realized there were
no other women in the place
...

"Tell me, Watanabe, do you get hard watching this kind of stuff?"
"Well, yeah, sometimes," I said
...
"
"So what you're saying is, every time one of those scenes starts, every
man in the cinema has his thing standing to attention? Thirty or forty
of them sticking up all at once? It's so weird if you stop and think
about it, don't you think?"
"Yeah, I guess so, now you mention it
...
It had lots of oral sex scenes, and
every time they started doing fellatio or cunnilingus or sixty-nine the
soundtrack would fill the cinema with loud sucking or slurping sound
effects
...

"Who comes up with these sounds, I wonder," I said to Midori
...

There was also a sound for a penis moving in and out of a vagina
...
The man was into a
lot of heavy breathing, and the woman came up with the usual sort of
expressions - "Yes!" or "More!" - as she writhed under him
...
These scenes just went on and on
...
We went outside and took a few
deep breaths
...

"That was fun," said Midori
...
"
"They just keep doing the same things," I said
...
"
She had a point there
...
I had more whisky, and
Midori drank three or four cocktails of some indefinable kind
...


269

"There aren't any trees around here," I said
...
"
"You're always so damn sensible, you ruin everything
...
What's wrong with that? And even if I am
drunk, I can still climb a tree
...

I took Midori to a pay toilet in Shinjuku Station, put a coin in the slot
and bundled her inside, then bought an evening paper at a nearby
stand and read it while I waited for her to come out
...
I started getting worried after 15 minutes and was ready to
go and check on her when she finally emerged looking pale
...
"I fell asleep
...

"Not really," she said
...
You just have to get home, take a nice, long bath
and go to bed
...
"
"I am not going home
...
I don't want
to sleep all by myself in a place like that
...
"So what are you going to do?"
"Go to some love hotel around here and sleep with your arms around
me all night
...
Tomorrow morning we'll have breakfast
somewhere and go to lectures together
...
"
"Of course
...
That's the only thing
that makes sense
...
"
"But I want to be with you
...
"First of all, I have to be back in the
dorm by midnight
...
The one time I did

270

that there was all hell to pay
...
I'm not kidding, I might end up
forcing you
...
"
"But I'm so lonely! I want to be with someone! I know I'm doing
terrible things to you, making demands and not giving you anything in
return, saying whatever pops into my head, dragging you out of your
room and forcing you to take me everywhere, but you're the only one I
can do stuff like that to! I've never been able to have my own way
with anybody, not once in the 20 years I've been alive
...
He gets angry if I try to
have my own way
...
You're the only one I can
say these things to
...
That's all I want
...
I swear
...
"
"I hear you, believe me, but there's nothing I can do
...
And I'll sleep with the first guy that
talks to me
...
I called the dorm and asked for Nagasawa
...
I was with a girl, I explained
...
"It's a worthy cause, I'll be glad to help you out
...
Don't worry
...
You can come in through my window in the morning
...
I owe you one," I said and hung up
...

"Pretty much," I said with a sigh
...
" "Wait a minute, I thought you were tired
...
" "Oh boy
...
We went to a disco, and her energy came back
little by little as we danced
...

"This is so much fun!" she exclaimed when we took a break at a table
...
I don't know, when you move your
body, it's kind of like your spirit gets liberated
...
"
"No way," she said, shaking her head and smiling
...
"
I took her to a pizzeria I knew and ordered draught beer and an
anchovy pizza
...
Midori finished the rest
...
"Not too long ago you were
pale and wobbly
...
"It unclogged me
...
Is there really nobody at home?"
"It's true
...
Now, that girl's got
a real case of the creeps
...
"
"Let's forget this love hotel crap, then
...
Let's go to your house
...
"OK, we'll spend
the night at mine
...
A
paper sign on the shutter read TEMPORARILY CLOSED
...
Half the shelves were empty, and most of the

272

magazines had been tied in bundles for returns
...
The
place looked like a hulk abandoned on the shore
...

"Nah, we're going to sell it," said Midori
...
My sister's
getting married next year, and I've got three more years at university
...
I'll
keep my part-time job, too
...
"
"You think somebody'll want to buy it?
"Probably
...
Poor Dad, though
...
It all
melted away, like foam on a river
...

"Me?!" Midori said with a laugh
...

"Let's go upstairs
...
"
Upstairs, she sat me at the kitchen table and went to warm the bath
water
...
Waiting for the tank to heat up, we sat across from each
other at the kitchen table and drank tea
...
There were no sounds other than the ticking of the
clock and the hum of the fridge motor turning on and off as the
thermostat kicked in and out
...

"You know, Watanabe, study it hard enough, and you've got a pretty
interesting face
...

"A nice face goes a long way with me," she said
...
well,
the more I look at it, the more I get to thinking, "He'll do'
...
"Every once in a while, I think about myself, "What
the hell, I'll do'
...
I'm not very good at putting my
feelings into words
...
All I'm
trying to say is I like you
...

"I mean, I'm not the only one who has trouble working out what men
are all about
...
"
Midori brought over a box of Marlboro and lit one up
...
" "I wouldn't be surprised
...

"Know what I did the other day?" Midori asked
...
Took off every stitch of clothing and let
him have a good, long look
...
Like, "Here,
Daddy, these are my tits, and this is my cunt'
...

"I don't know, I just wanted to show him
...
' I was a little drunk at the time
...
"
"I suppose
...
There I was in front of my
father's memorial portrait all naked with my legs spread
...
" "I s'pose so
...
She went away shocked
...
"
"In other words, she's relatively normal, you mean
...
I felt pretty comfortable
...
"
-What kind of stuff?"
-Euripides," I said
...
"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
...

We're going to have some fun now, so don't worry and get some sleep
...
If you are, you'd better complain to the gods
...
I hope you meet Mum and the two of you really
do it
...
It was pretty
impressive! So give it everything you've got
...
"
We took turns in the bath and changed into pyjamas
...
They were a little small but better than
nothing
...

"You're not scared sleeping in front of the altar?" she asked
...
I haven't done anything bad," I said with a smile
...

Practically falling over the edge of Midori's little bed, I held her in my
arms
...
My
right arm curled around her back while I tried to keep from falling out
by hanging on to the bed frame with my left hand
...
My nose was resting on her
head and her short-cut hair would tickle every now and then
...

"What do you want me to say?"
"Anything
...
" "You're really cute," I
said
...
"Say my name
...
"What do you mean
really cute?"
"So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up
...
"You have this special way with words
...

"Say something even nicer
...
A lot
...

"A spring bear?" Midori looked up again
...
"
"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
...
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
...
Really nice
...
"
"That is the best thing I've ever heard," said Midori, cuddling up
against my chest
...
"
"And you'll take care of me always and always
...
"Don't

276

worry, everything is going to be fine
...

I held her softly, and soon her shoulders were rising and falling, and I
could hear the regular breathing of sleep
...
I wasn't the least bit sleepy,
so I thought about reading a book, but I couldn't find anything worth
reading nearby
...

I sat there staring into space for a while, sipping my beer, when it
occurred to me that I was in a bookshop
...
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
...
This was my small contribution to reducing
the debts of the Kobayashi Bookshop
...
I had first read the novel the year I entered school
...
Funny
...

The book did have its dated moments, but as a novel it wasn't bad
...
A dusty bottle of brandy stood on
a shelf in the kitchen
...

It warmed me but did nothing to help me feel sleepy
...

She must have been exhausted
...
Midori slept with her back to the light
...
Bending over, I caught the sound of
her breathing
...

The suitcase from her recent travels stood by the bed
...
Her desktop was neatly arranged, and on
the wall over it hung a Snoopy calendar
...
Every shop was closed, their
metal shutters down, the vending machines hunched in front of the
off-licence the only sign of something waiting for the dawn
...
I went back to the kitchen, poured myself another shot
of brandy, and went on reading Beneath the Wheel
...
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
...
It's light outside, so I'm
going home
...
Then, after some hesitation, I wrote: You look
really cute when you're sleeping
...
I worried that a neighbour might find me suspicious,
but there was no one on the street at 5
...

Only the crows were on their usual rooftop perch, glaring down at the
street
...
On the way I found an open cafe and ate a breakfast of rice and
miso soup, pickled vegetables and fried eggs
...
He
let me in immediately
...

"Nah
...
Finally,
a dreamless sleep closed over me like a heavy lead door
...
Her letters
were never very long
...

You went back to Tokyo just about the time the autumn 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 the season
...
She says be sure to say "Hi" to
you
...
I don't think I would have been able
to stand this place if I didn't have her with me
...

Reiko says it's good I can cry
...
When
I'm lonely at night, people talk to me from the darkness
...
Kizuki; my sister: they
talk to me like that all the time
...

I often reread your letters at night when I'm lonely and in pain
...
It's so
strange! I wonder why that should be? So I read them over and over,
and Reiko reads them, too
...

I really liked the part about that girl Midori's father
...

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 sheet of paper, I begin to
feel depressed
...
Reiko's been yelling at me to answer you
...
I have tons of things I want to talk to you about, to tell you
about
...
Which is why it's

279

so painful for me to write letters
...
Reading
your letter, I got the feeling she might be in love with you
...
And I do mean every day: rice with
chestnuts, rice with matsutake mushrooms, but they taste so great, we
never get tired of them
...
For her,
it's still one cigarette after another
...

Goodbye
...
Inside I found a wine-coloured crew neck pullover and a
letter
...
My own year
of being 20 looks like 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
...
Reiko and I each knitted half of this jumper
...
The good half is Reiko's, and the bad half is mine
...
I mean, there's not a single thing I'm really
good at!
Goodbye
...

The package had a short note from Reiko, too
...
Still, we managed to finish this jumper
in time for your birthday
...

Happy Birthday
...
I walk through the mud, exhausted
...

Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps
...
The world around me was on
the verge of great transformations
...
People screamed
there'd be revolutionary changes - which always seemed to be just
ahead, at the curve in the road
...

I trudged along through each day in its turn, rarely looking up, eyes
locked on the never-ending 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
...
Unexcited, I went to my lectures,
worked three nights a week in the record shop reread The Great
Gatsby now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my washing
and write a long letter to Naoko
...
The sale of the
Kobayashi Bookshop went as planned, and Midori and her sister
moved into a two-bedroom flat near Myogadani, a more upmarket
neighbourhood
...
Meanwhile, she invited me to their

282

new place for lunch once
...

Every once in a while, Nagasawa would suggest that we go out on one
of our excursions, but I always found something else to do instead
...
Not that I didn't like the idea of sleeping
with girls: it was just that, when I thought about the whole process I
had to go through - drinking in town, looking for the right kind of
girls, talking to them, going to a hotel - it was all too much effort
...
Maybe what
Hatsumi had said to me had had some effect: I could make myself feel
far happier just thinking about Naoko than sleeping with some stupid,
anonymous girl
...

I wrote to her at the beginning of December to ask if it would be all
right for me to come and visit her during the winter holidays
...
She
explained that Naoko was having trouble writing and that she was
answering for her
...
These
things came in waves
...
The odd doctor had been right: the
winter mountains blanketed in snow were incredibly beautiful
...

When the sun went down, Reiko would play her guitar and the three
of us would sit around talking
...
An hour of tramping through the woods on skis left us
breathless and sweaty
...
Doctor Miyata popped over to
our table at dinner to explain why people's middle fingers are longer
than their index fingers, while with toes it worked the other way
...
Reiko
enjoyed the records I brought as gifts from the city
...

Naoko was even less talkative than she had been in the autumn
...
Reiko seemed to be chattering away to make up for
her
...
"This is just one of those
times
...
"
Reiko gave herself some chores that took her out of the flat so that
Naoko and I could get in bed
...

Afterwards, holding her close, I told her how her touch had stayed
with me these two months, that I had thought of her and masturbated
...
"Not once," I
said
...
" She slid
down and kissed my penis, then enveloped it in her warm mouth and
ran her tongue all over it, her long, straight hair swaying over my
belly and groin with each movement of her lips until I came a second
time
...

"Of course I can," I said
...
"
I held her tight and slid my hand inside her panties, touching her stilldry vagina
...
We held
each other for a time, saying nothing
...
"I've had it with dorm life
...
How about coming to

284

Tokyo to live with me, the way I suggested before?"
"Oh, Toru, thank you
...

"It's quiet, the surroundings are perfect, and Reiko is a wonderful
person
...
It's too specialized
for a long stay
...
"
Instead of answering, Naoko turned her gaze to the outside
...
Snow clouds hung
low and heavy in the sky, with only the smallest gap between them
and the snow-covered earth
...
"Whatever happens, I'm going
to move by the end of March
...
"
Naoko nodded
...
She put
her arms around my neck
...
Her body was so beautiful, I could have
enjoyed looking at it all day
...
"That one time was the only
time it ever happened
...

The night you held me in your arms
...
"Give it time
...
"
"All of my problems are strictly psychological," said Naoko
...

Naoko sat up in bed and slipped on a T-shirt
...
I put my clothes on, too
...
"And you think about it, too
...
"And speaking of lips, what you did with them just
now was great
...
"Kizuki used to say that,
too
...

We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and
talking about the old days
...
She would hesitate, and choose her words carefully
...
The sky never
cleared the whole three days I was there
...
I gave her one last, heavily padded
hug with my winter coat on, and kissed her on the lips
...

1970 - a year with a whole new sound to it - came along, and that put
an end to my teenage years
...
Then it was time for exams, and these I passed with relative
ease
...

Some problems arose in the dorm, though
...
They had a run-in with some of the baseball-players under the
wing of the dorm Head, as a result of which two of them were injured
and six expelled
...
The atmosphere
that hung over the dorm was oppressive, and people's nerves were on
edge
...
In any case, it was time for me to get out of there
...
After a week of searching, I came up with the right
place way out in the suburbs of Kichijoji
...

Originally a gardener's shack or some other kind of cottage, it stood
by itself in the corner of a good-sized plot of land, separated from the
main house by a large stretch of neglected garden
...
It had one good-sized room, a little
kitchen and bathroom, and an unimaginably huge closet
...
A nice old couple were
renting the house at way below market value on condition that the
tenant was prepared to move out the following year if their grandson
decided to come to Tokyo
...

Nagasawa helped me with the move
...
He might not need them any more, but for me
they were perfect
...

"I guess we won't be seeing each other for a long time," he said as he
left me, "so keep well
...
"
"I'm already looking forward to it," I said
...
"
"Right on," I said with a laugh
...
Good ones like her are hard to find
...
"
"Yeah, I know," he said, nodding
...
The two of you would make a

287

great couple
...

"Just kidding," said Nagasawa
...
I get the feeling a
lot of shit is going to come your way, but you're a stubborn bastard,
I'm sure you'll handle it
...
"
"Don't feel sorry for yourself," he said
...
"
"I'll keep it in mind," I said
...

Three days after my move, I wrote to Naoko
...
Now I could start my new life
with a new frame of mind
...
I like to stretch out on the
veranda and watch them
...
They sunbathe in groups
...
They'll
probably be friends of mine before too long
...
It's amazing how much he looks
like my old dorm Head
...

I'm kind of far from university here, but once I start my third year I
won't have too many morning lectures, so it shouldn't be too bad
...
Now all I have
to do is find some easy work out here that I can do three or four days a
week
...

I don't want to rush, but April is a good time of year to start new
things, and I can't help feeling that the best thing for us would be to

288

begin living together then
...
If there's a problem with us actually living together, I
could find a flat for y in the neighbourhood
...
It doesn't have to be
spring, of course
...

Just let me know what you're thinking, OK?
I'm planning to put some extra time in at work for a while
...
I'm going to need a fair amount of money for
one thing or another once I start living alone: pots and pans, dishes,
stuff like that
...
What dates work best for you? I'll plan a trip to
Kyoto then
...

I spent the next few days buying the things I needed in the nearby
Kichijoji shopping district and started cooking simple meals for
myself at home
...
I thought I could
study on it and, for the time being, eat my meals there, too
...
A white cat maybe
six months old decided she liked me and started eating at my place
...

Once I had my place sorted out to some extent, I went into town and
found a temporary job as a painter's assistant
...
The pay was good, but the work was murder, and the fumes
made my head spin
...
No answer came from Naoko during that time
...
I
hadn't been in touch with her for nearly three weeks,
I realized, and hadn't even told her I had moved
...


289

I went to a phone box and dialled her number
...
When I gave her my name, she said
"Just a minute", but Midori never came to the phone
...
"Midori
says she's too furious to talk to you
...
And once
she gets mad, she stays that way
...
"
"Look, could you just put her on the phone? I can explain
...
"
"Can I explain to you, then? I hate to do this to you, but could you just
listen and tell her what I said?"
"Not me! Do it yourself
...
"
It was hopeless
...
I really couldn't blame
Midori for being angry
...
Not even
Naoko had crossed my mind the whole time
...
Whenever I get involved in something, I shut out everything
else
...
I would have been hurt hurt badly, no doubt
...
The
thought caused me a good deal of grief
...

