Norwegian Wood (Vintage International)

by Haruki Murakami

  “Lonely April nights and lacy telephone covers.”

  “What else?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t think of anything else.”

  “My boyfriend—which is to say, my ex-boyfriend—had all kinds of things he hated. Like when I wore too-short skirts, or when I smoked, or how I got drunk right away, or said disgusting things, or criticized his friends. So if there’s anything about me you don’t like, just tell me, and I’ll fix it if I can.”

  “I can’t think of anything,” I said after giving it some thought. “There’s nothing.”

  “Really?”

  “I like everything you wear, and I like what you do and say and how you walk and how you get drunk. Everything.”

  “You mean I’m really O.K. just the way I am?”

  “I don’t know how you could change, so you must be fine the way you are.”

  “How much do you love me?” Midori asked.

  “Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter,” I said.

  “Mmm,” she said with a hint of satisfaction. “Will you hold me again?”

  We got into her bed and held each other, kissing as the sound of the rain filled our ears. Then we talked about everything from the formation of the universe to our preferences in the hardness of boiled eggs.

  “I wonder what ants do on rainy days?” Midori asked.

  “No idea,” I said. “They’re hard workers, so they probably spend the day cleaning house or taking inventory.”

  “If they work so hard, how come they don’t evolve? They’ve been the same forever.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe their body structure isn’t suited to evolving—compared with monkeys, say.”

  “Hey, Watanabe, there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know. I thought you knew everything.”

  “It’s a big world out there,” I said.

  “High mountains, deep oceans,” Midori said. She put her hand inside my bathrobe and took hold of my erection. Then, with a gulp, she said, “Hey, Watanabe, all kidding aside, this is not gonna work. I could never get this big, hard thing inside me. No way.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said with a sigh.

  “Yup,” she said, giggling. “Don’t worry. It’ll be just fine. I’m sure it’ll fit. Uh, mind if I have a look?”

  “Feel free.”

  Midori burrowed under the covers and groped me all over down there, stretching the skin of my penis, weighing my testicles in her palm. Then she poked her head out and released her breath. “I love it!” she said. “No flattery intended! I really love it!”

  “Thank you,” I said with simple gratitude.

  “But really, Watanabe, you don’t want to do it with me, do you—until you get all that business straightened out?”

  “There’s no way I don’t want to do it with you,” I said. “I’m going crazy, I want to do it so bad. But it just wouldn’t be right.”

  “You’re so damned stubborn! If I were you, I’d just do it—and think about it afterward.”

  “You would?”

  “Just kidding,” Midori said in a tiny voice. “I probably wouldn’t do it, either, if I were you. And that’s what I love about you. That’s what I really really love about you.”

  “How much do you love me?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she pressed against me, put her lips on my nipple and began to move the hand she had wrapped around my penis. The first thing that occurred to me was how different this was from the way Naoko moved her hand. Both were gentle and wonderful, but something was different about the way they did it, and so it felt like a totally different experience.

  “Hey, Watanabe, I bet you’re thinking about that other girl.”

  “Not true,” I lied.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Because I would really hate that.”

  “I can’t think about anybody else,” I said.

  “Want to touch my breasts, or down there?” Midori asked.

  “Oh, boy, I’d love to, but I’d better not. If we do all those things at once, it’ll be too much for me.”

  Midori nodded and rustled around under the covers, pulling her panties off and holding them against the tip of my penis.

  “You can come into this,” she said.

  “But it’ll make a mess of them.”

  “Stop it, will you? You’re gonna make me cry,” Midori said as if on the verge of tears. “All I have to do is wash them. So don’t hold back, just let yourself come all you want. If you’re worried about my panties, buy me a new pair. Or are they going to keep you from coming because they’re mine?”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Go right ahead, then, let go.”

  When I was through, Midori inspected my semen. “Wow, that’s a huge amount!”

  “Too much?”

  “Nah, that’s O.K., silly. Come all you want,” she said with a smile. Then she kissed me.

  In the evening, Midori did some shopping in the neighborhood and made dinner. We ate tempura and rice with green peas at the kitchen table, and washed it all down with beer.

  “Eat a lot and make lots of semen,” Midori said. “Then I’ll be nice and help you get rid of it.”

  “Thanks very much,” I said.

  “I know all kinds of ways to do it. I learned from the women’s magazines when we had the bookstore. Once they had this special edition all about how to take care of your husband so he won’t cheat on you while you’re pregnant and can’t have sex. There’s tons of ways. Wanna try ’em?”

  “I can hardly wait,” I said.

