📖 1Q84: Book 2. July–September by Haruki Murakami👁️ 35

Chapter 1. AOMAME: It Was the Most Boring Town in the World

ALTHOUGH THE RAINY season had not been declared officially over, the Tokyo sky was intensely blue and the midsummer sun beat down on the earth. With their newly thickened burden of green leaves, the willows once again cast dense, trembling shadows on the street.

Tamaru met Aomame at the front door, wearing a dark summer suit, white shirt, and solid-color tie. There was not a drop of sweat on him. Aomame always found it mysterious that such a big man did not sweat on even the hottest summer days.

He gave her a slight nod, and, after uttering a short greeting that she found barely audible, he said nothing further. Today there was none of their usual banter. He walked ahead of her down a long corridor and did not look back, instead guiding her to where the dowager waited. Aomame guessed that he was in no mood for small talk. Maybe the death of the dog was still bothering him. “We need a new guard dog,” he had said on the phone, as if commenting on the weather, though Aomame knew this was no indication of how he actually felt. The female German shepherd had been important to him: they had been close for many years. He had taken her sudden, baffling death as both a personal insult and a challenge. As she looked at silent Tamaru’s back, as broad as a classroom blackboard, Aomame could imagine the quiet anger he was feeling.

Tamaru opened the living-room door to let Aomame in, and stood in the doorway awaiting instructions from the dowager.

“We won’t be needing anything to drink now,” she said.

Tamaru gave her a silent nod and quietly closed the door, leaving the two women alone. A round goldfish bowl, with two goldfish inside, had been placed on the table beside the armchair in which the dowager was sitting – an utterly ordinary goldfish bowl with utterly ordinary goldfish and the requisite green strip of seaweed. Aomame had been in this large, handsome living room any number of times, but had never seen the goldfish before. She felt an occasional puff of cool air against her skin and guessed that the air conditioner must be running on low. On a table behind the dowager stood a vase containing three white lilies. The flowers were large and fleshy white, like little animals from an alien land that were deep in meditation.

The dowager waved Aomame over to the sofa beside her. White lace curtains covered the windows facing the garden, but still the summer afternoon sun was strong. In its light the dowager looked tired, which was unusual for her. Slumped in the big chair, she rested her chin on her hand, eyes sunken, neck more wrinkled than before, lips drained of color. The outer tips of her long eyebrows had dropped a notch, as if they had given up the struggle against gravity. Perhaps the efficiency of her circulatory system had declined: her skin appeared to have white, powdery blotches. She had aged at least five or six years since their last meeting. And today, for a change, it didn’t seem to bother her to show such obvious fatigue. This was not normal for her. As far as Aomame had observed, the dowager always tried – with much success – to keep her appearance smart, her inner strength fully mobilized, her posture perfectly erect, her expression focused, and all signs of aging hidden.

Aomame noticed that many things in the house were different today. Even the light had taken on a different color. And the bowl of goldfish, such a common object, did not fit in with the elegant high-ceilinged room full of antique furniture.

The dowager remained silent for a time, chin in hand, staring into the space adjacent to Aomame, where, Aomame knew, there was nothing

special to be seen. The dowager simply needed a spot where she could temporarily park her vision.

“Do you need something to drink?” the dowager asked softly. “No, thanks, I’m not thirsty,” Aomame answered.

“There’s iced tea over there. Pour yourself a glass if you like.”

The dowager pointed toward a side table set next to the door. On it was a pitcher of tea containing ice and lemon slices, and, next to that, three cut-glass tumblers of different colors.

“Thank you,” Aomame said, remaining seated and waiting for the dowager’s next words.

For a time, however, the dowager maintained her silence. She had something she needed to talk to Aomame about, but if she actually put it into words, the facts contained in the “something” might irretrievably become more definite as facts, so she wanted to postpone that moment, if only briefly. Such was the apparent significance of her silence. She glanced at the goldfish bowl next to her chair. Then, as if resigning herself to the inevitable, she finally focused her gaze directly on Aomame. Her lips were clenched in a straight line, the ends of which she had deliberately turned up. “You heard from Tamaru that the safe house guard dog died, didn’t you – in that inexplicable way?” “Yes, I did.”

“After that, Tsubasa disappeared.” Aomame frowned slightly. “Disappeared?”

“She just vanished. Probably during the night. This morning she was gone.”

Aomame pursed her lips, searching for something she could say, but the words did not come to her immediately. “But … from what you told me last time … I thought Tsubasa always had somebody nearby when she slept

… in the same room … as a precaution.”

“Yes, that is true, but the woman fell into an unusually deep sleep and was totally unaware that Tsubasa had left. When the sun came up, there was no sign of Tsubasa in the bed.”

“So the German shepherd died, and the next day Tsubasa disappeared,” Aomame said, as if to verify the accuracy of her understanding.

The dowager nodded. “So far, we don’t know for sure if the two events are related, but I think that they are.”

Aomame glanced at the goldfish bowl on the table for no particular reason. The dowager followed Aomame’s glance. The two goldfish swam coolly back and forth in their glass pond, barely moving their fins. The summer sunlight refracted strangely in the bowl, creating the illusion that one was peering into a mysterious ocean cave.

“I bought these goldfish for Tsubasa,” the dowager said by way of explanation, looking at Aomame. “There was a little festival at one of the Azabu shopping streets, so I took her for a walk there. I thought it wasn’t healthy for her to be locked up in her room all the time. Tamaru came with us, of course. I bought her the fish at one of the stands. She seemed fascinated by them. She put them in her room and spent the rest of the day staring at them. When we realized she was gone, I brought them here. Now I’m spending a lot of time watching the fish. Just staring at them, doing nothing. Strangely enough, you really don’t get tired of watching them. I’ve never done this before – stared at goldfish so intently.”

“Do you have any idea where Tsubasa might have gone?” Aomame asked.

“None whatsoever,” the dowager answered. “She doesn’t have any relatives. As far as I know, the child has nowhere to go in this world.” “What is the chance that someone took her away by force?”

The dowager gave a nervous little shake of the head, as if she were chasing away an invisible fly. “No, she just left. No one came and forced her to go. If that had happened, it would have awakened someone around her. Those women are all light sleepers. No, I’m sure she made up her mind and left on her own. She tiptoed downstairs, quietly unlocked the front door, and went out. I can see it happening. She didn’t make the dog bark – it had died the night before. She didn’t even change her clothes. The next day’s clothing was all nicely folded nearby, but she went out in her pajamas. I don’t think she has any money, either.”

Aomame’s grimace deepened. “All by herself – in pajamas?”

The dowager nodded. “Yes, where could a ten-year-old girl – all alone, in pajamas, with no money – possibly go in the middle of the night? It’s inconceivable, using ordinary common sense. But for some reason, I don’t find it all that strange. Far from it. I even get the feeling that it was something that had to happen. We’re not even looking for her. I’m not doing anything, just watching the goldfish like this.”

She glanced toward the goldfish bowl as she spoke. Then she turned back toward Aomame.

“I know that it would be pointless to search for her. She has gone somewhere out of our reach.”

The dowager stopped resting her chin on her hand and, with her hands on her knees, she slowly released a breath that she had held inside for a very long time.

“But why would she have done such a thing?” Aomame asked. “Why would she have left the safe house? She was protected as long as she stayed, and she had nowhere else to go.”

“I don’t know why. But I feel that the dog’s death was the trigger. She loved the dog, and the dog loved her. They were like best friends. The fact that the dog died – and died in such a bloody, incomprehensible way – was a great shock to her. Of course. It was a shock to everyone in the house. Now that I think of it, however, the killing of the dog might have been a kind of message to Tsubasa.”

“A message?”

“That she should not stay here. That they knew she was hiding here. That she had to leave. That even worse things might happen to the people around her if she didn’t go.”

The dowager’s fingers ticked off an imaginary interval on her lap.

Aomame waited for the rest of what the dowager had to say.

“She probably understood the message and left on her own. I’m sure she didn’t leave because she wanted to. She had to go, even knowing that she had no place to go. I can hardly stand the thought – that a ten-year-old girl was forced to make such a decision.”

Aomame wanted to reach out and hold the dowager’s hand, but she stopped herself. There was still more to tell.

The dowager continued, “It was a great shock to me, of course. I feel as if a part of me has been physically torn out. I was planning to formally adopt her, as you know. I knew that things would not work out so easily, but even recognizing all the difficulties involved, it was something I wanted to do. I was in no position to complain to anyone if it did not work out, but, to tell you the truth, at my age, these things take an enormous toll.”

Aomame said, “But Tsubasa might suddenly come back one day soon. She has no money, and there’s no place she can go …”

“I’d like to think you’re right, but that is not going to happen,” the dowager said, her voice completely flat. “She’s only ten years old, but she has ideas of her own. She made up her mind and left. I doubt she would ever decide to come back.”

“Excuse me a moment,” Aomame said, walking over to the table by the door, where she poured herself some iced tea into a green cut-glass tumbler. She was not particularly thirsty, but she wanted to introduce a pause into the conversation by leaving her seat. She then returned to the sofa, took a sip of tea, and set the tumbler down on the glass tabletop.

The dowager waited for Aomame to settle onto the sofa again and said, “That’s enough about Tsubasa for now,” stretching her neck and clasping her hands together to give herself an emotional pause. “Let’s talk about Sakigake and its Leader. I’ll tell you what we have been able to find out. This is the main reason I called you here today. Of course, it also has to do with Tsubasa.”

Aomame nodded. She had been expecting this.

“As I told you last time, we absolutely must ‘take care of’ this Leader. We must transport him into another world. You know, of course, that he is in the habit of raping preteen girls, none of whom have had their first period. He makes up ‘doctrine’ and exploits the religion’s system to justify such actions. I have had this researched in as much detail as possible and paid quite a bit of money for the information. It wasn’t easy. The cost far exceeded my expectations, but we succeeded in identifying four girls he is likely to have raped. Tsubasa was the fourth.”

Aomame lifted her glass and took a sip of iced tea, tasting nothing, as if her mouth were stuffed with cotton that absorbed all flavor.

“We still don’t know all the details, but at least two of the girls are still living in the religion’s compound,” the dowager said. “We’re told they serve Leader as his own personal shrine maidens. They never appear before the ordinary believers. We don’t know if they stay there of their own free will or are simply unable to run away. We also don’t know if there is still a sexual relationship between them and Leader. In any case, they all live in the same place, like a family. The area of Leader’s residence is strictly off- limits to ordinary believers. Many things are still shrouded in mystery.”

The cut-glass tumbler was beginning to sweat on the tabletop. The dowager paused to catch her breath and then continued.

“We do know one thing for certain. The first of the four victims is Leader’s own daughter.”

Aomame frowned. Her facial muscles began to move involuntarily, becoming greatly distorted. She wanted to say something, but her voice would not form the words.

“It’s true,” the dowager said. “They think that the first girl he violated was his own daughter. It happened seven years ago, when she was ten.”

The dowager lifted the intercom and told Tamaru to bring them a bottle of sherry and two glasses. They fell silent while they waited for him, each woman putting her thoughts in order. Tamaru came in, carrying a tray with a new bottle of sherry and two slim, elegant crystal glasses. After lining up everything on the table, he twisted open the bottle with a sharp, precise movement, as if wringing a chicken’s neck. The sherry gurgled as he poured it. The dowager nodded, and Tamaru bowed and left the room, saying nothing, as usual. Not even his steps made a sound.

The dog is not the only thing that’s bothering him, Aomame thought. The girl’s disappearance is another deep wound for him. She was so important to the dowager, and yet she vanished before his very eyes! Strictly speaking, the girl was not his responsibility. He was not a live-in bodyguard; he slept in his own home at night, a ten-minute walk away, unless some special task kept him at the dowager’s. Both the dog’s death and the girl’s disappearance had happened at night, when he was absent. He could have prevented neither. His job was to protect the dowager and her Willow House. His duties did not extend to security for the safe house, which lay outside the compound. Even so, the events were a personal defeat for Tamaru, an unforgivable slight.

“Are you prepared to take care of that man?” the dowager asked Aomame.

“Fully prepared,” Aomame assured her.

“It’s not going to be easy,” the dowager said. “Of course, none of the work I ask you to do is easy. But this is especially difficult. We’ll do everything we can to set it up, but I’m not sure of the extent to which we can guarantee your safety. It will probably involve a greater risk than usual.”

“I understand.”

“As I have told you before, I would rather not send you into dangerous situations, but to be honest, our choices are limited this time.”

“I don’t mind,” Aomame said. “We can’t leave that man alive in this world.”

The dowager lifted her glass and let some of her sherry glide over her tongue. Then she watched the goldfish again for a while.

“I’ve always enjoyed sherry at room temperature on a summer afternoon. I’m not fond of cold drinks on hot days. I’ll take a drink of sherry and, a little later, lie down for a nap, and fall asleep before I know it. When I wake up, some of the day’s heat is gone. I hope I can die that way – drink a little sherry on a summer afternoon, stretch out on a sofa, drop off to sleep, and never wake up.”

Aomame also lifted her sherry glass and took a small sip. She was not fond of sherry, but she definitely needed a drink. This time the taste got through to her, unlike the iced tea. The alcohol stabbed at her tongue.

“I want you to tell me the truth,” the dowager said. “Are you afraid to die?”

Aomame needed no time at all to answer. Shaking her head, she said, “Not particularly – living as myself scares me more.”

The dowager gave a fleeting smile that seemed to revive her a little. Her lips now had a touch of color. Maybe speaking with Aomame had helped, or perhaps the sip of sherry was having its effect.

“I believe you said there is a particular man you are in love with.” “Yes, it’s true, but the chances of my actually being with him are

infinitely close to zero. So even if I were to die, the resulting loss would also be infinitely close to zero.”

The dowager narrowed her eyes. “Is there a concrete reason that you think you probably will never be united with him?”

“Not in particular,” Aomame said. “Other than the fact that I am me.”

him?”

“Don’t you have any intention of taking the initiative to approach Aomame shook her head. “The most important thing to me is the fact that I want him with my whole heart.”

The dowager kept her eyes fixed on Aomame for a while in apparent admiration. “You are very clear about your own ideas, aren’t you?” she said.

“I had to be that way,” Aomame said, going through the motions of bringing the sherry glass to her lips. “It was not a matter of choice.”

Silence filled the room for a short while. The lilies continued hanging their heads, and the goldfish continued swimming in the refracted summer sunlight.

“We can set things up so that you are alone with Leader,” the dowager said. “It won’t be easy, and it will take a good deal of time, but I can make it happen. All you have to do is what you always do for us. Except this time, you’ll have to disappear afterward. Have plastic surgery. Quit your current job, of course, and go far away. Change your name. Get rid of all your possessions. Become another person. Of course you will be compensated with a suitable payment. I will be responsible for everything else. Is this all right with you?”

Aomame said, “As I said before, I don’t have anything to lose. My work, my name, this life of mine in Tokyo: none of them mean anything to me. I have no objections at all.”

“And your face? You don’t mind if it changes?” “Would it change for the better?”

“If you wanted, of course we could do that,” the dowager replied with a somber expression. “We can make a face according to your wishes – within limits, of course.”

“As long as we’re at it, I might as well have them do a breast enlargement.”

The dowager nodded. “That may be a good idea – for disguise purposes, I mean, of course.”

“I’m just kidding,” Aomame said, softening her expression. “I’m not exactly proud of them, but I don’t mind leaving them just the way they are. They’re light and easy to carry. And it would be such a pain to buy all new bras.”

“That’s nothing. I’d buy you as many as you liked.” “No, I’m kidding about that, too,” Aomame said.

The dowager cracked a smile. “Sorry, I’m not used to hearing jokes from you.”

“I don’t have any objection to plastic surgery,” Aomame said. “I’ve never felt I wanted to have it, but I don’t have any reason to refuse it, either.

I’ve never really liked my face, and I don’t have anybody who likes it especially, either.”

“You’ll lose all your friends, too, you know.”

“I don’t have any ‘friends,’” Aomame said, but then Ayumi came to mind. If I were to just disappear without saying anything to her, she might be sad. She might even feel betrayed. But there had been a problem with calling her a “friend” right from the start. Aomame was traveling too dangerous a road to make friends with a police officer.

“I had two children,” the dowager said. “A boy and a girl. She was three years younger than he. As I told you before, she died – she committed suicide. She had no children. My son and I have had our troubles and have not gotten along well for a very long time. I hardly ever talk to him now. I have three grandchildren, but I haven’t seen them for a long time, either. When I die, though, most of my estate will go to my only son and his children, almost automatically. Wills don’t carry much force these days, unlike the way it used to be. For now, though, my discretionary funds are quite considerable. I’d like to leave a lot of that money to you, if you succeed in this new task. Please don’t misunderstand, though: I’m not trying to buy you off. All I want to say is that I think of you as my own daughter. I wish you were my actual daughter.”

Aomame gazed quietly at the dowager, who set her sherry glass on the table as if suddenly recalling that she was holding it. She then turned to look at the glossy petals of the lilies behind her. Inhaling their rich fragrance, she looked once again at Aomame.

“As I said before, I was planning to adopt Tsubasa, but now I’ve lost her, too. I couldn’t help her. I did nothing but stand by and watch her disappear alone into the dark of night. And now, I’m getting ready to send you into far greater danger than ever before. I don’t really want to do that, but unfortunately, I can’t think of any other way to accomplish our goal. All I can do is offer you tangible compensation.”

Aomame listened attentively without comment. When the dowager fell silent, the chirping of a bird came clearly through the windowpane. It continued for a while, until the bird flew off somewhere.

“That man must be ‘taken care of,’ no matter what,” Aomame said. “That is the most important thing now. I have nothing but the deepest gratitude for the way you feel about me. I think you know that I rejected my parents and they abandoned me when I was a child; we both had our

reasons. I had no choice but to take a path without anything like family affection. In order to survive on my own, I had to adapt myself to such a frame of mind. It wasn’t easy. I often felt that I was nothing but scum – some kind of meaningless, filthy residue – which is why I am so grateful to you for what you just said to me. But it’s a bit too late for me to change my attitude or lifestyle. This is not true of Tsubasa, however. I’m sure she can still be saved. Please don’t resign yourself to losing her so easily. Don’t lose hope. Get her back!”

The dowager nodded. “I’m afraid I didn’t put it very well. I am of course not resigned to losing her. I will do everything in my power to bring her back. But as you can see, I’m too tired right now. My failure to help her has filled me with a deep sense of powerlessness. I need a little time to get my energy back. On the other hand, I may just be too old. The energy might never come back, no matter how long I wait.”

Aomame got up from the sofa and went over to the dowager. Sitting on the arm of her armchair, she grasped the woman’s slim, elegant hand.

“You’re an incredibly tough woman,” Aomame said. “You can go on living with more strength than anybody. You just happen to be exhausted. You ought to lie down and get some rest. When you wake up, you’ll be your old self, I’m sure.”

“Thank you,” the dowager said, squeezing Aomame’s hand in return. “You’re right: I should probably get some sleep.”

“I’ll be leaving, then,” Aomame said. “I will be waiting to hear from you. I’ll put my things in order – not that I own so many ‘things’ to put in order.”

“Prepare yourself to travel light. If there’s anything you need, we’ll take care of it.”

Aomame released the dowager’s hand and stood up. “Good night.

I’m sure everything is going to go well.”

The dowager nodded. Still cradled in her chair, she closed her eyes. Aomame took one last glance at the goldfish bowl and one last whiff of the lilies before she left the high-ceilinged living room.

Tamaru was waiting for her at the front door. Five o’clock had come, but the sun was still high in the sky, its intensity undiminished. The glare of its light reflected off Tamaru’s black cordovan shoes, which were perfectly

polished as usual. A few white summer clouds appeared in the sky, but they gathered at its corners, where they could not block the sun. The end of the rainy season was not yet near, but there had been several days in a row of midsummer-like weather, complete with the cries of cicadas, which now sounded from the garden’s trees. The cries were not very strong. If anything, they seemed somewhat restrained. But they were a positive sign of the season to come. The world was still working as it always did. The cicadas cried, the clouds moved along, Tamaru’s shoes were spotless. But all of this seemed fresh and new to Aomame: that the world should continue along as usual.

Aomame asked Tamaru, “Can we talk a little? Do you have time?” “Fine,” Tamaru said. His expression did not change. “I have time.

Killing time is part of what I do for a living.” He lowered himself into one of the garden chairs by the front door. Aomame sat in the chair next to his. The overhanging eaves blocked the sunlight. The two of them sat in their cool shadow. There was the smell of fresh grass.

“Summer’s here already,” Tamaru said.

“The cicadas have started crying,” Aomame replied.

“They seem a little early this year. This area’s going to get very noisy again for a while. That piercing cry hurts your ears. I heard exactly the same sound when I stayed in the town of Niagara Falls. It just kept going from morning to night without a letup, like a million cicadas.”

“So you’ve been to Niagara Falls.”

Tamaru nodded. “It was the most boring town in the world. I stayed there alone for three days and there was nothing to do but listen to the sound of the falls. It was too noisy to read.”

“What were you doing alone in Niagara Falls for three days?” Instead of answering, Tamaru just shook his head.

Tamaru and Aomame went on listening to the faint cries of the cicadas, saying nothing.

“I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” Aomame said.

This seemed to pique Tamaru’s interest. Aomame was not in the habit of asking people for favors.

She said, “It’s kind of unusual. I hope it doesn’t annoy you.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to accommodate you, but I’ll be glad at least to listen. It’s not polite to be annoyed when a lady asks a favor.”

“I need a gun,” Aomame said flatly. “One that would fit in a handbag. Something with a small recoil but still fairly powerful and dependable. Not a modified fake or one of those Filipino copies. I’ll only need to use it once. And one bullet should be enough.”

Silence. Tamaru kept his eyes on Aomame the whole time, unwavering.

Then, speaking slowly and carefully, Tamaru said, “You do know that it is illegal in this country for an ordinary citizen to own a handgun, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“And just so you know, let me say this,” Tamaru continued. “I have never once been charged with a crime. That is to say, I have no police record. Now, this may be owing to some oversights on the part of the justice system, I don’t deny that. But at least as far as the written record is concerned, I’m a good citizen. Honest, upright, pure. I’m gay, but that’s not against the law. I pay my taxes as ordered, and I vote in elections – though no candidate I voted for was ever elected. I’ve even paid all my parking tickets before the due date. I haven’t been stopped for speeding in the past ten years. I’m enrolled in the National Health Insurance system. I pay my NHK licensing fee automatically from my bank account, and I carry both an American Express card and a MasterCard. Although I have no intention of doing so now, I could qualify for a thirty-year mortgage if I wanted one, and it always pleases me immensely to think that I am in such a position. In other words, I could be called a pillar of society without the least bit of irony. Do you realize that you are asking such a person to provide you with a gun?”

“Which is why I said I hoped you wouldn’t be annoyed.” “Yes, I heard you say that.”

“Sorry, but I couldn’t think of anyone besides you I could ask.”

Tamaru made a small, strangled sound in the back of his throat that could well have been the suppression of a sigh. “Now, just supposing that I were in a position to provide you with what you are asking for, common sense tells me that I would probably want to ask you this: Whom do you intend to shoot?”

Aomame pointed her index finger toward her own temple. “Right here, probably.”

Tamaru stared at the finger expressionlessly for a moment. “My next question would probably be, ‘Why?’”

“Because I don’t want to be captured,” Aomame said. “I’m not afraid to die. And although I probably wouldn’t like it, I could tolerate going to prison. But I refuse to be held hostage and tortured by some unknown bunch of people. I just don’t want to give away anybody’s name. Do you see what I am saying?”

“I think I do.”

“I don’t plan to shoot anybody or to rob a bank. So I don’t need some big, twenty-shot semiautomatic. I want something compact without much kick.”

“A drug would be another option. It’s more practical than trying to get ahold of a gun.”

“Taking out a drug and swallowing it would take time. Before I could crush a capsule in my teeth, somebody might stick a hand in my mouth and stop me. With a gun, I could hold the other person off while I took care of things.”

Tamaru thought about this for a moment, his right eyebrow slightly

raised.

“I’d rather not lose you, if I can help it,” he said. “I kind of like you.

Personally, that is.”

Aomame gave him a little smile. “For a human female, you mean?” Without changing his expression, Tamaru said, “Male, female,

human, dog – I don’t have that many individuals I’m fond of.” “No, of course not,” Aomame said.

“At the same time, my single most important duty is protecting Madame’s health and safety. And I’m – what should I say? – kind of a pro.”

“That goes without saying.”

“So let me see what I can do. I can’t guarantee anything, but I might be able to find somebody I know who can respond to your request. This is a very delicate business, though. It’s not like buying an electric blanket by mail order. It might take a week before I can get back to you.”

“That would be fine,” Aomame said.

Tamaru squinted up at the trees where the cicadas were buzzing. “I hope everything goes well. I’ll do whatever I can, within reason.”

“Thanks, Tamaru. This next job will probably be my last. I might never see you again.”

Tamaru spread his arms, palms up, as if he were standing in a desert, waiting for the rain to fall, but he said nothing. He had big, fleshy palms marked with scars. His hands looked more like parts of a giant machine than of a human body.

“I don’t like good-byes,” Tamaru said. “I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye to my parents.”

“Are they dead?”

“I don’t know whether they’re alive or dead. I was born on Sakhalin Island the year before the war ended. The south end of Sakhalin was a Japanese territory called Karafuto, but the Soviets occupied it, and my parents were taken prisoner. My father apparently had some kind of job with the harbor facilities. Most of the Japanese civilian prisoners were returned to Japan soon enough, but my parents couldn’t go to Japan because they were Koreans who had been sent to Sakhalin as laborers. The Japanese government refused to take them. Once Japan lost the war, Koreans were no longer subjects of the empire of Japan. It was terrible. The government didn’t have a shred of sympathy for them. They could have gone to North Korea if they wanted to, but not to the South, because the Soviet Union at the time didn’t recognize the existence of South Korea. My parents came from a fishing village near Pusan and had no desire to go to the North. They had no relatives or friends up there. I was still a baby. They put me in the hands of a couple being repatriated to Japan, and those people took me across the straits to Hokkaido. The food situation in Sakhalin at the time was horrendous, and the Soviet army’s treatment of their prisoners was terrible. My parents had other small children and must have figured it would be hard to bring me up there. They probably figured they would send me over to Hokkaido first and join me later. Or maybe it was just an excuse to get rid of me. I don’t know the details. In any case, we were never reunited. They’re probably still in Sakhalin to this day – assuming they haven’t died yet.”

“You don’t remember them?”

“Not a thing. I was just a little over a year old when we separated. The couple kept me for a while and then sent me to a facility for orphans in the mountains near Hakodate, way down near the southern tip of Hokkaido, about as far as you could go from Sakhalin and still be on Hokkaido. They probably couldn’t afford to keep me. Some Catholic organization ran the orphanage, which was a very tough place. There were tons of orphans after

the war, and not enough food or heat for them all. I had to do all kinds of things to survive.” Tamaru glanced down at the back of his right hand. “So an adoption was arranged for form’s sake, I became a Japanese citizen, and got a Japanese name: Ken’ichi Tamaru. All I know about my original name is the surname: Park – and there are as many Koreans named ‘Park’ as there are stars in the sky.”

Sitting side by side with Tamaru, Aomame listened to the cries of the cicadas.

“You should get another dog,” Aomame said.

“Madame says so too. The safe house needs another guard dog, at least. But I just don’t feel like it yet.”

“I understand. But you should get one. Not that I’m in any position to be advising people.”

“I will,” Tamaru said. “We do need a trained guard dog, in the end.

I’ll get in touch with a breeder right away.”

Aomame looked at her watch and stood up. There was still some time left until sunset, but already a hint of evening marked the sky – a different blue mixed in with the blue of the afternoon. She could feel some of the lingering effects of the sherry. Could the dowager still be sleeping?

“According to Chekhov,” Tamaru said, rising from his chair, “once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired.”

“Meaning what?”

Tamaru stood facing Aomame directly. He was only an inch or two taller than she was. “Meaning, don’t bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away with all useless ornamentation.”

Aomame straightened the sleeves of her dress and slung her bag over her shoulder. “And that worries you – if a pistol comes on the scene, it’s sure to be fired at some point.”

“In Chekhov’s view, yes.”

“So you’re thinking you’d rather not hand me a pistol.”

“They’re dangerous. And illegal. And Chekhov is a writer you can

trust.”

“But this is not a story. We’re talking about the real world.”

Tamaru narrowed his eyes and looked hard at Aomame. Then,

slowly opening his mouth, he said, “Who knows?”

Chapter 2. TENGO: I Don’t Have a Thing Except My Soul

HE SET HIS recording of Janáček’s Sinfonietta on the turntable and pressed the “auto-play” button. Seiji Ozawa conducting the Chicago Symphony. The turntable started to spin at 33⅓ RPM, the tonearm moved over the edge of the record, and the needle traced the groove. Following the brass introduction, the ornate timpani resounded from the speakers. It was the section that Tengo liked best.

While listening to the music, Tengo faced the screen of his word processor and typed in characters. It was a daily habit of his to listen to Janáček’s Sinfonietta early in the morning. The piece had retained a special significance for him ever since he performed it as an impromptu high school percussionist. It gave him a sense of personal encouragement and protection – or at least he felt that it did.

He sometimes listened to Janáček’s Sinfonietta with his older girlfriend. “Not bad,” she would say, but she liked old jazz records more than classical – the older the better. It was an odd taste for a woman her age. Her favorite record was a collection of W. C. Handy blues songs, performed by the young Louis Armstrong, with Barney Bigard on clarinet and

Trummy Young on trombone. She gave Tengo a copy, though less for him than for herself to listen to.

After sex, they would often lie in bed listening to the record. She never tired of it. “Armstrong’s trumpet and singing are absolutely wonderful, of course, but if you ask me, the thing you should concentrate on is Barney Bigard’s clarinet,” she would say. Yet the actual number of Bigard solos on the record was small, and they tended to be limited to a single chorus. Louis Armstrong was the star of this record. But she obviously loved those few Bigard solos, the way she would quietly hum along with every memorized note.

She said she supposed there might be more talented jazz clarinetists than Barney Bigard, but you couldn’t find another one who could play with such warmth and delicacy. His best performances always gave rise to a particular mental image. Tengo could not, off the top of his head, name any other jazz clarinetists, but as he listened to this record over and over, he began to appreciate the sheer, unforced beauty of its clarinet performances – their richly nourishing and imaginative qualities. He had to listen closely and repeatedly for this to happen, and he had to have a capable guide. He would have missed the nuances on his own.

His girlfriend once said, “Barney Bigard plays beautifully, like a gifted second baseman. His solos are marvelous, but where he really shines is in the backup he gives the other musicians. That is so hard, but he does it like it’s nothing at all. Only an attentive listener can fully appreciate his true worth.”

Whenever the sixth tune on the flip side of the LP, “Atlanta Blues,” began, she would grab one of Tengo’s body parts and praise Bigard’s concise, exquisite solo, which was sandwiched between Armstrong’s song and his trumpet solo. “Listen to that! Amazing – that first, long wail like a little child’s cry! What is it – surprise? Overflowing joy? An appeal for happiness? It turns into a joyful sigh and weaves its way through a beautiful river of sound until it’s smoothly absorbed into some perfect, unknowable place. There! Listen! Nobody else can play such thrilling solos. Jimmy Noone, Sidney Bechet, Pee Wee Russell, Benny Goodman: they’re all great clarinetists, but none of them can create such perfectly sculptured works of art.”

“How come you know so much about old-time jazz?” Tengo once

asked.

“I have lots of past lives that you don’t know anything about – past lives that no one can change in any way,” she said, gently massaging Tengo’s scrotum with the palm of her hand.

When he was finished writing for the morning, Tengo walked to the station and bought a paper at the newsstand. This he carried into a nearby café, where he ordered a “morning set” of buttered toast and a hard-boiled egg. He drank coffee and opened the paper while waiting for his food to come. As Komatsu had predicted, there was an article about Fuka-Eri on the human interest page. Not very large, the article appeared above an ad for Mitsubishi automobiles, under the headline “Popular High School Girl Writer Runaway?”

Fuka-Eri (penname of Eriko Fukada, 17), author of the current bestseller Air Chrysalis, has been listed as missing, it was revealed yesterday afternoon. According to her guardian, cultural anthropologist Takayuki Ebisuno (63), who filed the search request with the Oume police station, Eriko has failed to return either to her home in Oume City or to her Tokyo apartment since the night of June 27, and there has been no word from her since then. In response to this newspaper’s telephone inquiry, Mr. Ebisuno said that Eriko was in her usual good spirits when he last saw her, that he could think of no reason she would want to go into hiding, that she had never once failed to come home without permission, and that he is worried something might have happened to her. The editor in charge of Air Chrysalis at the ** publishing company, Yuji Komatsu, said, “The book has been at the top of the bestseller list for six straight weeks and has garnered a great deal of attention, but Miss Fukada herself has not wanted to make public appearances. We at the company have been unable to determine whether her current disappearance might have something to do with her attitude toward such matters. While young, Miss Fukada is an author with abundant talent from whom much can be expected in the future. We hope that she reappears in good health as soon as possible.” The police investigation is proceeding with several possible leads in view.

That was probably about as much as the newspapers could say at this stage, Tengo concluded. If they gave it a more sensational treatment and

Fuka-Eri showed up at home two days later as if nothing had happened, the reporter who wrote the article would be embarrassed and the newspaper itself would lose face. The same was true for the police. Both issued brief, neutral statements like weather balloons to see what would happen. The story would turn big once the weekly magazines got ahold of it and the TV news shows turned up the volume. That would not happen for a few more days.

Sooner or later, though, things would heat up, that was for certain. A sensation was inevitable. There were probably only four people in the world who knew that she had not been abducted but was lying low somewhere, alone. Fuka-Eri herself knew it, of course, and Tengo knew it. Professor Ebisuno and his daughter Azami also knew it. No one else knew that the fuss over her disappearance was a hoax meant to attract broad attention.

Tengo could not decide whether his knowledge of the truth was something he should be pleased or upset about. Pleased, probably: at least he didn’t have to worry about Fuka-Eri’s welfare. She was in a safe place. At the same time it was also clear that Tengo was complicit in this complicated plot. Professor Ebisuno was using it as a lever, in order to pry up an ominous boulder and let the sunlight in. Then he would wait to see what crawled out from under the rock, and Tengo was being forced to stand right next to him. Tengo did not want to know what would crawl out from under the rock. He would prefer not to see it. It was bound to be a huge source of trouble. But he sensed he would have no choice but to look.

After he had drunk his coffee and eaten his toast and eggs, Tengo exited the café, leaving his rumpled newspaper behind. He went back to his apartment, brushed his teeth, showered, and prepared to leave for school.

During the noon break at the cram school, Tengo had a strange visitor. He had just finished his morning class and was reading a few of the day’s newspapers in the teachers’ lounge when the school director’s secretary approached him and said there was someone who wanted to see him. The secretary was a capable woman one year older than Tengo who, in spite of her title, handled virtually all of the school’s administrative business. Her facial features were a bit too irregular for her to be considered beautiful, but she had a nice figure and marvelous taste in clothes.

“He says his name is Mr. Ushikawa.”

Tengo did not recognize the name.

For some reason, a slight frown crossed her face. “He says he has ‘something important’ to discuss with you and wants to see you alone if possible.”

“Something important?” Tengo asked, taken aback. No one ever

brought him “something important” to discuss at the cram school.

“The reception room was empty, so I showed him in there. Teachers aren’t supposed to use that room without permission, but I figured …”

“Thanks very much,” Tengo said, and gave her his best smile.

Unimpressed, she hurried off somewhere, the hem of her new agnes

b. summer jacket flapping in the breeze.

Ushikawa was a short man, probably in his mid-forties. His trunk had already filled out so that it had lost all sign of a waist, and excess flesh was gathering at his throat. But Tengo could not be sure of his age. Owing to the peculiarity (or the uncommonness) of his appearance, the clues necessary for guessing his age were difficult to find. He could have been older than that, or he could have been younger – anywhere between, say, thirty-two and fifty-six. His teeth were crooked, and his spine was strangely curved. The large crown of his head formed an abnormally flat bald area with lopsided edges. It was reminiscent of a military heliport that had been made by cutting away the peak of a small, strategically important hill. Tengo had seen such a heliport in a Vietnam War documentary. Around the borders of the flat, lopsided area of his head clung thick, black, curly hair that had been allowed to grow too long, hanging down shaggily over the man’s ears. Ninety-eight people out of a hundred would probably be reminded by it of pubic hair. Tengo had no idea what the other two would think.

Everything about the man – his face, his body – seemed to have been formed asymmetrically. Tengo noticed this right away. Of course, all people’s bodies are asymmetrical to some extent: that in itself was not contrary to the laws of nature. Tengo himself was aware that his own two eyelids had slightly different shapes, and his left testicle hung slightly lower than the right one. Our bodies are not mass-produced in a factory according to fixed standards. But in this man’s case, the differences between right and left went far beyond the bounds of common sense. This imbalance, obvious to any observer, could not help but annoy those in his presence and cause

them the same kind of discomfort they would feel in front of a funhouse mirror.

The man’s gray suit had countless tiny wrinkles, which made it look like an expanse of earth that had been ground down by a glacier. One flap of his white dress shirt’s collar was sticking out, and the knot of his tie was contorted, as if it had twisted itself from the sheer discomfort of having to exist in that place. The suit, the shirt, and the tie were all slightly wrong in size. The pattern on his tie might have been an inept art student’s impressionistic rendering of a bowl of tangled, soggy noodles. Each piece of clothing looked like something he had bought at a discount store to fill an immediate need. But the longer Tengo studied them, the sorrier he felt for the clothes themselves, for having to be worn by this man. Tengo paid little attention to his own clothing, but he was strangely concerned about the clothing worn by others. If he had to compile a list of the worst dressers he had met in the past ten years, this man would be somewhere near the top. It was not just that he had terrible style: he also gave the impression that he was deliberately desecrating the very idea of wearing clothes.

When Tengo entered the reception room, the man stood and produced a business card from his card case, handing it to Tengo with a bow. “Toshiharu Ushikawa,” it said in both Japanese characters and Roman script. An ordinary enough first name, but “Ushikawa”? “Bull River”? Tengo had never seen that one before. The card further identified the man as “Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts,” located downtown in Kojimachi, Chiyoda Ward, and gave the foundation’s telephone number. Tengo had no idea what kind of organization the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts might be, nor what it meant to be a “full-time director” of anything. The business card, though, was a handsome one, with an embossed logo, not a makeshift item. Tengo studied it for several moments before looking at the man again. He felt sure there could not be many people in the world whose appearance was so out of keeping with the grandiose title “Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts.”

They sat in easy chairs on opposite sides of a low table and looked at each other. The man gave his sweaty forehead a few vigorous rubs with a handkerchief and returned the pitiful cloth to his jacket pocket. The

receptionist brought in two cups of green tea on a tray. Tengo thanked her as she left.

Ushikawa said nothing to her, but to Tengo he said, “Please forgive me for interrupting your break and for arriving without having first made an appointment.” The words themselves were polite and formal enough, but his tone was strangely colloquial, and Tengo found it almost offensive. “Have you finished lunch? If you like, we could go out and talk over a meal.”

“I don’t eat lunch when I’m working,” Tengo said. “I’ll have something light after my afternoon class, so don’t worry.”

“I see. Well, then, with your permission, I’ll tell you what I have in mind and we can discuss it here. This seems like a nice, quiet place where we can talk without interruption.” He surveyed the reception room as though appraising its value. There was nothing special about the room. It had one big oil painting hanging on the wall – a picture of some mountain, more impressive for the weight of its paint than anything else. A vase had an arrangement of flowers resembling dahlias – dull blossoms reminiscent of a slow-witted matron. Tengo wondered why a cram school would keep such a gloomy reception room.

“Let me belatedly introduce myself. As you can see from the card, my name is Ushikawa. My friends all call me ‘Ushi,’ never ‘Ushikawa.’ Just plain, old ‘Ushi,’ as if I were a bull,” Ushikawa said, smiling.

Friends? Tengo wondered – out of pure curiosity – what kind of person would ever want to be this man’s friend.

On first impression, Ushikawa honestly made Tengo think of some creepy thing that had crawled out of a hole in the earth – a slimy thing of uncertain shape that in fact was not supposed to come out into the light. He might conceivably be one of the things that Professor Ebisuno had lured out from under a rock. Tengo unconsciously wrinkled his brow and placed the business card, which was still in his hand, on the table. Toshiharu Ushikawa. That was this man’s name.

“I am sure that you are very busy, Mr. Kawana, so with your permission I will abbreviate any preliminary background and proceed directly to the heart of the matter,” Ushikawa said.

Tengo answered with a little nod.

Ushikawa took a sip of tea and launched into the business at hand. “You have probably never heard of the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts, Mr. Kawana.” Tengo nodded. “We are a relatively new foundation that concentrates on selecting and supporting young people – especially those young people who are not yet widely known – who are engaged in original activity in the fields of scholarship and the arts. In other words, our aim is to nourish the budding youth who will carry the next generation on their shoulders in all fields of Japan’s contemporary culture. We contract with specialists to propose candidates for us in each category. We choose five artists and scholars each year and provide them with grants. They can do anything they like for one year, no strings attached. All we ask is that they submit a simple report at the end of their year – a mere formality – outlining their activities and results, to be included in the foundation’s magazine. Nothing more burdensome than that. We have just begun this activity, so the important thing for us is to produce tangible results. We are, in other words, still in the seed-planting stage. In concrete terms, what this means is that we will provide each recipient with an annual stipend of three million yen.”

“Very generous,” Tengo said.

“It takes both time and money to build up or discover something important. Of course, time and money are not in themselves a guarantee of great results, but they can’t hurt. The total amount of time available is especially limited. The clock is ticking as we speak. Time rushes past. Opportunities are lost right and left. If you have money, you can buy time. You can even buy freedom if you want. Time and freedom: those are the most important things that people can buy with money.”

Hearing this, Tengo almost reflexively glanced at his watch. True, time was ticking past without a letup.

“Sorry for taking so much of your time,” Ushikawa added, obviously interpreting Tengo’s gesture as a demonstration of his own argument. “Let me be quick about this. These days, of course, a mere three million yen is not going to enable a lavish lifestyle, but it ought to help a young person pay the bills very nicely. Which is our basic purpose: to make it possible for recipients to spend a full year concentrating on their research or creative projects without struggling to support themselves. And if the governing board determines at the end-of-year evaluation that the person produced

noteworthy results during the period, the possibility remains for the stipend to be extended beyond the single year.”

Tengo said nothing but waited for Ushikawa to continue.

“The other day I took the liberty of listening to you lecture for a full hour here at the cram school, Mr. Kawana. Believe me, I found it very interesting. I am a total outsider when it comes to mathematics, or should I say I’ve always been terrible at it and absolutely hated math class in school. I just had to hear the word ‘mathematics’ to start writhing in agony and to run away as far as I could. But your lecture, Mr. Kawana, was utterly enjoyable. Of course, I didn’t understand a thing about the logic of calculus, but just listening to you speak about it, I thought, if it’s really so interesting, I ought to start studying math. You can be proud of yourself. You have a special talent – a talent for drawing people in, should I say. I had heard that you were a popular teacher, and I could see why.”

Tengo had no idea when or where Ushikawa could have heard him lecture. He always paid close attention to who was in the room when he was teaching, and though he had not memorized every student’s face, he could never have missed anyone as strange looking as Ushikawa, who would have stood out like a centipede in a sugar bowl. He decided not to pursue the matter, however, which would only have prolonged a conversation that was already too long.

“As you must know, Mr. Ushikawa, I’m just an employee here, somebody the cram school hires to teach a few courses,” Tengo began, anxious to waste as little time as possible. “I don’t do any original research in mathematics. I just take knowledge that is already out there and explain it to students as simply and entertainingly as I can. All I’m doing is teaching them more effective methods for solving problems on college placement tests. I may have a certain talent for that, but I gave up the idea of being a professional researcher in the field a long time ago. For one thing, I couldn’t afford to stay in school any longer, and I never thought I had the aptitude or the ability to make a name for myself in the academic world. In that sense, I’m just not the kind of person you’re looking for.”

Ushikawa hurriedly raised his hand. “No, that’s not what I’m getting at at all. I’m sorry, I might have made this more complicated than it has to be. It’s true that your math lectures are interesting and unique and original. But I didn’t come here today about that. What we have our eye on, Mr. Kawana, is your activity as a novelist.”

Tengo was so unprepared for this that he was momentarily at a loss for words.

“My activity as a novelist?” “Exactly.”

“I don’t understand. It’s true, I’ve been writing fiction for several years, but nothing of mine has ever been published. You can’t call someone like that a novelist. How could I have possibly attracted your attention?”

At Tengo’s reaction, Ushikawa smiled in great delight, revealing a mouthful of horribly crooked teeth. Like seaside pilings that had been hit by huge waves, they pointed off in all directions and were befouled in a great many ways. They were surely beyond help from orthodontia, but someone should at least teach him how to brush his teeth properly, Tengo thought.

“That’s what makes our foundation unique,” Ushikawa said proudly. “The researchers we contract with take note of things that other people have yet to notice. That is one of our goals. As you say, none of your work has been properly published, and we are quite aware of that. But we also know that, under a penname, you have entered various literary magazines’ new writers’ competitions almost every year. You have not won yet, unfortunately, but a few times your work made it through to the last stage of the screening process, so that, quite naturally, a not inconsiderable number of people got to read them, and several of those people took note of your talent. Our researcher has concluded that you are certain to win a new writers’ award in the near future and make your debut as a writer. ‘Investing in futures’ would be a rather crude way to put it, but as I said before, our aim is to ‘nourish the budding youth who will carry the next generation on their shoulders.’”

Tengo picked up his cup and took a drink of his tea, which, by now, was somewhat cool. “So, what you’re saying is that I’m a candidate for a grant as a fledgling novelist, is that it?”

“That is it exactly. Except that you’re not so much a candidate as a finalist. If you say that you are willing to accept the grant, then I am authorized to finalize the arrangements. If you will be so good as to sign the necessary documents, the three million yen will be transferred electronically into your bank account immediately. You will be able to take six months or a year’s leave from this cram school and devote all your energies to writing. We have heard that you are presently writing a long novel. This would be a perfect opportunity, don’t you think?”

frown.

“How do you know I’m writing a long novel?” Tengo asked with a

Ushikawa gave him another toothy grin, but upon closer inspection,

Tengo realized that his eyes were not smiling at all. The glow from them was icy cold.

“Our researchers are eager and capable. They choose a number of candidates and examine them from every angle. Probably a few people around you know that you are writing a novel. Word gets out …”

Komatsu knew he was writing a novel, and so did his older girlfriend. Was there anyone else? Probably not.

“I’d like to ask a few things about your foundation,” Tengo said. “Please do. Ask anything at all.”

“Where does it get the money it needs to operate?”

“From a certain individual. Or, you might say, from an organization of his. Realistically speaking – just between us – it also serves as one of his many tax write-offs. Of course, quite aside from that, this individual has a deep interest in scholarship and the arts, and he wants to support members of the younger generation. I can’t go into any more detail here. The person wishes to remain anonymous – and that includes his organization as well. All day-to-day operations are entrusted to the foundation’s committee, of which yours truly is, for now, a member.”

Tengo thought about this for a moment, but there really wasn’t that much to think about. All he did was put the things that Ushikawa had told him in order.

“Would you mind very much if I smoked?” Ushikawa asked.

“Not at all,” Tengo said, pushing a heavy glass ashtray in his direction.

Ushikawa took a box of Seven Stars cigarettes from his breast pocket, put a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it with a gold lighter. The lighter was slim and expensive looking.

“So, what do you say, Mr. Kawana?” Ushikawa asked. “Will you do us the honor of accepting our grant? Speaking for myself, quite honestly, after having heard your delightful lecture, I am very much looking forward to seeing what kind of world you go on to create in your literature.”

“I am very grateful to you for bringing me this offer,” Tengo said. “It’s far more than I deserve. But I’m afraid I can’t accept it.”

Smoke rose from the cigarette between Ushikawa’s fingers. He looked at Tengo with his eyes narrowed. “By which you mean …?”

“First of all, I don’t like the idea of taking money from people I hardly know. Secondly, as things stand now, I don’t really need the money. I have managed well enough so far by teaching three days a week at the cram school and using the other days to concentrate on my writing. I’m not ready to change that lifestyle.”

Thirdly, Mr. Ushikawa, I personally don’t want to have anything to do with you. Fourthly, no matter how you look at it, there’s something fishy about this grant. It just sounds too good to be true. There’s something going on behind the scenes. I certainly don’t have the best intuition in the world, but I can tell that much from the smell. Tengo, of course, said none of this.

“I see,” Ushikawa said, filling his lungs with cigarette smoke and exhaling with a look of deep satisfaction. “I see. I think, in my own way, I understand your view of the matter. What you say is quite logical. But really, Mr. Kawana, there is no need for you to give me your answer right now. Why don’t you go home and take a good two or three days to think it over? Take more time to reach your conclusion. We’re not in any hurry. It’s not a bad offer.”

Tengo gave his head a decisive shake. “Thank you, that’s very kind, but it will save us both a lot of time and trouble if we reach a final decision today. I am honored to have been nominated for a grant, and I’m sorry to have put you to the trouble of making a special trip here, but I’m afraid I will have to decline. This is my final conclusion, and there is no possibility that I would reconsider.”

Ushikawa nodded a few times and regretfully used the ashtray to crush out the cigarette, from which he had taken only two puffs.

“That’s fine, Mr. Kawana. I see where you are coming from, and I want to respect your wishes. I am sorry for having taken up your time. It’s unfortunate, but I will have to resign myself to it. I will be going now.”

But Ushikawa showed no sign of standing up. He simply treated the back of his head to a thorough scratching and looked at Tengo with narrowed eyes.

“However, Mr. Kawana, you yourself may not be aware of it, but people are expecting great things from you as a writer. You have talent. Mathematics and literature probably have no direct connection, but listening to you lecture on mathematics is like listening to someone tell a story. This

is not something that any ordinary person can do. You have something special that needs to be told. That is clear even to the likes of me. So be sure to take care of yourself. Forgive me if I am being oversolicitous, but please try not to become embroiled in extraneous matters, and make up your mind to walk straight down your own path in life.”

“Extraneous matters?” Tengo asked.

“For example, you seem to have – how should I put this? – some sort of connection with Miss Eriko Fukada, the author of Air Chrysalis. Or at least you have met her a few times, am I correct? By coincidence, I just happened to read in today’s paper that she has apparently disappeared. The media will have a field day with this delicious item, I’m sure.”

“Assuming I have met Eriko Fukada, is that supposed to mean something?”

Again Ushikawa raised his hand to stop Tengo. It was a small hand, but the fingers were short and stubby. “Now, now, please don’t get worked up over this. I don’t mean any harm. All I am trying to say is that selling off one’s talents and time in dribs and drabs to make ends meet never produces good results. It may sound presumptuous of me to say this, but your talent is a genuine diamond in the rough, and I don’t want to see it wasted and ruined on pointless things. If the relationship between you and Miss Fukada becomes public knowledge, Mr. Kawana, someone is bound to seek you out at home. They’ll start stalking you, and they’ll turn up all kinds of half- truths. They’re a persistent bunch.”

Tengo stared at Ushikawa, saying nothing. Ushikawa narrowed his eyes and started scratching one of his big earlobes. The ears themselves were small, but Ushikawa’s earlobes were strangely big. Ushikawa’s physical oddities were an unending source of fascination.

“Now, don’t get the wrong idea. My lips are sealed,” Ushikawa said, gesturing as if zipping his mouth closed. “I promise you that. I may not look it, but I know how to keep a secret. People say I must have been a clam in a previous life. I’ll keep this matter locked up inside as a sign of my personal regard for you. No one else will know.”

Finally he stood up and made several attempts to smooth out the tiny wrinkles in his suit but succeeded only in making them more obvious.

“If you should change your mind about the grant, please call the number on my card whenever you feel like it. There is still plenty of time. If this year is no good for you, well, there’s always next year.” With raised

index fingers, Ushikawa mimed the earth revolving around the sun. “We are in no hurry. At least I succeeded in meeting you and having this little talk with you, and I believe that you have gotten our message.”

After one more smile, all but flaunting his ruined dentition, Ushikawa turned and left the reception room.

Tengo used the time until his next class to think through Ushikawa’s remarks in his head. The man seemed to know that Tengo had participated in the rewrite of Air Chrysalis. There were hints of it everywhere in his speech. All I am trying to say is that selling off one’s talents and time in dribs and drabs to make ends meet never produces good results, Ushikawa had said pointedly.

“We know” – surely, that was the message.

I succeeded in meeting you and having this little talk with you, and I believe that you have gotten our message.

Could they have dispatched Ushikawa to see Tengo and offer him the three-million-yen grant for no other purpose than to deliver this message? No, it didn’t make sense. There was no need for them to devise such an elaborate plot. They already knew where he was weakest. If they had wanted to threaten Tengo, all they had to do was bring out the facts. Or were they trying to buy him off with the grant? It was all too dramatic. And who were “they,” after all? Was the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts connected with Sakigake? Did it even exist?

Tengo went to see the secretary, carrying Ushikawa’s business card. “I need to ask you to do me another favor,” he said.

“What would that be?” she asked, remaining seated at her desk and looking up at Tengo.

“I’d like you to call this number and ask if they’re the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. Also, ask whether this director, Mr. Ushikawa, is in. They’ll probably say he’s not there, so ask when he’s due back in the office. If they ask your name, just make something up. I’d do it myself, except it might be a problem if they recognize my voice.”

The secretary dialed the numbers and a standard back-and-forth ensued – a concise exchange between two professionals. When it ended, the

secretary reported to Tengo, “The New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts does exist. A woman answered, probably in her early twenties, a normal receptionist. Mr. Ushikawa actually works there. He’s supposed to be back around three thirty. She didn’t ask my name – which I certainly would have done.”

“Of course,” Tengo said. “Anyhow, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, handing Ushikawa’s card back to Tengo. “Is this Mr. Ushikawa the person who came to see you?”

“That’s him.”

“I barely looked at him, but he seemed kind of creepy.”

Tengo put the card into his wallet. “I suspect that impression wouldn’t change even if you had more time to look at him,” he said.

“I always tell myself not to judge people by their appearance. I’ve been wrong in the past and had some serious regrets. But the minute I saw this man, I got the feeling he couldn’t be trusted. I still feel that way.”

“You’re not alone,” Tengo said.

“I’m not alone,” she echoed, as if to confirm the grammatical accuracy of Tengo’s sentence.

“That’s a beautiful jacket you’re wearing,” Tengo said, meaning it quite honestly. He wasn’t just flattering her. After Ushikawa’s crumpled heap of a suit, her stylishly cut linen jacket looked like a lovely piece of fabric that had descended from heaven on a windless afternoon.

“Thank you,” she said.

“But just because somebody answered the phone, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts actually exists.”

“That’s true. It could be an elaborate ruse. You just have to put in a phone line and hire somebody to answer it. Like in The Sting. But why would they go to all that trouble? Forgive me, Tengo, but you don’t look like somebody who’d have enough money to squeeze out of you.”

“I don’t have a thing,” Tengo said, “except my soul.” “Sounds like a job for Mephistopheles,” she said.

“Maybe I should walk over to this address and see if there’s really an office there.”

“Tell me what you find out,” she said, inspecting her manicure with narrowed eyes.

The New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts actually existed. After class, Tengo took the subway to Yotsuya and walked to Kojimachi. At the address on Ushikawa’s card he found a four- story building with a metal nameplate by the front entrance: “New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts.” The office was on the third floor. Also on that floor were Mikimoto Music Publishers and Koda Accountants. Judging from the scale of the building, none of them could be very big offices. None appeared to be flourishing, either, though their true condition was impossible to judge from outside. Tengo considered taking the elevator to the third floor. He wanted to see what kind of office it was, or at least what its door looked like. But things could prove awkward if he ran into Ushikawa in the hallway.

Tengo took another subway home and called Komatsu’s office. For a change, Komatsu was in, and he came to the phone right away.

“I can’t talk now,” Komatsu said, speaking more quickly than usual, his tone of voice somewhat higher than normal. “Sorry, but I don’t think I can talk about anything here right now.”

“This is very important,” Tengo said. “A very strange guy came to see me at school today. He seemed to know something about my connection with Air Chrysalis.”

Komatsu went silent for a few seconds at his end. “I think I can call you in twenty minutes. Are you at home?”

Tengo said that he was. Komatsu hung up. While he waited for Komatsu to call, Tengo sharpened two kitchen knives on a whetstone, boiled water, and poured himself some tea. The phone rang exactly twenty minutes later, which was again unusual for Komatsu.

This time Komatsu sounded far calmer than he had before. He seemed to be phoning from a quieter place. Tengo gave him a condensed account of what Ushikawa had said in the reception room.

“The New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts? Never heard of it. And that three-million-yen grant for you is hard to figure, too. I agree, of course, that you have a great future as a writer, but you still haven’t published anything. It’s kind of incredible. They’ve got some ulterior motive.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Give me a little time. I’ll find out what I can about this New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. I’ll get in

touch with you if I learn anything. But this Ushikawa guy knows you’re connected with Fuka-Eri, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

“That’s a bit of a problem.”

“Something’s starting to happen,” Tengo said. “It’s fine that Professor Ebisuno managed to pry up his rock, but some kind of monster seems to have crawled out from underneath.”

Komatsu sighed into the phone. “It’s coming after me, too. The weekly magazines are going crazy. And the TV guys are poking around. This morning the cops came to the office to question me. They’ve already latched on to the connection between Fuka-Eri and Sakigake. And of course the disappearance of her parents. The media will start blowing up that angle soon.”

“What’s Professor Ebisuno doing?”

“Nobody’s been able to get in touch with him for a while. Phone calls don’t go through, and he doesn’t get in touch with anybody. He may be having a tough time too. Or he could be working on another secret plan.”

“Oh, by the way, to change the subject a bit, have you told anybody that I’m writing a long novel?” Tengo asked Komatsu.

“No, nobody,” Komatsu responded immediately. “Why would I tell anyone about that?”

“That’s okay, then. Just asking.”

Komatsu fell silent for a moment, and then he said, “It’s kind of late for me to be saying this, but we might have gotten ourselves into nasty territory.”

“Whatever we’ve gotten ourselves into, there’s no backing out now, that’s for sure.”

“And if we can’t back out, all we can do is keep going forward, even if you’re right about that monster.”

“Better fasten your seat belt,” Tengo said. “You said it,” Komatsu said, and hung up.

It had been a long day. Tengo sat at the kitchen table, drinking his cold tea and thinking about Fuka-Eri. What could she be doing all day, locked up alone in her hiding place? Of course, no one ever knew what Fuka-Eri was doing.

In her recorded message, Fuka-Eri had said that the Little People’s wisdom and power might cause harm to the Professor and to Tengo. Better be careful in the forest. Tengo found himself looking at his surroundings. True, the forest was their world.

Chapter 3. AOMAME: You Can’t Choose How You’re Born, But You Can Choose How You Die

ONE NIGHT NEAR the end of July, the thick clouds that had long covered the sky finally cleared, revealing two moons. Aomame stood on her apartment’s small balcony, looking at the sky. She wanted to call someone right away and say, “Can you do me a favor? Stick your head out the window and look at the sky. Okay, how many moons do you see up there? Where I am, I can see two very clearly. How about where you are?”

But she had no one to whom she could make such a call. Ayumi was one possibility, but Aomame preferred not to further deepen their personal relationship. She was a policewoman, after all. Aomame would more than likely be killing another man before long, after which she would change her face, change her name, move to a different area, and disappear. Obviously, she wouldn’t be able to see or contact Ayumi anymore. Once you let yourself grow close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.

She went back inside, closed the balcony door, and turned on the air conditioner. Then she drew the curtains to place a barrier between herself and the moons. The two moons in the sky were disturbing to her. They

subtly disrupted the balance of the earth’s gravity, and they seemed to be affecting her physically as well. Her period was not due for a while, but her body felt strangely listless and heavy. Her skin was dry, and her pulse abnormal. She told herself not to think about the moons anymore – even if they were something that she ought to think about.

To combat the listlessness, Aomame lay on the carpet to stretch her muscles, systematically engaging one muscle after another that she had little chance to use on a daily basis, and stretching it as far as it would go. Each muscle responded with wordless screams, and her sweat rained down on the floor. She had devised this stretching program herself and modified it each day, making it increasingly radical and effective. It was strictly for her own use. She could not have introduced it into her sports club classes. Ordinary people could never bear that much pain. Most of her fellow instructors screamed for mercy when she tried it on them.

While going through her program, she played a recording of Janáček’s Sinfonietta conducted by George Szell. The music took twenty- five minutes to play, which was the right amount of time to effectively torture every muscle in her body – neither too short nor too long. By the time the music ended, the turntable stopped, and the automatic tonearm returned to its rest, both her mind and her body felt like rags that had been thoroughly wrung out.

By now, Aomame had memorized every note of Sinfonietta. Listening to the music while stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simultaneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced. This sense of inner-directed self- sufficiency was what she wanted most of all. It gave her deep solace. Janáček’s Sinfonietta was effective background music for that purpose.

Just before ten o’clock that night, the phone rang. Lifting the receiver, she heard Tamaru’s voice.

“Any plans for tomorrow?”

“I get out of work at six thirty.” “Think you can stop by after that?” “I’m sure I can,” Aomame said.

“Good,” Tamaru said. She could hear his ballpoint pen writing on his calendar.

“Have you found a new dog yet?” Aomame asked.

“Dog? Uh-huh. Another female German shepherd. I still don’t know everything about her disposition, but she’s been trained in the basics and she seems to obey commands. She arrived about ten days ago and is pretty well settled in. The women are relieved to have a dog again.”

“That’s good.”

“This one’s satisfied with ordinary dog food. Less bother.” “Ordinary German shepherds don’t eat spinach.”

“That was one strange dog. And depending on the season, spinach can be expensive,” Tamaru complained nostalgically. After a few seconds’ pause, he added, “It’s a nice night for moon viewing.”

Aomame frowned slightly into the phone. “Where did that come from all of a sudden?”

“Even I am not unaware of natural beauty, I’ll have you know.”

“No, of course not,” Aomame said. But you’re not the type to discuss poetic subjects on the phone without some particular reason, either.

After another short silence at his end, Tamaru said, “You’re the one who brought up moon viewing the last time we talked on the phone, remember? I’ve been thinking about it ever since, especially when I looked up at the sky a little while ago and it was so clear – not a cloud anywhere.”

Aomame was on the verge of asking him how many moons he had seen in that clear sky, but she stopped herself. It was too fraught with danger. Tamaru had told her about his life last time – about having been raised as an orphan who never knew his parents’ faces, about his nationality. He had never spoken at such length before, but he was not a man much given to talking about himself in any case. He had taken a personal liking to Aomame and had more or less opened himself up to her. But ultimately, he was a professional, trained to take the shortest route to see his mission through. There was no point in saying too much to him.

“I think I can get there around seven o’clock tomorrow night after work,” she said.

“Fine,” Tamaru said. “You’ll probably be hungry. The cook is off tomorrow, so we can’t serve you anything decent, but if a sandwich or something is all right with you, I can do the preparations.”

“Thanks,” Aomame said.

“You’ll be needing your driver’s license, your passport, and your health insurance card. We’d like you to bring those tomorrow. Plus, we’d

like a copy of your apartment key. Can you have all those ready for us?” “Yes, I think so.”

“And one more thing. I’d like to see you alone about that business from before. So keep some time open for me after you’re through with Madame.”

“Business from before?”

Tamaru fell silent for a moment. His silence had all the weight of a sandbag. “I believe there was something you wanted to get ahold of. Have you forgotten?”

“No, of course I remember,” Aomame hurried to say. In a corner of her mind, she had still been thinking about the moons.

“Tomorrow at seven, then,” Tamaru said and hung up.

The number of moons had not changed the following night. When she took a quick shower after work and left the club, two pale-colored moons had already appeared side by side in the still-bright sky. Aomame stood on the pedestrian footbridge spanning Gaien-nishi Dori Avenue, leaning against the handrail and gazing at the two moons for a time. No one else made a point of looking at the moons like this. The people passing by did no more than cast puzzled glances in Aomame’s direction as she stood there looking up at the sky. They hurried toward the subway station as if they had absolutely no interest in either the sky or the moon. As she gazed upward, Aomame began to feel the same physical lassitude she had experienced the day before. I have to stop staring at the moons like this, she told herself. It can’t have a good effect on me. But try as she might not to look at the moons, she could not help feeling their gaze against her skin. Even if I don’t look at them, they’re looking at me. They know what I’m about to do.

Using ornate cups from a bygone era, the dowager and Aomame drank thick hot coffee. The dowager dribbled in a little milk at the edge of her cup

and drank the coffee without stirring it. She used no sugar. Aomame drank hers black, as usual. Tamaru served them the sandwiches he had promised. He had cut them into bite-sized pieces. Aomame ate several. They were simple cucumber and cheese sandwiches on brown bread, but were subtly flavored. Tamaru had a fine touch in making such simple dishes, wielding a kitchen knife with skill, cutting each of his ingredients to the perfect size and thickness. He knew the proper order with which to undertake each task. This was all it took to make an amazing difference in how things tasted.

“Have you finished organizing your things?” the dowager asked.

“I donated my extra clothing and books to charity. I’ve packed a bag with everything I’ll need in my new life, ready to go at any time. The only things left in my apartment are the basics I’ll need for the time being: electrical appliances, cookware, bed and bedding, a few dishes.”

“We’ll take care of anything that’s left. And you don’t have to think about your lease or other such details. You can just walk out with the few things you really need in your luggage.”

“Should I let them know at work? It could raise suspicions if I suddenly disappeared one day.”

The dowager quietly returned her coffee cup to the table. “You don’t have to think about that, either.”

Aomame responded with a nod. She ate another sandwich and took a sip of coffee.

“By the way, do you have money in the bank?” the dowager asked. “I have six hundred thousand yen in a regular savings account and

two million yen in a CD.”

The dowager did some calculations. “There’s no problem with your withdrawing up to four hundred thousand yen from the savings account if you do it in stages, but don’t touch the CD. It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to cancel it all of a sudden. They might be watching your personal affairs. We can’t be too careful. I’ll cover the difference later. Do you have any other property or assets?”

“There’s the money you paid me before. It’s just sitting in a safe- deposit box.”

“Take the cash out, but don’t keep it in your apartment. Think about someplace good to put it.”

“All right.”

“That’s all we need you to do for now. Otherwise, just go about your business as usual, not changing your lifestyle or doing anything that would attract attention. And make sure you don’t talk about anything important on the telephone.”

Once she had finished saying this much, the dowager settled more deeply into her chair, as if she had used up her entire reserve of energy.

“Has the date been set?” Aomame asked.

“Not yet, unfortunately,” the dowager said. “We’re still waiting for them to contact us. The arrangements have been made, but they won’t decide their schedule until the last minute. It could be another week, or it could be another month. We don’t know the place, either. We just have to ask you to stand by, I’m afraid, on pins and needles.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” Aomame said, “but I wonder if you can give me even a general idea about the ‘arrangements.’”

“You’ll be giving him a muscle-stretching session,” the dowager said. “What you always do. He has some kind of physical problems. They’re not life-threatening, but we’ve heard they give him a lot of trouble. In addition to orthodox medicine, he’s tried a number of alternative treatments in an attempt to solve these ‘problems’ – shiatsu, acupuncture, massage – but none of them seems to help. These physical problems are the only weak spot of this man they call ‘Leader.’ It’s the breach in his defenses that we’ve been looking for.”

The curtains were drawn on the window behind the dowager, concealing the moons, but Aomame could feel their cool gaze against her skin. Their conspiratorial silence seemed to be stealing into the room.

“We have a spy inside the Sakigake organization, and we’ve used him to pass the word that you are an outstanding expert in muscle stretching. This was not especially difficult, because it happens to be true. Now they are very interested in you. At first, they wanted to bring you into their compound in Yamanashi, but we made it clear that you are far too busy with your work to leave Tokyo. In any case, the man comes to Tokyo at least once a month on business. He stays incognito in a downtown hotel. You will be giving him a stretching session there. All you have to do is take the usual steps with him once you’re inside.”

Aomame imagined the scene. A hotel room. A man is lying on a yoga mat, and she is stretching his muscles. She can’t see his face. On his

stomach, he leaves the back of his neck exposed to her, defenseless. She reaches over and takes the ice pick from her bag.

“So he and I can be alone together in his room?” Aomame asked.

The dowager nodded. “Leader keeps his physical problems hidden from others in the organization, so there should be no one else present. You and he will be alone.”

“Do they know my name and where I work?”

“They are exceedingly cautious people. They’ve already done a thorough background check on you and found no problems. We received word yesterday that they will want you to come to where he is staying. They will let us know as soon as the time and place are set.”

