Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

I sat leaning against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. When I felt hungry I would nibble anything within reach, drink some water, and when the sadness of it got to me, I'd knock myself out with whisky. I didn't bathe, I didn't shave. This is how the three days went by.

A letter came from Midori on 6 April. She invited me to meet her on campus and have lunch on the tenth when we had to enroll for lectures.

I put off writing to you as long as I could, which makes us even, so let's make up. I have to admit it, I miss you.

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. What could it possibly mean? My brain was so fogged over, I couldn't find the connection from one sentence to the next. How would meeting her on enrolment day make us "even"?

Why did she want to have "lunch" with me? I was really losing it. My mind had gone slack, like the soggy roots of a subterranean plant. But somehow I knew I had to snap out of it. And then those words of Nagasawa's came to mind: "Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only arseholes do that."

"OK, Nagasawa. Right on," I heard myself thinking. I let out a sigh and got to my feet.

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. Shaving, I discovered in the mirror that I was becoming emaciated. My eyes were popping. I could hardly recognize myself.

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. Then thought seriously about what I ought to do next. The main reason I had taken Reiko's letter so hard was that it had upset my optimistic belief that Naoko was getting better. Naoko herself had told me, "My sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots." And Reiko had warned me there was no telling what might happen. Still, I had seen Naoko twice, and had gained the impression she was on the mend. I had assumed that the only problem was whether she could 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.

Reiko's letter smashed the illusory castle that I had built on that fragile hypothesis, leaving only a flattened surface devoid of feeling. I would have to do something to regain my footing. It would probably take a long time for Naoko to recover. And even then, she would no doubt be more debilitated and would have lost even more of her self confidence than ever. I would have to adapt myself to this new situation. As strong as I might become, though, it would not solve all the problems.

I knew that much. But there was nothing else I could do: just keep my own spirits up and wait for her to recover.

Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live - and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me.

Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger.

I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could.

But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I'm not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.

"Shit, Watanabe, what happened to you?"

Midori asked. "You're all skin and bones!"

"That bad, huh?"

"Too much you-know-what with that married girlfriend of yours, I bet."

I smiled and shook my head. "I haven't slept with a girl since the beginning of October."

"Whew! That can't be true. We're talking six months here!"

"You heard me."

"So how did you lose so much weight?"

"By growing up," I said.

Midori put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye with a twisted scowl that soon turned into a sweet smile. "It's true," she said.

"Something's kind of different. You've changed."

"I told you, I grew up. I'm an adult now."

"You're fantastic, the way your brain works," she said as though genuinely impressed. "Let's eat. I'm starving."

We went to a little restaurant behind the literature department. I ordered the lunch special and she did the same. "Hey, Watanabe, are you mad at me?"

"What for?"

"For not answering you, just to get even. Do you think I shouldn't have done that? I mean, you apologized and everything."

"Yeah, but it was my fault to begin with. That's just how it goes."

"My sister says I shouldn't have done it. That it was too unforgiving, too childish."

"Yeah, but it made you feel better, didn't it, getting even like that?"

"Uh-huh."

"OK, then, that's that."

"You are forgiving, aren't you?" Midori said. "But tell me the truth, Watanabe, you haven't had sex for six months?"

"Not once."

"So, that time you put me to bed, you must have really wanted it bad."

"Yeah, I guess I did."

"But you didn't do it, did you?"

"Look, you're the best friend I've got now," I said. "I don't want to lose you."

"You know, if you had tried to force y ourself on me that time, I wouldn't have been able to resist, I was so exhausted."

"But I was too big and hard," I said.

Midori smiled and touched my wrist. "A little before that, I decided I was going to believe in you. A hundred per cent. That's how I managed to sleep like that with total peace of mind. I knew I'd be all right, I'd be safe with you there. And I did sleep like a log, didn't I?"

"You sure did."

"On the other hand, if you were to say to me, "Hey, Midori, let's do it.

Then everything'll be great,' I'd probably do it with you. Now, don't think I'm trying to seduce you or tease you. I'm just telling you what's on my mind, with total honesty."

"I know, I know."

While we ate lunch, we showed each other our enrolment cards and found that we had enrolled for two of the same courses. So I'd be seeing her twice a week at least. With that out of the way, Midori told me about her living arrangements. For a while, neither she nor her sister could get used to living in a flat - because it was too easy, she said. 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.

"We're finally getting used to it, though," she said. "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 made us both nervous at first, as if our bodies were floating a few inches off the ground. It didn't seem real, like real life couldn't actually be like that.

We were both tense, as though everything was about to be tipped upside down any minute."

"A couple of worriers," I said with a smile.

"Well, it's just that life has been so cruel to us until now,"

Midori said. "But that's OK. We're going to get back every thing it owes us."

"I bet you are," I said, "knowing you. But tell me, what's your sister doing these days?"

"A friend of hers opened this swanky accessory shop a little while ago. My sister helps out there three times a week. Otherwise, she's studying cookery, going on dates with her fiancé, going to the cinema, vegging out, and just enjoying life.