1Q84. Òûñÿ÷à Íåâåñòüñîò Âîñåìüäåñÿò ×åòûðå. Êíèãà 1. Àïðåëü–èþíü Ìóðàêàìè Õàðóêè
Ushikawa picked up his lighter again, flipped open the top, and flicked it on, as if testing it. Then he quickly snapped the top shut.
“I always heard Leader was a very cautious person,” he said.
“He was. Very careful, very cautious,” Buzzcut said. Silence continued for a time.
“There is one more thing I would like to ask,” Ushikawa said. “About Tengo Kawana. He was seeing an older, married woman named Kyoko Yasuda. She came to his apartment once a week, and they would spend some intimate time together. He’s young, so that’s only to be expected. But suddenly one day her husband calls him, telling him she won’t be paying him any more visits. And he hasn’t heard a peep from her since.”
Buzzcut frowned. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this. Are you saying that Tengo Kawana was involved in all this?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. It’s just that something has been bothering me. Whatever the circumstances might be, you would expect the woman to at least give him a call. But she hasn’t gotten in touch. She just vanished, without a trace. Loose ends bother me, so that’s why I posed the question, to be on the safe side. Do you know anything about this?”
“Personally, I have no knowledge about this woman,” Buzzcut said in a flat tone. “Kyoko Yasuda. She had a relationship with Tengo Kawana.”
“She was married, and ten years older than him.”
Buzzcut noted down the name in his notebook. “I will let my superiors know.”
“That’s fine,” Ushikawa said. “By the way, have you located the whereabouts of Eriko Fukada?”
Buzzcut raised his head and stared at Ushikawa as if he were examining a crooked picture frame. “And why should we know where Eriko Fukada is?”
“You’re not interested in locating her?”
Buzzcut shook his head. “It is not our concern. She is free to go wherever she wants.”
“And you’re not interested in Tengo Kawana either?”
“He has nothing to do with us.”
“At one time it seemed like you were quite interested in both of them,” Ushikawa said.
Buzzcut narrowed his eyes for a moment, then opened his mouth. “At this point we are focused solely on Aomame.”
“Your focus shifts from day to day?”
Buzzcut’s lips parted a fraction, but he didn’t reply.
“Mr. Buzzcut, have you read the novel Eriko Fukada wrote, Air Chrysalis?”
“No, I have not. In the religion we are strictly forbidden to read anything other than books on Sakigake doctrine. We can’t even touch them.”
“Have you ever heard the term Little People?”
“No,” Buzzcut said, without missing a beat.
“That’s fine,” Ushikawa replied.
Their conversation came to an end. Buzzcut slowly rose from his chair and straightened the collar of his jacket. Ponytail took one step forward from the wall.
“Mr. Ushikawa, as I mentioned before, time is of the essence.” Buzzcut stood and looked down at Ushikawa, who had remained seated. “We have to locate Aomame as soon as possible. We are doing our very best, and we need you to do the same, from a different angle. If Aomame isn’t found, it could be bad for both of us. You are, after all, one of the few who know an important secret.”
“With great knowledge comes great responsibility.”
“Exactly,” Buzzcut replied without a trace of emotion. He turned and swiftly exited the room. Ponytail followed Buzzcut out, noiselessly shutting the door.
After they had left, Ushikawa pulled open a desk drawer and switched off the tape recorder inside. He opened the lid of the recorder, extracted the cassette tape, and wrote the date and time on it with a ballpoint pen. For a man with his sort of odd looks, his handwriting was neat and graceful. He grabbed the pack of Seven Stars cigarettes beside him, extracted one, and lit it with his lighter. He took a long puff, exhaled deeply toward the ceiling, then closed his eyes for a moment. He opened his eyes and looked over at the wall clock. The clock showed 2:30. What a creepy pair indeed, Ushikawa told himself once more.
If Aomame isn’t found, it could be bad for both of us, Buzzcut had said.
Ushikawa had twice visited the headquarters of Sakigake, deep in the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture, and had seen the huge incinerator in the woods behind the compound. It was built to burn garbage and waste, but since it operated at an extremely high temperature, if you threw a human corpse inside there wouldn’t be a single bone left. He knew that in fact several people’s bodies had been disposed of in this way. Leader’s body was probably one of them. Naturally enough, Ushikawa didn’t want to suffer the same fate. Someday he would die, but if possible he would prefer something a bit more peaceful.
