Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

Storm Trooper's iceberg poster stayed on the wall for a time, but I eventually took it down and replaced it with Jim Morrison and Miles Davis. This made the room seem a little more like my own. I used some of the money I had saved from work to buy a small stereo. At night I would drink alone and listen to music. I thought about Storm Trooper every now and then, but I enjoyed living alone.

At 11.30 a.m. one Monday, after a lecture on Euripides in History of Drama, I took a ten-minute walk to a little restaurant and had an omelette and salad for lunch. 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.

"They" were a married couple who rarely spoke to each other, plus one part-time waitress. As I sat there eating by the window, a group of four students came in, two men and two women, all rather neatly dressed. They took the table near the door, spent some time looking over the menu and discussing their options, until one of them reported their choices to the waitress.

Before long I noticed that one of the girls kept glancing in my direction. She had extremely short hair and wore dark sunglasses and a white cotton mini-dress. 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. With one hand on the edge of my table, she said, "You're Watanabe, aren't you?"

I raised my head and looked at her more closely. Still I could not recall ever having seen her. She was the kind of girl you notice, so if I had met her before I should have been able to recognize her immediately, and there weren't that many people in my university who knew me by name.

"Mind if I sit down?" she asked. "Or are you expecting somebody?"

Still uncertain, I shook my head. "No, nobody's coming. Please."

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.

"Looks good," she said.

"It is good. Mushroom omelette and green pea salad."

"Damn," she said. "Oh, well, I'll get it next time. I've already ordered something else."

"What are you having?"

"Macaroni and cheese."

"Their macaroni and cheese isn't bad, either," I said. "By the way, do I know you? I don't recall..."

"Euripides," she said.

"Electra.

"No god hearkens to the voice of lost Electra.' You know - the class just ended."

I stared hard at her. She took off her sunglasses. At last I remembered her - a first-year I had seen in History of Drama. A striking change in hairstyle had prevented me recognizing her.

"Oh," I said, touching a point a few inches below my shoulder, "your hair was down to here before the summer holidays."

"You're right," she said. "I had a perm this summer, and it was just awful.

I was ready to kill myself. I looked like a corpse on the beach with seaweed stuck to my head. So I decided as long as I was ready to die, I might as well cut it all off. At least it's cool in the summer." She ran her hand through her pixie cut and gave me a smile.

"It looks good, though," I said, still munching my omelette.

"Let me see your profile."

She turned away and held the pose a few seconds.

"Yeah, I thought so. It really looks good on you. Nicely shaped head.

Pretty ears, too, uncovered like that."

"So I'm not mad after all! I thought I looked good myself once I cut it all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a concentration camp survivor. 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. Really."

"I think you look better now than you did before," I said. And I meant it. As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another cute student. A fresh and physical life force surged from the girl who sat before me now. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.

"Do you mean it?" she asked.

I nodded, still munching on my salad.

She put on her sunglasses and looked at me from behind them.

"You're not lying, are you?"

"I like to think of myself as an honest man," I said. "Far out."

"So tell me: why do you wear such dark glasses?"

"I felt defenceless when my hair got short all of a sudden.

As if somebody had thrown m e into a crowd all naked."

"Makes sense," I said, eating the last of my omelette. She watched me with intense interest.

"You don't have to go back to them?" I asked, indicating her three companions.

"Nah. I'll go back when they serve the food. Am I interrupting your meal?"

"There's nothing left to interrupt," I said, ordering coffee when she showed no sign of leaving. The wife took my dishes and brought milk and sugar.

"Now you tell me," she said. "Why didn't you answer today when they called the register? You are Watanabe, aren't you?

Toru Watanabe?"

"That's me."

"So why didn't you answer?"

"I just didn't feel like it today."

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.

"I just didn't feel like it today." You talk like Humphrey Bogart. Cool.

Tough."

"Don't be silly. I'm just an ordinary guy like everybody else."

The wife brought my coffee and set it on the table. I took a sip without adding sugar or milk.

"Look at that. You drink it black."

"It's got nothing to do with Humphrey Bogart," I explained patiently.

"I just don't happen to have a sweet tooth. I think you've got me all wrong."

"Why are you so tanned?"

"I've been hiking around the last couple of weeks. Rucksack. Sleeping bag."

"Where'd you go?"

"Kanazawa. Noto Peninsula. Up to Niigata."

"Alone?"

"Alone," I said. "Found some company here and there."

"Some romantic company? New women in far-off places."

"Romantic? Now I know you've got me wrong. 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."

"You enjoy solitude?" she asked, resting her cheek on her hand.

"Travelling alone, eating alone, sitting by yourself in lecture halls..."

"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment."

The tip of one earpiece in her mouth, sunglasses dangling down, she mumbled, "

"Nobody likes being alone. I just hate to be disappointed.'

You can use that line if you ever write your autobiography."

"Thanks," I said.

"Do you like green?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You're wearing a green polo shirt."

"Not especially. I'll wear anything."

"Not especially. I'll wear anything.' I love the way you talk. Like spreading plaster, nice and smooth. Has anybody ever told you that?"

"Nobody," I said.

"My name's Midori," she said. "

"Green'. But green looks terrible on me. Weird, huh? It's like I'm cursed, don't you think? My sister's name is Momoko: "Peach girl'."

"Does she look good in pink?"

"She looks great in pink! She was born to wear pink. It's totally unfair."

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".

"Tell me," she said. "Do you take lecture notes? In drama?"