murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING. A few clues suggested the guard had
been there until some moments before: the ashtray held three buttends,
a tea cup stood there half empty, a transistor radio sat on a shelf,
and the clock on the wall ticked off the time with a dry sound. I waited
a while for the person to come back, but when that showed no sign of
happening, I gave a few pushes to something that looked as if it might
be a bell. The area just inside the gate was a car park. In it stood a
mini-bus, a four-wheel drive Land Cruiser, and a dark blue Volvo.
The car park could have held 30 cars, but only those three were parked
there now.
Two or three minutes went by, and then a gatekeeper in a navy-blue
uniform came down the forest road on a yellow bicycle. He was a tall
man in his early sixties with receding hair. He leaned the yellow bike
against the guardhouse and said, "I'm very sorry to have kept you
waiting," though he didn't sound sorry at all. The number 32 was
painted in white on the bike's mudguard. When I gave him my name,
he picked up the phone and repeated it twice to someone on the other
end, replied "Yes, uh-huh, I see" to the other person, then hung up.
"Go to the main building, please, and ask for Doctor Ishida," he said
to me. "You take this road through the trees to a roundabout. Then
take your second left - got that? Your second left - from the
roundabout. You'll see an old house. Turn right and go through
another bunch of trees to a concrete building. That's the main building.
It's easy, just watch for the signs."
I took the second left from the roundabout as instructed, and where
that path ended I came to an interesting old building that obviously
had been someone's country house once. It had a manicured garden
with well-shaped rocks and a stone lantern. It must have been a
country estate. Turning right through the trees, I saw a three-storey
concrete building. It stood in a hollowed-out area, and so there was
nothing overwhelming about its three storeys. It was simple in design
and gave a strong impression of cleanliness.
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