Norwegian Wood

  Why so much smoke? I wondered. I couldn’t see flames, and the burning area didn’t seem to be spreading. There was just this column of smoke winding up into the sky. What could have kept burning so long?

  “But I’m not the only one to blame,” Midori continued. “It’s true I’ve got a cold streak. I recognize that. But if they—my father and mother—had loved me a little more, I would have been able to feel more—to feel real sadness, for example.”

  “Do you think you weren’t loved enough?”

  She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod. “Somewhere between ‘not enough’ and ‘not at all.’ I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it—to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If I tried to cuddle up and beg for something, they’d just shove me away and yell at me. ‘No! That costs too much!’ It’s all I ever heard. So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I was still in elementary school at the time—fifth or sixth grade—but I made up my mind once and for all.”

  “Wow,” I said. “And did your search pay off?”

  “That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”

  “Waiting for the perfect love?”

  “No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”

  “I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.

  “It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are times in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”

  “Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”

  “Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. ‘Now I see, Midori. What a fool I’ve been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate mousse? Cheesecake?’”

  “So then what?”

  “So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”

  “Sounds crazy to me.”

  “Well, to me, that’s what love is. Not that anyone can understand me, though.” Midori gave her head a little shake against my shoulder. “For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly. From something like that or it doesn’t begin at all.”

  “I’ve never met a girl who thinks like you.”

  “A lot of people tell me that,” she said, digging at a cuticle. “But it’s the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I’m just telling you what I believe. It’s never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people’s. I’m not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I’m kidding or playacting. When that happens, I feel like everything’s such a pain!”

  “And you want to let yourself die in a fire?”

  “Hey, no, that’s different. It’s just a matter of curiosity.”

  “What? Dying in a fire?”

  “No, I just wanted to see how you’d react,” Midori said. “But dying itself, I’m not afraid of. Really. Like here, I’d just be overcome with smoke and lose consciousness and die before I knew it. That doesn’t frighten me at all, compared with the way I saw my mother and a few relatives die. All my relatives die after suffering with some terrible illness. It’s in the blood, I guess. It’s always a long, long process, and at the end you almost can’t tell whether the person is alive or dead. All that’s left is pain and suffering.”

  Midori put a Marlboro between her lips and lit it.

  “That’s the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything’s dark and you can’t see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive. I hate that. I couldn’t stand it.”

  ANOTHER HALF HOUR, and the fire was out. They had apparently kept it from spreading and prevented any injuries. All but one of the fire engines returned to base, and the crowd dispersed, buzzing with conversation. One police car remained to direct traffic, its rooftop light spinning. Two crows had settled onto nearby light poles to observe the activity below.

  Midori seemed drained of energy. Limp, she stared off at the sky, and she hardly spoke.

  “Tired?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she said. “I just sort of let myself go limp and spaced out. First time in a long time.”

  She looked into my eyes, and I into hers. I put my arm around her and kissed her. The slightest twinge went through her shoulders, and then she relaxed and closed her eyes for several seconds. The early autumn sun cast the shadow of her lashes on her cheek, and I could see it trembling in outline.

  It was a soft and gentle kiss, one not meant to lead beyond itself. I would probably not have kissed Midori that day if we hadn’t spent the afternoon on the laundry deck in the sun, drinking beer and watching a fire, and she probably felt the same. After a long time of watching the glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies and other things, we had felt something warm and close, and we both probably wanted, half-consciously, to preserve that mood in some form. It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger.

  The first to speak was Midori. She held my hand and told me, with what seemed like some difficulty, that she was seeing someone. I said that I had sensed as much.

  “Do you have a girl you like?” she asked.

  “I do,” I said.

  “But you’re always free on Sundays, right?”

  “It’s very complicated,” I said.

  And then I realized that the brief spell of the early autumn afternoon had vanished.

  AT FIVE I SAID I had to go to work and suggested that Midori go out with me for a snack. She said she had to stay home in case her phone call came.

  “I hate waiting at home all day for a call. When I spend the day alone, I feel as if my flesh is rotting little by little—rotting and melting until there’s nothing left but a green puddle that gets sucked down into the earth. And all that stays behind are my clothes. That’s how it feels to me, waiting indoors all day.”

  “I’ll keep you company next time you have to wait for a call,” I said. “As long as lunch is included.”

  “Great,” she said. “I’ll fix another fire for dessert.”

