1Q84. Òûñÿ÷à Íåâåñòüñîò Âîñåìüäåñÿò ×åòûðå. Êíèãà 1. Àïðåëü–èþíü Ìóðàêàìè Õàðóêè
“If that is what my father wanted, then I have no objection,” Tengo said, looking straight back at those eyes.
The funeral director nodded, and cast his eyes down. “Today would be the wake, and for one night we will have the body lie in state in our funeral home. So we will need to transport the body to our place. The cremation will take place tomorrow at one thirty in the afternoon in a crematorium nearby. I hope this is satisfactory?”
“I have no objection.”
“Will you be attending the cremation?”
“I will,” Tengo said.
“There are some who do not like to attend, and it is entirely up to you.”
“I will be there,” Tengo said.
“Very good,” the man said, sounding a little relieved. “I’m sorry to bother you with this now, but this is the same amount I showed your father while he was still alive. I would appreciate it if you would approve it.”
The funeral director, his long fingers like insect legs, extracted a statement from a folder and passed it to Tengo. Tengo knew almost nothing about funerals, but he could see this was quite inexpensive. He had no objection. He borrowed a ballpoint pen and signed the agreement.
The lawyer came just before three and he and the funeral director stood there chatting for a moment-a clipped conversation, one specialist to another. Tengo couldn’t really follow their conversation. The two of them seemed to know each other. This was a small town. Probably everybody knew everybody else.
Near the morgue was an inconspicuous back door, and the funeral parlor’s small van was parked just outside. Except for the driver’s window, all the windows were tinted black, and the jet-black van was devoid of any sign or markings. The thin funeral director and his white-haired assistant moved Tengo’s father onto a rolling gurney and pushed it toward the van. The van had been refitted to have an especially high ceiling and rails onto which they slid the body. They shut the back doors of the van with an earnest thud, the funeral director turned to Tengo and bowed, and the van pulled away. Tengo, the lawyer, Nurse Tamura, and Nurse Omura all faced the rear door of the black Toyota van and brought their hands together in prayer.
Tengo and the lawyer talked in a corner of the cafeteria. The lawyer looked to be in his mid-forties, and was quite obese, the exact opposite of the funeral director. His chin had nearly disappeared, and despite the chill of winter his forehead was covered with a light sheen of sweat. He must sweat something awful in the summer, Tengo thought. His gray wool suit smelled of mothballs. He had a narrow forehead, and above it an overabundance of thick, luxurious black hair. The combination of the obese body and the thick hair didn’t work. His eyelids were heavy and swollen, his eyes narrow, but behind them was a friendly glint.
“Your father entrusted me with his will. The word will implies something significant, but this isn’t like one of those wills from a detective novel,” the lawyer said, and cleared his throat. “It’s actually closer to a simple memo. Let me start by briefly summarizing its contents. The will begins by outlining arrangements for his funeral. I believe the gentleman from Zenkosha has explained this to you?”
“Yes, he did. It’s to be a simple funeral.”
“Very good,” the lawyer said. “That was your father’s wish, that everything be done as plainly as possible. The funeral expenses will be paid out of a reserve fund he set aside, and medical and other expenses will come out of the security deposit your father paid when he checked into this facility. There will be nothing you will have to pay for out of your own pocket.”
“He didn’t want to owe anybody, did he?”
“Exactly. Everything has been prepaid. Also, your father has money in an account at the Chikura post office, which you, as his son, will inherit. You will need to take care of changing it over to your name. To do that, you’ll need the proof that your father has been removed from the family register, and a copy of your family register and seal certificate. You should go directly to the Chikura post office and sign the necessary documents yourself. The procedures take some time. As you know, Japanese banks and the post office are quite particular about filling in all the proper forms.”
The lawyer took a large white handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“That’s all I need to tell you about the inheritance. He had no assets other than the post office account-no insurance policies, stocks, real estate, jewelry, art objects-nothing of this sort. Very straightforward, you could say, and fuss free.”
Tengo nodded silently. It sounded like his father. But taking over his postal account made Tengo feel a little depressed. It felt like being handed a pile of damp, heavy blankets. If possible, he would rather not have it. But he couldn’t say this.
“Your father also entrusted an envelope to my care. I have brought it with me and would like to give it to you now.”
The thick brown envelope was sealed tight with packing tape. The obese lawyer took it from his black briefcase and laid it on the table.
“I met Mr. Kawana soon after he came here, and he gave this to me then. He was still-conscious then. He would get confused occasionally, but he was generally able to function fine. He told me that when he died, he would like me to give this envelope to his legal heir.”
“Legal heir,” Tengo repeated, a bit surprised.
“Yes. That was the term he used. Your father didn’t specify anyone in particular, but in practical terms you would be the only legal heir.”
“As far as I know.”
“Then, as instructed, here you go,” the lawyer said, pointing to the envelope on the table. “Could you sign a receipt for it, please?”
Tengo signed the receipt. The brown office envelope on the table looked anonymous and bland. Nothing was written on it, neither on the front nor on the back.
“There’s one thing I would like to ask you,” Tengo said to the lawyer. “Did my father ever mention my name? Or use the word son?”
As he mulled this over, the lawyer pulled out his handkerchief again and mopped his brow. He shook his head slightly. “No, Mr. Kawana always used the term legal heir. He didn’t use any other terms. I remember this because I found it odd.”
Tengo was silent. The lawyer collected himself and spoke up.
“But you have to understand that Mr. Kawana knew you were the only legal heir. It’s just that when we spoke he didn’t use your name. Does that bother you?”
“Not really,” Tengo said. “My father was always a bit odd.”
