murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

demanded. She was right, of course.
Reiko then made coffee for the three of us. I told Naoko about Storm
Trooper's sudden disappearance and about the last day I saw him,
when he gave me the firefly.
"I'm so sorry he's gone," she said. "I wanted to hear more stories about
him." Reiko asked who Storm Trooper was, so I told her about his
antics and got a big laugh from her. The world was at peace and filled
with laughter as long as Storm Trooper stories were being told.
At six we went to the dining hall in the main building for supper.
Naoko and I had fried fish with green salad, boiled vegetables, rice
and miso soup. Reiko limited herself to pasta salad and coffee,
followed by another cigarette.
"You don't need to eat so much as you get older," she said by way of
explanation.
Some 20 other people were there in the dining hall. A few newcomers
arrived as we ate, meanwhile some others left. Aside from the variety
in people's ages, the scene looked pretty much like that of the dining
hall in my dormitory. Where it differed was the uniform volume at
which people conversed. There were no loud voices and no whispers,
no one laughing out loud or crying out in shock, no one yelling with
exaggerated gestures, nothing but quiet conversations, all carrying on
at the same level. People were eating in groups of three to five, each
with a single speaker, to whom the others would listen with nods and
grunts of interest, and when that person had finished speaking, the
next would take up the conversation. I could not tell what they were
saying, but the way they said it reminded me of the strange tennis
game I had seen at noon. I wondered if Naoko spoke like this when
she was with them and, strangely enough, I felt a twinge of loneliness
mixed with jealousy.
At the table behind me, a balding man in white with the authentic air
of a doctor was holding forth to a nervouslooking young man in
glasses and a squirrel-faced woman of middle age on the effects of
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