murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

she said. "Well, you've got this far, you have to tell me the rest.'
"Still she resisted telling me, but I finally got it all out of her. I mean,
her whole purpose in coming to see me was to tell me what she had
heard, so of course she was going to spit it out eventually. According
to her, people were saying that I was a card-carrying lesbian and had
been in and out of mental hospitals for it. They said that I had stripped
the clothes off my piano pupil and tried to do things to her and when
she had resisted I had slapped her so hard her face swelled up. They
had turned the story on its head, of course, which was bad enough, but
what really shocked me was that people knew I had been hospitalized.
"My friend said she was telling everyone that she had known me for
ever and that I was not like that, but the girl's parents believed her
version and were spreading it around the neighbourhood. In addition,
they had investigated my background and found that I had a history of
mental problems.
"The way my friend heard it, the girl had come home from her lesson
one day - that day, of course - with her face all bloated, her lip split
and bloody, buttons missing from her blouse, and even her underwear
torn. Can you believe it? She had done all this to back up her story, of
course, which her mother had to drag out of her. I can just see her
doing it - putting blood on her blouse, tearing buttons off, ripping the
lace on her bra, making herself cry until her eyes were red, messing up
her hair, telling her mother a pack of lies.
"Not that I'm blaming people for believing her. I would have believed
her, too, this beautiful doll with a devil's tongue. She comes home
crying, she refuses to talk because it's too embarrassing, but then she
spills it out. Of course people are going to believe her. And to make
matters worse, it's true, I do have a history of hospitalization for
mental problems, I did hit her in the face as hard as I could. Who's
going to believe me? Probably just my husband.
A few more days went by while I wrestled with the
question of whether to tell him or not, but when I did, he believed me.
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