The lawyer smiled, as if relieved, and gave a slight nod. He handed Tengo a new copy of their family register. “If you don’t mind, since it was this sort of illness, I would like you to check the family register so we can make sure there are no legal problems with the procedure. According to the record, you are Mr. Kawana’s sole child. Your mother passed away a year and a half after giving birth to you. Your father didn’t remarry, and raised you by himself. Your father’s parents and siblings are already deceased. So you are clearly Mr. Kawana’s sole legal heir.”
After the lawyer stood up, expressed his condolences, and left, Tengo remained seated, gazing at the envelope on the table. His father was his real blood father, and his mother was really dead. The lawyer had said so. So it must be true-or, at least, a fact, in a legal sense. But it felt like the more facts that were revealed, the more the truth receded. Why would that be?
Tengo returned to his father’s room, sat down at the desk, and struggled to open the sealed envelope. The envelope might contain the key to unlocking some mystery. Opening it was difficult. There were no scissors or box cutters in the room, so he had to peel off the packing tape with his fingernails. When he finally managed to get the envelope open, the contents were in several other envelopes, all of them in turn tightly sealed. Just the sort of thing he expected from his father.
One envelope contained 500,000 yen in cash-exactly fifty crisp new ten-thousand-yen bills, wrapped in layers of thin paper. A piece of paper included with it said Emergency cash. Definitely his father’s writing, small letters, nothing abbreviated. This money must be in case there were unanticipated expenses. His father had anticipated that his legal heir wouldn’t have sufficient funds on hand.
The thickest of the envelopes was stuffed full of newspaper clippings and various award certificates, all of them about Tengo. His certificate from when he won the math contest in elementary school, and the article about it in the local paper. A photo of Tengo next to his trophy. The artistic-looking award Tengo received for having the best grades in his class. He had the best grades in every subject. There were various other articles that showed what a child prodigy Tengo had been. A photo of Tengo in a judo gi in junior high, grinning, holding the second-place banner. Tengo was really surprised to see these. After his father had retired from NHK, he left the company housing he had been in, moved to another apartment in Ichikawa, and finally went to the sanatorium in Chikura. Probably because he had moved by himself so often, he had hardly any possessions. And father and son had basically been strangers to each other for years. Despite this, his father had lovingly carried around all these mementos of Tengo’s child-prodigy days.
The next envelope contained various records from his father’s days as an NHK fee collector. A record of the times when he was the top producer of the year. Several simple certificates. A photo apparently taken with a colleague on a company trip. An old ID card. Records of payment to his retirement plan and health insurance… Though his father worked like a dog for NHK for over thirty years, the amount of material left was surprisingly little-next to nothing when compared with Tengo’s achievements in elementary school. Society might see his father’s entire life as amounting to almost zero, but to Tengo, it wasn’t next to nothing. Along with a postal savings book, his father had left behind a deep, dark shadow.
There was nothing in the envelope to indicate anything about his father’s life before he joined NHK. It was as if his father’s life began the moment he became an NHK fee collector.
He opened the final envelope, a thin one, and found a single black-and-white photograph. That was all. It was an old photo, and though the contrast hadn’t faded, there was a thin membrane over the whole picture, as if water had seeped into it. It was a photo of a family-a father, a mother, and a tiny baby. The baby looked less than a year old. The mother, dressed in a kimono, was lovingly cradling the baby. Behind them was a torii gate at a shrine. From the clothes they had on, it looked like winter. Since they were visiting a shrine, it was most likely New Year’s. The mother was squinting, as if the light were too bright, and smiling. The father, dressed in a dark coat, slightly too big for him, had frown lines between his eyes, as if to say he didn’t take anything at face value. The baby looked confused by how big and cold the world could be.
The young father in the photo had to be Tengo’s father. He looked much younger, though he already had a sort of surprising maturity about him, and he was thin, his eyes sunken. It was the face of a poor farmer from some out-of-the-way hamlet, stubborn, skeptical. His hair was cut short, his shoulders a bit stooped. That could only be his father. This meant that the baby must be Tengo, and the mother holding the baby must be Tengo’s mother. His mother was slightly taller than his father, and had good posture. His father was in his late thirties, while his mother looked to be in her mid-twenties.
Tengo had never seen the photograph before. He had never seen anything that could be called a family photo. And he had never seen a picture of himself when he was little. They couldn’t afford a camera, his father had once explained, and never had the opportunity to take any family photos. And Tengo had accepted this. But now he knew it was a lie. They had taken a photo together. And though their clothes weren’t exactly luxurious, they were at least presentable. They didn’t look as if they were so poor they couldn’t afford a camera. The photo was taken not long after Tengo was born, sometime between 1954 and 1955. He turned the photo over, but there was no date or indication of where it had been taken.
Tengo studied the woman. In the photo her face was small, and slightly out of focus. If only he had a magnifying glass! Then he could have made out more details. Still, he could see most of her features. She had an oval-shaped face, a small nose, and plump lips. By no means a beauty, though sort of cute-the type of face that left a good impression. At least compared with his father’s rustic face she looked far more refined and intelligent. Tengo was happy about this. Her hair was nicely styled, but since she had on a kimono, he couldn’t tell much about her figure.
At least as far as they looked in this photo, no one could call them a well-matched couple. There was a great age difference between them. Tengo tried to imagine his parents meeting each other, falling in love, having him-but he just couldn’t see it. You didn’t get that sense at all from the photo. So if there wasn’t an emotional attachment that brought them together, there must have been some other circumstances that did. No, maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as the term circumstances made it sound. Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more.
Tengo tried to figure out if the mother in this photo was the mysterious woman who appeared in his daydreams, or in his fog of childhood memories. But he realized he didn’t have any memories of the woman’s face whatsoever. The woman in his memory took off her blouse, let down the straps of her slip, and let some unknown man suck her breasts. And her breathing became deeper, like she was moaning. That’s all he remembered-some man sucking his mother’s breasts. The breasts that should have been his alone were stolen away by somebody else. A baby would no doubt see this as a grave threat. His eyes never went to the man’s face.
Tengo returned the photo to the envelope, and thought about what it meant. His father had cherished this one photograph until he died, which might mean he still cherished Tengo’s mother. Tengo couldn’t remember his mother, for she had died from illness when he was too young to have any memories of her. According to the lawyer’s investigation, Tengo was the only child of his mother and his father, the NHK fee collector, a fact recorded in his family register. But official documents didn’t guarantee that that man was Tengo’s biological father.
“I don’t have a son,” his father had declared to Tengo before he fell into a coma.
“So, what am I?” Tengo had asked.
“You’re nothing,” was his father’s concise and peremptory reply.
His father’s tone of voice had convinced Tengo that there was no blood connection between him and this man. And he had felt freed from heavy shackles. As time went on, however, he wasn’t completely convinced that what his father had said was true.
I’m nothing, Tengo repeated.
Suddenly he realized that his young mother in the photo from long ago reminded him of his older girlfriend. Kyoko Yasuda was her name. In order to calm his mind, he pressed his fingers hard against the middle of his forehead. He took the photo out again and stared at it. A small nose, plump lips, a somewhat pointed chin. Her hairstyle was so different he hadn’t noticed at first, but her features did somewhat resemble Kyoko’s. But what could that possibly mean?
And why did his father think to give this photo to Tengo after his death? While he was alive he had never provided Tengo with a single piece of information about his mother. He had even hidden the existence of this family photo. One thing Tengo did know was that his father never intended to explain the situation to him. Not while he was alive, and not even now after his death. Look, here’s a photo, his father must be saying. I’ll just hand it to you. It’s up to you to figure it out.
Tengo lay faceup on the bare mattress and stared at the ceiling. It was a painted white plywood ceiling, flat with no wood grain or knots, just several straight joints where the boards came together-the same scene his father’s sunken eyes must have viewed during the last few months of life. Or maybe those eyes didn’t see anything. At any rate his gaze had been directed there, at the ceiling, whether he had been seeing it or not.
Tengo closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself slowly moving toward death. But for a thirty-year-old in good health, death was something far off, beyond the imagination. Instead, breathing softly, he watched the twilight shadows as they moved across the wall. He tried to not think about anything. Not thinking about anything was not too hard for Tengo. He was too tired to keep any one particular thought in his head. He wanted to catch some sleep if he could, but he was overtired, and sleep wouldn’t come.
Just before six p.m. Nurse Omura came and told him dinner was ready in the cafeteria. Tengo had no appetite, but the tall, busty nurse wouldn’t leave him alone. You need to get something, even a little bit, into your stomach, she told him. This was close to a direct order. When it came to telling people how to maintain their health, she was a pro. And Tengo wasn’t the type-especially when the other person was an older woman-who could resist.
They took the stairs down to the cafeteria and found Kumi Adachi waiting for them. Nurse Tamura was nowhere to be seen. Tengo ate dinner at the same table as Kumi and Nurse Omura. Tengo had a salad, cooked vegetables, and miso soup with asari clams and scallions, washed down with hot hojicha tea.
“When is the cremation?” Kumi asked him.
“Tomorrow afternoon at one,” Tengo said. “When that’s done, I’ll probably go straight back to Tokyo. I have to go back to work.”
“Will anyone else be at the cremation besides you, Tengo?”
“No, no one else. Just me.”
“Do you mind if I join you?” Kumi asked.
“At my father’s cremation?” Tengo asked, surprised.
“Yes. Actually I was pretty fond of him.”
Tengo involuntarily put his chopsticks down and looked at her. Was she really talking about his father? “What did you like about him?” he asked her.
“He was very conscientious, never said more than he needed to,” she said. “In that sense he was like my father, who passed away.”
“Huh,” Tengo said.
“My father was a fisherman. He died before he reached fifty.”
“Did he die at sea?”
“No, he died of lung cancer. He smoked too much. I don’t know why, but fishermen are all heavy smokers. It’s like smoke is rising out of their whole body.”
Tengo thought about this. “It might have been better if my father had been a fisherman too.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I’m not really sure,” Tengo replied. “The thought just occurred to me-that it would have been better for him than being an NHK fee collector.”
“If your father had been a fisherman, would it have been easier for you to accept him?”
“It would have made many things simpler, I suppose.”
Tengo pictured himself as a child, early in the morning on a day when he didn’t have school, heading off on a fishing boat with his father. The stiff Pacific wind, the salt spray hitting his face. The monotonous drone of the diesel engine. The stuffy smell of the fishing nets. Hard, dangerous work. One mistake and you could lose your life. But compared with being dragged all over Ichikawa to collect subscription fees, it would have to be a more natural, fulfilling life.
“But collecting NHK fees couldn’t have been easy work, could it?” Nurse Omura said as she ate her soy-flavored fish.
“Probably not,” Tengo said. At least he knew it wasn’t the kind of job he could handle.
“Your father was really good at his job, wasn’t he?” Kumi asked.
“I think he was, yes,” Tengo said.
“He showed me his award certificates,” Kumi said.
“Ah! Darn,” Nurse Omura said, suddenly putting down her chopsticks. “I totally forgot. Darn it! How could I forget something so important? Could you wait here for a minute? I have something I have to give you, and it has to be today.”
Nurse Omura wiped her mouth with a napkin, stood up, and hurried out of the cafeteria, her meal half eaten.
“I wonder what’s so important?” Kumi said, tilting her head.
Tengo had no idea.
As he waited for Nurse Omura’s return, he dutifully worked his way through his salad. There weren’t many others eating dinner in the cafeteria. At one table there were three old men, none of them speaking. At another table a man in a white coat, with a sprinkling of gray hair, sat alone, reading the evening paper as he ate, a solemn look on his face.
Nurse Omura finally trotted back. She was holding a department-store shopping bag. She took out some neatly folded clothes.