But there were some facts that Ushikawa hadn’t revealed. Ushikawa preferred not to show all his cards at once. It was okay to show them a few of the lower-value cards, but the face cards he kept hidden. One needed some insurance-like the secret conversation he had recorded. When it came to this kind of game, Ushikawa was an expert. These young bodyguards had nowhere near the experience he had.
Ushikawa had gotten ahold of Aomame’s private client list. As long as you don’t mind the time and effort, and you know what you’re doing, you can get ahold of almost any kind of information. Ushikawa had made a decent enough investigation of the backgrounds of the twelve private clients. Eight women and four men, all of them of high social standing and fairly well off. Not a single one the type who would lend a hand to an assassin. But one of them, a wealthy woman in her seventies, provided a safe house for women escaping domestic violence. She allowed battered women to live in a two-story apartment building on the extensive grounds of her estate, next door to her house.
This was, in itself, a wonderful thing to do. There was nothing suspicious about it. Yet something bothered Ushikawa, kicking around the edges of his consciousness. And as this vague notion rattled around in his mind, Ushikawa tried to pinpoint what it was. He was equipped with an almost animal-like sense of smell, and he trusted his intuition more than anything. His sense of smell had saved him a few times. Violence was perhaps the keyword here. This elderly woman had a special awareness of the violent, and thus went out of her way to protect those who were its victims.
Ushikawa had actually gone over to see this safe house. The wooden apartment building was on a rise in Azabu, prime real estate. It was a fairly old building, but had character. Through the grille of the front gate, he saw a beautiful flower bed in front of the entrance, and an extensive garden. A large oak cast a shadow onto the ground. A small die-cut plate glass was set into the front door. It was the kind of building that was fast disappearing from Tokyo.
For all its tranquillity, the building was heavily secured. The walls around it were high, and topped with barbed wire. The solid metal gate was securely locked, and a German shepherd patrolled the grounds and barked loudly if anyone approached. There were several cameras set up to scan the vicinity. Hardly any pedestrians walked on the road in front of the apartment building, so one couldn’t loiter there long. It was a quiet residential area, with several embassies nearby. If a strange-looking man like Ushikawa were seen loitering, someone would be sure to question his presence.
The security was a little too tight. For a place meant to shelter battered women, they went a bit overboard. Ushikawa felt he would have to find out all there was to know about this safe house. No matter how tightly it was guarded, he would somehow have to pry it open. No-the more tightly it was guarded, the more he had to pry it open. And to do so, he would have to wrack his brain to come up with a plan.
Ushikawa recalled the part of his conversation with Buzzcut concerning the Little People.
“Have you ever heard the term Little People?”
“No.”
The reply had come a little too fast. If you had never heard that name before, you would normally pause a beat before answering. Little People? You would let the sound roll around in your mind for a second to see if anything clicked. And then you would reply. That’s what most people would do.
Buzzcut had heard the term Little People before. Ushikawa didn’t know if he knew what it meant or what it was, but it was definitely not the first time he’d heard it.
Ushikawa extinguished his now stubby cigarette. He was lost in thought for a while, and then he pulled out a new cigarette and lit it. He had decided years ago not to worry about getting lung cancer. If he wanted to concentrate, he had to get some nicotine into his system. Who knew what his fate was, even two or three days down the road? So what was the point in worrying about how his health would be fifteen years from now?
As he smoked his third Seven Stars, an idea came to him. Ah! he thought. This might actually work.
CHAPTER 2
Aomame
ALONE, BUT NOT LONELY
When it got dark she sat on a chair on the balcony and gazed out at the playground across the street. This was the most important part of her daily schedule, the focal point of her life. On sunny days, cloudy days, even when it rained, she kept a close watch, without missing a day. As October came around, the air grew cooler. On cold nights she wore many layers, kept a blanket for her legs, and sipped hot cocoa. She watched the slide until ten thirty, then took a leisurely bath to warm herself up, and went to bed.
Of course, there was a possibility that Tengo might appear even in the daytime. But most likely he wouldn’t. If he was going to show up at the park, it would be after the mercury-vapor lamp went on and the moon was in the sky. Aomame had a quick supper, dressed so she could run outside, straightened her hair, then sat down on a garden chair and fixed her gaze on the slide. She always had an automatic pistol and a pair of small Nikon binoculars with her. Fearing that Tengo might appear if she went inside to the bathroom, she restricted her drinks to the hot cocoa.
