chapter 3

Naoko called me the following Saturday, and that Sunday we had a date. I suppose I can call it a date. I can't think of a better word for it. As before, we walked the streets. We stopped somewhere for coffee, walked some more, had dinner in the evening, and said goodbye. Again, she talked only in snatches, but this didn't seem to bother her, and I made no special effort to keep the conversation going. We talked about whatever came to mind - our daily routines, our colleges; each a little fragment that led nowhere. We said nothing at all about the past. And mainly, we walked - and walked, and walked. Fortunately, Tokyo is such a big city we could never have covered it all. We kept on walking like this almost every weekend. She would lead, and I would follow close behind. Naoko had a variety of hairslides and always wore them with her right ear exposed. I remember her most clearly this way, from the back. She would toy with her hairslide whenever she felt embarrassed by something. And she was always dabbing² at her mouth with a handkerchief. She did this whenever she had something to say. The more I observed these habits of hers, the more I came to like her. Naoko went to a girls' college on the rural western edge of Tokyo, a nice little place famous for its teaching of English. Nearby was a narrow irrigation canal with clean, clear water, and Naoko and I would often walk along its banks. Sometimes she would invite me up to her flat and cook for me. It never seemed to concern her that the two of us were in such close quarters together. The room was small and neat and so lacking in frills that only the stockings drying in the corner by the window gave any hint that a girl lived there. She led a spare, simple life with hardly any friends. No one who had known her at school could have imagined her like this. Back then, she had dressed with real flair³ and surrounded herself with a million friends. When I saw her room, I realized that, like me, she had wanted to go away to college and begin a new life far from anyone she knew. "Know why I chose this place?" she said with a smile. "Because nobody from home was coming here. We were all supposed to go somewhere more chic⁴. You know what I mean?" My relationship with Naoko was not without its progress, though. Little by little, she grew more accustomed to me, and I to her. When the summer holidays ended and a new term started, Naoko began walking next to me as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do. She saw me as a friend now, I concluded, and walking side by side with such a beautiful girl was by no means painful for me. We kept walking all over Tokyo in the same meandering⁵ way, climbing hills, crossing rivers and railway lines, just walking and walking with no destination in mind. We forged straight ahead, as if our walking were a religious ritual meant to heal our wounded spirits. If it rained, we used umbrellas, but in any case we walked. Then came autumn, and the dormitory grounds were buried in zelkova leaves. The fragrance⁶ of a new season arrived when I put on my first pullover. Having worn out one pair of shoes, I bought some new suede⁷ ones. I can't seem to recall what we talked about then. Nothing special, I expect. We continued to avoid any mention of the past and rarely spoke⁸ about Kizuki. We could face each other over coffee cups in total silence. Naoko liked to hear me tell stories about Storm Trooper. Once he had a date with a fellow student (a girl in geography, of course) but came back in the early evening looking glum⁹. "Tell me, W W-Watanabe, what do you talk about with g-g-girls?" I don't remember how I answered him, but he had picked the wrong person to ask. In July, somebody in the dorm had taken down Storm Trooper's Amsterdam canal scene and put up a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge instead. He told me he wanted to know if Storm Trooper could masturbate to the Golden Gate Bridge. "He loved it," I reported later, which prompted someone else to put up a picture of an iceberg¹⁰. Each time the photo changed in his absence, Storm Trooper became upset. "Who-who-who the hell is doing this?" he asked. "I wonder," I said. "But what's the difference? They're all nice pictures. You should be grateful." "Yeah, I s'pose so, but it's weird¹¹." My stories of Storm Trooper always made Naoko laugh. Not many things succeeded in doing that, so I talked about him often, though I was not exactly proud of myself for using him this way. He just happened to be the youngest son in a not-too-wealthy family who had grown up a little too serious for his own good. Making maps was the one small dream of his one small life. Who had the right to make fun of him for that? By then, however, Storm-Trooper jokes had become an indispensable source of dormitory talk, and there was no way for me to undo¹² what I had done. Besides, the sight of Naoko's smiling face had become my own special source of pleasure. I went on supplying everyone with new stories. Naoko asked me one time - just once - if I had a girl I liked. I told her about the one I had left behind in Kobe. "She was nice," I said, "I enjoyed sleeping with her, and I miss her every now and then, but finally, she didn't move me. I don't know, sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel¹³ in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody." "Have you ever been in love?" Naoko asked. "Never," I said. She didn't ask me more than that. When autumn ended and cold winds began tearing through the city, Naoko would often walk pressed against my arm. I could sense her breathing through the thick cloth of her duffel coat. She would entwine her arm with mine, or cram¹⁴ her hand in my pocket, or, when it was really cold, cling tightly to my arm, shivering. None of this had any special meaning. I just kept walking with my hands shoved in my pockets. Our rubber-soled shoes made hardly any sound on the pavement, except for the dry crackling when we trod on the broad, withered¹⁵ sycamore leaves. I felt sorry for Naoko whenever I heard that sound. My arm was not the one she needed, but the arm of someone else. My warmth was not what she needed, but the warmth of someone else. I felt almost guilty being me. As the winter deepened, the transparent¹⁶ clarity of Naoko's eyes seemed to increase. It was a clarity that had nowhere to go. Sometimes Naoko would lock her eyes on to mine for no apparent reason. She seemed to be searching for something, and this would give me a strange, lonely, helpless sort of feeling. I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever turning into words. Instead, she would fiddle¹⁷ with her hairslide, dab¹ at the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief, or look into my eyes in that meaningless way. I wanted to hold her tight when she did these things, but I would hesitate and hold back. I was afraid I might hurt her. And so the two of us kept walking the streets of Tokyo, Naoko searching for words in space. The guys in the dorm would always tease me when I got a call from Naoko or went out on a Sunday morning. They assumed, naturally enough, that I had found a girlfriend. There was no way to explain the truth to them, and no need to explain it, so I let them think what they wanted to. I had to face a barrage¹⁸ of stupid questions in the evening - what position had we used? What was she like down there? What colour underwear had she been wearing that day? I gave them the answers they wanted. And so I went from 18 to 19. Each day the sun would rise and set, the flag would be raised and lowered. Every Sunday I would have a date with my dead friend's girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do. For my courses I would read Claudel and Racine and Eisenstein, but they meant almost nothing to me. I made no friends at the lectures, and hardly knew anyone in the dorm. The others in the dorm thought I wanted to be a writer because I was always alone with a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be. I tried to talk about this feeling with Naoko. She, at least, would be able to understand what I was feeling with some degree of precision, I thought. But I could never find the words to express myself. Strange, I seemed to have caught her word-searching sickness. On Saturday nights I would sit by the phone in the lobby, waiting for Naoko to call. Most of the others were out, so the lobby was usually deserted¹⁹. I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I want? And what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers. Sometimes I would reach out and try to grasp the grains of light, but my fingers touched nothing. I read a lot, but not a lot of different books: I like to read my favourites again and again. Back then it was Truman Capote, John Updike, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, but I didn't see anyone else in my lectures or the dorm reading writers like that. They liked Kazumi Takahashi, Kenzaburo Oe, Yukio Mishima, or contemporary French novelists, which was another reason I didn't have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy. At 18 my favourite book was John Updike's The Centaur²⁰, but after I had read it a number of times, it began to lose some of its initial lustre²¹ and yielded first place to The Great Gatsby. Gatsby stayed in first place for a long time after that. I would pull it off the shelf when the mood hit me and read a section at random²². It never once