I sat there drinking coffee alone and trying to remember where Uruguay was. Let's see, Brazil was over here, and Venezuela there, and Colombia somewhere over here, but I couldn't recall the location of Uruguay. A few minutes later Midori came down and urged me to hurry somewhere with her. I followed her to the end of the hall and climbed a steep, narrow stairway to a wooden deck with bamboo laundry poles. The deck was higher than most of the surrounding rooftops and gave a good view of the neighborhood. Huge clouds of black smoke shot up from a place three or four houses away and flowed with the breeze out towards the high street. A burning smell filled the air.
"It's Sakamoto's place," said Midori, leaning over the railing. "They used to make traditional door fittings and stuff. They went out of business some time ago, though."
I leaned over the railing with her and strained to see what was going on. A three-storey building blocked our view of the fire, but there seemed to be three or four fire engines over there working on the blaze. No more than two of them could squeeze into the narrow lane where the house was burning, the rest standing by on the high street. The usual crowd of gawkers filled the area.
"Hey, maybe you should gather your valuables together and get ready to evacuate this place," I said to Midori. "The wind's blowing the other way now, but it could change any time, and you've got a petrol station right there. I'll help you pack."
"What valuables?" said Midori.
"Well, you must have something you'd want to save - bankbooks, seals, legal papers, stuff like that. Emergency cash." "Forget it. I'm not running away."
"Even if this place burns?"
"You heard me. I don't mind dying."
I looked her in the eye, and she looked straight at me. I couldn't tell if she was serious or joking. We stayed like that for a while, and soon I stopped worrying.
"OK," I said. "I get it. I'll stay with you."
"You'll die with me?" Midori asked with shining eyes.
"No way," I said. "I'll run if it gets dangerous. If you want to die, you can do it alone."
"Cold-hearted bastard!"
"I'm not going to die with you just because you made lunch for me. Of course, if it had been dinner. .."
"Oh, well ... Anyway, let's stay here and watch for a while. We can sing songs. And if something bad happens, we can think about it then."
"Sing songs?"
Midori brought two floor pillows, four cans of beer and a guitar from downstairs. We drank and watched the black smoke rising. She strummed and sang. I asked her if she didn't think this might anger the neighbors. Drinking beer and singing while you watched a local fire from the laundry deck didn't seem like the most admirable behavior I could think of.
"Forget it," she said. "We never worry about what the neighbors might think."
She sang some of the folk songs she had played with her group. I would have been hard pressed to say she was good, but she did seem to enjoy her own music. She went through all the old standards - "Lemon Tree", "Puff (The Magic Dragon)", "Five Hundred Miles", "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore". At first she tried to get me to sing bass harmony, but I was so bad she gave up and sang alone to her heart's content. I worked on my beer and listened to her sing and kept an eye on the fire. It flared up and died down several times. People were yelling and giving orders. A newspaper helicopter clattered overhead, took photographs and flew away. I worried that we might be in the picture. A policeman screamed through a loudspeaker for bystanders to get back. A little kid was crying for his mother. Glass shattered somewhere. Before long the wind began shifting unpredictably, and white ash flakes fell out of the air around us, but Midori went on sipping and singing. After she had gone through most of the songs she knew, she sang an odd one that she said she had written herself:

I'd love to cook a stew for you,
But I have no pot.
I'd love to knit a scarf for you,
But I have no wool.
I'd love to write a poem for you,
But I have no pen.

"It's called "I Have Nothing'," Midori announced. It was a truly terrible song, both words and music. I listened to this musical mess thinking that the house would blow apart in the explosion if the petrol station caught fire. Tired of singing, Midori put down her guitar and slumped against my shoulder like a cat in the sun.
"How did you like my song?" she asked.
I answered cautiously, "It was unique and original and very expressive of your personality."
"Thanks," she said. "The theme is that I have nothing." "Yeah, I kind of thought so."

― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood