murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

worry, everything is going to be fine."
"But I'm scared," she said.
I held her softly, and soon her shoulders were rising and falling, and I
could hear the regular breathing of sleep. I slipped out of her bed and
went to the kitchen, where I drank a beer. I wasn't the least bit sleepy,
so I thought about reading a book, but I couldn't find anything worth
reading nearby. I considered returning to Midori's room to look for
one, but I didn't want to wake her by rummaging around while she
was sleeping.
I sat there staring into space for a while, sipping my beer, when it
occurred to me that I was in a bookshop. I went downstairs, switched
on the light and started looking through the paperback shelves. There
wasn't much that appealed to me, and most of what did I had read
already, but I had to have something to read no matter what. I picked a
discoloured copy of Hermann Hesse's Beneath the Wheel that must
have been hanging around the shop unsold for a long time, and left the
money for it by the till. This was my small contribution to reducing
the debts of the Kobayashi Bookshop.
I sat at the kitchen table, drinking my beer and reading Beneath the
Wheel. I had first read the novel the year I entered school. And now,
about eight years later, here I was, reading the same book in a girl's
kitchen, wearing the undersized pyjamas of her dead father. Funny. If
it hadn't been for these strange circumstances, I would probably never
have reread
Beneath the Wheel.
The book did have its dated moments, but as a novel it wasn't bad. I
moved through it slowly, enjoying it line by line, in the hushed
bookshop in the middle of the night. A dusty bottle of brandy stood on
a shelf in the kitchen. I poured a little into a coffee cup and sipped it.
It warmed me but did nothing to help me feel sleepy.
I went to check on Midori a little before three, but she was fast asleep.
She must have been exhausted. The lights from the block of shops
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