disappointed me. There wasn't a boring page in the whole book. I wanted to tell people what a wonderful novel it was, but no one around me had read The Great Gatsby or was likely to. Urging others to read F Scott Fitzgerald, although not a reactionary²³ act, was not something one could do in 1968. When I did finally meet the one person in my world who had read Gatsby, he and I became friends because of it. His name was Nagasawa. He was two years older than me, and because he was doing legal studies at the prestigious²⁴ Tokyo University, he was on the fast track to national leadership. We lived in the same dorm and knew each other only by sight, until one day when I was reading Gatsby in a sunny spot in the dining hall. He sat down next to me and asked what I was reading. When I told him, he asked if I was enjoying it. "This is my third time," I said, "and every time I find something new that I like even more than the last." "This man says he has read The Great Gatsby three times," he said as if to himself. "Well, any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine." And so we became friends. This happened in October. The better I got to know Nagasawa, the stranger he seemed. I had met a lot of weird people in my day, but none as strange as Nagasawa. He was a far more voracious²⁵ reader than me, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years. "That's the only kind of book I can trust," he said. "It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short." "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 hesitation²⁶. "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. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that. Haven't you noticed, Watanabe? You and I are the only real ones in this dorm. The other guys are crap." This took me off guard. "How can you say that?" "'Cause it's true. I know. I can see it. It's like we have marks on our foreheads. And besides, we've both read The Great Gatsby." I did some quick calculating. "But Fitzgerald's only been dead 28 years," I said. "So what? Two years? Fitzgerald's advanced." No one else in the dorm knew that Nagasawa was a secret reader of classic novels, nor would it have mattered if they had. Nagasawa was known for being smart. He breezed into Tokyo University, he got good marks, he would take the Civil Service Exam, join the Foreign Ministry²⁷, and become a diplomat²⁸. He came from a wealthy family. His father owned a big hospital in Nagoya, and his brother had also graduated from Tokyo, gone on to medical school, and would one day inherit the hospital. Nagasawa always had plenty of money in his pocket, and he carried himself with real dignity. People treated him with respect, even the dorm Head. When he asked someone to do something, the person would do it without protest. There was no choice in the matter. Nagasawa had a certain inborn²⁹ 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 mere³⁰ sight of which would inspire awe³¹ in people for this superior being. Which is why it shocked everyone that Nagasawa chose me, a person with no distinctive³² 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. I had a definite interest in the strange, complex aspects of his nature, but none of those other things - his good marks, his aura, his looks - impressed me. This must have been something new for him. There were sides to Nagasawa's personality that conflicted in the extreme. Even I would be moved by his kindness at times, but he could just as well be malicious³³ and cruel. He was both a spirit of amazing loftiness and an irredeemable man of the gutter³⁴. He could charge forward, the optimistic leader, even as his heart writhed³⁵ in a swamp of loneliness. I saw these paradoxical qualities of his from the start, and I could never understand why they weren't just as obvious to everyone else. He lived in his own special hell. Still, I think I always managed to view him in the most favourable³⁶ light. His greatest virtue³⁷ was his honesty. Not only would he never lie, he would always acknowledge his shortcomings. He never tried to hide things that might embarrass him. And where I was concerned, he was unfailingly kind and supportive. Had he not been, my life in the dorm would have been far more unpleasant than it was. Still, I never once opened my heart to him, and in that sense my relationship with Nagasawa stood in stark³⁸ contrast to me and Kizuki. The first time I saw Nagasawa drunk and tormenting³⁹ a girl, I promised myself never, under any circumstances, to open myself up to him. There were several "Nagasawa Legends" that circulated throughout the dorm. According to one, he supposedly once ate three slugs. Another gave him a huge penis and had him sleeping with more than 100 girls. The slug story was true. He told me so himself. "Three big mothers," he said. "Swallowed 'em whole." "What the hell for?" "Well, it happened the first year I came to live here," he said. "There was some shit between the first-years and the third-years. Started in April and finally came to a head in September. As first -year representative I went to work things out with the third-years. Real right-wing arseholes. They had these wooden kendo swords, and "working things out' was probably the last thing they wanted to do. So I said, 'All right, let's put an end to this. Do what you want to me, but leave the other guys alone.' So they said, "OK, let's see you swallow a couple of slugs.' "Fine,' I said, "Let's have 'em.' The bastards⁴⁰ went out and got three huge slugs. And I swallowed 'em." "What was it like?" "What was it like?' You have to swallow one yourself. The way it slides down your throat and into your stomach ... it's cold, and it leaves this disgusting aftertaste ... yuck, I get chills just thinking about it. I wanted to puke but I fought it. I mean, if I had puked 'em up, I would have had to swallow 'em all over again. So I kept 'em down. All three of 'em." "Then what happened?" "I went back to my room and drank a bucket of salt water. What else could I do?" "Yeah, I guess so." "But after that, nobody could say a thing to me. Not even the third-years. I'm the only guy in this place who can swallow three slugs." "I bet you are." Finding out about his penis size was easy enough. I just went to the dorm's communal⁴¹ shower with him. He had a big one, all right. But 100 girls was probably an exaggeration. "Maybe 75," he said. "I can't remember them all, but I'm sure it's at least 70." When I told him I had slept with only one, he said, "Oh, we can fix that, easy. Come with me next time. I'll get you one easy as that." I didn't believe him, but he turned out to be right. It was easy. Almost too easy, with all the excitement of flat beer. We went to some kind of bar in Shibuya or Shinjuku (he had his favourites), found a pair of girls (the world was full of pairs of girls), talked to them, drank, went to a hotel, and had sex with them. He was a great talker. Not that he had anything great to say, but girls would get carried away listening to him, they'd drink too much and end up sleeping with him. I guess they enjoyed being with somebody so nice and handsome and clever. And the most amazing thing was that, just because I was with him, I seemed to become equally fascinating to them. Nagasawa would urge me to talk, and girls would respond to me with the same smiles of admiration⁴² they offered him. He worked his magic, a real talent he had that impressed me every time. Compared with Nagasawa, Kizuki's conversational⁴³ gifts were child's play. This was a completely different level of accomplishment⁴⁴. As much as I found myself caught up in Nagasawa's power, though, I still missed Kizuki. I felt a new admiration for his sincerity⁴⁵. Whatever talents he had he would share with Naoko and me alone, while Nagasawa was bent⁴⁶ on disseminating⁴⁷ his considerable gifts to all around him. Not that he was dying to sleep with the girls he found: it was just a game to him. I was not too crazy about sleeping with girls I didn't know. It was an easy way to take care of my sex drive of course, and I did enjoy all the holding and touching⁴⁸, but I hated the morning after. I'd wake up and find this strange girl sleeping next to me, and the room would reek⁴⁹ of alcohol, and the bed and the lighting⁵⁰ and the curtains had that special "love hotel" garishness⁵¹, and my head would be in a hungover fog. Then the girl would wake up and start groping around for her knickers and while she was putting on her stockings she'd say something like, "I hope you used one last night. It's the worst day of the month for me." Then she'd sit in front of a mirror and start grumbling⁵² about her aching head or her uncooperative make-up while she redid her lipstick⁵³ or attached her false eyelashes. I would have preferred not to spend the whole night with them, but you can't worry about a midnight curfew while you're seducing⁵⁴ women (which runs counter to the laws of physics anyway), so I'd go out with an overnight pass. This meant I had to stay put until morning and go back to the dorm filled with self-loathing and disillusionment, sunlight stabbing my eyes, mouth coated with sand, head belonging to someone else. When I had slept with three or four girls this way, I asked Nagasawa, "After you've done this 70 times, doesn't it begin to seem kind of pointless?" "That proves you're a decent human being," he said. "Congratulations. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from sleeping with one strange woman after another. It just tires you out and makes you disgusted with yourself. It's the same for me." "So why the hell do you keep it up?" "Hard to say. Hey, you know that thing Dostoevsky wrote on gambling⁵⁵? It's like that. When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up. See what I mean?" "Sort of." "Look. The sun goes down. The girls come out and drink. They wander around, looking for something. I can give them that something. It's the easiest thing in the world, like drinking water from a tap. Before you know it, I've got 'em down. It's what they expect. That's what I mean by possibility. It's all around you. How can you ignore it? You have a certain ability and the opportunity to use it: can you keep your mouth shut and let it pass?" "I don't know, I've never been in a situation like that," I said with a smile. "I can't imagine what it's like." "Count your blessings," Nagasawa said. His womanizing was the reason Nagasawa lived in a dorm despite his affluent⁵⁶ background. Worried that Nagasawa would do nothing else if allowed to live alone in Tokyo, his father had compelled him to live all four years at university in the dormitory. Not that it mattered much to Nagasawa. He was not going to let a few rules bother him. Whenever he felt like it, he would get an overnight permission and go girl-hunting or spend the night at hi s girlfriend's flat. These permissions were not easy to get, but for him they were like free passes - and for me, too, as long as he did the asking. Nagasawa did have a steady girlfriend, one he'd been going out with since his first year. Her name was Hatsumi, and she was the same age as Nagasawa. I had met her a few times and found her to be very nice. She didn't have the kind of looks that immediately attracted attention, and in fact she was so ordinary that when I first met her I had to wonder why Nagasawa couldn't do better, but anyone who talked to her took an immediate⁵⁷ liking⁵⁸ to her. Quiet, intelligent, funny, caring, she always dressed with immaculate good taste. I liked her a lot and knew that if I could have a girlfriend like Hatsumi, I wouldn't be sleeping around with a bunch of easy marks. She liked me, too, and tried hard to fix me up with a first-year in her club so we could double-date, but I would make up excuses to keep from repeating past mistakes. Hatsumi went to the absolute top girls' coll ege in the country, and there was no way I was going to be able to talk to one of those super-rich princesses. Hatsumi had a pretty good idea that Nagasawa was sleeping around, but she never complained to him. She was seriously in love, but she never made demands. "I don't deserve a girl like Hatsumi," Nagasawa once said to me. I had to agree with him. That winter I found a part-time job in a little record shop in Shinjuku. It didn't pay much, but the work was easy- just watching the place three nights a week - and they let me buy records cheap. For Christmas I bought Naoko a Henry Mancini album with a track of her favourite "Dear Heart". I wrapped it myself and added a bright red ribbon. She gave me a pair of woollen gloves she had knitted. The thumbs were a little short, but they did keep my hands warm. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, blushing, "What a bad job!" "Don't worry, they fit fine," I said, holding my gloved hands out to her. "Well, at least you won't have to shove your hands in your pockets, I guess." Naoko didn't go home to Kobe for the winter break. I stayed in Tokyo, too, working in the record shop right up to the end of the year. I didn't have anything especially fun to do in Kobe or anyone I wanted to see. The dorm's dining hall was closed for the holiday, so I went to Naoko's flat for meals. On New Year's Eve we had rice cakes and soup like everybody else. A lot happened in late January and February that year, 1969. At the end of January, Storm Trooper went to bed with a raging fever. Which meant I had to stand up Naoko that day. I had gone to a lot of trouble to get my hands on some free tickets for a concert. She had been especially eager to go because the orchestra was performing one of her favourites: Brahms' Fourth Symphony. But with Storm Trooper tossing around in bed on the verge⁵⁹ of what looked like an agonizing⁶⁰ death, I couldn't just leave him, and I couldn't find anyone stupid enough to nurse him in my place. I bought some ice and used several layers of plastic bags to hold it on his forehead, wiped his sweating brow with cold towels, took his temperature every hour, and even changed his vest for him. The fever stayed high for a day, but the following morning he jumped out of bed and started exercising as though nothing had happened. His temperature was completely normal. It was hard to believe he was a human being. "Weird," said Storm Trooper. "I've never run a fever in my life." It was almost as if he were blaming me. This made me mad. "But you did have a fever," I insisted, showing him the two wasted tickets. "Good thing they were free," he said. I wanted to grab his radio and throw it out of the window, but instead I went back to bed with a headache. It snowed several times in February. Near the end of the month I got into a stupid fight with one of the third-years on my floor and punched him. He hit his head against the concrete wall, but he wasn't badly injured, and Nagasawa straightened things out for me. Still, I was called into the dorm Head's office and given a warning, after which I grew increasingly uncomfortable living in the dormitory. The academic year ended in March, but I came up a few credits short. My exam results were mediocre⁶¹ - mostly "C"s and "D"s with a few "B"s. Naoko had all the grades she needed to begin the spring term of her second year. We had completed one full cycle of the seasons. Halfway⁶² through April Naoko turned 20. She was seven months older than I was, my own birthday being in November. There was something strange about her becoming 20. I. felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth⁶³ between 18 and 19. After 18 would come 19, and after 19, 18, of course. But she turned 20. And in the autumn, I would do the same. Only the dead stay 17 for ever. It rained on her birthday. After lectures I bought a cake nearby and took the tram to her flat. "We ought to have a celebration," I said. I probably would have wanted the same thing if our positions had been reversed. It must be hard to pass your twentieth birthday alone. The tram had been packed and had pitched so wildly that by the time I arrived at Naoko's room the cake was looking more like the Roman Colosseum than anything else. Still, once I had managed to stand up the 20 candles I had brought along, light them, close the curtains and turn out the lights, we had the makings of a birthday party. Naoko opened a bottle of wine. We drank, had some cake, and enjoyed a simple dinner. "I don't know, it's stupid being 20," she said. "I'm just not ready. It feels weird. Like somebody's pushing me from behind." "I've got seven months to get ready," I said with a laugh. "You're so lucky! Still 19!" said Naoko with a hint of envy. While we ate I told her about Storm Trooper's new jumper. Until then he had had only one, a navy-blue pullover, so two was a big move for him. The jumper itself was a nice one, red and black with a knitted deer motif⁶⁴, but on him it made everybody laugh. He couldn't work out what was going on. "W what's so funny, Watanabe?" he asked, sitting next to me in the dining hall. "Is something stuck to my forehead?" "Nothing," I said, trying to keep a straight face. "There's nothing funny. Nice jumper." "Thanks," he said, beaming. Naoko loved the story. "I have to meet him," she said. "Just once." "No way," I said. "You'd laugh in his face." "You think so?" "I'd bet on it. I see him every day, and still I can't help laughing sometimes." We cleared the table and sat on the floor, listening to music and drinking the rest of the wine. She drank two glasses in the time it took me to finish one. Naoko was unusually talkative that night. She told me about her childhood, her school, her family. Each episode was a long one, executed with the painstaking⁶⁵ detail of a miniature. I was amazed at the power of her memory, but as I sat listening it began to dawn on me that there was something wrong with the way she was telling these stories: something strange, warped⁶⁶ even. Each tale had its own internal logic⁶⁷, but the link from one to the next was odd. Before you knew it, story A had turned into story B, which had been contained in A, and then came C from something in B, with no end in sight. I found things to say in response at first, but after a while I stopped trying. I put on a record, and when it ended I lifted the needle and put on another. After the last record I went back to the first. She only had six. The cycle started with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and ended with Bill Evans' Waltz for Debbie. Rain fell past the window. Time moved slowly. Naoko went on talking by herself. It eventually dawned on me what was wrong: Naoko was taking great care as she spoke not to touch on certain things. One of those things was Kizuki, of course, but there was more than Kizuki. And though she had certain subjects she was determined⁶⁸ to avoid, she went on endlessly and in incredible detail about the most trivial, inane⁶⁹ things. I had never heard her speak with such intensity⁷⁰ before, and so