1Q84. Òûñÿ÷à Íåâåñòüñîò Âîñåìüäåñÿò ×åòûðå. Êíèãà 1. Àïðåëü–èþíü Ìóðàêàìè Õàðóêè
“Thunder?” Aomame said. It seemed to have happened a long time ago, though it had been a mere thirty minutes earlier. Yes, come to think of it, there had been some thunder. “Yes, really, incredible thunder.”
“The weather forecast said absolutely nothing about it. It was supposed to be beautiful all day.”
She tried to make her mind work. I have to say something. But I can’t think of anything good to say. My brain seems to have fogged over. “Weather forecasts are never right,” she said.
The driver glanced at Aomame in the rearview mirror. Maybe there was something funny about the way she spoke. The driver said, “I hear the water in the streets overflowed and ran down into the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station onto the tracks. It was because the rain all fell in one small area. They stopped the Ginza Line and the Marunouchi Line. I heard it on the radio news.”
The concentrated downpour brought the subway to a stop. Will this have any influence on my actions? I’ve got to make my brain work faster. I go to Shinjuku Station to get my travel bag and shoulder bag out of a coin locker. Then I call Tamaru for instructions. If I’m going to have to use the Marunouchi Line from Shinjuku, things could get very messy. I only have two hours to make my getaway. Once two hours have gone by, they’ll begin to wonder why Leader isn’t waking up. They’ll probably go into the bedroom and discover that he’s drawn his last breath. They’ll go into action immediately.
“Do you think the Marunouchi Line is still not running?” Aomame asked the driver.
“I wonder. I really don’t know. Want me to turn on the news?”
“Yes, please.”
According to Leader, the Little People caused that downpour. They concentrated the intense rain on a small area in the Akasaka District and caused the subway to stop. Aomame shook her head. Maybe they did it on purpose. Things don’t always go according to plan.
The driver tuned the radio to NHK. They were broadcasting a music program-folk songs sung by Japanese singers popular in the late sixties. Having listened to such music on the radio as a girl, Aomame remembered it vaguely, but in no way fondly. If anything, the memories it called up for her were unpleasant ones, things she would rather not think about. She put up with it for a while, but there was no sign of news about the subway situation.
“Sorry, that’s enough. Could you please turn off the radio?” Aomame said. “I’ll just go to Shinjuku Station and see what’s happening.”
The driver turned off the radio. “That place will be jammed,” he said.
As the driver had said, Shinjuku Station was horribly congested. Because the stalled Marunouchi Line connected with the National Railways here, the flow of passengers had been disrupted, and people were wandering in all directions. The evening rush hour had ended, but even so, pushing her way through the crowd was hard work for Aomame.
At last she made her way to the coin locker and took out her shoulder bag and her black imitation-leather travel bag. The travel bag contained the cash she had taken from her safe-deposit box. She took the items out of her gym bag and divided them between the shoulder and travel bags: the envelope of cash she had received from Buzzcut, the vinyl pouch containing the pistol, the hard case with the ice pick. The now useless Nike gym bag she put into a nearby locker, inserted a hundred-yen coin, and turned the key. She had no intention of reclaiming it. It contained nothing that could be traced to her.
Travel bag in hand, Aomame walked around looking for a pay phone in the station. Crowds had formed at every phone. People stood in long lines, waiting their turn to call home and say they would be late because the train had stopped. Aomame put her face into a light frown. I guess the Little People are not going to let me get away that easily. Leader said they can’t touch me directly, but they can interfere with my movements through the back door, using other methods.
Aomame gave up on waiting her turn for a phone. Leaving the station, she walked a short distance, went into the first caf she saw, and ordered an iced coffee. The pink pay phone here as also in use, but at least it had no line. She stood behind a middle-aged woman and waited for her long conversation to end. The woman flashed annoyed glances at Aomame but resigned herself to hanging up after she talked for five more minutes.
Aomame slipped all her coins into the phone and punched in the number she had memorized. After three rings, a mechanical recorded announcement came on: “Sorry, but we can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”
The beep sounded, and Aomame said into the mouthpiece, “Hello, Tamaru, please pick up if you’re there.”
Someone lifted the receiver, and Tamaru said, “I’m here.”
“Good!” Aomame said.
Tamaru seemed to sense an unusual tension in her voice. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“For now.”
“How did the job go?”
Aomame said, “He’s in a deep sleep. The deepest sleep possible.”
“I see,” Tamaru said. He sounded truly relieved, and it colored his voice. This was unusual for him. “I’ll pass on the news. She’ll be glad to hear it.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t. But you did it.”
