1Q84. Òûñÿ÷à Íåâåñòüñîò Âîñåìüäåñÿò ×åòûðå. Êíèãà 1. Àïðåëü–èþíü Ìóðàêàìè Õàðóêè
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 Caf 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 pattern. 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 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 caf (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 evisions 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.”
“A rubber 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.
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