“I come here so often, don’t you think there is some chance they will find our relationship suspicious?”

“I’m just a member of the sports club where you work, and you come to my house as a personal trainer. They have no reason to think that there might be any more to our relationship than that.”

Aomame responded with a nod.

The dowager said, “Whenever this Leader person leaves the compound and moves around, he has two bodyguards who accompany him. Both are believers and karate belt holders. We don’t know yet if they also carry weapons, but they are apparently good at what they do. They train every day. According to Tamaru, though, they are amateurs.”

“Unlike Tamaru.”

“Yes, unlike Tamaru. He used to belong to a Self-Defense Force Ranger unit. Those people have it pounded into them to carry out whatever needs to be done to accomplish the mission, and to do it instantly, without the slightest hesitation. The important thing is not to hesitate, no matter who the opponent might be. Amateurs hesitate – especially when the opponent is, say, a young woman.”

The dowager sank her head back into the chair and sighed deeply.

Then she straightened herself again and looked directly at Aomame.

“The two bodyguards will most likely wait in the next room of the suite while you are administering your treatment to Leader. You’ll be alone with him for an hour. That is how we have set things up for now. How it will actually go is anybody’s guess. Things can be fluid. Leader never reveals his plan of action until the very last minute.”

“How old a man is he?”

“Probably   in   his   mid-fifties.   We’ve   heard   he’s   a                    big man.

Unfortunately, we don’t know any more than that.”

Tamaru was waiting at the front door. She gave him her spare apartment key, driver’s license, passport, and health insurance card. He stepped inside and made copies of the documents. After checking to see that he had all the necessary copies, he handed the originals back to Aomame. Then he showed Aomame to his office, which was next to the front door. It was a small, square space lacking any decoration. A tiny window opened to the garden. The wall-mounted air conditioner hummed along. He had Aomame sit in a small wooden chair, while he sat at his desk. On the wall above the desk hung a row of four monitor screens with changeable camera angles. Four video decks constantly recorded their images. The screens showed views outside the walls. The far right one displayed an image of the front door of the safe house where the women were living. The new guard dog was also visible, resting on the ground. It was somewhat smaller than the previous dog.

“The tape didn’t show how the dog died,” Tamaru said, as if anticipating a question from Aomame. “She wasn’t tied up at the time. There’s no way she could have untied herself, so possibly someone untied her.”

“Someone who could approach without causing her to bark.” “That’s what it amounts to.”

“Strange.”

Tamaru nodded but said nothing. He had thought about the various possibilities so much on his own that he was sick of thinking about them. There was nothing left for him to say to anybody else.

Tamaru reached over and opened a drawer of the cabinet by his desk, taking out a black plastic bag. From the bag he took a faded blue bath towel, and when he spread the towel open, a lustrous black object emerged – a small automatic pistol. Saying nothing, he handed it to Aomame, who also remained silent as she took it. She tested the weight of it in her hand. It was much lighter than it appeared to be. Such a small, light object could deliver death to a human being.

“You just made two major mistakes. Do you know what they were?” Tamaru asked.

Aomame thought over the actions she had just taken but could discover no mistakes. All she had done was take the gun that was handed to her. “I don’t know,” she said.

“First, when you took the gun, you didn’t check to see if it was loaded or not and, if it was loaded, whether the safety was on. The second was that, after you took the gun, you pointed it – even if only for one split second – at me. You broke two absolute rules. Also, you should never put your finger inside the trigger guard if you have no intention of firing the gun.”

“I see. I’ll be careful from now on.”

“Emergency situations aside, you should never handle or hand over or carry a gun that has even one bullet in it. And whenever you see a gun, you should treat it as loaded until you know for sure otherwise. Guns are made to kill people. You can never be too careful with them. Some people might laugh at me for being too cautious, but stupid accidents happen all the time, and the ones who get killed or badly wounded are usually the ones who were laughing.”

Tamaru drew a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. Inside were seven new bullets. He set them on his desk. “As you can see, the bullets are not in the gun. The magazine is in place, but it’s empty. The chamber is empty, too.”

Aomame nodded.

“This is a personal gift from me. Even so, if you don’t use it, I’d like to have it back.”

“Of course,” Aomame said, her voice dry. “But it must have cost you something.”

“Don’t let that worry you,” Tamaru said. “You have other things to worry about. Let’s talk about those. Have you ever fired a gun?”

Aomame shook her head. “Never.”

“Revolvers tend to be easier to use than automatics, especially for amateurs. Their mechanism is simpler, and it’s easier to learn how to operate them, and you’re less likely to make mistakes with them. But a good revolver can be bulky and inconvenient to carry around. So I figured an automatic would be better for you. This is a Heckler & Koch HK4. A German make. Weighs 480 grams without bullets. It’s small and light, but its 9mm Short cartridges pack a punch, and it has a small recoil. It’s not very accurate for long distances, but it’s perfect for what you have in mind.

Heckler & Koch started up after the war, but this HK4 is based on the Mauser HSc, a well-respected model from before the war. They’ve been making it since 1968, and it’s still widely used. So it’s dependable. This is not a new one, but it’s been well taken care of by somebody who obviously knew what he was doing. Guns are like cars: you can trust a good used one better than one that’s brand-new.”

Tamaru took the gun back from Aomame and showed her how to handle it – how to lock and unlock the safety, how to remove and replace the magazine.

“Make sure the safety is on when you take the magazine out. After you open the catch and pull the magazine out, you pull the slide back and the bullet pops out of the chamber – not now, of course, since the gun isn’t loaded. After that, the slide stays open, so then you pull the trigger like this and the slide closes but the hammer stays cocked. You pull the trigger again and the hammer falls. Then you put in a new magazine.”

Tamaru went through the sequence of motions with practiced speed. Then he repeated the same sequence slowly, demonstrating each separate operation. Aomame watched intently.

“Now you try it.”

Aomame carefully extracted the magazine, pulled the slide back, emptied the chamber, lowered the hammer, and reinserted the magazine.

“That’s fine,” Tamaru said. Then he took the gun from Aomame, pulled out the magazine, carefully loaded it with seven bullets, and shoved it back into the gun with a loud click. Pulling back the slide, he sent a bullet into the chamber. Then he pushed down a lever on the left side of the gun to set the safety.

“Now do the same thing you did before. Only, this time it’s loaded with real bullets. There’s one in the chamber, too. The safety is on, but you still shouldn’t point the muzzle of the gun toward anyone,” Tamaru said.

Taking the loaded gun, Aomame found it noticeably heavier than before. Now it had the unmistakable feel of death. This was a precision tool designed to kill people. She could feel her armpits sweating.

Checking once more to make sure the safety was on, she opened the catch, pulled out the magazine, and set it on the table. Pulling back the slide, she ejected the bullet from the chamber. It fell on the wooden floor with a dry thump. She pulled the trigger to close the slide, and pulled the trigger one more time, lowering the hammer. Then, with a trembling hand,

she picked up the bullet from where it lay by her feet. Her throat was dry, and each breath she took was accompanied by a painful burning sensation.

“Not bad for your first time,” Tamaru said, pressing the fallen 9mm bullet back into the magazine. “But you need a lot more practice. Your hands are shaking. You should practice the movements for ejecting and reinserting the magazine several times a day until your hands learn the feel of the gun. You should be able to do it as quickly and automatically as I did. In the dark. In your case, you shouldn’t have to change magazines in mid- use, but the movements themselves are the most basic of the basic for people who handle pistols. You have to memorize them.”

“Don’t I need to practice firing?”

“Well, it’s not as if you’re going to shoot somebody with this. You’re just going to shoot yourself, right?”

Aomame nodded.

“In that case, you don’t have to practice firing. You just have to learn to load it, release the safety, and get the feel of the trigger. And anyway, where were you planning to practice firing it?”

Aomame shook her head. She had no idea.

“Also, how were you planning to shoot yourself? Here, give it a try.”

Tamaru inserted the loaded magazine, checked to make sure the safety was on, and handed the gun to Aomame. “The safety is on,” he said.

Aomame pressed the muzzle against her temple. She felt the chill of the steel. Looking at her, Tamaru slowly shook his head several times.

“Trust me, you don’t want to aim at your temple. It’s a lot harder than you think to shoot yourself in the brain that way. People’s hands usually shake, and it throws their aim off. You end up grazing your skull, but not killing yourself. You certainly don’t want that to happen.”

Aomame silently shook her head.

“Look what happened to General Tojo after the war. When the American military came to arrest him, he tried to shoot himself in the heart by pressing the muzzle against his chest and pulling the trigger, but the bullet missed and hit his stomach without killing him. Here you had the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didn’t know how to kill himself with a gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. It’s a terrible way to die. A person’s last moments are an

important thing. You can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose how you die.”

Aomame bit her lip.

“The surest way is to shove the gun barrel in your mouth and blow your brains out from below. Like this.”

Tamaru took the gun from Aomame to demonstrate. She knew that the safety was on, but the sight still made her tense up. She could hardly breathe, as if something were stuck in her throat.

“But even this isn’t one hundred percent certain. I actually know a guy who failed to kill himself and ended up in terrible shape. We were together in the Self-Defense Force. He shoved a rifle barrel in his mouth and fired the gun by pressing his big toes against a spoon he had fastened to the trigger. I suppose the barrel must have moved a little. Instead of dying, he became a vegetable. He lived that way for another ten years. It’s not so easy for people to end their own lives. It’s not like in the movies. There, they do it like nothing, no pain, and it’s all over, they’re dead. The reality is not like that. You lie in bed for ten years with the piss oozing out of you.”

Aomame nodded in silence.

Tamaru took the bullets out of the magazine and gun and put them in a plastic bag. Then he handed Aomame the gun and the bullets separately. “Now it’s not loaded.”

Aomame took them with a nod.

“Trust me, the smart thing is to think about surviving. It’s the most practical thing, too. That’s my advice to you.”

“I see,” Aomame said drily. Then she wrapped a scarf around the Heckler & Koch HK4, which was like a crude machine too, and thrust it to the bottom of her shoulder bag. This made the bag a pound or so heavier, but it didn’t change its shape. The HK4 was a small pistol.

“It’s not a gun for amateurs,” Tamaru said. “Speaking from experience, not much good can come of it. But you should be able to handle it all right. You’re like me in some ways. In a pinch, you can put the rules ahead of yourself.”

“Probably because the ‘self’ doesn’t really exist.” Tamaru had nothing to say to that.

“You were in the Self-Defense Force?” Aomame asked.

“Yeah, in the toughest unit. They fed us rats and snakes and locusts.

They’re not inedible, but they sure don’t taste good.”

“What did you do after that?”

“All kinds of stuff. Security work, mainly as a bodyguard – though maybe that’s too fancy a word for what I was doing in some cases. I’m not much of a team player, so I tend to work alone. I was involved in the underworld, too, for a little while, when that was the only thing I could find. I saw a lot of stuff going down – things that most people never have to see in their lifetimes. Still, I never got into the worst of the worst. I was always careful not to cross the line. I’m careful by nature, and I don’t think much of the yakuza. So, like I said before, my record is clean. After that, I came here.” Tamaru pointed straight down. “My life has been very settled ever since. Not that a stable life is all I’m looking for, but I’d like to try to keep things as they are for now. It isn’t easy finding jobs you like.”

“No, of course not,” Aomame said. “But really, shouldn’t I pay you something for this?”

Tamaru shook his head. “No, I don’t want your money. The world moves less by money than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I don’t like to owe anybody anything, so I keep myself as much on the lending side as I can.”

“Thank you,” Aomame said.

“If, by any chance, the cops end up grilling you about where you got the gun, I don’t want you giving them my name. And if they do come here, I’ll deny everything, of course. They’ll never find out anything about my past. If they go after Madame, though, I won’t have a leg to stand on.”

“I won’t give your name, of course.”

Tamaru pulled a folded piece of notepaper from his pocket and handed it to Aomame. On it was written a man’s name.

Tamaru said, “On July 4, you met this man at the Renoir Café near Sendagaya Station. He gave you the gun and seven bullets, and you paid him five hundred thousand yen in cash. He contacted you after he heard that you were looking for a gun. If he is questioned by police, he is supposed to freely admit to the charges and spend a few years in prison. You don’t have to tell them any more than that. As long as they can establish how the gun got into your hands, the police will come off looking good. And you might spend a little while behind bars too, for violating the Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law.”

Aomame memorized the name and handed the slip of paper back to Tamaru. He tore it into little pieces and threw it into the wastebasket. Then

he said, “Like I said before, I’m very careful by nature. I almost never depend on anybody for anything, and even when I do, I still don’t trust them. I never leave things to work themselves out. But what I’m most hoping for in this case is that the gun will come back to me unused. Then no one gets in trouble, no one dies, no one gets hurt, and no one goes to prison.”

Aomame nodded. “Meaning, you want me to violate Chekhov’s

rule.”

“Exactly. Chekhov was a great writer, but not all novels have to

follow his rules. Not all guns in stories have to be fired,” Tamaru said. Then he frowned slightly, as if recalling something. “Oh, yes, I almost forgot something important. I have to give you a pager.”

He took a small device from his drawer and set it on the desk. It had a metal clip to attach to clothing or a belt. Tamaru picked up the phone and punched in a three-digit quick-dial code. The phone rang three times, and the pager responded by emitting a series of electronic beeps. After turning up the volume as high as it would go, Tamaru pressed a switch to turn it off. He squinted at the device to make sure it displayed the caller’s number, and then handed it to Aomame.

“I’d like you to keep this on you at all times if possible,” Tamaru said, “or at least don’t get too far away from it. If it rings, that means you have a message from me. An important message. I won’t signal you to talk about the weather. Call the number you see in the display. Right away. From a public phone. And one other thing: if you have luggage, put it in a coin locker in Shinjuku Station.”

“Shinjuku Station,” Aomame repeated.

“It goes without saying that you should be ready to travel light.” “Of course.”

Back at her apartment, Aomame closed her curtains and took the Heckler & Koch HK4 and the bullets from her shoulder bag. Sitting at the kitchen table, she practiced ejecting and inserting the empty magazine a few times. Her speed increased with each repetition. Her movements developed a rhythm, and her hands stopped trembling. Then she wrapped the pistol in an old T-shirt and hid it in a shoe box, which she shoved to the back of the

closet. The bag of bullets she stored inside the pocket of a raincoat on a hanger. Suddenly very thirsty, she took a pitcher of chilled barley tea from the refrigerator and drank three glassfuls. Her shoulder muscles were tense and stiff, and the sweat of her armpits had an unusual smell. The awareness that she now possessed a pistol was enough to make the world look a little different. Her surroundings had taken on a strange, unfamiliar coloration.

She undressed and took a hot shower to wash off the unpleasant sweat smell. Not all guns have to be fired, she told herself in the shower. A pistol is just a tool, and where I’m living is not a storybook world. It’s the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.

Two weeks passed uneventfully. Aomame went to work at the sports club as usual, teaching her martial arts and stretching classes. She was not supposed to change her daily patterns. She followed the dowager’s instructions as strictly as possible. Coming home, she would eat dinner alone. Afterward, she would close the curtains, sit at the kitchen table, and practice handling the Heckler & Koch HK4 until its weight and hardness, the smell of its machine oil, its brute force and quietness all became a part of her.

Sometimes she practiced blindfolded, using a scarf. Soon she could nimbly load the magazine, release the safety, and pull back the slide without seeing a thing. The terse, rhythmical sound produced by each operation was pleasing to her ears. In the dark, she gradually lost track of the difference between the sounds the implement actually made and her aural perception of the sounds. The boundary between herself and her actions gradually faded until it disappeared entirely.

At least once a day she would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and put the muzzle of the loaded gun in her mouth. Feeling the hardness of the metal against the edges of her teeth, she imagined herself pulling the trigger. That was all it would take to end her life. In the next instant, she would have vanished from this world. To the self she saw standing in the mirror, she said, A few important points: not to let my hand shake; to brace for the recoil; not to be afraid; and, most important, not to hesitate.

I could do it now if I wanted to, Aomame thought. I’d just have to pull my finger inward half an inch. It would be so easy. Why don’t I just go ahead and do it? But she reconsidered and took the pistol from her mouth,

returned the hammer to its uncocked position, set the safety, and laid the gun down by the sink between the toothpaste tube and her hairbrush. No, it’s too soon for that. There’s something I have to do first.

As instructed by Tamaru, Aomame kept the pager with her at all times. She set it next to the alarm clock when she slept. She was ready to deal with it whenever it rang, but another week went by in silence.

The pistol in the shoe box, the seven bullets in the raincoat pocket, the silent pager, her handmade ice pick, its deadly point, the suitcase packed with her personal effects; the new face and the new life that must be awaiting her; the bundle of bills in a Shinjuku Station coin locker: Aomame spent the midsummer days in their presence. More and more people went off on full-fledged summer vacations. Shops closed their shutters. The streets had fewer passersby. The number of cars declined, and a hush fell over the city. She sometimes felt she was on the verge of losing track of her location. Is this actually the real world? she asked herself. If it’s not, then where should I look for reality? She had no idea where else to look, and so she had no choice for now but to recognize this as the one and only reality and to use all her strength to ride it out.

I’m not afraid to die, Aomame reassured herself. What I’m afraid of is having reality get the better of me, of having reality leave me behind.

She had gotten everything ready. She was emotionally prepared as well. She could leave her apartment at any time, as soon as Tamaru contacted her. But she heard nothing from him. The end of August was approaching. Soon summer would begin to wind down, and the cicadas outside would wring out their final cries. How could a whole month have shot by like this even though each day felt horribly long?

Aomame came home from work at the sports club, threw her sweat- soaked clothes into the hamper, and changed into a tank top and shorts. A violent downpour broke out after noon. The sky turned dark. Pebble-sized raindrops smacked down on the streets, and thunder rumbled. The streets were left soaking wet, but then the sun came out again and used all its energy to evaporate the standing water, shrouding the city in a shimmering curtain of steam. Clouds appeared as the sun was going down, covering the sky in a thick veil and hiding the moons.

She felt the need to relax a bit before preparing her supper. Drinking a cold cup of barley tea and nibbling on some edamame she had steamed earlier, she spread the evening paper on the kitchen table and proceeded to skim it in order, first page to last. Nothing piqued her interest. It was just an ordinary evening paper. When she opened to the human interest pages, however, the first thing to attract her attention was a photo of Ayumi. Aomame caught her breath and frowned.

No, it can’t be Ayumi, she thought at first. Aomame assumed she must be mistaken: it was someone who looked a lot like her young policewoman friend. Ayumi would never be so prominently featured in the newspaper, complete with a photo. The more she looked, though, the more certain she became that this was her erstwhile partner in those little sex feasts. In the close-up photo, Ayumi had the hint of a smile on her face – an artificial, uncomfortable smile. The real Ayumi always smiled in a natural, open way with her whole face. This photo looked like one that had been taken for some kind of public album. There was something unnerving in her apparent discomfort.

Aomame did not want to read the article, if possible. If she read the big headline next to the picture, she would be able to guess what had happened. But not reading the article was out of the question. This was reality. Whatever it might be, she could not pass reality by. Aomame took a deep breath and started reading.

Ayumi Nakano (26). Single. Resident of Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo.

The article reported that Ayumi had been found dead in a Shibuya hotel room. She had been strangled with a bathrobe sash. Stark naked, she was handcuffed to the bed, a piece of clothing stuffed in her mouth. A hotel staff person had found the body when inspecting the room before noon. Ayumi and a man had taken the room before eleven o’clock the night before, and the man had left alone at dawn. The charges had been paid in advance. This was not a terribly unusual occurrence in the big city, where the commingling of people gave off heat, often in the form of violence. The newspapers were full of such events. This one, however, had unusual aspects. The victim was a policewoman, and the handcuffs that appeared to have been used as a sex toy were the authentic government-issue type, not the cheap kind sold in porno shops. Quite naturally, this was news that attracted people’s attention.

Chapter 4. TENGO: It Might Be Better Not to Wish for Such a Thing

WHERE IS SHE now, and what could she be doing? Does she still belong to the Society of Witnesses?

I sure hope not, Tengo thought. Of course, religious faith was a matter of individual freedom. He shouldn’t be weighing in on it. But as he recalled, she gave no indication as a young girl that she enjoyed being a believer in the Society of Witnesses.

In college, Tengo worked part-time in a liquor wholesaler’s warehouse. The pay wasn’t bad, but moving heavy cases around was hard work, even for the sturdy Tengo, whose every joint would ache at the end of the day. By coincidence, two young fellows who had grown up as “second- generation” members of the Society of Witnesses worked alongside him. Both were polite young men, nice guys. They were the same age as Tengo, and serious workers. They worked without complaint and without cutting corners. Once after work the three of them went to a bar and had a pint of beer together. The two of them had been friends since childhood, they said, but a few years earlier they had abandoned the faith. On separating from the religion, they had set foot in the real world. As far as Tengo could see,

however, neither of them had fully adapted to their new world. Because they had been raised in a narrow, close-knit community, they found it hard to understand and accept the rules of the broader world. Often they would lose what confidence they had in their own judgments and end up perplexed. They felt liberated by their abandonment of the faith, but they simultaneously retained a nagging suspicion that their decision had been a mistake.

Tengo could not help but sympathize with them. If they had separated from that world while they were still children, before their egos had been firmly established, they would have had a much better chance of adapting to the social mainstream, but once they missed that chance, they had no choice but to live in the Witness community, conforming with its values. Or else, with considerable sacrifice, and depending entirely on their own strength, they had to remake their customs and attitudes from the ground up. When he spoke with them, Tengo would recall the girl and hope that she had not experienced the same pain as these two young men.

After the girl finally let go of his hand and dashed out of the classroom without looking back, Tengo could only stand there, unable to do a thing. She had gripped his left hand with considerable strength, and a vivid sense of her touch remained in that hand for several days. Even after more time went by and the direct sensation began to fade, his heart retained the deep impression she had made there.

Shortly after that, Tengo experienced his first ejaculation. A very small amount of liquid emerged from the tip of his erect penis. It was somewhat thicker than urine and was accompanied by a faintly painful throbbing. Tengo did not realize that this was the precursor of full-fledged semen. He had never seen such a thing before, and it worried him. Something scary might be happening to him. It was not something he could discuss with his father, however, nor could he ask his classmates about it. That night, he woke from a dream (the contents of which he could not remember) to find his underpants slightly damp. It seemed to Tengo as if, by squeezing his hand, the girl had drawn something out of him.

He had no contact with her after that. Aomame maintained the same isolated position in the class, spoke with no one, and recited the usual prayer before lunch in the same clear voice. Even if they happened to pass

each other somewhere, her expression exhibited not the slightest change, as if there had been nothing between them – as if she had not even seen Tengo. Tengo, for his part, took to observing Aomame closely and covertly whenever he had the chance. He realized now, on closer inspection, that she had a nice face – nice enough for him to feel he could like her. She was long and thin, and she always wore faded clothing that was too big for her. When she put on gym clothes, he could tell that her chest had not yet begun to develop. Her face displayed virtually no expression, she hardly ever talked, and her eyes, which always seemed to be focused on something far away, had no sign of life in them. Tengo found this strange, because, on that day when her eyes had looked straight into his, they had been so clear and

luminous.

After she squeezed his hand like that, Tengo came to see that this skinny little girl was far tougher inside than the average person. Her grip itself was impressive, but it was more than that. She seemed to possess an even greater strength of mind. Ordinarily she kept this energy hidden where the other students couldn’t see it. When the teacher called on her in class, she would say no more than minimally necessary to answer the question (and sometimes not even that much), but her posted test scores were never bad. Tengo guessed that she could earn still better grades if she wanted to, but she might be deliberately holding back on exams so as not to attract attention. Perhaps this was the wisdom with which a child in her position survived: by minimizing her wounds – staying as small as possible, as nearly transparent as possible.

How great it would be, Tengo thought, if only she were a totally ordinary girl with whom he could have a lighthearted conversation! Maybe they could have been good friends. For a ten-year-old boy and girl to become good friends was not easy under any circumstances. Indeed, it might be one of the most difficult accomplishments in the world. But while they ought to have managed the occasional friendly chat, such an opportunity never presented itself to Tengo and Aomame. So rather than make the effort to forge a real relationship with the flesh-and-blood Aomame, Tengo chose to relate to her through the silent realm of imagination and memory.

The ten-year-old Tengo had no concrete image of sex. All he wanted from the girl was for her to hold his hand again if possible. He wanted her to squeeze his hand again someplace where the two of them could be alone.

And he wanted her to tell him something – anything – about herself, to whisper some secret about what it meant to be Aomame, what it meant to be a ten-year-old girl. He would try hard to understand it, and that would be the beginning of something, though even now, Tengo still had no idea what that “something” might be.

April came, and the new school year began. Now they were fifth graders, but Tengo and the girl were put into separate classes. Sometimes they would pass each other in the hall or wait at the same bus stop, but the girl continued to act as if she were unaware of Tengo’s existence – or at least it appeared that way to Tengo. He could be right next to her and she wouldn’t move an eyebrow. She wouldn’t even bother to look away from him. As before, all depth and brightness were gone from her eyes. Tengo wondered what that incident in the classroom could have meant. Often it seemed to him like something that had happened in a dream. And yet his hand still retained the vivid feel of Aomame’s extraordinary grip. This world was far too full of riddles for Tengo.

Then at some point he realized that the girl named Aomame was no longer in school. She had transferred to another school, but that was all he found out. No one knew where she had moved to. He was probably the only one in the entire elementary school even slightly bothered by the fact that she had ceased to exist among them.

For a very long time after that, Tengo continued to regret his actions – or, more precisely, his lack of action. Now, finally, he could think of the words that he should have spoken to her. Inside him at last were the things that he wanted to tell her, the things he should have told her. It would not have been so hard. He should have stopped her on the street and said something. If only he had found a good opportunity and whipped up a tiny bit of courage! But that had been impossible for Tengo. And now the chance was lost forever.

Tengo often thought about Aomame after he graduated from the elementary school and advanced to a public middle school. He started having erections more often and masturbated while thinking of her. He always used his left

hand – the hand that retained the touch of her grasp. In his memory, Aomame remained a skinny little girl without breasts, but he was able to bring himself to ejaculation with the thought of her in gym clothes.

In high school, he started dating girls his own age. Their brand-new breasts showed clearly through their clothes, and the sight made it hard for Tengo to breathe. But even so, in bed, before he fell asleep at night, Tengo would move his left hand while thinking of Aomame’s flat chest, which lacked even a hint of swelling. There must be something wrong with him, something perverted, Tengo thought.

Once he entered college, though, Tengo no longer thought about Aomame all the time. The main reason for this was that he started dating real women, actually having sex with some of them. Physically, at least, he was a mature man, for whom the image of a skinny little ten-year-old girl in gym clothes had, naturally enough, grown removed from the objects of his desire.

Still, Tengo never again experienced the same intense shuddering of the heart that he had felt when Aomame gripped his hand in the elementary school classroom. None of the women he met in college or after leaving college to the present day made as distinct an impression on his heart as Aomame. He could not find what he was really looking for in any of them. There had been beautiful ones and warmhearted ones and ones who truly cared for him, but they had come and gone, like vividly colored birds perching momentarily on a branch before flying off somewhere. They could not satisfy him, and he could not satisfy them.

Even now, on the verge of turning thirty, Tengo was surprised to find his thoughts drifting back to the ten-year-old Aomame. There she was, in the deserted classroom, staring straight at him with her crystal-clear eyes, her hand tightly gripping his. Sometimes her skinny frame was draped in gym clothes. Or she was walking behind her mother down the Ichikawa shopping mall on a Sunday morning, her lips clamped shut, her eyes staring at a place that was no place.

At such times, Tengo would think, I guess I’ll never be able to detach myself from her. And he would kick himself again, now that it was too late, for never having spoken to her in the hallway. If only I had made myself do it! If only I had said something to her, my life might be very different.

What reminded him of Aomame was buying edamame in the supermarket. He was choosing among the branches of fresh edamame in the refrigerator case when the thought of Aomame came to him quite naturally. Before he knew it, he was standing there, lost in a daydream. How long this went on, he had no idea, but a woman’s voice saying, “Excuse me” brought him back. He was blocking access to the edamame section with his large frame.

Tengo stopped daydreaming, apologized to the woman, dropped the edamame branch into his shopping basket, and brought it to the cashier along with his other groceries – shrimp, milk, tofu, lettuce, and crackers. There, he waited in line with the housewives of the neighborhood. It was the crowded evening shopping hour and the cashier was a slow-moving trainee, which made for a long line, but this didn’t bother Tengo.

Assuming she was in this line at the cash register, would I know it was Aomame just by looking at her? I wonder. We haven’t seen each other in twenty years. The possibility of our recognizing each other must be pretty slim. Or, say we pass on the street and I think, “Could that be Aomame?,” would I be able to call out to her on the spot? I can’t be sure of that, either. I might just lose heart and let her go without doing a thing. And then I’d be filled with regret again – “Why couldn’t I have said something to her – just one word?”

Komatsu often said to Tengo, “What’s missing in you is desire and a positive attitude.” And maybe he was right. When Tengo had trouble making up his mind, he would think, Oh well, and resign himself. That was his nature.

But if, by chance, we were to come face-to-face and were fortunate enough to recognize each other, I would probably open up and tell her everything honestly. We’d go into some nearby café (assuming she had the time and accepted my invitation) and sit across from each other, drinking something, while I told her everything.

There were so many things he wanted to tell her! “I still remember when you squeezed my hand in that classroom. After that, I wanted to be your friend. I wanted to get to know you better. But I just couldn’t do it. There were lots of reasons for that, but the main problem was that I was a coward. I regretted it for years. I still regret it. And I think of you all the time.” Of course he would not tell her that he had masturbated while picturing her. That would be in a whole different dimension than sheer honesty.

It might be better not to wish for such a thing, though. It might be better never to see her again. I might be disappointed if I actually met her, Tengo thought. Maybe she had turned into some boring, tired-looking office worker. Maybe she had become a frustrated mother shrieking at her kids. Maybe the two of them would have nothing in common to talk about. Yes, that was a very real possibility. Then Tengo would lose something precious that he had cherished all these years. It would be gone forever. But no, Tengo felt almost certain it wouldn’t be like that. In that ten-year-old girl’s resolute eyes and strong-willed profile he had discovered a decisiveness that time could not have worn down.

By comparison, what about Tengo himself? Such thoughts made him uneasy.

Wasn’t Aomame the one who would be disappointed if they met again? In elementary school, Tengo had been recognized by everyone as a math prodigy and received the top grades in almost every subject. He was also an outstanding athlete. Even the teachers treated him with respect and expected great things from him in the future. Aomame might have idolized him. Now, though, he was just a part-time cram school instructor. True, it was an easy job that put no constraints on his solitary lifestyle, but he was far from being a pillar of society. While teaching at the cram school, he wrote fiction on the side, but he was still unpublished. For extra income, he wrote a made-up astrology column for a women’s magazine. It was popular, but it was, quite simply, a pack of lies. He had no friends worth mentioning, nor anyone he was in love with. His weekly trysts with a married woman ten years his senior were virtually his sole human contact. So far, the only accomplishment of which he could be proud was his role as the ghostwriter who turned Air Chrysalis into a bestseller, but that was something he could never mention to anyone.

Tengo’s thoughts had reached this point when the cashier picked up his grocery basket.

He went back to his apartment with a bag of groceries in his arms. Changing into shorts, he took a cold can of beer from the refrigerator and drank it, standing, while he heated a large pot of water. Before the water boiled, he stripped all the leathery edamame pods from the branch, spread them on a cutting board, and rubbed them all over with salt. When the water boiled, he threw them into the pot.

Tengo wondered, Why has that skinny little ten-year-old girl stayed in my heart all these years? She came over to me after class and squeezed my hand without saying a word. That was all. But in that time, Aomame seemed to have taken part of him with her – part of his heart or body. And in its place, she had left part of her heart or body inside him. This important exchange had taken place in a matter of seconds.

Tengo chopped a lot of ginger to a fine consistency. Then he sliced some celery and mushrooms into nice-sized pieces. The Chinese parsley, too, he chopped up finely. He peeled the shrimp and washed them at the sink. Spreading a paper towel, he laid the shrimp out in neat rows, like troops in formation. When the edamame were finished boiling, he drained them in a colander and left them to cool. Next he warmed a large frying pan and dribbled in some sesame oil and spread it over the bottom. He slowly fried the chopped ginger over a low flame.

I wish I could meet Aomame right now, Tengo started thinking again. Even if she turned out to be disappointed in him or he was a little disappointed in her, he didn’t care. He wanted to see her in any case. All he wanted was to find out what kind of life she had led since then, what kind of place she was in now, what kinds of things gave her joy, and what kinds of things made her sad. No matter how much the two of them had changed, or whether all possibility of their getting together had already been lost, this in no way altered the fact that they had exchanged something important in that empty elementary school classroom so long ago.

He put the sliced celery and mushrooms into the frying pan. Turning the gas flame up to high and lightly jogging the pan, he carefully stirred the contents with a bamboo spatula, adding a sprinkle of salt and pepper. When the vegetables were just beginning to cook, he tossed the drained shrimp into the pan. After adding another dose of salt and pepper to the whole thing, he poured in a small glass of sake. Then a dash of soy sauce and

finally a scattering of Chinese parsley. Tengo performed all these operations on automatic pilot. This was not a dish that required complicated procedures: his hands moved on their own with precision, but his mind stayed focused on Aomame the whole time.

When the stir-fried shrimp and vegetables were ready, Tengo transferred the food from the frying pan to a large platter along with the edamame. He took a fresh beer from the refrigerator, sat at the kitchen table, and, still lost in thought, proceeded to eat the steaming food.

I’ve obviously been changing a lot over the past several months. Maybe you could say I’m growing up mentally and emotionally … at last … on the verge of turning thirty. Well, isn’t that something! With his partially drunk beer in hand, Tengo shook his head in self-derision. Really, isn’t that something! How many years will it take me to reach full maturity at this rate?

In any case, though, it seemed clear that Air Chrysalis had been the catalyst for the changes going on inside him. The act of rewriting Fuka- Eri’s story in his own words had produced in Tengo a strong new desire to give literary form to the story inside himself. And part of that strong new desire was a need for Aomame. Something was making him think about Aomame all the time now. At every opportunity, his thoughts would be drawn back to that classroom on an afternoon twenty years earlier the way a strong riptide could sweep the feet out from under a person standing on the shore.

Tengo drank only half his beer and ate only half his shrimp and vegetables. He poured the leftover beer into the sink, and the food he transferred to a small plate, covered it with plastic wrap, and put it in the refrigerator.

After the meal, Tengo sat at his desk, switched on his word processor, and opened his partially written document.

True, rewriting the past probably had almost no meaning, Tengo felt. His older girlfriend had been right about that. No matter how passionately or minutely he might attempt to rewrite the past, the present circumstances in which he found himself would remain generally unchanged. Time had the power to cancel all changes wrought by human artifice, overwriting all new revisions with further revisions, returning the flow to its original

course. A few minor facts might be changed, but Tengo would still be Tengo.

What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as though he were rewriting the past. It was the only way.

Contrition and repentance Tear the sinful heart in two. O that my teardrops may be A sweet balm unto thee, Faithful Jesus.

This was the meaning of the aria from the St. Matthew Passion that Fuka-Eri had sung the other day. He had wondered about it and listened again to his recording at home, looking up the words in translation. It was an aria near the beginning of the Passion concerned with the so-called Anointing in Bethany. When Jesus visits the home of a leper in the town of Bethany, a woman pours “very costly fragrant oil” on his head. The disciples around him scold her for wasting the precious ointment, saying that she could have sold it and used the money to help the poor. But Jesus quiets the angry disciples and says that the woman has done a good deed. “For in pouring this fragrant oil on my body, she did it for my burial.”

The woman knew that Jesus would have to die soon. And so, as though bathing him in her tears, she could do no less than pour the valuable, fragrant oil on his head. Jesus also knew that he would soon have to tread the road to death, and he told his disciples, “Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

None of them, of course, was able to change the future.

Tengo closed his eyes again, took a deep breath, found the words he needed and set them in a row. Then he rearranged them to give the image greater clarity and precision. Finally, he improved the rhythm.

Like Vladimir Horowitz seated before eighty-eight brand-new keys, Tengo curved his ten fingers suspended in space. Then, when he was ready, he began typing characters to fill the word processor’s screen.

He depicted a world in which two moons hung side by side in the evening eastern sky, the people living in that world, and the time flowing through it.

“Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

Chapter 5. AOMAME: The Vegetarian Cat Meets Up with the Rat

ONCE SHE HAD managed to comprehend the sheer fact that Ayumi had died, Aomame went through a brief period involving a certain process of mental adjustment. Eventually, when the first phase of the process ended, she began to cry. She cried quietly, even silently, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders quivering, as if she wanted to be sure that no one else in the world could tell that she was crying.

The window curtains were shut tight, but still, someone might be watching. That night Aomame spread the newspaper on the kitchen table, and, in its presence, she cried without interruption. Now and then a sob escaped her, but the rest of the time she cried soundlessly. Her tears ran down her hands and onto the paper.

Aomame did not cry easily in this world. Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry – at someone else or at herself – which meant that it was rare for her to shed tears. Once they started pouring out of her, though, she couldn’t stop them. She hadn’t had such a long cry since Tamaki Otsuka killed herself. How many years ago had that been? She could not remember. In any case, it had been a long time before, and

she had cried forever. It went on for days. She ate nothing the whole time, and stayed shut up indoors. Now and then she would replenish the water that she had cried out in tears, and then she would collapse and doze. That was all. The rest of the time she went on weeping. That was the last time she did anything like this.

Ayumi was no longer in this world. She was now a cold corpse that was probably being sent for forensic dissection. When that ended, they would sew her back together, probably give her a simple funeral, send her to the crematorium, and burn her. She would turn into smoke, rise up into the sky, and mix with the clouds. Then she would come down to the earth again as rain, and nurture some nameless patch of grass with no story to tell. But Aomame would never see Ayumi alive again. This seemed warped and misguided, in opposition to the flow of nature, and horribly unfair.

Ayumi was the only person for whom Aomame had been able to feel anything like friendship since Tamaki Otsuka left the world. Unfortunately, however, there had been limits to her friendship. Ayumi was an active-duty police officer, and Aomame a serial murderer. True, she was a murderer motivated by conviction and conscience, but a murderer is, in the end, a murderer, a criminal in the eyes of the law.

For this reason, Aomame had to make an effort to harden her heart and not respond when Ayumi sought to deepen their ties. Ayumi must have realized this to some extent – that Aomame had some kind of personal secret or secrets that caused her deliberately to put a certain distance between them. Ayumi had excellent intuition. At least half of her easy openness was an act, behind which lurked a soft and sensitive vulnerability. Aomame knew this to be true. Her own defensiveness had probably saddened Ayumi, making her feel rejected and distanced. The thought was like a needle stabbing Aomame in the chest.

And so Ayumi had been murdered. She had probably met a man in the city, had drinks with him, and gone to the hotel. Then, in the dark, sealed room, their elaborate sex game had begun. Handcuffs, a gag, a blindfold. Aomame could picture the scene. The man tightened the sash of his bathrobe around the woman’s neck, and as he watched her writhe in agony, his excitement mounted until he ejaculated. But the man tightened the sash with too much force. What was supposed to have ended at the point of crisis did not end.

Ayumi must have feared that such a thing might happen. She needed intense sexual activity at regular intervals. Her flesh needed it – and so, perhaps, did her mind. Like Aomame, she did not want a regular lover. But Ayumi tended to wade in deeper than Aomame. She preferred wilder, riskier sex, and perhaps, unconsciously, she wanted to be hurt. Aomame was different. She was more cautious, and she refused to be hurt by anyone. She would fiercely resist if a man tried such a thing; but Ayumi tended to respond to a man’s desire, whatever it might be, and she looked forward to finding out what he would give her in return. It was a dangerous tendency. These sexual partners of hers were, ultimately, passing strangers. It was impossible to find out what desires they possessed, what tendencies they were hiding, until the critical moment. Ayumi herself recognized the danger, of course, which was why she needed a stable partner like Aomame – someone to put on the brakes and watch over her with care.

In her own way, Aomame, too, needed Ayumi, who possessed abilities that she herself happened to lack – an open, cheerful personality that put people at ease, a friendly manner, a natural curiosity, a positive attitude, a talent for interesting conversation, large breasts that attracted attention. All Aomame had to do was stay next to Ayumi with a mysterious smile on her face. The men would want to find out what lay behind that smile. In that sense, Aomame and Ayumi were an ideal team – an invincible sex machine.

I should have been more open and accepting with that girl, Aomame thought. I should have reciprocated her feelings and held her tight. That was the one thing she was hoping for – to be accepted and embraced unconditionally, to be comforted by someone, if only for a moment. But I could not respond to her need. My instinct for self-preservation is too strong, and so is my determination to keep Tamaki Otsuka’s memory unsullied.

So Ayumi went out to the city at night alone, without Aomame, to be strangled to death, shackled by the cold steel of genuine handcuffs, blindfolded, her stockings or underwear stuffed in her mouth. The thing that Ayumi had always feared had become a reality. If Aomame had accepted her more willingly, Ayumi would probably not have gone out that night. She would have called and asked Aomame to go with her. They would have gone to a safer place, and checked on each other as they lay in their men’s

arms. But Ayumi had probably been hesitant to impose on Aomame. And Aomame had never once called Ayumi to suggest an outing.

It was nearly four o’clock in the morning when Aomame found that she could no longer bear to stay alone in her apartment. She stepped into a pair of sandals and went out, walking aimlessly through the predawn streets, wearing only shorts and a tank top. Someone called out to her, but she kept walking straight ahead. She walked until she was thirsty. Then she stopped by an all-night convenience store, bought a large carton of orange juice, and drank it on the spot. Then she went back to her apartment to cry. I loved Ayumi, she thought, even more than I realized. If she wanted to touch me, I should have let her touch me anywhere she liked, as much as she liked.

The    next   day’s   paper    carried    another    report,    under   the          heading “Policewoman    Strangled in     Shibuya Hotel.” The                     police               were       doing everything in their power to catch the man, it said, and the woman’s fellow officers were utterly perplexed. Ayumi was a cheerful person who was well liked by everyone, a responsible and energetic individual who had always earned high marks for her police work. Several of her relatives, including her father and brother, were also police officers, and their family ties were strong. All were puzzled as to how such a thing could have happened to her.

None of them know, Aomame thought. But I know. Ayumi had a great emptiness inside her, like a desert at the edge of the earth. You could try watering it all you wanted, but everything would be sucked down to the bottom of the world, leaving no trace of moisture. No life could take root there. Not even birds would fly over it. What had created such a wasteland inside Ayumi, only she herself knew. No, maybe not even Ayumi knew the true cause. But one of the biggest factors had to be the twisted sexual desires that the men around Ayumi had forced upon her. As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create the sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst

that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically – on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.

Aomame took the Heckler & Koch HK4 from the shoe box, loaded the magazine with practiced movements, released the safety, pulled back the slide, sent a bullet into the chamber, raised the hammer, and aimed the gun at a point on the wall with both hands solidly on the grip. The barrel was rock steady. Her hands no longer trembled. Aomame held her breath, went into a moment of total concentration, and then let out one long breath. Lowering the pistol, she reset the safety and tested the weight of the gun in her hand, staring at its dull gleam. The gun had almost become a part of her body.

I have to keep my emotions in check, Aomame told herself. Even if I were to punish Ayumi’s uncle or brother, they wouldn’t know what they were being punished for. And nothing I could do to them now would bring Ayumi back. Poor kid, something like this had to happen sooner or later. Ayumi was on a slow but unavoidable approach toward the center of a deadly whirlpool. And even if I had been warmer to her, there were probably limits to how much that could have accomplished. It’s time for me to stop crying. I’ll have to change my attitude again. I’ll have to put the rules ahead of my self. That’s the important thing, as Tamaru said.

On the morning of the fifth day after Ayumi died, the pager finally rang. At the time, she was in the kitchen, boiling water to make coffee and listening to the news on the radio. The pager was sitting on the kitchen table. She read the telephone number displayed on the small screen. It was not one she knew. But it had to be a message from Tamaru. She went to a nearby pay phone and dialed the number. Tamaru answered after the third ring.

“All set to go?” Tamaru asked. “Of course,” Aomame answered.

“Here is Madame’s message: seven o’clock tonight in the lobby of the Hotel Okura’s main building. Dress for work as usual. Sorry for the short notice, but this could only be arranged at the last minute.”

“Seven o’clock tonight in the lobby of the Hotel Okura’s main building,” Aomame repeated mechanically.

“I’d like to wish you luck, but I’m afraid a good luck wish from me won’t do any good,” Tamaru said.

“Because you don’t believe in luck.”

“Even if I wanted to, I don’t know what it’s like,” Tamaru said. “I’ve never seen it.”

“That’s okay, I don’t need good wishes. There’s something I’d like you to do for me instead. I have a potted rubber plant in my apartment. I’d like you to take care of it. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.”

“I’ll take care of it.” “Thanks.”

“Arubber plant’s a lot easier to take care of than a cat or a tropical fish. Anything else?”

“Not a thing. Just throw out everything I leave behind.”

“When you’ve finished the job, go to Shinjuku Station and call this number again. I’ll give you your next instructions then.”

“When I finish the job, I go to Shinjuku Station and call this number again,” Aomame repeated.

“I think you know not to write down the telephone number. When you leave home, break the pager and get rid of it somewhere.”

“I see. Okay.”

“We’ve lined up everything to the last detail. You don’t have to worry about a thing. Just leave the rest to us.”

“I won’t worry,” Aomame said.

Tamaru kept silent for a moment. “Do you want my honest opinion?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t mean to say that what you two are doing is useless, I really don’t. It’s your problem, not mine. But I do think that, at the very least, it’s reckless. And there’s no end to it.”

“You may be right,” Aomame said. “But it’s beyond changing now.” “Like avalanches in the spring.”

“Probably.”

“But sensible people don’t go into avalanche country in avalanche season.”

“A sensible person wouldn’t be having this conversation with you.” “You may be right,” Tamaru had to admit. “Anyhow, are there any

relatives we should be contacting in case an avalanche does occur?” “None at all.”

“You mean there aren’t any, or they’re there but they’re not.” “They’re there but they’re not.”

“That’s fine,” Tamaru said. “It’s best to travel light. A rubber plant is just about the ideal family.”

“Seeing those goldfish in Madame’s house suddenly made me want to have some of my own. They’d be nice to have around. They’re little and quiet and probably don’t make too many demands. So I went to a shop by my station the next day thinking I was going to buy some, but when I actually saw them in the tank I didn’t want them anymore. Instead, I bought this sad little rubber plant, one of the last ones they had.”

“I’d say you made the right choice.”

“I might never be able to buy goldfish – ever.”

“Maybe not,” Tamaru said. “You could buy another rubber plant.” A short silence ensued.

“Seven o’clock tonight in the lobby of the Hotel Okura’s main building,” Aomame said again to reconfirm.

“You just have to sit there. They’ll find you.” “They’ll find me.”

Tamaru cleared his throat. “By the way, do you know the story about the vegetarian cat who met up with the rat?”

“Never heard that one.” “Would you like to?” “Very much.”

“A cat met up with a big male rat in the attic and chased him into a corner. The rat, trembling, said, ‘Please don’t eat me, Mr. Cat. I have to go back to my family. I have hungry children waiting for me. Please let me go.’ The cat said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t eat you. To tell you the truth, I can’t say this too loudly, but I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat any meat. You were lucky to run into me.’ The rat said, ‘Oh, what a wonderful day! What a lucky rat I am to meet up with a vegetarian cat!’ But the very next second, the cat pounced on the rat, held him down with his claws, and sank his

sharp teeth into the rat’s throat. With his last, painful breath, the rat asked him, ‘But Mr. Cat, didn’t you say you’re a vegetarian and don’t eat any meat? Were you lying to me?’ The cat licked his chops and said, ‘True, I don’t eat meat. That was no lie. I’m going to take you home in my mouth and trade you for lettuce.’”

Aomame thought about this for a moment. “What’s the point?”

“No point, really. I suddenly remembered the story when we were talking about luck before. That’s all. You can take whatever you like from it, of course.”

“What a heartwarming story.”

“Oh, and another thing. I’m pretty sure they’re going to pat you down and search your bag before they let you in. They’re a careful bunch. Better keep that in mind.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“All right, then,” Tamaru said, “let’s meet again somewhere.” “Again somewhere,” Aomame repeated by reflex.

Tamaru cut the connection. Aomame looked at the receiver for a moment, grimaced slightly, and put it down. Then, after committing the telephone number displayed on the pager to memory, she deleted it. Again somewhere, Aomame repeated to herself. But she knew she would probably never see Tamaru again.

Aomame scoured the morning paper but found nothing on Ayumi’s murder. This probably meant that the investigation had turned up nothing new. No doubt all the weekly magazines would be mining the case for every weird angle they could find. A young, active-duty policewoman engages in sex games with handcuffs in a Shibuya love hotel and is strangled, stark naked. Aomame didn’t want to read any sensationalistic reports. She had avoided turning on the television ever since it happened, not wanting to hear some female news announcer reporting on Ayumi’s death in the usual artificial high-pitched tones.

Of course, she wanted the perpetrator to be caught. He had to be punished, no matter what. But would it make any difference if he were arrested, tried, and all the details of the murder came out? It wouldn’t bring Ayumi back, that much was certain. In any case, the sentence would be a light one. It would probably be judged to have been not a homicide but

involuntary manslaughter – an accident. Of course, not even a death penalty could make up for what had happened. Aomame closed the paper, rested her elbows on the table, and covered her face with her hands for a while. She thought about Ayumi, but the tears no longer came. Now she was just angry.

She still had a lot of time until seven o’clock in the evening but nothing to do in the meantime, no work at the sports club. Following Tamaru’s instructions, she had already deposited her small travel bag and shoulder bag in a coin locker at Shinjuku Station. The travel bag contained a sheaf of bills and enough clothing (including underwear and stockings) for several days. She had been going to Shinjuku once every three days to deposit more coins in the slot and double-check on the contents. She had no need to clean her apartment, and even if she wanted to cook, the refrigerator was nearly empty. Aside from the rubber plant, there was almost nothing left in the room that still had the smell of life. She had gotten rid of everything connected to her personal information. All the drawers were empty. And as of tomorrow, I won’t be here, either. Not a trace of me will be left.

The clothes she would wear that evening were nicely folded and stacked on the bed. Next to them she had placed a blue gym bag. Inside was a complete set of stretching equipment. She checked the contents of the bag once more for safety’s sake: jersey top and bottom, yoga mat, large and small towels, and small hard case containing the fine-pointed ice pick. Everything was there. She took the ice pick out of the case, pulled off the cork, and touched the point to make sure it was still plenty sharp. To make doubly sure, she gave it a light sharpening with her finest whetstone. She pictured the needle sinking soundlessly into that special point on the back of the man’s neck, as if being sucked inside. As usual, everything should end in an instant – no screaming, no bleeding, just a momentary spasm. Aomame thrust the needle back into the cork and carefully returned the ice pick to its case.

Next she pulled the T-shirt-wrapped Heckler & Koch from its shoe box and, with practiced movements, loaded seven 9mm bullets into the magazine. With a dry sound, she sent a cartridge into the chamber. She released the safety catch and set it again. She wrapped the pistol in a white handkerchief and put it in a vinyl pouch. This she hid in a change of underwear.

Now, was there anything else I had to do?

She couldn’t think of anything. Standing in the kitchen, Aomame made coffee with the boiled water. Then she sat at the table, drinking it with a croissant.

This may be my last job, Aomame thought. It’s also going to be my most important and most difficult job. Once I’ve finished this assignment, I won’t have to kill anyone anymore.

Aomame was not opposed to losing her identity. If anything, she welcomed it. She was not particularly attached to her name or her face and could think of nothing about her past that she would regret losing. A reset of my life: this may be the one thing I’ve longed for most.

Strangely enough, the one thing that Aomame felt she did not want to lose was her rather sad little breasts. From the age of twelve, she had lived with an unwavering dissatisfaction with regard to the shape and size of her breasts. It often occurred to her that she might have been able to live a far more serene life if only her breasts had been a little larger. And yet now, when she was being given a chance to enlarge them (a choice that carried with it a certain necessity), she found that she had absolutely no desire to make the change. They were fine as they were. Indeed, they were just right.

She touched her breasts through her tank top. They were the same breasts as always, shaped like two lumps of dough that had failed to rise – because of a failure to properly combine the ingredients – and subtly different in size. She shook her head. But never mind. These are me.

What will be left of me besides these breasts?

Tengo’s memory will stay with me, of course. The touch of his hand will stay. My shuddering emotion will stay. The desire to be in his arms will stay. Even if I become a completely different person, my love for Tengo can never be taken from me. That’s the biggest difference between Ayumi and me. At my core, there is not nothing. Neither is it a parched wasteland. At my core, there is love. I’ll go on loving that ten-year-old boy named Tengo

forever – his strength, his intelligence, his kindness. He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.

The thirty-year-old Tengo inside of Aomame was not the real Tengo. That Tengo was nothing but a hypothesis, as it were, created entirely in Aomame’s mind. Tengo still had his strength and intelligence and kindness, and now he was a grown man with thick arms, a broad chest, and big, strong genitals. He could be by her side whenever she wanted him there, holding her tightly, stroking her hair, kissing her. Their room was always dark, and Aomame couldn’t see him. All that her eyes could take in was his eyes. Even in the dark, she could see his warm eyes. She could look into them and see the world as he saw it.

Aomame’s occasional overwhelming need to sleep with men came, perhaps, from her wish to keep the Tengo she nurtured inside her as unsullied as possible. By engaging in wild sex with unknown men, what she hoped to accomplish, surely, was the liberation of her flesh from the desire that bound it. She wanted to spend time alone with Tengo in the calm, quiet world that came to her after the liberation, just the two of them together, undisturbed. Surely that was what Aomame wanted.

Aomame spent several hours that afternoon thinking about Tengo. She sat on the aluminum chair on her narrow balcony, looking up at the sky, listening to the roar of the traffic, occasionally holding a leaf of her sad little rubber plant between her fingers as she thought of him. There was still no moon to be seen in the afternoon sky. That wouldn’t happen for some hours yet. Where will I be at this time tomorrow? Aomame wondered. I have no idea. But that’s a minor matter compared with the fact that Tengo exists in this world.

Aomame gave her rubber plant its last watering, and then she put Janáček’s Sinfonietta on the record player. It was the only record she had kept after getting rid of all the others. She closed her eyes and listened to the music, imagining the windswept fields of Bohemia. How wonderful it would be to walk with Tengo in such a place! They would be holding hands, of course. The breeze would sweep past, soundlessly swaying the soft green grass. Aomame could feel the warmth of Tengo’s hand in hers. The scene would gradually fade like a movie’s happy ending.

Aomame then lay down on her bed and slept for thirty minutes, curled up in a ball. She did not dream. It was a sleep that required no dreaming. When she woke, the hands of the clock were pointing to four thirty. Using the food still left in the refrigerator, she made herself some ham and eggs. She drank orange juice straight from the carton. The silence after her nap was strangely heavy. She turned on the FM radio to find Vivaldi’s Concerto for Woodwinds playing. The piccolo was trilling away like the chirping of a little bird. To Aomame, this sounded like music intended to emphasize the unreality of her present reality.

After clearing the dishes from the table, Aomame took a shower and changed into the outfit she had prepared weeks ago for this day – simple clothes that made for easy movement: pale blue cotton pants and a white short-sleeved blouse free of ornamentation. She gathered her hair in a bun and put it up, holding it in place with a comb. No accessories. Instead of putting the clothes she had been wearing into the hamper, she stuffed them into a black plastic garbage bag for Tamaru to get rid of. She trimmed her fingernails and took time brushing her teeth. She also cleaned her ears. Then she trimmed her eyebrows, spread a thin layer of cream over her face, and put a tiny dab of cologne on the back of her neck. She inspected the details of her face from every angle in the mirror to be sure there were no problems, and then, picking up a vinyl gym bag with a Nike logo, she left the room.

Standing by the front door, she turned for one last look, aware that she would never be coming back. The thought made the apartment appear unbelievably shabby, like a prison that only locked from the inside, bereft of any picture or vase. The only thing left was the bargain-sale rubber plant on the balcony, which she had bought instead of goldfish. She could hardly believe she had spent years of her life in this place without question or discontent.

“Good-bye,” she murmured, bidding farewell not so much to the apartment as to the self that had lived here.

Chapter 6. TENGO: We Have Very Long Arms

THE SITUATION SHOWED little development for a while. No one contacted Tengo. No messages arrived from Komatsu or Professor Ebisuno or Fuka-Eri. They all might have forgotten him and gone off to the moon. Tengo would have no problem with that if it were true, but things would never work out so conveniently for him. No, they had not gone to the moon. They just had a lot to do that kept them busy day after day, and they had neither the time nor the consideration to let Tengo know what they were up to.

Tengo tried to read the newspaper every day, in keeping with Komatsu’s instructions, but – at least in the paper he read – nothing further about Fuka-Eri appeared. The newspaper industry actively sought out events that had already happened, but took a relatively passive attitude toward ongoing events. Thus, it probably carried the tacit message, “Nothing much is happening now.” Having no television himself, Tengo did not know how television news shows were handling the case.

As for the weekly magazines, virtually all of them picked up the story. Not that Tengo actually read them. He just saw the magazine ads in

the newspaper with their sensational headlines: “Truth about the enigmatic disappearance of the beautiful bestselling teenage author,” “Air Chrysalis author Fuka-Eri (17): Where did she disappear to?” “’Hidden’ background of beautiful runaway teenage author.” Several of the ads even included Fuka-Eri’s photo, the one taken at the press conference. Tengo was, of course, not uninterested in what the articles might say, but he was not about to spend the money it would take to compile a complete set of weeklies. Komatsu would probably let him know if there was anything in them that he should be concerned about. The absence of contact meant that, for the moment, there had been no new developments. In other words, people had still not realized that Air Chrysalis had (perhaps) been the product of a ghostwriter.

Judging from the headlines, the media were focused on the identity of Fuka-Eri’s father as a once-famous radical activist, the fact that she had spent an isolated childhood in a commune in the hills of Yamanashi, and her present guardian, Professor Ebisuno (a formerly well-known intellectual). And even as the whereabouts of the beautiful, enigmatic teenage author remained a mystery, Air Chrysalis continued to occupy the bestseller list. Such questions were enough to arouse people’s interest.

If it appeared that Fuka-Eri’s disappearance was going to drag on, however, it was probably just a matter of time until investigations would begin to probe into broader areas. Then things might get sticky. If anyone decided to look into Fuka-Eri’s schooling, for example, they might discover that she was dyslexic and, possibly for that reason, hardly went to school at all. Her grades in Japanese or her compositions (assuming she wrote any) might come out, and that might naturally lead to the question of how a dyslexic girl had managed to produce such sterling prose. It didn’t take a genius to imagine how, at that point, people might start wondering if she had had help.

Such doubts would be brought to Komatsu first. He was the editor in charge of the story and had overseen everything regarding its publication. Komatsu would surely insist that he knew nothing about the matter. With a cool look on his face, he would maintain that his only role had been to pass the author’s manuscript on to the selection committee, that he had had nothing to do with the process of its creation. Komatsu was good at keeping a straight face when saying things he didn’t believe, though this was a skill mastered by all experienced editors to some degree. No sooner had he

denied any knowledge of the deception than he would call Tengo and dramatically say something like, “Hey, Tengo, it’s starting: the heat is on,” as if he himself were enjoying the mess.

And maybe he was. Tengo sometimes felt that Komatsu had a certain desire for self-destruction. Maybe deep down he was hoping to see the whole plan exposed, a big juicy scandal blow up, and all connected parties blasted into the sky. And yet, at the same time, Komatsu could be a hardheaded realist. He would be more likely to cast his desire aside than to sail over the edge toward destruction.

Komatsu probably had it all figured out so that no matter what happened, he at least would survive. Just how he would manage it in this case, Tengo did not know, but Komatsu probably had his own clever ways of exploiting anything, be it a scandal or even total destruction. He was a shrewd player who was in no position to be criticizing Professor Ebisuno in that regard. But Tengo told himself with some confidence that Komatsu would be sure to contact him if clouds of suspicion began to appear on the horizon concerning the authorship of Air Chrysalis. So far, Tengo had merely functioned as a convenient and effective tool for Komatsu, but now he was also Komatsu’s Achilles’ heel. If Tengo were to disclose all the facts, that would put Komatsu in a terrible position, so Komatsu could not afford to ignore him. All Tengo had to do was wait for Komatsu to call; as long as there was no call, the “heat” was not “on.”

Tengo was more interested in what Professor Ebisuno might be doing at the moment. No doubt he was making things happen with the police, hounding them with the possibility that Sakigake was involved in Fuka-Eri’s disappearance, exploiting the event to pry open the religious organization’s hard shell. But were the police moving in that direction? Yes, they probably were. The media were already foaming at the mouth over the relationship of Fuka-Eri and Sakigake. If the police did nothing and important facts later emerged along that line, they would be attacked for having failed to investigate. In any case, however, their investigation would be carried out behind the scenes, which meant that no substantial new information was to be gleaned from either the weekly magazines or TV news.

Coming home from the cram school one day, Tengo found a thick envelope shoved into his mailbox in the apartment building’s front entrance. It bore Komatsu’s name as sender, the logo of his publisher, and six special-

delivery postmarks. Back in his apartment, Tengo opened it to find copies of all the latest reviews of Air Chrysalis and a letter from Komatsu. Deciphering Komatsu’s scrawl took a good bit of time.

Tengo–

There have been no major developments so far. They still haven’t found Fuka-Eri. The weekly magazines and TV reports are mainly concentrating on the question of her birth and childhood, and fortunately the damage has not spread to us. The book keeps selling more and more, which may or may not be a cause for celebration, it’s hard to say. The company’s very happy, though, and the boss gave me a certificate of commendation and a cash bonus. I’ve been working for this publisher for over twenty years, but this is the first time he’s ever had anything nice to say about me. It kind of makes me want to see the look on their faces if they found out the truth.

I am enclosing copies of reviews and other articles regarding Air Chrysalis. Have a look at them for your own enlightenment when you get a chance. I think some of them will be of special interest to you, and a few will make you laugh – if you’re in the mood for laughing, that is.

I had an acquaintance of mine look into that New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts we talked about. It was set up a few years ago, received government approval, and is now actively operating. It has an office and submits its annual financial reports. It awards grants to a number of scholars and writers each year – or so they claim. My source can’t tell where they get their money, and he finds the whole thing just plain fishy. It could be a front established as a tax write-off. A detailed investigation might turn up some more information, but we don’t have that kind of time and effort to spare. As I said to you when we last talked, I’m not quite convinced that a place like that wants to give three million yen to an unknown writer like you. There’s something going on behind the scenes, and we can’t discount the possibility that Sakigake has something to do with it. If so, it means they’ve sniffed out your connection to Air Chrysalis. In any case, it makes sense for you to have nothing to do with that organization.

Tengo returned Komatsu’s letter to the envelope. Why would Komatsu have bothered to write him a letter? It could simply be that, as long as he was sending the reviews, he put a letter in with them, but that was not like Komatsu. If he had something to tell Tengo, he would have done it on the phone as usual. A letter like this could remain as evidence in the future. Cautious Komatsu could not have failed to think about that. Or possibly Komatsu was less worried about evidence remaining than the possibility of a wiretap.

Tengo looked over at his phone. A wiretap? It had never occurred to him that anyone might be tapping his phone. Though, come to think of it, no one had called him in the past week. Maybe it was common knowledge that this phone was being tapped. He had not even heard from his older girlfriend, who liked talking on the phone. That was very unusual.

Even more unusual was the fact that she had not come to his apartment last Friday. She always called if something came up to prevent her from visiting him – say, her child was home from school with a cold, or her period had started all of a sudden. That Friday, however, she had not contacted him; she simply never showed up. Tengo had prepared a simple lunch for them in anticipation of her arrival, but ended up spending the day alone. Perhaps she was stuck dealing with some emergency, but it was not normal not to have had the slightest word from her. Meanwhile, he was not able to contact her from his end.

Tengo stopped thinking about both his girlfriend and the telephone. He sat at the kitchen table to read the book reviews in order. They had been assembled chronologically, the title of the newspaper or magazine and date of publication written in ballpoint pen in the upper left-hand corner. Komatsu must have had his part-time female assistant do it; he would never have undertaken such drudgery himself. Most of the reviews were positive. Many of the reviewers praised the story’s depth and boldness and acknowledged the precision of the style, several of them finding it “incredible” that the work had been written by a seventeen-year-old girl.

Not a bad guess, Tengo thought.

One article called the author “a Françoise Sagan who has absorbed the air of magical realism.” This piece, though vague and filled with reservations, generally seemed to be in praise of the work.

More than a few of the reviewers seemed perplexed by – or simply undecided about – the meaning of the air chrysalis and the Little People. One reviewer concluded his piece, “As a story, the work is put together in an exceptionally interesting way and it carries the reader along to the very end, but when it comes to the question of what is an air chrysalis, or who are the Little People, we are left in a pool of mysterious question marks. This may well be the author’s intention, but many readers are likely to take this lack of clarification as a sign of ‘authorial laziness.’ While this may be fine for a debut work, if the author intends to have a long career as a writer, in the near future she may well need to explain her deliberately cryptic posture.”

Tengo cocked his head in puzzlement. If an author succeeded in writing a story “put together in an exceptionally interesting way” that “carries the reader along to the very end,” who could possibly call such a writer “lazy”?

But Tengo, in all honesty, had nothing clear to say to this. Maybe his thoughts on the matter were mistaken and the critic was right. He had immersed himself so deeply in the rewriting of Air Chrysalis that he was practically incapable of any kind of objectivity. He now saw the air chrysalis and the Little People as things that existed inside himself. Not even he could honestly say he knew what they meant. Nor was this so very important to him. The most meaningful thing was whether or not one could accept their existence as a fact, and Tengo was able to do this quite readily, which was precisely why he had been able to immerse his heart and soul in rewriting Air Chrysalis. Had he not been able to accept the story on its own terms, he would never have participated in the fraud, even if tempted with a fortune or faced with threats.

Still, Tengo’s reading of the story was his and his alone. He could not help feeling a certain sympathy for the trusting men and women who were “left in a pool of mysterious question marks” after reading Air Chrysalis. He pictured a bunch of dismayed-looking people clutching at colorful flotation rings as they drifted aimlessly in a large pool full of question marks. In the sky above them shone an utterly unrealistic sun. Tengo felt a certain sense of responsibility for having foisted such a state of affairs upon the public.

But who can possibly save all the people of the world? Tengo thought. You could bring all the gods of the world into one place, and still

they couldn’t abolish nuclear weapons or eradicate terrorism. They couldn’t end the drought in Africa or bring John Lennon back to life. Far from it – the gods would just break into factions and start fighting among themselves, and the world would probably become even more chaotic than it is now. Considering the sense of powerlessness that such a state of affairs would bring about, to have people floating in a pool of mysterious question marks seems like a minor sin.

Tengo read about half of the Air Chrysalis reviews that Komatsu had sent before stuffing them back into the envelope. He could pretty well imagine what the rest were like. As a story, Air Chrysalis was fascinating to many people. It had fascinated Tengo and Komatsu and Professor Ebisuno and an amazing number of readers. What more did it have to do?

The phone rang just after nine o’clock Tuesday night. Tengo was listening to music and reading a book. This was his favorite time of day, reading to his heart’s content before going to sleep. When he tired of reading, he would fall asleep.

This was the first time he had heard the phone ring in quite a while, and there was something ominous about it. This was not Komatsu calling. The phone had a different ring when it was from Komatsu. Tengo hesitated, wondering whether he should pick it up at all. He let it ring five times. Then he lifted the needle from the record groove and picked up the receiver. It might be his girlfriend.

“Mr. Kawana?” a man said. It was the voice of a middle-aged man, soft and deep. Tengo did not recognize it.

“Yes,” Tengo said cautiously.

“I’m sorry to call so late at night. My name is Yasuda,” the man said in a neutral voice, neither friendly nor hostile, neither impersonal nor intimate.

Yasuda? The name was ordinary enough, but he couldn’t think of any Yasudas he knew.

“I’m calling to give you a message,” the man said. He then inserted a slight pause, rather like putting a bookmark in between the pages of a book. “My wife will not be able to visit your home anymore, I believe. That is all I wanted to tell you.”

Yasuda! That was his girlfriend’s name. Kyoko Yasuda. She never had occasion to speak her name in Tengo’s presence, which accounted for the lag in recognition. This man on the phone was Kyoko’s husband. Tengo felt as if something were stuck in his throat.

“Have I managed to make myself clear?” the man asked, his voice entirely free of emotion – or none that Tengo could hear. He spoke with a slight accent, possibly from Hiroshima or Kyushu. Tengo could not be sure.

