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

CHAPTER 16

The next morning Ushikawa again took a seat by the window and continued his surveillance through a gap in the curtain. Nearly the same lineup of people who had come back to the apartment building the night before, or at least people who looked the same, were now exiting. Their faces were still grim, their shoulders hunched over. A new day had barely begun and yet they already looked fed up and exhausted. Tengo wasn’t among them, but Ushikawa went ahead and snapped photos of each and every face that passed by. He had plenty of film and it was good practice so he could be more efficient at stealthily taking photos.

When the morning rush had passed and he saw that everyone who was going out had done so, he left the apartment and slipped into a nearby phone booth. He dialed the Yoyogi cram school and asked to speak with Tengo.

“Mr. Kawana has been on leave for the last ten days,” said the woman who answered the phone.

“I hope he’s not ill?”

“No, someone in his family is, so he went to Chiba.”

“Do you know when he will be back?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t asked him that,” the woman said.

Ushikawa thanked her and hung up.

Tengo’s family, as far as Ushikawa knew, meant just his father-the father who used to be an NHK fee collector. Tengo still didn’t know anything about his mother. And as far as Ushikawa was aware, Tengo and his father had always had a bad relationship. Yet Tengo had taken more than ten days off from work in order to take care of his sick father. Ushikawa found this hard to swallow. How could Tengo’s antagonism for his father soften so quickly? What sort of illness did his father have, and where in Chiba was he in the hospital? There should be ways of finding out, though it would take at least a half a day to do so. And he would have to put his surveillance on hold while he did.

Ushikawa wasn’t sure what to do. If Tengo was away from Tokyo, then it was pointless to stake out this building. It might be smarter to take a break from surveillance and search in another direction. He should find out where Tengo’s father was a patient, or investigate Aomame’s background. He could meet her classmates and colleagues from her college days and from the company she used to work for, and gather more personal information. Who knows but this might provide some new clues.

But after mulling it over, he decided to stay put and continue watching the apartment building. First, if he suspended his surveillance at this point, it would put a crimp in the daily rhythm he had established, and he would have to start again from scratch. Second, even if he located Tengo’s father, and learned more about Aomame’s friendships, the payoff might not be worth the trouble. Pounding the pavement on an investigation can be productive up to a point, but oddly, once you pass that point, nothing much comes of it. He knew this through experience. Third, his intuition told him, in no uncertain terms, to stay put-to stay right where he was, watch all the faces that passed by, and let nothing get by him.

So he decided that, with or without Tengo, he would continue to stake out the building. If he stayed put, by the time Tengo came back Ushikawa would know each and every face. Once he knew all the residents, then he would know in a glance if someone was new to the building. I’m a carnivore, Ushikawa thought. And carnivores have to be forever patient. They have to blend in with their surroundings and know everything about their prey.

Just before noon, when the foot traffic in and out of the building was at its most sparse, Ushikawa left the apartment. He tried to disguise himself a bit, wearing a knit cap and a muffler pulled up to his nose, but still he couldn’t help but draw attention to himself. The beige knit cap perched on top of his huge head like a mushroom cap. The green muffler looked like a big snake coiled around him. Trying a disguise didn’t work. Besides, the cap and muffler clashed horribly.

Ushikawa stopped by the film lab near the station and dropped off two rolls of film to be developed. Then he went to a soba noodle shop and ordered a bowl of soba noodles with tempura. It had been a while since he had had a hot meal. He savored the tempura noodles and drank down the last drop of broth. By the time he finished he was so hot he had started to perspire. He put on his knit cap, wrapped the muffler around his neck again, and walked back to the apartment. As he smoked a cigarette, he lined up all the photos that he had had printed on the floor. He collated the photos of people going out in the morning and the ones of people coming back, and if any matched he put them together. In order to easily distinguish them, he made up names for each person, and wrote the names on the photos with a felt-tip pen.

