On October , the Soviet Union launched the worlds first
man-made satellite, Sputnik I, from the Baikanor Space Centre
in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Sputnik was cm in diameter,
weighed. kilograms, and orbited the Earth in minutes
and seconds.
On November of the same year, Sputnik II was successfully
launched, with the dog Laika on board. Laika became the first
living being to leave the Earths atmosphere, but the satellite
was never recovered, and Laika ended up sacrificed for the
sake of biological research in space.
from The Complete Chronicle of World History
 
 
In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for
the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado
sweeping across the plains flattening everything in its path,
tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing
them to bits. The tornados intensity doesnt abate for a second
as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat,
incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything,
transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an
exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly
monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with
happened to be years older than Sumire. And was married.
And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began,
and where it all ended. Almost.
 
At the time, Sumire Violet in Japanese was struggling to
become a writer. No matter how many choices life might bring 
 
her way, it was novelist or nothing. Her resolve was a regular
Rock of Gibraltar. Nothing could come between her and her
faith in literature.
After she graduated from a public high school in Kanagawa
Prefecture, she entered the liberal arts department of a cosy
little private college in Tokyo. She found the college totally out
of touch, a lukewarm, dispirited place, and she loathed it and
found her fellow students (which would include me, Im
afraid) hopelessly dull, second-rate specimens. Unsurprisingly,
then, just before her junior year, she simply upped and left.
Staying there any longer, she concluded, was a waste of time. I
think it was the right move, but if I can be allowed a mediocre
generalization, dont pointless things have a place, too, in this
far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an
imperfect life and itd lose even its imperfection.
 
Sumire was a hopeless romantic, a bit set in her ways 
innocent of the ways of the world, to put a nice spin on it. Start
her talking and shed go on nonstop, but if she was with
someone she didnt get along with most people in the world,
in other words she barely opened her mouth. She smoked too
much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time
she took the train. Shed get so engrossed in her thoughts at
times shed forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those
war orphans in an old Italian film like a stick with eyes. Id
love to show you a photo of her, but I dont have any. She
hated having her photograph taken no desire to leave behind
for posterity a Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man. If there
were a photograph of Sumire taken at that time, I know it
would provide a valuable record of how special certain people
can be. 
 
Im getting the order of events mixed up. The woman Sumire
fell in love with was named Miu. At least thats what everyone
called her. I dont know her real name, a fact that caused
problems later on, but again Im getting ahead of myself. Miu
was Korean by nationality, but she didnt speak a word of
Korean until she decided to study it when she was in her midtwenties.
She was born and raised in Japan and studied at a
music academy in France, so as well as Japanese she was fluent
in both French and English. She always dressed well, in a
refined way, with expensive yet modest accessories, and she
drove a twelve-cylinder, navy-blue Jaguar.
 
The first time Sumire met Miu, she talked about Jack Kerouacs
novels. Sumire was absolutely nuts about Kerouac. She always
had her Literary Idol of the Month, and at that point it
happened to be the out-of-fashion Kerouac. She carried a dogcared
copy of On the Road or Lonesome Traveler stuck in her coat
pocket, thumbing through them every chance she got.
Whenever she came across lines she liked, shed mark them in
pencil and commit them to memory as if they were Holy Writ.
Her favourite lines were from the fire lookout section of
Lonesome Traveler. Kerouac spent three lonely months in a cabin
on top of a high mountain, working as a fire lookout.
Sumire especially liked this part:
No man should go through life without once
experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the
wilderness, finding himself depending solely on
himself and thereby learning his true and hidden
strength. 
 
 Dont you just love it? she said. Every day you stand on
top of a mountain, make a sweep, checking to see if there
are any fires. And thats it. Youre done for the day. The rest of
the time you can read, write, whatever you want. At night
scruffy bears hang around your cabin. Thats the life!
Compared to that, studying literature in college is like biting
down on the bitter end of a cucumber. 
 Okay, I said, but someday youll have to come down off
that mountain. As usual, my practical, humdrum opinions
didnt faze her.
 
Sumire wanted to be like a character in a Kerouac novel wild,
cool, dissolute. Shed stand around, hands shoved deep in her
coat pockets, her hair an uncombed mess, staring vacantly at
the sky through her black plastic-framed Dizzy Gillespie
glasses, which she wore despite her / vision. She was
invariably decked out in an oversized herringbone coat from a
second-hand shop and a pair of rough work boots. If shed
been able to grow a beard, Im sure she would have.
Sumire wasnt exactly a beauty. Her cheeks were sunken, her
mouth a little too wide. Her nose was on the small side and
upturned. She had an expressive face and a great sense of
humour, though she hardly ever laughed out loud. She was
short, and even in a good mood she talked like she was half a
step away from picking a fight. I never knew her to use lipstick
or eyebrow pencil, and I have my doubts that she even knew
bras came in different sizes. Still, Sumire had something special
about her, something that drew people to her. Defining that
special something isnt easy, but when you gazed into her eyes,
you could always find it, reflected deep down inside.
 
 
I might as well just come right out and say it. I was in love with
Sumire. I was attracted to her from the first time we talked, and
soon there was no turning back. For a long time she was the
only thing I could think about. I tried to tell her how I felt, but
somehow the feelings and the right words couldnt connect.
Maybe it was for the best. If I had been able to tell her my
feelings, she would have just laughed at me.
While Sumire and I were friends, I went out with two or
three other girls. Its not that I dont remember the exact
number. Two, three it depends on how you count. Add to this
girls I slept with once or twice, and the list would be a little
longer. Anyhow, while I made love to these other girls, I
thought about Sumire. Or at least thoughts of her grazed a
corner of my mind. I imagined I was holding her. Kind of a
caddish thing to do, but I couldnt help myself.
 
Let me get back to how Sumire and Miu met.
Miu had heard of Jack Kerouac and had a vague sense that he
was a novelist of some kind. What kind of novelist, though, she
couldnt recall. Kerouac … hmm… Wasnt he a Sputnik? 
Sumire couldnt work out what she meant. Knife and fork
poised in mid-air, she gave it some thought. Sputnik? You
mean the first satellite the Soviets sent up, in the fifties? Jack
Kerouac was an American novelist. I guess they do overlap in
terms of generation… 
 Isnt that what they called the writers back then? Miu
asked. She traced a circle on the table with her fingertip, as if
rummaging through some special jar full of memories.
 Sputnik … ? 
 The name of a literary movement. You know how they
classify writers in various schools of writing. Like Shiga Naoya 
 
was in the White Birch School. 
Finally it dawned on Sumire. Beatnik! 
Miu lightly dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
 Beatnik Sputnik. I never can remember those kinds of terms.
Its like the Kenmun Restoration or the Treaty of Rapallo.
Ancient history. 
A gentle silence descended on them, suggestive of the flow of
time.
 The Treaty of Rapallo? Sumire asked.
Miu smiled. A nostalgic, intimate smile, like a treasured old
possession pulled out of the back of a drawer. Her eyes
narrowed in an utterly charming way. She reached out and,
with her long, slim fingers, gently ruffled Sumires already
tousled hair. It was such a sudden yet natural gesture that
Sumire could only return the smile.
 
Ever since that day, Sumires private name for Miu was Sputnik
Sweetheart. She loved the sound of it. It made her think of Laika,
the dog. The man-made satellite streaking soundlessly across
the blackness of outer space. The dark, lustrous eyes of the dog
gazing out of the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of
space, what could Laika possibly be looking at?
 
This Sputnik conversation took place at a wedding reception
for Sumires cousin at a posh hotel in Akasaka. Sumire wasnt
particularly close to her cousin; in fact they didnt get along at
all. Shed just as soon be tortured as attend one of these
receptions, but she couldnt back out of this one. She and Miu
were seated next to each other at one of the tables. Miu didnt
go into all the details, but it seemed shed taught Sumires
cousin the piano or something along those lines when she 
 
was taking the entrance exams for the university music
department. It wasnt a long or very close relationship, clearly,
but Miu felt obliged to attend.
In the instant Miu touched her hair, Sumire fell in love, as if
she were crossing a field when bang! a bolt of lightning zapped
her right in the head. Something like an artistic revelation.
Which is why, at that point, it didnt matter to Sumire that the
person she fell in love with happened to be a woman.
I dont think Sumire ever had what youd call a lover. In high
school she had a few boyfriends, guys shed go to the cinema
with, go swimming with. I couldnt picture any of those
relations ever getting very deep. Sumire was too focused on
becoming a novelist to really fall for anybody. If she did
experience sex or something close to it in high school, Im
sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than
literary curiosity.
 To be perfectly frank, sexual desire has me baffled, she
once told me, making a sober face. This was just before she left
college, I believe; shed downed five banana daiquiris and was
pretty drunk. You know how it all comes about. Whats your
take on it? 
 Sexual desires not something you understand, I said,
giving my usual middle-of-the-road opinion. Its just there. 
She scrutinized me for a while, as if I were some machine
running on a previously unheard-of power source. Losing
interest, she stared up at the ceiling, and the conversation
petered out. No use talking to him about that, she must have
decided.
Sumire was born in Chigasaki. Her home was near the
seashore, and she grew up with the dry sound of sand-filled
wind blowing against her windows. Her father ran a dental 
 
clinic in Yokohama. He was remarkably handsome, his wellformed
nose reminding you of Gregory Peck in Spellbound.
Sumire didnt inherit that handsome nose, nor, according to
her, did her brother. She found it amazing that the genes that
had produced that nose had disappeared. If they really were
buried for ever at the bottom of the gene pool, the world was a
sadder place. Thats how wonderful this nose was.
Sumires father was an almost mythic figure to the women in
the Yokohama area who needed dental care. In the examination
room he always wore a surgical cap and large mask, so the only
thing the patient could see was a pair of eyes and ears. Even so,
it was obvious how attractive he was. His beautiful, manly
nose swelled up suggestively from under the mask, making his
female patients blush. In an instant regardless of whether
their dental plan covered the costs they fell in love.
 
Sumires mother passed away from a congenital heart defect
when she was just. Sumire hadnt quite turned three. The
only memory she had of her mother was a vague one of the
scent of her skin. Just a couple of photographs of her
remained a posed photo taken at her wedding, and a
snapshot taken immediately after Sumire was born. Sumire
used to pull out the photo album and gaze at the pictures.
Sumires mother was to put it mildly a completely
forgettable person. A short, humdrum hairstyle, clothes that
made you wonder what she could have been thinking, an ill-atease
smile. If shed taken one step back, she would have melted
right into the wall. Sumire was determined to brand her
mothers face on her memory. Then someday she might meet
her in her dreams. Theyd shake hands, have a nice chat. But
things werent that easy. Try as she might to remember her 
 
mothers face, it soon faded. Forget about dreams if Sumire
had passed her mother on the street, in broad daylight, she
wouldnt have known her.
Sumires father hardly ever spoke of his late wife. He wasnt
a talkative man to begin with, and in all aspects of life as
though it were a kind of mouth infection he wanted to avoid
catching he never talked about his feelings. Sumire had no
memory of ever asking her father about her dead mother.
Except for once, when she was still very small, for some reason
she asked him, What was my mother like? She remembered
this conversation very clearly.
Her father looked away and thought for a moment before
replying. She was good at remembering, things, he said.
 And she had nice handwriting. 
A strange way to describe someone. Sumire was waiting
expectantly, the snow-white first page of her notebook open,
for nourishing words that could have been a source of warmth
and comfort a pillar, an axis, to help prop up her uncertain
life here on this third planet from the sun. Her father should
have said something that his young daughter could have held
on to. But Surnires handsome father wasnt going to speak
those words, the very words she needed most.
 
Sumires father remarried when she was six, and two years
later her younger brother was born. Her new mother wasnt
pretty either. On top of which she wasnt so good at
remembering things, and her handwriting wasnt any great
shakes. She was a kind and fair person, though. That was a
lucky thing for little Sumire, her brand-new stepdaughter. No,
lucky isnt the right word. After all, her father had chosen the
woman. He might not have been the ideal father, but when it 
 
came to choosing a mate, he knew what he was doing.
Her stepmothers love for her never wavered during her
long, difficult years of adolescence, and when Sumire declared
she was going to quit college and write novels, her
stepmother though she had her own opinions on the matter 
respected Sumires desire. Shed always been pleased that
Sumire loved to read so much, and she encouraged her literary
pursuits.
Her stepmother eventually won over her father, and they
decided that, until Sumire turned , they would provide her
with a small stipend. If she wasnt able to make a living by
writing then, shed be on her own. If her stepmother hadnt
spoken up in her defence, Sumire might very well have been
thrown out penniless, without the necessary social skills 
into the wilderness of a somewhat humourless reality. The
Earth, after all, doesnt creak and groan its way around the sun
just so human beings can have a good time and a bit of a laugh.
 
Sumire met her Sputnik Sweetheart a little more than two years
after shed dropped out of college.
She was living in a one-room apartment in Kichijoji where
she made do with the minimum amount of furniture and the
maximum number of books. Shed get up at noon, and take a
walk around Inogashira Park in the afternoon, with all the
enthusiasm of a pilgrim making her way through sacred hills.
On sunny days shed sit on a park bench, chewing on bread,
puffing one cigarette after another, reading. On rainy or cold
days shed go into an old-fashioned coffee house where
classical music played at full volume, sink down into a wornout
sofa, and read her books, a serious look on her face as she
listened to Schuberts symphonies, Bachs cantatas. In the 
 
evening shed have one beer and buy some ready-to-eat food at
the supermarket for dinner.
By p.m. shed settle down at her desk. Thered always be a
thermos of hot coffee, a coffee mug (one I gave her on her
birthday, with a picture of Snafkin on it), a pack of Marlboro
and a glass ashtray. Of course she had a word processor as
well. Each key with its very own letter.
A deep silence ensued. Her mind was as clear as the winter
night sky, the Big Dipper and North Star in place, twinkling
brightly. She had so many things she had to write, so many
stories to tell. If she could only find the right outlet, heated
thoughts and ideas would gush out like lava, congealing into a
steady stream of inventive works the likes of which the world
had never seen. Peoples eyes would pop wide open at the
sudden debut of this Promising Young Writer with a Rare Talent.
A photo of her, smiling coolly, would appear in the arts section
of the newspaper, and editors would beat a path to her door.
But it never happened that way. Sumire wrote some works
that had a beginning. And some that had an end. But never one
that had both a beginning and an end.
 
Not that she suffered from writers block far from it. She
wrote endlessly, everything that came into her head. The
problem was that she wrote too much. Youd think that all shed
have to do was cut out the extra parts and shed be fine, but
things werent that easy. She could never decide on the big
picture what was necessary and what wasnt. The following
day when she re-read what shed printed out, every line looked
absolutely essential. Or else shed Tippex out the whole thing.
Sometimes, in despair, shed rip up her entire manuscript and
consign it to the bin. If this had been a winter night and the 
 
room had had a fireplace, there would have been a certain
warmth to it imagine a scene from La Bohème but Sumires
apartment not only lacked a fireplace, it didnt even have a
phone. Not to mention a decent mirror.
 
On weekends, Sumire would come over to my apartment,
drafts of her novels spilling out of her arms the lucky
manuscripts that had escaped the massacre. Still, they made
quite a pile. Sumire would show her manuscripts to only one
person in the whole world. Me.
In college Id been two years ahead of her, and our subjects
were different, so there wasnt much chance wed meet. We
met by pure chance. It was a Monday in May, the day after a
string of holidays, and I was at the bus stop in front of the main
gate of the college, standing there reading a Paul Nizan novel
Id found in a second-hand bookshop. A short girl beside me
leaned over, took a look at the book, and asked me, Why Nizan,
of all people? She sounded like she was trying to pick a fight.
Like she wanted to kick something and send it flying, but
lacking a suitable target had attacked my choice of reading
matter.
Sumire and I were very alike. Devouring books came as
naturally to us as breathing. Every spare moment wed settle
down in some quiet corner, endlessly turning page after page.
Japanese novels, foreign novels, new works, classics, avantgarde
to bestseller as long as there was something
intellectually stimulating in a book, wed read it. Wed hang
out in libraries, spend whole days browsing in Kanda, the
second-hand bookshop Mecca in Tokyo. Id never come across
anyone else who read so avidly so deeply, so widely, as
Sumire, and Im sure she felt the same. 
 
I graduated around the time Sumire dropped out of college,
and after that shed hang out at my place two or three times a
month. Occasionally Id go over to her apartment, but you
could barely squeeze two people in there, and most of the time
shed end up at mine. Wed talk about the novels wed read
and exchange books. I cooked a lot of dinners. I didnt mind
cooking, and Sumire was the kind of person whod rather go
hungry than cook herself. Shed bring me presents from her
part-time jobs to thank me. Once she had a job in a warehouse
in a drug company and brought me six dozen condoms.
Theyre probably still at the back of a drawer somewhere.
 
The novels or fragments of novels, really Sumire wrote
werent as terrible as she thought. True, at times her style
resembled a patchwork quilt sewn by a group of stubborn old
ladies, each with her own tastes and complaints, working in
grim silence. Add to this her sometimes manic-depressive
personality, and things occasionally got out of control. As if
this werent enough, Sumire was dead set on creating a
massive nineteenth-century-style Total Novel, a kind of
portmanteau packed with every possible phenomenon in order
to capture the soul and human destiny.
Having said that, Sumires writing had a remarkable
freshness about it, her attempt to honestly portray what was
important to her. On the plus side she didnt try to imitate
anyone elses style, and she didnt attempt to distil everything
into some precious, clever little pieces. Thats what I liked most
about her writing. It wouldnt have been right to pare down the
direct power in her writing just so it could take on some
pleasant, cosy form. There was no need to rush things. She still
had plenty of time for detours. As the saying goes, Whats 
 
nurtured slowly grows well. 
 
 My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I
want to write about, she said. Images, scenes, snatches of
words … in my mind theyre all glowing, all alive. Write! they
shout at me. A great new story is about to be born I can feel it.
Itll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I
sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize
something vital is missing. It doesnt crystallize no crystals,
just pebbles. And Im not transported anywhere. 
With a frown, Sumire picked up her th stone and tossed it
into the pond.
 Maybe Im lacking something. Something you absolutely
must have to be a novelist. 
A deep silence ensued. It seemed she was seeking my run-ofthe-mill
opinion.
After a while I started to speak. A long time ago in China
there were cities with high walls around them, with huge,
magnificent gates. The gates werent just doors for letting
people in or out, they had greater significance. People believed
the citys soul resided in the gates. Or at least that it should
reside there. Its like in Europe in the Middle Ages when
people felt a citys heart lay in its cathedral and central square.
Which is why even today in China there are lots of wonderful
gates still standing. Do you know how the Chinese built these
gates? 
 I have no idea, Sumire answered.
 People would take carts out to old battlefields and gather
the bleached bones that were buried there or lay scattered
about. Chinas a pretty ancient country lots of old
battlegrounds so they never had to search far. At the entrance 
 
to the city theyd construct a huge gate and seal the bones up
inside. They hoped that by commemorating the dead soldiers
in this way they would continue to guard their town. Theres
more. When the gate was finished theyd bring several dogs
over to it, slit their throats, and sprinkle their blood on the gate.
Only by mixing fresh blood with the dried-out bones would the
ancient souls of the dead magically revive. At least that was the
idea. 
Sumire waited in silence for me to go on.
 Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and
make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might
be, that alone doesnt make it a living, breathing novel. A story
is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of
magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world
on the other side. 
 So what youre saying is that I go out on my own and find
my own dog? 
I nodded.
 And shed fresh blood? 
Sumire bit her lip and thought about this. She tossed another
hapless stone into the pond. I really dont want to kill an
animal if I can help it. 
 Its a metaphor, I said. You dont have to actually kill
anything. 
 
We were sitting as usual side by side at Inogashira Park, on her
favourite bench. The pond spread out before us. A windless
day. Leaves lay where they had fallen, pasted on the surface of
the water. I could smell a bonfire somewhere far away. The air
was filled with the scent of the end of autumn, and far-off
sounds were painfully clear. 
 
 What you need is time and experience, I said.
 Time and experience, she mused, and gazed up at the sky.
 Theres not much you can do about time it just keeps on
passing. But experience? Dont tell me that. Im not proud of it,
but I dont have any sexual desire. And what sort of experience
can a writer have if she doesnt feel passion? Itd be like a chef
without an appetite. 
 I dont know where your sexual desire has gone, I said.
 Maybe its just hiding somewhere. Or gone on a trip and
forgotten to come home. But falling in love is always a pretty
crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you.
Who knows maybe even tomorrow. 
Sumire turned her gaze from the sky to my face. Like a
tornado? 
 You could say that. 
She thought about it. Have you ever actually seen a
tornado? 
 No, I replied. Thankfully, Tokyo wasnt exactly Tornado
Alley.
About a half a year later, just as I had predicted, suddenly,
preposterously, a tornado-like love seized Sumire. With a
woman years older. Her very own Sputnik Sweetheart.
 
As Sumire and Miu sat there together at the table at the
wedding reception, they did what everybody else does in the
world in such situations, namely, introduce themselves. Sumire
hated her own name and tried to conceal it whenever she
could. But when somebody asks you your name, the only polite
thing to do is to go ahead and give it.
According to her father, her mother had chosen the name
Sumire. She loved the Mozart song of the same name and had 
 
decided long before that if she had a daughter that would be
her name. On the record shelf in their living room was a record
of Mozarts songs, doubtless the one her mother had listened to
and, when she was a child, Sumire would carefully lay this
heavy LP on the turntable and listen to the song over and over.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was the soloist, Waiter Gieseking on
piano. Sumire didnt understand the lyrics, but from the
graceful motif she felt sure the song was a paean to the
beautiful violets blooming in a field. Sumire loved that image.
In junior high, though, she came across a Japanese translation
of the song in her school library and was shocked. The lyrics
told of a callous shepherds daughter trampling down a
hapless little violet in a field. The girl didnt even notice shed
flattened the flower. It was based on a Goethe poem, and
Sumire found nothing redeeming about it, no lesson to be
learned.
 
 How could my mother give me the name of such an awful
song? said Sumire, scowling.
Miu arranged the corners of the napkin on her lap, smiled
neutrally, and looked at Sumire. Mius eyes were quite dark.
Many colours mixed together, but clear and unclouded.
 Do you think the song was beautiful? 
 Yes, the song itself is pretty. 
 If the music is lovely, I think that should be enough. After
all, not everything in this world can be beautiful, right? Your
mother must have loved that song so much the lyrics didnt
bother her. And besides, if you keep making that kind of face
youre going to get some permanent wrinkles. 
Sumire allowed her scowl to relax.
 Maybe youre right. I just felt so let down. I mean, the only 
 
tangible sort of thing my mother left me was that name. Other
than myself, of course. 
 Well, I think Sumire is a lovely name. I like it very much, 
said Miu, and tilted her head slightly as if to view things from a
new angle. By the way, is your father here at the reception? 
Sumire looked around. The reception hall was large, but her
father was tall, and she easily spotted him. He was sitting two
tables away, his face turned sideways, talking with some short,
elderly man in a morning coat. His smile was so trusting and
warm it would melt a glacier. Under the light of the
chandeliers, his handsome nose rose up softly, like a rococo
cameo, and even Sumire, who was used to seeing him, was
moved by its beauty. Her father truly belonged at this kind of
formal gathering. His mere presence lent the place a
flamboyant atmosphere. Like cut flowers in a large vase or a
jet-black stretch limousine.
 
When she spied Sumires father, Miu was speechless. Sumire
could hear the intake of breath. Like the sound of a velvet
curtain being drawn aside on a peaceful morning to let in the
sunlight to wake someone very special to you. Maybe I should
have brought a pair of opera glasses, Sumire mused. But she
was used to the dramatic reaction her fathers looks brought
out in people especially middle-aged women. What is
beauty? What value does it have? Sumire always found it
strange. But no one ever answered her. There was just that
same immovable effect.
 Whats it like to have such a handsome father? Miu asked.
 Just out of curiosity. 
Sumire sighed people could be so predictable. I cant say I
like it. Everybody thinks the same thing: What a handsome 
 
man. A real standout. But his daughter, well she isnt much to
look at, is she? That must be what they mean by atavism, they
think. 
Miu turned towards Sumire, pulled her chin in ever so
slightly, and gazed at her face, as if she were admiring a
painting in an art gallery.
 If thats how youve always felt up till now, youve been
mistaken, she said. Youre lovely. Every bit as much as your
father. She reached out and, quite unaffectedly, lightly
touched Sumires hand that, lay on the table. You dont realize
how very attractive you are. 
Sumires face grew hot. Her heart galloped as loudly as a
crazed horse on a wooden bridge.
After this Sumire and Miu were absorbed in their own
private conversation. The reception was a lively one, with the
usual assortment of after-dinner speeches (including, most
certainly, Sumires father), and the dinner wasnt half bad. But
not a speck of this remained in Sumires memory. Was the
main course meat? Or fish? Did she use a knife and fork and
mind her manners? Or eat with her hands and lick the plate?
Sumire had no idea.
The two of them talked about music. Sumire was a big fan of
classical music and ever since she was small liked to paw
through her fathers record collection. She and Miu shared
similar tastes, it turned out. They both loved piano music and
were convinced that Beethovens Sonata No. was the
absolute pinnacle in the history of music. And that Wilhelm
Backhauss unparalleled performance of the sonata for Decca
set the interpretive standard. What a delightful, vibrant, and
joyous thing it was!
Vladimir Horowitzs mono recordings of Chopin, especially the 
 
scherzos, are thrilling, arent they? Friedrich Guldas performances of
Debussys preludes are witty and lovely. Giesekings Grieg is sweet
from start to finish. Sviatoslav Richters Prokofiev is worth listening
to over and over his interpretation exactly captures the mercurial
shifts of mood. And Wanda Landowskas Mozart sonatas so filled
with warmth and tenderness its hard to understand why they
havent received more acclaim.
 What do you do? asked Miu, once their discussion of
music had come to an end.
I dropped out of college, Sumire explained, and Im doing
some part-time jobs while I work on my novels. What kind of
novels? Miu asked. Its hard to explain, replied Sumire. Well,
said Miu, then what type of novels do you like to read? If I list
them all well be here for ever, said Sumire.
Recently Ive been reading Jack Kerouac. And thats where
the Sputnik part of their conversation came in.
Other than some light fiction she read to pass the time, Miu
hardly ever touched novels. I never can get it out of my mind
thats its all made up, she explained, so I just cant feel any
empathy for the characters. Ive always been that way. Thats
why her reading was limited to books that treated reality as
reality. Books, for the most part, that helped her in her work.
What kind of work do you do? asked Sumire.
 Mostly it has to do with foreign countries, said Miu.
 Thirteen years ago I took over my fathers trading company,
since I was the oldest child. Id been studying to be a pianist,
but my father passed away from cancer, my mother wasnt
strong physically and besides couldnt speak Japanese very
well. My brother was still in high school, so we decided, for the
time being, that Id take care of the company. A number of
relatives depended on the company for their livelihood, so I 
 
couldnt very well just let the company go to pot. 
She punctuated all this with a sigh.
 My fathers company originally imported dried goods and
medicinal herbs from Korea, but now it deals with a wide
variety of things. Even computer parts. Im still officially listed
as the head of the company, but my husband and younger
brother have taken over so I dont have to go to the office very
often. Instead Ive got my own private business. 
 Doing what? 
 Importing wine, mainly. Occasionally I arrange concerts,
too. I travel to Europe quite a bit, since this type of business
depends on personal connections. Which is why Im able, all by
myself, to compete with some top firms. But all that
networking takes a lot of time and energy. Thats only to be
expected, I suppose… She looked up, as if she had just
remembered something. By the way, do you speak English? 
 Speaking English isnt my strong suit, but Im okay, I guess.
I love to read English, though. 
 Do you know how to use a computer? 
 Not really, but Ive been using a word processor, and Im
sure I could pick it up. 
 How about driving? 
Sumire shook her head. The year she started college she tried
reversing her fathers Volvo estate into the garage and smashed
the door on a pillar. Since then shed barely driven.
 All right can you explain, in words or less, the
difference between a sign and a symbol? 
Sumire lifted the napkin from her lap, lightly dabbed at her
mouth, and put it back. What was the woman driving at? A
sign and a symbol? 
 No special significance. Its just an example. 
 
Again Sumire shook her head. I have no idea. 
Miu smiled. If you dont mind, Id like you to tell me what
sort of practical skills you have. What youre especially good at.
Other than reading a lot of novels and listening to music. 
Sumire quietly laid her knife and fork on her plate, stared at
the anonymous space hanging over the table, and pondered the
question.
 Instead of things Im good at, it might be faster to list the
things I cant do. I cant cook or clean the house. My rooms a
mess, and Im always losing things. I love music, but I cant
sing a note. Im clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of
direction is the pits, and I cant tell left from right half the time.
When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils,
alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I cant help
myself. I have no money in the bank. Im bashful for no reason,
and I have hardly any friends to speak of. 
Sumire took a quick breath and forged ahead.
 However, I can touch-type really fast. Im not that athletic,
but other than the mumps, Ive never been sick a day in my life.
Im always punctual, never late for an appointment. I can eat
just about anything. I never watch TV. And other than a bit of
silly boasting, I hardly ever make excuses. Once a month or so
my shoulders get so stiff I cant sleep, but the rest of the time I
sleep like a log. My periods are light. I dont have a single
cavity. And my Spanish is okay. 
Miu looked up. You speak Spanish? 
When Sumire was in high school, she spent a month in the
home of her uncle, a businessman whod been stationed in
Mexico City. Making the most of the opportunity, shed
studied Spanish intensively. She had taken Spanish in college,
too. 
 
Miu grasped the stem of her wineglass between two fingers
and lightly turned it, as if turning a screw on a machine. What
would you think about working at my place for a while? 
 Working? Unsure what expression would best fit this
situation, Sumire made do with her usual dour look. Ive
never had a real job in my life, and Im not even sure how to
answer a phone the right way. I try to avoid taking the train
before a.m. and, as Im sure youve noticed from talking to
me, I dont speak politely. 
 None of that matters, said Miu simply. By the way, are
you free tomorrow, around noon? 
Sumire nodded reflexively. She didnt even have to think
about it. Free time, after all, was her main asset.
 Well then, why dont we have lunch together? Ill reserve a
quiet table at a restaurant nearby, Miu said. She held out the
fresh glass of red wine a waiter had poured for her, studied it
carefully, inhaled the aroma, then quietly took the first sip. The
whole series of movements had the sort of natural elegance of a
short cadenza a pianist has refined over the years.
 Well talk over the details then. Today Id rather just enjoy
myself. You know, Im not sure where its from, but this
Bordeaux isnt half bad. 
Sumire relaxed her dour look and asked Miu straight out:
 But you just met me, and you hardly know a thing about me. 
 Thats true. Maybe I dont, Miu admitted.
 So why do you think I might be of help to you? 
Miu swirled the wine in her glass. I always judge people by
their faces, she said. Meaning that I like your face, the way
you look. 
Sumire felt the air around her suddenly grow thin. Her
nipples tightened under her dress. Mechanically she reached 
 
for a glass of water and gulped it down. A hawk-faced waiter
quickly sidled in behind her and filled her empty glass with ice
water. In Sumires confused mind, the clatter of the ice cubes
sounded just like the groans of a robber hiding out in a cave.
 
I must be in love with this woman, she realized with a start. No
mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red. Im in love.
And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The
currents too overpowering; I dont have any choice. It may
very well be a special place, some place Ive never seen before.
Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up
wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything.
But theres no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if
it means Ill be burned up, gone for ever.
 
Now, after the fact, I know her hunch turned out to be correct.
One hundred and twenty per cent on the money. 
 
 
It was about two weeks after the wedding reception when
Sumire called me, a Sunday night, just before dawn. Naturally,
I was asleep. As dead to the world as an old anvil. The week
before Id been in charge of arranging a meeting and could only
snatch a few hours sleep as I gathered together all the
necessary (read pointless) documents we needed. Come the
weekend, I wanted to sleep to my hearts content. So of course
thats when the phone rang.
 
 Were you asleep? Sumire asked.
 Um, I groaned and instinctively glanced at the alarm clock
beside my bed. The clock had huge fluorescent hands, but I
couldnt read the time. The image projected on my retina and
the part of my brain that processed it were out of sync, like an
old lady struggling, unsuccessfully, to thread a needle. What I
could understand was that it was dark all around and close to 
 
Fitzgeralds Dark Night of the Soul .
 Itll be dawn pretty soon. Um, I murmured listlessly.
 Right near where I live theres a man who raises roosters.
Must have had them for years and years. In half an hour or so
theyll be crowing up a storm. This is my favourite time of the
day. The pitch-black night sky starting to glow in the east, the
roosters crowing for all theyre worth like its their revenge on
somebody. Any roosters near you? 
On this end of the telephone line I shook my head slightly.
 Im calling from the phone box near the park. 
 Um, I said. There was a phone box about yards from
her apartment. Since Sumire didnt own a phone, she always
had to walk over there to call. Just your average phone box.
 I know I shouldnt be calling you this late. Im really sorry.
The time of night when the roosters havent even started
crowing. When this pitiful moon is hanging there in a corner of
the eastern sky like a used-up kidney. But think of me I had
to trudge out in the pitch dark all the way over here clutching
this telephone card I got as a present at my cousins wedding.
With a photo on it of the happy couple holding hands. Can you
imagine how depressing that is? My socks dont even match,
for pitys sake. One has a picture of Mickey Mouse; the others
plain wool. My rooms a complete disaster area; I cant find
anything. I dont want to say this too loudly, but you wouldnt
believe how awful my panties are. I doubt if even one of those
pantie thieves would touch them. If some pervert killed me, Id
never live it down. Im not asking for sympathy, but it would
be nice if you could give me a bit more in the way of a
response. Other than those cold interjections of yours ohs and
ums. How about a conjunction? A conjunction would be nice.
A yet or a but. 
 
 However, I said. I was exhausted and felt like I was still in
the middle of a dream.
 ‘However, she repeated. Okay, I can live with that. One
small step for man. One very small step, however. 
 So, was there something you wanted? 
 Right, I wanted you to tell me something. Thats why I
called, Sumire said. She lightly cleared her throat. What I
want to know is whats the difference between a sign and
symbol? 
I felt a weird sensation, like something was silently parading
through my head. Could you repeat the question? 
She did. Whats the difference between a sign and a symbol?
I sat up in bed, switched the receiver from my left hand to
my right. Let me get this right youre calling me because you
want to find out the difference between a sign and a symbol.
On Sunday morning, just before dawn. Um … 
 At. , to be precise, she said. It was bothering me. What
could be the difference between a sign and a symbol?
Somebody asked me that a couple of weeks ago and I cant get
it out of my mind. I was getting undressed for bed, and I
suddenly remembered. I cant sleep until I find out. Can you
explain it? The difference between a sign and a symbol? 
 Let me think, I said and gazed up at the ceiling. Even when
I was fully conscious, explaining things logically to Sumire was
never easy. The emperor is a symbol of Japan. Do you follow
that? 
 Sort of, she replied.
 Sort of isnt good enough. Thats what it says in the Japanese
constitution, I said, as calmly as possible. No room for
discussion or doubts. Youve got to accept that, or we wont get
anywhere. 
 
 Gotcha. Ill accept that. 
 Thank you. So the emperor is a symbol of Japan. But this
doesnt mean that the emperor and Japan are equivalent. Do
you follow? 
 I dont get it. 
 Okay, how about this the arrow points in one direction.
The emperor is a symbol of Japan, but Japan is not the symbol
of the emperor. You understand that, right? 
 I guess. 
 Say, for instance, you write ‘The emperor is a sign of Japan.
That makes the two equivalent. So when we say ‘Japan, it
would also mean ‘the emperor, and when we speak of ‘the
emperor, it would also mean ‘Japan. In other words, the two
are interchangeable. Same as saying, ‘A equals B , so B equals
A. Thats what a sign is. 
 So youre saying you can switch the emperor and Japan?
Can you do that? 
 Thats not what I mean, I said, shaking my head vigorously
at my end of the line. Im just trying to explain the best I can.
Im not planning to switch the emperor and Japan. Its just a
way of explaining it. 
 Hmm, said Sumire. I think I get it. As an image. Its the
difference between a one-way street and a two-way street. 
 For our purposes, thats close enough. 
 Im always amazed how good you are at explaining things. 
 Thats my job, I said. My words seemed somehow flat and
stale. You should try being an elementary-school teacher
sometime. Youd never imagine the kinds of questions I get.
‘Why isnt the world square? Why do squids have ten legs and not
eight? Ive learned to come up with an answer to just about
everything. 
 
 You must be a great teacher. 
 I wonder, I said. I really did wonder.
 By the way, why do squids have ten legs and not eight? 
 Can I go back to sleep now? Im whacked. Just holding this
phone I feel like Im holding up a crumbling stone wall. 
 You know, said Sumire, and let a delicate pause
intervene like an old gatekeeper closing the railway-crossing
gate with a clatter just after the train bound for St Petersburg
has passed by its really silly to say this, but Im in love. 
 Um, I said, changing the receiver back to my left hand. I
could hear her breathing down the phone. I had no idea how I
should respond. And, as so often happens when I dont know
what to say, I let slip some totally inappropriate comment.
 Not with me, I assume? 
 Not with you, Sumire answered. I heard the sound of a
cheap lighter lighting a cigarette. Are you free today? Id like
to talk more. 
 You mean, about your falling in love with someone other
than me? 
 Right, she said. About my falling passionately in love
with somebody other than you. 
I clamped the phone between my head and shoulder and
stretched. Im free in the evening. 
 Ill be over at five, Sumire said. And then added, as if an
afterthought: Thank you. 
 For what? 
 For being nice enough to answer my question in the middle
of the night. 
I gave a vague response, hung up, and turned out the light. It
was still pitch black out. Just before I fell asleep, I thought
about her final thank you and whether Id ever heard those 
 
words from her before. Maybe I had, once, but I couldnt recall.
 
Sumire arrived at my apartment a little before five. I didnt
recognize her. Shed taken on a complete change of style. Her
hair was short in a stylish cut, her fringe still showing traces of
the scissors snips. She wore a light cardigan over a shortsleeve,
navy-blue dress and a pair of black enamel, mediumhigh
heels. She even had stockings on. Stockings? Womens
clothes werent exactly my field of expertise, but it was clear
that everything she wore was pretty expensive. Dressed like
this, she looked polished and lovely. It was quite becoming, to
tell the truth. Though I preferred the old, outrageous Sumire.
To each his own.
 Not bad, I said, giving her a complete once-over. But I
wonder what good old Jack Kerouac would say. 
Sumire smiled, an ever-so-slightly more sophisticated smile
than usual. Why dont we go for a walk? 
 
We walked side by side down University Boulevard towards
the station and stopped by our favourite coffee shop. Sumire
ordered her usual slice of cake along with her coffee. It was a
clear Sunday evening near the end of April. The flower shops
were full of crocuses and tulips. A gentle breeze blew, softly
rustling the hems of young girls skirts and wafting over the
leisurely fragrance of young trees.
I folded my hands behind my head and watched Sumire as
she slowly yet eagerly devoured her cake. From the small
speakers on the ceiling of the coffee shop Astrud Gilberto sang
an old bossa nova song. Take me to Aruanda, she sang. I
closed my eyes, and the clatter of the cups and saucers sounded
like the roar of a far-off sea. Aruanda whats it like there? I 
 
wondered.
 Still sleepy? 
 Not any more, I answered, opening my eyes.
 You feel okay? 
 Im fine. As fine as the Moldau River in spring. 
Sumire gazed for a while at the empty plate that had held her
slice of cake. She looked at me.
 Dont you think its strange that Im wearing these clothes? 
 I guess. 
 I didnt buy them. I dont have that kind of money. Theres a
story behind them. 
 Mind if I try to guess the story? 
 Go ahead, she said.
 There you were in your usual crummy Jack Kerouac outfit,
cigarette dangling from your lips, washing your hands in some
public toilet, when this five-foot one-inch woman rushed in, all
out of breath, dressed to the nines, and said, ‘Please, youve got
to help me! No time to explain, but Im being chased by some
awful people. Can I exchange clothes with you? If we swap
clothes I can give them the slip. Thank God were the same
size. Just like some Hong Kong action flick. 
Sumire laughed. And the other woman happened to wear a
size-six-and-a-half shoe and a size-seven dress. Just by
coincidence. 
 And right then and there you changed clothes, down to
your Mickey Mouse knickers. 
 Its my socks that are Mickey Mouse, not my knickers. 
 Whatever, I said.
 Hmm, Sumire mused. Actually, youre not too far off. 
 How far? 
She leaned across the table. Its a long story. Would you like 
 
to hear it? 
 Since youve come all the way over here to tell me, I have a
distinct feeling it doesnt matter if I do or not. Anyway, go right
ahead. Add a prelude, if youd like. And a ‘Dance of the
Blessed Spirits. I dont mind. 
She began to talk. About her cousins wedding reception, and
about the lunch she had had with Miu in Aoyama. And it was a
long tale. 
 
 
The day after the wedding, a Monday, was rainy. The rain
began to fall just after midnight and continued without a stop
till dawn. A soft, gentle rain that darkly dampened the spring
earth and quietly stirred up the nameless creatures living in it.
 
The thought of meeting Miu again thrilled Sumire, and she
found it hard to concentrate. She felt as though she were
standing alone on the summit of a hill, the wind swirling
around her. She settled down at her desk as usual, lit a
cigarette, and switched on her word processor, but stare as she
might at the screen, not a single sentence came to her. For
Sumire that was next to impossible. She gave up, turned off the
word processor, lay down in her tiny little room, and, an unlit
cigarette dangling from her lips, gave herself up to some
aimless musings.
If just the thought of seeing Miu has me this worked up, she 
 
thought, imagine how painful it would be if wed said goodbye
at the party and never saw each other again. Am I just yearning
to be like her a beautiful, refined older woman? No, she
decided, that cant be it. When Im beside her, I always want to
touch her. Thats a bit different from a yearning.
Sumire sighed, gazed up at the ceiling for a while, and lit her
cigarette. Its pretty strange if you think about it, she thought.
Here I am in love for the first time in my life, aged. And the
other person just happens to be a woman.
 
The restaurant Miu had made a reservation at was a ten-minute
walk from the Omote Sando subway station. The kind of
restaurant thats hard for first-timers to find; certainly not a
place where you just casually drop in for a meal. Even the
restaurants name was hard to remember unless you heard it a
couple of times. At the entrance Sumire told them Mius name
and was escorted to a small, private dining room on the first
floor. Miu was already there, sipping an iced Perrier water,
deep in conversation with the waiter about the menu.
Over a navy-blue polo shirt Miu had on a cotton sweater of
the same colour, and she wore a thin, plain silver hairpin. Her
trousers were white slim-fit jeans. On a corner of the table
rested a pair of bright blue sunglasses, and on the chair next to
her was a squash racquet and a Missoni sports bag. It looked
like she was on her way home after a couple of afternoon
games of squash. Her cheeks were still flushed a faint pink.
Sumire imagined her in the shower at the gym, scrubbing her
body with an exotic smelling bar of soap.
As Sumire entered the room, dressed in her usual
herringbone jacket and khaki trousers, her hair all messy like
some orphan, Miu looked up from the menu and gave her a 
 
dazzling smile. You told me the other day that you can eat
anything, right? I hope you dont mind if I go ahead and order
for us. 
Of course not, Sumire replied.
 
Miu ordered the same thing for both of them. The main course
was a light grilled fish with a touch of green sauce with
mushrooms. The slices of fish were cooked to perfection,
browned in an almost artistic way that you knew was just right.
Pumpkin gnocchi and a delicate endive salad rounded off the
meal. For dessert they had the crème brûlée, which only Sumire
ate. Miu didnt touch it. Finally, they had espresso. Sumire
observed that Miu took great care over what she ate. Her neck
was as slender as the stalk of some plant, her body without an
ounce of detectable fat. She didnt seem to have to diet. Even
so, it would appear she was super-strict about food. Like some
Spartan holed up in a mountain fortress.
As they ate they chatted about nothing in particular. Miu
wanted to know more about Sumires background, and she
obliged, answering the questions as honestly as she could. She
told Miu about her father, her mother, the schools she had
attended (all of which she loathed), the prizes she had won in a
composition contest a bicycle and a set of encyclopedias 
how she came to quit college, the way she spent her days now.
Not a particularly thrilling life. Even so, Miu listened,
enthralled, as if listening to the enchanting customs of a far-off
land.
Sumire wanted to know so much more about Miu, but Miu
hesitated to talk about herself. Thats not important, she
deferred with a bright smile. Id rather hear more about you. 
By the time they finished eating, Sumire still hadnt learned 
 
much. About the only thing she found out was this: that Mius
father had donated a lot of money to the small town in the
north part of Korea where he had been born, and had built
several public buildings for the townspeople to which theyd
responded by erecting a bronze statue of him in the town
square.
 Its a small town deep in the mountains, Miu explained.
 The winters awful, and just looking at the place makes you
shiver. The mountains are craggy and reddish, full of bent
trees. Once, when I was little, my father took me there. When
they unveiled the statue. All these relatives came up, crying
and hugging me. I couldnt understand a word they said. I
remember being frightened. For me it was a town in a foreign
country Id never set eyes on before. 
 What kind of statue was it? asked Sumire. Shed never
known anyone whod had a statue erected.
 Just a normal statue. The kind youd find anywhere. But its
weird to have your own father become a statue. Imagine if they
erected a statue of your father in the square in front of
Chigasaki Station. Youd feel pretty weird about it, right? My
father was actually fairly short, but the statue made him look
like some towering figure. I was only five at the time, but I was
struck by the way things you see arent always true to life. 
If they made a statue of my father, Sumire mused, itd be the
statue that would draw the short straw. Since in real life her
father was a little too good-looking.
 
 Id like to pick up where we left off yesterday, Miu began,
when they were on their second cup of espresso. So, do you
think you might want to work for me? 
Sumire was dying for a cigarette, but there werent any 
 
ashtrays. She made do with a sip of chilled Perrier.
She answered honestly. Well, what kind of work would it
be, exactly? Like I said yesterday, except for some simple
physical-labour-type jobs, Ive never once had what youd call
a proper job. Plus I dont have a thing to wear that would be
appropriate. The clothes I had on at the reception I borrowed. 
Miu nodded, her expression unchanged. She must have
anticipated this sort of response.
 I think I understand pretty much what sort of person you
are, she said, and the work I have in mind shouldnt give you
any trouble. Im sure you can handle whatever comes up. What
really matters is whether or not youd like to work with me.
Just approach it that way, as a simple yes or no. 
Sumire chose her words carefully. Im really happy to hear
you say that, but right now whats most important for me is
writing novels. I mean, thats why I left college. 
Miu looked across the table straight at Sumire. Sumire sensed
that quiet look on her skin and felt her face grow warm.
 Do you mind if I say exactly whats on my mind? Miu
asked.
 Of course not. Go right ahead. 
 It might make you feel bad. 
To show she could handle it, Sumire pursed her lips and
looked into Mius eyes.
 At this stage in your life I dont think youre going to write
anything worthwhile, no matter how much time you put into
your novels, said Miu, calmly but firmly. Youve got the
talent. Im sure someday youll be an extraordinary writer. Im
not just saying this, I truly believe it. You have that natural
ability within you. But nows not the time. The strength you
need to open that door isnt quite there. Havent you ever felt 
 
that way? 
 Time and experience, said Sumire, summing it up.
Miu smiled. At any rate, come and work for me. Thats the
best choice for you. And when you feel the time is right, dont
hesitate to chuck it all in and write novels to your hearts
content. You just need more time than the average person in
order to reach that stage. So even if you get to without any
breaks coming your way, and your parents cut off your funds
and youre left without a penny, well so what? Maybe youll
go a little hungry, but that might be a good experience for a
writer. 
Sumire opened her mouth, about to reply, but nothing
emerged. She merely nodded.
Miu stretched out her right hand towards the middle of the
table. Let me see your hand, she said.
Sumire reached out her right hand and Miu grasped it, as if
enveloping it. Her palm was warm and smooth. Its not
something you should worry about so much. Dont look so
glum. Well get along fine. 
Sumire gulped, but somehow managed to relax. With Miu
gazing right at her like that, she felt as though she were
steadily shrinking. Like a block of ice left out in the sun, she
might very well disappear.
 Starting next week Id like you to come to my office three
times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can start
at a.m., and you can leave at four. That way youll miss the
rush hour. I cant pay you much, but the work is easy, and you
can read when theres nothing to do. One condition is that you
take private lessons in Italian twice a week. You already know
Spanish, so it shouldnt be too hard. And Id like you to
practise English conversation and driving whenever you have 
 
the time. Do you think you can do that? 
 I think so, Sumire replied. Her voice sounded like it was
somebody elses coming from another room. No matter what
Im asked to do, no matter what Im ordered to do, all I can do
is say yes, she realized. Miu gazed steadily at Sumire, still
holding her hand. Sumire could make out clearly her own
figure reflected deep inside Mius dark eyes. It looked to her
like her own soul being sucked into the other side of a mirror.
Sumire loved that vision, and at the same time it frightened
her.
Miu smiled, charming lines appearing at the corners of her
eyes. Lets go to my place. Theres something I want to show
you. 
 
 
The summer holiday of my first year in college I took a random
trip by myself around the Hokuriku region, came across a
woman eight years older than me who was also travelling
alone, and we spent one night together. It struck me, at the
time, as something straight out of the opening of Sosekis novel
Sanshiro.
The woman worked in the foreign exchange section of a bank
in Tokyo. Whenever she had some time off, shed grab a few
books and set out on her own. Much less tiring to travel
alone, she explained. She had a certain charm, which made it
hard to work out why shed have any interest in someone like
me a quiet, skinny -year-old college kid. Still, sitting across
from me in the train, she seemed to enjoy our harmless banter.
She laughed out loud a lot. And unusually I chattered away.
We happened to get off at the same station at Kanazawa.
 Do you have a place to stay? she asked. 
 
 No, I replied. Id never made a hotel reservation in my life.
 I have a hotel room, she told me. You can stay if you like.
Dont worry about it, she went on, it costs the same whether
theres one or two people staying. 
I was nervous the first time we made love, which made
things awkward. I apologized to her.
 Arent we polite! she said. No need to apologize for every
little thing. 
After her shower she threw on a dressing gown, grabbed two
cold beers from the fridge, and handed one to me.
 Are you a good driver? she asked.
 I just got my licence, so I wouldnt say so. Just average. 
She smiled. Same with me. I think Im pretty good, but my
friends dont agree. Which makes me average, too, I suppose.
You must know a few people who think theyre great drivers,
right? 
 Yeah, I guess I do. 
 And there must be some who arent very good. 
I nodded. She took a quiet sip of beer and gave it some
thought.
 To a certain extent those kinds of things are inborn. Talent,
you could call it. Some people are nimble; others are all thumbs
… Some people are quite attentive, and others arent. Right? 
Again I nodded.
 Okay, consider this. Say youre going to go on a long
journey with someone by car. And the two of you will take
turns driving. Which type of person would you choose? One
whos a good driver, but inattentive, or an attentive person
whos not such a good driver? 
 Probably the second one, I said.
 Me, too, she replied. What we have here is very similar. 
 
Good or bad, nimble or clumsy those arent important.
Whats important is being attentive. Staying calm, being alert to
things around you. 
 Alert? I asked.
She just smiled and didnt say anything.
A while later we made love a second time, and this time it
was a smooth, congenial ride. Being alert I think I was starting
to get it. For the first time I saw how a woman reacts in the
throes of passion.
The next morning after we ate breakfast together, we went
our separate ways. She continued her trip, and I continued
mine. As she left she told me she was getting married in two
months to a man from work. Hes a very nice guy, she said
cheerily. Weve been going out for five years, and were
finally going to make it official. Which means I probably wont
be making any trips by myself any more. This is it. 
I was still young, certain that this kind of thrilling event
happened all the time. Later in life I realized how wrong I was.
 
I told Sumire this story a long time ago. I cant remember
why it came up. It might have been when we were talking
about sexual desire.
 So whats the point of your story? she asked me.
 The part about being alert, I replied. Not prejudging
things, listening to whats going on, keeping your ears, heart,
and mind open. 
 Hmm, Sumire replied. She seemed to be mulling over my
paltry sexual affair, perhaps wondering whether she could
incorporate it into one of her novels.
 Anyway, you certainly have a lot of experiences, dont
you? 
 
 I wouldnt say a lot, I gently protested. Things just
happen. 
She chewed lightly at her nail, lost in thought. But how are
you supposed to become attentive? The critical moment
arrives, and you say okay, Im going to be alert and listen
carefully, but you cant just be good at those things by
snapping your fingers, right? Can you be more specific? Give
me a for instance? 
 Well, first you have to relax. By … say, counting. 
 What else? 
 Think about a cucumber in a fridge on a summer afternoon.
Just an example. 
 Wait a second, she said with a significant pause. Do you
mean to tell me that when youre having sex with a girl you
imagine cucumbers in a fridge on a summer afternoon? 
 Not all the time, I said.
 But sometimes. 
 Maybe. 
Sumire frowned and shook her head a couple of times.
 Youre a lot weirder than you look. 
 Everybodys got something weird about them, I said.
 
 In the restaurant, as Miu held my hand and gazed deep into
my eyes, I thought about cucumbers, Sumire said to me.
 Gotta stay calm, gotta listen carefully, I told myself. 
 Cucumbers? 
 Dont you remember what you told me about cucumbers
in a fridge on a summer afternoon? 
 Oh, yeah, I guess I did, I recalled. So did it help? 
 A little, she said.
 Glad to hear it, I replied. 
 