“Not be able to visit,” Tengo echoed the words. “Yes, she will no longer be able to visit.”

Tengo mustered up the courage to ask, “Has something happened to

her?”

Silence. Tengo’s question hung in space, unanswered. Then the man

said, “So what I’m telling you, Mr. Kawana, is that you will probably never see my wife again. I just wanted to let you know that.”

The man knew that Tengo had been sleeping with his wife. Once a week. For a year. Tengo could tell that he knew. But the man’s voice was strangely lacking in either anger or resentment. It contained something else – not so much a personal emotion as an objective scene: an abandoned, overgrown garden, or a dry riverbed after a major flood – a scene like that.

“I’m not sure what you are trying to – ”

“Then let’s just leave it at that,” the man said, before Tengo could finish. A trace of fatigue was discernible in his voice. “One thing should be perfectly clear. My wife is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form. That is what I am saying.”

“Irretrievably lost,” Tengo repeated.

“I did not want to make this call, Mr. Kawana. But I couldn’t sleep at night if I just let it go and said nothing. Do you think I like having this conversation?”

No sounds of any kind came from the other end when the man stopped talking. He seemed to be phoning from an incredibly quiet place. Either that or the emotion inside him was acting like a vacuum, absorbing all sound waves in the vicinity.

Tengo felt he ought to ask the man a question or two. Otherwise, it seemed, this whole thing would end as a collection of inscrutable hints. He mustn’t let the conversation die! But this man had no intention of informing Tengo of any situational details. What kind of question could he ask when the other person had no intention of revealing the actual state of affairs?

What kind of words should he give voice to when facing a vacuum? Tengo was still struggling to discover any words that might work when, without warning, the connection was cut. The man had set down the receiver without saying anything and left Tengo’s presence. Probably forever.

Tengo kept the dead receiver pressed to his ear for a time. If anyone else was listening in to the call, he might be able to grasp that person’s presence. He held his breath and listened, but there were no telltale sounds. All he could hear was the beating of his own heart. The more he listened, the more he felt like a thief who has crept into a stranger’s house at night, hidden in the shadows, holding his breath, and waiting for the family to fall asleep.

He boiled some water in a kettle and made green tea to calm his nerves. Cradling the handleless cup in his hands, he sat at the kitchen table and mentally reviewed the telephone call.

“My wife is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form. That is what I am saying.” In any form: that phrase disturbed Tengo the most. It suggested something dark, damp, and slimy.

What this man named Yasuda wanted to convey to Tengo, it seemed, was the message that even if his wife wanted to visit Tengo’s apartment again, it was literally impossible for her to carry out that wish. Impossible in what way? In what context? And what did it mean to say that she was “irretrievably lost”? An image formed in his mind of Kyoko Yasuda with serious injuries from an accident or having come down with an incurable disease or her face horribly disfigured by violence. She was confined to a wheelchair or had lost a limb or was wrapped head to toe in bandages, unable to move. Or then again she was being held in an underground room, fastened like a dog on a thick chain. All of these possibilities, however, seemed far-fetched.

Kyoko Yasuda (as Tengo was now calling her in his mind) had hardly ever spoken of her husband. Tengo had learned nothing about him from her – his profession, his age, his looks, his personality, where they had met, when they had married, whether he was skinny or fat, tall or short, or whether or not they got along well. All Tengo knew was that she was not particularly hard-pressed economically (she appeared to be quite comfortable, in fact), and that she seemed dissatisfied with either the frequency or the quality of the sex she had with her husband, though even these were entirely matters of conjecture on his part. She and Tengo spent

their afternoons in bed talking of many things, but never once had the subject of her husband come up, nor had Tengo wanted to know about him. He preferred to remain ignorant of the man whose wife he was stealing. It seemed only proper. Now that this new situation had developed, however, he was sorry that he had never asked her about her husband (she would almost certainly have responded frankly if he had asked). Was her husband jealous? Possessive? Did he have violent tendencies?

He tried to put himself in the man’s place. How would he feel if the situation were reversed? Say, he has a wife, two small children, and a tranquil home life, but he discovers that his wife is sleeping with another man once a week – a man ten years her junior, and the affair has been going on for over a year. What would he think if he found himself in such a situation? What emotions would rule his heart? Violent anger? Deep disappointment? Vague sadness? Scornful indifference? A sense of having lost touch with reality? Or an indistinguishable blend of several emotions?

No amount of thinking enabled Tengo to hit upon exactly how he would feel. What came to mind through all his hypothesizing was the image of his mother in a white slip giving her breasts to a young man he did not know. Destiny seems to have come full circle, Tengo thought. The enigmatic young man was perhaps Tengo himself, the woman in his arms Kyoko Yasuda. The composition was exactly the same; only the individuals had changed. Does this mean that my life has been nothing but a process through which I am giving concrete form to the dormant image inside me? And how much responsibility do I bear for her having become irretrievably lost?

Tengo could not get back to sleep again. He kept hearing the voice of the man who called himself Yasuda. The hints that he had left behind weighed heavily on Tengo, and the words he had spoken bore a strange reality. Tengo thought about Kyoko Yasuda. He pictured her face and body in minute detail. He had last seen her on Friday, two weeks prior. As always, they had spent a lot of time having sex. After the phone call from her husband, though, it seemed like something that had happened in the distant past, like an episode out of history.

On his shelf remained several LP records that she had brought from home to listen to in bed with him, all jazz records from long, long ago –

Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday (this one, too, had Barney Bigard as a sideman), some 1940s Duke Ellington. She had listened to them – and handled them – with great care. The jackets had faded somewhat with the years, but the records themselves looked brand-new. Tengo picked up one jacket after another. Gazing at them, he felt with growing certainty that he might never see her again.

Tengo was not, strictly speaking, in love with Kyoko Yasuda. He had never felt that he wanted to spend his life with her or that saying good-bye to her could be painful. She had never made him feel that deep trembling of the heart. But he had grown accustomed to having this older girlfriend as part of his life, and naturally, he had grown fond of her. He looked forward to welcoming her to his apartment once a week and joining his naked flesh with hers. Their relationship was an unusual one for Tengo. He had never been able to feel very close to many women. In fact, most women – whether he was in a sexual relationship with them or not – made Tengo feel uncomfortable. And in order to curb that discomfort, Tengo had to fence off a certain territory inside himself. In other words, he had to keep certain rooms in his heart locked tight. With Kyoko Yasuda, however, such complex operations were unnecessary. First of all, she seemed to grasp exactly what Tengo wanted and what he did not want. And so Tengo counted himself lucky that they had happened to find each other.

Now, however, something had happened, and she was irretrievably lost. For some unknowable reason, she could never visit here in any form. And, according to her husband, it was better for Tengo to know nothing about either the reason or its consequence.

Still unable to sleep, Tengo was sitting on the floor, listening to the Duke Ellington record at low volume, when the phone rang again. The hands of the wall clock were pointing to 10:12. Tengo could think of no one other than Komatsu who might call at a time like this, but the ring didn’t sound like Komatsu’s, which was always more high-strung and impatient. It might be Yasuda again; perhaps he had forgotten to tell Tengo something else. Tengo did not want to answer. Experience had taught him that phone calls at this time of night were never very pleasant. Thinking of his current situation, however, he had no choice but to answer it.

“That is Mr. Kawana, isn’t it?” said a man. It was not Komatsu. Nor was it Yasuda. The voice belonged unmistakably to Ushikawa, speaking as if he had a mouthful of water – or some other elusive liquid. His strange face and flat, misshapen head came to Tengo’s mind automatically.

“Uh, sorry for calling so late. It’s Ushikawa. I know I burst in on you the other day and took much of your valuable time. Today, too, I wish I could have called earlier, but some urgent business came up, and the next thing I knew it was already this late. Believe me, I know you’re a real early- to-bed, early-to-rise type, Mr. Kawana, and that’s a very admirable thing. Staying up until all hours, frittering away your time, doesn’t do anyone any good. The best thing is to go to bed as soon as possible after it gets dark and wake with the sun in the morning. But, I don’t know, call it intuition, it just popped into my mind that you might still be up tonight, Mr. Kawana, so even though I knew it was not the most polite thing to do, I decided to give you a call. Have I caught you at a bad time?”

Tengo did not like what Ushikawa was saying, and he did not like it that Ushikawa knew his home phone number. Intuition had nothing to do with it: he had called because he knew perfectly well that Tengo was up, unable to sleep. Maybe he knew that Tengo’s lights were on. Could someone be watching this apartment? He could almost picture one of Ushikawa’s “eager” and “capable” “researchers” observing Tengo’s apartment from somewhere with a pair of high-powered binoculars.

“I am up tonight, in fact,” Tengo said. “That ‘intuition’ of yours is correct. Maybe I drank too much strong green tea.”

“That is too bad, Mr. Kawana. Wakeful nights often give people useless thoughts. How about it, then, do you mind talking with me a while?”

“As long as it’s not about something that makes it harder for me to

sleep.”

Ushikawa burst out laughing. At his end of the line – someplace in

this world – his misshapen head shook in its own misshapen way. “Very funny, Mr. Kawana. Of course, what I have to say may not be as comforting as a lullaby, but the subject itself is not so deadly serious as to keep you awake at night, I assure you. It’s a simple question of yes or no. The business about the, uh, grant. It’s an attractive proposition, don’t you think? Have you thought it over? We have to have your final answer now.”

“I believe I declined the grant quite clearly the last time we talked. I appreciate the offer, but I have everything I need at the moment. I’m not hard-pressed financially, and if possible I’d like to keep my life going along at its present pace.”

“Meaning, you don’t want to be beholden to anyone.” “In a word, yes.”

“I suppose that is very admirable of you, Mr. Kawana,” Ushikawa said with a sound like a light clearing of the throat. “You want to make it on your own. You want to have as little as possible to do with organizations. I understand how you feel, but I’m concerned about you, Mr. Kawana. Look at the world we live in. Anything could happen at any time. So we all need some kind of insurance, something to lean on, a shelter from the wind. I hate to say this, Mr. Kawana, but at the moment you have, uh, exactly nothing that you can lean on. Not one of the people around you can be counted on, it seems to me: all of them would most likely desert you in a pinch. Am I right? You know what they say – ‘Better safe than sorry.’ It’s important to insure yourself for when the pinch does come, don’t you think? And I’m not just talking about money. Money, ultimately, is just a kind of symbol of something else.”

“I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at,” Tengo said. That intuitive sense of distaste he experienced when first meeting Ushikawa was creeping up on him again.

“No, of course not. You’re still young and healthy. Maybe that’s why you don’t understand what I am saying. Let me give you an example. Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. It’s all very painful – as painful as actually being cut with a knife. You will be turning thirty soon, Mr. Kawana, which means that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight portion of life – you will be getting older.

You are probably beginning to grasp that painful sense that you are losing something, are you not?”

Tengo wondered if this man could be dropping hints about Kyoko Yasuda. Perhaps he knew that they had been meeting here once a week, and that recently something had caused her to leave him.

“You seem to know a great deal about my private life,” Tengo said. “No, not at all,” Ushikawa insisted. “I’m just talking about life in

general. Really. I know very little about your private life.” Tengo remained silent.

“Please, Mr. Kawana,” Ushikawa said with a sigh, “be so good as to accept our grant. Frankly speaking, you are in a rather precarious position. We can back you up in a pinch. We can throw you a life preserver. If things go on like this, you might find yourself in an inextricable situation.”

“An inextricable situation,” Tengo said. “Exactly.”

“Can you tell me specifically what kind of ‘situation’ you mean?” Ushikawa paused momentarily. Then he said, “Believe me, Mr.

Kawana, there are things it is better not to know. Certain kinds of knowledge rob people of their sleep. Green tea is no match for these things. They might take restful sleep away from you forever. What I, uh, want to say to you is this. Think about it this way: it’s as if you opened a special spigot and let a special something out before you knew what was happening, and it’s having an effect on the people around you – a rather less-than-desirable effect.”

“Do the Little People have anything to do with this?”

It was a shot in the dark, but it shut Ushikawa up for a while. His was a heavy silence, like a black stone sunk to the bottom of a deep body of water.

“I want to know the truth, Mr. Ushikawa. Let’s stop throwing riddles at each other and talk more concretely. What has happened to her?”

“’Her’? I don’t know what you mean.”

Tengo sighed. This was too delicate a matter to discuss on the phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kawana, but I’m just a messenger sent by my client.

For now, my job is to speak of fundamental matters as indirectly as possible,” Ushikawa said circumspectly. “I’m sorry if I seem to be deliberately tantalizing you, but I’m only allowed to talk about this in the vaguest terms. And, to tell you the truth, my own knowledge of the matter

is quite limited. In any case, though, I really don’t know anything about ‘her,’ whoever she might be. You’ll have to be a little more specific.”

“All right, then, who are the Little People?”

“Again, Mr. Kawana, I don’t know anything at all about these ‘Little People’ – or at least nothing more than that they appear in the book Air Chrysalis. I will tell you this, however: judging from the drift of your remarks, it seems to me that you have let something out of the bag before you yourself knew what it was all about. That can be awfully dangerous under certain circumstances. My client knows very well just how dangerous it is and what kind of danger it poses, and they have a degree of understanding regarding how to deal with the danger, which is precisely why we have tried to extend a helping hand to you. To put it quite bluntly, we have very long arms – long and strong.”

“Who is this ‘client’ you keep mentioning? Someone connected with Sakigake?”

“Unfortunately, I have not been granted the authority to divulge any names,” Ushikawa said with what sounded like genuine regret. “I can say, however, without going into detail, that they have their own very special power. Formidable power. We can stand behind you. Please understand – this is our final offer. You are free to take it or leave it. Once you make up your mind, however, there is no going back. So please think about it very carefully. And let me say this: if you are not on their side, regrettably, under certain circumstances, their long arms could, when extended, have certain undesirable – though unintended – effects on you.”

“What kind of ‘undesirable effects’?”

Ushikawa did not immediately reply to Tengo’s question. Instead, Tengo heard what sounded like the faint sucking of saliva at both sides of Ushikawa’s mouth.

“I don’t know the exact answer to that,” Ushikawa said. “They haven’t told me anything specific, which is why I am speaking in generalities.”

“So, what is it that I supposedly let out of the bag?” Tengo asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that, either,” Ushikawa said. “At the risk of repeating myself, I am nothing but a hired negotiator. By the time the full reservoir of information reaches me, it’s squeezed down to a few droplets. All I’m doing is passing on to you exactly what my client has told me to with the limited authority I have been granted. You may wonder why the

client doesn’t just contact you directly, which would speed things up, and why they have to use this strange man as an intermediary, but I don’t know any better than you do.”

Ushikawa cleared his throat and waited for another question, but when there was none, he continued, “Now, Mr. Kawana, you were asking what it is that you let out of the bag, right?”

Tengo said yes, that was right.

“Well, Mr. Kawana, I’m not sure why exactly, but I can’t help wondering if it might be something for which a third party couldn’t offer a simple solution. I suspect it’s something you would need to go out on your own and work up a sweat to find out. And it could very well be that after you’ve gone through all that and reached a point where you’ve figured out the answer, it’s too late. To me, it seems obvious that you have a, uh, very special talent – a superior and beautiful talent, a talent that ordinary people do not possess. Which is precisely why your recent accomplishment carries an authority that cannot be easily overlooked. And my client appears to value that talent of yours very highly. That is why we are offering you this grant. Unfortunately, however, sheer talent is not enough. And depending upon how you look at it, possessing an outstanding talent that is not sufficient may be more dangerous than possessing nothing at all. That is my impression, however vague, of the recent matter.”

“So what you are saying, then, is that your client has sufficient knowledge and ability to tell about such things.”

“Hmm, I really can’t say about that, don’t you think? I mean, nobody can ever declare whether such qualities are ‘sufficient.’”

“Why do they need me?”

“If I may use the analogy of epidemic, you people may be playing the role of – pardon me – the main carriers of a disease.”

“’You people?’” Tengo said. “Are you talking about Eriko Fukada and me?” Ushikawa did not answer the question. “Uh, if I may use a classical analogy here, you people might have opened Pandora’s box and let loose all kinds of things in the world. This seems to be what my client thinks you’ve done, judging from my own impressions. The two of you may have joined forces by accident, but you turned out to be a far more powerful team than you ever imagined. Each of you was able to make up for what the other lacked.”

“But that’s not a crime in any legal sense.”

“That is true. It is not, of course, a, uh, crime in any legal sense, or in any this-worldly sense. If I may be allowed to quote from George Orwell’s great classic, however – or, rather, from his novel as a great source of quotations – it is very close to what he called a ‘thought crime.’ By an odd coincidence, this year just happens to be 1984. Shall we call it a stroke of fate? But I seem to have been talking a bit too much tonight, Mr. Kawana. And most of what I have been saying is nothing but my own clumsy guesswork, pure speculation, without any firm evidence to support it. Because you asked, I have given you my general impressions, that is all.”

Ushikawa fell silent, and Tengo started thinking. His “own clumsy guesswork”? How much of what this man is saying can I believe?

“Oh, well, I’ll have to be calling it a day,” Ushikawa said. “It’s such an important matter, I’ll give you a little more time. Just a little. The clock is counting off the time. Tick-tock, tick-tock, without a break. Please consider our offer carefully once more. I’ll probably be getting in touch with you again soon. Good night, then. I’m glad we had a chance to talk. I, uh, hope you will be able to sleep well, Mr. Kawana.”

Ushikawa hung up. Tengo stared at the dead receiver in his hand for a while, the way a farmer stares at a withered vegetable he has picked up from his drought-wracked field. These days, a lot of people were hanging up on Tengo.

As he had imagined, restful sleep paid Tengo no visits that night. Until the pale light of dawn began coloring the curtains and the tough city crows woke to begin their day’s work, Tengo sat on the floor, leaning against the wall and thinking about his girlfriend and about the long, strong arms reaching toward him from some unknown place. Such thoughts, however, carried him nowhere. They merely circled aimlessly around the same spot.

Tengo looked around and heaved a sigh and realized that he was absolutely alone. Ushikawa had been right. He had nothing and no one to lean on.

Chapter 7. AOMAME: Where You Are About to Set Foot

WITH ITS HIGH ceiling and muted lighting, the capacious lobby of the Hotel Okura’s main building seemed like a huge, stylish cave. Against the cave walls, like the sighing of a disemboweled animal, bounced the muted conversations of people seated on the lobby’s sofas. The floor’s thick, soft carpeting could have been primeval moss on a far northern island. It absorbed the sound of footsteps into its endless span of accumulated time. The men and women crossing and recrossing the lobby looked like ghosts tied in place by some ancient curse, doomed to the endless repetition of their assigned roles. Men were armored in tight-fitting business suits. Slim young women were swathed in chic black dresses, here to attend a ceremony in one of the hotel’s many reception rooms. They wore small but expensive accessories, like vampire finches in search of blood, longing for a hint of light they could reflect. A large foreign couple loomed like an old king and queen past their prime, resting their tired bodies on thrones in the corner.

In this place so full of legend and suggestion, Aomame was truly out of place, with her pale blue cotton pants, simple white blouse, white

sneakers, and blue Nike gym bag. She probably looked like a babysitter sent by her agency to work for a hotel guest, she thought, as she killed time sitting in a big easy chair. Oh well, I’m not here for socializing. Sitting there, she sensed that someone was watching her, but, try as she might to scan the area, she could not find anyone who seemed to be focused on her. Never mind, she told herself. Let them look all they want.

When the hands of her watch hit 6:50, Aomame stood up and went to the ladies’ room, carrying her gym bag. She washed her hands with soap and water and checked once more to make sure there were no problems with her appearance. Then, facing the large, clear mirror, she took several deep breaths. This was a spacious restroom, and she was the only one in it. It might be even bigger than her whole apartment. “This is going to be my last job,” she said in a low voice to the mirror. Once I carry this off, I disappear. Poof! Like a ghost. I’m here now, but not tomorrow. In a few days, I’ll have a different name and a different face.

She returned to the lobby and took her seat again, setting the gym bag on the table next to her. In the bag was a small automatic pistol with seven bullets and a sharp needle made for thrusting into the back of a man’s neck. I’ve got to calm down, she told herself. This job is important, and it’s my last. I have to be the usual cool, tough Aomame.

But she could not shake off the awareness that she was not in a normal state. Her breathing was strangely labored, and the heightened speed of her heartbeat concerned her. A film of sweat moistened her armpits. Her skin was tingling. I’m not just tense, though. I’m having a premonition of something. And the premonition is giving me a warning. It keeps knocking on the door of my mind. It’s telling me, “It’s still not too late. Get out of here now and forget all this.”

Aomame wanted to heed the warning if she could, abandon everything and turn her back on this hotel lobby. There was something ominous here, the lingering presence of circuitous death – a slow, quiet, but inescapable death. But I can’t just run away with my tail between my legs. That’s not the Aomame way to live.

It was a long ten minutes. Time refused to move ahead. She stayed on the sofa, trying to get her breathing under control. The lobby ghosts kept spouting their hollow reverberations. People drifted silently over the thick carpet like souls groping for their eternal resting places. The only actual noise to reach her ears now and then was the clinking of a coffee set on a

tray whenever a waitress passed by. But even that sound contained a dubious secondary sound within it. Things were not heading in a good direction. If I’m already this tense, I won’t be able to do a thing when the time comes. Aomame closed her eyes and almost by reflex intoned a prayer, the one that she had been taught to recite before every meal from as long ago as she could remember. That had been a long, long time ago, but she remembered every word with perfect clarity –

O Lord in Heaven, may thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow thy blessings upon our humble pathways. Amen.

However grudgingly, Aomame had to admit that this prayer, which had given her nothing but pain in the past, now provided a source of support. The sound of the words calmed her nerves, stopped her fears at the doorway, and helped her breathing to quiet down. She pressed her fingers against her eyelids and repeated the prayer to herself over and over.

“Miss Aomame, I believe,” a man said close by. It was the voice of a young man.

Aomame opened her eyes, slowly raised her head, and looked at the owner of the voice. Two young men were standing in front of her. Both wore the same kind of dark suit. Judging by the fabric and cut, these were not expensive clothes – probably bought right off the rack at a discount store. They didn’t quite fit in every detail, but they were admirably free of wrinkles. Perhaps the men pressed them every time they put them on. Neither man wore a tie. One had his white shirt buttoned all the way to the top, while the other wore a kind of gray crew-neck shirt under his suit jacket. They had on the plainest black shoes possible.

The man in the white shirt must have been a good six feet tall, and he wore his hair in a ponytail. He had long eyebrows, the ends of which turned up at a distinct angle like a line graph. His face was serene, with well-balanced features that could have belonged to an actor. The other man must have been five foot five and had a buzz cut and a snub nose. A tiny

beard grew at the tip of his chin like a mistakenly applied shadow, and there was a small scar by his right eye. Both men were slim, with sunken cheeks and tanned faces. There was not an ounce of fat to be seen on either of them, and judging from the spread of their suits’ shoulders there were some serious muscles underneath. They were probably in their mid-to late twenties. The look in their eyes was deep and sharp, and the eyeballs moved no more than necessary, as with animals on the hunt.

As if by reflex, Aomame stood up from her chair and looked at her watch. The hands pointed to seven o’clock exactly. Right on time.

“Yes, I am Aomame.”

Neither man displayed any expression. They did a swift examination of Aomame’s attire and looked at the blue gym bag next to her.

“Is this all you brought with you?” Buzzcut asked. “Yes, this is it,” Aomame said.

“That’s fine. Let’s go, then. Are you ready?” Buzzcut asked. Ponytail said nothing as he kept his eyes on Aomame.

“Yes, of course,” Aomame said. She guessed that the shorter man was somewhat older than the other one and the leader of the two.

Buzzcut went ahead with leisurely steps, crossing the lobby toward the elevators. Aomame followed him, gym bag in hand. Ponytail followed about six feet behind her. This meant she was sandwiched between them. They know what they’re doing, she thought. They walked with erect posture, their gait strong and precise. The dowager had said they both practiced karate. Aomame knew from her martial arts training that in a face- to-face confrontation with these two, there was probably no way she could win. But she did not sense from these men the kind of overpowering menace that Tamaru projected. Defeating them was not entirely out of the question. The first thing she would have to do in hand-to-hand combat would be to render Buzzcut powerless. He called the shots. If Ponytail was her only opponent, she could manage to survive and escape.

The three of them boarded the elevator, and Ponytail pushed the button for the seventh floor. Buzzcut stood next to Aomame, and Ponytail stood in the corner, facing them at an angle. They did all this wordlessly, systematically, like a second baseman and shortstop who live to make double plays.

In the midst of such thoughts, it suddenly dawned on Aomame that her breathing and heartbeat had returned to their normal rhythms. Nothing

to worry about, she thought. I’m my usual self – the cool, tough Aomame. Everything will probably go well. No more bad premonitions.

The elevator door opened soundlessly. Ponytail kept the “Door Open” button depressed while Buzzcut stepped out followed by Aomame, and then he released the button and left the elevator. Buzzcut led the way down the corridor, Aomame followed, and Ponytail continued playing rear guard. The broad corridor was totally deserted: perfectly silent and perfectly clean, well cared for in every detail, befitting a first-class hotel – no trays of used room-service dishes parked in front of doors, no cigarette butts in the ashtray outside the elevator, the fragrance of fresh-cut flowers wafting from well-placed vases. They turned several corners and came to a stop in front of a door. Ponytail knocked twice and then, without waiting for an answer, opened the door with a key card. He stepped inside, looked around to make sure there was nothing wrong, and gave Buzzcut a curt nod.

“Please,” Buzzcut said to Aomame drily.

Aomame walked in. Buzzcut came in after her and closed the door, locking it from the inside with a chain. The room was a big one. No ordinary hotel room, it was outfitted with a large set of reception-room furniture and an office desk. The television set and refrigerator were also full-size. This was clearly the living area of a special suite. The window provided a sweeping view of Tokyo at night. It had to be an expensive room. Buzzcut checked his watch and urged Aomame to sit on the sofa. She did as she was told and set her blue gym bag next to her.

“Will you be changing clothes?” Buzzcut asked.

“If possible,” Aomame said. “I’d prefer to change into workout clothes.”

Buzzcut nodded. “First we’ll have to do a search, if you don’t mind.

Sorry, but it’s part of our job.”

“That’s fine, search all you want,” Aomame said. There was no hint of tension in her voice. If anything, there was a perceptible touch of amusement at their neurotic attention to detail.

Ponytail came over to Aomame and did a body search to make sure she was not carrying anything suspicious. All she had on was a pair of thin cotton pants and a blouse; it didn’t take a search to know there could be nothing hidden under those. He was just going through the motions. His hands seemed tense and stiff. It would have been hard to compliment him

on his skill at this. He probably had little experience at doing body searches on women. Buzzcut watched him work, leaning against the desk.

When the body search was over, Aomame opened her gym bag for him. Inside were a thin summer cardigan, a matching jersey top and bottom for work, and two towels, one large and one small. A simple makeup set and a paperback. There was a small beaded purse containing a wallet, a change purse, and a key ring. Aomame handed each item to Ponytail. Finally she took out a black vinyl pouch and unzipped it. Inside was a change of underwear and a few tampons and sanitary napkins.

“I sweat when I work, so I need to have a change of clothes,” Aomame said. She took out matching lace-trimmed bra and panties and started to spread them out for Ponytail to see. He blushed slightly and gave several quick nods as if to say, “All right, I’ve seen enough.” Aomame began to suspect that this man could not speak at all.

With unhurried movements, Aomame returned her underthings and sanitary products to the pouch, zipped it closed, and replaced it in the bag. These guys are amateurs, she thought. What kind of bodyguard blushes at the sight of cute lingerie and a few tampons? If Tamaru had been doing this job, he would have searched Snow White down to the hairs of her crotch. He would have examined the bottom of that pouch if it meant digging through a warehouse’s worth of bras, camisoles, and panties. Things like that are nothing but rags to him – well, true, he’s as gay as they come. At the very least, he would have picked up the pouch to check its weight. And then he would have been sure to find the Heckler & Koch wrapped in a handkerchief (and weighing in at some 500 grams) and the small homemade ice pick in its hard case.

These guys are amateurs. They may have some skill at karate, and they may have vowed absolute loyalty to their Leader, but they’re nothing but a couple of amateurs. Just as the dowager predicted. Aomame had assumed they wouldn’t go through a pouch stuffed with women’s things, and she had been right. It had been a gamble, of course, but she had not gone so far as to think about what she would do if the gamble hadn’t paid off. About all she could have done in that case was pray. But she knew this much: prayer works.

Aomame went into the suite’s large powder room and changed into her jersey outfit, folding her blouse and cotton pants and placing them in the bag. Next she checked to see that her hair was pinned tightly in place. Then

she sprayed her mouth with a breath freshener. She took the Heckler & Koch out of the pouch and, after flushing the toilet to mask the sound, she pulled back the slide to send a bullet into the chamber. Now all she would have to do was release the safety. Finally, she moved the case with the ice pick to the top of the bag where she could have immediate access to it. Once she had finished with these preparations, she faced the mirror and relaxed her tensed expression. Fine. I’ve kept my cool so far.

Coming out of the powder room, Aomame found Buzzcut standing at attention with his back to her, speaking at low volume into a telephone. When he saw her, he cut his call short, quietly hung up the receiver, and gave her a once-over in her jersey outfit.

“All set?” he asked.

“Whenever you are,” Aomame said.

“First I have a request to make,” Buzzcut said. Aomame gave him a token smile.

“That you not say a word about tonight to anyone,” Buzzcut said. He paused a moment so that his message could sink in. It was as if he had scattered water on dry earth and was waiting for it to be absorbed and disappear. She watched him the whole time without saying anything.

Buzzcut continued, “Pardon me if this sounds crass, but we are planning to offer you generous remuneration, and we may be requesting your services from time to time in the future. So we would like to ask you to forget anything and everything that happens here tonight. Whatever you see or hear. Everything.”

“As you know,” Aomame said, adopting a somewhat frosty tone, “my work involves people’s bodies, so I believe I am well versed in the ways of professional confidentiality. No information of any kind regarding an individual’s body will leave this room. If that is what concerns you, I can assure you there is no need to worry.”

“Excellent. That is what we wanted to hear,” Buzzcut said. “But let me just add that we would appreciate it if you would view this as a case that goes beyond professional confidentiality in the most general sense. Where you are about to set foot is, so to speak, a sacred space.”

“A sacred space?”

“It may sound a bit much, but, believe me, it is no exaggeration. The one you are about to lay eyes on, and to place your hands upon, is a sacred person. There is no other appropriate way to put it.”

Aomame nodded, saying nothing. This was no time for remarks from

her.

Buzzcut said, “We took the liberty of running a background check on

you. I hope you’re not offended, but it was something we had to do. We have our reasons for taking every precaution.”

Aomame stole a glance at Ponytail as she listened. He was sitting motionless in a chair beside the door, his back perfectly straight, hands on his knees, chin pulled back. He could have been posing for a photo. His eyes were locked on her the whole time.

Buzzcut looked down at his feet as if to check how worn out his black shoes might be, then raised his face and looked at Aomame again. “In short, we found no problems, which is why we have asked you to come today. You have a reputation as a talented instructor, and in fact people think very highly of you.”

“Thank you very much,” Aomame said.

“I understand you used to be a Society of Witnesses believer. Is that

true?”

“Yes, it is. Both of my parents were believers, and they naturally

made me one, too, from the time I was born. I didn’t choose it for myself, and I left the religion a long time ago.”

I wonder if their investigation turned up the fact that Ayumi and I used to go out man hunting in Roppongi? Oh well, it doesn’t make any difference. If they did find out, it obviously didn’t bother them. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here now.

“We know about that, too,” Buzzcut said. “But you did live in faith at one time in your life – that especially impressionable time of early childhood. So I assume you have a good idea what I mean when I speak of something as ‘sacred.’ In any religion, the sacred lies at the very root of faith. We must never tread upon that world. There is a sacred region into which we dare not stray. The first step of all faith is to recognize its existence, accept it, and revere it absolutely. You do understand what I am trying to say, don’t you?”

“I think so,” Aomame said, “though whether I accept it or not is another matter.”

“Of course,” Buzzcut said. “Of course there is no need for you to accept it. It is our faith, not yours. But, transcending the question of belief or nonbelief, you are likely to witness special things – a being who is by no means ordinary.”

Aomame kept silent. A being who is by no means ordinary.

Buzzcut narrowed his eyes for a time, gauging the meaning of Aomame’s silence. Then, speaking unhurriedly, he said, “Whatever you happen to witness today, you must not mention it to anyone on the outside. For that would cause an ineradicable defilement of the holiness, as if a clear, beautiful pond were polluted by a foreign body. Whatever the world at large might think, or the laws of this world might stipulate, that is how we feel about it. If we can count on you, and if you will keep your promise, we can, as I said before, provide you with generous remuneration.”

“I see,” Aomame said.

“We are a small religious body, but we have strong hearts and long arms,” Buzzcut said.

You have long arms, Aomame thought. I guess I’ll be testing to find out just how long they are.

Leaning against the desk with his arms folded, Buzzcut studied Aomame, as if checking to see whether a picture hanging on the wall was crooked or straight. Ponytail remained motionless, never once taking his eyes off of Aomame.

Buzzcut checked his watch.

“Let’s go, then,” he said. He cleared his throat once, then moved slowly across the room with the careful steps of a pilgrim crossing the surface of a lake. He gave two soft knocks on the door to the connecting room and, without waiting for a response, pulled the door open, gave a slight bow, and entered. Aomame followed, carrying the gym bag. Sinking step after careful step into the deep carpet, she made sure that her breathing was under control. Her finger was cocked and ready to pull the trigger of the pistol in her imagination. Nothing to worry about. I’m the same as always. But still, Aomame was afraid. A chunk of ice was stuck to her spine – ice that showed no sign of melting. I’m cool, calm, and – deep down – afraid.

We must never tread upon that world. There is a sacred region into which we dare not stray, Buzzcut had said. Aomame knew what he meant by that. She herself had once lived in a world that placed such a region at its

core. In fact, I might still be living in that world. I just may not be aware of it.

Aomame soundlessly repeated the words of her prayer with her lips. Then she took one deep breath, made up her mind, and walked into the next room.

Chapter 8. TENGO: Time for the Cats to Come

TENGO SPENT THE next week or more in a strange silence. One night, the man named Yasuda had called to tell Tengo that his wife had been lost and would never visit Tengo again. An hour later Ushikawa had called to tell him that Tengo and Fuka-Eri were functioning together as a carrier of a “thought crime” epidemic. Each caller had conveyed to Tengo a message containing (he could only believe that it did contain) a deep meaning, the way a toga-clad Roman would mount a platform in the middle of the Forum to make a proclamation to concerned citizens. And once each man had spoken his piece, he had hung up on Tengo.

Not one person had contacted Tengo since those two nighttime calls. There were no phone calls, no letters, no knocks on the door, no carrier pigeons. Neither Komatsu nor Professor Ebisuno nor Fuka-Eri nor Kyoko Yasuda had anything at all they needed to convey to Tengo.

And Tengo felt as if he had lost all interest in those people. Nor was it just them: he seemed to have lost interest in anything at all. He didn’t care about the sales of Air Chrysalis or what its author, Fuka-Eri, might be doing now, or what was happening with Komatsu’s scheme or whether Professor

Ebisuno’s coolly conceived plan was progressing well, or how close the media had come to sniffing out the truth, or what kind of moves Sakigake might be making. If the boat they were all riding in was plunging over the falls upside down, there was nothing to do but fall with it. Tengo could struggle all he wanted to at this point, and it would do nothing to change the flow of the river.

He was, of course, worried about Kyoko Yasuda. He had no real idea what was happening to her, but he would spare no effort to help her if he could. Whatever problems she was facing at the moment, however, were out of his reach. There was nothing he could do.

He stopped reading the papers. The world was moving ahead in a direction unconnected with him. Apathy enveloped him as if it were his own personal haze. He was so sick of seeing the piles of Air Chrysalis on display that he stopped going to bookstores. He would travel in a straight line from home to the school and back. Most people were enjoying summer vacation, but the cram schools had summer courses, which kept him busier than ever. He welcomed this schedule. At least while he was lecturing, he didn’t have to think about anything but mathematics.

He gave up on writing his novel, too. He might sit at his desk, switch on the word processor, and watch the screen light up, but he couldn’t find the motivation to write. Whenever he tried to think of anything, snatches of his conversations with Kyoko Yasuda’s husband or with Ushikawa would come to mind. He couldn’t concentrate on his novel.

My wife is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form.

That was what Kyoko Yasuda’s husband had said.

If I may use a classical analogy here, you people might have opened Pandora’s box and let loose all kinds of things in the world. The two of you may have joined forces by accident, but you turned out to be a far more powerful team than you ever imagined. Each of you was able to make up for what the other lacked.

So said Ushikawa.

Both seemed to be trying to say the same thing: Tengo had unleashed some kind of power before fully comprehending it himself, and it was having a real impact (probably not a desirable impact) on the world around him. Tengo turned off the word processor, sat down on the floor, and stared at the telephone. He needed more hints, more pieces of the puzzle. But no

one would give him those. Kindness was one of the things presently (or permanently) in short supply in the world.

He thought about phoning someone – Komatsu or Professor Ebisuno or Ushikawa. But he couldn’t make himself actually do it. He had had enough of their inscrutable, deliberately cryptic pronouncements. If he sought a hint concerning one riddle, all they would give him was another riddle. He couldn’t keep up the game forever. Fuka-Eri and Tengo were a powerful team. That’s all they needed to say. Tengo and Fuka-Eri. Like Sonny and Cher. The Beat Goes On.

Day after day went by. Finally Tengo grew tired of staying holed up in his apartment, waiting for something to happen. He shoved his wallet and a paperback into his pockets, put on a baseball cap and sunglasses, and went out, walking with decisive strides as far as Koenji, the nearby station. There he showed his pass and boarded the Chuo Line inbound rapid-service train. The car was empty. He had nothing planned that day. Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him. It was ten o’clock on a windless summer morning, and the sun was beating down.

Wondering if one of Ushikawa’s “researchers” might be following him, he paid special attention on the way to the station, stopping suddenly to glance behind him, but there was no sign of anyone suspicious. At the station, he purposely went to the wrong platform and then, pretending to change his mind all of a sudden, he dashed down the stairs and went to the platform for trains headed in the other direction. But no one else seemed to take those same maneuvers. He must be having a typical delusion of being pursued. Of course no one was following him. Not even Tengo knew where he was going or what he was about to do. He himself was the one who most wanted to watch his own forthcoming actions from a distance.

The train he had boarded passed Shinjuku, Yotsuya, Ochanomizu, and arrived at Tokyo Central Station, the end of the line. Everyone got off, and he followed suit. Then he sat on a bench and gave some thought to where he ought to go. I’m in downtown Tokyo now, Tengo thought. I have

nothing planned all day. I can go anywhere I decide to. The day looks as if it’s going to be a hot one. I could go to the seashore. He raised his head and looked at the platform guide.

At that point he suddenly realized what he had been doing all along.

He tried shaking his head a few times, but the idea that had struck him would not go away. He had probably made up his mind unconsciously from the moment he boarded the inbound Chuo Line train at his station in Koenji. He heaved a sigh, stood up from the bench, went down the platform stairs, and headed for the Sobu Line platform. On the way, he asked a station employee for the fastest connection to Chikura, and the man flipped through the pages of a thick volume of train schedules. He should take the 11:30 special express train to Tateyama, transfer there to a local, and he would arrive at Chikura shortly after two o’clock. He bought a Tokyo– Chikura round-trip ticket and a reserved seat on the express train. Then he went to a restaurant in the station and ordered rice and curry and a salad. He killed time after the meal by drinking a cup of thin coffee.

Going to see his father was a depressing prospect. He had never much liked the man, and his father probably had no special love for him, either. Tengo had no idea if his father had any desire to see him. His father had retired from NHK four years earlier and, soon afterward, entered a sanatorium in Chikura that specialized in care for patients with cognitive disorders. Tengo had visited him there no more than twice before – the first time just after the father entered the facility when an administrative procedural problem had required Tengo, as the only relative, to travel out there. The second time had involved a pressing administrative matter as well. Two times: that was it.

The sanatorium stood on a large plot of land across the road from the shoreline. Originally the country villa of a wealthy family connected with one of the prewar zaibatsu – large, influential, family-controlled financial/industrial monopolies – it had been bought as a life insurance company’s welfare facility and, more recently, converted into a sanatorium primarily for the treatment of people with cognitive disorders. To an outside observer, it appeared to be an odd combination of elegant old wooden buildings and new three-story reinforced-concrete buildings. The air there was fresh, however, and aside from the roar of the surf, it was always quiet. One could walk along the shore on days when the wind was not too strong.

An imposing pine grove lined the garden as a windbreak. And the medical facilities were excellent.

With his health insurance, retirement bonus, savings, and pension, Tengo’s father could probably spend the rest of his life there quite comfortably, all because he had been lucky enough to be hired as a full-time employee of NHK. He might not be able to leave behind any sizable inheritance, but at least he could be taken care of, for which Tengo was tremendously grateful. Whether or not the man was his true biological father, Tengo had no intention of taking anything from him or giving him anything. They were two separate human beings who had come from – and were heading toward – entirely different places. By chance, they had spent some years of life together, that was all. It was a shame that things had come to that, Tengo believed, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

Tengo knew that the time had come for him to visit his father again. He didn’t much like the idea, and he would have preferred to take a U-turn and go straight back to his apartment. But he already had his round-trip and express-train tickets in his pocket. He was all set to go.

He left the table, paid his bill, and went to the platform to wait for the Tateyama express train to arrive. He scanned his surroundings once more, but saw no likely “researchers” in the area. His only fellow passengers were happy-looking families heading out for a few days at the beach. He took off his sunglasses, shoved them into a pocket, and readjusted his baseball cap. Who gives a damn? he thought. Let them spy on me all they want. I’m going to a seaside town in Chiba to see my father, who is suffering from dementia. He might remember his son, or then again he might not. His memory was already pretty shaky last time. It’s probably gotten worse since then. Cognitive disorders move ahead, never back. Or so I’ve been told. They’re like gears that can only move in one direction.

When the train left Tokyo Station, Tengo took out the paperback he had brought along and started reading it. It was an anthology of short stories on the theme of travel and included one tale about a young man who journeyed to a town ruled by cats. “Town of Cats” was the title. It was a fantastical piece by a German writer with whom he was not familiar. According to the

book’s editorial note, the story had been written in the period between the two world wars.

Carrying a single bag, the young man is traveling alone at his whim with no particular destination in mind. He goes by train and gets off at any stop that arouses his interest. He takes a room, sees the sights, and stays as long as he likes. When he has had enough, he boards another train. He spends every vacation this way.

One day he sees a lovely river from the train window. Gentle green hills line the meandering stream, and below them lies a quiet-looking, pretty little town with an old stone bridge over the river. The scene attracts him. Tasty river fish should be available in a place like this. The train stops at the station, and the young man steps down with his bag. No one else gets off there. As soon as he alights, the train departs.

No workers man the station, which must see very little activity. The young man crosses the stone bridge and walks into the town. It is utterly still, with no one to be seen. All the shops are shuttered, the town hall deserted. No one occupies the desk at the town’s only hotel. He rings the bell, but no one comes out. The place seems totally uninhabited. Perhaps all the people are off napping somewhere. But it is only ten thirty in the morning, way too early for that. Perhaps something caused all the people to abandon the town. In any case, the next train will not come until the following morning, so he has no choice but to spend the night here. He wanders around the town to kill time.

In fact, however, this is a town of cats. When the sun starts to go down, many cats cross the bridge into town – cats of all different kinds and colors. They are much larger than ordinary cats, but they are still cats. The young man is shocked to see this spectacle. He rushes into the bell tower in the center of town and climbs to the top to hide. The cats go about their business raising the shop shutters or seating themselves at their town hall desks to start their day’s work Soon, still more cats come, crossing the bridge into town like the others. They enter the shops to buy things or go to the town hall to handle administrative matters or have a meal at the hotel restaurant or drink beer at the tavern and sing lively cat songs. One plays a concertina and others dance to the music. Because cats can see in the dark, they need almost no lights, but that particular night the glow of the full moon floods the town, enabling the young man to see every detail from his perch in the bell tower. When dawn approaches, the cats close up shop,

finish their work or official business, and swarm back across the bridge to where they came from.

By the time the sun comes up, the cats are gone, and the town is deserted again. The young man climbs down, picks one of the hotel beds for himself, and goes to sleep. When he gets hungry, he eats the bread and cooked fish left in the hotel kitchen. When darkness approaches, he hides in the top of the bell tower again and observes the cats’ activities until dawn. Trains stop at the station before noon and before evening. If he took the morning train he could continue his journey, and if he took the afternoon train he could go back where he came from. No passengers alight at the station, and no one boards here, either. Still, the trains stop at the station for exactly one minute as scheduled and pull out again. He could take one of the trains and leave the creepy cat town behind. But he doesn’t. Being young, he has a lively curiosity and boundless ambition and is ready for adventure. He wants to see more of the strange spectacle of the cat town. If possible, he wants to find out when and how it became a town of cats, how the town is organized, and what the cats are doing there. He is probably the only human being who has ever seen this strange sight.

On the night of the third day, a hubbub breaks out in the square below the bell tower. “Hey, do you smell something human?” one of the cats says. “Now that you mention it, I thought there was a funny smell the past few days,” another chimes in, twitching his nose. “Me too,” says yet another cat. “That’s weird. There shouldn’t be any humans here,” someone adds. “No, of course not. There’s no way a human could get into this town of cats.” “Still, that smell of theirs is definitely here.”

The cats form into groups and search the town from top to bottom like vigilante bands. Cats have an excellent sense of smell when they want to use it, so it takes them very little time to discover that the bell tower is the source of the smell. The young man hears their soft paws padding their way up the stairs. That’s it, they’ve got me! he thinks. His smell seems to have aroused the cats to anger. They have big, sharp claws and white fangs. Humans are not supposed to set foot in this town. He has no idea what terrible fate awaits him if he is discovered, but he is sure they will never let him leave the town alive now that he has learned their secret.

Three cats climb to the top of the bell tower and sniff the air. “Strange,” one cat says, twitching his whiskers. “I smell a human, but there’s no one here.”

“It is strange,” says a second cat. “But there is definitely no one here.

Let’s look somewhere else.” “I don’t get it, though.”

The three cats cock their heads, puzzled, then retreat down the stairs. The young man hears their footsteps going down and fading into the dark of night. He breathes a sigh of relief, but he doesn’t get it, either. He was literally nose-to-nose with the cats in this small space. There was no way they could have missed him. But for some reason they did not see him. He brings his hand to his eyes and can see it perfectly well. It hasn’t turned transparent. Strange. In any case, though, when morning comes, he knows he should go to the station and take the train away from this town. Staying here would be too dangerous. His luck can’t last forever.

The next day, however, the morning train does not stop at the station. He watches it pass by without slowing down. The afternoon train does the same. He can even see the engineer seated at the controls. The passengers’ faces, too, are visible through the windows. But the train shows no sign of stopping. It is as though people cannot see the young man waiting for a train – or even see the station itself. Once the afternoon train disappears down the track, the place grows quieter than ever. The sun begins to sink. It is time for the cats to come. He knows that he is irretrievably lost. This is no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place where he is meant to be lost. It is a place not of this world that has been prepared especially for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to bring him back to his original world.

Tengo read the story twice. The phrase “the place where he is meant to be lost” attracted his attention. He closed the book and let his eyes wander aimlessly across the drab coastal industrial scene passing by the train window – the flame of an oil refinery, the gigantic gas tanks, the squat but equally gigantic smokestacks shaped like long-range cannons, the line of tractor-trailers and tank trucks moving down the road. It was a scene remote from “Town of Cats,” but it had its own sense of fantasy about it, as though it were the netherworld supporting urban life from below.

Soon afterward Tengo closed his eyes and imagined Kyoko Yasuda closed up in her own “lost place,” where there were no trains or telephones or mail. During the day there was nothing but absolute loneliness, and with

night came the cats’ relentless searching, the cycle repeating itself with no apparent end. Apparently, he had drifted off to sleep in his seat – not a long nap, but a deep one. He woke covered in sweat. The train was moving along the southern coastline of the Boso Peninsula in midsummer.

He left the express train in Tateyama, transferred to a local, and went as far as Chikura. Stepping from the train, he caught a whiff of the old familiar smell of the seashore. Everyone on the street was darkly tanned. He took a cab from the station to the sanatorium. At the reception desk, he gave his name and his father’s name.

The middle-aged nurse at the desk asked, “Have you by any chance notified us of your intention to visit today?” There was a hard edge to her voice. A small woman, she wore metal-frame glasses, and her short hair had a touch of gray. The ring on her stubby ring finger might have been bought as part of a matching set with the glasses. Her name tag said “Tamura.”

“No, it just occurred to me to come this morning and I hopped on a train,” Tengo answered honestly.

The nurse gave him a look of mild disgust. Then she said, “Visitors are supposed to notify us before they arrive to see a patient. We have our schedules to keep, and the wishes of the patient must also be taken into account.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” “When was your last visit?” “Two years ago.”

“Two years ago,” Nurse Tamura said as she checked the list of visitors with a ballpoint pen in hand. “You mean to say that you have not made a single visit in two years?”

“That’s right,” Tengo said.

“According to our records, you are Mr. Kawana’s only relative.” “That is correct.”

She set the list on the desk and glanced at Tengo, but she said nothing. Her eyes were not blaming Tengo, just checking the facts. Apparently, Tengo’s case was not exceptional.

“At the moment, your father is in group rehabilitation. That will end in half an hour. You can see him then.”

“How is he doing?”

“Physically, he’s healthy. He has no special problems. It’s in the other area that he has his ups and downs,” she said, touching her temple with an index finger. “I’ll leave it to you to see what I mean about ups and downs.”

Tengo thanked her and went to pass the time in the lounge by the entrance, sitting on a sofa that smelled like an earlier era and reading more of his book. A breeze passed through now and then, carrying the scent of the sea and the cooling sound of the pine windbreak outside. Cicadas clung to the branches of the trees, screeching their hearts out. Summer was now at its height, but the cicadas seemed to know that it would not last long.

Eventually bespectacled Nurse Tamura came to tell Tengo that he could see his father now that the rehabilitation session was over.

“I’ll show you to his room,” she said. Tengo got up from the sofa and, passing by a large mirror on the wall, realized for the first time what a sloppy outfit he was wearing – a Jeff Beck Japan Tour T-shirt under a faded dungaree shirt with mismatched buttons, chinos with specks of pizza sauce near one knee, long-unwashed khaki-colored sneakers, a baseball cap: no way for a thirty-year-old son to dress on his first hospital visit to his father in two years. Nor did he have anything with him that might serve as a gift on such an occasion. He had a paperback book shoved into one pocket, nothing more. No wonder the nurse had given him that look of disgust.

As they crossed the sanatorium grounds toward the wing in which his father’s room was located, the nurse gave him a general description of the place. There were three wings divided according to the severity of the patient’s illness. Tengo’s father was now housed in the “moderate” wing. People usually started in the “mild” wing, moved to “moderate,” and then to “severe.” As with a door that opens in only one direction, backward movement was not an option. There was nowhere to go beyond the “severe” wing – other than the crematorium. The nurse did not add that remark, of course, but her meaning was clear.

His father was in a double room, but his roommate was out attending some kind of class. The sanatorium offered several rehabilitation classes – ceramics, or gardening, or exercise. Though all were supposedly for “rehabilitation,” they did not aim at “recovery.” Their purpose, rather, was to slow the advance of the disease as much as possible. Or just to kill time. Tengo’s father was seated in a chair by the open window, looking out, hands on his knees. A nearby table held a potted plant. Its flowers had several

delicate, yellow petals. The floor was made of some soft material to prevent injury in case of a fall. There were two plain wood-frame beds, two writing desks, and two dressers. Next to each desk was a small bookcase, and the window curtains had yellowed from years of exposure to sunlight.

Tengo did not realize at first that the old man seated by the window was his own father. He had become a size smaller – though “shriveled up” might be more accurate. His hair was shorter and as white as a frost-covered lawn. His cheeks were sunken, which may have been why the hollows of his eyes looked much larger than they had before. Three deep creases marked his forehead. The shape of his head seemed more deformed than it had, probably because his shorter hair made it more obvious. His eyebrows were extremely long and thick, and white hair poked out from both ears. His large, pointed ears were now larger than ever and looked like bat wings. Only the shape of the nose was the same – round and pudgy, in marked contrast to the ears, and it wore a reddish black tinge. His lips drooped at both ends, seemingly ready to drool at any moment. His mouth was slightly open, revealing uneven teeth. Sitting so still at the window, his father reminded Tengo of one of van Gogh’s last self-portraits.

Although Tengo entered the room, the man did nothing but glance momentarily in his direction, after which he continued to stare outside. From a distance, he looked less like a human being than some kind of creature resembling a rat or a squirrel – a creature that might not be terribly clean but that possessed all the cunning it needed. It was, however, without a doubt, Tengo’s father – or, rather, the wreckage of Tengo’s father. The two intervening years had taken much from him physically, the way a merciless tax collector strips a poor family’s house of all its possessions. The father that Tengo remembered was a tough, hardworking man. Introspection and imagination may have been foreign qualities to him, but he had his own moral code and a simple but strong sense of purpose. He was a stoic individual; Tengo never once heard him whine or make excuses for himself. But the man Tengo saw before him now was a mere empty shell, a vacant house deprived of all warmth.

“Mr. Kawana!” the nurse said to Tengo’s father in a crisp, clear tone of voice she must have been trained to use when addressing patients. “Mr. Kawana! Look who’s here! It’s your son!”

His father turned once more in Tengo’s direction. His expressionless eyes made Tengo think of two empty swallows’ nests hanging from the

eaves.

“Hello,” Tengo said.

“Mr. Kawana, your son is here from Tokyo!” the nurse said.

His father said nothing. Instead, he looked straight at Tengo as if he

were reading a bulletin written in a foreign language.

“Dinner starts at six thirty,” the nurse said to Tengo. “Please feel free to stay until then.”

Tengo hesitated for a moment after the nurse was gone, and then approached his father, sitting down in the chair that faced his – a faded, cloth-covered chair, its wooden parts scarred from long use. His father’s eyes followed his movements.

“How are you?” Tengo asked.

“Fine, thank you,” his father said formally.

Tengo did not know what to say after that. Toying with the third button of his dungaree shirt, he turned his gaze toward the pine trees outside and then back again to his father.

“You have come from Tokyo, is it?” his father asked, apparently unable to remember Tengo.

“Yes, from Tokyo.”

“You must have come by express train.”

“That’s right,” Tengo said. “As far as Tateyama. There I transferred to a local for the trip here to Chikura.”

“You’ve come to swim?” his father asked. “I’m Tengo. Tengo Kawana. Your son.”

“Where do you live in Tokyo?” his father asked. “In Koenji. Suginami Ward.”

The three wrinkles across his father’s forehead deepened. “A lot of people tell lies because they don’t want to pay their NHK subscription fee.” “Father!” Tengo called out to him. This was the first time he had

spoken the word in a very long time. “I’m Tengo. Your son.” “I don’t have a son,” his father declared.

“You don’t have a son,” Tengo repeated mechanically. His father nodded.

“So, what am I?” Tengo asked.

“You’re nothing,” his father said with two short shakes of the head.

Tengo caught his breath. He could find no words. Nor did his father have any more to say. Each sat in silence, searching through his tangled

thoughts. Only the cicadas sang without confusion, screeching at top volume.

He may be speaking the truth, Tengo felt. His memory may have been destroyed, and his mind might be sunk in mud, but the words on his lips are probably true. Tengo understood this intuitively.

“What are you talking about?” Tengo asked.

“You are nothing,” his father repeated the words, his voice devoid of emotion. “You were nothing, you are nothing, and you will be nothing.”

That’s enough, Tengo thought.

He wanted to get up out of his chair, walk to the station, and go back to Tokyo. He had heard what he needed to hear. But he could not stand up. He was like the young man who traveled to the town of cats. He had curiosity. He wanted to know what lay behind those words. He wanted a clearer answer. There was danger lurking there, of course. But if he let this opportunity escape, he would lose any chance to learn the secret about himself forever. It would sink into total chaos.

Tengo arranged and rearranged words in his head until, at last, he was ready to speak them. This was the question he had come close to asking since childhood but could never quite manage to utter.

“What you’re saying, then, is that you are not my biological father, correct? You are telling me that there is no blood connection between us, is that it?”

His father looked at him without speaking. It was impossible to tell from his expression whether he had understood the meaning of Tengo’s question.

“Stealing radio waves is an unlawful act,” his father said, looking into Tengo’s eyes. “It is no different from stealing money or valuables, don’t you think?”

“You’re probably right,” Tengo decided to agree for now. His father nodded several times with apparent satisfaction.

“Radio waves don’t come falling out of the sky for free like rain or snow,” his father said.

With his lips closed Tengo stared at his father’s hands. They were lined up neatly on his knees, right hand on right knee, left hand on left knee, stock still. Small, dark hands, they looked tanned to the core by long years of outdoor work.

“My mother didn’t really die of an illness when I was little, did she?” Tengo asked slowly, speaking phrase by phrase.

His father did not answer. His expression did not change, and his hands did not move. His eyes focused on Tengo as if they were observing something unfamiliar.

“My mother left you. She got rid of you and left me behind. She probably went off with another man. Am I wrong?”

His father nodded. “It is not good to steal radio waves. You can’t get away with it, doing anything you like.”

This man understands my questions perfectly well. He just doesn’t want to answer them directly, Tengo felt.

“Father,” Tengo addressed him. “You may not actually be my father, but I’ll call you that for now because I don’t know what else to call you. To tell you the truth, I’ve never liked you. Maybe I’ve even hated you most of the time. You know that, don’t you? But even supposing you are not my real father and there is no blood connection between us, I no longer have any reason to hate you. I don’t know if I can go so far as to be fond of you, but I think that at least I should be able to understand you better than I do now. I have always wanted to know the truth about who I am and where I came from. That’s all. But no one ever told me. If you will tell me the truth right now, I won’t hate you or dislike you anymore. In fact, I would welcome the opportunity not to have to hate you or dislike you any longer.”

His father went on staring at Tengo with expressionless eyes, saying nothing, but Tengo felt he might be seeing the tiniest gleam of light flashing somewhere deep within those empty swallows’ nests.

“I am nothing,” Tengo said. “You are right. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything. The closest thing I have to a family is you, but you hold on to the secret and won’t even try to tell me anything. Meanwhile, in this seaside town, your memory goes through repeated ups and downs as it steadily deteriorates day by day. Like your memory, the truth about me is being lost. Without the aid of truth, I am nothing, and I can never be anything. You are right about that, too.”

“Knowledge is a precious social asset,” his father said in a monotone, though his voice was somewhat quieter than before, as if someone behind him had reached over and turned down the volume. “It is

an asset that must be amassed in abundant stockpiles and utilized with the utmost care. It must be handed down to the next generation in fruitful forms. For that reason, too, NHK needs to have all of your subscription fees and –”

This is a kind of mantra for him, thought Tengo. He has protected himself all these years by reciting such phrases. Tengo felt he had to smash this obstinate amulet of his, to pull the living human being out from behind the surrounding barrier.

He cut his father short. “What kind of person was my mother?

Where did she go? What happened to her?”

His father brought his incantation to a sudden halt.

Tengo went on, “I’m tired of living in hatred and resentment. I’m tired of living unable to love anyone. I don’t have a single friend – not one. And, worst of all, I can’t even love myself. Why is that? Why can’t I love myself? It’s because I can’t love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I’m not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don’t know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that?”

His father was closed off in silence, lips shut tight. It was impossible to tell from his expression whether he had understood Tengo or not. Tengo also fell silent and settled more deeply into his chair. A breeze blew in through the open window, stirred the sun-bleached curtains and the delicate petals of the potted plant, and slipped through the open door into the corridor. The smell of the sea was stronger than before. The soft sound of pine needles brushing against each other blended with the cries of the cicadas.

His voice softer now, Tengo went on, “A vision often comes to me – the same one, over and over, ever since I can remember. I suspect it’s probably not so much a vision as a memory of something that actually happened. I’m one and a half years old, and my mother is next to me. She and a young man are holding each other. The man is not you. Who he is, I have no idea, but he is definitely not you. I don’t know why, but the scene is permanently burned into me.”

His father said nothing, but his eyes were clearly seeing something else – something not there. The two maintained their silence. Tengo was

listening to the suddenly stronger breeze. He did not know what his father was listening to.

“I wonder if I might ask you to read me something,” his father said in formal tones after a long silence. “My sight has deteriorated to the point where I can’t read books anymore. I can’t follow the words on the page for long. That bookcase has some books. Choose any one you like.”

Tengo gave up and left his chair to scan the spines of the volumes in the bookcase. Most of them were historical novels set in ancient times when samurai roamed the land. All the volumes of Sword of Doom were there. Tengo couldn’t bring himself to read his father some musty old book full of archaic language.

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather read a story about a town of cats,” Tengo said. “I brought it to read myself.”

“A story about a town of cats,” his father said, savoring the words. “Please read that to me, if it is not too much trouble.”

Tengo looked at his watch. “It’s no trouble at all. I have plenty of time before my train leaves. It’s an odd story; I don’t know if you’ll like it or not.”

Tengo pulled out his paperback and started reading “Town of Cats.” His father listened to him read the entire story, not changing his position in the chair by the window. Tengo read slowly in a clearly audible voice, taking two or three breaks along the way to catch his breath. He glanced at his father whenever he stopped reading but saw no discernible reaction on his face. Was he enjoying the story or not? He could not tell. When he was through reading the story, his father was sitting perfectly still with his eyes closed. He looked as if he could be sound asleep, but he was not. He was simply deep inside the story, and it took him a while to come back out. Tengo waited patiently for that to happen. The afternoon light had begun to weaken and blend with touches of evening. The ocean breeze continued to shake the pines.

“Does that town of cats have television?” his father asked.

“The story was written in Germany in the 1930s. They didn’t have television yet back then. They did have radio, though.”

“I was in Manchuria, but I didn’t even have a radio. There weren’t any stations. The newspaper often didn’t arrive, and when it did it was two weeks old. There was hardly anything to eat, and we had no women.

Sometimes there were wolves roaming around. It was like the edge of the earth out there.”

He fell silent for a while, thinking, probably recalling the hard life he led as a young pioneer in distant Manchuria. But those memories soon clouded over, swallowed up into nothingness. Tengo could read these movements of his father’s mind from the changing expressions on his face.

“Did the cats build the town? Or did people build it a long time ago and the cats came to live there?” his father asked, speaking toward the windowpane as if to himself, though the question seemed to have been directed to Tengo.

“I don’t know,” Tengo said. “But it does seem to have been built by human beings long before. Maybe the people left for some reason – say, they all died in an epidemic – and the cats came to live there.”

His father nodded. “When a vacuum forms, something has to come along to fill it. Because that’s what everybody does.”

“That’s what everybody does?” “Exactly.”

“What kind of vacuum are you filling?”

His father scowled. His long eyebrows came down to hide his eyes.

Then he said with a touch of sarcasm in his voice, “Don’t you know?” “I don’t know,” Tengo said.

His father’s nostrils flared. One eyebrow rose slightly. This was the expression he always used when he was dissatisfied with something. “If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.”

Tengo narrowed his eyes, trying to read the man’s expression. Never once had his father employed such odd, suggestive language. He always spoke in concrete, practical terms. To say only what was necessary when necessary: that was his unshakable definition of a conversation. But there was no expression on his face to be read.

“I see. So you are filling in some kind of vacuum,” Tengo said. “All right, then, who is going to fill the vacuum that you have left behind?”

“You,” his father declared, raising an index finger and thrusting it straight at Tengo. “Isn’t it obvious? I have been filling in the vacuum that somebody else made, so you will fill in the vacuum that I have made. Like taking turns.”

“The way the cats filled in the town after the people were gone.”

“Right. Lost like the town,” his father said. Then he stared vacantly at his own outstretched index finger as if looking at some mysterious, misplaced object.

“Lost like the town,” Tengo repeated his father’s words.

“The woman who gave birth to you is not anywhere anymore.” “’Not anywhere.’ ‘Lost like the town.’ Are you saying she’s dead?” His father made no reply to that.

Tengo sighed. “So, then, who is my father?”

“Just a vacuum. Your mother joined her body with a vacuum and gave birth to you. I filled in that vacuum.”

Having said that much, his father closed his eyes and closed his

mouth.

“Joined her body with a vacuum?” “Yes”.

“And you raised me. Is that what you’re saying?”

After one ceremonious clearing of his throat, his father said, as if

trying to explain a simple truth to a slow-witted child, “That is why I said, ‘If you can’tunderstand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.’”

“So you’re telling me that I came out of a vacuum?” Tengo asked. No answer.

Tengo folded his hands in his lap and looked straight into his father’s face once more. This man is no empty shell, no vacant house. He is a flesh- and-blood human being with a narrow, stubborn soul and shadowed memories, surviving in fits and starts on this patch of land by the sea. He has no choice but to coexist with the vacuum that is slowly spreading inside him. The vacuum and his memories are still at odds, but eventually, regardless of his wishes, the vacuum will completely swallow up whatever memories are left. It is just a matter of time. Could the vacuum that he is confronting now be the same vacuum from which I was born?

Tengo thought he might be hearing the distant rumble of the sea mixed with the early-evening breeze slipping through the pine branches. Though it could have been an illusion.

Chapter 9. AOMAME: What Comes as a Pay ment for Heavenly Grace

WHEN AOMAME WALKED into the adjoining room, Buzzcut followed and swiftly closed the door. The room was totally dark. Thick curtains covered the window, and all lights had been extinguished. A few rays of light seeped in through a gap between the curtains, serving only to emphasize the darkness of everything else.

It took time for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, as in a movie theater or planetarium. The first thing she saw was the display of an electric clock on a low table. Its green figures read 7:20 p.m. When a few more seconds passed, she could tell that there was a large bed against the back wall. The clock was near the head of the bed. This room was somewhat smaller than the spacious adjoining room, but it was still larger than an ordinary hotel room.

On the bed was a deep black object, like a small mountain. Still more time had to go by before Aomame could tell that its irregular outline indicated the presence of a human body. During this interval, the outline remained perfectly unbroken. She could detect no signs of life. There was no breathing to be heard. The only sound was the soft rush of air from the

air conditioner near the ceiling. Still, the body was not dead. Buzzcut’s actions were based on the premise that this was a living human being.

This was a very large person, most likely a man. She could not be sure, but the person did not seem to be facing in this direction and did not seem to be under the covers but rather was lying facedown on the made-up bed, like a large animal at the back of a cave, trying not to expend its physical energy while it allows its wounds to heal.

“It is time,” Buzzcut announced in the direction of the shadow.

There was a new tension in his voice.

Whether or not the man heard Buzzcut’s voice was unclear. The dark mound on the bed remained perfectly still. Buzzcut stood stiffly by the door, waiting. The room was enveloped in a silence so deep Aomame could hear someone swallow, and then she realized that the sound of swallowing had come from her. Gripping her gym bag in her right hand, Aomame, like Buzzcut, was waiting for something to happen. The clock display changed to 7:21, then 7:22, then 7:23.

Eventually the outline on the bed began to show a slight degree of motion – a faint shudder that soon became a clear movement. The person must have been in a deep sleep or a state resembling sleep. The muscles awoke, the upper body began to rise, and, in time, the consciousness was regained. The shadow sat straight up on the bed, legs folded. It’s definitely a man, thought Aomame.

“It is time,” Buzzcut said again.

Aomame heard the man release a long breath. It was like a heavy sigh slowly rising from the bottom of a deep well. Next came the sound of a large inhalation. It was as wild and unsettling as a gale tearing through a forest. Then the cycle started again, the two utterly different types of sound repeated, separated by a long silence. This made Aomame feel uneasy. She sensed that she had found her way into a region that was completely foreign to her – a deep ocean trench, say, or the surface of an unknown asteroid: the kind of place it might be possible to reach with great effort, but from which return was impossible.

Her eyes refused to adapt fully to the darkness. She could now see to a certain point but no farther. All that her eyes could reach was the man’s dark silhouette. She could not tell which way he was facing or what he was looking at. All she could see was that he was an extremely large man and that his shoulders seemed to rise and fall quietly – but enormously – with

each breath. This was not normal breathing. Rather, it was breathing that had a special purpose and function and that was performed with the entire body. She pictured the large movements of his shoulder blades and diaphragm expanding and contracting. No ordinary human being could breathe with such fierce intensity. It was a distinctive method of breathing that could only be mastered through long, intense training.

Buzzcut stood next to her at full attention, back straight, chin in. His breathing was shallow and quick, in contrast to that of the man on the bed. He was trying to minimize his presence as he waited for the intense deep breathing sequence to end: apparently it was an activity the man practiced routinely. Like Buzzcut, Aomame could do nothing but wait for it to end. It was probably a process the man needed to go through to become fully awake.