As soon as I got home from work, I sat at my new desk and wrote to
Midori
...
I apologized,
without explanations or excuses, for having been so careless and
insensitive
...
I want to see you
as soon as possible
...
Please write to

290

me, I said, and sent the letter special delivery
...

This was the beginning of one weird spring
...
I couldn't take a trip, I couldn't go home to see my
parents, I couldn't even take a part-time job because there was no
telling when a letter might arrive from Naoko saying she wanted me to
come and see her on such-and-such a date
...
I saw no one and talked to almost no one
...
I never suggested to her that I
was hoping for an answer
...
I
would tell her about my painting job, about Seagull, about the peach
blossom in the garden, about the nice old lady who sold tofu, about
the nasty old lady in the local restaurant, about the meals I was
making for myself
...

Whenever I was fed up reading or listening to records, I would work a
little in the garden
...
It didn't take much to make the garden look good
...
After retirement, he had got a job with an insurance
company, he said, but he had left that,
too, after a couple of years, and now he was taking it easy
...
Which is why he and his wife were always
travelling together
...

"No it's not," he answered
...
I'd much rather be
working
...
Cutting grass made
him sneeze
...
"We don't have any use for any of this stuff," he
said, "so feel free
...
I found an old
bike, a handy-sized dining table with two chairs, a mirror, and a
guitar
...

"Feel free," he said again
...
It looked like a
different bike by the time I had finished
...
I replaced the strings of
the guitar and glued a section of the body that was coming apart
...
It
wasn't much of a guitar, but at least I got it to stay in tune
...
I sat on the porch and
picked my way through The Drifters' "Up on the Roof" as well as I
could
...

Next I took a few planks of wood and made myself a square letterbox
...
Up
until 3 April, the only post that found its way to my box was
something that had been forwarded from the dorm: a notice from the
reunion committee of my school
...
That was the class I had been in
with Kizuki
...

I found a letter in the box on the afternoon of 4 April
...
I made a nice, clean cut across the seal with my

292

scissors and went out to the porch to read it
...

First Reiko apologized for making me wait so long for an answer
...

I offered to send you an answer in her place, but every time I pointed
out how wrong it was of her to keep you waiting, she insisted that it
was far too personal a matter, that she would write to you herself,
which is why I haven't written sooner
...
I hope you can
forgive me
...
Please try
to understand what she's been going through
...
She was trying her best to stand on
her own two feet, but so far the results have not been good
...
That happened around the end of
November or beginning of December
...

Whenever she would try to write a letter, she would hear people
talking to her, which made it impossible for her to write
...
It wasn't all
that bad until about the time of your second visit, so I didn't take it too
seriously
...
In her case, they got quite serious after you left
...
She can't
find the right words to speak, and that puts her into a terribly confused
state - confused and frightened
...

We have a session every day with one of the specialists
...
I came up with the idea that it would be good to add

293

you to one of our sessions if possible, and the doctor was in favour of
it, but Naoko was against it
...
" That
was not the problem, I said to her; the problem was to get her well as
quickly as possible, and I pushed as hard as I could, but she wouldn't
change her mind
...

We do have medical specialists here, of course, and they provide
effective treatments, but concentrated therapy is another matter
...
Which means that if Naoko's
condition grows any worse, they will probably have to transfer her to
some other hospital or medical facility or what have you
...
That isn't to
say that she couldn't come back here for treatment on a kind of
temporary "leave of absence"
...
In any case, we're doing
everything we can, and Naoko is doing everything she can
...

It was dated 31 March
...
An old cherry tree stood there, its blossoms nearing the height
of their glory
...
Seagull wandered
over from somewhere, and after scratching at the boards of the
veranda for a while, she stretched out next to me and fell asleep
...
And, to tell the truth, thinking was the last thing I
wanted to do
...
Not now, though
...

I spent the day staring at the garden, propped against a pillar and
stroking Seagull
...
The
afternoon deepened, twilight approached, and bluish shadows
enveloped the garden
...
In the spring gloom, they looked like flesh that had
burst through the skin over festering wounds
...
And that's when I
thought of Naoko's flesh
...
Why did such a beautiful
body have to be so ill? I wondered
...
It filled everything from the ground
up
...
Shut in behind my curtains, I felt a violent
loathing for spring
...
I had never hated
anything in my life with such intensity
...
I could hardly hear what people said to me, and they had just as
much trouble catching anything I had to say
...
I couldn't touch "them", and "they"
couldn't touch me
...

I sat leaning against the wall, staring up at the ceiling
...
I
didn't bathe, I didn't shave
...


295

A letter came from Midori on 6 April
...
I put off writing to you as long as I could, which makes us
even, so let's make up
...

I read the letter again and again, four times all together, and still I
couldn't tell what she was trying to say to me
...
How would meeting her on enrolment
day make us "even"? Why did she want to have "lunch" with me? I
was really losing it
...
But somehow I knew I had to snap out of it
...
Only arseholes do that
...
Right on," I heard myself thinking
...

I did my laundry for the first time in weeks, went to the public bath
and shaved, cleaned my place up, shopped for food and cooked myself
a decent meal for a change, fed the starving Seagull, drank only beer,
and did 30 minutes of exercise
...
My eyes were popping
...

I went out the next morning on a longish bike ride, and after finishing
lunch at home, I read Reiko's letter one more time
...
The main reason I had taken
Reiko's letter so hard was that it had upset my optimistic belief that
Naoko was getting better
...
" And Reiko had
warned me there was no telling what might happen
...
I had assumed that the only problem was whether she could

296

regain the courage to return to the real world, and that if she managed
to, the two of us could join forces and make
a go of it
...
I would
have to do something to regain my footing
...
And even then, she would no doubt be
more debilitated and would have lost even more of her self confidence
than ever
...
As
strong as I might become, though, it would not solve all the problems
...
But there was nothing else I could do: just keep my
own spirits up and wait for her to recover
...
Unlike you, I've chosen to live - and to
live the best I know how
...
What the hell, it's
hard for me
...
And all because you killed yourself and left
Naoko behind
...
I will never, ever,
turn my back on her
...
And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger
...
I'm going to be an adult
...
I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could
...
I'm not a teenager any more
...
I'm not the same person I was when we used to
hang out together
...
And I have to pay the price to go on
living
...
"You're all
skin and bones!"
"That bad, huh?"
"Too much you-know-what with that married girlfriend of yours, I
bet
...
"I haven't slept with a girl since the

297

beginning of October
...
We're talking six months here!" "You
heard me
...

Midori put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye with a
twisted scowl that soon turned into a sweet smile
...

"Something's kind of different
...
"
"I told you, I grew up
...
"
"You're fantastic, the way your brain works," she said as though
genuinely impressed
...
I'm starving
...
I
ordered the lunch special and she did the same
...
Do you think I shouldn't
have done that? I mean, you apologized and everything
...
That's just how it goes
...
That it was too unforgiving,
too childish
...
"
"OK, then, that's that
...
"But tell me the truth,
Watanabe, you haven't had sex for six months?"
"Not once
...
"
"Yeah, I guess I did
...
"I don't want to lose
you
...
"
"But I was too big and hard," I said
...
"A little before that, I decided I
was going to believe in you
...
That's how I
managed to sleep like that with total peace of mind
...
And I did sleep like a log, didn't I?"
"You sure did
...

Then everything'll be great,' I'd probably do it with you
...
I'm just telling you what's
on my mind, with total honesty
...
"
While we ate lunch, we showed each other our enrolment cards and
found that we had enrolled for two of the same courses
...
With that out of the way, Midori told
me about her living arrangements
...
They had always been used to running around like mad every
day, taking care of sick people, helping out at the bookshop, and one
thing or another
...
"This is the way we
should have been living all along - not having to worry about anyone
else's needs, just stretching out any way we felt like it
...
It didn't seem real, like real life couldn't actually be like that
...
"
"A couple of worriers," I said with a smile
...
"But that's OK
...
"
"I bet you are," I said, "knowing you
...
My sister helps out there three times a week
...

Midori then asked about my new life
...

"Are you enjoying yourself?" she asked
...

"Could have fooled me," said Midori
...

"And you're wearing that cool pullover your girlfriend knitted for
you
...

