Norwegian Wood (33 page)

Eventually a waiter came and took our orders. After choosing hors d’oeuvres and soup, Nagasawa ordered duck, and Hatsumi and I ordered sea bass. The food arrived at a leisurely pace, which allowed us to enjoy the wine and conversation. Nagasawa spoke first of the Foreign Ministry exam. Most of the examinees were scum who might as well be thrown into a bottomless pit, he said, though he supposed there were a few decent ones in the bunch. I asked if he thought the proportion of good ones to scum was higher or lower than in society in general.

“It’s the same,” he said. “Of course.” It was the same everywhere, he added: an immutable law.

Nagasawa ordered a second bottle of wine when we had finished the first, and for himself he ordered a double scotch.

Hatsumi then began talking about a girl she wanted to fix me up with. This was a perpetual topic for the two of us. She was always telling me about some “cute freshman in my club,” and I was always running away.

“She’s
really
nice, though, and
really
cute. I’ll bring her along next time. You ought to talk to her. I’m sure you’ll like her.”

“It’s a waste of time, Hatsumi,” I said. “I’m too poor to go out with girls from your school. I can’t talk to them.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “This girl is simple and natural and unaffected.”

“Come on, Watanabe,” said Nagasawa. “Just meet her. You don’t have to screw her.”

“I should say
not!”
said Hatsumi. “This one’s a virgin.”

“Like you used to be,” said Nagasawa.

“Exactly,” said Hatsumi with a bright smile. “Like I used to be. But really,” she said to me, “don’t give me that stuff about being ‘too poor.’ It’s got nothing to do with anything. Sure, there are a few super stuck-up girls in every class, but the rest of us are just ordinary people. We all eat lunch in the school cafeteria for two hundred fifty yen—”

“Now wait just a minute, Hatsumi,” I said, interrupting her. “In
my
school the cafeteria has three lunches: A, B, and C. The A Lunch is a hundred and twenty yen, the B Lunch is a hundred yen, and the C Lunch is eighty yen. Everybody gives me dirty looks when I eat the A Lunch, and guys who can’t afford the C Lunch eat
ramen
noodles for sixty yen. That’s the kind of school I go to. You still think I can talk to girls from your school?”

Hatsumi could hardly stop laughing. “That’s so
cheap!”
she said. “Maybe
I
should go there for lunch! But really, Toru, you’re such a nice guy, I’m sure you’d get along with this girl. She might even like the hundred-and-twenty-yen lunch.”

“No way,” I said with a laugh.
“Nobody
eats that stuff because they like it; they eat it because they can’t afford anything else.”

“Anyhow, don’t judge a book by its cover. It’s true we go to this hoity-toity girls’ school, but lots of us there are serious people who think serious thoughts about life. Not
everybody
is looking for a boyfriend with a sports car.”

“I know that much,” I said.

“Watanabe’s got a girl. He’s in love,” said Nagasawa. “But he won’t say a word about her. He’s as tight-lipped as they come. A riddle wrapped in an enigma.”

“Really?” Hatsumi asked me.

“Really,” I said. “But there’s no riddle involved here. It’s just that the situation is a complicated one, and hard to talk about.”

“An illicit love? Ooh! You can talk to
me!”

I took a sip of wine to avoid answering.

“See what I mean?” said Nagasawa, at work on his third whiskey. “Tight-lipped. When this guy decides he’s not going to talk about something, nobody can drag it out of him.”

“What a shame,” said Hatsumi as she cut a small slice of terrine and brought it to her mouth. “If you had gotten along with her, we could have gone on double dates.”

“Yeah, we could’ve gotten drunk and done a little swapping,” said Nagasawa.

“Enough of that kind of talk,” said Hatsumi.

“Whaddya mean ‘that kind of talk’? Watanabe’s got his eye on you,” said Nagasawa.

“That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about,” Hatsumi murmured. “He’s not that kind of person. He’s sincere and caring. I can tell. That’s why I’ve been trying to fix him up.”

“Oh, sure, he’s sincere. Like the time we swapped women once, way back when. Remember, Watanabe?” Nagasawa said this with a blasé look on his face, then slugged back the rest of his whiskey and ordered another one.

Hatsumi set her knife and fork down and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. Then, looking at me, she asked, “Toru, did you really do that?”

I didn’t know how to answer her, and so I said nothing.

