Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (1987) (read in 2025)

““What kind of authors do you like?” I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior.

““Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens,” he answered without hesitation. “Not exactly fashionable.” “That’s why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. […]””

“[…] What a joke. The wind changes direction a little, and their cries become whispers. Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you’re not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The arseholes are getting good marks and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.”

““I think you look better now than you did before,” I said. And I meant it. As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another cute student. A fresh and physical life force surged from the girl who sat before me now. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement and despair. I hadn’t seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.”

“I sipped my beer and focused on Midori as she went on cooking, her back to me. She worked with quick, nimble movements, handling no fewer than four cooking procedures at once. Over here she tasted a boiled dish, and the next second she was at the cutting board, rat-tat-tatting, then she took something out of the fridge and piled it in a bowl, and before I knew it she had washed a pot she had finished using. From the back she looked like an Indian percussionist – ringing a bell, tapping a block, striking a water-buffalo bone, each movement precise”

“I suppose I didn’t want to think of myself that way, but once I reached a certain age and had attained a degree of self-knowledge I realized it was true after all: I’m good at teaching people things. Really good.”

““I bet you are.“

““I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I’m much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That’s just the kind of person I am. I’m the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that’s fine with me. I don’t mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.”

“Where the road sloped upwards beyond the trees, I sat and looked towards the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell her room. All I had to do was find the one window towards the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final pulse of a soul’s dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching it the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.”

“I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some 36 good twists by the time I’ve got up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, “OK, let’s make this day another good one.” I hadn’t noticed before, but they tell me I talk to myself a lot these days. Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring.”

“I sat at my desk to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis albums. A fine rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium. The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick jumper I had just taken out of a storage box. High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat fly, unmoving.”

““What kind of authors do you like?” I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior.

““Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens,” he answered without hesitation. “Not exactly fashionable.” “That’s why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. […]””

“Nagasawa had a certain inborn quality that drew people to him and made them follow him. He knew how to stand at the head of the pack, to assess the situation, to give precise and tactful instructions that others would obey. Above his head hung an aura that revealed his powers like an angel’s halo, the mere sight of which would inspire awe in people for this superior being. Which is why it shocked everyone that Nagasawa chose me, a person with no distinctive qualities, to be his special friend. People I hardly knew treated me with a certain respect because of it, but what they did not seem to realize was that the reason for my having been chosen was a simple one, namely that I treated Nagasawa with none of the adulation he received from other people.”

“When the strike was defused and lectures started up again under police occupation, the first ones to take their seats in the classrooms were those arseholes who had led the strike. As if nothing had ever happened, they sat there taking notes and answering “present” when the register was taken. I found this incredible. After all, the strike was still in effect. There had been no declaration bringing it to an end. All that had happened was that the university had called in the riot police and torn down the barricades, but the strike itself was supposed to be continuing. The arseholes had screamed their heads off at the time of the strike, denouncing students who opposed it (or just expressed doubts about it), at times even trying them in their own kangaroo courts. I made a point of visiting those former leaders and asking why they were attending lectures instead of continuing to strike, but they couldn’t give me a straight answer. What could they have said? That they were afraid of losing marks through lack of attendance? To think that these idiots had been the ones screaming for the dismantling of the university! What a joke. The wind changes direction a little, and their cries become whispers. Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you’re not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The arseholes are getting good marks and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.”

““I think you look better now than you did before,” I said. And I meant it. As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another cute student. A fresh and physical life force surged from the girl who sat before me now. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement and despair. I hadn’t seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.”

“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 problems far more urgent and relevant than Greek tragedy, but you’re not going to listen to anything I have to say, so do what you like.””

“I sipped my beer and focused on Midori as she went on cooking, her back to me. She worked with quick, nimble movements, handling no fewer than four cooking procedures at once. Over here she tasted a boiled dish, and the next second she was at the cutting board, rat-tat-tatting, then she took something out of the fridge and piled it in a bowl, and before I knew it she had washed a pot she had finished using. From the back she looked like an Indian percussionist – ringing a bell, tapping a block, striking a water-buffalo bone, each movement precise”

““You’re very clear about what you like and what you don’t like,” she said.

““Maybe so,” I said. “Maybe that’s why people don’t like me. Never have.”

““It’s because you show it,” she said. “You make it obvious you don’t care whether people like you or not. That makes some people angry.” She spoke in a near mumble, chin in hand. “But I like talking to you. The way you talk is so unusual. ‘I don’t like having something control me that way’.””

