Norwegian Wood (7 page)

It eventually dawned on me what was wrong: Naoko was taking great care as she spoke not to touch on certain things. One of those things was Kizuki, of course, but there was more than Kizuki. And though she had certain subjects she was determined to avoid, she went on endlessly and in incredible detail about the most trivial and inane things. I had never heard her speak with such intensity before, and so I did nothing to interrupt her.

Once the clock hit eleven, though, I began to feel nervous. She had been talking nonstop for over four hours. I had to worry about the last train, and my midnight curfew. I saw my chance and cut in.

“Time for the troops to go home,” I said, looking at my watch. “Last train’s coming.”

My words did not seem to reach her, though. Or, if they did, she was unable to grasp their meaning. She clamped her mouth shut for a split second, then went on with her story. I gave up and, shifting to a more
comfortable position, drank what was left of the second bottle of wine. I figured I had better let her talk herself out. The curfew and the last train would have to take care of themselves.

She did not go on for long, though. Before I knew it, she had stopped talking. The ragged end of the last word she spoke seemed to float in the air, where it had been torn off. She had not actually finished what she was saying. Her words had simply evaporated. She had been trying to go on, but had come up against nothing. Something was gone now, and I was probably the one who had destroyed it. My words might have finally reached her, taken their time to be understood, and obliterated whatever energy it was that had kept her talking so long. Lips slightly parted, she turned her half-focused eyes on mine. She looked like some kind of machine that had been humming along until someone pulled the plug. Her eyes appeared clouded, as if covered by a thin, translucent membrane.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, “but it’s getting late, and …”

One big tear spilled from her eye, ran down her cheek, and splattered on a record jacket. Once that first tear broke free, the rest followed in an unbroken stream. Naoko bent forward where she sat on the floor and pressing her palms to the mat, she began to cry with the force of a person vomiting on all fours. Never in my life had I seen anyone cry with such intensity. I reached out and placed a hand on her trembling shoulder. Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound. My shirt became damp—and then soaked—with her tears and hot breath. Soon her fingers began to move across my back as if in search of something, some important something that had always been there. Supporting her weight with my left arm, I used my right hand to caress her soft straight hair. And I waited. In that position, I waited for Naoko to stop crying. And I went on waiting. But Naoko’s crying never stopped.

I
SLEPT WITH
N
AOKO
that night. Was it the right thing to do? That I cannot tell. Even now, almost twenty years later, I can’t be sure. I guess I’ll never know. But at the time, it was all I could do. She was in a heightened state of tension and confusion, and she made it clear that she wanted me to give her release. I turned the lights down and began, one piece at a
time, and with the gentlest touch I could manage, to remove her clothes. Then I took off my own. It was warm enough, that rainy April night, for us to cling to each other’s nakedness without a sense of chill. We explored each other’s bodies in the darkness without words. I kissed her and enfolded her soft breasts in my hands. She clutched at my erection. Her opening was warm and wet and asking for me.

And yet, when I went inside her, Naoko tensed with pain. Was this her first time? I asked, and she nodded. Now it was my turn to be confused. I had assumed that Naoko had been sleeping with Kizuki all that time. I went in as far as I could and stayed that way for a long time, holding Naoko, without moving. And then, as she began to seem more calm, I allowed myself to move inside her, taking a long time to come to climax, with slow, gentle movements. Her arms tightened around me at the end, when at last she broke her silence. Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm I had ever heard.

When everything had ended, I asked Naoko why she had never slept with Kizuki. This was a mistake. No sooner had I asked the question than she took her arms from me and started crying soundlessly again. I pulled her bedding from the closet, spread it on the mat floor, and put her in beneath the covers. Smoking, I watched the endless April rain beyond the window.

T
HE RAIN HAD STOPPED
when morning came. Naoko was sleeping with her back to me. Or maybe she hadn’t slept at all. Whether she was awake or asleep, all words had left her lips, and her body now seemed stiff, almost frozen. I tried several times to talk to her, but she would not answer or move. I stared for a long time at her naked shoulder, but in the end I lost all hope of eliciting a response and decided to get up.

The floor was still littered with record jackets and glasses and wine bottles and the ashtray I had been using. Half the caved-in birthday cake remained on the table. It was as if time had come to a sudden stop here. I picked up the things off the floor and drank two glasses of water at the sink. On Naoko’s desk lay a dictionary and a French verb chart. On the wall above the desk hung a calendar, one without an illustration or photo of any kind, just the numbers of the days of the month. Neither were there memos or marks written next to any of the figures.