Finally, the special breathing ended in stages, the way a large machine stops running. The intervals between breaths grew gradually longer, concluding with one long breath that seemed to squeeze everything out. A deep silence fell over the room once again.

“It is time,” Buzzcut said a third time.

The man’s head moved slowly. He now seemed to be facing Buzzcut.

“You may leave the room,” the man said. His voice was a deep, clear baritone – decisive and unambiguous. His body had apparently attained complete wakefulness.

Buzzcut gave one shallow bow in the darkness and left the room the way he had entered it, with no unnecessary movements. The door closed, leaving Aomame alone in the room with the man.

“I’m sorry it’s so dark,” the man said, most likely to Aomame. “I don’t mind,” Aomame said.

“We had to make it dark,” the man said softly. “But don’t worry. You will not be hurt.”

Aomame nodded. Then, recalling that she was in darkness, she said aloud, “I see.” Her voice was somewhat harder and higher than normal.

For a time, the man stared at Aomame in the darkness. She felt herself being stared at intensely. His gaze was precise and attentive to detail. He was not so much “looking” at her as “viewing” her. He seemed able to survey every inch of her body. She felt as if he had, in an instant, stripped off every piece of clothing and left her stark naked. But his gaze

didn’t stop with the skin; it pierced through to her muscles and organs and uterus. He can see in the dark, she thought. He is viewing far more than the eyes can see.

“Things can be seen better in the darkness,” he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. “But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is. You have to call a stop to it at some point.”

Having said this, he spent another interval observing Aomame. There was nothing sexual in his gaze. He was just viewing her as an object, the way a boat passenger stares at the shape of a passing island. But this was no ordinary passenger. He was trying to see through to everything about the island. With prolonged exposure to such a relentless, piercing gaze, Aomame strongly felt the imperfections of her own fleshly self. This was not how she felt normally. Aside from the size of her breasts, she was, if anything, proud of her body. She trained it daily and kept it beautiful. Her muscles were smooth and taut without the slightest excess flesh. Stared at by this man, however, she could not help but feel that her flesh was a worn- out old bag of meat.

As though he had read her thoughts, the man stopped staring at her. She felt the power suddenly go out of his gaze. It was as if someone had been spraying water with a hose when another person behind the building turned off the spigot.

“Sorry, but could you open the curtains just a bit?” the man asked softly. “I’m sure you could use some light, too, for your work.”

Setting the gym bag on the floor, Aomame went over to the window and pulled on the cords at the side to open, first, the thick, heavy curtains and then the inner white lace curtains. Nighttime Tokyo poured its light into the room. Tokyo Tower’s floodlights, the lamps lining the elevated expressway, the moving headlights of cars, the lighted windows of high-rise buildings, the colorful rooftop neon signs: they all combined to illuminate the hotel room with that mixed light unique to the big city, but just barely, enough so that Aomame was now able to make out some of the room’s furnishings. Aomame saw the light with a pang of familiarity. This was light from the world to which she herself belonged. She suddenly realized how urgently she needed such light. As weak as it was, though, it appeared to be too strong for the man’s eyes. Still seated on the bed in the lotus position, he covered his face with his two large hands.

“Are you all right?” Aomame asked. “Don’t worry,” he said.

“Shall I close the curtains a bit more?”

“No, that’s fine. I have a problem with my retinas. It takes time for them to adjust to light. I’ll be all right in a minute. Have a seat over there.”

A problem with his retinas? Aomame wondered. People with retinal problems are usually on the verge of going blind. But this was of no concern to Aomame now. She was not here to deal with this man’s sight.

While the man was covering his face with his hands and letting his eyes adjust to the light streaming in from the window, Aomame sat on a sofa and watched him. Now it was her turn to study him in detail.

He was a very large man. Not fat, just large. Tall and broad and powerful looking. She had heard about his large size from the dowager, but she had not expected him to be this big. There was, of course, no reason that a religious guru should not be huge. She imagined ten-year-old girls being raped by this big man and found herself scowling. She imagined him naked and mounted on a tiny girl. There was no way for such girls to resist. Even an adult woman would have a difficult time of it.

The man was wearing something like thin sweatpants that narrowed at the ankles with elastic bands, and a solid-color long-sleeved shirt that had a slight, silk-like sheen. The loose-fitting shirt buttoned up the front, but the man had left the top two buttons open. Both the pants and the shirt appeared to be white or a light cream color. These were not pajamas but more like comfortable lounging clothes or an outfit that would look normal under palm trees in southern lands. His bare feet looked big. The broad stone wall of his shoulders brought to mind an experienced martial arts combatant.

After waiting for a pause in Aomame’s observation, the man said, “Thanks for coming today.”

“It’s my job,” Aomame said in a voice devoid of emotion. “I go where I’m needed.” Even as she spoke, however, she felt like a prostitute who had come when called. Perhaps this was due to the way he had undressed her in the darkness with that penetrating gaze.

“How much do you know about me?” the man asked Aomame, his hands still covering his face.

“How much do I know about you?” “That’s right.”

“Almost nothing,” Aomame said, choosing her words carefully. “I have not even been told your name. All I know is that you are the head of a religious organization in Nagano or Yamanashi, that you have some kind of physical problem, and that I may be able to help you with it.”

The man gave his head a few quick shakes and took his hands away from his face. Now he and Aomame were looking directly at each other.

His hair was long. His abundant head of hair hung straight down to his shoulders. It had much gray mixed in. The man was probably somewhere in his late forties or early fifties. He had a large nose that occupied a good deal of his face. It was admirably straight and brought to mind a calendar photo of the Alps. The mountain had a broad base and great dignity. It was the first thing one noticed when looking at his face, and it contrasted sharply with his eyes, which were set so deeply into his face that it was hard to tell what they were looking at. Like his body, his face was broad and thick. Clean-shaven, it bore no scars or moles. The features worked well together, producing a look of serenity and intelligence but also something peculiar, out of the ordinary, something that did not inspire easy trust. It was the kind of face that, on first impression, gives people pause. Perhaps it was because the nose was too big. Because of it, the face was missing a certain balance, perhaps the root of what left the observer feeling unsettled. Or perhaps it was the deep-set eyes that did it, the way they gave off the quiet glow of an ancient glacier. Then again, it might have been the cruel impression created by the thin lips, which looked as if they were ready to spit out unpredictable words at any moment.

“And besides that?” he asked.

“Besides that I have heard very little. All I was told was to be prepared to perform stretching exercises. The muscles and joints are my area of expertise. I don’t need to know much about my clients’ positions or personalities.”

Just like a whore, Aomame thought.

“I understand what you are saying,” the man said in a deep voice. “But in my case, you might need some explanation.”

“I would be glad to listen to anything you might wish to share.” “People call me ‘Leader.’ But I almost never show my face to

anyone. Most of our believers, although they belong to the religion and live in the same compound, have no idea what I look like.”

Aomame nodded.

“But here I am, letting you see my face. For one thing, I can hardly ask you to treat me in the dark or blindfolded. And there is also the question of courtesy.”

“What I do is not a ‘treatment,’” Aomame calmly corrected him. “It is simply the stretching of the muscles. I am not licensed to perform medical procedures. All I do is force people to stretch the muscles they don’t normally use or the ones that are difficult to use, and that way we prevent the deterioration of their physical strength.”

The man appeared to smile faintly, though it might have been a mere illusion caused by a slight twitching of his facial muscles.

“I am quite aware of that. I simply used the word ‘treat’ for convenience’s sake. Don’t worry. All I was trying to say was that you are now seeing something that most people are not able to see, and I wanted you to be aware of that.”

“I was warned in there not to say anything about this to anyone,” Aomame said, pointing toward the door to the adjoining room. “But none of you need to worry. Nothing that I observe here will find its way outside. I touch many people’s bodies in my work. You may be someone in a special position, but to me you are merely one of many people with muscle problems. The only part of you that concerns me is your muscles.”

“I hear you were a Society of Witnesses believer as a child.”

“It’s not as if I chose to become a believer. I was simply raised that way. There is a big difference between the two.”

“Indeed, a very big difference,” the man said. “But people can never fully divorce themselves from the images implanted during early childhood.”

“For better or worse,” Aomame said.

“The Witnesses’ doctrines are very different from those of the religion that I belong to. If you ask me, any religion that takes the end of the world as one of its central tenets is more or less bogus. In my view, the only thing that ever ‘ends’ is the individual. That said, the Society of Witnesses is an amazingly tough religion. Its history is not very long, but it has withstood many tests and has steadily continued to increase the number of its believers. There is a lot that can be learned from that.”

“It probably just shows how closed-minded they’ve been. The smaller and narrower such a group is, the more firmly they can resist outside pressure.”

“You are probably right about that,” the man said, pausing for a few moments. “In any case, we’re not here to discuss religion.”

Aomame said nothing.

“What I want you to understand is the fact that my body has many special things about it.”

Aomame, still seated, waited for him to go on.

“As I said before, my eyes can’t stand strong light. This symptom appeared some years ago. I had no particular problem until that time, but all at once, at some point, it started. This was the main reason I stopped coming into people’s presence. I spend practically all my time in dark rooms.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do anything for vision problems,” Aomame said. “As I said before, the muscles are my area of expertise.”

“Yes, I am quite aware of that. And of course I consulted medical specialists. I have been to any number of famous eye doctors and had many tests. But they tell me there is nothing they can do at this point. My retinas have been damaged, but they don’t know the cause. The symptoms are slowly progressing. If things go on like this, I will lose my sight before long. As you say, of course, this is a problem that has nothing to do with the muscles. But let me list my physical problems in order, and when I am through, we can think about what you can and cannot do.”

Aomame nodded.

“The next problem is that my muscles often go stiff,” the man said. “I quite literally ‘can’t move a muscle.’ They become rock hard and stay that way for hours. All I can do at such times is lie down. I don’t feel any pain. All the muscles of my body simply become immobile. I can’t even move a finger. The only thing I can manage to move, through sheer willpower, is my eyeballs. This happens once or twice a month.”

“Do you have any sign beforehand that it is about to happen?”

“First I have spasms. My muscles start twitching all over. That goes on for ten to twenty minutes. After that, my muscles go dead, as if someone has turned off a switch. During those ten or twenty minutes after the warning comes, I go to a place where I can stretch out, and I lie down. Like a boat seeking shelter from a storm in a cove, I wait there in hiding for the paralysis to pass over me. And though the paralysis is complete when it comes, my mind remains fully awake. No, if anything, it is awake with a special clarity.”

it.”

“You say you have no pain?”

“I lose all sensation. If you jabbed me with a needle, I wouldn’t feel

“Have you consulted a doctor about that?”

“I have been to all the best hospitals and any number of doctors, but

all they can tell me is that this is an unprecedented affliction for which current medical knowledge can do nothing. I have tried traditional Chinese remedies, osteopathic physicians, acupuncture, moxibustion, massage, hot spring cures – everything I could think of – but have had no results worth talking about.”

Aomame frowned slightly. “All my approach does is to stimulate the normal bodily functions. I doubt that it will have much effect on such severe problems.”

“Yes, I am quite aware of that as well. But I am trying to exhaust every possibility. Even if your method has no effect, that is not your responsibility. Just do to me what you always do. I would like to see how my body responds to it.”

Aomame pictured the man’s huge body lying motionless in some dark place like a hibernating animal.

“When was the last time you experienced the paralysis?”

“Ten days ago,” the man said. “And – this is a bit difficult to bring up, but – there is one more thing I should probably mention.”

“Feel free to tell me anything.”

“All the time my muscles are in that state of suspended animation, I have an erection.”

Aomame’s frown deepened. “You mean to say that your sex organ remains hard for hours at a time?”

“That is correct.”

“But you have no feeling.”

“None at all,” he said. “No sexual desire, either. I just harden up.

Like a rock, the way my muscles do.”

Aomame gave her head a little shake and did her best to resume a normal expression. “I don’t believe I can do anything about that, either. It’s quite far from my area of expertise.”

“This is very difficult for me to talk about, and you probably don’t want to hear about it either, but may I tell you a bit more?”

“Please do. Your secrets are safe with me.”

girls.”

“During this interval, it happens that I am physically joined with

“Girls?!”

“I have a number of females around me. Whenever I go into my

paralytic state, they take turns mounting me and having sexual relations with me. I have no feeling at all. I feel no sexual pleasure. But I do ejaculate. With each of them.”

Aomame kept silent.

He continued, “All together, there are three girls, all in their teens. I am sure you must be wondering why I have such young girls around me and why they must have sex with me.”

“Could it be, perhaps, part of a religious practice?”

Still sitting cross-legged on the bed, the man took a deep breath. “It is thought that these paralyses of mine are a form of grace bestowed by heaven, a kind of sacred state. Thus, when I am visited by those states, the girls come to me and join their bodies with mine. They are trying to become impregnated. With my heir.”

Aomame looked at him, saying nothing. He also fell silent.

“So, then, what you are telling me is that the girls’ purpose is to become pregnant? To carry your child?” Aomame then asked.

“That is correct.”

“And during this several-hour period while you lie there paralyzed, you have three ejaculations with these three girls?”

“That is correct.”

Aomame could not help but realize that she had gotten herself into a terribly complicated situation. She was about to murder this man, to send him to the other side. Yet here she was, being given the strange secrets of his flesh.

“I don’t quite understand the precise nature of your problem. All the muscles of your body become paralyzed once or twice a month. When that happens, your three girlfriends come and have sex with you. True, that is not exactly normal in commonsense terms, but –”

“They are not my girlfriends,” the man said, cutting her short. “They serve me as shrine maidens. Joining their bodies with mine is one of their duties.”

“Duties?”

“It is a role that has been assigned to them – to become pregnant with my heir.”

“Assigned by whom?” Aomame asked.

“That would be a long story,” the man said. “The problem is that all of this is steadily leading toward the destruction of my flesh.”

“So, then, have they gotten pregnant?”

“No, not yet. And there is little possibility that any of them will. They have not started their periods. Still, they are hoping for a miracle through heavenly grace.”

“None of them have gotten pregnant. They are not menstruating,” Aomame said. “And your flesh is headed for destruction.”

“Little by little, the time of each paralytic episode is growing longer. And the episodes are increasing in number. They started seven years ago. Back then, I would have one episode in two or three months. Now it is once or twice a month, and after each paralysis ends, my body is racked by excruciating pain and exhaustion. I have to live this way for a week or more each time. I feel as if my whole body is being stabbed by thick needles. I have intense headaches and an overwhelming fatigue. I find it impossible to sleep, and no medicine has done anything to alleviate the pain.”

The man sighed. Then he continued, “The second week after the episode is better than the first, but still the pain never entirely goes away. Intense pain comes over me like a wave several times a day. I can hardly breathe. My organs don’t function properly. My joints creak like a machine that needs oiling. My flesh is being devoured and my blood sucked out. I can feel it happening. But what is gnawing away at me is neither cancer nor a parasite. I have had every test they can think of, but they can never find the cause. They tell me I’m the picture of health. Medical science cannot explain my torment. The only conclusion is that this is the price I must pay for the heavenly grace I experience.”

This man is surely on the road to destruction, Aomame thought. But she could find no hint of emaciation about him. He seemed sturdily built in every way and appeared to have the discipline to withstand intense pain. And yet she could sense that his flesh was headed for destruction. This man is diseased. I don’t know what his disease might be, but even if I don’t take steps to dispatch him right now, he will suffer intense pain as his flesh is slowly destroyed and he encounters inevitable death.

“I can’t stop its progress,” the man said, as if he had read Aomame’s thoughts. “Every part of me is being eaten away, my body hollowed out, and a horribly painful death awaits me. They’ll just throw me away like a useless old car.”

“’They’?” Aomame asked. “Who are ‘they’?”

“I am talking about the ones who are eating away at my flesh like this,” the man said. “But never mind that. What I am looking for now is some way to have my very real pain eased to some extent. That is what I need more than anything, even if the solution is not complete. This pain is unbearable. At times – at certain times – the pain deepens dramatically, as if it has a direct link to the center of the earth. It is a kind of pain that no one else besides me can grasp. It has robbed me of many things, but in return it has given me much. Deep, special pain bestows deep, special grace – not that the grace alleviates the pain, of course. Nor can it prevent the coming destruction.”

A deep silence followed for some moments.

Aomame finally managed to speak. “I know I keep saying the same thing, but I can’t help thinking that the techniques at my disposal can do almost nothing for your problem – especially if it is something that has come to you as a payment for heavenly grace.”

Leader sat up straight and looked at Aomame with those small, deep- set, glacier-like eyes. Then he opened his long, thin lips.

“No, I think you can do something for me – something that only you can do.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am right, I know it,” the man said. “I know a lot of things. If you are willing, I would like to have you start now. Do what you always do.”

“I’ll try,” Aomame said, her voice tense and hollow. What I always do, Aomame thought.

Chapter 10. TENGO: You Have Declined Our Offer

TENGO SAID GOOD-BYE to his father just before six p.m. While he waited for the taxi to come, the two of them sat across from each other by the window, saying nothing. Tengo indulged in his own unhurried thoughts while his father stared hard at the view outside the window, frowning. The sun had dropped down, and the sky’s pale blue was slowly deepening.

He had many more questions he wanted to ask, but he knew that there would be no answers coming back. The sight of his father’s tightly clenched lips told him that. His father had obviously decided to say nothing more, so Tengo decided not to ask any more. If you couldn’t understand something without an explanation, you couldn’t understand it with an explanation. As his father had said.

When the time for him to leave drew near, Tengo said, “You told me a lot today. It was indirect and often hard to grasp, but it was probably as honest and open as you could make it.”

Tengo looked at his father, but there was no change of expression.

“I still have some things I’d like to ask you, but I know they would only cause you pain. All I can do is guess the rest from what you’ve told

me. You are probably not my father by blood. That is what I assume. I don’t know the details, but I have to think that in general. If I’m wrong, please tell me so.”

His father made no reply.

Tengo continued, “If my assumption is correct, that makes it easier for me. Not because I hate you, but – as I said before – because I no longer need to hate you. You seem to have raised me as your son even though we had no blood ties. I should be grateful for that. Unfortunately, we were never very good at being father and son, but that’s another problem.”

Still his father said nothing, his eyes fixed on the outdoor scene like a soldier on guard duty, determined not to miss the next signal flare sent up by the savage tribe on the distant hill. Tengo tried looking out along his father’s line of vision, but found nothing resembling a flare. The only thing out there were the pine trees tinted with the coming sunset.

“I’m sorry to say it, but there is virtually nothing I can do for you – other than to hope that the process forming a vacuum inside you is a painless one. I’m sure you have suffered a lot. You must have loved my mother as deeply as you knew how. I do get that sense. But she went off somewhere. I don’t know whether the man she went with was my biological father or not, and you apparently have no intention of telling me. But in any case she left you. And me, too, an infant. Maybe you decided to raise me because you figured she would come back to you if you had me with you. But she never came back – to you or to me. That must have been hard on you, like living in an empty town. Still, you raised me in that empty town – as if to fill in the vacuum.”

His father’s expression did not change. Tengo could not tell whether he was understanding – or even hearing – what he was saying.

“My assumption may be wrong, and that might be all for the better. For both of us. But thinking about it that way helps all kinds of things to fit together nicely inside me, and my doubts are more or less resolved.”

A pack of crows cut across the sky, cawing. Tengo looked at his watch. It was time for him to leave. He stood up, went over to his father, and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Good-bye, Father. I’ll come again soon.”

Grasping the doorknob, Tengo turned around one last time and was shocked to see a single tear running down from his father’s eye. It shone a dull silver color under the ceiling’s fluorescent light. To release that tear, his

father must have squeezed every bit of strength from what little emotion he still had left. The tear crept slowly down his father’s cheek and fell onto his lap. Tengo opened the door and left the room. He took the cab to the station and boarded the train that had brought him here.

The Tokyo-bound express train from Tateyama was more crowded and noisy than the outbound train had been. Most of the passengers were families returning from a stay at the beach. Looking at them, Tengo thought about being in elementary school. He had never once experienced such a family outing or trip. During the Bon Festival, or New Year’s, his father would do nothing but stretch out at home and sleep, looking like some kind of grubby machine with the electricity switched off.

Taking his seat, he thought he might read the rest of his paperback, until he realized he had left it in his father’s room. He sighed but then realized on second thought that this was probably just as well. Anything he might read now would probably not register with him. And “Town of Cats” was a story that belonged more in his father’s room than in Tengo’s possession.

The scenery moved past the window in the opposite order: the dark, deserted strip of coastline pressed in upon by mountains eventually gave way to the more open coastal industrial zone. Most of the factories were still operating even though it was nighttime. A forest of smokestacks towered in the darkness, spitting fire like snakes sticking out their long tongues. Big trucks’ strong headlights flooded the roadway. The ocean beyond looked like thick, black mud.

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time he arrived home. His mailbox was empty. Opening his apartment door, he found the place looking even emptier than usual, the same vacuum he had left behind that morning. The shirt he had thrown on the floor, the switched-off word processor, the swivel chair with the indentation his weight had left in the seat, the eraser crumbs scattered over his desk. He drank two glasses of water, undressed, and crawled straight into bed. Sleep came over him immediately – a deep sleep such as he had not had lately.

When he woke up after eight o’clock the next morning, Tengo realized that he was a brand-new person. Waking up felt good. The muscles of his arms and legs felt free of all stiffness and ready to deal with any wholesome stimulus. His physical weariness was gone. He had that feeling he remembered from childhood when he opened a new textbook at the beginning of the term, ignorant of its contents but sensing the new knowledge to come. He went into the bathroom and shaved. Drying his face and slapping on aftershave lotion, he studied himself in the mirror, confirming that he was, indeed, a new person.

Yesterday’s events all seemed as if they had happened in a dream, not in reality. While everything was quite vivid, he noticed touches of unreality around the edges. He had boarded a train, visited the “Town of Cats,” and come back. Fortunately, unlike the hero of the story, he had managed to board the train for the return trip. And his experiences in that town had changed Tengo profoundly.

Of course, nothing at all had changed about the actual situation in which he found himself, compelled to walk on dangerous, enigmatic ground. Things had developed in totally unforeseen ways, and he had no idea what was going to happen to him next. Still, Tengo had a strong sense that somehow he would be able to overcome the danger.

I’ve finally made it to the starting line, Tengo thought. Not that any decisive facts had come to light, but from the things his father had said, and his father’s attitude, he had begun to gain some vague understanding of his own origins. That “image” that had long tormented and confused him was no meaningless hallucination. How much it reflected actuality, he could not say with any precision, but it was the single piece of information left him by his mother, and, for better or worse, it comprised the foundation of his life. With that much now clear, Tengo was able to feel that he had lowered a great burden from his back. And, having set it down once and for all, he realized what a heavy load he had been carrying.

A strangely quiet and peaceful two weeks went by, like a calm sea. He taught four days a week at the cram school during summer vacation, and allocated the rest of his time to writing his novel. No one contacted him. Tengo knew nothing about how the Fuka-Eri disappearance case was progressing or whether Air Chrysalis was still selling. Nor did he want to

know. Let the world move along as it pleased. If it had any business with him, it would be sure to tell him.

August ended, and September came. As he made his morning coffee, Tengo found himself silently wishing that this peaceful time could go on forever. If he said it aloud, some keen-eared demon somewhere might overhear him. And so he kept his wish for continued tranquility to himself. But things never go the way you want them to, and this was no exception. The world seemed to have a better sense of how you wanted things not to go.

The phone rang just after ten o’clock that morning. He let it ring seven times, gave up, reached out, and lifted the receiver.

“Can I come over now,” a subdued voice asked. As far as Tengo knew, there was only one person in the world who could ask questions without a question mark like that. In the background Tengo could hear some kind of announcement and the sound of car exhausts.

“Where are you now?” Tengo asked. “At the front door of the Marusho.”

His apartment was less than two hundred yards from that supermarket. She was calling from the pay phone out front.

Tengo instinctively glanced around his apartment. “Don’t you think it’s risky? Somebody might be watching my apartment. And you’re supposed to be ‘whereabouts unknown.’”

“Somebody might be watching your apartment,” she asked, parroting his words.

“Right,” Tengo said. “All kinds of weird things have been going on around me, probably having to do with Air Chrysalis.”

“ ’Cause people are mad.”

“Probably. They’re mad at you, and I think they’re a little mad at me, too. Because I rewrote Air Chrysalis.”

“I don’t care,” Fuka-Eri said.

“You don’t care.” Now Tengo was parroting her words. The habit was catching. “About what?”

“Your apartment being watched. If it is.”

He was momentarily at a loss for words. “Well, maybe I do care,” he said at last.

“We should be together,” Fuka-Eri said. “Join forces.”

“Sonny and Cher,” Tengo said. “The strongest male/female duo.” “The strongest what?”

“Never mind. My own little joke.” “I’m coming over.”

Tengo was about to say something when he heard the connection cut.

Everybody was hanging up on him. Like chopping down a rope bridge.

Fuka-Eri showed up ten minutes later with a plastic supermarket bag in each arm. She wore a blue-striped long-sleeve shirt and slim jeans. The shirt was a men’s shirt, unironed, straight from the clothesline. A canvas bag hung from one shoulder. She wore a pair of oversized sunglasses to hide her face, but it didn’t look like an effective disguise. If anything, it would attract attention.

“I thought we should have lots of food,” Fuka-Eri said, transferring the contents of the plastic bags to the refrigerator. Most of what she had bought was ready-made food that only needed heating in a microwave oven. There were also crackers and cheese, apples, tomatoes, and some canned goods.

“Where’s the microwave?” she asked, looking around the kitchen. “I don’t have one,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri wrinkled her brow in thought, but had nothing to say. She seemed to have trouble imagining a world without a microwave oven.

“I want you to put me up,” she said, as if conveying an objective

fact.

“How long?” Tengo asked.

Fuka-Eri shook her head. This meant she didn’t know. “What happened to your hiding place?”

“I don’t want to be alone when something happens.” “You think something is going to happen?”

Fuka-Eri did not reply.

“I don’t mean to keep repeating myself, but this is not a safe place,”

Tengo said. “Some kind of people seem to be keeping an eye on me. I don’t know who they are yet, but …”

“There is no such thing as a safe place,” Fuka-Eri said, narrowing her eyes meaningfully and tugging on an earlobe. Tengo could not tell what

this body language was supposed to mean. Probably nothing. “So it doesn’t matter where you are,” Tengo said.

“There is no such thing as a safe place,” Fuka-Eri repeated.

“You may be right,” Tengo said with resignation. “After a certain point, there’s no difference in the level of danger. In any case, I have to go to work soon.”

“To the cram school.” “Right.”

“I’ll stay here,” Fuka-Eri said.

“You’ll stay here,” Tengo echoed her. “You should. Just don’t go outside, and don’t answer if anybody knocks. Don’t answer the phone if it rings.”

Fuka-Eri nodded silently.

“So, anyhow, what’s happening with Professor Ebisuno?” “They searched Sakigake yesterday.”

“You mean, the police searched the Sakigake compound looking for you?” Tengo asked, surprised.

“You aren’t reading the papers.”

“I’m not reading the papers,” Tengo echoed. “I just haven’t felt like it lately. So I don’t know what’s happening. But I would think the Sakigake people would be very upset by that.”

Fuka-Eri nodded.

Tengo released a deep sigh. “They must be even angrier than before, like hornets having their nest poked.”

Fuka-Eri narrowed her eyes and went into a short silence. She was probably imagining a swarm of furious hornets pouring out of their nest.

“Probably,” Fuka-Eri said in a tiny voice.

“So, did they find out anything about your parents?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. They still knew nothing about them.

“In any case, the organization is angry,” Tengo said. “And if the police find out that your disappearance was an act, they’ll be mad at you too. And mad at me for covering up for you even though I know the truth.”

“Which is precisely why we have to join forces,” Fuka-Eri said. “Did you just say, ‘Which is precisely’?”

Fuka-Eri nodded. “Did I say it wrong?” she asked.

Tengo shook his head. “Not at all. The words sounded fresh, that’s

all.”

“If it’s a bother for you, I can go somewhere else,” Fuka-Eri said.

“I don’t mind if you stay here,” Tengo said, resigned. “I’m sure you don’t have anyplace else in mind, right?”

Fuka-Eri answered with a curt nod.

Tengo took some cold barley tea from the refrigerator and drank it. “Angry hornets would be too much for me, but I’m sure I can manage to look after you.”

Fuka-Eri looked hard at Tengo for a few moments. Then she said, “You look different.”

“What do you mean?”

Fuka-Eri twisted her lips into a strange angle and then returned them to normal. “Can’t explain.”

“No need to explain,” Tengo said. If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.

As he left the apartment, Tengo said, “When I call, I’ll let it ring three times, hang up, and call again. Then you answer. Okay?”

“Okay,” Fuka-Eri said. “Ring three times, hang up, call again, answer.” She sounded as if she could be translating aloud from an ancient stone monument.

“It’s important, so don’t forget,” Tengo said. Fuka-Eri nodded twice.

Tengo finished his two classes, went back to the teachers’ lounge, and was getting ready to go home. The receptionist came to tell him that the man named Ushikawa was here to see him. She spoke with an apologetic air, like a kindhearted messenger bearing unwelcome news. Tengo flashed her a bright smile and thanked her. No sense blaming the messenger.

Ushikawa was in the cafeteria by the front lobby, drinking a café au lait as he waited for Tengo. Tengo could not imagine a drink less well suited to Ushikawa, whose strange exterior looked all the stranger amid the energetic, young students. Only the part of the room where he was sitting seemed to have different gravity and air density and light refractivity. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking that he looked like bad news. The cafeteria was crowded between classes, but not one person shared his six- person table. The students’ natural instincts led them to avoid Ushikawa, just as antelope keep away from wild dogs.

Tengo bought a coffee at the counter and carried it over to Ushikawa’s table, sitting down opposite him. Ushikawa seemed to have just finished eating a cream-filled pastry. The crumpled wrapper lay atop the table, and crumbs stuck to the corner of his mouth. Cream pastries also seemed totally unsuited to Ushikawa.

“It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it, Mr. Kawana?” Ushikawa said to Tengo, raising himself slightly from his chair. “Sorry to barge in on you again all of a sudden.”

Tengo dispensed with the polite chatter and got down to business. “I’m sure you’re here for my answer. To the offer you made the other day, that is.”

“Well, yes, that is true,” Ushikawa said. “In a word.”

“I wonder, Mr. Ushikawa, if I can get you to speak a little more concretely and directly today. What is it that you people want from me – in return for this ‘grant’ thing?”

Ushikawa cast a cautious glance around the room, but there was no one near them, and the cafeteria was so noisy with student voices that there was no danger of their conversation’s being overheard.

“All right, then. Let me give you our best deal and lay it all out with total honesty,” Ushikawa said, leaning across the table and lowering his voice a notch. “The money is just a pretext. For one thing, the grant is not all that big. The most important thing that my client can offer you is your personal safety. In other words, no harm will come to you. We guarantee it.”

“In return for which …?” Tengo said.

“In return for which all they want from you is your silence and forgetting. You participated in this affair, but you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into. You were just a foot soldier acting under orders. They won’t hold you personally responsible. So all you have to do is forget everything. We can make it as though nothing ever happened. Word will never get out that you ghostwrote Air Chrysalis. You are not – and never will be – connected with it in any way. That is what they want from you. And it would be to your advantage as well, I’m sure you see.”

“No harm will come to me. In other words, harm will come to the other participants? Is that what you are saying?”

“That would be handled, uh, ‘case by case,’ as they say in English,” Ushikawa said with apparent difficulty. “I am not the one who decides, so I can’t say specifically, but some steps will have to be taken, I should think.”

“And your arms are both long and strong.”

“Exactly. Very long, and very strong, as I mentioned before. So, then, Mr. Kawana, what kind of answer can we hope for from you?”

“Let me first say that for me to accept money from you people is out of the question.”

Without speaking, Ushikawa reached for his glasses, took them off, carefully wiped the lenses with a handkerchief he produced from his pocket, and put them back on, as if to say that there might be some sort of connection between his vision and what he had just heard.

“Do I understand this to mean that you have rejected our offer?” “That is correct.”

Ushikawa stared at Tengo through his glasses as if he were looking at an oddly shaped cloud. “And why would that be? In my humble opinion, it is by no means a bad deal for you.”

“In the end, all of us connected with the story are in the same boat.

It’s out of the question for me to be the only one who runs away.”

“I’m mystified!” Ushikawa said, as if truly mystified. “I can’t understand it. I maybe shouldn’t say this, but none of the others are the least bit concerned about you. It’s true. They throw a little spare change your way and use you any way they like. And for that you get dragged into the mess. If you ask me, you’d be totally justified to tell them all to go to hell. If it were me, I’d be fuming. But you’re ready to protect them. ‘It’s out of the question for me to be the only one who runs away,’ he says! Boat schmoat! I don’t get it. Why won’t you take it?”

“One reason has to do with a woman named Kyoko Yasuda.” Ushikawa picked up his cold café au lait and winced as he sipped it.

“Kyoko Yasuda?”

“You people know something about Kyoko Yasuda,” Tengo said.

Ushikawa let his mouth hang open, as if he had no idea what Tengo was talking about. “No, honestly, I don’t know a thing about a woman by that name. I swear, really. Who is she?”

Tengo looked at Ushikawa for a while, saying nothing, but he could not read anything on his face. “A woman I know.”

“Would she, by any chance, be someone with whom you have a … relationship?”

Tengo did not reply to that. “What I want to know is whether you people did something to her.”

“Did something? No way! We haven’t done a thing,” Ushikawa said. “I’m not lying. I just told you, I don’t know a thing about her. You can’t do anything to somebody you’ve never even heard of.”

“But you said you hired a capable ‘researcher’ and investigated every last thing about me. He even hit upon the fact that I had rewritten Eriko Fukada’s work. He knows a lot about my private life, too. It only makes sense that he should know about Kyoko Yasuda and me.”

“Yes, it’s true, we have hired a capable researcher. And he has been finding out about you in great detail. So it could be that he has discovered your relationship with Kyoko Yasuda, as you say. But even assuming he has discovered it, the information has not reached me.”

“I was seeing Kyoko Yasuda for quite some time,” Tengo said. “I used to see her once a week. In secret. Because she had a family. But suddenly one day, without saying a word to me, she disappeared.”

Ushikawa used the handkerchief with which he had wiped his glasses to dab at the sweat on the tip of his nose. “And so, Mr. Kawana, you think that, in one way or another, we have something to do with the fact that this married woman disappeared, is that it?”

“Maybe you informed her husband that she was seeing me.”

Ushikawa pursed his lips as if taken aback. “What possible reason could we have for doing such a thing?”

Tengo clenched his fists in his lap. “I keep thinking about something you said on the phone the last time we talked.”

“And what could that have been?”

“Once you pass a certain age, life is just a continuous process of losing one thing after another. One after another, things you value slip out of your hands the way a comb loses teeth. People you love fade away one after another. That sort of thing. Surely, you must remember.”

“Yes, I remember. I did say something like that the other day. But really, Mr. Kawana, I was just speaking in generalities. I was offering my own humble view of the pain and difficulty of aging. I certainly was not pointing specifically to What’s-her-name Yasuda.”

“But to my ears it sounded like a warning.”

Ushikawa gave his head several vigorous shakes. “Nothing of the sort! It wasn’t even remotely meant as a warning. It was simply my personal view. Really, I swear, I don’t know anything at all about Mrs. Yasuda. She disappeared?”

Tengo went on, “And you also said this: if I go on refusing to listen to you people, it might have an undesirable effect on everyone around me.”

“Yes, I did say something like that.” “Isn’t that a warning too?”

Ushikawa stuffed his handkerchief into his jacket pocket and let out a sigh. “True, it might have sounded like a warning, but there, too, I was speaking strictly generally. I’m telling you, Mr. Kawana, I don’t know anything about this Mrs. Yasuda. I’ve never even heard the name. I swear to all the gods and goddesses of heaven and earth.”

Tengo studied Ushikawa’s face again. This man really might not know anything about Kyoko Yasuda. The expression of bewilderment on his face certainly looked like the real thing. But even if he knew nothing, it didn’t necessarily mean that they hadn’t done anything to her. It could just be that they hadn’t told him about it.

“It’s none of my business, Mr. Kawana, but having an affair with a married woman is a dangerous business. You’re a young, healthy single male. You should be able to have any number of single young girls without doing such dangerous things.” Having said this, Ushikawa deftly licked the crumbs from the corner of his mouth.

Tengo watched Ushikawa in silence.

Ushikawa said, “Of course, male-female relationships don’t work by logic and reason. Even monogamous marriage has its own set of contradictions. I’m telling you for your own good, though, if she has left you, it might be best to let the situation stay as it is. What I’m trying to say is this: there are things in this world that are better left as unknowns. The business about your mother, for example. Learning the truth would just hurt you. And once you do learn the truth, you end up having to take on a certain responsibility for it.”

Tengo scowled, holding his breath for a few seconds. “You know something about my mother?”

Ushikawa flicked his tongue over his lips. “Yes, to some extent, I do. Our researcher investigated that area very thoroughly. So if you ever want to learn about that, I can hand you all the materials on your mother as is. As I understand it, you grew up knowing absolutely nothing about her. However, there might be some not-very-pleasant information included in the file.”

“Please leave now, Mr. Ushikawa,” Tengo said, pushing his chair back and standing up. “I have no desire to talk to you any more. And please don’t ever show your face to me again. Whatever ‘harm’ might be coming to me, it would be better than having to deal with you. I don’t want that ‘grant’ of yours or your guarantees of ‘safety.’ There’s only one thing I want, and that is never to see you again.”

Ushikawa showed no discernible reaction to this. Perhaps he had had worse things said to him any number of times. There was even a hint of a smile gleaming deep in his eyes.

“That’s fine,” Ushikawa said. “I’m glad I got your answer at least. A definite no. You have declined our offer. Clear and easy to understand. I will convey it to my superiors in that form. I am just a lowly errand boy. Now, simply because your answer is no, that doesn’t mean that harm will come to you right away. It just might, is all I am saying. It might never happen. That’s what I am hoping for. No, really, with all my heart. Because I like you, Mr. Kawana. I’m sure that’s the last thing you want – for me to like you – but that’s just the way it is. This nonsensical guy who shows up with nonsensical deals, terrible to look at. I’ve never had the problem of being liked too much. But the simple fact is that I have good feelings toward you, Mr. Kawana, as unwelcome as you may find them. And I hope that you go on to achieve great success in life.”

Having said this, Ushikawa proceeded to stare at his own fingers. They were short, stubby fingers. He turned them over a few times. Then he stood up.

“Well, then, I’ll be excusing myself. Now that you mention it, this will probably be the last time you see me. Yes, I will do my best to honor your wishes. May things go well for you in the future. Good-bye.”

Ushikawa picked up the worn-out leather case he had set on the chair and disappeared into the cafeteria’s crowd. As he walked, the mass of young male and female students parted naturally to make way for him, like medieval village children trying to avoid a fearsome slave trader.

Tengo dialed his own apartment from the public phone in the school lobby. He was planning to hang up after three rings, but Fuka-Eri picked up at the second ring.

“I was going to let it ring three times and then call again. We had an arrangement,” Tengo said wearily.

“I forgot,” Fuka-Eri said with apparent unconcern. “I’m sure I asked you not to forget.”

“Want to do it again,” Fuka-Eri asked.

“No, never mind, we’re talking. Has anything unusual happened since I left?”

“No calls. Nobody came.”

“Good. I’m through working. I’ll be coming back now.”

“A big crow came and cawed outside the window,” Fuka-Eri said. “He comes every evening. Nothing to worry about. It’s like a social

call. Anyhow, I should be back by seven.” “Better hurry.”

“Why’s that?” Tengo asked. “The Little People are stirring.”

“The Little People are stirring,” Tengo repeated her words. “In my apartment?”

“No. Somewhere else.” “Somewhere else.” “Way far away.”

“But you can hear them.” “I can hear them.”

“Does it mean something?” Tengo asked. “That something extra ordinary is starting.”

It took Tengo a moment to realize she meant “extraordinary.” “And what kind of extraordinary something would that be?”

“I can’t tell that much.”

“The Little People are going to make this extraordinary thing happen?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. He could feel it through the phone. It meant she didn’t know.

“Better come back before the thunder starts,” she said. “Thunder?”

“If the train stops running, we’ll be apart.”

Tengo turned and looked out the window. It was a calm late-summer evening without a cloud in the sky. “It doesn’t look like thunder.”

“You can’t tell from looks.”

“I’ll hurry,” Tengo said.

“Better hurry,” Fuka-Eri said, and hung up.

Tengo stepped outside, looked up once again at the clear evening sky, and walked briskly toward Yoyogi Station, Ushikawa’s words resounding in his head like a tape on auto-repeat.

What I’m trying to say is this: there are things in this world that are better left as unknowns. The business about your mother, for example. Learning the truth would just hurt you. And once you do learn the truth, you end up having to take on a certain responsibility for it.

And somewhere the Little People are stirring. They apparently have something to do with an extraordinary event that is coming our way. For now, the sky is beautiful and clear, but you can’t tell by how things look. Maybe the thunder will roar, the rain will fall, and the trains will stop. Got to hurry back to the apartment. Fuka-Eri’s voice was strangely compelling.

“We have to join forces,” she had said.

Those long arms were reaching out from somewhere. We have to join forces. Because we’ll be the world’s strongest male/female duo.

The Beat Goes On.

Chapter 11. AOMAME: Balance Itself is the Good

AOMAME SPREAD HER blue foam yoga mat on the carpeted bedroom floor. Then she told the man to take off his top. He got down from the bed and pulled off his shirt. He looked even bigger without a shirt on. He was deep-chested, with bulging muscles, and had no drooping excess flesh. To all appearances, this was a very healthy body.

Following Aomame’s directions, he lay facedown on the mat.

Aomame touched his wrist and took his pulse. It was strong and steady. “Are you doing some kind of regular exercise?” Aomame asked. “Not really,” he said. “Just breathing.”

“Just breathing?”

“It’s a little different from ordinary breathing,” the man said.

“Like you were doing before in the dark, I suppose. Deep, repetitive breathing with all the muscles of your body.”

Facedown, he gave a little nod.

Aomame could not quite grasp it. While his intense style of breathing certainly must take a good deal of physical strength, was it possible for mere breathing to maintain such a tight, powerful body?

“What I’m about to do now involves a good deal of pain,” Aomame said in a voice without inflection. “It has to hurt for it to do any good. On the other hand, I can adjust the amount of pain. So if it hurts, don’t just bear it – speak up.”

The man paused for a moment before saying, “If there is a pain I’ve never tasted, I’d like to try it.” This sounded mildly sarcastic to her.

“Pain is not fun for anybody.”

“But a painful technique is more effective, is that it? I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”

Aomame allowed herself a momentary facial expression in the pale darkness. Then she said, “I understand. Let’s both see how it goes.”

As always, Aomame started with the stretching of the shoulder blades. The first thing she noticed when she touched his flesh was its suppleness. This was fine, healthy flesh, fundamentally different in composition from the tired, stiff flesh of the urbanites with whom she dealt at the gym. At the same time, however, she had a strong sense that its natural “flow” was being blocked by something, the way a river’s flow can be blocked temporarily by floating timber or other debris.

Leaning her weight into her elbow, Aomame squeezed the man’s shoulder upward – slowly at first, but then with a serious application of strength. She knew he was feeling pain – intense pain that would make any ordinary human being cry out. But he bore it in silence. His breathing remained calm, nor was there any hint of a frown on his face. He tolerates pain well, she thought. She decided to see how much he could stand. She held nothing back from her next push, until the shoulder blade joint gave out with a dull snap and she could tell that the track had been switched. The man’s breathing paused momentarily but immediately resumed its quiet, steady pace.

“Your shoulder blade was tremendously obstructed,” Aomame explained, “but that took care of it. Now the flow is back to normal.”

She jammed her fingers in under the shoulder blade up to the second joint. The muscles here were meant to be flexible, and once the obstruction was removed they would quickly return to normal.

“That feels much better,” the man murmured. “It must have hurt quite a bit.”

“Not more than I could stand.”

“I myself have a rather high tolerance for pain, but if someone had done the same thing to me, I’m pretty sure I would have cried out.”

“In most cases, one pain is alleviated or canceled out by another pain. The senses are, ultimately, relative.”

Aomame placed her hand on his left shoulder blade, felt for the muscles with her fingertips, and determined that they were in about the same condition that the right ones had been. Let’s see just how relative this can be. “I’ll do the left side now. It should hurt about as much as the right side did.”

“Do what you need to. Don’t worry about me.” “Meaning, I shouldn’t hold back at all?”

“No need for that.”

Following the same procedure, Aomame corrected the joints and the muscles around the left shoulder blade. As instructed, she did not hold back. Once she had decided she would not hold anything back, Aomame took the shortest possible route without hesitation. The man reacted even more calmly than he had with the right side. He accepted the pain with complete equanimity, making only one brief swallowing sound in his throat. All right, let’s see how much he can stand, Aomame thought.

She started working on his muscles one after another in order, loosening them up, following her mental checklist. All she had to do was mechanically follow the usual route, like a capable and fearless night watchman making the rounds of his building with a flashlight.

All of his muscles were more or less “blocked,” like a region that has suffered a horrible disaster, its waterways obstructed, their embankments collapsed. Any ordinary human being in such a condition would probably not be able to stand up – or even breathe normally. This man was supported by his sturdy flesh and strong will. However despicable his behavior might have been, Aomame could not deny him her professional admiration for his ability to bear such intense pain in silence.

She worked on one muscle after another, forcing it to move, bending and stretching it to the limit, and each time the joint would release a dull pop. She was fully aware that this was something close to torture. She had performed this muscle stretching on many athletes, tough men used to living with physical pain, but even the toughest of them at some point couldn’t stop themselves from letting out a cry – or something close to a cry. Some even wet themselves. But this man never even groaned. He was

very impressive. Still, it was possible to guess the pain he was feeling from the sweat oozing on the back of his neck. Aomame herself was starting to develop a film of sweat on her body.

It took close to thirty minutes for her to loosen up the muscles on the back of his body. When this was finished, she took a moment’s break to wipe the sweat from her forehead.

This is very odd, Aomame thought. I came here to kill this man. In my bag is the superfine ice pick I made. If I hold its point at the right spot on the back of his neck and punch the handle, it will be all over. He would never know what happened to him as his life came to an instantaneous end and he moved on to another world. That way, in effect, his body would be released from all pain. Instead, I’m spending all my energy to ease the pain that he is feeling in the real world.

I am probably doing it because this is the work that I have been given to do, Aomame thought. Whenever I have work before me, I have to pour all my strength into getting it done. That is just the way I am. If I am given the job of curing problem muscles, then I will pour all my strength into that. If I have to kill a person and have a proper reason for doing so, I will do that with all my strength.

Obviously, though, I can’t do both at the same time. The two jobs have conflicting purposes and call for incompatible methods. I can only do one at a time. At the moment I am trying to bring this man’s muscles back to as normal a state as possible. I am concentrating my mind on that task and mobilizing all the strength I can muster up. I can think about the other task after this one is finished.

At the same time, Aomame was unable to suppress her curiosity. The man’s far-from-ordinary illness; the fine, healthy muscles so terribly obstructed by it; the strong will and powerful flesh that enabled him to bear the intense pain he called his “payment for heavenly grace”: all aroused her curiosity. She wanted to see what she could do for this man, what kind of response his flesh would show. It was a matter of both professional curiosity and personal curiosity. Also, if I killed him now, I would have to leave right away. If the job ends too quickly, the two men in the next room might find it suspicious. I told them that it would take an hour at the very least.

“I’m halfway done. Now I’ll do the second half. Could you please turn over onto your back?”

The man rolled over slowly like some large aquatic animal that has been cast up on the shore.

“The pain is definitely lessening,” the man said after releasing a long breath. “None of the treatments I have tried thus far have done as much.”

“I am only treating the symptoms, however, not solving the basic problem. Until you identify the cause, the same thing will probably keep happening.”

“I know that. I considered using morphine, but I would rather not use drugs if possible. Long-term use of drugs destroys the function of the brain.”

“I will go on with the rest of the treatment now,” Aomame said. “I gather you are all right with my not holding back.”

“It goes without saying.”

Aomame emptied her mind and worked on the man’s muscles with total concentration. The structure of each muscle in the human body was engraved in her professional memory – its function, the bones to which it was attached, its unique characteristics, its sensitivities. She inspected, shook, and effectively worked on each muscle and joint in order, the way zealous inquisitors used to test every point of pain in their victims’ bodies.

Thirty minutes later, they were bathed in sweat, panting like lovers who have just had miraculously deep sex. The man said nothing for a time, and Aomame was at a loss for words.

Finally, the man spoke: “I don’t want to exaggerate, but I feel as if every part of my body has been replaced.”

Aomame said, “You might experience something of a backlash tonight. During the night your muscles might tighten up tremendously and let out a scream, but don’t worry, they will be back to normal tomorrow morning.”

If you have a tomorrow morning, Aomame thought.

Sitting cross-legged on the yoga mat, the man took several deep breaths, as though testing the condition of his body. Then he said, “You really do seem to have a special talent.”

Aomame toweled the sweat from her face as she said, “What I do is strictly practical. I studied the structure and function of the muscles in college and have expanded my knowledge through actual practice. I’ve put together my own system by making tiny adjustments to my technique, just doing things that are obvious and reasonable. ‘Truth’ here is for the most part observable and provable. It also involves a good deal of pain, of course.”

The man opened his eyes and looked at Aomame as though intrigued. “So that is what you believe.”

“What do you mean?” Aomame asked.

“That truth is strictly something observable and provable.”

Aomame pursed her lips slightly. “I’m not saying it is true for all truths, just that it happens to be the case in my professional field. Of course, if it were true in all fields, things in general would be a lot easier to grasp.”

“Not at all,” the man said. “Why is that?”

“Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.”

The man turned his neck several times before continuing.

“If a certain belief – call it ‘Belief A’ – makes the life of that man or this woman appear to be something of deep meaning, then for them Belief A is the truth. If Belief B makes their lives appear to be powerless and puny, then Belief B turns out to be a falsehood. The distinction is quite clear. If someone insists that Belief B is the truth, people will probably hate him, ignore him, or, in some cases, attack him. It means nothing to them that Belief B might be logical or provable. Most people barely manage to preserve their sanity by denying and rejecting images of themselves as powerless and puny.”

“But people’s flesh – all flesh, with only minor differences – is a powerless and puny thing. This is self-evident, don’t you think?”

“I do,” the man said. “All flesh, with only minor differences, is a powerless and puny thing doomed soon to disintegrate and disappear. That is an unmistakable truth. But what, then, of a person’s spirit?”

“I try my best not to think about the spirit.”

“And why is that?”

“Because there is no particular need to think about it.”

“Why is there no particular need to think about the spirit? Setting aside the question of whether it has any practical value to do so, thinking about one’s own spirit is one of the most indispensable of all human tasks, is it not?”

“I have love,” Aomame declared.

Oh, no, what am I doing? she thought. Talking about love to this man I’m about to kill!

As a breeze sends ripples over the surface of a quiet pond, a faint smile spread across the man’s face, conveying a natural and even friendly emotion.

“Do you think that love is all a person needs?” he asked. “I do.”

“Now, this ‘love’ of yours – does it have a particular individual as its object?”

“It does,” Aomame said. “It is directed toward a specific man.” “Powerless, puny flesh and an absolute love free of shadows … ,” he

murmured. Then, after a brief pause, he added, “You don’t seem to have any need for religion.”

“Maybe I don’t have any need.”

“Because your attitude is itself the very essence of religion, as it

were.”

“You said before that religion offers not so much truth as beautiful

hypotheses. Where does that leave the religion that you head?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t consider what I do to be a religious activity,” the man said. “What I am doing is listening to the voices and transmitting them to people. I am the only one who can hear the voices. That I can hear them is an unmistakable truth, but I can’t prove that their messages are the truth. All I can do is to embody their accompanying traces of heavenly grace.”

Lightly biting her lip, Aomame set down her towel. She wanted to ask what kinds of grace he was talking about, but she stopped herself. This could go on forever. She still had an important task she had to complete.

“Can you lie facedown again? I’m going to work on loosening up your neck muscles,” Aomame said.

The man stretched out his huge frame again on the yoga mat and presented the back of his thick neck to Aomame.

“In any case, you have a magic touch,” he said, using the English expression.

“Magic touch?”

“Fingers that give off extraordinary power. An acute sense for locating those special points on the body. A special capacity that is granted to very few individuals. This is not something you can learn through study and practice. I have something – a very different kind of something – that came to me in the same way. But as with all forms of heavenly grace, people have to pay a price for the gifts they are given.”

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Aomame said. “I simply developed my techniques through study and a lot of practice. They were not ‘granted’ to me by anybody.”

“I’m not going to get involved in a debate with you. Just remember this: the gods give, and the gods take away. Even if you are not aware of having been granted what you possess, the gods remember what they gave you. They don’t forget a thing. You should use the abilities you have been granted with the utmost care.”

Aomame looked at her ten fingers. Then she placed them on the back of the man’s neck, concentrating all her awareness into her fingertips. The gods give, and the gods take away.

“I’ll be through soon. This is the finishing touch,” she announced drily to the man’s back.

She seemed to hear thunder in the distance. She raised her face and looked out the window. There was nothing to see but the dark sky. Again the sound came, reverberating hollowly in the quiet room.

“It is going to rain any time now,” the man declared in a voice without feeling.

Hands on the back of the man’s thick neck, Aomame searched for the special spot. This required unusual powers of concentration. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and listened for the flow of his blood there. Her fingertips strained to read detailed information from the elasticity of his skin and the conduction of his body heat. There was only one special spot, and it was exceptionally small. On some people, it was easy to find, but

much more difficult on others. This man they called “Leader” was clearly the latter type. This was like trying to find a single coin in a pitch-dark room entirely by feel, while taking care not to make any sound. At last, however, she found it. She placed her fingertip on it and engraved the feel and its precise position into her mind as though marking a map, a special ability that had been imparted to her.

“Please stay in that exact position,” Aomame said to the man as he lay there prone. She reached out for the gym bag lying next to them and from it took out the hard case holding the little ice pick.

“One spot is left on the back of your neck where the flow is still blocked,” Aomame said calmly, “and I can’t seem to resolve it with only the strength of my fingers. If I can remove the blockage in this one place, it should give you great relief from your pain. I want to place one simple acupuncture needle there. Don’t worry, I’ve done this any number of times. Do you mind?”

The man released a deep breath. “I am leaving it entirely up to you. I will accept anything from you that will erase the pain I am feeling.”

She took the ice pick from the case and slipped the cork from its tip. The point had its usual deadly sharpness. She held the ice pick in her left hand and used the index finger of her right hand to locate the point she had found earlier. This was the spot, without the slightest doubt. She placed the point against the spot and took a deep breath. Now all she needed to do was bring her right hand down on the handle like a hammer and drive the needle’s exceedingly fine point deep into the spot. Then it would all be over.

But something held her back. For some reason, she was unable to bring down the fist she was holding aloft. With this, it will be all over, Aomame thought. With one stroke, I can send this man to the “other side.” Then I leave the room looking cool, change my face and name, and take on a new personality. I can do it. Without fear, without pangs of conscience. This man has repeatedly committed loathsome acts that deserve death, there can be no doubt. But, for some reason, she could not bring herself to do it. What held her right hand back was an incoherent yet persistent doubt. This is all happening too easily, her instincts were warning her.

Reason had nothing to do with it. She simply knew: something was wrong. Something was not natural. All her powers and abilities were

clashing inside her, their disparate elements engaged in a fierce struggle. Her face performed deep contortions in the darkness.

“What is it?” the man called out. “I’m waiting. I’m waiting for you to finish once and for all.”

When she heard this, Aomame finally realized what was holding her back. This man knows. He knows what I am about to do to him.

“There is no need for you to hesitate,” the man said calmly. “It’s all right. What you want is also what I want.”

The thunder continued to rumble, but there was no lightning to be seen, just a roar like distant cannons. The battlefield was still far off. The man continued.

“If there were ever a perfect treatment, that is it. You did a careful job of stretching out my muscles. I have only the purest respect for your skill. But as you pointed out yourself, it is, ultimately, nothing but a symptomatic treatment. My pain has advanced to the point where it can only be resolved by severing my life at the roots, by going down to the basement and cutting the main switch. You are about to do that for me.”

Aomame maintained her pose, the left hand holding the needle against the special spot on the back of his neck, the right hand held aloft. She could move neither forward nor back.

“If you want to put a stop to what you are about to do, there are any number of ways you can do that. It’s simple,” he said. “Try bringing your right hand down.”

As directed, Aomame tried to lower her right hand. But it would not budge. It was frozen in midair, like the hand of a stone statue.

“I have the power to do that – not that it was something I ever hoped to obtain. All right, you can move your right hand now. Now you are in complete control of my life.”

Aomame became aware that she could now move her right hand freely. She clenched her fist and opened it. It felt entirely normal. He must have employed something like hypnotism. Whatever it was, it was very powerful.

“They have granted me these special powers, but in return they have impressed certain demands upon me. Their desires have become my desires – implacable desires that I have been unable to defy.”

“They?” Aomame asked. “Do you mean the Little People?”

“So you know about them. Good. That will save time explaining.”

are.”

“All I know is that name. I don’t know who or what the Little People

“Probably no one knows for sure who the Little People are,” the man

said. “All that people are able to learn is that they exist. Have you read Frazer’s The Golden Bough?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“It is a very interesting book that has much to teach us. In certain periods of history in several parts of the world – in ancient times, of course – the king was often killed at the end of his reign, usually after a fixed period of ten to twelve years. When the term ended, the people would gather together and slaughter him. This was deemed necessary for the community, and the kings themselves willingly accepted it. The killing had to be cruel and bloody, and it was considered a great honor bestowed upon the one who was king. Now, why did the king have to be killed? It was because in those days the king was the one who listened to the voices, as the representative of the people. Such a person would take it upon himself to become the circuit connecting ‘us’ with ‘them.’ And slaughtering the one who listened to the voices was the indispensable task of the community in order to maintain a balance between the minds of those who lived on the earth and the power manifested by the Little People. In the ancient world, ‘to rule’ was synonymous with ‘listening to the voices of the gods.’ Such a system was at some point abandoned, of course. Kings were no longer killed, and kingship became secular and hereditary. In this way, people stopped hearing the voices.”

Unconsciously opening and closing her elevated right hand, Aomame listened to what the man was saying.

“They have been called by many different names, but in most cases have not been called anything at all. They were simply there. The expression ‘Little People’ is just an expedient. My daughter called them that when she was very young and brought them with her.”

“Then you became a king.”

The man drew a strong breath in through his nose and held it in his lungs for a time before releasing it slowly. “I am no king. I became one who listens to the voices.”

“And now you are seeking to be slaughtered.”

“No, it need not be a slaughter. This is 1984, and we are in the middle of the big city. There is no need for a brutal, bloody killing. All you

have to do is take my life. It can be neat and simple.”

Aomame shook her head and relaxed the muscles of her body. The point of the needle was still pressed against the spot on the back of his neck, but she found it impossible to summon the will to kill this man.

Aomame said, “You have raped many young girls – girls barely ten years old, some perhaps even younger.”

“That is true,” the man said. “There are aspects to what I did, I must admit, that can be viewed that way in the light of commonly held concepts. In the eyes of earthly law, I am a criminal. I did have physical relations with girls who had still not reached maturity – even if it was something that I myself did not seek .”

All that Aomame could do was inhale and exhale deeply. She had no idea how to go about quieting the intense emotional currents streaming through her body. Her face was greatly distorted, and her right and left hands seemed to be longing for entirely different things.

“I would like you to take my life,” the man said. “It makes no sense for me to go on living in this world. I should be obliterated in order to maintain the world’s balance.”

“What would happen after I killed you?”

“The Little People would lose one who listens to their voices. I still have no successor.”

“How is it possible to believe this?” Aomame practically spit the words out between her taut lips. “You may just be a sexual pervert trying to justify your despicable actions with convenient rationalizations. There never were any ‘Little People,’ no voices of the gods, no heavenly grace. You may be just another phony claiming to be a prophet or religious leader.”

“See the clock over there?” the man said without lifting his head. “On the right-hand chest of drawers.”

Aomame looked to the right. There was a rounded, waist-high chest, on top of which sat a clock embedded in a marble frame – obviously, a heavy object.

“Keep your eyes on it. Don’t look away.”

As instructed, Aomame kept her neck turned in that direction and fixed her eyes on the clock. Beneath her fingers, she could feel every muscle in the man’s body turning to stone and filling with an incredibly intense power. As if in response to that power, the marble clock rose slowly

from the surface of the chest. She watched it begin to tremble, as if hesitating, come to rest at a point some three inches in the air, and stay there for a full ten seconds. Then the man’s muscles lost their strength, and the clock dropped back to the chest with a dull thud, as if it had just remembered the earth’s gravity.

The man took a long time to release a deep, exhausted-sounding

breath.

“Even a little thing like that takes a huge amount of energy,” he said

once he had expelled every last breath in his body. “Enough to shorten my life. But I hope you see it now: at least I am no phony.”

Aomame did not answer him. The man took time bringing his strength back with a series of deep breaths. The clock went on silently displaying the time as though nothing had happened. Only its position on top of the chest had shifted slightly on a diagonal. Aomame stared hard at the clock while the second hand made a circuit.

“You do have special powers,” Aomame said drily. “As you have now seen.”

“There is an episode involving the devil and Christ in The Brothers Karamazov, I recall. The Christ is undergoing harsh austerities in the wilderness when the devil challenges him to perform a miracle – to change a stone into bread. But the Christ ignores him. Miracles are the devil’s temptation.”

“Yes, I know that. I, too, have read The Brothers Karamazov. And what you say is true: this kind of showing off doesn’t solve a thing. But I had to convince you in the limited amount of time we have, so I went ahead and performed for you.”

Aomame remained silent.

“In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil,” the man said. “Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good. This is what I mean when I say that I must die in order to keep things in balance.”

“I don’t feel any need to kill you at this point,” Aomame declared. “As you probably know, that is what I came here to do. I can’t permit a person like you to exist. I was determined to obliterate you from this world. But I no longer feel that determination. You are suffering terribly, I can tell. You deserve to die slowly, going to pieces bit by bit, in terrible pain. I can’t find it in me to grant you an easy death.”

Still lying facedown, the man responded with a small nod. “If you were to kill me, my people would be sure to track you down. They are absolute fanatics, and they are powerful and persistent. With me gone, the religion would lose its centripetal force. But once it is formed, a system takes on a life of its own.”

Aomame listened to him speak as he lay there facedown. “What I did to your friend was very bad.”

“My friend?”

“Your girlfriend with the handcuffs. Now, what was her name again

…?”

A sudden calm filled Aomame. The inner conflict was gone. A

heavy silence hung over her now. “Ayumi Nakano,” Aomame said. “Poor girl.”

“Did you do that?” Aomame asked coldly. “Are you the one who killed Ayumi?”

“No, not at all. I didn’t kill her.”

“But for some reason you know – that someone killed her.”

“Our researcher found out,” the man said. “We don’t know who killed her. All we know is that your friend, the policewoman, was strangled to death in a hotel.”

Aomame’s right hand became tightly clenched again. “But you said, ‘What I did to your friend was very bad.’”

“That I was unable to prevent it. Whoever may have killed her, the fact is that they always go after your weakest point – the way wolves chase down the weakest sheep in the herd.”

“You’re saying that Ayumi was a weak point of mine?” The man did not answer.

Aomame closed her eyes. “But why did they have to kill her? She was such a good person! She would never hurt anyone. Why? Because I am involved in this? If so, wouldn’t it have been enough just to destroy me?”

The man said, “They can’t destroy you.”

“Why not?” Aomame asked. “Why can’t they destroy me?” “Because you have long since become a special being.” “Special being?” Aomame asked. “In what way ‘special’?” “You will discover that eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“When the time comes.”

Aomame screwed up her face again. “I can’t understand what you are saying.”

“You will at some point.”

Aomame shook her head. “In any case, they can’t attack me for now. And so they aimed at a weak point near me. In order to give me a warning. To keep me from taking your life.”

The man remained silent. It was a silence of affirmation.

“It’s too terrible,” Aomame said. She shook her head. “What real difference could it possibly have made for them to murder her?”

“No, they are not murderers. They never destroy anyone with their own hands. What killed your friend, surely, was something she had inside of her. The same kind of tragedy would have happened sooner or later. Her life was filled with risk. All they did was to provide the stimulus. Like changing the setting on a timer.”

Setting on a timer?

“She was no electric oven! She was a living human being! So what if her life was full of risk? She was a dear friend of mine. You people took that from me like nothing at all. Meaninglessly. Callously.”

“Your anger is entirely justified,” the man said. “You should direct it at me.”

Aomame shook her head. “Even if I take your life here, that won’t bring Ayumi back.”

“No, but it would provide some degree of retaliation against the Little People. You could have your revenge, as it were. They don’t want me to die yet. If I die now, it will open up a vacuum – at least a temporary vacuum, until a successor comes into being. It would be a strike against them. At the same time, it would be a benefit to you.”

“Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge,” Aomame said.

“Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire’s budget deficits. It has no moral significance.”

“Never mind about morals. You are going to die in agony while some strange thing eats you up whether I raise a hand against you or not. I have no reason to sympathize with you for that. Even if the world were to lose all morals and go to pieces, it wouldn’t be my fault.”

The man took another deep breath. “All right, I see what you are saying. How about this, then? Let’s make a deal. If you will take my life, I will spare the life of Tengo Kawana. I still have that much power left.”

“Tengo,” Aomame said. The strength went out of her body. “So you know about that, too.”

“I know everything about you. Or perhaps I should say almost

everything.”

“But you can’t possibly tell that much. Tengo’s name has never taken a step outside my heart.”

“Please, Miss Aomame,” the man said. Then he released a brief sigh. “There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart. And it just so happens – should I say? – that Tengo Kawana has become a figure of no little significance to us at the moment.”

Aomame was at a loss for words.

The man said, “But then again, chance has nothing to do with it. Your two fates did not cross through mere happenstance. The two of you set foot in this world because you were meant to enter it. And now that you have entered it, like it or not, each of you will be assigned your proper role here.”

up!

“Set foot in this world?” “Yes, in this year of 1Q84.”

“1Q84?” Aomame said, her face greatly distorting. I made that word

“True, it is a word you made up,” the man said, as if reading her

mind. “I am just borrowing it from you.”

Aomame formed the word 1Q84 in her mouth.

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart,” Leader repeated softly.

Chapter 12. TENGO: More than I Could Count on My Fingers

TENGO MANAGED TO return to his apartment before the rains came. He hurried on foot from the station to his building. There was not a cloud to be seen in the evening sky, no sign that rain was on its way, no suggestion of coming thunder. None of the people around him was carrying an umbrella. It was the kind of pleasant late-summer evening that called for a draft beer at a baseball game. But he had recently entered a new frame of mind, and that was to assume that anything Fuka-Eri said might be true. Better to believe than not to believe, Tengo thought, basing it not so much on logic as experience.

He peeked into his mailbox to find a business envelope with no return address. He tore it open on the spot. Inside was a notice that 1,627,534 yen had been electronically transferred into his bank account. The payer was listed as “Office ERI,” which was almost certainly Komatsu’s fabricated company. Or possibly Professor Ebisuno had made the transfer. Komatsu had informed Tengo that he would be paid a part of the Air Chrysalis royalties as an honorarium, and perhaps this was that

“part.” No doubt the payment had been listed as an “assistance fee” or “research fee.” After checking the figure again, Tengo returned the notice to the envelope and stuffed it into his pocket.

1.6 million yen was a lot of money to Tengo (in fact, he had never received such a lump sum in his life), but he felt neither happy nor surprised. Money was not a major problem for him at this point in time. He had his regular income, which enabled him to get by without undue strain, and for the moment, at least, he had no anxiety about his future. In spite of that, everyone wanted to give him large chunks of money. It was a strange world.

Where the rewriting of Air Chrysalis was concerned, however, Tengo had a sneaking suspicion that 1.6 million yen was not sufficient recompense for his having been drawn into this much trouble. If, on the other hand, someone were to ask him straight out, “All right, then, how much would be a fair amount?,” he would have been hard-pressed to come up with a figure. First of all, he did not know if there was such a thing as a fair price for trouble. There must surely be many different kinds of trouble in the world for which there was no way to attach a price or for which there was no one willing to pay. Air Chrysalis was still selling well, apparently, which meant that there might be further payments into his account, but the more the deposits increased, the more problems they would give rise to. Each increase in compensation only served to increase the extent of Tengo’s involvement with Air Chrysalis as an established fact.