Sumire steered the conversation back on track. Mius
apartment is just a short walk from the restaurant. Not a very
big place, but really lovely. A sunny veranda, house-plants, an
Italian leather sofa, Bose speakers, a set of prints, a Jaguar in
the garage. She lives there alone. The place she and her
husband have is somewhere in Setagaya. She goes back there at
the weekends. Most of the time she stays in her apartment in
Aoyama. What do you think she showed me there? 
 Mark Bolans favourite snakeskin sandals in a glass case, I
ventured. One of the invaluable legacies without which the
history of rock and roll cannot be told. Not a single scale
missing, his autograph on the arch. The fans go nuts. 
Sumire frowned and sighed. If they invent a car that runs on
stupid jokes, you could go far. 
 Put it down to an impoverished intellect, I said humbly.
 Okay, all joking aside, I want you to give it some serious
thought. What do you think she showed me there? If you get it
right, Ill pay the bill. 
I cleared my throat. She showed you the gorgeous clothes
you have on. And told you to wear them to work. 
 You win, she said. She has this rich friend with clothes to
spare whos just about the same size as me. Isnt life strange?
There are people who have so many leftover clothes they cant
stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like
me, whose socks never match. Anyway, I dont mind. She went
over to her friends house and came back with an armful of
these leftovers. Theyre just a bit out of fashion if you look
carefully but most people wouldnt notice. 
I wouldnt know no matter how closely I looked, I told her.
Sumire smiled contentedly. The clothes fit me like a glove.
The dresses, blouses, skirts everything. Ill have to take in the 
 
waist a bit, but put a belt on and youd never know the
difference. My shoe size, fortunately, is almost the same as
Mius, so she let me have some pairs she doesnt need. High
heels, low heels, summer sandals. All with Italian names on
them. Handbags, too. And a little make-up. 
 A regular Jane Eyre, I said.
 
All of which explains how Sumire started working three days a
week at Mius office. Wearing a suit jacket and dress, high
heels, and a touch of make-up, taking the morning commuter
train from Kichijoji to Harajuku. Somehow I just couldnt
picture it.
 
Apart from her office at her company in Akasaka, Miu had her
own small office at Jingumae. There she had her desk as well as
her assistants (Sumires, in other words), a filing cabinet, a fax,
a phone, and a PowerBook. Thats all. It was just one room in
an apartment building and came with an afterthought-type of
tiny kitchen and bathroom. There was a CD player, minispeakers,
and a dozen classical CDs. The room was on the
second floor, and out of the east-facing window you could see a
small park. The ground floor of the building was taken up by a
showroom selling Northern European furniture. The whole
building was set back from the main thoroughfare, which kept
traffic noise at a minimum.
As soon as she arrived at the office, Sumire would water the
plants and get the coffee-maker going. Shed check phone
messages and e-mails on the PowerBook. Shed print out any
messages and put them on Mius desk. Most of them were from
foreign agents, in either English or French. Shed open any
ordinary post that came and throw away whatever was clearly 
 
junk mail. A few calls would come in every day, some from
abroad. Sumire would take down the persons name, number,
and message and relay these to Miu on her cellphone.
Miu usually showed up around one or two in the afternoon.
Shed stay an hour or so, give Sumire various instructions,
drink coffee, make a few calls. Letters that required a reply
shed dictate to Sumire, whod type them up on the word
processor and either post or fax them. These were usually quite
brief business letters. Sumire also made reservations for Miu at
the hairdresser, restaurants, and the squash court. Business out
of the way, Miu and Sumire would chat for a while, and then
Miu would leave.
So Sumire was often alone in the office, talking to no one for
hours, but she never felt bored or lonely. Shed review her
twice-a-week Italian lessons, memorizing the irregular verbs,
checking her pronunciation with a tape recorder. She took
some computer classes and got to where she could handle most
simple glitches. She opened up the information in the hard
drive and learned the general outlines of the projects Miu had
going.
Mius main work was exactly as she had described it at the
wedding reception. She contracted with small wine producers,
mostly in France, and wholesaled their wine to restaurants and
speciality shops in Tokyo. On occasion she arranged concert
trips by musicians to Japan. Agents from large firms handled
the complex business angles, with Miu taking care of the
overall plan and some of the groundwork. Mius speciality was
searching out unknown, promising young performers and
bringing them to Japan.
Sumire had no way of knowing how much profit Miu made
from her private business. Accounting records were kept on 
 
separate disks and couldnt be accessed without a password. At
any rate, Sumire was ecstatic, her heart aflutter, just to be able
to meet Miu and talk to her. Thats the desk where Miu sits, she
thought. Thats the ballpoint pen she uses; the mug she drinks
coffee from. No matter how trivial the task, Sumire did her
best.
 
Every so often Miu would invite Sumire out for dinner. Since
her business involved wine, Miu found it necessary to
regularly make the rounds of the better-known restaurants to
stay in touch with the latest news. Miu always ordered a light
fish dish or, on occasion, chicken, though shed leave half, and
would pass on dessert. Shed pore over every detail of the wine
list before deciding on a bottle, but would never drink more
than a glass. Go ahead and have as much as you like, she told
Sumire, but there was no way Sumire could finish that much.
So they always ended up with half a very expensive bottle of
wine left, but Miu didnt mind.
 Its such a waste to order a whole bottle of wine for just the
two of us, Sumire said to Miu one time. We can barely finish
half. 
 Dont worry. Miu laughed. The more we leave behind, the
more people in the restaurant will be able to try it. The
sommelier, the headwaiter, all the way down to the waiter who
fills the water glasses. That way a lot of people will start to
acquire a taste for good wine. Which is why leaving expensive
wine is never a waste. 
Miu examined the colour of the Médoc and then, as if
savouring some nicely turned out prose, carefully tasted it.
 It is the same with anything you have to learn through
your own experience, paying your own way. You cant learn it 
 
from a book. 
Taking a cue from Miu, Sumire picked up her glass and very
attentively took a sip, held it in her mouth, and then swallowed
it. For a moment an agreeable aftertaste remained, but after a
few seconds this disappeared, like morning dew on a summer
leaf. All of which prepared the palate for the next bite of food.
Every time she ate and talked with Miu, Sumire learned
something new. Sumire was amazed by the overwhelming
number of things she had yet to learn.
 You know Ive never thought I wanted to be somebody
else, Sumire blurted out once, perhaps urged on by the morethan-usual
amount of wine shed drunk. But sometimes I
think how nice it would be to be like you. 
Miu held her breath for a moment. Then she picked up her
wineglass and took a sip. For a second, the light dyed her eyes
the crimson of the wine. Her face was drained of its usual
subtle expression.
 Im sure you dont know this, she said calmly, returning
her glass to the table. The person here now isnt the real me.
Fourteen years ago I became half the person I used to be. I wish
I could have met you when I was whole that would have
been wonderful. But its pointless to think about that now. 
Sumire was so taken aback she was speechless. And missed
the chance to ask the obvious questions. What had happened to
Miu years ago? Why had she become half her real self? And
what did she mean by half, anyway? This enigmatic
announcement, in the end, only made Sumire more and more
smitten with Miu. What an awesome person, she thought.
 
Through fragments of conversation Sumire was able to piece
together a few facts about Miu. Her husband was Japanese, five 
 
years older and fluent in Korean, the result of two years as an
exchange student in the economics department of Seoul
University. He was a warm person, good at what he did, in
point of fact the guiding force behind Mius company. Even
though it was originally a family-run business, no one ever said
a bad word about him.
Ever since she was a little girl, Miu had had a talent for
playing the piano. Still in her teens she had won the top prize
at several competitions for young people. She went on to a
conservatoire, studied under a famous pianist and, through her
teachers recommendation, was able to study at a music
academy in France. Her repertoire ran mainly from the late
Romantics, Schumann and Mendelssohn, to Poulenc, Ravel,
Bartók, and Prokofiev. Her playing combined a keen, sensuous
tone with a vibrant, impeccable technique. In her student days
she held a number of concerts, all well received. A bright future
as a concert pianist looked assured. During her time abroad,
though, her father fell ill, and Miu shut the lid of her piano and
returned to Japan. Never to touch a keyboard again.
 How could you give up the piano so easily? Sumire asked
hesitantly. If you dont want to talk about it, thats okay. I just
find it I dont know a little unusual. I mean, you had to
sacrifice a lot of things to become a pianist, didnt you? 
 I didnt sacrifice a lot of things for the piano, Miu said softly.
 I sacrificed everything. The piano demanded every ounce of
flesh, every drop of blood, and I couldnt refuse. Not even
once. 
 Werent you sorry to give up? Youd almost made it. 
Miu gazed into Sumires eyes searchingly. A deep, steady
gaze. Deep within Mius eyes, as if in a quiet pool in a swift
stream, wordless currents vied with one another. Only 
 
gradually did these clashing currents settle.
 Im sorry, Sumire apologized. Ill mind my own
business. 
 Its all right. I just cant explain it well. 
They didnt talk about it again.
 
Miu didnt allow smoking in her office and hated people to
smoke in front of her, so after she began the job Sumire decided
it was a good chance to quit. Being a two-packs-of-Marlboro-aday
smoker, though, things didnt go so smoothly. After a
month, like some animal thats had its furry tail sliced off, she
lost her emotional grip on things not that this was so firm to
begin with. And as you might guess, she started calling me all
the time in the middle of the night.
 
 All I can think about is having a smoke. I can barely sleep, and
when I do sleep I have nightmares. Im constipated. I cant
read, cant write a line. 
 Everybody goes through that when they try to stop. In the
beginning at least, I said.
 You find it easy to give opinions as long as its about other
people, dont you? she snapped. Youve never had a cigarette
in your life. 
 Hey, if you cant give your opinion about other people, the
world would turn into a pretty scary place, wouldnt it? If you
dont think so, just look up what Joseph Stalin did. 
On the other end of the line Sumire was silent for a long time.
A heavy silence like dead souls on the Eastern Front.
 Hello? I asked.
She finally spoke up. Truthfully, though, I dont think its
because I stopped smoking that I cant write. It might be one 
 
reason, but thats not all. What I mean is stopping smoking is
just an excuse. You know: ‘Im stopping smoking; thats why I
cant write. Nothing I can do about it. 
 Which explains why youre so upset? 
 I guess, she said, suddenly meek. Its not just that I cant
write. What really upsets me is I dont have confidence any
more in the act of writing itself. I read the stuff I wrote not long
ago, and its boring. What could I have been thinking? Its like
looking across the room at some filthy socks tossed on the
floor. I feel awful, realizing all the time and energy I wasted. 
 When that happens you should call somebody up at three in
the morning and wake him up symbolically of course from
his peaceful semiotic sleep. 
 Tell me, said Sumire, have you ever felt confused about
what youre doing, like its not right? 
 I spend more time being confused than not, I answered.
 Are you serious? 
 Yep. 
Sumire tapped her nails against her front teeth, one of her
many habits when she was thinking. Ive hardly ever felt
confused like this before. Not that Im always confident, sure of
my talent. Im not that nervy. I know Im a haphazard, selfish
type of person. But Ive never been confused. I might have
made some mistakes along the way, but I always felt I was on
the right path. 
 Youve been lucky, I replied. Like a long spell of rain right
after you plant rice. 
 Maybe youre right. 
 But at this point, things arent working out. 
 Right. They arent. Sometimes I get so frightened, like
everything Ive done up till now is wrong. I have these realistic 
 
dreams and snap wide awake in the middle of the night. And
for a while I cant work out whats real and what isnt … That
kind of feeling. Do you have any idea what Im saying? 
 I think so, I replied.
 The thought hits me a lot these days that maybe my novelwriting
days are over. The worlds crawling with stupid,
innocent girls, and Im just one of them, self-consciously
chasing after dreams thatll never come true. I should shut the
piano lid and come down off the stage. Before its too late. 
 Shut the piano lid? 
 A metaphor. 
I switched the receiver from my left hand to my right. I am
sure of one thing. Maybe you arent, but I am. Someday youll
be a fantastic writer. Ive read what youve written, and I
know. 
 You really think so? 
 From the bottom of my heart, I said. Im not going to lie to
you about things like that. There are some pretty remarkable
scenes in the things youve written so far. Say you were writing
about the seashore in May. You can hear the sound of the wind
in your ears and smell the salt air. You can feel the soft warmth
of the sun on your arms. If you wrote about a small room filled
with tobacco smoke, you can bet the reader would start to feel
like he cant breathe. And his eyes would sting. Prose like that
is beyond most writers. Your writing has the living, breathing
force of something natural flowing through it. Right now that
hasnt all come together, but that doesnt mean its time to 
shut the lid on the piano. 
Sumire was silent for a good , seconds. Youre not just
saying that to make me feel better, to cheer me up, are you? 
 No, Im not. Its an undeniable fact, plain and simple. 
 
 Like the Moldau River? 
 You got it. Just like the Moldau River. 
 Thank you, she said.
 Youre welcome, I replied.
 Sometimes youre just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas,
summer holidays and a brand-new puppy all rolled into one. 
Like I always do when somebody praises me, I mumbled
some vague reply.
 But one thing bothers me, she added. Someday youll get
married to some nice girl and forget all about me. And I wont
be able to call you in the middle of the night whenever I want
to. Right? 
 You can always call during the day. 
 Daytimes no good. You dont understand anything, do
you? 
 Neither do you, I protested. Most people work when the
suns up and turn out the light at night and go to sleep. But I
might as well have been reciting some pastoral poems to
myself in the middle of a pumpkin patch.
 There was this article in the paper the other day, she
continued, completely oblivious. It said that lesbians are born
that way; theres a tiny bone in the inner ear thats completely
different from other womens and that makes all the difference.
Some small bone with a complicated name. So being a lesbian
isnt acquired; its genetic. An American doctor discovered this.
I have no idea why he was doing that kind of research, but ever
since I read about it I cant get the idea out of my mind of this
little good-for-nothing bone inside my ear, wondering what
shape my own little bone is. 
I had no idea what to say. A silence descended on us as
sudden as the instant fresh oil is poured into a large frying pan. 
 
 So youre sure what you feel for Miu is sexual desire? I
asked.
 A hundred per cent sure, Sumire said. When Im with her
that bone in my ear starts ringing. Like delicate seashell wind
chimes. And I want her to hold me, let everything take its
course. If that isnt sexual desire, whats flowing in my veins
must be tomato juice. 
 Hmm, I said. What could I possibly say to that?
 It explains everything. Why I dont want to have sex with
any men. Why I dont feel anything. Why Ive always thought
Im different from other people. 
 Mind if I give you my pennyworth here? I asked.
 Okay. 
 Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily
has a hidden trap in it. Im speaking from experience.
Somebody once said if its something a single book can explain,
its not worth having explained. What I mean is dont leap to
any conclusions. 
 Ill remember that, Sumire said. And the call ended,
somewhat abruptly.
 
I pictured her hanging up the receiver, walking out of the
telephone box. By my clock it was.. I went to the kitchen,
drank a glass of water, snuggled back in bed, and dosed my
eyes. But sleep wouldnt come. I drew the curtain aside, and
there was the moon, floating in the sky like some pale, clever
orphan. I knew I wouldnt get back to sleep. I brewed a fresh
pot of coffee, pulled a chair over next to the window, and sat
there, munching on some cheese and crackers. I sat, reading,
waiting for the dawn. 
 
 
Its time to say a few words about myself.
Of course this story is about Sumire, not me. Still, Im the one
whose eyes the story is told through the tale of who Sumire is
and what she did and I should explain a little about the
narrator. Me, in other words.
 
I find it hard to talk about myself. Im always tripped up by the
eternal who am I? paradox. Sure, no one knows as much pure
data about me as me. But when I talk about myself, all sorts of
other factors values, standards, my own limitations as an
observer make me, the narrator, select and eliminate things
about me, the narratee. Ive always been disturbed by the
thought that Im not painting a very objective picture of myself.
This kind of thing doesnt seem to bother most people. Given
the chance, theyre surprisingly frank when they talk about
themselves. Im honest and open to a ridiculous degree, 
 
theyll say, or Im thin-skinned and not the type who gets
along easily in the world, or Im very good at sensing others
true feelings. But any number of times Ive seen people who
say theyre easily hurt or hurt other people for no apparent
reason. Self-styled honest and open people, without realizing
what theyre doing, blithely use some self-serving excuse to get
what they want. And those who are good at sensing others
true feelings are taken in by the most transparent flattery. Its
enough to make me ask the question: how well do we really
know ourselves?
 The more I think about it, the more Id like to take a rain
check on the topic of me. What Id like to know more about is
the objective reality of things outside myself. How important the
world outside is to me, how I maintain a sense of equilibrium
by coming to terms with it. Thats how Id grasp a dearer sense
of who I am.
These are the kinds of ideas I had running through my head
when I was a teenager. Like a master builder stretches taut his
string and lays one brick after another, I constructed this
viewpoint or philosophy of life, to put a bigger spin on it.
Logic and speculation played a part in formulating this
viewpoint, but for the most part it was based on my own
experiences. And speaking of experience, a number of painful
episodes taught me that getting this viewpoint of mine across
to other people wasnt the easiest thing in the world.
The upshot of all this is that when I was young I began to
draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people.
No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance,
carefully monitoring the persons attitude so that they wouldnt
get any closer. I didnt easily swallow what other people told
me. My only passions were books and music. As you might 
 
guess, I led a lonely life.
 
My family isnt anything special. So blandly normal, in fact, I
dont know where to begin. My father graduated from a local
university with a degree in science and worked in the research
lab of a large food manufacturer. He loved golf, and every
Sunday he was out on the course. My mother was crazy about
tanka poetry and often attended poetry recitals. Whenever her
name was in the poetry section of the newspaper, shed be
happy as a lark for days. She liked cleaning, but hated cooking.
My sister, five years older than me, detested both cleaning and
cooking. Those are things other people did, she decided, not
her. Which meant that ever since I was old enough to be in the
kitchen, I made all my own meals. I bought some cookbooks
and learned how to make almost everything. I was the only
child I knew who lived like that.
I was born in Suginami, but we moved to Tsudanuma in
Chiba Prefecture when I was small, and I grew up there. The
neighbourhood was full of white-collar families just like ours.
My sister was always top of her class; she couldnt stand not
being the best and didnt step one inch outside her sphere of
interest. She never not even once took our dog for a walk.
She graduated from Tokyo University law school and passed
the bar exam the following year, no mean feat. Her husband is
a go-getter management consultant. They live in a four-room
condo they purchased in an elegant building near Yoyogi Park.
Inside, though, the place is a pigsty.
I was the opposite of my sister, not caring much about
studying or my grades. I didnt want any grief from my
parents, so I went through the motions of going to school,
doing the minimum amount of study and homework to get by. 
 
The rest of the time I played football and sprawled on my bed
when I got home, reading one novel after another. None of
your typical after-hours cram school, no tutor. Even so, my
grades werent half bad. At this rate, I reckoned I could get into
a decent college without killing myself studying for the
entrance exams. And thats exactly what happened.
 
I started college and lived by myself in a small apartment. Even
when I was living at home in Tsudanuma I hardly ever had a
heart-to-heart conversation with my family. We lived together
under one roof, but my parents and sister were like strangers to
me, and I had no idea what they wanted from life. And the
same held true for them they didnt have any idea what kind
of person I was or what I aspired to. Not that I knew what I
wanted in life I didnt. I loved reading novels to distraction,
but didnt write well enough to be a novelist; being an editor or
a critic was out, too, since my tastes ran to extremes. Novels
should be for pure personal enjoyment, I decided, not part of
your work or study. Thats why I didnt study literature, but
history. I didnt have any special interest in history, but once I
began studying it I found it an engrossing subject. I didnt plan
to go to grad school and devote my life to history or anything,
though my adviser did suggest that. I enjoyed reading and
thinking, but I was hardly the academic type. As Pushkin put
it:
He had no itch to dig for glories
Deep in the dirt that time has laid.
All of which didnt mean I was about to find a job in a
normal company, claw my way through the cut-throat 
 
competition, and advance step by step up the slippery slopes of
the capitalist pyramid.
So, by a process of elimination, I ended up a teacher. The
school is only a few stations away by train. My uncle happened
to be on the board of education in that town and asked me
whether I might want to be a teacher. I hadnt taken all the
required teacher-training classes, so I was hired as an assistant
teacher, but after a short period of screening I qualified as a
proper teacher. I hadnt planned on being a teacher, but after I
actually became one I discovered a deeper respect and affection
for the profession than I ever imagined Id have. More
accurately, really, I should say that I happened to discover
myself.
Id stand at the front of the classroom, teaching my primaryschool
charges basic facts about language, life, the world, and
Id find that at the same time I was teaching myself these basic
facts all over again filtered through the eyes and minds of
these children. Done the right way, this was a refreshing
experience. Profound, even. I got along well with my pupils,
their mothers, and my fellow teachers.
Still the basic questions tugged at me: Who am I? What am I
searching for? Where am I going?
 
The closest I came to answering these questions was when I
talked to Sumire. More than talking about myself, though, I
listened attentively to her, to what she said. She threw all sorts
of questions my way, and if I couldnt come up with an answer,
or if my response didnt make sense, youd better believe she
let me know. Unlike other people she honestly, sincerely wanted
to hear what I had to say. I did my best to answer her, and our
conversations helped me open up more about myself to her 
 
and, at the same time, to myself.
We used to spend hours talking. We never got tired of
talking, never ran out of topics novels, the world, scenery,
language. Our conversations were more open and intimate
than any lovers.
I imagined how wonderful it would be if indeed we could be
lovers. I longed for the warmth of her skin on mine. I pictured
us married, living together. But I had to face the fact that
Sumire had no such romantic feelings for me, let alone sexual
interest. Occasionally shed stay over at my apartment after
wed talked into the small hours, but there was never even the
slightest hint of romance. Come or a.m. and shed yawn,
crawl into bed, sink her face into my pillow, and fall fast asleep.
Id spread out some bedding on the floor and lie down, but I
couldnt sleep, my mind full of fantasies, confused thoughts,
self-loathing. Sometimes the inevitable physical reactions
would cause me grief, and Id lie awake in misery until dawn.
It was hard to accept that she had almost no feelings, maybe
none at all, for me as a man. This hurt so bad at times it felt like
someone was gouging out my guts with a knife. Still, the time I
spent with her was more precious than anything. She helped
me forget the undertone of loneliness in my life. She expanded
the outer edges of my world, helped me draw a deep, soothing
breath. Only Sumire could do that for me.
In order to ease the pain and, I hoped, eliminate any sexual
tension between me and Sumire, I started sleeping with other
women. Im not saying I was a big hit with women; I wasnt. I
wasnt what youd call a ladies man, and laid no claim to any
special charms. For whatever reason, though, some women
were attracted to me, and I discovered that if I let things take
their course it wasnt so hard to get them to sleep with me. 
 
These little flings never aroused much passion in me; they
were, at most a kind of comfort.
I didnt hide my affairs from Sumire. She didnt know every
little detail, just the basic outlines. It didnt seem to bother her.
If there was anything in my affairs that was troubling, it was
the fact that the women were all older and either were married
or had fiancés or steady boyfriends. My most recent partner
was the mother of one of my pupils. We slept together about
twice a month.
 That may be the death of you, Sumire warned me once.
And I agreed. But there wasnt much I could do about it.
 
One Saturday at the beginning of July my class had an outing. I
took all of my pupils mountain climbing in Okutama. The
day began with an air of happy excitement, only to descend
into total chaos. When we reached the summit, two children
discovered theyd forgotten to pack their lunches in their
backpacks. There werent any shops around, so I had to split
my own nori-maki lunch the school had provided. Which left
me with nothing to eat. Someone gave me some chocolate, but
that was all I had the whole day. On top of which one girl said
she couldnt walk any more, and I had to carry her piggyback
all the way down the mountain. Two boys started to scuffle,
half in fun, and one of them fell and banged his head on a rock.
He got a slight concussion and a heavy nosebleed. Nothing
critical, but his shirt was covered in blood as if hed been in a
massacre. Like I said, total chaos.
When I got home I was as exhausted as an old railway
sleeper. I took a bath, downed a cold drink, snuggled into bed
too tired to think, turned off the light, and settled into a
peaceful sleep. And then the phone rang: a call from Sumire. I 
 
looked at my bedside clock. Id only slept for about an hour.
But I didnt grumble. I was too tired to complain. Some days
are like that.
 Can I see you tomorrow afternoon? she asked.
My woman friend was coming to my place at p.m. She was
supposed to park her red Toyota Celica a little way down the
road. Im free till four, I said.
 
Sumire had on a sleeveless white blouse, a navy-blue mini
skirt, and a tiny pair of sunglasses. Her only accessory was a
small plastic hairclip. An altogether simple outfit. She wore
almost no make-up, exposed to the world in her natural state.
Somehow, though, I didnt recognize her at first. It had only
been three weeks since we last met, but the girl sitting across
from me at the table looked like someone who belonged to an
entirely different world from the Sumire I knew. To put it
mildly, she was thoroughly beautiful. Something inside her
was blossoming.
I ordered a small glass of draught beer, and she asked for
grape juice.
 I hardly recognize you these days, I said.
 Its that season, she said disinterestedly, sipping at her
drink through a straw.
 What season? I asked.
 A delayed adolescence, I guess. When I get up in the
morning and see my face in the mirror, it looks like someone
elses. If Im not careful, I might end up left behind. 
 So wouldnt it be better to just let it go, then? I said.
 But if I lost myself, where could I go? 
 If its for a couple of days, you can stay at my place. Youd
always be welcome the you who lost you. 
 
Sumire laughed.
 All joking aside, she said, where in the world could I be
heading? 
 I dont know. Look on the bright side youve stopped
smoking, youre wearing nice clean clothes even your socks
match now and you can speak Italian. Youve learned how to
judge wines, use a computer, and at least for now go to sleep at
night and wake up in the morning. You must be heading
somewhere. 
 But I still cant write a line. 
 Everything has its ups and downs. 
Sumire screwed up her lips. Would you call what Im going
through a defection? 
 Defection? For a moment I couldnt see what she meant.
 Defection. Betraying your beliefs and convictions. 
 You mean getting a job, dressing nicely, and giving up
writing novels? 
 Right. 
I shook my head. Youve always written because you
wanted to. If you dont want to any more, why should you? Do
you think your not writing is going to cause a village to burn to
the ground? A ship to sink? The tides to get messed up? Or set
the revolution back five years? Hardly. I dont think anybodys
going to label that defection. 
 So what should I call it? 
I shook my head again. The word defections too oldfashioned.
Nobody uses it any more. Go to some leftover
commune, maybe, and people might still use the word. I dont
know the details, but if you dont want to write any longer,
thats up to you. 
 Commune? Do you mean the places Lenin made? 
 
 Those are called kolkhoz. There arent any left, though. 
 Its not like I want to give up writing, Sumire said. She
thought for a moment. Its just that when I try to write, I cant.
I sit down at my desk and nothing comes no ideas, no words,
no scenes. Zero. Not too long ago I had a million things to write
about. What in the worlds happening to me? 
 Youre asking me? 
Sumire nodded.
I took a sip of my cold beer and gathered my thoughts. I
think right now its like youre positioning yourself in a new
fictional framework. Youre preoccupied with that, so theres
no need to put your feelings into writing. Besides, youre too
busy. 
 Do you do that? Put yourself inside a fictional framework? 
 I think most people live in a fiction. Im no exception. Think
of it in terms of a cars transmission. Its like a transmission that
stands between you and the harsh realities of life. You take the
raw power from outside and use gears to adjust it so
everythings all nicely in sync. Thats how you keep your
fragile body intact. Does this make any sense? 
Sumire gave a small nod. And Im still not completely
adjusted to that new framework. Thats what youre saying? 
 The biggest problem right now is that you dont know what
sort of fiction youre dealing with. You dont know the plot; the
styles still not set. The only thing you do know is the main
characters name. Nevertheless, this new fiction is reinventing
who you are. Give it time, itll take you under its wing, and you
may very well catch a glimpse of a new world. But youre not
there yet, which leaves you in a precarious position. 
 You mean Ive taken out the old transmission, but havent
quite finished bolting down the new one? And the engine stills 
 
running. Right? 
 You could put it that way. 
Sumire made her usual sullen face and tapped her straw on
the hapless ice in her drink. Finally she looked up.
 I understand what you mean by precarious. Sometimes I feel
so I dont know lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when
everything youre used to has been ripped away. Like theres
no more gravity, and Im left to drift in outer space with no
idea where Im going. 
 Like a little lost Sputnik? 
 I guess so. 
 But you do have Miu, I said.
 At least for now. 
For a while silence reigned.
 Do you think Miu is seeking that, too? I asked.
Sumire nodded. I believe she is. Probably as much as I am. 
 Physical aspects included? 
 Its hard to say. I cant get a handle on it yet. What her
feelings are, I mean. Which makes me feel lost and confused. 
 A classical conundrum, I said.
In place of an answer, Sumire screwed up her lips again.
 But as far as youre concerned, I said, youre ready to go. 
Sumire nodded once, unequivocally. She couldnt have been
more serious. I sank back deep into my chair and clasped my
hands behind my head.
 After all this, dont start to hate me, okay? Sumire said. Her
voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc
Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my
consciousness.
 After all this, I wont start to hate you. 
 
 
The next time I saw Sumire was two weeks later, on a Sunday,
when I helped her move. Shed decided to move all of a
sudden, and I was the only one who came to help. Other than
books, she owned very little, and the whole procedure was
over before we knew it. One good thing about being poor, at
least.
I borrowed a friends Toyota minivan and transported her
things over to her new place in Yoyogi-Uehara. The apartment
wasnt so new or much to look at, but compared to her old
wooden building in Kichijoji a place that should be on a list of
designated historical sites it was definitely a step up. An
estate agent friend of Mius had located the place for her;
despite its convenient location, the rent was reasonable and it
boasted a nice view. It was also twice as big as the old place.
Definitely worth the move. Yoyogi Park was nearby, and she
could walk to work if the mood took her.
 Starting next month Ill be working five days a week, she
said. Three days a week seems neither here nor there, and its
easier to stand commuting if you do it every day. I have to pay
more rent now, and Miu told me itd be better all around if I
became a full-time employee. I mean, if I stay at home, I still
wont be able to write. 
 Sounds like a good idea, I commented.
 My life will get more organized if I work every day, and I
probably wont be calling you up at. in the morning. One
good point about it. 
 One very good point, I said. But its sad to think youll be
living so far away from me. 
 You really feel that way? 
 Of course. Want me to rip out my heart and show you? 
I was sitting on the bare floor of the new apartment, leaning 
 
against the wall. Sumire was so bereft of household goods the
new place looked deserted. There werent any curtains in the
windows, and the books that didnt fit into the bookshelf lay
piled on the floor like a gang of intellectual refugees. The fulllength
mirror on the wall, a moving present from Miu, was the
only thing that stood out. The caws of crows filtered in from
the park on the twilight breeze. Sumire sat down next to me.
 You know what? she said.
 What? 
 If I were some good-for-nothing lesbian, would you still be
my friend? 
 Whether youre a good-for-nothing lesbian or not doesnt
matter. Imagine The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin minus ‘Mack
the Knife. Thats what my life would be like without you. 
Sumire narrowed her eyes and looked at me. Im not sure I
follow your metaphor, but what you mean is youd feel really
lonely? 
 Thats about the size of it, I said.
 
Sumire rested her head on my shoulder. Her hair was held
back by a small hairclip, and I could see her small, nicely
formed ears. Ears so pretty youd think they had just been
created. Soft, easily injured ears. I could feel her breath on my
skin. She wore a pair of pink shorts and a faded, plain navyblue
T-shirt. The outline of her small nipples showed through
the shirt. There was a faint odour of sweat. Her sweat and
mine, the two odours subtly combined.
I wanted to hold her so badly. I was seized by a violent desire
to push her down on the floor right then and there. But I knew
it would be wasted effort. Suddenly I found it hard to breathe,
and my field of vision narrowed. Time had lost an exit and 
 
spun its wheels. Desire swelled up in my trousers, hard as a
rock. I was confused, bewildered. I tried to get a grip. I
breathed in a lungful of fresh air, closed my eyes, and in that
incomprehensible darkness I slowly began counting. My urges
were so overpowering that tears came to my eyes.
 I like you, too, Sumire said. In this whole big world, more
than anyone else. 
 After Miu, you mean, I said.
 Mius a little different. 
 How so? 
 The feelings I have for her are different from how I feel
about you. What I mean is … hmm. How should I put it? 
 We good-for-nothing heterosexuals have a term for it, I
said. We say you get a hard-on. 
Sumire laughed. Other than wanting to be a novelist, Ive
never wanted anything so much. Ive always been satisfied
with exactly what I have. But now, right at this moment, I want
Miu. Very, very much. I want to have her. Make her mine. I just
have to. There are no other choices. Not one. I have no idea why
things worked out like this. Does that … make sense? 
I nodded. My penis still maintained its overpowering
rigidity, and I prayed that Sumire wouldnt notice.
 Theres a great line by Groucho Marx, I said. ‘ Shes so in
love with me she doesnt know anything. Thats why shes in
love with me. 
Sumire laughed.
 I hope things work out, I said. But try your best to stay
alert. Youre still vulnerable. Remember that. 
 
Without a word, Sumire took my hand and gently squeezed it.
Her small, soft hand had a faint sheen of sweat. I imagined her 
 
hand stroking my rock-hard penis. I tried not to think that, but
couldnt help it. As Sumire had said, there were no other
choices. I imagined taking off her T-shirt, her shorts, her
panties. Feeling her tight, taut nipples under my tongue.
Spreading her legs wide, entering that wetness. Slowly, into the
deep darkness within. It enticed me inside, enfolded me, then
pushed me out … The illusion grabbed me and wouldnt let go.
I closed my eyes tight again and let a concentrated clump of
time wash over me. My face turned down, I waited patiently
for the overheated air to blow above me and away.
 
 Why dont we have dinner together? she asked. But I had to
take the minivan I borrowed back to Hino by the end of the
day. More than anything else, though, I had to be alone with
my violent urges. I didnt want Sumire to get involved any
more than she already was. I didnt know how far I could
control myself if she was beside me. Past the point of no return,
and I might completely lose it.
 Well, let me treat you to a nice dinner sometime soon, then.
Tablecloths, wine. The works. Maybe next week, Sumire
promised as we said goodbye. Keep your diary free for me
next week. 
 Okay, I said.
 
I glanced at the full-length mirror as I passed by and saw my
face. It had a strange expression. It was my face, all right, but
where did that look come from? I didnt feel like retracing my
steps and investigating further.
Sumire stood at the entrance to her new place to see me off.
She waved goodbye, something she rarely did.
In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that 
 
dinner date never came to be. At the beginning of August I
received a long letter from her. 
 
 
The envelope had a large, colourful Italian stamp on it and was
postmarked Rome, though I couldnt make out when it had
been sent.
The day the letter arrived, Id gone out to Shinjuku for the
first time in quite a while, picked up a couple of new books at
the Kinokuniya bookshop, and taken in a Luc Besson movie.
Afterwards I stopped by a beer hall and enjoyed an anchovy
pizza and a mug of dark beer. Only just beating the rush hour, I
boarded the Chuo Line and read one of my new books until I
arrived home at Kunitachi. I planned to make a simple dinner
and watch a football match on TV. The ideal way to spend a
summer holiday. Hot, alone, and free, not bothering anyone,
and nobody bothering me.
When I got back home, there was a letter on the mat. The
senders name wasnt on the envelope, but one glance at the
handwriting told me it was from Sumire. Hieroglyphic writing, 
 
compact, hard, uncompromising. Writing that reminded me of
the beetles they discovered inside the pyramids of Egypt. Like
its going to start crawling and disappear back into the
darkness of history.
Rome?
 
I put the food Id bought at a supermarket in the fridge and
poured myself a tall glass of iced tea. I sat down in a chair in
the kitchen, slit open the envelope with a paring knife, and
read the letter. Five pages of stationery from the Rome
Excelsior Hotel, crammed full of tiny writing in blue ink. Must
have taken a lot of time to write that much. On the last page, in
one corner, was some sort of stain coffee, perhaps.
 
How are you?
I can imagine how surprised you must be to all of
a sudden get a letter from me from Rome. Youre
so cool, though, itd probably take more than
Rome to surprise you. Romes a bit too touristy.
Itd have to be some place like Greenland,
Timbuktu, or the Strait of Magellan, wouldnt it?
Though I can tell you I find it hard to believe that
here I am in Rome.
Anyway, Im sorry I wasnt able to take you out
to dinner like we planned. This Europe trip came
right out of the blue, just after I moved. Then it
was utter madness for a few days running out
to apply for a passport, buying suitcases,
finishing up some work Id begun. Im not very 
 
good at remembering things I dont need to tell
you, do I? but I do try my best to keep my
promises. The ones I remember, that is. Which is
why I want to apologize for not keeping our
dinner date.
I really enjoy my new apartment. Moving is
certainly a pain (I know you did most of the
work, for which Im grateful; still, its a pain), but
once youre all moved in its pretty nice. Therere
no roosters crowing in my new place, as in
Kichijoji, instead a lot of crows making a racket
like some old wailing women. At dawn flocks of
them assemble in Yoyogi Park, and make such a
ruckus youd think the world was about to end.
No need for an alarm clock, since the racket
always wakes me up. Thanks to which Im now
like you, living an early-to-bed-early-to-rise
farmers lifestyle. Im beginning to understand
how it feels to have someone call you at. in
the morning. Beginning to understand, mind you.
Im writing this letter at an outdoor cafe on a
side street in Rome, sipping espresso as thick as
the devils sweat, and I have this strange feeling
that Im not myself any more. Its hard to put it
into words, but I guess its as if I was fast asleep,
and someone came, disassembled me, and
hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of
feeling. Can you understand what Im getting at?
My eyes tell me Im the same old me, but
somethings different from usual. Not that I can
clearly recall what usual was. Ever since I 
 
stepped off the plane I cant shake this very real,
deconstructive illusion. Illusion? I guess thats the
word …
Sitting here, asking myself, Why am I in Rome
of all places? everything around me starts to
look unreal. Of course if I trace the details of how
I got here I can come up with an explanation, but
on a gut level Im still not convinced. The me
sitting here and the image of me I have are out of
sync. To put it another way, I dont particularly
need to be here, but nonetheless here I am. I know
Im being vague, but you understand me, dont
you?
Theres one thing I can say for sure: I wish you
were here with me. Even though I have Miu with
me, Im lonely being so far away from you. If we
were even farther apart, I know Id feel even more
lonely. Id like to think you feel the same way.
So anyway, here Miu and I are, traipsing around
Europe. She had some business to take care of
and was planning originally to go around Italy
and France by herself for two weeks, but asked
me to come along as her personal secretary. She
just blurted this out one morning, took me
completely by surprise. My title might be
 personal secretary , but I dont think Im much
use to her; still, the experience will do me good,
and Miu tells me the trips her present to me for
stopping smoking. So all the agony I went
through paid off in the end. 
 
We landed first in Milan, went sightseeing, then
rented a blue Alfa Romeo and headed south on
the autostrada. We went around a few vineyards
in Tuscany, and after taking care of business
stayed a few nights in a charming little hotel, and
then arrived in Rome. Business is always
conducted in either English or French, so I dont
have much of a role to play, though my Italian
has come in handy in day-to-day things as we
travel. If we went to Spain (which unfortunately
wont happen on this trip), I might be of more use
to Miu.
The Alfa Romeo we rented was a manual drive,
so I was no help at all. Miu did all the driving.
She can drive for hours and never seems to mind.
Tuscany is all hills and curves, and it was
amazing how smoothly she shifted gears up and
down; watching her made me (and Im not joking
here) shiver all over. Being away from Japan, and
simply being by her side are quite enough to
satisfy me. If only we could stay this way for ever.
Next time Ill write about all the wonderful
meals and wine weve had in Italy; itd take too
much time to do so now. In Milan we walked
from store to store shopping. Dresses, shoes,
underwear. Other than some pyjamas (Id
forgotten to take mine), I didnt buy anything. I
didnt have much money, and besides there were
so many beautiful things I had no idea where to
start. Thats the situation where my sense of 
 
judgement blows a fuse. Just being with Miu as
she shopped was sufficient. Shes an absolute
master shopper, choosing only the most exquisite
things, and buying only a select few. Like taking a
bite of the tastiest part of a dish. Very smart and
charming. When I watched her select some
expensive silk stockings and underwear I found it
hard to breathe. Drops of sweat bubbled up on
my forehead. Which is pretty strange when you
think about it. Im a girl, after all. I guess thats
enough about shopping writing about all that as
well will make this too long.
At hotels we stay in separate rooms. Miu seems
very insistent on this. Only once, in Florence,
when our reservation got messed up somehow,
did we end up having to share a room. It had
twin beds, but just being able to sleep in the same
room with her made my heart leap. I caught a
glimpse of her coming out of the bath with a
towel wrapped around her, and of her changing
her clothes. Naturally I pretended not to look and
read my book, but I did manage a peek. Miu has a
truly gorgeous figure. She wasnt completely
nude, but wore some tiny underwear; still her
body was enough to take my breath away. Very
slim, tight buns, a thoroughly attractive woman. I
wish you could have seen it though its a little
weird for me to say that.
I imagined being held by that lithe, slim body.
All sorts of obscene images came to mind of us as 
 
I lay in bed in the same room with her, and I felt
these thoughts gradually pushing me to some
other place. I think I got a little too worked up 
my period started that same night, way ahead of
schedule. What a pain that was. Hmm. I know
telling you this isnt going to get me anywhere.
But Ill go ahead anyway just to get the facts
down on paper.
Last night we attended a concert in Rome. I
wasnt expecting much, it being the off-season,
but we managed to enjoy an incredible
performance. Martha Argerich playing Liszts
Piano Concerto No.. I adore that piece. The
conductor was Giuseppe Sinopoli. What a
performance! Cant get bored when you listen to
that kind of music it was absolutely the most
expansive, fantastic music Ive ever heard. Come
to think of it, maybe it was a bit too perfect for my
taste. Liszt needs to be a bit slippery, and
furtive like music at a village festival. Take out
the difficult parts and let me feel the thrill thats
what I like. Miu and I agreed on this point.
Theres a Vivaldi festival in Venice, and were
talking about going. Like when you and I talk
about literature, Miu and I can talk about music
till the cows come home.
This letters getting pretty long, isnt it? Its like
once I take hold of a pen and start to write I cant
stop halfway. Ive always been like that. They say 
 
well brought up girls dont overstay their
welcome, but when it comes to writing (maybe
not just writing?) my manners are hopeless. The
waiter, with his white jacket, sometimes looks
over at me with this disgusted look on his face.
But even my hand gets tired, Ill admit. Besides,
Ive run out of paper.
Miu is out visiting an old friend in Rome, and I
wandered the streets near the hotel, then decided
to take a break in this cafe I came across, and here
I am busily writing away to you. Like Im on a
desert island and Im sending out a message in a
bottle. Strange thing is, when Im not with Miu I
dont feel like going anywhere. Ive come all this
way to Rome (and most likely wont come back
again), but I just cant rouse myself to get up and
see those ruins what do they call those? or
those famous fountains. Or even to go shopping.
Its enough just to sit here in a cafe, sniff the smell
of the city, like a dog might, listen to voices and
sounds, and gaze at the faces of the people
passing by.
And suddenly I just got the feeling, while
writing this letter to you, that what I described in
the beginning the strange sense of being
disassembled is starting to fade. It doesnt
bother me so much now. Its like the way I feel
when Ive called you up in the middle of the night
and just finished the call and stepped out of the
phone box. Maybe you have that kind of effect on 
 
me?
What do you think? At any rate, please pray for
my happiness and good fortune. I need your
prayers.
Bye for now.
P.S. Ill probably be back home around the th of
August. Then we can have dinner together I
promise! before the summers over.
 
Five days later a second letter came, posted from some obscure
French village. A shorter letter than the first one. Miu and
Sumire had left their rental car in Rome and taken a train to
Venice. There they listened to two full days of Vivaldi. Most of
the concerts were held at the church where Vivaldi had served
as a priest. If I dont hear any more Vivaldi for six months
thats fine by me, wrote Sumire. Her descriptions of how
delicious the paper-wrapped grilled seafood was in Venice
were so realistic it made me want to dash off to Venice to try
some for myself.
After Venice they returned to Milan, then flew to Paris. They
took a break there, shopping some more, then boarded a train
to Burgundy. One of Mius good friends owned a huge house, a
manor really, where they stayed. As in Italy, Miu made the
rounds of several small vineyards on business. On free
afternoons they took a picnic-basket lunch and went walking in
the woods nearby. With a couple of bottles of wine to
complement the meal, of course. The wine here is simply out
of this world, Sumire wrote.
Somehow, though, it looks like our original plan 
 
of returning to Japan on the th of August is
going to change. After our work is done in France
we may be taking a short holiday on a Greek
island. This English gentleman we happened to
meet here a real gentleman, mind you owns a
villa on the island and invited us to use it for as
long as we like. Great news! Miu likes the idea,
too. We need a break from work, some time to
just kick back and relax. The two of us lying on
the pure white beaches of the Aegean, two
beautiful sets of breasts pointed towards the sun,
sipping wine with a scent of pine resin in it, just
watching the clouds drift by. Doesnt that sound
wonderful?
It certainly does, I thought.
That afternoon I went to the public pool and paddled around,
stopped in a nicely air-conditioned coffee shop on the way
home, and read for an hour. When I got back to my place I
listened to both sides of an old Ten Years After LP while
ironing three shirts. Ironing done, I drank some cheap wine Id
got on sale, mixed with Perrier, and watched a football match
Id videotaped. Every time I saw a pass I thought I wouldnt
have made myself, I shook my head and sighed. Judging the
mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do and it feels pretty
good.
After the football match I sank back in my chair, stared at the
ceiling, and imagined Sumire in her village in France. By now
she was already on that Greek island. Lying on the beach,
gazing at the passing clouds. Either way, she was a long way
from me. Rome, Greece, Timbuktu, Aruanda it didnt matter. 
 
She was far, far away. And most likely that was the future in a
nutshell, Sumire growing ever more distant. It made me sad. I
felt like I was some meaningless bug clinging for no special
reason to a high stone wall on a windy night, with no plans, no
beliefs. Sumire said she missed me. But she had Miu beside her.
I had no one. All I had was me. Same as always.
 
Sumire didnt come back on August. Her phone still just had
a curt Im-away-on-a-trip recording on it. One of her first
purchases after she moved was a phone with an answering
machine, so she wouldnt have to go out on rainy nights,
umbrella in hand, to a phone box. An excellent idea all round. I
didnt leave a message.
 
I called her again on the th but got the same recording. After
the lifeless beep I left my name and a simple message for her to
call me when she got back. Most likely she and Miu found their
Greek island too much fun to want to leave.
 
In the interval between my two calls I coached one football
practice at my school and slept once with my girlfriend. She
was well tanned, having just returned from a holiday in Bali
with her husband and two children. As I held her I thought of
Sumire on her Greek island. Inside her, I couldnt help but
imagine Sumires body.
If I hadnt known Sumire I could have easily fallen for this
woman, seven years my senior (and whose son was one of my
students). She was a beautiful, energetic, kind woman. She
wore a bit too much make-up for my liking, but dressed nicely.
She worried about being a little overweight, but shouldnt
have. I certainly wasnt about to complain about her sexy
figure. She knew all my desires, everything I wanted and didnt 
 
want. She knew just how far to go and when to stop in bed
and out. Made me feel like I was flying first class.
 I havent slept with my husband for almost a year, she
revealed to me as she lay in my arms. Youre the only one. 
 
But I couldnt love her. For whatever reason, that
unconditional, natural intimacy Sumire and I had just wasnt
there. A thin, transparent veil always came between us. Visible
or not, a barrier remained. Awkward silences came on us all
the time particularly when we said goodbye. That never
happened with me and Sumire. Being with this woman
confirmed one undeniable fact: I needed Sumire more than
ever.
After the woman left, I went for a walk alone, wandered
aimlessly for a while, then dropped by a bar near the station
and had a Canadian Club on the rocks. As always at times like
those, I felt like the most wretched person alive. I quickly
drained my first drink and ordered another, closed my eyes
and thought of Sumire. Sumire, topless, sunbathing on the
white sands of a Greek island. At the table next to mine four
college boys and girls were drinking beer, laughing, and
having a good time. An old number by Huey Lewis and the
News was playing. I could smell pizza baking.
When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought.
It was over, wasnt it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only
half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of hit
songs then. Not so many years ago. And now here I was, inside
a closed circuit, spinning my wheels. Knowing I wasnt getting
anywhere, but spinning just the same. I had to. Had to keep
that up or I wouldnt be able to survive.
 
 
That night I got a phone call from Greece. At a.m.
But it wasnt Sumire. It was Miu. 
 
 
The first thing I heard was a mans deep voice in heavily
accented English, spouting my name and then shouting, Ive
reached the right person, yes? Id been fast asleep. My mind
was a blank, a rice paddy in the middle of a rainstorm, and I
couldnt work out what was going on. The bed sheets still
retained a faint memory of the afternoons lovemaking, and
reality was one step out of line, a cardigan with the buttons
done up wrong. The man spoke my name again. Ive reached
the right person, yes? 
 Yes, you have, I replied. It didnt sound like my name, but
there it was. For a while there was a crackle of static, as if two
different air masses had collided. Must be Sumire making an
overseas call from Greece, I imagined. I held the receiver away
from my ear a bit, waiting for her voice to come on. But the
voice I heard next wasnt Sumires, but Mius.
 Im sure youve heard about me from Sumire? 
 
 Yes, I have, I answered.
Her voice on the phone line was distorted by some far-off,
inorganic substance, but I could still sense the tension in it.
Something rigid and hard flowed through the phone like
clouds of dry ice and into my room, throwing me wide awake.
I sat bolt upright in bed and adjusted my grip on the receiver.
 I have to talk quickly, said Miu breathlessly. Im calling
from a Greek island, and its next to impossible to get through
to Tokyo even when you do they cut you off. I tried so many
times, and finally got through. So Im going to skip formalities
and get right to the point, if you dont
mind? 
 I dont mind, I said.
 Can you come here? 
 By here, you mean Greece? 
 Yes. As soon as you possibly can. 
I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Did
something happen to Sumire? 
A pause as Miu took in a breath. I still dont know. But I
think she would want you to come here. Im certain of it. 
 You think she would? 
 I cant go into it over the phone. Theres no telling when
well be cut off, and besides, its a delicate sort of problem, and
Id much rather talk to you face to face. Ill pay the return fare.
Just come. The sooner the better. Just buy a ticket. First class,
whatever you like. 
The new term at school began in ten days. Id have to be back
before then, but if I wanted to, a round trip to Greece wasnt
beyond the realm of possibility. I was scheduled to go to school
twice during the break to take care of some business, but I
should be able to have somebody cover for me. 
 
 Im pretty sure I can come, I said. Yes, I think I can. But
where exactly is it Im supposed to go? 
She told me the name of the island. I wrote down what she
said on the inside cover of a book next to my bed. It sounded
vaguely familiar.
 You take a plane from Athens to Rhodes, then take a ferry.
There are two ferries a day to the island, one in the morning
and one in the evening. Ill go down to the harbour whenever
the ferries arrive. Will you come? 
 I think Ill make it somehow. Its just that I I started to
say, and the line went dead. Suddenly, violently, like someone
taking an axe to a rope. And again that awful static. Thinking
we might be connected again, I sat there for a minute, phone
against my ear, waiting, but all I heard was that grating noise. I
hung up the phone and got out of bed. In the kitchen I had a
glass of cold barley tea and leaned back against the fridge,
trying to gather my thoughts.
Was I really going to get on a plane and fly all the way to
Greece?
The answer was yes. I had no other choice.
 
I pulled a large world atlas down from my bookshelf to locate
the island Miu had told me about. It was near Rhodes, shed
said, but it was no easy task to find it among the myriad islands
that dotted the Aegean. Finally, though, I was able to spot, in
tiny print, the name of the place I was looking for. A small
island near the Turkish border. So small you couldnt really tell
its shape.
I pulled my passport out of a drawer and checked it was still
valid. Next I gathered all the cash I had in the house and
stuffed it in my wallet. It didnt amount to much, but I could 
 
withdraw more from the bank in the morning. I had some
money in a savings account and had barely touched my
summer bonus. That and my credit card and I should be able to
come up with enough for a return ticket to Greece. I packed
some clothes in a vinyl gym bag and tossed in a toilet kit. And
two Joseph Conrad novels Id been meaning to re-read. I
hesitated about packing my swimming trunks, but ended up
taking them. Maybe Id get there and whatever problem there
was would be solved, everybody healthy and happy, the sun
hanging peacefully in the sky, and Id enjoy a leisurely swim or
two before I had to come home which of course would be the
best outcome for everyone involved.
Those things taken care of, I turned out the light, sunk my
head back on the pillow, and tried to go back to sleep. It was
just past three, and I could still catch a few winks before
morning. But I couldnt sleep. Memories of that harsh static
thrummed in my blood. Deep inside my head I could hear that
mans voice, barking out my name. I switched on the light, got
out of bed again, went to the kitchen, brewed some iced tea,
and drank it. Then I replayed the entire conversation Id had
with Miu, every word in order. Her words were vague,
abstract, full of ambiguities. But there were two facts in what
she told me. I wrote them both down on a memo pad.
. Something has happened to Sumire. But Miu
doesnt know what it is.
. I have to get there as soon as possible. Sumire,
too, Miu thinks, wants me to do that.
I stared at the memo pad. And I underlined two
phrases. 
 
