1Q84. Òûñÿ÷à Íåâåñòüñîò Âîñåìüäåñÿò ×åòûðå. Êíèãà 1. Àïðåëü–èþíü Ìóðàêàìè Õàðóêè
The poor Gilyaks! Fuka-Eri had said.
Tengo thought of Fuka-Eri’s face as she slept. She had fallen asleep wearing Tengo’s too-large pajamas, the sleeves and cuffs rolled up. He had lifted them from the washing machine, held them to his nose, and smelled them.
I can’t let myself think about that! Tengo told himself, but it was already too late.
The semen surged out of him in multiple violent convulsions and into his girlfriend’s mouth. She took it in until he finished, then stepped out of bed and went to the bathroom. He heard her open the spigot, run the water, and rinse her mouth. Then, as if it had been nothing at all, she came back to the bed.
“Sorry,” Tengo said.
“I guess you couldn’t stop yourself,” she said, caressing his nose with her fingertip. “That’s okay, it’s no big deal. Did it feel that good?”
“Fantastic,” he said. “I think I can do it again in a few minutes.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said, pressing her cheek against Tengo’s bare chest. She closed her eyes, keeping very still. Tengo could feel the soft breath from her nose against his nipple.
“Can you guess what your chest reminds me of when I see it?” she asked Tengo.
“No idea.”
“A castle gate in a Kurosawa samurai movie.”
“A castle gate,” Tengo said, caressing her back.
“You know, like in Throne of Blood or Hidden Fortress. There’s always a big, sturdy castle gate in those old black-and-white movies of his, all covered with these huge iron rivets. That’s what I think of. Thick, solid…”
“I don’t have any rivets, though.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” she said.
Fuka-Eri’s Air Chrysalis placed on the bestseller lists the second week after it went on sale, rising to number one on the fiction list in the third week. Tengo traced the process of the book’s ascent through the newspapers they kept in the cram school’s teachers’ lounge. Two ads for the book also appeared in the papers, featuring a photo of the book’s cover and a smaller shot of Fuka-Eri wearing the familiar tight-fitting summer sweater that showed off her breasts so beautifully (taken, no doubt, at the time of the press conference). Long, straight hair falling to her shoulders. Dark, enigmatic eyes looking straight at the camera. Those eyes seemed to peer through the lens and focus directly on something the viewer kept hidden deep in his heart, of which he was normally unaware. They did so neutrally but gently. This seventeen-year-old girl’s unwavering gaze was disconcerting. It was just a small black-and-white photograph, but the mere sight of it almost certainly prompted many people to buy the book.
Komatsu had sent two copies of the book to Tengo a few days after it went on sale, but Tengo opened only the package, not the vinyl around the books themselves. True, the text inside the book was something he himself had written, and this was the first time his writing had taken the shape of a book, but he had no desire to open it and read it-or even glance at its pages. The sight of it gave him no joy. The sentences and paragraphs may have been his, but the story they comprised belonged entirely to Fuka-Eri. Her mind had given birth to it. His minor role as a secret technician had ended long before, and the work’s fate from this point onward had nothing to do with him. Nor should it. He shoved the two volumes into the back of his bookcase, out of sight, still wrapped in vinyl.
For a while after the one night Fuka-Eri slept in his apartment, Tengo’s life flowed along uneventfully. It rained a lot, but Tengo paid almost no attention to the weather, which ranked far down on his list of priorities. From Fuka-Eri herself, he heard nothing. The lack of contact probably meant that she had no particular problems for him to solve.
In addition to writing his novel every day, Tengo wrote a number of short pieces for magazines-anonymous jobs that anyone could do. They were a welcome change of pace, though, and the pay was good for the minimal effort involved. Three times a week, as usual, Tengo taught math at the cram school. He burrowed more deeply than ever into the world of mathematics in order to forget his concerns-issues involving Air Chrysalis and Fuka-Eri, mainly. Once he entered the mathematical world, his brain switched circuits (with a little click), his mouth emitted different kinds of words, his body began to use different kinds of muscles, and both the tone of his voice and the look on his face changed. Tengo liked the way this change of gears felt. It was like moving from one room into another or changing from one pair of shoes into another.
In contrast to the time he spent performing daily tasks or writing fiction, Tengo was able to attain a new level of relaxation-and even to become more eloquent-when he entered the world of mathematics. At the same time, however, he also felt he had become a somewhat more practical person. He could not decide who might be the real Tengo, but the switch was both natural and almost unconscious. He also knew that it was something he more or less needed.
As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students’ heads how voraciously mathematics demanded logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning, but once you had succeeded in proving something, the world’s riddles settled into the palm of your hand like a tender oyster. Tengo’s lectures took on uncomon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears. Since meeting Fuka-Eri, however, Tengo no longer felt sexual interest in such girls, nor did he have any urge to smell their pajamas.
Fuka-Eri is surely a special being, Tengo realized. She can’t be compared with other girls. She is undoubtedly someone of special significance to me. She is-how should I put it?-an all-encompassing image projected straight at me, but an image I find it impossible to decipher.
Still, I’d better end any involvement with Fuka-Eri. Tengo’s rational mind reached this lucid conclusion. I should also put as much distance as possible between myself and the piles of Air Chrysalis displayed in the front of all the bookstores, and the inscrutable Professor Ebisuno, and that ominously mysterious religious organization. I’d also better keep away from Komatsu, at least for the time being. Otherwise, I’m likely to be carried into even more chaotic territory, pushed into a dangerous corner without a shred of logic, driven into a situation from which I can never extricate myself.
But Tengo was also well aware that he could not easily withdraw from the twisted conspiracy in which he was now fully involved. He was no Hitchcockian protagonist, embroiled in a conspiracy before he knew what was happening. He had embroiled himself, knowing full well that it contained an element of risk. The machine was already in motion, gaining too much forward momentum for him to stop it. Tengo himself was one of its gears-and an important one at that. He could hear the machine’s low groaning, and feel its implacable motion.
Komatsu called Tengo a few days after Air Chrysalis topped the bestseller list for the second week in a row. The phone rang after eleven o’clock at night. Tengo was already in bed in his pajamas. He had been reading a book for a while, lying on his stomach, and was just about to turn off the bedside light. Judging from the ring, he knew it was Komatsu. Exactly how, he could not explain, but he could always tell when the call was from Komatsu. The phone rang in a special way. Just as writing had a particular style, Komatsu’s calls had a particular ring.
Tengo got out of bed, went to the kitchen, and picked up the receiver. He did not really want to answer the call and would have preferred to go quietly to sleep, to dream of Iriomote cats or the Panama Canal, or the ozone layer, or Basho-anything, as long as it was as far from here as possible. If he didn’t answer the phone now, though, it would just ring again in another fifteen minutes or half an hour. Better to take the call now.
“Hey, Tengo, were you sleeping?” Komatsu asked, easygoing as usual.
“I was trying,” Tengo said.
“Sorry about that,” Komatsu said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “I just wanted to let you know that Air Chrysalis is selling well.”
“That’s great.”
“Like hotcakes. They can’t keep up. The poor guys at the printer are working through the night. Anyhow, I figured the numbers would be pretty good, of course. The author is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl. People are talking about it. All the elements are in place for a bestseller.”
“Unlike novels written by a thirty-year-old cram school teacher who looks like a bear, you mean.”
“Exactly. But still, you couldn’t call this a commercial novel. It’s got no sex scenes, it’s not a tearjerker. Not even I imagined it would sell so spectacularly.”
Komatsu paused as if he expected a response from Tengo. When Tengo said nothing, he went on:
“It’s not just selling a lot, either. The critical reception is wonderful, too. This is no lightweight drama slapped together on a whim by some youngster. The story itself is outstanding. Of course your superb revision made this possible, Tengo. That was an absolutely perfect piece of work you did.”
Made this possible. Ignoring Komatsu’s praise, Tengo pressed his fingertips against his temples. Whenever Komatsu openly praised Tengo, it was bound to be followed by something unpleasant.
Tengo asked Komatsu, “So tell me, what’s the bad news?”
“How do you know there’s bad news?”
“Look what time you’re phoning me! There has to be some bad news.”
“True,” Komatsu said, in apparent admiration. “You’ve got that special sensitivity, Tengo. I should have known.”
Sensitivity’s got nothing to do with it, Tengo thought. It’s just plain old experience. But he said nothing and waited to see what Komatsu was getting at.
“Unfortunately, you’re right, I do have a piece of unpleasant news,” Komatsu said. He paused meaningfully. Tengo imagined Komatsu at the other end, his eyes gleaming like a mongoose’s in the dark.
“It probably has something to do with the author of Air Chrysalis, am I right?”
“Exactly. It is about Fuka-Eri. And it’s not good. She’s been missing for a while.”
Tengo’s fingers kept pressing against his temples. “ ‘A while’? Since when?”
“Three days ago, on Wednesday morning, she left her house in Okutama for Tokyo. Professor Ebisuno saw her off. She didn’t say where she was going. Later in the day she phoned to say she wouldn’t be coming back to the house in the hills, that she was going to spend the night in their Shinano-machi condo. Professor Ebisuno’s daughter was also supposed to spend the night there, but Fuka-Eri never showed up. They haven’t heard from her since.”
Tengo traced his memory back three days, but could think of nothing relevant.
“They have absolutely no idea where she is. I thought she might have contacted you.”
“I haven’t heard a thing,” Tengo said. More than four weeks must have gone by since she spent the night in his apartment.
Tengo momentarily wondered whether he ought to tell Komatsu what she had said back then-that she had better not go back to the Shinano-machi condo. She might have been sensing something ominous about the place. But he decided not to mention it. He didn’t want to have to tell Komatsu that Fuka-Eri had stayed at his apartment.
“She’s an odd girl,” Tengo said. “She might have just gone off somewhere by herself without telling anybody”
“No, I don’t think so. She may not look it, but Fuka-Eri is a very conscientious person. She’s always very clear about her whereabouts, always phoning to say where she is or where she’s going and when. That’s what Professor Ebisuno tells me. For her to be out of touch for three full days is not at all usual for her. Something bad might have happened.”
“Something bad,” Tengo growled.
“The Professor and his daughter are both very worried,” Komatsu said.
“In any case, if she stays missing like this, it’ll put you in a difficult position, I’m sure,” Tengo said to Komatsu.
“True, especially if the police get involved. I mean, think about it: beautiful teenage writer of runaway bestseller disappears! You know the media would go crazy over that one. Then they’re going to drag me out for comments as her editor. No good can come of that. I’m strictly a shadow figure, I don’t do well in the sunlight. Once something like that gets going the truth could come out at any point.”
“What does Professor Ebisuno say?”
“That he’s going to file a search request with the police, maybe as soon as tomorrow,” Komatsu said. “I got him to hold off for a few days, but it’s not something that can be postponed for very long.”
“If the media get wind of the search request, they’ll be all over this.”
“I don’t know how the police are going to respond, but Fuka-Eri is the girl of the moment, not just some teenage runaway. Keeping this out of the public eye will likely be impossible.”
That might have been exactly what Professor Ebisuno was hoping for, Tengo thought: to cause a sensation using Fuka-Eri as bait, exploit it to clarify the relationship of Sakigake to Fuka-Eri’s parents, and learn the couple’s whereabouts. If so, then the Professor’s plan was working as he had imagined it would. But had the Professor fully grasped how dangerous this might prove to be? He certainly should have: Professor Ebisuno was not a thoughtless person. Indeed, deep thinking was exactly what he did for a living. And besides, there seemed to be a number of important facts surrounding Fuka-Eri’s situation of which Tengo was unaware, as though he were trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without having been given all the pieces. A wise person would have avoided getting involved from the beginning.
“Do you have any idea where she might be, Tengo?” Komatsu asked.
“Not at the moment.”
“No?” Komatsu said with a perceptible note of fatigue in his voice. He was not a man who often let such human failings show. “Sorry I woke you in the middle of the night.”
To hear words of apology coming from Komatsu’s mouth was also a rare occurrence.
“That’s okay,” Tengo said. “Given the situation.”
“You know, Tengo, if I had my way I would have preferred not to involve you in these real-world complications. Your only job was to do the writing, and you carried that off splendidly. But things never work out as smoothly as we want them to. And, as I said to you once before, we’re all shooting the rapids-”
“In the same boat,” Tengo mechanically finished the sentence.
“Exactly.”
“But come to think of it,” Tengo added, “won’t Air Chrysalis just sell all the more if Fuka-Eri’s disappearance becomes news?”
“It’s selling enough already,” Komatsu said with a note of resignation. “We don’t need any more publicity. The only thing a scandal will net us is trouble. What we ought to be thinking about is a nice, quiet spot to land in.”
“A spot to land in,” Tengo said.
Komatsu made a sound as though he were swallowing some imaginary thing. Then he lightly cleared his throat. “Well, let’s have a nice, long talk about that over dinner sometime. After this mess gets cleaned up. Good night, Tengo. You ought to get a good night’s rest.”
Komatsu hung up. As if he had just had a curse laid on him, Tengo could no longer sleep. He felt tired, but he couldn’t get to sleep.
What was this “You ought to get a good night’s rest” business? He thought about doing some work at the kitchen table, but he wasn’t in the mood. He took a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, poured some into a glass, and drank it straight in small sips.
