1Q84. Тысяча Невестьсот Восемьдесят Четыре. Книга 1. Апрель–июнь Мураками Харуки

CHAPTER 13

Ushikawa

IS THIS WHAT THEY MEAN BY BACK TO SQUARE ONE?

Ushikawa’s appearance made him stand out. He did not have the sort of looks suited for stakeouts or tailing people. As much as he might try to lose himself in a crowd, he was as inconspicuous as a centipede in a cup of yogurt.

His family wasn’t like that at all. Ushikawa’s family consisted of his parents, an older and younger brother, and a younger sister. His father ran a health clinic, where his mother was the bookkeeper. Both brothers were outstanding students, attended medical school, and became doctors. His older brother worked in a hospital in Tokyo, while his younger brother was a research doctor at a university. When his father retired, his older brother was due to take over the family clinic in Urawa, a suburb of Tokyo. Both brothers were married and had one child. Ushikawa’s sister had studied at a college in the United States and was now back in Japan, working as an interpreter. She was in her mid-thirties but still single. All his siblings were slim and tall, with pleasantly oval features.

In almost every respect, particularly in looks, Ushikawa was the exception in his family. He was short, with a large, misshapen head and unkempt, frizzy hair. His legs were stumpy and bent like cucumbers. His popping eyes always looked startled, and he had a thick layer of flesh around his neck. His eyebrows were bushy and large and nearly came together in the middle. They looked like two hairy caterpillars reaching out to each other. In school he had generally gotten excellent grades, but his performance in some subjects was erratic and he was particularly hopeless at sports.

In this affluent, self-satisfied, elite family, he was the foreign element, the sour, dissonant note that ruined the familial harmony. In family photos he looked like the odd man out, the insensitive outsider who had pushed his way into the group and had his picture taken with them.

The other members of his family couldn’t understand how someone who didn’t resemble them in the least could be one of them. But there was no mistaking the fact that his mother had given birth to him, with all the attendant labor pains (her recollection was how particularly painful that birth had been). No one had laid him at their doorstep in a basket. Eventually, someone recalled that there was a relative who also had an oversized, misshapen head-Ushikawa’s grandfather’s cousin. During the war he had worked in a metal shop in Koto Ward in Tokyo, but he died in the massive air raid in the spring of 1945. His father had never met the man, though he had a photo of him in an old album. When the family saw the photo, they exclaimed, “It all makes sense now!” Ushikawa and his uncle were such peas in a pod that you would think that Ushikawa was the man reincarnated. The genetic traits of this uncle had, for whatever reason, surfaced once more.

The Ushikawa family of Urawa, Saitama Prefecture, would have been the perfect family-in both looks and academic and career achievements-if only Ushikawa hadn’t existed. They would have been the kind of memorable, photogenic family that anyone would envy. But with Ushikawa in the mix, people tended to frown and shake their heads. People might begin to think that somewhere along the line a joker or two had tripped up the goddess of beauty. No, they definitely must think this, his parents decided, which is why they tried their hardest to keep him out of the public eye or at least make sure he didn’t stand out (though the attempt was always pointless).

Being put in this situation, however, never made Ushikawa feel dissatisfied, sad, or lonely. He wasn’t sociable to begin with and usually preferred to stay in the shadows. He wasn’t particularly fond of his brothers and sister. From Ushikawa’s perspective, they were irretrievably shallow. To him, their minds were dull, their vision narrow and devoid of imagination, and all they cared about was what other people thought. More than anything, they were completely lacking in the sort of healthy skepticism needed to attain any degree of wisdom.

Ushikawa’s father was a moderately successful doctor of internal medicine in the countryside, but he was so utterly boring that talking with him gave you chest pains. Like the king whose touch turned everything to gold, every single word he uttered turned into insipid grains of sand. But as a man of few words he was able-probably unintentionally-to conceal how boring and ignorant he really was. In contrast, his mother was a real talker, a hopeless snob. Money was everything to her, and she was self-centered and proud, loved anything gaudy and showy, and could always be counted on to bad-mouth other people in a shrill voice. Ushikawa’s older brother had inherited his father’s disposition; his younger brother had his mother’s. His sister was very independent. She was irresponsible and had no consideration for others. As the baby of the family, she had been totally pampered and spoiled by her parents.

All of which explained why, since he was a boy, Ushikawa had kept to himself. When he came home from school, he had shut himself in his room and gotten lost in books. He had no friends other than his dog, so he never had the chance to talk with someone about what he had learned, or debate anyone. Still, he was convinced that he was a clear, eloquent, logical thinker, and he patiently honed these abilities all by himself. For instance, he would propose an idea for discussion and debate it, taking both sides. He would passionately argue in support of the proposition, then argue-just as vigorously-against it. He could identify equally with either of the two positions and was completely and sincerely absorbed by whatever position he happened to be supporting at the moment. Before he had realized it, these exercises had given him the talent to be skeptical about his own self, and he had come to the recognition that most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. Subject and object are not as distinct as most people think. If the boundary separating the two isn’t clear-cut to begin with, it is not such a difficult task to intentionally shift back and forth from one to the other.

In order to use logic and rhetoric more clearly and effectively, he filled his mind with whatever knowledge he could find-both what he thought would be useful and what he was pretty sure was the opposite. He chose things he agreed with, and things that, initially, he opposed. It wasn’t cultivation and learning in the usual sense that he was after, but more tangible information-something you could actually handle, something with a real shape and heft.

That huge, misshapen head of his turned out to be the perfect container for these quantities of accumulated information. Thanks to all this, he was far more erudite than any of his contemporaries. If he felt like it, he knew he could shoot down anybody in an argument-not just his siblings or classmates, but his teachers and parents as well. But he didn’t want to attract any kind of attention if he could avoid it, so he kept this ability hidden. Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.

Ushikawa began to think of himself as a nocturnal creature, concealed in a dark forest, waiting for prey to wander by. He waited patiently for an opportunity, and when it came he would leap out and grab it. But until that point, he couldn’t let his opponent know he was there. It was critical to keep a low profile and catch the other person off guard. Even as an elementary school pupil, he had thought this way. He never depended on others or readily revealed his emotions.

Sometimes he imagined how his life would be if he had been born a little better-looking. He didn’t need to be handsome. There was no need to look that impressive. He just needed to be normal-looking, or enough so that people wouldn’t turn and stare. If only I had been born like that, he wondered, what sort of life would I have led? But this was a supposition that exceeded his powers of imagination. Ushikawa was too Ushikawa-like, and there was no room in his brain for such hypotheses. It was precisely because of his large, misshapen head, his bulging eyes, and his short, bandy legs that he was who he was, a skeptical young boy, full of intellectual curiosity, quiet but eloquent.