. Something has happened to Sumire. But Miu
doesnt know what it is.
. I have to get there as soon as possible. Sumire,
too, Miu thinks, wants me to do that.
I couldnt imagine what had happened to Sumire on that small
Greek island. But I was sure it had to be something bad. The
question was, how bad? Until morning there wasnt a thing I
could do about it. I sat in my chair, feet up on the table, reading
a book and waiting for the first light to show. It seemed to take
forever.
 
At first light I boarded the Chuo Line to Shinjuku, hopped
aboard the Narita Express, and arrived at the airport. At nine I
made the rounds of airline ticket counters, only to learn that
there werent any direct flights between Narita and Athens.
After a bit of trial and error I booked a business-class seat on
the KLM flight to Amsterdam. Id be able to change there onto
a flight to Athens. Then at Athens Id take an Olympic Airways
domestic flight to Rhodes. The KLM people made all the
arrangements. As long as no problems arose, I should be able
to make the two connections okay. It was the fastest way to get
there. I had an open ticket for the return flight, and I could
come back any time in the next three months. I paid by credit
card. Any bags to check in? they asked me. No, I replied.
I had time before my flight, so I ate breakfast at the airport
restaurant. I withdrew some cash from an ATM and bought
dollar travellers cheques. Next I bought a guidebook to Greece
in the bookshop. The name of the island Miu told me wasnt in
the little book, but I did need to get some information about the 
 
country the currency, the climate, the basics. Other than the
history of ancient Greece and classical drama, there wasnt
much I knew about the place. About as much as I knew of the
geography of Jupiter or the inner workings of a Ferraris
cooling system. Not once in my life had I considered the
possibility of going to Greece. At least not until a.m. on that
particular day.
 
Just before noon I phoned one of my fellow teachers.
Something unfortunate happened to a relative of mine, I told
her, Ill be away from Tokyo for about a week, so I wonder if
youd take care of things at school until I get back. No problem,
she replied. Wed helped each other out like this a number of
times, it was no big deal. Where are you going? she asked
me. Shikoku, I answered. I just couldnt very well tell her I
was heading off to Greece.
 Im sorry to hear that, she said. Anyway, make sure you
get back in time for the start of the new term. And pick up a
souvenir for me if you can, okay? 
 Of course, I said. Id work that one out later.
I went to the business-class lounge, lay back in a sofa, and
dozed for a bit, an unsettled sleep. The world had lost all sense
of reality. Colours were unnatural, details crude. The
background was papier mache, the stars made out of
aluminium foil. You could see the glue and the heads of the
nails holding it all together. Airport announcements flitted in
and out of my consciousness. All passengers on Air France
flight , bound for Paris. In the midst of this illogical
dream or uncertain wakefulness I thought about Sumire.
Like some documentary of ages past, fragments sprang to mind
of the times and places wed shared. In the bustle of the airport, 
 
passengers dashing here and there, the world I shared with
Sumire seemed shabby, helpless, uncertain. Neither of us knew
anything that really mattered, nor did we have the ability to
rectify that. There was nothing solid we could depend on. We
were almost boundless zeros, just pitiful little beings swept
from one kind of oblivion to another.
I woke in an unpleasant sweat, my shirt plastered to my
chest. My body was listless, my legs swollen. I felt as if Id
swallowed an overcast sky. I must have looked pale. One of the
lounge staff asked me, worriedly, if I was okay. Im all right, 
I replied, the heats just getting to me. Would you like
something cold to drink? she asked. I thought for a moment
and asked for a beer. She brought me a chilled facecloth, a
Heineken, and a bag of salted peanuts. After wiping my sweaty
face and drinking half the beer, I felt better. And I could sleep a
little.
 
The flight left Narita just about on time, taking the polar route
to Amsterdam. I wanted to sleep some more, so I had a couple
of whiskys and when I woke up, had a little dinner. I didnt
have much of an appetite and skipped breakfast. I wanted to
keep my mind a blank, so when I was awake I concentrated on
reading Conrad.
In Amsterdam I changed planes, arrived in Athens, went to
the domestic flight terminal, and, with barely a moment to
spare, boarded the bound for Rhodes. The plane was
packed with an animated bunch of young people from every
imaginable country. They were all tanned, dressed in T-shirts
or tank tops and cut-off jeans. Most of the young men were
growing beards (or maybe had forgotten to shave) and had
dishevelled hair pulled back in ponytails. Dressed in beige 
 
slacks, a white short-sleeve polo shirt and dark-blue cotton
jacket, I looked out of place. Id even forgotten to bring any
sunglasses. But who could blame me? Not too many hours
before I had been in my apartment in Kunitachi, worrying
about what I should do with my rubbish.
At Rhodes airport I asked at the information desk where I
could catch the ferry to the island. It was at a harbour nearby. If
I hurried, I might be able to make the evening ferry. Isnt it
sold out sometimes? I asked, just to be sure. The pointy-nosed
woman of indeterminate age at the information counter
frowned and waved her hand dismissively. They can always
make room for one more, she replied. Its not an elevator. 
 
I hailed a taxi and headed to the harbour. Im in a hurry, I
told the driver, but he didnt seem to catch my meaning. The
cab didnt have any air-conditioning, and a hot, dusty wind
blew in the open window. All the while the taxi driver, in
rough, sweaty English, ran on and on with some gloomy
diatribe about the Euro. I made polite noises to show I was
following, but I wasnt really listening. Instead, I squinted at
the bright Rhodes scenery passing by outside. The sky was
cloudless, not a hint of rain. The sun baked the stone walls of
the houses. A layer of dust covered the gnarled trees beside the
road, and people sat in the shade of the trees or under open
tents and gazed, almost silently, at the world. I began to
wonder if I was in the right place. The gaudy signs in Greek
letters, however, advertising cigarettes and ouzo and
overflowing the road from the airport into town, told me that 
sure enough this was Greece.
The evening ferry was still in the port. It was bigger than Id
imagined. In the stern was a space for transporting cars, and 
 
two medium-sized lorries full of food and sundries and an old
Peugeot sedan were already aboard, waiting for the ship to pull
out of the port. I bought a ticket and got on, and Id barely
taken a seat on a deckchair when the line to the dock was
untied and the engines roared into life. I sighed and looked up
at the sky. All I could do now was wait for the ship to take me
where I was going.
I removed my sweaty, dusty cotton jacket, folded it and
stuffed it in my bag. It was p.m., but the sun was still in the
middle of the sky, the sunlight overpowering. The breeze
blowing from the bow under the canvas awning wafted over
me, and ever so slowly I began to feel calmer. The gloomy
emotions that had swept through me in the lounge at Narita
airport had disappeared. Though there was still a bitter
aftertaste.
 
There were only a few tourists on board, so I guessed that the
island I was heading for was not such a popular holiday spot.
The vast majority of passengers were locals, mainly old people
whod taken care of business on Rhodes and were heading
home. Their purchases lay carefully at their feet, like fragile
animals. The old peoples faces were all deeply etched with
wrinkles and deadpan, as if the overpowering sun and a
lifetime of hard work had robbed them of all expression.
There were also a few young soldiers on board. And two
hippie travellers, heavy-looking backpacks in hand, sitting on
the deck. Both with skinny legs and grim faces.
There was a teenage Greek girl, too, in a long skirt. She was
lovely, with deep, dark eyes. Her long hair blew in the breeze
as she chatted to her girlfriend. A gentle smile played around
the corners of her mouth, as if something wonderful was about 
 
to occur. Her gold earrings glinted brightly in the sun. The
young soldiers leaned against the deck railing, smoking,
looking cool, throwing a quick glance in the girls direction
from time to time.
I sipped a lemon soda Id bought at the ferrys canteen and
gazed at the deep blue sea and the tiny islands floating by.
Most were not so much islands as crags in the sea, completely
deserted. White seabirds rested on the tip of the rocks, scanning
the ocean for fish. They ignored our ship. Waves broke at the
foot of the cliffs, creating a dazzling white border. Occasionally
I spotted an inhabited island. Tough-looking trees grew all over
it, and white-walled houses dotted the slopes. Brightly
coloured boats bobbed in the inlet, their tall masts inscribing
arcs as they rolled with the waves.
A wrinkled old man sitting next to me offered me a cigarette.
Thank you, I smiled, waving my hand, but I dont smoke. He
proffered a stick of spearmint gum instead. I took it gratefully,
and continued to gaze out to sea as I chewed.
It was after seven when the ferry reached the island. The
blazing sun had passed its zenith, but the sky was as light as
before, the summer light actually increasing in brilliance. As if
on some huge nameplate, the name of the island was written in
gigantic letters on the white walls of a building in the harbour.
The ferry sidled up to the wharf, and one by one the passengers
walked down the gangplank, luggage in hand. An open-air
café faced the harbour, and people whod come to meet the
ship waited there until they recognized the people they were
looking for.
As soon as I debarked I looked around for Miu. But there was
no one around who might be her. Several owners of inns came
up, asking me if I was looking for a place to stay for the night. 
 
 No, Im not, I said each time, shaking my head. Even so, each
one handed me a card before leaving.
The people whod left the ship with me scattered in all
directions. Shoppers trudged home, travellers went off to
hotels and inns. As soon as the people whod come to greet
their returning friends spotted them, they hugged each other
tightly or shook hands, and off theyd go. The two lorries and
the Peugeot, too, were unloaded and roared off into the
distance. Even the cats and dogs that had assembled out of
curiosity were gone before long. The only ones left were a
group of sunburned old folks with time on their hands. And
me, gym bag in hand, thoroughly out of place.
I took a seat at the café and ordered an iced tea, wondering
what I should do next. There wasnt much I could do. Night
was fast approaching, and I knew nothing about the island and
the layout of the land. If nobody came after a while, Id get a
room somewhere and the next morning come back to the
harbour, hopefully to meet with Miu. According to Sumiré,
Miu was a methodical woman, so I couldnt believe shed stand
me up. If she couldnt make it to the harbour, there must be
some very good explanation. Maybe she didnt think Id get
here so quickly.
I was starving. A feeling of such extreme hunger I felt sure
you could see through me. All the fresh sea air must have made
my body realize it hadnt had any nourishment since morning.
I didnt want to miss Miu, though, so I decided to wait some
more in the cafe. Every so often a local would pass by and give
me a curious glance.
At the kiosk next to the cafe I bought a small English
pamphlet about the history and geography of the island. I
leafed through it as I sipped the incredibly tasteless iced tea. 
 
The islands population ranged from , to , , depending
on the season. The population went up in the summer with the
number of tourists, down in winter when people went
elsewhere in search of work. The island had no industry to
speak of, and agriculture was pretty limited olives and a
couple of varieties of fruit. And there was fishing and spongediving.
Which is why, since the beginning of the twentieth
century, most of the islanders had emigrated to America. The
majority moved to Florida, where they could put their fishing
and sponging skills to good use. There was even a town in
Florida with the same name as the island.
On top of the hills was a military radar installation. Near the
civilian harbour was a second, smaller harbour where military
patrol ships docked. With the Turkish border nearby, the
Greeks wanted to prevent illegal border crossings and
smuggling, which is why there were soldiers in the town.
Whenever there was a dispute with Turkey in fact small-scale
skirmishes often broke out traffic in and out of the harbour
picked up.
More than , years ago, when Greek civilization was at its
peak, this island, situated along the main route to Asia,
flourished as a trading centre. Back then the hills were still
covered with green trees, put to good use by the thriving shipbuilding
industry. When Greek civilization declined, though,
and all the trees had been cut down (an abundant greenery
never to return again), the island quickly slid downhill
economically. Finally, the Turks came in. Their rule was
draconian, according to the pamphlet. If something wasnt to
their liking, theyd lop off peoples ears and noses as easily as
pruning trees. At the end of the nineteenth century, after
countless bloody battles, the island finally won its 
 
independence from Turkey, and the blue-and-white Greek flag
fluttered over the harbour. Next came Hitler. The Germans
built a radar and weather station on top of the hills to monitor
the nearby sea, since the hills provided the best possible view.
An English bombing force from Malta bombed the station. It
bombed the harbour as well as the hilltop, sinking a number of
innocent fishing boats and killing some hapless fishermen.
More Greeks died in the attack than did Germans, and some
old-timers still bore a grudge over the incident.
 
Like most Greek islands there was little flat space here, it was
mostly steep, unforgiving hills, with only one town along the
shore, just south of the harbour. Far from the town was a
beautiful, quiet beach, but to get to it you had to climb over a
steep hill. The easily accessible places didnt have such nice
beaches, which might be one reason the number of tourists
remained static. There were some Greek Orthodox monasteries
up in the hills, but the monks led strictly observant lives, and
casual visitors werent allowed. As far as I could tell from
reading the pamphlet, this was a pretty typical Greek island.
For some reason, though, Englishmen found the island
particularly charming (the British are a bit eccentric) and, in
their zeal for the place, built a colony of summer cottages on a
rise near the harbour. In the late s several British writers
lived there and wrote their novels while gazing at the blue sea
and the white clouds. Several of their works became critically
acclaimed, resulting in the island garnering a reputation among
the British literati as a romantic spot. As far as this notable
aspect of their islands culture was concerned, though, the local
Greek inhabitants couldnt have cared less.
 
 
I read all this to take my mind off how hungry I was. I closed
the pamphlet and looked around me again. The old people in
the café gazed unceasingly at the sea, as if they were
contestants in a staring contest. It was already eight oclock,
and my hunger was turning into something close to physical
pain. The smell of roast meat and grilled fish drifted over from
somewhere and, like a good-natured torturer, seized me by the
guts. I couldnt endure it any more and stood up. Just as I
picked up my bag and was about to start searching for a
restaurant, a woman silently appeared before me.
 
The sun, finally sinking into the sea, shone directly on the
woman, her knee-length white skirt rippling slightly as she
strode down the stone steps. She wore small tennis shoes, and
her legs were girlish. She had on a sleeveless light-green
blouse, a narrow-brimmed hat and carried a small cloth
shoulder bag. The way she walked was so natural, so ordinary,
she blended into the scenery, and at first I took her for a local.
But she was heading straight for me, and as she approached I
could make out her Asian features. Half reflexively I sat down,
then stood up again. The woman removed her sunglasses and
spoke my name.
 Sorry Im so late, she said. I had to go to the police station,
and all the paperwork took a long time. And I never imagined
youd be here today. Tomorrow at noon at the earliest, I
thought. 
 I managed to make all my connections, I said. The police
station?
Miu looked straight at me and smiled faintly. If its all right
with you, why dont we go somewhere to eat and talk. Ive
only had breakfast today. How about you? Are you hungry? 
 
Youd better believe it, I replied.
 
She led me to a taverna on a side street near the harbour. There
was a charcoal grill set up near the entrance and all kinds of
fresh seafood cooking away on the iron grill. Do you like fish?
Asked Miu, and I said I did. She spoke to the waiter, ordering
in broken Greek. First he brought a carafe of white wine, bread,
and olives. Without any toasts or further ado, we poured
ourselves some wine and started drinking. I ate some of the
coarse bread and a few olives to ease my hunger pangs.
Miu was beautiful. My first impression was of that clear and
simple fact. No, maybe it wasnt that clear or that simple.
Maybe I was under some terrible mistaken impression. Maybe
for some reason Id been swallowed up in some other persons
unalterable dream. Thinking about it now, I cant rule out that
possibility. All I can say for sure is that at that moment I saw
her as an extremely lovely woman.
She wore several rings on her slim fingers. One was a simple
gold wedding band. While I tried hurriedly to arrange my first
impressions of her in some kind of order, she gazed at me with
gentle eyes, taking an occasional sip of wine.
 I feel like Ive met you before, she said. Perhaps because I
hear about you all the time. 
 Sumires told me a lot about you, too, I said.
Miu beamed. When she smiled, and then only, charming
small lines appeared at the corners of her eyes. I guess we can
forgo introductions, then. 
I nodded.
What I liked most about Miu was that she didnt try to hide
her age. According to Sumire, she must be or. And indeed
she looked that age. With her slim, tight figure, a little make-up 
 
and shed easily pass for late twenties. But she didnt make the
effort. Miu let age naturally rise to the surface, accepted it for
what it was, and made her peace with it.
 
Miu popped an olive into her mouth, grasped the pit with her
fingers and, like a poet getting the punctuation just right,
gracefully discarded it in an ashtray.
 Im sorry to call you up like that in the middle of the night, 
she said. I wish I could have explained things better then, but I
was too upset and didnt know where to begin. Im still not
totally calm, but my initial confusion has settled a bit. 
 What in the world happened? I asked.
Miu brought her hands together on the table, separated them,
brought them together again. Sumire has disappeared. 
 Disappeared? 
 Like smoke, Miu said. She took a sip of wine.
She continued. Its a long story, so I think Id better start at
the beginning and tell it in the right order. Otherwise some of
the nuances might not come through. The story itself is quite
subtle. But lets eat first. Its not like each second counts right
now, and its hard to think straight if youre hungry. Also, its a
bit too noisy to talk here. 
The restaurant was filled with Greeks gesturing and talking
boisterously. So that we didnt have to shout at each other, Miu
and I leaned forward across the table, our heads close together
as we talked. Presently the waiter brought over a heaping plate
of Greek salad and a large grilled whitefish. Miu sprinkled
some salt on the fish, squeezed out half a lemon, and dripped
some olive oil onto her portion. I did the same. We
concentrated on eating for a while. As she said, first things first.
We needed to assuage our hunger. 
 
How long could I stay here? she asked. The new term
begins in a week, I replied, so I have to be back by then.
Otherwise things will be a bit sticky. Miu gave a matter-of-fact
nod. She pursed her lips and seemed to be working out
something. She didnt say anything predictable, like Dont
worry, youll be back by then, or I wonder if thingsll be all
settled by then. She came to her own private conclusion,
which she tucked away in a drawer, and silently went back to
her meal.
After dinner, as we were having coffee, she broached the
subject of the air fare. Would you mind taking the amount in
dollar travellers cheques? she asked. Or else I could have the
money transferred to your account in yen after you return to
Tokyo. Which do you prefer? Im not strapped for funds, I
answered, I can pay it myself. But Miu insisted on paying. Im
the one who asked you to come, she said.
I shook my head. Its not like Im being polite or anything. A
little bit later on, and I probably would have come here of my
own accord. Thats what Im trying to say. 
Miu gave it some thought and nodded. I am very grateful to
you. For coming here. I cant tell you how much. 
 
When we left the restaurant, the sky was a brilliant splash of
colours. The kind of air that felt like if you breathed it in, your
lungs would be dyed the same shade of blue. Tiny stars began
to twinkle. Barely able to wait for the long summer day to be
over, the locals were out for an after-dinner stroll around the
harbour. Families, couples, groups of friends. The gentle scent
of the tide at the end of the day enveloped the streets. Miu and
I walked through the town. The right side of the street was
lined with shops, small hotels, and restaurants with tables set 
 
up on the pavement. Cosy yellow lights shone at small,
wooden-shuttered windows, and Greek music filtered down
from a radio. On the left side the sea spread out, dark waves
placidly breaking on the wharves.
 In a while the road goes uphill, Miu said. We can either
take some steep stairs or a gentle slope. The stairs are faster. Do
you mind? 
 No, I dont, I answered.
Narrow stone stairs paralleled the slope of the hill. They were
long and steep, but Mius trainer-clad feet showed no signs of
tiring, and she never slackened her pace. The hem of her skirt
just in front of me swished pleasantly from side to side, her
tanned, shapely calves shone in the light of the almost full
moon. I got winded first and had to stop to take some deep
breaths. As we made our way up, the lights of the harbour
became smaller and further away. All the activities of the
people whod been right beside me were absorbed into that
anonymous line of lights. It was an impressive sight, something
I wanted to cut out with scissors and pin to the wall of my
memory.
The place where Miu and Sumire were staying was a small
cottage with a veranda facing the sea. White walls and a redtiled
roof, the door painted a deep green. A riot of red
bougainvilleas overgrew the low stone wall that surrounded
the house. She opened the unlocked door and invited me in.
The cottage was pleasantly cool. There was a living room and
a medium-sized dining room and kitchen. The walls were
white stucco, with a couple of abstract paintings. In the living
room there was a sofa and bookshelf, and a compact stereo.
Two bedrooms and a small but clean-looking tiled bathroom.
None of the furniture was very appealing, just cosy and lived 
 
in.
Miu took off her hat and laid her bag down on the kitchen
worktop. Would you like something to drink? she asked. Or
would you like a shower first? 
 Think Ill take a shower first, I said.
I washed my hair and shaved. Blow-dried my hair and
changed into a fresh T-shirt and shorts. Made me feel halfway
back to normal. Below the mirror in the bathroom there were
two toothbrushes, one blue, the other red. I wondered which
was Sumires.
I went back into the living room and found Miu in an easy
chair, brandy glass in hand. She invited me to join her, but
what I really wanted was a cold beer. I got an Amstel beer from
the fridge and poured it into a tall glass. Sunk deep in her chair,
Miu was quiet for a long time. It didnt look like she was trying
to find the right words she wanted to say, rather that she was
immersed in some personal memory, one without beginning
and without end.
 How long have you been here? I ventured.
 Today is the eighth day, Miu said after thinking about it.
 And Sumire disappeared from here? 
 Thats right. Like I said before, just like smoke. 
 When did this happen? 
 At night, four days ago, she said, looking around the room
as if seeking a clue. I dont know where to begin. 
 Sumire told me in her letters about going to Paris from
Milan, I said. Then about taking the train to Burgundy. You
stayed at your friends large estate house in a Burgundy
village. 
 Well, then, Ill pick up the story from there, she said. 
 
 
 Ive known the wine producers around that village for ages,
and I know their wines like I know the layout of my own
house. What kind of wine the grapes on a certain slope in a
certain field will produce. How that years weather affects the
flavour, which producers are working hardest, whose son is
trying his best to help his father. How much in loans certain
producers have taken out, whos bought a new Citroen. Those
kinds of things. Wine is like breeding thoroughbreds you
have to know the lineage and the latest information. You cant
do business based just on what tastes good and what doesnt. 
Miu stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She seemed
unable to decide whether to go on or not. She continued.
 There are a couple of places in Europe I buy from, but that
village in Burgundy is my main supplier. So I try to spend a
fair amount of time there at least once a year, to renew old
friendships and gather the latest news. I always go alone, but 
 
this time we were visiting Italy first, and I decided to take
Sumire with me. Its more convenient sometimes to have
another person with you on trips like this, and besides, Id had
her study Italian. In the end I decided I would rather go alone
and planned to make up some excuse to have her go back
home before I set out for France. Ive been used to travelling
alone ever since I was young, and no matter how close you are
to them its not easy to be with someone else day after day.
 Sumire was surprisingly capable and took care of lots of
details for me. Buying tickets, making hotel reservations,
negotiating prices, keeping expense records, searching out
good local restaurants. Those kinds of things. Her Italian was
much improved, and I liked her healthy curiosity, which
helped me experience things I never would have if Id been
alone. I was surprised at how easy it is to be with someone else.
I felt that way, I think, because of something special that
brought us together. 
 
 I remember very well the first time we met and we talked
about Sputniks. She was talking about Beatnik writers, and I
mistook the word and said ‘Sputnik. We laughed about it, and
that broke the ice. Do you know what ‘Sputnik means in
Russian? ‘Travelling companion. I looked it up in a dictionary
not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about
it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange
name. Its just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the
Earth. 
Miu was silent for just a moment, then continued.
 
 Anyway, I ended up taking Sumire with me to Burgundy.
While I was seeing old acquaintances and taking care of 
 
business, Sumire, whose French was nonexistent, borrowed the
car and drove around the area. In one town she happened to
meet a wealthy old Spanish lady, and they chatted in Spanish
and got to be friends. The lady introduced Sumire to an
Englishman who was staying in their hotel. He was more than
 , a writer of some sort, very refined and handsome. Im
positive he was gay. He had a secretary with him who seemed
to be his boyfriend.
 They invited us for dinner. They were very nice people, and
as we talked we realized we had some mutual acquaintances,
and I felt like Id found some kindred spirits.
 The Englishman told us he had a small cottage on an island
in Greece and would be happy if we used it. He always used
the cottage for a month in the summer, but this summer he had
some work that kept him from going. Houses are best
occupied, otherwise the caretakers will get lazy, he told us. So
if it isnt any bother, please feel free to use it. This cottage, in
other words. 
Miu gazed around the room.
 
 When I was in college I visited Greece. It was one of those
whirlwind tours where you leap from port to port, but still I
fell in love with the country. Thats why it was such an enticing
offer to have a free house on a Greek island to use for as long as
we wanted. Sumire jumped at the chance, too. I offered to pay a
fair price to rent the cottage, but the Englishman refused,
saying he wasnt in the rental business. We batted some ideas
around for a while, and ended up agreeing that I would send a
case of red wine to his home in London to thank him.
 Life on the island was like a dream. For the first time in I
dont know how long I could enjoy a real holiday, without any 
 
schedule to worry about. Communications are a bit backward
here you know about the awful phone service and there
arent any faxes or the Internet. Getting back to Tokyo later
than originally planned would cause a bit of a problem for
other people, but once I got here it didnt seem to matter any
more.
 Sumire and I got up early every morning, packed a bag with
towels, water, sunscreen, and walked to the beach on the other
side of the mountains. The shore is so beautiful it takes your
breath away. The sand is pure white, and there are hardly any
waves. Its a little out of the way, though, and very few people
go there, particularly in the morning. Everyone, men and
women, swims nude. We did, too. It feels fantastic to swim in
the pure blue sea in the morning, as bare as the day you were
born. You feel like youre in another world.
 When we tired of swimming, Sumire and I would lie on the
beach and get a tan. At first we were a little embarrassed to be
nude in front of each other, but once we got used to it, it was no
big deal. The energy of the place was working on us, I suppose.
Wed spread sunscreen on each others backs, loll in the sun,
reading, dozing, just chatting. It made me feel truly free.
 Wed walk back home over the mountains, take showers
and have a simple meal, then set off down the stairs to town.
Wed have tea in a harbour cafe, read the English paper, buy
some food in a shop, go home, then spend our time as we
pleased until evening reading out on the veranda or listening
to music. Sometimes Sumire was in her room, writing
apparently. I could hear her opening up her PowerBook and
clattering away on the keys. In the evening wed go out to the
harbour to watch the ferryboat come in. Wed have a cool drink
and watch the people getting off the ship. 
 
 
 There we were, sitting quietly on the edge of the world, and
no one could see us. Thats the way it felt like Sumire and I
were the only ones here. There was nothing else we had to
think about. I didnt want to move, didnt want to go
anywhere. I just wanted to stay this way for ever. I knew that
was impossible our life here was just a momentary illusion,
and someday reality would yank us back to the world we came
from. But until that time came I wanted to enjoy each day to the
fullest, without worrying about anything. We loved our life
here. Until four days ago. 
 
On their fourth morning there they went as usual to the beach,
skinny-dipped, returned home, and left again for the harbour.
The waiter at the cafe remembered them the generous tips
Miu always left didnt hurt and greeted them warmly. He
made some polite comment about how beautiful they looked.
Sumire went to the kiosk and bought a copy of the English
newspaper published in Athens. That was their only link with
the outside world. Sumires job was reading the paper. Shed
check the exchange rate and translate and read aloud to Miu
any major news item or interesting article she happened to
come across.
The article Sumire picked to read aloud that particular day
was a report of a -year-old lady who was eaten by her cats. It
happened in a small suburb of Athens. The dead woman had
lost her husband, a businessman, eleven years before and ever
since had lived a quiet life in a two-room apartment with
several cats as her only friends. One day the woman collapsed
face down on her sofa from a heart attack and expired. It
wasnt known how much time had elapsed between her attack 
 
and her death. At any rate, the womans soul passed through
all the set stages to bid farewell to its old companion, the body
it had inhabited for years. She didnt have any relatives or
friends who visited her regularly, and her body wasnt
discovered until a week later. The doors were shut, the
windows shuttered, and the cats couldnt get out after the
death of their owner. There wasnt any food in the apartment.
There must have been something in the refrigerator, but cats
dont possess the necessary skill to open fridge doors. Starving,
they devoured the flesh of their owner.
Taking an occasional sip from her coffee cup, Sumire
translated the article in stages. Some bees buzzed around the
table, licking the jam a previous patron had spilled. Miu gazed
at the sea through her sunglasses, listening intently to Sumire.
 And then what happened? Miu asked.
 Thats it, said Sumire, folding the tabloid in half and laying
it on the table. Thats all the newspaper says. 
 What could have happened to the cats? 
 I dont know … Sumire said, pursing her lips to one side
and giving it some thought. Newspapers are all the same.
They never tell you what you really want to know. 
The bees, as if sensing something, flew up in the air and with
a ceremonious buzz circled for a while, then settled again on
the table. They returned to their jam licking.
 And what was the fate of the cats, one wonders, Sumire
said, tugging at the collar of her oversize T-shirt and smoothing
out the wrinkles. She had on a T-shirt and shorts and Miu
happened to know no underwear underneath. Cats that
develop a taste for human flesh might turn into man-eating
cats, so maybe they destroyed them. Or maybe the police said,
‘Hey, you guys have suffered enough, and they were
 
acquitted. 
 If you were the mayor or chief of police in that town, what
would you do? 
Sumire thought about it. How about placing them in an
institution and reforming them? Turn them into vegetarians. 
 Not a bad idea. Miu laughed. She took off her sunglasses
and turned to face Sumire. That story reminds me of the first
lecture I heard when I entered a Catholic junior high school.
Did I ever tell you I went to a very strict Catholic girls school
for six years? I attended an ordinary elementary school, but I
went into that school in junior high. Right after the entrance
ceremony a decrepit old nun took all of us new students into
the auditorium and gave a talk on Catholic ethics. She was a
French nun, but her Japanese was fluent. She talked about all
kinds of things, but what I recall is the story of cats and the
deserted island. 
 Thats sounds interesting, Sumire said.
 Youre shipwrecked, washed up on a deserted island. Only
you and a cat made it to the lifeboat. You drift for a while and
end up on this island, just a rocky island with nothing you can
eat. No water, either. In your lifeboat you have ten days worth
of biscuits and water for one person, and thats it. Thats how
the story went.
 The nun looked all around the auditorium and she said this
in a strong, clear voice. ‘Close your eyes and imagine this
scene. Youre washed up on a deserted island with a cat. This is
a solitary island in the middle of nowhere. Its almost
impossible that someone would rescue you within ten days.
When your food and water run out, you may very well die.
Well, what would you do? Since the cat is suffering as you are,
should you divide your meagre food with it? The sister was 
 
silent again and looked at all our faces. ‘No. That would be a
mistake, she continued. ‘I want you to understand that
dividing your food with the cat would be wrong. The reason
being that you are precious beings, chosen by God, and the cat
is not. Thats why you should eat all the food yourself. The
nun had this terribly serious look on her face.
 At first I thought it was some kind of joke. I was waiting for
the punchline. But there wasnt one. She turned her talk to the
subject of human dignity and worth, and it all went over my
head. I mean, really, what was the point of telling that kind of
story to kids whod just entered the school? I couldnt figure it
out and I still cant. 
Sumire thought it over. Do you mean whether it would be
okay in the end, to eat the cat? 
 Well, I dont know. She didnt take it that far. 
 Are you a Catholic? 
Miu shook her head. That school just happened to be near
my house, so I went. I liked their uniforms, too. I was the only
non-Japanese citizen in the school. 
 Did you have any bad experiences? 
 Because I was Korean? 
 Yes. 
Again Miu shook her head. The school was quite liberal.
The rules were pretty strict, and some of the sisters were
eccentrics, but the atmosphere was generally progressive, and
no, I never experienced any prejudice. I made some good
friends, and overall Id say I enjoyed school. Ive had a few
unpleasant experiences, but that was after I went out into the
real world. But thats nothing unusual it happens to most
people. 
 I heard they eat cats in Korea. Is it true? 
 
 Ive heard the same thing. But nobody I know does. 
 
It had been the hottest time of day, and the early afternoon
town square was nearly deserted. Almost everyone in town
was shut up in a cool house, taking a nap. Only curious
foreigners ventured out at that time of day.
There was a statue of a hero in the square. Hed led a
rebellion in mainland Greece and fought the Turks who
controlled the island, but was captured and put to death by
skewering. The Turks set up a sharpened stake in the square
and lowered the pitiful hero onto it, naked. Ever so slowly, the
stake went through his anus, and finally all the way to his
mouth, taking him hours to die. The statue was supposedly
erected on the spot where this happened. When it was erected,
the valiant bronze statue must have been quite a sight, but over
the intervening years, what with the sea wind, dust, and
seagull droppings, you could barely make out the mans
features. Island folk hardly gave the shabby statue a passing
glance, and the statue itself looked like it had turned its back on
the world.
 
 Speaking of cats, Sumire had blurted out, I have a very
strange memory of one. When I was in second grade we had a
pretty little six-month-old tortoiseshell cat. I was on the
veranda one evening, reading a book, when the cat started to
run like crazy around the base of this large pine tree in the
garden. Cats do that. Theres nothing there, but suddenly they
hiss, arch their backs, jump, hair standing on end and tail up, in
attack mode.
 The cat was so worked up it didnt notice me watching it
from the veranda. It was such a strange sight I laid down my 
 
book and watched the cat. It didnt seem to tire of its solitary
game. Actually, as time passed it got more determined. Like it
was possessed. 
Sumire took a drink of water and lightly scratched her ear.
 The more I watched, the more frightened I became. The cat
saw something that I couldnt see, and whatever it was drove it
into a frenzy. Finally the cat started racing around and around
the tree trunk at a tremendous speed, like the tiger that changes
into butter in that childrens story. Finally, after running
forever, it leaped up the tree trunk. I could see its tiny face
peeping out between the branches way up high. From the
veranda I called out its name in a loud voice, but it didnt hear
me.
 Finally the sun set and the cold late-autumn wind began to
blow. I sat on the veranda, waiting for the cat to come down. It
was a friendly cat, and I thought that if I sat there for a while, it
would come down. But it didnt. I couldnt even hear it
miaowing. It got darker and darker. I got scared and told my
family. ‘Dont worry, they said, ‘just leave it alone and itll
come down before long. But the cat never came back. 
 What do you mean never came back? asked Miu.
 It just disappeared. Like smoke. Everybody told me the cat
must have come down from the tree in the night and gone off
somewhere. Cats get worked up and climb tall trees, then get
frightened when they realize how high they are, and wont
come down. Happens all the time. If the cat was still there, they
said, itd miaow for all its worth to let you know. But I didnt
believe that. I thought the cat must be clinging to a branch,
scared to death, unable to cry out. When I came back from
school, I sat on the veranda, looked at the pine tree, and every
once in a while called out the cats name. No reply. After a 
 
week, I gave up. I loved that little cat, and it made me so sad.
Every time I happened to look at the pine tree I could picture
that pitiful little cat, stone-cold dead, still clinging to a branch.
The cat never going anywhere, starving to death and
shrivelling up there. 
Sumire looked at Miu.
 I never had a cat again. I still like cats, though I decided at
the time that that poor little cat who climbed the tree and never
returned would be my first and last cat. I couldnt forget that
little cat and start loving another. 
 
 Thats what we talked about that afternoon at the cafe, said
Miu. I thought they were just a lot of harmless memories, but
now everything seems significant. Maybe its just my
imagination. 
Miu turned and looked out of the window. The breeze
blowing in from the sea rustled the pleated curtains. With her
gazing out at the darkness, the room seemed to acquire an even
deeper silence.
 Do you mind if I ask a question? Im sorry if it seems off the
subject, but its been bothering me, I said. You said Sumire
disappeared, vanished ‘like smoke, as you put it. Four days
ago. And you went to the police. Right? 
Miu nodded.
 Why did you ask me to come instead of getting in touch
with Sumires family? 
 I didnt have any clues about what happened to her. And
without any solid evidence, I didnt know if I should upset her
parents. I agonized over it for some time and decided to wait
and see. 
I tried picturing Sumires handsome father taking the ferry to 
 
the island. Would her stepmother, understandably hurt by the
turn of events, accompany him? That would be one fine mess.
As far as I was concerned, though, things were already a mess.
How could a foreigner possibly vanish on such a small island
for four days?
 But why did you call me? 
Miu brought her bare legs together again, held the hem of
her skirt between her fingers, and tugged it down. You were
the only one I could count on. 
 But youd never met me. 
 Sumire trusted you more than anyone else. She said you
think deeply about things, no matter what the subject. 
 Definitely a minority opinion, Im afraid. 
Miu narrowed her eyes and smiled, those tiny wrinkles
appearing around her eyes.
I stood up and walked in front of her, taking her empty glass.
I went into the kitchen, poured some Courvoisier into the glass,
then went back to the living room. She thanked me and took
the brandy. Time passed, the curtain silently fluttering. The
breeze had the smell of a different place.
 Do you really, really want to know the truth? Miu asked
me. She sounded drained, as if shed come to a difficult
decision.
I looked up and gazed into her face. One thing I can say
with absolute certainty, I said, is that if I didnt want to know
the truth, I wouldnt be here. 
Miu squinted in the direction of the curtains. And finally
spoke, in a quiet voice. It happened that night, after wed
talked about cats at the café. 
 
 
After their conversation at the harbour cafe about cats, Miu and
Sumire went grocery shopping and returned to the cottage. As
usual, they relaxed until dinner. Sumire was in her room,
writing on her laptop. Miu lay on the sofa in the living room,
hands folded behind her head, eyes closed, listening to Julius
Katchens recording of Brahmss ballads. It was an old LP, but
the performance was graceful, emotional, and utterly
memorable. Not a bit presumptuous, but fully expressive.
 Does the music bother you? Miu asked once, looking in at
the door to Sumires room. The door was wide open.
 Brahms never bothers me, Sumire said, turning around.
This was the first time Miu had seen Sumire writing so
intently. Her mouth was tight, like a prowling animals, her
eyes deeper than usual.
 What are you writing? Miu asked. A new Sputnik novel? 
The tenseness around Sumires mouth softened a little. 
 
 Nothing much. Just things that came to mind that might be of
use someday. 
Miu returned to her sofa and sank back down in the
miniature world the music traced in the afternoon sunlight;
how wonderful it would be, she mused, to play Brahms so
beautifully. In the past I always had trouble with Brahmss
minor works, especially the ballads, she thought. I never could
give myself up to that world of capricious, fleeting nuances and
sighs. Now, though, I should be able to play Brahms more
beautifully than before. But Miu knew very well: I cant play
anything. Ever again.
 
At. the two of them prepared dinner in the kitchen and ate
out on the veranda. A soup of sea bream and fragrant herbs,
salad, and bread. They had some white wine and, later, hot
coffee. They watched as a fishing boat appeared in the lee of
the island and inscribed a short white arc as it sailed into the
harbour. No doubt a hot meal was awaiting the fishermen in
their homes.
 By the way, when will we be leaving here? asked Sumire
as she washed the dishes in the sink.
 Id like to stay one more week, but thats about as long as I
can manage, Miu replied, looking at the calendar on the wall.
 If I had my way, Id stay here for ever. 
 If I had my way, me too, Sumire said, beaming. But what
can you do? Wonderful things always come to an end. 
 
Following their usual routine, they each went to their rooms
before ten. Miu changed into long-sleeve, white cotton pyjamas
and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. But soon she
woke up, as if shaken by the beating of her own heart. She 
 
glanced over at the travel alarm clock next to her; it was past
.. The room was pitch black, enveloped by total silence. She
sensed someone nearby, hiding with bated breath. Miu pulled
the covers up to her neck and pricked up her ears. Her heart
thumped loudly, drowning out everything else. It wasnt just a
bad dream spilling over into wakefulness someone was
definitely in the room with her. Careful not to make a sound,
she reached out and pulled aside the window curtain an inch
or two. Pale, watery moonlight stole into the room. Keeping
perfectly still, she swept the room with her eyes.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could distinguish an
outline of something gradually forming in a corner of the room.
In the shadow of the wardrobe beside the door, where the
darkness was deepest. Whatever it was, it was low, rolled into
a thick ball like some large, long-forgotten postbag. An animal?
A large dog? But the front door was locked, the door to her
room shut. A dog wouldnt be able to get in.
Miu continued to breathe quietly and stared fixedly. Her
mouth was dry, and she could catch a faint whiff of the brandy
shed had before going to bed. She reached out and drew the
curtain back a little to let more moonlight in. Slowly, like
unravelling a tangled thread, she could make out the outline of
the black lump on the floor. It looked like a persons body: hair
hanging down in front, two thin legs bent at an acute angle.
Someone was sitting on the floor, rolled up, head between legs,
scrunched up as if to protect herself from something falling
from the sky.
It was Sumire. Wearing her usual blue pyjamas, she crouched
like an insect between the door and the wardrobe. Not moving.
Not even breathing, as far as Miu could tell.
Miu gave a sigh of relief. But what in the world was Sumire 
 
doing here? Miu sat up quietly in bed and switched on the
lamp. Yellow light lit up the entire room, but Sumire didnt
budge an inch. She didnt even seem to realize the light was on.
 
 Whats the matter? Miu called out. First in a small voice, then
more loudly.
There was no response. Mius voice didnt appear to reach
Sumire. Miu got out of bed and walked over to her. The feel of
the carpet was rougher than ever against her bare feet.
 Are you sick? Miu asked, crouching beside Sumire.
Still no answer.
Miu noticed that Sumire was holding something in her
mouth. A pink facecloth that was always hanging in the
bathroom. Miu tried to pull it out, but Sumires mouth was
clamped down hard. Her eyes were open, but unseeing. Miu
gave up and rested a hand on her shoulder. Sumires pyjamas
were soaking wet.
 Youd better take your pyjamas off, Miu said. Youre
sweating so much youll catch cold. 
Sumire looked stupefied, not hearing anything, not seeing
anything. Miu decided to get Sumires pyjamas off; otherwise
her body would freeze. It was August, but sometimes nights on
the island were chilly. The two of them swam nude every day
and were used to seeing each others bodies, so Miu thought
Sumire wouldnt mind if she undressed her.
Supporting Sumires body, she unbuttoned the pyjamas and,
after a time, was able to get the top off. Then the bottoms.
Sumires body was rigid, but gradually relaxed and ended up
limp. Miu took the facecloth out of her mouth. It was soaked
from her saliva. There was a perfect set of teethmarks on it.
Sumire had no panties on under the pyjamas. Miu grabbed a 
 
towel nearby and wiped the sweat from her body. First her
back, then under her arms, then her chest. She wiped her belly,
then very quickly the area from her waist to her thighs. Sumire
was subdued, unresisting. She appeared unconscious, though
looking into her eyes Miu could make out a glint of
comprehension.
Miu had never touched Sumires naked body before. Her
skin was taut, smooth like a young childs. Lifting her up, Miu
found that Sumires body was heavier than she had imagined,
and smelled of sweat. Wiping the sweat from her, Miu felt
again her own heart thumping in her chest. Saliva gathered in
her mouth, and she had to swallow again and again.
Bathed in moonlight, Sumires body glistened like some
ancient ceramic. Her breasts were small, but shapely, with wellformed
nipples. Her black pubic hair was wet with sweat and
glittered like grass in the morning dew. Her limp, naked body
was completely different from the one Miu had seen under the
blazing sun at the beach. Her body was a mix of still-girlish
elements and a budding maturity blindly wrenched open by
the painful flow of time.
Miu felt like she was peering into someones elses secrets,
something forbidden she shouldnt be seeing. She avoided
looking at her naked skin as she continued to wipe away the
sweat from Sumires body, all the while replaying in her mind
a Bach piece shed memorized as a child. She wiped Sumires
sweaty fringe, which was plastered to her forehead. Even the
inside of Sumires tiny ears were sweaty.
Miu felt Sumires arm silently go around her own body.
Sumires breath grazed her neck.
 All you all right? she asked.
Sumire didnt reply. But her arm held on a bit more tightly. 
 
Half carrying her, Miu helped her into her own bed. She lay her
down and pulled the covers over her. Sumire lay there,
unmoving, and closed her eyes.
 
Miu watched her for a while, but Sumire didnt move a muscle.
She seemed to have fallen asleep. Miu went to the kitchen and
gulped down several glasses of mineral water. She took a few
deep breaths and managed to calm down. Her heart had
stopped pounding, though her chest ached with the tension of
the last few moments. Everything was cloaked in a choking
silence. No voices, not even a dog barking. No waves, no sound
of the wind. Why, Miu wondered, is everything so deadly still?
Miu went into the bathroom and took Sumires sweaty
pyjamas, the towel shed used to wipe her down, and the
facecloth with the teethmarks and tossed them into the laundry
basket. She washed her face and gazed at her reflection in the
mirror. Since coming to the island she hadnt dyed her hair,
which was now pure white, like newly fallen snow.
When Miu went back into the room Sumires eyes were open.
A thin, translucent veil seemed to cover them, but a glimmer of
consciousness had returned. She lay there, the covers up to her
shoulders.
 Im sorry, she said huskily. Sometimes I get this way. 
Miu sat down on a corner of the bed, smiled, and reached out
to touch Sumires still-damp hair. You should take a good,
long shower. You were really sweating. 
 Thanks, said Sumire. I just want to lie here. 
Miu nodded and handed Sumire a fresh bath towel, took out
a pair of her own clean pyjamas from the chest of drawers and
laid them beside Sumire. You can use these. I dont imagine
you have another pair, do you? 
 
 Can I sleep here tonight? asked Sumire.
 All right. Just go to sleep. Ill sleep in your bed. 
 My bed must be soaked, Sumire said. The covers,
everything. And I dont want to be alone. Dont leave me here.
Would you sleep beside me? Just for tonight? I dont want to
have any more nightmares. 
Miu thought about it, then nodded. But first put on a pair of
pyjamas. I dont think Id like having somebody naked lying
right next to me especially in such a small bed. 
 
Sumire got up slowly and pushed back the covers. She stood
up, still naked, and tugged on Mius pyjamas. She leaned
forward and slipped on the bottoms, then the top. It took some
time to get the buttons all fastened. Her fingers wouldnt work
right. Miu didnt help, she just sat there watching. Sumire
buttoned up the pyjamas in such a deliberate way it struck Miu
as an almost religious ceremony. The moonlight lent a strange
hardness to her nipples.
She might be a virgin, Miu suddenly thought.
After putting on the silk pyjamas, Sumire lay down again in
bed, on the far side. Miu got into bed, where the scent of sweat
remained strong.
 Can I, Sumire began, just hold you for a while? 
 Hold me? 
 Yes. 
While Miu wondered how to respond, Sumire reached out
and clasped her hand. Her palm was still sweaty, warm and
soft. She reached both hands behind Miu. Sumires breasts
pushed against Miu, just above her stomach. Sumire pressed
her cheek between Mius breasts. They remained that way for a
long time. Sumire seemed to be shaking, ever so slightly. She 
 
must be crying, Miu thought. But it was as if she couldnt let it
all out. Miu reached around Sumires shoulder and drew her
closer. Shes still a child, Miu thought. Lonely and frightened,
she wants someones warmth. Like that kitten clinging to a
pine branch.
Sumire shifted her body upwards a bit. The tip of her nose
brushed Mius neck. Their breasts pressed together. Miu
gulped. Sumires hand wandered over her back.
 I really like you, Sumire said in a small voice.
 I like you, too, Miu said. She didnt know what else to say.
And it was the truth.
Sumires fingers started to unbutton the front of Mius
pyjamas. Miu tried to stop her. But Sumire wouldnt stop. Just
a little, she said. Just a little please. 
Miu lay there unresisting. Sumires fingers gently traced the
contours of Mius breasts. Her nose flickered back and forth at
Mius throat. She touched Mius nipple, stroked it gently, and
held it between two fingers. Hesitantly at first, then more
boldly.
 
Miu stopped speaking. She looked up, searchingly, at me. Her
cheeks were slightly flushed.
 Theres something I need to explain to you. A long time ago
I had a very unusual experience, and my hair turned pure
white. Overnight, completely. Since then Ive dyed my hair.
Sumire knew I dyed it, and since it was too much trouble after
we came to this island, I gave up. Nobody knows me here, so it
didnt matter. But knowing youd be coming, I dyed it again. I
didnt want to give you a strange first impression. 
Time flowed past in the ensuing silence.
 
 
 Ive never had a homosexual experience, and never
considered I had those tendencies. But if thats what Sumire
really wanted, I thought I could oblige. At least I didnt find it
disgusting. As long as it was with Sumire, that is. So I didnt
resist when she started feeling me all over, or when she stuck
her tongue inside my mouth. It felt strange, but I tried to get
used to it. I let her do what she wanted. I like Sumire, and if it
made her happy, I didnt mind what she did.
 But my body and my mind are two different things. A part
of me was happy that Sumire was caressing me so lovingly. But
no matter how happy my mind was, my body resisted. It
wouldnt yield to her. My heart and my head were aroused, but
the rest of me was like a hard, dry stone. Its sad, but I couldnt
help it. Of course Sumire picked up on that. Her body was
flushed and gently damp, but I couldnt respond.
 I told her how I felt. ‘Im not rejecting you, I said, ‘but I just
cant do that kind of thing. Ever since that happened to me, 
years ago, I havent been able to give myself to anyone in this
world. Its something thats out of my hands, decided
somewhere else. I told her that if there was anything I could
do, you know, with my fingers, or mouth, I would. But that
isnt what she wanted. I knew that already. 
 
 She kissed me on the forehead and said she was sorry. ‘Its
just that I like you, she said. ‘Ive worried about it for so long,
and I had to try. ‘I like you, too, I told her. ‘So dont worry
about it. I still want you to be with me.
 As if a dam had burst, Sumire sobbed into her pillow for the
longest time. As she cried, I rubbed her bare back from the top
of her shoulder to her waist, feeling all her bones. I wanted to
cry along with her, but I couldnt. 
 
 And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling
companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal
on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like
beautiful shooting stars, but in reality theyre nothing more
than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going
nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours
happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even
open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest
moment. In the next instant wed be in absolute solitude. Until
we burned up and became nothing. 
 
 After crying her heart out, Sumire got up, picked up the
pyjamas that had fallen to the floor and slipped them on, said
Miu. She said she wanted to be alone and was going back to
her room. ‘Dont think too deeply about things, I told her.
‘Tomorrows a new day, things will work out just like before.
Youll see. ‘I guess so, Sumire said. She leaned over and held
her cheek against mine. Her cheek was wet and warm. She
whispered something in my ear, I think. But in such a small
voice I couldnt make it out. I was about to ask her what she
said, but shed already turned away. 
 
 Sumire wiped her tears away with the bath towel and left the
room. The door closed, and I snuggled back under the covers
and closed my eyes. After an experience like that, I thought it
would be hard to sleep, but strangely enough I soon fell fast
asleep.
 When I woke up at seven the next morning, Sumire was
nowhere in the house. Perhaps she woke up early or maybe
never got back to sleep and went to the beach by herself. She
said she wanted to be alone for a while. It was odd that she 
 
didnt even leave a note, but considering the night before, I
guessed she was still pretty upset and confused.
 I did the washing, hung out her bedding to dry, and sat on
the veranda, reading, waiting for her to come back. The whole
morning passed, and no Sumire. I was worried, so I looked
through her room, even though I knew I shouldnt. I was afraid
maybe shed left the island. But her bags were still open, her
passport was still in her handbag, her swimsuit and socks
drying in a corner of her room. Coins, notepaper, and a bunch
of keys lay scattered on her desk. One of the keys was for the
front door of the cottage.
 It all felt weird to me. What I mean is whenever we went to
the beach we always wore heavy trainers and T-shirts over our
swimsuits as we walked over the mountains. With a canvas bag
with our towels and mineral water. But shed left it all
behind the bag, shoes, and swimsuit. The only things missing
were the pair of cheap flip-flops shed bought at a local shop
and the pair of thin silk pyjamas Id lent her. Even if you only
meant to take a walk around the neighbourhood, you wouldnt
stay out long dressed like that, would you?
 In the afternoon I went out to scour the area for her. I made
a couple of circuits nearby, went to the beach, then walked
back and forth down the streets of the town, and finally
returned home. But Sumire was nowhere to be found. The sun
was setting, and night came on. The wind had picked up. All
night long I could hear the sound of the waves. Any little
sound woke me up. I left the front door unlocked. Dawn came,
and still no Sumire. Her bed was just as Id left it. So I went
down to the local police station near the harbour. 
 
 I explained everything to one of the policemen, one who 
 
spoke English. ‘The girl who was travelling with me has
disappeared, I told him, ‘and hasnt been back for two nights.
He didnt take me seriously. ‘Your friend will be back, he said.
‘It happens all the time. Everyone lets their hair down here. Its
summer, theyre young, what do you expect? I went again the
next day, and this time they paid a bit more attention. Not that
they were going to do anything about it. I phoned the Japanese
embassy in Athens and explained the situation. Thankfully, the
person there was quite kind. He said something in no uncertain
terms in Greek to the police chief, and the police finally started
getting an investigation up and running.
 They were simply clueless. They questioned people in the
harbour and around our cottage, but no one had seen Sumire.
The captain of the ferry, and the man who sold ferry tickets,
had no recollection of any young Japanese girl getting on the
boat in the last couple of days. Sumire must still be on the
island. She didnt have any money on her to buy a ticket in the
first place. On this little island a young Japanese girl wandering
about in pyjamas wouldnt escape peoples notice. The police
questioned a German couple whod been swimming for a long
time that morning at the beach. They hadnt seen any Japanese
girl, either at the beach or on the road there. The police
promised me theyd continue to do their best, and I think they
did. But time passed without a single clue. 
Miu took a deep breath and covered half her face with her
hands.
 All I could do was call you in Tokyo and ask you to come. I
was at my wits end. 
 
I pictured Sumire, alone, wandering the rugged hills in a pair
of thin silk pyjamas and flip-flops. 
 