Aomame kept up her watch without missing a day. She didn’t read, didn’t listen to music, just stared at the park, her ears poised to catch any sound outside. She rarely even changed her position in the chair. She would raise her head from time to time and-if it was a cloudless night-look at the sky to make sure there were still two moons. And then she would quickly shift her gaze back to the park. As Aomame kept a close watch on the park, the moons kept a close watch over her.
But Tengo didn’t come.
Not many people visited the playground at night. Occasionally young lovers would appear. They would sit on a bench, hold hands, and, like a pair of tiny birds, exchange a few short, nervous kisses. But the park was too small, and too well lit. Soon they would grow restless and move on. Someone might show up to use the public toilet, find the door locked, and go away disappointed (or perhaps angry). The occasional office worker on his way home from work would sometimes sit alone on the bench, head bowed, undoubtedly hoping to sober up. Or maybe he just didn’t want to go straight home. And there was an old man who took his dog for a walk late at night. Both the dog and the man were taciturn, and looked like they had given up all hope.
Most of the time, though, the playground was empty at night. Not even a cat ran across it. Just the mercury-vapor lamp’s anonymous light illuminating the swings, the slide, the sandbox, the locked public toilet. When Aomame looked at this scene for a long time, she began to feel as if she had been abandoned on a deserted planet. Like that movie that showed the world after a nuclear war. What was the h2?
On the Beach.
Still, Aomame sat there, her mind focused as she kept watch over the playground. As if she were a sailor who had climbed a tall mast and was scanning the vast ocean in search of schools of fish, or the ominous shadow of a periscope. Her watchful pair of eyes were on the lookout for one thing only-Tengo Kawana.
Perhaps Tengo lived in some other town, and had just happened to be passing by that night. In that case, the chances of his revisiting this park were close to zero. But Aomame didn’t think so. When he sat on the slide that night, something about his manner, and his clothes, made her feel that he was taking a late-night stroll in the neighborhood, that he had stopped by the park and climbed up the slide. Probably to get a better look at the moons. Which meant he must live within walking distance.
In the Koenji District it wasn’t easy to find a place to see the moon. The area was mostly flat, with hardly any tall buildings from which you could look at the sky. This made the slide in the playground a decent place to do so. It was quiet, and no one would bother you. If he decided he wanted to look at the moon again, he would show up-Aomame was certain of it. But then the next moment a thought struck her: Things might not work out that easily. Maybe he’s already found a better place to view the moon.
Aomame gave a short, decisive shake of her head. She shouldn’t overthink things. The only choice I have is to believe that Tengo will return to this playground, and to wait here patiently until he does. I can’t leave-this is the only point of contact between him and me.
Aomame hadn’t pulled the trigger.
It was the beginning of September. She was standing in a turnout on the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3, in the midst of a traffic jam, bathed in bright morning sunlight as she stuck the black muzzle of a Heckler & Koch in her mouth. Dressed in a Junko Shimada suit and Charles Jourdan high heels.
People were watching her from their cars, as if something was about to occur but they had no idea what. There was a middle-aged woman in a silver Mercedes coupe. There were suntanned men looking down at her from the high cab of a freight truck. Aomame planned to blow her brains out right before their very eyes with a 9mm bullet. Taking her life was the only way she could vanish from this 1Q84 world. That way she would be able to save Tengo’s life. At least Leader had promised that. He had promised that much, and sought his own death.
Aomame didn’t find it particularly disappointing that she had to die. Everything, she felt, had already been decided, ever since she was first pulled into this 1Q84 world. I’m just following the plan that has already been laid out. Continuing to live, alone, in this unreasonable world-where there are two moons in the sky, one large, one small, where something called Little People control the destiny of others-what meaning could it have anyway?
In the end, though, she didn’t pull the trigger. At the last moment she relaxed her right index finger and removed the muzzle from her mouth. Like a person surfacing from deep under water she took a long breath, and exhaled, as if replacing every molecule of air within her.
She stopped moving toward death because she had heard a distant voice. At that point, she was in a soundless space. From the moment she put pressure on the trigger, all noise around her vanished. She was wrapped in silence, as if at the bottom of a pool. Down there, death was neither dark nor fearful. Like amniotic fluid to a fetus, it was natural, self-evident. This isn’t so bad, Aomame thought, and almost smiled. That was when she heard a voice.
The voice sounded far away, as if coming from a distant time. She didn’t recognize it. It reached her only after many twists and turns, and in the process it lost its original tone and timbre. What was left was a hollow echo, stripped of meaning. Still, within that sound, Aomame could detect a warmth she hadn’t felt for years. The voice seemed to be calling her name.