He thought about sending the money back to Komatsu first thing tomorrow morning. That would enable him to evade some sort of responsibility. It might also provide some psychological relief. In any case it would establish the fact that he had rejected compensation. Not that it would expunge his moral responsibility or justify the actions he had taken. All it would give him was “possible extenuating circumstances,” though it might end up doing just the opposite by making his actions appear all the more suspicious, as though he had returned the money because he felt guilty about it.

As he went on agonizing about the money, his head started to hurt, so he decided to stop. He could think about it again later, when he had time to spare. Money was not a living thing. It wouldn’t run off anywhere if he left it alone. Probably.

The problem I have to deal with now is how to give my life a new start, Tengo thought as he climbed the three flights of stairs to his apartment. Having gone to see his father at the southern tip of the Boso Peninsula, he had become generally convinced that the man was not his real father. He felt he had also succeeded in reaching a turning point in his life. It might be the perfect opportunity. Now might be a good time to make a break with all his troubles and start his life over again: a new job, a new place, new relationships. Though not yet entirely confident, he had a kind of presentiment that he might be able to lead a somewhat more coherent life than he had so far.

Before he could do that, however, there were things he had to take care of. He couldn’t simply shrug off Fuka-Eri and Komatsu and Professor Ebisuno and disappear somewhere. Of course, he had no obligations toward them, no ethical responsibilities. As Ushikawa had said, where this current matter was concerned, Tengo was the one being put upon by them. Still, though he could claim to have been all but dragged into the situation and to have been ignorant of its underlying plot, the fact was that he had still been involved. He couldn’t simply announce that he would have nothing more to do with it and that the others could do as they pleased. Wherever he might go from here on out, he wanted first to bring things to some sort of conclusion and clean up his personal affairs. Otherwise, his fresh new life might be tainted from the outset.

“Tainted” reminded Tengo of Ushikawa. Ushikawa, huh? Tengo thought with a sigh. Ushikawa had his hands on some information regarding Tengo’s mother, information that he said he could share with Tengo.

If you ever want to learn about that, I can hand you all the materials on your mother as is. However, there might be some not-very- pleasant information included in the file.

Tengo had not even bothered to reply to this. He had no wish to hear news about his mother from Ushikawa’s mouth. Any kind of information would be sullied the moment it emerged from that orifice. No, Tengo had no desire to hear such information from anyone’s mouth. If he was going to be given news about his mother, it had to come not in bits and pieces but as a comprehensive “revelation.” It had to be, as it were, a vivid cosmic landscape, the full vast expanse of which could be seen in a split second.

Tengo did not know, of course, if he would be granted such a dramatic revelation sometime in the future. It might never come. But what

he needed was something so enormous, on such an overwhelming scale, that it could rival and even surpass the striking images of the “waking dream” that had disoriented and jolted and tormented him over these many years. He needed something that would totally purge him of this image. Fragmentary information would do him no good at all.

These were the thoughts that ran through Tengo’s mind as he climbed three flights of stairs.

Tengo stood in front of his apartment door, pulled his key from his pocket, inserted the key in the lock, and turned it. Then, before opening the door, he knocked three times, paused, and knocked twice more. Finally, he eased the door open.

Fuka-Eri was sitting at the table, drinking tomato juice from a tall glass. She was dressed in the same clothes she had been wearing when she arrived – a striped men’s shirt and slim blue jeans. But the impression she made on Tengo was very different from the one she had given him that morning. It took Tengo a while to realize why: she had her hair tied up, revealing her ears and the back of her neck. Those small, pink ears of hers looked as though they had been daubed with powder using a soft brush and had just been made a short time ago for purely aesthetic reasons, not for the practical purpose of hearing sounds. Or at least they looked that way to Tengo. The slim, well-shaped neck below the ears had a lustrous glow, like vegetables raised in abundant sunshine, immaculate and well suited to morning dew and ladybugs. This was the first time he had seen her with her hair up, and it was a miraculously intimate and beautiful sight.

Tengo had closed the door by reaching around behind himself, but he went on standing there in the entrance. Her bared ears and neck disoriented him as much as another woman’s total nakedness. Like an explorer who has discovered the secret spring at the source of the Nile, Tengo stared at Fuka- Eri with narrowed eyes, speechless, hand still clutching the doorknob.

“I took a shower,” she said to Tengo as he stood there transfixed. She spoke in grave tones, as though she had just recalled a major event. “I used your shampoo and rinse.”

Tengo nodded. Then, exhaling, he finally wrenched his hand from the doorknob and locked the door. Shampoo and rinse? He stepped forward, away from the door.

“Did the phone ring after I called?” Tengo asked.

“Not at all,” Fuka-Eri said. She gave her head a little shake.

Tengo went to the window, parted the curtains slightly, and looked outside. The view from the third floor had nothing unusual about it – no suspicious people lurking there or suspicious cars parked out front, just the usual drab expanse of this drab residential neighborhood. The misshapen trees lining the street wore a layer of gray dust. The pedestrian guardrail was full of dents. Rusty bicycles lay abandoned by the side of the road. A wall bore the police slogan “Driving Drunk: A One-Way Street to a Ruined Life.” (Did the police have slogan-writing specialists in their ranks?) A nasty-looking old man was walking a stupid-looking mutt. A stupid-looking woman drove by in an ugly subcompact. Nasty-looking wires stretched from one ugly utility pole to another. The scene outside the window suggested that the world had settled in a place somewhere midway between “being miserable” and “lacking in joy,” and consisted of an infinite agglomeration of variously shaped microcosms.

On the other hand, there also existed in the world such unexceptionably beautiful views as Fuka-Eri’s ears and neck. In which should he place the greater faith? It was not easy for him to decide. Like a big, confused dog, Tengo made a soft growling noise in his throat, closed the curtains, and returned to his own little world.

“Does Professor Ebisuno know that you’re here?” Tengo asked. Fuka-Eri shook her head. The professor did not know.

“Don’t you plan to tell him?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “I can’t contact him.” “Because it would be dangerous to contact him?”

“The phone may be tapped. Mail might not get through.” “I’m the only one who knows you’re here?”

Fuka-Eri nodded.

“Did you bring a change of clothing and stuff?”

“A little,” Fuka-Eri said, glancing at her canvas shoulder bag.

Certainly “a little” was all it could hold. “I don’t mind,” the girl said.

“If you don’t mind, of course I don’t mind,” Tengo said.

Tengo went into the kitchen, put the kettle on to boil, and spooned some tea leaves into the teapot.

“Does your lady friend come here,” Fuka-Eri asked.

“Not anymore,” Tengo gave her a short answer. Fuka-Eri stared at Tengo in silence.

“For now,” Tengo added.

“Is it my fault,” Fuka-Eri asked.

Tengo shook his head. “I don’t know whose fault it is. But I don’t think it’s yours. It’s probably my fault. And maybe hers to some extent.”

“But anyhow, she won’t come here anymore.”

“Right, she won’t come here anymore. Probably. So it’s okay for you to stay.”

Fuka-Eri spent a few moments thinking about that. “Was she married,” she asked.

“Yes, and she had two kids.” “Not yours.”

“No, of course not. She had them before she met me.” “Did you love her.”

“Probably,” Tengo said. Under certain limited conditions, Tengo added to himself.

“Did she love you.” “Probably. To some extent.”

“Were you having intercourse.”

It took a moment for the word “intercourse” to register with Tengo.

It was hard to imagine that word coming from Fuka-Eri’s mouth.

“Of course. She wasn’t coming here every week to play Monopoly.” “Monopoly,” she asked.

“Never mind,” Tengo said.

“But she won’t come here anymore.”

“That’s what I was told, at least. That she won’t come here anymore.”

“She told you that,” Fuka-Eri asked.

“No, I didn’t hear it directly from her. Her husband told me. That she was irretrievably lost and couldn’t come here anymore.”

“Irretrievably lost.”

“I don’t know exactly what it means either. I couldn’t get him to explain. There were lots of questions but not many answers. Like a trade imbalance. Want some tea?”

Fuka-Eri nodded.

Tengo poured the boiling water into the teapot, put the lid on, and waited.

“Oh well,” Fuka-Eri said.

“What? The few answers? Or that she was lost?” Fuka-Eri did not reply.

Tengo gave up and poured tea into two cups. “Sugar?” “A level teaspoonful,” Fuka-Eri said.

“Lemon or milk?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. Tengo put a spoonful of sugar into the cup, stirred it slowly, and set it in front of the girl. He added nothing to his own tea, picked up the cup, and sat at the table across from her.

“Did you like having intercourse,” Fuka-Eri asked.

“Did I like having intercourse with my girlfriend?” Tengo rephrased it as an ordinary question.

Fuka-Eri nodded.

“I think I did,” Tengo said. “Having intercourse with a member of the opposite sex that you’re fond of. Most people enjoy that.”

To himself he said, She was very good at it. Just as every village has at least one farmer who is good at irrigation, she was good at sexual intercourse. She liked to try different methods.

“Are you sad she stopped coming,” Fuka-Eri asked. “Probably,” Tengo said. Then he drank his tea. “Because you can’t do intercourse.”

“That’s part of it, naturally.”

Fuka-Eri stared straight at Tengo again for a time. She seemed to be having some kind of thoughts about intercourse. What she was actually thinking about, no one could say.

“Hungry?” Tengo asked.

Fuka-Eri nodded. “I have hardly eaten anything since this morning.” “I’ll make dinner,” Tengo said. He himself had hardly eaten anything

since the morning, and he was feeling hungry. Also, he could not think of anything to do for the moment aside from making dinner.

Tengo washed the rice, put it in the cooker, and turned on the switch. He used the time until the rice was ready to make miso soup with wakame seaweed and green onions, grill a sun-dried mackerel, take some tofu out of

the refrigerator and flavor it with ginger, grate a chunk of daikon radish, and reheat some leftover boiled vegetables. To go with the rice, he set out some pickled turnip slices and a few pickled plums. With Tengo moving his big body around inside it, the little kitchen looked especially small. It did not bother him, though. He was long used to making do with what he had there. “Sorry, but these simple things are all I can make,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri studied Tengo’s skillful kitchen work in great detail. With apparent fascination, she scrutinized the results of that work neatly arranged on the table and said, “You know how to cook.”

“I’ve been living alone for a long time. I prepare my meals alone as quickly as possible and I eat alone as quickly as possible. It’s become a habit.”

“Do you always eat alone.”

“Pretty much. It’s very unusual for me to sit down to a meal like this with somebody. I used to eat lunch here once a week with the woman we were talking about. But, come to think of it, I haven’t eaten dinner with anybody for a very long time.”

“Are you nervous.”

Tengo shook his head. “No, not especially. It’s just dinner. It does seem a little strange, though.”

“I used to eat with lots of people. We all lived together when I was little. And I ate with lots of different people after I moved to the Professor’s. He always had visitors.”

He had never heard Fuka-Eri speak so many sentences in a row.

“But you were eating alone all the time you were in hiding?” Tengo

asked.

Fuka-Eri nodded.

“Where were you in hiding?” Tengo asked. “Far away. The Professor arranged it for me.” “What were you eating alone?”

“Instant stuff. Packaged food,” Fuka-Eri said. “I haven’t had a meal

like this in a long time.”

Fuka-Eri put a lot of time into tearing the flesh of the mackerel from the bones with her chopsticks. She brought the pieces of fish to her mouth and put more time into chewing them, as though she were eating some rare new food. Then she took a sip of miso soup, examined the taste, made some kind of judgment, set her chopsticks on the table, and went on thinking.

Just before nine o’clock, Tengo thought he might have caught the sound of thunder in the distance. He parted the curtains slightly and looked outside. The sky was totally dark now, and across it streamed a number of ominously shaped clouds.

“You  were   right,”   Tengo   said   after   closing   the                       curtain.            “The weather’s looking very ugly out there.”

“Because the Little People are stirring,” Fuka-Eri said with a somber expression.

“When the Little People begin stirring, it does extraordinary things to the weather?”

“It depends. Weather is a question of how you look at it.” “A question of how you look at it?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “I don’t really get it.”

Tengo didn’t get it either. To him, weather seemed to be an independent, objective condition. But he probably couldn’t get anywhere pursuing this question further. He decided to ask another question instead.

“Do you think the Little People are angry about something?” “Something is about to happen,” the girl said.

“What kind of something?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “We’ll see soon.”

Together they washed and dried the dishes and put them away, after which they sat facing each other across the table, drinking tea. He would have liked a beer, but decided it might be better to refrain from drinking today. He sensed some kind of danger in the air, and thought he should remain as clearheaded as possible in case something happened.

“It might be better to go to sleep early,” Fuka-Eri said, pressing her hands against her cheeks like the screaming man on the bridge in the Munch picture. Not that she was screaming: she was just sleepy.

“Okay, you can use my bed,” Tengo said. “I’ll sleep on the sofa like before. Don’t worry, I can sleep anywhere.”

It was true. Tengo could fall asleep anywhere right away. It was almost a talent.

Fuka-Eri only nodded. She looked straight at Tengo for a while, offering no opinions. Then she briefly touched her freshly made ears, as if to check that they were still there. “Can you lend me your pajamas. I didn’t bring mine.”

Tengo took his extra pajamas from the bedroom dresser drawer and handed them to Fuka-Eri. They were the same pajamas he had lent her the last time she stayed here – plain blue cotton pajamas, washed and folded from that time. Tengo held them to his nose to check for odors, but there were none. Fuka-Eri took them, went to the bathroom to change, and came back to the dining table. Now her hair was down. The pajama legs and arms were rolled up as before.

“It’s not even nine o’clock,” Tengo said, glancing at the wall clock. “Do you always go to bed so early?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “Today is special.” “Because the Little People are stirring outside?” “I’m not sure. I’m just tired now.”

“You do look sleepy,” Tengo admitted.

“Can you read me a book or tell me a story in bed,” Fuka-Eri asked. “Sure,” Tengo said. “I don’t have anything else to do.”

It was a hot and humid night, but as soon as she got into bed, Fuka- Eri pulled the quilt up to her chin, as if to form a firm barrier between the outside world and her own world. In bed, somehow, she looked like a little girl no more than twelve years old. The thunder rumbling outside the window was much louder than before, as though the lightning were beginning to strike somewhere quite close by. With each thunderclap, the windowpanes would rattle. Strangely, though, there were no lightning flashes to be seen, just thunder rolling across the pitch-dark sky. Nor was there any hint of rain. Something was definitely out of balance.

“They are watching us,” Fuka-Eri said. “You mean the Little People?” Tengo asked. Fuka-Eri did not answer him.

“They know we’re here,” Tengo said. “Of course they know,” Fuka-Eri said. “What are they trying to do to us?” “They can’t do anything to us.” “That’s good.”

“For now, that is.”

“They can’t touch us for now,” Tengo repeated feebly. “But there’s no telling how long that will go on.”

“No one knows,” Fuka-Eri declared with conviction.

“But even if they can’t do anything to us, they can, instead, do something to the people around us?” Tengo asked.

“Maybe so.”

“Maybe they can make terrible things happen to them?”

Fuka-Eri narrowed her eyes for a time with a deadly serious look, like a sailor trying to catch the song of a ship’s ghost. Then she said, “In some cases.”

“Maybe the Little People used their powers against my girlfriend. To give me a warning.”

Fuka-Eri slipped a hand out from beneath the quilt and gave her freshly made ear a scratching. Then she slipped the hand back inside. “What the Little People can do is limited.”

Tengo bit his lip for a moment. Then he said, “Exactly what kinds of things can they do, for example?”

Fuka-Eri started to offer an opinion on the matter but then had second thoughts and stopped. Her opinion, unvoiced, sank back into the place it had originated from – a deep, dark, unknown place.

“You said that the Little People have wisdom and power.” Fuka-Eri nodded.

“But they have their limits.” Fuka-Eri nodded.

“And that’s because they are people of the forest; when they leave the forest, they can’t unleash their powers so easily. And in this world, there exist something like values that make it possible to resist their wisdom and power. Is that it?”

Fuka-Eri did not answer him. Perhaps the question was too long. “Have you ever met the Little People?” Tengo asked.

Fuka-Eri stared at him vaguely, as though she could not grasp the meaning of his question.

“Have you ever actually seen them?” Tengo rephrased his question. “Yes,” Fuka-Eri said.

“How many of the Little People did you see?”

“I don’t know. More than I could count on my fingers.” “But not just one.”

“Their numbers can sometimes increase and sometimes decrease, but there is never just one.”

“The way you depicted them in Air Chrysalis.”

Fuka-Eri nodded.

Tengo took this opportunity to ask Fuka-Eri a question he had been wanting to ask her for some time. “Tell me,” he said, “how much of Air Chrysalis is real? How much of it really happened?”

“What does ‘real’ mean,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark. Tengo had no answer for this, of course.

A great clap of thunder echoed through the sky. The windowpanes rattled. But still there was no lightning, no sound of rain. Tengo recalled an old submarine movie. One depth charge after another would explode, jolting the ship, but everyone was locked inside the dark steel box, unable to see outside. For them, there was only the unbroken sound and the shaking of the sub.

“Will you read me a book or tell me a story,” Fuka-Eri asked. “Sure,” Tengo said, “but I can’t think of a good book for reading out

loud. I don’t have the book here, but I can tell you a story called ‘Town of Cats,’ if you like.”

“’Town of Cats.’”

“It’s the story of a town ruled by cats.” “I want to hear it.”

“It might be a little too scary for a bedtime story, though.” “That’s okay. I can sleep, whatever story you tell.”

Tengo brought a chair next to the bed, sat down, folded his hands in his lap, and started telling “Town of Cats,” with the thunder as background music. He had read the story twice on the express train and once again, aloud, to his father in the sanatorium, so he knew the plot pretty well. It was not such a complex or finely delineated story, nor had it been written in a terribly elegant style, so he felt little hesitation in altering it as he pleased, omitting the more tedious parts or adding episodes that occurred to him as he recited the story for Fuka-Eri.

The original story had not been very long, but telling it took a lot longer than he had imagined because Fuka-Eri would not hesitate to ask any questions that occurred to her. Tengo would interrupt the story each time and give her careful answers, explaining the details of the town or the cats’ behavior or the protagonist’s character. When they were things not described in the story (which was usually the case), Tengo would make

them up, as he had with Air Chrysalis. Fuka-Eri seemed to be completely drawn in by “Town of Cats.” She no longer looked tired. She would close her eyes sometimes, imagining scenes of the town of cats. Then she would open her eyes and urge Tengo to go on with the story.

When he was through telling her the story, Fuka-Eri opened her eyes wide and stared at Tengo the way a cat widens its pupils to stare at something in the dark.

“Did you go to a town of cats,” Fuka-Eri asked Tengo, as if pressing him to reveal a truth.

“Me?!”

“You went to your town of cats. Then came back on a train.” “Is that what you feel?”

With the summer quilt pulled up to her chin, Fuka-Eri gave him a quick little nod.

“You’re quite right,” Tengo said. “I went to a town of cats and came back on a train.”

“Did you do a purification afterward,” she asked. “Purification? No, I don’t think so, not yet.” “You have to do it.”

“What kind of purification?”

Instead of answering him, Fuka-Eri said, “If you go to a town of cats and don’t do anything about it afterward, bad stuff can happen.”

A great thunderclap seemed to crack the heavens in two. The sound was increasing in ferocity. Fuka-Eri recoiled from it in bed.

“Come here and hold me,” Fuka-Eri said. “We have to go to a town of cats together.”

“Why?”

“The Little People might find the entrance.” “Because I haven’t done a purification?” “Because the two of us are one,” the girl said.

Chapter 13. AOMAME: Without Your Love

“1Q84,” AOMAME SAID. “Are you talking about the fact that I am living now in the year called 1Q84, not the real 1984?”

“What the real world is: that is a very difficult problem,” the man called Leader said as he lay on his stomach. “What it is, is a metaphysical proposition. But this is the real world, there is no doubt about that. The pain one feels in this world is real pain. Deaths caused in this world are real deaths. Blood shed in this world is real blood. This is no imitation world, no imaginary world, no metaphysical world. I guarantee you that. But this is not the 1984 you know.”

“Like a parallel world?”

The man’s shoulders trembled with laughter. “You’ve been reading too much science fiction. No, this is no parallel world. You don’t have 1984 over there and 1Q84 branching off over here and the two worlds running along parallel tracks. The year 1984 no longer exists anywhere. For you and for me, the only time that exists anymore is this year of 1Q84.”

“We have entered into its time flow once and for all.”

“Exactly. We have entered into this place where we are now. Or the time flow has entered us once and for all. And as far as I understand it, the door only opens in one direction. There is no way back.”

“I suppose it happened when I climbed down the Metropolitan Expressway’s emergency stairway.”

“Metropolitan Expressway?” “Near Sangenjaya,” Aomame said.

“The place is irrelevant,” the man said. “For you, it was Sangenjaya. But the specific place is not the question. The question here, in the end, is the time. The track, as it were, was switched there, and the world was transformed into 1Q84.”

Aomame imagined a number of Little People joining forces to move the device that switches the tracks. In the middle of the night. Under the pale light of the moon.

“And in this year of 1Q84, there are two moons in the sky, aren’t there?”

“Correct: two moons. That is the sign that the track has been switched. That is how you can tell the two worlds apart. Not that all of the people here can see two moons. In fact, most people are not aware of it. In other words, the number of people who know that this is 1Q84 is quite limited.”

“Most people in this world are not aware that the time flow has been switched?”

“Correct. To most people, this is just the plain old everyday world they’ve always known. This is what I mean when I say, ‘This is the real world.’”

“So the track has been switched,” Aomame said. “If it had not been switched, we would not be meeting here like this. Could that be what you are saying?”

“That is the one thing that no one knows. It’s a question of probability. But that is probably the case.”

“Is what you are saying an objective fact, or just a hypothesis?” “Good question. But distinguishing between the two is virtually

impossible. Remember how the old song goes, ‘Without your love, it’s a honky-tonk parade’?” He hummed the melody. “Do you know it?”

“’It’s Only a Paper Moon.’”

“That’s it. 1984 and 1Q84 are fundamentally the same in terms of how they work. If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the inner eye, the eye of the mind.”

“Who switched the tracks?”

“Who switched the tracks? That is another difficult question. The logic of cause and effect has little power here.”

“In any case, some kind of will transported me into this world of 1Q84,” Aomame said. “A will other than my own.”

“That is true. You were carried into this world when the train you were on had its tracks switched.”

“Do the Little People have anything to do with that?”

“In this world there are the so-called ‘Little People.’ Or at least, that is what they are called in this world. But they do not always have a shape or a name.”

Aomame bit her lip in thought. Then she said, “What you are saying sounds contradictory to me. Let’s assume it was these ‘Little People’ who switched the track and carried me into this world of 1Q84. Why would they do such a thing if they don’t want me to do what I am about to do to you? It would be far more advantageous to get rid of me.”

“That is not easy to explain,” the man said, his voice lacking all intonation. “But you are a very quick thinker. You might be able to grasp, however vaguely, what I am trying to tell you. As I said before, the most important thing with regard to this world in which we live is for there to be a balance maintained between good and evil. The so-called ‘Little People’ – or some kind of manifestations of will – certainly do have great power. But the more they use their power, the more another power automatically arises to resist it. In that way, the world maintains a delicate balance. This fundamental principle is the same in any world. Precisely the same thing can be said in this world of 1Q84 that now contains us. When the Little People began to manifest their enormous power, a power opposing the Little People also automatically came into being. And this opposing momentum must have drawn you into the year 1Q84.”

Lying like a beached whale on his blue yoga mat, the giant man released a huge breath.

“To continue with the train analogy: it is possible for them to switch tracks, as a result of which the train has entered its current line – the 1Q84 line. One thing they are not able to do, however, is to distinguish one passenger on the train from another – to choose among them. Which means that there may be passengers aboard who, to them, are undesirable.”

“Uninvited passengers.” “Exactly.”

Again there was a rumble of thunder. This one was much louder than before. But there was no lightning. Just the sound. Strange, Aomame thought. The thunder is so close, but the lightning doesn’t flash. And no rain is falling.

“Have I managed to make myself clear thus far?”

“I’m listening,” she said, having already moved the needle away from the spot on his neck. Now she had it pointed cautiously toward empty space. She had to concentrate all her attention on what he was saying.

“Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about ‘the Shadow’ in one of his books: ‘It is as evil as we are positive … the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive. … The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.’

“We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them since long, long ago – from a time before good and evil even existed, when people’s minds were still benighted. But the important thing is that, whether they are good or evil, light or shadow, whenever they begin to exert their power, a compensatory force comes into being. In my case, when I became an ‘agent’ of the so- called Little People, my daughter became something like an agent for those forces opposed to the Little People. In this way, the balance was maintained.”

“Your daughter?”

“Yes, the first one to usher in the so-called Little People was my daughter. She was ten years old at the time. Now she is seventeen. The

Little People emerged from the darkness at some point, coming here through her, and they made me their agent. My daughter became a Perceiver and I became a Receiver. Apparently we were suited to such roles by nature. In any case, they found us. We did not find them.”

“And so you raped your own daughter.”

“I had congress with her,” he said. “That expression is closer to the truth. And the one I had congress with was, strictly speaking, my daughter as a concept. ‘To have congress with’ is an ambiguous term. The essential point was for us to become one – as Perceiver and Receiver.”

Aomame shook her head. “I can’t understand what you are saying.

Did you have sex with your daughter or didn’t you?”

“The answer to that question is, finally, both yes and no.” “Is this true of little Tsubasa as well?”

“Yes, in principle.”

“But Tsubasa’s uterus was destroyed – not ‘in principle’ but in reality.”

The man shook his head. “What you saw was the outward manifestation of a concept, not an actual substance.”

Aomame was unable to follow the swift flow of the conversation. She paused to bring her breathing under control. Then she asked, “Are you saying that a concept took on human shape and ran away on its own two feet?”

“To put it simply.”

“The Tsubasa I laid eyes on was not actual substance?” “Which is why she was retrieved.”

“Retrieved,” Aomame said.

“She was retrieved and is now being healed. She is receiving the treatment she needs.”

“I don’t believe you,” Aomame declared.

“I can’t blame you,” the man said without emotion.

Aomame was at a loss to say anything for a time. Then she asked another question. “By violating your daughter, conceptually and ambiguously, you became an agent of the Little People. But simultaneously, your daughter compensated by leaving you and becoming, as it were, an opponent of the Little People. Is this what you are asserting?”

“That is correct. And in order to do so, she had to leave her own

dohta behind,” the man said. “That doesn’t mean anything to you, though,

does it?”

“’Dohta’?” Aomame asked.

“Something like a living shadow. Here another character becomes involved – an old friend of mine. A man I can trust. I put my daughter in his care. Then, not too long ago, yet another character became involved, someone you know very well by the name of Tengo Kawana. Sheer chance brought Tengo and my daughter together as a team.”

Time seemed to come to a sudden halt. Aomame could find no words to speak. She went stiff from head to toe, waiting for time to begin to move once again.

The man continued speaking. “Each happened to have qualities that augmented the other. What Tengo lacked, Eriko possessed, and what Eriko lacked, Tengo possessed. They joined forces to complete a single work. And the fruits of their collaboration turned out to have a great impact. That is to say, in the context of establishing an opposition to the Little People.”

“They made a team?”

“Not that the two have a romantic or physical relationship. So there is nothing for you to worry about – if that is what you have in mind. Eriko will never have a romantic relationship with anyone. She has transcended such things.”

“What are the fruits of their collaboration, exactly?”

“In order to explain that, I must bring up a second analogy. The two have, so to speak, invented an antibody to a virus. If we take the actions of the Little People to be a virus, Tengo and Eriko have created and spread the antibody to combat it. This is, of course, a one-sided analogy. From the Little People’s point of view, Tengo and Eriko are, conversely, the carriers of a virus. All things are arranged as mirrors set face-to-face.”

“Is this what you call the compensatory function?”

“Exactly. In joining forces, the man you love and my daughter have succeeded in giving rise to such a function. Which is to say that, in this world, you and Tengo are literally in step with each other.”

“But that is not simply a matter of chance, according to you. You say I was led into this world by some form of will. Is that it?”

“That is it exactly. You came with a purpose, led by a form of will, to this world of 1Q84. That you and Tengo have come to have a relationship here – in whatever form it might take – is by no means a product of chance.”

said.

“What kind of will, and what kind of purpose?”

“It has not been given to me to explain that, sorry to say,” the man

“Why are you unable to explain it?”

“It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain

meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.” “All right, then, let me try another question,” Aomame said. “Why

did I have to be the one?”

“You still don’t understand why, do you?”

Aomame   gave   her   head   several   strong   shakes.   “No,                              I          don’t understand why. Not at all.”

“It is very simple, actually. It is because you and Tengo were so powerfully drawn to each other.”

Aomame maintained a long silence. She sensed a hint of perspiration oozing from the pores of her face. It felt as if her whole face were covered by a thin membrane invisible to the naked eye.

“Drawn to each other,” she said. “Yes, to each other. Very powerfully.”

An emotion resembling anger welled up inside her as if from nowhere, accompanied by a vague sense of nausea. “I can’t believe that. He couldn’t possibly remember me.”

“No, Tengo knows very well that you exist in this world, and he wants you. To this day, he has never once loved any woman other than you.”

Aomame was momentarily at a loss for words, during which time the violent thunder continued at short intervals, and rain seemed to have finally begun to fall. Large raindrops began pelting the hotel room window, but the sound barely reached Aomame.

The man said, “You can believe it or not as you wish. But you would do better to believe it because it is the unmistakable truth.”

“You mean to say that he still remembers me even though twenty years have gone by since we last met? Even though we never really spoke to each other?”

“In that empty classroom, you strongly gripped his hand. When you were ten years old. You had to summon up every bit of your courage to do

it.”

Aomame twisted her face out of shape. “How could you possibly

know such a thing?”

The man did not answer her. “Tengo never forgot about that. And he has continued to think of you all this time. You would do well to believe it. I know many things. For example, I know that, even now, you think of Tengo when you masturbate. You picture him. I am right about that, aren’t I?”

Aomame let her mouth fall open slightly, but she was at a total loss for words. All she did was take one shallow breath after another.

The man went on, “It is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a natural human function. Tengo does the same thing. He thinks of you at those times, even now.”

“But how could you possibly …?”

“How could I possibly know such things? By listening closely. That is my job – to listen to the voices.”

She wanted to laugh out loud, and, simultaneously, she wanted to cry. But she could do neither. She could only stay transfixed, somewhere between the two, inclining her center of gravity in neither direction, at a loss for words.

“You need not be afraid,” the man said. “Afraid?”

“You are afraid, just as the people of the Vatican were afraid to accept the Copernican theory. Not even they believed in the infallibility of the Ptolemaic theory. They were afraid of the new situation that would prevail if they accepted the Copernican theory. They were afraid of having to reorder their minds to accept it. Strictly speaking, the Catholic Church has still not publicly accepted the Copernican theory. You are like them. You are afraid of having to shed the armor with which you have long defended yourself.”

Aomame covered her face with her hands and let out several convulsive sobs. This was not what she wanted to do, but she was unable to stop herself. She would have preferred to appear to be laughing, but that was out of the question.

“You and Tengo were, so to speak, carried into this world on the same train,” the man said softly. “By teaming up with my daughter, Tengo took steps against the Little People, and you are trying to obliterate me for

other reasons. In other words, each of you, in your own way, is doing something dangerous in a very dangerous place.”

“And you are saying that some kind of will wanted us to do these things?”

“Perhaps.”

“For what conceivable purpose?” No sooner had the question left her mouth than Aomame realized it was pointless. There was no hope she would ever receive a reply.

“The most welcome resolution would be for the two of you to meet somewhere and leave this world hand in hand,” the man said, without answering her question. “But that would not be an easy thing to do.”

“Not be an easy thing to do,” Aomame repeated his words unconsciously.

“Not an easy thing to do, and, sad to say, that is putting it as mildly as possible. In fact, it is just about impossible. The adversary that you two are facing, whatever you care to call it, is a fierce power.”

“So then –” Aomame said, her voice dry. She cleared her throat. By now she had overcome her confusion. This is no time to cry, she thought. “So then comes your proposition, is that it? I give you a painless death, in return for which you can give me something – a different choice.”

“You’re very quick on the uptake,” the man said, still lying facedown. “That is correct. My proposition is a choice having to do with you and Tengo. It may not be the most pleasant choice. But at least it does give you room to choose.”

“The Little People are afraid of losing me,” the man said. “They still need me. I am useful to them as their human agent. Finding my replacement will not be easy for them. And at this point in time, they have not prepared my successor. Many difficult conditions have to be met in order to become their agent, and I happen to meet all of them, which makes me a rare find. They are afraid of losing me. If that were to happen, it would give rise to a temporary vacuum. This is why they are trying to prevent you from taking my life. They want to keep me alive a little while longer. The thunder you hear outside is a sign of their anger. But they can’t raise a hand against you directly. All they can do is warn you of their anger. For the same reason, they drove your friend to her death using possibly devious methods. And if

things go on like this they will almost surely inflict some kind of harm upon Tengo.”

“Inflict harm on Tengo?”

“Tengo wrote a story about the Little People and their deeds. Eriko furnished the basic story, and Tengo converted it into an effective piece of writing. It was their collaborative effort, and it acted as an antibody, countering the momentum of the Little People. It was published as a book and became a bestseller, as a result of which, if only temporarily, the Little People found that many potential avenues had been closed for them, and limits were placed on several of their actions. You have probably heard of the book: it is called Air Chrysalis.”

Aomame nodded. “I’ve seen articles about the book in the newspaper. And the publisher’s advertisements. I haven’t read the book, though.”

“The one who did the actual writing of Air Chrysalis was Tengo. And now he is writing a new story of his own. In Air Chrysalis – which is to say, in its world with two moons – he discovered his own story. A superior Perceiver, Eriko inspired the story as an antibody inside him. Tengo seems to have possessed superior ability as a Receiver. That ability may be what brought you here – in other words, what put you onto that train.”

Aomame severely distorted her face in the gloom. She had to try her best to follow what this man was saying. “Are you telling me that I was transported into this other world of 1Q84 by Tengo’s storytelling ability – or, as you put it, by his power as a Receiver?”

“That is, at least, what I surmise,” the man said.

Aomame stared at her hands. Her fingers were wet with tears.

“If things go on as they are now, Tengo will in all likelihood be liquidated. At the moment, he is the number one threat to the so-called Little People. And, after all, this is the real world, where real blood is shed and real deaths occur. Death, of course, lasts forever.”

Aomame bit her lip.

“I would like you to think about it this way,” the man said. “If you kill me here and eliminate me from this world, the Little People will no longer have any reason to harm Tengo. If I cease to exist as a channel, Tengo and my daughter can obstruct that channel all they want without presenting any threat to them. The Little People will just forget about the

two of them and look for a channel somewhere else – a channel with another origin. That will become their first priority. Do you see what I mean?”

“In theory, at least,” Aomame said.

“On the other hand, if I am killed, the organization that I have created will never leave you alone. True, it might take them some time to find you because you will surely change your name, change where you live, and maybe even change your face. Still, they will track you down and punish you severely. That is the kind of system that we have created: close- knit, violent, and irreversible. That is one choice you have.”

Aomame took time to organize her thoughts about what he had told her. The man waited for his logic to permeate her mind.

Then he went on. “Conversely, if you do not kill me here and now, what will happen? You will simply withdraw from this place and I will go on living. So then the Little People will use all their powers to eliminate Tengo in order to protect me, their agent. The protective cloak he wears is not yet strong enough. They will find his weak point and do everything they can to destroy him because they cannot tolerate any further dissemination of the antibody. Meanwhile, you cease to be a threat, and they no longer have any reason to punish you. That is your other choice.”

“In that case,” Aomame said, summarizing what the man had told her, “Tengo dies and I go on living – here, in this world of 1Q84.”

“Probably,” he said.

“But there is no point in my living in a world where Tengo no longer exists. All possibility of our meeting would be lost forever.”

“That may be the case from your point of view.”

Aomame bit down hard on her lip, imagining such a state of affairs. “But all I have to go on is what you are saying,” she pointed out.

“Why do I have to take you at your word? Is there some basis or backing for that?”

The man shook his head. “You are right. There is no basis or backing. It’s just what I tell you. But you saw my special powers a little while ago. There are no strings attached to that clock, and it’s very heavy. Go look at it yourself. Do you accept what I am saying or don’t you? Decide one way or the other. We don’t have much time left.”

Aomame looked over at the clock on the chest of drawers. Its hands were showing just before nine. The clock was slightly out of place, facing at

an odd angle, having been lifted into the air and dropped back again.

The man said, “At this point in this year of 1Q84, there seems to be no way to rescue you both at the same time. You have two possibilities to choose from. In one, you probably die and Tengo lives. In the other, he probably dies and you live. As I said before, it is not a pleasant choice.”

“But no other possibilities exist to choose between.”

The man shook his head. “At this point in time, you can only choose between those two.”

Aomame filled her lungs with air and slowly exhaled.

“It’s too bad for you,” the man said. “If you had stayed in the year 1984, you would not have been faced with this choice. But at the same time, if you had stayed in 1984, you would almost surely never have learned that Tengo has continued to long for you all this time. It is precisely because you were transported to 1Q84 that you were able to learn this fact – the fact that your hearts are, in a sense, intertwined.”

Aomame closed her eyes. I will not cry, she thought. It is not the time to cry yet. “

Is Tengo really longing for me? Can you swear to that without deception?”

“To this day, Tengo has never loved anyone but you with his whole heart. It is a fact. There is not the slightest room for doubt.”

“But still, he never looked for me.”

“Well, you never looked for him. Isn’t that true?”

Aomame closed her eyes and, in a split second, reviewed the long span of years as if standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, surveying an ocean channel far below. She could smell the sea. She could hear the deep sighing of the wind.

She said, “We should have had the courage to search for each other long ago, I suppose. Then we could have been united in the original world.” “Theoretically, perhaps,” the man said. “But you would never have

even thought such a thing in the world of 1984. Cause and effect are linked that way in a twisted form. You can pile up all the worlds you like and the twisting will never be undone.”

Tears poured from Aomame’s eyes. She cried for everything she had lost. She cried for everything she was about to lose. And eventually – how long had she been crying? – she arrived at a point where she could cry no longer. Her tears dried up, as if her emotions had run into an invisible wall.

“All right, then,” Aomame said. “There is no firm basis. Nothing has been proved. I can’t understand all the details. But still, it seems I have to accept your offer. In keeping with your wishes, I will obliterate you from this world. I will give you a painless, instantaneous death so that Tengo can go on living.”

“This means that you will agree to my bargain, then?” “Yes. We have a bargain.”

“You will probably die as a result, you know,” the man said. “You will be chased down and punished. And the punishment may be terrible. They are fanatics.”

“I don’t care.”

“Because you have love.” Aomame nodded.

The man said, “’Without your love, it’s a honky-tonk parade.’ Like in the song.”

“You are sure that Tengo will be able to go on living if I kill you?”

The man remained silent for a while. Then he said, “Tengo will go on living. You can take me at my word. I can give you that much without fail in exchange for my life.”

“And my life, too,” Aomame said.

“Some things can only be done in exchange for life,” the man said.

Aomame clenched her fists. “To tell the truth, though, I would have preferred to stay alive and be united with Tengo.”

A short silence came over the room. Even the thunder stopped.

Everything was hushed.

“I wish I could make that happen,” the man said softly. “Unfortunately, however, that is not one of the options. It was not available in 1984 nor is it in 1Q84, in a different sense in each case.”

“Our paths would never have crossed – Tengo’s and mine – in 1984?

Is that what you are saying?”

“Exactly. You would have had no connection whatever, but you likely would have kept on thinking about each other as each of you entered a lonely old age.”

“But in 1Q84 I can at least know that I am going to die for him.” The man took a deep breath, saying nothing.

“There is one thing I want you to tell me,” Aomame said. “If I can,” the man said, lying on his stomach.

“Will Tengo find out in some form or other that I died for him? Or will he never know anything about it?”

The man thought about the question for a long time. “That is probably up to you.”

“Up to me?” Aomame asked with a slight frown. “What do you mean by that?”

The man quietly shook his head. “You are fated to pass through great hardships and trials. Once you have done that, you should be able to see things as they are supposed to be. That is all I can say. No one knows for certain what it means to die until they actually do it.”

Aomame picked up a towel and carefully dried the tears still clinging to her face. Then she examined the slender ice pick in her hand again to be certain that its fine point had not been broken off. With her right index finger, she searched again for the fatal point on the back of the man’s neck as she had done before. She was able to find it right away, so vividly was it etched into her brain. She pressed the point softly with her fingertip, gauged its resilience, and made sure once again that her intuition was not mistaken. Taking several slow, deep breaths, she calmed the beating of her heart and steadied her heightened nerves. Her head would have to be perfectly clear. She swept away all thoughts of Tengo for the moment. Hatred, anger, confusion, pity: all these she sealed off in a separate space. Error was unacceptable. She had to concentrate her attention on death itself, as if focusing a narrow beam of light.

“Let us complete our work,” Aomame said calmly. “I must remove you from this world.”

“Then I can leave behind all the pain that I have been given.”

“Leave behind all the pain, the Little People, a transformed world, those hypotheses … and love.”

“And love. You are right,” the man said as if speaking to himself. “I used to have people I loved. All right, then, let each of us finish our work. You are a terribly capable person, Aomame. I can tell that.”

“You, too,” Aomame said. Her voice had taken on the strange transparency of one who will deliver death. “You, too, are surely a very capable, superior person. I am sure there must have been a world in which there was no need for me to kill you.”

“That world no longer exists,” the man said. These were the last words he spoke.

That world no longer exists.

Aomame placed the sharp point against that delicate spot on the back of his neck. Concentrating all her attention, she adjusted the angle of the ice pick. Then she raised her right fist in the air. Holding her breath, she waited for a signal. No more thinking, she said to herself. Let each of us complete our work. That is all. There is no need to think, no need for explanations. Just wait for the signal. Her fist was as hard as a rock, devoid of feeling.

Outside the window, the thunder-without-lightning rumbled with increased force. Raindrops pelted the glass. The two of them were in an ancient cave – a dark, damp, low-ceilinged cave. Dark beasts and spirits surrounded the entrance. For the briefest instant around her, light and shadow became one. A nameless gust of wind blew through the distant channel. That was the signal. Aomame brought her fist down in one short, precise movement.

Everything ended in silence. The beasts and spirits heaved a deep breath, broke up their encirclement, and returned to the depths of a forest that had lost its heart.

Chapter 14. TENGO: A Package in His Hands

“COME HERE AND hold me,” Fuka-Eri said. “The two of us have to go to the town of cats together one more time.”

“Hold you?” Tengo asked.

“You don’t want to hold me,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question

mark.

“No, that’s not it. It’s just that – I didn’t quite get what you were

saying.”

“This will be a purification,” she informed him in uninflected tones. “Come here and hold me. You put on pajamas, too, and turn out the light.”

As instructed, Tengo turned out the bedroom ceiling light. He undressed, took out his pajamas, and put them on. When was the last time I washed these? he wondered as he slipped into his pajamas. Judging from the fact that he could not remember, it must have been quite some time ago. Fortunately, they did not smell of sweat. Tengo had never sweated very much, and he did not have a strong body odor. But still, he reflected, I ought to wash my pajamas more often. Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.

He got into bed and gingerly wrapped his arms around Fuka-Eri, who laid her head on Tengo’s right arm. She lay very still, like a creature about to enter hibernation. Her body was warm, and so soft as to feel utterly defenseless. But she was not sweating.

The thunder increased in intensity, and now it was beginning to rain. As though crazed with anger, the raindrops slammed sideways against the window glass. The air was damp and sticky, and the world felt as if it might be oozing its way toward its dark finale. The time of Noah’s flood might have felt like this. If so, it must have been quite depressing in the violent thunderstorm to have the narrow ark filled with the rhinoceroses, the lions, the pythons, and so forth, all in pairs, all used to different modes of living, with limited communication skills, and the stink something special.

The word “pair” made Tengo think of Sonny and Cher, but Sonny and Cher might not be the most appropriate pair to put aboard Noah’s ark to represent humanity. Though they might not be entirely inappropriate, either. There must be some other couple who would be a more appropriate human sample.

Embracing Fuka-Eri in bed like this, with her wearing his own pajamas, Tengo had a strange feeling. He even felt as if he might be embracing a part of himself, as if he were holding someone with whom he shared flesh and body odor and whose mind was linked with his.

Tengo imagined the two of them having been chosen as a pair to board Noah’s ark instead of Sonny and Cher. But even they could hardly be said to be the most appropriate sample of humanity. The very fact of our embracing each other in bed like this is far from appropriate, no matter how you look at it. The thought kept Tengo from being able to relax. He decided instead to imagine Sonny and Cher becoming good friends with the python pair on the ark. It was an utterly pointless thing to imagine, but at least it enabled him to relax the tension in his body.

Lying in Tengo’s arms, Fuka-Eri said nothing. Nor did she move or open her mouth. Tengo didn’t say anything either. Even embracing Fuka-Eri in bed, he felt almost nothing that could be called sexual desire. To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him. He realized, too, that what Fuka-Eri was looking for was not his sexual desire.

She was looking for something else from him, but what that something else was, he could not tell.

The purpose of doing so aside, the sheer act of holding a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl in his arms was by no means unpleasant. Her ear would touch his cheek now and then. Her warm breath grazed his neck. Her breasts were startlingly large and firm for a girl with such a slim body. He could feel them pressed against him in the area above his stomach. Her skin exuded a marvelous fragrance. It was the special smell of life that could only be exuded by flesh still in the process of formation, like the smell of dew-laden flowers in midsummer. He had often experienced that smell as an elementary school student on his way to early-morning radio exercises.

I hope I don’t have an erection, Tengo thought. If he did have an erection, she would know immediately, given their relative positions. If that happened, it would make things somewhat uncomfortable. With what words and in what context could he explain to a seventeen-year-old girl that erections simply happen sometimes, even when not directly driven by sexual desire? Fortunately, however, no erection had happened so far, nor did he have any sign of one. Let me stop thinking about smells. I have to concentrate my mind on things having as little to do with sex as possible.

He thought again of the socializing between Sonny and Cher and the two pythons. Would they have anything to talk about? And if so, what could it be? Finally, when his ability to imagine the ark in the storm gave out, he tried multiplying sets of three-digit numbers. He would often do that when he was having sex with his older girlfriend. This would enable him to delay the moment of ejaculation (the moment of ejaculation being something about which she was particularly demanding). Tengo did not know if it would also work to hold off an erection, but it was better than doing nothing. He had to do something.

“I don’t mind if it gets hard,” Fuka-Eri said, as if she had read his

mind.

“You don’t mind?”

“There is nothing wrong with that.”

“There is nothing wrong with that,” Tengo said, echoing her words.

Sounds like a grade school kid in sex education. “Now, boys, there is nothing shameful or bad about having an erection. But of course you must choose the proper time and occasion.”

“So, anyhow, has the purification begun?” Tengo asked in order to change the subject.

Fuka-Eri did not reply. Her small, beautiful ear seemed still to be trying to catch something in the rumbling of the thunder. Tengo could tell that much, and so he decided not to say any more. He also gave up trying to multiply three-digit numbers. If Fuka-Eri doesn’t mind, what’s the difference if I get hard? he thought. In any case, his penis showed no signs of movement. For now, it was just peacefully lying in the mud.

“I like your thingy,” his older girlfriend had said. “I like its shape and color and size.”

“I’m not so crazy about it,” Tengo said.

“Why not?” she asked, slipping her palm under Tengo’s flaccid penis as if handling a sleeping pet, testing its weight.

“I don’t know,” Tengo said. “Probably because I didn’t choose it for myself.”

“You’re so weird,” she said. “You’ve got a weird way of thinking.” That had happened once upon a time. Before Noah’s flood, probably.

Fuka-Eri’s warm, silent breath grazed Tengo’s neck in a regular rhythm. Tengo could see her ear in the faint green light from the electric clock or in the occasional flash of lightning, which had finally started. The ear looked like a soft secret cave. If this girl were my lover, I would probably never tire of kissing her there, Tengo thought. While I was inside her, I would kiss that ear, give it little bites, run my tongue over it, blow my breath into it, inhale its fragrance. Not that I want to do that now. This was just a momentary fantasy based on pure hypothesis concerning what he would do if she were his lover. Morally, it was nothing for him to be ashamed of – probably.

But whether this involved a moral question or not, he should not have been thinking about it. Tengo’s penis began to wake from its tranquil sleep in the mud, as if it had been poked in its back by a finger. It gave a yawn and slowly raised its head, gradually growing harder until, like a yacht whose sails are filled by a strong northwest tailwind, it achieved a full, unreserved erection. As a result, his hardened penis could not help but

press against Fuka-Eri’s hip. Tengo released a deep mental sigh. He had not had sex for more than a month following the disappearance of his girlfriend. Probably that was the cause. He should have continued multiplying three- digit figures.

“Don’t let it bother you,” Fuka-Eri said. “Getting hard is only natural.”

“Thank you,” Tengo said. “But maybe the Little People are watching from somewhere.”

“Just watching. They can’t do anything.”

“That’s good,” Tengo said, his voice unsettled. “But it does kind of bother me to think that I’m being watched.”

Again a lightning bolt cracked the sky in two, like the ripping of an old curtain, and the thunder gave the windowpane a violent shake as if they were seriously trying to shatter the glass. The glass might actually break before long, it seemed. The window had a sturdy aluminum frame, but it might not hold up if such ferocious shaking continued. Big, hard raindrops went on knocking against the glass like bullets slamming into a deer.

“The thunderbolts have hardly moved, it seems,” Tengo said. “Lightning storms don’t usually go on this long.”

Fuka-Eri looked up at the ceiling. “It won’t go anywhere for a while.”

“How long a while?”

Fuka-Eri did not answer him. Tengo went on holding Fuka-Eri apprehensively, his unanswered question and his useless erection both intact.

sleep.”

“We will go to the cat town again,” Fuka-Eri said. “So we have to

“Do you think we can sleep with all this thunder going? And it’s

barely past nine,” Tengo said anxiously.

Tengo arranged mathematical formulas in his head. It was a problem concerning long, complex mathematical formulas, but he already knew the answer. The assignment was to find how quickly and by how short a route he could arrive at the answer. He wasted no time setting his mind in motion, pushing his brain to the point of abuse. But this did nothing to relieve his erection. Its hardness only seemed to increase.

“We can sleep,” Fuka-Eri said.

And she was right. Even in the midst of the violent downpour, surrounded by thunder rattling the building, and beset by his jangled nerves and his stubborn erection, Tengo drifted into sleep before he knew it. He couldn’t believe such a thing was possible, and yet …

This is total chaos, Tengo thought just before he fell asleep. I’ve got to find the shortest route to the solution. Time is running out, and there’s so little space on the examination sheet they distributed. Tick-tock, tick-tock, the clock dutifully counted off time.

He was naked when he awoke, and so was Fuka-Eri. Completely and totally naked. Her breasts were perfect hemispheres. Her nipples were not overly large, and they were soft, still quietly groping for the maturity that was to come. Her breasts themselves were large, however, and fully ripe. They seemed to be virtually uninfluenced by the force of gravity, the nipples turned beautifully upward, like a vine’s new tendrils seeking sunlight. The next thing that Tengo became aware of was that Fuka-Eri had no pubic hair. Where there should have been pubic hair there was only smooth, bare white skin, its whiteness giving emphasis to its utter defenselessness. She had her legs spread; he could see her vagina. Like the ear he had been staring at, it looked as if it had just been made only moments before. And perhaps it really had been made only moments before. A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike, Tengo thought. Both appeared to be turned outward, trying to listen closely to something – something like a distant bell.

I was sleeping, Tengo realized. He had fallen asleep still erect. And even now he was firmly erect. Had the erection continued the whole time he was sleeping? Or was this a new erection, following the relaxation of the first (like Prime Minister So-and-So’s Second Cabinet)? How long was I sleeping? But what’s the difference? I’m still erect now, and it shows no sign of subsiding. Neither Sonny and Cher nor three-digit multiplication nor complex mathematics had managed to bring it down.

“I don’t mind,” Fuka-Eri said. She had her legs spread and was pressing her freshly made vagina against his belly. He could detect no hint of embarrassment on her part. “Getting hard is not a bad thing,” she said.

“I can’t move my body,” he said. It was true. He was trying to raise himself, but he couldn’t move a finger. He could feel his body – feel the

weight of Fuka-Eri’s body on top of his – feel the hardness of his erection – but his body was as heavy and stiff as if it had been fastened down by something.

“You have no need to move it,” Fuka-Eri said.

“I do have a need to move it. It’s my body,” Tengo said. Fuka-Eri said nothing in response to that.

Tengo could not even be sure whether what he was saying was vibrating in the air as vocal sounds. He had no clear sense that the muscles around his mouth were moving and forming the words he tried to speak. The things he wanted to say were more or less getting through to Fuka-Eri, it seemed, but their communication was as uncertain as a long-distance phone call with a bad connection. She, at least, could get by without hearing what she had no need to hear. But this was not possible for Tengo.

“Don’t worry,” Fuka-Eri said, moving her body lower down on his. The meaning of her movement was clear. Her eyes had taken on a certain gleam, the hue of which he had never seen before.

It seemed inconceivable that his adult penis could penetrate her small, newly made vagina. It was too big and too hard. The pain should have been enormous. Before he knew it, though, every bit of him was inside her. There had been no resistance whatever. The look on her face remained totally unchanged as she brought him inside. Her breathing became slightly agitated, and the rhythm with which her breasts rose and fell changed subtly for five or six seconds, but that was all. Everything else seemed like a normal, natural part of everyday life.

Having brought Tengo deep inside her, Fuka-Eri remained utterly still, as did Tengo, feeling himself deep inside of her. He remained incapable of moving his body, and she, eyes closed, perched on top of him like a lightning rod, stopped moving. He could see that her mouth was slightly open and her lips were making delicate, rippling movements as if groping in space to form some kind of words. Aside from this, she exhibited no movement at all. She seemed to be holding that posture as she waited for something to happen.

A deep sense of powerlessness came over Tengo. Even though something was about to happen, he had no idea what that something might be, and had no way of controlling it through his own will. His body felt nothing. He could not move. But his penis had feeling – or, rather than feeling, it had what might have been closer to a concept. In any case, it was

telling him that he was inside Fuka-Eri and that he had the consummate erection. Shouldn’t he be wearing a condom? He began to worry. It could be a real problem if she got pregnant. His older girlfriend was extremely strict about birth control, and she had trained Tengo to be just as strict.

He tried as hard as he could to think of other things, but in fact he was unable to think about anything at all. He was in chaos. Inside that chaos, time seemed to have come to a stop. But time never stopped. That was a theoretical impossibility. Perhaps it had simply lost its uniformity. Taking the long view, time moved ahead at a fixed pace. There could be no mistake about that. But if you considered any one particular part of time, it could cease to be uniform. In these momentary periods of slackness, such things as order and probability lost all value.

“Tengo,” Fuka-Eri said. She had never called him by his first name before. She said it again: “Tengo,” as if practicing the pronunciation of a foreign word. Why is she calling me by my name all of a sudden? Tengo wondered. Fuka-Eri then leaned forward slowly, bringing her face close to his. Her partially open lips now opened wide, and her soft, fragrant tongue entered his mouth, where it began a relentless search for unformed words, for a secret code engraved there. Tengo’s own tongue responded unconsciously to this movement and soon their tongues were like two young snakes in a spring meadow, newly wakened from their hibernation and hungrily intertwining, each led on by the other’s scent.

Fuka-Eri then stretched out her right hand and grasped Tengo’s left hand. She took it powerfully, as if to envelope his hand in hers. Her small fingernails dug into his palm. Then, bringing their intense kiss to an end, she righted herself. “Close your eyes.”

Tengo did as he was told. Inside his closed eyes he found a deep, gloomy space – so deep that it appeared to extend to the center of the earth. Then a light evocative of dusk broke into this space, the kind of sweet, nostalgic dusk that comes at the end of a long, long day. He could see, suspended in the light, numberless fine-grained cross-section-like particles – dust, perhaps, or pollen, or something else entirely. Eventually the depths began to contract, the light began to grow brighter, and the surrounding objects came into view.

The next thing he knew he was ten years old and in an elementary school classroom. This was real time and a real place. The light was real, and so was his ten-year-old self. He was really breathing the air of the

room, smelling its varnished woodwork and the chalk dust permeating its erasers. Only he and the girl were in the room. There was no sign of other children. She was quick to seize the opportunity and she did so boldly. Or perhaps she had been waiting for this to happen. In any case, standing there, she stretched out her right hand and grasped Tengo’s left hand, her eyes looking straight into his.

His mouth felt parched. It all happened so suddenly, he had no idea what he should do or say. He simply stood there, letting his hand be squeezed by the girl. Eventually, deep in his loins, he felt a faint but deep throbbing. This was nothing he had ever experienced before, a throbbing like the distant roar of the sea. At the same time actual sounds reached his ears – the shouts of children resounding through the open window, a soccer ball being kicked, a bat connecting with a softball, the high-pitched complaints of a girl in one of the younger classes, the uncertain notes of a recorder ensemble practicing “The Last Rose of Summer.” After-school activities.

He wanted to return the girl’s grasp with equal force, but the strength would not come into his hand. Part of it was that the girl’s grip was too strong. But Tengo realized, too, that he could not make his body move. Why should that be? He couldn’t move a finger, as if he were totally paralyzed.

Time seems to have stopped, Tengo thought. He breathed quietly, listening to his own inhalations and exhalations. The sea went on roaring. Suddenly he realized that all actual sounds had ceased. The throbbing in his loins had transformed into something different, something more limited, and soon he felt a particular kind of tingling. The tingling in turn became a fine, dust-like substance that mixed with his hot, red blood, coursing through his veins to all parts of his body, by the power of his hardworking heart. A dense, little, cloud-like thing formed in his chest, changing the rhythm of his breathing and stiffening the beating of his heart.

I’m sure I’ll be able to understand the meaning and purpose of this incident sometime in the future, Tengo thought. What I have to do now, in order to make that happen, is to record this moment in my mind as clearly and accurately as possible. Now Tengo again was nothing more than a ten- year-old boy who happened to be good at math. A new door stood before him, but he did not know what awaited him on the other side. He felt powerless and ignorant, emotionally confused, and not a little afraid. This

much he knew. And the girl, for her part, had no hope of being understood at that moment. All she wanted was to make sure that her feelings were delivered to Tengo, stuffed into a small, sturdy box, wrapped in a spotless sheet of paper, and tied with a narrow cord. She was placing such a package in his hands.

You don’t have to open the package right now, the girl was telling him wordlessly. Open it when the time comes. All you have to do is take it now.

She already knows all kinds of things, Tengo thought. They were things that he did not know yet. She was the leader in this new arena. There were new rules here, new goals and new dynamics. Tengo knew nothing. But she knows.

At length she released the grip of her right hand on Tengo’s left hand, and, without saying anything or looking back, she hurried from the big classroom. Tengo stood there all alone. Children’s voices resounded through the open window.

In the next second, Tengo realized that he was ejaculating. The violent spasm went on for several seconds, releasing a great deal of semen in a powerful surge. Where is my semen going? Tengo’s garbled mind wondered. Ejaculating like this after school in a grade school classroom was not an appropriate thing to do. He could be in trouble if someone saw him. But this was not a grade school classroom anymore. Now he realized that he was inside Fuka-Eri, ejaculating toward her uterus. This was not something that he wanted to be doing. But he could not stop himself. Everything was happening beyond his control.

“Don’t worry,” Fuka-Eri said a short time afterward in her usual flat voice.“

I will not get pregnant. I haven’t started my periods yet.”

Tengo opened his eyes and looked at Fuka-Eri. She was still mounted on him, looking down. Her perfect breasts were there in front of him, moving with each calm, regular breath.

Tengo wanted to ask her if this was what “going to the town of cats” meant. What kind of a place was the town of cats? He tried to put the question into actual words, but the muscles of his mouth would not budge.

“This was necessary,” Fuka-Eri said, as if reading Tengo’s mind. It was a concise answer and no answer at all, as usual.

Tengo closed his eyes again. He had gone there, ejaculated, and come back here again. It had been a real ejaculation discharging real semen. If Fuka-Eri said it was necessary, it had surely been necessary. Tengo’s flesh was still paralyzed and had no feeling. And the lassitude that follows ejaculation enveloped his body like a thin membrane.

Fuka-Eri maintained her position for a long time, effectively squeezing out the last drop of semen from Tengo, like an insect sucking nectar from a flower. She literally left not a drop behind. Then, sliding off of Tengo’s penis, without a word, she left the bed and went into the bathroom. Tengo realized now that the thunder had stopped. The violent rain had also cleared before he knew it. The thunderclouds, which had stayed so stubbornly fixed above them, had now vanished without a trace. The silence was almost unreal. All he could hear was the faint sound of Fuka-Eri showering in the bathroom. Tengo stared at the ceiling, waiting for the feeling to come back to his flesh. Even after ejaculating, he was still erect, though at least the hardness had abated somewhat.

Part of his mind was still in the grade school classroom. The touch of the girl’s fingers remained as a vivid impression in his left hand. He could not lift the hand to look at it, but the palm of that hand probably still had red fingernail marks in it. His heartbeat retained traces of his arousal. The dense cloud had faded from his chest, but its imaginary space near his heart still cried out with its pleasant dull ache.

Aomame, Tengo thought.

I have to see Aomame, Tengo thought. I have to find her. Why has it taken me so long to realize something so obvious? She handed me that precious package. Why did I toss it aside and leave it unopened all this time? He thought of shaking his head, but that was something he could not yet do. His body had still not recovered from its paralysis.

Fuka-Eri came back to the bedroom a short time later. Wrapped in a bath towel, she sat on the edge of the bed for a while.

“The Little People are not stirring anymore,” she said, like a cool, capable scout reporting on conditions at the front. Then she used her fingertip to draw a little circle in the air – a perfect, beautiful circle such as an Italian Renaissance painter might draw on a church wall: no beginning, no end. The circle hung in the air for a while. “All done.”

Having said this, the girl stood and undid her bath towel. Completely naked, she stayed there for a while, as if allowing her damp body to dry naturally in the still air. It was a lovely sight: the smooth breasts, the lower abdomen free of pubic hair.

She bent over and picked up the pajamas where they had fallen on the floor, putting them on directly next to her skin without underwear, buttoning the top and tying the bottom’s cord. Tengo watched all this in the darkened room, as if studying an insect undergoing metamorphosis. Tengo’s pajamas were too big for her, but she looked comfortable in them. Fuka-Eri slipped into bed, found her narrow space, and rested her head on Tengo’s shoulder. He could feel the shape of her little ear against his naked shoulder and her warm breath against the base of his neck. All the while, his paralysis began to fade, just as the tide ebbs when the time comes.

The air was still damp but no longer unpleasantly sticky. Outside, the insects were beginning to chirp. By now Tengo’s erection had subsided and his penis was beginning to sink into the peaceful mud again. Things seemed to have run their course, bringing the cycle to an end. A perfect circle had been drawn in the air. The animals had left the ark and scattered across the earth they craved, all the pairs returning to the places where they belonged.

“You’d better sleep,” she said. “Very deeply.”

Sleep very deeply, Tengo thought. Sleep, and then wake up. What kind of world will be there tomorrow?

“No one knows the answer to that,” Fuka-Eri said, reading his mind.

Chapter 15. AOMAME: Time Now for Ghosts

AOMAME TOOK A spare blanket from the closet and laid it over the man’s big body. Then she placed a finger on the back of his neck again and confirmed that his pulse had completely stopped. This man they called “Leader” had already moved on to another world. What kind of world that was, she could not be sure, but it was definitely not 1Q84. In this world, he had now become what would be called “the deceased.” The man had crossed the divide that separates life and death, and he had done so without making the slightest sound, with just a momentary shiver, as if he had felt a chill. Nor had he shed a drop of blood. Now he had been released from all suffering, lying silent and dead, facedown on the blue yoga mat. As always, her work had been swift and precise.

She placed the cork on the needle and returned the ice pick to the hard case. This went into the gym bag. She took the Heckler & Koch from the vinyl pouch and slipped it under the waistband of her sweatpants, safety released and bullet in the chamber. The hard metal against her backbone reassured her. Stepping over to the window, she pulled the thick curtain closed and made the room dark again.

She picked up the gym bag and headed for the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned for one last look at the large man lying in the dark room. He appeared only to be sound asleep, as he had when she first saw him. Aomame herself was the only person in the world who knew that he was no longer alive. No, the Little People probably knew, which was why they had stopped the thunder. They knew it would be useless to go on sending such warnings. The life of their chosen agent had come to an end.

Aomame opened the door and stepped into the bright room, averting her eyes from the glare. She closed the door soundlessly. Buzzcut was sitting on the sofa, drinking coffee. On the table was a coffeepot and a large room service tray holding a stack of sandwiches. The sandwiches were half gone. Two unused coffee cups stood nearby. Ponytail was sitting in a rococo chair beside the door, his back straight, as he had been earlier. It seemed as though both men had spent the whole time in the same position, saying nothing. Such was the reserved atmosphere that pervaded the room.

When Aomame came in, Buzzcut set his coffee cup onto its saucer and quietly stood up.

“I’m through,” Aomame said. “He’s asleep now. It took quite a while. I think it was hard on his muscles. You should let him get some sleep.”

“He’s sleeping?”

“Very soundly,” Aomame said.

Buzzcut looked Aomame straight in the face. He peered deep into her eyes. Then he slowly moved his gaze down to her toes and back again, as if to inspect for possible irregularities.

“Is that normal?”

“Many people react that way, falling into a deep sleep after they have been released from extreme muscular stress. It is not unusual.”

Buzzcut walked over to the bedroom door, quietly turned the knob, and opened the door just enough to peer inside. Aomame rested her right hand on the waist of her sweatpants so that she could take the pistol out as soon as anything happened. The man spent some ten seconds observing the situation in the bedroom, then finally drew his face back and closed the door.

“How long do you think he will sleep?” he asked Aomame. “We can’t just leave him lying on the floor like that forever.”

“He should wake up in two hours or so. It would be best to leave him in that position until then.”

Buzzcut checked his watch and gave Aomame a slight nod.

“I see. We’ll leave him like that for a while,” Buzzcut said. “Would you like to take a shower?”

“I don’t need to shower, but let me change my clothes again.” “Of course. Please use the powder room.”

Aomame would have preferred not to change her clothes and to get out of there as quickly as possible, but she had to be sure not to arouse their suspicions. She had changed clothes when she arrived, so she must change her clothes on her way out. She went into the bathroom and took off her sweat suit and her sweat-soaked underwear, dried her body with a bath towel, and put on fresh underwear and her original cotton pants and blouse. She shoved the pistol under her belt so that it would not be visible from the outside. She tested various movements of her body to make sure that they would not appear unnatural. She washed her face with soap and water and brushed her hair. Facing the large mirror over the sink, she twisted her face into every scowl she could think of in order to relax any facial muscles that had stiffened from tension. After continuing that for a while, she returned her face to normal. After such prolonged frowning, it took her some moments to recall what her normal face even looked like, but after several attempts she was able to settle on a reasonable facsimile. She glared into the mirror, studying her face in detail. No problem, she thought. This is my normal face. I can even smile if I have to. My hands are not shaking, either. My gaze is steady. I’m the usual cool Aomame.

Buzzcut, though, had stared hard at her when she first came out of the bedroom. He might have noticed the streaks left by her tears. There must have been something left after all that crying. The thought made Aomame uneasy. He must have found it odd that she would have had to shed tears while stretching a client’s muscles. It might have led him to suspect that something strange had occurred. He might have opened the bedroom door, gone in to check on Leader, and discovered that his heart had stopped …

Aomame reached around to check the grip of her pistol. I have to calm down, she told herself. I can’t be afraid. Fear will show on my face and raise suspicions.

Resigning herself to the worst, Aomame cautiously stepped out of the bathroom with the gym bag in her left hand, right hand ready to reach for the gun, but there was no sign of anything unusual in the room. Buzzcut stood in the center, his arms folded, eyes narrowed in thought. Ponytail was still in the chair by the door, coolly observing the room. He had the calm eyes of a bomber’s tail gunner, accustomed to sitting there all alone, looking at the blue sky, eyes taking on the sky’s tint.

“You must be worn out,” Buzzcut said. “How about a cup of coffee?

We have sandwiches, too.”

“Thanks, but I’ll have to pass on that. I can’t eat right after work. My appetite starts to come back after an hour or so.”

Buzzcut nodded. Then he pulled a thick envelope from his inner jacket pocket. After checking its weight, he handed it to Aomame.

The man said, “I believe you will find here something more than the agreed-upon fee. As I said earlier, we strongly urge you to keep this matter a secret.”

“Hush money?” Aomame said jokingly.

“For the extra effort we have put you through,” the man said, without cracking a smile.

“I have a policy of strict confidentiality, whatever the fee. That is part of my work. No word of this will leak out under any circumstances,” Aomame said. She put the unopened envelope into her gym bag. “Do you need a receipt?”