I did not interrupt her. Once the clock struck eleven, though, I began to feel nervous. She had been talking non-stop for more than four hours. I had to worry about the last train, and my midnight curfew. I saw my chance and cut in. "Time for the troops to go home," I said, looking at my watch. "Last train's coming." My words did not seem to reach her. Or, if they did, she was unable to grasp their meaning. She clamped her mouth shut for a split second, then went on with her story. I gave up and, shifting to a more comfortable position, drank what was left of the second bottle of wine. I thought I had better let her talk herself out. The curfew and the last train would have to take care of themselves. She did not go on for long, though. Before I knew it, she had stopped talking. The ragged⁷¹ end of the last word she spoke seemed to float in the air, where it had been torn off. She had not actually finished what she was saying. Her words had simply evaporated. She had been trying to go on, but had come up against nothing. Something was gone now, and I was probably the one who had destroyed it.My words might have finally reached her, taken their time to be understood, and obliterated⁷² whatever energy it was that had kept her talking so long. Lips slightly parted, she turned her half focused eyes on mine. She looked like some kind of machine that had been humming along until someone pulled the plug. Her eyes appeared clouded, as if covered by some thin, translucent⁷³ membrane⁷⁴. "Sorry to interrupt," I said, "but it's getting late, and ..." One big tear spilled from her eye, ran down her cheek and splattered onto a record jacket. Once that first tear broke free, the rest followed in an unbroken stream. Naoko bent forwards on all fours on the floor and, pressing her palms to the mat, began to cry with the force of a person vomiting⁷⁵. Never in my life had I seen anyone cry with such intensity. I reached out and placed a hand on her trembling shoulder. Then, all but instinctively⁷⁶, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me, her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound. My shirt became damp - then soaked - with her tears and hot breath. Soon her fingers began to move across my back as if in search of something, some important thing that had always been there. Supporting her weight with my left arm, I used my right hand to caress⁷⁷ her soft, straight hair. And I waited. In that position, I waited for Naoko to stop crying. And I went on waiting. But Naoko's crying never stopped. I slept with Naoko that night. Was it the right thing to do? I can't tell. Even now, almost 20 years later, I can't be sure. I suppose I'll never know. But at the time, it was all I could do. She was in a heightened state of tension and confusion, and she made it clear she wanted me to give her release. I turned the lights down and began, one piece at a time, with the gentlest touch I could manage, to remove her clothes. Then I undressed. It was warm enough, that rainy April night, for us to cling to each other's nakedness without a sense of chill. We explored each other's bodies in the darkness without words. I kissed her and held her soft breasts in my hands. She clutched at my erection. Her opening was warm and wet and asking for me. And yet, when I went inside her, Naoko tensed with pain. Was this her first time? I asked, and she nodded. Now it was my turn to be confused. I had assumed that Naoko had been sleeping with Kizuki all that time. I went in as far as I could and stayed that way for a long time, holding Naoko, without moving. And then, as she began to seem calmer, I allowed myself to move inside her, taking a longtime to come to climax⁷⁸, with slow, gentle movements. Her arms tightened⁷⁹ around me at the end, when at last she broke her silence. Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm I had ever heard. When everything had ended, I asked Naoko why she had never slept with Kizuki. This was a mistake. No sooner had I asked the question than she took her arms from me and started crying soundlessly again. I pulled her bedding from the closet, spread it on the mat floor, and put her in beneath the covers. Smoking, I watched the endless April rain beyond the window. The rain had stopped when morning came. Naoko was sleeping with her back to me. Or maybe she hadn't slept at all. Whether she was awake or asleep, all words had left her lips, and her body now seemed stiff, almost frozen. I tried several times to talk to her, but she would not answer or move. I stared for a long time at her naked shoulder, but in the end I lost all hope of eliciting⁸⁰ a response and decided⁸¹ to get up. The floor was still littered with record jackets, glasses, wine bottles and the ashtray⁸² I had been using. Half the caved-in birthday cake remained on the table. It was as if time had come to a halt. I picked up the things off the floor and drank two glasses of water at the sink. On Naoko's desk lay a dictionary and a French verb chart. On the wall above the desk hung a calendar, one without an illustration or photo of any kind, just the numbers of the days of the month. There were no memos⁸³ or marks written next to any of the dates. I picked up my clothes and dressed. The chest of my shirt was still damp and chilly⁸⁴. It had Naoko's smell. On the notepad lying on the desk I wrote: I'd like to have a good long talk with you once you've calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday. I took one last look at Naoko's shoulder, stepped outside and quietly shut the door. No call came even after a week had passed. Naoko's house had no system for calling people to the phone, and so on Sunday morning I took the train out to Kokubunji. She wasn't there, and her name had been removed from the door. The windows and storm shutters⁸⁵ were closed tight. The manager told me that Naoko had moved out three days earlier. He had no idea where she had moved to. I went back to the dorm and wrote Naoko a long letter addressed to her home in Kobe. Wherever she was, they would forward it to her at least. I gave her an honest account of my feelings. There was a lot I still didn't understand, I said, and though I was trying hard to understand, it would take time. Where I would be once that time had gone by, it was impossible for me to say now, which is why it was impossible for me to make promises or demands, or to set down pretty words. For one thing, we knew too little of each other. If, however, she would grant me the time, I would give it my best effort, and the two of us would come to know each other better. In any case, I wanted to see her again and have a good long talk. When I lost Kizuki, I lost the one person to whom I could speak honestly of my feelings, and I imagined it had been the same for Naoko. She and I had needed each other more than either of us knew. Which was no doubt why our relationship had taken such a major detour⁸⁶ and become, in a sense, warped. I probably should not have done what I did, and yet I believe that it was all I could do. The warmth and closeness I felt for you at that moment was something I have never experienced before. I need you to answer this letter. Whatever that answer may be, I need to have it. No answer came. Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the empty cavern⁸⁷. There was an abnormal lightness to my body, and sounds had a hollow echo to them. I went to lectures more faithfully than ever. They were boring, and I never talked to my fellow students, but I had nothing else to do. I would sit by myself in the very front row of the lecture hall, speak to no one and eat alone. I stopped smoking. The student strike started at the end of May. "Dismantle⁸⁸ the University!" they all screamed. Go ahead, do it, I thought. Dismantle it. Tear it apart. Crush it to bits. I don't give a damn. It would be a breath of fresh air. I'm ready for anything. I'll help if necessary. Just go ahead and do it. With the campus blockaded and lectures suspended, I started to work at a delivery company. Sitting with the driver, loading and unloading lorries, that kind of stuff. It was tougher than I thought. At first I could hardly get out of bed in the morning with the pain. The pay was good, though, and as long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the emptiness inside. I worked on the lorries five days a week, and three nights a week I continued my job at the record shop. Nights without work I spent with whisky and books. Storm Trooper wouldn't touch whisky and couldn't stand the smell, so when I was sprawled⁸⁹ on my bed drinking it straight, he'd complain that the fumes⁹⁰ made it impossible for him to study and ask me to take my bottle outside. "You get the hell out," I growled⁹¹. "But you know drinking in the dorm is a-a-against the rules." "I don't give a shit. You get out." He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof and drank alone. In June I wrote Naoko another long letter, addressing it again to her house in Kobe. It said pretty much the same thing as the first one, but at the end I added: Waiting for your answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At least let me know whether or not I hurt you. When I posted it, I felt as if the cavern inside me had grown again. That June I went out with Nagasawa twice again to sleep with girls. It was easy both times. The first girl put up a terrific struggle when I tried to get her undressed and into the hotel bed, but