She relaxed her finger on the trigger, narrowed her eyes, and listened carefully, trying to hear the words the voice was saying. But all she could make out, or thought that she made out, was her name. The rest was wind whistling through a hollow space. In the end the voice grew distant, lost any meaning at all, and was absorbed into the silence. The void enveloping her disappeared, and, as if a cork had been pulled, the noise and clamor around her rushed in. And she no longer wanted to die.
Maybe I can see Tengo one more time at that little playground, she thought. I can die after that. I’ll take a chance on that happening. Living-not dying-means the possibility of seeing Tengo again. I want to live, she decided. It was a strange feeling. Had she ever experienced that feeling before in her life?
She released the hammer of the automatic pistol, set the safety, and put it inside her shoulder bag. She straightened up, put on her sunglasses, and walked in the opposite direction of traffic back to her taxi. People silently watched her, in her high heels, striding down the expressway. She didn’t have to walk for long. Even in the traffic jam, her taxi had managed to inch forward and had come up to where she was now standing.
Aomame knocked on the window and the driver lowered it.
“Can I get in again?”
The driver hesitated. “That thing you put in your mouth over there looked like a pistol.”
“It was.”
“A real one?”
“No way,” Aomame replied, curling her lips.
The driver opened the door, and she climbed in. She took the bag off her shoulder and laid it on the seat and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. She could still taste the metal and the residue of gun oil.
“So, did you find an emergency stairway?” the driver asked.
Aomame shook her head.
“I’m not surprised. I never heard of an emergency stairway anywhere around here,” the driver said. “Would you still like to get off at the Ikejiri exit?”
“Yes, that would be fine,” Aomame replied.
The driver rolled down his window, stuck his hand out, and pulled over into the right lane in front of a large bus. The meter in the cab was unchanged from when she had gotten out.
Aomame leaned back against the seat, and, breathing slowly, she gazed at the familiar Esso billboard. The huge tiger was looking in her direction, smiling, with a gas hose in his paw. Put a Tiger in Your Tank, the ad read.
“Put a tiger in your tank,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?” the driver said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”
I think I’ll stay alive here a bit longer, and see with my own eyes what’s going to happen. I can still die after that-it won’t be too late. Probably.
The day after she gave up on killing herself, Tamaru called her. So Aomame told him that the plan had changed-that she was going to stay put, and not change her name or get plastic surgery.
On the other end of the line Tamaru was silent. Several theories noiselessly aligned themselves in his mind.
“In other words, you’re saying you don’t want to move to another location?”
“Correct,” Aomame replied. “I would like to stay here for the time being.”
“That place is not set up to hide someone for an extended period.”
“If I stay inside and don’t go out, they shouldn’t find me.”
“Don’t underestimate them,” Tamaru said. “They will do everything they can to pinpoint who you are and hunt you down. And you won’t be the only one in danger. It could involve those around you. If that happens, I could be put in a difficult position.”
“I’m very sorry about that. But I need a bit more time.”
“A bit more time? That’s a little vague,” Tamaru said.
“That’s the only way I can put it.”
Tamaru was silent, in thought. He seemed to have sensed how firm her decision was.
“I have to keep my priorities straight,” he said. “Do you understand that?”
“I think so.”
Tamaru was silent again, and then continued.
“All right. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. Since you insist on staying, you must have your reasons.”
“I do,” Aomame said.
Tamaru briefly cleared his throat. “As I have told you before, we have committed to take you someplace safe, and far away-to erase any trail, change your face and name. Maybe it won’t be a total transformation, but as close to total as we can manage. I thought we were agreed on this.”
“Of course I understand. I’m not saying I don’t like the plan itself. It’s just that something unexpected occurred, and I need to stay put for a while longer.”
“I am not authorized to say yes or no to this,” Tamaru said, making a faint sound in the back of his throat. “It might take a while to get an answer.”
“I’ll be here,” Aomame said.
“Glad to hear it,” Tamaru said, and hung up.
The phone rang the next morning, just before nine. Three rings, then it stopped, and rang again. It had to be Tamaru.
Tamaru launched right in without saying hello. “Madame also is concerned about you staying there for very long. It is just a safe house, and it is not totally secure. Both of us agree that it’s best to move you somewhere far away, somewhere more secure. Do you follow me?”
“I do.”
“But you are a calm, cautious person. You don’t make stupid mistakes, and I know you are committed. We trust you implicitly.”