“One way or another,” Aomame said. “Is this phone safe?”
“I’m using a special circuit. Don’t worry.”
“I got my bags out of the Shinjuku Station coin locker. Now what?”
“How much time do you have?”
“An hour and a half,” Aomame said. She explained briefly. After another hour and a half, the two bodyguards would check the bedroom and find that Leader was not breathing.
“An hour and a half is plenty,” Tamaru said.
“Do you think they’ll call the police right away?”
“I don’t know. Just yesterday, the police went into the group’s headquarters to start an investigation. They’re still at the questioning stage and haven’t launched the investigation itself, but it could be real trouble for them if the head of the religion suddenly turned up dead.”
“You think they might just handle it themselves without making anything public?”
“That would be nothing for them. We’ll know what happened when we see tomorrow’s newspaper-whether they reported the death or not. I’m no gambler, but if I had to make a bet, I’d put my money on their not reporting it.”
“They won’t just assume it happened naturally?”
“They won’t be able to tell by appearances. And they won’t know whether it was a natural death or murder without a meticulous autopsy. In any case, the first thing they’re going to want to do is talk to you. You were the last one to see him alive, after all. And once they learn that you’ve cleared out of your apartment and gone into hiding, they’ll be pretty sure it was no natural death.”
“So then they’ll start looking for me-with every resource at their disposal.”
“That’s for sure,” Tamaru said.
“Do you think we can manage to keep me hidden?”
“We’ve got it all planned out-in great detail. If we follow the plan carefully and persistently, no one’s going to find you. The worst thing would be to panic.”
“I’m doing my best,” Aomame said.
“Keep it up. Act quickly and get time on your side. You’re a careful and persistent person. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Aomame said, “There was a huge downpour in the Akasaka area, and the subways have stopped running.”
“I know,” Tamaru said. “Don’t worry, we weren’t planning for you to use the subway. You’ll be taking a cab and going to a safe house in the city.”
“In the city? Wasn’t I supposed to be going somewhere far away?”
“Yes, of course you will be going far away,” Tamaru said slowly, as if spelling things out for her. “But first we have to get you ready-change your name and your face. And this was a particularly tough job: you must be all keyed up. Nothing good can come of running around crazily at a time like this. Hide out in the safe house for a while. You’ll be fine. We’ll provide all the support you need.”
“Where is this ‘safe house’?”
“In the Koenji neighborhood. Maybe twenty minutes from where you are now.”
Koenji, Aomame thought, tapping her nails against her teeth. She knew it was somewhere west of the downtown area, but she had never set foot there.
Tamaru told her the address and the name of the condo. As usual, she took no notes but engraved it on her brain.
“On the south side of Koenji Station. Near Ring Road 7. Apartment 303. Press 2831 to unlock the front door.”
Tamaru paused while Aomame repeated “303” and “2831” to herself.
“The key is taped to the bottom of the doormat. The apartment has everything you’ll need for now, so you shouldn’t have to go out for a while. I’ll make contact from my end. I’ll ring the phone three times, hang up, and call again twenty seconds later. We’d like to avoid having you call.”
“I see,” Aomame said.
“Were his men tough?” Tamaru asked.
“There were two of them, and both seemed pretty tough. I had some scary moments. But they’re no pros. They can’t touch you.”
“There aren’t too many people like me.”
“Too many Tamarus could be a problem.”
“Could be,” Tamaru said.
…
Carrying her bags, Aomame headed for the station’s taxi stand, where she encountered another long line. Subway operations had still not returned to normal, it seemed. She had no choice but to take her place in line.
Joining the many other annoyed-looking commuters and patiently waiting her turn, Aomame mentally repeated the safe house address, the name of the building and apartment number, the code for unlocking the front door, and Tamaru’s phone number. She was like an ascetic sitting on a rock on a mountaintop, intoning his precious mantra. Aomame had always had confidence in her powers of memory. She could easily memorize those few bits of information. But these figures were now a lifeline. If she forgot even one of them in this situation, it could put her survival in jeopardy. She had to make sure they were engraved on her brain.
By the time Aomame finally got a taxi, a full hour had passed since she had left Leader’s corpse in the hotel room. So far, it was taking her twice as long as she had planned-a delay that the Little People had caused, no doubt. No, it could be sheer coincidence. Maybe I’m just letting the specter of some nonexistent “Little People” frighten me.