"How did you know?"
"You're as honest as they come," said Midori
...
I'm trying to whip up a little enthusiasm
...
"
I shook my head a few times and looked at her
...
"
"You know, they've got these chocolate assortments, and you like
some but you don't like others? And you eat all the ones you like, and
the only ones left are the ones you don't like as much? I always think
about that when something painful comes up
...
' Life is a box of chocolates
...
"
"It's true, though
...
"
We were drinking our coffee when two girls came in
...
The three of them compared enrolment
cards and talked about a million different things: "What kind of mark

300

did you get in German?" "So-and-so got hurt in the campus riots
...

I sipped my coffee and watched the scene passing by the shop
window
...
I felt myself drifting off a little and thought
about Naoko, unable to return to her studies again this year
...

When the other two went back to their table, Midori and I left to walk
around the neighbourhood
...
When she said she
was thirsty, I ran over to a newsagent's and bought us two Cokes
...

"What's that?" I asked
...

"I have to go," she announced at 3
...
"I'm supposed to meet my sister
at the Ginza
...

As she left, Midori stuffed the piece of paper, now folded in four, into
my pocket
...
I read it on the
train
...
This is the
first time in my life I've ever written a letter to somebody sitting next
to me on a bench, but I feel it's the only way I can get through to you
...
Am I right?
Do you realize you did something terrible to me today? You never

301

even noticed that my hairstyle had changed, did you? I've been
working on it forever, trying to grow it out, and finally, at the end of
last week, I managed to get it into a style you could actually call
girlish, but you never even noticed
...
Don't you think that's
awful? I bet you can't even remember what I was wearing today
...
It's not true that I have to
meet my sister at the Ginza
...
I even brought my pyjamas with me
...
I've got my
pyjamas and a toothbrush in my bag
...
Oh well, what the
hell, you obviously want to be alone, so I'll leave you alone
...
I'm not totally mad at you
...
You
were so nice to me when I was having my problems, but now that
you're having yours, it seems there's not a thing I can do for you
...

So now I see you coming back with our drinks - walking and thinking
...
Now you're sitting next to me
drinking your Coke
...
If you had, I would have
torn up this letter and said: "Let's go to your place
...
And afterwards we can go to bed and cuddle
...
Goodbye
...
Please don't talk to me next time we meet
...
With nothing better to do, I
ambled around the neighbourhood looking for some part-time work I
could take after lectures began
...
I gave up and went home
...
Her sister told me
that Midori hadn't come home yet and that she had no idea when she'd
be back
...

After eating, I tried to write to Midori, but I gave up after several false
starts and wrote to Naoko instead
...
I
told her I missed her, that I had been hoping, one way or another, to be
able to meet her and talk
...
As far as I can tell, that's
all I can do
...
Maybe it's just to do with me, and you may
not care about this one way or another, but I'm not sleeping with
anybody any more
...
It meant a lot more to me than you might think
...

I put the letter in an envelope, stuck on a stamp, and sat at my desk a
long while staring at it
...
I
poured myself an inch-and-a-half of whisky, drank it in two swallows,
and went to sleep
...
The conditions were pretty poor, but travel
and lunch expenses were included
...
This was perfect for
me
...
He was a
much more decent guy than the idiot who ran the record shop in
Shinjuku
...

Midori hadn't come back since yesterday, she said, sounding tired, and
now she herself was beginning to worry: did I have any idea where
she might have gone? All I knew was that Midori had her pyjamas and
a toothbrush in her bag
...
She was wearing a deep
green pullover and the dark sunglasses she had often worn that
summer
...
I approached her and said I'd like to
talk afterwards
...
Her hairstyle was, in fact, somewhat more
feminine than it had been before: more mature
...

"I won't take up much of your time," I said
...
"
Midori removed her sunglasses and narrowed her eyes
...

"I don't want to talk to you
...

The girl with glasses looked at me with eyes that said: She says she
doesn't want to talk to you
...

I sat at the right end of the front row for the lecture (an overview of

304

the works of Tennessee Williams and their place in American
literature), and when it was over, I did a long count to three and turned
around
...

April was too lonely a month to spend all alone
...
People would throw off their coats and
enjoy each other's company in the sunshine - talking, playing catch,
holding hands
...
Naoko, Midori,
Nagasawa: all of them had gone away from where I stood
...
I even missed
Storm Trooper
...
I tried to speak to Midori a few times, but the answer I got
from her was always the same: "I don't want to talk to you now" - and
I knew from the tone of her voice that she meant it
...
He had these incredibly long legs and always wore white
basketball shoes
...
In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to
recognize the trembling of my heart
...
In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance
of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning,
and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain
...
And it would
pass - but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache in its
path
...
In my letters to her, I would
describe only things that were touching or pleasant or beautiful: the
fragrance of grasses, the caress of a spring breeze, the light of the
moon, a film I'd seen, a song I liked, a book that had moved me
...
And I would
feel that the world I lived in was a wonderful one
...

At the restaurant where I worked I got to know another student my
age named Itoh
...
He also liked to read and to
listen to music, so we'd usually talk about books and records we liked
...
He never had a lot to say,
but he had his definite tastes and opinions
...
For music, he
preferred Mozart and Ravel
...

Itoh once invited me to his flat
...
His room
was stuffed with painting supplies and canvases
...
We
drank some Chivas Regal that he had quietly removed from his
father's place, grilled some smelts on his charcoal stove, and listened
to Robert Casadesus playing a Mozart piano concerto
...
He had a girlfriend he would sleep with
whenever he went home, he said, but things weren't going too well
with her lately
...
"They turn 20 or 21 and all of
a sudden they start having these concrete ideas
...
And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and
loveable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing
...

Munching on a mouthful of smelt, he shook his head
...
So she's
like, "Why don't you come back to Nagasaki and become an art
teacher?' She's planning to be an English teacher
...
"And who on earth wants
to be an art teacher? I'm not gonna spend my whole fuckin' life
teaching teenaged monkeys how to draw!"
"That's beside the point," I said
...
"
"Sure I do
...
She's planning to
spend her life with me
...
I don't like you any more'?"
We drank our Chivas straight, without ice, and when we ran out of
smelts we cut up some cucumbers and celery and dipped them in
miso
...

Without my being aware of it, she had become a huge presence inside
me
...

"Yeah," I said, then, after a pause added, "but I can't be with her at the
moment
...
Otherwise, what's the point?" I said with a chuckle
...
He knew
Mozart inside out, the way a country boy knows his mountain trails
...
I didn't know so much about classical music, but listening to
this Mozart concerto with Itoh's smart and heartfelt commentary
("There - that part," "How about that?"), I felt myself calming down
for the first time in ages
...
Fantastic

307

whisky
...

On the way back to my place I called Midori from a phone box
...

"Sorry," she said, "but I don't want to talk to you right now
...
But I don't want our relationship to end like this
...
When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to
tell me that much, at least
...

"How are you?" I asked
...

A letter came from Reiko in the middle of May
...
Naoko enjoys your letters
...

You don't mind if I read them, do you?
Sorry I haven't been able to answer for such a long time
...
Naoko's not doing well
...
The four of us - she and Naoko and the doctor and
I - had a good, long talk and we reached the conclusion that Naoko
should move to a real hospital for a while for some intensive treatment
and then maybe come back here depending on the results
...
She's fine
most of the time, but sometimes her emotions become extremely
unstable, and when that happens we can't take our eyes off her
...
When she has those intense
episodes of hearing voices, she shuts down completely and burrows

308

inside herself
...
I hate to
say it, but it's all we can do
...
We have to go on unravelling the jumbled
threads one at a time, without losing hope
...
If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit
tight until your eyes get used to the dark
...
I'm sorry I waited to tell you until the decisions had been
made, but it happened very quickly
...
I'll write the address below: please write to Naoko
there
...
I hope it will be good news
...
And even though
Naoko is not here any more, please write to me once in a while
...

I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko,
several to Reiko, and several more to Midori
...
It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces
of my crumbling life
...
I never knew that spring could be so
painful and lonely
...
I know it's too late to be saying this, but your new hairstyle looks
great on you
...
I'm working at an Italian restaurant now,
and the cook taught me a great way to make spaghetti
...

I went to the university every day, worked in the restaurant two or
three times a week, talked with Itoh about books and music, read a
few Boris Vian novels he lent me, wrote letters, played with Seagull,
made spaghetti, worked in the garden, masturbated thinking of Naoko,
and saw lots of films
...
We hadn't said a word to each other for two months
...

Beyond the window, it was raining - a really rainy-season rain,
pouring straight down without any wind, soaking every single thing
beneath
...
Then she took a
Marlboro from the pocket of her jeans jacket, put it between her lips,
and handed me her matches
...