“She looked into my eyes, and I into hers. I put my arm around her and kissed her. The slightest twinge went through her shoulders, and then she relaxed and closed her eyes for several seconds. The early autumn sun cast the shadow of her lashes on her cheek, and I could see it trembling in outline. It was a soft and gentle kiss, one not meant to lead beyond itself. I would probably not have kissed Midori that day if we hadn’t spent the afternoon on the laundry deck in the sun, drinking beer and watching a fire, and she no doubt felt the same. After a long time of watching the glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies and other things, we had felt something warm and close, and we both probably wanted, half-consciously, to preserve that mood in some form. It was that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain element of danger.”

“Reiko and I left the main building, crossed a hill, and passed by a pool, some tennis courts, and a basketball court. Two men – one thin and middle-aged, the other young and fat – were on a tennis court. Both used their racquets well, but to me the game they were playing could not have been tennis. It seemed as if the two of them had a special interest in the bounce of tennis balls and were doing research in that area. They slammed the ball back and forth with a kind of strange concentration.”

“Where the road sloped upwards beyond the trees, I sat and looked towards the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell her room. All I had to do was find the one window towards the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final pulse of a soul’s dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching it the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.”

“Three days later the girl came to the house by herself. She was an absolute angel, with a kind of pure, sweet, transparent beauty. I had never – and have never – seen such a beautiful little girl. She had long, shiny hair as black as freshly ground Indian ink, slim, graceful arms and legs, bright eyes, and a soft little mouth that looked as if someone had just made it. I couldn’t speak when I first saw her, she was so beautiful. Sitting on my sofa, she turned my living room into a gorgeous parlour. It hurt to look directly at her: I had to squint. So, anyway, that’s what she was like. I can still picture her clearly.””

“Naoko slipped the gown from her shoulders and threw it off completely like an insect shedding its skin. She had been wearing nothing under the gown. All she had on was the butterfly hairslide. Naked now, and still kneeling by the bed, she looked at me. Bathed in the soft light of the moon, Naoko’s body had the heartbreaking lustre of newborn flesh. When she moved – and she did so almost imperceptibly – the play of light and shadow on her body shifted subtly. The swelling roundness of her breasts, her tiny nipples, the indentation of her navel, her hipbones and pubic hair, all cast grainy shadows, the shapes of which kept changing like ripples spreading over the calm surface of a lake. What perfect flesh! I thought. When had Naoko come to possess such a perfect body? What had happened to the body I held in my arms that night last spring? A sense of imperfection had been what Naoko’s body had given me that night as I tenderly undressed her while she cried. Her breasts had seemed hard, the nipples oddly jutting, the hips strangely rigid. She was a beautiful girl, of course, her body marvellous and alluring. It aroused me that night and swept me along with a gigantic force. But still, as I held her and caressed her and kissed her naked flesh, I felt a strange and powerful awareness of the imbalance and awkwardness of the human body. Holding Naoko in my arms, I wanted to explain to her, “I am having sex with you now. I am inside you. But really this is nothing. It doesn’t matter. It is nothing but the joining of two bodies. All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh. By doing this, we are sharing our imperfection.” But of course I could never have said such a thing with any hope of being understood. I just went on holding her tightly. And as I did so, I was able to feel inside her body some kind of stony foreign matter, something extra that I could never draw close to. And that sensation both filled my heart for Naoko and gave my erection a terrifying intensity. The body that Naoko revealed before me now, though, was nothing like the one I had held that night. This flesh had been through many changes to be reborn in utter perfection beneath the light of the moon. All signs of girlish plumpness had been stripped away since Kizuki’s death to be replaced by the flesh of a mature woman. So perfect was Naoko’s physical beauty now that it aroused nothing sexual in me. I could only stare, astounded, at the lovely curve from waist to hips, the rounded richness of the breasts, the gentle movement with each breath of the slim belly and the soft, black pubic shadow beneath.”

“Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto”

“I suppose I didn’t want to think of myself that way, but once I reached a certain age and had attained a degree of self-knowledge I realized it was true after all: I’m good at teaching people things. Really good.”

““I bet you are.“

““I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I’m much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That’s just the kind of person I am. I’m the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that’s fine with me. I don’t mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match.”