 What colour were the pyjamas? I asked.
 Colour? said Miu, a dubious look on her face.
 The pyjamas Sumire was wearing when she disappeared. 
 What colour were they? Im not sure. I bought them in
Milan and hadnt worn them yet. A light colour. Pale green,
maybe? They were very lightweight, with no pockets. 
 Id like you to call the embassy in Athens again and ask
them to send somebody here. Insist on it. Then have the
embassy contact Sumires parents. Itll be hard on them, but
you cant keep it from them any more. 
Miu gave a small nod.
 Sumire can be a little outrageous at times, as you know, I
said, and she does the craziest things. But she wouldnt leave
for four days without a word. Shes not that irresponsible. She
wouldnt disappear unless theres a very good reason. What
reason, I dont know, but it must be serious. Maybe she fell
down a well out in the country, and shes waiting for someone
to rescue her. Maybe somebody kidnapped her. For all we
know she could be murdered and buried somewhere. A young
girl wandering at night in pyjamas anything could happen.
At any rate, weve got to come up with a plan. But lets sleep on
it. Tomorrows going to be a long day. 
 Do you think maybe … Sumire … killed herself? Miu
asked.
 We cant rule that out. But she would have left a note. She
wouldnt have left everything scattered like this for you to pick
up the pieces. She liked you, and I know she would consider
your feelings. 
Arms folded, Miu looked at me for a while. You really think
so? 
I nodded. Absolutely. Thats the way she is. 
 
 Thank you. Thats what I wanted to hear most. 
 
Miu led me to Sumires room. Devoid of decorations, the boxy
room reminded me of a big cube. There was a small wooden
bed, a writing desk, a wardrobe, and a small dresser. At the
foot of the desk was an average-size red suitcase. The front
window was open to the hills beyond. On top of the desk was a
brand new Macintosh PowerBook.
 Ive straightened up her things so you can sleep here. 
Left alone, I grew suddenly sleepy. It was nearly midnight. I
undressed and got under the covers, but I couldnt sleep. Until
just a while ago, I thought, Sumire was sleeping in this bed.
The excitement of the long trip reverberated in my body. I was
struck by the illusion that I was on a journey without end.
In bed I reviewed everything Miu had told me, making a
mental list of the important points. But my mind wouldnt
work. Systematic thought was beyond me. Leave it for
tomorrow, I concluded. Out of the blue, the image came to me
of Sumires tongue inside Mius mouth. Forget about it, I willed
my brain. Leave that for tomorrow as well. But the chances of
tomorrow being an improvement on today were,
unfortunately, slim. Gloomy thoughts werent going to get me
anywhere, I decided, and closed my eyes. I soon fell into a deep
sleep. 
 
 
When I woke up, Miu was setting the table for breakfast out on
the veranda. It was. , and a brand-new sun was flooding the
world with sunlight. Miu and I sat down on the veranda and
had breakfast, gazing at the bright sea as we ate. We had toast
and eggs and coffee. Two white birds glided down the slope
towards the coast. A radio was playing nearby, an announcers
voice, speaking quickly, reading the news in Greek.
 
A strange jet-lag numbness filled my head. I couldnt separate
the boundary between what was real and what only seemed
real. Here I was on a small Greek island, sharing a meal with a
beautiful older woman Id met only the day before. This
woman loved Sumire, but couldnt feel any sexual desire for
her. Sumire loved this woman and desired her. I loved Sumire 
 
and felt sexual desire for her. Sumire liked me, but didnt love
me, and didnt feel any desire for me. I felt sexual desire for a
woman who will remain anonymous. But I didnt love her. It
was all so complicated, like something out of an existential
play. Everything hit a dead end there, no alternatives left. And
Sumire had exited stage right.
 
Miu refilled my empty coffee cup. I thanked her.
 You like Sumire, dont you? Miu asked me. As a woman, I
mean. 
I gave a slight nod as I buttered my toast. The butter was cold
and hard, and it took some time to spread it on the bread. I
looked up and added, Of course thats not something you
necessarily can choose. It just happens. 
We continued eating breakfast in silence. The news ended,
and the radio started to play Greek music. The wind swelled
up and shook the bougainvilleas. If you looked closely, you
could make out whitecaps appearing.
 Ive given it a great deal of thought, and I think I should go
to Athens right away, Miu said, peeling some fruit. Id
probably get nowhere over the phone, so itd be better if I went
straight to the embassy and talked with them face to face.
Maybe someone from the embassy will be willing to come back
with me, or I might wait for Sumires parents to arrive in
Athens and come back with them. At any rate, Id like you to
stay here as long as you can. The police might get in touch, and
theres always the possibility that Sumire will come back.
Would you do that for me? 
Of course, I replied.
 Im going to go to the police station again to check on the
investigation, then charter a boat to take me to Rhodes. A 
 
return trip to Athens takes time, so most likely Ill get a hotel
room and stay a couple of days. 
I nodded.
Miu finished peeling the orange and wiped it carefully with a
napkin. Have you ever met Sumires parents? 
I never have, I said.
Miu gave a sigh like the wind at the edge of the world. I
wonder how Im going to explain it to them. 
I could understand her confusion. How can you explain the
inexplicable?
Miu and I walked down to the harbour. She had a small bag
with a change of clothes, wore leather high-heeled shoes, and
carried a Mila Sch[umlaut]on shoulder bag. We stopped by the
police station. We told them I was a relative of Mius who
happened to be travelling nearby. They still didnt have a
single clue. But its all right, they said cheerily. Not to
worry. Look around you. This is a peaceful island. We have
some crime, of course lovers quarrels, drunks, political
fights. Were dealing with people, after all, and everywhere
you go its the same. But those are domestic squabbles. In the
last years theres never once been a foreigner whos been the
victim of a crime on this island. 
That might very well be true. But when it came to explaining
Sumires disappearance, they had nothing to say.
 Theres a large limestone cave on the north shore of the
island, the police ventured. If she wandered in there, maybe
she couldnt find her way out. Its like a maze inside. But its
very, very far away. A girl like that couldnt have walked that
far. 
Could she have drowned? I asked.
The policemen shook their heads. Theres no strong current 
 
around here, they said. And the weather this past week has
been mild, the sea calm. Lots of fishermen go out to fish every
day, and if the girl had drowned, one of them would have
come across her body.
 What about wells? I asked. Couldnt she have fallen in a
deep well somewhere while she was out for a walk? 
The chief of police shook his head. There arent any wells on
the island. We have a lot of natural springs so theres no need
to dig any. Besides, the bedrock is hard and digging a well
would be a major undertaking. 
After we left the police station I told Miu I wanted to walk to
the beach she and Sumire had frequented, if possible in the
morning. She bought a simple map of the island at a kiosk and
showed me the road; it takes minutes one way, she
cautioned, so be sure to wear some sturdy shoes. She went to
the harbour and, in a mixture of French and English, quickly
concluded negotiations with the pilot of a small taxi boat to
take her to Rhodes.
 If only we had a happy ending, Miu said as she left. But
her eyes told another story. She knew that things didnt work
out that simply. And so did I. The boats engine started up, and
she held down her hat with her left hand and waved to me
with her right. When her boat disappeared offshore, I felt like
my insides were missing a couple of parts. I wandered around
the harbour for a while and bought some dark sunglasses at a
souvenir shop. Then I climbed the steep stairs back to the
cottage.
 
As the sun rose higher it grew fiercely hot. I put a short-sleeve
cotton shirt on over my trunks, put on my sunglasses and
jogging shoes, and set off over the steep mountain road to the 
 
beach. I soon regretted not bringing a hat, but decided to forge
on. I soon got thirsty walking uphill. I stopped and took a drink
and rubbed the sunscreen Miu had lent me over my face and
arms. The path was white with dust, which swirled into the air
whenever the wind blew. Occasionally Id pass villagers
leading donkeys. Theyd greet me in a loud voice: Kali mera! 
Id say the same thing back to them. I supposed it was the thing
to do.
The mountainside was covered with short, twisted trees.
Mountain goats and sheep made their way over the craggy
rock face, crabby looks on their faces. The bells around their
necks made a matter-of-fact little tinkling sound. The people
herding the flocks were either children or old people. As I
passed theyd glance at me out of the corner of their eyes and
then half raise their hand in some sort of sign. I raised my hand
the same way in greeting. Sumire couldnt have come this way
by herself. There was no place to hide, and someone would
have seen her.
 
The beach was deserted. I took off my shirt and trunks and
swam in the nude. The water was clear and felt wonderful. You
could see all the way to the stones on the bottom. A yacht was
anchored at the mouth of the inlet, sail stowed, and the tall
mast swayed back and forth like a giant metronome. Nobody
was on deck. Each time the tide went out, countless little stones
were left behind, clattering listlessly. After swimming, I went
back to the beach and lay down, still naked, on my towel and
gazed up at the high, pure blue sky. Seabirds circled above the
inlet searching for fish. The sky was utterly cloudless. I dozed
there for perhaps half an hour, during which time no one
visited the beach. Before long a strange hush fell over me. This 
 
beach was a little too quiet for a person to visit alone, a little too
beautiful. It made me imagine a certain way of dying. I dressed
and walked over the mountain path, back towards the cottage.
The heat was even more intense than before. Mechanically
moving one foot after the other, I tried to imagine what Sumire
and Miu must have talked about when the two of them walked
this road together.
Sumire might very well have been pondering the sexual
desire she felt. The same way I thought about my own desire
when I was with her. It wasnt hard for me to understand how
she felt. Sumire pictured Miu naked beside her and wanted
nothing so much as to hold her tight. An expectation was there,
mixed with so many other emotions excitement, resignation,
hesitation, confusion, fear that would well up, then wither on
the vine. Youre optimistic one moment, only to be wracked the
next by the surety that it will all fall to pieces. And in the end it
does.
I walked to the top of the mountain, took a break and a drink
of water, then headed downhill. Just as the roof of the cottage
came into view, I remembered what Miu had said about
Sumire feverishly writing something in her room after they
came to the island. What could she have been writing? Miu
hadnt said anything more, and I didnt push it. There might 
just might be a clue in what Sumire wrote. I could have kicked
myself for not having thought of it before.
 
When I got back to the cottage I went to Sumires room, turned
on her PowerBook, and opened the hard drive. Nothing looked
promising. There was a list of expenses for their European trip,
addresses, a schedule. All business items related to Mius work.
No personal files. I opened the RECENT DOCUMENTS
 
menu nothing. She probably didnt want anybody to read it
and had erased it all. Which meant that she had saved her
personal files on a floppy disk somewhere. It was unlikely
shed taken the disk with her when she disappeared; for one
thing, her pyjamas didnt have any pockets.
I rummaged around in the desk drawers. There were a
couple of disks, but they were copies of what was on the hard
drive or other work-related files. Nothing looked promising. I
sat at the desk and thought. If I were Sumire, where would I
put it? The room was small; there werent many places to hide
something. Sumire was very particular about deciding who
could read what she wrote.
Of course the red suitcase. This was the only thing in the
room that could be locked.
Her new suitcase seemed empty, it was so light; I shook it,
but it didnt make any sound. The four-digit padlock was
locked, however. I tried several combinations of numbers I
knew Sumire was likely to use her birthday, her address,
telephone number, post code but none of them worked. Not
surprising, since a number that someone could easily guess
wasnt much use as a combination number. It had to be
something she could remember, but that wasnt based on
something personal. I thought about it for a long time, and then
it hit me. I tried the area code for Kunitachi my area code, in
other words. - - -.
The lock clicked open.
A small black cloth bag was stuck inside the inner side
pocket of the suitcase. I unzipped it and found a little green
diary and a floppy disk inside. I opened the diary first. It was
written in her usual handwriting. Nothing leaped out at me. It
was just information about where they went. Who they saw. 
 
Names of hotels. The price of petrol. Dinner menus. Brands of
wine and what they tasted like. Basically just a list. A lot of the
pages were blank. Keeping a diary wasnt one of Sumires
strong points, apparently.
 
The disk was untitled. The label just had the date on it, in
Sumires distinctive handwriting. August. I slipped the
disk inside the PowerBook and opened it. The menu showed
two documents, neither of which had a title. They were just
Document and Document.
Before opening them, I slowly looked around the room.
Sumires coat was hanging in the wardrobe. I saw her goggles,
her Italian dictionary, her passport. Inside the desk were her
ballpoint pen and propelling pencil. In the window above the
desk the gentle, craggy slope was visible. A black cat was
walking on top of the wall of the house next door. The bare
little box room was enveloped in the late afternoon silence. I
closed my eyes and could still hear the waves on the deserted
beach that morning. I opened my eyes again, and this time
listened closely to the real world. I couldnt hear a thing.
 
I set my pointer on Document and double-clicked the icon. 
 
 
Document 
Did You Ever See Anyone Shot by a Gun without Bleeding?
Fate has led me to a conclusion an ad hoc conclusion, mind you
(is there any other kind? interesting question, but Ill leave it for
some other time) and here I am on an island in Greece. A small
island whose name Id never even heard of until recently. The time
is … a little past four in the morning. Still dark out, of course.
Innocent goats have slipped into their peaceful, collective sleep.
The line of olive trees outside in the field is sipping at the
nourishment the darkness provides. And the moon, like some
melancholy priest, rests above the rooftop, stretching out its
hands to the barren sea.
No matter where I find myself, this is the time of day I love best.
The time thats mine alone. Itll be dawn soon, and Im sitting here
writing. Like Buddha, born from his mothers side (the right or the
left, I cant recall), the new sun will lumber up and peek over the
edge of the hills. And the ever discreet Miu will quietly wake up. At
six well make a simple breakfast together, and afterwards go over
the hills to our ever lovely beach. Before this routine begins, I want 
 
to roll up my sleeves and finish a bit of work.
 
Except for a few letters, its been a long time since Ive written
something purely for myself, and Im not very confident I can
express myself the way Id like to. Not that Ive ever had that
confidence. Somehow, though, I always feel driven to write.
Why? Its simple, really. In order for me to think about
something, I have to first put it into writing.
Its been that way since I was little. When I didnt understand
something, I gathered up the words scattered at my feet, and lined
them up into sentences. If that didnt help, Id scatter them again,
rearrange them In a different order. Repeat that a number of
times, and I was able to think about things like most people.
Writing for me was never difficult. Other children gathered pretty
stones or acorns, and I wrote. As naturally as breathing, Id scribble
down one sentence after another. And Id think.
No doubt you think Its a time-consuming process to reach a
conclusion, seeing as how every time I thought about something I
had to go through all those steps. Or maybe you wouldnt think
that. But In actual practice it did take time. So much so that by the
time I entered elementary school people thought I was retarded. I
couldnt keep up with the other kids.
When I finished elementary school the feeling of alienation this
gave me had lessened considerably. By then Id found a way to
keep pace with the world around me. Still, until I left college and
broke off any relations with officialdom, this gap existed inside
me like a silent snake in the grass.
My provisional theme here: On a day-to-day basis I use writing to
work out who I am.
 
Right?
Right you are!
 
Ive written an incredible amount up till now. Nearly every day. Its
like I was standing in a huge pasture, cutting the grass all by 
 
myself, and the grass grows back almost as fast as I can cut it.
Today Id cut over here, tomorrow over there… By the time I
make one complete round of the pasture the grass in the first spot
is as tall as it was in the beginning.
But since I met Miu Ive barely written. Why is that? The Fiction =
Transmission theory K. told me does make sense. On one level
theres some truth to it. But it doesnt explain everything. Ive got
to simplify my thinking here.
Simplify, simplify.
 
What happened after I met Miu was I stopped thinking. (Of course
Im using my own individual definition of thinking here.) Miu and I
were always together, two interlocking spoons, and with her I was
swept away somewhere someplace I couldnt fathom and I just
thought, Okay, go with the flow.
In other words, I had to get rid of a lot of baggage to get closer
to her. Even the act of thinking became a burden. I think that
explains it. No matter how tall the grass got, I couldnt be
bothered. I sprawled on my back, gazing up at the sky, watching
the billowy clouds drift by. Consigning my fate to the clouds.
Giving myself up to the pungent aroma of the grass, the murmur
of the wind. And after a time I couldnt have cared less about the
difference between what I knew and what I didnt know.
No, thats not true. From day one I couldnt have cared less. I
have to be a bit more precise in my account here.
Precision, precision.
 
I see now that my basic rule of thumb in writing has always been
to write about things as if I didnt know them and this would
include things that I did know, or thought I knew about. If I said
from the beginning, Oh, I know that, no need to spend my precious
time writing about it, my writing would never have got off the
ground. For example, if I think about somebody, I know that guy,
no need to spend time thinking about him, Ive got him down, I run 
 
the risk of being betrayed (and this would apply to you as well). On
the flip side of everything we think we absolutely understand lurks
an equal amount of the unknown.
Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings.
Just between us, thats my way of comprehending the world. In
a nutshell.
 
In the world we live in, what we know and what we dont know are
like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.
Confusion, confusion.
Who can really distinguish between the sea and whats reflected
in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?
Without any fuss, then, I gave up worrying about the difference
between knowing and not knowing. That became my point of
departure. A terrible place to start, perhaps but people need a
makeshift springboard, right? All of which goes to explain how I
started seeing dualisms such as theme and style, object and
subject, cause and effect, the joints of my hand and the rest of me,
not as black-and-white pairs, but as indistinguishable one from the
other. Everything had spilled on the kitchen floor the salt,
pepper, flour, starch. All mixed into one fine blob.
 
The joints of my hand and the rest of me … I notice sitting here in
front of the computer that Im back to my old bad habit of
cracking my knuckles. This bad habit made quite a comeback after
I stopped smoking. First I crack the joints of the five fingers of my
right hand crack crack then the joints of my left hand. Im not
trying to brag, but I can crack my joints so loud youd think
someones necks getting broken. I was the champion knucklecracker
in elementary school. Put the boys to shame.
When I was at college, K. let me know In no uncertain terms that
this wasnt exactly a skill I should be proud of. When a girl reaches
a certain age she cant be snapping her knuckles all over the place.
Especially in front of other people. Otherwise youll end up like 
 
Lotte Lenya In From Russia with Love. Now why hadnt anybody
ever told me that before? I tried to break the habit. I mean, I really
like Lotte Lenya, but not enough to want to be her. Once I stopped
smoking, though, I realized that whenever I sat down to write,
unconsciously I was cracking my knuckles all over again. Snap
crackle pop.
The names Bond. James Bond.
 
Let me get back to what I was saying. Times limited no room for
detours. Forget Lotte Lenya. Sorry, metaphors gotta split. As I
said before, inside us what we know and what we dont know
share the same abode. For conveniences sake most people erect a
wall between them. It makes life easier. But I just swept that wall
away. I had to. I hate walls. Thats just the kind of person I am.
 
To use the image of the Siamese twins again, its not like they
always get along. They dont always try to understand each other.
In fact the opposite is more often true. The right hand doesnt try
to know what the left hands doing and vice versa. Confusion
reigns, we end up lost and we crash smack-bang right into
something. Thud.
 
What Im getting at is that people have to come up with a clever
strategy if they want what they know and what they dont know
to live together in peace. And that strategy yep, youve got it! 
is thinking. We have to find a secure anchor. Otherwise, no mistake
about it, were on an awful collision course.
 
A question.
So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a
collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting
by, listening to the grass grow not thinking, in other words?
Sounds hard? Not at all. Logically, its easy. Cest simple. The
answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of
dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of 
 
time.
In dreams you dont need to make any distinctions between
things. Not at all. Boundaries dont exist. So in dreams there are
hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they dont hurt. Reality is
different. Reality bites.
Reality, reality.
 
Way back when the Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch premiered,
a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and
asked the following: Why in the world do you have to show so
much blood all over the place? She was pretty worked up about
it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and
fielded the question. Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun
without bleeding? This film came out at the height of the Vietnam
War.
I love that line. Thats gotta be one of the principles behind
reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving
them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding.
Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?
Which explains my stance as a writer. I think in a very ordinary
way and reach a point where, in a realm I cannot even give a
name to, I conceive a dream, a sightless foetus called
understanding, floating in the universal, overwhelming amniotic
fluid of incomprehension. Which must be why my novels are
absurdly long and, up till now, at least, never reach a proper
conclusion. The technical, and moral, skills needed to maintain a
supply line on that scale are beyond me.
 
Of course Im not writing a novel here. I dont know what to call it.
Just writing. Im thinking aloud, so theres no need to wrap things
up neatly. I have no moral obligations. Im merely hmm 
thinking. I havent done any real thinking for the longest time, and 
 
probably wont for the foreseeable future. But right now, at this
very moment, I am thinking. And thats what Im going to do until
morning. Think.
 
That being said, though, I cant rid myself of my old familiar dark
doubts. Arent I spending all my time and energy in some useless
pursuit? Hauling a bucket of water to a place thats on the verge of
flooding? Shouldnt I give up any useless effort and just go with
the flow?
Collision? Whats that?
 
Let me put it a different way.
Okay what different way was I going to use?
Oh, I remember this is what it is.
If Im going to merely ramble, maybe I should just snuggle under
the warm covers, think of Miu, and play with myself. Thats what I
meant.
I love the curve of Mius rear end. The exquisite contrast
between her jet-black pubic hair and snow-white hair, the nicely
shaped arse, clad in tiny black panties. Talk about sexy. Inside her
black panties, her T-shaped pubic hair, every bit as black.
Ive got to stop thinking about that. Switch off the circuit of
pointless sexual fantasies (click) and concentrate on writing. Cant
let these precious pre-dawn moments slip away. Ill let somebody
else, in some other context, decide whats effective and what isnt.
Right now I dont have a glass of barley teas worth of interest in
what they might say.
 
Right?
Right you are!
So onward and upward.
 
They say its a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual
dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of
writers and Im talking the most talented are able to pull off 
 
the kind of irrational synthesis you find in dreams. Sounds
reasonable. Still, I want to relate a dream, one I had recently. I
want to record this dream simply as a fact that concerns me and
my life. Whether its literary or not, I dont care. Im just the keeper
of the warehouse.
 
Ive had the same type of dream many times. The details differ,
including the setting, but they all follow the same pattern. And the
pain I feel upon waking is always the same. A single theme is
repeated there over and over, like a train blowing its whistle at the
same blind curve night after night.
Sumires Dream
(Ive written this in the third person. It feels more authentic that
way.)
 
Sumire is climbing a long spiral staircase to meet her mother, who
died a long time ago. Her mother is waiting at the top of the stairs.
She has something she wants to tell Sumire, a critical piece of
information Sumire desperately needs in order to live. Sumires
never met a dead person before, and shes afraid. She doesnt
know what kind of person her mother is. Maybe for some reason
Sumire cant imagine her mother hates her. But she has to meet
her. This is her one and only chance.
 
The stairs go on forever. Climb and climb and she still doesnt
reach the top. Sumire rushes up the stairs, out of breath. Shes
running out of time. Her mother wont always be here, In this
building. Sumires brow breaks out in a sweat. And finally the stairs
come to an end.
At the top of the staircase theres a broad landing, a thick stone
wall at the very end facing her. Right at eye level theres a kind of
round hole like a ventilation shaft. A small hole about inches In
diameter. And Sumires mother, as if shed been pushed inside feet 
 
first, is crammed inside that hole. Sumire realizes that her time is
nearly up.
 
In that cramped space, her mother faces outwards, towards her.
She looks at Sumires face as if appealing to her. Sumire knows in a
glance that Its her mother. Shes the person who gave me life and
flesh, she realizes. But somehow the woman here is not the
mother in the family photo album. My real mother is beautiful, and
youthful. So that person in the album wasnt really my mother
after all, Sumire thinks. My father tricked me.
 Mother! Sumire bravely shouts. She feels a wall of sorts melt
away inside her. No sooner does she utter this word than her
mother is pulled deeper into that hole, as if sucked by some giant
vacuum on the other side. Her mothers mouth is open, and shes
shouting something to Sumire. But the hollow sound of the wind
rushing out of the hole swallows up her words. In the next instant
her mother is yanked into the darkness of the hole and vanishes.
Sumire looks back, and the staircase is gone. Shes surrounded
by stone walls. Where the staircase had been theres a wooden
door. She turns the knob and opens the door, and beyond is the
sky. Shes at the top of a tall tower. So high it makes her dizzy to
look down. Lots of tiny objects, like aeroplanes, are buzzing
around in the sky. Simple little planes anybody could make,
constructed of bamboo and light pieces of lumber. In the rear of
each plane theres a tiny fist-sized engine and propeller. Sumire
yells out to one of the passing pilots to come and rescue her. But
none of the pilots pays any attention.
 
It must be because Im wearing these clothes, Sumire decides.
Nobody can see me. She has on an anonymous white hospital
gown. She takes it off, and is naked theres nothing on
underneath. She discards the gown on the ground next to the
door, and like a soul now unfettered it catches an updraught and
sails out of sight. The same wind caresses her body, rustles the hair 
 
between her legs. With a start she notices that all the little
aeroplanes have changed into dragonflies. The sky is filled with
multicoloured dragonflies, their huge bulbous eyes glistening as
they gaze around. The buzz of their wings grows steadily louder,
like a radio being turned up. Finally its an unbearable roar. Sumire
crouches down, eyes closed, and covers her ears.
 
And she wakes up.
 
Sumire could recall every last detail of the dream. She could have
painted a picture of it. The only thing she couldnt recall was her
mothers face as it was sucked into that black hole. And the critical
words her mother spoke, too, were lost for ever in that vacant
void. In bed, Sumire violently bit her pillow and cried and cried.
The Barber Wont Be Digging Any More Holes
After this dream I came to an important decision. The tip of my
somewhat industrious pickaxe will finally begin to chip away at the
solid cliff. Thwack. I decided to make it clear to Miu what I want. I
cant stay like this forever, hanging. I cant be like a spineless little
barber digging a hole in his back garden, revealing to no one the
fact that I love Miu. Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade
away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by
piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away
completely and I would end up nothing.
 
Matters are as clear as crystal.
Crystal, crystal.
I want to make love to Miu, and be held by her. Ive already
surrendered so much thats Important to me. Theres nothing
more I can give up. Its not too late. I have to be with Miu, enter
her. And she must enter me. Like two greedy, glistening snakes.
And if Miu doesnt accept me, then what?
Ill cross that bridge when the times comes. 
 
 Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding? 
 
Blood must be shed. Ill sharpen my knife, ready to slit a dogs
throat somewhere.
 
Right?
Right you are!
 
What Ive written here is a message to myself. I toss it into the air
like a boomerang. It slices through the dark, lays the little soul of
some poor kangaroo out cold, and finally comes back to me.
But the boomerang that returns is not the same one I threw.
Boomerang, boomerang. 
 
 
Document 
Its. in the afternoon. Outside its as bright and hot as hell. The
cliffs, the sky, and the sea are sparkling. Look at them long enough
and the boundaries begin to dissolve, everything melting into a
chaotic ooze. Consciousness sinks into the sleepy shadows to
avoid the light. Even the birds have given up flying. Inside the
house, though, its pleasantly cool. Miu is in the living room
listening to Brahms. Shes wearing a blue summer dress with thin
straps, her pure-white hair pulled back simply. Im at my desk,
writing these words.
 Does the music bother you? Miu asks me.
Brahms never bothers me, I answer.
 
Ive been searching my memory, trying to reproduce the story Miu
told me a few days ago in the village in Burgundy. Its not easy. She
told the story in fits and starts, the chronology thoroughly mixed
up. Sometimes I couldnt unravel which events happened first, and
which came later, what was cause, what was effect. I dont blame
her, though. The cruel conspiratorial razor buried in her memory 
 
slashed out at her, and as the stars faded with the dawn above the
vineyard, so the life force drained from her cheeks as she told me
her tale.
Miu told the story only after I insisted on hearing it. I had to run
through a whole gamut of appeals to get her to talk -alternately
encouraging her, bullying her, indulging, praising, enticing her to
continue. We drank red wine and talked till dawn. Hands clasped
together we followed the traces of her memories, piecing them
together, analysing the results. Still there were places Miu couldnt
dredge up from her memory. Once she dipped her foot there she
grew quietly confused, and downed more wine. These were the
danger zones of memory. Whenever we came across these, wed
give up the search and gingerly withdraw to higher ground.
 
I persuaded Miu to tell me the story after I became aware that she
dyed her hair. Miu is such a careful person that only a very few
people around her have any idea she dyes her hair. But I noticed it.
Travelling together for so long, spending each day together, you
tend to pick up on things like that. Or maybe Miu wasnt trying to
hide it. She could have been much more discreet if shed wanted
to. Maybe she thought it was inevitable Id find out, or maybe she
wanted me to find out. (Hmm pure conjecture on my part.)
 
I asked her straight out. Thats me never beat about the bush.
How much of your hair is white? I asked. How long have you been
dyeing it? Fourteen years, she answered. Fourteen years ago my
hair turned entirely white, every single strand. Were you sick? No,
that wasnt it, said Miu. Something happened, and all my hair
turned pure white. Overnight.
Id like to hear the story, I said, imploring her. I want to know
everything about you. You know I wouldnt hide a thing from you.
But Miu quietly shook her head. Shed never once told anyone the
story; even her husband didnt know what had happened. For
fourteen years it had been her own private secret. 
 
But in the end we talked all night. Every story has a time to be told,
I convinced her. Otherwise youll be forever a prisoner to the
secret inside you.
Miu looked at me as if gazing at some far-off scene. Something
floated to the surface of her eyes, then slowly settled to the
bottom again. I have nothing I have to clear up, she said. They
have accounts to settle not me. 
I couldnt understand what she was driving at.
 If I do tell you the story, Miu said, the two of us will always
share it. And I dont know if thats the right thing to do. If I lift
open the lid now, youll be implicated. Is that what you want? You
really want to know something Ive sacrificed so much trying to
forget? 
Yes, I said. No matter what it is, I want to share it with you. I
dont want you to hide a thing.
Obviously confused, Miu took a sip of wine and closed her eyes.
A silence followed In which time itself seemed to bend and buckle.
In the end, though, she began to tell the story. Bit by bit, one
fragment at a time. Some elements of the story took on a life of
their own, while others never even quivered into being. There
were the inevitable gaps and elisions, some of which themselves
had their own special significance. My task now, as narrator, is to
gather ever so carefully all these elements into a whole.
The Tale of Miu and the Ferris Wheel
One summer Miu stayed alone in a small town In Switzerland near
the French border. She was and lived in Paris, where she studied
the piano. She came to this little town at her fathers request to
take care of some business negotiations. The business itself was a
simple matter, basically just having dinner once with the other
party and having him sign a contract. Miu liked the little town the
first time she laid eyes on it. It was such a cosy, lovely place, with a 
 
lake and medieval castle beside it. She thought it would be fun to
live there, and took the plunge. Besides, a music festival was being
held in a nearby village, and if she rented a car she could attend
every day.
She was lucky enough to find a furnished apartment on a shortterm
lease, a pleasant, tidy little building on top of a hill on the
outskirts of town. The view was superb. Nearby was a place where
she could practise piano. The rent wasnt cheap, but if she found
herself strapped for cash she could always rely on her father to
help out.
Thus Miu began her temporary but placid life in the town. Shed
attend concerts at the music festival, take walks in the
neighbourhood, and before long got to make a few acquaintances.
She found a nice little restaurant and café that she began to
frequent. Out of the window of her apartment she could see an
amusement park outside town. There was a giant Ferris wheel in
the park. Colourful boxes with doors forever wed to the huge
wheel, all of which would slowly rotate through the sky. Once it
reached its upward limit, it began to descend. Naturally. Ferris
wheels dont go anywhere. They go up, they come back down, a
roundabout trip that, for some strange reason, most people find
pleasant.
In the evenings the Ferris wheel was speckled with countless
lights. Even after it shut down for the night and the amusement
park closed, the wheel twinkled all night long, as if vying with the
stars in the sky. Miu would sit near her window, listening to music
on the radio, and gaze forever at the up-and-down motion of the
Ferris wheel. Or, when it was stopped, at the monument-like
stillness of it.
She got to know a man who lived in the town. A handsome, -ish
Latin type. He was tall, with a thoroughly handsome nose and dark
straight hair. He introduced himself to her at the cafe. Where are
you from? he asked. Im from Japan, she answered. And the two of
them began talking. His name was Ferdinando. He was from 
 
Barcelona, and had moved here five years before to work in
furniture design.
He spoke in a relaxed way, often joking. They chatted for a
while, then said goodbye. Two days later they met each other at
the same cafe. He was single, divorced, she found out. He told her
he left Spain to begin a new life. Miu didnt have a very good
impression of the man. She could sense he was trying to move In
on her. She sniffed a hint of sexual desire, and it frightened her.
She decided to avoid the cafe.
Still, she bumped into Ferdinando many times in town often
enough to make her feel he was following her. Perhaps it was just
a silly delusion. It was a small town, so running across the same
person wasnt so strange. Every time he saw her, he smiled
broadly and said hello in a friendly way. Still, ever so slowly, Miu
became irritated and uneasy. She started to see Ferdinando as a
threat to her peaceful life. Like a dissonant cymbal at the
beginning of a musical score, an ominous shadow began to cloud
her pleasant summer.
 
Ferdinando, though, turned out to be just a glimpse of a greater
shadow. After living there ten days, she started to feel a kind of
impediment attaching itself to her life in the town. The thoroughly
lovely, neat-as-a-pin town now seemed narrow-minded, selfrighteous.
The people were friendly and kind enough, but she
started to feel an invisible prejudice against her as an Asian. The
wine she drank in restaurants suddenly had a bad aftertaste. She
found worms In the vegetables she bought. The performances at
the music festival sounded listless. She couldnt concentrate on
her music. Even her apartment, which she thought quite
comfortable, began to look to her like a poorly decorated, squalid
place. Everything lost its initial lustre. The ominous shadow spread.
And she couldnt escape it.
The phone would ring at night, and shed pick it up. Alio? shed
say. But the phone would go dead. This happened again and again. 
 
It had to be Ferdinando, she thought. But she had no proof. How
would he know her number? The phone was an old model, and she
couldnt just unplug it. She had trouble sleeping, and started
taking sleeping pills. Her appetite had gone.
 
Ive got to get out of here, she decided. But for some reason she
couldnt fathom, she couldnt drag herself away from the town.
She made up a list of reasons to stay. Shed already paid a months
rent, and bought a pass to the music festival. And shed already let
out her apartment in Paris for the summer. She couldnt just up
and leave now, she told herself. And besides, nothing had actually
happened. She hadnt been hurt in any real way, had she? No one
had treated her badly. I must just be getting overly sensitive to
things, she convinced herself.
One evening, about two weeks after she began living there, she
dined out as usual at a nearby restaurant. After dinner she decided
to enjoy the night air for a change, and took a long stroll. Lost in
thought, she wandered from one street to the next. Before she
realized it, she was at the entrance to the amusement park. The
park with the Ferris wheel. The air was filled with lively music, the
sound of carnival barkers, and childrens happy shouts. The visitors
were mostly families, and a few couples from town. Miu
remembered her father taking her to an amusement park once
when she was little. She could remember even now the scent of
her fathers tweed coat as they rode the whirling teacups. The
whole time they were on the ride, she clung to her fathers sleeve.
To young Miu that odour was a sign of the far-off world of adults,
a symbol of security. She found herself missing her father.
 
Just for fun, she bought a ticket and went inside the park. The
place was filled with different little shops and stands a shooting
gallery, a snake show, a fortune-tellers booth. Crystal ball in front
of her, the fortune-teller, a largish woman, beckoned to Miu:
 Mademoiselle, come here, please. Its very important. Your fate is 
 
about to change. Miu just smiled and passed by.
She bought some ice-cream and sat on a bench to eat it,
watching the people passing by. She felt herself far removed from
the bustling crowds around her. A man started to talk to her in
German. He was about , small, with blond hair and a moustache,
the kind of man whod look good in a uniform. She shook her head
and smiled and pointed to her watch. Im waiting for somebody, 
she said in French. Her voice sounded higher, and remote to her.
The man said nothing further, grinned sheepishly, gave her a brief
wave of the hand and was gone.
 
Miu stood up, and wandered around. Somebody was throwing
darts and a balloon burst. A bear was stomping around in a dance.
An organ played The Blue Danube Waltz . She looked up, and
saw the Ferris wheel leisurely turning through the air. It would be
fun to see my apartment from the Ferris wheel, she suddenly
thought, instead of the other way around. Fortunately she had a
small pair of binoculars in her shoulder bag. She had left them in
there since the last time she was at the music festival, where they
came in handy for seeing the stage from her far-off seat on the
lawn. They were light and strong enough. With these she should
be able to see right into her room.
 
She went to buy a ticket at the booth in front of the Ferris wheel.
 Well be closing pretty soon, Mademoiselle, the ticket seller, an
old man, told her. He looked down as he mumbled this, as if
talking to himself. And he shook his head. Were almost finished
for the day. This will be the last ride. One time around and were
finished. White stubble covered his chin, his whiskers stained by
tobacco smoke. He coughed. His cheeks were as red as if buffeted
for years in a north wind.
 Thats all right. Once is enough, Miu replied. She bought a
ticket and stepped up on the platform. She was the only person
waiting to board, and as far as she could make out, the little 
 
gondolas were all empty. Empty boxes swung idly through the air
as they revolved, as if the world itself were fizzling out towards its
end.
She got inside the red gondola, sat on the bench, while the old
man came over, closed the door, and locked it from the outside.
For safetys sake, no doubt. Like some ancient animal coming to
life, the Ferris wheel clattered and began its ascent. The assorted
throng of booths and attractions shrank below her. As they did,
the lights of the city rose up before her. The lake was on her lefthand
side, and she could see lights from excursion boats reflected
gently on the surface of the water. The far-off mountainside was
dotted with lights from tiny villages. Her chest tightened at the
beauty of it all.
 
The area where she lived, on the hilltop, came into view. Miu
focused her binoculars and searched for her apartment, but it
wasnt easy to find. The Ferris wheel steadily rose higher and
higher. Shed have to hurry. She swept the binoculars back and
forth in a frantic search. But there were too many buildings that
looked alike. The Ferris wheel reached the top, and began its
downward turn. Finally she spotted the building. Thats it! But
somehow it had more windows than she remembered. Lots of
people had their windows open to catch the summer breeze. She
moved her binoculars from one window to the next, and finally
located the second apartment from the right on the third floor.
But by then the Ferris wheel was getting closer to ground level.
The walls of other buildings got in the way. It was a shame just a
few more seconds and she could have seen right inside her place.
 
The Ferris wheel approached the ground, ever so slowly. She tried
to open the door to get out, but it wouldnt budge. Of course it
was locked from the outside. She looked around for the old man in
the ticket booth, but he was nowhere to be seen. The light in the
booth was already out. She was about to call to someone, but 
 
there wasnt anyone to yell to. The Ferris wheel began rising once
more. What a mess, she thought. How could this happen? She
sighed. Maybe the old man had gone to the toilet and missed the
timing. Shed have to make one more circuit.
Its alt right, she thought. The old mans forgetfulness would
give her a second free spin on the wheel. This time for sure shed
spot her apartment. She grasped the binoculars firmly and stuck
her face out of the window. Since shed located the general area
and position last time around, this time it was an easy task to spot
her own room. The window was open, the light on. She hated to
come back to a dark room, and had planned to come back straight
after dinner.
 
It gave her a guilty feeling to look at her own room from so far
away through the binoculars, as if she were peeking in on herself.
But Im not there, she assured herself. Of course not. Theres a
phone on the table. Id really like to place a call to that phone.
Theres a letter I left on the table, too. Id like to read it from here,
Miu thought. But naturally she couldnt see that much detail.
 
Finally the Ferris wheel passed its zenith and began to descend. It
had only gone down a short while when it suddenly stopped. She
was thrown against the side of the car, banging her shoulder and
nearly dropping the binoculars on the floor. The sound of the
Ferris wheel motor ground to a halt, and everything was wrapped
in an unearthly silence. All the lively background music shed heard
was gone. Most of the lights in the booths down below were out.
She listened carefully, but heard only the faint sound of the wind
and nothing more. Absolute stillness. No voices of carnival barkers,
no childrens happy shouts. At first she couldnt grasp what had
happened. And then it came to her: shed been abandoned.
She leaned out of the half-open window, and looked down
again. She realized how high up she was. Miu thought to yell out
for help, but knew that no one would hear her. She was too high 
 
up, her voice too small.
Where could that old man have gone to? He must have been
drinking. His face that colour, his breath, his thick voice no
mistake about it. He forgot all about putting me on the Ferris
wheel and turned the machinery off. At this very moment hes
probably getting pissed in some bar, having a beer or gin, getting
even more drunk and forgetting what hes done. Miu bit her lip. I
might not get out of here until tomorrow afternoon, she thought.
Or maybe evening? When did the amusement park open for
business? She had no idea.
 
Miu was dressed only in a light blouse and short cotton skirt, and
though it was the middle of summer the Swiss night air was chilly.
The wind had picked up. She leaned out of the window once more
to look at the scene below. There were even fewer lights than
before. The amusement park staff had finished for the day and
gone home. There had to be a guard around somewhere. She took
a deep breath and shouted for help at the top of her lungs. She
listened. And yelled again. And again. No response.
She took a small notebook from her shoulder bag, and wrote on
it in French: Im locked Inside the Ferris wheel at the amusement
park. Please help me. She dropped the note out of the window.
The sheet flew off on the wind. The wind was blowing towards the
town, so if she was lucky it might end up there. But if someone
actually did pick it up and read it, would he (or she) believe it? On
another page, she wrote her name and address along with the
message. That should be more believable. People might not take it
for a joke then, but realize she was in serious trouble. She sent half
the pages in her notebook flying out on the wind.
Suddenly she got an idea, took everything out of her wallet
except a ten-franc note, and put a note inside: A woman is locked
inside the Ferris wheel up above you. Please help. She dropped
the wallet out the window. It fell straight down towards the
ground. She couldnt see where it fell, though, or. hear the thud of 
 
it hitting the ground. She put the same kind of note inside her
purse and dropped that as well.
Miu looked at her wristwatch. It was.. She rummaged
around inside her shoulder bag to see what else she could find.
Some simple make-up and a mirror, her passport. Sunglasses. Keys
to her rental car and her apartment. An army knife for peeling
fruit. A small plastic bag with three crackers inside. A French
paperback. Shed eaten dinner, so she wouldnt be hungry until
morning. With the cool air, she wouldnt get too thirsty. And
fortunately she didnt have to go to the toilet yet.
She sat down on the plastic bench, and leaned her head back
against the wall. Regrets spun through her mind. Why had she
come to the amusement park, and got on this Ferris wheel? After
she left the restaurant she should have gone straight home. If only
she had, shed be taking a nice hot bath right now, snuggling into
bed with a good book, as she always did. Why hadnt she done
that? And why in the world would they hire a hopeless drunk like
that old man?
 
The Ferris wheel creaked in the wind. She tried to close the
window so the wind wouldnt get in, but it didnt give an inch. She
gave up and sat on the floor. I knew I should have brought a
sweater, she thought. As shed left her apartment shed paused,
wondering if she should drape a cardigan over her shoulders. But
the summer evening had looked so pleasant, and the restaurant
was only three blocks from her place. At that point walking to the
amusement park and getting on the Ferris wheel were the furthest
things from her mind. Everything had gone wrong.
To help her relax, she removed her wristwatch, her thin silver
bracelet, and the seashell-shaped earrings and stored them in her
bag. She curled up in a corner of the floor, and hoped she could
just sleep till morning. Naturally she couldnt get to sleep. She was
cold, and uneasy. An occasional gust of wind shook the gondola.
She closed her eyes and mentally played a Mozart sonata in C 
 
minor, moving her fingers on an imaginary keyboard. For no
special reason, shed memorized this piece that shed played when
she was a child. Halfway through the second movement, though,
her mind grew dim. And she fell asleep.
 
How long she slept, she didnt know. It couldnt have been long.
She woke with a start, and for a minute had no idea where she
was. Slowly her memory returned. Thats right, she thought, Im
stuck inside a Ferris wheel at an amusement park. She pulled her
watch out of her bag; it was after midnight. Miu slowly stood up.
Sleeping in such a cramped position had made all her joints ache.
She yawned a couple of times, stretched, and rubbed her wrists.
Knowing she wouldnt be able to get back to sleep for a while,
she took the paperback out of her bag to take her mind off her
troubles, and began reading where shed left off. It was a new
mystery shed bought at a bookshop in town. Luckily, the lights on
the Ferris wheel were left on all night. After shed read a few
pages, though, she realized she wasnt following the plot. Her eyes
were following the lines all right, but her mind was miles away.
Miu gave up and shut the book. She looked at the night sky. A
thin layer of clouds covered the sky, and she couldnt make out
any stars. There was a dim sliver of moon. The lights cast her
reflection clearly on the gondolas glass window. She stared at her
face for a long time. When will this be over? she asked herself.
Hang in there. Later on this will all be just a funny story youll tell
people. Imagine getting locked inside a Ferris wheel in an
amusement park in Switzerland!
But it didnt become a funny story.
This is where the real story begins.
 
A little later, she picked up her binoculars and looked out at the
window of her apartment. Nothing had changed. Well, what do
you expect? she asked herself, and smiled.
She looked at the other windows in the building. It was past 
 
midnight, and almost everyone was asleep. Most of the windows
were dark. A few people, though, were up, lights on in their
apartments. People on the lower floors had taken the precaution
of closing their curtains. Those on the upper floors didnt bother,
and left their curtains open to catch the cool night breeze. Life
within these rooms was quietly, and completely, open to view.
(Who would ever imagine that someone looking in with binoculars
was hidden away in a Ferris wheel in the middle of the night?) Miu
wasnt very interested in peeking in on others private lives,
though. She found looking in her own empty room far more
absorbing.
 
When she made one complete circuit of the windows and returned
to her own apartment, she gasped. There was a naked man in her
bedroom. At first she thought she had the wrong apartment. She
moved the binoculars up and down, back and forth. But there was
no mistake; it was her room all right. Her furniture, her flowers in
the vase, her apartments paintings hanging on the wall. The man
was Ferdinando. No mistake about it. He was sitting on her bed,
stark naked. His chest and stomach were hairy, and his long penis
hung down flaccidly like some drowsy animal.
What could he be doing in my room? A thin sheen of sweat
broke out on Mius forehead. How did he get in? Miu couldnt
understand it. She was angry at first, then confused. Next, a
woman appeared in the window. She had on a short-sleeve white
blouse and a short blue cotton skirt. A woman? Miu clutched the
binoculars tighter and fixed her eyes on the scene.
What she saw was herself.
 
Mius mind went blank. Im right here, looking at my room through
binoculars. And in that room is me. Miu focused and refocused the
binoculars. But no matter how many times she looked, it was her
inside the room. Wearing the exact same clothes she had on now.
Ferdinando held her close and carried her to the bed. Kissing her, 
 
he gently undressed the Miu inside the room. He took off her
blouse, undid her bra, pulled off her skirt, kissed the base of her
neck as he caressed her breasts with his hands. After a while, he
pulled off her panties with one hand, panties exactly the same as
the ones she had on now. Miu couldnt breathe. What was
happening?
Before she realized it, Ferdinandos penis was erect, as stiff as a
rod. Shed never seen one so huge. He took Mius hand, and
placed it on his penis. He caressed her and licked her from head to
toe. He took his own sweet time. She didnt resist. She the Miu in
the apartment let him do whatever he wanted, thoroughly
enjoying the rising passion. From time to time she would reach out
and caress Ferdinandos penis and balls and allow him to touch her
everywhere.
Miu couldnt drag her gaze away from this strange sight. She felt
sick. Her throat was so parched she couldnt swallow. She felt as if
she was going to vomit. Everything was grotesquely exaggerated,
menacing, like some medieval allegorical painting. This is what Miu
thought: that they were deliberately showing her this scene. They
know Im watching. But still she couldnt pull her eyes away.
 
A blank.
 
Then what happened?
Miu didnt remember. Her memory came to an abrupt halt at
this point.
 I cant recall, she said. She covered her face with her hands.
 All I know is that it was a horrifying experience, she added
quietly. I was right here, and another me was over there. And that
man Ferdinando was doing all kinds of things to me over
there. 
 What do you mean, all kinds of things? 
 I just cant remember. All kinds of things. With me locked inside
the Ferris wheel, he did whatever he wanted to the me over 
 
there. Its not like I was afraid of sex. There was a time when I
enjoyed casual sex a lot. But that wasnt what I was seeing there.
It was all meaningless and obscene, with only one goal in mind to
make me thoroughly polluted. Ferdinando used all the tricks he
knew to soil me with his thick fingers and mammoth penis not
that the me over there felt that this was making her dirty. And in
the end it wasnt even Ferdinando any more.
Not Ferdinando any more? I stared at Miu. If it wasnt
Ferdinando, then who was it?
I dont know. I cant recall. But in the end it wasnt Ferdinando
any more. Or maybe from the beginning it wasnt him.
 
The next thing she knew, Miu was lying in a hospital bed, a white
hospital gown covering her naked body. All her joints ached. The
doctor explained what had happened. In the morning one of the
workers at the amusement park had found the wallet shed
dropped and worked out what had happened. He got the Ferris
wheel down and called an ambulance. Inside the gondola Miu was
unconscious, collapsed in a heap. She looked like she was in shock,
her pupils non-reactive. Her face and arms were covered with
abrasions, her blouse bloody. They took her to the hospital for
treatment. Nobody could work out how shed got the injuries.
Thankfully none of them would leave any lasting scars. The police
hauled in the old man who ran the Ferris wheel for questioning,
but he had no memory at all of giving her a ride just near closing
time.
The next day some local policemen came to question her. She
had trouble answering their questions. When they compared her
face with her picture in her passport, they frowned, strange
expressions on their faces like theyd swallowed something awful.
Hesitantly, they asked her: Mademoiselle, were sorry to have to
ask, but are you really ? 
 I am, she replied, just like it says in my passport. Why did
they have to ask that? 
 
A little while later, though, when she went to the bathroom to
wash her face, she understood. Every single hair on her head was
white. Pure white, like freshly driven snow. At first she thought it
was somebody else in the mirror. She spun around. But she was
alone in the bathroom. She looked in the mirror once more. And
the reality of it all came crashing down on her in that instant. The
white-haired woman staring back at her was herself. She fainted
and fell to the floor.
 
And Miu vanished.
 I was still on this side, here. But another me, maybe half of me,
had gone over to the other side. Taking with it my black hair, my
sexual desire, my periods, my ovulation, perhaps even the will to
live. And the half that was left is the person you see here. Ive felt
this way for the longest time that in a Ferris wheel in a small
Swiss town, for a reason I cant explain, I was split in two for ever.
For all I know this may have been some kind of transaction. Its not
like something was stolen away from me, because it all still exists,
on the other side, lust a single mirror separates us from the other
side. But I can never cross the boundary of that single pane of
glass. Never. 
Miu nibbled at her fingernails.
 I guess never is too strong a word. Maybe someday,
somewhere, well meet again, and merge back into one. A very
important question remains unanswered, however. Which me, on
which side of the mirror, is the real me? I have no idea. Is the real
me the one who held Ferdinando? Or the one who detested him? I
dont have the confidence to work that one out. 
 
After the summer holidays were over, Miu didnt return to school.
She abandoned her studies abroad and went back to Japan. And
never again did she touch a keyboard. The strength to make music
had left her, never to return. A year later her father died and she
took over his company.
 
 
 Not being able to play the piano any more was definitely a shock,
but I didnt brood about it. I had a faint idea that, sooner or later, it
was bound to happen. One of these days … Miu smiled. The
world is filled with pianists. Twenty active world-class pianists are
more than enough. Go to a record shop and check out all the
versions of the ‘Waldstein, the ‘Kreisleriana, whatever. There are
only so many classical pieces to record, only so much space on the
CD shelves at shops. As far as the recording industrys concerned,
 top-notch pianists are plenty. No one was going to care if I
wasnt one of them. 
Miu spread her ten fingers out before her, and turned them over
again and again, as if she were making sure of her memory.
 After Id been in France for about a year I noticed a strange
thing. Pianists whose technique was worse than mine, and who
didnt practise nearly half as much as I did, were able to move their
audiences more than I ever could. In the end they defeated me. At
first I thought it was just a misunderstanding. But the same thing
happened so many times it made me angry. Its so unfair! I
thought. Slowly but surely, though, I understood that something
was missing from me. Something absolutely critical, though I
didnt know what. The kind of depth of emotion a person needs to
make music that will inspire others, I guess. I hadnt noticed this
when I was in Japan. In Japan I never lost to anyone, and I certainly
didnt have the time to criticize my own performance. But in Paris
surrounded by so many talented pianists, I finally understood that.
It was entirely clear like when the sun rises and the fog melts
away. 
Miu sighed. She looked up and smiled.
 Ever since I was little Ive enjoyed making my own private rules
and living by them. I was a very independent, super-serious type of
girl. I was born in Japan, went to Japanese schools, grew up
playing with Japanese friends. Emotionally I was completely
Japanese, but by nationality I was a foreigner. Technically speaking
Japan will always be a foreign country. My parents werent the 
 
kind to be strict about things, but thats one thing they drummed
into my head since I can remember: You are a foreigner here. I
decided that in order for me to survive I needed to make myself
stronger. 
Miu continued in a calm voice.
 Being tough isnt of itself a bad thing. Looking back on it,
though, I can see I was too used to being strong, and never tried
to understand those who were weak. I was too used to being
fortunate, and didnt try to understand those less fortunate. Too
used to being healthy, and didnt try to understand the pain of
those who werent. Whenever I saw a person in trouble,
somebody paralysed by events, I decided it was entirely their
fault they just werent trying hard enough. People who complain
were just plain lazy. My outlook on life was unshakeable, and
practical, but lacked any human warmth. And not a single person
around me pointed this out.
 I lost my virginity at , and slept with quite a few men. I had a
lot of boyfriends, and if the mood struck me, I didnt mind onenight
stands. But never once did I truly love someone. I didnt have
the time. All I could think about was becoming a world-class
pianist, and deviating from that path was not an option.
Something was missing in me, but by the time I noticed that gap, it
was too late. 
Again she spread out both hands in front of her, and thought for
a while.
 In that sense, what happened in Switzerland years ago may
well have been something I created myself. Sometimes I believe
that. 
 
