Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

The rooms I had set aside in there for Naoko were shuttered, the furniture draped in white, the windowsills dusty. I spent the better part of each day in those rooms. And I thought about Kizuki. "So you finally made Naoko yours," I heard myself telling him. "Oh, well, she was yours to begin with. Now, maybe, she's where she belongs. But in this world, in this imperfect world of the living, I did the best I could for Naoko. I tried to establish a new life for the two of us. But forget it, Kizuki. I'm giving her to you. You're the one she chose, after all. In woods as dark as the depths of her own heart, she hanged herself.

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.

Sometimes I feel like the caretaker of a museum - a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one but myself."

The fourth day after my return to Tokyo, a letter came from Reiko.

Special delivery. It was a simple note: I haven't been able to get in touch with you for weeks, and I'm worried. Please call me. At 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. I will be waiting by the telephone.

I called her at nine o'clock that night. Reiko picked up after one ring.

"Are you OK?" she asked.

"More or less," I said.

"Do you mind if I come and visit you the day after tomorrow?"

"Visit me? You mean here in Tokyo?"

"That's exactly what I mean. I want to have a good, long talk with you."

"You're leaving the sanatorium?"

"It's the only way I can come and see you, isn't it? Anyway, it's about time for me to get out of this place. I've been here eight years, after all.

If they keep me any longer, I'll start to rot."

I found it difficult to speak. After a short silence, Reiko went on: "I'll be on the 3.20 bullet train the day after tomorrow. Will you meet me at the station? Do you still remember what I look like? Or have you lost interest in me now that Naoko's dead?"

"No way," I said. "See you at Tokyo Station the day after tomorrow at 3.20."

"You won't have any trouble recognizing me. I'm the old lady with the guitar case. There aren't many of those."

And in fact, I had no trouble finding Reiko in the crowd. She wore a man's tweed jacket, white trousers, and red trainers. Her hair was as short as ever, with the usual clumps sticking up. In her right hand she held a brown leather suitcase, and in her left a black guitar case. She gave me a big, wrinkly smile the moment she spotted me, and I found myself grinning back. I took her suitcase and walked beside her to the train for the western suburbs.

"Hey, Watanabe, how long have you been wearing that awful face? Or is that the 'in' look in Tokyo these days?"

"I was travelling for a while, ate junk all the time," I said. "How did you find the bullet train?"

"Awful!" she said. "You can't open the windows. I wanted to buy a box lunch from one of the station buffets."

"They sell them on board, you know."

"Yeah, overpriced plastic sandwiches. A starving horse wouldn't touch that stuff. I always used to enjoy the boxed lunches at Gotenba Station."

"Once upon a time, before the bullet train."

"Well, I'm from once upon a time before the bullet train!"

On the train out to Kichijoji, Reiko watched the Musashino landscape passing the window with all the curiosity of a tourist.

"Has it changed much in eight years?" I asked.

"You don't know what I'm feeling now, do you, Watanabe?"

"No, I don't."

"I'm scared," she said. "So scared, I could go crazy just like that. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, flung out here all by myself."

She paused. "But 'Go crazy just like that.' Kind of a cool expression, don't you think?"

I smiled and took her hand. "Don't worry," I said. "You'll be OK. Your own strength got you this far."

"It wasn't my own strength that got me out of that place," Reiko said.

"It was Naoko and you. I couldn't stand it there without Naoko, and I had to come to Tokyo to talk to you. That's all. If nothing had happened I probably would have spent the rest of my life there."

I nodded.

"What are you planning to do from now on?" I asked Reiko.

"I'm going to Asahikawa," she said. "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 told her it was too cold for me. 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."

"It's not so awful," I said, laughing. "I've been there. It's not a bad little town. Got its own special atmosphere."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. It's much better than staying in Tokyo."

"Oh, well," she said. "I don't have anywhere else to go, and I've already sent my stuff there. Hey, Watanabe, promise me you'll come and visit me in Asahikawa."

"Of course I will. But do you have to leave straight away?

Can't you stay in Tokyo for a while?"

"I'd like to hang around here a few days if I can. Can you put me up? I won't get in your way."

"No problem," I said. "I have a big closet I can sleep in, in my sleeping bag."

"I can't do that to you."

"No, really. It's a huge closet."

Reiko tapped out a rhythm on the guitar case between her legs. "I'm probably going to have to condition myself a little before I go to Asahikawa. I'm just not used to being in the outside world. There's a lot of stuff I don't get, and I'm nervous. Think you can help me out a little? You're the only one I can ask."

"I'll do anything I can to help you," I said.

"I hope I'm not getting in your way," she said. "I don't have any way for you to get in," I said.

She looked at me and turned up the corners of her mouth in a smile but said nothing.

We hardly talked the rest of the way to Kichijoji Station or on the bus back to my place. 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. Ten months had gone by since I last saw Reiko, but walking by her side I felt strangely calmed and comforted. 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. And just as Naoko and I had shared the dead Kizuki, Reiko and I shared the dead Naoko. This thought made it impossible for me to go on talking. Reiko continued speaking for a while, but when she realized that I wasn't saying anything, she also fell silent. Neither of us said a word on the bus.

It was one of those early autumn afternoons when the light is sharp and clear, exactly as it had been a year earlier when I visited Naoko in Kyoto. The clouds were white and as narrow as bones, the sky wide open and high. The fragrance of the breeze, the tone of the light, the tiny flowers in the grass, the subtle reverberations that accompanied sounds: all these told me that autumn had come again, increasing the distance between me and the dead with each cycle of the seasons.

Kizuki was still 17 and Naoko 21: for ever.

"Oh, what a relief to come to a place like this!" Reiko said, looking all around as we stepped off the bus.

"Because there's nothing here," I said.

As I led her through the back gate through the garden to my cottage, Reiko was impressed by everything she saw.