Which is why you were so important to us. We grew up fast and had to enter society.

But that kind of thing doesn't last forever. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms. We were like kids who grew up naked on a desert island. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. She had taken her barrette off, which made the hair fall over her face when she dropped her head forward.īecause we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it,' she said, raising her eyes to mine. With her fingers, Naoko combed her hair back several times. So if Kizuki had lived, I'm sure we would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing unhappy.' I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.” At the Hamburg airport, though, the kicks were longer and harder than usual. Just a hollow sound that echoes with each kick. Think about why I'm still here.' The kicking never hurts me. Each time is appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. And nothing but scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a movie. There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand-ever more distant from the spot where my old self used to stand. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute-like shadows lengthening at dusk.

And as the years have passed, the time has grown longer. “I do need that time, though, for Naoko's face to appear. I wrote any number of letters like this, but from Naoko or Reiko I heart nothing.” And I would feel that the world I lived in was a wonderful one. I myself would be comforted by letters like this when I would reread what I had written. In my letters to her, I would describe only things that were touching or pleasant or beautiful: the fragrance of grasses, the caress of a spring breeze, the light of the moon, a movie I'd seen, a song I liked, a book that had moved me. And it would pass.but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.Īt those times I would write to Naoko. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. “April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April.

Haruki murakami night