Miu married at. Ever since the incident in Switzerland, she was
totally frigid, and couldnt manage sex with anyone. Something
inside her had vanished for ever. She shared this fact and this
fact alone with the man she ended up marrying. Thats why I
cant marry anyone, she explained. But the man loved Miu, and 
 
even if it meant a platonic relationship, he wanted to share the
rest of his life with her. Miu couldnt come up with a valid reason
for turning down his proposal. Shed known him since she was a
child, and had always been fond of him. No matter what form the
relationship might take, he was the only person she could picture
sharing her life with. Also, on the practical side, being married was
important as far as carrying on her family business was concerned.
Miu continued.
 My husband and I see each other only at weekends, and
generally get along well. Were like good friends, life partners able
to pass some pleasant time together. We talk about all sorts of
things, and we trust each other implicitly. Where and how he has a
sex life I dont know, and I dont really care. We never make love,
though never even touch each other. I feel bad about it, but I
dont want to touch him. I just dont want to. 
Worn out with talking, Miu quietly covered her face with her
hands. Outside, the sky had turned light.
 I was alive in the past, and Im alive now, sitting here talking to
you. But what you see here isnt really me. This is just a shadow of
who I was. You are really living. But Im not. Even these words Im
saying right now sound empty, like an echo. 
Wordlessly I put my arm around Mius shoulder. I couldnt find
the right words, so I just held her.
Im in love with Miu. With the Miu on this side, needless to say.
But I also love the Miu on the other side just as much. The moment
this thought struck me it was like I could hear myself -with an
audible creak splitting in two. As if Mius own split became a
rupture that had taken hold of me. The feeling was overpowering,
and I knew there was nothing I could do to fight it.
One question remains, however. If this side, where Miu is, is not
the real world if this side is actually the other side what about
me, the person who shares the same temporal and spatial plane
with her?
Who in the world am I? 
 
 
I read both documents twice, a quick run-through at first, then
slowly, paying attention to the details, engraving them on my
mind. The documents were definitely Sumires; the writing was
filled with her one-of-a-kind phrasing. There was something
different about the overall tone, though, something I couldnt
pin down. It was more restrained, more distanced. Still, there
was no doubt about it Sumire had written both.
After a moments hesitation, I slipped the floppy disk into the
pocket of my bag. If Sumire were to come back without
incident, Id just put it back where it belonged. The problem
was what to do if she didnt return. If somebody went through
her belongings, they were bound to find the disk, and I
couldnt abide the thought of other eyes prying into what I had
just read.
After I read the documents, I had to get out of the house. I
changed into a new shirt, left the cottage, and clambered down 
 
the staircase to town. I exchanged $ -worth of travellers
cheques, bought an English-language tabloid at the kiosk, and
sat under a parasol at a cafe, reading. A sleepy waiter took my
order for lemonade and melted cheese on toast. He wrote down
the order with a stubby pencil, in no particular hurry. Sweat
had seeped through the back of his shirt, forming a large stain.
The stain seemed to be sending out a message, but I couldnt
decipher it.
I mechanically leafed through half the paper, then gazed
absently at the harbour scene. A skinny black dog came out of
nowhere, sniffed my legs, then, losing interest, padded away.
People passed the languid summer afternoon, each in his own
personal spot. The only ones who seemed to be moving were
the waiter and the dog, though I had my doubts about how
long theyd keep at it. The old man at the kiosk where Id
bought the paper had been fast asleep under a parasol, legs
spread wide apart. The statue of the hero in the square stood
impassively as always, back turned to the intense sunlight.
I cooled my palms and forehead with the cold glass of
lemonade, turning over and over in my mind any connections
there might be between Sumires disappearance and what
shed written.
For a long time Sumire had not written. When she first met
Miu at the wedding reception, her desire to write had flown
out of the window. Still, here on this little island, shed
managed those two pieces in a short space of time. No mean
feat to complete that much in a few days. Something must have
driven Sumire to sit at her desk and write. Where was the
motivation?
More to the point, what theme tied these two pieces of
writing together? I looked up, gazed at the birds resting on the 
 
wharf, and gave it some thought.
It was far too hot to think about complicated matters.
Admittedly I was confused and tired. Still, as if marshalling
together the remnants of a defeated army minus any drums
and trumpets I rallied my scattered thoughts. My mind
focused, I began to piece it together.
 Whats really important here, I whispered aloud to myself,
 is not the big things other people have thought up, but the
small things you, yourself, have. My standard maxim I taught
my own students. But was it really true? Its easy to say, but
putting it into practice isnt. Ones hard put to start with even
the small things, let alone the Big Picture. Or maybe the smaller
the notion, the harder it is to grasp? Plus it didnt help that I
was so far from home.
Sumires dream. Mius split.
 
These are two different worlds, I realized. Thats the common
element here.
Document : This relates a dream Sumire had. Shes climbing a
long staircase to go to see her dead mother. But the moment
she arrives, her mother is already returning to the other side.
And Sumire cant stop her. And shes left standing on the spire
of a tower, surrounded by objects from a different world.
Sumires had many similar dreams.
Document : This one concerns the strange experiences Miu
had years ago. She was stuck inside a Ferris wheel overnight
in an amusement park in a small Swiss town, and looking
through binoculars at her own room she saw a second self
there. A doppelgänger. And this experience destroyed Miu as a 
 
person or at least made this destruction tangible. As Miu put
it, she was split in two, with a mirror in between each self.
Sumire had persuaded Miu to tell the story and wrote it down
as best she could.
 
This side the other side. That was the common thread. The
movement from one side to the other. Sumire must have been
drawn by this motif and motivated enough to spend so much
time writing it all down. To borrow her own word, writing all
this helped her think.
The waiter came to clear away the remnants of my toast, and
I ordered a refill of lemonade. Put in lots of ice, I asked him.
When he brought the drink over I took a sip and used it again
to cool my forehead.
 And if Miu doesnt accept me, then what? Sumire had
written. Ill cross that bridge when the times comes. Blood
must be shed. Ill sharpen my knife, ready to slit a dogs throat
somewhere. 
What was she trying to convey? Was she hinting that she
might kill herself? I couldnt believe that. Her words didnt
have the acrid smell of death. What I sensed in them was rather
the will to move forwards, the struggle to make a new start.
Dogs and blood are just metaphors, like Id explained to her on
that bench at Inogashira Park. They get their meaning from
magical, life-giving forces. The story about the Chinese gates
was a metaphor of how a story captures that magic.
Ready to slit a dogs throat somewhere.
Somewhere?
My thoughts slammed into a solid wall. A total dead end.
Where could Sumire have gone to? Is there somewhere she
had to go to on this island? 
 
 
I couldnt shake the image of Sumire falling down a well in
some remote area and waiting, alone, for help to arrive.
Injured, lonely, starving, and thirsty. The thought of this nearly
drove me crazy.
The police had made clear that there wasnt a single well on
the island. Theyd never heard of any holes either anywhere
near town. If there were, wed be the first to know, they
declared. I had to grant them that.
I decided to venture a theory.
Sumire went over to the other side.
That would explain a lot. Sumire broke through the mirror
and journeyed to the other side. To meet the other Miu who
was there. If the Miu on this side rejected her, wouldnt that be
the logical thing to do?
I dredged up from memory what shed written: So what
should we do to avoid a collision? Logically, its easy. The
answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of
dreams, and never coming out. Living there for the rest of
time. 
One question remains, however. A major question. How are
you supposed to go there?
Put in simple logical terms, its easy. Though explaining it
isnt.
I was right back where I started.
 
I thought about Tokyo. About my apartment, the school where
I taught, the kitchen rubbish Id stealthily tossed in a bin at the
station. Id only been away from Japan for two days, but
already it seemed like a different world. The new term was
going to start in a week. I pictured myself standing in front of 
 
 pupils. Seen from this distance, the thought of my teaching
anyone even ten-year-old kids seemed absurd.
I removed my sunglasses, wiped my sweating brow with a
handkerchief, and put them on again, then gazed at the
seabirds.
I thought about Sumire. About the colossal hard-on I had the
time I sat beside her when she moved into her new place. The
kind of awesome, rock-hard erection Id never experienced
before. Like my whole body was about to explode. At the time,
in my imagination something like the world of dreams Sumire
wrote of I made love to her. And the sensation was far more
real than any sex Id ever had.
I gulped down some lemonade to clear my throat.
 
I returned to my hypothesis, taking it one step further. Sumire
had somehow found an exit. What kind of exit that was, and
how she discovered it, I had no way of knowing. Ill put that on
hold. Suppose its a kind of door. I closed my eyes and
conjured up a mental image an elaborate image of what this
door looked like. Just an ordinary door, part of an ordinary
wall. Sumire happened to find this door, turned the knob, and
slipped outside from this side to the other. Clad only in thin
silk pyjamas and a pair of flip-flops.
What lay beyond that door was beyond my powers of
imagination. The door closed, and Sumire wouldnt be coming
back.
I went back to the cottage and made a simple dinner from
things I found in the fridge. Tomato and basil pasta, a salad, an
Amstel beer. I went out to sit on the veranda, lost in thought.
Or maybe thinking of nothing. Nobody phoned. Miu might be
trying to call from Athens, but you couldnt count on the 
 
phones to work.
Moment by moment the blue of the sky turned deeper, a
large circular moon rising from the sea, a handful of stars
piercing holes in the sky. A breeze blew up the slopes, rustling
the hibiscus. The unmanned lighthouse at the tip of the pier
blinked on and off with its ancient-looking light. People were
slowly heading down the slope, leading donkeys as they went.
Their loud conversation came closer, then faded into the
distance. I silently took it all in, this foreign scene seeming
entirely natural.
In the end the phone didnt ring, and Sumire didnt appear.
Quietly, gently, time slipped by, the evening deepening. I took
a couple of cassettes from Sumires room and played them on
the living room stereo. One of them was a collection of Mozart
songs. The handwritten label read: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and
Walter Gieseking (p). I dont know much about classical music,
but one listen told me how lovely this music was. The singing
style was a bit dated, but it reminded me of reading some
beautiful, memorable prose it demanded that you sit up
straight and pay attention. The performers were right there in
front of me, it seemed, their delicate phrasing swelling up, then
retreating, then swelling up again. One of the songs in the
collection must be Sumire . I sank back in my chair, closed my
eyes, and shared this music with my missing friend.
 
I was awakened by music. Far-off music, barely audible.
Steadily, like a faceless sailor hauling in an anchor from the
bottom of the sea, the faint sound brought me to my senses. I
sat up in bed, leaned towards the open window, and listened
carefully. It was definitely music. The wristwatch next to my
bed showed it was past one oclock. Music? At this time of 
 
night?
I put on my trousers and a shirt, slipped on my shoes, and
went outside. The lights in the neighbourhood were all out, the
streets deserted. No wind, not even the sound of waves. Just
the moonlight bathing the earth. I stood there, listening again.
Strangely, the music seemed to be coming from the top of the
hills. There werent any villages on the steep mountains, just a
handful of shepherds and monasteries where monks lived their
cloistered lives. It was hard to imagine either group putting on
a festival at this time of night.
Outside, the music was more audible. I couldnt make out the
melody, but by the rhythm it was clearly Greek. It had the
uneven, sharp sound of live music, not something played
through speakers.
 
By then I was wide awake. The summer night air was pleasant,
with a mysterious depth to it. If I hadnt been worried about
Sumire, I might very well have felt a sense of celebration. I
rested my hands on my hips, stretched, looking up at the sky,
and took a deep breath. The coolness of the night washed
inside me. Suddenly a thought struck me maybe, at this very
moment, Sumire is listening to the same music.
I decided to walk for a while in the direction of the sound. I
had to find out where it was coming from, who was playing it.
The road to the hilltop was the same one Id taken that morning
to go to the beach, so I knew the way. Ill go as far as I can, I
decided.
The brilliant moonlight lit everything, making walking easy.
It created complex shadows between the cliffs, dyeing the
ground with unlikely shades. Every time the soles of my
running shoes crushed a pebble on the road, the sound was 
 
amplified. The music grew more pronounced as I made my
way further up the slopes. As Id surmised, it was coming from
the top of the hill. I could make out some kind of percussion
instrument, a bouzouki, an accordion, and a flute. Possibly a
guitar. Other than that, I couldnt hear a thing. No singing, no
people shouting. Just that music playing endlessly, at a
detached, almost monotonous pace.
I wanted to see what was taking place on top of the
mountain, yet at the same time I thought I should keep my
distance. Irrepressible curiosity vied with an instinctive fear.
Still, I had to go forward. I felt as if I was in a dream. The
principle that made other choices possible was missing. Or was
it the choice that made that principle possible that was
missing?
For all I knew, a few days before Sumire had awakened to
the same music, her curiosity getting the better of her as she
clambered up the slope in her pyjamas.
 
I stopped and turned to look behind me. The slope twisted
palely down towards the town like the tracks of some gigantic
insect. I looked up at the sky then, under the moonlight, and
glanced at my palm. With a rush of understanding I knew this
wasnt my hand any more. I cant explain it. But at a glance I
knew. My hand was no longer my hand, my legs no longer my
legs.
Bathed in the pallid moonlight, my body, like some plaster
puppet, had lost all living warmth. As if a voodoo magician
had put a spell on me, blowing my transient life into this lump
of clay. The spark of life had vanished. My real life had fallen
asleep somewhere, and a faceless someone was stuffing it in a
suitcase, about to leave. 
 
An awful chill swept through me and I felt choked.
Someone had rearranged my cells, untied the threads that held
my mind together. I couldnt think straight. All I was able to do
was retreat as fast as I could to my usual place of refuge. I took
a huge breath, sinking in the sea of consciousness to the very
bottom. Pushing aside the heavy water I plunged down quickly
and grabbed a huge rock there with both arms. The water
crushed my eardrums. I squeezed my eyes tightly closed, held
my breath, resisting. Once I made up my mind, it wasnt that
difficult. I grew used to it all the water pressure, the lack of
air, the freezing darkness, the signals the chaos emitted. It was
something Id mastered again and again as a child.
Time reversed itself, looped back, collapsed, reordered itself.
The world stretched out endlessly and yet was defined and
limited. Sharp images just the images alone passed down
dark corridors, like jellyfish, like souls adrift. But I steeled
myself not to look at them. If I acknowledged them, even a
little, they would envelop themselves in meaning. Meaning
was fixed to the temporal, and the temporal was trying to force
me to rise to the surface. I shut my mind tight to it all, waiting
for the procession to pass.
How long I remained that way, I dont know. When I bobbed
to the surface, opened my eyes, and took a silent breath, the
music had already stopped. The enigmatic performance was
finished. I listened carefully. I couldnt hear a thing. Absolutely
nothing. No music, no peoples voices, no rustle of the wind.
I tried to check the time, but I wasnt wearing a watch. Id left
it by my bedside.
The sky was now filled with stars. Or was it my imagination?
The sky itself seemed to have changed into something
different. The strange sense of alienation Id felt inside had 
 
vanished. I stretched, bent my arm, my fingers. No sense of
being out of place. My underarms were clammy, but that was
all.
I stood up from the grass and continued to climb uphill. Id
come this far and might as well reach the top. Had there really
been music there? I had to see for myself, even if only the
faintest clues remained. In five minutes I reached the summit.
Towards the south the hill sloped down to the sea, the harbour,
and the sleeping town. A scattering of streetlights lit the coast
road. The other side of the mountain was wrapped in darkness,
not a single light visible. I gazed fixedly into the dark, and
finally a line of hills beyond floated into sight in the moonlight.
Beyond them lay an even deeper darkness. And here around
me, no indication whatsoever that a lively festival had taken
place only a short while before.
Though the echo of it remained deep inside my head, now I
wasnt even sure Id heard music. As time passed, I became less
and less certain. Maybe it had all been an illusion, my ears
picking up signals from a different time and place. It made
sense the idea that people would get together on a
mountaintop at a.m. to play music was pretty preposterous.
In the sky above the summit, the coarse-looking moon
loomed awfully near. A hard ball of stone, its skin eaten away
by the merciless passage of time. Ominous shadows on its
surface were blind cancer cells stretching out feelers towards
the warmth of life. The moonlight warped every sound,
washed away all meaning, threw every mind into chaos. It
made Miu see a second self. It took Sumires cat away
somewhere. It made Sumire disappear. And it brought me
here, in the midst of music that most likely never existed.
Before me lay a bottomless darkness; behind me, a world of 
 
pale light. I stood there on the top of a mountain in a foreign
land, bathed in moonlight. Maybe this had all been
meticulously planned, from the very beginning.
 
I returned to the cottage and downed a glass of Mius brandy. I
tried to get to sleep, but I couldnt. Not a wink. Until the
eastern sky grew light, I was held in the grip of the moon, and
gravity, and something astir in the world.
I pictured cats, starving to death in a closed-up apartment.
Soft, small carnivores. I the real me was dead, and they were
alive, devouring my flesh, chewing on my heart, sucking my
blood. If I listened very carefully, somewhere far, far away I
could hear the cats lapping up my brain. Three lithe cats,
surrounding my broken head, slurping up the mushy grey
soup within. The tips of their red, rough tongues licked the soft
folds of my mind. And with each lick of their tongues, my
mind like a shimmer of hot air flickered and faded away. 
 
 
In the end we never found out what happened to Sumire. As
Miu put it, she vanished like smoke.
Two days later Miu came back to the island on the noon ferry
together with an official from the Japanese embassy and a
police official in charge of tourist affairs. They met with the
local police and launched a full-scale investigation involving
the islanders. The police put out a public appeal for
information, publishing a blown-up version of Sumires
passport photo in a national newspaper. Many people got in
touch, but nothing connected. The information always turned
out to be about someone else.
Sumires parents came to the island, too. I left just before they
arrived. The new school term was around the corner, but
mostly I couldnt stand the thought of facing them. Besides, the
mass media in Japan had caught wind of events and had begun
to contact the Japanese embassy and the local police. I told Miu 
 
it was about time for me to be getting back to Tokyo. Staying
any longer on the island wasnt going to help find Sumire.
She nodded. Youve done so much already, she said.
 Really. If you hadnt come, I would have been completely lost.
Dont worry. Ill explain things to Sumires parents. And Ill
handle any reporters. Leave it to me. You had no responsibility
for any of this to begin with. I can be pretty businesslike when I
need to be, and I can hold my own. 
 
She saw me off at the harbour. I was taking the afternoon ferry
to Rhodes. It was exactly ten days since Sumire had
disappeared. Miu hugged me just before I left. A very natural
embrace. For a long moment, she silently rubbed my back as
she held me. The afternoon sun was hot, but strangely her skin
felt cool. Her hand was trying to tell me something. I closed my
eyes and listened to those words. Not words -something that
couldnt coalesce into language. In the midst of our silence,
something passed between us. Take care of yourself, said
Miu.
 You, too, I said. For a while we stood there in front of the
gangplank.
 I want you to tell me something, honestly, She said in a
serious tone, just before I boarded the ferry. Do you believe
Sumire is no longer alive? 
 
I shook my head. I cant prove it, but I feel like shes still
alive somewhere. Even after this much time, I just dont have
the sense that shes dead. 
 
Miu folded her tanned arms and looked at me.
 Actually I feel exactly the same, she said. That Sumire
isnt dead. But I also feel that Ill never see her again. Though I 
 
cant prove anything either. 
I didnt say a word. Silence wove itself into the spaces of
everything around us. Seabirds squawked as they cut across
the cloudless sky, and in the café the ever-sleepy waiter hoisted
yet another tray of drinks.
Miu pursed her lips and was lost in thought. Do you hate
me? she finally asked.
 Because Sumire disappeared? 
 Yes. 
 Why would I hate you? 
 I dont know. Her voice was tinged with a long-suppressed
exhaustion. I have the feeling Ill never see you again, either.
Thats why I asked. 
 I dont hate you, I said.
 But who can tell, maybe later on? 
 I dont hate people over things like that. 
Miu took off her hat, straightened her fringe, and put it back
on. She squinted at me.
 That might be because you dont expect anything from
anyone, she said. Her eyes were deep and clear, like the twilit
darkness on the day we met. Im not like that. I just want you
to know that I like you. Very much. 
 
And we said goodbye. The ship edged backwards out of the
harbour, the propeller churning up the water as it lumbered
through a change of direction; all the while, Miu stood on
the wharf watching me go. She wore a tight white dress and
occasionally reached out to keep her hat from flying away in
the wind. Standing there on that wharf on this little Greek
island, she looked like something from a different world,
fleeting, full of grace and beauty. I leaned against the railing on 
 
deck and watched her for a long time.
Time seemed to stand still, the scene forever etched on my
memory.
 
But time began to move again, and Miu got smaller and
smaller, first a vague dot, then swallowed up whole in the
shimmering air. The town grew distant, the shape of the
mountains indistinct, and finally the island merged into the
mist of light, blurred, and vanished altogether. Another island
rose up to take its place and likewise disappeared into the
distance. As time passed, all the things I left behind there
seemed never to have existed at all.
Maybe I should have stayed with Miu. So what if the new
school term was starting? I should encourage Miu, do
everything I could to help in the search, and if something awful
happened, then I should hold her, give her what comfort I
could. Miu wanted me, I believe, and in a sense I wanted her as
well.
 
Shed grabbed hold of my heart with a rare intensity.
I realized all this for the first time as I stood on the deck and
watched her disappear in the distance. A feeling came over me,
like a thousand strings were tugging at me. Perhaps not fullblown
romantic love, but something very close. Flustered, I sat
on a bench on the deck, placed my gym bag on my knees, and
gazed out at the white wake trailing behind the ship. Seagulls
flew after the ferry, clinging to the wake. I could still feel Mius
small palm on my back, like a souls tiny shadow.
I planned to fly straight back to Tokyo, but for some reason
the reservation Id made the day before was cancelled, and I
ended up spending the night in Athens. I took the airline 
 
shuttle bus and stayed at a hotel in the city that the airline
recommended. A pleasant, cosy hotel near the Plaka district,
which, unfortunately, was crowded with a boisterous German
tour group. With nothing else to do, I wandered around the
city, bought some souvenirs for no one in particular, and in the
evening walked to the top of the Acropolis. I lay down on a
slab of stone, the twilight breeze blowing over me as I gazed at
the white temple floating up in the bluish floodlights. A lovely,
dreamy scene.
But all I felt was an incomparable loneliness. Before I knew it,
the world around was drained of colour. From the shabby
mountaintop, the ruins of those empty feelings, I could see my
own life stretching out into the future. It looked just like an
illustration in a science fiction novel I read as a child: the
desolate surface of a deserted planet. No sign of life at all. Each
day seemed to last for ever, the air either boiling hot or
freezing. The spaceship that brought me there had
disappeared, and I was stuck. Id have to survive on my own.
 
All over again I understood how important, how irreplaceable,
Sumire was to me. In her own special way shed kept me
tethered to the world. As I talked to her and read her stories,
my mind quietly expanded, and I could see things Id never
seen before. Without even trying, we grew close. Like a pair of
young lovers undressing in front of each other, Sumire and I
had exposed our hearts to one another, an experience Id never
have with anyone else, anywhere. We cherished what we had
together, though we never put into words how very precious it
was.
Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a
physical way. We would have been far happier if we had. But 
 
that was like the tides, the change of seasons something
immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No
matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship
wasnt going to last for ever. We were bound to reach a dead
end. That was painfully clear.
I loved Sumire more than anyone else and wanted her more
than anything in the world. And I couldnt just shelve those
feelings, for there was nothing to take their place.
I dreamed that someday thered be a sudden, major
transformation. Even if the chances of it coming true were slim, I
could dream about it, couldnt I? But I knew it would never
come true.
Like the tide receding, the shoreline washed clean, with Sumire
gone I was left in a distorted, empty world. A gloomy, cold
world in which what she and I had would never ever take
place again.
We each have a special something we can get only at a special
time of our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few
cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their
way. But once that flame goes out, its gone for ever. What Id
lost was not just Sumire. Id lost that precious flame.
 
What is it like on the other side? Sumire was over there, and so
was the lost part of Miu. Miu with black hair and a healthy
sexual appetite. Perhaps theyve come across each other there,
loving each other, fulfilling each other. We do things you cant
put into words, Sumire would probably tell me, putting it into
words all the same.
 
Is there a place for me over there? Could I be with them? While
they make passionate love, Id sit in the corner of a room 
 
somewhere and amuse myself reading the Collected Works of
Balzac. After she showered, Sumire and I would take long
walks and talk about all kinds of things with Sumire, as
usual, doing most of the talking. But would our relationship
last for ever? Is that natural? Of course, Sumire would tell
me. No need to ask that. ‘Cause youre my one and only true
friend! 
 
But I hadnt a clue how to get to that world. I rubbed the slick,
hard rock face of the Acropolis. History had seeped through
the surface and was stored up inside. Like it or not, I was shut
up in that flow of time. I couldnt escape. No thats not
entirely true. The truth is, I really dont want to escape.
 
Tomorrow Ill get on a plane and fly back to Tokyo. The
summer holidays are nearly over, and I have to step once more
in that endless stream of the everyday. Theres a place for me
there. My apartments there, my desk, my classroom, my
pupils. Quiet days await me, novels to read. The occasional
affair.
But tomorrow Ill be a different person, never again the
person I was. Not that anyone will notice after Im back in
Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something
inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and
something inside me is gone. Face turned down, without a
word, that something makes its exit. The door opens; the door
shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am
right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the
person I am wont be here any more. Someone else will occupy
this body.
 
Why do people have to be this lonely? Whats the point of it 
 
all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning,
looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves.
Why? Was the Earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
I turned face-up on the slab of stone, gazed at the sky, and
thought about all the man-made satellites spinning around the
Earth. The horizon was still etched in a faint glow, and stars
began to blink on in the deep, wine-coloured sky. I gazed
among them for the light of a satellite, but it was still too bright
out to spot one with the naked eye. The sprinkling of stars
looked nailed to the spot, unmoving. I closed my eyes and
listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now
circling the Earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely
metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet,
pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words
passing between them. No promises to keep. 
 
 
The phone rang on a Sunday afternoon. The second Sunday
after the new school term began in September. I was fixing a
late lunch and had to turn off the gas range before I answered.
The phone rang with a kind of urgency at least it felt that
way. I was sure it was Miu calling with news of Sumires
whereabouts. The call wasnt from Miu, though, but from my
girlfriend.
 Somethings happened, she said, skipping her usual
opening pleasantries. Can you come straightaway? 
It sounded like something awful. Had her husband found out
about us? I took a deep breath. If people discovered I was
sleeping with the mother of one of the kids in my class, Id be
in a major fix to say the least. Worst-case scenario, I could lose
my job. At the same time, though, I was resigned to it. I knew
the risks.
 Where are you? I asked. 
 
 At a supermarket, she said.
 
I took the train to Tachikawa, arriving at the station near the
supermarket at.. The afternoon was blazing hot, the
summer back in force, but I had on a white dress-shirt, tie, and
light grey suit, the clothes shed asked me to wear. You look
more like a teacher that way, she said, and youll give a
better impression. Sometimes you still look like a college
student, she added.
At the entrance to the supermarket I asked a young assistant
who was rounding up stray shopping trolleys where the
security office was. He told me it was across the street on the
third floor of an annexe, an ugly little three-storey building
without even a lift. Hey, dont worry about us, the cracks in the
concrete walls seemed to say, Theyre just going to tear this
place down someday anyway. I walked up the narrow,
timeworn stairs, located the door with SECURITY on it, and
gave a couple of light taps. A mans deep voice answered. I
opened the door and saw my girlfriend and her son inside
seated in front of a desk facing a middle-aged uniformed
security guard. Just the three of them.
The room was an in-between size, not too big, not too small.
Three desks were lined up along the window, a steel locker
against the wall opposite. On the wall between were a duty
rota and three security guard caps on a steel shelf. Beyond a
frosted-glass door at the far end of the room there seemed to be
a second room, which the guards probably used for taking
naps. The room we were all in was almost completely devoid
of decoration. No flowers, no pictures, not even a calendar. Just
an overly large round clock on the wall. A totally barren room,
like some ancient corner of the world that time forgot. On top 
 
of which the place had a strange odour of cigarette smoke,
mouldy documents, and perspiration mixed together over the
years.
The security guard in charge was a thickset man in his late
fifties. He had beefy arms and a large head covered with a thick
patch of coarse salt-and-pepper hair hed plastered down with
some cheap hair tonic, the best he could probably afford on his
lowly security guard salary. The ashtray in front of him was
overflowing with Seven Star butts. When I came in the room,
he took off his black-framed glasses, wiped them with a cloth,
and put them back on. Maybe his set way of greeting new
people. With his glasses off, his eyes were as cold as moon
rocks. When he put them back on, the coldness retreated,
replaced by a kind of powerful glazed look. Either way, this
wasnt a look to put people at their ease.
The room was oppressively hot; the window was wide open,
but not a breath of air came in. Only the noise from the road
outside. A large lorry coming to a halt at a red light blatted out
a hoarse air brake, reminding me of Ben Webster on the tenor
sax in his later years. We were all sweating. I walked up to the
desk, introduced myself, and handed the security guard my
business card. He took it without a word, pursed his lips, and
stared at it for a while, then placed it on the desk and looked
up at me.
 Youre pretty young for a teacher, arent you? he said.
 How long have you been teaching? 
 
I pretended to think it over and answered, Three years. 
 Hmm, he said. And didnt say anything else. But the
silence spoke volumes. He picked up my card and read my
name again, as if re-checking something. 
 
 My names Nakamura, Im the chief of security here, he
introduced himself. He didnt proffer a business card of his
own. Just pull up a chair from over there if you would. Im
sorry about how hot it is. The air conditioners on the blink,
and no one will come out to fix it on a Sunday. They arent nice
enough to give me a fan, so I sit and suffer. Take off your jacket
if youd like. We might be here for a while, and it makes me hot
just looking at you. 
I did as he told me, pulling over a chair and removing my
jacket. My sweaty shirt clung to my skin.
 You know, Ive always envied teachers, the guard began.
A stillborn smile played around his lips, yet his eyes remained
those of a deep-sea predator searching my depths for the
slightest movement. His words were polite enough, but that
was only a veneer. The word teacher sounded like an insult.
 You have over a month off in the summer, dont have to
work on Sundays or at night, and people give you gifts all the
time. Pretty nice life if you ask me. I sometimes wish Id
studied harder and become a teacher myself. Destiny
intervened and here I am a security guard at a supermarket. I
wasnt smart enough, I suppose. But I tell my kids to grow up
to be teachers. I dont care what anybody says, teachers have it
made. 
 
My girlfriend wore a simple blue, half-sleeve dress. Her hair
was piled up neatly on top of her head, and she had on a pair
of small earrings. White sandals with heels completed her
outfit, and a white bag and small, cream-coloured handkerchief
rested on her lap. It was the first time Id seen her since I got
back from Greece. She looked back and forth between me and
the guard, her eyes puffy from crying. Shed been through a lot, 
 
it was clear.
We exchanged a quick glance, and I turned to her son. His
name was Shinichi Nimura, but his classmates nicknamed him
Carrot. With his long, thin face, his shock of unkempt, curly
hair, the name fitted. I usually called him that, too. He was a
quiet boy, hardly ever speaking more than was necessary. His
grades werent bad; he rarely forgot to bring his homework and
never failed to do his share of the cleaning up. Never got into
trouble. But he lacked initiative and never once raised his hand
in class. Carrots classmates didnt dislike him, but he wasnt
what youd call popular. This didnt please his mother much,
but from my point of view he was a good kid.
 
 I assume youve heard about what happened from the boys
mother, the security guard said.
 Yes, I have, I replied. He was caught shoplifting. 
 Thats correct, the guard said and set a cardboard box that
was at his feet on top of the table. He pushed it towards me.
Inside was a collection of identical small staplers still in their
packaging. I picked one up and examined it. The price tag said
¥.
 Eight staplers, I commented. Is this all? 
 Yep. Thats the lot of it. 
I put the stapler back in the box. So the whole thing would
come to ¥ ,. 
 Correct. ¥ ,. Youre probably thinking, ‘Well, okay, he
shoplifted. Its a crime, sure, but why get so worked up about
eight staplers? Hes just a school kid. Am I right? 
I didnt reply.
 Its okay to think that. ‘Cause its the truth. There are a lot
worse crimes than stealing eight staplers. I was a policeman 
 
before I became a security guard, so I know what Im talking
about. 
The guard looked directly into my eyes as he spoke. I held
his gaze, careful not to appear defiant.
 If this were his first offence, the store wouldnt raise such a
fuss. Our business is dealing with customers, after all, and we
prefer not to get too upset over something small-scale like this.
Normally Id bring the child here to this room and Id put a
little of the fear of God into him. In worse cases wed contact
the parents and have them punish the child. We dont get in
touch with the school. Thats our stores policy, to take care of
children shoplifting quietly.
 The problem is, this isnt the first time this boys shoplifted.
In our store alone we know hes done it three times. Three times!
Can you imagine? And whats worse is both other times he
refused to give us his name or the name of his school. I was the
one who took care of him, so I remember it well. He wouldnt
say a word, no matter what we asked. The silent treatment, we
used to call it in the police force. No apologies, no remorse, just
adopt a crummy attitude and stonewall it. If he didnt tell me
his name this time, I was going to turn him over to the police,
but even this didnt raise a reaction. Nothing else to do, so I
forced him to show me his bus pass, and thats how I found out
his name. 
He paused, waiting for it all to sink in. He was still staring
fixedly at me, and I continued to hold his gaze.
 Another thing is the kind of things he stole. Nothing cute
about it. The first time he stole propelling pencils. Total
value, ¥ ,. The second time it was eight compasses, ¥ , 
altogether. In other words, each time he just steals a pile of the
same things. Hes not going to use them himself. Hes just 
 
doing it for kicks, or else hes planning to sell it all to his friends
at school. 
I tried conjuring up a mental image of Carrot selling stolen
staplers to his friends during lunch hour. I couldnt picture it.
 I dont quite understand, I said. Why keep stealing from
the same shop? Wouldnt that just increase the chances youd
get caught and worsen your punishment when you were? If
youre trying to get away with it, wouldnt you normally try
other shops? 
 Dont ask me. Maybe he was stealing from other shops. Or
maybe ours just happens to be his favourite. Maybe he doesnt
like my face. Im just a simple security guard for a
supermarket, so Im not going to think out all the ramifications.
They dont pay me enough for that. If you really want to know,
ask him yourself. I hauled him in here three hours ago and not
a peep so far. Pretty amazing. Which is why I dragged you in
here. Im sorry you had to come in on your day off … One
thing Ive been wondering about since you came in, though.
You look so tanned. Not that its relevant, but did you go
somewhere special for your summer holidays? 
 No, nowhere special, I replied.
Even so, he continued to scrutinize my face carefully, as if I
were an important piece in the puzzle.
I picked up the stapler again and examined it in detail. Just
an ordinary, small stapler, the kind youd find in any home or
office. An office supply about as cheap as they come.
Seven Star cigarette dangling from his lips, the security guard
lit it with a Bic lighter and, turning to one side, blew out a
cloud of smoke.
I turned to the boy and gently asked, Why staplers? 
Carrot had been staring the whole time at the floor, but now 
 
he quietly lifted his face and looked at me. But he didnt say
anything. I noticed for the first time that his expression was
completely changed strangely expressionless, eyes out of
focus. He seemed to be staring into a void.
 Did somebody bully you into doing it? 
Still no answer. It was hard to tell if my words were getting
through. I gave up. Asking the boy anything at this point
wasnt going to be productive. His door was closed, the
windows shut tight.
 Well, sir, what do you propose we do? the guard asked me.
 I get paid to make my rounds of the shop, check the monitors,
catch shoplifters, and bring them back to this room. What
happens afterwards is another matter entirely. Especially hard
to deal with when its a child. What do you suggest we do? Im
sure youre more knowledgeable in this area. Should we just let
the police handle the whole thing? That would certainly be
easier for me. Keep us from wasting our time when were just
treading water anyway. 
Actually, at that moment I was thinking about something
else. This dumpy little supermarket security room reminded
me of the police station on the Greek island. Thoughts of which
led straight to Sumire. And the fact that she was gone.
It took me a few moments to work out what this man was
trying to say to me.
 Ill let his father know, Carrots mother said in a monotone,
 and make sure my son knows in no uncertain terms that
shoplifting is a crime. I promise he wont ever bother you
again. 
 In other words you dont want this to be taken to court.
Youve said that over and over, the security guard said in a
bored tone. He tapped his cigarette on the ashtray, flicking the 
 
ash into it. He turned to me again and said, But from where I
sit, three times is just too many. Somebodys gotta put a stop to
it. What are your feelings about this? 
I took a deep breath, pulling my thoughts back to the
present. To the eight staplers and a Sunday afternoon in
September.
 I cant say anything unless I talk to him, I replied. Hes a
smart boy, and hes never caused any problems before. I have
no clue why hed do something so stupid, but Im going to
spend time myself and get to the bottom of this. I really
apologize for all the trouble hes caused. 
 Yeah, but I just dont get it, the guard said, frowning
behind his glasses. This boy Shinichi Nimura? hes in your
class, right? So you see him every day, correct? 
 Thats right. 
 Hes in fourth grade, which means hes been in your class
for a year and four months. Am I right? 
 Yes, thats correct. Ive been in charge of his class since they
were in third grade. 
 And how many pupils are in your class? 
 Thirty-five. 
 So you can keep an eye on them all. Youre telling me you
never had any hint that this boy was going to cause trouble. No
sign at all? 
 Thats right. 
 Wait a sec as far as we know, hes been shoplifting for a
half year. Always alone. Nobodys threatening him to do it.
And its not spur of the moment. And hes not doing it for the
money either. According to his mother he gets plenty of pocket
money. Hes doing it just to get away with stealing. This boy
has problems, in other words. And youre telling me there 
 
wasnt any indication of this whatsoever? 
 Im speaking as a teacher here, I replied, but especially
with children, habitual shoplifting is not so much a criminal act
as the result of a subtle emotional imbalance. Maybe if Id paid
a little more attention I would have noticed something. I fell
down on the job, definitely. But with emotionally disturbed
children theres not always something outward to go on. If you
separate the act from everything else and punish the child, the
basic problem isnt going to be cured. Unless you find the
fundamental cause and treat that, the same problem will
surface later on in a different form. Often children are trying to
send a message by shoplifting, so even if it isnt the most
efficient way of handling the problem, its important to take the
time to talk things out. 
The guard crushed out his cigarette and, mouth half open,
stared at me for a long time, as if I were some odd-looking
animal. His fingers resting on the tabletop were terribly thick,
like ten little furry black creatures. The more I looked at them,
the harder I found it to breathe.
 Is that what they teach you in college, in teacher-training or
whatever you call it? 
 Not necessarily. Its basic psychology. You can find it in any
book. 
 You can find it in any book, he said, repeating my words
listlessly. He picked up his hand towel and wiped away the
sweat from his thick neck.
 A subtle emotional imbalance whats that supposed to
mean? When I was a policeman I spent every day, morning till
night, dealing with characters who were imbalanced, all right.
But there was nothing subtle about it. The worlds full of
people like that. Ten a penny. If I took the time to listen to each 
 
and every one of the messages those people were sending out,
Id need ten more brains. And that still wouldnt be enough. 
He sighed, and placed the box of staplers back under the
desk.
 Okay youre absolutely right. Children have pure hearts.
Corporal punishment is bad. People are all equal. You cant
judge people by their grades. Take the time to talk and work
out a solution. I dont have a major problem with that. But do
you think thats how the world will get to be a better place? No
way. Itll only get worse. How can people all be equal? Ive
never heard such a thing. Consider this million people are
elbowing one another out of the way every day in Japan. Try
making all of them equal. Itd be hell on earth.
 Its easy to say all these sweet words. Close your eyes,
pretend not to see whats going on, and pass the buck. Dont
make any waves, sing Auld Lang Syne, hand the kids their
diplomas, and everybody lives happily ever after. Shoplifting is
a childs message. Dont worry about later on. Thats the easy
way out, so why not? But whos going to clean up the mess?
People like me, thats who. You think we do this because we
like it? You lot have this kind of hey-whats-¥ , ?-look on
your faces, but think about the people he stole from. A hundred
people work here, and you better believe they take a difference
of one or two yen seriously. When they add up the receipts for
a cash register and theres a ¥ discrepancy, they work
overtime to straighten it out. Do you know how much an hour
the women who work the checkouts make here? Why dont
you teach your pupils that? 
 
I didnt say anything. Carrots mother was silent, as was the
boy. The security guard had worn himself out talking and sank 
 
back into the general silence. In another room a phone rang,
and someone picked it up on the first ring. So, what should
we do? he asked.
I said: How about we string him upside down from the
ceiling until he says hes sorry? 
 I like it! ‘Course you know that wed both be out on our
ears. 
 Well, then, the only thing we can do is patiently take the
time to discuss the problem. Thats all I can say. 
Someone from another room knocked at the door and
entered. Mr Nakamura, could you lend me the key to the
storeroom? he asked. Mr Nakamura rummaged through the
drawer in his desk for a while, but couldnt find it.
 Its gone, he said. Thats strange. I always keep it in here. 
 Its very important, the other man said. I need it now. 
The way the two of them talked about it, it sounded like a very
important key, something that probably shouldnt have been
kept in a drawer to begin with. They rifled through every
drawer, but came up empty-handed.
The three of us just sat there while this was going on. A
couple of times Carrots mother glanced at me beseechingly.
Carrot sat as before, expressionless, eyes pinned to the ground.
Pointless, random thoughts flashed through my head. The
room was stifling.
The man who needed the key gave up, grumbling as he left.
 Thats enough, Mr Nakamura said, turning to us; in a
toneless, matter-of-fact voice he continued: Thank you for
coming. Were finished here. Ill leave the rest up to you and
the boys mother. But get one thing clear if he does this one
more time, he wont get off this easy. You do understand that, I
hope? I dont want any trouble. But I do have to do my job. 
 
She nodded, and so did I. Carrot looked as though he hadnt
heard a word. I stood up, and the two of them weakly followed
suit.
 One last thing, the security guard said, still seated. He
looked up at me. I know this is rude of me, but Ill just go
ahead and say it. Since I laid eyes on you theres something just
not quite right. Youre young, tall, make a good impression,
nicely tanned, logical. Everything you say makes absolute
sense. Im sure the parents of your pupils like you a lot. I cant
really explain it, but since I first saw you somethings been
gnawing at me. Something I just cant swallow. Nothing
personal, so dont get angry. Its just something bothers me. But
what is it thats gnawing at me, I wonder? 
 Would you mind if I ask you something personal? I said.
 Ask away. 
 If people arent equal, where would you fit in? 
Mr Nakamura took a deep lungful of cigarette smoke, shook
his head, and exhaled ever so slowly, as if he were forcing
someone to do something. I dont know, he replied.
 Dont you worry, though. The two of us wont be sharing
the same level. 
 
Shed parked her red Toyota Celica in the supermarket car
park. I called her over to one side, away from her son, and told
her to go on home alone.
 I need to talk to your son alone for a while, I said. Ill
bring him home later. She nodded. She was about to say
something, but didnt, got in her car, took her sunglasses from
her bag, and started the engine.
After she left I took Carrot to a cheerful-looking little coffee
shop I noticed nearby. I relaxed in the air-conditioning, ordered 
 
an iced tea for myself and an ice-cream for the boy. I undid the
top button of my shirt, took off my tie, and slipped it in my
jacket pocket. Carrot remained sunk in silence. His expression
and the look in his eyes were unchanged from when we were
in the security office. He looked completely blank, like he was
going to be that way for a while. His small hands placed neatly
in his lap, he looked down at the floor, averting his face. I
drank my iced tea, but Carrot didnt touch his ice-cream. It
slowly melted in the dish, but he didnt seem to notice. We sat
facing each other like some married couple sharing an
awkward silence. Every time she stopped by our table, the
waitress looked tense.
 
 Things just happen, I said finally. I wasnt trying to break the
ice. The words just came bubbling up.
Carrot slowly raised his head and turned towards me. He
didnt say a thing. I shut my eyes, sighed, and was silent for a
while.
 I havent told anybody yet, I said, but during the summer
holidays I went to Greece. You know where Greece is, dont
you? We watched that video in social studies class, remember?
In southern Europe, next to the Mediterranean. They have lots
of islands and grow olives. Five hundred BC was the peak of
their civilization. Athens was the birthplace of democracy, and
Socrates took poison and died. Thats where I went. Its a
beautiful place. But I didnt go to have a good time. A friend of
mine disappeared on a small Greek island, and I went to help
search. But we didnt find anything. My friend just quietly
vanished. Like smoke. 
Carrot opened his mouth a crack and looked at me. His
expression was still hard and lifeless, but a glimmer of light 
 
appeared. Id got through to him.
 
 I really liked this friend of mine. Very, very much. My friend
was the most important person in the world to me. So I took a
plane to Greece to help search. But it didnt help. We didnt
find a clue. Since I lost my friend, I dont have any more
friends. Not a single one. 
I wasnt talking to Carrot as much as to myself. Thinking
aloud.
 You know what Id really like to do the most right now?
Climb up to the top of some high place like the pyramids. The
highest place I can find. Where you can see as far as possible.
Stand on the very top, look all around the world, see all the
scenery, and see with my own eyes whats been lost from the
world. I dont know … Maybe I really dont want to see that.
Maybe I dont want to see anything any more. 
The waitress came over, removed Carrots plate of melted ice
cream, and left the bill.
 
 I feel like Ive been alone ever since I was a child. I had
parents and an older sister at home, but I didnt get along with
them. I couldnt communicate with anyone in my family. So I
often imagined I was adopted. For some reason some distant
relatives gave me up to my family. Or maybe they got me from
an orphanage. Now I realize how silly that idea was. My
parents arent the type to adopt a helpless orphan. Anyway, I
couldnt accept the fact that I was related by blood to these
people. It was easier to think they were complete strangers.
 I imagined a town far away. There was a house there, where
my real family lived. Just a modest little house, but warm and
inviting. Everyone there can understand one another, they say 
 
whatever they feel like. In the evening you can hear Mum
bustling around in the kitchen getting dinner ready, and theres
a warm, delicious fragrance. Thats where I belong. I was
always picturing this place in my mind, with me as a part of
the picture.
 In real life my family had a dog, and he was the only one I
got along with. He was a mongrel, but pretty bright; once you
taught him something he never forgot. I took him for a walk
every day, and wed go to the park; Id sit on a bench and talk
about all sorts of things. We understood each other. Those were
my happiest moments as a child. When I was in fifth grade my
dog was hit by a lorry near our house and killed. My parents
wouldnt let me buy another. Theyre too noisy and dirty, they
told me, too much trouble.
 After my dog died I stayed in my room a lot, just reading
books. The world in books seemed so much more alive to me
than anything outside. I could see things Id never seen before.
Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good
friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my
heart to. Wed just make small talk, play football together.
When something bothered me, I didnt talk with anyone about
it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and
took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought thats
just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis,
have to survive on their own.
 When I entered college, though, I made a friend, the one I
told you about. And my way of thinking started to change. I
came to understand that thinking just by myself for so long was
holding me back, keeping me to a single viewpoint. And I
started to feel that being all alone is a terribly lonely thing.
 Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at 
 
the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the
water flow into the sea. Have you ever done that? Stand at the
mouth of a large river and watch the water flow into the sea? 
Carrot didnt reply.
 I have, I said.
Eyes wide open, Carrot looked in my face.
 I cant really say why its such a lonely feeling to watch all
the river water mix together with the sea water. But it really is.
You should try it sometime. 
I picked up my jacket and the bill and slowly stood up. I
rested a hand on Carrots shoulder, and he got up, too. And we
left the coffee shop.
 
It took about minutes to walk to his house. We walked
together, and I didnt say a word.
Near his house was a small river, with a concrete bridge over
it. A bland little thing, really, less a river than a drainage ditch
that had been widened. When there was still farmland around
here it must have been used for irrigation. Now, though, the
water was cloudy, with a slight odour of detergent. Summer
grasses sprouted in the riverbed, a discarded comic book lay
open in the water. Carrot came to a halt in the middle of the
bridge, leaned over the railing, and gazed down. I stood beside
him and looked down, too. We stood like that for a long time.
He probably didnt want to go back home. I could understand
that.
 
Carrot stuck a hand inside his trouser pocket, pulled out a key,
and held it towards me. Just an ordinary key, with a large red
tag on it. The tag said STORAGE on it. The key for the
storeroom that the security guard, Nakamura, was looking for. 
 
Carrot must have been left alone in the room for a moment,
found it in the drawer, and slipped it into his pocket. This boys
mind was a bigger enigma than Id imagined. He was an
altogether strange child.
I took the key and held it in my palm and could feel the
weight of countless people that had seeped into it. It struck me
as terribly wretched, dirty, small-minded. Flustered for a
moment, I ended up dropping the key into the river. It made a
tiny splash. The river wasnt very deep, but the water was
cloudy, and the key disappeared from sight. Side by side on the
bridge, Carrot and I gazed at the water for a time. Somehow it
made me feel cheerful, my body lighter.
 Its too late to take it back, I said, more to myself than to
him. Im sure they have a spare somewhere. Its their precious
storeroom, after all. 
I held my hand out, and Carrot softly took it in his. I could
feel his slim, small fingers in mine. A feeling that Id
experienced somewhere where could it have been? a long
long time ago. I held his hand and we headed for his home.
 
His mother was waiting for us when we got there. Shed
changed into a smart little white, sleeveless blouse and a
pleated skirt. Her eyes were red and swollen. She must have
cried alone the whole time after she got home. Her husband ran
an estate agents in the city and on Sundays was either at work
or out playing golf. She had Carrot go to his room on the first
floor and took me not to the living room, but to the kitchen,
where we sat down at the table. Maybe it was easier for her to
talk there. The kitchen had a huge avocado-green fridge, an
island in the middle, and a sunny window facing east.
 
 
 He looks a little better than he did before, she said weakly.
 When I first saw him at that security office, I didnt know
what to do. Ive never seen him look that way. Like he was off
in another world. 
 Theres nothing to worry about. Just give it time and hell
get back to normal. For the time being itd be better if you dont
say anything to him. Just leave him alone. 
 What did you two do after I left? 
 We talked, I said.
 About what? 
 Not much. Basically I did all the talking. Nothing special,
really. 
 Would you like something cold to drink? I shook my head.
 I have no idea how to talk to him any more, she said. And
that feeling just grows stronger. 
 Theres no need to force yourself to talk to him. Children are
in their own world. When he wants to talk, he will. 
 But he barely talks at all. 
We were careful not to let our bodies touch as we faced each
other across the kitchen table. Our conversation was strained,
the kind you might expect of a teacher and a mother discussing
a problem child. As she spoke she played with her hands,
twisting her fingers, stretching them out, grasping her hands. I
thought about the things those hands had done to me in bed.
I wont report whats happened to the school, I told her. Ill
have a good talk with him, and if theres any problem, Ill take
care of it. So dont worry about it. Hes a smart boy, a good
boy; give it time and hell settle down. This is just a phase hes
going through. The most important thing is for you to be calm
about it. I slowly, calmly repeated all this over and over, letting
it sink in. It seemed to make her feel better. 
 
She said shed drive me back to my apartment in Kunitachi.
 
 Do you think my son senses whats going on? she asked me
when we were stopped at a traffic light. What she meant, of
course, was what was going on between her and me.
I shook my head. Why do you say that? 
 While I was alone at home, waiting for you to come back,
the thought just struck me. I have nothing to go by, its just a
feeling. Hes very intuitive, and Im sure hes picked up on how
my husband and I dont get along well. 
I was silent. She didnt say any more.
 
She parked her car in the car park just beyond the intersection
where my apartment building stood. She pulled on the
handbrake and turned off the engine. It sputtered out, and with
the sound from the air-conditioning off, an uncomfortable
silence fell over the car. I knew she wanted me to take her in
my arms right then and there. I thought of her pliant body
beneath her blouse, and my mouth became dry.
 I think itd be better for us not to meet any more, I came
right out and said.
She didnt say anything. Hands on the steering wheel, she
stared in the direction of the oil gauge. Almost all expression
had faded from her face.
 Ive given it a lot of thought, I said. I dont think its right
that Im part of the problem. I cant be part of the solution if Im
part of the problem. Its better for everyone that way. 
 Everyone? 
 Especially for your son. 
 For you, too? 
 Yes. Of course. 
 
 What about me? Does that include me? 
Yes, I wanted to say. But I couldnt get the word out. She
took off her dark green Raybans, then slipped them on again.
 Its not easy for me to say this, she said, but if I cant see
you any more it will be very hard on me. 
 It will be hard on me, too. I wish we could continue the way
we are. But its not right. 
She took a deep breath and let it out.
 What is right? Would you tell me? I dont really know
whats right. I know whats wrong. But what is right? 
I didnt have a good answer.
 