“I got this from Mr. Kawana about a year or so ago, while he was still conscious,” the large nurse said. “He said when he was put in the casket he would like to be dressed in this. So I sent it to the cleaners and had them store it in mothballs.”
There was no mistaking the NHK fee collector’s uniform. The matching trousers had been nicely ironed. The smell of mothballs hit Tengo. For a while he was speechless.
“Mr. Kawana told me he would like to be cremated wearing this uniform,” Nurse Omura said. She refolded the uniform neatly and put it back in the shopping bag. “So I’m giving it to you now. Tomorrow, give this to the funeral home people and make sure they dress him in it.”
“Isn’t it a problem to have him wear this? The uniform was just on loan to him, and when he retired it should have been returned to NHK,” Tengo said, weakly.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Kumi said. “If we don’t say anything, who’s going to know? NHK isn’t going to be in a tight spot over a set of old clothes.”
Nurse Omura agreed. “Mr. Kawana walked all over the place, from morning to night, for over thirty years for NHK. I’m sure it wasn’t always pleasant. Who cares about one uniform? It’s not like you’re using it to do something bad or anything.”
“You’re right. I still have my school uniform from high school,” Kumi said.
“An NHK collector’s uniform and a high school uniform aren’t exactly the same thing,” Tengo interjected, but no one took up the point.
“Come to think of it, I have my old school uniform in the closet somewhere too,” Nurse Omura said.
“Are you telling me you put it on sometimes for your husband? Along with white bobby socks?” Kumi said teasingly.
“Hmm-now that’s a thought,” Nurse Omura said, her chin in her hands on the table, her expression serious. “Probably get him all hot and bothered.”
“Anyway…,” Kumi said. She turned to Tengo. “Mr. Kawana definitely wanted to be cremated in his NHK uniform. I think we should help him make his wish come true. Don’t you think so?”
Tengo took the bag containing the uniform and went back to the room. Kumi Adachi came with him and made up the bed. There were fresh sheets, with a still-starchy fragrance, a new blanket, a new bed cover, and a new pillow. Once all this was arranged, the bed his father had slept in looked totally transformed. Tengo randomly thought of Kumi’s thick, luxuriant pubic hair.
“Your father was in a coma for so long,” Kumi said as she smoothed out the wrinkles in the sheets, “but I don’t think he was completely unconscious.”
“Why do you say that?” Tengo asked.
“Well, he would sometimes send messages to somebody.”
Tengo was standing at the window gazing outside, but he spun around and looked at Kumi. “Messages?”
“He would tap on the bed frame. His hand would hang down from the bed and he would knock on the frame, like he was sending Morse code. Like this.”
Kumi lightly tapped the wooden bed frame with her fist.
“Don’t you think it sounds like a signal?”
“That’s not a signal.”
“Then what is it?”
“He’s knocking on a door,” Tengo said, his voice dry. “The front door of a house.”
“I guess that makes sense. It does sound like someone knocking on a door.” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “So are you saying that even after he lost consciousness he was still making his rounds to collect fees?”
“Probably,” Tengo said. “Somewhere inside his head.”
“It’s like that story of the dead soldier still clutching his trumpet,” Kumi said, impressed.
There was nothing to say to this, so Tengo stayed silent.
“Your father must have really liked his job. Going around collecting NHK subscription fees.”
“I don’t think it’s a question of liking or disliking it,” Tengo said.
“Then what?”
“It was the one thing he was best at.”
“Hmm. I see,” Kumi said. She pondered this. “But that might very well be the best way to live your life.”
“Maybe so,” Tengo said as he looked out at the pine windbreak. It might really be so.
“What’s the one thing you can do best?”
“I don’t know,” Tengo said, looking straight at her. “I honestly have no idea.”
CHAPTER 22
Tengo showed up at the entrance to the apartment building on Sunday evening, at six fifteen. As soon as he stepped outside he halted and gazed around, as if looking for something. First to the right, then the left. Then from left to right. He looked up at the sky, then down at his feet. But nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, as far as he was concerned.
Ushikawa didn’t follow him then. Tengo was carrying nothing with him. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his unpleated chinos. He had on a high-neck sweater and a well-worn olive-green corduroy jacket, and his hair was unruly. A thick paperback book peeped out of a jacket pocket. Ushikawa figured he must be going out to eat dinner in a nearby restaurant. Fine, he decided, just let him go where he wants.
Tengo had several classes he had to teach on Monday. Ushikawa had found this out by phoning the cram school. Yes, a female office worker had told him, Mr. Kawana will be teaching his regular classes from the beginning of the week. Good. From tomorrow, then, Tengo was finally going back to his normal schedule. Knowing him, he probably wouldn’t be going far this evening. (If Ushikawa had followed him that night, he would have found out that Tengo was on his way to meet with Komatsu at the bar in Yotsuya.)
Just before eight, Ushikawa threw on his pea coat, muffler, and knit hat and, looking around him as he did, hurried out of the building. Tengo had not yet returned at this point. If he was really eating somewhere in the neighborhood, it was taking longer than it should. If Ushikawa was unlucky, he might actually bump into him on his way back. But he was willing to run the risk, since there was something he absolutely had to do, and it had to be done now, at this time of night.
He relied on his memory of the route as he turned several corners, passed a few semi-familiar landmarks, and though he hesitated a few times, unsure of the direction, he eventually arrived at the playground. The strong north wind of the previous day had died down, and it was warm for a December evening, but as expected, the park was deserted. Ushikawa double-checked that there was no one else around, then climbed up the slide. He sat down on top of the slide, leaned back against the railing, and looked up at the sky. The moons were there, almost in the same location as the night before. A bright moon, two-thirds full. Not a single cloud nearby. And beside it, a small green, misshapen moon snuggled close.