Once the morning rush hour was over, hardly any residents left the building. One young man-a college student, by the looks of him-hurried out around ten a.m., a bag slung over his shoulder. An old woman around seventy and a woman in her mid-thirties also went out but then returned lugging bags of groceries from a supermarket. Ushikawa took their photos as well. During the morning the mailman came and sorted the mail into the various mailboxes at the entrance. A deliveryman with a cardboard box came in and left, empty-handed, five minutes later.

Once an hour Ushikawa left his camera and did some stretching for five minutes. During that interval his surveillance was put on hold, but he knew from the start that total coverage by one person was impossible. It was more important to make sure his body didn’t get numb. His muscles would start to atrophy and then he wouldn’t be able to react quickly if need be. Like Gregor Samsa when he turned into a beetle, he deftly stretched his rotund, misshapen body on the floor, working the kinks out of his tight muscles.

He listened to AM radio with an earphone to keep from getting bored. Most of the daytime programs appealed to housewives and elderly listeners. The people who appeared on the programs told jokes that fell flat, pointlessly burst out laughing, gave their moronic, hackneyed opinions, and played music so awful you felt like covering your ears. Periodically they gave blaring sales pitches for products no one could possibly want. At least this is how it all sounded to Ushikawa. But he wanted to hear people’s voices, so he endured listening to the inane programs, wondering all the while why people would produce such idiotic shows and go to the trouble of using the airwaves to disseminate them.

Not that Ushikawa himself was involved in an operation that was so lofty and productive-hiding behind the curtains in a cheap one-room apartment, secretly snapping photos of people. He couldn’t very well criticize the actions of others.

It was not just now, either. Back when he was a lawyer it was the same. He couldn’t remember having done anything that helped society. His biggest clients ran small and medium-sized financial firms and had ties to organized crime. Ushikawa created the most efficient ways to disperse their profits and made all the arrangements. Basically, it was money laundering. He was also involved in land sharking: when investors had their eyes on an area, he helped drive out longtime residents so they could knock down their houses and sell the remaining large lot to condo builders. Huge amounts of money rolled in. The same type of people were involved in this as well. He also specialized in defending people brought up on tax-evasion charges. Most of the clients were suspicious characters that an ordinary lawyer would hesitate to have anything to do with. But as long as a client wanted him to represent him-and as long as a certain amount of money changed hands-Ushikawa never hesitated. He was a skilled lawyer, with a decent track record, so he never hurt for business. His relationship with Sakigake began in the same way. For whatever reason, Leader took a personal liking to him.

If he had followed the path that ordinary lawyers take, Ushikawa would probably have found it hard to earn a living. He had passed the bar exam not long after he left college, and he had become a lawyer, but he had no connections or influential backers. With his looks, no prestigious law firm would ever hire him, so if he had stayed on a straight and narrow path he would have had very few clients. There can’t be many people in the world who would go out of their way to hire a lawyer who looked as unappealing as Ushikawa, plus pay the high fees involved. The blame might lie with TV law dramas, which have conditioned people to expect lawyers to be both bright and attractive.

So as time went on, Ushikawa became linked with the underworld. People in the underworld didn’t care about his looks. In fact, his peculiar appearance was one element that helped them trust and accept him, since neither of them were accepted by the ordinary world. They recognized his quick mind, his practical abilities, his eloquence. They put him in charge of moving vast sums of money (a task they couldn’t openly undertake), and compensated him generously. Ushikawa quickly learned the ropes-how to evade the authorities while still doing what was barely legal. His intuitiveness and strong will were a big help. Unfortunately, though, he got too greedy, made some assumptions he shouldn’t have, and went over the line. He avoided criminal punishment-barely-but was expelled from the Tokyo Bar Association.

Ushikawa switched off the radio and smoked a Seven Stars. He breathed the smoke deep into his lungs, then leisurely exhaled. He used an empty can of peaches as an ashtray. If he went on like this, he would probably die a miserable death. Before long he would make a false step and fall alone in some dark place. Even if I left this world, I doubt anyone would notice. I would shout out from the dark, but no one would hear me. Still, I have to keep soldiering on until I die, the only way I know how. Not a laudable sort of life, but the only life I know how to live. And when it came to not very laudable things, Ushikawa was more capable than almost anyone.

