“But you might have all sorts of new opportunities,” I said. “Isn’t that worth a try?”
“Maybe,” she said, turning her lighter over and over in her hand. “But you know, Toru, I’ve got my own agenda, as it were. My own circumstances. We can talk about it sometime if you want.”
I nodded.
“And Naoko, is she getting better?”
“Well, we’d like to think so. She was pretty con-fused at first. We were all worried what was to become of her. But now she’s settled down fine, she’s speaking much more freely, gotten able to express her own mind. She’s certainly heading in the right direction. But, still, she ought to have had treatment a little sooner. With her, the symptoms were already starting to show from the time her boyfriend Kizuki died. Which is something her own family should have realized. Then, what with her family background…”
“Family background?” I asked, surprised.
“You mean, you didn’t know?” said Reiko, even more surprised.
I shook my head.
“Well then, that’s something you should ask Naoko directly. It’d be better that way. She’s ready to open up to you about all sorts of things,” said Reiko, stirring her coffee again and taking a sip. “By the way, we’ve got one condition I ought to lay on the line first thing, which is that it’s forbidden for you to be alone with Naoko. It’s a rule here. Outsiders are not allowed to be alone with the person they’re visiting. An observer—which in this case will be me—has to be around at all times. It’s not what you’d prefer, I’m sure, but you’ll just have to bear with it. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” I said with a smile.
“Still, you two get on with your talking and don’t mind my being there. I pretty much know everything that went on between you and Naoko, anyway.”
“Everything?”
“Pretty much,” she said. “I mean, we have group sessions, after all. So how couldn’t I know what’s what? And moreover we talk, Naoko and I. There’s not much in the way of secrets here.”
I drank some coffee, my eyes on Reiko. “To be honest, I don’t really know. I mean whether my actions toward Naoko while she was in Tokyo were right or not. I’ve thought it over for the longest time, but I still can’t figure it out.”
“I wouldn’t know that, either,” said Reiko. “Nor would Naoko. That’s something better worked out between the two of you. Right? But whatever happened, you can always take it and move it in the right direction. Mutual understanding first, then you can come to terms with whether it was right or wrong, no?”
I nodded.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we three could all help each other. You and Naoko and me. That is, if we’ve a mind to be honest and really try. Sometimes three’s a very effective combination. How long do you plan on staying here?”
“I want to get back to Tokyo by the evening of the day after tomorrow. I’ve got a job and a German test on Thursday.”
“That’s fine, so why don’t you stay at our place. That way it won’t cost anything and we won’t have to worry about the time.”
“Whose ‘our place’?”
“Naoko’s and mine, of course,” said Reiko. “The rooms are partitioned and there’s a sofa bed where you can sleep. No problem.”
“But is that all right? I mean a male visitor staying in women’s rooms?”
“C’mon now, you’re not about to sneak into, our bedroom in the middle of the night and rape us in turn, are you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what’s the problem? Stay at our place and we can have good long talks. That’d be best. That way we can get behind each other’s space and I can play guitar for you. I’m pretty good.”
“I wouldn’t be imposing?”
Putting her third Seven Stars to her lips, Reiko tightened the corners of her mouth as she lit up. “The two of us talked it over. We’re inviting you, personally. Hadn’t you better politely accept?”
“Most gladly,” I said.
Reiko looked me in the face, the wrinkles deepening at the corners of her eyes. “You have a funny way of talking,” she said. “You’re not imitating that Catcher in the Rye kid, are you?”
“Give me a break.” I laughed it off.
Reiko laughed, too, cigarette still at her lips. “I must say but you are the straightforward type. Me, I can tell that just by looking at you. I’ve been here seven years and have met all kinds of people. There’s a difference between those who can open up and those who can’t. And you’re one who can. Or, more precisely, you can open up if you’ve a mind to.”
“And what does opening up lead to?”
Reiko, cigarette in place, looking very pleased, folded her hands on the table. “Recovery,” she said simply. She didn’t even care about the cigarette ash falling on the table.
We left the main building, crossed over a small rise, passed the pool and the tennis and basketball courts. Two men were practicing tennis, a thin middle-aged man and a stout young man, both good enough players, but theirs was a different game from the one I knew. It seemed less of a game than an investigative research into the resilience of tennis balls. They had at the ball, both strangely absorbed in thought, both also sopping wet with sweat. The closer, younger man halted play when he saw Reiko, smiled, and exchanged a few words. Alongside the tennis court an expressionless man sitting on a huge lawn mower was cutting the grass.
Heading on, we came to fifteen or twenty small Western-style cottages set apart from one another. Parked in front of most were bicycles, of the same yellow as the gatekeeper’s. Here, Reiko informed me, was where the staff members’ families lived.
“We have everything we need at hand, so there’s no need to go into town,” Reiko explained as we walked. “We’re almost self-sufficient, I told you that, right? And we’ve got a chicken coop, so there’s eggs. We have records and books and exercise facilities, a small supermarket of sorts, and every week a barber comes through. Weekends, there’s even movies. You can ask staffers going into town to make special purchases, there’s a catalog order system for clothes and such, so there’s no going without.”
“You can’t go into town?” I questioned.
“That’s off limits, except if it’s a matter of having to go to the dentist or something, but as a rule it’s not permitted. Leaving here is completely up to the individual, but once you’ve left you can’t come back. A burned bridge. Two or three days in town, then back here, that you can’t do. It only makes sense, really. If they started that, it’d be nothing but in-and-out all the time.”
From the woods we emerged onto a gentle slope. Scattered over the slope in no perceivable order were odd-looking two-story woodframe houses. Just what was so odd about them I couldn’t quite say, but it struck you first thing. A pleasant picture of unreality. I couldn’t help feeling that if Walt Disney had made a cartoon based on Munch’s paintings, it might have looked something like this. All the houses were exactly the same in shape and color. Nearly cubic, symmetrical, with big entrances and lots of windows. Between the houses looped a driving-school maze of paths. Well-tended plants bloomed before each doorway. Not a soul in sight, all the curtains drawn.
“This is Sector C, where the women live. Like us. There’re ten of these buildings, each divided into four sections, each section housing two people. Room for eighty altogether, though we’ve only got thirty-two living here at the moment.”
“Sure is quiet,” I said.
“There’s nobody here right now,” said Reiko. “I’ve got special status so I’m free to come and go as I please, but the others all follow a set curriculum of activities. Some are exercising, some are gardening, some are in group therapy, some out picking wild vegetables. You get to decide your own curriculum. Naoko should be—What was it now? Wallpapering? Painting? I forget. But she’s got a number of things to take care of until around five.”
Reiko entered building C-7, climbed the stairs, entered an unlocked door on the right, then showed me around insid
e. A simple layout of four rooms: living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. Agreeable quarters with no unnecessary frills or out-of-place furnishings, yet nothing drab about it, either. Not that there was anything special to speak of, but just being in the room put me at ease, the same way I had felt myself unwind in Reiko’s presence. The living room had a sofa and table, and a rocking chair. The kitchen, equipped with your basic refrigerator and electric burner for rudimentary cooking, also had a dining table. Large ashtrays were placed on both tables. In the bedroom were two beds and two desks, a wardrobe, small bedside tables with reading lamps and open paperbacks lying face down.
“No bath. Only a shower. But good enough all in all, eh?” said Reiko. “Baths and laundry facilities are communal.”
“More than just fine, I’d say. The dorm I live in is only a ceiling and a window.”
“You can say that, but you’ve never lived through a winter here,” said Reiko, patting me on the back and having me sit on the sofa, before taking a seat herself. “It’s a long bitter winter. Nothing but snow, snow, snow, everywhere you look. That and damp, bone-chilling cold. When winter sets in it’s snow-shoveling each and every day. It’s the season for warming up in heated rooms, listening to music, chatting, knitting. Without this much space, we’d all go stir-crazy. You’d understand if you spent a winter here.”