when I began reading alone because it just wasn't worth it, she came over and started nuzzling me. And after I had done it with the second one, she started asking me all kinds of personal questions - how many girls had I slept with? Where was I from? Which university did I go to? What kind of music did I like? Had I ever read any novels by Osamu Dazai? Where would I like to go if I could travel abroad? Did I think her nipples were too big? I made up some answers and went to sleep, but next morning she said she wanted to have breakfast with me, and she kept up the stream of questions over the tasteless eggs and toast and coffee. What kind of work did my father do? Did I get good marks at school? What month was I born? Had I ever eaten frogs? She was giving me a headache, so as soon as we had finished eating I said I had to go to work. "Will I ever see you again?" she asked with a sad look. "Oh, I'm sure we'll meet again somewhere before long," I said, and left. What the hell am I doing? I started wondering as soon as I was alone, feeling disgusted with myself. And yet it was all I could do. My body was hungering for women. All the time I was sleeping with those girls I thought about Naoko: the white shape of her naked body in the darkness, her sighs, the sound of the rain. The more I thought about these things, the hungrier my body grew. I went up to the roof with my whisky and asked myself where I thought I was heading. Finally, at the beginning of July, a letter came from Naoko. A short letter. Please forgive me for not answering sooner. But try to understand. It took me a very long time before I was in any condition to write, and I have started this letter at least ten times. Writing is a painful process for me. Let me begin with my conclusion. I have decided to take a year off from college. Officially, it's a leave of absence, but I suspect that I will never be going back. This will no doubt come as a surprise to you, but in fact I had been thinking about doing this for a very long time. I tried a few times to mention it to you, but I was never able to make myself begin. I was afraid even to pronounce the words. Try not to get so worked up about things. Whatever happened- or didn't happen - the end result would have been the same. This may not be the best way to put it, and I'm sorry if it hurts you. What I am trying to tell you is, I don't want you to blame yourself for what happened with me. It is something I have to take on all by myself. I had been putting it off for more than a year, and so I ended up making things very difficult for you. There is probably no way to put it off any longer. After I moved out of my flat, I came back to my family's house in Kobe and was seeing a doctor for a while. He tells me there is a place in the hills outside Kyoto that would be perfect for me, and I'm thinking of spending a little time there. It's not exactly a hospital, more a sanatorium kind of thing with a far freer style of treatment. I'll leave the details for another letter. What I need now is to rest my nerves in a quiet place cut off from the world. I feel grateful in my own way for the year of companionship you gave me. Please believe that much even if you believe nothing else. You are not the one who hurt me. I myself am the one who did that. This is truly how I feel. For now, however, I am not prepared to see you. It's not that I don't want to see you: I'm simply not prepared for it. The moment I feel ready, I will write to you. Perhaps then we can get to know each other better. As you say, this is probably what we should do: get to know each other better. Goodbye. I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I would be filled with that same unbearable⁹² sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko herself stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight nor could I wrap myself in it. Objects in the scene would drift past me, but the words they spoke never reached my ears. I continued to spend my Saturday nights sitting in the hall. There was no hope of a phone call, but I didn't know what else to do with the time. I would switch on a baseball game and pretend to watch it as I cut the empty space between me and the television set in two, then cut each half in two again, over and over, until I had fashioned a space small enough to hold in my hand. I would switch the set off at ten, go back to my room, and go to sleep. At the end of the month, Storm Trooper gave me a firefly. It was in an instant coffee jar with air holes in the lid and containing some blades of grass and a little water. In the bright room the firefly looked like some kind of ordinary black insect you'd find by a pond somewhere, but Storm Trooper insisted it was the real thing. "I know a firefly when I see one," he said, and I had no reason or basis to disbelieve him. "Fine," I said. "It's a firefly." It had a sleepy look on its face, but it kept trying to climb up the slippery glass walls of the jar and falling back. "I found it in the quad," he said. "Here? By the dorm?" "Yeah. You know the hotel down the street? They release fireflies in their garden for summer guests. This one made it over here." Storm Trooper was busy stuffing clothes and notebooks into his black Boston bag as he spoke. We were several weeks into the summer holidays, and he and I were almost the only ones left in the dorm. I had carried on with my jobs rather than go back to Kobe, and he had stayed on for a practical training session. Now that the training had ended, he was going back to the mountains of Yamanashi. "You could give this to your girlfriend," he said. "I'm sure she'd love it." "Thanks," I said. After dark the dorm was hushed, like a ruin. The flag had been lowered and the lights glowed in the windows of the dining hall. With so few students left, they turned on only half the lights in the place, keeping the right half dark and the left lighted. Still, the smell of dinner drifted up to me - some kind of cream stew⁹³. I took my bottled firefly to the roof. No one else was up there. A white vest hung on a clothesline that someone had forgotten to take in, waving in the evening breeze like the discarded shell of some huge insect. I climbed a steel ladder in the corner of the roof to the top of the dormitory's water tank. The tank was still warm with the heat of the sunlight it had absorbed during the day. I sat in the narrow space above the tank, leaning against the handrail and coming face-to-face with an almost full white moon. The lights of Shinjuku glowed to the right, Ikebukuro to the left. Car headlights flowed in brilliant streams from one pool of light to the other. A dull roar of jumbled⁹⁴ sounds hung over the city like a cloud. The firefly made a faint glow in the bottom of the jar, its light all too weak, its colour all too pale. I hadn't seen a firefly in years, but the ones in my memory sent a far more intense light into the summer darkness, and that brilliant, burning image was the one that had stayed with me all that time. Maybe this firefly was on the verge of death. I gave the jar a few shakes. The firefly bumped against the glass walls and tried to fly, but its light remained dim. I tried to remember when I had last seen fireflies, and where it might have been. I could see the scene in my mind, but was unable to recall the time or place. I could hear the sound of water in the darkness and see an old-fashioned brick sluice⁹⁵ gate. It had a handle you could turn to open and close the gate. The stream it controlled was small enough to be hidden by the grass on its banks. The night was dark, so dark I couldn't see my feet when I turned out my torch. Hundreds of fireflies drifted over the pool of water held back by the sluice gate, their hot glow reflected in the water like a shower of sparks. I closed my eyes and steeped myself in that long-ago darkness. I heard the wind with unusual clarity. A light breeze swept past me, leaving strangely brilliant trails in the dark. I opened my eyes to find the darkness of the summer night a few degrees deeper than it had been. I twisted open the lid of the jar and took out the firefly, setting it on the two-inch lip of the water tank. It seemed not to grasp its new surroundings. It hobbled around the head of a steel bolt, catching⁹⁶ its legs on curling scabs of paint. It moved to the right until it found its way blocked, then circled back to the left. Finally, with some effort, it mounted the head of the bolt and crouched⁹⁷ there for a while, unmoving, as if it had taken its last breath. Still leaning against the handrail, I studied the firefly. Neither I nor it made a move for a very long time. The wind continued sweeping⁹⁸ past the two of us while the numberless leaves of the zelkova tree rustled⁹⁹ in the darkness. I waited for ever. Only much later did the firefly take to the air. As if some thought had suddenly occurred to it, the firefly spread its wings, and in a moment it had flown past the handrail to float in the pale darkness. It traced a swift arc by the side of the water tank as though trying to bring back a lost interval¹⁰⁰ in time. And then, after hovering¹⁰¹ there for a few seconds as if to watch its curved line of light blend into the wind, it finally flew off to the east. Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids¹⁰² like a lost soul. More than once I tried stretching my hand out in the dark. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond my grasp.