At two thirty a young woman wearing a baseball cap exited the building. She had no bags with her and quickly strode across Ushikawa’s line of sight. He hurriedly pushed the motor drive switch in his hand and got off three quick shots. It was the first time he had seen her. She was a beautiful young girl, thin and long limbed with wonderful posture, like a ballerina. She looked about sixteen or seventeen and had on faded jeans, white sneakers, and a man’s leather jacket. Her hair was tucked into the collar of the jacket. After leaving the building the girl took a couple of steps, then stopped, frowned, and looked intently up above the electric pole in front. She then lowered her gaze to the ground and started off again. She turned left and disappeared from Ushikawa’s sight.

That girl looks like somebody, he thought. Somebody he knew, that he had seen recently. With her looks she might be a TV personality. Ushikawa never watched anything on TV but news, and had never been interested in cute girl TV stars.

Ushikawa pushed his memory accelerator to the floor and shifted his brain into high gear. He narrowed his eyes and squeezed his brain cells hard, like wringing out a dishrag. His nerves ached painfully with the effort. And suddenly it came to him: that somebody was none other than Eriko Fukada. He had never seen her in person, only a photo of her in the literary column of the papers. But the sense of aloof transparency that hung over her was exactly the same impression he had gotten from the tiny black-and-white photo of her in the paper. She and Tengo must have met each other during the rewriting of Air Chrysalis. It was entirely possible that she had grown fond of Tengo and was lying low in his apartment.

Almost without thinking, Ushikawa grabbed his knit cap, yanked on his navy-blue pea coat, and wrapped his muffler around his neck. He left the building and trotted off in the direction he had last seen her.

She was a very fast walker. It might be impossible to catch up with her, he thought. But she was carrying nothing, which meant she wasn’t going far. Instead of shadowing her and risking drawing her attention, wouldn’t it make more sense to wait patiently for her to return? Ushikawa pondered this, but couldn’t stop following her. The girl had a certain illogical something that shook him. The same feeling as the moment at twilight when a mysteriously colored beam of light conjures up a special memory.

After a while he spotted her. Fuka-Eri had stopped in front of a tiny stationery store and was peering intently inside, where something had undoubtedly caught her interest. Ushikawa casually turned his back on her and stood in front of a vending machine. He took some coins out and bought a can of hot coffee.

Finally the girl took off again. Ushikawa laid the half-finished can of coffee at his feet and followed her at a safe distance. The girl seemed to be concentrating very hard on the act of walking, as if she were gliding across the surface of a placid lake. Walk in this special way, and you won’t sink or get your shoes wet. It was as if she had grasped the key to doing this.

There was something different about this girl. She had a special something most people didn’t. Ushikawa didn’t know a lot about Eriko Fukada. From what he had gathered, she was Leader’s only daughter, had run away from Sakigake at age ten, had grown up in the household of a well-known scholar named Professor Ebisuno, and had written a novel enh2d Air Chrysalis, which was reworked by Tengo Kawana and became a bestseller. But she was supposedly missing now-a missing person’s report had been filed with the police, and the police had searched Sakigake headquarters not long ago.

The contents of Air Chrysalis were problematic for Sakigake, it appeared. Ushikawa had bought the novel and read through it carefully, though which parts were troublesome, and for what reason, he had no idea. He found the novel fascinating and well written. But to him, it seemed a harmless work of fantasy and he was sure the rest of the world must agree. Little People emerge from a goat’s mouth, create an air chrysalis, the main character splits into maza and dohta, and there are two moons. So where in the midst of this fantastical story are there elements that would damage Sakigake if they came out?