  MIDORI DIDN’T COME to the next day’s History of Drama lecture. I went to the cafeteria after class and ate a cold, tasteless lunch alone. Then I sat in the sun and observed the campus scene. Two women students next to me were carrying on a long conversation, standing the whole time. One cradled a tennis racquet to her breast with all the loving care she might give a baby, while the other held some books and a Leonard Bernstein LP. Both girls were pretty and were obviously enjoying talking to each other. From the direction of the student club building came the sound of a bass voice practicing scales. Here and there stood groups of four or five students expressing whatever opinions they happened to hold, laughing and shouting to one another. In the parking lot was a bunch of guys on skateboards. A professor with a leather briefcase in his arms crossed the parking lot, avoiding the skateboarders. In the quadrangle a helmeted girl student knelt on the ground, painting huge characters on a sign with something about American imperialism invading Asia. It was the usual noontime university scene, but as I sat watching it with renewed attention, I became a
ware of a certain fact. In his or her own way, each person I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn’t tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon at the end of September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness that was new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.

  Come to think of it, what scene had I been part of in recent years? The last one I could remember was a billiards parlor near the harbor, where Kizuki and I shot pool together in a mood of total friendship. Kizuki died that night, and ever since then a cold, stiffening wind had come between me and the world. This boy Kizuki: what had his existence meant to me? To this question I could find no answer. All I knew—with absolute certainty—was that Kizuki’s death had robbed me forever of a part of my adolescence. But what that meant, and what would come from it, were far beyond my understanding.

  I sat there for a long time, watching the campus and the people passing through it, and hoping, too, that I might see Midori. But she never appeared, and when the noon break ended, I went to the library to prepare for my German class.

  NAGASAWA CAME TO MY ROOM that Saturday afternoon and suggested we have one of our nights on the town. He would arrange an overnight pass for me. I said I would go. I had been feeling especially foggy-brained for the past week and was ready to sleep with anybody, it didn’t matter much who.

  Late in the afternoon I showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes—a polo shirt and cotton jacket—then had dinner with Nagasawa in the dining hall and the two of us caught a bus to Shinjuku. We walked around a lively section for a while, then went to one of our regular bars and sat there waiting for a likely pair of girls. The girls tended to come in pairs to this bar—except on this particular evening. We stayed there almost two hours, sipping whiskey and sodas at a rate that kept us sober. Finally, two friendly looking girls took seats at the bar, ordering a gimlet and a margarita. Nagasawa approached them right away, but they said they were waiting for their boyfriends. Still, the four of us enjoyed a nice chat until their dates showed up and the girls joined them.

  Nagasawa took me to another bar to try our luck, a small place in a kind of cul-de-sac, where most of the customers were already drunk and noisy. A group of three girls occupied a table at the back. We joined them and enjoyed a little conversation, the five of us getting into a nice mood, but when Nagasawa suggested we go to a different place to drink, the girls said it was almost curfew time and they had to go back to their dorms. So much for our “luck.” We tried one more place with the same results. For some reason, the girls were just not coming our way.

  When eleven-thirty rolled around, Nagasawa was ready to give up. “Sorry I dragged you around for nothing,” he said.

  “No problem,” I said. “It was worth it to me just to see you have your off days sometimes, too.”

  “Maybe once a year,” he admitted.

  In fact, I didn’t care about getting laid anymore. Wandering around Shinjuku on a noisy Saturday night, observing the mysterious energy created by a mix of sex and alcohol, I began to feel that my own desire was a puny thing.

  “What are you going to do now, Watanabe?”

  “Maybe go to an all-nighter,” I said. “I haven’t seen a movie in a long time.”

  “I’ll be going to Hatsumi’s, then,” said Nagasawa. “Do you mind?”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “Why should I mind?”

  “If you’d like, I could introduce you to a girl who’d let you spend the night.”

  “Nah, I really am in the mood for some movies.”

  “Sorry,” said Nagasawa. “I’ll make it up to you some time.” And he disappeared into the crowd. I went into a fast-food place for a cheeseburger and some coffee to kill the buzz, then went to see The Graduate in an old rep house. I didn’t think it was all that good, but I didn’t have anything better to do, so I stayed and watched it again. Emerging from the theater at four in the morning, I wandered along the chilly streets of Shinjuku, thinking.

  When I tired of walking, I went to an all-night coffeehouse and waited with a book and a cup of coffee for the morning trains to start. Before long, the place became crowded with people who, like me, were waiting for those first trains. A waiter came to ask me apologetically if I would mind sharing my table. I said it would be all right. It didn’t matter to me who sat across from me: I was just reading a book.