1 dab   

v.轻触，轻拍，轻涂；n.(颜料等的)轻涂

参考例句：

• She returned wearing a dab of rouge on each cheekbone.她回来时，两边面颊上涂有一点淡淡的胭脂。
• She gave me a dab of potatoes with my supper.她给我晚饭时，还给了一点土豆。

2 dabbing   

石面凿毛，灰泥抛毛

参考例句：

• She was crying and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. 她一边哭一边用手绢轻按眼睛。
• Huei-fang was leaning against a willow, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. 四小姐蕙芳正靠在一棵杨柳树上用手帕揉眼睛。 来自子夜部分

3 flair   

n.天赋，本领，才华；洞察力

参考例句：

• His business skill complements her flair for design.他的经营技巧和她的设计才能相辅相成。
• He had a natural flair for business.他有做生意的天分。

4 chic   

n./adj.别致(的)，时髦(的)，讲究的

参考例句：

• She bought a chic little hat.她买了一顶别致的小帽子。
• The chic restaurant is patronized by many celebrities.这家时髦的饭店常有名人光顾。

5 meandering   

蜿蜒的河流，漫步，聊天

参考例句：

• The village seemed deserted except for small boys and a meandering donkey. 整个村子的人都像是逃光了，只留下了几个小男孩和一头正在游游荡荡的小毛驴。 来自教父部分
• We often took a walk along the meandering river after supper. 晚饭后我们常沿着那条弯弯曲曲的小河散步。

6 fragrance   

n.芬芳，香味，香气

参考例句：

• The apple blossoms filled the air with their fragrance.苹果花使空气充满香味。
• The fragrance of lavender filled the room.房间里充满了薰衣草的香味。

7 suede   

n.表面粗糙的软皮革

参考例句：

• I'm looking for a suede jacket.我想买一件皮制茄克。
• Her newly bought suede shoes look very fashionable.她新买的翻毛皮鞋看上去非常时尚。

8 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

9 glum   

adj.闷闷不乐的，阴郁的

参考例句：

• He was a charming mixture of glum and glee.他是一个很有魅力的人，时而忧伤时而欢笑。
• She laughed at his glum face.她嘲笑他闷闷不乐的脸。

10 iceberg   

n.冰山，流冰，冷冰冰的人

参考例句：

• The ship hit an iceberg and went under.船撞上一座冰山而沉没了。
• The glacier calved a large iceberg.冰河崩解而形成一个大冰山。

11 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

12 undo   

vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销

参考例句：

• His pride will undo him some day.他的傲慢总有一天会毁了他。
• I managed secretly to undo a corner of the parcel.我悄悄地设法解开了包裹的一角。

13 kernel   

n.(果实的)核，仁；(问题)的中心，核心

参考例句：

• The kernel of his problem is lack of money.他的问题的核心是缺钱。
• The nutshell includes the kernel.果壳裹住果仁。

14 cram   

v.填塞，塞满，临时抱佛脚，为考试而学习

参考例句：

• There was such a cram in the church.教堂里拥挤得要命。
• The room's full,we can't cram any more people in.屋里满满的，再也挤不进去人了。

15 withered   

adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• The grass had withered in the warm sun. 这些草在温暖的阳光下枯死了。
• The leaves of this tree have become dry and withered. 这棵树下的叶子干枯了。

16 transparent   

adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的

参考例句：

• The water is so transparent that we can see the fishes swimming.水清澈透明，可以看到鱼儿游来游去。
• The window glass is transparent.窗玻璃是透明的。

17 fiddle   

n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动

参考例句：

• She plays the fiddle well.她小提琴拉得好。
• Don't fiddle with the typewriter.不要摆弄那架打字机了。

18 barrage   

n.火力网，弹幕

参考例句：

• The attack jumped off under cover of a barrage.进攻在炮火的掩护下开始了。
• The fierce artillery barrage destroyed the most part of the city in a few minutes.猛烈的炮火几分钟内便毁灭了这座城市的大部分地区。

19 deserted   

adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的

参考例句：

• The deserted village was filled with a deathly silence.这个荒废的村庄死一般的寂静。
• The enemy chieftain was opposed and deserted by his followers.敌人头目众叛亲离。

20 centaur   

n.人首马身的怪物

参考例句：

• His face reminded me somehow of a centaur.他的脸使我想起半人半马的怪物。
• No wonder he had soon been hustled away to centaur school.也难怪父母匆匆忙忙就把他送到了半人马学校。

21 lustre   

n.光亮，光泽；荣誉

参考例句：

• The sun was shining with uncommon lustre.太阳放射出异常的光彩。
• A good name keeps its lustre in the dark.一个好的名誉在黑暗中也保持它的光辉。

22 random   

adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动

参考例句：

• The list is arranged in a random order.名单排列不分先后。
• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。

23 reactionary   

n.反动者，反动主义者；adj.反动的，反动主义的，反对改革的

参考例句：

• They forced thousands of peasants into their reactionary armies.他们迫使成千上万的农民参加他们的反动军队。
• The reactionary ruling clique was torn by internal strife.反动统治集团内部勾心斗角，四分五裂。

24 prestigious   

adj.有威望的，有声望的，受尊敬的

参考例句：

• The young man graduated from a prestigious university.这个年轻人毕业于一所名牌大学。
• You may even join a prestigious magazine as a contributing editor.甚至可能会加入一个知名杂志做编辑。

25 voracious   

adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的

参考例句：

• She's a voracious reader of all kinds of love stories.什么样的爱情故事她都百看不厌。
• Joseph Smith was a voracious book collector.约瑟夫·史密斯是个如饥似渴的藏书家。

26 hesitation   

n.犹豫，踌躇

参考例句：

• After a long hesitation, he told the truth at last.踌躇了半天，他终于直说了。
• There was a certain hesitation in her manner.她的态度有些犹豫不决。

27 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。

28 diplomat   

n.外交官，外交家；能交际的人，圆滑的人

参考例句：

• The diplomat threw in a joke, and the tension was instantly relieved.那位外交官插进一个笑话，紧张的气氛顿时缓和下来。
• He served as a diplomat in Russia before the war.战前他在俄罗斯当外交官。

