murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

and doing all the assignments. Everything seems pointless since you
left. I'd like to have a nice, long talk with you. If possible, I'd like to
visit your sanatorium and see you for several hours. And, if possible,
I'd like to go out walking with you side by side the way we used to.
Please try to answer this letter - even a short note. I won't mind.
I filled four sheets, folded them, slipped them into an envelope, and
addressed it to Naoko care of her family.
By then the lecturer had arrived, wiping the sweat from his brow as he
took the register. He was a small, mournfullooking man who walked
with a metal cane. While not exactly fun, the lectures in his course
were always well prepared and worthwhile. After remarking that the
weather was as hot as ever, he began to talk about the use of the deus
ex machina in Euripides and explained how the concept of "god" was
different in Euripides than in Aeschylus or Sophocles. He had been
talking for some 15 minutes when the lecture-hall door opened and in
walked Midori. She was wearing a dark blue sports shirt, creamcoloured
cotton trousers and her usual sunglasses. After flashing a
"sorry I'm late" kind of smile at the professor, she sat down next to
me. Then she took a notebook - my notebook - from her shoulder bag,
and handed it to me. Inside, I found a note: Sorry about Wednesday.
Are you angry?
The lecture was about half over and the professor was drawing a
sketch of a Greek stage on the blackboard when the door opened again
and two students in helmets walked in. They looked like some kind of
comedy team, one tall, thin and pale, the other short, round and dark
with a long beard that didn't suit him. The tall one carried an armful of
political agitation handbills. The short one walked up to the professor
and said, with a degree of politeness, that they would like to use the
second half of his lecture for political debate and hoped that he would
cooperate, adding, "The world is full of problems far more urgent and
relevant than Greek tragedy." This was more an announcement than a
request. The professor replied, "I rather doubt that the world has
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