Maybe Fuka-Eri had been kidnapped by Sakigake. It seemed entirely plausible to Tengo. A bunch of them had staked out her Shinano-machi condo, forced her into a car, and taken her away. It was by no means impossible, if they had chosen the right moment and acted quickly. Maybe Fuka-Eri had already sensed their presence when she said she had better not go back to the condo.
Both the Little People and air chrysalises actually existed, Fuka-Eri had told Tengo. She had met the Little People in the Sakigake commune when she was being punished for having carelessly let the blind goat die, and she had made an air chrysalis with them for several nights running. As a result, something of great significance had happened to her. She had put the events into a story, and Tengo had refashioned the story into a finished piece of fiction. In other words, he had transformed it into a commodity, and that commodity was (to borrow Komatsu’s expression) selling like hotcakes. This in turn might be distressing to Sakigake. The stories of the Little People and the air chrysalis might be major secrets that must not be divulged to the outside world. And so, to prevent any further leaks, they had kidnapped Fuka-Eri and shut her up. They had resorted to force, even if it meant risking the possibility that her disappearance might arouse public suspicion.
This was, of course, nothing more than Tengo’s hypothesis. He had no evidence he could offer, no way he could prove it. Even if he told people, “The Little People and air chrysalises actually exist,” who could possibly take him seriously? First of all, Tengo himself did not know what it meant to say that such things “actually exist.”
Another possibility was that Fuka-Eri had become sick of all the hype surrounding her bestseller and had gone into hiding. This was entirely conceivable, of course. It was all but impossible to predict what she would do, but assuming she went into hiding, she would probably have left some kind of message for Professor Ebisuno and his daughter, Azami. There would have been no reason for her to worry them.
It was easy for Tengo to imagine, however, that Fuka-Eri might be in great danger if she had actually been abducted by Sakigake. Just as there had been no word from her parents, all word of Fuka-Eri might be lost. Even if the relationship between Fuka-Eri and Sakigake were revealed (which would not take a very long time), and this gave rise to a media scandal, it would all be for nothing if the police refused to get involved on the grounds that there was “no physical evidence that she was abducted.” She might remain locked up somewhere inside the high-walled religious commune. Had Professor Ebisuno concocted a plan that included such a worst-case scenario?
Tengo wanted to call Professor Ebisuno and ask him all these questions, but it was already past midnight, and he could only wait until tomorrow.
The next morning Tengo dialed the number he was given to call Professor Ebisuno’s house, but the call did not go through. All he got was the recorded message, “The number you have dialed is not presently in service. Please check the number and dial again.” He tried again several times, but always with the same results. He guessed that they had changed phone numbers after Fuka-Eri’s debut, due to an onslaught of calls requesting interviews.
Nothing unusual happened during the following week. Air Chrysalis went on selling in the same high numbers, coming out again at the top of the national bestseller list. No one contacted Tengo during the week. He tried phoning Komatsu at his office a few times, but he was always out (which was not unusual). Tengo left a message with the editorial office for Komatsu to call, but no call came (which was also not unusual). He read the newspaper every day, but he found no report that a search request had been filed for Fuka-Eri. Could Professor Ebisuno have decided not to file one? Perhaps he had filed a request but the police had not publicized it so as to search for her in secret, or they had not taken it seriously, treating it as just another case of a runaway teenager.
As always, Tengo taught mathematics at the cram school three days a week, continued writing his novel on other days, and spent Friday afternoon having intense sex with his girlfriend when she visited his apartment. But he could not focus. He spent day after day feeling uneasy and muddled, like someone who has mistakenly swallowed a thick swatch of cloud. He began losing his appetite. He would wake up at odd times in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep. Then he would think about Fuka-Eri. Where was she now? What was she doing? Whom was she with? What was happening to her? He imagined a variety of situations, all of them, with minor variations, deeply pessimistic. In the scenes he imagined, she was always wearing her thin, tight-fitting sweater that showed off the lovely shape of her breasts. The image made him gasp for breath and only added to his agitation.
It was on the Thursday of the sixth week after Air Chrysalis became a permanent fixture on the bestseller list that Fuka-Eri finally got in touch with him.
CHAPTER 23
Aomame
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING
Aomame and Ayumi were the perfect pair to host intimate but fully erotic all-night sex feasts. Ayumi was petite and cheerful, comfortable with strangers, and talkative. She brought a positive attitude to just about any situation once she had made up her mind to do so. She also had a healthy sense of humor. By contrast, Aomame, slim and muscular, tended to be rather expressionless and reserved, and she found it hard to be witty with a man she was meeting for the first time. In her speech there was a subtle note of cynicism and even hostility, and in her eyes an equally subtle gleam of intolerance. Still, when she felt like it, Aomame gave off a cool aura that naturally attracted men. It was like the sweet, sexually stimulating fragrance that animals or insects give off when necessary. This was not something that could be learned through conscious effort. It was probably inborn. But no-she might well have acquired the fragrance for some reason at a certain stage of life. In any case, this aura subtly aroused not only her sexual partners but also Ayumi, adding color and a positive warmth to their evenings.