I picked my clothes up off the floor and put them on. The front of my shirt was still damp and chilly. It had Naoko’s smell. On the notepad lying on the desk I wrote, “I’d like to have a good, long talk with you once you’ve calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday.” I took one last look at Naoko’s shoulder, stepped outside, and quietly shut the door.

A
WEEK WENT BY
, but no call came. Naoko’s apartment house had no system for summoning people to the phone, and so on Sunday morning I took the train out to Kokubunji. She was not there, and the name had been removed from her door. The windows and storm shutters were closed up tight. The manager told me that Naoko had moved out three days earlier. Where she had moved to, he had no idea.

I went back to the dorm and wrote a long letter addressed to Naoko at her home in Kobe. Wherever she was, they would forward it to her at least.

I gave her an honest account of my feelings. There was a lot I still didn’t understand, I said, and though I was trying hard to understand, it would take time. Where I would be once that time had gone by, it was impossible for me to say now, which is why it was impossible for me to make promises or demands, or to set down pretty words. For one thing, we knew too little of each other. If, however, she would grant me the time, I would give it my best effort, and the two of us would come to know each other better. In any case, I wanted to see her once again and have a good, long talk. When I lost Kizuki, I lost the one person to whom I could speak honestly of my feelings, and I imagined it had been the same for Naoko. She and I had probably needed each other more than either of us knew, which was probably why our relationship had taken such a major detour and become, in a sense, warped. “I probably should not have done what I did, and yet I believe that it was all I could do. The warmth and closeness I felt for you at that moment was something I had never experienced before. I need you to answer this letter. Whatever that answer may be, I need to have it.”

The answer did not come.

Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern. There was an abnormal lightness to my body, and sounds had a hollow echo to them. I went to classes more faithfully than ever. The lectures
were boring, and I never talked to my classmates, but I had nothing else to do. I would sit by myself in the very front row of the lecture hall, speak to no one, and eat alone. I quit smoking.

The student strike started at the end of May. “Dismantle the university,” they all screamed. Go ahead, do it, I thought. Dismantle it. Tear it apart. Crush it to bits. I don’t give a damn. A breath of fresh air for me. I’m ready for anything. I’ll help if you need it. Just go ahead and do it.

With the campus blockaded and lectures suspended, I started to work at a trucking company. Riding shotgun, loading and unloading trucks, that kind of stuff. It was tougher than I thought. At first I could hardly get out of bed in the morning with the pain. The money was good, though, and as long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the emptiness inside. I worked on the truck five days a week, and three nights a week I continued my job at the record store. Nights without work I spent with whiskey and books. Storm Trooper wouldn’t touch whiskey and couldn’t stand the smell, so when I was sprawled on my bed chugging it down straight, he would complain that the fumes made it impossible for him to study and ask me to take my bottle outside.

“You
get the hell out,” I growled at him.

“But you know drinking in the dorm is a-a-against the rules.”

“I don’t give a shit.
You
get out.”

He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof and drank alone.

In June I wrote Naoko another long letter, addressing it again to her house in Kobe. It said pretty much the same thing as the first letter, but at the end I added this: “Waiting for your answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At least let me know whether or not I hurt you.” When I dropped it in the mail, I felt as if the cavern inside me had grown again.

Also during June I went out with Nagasawa twice again to sleep with girls. It was easy both times. The first girl put up a terrific struggle when I tried to get her undressed and into the hotel bed, but when I began reading alone in bed because it just wasn’t worth it, she came over and started nuzzling me. And after I had done it with the second one, she started asking me all kinds of personal questions—how many girls had I slept with? Where was I from? Which school did I go to? What kind of music did I like? Had I ever read any novels by Osamu Dazai? Where would I like to
go if I could travel abroad? Did I think her nipples were too big? I made up some answers and went to sleep, but next morning she said she wanted to have breakfast with me, and she kept up the stream of questions over the tasteless eggs and toast and coffee. What kind of work did my father do? Did I have good grades in high school? What month was I born? Had I ever eaten frogs? She was giving me a headache, so as soon as we had finished eating I said I had to go to work.

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked with a sad look.

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll meet again somewhere before long,” I said, and left. What the hell am I doing? I started wondering as soon as I was alone and feeling disgusted with myself. And yet it was all I
could
do. My body was hungering for women. All the time I was sleeping with those girls, I thought about Naoko, about the white shape of her naked body in the darkness, her sighs, the sound of the rain. The more I thought about these things, the hungrier my body grew. I went up to the roof with my whiskey and asked myself where I thought I was heading.

Finally, at the beginning of July, a letter came from Naoko. A short letter.

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.