As the years passed the ugly boy grew up into an ugly youth, and before he knew it, into an ugly middle-aged man. At every stage of his life, people continued to turn and stare. Children would stare unabashedly at him. When I become an ugly old man, Ushikawa sometimes thought, then maybe I won’t attract so much attention. But he wouldn’t know for sure. Maybe he would end up the ugliest old man the world had ever seen.

At any rate, he was not equipped with the skills needed to blend into the background. And to make matters worse, Tengo knew what he looked like. If he was discovered hanging around outside Tengo’s building, the whole operation would come crashing down.

In situations like this, Ushikawa normally hired someone from a PI agency. Ever since he was a lawyer, he had made use of these sorts of organizations, which mostly employed former policemen who were adept at digging up information, shadowing people, and conducting surveillance. But in this case, he didn’t want to involve any outsiders. Things were too touchy, and a serious crime-murder-was involved. Besides, Ushikawa wasn’t even sure what he might gain by putting Tengo under surveillance.

What Ushikawa wanted was to make clear the connection between Tengo and Aomame, but he wasn’t even sure what Aomame looked like. He had tried all sorts of methods but had yet to come up with a decent photo. Even Bat hadn’t been able to obtain one. Ushikawa had looked at her high school graduation album, but in the class photo her face was tiny and somehow unnatural-looking, like a mask. In the photo of her company softball team she had on a wide-brimmed cap and her face was in shadow. So even if Aomame were to pass him on the street, he would have no way of knowing if it was really her. He knew she was nearly five feet six inches tall and had a trim body and good posture. Her eyes and cheekbones were distinctive, and she wore her hair down to her shoulders. But there were plenty of women in the world who fit that description.

So it looked like Ushikawa would have to undertake the surveillance by himself. He would have to keep his eyes open, patiently waiting for something to happen, and, when it did, instantly react. He couldn’t ask someone else to handle such a delicate undertaking.

Tengo was living on the third floor of an old, three-story concrete apartment building. At the entrance was a row of mailboxes for all the residents, one of them with a name tag on it that said Kawana. Some of the mailboxes were rusty, the paint peeling off. They all had locks, but most of the residents left them unlatched. The front door of the building was unlocked, and anyone could go inside.

The dark corridor inside had that special odor you find in older apartment buildings. It is a peculiar mix of smells-of unrepaired leaks, old sheets washed in cheap detergent, stale tempura oil, a dried-up poinsettia, cat urine from the weed-filled front yard. Live there long enough and you would probably get used to the smell. But no matter how used to it you got, the fact remained that this was not a heartwarming odor.

Tengo’s apartment faced the main road. It wasn’t all that noisy, but there was a fair amount of foot traffic. An elementary school was nearby and at certain times of day there were large groups of children outside. Across from the building was a clump of small single-family homes, two-story houses with no garden. Just down the road were a liquor store and a stationery store catering to elementary school children. And two blocks farther down was a small police substation. There was nowhere to hide, and if he were to stand by the road and look up at Tengo’s apartment-even if Tengo didn’t discover him-the neighbors would be sure to cast a suspicious eye his way. And since he was such an unusual-looking character, the locals’ alert level would be ratcheted up a couple of levels. He might be mistaken for a pervert waiting for the kids to get out of school, and neighbors might call the police.

In surveillance the first requirement is finding a suitable place from which to watch, a place to track your target’s movements and maintain a steady supply of water and food. The ideal situation would be to have a room from which Ushikawa could see Tengo’s apartment. He could set up a camera with a telephoto lens on a tripod and keep watch over movement in the apartment and who came in and out. Since he was alone on the assignment, twenty-four-hour coverage was impossible, but Ushikawa figured he could cover it for ten hours a day. Needless to say, however, finding a suitable place was going to be tricky.

Even so, Ushikawa walked the neighborhood, searching. He wasn’t the type to give up easily. Tenaciousness was, after all, his forte. But after pounding the pavement of every nook and cranny of the neighborhood, Ushikawa called it quits. Koenji was a densely populated residential area, flat with no tall buildings. The number of places from which Tengo’s apartment was visible was very limited, and there was not a single one he thought he could use.

Whenever Ushikawa had trouble coming up with a good idea, he liked to take a long, lukewarm soak in the tub, so he went back home and drew a bath. As he lay in the acrylic bathtub, he listened to Sibelius’s violin concerto on the radio. He didn’t particularly want to listen to Sibelius-and Sibelius’s concerto wasn’t exactly the right music to listen to at the end of a long day as you soaked in the tub. Perhaps, he mused, Finnish people liked to listen to Sibelius while in a sauna during their long nights. But in a tiny, one-unit bathroom of a two-bedroom condo in Kohinata, Bunkyo Ward, Sibelius’s music was too emotional, too tense. Not that this bothered him-as long as there was some background music, he was fine. A concerto by Rameau would do just as well, nor would he have complained if it had been Schumann’s Carnaval. The radio station just happened to be broadcasting Sibelius’s violin concerto. That was all there was to it.

As usual, Ushikawa let half his mind go blank and thought with the other half. David Oistrakh’s performance of Sibelius went through the blank half of his mind, like a gentle breeze wafting in through a wide-open entrance and out through a wide-open exit. Maybe it was not the most laudable way of appreciating music. If Sibelius knew his music was being treated this way, it was easy to imagine how those large eyebrows would frown, the folds of his thick neck coming together. But Sibelius had died long ago, and even Oistrakh had long since gone to his grave. So Ushikawa could do as he pleased and let the music filter from right to left, as the unblank half of his brain toyed with random thoughts.

In times like these, Ushikawa didn’t like to have a set objective. He let his thoughts run free, as if he were releasing dogs on a broad plain. He would tell them to go wherever they wanted and do whatever they liked, and then he would just let them go. He sank down in the bathwater up to his neck, closed his eyes, and, half listening to the music, let his mind wander. The dogs frolicked around, rolled down slopes, gamboled after each other tirelessly, chased pointlessly after squirrels, then came back, covered in mud and grass, and Ushikawa patted their heads and fastened their collars back on. The music came to an end. Sibelius’s violin concerto was a roughly thirty-minute piece-just the right length. The next piece, the announcer intoned, is Janek’s Sinfonietta. Ushikawa had a vague memory of hearing the name of the piece before, but he couldn’t remember exactly. When he tried to recall, his vision turned strangely cloudy and indistinct, as if a cream-colored mist had settled over his eyeballs. He must have stayed too long in the bath, he decided. He gave up, switched off the radio, got out of the bathtub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and got a beer from the fridge.

Ushikawa lived by himself. He used to have a wife and two small daughters. They had bought a house in the Chuorinkan District in Yamato, in Kanagawa Prefecture. It was a small house, but they had a garden and a dog. His wife was good-looking enough, and his daughters were even pretty. Neither daughter had inherited anything of Ushikawa’s looks, which was a great relief.

