After two or three rounds of this, I asked Nagasawa whether keeping it up for seventy times didn’t leave him feeling kind of empty.
“If it leaves you feeling empty, that only goes to prove that you’re a decent human being, and that’s to be congratulated,” he said. “There’s nothing to be had from sleeping around with women you don’t even know. You only get tired and fed up with yourself. Don’t you think I feel the same way?” “Then why make such a big thing of it?” “That’s difficult to explain. Take Dostoyevsky, what he wrote about gamblers. It’s the same thing. I mean when you’re surrounded with so many possibilities, it’s hard just to pass things up, if you get my meaning.”
“Kind of,” I said.
“Come night and girls are all over the place, out on the town, drinking. They’re looking for something, and I can give them that something they’re looking for. It’s that simple. As simple as turning on a faucet to get a drink of water. Nail them in nothing flat. That’s what they’re waiting for, after all. That’s what possibilities are. Who am I to turn up my nose at such possibilities? Here I am with abilities, and a stage on which to use these abilities. You’re not going to tell me you’d walk by without a word?”
“For someone like me who’s not in your position, I’m not going to say I know I would. I haven’t the vaguest idea,” I said with a laugh.
“For which, in a sense, you should be glad,” said Nagasawa.
Nagasawa’s womanizing had been one reason he’d entered the dormitory despite his wealthy family background. His father, it seems, had worried that he’d spend all his time in wanton dissipation if he lived on his own in Tokyo, and so had forced four years of dormitory life on him. Which was perfectly fine with Nagasawa, seeing as he did what he pleased and never paid much attention to dorm rules anyway. He’d get night leave whenever he felt like it and go girl-hunting or stay over at some lady-friend’s apartment. It took some doing to get night leave, but in his case it was almost a standing free pass, and the same went for me as long as he put in a good word.
Nagasawa did have one steady girlfriend, though, who’d been going with him from the time he entered university. Hatsumi was her name, same age as him and a nice enough girl from what I could tell the few times I met her. No breathtaking beauty; if anything, rather ordinary looking. So why would a guy like Nagasawa settle for a girl like that?—you’d almost think, until you talked with her and found it impossible not to like her. She was that kind of a girl. Good-natured, considerate, smart with a sense of humor, always tastefully dressed in good clothes. I myself liked her a lot, and I could only think if I had a girlfriend like her I wouldn’t be caught dead sleeping around with all these nothing women. She took a liking to me, too, and offered to introduce underclasswomen from a club she belonged to, insisting that we go out as a foursome. But remembering my past experiences with double dates, I always came up with some polite excuse. Hatsumi’s school was a women’s university known for attracting bevies of fabulously rich girls, none of whom could possibly have had anything in common to talk about with me.
She was well aware that Nagasawa slept around, but never once complained to him about it. She was deeply in love with Nagasawa, yet never forced anything on him.
“The woman’s too good for the likes of me,” Nagasawa used to say. Quite right, I thought.
*
That winter I found part-time work at a small record shop in Shinjuku. The pay wasn’t all that great, but the job was easy, night shifts only, three times a week. I also got to buy records cheap. At Christmas I bought Naoko a Henry Mancini record with the track “Dear Heart” she liked so much. I wrapped it up myself and tied it with a red ribbon. Naoko gave me a pair of woolen gloves she’d knitted herself. The thumbs were a little small, but warm they were.
“Sorry,” she said, blushing. “I never get things right.”
“Don’t worry. Look, they fit fine,” I said, putting them on to show her.
“Well, at least you won’t have to keep your hands in your pockets,” Naoko said by way of consolation.
Naoko didn’t go back to Kobe that winter vacation. I worked until the end of the year and stayed on in Tokyo. It wasn’t as if I’d miss anything exciting by not returning to Kobe, and there wasn’t anyone I especially wanted to see. Over New Year’s the dining hall was closed, so I ate at her apartment. We roasted rice cakes and made a simple broth, traditional New Year’s foods.
All sorts of things happened between January and February 1969.
At the end of January, Kamikaze ran a fever of nearly 105 degrees and was suddenly bedridden. Thanks to which I had to pass up a date with Naoko, a performance of Brahms’s Fourth, Naoko’s favorite. She’d been looking forward to it, but Kamikaze was tossing and turning on his mattress in such agony he seemed about to die any minute. I couldn’t just leave him like that. Nor could I find any kindly soul to take my place by his bedside. I bought ice and wrapped it in several plastic bags to make an ice pack, chilled towels to wipe away the sweat, took his temperature hourly, and even changed his shirts for him. The fever didn’t go down for one whole day. Then, on the morning of the second day, he sprang up and began doing his exercises as if nothing had happened. When I took his temperature, the thermometer read just over 97. The guy couldn’t have been human.
“And to think I haven’t once had a fever before!” said Kamikaze, almost as if it had been through some oversight of mine.
“Well, you have now,” I said, more than a little pissed off. And I showed him the two tickets I’d blown on account of him.
“Be glad they were free tickets,” said Kamikaze. I almost grabbed his radio and heaved it out the window, but my head hurt so I crawled back into bed.
February brought snow, a number of times.