“Tell her,” said Nagasawa. “What the hell.” This was turning ugly. Nagasawa could get nasty when he was drunk, but tonight his nastiness was aimed at Hatsumi, not at me. Knowing that made it all the more difficult for me to go on sitting there.

“I’d like to hear about that,” said Hatsumi. “It sounds
very
interesting!”

“We were drunk,” I said.

“That’s all right, Toru. I’m not blaming you. I just want you to tell me what happened.”

“The two of us were drinking in a bar in Shibuya, and we got friendly with this pair of girls. They went to some junior college, and they were pretty plastered, too. So, anyhow, we, uh, went to a hotel and slept with them. Our rooms were right next door to each other. In the middle of the night, Nagasawa knocked on my door and said we should change girls, so I went to his room and he came to mine.”

“Didn’t the girls mind?”

“No, they were drunk too.”

“Anyway, I had a good reason for doing it,” said Nagasawa.

“A good reason?”

“Well, the girls were too different. One was really good-looking, but the other one was a dog. It seemed unfair to me. I got the pretty one, but Watanabe got stuck with the other one. That’s why we swapped. Right, Watanabe?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. But in fact, I had liked the not-pretty one. She was fun to talk to, and she was a nice person. After we had sex, we were enjoying talking to each other in bed when Nagasawa showed up and suggested we change partners. I asked the girl if she minded, and she said it was O.K. with her if that’s what we wanted. She probably figured I wanted to do it with the pretty one.

“Was it fun?” Hatsumi asked me.

“Switching, you mean?”

“The whole thing.”

“Not especially. It’s just something you do. Sleeping with girls that way is not all that much fun.”

“So why do you do it?”

“Because of me,” said Nagasawa.

“I’m asking Toru,” Hatsumi shot back to Nagasawa. “Why do you do something like that?”

“Because sometimes I have this tremendous desire to sleep with a girl.”

“If you’re in love with someone, can’t you manage one way or another with her?” Hatsumi asked after a few moments’ thought.

“It’s complicated.”

Hatsumi sighed.

At that point the door opened and the waiters brought the food in. Nagasawa was presented with his roast duck, and Hatsumi and I received our sea bass. The waiters heaped fresh-cooked vegetables on our plates and dribbled sauce on them before withdrawing and leaving the three of us alone again. Nagasawa cut a slice of duck and ate it with gusto, followed by more whiskey. I took a forkful of spinach. Hatsumi didn’t touch her food.

“You know, Toru,” she said, “I have no idea what makes your situation so ‘complicated,’ but I do think that the kind of thing you just told me about is not right for you. You’re not that kind of person. What do you think?” She set her hands on the table and looked me in the eye.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve felt that way myself sometimes.”

“So why don’t you stop?”

“Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth,” I answered honestly. “Sometimes, if I can’t feel something like the warmth of a woman’s skin, I get so lonely I can’t stand it.”

“Here, let me summarize what I think it’s all about,” interjected Nagasawa.
“Watanabe’s got this girl he likes, but for certain complicated reasons, they can’t do it. So he tells himself ‘Sex is just sex,’ and he takes care of his need with somebody else. What’s wrong with that? It makes perfect sense. He can’t just stay locked in his room jerking off all the time, can he?”

“But if you really love her, Toru, shouldn’t it be possible for you to control yourself?”

“Maybe so,” I said, bringing a piece of sea bass in cream sauce to my mouth.

“You just don’t understand a man’s sexual need,” said Nagasawa to Hatsumi. “Look at me, for example. I’ve been with you for three years, and I’ve slept with plenty of women in that time. But I don’t remember a thing about them. I don’t know their names, I don’t remember their faces. I slept with each of them exactly once. Meet ’em, do it, so long. That’s it. What’s wrong with that?”

“What I can’t stand is that arrogance of yours,” said Hatsumi in a soft voice. “Whether you sleep with other women or not is beside the point. I’ve never really gotten angry at you for fooling around, have I?”

“You can’t even call what I do fooling around. It’s just a game. Nobody gets hurt,” said Nagasawa.

“I
get hurt,” said Hatsumi. “Why am I not enough for you?”

Nagasawa kept silent for a moment and swirled the whiskey in his glass. “It’s not that you’re not enough for me. That’s another phase, another question. It’s just a hunger I have inside me. If I’ve hurt you, I’m sorry. But it’s not a question of whether or not you’re enough for me. I can only live with that hunger. That’s the kind of man I am. That’s what makes me
me
. There’s nothing I can do about it, don’t you see?”