Buzzcut shook his head. “That will not be necessary. This is just between us. There is no need for you to report this as income.”

Aomame nodded silently.

“It must have taken a great deal of strength,” Buzzcut said, as if probing for information.

“More than usual,” she said. “Because he is no ordinary person.” “So it would seem.”

“He is utterly irreplaceable,” he said. “He has suffered terrible physical pain for a very long time. He has taken all of our suffering and pain upon himself, as it were. We can only hope that he can have some small degree of relief.”

“I can’t say for sure because I don’t know the basic cause of his pain,” Aomame said, choosing her words carefully, “but I do think that his

pain may have been reduced somewhat.”

Buzzcut nodded. “As far as I can tell, you seem quite drained.” “Perhaps I am,” Aomame said.

While Aomame and Buzzcut were speaking, Ponytail remained seated by the door, wordlessly observing the room. His face was immobile; only his eyes moved. His expression never changed. She had no idea whether he was even hearing their conversation. Isolated, taciturn, attentive, he kept watch for any sign of enemy fighter planes among the clouds. At first they would be no bigger than poppy seeds.

After some hesitation, Aomame asked Buzzcut, “This may be none of my business, but drinking coffee, eating ham sandwiches: are these not violations of your religion?”

Buzzcut turned to look at the coffeepot and the tray of sandwiches on the table. Then the faintest possible smile crossed his lips.

“Our religion doesn’t have such strict precepts. Alcohol and tobacco are generally forbidden, and there are some prohibitions regarding sexual matters, but we are relatively free where food is concerned. Most of the time we eat only the simplest foods, but coffee and ham sandwiches are not especially forbidden.”

Aomame just nodded, offering no opinion on the matter.

“The religion brings many people together, so some degree of discipline is necessary, of course, but if you focus too much on formalities, you can lose sight of your original purpose. Things like precepts and doctrines are, ultimately, just expedients. The important thing is not the frame itself but what is inside the frame.”

“And your Leader provides the content to fill the frame.”

“Exactly. He can hear the voices that we cannot hear. He is a special person.” Buzzcut looked into Aomame’s eyes again. Then he said, “Thank you for all your efforts today. And luckily the rain seems to have stopped.”

“The thunder was terrible,” Aomame said.

“Yes, very,” Buzzcut said, though he himself did not seem particularly interested in the thunder and rain.

Aomame gave him a little bow and headed for the door, gym bag in

hand. edge.

“Wait a moment,” Buzzcut called from behind. His voice had a sharp

Aomame came to a stop in the center of the room and turned around. Her heart made a sharp, dry sound. Her right hand casually moved to her hip.

“The yoga mat,” the young man said. “You’re forgetting your yoga mat. It’s still on the bedroom floor.”

Aomame smiled. “He is lying on top of it, sound asleep. We can’t just shove him aside and pull it out. I’ll give it to you if you like. It’s not expensive, and it’s had a lot of use. If you don’t need it, throw it away.”

Buzzcut thought about this for a moment and finally nodded. “Thank you again. I’m sure you’re very tired.”

As Aomame neared the door, Ponytail stood and opened it for her. Then he bowed slightly. That one never said a word, Aomame thought. She returned his bow and started to slip past him.

In that moment, however, a violent urge penetrated Aomame’s skin, like an intense electric current. Ponytail’s hand shot out as if to grab her right arm. It should have been a swift, precise movement – like grabbing a fly in thin air. Aomame had a vivid sense of its happening right there. Every muscle in her body stiffened up. Her skin crawled, and her heart skipped a beat. Her breath caught in her throat, and icy insects crawled up and down her spine. A blazing hot white light poured into her mind: If this man grabs my right arm, I won’t be able to reach for the pistol. And if that happens, I have no hope of winning. He feels it. He feels that I’ve done something. His intuition recognizes that something happened in this hotel room. He doesn’t know what, but it is something that should not have happened. His instincts are telling him, “You have to stop this woman,” ordering him to wrestle me to the floor, drop his whole weight on me, and dislocate my shoulders. But he has only instinct, no proof. If his feeling turns out to be wrong, he’ll be in big trouble. He was intensely conflicted, and now he’s given up. Buzzcut is the one who makes the decisions and gives the orders. Ponytail is not qualified. He struggled to suppress the impulse of his right hand and let the tension go out of his shoulder. Aomame had a vivid sense of the stages through which Ponytail’s mind had passed in that second or two.

Aomame stepped out into the carpeted hallway and headed for the elevator without looking back, walking coolly down the perfectly straight corridor. Ponytail, it seemed, had stuck his head out the door and was following her movements with his eyes. She continued to feel his sharp, knifelike gaze piercing her back. Every muscle in her body was tingling, but

she refused to look back. She must not look back. Only when she turned the corner did she feel the tension go out of her. But still she could not relax. There was no telling what could happen next. She pushed the elevator’s “down” button and reached around to hold the pistol grip until the elevator came (which took an eternity), ready to draw the gun if Ponytail changed his mind and came after her. She would have to shoot him without hesitation before he put his powerful hands on her. Or shoot herself without hesitation. She could not decide which. Perhaps she would not be able to decide.

But no one came after her. The hotel corridor was hushed. The elevator door opened with a ring, and Aomame got on. She pressed the button for the lobby and waited for the door to close. Biting her lip, she glared at the floor number display. Then she exited the elevator, walked across the broad lobby, and stepped into a cab waiting for passengers at the front door. The rain had cleared up completely, but the cab had water dripping from its entire chassis, as if it had made its way here underwater. Aomame told the driver to take her to the west exit of Shinjuku Station. As they pulled away from the hotel, she exhaled every bit of air she was holding inside. Then she closed her eyes and emptied her mind. She didn’t want to think about anything for a while.

A strong wave of nausea hit her. It felt as if the entire contents of her stomach were surging up toward her throat, but she managed to force them back down. She pressed the button to open her window halfway, sending the damp night air deep into her lungs. Then she leaned back and took several deep breaths. Her mouth produced an ominous smell, as though something inside her were beginning to rot.

It suddenly occurred to her to search in her pants pocket, where she found two sticks of chewing gum. Her hands trembled slightly as she tore off the wrappers. She put the sticks in her mouth and began chewing slowly. Spearmint. The pleasantly familiar aroma helped to quiet her nerves. As she moved her jaw, the bad smell in her mouth began to dissipate. It’s not as if I actually have something rotting inside me. Fear is doing funny things to me, that’s all.

Anyhow, it’s all over now, Aomame thought. I don’t have to kill anyone anymore. And what I did was right, she told herself. He deserved to

be killed for what he did. It was a simple case of just punishment. And as it happened (strictly by chance), the man himself had a strong desire to be killed. I gave him the peaceful death he was hoping for. I did nothing wrong. All I did was break the law.

Try as she might, however, Aomame was unable to convince herself that this was true. Only moments before, she had killed a far-from-ordinary human being with her own hands. She retained a vivid memory of how it felt when the needle sank soundlessly into the back of the man’s neck. That far-from-ordinary feeling was still there, in her hands, upsetting her to no small degree. She opened her palms and stared at them. Something was different, utterly different. But she was unable to discover what had changed, and how.

If she was to believe what he had told her, she had just killed a prophet, one entrusted with the voice of a god. But the master of that voice was no god. It was probably the Little People. A prophet is simultaneously a king, and a king is destined to be killed. She was, in other words, an assassin sent by destiny. By violently exterminating a being who was both prophet and king, she had preserved the balance of good and evil in the world, as a result of which she must die. But when she performed the deed, she struck a bargain. By killing the man and, in effect, throwing her own life away, she would save Tengo’s life. That was the content of the bargain. If she was to believe what he had told her.

Aomame had no choice but to believe fundamentally in what he had said. He was no fanatic, and dying people do not lie. Most importantly, his words had genuine persuasive power. They carried the weight of a huge anchor. All ships carry anchors that match their size and weight. However despicable his deeds may have been, the man was truly reminiscent of a great ship. Aomame had no choice but to recognize that fact.

Taking care that the driver did not see her, Aomame slipped the Heckler & Koch from her belt, set the safety catch, and put the gun in its pouch, relieving herself of 500 grams of solid, lethal weight.

“Wasn’t that thunder something?” the driver said. “And the rain was incredible.”

“Thunder?” Aomame said. It seemed to have happened a long time ago, though it had been a mere thirty minutes earlier. Yes, come to think of it, there had been some thunder. “Yes, really, incredible thunder.”

“The weather forecast said absolutely nothing about it. It was supposed to be beautiful all day.”

She tried to make her mind work. I have to say something. But I can’t think of anything good to say. My brain seems to have fogged over. “Weather forecasts are never right,” she said.

The driver glanced at Aomame in the rearview mirror. Maybe there was something funny about the way she spoke. The driver said, “I hear the water in the streets overflowed and ran down into the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station onto the tracks. It was because the rain all fell in one small area. They stopped the Ginza Line and the Marunouchi Line. I heard it on the radio news.”

The concentrated downpour brought the subway to a stop. Will this have any influence on my actions? I’ve got to make my brain work faster. I go to Shinjuku Station to get my travel bag and shoulder bag out of a coin locker. Then I call Tamaru for instructions. If I’m going to have to use the Marunouchi Line from Shinjuku, things could get very messy. I only have two hours to make my getaway. Once two hours have gone by, they’ll begin to wonder why Leader isn’t waking up. They’ll probably go into the bedroom and discover that he’s drawn his last breath. They’ll go into action immediately.

“Do you think the Marunouchi Line is still not running?” Aomame asked the driver.

“I wonder. I really don’t know. Want me to turn on the news?” “Yes, please.”

According to Leader, the Little People caused that downpour. They concentrated the intense rain on a small area in the Akasaka District and caused the subway to stop. Aomame shook her head. Maybe they did it on purpose. Things don’t always go according to plan.

The driver tuned the radio to NHK. They were broadcasting a music program – folk songs sung by Japanese singers popular in the late sixties. Having listened to such music on the radio as a girl, Aomame remembered it vaguely, but in no way fondly. If anything, the memories it called up for her were unpleasant ones, things she would rather not think about. She put up with it for a while, but there was no sign of news about the subway situation.

“Sorry, that’s enough. Could you please turn off the radio?” Aomame said. “I’ll just go to Shinjuku Station and see what’s happening.”

The driver turned off the radio. “That place will be jammed,” he

said.

As the driver had said, Shinjuku Station was horribly congested. Because the stalled Marunouchi Line connected with the National Railways here, the flow of passengers had been disrupted, and people were wandering in all directions. The evening rush hour had ended, but even so, pushing her way through the crowd was hard work for Aomame.

At last she made her way to the coin locker and took out her shoulder bag and her black imitation-leather travel bag. The travel bag contained the cash she had taken from her safe-deposit box. She took the items out of her gym bag and divided them between the shoulder and travel bags: the envelope of cash she had received from Buzzcut, the vinyl pouch containing the pistol, the hard case with the ice pick. The now useless Nike gym bag she put into a nearby locker, inserted a hundred-yen coin, and turned the key. She had no intention of reclaiming it. It contained nothing that could be traced to her.

Travel bag in hand, Aomame walked around looking for a pay phone in the station. Crowds had formed at every phone. People stood in long lines, waiting their turn to call home and say they would be late because the train had stopped. Aomame put her face into a light frown. I guess the Little People are not going to let me get away that easily. Leader said they can’t touch me directly, but they can interfere with my movements through the back door, using other methods.

Aomame gave up on waiting her turn for a phone. Leaving the station, she walked a short distance, went into the first café she saw, and ordered an iced coffee. The pink pay phone here was also in use, but at least it had no line. She stood behind a middle-aged woman and waited for her long conversation to end. The woman flashed annoyed glances at Aomame but resigned herself to hanging up after she talked for five more minutes.

Aomame slipped all her coins into the phone and punched in the number she had memorized. After three rings, a mechanical recorded announcement came on: “Sorry, but we can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”

The beep sounded, and Aomame said into the mouthpiece, “Hello, Tamaru, please pick up if you’re there.”

Someone lifted the receiver, and Tamaru said, “I’m here.” “Good!” Aomame said.

Tamaru seemed to sense an unusual tension in her voice. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“For now.”

“How did the job go?”

Aomame said, “He’s in a deep sleep. The deepest sleep possible.”

“I see,” Tamaru said. He sounded truly relieved, and it colored his voice. This was unusual for him. “I’ll pass on the news. She’ll be glad to hear it.”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t. But you did it.”

“One way or another,” Aomame said. “Is this phone safe?” “I’m using a special circuit. Don’t worry.”

“I got my bags out of the Shinjuku Station coin locker. Now what?” “How much time do you have?”

“An hour and a half,” Aomame said. She explained briefly. After another hour and a half, the two bodyguards would check the bedroom and find that Leader was not breathing.

“An hour and a half is plenty,” Tamaru said.

“Do you think they’ll call the police right away?”

“I don’t know. Just yesterday, the police went into the group’s headquarters to start an investigation. They’re still at the questioning stage and haven’t launched the investigation itself, but it could be real trouble for them if the head of the religion suddenly turned up dead.”

“You think they might just handle it themselves without making anything public?”

“That would be nothing for them. We’ll know what happened when we see tomorrow’s newspaper – whether they reported the death or not. I’m no gambler, but if I had to make a bet, I’d put my money on their not reporting it.”

“They won’t just assume it happened naturally?”

“They won’t be able to tell by appearances. And they won’t know whether it was a natural death or murder without a meticulous autopsy. In any case, the first thing they’re going to want to do is talk to you. You were the last one to see him alive, after all. And once they learn that you’ve

cleared out of your apartment and gone into hiding, they’ll be pretty sure it was no natural death.”

“So then they’ll start looking for me – with every resource at their disposal.”

“That’s for sure,” Tamaru said.

“Do you think we can manage to keep me hidden?”

“We’ve got it all planned out – in great detail. If we follow the plan carefully and persistently, no one’s going to find you. The worst thing would be to panic.”

“I’m doing my best,” Aomame said.

“Keep it up. Act quickly and get time on your side. You’re a careful and persistent person. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Aomame said, “There was a huge downpour in the Akasaka area, and the subways have stopped running.”

“I know,” Tamaru said. “Don’t worry, we weren’t planning for you to use the subway. You’ll be taking a cab and going to a safe house in the city.”

“In the city? Wasn’t I supposed to be going somewhere far away?” “Yes, of course you will be going far away,” Tamaru said slowly, as

if spelling things out for her. “But first we have to get you ready – change your name and your face. And this was a particularly tough job: you must be all keyed up. Nothing good can come of running around crazily at a time like this. Hide out in the safe house for a while. You’ll be fine. We’ll provide all the support you need.”

“Where is this ‘safe house’?”

“In the Koenji neighborhood. Maybe twenty minutes from where you are now.”

Koenji, Aomame thought, tapping her nails against her teeth. She knew it was somewhere west of the downtown area, but she had never set foot there.

Tamaru told her the address and the name of the condo. As usual, she took no notes but engraved it on her brain.

“On the south side of Koenji Station. Near Ring Road 7. Apartment

303. Press 2831 to unlock the front door.”

Tamaru paused while Aomame repeated “303” and “2831” to herself.

“The key is taped to the bottom of the doormat. The apartment has everything you’ll need for now, so you shouldn’t have to go out for a while. I’ll make contact from my end. I’ll ring the phone three times, hang up, and call again twenty seconds later. We’d like to avoid having you call.”

“I see,” Aomame said.

“Were his men tough?” Tamaru asked.

“There were two of them, and both seemed pretty tough. I had some scary moments. But they’re no pros. They can’t touch you.”

“There aren’t too many people like me.” “Too many Tamarus could be a problem.” “Could be,” Tamaru said.

Carrying her bags, Aomame headed for the station’s taxi stand, where she encountered another long line. Subway operations had still not returned to normal, it seemed. She had no choice but to take her place in line.

Joining the many other annoyed-looking commuters and patiently waiting her turn, Aomame mentally repeated the safe house address, the name of the building and room number, the code for unlocking the front door, and Tamaru’s phone number. She was like an ascetic sitting on a rock on a mountaintop, intoning his precious mantra. Aomame had always had confidence in her powers of memory. She could easily memorize those few bits of information. But these figures were now a lifeline. If she forgot even one of them in this situation, it could put her survival in jeopardy. She had to make sure they were engraved on her brain.

By the time Aomame finally got a taxi, a full hour had passed since she had left Leader’s corpse in the hotel room. So far, it was taking her twice as long as she had planned – a delay that the Little People had caused, no doubt. No, it could be sheer coincidence. Maybe I’m just letting the specter of some nonexistent “Little People” frighten me.

Aomame gave the driver her destination and then settled back in the seat, closing her eyes. Right about now, those two guys in their dark suits are probably checking their watches and waiting for their guru to wake up. Aomame pictured them. Buzzcut was drinking coffee and thinking about all sorts of things. Thinking was his job. Thinking and deciding. Maybe he had grown suspicious: Leader’s sleep was all too quiet. But Leader always slept soundly, without making noises – no snoring or even heavy breathing. Still,

there was always his presence. The woman had said that Leader would be sound asleep for at least two hours, that it was important to let him rest quietly so that his muscles could recover. Only an hour had gone by, but something was bothering Buzzcut. Maybe he should check on Leader’s condition. What should he do?

Ponytail was the dangerous one, though. Aomame still had a vivid image of that momentary hint of violence he had displayed as she was leaving the hotel room. He was silent, but his instincts were sharp. His fighting skills must also be outstanding – probably much more so than she had imagined until that moment. Her own command of martial arts was surely no match for his. In a fight, he would probably not give her a chance to reach for her gun. Fortunately, though, he was no professional. He had let his rational mind interfere before he put his intuition into action. He was used to taking orders – unlike Tamaru. Tamaru would subdue his opponent and render him powerless before thinking. Action came first – trust the instincts and let rational judgments come later. A split-second’s hesitation and it was all over.

Recalling that moment at the door, Aomame felt her underarms growing moist. She shook her head. I was just lucky. At least I avoided being captured on the spot. I have to be a lot more careful from now on. Tamaru was right: the most important things are to be careful and persistent. Danger comes the moment you relax.

The driver was a polite-spoken middle-aged man. He pulled out a map, stopped the car, turned off the meter, and kindly found the exact location of the condo building. Aomame thanked him and stepped out of the cab. It was a handsome new six-story building in the middle of a residential area. There was no one at the entrance. Aomame punched in 2831 to unlock the front door, went inside, and rode a clean but narrow elevator up to the third floor. The first thing she did upon exiting the elevator was find the location of the emergency stairway. Then she removed the key taped to the back of the doormat of room 303 and used it to go inside. The entryway lights were set to go on automatically when the door opened. The place had that new- apartment smell. All of the furniture and appliances looked brand-new and unused, as if they had just come out of the boxes and plastic wrapping –

matching pieces that could have been chosen by a designer to equip a model condo: simple, functional design, free of the smell of daily life.

To the left of the entry was a living/dining room. Off a hallway was a bathroom and beyond that were two rooms. One had a queen-sized bed that was already made. The blinds were closed. Opening the window that faced the street, she heard the traffic on Ring Road 7 like the distant roar of the ocean. Closing it again, she could hear almost nothing. There was a small balcony off the living room. It overlooked a small park across the street. There were swings, a slide, a sandbox, and a public toilet. A tall mercury- vapor lamp made everything unnaturally bright. A large zelkova tree spread its branches over the area. This was a third-floor condo, but there were no other tall buildings nearby from which she could be watched.

Aomame thought about the Jiyugaoka apartment she had just vacated. It was in an old building, not terribly clean, with the occasional cockroach, and the walls were thin – not exactly the kind of place to which one became attached. Now, though, she missed it. In this brand-new, spotless condo, she felt like an anonymous person, stripped of memory and individuality.

Aomame opened the refrigerator to find four cans of Heineken chilling in the door. She opened one and took a swallow. Switching on the twenty-one-inch television, she sat down in front of it to watch the news. There was a report on the thunderstorm. The top story concerned the flooding of Akasaka-Mitsuke Station and the stopping of the Marunouchi and Ginza lines. The water overflowing the street had poured down the station steps like a waterfall. Station employees in rain ponchos had piled sandbags at the entrances, but they were obviously too late. The subway lines were still not running, and there was no estimate of when they would return to normal. The reporter thrust a mike at one stranded commuter after another. One man complained, “The morning forecast said it would be clear all day!”

She watched the news program until it ended. Of course, there was no report yet on the death of Sakigake’s Leader. Buzzcut and Ponytail were probably still waiting in the next room for the full two hours to pass. Then they would learn the truth. She took the pouch from her travel bag and pulled out the Heckler & Koch, setting it on the dining table. On the new table, the German-made automatic pistol looked terribly crude and taciturn – and black through and through – but at least it gave a focal point to the

otherwise impersonal room. Landscape with Pistol, Aomame muttered, as if titling a painting. In any case, I have to keep this within reach at all times – whether I use it to shoot someone else or myself.

The large refrigerator had been stocked with enough food for her to stay for two weeks or more: fruit, vegetables, and several processed foods ready for eating. The freezer held various meats, fish, and bread. There was even some ice cream. In the cabinets she found a good selection of foods in vacuum pouches and cans, plus spices. Rice and pasta. A generous supply of mineral water. Two bottles of red wine and two white. She had no idea who put these supplies together, but the person had done a very thorough job. For now, she couldn’t think of anything that was missing.

Feeling a little hungry, she took out some Camembert, cut a wedge, and ate it with crackers. When the cheese was half gone, she washed a stalk of celery, spread it with mayonnaise, and munched it whole.

Next she examined the contents of the dresser drawers in the bedroom. The top one held pajamas and a thin bathrobe – new ones still in their plastic packs. More well-chosen supplies. The next drawer held three sets of T-shirts, socks, and underwear. All were simple, white things that seemed chosen to match the design of the furniture, and all were still packed in plastic. These were probably the same things they gave to the women staying in the safe house, made of good materials but very much “supplied” by an institution.

The bathroom had shampoo, conditioner, skin cream, and cologne, everything she needed. She rarely put on makeup and so needed few cosmetics. There were a toothbrush, interdental brush, and a tube of toothpaste. They had also thoughtfully supplied her with a hairbrush, cotton swabs, razor, small scissors, and sanitary products. The place was well stocked with toilet paper and tissues. Bath and face towels had been neatly folded and piled in a cabinet. Everything was there.

She looked in the bedroom closet, wondering if, by any chance, she would find dresses and shoes of her size – Armani and Ferragamo, preferably. But no, the closet was empty. There was a limit to how far they could go. They knew the difference between thoroughness and overkill. It was like Jay Gatsby’s library: the books were real, but the pages uncut. Besides, she would not need street clothes while she was here. They wouldn’t supply things she didn’t need. There were plenty of hangers, though.

She used those hangers for the clothes she had brought in her travel bag, taking each piece out, checking it for wrinkles, and hanging it in the closet. She knew that it would be more convenient, as a fugitive, to leave the clothes in her bag rather than hanging them up, but the thing she hated most in the world was wearing creased clothing.

I guess I can never be a coolheaded professional criminal, Aomame thought, if I’m going to be worried about wrinkled clothes at a time like this! She suddenly recalled a conversation she had once had with Ayumi.

“The thing to do is keep your cash in your mattress so in a jam you can grab it and escape out the window.”

“That’s it,” Ayumi said, snapping her fingers. “Like in ‘The Getaway.’ The Steve McQueen movie. A wad of bills and a shotgun. I love that kind of stuff.”

It’s not much fun to live like that, Aomame said to the wall.

Aomame went into the bathroom, stripped, and showered. The hot water took off the remaining unpleasant sweat still clinging to her body. Then she went into the kitchen, sat at the counter, and took another swallow from her beer can while toweling her hair.

In the course of this one day, several things have taken a decisive step forward, Aomame thought. The gears have turned forward with a click. And gears that have turned forward never turn back. That is one of the world’s rules.

Aomame picked up the gun, turned it upside down, and put the muzzle into her mouth. The steel felt horrendously cold and hard against her teeth. She caught the faint scent of grease. This is the best way to blow the brains out. Pull the hammer, squeeze the trigger. Everything ends – just like that. No need to think. No need to run around.

Aomame was not particularly afraid of dying. I die, Tengo lives. He goes on living in this 1Q84, this world with two moons. But I’m not in it. I don’t get to meet him in this world. Or any world. At least, that’s what Leader says.

Aomame took another slow scan of the room. It’s like a model apartment, she thought. Clean and uniform, with every need supplied. But distant and devoid of individuality. Papier-mâché. It wouldn’t be very pleasant to die in a place like this. But even if you changed the backdrop to

something more desirable, is there really a pleasant way to die in this world? And come to think of it, isn’t this world we live in itself like a gigantic model room? We come in, sit down, have a cup of tea, gaze out the window at the scenery, and when the time comes we say thank you and leave. All the furniture is fake. Even the moon hanging in the window may be made of paper.

But I love Tengo. Aomame murmured the words aloud. “I love Tengo.” This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain, and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon. It – or they – are real moons. And in this world, I have willingly accepted death for Tengo’s sake. I won’t let anyone call this fake.

Aomame looked at the round clock on the wall. A simple design, by Braun. Well matched to the Heckler & Koch. The clock was the only thing hanging on the walls of this apartment. The clock hands had passed ten. Just about time for the two men to find Leader’s corpse.

In the bedroom of an elegant suite at the Hotel Okura, a man had breathed his last. A big man. A man who was far from ordinary. He had moved on to another world. No one could do anything to bring him back.

Time now for ghosts.

Chapter 16. TENGO: Like a Ghost Ship

What kind of world will be there tomorrow? “No one knows the answer to that,” Fuka-Eri said.

BUT THE WORLD to which Tengo awoke did not appear especially changed from the world he had seen as he fell asleep the night before. The bedside clock said it was just after six. Outside, it was fully light, the air perfectly clear. A wedge of light came in through the curtains. Summer was winding down, it seemed. The cries of the birds were sharp and clear. Yesterday’s violent thunderstorm felt like an apparition – or else something that had happened in an unknown place in the distant past.

The first thing that came to Tengo’s mind upon waking was that Fuka-Eri might have disappeared during the night. But no, there she was, next to him, sound asleep, like a little animal in hibernation. Her face was beautiful in sleep, a few narrow strands of black hair against her white cheek forming a complex pattern, her ears hidden. Her breathing was soft. Tengo stared at the ceiling for a while, listening. Her breathing sounded like a tiny bellows.

He retained a vivid tactile memory of last night’s ejaculation. He had actually released semen – a lot of semen – inside this young girl. The thought made his head swim. But now that morning was here, it seemed as unreal as that violent storm, like something that happened in a dream. He had experienced wet dreams several times in his teens. He would have a realistic sexual dream, ejaculate, and then wake up. The events had all happened in the dream, but the release of semen was real. What he felt now was a lot like that.

It had not been a wet dream, though. He had unquestionably come inside Fuka-Eri. She had deliberately penetrated herself with his penis and squeezed every drop of semen out of him. He had simply followed her lead. He had been totally paralyzed at the time, unable to move a finger. And as far as he was concerned, he was coming while in the elementary school classroom, not in Fuka-Eri, who later told him there was no chance she’d become pregnant because she had no periods. He couldn’t fully grasp that such a thing had actually happened. But it had actually happened. As a real event in the real world. Probably.

He got out of bed, got dressed, went to the kitchen, boiled water, and made coffee. While making the coffee, he tried to put his head in order, like arranging the contents of a desk drawer. He couldn’t get things straight, though. All he succeeded in doing was rearranging the items in the drawer, putting the paper clips where the eraser had been, the pencil sharpener where the paper clips had been, and the eraser where the pencil sharpener had been, exchanging one form of confusion for another.

After drinking a fresh cup of coffee, he went to the bathroom and shaved while listening to a baroque music program on the FM radio: Telemann’s partitas for various solo instruments. This was his normal routine: make coffee in the kitchen, drink it, and shave while listening to Baroque Music for You on the radio. Only the musical selections changed each day. Yesterday it had almost certainly been Rameau’s keyboard music.

The commentator was speaking.

Telemann won high praise throughout Europe in the early eighteenth century, but came to be disdained as too prolific by people in the nineteenth century. This was no fault of Telemann’s, however. The purposes for which music is composed underwent great changes as

the structure of European society changed, leading to this reversal in his reputation.

Is this the new world? he wondered.

He took another look at his surroundings. Still there was no sign of change. For now, there was no sign of disdainful people. In any case, what he had to do was shave. Whether the world had changed or not, no one was going to shave for him. He would have to do it himself.

When he was through shaving, he made some toast, buttered and ate it, and drank another cup of coffee. He went into the bedroom to check on Fuka-Eri, but she was still in a very deep sleep, it seemed: she hadn’t moved at all. Her hair still formed the same pattern on her cheek. Her breathing was as soft as before.

For the moment, he had nothing planned. He would not be teaching at the cram school. No one would be coming to visit, nor did he have any intention of visiting anyone. He could spend the day any way he liked. Tengo sat at the kitchen table and continued writing his novel, filling in the little squares on the manuscript paper with a fountain pen. As always, his attention became focused on his work. Switching channels in his mind made everything else disappear from his field of vision.

It was just before nine when Fuka-Eri woke. She had taken off his pajamas and was wearing one of Tengo’s T-shirts – the Jeff Beck Japan Tour T-shirt he was wearing when he visited his father in Chikura. Her nipples showed clearly through the shirt, which could not help but revive in Tengo the feeling of last night’s ejaculation, the way a certain date brings to mind related historical facts.

The FM radio was playing a Marcel Dupré organ piece. Tengo stopped writing and fixed her breakfast. Fuka-Eri drank Earl Grey tea and ate strawberry jam on toast. She devoted as much time and care to spreading the jam on the toast as Rembrandt had when he painted the folds in a piece of clothing.

“I wonder how many copies your book has sold,” Tengo said. “You mean Air Chrysalis?” Fuka-Eri asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t know,” Fuka-Eri said, lightly creasing her brow. “A lot.” Numbers were not important to her, Tengo thought. Her “a lot”

brought to mind clover growing on a broad plane as far as the eye could see. The clover suggested only the idea of “a lot,” but no one could count them all.

“A lot of people are reading Air Chrysalis,” Tengo said.

Saying nothing, Fuka-Eri inspected how well she had spread the jam on her toast.

“I’ll have to see Mr. Komatsu. As soon as possible,” Tengo said, looking at Fuka-Eri across the table. As always, her face showed no expression. “You have met Mr. Komatsu, haven’t you?”

“At the press conference.” “Did you talk?”

Fuka-Eri gave her head a slight shake, meaning they had hardly talked at all.

Tengo could imagine the scene vividly. Komatsu was talking his head off at top speed, saying everything he was thinking – or not thinking – while she hardly opened her mouth or listened to what he had to say. Komatsu was not concerned about that. If anyone ever asked Tengo for a concrete example of two perfectly incompatible personalities, he would name Fuka-Eri and Komatsu.

Tengo said, “I haven’t seen Mr. Komatsu for a very long time. And I haven’t heard from him, either. He must be very busy these days. Ever since Air Chrysalis became a bestseller, he’s been swept up in the circus. It’s about time, though, for us to get together and have a serious talk. We’ve got all kinds of problems to discuss. Now would be a good chance to do that, since you’re here. How about it? Want to see him together?”

“The three of us?”

“Uh-huh. That’d be the quickest way to settle things.”

Fuka-Eri thought about this for a moment. Or else she was imagining some thing. Then she said, “I don’t mind. If we can.”

If we can, Tengo repeated mentally. It had a prophetic sound.

“Are you thinking we might not be able to?” Tengo asked with some hesitation.

Fuka-Eri did not reply.

“Assuming we can, we’ll meet him. Are you okay with that?” “Meet him and do what?”

“’Meet him and do what’? Well, first I’d return some money to him. A fairly good-sized payment was transferred into my bank account the other day for my rewriting of Air Chrysalis, but I’d rather not take it. Not that I have any regrets about having done the work. It was a great inspiration for my own writing and guided me in a good direction. And it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. It’s been well received critically and the book is selling. I don’t believe it was a mistake for me to take it on. I just never expected it to blow up like this. Of course, I am the one who agreed to do it, and I certainly have to take responsibility for that. But I just don’t want to be paid for it.”

Fuka-Eri gave her shoulders a little shrug.

Tengo said, “You’re right. It might not change a thing. But I’d like to make it clear where I stand.”

“Who for?”

“Well, mainly for myself,” Tengo said, lowering his voice somewhat.

Fuka-Eri picked up the lid of the jam jar and stared at it as if she found it fascinating.

“But it may already be too late,” Tengo said. Fuka-Eri had nothing to say to that.

When Tengo tried phoning Komatsu’s office after one o’clock (Komatsu never came to work in the morning), the woman who answered said that Komatsu had not been in for the past several days. That was all she knew. Or, if she knew more, she obviously had no intention of sharing it with Tengo. He asked her to connect him with another editor he knew. Tengo had written short columns under a pseudonym for the monthly magazine edited by this man, who was two or three years older than Tengo and generally well disposed toward him, in part because they had graduated from the same university.

“Komatsu has been out for over a week now,” the editor said. “He called in on the third day to say he wouldn’t be coming to work for a while because he wasn’t feeling well, and we haven’t seen him since. The guys in the book division are going crazy. He’s in charge of Air Chrysalis and so far he’s handled everything himself. He’s supposed to restrict himself to the magazine side of things, but he ignored that fact and hasn’t let anybody else lay a finger on this project, even when it went into book production. So if

he takes off now, nobody knows what to do. If he’s really sick, I suppose there’s nothing we can say, but still …”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know. All he said was he’s not feeling well. And then he hung up. Haven’t heard a word from him since. We wanted to ask him a few things and tried calling him, but all we got was the answering machine. Nobody knows what to do.”

“Doesn’t he have a family?”

“No, he lives alone. He used to have a wife and a kid, but I’m pretty sure he’s been divorced for a long time. He doesn’t tell anybody anything, so I don’t really know, but that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Anyhow, it’s strange that he’s been out a week and you’ve only heard from him once.”

“Well, you know Komatsu. Common sense isn’t really his thing.”

Receiver in hand, Tengo thought about this remark. “It’s true, you never know what he’ll do next. He’s socially awkward and he can be self- centered, but as far as I know he’s not irresponsible about his work. I don’t care how sick he is, he wouldn’t just let everything go and not contact the office when Air Chrysalis is selling like this. He’s not that bad.”

“You’re absolutely right,” the editor said. “Maybe somebody should go to his place and see what’s up. There was all that trouble with Sakigake over Fuka-Eri’s disappearance, and we still don’t know where she is. Something might have happened. I can’t believe he’d fake being sick so he could take off from work and hide out with Fuka-Eri, right?”

Tengo said nothing. He could hardly tell the man that Fuka-Eri was right there in front of him, cleaning her ears with a cotton swab.

“And not just this case. Everything involving this book. I don’t know, there’s something wrong with it. We’re glad it’s selling so well, but there’s something about it that’s not quite right. And I’m not the only one: a lot of people at the company feel that way about it. Oh, by the way, Tengo, did you have something you wanted to talk to Komatsu about?”

“No, nothing special. I haven’t talked to him for a while, so I was just wondering what he’s up to.”

“Maybe the stress of it all finally got to him. Anyhow, Air Chrysalis is the first bestseller this company has ever had. I’m looking forward to this year’s bonus. Have you read the book?”

“Of course, I read the manuscript when it was submitted for the competition.”

“Oh, that’s right. You were a screener.”

“I thought it was well written and pretty interesting, too.” “Oh, it’s interesting all right, and well worth a read.”

Tengo detected an ominous ring to his remark. “But something about it bothers you?”

“Well, this is just an editor’s intuition. You’re right: it is well written. A little too well written for a debut by a seventeen-year-old girl. And now she’s disappeared. And we can’t get in touch with her editor. The book is like one of those old ghost ships with nobody aboard: it just keeps sailing along, all sails set, straight down the bestseller seaway.”

Tengo managed a vague grunt.

“It’s creepy. Mysterious. Too good to be true. This is just between you and me, but people around here are whispering that Komatsu himself might have fixed up the manuscript – more than common sense would allow. I can’t believe it, but if it’s true, we could be holding a time bomb.”

“Maybe it was just a series of lucky coincidences.”

“Even so, good luck can only last so long,” the editor said. Tengo thanked him and ended the call.

After hanging up, Tengo said to Fuka-Eri, “Mr. Komatsu hasn’t been to work for the past week. They can’t get in touch with him.”

Fuka-Eri said nothing.

“The people around me seem to be disappearing one after another,” Tengo said.

Still Fuka-Eri said nothing.

Tengo suddenly recalled the fact that people lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off, turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned. If so, there’s nothing mysterious about somebody suddenly disappearing one day.

“I may be next,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri gave her head a tight, little shake. “Not you,” she said. “Why not me?”

“Because I did a purification.”

Tengo contemplated this for several seconds without reaching a conclusion. He knew from the start that no amount of thinking could do any good. Still, he could not entirely forgo the effort to think.

“In any case, we can’t see Mr. Komatsu right now,” Tengo said. “And I can’t give the money back to him.”

“The money is no problem,” Fuka-Eri said. “Then what is a problem?” Tengo asked.

Of course, he did not receive an answer.

Tengo decided to follow through on last night’s resolution to search for Aomame. If he spent the whole day in a concentrated effort, he should at least be able to come up with some kind of clue. But in fact, it turned out not to be that easy. He left Fuka-Eri in his apartment (after warning her repeatedly not to open the door for anyone) and went to the telephone company’s main office, which had a complete set of telephone books for every part of the country, available for public use. He went through all the phone books for Tokyo’s twenty-three central wards, looking for the name “Aomame.” Even if he didn’t find Aomame herself, a relative might be living there, and he could ask that person for news of Aomame.

But he found no one with the name Aomame. He broadened his search to include the entire Tokyo metropolis and still found no one. He further broadened his search to include the entire Kanto region – the prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama. At that point, his time and energy ran out. After glaring at the phone books’ tiny type all day, his eyeballs were aching.

Several possibilities came to mind.

1. She was living in a suburb of the city of Utashinai on Hokkaido.
2.  
3. She had married and changed her name to “Ito.”
4.  
5. She kept her number unlisted to protect her privacy.
6.  
7. She had died in the spring two years earlier from a virulent influenza.

There must have been any number of possibilities besides these. It didn’t make sense to rely strictly on the phone books. Nor could he read every one in the country. It could be next month before he finally reached Hokkaido. He had to find another way.

Tengo bought a telephone card and entered a booth at the telephone company. From there he called their old elementary school in Ichikawa and asked the female office worker who answered the phone to look up the address they had on file for Aomame, saying he wanted to reach her on alumni association business. The woman seemed kind and unhurried as she went through the roster of graduates. Aomame had transferred to another school in the fifth grade and was not a graduate. Her name therefore did not appear in the roster, and they did not know her current address. It would be possible, however, to find the address to which she moved at the time. Did he want to know that?

Tengo said that he did want to know that.

He took down the address and telephone number, “c/o Koji Tasaki” in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward. Aomame had apparently left her parents’ home at the time. Something must have happened. Figuring it was probably hopeless, Tengo tried dialing the phone number. As he had expected, the number was no longer in use. It had been twenty years, after all. He called Information and gave them the address and the name Koji Tasaki, but learned only that no telephone was listed under that name.

Next Tengo tried finding the phone number for the headquarters of the Society of Witnesses, but no contacts were listed for them in any of the phone books he perused – nothing under “Before the Flood,” nothing under “Society of Witnesses” or anything else of that ilk. He tried the classified directory under “Religious Organizations” but found nothing. At the end of this struggle, Tengo concluded that they probably didn’t want anyone contacting them.

This was, upon reflection, rather odd. They showed up all the time. They’d ring the bell or knock on the door, unconcerned that you might be otherwise occupied – be it baking a soufflé, soldering a connection, washing your hair, training a mouse to do tricks, or thinking about quadratic functions – and, with a big smile, invite you to study the Bible with them. They had no problem coming to see you, but you were not free to go to see

them (unless you were a believer, probably). You couldn’t ask them one simple question. This was rather inconvenient.

But even if he did manage to find the Society’s phone number and get in touch with them, it was hard to imagine that such a wary organization would freely disclose information on an individual believer. No doubt they had their reasons for being so guarded. Many people hated them for their extreme, eccentric doctrines and for the closed-minded nature of their faith. They had caused several social problems, as a result of which their treatment often bordered on persecution. It had probably become second nature for them to protect their community from a less-than-welcoming outside world.

In any case, Tengo’s search for Aomame had been shut down, at least for now. He could not immediately think of what additional search methods might remain. Aomame was such an unusual name, you could never forget it once you’d heard it. But in trying to trace the footsteps of one single human being who bore that name, he quickly collided with a hard wall. It might be quicker to go around asking Society of Witnesses members directly. Headquarters would probably doubt his motives and refuse to tell him anything, but if he were to ask some individual member, he felt, they would probably be kind enough to tell him. But Tengo did not know even one member of the Society of Witnesses. Come to think of it, no one from the Society had knocked on his door for a good ten years now. Why did they not come when you wanted them and come only when you didn’t want them?

One possibility was to put a classified ad in the paper. “Aomame, please contact me immediately. Kawana.” Stupid sounding. Tengo couldn’t believe that Aomame would bother to contact him even if she saw such an ad. It would probably just end up scaring her away. “Kawana” was not such a common name, either, but Tengo couldn’t believe that Aomame would still remember it. Kawana – who’s that? She simply wouldn’t contact him. And besides, who read classified ads, anyway?

Another approach might be to hire a private detective. They should know how to look for people. They have their methods and connections. The clues Tengo already had might be enough for them to find her right away. And it probably wouldn’t be too expensive. But that might be something to set aside as a last resort, Tengo thought. He would try a little harder to see what he could come up with himself.

When the daylight began to fade, he went home to find Fuka-Eri sitting on the floor, listening to records – old jazz records left by his girlfriend. Record jackets were spread on the floor – Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Billie Holliday. Spinning on the turntable just then was Louis Armstrong singing “Chantez Les Bas,” a memorable song. It reminded him of his girlfriend. They had often listened to this one between bouts of lovemaking. Near the end, the trombonist, Trummy Young, gets carried away, forgets to end his solo at the agreed-upon point, and plays an extra eight bars. “Here, this is the part,” his girlfriend had explained to him. When it ended, it was Tengo’s job to get out of bed naked, go to the next room, and turn the LP over to play the second side. He felt a twinge of nostalgia recalling those days. Though he never thought the relationship would last forever, he had not expected it to end so abruptly.

Tengo felt odd seeing Fuka-Eri listening intently to the records that Kyoko Yasuda had left behind. Wrinkling her brow in complete concentration, she seemed to be trying to hear something beyond the old music, straining to see the shadow of something in its tones.

“You like this record?”

“I listened to it a lot,” Fuka-Eri said. “Is that okay.”

“Sure, it’s okay. But aren’t you bored here all by yourself?”

Fuka-Eri gave her head a little shake. “I have stuff to think about.”

Tengo wanted to ask Fuka-Eri about what had happened between them during the thunderstorm. Why did you do that? He couldn’t believe that Fuka-Eri had any sexual desire for him. It must have been an act that somehow took shape unconnected with sex. If so, what possible meaning could it have had?

Even if he asked her about it outright, though, he doubted he would receive a straight answer. And Tengo couldn’t quite bring himself to broach a subject like that directly on such a peaceful, quiet September evening. It was an act that had been performed in hiding at a dark hour in a dark place in the midst of a raging thunderstorm. Brought out into everyday circumstances, the nature of its meaning might change.

So Tengo approached the question from a different angle, one that admitted of a simple yes-or-no answer. “You don’t have periods?”

“No” was Fuka-Eri’s curt reply. “You’ve never had even one?” “No, not even one.”

“This may be none of my business, but you’re seventeen years old.

It’s probably not normal that you’ve never had a period.” Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug.

“Have you seen a doctor about it?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “It wouldn’t do any good.” “Why wouldn’t it do any good?”

Fuka-Eri did not answer. She gave no sign that she had even heard the question. Maybe her ears had a special valve that sensed a question’s appropriateness or inappropriateness, opening and closing as needed, like a mermaid’s gills.

“Are the Little People involved in this, too?” Tengo asked. Again no answer.

Tengo sighed. He couldn’t think of anything else to ask that would enable him to approach a clarification of last night’s events. The narrow, uncertain path gave out at that point, and only a deep forest lay ahead. He checked his footing, scanned his surroundings, and looked up to the heavens. This was always the problem with talking to Fuka-Eri. All roads inevitably gave out. A Gilyak might be able to continue on even after the road ended, but for Tengo it was impossible.

Instead he brought up a new subject. “I’m looking for a certain person,” he said. “A woman.”

There was no point in talking about this to Fuka-Eri. Tengo was fully aware of that. But he wanted to talk about it to someone. He wanted to hear himself telling someone – anyone – what he was thinking about Aomame. Unless he did so, he felt Aomame would grow even more distant from him.

“I haven’t seen her for twenty years. I was ten when I last saw her. She and I are the same age. We were in the same class in elementary school. I’ve tried different ways of finding her without any luck.”

The record ended. Fuka-Eri lifted it from the turntable, narrowed her eyes, and sniffed the vinyl a few times. Then, handling it carefully by the edges so as not to leave fingerprints on it, she slipped it into its paper envelope and slid the envelope into the record jacket – gently, lovingly, like transferring a sleeping kitten to its bed.

“You want to see this person,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question

mark.

“Yes, she is very important to me.”

“Have you been looking for her for twenty years,” Fuka-Eri asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Tengo said. While searching for the proper words to continue, Tengo folded his hands on the table. “To tell you the truth, I just started looking for her today.”

“Today,” she said.

“If she’s so important to you, why have you never looked for her until today?” Tengo asked for Fuka-Eri. “Good question.”

Fuka-Eri looked at him in silence.

Tengo put his thoughts into some kind of order. Then he said, “I’ve probably been taking a long detour. This girl named Aomame has been – how should I put this? – at the center of my consciousness all this time without a break. She has functioned as an important anchor to my very existence. In spite of that fact – is it? – I guess I haven’t been able to fully grasp her significance to me precisely because she has been all too close to the center.”

Fuka-Eri stared at Tengo. It was impossible to tell from her expression whether this young girl had the slightest comprehension of what he was saying. But that hardly mattered. Tengo was half talking to himself.

“But it has finally hit me: she is neither a concept nor a symbol nor a metaphor. She actually exists: she has warm flesh and a spirit that moves. I never should have lost sight of that warmth and that movement. It took me twenty years to understand something so obvious. It always takes me a while to think of things, but this is a little too much. It may already be too late. But one way or another, I want to find her.”

With her knees on the floor, Fuka-Eri straightened up, the shape of her nipples showing through the Jeff Beck T-shirt.

“Ah-oh-mah-meh,” Fuka-Eri said slowly, as if pondering each syllable.

“Yes. Green Peas. It’s an unusual name.”

“You want to meet her,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark. “Yes, of course I want to meet her,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri chewed her lower lip as she took a moment to think about something. Then she looked up as if she had hit upon a new idea and said, “She might be very close by.”

Chapter 17. AOMAME: Pull the Rat Out

THE SEVEN A.M. television news carried a big report on the Akasaka- Mitsuke subway station’s flooding, but there was no mention of the death of Sakigake’s Leader in a suite at the Hotel Okura. When NHK’s news ended, Aomame switched channels and watched the news on a few other channels, but none of them announced that large man’s painless death.

They hid his body, Aomame thought, scowling. Tamaru had predicted such a possibility, but she had found it hard to believe that they would actually do it. Somehow they had managed to carry Leader’s corpse from the Hotel Okura suite, load it into a car, and take it away. He was a big man, and the corpse must have been tremendously heavy. The hotel was full of guests and employees. Security cameras were everywhere. How had they succeeded in carrying the corpse to the hotel’s underground parking lot without having anyone notice?

They must have transported the body at night to the headquarters in Yamanashi and then held a discussion of what to do with it. At least they were not going to formally report his death to the police. Once you’ve hidden something, you have to keep it hidden.

Aomame, of course, had no idea how they intended to fill the vacuum created by Leader’s death. But they would exhaust every means available to them to maintain the organization. As the man himself had said, the system would endure with or without a leader. Who could inherit Leader’s mantle? That problem had nothing to do with Aomame. Her assignment had been to liquidate Leader, not to crush a religion.

She thought about the two bodyguards in their dark suits. Buzzcut and Ponytail. When they got back to headquarters, would they be held responsible for having allowed Leader to be wiped out before their very eyes? Aomame imagined their next assignment: “Find that woman, no matter what. Don’t come back here until you do.” It was possible.

She ate an apple for breakfast, but she had almost no appetite. Her hands still retained the sensation of driving the needle into the back of the man’s neck. While peeling the apple with a small knife in her right hand, she felt a slight trembling in her body – a trembling she had never experienced before. When she had killed someone in the past, the memory of it had nearly faded after a night’s sleep. Though it never felt good to take a person’s life, those were all men who didn’t deserve to go on living. They inspired more disgust than human pity. But this time was different. Objectively, what this man had been doing was perhaps an affront to humanity. But he himself was, in many senses, an extraordinary human being, and his extraordinariness, at least in part, appeared to transcend standards of good and evil. Ending his life had also been something extraordinary. It had left a strange kind of resonance in her hands – an extraordinary resonance.

What he had left behind was a “promise.” This was the conclusion to which Aomame’s thoughts led her. The weight of that promise was left in her hands as a sign. She understood this. The sign might not fade from her hands – ever.

The phone rang shortly after nine a.m. It was Tamaru. It rang three times, stopped, and started again twenty seconds later.

“They didn’t call the police after all,” Tamaru said. “It’s not on the TV news or in the paper.”

“He did die, though. I’m sure of that.”

“Yes, of course, I know. No question he died. There were a few movements around there. They’ve already cleared out of the hotel. They called in several people from their city branch office in the middle of the night, probably to help deal with the body. They’re good at things like that. Around one a.m., an S-Class Mercedes and a Toyota Hiace van left the hotel parking lot. Both had dark glass and Yamanashi plates. They were probably back in Sakigake headquarters by sunrise. The police investigated the compound the day before yesterday, but it wasn’t a full-scale operation, and all the officers were long gone by then. Sakigake has a big incinerator. If you threw a body in there, it wouldn’t leave a bone, just clean smoke.”

“Creepy.”

“They’re a creepy bunch, all right. Even if their Leader is dead, the organization will keep moving for a while, like a snake that keeps going even after its head is cut off. Head on or off, it knows exactly where it’s headed. Nobody can say what will happen in the future. It might die. Or grow a new head.”

“He was no ordinary man.”

Tamaru offered no opinion on that matter. “Completely different from the others,” Aomame said.

Tamaru took a moment to gauge the resonance of her words. Then he said, “Yes, I can imagine this was different from the others. But we’d better start thinking about what happens from now on, and be a little more practical. Otherwise you won’t be able to survive.”

Aomame thought she should say something, but the words would not come. The trembling was still there in her body.

“Madame tells me she wants to talk to you,” Tamaru said. “Can you

talk?”

voice.

“Of course,” Aomame said.

The dowager took the phone. Aomame could sense relief in her

“I am so grateful to you, more than I can ever say. You handled this

one perfectly.”

“Thank you very much. But I don’t think I’ll be able to do it again,” Aomame said.

“No, I realize that. We asked too much of you. I’m so happy you’re all right. We won’t be asking you to do this anymore. This was the last time. We have prepared a place for you to settle into. You won’t have to worry

about a thing. Just lie low for a while in the safe house. In the meantime, we’ll make arrangements for you to move into your new life.”

Aomame thanked her.

“Do you have everything you need there? If not, let us know. I’ll have Tamaru take care of it right away.”

“No, thank you. As far as I can tell, everything I need is here.”

The dowager lightly cleared her throat. “Now, this is something I want you to keep in mind. What we did was absolutely right. We punished the man for his crimes and prevented him from committing any more. There will be no more victims. We put a stop to that. You must not let this bother you.”

“He said the same thing.” “’He’?”

“Sakigake’s Leader. The man I took care of last night.”

The dowager remained silent for a full five seconds. Then she said, “He knew?”

“Yes, he knew I was there to take care of him, and still he let me in. He was, if anything, hoping for death. His body had already suffered serious injury and was heading toward a slow but inevitable end. All I did was speed up the process somewhat and provide relief to a body tortured by intense pain.”

The dowager seemed seriously shocked to hear this. Again she was at a loss for words, something most unusual for her.

“You mean to say –” the dowager said, looking for the right words, “that he himself was hoping for punishment for his deeds?”

“What he wanted was to end his painful life as soon as possible.” “And he made up his mind to let you kill him.”

“Exactly.”

Aomame said nothing about the bargain she had struck with Leader. In exchange for letting Tengo go on living in this world, she herself would have to die: this was an agreement known only to Aomame and the man. No one else was to be told.

Aomame said, “The things he did were deviant and deserving of death, but he was no ordinary human being. Or at least he possessed something special.”

“Something special?” the dowager said.

“It’s hard to explain,” Aomame said. “It was at the same time both a special power or gift and a cruel burden. It was, I think, eating him alive from the inside.”

“Could it be that this special something urged him on toward his deviant behavior?”

“Probably.”

“In any case, you put a stop to it.”

“That is true,” Aomame said, her voice dry.

Holding the receiver in her left hand, Aomame spread out her right hand, with its lingering sensation of death, and stared at the palm. What did it mean to “have ambiguous congress” with those girls? Aomame could neither understand it nor explain it to the dowager.

“As always, I made the death appear to have been a natural one, but they will probably not do us the favor of seeing it that way. Given the circumstances, I’m sure they will conclude that I had something to do with it. And as you know, his death has not been reported to the police yet.”

“Whatever steps they choose to take, we will do everything in our power to protect you,” the dowager said. “They have their organization, but we have strong connections and ample funds. Also, you are a careful, intelligent person. We won’t let them have their way.”

“Have you not yet found Tsubasa?” Aomame asked.

“We still don’t know where she went. My thought is that she is in the Sakigake compound. She has nowhere else to go. We haven’t found a way to bring her back yet, but I suspect that Leader’s death has put the group into a state of confusion. We may be able to do something to exploit that confusion in order to save her. That child must be protected.”

That child in the safe house was not actual substance, according to Leader. She was merely one form of a concept and had since been “retrieved.” But Aomame could hardly say this to the dowager now. Aomame herself did not know what it meant. She did, however, remember the levitation of the marble clock. She had seen it happen with her own eyes.

Aomame asked, “How many days will I be hiding out in this safe house?”

“You should assume it will be from four days to a week. After that you will be given a new name and situation and moved to a faraway place. Once you have settled down there, we will have to cut off all contact with

you for your own safety. I won’t be able to see you for a while. Considering my age, I might never be able to see you again. It might have been better if I had never lured you into this troublesome business. I have thought about that many times. Then I would not have had to lose you this way. But –”

The dowager’s voice caught in her throat. Aomame waited quietly for her to continue speaking.

“But I have no regrets. Everything was more or less destined to happen. I had to involve you. I had no choice. A very strong force was at work, and that is what has moved me. Still, I feel bad for you that it has come to this.”

“On the other hand, we have shared something, something important, something we could not have shared with anyone else, something we could not have had any other way.”

“Yes, you are right,” the dowager said. “Sharing it was something that I needed, too.”

“Thank you for saying that. It gives me a measure of salvation.”

Aomame was also pained to think that she could no longer see the dowager, who was one of the few ties she possessed with the outside world.

“Be well,” Aomame said.

“You, too,” the dowager said. “And be happy.”

“If possible,” Aomame said. Happiness was one of the farthest things away from her.

Tamaru came on the phone.

“You haven’t used it so far, have you?” he asked. “No, not yet.”

“Try your best not to use it.” “I’ll keep that in mind.”

After a momentary pause, Tamaru said, “I think I told you the other day that I grew up in an orphanage in the mountains of Hokkaido.”

“You were put in there after you were evacuated from Sakhalin when you were separated from your parents.”

“There was a boy in that orphanage two years younger than I was. He was mixed: half Japanese, half black. I think his father was a soldier from the American base in Misawa. I don’t know about his mother, but she was probably a prostitute or a bar hostess. She abandoned him soon after he was born, and he was put in the orphanage. He was a lot bigger than me, but

not very smart. The other kids teased him, of course, mainly because his color was different. You know how that goes.”

“I guess.”

“I wasn’t Japanese, either, so it fell to me one way or another to be his protector. Our situations were similar – a Korean evacuee and the illegitimate mixed-race kid of a black guy and a whore. You can’t get much lower than that. But it did me good: it toughened me up. Not him, though. He could never be tough. Left on his own, he would have died for sure. In that place, you had to have a quick wit or be a tough fighter if you wanted to survive.”

Aomame waited quietly for him to go on.

“He was bad at everything. He couldn’t do anything right. He couldn’t button his own shirt or wipe his ass. Carving, though, was something else. He was great at that. Give him a few carving tools and a block of wood and before you knew it he had made a really fine carving. No sketches or anything: the image would pop into his head and he would produce an accurate three-dimensional figure, tremendously detailed and realistic. He was a kind of genius. It was amazing.”

“A savant,” Aomame said.

“Yes, sure. I learned about that stuff later, the so-called savant syndrome. People with extraordinary powers. But nobody knew about that back then. People assumed he was mentally retarded or something – a kid with a slow brain but gifted hands that made him good at carving. For some reason, though, the only thing he would ever carve was rats. He could do those beautifully. They looked alive from any angle. But he never, ever carved anything but rats. Everybody would urge him to carve some other animal – a horse or a bear – and they even took him to the zoo for that purpose, but he never showed the slightest interest in other creatures. So then they just gave up and let him have his way, making nothing but rats. He made rats of every shape and size and pose. It was strange, I guess. By which I mean that there weren’t any rats in the orphanage. It was too cold there, and there was nothing for them to eat. The place was too poor even for rats. Nobody could figure out why he was so fixated on rats… . Well, anyway, word got out about the rats he was making. The local paper carried a story, and people started asking to buy them. The head of the orphanage, a Catholic priest, got a craft shop to carry the carved rats and sell them to tourists. They must have brought in some decent money, but of course none

of it ever came back to the boy. I don’t know what they did with it, but I suspect the top people in the orphanage used it for themselves. All the boy ever got was more carving tools and wood to keep making rats in the workshop. True, he was spared the hard fieldwork; all he had to do was carve rats by himself while the rest of us were out. He was lucky to that extent.”

“What finally happened to him?”

“I really don’t know. I ran away from the orphanage when I was fourteen and lived on my own after that. I headed straight for the ferry, crossed over to the main island, and I haven’t set foot in Hokkaido since then. The last I saw him, he was bent over a workbench, concentrating on his carving. You couldn’t get through to him at those times, so we never even said good-bye. If he’s still alive, I imagine he’s still carving rats somewhere. It was all he could do.”

Aomame kept silent and waited for the rest of the story.

“I often think of him even now. Life in the orphanage was terrible. They fed us next to nothing, and we were always hungry. The winters were cold. The work was harsh, and the older kids bullied us something awful. But he never seemed to find the life there all that painful. He appeared to be happy as long as he could carve. Sometimes he would go half mad when he picked up his carving tools, but otherwise he was a truly docile little fellow. He didn’t make trouble for anyone but just kept quietly carving his rats. He’d pick up a block of wood and stare at it for a long time until he could see what kind of rat in what kind of pose was lurking inside. It took a long while before he could see the figure, but once that happened, all he had to do was pull the rat out of the block with his knives. He often used to say that: ‘I’m going to pull the rat out.’ And the rats he pulled out looked as if they might start moving at any moment. He kept on freeing these imaginary rats that were locked up in their blocks of wood.”

“And you were the boy’s protector.”

“Yes, but not because I wanted to be. I just ended up in that position. And once you were given a position, you had to live up to it, no matter what. That was the rule. Say, if one of the other boys took away his carving tools just to be nasty, I would go and beat him up. Even if the other kid was older or bigger or there was more than one of them, I had to beat him up. Of course, there were times when they beat me up. Lots of times. But it didn’t

matter whether I won or lost those fights: I always got the tools back for him. That was the main thing. See what I mean?”

“I think so,” Aomame said. “But finally you had to abandon him.” “Well, I had to go on living. I couldn’t stay with him forever, taking

care of him. I didn’t have that luxury, obviously.”

Aomame opened her right hand again and stared at it.

“I’ve seen you holding a little carved rat now and then. Did he make

that?”

me.”

“Yes, he gave me a little one. I took it when I ran away. I keep it with “You know, Tamaru, you’re not the kind of guy who usually talks

about himself. Why now?”

“One thing I wanted to tell you is that I often think of him,” Tamaru said. “Not that I want to see him again or anything. I really don’t. We wouldn’t have anything to talk about, for one thing. It’s just that I still have this vivid image of him ‘pulling rats out’ of blocks of wood with total concentration, and that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something – or tries to. People need things like that to go on living – mental landscapes that have meaning for them, even if they can’t explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things. That’s what I think.”

“Are you saying that they’re like a basis for us to live?” “Maybe so.”

“I have such mental landscapes, too.” “You’d better handle them with care.” “I will.”

“I have one more thing to say, and that is that I will do everything I can to protect you. If there’s somebody I have to beat up, I’ll go out and beat them up. Win or lose, I won’t abandon you.”

“Thank you.”

A few tranquil seconds of silence followed.

“Don’t leave that apartment for a while. Just think of it as a jungle one step outside your door. Okay?”

“Got it,” Aomame said.

The connection was cut. Hanging up, Aomame realized how tightly she had been gripping the receiver.

What Tamaru wanted to convey to me was that I’m now an indispensable part of their family, that ties once formed will never be cut, Aomame thought. We are bound by artificial blood, so to speak. Aomame was grateful to Tamaru for having delivered that message. He must have realized what a painful time this was for Aomame. It was precisely because he thought of her as a member of the family that he had begun to share some of his secrets.

To think that such a close connection could only be formed through violence was almost too much for Aomame to bear. We can only share these deep feelings because of my unique circumstances: I’ve broken the law, killed several people, and now someone is after me and may even kill me. Would it have been possible to form such a relationship if murder had not been involved? Could we have formed such bonds of trust if I were not an outlaw? I doubt it.

She watched the TV news, drinking tea. There were no more reports on the flooding of the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station. Once the water receded the next day and the trains were running normally again, it had become old news. The death of Sakigake’s Leader was still not public knowledge. Only a handful of people knew about that. Aomame imagined the large man’s corpse being consumed by the high-temperature incinerator. Tamaru had said that not a single bone would be left. Unrelated to either grace or pain, everything would become smoke and blend into the early- autumn sky. Aomame could picture the smoke and the sky.

There was a report on the disappearance of the seventeen-year-old girl who wrote the bestselling book Air Chrysalis. Eriko Fukada, or “Fuka- Eri,” as she was known, had been missing for over two months. The police had received a search request from her guardian and were carrying on a thorough investigation, but nothing had come to light as yet, the announcer said. The screen showed a stack of copies of Air Chrysalis in a bookstore, and a poster with the photo of the beautiful author hung on the store wall. A young female bookstore clerk was interviewed: “The book is still selling like crazy. I bought a copy myself and read it. It’s really good – very imaginative! I hope they find out where Fuka-Eri is soon.”

The report said nothing about a relationship between Eriko Fukada and Sakigake. The media were very cautious when religious organizations were involved.

In any case, Eriko Fukada was missing. She had been violated by her father when she was ten years old. They had had “ambiguous congress,” if Aomame was to accept his terminology. Through that act, they had led the Little People into him. How did he put it, again? That’s it – they were Perceiver and Receiver. Eriko Fukada was the one who perceived, and her father was the one who received. Then the man started to hear special voices. He became the agent of the Little People and the founder of the religion called Sakigake. She left the religion after that. Then, as a force against the Little People, she teamed up with Tengo and wrote the novella Air Chrysalis, which became a bestseller. Now, for some reason or other, she has disappeared, and the police are looking for her.

Meanwhile, last night, using a specially made ice pick, I killed Eriko Fukada’s father, leader of the religion called Sakigake. People from the religion transported his corpse from the hotel and secretly “disposed” of it. Aomame could not imagine how Eriko Fukada would deal with the news of her father’s death. It was a death that he himself asked for, a painless “mercy killing,” but the fact is that I used these hands of mine to end the life of a human being. A person’s life may be a lonely thing by nature, but it is not isolated. To that life other lives are linked, and I surely have to bear some responsibility for those as well.

Tengo is also deeply involved in these events. The Fukadas – father and daughter – are what bind us together: Perceiver and Receiver. Where could Tengo be now, and what is he doing? Could he have something to do with the disappearance of Eriko Fukada? Are the two of them still working together? The television news, of course, tells me nothing about Tengo’s fate. So far, no one seems to know that he was the actual writer of Air Chrysalis. But I know.

It appears that he and I are narrowing the distance between us bit by bit. Circumstances carried us into this world and are bringing us closer together as though we are being drawn into a great whirlpool. It may be a lethal whirlpool. But Leader suggested that we would never find each other

outside such a lethal place, just as violence creates certain kinds of pure relationships.

She took a deep breath. Then she reached out toward the Heckler & Koch on the table and assured herself of its hardness. She imagined its muzzle being shoved into her mouth and her finger tightening on the trigger.

A large crow suddenly appeared on her balcony, perched on the railing, and let out a number of piercing cries. Aomame and the crow observed each other through the glass. The crow moved the big, bright eye on the side of his head, watching Aomame’s movements in the room. He seemed to understand the significance of the pistol in her hand. Crows were intelligent animals. They knew that this block of steel had great importance. Somehow or other, they knew.

The crow spread its wings and flew off as suddenly as it had arrived, apparently having seen what it was supposed to see. Once it was gone, Aomame stood up, turned off the television, and sighed, hoping that the crow was not a spy for the Little People.

Aomame practiced her usual stretching on the living-room carpet. She worked her muscles to the limit for an hour, passing the time with the appropriate pain. One by one, she summoned up each muscle of her body and subjected it to an intense, detailed interrogation. She had the name, function, and quality of each muscle minutely engraved in her mind, missing none. She sweated profusely, working her lungs and heart to the fullest, and switching the channels of her consciousness. She listened to the flow of the blood in her veins, and received the wordless messages that her heart was issuing. The muscles of her face contorted every which way as she sank her teeth into the messages.

Next she washed the sweat off in the shower. She stepped on the scale to make sure there had been no major change in her weight. Confirming in the mirror that the size of her breasts and the shape of her pubic hair had not changed, she scowled immensely. This was her morning ritual.

When she was finished in the bathroom, she changed into a jersey sportswear top and bottom for easy movement. Then, to kill time, she decided to examine the contents of the apartment again, beginning with the

kitchen: the foods and the eating and cooking utensils. She memorized each item and devised a plan for which foods she would prepare and eat in what order. She estimated that, even if she never set foot outside the apartment, she could live here for at least ten days without going hungry, and she could make it last two weeks if she was careful in parceling out the supplies. They had stocked the place with that much food.

Then she went through the non-food items: toilet paper, tissues, laundry detergent, rubber gloves. Nothing was missing. The shopping had been done with great care. A woman must have participated in the preparations – probably an experienced housewife, judging from the obvious care that had been lavished on the task. Someone had meticulously calculated what and how much would be needed for a healthy thirty-year- old single woman to live here alone for a short time. This was not something a man could have done – though perhaps it would be possible for a highly observant gay man.

The bedroom linen closet was well stocked with sheets, blankets, and spare pillows, all with the smell of new linen, and all plain white. Ornamentation had been carefully avoided, there being no need for taste or individuality.

The living room had a television, a VCR, and a small stereo with a record player and a cassette deck. On the wall opposite the window, there was a waist-high wooden sideboard. She bent over and opened it to find some twenty books lined up inside. Someone had done their best to assure that Aomame would not be bored while hiding out here. The books were all new hardcover volumes that showed no evidence of having been opened. Most of them were recent, probably chosen from displays of current bestsellers at a large bookstore. The person had exercised some standards of selection – if not exactly taste – in choosing about half fiction and half nonfiction. Air Chrysalis was among them.

With a little nod, Aomame picked it up and sat on the living-room sofa in the warm sunshine. It was not a thick book. It was light, and the type was large. She looked at the dust jacket and at the name of the author, “Fuka-Eri,” printed there, balanced the book on her palm to gauge its weight, and read the publisher’s copy on the colorful band around the jacket. Then she sniffed the book for that special smell that new books have. Though his name was nowhere printed on it, Tengo’s presence was here.

The text printed inside it had passed through Tengo’s body. She calmed herself and opened to the first page.

Her teacup and the Heckler & Koch were both where she could reach them.

Chapter 18. TENGO: That Lonely, Taciturn Satellite

“SHE MIGHT BE very close by,” Fuka-Eri said after some moments of biting her lip in serious thought.

Tengo unfolded and refolded his hands on the table, looking into Fuka-Eri’s eyes. “Very close by? You mean here, in Koenji?”

