murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

pocket of my shirt. "Here," he said, "get yourself some healthy food.
You look awful." I said he had done more than enough for me and that
I couldn't accept money on top of everything else, but he refused to
take it back. "It's not money," he said, "it's my feelings. Don't think
about it too much, just take it." All I could do was thank him and
accept it.
When he had gone, I suddenly thought about my old girlfriend, the
one I had first slept with in my last year of school. Chills ran through
me as I realized how badly I had treated her. I had hardly ever thought
about her thoughts or feelings or the pain I had caused her. She was
such a sweet and gentle thing, but at the time I had taken her
sweetness for granted and later hardly gave her a second thought.
What was she doing now? I wondered. And had she forgiven me?
A wave of nausea came over me, and I vomited by the old ship. My
head hurt from too much sake, and I felt bad about having lied to the
fisherman and taken his money. It was time for me to go back to
Tokyo, I decided; I couldn't keep this up for ever. I stuffed my
sleeping bag into my rucksack, slipped my arms through the straps
and walked to the local railway station. I told the man at the ticketoffice
window that I wanted to get to Tokyo as soon as possible. He
checked his timetable and said I could make it as far as Osaka by
morning if I transferred from one night train to another, then I could
take the bullet train from there. I thanked him and used the x"5,000
note the fisherman gave me to buy a ticket to Tokyo. Waiting for the
train, I bought a newspaper and checked the date: 2 October, 1970. So
I had been travelling for a full month. I knew I had to go back to the
real world.
The month of travelling neither lifted my spirits nor softened the blow
of Naoko's death. I arrived back in Tokyo in pretty much the same
state in which I had left. I couldn't even bring myself to phone Midori.
What could I say to her? How could I begin? "It's all over now; you
and I can be happy together"? No, that was out of the question.
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