Whenever they encountered suitable men, first Ayumi approached them with her natural cheer. Then Aomame would join them at an appropriate moment, creating a unique atmosphere that was part operetta, part film noir. Once things got to that point, the rest was simple. They would move to an appropriate place and (as Ayumi bluntly put it) “fuck like mad.” The hardest thing was finding suitable partners. Preferably, they should be two men together-clean, and reasonably good-looking. They had to be at least somewhat intellectual, but too much so could be a problem: boring conversation could turn the evening sterile. They also had to look like men who had money to spend. Obviously, the men paid for the drinks and the hotel rooms.
When they tried to hold a nice little sex feast near the end of June, however (in what would turn out to be their last team activity), they simply could not find suitable men. They put a lot of time into it, changing venues several times, always with the same results. In spite of the fact that it was the last Friday of the month, all the clubs they tried, from Roppongi to Akasaka, were shockingly quiet, almost deserted, giving them no real choice. Maybe it had something to do with the heavy clouds that hung in the sky, as if the whole of Tokyo were in mourning for someone.
“It doesn’t look good today,” Aomame said. “Maybe we should give up.” It was already ten thirty.
Ayumi reluctantly agreed. “I’ve never seen such a dead Friday night. And here I’m wearing my sexy purple underwear!”
“So go home and get carried away with yourself in the mirror.”
“Not even I have the guts to do that in the police dorm bathroom!”
“Anyhow, let’s just forget it. We’ll have a nice, quiet drink, then head home and go to bed.”
“That may be the best thing,” Ayumi said. Then, as if she had suddenly recalled something, she added, “Say, let’s have a bite to eat before we go home. I’ve got an extra thirty thousand yen in my purse.”
Aomame frowned. “Extra? How come? You’re always complaining how little they pay you.”
Ayumi scratched the side of her nose. “Actually, the last time, the guy gave me thirty thousand yen. He called it ‘taxi fare’ and handed it to me when we said good-bye. You know, the time we did it with those real estate guys.”
“And you just took it?” Aomame asked, shocked.
“Maybe he thought we were semi-pros,” Ayumi said with a chuckle. “I bet it never crossed his mind he was dealing with a cop and a martial arts instructor. Anyhow, what’s the difference? I’m sure he makes tons of money in real estate-more than he knows what to do with. I kept it separate, figured I’d spend it with you on a nice meal or something. I mean, money like that you don’t want to use on just regular expenses.”
Aomame did not tell Ayumi how she felt about this. To have taken money for casual sex with a man she didn’t know-she could hardly comprehend the fact that such a thing had occurred. She felt as if she were looking at a twisted image of herself in a warped mirror. Ethically, which was better-taking money for killing men or taking money for having sex with men?
“Tell me,” Ayumi asked Aomame uneasily, “does the idea of taking money from a man bother you?”
Aomame shook her head. “It doesn’t bother me so much as make me feel a little mystified. But what about you? I would have expected a female cop to feel reluctant to do anything like prostitution.”
“Not at all,” Ayumi insisted cheerfully. “I have no problem with that. You know, a prostitute is somebody who agrees on a price and gets her money before having sex. The first rule is ‘Pay me before you take your pants off.’ She couldn’t make a living if guys told her, ‘Gee, I don’t have any money’ after it was all over. But when there’s no prior negotiation of a price, and afterward the guy gives you a little something for ‘taxi fare,’ it’s just an expression of gratitude. That’s different from professional prostitution. There’s a clear distinction between the two.”
What Ayumi had to say made a certain kind of sense.
The men that Aomame and Ayumi had chosen the last time were in their late thirties or early forties. Both had full heads of hair, but Aomame was willing to compromise on that point. They said they were with a company that dealt in real estate, but judging from their Hugo Boss suits and Missoni Uomo neckties, they were not just ordinary employees of giant conglomerates like Mitsubishi or Mitsui, whose employees were bound by finicky rules, tradition, and endless meetings, but rather they worked for a more aggressive, flexible company with a cool, foreign-sounding name, a place that looked for individual talent and richly rewarded success. One of the men carried keys to a brand-new Alfa Romeo. Tokyo was short on office space, they said. The economy had recovered from the oil shocks and was showing signs of heating up again. Capital was growing ever more fluid, and soon it would be impossible to meet the need for space no matter how many new high-rise buildings they put up.