Reiko let out a deep sigh at the thought of winter and folded her hands on her lap. “I’ll break this down and make your bed for you,” she said, patting the sofa beneath us. “We’ve got the bedroom, so you sleep here. Fair enough?”
“Fine by me.”
“Then it’s settled,” said Reiko. “I imagine we’ll both be back here around five. Until then Naoko and I each have things to do, so would it be asking too much to have you wait here for the time being?”
“Not at all. I’ll work on my German.”
Reiko left and I stretched out on the sofa and shut my eyes. And as I sank silently into the stillness, an image of Kizuki and me riding off on a bike came into view. Yes, it had been autumn, I thought. How many autumns ago? Four, that’s right. The smell of Kizuki’s leather jacket, the unbearable racket that red 125cc Yamaha made. We rode off to a distant beach and returned that evening, exhausted. We’d set off for no particular reason, but somehow that excursion stuck in my mind. The piercing whine of the autumn wind in my ear as I held tight to Kizuki’s jacket and gazed up at the sky. I felt as if I were being blown along through space.
I lay in that position for ages, as scenes of far-off days floated into mind, one after another. For reasons unclear to me, just lying there in that room brought back visions of things and events previously beyond recall. Some were happy, some left me a little sad.
How much time passed? Drawn along by this unforeseen flood of memories (it really was like a spring welling up from a crack in a rock), I didn’t even notice when Naoko quietly opened the door and walked in. I just happened to glance up and Naoko was there. I lifted my head to look into her eyes. She sat down on the arm of the sofa and looked at me. At first I couldn’t believe this wasn’t an image I myself had conjured out of my own recollections. But no, this was the real Naoko.
“Were you asleep?” she asked softly.
“No, only thinking,” I said. Then I sat up. “How are you?”
“Well,” she said with a smile. A pale, far-off vision of a smile. “I don’t have much time. Actually, I’m not supposed to be here like this, but I made just enough of a break to come. So I really do have to be heading back. Pretty horrible haircut, don’t you think?”
“Not at all. It’s rather cute,” I said. She was bobbed like an elementary school girl, hairclip on one side, same as ever. The style suited her and she seemed quite comfortable with it. She looked like one of those cherub-faced girls you see in medieval woodcuts.
“It got to be a bother, so I asked Reiko to lop it off. You really think it’s cute?”
“I really do.”
“But Mother said it looked horrible,” said Naoko, undoing her hairclip and running her fingers through the tumult of hair. The clip was butterfly-shaped.
“I wanted to see you one-to-one before the three of us got together. No special reason. Just to see you and get used to you. A head start, otherwise I couldn’t handle it. I’m so awkward.”
“Get used to me a little yet?”
“A little,” she said, fiddling with her hairclip again. “But there’s no time. I have to be going.”
I nodded.
“Toru, thank you for coming here. You’ve made me very happy. But if staying here gets too heavy, please come out and say so. It’s a peculiar place here, with its own peculiar system. Some people never get used to it. So if it starts to get to you, be honest and tell us. We won’t hold it against you. We all speak frankly here.”
“I’ll be sure to tell you frankly,” I said.
Naoko sat down next to me on the sofa and leaned against me. I put my arm around her shoulder and she rested her head on my shoulder, the tip of her nose against my neck. She maintained that position, almost as if she were checking my temperature. Holding Naoko like that, I could feel the warmth building in my chest. In due course Naoko got up without a word, opened the door, and left as quietly as she had come.
Once Naoko had left, I fell asleep on the sofa. I hadn’t meant to, but I slept more soundly there, feeling Naoko’s presence, than I had in ages. There were dishes that Naoko used in the kitchen, Naoko’s toothbrush in the bathroom, the bed where Naoko slept in the bedroom. I slept so soundly the rooms wrung out every last drop of fatigue in me. I dreamed of a butterfly gliding through the gloom.
