murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

directions. It was not immediately clear to me why our bus had had to
wait for the other one, but a short way down the other side of the
mountain the road narrowed suddenly. Two big buses could never
have passed each other on the road, and in fact passing ordinary cars
coming in the other direction required a good deal of manoeuvring,
with one or the other vehicle having to back up and squeeze into the
overhang of a curve.
The villages along the road were far smaller now, and the level areas
under cultivation even narrower. The mountain was steeper, its walls
pressed closer to the bus windows. They seemed to have just as many
dogs as the other places, though, and the arrival of the bus would set
off a howling competition.
At the stop where I got off, there was nothing - no houses, no fields,
just the bus stop sign, a little stream, and the trail opening. I slung my
rucksack over my shoulder and started up the track. The stream ran
along the left side of the trail, and a forest of deciduous trees lined the
right. I had been climbing
the gentle slope for some 15 minutes when I came to a road leading
into the woods on the right, the opening barely wide enough to
accommodate a car. AMI HOSTEL PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING
read the sign by the road.
Sharply etched tyre tracks ran up the road through the trees. The
occasional flapping of wings echoed in the woods. The sound came
through with strange clarity, as if amplified above the other voices of
the forest. Once, from far away, I heard what might have been a rifle
shot, but it was a small and muffled sound, as though it had passed
through several filters.
Beyond the woods I came to a white stone wall. It was no higher than
my own height and, lacking additional barriers on top, would have
been easy for me to scale. The black iron gate looked sturdy enough,
but it was wide open, and there was no one manning the guardhouse.
Another sign like the last one stood by the gate: AMI HOSTEL
111