“Sounds like real estate is where the money is,” Aomame said to Ayumi.
“That’s true,” Ayumi said. “If you have anything extra lying around, you ought to invest it in real estate. Huge amounts of money are just pouring into Tokyo, which is only so big. Land prices are bound to soar. Buy now, and there’s no way you can lose. It’s like betting on horses when you know you hold the winning ticket. Unfortunately, low-ranking public employees like me don’t have anything to spare. But how about you, Aomame? Do you do any investing?”
Aomame shook her head. “I don’t trust anything but cash.”
Ayumi laughed out loud. “You have the mind of a criminal!”
“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.”
“More than being on the side that enforces the law?”
“Personally, yes,” Ayumi said with a smile. “I’m more drawn to outlaws. They’re a whole lot more exciting than riding around in a mini patrol car and handing out parking tickets. That’s what I like about you.”
“Do I look like an outlaw?”
Ayumi nodded. “How should I put it? I don’t know, you just have that atmosphere about you, though maybe not like a Faye Dunaway holding a machine gun.”
“I don’t need a machine gun,” Aomame said.
“About that religious commune we were talking about last time, Sakigake…,” Ayumi said.
The two were sharing a light meal and a bottle of Chianti at a small, late-night Italian restaurant in Iikura, a quiet neighborhood. Aomame was having a salad with strips of raw tuna, while Ayumi had ordered a plate of gnocchi with basil sauce.
“Uh-huh,” Aomame said.
“You got me interested, so I did a little searching on my own. And the more I looked, the fishier it began to smell. Sakigake calls itself a religion, and it even has official certification, but it’s totally lacking any religious substance. Doctrine-wise, it’s kind of deconstructionist or something, just a jumble of images of religion thrown together. They’ve added some new-age spiritualism, fashionable academicism, a return to nature, anticapitalism, occultism, and stuff, but that’s all: it has a bunch of flavors, but no substantial core. Or maybe that’s what it’s all about: this religion’s substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium is the message. Some people might find that cool.”
“McLuhanesque?”
“Hey, look, even I read a book now and then,” Ayumi protested. “McLuhan was ahead of his time. He was so popular for a while that people tend not to take him seriously, but what he had to say was right.”
“In other words, the package itself is the contents. Is that it?”
“Exactly. The characteristics of the package determine the nature of the contents, not the other way around.”
Aomame considered this for a moment and said, “The core of Sakigake as a religion is unclear, but that has nothing to do with why people are drawn to it, you mean?”
Ayumi nodded. “I wouldn’t say it’s amazing how many people join Sakigake, but the numbers are by no means small. And the more people who join, the more money they put together. Obviously. So, then, what is it about this religion that attracts so many people? If you ask me, it’s primarily that it doesn’t smell like a religion. It’s very clean and intellectual, and it looks systematic. That’s what attracts young professionals. It stimulates their intellectual curiosity. It provides a sense of achievement they can’t get in the real world-something tangible and personal. And these intellectual believers, like an elite officers’ corps, form the powerful brains of the organization.
“Plus,” Ayumi continued, “their ‘Leader’ seems to have a good deal of charisma. People idolize him. His very presence, you might say, functions like a doctrinal core. It’s close in origin to primitive religion. Even early Christianity was more or less like that at first. But this guy never comes out in the open. Nobody knows what he looks like, or his name, or how old he is. The religion has a governing council that supposedly runs everything, but another person heads the council and acts as the public face of the religion in official events, though I don’t think he’s any more than a figurehead. The one who is at the center of the system seems to be this mysterious ‘Leader’ person.”
“Sounds like he wants to keep his identity hidden.”
“Well, either he has something to hide or he keeps his existence obscure on purpose to heighten the mysterious atmosphere around him.”
“Or else he’s tremendously ugly,” Aomame said.
“That’s possible, I suppose. A grotesque creature from another world,” Ayumi said, with a monster’s growl. “But anyway, aside from the founder, this religion has too many things that stay hidden. Like the aggressive real estate dealings I mentioned on the phone the other day. Everything on the surface is there for show: the nice buildings, the handsome publicity, the intelligent-sounding theories, the former social elites who have converted, the stoic practices, the yoga and spiritual serenity, the rejection of materialism, the organic farming, the fresh air and lovely vegetarian diet-they’re all like calculated photos, like ads for high-class resort condos that come as inserts in the Sunday paper. The packaging is beautiful, but I get the feeling that suspicious plans are hatching behind the scenes. Some of it might even be illegal. Now that I’ve been through a bunch of materials, that’s the impression I get.”
