Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami Page A

with a tilt of the head. “But if you’re looking for them, you usually find them. And if you don’t, you can always make up something harmless.”
    “Oh-ho!”
    “Peace,” said Midori.
    She said she wanted to hear about my dormitory, so I told her the usual stories about the raising of the flag and Storm Trooper’s Radio Calisthenics. Storm Trooper gave Midori an especially big laugh, as he seemed to do with all the world’s people. Midori said she thought it would be fun to have a look at the dorm. There was nothing fun about the place, I told her: “Just a few hundred guys in grubby rooms, drinking and jerking off.”
    “Does that include you?”
    “It includes every man on the face of the earth,” I explained. “Girls have periods and boys jerk off. Everybody.”
    “Even ones with girlfriends? I mean, sex partners.”
    “It’s got nothing to do with that. The Keio student living next door to me jerks off before every date. He says it relaxes him.”
    “I don’t know much about that stuff. I was in a girls’ school so long.”
    “I guess the ladies’ magazine supplements don’t go into that.”
    “Not at all!” she said, laughing. “Anyhow, Watanabe, would you have some time this Sunday? Are you free?”
    “I’m free every Sunday. Until six, at least. That’s when I go to work.”
    “Why don’t you come visit me? At the Kobayashi Bookstore. The store itself will be closed, but I have to hang around there alone all day. I might be getting an important phone call. How about lunch? I’ll cook for you.”
    “I’d like that,” I said.
    Midori tore a page from a notebook and drew a detailed map of the way to her place. She used a red pen to make a large X where the house stood.
    “You can’t miss it. There’s a big sign: ‘Kobayashi Bookstore.’ Come at noon. I’ll have lunch ready.”
    I thanked her and put the map in my pocket. “I’d better get back tocampus now,” I said. “My German class starts at two.” Midori said she had someplace to go and took the train from Yotsuya.
    S UNDAY MORNING I GOT UP AT NINE , shaved, did my laundry, and hung the clothes on the roof. It was a beautiful day. The first smell of autumn was in the air. Red dragonflies were flitting around the quadrangle, chased by neighborhood kids swinging nets. With no wind, the Rising Sun hung limp on its pole. I put on a freshly ironed shirt and walked from the dorm to the streetcar stop. A student neighborhood on a Sunday morning: the streets were dead, virtually empty, most stores closed. What few sounds there were echoed with special clarity. A girl wearing sabots clip-clopped across the asphalt roadway, and next to the streetcar barn four or five kids were throwing rocks at a line of empty cans. A flower store was open, so I went in and bought some daffodils. Daffodils in the autumn: that was strange. But I had always liked that particular flower.
    Three old women were the only passengers on the Sunday morning streetcar. They all looked at me and my flowers. One of them gave me a smile. I smiled back. I sat in the last seat and watched the old houses passing close by the window. The streetcar almost touched the overhanging eaves. The laundry deck of one house had ten potted tomato plants, next to which a big black cat lay stretched out in the sun. In the yard of another house, a little kid was blowing soap bubbles. I heard an Ayumi Ishida song coming from someplace, and could even catch the smell of curry cooking. The streetcar snaked its way through this private back-alley world. A few more passengers got on at stops along the way, but the three old women went on talking intently about something, huddled together face-to-face.
    I got off near Otsuka Station and followed Midori’s map down a broad street without much to look at. None of the shops along the way seemed to be doing very well, housed as they were in old buildings with gloomy-looking interiors and faded writing on some of the signs. Judging from the