29 inborn   

adj.天生的，生来的，先天的

参考例句：

• He is a man with an inborn love of joke.他是一个生来就喜欢开玩笑的人。
• He had an inborn talent for languages.他有语言天分。

30 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

31 awe   

n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧

参考例句：

• The sight filled us with awe.这景色使我们大为惊叹。
• The approaching tornado struck awe in our hearts.正在逼近的龙卷风使我们惊恐万分。

32 distinctive   

adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的

参考例句：

• She has a very distinctive way of walking.她走路的样子与别人很不相同。
• This bird has several distinctive features.这个鸟具有几种突出的特征。

33 malicious   

adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的

参考例句：

• You ought to kick back at such malicious slander. 你应当反击这种恶毒的污蔑。
• Their talk was slightly malicious.他们的谈话有点儿心怀不轨。

34 gutter   

n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟

参考例句：

• There's a cigarette packet thrown into the gutter.阴沟里有个香烟盒。
• He picked her out of the gutter and made her a great lady.他使她脱离贫苦生活，并成为贵妇。

35 writhed   

（因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He writhed at the memory, revolted with himself for that temporary weakness. 他一想起来就痛悔不已，只恨自己当一时糊涂。
• The insect, writhed, and lay prostrate again. 昆虫折腾了几下，重又直挺挺地倒了下去。

36 favourable   

adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的

参考例句：

• The company will lend you money on very favourable terms.这家公司将以非常优惠的条件借钱给你。
• We found that most people are favourable to the idea.我们发现大多数人同意这个意见。

37 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

38 stark   

adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地

参考例句：

• The young man is faced with a stark choice.这位年轻人面临严峻的抉择。
• He gave a stark denial to the rumor.他对谣言加以完全的否认。

39 tormenting   

使痛苦的，使苦恼的

参考例句：

• He took too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly monster called Caliban. 他喜欢一味捉弄一个名叫凯列班的丑妖怪。
• The children were scolded for tormenting animals. 孩子们因折磨动物而受到责骂。

40 bastards   

私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙

参考例句：

• Those bastards don't care a damn about the welfare of the factory! 这批狗养的，不顾大局！ 来自子夜部分
• Let the first bastards to find out be the goddam Germans. 就让那些混账的德国佬去做最先发现的倒霉鬼吧。 来自演讲部分

41 communal   

adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的

参考例句：

• There was a communal toilet on the landing for the four flats.在楼梯平台上有一处公共卫生间供4套公寓使用。
• The toilets and other communal facilities were in a shocking state.厕所及其他公共设施的状况极其糟糕。

42 admiration   

n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕

参考例句：

• He was lost in admiration of the beauty of the scene.他对风景之美赞不绝口。
• We have a great admiration for the gold medalists.我们对金牌获得者极为敬佩。

43 conversational   

adj.对话的，会话的

参考例句：

• The article is written in a conversational style.该文是以对话的形式写成的。
• She values herself on her conversational powers.她常夸耀自己的能言善辩。

44 accomplishment   

n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能

参考例句：

• The series of paintings is quite an accomplishment.这一系列的绘画真是了不起的成就。
• Money will be crucial to the accomplishment of our objectives.要实现我们的目标，钱是至关重要的。

45 sincerity   

n.真诚，诚意；真实

参考例句：

• His sincerity added much more authority to the story.他的真诚更增加了故事的说服力。
• He tried hard to satisfy me of his sincerity.他竭力让我了解他的诚意。

46 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

47 disseminating   

散布，传播( disseminate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Our comrades in propaganda work have the task of disseminating Marxism. 我们作宣传工作的同志有一个宣传马克思主义的任务。
• Disseminating indecent photographs on the internet a distasteful act. 在因特网上发布不雅照片是卑劣的行径。

48 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

49 reek   

v.发出臭气；n.恶臭

参考例句：

• Where there's reek,there's heat.哪里有恶臭，哪里必发热。
• That reek is from the fox.那股恶臭是狐狸发出的。

50 lighting   

n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光

参考例句：

• The gas lamp gradually lost ground to electric lighting.煤气灯逐渐为电灯所代替。
• The lighting in that restaurant is soft and romantic.那个餐馆照明柔和而且浪漫。

51 garishness   

n.鲜艳夺目，炫耀

参考例句：

• Succinct line layout abandons excessive garishness. 简洁而洗练的一字造型摒弃过多的花哨，把一切都交由门板去演绎。 来自互联网

52 grumbling   

adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的

参考例句：

• She's always grumbling to me about how badly she's treated at work. 她总是向我抱怨她在工作中如何受亏待。
• We didn't hear any grumbling about the food. 我们没听到过对食物的抱怨。

53 lipstick   

n.口红，唇膏

参考例句：

• Taking out her lipstick,she began to paint her lips.她拿出口红，开始往嘴唇上抹。
• Lipstick and hair conditioner are cosmetics.口红和护发素都是化妆品。

54 seducing   

诱奸( seduce的现在分词 )； 勾引； 诱使堕落； 使入迷

参考例句：

• He got into trouble for seducing the daughter of a respectable tradesman. 他因为引诱一个有名望的商人的女儿而惹上了麻烦。
• Chao Hsin-mei, you scoundrel, you shameless wretch, seducing a married woman. 赵辛楣，你这混帐东西！无耻家伙！引诱有夫之妇。

55 gambling   

n.赌博；投机

参考例句：

• They have won a lot of money through gambling.他们赌博赢了很多钱。
• The men have been gambling away all night.那些人赌了整整一夜。

56 affluent   

adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的

参考例句：

• He hails from an affluent background.他出身于一个富有的家庭。
• His parents were very affluent.他的父母很富裕。

57 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

58 liking   

n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢

参考例句：

• The word palate also means taste or liking.Palate这个词也有“口味”或“嗜好”的意思。
• I must admit I have no liking for exaggeration.我必须承认我不喜欢夸大其词。

59 verge   

n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• She was on the verge of bursting into tears.她快要哭出来了。

60 agonizing   

adj.痛苦难忍的；使人苦恼的v.使极度痛苦；折磨(agonize的ing形式)

参考例句：

• I spent days agonizing over whether to take the job or not. 我用了好些天苦苦思考是否接受这个工作。
• his father's agonizing death 他父亲极度痛苦的死

61 mediocre   

adj.平常的，普通的

参考例句：

• The student tried hard,but his work is mediocre. 该生学习刻苦，但学业平庸。
• Only lazybones and mediocre persons could hanker after the days of messing together.只有懒汉庸才才会留恋那大锅饭的年代。

62 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

63 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

64 motif   

n.(图案的)基本花纹，(衣服的)花边；主题

参考例句：

• Alienation is a central motif in her novels.疏离感是她小说的一个重要的主题。
• The jacket has a rose motif on the collar.这件夹克衫领子上有一朵玫瑰花的图案。

65 painstaking   

adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的

参考例句：

• She is not very clever but she is painstaking.她并不很聪明，但肯下苦功夫。
• Through years of our painstaking efforts,we have at last achieved what we have today.大家经过多少年的努力，才取得今天的成绩。

66 warped   

adj.反常的；乖戾的；（变）弯曲的；变形的v.弄弯，变歪( warp的过去式和过去分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾，

参考例句：

• a warped sense of humour 畸形的幽默感
• The board has warped. 木板翘了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

67 logic   

n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性

参考例句：

• What sort of logic is that?这是什么逻辑？
• I don't follow the logic of your argument.我不明白你的论点逻辑性何在。

