murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

stolen bases.
After noon I went back to my room to read but couldn't concentrate.
Instead I found myself staring at the ceiling and thinking about
Midori. I wondered if her father had really been trying to ask me to
look after her when he was gone, but I had no way of telling what had
been on his mind. He had probably confused me with somebody else.
In any case, he had died on a Friday morning when a cold rain was
falling, and now it was impossible to know the truth. I imagined that,
in death, he had shrivelled up smaller than ever. And then they had
burned him in an oven until he was nothing but ashes. And what had
he left behind? A nothing-much bookshop in a nothing-much
neighbourhood and two daughters, at least one of whom was more
than a little strange. What kind of life was that? I wondered. Lying in
that hospital bed with his cut-open head and his muddled brain, what
had been on his mind as he looked at me?
Thinking thoughts like this about Midori's father put me into such a
miserable mood that I had to bring the laundry down from the roof
before it was really dry and set off for Shinjuku to kill time walking
the streets. The Sunday crowds gave me some relief. The Kinokuniya
bookshop was as jampacked as a rush-hour train. I bought a copy of
Faulkner's Light in August and went to the noisiest jazz café I could
think of, reading my new book while listening to Ornette Coleman and
Bud Powell and drinking hot, thick, foul-tasting coffee. At 5.30 I
closed my book, went outside and ate a light supper. How many
Sundays - how many hundreds of Sundays like this - lay ahead of me?
"Quiet, peaceful, and lonely," I said aloud to myself. On Sundays, I
didn't wind my spring.
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