murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

down the sofa back and handed me a pillow, sheets and blankets.
"If you feel like raping anybody in the middle of the night, don't get
the wrong one," she said. "The unwrinkled body in the left bed is
Naoko's."
"Liar! Mine's the right bed," said Naoko.
Reiko added, "By the way, I arranged for us to skip some of our
afternoon schedule. Why don't the three of us have a little picnic? I
know a really nice place close by."
"Good idea," I said.
The women took turns brushing their teeth and withdrew to the
bedroom. I poured myself some brandy and stretched out on the sofa
bed, going over the day's events from morning to night. It felt like an
awfully long day. The room continued to glow white in the moonlight.
Aside from the occasional slight creak of a bed, hardly a sound came
from the bedroom where Naoko and Reiko lay sleeping. Tiny
diagrammatic shapes seemed to float in the darkness when I closed
my eyes, and my ears sensed the lingering reverberation of Reiko's
guitar, but neither of these lasted for long. Sleep came and carried me
into a mass of warm mud. I dreamed of willows. Both sides of a
mountain road were lined with willows. An incredible number of
willows. A fairly stiff breeze was blowing, but the branches of the
willow trees never swayed. Why should that be? I wondered, and then
I saw that every branch of every tree had tiny birds clinging to it.
Their weight kept the branches from stirring. I grabbed a stick and hit
a nearby branch with it, hoping to chase away the birds and allow the
branch to sway. But they would not leave. Instead of flying away, they
turned into bird-shaped metal chunks that crashed to the ground.
When I opened my eyes, I felt as if I were seeing the continuation of
my dream. The moonlight filled the room with the same soft white
glow. As if by reflex, I sat up in bed and started searching for the
metal birds, which of course were not there. What I saw instead was
Naoko at the foot of the bed, sitting still and alone, staring out through
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