Then, like a sudden blackout on the stage between acts, he was alone. He found it hard to believe that there had ever been a time when he had a family and lived with them in a house in the suburbs. Sometimes he was even sure the whole thing must be a misunderstading, that he had unconsciously fabricated this past for himself. But it had actually happened. He had actually had a wife he shared a bed with and two children who shared his bloodline. In his desk drawer, he had a family photo of the four of them. They were all smiling happily. Even the dog seemed to be grinning.

There was no likelihood that they would ever be a family again. His wife and daughters lived in Nagoya now. The girls had a new father, the kind of father with normal looks who wouldn’t embarrass them when he showed up at parent-teacher conference day. The girls hadn’t seen Ushikawa for nearly four years, but they didn’t seem to regret this. They never even wrote to him. It didn’t bother Ushikawa much either that he couldn’t see his daughters. This didn’t mean that his daughters weren’t important to him. It was just that now his top priority was simply keeping himself secure, so for the time being he had to switch off any unnecessary emotional circuits and focus on the tasks at hand.

Plus, he knew this: that no matter how far away his daughters went from him, his blood still flowed inside them. His daughters might forget all about him, but that blood would not lose its way. Blood had a frighteningly long memory. And the sign of that large head would, sometime, somewhere in the future, reappear, in an unexpected time and unexpected place. When it did, people would sigh and remember that Ushikawa had once existed.

Ushikawa might be alive to witness this eruption, or perhaps not. It didn’t really matter. He was satisfied just to know that it was possible. It wasn’t like he was hoping for revenge. Rather, he felt content to know that he was, unavoidably, an inherent part of the world’s structure.

He sat down on his sofa, plopped his stubby legs up on the table, and, as he sipped his beer, a thought suddenly came to him. It might not work out, he thought, but it was worth trying. It’s so simple-why hadn’t it occurred to me? he wondered, finding it odd. Maybe the easiest things are the hardest to come up with. Like they say, people miss what’s going on right under their noses.

The next morning Ushikawa went to Koenji again. He saw a real estate agency, went inside, and asked if there were any apartments available for rent in Tengo’s building. But this agency didn’t handle that building. All rentals in that apartment building were handled by an agency in front of the station.

“I sort of doubt there are any units available,” the agent said. “The rent is reasonable, and it’s a convenient location, so few people move out.”

“Well, I’ll ask anyway, just to make sure,” Ushikawa said.

He stopped by the agency in front of the station. A young man in his early twenties was the one who dealt with him. The man had jet-black hair, hardened with gel to the consistency of a bird’s nest. He wore a bright white shirt and a brand-new tie. He probably hadn’t been working there long. He still had marks from pimples on his cheeks. The man flinched a bit when he looked at Ushikawa, but soon recovered and gave him a pleasant, professional smile.

“You’re in luck, sir,” the young man said. “The couple on the first floor had some family issues that arose and they had to move out quickly, so one of the units has been vacant for a week. We finished cleaning it yesterday but haven’t advertised it yet. It’s on the first floor so it might be a bit noisy, and it doesn’t get a lot of sun, but it’s a wonderful location. There is one condition of the contract, however: in five or six years the owner plans to completely rebuild the place, so when you receive notice of that renovation six months ahead of time, you’ll need to move out, with no complaints. Plus, there’s no parking lot there.”

“Not a problem,” Ushikawa replied. He didn’t plan to stay there that long, and he didn’t have a car.

“Excellent. If you agree to those conditions, then you can move in at once. I imagine you would like to see the apartment first?”

“Yes, of course,” Ushikawa replied. The young man took a key out of a desk drawer and passed it to him.

“I’m very sorry, but I have an errand to run, so if you don’t mind, could you check out the place by yourself? The apartment is empty, and all you need to do is drop off the key on your way back.”

“That sounds fine,” Ushikawa said, “but what if I’m some evil man who never gives the key back, or makes a copy and sneaks in later to ransack the place? What would you do then?”

The young man stared in surprise at Ushikawa for a time. “Yes, good point. I see. Just to be on the safe side, could you give me a card?”

Ushikawa took out one of his New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts business cards and handed it to him.

“Mr. Ushikawa,” the young man frowned as he read the name. But then he looked relieved. “You don’t look to me like someone who would do something bad.”

“Much appreciated,” Ushikawa replied. And he smiled, a smile as meaningless as the h2 listed on his card.

No one had ever told him this before. Maybe it meant his looks were too unusual for him to ever do anything bad. It would be too easy for anyone to describe him, and a simple matter to draw a police sketch. If a warrant were issued for his arrest, he wouldn’t last three days.

The apartment was nicer than he had imagined. Tengo’s third-floor apartment was two stories directly above, so it was impossible to observe his place. But the front entrance was visible from his window so he could see when Tengo entered and exited the building, and spot anyone visiting him. He could just camouflage a telephoto lens and take pictures of each person’s face.

In order to rent this apartment he had to pay two months’ security deposit: one month’s rent up front, plus a fee equivalent to the second month’s rent. The rent itself wasn’t that high, and the security deposit would be returned when the lease was up, but still, this all came to a hefty sum. Having just paid Bat, his resources were severely depleted, but he knew he had to rent that apartment. There was no other choice. Ushikawa went back to the real estate agency, took out the cash he had already prepared in an envelope, and signed the lease. The lease was with the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. He told them he would mail them a certified copy of the foundation’s registry later. This didn’t seem to faze the young real estate agent. Once the lease was signed, the agent again handed him the keys.

“Mr. Ushikawa, the apartment is ready for you to move in today. The electricity and water are on, but you will have to be present when they turn on the gas, so please contact Tokyo Gas yourself. What will you do about a phone?”

“I’ll handle that myself,” Ushikawa said. It took a lot of time and effort to get a contract with the phone company, and a workman would have to come to the apartment to install it. It was easier to use a nearby pay phone.

Ushikawa went back to the apartment and drew up a list of items he would be needing. Thankfully the previous resident had left the curtains up. They were old, flowery curtains, but as long as they were curtains, he felt lucky to have them. Curtains of some kind were indispensable to a stakeout.

The list of necessary items wasn’t all that long. The main things he would need were food and drinking water, a camera with a telephoto lens, and a tripod. The rest of his list included toilet paper, a heavy-duty sleeping bag, portable kerosene containers, a camping stove, a sharp knife, a can opener, garbage bags, basic toiletries, and an electric razor, several towels, a flashlight, and a transistor radio. The minimal amount of clothes and a carton of cigarettes. That was about it. No need for a fridge, a table, or bedding. As long as he had a place to keep out of the weather, he considered himself lucky. Ushikawa returned to his own house and put a single reflex and a telephoto lens in a camera bag, as well as an ample amount of film. He then stuffed all the items on his list into a travel bag. He bought the additional things he still needed in the shopping district in front of Koenji Station.