“Within walking distance.”

How do you know that? Tengo wanted to ask her, but he was at least prescient enough to know that he would not get an answer to such a question. She needed practical questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no.

“Are you saying that I can meet Aomame if I look for her in this neighborhood?” Tengo asked.

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “You can’t meet her just by walking around.”

“She’s within walking distance, but I can’t find her just by walking around. Is that what you are saying?”

“Because she’s hiding.” “Hiding?”

“Like a wounded cat.”

Tengo got an image of Aomame curled up under a moldy-smelling porch somewhere. “Why? Is she hiding from someone?” he asked.

This, of course, she did not answer.

“But the fact that she is hiding must mean that she is in some kind of critical situation, doesn’t it?”

“Crit-i-cal sit-choo-ay-shun,” Fuka-Eri said, echoing Tengo, with a look on her face like that of a child being shown a bitter medicine. She probably didn’t like the sound of the words.

“Like, someone is chasing after her,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri cocked her head slightly, meaning she didn’t understand. “But she is not going to stay here forever.”

“Our time is limited.” “Yes, limited.”

“But now she is sitting somewhere like a wounded cat, so she won’t be out taking walks.”

“No, she won’t do that,” the beautiful young girl said with conviction.

“In other words, I’d have to look for her someplace special.” Fuka-Eri nodded.

“What kind of special place would that be?” Tengo asked. Needless to say, he received no answer.

“You remember some things about her,” Fuka-Eri said after a short pause. “One of them might help.”

“Might help,” Tengo said. “Are you saying that if I remember something about her, I might get a hint about where she is hiding?”

Without answering, she gave a little shrug. The gesture might have contained an affirmative nuance.

“Thank you,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri gave him a tiny nod, like a contented cat.

Tengo prepared lunch in the kitchen. Fuka-Eri was intently choosing records from the record shelf. Not that he had a lot of records there, but it took her time to choose. At the end of her deliberations, she took out an old Rolling Stones album, put it on the turntable, and lowered the tonearm. It

was a record that he had borrowed from somebody in high school and, for some reason, never given back. He hadn’t heard it in years.

Listening to tracks like “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Lady Jane,” he made rice pilaf using ham and mushrooms and brown rice, and miso soup with tofu and wakame. He boiled cauliflower and flavored it with curry sauce he had prepared. He made a green bean and onion salad. Cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always used it as a time to think – about everyday problems, about math problems, about his writing, or about metaphysical propositions. He could think in a more orderly fashion while standing in the kitchen and moving his hands than while doing nothing. Today, however, no amount of thinking would tell him what kind of “special place” Fuka-Eri had been talking about. Trying to impose order on something where there had never been any was a waste of effort. The number of places he could arrive at was limited.

The two of them sat across from each other eating dinner. Their conversation was virtually nonexistent. Like a bored married couple, they transported the food to their mouths in silence, each thinking – or not thinking – separate thoughts. It was especially difficult to distinguish between the two in Fuka-Eri’s case. When the meal ended, Tengo drank coffee and Fuka-Eri ate a pudding she found in the refrigerator. Whatever she ate, her expression never changed. Chewing seemed to be the only thing she was thinking about.

Tengo sat at his desk, and, following Fuka-Eri’s suggestion, he tried hard to recall something about Aomame.

You remember some things about her. One of them might help.

But Tengo could not concentrate. Another Rolling Stones record was playing. “Little Red Rooster” – a performance from the time Mick Jagger was crazy about Chicago blues. Not bad, but not a song written for people engaged in deep thinking or in the midst of seriously digging through old memories. The Rolling Stones were not a band much given to such kindness. He needed someplace quiet where he could be alone.

“I’m going out for a while,” Tengo said.

Studying the Rolling Stones album jacket in her hand, Fuka-Eri nodded, as if to say, “Fine.”

“If anyone comes here, don’t open the door for them,” Tengo said.

Tengo walked toward the station wearing a navy-blue long-sleeved T-shirt, chinos from which the crease had long since faded, and sneakers. Just before reaching the station, he turned into a bar called Barleyhead and ordered a draft beer. The place served drinks and snacks. It was small enough so that twenty customers filled it up. He had come here any number of times before. Young people made it quite noisy late at night, but there were relatively few customers in the hour between seven and eight, when the mood was nice and hushed. It was perfect for sitting alone in a corner and reading a book while drinking a beer. The chairs were comfortable, too. He had no idea where the bar’s name came from or what it meant. He could have asked one of the employees, but he was not good at small talk with strangers, and not knowing the source of the name didn’t really matter. It was just a pleasant bar that happened to be named Barleyhead.

Fortunately, no music was playing. Tengo sat at a table by a window, drinking Carlsberg draft and munching on mixed nuts from a small bowl, thinking about Aomame. Picturing Aomame meant that Tengo himself became a ten-year-old boy again. It also meant that he experienced a major turning point in his life once again. After Aomame grasped his hand when they were ten, he refused to make any more rounds with his father doing NHK subscription collections. Shortly after that he experienced a definite erection and his first ejaculation. That was a watershed in his life. Of course, the transformation would have come – sooner or later – whether or not Aomame grasped his hand, but Aomame urged him on and promoted the change as if she had given his back a gentle shove.

He stared at the open palm of his left hand for a long time. That ten- year-old girl grasped this hand and hugely changed something inside me, but I can’t give a reasonable explanation of how such a thing could have happened. Still, the two of us understood each other and accepted each other in a very natural way in every last particular – almost miraculously so. Such things don’t happen all that often in this life. For some people, they might never happen. At the time, however, Tengo had not been able to fully comprehend the event’s decisive meaning. And not just back then. He had not truly been able to understand its meaning until almost the present moment. He had only vaguely embraced the girl’s image in his heart over the years.

She was thirty now, and her outward appearance might be very different from what he remembered from when they were ten. She must

have grown taller, her chest developed, and her hairstyle must have changed. If she left the Society of Witnesses, she was probably wearing makeup. She might be sporting expensive, stylish clothing. Tengo found it hard to imagine Aomame striding down the street wearing a Calvin Klein suit and high heels. But such a thing was, of course, conceivable. People grow up, and when they grow up they change. She could be in this bar right this moment without my realizing it.

Tipping back his beer glass, Tengo took another look at his surroundings. She was somewhere close by. Within walking distance. Fuka- Eri said so. And Tengo accepted Fuka-Eri at her word. If she said it, it must be true.

The only other customers in the room were a young couple, probably students, sitting at the bar, engaged in an intense and intimate conversation, their foreheads practically touching. Seeing them, Tengo felt a profound loneliness, the sort he had not experienced for a very long time. I’m alone in this world, he thought. I have no ties with anyone.

Tengo closed his eyes and concentrated on the elementary school classroom once again. He had closed his eyes and visited that place last night, too – with a tremendously concrete sense of reality – when he and Fuka-Eri joined bodies during the violent thunderstorm. Because of that, the picture he conjured now came back with special vividness, as if it had been cleansed of all dust by last night’s rain.

Unease and expectation and fear scattered to the farthest corners of the spacious classroom, and hid themselves in the room’s many objects like cowardly little animals. Tengo was able to recreate the scene in meticulous detail – the blackboard with its partially erased mathematical formulas, the broken pieces of chalk, the cheap, sun-damaged curtains, the flowers in the vase on the teacher’s podium (though he couldn’t tell what type), the children’s paintings pinned to the wall, the world map behind the podium, the smell of the floor wax, the waving of the curtains, the children’s shouts coming through the window. His eyes could trace each omen or plan or riddle they contained.

During those several seconds when Aomame was holding his hand, Tengo had seen many things and accurately seared each image on his retinas, like a camera taking a photograph. These images comprised one of the basic landscapes that helped him survive his pain-filled teens. The scene always included the strong sensation of the girl’s fingers. Her right hand

never failed to encourage Tengo during the agonizing process of becoming an adult. Don’t worry, I’m with you, the hand declared.

You are not alone.

She is in hiding, Fuka-Eri had said. Like a wounded cat.

Come to think of it, this was a strange coincidence. Fuka-Eri herself was in hiding here. She wouldn’t set foot outside of Tengo’s apartment. In this same section of Tokyo, two women were lying low, running away from something. Both women had deep connections with Tengo. Could that be significant? Or was it a mere coincidence?

No answers were forthcoming, of course, just an aimless bunch of questions. Too many questions, too few answers. It was always like this.

When he finished his beer, a young waiter came over and asked him if he would like something else. Tengo hesitated a moment and then requested a bourbon on the rocks and another bowl of mixed nuts. “The only bourbon we have is Four Roses, if that’s okay.” Tengo said it would be okay. Anything at all. Then he went back to thinking about Aomame. The fragrance of a baking pizza wafted toward him from the kitchen.

From whom could Aomame possibly be hiding? The police? But Tengo could not believe that she had become a criminal. What kind of crime could she have committed? No, it could not be the police who were chasing her. Whoever or whatever it might be, the law surely had nothing to do with it.

Maybe they’re the same ones who are after Fuka-Eri, it suddenly occurred to Tengo. The Little People? Why would the Little People have to pursue Aomame?

But if they are really the ones pursuing Aomame, am I at the center of this? Tengo of course had no idea why he had to be the pivotal figure in such a chain of events, but if there was a connection between the two women, Fuka-Eri and Aomame, it could not be anyone other than Tengo himself. Without even being aware of it, I may have been using some kind of power to draw Aomame closer to me.

Some kind of power?

He stared at his hands. I don’t get it. Where could I have that kind of power?

His Four Roses on the rocks arrived along with a new bowl of nuts. He took a swallow of Four Roses, and, taking several nuts in the palm of his hand, he shook them like dice.

Anyhow, Aomame is in this neighborhood. Within walking distance. That’s what Fuka-Eri says. And I believe it. I’d be hard-pressed to explain why, but I do believe it. Still, how can I go about finding Aomame in her hiding place? It’s hard enough finding someone living a normal life, but the task obviously becomes more challenging when someone is deliberately hiding. Should I go through the streets calling her name on a loudspeaker? Sure, like that’s going to get her to step right up. It would just alert others to her presence and expose her to added danger.

There must be something else I should recall about her, Tengo thought.

“You remember some things about her. One of them might help,” Fuka-Eri had said. But even before she said that to him, Tengo had long suspected that he might have failed to recall an important fact or two regarding Aomame. It had begun to make him feel uneasy now and then, like a pebble in his shoe. The feeling was vague but persistent.

Tengo swept his mind clean, as if erasing a blackboard, and started unearthing memories again – memories of Aomame, memories of himself, memories of the things around them, dredging the soft, muddy bottom like a fisherman dragging his net, putting the items in order and mulling them over with great care. Ultimately, though, these were things that had happened twenty years earlier. As vividly as he might recall them, there was a limit to how much he could bring back.

It occurred to him to try thinking about lines of vision. What had Aomame been looking at? And what had Tengo himself been looking at? Let me think back along our moving lines of vision and the flow of time.

The girl was holding his hand and looking straight into his eyes. Her line of vision never wavered. Tengo, initially at a loss to understand her actions, sought an explanation in her eyes. This must be some kind of misunderstanding or mistake, Tengo had thought. But there was no misunderstanding or mistake here. What he realized was that the girl’s eyes were almost shockingly deep and clear. He had never seen eyes of such absolute clarity. They were like two springs, utterly transparent, but too deep to see the bottoms. He felt he might be sucked inside if he went on looking into them. And so he had no choice but to turn away from them.

He looked first at the floorboards beneath his feet, then at the entrance to the empty classroom, and finally he bent his neck slightly to look outside through the window. All this time, Aomame’s gaze never wavered. She kept staring at Tengo’s eyes even as he looked outside the window. He could feel her line of vision stinging his skin and her fingers gripping his left hand with unwavering strength and with complete conviction. She was not afraid. There was nothing she had to fear. And she was trying to convey that feeling to Tengo through her fingertips.

Because their encounter followed the cleaning of the classroom, the window had been left wide open for fresh air, and the white curtains were softly waving in the breeze. Beyond them stretched the sky. December had come, but it was still not that cold. High up in the sky floated a cloud – a straight, white cloud that retained a vestige of autumn, like a brand-new brushstroke across the sky. And there was something else there, hanging beneath the cloud. The sun? No, it was not the sun.

Tengo held his breath, pressed his fingers to his temple and tried to peer into a still-deeper place in his memory, tracing a frail thread of consciousness that was ready to snap at any moment.

That’s it. The moon was up there.

Sunset was still some time away, but there it was – the moon – standing out against the sky, about three-quarters full. Tengo was impressed that he could see such a large, bright moon while it was still so light out. He remembered that. The unfeeling chunk of rock hung low in the sky as if, having nothing better to do, it was suspended on an invisible thread. It had a certain artificial air about it. At first glance, it looked like a fake moon used as a stage prop. But it was the actual moon, of course. Nobody would take the time and effort to hang a fake moon in a real sky.

Suddenly Tengo realized that Aomame was no longer looking at him. Her line of vision was turned in the same direction as his. Like him, Aomame was staring at the moon in broad daylight, still gripping his hand, her face deadly serious. He looked at her eyes again. They were not as clear as before. That had been a special, momentary clarity, and in its place he now could see something hard and crystalline. It was at once beguiling and severe, with a quality reminiscent of frost. Tengo could not grasp its meaning.

Eventually the girl seemed to have made up her mind. She suddenly released her grip on his hand, turned her back on him, and rushed out of the

room without a word or a backward glance, leaving Tengo in a deep vacuum.

Tengo opened his eyes, relaxed his mental concentration, released a deep breath, and took a swallow of his bourbon. He felt the whiskey pass through his throat and down his gullet. He took another breath and exhaled. He could no longer see Aomame. She had turned her back on him and left the classroom, erasing herself from his life.

Twenty years went by.

It was the moon, Tengo thought.

I was looking at the moon, and so was Aomame. That gray chunk of rock hanging in the still-bright sky at three thirty in the afternoon. That lonely, taciturn satellite. We stood side by side, looking at that moon. But what does it mean? That the moon will guide me to her?

It suddenly crossed Tengo’s mind that back then, Aomame might have entrusted the moon with her feelings. She and the moon might have reached a kind of secret agreement. Her gaze at the moon contained something frighteningly serious that could stir the imagination this way.

Tengo had no idea, of course, what Aomame had offered to the moon that time, but he could well imagine what the moon had given her: pure solitude and tranquillity. That was the best thing the moon could give a person.

Tengo paid his bill and walked out of the Barleyhead. Then he looked up at the sky but could not find the moon. The sky was clear, and the moon should be up, but it could not be seen from street level with buildings all around. Hands thrust in his pockets, Tengo walked from one street to the next, looking for the moon. He wanted to go someplace with an open field of vision, but finding such a place in a neighborhood like Koenji was no easy matter. The area was so flat that finding even a slight incline involved a major effort, and there were no hills at all. The best place might be the roof of a tall building with a view in all directions, but he couldn’t see the kind of building in the area that let people up to the roof.

As he went on walking around aimlessly, Tengo recalled that there was a playground nearby, one that he often passed on walks. It was not a large playground, but it probably had a slide. If he climbed that, he should be able to have a better view of the sky. It wasn’t a tall slide, but the view should be better than from street level. He headed for the playground. His watch hands were pointing to nearly eight o’clock.

There was no one in the playground. A tall mercury-vapor lamp stood in the middle, illuminating every corner of the place. There was a large zelkova tree, its leaves still thick and luxuriant. There were several low shrubberies, a water fountain, a bench, swings, and a slide. There was also a public toilet, but it had been locked by a worker at sunset, perhaps to keep vagrants out. During the daytime, young mothers brought their children who were not yet old enough for kindergarten, and kept up their lively chattering while the children played. Tengo had observed such scenes any number of times. Once the sun went down, however, almost no one visited this place.

Tengo climbed the slide and, still standing, looked up at the night sky. A new six-story condo stood on the north side of the park. He had never noticed it before. It must have been built quite recently. It blocked the northern sky like a wall. Only low buildings stood on the other three sides of the playground. Tengo turned to scan the area and found the moon in the southwest, hanging over an old two-story house. It was about three-quarters full. Just like the moon of twenty years ago, Tengo thought. Exactly the same size and shape. A complete coincidence. Probably.

But this bright moon, hanging in the early-autumn night sky, had sharp, clear outlines and the introspective warmth characteristic of this season. The impression it gave was very different from that of the moon at three thirty in the December afternoon sky. Its calm, natural glow had the power to soothe and heal the heart like the flow of clear water or the gentle stirring of tree leaves.

Standing on the very top of the slide, Tengo looked up at that moon for a very long time. From the direction of Ring Road 7 came the blended sound of different-sized tires, like the roar of the sea. All at once the sound reminded Tengo of the sanatorium where his father was staying on the Chiba shore.

The city’s earthly lights blotted out the stars as always. The sky was nice and clear, but only a few stars were visible, the very bright ones that

twinkled as pale points here and there. Still, the moon stood out clearly against the sky. It hung up there faithfully, without a word of complaint concerning the city lights or the noise or the air pollution. If he focused hard on the moon, he could make out the strange shadows formed by its gigantic craters and valleys. Tengo’s mind emptied as he stared at the light of the moon. Inside him, memories that had been handed down from antiquity began to stir. Before human beings possessed fire or tools or language, the moon had been their ally. It would calm people’s fears now and then by illuminating the dark world like a heavenly lantern. Its waxing and waning gave people an understanding of the concept of time. Even now, when darkness had been banished from most parts of the world, there remained a sense of human gratitude toward the moon and its unconditional compassion. It was imprinted upon human genes like a warm collective memory.

Come to think of it, I haven’t looked hard at the moon like this for a very long while, Tengo thought. When could the last time have been? Living one hectic day after another in the city, you tend to look down at the ground. You forget to even look at the night sky.

It was then that Tengo realized there was another moon hanging in the sky. At first, he thought it might be an optical illusion, a mere trick of light rays, but the more he looked at it, the surer he became that there was a second moon with solid outlines up there. His mind went blank as he stared in its direction, open-mouthed. What am I seeing? He could not make up his mind. The outline and the substance refused to overlap, as when word and concept fail to cohere.

Another moon?

He closed his eyes, opened his palms, and rubbed his cheeks. What’s wrong with me? I didn’t drink that much. He drew in a long, quiet breath and then quietly expelled it. He checked to be sure his mind was clear. Who am I? Where am I now? What am I doing? he asked himself in the darkness behind his closed eyelids. It’s September 1984, I’m Tengo Kawana, I’m in a playground in Koenji in Suginami Ward, and I’m looking up at the moon in the night sky. No doubt about it.

Then he slowly opened his eyes and looked at the sky again, carefully, his mind calm, but still there were two moons.

This is no illusion. There are two moons. Tengo balled his hand into a fist and kept it that way for a long time.

The moon was as taciturn as ever. But it was no longer alone.

Chapter 19. AOMAME: When the Dohta Wakes Up

AIR CHRYSALIS WAS a fantastical story, but it took the form of a very readable novella narrated from beginning to end in a simple, colloquial style, by a ten-year-old girl. It was not overly complex in terms of its vocabulary or logic, and it did not contain long-winded explanations or wordy expressions. The words and style of the young narrator were universally appealing – concise and, in most cases, pleasant – but they explained almost nothing about the events that unfolded. Rather, the girl simply let the narrative flow as she recounted what she had seen with her own eyes, never stopping to consider “What is going on here?” or “What could this mean?” The book moved forward at an easy pace appropriate to the story she was telling. Her readers followed along, very naturally adopting her point of view, and before they knew it, they were in another world – a world that was not this world, a world in which the Little People made air chrysalises.

Reading the first ten pages, Aomame felt herself responding strongly to the novel’s style. If indeed this was Tengo’s creation, he was certainly a talented writer. The Tengo that Aomame knew was primarily a

mathematical genius. He was said to be a prodigy, easily able to solve mathematical problems that were too difficult for most adults. His grades had been outstanding in other subjects, too, if not quite up to his work in mathematics. He was also physically big and an all-around athlete, but Aomame did not recall anything about his being an especially good writer. Probably that talent was obscured at the time in the shadow of his mathematics.

On the other hand, Tengo might have done nothing more than transfer the author’s narrative voice to the page just as he had initially read it. His own originality might not have contributed much of anything to the style. She felt, though, that this was not the case. While the writing was deceptively simple, a closer read revealed that it was in fact calculated and arranged with great care. No part of it was overwritten, but at the same time it had everything it needed. Figurative expressions were kept to a minimum, but the descriptions were still vivid and richly colored. Above all, the style had a wonderfully musical quality. Even without reading it aloud, the reader could recognize its deep sonority. This was not writing that flowed naturally from the pen of a seventeen-year-old girl.

Having ascertained all this, Aomame proceeded to read the rest with great care.

The heroine is a young girl. She belongs to a small mountain community known as the “Gathering.” Her mother and father live a communal life in the Gathering. She has no brothers or sisters. Because she was brought here shortly after her birth, the girl has virtually no knowledge of the outside world. All three members of the family have busy schedules that give them little opportunity to spend time together in relaxed conversation, but still they are close. The girl spends her days in the local elementary school while her parents are primarily engaged in farm work. The children also help with the farming when they have free time.

The adults of the Gathering all hate the outside world. At every opportunity, they like to say that the world in which they live is a beautiful, solitary island floating in a sea of “cap-i-tal-izum,” a “for-tress.” The girl does not know what they mean by “cap-i-tal-izum” (or the other word they sometimes use, “ma-teer-ee-al-izum”), but, judging from the scornful tone they use whenever they speak the words, cap-i-tal-izum and ma-teer-ee-al-

izum must be very twisted things that are opposed to nature and rightness. The girl has been taught that, in order to keep her body and her thoughts clean, she must limit her contact with the outside world. Otherwise, her mind will become “po-loo-ted.”

The Gathering is composed of some fifty relatively young men and women, divided into two groups. One group aims at “rev-a-loo-shun,” while the other group aims at “peese.” The girl’s parents tend to belong to the “peese” group. Her father is the oldest member of that group, and he has played a central role since the founding of the Gathering.

The ten-year-old girl cannot, of course, give a logical explanation of the opposition of the two groups, nor does she understand the difference between “rev-a-loo-shun” and “peese.” She has only the vague impression that “rev-a-loo-shun” is a kind of pointed way of thinking, while “peese” has a rather more rounded shape. Each “way of thinking” has its own shape and color, which wax and wane like the moon. That is about all she understands.

The girl does not know much about how the Gathering came into being, either. She has been told that, almost ten years earlier, just after she was born, there was a big movement in society, and people stopped living in the city and came out to an isolated village in the mountains. She does not know much about the city. She has never ridden on a subway or taken an elevator. She has never seen a building with more than three stories. There is just too much she doesn’t know about. All she can understand are the things around her that she can see and touch.

Still, the girl’s low-angled line of vision and unadorned narrative voice vividly and naturally depict the small community called the Gathering, its makeup and scenery, and the customs and ways of thinking of the people who live there.

Despite the split in the residents’ ways of thinking, their sense of solidarity is strong. They share the conviction that it is good to live separately from “cap-i-tal-izum,” and they are well aware that even though the shape and color of their ways of thinking may differ, they have to stand together if they hope to survive. They are barely able to make ends meet. People work hard every day without a break. They grow vegetables, barter with the neighboring villages, sell their surplus products, avoid the use of mass-produced items as much as possible, and generally spend their lives in nature. When they must use an electrical appliance, they find one in a pile

of discards somewhere and repair it. Almost all the clothes they wear are used items sent to them from somewhere else.

Some members of the community, unable to adapt to this pure but difficult life, eventually leave the Gathering, but others come to join it. New members outnumber those who leave, and so the Gathering’s population gradually increases. This is a welcome trend. The abandoned village in which they make their life has many homes that can be lived in with a few repairs, and many fields remaining that can be farmed. The community is delighted to have new workers.

The number of children in the community varies between eight and ten. Most of the children were born in the Gathering. The eldest child is the heroine of the story, the girl. The children attend a local elementary school, walking together to and from the school each day. They are required by law to attend a school in the district, and the Gathering’s founders believe that preserving good relations with the people of the district is indispensable to the survival of the community. The local children, however, are unnerved by the children of the Gathering, and they either avoid them or bully them, as a result of which the Gathering children move as one. They stay together to protect themselves, both from physical harm and from “po-loo-shun” of the mind.

Quite separate from the district public school, the Gathering has its own school, and members take turns teaching the children. This is not a great burden, since most of the members are highly educated, and several of them hold teaching certificates. They make their own textbooks and teach the children basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. They also teach the basics of chemistry, physics, physiology, biology, and the workings of the outside world. The world has two systems, “cap-i-tal-izum” and “com- yoon-izum,” that hate each other. Both systems, though, have big problems, so the world is generally moving in a direction that is not good. “Com- yoon-izum” was originally an outstanding ideology with high ideals, but it was twisted out of shape by “self-serving politicians.” The girl was shown a photograph of one of the “self-serving politicians.” With his big nose and big, black beard, the man made her think of the king of the devils.

There is no television in the Gathering, and listening to the radio is not allowed except on special occasions. Newspapers and magazines are also limited. News that is considered necessary is reported orally during dinner at the Assembly Hall. The people respond to each item of news with

cheers or groans – far more often with groans. This is the girl’s only experience of media. She has never seen a movie. She has never read a cartoon. She is only allowed to listen to classical music. There is a stereo set in the Assembly Hall and lots of records that someone probably brought in as a single collection. During free moments, it is possible to listen to a Brahms symphony or a Schumann piano piece or Bach keyboard music or religious music. These are precious times for the girl and virtually her only entertainment.

Then one day something happens that makes it necessary for the girl to be punished. She has been ordered that week to take care of the Gathering’s small herd of goats each morning and night, but, overwhelmed with her homework and other daily chores, one night it slips her mind. The next morning, the oldest animal, a blind goat, is found cold and dead. As her punishment, the girl is to be isolated from the rest of the Gathering for ten days.

That particular goat was thought by the community to have a special significance, but it was quite old, and some kind of illness had sunk its talons into the goat’s wasted body, so whether anyone took care of it or not, there was no hope it would recover. Still, that does not lessen the severity of the girl’s crime in any way. She is blamed not only for the death of the goat itself but for the dereliction of her duties. Isolation is one of the most serious punishments that the Gathering can impose.

The girl is locked in a small, old earthen storehouse with the dead blind goat. The storehouse is called the Room for Reflection. Anyone who has broken the Gathering’s rules goes there in order to reflect upon his or her offense. No one speaks to the girl while she is in isolation. She must endure ten full days of total silence. A minimal amount of water and food is brought to her, but the storehouse is dark, cold, and damp, and it smells of the dead goat. The door is locked from the outside. In one corner of the room is a bucket where she can relieve herself. High on one wall is a small window that admits the light of the sun and the moon. A few stars can also be seen through it when the sky is not clouded over. There is no other light. She stretches out on the hard mattress on top of the board floor, wraps herself in two old blankets, and spends the night shivering. It is April, but

the nights are cold in the mountains. When darkness falls, the dead goat’s eye sparkles in the starlight. Afraid, the girl can hardly sleep.

On the third night, the goat’s mouth opens wide. It has been pushed open from the inside, and out of the mouth come a number of tiny people, six in all. They are only four inches high when they first emerge, but as soon as they set foot on the ground, they begin to grow like mushrooms sprouting after the rain. Even so, they are no more than two feet tall. They tell the girl that they are called the Little People.

This is like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the girl thinks, recalling a story her father read to her when she was little. But there’s one missing.

“If you’d rather have seven, we can be seven,” one of the Little People says to her in a soft voice. Apparently, they can read her mind. She counts them again, and now there are seven. The girl does not find this especially strange, however. The rules of the world had already changed when the Little People came out of the goat’s mouth. Anything could happen after that.

“Why did you come out of the dead goat’s mouth?” she asks, noticing that her voice sounds odd. Her manner of speaking is also different from usual, probably because she has not spoken with anyone for three days.

“Because the goat’s mouth turned into a passageway,” one of the Little People with a hoarse voice says. “We didn’t know it was a dead goat until we actually came out.”

A screechy-voiced one adds, “We don’t mind at all, though. A goat, a whale, a peapod: as long as it’s a passageway.”

“You made the passageway, so we thought we’d give it a try and see where it came out,” the soft-voiced one says.

“I made the passageway?” the girl says. No, it does not sound like her own voice.

“You did us a favor,” says one of the Little People with a small

voice.

Some of the others voice their agreement.

“Let’s play,” says one with a tenor voice. “Let’s make an air

chrysalis.”

“Yes,” replies a baritone. “Since we went to all the trouble of coming

here.”

“An air chrysalis?” the girl asks.

“We pluck threads out of the air and make a home. We make it bigger and bigger!” the bass says.

“A home? Who is it for?” the girl asks. “You’ll see,” the baritone says.

“You’ll see when it comes out,” the bass says. “Ho ho,” another one takes up the beat.

“Can I help?” the girl asks.

“Of course,” the hoarse one says.

“You did us a favor,” the tenor says. “Let’s work together.”

Once the girl begins to get the hang of it, plucking threads out of the air is not too difficult. She has always been good with her hands, so she is able to master this operation right away. If you look closely, there are lots of threads hanging in the air. You can see them if you try.

“Yes, that’s it, you’re doing it right,” the small-voiced one says. “You’re a very clever girl. You learn quickly,” says the screechy-

voiced one.

All the Little People wear the same clothing and their faces look alike, but each one has a distinctly different voice.

The clothing they wear is utterly ordinary, the kind that can be seen anywhere. This is an odd way to put it, but there is no other way to describe their clothing. Once you take your eyes off their clothes, you can’t possibly remember what they looked like. The same can be said of their faces, the features of which are neither good nor bad. They are just ordinary features, the kind that can be seen anywhere. Once you take your eyes off their faces, you can’t possibly remember what they looked like. It is the same with their hair, which is neither long nor short, just ordinary hair. One thing they do not have is any smell.

When the dawn comes and the cock crows and the eastern sky lightens, the seven Little People stop working and begin stretching. Then they hide the partially finished air chrysalis – which is only about the size of a baby rabbit – in the corner of the room, probably so that the person who brings the meals will not see it.

“It’s morning,” says the one with the small voice. “The night has ended,” says the bass.

Since they have all these different voices, they ought to form a chorus, the girl thinks.

“We have no songs,” says the tenor. “Ho ho,” says the keeper of the beat.

The Little People all shrink down to their original four-inch size, form a line, and enter the dead goat’s mouth.

“We’ll be back tonight,” the small-voiced one says before closing the goat’s mouth from the inside. “You must not tell anyone about us.”

“If you do tell someone about us, something very bad will happen,” the hoarse one adds for good measure.

“Ho ho,” says the keeper of the beat. “I won’t tell anyone,” the girl says.

And even if I did, they wouldn’t believe me. The girl has often been scolded by the grown-ups around her for saying what is in her mind. People have said that she does not distinguish between reality and her imagination. The shape and color of her thoughts seem to be very different from those of other people. She can’t understand what they consider so wrong about her. In any case, she had better not tell anyone about the Little People.

After the Little People have disappeared and the goat’s mouth has closed, the girl does a thorough search of the area where they hid the air chrysalis, but she is unable to find it. They did such a good job of hiding it! The space is confined, but still she can’t discover where it might be. Where could they have hidden it?

After that, she wraps herself in the blankets and goes to sleep – her first truly restful sleep in a long time: no dreams, no interruptions. She enjoys the unusually deep sleep.

The dead goat stays dead all day, its body stiff, its eyes clouded like marbles. When the sun goes down, though, and darkness comes to the storehouse, the eye sparkles in the starlight, the mouth snaps open, and the Little People emerge, as if guided by the light. This time there are seven from the beginning.

“Let’s pick up where we left off last night,” the hoarse-voiced one

says.

Each of the other six voices his approval in his own way.

The seven Little People and the girl sit in a circle around the

chrysalis and continue to work on it, plucking white threads from the air and adding them to the chrysalis. They hardly speak, concentrating their

energies on the job. Engrossed in moving her hands, the girl is not bothered by the night’s coldness. She is hardly aware of the passing of time, and she feels neither bored nor sleepy. The chrysalis grows in size, slowly but visibly.

“How big are we going to make it?” the girl asks when dawn is nearing. She wants to know if the job will be done within the ten days she is locked in the storehouse.

“As big as we can,” the screechy-voiced one replies.

“When it gets to a certain size, it will break open all by itself,” the tenor says gleefully.

“And something will come out,” the baritone says in vibrant tones. “What kind of thing?” the girl asks.

“What will come out?” the small-voiced one says. “Just you wait!” the bass says.

“Ho ho,” says the keeper of the beat. “Ho ho,” the other six join in.

A peculiar darkness pervaded the novella’s style. As she became aware of it, Aomame frowned slightly. This was like a fabulous children’s story, but hidden down deep somewhere it had a strong, dark undercurrent. Aomame could hear its ominous rumble beneath the story’s simple phrases, a gloomy suggestion of illness to come – a deadly illness that quietly gnaws away a person’s spirit from the core. What brought the illness with them was the chorus-like group of seven Little People. There is something unhealthy here, without question, Aomame thought. And yet she could hear in their voices something that she recognized in herself – something almost fatally familiar.

Aomame looked up from the book and recalled what Leader had said about the Little People before he died.

“We have lived with them since long, long ago – from a time before good and evil even existed, when people’s minds were still benighted.”

Aomame went on reading the story.

The Little People and the girl continue working, and after several days the air chrysalis has grown to something like the size of a large dog.

“My punishment ends tomorrow. After that I’ll get out of here,” the girl says to the Little People as dawn is beginning to break.

The seven Little People listen quietly to what the girl is telling them. “So I won’t be able to make the air chrysalis with you anymore.” “We are very sorry to hear that,” the tenor says, sounding genuinely

sorry.

“You helped us very much,” the baritone says.

The one with the screechy voice says, “But the chrysalis is almost

finished. It will be ready once we add just a little bit more.”

The Little People stand in a row, staring at the air chrysalis as if to measure the size of what they have made so far.

“Just a tiny bit more!” the hoarse-voiced one says as if leading the chorus in a monotonous boatman’s song.

“Ho ho,” intones the keeper of the beat. “Ho ho,” the other six join in.

The girl’s ten days of isolation end and she returns to the Gathering. Her communal life starts again, and she is so busy following all the rules that she has no more time to be alone. She can, of course, no longer work on the air chrysalis with the Little People. Every night before she goes to bed, she imagines to herself the seven Little People continuing to sit around the air chrysalis and make it bigger. It is all she can think about. It even feels as if the whole air chrysalis has actually slipped inside her head.

The girl is dying to know what could possibly be inside the air chrysalis. What will appear when the chrysalis ripens and pops open? She is filled with regret to think that she cannot witness the scene with her own eyes. I worked so hard helping them to make it, I should be allowed to be there when it opens. She even thinks seriously of committing another offense so that she can be punished with another period of isolation in the storehouse. But even if she were to go to all that trouble, the Little People

might not appear. The dead goat has been carried away and buried somewhere. Its eye will not sparkle in the starlight again.

The story goes on to describe the girl’s daily life in the community – the disciplined schedule, the fixed tasks, the guidance and care she provides the other children as the oldest child in the community, her simple meals, the stories her parents read her before bedtime, the classical music she listens to whenever she can find a spare moment. A life without “po-loo- shun.”

The Little People visit her in dreams. They can enter people’s dreams whenever they like. They tell her that the air chrysalis is about to break open, and they urge her to come and see it. “Come to the storehouse with a candle after sunset. Don’t let anyone see you.”

The girl cannot suppress her curiosity. She slips out of bed and pads her way to the storehouse carrying the candle she has prepared. No one is there. All she finds is the air chrysalis sitting quietly where it has been left on the storehouse floor. It is twice as big as it was when she last saw it, well over four feet long. Its entire surface radiates a soft glow, and its beautifully curved shape has a waist-like narrowed area in the middle that was not there before, when it was smaller. The Little People have obviously been working hard. The chrysalis is already breaking open. A vertical crack has formed in its side. The girl bends over and peers in through the opening.

She discovers that she herself is inside the chrysalis. She stares at this other self of hers lying naked on her back, eyes closed, apparently unconscious, not breathing, like a doll.

One of the Little People speaks to her – the one with the hoarse voice: “That is your dohta,” he says, and then clears his throat.

The girl turns to find the seven Little People fanned out behind her in a row.

“Dohta,” she says, mechanically repeating the word. “And what you are called is ‘maza,’” the bass says. “Maza and dohta,” the girl says.

“The dohta serves as a stand-in for the maza,” the screechy-voiced one says.

“Do I get split in two?” the girl asks.

“Not at all,” the tenor says. “This does not mean that you are split in two. You are the same you in every way. Don’t worry. A dohta is just the shadow of the maza’s heart and mind in the shape of the maza.”

“When will she wake up?”

“Very soon. When the time comes,” the baritone says.

“What will this dohta do as the shadow of my heart and mind?” the girl asks.

“She will act as a Perceiver,” the small-voiced one says furtively. “Perceiver,” the girl says.

“Yes,” says the hoarse one. “She who perceives.”

“She conveys what she perceives to the Receiver,” the screechy one

says.

“In other words, the dohta becomes our passageway,” the tenor says. “Instead of the goat?” the girl asks.

“The dead goat was only a temporary passageway,” the bass says.

“We must have a living dohta as a Perceiver to link the place we live with this place.”

“What does the maza do?” the girl asks.

“The maza stays close to the dohta,” the screechy one says. “When will the dohta wake up?” the girl asks.

“Two days from now, or maybe three,” the tenor says. “One or the other,” says the one with the small voice.

“Make sure you take good care of this dohta,” the baritone says. “She is your dohta.”

“Without the maza’s care, the dohta cannot be complete. She cannot live long without it,” the screechy one says.

“If she loses her dohta, the maza will lose the shadow of her heart and mind,” the tenor says.

“What happens to a maza when she loses the shadow of her heart and mind?” the girl asks.

The Little People look at each other. None of them will answer the question.

“When the dohta wakes up, there will be two moons in the sky,” the hoarse one says.

“The two moons cast the shadow of her heart and mind,” the baritone says.

“There will be two moons,” the girl repeats mechanically.

“That will be a sign. Watch the sky with great care,” the small- voiced one says furtively. “Watch the sky with great care,” he says again. “Count the moons.”

“Ho ho,” says the keeper of the beat. “Ho ho,” the other six join in.

The girl runs away.

There was something mistaken there. Something wrong. Something greatly misshapen. Something opposed to nature. The girl knows this. She does not know what the Little People want, but the image of herself inside the air chrysalis sends shivers through her. She cannot possibly live with her living, moving other self. She has to run away from here. As soon as she possibly can. Before her dohta wakes up. Before that second moon appears in the sky.

In the Gathering it is forbidden for individuals to own money. But the girl’s father once secretly gave her a ten-thousand-yen bill and some coins. “Hide this so that no one can find it,” he told her. He also gave her a piece of paper with someone’s name, address, and telephone number written on it. “If you ever have to run away from this place, use the money to buy a train ticket and go there.”

Her father must have known back then that something bad might happen in the Gathering. The girl does not hesitate. Her actions are swift. She has no time to say good-bye to her parents.

From a jar she buried in the earth, she takes out the ten-thousand-yen bill and the coins and the paper. During class, she tells the teacher she is not feeling well and gets permission to go to the nurse’s office. Instead she leaves the school and takes a bus to the station. She presents her ten- thousand-yen bill at the window and buys a ticket to Takao, west of Tokyo. The man at the window gives her change. This is the first time in her life she has ever bought a ticket or received change or gotten on a train, but her father gave her detailed instructions, and she has memorized what she must do.

As indicated on the paper, the girl gets off the train at Takao Station on the Chuo Line, and she uses a public telephone to call the number her father gave her. The man who answers is an old friend of her father’s, an artist who paints in the traditional Japanese style. He is ten years older than her father and he lives in the hills with his daughter near Mount Takao. His wife died a short time before. The daughter is named Kurumi and she is one year younger than the girl. As soon as he hears from the girl, the man comes

to get her at the station, and he warmly welcomes this young escapee into his home.

The day after she is taken into the painter’s home, the girl looks at the sky from her room and discovers that the number of moons up there has increased to two. Near the usual moon a smaller second moon hangs like a slightly shriveled green pea. My dohta must have awakened, the girl thinks. The two moons cast the shadow of her heart and mind. Her heart gives a shudder. The world has changed. And something is beginning to happen.

The girl hears nothing from her parents. Perhaps no one in the Gathering has noticed her disappearance. That is because her other self, her dohta, has remained behind. The two of them look exactly alike, so most people can’t tell the difference. Her parents, of course, should be able to tell that the dohta is not the actual girl, that she is nothing but the girl’s other self, that their actual daughter has run away from the Gathering, leaving the dohta behind in her place. There is only one place where the girl might have gone, but still her parents never try to contact her. This in itself might be a wordless message to the girl to stay away.

The girl goes to school irregularly. The new outside world is simply too different from the world of the Gathering where she grew up. The rules are different, the aims are different, the words they use are different. For this reason, she has trouble making friends in this new world. She can’t get used to life in the school.

In middle school, however, she befriends a boy. His name is Toru. He is small and skinny, and his face has several deep wrinkles like that of a monkey. He seems to have suffered from a serious illness when little and can’t participate in strenuous activities. His backbone is somewhat curved. At recess time, he always stays by himself, reading a book. Like the girl, he has no friends. He is too small and too ugly. During one lunch break, the girl sits next to him and starts to talk to him. She asks about the book he is reading. He reads it aloud to her. She likes his voice, which is small and hoarse but very clear to her. The stories he tells with that voice all but carry her away. He reads prose so beautifully that it sounds as if he is reciting poetry. Soon she is spending every lunchtime with him, sitting very still and listening with deep attention to the stories he reads her.

Before long, however, Toru is lost to the girl. The Little People snatch him away from her.

One night an air chrysalis appears in Toru’s room. The Little People make it bigger and bigger each night while he sleeps, and they show the scene to the girl through her dreams. The girl can do nothing to stop them. Eventually the chrysalis reaches full size and a vertical split appears in its side, just as it happened with the girl. But inside this chrysalis are three big, black snakes. The three snakes are tightly intertwined, so tightly that no one – including themselves – can pull them apart. They look like a shiny perpetual tangle with three heads. The snakes are terribly angry that they cannot pull free. They writhe in a frantic effort to separate themselves from each other, but the more they writhe, the more entangled they become. The Little People show these creatures to the girl. The boy called Toru sleeps on beside them, unaware. Only the girl can see all this.

The boy suddenly falls ill a few days later and is sent to a distant sanatorium. The nature of his illness is not disclosed. In any case, Toru will surely never return to the school. He has been irretrievably lost.

The girl realizes that this is a message from the Little People. Apparently they cannot do anything to the girl, a maza, directly. What they can do instead is harm and even destroy the people around her. But they cannot do this to just anyone – they cannot touch her guardian, the painter, or his daughter, Kurumi. Instead they choose the weakest ones for their prey. They dragged the three black snakes from the depths of the boy’s mind and woke them from their slumber. By destroying the boy, they have sent a warning to the girl and are trying their best to bring her back to her dohta. “You, finally, are the one who caused this to happen,” they are telling her.

The girl returns to her loneliness. She stops going to school. Making friends with someone can only expose that person to danger. That is what it means to live beneath two moons. That is what she has learned.

The girl eventually makes up her mind and begins fashioning her own air chrysalis. She is able to do this. The Little People said that they had come to her world down a passageway from the place they belong. If that is the case, she herself should be able to go to that place down a passageway in the opposite direction. If she goes there, she can learn the secrets regarding why

she is here and what the meaning of “maza” and “dohta” could be. She might also succeed in saving the lost Toru. The girl begins making a passageway. All she has to do is pluck threads from the air and weave a chrysalis. This will take time, but if she does take the time, she can do it.

Sometimes, however, she becomes unsure and confusion overtakes her. Am I really a maza? Couldn’t I have switched places somewhere with my dohta? The more she thinks about it, the less certain she becomes. How can I prove that I am the real me?

The story ends symbolically when the girl is opening the door of her passageway. It says nothing about what will happen beyond the door – probably because it has not happened yet.

Dohta, Aomame thought. Leader used that word before he died. He said that his own daughter had run away, leaving her dohta behind, in order to establish a force opposed to the Little People. It might have actually happened. And I am not the only one to see two moons.

Still, Aomame felt she could understand why this novella had gained such a wide readership. Although it was a story about the fantastical experiences of a girl placed in unusual circumstances, it also had something that called forth people’s natural sympathies. It probably aroused some subconscious something, which was why readers were pulled in and kept turning pages.

Tengo undoubtedly had contributed much to the book’s literary qualities, its vivid, precise descriptions, but she could not confine her admiration to that fact alone. She had to focus on the parts of the story where the Little People enter the action. For Aomame, this was a highly practical story – a virtual instruction manual – upon which hinged the life and death of actual people. She needed to gain concrete knowledge from it, to add whatever solidity and detail she could to her understanding of the world into which she had strayed.

Air Chrysalis was not just a wild fantasy dreamed up by a seventeen- year-old girl. The names may have been changed, but Aomame firmly believed that the majority of things depicted in it were unmistakable reality as experienced firsthand by the girl herself. Fuka-Eri had recorded those events from her own life as accurately as possible in order to reveal those

hidden secrets to the world at large, to inform large numbers of people of the existence and the deeds of the Little People.

The dohta that the girl had left behind must have become a passageway for the Little People and guided them to Leader, the girl’s father, who was then transformed by them into a Receiver. They then drove the Akebono members, who were of no use to them, into a suicidal bloodbath, and transformed the remaining Sakigake group into a smart, militant, and xenophobic religious organization, which was probably the most comfortable and convenient environment for the Little People.

Aomame wondered if Fuka-Eri’s dohta had been able to survive for long without her maza. The Little People had said that it was virtually impossible for a dohta to go on living without her maza. And what about a maza? What was it like for her to live after having lost the shadow of her heart and mind?

After the girl escaped from Sakigake, the Little People had probably used the same process to make more new dohtas, their purpose being to widen and stabilize the passageway by which they came and went, like adding new lanes to a highway. This was how the dohtas became Perceivers for the Little People and played the role of shrine maidens. Tsubasa had been one of them. If Leader had sexual relations not with the girls’ actual mazas but with their other selves, their dohtas, then Leader’s expression – “ambiguous congress” – made sense. It also explained Tsubasa’s flat, depthless eyes and her near inability to speak. Aomame had no idea how or why the dohta, Tsubasa, had escaped from the religious organization, but she had almost certainly been put into an air chrysalis and “retrieved” to be taken back to her maza. The bloody killing of the dog had been a warning from the Little People, like what was done to Toru in the story.

The dohtas wanted to become pregnant with Leader’s child, but, lacking substance themselves, they were not menstruating. Still, according to Leader, their desire to become pregnant was intense. Why should that have been?

Aomame shook her head. There was still much that she did not understand.

Aomame wished that she could tell this to the dowager as soon as possible – that the man might actually have raped nothing more than the girls’

shadows; that they might not have had to kill him after all.

But even if she explained these things, it would not be easy for her to get the dowager to believe her. Aomame knew how the dowager would feel. The dowager – or any sane person – would have trouble accepting as fact this stuff about the Little People, mazas, dohtas, or air chrysalises. To sane people, these things would seem like nothing more than the kinds of fabrications that appear in fiction, no more real than the Queen of Hearts or the white rabbit with the watch in Alice in Wonderland.

But Aomame herself had actually seen two moons – the old one and the new one – hanging in the sky. She had actually been living under their light. She had felt their lopsided gravity in her skin. And with her own hands she had killed the man called Leader in a dark hotel room.

Aomame did not know what the Little People were hoping to accomplish by taking control of Sakigake. Perhaps they wanted things that transcended good and evil, but the young protagonist of Air Chrysalis intuitively recognized those things as not right, and she tried to strike back in her own way. Her vehicle was her story. Tengo became her partner to help get the story going. Tengo himself probably did not understand the meaning of what he was doing at that point, and he might not understand it even now.

In any case, the story called Air Chrysalis was the important key.

Everything started from this story. But where do I fit into it?

From the moment I heard Janáček’s Sinfonietta and climbed down the escape stairs from the traffic jam on the Metropolitan Expressway, I was drawn into this world with two moons in the sky, into this enigma-filled world of 1Q84. What could it mean?

She closed her eyes and continued to think.

I have probably been drawn into the passageway of the “force opposed to the Little People” created by Fuka-Eri and Tengo. That force carried me into this side. What other explanation could there be? And the role I am playing in this story is by no means small. I may even be one of the central characters.

Aomame looked at her surroundings. In other words, I am in the story that Tengo set in motion. In a sense, I am inside him – inside his body,

she realized. I am inside that shrine, so to speak.

I saw an old science fiction movie on television long ago. It was the story of a small group of scientists who shrank their bodies down to microscopic size, boarded a submarine-like vehicle (which had also been shrunk down), and entered their patient’s blood vessels, through which they gained entry to his brain in order to perform a complex operation that would have been impossible under ordinary circumstances. Maybe my situation is like that. I’m in Tengo’s blood and circulating through his body. I battled the white blood cells that attacked the invading foreign body (me) as I headed for the root cause of the disease, and I must have succeeded in “deleting” that cause when I killed Leader at the Hotel Okura.

Aomame was able to warm herself somewhat with such thoughts. I carried out my assigned mission. It was a difficult mission, that is for sure, and I was afraid, but I carried it off coolly and flawlessly in the midst of all that thunder – and perhaps with Tengo looking on. She felt proud of what she had accomplished.

To continue with the blood analogy, I should soon be drawn into a vein, spent, having served my purpose. Before long, I will be expelled from the body. That is the rule by which the body’s system works – an inescapable destiny. But so what? I am inside Tengo now, enveloped by his warmth, guided by his heartbeat, guided by his logic and his rules, and perhaps by the very language he is writing. How marvelous to be inside him like this!

Still sitting on the floor, Aomame closed her eyes. She pressed her nose against the pages of the book, inhaling its smells – the smell of the paper, the smell of the ink. She quietly gave herself up to its flow, listening hard for the sound of Tengo’s heart.

This is the kingdom, she thought.

I am ready to die, anytime at all.

Chapter 20. TENGO: The Walrus and the Mad Hatter

NO DOUBT ABOUT IT: there were two moons.

One was the moon that had always been there, and the other was a far smaller, greenish moon, somewhat lopsided in shape, and much less bright. It looked like a poor, ugly, distantly related child that had been foisted on the family by unfortunate events and was welcomed by no one. But it was undeniably there, neither a phantom nor an optical illusion, hanging in space like other heavenly bodies, a solid mass with a clear-cut outline. Not a plane, not a blimp, not an artificial satellite, not a papier-mâché moon that someone made for fun. It was without a doubt a chunk of rock, having quietly, stubbornly settled on a position in the night sky, like a punctuation mark placed only after long deliberation or a mole bestowed by destiny.

Tengo stared at the new moon for a long time as if to challenge it, never averting his gaze, hardly even blinking. But no matter how long he

kept his eyes locked on it, it refused to budge. It stayed hunkered down in its spot in the sky with silent, stonehearted tenacity.

Tengo unclenched his right fist and, almost unconsciously, gave his head a slight shake. Damn, it’s the same as in Air Chrysalis! A world with two moons hanging in the sky side by side. When a dohta is born, a second moon appears.

“That will be a sign. Watch the sky with great care,” one of the Little People said to the girl.

Tengo was the one who wrote those words. Following Komatsu’s advice, he had made his description of the new moon as concrete and detailed as possible. It was the part on which he had worked the hardest. The look of the new moon was almost entirely Tengo’s creation.

Komatsu had said, “Think of it this way, Tengo. Your readers have seen the sky with one moon in it any number of times, right? But I doubt they’ve seen a sky with two moons in it side by side. When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precise detail as possible.”

It made a lot of sense.

Still looking up at the sky, Tengo shook his head again. The newly added moon was absolutely the same size and shape as the one for which he had invented a description. Even the figurative language that he had used fit this one almost perfectly.

This can’t be, Tengo thought. What kind of reality mimics fictional creations? “No, this can’t be,” he actually said aloud. Or tried to. His voice barely worked. His throat was parched, as if he had just run a very long distance. There’s no way this can be. That’s a fictional world, a world that does not exist in reality. It was a world in a fantastic story that Fuka-Eri had told Azami night after night and that Tengo himself had fleshed out.

Could this mean, then – Tengo asked himself – that this is the world of the novel? Could I have somehow left the real world and entered the world of Air Chrysalis like Alice falling down the rabbit hole? Or could the real world have been made over so as to match exactly the story of Air Chrysalis? Does this mean that the world that used to be – the familiar world with only one moon – no longer exists anywhere? And could the power of the Little People have something to do with this in one way or another?

He looked around, hoping for answers, but all that appeared before his eyes was the perfectly ordinary urban residential neighborhood. He could find nothing about it that seemed odd or unusual – no Queen of Hearts, no walrus, no Mad Hatter. There was nothing in his surroundings but an empty sandbox and swings, a mercury-vapor lamp emitting its sterile light, the spreading branches of a zelkova tree, a locked public toilet, a new six-story condo (only four units of which had lighted windows), a ward notice board, a red vending machine with a Coca-Cola logo, an illegally parked old-model green Volkswagen Golf, telephone poles and electric lines, and primary-color neon signs in the distance. The usual city noise, the usual lights. Tengo had been living here in Koenji for seven years. Not because he particularly liked it, but because he had just happened to find a cheap apartment that was not too far from the station. It was convenient for commuting, and moving somewhere else would have been too much trouble, so he had stayed on. But he at least knew the neighborhood inside and out and would have noticed any change immediately.

How long had there been more than one moon? Tengo could not be sure. Perhaps there had been two moons for years now and he simply hadn’t noticed. He had missed lots of things that way. He wasn’t much of a newspaper reader, and he never watched television. There were countless things that everybody knew but him. Perhaps something had occurred just recently to increase the number of moons to two. He wanted to ask someone, “Excuse me, this is a strange question, but how long have there been two moons? I just thought you might know.” But there was nobody there to ask – literally, not even a cat.

No, there was someone there. Nearby, someone was using a hammer to pound a nail into a wall. Bang bang bang. The sound kept up without a break, a very hard nail going into a very hard wall. Who could be pounding nails at a time like this? Puzzled, Tengo looked around, but he could see no wall, nor was there anyone pounding nails.

A moment later, Tengo realized that he was hearing the sound of his own heart. Spurred on by adrenaline, his heart was pumping surges of blood through his body. It pounded in his ears.

The sight of the two moons gave Tengo a slight dizzy feeling, as if it had put his nervous system out of balance. He sat down on top of the slide,

leaning against the handrail, and closed his eyes, fighting the dizziness. He felt as if the force of gravity around him had subtly changed. Somewhere the tide was rising, and somewhere else the tide was receding. Their faces devoid of expression, people were moving back and forth between “insane” and “lunatic.”

In his dizziness, it suddenly occurred to Tengo that the image of his mother wearing a white slip had not attacked him for a very long time. He had almost forgotten that he had been tormented by that illusion for years. When could he have last seen it? He could not recall exactly, but it was probably around the time he started writing his new novel. For some unfathomable reason, his mother’s ghost had stopped haunting him from that point onward.

Instead, Tengo now sat on top of a slide in a playground in Koenji, looking at a pair of moons in the sky. An inscrutable new world silently surrounded him like lapping dark water. Perhaps a new trouble had chased out the old one. Perhaps the old, familiar riddle had been replaced by a fresh, new one. The thought came to Tengo without irony. Nor did he feel any need to complain about it. Whatever the composition of this new world might be, I surely have no choice but to accept it in silence. There’s no way to pick and choose. Even in the world that existed until now, there was no choice. It’s the same thing. And besides, he asked himself, even if I wanted to lodge a complaint, who is there for me to complain to?

The hard, dry sound of his heart continued, but the dizzy sensation was gradually subsiding. With his heart pounding in his ears, Tengo leaned his head against the handrail of the slide and looked at the two moons hanging in the Koenji sky. What a strange sight it was – a new world with a new moon. Everything was uncertain, and ultimately ambiguous. But there is one thing I can declare with certainty, Tengo thought: No matter what happens to me in the future, this view with two moons hanging up there side by side will never – ever – seem ordinary and obvious to me.

What kind of secret pact had Aomame concluded with the moon that time, Tengo wondered. And he recalled the deadly serious look in her eye as she stared at the moon in broad daylight. What could she have offered the moon?

And what is going to happen to me from now on?

At ten years old, as a frightened boy standing before the room’s big door, Tengo had wondered this again and again while Aomame continued to

grip his hand in the empty classroom. Even now Tengo continued to wonder that same thing. He felt the same anxiety, the same fear, the same trembling. The door now was new and bigger. The moon was hanging there again, but this time there were two moons, not one.

Where could Aomame be?

Tengo scanned the area again from his perch on the slide, but nowhere could he find what he was hoping to discover. He spread out his left hand and struggled to find some clue, but there was nothing in his palm besides its natural deeply carved lines. In the flat light of the mercury-vapor lamp they looked like the canals on the surface of Mars, but they told him absolutely nothing. The most he could glean from this big hand was the fact that he had come a very long way since the age of ten – all the way to the top of this slide in a little Koenji playground where two moons were hanging in the sky.

Where could Aomame be? Tengo asked himself again. Where is she hiding?

“She might be very close by,” Fuka-Eri had said. “Within walking distance.”

Supposedly somewhere close by, could Aomame also see the two moons?

Yes, I’m sure she can, Tengo thought. He had no proof, of course, but he had a mysterious conviction that it must be true. She could see what he could see, without a doubt. He balled his left hand into a tight fist and pounded on the surface of the slide hard enough to hurt.

That is why it has to happen: we have to run into each other somewhere within walking distance of this place. Someone is after Aomame, and she’s hiding like a wounded cat. I don’t have much time to find her. But where could she be? Tengo had no idea.

“Ho ho,” called the keeper of the beat. “Ho ho,” the other six joined in.

Chapter 21. AOMAME: What Should I Do?

THAT NIGHT, AOMAME stepped out onto the balcony in her slippers and gray jersey workout clothes to look at the moons. She was holding a cup of cocoa. It was the first time in a very long time that she felt like drinking cocoa, but the sight of a can of Van Houten cocoa in a kitchen cabinet had suddenly inspired her. Two moons – a big one and a little one – hung in the perfectly clear southwestern sky. Instead of sighing, she produced a tiny moan. A dohta had been born from an air chrysalis, and now there were two moons. 1984 had changed to 1Q84. The old world had vanished, and she could never get back to it.

Sitting on the balcony’s garden chair, taking little sips of the hot cocoa and looking at the two moons through narrowed eyes, Aomame tried to recall things from the old world. All she could bring back at the moment, however, was the potted rubber plant she had left in her apartment. Where could it be now? Was Tamaru looking after it as he had promised? Of course. There’s nothing to worry about, Aomame told herself: Tamaru is a man who keeps his word. He might kill you without hesitation if necessary, but even so, he would care for your rubber plant to the end.

But why am I so concerned about that rubber plant?

Aomame had barely thought about the thing until the day she left it behind in her apartment. It was nothing but a sad-looking rubber plant, its color pale and dull, its poor health obvious at a glance. It had carried an 1,800-yen price tag in a special sale, but the cashier had further dropped the price to 1,500-yen without being asked, and if Aomame had bargained it might have gotten cheaper still. It had obviously remained unsold for a long time, and all the way home she had regretted having bought it on impulse, not only because it was sad looking, bulky, and hard to carry, but because it was a living thing.

That was the first time in her life that she had owned something alive. Whether a pet or a potted plant, she had never bought one or received one or found one. The rubber plant was her very first experience of living with a thing that had a life of its own. The moment she had seen the two little red goldfish in the living room and heard from the dowager that she had bought them for Tsubasa at a night stall in a street fair, Aomame had wanted to have her own fish – badly. She could hardly keep her eyes off them. Where had this desire come from all of a sudden? Perhaps she felt envious of Tsubasa. No one had ever bought Aomame anything at a street fair – or even taken her to one. Ardent members of the Society of Witnesses, faithful in every way to the teachings of the Bible, her parents had disdained and avoided all the secular world’s festivals.

And so Aomame had made up her mind to go to a discount store near the station in her Jiyugaoka neighborhood and buy a goldfish. If no one was going to buy her a goldfish and bowl, then she would do it herself. What’s wrong with that? she had thought. I’m a grown-up, I’m thirty years old, and I live in my own apartment. I’ve got bricks of money piled up in my safe-deposit box. I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to buy myself a damned goldfish.

But when she went to the pet department and saw actual goldfish swimming in the tank, their lacy fins waving, Aomame felt incapable of buying one. She could not help but feel that paying money to take ownership of a living organism was inappropriate. It made her think, too, of her own young self. The goldfish was powerless, trapped in a small glass bowl, unable to go anywhere. This fact did not appear to bother the goldfish itself. It probably had nowhere it wanted to go. But to Aomame this was a matter of genuine concern.

She had felt none of this when she saw the two goldfish in the dowager’s living room. They had appeared to be enjoying themselves swimming in their glass bowl so elegantly, the summer light rippling through the water. Living with goldfish seemed like a wonderful thought. It should add a certain richness to her own life. But the sight of the goldfish in the pet department of the discount store by the station only made Aomame feel short of breath. No, it’s out of the question. I can’t possibly keep a goldfish.

What caught her eye at that point was the rubber plant, over in a corner of the store. It seemed to have been shoved into the least noticeable spot in the place, hiding like an abandoned orphan. Or at least it appeared so to Aomame. It was lacking in color and sheen, and its shape was out of kilter, but with hardly a thought in her head, she bought it – not because she liked it but because she had to buy it. And in fact, even after she brought it home and set it down, she hardly looked at it except on those rare occasions when she watered it.

Once she had left it behind, however, and realized that she would never see it again, Aomame couldn’t stop herself from worrying about the plant. She frowned hugely, the way she often did when she wanted to scream out loud in confusion, stretching every muscle in her face until she looked like a completely different person. When she had finished distorting her face into every possible angle, Aomame finally returned it to normal.

Why am I so concerned about that rubber plant?

In any case, I know for sure that Tamaru will treat the plant well. He is used to loving and caring for living things. Unlike me. He treats his dogs like second selves. He even uses his spare time to go through the dowager’s garden, inspecting her plants in great detail. When he was in the orphanage, he risked his own life to protect a younger boy with impaired abilities. I could never do anything like that, Aomame thought. I can’t afford to take responsibilities for others’ lives. It’s all I can do to bear the weight of my own life and my own loneliness.

“Loneliness” reminded Aomame of Ayumi.

Some man had handcuffed her to a bed in a love hotel, violently raped her, and strangled her to death with a bathrobe sash. As far as Aomame knew, the perpetrator had not been taken into custody. Ayumi had

a family and colleagues, but she was lonely – so lonely that she had to experience such a horrible death. Still, I wasn’t there for her. She wanted something from me, that was certain. But I had my own secrets – and my own loneliness – that had to be protected. I could never share them with Ayumi. Why did she choose me, of all people, when there are so many others in this world?

Aomame closed her eyes and pictured the potted rubber plant that she had left in her empty apartment.

Why am I so concerned about that rubber plant?

Aomame spent the next several minutes crying. What’s wrong with me? she wondered, shaking her head. I’m crying too much these days. Crying was the last thing she wanted to do. But she couldn’t stop the tears. Her shoulders trembled. I’ve got nothing left. Anything of value I ever possessed has disappeared, one thing after another. Everything is gone – except for the warmth of my memory of Tengo.

I’ve got to stop this crying, Aomame told herself. Here I am, inside of Tengo, like the scientists in Fantastic Voyage. Yes, that’s it! The movie’s title was Fantastic Voyage. Satisfied that she had recalled the title, Aomame calmed down and stopped crying. No matter how many tears I shed, it’s not going to solve anything. I’ve got to go back to being the cool, tough Aomame.

Who wants that to happen? I want that to happen.

She looked at her surroundings. There were still two moons in the

sky.

“That will be a sign. Watch the sky with great care,” one of the Little

People, the small-voiced one, had said. “Ho ho,” said the keeper of the beat.

Just then Aomame noticed something: she was not the only person looking up at the moons. She could see a young man in the playground across the street. He was sitting on top of the slide and looking in the same direction that she was. He is seeing two moons, just like me, she knew intuitively. No

mistake, he is looking at what I am looking at. He can tell: there are two moons in this world. But Leader had said that not everyone living in this world could see both moons.

There was no room for doubt: this large young man was looking at a pair of moons in the sky. I’d bet anything on that. I can tell. He’s sitting there, looking at the big, yellow moon and the small, lopsided, greenish mossy-colored moon. He appears to be thinking hard about their meaning. Could he too have drifted into 1Q84? Maybe he is confused, unable to grasp the meaning of this new world. Yes, that must be it. That must be why he had to climb to the top of the slide in this playground at night, staring at the moons all alone, mentally listing all the possibilities, all the hypotheses he could think of, and examining them in detail.

But no, that might not be it at all. He could be working for Sakigake.

He could be here looking for me.

The thought set Aomame’s heart racing. Her right hand unconsciously reached for the automatic pistol in her waistband, tightening on its hard grip.

It was impossible, though, to find any sense of tension or urgency in the man on the slide, and there was nothing about him that suggested violence. He was just sitting up there alone, his head against the handrail, looking straight up at the moons in the sky, absorbed in his own thoughts. Aomame was on her third-story balcony, and he was down below. She sat in the garden chair, looking down at the man through the gap between the balcony’s opaque plastic screen and the metal railing. Even if he were to look up toward Aomame, he would probably not be able to see her, but in any case the man appeared to be completely engrossed, staring at the sky without the slightest sense that someone might be staring at him.

Aomame calmed herself down and quietly released the breath that she was holding in. She relaxed the tension in her fingers and took her hand from the pistol. Maintaining her position, she continued to observe the man. From her vantage point, she could only see his profile. The playground’s mercury-vapor lamp cast its bright light on him from above. He was a tall man with broad shoulders. He had a stiff-looking head of hair, cut short, and he wore a long-sleeved T-shirt, its sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Not exactly handsome, but he had good, solid features, and the shape of his head was not bad. If he were a little older and his hair thinning, he would be quite nice looking.

Then Aomame suddenly knew:

It was Tengo.

No, she thought, that couldn’t possibly be. She gave her head several short, sharp shakes. No way. I must be wrong. Things don’t work out like that. She found it impossible to breathe normally. Her body wasn’t working right. Thought and action refused to sync. I’ve got to take another good look at him, she thought, but for some reason she couldn’t get her eyes to focus. Something seemed to be causing the vision of her right and left eyes to become hugely different, all of a sudden. She unconsciously twisted her features out of shape.

What should I do?

She got out of her garden chair and looked around helplessly. Then she recalled that there had been a small pair of Nikon binoculars in the sideboard, and she went in to get them. She hurried back to the balcony holding the binoculars and looked at the slide. The young man was still there. In the same position, in profile, looking at the sky. With trembling fingers, she focused the binoculars and looked at his profile close-up, holding her breath, concentrating. No doubt about it: it was Tengo. Twenty years might have gone by, but she knew for sure: it could not be anyone but Tengo.

What most surprised Aomame was that Tengo’s appearance had hardly changed from the time he was ten, as if the ten-year-old boy had aged directly into a thirty-year-old man. This was not to say that he looked childish. His body and his head were, of course, far bigger than they used to be, and his features were now those of an adult. His facial expression had a new depth to it. The hands resting on his knees were big and strong, very different from the hand she had grasped in that elementary school classroom twenty years earlier. Even so, the aura projected by his physical presence was the same. His solid, massive body gave her a deep, natural sense of warmth and security. She felt a strong desire to press her cheek against his chest, and that filled her with joy. He was sitting on a playground slide, looking at the sky, staring hard at exactly the same things that she was looking at – the two moons. Yes, it is possible for us to see the same things.

What should I do?

Aomame had no idea what to do next. She set the binoculars in her lap and clenched her fists – tightly enough for her nails to leave marks in her skin. Her clenched fists were trembling slightly.

What should I do?

She listened to her labored breathing. Before she knew it, her body seemed to have split down the middle. One half was willing to accept the fact that Tengo was right there in front of her. The other half refused to accept it, trying to convince itself that this was not happening. Inside her, these two forces clashed, each trying to drag her in its own direction. It was as if every bit of her flesh was being shredded, her joints torn apart, her bones smashed.

Aomame wanted to run straight to the playground, climb the slide, and speak to Tengo there. But what should she say? She didn’t know how to move the muscles of her mouth. Could she manage to squeeze out a few words? “My name is Aomame. I held your hand in an elementary school classroom in Ichikawa twenty years ago. Do you remember me?”

Is that what she should say?

There should be something a little better.