So it’s no mistake, then, Ushikawa thought. He exhaled and shook his head. He wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. Two moons, one big, one small, were definitely visible there, above the leafless zelkova tree. The two moons looked like they had stayed put since last night, waiting for him to return to the top of the slide. They knew that he would be back. As if prearranged, the silence around them was suggestive. And the moons wanted Ushikawa to share that silence with them. You can’t tell anybody else about this, they warned. They held an index finger, covered with a light dusting of ash, to their mouths to make sure he didn’t say a thing.
As he sat there, Ushikawa moved his facial muscles this way and that, to make sure there wasn’t something unnatural or unusual about this feeling he was having. He found nothing unnatural about it. For better or for worse, this was his normal face.
Ushikawa always saw himself as a realist, and he actually was. Metaphysical speculation wasn’t his thing. If something really existed, you had to accept it as a reality, whether or not it made sense or was logical. That was his basic way of thinking. Principles and logic didn’t give birth to reality. Reality came first, and the principles and logic followed. So, he decided, he would have to begin by accepting this reality: that there were two moons in the sky.
The rest of it he would think about later. He sat there, trying not to think, completely absorbed in observing the two moons. He tried to get used to the scene. I have to accept these guys as they are, he said to himself. He couldn’t explain why something like this could be possible, but it wasn’t a question he needed to delve into deeply at this point. The question was how to deal with it. That was the real issue. To do so he needed to start by accepting what he was seeing, without questioning the logic of it.
Ushikawa was there for some fifteen minutes. He sat, leaning against the railing of the slide, hardly moving a muscle. Like a diver slowly acclimatizing his body to a change in water pressure, he let himself be bathed in the light from these moons, let it seep into his skin. Ushikawa’s instinct told him this was important.
Finally this small man with a misshapen head stood up, climbed down from the slide, and, completely caught up in indescribable musings, walked back to the apartment building. Things looked a little different from when he came. Maybe it’s the moonlight, he told himself. That moonlight is gradually displacing how things appear. Thanks to this, he took the wrong turn a number of times. Before he walked inside the building he looked up at the third floor to check that Tengo’s lights were still off. Tengo was still out. It didn’t seem likely that he had just gone out to eat someplace nearby. Maybe he was meeting somebody? And maybe that somebody was Aomame. Or Fuka-Eri. Have I let a golden opportunity slip through my fingers? he wondered. But it was too late to worry about it now. It was too risky to tail Tengo every time he went out. Tengo only had to spot him once to bring the whole operation crashing down.
Ushikawa went back to his apartment and removed his coat, muffler, and hat. He opened a tin of corned beef, spread some on a roll, and ate it, standing up in the kitchen. He drank a container of lukewarm canned coffee. Nothing had any taste. He could feel the texture of the food, but he couldn’t taste anything. Whether this was the fault of the food and drink or his own sense of taste, he couldn’t say. Maybe it could be blamed on those two moons. He heard a faint doorbell ring somewhere. A pause, then it rang again. He didn’t care. It wasn’t his chime ringing, but somebody else’s, far away, on a different floor.
He finished his sandwich, drained the coffee, then leisurely smoked a cigarette to bring his mind back to reality. He reconfirmed what it was he had to do here, and sat down behind the camera at the window. He switched on the electric space heater and warmed his hands in front of the orange light. It was Sunday evening, not yet nine. Traffic into and out of the building was sparse, but Ushikawa was determined to see what time Tengo returned.
A moment later a woman in a black down jacket came out of the entrance, a woman he had never seen before. She had on a gray muffler up to her mouth, dark-framed glasses, and a baseball cap-the perfect getup to hide yourself from prying eyes. She was empty-handed and was walking briskly, taking long strides. Instinctively Ushikawa switched on the camera’s motor drive and snapped three quick shots. He had to find out where she was going, but by the time he had gotten to his feet, the woman had reached the road and vanished into the night. Ushikawa frowned and gave up. At the pace she was walking, by the time he got his shoes on and chased after her, it would be too late to catch up.
He did an instant replay in his mind of what he had just seen. The woman was about five feet six inches tall, and wore narrow blue jeans and white sneakers. All her clothes looked strangely brand-new. He would put her at mid-twenties to about thirty. Her hair was stuffed in her collar, so he couldn’t tell how long it was. The puffy down jacket made it hard to tell what sort of figure she had, but judging from her legs, she must be fairly slim. Her good posture and quick pace indicated she was young and healthy. She must be into sports. All these characteristics fit the Aomame that Ushikawa knew about, though he couldn’t make too many assumptions. Still, she seemed to be very cautious. You could tell how tense her whole body was, like an actress being stalked by paparazzi.
Let’s suppose for the moment, he thought, that this was Aomame.
She came here to see Tengo, but Tengo was out somewhere. The lights in his place were off. She came to see him, but there was no answer when she knocked, so she gave up and left. Maybe she was the one who had been ringing the doorbell. But something about this didn’t make sense. Aomame was being pursued, and should be trying to stay out of sight. Why wouldn’t she have called Tengo ahead of time to make sure he would be at home? That way she wouldn’t unnecessarily expose herself to danger.
Ushikawa mulled this over as he sat in front of the camera, but he couldn’t come up with a working hypothesis that made any sense. The woman’s actions-disguising herself in this non-disguise, leaving the place where she was hiding-didn’t fit what Ushikawa knew about her. She was more cautious and careful than that. The whole thing left him befuddled.
Anyhow, he decided he would go to the photo shop near the station tomorrow and develop the film he had taken. This mystery woman should be in the photos.
He kept watch with his camera until past ten, but after the woman left no one else came in or out of the building. The entrance was silent and deserted, like a stage abandoned after a poorly attended performance. Ushikawa was puzzled about Tengo. As far as he knew, he rarely stayed out this late, and he had classes to teach tomorrow. Maybe he had already come home while Ushikawa was out, and had long since gone to bed?