At last Hatsumi picked up her silverware and started eating her fish. “At least you shouldn’t drag Toru into your ‘games.’”

“We’re a lot alike, though, Watanabe and me,” said Nagasawa. “Neither of us is interested, essentially, in anything but ourselves. O.K., so I’m arrogant and he’s not, but neither of us is able to feel any interest in anything other than what we ourselves think or feel or do. That’s why we can think about things in a way that’s totally divorced from anybody else. That’s what I like about him. The only difference is that he hasn’t realized this about himself, and so he hesitates and feels hurt.”

“What human being
doesn’t
hesitate and feel hurt?” Hatsumi demanded. “Are you trying to say that
you
have never felt those things?”

“Of course I have, but I’ve disciplined myself to where I can minimize them. Even a rat will choose the least painful route if you shock him enough.”

“But rats don’t fall in love.”

“‘Rats don’t fall in love.’” Nagasawa looked at me. “That’s great. We should have background music for this—a full orchestra with two harps and—”

“Don’t make fun of me. I’m serious.”

“We’re eating,” said Nagasawa. “And Watanabe’s here. It might be more civil for us to confine ‘serious’ talk to another occasion.”

“I can leave,” I said.

“No,” said Hatsumi. “Please stay. It’s better with you here.”

“At least have dessert,” said Nagasawa.

“I don’t mind, really.”

The three of us went on eating in silence for a time. I finished my fish. Hatsumi left half of hers. Nagasawa had finished his duck long before and now was concentrating on his whiskey.

“This was excellent sea bass,” I offered, but no one took me up on it. I might as well have thrown a rock down a deep shaft.

The waiters took our plates away and brought lemon sherbet and espresso. Nagasawa barely touched his dessert and coffee, moving directly to a cigarette. Hatsumi ignored her sherbet. “Oh, boy,” I thought to myself as I finished my sherbet and coffee. Hatsumi stared at her hands on the table. Like everything she had on, her hands looked chic and elegant and expensive. I thought about Naoko and Reiko. What would they be doing now? I wondered. Naoko could be lying on the sofa reading a book, and Reiko might be playing “Norwegian Wood” on her guitar. I felt an intense desire to go back to that little room of theirs. What the hell was I doing in this place?

“Where Watanabe and I are alike is, we don’t give a damn if nobody understands us,” Nagasawa said. “That’s what makes us different from everybody else. They’re all worried about whether the people around them understand them. But not me, and not Watanabe. We just don’t give a damn. Self and others are separate.”

“Is this true?” Hatsumi asked me.

“No way,” I said. “I’m not that strong. I don’t feel it’s O.K. if nobody understands me. I’ve got people I want to understand and be understood
by. But aside from those few, well, I figure it’s kind of hopeless. I don’t agree with Nagasawa. I
do
care if people understand me.”

“That’s practically the same thing as what I’m saying,” said Nagasawa, picking up his coffee spoon. “It
is
the same! It’s the difference between a late breakfast or an early lunch. Same time, same food, different name.”

Now Hatsumi spoke to Nagasawa. “Don’t you care whether
I
understand you or not?”

“I guess you don’t get it. Person A understands Person B because the
time
is right for that to happen, not because Person B
wants to be understood
by Person A.”

“So is it a mistake for me to feel that I want to be understood by someone—by
you
, for example?”

“No, it’s not a mistake,” answered Nagasawa. “Most people would call that love, if you think you want to understand me. My system for living is way different from other people’s system for living.”

“So what you’re saying is you’re not in love with me, is that it?”

“Well, my system and your—”

“To hell with your fucking system!” Hatsumi shouted. That was the first and last time I ever heard her shout.

Nagasawa pushed the button by the table, and the waiter came in with the check. Nagasawa handed him a credit card.

“Sorry about this, Watanabe,” said Nagasawa. “I’m going to see Hatsumi home. You go back to the dorm alone, O.K.?”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. Great meal,” I said, but no one said anything in response.

The waiter brought the card, and Nagasawa signed with a ballpoint pen after checking the amount. Then the three of us stood and went outside. Nagasawa started to step into the street to hail a cab, but Hatsumi stopped him.