murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

Stretched out, he looked like some tiny creature with a fatal wound.
He lay on his side, limp, the drooping left arm inert, jabbed with an
intravenous needle. He was a small, skinny man who gave the
impression that he would only get smaller and thinner. A white
bandage encircled his head, and his pasty white arms were dotted with
the holes left by injections or intravenous drips. His half-open eyes
stared at a fixed point in space, bloodshot spheres that twitched in our
direction when we entered the room. For some ten seconds they stayed
focused on us, then drifted back to that fixed point in space.
You knew when you saw those eyes he was going to die soon. There
was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest trace of what had once
been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all
the fixtures and fittings have been removed, awaiting its final
demolition. Around the dry lips clumps of whiskers sprouted like
weeds. So, I thought, even after so much of a man's life force has been
lost, his beard continues to grow.
Midori said hello to a fat man in the bed by the window. He nodded
and smiled, apparently unable to talk. He coughed a few times and,
after sipping some water from a glass by his pillow, he shifted his
weight and rolled on his side, turning to gaze out of the window.
Beyond the window could be seen only a pole and some power lines,
nothing more, not even a cloud in the sky.
"How are you feeling, Daddy?" said Midori, speaking into her father's
ear as if testing a microphone. "How are you today?"
Her father moved his lips. he said, not so much speaking
the words as forming them from dried air at the back of his throat.
he said.
"You have a headache?" Midori asked.
he said, apparently unable to pronounce more than a syllable
or two at a time.
"Well, no wonder," she said, "you've just had your head cut open. Of
course it hurts. Too bad, but try to be brave. This is my friend,
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