murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

gardeners in the area and because he had developed allergies that
made it impossible for him to do the work himself. Cutting grass made
him sneeze.
When we had finished our tea, he showed me a storage shed and told
me I could use anything I found inside, more or less by way of thanks
for my gardening. "We don't have any use for any of this stuff," he
said, "so feel free."
And in fact the place was crammed with all kinds of things - an old
wooden bath, a kids' swimming pool, baseball bats. I found an old
bike, a handy-sized dining table with two chairs, a mirror, and a
guitar. "I'd like to borrow these if you don't mind," I said.
"Feel free," he said again.
I spent a day working on the bike: cleaning the rust off, oiling the
bearings, pumping up the tyres, adjusting the gears, and taking it to a
bike repair shop to have a new gear cable installed. It looked like a
different bike by the time I had finished. I cleaned a thick layer of dust
off the table and gave it a new coat of varnish. I replaced the strings of
the guitar and glued a section of the body that was coming apart. I
took a wire brush to the rust on the tuning pegs and adjusted those. It
wasn't much of a guitar, but at least I got it to stay in tune. I hadn't had
a guitar in my hands since school, I realized. I sat on the porch and
picked my way through The Drifters' "Up on the Roof" as well as I
could. I was amazed to find I still remembered most of the chords.
Next I took a few planks of wood and made myself a square letterbox.
I painted it red, wrote my name on it, and set it outside my door. Up
until 3 April, the only post that found its way to my box was
something that had been forwarded from the dorm: a notice from the
reunion committee of my school. A class reunion was the last thing I
wanted to have anything to do with. That was the class I had been in
with Kizuki. I threw it in the bin.
I found a letter in the box on the afternoon of 4 April. It said Reiko
Ishida on the back. I made a nice, clean cut across the seal with my
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