“I appreciate that.”
“If you insist that you want to stay in that place for a bit longer then you must have your reasons. We don’t know what your rationale is, but I’m sure it’s not just a whim. So she is thinking that she would like to follow your wishes as much as she can.”
Aomame said nothing.
Tamaru continued. “You can stay there until the end of the year. But that’s the limit.”
“After the first of the year, then, I need to move to another place.”
“Please understand we are doing our very best to respect your wishes.”
“I understand,” Aomame said. “I’ll be here until the end of the year, then I will move.”
But this wasn’t her real intention. She didn’t plan to take one step out of this apartment until she saw Tengo again. If she mentioned this now, though, complications would set in. She could delay things for over three months, until the end of the year. After that she would consider what to do next.
“Fine,” Tamaru said. “We’ll deliver food and other necessities once a week. At one p.m. each Tuesday the supply masters will stop by. They have a key, so they can get in on their own. They will only go to the kitchen, nowhere else. While they are at the apartment, I want you to go into the back bedroom and lock the door. Don’t show your face, or speak. When they’re leaving, they will ring the doorbell once. Then you can come out of the bedroom. If there’s anything special you need, let me know right now and I’ll have it included in the next delivery.”
“It would be nice to have equipment so I could do some strength training,” Aomame said. “There’s only so much you can do exercising and stretching without equipment.”
“Full-scale gym equipment is out of the question, but we could supply some home equipment, the kind that doesn’t take up much space.”
“Something very basic would be fine,” Aomame said.
“A stationary bike and some auxiliary equipment for strength training. Would that do it?”
“That would be great. If possible, I’d also like to get a metal softball bat.”
Tamaru was silent for a few seconds.
“A bat has many uses,” Aomame explained. “Just having it next to me makes me calm. It’s like I grew up with a bat in my hand.”
“Okay. I’ll get one for you,” Tamaru said. “If you think of anything else you need, write it on a piece of paper and leave it on the kitchen counter. I’ll make sure you get it the next time we bring supplies.”
“Thank you. But I think I have everything I need.”
“How about books and videos and the like?”
“I can’t think of anything I particularly want.”
“How about Proust’s In Search of Lost Time?” Tamaru asked. “If you’ve never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing.”
“Have you read it?”
“No, I’ve never been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can’t read the whole of Proust.”
“Do you know anybody who has read the whole thing?”
“I’ve known some people who have spent a long period in jail, but none were the type to be interested in Proust.”
“I’d like to give it a try,” Aomame said. “If you can get ahold of those books, bring them the next time you bring supplies.”
“Actually, I already got them for you,” Tamaru said.
The so-called supply masters came on Tuesday afternoon at one p.m. on the dot. As instructed, Aomame went into the back bedroom, locked it from the inside, and tried not to make a sound. She heard the front door being unlocked and people opening the door and coming in. Aomame had no idea what kind of people these “supply masters” were. From the sounds they made she got the feeling there were two of them, but she didn’t hear any voices. They carried in several boxes and silently went about putting things away. She heard them at the sink, rinsing off the food they had bought and then stacking it in the fridge. They must have decided beforehand who would be in charge of what. They unwrapped some boxes, and she could hear them folding up the wrapping paper and containers. It sounded like they were wrapping up the kitchen garbage as well. Aomame couldn’t take the bag of garbage downstairs to the collection spot, so she had to have somebody take it for her.
The people seemed to do their work efficiently, with no wasted effort. They tried not to make any unnecessary noise, and their footsteps, too, were quiet. They were finished in about twenty minutes. Then they opened the front door and left. She heard them lock the front door from the outside, and then the doorbell rang once as a signal. To be on the safe side, Aomame waited fifteen minutes. Then she exited the bedroom, made sure no one else was there, and locked the dead bolt on the front door.
The large fridge was crammed full of a week’s worth of food. This time it wasn’t the kind of food you popped in the microwave, but mostly fresh groceries: a variety of fruits and vegetables; fish and meat; tofu, wakame, and natto. Milk, cheese, and orange juice. A dozen eggs. So there wouldn’t be any extra garbage, they had taken everything out of their original containers and then neatly rewrapped them in plastic wrap. They had done a good job understanding the type of food she normally ate. How would they know this? she wondered. A stationary bicycle was set down next to the window, a small but high-end model. The digital display on it showed speed, distance, and calories burned. You could also monitor rpms and heart rate. There was a bench press to work on abs, deltoids, and triceps, the kind of equipment that was easy to assemble and disassemble. Aomame was quite familiar with it. It was the newest type, a very simple design yet very effective. With these two pieces of equipment she would have no trouble keeping in shape.
