Norwegian Wood

s cracked. I could hardly believe how much blood gushed out of me, turning the floor bright red at my feet. The shop manager found some towels and tied th

his room and he came to mine." "Didn't the girls mind?" "No, they were drunk too." "Anyway, I had a good reason for doing it," said Nagasawa. "A good reason?" "Well, the girls were too different. One was really goodlooking, but the other one was a dog. It seemed unfair to me. I got the pretty girl, but Watanabe got stuck with the other one. That's why we swapped. Right, Watanabe?" "Yeah, I s'pose so," I said. But in fact, I had liked the not-pretty one. She was fun to talk to and a nice person. After we had sex, we were enjoying talking to each other in bed when Nagasawa showed up and suggested we change partners. I asked the girl if she minded, and she said it was OK with her if that's what we wanted. She probably thought I wanted to do it with the pretty one. "Was it fun?" Hatsumi asked me. "Swapping, you mean?" "The whole thing." "Not especially. It's just something you do. Sleeping with girls that way is not all that much fun." "So why do you do it?" "Because of me," said Nagasawa. "I'm asking Toru," Hatsumi shot back at Nagasawa. "Why do you do something like that?" "Because sometimes I have this tremendous desire to sleep with a girl." "If you're in love with someone, can't you manage one way or another with her?" Hatsumi asked after a few moments' thought. "It's complicated." Hatsumi sighed. At that point the door opened and the food was carried in. Nagasawa was presented with his roast duck, and Hatsumi and I received our sea bass. The waiters heaped freshcooked vegetables on our plates and dribbled sauce on them before withdrawing and leaving the three of us alone again. Nagasawa cut a slice of duck and ate it with gusto, followed by more whisky. I took a forkful of spinach. Hatsumi didn't touch her food. "You know, Toru," she said, "I have no idea what makes your situation so "complicated', but I do think that the kind of thing you just told me about is not right for you. You're not that kind of person. What do you think?" She placed her hands on the table and looked me in the eye. "Well," I said, "I've felt that way myself sometimes." "So why don't you stop?" "Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth," I answered honestly. "Sometimes, if I can't feel something like the warmth of a woman's skin, I get so lonely I can't stand it." "Here, let me summarize what I think it's all about," inter jected Nagasawa. "Watanabe's got this girl he likes, but for certain complicated reasons, they can't do it. So he tells himself "Sex is just sex', and he takes care of his need with somebody else. What's wrong with that? It makes perfect sense. He can't just stay locked in his room tossing off all the time, can he?" "But if you really love her, Toru, shouldn't it be possible for you to control yourself?" "Maybe so," I said, bringing a piece of sea bass in cream sauce to my mouth. "You just don't understand a man's sexual needs," said Nagasawa to Hatsumi. "Look at me, for example. I've been with you for three years, and I've slept with plenty of women in that time. But I don't remember a thing about them. I don't know their names, I don't remember their faces. I slept with each of them exactly once. Meet 'em, do it, so long. That's it. What's wrong with that?" "What I can't stand is that arrogance of yours," said Hatsumi in a soft voice. "Whether you sleep with other women or not is beside the point. I've never really been angry with you for sleeping around, have I?" "You can't even call what I do sleeping around. It's just a game. Nobody gets hurt," said Nagasawa. "I get hurt," said Hatsumi. "Why am I not enough for you?" Nagasawa kept silent for a moment and swirled the whisky in his glass. "It's not that you're not enough for me. That's another phase, another question. It's just a hunger I have inside me. If I've hurt you, I'm sorry. But it's not a question of whether or not you're enough for me. I can only live with that hunger. That's the kind of man I am. That's what makes me me. There's nothing I can do about it, don't you see?" At last Hatsumi picked up her silverware and started eating her fish. "At least you shouldn't drag Toru into your "games'." "We're a lot alike, though, Watanabe and me," said Nagasawa. "Neither of us is interested, essentially, in anything but ourselves. OK, so I'm arrogant and he's not, but neither of us is able to feel any interest in anything other than what we ourselves think or feel or do. That's why we can think about things in a way that's totally divorced from anybody else. That's what I like about him. The only difference is that he hasn't realized this about himself, and so he hesitates and feels hurt." "What human being doesn't hesitate and feel hurt?" Hatsumi demanded. "Are you trying to say that you have never felt those things?" "Of course I have, but I've disciplined myself to where I can minimize them. Even a rat will choose the least painful route if you shock him enough." "But rats don't fall in love." ""Rats don't fall in love'." Nagasawa looked at me. "That's great. We should have background music for this - a full orchestra with two harps and - " "Don't make fun of me. I'm serious." -We're eating," said Nagasawa. "And Watanabe's here. It ,night be more civil for us to confine 'serious' talk to another occasion." "I can leave," I said. "No," said Hatsumi. "Please stay. It's better with you here." "At least have dessert," said Nagasawa. "I don't mind, really." The three of us went on eating in silence for a time. I finished my fish. Hatsumi left half of hers. Nagasawa had polished off his duck long before and was now concentrating on his whisky. "That was excellent sea bass," I offered, but no one took me up on it. I might as well have thrown a rock down a deep well. The waiters took away our plates and brought lemon sherbet and espresso. Nagasawa barely touched his dessert and coffee, moving directly to a cigarette. Hatsumi ignored her sherbet. "Oh boy," I thought