At the end of February, I got in a fight over something stupid with an upperclassman living on the same floor of the dorm and threw him a punch. He hit his head on the concrete wall, but luckily wasn’t hurt. Nagasawa interceded on my behalf, but still I was called to the supervisor’s office for a reprimand, and from that time on dorm life became somehow unpleasant.
So ended one school year. Spring arrived. I missed out on a few credits. My grades weren’t what they could have been. Mostly C’s or D’s, with a few B’s. Naoko didn’t lose any credits and so became a sophomore. We’d been one full time around the seasons.
Mid-April, Naoko turned twenty. My birthday was in November, so that made her some seven months older than I. Naoko twenty years old— there was something funny about that. It seemed more like we ought to have been going back and forth between eighteen and nineteen—eighteen then nineteen, then back to eighteen—that way it would have made more sense. But here she was twenty. And in autumn, I’d also be twenty. Only the one who’d died was forever seventeen.
It rained on Naoko’s birthday. After school that day I bought a cake at a nearby shop, got on a train, and went to her apartment. After all, she’d turned twenty, so I’d said we ought to celebrate or something, I figured I’d probably hope for the same if it were the other way around. Spending your twentieth birthday all alone is nothing I’d wish on anyone. The train was crowded and, worse, it lurched from side to side. Thanks to which, by the time I reached her place, the cake looked like the ruins of the Coliseum in Rome. What the hell, we still lit the twenty candles I’d brought along, drew the curtains, turned out the lights, and did a passable rendition of birthday festivities. Naoko opened a bottle of wine, and we drank it, had some cake, and ate a simple supper.
“It seems so idiotic, turning twenty,” said Naoko. “I didn’t even prepare myself. It makes me feel strange. It’s like someone’s pushed me into this from behind.”
“I’ve still got seven months ahead of me, so I can take my time getting ready,” I said with a laugh.
“Aren’t you the lucky one, still nineteen,” jibed Naoko enviously.
Over supper I talked about how Kamikaze had bought himself a new sweater. Up to then he’d only had o
ne sweater, his navy blue high school sweater, but finally he now had two. The new one had a woven red and black deer pattern, a great-looking sweater in itself, but whenever he walked around in it, everyone would sputter with laughter in spite of themselves, although he could never figure out what they all found so amusing.
“Tell me, Watanabe, what’s s-s-so funny?” he asked as he sat down beside me in the dining hall. “Is there something on my face?”
“No, there’s nothing on it. There’s nothing funny at all,” I said, keeping a straight face. “But, say, that’s a fine sweater you’ve got there.”
“Thanks,” said Kamikaze, smiling with pleasure.
The story amused Naoko no end. “I’d like to meet this fellow. Just once.”
“No way. You’d only burst out laughing,” I said.
“You really think so?”
“I’d even bet you. Me, I’m with him every day, and sometimes I can’t control myself, he’s so funny.”
After supper, we washed the dishes and sat on the floor listening to records while finishing the last of the wine. For each glass I drank, she drank two.
That day Naoko was unusually talkative. She talked about her childhood, her school, her family, all at some length and with the clarity of a finely detailed painting. Just listening to her, I couldn’t help being impressed at her powers of recall. But gradually I realized that what she was saying was somehow strange, somehow unnatural, distorted. Each of the bits made sense in itself, but there was something queer about the way they were strung together. One led into the next and none of them ever came to an end. Until eventually I gave up following the drift altogether. I just put on records, one after the other, going through the whole stack, on back to the first record. There were only six records in total, a cycle beginning with “Sargeant Pepper” and ending with Bill Evans’s “Waltz for Debbie.” Outside, the rain kept falling. Time passed slowly as Naoko talked on without end.
The unnatural thing about Naoko’s monologue was the way it consciously seemed to skirt certain areas. One of these, of course, was Kizuki, but I seemed to sense he wasn’t all that she was avoiding. She went on and on about details that hardly mattered, all the while avoiding certain things. Yet, as this was the first time Naoko had gotten so absorbed in speaking, I just let her keep talking.
Still, when it got to be eleven o’clock and Naoko had been talking four hours nonstop, even I got to feeling uneasy. It was getting to be time for the last train home and I had my curfew to think about. Keeping an eye on the clock, I broke into her torrent at an appropriate moment.
“I ought to be going now. There’s the train and all,” I said, looking at my watch.
My words didn’t seem to reach Naoko’s ears. Either that, or she hadn’t understood what I was saying. She pursed her lips a second, then immediately started talking again. I gave up and sat back down to finish off a second bottle of wine. The way things were going, it seemed wiser to let her keep talking all she wanted. I decided to let whatever happen just happen, last train, curfew, whatever.