“I nodded in the darkness. I could feel the full shape of her breasts against me. I traced the outline of her body through her gown with the flat of my hand. From shoulder to back to hips, I ran my hand over her again and again, driving the line and the softness of her body into my brain. After we had been in this gentle embrace for a while, Naoko touched her lips to my forehead and slipped out of bed. I could see her pale blue gown flash in the darkness like a fish. “Goodbye,” she called in a tiny voice. Listening to the rain, I dropped into a gentle sleep.”

“People are always trying to force stuff on me. The minute they see me they start telling me what to do. At least you don’t try to force stuff on me.”

““I don’t know you well enough to force stuff on you.”

““You mean, if you knew me better, you’d force stuff on me like everyone else?”

““It’s possible,” I said. “That’s how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other.””

““Tell me, Watanabe,” Midori said, looking up at the dorm buildings, “do all the guys in here wank – rub-a-dub-dub?”

““Probably,” I said. “Do guys think about girls when they do that?”

““I suppose so. I kind of doubt that anyone thinks about the stock market or verb conjugations or the Suez Canal when they wank. Nope, I’m pretty sure just about everybody thinks about girls.””

“Without warning, she asked me, “Hey, Watanabe, can you explain the difference between the English present subjunctive and past subjunctive?”

““I think I can,” I said.

““Let me ask you, then, what possible use is stuff like that for everyday life?”

““None at all,” I said. “It may not serve any concrete purpose, but it does give you some kind of training to help you grasp things in general more systematically.”

“Midori gave that a moment’s serious thought. “You’re amazing,” she said. “That never occurred to me before. I always thought of things like the subjunctive case and differential calculus and chemical symbols as totally useless. A pain in the neck. So I’ve always ignored them. Now I have to wonder if my whole life has been a mistake.”

““You’ve ignored them?”

““Yeah. Like, for me, they didn’t exist. I don’t have the slightest idea what ‘sine’ and ‘cosine’ mean.”

““That’s incredible! How did you pass your exams? How did you get into university?”

““Don’t be silly,” said Midori. “You don’t have to know anything to pass entrance exams! All you need is a little intuition – and I have great intuition. ‘Choose the correct answer from the following three.’ I know immediately which one is right.”

““My intuition’s not as good as yours, so I have to be systematic to some extent. Like the way a magpie collects bits of glass in a hollow tree.”

““Does it serve some purpose?” “I wonder. It probably makes it easier to do some things.”

““What kind of things? Give me an example.”

““Metaphysical thought, say. Mastering several languages.”

““What good does that do?” “It depends on the person who does it. It serves a purpose for some, and not for others. But mainly it’s training. Whether it serves a purpose or not is another question. Like I said.””

““Have you ever read Das Kapital?”

““Yeah. Not the whole thing, of course, but parts, like most people.”

““Did you understand it?”

““I understood some bits, not others. You have to acquire the necessary intellectual apparatus to read a book like Das Kapital. I think I understand the general idea of Marxism, though.”

““Do you think a first-year student who hasn’t read books like that can understand Das Kapital just by reading it?”

““That’s pretty nigh impossible, I’d say.””

“I’m working class. But it’s the working class that keeps the world running, and it’s the working classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws out big words that working-class people can’t understand? What kind of crap social revolution is that? I mean, I’d like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody’s really being exploited, we’ve got to put a stop to it.”

““So that’s when it hit me. These guys are fakes. All they’ve got on their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they’re so proud of, while sticking their hands up their skirts. And when they graduate, they cut their hair short and march off to work for Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who’ve never read Marx.”

“They come barging in and acting big. ‘What’s this ledger for?’ ‘Hey, you keep pretty sloppy records.’ ‘You call this a business expense?’ ‘I want to see all your receipts right now .’ Meanwhile, we’re crouching in the corner, and when suppertime comes we have to treat them to sushi deluxe – home delivered. Let me tell you, though, my father never once cheated on his taxes. That’s just how he is, a real old-fashioned straight arrow. But tell that to the taxman. All he can do is dig and dig and dig and dig. ‘Income’s a little low here, don’t you think?’ Well, of course the income’s low when you’re not making any money! I wanted to scream: ‘Go do this where they’ve got some money!’ Do you think the taxman’s attitude would change if there was a revolution?””

“You knew when you saw those eyes he was going to die soon. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest trace of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all the fixtures and fittings have been removed, awaiting its final demolition. Around the dry lips clumps of whiskers sprouted like weeds. So, I thought, even after so much of a man’s life force has been lost, his beard continues to grow.”