  My companions at the table turned out to be two girls. They looked to be about my age. Neither of them was a knockout, but they weren’t bad. Both were reserved in the way they dressed and made up: they were definitely not the type to be wandering around Shinjuku at five in the morning. I guessed that they had just happened to miss the last train. They seemed relieved to be seated with me: I was neatly dressed, had shaved in the evening, and to top things off I was absorbed in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

  One of the girls was on the large side. She wore a gray parka and white jeans, carried a big vinyl pocketbook, and had on big, shell-shaped earrings. Her friend was a small girl with glasses. She wore a blue cardigan over a checked shirt and had a blue turquoise ring. The smaller one seemed to have a habit of taking her glasses off and pressing her eyes with her fingertips.

  Both girls ordered café au lait and cake, which it took them some time to consume as they carried on what seemed like a serious discussion in hushed tones. The large girl tilted her head any number of times, while the small one shook hers just as often. I couldn’t make out what they were saying because of the loud stereo playing Marvin Gaye or the Bee Gees or something, but it seemed the small girl was angry or upset and the large girl was trying to comfort her. I alternated passages of my book with glances in their direction.

  Clutching her shoulder bag to her breast, the smaller girl went off to the ladies’ room, at which point her companion spoke to me.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you might know of any bars in the neighborhood that would still be serving drinks?”

  Taken off guard, I set my book aside and asked, “After five o’clock in the morning?”

  “Yes …”

  “If you ask me, at five-twenty in the morning, most people are on their way home to get sober and go to bed.”

  “Yes, I realize that,” she said with a good deal of embarrassment, “but my friend says she has to have a drink. It’s kind of important.”

  “There’s probably nothing much you can do but go home and drink.”

  “But I have to catch a seven-thirty train to Nagano.”

  “So find a vending machine and a nice place to sit. It’s about all you can do.”

  “I know this is asking a lot, but could you come with us? Two girls alone really can’t do something like that.”

  I had had a number of unusual experiences in Shinjuku, but I had never before been invited to have a drink with two strange girls at five-twenty in the morning. Refusing would have been more trouble than it was worth, and time was no problem, so I bought an armload of sake and snacks from a nearby machine, and the three of us went to an empty lot by the west exit of the station to hold an impromptu drinking party.

  The girls told me they had become friends while working at a travel agency. Both of them had graduated from junior college this year and taken their first jobs. The small one had a boyfriend she had been seeing for a year, but had recently found out he was sleeping with another girl and she was taking it hard. The bigger one was supposed to have left for the mountains of Nagano last night for her brother’s wedding, but she had decided to spend the night with her depressed friend and take the first express on Sunday morning.

  “It’s too bad what you’re going through,” I said to the small one, “but how did you figure out your boyfriend was sleeping with someone else?”

  Taking little sips of sake, the girl tore at some weeds underfoot. “I didn’t have to figure anything out,” she said. “I opened his door, and there he was, doing it.”

  “When was that?” />
  “The night before last.”

  “No kidding. The door was unlocked?”

  “Right.”

  “I wonder why he didn’t lock it?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Yeah, how’s she supposed to feel?” said the big one, who seemed truly concerned for her friend. “What a shock it must have been for her. Don’t you think it’s terrible?”

  “I really can’t say,” I answered. “You ought to have a good talk with your boyfriend. Then it’s a question of whether you forgive him or not.”

  “Nobody knows how I feel,” spat out the little one, still tearing grass.

  A flock of crows sailed out of the west and flew over a big department store. It was full daylight now. The time for the train to Nagano was approaching, so we gave what was left of the sake to a homeless guy downstairs at the west exit, bought platform tickets, and went in to see the big girl off. After the train pulled out of sight, the small girl and I somehow ended up going to a nearby hotel. Neither of us was particularly dying to sleep with the other, but it seemed necessary to bring things to a close.

  I got undressed first and sat in the bathtub drinking beer with a vengeance. She got in with me and did the same, the two of us stretched out and guzzling beer in silence. We couldn’t seem to get drunk, though, and neither of us was sleepy. Her skin was very fair and smooth, and she had beautiful legs. I complimented her on her legs, but her “Thanks” was little more than a grunt.

  Once we were in bed, though, she was like a different person. She responded to the slightest touch of my hands, writhing and moaning. When I went inside her, she dug her nails into my back, and as her orgasm approached she called out another man’s name exactly sixteen times. I concentrated on counting them as a way to delay my own orgasm. Then the two of us fell asleep.