Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

Midori stared at the smoke rising from her cigarette.

"You know," she said, "my father's not such a bad guy. I get angry with him sometimes because he says terrible things, but deep down he's honest and he really loved my mother. In his own way, he's lived life with all the intensity he could muster. 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. I'm as bad as he is about not backing down once I've said something, so we fight a lot, but really, he's not a bad guy."

Midori took my hand as if she were picking up something someone had dropped in the street, and placed it on her lap. Half my hand lay on the skirt, the rest touching her thigh. She looked into my eyes for some time.

"Sorry to bring you to a place like this," she said, "but would you mind staying with me a little longer?"

"I'll stay with you all day if you want," I said. "Until five." I like spending time with you, and I've got nothing else to do."

"How do you usually spend your Sundays?"

"Doing my laundry," I said. "And ironing."

"I don't suppose you want to tell me too much about her... your girlfriend?"

"No, I guess not. It's complicated, and I, kind of, don't think I could explain it very well."

"That's OK. You don't have to explain anything," said Midori. "But do you mind if I tell you what I imagine is going on?"

"No, go ahead. I suspect anything you'd imagine would have to be interesting."

"I think she's a married woman."

"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. The two of you meet on weekday afternoons and devour each other's bodies.

But her husband's home on Sundays, so she can't see you. Am I right?"

"Very, very interesting."

"She has you tie her up and blindfold her and lick every square inch of her body. Then she makes you put weird things inside her and she gets into these incredible positions like a contortionist and you take pictures of her with a Polaroid camera."

"Sounds like fun."

"She's dying for it all the time, so she does everything she can think of. And she thinks about it every day. She's got nothing but free time, so she's always planning: Hmm, next time Watanabe comes, we'll do this, or we'll do that. You get in bed and she goes crazy, trying all these positions and coming three times in each one. And she says to you, "Don't I have a sensational body? You can't be satisfied with young girls any more. Young girls won't do this for you, will they? Or this.

Feel good? But don't come yet!"'

"You've watched too many porno movies," I said with a laugh.

"You think so? I was kind of worried about that. But I love porn films. Take me to one next time, OK?"

"Fine," I said. "Next time you're free."

"Really? I can hardly wait. Let's go to a real S&M one, with whips and, like, they make the girl pee in front of everyone.

That's my favourite."

"We'll do it."

"You know what I like best about porn cinemas?"

"I couldn't begin to guess."

"Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this "Gulp!' sound when everybody swallows all at once," said Midori. "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. Around eleven the wife of the man in the other bed came to change her husband's pyjamas and peel fruit for him and so on. She had a round face and seemed like a nice person, and she and Midori shared a lot of small talk. A nurse showed up with a new intravenous drip and talked a little while with Midori and the wife before she left. I let my eyes wander around the room and out the window to the power lines.

Sparrows would turn up every now and then and perch on them.

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.

The doctor did his rounds at 11.30, so Midori and I stepped outside to wait in the corridor. When he came out, Midori asked him how her father was doing.

"Well, he's just come out of surgery, and we've got him on painkillers so, well, he's pretty drained," said the doctor. "I'll need another two or three days to evaluate the results of the operation. If it went well, he'll be OK, and if it didn't, we'll have to make some decisions at that point."

"You're not going to open his head up again, are you?"

"I really can't say until the time comes," said the doctor. "Wow, that's some short skirt you're wearing!"

"Nice, huh?"

"What do you do on stairways?" the doctor asked.

"Nothing special. I let it all hang out," said Midori. The nurse chuckled behind the doctor.

"Incredible. You ought to come and let us open your head one of these days to see what's going on in there. Do me a favour and use the lifts while you're in the hospital. I can't afford to have any more patients.

I'm way too busy as it is."

Soon after the doctor's rounds it was lunchtime. A nurse was circulating from room to room pushing a trolley loaded with meals.

Midori's father was given pottage, fruit, boiled, deboned fish, and vegetables that had been ground into some kind of jelly. Midori turned him on his back and raised him up using the handle at the foot of the bed. She fed him the soup with a spoon. After five or six swallows, he turned his face aside and said (No more>.

You've got to eat at least this much." Midori san he said.

"You're hopeless - if you don't eat properly, you'll never get your strength back," she said. "Don't you have to pee yet?" he said.

"Hey, Watanabe, let's go down to the cafeteria."

I agreed to go, but in fact I didn't much feel like eating. The cafeteria was packed with doctors, nurses and visitors. 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. Now and then the PA system would break through the reverberation with calls for a doctor or nurse. While I laid claim to a table, Midori bought two set meals and carried them over on an aluminium tray. Croquettes with cream sauce, potato salad, shredded cabbage, boiled vegetables, rice and miso soup: these were lined up in the tray in the same white plastic dishes they used for patients. I ate about half of mine and left the rest.

Midori seemed to enjoy her meal to the last mouthful.

"Not hungry?" she asked, sipping hot tea. "Not really," I said.

"It's the hospital," she said, scanning the cafeteria. "This always happens when people aren't used to the place. The smells, the sounds, the stale air, patients' faces, stress, irritation, disappointment, pain, fatigue - that's what does it. It grabs you in the stomach and kills your appetite. Once you get used to it, though, it's no problem at all. Plus, you can't really take care of a sick person unless you eat properly. It's true. I know what I'm talking about because I've done it with my grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, and now my father. 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.