A metal bat in a soft case was there as well. Aomame took it out of the case and took a few swings. The shiny, new silver bat swished sharply through the air. The old familiar heft of it calmed her. The feel of the bat in her hands brought back memories of her teenage years, and the time she had spent with Tamaki Otsuka.
All seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time were piled up on the dining table. They were not new copies, but they appeared to be unread. Aomame flipped through one. There were several magazines, too-weekly and monthly magazines-and five brand-new videos, still in their plastic wrap. She had no idea who had chosen them, but they were all new movies she had never seen. She was not in the habit of going to movie theaters, so there were always a lot of new films that she missed.
There were three brand-new sweaters in a large department-store shopping bag, in different thicknesses. There were two thick flannel shirts, and four long-sleeved T-shirts. All of them were in plain fabric and simple designs. They were all the perfect size. There were also some thick socks and tights. If she was going to be here until December, she would need them. Her handlers knew what they were doing.
She took the clothes into the bedroom and folded them to store in drawers or hung them on hangers in the closet. She had gone back to the kitchen and was drinking coffee when the phone rang. It rang three times, stopped, then rang again.
“Did you get everything?” Tamaru asked.
“Yes, thank you. I think I have everything I need now. The exercise equipment is more than enough. Now I just have to crack open Proust.”
“If there is anything that we’ve overlooked, don’t hesitate to tell me.”
“I won’t,” Aomame said. “Though I don’t think it would be easy to find anything you have overlooked.”
Tamaru cleared his throat. “This might not be my business, but do you mind if I give you a warning?”
“Go right ahead.”
“Unless you have experienced it, being shut up in a small place by yourself, unable to see or talk to anyone else, is not the easiest thing in the world. No matter how tough a person might be, eventually he is going to make a sound. Especially when someone is after you.”
“I haven’t been living in very spacious places up till now.”
“That could be an advantage,” Tamaru said. “Still, I want you to be very careful. If a person remains tense for a long time he might not notice it himself, but it’s like his nerves are a piece of rubber that has been stretched out. It’s hard to go back to the original shape.”
“I’ll be careful,” Aomame said.
“As I said before, you are a very cautious person. You’re practical and patient, not overconfident. But no matter how careful a person might be, once your concentration slips, you will definitely make one or two mistakes. Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.”
“I don’t think I’m lonely,” Aomame declared. She said this half to Tamaru, and half to herself. “I’m all alone, but I’m not lonely.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, as if Tamaru were giving serious thought to the difference between being alone and being lonely.
“At any rate I’ll be more cautious than I have been,” Aomame said. “Thank you for the advice.”
“There is one thing I’d like you to understand,” Tamaru said. “We will do whatever we can to protect you. But if some emergency situation arises-what that might be, I don’t know-you may have to deal with it yourself. I can run over there as fast as possible and still might not make it in time. Depending on the situation, I may not be able to get there at all. For instance, if it is no longer desirable for us to have a connection with you.”
“I understand completely. I plan to protect myself. With the bat, and with the thing you gave me.”
“It’s a tough world.”
“Wherever there’s hope there’s a trial,” Aomame said.
Tamaru was silent again for a moment, and then spoke. “Have you heard about the final tests given to candidates to become interrogators for Stalin’s secret police?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“A candidate would be put in a square room. The only thing in the room is an ordinary small wooden chair. And the interrogator’s boss gives him an order. He says, ‘Get this chair to confess and write up a report on it. Until you do this, you can’t leave this room.’ ”
“Sounds pretty surreal.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s not surreal at all. It’s a real story. Stalin actually did create that kind of paranoia, and some ten million people died on his watch-most of them his fellow countrymen. And we actually live in that kind of world. Don’t ever forget that.”
“You’re full of heartwarming stories, aren’t you.”
“Not really. I just have a few set aside, just in case. I never received a formal education. I just learned whatever looked useful, as I experienced it. Wherever there’s hope there’s a trial. You’re exactly right. Absolutely. Hope, however, is limited, and generally abstract, while there are countless trials, and they tend to be concrete. That is also something I had to learn on my own.”
“So what kind of confession did the interrogator candidates extract from the chairs?”
“That is a question definitely worth considering,” Tamaru said. “Sort of like a Zen koan.”