Midori pursed her lips and blew a gentle cloud of tobacco in my face
...

"It's great
...
"
"You really think so?"
"I really think so
...
I took it
...
She tapped
her ashes onto the floor and rose to her feet
...
I'm starving," she said
...

"To the restaurant of the Takashimaya department store in

310

Nihonbashi
...
"
And so we took the subway to Nihonbashi
...
The smell of
rain filled the big, cavernous department store, and all the employees
had that what-do-we-do-now? kind of look
...
Inside, it was far from crowded despite
it being midday
...

"I like to do stuff like this," said Midori
...
Probably reminds me of when I
was a kid
...
"
"And I get the sneaking suspicion that's all mine ever did
...
"
"Lucky you!"
"What are you talking about? I don't particularly like going to
department stores
...
'-"
"Well, I was an only child," I said
...

But what an empty dream! What's the fun of cramming your mouth
full of rice all alone in a place like this? The food's not all that great,
and it's just big and crowded and stuffy and noisy
...
"

311

"I've been really lonely these past two months," I said
...
You told me in your letters," Midori said, her voice
flat
...
That's all I can think about now
...
Midori followed lunch with a cigarette
...
I also stood up and took mine
...

"The roof, of course
...
"
There was no one on the roof in the rain, no clerk in the pet
department, and the shutters were closed in the kiosks and the
children's rides ticket booth
...
It
seemed incredible to me that there could be anywhere so devoid of
people in the middle of Tokyo
...

In one corner of the roof there was a covered game area with a row of
children's rides
...

"So talk," Midori said
...
"
"I'm not trying to make excuses," I said, "but I was really depressed
that time
...
Nothing was registering with
me
...
I realized that the only way I had been able to survive until
then was having you in my life
...
"
"Don't you have any idea how painful and lonely it's been for me

312

without you these past two months?"
This took me completely off guard
...
"It never occurred to
me
...
"
"How can you be such an idiot? Of course I wanted to see you! I told
you how much I like you! When I like somebody I really like them
...
Don't you realize at least
that much about me?"
"Well, sure, but - "
"That's why I was so mad at you! I wanted to give you a good kick up
the arse
...
To get things clear in my head
...
It was getting to the point where I
enjoyed being with you far more than being with him
...
He's a little self-centred and narrow-minded and kind
of a fascist, but he's got a lot of good points, and he's the first man I
ever felt serious about
...
When I'm
with you I feel something is just right
...
I like you
...
I was getting more and more confused, so I
went to him and asked him what I should do
...
He said if I was going to see you, I should break up with
him
...
Just like that
...

"Why?"
""Why?'!" she screamed
...
I wish I had fallen
in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course
...

I fell in love with you!"
I tried to speak, but I felt the words catching in my throat
...
"Will you please get that
look off your face? You're gonna make me cry
...
I'm not expecting anything from
you
...
These have been two
tough months for me
...
Our bodies strained against each other, and our lips
met
...
Girls'
bodies were so soft and warm! I could feel her breasts pressing against
my chest through our clothing
...

"I love you," I said to her
...
I don't ever
want to let you go again
...
I can't make a
move
...

"Tell me, have you slept with her?"
"Once
...
"
"And you haven't seen her since then?"
"I have seen her: twice
...
" "Why not?
Doesn't she love you?"
"That's hard to say," I said
...
And
mixed up
...
And neither does she
...
At least, that's how I feel about it now
...
"
"Let me just tell you this, Watanabe," said Midori, pressing her cheek
against my neck
...
You're holding me in your arms and I'm telling you
that I love you
...
I may be a
little bit mad, but I'm a good girl, and honest, and I work hard, I'm
kind of cute, I have nice boobs, I'm a good cook, and my father left me
a trust fund
...
"
"I need time," I said
...
I'm sorry, but that's all I can say at this point
...
"
Midori pulled away from me with a smile on her face
...
"But when you take me, you take only me
...
Is that
clear?"
"I understand exactly
...
I've
had enough hurt already in my life
...
Now I want to
be happy
...

"Drop the damn umbrella and wrap both your arms around me - hard!"
she said
...
The dull rush of
tyres on the highway enveloped us like a fog
...

"How about going back under the roof?" I said
...
There's nobody home now
...
"
"It's true
...
"What
a great feeling!"
We bought a good-sized towel in the linen department and took turns
going into the bathroom to dry our hair
...
She let me
shower first and then she showered
...
We
sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee
...

"What about me?"
"Hmm, I don't know, what do you hate?" "Chicken and VD and
barbers who talk too much
...
" "What else?"
I shook my head
...
"
"My boyfriend - which is to say, my ex-boyfriend - had all kinds of
things he hated
...
So if there's anything about me you don't like, just tell me,
and I'll fix it if I can
...
"There's
nothing
...
Everything
...
"
"How much do you love me?" Midori asked
...
"Far out,"
she said with a hint of satisfaction
...
Then we talked about everything from the
formation of the universe to our preferences in the hardness of boiled
eggs
...

"No idea," I said
...
"
"If they work so hard, why don't they evolve? They've been the same
for ever
...
"Maybe their body structure isn't suited to
evolving - compared with monkeys, say
...
I thought you
knew everything
...

"High mountains, deep oceans," Midori said
...
Then, with a gulp, she
said, "Hey, Watanabe, joking aside, this isn't gonna work
...
No way
...

"Yup," she said, giggling
...
It'll be just fine
...
Er, mind if I have a look?"
"Feel free
...
Then she poked her head out and sighed
...
"No flattery intended! I really love it!"
"Thank you," I said with simple gratitude
...
"I'm going
crazy I want to do it so bad
...
"
"You're so damned stubborn! If I were you, I'd just do it - then think
about it afterwards
...
"I probably wouldn't do it,
either, if I were you
...
That's what I
really really love about you
...
Instead,
she pressed against me, put her lips on my nipple and began to move
the hand that was wrapped around my penis
...
Both were gentle and wonderful, but something was different
about the way they did it, and so it felt like a totally different
experience
...
"
"Not true," I lied
...
"
"Because I would really hate that
...

"Want to touch my breasts, or down there?" Midori asked
...
If we do all those
things at once, it'll be too much for me
...
"You can
come on these," she said
...
"
"Stop it, will you? You're gonna make me cry," said Midori, a if on
the verge of tears
...
So don't hold back,
just let yourself come all you want
...
Or are they going to keep you from
coming because they're mine?"
"No way," I said
...
"
When I was through, Midori inspected my semen
...
Come all you want," she said with a smile
...

In the evening, Midori did some shopping in the neighbourhood and
made dinner
...

"Eat a lot and make lots of semen," Midori said
...
"
"Thanks very much," I said
...
I learned from the women's
magazines when we had the bookshop
...
There's tons of ways
...

After saying goodbye to Midori, I bought a newspaper at the station,
but when I opened it on the train, I realized I had absolutely no desire
to read a paper and in fact couldn't understand what it said
...
I felt as if the world was pulsating every now
and then
...
As regards what I had
done that day, I felt not the slightest regret; I knew for certain that if I
had to do it all over again, I would live this day in exactly the same
way
...
I had no doubts about those things
...
The two of us could make it, that
was certain
...
It
had been all I could do to suppress the intense desire I had to strip her
naked, throw open her body, and sink myself in her warmth
...
I wanted her to do it, she wanted to do
it, and we were in love
...
And I had probably known as much for a while
...

The problem was that I could never explain these developments to
Naoko
...
And besides, I still loved Naoko
...
Somewhere inside me there was
still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one
else
...
At home, I sat on the veranda, watching
the rain pour down on the garden at night, and assembling phrases in
my head
...
It is almost
unbearable to me that I now have to write a letter like this to you, I
began
...

I have always loved Naoko, and I still love her
...
It has an irresistible
power that is bound to sweep me into the future
...
It stands and
walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me

320

to the roots of my being
...
I'm confused
...
I have never lied to anyone, and I
have taken care over the years not to hurt other people
...
How can this be? I can't explain it
...
Can you tell me, Reiko? You're the only
one I can turn to for advice
...

Reiko's answer came five days later, dated 17 June
...
Naoko has been improving far more
rapidly than anyone could have expected
...
She may even be able to come
back here before long
...

I think you take everything too seriously
...
You have to have more faith in yourself
...
First of all, if you are drawn so
strongly to this Midori person, it is only natural for you to have fallen
in love with her
...
But love is like that
...

That's what I think
...

Second, as to whether or not you should have sex with Midori, that is
for you to work out
...
Talk it over with Midori and
reach your own conclusion, one that makes sense to you
...
If things should develop to the
point where you absolutely have to tell her, then you and I will come
up with a good plan together
...
Leave it to
me
...