After ten Ushikawa realized how exhausted he was. He could barely keep his eyes open. This was unusual, since he normally kept late hours. Usually he could stay up as late as he needed. But tonight, sleep was bearing down on him from above, like the stone lid of an ancient coffin.
Maybe I looked at those two moons for too long, he thought, absorbed too much of their light. Their vague afteri remained in his eyes. Their dark silhouettes numbed the soft part of his brain, like a bee stinging and numbing a caterpillar, then laying eggs on the surface of its body. The bee larvae use the paralyzed caterpillar as a convenient source of food and devour it as soon as they’re born. Ushikawa frowned and shook this ominous i from his mind.
Fine, he decided. I can’t wait here forever for Tengo to get back. When he gets back is entirely up to him, and he’ll just go to sleep as soon as he does. He doesn’t have anywhere else to come back to besides this apartment. Most likely.
Ushikawa listlessly tugged off his trousers and sweater and, stripped to his long-sleeved shirt and long johns, slipped into his sleeping bag. He curled up and soon fell asleep. It was a deep sleep, almost coma-like. As he was falling asleep he thought he heard a knock at the door. But by then his consciousness had shifted over to another world and he couldn’t distinguish one thing from another. When he tried, his body creaked. So he kept his eyes shut, didn’t try to figure out what the sound could mean, and once more sank down into the soft muddy oblivion of sleep.
It was about thirty minutes after Ushikawa fell into this deep sleep that Tengo came back home after meeting Komatsu. He brushed his teeth, hung up his jacket-which reeked of cigarette smoke-changed into pajamas, and went to sleep. Until a phone call came at two a.m. telling him that his father was dead.
When Ushikawa awoke, it was past eight a.m., Monday morning, and Tengo was already on the express train to Tateyama, fast asleep to make up for the hours he had missed. Ushikawa sat behind his camera, waiting to catch Tengo on his way to the cram school, but of course he never made an appearance. At one p.m. Ushikawa gave up. He went to a nearby public phone and called the cram school to see if Tengo was teaching his regular classes today.
“Mr. Kawana had a family emergency, so his classes are canceled for today,” the woman on the phone said. Ushikawa thanked her and hung up.
Family emergency? The only family Tengo had was his father. His father must have died. If that was the case, then Tengo would be leaving Tokyo again. Maybe he had already left while I was sleeping. What was wrong with me? I slept so long I missed him.
At any rate, Tengo is now all alone in the world, thought Ushikawa. A lonely man to begin with, he was now even lonelier. Utterly alone. Before he was even two, his mother had been strangled to death at a hot springs resort in Nagano Prefecture. The man who murdered her was never caught. She had left her husband and, with Tengo in tow, had absconded with a young man. Absconded-a quite old-fashioned term. Nobody uses it anymore, but for a certain kind of action it’s the perfect term. Why the man killed her wasn’t clear. It wasn’t even clear if that man had been the one who murdered her. She had been strangled at night with the belt from her robe, in a room at an inn. The man she had been with was gone. It was hard not to suspect him. When Tengo’s father got the news, he came from Ichikawa and took back his infant son.
Maybe I should have told Tengo about this, Ushikawa thought. He has a right to know. But he told me he didn’t want to hear anything about his mother from the likes of me, so I didn’t say anything. Well, what are you going to do? That’s not my problem, it’s his.
At any rate, whether Tengo is here or not, I have to keep up my surveillance of this place, Ushikawa told himself. Last night was that mysterious woman who looked a lot like Aomame. I have no proof it’s her, but there’s a strong possibility it is. That’s what my misshapen head is telling me. And if that woman is Aomame, she’ll be back to visit Tengo before long. She doesn’t know yet that his father has died. These were Ushikawa’s deductions as he mulled over the situation. Tengo must have gotten the news about his father during the night and set off early this morning. And there must be some reason why the two of them couldn’t get in touch by phone. Which means she would definitely be coming back here. Something was so important to her that she would come here, despite the danger. This time he was going to find out where she was going.
Doing so might also begin to explain why there were two moons. This was a fascinating question that Ushikawa was dying to solve. But really it was of secondary importance. His job was to find out where Aomame was hiding, and hand her over, nice and neat, to the creepy Sakigake duo. Until I do so, whether there are two moons or only one, he decided, I have to be realistic. That has always been my strong point. It’s what defines me.
Ushikawa went to the photo store near the station and handed over five thirty-six-exposure rolls of film. Once the film had been processed and printed, he went to a nearby chain restaurant and looked through them in chronological order while eating a meal of chicken curry. Most were photos of people he was now familiar with. There were three people he was most interested in: Fuka-Eri and Tengo, and last night’s mystery woman.
Fuka-Eri’s eyes made him nervous. Even in the photo she was staring straight into his face. No doubt about it, Ushikawa thought. She knew she was being observed. She probably knew about the hidden camera, too, and that he was taking photos. Her clear eyes saw through everything, and they didn’t like what Ushikawa was up to. That unwavering gaze stabbed mercilessly to the depths of his heart. There was no excuse whatsoever for the activities he was engaged in. At the same time, though, she wasn’t condemning him, or despising him. In a sense, those gorgeous eyes forgave him. No, not forgiveness, Ushikawa decided, rethinking it. Those eyes pitied him. She knew how ugly Ushikawa’s actions were, and she felt compassion for him.
Looking at her eyes, he had felt a sharp stab of pain between his ribs, as if a thick knitting needle had been thrust in. He felt like a twisted, ugly person. So what? he thought. I really am twisted and ugly. The natural, transparent pity that colored her eyes sank deep into his heart. He would have much preferred to be openly accused, reviled, denounced, and convicted. Much better even to be beaten senseless with a baseball bat. That he could stand. But not this.