But when Eriko Fukada was in the public eye, it would have been too risky to take any action against her. Which is why, Ushikawa surmised, they wanted him to approach Tengo. In Ushikawa’s view Tengo was a mere bit player in the bigger scheme of things. Ushikawa still couldn’t grasp why they were so fixated on Tengo. But as Ushikawa was just a foot soldier in these operations, he had to unquestioningly follow orders. The problem was, Tengo had quickly rejected the generous proposal that Ushikawa had worked hard to create, and the plan he had made to forge a connection with Tengo had come to a screeching halt. Right when he had been trying to think of another approach, Eriko Fukada’s father, Leader, had died, and things were left as they were.

So Ushikawa was in the dark regarding Sakigake’s focus. He didn’t even know who was in charge now that they had lost Leader. In any case, they were trying to locate Aomame, find out why Leader had been murdered, and who was behind it. No doubt they would mete out some pretty harsh punishment on whoever had done it. And they were determined not to get the law involved.

So what about Eriko Fukada? What was Sakigake’s take now on Air Chrysalis? Did they still view the book as a threat?

Eriko Fukada didn’t slow down or turn around, like a homing pigeon heading straight to her goal. He soon determined that that goal was a midsized supermarket, the Marusho. Shopping basket in hand, Fuka-Eri went from one aisle to another, selecting various canned and fresh foods. Just selecting a single head of lettuce took time, as she examined it from every possible angle. This is going to take a while, Ushikawa thought. He left the supermarket, went across the street to a bus stop, and pretended to be waiting for a bus while he kept an eye on the store’s entrance.

But no matter how long he waited, the girl didn’t emerge. Ushikawa started to get worried. Maybe she had left by another exit? As far as he could tell, though, the market had only the one door, facing the main street. Probably shopping was just taking time for her. Ushikawa recalled the serious, strangely depthless eyes of the girl as she contemplated heads of lettuce and decided to sit tight. Three buses came and went. Each time Ushikawa was the only one left behind. He regretted not having brought a newspaper. He could have hidden behind it. When you are shadowing someone a newspaper or magazine is an absolute must. But there was nothing he could do-he had dropped everything and rushed out of the apartment empty-handed.

When Fuka-Eri finally emerged, his watch showed 3:35. The girl didn’t glance his way but marched off in the direction from which she had come. Ushikawa let some time pass and then set off in pursuit. The two shopping bags she carried looked heavy, but she carried them lightly, tripping down the street like a water skipper skimming across a puddle.

What an odd young woman, Ushikawa thought again as he kept her in sight. It’s like watching some rare exotic butterfly. Pleasant to watch, but you can’t touch it, for as soon as you do, it dies, its brilliance gone. That would put an end to his exotic dream.

Ushikawa quickly calculated whether it made sense to let the Sakigake duo know he had discovered Fuka-Eri’s whereabouts. It was a tough decision. If he did tell them he had located her, he would definitely score some points. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt his standing with them-he could show them he was making decent progress. But if he got too involved with Fuka-Eri, he might very well miss the chance to find the real object of his search, Aomame. That would be a disaster. So what should he do? He stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his pea coat, pulled the muffler up to his nose, and continued following her, keeping a longer distance between them than before.

Maybe I’m only following her because I wanted to see her. The thought suddenly occurred to him. Just watching her stride along the road, bags of groceries clutched to her, made his chest grow tight. Like a person hemmed in between two walls, he could go neither forward nor back. His breathing turned ragged and forced, and he found it almost impossible to breathe, like he was caught up in a tepid blast of wind. A thoroughly strange feeling he had never experienced.

At any rate, I’ll let her go for a while. I’ll stick to the original plan and focus on Aomame. Aomame is a murderer. It doesn’t matter what reason she may have had for doing it-she deserves to be punished. Turning her over to Sakigake didn’t bother him. But this young girl was different. She was a quiet little creature living deep in the woods, with pale wings like the shadow of a spirit. Just observe her from a distance, he decided.

Ushikawa waited a while after Fuka-Eri had disappeared into the entrance of the apartment, grocery bags in hand, before he went in. He went to his room, took off his muffler and cap, and plopped back down in front of the camera. His cheeks were cold from the wind. He smoked a cigarette and drank some mineral water. His throat felt parched, as if he had eaten something very spicy.

Twilight fell, streetlights snapped on, and it was getting near the time people would be coming home. Still wearing his pea coat, Ushikawa held the remote control for the shutter and intently watched the entrance to the building. As the memory of the afternoon sunlight faded, his empty room rapidly grew chilly. It looked like tonight would be much colder than last night. Ushikawa considered going to the discount electrical goods store in front of the station and buying an electric space heater or electric blanket.

Eriko Fukada came out of the entrance again at four forty-five. She had on the same black turtleneck sweater and jeans, but no leather jacket. The tight sweater revealed the swell of her breasts. She had generous breasts for such a slim girl. Ushikawa watched this lovely swelling through his viewfinder, and as he did again he felt the same tightness and difficulty breathing.

Since she wasn’t wearing a jacket, she couldn’t be going far. As before, she stopped at the entrance, narrowed her eyes, and looked up above the electric pole in front. It was getting dark, but if you squinted you could make out the outlines of things. She stood there for a while as if searching for something. But she apparently didn’t find what she was looking for. She gave up looking above the pole and, like a bird, twisted her head and gazed at her surroundings. Ushikawa pushed the remote button and snapped photos of her.

As if she had heard the sound of the shutter, Fuka-Eri turned to look right in the direction of the camera. Through the viewfinder Ushikawa and Fuka-Eri were face-to-face. Ushikawa could see her face quite clearly. He was looking through a telephoto lens, after all. On the other end of the lens, though, Fuka-Eri was staring steadily right at him. Deep within the lens, she could see him. Ushikawa’s face was clearly reflected within those soft, jet-black eyes. He found it strange that they were directly in touch like this. He swallowed. This can’t be real. From where she is, she can’t see anything. The telephoto lens is camouflaged, the sound of the shutter dampened by the towel wrapped around it, so there’s no way she could hear it from where she is. Still, there she stood at the entrance, staring right at where he was hiding. That emotionless gaze of hers was unwavering as it stared straight at Ushikawa, like starlight shining on a nameless, massive rock.

For a long time-Ushikawa had no idea just how long-the two of them stared at each other. Suddenly Fuka-Eri twisted around and strode through the entrance, as if she had seen all that she needed to see. After she disappeared, Ushikawa let all the air out of his lungs, waited a moment, then breathed fresh air in deeply. The chilled air became countless thorns, stinging his lungs.

People were coming back, just like last night, passing under the light at the entrance, one after another. Ushikawa, though, was no longer gazing through his viewfinder. His hand was no longer holding the shutter remote. The girl’s open, unreserved gaze had plucked the strength right out of him-as if a long steel needle had been stabbed right into his chest, so deep it felt like it was coming out the other side.

The girl knew that he was secretly watching her, that she was being photographed by a hidden camera. He couldn’t say how, but Fuka-Eri knew this. Maybe she understood it through some special tactile sense she possessed.

He really needed a drink, to fill a glass of whiskey to the brim and drink it down in one gulp. He considered going out to buy a bottle. There was a liquor store right nearby. But he gave it up-drinking wouldn’t change anything. On the other side of the viewfinder, she had seen him. That beautiful girl saw me, my misshapen head and dirty spirit, hiding here, secretly snapping photos. Nothing could change that fact.

Ushikawa left his camera, leaned back against the wall, and looked up at the stained ceiling. Soon everything struck him as empty. He had never felt so utterly alone, never felt the dark to be this intense. He remembered his house back in Chuorinkan, his lawn and his dog, his wife and two daughters, the sunlight shining there. And he thought of the DNA he had given to his daughters, the DNA for a misshapen head and a twisted soul.

Everything he had done seemed pointless. He had used up all the cards he’d been dealt-not that great a hand to begin with. He had taken that lousy hand and used it as best he could to make some clever bets. For a time things looked like they were going to work out, but now he had run out of cards. The light at the table was switched off, and all the players had filed out of the room.