“But the police aren’t making any moves now.”
“Something may be happening undercover, but I wouldn’t know about that. The Yamanashi Prefectural Police do seem to be keeping an eye on them to some extent. I kind of sensed that when I spoke to the guy in charge of the investigation. I mean, Sakigake gave birth to Akebono, the group that staged the shootout, and it’s just guesswork that Akebono’s Chinese-made Kalashnikovs came in through North Korea: nobody’s really gotten to the bottom of that. Sakigake is still under some suspicion, but they’ve got that ‘Religious Juridical Person’ label, so they have to be handled with kid gloves. The police have already investigated the premises once, and that made it more or less clear that there was no direct connection between Sakigake and the shootout. As for any moves the Public Security Intelligence Agency might be making, we just don’t know. Those guys work in absolute secrecy and have never gotten along with us.”
“How about the children who stopped coming to public school? Do you know any more about them?”
“No, nothing. Once they stop going to school, I guess, they never come outside the walls of the compound again. We don’t have any way of investigating their cases. It would be different if we had concrete evidence of child abuse, but for now we don’t have anything.”
“Don’t you get any information about that from people who have quit Sakigake? There must be a few people at least who become disillusioned with the religion or can’t take the harsh discipline and break away.”
“There’s constant coming and going, of course-people joining, people quitting. Basically, people are free to quit anytime. When they join, they make a huge donation as a ‘Permanent Facility Use Fee’ and sign a contract stipulating that it is entirely nonrefundable, so as long as they’re willing to accept that loss, they can come out with nothing but the clothes on their backs. There’s an organization of people who have quit the religion, and they accuse Sakigake of being a dangerous, antisocial cult engaged in fraudulent activity. They’ve filed a suit and put out a little newsletter, but they’re such a small voice they have virtually zero impact on public opinion. The religion has a phalanx of top lawyers, and they’ve put together a watertight defense. One lawsuit can’t budge them.”
“Haven’t the ex-members made any statements about Leader or the children inside?”
“I don’t know,” Ayumi said. “I’ve never read their newsletter. As far as I’ve been able to check, though, all the dissidents are from the lowest ranks of the group, just small fry. Sakigake makes a big deal about how they reject all worldly values, but part of the organization is completely hierarchical, sharply divided between the leadership and the rest of them. You can’t become a member of the leadership without an advanced degree or specialized professional qualifications. Only elite believers in the leadership group ever get to see or receive direct instruction from Leader or make contact with key figures of the organization. All the others just make their required donations and spend one sterile day after another performing their religious austerities in the fresh air, devoting themselves to farming, or spending hours in the meditation rooms. They’re like a flock of sheep, led out to pasture under the watchful eye of the shepherd and his dog, and brought back to their shed at night, one peaceful day after the next. They look forward to the day when their position rises high enough in the organization for them to come into the presence of Big Brother, but that day never comes. That’s why ordinary believers know almost nothing about the inner workings of the organization. Even if they quit Sakigake, they don’t have any important information they can offer the outside world. They’ve never even seen Leader’s face.”
“Aren’t there any members of the elite who have quit?”
“Not one, as far as I can tell.”
“Does that mean you’re not allowed to leave once you’ve learned the secrets?”
“There might be some pretty dramatic developments if it came to that,” Ayumi said with a short sigh. Then she said to Aomame, “So tell me, about that raping of little girls you mentioned: how definite is that?”
“Pretty definite, but there’s still no proof.”
“It’s being done systematically inside the commune?”
“That’s not entirely clear, either. We do have one actual victim, though. I’ve met the girl. They did terrible things to her.”
“By ‘rape,’ do you mean actual penetration?”
“Yes, there’s no question about that.”
Ayumi twisted her lips at an angle, thinking. “I’ve got it! Let me dig into this a little more in my own way.”
“Don’t get in over your head, now.”
“Don’t worry,” Ayumi said. “I may not look it, but I’m very cautious.”
They finished their meal, and the waiter cleared the table. They declined to order dessert and, instead, continued drinking wine.
Ayumi said, “Remember how you told me that no men had fooled around with you when you were a little girl?”
Aomame glanced at Ayumi, registering the look on her face, and nodded. “My family was very religious. There was never any talk of sex, and it was the same with all the other families we knew. Sex was a forbidden topic.”