He set up his tripod next to the window, attached the latest Minolta automatic camera to it, screwed on the telephoto lens, aimed it at the level of the faces of anyone who came in or exited the building, and set the camera to manual. He made it so he could use a remote control to work the shutter and set the motor drive. He fashioned a cardboard cone to go around the lens so that light wouldn’t reflect off the lens. From the outside, part of a paper tube was visible at one end of the slightly raised curtain, but no one would ever notice it. No one would ever imagine that someone was secretly photographing the entrance of such a nondescript apartment building.

Ushikawa took a few test shots of people coming in and out of the building. Because of the motor drive he was able to get three quick shots of each person. As a precaution he wrapped a towel around the body of the camera to muffle any noise. As soon as he finished the first roll, he took it to the photo store next to the station. The clerk placed it in a machine that would automatically develop and print the photos. It handled great numbers of photos at high speed, so no one ever noticed or cared about the images printed on them.

The photos came out fine-not very artistic, to be sure, but serviceable. The faces of the people entering and exiting the building were clear enough to distinguish one from another. On the way back from the photo shop, Ushikawa bought some mineral water and several cans of food. And he bought a carton of Seven Stars at a smoke shop. Holding his bags of purchases in front of him to hide his face, he returned to the apartment and sat down again in front of the camera. As he kept watch over the entrance he drank some water, ate canned peaches, and smoked a couple of cigarettes. The electricity was on, but for some reason not the water. When he turned on the tap there was a rumbling sound in the wall, but nothing came out. Something had to be holding them up from turning on the water. He thought of contacting the real estate agent, but, wanting to limit his trips in and out of the building, he decided to wait and see. No running water meant he couldn’t use the toilet, so instead he peed into an old bucket the cleaning company had conveniently forgotten to take away.

The impatient early-winter twilight came quickly and the room grew totally dark, but still he didn’t turn on the lights. Ushikawa rather welcomed the darkness. The light came on at the entrance and he continued to survey the faces that passed by under the yellowish light.

As evening came, the foot traffic into and out of the building increased a bit, though the number of people was still not that great. It was, after all, a small apartment building. Tengo was not among them, and neither was anyone who could possibly be Aomame. Tengo was scheduled to teach at the cram school today. He would be coming back in the evening. He didn’t usually stop off anywhere on the way home after work. He preferred to make his own dinner rather than eat out, and he liked to eat alone while reading. Ushikawa knew all this. But Tengo didn’t come home. Perhaps he was meeting someone after work.

A variety of people lived in the building, everyone from young, single working people, to college students, to couples with small children, to elderly people living alone-people from all walks of life. But all of them entered the frame of the lens, unaware they were under surveillance. Despite some differences in age and circumstances, every one of them looked worn out, tired of life. They appeared hopeless, abandoned by ambition, their emotions worn away, with only resignation and numbness filling the void left behind. As if they had just had a tooth pulled, their faces were dark, their steps heavy.

But he may have been mistaken. Some of them may have actually been enjoying life to the fullest. Once they opened their doors, there was some breathtaking little paradise waiting just for them. Perhaps some of them were pretending to live a Spartan life to avoid getting audited by the Tax Bureau. This was possible. But through the telephoto lens, they all looked like dead-end city dwellers not going anywhere in life, clinging to a cheap apartment scheduled to be torn down.

That night Tengo didn’t make an appearance and Ushikawa saw no one who could be connected to him. When ten thirty rolled around, he decided to call it a day. He hadn’t quite settled into a routine and didn’t want to push it. There will be many days to come, he decided, so this is enough for now. He did a variety of stretches to loosen his stiff muscles, then ate a sweet anpan bun, poured coffee from his thermos into the cap, and drank it. He tried the faucet in the sink, and now the water was running. He washed his face with soap, brushed his teeth, and took a good, long pee. He leaned back against the wall and smoked a cigarette. He longed for a sip of whiskey, but he had decided that as long as he was here, he wouldn’t touch a drop of alcohol.

He stripped to his underwear and snuggled into the sleeping bag. The cold made him tremble slightly. At night the empty apartment was unexpectedly chilly. He thought he might need a small electric space heater.

As he lay shivering, alone in the sleeping bag, he recalled the days when he had been surrounded by his family. He didn’t particularly miss those days. His life now was so completely different that these memories merely popped up to illustrate that fact. Even when he was living with his family, Ushikawa had felt lonely. He never opened up to anyone and thought that his ordinary life would never last. Deep down he was convinced that one day it would all too easily fall apart-his busy days as a lawyer, his generous income, his nice house in Chuorinkan, his not-bad-looking wife, his cute daughters, both attending private elementary school, his pedigreed dog. So when his life steadily fell apart bit by bit and he was left all alone, he was actually relieved. Thank God, he thought. Nothing to worry about now. I’m back right where I started.

Is this what it means to go back to square one?

He curled up like a maggot in the sleeping bag and stared at the dark ceiling. He had sat in the same position for too long and his joints ached. Shivering in the cold, making do with a cold bun for dinner, standing watch over the entrance of a cheap apartment that was ready to be torn down, watching the unattractive people coming in and out, peeing into a wash bucket. Is this what it means to go back to square one? he asked again. He remembered something he had forgotten to do. He crawled out of the sleeping bag, poured the urine in the bucket into the toilet, pushed the wobbly handle, and flushed it down. The sleeping bag had just started to warm up, and he had hesitated to get out. Just leave it, he had thought-but if he happened to slip in the dark he would regret it. Afterward he crawled back into the sleeping bag and shivered in the cold again.

Is this what it means to go back to square one?

Most likely. He had nothing left to lose, other than his life. It was all very clear-cut. In the darkness, a razor-thin smile came to Ushikawa’s lips.

CHAPTER 14

Aomame

THIS LITTLE ONE OF MINE

For the most part, Aomame’s life had become filled with confusion. She felt as though she were blindly groping around in the dark. Ordinary logic and reason didn’t function in this 1Q84 world, and she couldn’t predict what was going to happen to her next. She felt sure, though, that she would survive the next few months and give birth to the baby. This was nothing more than a hunch, though a strong one. Everything was proceeding on the premise that she would give birth to this child. She could just sense it.

She remembered the last words that Leader had spoken. “You are fated to pass through great hardships and trials,” he had said. “Once you have done that, you should be able to see things as they are supposed to be.”

He knew something. Something vital. And he had tried-in vague and ambiguous terms-to give me this message, Aomame thought. The hardship he spoke of may have been when I took myself to the brink of death, when I took the pistol to that spot in front of the Esso sign, meaning to kill myself. But I came back, without dying, and discovered I was pregnant. This, too, might have been preordained.