That evening he didn’t take a single photo. Leaning against the wall, he smoked Seven Stars, and opened another can of peaches and ate it. At nine he went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, tugged off his clothes, slipped into the sleeping bag, and, shivering, tried to sleep. The night was cold, but his shivering wasn’t just brought on by the cold alone. The chill seemed to be arising from inside his body. Where in the world did I come from? he asked himself in the dark. And where the hell am I going?

The pain of her gaze still stabbed at him. Maybe it would never go away. Or was it always there, he wondered, and I just didn’t notice it?

The next morning, after a breakfast of cheese and crackers washed down by instant coffee, he pulled himself together and sat back down in front of the camera. As he did the day before, he observed the people coming and going and took a few photos. Tengo and Fuka-Eri, though, were not among them. Instead it was more hunched-over people, carried by force of habit into the new day. The weather was fine, the wind strong. People’s white breath swirled away in the air.

I’m not going to think of anything superfluous, Ushikawa decided. Be thick-skinned, have a hard shell around my heart, take one day at a time, go by the book. I’m just a machine. A capable, patient, unfeeling machine. A machine that draws in new time through one end, then spits out old time from the other end. It exists in order to exist. He needed to revert back again to that pure, unsullied cycle-that perpetual motion that would one day come to an end. He pumped up his willpower and put a cap on his emotions, trying to rid his mind of the i of Fuka-Eri. The pain in his chest from her sharp gaze felt better now, little more than an occasional dull ache. Good. Can’t ask for more. I’m a simple system again, he told himself, a simple system with complex details.

Before noon he went to the discount store near the station and bought a small electric space heater. He then went to the same noodle place he had been to before, opened his newspaper, and ate an order of hot tempura soba. Before going back to his apartment he stood at the entrance and gazed above the electric pole at the spot Fuka-Eri had been so focused on yesterday, but he found nothing to draw his attention. All that was there were a transformer and thick black electric lines entwined like snakes. What could she have been looking at? Or was she looking for something?

Back in his room, he switched on the space heater. An orange light flickered into life and he felt an intimate warmth on his skin. It was not enough to fully heat the place, but it was much better than nothing. Ushikawa leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and took a short nap in a tiny spot of sunlight. A dreamless sleep, a pure blank in time.

He was pulled out of this happy, deep sleep by the sound of a knock. Someone was knocking on his door. He bolted awake and gazed around him, unsure for a moment of his surroundings. He spotted the Minolta single-lens reflex camera on a tripod and remembered he was in a room in an apartment in Koenji. Someone was pounding with his fist on the door. As he hurriedly scraped together his consciousness, Ushikawa thought it was odd that someone would knock on the door. There was a doorbell-all you had to do was push the button. It was simple enough. Still this person insisted on knocking-pounding it for all he was worth, actually. Ushikawa frowned and checked his watch. One forty-five. One forty-five p.m., obviously. It was still light outside.

He didn’t answer the door. Nobody knew he was here, and he wasn’t expecting any visitors. It must be a salesman, or someone selling newspaper subscriptions. Whoever it was might need him, but he certainly didn’t need them. Leaning against the wall, he glared at the door and maintained his silence. The person would surely give up after a time and go away.

But he didn’t. He would pause, then start knocking once more. A barrage of knocks, nothing for ten or fifteen seconds, then a new round. These were firm knocks, nothing hesitant about them, each knock almost unnaturally the same as the next. From start to finish they were demanding a response from Ushikawa. He grew uneasy. Was the person on the other side of the door maybe-Eriko Fukada? Coming to complain to him about his despicable behavior, secretly photographing people? His heart started to pound. He licked his lips with his thick tongue. But the banging against this steel door could only be that of a grown man’s fist, not that of a girl’s.

Or had she informed somebody else of what Ushikawa was up to, and that person was outside the door? Somebody from the rental agency, or maybe the police? That couldn’t be good. But the rental agent would have a master key and could let himself in, and the police would announce themselves. And neither one would bang on the door like this. They would simply ring the bell.

“Mr. Kozu,” a man called out. “Mr. Kozu!”