When I awoke, my watch read four-thirty-five. The light had a different hue, the wind had let up, the clouds had changed. I was sweating, so I fetched my towel from my knapsack to wipe my face and changed into a new shirt. Then I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and looked out the window by the sink. I could see the window of the building across the way. Inside hung a chain of cut-paper shapes, carefully trimmed silhouettes of birds and clouds and cows and cats. Still not a soul about anywhere. All was quiet. I felt like the lone occupant of a well-tended ghost town.
It was a little past five before people started to reconverge on Sector C. I could see two, no, three women pass directly under the kitchen window. All three wore hats, which hid their faces and ages, but from the sound of their voices they were none too young. No sooner had they disappeared around the corner than four other women came from the same direction and also vanished around the corner. There was a sense of evening gathering. The window in the living room looked out on the woods and the line of hills, the slightest wash of light edging their outline.
Naoko and Reiko returned together at five-thirty. Naoko and I exchanged greetings as properly as if we were meeting for the first time. Naoko seemed truly shy about it all. Reiko’s eyes fell upon the book I was reading and she asked me what it was. Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, I told her.
“Why on earth would you want to bring such a book here?” Reiko exclaimed, disgusted, and of course she was right.
Reiko made coffee for the three of us. I told Naoko about Kamikaze’s sudden departure. And about how he’d given me a firefly the last night I saw him. She seemed disappointed she wouldn’t be hearing any more Kamikaze stories. Reiko, though, being a stranger to Kamikaze lore, warranted a retelling. And she, of course, couldn’t help laughing, either. As long as the Kamikaze stories held out, there was a laugh a minute for everyone and all was right with the world.
At six o’clock the three of us went to the dining hall in the main building for dinner. Naoko and I had fried fish with salad, simmered vegetables, rice, and soup, while Reiko only wanted a macaroni salad and coffee, which she followed up with a cigarette.
“You get older and your body just stops needing so much food,” she said by way of explanation.
There were maybe twenty people at the tables in the dining hall. During the meal a few people came in, others left.
Other than the range in age of the people here, the scene could well have been of my dormitory dining hall. The only real difference was that here everyone seemed to speak at one level of volume. No loud voices, no whispers. Not one person bursting out laughing in surprise or calling anyone over with a wave of the hand. Everyone spoke at the same quiet pitch. They were divided into groups to eat, each one with three to five people. First one person would say something, then another would speak. I couldn’t tell what they were talking about, but their conversations had the curious look of that afternoon tennis game. Did Naoko talk this way when she was with them? It was all so strange I felt somehow excluded and jealous with loneliness.
At the table behind us a thin-haired doctor type in a lab coat was expounding without pause on the whys and wherefores of digestive fluid secretion to a nervous-looking young man wearing glasses and a mousy middle-aged woman. The two listeners interjected the occasional “Oh” or “Is that so?” but the more I listened the more I doubted whether this man in the lab coat was really a doctor.
No one in the dining hall paid much attention to me. No one stared or even appeared to notice my presence. My being there seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Only once did the man in the lab coat suddenly turn around and ask me how long I planned on staying.
“Two overnights and I leave on Wednesday,” I replied.
“It’s a nice season now, eh? But come again in winter. The whole place is completely white,” he said.
“Naoko might be out of here before the snow,” Reiko told him.
“But, really, winter here is something to see,” the man repeated earnestly. More and more suspect, this “doctor.”
“What does everyone talk about?” I asked Reiko, but she didn’t seem to get my meaning.
“What do they talk about? Your usual things. The day’s events, books they’ve read, tomorrow’s weather, things like that. You don’t really think someone would stand up and shout, ‘Today the polar bear ate the little star so tomorrow it’ll rain,’ do you?”
Norwegian Wood Vol 1. Page 13