As they entered December, the winds grew fierce for a few days. The fallen zelkova leaves whipped against the plastic screen on the balcony with a dry, biting sound. The cold wind let out a warning as it whistled between the bare branches of the trees. The caws of the crows grew sharper, keener. Winter had arrived.

Every day, she became even more convinced that the baby growing in her womb was Tengo’s child, until this theory became an established fact. It wasn’t logical enough to convince a third party, but it made sense to her. It was obvious.

If I’m pregnant without having had sex, who could the man possibly be other than Tengo?

In November she had begun putting on weight. She couldn’t go outside, but she more than made up for it by continuing to work out and strictly watching her diet. After age twenty she never weighed more than 115 pounds. But one day the scale showed she weighed 119, and after that her weight never dropped below it. She felt like her face, too, had rounded out. No doubt this little one wanted its mother to plump up.

Together with this little one she continued to keep watch over the playground at night, hoping to spot the silhouette of a large young man sitting alone on the slide. As she gazed at the two moons, lined up side by side in the early-winter sky, Aomame rubbed her belly through the blanket. Occasionally tears would well up for no reason. She would find a tear rolling down her cheek and falling to the blanket on her lap. Maybe it was because she was lonely, or because she was anxious. Or maybe pregnancy had made her more sensitive. Or maybe it was merely the cold wind stimulating the tear ducts to produce tears. Whatever the reason, Aomame let the tears flow without wiping them away.

Once she had cried for a while, at a certain point the tears would stop, and she would continue her lonely vigil. No, she thought, I’m not that lonely. I have this little one with me. There are two of us-two of us looking up at the two moons, waiting for Tengo to appear. From time to time she would pick up her binoculars and focus on the deserted slide. Then she would pick up the automatic pistol to check its heft and what it felt like. Protecting myself, searching for Tengo, and providing this little one with nourishment. Those are my duties now.

One time, as the cold wind blew and she kept watch over the playground, Aomame realized she believed in God. It was a sudden discovery, like finding, with the soles of your feet, solid ground beneath the mud. It was a mysterious sensation, an unexpected awareness. Ever since she could remember, she had always hated this thing called God. More precisely, she rejected the people and the system that intervened between her and God. For years she had equated those people and that system with God. Hating them meant hating God.

Since the moment she was born they had been near her, controlling her, ordering her around, all in the name of God, driving her into a corner. In the name of God, they stole her time and her freedom, putting shackles on her heart. They preached about God’s kindness, but preached twice as much about his wrath and intolerance. At age eleven, Aomame made up her mind and was ultimately able to break free from that world. In doing so, though, much had been sacrificed.

If God didn’t exist, then how much brighter my life would be, how much richer. Aomame often thought this. Then she should be able to share all the beautiful memories that normal children had, without the constant anger and fear that tormented her. And then how much more positive, peaceful, and fulfilling her life might be.

Despite all this, as she sat there, her palm resting on her belly, peeking through the slats of the plastic boards at the deserted playground, she couldn’t help but come to the realization that she believed in God. When she had mechanically repeated the words of the prayer, when she brought her hands together, she had believed in a God outside the conscious realm. It was a feeling that had seeped into her marrow, something that could not be driven away by logic or emotion. Even hatred and anger couldn’t erase it.

But this isn’t their God, she decided. It’s my God. This is a God I have found through sacrificing my own life, through my flesh being cut, my skin ripped off, my blood sucked away, my nails torn, all my time and hopes and memories being stolen from me. This is not a God with a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This God has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts. No reward, no punishment. This God doesn’t give, and doesn’t take away. There is no heaven up in the sky, no hell down below. When it’s hot, and when it’s cold, God is simply there.

From time to time, she would recall Leader’s final words before he died. She could never forget his rich baritone. Just like she could never forget the feeling of stabbing a needle into the back of his neck.

Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow, there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow… We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them since long, long ago-from a time before good and evil even existed, when people’s minds were still benighted.

Are God and the Little People opposites? Or two sides of the same thing?

Aomame had no idea. What she did know was that she had to protect this little one inside her. And to do so it became necessary to somehow believe in God. Or to recognize the fact that she believed in God.

Aomame pondered the idea of God. God has no form, yet is able to take on any form. The image she had was of a streamlined Mercedes coupe, a brand-new car just delivered from the dealer. An elegant, middle-aged woman coming out of that car, in the middle of an expressway running through the city, offering her beautiful spring coat to the naked Aomame. To protect her from the chilly wind, and people’s rude stares. And then, without a word, getting back in her silver coupe. The woman knew-that Aomame had a baby within her. That Aomame had to be protected.

…

She began to have a new dream. In the dream she is imprisoned in a white room. A small, cube-shaped room, no windows, a single door. A plain bed, no frills, on which she lies sleeping, faceup. A light hanging over the bed illuminates her hugely swollen belly. It doesn’t look like her own body, but it is definitely a part of Aomame’s flesh. It is getting close to the time for the baby’s delivery.

The room is guarded by Buzzcut and Ponytail. The duo is dead set against making any more errors. They made a mistake once and they need to recover their reputation. Their assignment is to make sure that Aomame does not leave this room, and that no one enters. They wait for the birth of the little one. It seems they plan to snatch it away from Aomame the moment it is born.

Aomame calls out, desperately seeking help. But this room is built of special material. The walls, floor, and ceiling immediately absorb any sound. She can’t even hear her own scream. Aomame prays that the woman in the Mercedes coupe will come and rescue her-her and the little one. But her voice is sucked, in vain, into the walls of that white room.

The little one absorbs nourishment through its umbilical cord, and is growing larger by the minute. Hoping to break out of that lukewarm darkness, it kicks against the walls of her womb. Hoping for light, and freedom.

Tall Ponytail sits in a chair beside the door, hands in his lap, staring at a point in space. Perhaps a small, dense cloud is floating there. Buzzcut stands next to the bed. They wear the same dark suits as before. Buzzcut raises his arm from time to time to glance at his watch, like somebody waiting for an important train to pull into the station.

Aomame can’t move her arms and legs. It doesn’t feel like she is tied down, but still she can’t move. There is no feeling in her fingers. She has a premonition that her labor pains are about to begin. Like that fateful train drawing nearer to the station, exactly on schedule. She can hear the slight vibration of the rails as it gets closer.

And then she wakes up.

She took a shower to wash off the sweat and changed clothes. She tossed her sweaty clothes into the washer. There was no way she wanted to have this dream, but it came upon her anyway. The details sometimes changed, but the place and outcome were always the same: the cube-shaped white room, the approaching labor pains, the duo in their bland, dark suits.

The two men knew she was pregnant with the little one-or they were going to find out. Aomame was prepared. If need be, she would have no problem pumping all the 9mm bullets she had into Ponytail and Buzzcut. The God that protected her was also, at times, a bloody God.

