murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

"Why don't you eat something? You must be hungry." He answered
with a slight nod. As Midori had done, I cranked his bed up and
started feeding him alternating spoonfuls of vegetable jelly and boiled
fish. It took an incredibly long time to get through half his food, at
which point he shook his head a little to signal he had had enough.
The movement was almost imperceptible; it apparently hurt him to
make larger gestures.
"What about the fruit?" I asked him.
he said. I wiped the corners of his mouth with a towel and made
the bed level again before taking the dishes to the corridor.
"Was that good?" I asked him.
he answered.
"Yeah," I said with a smile. "It looked pretty bad." Midori's father
could not seem to decide whether to open his eyes further or close
them as he lay there silently, staring at me. I wondered if he knew who
I was. He seemed more relaxed when alone with me than when Midori
was around. He had probably mistaken me for someone else. Or at
least that was how I preferred to think of it.
"Beautiful day out there," I said, perching on the stool and crossing
my legs. "It's autumn, Sunday, great weather, and crowded
everywhere you go. Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you
can do on such a nice day. It's exhausting in those crowds. And the air
is bad. I mostly do laundry on Sundays - wash the stuff in the
morning, hang it out on the roof of my dorm, take it in before the sun
goes down, do a good job of ironing it. I don't mind ironing at all.
There's a special satisfaction in making wrinkled things smooth. And
I'm pretty good at it, too. Of course I was terrible at it at first. I put
creases in everything. After a month of practice, though, I knew what
I was doing. So Sunday is my day for laundry and ironing. I couldn't
do it today, of course. Too bad: wasted a perfect laundry day.
"That's OK, though. I'll wake up early and take care of it tomorrow.
Don't worry. I've got nothing else to do on a Sunday.
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