The other Aomame gave her an order: “Stay hidden on this balcony. There’s nothing more you can do. You know that. You struck a bargain with Leader last night: you would save Tengo and help him to go on living in this world by throwing away your own life. That was the gist of your bargain. The contract has been concluded. You have sent Leader to the other world and agreed to offer your own life. What good would it do you now to see Tengo and talk about the past? And what would you do if he didn’t remember you or if he knew you only as ‘that strange girl who used to say the creepy prayers’? Then how would you feel as you went to your death?”

The thought made her go stiff all over. She began to shiver uncontrollably, as if she had caught a bad cold and might freeze to the core. She hugged herself for a time, shivering, but never once did she take her eyes off Tengo sitting on top of the slide and looking at the sky. He might disappear somewhere the moment she looked away from him.

She wanted Tengo to hold her in his arms, to caress her with his big hands. She wanted her whole body to feel his warmth, to have him stroke her from head to toe and warm her up. I want him to take away this chill I feel in my body’s core. Then I want him to come inside me and stir me with

all his might, like a spoon in a cup of cocoa, slowly, to the very bottom. If he would do that for me, I wouldn’t mind dying right then and there. Really.

No, can that really be true? Aomame thought. If that really happened, I might not want to die anymore. I might want to stay with him forever and ever. My resolve to die might simply evaporate, like a drop of dew in the morning sun. Or then again, I might feel like killing him, shooting him first with the Heckler & Koch, and then blowing my own brains out. I can’t begin to predict what would happen or what I would be capable of.

What should I do?

Aomame could not decide. Her breathing became harsh. A jumble of thoughts came to her, one after another, tangled thoughts defying all her attempts to impose order upon them. What was right? What was wrong? She knew only one thing for sure: she wanted those thick arms of his to be holding her right now. What happened after that would happen: let God or the devil decide.

Aomame made up her mind. She went to the bathroom and wiped away the traces of her tears. She looked in the mirror and swiftly straightened her hair. Her face was an absolute mess. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her outfit was terrible – faded jersey workout clothes with a weird bulge in back where she had a 9mm automatic pistol shoved into her waistband. This was no way to present herself to the man for whom she’d been burning with desire for twenty years. Why wasn’t she wearing something a little more decent? But it was too late. She had no time to be changing clothes. She slipped on a pair of sneakers and ran down three floors on the condo building’s emergency stairway, crossed the street, entered the empty playground, and walked to the slide, where there was no sign of Tengo. Bathed in the artificial light of the mercury-vapor lamp, the top of the slide was deserted – darker, colder, and emptier than the far side of the moon.

Could it have been a hallucination?

No, it was no hallucination, Aomame told herself, out of breath. Tengo was there until a moment ago, without a doubt. She climbed to the top of the slide and stood there, looking all around. No sign of anybody. But

he could not have gone very far. He was here until a very few minutes ago – four or five minutes at the most. If I run, I should be able to catch up with him.

But Aomame changed her mind. She stopped herself almost by force. No, I can’t do that. I don’t even know which way he walked from here. I don’t want to be running aimlessly around the streets of Koenji at night. That is not something I should be doing. While Aomame had hesitated on the balcony, wondering what she should do, Tengo had climbed down from the slide and left. Come to think of it, this is the fate I have been handed. I hesitated and hesitated and momentarily lost my powers of judgment, and in that time Tengo went away. That is what happened to me.

It’s just as well this way, Aomame told herself. It’s probably the best thing that could have happened. At least I succeeded in finding Tengo. I saw him just across the street. I trembled with the possibility of having his arms around me. If only for a few moments, I was able to taste that intense joy and anticipation. She closed her eyes and grasped the slide handrail, biting her lip.

Aomame sat down on top of the slide in the same posture that Tengo had adopted. She looked up at the southwestern sky, where the two moons, large and small, hung side by side. Until only moments ago, she had been watching Tengo from the balcony of her apartment, where her deep hesitation seemed to be lingering still.

1Q84: that is the name given to this world. I entered it six months ago without meaning to, and now I am about to leave it quite deliberately. Tengo will stay here after I am gone. I have no idea, of course, what kind of world it will be for Tengo. There is no way I can see it through to the end. But so what? I am going to die for him. I was unable to live for myself: that possibility had already been stripped from me. Instead, I will be able to die for him. That is enough. I can die smiling.

This is no lie.

Aomame struggled to feel whatever hint of Tengo’s presence might be left at the top of the slide, but no warmth of any kind remained there. The night wind, with its presentiment of autumn, cut through the leaves of the zelkova tree, removing all traces of Tengo. Even so, Aomame went on sitting there, looking up at the moons, bathed in their odd, emotionless light. The city

sounds blended together into one urban noise surrounding her with its basso continuo. She thought of the little spiders that had spun their webs on the emergency stairway of the Metropolitan Expressway. Were those spiders still alive and maintaining their webs?

She smiled.

I’m ready, she thought. I’ve made my preparations. But there was one place she would have to visit first.

Chapter 22. TENGO: As Long as There Are Two Moons in the Sky

AFTER CLIMBING DOWN from the slide and leaving the playground, Tengo wandered aimlessly through the streets of Koenji, from one block to the next, hardly conscious of where his feet were taking him. He tried to organize the jumble of ideas in his head, but unified thinking was beyond him now, probably because he had thought about too many different things at once while sitting on the slide: about the increase in the number of moons, about blood ties, about a new chapter in his life, about his dizzyingly realistic daydream, about Fuka-Eri and Air Chrysalis, and about Aomame, who was probably in hiding somewhere nearby. With his head a confused tangle of thoughts, Tengo felt his powers of concentration being tested to the limit. He wished he could just go to bed and be fast asleep. He could continue this process in the morning. No amount of additional thinking would bring him any clarity now.

Back at his apartment, he found Fuka-Eri sitting at his desk, intently sharpening pencils with a small pocketknife. Tengo always kept ten pencils in his pencil holder, but now there were at least twenty. She had done a

beautiful job of sharpening them. Tengo had never seen such beautifully sharpened pencils. Their points were like needles.

“You had a phone call,” she said, checking the sharpness of the current pencil with her finger. “From Chikura.”

“You weren’t supposed to be answering the phone.” “It was an important call.”

She had probably been able to tell it was important from the ring. “What was it about?” Tengo asked.

“They didn’t say.”

“But it was from the sanatorium in Chikura, right?” “They want a call.”

“They want me to call them?” “Today. Even if it’s late.”

Tengo sighed. “You don’t know the number, I suppose.” “I do.”

She had memorized the number. Tengo wrote it down. Then he looked at the clock. Eight thirty.

“What time did they call?” he asked. “A little while ago.”

Tengo went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Resting his hands on the edge of the sink, he closed his eyes and confirmed that his brain was functioning normally. Then he went to the phone and dialed the number. Perhaps his father had died. Or at least it was a life-and-death issue of some sort. They would not have called this late if it were not about something important.

A woman answered the phone. Tengo gave his name and said he was calling in response to an earlier message.

“Mr. Kawana’s son?” the woman asked. “Yes,” Tengo said.

“We met here the other day,” she said.

Tengo pictured the middle-aged nurse with metal-framed glasses. He could not recall her name.

He uttered a few polite words, adding, “I gather you called earlier?” “Yes, I did. I’ll connect you with the doctor in charge so you can talk

to him directly.”

With the receiver pressed against his ear, Tengo waited – and waited – for the doctor to pick up. “Home on the Range” seemed as if it would go

on playing forever. Tengo closed his eyes and pictured the sanatorium on the Boso Peninsula shore. The thickly overlapping pine trees, the sea breeze blowing through them, the Pacific Ocean waves breaking endlessly on the beach. The hushed entryway lobby without visitors. The sound of movable beds being wheeled down the corridors. The sun-damaged curtains. The well-pressed white uniforms of the nurses. The thin, flat coffee in the lunchroom.

Finally, the doctor picked up the phone.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I got an emergency call from one of the other sickrooms a few minutes ago.”

“That’s fine,” Tengo said. He tried to recall what his father’s doctor looked like, until it occurred to him that he had never met the man. His brain was still not functioning properly. “So, is something wrong with my father?”

The doctor paused a moment and then said, “Well, it’s not that something in particular happened today, just that his condition has not been good lately. I hate to tell you this, but he is in a coma.”

“You mean, he’s completely unconscious?” “Exactly.”

Tengo struggled to make his brain work. “Did he come down with something that made him go into a coma?”

“Properly speaking, no,” the doctor said with apparent difficulty. Tengo waited.

“It’s difficult to explain on the phone, but there is not one particular thing wrong with him. He does not have cancer or pneumonia or any other illness that we can name. Medically speaking, we can’t see any distinguishing symptoms. We don’t know what the cause might be, but in your father’s case, it appears that his natural life-sustaining force is visibly weakening. And since we don’t know the cause, we don’t know what treatment to apply. We are continuing to feed him intravenously, but this is strictly treating the symptoms.”

“Is it all right for me to ask you a very direct question?” Tengo

asked.

“Yes, of course,” the doctor said.

“Are you saying that my father is not going to last much longer?” “That might be a strong possibility if he stays in his current

condition.”

“So he’s more or less wasting away of old age?”

The doctor made a vague sound into the phone. Then he said, “Your father is still in his sixties, not yet ready to ‘waste away of old age.’ He is basically healthy. We haven’t found anything wrong with him other than his impaired cognitive abilities. He gets rather good scores on the periodic strength tests we perform. We are not aware of a single problem he might have.”

The doctor stopped talking at that point. Then he went on:

“But … come to think of it … observing him these past few days, there may be some degree of what you call ‘wasting away of old age.’ His physical functions overall have declined, and he seems to be losing the will to live. Normally, these symptoms don’t emerge until the patient passes his mid-eighties. When a person gets that old, we often see him grow tired of living and abandon the effort to maintain life. But I have no idea why that should be happening to a man in his sixties like Mr. Kawana.”

Tengo bit his lip and gave this some thought. “When did the coma start?” Tengo asked. “Three days ago,” the doctor said.

“You mean he hasn’t awakened for three days?” “Not once.”

“And his vital signs are gradually weakening?”

The doctor said, “Not drastically, but as I just said, the level of his life-sustaining force is gradually – but visibly – going down, like a train dropping its speed little by little as it begins to stop.”

“How much time do you think he has left?”

“I can’t say for sure. If his present condition continues as is, he might have another week in the worst case,” the doctor said.

Tengo changed his grip on the receiver and bit his lip again.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Tengo said. “Even if you hadn’t called, I was thinking of going there soon. But I’m glad you called. I’m very grateful to you.”

The doctor seemed relieved to hear this. “Please do come. The sooner you see him the better, I think. He may not be able to talk to you, but I’m sure your father will be glad you’re here.”

“He is completely unconscious, though, isn’t he?” “Yes. He is not conscious.”

“Do you think he is in pain?”

“For now, no, probably not. That is the one silver lining in all this.

He is sound asleep.”

“Thank you very much,” Tengo said.

“You know, Mr. Kawana,” the doctor said, “your father was a very easy patient to take care of. He never gave anyone any trouble.”

“He’s always been like that,” Tengo said. Then, thanking the doctor once again, he ended the call.

Tengo warmed his coffee and drank it at the kitchen table, sitting across from Fuka-Eri.

“You’ll be leaving tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked.

Tengo nodded. “Tomorrow morning I have to take the train and go to the cat town again.”

“You’re going to the cat town,” Fuka-Eri asked without expression. “You will be waiting here,” Tengo asked. Living with Fuka-Eri, he

had become used to asking questions without question marks. “I will be waiting here.”

“I’ll go to the cat town alone,” Tengo said. He took a sip of coffee. Then it suddenly occurred to him to ask her, “Do you want something to drink?”

“White wine if you have some.”

Tengo opened the refrigerator to see if he had any chilled white wine. In back he found a bottle of Chardonnay he had recently bought on sale. The label had a picture of a wild boar. He pulled the cork, poured some into a wineglass, and placed it before Fuka-Eri. After some hesitation, he poured himself a glass as well. He was definitely more in the mood for wine than coffee. It was a bit too chilled, and a bit too sweet, but the alcohol calmed Tengo’s nerves somewhat.

“You’ll be going to the cat town tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked again. “I’ll take a train first thing in the morning,” Tengo said.

Tipping back his glass of white wine, Tengo recalled that he had ejaculated into the body of the beautiful seventeen-year-old girl now sitting across the table from him. It had happened only the night before, but it seemed like something that had occurred in the distant past – almost a historical event. Still, the sensation of it remained as vivid as ever inside him.

“The number of moons increased,” Tengo said, as if sharing a secret, slowly turning the wineglass in his hand. “When I looked at the sky a little while ago, there were two moons – a big, yellow one and a small, green one. They might have been there from before, but I never noticed them. I finally realized it just a little while ago.”

Fuka-Eri had nothing to say regarding the fact that the number of moons had increased, nor could Tengo discern any sense of surprise at the news. Her expression had not changed at all. She did not even give her usual little shrug. It did not appear to be news to her.

“I don’t have to tell you that having two moons in the sky is the same as the world of Air Chrysalis,” Tengo said. “And the new moon looks exactly as I described it – the same size and color.”

Fuka-Eri had nothing to say. She never answered questions that needed no answers.

“Why do you think such a thing has happened? How could such a thing have happened?”

Still no answer.

Tengo decided to ask her directly, “Could this mean that we have entered into the world depicted in Air Chrysalis?”

Fuka-Eri spent several moments carefully examining the shapes of her fingernails. Then she said, “Because we wrote the book together.”

Tengo set his wineglass on the table. Then he asked Fuka-Eri, “We wrote Air Chrysalis and published it. It was a joint effort. Then the book became a bestseller, and information regarding the Little People and mazas and dohtas was revealed to the world. As a result of that, you and I together entered into this newly altered world. Is that what it means?”

“You are acting as a Receiver.”

“I’m acting as a Receiver,” Tengo said, echoing her words. “True, I wrote about Receivers in Air Chrysalis, but I didn’t understand any of that. What does a Receiver do, specifically?”

Fuka-Eri gave her head a little shake, meaning she could not explain

it.

“If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t

understand it with an explanation,” Tengo’s father had said.

“We had better stay together,” Fuka-Eri said, “until you find her.” Tengo looked at Fuka-Eri for a time, trying to read her expression,

but as always, there was no expression on her face to read. Unconsciously,

he turned aside to look out the window, but there were no moons to be seen, only an ugly, twisted mass of electric lines.

“Does it take some special talent to act as a Receiver?”

Fuka-Eri moved her chin slightly up and down, meaning that some talent was required.

“But Air Chrysalis was originally your story, a story you wrote from scratch. It came from inside of you. All I did was take on the job of fixing the style. I was just a technician.”

“Because we wrote the book together,” Fuka-Eri said as before.

Tengo unconsciously brought his fingertips to his temple. “Are you saying I was acting as a Receiver from then on without even knowing it?”

“From before that,” Fuka-Eri said. She pointed her right index finger at herself and then at Tengo. “I’m a Perceiver, and you’re a Receiver.”

“In other words, you ‘perceive’ things and I ‘receive’ them?” Fuka-Eri gave a short nod.

Tengo frowned slightly. “So you knew that I was a Receiver or had a Receiver’s special talent, and that’s why you let me rewrite Air Chrysalis. Through me, you turned what you had perceived into a book. Is that it?”

No answer.

Tengo undid his frown. Then, looking into Fuka-Eri’s eyes, he said, “I still can’t pinpoint the exact moment, but I’m guessing that around that time, I had already entered this world with two moons. I’ve just overlooked that fact until now. I never had occasion to look up at the night sky, so I never noticed that the number of moons had increased. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Fuka-Eri kept silent. Her silence floated up and hung in the air like fine dust. This was dust that had been scattered there only moments before by a swarm of moths from a special space. For a while, Tengo looked at the shapes the dust had made in the air. He felt he had become a two-day-old evening paper. New information was coming out day after day, but he was the only one who knew none of it.

“Cause and effect seem to be all mixed up,” Tengo said, recovering his presence of mind. “I don’t know which came before and which came after. In any case, though, we are now inside this new world.”

Fuka-Eri raised her face and peered into Tengo’s eyes. He might have been imagining it, but he thought he caught a hint of an affectionate gleam in her eyes.

“In any case, the original world no longer exists,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug. “We will go on living here.” “In the world with two moons?”

Fuka-Eri did not reply to this. The beautiful seventeen-year-old girl tensed her lips into a perfectly straight line and looked directly into Tengo’s eyes – exactly the way Aomame had looked into the ten-year-old Tengo’s eyes in the empty classroom, with strong, deep mental concentration. Under Fuka-Eri’s intense gaze, Tengo felt he might turn into stone, transforming into the new moon – the lopsided little moon. A moment later, Fuka-Eri finally relaxed her gaze. She raised her right hand and pressed her fingertips to her temple as if she were trying to read her own secret thoughts.

“You were looking for someone,” the girl asked. “Yes.”

“But you didn’t find her.”

“No, I didn’t find her,” Tengo said.

He had not found Aomame, but instead he had discovered the two moons. This was because he had followed Fuka-Eri’s suggestion to dig deep into his memory, as a result of which he had thought to look at the moon.

The girl softened her gaze somewhat and picked up her wineglass. She held a mouthful of wine for a while and then swallowed it carefully, like an insect sipping dew.

Tengo said, “You say she’s hiding somewhere. If that’s the case, it won’t be easy to find her.”

“You don’t have to worry,” the girl said.

“I don’t have to worry,” Tengo echoed her words. Fuka-Eri nodded deeply.

“You mean, I’m going to find her?”

“She is going to find you,” Fuka-Eri said in a voice like a breeze passing over a field of soft grass.

“Here, in Koenji?”

Fuka-Eri inclined her head to one side, meaning she did not know. “Somewhere,” she said.

“Somewhere in this world,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri gave him a little nod. “As long as there are two moons in the sky.”

Tengo thought about this for a moment and said with some resignation, “I guess I have no choice but to believe you.”

“I perceive and you receive,” Fuka-Eri said thoughtfully.

“You perceive and I receive,” Tengo said. Fuka-Eri nodded.

And is that why we joined our bodies? Tengo wanted to ask Fuka- Eri. In that wild storm last night. What did that mean? But he did not ask those questions, which might have been inappropriate, and which he knew she never would have answered.

If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation, Tengo’s father said somewhere.

“You perceive and I receive,” Tengo repeated once again. “The same as when I rewrote Air Chrysalis.”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. Then she pushed her hair back, revealing one beautiful, little ear as though raising a transmitter’s antenna.

“It is not the same,” Fuka-Eri said. “You changed.” “I changed,” Tengo repeated.

Fuka-Eri nodded. “How have I changed?”

Fuka-Eri stared for a long time into the wineglass she was holding, as if she could see something important inside.

“You will find out when you go to the cat town,” the beautiful girl said. Then, with her ear still showing, she took a sip of white wine.

Chapter 23. AOMAME: Put a Tiger in Your Tank

AOMAME WOKE AT just after six o’clock in the morning. It was a clear, beautiful day. She made herself a pot of coffee, toasted some bread, and boiled an egg. While eating breakfast, she checked the television news to confirm that there was still no report of the Sakigake Leader’s death. They had obviously disposed of the body in secret without filing a report with the police or letting anyone else know. No problem with that. A dead person was still a dead person no matter how you got rid of him.

At eight o’clock she showered, gave her hair a thorough brushing at the mirror, and applied a barely perceptible touch of lipstick. She put on stockings. Then she put on the white silk blouse she had hanging in the closet and completed her outfit with her stylish Junko Shimada suit. While shaking and twisting her body a few times to help her padded underwire bra conform more comfortably to her shape, she found herself again wishing that her breasts could have been somewhat bigger. She must have had that same thought at least 72,000 times while looking in the mirror. But so what? I can think what I want as many times as I want. This could be the 72,001st time, but what’s wrong with that? As long as I’m alive, I can think

what I want, when I want, any way I want, as much as I want, and nobody can tell me any different. She put on her Charles Jourdan high heels.

She stood at the full-length mirror by the front door and checked to see that her outfit was flawless. She raised one shoulder slightly and considered the possibility that she might look something like Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair. Faye Dunaway played a coolheaded insurance investigator in that movie – a woman like a cold knife: sexy, great-looking in a business suit. Of course Aomame didn’t look like Faye Dunaway, but the atmosphere she projected was somewhat close – or at least not entirely different. It was that special atmosphere that only a first- class professional could exude. In addition, her shoulder bag contained a cold, hard automatic pistol.

Putting on her slim Ray-Ban sunglasses, she left the apartment. She crossed the street to the playground, walked up to the slide where Tengo had been sitting, and replayed last night’s scene in her head. It had happened twelve hours earlier. The actual Tengo had been right there –just across the street from me. He sat there for a long time, alone, looking up at the moons –the same two moons that she had been looking at.

It felt almost like a miracle to Aomame – a kind of revelation – that she had come so close to Tengo. Something had brought her into his presence. And the event, it seemed, had largely restructured her physical being. From the moment she woke up in the morning, she had continued to feel a sort of friction throughout her entire body. He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.

She stood there for a full five minutes, one hand on a step of the slide, frowning slightly, jabbing at the ground with the sharp heel of her shoe. She was checking the degree to which she had been stirred both physically and mentally, and savoring the sensation. Finally, she made up her mind, walked out of the playground to the nearest big street, and caught a cab.

“I want you to go out to Yohga first, then take the Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 inbound until just before the Ikejiri exit,” she announced to the driver, who was understandably confused by these instructions.

“So, miss, can you tell me exactly what your final destination is?” he asked, his tone rather on the easygoing side.

“The Ikejiri exit. For now.”

“Well, then, it would be much closer to go straight to Ikejiri from here. Going all the way out to Yohga would be a huge detour. And at this time of the morning, the inbound lanes of Number 3 are going to be completely jammed. They’ll hardly be moving. I’m as sure of that as I am that today is Wednesday.”

“I don’t care if the expressway is jammed. I don’t care if today is Thursday or Friday or the Emperor’s Birthday. I want you to get on the Metropolitan Expressway from Yohga. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

The driver was a man in his early thirties. He was slim, with a long, pale face, and looked like a timid grazing animal. His chin stuck out like those of the stone faces on Easter Island. He was looking at Aomame in his rearview mirror, trying to decide from her expression whether his current passenger was totally bonkers or just an ordinary human being in a complicated situation. It was not easy for him to tell, though, especially from the image in the small mirror.

Aomame took her wallet out of her shoulder bag and thrust a brand- new ten-thousand-yen bill toward his face. The money looked as if it had just been printed.

“No change needed, and no receipt,” Aomame said curtly. “So keep your opinions to yourself and do what you’re told. Go first to Yohga, get on the expressway, and go to Ikejiri. This should cover the fare even if we get caught in traffic.”

“It’s more than enough, of course,” the driver said, though he still seemed dubious. “Do you have some special business on the expressway?”

Aomame shook the bill at him like a pennant in the wind. “If you don’t want to take me, I’ll get out and find another cab. So make up your mind, please. Now.”

The driver stared at the ten-thousand-yen bill for a good ten seconds with his brows knit. Then he made up his mind and took the money. After holding the bill up to the light to check its authenticity, he shoved it into his business bag.

“All right, then, let’s go, Metropolitan Expressway Number 3. It’s going to be badly backed up, though, I’m telling you, miss. And there’s no exit between Yohga and Ikejiri. No toilet, either. So if there’s any chance you might need to go, better take care of it now.”

“Don’t worry, just take me straight there.”

The driver made his way out of the network of residential streets to Ring Road Number 8 and joined the thick traffic heading for Yohga. Neither he nor Aomame said a word. He listened to the news, and she was lost in thought. As they neared the entrance to the Metropolitan Expressway, the driver lowered the radio’s volume and asked Aomame a question.

“This may be none of my business, miss, but are you in some special line of work?”

“I’m an insurance investigator,” Aomame said without hesitation. “An insurance investigator,” the driver repeated her words carefully,

as if tasting a new food.

“I find evidence in cases of insurance fraud,” Aomame said.

“Wow,” the driver said, obviously impressed. “Does Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 have something to do with this insurance fraud stuff?”

“It does indeed.”

“Just like that movie, isn’t it?” “What movie?”

“It’s a really old one, with Steve McQueen. I don’t remember what it’s called.”

“The Thomas Crown Affair,” Aomame said.

“Yeah, that’s it. Faye Dunaway plays an insurance investigator. She’s a specialist in theft insurance. McQueen is this rich guy who commits crimes for fun. That was a great movie. I saw it when I was in high school. I really liked the music. It was very cool.”

“Michel Legrand.”

The driver hummed the first few bars of the theme song. Then he looked in the mirror for another close look at Aomame.

“Come to think of it, miss, something about you reminds me of Faye Dunaway.”

“Thank you,” Aomame said, struggling somewhat to hide the smile that formed around her lips.

The inbound side of Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 was, as the driver had predicted, beautifully backed up. The slowdown started less than a hundred yards from the entrance, an almost perfect specimen of chaos, which was exactly what Aomame wanted. The same outfit, the same road, the same traffic jam. Unfortunately, Janáček’s Sinfonietta was not playing on the car radio, and the sound quality didn’t measure up to that of the stereo in the Toyota Crown Royal Saloon, but that would have been asking for too much.

The cab inched ahead, hemmed in by trucks. It would stay in one place for a long time and then unpredictably creep ahead. The young driver of the refrigerated truck in the next lane was absorbed in his manga magazine during the long stops. The middle-aged couple in a cream Toyota Corona Mark II sat looking straight ahead, frowning, but never saying a word to each other. They probably had nothing to talk about, or maybe they had talked and now they were silent as a result. Aomame settled deeply into her seat. The taxi driver listened to the broadcast on his radio.

The cab finally passed a sign for Komazawa as it continued to crawl along toward Sangenjaya at a snail’s pace. Aomame looked up now and then to stare out the window. I won’t be seeing this neighborhood anymore. I’m going somewhere far away. But she was not about to start feeling nostalgic for the streets of Tokyo. All the buildings along the expressway were ugly, stained with the soot of automobile exhaust, and they carried garish billboards. The sight weighed on her heart. Why do people have to build such depressing places? I’m not saying that every nook and cranny of the world has to be beautiful, but does it have to be this ugly?

Finally, after some time, a familiar area entered Aomame’s field of vision – the place where she had stepped out of the cab. The middle-aged driver had told her, as if hinting at some deeper significance, that there was an emergency stairway at the side of the roadway. Just ahead was the large billboard advertising Esso gasoline. A smiling tiger held up a gas hose. It was the same billboard as before.

“Put a tiger in your tank.”

Aomame suddenly noticed that her throat was dry. She coughed once, thrust her hand into her shoulder bag, and took out a box of lemon- flavored cough drops. After putting a drop in her mouth, she returned the box to the bag. While her hand was in there, she gave the handle of the Heckler & Koch a strong squeeze, reassured by its weight and hardness. Good, she thought. The cab moved ahead somewhat.

“Get into the left lane, will you?” Aomame said to the driver.

“The right lane is moving better,” he objected softly. “And the Ikejiri exit is on the right. If I get into the left lane here, I’ll just have to move over again.”

Aomame was not ready to accept his objections. “Never mind, just get into the left lane.”

“If you say so, miss,” the driver said with resignation.

Leaning over and sticking his hand out the front passenger window, he signaled to the refrigerated truck behind him in the left lane. After making sure the driver had seen him, he raised the window again and squeezed the cab into the left lane. They moved ahead another fifty yards until the traffic came to a full stop again.

“Now open the door for me. I’m getting out here,” Aomame said. “Getting out?” the driver asked, astonished. He made no move to

pull the lever that opened the passenger door. “Here?!”

“Yes, this is where I’m getting out. I have something to do here.” “But we’re right in the middle of the Metropolitan Expressway. It

would be too dangerous to get out here, and even if you did, there’s no place you could go.”

“Don’t worry, there’s an emergency stairway right there.” “Emergency stairway.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if there’s

an emergency stairway or not, but if anyone found out I let a passenger out in a place like this, I’d be in big trouble with the cab company and the expressway management company. So please, miss, give me a break …”

“Sorry, I have to get out here,” Aomame said. She took another ten- thousand-yen bill from her wallet, gave it a snap, and shoved it at the driver. “I know I’m asking you to do something you shouldn’t do. This will pay for your trouble. So please stop arguing and let me out.”

The driver did not take the money, but he gave up and pulled the lever. The left-side passenger door opened.

“No, thanks, you’ve already paid me more than enough. But please be careful. The expressway doesn’t have shoulders, and no matter how backed up the traffic might be, it’s very dangerous for anybody to walk up here.”

“Thank you,” Aomame said. After stepping out, she knocked on the passenger-side front window and had him lower the glass. Leaning inside, she thrust the ten-thousand-yen bill into the driver’s hand.

“Never mind, just take it. Don’t worry, I have more money than I know what to do with.”

The driver looked back and forth between the bill and Aomame’s

face.

Aomame said, “If this gets you into trouble with the police or the

company, just tell them I threatened you with a pistol. You had no choice but to let me out. That’ll shut them up.”

The driver seemed unable to grasp what she was saying. More money than she knew what to do with? Threatened him with a pistol? Still, he took the money, probably fearing that she might do something even more unreasonable if he refused.

Just as she had done before, Aomame made her way between the expressway’s sidewall and the cars in the left lane, heading toward Shibuya. She had some fifty yards to pass. People in the cars looked at her, incredulous, but Aomame did not let them bother her. She walked ahead with long, confident strides, her back straight, like a fashion model on the Paris runway. The wind stirred her hair. Trucks speeding along the wide- open lanes heading in the other direction shook the roadway. The Esso billboard grew larger as she approached, until finally she reached the familiar emergency turnout.

Everything looked as it had before – the metal barrier, the yellow box next to it containing an emergency telephone.

This is where the year 1Q84 started, Aomame thought.

One world took the place of another from the time I climbed down this emergency stairway to Route 246 below. So I’m going to try climbing

down again. The first time I did it, it was April, and I was wearing my beige coat. Now it’s early September, and the weather is too hot for a coat. Aside from the coat, though, I’m wearing exactly the same outfit I had on that day, when I killed that awful man who worked in oil – my Junko Shimada suit and Charles Jourdan high heels. White blouse. Stockings and white underwire bra. I pulled my miniskirt up to step over the barrier and climbed down the emergency stairway from here.

I’ll try doing the same thing again – purely out of curiosity. I just want to know what will happen if I do the same thing in the same place wearing the same outfit. I’m not hoping this will save me. I’m not especially afraid to die. If it comes to that, I’ll do it without hesitation. I can die smiling. But Aomame did not want to die ignorant, failing to grasp how things worked. I want to push myself to my limits, and if things don’t work out, then I can give up. But I will do everything I can until the bitter end. That is how I live.

Aomame leaned over the metal barrier and looked for the emergency stairway. It was not there.

She looked again and again, with the same result. The emergency stairway had vanished.

Aomame bit her lip and twisted her face out of shape.

This is not the wrong place. It was definitely this turnout. Everything around here looks the same. The Esso billboard is right there. The emergency stairway existed in that place in the world of 1984. Aomame had found it easily, exactly where the strange taxi driver had said it would be. She had been able to step over the barrier and climb down. But in the world of 1Q84, the emergency stairway no longer existed.

Her exit was blocked.

Aomame untwisted her face and carefully observed her surroundings. She looked up at the Esso billboard again. Gas hose in hand, curly tail held high, the tiger looked out from the frame with a sly, knowing glance and a happy smile – a smile so utterly joyful it seemed to say that any greater satisfaction was an impossibility.

Yes, of course, Aomame thought.

She had known it from the start. Leader had said so before she killed him in the Hotel Okura suite: there was no way to return from 1Q84 to 1984. The door to this world only opened in one direction.

Even so, Aomame needed to confirm this fact with her own two eyes. It was her nature. And now she had confirmed it. It was all over. The proof was finished. QED.

Aomame leaned against the metal barrier and looked up at the sky. The weather was perfect. Several long, narrow clouds traced straight lines across a deep blue background. She could view the sky far into the distance. It didn’t seem like a city’s sky. But there were no moons to be seen. Where could the moons have gone? Oh well, a moon is a moon, and I am me. Each of us has a different way to live. We each have our own plans.

If she had been Faye Dunaway, at this point Aomame would have taken out a slim cigarette and coolly lit it with a cigarette lighter, elegantly narrowing her eyes. But Aomame did not smoke, and she had neither cigarettes nor a lighter with her. About all she had in her bag was a box of lemon cough drops. That plus a steel 9mm automatic pistol and a specially made ice pick she had used to stab a number of men in the back of the neck. Both might be somewhat more lethal than cigarettes.

She looked at the backed-up line of cars. Inside their vehicles, people were staring intently at her. Of course. Not often did people have the chance to see an ordinary citizen walking along the Metropolitan Expressway, and especially not a young woman, wearing a miniskirt and spiked high heels, with green sunglasses and a smile on her lips. Anyone who did not look must have something wrong with them.

The majority of vehicles stuck on the roadway were large trucks. They were bringing all sorts of goods from all sorts of places to Tokyo. The drivers had probably been at the wheel all night. And now they were stuck in this fated morning traffic jam. They were bored, fed up, and tired. All they wanted was to take a bath, shave, lie down, and go to sleep. They stared blankly at Aomame, as if they were looking at some unfamiliar animal. They were too tired to engage with her positively.

Wedged between these many trucks, like a graceful antelope caught in a herd of clumsy rhinoceros, was a silver Mercedes-Benz coupe. Its

beautiful body, looking fresh from the factory, reflected the newly risen morning sun. Its hubcaps had been color coordinated with the body. The car was an import, with its steering wheel on the left side. The driver’s window was down, and a well-dressed middle-aged woman was looking straight at Aomame. Givenchy sunglasses. Hands visible on the steering wheel. Rings glittering.

The woman had a kind face, and she seemed to be worried about Aomame. She was obviously wondering what a well-dressed young woman was doing out on the roadway of the Metropolitan Expressway and what could have caused her to be there. She looked ready to call out to Aomame. If asked, she might drive her anywhere she wanted to go.

Aomame took off her Ray-Bans and put them in the pocket of her suit top. Squinting in the bright morning light, she spent some time rubbing the dents left on either side of her nose by the glasses. She ran her tongue across her dry lips and caught the faint taste of lipstick. She looked up at the clear sky and checked the ground under her feet once.

She opened her shoulder bag and slowly drew out the Heckler & Koch, dropping the bag at her feet to free up her hands. With her left hand, she released the safety catch and pulled back the slide, sending a round into the chamber. She performed the sequence of movements rapidly and precisely with a few satisfying clicks. She lightly shook the gun in her hand, testing its weight. The gun itself weighed 480 grams, to which the weight of seven bullets was added. No question, it’s loaded. She could tell by the difference in weight.

A smile still played around Aomame’s straight lips. People were focused on her actions. No one was surprised to see her pull a gun out of her bag – or at least they did not show surprise on their faces. Maybe they didn’t believe it was a real gun. It is, though, Aomame told them mentally.

Next she turned the gun upward and thrust the muzzle into her mouth. Now it was aimed directly at her cerebrum – the gray labyrinth where consciousness resided.

The words of a prayer came to her automatically, with no need to think. She intoned them quickly with the muzzle of the gun still in her mouth. Nobody can hear what I am saying, I’m sure. But so what? As long as God can hear me. When a little girl, Aomame could hardly understand the phrases she was reciting, but the words had permeated her to the core. She had to be sure to recite them before her school lunches, all by herself,

but in a loud voice, unconcerned about the curious stares and scornful laughter of the other children. The important thing is that God is watching you. No one can avoid his gaze.

Big Brother is watching you.

O Lord in Heaven, may thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow thy blessings upon our humble pathways. Amen.

The nice-looking middle-aged lady at the wheel of the brand-new Mercedes-Benz was still looking straight at Aomame. Like the other people watching, she seemed unable to grasp the meaning of the gun that Aomame was holding. If she understood, she would have to look away from me, Aomame thought. If she sees my brain splatter in all directions, she probably won’t be able to eat her lunch today – or her dinner. I won’t blame you if you look the other way, Aomame said to her wordlessly. I’m not over here brushing my teeth. I’ve got this German-made automatic pistol, a Heckler & Koch, shoved in my mouth. I’ve said my prayers. You should know what that means.

Here is my advice to you – important advice. Don’t look at anything. Just drive your brand-new Mercedes-Benz straight home – your beautiful home, where your precious husband and children are waiting – and go on living your peaceful life. This is not something that someone like you should see. This is an ugly pistol, a real gun, loaded with seven ugly 9mm bullets. And, as Anton Chekhov said, once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired at some point. That is what we mean by “a story.”

But the middle-aged lady would not look away from Aomame. Resigned, Aomame gave her head a little shake. Sorry, but I can’t wait any longer. My time is up. Let’s get the show on the road.

Put a tiger in your tank.

“Ho ho,” said the keeper of the beat.

“Ho ho,” the six other Little People joined in.

“Tengo!” said Aomame, and started to squeeze the trigger.

Chapter 24. TENGO: As Long as This Warmth Remains

TENGO TOOK A morning special express train from Tokyo Station to Tateyama, changed there to a local, and rode it as far as Chikura. The morning was clear and beautiful. There was no wind, and there was hardly a wave to be seen on the ocean. Summer was long gone. He wore a thin cotton jacket over a short-sleeved shirt, which turned out to be exactly right for the weather. Without bathers, the seaside town was surprisingly deserted and quiet. Like a real town of cats, Tengo thought.

He had a simple lunch by the station and took a taxi to the sanatorium, arriving just after one o’clock. The same middle-aged nurse greeted him at the reception desk – the woman who had taken his phone call the night before. Nurse Tamura. She remembered Tengo and was somewhat friendlier than she had been the first time, even managing a little smile, perhaps influenced by Tengo’s nicer outfit.

She guided Tengo first to the lunchroom and poured him a cup of coffee. “Please wait here. The doctor will come to see you,” she said. Ten minutes later, his father’s doctor appeared, drying his hands with a towel. Flecks of white were beginning to appear among the stiff hairs of his head.

He was probably around fifty. He was not wearing a white jacket, as if he had just completed some task. Instead he wore a gray sweatshirt, matching gray sweatpants, and an old pair of jogging shoes. He was well built and looked less like a doctor than a college sports coach who had never been able to rise past Division II.

The doctor told Tengo pretty much the same thing he had said on the phone the night before. Judging from his expression and his words, he seemed genuinely saddened when he said, “I’m sorry to say there is almost nothing we can do for him medically at this point. The only thing left to do is let him hear his son’s voice. It might enhance his will to live.”

“Do you think he can hear what people say?” Tengo asked.

The doctor frowned thoughtfully as he sipped his lukewarm green tea. “To tell you the truth, not even I know the answer to that. Your father is in a coma. He shows absolutely no physical response when we speak to him. There have been cases, though, where someone in a deep coma has been able to hear people talking and sometimes even understand what was being said.”

“But you can’t tell by looking at them.” “No, we can’t.”

“I can stay here until six thirty tonight,” Tengo said. “I’ll sit with him all day and talk to him as much as possible. Let’s see if it does any good.”

“Please let me know if he shows any kind of reaction,” the doctor said. “I’ll be around here somewhere.”

A young nurse showed Tengo to his father’s room. She wore a name badge that read “Adachi.” His father had been moved to a private room in the new wing, the wing for more serious patients. In other words, the gears had advanced one more notch. There was nowhere else to move after this. It was a drab little room, long and narrow, and more than half filled by the bed. Beyond the window stretched the pine woods that acted as a windbreak. The dense grove looked like a wall, separating the sanatorium from the vitality of the real world. The nurse went out, leaving Tengo alone with his father, who lay on his back, sound asleep. Tengo sat on a small wooden stool by the bed and looked at his father.

Near the head of the bed stood an intravenous feeding device, the liquid in its plastic bag being sent into a vein in his father’s arm through a tube. A catheter had been inserted to catch urine, surprisingly little of which

had been collected. His father seemed to have shrunk another size or two since the month before. His emaciated cheeks and chin wore perhaps two days’ growth of white beard. His father had always had sunken eyes, but now they were more deeply set than ever. Tengo couldn’t help wondering if it might be necessary to pull the eyeballs up from their holes with some kind of medical device. His eyelids were tightly shut at the bottoms of those caverns like lowered shutters, and his mouth was slightly open. Tengo couldn’t hear his father’s breathing, but, bringing his ear close, he could feel the slight movement of air. Life was being quietly maintained there at a minimal level.

The doctor’s words on the phone last night – “like a train, dropping its speed little by little as it begins to stop” – began to feel terribly real to Tengo. This “father” train was gradually lowering its speed, waiting for its momentum to run down, and preparing to come to a quiet stop in the middle of an empty prairie. At least there was no longer a single passenger aboard, no one to raise a complaint even if the train came to a halt. That was the only salvation.

Tengo felt he ought to start talking to his father, but he did not know what he should say, how he should say it, or what tone of voice to use. All right, say something, he told himself, but no meaningful words came to mind.

“Father,” he ventured in a whisper, but no other words followed.

He got up from the stool, approached the window, and looked at the well-tended lawn and garden and the sky stretching high above the pine woods. A solitary crow sat perched on a large antenna, glaring at the area with disdain as it caught the sunlight. A combination transistor radio/alarm clock had been placed near the head of the bed, but his father required neither of its functions.

“It’s me – Tengo. I just came from Tokyo. Can you hear me?” he said, standing at the window, looking down at his father, who did not respond at all. After vibrating in the air for a moment, the sound of his voice was absorbed without a trace by the void that had come to occupy the room.

This man is trying to die, Tengo thought. He could tell by looking at the deeply sunken eyes. He made up his mind to end his life, and then he closed his eyes and went into a deep sleep. No matter what I say to him, no matter how much I try to rouse him, it will be impossible to overturn his

resolution. Medically speaking, he was still alive, but life had already ended for this man. He no longer had the reason or the will to continue to struggle. All that Tengo could do was respect his father’s wishes and let him die in peace. The look on his face was utterly tranquil. He did not seem to be suffering at all. As the doctor had said on the phone, that was the one salvation.

Still, Tengo had to speak to his father, if only because he had promised the doctor that he would do so. The doctor seemed to be caring for his father with genuine warmth. Secondly, there was the question of what he thought of as “courtesy.” Tengo had not had a full-fledged conversation with his father for a very long time, not even small talk. The truth was that Tengo had probably been in middle school the last time they had had a real conversation. Tengo hardly ever went near their home after that, and even when he had some business that required him to go to the house, he did his best to avoid seeing his father.

Now, having made a de facto confession to Tengo that he was not his real father, the man could lay down his burden at last. He looked in some way relieved. That means that each of us was able to lay down his burden – at the last possible moment.

Here was the man who had raised Tengo as his own son, listing him as such in the family register despite the absence of blood ties, and raising him until he was old enough to fend for himself. I owe him that much. I have some obligation to tell him how I have lived my life thus far, as well as some of the thoughts I have had in the course of living that life, Tengo thought. No, it’s not so much an obligation as a courtesy. It doesn’t matter if the things I am saying reach his ears or whether telling him serves any purpose.

Tengo sat on the stool by the bed once again and began to narrate a summary of his life to date, beginning from the time he left the house and started living in the judo dorm when he entered high school. From that time onward, he and his father had lost nearly all points of contact, creating a situation in which neither had the least concern for what the other was doing. Tengo felt he should probably fill in such a large vacuum as best he could.

Ultimately, however, there was almost nothing for Tengo to tell about his life in high school. He had entered a private high school in Chiba Prefecture that had a strong reputation for its judo program. He could easily have gotten into a better school, but the conditions offered him by that school were the best. They waived his tuition and allowed him to live in the dormitory, providing him with three meals a day. Tengo became a star member of the judo team, studied between practice sessions (he could maintain some of the highest grades in his class without having to study too hard), and he earned extra money during vacations by doing assorted manual labor with his teammates. With so much to do, he found himself pressed for time day after day. There was little to say about his three years of high school other than that it was a busy time for him. It had not been especially enjoyable, nor had he made any close friends. He never liked the school, which had a lot of rules. He did what he had to do in order to get along with his teammates, but they weren’t really on the same wavelength. In all honesty, Tengo never once felt totally committed to judo as a sport. He needed to win in order to support himself, so he devoted a lot of energy to practice in order not to betray others’ expectations. It was less a sport to him than a practical means of survival – a job. He spent the three years of high school wanting to graduate so that he could begin living a more serious life as soon as possible.

Even after entering college, however, he continued with judo, living basically the same life as before. Keeping up his judo meant he could live in the dormitory and thus be spared any difficulty in finding a place to sleep or food to eat (minimal though it was). He also received a scholarship, though it was nowhere nearly enough to get by on. His major was mathematics, of course. He studied fairly hard and earned good grades in college, too. His adviser even urged him to continue into graduate school. As he advanced into the third year and then the fourth year of college, however, his passion for mathematics as an academic discipline rapidly cooled. He still liked mathematics as much as ever, but he had no desire to make a profession of research in the field. It was the same as it had been with judo. It was fine as an amateur endeavor, but he had neither the personality nor the drive to stake his whole life on it, which he well knew.

As his interest in mathematics waned and his college graduation drew near, his reasons for continuing judo evaporated and he had no idea what path he should next pursue. His life seemed to lose its center of gravity – not that he had ever really had one, but up to that point, other people had placed certain demands and expectations upon him, and responding to them had kept him busy. Once those demands and expectations disappeared, however, there was nothing left worth talking about. His life had no purpose. He had no close friends. He was drifting and unable to concentrate his energies on anything.

He had a number of girlfriends during his college years, and a lot of sexual experience. He was not handsome in the usual sense. He was not a particularly sociable person, nor was he especially amusing or witty. He was always hard up for money and wasn’t at all stylish. But just as the smell of certain kinds of plants attract moths, Tengo was able to attract certain kinds of women – and very strongly, at that.

He discovered this fact around the time he turned twenty (which was just about the time he began losing his enthusiasm for mathematics as an academic discipline). Without doing anything about it himself, he always had women who were interested enough to take the initiative in approaching him. They wanted him to hold them in his big arms – or at least they never resisted him when he did so. He couldn’t understand how this worked at first and reacted with a good deal of confusion, but eventually he got the hang of it and learned how to exploit this ability, after which Tengo was rarely without a woman. He never had a positive feeling of love toward any of them, however. He just went with them and had sex with them. They filled each other’s emptiness. Strange as it may seem, he never once felt a strong emotional attraction to any of the women who had a strong emotional attraction to him.

Tengo recounted these developments to his unconscious father, choosing his words slowly and carefully at first, more smoothly as time went by, and finally with some passion. He even spoke as honestly as he could about sexual matters. There’s no point getting embarrassed about such things now, he told himself. His father lay faceup, unmoving, his deep sleep unbroken, his breathing unchanged.

A nurse came before three o’clock, changed the plastic bag of intravenous fluid, replaced the bag of collected urine with an empty one, and took his father’s temperature. She was a strongly built, full-bosomed woman in her late thirties. The name on her tag read “Omura.” Her hair was pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head, with a ballpoint pen thrust into it.

“Has there been any change in his condition?” she asked Tengo while recording numbers on a clipboard with the ballpoint pen.

“None at all. He’s been fast asleep the whole time,” Tengo said. “Please push that button if anything happens,” she said, pointing

toward the call switch hanging over the head of the bed. Then she shoved the ballpoint pen back into her hair.

“I see.”

Shortly after the nurse went out, there was a quick knock on the door and bespectacled Nurse Tamura poked her head in.

“Would you like to have a bite to eat? You could go to the lunchroom.”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry yet,” Tengo said. “How is your father doing?”

Tengo nodded. “I’ve been talking to him the whole time. I can’t tell whether he can hear me or not.”

“It’s good to keep talking to them,” she said. She smiled encouragingly. “Don’t worry, I’m sure he can hear you.”

She closed the door softly. Now it was just Tengo and his father in the little room again.

Tengo went on talking.

He graduated from college and started teaching mathematics at a cram school in the city. No longer was he a math prodigy from whom people expected great things, nor was he a promising member of a judo team. He was a mere cram school instructor. But that very fact made Tengo happy. He could catch his breath at last. For the first time in his life, he was free: he could live his own life as he wanted to without having to worry about anyone else.

Eventually, he started writing fiction. He entered a few of his finished stories in competitions, which led him to become acquainted with a quirky editor named Komatsu. This editor gave him the job of rewriting Air

Chrysalis, a story by a seventeen-year-old girl named Fuka-Eri (whose real name was Eriko Fukada). Fuka-Eri had created the story, but she had no talent for writing, so Tengo took on that task. He did such a good job that the piece won a debut writers’ prize from a magazine and then was subsequently published as a book that became a huge bestseller. Because the book was so widely discussed, the selection committee for the Akutagawa Prize, the most prestigious literary award, kept their distance from it. So while it did not win that particular prize, the book sold so many copies that Komatsu, in his typically brusque way, said, “Who the hell needs that?”

Tengo had no confidence that his story was reaching his father’s ears, and even if it was, he had no way of telling whether or not his father was understanding it. He felt his words had no impact and he could see no response. Even if his words were getting through, Tengo had no way of knowing if his father was even interested. Maybe the old man just found them annoying. Maybe he was thinking, “Who gives a damn about other people’s life stories? Just let me sleep!” All Tengo could do, though, was continue to say whatever came to his mind. He couldn’t think of anything better to do while crammed into this little room with his father.

His father never made the slightest movement. His eyes were closed tightly at the bottom of those two deep, dark hollows. He might as well have been waiting for winter to come and the hollows to fill up with snow.

“I can’t say that things are going all that well for the moment, but if possible I’d like to make my living by writing – not just rewriting somebody else’s work but writing what I want to write, the way I want to write it. Writing – and especially fiction writing – is well suited to my personality, I think. It’s good to have something you want to do, and now I finally have it. Nothing of mine has ever been published with my name on it, but that ought to happen soon enough. I’m really not a bad writer, if I do say so myself. At least one editor gives me some credit for my talent. I’m not worried on that front.”

And I seem to have the qualities needed to be a Receiver, Tengo thought of adding. So much so that I have been drawn into the fictional world that I myself have written. But this was no place to start talking about such complicated matters. That was a whole different story. He decided to change the subject.

“A more pressing problem for me is that I have never been able to love anyone seriously. I have never felt unconditional love for anyone since the day I was born, never felt that I could give myself completely to that one person. Never once.”

Even as he said this, Tengo found himself wondering if this miserable-looking old man before him had ever experienced loving someone with his whole heart. Perhaps he had seriously loved Tengo’s mother, which may have been why he was willing to raise Tengo as his own child, even though he knew they had no blood tie. If so, that meant he had lived a far more spiritually fulfilling life than Tengo.

“The one possible exception is a girl I remember very well. We were in the same class in the third and fourth grades in Ichikawa. Yes, I’m talking about something that happened a good twenty years ago. I was very strongly drawn to her. I’ve thought about her all this time, and even now I still think about her a lot. But I never really talked to her. She changed schools, and I never saw her again. But something happened recently that made me want to find her. I finally realized that I need her, that I want to see her and talk to her about all kinds of things. But I haven’t been able to track her down. I suppose I should have started looking for her a lot sooner. It might have been much easier then.”

Tengo fell silent, waiting for the things he had talked about so far to sink into his father’s mind – or, rather, to sink into his own mind. Then he started speaking again.

“Yes, I was too much of a coward where these things were concerned. The same reason kept me from investigating my own family register. If I wanted to find out whether my mother really died or not, I could have looked it up easily. All I had to do was go to the city hall and look up the record. In fact, I thought about doing it any number of times. I even walked as far as the city hall. But I couldn’t make myself request the documents. I was afraid to see the truth before my eyes. I was afraid to expose it with my own hands. And so I waited for it to happen by itself, naturally.”

Tengo released a sigh.

“Oh well, all that aside, I should have started looking for the girl a lot sooner. I took a huge detour. I couldn’t get myself going. I just – how

should I put this? – I’m a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”

Tengo got up from the stool, went to the window, and looked out at the pine woods. The wind had died. He couldn’t hear the roar of the ocean. A large cat was crossing the garden. Judging from its sagging middle, it was probably pregnant. It lay down at the base of a tree, spread its legs, and started licking its belly.

Leaning against the windowsill, Tengo continued to speak to his

father.

“But anyhow, lately it has begun to seem as if my life has finally

started to change. I feel that way. To tell you the truth, I hated you for a long time. From the time I was little, I used to think that I didn’t belong in such a miserable little place, that I was someone who deserved to be in more comfortable circumstances. I felt it was unfair for you to treat me as you did. My classmates all seemed to be living happy, satisfying lives. Kids whose gifts and talents were far inferior to mine were having much more fun than I was every day. I used to seriously wish that you were not my father. I imagined that this had to be some mistake; you couldn’t possibly be my real father; there couldn’t possibly be any blood relationship.”

Tengo looked out of the window again at the cat. It was still absorbed in licking its swollen belly, unaware that it was being watched. Tengo kept his gaze on the cat as he continued talking.

“I don’t feel that way anymore. Now I think that I was in the right circumstances for me and had the right father. I really mean it. To tell you the truth, I was a useless human being, a person of no value. In a sense, I’m the one who ruined me: I did it myself. I can see that now. I was a math prodigy when I was little, that’s for sure. Even I know I had a real talent. Everybody kept their eye on me and made a big deal over me. But ultimately, it was a talent that had no hope of developing into anything meaningful. It was just there. I was always a big boy and good at judo, and I always did well in the prefectural tournaments. But when I went out into the wider world, there were lots of guys who were stronger than I was. I was never chosen to represent my university in the national tournaments. This was a great shock to me, and for a while I no longer knew who I was. But that was only natural, because in fact I was nobody.”

Tengo opened the bottle of mineral water he had brought with him and took a drink. Then he sat down on the stool again.

“I told you this before, but I’m grateful to you. I believe I’m not your real son. I’m almost sure of it. I’m grateful to you for having raised me even though we had no blood tie. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for a man to raise a small child alone. Now, though, when I recall how you took me around on your NHK collections, I feel sick at heart. I have only terrible memories of that. But I’m sure that you could think of no other way to communicate with me. How should I put it? It was probably the best you could do. That was your only point of contact with society, and you wanted to show me what it was like out there. I can see that now. Of course, you also calculated that having a child with you would make it easier for you to collect the money. But that wasn’t all you had in mind, I suspect.”

Tengo paused briefly to let his words sink in and to organize his own thoughts.

“Of course, as a child, I couldn’t see it that way. It was just embarrassing and painful to me – that I had to go around with you making collections while my classmates spent their Sundays having fun. I can’t tell you how much I hated it when Sundays came around. But now, at least to some extent, I can understand what you did. I’m not saying that it was right. It left me with scars. It was hard for a child. But what’s done is done. Don’t let it bother you. One good thing it did was to make me tougher. I learned firsthand that it’s not easy making your way through this world.”

Tengo opened his hands and looked at his palms for a while.

“I’m going to go on living one way or another. I think I can do a better job of it from now on, without such pointless detours. I don’t know what you want to do. Maybe you just want to go on sleeping quietly, without ever waking up again. That’s what you should do if you want to. I can’t stand in your way if that’s what you are hoping for. All I can do is let you go on sleeping. In any case, I wanted to say all this to you – to tell you what I have done so far in life and what I am thinking. Maybe you would have preferred not to hear any of this, and if that’s the case, I’m sorry to have inflicted it on you. Anyhow, I have nothing more to tell you. I’ve pretty much said everything I thought I ought to say. I won’t bother you anymore. Now you can sleep as much as you like.”

After five o’clock, Nurse Omura, the one with the ballpoint pen in her hair, came to the room and checked the amount of intravenous fluid in the bag.

This time she did not check his father’s temperature. “Anything to report?” she asked.

“Not really. He’s just been sleeping the whole time,” Tengo answered.

The nurse nodded. “The doctor will be here soon. How late can you stay here today, Mr. Kawana?”

Tengo glanced at his watch. “I’ll be catching the train just before seven, so I can stay as late as six thirty.”

The nurse wrote something on his father’s chart and put the pen back into her hair.

“I’ve been talking to him all afternoon, but he doesn’t seem to hear me,” Tengo said.

The nurse said, “If I learned anything in nursing school, it’s that bright words make the eardrums vibrate brightly. They have their own bright sound. So even if the patient doesn’t understand what you’re saying, his eardrums will physically vibrate on that bright wavelength. We’re taught to always talk to the patient in a big, bright voice whether he can hear you or not. It definitely helps, whatever the logic involved. I can say that from experience.”

Tengo thought about this remark. “Thank you,” he said. Nurse Omura nodded lightly and, with a few quick steps, left the room.

After that, Tengo and his father maintained a long silence. Tengo had nothing more to say, but the silence was not an uncomfortable one for him. The afternoon light was gradually fading, and hints of evening hung in the air. The sun’s last rays moved silently and stealthily through the room.

Tengo suddenly wondered if he had said anything to his father about the two moons. He had the feeling that he had probably not done so. Tengo was now living in a world with two moons. “It’s a very strange sight, no matter how many times I see it,” he wanted to say, but he also felt that there wouldn’t be much point to mentioning it. The number of moons in the sky was of no concern to his father. This was a problem that Tengo would have to handle on his own.

Ultimately, though, whether this world (or that world) had only one moon or two moons or three moons, there was only one Tengo. What difference did it make? Whatever world he was in, Tengo was just Tengo, the same person with his own unique problems and his own unique

characteristics. The real question was not in the moons but in Tengo himself.

Half an hour later, Nurse Omura came into the room again. For some reason, she no longer had a pen in her hair. Where could it have gone? Tengo found himself strangely concerned about the pen. Two male staff members came with her, wheeling a movable bed. Both men were stockily built and dark-complexioned, and neither of them said a word. They might have been foreigners.

“We have to take your father for some tests, Mr. Kawana,” the nurse said. “Would you like to wait here?”

Tengo looked at the clock. “Is something wrong with him?”

The nurse shook her head. “No, not at all. We just don’t have the testing equipment in this room, so we’re taking him to where it is. It’s nothing special. The doctor will probably talk to you afterward.”

“I see. I’ll wait here.”

“You could go to the lunchroom for some hot tea. You should get some rest.”

“Thank you,” Tengo said.

The two men gently lifted his father’s thin body, with the intravenous tubes still attached, and transferred him to the wheeled bed, moving the bed and intravenous stand into the corridor with quick, practiced movements. Still they did not say a word.

“This won’t take too long,” the nurse said.

But his father did not return to the room for a long time. The light coming in the window grew slowly weaker, but Tengo did not turn on the lamp. If he did so, he felt, something important here would be lost.

An indentation remained in the bed where his father had been lying. His father now probably weighed next to nothing, but still he had left a clear impression of his shape. Looking at the indentation, Tengo had a strong feeling that he had been left behind in this world all alone. He even felt that the dawn might never come again, once the sun had set tonight.

Sitting on the stool by the bed, steeped in the colors of the approaching evening, Tengo stayed in the same position, lost in thought. Then suddenly it occurred to him that he had not actually been thinking at all but had been aimlessly submerging himself in a vacuum. He stood up

slowly, went to the toilet, and relieved himself. After washing his face with cold water, he dried his face with his handkerchief and looked at himself in the mirror. Then, recalling what the nurse had said, he went downstairs to the lunchroom and drank some hot green tea.

His father had still not been brought back to the room when Tengo returned there after twenty minutes downstairs. Instead, what he found, in the hollow that his father had left in the bed, was a white object that he had never seen before.

Nearly five feet in length, it had smooth, beautiful curves. At first sight, it seemed to be shaped like a peanut shell, its entire surface covered with something like short, soft down that emitted a faint but even glow. In the rapidly darkening room, the pale bluish light enveloped the object softly. The thing lay still in the bed, as if to fill the individual space that his father had temporarily left behind. Tengo halted in the doorway, hand on the knob, staring at the mysterious object. His lips seemed to move somewhat, but no words emerged from them.

What is this thing? Tengo asked himself as he stood there, frozen to the spot, eyes narrowed. How had this come to be here in his father’s place? No doctor or nurse had brought it in, that much was obvious. Around it hovered some special kind of air that was out of sync with reality.

Then it suddenly hit him: This is an air chrysalis!

This was the first time that Tengo had ever seen an air chrysalis. He had described some in great detail in the novella, but of course he had never seen a real one with his own eyes, and he had never thought of them as things that actually existed. But what he saw before him now was the very object his mind had imagined and his words had described: an air chrysalis. He experienced such a violent sense of déjà vu that it felt as if a metal band had been tightened around his stomach. Nevertheless, he stepped inside the room and closed the door. Better not let anyone see him. He swallowed the saliva that had been collecting in his mouth, making a strange sound in his throat.

Tengo crept toward the bed, stopping when there was no more than a yard between him and it, examining the air chrysalis in greater detail. Now he could be sure that it looked exactly like the picture he had drawn of an air chrysalis at the time he wrote the story. He had done a simple pencil

sketch before attempting to create a description of an air chrysalis, first putting the image in his mind into visual form and then transferring it into words. He had left the picture pinned to the wall over his desk while he rewrote Air Chrysalis. It was shaped more like a cocoon than a chrysalis, but “air chrysalis” was the only name by which Fuka-Eri (and Tengo himself) could possibly call the thing.

During his revision, Tengo had created most of the external features of an air chrysalis and added them to his descriptions, including the gracefully narrowed waist in the middle and the swelling, round, decorative protuberance at either end. These came entirely from Tengo’s mind. There had been no mention of them in Fuka-Eri’s original narrative. To Fuka-Eri, an air chrysalis was simply that – an air chrysalis, something midway between an object and a concept – and she seemed to feel little need to describe its appearance in words. Tengo had to invent all the details himself, and the air chrysalis that he was now seeing had these same details exactly: the waist in the middle and the lovely protuberances at either end.

This is the very air chrysalis I sketched and described, Tengo thought. The same thing happened with the two moons. For some reason, every detail he had put into writing had now become a reality. Cause and effect were jumbled together.

All four of Tengo’s limbs felt a strange, nervous, twisting sensation, and his flesh began to crawl. He could no longer distinguish how much of this present world was reality and how much of it fiction. How much of it belonged to Fuka-Eri, how much was Tengo’s, and how much was “ours”?

A small tear had opened at the very top of the air chrysalis: the chrysalis was about to break in two. The gap that had formed was perhaps an inch long. If he bent over and brought his eye to the opening, he could probably see what was inside. But Tengo could not find the courage to do so. He sat down on the stool by the bed, staring at the air chrysalis while his shoulders rose and fell imperceptibly as he struggled to bring his breathing under control. The white chrysalis lay there still, emitting its faint glow, quietly waiting, like a mathematical proposition, for Tengo to approach it.

What could possibly be inside the chrysalis? What was it trying to show him?

In the novella Air Chrysalis, the young girl protagonist discovers her own other self inside. Her dohta. She leaves her dohta behind and runs away from the community alone. But what could possibly be inside of

Tengo’s air chrysalis? (Tengo felt intuitively that this air chrysalis must be his own.) Was it something good or something evil? Was it something that would guide him somewhere or something that would stand in his way? And who could possibly have sent this air chrysalis to him here?

Tengo knew quite well that he was being asked to act. But he could not find the courage that would enable him to stand and look inside the chrysalis. He was afraid. The thing inside the chrysalis might wound him or greatly change his life. The thought caused Tengo to grow stiff, sitting on the little stool like someone who has lost a place of refuge. He was feeling the same kind of fear that had kept him from looking up his parents’ family register or searching for Aomame. He did not want to know what was inside the air chrysalis that had been prepared for him. If he could get by without knowing what was in there, that was how he wanted to walk out of this room. If possible, he wanted to leave this room now, get on the train, and go back to Tokyo. He wanted to close his eyes, block his ears, and burrow himself in his own little world.

But Tengo also knew that this was impossible. If I leave here without seeing what is inside, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I’ll probably never be able to forgive myself for having averted my eyes from that something, whatever it might be.

Tengo remained seated on the stool for a long time, unsure of what he should do, unable to go either forward or back. Folding his hands on his knees, he stared at the air chrysalis on the bed, glancing occasionally out the window, as if hoping to escape. The sun had set, and a pale afterglow was slowly enveloping the pine woods. Still there was no wind, nor could he hear the sound of the waves. It was almost mysteriously quiet. And as the room’s darkness increased, the light emitted by the white object became deeper and more vivid. The chrysalis itself seemed like a living thing to Tengo, with its soft glow of life, its unique warmth, its nearly imperceptible vibration.

Finally Tengo made up his mind, stood up from the stool, and leaned over the bed. Running away now was out of the question. He couldn’t live forever like a frightened child, averting his eyes from the things before him. Only by learning the truth – whatever that truth might be – could people be given the right kind of power.

The tear in the air chrysalis was unchanged, neither bigger nor smaller than before. Squinting, he looked in through the opening, but he could not see very far inside. It was dark in there, and a thin membrane seemed to be stretched across the space inside. Tengo steadied his breathing and made sure his hands were not shaking. Then he put his fingers into the inch-long opening and slowly spread it apart, as if opening the two leaves of a double sliding door. It opened easily with little resistance and no sound, as if it had been waiting for his hands.

Now the light of the air chrysalis itself was softly illuminating its interior, like light reflected from snow. He was able to see inside, however dimly.

What Tengo found in there was a beautiful ten-year-old girl.

She was sound asleep. She wore a simple white dress or nightgown free of decoration, her small hands folded on top of her flat chest. Tengo knew instantly who this was. She had a slender face, and her lips formed a straight line, as if drawn with a ruler. Perfectly straight bangs lay over a smooth, well-shaped forehead. Her little nose seemed to be searching for something, aimed tentatively upward into space. Her cheekbones stretched slightly to either side. Her eyes were closed, but Tengo knew what they would look like when they opened. How could he not know? He had lived for twenty years holding the image of this girl in his heart.

“Aomame,” Tengo said aloud.

The girl was sound asleep – a deep and utterly natural sleep, with the faintest possible breathing. The beating of her heart was too ephemeral to be heard. She did not have enough strength to raise her eyelids. The time for that had not come yet. Her conscious mind was not here but rather somewhere far away. Still, the word that Tengo had spoken was able to impart the slightest vibration to her eardrums. It was her name.

Aomame heard the call from far away. Tengo, she thought. She formed the word clearly with her mouth, though it didn’t move the lips of the girl in the air chrysalis or reach Tengo’s ears.

As if his soul had been snatched, Tengo stared insatiably at the girl, taking one shallow breath after another. Her face looked totally peaceful, without the slightest shadow of sadness or pain or anxiety. Her thin, little lips seemed ready to begin moving at any moment to form meaningful words. Her eyelids appeared ready to open. Tengo prayed from the heart for this to happen. His prayer took no precise words, but his heart spun this

formless prayer and sent it out into space. The girl, however, showed no sign of waking.

“Aomame,” Tengo called again.

There were things he had to say to Aomame, feelings he had to convey to her. He had been living with them, keeping them inside, for years. But all that Tengo could do now was speak her name.

“Aomame,” he called.

He dared then to reach out and touch the hand of the girl who lay in the air chrysalis, placing his big grown-up hand on hers. This was the little hand that had so tightly grasped the hand of his ten-year-old self. This hand had come straight for him, wanting him, giving him encouragement. The unmistakable warmth of life was there in the hand of the girl asleep inside the pale glow. Aomame came here to convey her warmth to me, Tengo thought. That was the meaning of the package she handed to me in that classroom twenty years ago. Now at last he was able to open the package and view its contents.

“Aomame,” Tengo said. “I will find you, no matter what.”

After the air chrysalis had gradually lost its glow and disappeared, as if sucked into the darkness, and the young Aomame had disappeared as well, Tengo found himself unable to judge whether all of this had really happened. But his fingers retained the touch and the intimate warmth of her little hand.

This warmth will almost surely never fade, Tengo thought, sitting aboard the special express train heading for Tokyo. Tengo had lived for the past twenty years with the memory of her touch. He should be able to go on living with this new warmth.

The express train traced a huge arc along the ocean shore beneath the towering mountains, until it reached a point along the coast where the two moons were visible, hanging side by side in the sky above the quiet sea. They stood out sharply – the big, yellow moon and the small, green one – vivid in outline but their distance impossible to grasp. In their light, the ocean’s tiny ripples shone mysteriously like scattered shards of glass. As the train continued around the curve, the two moons moved slowly across the window, leaving those delicate shards behind, like wordless hints, until they disappeared from view.

Once the moons were gone, the warmth returned to Tengo’s chest. Faint as it was, the warmth was surely there, conveying a promise like a lamp a traveler sees in the far distance.

I will go on living in this world, Tengo thought, closing his eyes. He did not know yet how this world was put together or under what principles it moved, and he had no way of predicting what would happen there. But that was all right. He didn’t have to be afraid. Whatever might be waiting for him, he would survive in this world with two moons, and he would find the path he needed to take – as long as he did not forget this warmth, as long as he did not lose this feeling in his heart.

He kept his eyes closed like this for a long time. Eventually, he opened his eyes to stare into the darkness of the early-autumn night beyond the window. The ocean had long since disappeared.I will find Aomame, Tengo swore to himself again, no matter what happens, no matter what kind of world it may be, no matter who she may be.