…

A knock came at the door. Aomame sat down on a stool in the kitchen and gripped the automatic pistol tight, the safety off. Outside a cold rain had been falling since morning. The world was enveloped in the smell of winter rain.

The knocks stopped. “Hello, Miss Takai,” a man’s voice said on the other side of the door. “It’s me, your friendly NHK collector. Sorry to bother you again, but I’m back to collect the subscription fee. I know you’re there, Miss Takai.”

Aomame faced the door and silently spoke. We called NHK and asked about this. You’re nothing but someone posing as an NHK man. Who are you? And what do you want here?

“When people receive things, they have to pay for them. That’s the way the world works. You receive a TV signal, so you have to pay the fee. Receiving without paying isn’t fair. It’s the same as stealing.”

His voice echoed loudly in the hallway. A hoarse, but piercing voice.

“My personal feelings are not involved in this at all. I don’t hate you, and I’m not trying to punish you whatsoever. It’s just that I can’t stand when things are unfair. People have to pay for what they receive. Miss Takai, as long as you don’t open up, I’ll be back again and again to bang on your door. And I don’t think that’s what you want. I’m not some unreasonable old coot. If we talk, I’m sure we can come to an understanding. So would you be kind enough to open the door?”

The knocking continued.

Aomame gripped the pistol tighter. This man must know I’m having a baby. A thin sheen of sweat formed under her arms and on the tip of her nose. I am never going to open this door. He can try to use a duplicate key, or try to force it open, but if he does I’m going to empty this entire clip into his belly-NHK collector or not.

No, that probably wouldn’t happen. And she knew it. He couldn’t open the door. As long as she didn’t open it from the inside, the door was set up so it couldn’t be opened. Which is why the man got so irritated and voluble, using every verbal trick in the book trying to make her tense and on edge.

Ten minutes later, the man left. But only after he had, in a thunderous voice, threatened and ridiculed her, slyly tried to win her over to his side, denounced her in no uncertain terms, and finally announced he would be back to pay her another visit.

“You can’t escape, Miss Takai. As long as you get the TV signal I will be back. I’m not the kind of man who gives up so easily. That’s just my personality. Well, we will be seeing each other again very soon.”

She didn’t hear his footsteps, but he was no longer standing outside the door. Aomame peeked through the peephole to make sure. She set the safety on the pistol and washed her face in the sink. Her armpits were soaked. As she changed to a fresh shirt she stood, naked, in front of the mirror. Her stomach still wasn’t showing enough to notice, but she knew an important secret lay hidden within.

She spoke to the dowager on the phone. After Tamaru had gone over a few points with her, he handed the phone to the dowager without a word. They used a roundabout way of speaking, avoiding any clear-cut terms. At least at first.

“We have already secured a new place for you,” the dowager said. “There you can perform the task you’ve been planning on. It’s a safe place and you can get checked out regularly by a specialist. If you’re willing, you can move there as soon as you would like.”

Should she tell the dowager about the people who were after her little one? How in her dreams the guys from Sakigake were trying to get hold of her child? How the phony NHK collector using all his wiles to get her to open the door was probably after the same thing? But Aomame gave up the idea. She trusted the dowager, and respected her deeply. But that wasn’t the issue. Which world was she living in? For the time being, that was the point.

“How have you been feeling?” the dowager asked.

“Everything seems to be going well so far,” Aomame replied.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” the dowager said. “But your voice seems different somehow. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but you sound a little tense and guarded. If there’s anything that’s bothering you, anything at all, please don’t hesitate to tell us. We might be able to help you.”

“I think being in one place for so long has made me anxious, maybe, without my even realizing it. But I’m taking good care of myself. That’s my field, after all,” Aomame replied, careful with her tone of voice.

“Of course,” the dowager responded. She paused again. “A little while ago a suspicious man was hanging around our place for a couple of days. He seemed mainly interested in checking out the safe house. I asked the three women staying there to look at the pictures on our security cameras, but none of them recognized him. It might be somebody who’s after you.”

Aomame frowned slightly. “You mean they’ve figured out our connection?”

“I’m not sure about that. We’re at the point where we need to consider that possibility, though. This man looks quite unusual. He has a big, misshapen head. The top is flat, and he’s balding. He’s short, with stubby arms and legs, and stocky. Does that sound at all familiar?”

A misshapen head? “From the balcony I keep a close eye on the people walking down the street, but I’ve never seen anyone that fits that description. He sounds like the kind of person you couldn’t miss.”

“Exactly. He sounds like a colorful circus clown. If he’s the one they selected and sent to check us out, I would say it’s an odd choice.”

Aomame agreed. Sakigake wouldn’t deliberately send a person who stood out like that to reconnoiter. They couldn’t be that desperate for help. Which meant that the man probably had nothing to do with the religion, and that Sakigake still didn’t know about her relationship with the dowager. But then who was this man, and what was he doing checking out the safe house? Maybe he was the same man who pretended to be an NHK fee collector and kept on bothering her? She had no proof. She had just mentally linked the fee collector’s eccentric manner and the description of this other weird man.

“If you see him, please get in touch. We may have to take steps.”

“Of course I will get in touch right away,” Aomame replied.

The dowager was silent again. This was rather unusual, for usually when they talked on the phone she was quite no-nonsense, and hated to waste any time.

“Are you well?” Aomame asked casually.

“The same as always. I have no complaints,” the dowager said. But Aomame could hear a faint hesitation in her voice-something else that was unusual.

Aomame waited for her to continue.

Finally, as if resigned to it, the dowager spoke. “It’s just that recently I feel old more often than I used to. Especially after you left.”

“I never left,” Aomame said brightly. “I’m still here.”

“I know. You’re there and we can still speak on the phone. It’s just that when we were able to meet regularly and exercise together, some of your vitality rubbed off on me.”

“You have a lot of your own vitality to begin with. All I did was help bring it out. Even if I’m not there, you should be able to make it on your own.”

“To tell you the truth, I thought the same thing until a while ago,” the dowager said, giving a laugh that was best characterized as dry. “I was confident that I was a special person. But time slowly chips away at life. People don’t just die when their time comes. They gradually die away, from the inside. And finally the day comes when you have to settle accounts. Nobody can escape it. People have to pay the price for what they’ve received. I have only just learned that truth.”

You have to pay the price for what you’ve received. Aomame frowned. It was the same line that the NHK collector had spoken.

“On that night in September, when there was the huge thunderstorm, this thought suddenly came to me,” the dowager said. “I was in my house, alone in the living room, anxious about you, watching the flashes of lightning. And a flash of lightning lit up this truth for me, right in front of my eyes. That night I lost you, I also lost something inside me. Or perhaps several things. Something central to my existence, the very support for who I am as a person.”