68 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

69 inane   

adj.空虚的，愚蠢的，空洞的

参考例句：

• She started asking me inane questions.她开始问我愚蠢的问题。
• Such comments are inane because they don't help us solve our problem.这种评论纯属空洞之词，不能帮助我们解决问题。

70 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。

71 ragged   

adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的

参考例句：

• A ragged shout went up from the small crowd.这一小群人发出了刺耳的喊叫。
• Ragged clothing infers poverty.破衣烂衫意味着贫穷。

72 obliterated   

v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭

参考例句：

• The building was completely obliterated by the bomb. 炸弹把那座建筑物彻底摧毁了。
• He began to drink, drank himself to intoxication, till he slept obliterated. 他一直喝，喝到他快要迷糊地睡着了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

73 translucent   

adj.半透明的；透明的

参考例句：

• The building is roofed entirely with translucent corrugated plastic.这座建筑完全用半透明瓦楞塑料封顶。
• A small difference between them will render the composite translucent.微小的差别,也会使复合材料变成半透明。

74 membrane   

n.薄膜，膜皮，羊皮纸

参考例句：

• A vibrating membrane in the ear helps to convey sounds to the brain.耳膜的振动帮助声音传送到大脑。
• A plastic membrane serves as selective diffusion barrier.一层塑料薄膜起着选择性渗透屏障的作用。

75 vomiting   

吐

参考例句：

• Symptoms include diarrhoea and vomiting. 症状有腹泻和呕吐。
• Especially when I feel seasick, I can't stand watching someone else vomiting." 尤其晕船的时候，看不得人家呕。”

76 instinctively   

adv.本能地

参考例句：

• As he leaned towards her she instinctively recoiled. 他向她靠近，她本能地往后缩。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He knew instinctively where he would find her. 他本能地知道在哪儿能找到她。 来自《简明英汉词典》

77 caress   

vt./n.爱抚，抚摸

参考例句：

• She gave the child a loving caress.她疼爱地抚摸着孩子。
• She feasted on the caress of the hot spring.她尽情享受着温泉的抚爱。

78 climax   

n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点

参考例句：

• The fifth scene was the climax of the play.第五场是全剧的高潮。
• His quarrel with his father brought matters to a climax.他与他父亲的争吵使得事态发展到了顶点。

79 tightened   

收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧

参考例句：

• The rope holding the boat suddenly tightened and broke. 系船的绳子突然绷断了。
• His index finger tightened on the trigger but then relaxed again. 他的食指扣住扳机，然后又松开了。

80 eliciting   

n. 诱发, 引出 动词elicit的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• He succeeded in eliciting the information he needed from her. 他从她那里问出了他所需要的信息。
• A criminal trial isn't a tribunal for eliciting the truth. 刑事审讯并非是一种要探明真相的审判。

81 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

82 ashtray   

n.烟灰缸

参考例句：

• He knocked out his pipe in the big glass ashtray.他在大玻璃烟灰缸里磕净烟斗。
• She threw the cigarette butt into the ashtray.她把烟头扔进烟灰缸。

83 memos   

n.备忘录( memo的名词复数 )；（美）内部通知

参考例句：

• Big shots get their dander up and memos start flying. 大人物们怒火中烧，备忘录四下乱飞。 来自辞典例句
• There was a pile of mail, memos and telephone messages on his desk. 他的办公桌上堆满着信件、备忘录和电话通知。 来自辞典例句

84 chilly   

adj.凉快的，寒冷的

参考例句：

• I feel chilly without a coat.我由于没有穿大衣而感到凉飕飕的。
• I grew chilly when the fire went out.炉火熄灭后，寒气逼人。

85 shutters   

百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门

参考例句：

• The shop-front is fitted with rolling shutters. 那商店的店门装有卷门。
• The shutters thumped the wall in the wind. 在风中百叶窗砰砰地碰在墙上。

86 detour   

n.绕行的路，迂回路；v.迂回，绕道

参考例句：

• We made a detour to avoid the heavy traffic.我们绕道走，避开繁忙的交通。
• He did not take the direct route to his home,but made a detour around the outskirts of the city.他没有直接回家，而是绕到市郊兜了个圈子。

87 cavern   

n.洞穴，大山洞

参考例句：

• The cavern walls echoed his cries.大山洞的四壁回响着他的喊声。
• It suddenly began to shower,and we took refuge in the cavern.天突然下起雨来，我们在一个山洞里避雨。

88 dismantle   

vt.拆开，拆卸；废除，取消

参考例句：

• He asked for immediate help from the United States to dismantle the warheads.他请求美国立即提供援助，拆除这批弹头。
• The mower firmly refused to mow,so I decided to dismantle it.修完后割草机还是纹丝不动，于是，我决定把它拆开。

89 sprawled   

v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着）

参考例句：

• He was sprawled full-length across the bed. 他手脚摊开横躺在床上。
• He was lying sprawled in an armchair, watching TV. 他四肢伸开正懒散地靠在扶手椅上看电视。

90 fumes   

n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体

参考例句：

• The health of our children is being endangered by exhaust fumes. 我们孩子们的健康正受到排放出的废气的损害。
• Exhaust fumes are bad for your health. 废气对健康有害。

91 growled   

v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说

参考例句：

• \"They ought to be birched, \" growled the old man. 老人咆哮道：“他们应受到鞭打。” 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He growled out an answer. 他低声威胁着回答。 来自《简明英汉词典》

92 unbearable   

adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的

参考例句：

• It is unbearable to be always on thorns.老是处于焦虑不安的情况中是受不了的。
• The more he thought of it the more unbearable it became.他越想越觉得无法忍受。

93 stew   

n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑

参考例句：

• The stew must be boiled up before serving.炖肉必须煮熟才能上桌。
• There's no need to get in a stew.没有必要烦恼。

94 jumbled   

adj.混乱的；杂乱的

参考例句：

• Books, shoes and clothes were jumbled together on the floor. 书、鞋子和衣服胡乱堆放在地板上。
• The details of the accident were all jumbled together in his mind. 他把事故细节记得颠三倒四。

95 sluice   

n.水闸

参考例句：

• We opened the sluice and the water poured in.我们打开闸门，水就涌了进来。
• They regulate the flow of water by the sluice gate.他们用水闸门控制水的流量。

96 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

97 crouched   

v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He crouched down beside her. 他在她的旁边蹲了下来。
• The lion crouched ready to pounce. 狮子蹲下身，准备猛扑。

98 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

99 rustled   

v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He rustled his papers. 他把试卷弄得沙沙地响。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Leaves rustled gently in the breeze. 树叶迎着微风沙沙作响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

100 interval   

n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息

参考例句：

• The interval between the two trees measures 40 feet.这两棵树的间隔是40英尺。
• There was a long interval before he anwsered the telephone.隔了好久他才回了电话。

101 hovering   

鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫

参考例句：

• The helicopter was hovering about 100 metres above the pad. 直升机在离发射台一百米的上空盘旋。
• I'm hovering between the concert and the play tonight. 我犹豫不决今晚是听音乐会还是看戏。

102 eyelids   

n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色

参考例句：

• She was so tired, her eyelids were beginning to droop. 她太疲倦了，眼睑开始往下垂。
• Her eyelids drooped as if she were on the verge of sleep. 她眼睑低垂好像快要睡着的样子。 来自《简明英汉词典》