So don't brood over everything in that super-serious way of yours
...
We don't live
with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all
our lines and angles with rulers and protractors
...
I
understand just reading your letter why you would be drawn to her
...

There's nothing the least bit sinful about it
...
It's like taking a boat out on a
beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the
lake are beautiful
...
Things will go where
they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course
...
Life is like that
...
You try
too hard to make life fit your way of doing things
...
I'm just a powerless and
imperfect woman, but still there are times when I think to myself how
wonderful life can be! Believe me, it's true! So stop what you're doing
this minute and get happy
...
But who can say what's best? That's
why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where
you find it, and not worry about other people too much
...


322

I'm playing the guitar every day for no one in particular
...
I don't like dark, rainy nights, either
...

Ah, well, until then Reiko Ishida

323

Reiko wrote to me several times after Naoko's death
...
It was nobody's fault, any more than you could blame
someone for the rain
...
What could I have
said? What good would it have done? Naoko no longer existed in this
world; she had become a handful of ashes
...
I told my landlord I would be
away for a while and my boss at the Italian restaurant that I wouldn't
be coming in to work
...
I
spent the next three days in cinemas, and after I had seen every new
film in Tokyo, I packed my rucksack, took out all my savings from the
bank, went to Shinjuku Station, and got the first express train I could
find going out of town
...
I
remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the
names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in
which I travelled from place to place
...
I once persuaded them to let me sleep in the corner of
a local police station, and another time slept alongside a graveyard
...
Exhausted from
walking, I would crawl into it, gulp down some cheap whisky, and fall

324

fast asleep
...
It made no difference to me one way or
another
...

When I ran low on money, I would work as a labourer for a few days
until I had what I needed
...
I just
kept moving from one town to the next, no destination in mind
...
One time I
called Midori because I had to hear her voice
...
"Some courses
are even asking for papers already
...
Not yet
...
Maybe in October
...
"
Midori hung up without a word
...
Every now and then I'd stay at a dosshouse
and have a bath and shave
...

The sun had dried out my skin, my eyes were sunken, and odd stains
and cuts marked my cheekbones
...
It was me
...
Walking
along the seashore was easy
...
I'd make a fire from driftwood and roast some
dried fish I bought from a local fisherman
...
It was
too strange to think that she was dead and no longer part of this world
...
I couldn't believe it
...

No, the image of her was still too vivid in my memory
...
I could still feel her warmth, her breath against me, and that
helpless moment when I could do nothing but come
...
But no, she wasn't there; her flesh no longer existed in this
world
...
There was no way I could stop them
...

The memories would slam against me like the waves of an incoming
tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place - a place
where I lived with the dead
...
Death in that place was not a
decisive element that brought life to an end
...
There Naoko lived with death
inside her
...
Don't let
it bother you
...
Death was death, and Naoko
was Naoko
...
"If this is death," I thought to myself, "then death is not
so bad
...
It's just death
...
" Naoko spoke to me in the spaces
between the crashing of the dark waves
...
Powerless, I could go nowhere; sadness itself would
envelop me in deep darkness until the tears came
...

I had learned one thing from Kizuki's death, and I believed that I had
made it a part of myself in the form of a philosophy: "Death exists, not
as the opposite but as a part of life
...
True as this might be, it was
only one of the truths we had to learn
...
No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure
that sorrow
...
Hearing the waves
at night, listening to the sound of the wind, day after day I focused on
these thoughts of mine
...

One windy evening, as I lay wrapped in my sleeping bag, weeping, by
the side of an abandoned hulk, a young fisherman passed by and
offered me a cigarette
...
He asked why I was crying, and almost by reflex I told him that
my mother had died
...
He expressed his deep sympathy and brought a big bottle
of sake and two glasses from his house
...
He told
me that he had lost his mother when he was 16
...
I half-listened to
him, sipping my sake and grunting in response every now and then
...
What the hell
was he talking about? I wondered, and all of a sudden I was filled with
intense rage: I wanted to strangle him
...
I closed my
eyes and went on half-listening to the fisherman's endless talk
...
No, I said, but in my rucksack I
had bread and cheese, a tomato and a piece of chocolate
...

Bread and cheese, tomato and chocolate, I answered
...
I tried to stop him, but he disappeared into the
darkness without looking back
...
The shore was littered
with paper flecks from fireworks that had been exploded on the sand,
and waves crashed against the beach with a mad roar
...

The young fisherman came back half an hour later with two boxes of
sushi and a new bottle of sake
...
He
filled both our glasses with sake from the new bottle
...
After we had drunk as much sake as we could
manage, he offered to put me up for the night, but when I said I would
rather sleep alone on the beach, he left it at that
...
"Here," he said, "get yourself some healthy food
...
" I said he had done more than enough for me and that
I couldn't accept money on top of everything else, but he refused to
take it back
...
Don't think
about it too much, just take it
...

When he had gone, I suddenly thought about my old girlfriend, the
one I had first slept with in my last year of school
...
I had hardly ever thought
about her thoughts or feelings or the pain I had caused her
...

What was she doing now? I wondered
...
My
head hurt from too much sake, and I felt bad about having lied to the
fisherman and taken his money
...
I stuffed my
sleeping bag into my rucksack, slipped my arms through the straps
and walked to the local railway station
...
He
checked his timetable and said I could make it as far as Osaka by
morning if I transferred from one night train to another, then I could
take the bullet train from there
...
Waiting for the
train, I bought a newspaper and checked the date: 2 October, 1970
...
I knew I had to go back to the
real world
...
I arrived back in Tokyo in pretty much the same
state in which I had left
...

What could I say to her? How could I begin? "It's all over now; you
and I can be happy together"? No, that was out of the question
...
Naoko was a mound of white ash,
and Midori was a living, breathing human being
...
Though I
returned to Tokyo I did nothing for days but shut myself up in my
room
...

The rooms I had set aside in there for Naoko were shuttered, the
furniture draped in white, the windowsills dusty
...
And I thought about Kizuki
...
"Oh, well, she
was yours to begin with
...
But in
this world, in this imperfect world of the living, I did the best I could
for Naoko
...
But forget
it, Kizuki
...
You're the one she chose, after all
...

Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the
dead, and now Naoko has dragged another part of me into that world
...
"
The fourth day after my return to Tokyo, a letter came from Reiko
...
It was a simple note: I haven't been able
to get in touch with you for weeks, and I'm worried
...
At
9 a
...
and 9 p
...
I will be waiting by the telephone
...
Reiko picked up after one ring
...

"More or less," I said
...
I want to have a good, long talk with
you
...
I've been here eight years, after all
...
"
I found it difficult to speak
...
20 bullet train the day after tomorrow
...
"See you at Tokyo Station the day after tomorrow at
3
...
"
"You won't have any trouble recognizing me
...
There aren't many of those
...
She wore a
man's tweed jacket, white trousers, and red trainers
...
In her right hand she
held a brown leather suitcase, and in her left a black guitar case
...
I took her suitcase and walked beside her to the
train for the western suburbs
...
"How did
you find the bullet train?"
"Awful!" she said
...
I wanted to buy a
box lunch from one of the station buffets
...
"
"Yeah, overpriced plastic sandwiches
...
I always used to enjoy the boxed lunches at Gotenba
Station
...
"
"Well, I'm from once upon a time before the bullet train!"

331

On the train out to Kichijoji, Reiko watched the Musashino landscape
passing the window with all the curiosity of a tourist
...

"You don't know what I'm feeling now, do you, Watanabe?" "No, I
don't
...
"So scared, I could go crazy just like that
...
"
She paused
...
' Kind of a cool expression,
don't you think?"
I smiled and took her hand
...
"You'll be OK
...
"
"It wasn't my own strength that got me out of that place," Reiko said
...
I couldn't stand it there without Naoko, and I
had to come to Tokyo to talk to you
...
If nothing had
happened I probably would have spent the rest of my life there
...

"What are you planning to do from now on?" I asked Reiko
...
"Way up in the wilds of
Hokkaido! An old college friend of mine runs a music school there,
and she's been asking me for two or three years now to help her out
...
I mean, I finally get my freedom back
and I'm supposed to go to Asahikawa? It's hard to get excited about a
place like that - some hole in the ground
...
"I've been there
...
Got its own special atmosphere
...
It's much better than staying in Tokyo
...
"I don't have anywhere else to go, and I've
already sent my stuff there
...
"
"Of course I will
...
Can you put me up? I

332

won't get in your way
...
"I have a big closet I can sleep in, in
my sleeping bag
...
"
"No, really
...
"
Reiko tapped out a rhythm on the guitar case between her legs
...
I'm just not used to being in the outside world
...
Think you can help me out a
little? You're the only one I can ask
...

