Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

"That's all right. Tell me exactly what you think."

"Well, if I were you, I'd leave him. I'd find someone with a more normal way of looking at things and live happily ever after. There's no way in hell you can be happy with him. The way he lives, it never crosses his mind to try to make himself happy or to make others happy. Staying with him will only wreck your nervous system. To me, it's already a miracle that you've been with him three years. Of course, I'm very fond of him in my own way. He's fun, and he has lots of great qualities.

He has strengths and abilities that I could never hope to match. But in the end, his ideas about things and the way he lives his life are not normal. Sometimes, when I'm talking to him, I feel as if I'm going around and around in circles. The same process that takes him higher and higher leaves me going around in circles. It makes me feel so empty! Finally, our very systems are totally different. Do you see what I'm saying?"

"I do," Hatsumi said as she brought me another beer from the fridge.

"Plus, after he gets into the Foreign Ministry and does a year of training, he'll be going abroad. What are you going to do all that time?

Wait for him? He has no intention of marrying anyone."

"I know that, too."

"So I've got nothing else to say."

"I see," said Hatsumi.

I slowly filled my glass with beer.

"You know, when we were playing pool before, something popped into my mind," I said. "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. I was happy being alone. 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."

Hatsumi flashed me a happy smile. "That's got to be the nicest thing anybody's said to me in the past year," she said. "Really."

"All I want for you," I said, blushing, "is for you to be happy. It's crazy, though. 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. There's probably not much you can do about them. It's certainly true in my case. Of course, Nagasawa would say it's my responsibility, not his.'

"I'm sure he would."

"But anyway, Toru, I'm not the smartest girl in the world. If anything, I'm sort of on the stupid side, and old-fashioned. I couldn't care less about "systems' and "responsibility'. All I want is to get married and have a man I love hold me in his arms every night and make babies.

That's plenty for me. It's all I want out of life."

"And what Nagasawa wants out of life has nothing to do with that."

"People change, though, don't you think?" Hatsumi asked. "You mean, like, they go out into society and get a kick up the arse and grow up?"

"Yeah. 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. "But he's different. He's incredibly strong-willed - stronger than you or I can imagine. And he only makes himself stronger with every day that goes by. If something smashes into him, he just works to make himself stronger. He'd eat slugs before he'd back down to anyone. 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.

"You love him that much?"

"I do," she answered without a moment's hesitation.

"Oh boy," I said with a sigh, drinking down the last of my beer. "It must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody."

"I'm a stupid, old-fashioned girl," she said. "Have another beer?"

"No, thanks, I must get going. Thanks for the bandage and beer."

As I was standing in the hallway putting on my shoes, the telephone rang. Hatsumi looked at me, looked at the phone, and looked at me again.

"Good night," I said, stepping outside. As I shut the door, I caught a glimpse of Hatsumi picking up the receiver. It was the last time I ever saw her.

It was 11.30 by the time I got back to the dorm. I went straight to Nagasawa's room and knocked on his door. After the tenth knock it occurred to me that this was Saturday night. Nagasawa always got overnight permission on Saturday nights, supposedly to stay at his relatives' house.

I went back to my room, took off my tie, put my jacket and trousers on a hanger, changed into my pyjamas, and brushed my teeth. Oh no, I thought, tomorrow is Sunday again! Sundays s eemed to be rolling around every four days. Another two Sundays and I would be 20 years old. I stretched out in bed and stared at my calendar as dark feelings washed over me.

I sat at my desk to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis albums. A fine rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium.

The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick jumper I had just taken out of a storage box. High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat fly, unmoving. With no wind to stir it, the Rising Sun standard hung limp against the flagpole like the toga of a Roman senator. A skinny, timid-looking brown dog that had wandered into the quadrangle was sniffing every blossom in the flowerbed. I couldn't begin to imagine why any dog would have to go around sniffing flowers on a rainy day.

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 quadrangle.

I began by telling Naoko how I had given my right hand a nasty cut while working in the record shop, then went on to say that Nagasawa, Hatsumi and I had had a sort of celebration the night before for Nagasawa's having passed his Foreign Ministry exam. I described the restaurant and the food. The meal was great, I said, but the atmosphere got uncomfortable halfway through.

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

I still remember the last shot Kizuki took that day - the day he died. It was a difficult cushion shot that I never expected him to get. 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. It was such a beautiful shot, I still have a vivid image of it to this day. For nearly two-and-a-half years after that, I never touched a cue.

The night I played pool with Hatsumi, though, the thought of Kizuki never crossed my mind until the first game ended, and this came as a real shock to me. I had always assumed that I'd be reminded of Kizuki whenever I played pool. But not until the first game was over and I bought a Pepsi from a vending machine and started drinking it did I even think of him. It was the pool hall we used to play in, and we had often bet drinks on the outcome of our games.

I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki straight away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. 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. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. 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. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn 20 soon. Part of 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. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably under- stand what I felt and what I am trying to say. In fact, you are probably the only one in the world who can understand.