“Stalinist Zen,” Aomame said.
After a short pause, Tamaru hung up.
That afternoon she worked out on the stationary bike and the bench press. Aomame enjoyed the moderate workout, her first in a while. Afterward she showered, then made dinner while listening to an FM station. In the evening she checked the TV news (though not a single item caught her interest). After the sun had set she went out to the balcony to watch the playground, with her usual blanket, binoculars, and pistol. And her shiny brand-new bat.
If Tengo doesn’t show up by then, she thought, I guess I will see out this enigmatic year of 1Q84 in this corner of Koenji, one monotonous day after another. I’ll cook, exercise, check the news, and work my way through Proust-and wait for Tengo to show up at the playground. Waiting for him is the central task of my life. Right now that slender thread is what is barely keeping me alive. It’s like that spider I saw when I was climbing down the emergency stairway on the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3. A tiny black spider that had spun a pathetic little web in a corner of the grimy steel frame and was silently lying in wait. The wind from under the bridge had blown the spider web, which hung there precariously, tattered and full of dust. When I first saw it, I thought it was pitiful. But right now I’m in the same situation.
I have to get ahold of a recording of Janek’s Sinfonietta. I need it when I’m working out. It makes me feel connected. It’s as if that music is leading me to something. To what, though, I can’t say. She made a mental note to add that to the next list of supplies.
It was October now. There were less than three months left of her reprieve. The clock kept ticking away, ceaselessly. Aomame sank down into her garden chair and continued to watch the slide in the playground through the plastic blinds. The little children’s playground looked pale under the mercury-vapor lamp. The scene made Aomame think of deserted hallways in an aquarium at night. Invisible, imaginary fish were swimming noiselessly through the trees, never halting their silent movements. And two moons hung in the sky, waiting for Aomame’s acknowledgment.
“Tengo,” she whispered. “Where are you?”
CHAPTER 3
Tengo
THE ANIMALS ALL WORE CLOTHES
In the afternoons Tengo would visit his father in the hospital, sit next to his bed, open the book he brought, and read aloud. After reading five pages he would take a short break, then read five more pages. He read whatever book he happened to be reading on his own at the time. Sometimes it was a novel, or a biography, or a book on the natural sciences. What was most important was the act of reading the sentences aloud, not the contents.
Tengo didn’t know if his father actually heard his voice. His face never showed any reaction. This thin, shabby-looking old man had his eyes closed, and he was asleep. He didn’t move at all, and his breathing wasn’t audible. He was breathing, but unless you brought your ear very close, or held a mirror up to his nose to see if it clouded, you couldn’t really tell. The liquid in the IV drip went into his body, and a tiny amount of urine oozed out the catheter. The only thing that revealed that he was alive was this silent, slow movement in and out. Occasionally a nurse would shave his beard with an electric razor and use a tiny pair of scissors with rounded-off tips to clip the white hairs growing out of his ears and nose. She would trim his eyebrows as well. Even though he was unconscious, these continued to grow. As he watched his father, Tengo started to have doubts about the difference between a person being alive and being dead. Maybe there really wasn’t much of a difference to begin with, he thought. Maybe we just decided, for convenience’s sake, to insist on a difference.
At three the doctor came and gave Tengo an update on his father’s condition. The explanation was always concise, and it was nearly the same from one day to the next. There was no change. The old man was simply asleep, his life gradually fading away. In other words, death was approaching, slowly but certainly, and there was nothing medically speaking that could be done. Just let him lie here, quietly sleeping. That’s about all the doctor could say.
In the evenings two male nurses would come and take his father to an examination room. The male nurses differed depending on the day, but both of hem were taciturn. Perhaps the masks they wore had something to do with it, but they never said a word. One of them looked foreign. He was short and dark skinned, and was always smiling at Tengo through his mask. Tengo could tell he was smiling by his eyes. Tengo smiled back and nodded.
Anywhere from a half hour to an hour later, his father would be brought back to his room. Tengo had no idea what kind of examinations they were conducting. While his father was gone he would go to the cafeteria, have some hot green tea, and stay about fifteen minutes before going back to the hospital room. All the while he held on to the hope that when he returned an air chrysalis would once again materialize, with Aomame as a young girl lying inside. But all that greeted him in the gloomy hospital room was the smell of a sick person and the depressions left behind in the empty bed.
