Read Online Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Haruki Murakami
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It is something I have to take on all by myself. I had been putting it off for more than a year, and so I ended up making things very difficult for you. There is probably no way to put it off any longer.
After I moved out of my apartment, I came back to my family’s house inKobe and was seeing a doctor for a while. He tells me there is a place in the hills outside Kyoto that would be perfect for me, and I’m thinking of spending a little time there. It’s not exactly a hospital, more a sanatorium kind of thing with a far freer style of treatment. I’ll leave the details for another letter. What I need now is to rest my nerves in a quiet place cut off from the world.
I feel grateful in my own way for the year of companionship you gave me. Please believe that much even if you believe nothing else. You are not the one who hurt me. I myself am the one who did that. This is truly how I feel.
For now, however, I am not prepared to see you. It’s not that I don’t
want
to see you: I’m simply not prepared for it. The moment I feel ready, I will write to you. Perhaps then we can get to know each other better. As you say, this is probably what we should do: get to know each other better.
Good-bye
I read Naoko’s letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with that same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko herself stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it. Objects in the scene would drift past me, but the words they spoke never reached my ears.
I continued to spend my Saturday nights in the lobby. There was no hope of a phone call, but I didn’t know what else to do with the time. I would switch on the baseball game and pretend to watch it as I cut the empty space between me and the television set in two, then cut each half in two again, over and over, until I had fashioned a space small enough to hold in my hand.
I would switch the set off at ten, go back to my room, and go to sleep.
A T THE END OF THE MONTH , Storm Trooper gave me a firefly. It was in an instant coffee jar with air holes in the lid and containing some blades of grass and a little water. In the bright room the firefly looked like an ordinary black bug you’d find by a pond somewhere, but Storm Trooper insisted that it was the real thing. “I know a firefly when I see one,” he said, and I had no reason or basis to dispute him.
“Fine,” I said. “It’s a firefly.” It had a sleepy look on its face, but it kept trying to climb up the slippery glass walls of the jar and falling back.
“I found it in the quad,” he said.
“Here? By the dorm?”
“Sure. You know the hotel down the street? They release fireflies in their garden for summer guests. This one made it over here.”
Storm Trooper was busy stuffing clothes and notebooks into his black Boston bag as he spoke.
We were several weeks into summer vacation, and Storm Trooper and I were almost the only ones left in the dorm. I had continued my jobs rather than go back to Kobe, and he had stayed on for a practical training session. Now that the training had ended, he was going back to the mountains of Yamanashi.
“You could give this to your girlfriend,” he said. “I’m sure she’d love it.”
“Thanks,” I said.
After dark the dorm was hushed, like a ruin. The flag had been lowered and the lights glowed in the windows of the dining hall. With so few students left, they turned on only half the lights in the place, keeping the right half dark and the left half lighted. Still, the smell of dinner drifted up to us—some kind of cream stew.
I took my bottled firefly to the roof. No one else was up there. A white undershirt hung on a clothesline where someone had forgotten to take it in, waving in the evening breeze like the discarded shell of some huge insect. I climbed a steel ladder in the
After I moved out of my apartment, I came back to my family’s house inKobe and was seeing a doctor for a while. He tells me there is a place in the hills outside Kyoto that would be perfect for me, and I’m thinking of spending a little time there. It’s not exactly a hospital, more a sanatorium kind of thing with a far freer style of treatment. I’ll leave the details for another letter. What I need now is to rest my nerves in a quiet place cut off from the world.
I feel grateful in my own way for the year of companionship you gave me. Please believe that much even if you believe nothing else. You are not the one who hurt me. I myself am the one who did that. This is truly how I feel.
For now, however, I am not prepared to see you. It’s not that I don’t
want
to see you: I’m simply not prepared for it. The moment I feel ready, I will write to you. Perhaps then we can get to know each other better. As you say, this is probably what we should do: get to know each other better.
Good-bye
I read Naoko’s letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with that same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko herself stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it. Objects in the scene would drift past me, but the words they spoke never reached my ears.
I continued to spend my Saturday nights in the lobby. There was no hope of a phone call, but I didn’t know what else to do with the time. I would switch on the baseball game and pretend to watch it as I cut the empty space between me and the television set in two, then cut each half in two again, over and over, until I had fashioned a space small enough to hold in my hand.
I would switch the set off at ten, go back to my room, and go to sleep.
A T THE END OF THE MONTH , Storm Trooper gave me a firefly. It was in an instant coffee jar with air holes in the lid and containing some blades of grass and a little water. In the bright room the firefly looked like an ordinary black bug you’d find by a pond somewhere, but Storm Trooper insisted that it was the real thing. “I know a firefly when I see one,” he said, and I had no reason or basis to dispute him.
“Fine,” I said. “It’s a firefly.” It had a sleepy look on its face, but it kept trying to climb up the slippery glass walls of the jar and falling back.
“I found it in the quad,” he said.
“Here? By the dorm?”
“Sure. You know the hotel down the street? They release fireflies in their garden for summer guests. This one made it over here.”
Storm Trooper was busy stuffing clothes and notebooks into his black Boston bag as he spoke.
We were several weeks into summer vacation, and Storm Trooper and I were almost the only ones left in the dorm. I had continued my jobs rather than go back to Kobe, and he had stayed on for a practical training session. Now that the training had ended, he was going back to the mountains of Yamanashi.
“You could give this to your girlfriend,” he said. “I’m sure she’d love it.”
“Thanks,” I said.
After dark the dorm was hushed, like a ruin. The flag had been lowered and the lights glowed in the windows of the dining hall. With so few students left, they turned on only half the lights in the place, keeping the right half dark and the left half lighted. Still, the smell of dinner drifted up to us—some kind of cream stew.
I took my bottled firefly to the roof. No one else was up there. A white undershirt hung on a clothesline where someone had forgotten to take it in, waving in the evening breeze like the discarded shell of some huge insect. I climbed a steel ladder in the
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