She looked like she was about to weep. Or cry out. But
somehow she held herself in check. She just gripped the
steering wheel tightly, the backs of her hands turning slightly
red.
 When I was younger all kinds of people talked to me, she
said. Told me all sorts of things. Fascinating stories, beautiful,
strange stories. But past a certain point nobody talked to me
any more. No one. Not my husband, my child, my friends …
no one. Like there was nothing left in the world to talk about.
Sometimes I feel like my bodys turning invisible, like you can
see right through me. 
She raised her hands from the steering wheel and held them
out in front of her.
 Not that you would understand what Im trying to say. 
I searched for the right words, but nothing came.
 Thank you very much for everything today, she said,
pulling herself together. Her voice was nearly her usual, calm
tone. I dont think I could have handled it alone. Its very hard
on me. Having you there helped a lot. Im grateful. I know 
 
youre going to be a wonderful teacher. You almost are. 
Was this meant to be sarcastic? Probably. No definitely.
 Not yet, I said. She smiled, ever so slightly. And our
conversation came to an end.
I opened the car door and stepped outside. The summer
Sunday afternoon sunlight had weakened considerably. I
found it hard to breathe and my legs felt strange as I stood
there. The Celicas engine roared to life, and she drove out of
my life for ever. She rolled down her window and gave a small
wave, and I lifted my hand in response.
 
Back in the apartment I took off my sweaty shirt and tossed it
in the washing machine, took a shower, and washed my hair. I
went to the kitchen, finished preparing the meal Id left half
done, and ate. Afterwards, I sank back in my sofa and read a
book Id just started. But I couldnt finish five pages. Giving up,
I closed the book and thought for a while about Sumire. And
the storeroom key Id tossed in the filthy river. And my
girlfriends hands gripping the steering wheel. It had been a
long day, and it was finally over, leaving behind just random
memories. Id taken a good long shower, but my body was still
steeped in the stink of tobacco. And my hand still retained a
sharp sensation as if Id crushed the life out of something.
Did I do what was right?
I didnt think so. Id only done what was necessary for me.
Theres a big difference. Everyone? shed asked me. Does that
include me?
Truthfully, at that time I wasnt thinking about everyone. I was
thinking only about Sumire. Not all of them there, or all of us
here.
Only of Sumire, who wasnt anywhere. 
 
 
I hadnt heard a word from Miu since the day wed said
goodbye at the harbour. This struck me as odd, since she
promised to get in touch regardless of whether there was any
news about Sumire. I couldnt believe shed forgotten me; she
wasnt the type to make promises she didnt intend to keep.
Something must have happened to keep her from contacting
me. I considered calling her, but I didnt even know her real
name, or the name of her company or where it was. As far as
Miu was concerned, Sumire hadnt left behind any solid leads.
Sumires phone still had the same message on it, but it was
soon disconnected. I thought about calling her family. I didnt
know the number, though it wouldnt have been hard to find
her fathers dental clinic in the Yokohama Yellow Pages. But
somehow I couldnt take that step. Instead, I went to the library
and looked through the August newspapers. There was a tiny
article about her, about a -year-old Japanese girl travelling in 
 
Greece who disappeared. The local authorities are
investigating, searching for her. But so far no clues. That was it.
Nothing I didnt already know. Quite a few people travelling
abroad disappeared, it seemed. And she was merely one of
them.
I gave up trying to follow the news. Whatever the reasons for
her disappearance, however the investigation was proceeding,
one thing was certain: if Sumire were to come back, shed get in
touch. That was all that mattered.
September came and went, autumn was over before I knew
it, and winter set in. November was Sumires rd birthday,
and December was my th. The New Year came and the
school year ended. Carrot didnt cause any more problems and
went into fifth grade, into a new class. After that day I never
really talked to him about the shoplifting. Every time I saw
him, I realized it wasnt necessary.
Since he had a new teacher now, there were fewer times Id
come across my former girlfriend. Everything was over and
done with. Sometimes, though, a nostalgic memory of the
warmth of her skin would come to me, and Id be on the verge
of picking up the phone. What brought me to a halt was the
feeling of that supermarket storeroom key in my hand. Of that
summer afternoon. And of Carrots little hand in mine.
 
Every time I met Carrot at school, I couldnt help thinking that
he was one strange child. I had no inkling of what thoughts
were brewing behind that thin, calm face. But something was
definitely going on under that placid exterior. And if push
came to shove, he had the wherewithal to take action. I could
sense something deep about him. I believed that telling him the
feelings I held inside was the right thing to do. For him, and for 
 
me. Probably more for my sake. Its a little strange to say this,
but he understood me then and accepted me. And even forgave
me. To some extent, at least.
 
What kind of days the seemingly endless days of youth 
would children like Carrot go through as they grew into
adulthood? It wouldnt be easy for them. Hard times would
outnumber the easy. From my own experience, I could predict
the shape their pain would take. Would he fall in love with
somebody? And would that other person love him back? Not
that my thinking about it mattered. Once he graduated from
elementary school, hed be gone, and Id see him no more. And
I had my own problems to think about.
I went to a record shop, bought a copy of Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf singing Mozarts lieder, and listened to it again
and again. I loved the beautiful stillness of the songs. If I closed
my eyes, the music always took me back to that night on the
Greek island.
 
Aside from some very vivid memories, including the one of the
overwhelming desire I felt the day I helped her move, all
Sumire left behind were several long letters and the floppy
disk. I read the letters and the two documents so many times I
nearly had them memorized. Every time I read them, I felt like
Sumire and I were together again, our hearts one. This warmed
my heart more than anything else could. Like youre on a train
at night travelling across some vast plain, and you catch a
glimpse of a tiny light in the window of a farmhouse. In an
instant its sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes.
But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you,
just barely, for a few moments.
 
 
I wake up in the middle of the night and get out of bed (Im not
going to be able to sleep anyway), lie down on my sofa, and
relive memories of that small Greek island as I listen to
Schwarzkopf. I recollect each and every event, quietly turning
the pages of my memory. The lovely deserted beach, the
outdoor cafe at the harbour. The waiters sweat-stained shirt.
Mius graceful profile and the sparkle of the Mediterranean
from the veranda. The poor hero standing in the town square
whod been impaled. And the Greek music I heard from the
mountaintop that night. I vividly relive the magical moonlight,
the wondrous echo of the music. The sensation of estrangement
I experienced when I was awakened by the music. That
formless, midnight pain, like my body, too, was silently,
cruelly, being impaled
Lying there, I close my eyes for a while, then open them. I
silently breathe in, then out. A thought begins to form in my
mind, but in the end I think of nothing. Not that there was
much difference between the two, thinking and not thinking. I
find I can no longer distinguish between one thing and another,
between things that existed and things that did not. I look out
the window. Until the sky turns white, clouds float by, birds
chirp, and a new day lumbers up, gathering together the sleepy
minds of the people who inhabit this planet.
Once in downtown Tokyo I caught a glimpse of Miu. It was
about six months after Sumire disappeared, a warm Sunday in
the middle of March. Low clouds covered the sky, and it
looked like it would rain at any minute. Everyone carried
umbrellas. I was on my way to visit some relatives who lived
downtown and was stopped at a traffic light in Hiroo, at the
intersection near the MEIDI-YA store, when I spotted the navyblue
Jaguar inching its way forward in the heavy traffic. I was 
 
in a taxi, and the Jaguar was in the through lane to my left. I
noticed the car because its driver was a woman with a stunning
mane of white hair. From a distance, her white hair stood out
starkly against the flawless navy-blue car. I had only seen Miu
with black hair, so it took me a while to put this Miu and the
Miu I knew together. But it was definitely her. She was as
beautiful as I remembered, refined in a rare and wonderful
way. Her breathtaking white hair kept one at arms length and
had a resolute, almost mythical air about it.
The Miu before me, though, was not the woman I had waved
goodbye to at the harbour on the Greek island. Only half a year
had passed, yet she looked like a different person. Of course
her hair colour was changed. But that wasnt all.
An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to
mind. Miu was like an empty room after everyones left.
Something incredibly important the same something that
pulled in Sumire like a tornado, that shook my heart as I stood
on the deck of the ferry had disappeared from Miu for good.
Leaving behind not life, but its absence. Not the warmth of
something alive, but the silence of memory. Her pure-white
hair inevitably made me imagine the colour of human bones,
bleached by the passage of time. For a time, I couldnt exhale.
 
The Jaguar Miu was driving sometimes got ahead of my taxi,
sometimes fell behind, but Miu didnt notice I was watching
her from nearby. I couldnt call out to her. I didnt know what
to say, but even if I had, the windows of the Jaguar were shut
tight. Miu was sitting up straight, both hands on the steering
wheel, her attention fixed on the scene ahead of her. She might
have been thinking deeply about something. Or maybe she was
listening to the Art of the Fugue that was playing on her car 
 
stereo. The entire time her icy, hardened expression didnt
change, and she barely blinked. Finally the light turned green
and the Jaguar sped off in the direction of Aoyama, leaving
behind my taxi, which sat there waiting to make a right turn.
 
So thats how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal
the loss, no matter how important the thing thats stolen from
us thats snatched right out of our hands even if we are left
completely changed people with only the outer layer of skin
from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in
silence. We draw ever nearer to our allotted span of time,
bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often
adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a
feeling of immeasurable emptiness.
 
Though she came back to Japan, Miu couldnt get in touch with
me for some reason. Instead, she kept her silence, clutching her
memories close, seeking some nameless, remote place to
swallow her up. Thats what I imagined. I didnt feel like
blaming Miu. Let alone hating her.
The image that came to mind at that moment was of the
bronze statue of Mius father in the little mountain village in
North Korea. I could picture the tiny town square, the lowslung
houses, and the dust-covered bronze statue. The wind
always blows hard there, twisting the trees into surreal shapes.
I dont know why, but that bronze statue and Miu, hands on
the steering wheel of her Jaguar, melted into one in my mind.
Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly,
lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can
disappear, melding together in a single, overlapping figure.
And as we live our lives we discover drawing towards us the 
 
thin threads attached to each what has been lost. I closed my
eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as
I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them. Knowing all
the while that their lives are fleeting.
 
I dream. Sometimes I think thats the only right thing to do. To
dream, to live in the world of dreams just as Sumire said. But
it doesnt last for ever. Wakefulness always comes to take me
back.
I wake up at a.m., turn on the light, sit up, and look at the
phone beside my bed. I picture Sumire in a phone box, lighting
up a cigarette and pushing the buttons for my number. Her
hairs a mess; she has on a mans herringbone jacket many sizes
too big for her and mismatched socks. She frowns, choking a
bit on the smoke. It takes her a long time to push all the
numbers correctly. Her head is crammed full of things she
wants to tell me. She might talk until dawn, who knows?
About the difference, say, between symbols and signs. My
phone looks as though it will ring any minute now. But it
doesnt ring. I lie down and stare at the silent phone.
But one time it does ring. Right in front of me, it actually
rings. Making the air of the real world tremble and shake. I
grab the receiver.
 Hello? 
 Hey, Im back, said Sumire. Very casual. Very real. It
wasnt easy, but somehow I managed it. Like a -word précis
of Homers Odyssey. 
 Thats good, I said. I still couldnt believe it. Being able to
hear her voice. The fact that this was happening.
 Thats good? Sumire said, and I could almost hear the
frown. What the heck do you mean by that? Ive gone through 
 
bloody hell, Ill have you know. The obstacles I went through 
millions of them, Id never finish if I tried to explain them all 
all this to get back, and thats all you can say? I think Im going
to cry. If it isnt good that Im back, where would that leave me?
Thats good. I cant believe it! Save that kind of heartwarming,
witty remark for the kids in your class when they finally
work out how to multiply! 
 Where are you now? 
 Where am I? Where do you think I am? In our good old
faithful telephone box. This crummy little square telephone box
plastered inside with ads for phony loan companies and escort
services. A mouldy-coloured half-moons hanging in the sky;
the floors littered with cigarette butts. As far as the eye can see,
nothing to warm the cockles of the heart. An interchangeable,
totally semiotic telephone box. So, where is it? Im not exactly
sure. Everythings just too semiotic and you know me, right? I
dont know where I am half the time. I cant give directions
well. Taxi drivers are always yelling at me: Hey lady, where in
the world you trying to get to? Im not too far away, I think.
Probably pretty close by. 
 Ill come and get you. 
 Id like that. Ill find out where I am and call you back. Im
running out of change, anyway. Wait for a while, okay? 
 I really wanted to see you, I said.
 And I really wanted to see you, too, she said. When I
couldnt see you any more, I realized that. It was as clear as if
the planets all of a sudden lined up in a row for me. I really
need you. Youre a part of me; Im a part of you. You know,
somewhere Im not at all sure where I think I cut
somethings throat. Sharpening my knife, my heart a stone.
Symbolically, like making a gate in China. Do you understand 
 
what Im saying? 
 I think so. 
 Then come and get me. 
 
Suddenly the phone cuts off. Still clutching the receiver, I stare
at it for a long time. Like the phone itself is some vital message,
its very shape and colour containing hidden meaning.
Reconsidering, I hang up. I sit up in bed and wait for the phone
to ring again. I lean back against the wall, my focus fixed on a
single point in the space before me, and I breathe slowly,
soundlessly. Making sure of the joints bridging one moment of
time and the next. The phone doesnt ring. An unconditional
silence hangs in the air. But Im in no hurry. Theres no need to
rush. Im ready. I can go anywhere.
 
Right?
Right you are!
 
I get up out of bed. I pull back the old, faded curtain and open
the window. I stick my head out and look up at the sky. Sure
enough, a mouldy-coloured half-moon hangs in the sky. Good.
Were both looking at the same moon, in the same world. Were
connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly
draw it towards me.
I spread my fingers apart and stare at the palms of both
hands, looking for bloodstains. There arent any. No scent of
blood, no stiffness. The blood must have already, in its own
silent way, seeped inside. 
I was then, strapped in my seat as the huge plunged through
dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg airport. Cold November
rains drenched the earth, lending everything the gloomy air of a
Flemish landscape: the ground crew in waterproofs, a flag atop a squat
airport building, a BMW billboard. So - Germany again.
Once the plane was on the ground, soft music began to flow from the
ceiling speakers: a sweet orchestral cover version of the Beatles 
 Norwegian Wood . The melody never failed to send a shudder
through me, but this time it hit me harder than ever.
I bent forward, my face in my hands to keep my skull from splitting
open. Before long one of the German stewardesses approached and
asked in English if I were sick.
 No, I said, just dizzy. 
 Are you sure? 
 Yes, I m sure. Thanks. 
She smiled and left, and the music changed to a Billy Joel tune. I
straightened up and looked out of the window at the dark clouds
hanging over the North Sea, thinking of all I had lost in the course of
my life: times gone for ever, friends who had died or disappeared,
feelings I would never know again.
The plane reached the gate. People began unfastening their seatbelts
and pulling luggage from the overhead lockers, and all the while I was
in the meadow. I could smell the grass, feel the wind on my face, hear
the cries of the birds. Autumn , and soon I would be.
 
The stewardess came to check on me again. This time she sat next to
me and asked if I was all right.
 I m fine, thanks, I said with a smile. Just feeling kind of blue. 
 I know what you mean, she said. It happens to me, too, every once
in a while. 
She stood and gave me a lovely smile. Well, then, have a nice trip.
Auf Wiedersehen. 
 Auf Wiedersehen. 
Eighteen years have gone by, and still I can bring back every detail of
that day in the meadow. Washed clean of summer s dust by days of
gentle rain, the mountains wore a deep, brilliant green. The October
breeze set white fronds of head-high grasses swaying. One long streak
of cloud hung pasted across a dome of frozen blue. It almost hurt to
look at that far-off sky. A puff of wind swept across the meadow and
through her hair before it slipped into the woods to rustle branches and
send back snatches of distant barking - a hazy sound that seemed to
reach us from the doorway to another world. We heard no other
sounds. We met no other people. We saw only two bright red birds
leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods.
As we ambled along, Naoko spoke to me of wells.
Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid it any
attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make
a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that years later I
would recall it in such detail. I didn t give a damn about the scenery
that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the
beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us
together, and then about myself again. I was at that age, that time of
life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a
boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with
complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.
 
Now, though, that meadow scene is the first thing that comes back to
me. The smell of the grass, the faint chill of the wind, the line of the
hills, the barking of a dog: these are the first things, and they come
with absolute clarity. I feel as if I can reach out and trace them with a
fingertip. And yet, as clear as the scene may be, no one is in it. No
one. Naoko is not there, and neither am I. Where could we have
disappeared to? How could such a thing have happened? Everything
that seemed so important back then - Naoko, and the self I was then,
and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? its true, I
can t even bring back her face - not straight away, at least. All I m left
holding is a background, pure scenery, with no people at the front.
True, given time enough, I can remember her face. I start joining
images - her tiny, cold hand; her straight, black hair so smooth and
cool to the touch; a soft, rounded earlobe and the microscopic mole
just beneath it; the camel-hair coat she wore in the winter; her habit of
looking straight into my eyes when asking a question; the slight
trembling that would come to her voice now and then (as though she
were speaking on a windy hilltop) - and suddenly her face is there,
always in profile at first, because Naoko and I were always out
walking together, side by side. Then she turns to me and smiles, and
tilts her head just a little, and begins to speak, and she looks into my
eyes as if trying to catch the image of a minnow that has darted across
the pool of a limpid spring.
It takes time, though, for Naoko s face to appear. And as the years
have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I
could recall in seconds all too soon needed , then , then a full
minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the
shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. There is no way around it:
my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko
used to stand - where my old self used to stand. And nothing but
scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again
to me like a symbolic scene in a film. Each time it appears, it delivers 
 
a kick to some part of my mind. Wake up, it says. I m still here. Wake
up and think about it. Think about why I m still here. The kicking
never hurts me. There s no pain at all. Just a hollow sound that echoes
with each kick. And even that is bound to fade one day. At Hamburg
airport, though, the kicks were longer and harder than usual. Which is
why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens
to be the way I m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully
comprehend them.
Lets see, now, what was Naoko talking about that day?
Of course: the field well . I have no idea whether there was such a
well. It might have been an image or a sign that existed only inside
Naoko, like all the other things she used to spin into existence inside
her mind in those dark days. Once she had described it to me, though,
I was never able to think of that meadow scene without the well. From
that day forward, the image of a thing I had never laid eyes on became
inseparably fused to the actual scene of the field that lay before me. I
can describe the well in minute detail. It lay precisely on the border
where the meadow ended and the woods began - a dark opening in the
earth a yard across, hidden by grass. Nothing marked its perimeter -
no fence, no stone curb (at least not one that rose above ground level).
It was nothing but a hole, a wide-open mouth. The stones of its collar
had been weathered and turned a strange muddy-white. They were
cracked and chunks were missing, and a little green lizard slithered
into an open seam. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see
nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was
deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the
world s darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density.
 its really, really deep, said Naoko, choosing her words with care.
She would speak that way sometimes, slowing down to find the exact
word she was looking for. But no one knows where it is, she
continued. The one thing I know for sure is that its around here
 
somewhere. 
Hands thrust into the pockets of her tweed jacket, she smiled at me as
if to say its true! 
 Then it must be incredibly dangerous, I said. A deep well, but
nobody knows where it is. You could fall in and that d be the end of
you. 
 The end. Aaaaaaaah! Splat! Finished. 
 Things like that must happen. 
 They do, every once in a while. Maybe once in two or three years.
Somebody disappears all of a sudden, and they just can t find him. So
then the people around here say, Oh, he fell in the field well . 
 Not a nice way to die, I said.
 No, its a terrible way to die, said Naoko, brushing a cluster of grass
seed from her jacket. The best thing would be to break your neck, but
you d probably just break your leg and then you couldn t do a thing.
You d yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody would hear you, and
you couldn t expect anyone to find you, and you d have centipedes and
spiders crawling all over you, and the bones of the ones who died
before are scattered all around you, and its dark and soggy, and high
overhead there s this tiny, tiny circle of light like a winter moon. You
die there in this place, little by little, all by yourself. 
 Yuck, just thinking about it makes my flesh creep, I said.
 Somebody should find the thing and build a wall around it. 
 But nobody can find it. So make sure you don t go off the path. 
 Don t worry, I won t. 
Naoko took her left hand from her pocket and squeezed my hand.
 Don t you worry, she said. You ll be OK. You could go running all
around here in the middle of the night and you d never fall into the
well. And as long as I stick with you, I won t fall in, either. 
 Never? 
 Never! 
 How can you be so sure? 
 
 I just know, she said, increasing her grip on my hand and walking
along in silence. I know these things. I m always right. its got
nothing to do with logic: I just feel it. For example, when I m really
close to you like this, I m not the least bit scared. Nothing dark or evil
could ever tempt me. 
 Well, that s the answer, I said. All you have to do is stay with me
like this all the time. 
 Do you mean that? 
 Of course. 
Naoko stopped short. So did I. She put her hands on my shoulders and
peered into my eyes. Deep within her own pattern. Those beautiful
eyes of hers were looking inside me for a long, long time. Then she
stretched to her full height and touched her cheek to mine. It was a
marvelous, warm gesture that stopped my heart for a moment.
 Thank you. 
 My pleasure, I answered.
 I m so happy you said that. Really happy, she said with a sad smile.
 But its impossible. 
 Impossible? Why? 
 It would be wrong. It would be terrible. It - 
Naoko clamped her mouth shut and started walking again. I could tell
that all kinds of thoughts were whirling around in her head, so rather
than intrude on them I kept silent and walked by her side.
 It would be wrong - wrong for you, wrong for me, she said after a
long pause.
 Wrong how? I murmured.
 Don t you see? its just not possible for one person to watch over
another person forever and ever. I mean, suppose we got married.
You d have to work during the day. Who s going to watch over me
while you re away? Or if you go on a business trip, who s going to
watch over me then? Can I be glued to you every minute of our lives?
What kind of equality would there be in that? What kind of
 
relationship would that be? Sooner or later you d get sick of me. You d
wonder what you were doing with your life, why you were spending
all your time babysitting this woman. I couldn t stand that. It wouldn t
solve any of my problems. 
 But your problems are not going to continue for the rest of your life, 
I said, touching her back. They ll end eventually. And when they do,
we ll stop and think about how to go on from there. Maybe you will
have to help me. We re not running our lives according to some
account book. If you need me, use me. Don t you see? Why do you
have to be so rigid? Relax, let down your guard. You re all tensed up
so you always expect the worst. Relax your body, and the rest of you
will lighten up. 
 How can you say that? she asked in a voice drained of feeling.
Naoko s voice alerted me to the possibility that I had said something I
shouldn t have.
 Tell me how you could say such a thing, she said, staring at the
ground beneath her feet. You re not telling me anything I don t know
already. Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up. What s
the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I d fall apart.
I ve always lived like this, and its the only way I know how to go on
living. If I relaxed for a second, I d never find my way back. I d go to
pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can t you see that?
How can you talk about watching over me if you can t see that? 
I said nothing.
 I m confused. Really confused. And its a lot deeper than you think.
Deeper... darker... colder. But tell me something. How could you
have slept with me that time? How could you have done such a thing?
Why didn t you just leave me alone? 
Now we were walking through the frightful silence of a pine forest.
The desiccated corpses of cicadas that had died at the end of summer
littered the surface of the path, crunching beneath our shoes. As if
searching for something we d lost, Naoko and I continued slowly
 
along the path.
 I m sorry, she said, taking my arm and shaking her head.
 I didn t mean to hurt you. Try not to let what I said bother you.
Really, I m sorry. I was just angry at myself. 
 I suppose I don t really understand you yet, I said. I m not all that
smart. It takes me a while to understand things. But if I do have the
time, I will come to understand you - better than anyone else in the
world. 
We came to a stop and stood in the silent forest, listening. I tumbled
pinecones and cicada shells with my toecap, then looked up at the
patches of sky showing through the pine branches. Hands in pockets,
Naoko stood there thinking, her eyes focused on nothing in particular.
 Tell me something, Toru, she said. Do you love me? 
 You know I do. 
 Will you do me two favors? 
 You can have up to three wishes, Madame. 
Naoko smiled and shook her head. No, two will do. One is for you to
realize how grateful I am that you came to see me here. I hope you ll
understand how happy you ve made me. I know its going to save me
if anything will. I may not show it, but its true. 
 I ll come to see you again, I said. And what is the other wish? 
 I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I
existed, and that I stood next to you here like this? 
 Always, I said. I ll always remember. 
She walked on without speaking. The autumn light filtering through
the branches danced over the shoulders of her jacket. A dog barked
again, closer than before. Naoko climbed a small mound, walked out
of the forest and hurried down a gentle slope. I followed two or three
steps behind.
 Come over here, I called towards her back. The well might be
around here somewhere. Naoko stopped and smiled and took my
arm. We walked the rest of the way side by side. Do you really
 
promise never to forget me? she asked in a near whisper.
 I ll never forget you, I said. I could never forget you. 
Even so, my memory has grown increasingly dim, and I have already
forgotten any number of things. Writing from memory like this, I
often feel a pang of dread. What if I ve forgotten the most important
thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all
the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?
Be that as it may, its all I have to work with. Clutching these faded,
fading, imperfect memories to my breast, I go on writing this book
with all the desperate intensity of a starving man sucking on bones.
This is the only way I know to keep my promise to Naoko.
Once, long ago, when I was still young, when the memories were far
more vivid than they are now, I often tried to write about her. But I
couldn t produce a line. I knew that if that first line would come, the
rest would pour itself onto the page, but I could never make it happen.
Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to
start - the way a map that shows too much can sometimes be useless.
Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of
writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts. The more the
memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to
understand her. I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her.
Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her
would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget
her, to remember that she had existed.
The thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. Because
Naoko never loved me.
 
Once upon a time, many years ago - just years ago, in fact - I was
living in a dormitory. I was and a first-year student. I was new to
Tokyo and new to living alone, and so my anxious parents found a
private dorm for me to live in rather than the kind of single room that
most students took. The dormitory provided meals and other facilities
and would probably help their unworldly -year-old survive.
Expenses were also a consideration. A dorm cost far less than a
private room. As long as I had bedding and a lamp, there was no need
to buy a lot of furnishings. For my part, I would have preferred to rent
a flat and live in comfortable solitude, but knowing what my parents
had to spend on enrolment fees and tuition at the private university I
was attending, I was in no position to insist. And besides, I really
didn t care where I lived.
Located on a hill in the middle of the city with open views, the
dormitory compound sat on a large quadrangle surrounded by a
concrete wall. A huge, towering zelkova tree stood just inside the
front gate. People said it was at least years old. Standing at its
base, you could look up and see nothing of the sky through its dense
cover of green leaves.
The paved path leading from the gate circumvented the tree and
continued on long and straight across a broad quadrangle, two threestory
concrete dorm buildings facing each other on either side of the
path. They were large with lots of windows and gave the impression
of being either flats that had been converted into jails or jails that had
been converted into flats. However there was nothing dirty about
them, nor did they feel dark. You could hear radios playing through
open windows, all of which had the same cream-coloured curtains that
the sun could not fade.
Beyond the two dormitories, the path led up to the entrance
of a two-story common building, the first floor of which contained a
dining hall and bathrooms, the second consisting of an auditorium,
meeting rooms, and even guest rooms, whose use I could never
 
fathom. Next to the common building stood a third dormitory, also
three storeys high. Broad green lawns filled the quadrangle, and
circulating sprinklers caught the sunlight as they turned. Behind the
common building there was a field used for baseball and football, and
six tennis courts. The complex had everything you could want.
There was just one problem with the place: its political smell. It was
run by some kind of fishy foundation that centered on this extreme
right-wing guy, and there was something strangely twisted - as far as I
was concerned - about the way they ran the place. You could see it in
the pamphlet they gave to new students and in the dorm rules. The
proclaimed founding spirit of the dormitory was to strive to nurture
human resources of service to the nation through the ultimate in
educational fundamentals , and many financial leaders who endorsed
this spirit had contributed their private funds to the construction of
the place. This was the public face of the project, though what lay
behind it was extremely vague. Some said it was a tax dodge, others
saw it as a publicity stunt for the contributors, and still others claimed
that the construction of the dormitory was a cover for swindling the
public out of a prime piece of real estate. One thing was certain,
though: in the dorm complex there existed a privileged club composed
of elite students from various universities. They formed study
groups that met several times a month and included some of the
founders. Any member of the club could be assured of a good job after
graduation. I had no idea which - if any - of these theories was correct,
but they all shared the assumption that there was something fishy 
about the place.
In any case, I spent two years - from the spring of to the spring
of - living in this fishy dormitory. Why I put up with it so long,
I can t really say. In terms of everyday life, it made no practical
difference to me whether the place was right wing or left wing or
anything else.
Each day began with the solemn raising of the flag. They played the 
 
national anthem, too, of course. You can t have one without the other.
The flagpole stood in the very center of the compound, where it was
visible from every window of all three dormitories.
The Head of the east dormitory (my building) was in charge of the
flag. He was a tall, eagle-eyed man in his late fifties or early sixties.
His bristly hair was flecked with grey, and his sunburned neck bore a
long scar. People whispered that he was a graduate of the wartime
Nakano spy school, but no one knew for sure. Next to him stood a
student who acted as his assistant. No one really knew this guy, either.
He had the world s shortest crewcut and always wore a navy-blue
student uniform. I didn t know his name or which room he lived in,
never saw him in the dining hall or the bath. I m not even sure he was
a student, though you would think he must have been, given the
uniform - which quickly became his nickname. In contrast to Sir
Nakano, Uniform was short, pudgy and pasty-faced. This creepy
couple would raise the banner of the Rising Sun every morning at six.
When I first entered the dormitory, the sheer novelty of the event
would often prompt me to get up early to observe this patriotic ritual.
The two would appear in the quadrangle at almost the exact moment
the radio beeped the six o clock signal. Uniform was wearing his
uniform, of course, with black leather shoes, and Nakano wore a short
jacket and white trainers. Uniform held a ceremonial box of untreated
paulownia wood, while Nakano carried a Sony tape recorder at his
side. He placed this at the base of the flagpole, while Uniform opened
the box to reveal a neatly folded banner. This he reverentially
proffered to Nakano, who would clip it to the rope on the flagpole,
revealing the bright red circle of the Rising Sun on a field of pure
white. Then Uniform pressed the switch for the playing of the anthem.
 May Our Lord s Reign... 
And up the flag would climb.
 Until pebbles turn to boulders... It would reach halfway up the pole.
 And be covered with moss. 
 
Now it was at the top. The two stood to attention, rigid, looking up at
the flag, which was quite a sight on clear days when the wind was
blowing.
The lowering of the flag at dusk was carried out with the same
ceremonial reverence, but in reverse. Down the banner would come
and find its place in the box. The national flag did not fly at night.
I didn t know why the flag had to be taken down at night. The nation
continued to exist while it was dark, and plenty of people worked all
night - railway construction crews and taxi drivers and bar hostesses
and firemen and night watchmen: it seemed unfair to me that such
people were denied the protection of the flag. Or maybe it didn t
matter all that much and nobody really cared - aside from me. Not that
I really cared, either. It was just something that happened to cross my
mind.
The rules for room assignments put first- and second-year students in
doubles while third- and final-year students had single rooms. Double
rooms were a little longer and narrower than nine-by-twelve, with an
aluminium-framed window in the wall opposite the door and two
desks by the window arranged so the inhabitants of the room could
study back-to-back. To the left of the door stood a steel bunk bed. The
furniture supplied was sturdy and simple and included a pair of
lockers, a small coffee table, and some built-in shelves. Even the most
well-disposed observer would have had trouble calling this setting
poetic. The shelves of most rooms carried such items as transistor
radios, hairdryers, electric carafes and cookers, instant coffee, tea
bags, sugar cubes, and simple pots and bowls for preparing instant
ramen. The walls bore pin-ups from girlie magazines or stolen porno
movie posters. One guy had a photo of pigs mating, but this was a farout
exception to the usual naked women, girl pop singers or actresses.
Bookshelves on the desks held textbooks, dictionaries and novels.
The filth of these all-male rooms was horrifying. Mouldy mandarin
skins clung to the bottoms of waste-paper baskets. Empty cans used 
 
for ashtrays held mounds of cigarette butts, and when these started to
smoulder they d be doused with coffee or beer and left to give off a
sour stink. Blackish
grime and bits of indefinable matter clung to all the bowls and dishes
on the shelves, and the floors were littered with instant ramen
wrappers and empty beer cans and discarded lids from one thing or
another. It never occurred to anyone to sweep up and throw these
things in the bin. Any wind that blew through would raise clouds of
dust. Each room had its own horrendous smell, but the components of
that smell were always the same: sweat, body odour and rubbish.
Dirty clothes would pile up under the beds, and without anyone
bothering to air the mattresses on a regular basis, these sweatimpregnated
pads would give off odours beyond redemption. In
retrospect, it seems amazing that these shitpiles gave rise to no killer
epidemics.
My room, on the other hand, was as sanitary as a morgue. The floor
and window were spotless, the mattresses were aired each week, all
pencils stood in the pencil holders, and even the curtains were washed
once a month. My room-mate was a cleanliness freak. None of the
others in the dorm believed me when I told them about the curtains.
They didn t know that curtains could be washed. They believed,
rather, that curtains were semi-permanent parts of the window.
 There s something wrong with that guy, they d say, labelling him a
Nazi or a storm trooper.
We didn t even have pin-ups. No, we had a photo of a canal in
Amsterdam. I had put up a nude shot, but my room-mate had pulled it
down. Hey, Watanabe, he said, I-I m not too crazy about this kind
of thing, and up went the canal photo instead. I wasn t especially
attached to the nude, so I didn t protest.
 What the hell s that? was the universal reaction to the Amsterdam
photo whenever any of the other guys came to my room.
 Oh, Storm Trooper likes to wank looking at this, I said.
 
I meant it as a joke, but they all took me seriously - so seriously that I
began to believe it myself.
Everybody sympathized with me for having Storm Trooper as a roommate,
but I really wasn t that upset about it. He left me alone as long as
I kept my area clean, and in fact having him as my room-mate made
things easier for me in many ways. He did all the cleaning, he took
care of sunning the mattresses, he threw out the rubbish. He d give a
sniff and suggest a bath for me if I d been too busy to wash for a few
days. He d even point out when it was time for me to go to the barber s
or trim my nasal hair. The one thing that bothered me was the way he
would spray clouds of insecticide if he noticed a single fly in the
room, because then I had to take refuge in a neighbouring shitpile.
Storm Trooper was studying geography at a national university.
As he told me the first time we met, I m studying m-m-maps. 
 You like maps? I asked.
 Yup. When I graduate, I m going to work for the Geographical
Survey Institute and make m-m-maps. 
I was impressed by the variety of dreams and goals that life could
offer. This was one of the very first new impressions I received when I
came to Tokyo for the first time. The thought struck me that society
needed a few people - just a few - who were interested in and even
passionate about mapmaking. Odd, though, that someone who wanted
to work for the government s Geographical Survey Institute should
stutter every time he said the word map . Storm Trooper often didn t
stutter at all, except when he pronounced the word map , for which it
was a per cent certainty.
 W what are you studying? he asked me.
 Drama, I said.
 Gonna put on plays? 
 Nah, just read scripts and do research. Racine, lonesco, Shakespeare,
stuff like that. 
He said he had heard of Shakespeare but not the others. I hardly knew 
 
anything about the others myself, I d just seen their names in lecture
handouts.
 You like plays? he asked.
 Not especially. 
This confused him, and when he was confused, his stuttering got
worse. I felt sorry I had done that to him.
 I could have picked anything, I said. Ethnology, Asian history. I
just happened to pick drama, that s all, which was not the most
convincing explanation I could have come up with.
 I don t get it, he said, looking as if he really didn t get it. I like mm-maps,
so I decided to come to Tokyo and get my parents to s-send
me money so I could study m-m-maps. But not you, huh? 
His approach made more sense than mine. I gave up trying to explain
myself. Then we drew lots (matchsticks) to choose bunks. He got the
upper bunk.
Tall, with a crewcut and high cheekbones, he always wore the same
outfit: white shirt, black trousers, black shoes, navy-blue jumper. To
these he would add a uniform jacket and black briefcase when he went
to his university: a typical right-wing student. Which is why
everybody called him Storm Trooper. But in fact he was totally
indifferent to politics. He wore a uniform because he didn t want to be
bothered choosing clothes. What interested him were things like
changes in the coastline or the completion of a new railway tunnel.
Nothing else. He d go on for hours once he got started on a subject
like that, until you either ran away or fell asleep.
He was up at six each morning with the strains of May Our Lord s
Reign . Which is to say that that ostentatious flag-raising ritual was
not entirely useless. He d get dressed, go to the bathroom and wash his
face - for ever. I sometimes got the feeling he must be taking out each
tooth and washing it, one at a time. Back in the room, he would snap
the wrinkles out of his towel and lay it on the radiator to dry, then
return his toothbrush and soap to the shelf. Finally he d do radio
 
callisthenics with the rest of the nation.
I was used to reading late at night and sleeping until eight o clock, so
even when he started shuffling around the room and exercising, I
remained unconscious - until the part where he started jumping. He
took his jumping seriously and made the bed bounce every time he hit
the floor. I stood it for three days because they had told us that
communal life called for a certain degree of resignation, but by the
morning of the fourth day, I couldn t take it any more.
 Hey, can you do that on the roof or somewhere? I said. I can t
sleep. 
 But its already. ! he said, open-mouthed.
 Yeah, I know it s.. I m still supposed to be asleep. I don t know
how to explain it exactly, but that s how it works for me. 
 Anyway, I can t do it on the roof. Somebody on the third floor would
complain. Here, we re over a storeroom. 
 So go out on the quad. On the lawn. 
 That s no good, either. I don t have a transistor radio. I need to plug it
in. And you can t do radio callisthenics without music. 
True, his radio was an old piece of junk without batteries. Mine was a
transistor portable, but it was strictly FM, for music.
 OK, lets compromise, I said. Do your exercises but cut out the
jumping part. its so damned noisy. What do you say? 
 J-jumping? What s that? 
 Jumping is jumping. Bouncing up and down. But there isn t any
jumping. 
My head was starting to hurt. I was ready to give up, but I wanted to
make my point. I got out of bed and started bouncing up and down
and singing the opening melody of NHK s radio callisthenics. I m
talking about this, I said.
 Oh, that. I guess you re right. I never noticed. 
 See what I mean? I said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Just cut out
that part. I can put up with the rest. Stop jumping and let me sleep. 
 
 But that s impossible, he said matter-of-factly. I can t leave
anything out. I ve been doing the same thing every day for ten years,
and once I start I do the whole routine unconsciously. If I left
something out, I wouldn t be able to do any of it. 
There was nothing more for me to say. What could I have said? The
quickest way to put a stop to this was to wait for him to leave the
room and throw his goddamn radio out the goddamn window, but I
knew if I did that all hell would break loose. Storm Trooper treasured
everything he owned. He smiled when he saw me sitting on the bed at
a loss for words, and tried to comfort me.
 Hey, Watanabe, why don t you just get up and exercise with me? 
And he went off to breakfast.
Naoko chuckled when I told her the story of Storm Trooper and his
radio callisthenics. I hadn t been trying to amuse her, but I ended up
laughing myself. Though her smile vanished in an instant, I enjoyed
seeing it for the first time in a long while.
We had left the train at Yotsuya and were walking along the
embankment by the station. It was a Sunday afternoon in the middle
of May. The brief on-and-off showers of the morning had cleared up
before noon, and a south wind had swept away the low-hanging
clouds. The brilliant green leaves of the cherry trees stirred in the air,
splashing sunlight in all directions. This was an early summer day.
The people we passed carried their jumpers or jackets over their
shoulders or in their arms. Everyone looked happy in the warm
Sunday afternoon sun. The young men playing tennis in the courts
beyond the embankment had stripped down to their shorts. Only
where two nuns in winter habits sat talking on a bench did the summer
light seem not to reach, though both wore looks of satisfaction as they
enjoyed chatting in the sun.
Fifteen minutes of walking and I was sweaty enough to take off my
thick cotton shirt and go with a T-shirt. Naoko had rolled the sleeves 
 
of her light grey sweatshirt up to her elbows. It was nicely faded,
obviously having been washed many times. I felt as if I had seen her
in that shirt long before. This was just a feeling I had, not a clear
memory. I didn t have that much to remember about Naoko at the
time.
 How do you like communal living? she asked. Is it fun to live with
a lot of other people? 
 I don t know, I ve only been doing it a month or so. its not that bad, I
can stand it. 
She stopped at a fountain and took a sip, wiping her mouth with a
white handkerchief she took from her trouser pocket. Then she bent
over and carefully retied her laces.
 Do you think I could do it? 
 What? Living in a dorm? 
 Uh-huh. 
 I suppose its all a matter of attitude. You could let a lot of things
bother you if you wanted to - the rules, the idiots who think they re hot
shit, the room-mates doing radio callisthenics at. in the morning.
But its pretty much the same anywhere you go, you can manage. 
 I guess so, she said with a nod. She seemed to be turning something
over in her mind. Then she looked straight into my eyes as if peering
at some unusual object. Now I saw that her eyes were so deep and
clear they made my heart thump. I realized that I had never had
occasion to look into her eyes like this. It was the first time the two of
us had ever gone walking together or talked at such length.
 Are you thinking about living in a dorm or something? I asked.
 Uh-uh, she said. I was just wondering what communal life would
be like. And... She seemed to be trying - and failing - to find exactly
the right word or expression. Then she sighed and looked down. Oh,
I don t know. Never mind. 
That was the end of the conversation. She continued walking east, and
I followed just behind.
 
Almost a year had gone by since I had last seen Naoko, and in that
time she had lost so much weight as to look like a different person.
The plump cheeks that had been a special feature of hers were all but
gone, and her neck had become delicate and slender. Not that she was
bony now or unhealthy looking: there was something natural and
serene about the way she had slimmed down, as if she had been hiding
in some long, narrow space until she herself had become long and
narrow. And a lot prettier than I remembered. I wanted to tell her that,
but couldn t find a good way to put it.
We had not planned to meet but had run into each other on the Chuo
commuter line. She had decided to see a film by herself, and I was
headed for the bookshops in Kanda - nothing urgent in either case.
She had suggested that we leave the train, which we happened to do in
Yotsuya, where the green embankment makes for a nice place to walk
by the old castle moat. Alone together, we had nothing in particular to
talk about, and I wasn t quite sure why Naoko had suggested we get
off the train. We had never really had much to say to each other.
Naoko started walking the minute we hit the street, and I hurried after
her, keeping a few paces behind. I could have closed the distance
between us, but something held me back. I walked with my eyes on
her shoulders and her straight black hair. She wore a big, brown
hairslide, and when she turned her head I caught a glimpse of a small,
white ear. Now and then she would look back and say something.
Sometimes it would be a remark I might have responded to, and sometimes
it would be something to which I had no idea how to reply.
Other times, I simply couldn t hear what she was saying. She didn t
seem to care one way or another. Once she had finished saying
whatever she wanted to say, she d face front again and keep on
walking. Oh, well, I told myself, it was a nice day for a stroll.
This was no mere stroll for Naoko, though, judging from that walk.
She turned right at Lidabashi, came out at the moat, crossed the
intersection at Jinbocho, climbed the hill at Ochanomizu and came out 
 
at Hongo. From there she followed the tram tracks to Komagome. It
was a challenging route. By the time we reached Komagome, the sun
was sinking and the day had become a soft spring evening.
 Where are we? asked Naoko, as if noticing our surroundings for the
first time.
 Komagome, I said. Didn t you know? We made this big arc. 
 Why did we come here? 
 You brought us here. I was just following you. 
We went to a shop by the station for a bowl of noodles. Thirsty, I had
a whole beer to myself. Neither of us said a word from the time we
gave our order to the time we finished eating. I was exhausted from all
that walking, and she just sat there with her hands on the table,
mulling something over again. All the leisure spots were crowded on
this warm Sunday, they were saying on the TV news. And we just
walked from Yotsuya to Komagome, I said to myself.
 Well, you re in good shape, I said when I had finished my noodles.
 Surprised? 
 Yeah. 
 I was a long distance runner at school, I ll have you know. I used to
do the , metres. And my father took me mountain climbing on
Sundays ever since I can remember. You know our house - right there,
next to the mountain. I ve always had strong legs. 
 It doesn t show, I said.
 I know, she answered. Everybody thinks I m this delicate little girl.
But you can t judge a book by its cover. To which she added a
momentary smile.
 And that goes for me, too, I said. I m worn out. 
 Oh, I m sorry, I ve been dragging you around all day. Still, I m glad
we had a chance to talk. We ve never done that before, just the two of
us, I said, trying without success to recall what we had talked about.
She was playing with the ashtray on the table.
 I wonder... she began, ... if you wouldn t mind... I mean, if it 
 
really wouldn t be any bother to you... Do you think we could see
each other again? I know I don t have any right to be asking you this. 
 Any right? What do you mean by that? 
She blushed. My reaction to her request might have been a little too
strong.
 I don t know... I can t really explain it, she said, tugging the sleeves
of her sweatshirt up over the elbows and down again. The soft hair on
her arms shone a lovely golden colour in the lights of the shop. I
didn t mean to say right exactly. I was looking for another way to put
it. 
Elbows on the table, she stared at the calendar on the wall, almost as
though she were hoping to find the proper expression there. Failing,
she sighed and closed her eyes and played with her hairslide.
 Never mind, I said. I think I know what you re getting at. I m not
sure how to put it, either. 
 I can never say what I want to say, continued Naoko. its been like
this for a while now. I try to say something, but all I get are the wrong
words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I
mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track
of what I was trying to say to begin with. its like I m split in two and
playing tag with myself. One half is chasing the other half around this
big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this me can t catch
her. She raised her face and looked into my eyes. Does this make
any sense to you? 
 Everybody feels like that to some extent, I said. They re trying to
express themselves and it bothers t can t get it right. 
Naoko looked disappointed with my answer. No, thats not it either, 
she said without further explanation
 Anyway, I d be glad to see you again, I said. I m always free on
Sundays, and walking would be good for me. 
We boarded the Yamanote Line, and Naoko transferred to the Chuo
Line at Shinjuku. She was living in a tiny flat way out in the western 
 
suburb of Kokubunji.
 Tell me, she said as we parted. Has anything changed about the
way I talk? 
 I think so, I said, but I m not sure what. Tell you the truth, I know I
saw you a lot back then, but I don t remember talking to you much. 
 That s true, she said. Anyway, can I call you on Saturday? 
 Sure. I ll be expecting to hear from you. 
I first met Naoko when I was in the sixth-form at school. She was also
in the sixth-form at a posh girls school run by one of the Christian
missions. The school was so refined you were considered unrefined if
you studied too much. Naoko was the girlfriend of my best (and only)
friend, Kizuki. The two of them had been close almost from birth,
their houses not yards apart.
As with most couples who have been together since childhood, there
was a casual openness about the relationship of Kizuki and Naoko and
little sense that they wanted to be alone together. They were always
visiting each other s homes and eating or playing mah-jong with each
other s families. I double-dated with them any number of times. Naoko
would bring a school friend for me and the four of us would go to the
zoo or the pool or the cinema. The girls she brought were always
pretty, but a little too refined for my taste. I got along better with the
somewhat cruder girls from my own State school who were easier to
talk to. I could never tell what was going on inside the pretty heads of
the girls that Naoko brought along, and they probably couldn t
understand me, either.
After a while, Kizuki gave up trying to arrange dates for me, and
instead the three of us would do things together. Kizuki and Naoko
and I: odd, but that was the most comfortable combination.
Introducing a fourth person into the mix would always make things a
little awkward. We were like a TV talk show, with me the guest,
Kizuki the talented host, and Naoko his assistant. He was good at
 
occupying that central position. True, he had a sarcastic side that often
struck people as arrogant, but in fact he was a considerate and fairminded
person. He would distribute his remarks and jokes fairly to
Naoko and to me, taking care to see that neither of us felt left out. If
one or the other stayed quiet too long, he would steer his conversation
in that direction and get the person to talk. It probably looked harder
than it was: he knew how to monitor and adjust the air around him on
a second-by-second basis. In addition, he had a rare talent for finding
the interesting parts of someone s generally uninteresting comments so
that, while speaking to him, you felt you were an exceptionally
interesting person with an exceptionally interesting life.
And yet he was not the least bit sociable. I was his only real friend at
school. I could never understand why such a smart and capable talker
did not turn his talents to the broader world around him but remained
satisfied to concentrate on our little trio. Nor could I understand why
he picked me to be his friend. I was just an ordinary kid who liked to
read books and listen to music and didn t stand out in any way that
would prompt someone like Kizuki to pay attention to me. We hit it
off straight away, though. His father was a dentist, known for his
professional skill and his high fees.
 Want to double-date Sunday? he asked me just after we met. My
girlfriend goes to a girls school, and she ll bring along a cute one for
you. 
 Sure, I said, and that was how I met Naoko.
The three of us spent a lot of time together, but whenever Kizuki left
the room, Naoko and I had trouble talking to each other. We never
knew what to talk about. And in fact there was no topic of
conversation that we had in common. Instead of talking, we d drink
water or toy with something on the table and wait for Kizuki to come
back and start up the conversation again. Naoko was not particularly
talkative, and I was more of a listener than a talker, so I felt
 
uncomfortable when I was left alone with her. Not that we were
incompatible: we just had nothing to talk about.
Naoko and I saw each other only once after Kizuki s funeral. Two
weeks after the event, we met at a café to take care of some minor
matter, and when that was finished we had nothing more to say. I tried
raising several different topics, but none of them led anywhere. And
when Naoko did talk, there was an edge to her voice. She seemed
angry with me, but I had no idea why. We never saw each other again
until that day a year later we happened to meet on the Chuo Line in
Tokyo.
Naoko might have been angry with me because I, not she, had been
the last one to see Kizuki. That may not be the best way to put it, but I
more or less understood how she felt. I would have swapped places
with her if I could have, but finally, what had happened had happened,
and there was nothing I could do about it.
It had been a nice afternoon in May. After lunch, Kizuki suggested we
skip classes and go play pool or something. I had no special interest in
my afternoon classes, so together we left school, ambled down the hill
to a pool hall on the harbour, and played four games. When I won the
first, easy-going game, he became serious and won the next three.
This meant I paid, according to our custom. Kizuki didn t make a
single joke as we played, which was most unusual. We smoked
afterwards.
 Why so serious? I asked.
 I didn t want to lose today, said Kizuki with a satisfied smile.
He died that night in his garage. He led a rubber hose from the exhaust
pipe of his N- to a window, taped over the gap in the window, and
revved the engine. I have no idea how long it took him to die. His
parents had been out visiting a sick relative, and when they opened the
garage to put their car away, he was already dead. His radio was
going, and a petrol station receipt was tucked under the windscreen 
 
wiper.
Kizuki had left no suicide note, and had no motive that anyone could
think of. Because I had been the last one to see him, I was called in for
questioning by the police. I told the investigating officer that Kizuki
had given no indication of what he was about to do, that he had been
exactly the same as always. The policeman had obviously formed a
poor impression of both Kizuki and me, as if it was perfectly natural
for the kind of person who would skip classes and play pool to
commit suicide. A small article in the paper brought the affair to a
close. Kizuki s parents got rid of his red N-. For a time, a white
flower marked his school desk.
In the ten months between Kizuki s death and my exams, I was unable
to find a place for myself in the world around me. I started sleeping
with one of the girls at school, but that didn t last six months. Nothing
about her really got to me. I applied to a private university in Tokyo,
the kind of place with an entrance exam for which I wouldn t have to
study much, and I passed without exhilaration. The girl asked me not
to go to Tokyo - its miles from here! she pleaded - but I had to
get away from Kobe at any cost. I wanted to begin a new life where I
didn t know a soul.
 You don t give a damn about me any more, now that you ve slept
with me, she said, crying.
 That s not true, I insisted. I just need to get away from this town. 
But she was not prepared to understand me. And so we parted.
Thinking about all the things that made her so much nicer than the
other girls at home, I sat on the bullet train to Tokyo feeling terrible
about what I d done, but there was no way to undo it. I would try to
forget her.
There was only one thing for me to do when I started my new life in
the dorm: stop taking everything so seriously; establish a proper
distance between myself and everything else. Forget about green baize
pool tables and red N- s and white flowers on school desks; about 
 
smoke rising from tall crematorium chimneys, and chunky
paperweights in police interrogation rooms. It seemed to work at first.
I tried hard to forget, but there remained inside me a vague knot of air.
And as time went by, the knot began to take on a clear and simple
form, a form that I am able to put into words, like this:
Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.
It s a cliché translated into words, but at the time I felt it not as words
but as that knot of air inside me. Death exists - in a paperweight, in
four red and white balls on a pool table - and we go on living and
breathing it into our lungs like fine dust.
Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate
from and independent of life. The hand of death is bound to take us, I
had felt, but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This
had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over
there. I am here, not over there.
The night Kizuki died, however, I lost the ability to see death (and
life) in such simple terms. Death was not the opposite of life. It was
already here, within my being, it had
always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.
When it took the -year-old Kizuki that night in May, death took me
as well.
I lived through the following spring, at , with that knot of air in my
chest, but I struggled all the while against becoming serious.
Becoming serious was not the same thing as approaching the truth, I
sensed, however vaguely. But death was a fact, a serious fact, no
matter how you looked at it. Stuck inside this suffocating
contradiction, I went on endlessly spinning in circles. Those were
strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life,
everything revolved around death.
 