Tengo stood by the window and looked at the scene outside. Beyond the garden and lawn was the dark line of the pine windbreak, through which came the sound of waves. The rough waves of the Pacific. It was a thick, darkish sound, as if many souls were gathered, each whispering his story. They seemed to be seeking more souls to join them, seeking even more stories to be told.
Before this, in October, Tengo had twice taken day trips, on his days off, to the sanatorium in Chikura. He would take the early-morning express train. Once there, he would sit beside his father’s bed, and talk to him sometimes. There was nothing even close to a response. His father just lay there, faceup, sound asleep. Tengo spent most of his time gazing out the window. As evening approached he waited for something to happen, but nothing ever did. The sun would silently sink, and the room would be wrapped in the gathering gloom. He would ultimately give up, leave, and take the last express train back to Tokyo.
Maybe I should be more patient, stay with him longer, Tengo thought once. Maybe visiting him for the day and then leaving isn’t enough. What’s needed, perhaps, is a deeper commitment. He had no concrete evidence that this was true. He just felt that way.
After the middle of November he took the vacation leave he had accumulated, telling the cram school that his father was in critical condition and he needed to look after him. This in itself wasn’t a lie. He asked a classmate from college to take over his classes. He was one of the relatively few people with whom Tengo had kept in touch, albeit just once or twice a year. Even in the math department, which had more than its share of oddballs, this guy was particularly odd, as well as smart beyond compare. After graduating, though, he didn’t get a job or go on to grad school. Instead, when he felt like it, he taught math at a private cram school for junior high students. Other than that, he read, went fly fishing, and did whatever he wanted. Tengo happened to know, however, that he was a very capable teacher. The thing was, he was tired of being so capable. Plus, he was from a wealthy family and there was no need for him to force himself to work. He had substituted for Tengo once before and the students had liked him. Tengo called him and explained the situation, and he immediately agreed to step in.
There was also the question of what to do about Fuka-Eri. Tengo couldn’t decide if leaving this naive girl behind in his apartment for a long time was the right thing to do. And besides, she was trying to hide out, to stay out of sight. So he asked her directly. “Are you okay on your own here for a while? Or would you like to go someplace else, temporarily?”
“Where are you going,” Fuka-Eri asked, a serious look in her eyes.
“To the cat town,” Tengo explained. “My father won’t regain consciousness. He’s been in a deep sleep for a while. They say he might not last long.”
He didn’t say a word about the air chrysalis appearing in the hospital room bed one evening. Or how Aomame appeared inside as a young girl, asleep. Or how the air chrysalis was exactly as Fuka-Eri had described it in her novel, down to the last detail. Or how he was secretly hoping that it would again appear before him.
Fuka-Eri narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and stared straight at Tengo, as if trying to make out a message written in tiny letters. Almost unconsciously he touched his face, but it didn’t feel as though something was written on it.
“That’s fine,” Fuka-Eri said after a while, and she nodded several times. “Do not worry about me. I will stay at home.” After thinking for a moment she added, “Right now there is no danger.”
“Right now there is no danger,” Tengo repeated.
“Do not worry about me,” she said again.
“I’ll call you every day.”
“Do not get abandoned in the cat town.”
“I’ll be careful,” Tengo said.
Tengo went to the supermarket and bought enough food so Fuka-Eri wouldn’t have to go shopping, all things that would be simple to prepare. Tengo was well aware that she had neither the ability nor the desire to do much cooking. He wanted to avoid coming back in two weeks to a fridge full of mushy, spoiled food.
He stuffed a vinyl bag full of clothes and toiletries, a few books, pens, and paper. As usual he took the express train from Tokyo Station, changed to a local train at Tateyama, and got off at Chikura. He went to the tourist information booth in front of the station to look for a fairly inexpensive hotel. It was the off-season, so he had no trouble finding a room in a simple Japanese-style inn that catered mainly to people coming to fish. The cramped but clean room smelled of fresh tatami. The fishing harbor was visible from the second-floor window. The charge for the room, which included breakfast, was cheaper than he had expected.
“I don’t know yet how long I’ll be staying,” Tengo said, “but I’ll go ahead and pay for three days.” The proprietress of the inn had no objection. The doors shut at eleven, and bringing a woman to his room would be problematic, she explained in a roundabout way. All this sounded fine to him. Once he settled into his room, he phoned the sanatorium. He told the nurse (the same middle-aged nurse he had met before) that he would like to visit his father at three p.m. and asked if that would be convenient. That would be fine, she replied. “Mr. Kawana just sleeps all the time,” she said.
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