"I hope I'm not getting in your way," she said
...

She looked at me and turned up the corners of her mouth in a smile
but said nothing
...
We traded a few random comments on the changes
in Tokyo and Reiko's time at the College of Music and my one trip to
Asahikawa, but said nothing about Naoko
...
This was a familiar feeling, I thought, and then it
occurred to me it was the way I used to feel when walking the streets
of Tokyo with Naoko
...
This thought made it
impossible for me to go on talking
...
Neither of us said a word on the bus
...
The clouds were white and as narrow as bones, the sky wide
open and high
...

Kizuki was still 17 and Naoko 21: for ever
...

"Because there's nothing here," I said
...

"This is terrific!" she said
...

"You're obviously good with your hands
...
"He turned me into a cleanliness
freak
...
"
"Oh, your landlord! I ought to introduce myself to him
...
" "Introduce
yourself to him? What for?"
"What do you mean "what for'? Some weird old lady shows up in your
place and starts playing the guitar, he's going to wonder what's going
on
...
I even brought a box of tea
sweets for him
...

"The wisdom that comes with age
...

The age difference comes in handy at times like this
...
"
Reiko took the box of sweets from her bag and went off to pay her
respects
...
Twenty minutes went by, and when Reiko finally came
back, she pulled a tin of rice crackers from her bag and said it was a
present for me
...

"You, of course," said Reiko, cradling the cat and rubbing her cheek
against it
...
"
"Are you sure he was talking about me?"
"There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that he was talking about
you," she said with a laugh
...

It had been months since I last heard Reiko's guitar, and it gave me
that old, warm feeling
...

"It was kicking around the landlord's storehouse, so I borrowed it and
I plunk on it once in a while
...
"
"I'll give you a lesson later
...
" Reiko put down the
guitar and took off her tweed jacket
...
She was wearing a madras check short-sleeve
shirt
...

"It is," I said
...

"It's Naoko's," said Reiko
...
Especially when she first came to the sanatorium
...
Bras were about the only thing we
couldn't share
...
So we were always
swapping clothes
...
"
Now that she mentioned it, I saw that Reiko's build was almost
identical to Naoko's
...


335

"The jacket and trousers are hers, too," said Reiko
...
Does
it bother you to see me wearing her stuff?"
"Not at all," I said
...
"
"It's strange," Reiko said with a little snap of the fingers
...
She scribbled one line on a memo pad on her desk
...
' She was a funny one, don't you think?
Why would she be concerned about her clothes of all things when
she's getting ready to die? Who gives a damn about clothes? She must
have had tons of other things she wanted to say
...

Puffing on her cigarette, Reiko seemed lost in thought
...
"
"I do," I said
...
"
"Tests at the hospital in Osaka showed that Naoko's condition was
improving for the moment but that she should stay there on a
somewhat longer-term basis so that they could
continue the intensive therapy for its future benefits
...
"
"Right
...
"
"Well, on the 24th of August I got a call from Naoko's mother asking
if it was OK for Naoko to visit me at the sanatorium
...
I said that would be fine
...
So Naoko and her
mother arrived the next day, the 25th, in a taxi
...
Late in the
afternoon, Naoko said it would be OK for her mother to go home, that

336

she'd be fine, so they called a taxi and the mother left
...
In
fact, until then I had been very worried
...
I mean, I knew how much the
testing and therapy and stuff they do at those hospitals can take it out
of you, so I had some real doubts about this visit
...
She looked a lot healthier
than I had expected and she was smiling and joking and talking much
more normally than when I had seen her last
...
So I thought there
would be nothing to worry about even if her mother left us alone
...
So then the two of us went out for a walk,
talking all the time, mainly about the future
...
"
"Live together? You and Naoko?"
"That's right," said Reiko with a little shrug
...
' That's all
...
After
that we went to the aviary and played with the birds
...
Reiko lit another cigarette,
the cat sound asleep in her lap
...
I'm sure that's why
she was so full of energy and smiling and healthylooking
...
So then we finished going through her stuff and throwing
what she didn't need into the metal drum in the garden and burning it:
the notebook she had used as a diary, and all the letters she had
received
...
This seemed a bit strange to me, so I asked

337

her why she was burning stuff like that
...
She said, "I'm getting rid of everything from the
past so I can be reborn in the future
...
It had its own kind of logic to it, sort of
...
She was so
sweet and lovely that day: I wish you could have seen her!
"When that was over, we went to the dining hall for supper the way
we used to
...
The Beatles, as always, "Norwegian Wood",
"Michelle", her favourites
...
We
turned out the lights, got undressed and lay in our beds
...
We had the windows wide open, but there
was hardly a breath of wind
...
All of a sudden, Naoko
started talking about you - about the night she had sex with you
...
How you took her clothes off, how you touched her,
how she found herself getting wet, how you went inside her, how
wonderful it felt: she told me all of this in vivid detail
...
Of course, we had had
some frank sexual talk as a kind of therapy, but she had been too
embarrassed to go into details
...
I was shocked
...
I'll stop if
you'd rather not hear it
...
"If there's something
you need to talk about, you'd better get it all out
...
'
"So she went on with her story: "When he went inside me, I couldn't
believe how much it hurt
...
I was so wet,
he slipped right in, but still, my brain fogged over - it hurt so much
...
That sent chills all through my body, as if I was
soaking in ice water
...
I didn't know what was happening
...

But he realized I was in pain, so he stopped moving, and still deep
inside me, he started kissing me all over - my hair, my neck, my
breasts - for a long, long time
...
Oh, Reiko, it was
so wonderful! Now it felt as if my brain was just going to melt away
...
That's how great it was
...
I knew this was something that
would come to me once, and leave, and never come back
...
I had never felt anything like it before,
and I've never felt anything like it since
...
'
"Of course, I explained to her that this was something that often
happened to young women and that, in most cases, it cures itself with
age
...
I myself had had all kinds of trouble
when I was first married
...
I'm not worried about that at
all
...
I just don't want
to be violated like that again - by anybody'
...
The cat
stretched itself in Reiko's lap, found a new position and went back to
sleep
...

"After that, Naoko began to sob
...
"Don't worry,' I said, "everything is going to be all
right
...
' Naoko was drenched in sweat and tears
...
Even her panties were
soaked, so I helped her out of
them - now wait a minute, don't get any strange ideas, there was
nothing funny going on
...
She was
like my little sister
...

"Well, anyway, Naoko said she wanted me to hold her
...
Just for a while
...
And when she
calmed down, I dried her off again, got her nightdress on her and put
her to bed
...
Or maybe she was just
pretending to sleep
...
I saw that look on her
face, and I knew I could let myself fall asleep with an easy heart
...
Her nightdress was
there, where she had dropped it, but her clothes and trainers and the
torch I always keep by my pillow were missing
...
I mean, the very fact that she had taken the
torch meant she had left in the dark
...
I woke
up everybody straight away, and we took different paths to look for
her
...
It took us five hours to find her
...
"
Reiko sighed and patted the cat
...


340

"Yes, thanks," said Reiko
...
Sundown
was approaching
...
I sipped my tea and looked at the strangely
random garden with its funny mix of yellow globeflowers and pink
azaleas and tall, green nandins
...
Not that there was much doubt
...
So it was pretty pro forma
...
"
"What a sad little funeral it was," I said
...
I'm sure they didn't want people to
know it was suicide
...
Which
made me feel even worse
...
"
"Hey, Watanabe, let's go for a walk
...
I'm starving
...
Is there something you want to eat?"
"Sukiyaki," she said
...
I used
to dream about sukiyaki - just stuffing myself with beef and green
onions and noodles and roasted tofu and greens
...
" "Just leave it
to me
...
" She ran off to the main
house and came back with a good
sized pan and gas cooker and rubber hose
...
I picked out a fairly decent white wine
...

"Think how the family would laugh at me if they heard I let my
nephew pay for the food!" said Reiko
...
So don't worry
...
"
Reiko washed the rice and put it on to boil while I arranged everything
for cooking on the veranda
...
On
the hard parts she would purposely slow down or speed up or make it
detached or sentimental, listening with obvious pleasure to the variety
of sounds she could draw from the instrument
...
Her eyes sparkled, and she pouted with just the hint of a smile
...

