murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

she'd be fine, so they called a taxi and the mother left. We weren't
worried at all because Naoko seemed to be in such good spirits. In
fact, until then I had been very worried. I had been expecting her to be
depressed and worn out and emaciated. I mean, I knew how much the
testing and therapy and stuff they do at those hospitals can take it out
of you, so I had some real doubts about this visit. But one look at her
was all it took to convince me she'd be OK. She looked a lot healthier
than I had expected and she was smiling and joking and talking much
more normally than when I had seen her last. She had been to the
hairdresser's and was showing off her new hairdo. So I thought there
would be nothing to worry about even if her mother left us alone.
Naoko told me that this time she was going to let those hospital
doctors cure her once and for all, and I said that that would probably
be the best thing to do. So then the two of us went out for a walk,
talking all the time, mainly about the future. Naoko told me that what
she'd really like was for the two of us to get out of the sanatorium and
live together somewhere."
"Live together? You and Naoko?"
"That's right," said Reiko with a little shrug. "So I told her it sounded
good to me, but what about Watanabe? And she said, "Don't worry,
I'll get everything straight with him.' That's all. Then she talked about
where she and I would live and what we'd do, that kind of thing. After
that we went to the aviary and played with the birds."
I took a beer from the fridge and opened it. Reiko lit another cigarette,
the cat sound asleep in her lap.
"That girl had everything worked out for herself. I'm sure that's why
she was so full of energy and smiling and healthylooking. It must have
been such a load off her mind to feel she knew exactly what she was
going to do. So then we finished going through her stuff and throwing
what she didn't need into the metal drum in the garden and burning it:
the notebook she had used as a diary, and all the letters she had
received. Your letters, too. This seemed a bit strange to me, so I asked
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