Aomame gave the driver her destination and then settled back in the seat, closing her eyes. Right about now, those two guys in their dark suits are probably checking their watches and waiting for their guru to wake up. Aomame pictured them. Buzzcut was drinking coffee and thinking about all sorts of things. Thinking was his job. Thinking and deciding. Maybe he had grown suspicious: Leader’s sleep was all too quiet. But Leader always slept soundly, without making noises-no snoring or even heavy breathing. Still, there was always his presence. The woman had said that Leader would be sound asleep for at least two hours, that it was important to let him rest quietly so that his muscles could recover. Only an hour had gone by, but something was bothering Buzzcut. Maybe he should check on Leader’s condition. What should he do?
Ponytail was the dangerous one, though. Aomame still had a vivid i of that momentary hint of violence he had displayed as she was leaving the hotel room. He was silent, but his instincts were sharp. His fighting skills must also be outstanding-probably much more so than she had imagined until that moment. Her own command of martial arts was surely no match for his. In a fight, he would probably not give her a chance to reach for her gun. Fortunately, though, he was no professional. He had let his rational mind interfere before he put his intuition into action. He was used to taking orders-unlike Tamaru. Tamaru would subdue his opponent and render him powerless before thinking. Action came first-trust the instincts and let rational judgments come later. A split-second’s hesitation and it was all over.
Recalling that moment at the door, Aomame felt her underarms growing moist. She shook her head. I was just lucky. At least I avoided being captured on the spot. I have to be a lot more careful from now on. Tamaru was right: the most important things are to be careful and persistent. Danger comes the moment you relax.
The driver was a polite-spoken middle-aged man. He pulled out a map, stopped the car, turned off the meter, and kindly found the exact location of the condo building. Aomame thanked him and stepped out of the cab. It was a handsome new six-story building in the middle of a residential area. There was no one at the entrance. Aomame punched in 2831 to unlock the front door, went inside, and rode a clean but narrow elevator up to the third floor. The first thing she did upon exiting the elevator was find the location of the emergency stairway. Then she removed the key taped to the back of the doormat of apartment 303 and used it to go inside. The entryway lights were set to go on automatically when the door opened. The place had that new-apartment smell. All of the furniture and appliances looked brand-new and unused, as if they had just come out of the boxes and plastic wrapping-matching pieces that could have been chosen by a designer to equip a model condo: simple, functional design, free of the smell of daily life.
To the left of the entry was a living/dining room. Off a hallway was a bathroom and beyond that were two rooms. One had a queen-sized bed that was already made. The blinds were closed. Opening the window that faced the street, she heard the traffic on Ring Road 7 like the distant roar of the ocean. Closing it again, she could hear almost nothing. There was a small balcony off the living room. It overlooked a small park across the street. There were swings, a slide, a sandbox, and a public toilet. A tall mercury-vapor lamp made everything unnaturally bright. A large zelkova tree spread its branches over the area. This was a third-floor condo, but there were no other tall buildings nearby from which she might have to worry about being watched.
Aomame thought about the Jiyugaoka apartment she had just vacated. It was in an old building, not terribly clean, with the occasional cockroach, and the walls were thin-not exactly the kind of place to which one became attached. Now, though, she missed it. In this brand-new, spotless condo, she felt like an anonymous person, stripped of memory and individuality.
Aomame opened the refrigerator to find four cans of Heineken chilling in the door. She opened one and took a swallow. Switching on the twenty-one-inch television, she sat down in front of it to watch the news. There was a report on the thunderstorm. The top story concerned the flooding of Akasaka-Mitsuke Station and the stopping of the Marunouchi and Ginza lines. The water overflowing the street had poured down the station steps like a waterfall. Station employees in rain ponchos had piled sandbags at the entrances, but they were obviously too late. The subway lines were still not running, and there was no estimate of when they would return to normal. The reporter thrust a mike at one stranded commuter after another. One man complained, “The morning forecast said it would be clear all day!”
She watched the news program until it ended. Of course, there was no report yet on the death of Sakigake’s Leader. Buzzcut and Ponytail were probably still waiting in the next room for the full two hours to pass. Then they would learn the truth. She took the pouch from her travel bag and pulled out the Heckler & Koch, setting it on the dining table. On the new table, the German-made automatic pistol looked terribly crude and taciturn-and black through and through-but at least it gave a focal point to the otherwise impersonal room. Landscape with Pistol, Aomame muttered, as if titling a painting. In any case, I have to keep this within reach at all times-whether I use it to shoot someone else or myself.
