murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

ain."
"Shouldn't you go home and get some sleep?" "Not now. Let's get out
of here."
She took me to her old school, a short walk from Yotsuya.
Passing the station, I thought about Naoko and our endless walking. It
had all started from there. I realized that if I hadn't run into Naoko on
the train that Sunday in May, My life would have been very different
from what it was now. But then I changed my mind: no, even if we
hadn't met that day, my life might not have been any different. We
were supposed to meet. If not then, some other time. I didn't have any
basis for thinking this: it was just a feeling.
Midori Kobayashi and I sat on a park bench together, looking at her
old school. Ivy clung to the walls, and pigeons huddled under the
gables, resting their wings. It was a nice, old building with character.
A great oak tree stood in the playground, and a column of white
smoke rose straight up beside it. The fading summer light gave the
smoke a soft and cloudy look.
"Do you know what that smoke is?" Midori asked me all of a sudden.
"No idea," I said.
"They're burning sanitary towels."
"Really?" I couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Sanitary towels, tampons, stuff like that," she said with a smile. "It is
a girls' school. The old caretaker collects them from all the receptacles
and burns them in the incinerator. That's the smoke."
"Whoa."
"Yeah, that's what I used to say to myself whenever I was in class and
saw the smoke outside the window. "Whoa'. Think about it: the school
had almost a thousand girls. So, say 900 of them have started their
periods, and maybe a fifth of them are menstruating at any one time:
180 girls. That's 180 girls' worth of towels in the receptacles every
day."
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