murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

esting on her lap. "That was the problem."
"So now you'll have plenty of chances to see a world without that
problem. More than you want to, maybe."
"Hey, tell me, what do you think the best thing is about being rich?"
"I don't know."
"Being able to say you don't have any money. Like, if I suggested to a
school friend we do something, she could say, 'Sorry, I don't have any
money'. Which is something I could never say if the situation was
reversed. If I said "I don't have any money', it would really mean "I
don't have any money'. It's sad. Like, if a pretty girl says "I look
terrible today, I don't want to go out,' that's OK, but if an ugly girl says
the same thing people laugh at her. That's what the world was like for
me. For six years, until last year."
"You'll get over it."
"I hope so. University is such a relief! It's full of ordinary people."
She smiled with the slightest curl of her lip and smoothed her short
hair with the palm of her hand.
"Do you have a job?" I asked.
"Yeah, I write map notes. You know those little pamphlets that come
with maps? With descriptions of the different neighbourhoods and
population figures and points of interest. Here there's so-and-so hiking
trail or such-and-such a legend, or some special flower or bird. I write
the texts for those things. It's so easy! Takes no time at all. I can write
a whole booklet with a day of looking things up in the library. All you
have to do is master a couple of secrets and all kinds of work comes
your way."
"What kind of secrets?"
"Like you put in some little something that nobody else has written
and the people at the map company think you're a literary genius and
send you more work. It doesn't have to be anything at all, just some
tiny thing. Like, say, when they built a dam in this particular valley,
the water covered over a village, but still every spring the birds come
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