The large refrigerator had been stocked with enough food for her to stay for two weeks or more: fruit, vegetables, and several processed foods ready for eating. The freezer held various meats, fish, and bread. There was even some ice cream. In the cabinets she found a good selection of foods in vacuum pouches and cans, plus spices. Rice and pasta. A generous supply of mineral water. Two bottles of red wine and two white. She had no idea who put these supplies together, but the person had done a very thorough job. For now, she couldn’t think of anything that was missing.
Feeling a little hungry, she took out some Camembert, cut a wedge, and ate it with crackers. When the cheese was half gone, she washed a stalk of celery, spread it with mayonnaise, and munched it whole.
Next she examined the contents of the dresser drawers in the bedroom. The top one held pajamas and a thin bathrobe-new ones still in their plastic packs. More well-chosen supplies. The next drawer held three sets of T-shirts, socks, and underwear. All were simple, white things that seemed chosen to match the design of the furniture, and all were still packed in plastic. These were probably the same things they gave to the women staying in the safe house, made of good materials but very much “supplied” by an institution.
The bathroom had shampoo, conditioner, skin cream, and cologne, everything she needed. She rarely put on makeup and so needed few cosmetics. There were a toothbrush, interdental brush, and a tube of toothpaste. They had also thoughtfully supplied her with a hairbrush, cotton swabs, razor, small scissors, and sanitary products. The place was well stocked with toilet paper and tissues. Bath and face towels had been neatly folded and piled in a cabinet. Everything was there.
She looked in the bedroom closet, wondering if, by any chance, she would find dresses and shoes of her size-Armani and Ferragamo, preferably. But no, the closet was empty. There was a limit to how far they could go. They knew the difference between thoroughness and overkill. It was like Jay Gatsby’s library: the books were real, but the pages uncut. Besides, she would not need street clothes while she was here. They wouldn’t supply things she didn’t need. There were plenty of hangers, though.
She used those hangers for the clothes she had brought in her travel bag, taking each piece out, checking it for wrinkles, and hanging it in the closet. She knew that it would be more convenient, as a fugitive, to leave the clothes in her bag rather than hanging them up, but the thing she hated most in the world was wearing creased clothing.
I guess I can never be a coolheaded professional criminal, Aomame thought, if I’m going to be worried about wrinkled clothes at a time like this! She suddenly recalled a conversation she had once had with Ayumi.
“The thing to do is keep your cash in your mattress so in a jam you can grab it and escape out the window.”
“That’s it,” Ayumi said, snapping her fingers. “Like in The Getaway. The Steve McQueen movie. A wad of bills and a shotgun. I love that kind of stuff.”
It’s not much fun to live like that, Aomame said to the wall.
Aomame went into the bathroom, stripped, and showered. The hot water took off the remaining unpleasant sweat still clinging to her body. Then she went into the kitchen, sat at the counter, and took another swallow from her beer can while toweling her hair.
In the course of this one day, several things have taken a decisive step forward, Aomame thought. The gears have turned forward with a click. And gears that have turned forward never turn back. That is one of the world’s rules.
Aomame picked up the gun, turned it upside down, and put the muzzle into her mouth. The steel felt horrendously cold and hard against her teeth. She caught the faint scent of grease. This is the best way to blow the brains out. Pull the hammer, squeeze the trigger. Everything ends-just like that. No need to think. No need to run around.
Aomame was not particularly afraid of dying. I die, Tengo lives. He goes on living in this 1Q84, this world with two moons. But I’m not in it. I don’t get to meet him in this world. Or any world. At least, that’s what Leader says.
Aomame took another slow scan of the room. It’s like a model apartment, she thought. Clean and uniform, with every need supplied. But distant and devoid of individuality. Papier-mch. It wouldn’t be very pleasant to die in a place like this. But even if you changed the backdrop to something more desirable, is there really a pleasant way to die in this world? And come to think of it, isn’t this world we live in itself like a gigantic model room? We come in, sit down, have a cup of tea, gaze out the window at the scenery, and when the time comes we say thank you and leave. All the furniture is fake. Even the moon hanging in the window may be made of paper.
But I love Tengo. Aomame murmured the words aloud. “I love Tengo.” This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain, and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon. It-or they-are real moons. And in this world, I have willingly accepted death for Tengo’s sake. I won’t let anyone call this fake.
Aomame looked at the round clock on the wall. A simple design, by Braun. Well matched to the Heckler & Koch. The clock was the only thing hanging on the walls of this apartment. The clock hands had passed ten. Just about time for the two men to find Leader’s corpse.
In the bedroom of an elegant suite at the Hotel Okura, a man had breathed his last. A big man. A man who was far from ordinary. He had moved on to another world. No one could do anything to bring him back.