Naoko called me the following Saturday, and that Sunday we had a
date. I suppose I can call it a date. I can t think of a better word for it.
As before, we walked the streets. We stopped somewhere
for coffee, walked some more, had dinner in the evening, and
said goodbye. Again, she talked only in snatches, but this didn t seem
to bother her, and I made no special effort to keep the conversation
going. We talked about whatever came to mind - our daily routines,
our colleges; each a little fragment that led nowhere. We said nothing
at all about the past. And mainly, we walked - and walked, and
walked. Fortunately, Tokyo is such a big city we could never have
covered it all.
We kept on walking like this almost every weekend. She would lead,
and I would follow close behind. Naoko had a variety of hairslides
and always wore them with her right ear exposed. I remember her
most clearly this way, from the back. She would toy with her hairslide
whenever she felt embarrassed by something. And she was always
dabbing at her mouth with a handkerchief. She did this whenever she
had something to say. The more I observed these habits of hers, the
more I came to like her.
Naoko went to a girls college on the rural western edge of Tokyo, a
nice little place famous for its teaching of English.
Nearby was a narrow irrigation canal with clean, clear water, and
Naoko and I would often walk along its banks. Sometimes she would
invite me up to her flat and cook for me. It never seemed to concern
her that the two of us were in such close quarters together. The room
was small and neat and so lacking in frills that only the stockings
drying in the corner by the window gave any hint that a girl lived
 
there. She led a spare, simple life with hardly any friends. No one who
had known her at school could have imagined her like this. Back then,
she had dressed with real flair and surrounded herself with a million
friends. When I saw her room, I realized that, like me, she had wanted
to go away to college and begin a new life far from anyone she knew.
 Know why I chose this place? she said with a smile. Because
nobody from home was coming here. We were all supposed to go
somewhere more chic. You know what I mean? 
My relationship with Naoko was not without its progress, though.
Little by little, she grew more accustomed to me, and I to her. When
the summer holidays ended and a new term started, Naoko began
walking next to me as if it were the most natural thing in the world to
do. She saw me as a friend now, I concluded, and walking side by side
with such a beautiful girl was by no means painful for me. We kept
walking all over Tokyo in the same meandering way, climbing hills,
crossing rivers and railway lines, just walking and walking with no
destination in mind. We forged straight ahead, as if our walking were
a religious ritual meant to heal our wounded spirits. If it rained, we
used umbrellas, but in any case we walked.
Then came autumn, and the dormitory grounds were buried in zelkova
leaves. The fragrance of a new season arrived when I put on my first
pullover. Having worn out one pair of shoes, I bought some new suede
ones.
I can t seem to recall what we talked about then. Nothing special, I
expect. We continued to avoid any mention of the past and rarely
spoke about Kizuki. We could face each other over coffee cups in
total silence.
Naoko liked to hear me tell stories about Storm Trooper. Once he had
a date with a fellow student (a girl in geography, of course) but came
back in the early evening looking glum. Tell me, W W-Watanabe,
what do you talk about with g-g-girls? I don t remember how I
answered him, but he had picked the wrong person to ask. In July,
 
somebody in the dorm had taken down Storm Trooper s Amsterdam
canal scene and put up a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge instead. He
told me he wanted to know if Storm Trooper could masturbate to the
Golden Gate Bridge. He loved it, I reported later, which prompted
someone else to put up a picture of an iceberg. Each time the photo
changed in his absence, Storm Trooper became upset.
 Who-who-who the hell is doing this? he asked.
 I wonder, I said. But what s the difference? They re all nice
pictures. You should be grateful. 
 Yeah, I s pose so, but its weird. 
My stories of Storm Trooper always made Naoko laugh. Not many
things succeeded in doing that, so I talked about him often, though I
was not exactly proud of myself for using him this way. He just
happened to be the youngest son in a not-too-wealthy family who had
grown up a little too serious for his own good. Making maps was the
one small dream of his one small life. Who had the right to make fun
of him for that?
By then, however, Storm-Trooper jokes had become an indispensable
source of dormitory talk, and there was no way for me to undo what I
had done. Besides, the sight of Naoko s smiling face had become my
own special source of pleasure. I went on supplying everyone with
new stories.
Naoko asked me one time - just once - if I had a girl I liked. I told her
about the one I had left behind in Kobe. She was nice, I said, I
enjoyed sleeping with her, and I miss her every now and then, but
finally, she didn t move me. I don t know, sometimes I think I ve got
this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I
doubt if I can really love anybody. 
 Have you ever been in love? Naoko asked.
 Never, I said.
She didn t ask me more than that.
When autumn ended and cold winds began tearing through the city, 
 
Naoko would often walk pressed against my arm. I could sense her
breathing through the thick cloth of her duffel coat. She would
entwine her arm with mine, or cram her hand in my pocket, or, when
it was really cold, cling tightly to my arm, shivering. None of this had
any special meaning. I just kept walking with my hands shoved in my
pockets. Our rubber-soled shoes made hardly any sound on the
pavement, except for the dry crackling when we trod on the broad,
withered sycamore leaves. I felt sorry for Naoko whenever I heard that
sound. My arm was not the one she needed, but the arm of someone
else. My warmth was not what she needed, but the warmth of
someone else. I felt almost guilty being me.
As the winter deepened, the transparent clarity of Naoko s eyes
seemed to increase. It was a clarity that had nowhere to go. Sometimes
Naoko would lock her eyes on to mine for no apparent reason. She
seemed to be searching for something, and this would give me a
strange, lonely, helpless sort of feeling.
I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something
she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could
not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever
turning into words. Instead, she would fiddle with her hairslide, dab at
the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief, or look into my eyes in
that meaningless way. I wanted to hold her tight when she did these
things, but I would hesitate and hold back. I was afraid I might hurt
her. And so the two of us kept walking the streets of Tokyo, Naoko
searching for words in space.
The guys in the dorm would always tease me when I got a call from
Naoko or went out on a Sunday morning. They assumed, naturally
enough, that I had found a girlfriend. There was no way to explain the
truth to them, and no need to explain it, so I let them think what they
wanted to. I had to face a barrage of stupid questions in the evening -
what position had we used? What was she like down there? What
colour underwear had she been wearing that day? I gave them the
 
answers they wanted.
And so I went from to. Each day the sun would rise and set, the
flag would be raised and lowered. Every Sunday I would have a date
with my dead friend s girl. I had no idea what I was doing or what I
was going to do. For my courses I would read Claudel and Racine and
Eisenstein, but they meant almost nothing to me. I made no friends at
the lectures, and hardly knew anyone in the dorm. The others in the
dorm thought I wanted to be a writer because I was always alone with
a book, but I had no such ambition. There was nothing I wanted to be.
I tried to talk about this feeling with Naoko. She, at least, would be
able to understand what I was feeling with some degree of precision, I
thought. But I could never find the words to express myself. Strange, I
seemed to have caught her word-searching sickness.
On Saturday nights I would sit by the phone in the lobby, waiting for
Naoko to call. Most of the others were out, so the lobby was usually
deserted. I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent
space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I want? And
what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers.
Sometimes I would reach out and try to grasp the grains of light, but
my fingers touched nothing.
I read a lot, but not a lot of different books: I like to read my
favourites again and again. Back then it was Truman Capote, John
Updike, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, but I didn t see
anyone else in my lectures or the dorm reading writers like that. They
liked Kazumi Takahashi, Kenzaburo Oe, Yukio Mishima, or
contemporary French novelists, which was another reason I didn t
have much to say to anybody but kept to myself and my books. With
my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance
deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.
At my favourite book was John Updike s The Centaur, but after I
had read it a number of times, it began to lose some of its initial lustre 
 
and yielded first place to The Great Gatsby. Gatsby stayed in first
place for a long time after that. I would pull it off the shelf when the
mood hit me and read a section at random. It never once disappointed
me. There wasn t a boring page in the whole book. I wanted to tell
people what a wonderful novel it was, but no one around me had read
The Great Gatsby or was likely to. Urging others to read F Scott
Fitzgerald, although not a reactionary act, was not something one
could do in.
When I did finally meet the one person in my world who had read
Gatsby, he and I became friends because of it. His name was
Nagasawa. He was two years older than me, and because he was doing
legal studies at the prestigious Tokyo University, he was on the fast
track to national leadership. We lived in the same dorm and knew
each other only by sight, until one day when I was reading Gatsby in a
sunny spot in the dining hall. He sat down next to me and asked what I
was reading. When I told him, he asked if I was enjoying it. This is
my third time, I said, and every time I find something new that I like
even more than the last. 
 This man says he has read The Great Gatsby three times, he said as
if to himself. Well, any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine. 
And so we became friends. This happened in October.
The better I got to know Nagasawa, the stranger he seemed. I had met
a lot of weird people in my day, but none as strange as Nagasawa. He
was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never
to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least years.
 That s the only kind of book I can trust, he said.
 its not that I don t believe in contemporary literature, he added, but
I don t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had
the baptism of time. Life is too short. 
 What kind of authors do you like? I asked, speaking in respectful
tones to this man two years my senior.
 Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens, he answered without
 
hesitation.
 Not exactly fashionable. 
 That s why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else
is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That s
the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of
themselves doing that. Haven t you noticed, Watanabe? You and I are
the only real ones in this dorm. The other guys are crap. 
This took me off guard. How can you say that? 
 Cause its true. I know. I can see it. its like we have marks on our
foreheads. And besides, we ve both read The Great Gatsby. 
I did some quick calculating. But Fitzgerald s only been dead 
years, I said.
 So what? Two years? Fitzgerald s advanced. 
No one else in the dorm knew that Nagasawa was a secret reader of
classic novels, nor would it have mattered if they had. Nagasawa was
known for being smart. He breezed into Tokyo University, he got
good marks, he would take the Civil Service Exam, join the Foreign
Ministry, and become a diplomat. He came from a wealthy family. His
father owned a big hospital in Nagoya, and his brother had also
graduated from Tokyo, gone on to medical school, and would one day
inherit the hospital. Nagasawa always had plenty of money in his
pocket, and he carried himself with real dignity. People treated him
with respect, even the dorm Head. When he asked someone to do
something, the person would do it without protest. There was no
choice in the matter.
Nagasawa had a certain inborn quality that drew people to him and
made them follow him. He knew how to stand at the head of the pack,
to assess the situation, to give precise and tactful instructions that
others would obey. Above his head hung an aura that revealed his
powers like an angel s halo, the mere sight of which would inspire awe
in people for this superior being. Which is why it shocked everyone 
 
that Nagasawa chose me, a person with no distinctive qualities, to be
his special friend. People I hardly knew treated me with a certain
respect because of it, but what they did not seem to realize was that
the reason for my having been chosen was a simple one, namely that I
treated Nagasawa with none of the adulation he received from other
people. I had a definite interest in the strange, complex aspects of his
nature, but none of those other things - his good marks, his aura, his
looks - impressed me. This must have been something new for him.
There were sides to Nagasawa s personality that conflicted in the
extreme. Even I would be moved by his kindness at times, but he
could just as well be malicious and cruel. He was both a spirit of
amazing loftiness and an irredeemable man of the gutter. He could
charge forward, the optimistic leader, even as his heart writhed in a
swamp of loneliness. I saw these paradoxical qualities of his from the
start, and I could never understand why they weren t just as obvious to
everyone else. He lived in his own special hell.
Still, I think I always managed to view him in the most favourable
light. His greatest virtue was his honesty. Not only would he never lie,
he would always acknowledge his shortcomings. He never tried to
hide things that might embarrass him. And where I was concerned, he
was unfailingly kind and supportive. Had he not been, my life in the
dorm would have been far more unpleasant than it was. Still, I never
once opened my heart to him, and in that sense my relationship with
Nagasawa stood in stark contrast to me and Kizuki. The first time I
saw Nagasawa drunk and tormenting a girl, I promised myself never,
under any circumstances, to open myself up to him.
There were several Nagasawa Legends that circulated throughout
the dorm. According to one, he supposedly once ate three slugs.
Another gave him a huge penis and had him sleeping with more than
 girls.
The slug story was true. He told me so himself. Three big mothers, 
 
he said. Swallowed em whole. 
 What the hell for? 
 Well, it happened the first year I came to live here, he said. There
was some shit between the first-years and the third-years. Started in
April and finally came to a head in September. As first-year
representative I went to work things out with the third-years. Real
right-wing arseholes. They had these wooden kendo swords, and
 working things out was probably the last thing they wanted to do. So
I said, All right, lets put an end to this. Do what you want to me, but
leave the other guys alone. So they said, OK, lets see you swallow a
couple of slugs. Fine, I said, lets have em. The bastards went out
and got three huge slugs. And I swallowed em. 
 What was it like? 
 What was it like? You have to swallow one yourself. The way it
slides down your throat and into your stomach... its cold, and it
leaves this disgusting aftertaste... yuck, I get chills just thinking about
it. I wanted to puke but I fought it.
I mean, if I had puked em up, I would have had to swallow
 em all over again. So I kept em down. All three of em. 
 Then what happened? 
 I went back to my room and drank a bucket of salt water.
What else could I do? 
 Yeah, I guess so. 
 But after that, nobody could say a thing to me. Not even
the third-years. I m the only guy in this place who can swallow three
slugs. 
 I bet you are. 
Finding out about his penis size was easy enough. I just went to the
dorm s communal shower with him. He had a big one, all right. But
 girls was probably an exaggeration. Maybe , he said. I can t
remember them all, but I m sure its at least. When I told him I had 
 
slept with only one, he said, Oh, we can fix that, easy. Come with me
next time. I ll get you one easy as that. 
I didn t believe him, but he turned out to be right. It was easy. Almost
too easy, with all the excitement of flat beer. We went to some kind of
bar in Shibuya or Shinjuku (he had his favourites), found a pair of
girls (the world was full of pairs of girls), talked to them, drank, went
to a hotel, and had sex with them. He was a great talker. Not that he
had anything great to say, but girls would get carried away listening to
him, they d drink too much and end up sleeping with him. I guess they
enjoyed being with somebody so nice and handsome and clever. And
the most amazing thing was that, just because I was with him, I
seemed to become equally fascinating to them. Nagasawa would urge
me to talk, and girls would respond to me with the same smiles of
admiration they offered him. He worked his magic, a real talent he had
that impressed me every time. Compared with Nagasawa, Kizuki s
conversational gifts were child s play. This was a completely different
level of accomplishment. As much as I found myself caught up in
Nagasawa s power, though, I still missed Kizuki. I felt a new
admiration for his sincerity. Whatever talents he had he would share
with Naoko and me alone, while Nagasawa was bent on disseminating
his considerable gifts to all around him. Not that he was dying to sleep
with the girls he found: it was just a game to him.
I was not too crazy about sleeping with girls I didn t know. It was an
easy way to take care of my sex drive of course, and I did enjoy all the
holding and touching, but I hated the morning after. I d wake up and
find this strange girl sleeping next to me, and the room would reek of
alcohol, and the bed and the lighting and the curtains had that special
 love hotel garishness, and my head would be in a hungover fog.
Then the girl would wake up and start groping around for her knickers 
 
and while she was putting on her stockings she d say something like,
 I hope you used one last night. its the worst day of the month for
me. Then she d sit in front of a mirror and start grumbling about her
aching head or her uncooperative make-up while she redid her lipstick
or attached her false eyelashes. I would have preferred not to spend
the whole night with them, but you can t worry about a midnight
curfew while you re seducing women (which runs counter to the laws
of physics anyway), so I d go out with an overnight pass. This meant I
had to stay put until morning and go back to the dorm filled with selfloathing
and disillusionment, sunlight stabbing my eyes, mouth coated
with sand, head belonging to someone else.
When I had slept with three or four girls this way, I asked Nagasawa,
 After you ve done this times, doesn t it begin to seem kind of
pointless? 
 That proves you re a decent human being, he said. Congratulations.
There is absolutely nothing to be gained from sleeping with one
strange woman after another. It just tires you out and makes you
disgusted with yourself. its the same for me. 
 So why the hell do you keep it up? 
 Hard to say. Hey, you know that thing Dostoevsky wrote on
gambling? its like that. When you re surrounded by endless
possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up. See
what I mean? 
 Sort of. 
 Look. The sun goes down. The girls come out and drink. They
wander around, looking for something. I can give them that
something. its the easiest thing in the world, like drinking water from
a tap. Before you know it, I ve got em down. its what they expect.
That s what I mean by possibility. its all around you. How can you
ignore it? You have a certain ability and the opportunity to use it: can
you keep your mouth shut and let it pass? 
 I don t know, I ve never been in a situation like that, I said with a 
 
smile. I can t imagine what its like. 
 Count your blessings, Nagasawa said.
His womanizing was the reason Nagasawa lived in a dorm despite his
affluent background. Worried that Nagasawa would do nothing else if
allowed to live alone in Tokyo, his father had compelled him to live
all four years at university in the dormitory. Not that it mattered much
to Nagasawa. He was not going to let a few rules bother him.
Whenever he felt like it, he would get an overnight permission and go
girl-hunting or spend the night at his girlfriend s flat. These
permissions were not easy to get, but for him they were like free
passes - and for me, too, as long as he did the asking.
Nagasawa did have a steady girlfriend, one he d been going out with
since his first year. Her name was Hatsumi, and she was the same age
as Nagasawa. I had met her a few times and found her to be very nice.
She didn t have the kind of looks that immediately attracted attention,
and in fact she was so ordinary that when I first met her I had to
wonder why Nagasawa couldn t do better, but anyone who talked to
her took an immediate liking to her. Quiet, intelligent, funny, caring,
she always dressed with immaculate good taste. I liked her a lot and
knew that if I could have a girlfriend like Hatsumi, I wouldn t be
sleeping around with a bunch of easy marks. She liked me, too, and
tried hard to fix me up with a first-year in her club so we could
double-date, but I would make up excuses to keep from repeating past
mistakes. Hatsumi went to the absolute top girls college in the
country, and there was no way I was going to be able to talk to one of
those super-rich princesses.
Hatsumi had a pretty good idea that Nagasawa was sleeping around,
but she never complained to him. She was seriously in love, but she
never made demands.
 I don t deserve a girl like Hatsumi, Nagasawa once said to me. I had
to agree with him.
 
That winter I found a part-time job in a little record shop in Shinjuku.
It didn t pay much, but the work was easy - just watching the place
three nights a week - and they let me buy records cheap. For
Christmas I bought Naoko a Henry Mancini album with a track of her
favourite Dear Heart . I wrapped it myself and added a bright red
ribbon. She gave me a pair of woollen gloves she had knitted. The
thumbs were a little short, but they did keep my hands warm.
 Oh, I m sorry, she said, blushing, What a bad job! 
 Don t worry, they fit fine, I said, holding my gloved hands out to
her.
 Well, at least you won t have to shove your hands in your pockets, I
guess. 
Naoko didn t go home to Kobe for the winter break. I stayed in Tokyo,
too, working in the record shop right up to the end of the year. I didn t
have anything especially fun to do in Kobe or anyone I wanted to see.
The dorm s dining hall was closed for the holiday, so I went to
Naoko s flat for meals. On New Year s Eve we had rice cakes and
soup like everybody else.
A lot happened in late January and February that year,.
At the end of January, Storm Trooper went to bed with a raging fever.
Which meant I had to stand up Naoko that day. I had gone to a lot of
trouble to get my hands on some free tickets for a concert. She had
been especially eager to go because the orchestra was performing one
of her favourites: Brahms Fourth Symphony. But with Storm Trooper
tossing around in bed on the verge of what looked like an agonizing
death, I couldn t just leave him, and I couldn t find anyone stupid
enough to nurse him in my place. I bought some ice and used several
layers of plastic bags to hold it on his forehead, wiped his sweating
brow with cold towels, took his temperature every hour, and even
changed his vest for him. The fever stayed high for a day, but the
following morning he jumped out of bed and started exercising as
though nothing had happened. His temperature was completely
 
normal. It was hard to believe he was a human being.
 Weird, said Storm Trooper. I ve never run a fever in my life. It
was almost as if he were blaming me.
This made me mad. But you did have a fever, I insisted, showing
him the two wasted tickets.
 Good thing they were free, he said. I wanted to grab his radio and
throw it out of the window, but instead I went back to bed with a
headache.
It snowed several times in February.
Near the end of the month I got into a stupid fight with one of the
third-years on my floor and punched him. He hit his head against the
concrete wall, but he wasn t badly injured, and Nagasawa straightened
things out for me. Still, I was called into the dorm Head s office and
given a warning, after which I grew increasingly uncomfortable living
in the dormitory.
The academic year ended in March, but I came up a few credits short.
My exam results were mediocre - mostly C s and D s with a few
 B s. Naoko had all the grades she needed to begin the spring term of
her second year. We had completed one full cycle of the seasons.
Halfway through April Naoko turned. She was seven months older
than I was, my own birthday being in November. There was
something strange about her becoming. I. felt as if the only thing
that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back
and forth between and. After would come , and after ,
 , of course. But she turned. And in the autumn, I would do the
same. Only the dead stay for ever.
It rained on her birthday. After lectures I bought a cake nearby and
took the tram to her flat. We ought to have a celebration, I said. I
probably would have wanted the same thing if our positions had been
reversed. It must be hard to pass your twentieth birthday alone. The
tram had been packed and had pitched so wildly that by the time I
 
arrived at Naoko s room the cake was looking more like the Roman
Colosseum than anything else. Still, once I had managed to stand up
the candles I had brought along, light them, close the curtains and
turn out the lights, we had the makings of a birthday party. Naoko
opened a bottle of wine. We drank, had some cake, and enjoyed a
simple dinner.
 I don t know, its stupid being , she said. I m just not ready. It
feels weird. Like somebody s pushing me from behind. 
 I ve got seven months to get ready, I said with a laugh.
 You re so lucky! Still ! said Naoko with a hint of envy.
While we ate I told her about Storm Trooper s new jumper. Until then
he had had only one, a navy-blue pullover, so two was a big move for
him. The jumper itself was a nice one, red and black with a knitted
deer motif, but on him it made everybody laugh. He couldn t work out
what was going on.
 W what s so funny, Watanabe? he asked, sitting next to me in the
dining hall. Is something stuck to my forehead? 
 Nothing, I said, trying to keep a straight face. There s nothing
funny. Nice jumper. 
 Thanks, he said, beaming.
Naoko loved the story. I have to meet him, she said. Just once. 
 No way, I said. You d laugh in his face. You think so? 
 I d bet on it. I see him every day, and still I can t help laughing
sometimes. 
We cleared the table and sat on the floor, listening to music and
drinking the rest of the wine. She drank two glasses in the time it took
me to finish one.
Naoko was unusually talkative that night. She told me about her
childhood, her school, her family. Each episode was a long one,
executed with the painstaking detail of a miniature. I was amazed at
the power of her memory, but as I sat listening it began to dawn on me
that there was something wrong with the way she was telling these 
 
stories: something strange, warped even. Each tale had its own
internal logic, but the link from one to the next was odd. Before you
knew it, story A had turned into story B, which had been contained in
A, and then came C from something in B, with no end in sight. I found
things to say in response at first, but after a while I stopped trying. I
put on a record, and when it ended I lifted the needle and put on
another. After the last record I went back to the first. She only had six.
The cycle started with Sgt. Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band and
ended with Bill Evans Waltz for Debbie. Rain fell past the window.
Time moved slowly. Naoko went on talking by herself.
It eventually dawned on me what was wrong: Naoko was taking great
care as she spoke not to touch on certain things. One of those things
was Kizuki, of course, but there was more than Kizuki. And though
she had certain subjects she was determined to avoid, she went on
endlessly and in incredible detail about the most trivial, inane things. I
had never heard her speak with such intensity before, and so I did not
interrupt her.
Once the clock struck eleven, though, I began to feel nervous. She had
been talking non-stop for more than four hours. I had to worry about
the last train, and my midnight curfew. I saw my chance and cut in.
 Time for the troops to go home, I said, looking at my watch. Last
train s coming. 
My words did not seem to reach her. Or, if they did, she was unable to
grasp their meaning. She clamped her mouth shut for a split second,
then went on with her story. I gave up and, shifting to a more
comfortable position, drank what was left of the second bottle of wine.
I thought I had better let her talk herself out. The curfew and the last
train would have to take care of themselves.
She did not go on for long, though. Before I knew it, she had stopped
talking. The ragged end of the last word she spoke seemed to float in
the air, where it had been torn off. She had not actually finished what
she was saying. Her words had simply evaporated. She had been
 
trying to go on, but had come up against nothing. Something was gone
now, and I was probably the one who had destroyed it. My words
might have finally reached her, taken their time to be understood, and
obliterated whatever energy it was that had kept her talking so long.
Lips slightly parted, she turned her half focused eyes on mine. She
looked like some kind of machine that had been humming along until
someone pulled the plug. Her eyes appeared clouded, as if covered by
some thin, translucent membrane.
 Sorry to interrupt, I said, but its getting late, and... 
One big tear spilled from her eye, ran down her cheek and splattered
onto a record jacket. Once that first tear broke free, the rest followed
in an unbroken stream. Naoko bent forwards on all fours on the floor
and, pressing her palms to the mat, began to cry with the force of a
person vomiting. Never in my life had I seen anyone cry with such
intensity. I reached out and placed a hand on her trembling shoulder.
Then, all but instinctively, I took her in my arms. Pressed against me,
her whole body trembling, she continued to cry without a sound. My
shirt became damp - then soaked - with her tears and hot breath. Soon
her fingers began to move across my back as if in search of
something, some important thing that had always been there.
Supporting her weight with my left arm, I used my right hand to
caress her soft, straight hair. And I waited. In that position, I waited
for Naoko to stop crying. And I went on waiting. But Naoko s crying
never stopped.
I slept with Naoko that night. Was it the right thing to do? I can t tell.
Even now, almost years later, I can t be sure. I suppose I ll never
know. But at the time, it was all I could do. She was in a heightened
state of tension and confusion, and she made it clear she wanted me to
give her release. I turned the lights down and began, one piece at a
time, with the gentlest touch I could manage, to remove her clothes.
Then I undressed. It was warm enough, that rainy April night, for us to
cling to each other s nakedness without a sense of chill. We explored 
 
each other s bodies in the darkness without words. I kissed her and
held her soft breasts in my hands. She clutched at my erection. Her
opening was warm and wet and asking for me.
And yet, when I went inside her, Naoko tensed with pain. Was this her
first time? I asked, and she nodded. Now it was my turn to be
confused. I had assumed that Naoko had been sleeping with Kizuki all
that time. I went in as far as I could and stayed that way for a long
time, holding Naoko, without moving. And then, as she began to seem
calmer, I allowed myself to move inside her, taking a long time to
come to climax, with slow, gentle movements. Her arms tightened
around me at the end, when at last she broke her silence. Her cry was
the saddest sound of orgasm I had ever heard.
When everything had ended, I asked Naoko why she had never slept
with Kizuki. This was a mistake. No sooner had I asked the question
than she took her arms from me and started crying soundlessly again. I
pulled her bedding from the closet, spread it on the mat floor, and put
her in beneath the covers. Smoking, I watched the endless April rain
beyond the window.
The rain had stopped when morning came. Naoko was sleeping with
her back to me. Or maybe she hadn t slept at all. Whether she was
awake or asleep, all words had left her lips, and her body now seemed
stiff, almost frozen. I tried several times to talk to her, but she would
not answer or move. I stared for a long time at her naked shoulder, but
in the end I lost all hope of eliciting a response and decided to get up.
The floor was still littered with record jackets, glasses, wine bottles
and the ashtray I had been using. Half the caved-in birthday cake
remained on the table. It was as if time had come to a halt. I picked up
the things off the floor and drank two glasses of water at the sink. On
Naoko s desk lay a dictionary and a French verb chart. On the wall
above the desk hung a calendar, one without an illustration or photo of
any kind, just the numbers of the days of the month. There were no
memos or marks written next to any of the dates.
 
I picked up my clothes and dressed. The chest of my shirt was still
damp and chilly. It had Naoko s smell. On the notepad lying on the
desk I wrote: I d like to have a good long talk with you once you ve
calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy
Birthday. I took one last look at Naoko s shoulder, stepped outside and
quietly shut the door.
No call came even after a week had passed. Naoko s house had no
system for calling people to the phone, and so on Sunday morning I
took the train out to Kokubunji. She wasn t there, and her name had
been removed from the door. The windows and storm shutters were
closed tight. The manager told me that Naoko had moved out three
days earlier. He had no idea where she had moved to.
I went back to the dorm and wrote Naoko a long letter addressed to
her home in Kobe. Wherever she was, they would forward it to her at
least.
I gave her an honest account of my feelings. There was a lot I still
didn t understand, I said, and though I was trying hard to understand, it
would take time. Where I would be once that time had gone by, it was
impossible for me to say now, which is why it was impossible for me
to make promises or demands, or to set down pretty words. For one
thing, we knew too little of each other. If, however, she would grant
me the time, I would give it my best effort, and the two of us would
come to know each other better. In any case, I wanted to see her again
and have a good long talk. When I lost Kizuki, I lost the one person to
whom I could speak honestly of my feelings, and I imagined it had
been the same for Naoko. She and I had needed each other more than
either of us knew. Which was no doubt why our relationship had taken
such a major detour and become, in a sense, warped. I probably
should not have done what I did, and yet I believe that it was all I
could do. The warmth and closeness I felt for you at that moment was
something I have never experienced before. I need you to answer this 
 
letter. Whatever that answer may be, I need to have it.
No answer came.
Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill
the empty cavern. There was an abnormal lightness to my body, and
sounds had a hollow echo to them. I went to lectures more faithfully
than ever. They were boring, and I never talked to my fellow students,
but I had nothing else to do. I would sit by myself in the very front
row of the lecture hall, speak to no one and eat alone. I stopped
smoking.
The student strike started at the end of May. Dismantle the
University! they all screamed. Go ahead, do it, I thought. Dismantle
it. Tear it apart. Crush it to bits. I don t give a damn. It would be a
breath of fresh air. I m ready for anything. I ll help if necessary. Just
go ahead and do it.
With the campus blockaded and lectures suspended, I started to work
at a delivery company. Sitting with the driver, loading and unloading
lorries, that kind of stuff. It was tougher than I thought. At first I could
hardly get out of bed in the morning with the pain. The pay was good,
though, and as long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the
emptiness inside. I worked on the lorries five days a week, and three
nights a week I continued my job at the record shop. Nights without
work I spent with whisky and books. Storm Trooper wouldn t touch
whisky and couldn t stand the smell, so when I was sprawled on my
bed drinking it straight, he d complain that the fumes made it
impossible for him to study and ask me to take my bottle outside.
 You get the hell out, I growled.
 But you know drinking in the dorm is a-a-against the rules. 
 I don t give a shit. You get out. 
He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof
and drank alone.
In June I wrote Naoko another long letter, addressing it again to her
house in Kobe. It said pretty much the same thing as the first one, but 
 
at the end I added: Waiting for your
answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At
least let me know whether or not I hurt you. When I posted it,
I felt as if the cavern inside me had grown again.
That June I went out with Nagasawa twice again to sleep with girls. It
was easy both times. The first girl put up a terrific struggle when I
tried to get her undressed and into the hotel bed, but when I began
reading alone because it just wasn t worth it, she came over and started
nuzzling me. And after I had done it with the second one, she started
asking me all kinds of personal questions - how many girls had I slept
with? Where was I from? Which university did I go to? What kind of
music did I like? Had I ever read any novels by Osamu Dazai? Where
would I like to go if I could travel abroad? Did I think her nipples
were too big? I made up some answers and went to sleep, but next
morning she said she wanted to have breakfast with me, and she kept
up the stream of questions
over the tasteless eggs and toast and coffee. What kind of work did my
father do? Did I get good marks at school? What month was I born?
Had I ever eaten frogs? She was giving me a headache, so as soon as
we had finished eating I said I had to go to work.
 Will I ever see you again? she asked with a sad look.
 Oh, I m sure we ll meet again somewhere before long, I said, and
left. What the hell am I doing? I started wondering as soon as I was
alone, feeling disgusted with myself. And yet it was all I could do. My
body was hungering for women. All the time I was sleeping with
those girls I thought about Naoko: the white shape of her naked body
in the darkness, her sighs, the sound of the rain. The more I thought
about these things, the hungrier my body grew. I went up to the roof
with my whisky and asked myself where I thought I was heading.
Finally, at the beginning of July, a letter came from Naoko. A short
letter.
 
Please forgive me for not answering sooner. But try to understand. It
took me a very long time before I was in any condition to write, and I
have started this letter at least ten times. Writing is a painful process
for me.
Let me begin with my conclusion. I have decided to take a year off
from college. Officially, its a leave of absence, but I suspect that I will
never be going back. This will no doubt come as a surprise to you, but
in fact I had been thinking about doing this for a very long time. I tried
a few times to mention it to you, but I was never able to make myself
begin. I was afraid even to pronounce the words.
Try not to get so worked up about things. Whatever happened - or
didn t happen - the end result would have been the same. This may not
be the best way to put it, and I m sorry if it hurts you. What I am
trying to tell you is, I don t want you to blame yourself for what
happened with me. It is something I have to take on all by myself. I
had been putting it off for more than a year, and so I ended up making
things very difficult for you. There is probably no way to put it off any
longer.
After I moved out of my flat, I came back to my family s house in
Kobe and was seeing a doctor for a while. He tells me there is a place
in the hills outside Kyoto that would be perfect for me, and I m
thinking of spending a little time there. its not exactly a hospital, more
a sanatorium kind of thing with a far freer style of treatment. I ll leave
the details for another letter. What I need now is to rest my nerves in a
quiet place cut off from the world.
I feel grateful in my own way for the year of companionship you gave
me. Please believe that much even if you believe nothing else. You are
not the one who hurt me. I myself am the one who did that. This is
truly how I feel.
For now, however, I am not prepared to see you. its not that I don t
want to see you: I m simply not prepared for it. The moment I feel
ready, I will write to you. Perhaps then we can get to know each other 
 
better. As you say, this is probably what we should do: get to know
each other better.
Goodbye.
I read Naoko s letter again and again, and each time I would be filled
with that same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko
herself stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I
could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body,
it had neither shape nor weight nor could I wrap myself in it. Objects
in the scene would drift past me, but the words they spoke never
reached my ears.
I continued to spend my Saturday nights sitting in the hall. There was
no hope of a phone call, but I didn t know what else to do with the
time. I would switch on a baseball game and pretend to watch it as I
cut the empty space between me and the television set in two, then cut
each half in two again, over and over, until I had fashioned a space
small enough to hold in my hand.
I would switch the set off at ten, go back to my room, and go to sleep.
At the end of the month, Storm Trooper gave me a firefly. It was in an
instant coffee jar with air holes in the lid and containing some blades
of grass and a little water. In the bright room the firefly looked like
some kind of ordinary black insect you d find by a pond somewhere,
but Storm Trooper insisted it was the real thing. I know a firefly
when I see one, he said, and I had no reason or basis to disbelieve
him.
 Fine, I said. its a firefly. It had a sleepy look on its face, but it
kept trying to climb up the slippery glass walls of the jar and falling
back.
 I found it in the quad, he said.
 Here? By the dorm? 
 Yeah. You know the hotel down the street? They release fireflies in 
 
their garden for summer guests. This one made it over here. 
Storm Trooper was busy stuffing clothes and notebooks into his black
Boston bag as he spoke.
We were several weeks into the summer holidays, and he and I were
almost the only ones left in the dorm. I had carried on with my jobs
rather than go back to Kobe, and he had stayed on for a practical
training session. Now that the training had ended, he was going back
to the mountains of Yamanashi.
 You could give this to your girlfriend, he said. I m sure she d love
it. 
 Thanks, I said.
After dark the dorm was hushed, like a ruin. The flag had been
lowered and the lights glowed in the windows of the dining hall. With
so few students left, they turned on only half the lights in the place,
keeping the right half dark and the left lighted. Still, the smell of
dinner drifted up to me - some kind of cream stew.
I took my bottled firefly to the roof. No one else was up there. A white
vest hung on a clothesline that someone had forgotten to take in,
waving in the evening breeze like the discarded shell of some huge
insect. I climbed a steel ladder in the corner of the roof to the top of
the dormitory s water tank. The tank was still warm with the heat of
the sunlight it had absorbed during the day. I sat in the narrow space
above the tank, leaning against the handrail and coming face-to-face
with an almost full white moon. The lights of Shinjuku glowed to the
right, Ikebukuro to the left. Car headlights flowed in brilliant streams
from one pool of light to the other. A dull roar of jumbled sounds
hung over the city like a cloud.
The firefly made a faint glow in the bottom of the jar, its light all too
weak, its colour all too pale. I hadn t seen a firefly in years, but the
ones in my memory sent a far more intense light into the summer
darkness, and that brilliant, burning image was the one that had stayed
with me all that time.
 
Maybe this firefly was on the verge of death. I gave the jar a few
shakes. The firefly bumped against the glass walls and tried to fly, but
its light remained dim.
I tried to remember when I had last seen fireflies, and where it might
have been. I could see the scene in my mind, but was unable to recall
the time or place. I could hear the sound of water in the darkness and
see an old-fashioned brick sluice gate. It had a handle you could turn
to open and close the gate. The stream it controlled was small enough
to be hidden by the grass on its banks. The night was dark, so dark I
couldn t see my feet when I turned out my torch. Hundreds of fireflies
drifted over the pool of water held back by the sluice gate, their hot
glow reflected in the water like a shower of sparks.
I closed my eyes and steeped myself in that long-ago darkness. I heard
the wind with unusual clarity. A light breeze swept past me, leaving
strangely brilliant trails in the dark. I opened my eyes to find the
darkness of the summer night a few degrees deeper than it had been.
I twisted open the lid of the jar and took out the firefly, setting it on
the two-inch lip of the water tank. It seemed not to grasp its new
surroundings. It hobbled around the head of a steel bolt, catching its
legs on curling scabs of paint. It moved to the right until it found its
way blocked, then circled back to the left. Finally, with some effort, it
mounted the head of the bolt and crouched there for a while,
unmoving, as if it had taken its last breath.
Still leaning against the handrail, I studied the firefly. Neither I nor it
made a move for a very long time. The wind continued sweeping past
the two of us while the numberless leaves of the zelkova tree rustled
in the darkness.
I waited for ever.
Only much later did the firefly take to the air. As if some thought had
suddenly occurred to it, the firefly spread its wings, and in a moment 
 
it had flown past the handrail to float in the pale darkness. It traced a
swift arc by the side of the water tank as though trying to bring back a
lost interval in time. And then, after hovering there for a few seconds
as if to watch its curved line of light blend into the wind, it finally
flew off to the east.
Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained
inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness
behind my eyelids like a lost soul.
More than once I tried stretching my hand out in the dark. My fingers
touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond my grasp.
 
During the summer holidays the university called in the riot police.
They broke down the barricades and arrested the students inside. This
was nothing new. its what all the students were doing at the time. The
universities were not so easily dismantled . Massive amounts of
capital had been invested in them, and they were not about to dissolve
just because a few students had gone wild. And in fact those students
who had sealed off the campus had not wanted to dismantle the
university either. All they had really wanted to do was shift the
balance of power within the university structure, about which I
couldn t have cared less. And so, when the strike was finally crushed, I
felt nothing.
I went to the campus in September expecting to find rubble. The place
was untouched. The library s books had not been carted off, the tutors 
offices had not been destroyed, the student affairs office had not been
burned to the ground. I was thunderstruck. What the hell had they
been doing behind the barricades?
When the strike was defused and lectures started up again under
police occupation, the first ones to take their seats in the classrooms
were those arseholes who had led the strike. As if nothing had ever
happened, they sat there taking notes and answering present when
the register was taken. I found this incredible. After all, the strike was
still in effect. There had been no declaration bringing it to an end. All
that had happened was that the university had called in the riot police
and torn down the barricades, but the strike itself was supposed to be 
 
continuing. The arseholes had screamed their heads off at the time of
the strike, denouncing students who opposed it (or just expressed
doubts about it), at times even trying them in their own kangaroo
courts. I made a point of visiting those former leaders and asking why
they were attending lectures instead of continuing to strike, but they
couldn t give me a straight answer. What could they have said? That
they were afraid of losing marks through lack of attendance? To think
that these idiots had been the ones screaming for the dismantling of
the university! What a joke. The wind changes direction a little, and
their cries become whispers.
Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you re not missing a damn thing. This world is
a piece of shit. The arseholes are getting good marks and helping to
create a society in their own disgusting image.
For a while I attended lectures but refused to answer when they took
the register. I knew it was a pointless gesture, but I felt so bad I had no
choice. All I managed to do was isolate myself more than ever from
the other students. By remaining silent when my name was called, I
made everyone uncomfortable for a few seconds. None of the other
students spoke to me, and I spoke to none of them.
By the second week in September I reached the conclusion that a
university education was meaningless. I decided to think of it as a
period of training in techniques for dealing with boredom. I had
nothing I especially wanted to accomplish in society that would
require me to abandon my studies straight away, and so I went to my
lectures each day, took notes, and spent my free time in the library
reading or looking
things up.
And though that second week in September had rolled around, there
was no sign of Storm Trooper. More than unusual, this was an earthshattering
development. University had started up again, and it was
inconceivable that Storm Trooper would miss lectures. A thin layer of 
 
dust covered his desk and radio. His plastic cup and toothbrush, tea
tin, insecticide spray and so on stood in a neat row on his shelf.
I kept the room clean in his absence. I had picked up the habit of
neatness over the past year and a half, and without him there to take
care of the room, I had no choice but to do it. I swept the floor each
day, wiped the window every third day, and aired my mattress once a
week, waiting for him to come back and tell me what a great job I had
done.
But he never came back. I returned from lectures one day to find all
his stuff gone and his name tag removed from the door. I went to the
dorm Head s room and asked what had happened.
 He s withdrawn from the dormitory, he said. You ll be alone in the
room for the time being. 
I couldn t get him to tell me why Storm Trooper had disappeared. This
was a man whose greatest joy in life was to control everything and
keep others in the dark.
Storm Trooper s iceberg poster stayed on the wall for a time, but I
eventually took it down and replaced it with Jim Morrison and Miles
Davis. This made the room seem a little more like my own. I used
some of the money I had saved from work to buy a small stereo. At
night I would drink alone and listen to music. I thought about Storm
Trooper every now and then, but I enjoyed living alone.
At. a.m. one Monday, after a lecture on Euripides in History of
Drama, I took a ten-minute walk to a little restaurant and had an
omelette and salad for lunch. The place was on a quiet backstreet and
was slightly more expensive than the student dining hall, but you
could relax there, and they knew how to make a good omelette.
 They were a married couple who rarely spoke to each other, plus
one part-time waitress. As I sat there eating by the window, a group of
four students came in, two men and two women, all rather neatly
dressed. They took the table near the door, spent some time looking 
 
over the menu and discussing their options, until one of them reported
their choices to the waitress.
Before long I noticed that one of the girls kept glancing in my
direction. She had extremely short hair and wore dark sunglasses and
a white cotton mini-dress. I had no idea who she was, so I went on
with my lunch, but she soon slipped out of her seat and came over to
where I was sitting. With one hand on the edge of my table, she said,
 You re Watanabe, aren t you? 
I raised my head and looked at her more closely. Still I could not
recall ever having seen her. She was the kind of girl you notice, so if I
had met her before I should have been able to recognize her
immediately, and there weren t that many people in my university who
knew me by name.
 Mind if I sit down? she asked. Or are you expecting somebody? 
Still uncertain, I shook my head. No, nobody s coming. Please. 
With a wooden clunk, she dragged a chair out and sat down opposite,
staring straight at me through her sunglasses, then
glancing at my plate.
 Looks good, she said.
 It is good. Mushroom omelette and green pea salad. Damn, she
said. Oh, well, I ll get it next time. I ve
already ordered something else. 
 What are you having? Macaroni and cheese. 
 Their macaroni and cheese isn t bad, either, I said. By the way, do I
know you? I don t recall... 
 Euripides, she said. Electra. No god hearkens to the voice of lost
Electra. You know - the class just ended. 
I stared hard at her. She took off her sunglasses. At last I remembered
her - a first-year I had seen in History of Drama. A striking change in
hairstyle had prevented me recognizing her.
 Oh, I said, touching a point a few inches below my shoulder, your
hair was down to here before the summer holidays. You re right, 
 
she said. I had a perm this summer, and it was just awful. I was ready
to kill myself. I looked like a corpse on the beach with seaweed stuck
to my head. So I decided as long as I was ready to die, I might as well
cut it all off. At least its cool in the summer. She ran her hand
through her pixie cut and gave me a smile.
 It looks good, though, I said, still munching my omelette.
 Let me see your profile. 
She turned away and held the pose a few seconds.
 Yeah, I thought so. It really looks good on you. Nicely shaped head.
Pretty ears, too, uncovered like that. 
 So I m not mad after all! I thought I looked good myself once I cut it
all off. Not one guy likes it, though. They all tell me I look like a
concentration camp survivor. What s this thing that guys have for girls
with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all
think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most
feminine? I mean, I myself know at least unclassy girls with long
hair. Really. 
 I think you look better now than you did before, I said. And I meant
it. As far as I could recall, with long hair she had been just another
cute student. A fresh and physical life force surged from the girl who
sat before me now. She was like a small animal that has popped into
the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an
independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement and
despair. I hadn t seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I
enjoyed watching it live and move.
 Do you mean it? she asked.
I nodded, still munching on my salad.
She put on her sunglasses and looked at me from behind them.
 You re not lying, are you? 
 I like to think of myself as an honest man, I said. Far out. 
 So tell me: why do you wear such dark glasses? 
 I felt defenceless when my hair got short all of a sudden.
 
As if somebody had thrown me into a crowd all naked. Makes
sense, I said, eating the last of my omelette. She watched me with
intense interest.
 You don t have to go back to them? I asked, indicating her three
companions.
 Nah. I ll go back when they serve the food. Am I interrupting your
meal? 
 There s nothing left to interrupt, I said, ordering coffee when she
showed no sign of leaving. The wife took my dishes and brought milk
and sugar.
 Now you tell me, she said. Why didn t you answer today when they
called the register? You are Watanabe, aren t you?
Toru Watanabe? 
 That s me. 
 So why didn t you answer? I just didn t feel like it today. 
She took off her sunglasses again, set them on the table, and looked at
me as if she were staring into the cage of some rare animal at a zoo.
 I just didn t feel like it today. You talk like Humphrey Bogart. Cool.
Tough. 
 Don t be silly. I m just an ordinary guy like everybody else. 
The wife brought my coffee and set it on the table. I took a sip without
adding sugar or milk.
 Look at that. You drink it black. 
 its got nothing to do with Humphrey Bogart, I explained patiently.
 I just don t happen to have a sweet tooth. I think you ve got me all
wrong. 
 Why are you so tanned? 
 I ve been hiking around the last couple of weeks. Rucksack. Sleeping
bag. 
 Where d you go? 
 Kanazawa. Noto Peninsula. Up to Niigata. Alone? 
 Alone, I said. Found some company here and there. Some
 
romantic company? New women in far-off places. Romantic? Now I
know you ve got me wrong. How s a guy with a sleeping bag on his
back and his face all stubbly supposed to have romance? 
 Do you always travel alone like that? Uh-huh. 
 You enjoy solitude? she asked, resting her cheek on her hand.
 Travelling alone, eating alone, sitting by yourself in lecture halls... 
 Nobody likes being alone that much. I don t go out of my way to
make friends, that s all. It just leads to disappointment. 
The tip of one earpiece in her mouth, sunglasses dangling down, she
mumbled, Nobody likes being alone. I just hate to be disappointed. 
You can use that line if you ever write your autobiography. 
 Thanks, I said.
 Do you like green? 
 Why do you ask? 
 You re wearing a green polo shirt. 
 Not especially. I ll wear anything. 
 Not especially. I ll wear anything. I love the way you talk. Like
spreading plaster, nice and smooth. Has anybody ever told you that? 
 Nobody, I said.
 My name s Midori, she said. Green . But green looks terrible on
me. Weird, huh? its like I m cursed, don t you think? My sister s name
is Momoko: Peach girl . 
 Does she look good in pink? 
 She looks great in pink! She was born to wear pink. its totally
unfair. 
The food arrived at Midori s table, and a guy in a madras jacket called
out to her, Hey, Midori, come n get it! She waved at him as if to
say I know .
 Tell me, she said. Do you take lecture notes? In drama? I do. 
 I hate to ask, but could I borrow your notes? I ve missed twice, and I
don t know anybody in the class. No problem, I said, pulling the
notebook from my bag.
 
After checking to make sure I hadn t written anything personal in it, I
handed it to Midori.
 Thanks, she said. Are you coming to lectures the day after
tomorrow? 
 Yeah. 
 Meet me here at noon. I ll give you back your notebook and buy you
lunch. I mean... its not as if you get an upset stomach or anything if
you don t eat alone, right? 
 No, I said. But you don t have to buy me lunch just because I m
lending you my notebook. 
 Don t worry, she said. I like buying people lunch. Anyway,
shouldn t you write it down somewhere? You won t forget? 
 I won t forget. Day after tomorrow. Twelve o clock. Midori. Green. 
From the other table, somebody called out, Hurry up, Midori, your
food s getting cold! 
She ignored the call and asked me, Have you always talked like
that? 
 I think so, I said. Never noticed before. And in fact no one had
ever told me there was anything unusual about the way I spoke.
She seemed to be mulling something over for a few seconds. Then she
stood up with a smile and went back to her table. She waved to me as
I walked past their table, but the three others barely glanced in my
direction.
At noon on Wednesday there was no sign of Midori in the restaurant. I
thought I might wait for her over a beer, but the place started to fill up
as soon as the drink arrived, so I ordered lunch and ate alone. I
finished at. , but still no Midori. Paying my bill, I went outside
and crossed the street to a little shrine, where I waited on the stone
steps for my head to clear and Midori to come. I gave up at one
o clock and went to read in the library. At two I went to my German 
 
lecture.
When it was over I went to the student affairs office and looked for
Midori s name in the class list for History of Drama. The only Midori
in the class was Midori Kobayashi. Next I flipped through the cards of
the student files and found the address and phone number of a Midori
Kobayashi who had entered the university in. She lived in a
north-west suburb, Toshima, with her family. I slipped into a phone
box and dialled the number.
A man answered: Kobayashi Bookshop. Kobayashi Bookshop?
 Sorry to bother you, I said, but I wonder if Midori might be in? 
 No, she s not, he said.
 Do you think she might be on campus? 
 Hmm, no, she s probably at the hospital. Who s calling, please? 
Instead of answering, I thanked him and hung up. The hospital? Could
she have been injured or fallen ill? But the man had spoken without
the least sense of emergency. She s probably at the hospital, he had
said, as easily as he might have said She s at the fish shop . I thought
about a few other possibilities until thinking itself became too
problematic, then I went back to the dorm and stretched out on my bed
reading Lord Jim, which I d borrowed from Nagasawa. When I had
finished it, I went to his room to give it back.
Nagasawa was on his way to the dining hall, so I went with him for
dinner.
 How d the exams go? I asked. The second round of upper level
exams for the Foreign Ministry had been held in August.
 Same as always, said Nagasawa as if it had been nothing.
 You take em, you pass. Group discussions, interviews... like
screwin a chick. 
 In other words, easy, I said. When do they let you know? 
 First week of October. If I pass, I ll buy you a big dinner. 
 So tell me, what kind of guys make it to round two? All superstars 
 
like you? 
 Don t be stupid. They re a bunch of idiots. Idiots or weirdos. I d say
 per cent of the guys who want to be bureaucrats aren t worth shit.
I m not kidding. They can barely read. 
 So why are you trying to join the Foreign Ministry? 
 All kinds of reasons, said Nagasawa. I like the idea of working
overseas, for one. But mainly I want to test my abilities. If I m going
to test myself, I want to do it in the biggest field there is - the nation. I
want to see how high I can climb, how much power I can exercise in
this insanely huge bureaucratic system. Know what I mean? 
 Sounds like a game. 
 It is a game. I don t give a damn about power and money per se.
Really, I don t. I may be a selfish bastard, but I m incredibly cool
about shit like that. I could be a Zen saint. The one thing I do have,
though, is curiosity. I want to see what I can do out there in the big,
tough world. 
 And you have no use for ideals , I suppose? 
 None. Life doesn t require ideals. It requires standards of action. 
 But there are lots of other ways to live, aren t there? I asked.
 You like the way I live, don t you? 
 That s beside the point, I said. I could never get into Tokyo
University; I can t sleep with any girl I want whenever I want to; I m
no great talker; people don t look up to me; I haven t got a girlfriend;
and the future s not going to open up to me when I get a literature BA
from a second-rate private university. What does it matter if I like the
way you live? 
 Are you saying you envy the way I live? 
 No, I don t, I said. I m too used to being who I am. And I don t
really give a damn about Tokyo University or the Foreign Ministry.
The one thing I envy you for is having a terrific girlfriend like
Hatsumi. 
Nagasawa shut up and ate. When dinner was over he said, You know, 
 
Watanabe, I have this feeling like, maybe years or years after
we get out of this place, we re going to meet again somewhere. And
one way or another, I think we re going to have some connection. 
 Sounds like Dickens, I said with a smile.
 I guess it does, he said, smiling back. But my hunches are usually
right. 
The two of us left the dining hall and went out to a bar. We stayed
there drinking until after nine.
 Tell me, Nagasawa, I asked, what is the standard of action in your
life? 
 You ll laugh if I tell you, he said.
 No I won t. 
 All right, he said. To be a gentleman. 
I didn t laugh, but I nearly fell off my chair. To be a gentleman? A
gentleman? 
 You heard me. 
 What does it mean to be a gentleman? How do you define it? 
 A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do but what
he should do. 
 You re the weirdest guy I ve ever met, I said.
 You re the straightest guy I ve ever met, he said. And he paid for us
both.
I went to the following week s drama lecture, but still saw no sign of
Midori Kobayashi. After a quick survey of the room convinced me she
wasn t there, I took my usual seat in the front row and wrote a letter to
Naoko while I waited for the lecturer to arrive. I wrote about my
summer travels - the roads I had walked, the towns I had passed
through, the
people I had met. And every night I thought of you. Now that I can no
longer see you, I realize how much I need you. University is incredibly
boring, but as a matter of self-discipline I am going to all my lectures 
 
and doing all the assignments. Everything seems pointless since you
left. I d like to have a nice, long talk with you. If possible, I d like to
visit your sanatorium and see you for several hours. And, if possible,
I d like to go out walking with you side by side the way we used to.
Please try to answer this letter - even a short note. I won t mind.
I filled four sheets, folded them, slipped them into an envelope, and
addressed it to Naoko care of her family.
By then the lecturer had arrived, wiping the sweat from his brow as he
took the register. He was a small, mournfullooking man who walked
with a metal cane. While not exactly fun, the lectures in his course
were always well prepared and worthwhile. After remarking that the
weather was as hot as ever, he began to talk about the use of the deus
ex machina in Euripides and explained how the concept of god was
different in Euripides than in Aeschylus or Sophocles. He had been
talking for some minutes when the lecture-hall door opened and in
walked Midori. She was wearing a dark blue sports shirt, creamcoloured
cotton trousers and her usual sunglasses. After flashing a
 sorry I m late kind of smile at the professor, she sat down next to
me. Then she took a notebook - my notebook - from her shoulder bag,
and handed it to me. Inside, I found a note: Sorry about Wednesday.
Are you angry?
The lecture was about half over and the professor was drawing a
sketch of a Greek stage on the blackboard when the door opened again
and two students in helmets walked in. They looked like some kind of
comedy team, one tall, thin and pale, the other short, round and dark
with a long beard that didn t suit him. The tall one carried an armful of
political agitation handbills. The short one walked up to the professor
and said, with a degree of politeness, that they would like to use the
second half of his lecture for political debate and hoped that he would
cooperate, adding, The world is full of problems far more urgent and
relevant than Greek tragedy. This was more an announcement than a
request. The professor replied, I rather doubt that the world has
 
problems far more urgent and relevant than Greek tragedy, but you re
not going to listen to anything I have to say, so do what you like. 
Grasping the edge of the table, he set his feet on the floor, picked up
his cane and limped out of the classroom.
While the tall student passed out his handbills, the round one went to
the podium and started lecturing. The handbills were full of the usual
simplistic sloganeering: SMASH
FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS FOR UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT! ,
 MARSHAL ALL FORCES FOR NEW ALL-CAMPUS STRIKE! ,
 CRUSH THE IMPERIAL-EDUCATIONAL-INDUSTRIAL
COMPLEX! 
I had no problem with what they were saying, but the writing was
lame. It had nothing to inspire confidence or arouse the passions. And
the round man s speech was just as bad - the same old tune with
different words. The true enemy of this bunch was not State Power but
Lack of Imagination.
 lets get out of here, said Midori.
I nodded and stood, and the two of us made for the door. The round
man said something to me at that point, but I couldn t catch it. Midori
waved to him and said, See ya later. 
,Hey, are we counter-revolutionaries? Midori asked me when we
were outside. Are we going to be strung upon telephone poles if the
revolution succeeds? 
 lets have lunch first, just in case. 
 Good. There s a place I want to take you to. its a bit far, though. Can
you spare the time? 
 Yeah, I m free until my two o clock class. 
Midori took me by bus to Yotsuya and showed me to a fancy boxedlunch
speciality shop in a sheltered spot just behind the station. The
minute we sat down they served us soup and the lunch of the day in
square, red-lacquered boxes. This was a place worth a bus ride to eat
at.
 