  After saying good-bye to Midori, I bought a newspaper at the station, but when I opened it on the train, I realized I had absolutely no desire to read a paper and in fact couldn’t understand what it said. All I could do was glare at the incomprehensible page of print and wonder what was going to happen to me from now on, and how the things around me would be changing. I felt as if the world was pulsating every now and then. I released a deep sigh and closed my eyes. With regard to what I had done that day, I felt not the slightest regret; I knew for certain that if I had it to do all over again, I would live this day in exactly the same way again. I would hold Midori tight on the roof in the rain; I would get soaking wet with her; and I would let her fingers bring me to climax in her bed. I had no doubts about those things. I loved Midori, and I was happy that she had come back to me. The two of us could make it, that was certain. As Midori herself had said, she was a real, live girl with blood in her veins, and she was putting her warm body in my arms. It had been all I could do to suppress the intense desire I had to strip her naked, throw open her body, and sink myself in her warmth. There was no way I could have made myself stop her once she was holding my penis and moving her hand. I wanted her to do it, she wanted to do it, and we were in love. Who could have stopped such a thing? It was true: I loved Midori. And I had probably known as much for a while. I had just been avoiding the conclusion for a very long time.

  The problem was that I could never explain these developments to Naoko. It would have been hard enough at any point, but with Naoko in her present condition, there was no way I could tell her I had fallen in love with another girl. And besides, I still loved Naoko. Bent and twisted as that love might be, I did love her. Somewhere inside me, there was still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one else.

  One thing I could do was to write a letter to Reiko that confessed everything with total honesty. At home, I sat on the veranda, watching the rain pour down on the garden at night and assembling phrases in my head. Then I went to my desk and wrote the letter. “It is almost unbearable to me that I now have to write a letter like this to you,” I began. I summarized my relationship with Midori and explained what had happened that day.

  I have always loved Naoko, and I still love her. But there is a decisive finality to what exists between Midori and me. It has an irresistible power that is bound to sweep me into the future. What I feel for Naok
o is a tremendously quiet and gentle and transparent love, but what I feel for Midori is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being. I don’t know what to do. I’m confused. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself, but I do believe that I have lived as sincerely as I knew how. I have never lied to anyone, and I have taken care over the years not to hurt other people. And yet I find myself having been tossed into this labyrinth. How can this be? I can’t explain it. I don’t know what I should do. Can you tell me, Reiko? You’re the only one I can turn to for advice.

  I mailed the letter that night with special-delivery postage attached.

  REIKO’S ANSWER CAME five days later, dated June 17.

  Let me start with the good news. Naoko has been improving far more rapidly than anyone could have expected. I talked to her once on the phone, and she spoke with real lucidity. She may even be able to come back here before too long.

  Now, about you.

  I think you take everything too seriously. Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.

  My advice to you is very simple. First of all, if you are drawn so strongly to this person Midori, it is only natural for you to have fallen in love with her. It might go well, or it might not. But love is like that. When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That’s what I think. It’s just one form of sincerity.

  Second, as to whether or not you should have sex with Midori, that is for you to figure out. I can’t say a thing. Talk it over with Midori and reach your own conclusion, one that makes sense to you.

  Third, don’t tell any of this to Naoko. If things should develop to the point where you absolutely have to tell her, then you and I will come up with a good plan together. So now, just keep it quiet. Leave it to me.

  The fourth thing I have to say is that you have been such a great source of strength for Naoko that even if you no longer have the feelings of a lover toward her, there is still a lot you can do for her. So don’t brood over everything in that superserious way of yours. All of us (by which I mean all of us, both normal and not-so-normal) are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don’t live with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all our lines and angles with rulers and protractors. Am I right?

  My own personal feeling is that Midori sounds like a great girl. I understand just reading your letter why you would be drawn to her. And I understand, too, why you would also be drawn to Naoko. There’s nothing the least bit sinful about it. Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It’s like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. Life is like that. I know I sound like I’m preaching from a podium, but it’s about time for you to learn to live like this. You try too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. If you don’t want to spend time in an insane asylum, you have to open up a little more and let yourself go with life’s natural flow. I’m just a powerless and imperfect woman, but still there are times when I think to myself how wonderful life can be! Believe me, it’s true! So stop what you’re doing this minute and get happy. Work at making yourself happy!

  Needless to say, I do feel sorry that you and Naoko could not see things through to a happy ending. But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have for happiness where you find it, and not worry too much about other people. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

  I’m playing the guitar every day for no one in particular. It seems kind of pointless. I don’t like dark, rainy nights, either. I hope I’ll have another chance to play my guitar and eat grapes with you and Naoko in the room with me.

  Ah, well, until then —

  Reiko Ishida

  REIKO WROTE TO ME SEVERAL TIMES AFTER NAOKO’S DEATH. IT was not my fault, she said. It was nobody’s fault, any more than you could blame someone for the rain. But I never answered her. What could I have said? What good would it have done? Naoko no longer existed in this world; she had become a fistful of ash.