to myself as I finished my sherbet and coffee. Hatsumi stared at her hands on the table. Like everything she wore, her hands looked chic and elegant and expensive. I thought about Naoko and Reiko. What would they be doing now? I wondered. Naoko could be lying on the sofa reading a book, and Reiko might be playing "Norwegian Wood" on her guitar. I felt an intense desire to go back to that little room of theirs. What the hell was I doing in this place? "Where Watanabe and I are alike is, we don't give a shit if nobody understands us," Nagasawa said. "That's what makes us different from everybody else. They're all worried about whether the people around them understand them. But not me, and not Watanabe. We just don't give a shit. Self and others are separate." "Is this true?" Hatsumi asked me. "No," I said. "I'm not that strong. I don't feel it's OK if nobody understands me. I've got people I want to understand and be understood by. But aside from those few, well, I feel it's kind of hopeless. I don't agree with Nagasawa. I do care if people understand me." "That's practically the same thing as what I'm saying," said Nagasawa, picking up his coffee spoon. "It is the same! It's the difference between a late breakfast or an early lunch. Same time, same food, different name." Now Hatsumi spoke to Nagasawa. "Don't you care whether I understand you or not?" "You don't get it, do you? Person A understands Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A." "So is it a mistake for me to feel that I want to be understood by someone - by you, for example?" "No, it's not a mistake," answered Nagasawa. "Most people would call that love, if you think you want to understand me. My system for living is way different from other people's systems for living." "So what you're saying is you're not in love with me, is that it?" "Well, my system and your - " "To hell with your fucking system!" Hatsumi shouted. That was the first and last time I ever heard her shout. Nagasawa pushed the button by the table, and the waiter came in with the bill. Nagasawa handed him a credit card. "Sorry about this, Watanabe," said Nagasawa. "I'm going to see Hatsumi home. You go back to the dorm alone, OK?" "You don't have to apologize to me. Great meal," I said, but no one said anything in response. The waiter brought the card, and Nagasawa signed with a ballpoint pen after checking the amount. Then the three of us stood and went outside. Nagasawa started to step into the street to hail a taxi, but Hatsumi stopped him. "Thanks, but I don't want to spend any more time with you today. You don't have to see me home. Thank you for dinner." ,,Whatever," said Nagasawa. "I want Toru to see me home." "Whatever," said Nagasawa. "But Watanabe's practically the same as me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he's incapable of loving anybody. There's always some part of him somewhere that's wide awake and detached. He just has that hunger that won't go away. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about." I flagged down a taxi and let Hatsumi in first. "Anyway," I said to Nagasawa, "I'll make sure she gets home." "Sorry to put you through this," said Nagasawa, but I could see that he was already thinking about something else. Once inside the cab, I asked Hatsumi, "Where do you want to go? Back to Ebisu?" Her flat was in Ebisu. She shook her head. "OK. How about a drink somewhere?" "Yes," she said with a nod. "Shibuya," I told the driver. Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi swayed. Her midnight-blue dress seemed to have been made to match the darkness of the interior. Every now and then her lightly made-up, beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as though she had caught herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered, without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation could be that I was feeling. It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had gone to Santa Fe to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlour, drinking beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset. Everything was soaked in brilliant red - my hand, the plate, the table, the world - as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing that had always remained - and would for ever remain - unfulfilled. I had forgotten the existence of such innocent, almost burnt-in longing: forgotten for years that such feelings had ever existed inside me. What Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman. Someone should have done something - anything - to save her. But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in life and decided - almost on the spur of the moment - to end it. Two years after Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she slashed her wrists with a razor blade. It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had happened. His letter from Bonn said this: "Hatsumi's death has extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to me." I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to him again. Hatsumi and I went to a small bar and downed several drinks. Neither of us said much. Like a bored, old married couple, we sat opposite each other, drinking in silence and munching peanuts. When the place began to fill up, we went for a walk. Hatsumi said she would pay the bill, but I insisted on paying because the drinks had been my idea. There was a deep chill in the night air. Hatsumi wrapped herself in her pale grey cardigan and walked by my side in silence. I had no destination in mind as we ambled through the nighttime streets, my hands shoved deep into my pockets. This was just like walking with Naoko, it occurred to me. "Do you know somewhere we could play pool around here?" Hatsumi asked me without warning. "Pool? You play?" "Yeah, I'm pretty good. How about you?" "I play a little. Not that I'm very good at it." "OK, then. Let's go." We found a pool hall nearby and went in. It was a small place at the far end of an alley. The two of us - Hatsumi in her chic dress and I in my blue blazer and regimental ti