murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

letter. Whatever that answer may be, I need to have it.
No answer came.
Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill
the empty cavern. There was an abnormal lightness to my body, and
sounds had a hollow echo to them. I went to lectures more faithfully
than ever. They were boring, and I never talked to my fellow students,
but I had nothing else to do. I would sit by myself in the very front
row of the lecture hall, speak to no one and eat alone. I stopped
smoking.
The student strike started at the end of May. "Dismantle the
University!" they all screamed. Go ahead, do it, I thought. Dismantle
it. Tear it apart. Crush it to bits. I don't give a damn. It would be a
breath of fresh air. I'm ready for anything. I'll help if necessary. Just
go ahead and do it.
With the campus blockaded and lectures suspended, I started to work
at a delivery company. Sitting with the driver, loading and unloading
lorries, that kind of stuff. It was tougher than I thought. At first I could
hardly get out of bed in the morning with the pain. The pay was good,
though, and as long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the
emptiness inside. I worked on the lorries five days a week, and three
nights a week I continued my job at the record shop. Nights without
work I spent with whisky and books. Storm Trooper wouldn't touch
whisky and couldn't stand the smell, so when I was sprawled on my
bed drinking it straight, he'd complain that the fumes made it
impossible for him to study and ask me to take my bottle outside.
"You get the hell out," I growled.
"But you know drinking in the dorm is a-a-against the rules."
"I don't give a shit. You get out."
He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof
and drank alone.
In June I wrote Naoko another long letter, addressing it again to her
house in Kobe. It said pretty much the same thing as the first one, but
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