murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

"No way!" I said with a smile.
Reiko smiled too, cigarette in mouth. "You are a good person, though.
I can tell that much from looking at you. I can tell these things after
seven years of watching people come and go here: there are people
who can open their hearts and people who can't. You're one of the
ones who can. Or, more precisely, you can if you want to."
"What happens when people open their hearts?"
Reiko clasped her hands together on the table, cigarette dangling from
her lips. She was enjoying this. "They get better," she said. Ash
dropped onto the table, but she seemed not to notice.
Reiko and I left the main building, crossed a hill, and passed by a
pool, some tennis courts, and a basketball court. Two men - one thin
and middle-aged, the other young and fat were on a tennis court. Both
used their racquets well, but to me the game they were playing could
not have been tennis. It seemed as if the two of them had a special
interest in the bounce of tennis balls and were doing research in that
area. They slammed the ball back and forth with a kind of strange
concentration. Both were drenched in sweat. The young man, in the
end of the court closer to us, noticed Reiko and carne over. They
exchanged a few words, smiling. Near the court, a man with no
expression on his face was using a large mower to cut the grass.
Moving on, we came to a patch of woods where some 15 or 20 neat
little cottages stood at some distance from each other. The same kind
of yellow bike the gatekeeper had been riding was parked at the
entrance to almost every house. "Staff members and their families live
here," said Reiko.
"We have just about everything we need without going to the city,"
she said as we walked along. "Where food is concerned, as I said
before, we're practically self-sufficient. We get eggs from our own
chicken coop. We have books and records and exercise facilities, our
own convenience store, and every week barbers and beauticians come
to visit. We even have films at weekends. Anything special we need
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