“Was anger a part of this?” Aomame ventured.

There was a silence, like after the tide had gone out. Finally the dowager spoke. “You mean was my anger among the things I lost then? Is that what you’re asking?”

“Yes.”

The dowager slowly breathed in. “The answer to your question is-yes. That’s what happened. In the midst of that tremendous lightning, the seething anger I had had was suddenly gone-at least, it had retreated far away. It was no longer the blazing anger I used to have. It had transformed into something more like a faintly colored sorrow. I thought such an intense anger would last forever… But how do you know this?”

“Because the same thing happened to me,” Aomame said, “that night when there was all that thunder.”

“You’re talking about your own anger?”

“That’s right. I can’t feel the pure, intense anger I used to have anymore. It hasn’t completely disappeared, but like you said, it has withdrawn to someplace far away. For years this anger has occupied a large part of me. It’s been what has driven me.”

“Like a merciless coachman who never rests,” the dowager said. “But it has lost power, and now you are pregnant. Instead of being angry.”

Aomame calmed her breathing. “Exactly. Instead of anger, there’s a little one inside me. Something that has nothing to do with anger. And day by day it is growing inside me.”

“I know I don’t need to say this,” the dowager said, “but you need to take every precaution with it. That is another reason you need to move as soon as possible to a more secure location.”

“I agree, but before that happens, there’s something I need to take care of.”

After she hung up, Aomame went out to the balcony, looked down through the plastic slats at the afternoon road below, and gazed at the playground. Twilight was fast approaching. Before 1Q84 is over, she thought, before they find me, I have to find Tengo.

No matter what it takes.

CHAPTER 15

Tengo

NOT SOMETHING NOT SOMETHING HE’S ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT

Tengo left the bar, Mugiatama, and wandered the streets, lost in thought. Eventually, he made up his mind and headed toward the small children’s playground-the place where he had first discovered two moons in the sky. I will climb the slide like last time, he thought, and look up at the sky once more. He might be able to see the moons from there again. And they might tell him something.

As he walked, he wondered when exactly he had last visited the playground. He couldn’t recall. The flow of time wasn’t uniform anymore, the sense of distance uncertain. But it probably had been in the early autumn. He remembered wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt. And now it was December.

A cold wind was blowing the mass of clouds off toward Tokyo Bay. The free-form clouds looked stiff and hard, as if made of putty. The two moons were visible, occasionally hiding behind the clouds. The familiar yellow moon, and the new, smaller green moon, both of them past full, about two-thirds size. The smaller moon was like a child hiding in its mother’s skirts. The moons were in almost the same location as the time he saw them before, as if they had been patiently waiting for Tengo’s return.

There was no one else in the playground. The mercury-vapor lamp shone brighter than before, a cold, harsh light. The bare branches of the zelkova tree reminded him of ancient white bones. It was the sort of night when you would expect to hear an owl. But there were no owls to be found in the city’s parks. Tengo tugged the hood of his yacht parka over his head and stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He climbed up the slide, leaned against the handrail, and gazed up at the two moons as they appeared, then disappeared, among the clouds. Beyond that, the stars twinkled silently. The amorphous filth that hangs over the city was blown away in the wind, leaving the air pure and clear.

Right now, how many people besides me have noticed these two moons? Tengo considered this. Fuka-Eri knew about it, because this was something that she initiated. Most likely. Other than her, though, nobody he knew had mentioned that the number of moons had increased. Have people not noticed? Or they don’t dare to bring it up in conversation? Is it just common knowledge? Either way, other than the friend who filled in for him at the cram school, Tengo hadn’t asked anybody about the moons. Actually, he had been careful not to bring it up in conversation, like it was some morally inappropriate subject.

Why?

Perhaps the moons wanted it that way, Tengo thought. Maybe these two moons are a special message meant just for me, and I am not permitted to share this information with anyone else.

But this was a strange way to see it. Why would the number of moons be a personal message? And what could they be trying to tell him? To Tengo it seemed less a message than a kind of complicated riddle. And if it’s a riddle, then who made it? Who’s not permitting things?

The wind rushed between the branches of the zelkova tree, making a piercing howl, like the coldhearted breath leaking out between the teeth of a person who has lost all hope. Tengo gazed at the moons, not paying much attention to the sound of the wind, sitting there until his whole body was chilled to the bone. It must have been around fifteen minutes. No, maybe more. His sense of time had left him. His body, initially warmed by the whiskey, now felt hard and cold, like a lonely boulder at the bottom of the sea.

The clouds continued to scud off toward the south. No matter how many were blown away, others appeared to take their place. There was an inexhaustible source of clouds in some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows.

Tengo looked at his watch. It was almost eight. The playground was still deserted. Occasionally people would walk by quickly on the street in front. People who have finished work and are on the way home all walk the same way. In the new six-story apartment building on the other side of the street the lights were on in half the units. On windy winter nights, a window with a light shining in it acquires a gentle warmth. Tengo looked from one lit window to the next, in order, like looking up at a huge luxury cruise liner from a tiny fishing boat bobbing in the night sea. As if by prearrangement, all the curtains at the windows were closed. Seen from a freezing-cold slide in a park at night, they looked like a totally different world-a world founded on different principles, a world that ran by different rules. Beyond those curtains there must be people living their quite ordinary lives, peaceful and content.

Quite ordinary lives?

The only image that Tengo had of quite ordinary lives was stereotypical, lacking depth and color. A married couple, probably with two kids. The mother has on an apron. Steam rising from a bubbling pot, voices around the dining table-that’s as far as his imagination took him before plowing into a solid wall. What would a quite ordinary family talk about around the dinner table? He had no memory himself of ever talking with his father at the dinner table. They each just stuffed food into their mouths, silently, whenever they felt like it. And what they ate was hard to call a real meal.

After checking out all the illuminated windows in the building, Tengo again looked up at the pair of moons. But no matter how long he waited, neither moon said anything to him. Their faces were expressionless as they floated in the sky beside each other, like a precarious couplet in need of reworking. Today there was no message. That was the only thing they conveyed to Tengo.

The clouds swept tirelessly toward the south. All sizes and shapes of clouds appeared, then disappeared. Some of them had very unusual shapes, as if they had their own unique thoughts-small, hard, clearly etched thoughts. But Tengo wanted to know what the moons were thinking, not the clouds.

He finally gave up and stood, stretching his arms and legs, then climbed down from the slide. That’s all I can do. I was able to see that the number of moons hasn’t changed, and I will leave it at that for now. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, left the playground, and strode back to his apartment. As he walked he suddenly thought of Komatsu. It was about time for them to talk. He had to sort out, even if just barely, what had transpired between them. And Komatsu, too, had some things he must need to talk to Tengo about. Tengo had left the number of the sanatorium in Chikura with Komatsu’s office, but he had never heard from him. He would give Komatsu a call tomorrow. Before that, though, he needed to go to the cram school and read the letter that Fuka-Eri had left for him.