Time now for ghosts.
CHAPTER 16
What kind of world will be there tomorrow?
“No one knows the answer to that,” Fuka-Eri said.
But the world to which Tengo awoke did not appear especially changed from the world he had seen as he fell asleep the night before. The bedside clock said it was just after six. Outside, it was fully light, the air perfectly clear. A wedge of light came in through the curtains. Summer was winding down, it seemed. The cries of the birds were sharp and clear. Yesterday’s violent thunderstorm felt like an apparition-or else something that had happened in an unknown place in the distant past.
The first thing that came to Tengo’s mind upon waking was that Fuka-Eri might have disappeared during the night. But no, there she was, next to him, sound asleep, like a little animal in hibernation. Her face was beautiful in sleep, a few narrow strands of black hair against her white cheek forming a complex pattern, her ears hidden. Her breathing was soft. Tengo stared at the ceiling for a while, listening. Her breathing sounded like a tiny bellows.
He retained a vivid tactile memory of last night’s ejaculation. He had actually released semen-a lot of semen-inside this young girl. The thought made his head swim. But now that morning was here, it seemed as unreal as that violent storm, like something that happened in a dream. He had experienced wet dreams several times in his teens. He would have a realistic sexual dream, ejaculate, and then wake up. The events had all happened in the dream, but the release of semen was real. What he felt now was a lot like that.
It had not been a wet dream, though. He had unquestionably come inside Fuka-Eri. She had deliberately penetrated herself with his penis and squeezed every drop of semen out of him. He had simply followed her lead. He had been totally paralyzed at the time, unable to move a finger. And as far as he was concerned, he was coming while in the elementary school classroom, not in Fuka-Eri, who later told him there was no chance she’d become pregnant because she had no periods. He couldn’t fully grasp that such a thing had actually happened. But it had actually happened. As a real event in the real world. Probably.
He got out of bed, got dressed, went to the kitchen, boiled water, and made coffee. While making the coffee, he tried to put his head in order, like arranging the contents of a desk drawer. He couldn’t get things straight, though. All he succeeded in doing was rearranging the items in the drawer, putting the paper clips where the eraser had been, the pencil sharpener where the paper clips had been, and the eraser where the pencil sharpener had been, exchanging one form of confusion for another.
After drinking a fresh cup of coffee, he went to the bathroom and shaved while listening to a baroque music program on the FM radio: Telemann’s partitas for various solo instruments. This was his normal routine: make coffee in the kitchen, drink it, and shave while listening to Baroque Music for You on the radio. Only the musical selections changed each day. Yesterday it had almost certainly been Rameau’s keyboard music.
The commentator was speaking.
Telemann won high praise throughout Europe in the early eighteenth century, but came to be disdained as too prolific by people in the nineteenth century. This was no fault of Telemann’s, however. The purposes for which music is composed underwent great changes as the structure of European society changed, leading to this reversal in his reputation.
Is this the new world? he wondered.
He took another look at his surroundings. Still there was no sign of change. For now, there was no sign of disdainful people. In any case, what he had to do was shave. Whether the world had changed or not, no one was going to shave for him. He would have to do it himself.
When he was through shaving, he made some toast, buttered and ate it, and drank another cup of coffee. He went into the bedroom to check on Fuka-Eri, but she was still in a very deep sleep, it seemed: she hadn’t moved at all. Her hair still formed the same pattern on her cheek. Her breathing was as soft as before.
For the moment, he had nothing planned. He would not be teaching at the cram school. No one would be coming to visit, nor did he have any intention of visiting anyone. He could spend the day any way he liked. Tengo sat at the kitchen table and continued writing his novel, filling in the little squares on the manuscript paper with a fountain pen. As always, his attention became focused on his work. Switching channels in his mind made everything else disappear from his field of vision.
…
It was just before nine when Fuka-Eri woke. She had taken off his pajamas and was wearing one of Tengo’s T-shirts-the Jeff Beck Japan Tour T-shirt he was wearing when he visited his father in Chikura. Her nipples showed clearly through the shirt, which could not help but revive in Tengo the feeling of last night’s ejaculation, the way a certain date brings to mind related historical facts.
The FM radio was playing a Marcel Dupr organ piece. Tengo stopped writing and fixed her breakfast. Fuka-Eri drank Earl Grey tea and ate strawberry jam on toast. She devoted as much time and care to spreading the jam on the toast as Rembrandt had when he painted the folds in a piece of clothing.
“I wonder how many copies your book has sold,” Tengo said.