Compared with her, Tengo was much easier to deal with. In the photo he was standing at the entrance, also looking in his direction. Like Fuka-Eri, he carefully examined his surroundings. But there was nothing in his eyes. Pure, ignorant eyes like those couldn’t locate the camera hidden behind the curtains, or Ushikawa.
Ushikawa turned to the photos of the mystery woman. There were three photos. Baseball cap, dark-framed glasses, gray muffler up to her nose. It was impossible to make out her features. The lighting was poor in all the photos, and the baseball cap cast a shadow over her face. Still, this woman perfectly fit his mental i of Aomame. He picked up the photos and, like checking out a poker hand, went through them in order, over and over. The more he looked at them, the more convinced he was that this had to be Aomame.
He called the waitress over and asked her about the day’s dessert. Peach pie, she replied. Ushikawa ordered a piece and a refill of coffee.
If this isn’t Aomame, he thought as he waited for the pie, then I might never see her as long as I live.
The peach pie was much tastier than expected. Juicy peaches inside a crisp, flaky crust. Canned peaches, no doubt, but not too bad for a dessert at a chain restaurant. Ushikawa ate every last bite, drained the coffee, and left the restaurant feeling content. He picked up three days’ worth of food at a supermarket, then went back to the apartment and his stakeout in front of the camera.
As he continued his surveillance of the entrance, he leaned back against the wall, in a sunny spot, and dozed off a few times. This didn’t bother him. He felt sure he hadn’t missed anything important while he slept. Tengo was away from Tokyo at his father’s funeral, and Fuka-Eri wasn’t coming back. She knew he was continuing his surveillance. The chances were slim that the mystery woman would visit while it was light out. She would be cautious, and wait until dark to make a move.
But even after sunset the mystery woman didn’t appear. The same old lineup came and went-shopping bags in hand, out for an evening stroll, those coming back from work looking more beaten and worn out than when they had set off in the morning. Ushikawa watched them come and go but didn’t snap any photos. There wasn’t any need. Ushikawa was focused on only three people. Everyone else was just a nameless pedestrian. But to pass time Ushikawa called out to them, using the nicknames he had come up with.
“Hey, Chairman Mao.” (The man’s hair looked like Mao Tse-tung’s.) “You must have worked hard today.”
“Warm today, isn’t it, Long Ears-perfect for a walk.”
“Evening, Chinless. Shopping again? What’s for dinner?”
Ushikawa kept up his surveillance until eleven. He gave a big yawn and called it a day. After he brushed his teeth, he stuck out his tongue and looked at it in the mirror. It had been a while since he had examined his tongue. Something like moss was growing on it, a light green, like real moss. He examined this moss carefully under the light. It was disturbing. The moss adhered to his entire tongue and didn’t look like it would come off easily. If I keep up like this, he thought, I’m going to turn into a Moss Monster. Starting with my tongue, green moss will spread here and there on my skin, like the shell of a turtle that lives in a swamp. The very thought was disheartening.
He sighed, and in a voiceless voice decided to stop worrying about his tongue. He turned off the light, slowly undressed in the dark, and snuggled into his sleeping bag. He zipped the bag and curled up like a bug.
It was dark when he woke up. He turned to check the time, but his clock wasn’t where it should be. This confused him. His long-standing habit was to always check for the clock before he went to sleep. So why wasn’t it there? A faint light came in through a gap in the curtain, but it only illuminated a corner of the room. Everywhere else was wrapped in middle-of-the-night darkness.
Ushikawa felt his heart racing, working hard to pump adrenaline through his system. His nostrils flared, his breathing was ragged, like he had woken in the middle of a vivid, exciting dream.
But he wasn’t dreaming. Something really was happening. Somebody was standing right next to him. Ushikawa could sense it. A shadow, darker than the darkness, was looming over him, staring down at his face. His back stiffened. In a fraction of a second, his mind regrouped and he instinctively tried to unzip the sleeping bag.
In the blink of an eye, the person wrapped his arm around Ushikawa’s throat. He didn’t even have time to get out a sound. Ushikawa felt a man’s strong, trained muscles around his neck. This arm constricted his throat, squeezing him mercilessly in a viselike grip. The man never said a word. Ushikawa couldn’t even hear him breathing. He twisted and writhed in his sleeping bag, tearing at the inner nylon lining, kicking with both feet. He tried to scream, but even if he could, it wouldn’t help. Once the man had settled down on the tatami he didn’t budge an inch, except for his arm, which gradually increased the amount of force he applied. A very effective, economical movement. As he did, pressure grew on Ushikawa’s windpipe, and his breathing grew weaker.
In the midst of this desperate situation, what flashed through Ushikawa’s mind was this: How had the man gotten in here? The door was locked, the chain inside set, the windows bolted shut. So how did he get in? If he picked the lock, it would have made a sound.
This guy is a real pro. If the situation called for it, he wouldn’t hesitate to take a person’s life. He is trained precisely for this. Was he sent by Sakigake? Have they finally decided to get rid of me? Did they conclude that I was useless to them, a hindrance they had to get rid of? If so, they’re flat-out wrong. I’m one step away from locating Aomame. Ushikawa tried to speak, to tell the man this. Listen to me first, he wanted to plead. But no voice would come. There wasn’t enough air to vibrate his vocal cords, and his tongue in the back of his mouth was a solid rock.
Now his windpipe was completely blocked. His lungs desperately struggled for oxygen, but none was to be found, and he felt his body and mind split apart. His body continued to writhe inside the sleeping bag, but his mind was dragged off into the heavy, gooey air. He suddenly had no feeling in his arms and legs. Why? his fading mind asked. Why do I have to die in such an ugly place, in such an ugly way? There was no answer. An undefined darkness descended from the ceiling and enveloped everything.
