Rakuen

One special activity during my week of leave was to bring Euterpe visiting Vivian's parents.

We take it as a kind of Putonghua lesson (my in-laws are native mandarin speakers), and I am all too happy to have an hour or so retiring to the study while my daughter is enjoying the time with her grandparents.

Naturally I brought a book with me; it was Rakuen (樂園) of Miyabe Miyuki (宮部美幸).

The study was no more than 60 square feet; it used to be the bedroom of Vivian before we got married. After making myself comfort in the small armchair, I flipped through the pages under the afternoon sunshine from the window; all of a sudden a scene in the Norwegian Wood (挪威的森林) of Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) came to my mind:

After the father of Midori Kobayashi (小林綠) died, Toru Watanabe (渡邊徹) spent a night at her house. When Midori fell asleep, Toru tiptoed to her father's study and - just to kill time - he picked one book on the shelf by random and read.

It was Beneath the Wheel (車輪下) of Hermann Hesse.

PS. The last chapter of this little German novel was indeed remarkable:

The teachers sighed, "How could a brilliant student turn into a mess like this ?"

Pointing his hand to those teachers, the shoemaker at a corner told his friends, "They are the ones who made the mess."