“You mean Air Chrysalis?” Fuka-Eri asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t know,” Fuka-Eri said, lightly creasing her brow. “A lot.”
Numbers were not important to her, Tengo thought. Her “a lot” brought to mind clover growing on a broad plane as far as the eye could see. The clover suggested only the idea of “a lot,” but no one could count them all.
“A lot of people are reading Air Chrysalis,” Tengo said.
Saying nothing, Fuka-Eri inspected how well she had spread the jam on her toast.
“I’ll have to see Mr. Komatsu. As soon as possible,” Tengo said, looking at Fuka-Eri across the table. As always, her face showed no xpression. “You have met Mr. Komatsu, haven’t you?”
“At the press conference.”
“Did you talk?”
Fuka-Eri gave her head a slight shake, meaning they had hardly talked at all.
Tengo could imagine the scene vividly. Komatsu was talking his head off at top speed, saying everything he was thinking-or not thinking-while she hardly opened her mouth or listened to what he had to say. Komatsu was not concerned about that. If anyone ever asked Tengo for a concrete example of two perfectly incompatible personalities, he would name Fuka-Eri and Komatsu.
Tengo said, “I haven’t seen Mr. Komatsu for a very long time. And I haven’t heard from him, either. He must be very busy these days. Ever since Air Chrysalis became a bestseller, he’s been swept up in the circus. It’s about time, though, for us to get together and have a serious talk. We’ve got all kinds of problems to discuss. Now would be a good chance to do that, since you’re here. How about it? Want to see him together?”
“The three of us?”
“Uh-huh. That’d be the quickest way to settle things.”
Fuka-Eri thought about this for a moment. Or else she was imagining something. Then she said, “I don’t mind. If we can.”
If we can, Tengo repeated mentally. It had a prophetic sound.
“Are you thinking we might not be able to?” Tengo asked with some hesitation.
Fuka-Eri did not reply.
“Assuming we can, we’ll meet him. Are you okay with that?”
“Meet him and do what?”
“ ‘Meet him and do what’? Well, first I’d return some money to him. A fairly good-sized payment was transferred into my bank account the other day for my rewriting of Air Chrysalis, but I’d rather not take it. Not that I have any regrets about having done the work. It was a great inspiration for my own writing and guided me in a good direction. And it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. It’s been well received critically and the book is selling. I don’t believe it was a mistake for me to take it on. I just never expected it to blow up like this. Of course, I am the one who agreed to do it, and I certainly have to take responsibility for that. But I just don’t want to be paid for it.”
Fuka-Eri gave her shoulders a little shrug.
Tengo said, “You’re right. It might not change a thing. But I’d like to make it clear where I stand.”
“Who for?”
“Well, mainly for myself,” Tengo said, lowering his voice somewhat.
Fuka-Eri picked up the lid of the jam jar and stared at it as if she found it fascinating.
“But it may already be too late,” Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri had nothing to say to that.
When Tengo tried phoning Komatsu’s office after one o’clock (Komatsu never came to work in the morning), the woman who answered said that Komatsu had not been in for the past several days. That was all she knew. Or, if she knew more, she obviously had no intention of sharing it with Tengo. He asked her to connect him with another editor he knew. Tengo had written short columns under a pseudonym for the monthly magazine edited by this man, who was two or three years older than Tengo and generally well disposed toward him, in part because they had graduated from the same university.
“Komatsu has been out for over a week now,” the editor said. “He called in on the third day to say he wouldn’t be coming to work for a while because he wasn’t feeling well, and we haven’t seen him since. The guys in the book division are going crazy. He’s in charge of Air Chrysalis and so far he’s handled everything himself. He’s supposed to restrict himself to the magazine side of things, but he ignored that fact and hasn’t let anybody else lay a finger on this project, even when it went into book production. So if he takes off now, nobody knows what to do. If he’s really sick, I suppose there’s nothing we can say, but still…”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know. All he said was he’s not feeling well. And then he hung up. Haven’t heard a word from him since. We wanted to ask him a few things and tried calling him, but all we got was the answering machine. Nobody knows what to do.”
“Doesn’t he have a family?”
“No, he lives alone. He used to have a wife and a kid, but I’m pretty sure he’s been divorced for a long time. He doesn’t tell anybody anything, so I don’t really know, but that’s what I’ve heard.”
“Anyhow, it’s strange that he’s been out a week and you’ve only heard from him once.”
“Well, you know Komatsu. Common sense isn’t really his thing.”