In fact, Naoko didn’t go on for long. Before I knew it, her words had trailed off, loose ends floating in the air. To be accurate, her talk hadn’t ended, it had slipped off somewhere. She had meant to keep talking, but the words had simply vanished. She’d lost something. Or maybe it was me who’d lost something. Maybe my words had reached her ears and finally been understood, robbing her of the energy to continue. Lips parted slightly, Naoko looked at me vacantly, with glazed eyes, like some mechanical gizmo unplugged in mid-motion.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” I said, “but it’s gotten late and…”
A tear squeezed out of Naoko’s eye and rolled down her cheek, falling with a loud plop on a record jacket. After that first tear, there was no stopping the rest. She placed both hands on the floor and leaned forward, almost as if she meant to vomit, but she was crying instead. Never before had I seen anyone cry so vehemently. I reached out and touched her shoulder. It was trembling. Then, almost unconsciously, I drew her close to me. She was quietly atremble in my arms, all tears. My shirt grew damp with her tears and warm breath, then sopping wet. Naoko’s ten fingers groped—searching for some precious something—lost and wandering over my back. Supporting her with my left arm, I stroked her long, soft, straight hair with my right. For the longest time I stayed that way, just waiting for her to stop crying. But she didn’t stop.
*
That night I slept with Naoko. Whether it was the right thing to do or not, I don’t know. Now, almost twenty years later, I still don’t know and probably never will. At the time, though, it seemed like the only thing to do. She was all worked up and confused and I wanted to calm her down. I turned off the light, slowly and tenderly removed first her clothes, then mine. Then we embraced. On that warm rainy night, even naked we didn’t feel cold. There in the dark Naoko and I explored each other’s bodies without uttering a word. I kissed her, cupped my hands gently over her breasts. Naoko gripped my hardened penis. Her warm moist vagina wanted me.
Even so, she felt great pain when I entered her. I asked her if this was her first time and she nodded yes. Which scrambled up everything for me. Because I’d thought that Kizuki had been sleeping with Naoko all along. I pushed my penis in as far as it would go and kept it there, not moving, just holding her a good long while. Then, when I saw she’d relaxed, I began to move, slowly, taking my time until I came. At the very last, Naoko clung tight to my body and let out a cry. Of all the moans of orgasm I’d heard up to then, that had to be the saddest.
When it was all over I asked her why she hadn’t slept with Kizuki. Something I should never have asked. Naoko let go of me and began to cry again. I pulled her bedding out of the closet and put her to bed. Then I had a cigarette, gazing out the window at the steady April rain.
Come morning, the rain let up. Naoko was sleeping with her back to me. Or maybe she’d stayed awake all night. Either way, her lips had lost the power of speech, and her body was as stiff as if it was frozen. I tried talking to her several times, but she made no reply and didn’t even stir. I stared for the longest time at her naked back, then finally gave in to the urge to get up.
Record jackets and glasses and wine bottles and ashtrays were all over the floor the way we’d left them the night before. On the table were the shambles of half the birthday cake. Everything looked as if time had suddenly stood still. I tidied up the mess on the floor and drank two glasses of water at the sink. On her desk was a dictionary and a table of French verbs. A calendar was tacked to the wall above the desk; a calendar without any photo or picture, just numbers. Nothing written on it.
I picked up the clothes that lay about. The front of my shirt was still damp. When I held it to my nose, it smelled of Naoko. On a notepad on her desk I wrote that I wanted to talk things over with her when she had collected herself, so she should give me a call. That, and Happy Birthday. Whereupon I glanced over at Naoko’s back once more and left, closing the door quietly behind me.
*
A week passed and no call came. Naoko didn’t have a phone at her place, so Sunday morning I set out for Kokubunji. She wasn’t there, nor was her name on the door. All the windows and shutters were closed tight. On checking with the superintendent, I learned the Naoko had moved out three days before and left no forwarding address.
Back at the dormitory, I wrote a long letter and addressed it to her care of her family in Kobe. No matter where she’d moved, the letter would surely be forwarded to her.
I wrote down my honest feelings. That there were many things I didn’t understand nor had even seriously tried to make sense of, and that it would take time. Who knows where I’ll be when that time has passed, so there are no promises I can make, nor am I about to put forth demands or pretty words. First of all, there’s too much we don’t know about each other. Still, if you are willing to give me the time, I’ll do my best so we can find out more about each other. Whatever, I want to meet again and take the time to d
iscuss things. Ever since Kizuki died, I’ve been without anyone to whom I can tell my real feelings and I guess the same goes for you. Maybe we wanted more from each other than either of us cared to admit. Thanks to which we’ve gone about things the long way around and in a sense gone off-course in the process. Probably I should never have done what I did. But that’s all I could do. What’s more, the closeness I felt for you then was unlike any emotion I’ve ever felt before. I only hope you’ll reply. In whatever form. So went the letter.
No reply came.
I felt as if something was missing inside me, which, for lack of something to fill it, left me with an empty cavity in its place. My body was unnaturally light and resounded with phantom echoes. Weekdays I attended university more conscientiously than ever before, going to all my lectures. Boring as they were, I sat them out. I didn’t even talk with my classmates. I ate my meals alone, quit smoking.
At the end of May, the campus went on strike. Those involved spoke of “dismantling the university.” Fine, go ahead and dismantle it, I thought. Take it apart and trample it to pieces, I don’t mind in the least. At least it’d give me a clean slate and I could take care of the rest. If you need help, I’ll be only too glad to lend a hand. Just get done with it.
Norwegian Wood Vol 1. Page 5