““You’ve watched too many porno movies,” I said with a laugh.

““You think so? I was kind of worried about that. But I love porn films. Take me to one next time, OK?”

““Fine,” I said. “Next time you’re free.”

““Really? I can hardly wait. Let’s go to a real S&M one, with whips and, like, they make the girl pee in front of everyone. That’s my favourite.”

““We’ll do it.”

““You know what I like best about porn cinemas?”

““I couldn’t begin to guess.”

““Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this ‘Gulp!’ sound when everybody swallows all at once,” said Midori. “I love that ‘Gulp!’ It’s so sweet!””

““Would you like something to drink? Water? Juice?” I asked Midori’s father.

“‹Cucumber› he said.

““Great,” I said with a smile. “With nori?”

“He gave a little nod. I cranked the bed up again. Then I cut a bite-sized piece of cucumber, wrapped it with a strip of nori, stabbed the combination with a toothpick, dipped it in soy sauce, and delivered it to the patient’s waiting mouth. With almost no change of expression, Midori’s father crunched down on the piece again and again and finally swallowed it.

““How was that? Good, huh?”

“‹Good› he said.

““It’s good when food tastes good,” I said. “It’s kind of like proof you’re alive.”

“He ended up eating the entire cucumber.”

“I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster. Just as you take care of the birds and the fields every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some 36 good twists by the time I’ve got up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the university. I tell myself, “OK, let’s make this day another good one.” I hadn’t noticed before, but they tell me I talk to myself a lot these days. Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring.”

“[…] he had died on a Friday morning when a cold rain was falling, and now it was impossible to know the truth. I imagined that, in death, he had shrivelled up smaller than ever. And then they had burned him in an oven until he was nothing but ashes. And what had he left behind? A nothing-much bookshop in a nothing-much neighbourhood and two daughters, at least one of whom was more than a little strange. What kind of life was that? I wondered. Lying in that hospital bed with his cut-open head and his muddled brain, what had been on his mind as he looked at me?”

“I’m going to give it 100 per cent and go as far as I can. I’ll take what I want and leave what I don’t want. That’s how I intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I’ll stop and reconsider at that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit.”

““Sounds like a pretty self-centred way to live,” I said.

““Perhaps, but I’m not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In my own way, I’m working hard. I’m working ten times harder than you are.”

““That’s probably true,” I said. “I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the hell don’t these bastards do something? I wonder. They don’t do a fucking thing, and then they moan about it.”

“Amazed at the harshness of his tone, I looked at Nagasawa. “The way I see it, people are working hard. They’re working their fingers to the bone. Or am I looking at things wrong?”

““That’s not hard work. It’s just manual labour,” Nagasawa said with finality. “The ‘hard work’ I’m talking about is more self-directed and purposeful.”

““You mean, like studying Spanish while everyone else is taking it easy?”

““That’s it. I’m going to have Spanish mastered by next spring. I’ve got English and German and French down pat, and I’m almost there with Italian. You think things like that happen without hard work?””

“I sat at my desk to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis albums. A fine rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium. The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick jumper I had just taken out of a storage box. High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat fly, unmoving.”

“It seemed incredible to me that a guy like that would want a girlfriend like Midori, but I kept this thought to myself.”

““Hey, why don’t we go now and see a dirty film?” Midori suggested. “A really filthy S&M one.”

“We went from the bar to an eel shop, and from there to one of Shinjuku’s most run-down adult cinemas to see a triple bill. It was the only place we could find in the paper that was showing S&M stuff. Inside, the cinema had some kind of indefinable smell. Our timing was good: the S&M film was just starting as we took our seats. It was the story of a secretary and her schoolgirl sister being kidnapped by a bunch of men and subjected to sadistic tortures. The men made the older one to do all kinds of awful things by threatening to rape the sister, but soon the older sister is transformed into a raging masochist, and the younger one gets really turned on from having to watch all the contortions they put her through. It was such a gloomy, repetitive film, I got bored after a while.”

“Midori’s eyes were glued to the screen. I was impressed: anyone watching a film with such fierce intensity was getting more than her money’s worth. She kept reporting her thoughts to me: “Oh my God, will you look at that!” or “Three guys at once! They’re going to tear her apart!” or “I’d like to try that on somebody, Watanabe.” I was enjoying Midori a lot more than the film.”

““Tell me, Watanabe, do you get hard watching this kind of stuff?”