"Do you mind if I talk to you?" I asked
...
"I was just thinking how hungry I am
...
"
"Close enough
...
But no, I don't plan to see them
...
They've started a new life
...
No, the best thing is to keep away
...
She cut the seal and put a cigarette in her
mouth, but she didn't light up
...
"All you're looking at is the
lingering memory of what I used to be
...
"
"But I like you now, Reiko, the way you are, lingering memory or
whatever
...
"
Reiko smiled and lit her cigarette with a lighter
...
"

342

I felt myself reddening
...
" "Sure, I
know," said Reiko, smiling
...

"Tell me this isn't a dream," said Reiko, sniffing the air
...
"Empirically
speaking, of course
...
Seagull turned up, attracted by
the smell, so we shared our meat with her
...

"Satisfied?" I asked
...
"I've never eaten so much in my life
...
My hair's a mess
...
"
"No problem
...
"
"Tell me, Watanabe, if you don't mind
...
We decided not to until things
get sorted out
...
"Now that Naoko's dead, you mean?"
"No, not that
...
Whether Naoko is alive or dead, it has
nothing to do with your decision
...
Naoko chose to
die
...
Otherwise, you ruin everything
...
"I told Naoko I would go on waiting for
her, but I couldn't do it
...
I'm not
saying anyone's to blame: it's a problem for me myself
...
Naoko was choosing death all along
...
I can't forgive myself
...
If you stop and think about it, she and I were
bound together at the border between life and death
...
"
"If you feel some kind of pain with regard to Naoko's death, I would
advise you to keep on feeling that pain for the rest of your life
...
But
quite aside from that, you should be happy with Midori
...
If you hurt her any more
than you already have, the wound could be too deep to fix
...
You have to grow up more, be more
of an adult
...
"
"I understand what you're telling me," I said to Reiko, "but I'm still not
prepared to follow through on it
...
"
Reiko stretched out her hand and stroked my head
...
I will, and so will you
...
I opened the bottle of
wine and we sat on the veranda drinking it
...
"But what for?"
"We're going to have our own funeral for Naoko, just the two of us
...
"
When I handed her the glass, Reiko filled it to the brim and set it on
the stone lantern in the garden
...

"And now could you bring out a box of matches? Make it the biggest

344

one you can find
...

"Now what I want you to do is lay down a match every time I play a
song, just set them in a row
...
"
First she played a soft, lovely rendition of Henry Mancini's "Dear
Heart"
...

"I did
...
She really liked that song
...
"So sweet and beautiful
...
"I wonder how many songs I can play before I get
completely drunk
...
She sang and played
"Here Comes the Sun", then played "The Fool on the Hill"
...

"Seven songs," said Reiko, sipping more wine and smoking another
cigarette
...
"
By "those guys" Reiko of course meant John Lennon, Paul McCartney
and George Harrison
...
She played "Penny Lane",
"Blackbird", "Julia", "When I'm 64", "Nowhere Man", "And I Love
Her", and "Hey Jude"
...

She sighed and asked me, "How about you? Can you play something maybe one song?"
"No way
...
"

345

"So play it terribly
...
Reiko took a rest, smoking and drinking
...

Next she played a guitar transcription of Ravel's "Pavanne for a Dying
Queen" and a beautifully clean rendition of Debussy's "Claire de
Lune"
...
"To the end,
her taste in music never rose above the sentimental
...

"Twenty," I said
...
"My professors would
faint if they could see me now
...
Sometimes she would close her eyes
and nod or hum to the melody
...
The wine in the glass
in the garden I poured over the stone lantern and replaced it with
whisky
...
"Forty-eight," I said
...
After that she
rested her hands and drank some whisky
...

"It is," I answered
...
"
Reiko looked me in the eye and said, "Now listen to me, Watanabe
...
Just

346

remember this marvellous one of ours
...

"Here's one more for good measure," she said, and for her fifty-first
piece she played her favourite Bach fugue
...
"I was thinking the same thing
...
Then, in the darkened room,
Reiko and I sought out each other's bodies as if it were the most
natural thing in the world for us to do
...

"I've lived a strange life," said Reiko, "but I never thought I'd have my
panties removed for me by a man 19 years my junior
...
But don't be too shocked at all my wrinkles
...
"
"You're gonna make me cry," she whispered
...
She had the breasts of a little girl
...

"Wrong spot, Watanabe," Reiko whispered in my ear
...
"
"I can't believe you're telling jokes at a time like this!"
"Sorry," she said
...
I haven't done this for years
...
"
"To tell you the truth, I feel as if I'm violating a 17-year-old girl
...
As her breathing intensified and
her throat began to tremble, I parted her long, slim legs and eased

347

myself inside her
...
"I'd be so embarrassed if I
got pregnant at this age
...
"Just relax
...

Caressing her back, I moved inside her and then, without warning, I
came
...
I clutched at her as
my semen pulsed into her warmth again and again
...
"I couldn't stop myself
...
"You
don't have to worry about that
...
"
"Well, you don't have to think about it with me
...

Just let yourself go as much as you like
...

That's why I couldn't control myself
...
This is fine
...
"
"You know, Reiko," I said
...
You're terrific
...
"
"Well, I'll think about it," she said
...
"
Growing hard a few minutes later, I went inside her again
...
I moved slowly and quietly with
my arms around her, and we talked
...

If I said something funny and made her laugh, the tremors came into
me through my penis
...

"Oh, this feels marvellous!" Reiko said
...


348

"Go ahead
...
"
I lifted her hips and went in as far as I could go, then savoured the
sensation of moving in a circular pattern until, having enjoyed it to the
full, I let myself come
...
At the end each
time, Reiko would lie in my arms trembling slightly, eyes closed, and
release a long sigh
...
Oh,
please, Watanabe, tell me it's true
...
"
"Nobody can tell you that," I said
...
"
I tried to convince Reiko that taking a plane would be faster and
easier, but she insisted on going to Asahikawa by train
...
And I have no desire to fly through the
air," she said
...
She carried her
guitar and I carried her suitcase
...
Reiko wore the same tweed jacket and white
trousers she had on when she arrived in Tokyo
...

"It's a nice town
...
"
"Really?"
I nodded
...
"
"I love your letters
...
And they
were such great letters too!"
"Letters are just pieces of paper," I said
...
"
"You know, Watanabe,
Asahikawa by myself
...
Whenever I read
your letters, I feel you're right there next to me
...
But don't worry
...
"
"And another thing
...
Could it be my imagination?"
"Just a lingering memory," I said and smiled
...

"Don't forget about me," she said
...
"Ever
...
"
I saw that she was crying
...
Others
on the platform were staring at us, but I didn't care about such things
any more
...
And all we had to think about was
continuing to live
...
"I've given you
all the advice I have to give
...
Just be
happy
...
"
We held hands for a moment, and then we parted
...

"I have to talk to you," I said
...
A million things we have to talk about
...
I want to see you and talk
...
"
Midori responded with a long, long silence - the silence of all the
misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the
world
...

At last, Midori's quiet voice broke the silence: "Where are you now?"
Where was I now?
Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay
beyond the phone box
...
No idea at
all
...
Again and again I
called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no

350

place
...
Fame was one thing, superstardom another,
and the craziness of it sent him back to the anonymity of Europe (he
had written the book in Greece and Italy)
...
Not until 1995 was he prepared to resume living in
Japan, but strictly on his own terms, without the television
appearances and professional pontificating expected of a bestselling
Japanese author
...

Accustomed to his cool, fragmented, American-flavoured narratives
on mysterious sheep and disappearing elephants, some of Murakami's
early readers were dismayed to find that Norwegian Wood seemed to
be "just" a love story - and one that bore a suspicious resemblance to
the kind of Japanese mainstream autobiographical fiction that
Murakami had rejected since his exciting debut in 1979
...
For me personally, however, it was just the opposite: it was an
adventure, a challenge
...
I set Norwegian Wood in the late
1960s
...
As a
result, many people think it is an autobiographical novel, but in fact it

352

is not autobiographical at all
...
If I had simply written the literal truth of my
own life, the novel would have been no more than 15 pages long
...

Back then, in the years 1968-70 that occupy the bulk of the novel,
Murakami's experience centred on meeting the love of his life, his
wife, Yoko, amid the turbulence of the student movement
...
It is by no means "just" a love story
...
Although the
novel has appeared in
French, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Norwegian and Hebrew, the present
edition is the first English translation that Murakami has authorized
for publication outside Japan

---

Title: Nowegian wood
Description: It is aboout love. Japanese famous writer Haruki murakami's one of best seller book.

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