murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

dust covered his desk and radio. His plastic cup and toothbrush, tea
tin, insecticide spray and so on stood in a neat row on his shelf.
I kept the room clean in his absence. I had picked up the habit of
neatness over the past year and a half, and without him there to take
care of the room, I had no choice but to do it. I swept the floor each
day, wiped the window every third day, and aired my mattress once a
week, waiting for him to come back and tell me what a great job I had
done.
But he never came back. I returned from lectures one day to find all
his stuff gone and his name tag removed from the door. I went to the
dorm Head's room and asked what had happened.
"He's withdrawn from the dormitory," he said. "You'll be alone in the
room for the time being."
I couldn't get him to tell me why Storm Trooper had disappeared. This
was a man whose greatest joy in life was to control everything and
keep others in the dark.
Storm Trooper's iceberg poster stayed on the wall for a time, but I
eventually took it down and replaced it with Jim Morrison and Miles
Davis. This made the room seem a little more like my own. I used
some of the money I had saved from work to buy a small stereo. At
night I would drink alone and listen to music. I thought about Storm
Trooper every now and then, but I enjoyed living alone.
At 11.30 a.m. one Monday, after a lecture on Euripides in History of
Drama, I took a ten-minute walk to a little restaurant and had an
omelette and salad for lunch. The place was on a quiet backstreet and
was slightly more expensive than the student dining hall, but you
could relax there, and they knew how to make a good omelette.
"They" were a married couple who rarely spoke to each other, plus
one part-time waitress. As I sat there eating by the window, a group of
four students came in, two men and two women, all rather neatly
dressed. They took the table near the door, spent some time looking
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