Ushikawa remembered that Kozu was the name of the previous resident of the apartment. His name remained on the mailbox. Ushikawa preferred it that way. The man outside must think Mr. Kozu still lived here.

“Mr. Kozu,” the man intoned. “I know you’re in there. I can sense you’re holed up inside, trying to stay perfectly quiet.”

A middle-aged man’s voice, not all that loud, but slightly hoarse. At the core his voice had a hardness to it, the hardness of a brick fired in a kiln and carefully allowed to dry. Perhaps because of this, his voice echoed throughout the building.

“Mr. Kozu, I’m from NHK. I’ve come to collect your monthly subscription fee. So I would appreciate it if you’d open the door.”

Ushikawa wasn’t planning to pay any NHK subscription fee. It might be faster, he thought, to just let the man in and show him the place. Tell him, look, no TV, right? But if he saw Ushikawa, with his odd features, shut up alone in an apartment in the middle of the day without a stick of furniture, he couldn’t help but be suspicious.

“Mr. Kozu, people who have TVs have to pay the subscription fee. That’s the law. Some people say they never watch NHK, so they’re not going to pay. But that argument doesn’t hold water. Whether you watch NHK or not, if you have a TV you have to pay.”

So it’s just a fee collector. Let him get it out of his system. Don’t respond, and he’ll go away. But how could he be so sure there’s someone in this apartment? After he came back an hour or so ago, Ushikawa hadn’t been out again. He hardly made a sound, and he always kept the curtains closed.

“Mr. Kozu, I know very well that you are in there,” the man said, as if reading Ushikawa’s thoughts. “You must think it strange that I know that. But I do know it-that you’re in there. You don’t want to pay the NHK fee, so you’re trying to not make a sound. I’m perfectly aware of this.”

The homogeneous knocks started up again. There would be a slight pause, like a wind instrument player pausing to take a breath, then once more the pounding would start, the rhythm unchanged.

“I get it, Mr. Kozu. You have decided to ignore me. Fine. I’ll leave today. I have other things to do. But I’ll be back. Mark my words. If I say I’ll be back, you can count on it. I’m not your average fee collector. I never give up until I get what is coming to me. I never waver from that. It’s like the phases of the moon, or life and death. There is no escape.”

A long silence followed. Just when Ushikawa thought he might be gone, the collector spoke up again.

“I’ll be back soon, Mr. Kozu. Look forward to it. When you’re least expecting it, there will be a knock on the door. Bang bang! And that will be me.”

No more knocks now. Ushikawa listened intently. He thought he heard footsteps fading down the corridor. He quickly went over to his camera and fixed his gaze on the entrance to the apartment. The fee collector should finish his business in the building soon and be leaving. He had to check and see what sort of man he was. NHK collectors wear uniforms, so he should be able to spot him right away. But maybe he wasn’t really from NHK. Maybe he was pretending to be one to try to get Ushikawa to open the door. Either way, he had to be someone Ushikawa had never seen before. The remote for the shutter in his right hand, he waited expectantly for a likely-looking person to appear.

For the next thirty minutes, though, no one came into or out of the building. Eventually a middle-aged woman he had seen a number of times emerged and pedaled off on her bike. Ushikawa had dubbed her “Chin Lady” because of the ample flesh dangling below her chin. A half an hour later Chin Lady returned, a shopping bag in the basket of her bike. She parked her bike in the bike parking area and went into the building, bag in hand. After this, a boy in elementary school came home. Ushikawa’s name for him was “Fox,” since his eyes slanted upward. But no one who could have been the fee collector appeared. Ushikawa was puzzled. The building had only one way in and out, and he had kept his eyes glued to the entrance every second. If the collector hadn’t come out, that could only mean he was still inside.

He continued to watch the entrance without a break. He didn’t go to the bathroom. The sun set, it grew dark, and the light at the entrance came on. But still no fee collector. After six, Ushikawa gave up. He went to the bathroom and let out all the pee he had been holding in. The man was definitely still in the building. Why, he didn’t know. It didn’t make any sense. But that weird fee collector had decided to stay put.