““Well, yeah, sometimes,” I said. “That’s why they make these films.”

““So what you’re saying is, every time one of those scenes starts, every man in the cinema has his thing standing to attention? Thirty or forty of them sticking up all at once? It’s so weird if you stop and think about it, don’t you think?””

““Tell me, Watanabe, do you get hard watching this kind of stuff?”

““Well, yeah, sometimes,” I said. “That’s why they make these films.”

““So what you’re saying is, every time one of those scenes starts, every man in the cinema has his thing standing to attention? Thirty or forty of them sticking up all at once? It’s so weird if you stop and think about it, don’t you think?”

““Yeah, I guess so, now you mention it.””

““That was fun,” said Midori. “Let’s try it again sometime.”

““They just keep doing the same things,” I said.

““Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things.”

“She had a point there.”

“if I go to bed with a girl, I’m going to want to do it with her, and the last thing I want is to lie there struggling to restrain myself. I’m not kidding, I might end up forcing you.”

““You mean you’d hit me and tie me up and rape me from behind?”

““Hey, look, I’m serious.”

““But I’m so lonely! I want to be with someone! I know I’m doing terrible things to you, making demands and not giving you anything in return, saying whatever pops into my head, dragging you out of your room and forcing you to take me everywhere, but you’re the only one I can do stuff like that to! I’ve never been able to have my own way with anybody, not once in the 20 years I’ve been alive. My father, my mother, they never paid the slightest attention to me, and my boyfriend, well, he’s just not that kind of guy. He gets angry if I try to have my own way. So we end up fighting. You’re the only one I can say these things to. And now I’m really, really, really tired and I want to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and how pretty I am and stuff.”

““Anyway, now that I’m feeling better, I’m starved! Let’s go for a pizza.”

“I took her to a pizzeria I knew and ordered draught beer and an anchovy pizza. I wasn’t very hungry and ate only four of the twelve slices. Midori finished the rest.

““You sure made a fast recovery,” I said. “Not too long ago you were pale and wobbly.”

““It’s because my selfish demands got through to somebody,” she answered. “It unclogged me. Wow, this pizza is great!””

“Upstairs, she sat me at the kitchen table and went to warm the bath water. While she busied herself with that, I put a kettle on to boil and made tea. Waiting for the tank to heat up, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table and drank tea. Chin in hand, she took a long, hard look at me. There were no sounds other than the ticking of the clock and the hum of the fridge motor turning on and off as the thermostat kicked in and out. The clock showed that midnight was fast approaching.”

“I nudged the curtain aside and looked down at the deserted shops. Every shop was closed, their metal shutters down, the vending machines hunched in front of the off-licence the only sign of something waiting for the dawn. The moan of long-distance lorry tyres sent a deep shudder through the air every now and then. I went back to the kitchen, poured myself another shot of brandy, and went on reading Beneath the Wheel. By the time I had finished it the sky was growing light.

“I made myself some instant coffee and used some notepaper and a ballpoint pen I found on the table to write a message to Midori:

“I drank some of your brandy. I bought a copy of Beneath the Wheel. It’s light outside, so I’m going home. Goodbye. Then, after some hesitation, I wrote: You look really cute when you’re sleeping.

“I washed my coffee cup, switched off the kitchen light, went downstairs, quietly lifted the shutter, and stepped outside.”

“I glanced up at the pale pink curtains in Midori’s window, walked to the tram stop, rode to the end of the line, and walked to my dorm. On the way I found an open café and ate a breakfast of rice and miso soup, pickled vegetables and fried eggs.”

“Speaking of Midori, she sounds like an interesting person. Reading your letter, I got the feeling she might be in love with you. When I told that to Reiko, she said, ‘Well, of course she is! Even I am in love with Watanabe!’”

“I turned 20, autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing changed in any significant way. Unexcited, I went to my lectures, worked three nights a week in the record shop, reread The Great Gatsby now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my washing and write a long letter to Naoko. Sometimes I would go out with Midori for a meal or to the zoo or to the cinema.”

“Which is why I myself agree that the best thing for Naoko would be for her to receive therapy at a proper institution for a while. I hate to say it, but it’s all we can do. As I told you once before, patience is the most important thing. We have to go on unravelling the jumbled threads one at a time, without losing hope. No matter how hopeless her condition may appear to be, we are bound to find that one loose thread sooner or later. If you’re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.”