Receiver in hand, Tengo thought about this remark. “It’s true, you never know what he’ll do next. He’s socially awkward and he can be self-centered, but as far as I know he’s not irresponsible about his work. I don’t care how sick he is, he wouldn’t just let everything go and not contact the office when Air Chrysalis is selling like this. He’s not that bad.”
“You’re absolutely right,” the editor said. “Maybe somebody should go to his place and see what’s up. There was all that trouble with Sakigake over Fuka-Eri’s disappearance, and we still don’t know where she is. Something might have happened. I can’t believe he’d fake being sick so he could take off from work and hide out with Fuka-Eri, right?”
Tengo said nothing. He could hardly tell the man that Fuka-Eri was right there in front of him, cleaning her ears with a cotton swab.
“And not just this case. Everything involving this book. I don’t know, there’s something wrong with it. We’re glad it’s selling so well, but there’s something about it that’s not quite right. And I’m not the only one: a lot of people at the company feel that way about it. Oh, by the way, Tengo, did you have something you wanted to talk to Komatsu about?”
“No, nothing special. I haven’t talked to him for a while, so I was just wondering what he’s up to.”
“Maybe the stress of it all finally got to him. Anyhow, Air Chrysalis is the first bestseller this company has ever had. I’m looking forward to this year’s bonus. Have you read the book?”
“Of course, I read the manuscript when it was submitted for the competition.”
“Oh, that’s right. You were a screener.”
“I thought it was well written and pretty interesting, too.”
“Oh, it’s interesting all right, and well worth a read.”
Tengo detected an ominous ring to his remark. “But something about it bothers you?”
“Well, this is just an editor’s intuition. You’re right: it is well written. A little too well written for a debut by a seventeen-year-old girl. And now she’s disappeared. And we can’t get in touch with her editor. The book is like one of those old ghost ships with nobody aboard: it just keeps sailing along, all sails set, straight down the bestseller seaway.”
Tengo managed a vague grunt.
“It’s creepy. Mysterious. Too good to be true. This is just between you and me, but people around here are whispering that Komatsu himself might have fixed up the manuscript-more than common sense would allow. I can’t believe it, but if it’s true, we could be holding a time bomb.”
“Maybe it was just a series of lucky coincidences.”
“Even so, good luck can only last so long,” the editor said.
Tengo thanked him and ended the call.
After hanging up, Tengo said to Fuka-Eri, “Mr. Komatsu hasn’t been to work for the past week. They can’t get in touch with him.”
Fuka-Eri said nothing.
“The people around me seem to be disappearing one after another,” Tengo said.
Still Fuka-Eri said nothing.
Tengo suddenly recalled the fact that people lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off, turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned. If so, there’s nothing mysterious about somebody suddenly disappearing one day.
“I may be next,” Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri gave her head a tight, little shake. “Not you,” she said.
“Why not me?”
“Because I did a purification.”
Tengo contemplated this for several seconds without reaching a conclusion. He knew from the start that no amount of thinking could do any good. Still, he could not entirely forgo the effort to think.
“In any case, we can’t see Mr. Komatsu right now,” Tengo said. “And I can’t give the money back to him.”
“The money is no problem,” Fuka-Eri said.
“Then what is a problem?” Tengo asked.
Of course, he did not receive an answer.
Tengo decided to follow through on last night’s resolution to search for Aomame. If he spent the whole day in a concentrated effort, he should at least be able to come up with some kind of clue. But in fact, it turned out not to be that easy. He left Fuka-Eri in his apartment (after warning her repeatedly not to open the door for anyone) and went to the telephone company’s main office, which had a complete set of telephone books for every part of the country, available for public use. He went through all the phone books for Tokyo’s twenty-three central wards, looking for the name “Aomame.” Even if he didn’t find Aomame herself, a relative might be living there, and he could ask that person for news of Aomame.
But he found no one with the name Aomame. He broadened his search to include the entire Tokyo metropolis and still found no one. He further broadened his search to include the entire Kanto region-the prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama. At that point, his time and energy ran out. After glaring at the phone books’ tiny type all day, his eyeballs were aching.
Several possibilities came to mind.
1 She was living in a suburb of the city of Utashinai on Hokkaido.
2 She had married and changed her name to “Ito.”
3 She kept her number unlisted to protect her privacy.
4 She had died in the spring two years earlier from a virulent influenza.
There must have been any number of possibilities besides these. It didn’t make sense to rely strictly on the phone books. Nor could he read every one in the country. It could be next month before he finally reached Hokkaido. He had to find another way.