  They held a quiet funeral for Naoko in Kobe at the end of August, and when it was over, I went back to Tokyo. I told my landlord I would be away for a while and my boss at the Italian restaurant that I wouldn’t be coming in to work. To Midori I wrote a short note: I couldn’t say anything just yet, but I hoped she would wait for me a little longer. I spent the next three days in movie theaters, and after I had seen every new movie in Tokyo, I packed my knapsack, took all my money out of the bank, went to Shinjuku Station, and took the first express train I could find heading out of town.

  Where I went in my travels, it’s impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place. I would move from town to town by train or bus or hitching a ride in a truck, spreading my sleeping bag out in empty lots or stations or parks or on riverbanks or the seashore. I once got them to let me sleep in the corner of a neighborhood police station, and another time slept by the side of a graveyard. I didn’t care where I slept, as long as I was out of people’s way and could stay in my sack as long as I felt like it. Exhausted from walking, I would crawl into my sleeping bag, gulp down some cheap whiskey, and go right to sleep. In nice towns, people would bring me food and mosquito coils, and in not-so-nice towns, people would call the police and have me chased out of parks. It made no difference to me one way or the other. All I wanted was to put myself to sleep in towns I didn’t know.

  When I ran low on money, I would work as a laborer for a few days until I had what I needed. There was always some work for me to do. I just kept moving from one town to the next, no destination in mind. The world was big and full of weird things and strange people. One time I called Midori because I had to hear her voice.

  “School started a long time ago, you know,” she said. “Some courses are even asking for papers already. What are you going to do? Do you realize you’ve been out of touch for three whole weeks now? Where are you? What are you doing?”

  “Sorry, but I can’t go back to Tokyo yet. Not yet.”

  “And that’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  “There’s really nothing more I can say at this point. Maybe in October …”

  Midori hung up without a word.

  I went on with my travels. Every once in a while, I’d stay at a flophouse and take a bath and shave. What I saw in the mirror looked terrible. The sun had dried my skin out, my eyes were sunken, and some odd stains and cuts marked my bony cheeks. I looked as if I had just crawled out of a cave somewhere, but it was me after all. It was me.

  By that time, I was moving down the coast as far from Tokyo as I could get—maybe in Tottori or the northern shore of Hyogo. Walking along the seashore was easy. I could always find a comfortable place to sleep in the sand. I’d make a fire from driftwood and roast some dried fish I bought from a local fisherman. Then I’d swallow some whiskey and listen to the waves while I thought about Naoko. It was too strange to think that she was dead and no longer part of this world. I couldn’t absorb the truth of it. I couldn’t believe it. I had heard the nails being driven into the lid of her coffin, but I still couldn’t adjust to the fact that she had returned to nothingness.

  No, the image of her was still too vivid in my memory. I could still see her enclosing my penis in her mouth, her hair falling across my belly. I could still feel her warmth, her breath against me, and that helpless moment when I could do nothing but come. I could bri
ng all this back as clearly as if it had happened five minutes earlier, and I felt sure that Naoko was still beside me, that I could just reach out and touch her. But no, she was not there; her flesh no longer existed in this world.

  Nights when it was impossible for me to sleep, the images of Naoko would come back to me. There was no way I could stop them. Too many memories of her were crammed inside me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, an unstoppable flood: Naoko in her yellow rain cape cleaning the birdhouse and carrying the feed bag that rainy morning; the caved-in birthday cake and the feel of Naoko’s tears soaking through my shirt (yes, it had been raining then, too); Naoko walking beside me in winter wearing her camel’s hair coat; Naoko touching the barrette she always wore; Naoko peering at me with those incredibly clear eyes of hers; Naoko sitting on the sofa, legs drawn up beneath her blue nightgown, chin resting on her knees.

  The memories would slam against me like the waves of an incoming tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place—a place where I lived with the dead. There Naoko lived, and I could speak with her and hold her in my arms. Death in that place was not a decisive element that brought life to an end. There, death was but one of many elements comprising life. There Naoko lived with death inside her. And to me she said, “Don’t worry, it’s only death. Don’t let it bother you.”

  I felt no sadness in that strange place. Death was death, and Naoko was Naoko. “What’s the problem?” she asked me with a bashful smile, “I’m here, aren’t I?” Her familiar little gestures soothed my heart and gave me healing. “If this is death,” I thought to myself, “then death is not so bad.” “It’s true,” said Naoko, “death is nothing much. It’s just death. Things are so easy for me here.” Naoko spoke to me in the spaces between the crashing of the dark waves.

  Eventually, though, the tide would pull back, and I would be left on the beach alone. Powerless, I could go nowhere; sorrow itself would envelop me in deep darkness until the tears came. I felt less that I was crying than that the tears were simply oozing out of me like perspiration.