“Well, okay, but being religious has nothing to do with the strength or weakness of a person’s sex drive. Everybody knows the clergy is full of sex freaks. In fact, we arrest a lot of people connected with religion-and with education-for stuff like prostitution and groping women on commuter trains.”
“Maybe so, but at least in our circles, there was no hint of that kind of thing, nobody who did anything they shouldn’t.”
“Well, good for you,” Ayumi said. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“It was different for you?”
Instead of responding immediately, Ayumi gave a little shrug. Then she said, “To tell you the truth, they messed around with me a lot when I was a girl.”
“Who were ‘they’?”
“My brother. And my uncle.”
Aomame grimaced slightly. “Your brother and uncle?”
“That’s right. They’re both policemen now. Not too long ago, my uncle even received official commendation as an outstanding officer-thirty years of continuous service, major contributions to public safety in the district and to improvement of the environment. He was featured in the paper once for saving a stupid dog and her pup that wandered into a rail crossing.”
“What did they do to you?”
“Touched me down there, made me give them blow jobs.”
The wrinkles of Aomame’s grimace deepened. “Your brother and uncle?”
“Separately, of course. I think I was ten and my brother maybe fifteen. My uncle did it before that-two or three times, when he stayed over with us.”
“Did you tell anybody?”
Ayumi responded with a few slow shakes of the head. “I didn’t say a word. They warned me not to, threatened that they’d get me if I said anything. And even if they hadn’t, I was afraid if I told, they’d blame me for it and punish me. I was too scared to tell anybody.”
“Not even your mother?”
“Especially my mother,” Ayumi said. “My brother had always been her favorite, and she was always telling me how disappointed she was in me-I was sloppy, I was fat, I wasn’t pretty enough, my grades in school were nothing special. She wanted a different kind of daughter-a slim, cute little doll to send to ballet lessons. It was like asking for the impossible.”
“So you didn’t want to disappoint her even more.”
“Right. I was sure if I told her what my brother was doing, she’d hate me even more. She’d say it was my fault instead of blaming him.”
Aomame used her fingers to smooth out the wrinkles in her face. My mother refused to talk to me after I announced that I was abandoning the faith at the age often. She’d hand me notes when it was absolutely necessary to communicate something, but she would never speak. I ceased to be her daughter. I was just “the one who abandoned the faith.” I moved out after that.
“But there was no penetration?” Aomame asked Ayumi.
“No penetration,” Ayumi said. “As bad as they were, they couldn’t do anything that painful to me. Not even they would demand that much.”
“Do you still see this brother and uncle of yours?”
“Hardly ever after I took a job and left the house. But we are relatives, after all, and we’re in the same profession. Sometimes I can’t avoid seeing them, and when I do I’m all smiles. I don’t do anything to rock the boat. I bet they don’t even remember that something like that ever happened.”
“Don’t remember?”
“Sure, they can forget about it,” Ayumi said. “I never can.”
“Of course not,” Aomame said.
“It’s like some historic massacre.”
“Massacre?”
“The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don’t want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.”
“True,” Aomame said, scowling slightly. An endless battle of contrasting memories?
“To tell you the truth,” Ayumi said, “I kind of thought that you must have had the same kind of experience as me.”
“Why did you think that?”
“I don’t know, I can’t really explain it, I just sort of figured. Maybe I thought that having wild one-night stands with strange men was a result of something like that. And in your case, I thought I detected some kind of anger, too. Anyhow, you just don’t seem like someone who can do the ordinary thing, you know, like everybody else does: find a regular boyfriend, go out on a date, have a meal, and have sex in the usual way with just the one person. It’s more or less the same with me.”
“You’re saying that you couldn’t follow the normal pattern because someone messed around with you when you were little?”
“That’s how I felt,” Ayumi said. She gave a little shrug. “To tell you the truth, I’m afraid of men. Or, rather, I’m afraid of getting deeply involved with one particular man, of completely taking on another person. The very thought of it makes me cringe. But being alone can be hard sometimes. I want a man to hold me, to put his thing inside me. I want it so bad I can’t stand it sometimes. Not knowing the man at all makes it easier. A lot easier.”
“Because you’re afraid of men?”
“I think that’s a large part of it.”
“I don’t think I have any fear of men,” Aomame said.
“Is there anything you are afraid of?”
“Of course there is,” Aomame said. “The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now.”
“What are you doing right now?”
Aomame stared at the wineglass in her hand for a time. “I wish I knew.” She looked up. “But I don’t. I can’t even be sure what world I’m in now, what year I’m in.”
“It’s 1984. We’re in Tokyo, in Japan.”
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