The wind, colder now, whined through the frozen electric lines. Ushikawa turned on the space heater, and as he smoked a cigarette he tried to make sense of it all. Why did the man have to speak in such an aggressive, challenging tone? Why was he so positive that someone was inside the apartment? And why hadn’t he left the building? If he hasn’t left here, then where is he?

Ushikawa left the camera, leaned against the wall, and stared for the longest time at the orange filament of the space heater.

CHAPTER 17

It was a windy Saturday, nearly eight p.m., when the phone rang. Aomame was wearing a down jacket, a blanket on her lap, sitting on the balcony. Through a gap in the screen, she kept an eye on the slide in the playground, which was illuminated by the mercury-vapor lamp. Her hands were under the blanket so they wouldn’t get numb. The deserted slide looked like the skeleton of some huge animal that had died in the Ice Age.

Sitting outside on a cold night might not be good for the baby, but Aomame decided it wasn’t cold enough to present a problem. No matter how cold you may be on the outside, amniotic fluid maintained nearly the same temperature as blood. There are plenty of places in the world way colder and harsher, she concluded. And women keep on having babies, even there. But above all, this cold was something she felt she had to endure if she wanted to see Tengo again.

As always, the large yellow moon and its smaller green companion floated in the winter sky. Clouds of assorted sizes and shapes scudded swiftly across the sky. The clouds were white and dense, their outlines sharply etched, and they looked to her like hard blocks of ice floating down a snowmelt river to the sea. As she watched the clouds, appearing from somewhere only to disappear again, Aomame felt she had been transported to a spot near the edge of the world. This was the northern frontier of reason. There was nothing north of here-only the chaos of nothingness.

The sliding glass door was open just a crack, so the ringing phone sounded faint, and Aomame was lost in thought, but she didn’t miss the sound. The phone rang three times, stopped, then twenty seconds later rang one more time. It had to be Tamaru. She threw aside the blanket, slid open the cloudy glass door, and went inside. It was dark inside and the heat was at a comfortable level. Her fingers still cold, she lifted the receiver.

“Still reading Proust?”

“But not making much progress,” Aomame replied. It was like an exchange of passwords.

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s not that. How should I put it-it’s a story about a different place, somewhere totally unlike here.”

Tamaru was silent, waiting for her to go on. He was in no hurry.

“By different place, I mean it’s like reading a detailed report from a small planet light-years away from this world I’m living in. I can picture all the scenes described and understand them. It’s described very vividly, minutely, even. But I can’t connect the scenes in that book with where I am now. We are physically too far apart. I’ll be reading it, and I find myself having to go back and reread the same passage over again.”

Aomame searched for the next words. Tamaru waited as she did.

“It’s not boring, though,” she said. “It’s so detailed and beautifully written, and I feel like I can grasp the structure of that lonely little planet. But I can’t seem to go forward. It’s like I’m in a boat, paddling upstream. I row for a while, but then when I take a rest and am thinking about something, I find myself back where I started. Maybe that way of reading suits me now, rather than the kind of reading where you forge ahead to find out what happens. I don’t know how to put it exactly, but there is a sense of time wavering irregularly when you try to forge ahead. If what is in front is behind, and what is behind is in front, it doesn’t really matter, does it. Either way is fine.”

Aomame searched for a more precise way of expressing herself.

“It feels like I’m experiencing someone else’s dream. Like we’re simultaneously sharing feelings. But I can’t really grasp what it means to be simultaneous. Our feelings seem extremely close, but in reality there’s a considerable gap between us.”

“I wonder if Proust was aiming for that sort of sensation.”

Aomame had no idea.

“Still, on the other hand,” Tamaru said, “time in this real world goes ever onward. It never stands still, and never reverses course.”

“Of course. In the real world time goes forward.”

As she said this Aomame glanced at the glass door. But was it really true? That time was always flowing forward?

“The seasons have changed, and we are getting close to the end of 1984,” Tamaru said.