When he regained consciousness, Ushikawa was no longer inside the sleeping bag. He couldn’t feel his arms or legs. All he knew was that he had on a blindfold and his cheek felt pressed up against the tatami. He wasn’t being strangled anymore. His lungs audibly heaved like bellows breathing in new air. Cold, winter air. The oxygen made new blood, and his heart pumped this hot red liquid to all his nerve endings at top speed. He coughed wretchedly and focused on breathing. Gradually, feeling was returning to his extremities. His heart pounded hard in his ears. I’m still alive, Ushikawa told himself in the darkness.
Ushikawa was lying facedown on the tatami. His hands were bound behind him, tied up in something that felt like a soft cloth. His ankles were tied up as well-not tied so tightly, but in an accomplished, effective way. He could roll from side to side, but that was all. Ushikawa found it astounding that he was alive, still breathing. So that wasn’t death, he thought. It had come awfully close to death, but it wasn’t death itself. A sharp pain remained, like a lump, on either side of his throat. He had urinated in his pants and his underwear was wet and starting to get clammy. But it wasn’t such a bad sensation. In fact he rather welcomed it. The pain and cold were signs that he was still alive.
“You won’t die that easily,” the man’s voice said. Like he had been reading Ushikawa’s mind.
CHAPTER 23
It was past midnight, the day had shifted from Sunday to Monday, but still sleep wouldn’t come.
Aomame finished her bath, put on pajamas, slipped into bed, and turned out the light. Staying up late wouldn’t accomplish a thing. For the time being she had left it all up to Tamaru. Much better to get some sleep and think again in the morning when her mind was fresh. But she was wide awake, and her body wanted to be up and moving. It didn’t look like she would be getting to sleep anytime soon.
She gave up, got out of bed, and threw a robe over her pajamas. She boiled water, made herbal tea, and sat at the dining table, slowly sipping it. A thought came to her, but what it was exactly, she couldn’t say. It had a thick, furtive form, like far-off rain clouds. She could make out its shape but not its outline. There was a disconnect of some kind between shape and outline. Mug in hand, she went over to the window, and looked out at the playground through a gap in the curtains.
There was no one there, of course. Past one a.m. now, the sandbox, swings, and slide were deserted. It was a particularly silent night. The wind had died down, and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, just the two moons floating above the frozen branches of the trees. The position of the moons had shifted with the earth’s rotation, but they were still visible.
Aomame stood there, thinking about Bobblehead’s run-down apartment building, and the name card in the slot on the door of apartment 303. A white card with the typed name Kawana. The card wasn’t new, by any means. The edges were curled up, and there were faint moisture stains on it. The card had been in the slot for some time.
Tamaru would find out for her if it was really Tengo Kawana who lived there, or someone else with the same last name. At the latest, he would probably report back by tomorrow. He wasn’t the kind of person who wasted time. Then she would know for sure. Depending on the outcome, she thought, I might actually see Tengo before much longer. The possibility made it hard to breathe, like the air around her had suddenly gotten thin.
But things might not work out that easily. Even if the person living in 303 was Tengo Kawana, Bobblehead was hidden away somewhere in the same building. And he was planning something-what, she didn’t know, but it couldn’t be good. He was undoubtedly hatching a clever plan, breathing down their necks, doing what he could to prevent them from seeing each other.
No, there’s nothing to worry about, Aomame told herself. Tamaru can be trusted. He’s more meticulous, capable, and experienced than anyone I know. If I leave it up to him, he will fend off Bobblehead for me. Bobblehead is a danger not just to me, but to Tamaru as well, a risk factor that has to be eliminated.
But what if Tamaru decides that it isn’t advisable for Tengo and me to meet, then what will I do? If that happens, then Tamaru will surely cut off any possibility of Tengo and me ever seeing each other. Tamaru and I are pretty friendly, but his top priority is what will benefit the dowager and keep her out of harm’s way. That’s his real job-he isn’t doing all this for my sake.
This made her uneasy. Getting Tengo and her together, letting them see each other again-where did this fall on Tamaru’s list of priorities? She had no way of knowing. Maybe telling Tamaru about Tengo had been a fatal mistake. Shouldn’t I have taken care of everything myself?
But what’s done is done. I’ve told Tamaru everything. I had no choice. Bobblehead must be lying in wait for me, and it would be suicide to waltz right in all alone. Time is ticking away and I don’t have the leisure to put things on hold and see how they might develop. Opening up to Tamaru about everything, and putting it all in his hands, was the best choice at the time.
Aomame decided to stop thinking about Tengo-and stop looking at the moons. The moonlight wreaked havoc on her mind. It changed the tides in inlets, stirred up life in the woods. She drank the last of her herbal tea, left the window, went to the kitchen, and rinsed out the mug. She longed for a sip of brandy, but she knew she shouldn’t have any alcohol while pregnant.
She sat on the sofa, switched on the small reading lamp beside it, and began rereading Air Chrysalis. She had read the novel at least ten times. It wasn’t a long book, and by now she had nearly memorized it. But she wanted to read it again, slowly, attentively. She figured she might as well, since she wasn’t about to get to sleep. There might be something in it she had overlooked.
Air Chrysalis was like a book with a secret code, and Eriko Fukada must have told the story in order to get a message across. Tengo rewrote it, creating something more polished, more effective. They had formed a team to create a novel with a wider appeal. As Leader had said, it was a collaborative effort. If Leader was to be believed, when Air Chrysalis became a bestseller and certain secrets were revealed within, the Little People lost their power, and the voice no longer spoke. Because of this, the well dried up, the flow was cut off. This is how much influence the novel had exerted.
She focused on each line as she read.
By the time the clock showed 2:30, she was already two-thirds of the way through the novel. She closed the book and tried to put into words the strong emotions she was feeling. Though she wouldn’t go so far as to call it a revelation, she had a strong, specific i in her mind.
I wasn’t brought here by chance.
This is what the i told her.
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