Fuka-Eri’s letter was in his desk drawer, unopened. For such a tightly sealed envelope, it was a short letter. On a page and a half of notebook paper, in blue ink, was her writing, that distinctive cuneiform-like script, the kind of writing that would be more appropriate on a clay tablet than notebook paper. Tengo knew it must have taken her a long time to write like that.

Tengo read the letter over and over. She had to get out of his place. Right this minute, she had written, because they were being watched. She had underlined these three places with a soft, thick pencil. Terribly eloquent underlining.

Who was watching us, and how she knew this-about this she said nothing. In the world that Fuka-Eri lived in, it seemed that facts were not conveyed directly. Like a map showing buried pirate treasure, things had to be connected through hints and riddles, ellipses and variations. He had grown used to it and, for the time being, provisionally, accepted whatever Fuka-Eri announced. When she said that they were being watched, no doubt they actually were being watched. When she felt that she had to get out, that meant the time had come for her to leave. The first thing to do was to accept all those statements as one comprehensive fact. Later on he could discover, or surmise, the background, the details, the basis for these hypotheses-or else just give up on it from the very beginning.

We’re being watched.

Did this mean people from Sakigake had found Fuka-Eri? They knew about his relationship with her. They had uncovered the fact that he was the one, at Komatsu’s request, who rewrote Air Chrysalis, which would explain why Ushikawa tried to get closer to Tengo. And if that was true, then there was a distinct possibility his apartment was under surveillance.

If this was true, though, they were really taking their time. Fuka-Eri had settled down in his apartment for nearly three months. These were organized people, people with real power and influence. If they had wanted to, they could have grabbed her anytime. There was no need to go to all the trouble of putting his apartment under surveillance. And if they really were watching her, they wouldn’t let her just leave.

The more Tengo tried to follow the logic of it, the more confused he got. All he concluded was that they weren’t trying to grab Fuka-Eri. Maybe at a certain point they had changed objectives. They weren’t after Fuka-Eri, but someone connected to her. For some reason they no longer viewed Fuka-Eri as a threat to Sakigake. If you accept that, though, then why go to the trouble of putting Tengo’s apartment under surveillance?

Tengo used the pay phone at the cram school to call Komatsu’s office. It was Sunday, but Tengo knew that he liked to come in and work on the weekend. The office could be a nice place, he liked to say, if there was nobody else there. But no one answered. Tengo glanced at his watch. It was eleven a.m., too early for Komatsu to show up at work. He started his day, and it didn’t matter what day of the week it was, after the sun had reached its zenith. Tengo, on a chair in the cafeteria, sipped the weak coffee and reread the letter from Fuka-Eri. As always she used hardly any kanji at all, and no paragraphs or punctuation.

Tengo you are back from the cat town and are reading this letter that’s good but we’re being watched so I have to get out of this place right this minute do not worry about me but I can’t stay here any longer as I said before the person you are looking for is within walking distance of here but be careful not to let somebody see you

Tengo read this telegram-like letter again three times, then folded it and put it in his pocket. As before, the more he read it, the more believable her words became. He was being watched by someone. Now he accepted this as a certainty. He looked up and scanned the cram school cafeteria. Class was in session so the cafeteria was nearly deserted. A handful of students were there, studying textbooks or writing in their notebooks. But he didn’t spot anyone in the shadows stealthily spying on him.

A basic question remained: If they weren’t watching Fuka-Eri, then why would there be surveillance here? Were they interested in Tengo himself, or was it his apartment? Tengo considered this. This was all at the level of conjecture. Somehow, he didn’t feel he was the object of their interest. His role in Air Chrysalis was long past.

Fuka-Eri had barely taken a step out of his apartment, so her sense that she was being watched meant that his apartment was under surveillance. But where could somebody keep his place under watch? The area where he lived was a crowded urban neighborhood, but Tengo’s third-floor apartment was, oddly enough, situated so that it was almost out of anyone’s line of sight. That was one of the reasons he liked the place and had lived there so long. His older girlfriend had liked the apartment for the same reason. “Putting aside how the place looks,” she often said, “it’s amazingly tranquil. Much like the person who lives here.”

Just before the sun set each day, a large crow would fly over to his window. This was the crow Fuka-Eri had talked about on the phone. It settled in the window box and rubbed its large, jet-black wings against the glass. This was part of the crow’s daily routine, to rest for a spell outside his apartment before homing back to its nest. This crow seemed to be curious about the interior of Tengo’s apartment. The large, inky eyes on either side of its head shifted swiftly, gathering information through a gap in the curtain. Crows are highly intelligent animals, and extremely curious. Fuka-Eri claimed to be able to talk with this crow. Still, it was ridiculous to think that a crow could be somebody’s tool to reconnoiter Tengo’s apartment.

So how were they watching him?

On the way home from the station Tengo stopped by a supermarket and bought some vegetables, eggs, milk, and fish. Standing at the entrance to his building, paper bag in hand, he glanced all around just to make sure. Nothing looked suspicious, the same scene as always-the electric lines hanging in the air like dark entrails; the small front yard, its lawn withered in the winter cold; the rusty mailboxes. He listened carefully, but all he could hear was the distinctive, incessant background noise of the city, like the faint hum of wings.

He went into his apartment, put away the food, then went over to the window, drew back the curtains, and inspected the scene outside. Across the road were three old houses, two-story homes built on minuscule lots. The owners were all long-term, elderly residents, people with crabby expressions who loathed any kind of change, so they weren’t about to welcome a newcomer to their second floor. Plus, even if someone was on the second floor and leaned way out the window, all they would be able to see was a glimpse of his ceiling.

Tengo closed the window, boiled water, and made coffee. As he sat at the dining table and drank it, he considered every scenario he could think of. Someone nearby was keeping him under watch. And Aomame was (or had been) within walking distance. Was there some connection between the two? Or was it all mere coincidence? He thought long and hard, but he couldn’t reach a conclusion. His thoughts went around and around, like a poor mouse stuck in an exitless maze allowed only to smell the cheese.

He gave up thinking about it and glanced through the newspaper he had bought at the station kiosk. Ronald Reagan, just reelected president that fall, had taken to calling Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone Yasu, and Nakasone was calling him Ron. It might have been the way the photo was taken, but the two of them looked like a couple of men in the construction industry discussing how they were going to switch to cheap, shoddy building material. Riots in India following the assassination of Indira Gandhi were still ongoing, with Sikhs being butchered throughout the country. In Japan there was an unprecedented bumper crop of apples. But nothing in the paper aroused Tengo’s interest.

He waited until the clock showed two and then called Komatsu’s office once more.