Tengo bought a telephone card and entered a booth at the telephone company. From there he called their old elementary school in Ichikawa and asked the female office worker who answered the phone to look up the address they had on file for Aomame, saying he wanted to reach her on alumni association business. The woman seemed kind and unhurried as she went through the roster of graduates. Aomame had transferred to another school in the fifth grade and was not a graduate. Her name therefore did not appear in the roster, and they did not know her current address. It would be possible, however, to find the address to which she moved at the time. Did he want to know that?
Tengo said that he did want to know that.
He took down the address and telephone number, “c/o Koji Tasaki” in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward. Aomame had apparently left her parents’ home at the time. Something must have happened. Figuring it was probably hopeless, Tengo tried dialing the phone number. As he had expected, the number was no longer in use. It had been twenty years, after all. He called Information and gave them the address and the name Koji Tasaki, but learned only that no telephone was listed under that name.
Next Tengo tried finding the phone number for the headquarters of the Society of Witnesses, but no contacts were listed for them in any of the phone books he perused-nothing under “Before the Flood,” nothing under “Society of Witnesses” or anything else of that ilk. He tried the classified directory under “Religious Organizations” but found nothing. At the end of this struggle, Tengo concluded that they probably didn’t want anyone contacting them.
This was, upon reflection, rather odd. They showed up all the time. They’d ring the bell or knock on the door, unconcerned that you might be otherwise occupied-be it baking a souffl, soldering a connection, washing your hair, training a mouse to do tricks, or thinking about quadratic functions-and, with a big smile, invite you to study the Bible with them. They had no problem coming to see you, but you were not free to go to see them (unless you were a believer, probably). You couldn’t ask them one simple question. This was rather inconvenient.
But even if he did manage to find the Society’s phone number and get in touch with them, it was hard to imagine that such a wary organization would freely disclose information on an individual believer. No doubt they had their reasons for being so guarded. Many people hated them for their extreme, eccentric doctrines and for the close-minded nature of their faith. They had caused several social problems, as a result of which their treatment often bordered on persecution. It had probably become second nature for them to protect their community from a less-than-welcoming outside world.
In any case, Tengo’s search for Aomame had been shut down, at least for now. He could not immediately think of what additional search methods might remain. Aomame was such an unusual name, you could never forget it once you’d heard it. But in trying to trace the footsteps of one single human being who bore that name, he quickly collided with a hard wall. It might be quicker to go around asking Society of Witnesses members directly. Headquarters would probably doubt his motives and refuse to tell him anything, but if he were to ask some individual member, he felt, they would probably be kind enough to tell him. But Tengo did not know even one member of the Society of Witnesses. Come to think of it, no one from the Society had knocked on his door for a good ten years now. Why did they not come when you wanted them and come only when you didn’t want them?
One possibility was to put a classified ad in the paper. “Aomame, please contact me immediately. Kawana.” Stupid sounding. Tengo couldn’t believe that Aomame would bother to contact him even if she saw such an ad. It would probably just end up scaring her away. “Kawana” was not such a common name, either, but Tengo couldn’t believe that Aomame would still remember it. Kawana-who’s that? She simply wouldn’t contact him. And besides, who read classified ads, anyway?
Another approach might be to hire a private detective. They should know how to look for people. They have their methods and connections. The clues Tengo already had might be enough for them to find her right away. And it probably wouldn’t be too expensive. But that might be something to set aside as a last resort, Tengo thought. He would try a little harder to see what he could come up with himself.
When the daylight began to fade, he went home to find Fuka-Eri sitting on the floor, listening to records-old jazz records left by his girlfriend. Record jackets were spread on the floor-Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Billie Holliday. Spinning on the turntable just then was Louis Armstrong singing “Chantez les Bas,” a memorable song. It reminded him of his girlfriend. They had often listened to this one between bouts of lovemaking. Near the end, the trombonist, Trummy Young, gets carried away, forgets to end his solo at the agreed-upon point, and plays an extra eight bars. “Here, this is the part,” his girlfriend had explained to him. When it ended, it was Tengo’s job to get out of bed naked, go to the next room, and turn the LP over to play the second side. He felt a twinge of nostalgia recalling those days. Though he never thought the relationship would last forever, he had not expected it to end so abruptly.
Tengo felt odd seeing Fuka-Eri listening intently to the records that Kyoko Yasuda had left behind. Wrinkling her brow in complete concentration, she seemed to be trying to hear something beyond the old music, straining to see the shadow of something in its tones.
“You like this record?”
“I listened to it a lot,” Fuka-Eri said. “Is that okay.”
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