 Great food, I said.
 And cheap, too. I ve been coming here since school. My old school s
just down the street. They were so strict, we had to sneak out to eat
here. They d suspend you if they caught you eating out. 
Without the sunglasses, Midori s eyes looked somewhat sleepier than
they had the last time. When she was not playing with the narrow
silver bracelet on her left wrist, she would be rubbing at the corners of
her eyes with the tip of her little finger.
 Tired? I asked.
 Kind of. I m not getting enough sleep. But I m OK, don t worry, she
said. Sorry about the other day. Something important came up and I
just couldn t get out of it. All of a sudden, in the morning. I thought
about calling you at the restaurant, but I couldn t remember the name,
and I didn t know your home number. Did you wait long? 
 No big deal. I ve got a lot of time on my hands. 
A lot? 
 Way more than I need. I wish I could give you some to help you
sleep. 
Midori rested her cheek on her hand and smiled at me. What a nice
guy you are. 
 Not nice. I just have time to kill, I said. By the way, I called your
house that day and somebody told me you were at the hospital.
Something wrong? 
 You called my house? she asked with a slight wrinkle forming
between her eyebrows. How did you get my number? 
 Looked it up in the student affairs office. Anyone can do that. 
She nodded once or twice and started playing with the bracelet again.
 I never would have thought of that. I suppose I could have looked up
your number. Anyway, about the hospital, I ll tell you next time. I
don t feel like it now. Sorry. 
 That s OK. I didn t mean to pry. 
 No, you re not prying. I m just kind of tired. Like a monkey in the
 
rain. 
 Shouldn t you go home and get some sleep? Not now. lets get out
of here. 
She took me to her old school, a short walk from Yotsuya.
Passing the station, I thought about Naoko and our endless walking. It
had all started from there. I realized that if I hadn t run into Naoko on
the train that Sunday in May, My life would have been very different
from what it was now. But then I changed my mind: no, even if we
hadn t met that day, my life might not have been any different. We
were supposed to meet. If not then, some other time. I didn t have any
basis for thinking this: it was just a feeling.
Midori Kobayashi and I sat on a park bench together, looking at her
old school. Ivy clung to the walls, and pigeons huddled under the
gables, resting their wings. It was a nice, old building with character.
A great oak tree stood in the playground, and a column of white
smoke rose straight up beside it. The fading summer light gave the
smoke a soft and cloudy look.
 Do you know what that smoke is? Midori asked me all of a sudden.
 No idea, I said.
 They re burning sanitary towels. 
 Really? I couldn t think of anything else to say.
 Sanitary towels, tampons, stuff like that, she said with a smile. It is
a girls school. The old caretaker collects them from all the receptacles
and burns them in the incinerator. That s the smoke. 
 Whoa. 
 Yeah, that s what I used to say to myself whenever I was in class and
saw the smoke outside the window. Whoa . Think about it: the school
had almost a thousand girls. So, say of them have started their
periods, and maybe a fifth of them are menstruating at any one time:
 girls. That s girls worth of towels in the receptacles every
day. 
 
 I bet you re right - though I m not sure about the maths. 
 Anyway, its a lot. girls. What do you think it feels like to collect
and burn that much stuff? 
 Can t imagine, I said. How could I have imagined what the old man
was going through? Midori and I went on watching the smoke.
 I really didn t want to go to this school, Midori said. She gave her
head a little shake. I wanted to go to an absolutely ordinary State
school with ordinary people where I could relax and have fun like an
ordinary teenager. But my parents thought it would look good for me
to go to this fancy place. They re the ones who stuck me in here. You
know: that s what happens when you do well in primary school. The
teacher tells your parents With marks like hers, she ought to go
there. So that s where I ended up. I went for six years and I never
liked it. All I could think about was getting out. And you know, I ve
got certificates of merit for never having been late or missed a day of
school. That s how much I hated the place. Get it? 
 No, I don t get it. 
 its because I hated the place so much. I wasn t going to let it beat me.
If I d let it get to me once I d be finished. I was scared I d just keep
slipping down and down. I d crawl to school with a temperature of
. The teacher would ask me if I was sick, but I d say no. When I
left they gave me certificates for perfect attendance and punctuality,
plus a French dictionary. That s why I m taking German now. I didn t
want to owe this school anything. I m not kidding. 
 Why did you hate it so much?
 Did you like your school? 
 Well, no, but I didn t especially hate it, either. I went to an ordinary
State school but I never thought about it one way or another. 
 Well, this school, Midori said, scratching the corner of her eye with
her little finger, had nothing but upper-class girls - almost a thousand
girls with good backgrounds and good exam results. Rich girls. They
had to be rich to survive. High tuition, endless contributions,
 
expensive school trips. For instance, if we went to Kyoto, they d put
us up in a first-class inn and serve us tea ceremony food on lacquer
tables, and they d take us once a year to the most expensive hotel in
Tokyo to study table manners. I mean, this was no ordinary school.
Out of girls in my class, I was the only one from a middle-class
neighbourhood like Toshima. I looked at the school register once to
see where the others lived, and every single one of them was from a
rich area. Well, no, there was one girl from way out in Chiba with the
farmers, so I got kind of friendly with her. And she was really nice.
She invited me to her house, though she apologized for how far I d
have to travel to get there. I went and it was incredible, this giant
piece of land you d have to walk minutes to get around. It had this
amazing garden and two dogs like compact cars they fed steaks to.
But still, this girl felt embarrassed about living out in Chiba. This is a
girl who would be driven to school in a Mercedes Benz if she was
late! By a chauffeur! Like right out of the Green Hornet: the hat, the
white gloves, the whole deal. And still she had this inferiority
complex. Can you believe it? 
I shook my head.
 I was the only one in the whole school who lived in a place like KitaOtsuka
Toshima. And under parent s profession it said bookshop
owner . Everybody in my class thought that was so neat: Oh, you re
so lucky, you can read any book you like and stuff. Of course, they
were thinking of some monster bookshop like Kinokuniya. They could
never have imagined the poor, little Kobayashi Bookshop. The door
creaks open and you see nothing but magazines. The steady sellers are
the women s glossies with illustrated pull-out sections on the latest
sexual techniques. The local housewives buy them and sit at the
kitchen table reading them from cover to cover, and give em a try
when their husbands get home. And they ve got the most incredible
positions! Is this what housewives have on their minds all day? The
comics are the other big-seller: Magazine, Sunday, Jump. And of
 
course the weeklies. So this bookshop is almost all magazines. Oh,
there are a few books, paperbacks, mysteries and swashbucklers and
romances. That s all that sells. And How-To books: how to win at Go,
how to raise bonsai, how to give wedding speeches, how to have sex,
how to stop smoking, you name it. We even sell writing supplies -
stacks of ballpoint pens and pencils and notebooks next to the till. But
that s it. No War and Peace, no Kenzaburo Oe, no Catcher in the Rye.
That s the Kobayashi Bookshop. That s how lucky I am. Do you
think I m lucky? 
 I can just see the place. 
 You know what I mean. Everybody in the neighbourhood comes
there, some of them for years, and we deliver. its a good business,
more than enough to support a family of four; no debts, two daughters
in college, but that s it. Nothing to spare for extras. They should never
have sent me to a school like that. It was a recipe for heartache. I had
to listen to them grumble to me every time the school asked for a
contribution, and I was always scared to death I d run out of money if
I went out with my school friends and they wanted to eat somewhere
expensive. its a miserable way to live. Is your family rich? 
 My family? No, my parents are absolutely ordinary working people,
not rich, not poor. I know its not easy for them to send me to a private
university in Tokyo, but there s just me, so its not that big a deal.
They don t give me much to live on, so I work part-time. We live in a
typical house with a little garden and our car is a Toyota Corolla. 
 What s your job like? 
 I work in a Shinjuku record shop three nights a week. its easy. I just
sit there and mind the shop. 
 You re joking? said Midori. I don t know, just looking at you I sort
of assumed you d never been hard up. 
 its true. I have never been hard up. Not that I have tons of money,
either. I m like most people. 
 Well, most people in my school were rich, said Midori, palms
 
resting on her lap. That was the problem. 
 So now you ll have plenty of chances to see a world without that
problem. More than you want to, maybe. 
 Hey, tell me, what do you think the best thing is about being rich? 
 I don t know. 
 Being able to say you don t have any money. Like, if I suggested to a
school friend we do something, she could say, Sorry, I don t have any
money . Which is something I could never say if the situation was
reversed. If I said I don t have any money , it would really mean I
don t have any money . its sad. Like, if a pretty girl says I look
terrible today, I don t want to go out, that s OK, but if an ugly girl says
the same thing people laugh at her. That s what the world was like for
me. For six years, until last year. 
 You ll get over it. 
 I hope so. University is such a relief! its full of ordinary people. 
She smiled with the slightest curl of her lip and smoothed her short
hair with the palm of her hand.
 Do you have a job? I asked.
 Yeah, I write map notes. You know those little pamphlets that come
with maps? With descriptions of the different neighbourhoods and
population figures and points of interest. Here there s so-and-so hiking
trail or such-and-such a legend, or some special flower or bird. I write
the texts for those things. its so easy! Takes no time at all. I can write
a whole booklet with a day of looking things up in the library. All you
have to do is master a couple of secrets and all kinds of work comes
your way. 
 What kind of secrets? 
 Like you put in some little something that nobody else has written
and the people at the map company think you re a literary genius and
send you more work. It doesn t have to be anything at all, just some
tiny thing. Like, say, when they built a dam in this particular valley,
the water covered over a village, but still every spring the birds come 
 
up from the south and you can see them flying over the lake. Put in
one little episode like that and people love it, its so graphic and
sentimental. The usual part-timer doesn t bother with stuff like that,
but I can make decent money with what I write. 
 Yeah, but you have to find those episodes . 
 True, said Midori with a tilt of her head. But if you re looking for
them, you usually find them. And if you don t, you can always make
up something harmless. 
 Aha! 
 Peace, said Midori.
She said she wanted to hear about my dormitory, so I told her the
usual stories about the raising of the flag and Storm Trooper s radio
callisthenics. Storm Trooper especially made Midori laugh, as he
seemed to do with everyone. She said she thought it would be fun to
have a look at the dorm. There was nothing fun about the place, I told
her: Just a few hundred guys in grubby rooms, drinking and
wanking. 
 Does that include you? 
 It includes every man on the face of the earth, I explained.
 Girls have periods and boys wank. Everybody. 
 Even ones with girlfriends? I mean, sex partners. 
 its got nothing to do with that. The Keio student living next door to
me has a wank before every date. He says it relaxes him. 
 I don t know much about that stuff. I was in a girls school so long. 
 I guess the glossy women s magazines don t go into that. 
 Not at all! she said, laughing. Anyway, Watanabe, would you have
some time this Sunday? Are you free? 
 I m free every Sunday. Until six, at least. That s when I go to work. 
 Why don t you visit me? At the Kobayashi Bookshop. The shop itself
will be closed, but I have to hang around there alone all day. I might
be getting an important phone call. How about lunch? I ll cook for 
 
you. 
 I d like that, I said.
Midori tore a page from a notebook and drew a detailed map of the
way to her place. She used a red pen to make a large X where the
house stood.
 You can t miss it. There s a big sign: Kobayashi Bookshop . Come at
noon. I ll have lunch ready. 
I thanked her and put the map in my pocket. I d better get back to
campus now, I said. My German lecture starts at two. Midori said
she had somewhere to go and took the train from Yotsuya.
Sunday morning I got up at nine, shaved, did my laundry and hung out
the clothes on the roof. It was a beautiful day. The first smell of
autumn was in the air. Red dragonflies flitted around the quadrangle,
chased by neighbourhood kids swinging nets. With no wind, the
Rising Sun flag hung limp on its pole. I put on a freshly ironed shirt
and walked from the dorm to the tram stop. A student neighbourhood
on a Sunday morning: the streets were dead, virtually empty, most
shops closed. What few sounds there were echoed with special clarity.
A girl wearing sabots clip-clopped across the asphalt roadway, and
next to the tram shelter four or five kids were throwing rocks at a row
of empty cans. A florist s was open, so I went in and bought some
daffodils. Daffodils in autumn: that was strange. But I had always
liked that particular flower.
Three old women were the only passengers on the Sunday morning
tram. They all looked at me and my flowers. One of them gave me a
smile. I smiled back. I sat in the last seat and watched the ancient
houses passing close to the window. The tram almost touched the
overhanging eaves. The laundry deck of one house had ten potted
tomato plants, next to which a big black cat lay stretched out in the
sun. In the garden of another house, a little girl was blowing soap
bubbles. I heard an Ayumi Ishida song coming from somewhere, and 
 
could even catch the smell of curry cooking. The tram snaked its way
through this private back-alley world. A few more passengers got on
at stops along the way, but the three old women went on talking
intently about something, huddled together face-to-face.
I got off near Otsuka Station and followed Midori s map down a broad
street without much to look at. None of the shops along the way
seemed to be doing very well, housed as they were in old buildings
with gloomy-looking interiors and faded writing on some of the signs.
Judging from the age and style of the buildings, this area had been
spared the wartime air raids, leaving whole blocks intact. A few of the
places had been entirely rebuilt, but just about all had been enlarged or
repaired in places, and it was these additions that tended to look
shabbier than the old buildings themselves.
The whole atmosphere of the place suggested that most of the original
residents had become fed up with the cars, the filthy air, the noise and
high rents and moved to the suburbs, leaving only cheap flats and
company apartments
and hard-to-sell shops and a few stubborn people who clung to old
family properties. Everything looked blurred and grimy as though
wrapped in a haze of exhaust fumes.
Ten minutes walk down this street brought me to a corner petrol
station, where I turned right into a small block of shops, in the middle
of which hung the sign for the Kobayashi Bookshop. True, it was not
a big shop, but neither was it as small as Midori s description had led
me to believe. It was just a typical neighbourhood bookshop, the same
kind I used to run to on the very day the boys comics came out. A
nostalgic mood overtook me as I stood in front of the place.
The whole front of the shop was sealed off by a big, rolldown metal
shutter inscribed with a magazine advertisement:
 WEEKLY BUNSHUN SOLD HERE THURSDAYS . I still had 
minutes before noon, but I didn t want to kill time wandering through
the block with a handful of daffodils, so I pressed the doorbell beside 
 
the shutter and stepped a few paces back to wait. Fifteen seconds went
by without an answer, and I was debating with myself whether to ring
again when I heard a window clatter open above me. I looked up to
see Midori leaning out and waving.
 Come in, she yelled. Lift the shutter. 
 Is it OK? I m kind of early, I shouted back.
 No problem. Come upstairs. I m busy in the kitchen. She pulled the
window closed.
The shutter made a terrific grinding noise as I raised it three feet from
the ground, ducked under, and lowered it again. The shop was pitch
black inside. I managed to feel my way to the back stairway, tripping
over bound piles of magazines. I unlaced my shoes and climbed the
stairs to the living area. The interior of the house was dark and
gloomy. The stairs led to a simple parlour with a sofa and easy chairs.
It was a small room with dim light coming in the window, reminiscent
of old Polish films. There was a kind of storage area on the left and
what looked like the door to a bathroom. I had to climb the steep
stairway with care to reach the second floor, but once I got there, it
was so much brighter than the first that I felt greatly relieved.
 Over here, called Midori s voice. To the right at the top of the stairs
was what looked like a dining room, and beyond that a kitchen. The
house itself was old, but the kitchen seemed to have been refitted
recently with new cabinets and a bright, shiny sink and taps. Midori
was preparing food. A pot was bubbling, and the air was filled with
the smell of grilled fish.
 There s beer in the fridge, she said with a glance in my direction.
 Have a seat while I finish this. I took a can and sat at the kitchen
table. The beer was so cold it might have been in the fridge for the
best part of a year. On the table lay a small, white ashtray, a
newspaper, and a soy sauce dispenser. There was also a notepad and
pen, with a phone number and some figures on the pad that seemed to
be calculations connected with shopping.
 
 I should have this done in ten minutes, she said. Can you stand the
wait? 
 Of course I can, I said.
 Get good and hungry, then. I m making a lot. 
I sipped my beer and focused on Midori as she went on cooking, her
back to me. She worked with quick, nimble movements, handling no
fewer than four cooking procedures at once. Over here she tasted a
boiled dish, and the next second she was at the cutting board, rat-tattatting,
then she took something out of the fridge and piled it in a
bowl, and before I knew it she had washed a pot she had finished
using. From the back she looked like an Indian percussionist - ringing
a bell, tapping a block, striking a water-buffalo bone, each movement
precise and economical, with perfect balance. I watched in awe.
 Let me know if there s something I can do, I said, just in case.
 That s OK, said Midori with a smile in my direction. I m used to
doing everything alone. She wore slim blue jeans and a navy T-shirt.
An Apple Records logo nearly covered the back of the shirt. She had
extremely narrow hips, as if she had somehow skipped puberty when
the hips grow fuller, and this gave her a far more androgynous look
than most girls have in slim jeans. The light pouring in from the
kitchen window gave her figure a kind of vague outline.
 You really didn t have to put together such a feast, I said.
 its no feast, answered Midori without turning my way. I was too
busy to do any real shopping yesterday. I m just throwing together a
few things I had in the fridge. Really, don t worry. Besides, it s
Kobayashi family tradition to treat guests well. I don t know what it is,
but we like to entertain. its inborn; a kind of sickness. Not that we re
especially nice or people love us or anything, but if somebody shows
up we have to treat them well no matter what. We ve all got the same
personality flaw, for better or worse. Take my father, for example. He
hardly drinks, but the house is full of alcohol. What for? To serve
guests! So don t hold back: drink all the beer you want. 
 
 Thanks, I said.
It suddenly dawned on me that I had left the daffodils downstairs. I
had set them aside while unlacing my shoes. I slipped back downstairs
and found the ten bright blossoms lying in the gloom. Midori took a
tall, slim glass from the cupboard and arranged the flowers in it.
 I love daffodils, said Midori. I once sang Seven Daffodils in the
school talent contest. Do you know it? Of course. 
 We had a folk group. I played guitar. 
She sang Seven Daffodils as she arranged the food on plates.
Midori s cooking was far better than I had expected: an amazing
assortment of fried, pickled, boiled and roasted dishes using eggs,
mackerel, fresh greens, aubergine, mushrooms, radishes, and sesame
seeds, all cooked in the delicate Kyoto style.
 This is great, I said with my mouth full.
 OK, tell me the truth now, Midori said. You weren t expecting my
cooking to be very good, were you - judging from the way I look? 
 Not really, I said honestly.
 You re from the Kansai region, so you like this kind of delicate
flavouring, right? 
 Don t tell me you changed style especially for me? 
 Don t be ridiculous! I wouldn t go to that much trouble. No, we
always eat like this. 
 So your mother - or your father - is from Kansai? 
 Nope. My father was born in Tokyo and my mother s from
Fukushima. There s not a single Kansai person among my relatives.
We re all from Tokyo or northern Kanto. 
 I don t get it, I said. How can you make this per cent authentic
Kansai-style food? Did somebody teach you? 
 Well, its kind of a long story, she said, eating a slice of fried egg.
 My mother hated housework of any kind, and she almost never
 
cooked anything. And we had the business to think about, so it was
always Today we re so busy, lets get a take-away or lets just buy
some croquettes at the butcher s and so on. I hated that even when I
was little, I mean like cooking a big pot of curry and eating the same
thing three days in a row. So then one day - I was in the fifth year of
school - I decided I was going to cook for the family and do it right. I
went to the big Kinokuniya in Shinjuku and bought the biggest,
handsomest cookbook I could find, and I mastered it from cover to
cover: how to choose a cutting board, how to sharpen knives, how to
bone a fish, how to shave fresh bonito flakes, everything. It turned out
the author of the book was from the Kansai, so all my cooking is
Kansai style. 
 You mean you learned how to make all this stuff from a book?! 
 I saved my money and went to eat the real thing. That s how I learned
flavourings. I ve got pretty good intuition. I m hopeless as a logical
thinker, though. 
 its amazing you could teach yourself to cook so well without having
anyone to show you. 
 It wasn t easy, said Midori with a sigh, growing up in a house
where nobody gave a damn about food. I d tell them I wanted to buy
decent knives and pots and they wouldn t give me the money. What
we have now is good enough, they d say, but I d tell them that was
crazy, you couldn t bone a fish with the kind of flimsy knives we had
at home, so they d say, What the hell do you have to bone a fish for? 
It was hopeless trying to communicate with them. I saved up my
allowance and bought real professional knives and pots and strainers
and stuff. Can you believe it? Here s a -year-old girl pinching
pennies to buy strainers and whetstones and tempura pots when all the
other girls at school are getting huge allowances and buying beautiful
dresses and shoes. Don t you feel sorry
for me? 
 
I nodded, swallowing a mouthful of clear soup with fresh junsai
greens.
 When I was in the sixth-form, I had to have an egg fryer - a long,
narrow pan for making this dashimaki-style fried egg we re eating. I
bought it with money I was supposed to use for a new bra. For three
months I had to live with one bra. Can you believe it? I d wash my bra
at night, go crazy trying to dry it, and wear it the next day. And if it
didn t dry right, I had a tragedy to deal with. The saddest thing in the
world is wearing a damp bra. I d walk around with tears pouring from
my eyes. To think I was suffering this for an egg fryer! 
 I see what you mean, I said with a laugh.
 I know I shouldn t say this, but actually it was kind of a relief to me
when my mother died. I could run the family budget my way. I could
buy what I liked. So now I ve got a relatively complete set of cooking
utensils. My father doesn t know a thing about the budget. 
 When did your mother die? 
 Two years ago. Cancer. Brain tumour. She was in the hospital a year
and a half. It was terrible. She suffered from beginning to end. Finally
lost her mind; had to be doped up all the time, and still she couldn t
die, though when she did it was practically a mercy killing. its the
worst kind of death - the person s in agony, the family goes through
hell. It took every yen we had. I mean, they d give her these shots -
bang, bang, x , a pop, and she had to have round-the-clock care.
I was so busy with her, I couldn t study, had to delay university for a
year. And as if that weren t bad enough - She stopped in midsentence,
put her chopsticks down and sighed. How did this
conversation turn so dark all of a sudden? 
 It started with the business about the bras, I said.
 So anyway, eat your eggs and think about what I just told you, 
Midori said with a solemn expression.
Eating my portion filled me up, but Midori ate far less. Cooking ruins
my appetite, she said. She cleared the table, wiped up the crumbs, 
 
brought out a box of Marlboro, put one in her mouth and lit up with a
match. Taking hold of the glass with the daffodils, she studied the
blooms for a while.
 I don t think I ll put them in a vase, she said. If I leave them like
this, its like I just happened to pick them by a pond somewhere and
threw them into the first thing that came to hand. 
 I did pick them by the pond at Otsuka Station, I said.
She chuckled. You are a weird one. Making jokes with a perfectly
straight face. 
Chin in hand, she smoked half her cigarette, then crushed it out in the
ashtray. She rubbed her eyes as if smoke had got into them.
 Girls are supposed to be a little more elegant when they put out their
cigarettes. You did that like a lumberjack. You shouldn t just cram it
down in the ashtray but press it lightly around the edges of the ash.
Then it doesn t get all bent up. And girls are never supposed to blow
smoke through their noses. And most girls wouldn t talk about how
they wore the same bra for three months when they re eating alone
with a man. 
 I am a lumberjack, Midori said, scratching next to her nose. I can
never manage to be chic. I try it as a joke sometimes, but it never
sticks. Any more critiques for me? 
 Girls don t smoke Marlboro, I said.
 What s the difference? One tastes as bad as another. She turned the
red Marlboro packet over and over in her hand. I started smoking last
month. its not as if I was dying for tobacco or anything. I just sort of
felt like it. Why s that? I asked.
She pressed her hands together on the table and thought about it for a
while. What s the difference? You don t smoke? Stopped in June, I
said.
 How come? 
 It was a pain. I hated running out of smokes in the middle of the
night. I don t like having something control me that way. 
 
 You re very clear about what you like and what you don t like, she
said.
 Maybe so, I said. Maybe that s why people don t like me. Never
have. 
 its because you show it, she said. You make it obvious you don t
care whether people like you or not. That makes some people angry. 
She spoke in a near mumble, chin in hand. But I like talking to you.
The way you talk is so unusual. I don t like having something control
me that way . 
I helped her wash the dishes. Standing next to her, I wiped as she
washed, and stacked everything on the worktop. So, I said, your
family s out today? 
 My mother s in her grave. She died two years ago. Yeah, I heard
that part. 
 My sister s on a date with her fiancé. Probably on a drive. Her
boyfriend works for some car company. He loves cars. I don t love
cars. 
Midori stopped talking and washed. I stopped talking and wiped.
 And then there s my father, she said after some time had gone by.
 Right, I said.
 He went off to Uruguay in June last year and he s been there ever
since. 
 Uruguay?! Why Uruguay? 
 He was thinking of settling there, believe it or not. An old army
buddy of his has a farm there. All of a sudden, my father announces
he s going, too, that there s no limit to what he can do in Uruguay, and
he gets on a plane and that s that. We tried hard to stop him, like,
 Why do you want to go to a place like that? You can t speak the
language, you ve hardly ever left Tokyo. But he wouldn t listen.
Losing my mother was a real shock to him. I mean, it made him a 
 
little cuckoo. That s how much he loved her. Really. 
There was not much I could say in reply. I stared at Midori with my
mouth open.
 What do you think he said to my sister and me when our mother
died? I would much rather have lost the two of you than her. It
knocked the wind out of me. I couldn t say a word. You know what I
mean? You just can t say something like that. OK, he lost the woman
he loved, his partner for life. I understand the pain, the sadness, the
heartbreak. I pity him. But you don t tell the daughters you fathered
 You should have died in her place . I mean, that s just too terrible.
Don t you agree? 
 Yeah, I see your point. 
 That s one wound that will never go away, she said, shaking her
head. But anyway, everyone in my family s a little different. We ve
all got something just a little bit strange. 
 So it seems, I said.
 Still, it is wonderful for two people to love each other, don t you
think? I mean, for a man to love his wife so much he can tell his
daughters they should have died in her place
 Maybe so, now that you put it that way. 
 And then he dumps the two of us and runs off to Uruguay. 
I wiped another dish without replying. After the last one, Midori put
everything back in the cabinets.
 So, have you heard from your father? I asked.
 One postcard. In March. But what does he write? its hot here or
 The fruit s not as good as I expected . Stuff like that. I mean, give me
a break! One stupid picture of a donkey! He s lost his marbles! He
didn t even say whether he d met that guy - that friend of his or
whatever. He did add near the end that once he s settled he ll send for
me and my sister, but not a word since then. And he never answers our
letters. 
 What would you do if your father said Come to Uruguay ? 
 
 I d go and have a look around at least. It might be fun. My sister says
she d absolutely refuse. She can t stand dirty things and dirty places. 
 Is Uruguay dirty? 
 Who knows? She thinks it is. Like the roads are full of donkey shit
and its swarming with flies, and the toilets don t work, and lizards and
scorpions crawl all over the place. She maybe saw a film like that. She
can t stand flies, either. All she wants to do is drive through scenic
places in fancy cars. 
 No way. 
 I mean, what s wrong with Uruguay? I d go. So who s running the
shop? 
 My sister, but she hates it. We have an uncle in the neighbourhood
who helps out and makes deliveries. And I help when I have time. A
bookshop s not exactly hard labour, so we can manage. If it gets to be
too much, we ll sell the place. 
 Do you like your father? 
Midori shook her head. Not especially. So how can you follow him
to Uruguay? 
 I believe in him. 
 Believe in him? 
 yeah, I m not that fond of him, but I believe in my father.
How can I not believe in a man who gives up his house, his kids, his
work, and runs off to Uruguay from the shock of losing his wife? Do
you see what I mean? 
I sighed. Sort of, but not really. 
Midori laughed and patted me on the back. Never mind, she said. It
really doesn t matter. 
One weird thing after another came up that Sunday afternoon. A fire
broke out near Midori s house and, when we went up to the third-floor
laundry deck to watch, we sort of kissed. It sounds stupid when I put it
like that, but that was how things worked out.
We were drinking coffee after the meal and talking about the
 
university when we heard sirens. They got louder and louder and
seemed to be increasing in number. Lots of people ran past the shop,
some of them shouting. Midori went to a room facing the street,
opened the window and looked down. Wait here a minute, she said
and disappeared; after which I heard feet pounding up stairs.
I sat there drinking coffee alone and trying to remember where
Uruguay was. lets see, Brazil was over here, and Venezuela there,
and Colombia somewhere over here, but I couldn t recall the location
of Uruguay. A few minutes later Midori came down and urged me to
hurry somewhere with her. I followed her to the end of the hall and
climbed a steep, narrow stairway to a wooden deck with bamboo
laundry poles. The deck was higher than most of the surrounding
rooftops and gave a good view of the neighbourhood. Huge clouds of
black smoke shot up from a place three or four houses away and
flowed with the breeze out towards the high street. A burning smell
filled the air.
 its Sakamoto s place, said Midori, leaning over the railing. They
used to make traditional door fittings and stuff. They went out of
business some time ago, though. 
I leaned over the railing with her and strained to see what was going
on. A three-storey building blocked our view of the fire, but there
seemed to be three or four fire engines over there working on the
blaze. No more than two of them could squeeze into the narrow lane
where the house was burning, the rest standing by on the high street.
The usual crowd of gawkers filled the area.
 Hey, maybe you should gather your valuables together and get ready
to evacuate this place, I said to Midori. The wind s blowing the other
way now, but it could change any time, and you ve got a petrol station
right there. I ll help you pack. 
 What valuables? said Midori.
 Well, you must have something you d want to save - bankbooks,
seals, legal papers, stuff like that. Emergency cash. Forget it. I m not 
 
running away. 
 Even if this place burns? 
 You heard me. I don t mind dying. 
I looked her in the eye, and she looked straight at me. I couldn t tell if
she was serious or joking. We stayed like that for a while, and soon I
stopped worrying.
 OK, I said. I get it. I ll stay with you. 
 You ll die with me? Midori asked with shining eyes.
 No way, I said. I ll run if it gets dangerous. If you want to die, you
can do it alone. 
 Cold-hearted bastard! 
 I m not going to die with you just because you made lunch for me. Of
course, if it had been dinner... 
 Oh, well... Anyway, lets stay here and watch for a while. We can
sing songs. And if something bad happens, we can think about it
then. 
 Sing songs? 
Midori brought two floor pillows, four cans of beer and a guitar from
downstairs. We drank and watched the black smoke rising. She
strummed and sang. I asked her if she didn t think this might anger the
neighbours. Drinking beer and singing while you watched a local fire
from the laundry deck didn t seem like the most admirable behaviour I
could think of.
 Forget it, she said. We never worry about what the neighbours
might think. 
She sang some of the folk songs she had played with her group. I
would have been hard pressed to say she was good, but she did seem
to enjoy her own music. She went through all the old standards -
 Lemon Tree , Puff (The Magic Dragon) , Five Hundred Miles ,
 Where Have All the Flowers Gone? , Michael, Row the Boat
Ashore . At first she tried to get me to sing bass harmony, but I was so
bad she gave up and sang alone to her heart s content. I worked on my 
 
beer and listened to her sing and kept an eye on the fire. It flared up
and died down several times. People were yelling and giving orders. A
newspaper helicopter clattered overhead, took photographs and flew
away. I worried that we might be in the picture. A policeman
screamed through a loudspeaker for bystanders to get back. A little kid
was crying for his mother. Glass shattered somewhere. Before long
the wind began shifting unpredictably, and white ash flakes fell out of
the air around us, but Midori went on sipping and singing. After she
had gone through most of the songs she knew, she sang an odd one
that she said she had written herself:
I d love to cook a stew for you,
But I have no pot.
I d love to knit a scarf for you,
But I have no wool.
I d love to write a poem for you,
But I have no pen.
 its called I Have Nothing , Midori announced. It was a truly
terrible song, both words and music.
I listened to this musical mess thinking that the house would blow
apart in the explosion if the petrol station caught fire. Tired of singing,
Midori put down her guitar and slumped against my shoulder like a
cat in the sun.
 How did you like my song? she asked.
I answered cautiously, It was unique and original and very expressive
of your personality. 
 Thanks, she said. The theme is that I have nothing. Yeah, I kind
of thought so. 
 You know, she said, when my mother died... Yeah? 
 I didn t feel the least bit sad. 
 Oh. 
 And I didn t feel sad when my father left, either. Really? 
 
 its true. Don t you think I m terrible? Cold-hearted? I m sure you
have your reasons. 
 My reasons. Hmm. Things were pretty complicated in this house. But
I always thought, I mean, they re my mother and father, of course I d
be sad if they died or I never saw them again. But it didn t happen that
way. I didn t feel anything. Not sad, not lonely. I hardly even think of
them. Sometimes I ll have dreams, though. Sometimes my mother will
be glaring at me out of the darkness and she ll accuse me of being
happy she died. But I m not happy she died. I m just not very sad. And
to tell the truth, I never shed a single tear. I cried all night when my
cat died, though, when I was little. 
Why so much smoke? I wondered. I couldn t see flames, and the
burning area didn t seem to be spreading. There was just this column
of smoke winding up into the sky. What could have kept burning so
long?
 But I m not the only one to blame, Midori continued. its true I have
a cold streak. I recognize that. But if they - my father and mother - had
loved me a little more, I would have been able to feel more - to feel
real sadness, for example. 
 Do you think you weren t loved enough? 
She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod.
 Somewhere between not enough and not at all . I was always
hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get
my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn t take any more. Just
once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If I tried to
cuddle up and beg for something, they d just shove me away and yell
at me. No! That costs too much! its all I ever heard. So I made up
my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally
 days a year. I was still in primary school at the time, but
I made up my mind once and for all. 
 Wow, I said. And did your search pay off? 
 That s the hard part, said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a 
 
while, thinking. I guess I ve been waiting so long I m looking for
perfection. That makes it tough. 
 Waiting for the perfect love? 
 No, even I know better than that. I m looking for selfishness. Perfect
selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortbread.
And you stop everything you re doing and run out and buy it for me.
And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and
hold this strawberry shortbread out to me. And I say I don t want it
any more and throw it out of the window. That s what I m looking
for. 
 I m not sure that has anything to do with love, I said with some
amazement.
 It does, she said. You just don t know it. There are times in a girl s
life when things like that are incredibly important. 
 Things like throwing strawberry shortbread out of the window? 
 Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. Now I
see, Midori. What a fool I ve been! I should have known that you
would lose your desire for strawberry shortbread. I have all the
intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to
you, I ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like?
Chocolate mousse? Cheesecake? 
 So then what? 
 So then I d give him all the love he deserves for what he s done. 
 Sounds crazy to me. 
 Well, to me, that s what love is. Not that anyone can understand me,
though. Midori gave her head a little shake against my shoulder. For
a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly.
From something like that or it doesn t begin at all. 
 I ve never met a girl who thinks like you. 
 A lot of people tell me that, she said, digging at a cuticle. But it s
the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I m just telling you what
I believe. its never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is
 
different from other people s. I m not trying to be different. But when I
speak out honestly, everybody thinks I m kidding or play-acting.
When that happens, I feel like everything s such a pain! 
 And you want to let yourself die in a fire? 
 Hey, no, that s different. its just a matter of curiosity. 
 What? Dying in a fire? 
 No, I just wanted to see how you d react, Midori said. But, I m not
afraid of dying. Really. Like here, I d just be overcome with smoke
and lose consciousness and die before I knew it. That doesn t frighten
me at all, compared to the way I saw my mother and a few relatives
die. All my relatives die after suffering from some terrible illness. It s
in the blood, I guess. its always a long, long process, and at the end
you almost can t tell whether the person is alive or dead. All that s left
is pain and suffering. 
Midori put a Marlboro between her lips and lit it.
 That s the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death
slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it
everything s dark and you can t see, and the people around you think
of you as more dead than alive. I hate that. I couldn t stand it. 
Another half hour and the fire was out. They had apparently kept it
from spreading and prevented any injuries. All but one of the fire
engines returned to base, and the crowd dispersed, buzzing with
conversation. One police car remained to direct the traffic, its blue
light spinning. Two crows had settled on nearby lamp-posts to observe
the activity below.
Midori seemed drained of energy. Limp, she stared at the sky and
barely spoke.
 Tired? I asked.
 Not really, she said. I just sort of let myself go limp and spaced out.
First time in a long time. 
 
She looked into my eyes, and I into hers. I put my arm around her and
kissed her. The slightest twinge went through her shoulders, and then
she relaxed and closed her eyes for several seconds. The early autumn
sun cast the shadow of her lashes on her cheek, and I could see it
trembling in outline.
It was a soft and gentle kiss, one not meant to lead beyond itself. I
would probably not have kissed Midori that day if we hadn t spent the
afternoon on the laundry deck in the sun, drinking beer and watching a
fire, and she no doubt felt the same. After a long time of watching the
glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies and other
things, we had felt something warm and close, and we both probably
wanted, half-consciously, to preserve that mood in some form. It was
that kind of kiss. But as with all kisses, it was not without a certain
element of danger.
The first to speak was Midori. She held my hand and told me, with
what seemed like some difficulty, that she was seeing someone. I said
that I had sensed as much.
 Do you have a girl you like? she asked.
 I do, I said.
 But you re always free on Sundays, right? its very complicated, I
said.
And then I realized that the brief spell of the early autumn afternoon
had vanished.
At five I said I had to go to work and suggested that Midori come with
me for a snack. She said she had to stay home in case the phone rang.
 I hate waiting at home all day for a call. When I spend the day alone,
I feel as if my flesh is rotting little by little - rotting and melting until
there s nothing left but a green puddle that gets sucked down into the
earth. And all that stays behind are my clothes. That s how it feels to
me, waiting indoors all day. I ll keep you company next time you
have to wait for a
 
call, I said. As long as lunch is included. 
 Great, she said. I ll arrange another fire for dessert. 
Midori didn t come to the next day s History of Drama lecture. I went
to the cafeteria afterwards and ate a cold, tasteless lunch alone. Then I
sat in the sun and observed the campus scene. Two women students
next to me were carrying on a long conversation, standing the whole
time. One cradled a tennis racquet to her breast with all the loving care
she might give a baby, while the other held some books and a Leonard
Bernstein LP Both were pretty and obviously enjoying their
discussion. From the direction of the student club building came the
sound of a bass voice practising scales. Here and there stood groups of
four or five students expressing whatever opinions they happened to
hold, laughing and shouting to one another. There were skateboarders
in the car park. A professor with a leather briefcase in his arms
crossed the car park, avoiding them. In the quadrangle a helmeted girl
student knelt on the ground, painting huge characters on a sign with
something about American imperialism invading Asia. It was the
usual midday university scene, but as I sat watching it with renewed
attention, I became aware of something. In his or her own way,
everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really
happy or just looked it, I couldn t tell. But they did look happy on this
pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a
kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was
not truly part of the scene.
Come to think of it, what scene had I been a part of in recent years?
The last one I could remember was a pool hall near the harbour, where
Kizuki and I played pool together in a spirit of total friendship. Kizuki
died that night, and ever since a cold, stiffening wind had come
between me and the world. This boy Kizuki: what had his existence
meant to me? To this question I could find no answer. All I knew -
with absolute certainty - was that Kizuki s death had robbed me for 
 
ever of some part of my adolescence. But what that meant, and what
would come of it, were far beyond my understanding.
I sat there for a long time, watching the campus and the people
passing through it, and hoping, too, that I might see Midori. But she
never appeared, and when the noon break ended, I went to the library
to prepare for my German class.
Nagasawa came to my room that Saturday afternoon and suggested we
have one of our nights on the town. He would arrange an overnight
pass for me. I said I would go. I had been feeling especially muddleheaded
for the past week and was ready to sleep with anybody, it
didn t matter who.
Late in the afternoon I showered and shaved and put on fresh clothes -
a polo shirt and cotton jacket - then had dinner with Nagasawa in the
dining hall and the two of us caught a bus to Shinjuku. We walked
around a lively area for a while, then went to one of our usual bars and
sat there waiting for a likely pair of girls. The girls tended to come in
pairs to this bar - except on this particular evening. We stayed there
almost two hours, sipping whisky and sodas at a rate that kept us
sober. Finally, two friendly-looking girls took seats at the bar,
ordering a gimlet and a margarita. Nagasawa approached them straight
away, but they said they were waiting for their boyfriends. Still, the
four of us enjoyed a pleasant chat until their dates showed up.
Nagasawa took me to another bar to try our luck, a small
place in a kind of cul-de-sac, where most of the customers were
already drunk and noisy. A group of three girls occupied a table at the
back. We joined them and enjoyed a little conversation, the five of us
getting into a nice mood, but when Nagasawa suggested we go
somewhere else for a drink, the girls said it was almost curfew time
and they had to go back to their dorms. So much for our luck . We
tried one more place with the same result. For some reason, the girls
were just not coming our way.
 
At. Nagasawa was ready to give up. Sorry I dragged you around
for nothing, he said.
 No problem, I said. It was worth it to me just to see you have your
off days sometimes, too. 
 Maybe once a year, he admitted.
In fact, I didn t care about getting laid any more. Wandering around
Shinjuku on a noisy Saturday night, observing the mysterious energy
created by a mixture of sex and alcohol, I began to feel that my own
desire was a puny thing.
 What are you going to do now, Watanabe? 
 Maybe go to an all-nighter, I said. I haven t seen a film in ages. 
 I ll be going to Hatsumi s then, said Nagasawa. Do you mind? 
 No way, I said. Why should I mind? 
 If you d like, I could introduce you to a girl who d let you spend the
night. 
 Nah, I really am in the mood for a film. 
 Sorry, said Nagasawa. I ll make it up to you some time. And he
disappeared into the crowd. I went into a fast food place for a
cheeseburger and some coffee to kill the buzz, then went to see The
Graduate in an old rep house. I didn t think it was all that good, but I
didn t have anything better to do, so I stayed and watched it again.
Emerging from the cinema at four in the morning, I wandered along
the chilly streets of Shinjuku, thinking.
When I tired of walking, I went to an all-night café and waited with a
book and a cup of coffee for the morning trains to start. Before long,
the place became crowded with people who, like me, were waiting for
those first trains. A waiter came to ask me apologetically if I would
mind sharing my table. I said it would be all right. It didn t matter to
me who sat across from me: I was just reading a book.
My companions at the table turned out to be two girls. They looked
about my age. Neither of them was a knockout, but they weren t bad.
Both were reserved in the way they dressed and made up: they were 
 
definitely not the type to be wandering around Shinjuku at five in the
morning. I guessed they had just happened to miss the last train. They
seemed relieved to sit with me: I was neatly dressed, had shaved in the
evening, and to cap it all I was absorbed in Thomas Mann s The Magic
Mountain.
One of the girls was on the large side. She wore a grey parka and
white jeans, carried a large vinyl pocketbook, and had large, shellshaped
earrings. Her friend was a small girl with glasses. She wore a
blue cardigan over a checked shirt and had a turquoise ring. The
smaller one had a habit of taking off her glasses and pressing her eyes
with her fingertips.
Both girls ordered cafe au lait and cake, which it took them some time
to consume as they carried on what seemed like a serious discussion in
hushed tones. The large girl tilted her head several times, while the
small one shook hers just as often. I couldn t make out what they were
saying because of the loud stereo playing Marvin Gaye or the Bee
Gees or something, but it seemed the small girl was angry or upset and
the large girl was trying to comfort her. I alternated passages of my
book with glances in their direction.
Clutching her shoulder bag to her breast, the smaller girl went to the
ladies , at which point her companion spoke to me.
 I m sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you might know of ally bars
in the neighbourhood that would still be serving drinks? 
Taken off guard, I set my book aside and asked, After five o clock in
the morning? 
 Yes... If you ask me, at. in the morning, most people are on
their way home to get sober and go to bed. 
 Yes, I realize that, she said, a bit embarrassed, but my friend says
she has to have a drink. its kind of important. 
 There s probably nothing much you can do but go home and have a
drink. 
 But I have to catch a. train to Nagano. 
 
 So find a vending machine and a nice place to sit. its about all you
can do. 
 I know this is asking a lot, but could you come with us? Two girls
alone really can t do something like that. 
I had had a number of unusual experiences in Shinjuku, but I had
never before been invited to have a drink with two strange girls at. 
in the morning. Refusing would have been more trouble than it was
worth, and time was no problem, so I bought an armload of sake and
snacks from a nearby machine, and the three of us went to an empty
car park by the west exit of the station to hold an impromptu drinking
party.
The girls told me they had become friends working at a travel agency.
Both of them had graduated from college this year and started their
first jobs. The small one had a boyfriend she had been seeing for a
year, but had recently discovered he was sleeping with another girl
and she had taken it hard. The larger one was supposed to have left for
the mountains of Nagano last night for her brother s wedding, but she
had decided to spend the night with her depressed friend and take the
first express on Sunday morning.
 its too bad what you re going through, I said to the small one, but
how did you find out your boyfriend was sleeping with someone
else? 
Taking little sips of sake, the girl tore at some weeds underfoot. I
didn t have to work anything out, she said. I opened his door, and
there he was, doing it. 
 When was that? 
 The night before last. 
 No way. The door was unlocked? 
 Right. 
 I wonder why he didn t lock it? 
 How the hell should I know? 
 Yeah, how s she supposed to feel? said the larger one, who seemed 
 
truly concerned for her friend. What a shock it must have been for
her. Don t you think its terrible? 
 I really can t say, I answered. You ought to have a good talk with
your boyfriend. Then its a question of whether you forgive him or
not. 
 Nobody knows how I feel, spat out the little one, still tearing grass.
A flock of crows appeared from the west and sailed over a big
department store. It was daylight now. The time for the train to
Nagano was approaching, so we gave what was left of the sake to a
homeless guy downstairs at the west exit, bought platform tickets and
went in to see the big girl off. After the train pulled out of sight, the
small girl and I somehow ended up going to a nearby hotel. Neither of
us was particularly dying to sleep with the other, but it seemed
necessary to bring things to a close.
I undressed first and sat in the bath drinking beer with a vengeance.
She got in with me and did the same, the two of us stretched out and
guzzling beer in silence. We couldn t seem to get drunk, though, and
neither of us was sleepy. Her skin was very fair and smooth, and she
had beautiful legs. I complimented her on her legs, but her Thanks 
was little more than a grunt.
Once we were in bed, though, she was like a different person. She
responded to the slightest touch of my hands, writhing and moaning.
When I went inside her, she dug her nails into my back, and as her
orgasm approached she called out another man s name exactly 
times. I concentrated on counting them as a way to delay my own
orgasm. Then the two of us fell asleep.
She was gone when I woke at.. I found no note of any kind. One
side of my head felt strangely heavy from having drunk at an odd
hour. I took a shower to wake myself, shaved and sat in a chair, naked,
drinking a bottle of juice from the fridge and reviewing in order the
events of the night before. Each scene felt unreal and strangely distant,
as though I were viewing it through two or three layers of glass, but 
 
the events had undoubtedly happened to me. The beer glasses were
still sitting on the table, and a used toothbrush lay by the sink.
I ate a light lunch in Shinjuku and went to a telephone box to call
Midori Kobayashi on the off chance that she might be home alone
waiting for a call again today. I let it ring times but no one
answered. I tried again minutes later with the same results. Then I
took a bus back to the dorm. A special delivery letter was waiting for
me in the letterbox by the entry. It was from Naoko.
Thanks for your letter, wrote Naoko. Her family had forwarded it
here, she said. Far from upsetting her, its arrival had made her very
happy, and in fact she had been on the point of writing to me herself.
Having read that much, I opened the window, took off my jacket and
sat on the bed. I could hear pigeons cooing in a nearby roost. The
breeze stirred the curtains. Holding the seven pages of writing paper
from Naoko, I gave myself up to an endless stream of feelings. It
seemed as if the colours of the real world around me had begun to
drain away from my having done nothing more than read a few lines
she had written. I closed my eyes and spent a long time collecting my
thoughts. Finally, after one deep breath, I continued reading.
It s almost four months since I came here, she went on.
I ve thought a lot about you in that time. The more I ve thought, the
more I ve come to feel that I was unfair to you. I probably should have
been a better, fairer person when it came to the way I treated you.
This may not be the most normal way to look at things, though. Girls
my age never use the word fair . Ordinary girls as young as I am are
basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The central
 
question for them is not whether something is fair but whether or not
it s beautiful or will make them happy. Fair is a man s word, finally,
but I can t help feeling that it is also exactly the right word for me
now. And because questions of beauty and happiness have become
such difficult and convoluted propositions for me now, I suspect, I
find myself clinging instead to other standards - like, whether or not
something is fair or honest or universally true.
In any case, though, I believe that I have not been fair to you and that,
as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.
In doing so, however, I have led myself around in circles and hurt
myself just as deeply. I say this not as an excuse or a means of selfjustification
but because it is true. If I have left a wound inside you, it
is not just your wound but mine as well. So please try not to hate me. I
am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you
realize. Which is precisely why I do not want you to hate me. Because
if you were to do that, I would really go to pieces. I can t do what you
can do: I can t slip inside my shell and wait for things to pass. I don t
know for a fact that you are really like that, but sometimes you give
me that impression. I often envy that in you, which may be why I led
you around in circles so much.
This may be an over-analytical way of looking at things. Don t you
agree? The therapy they perform here is certainly not over-analytical,
but when you are under treatment for several months the way I am
here, like it or not, you become more or less analytical. This was
caused by that, and that means this, because of which such-and-such. 
Like that. I can t tell whether this kind of analysis is trying to simplify
the world or complicate it.
In any case, I myself feel that I am far closer to recovery than I once
was, and people here tell me this is true. This is the first time in a long
while I have been able to sit down and calmly write a letter. The one I
wrote you in July was something I had to squeeze out of me (though,
to tell the truth, I don t remember what I wrote - was it terrible?), but 
 
this time I am very, very calm. Clean air, a quiet world cut off from
the outside, a daily schedule for living, regular exercise: those are
what I needed, it seems. How wonderful it is to be able to write
someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to
sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like
this is truly marvellous. Of course, once I do put them into words, I
find I can only express a fraction of what I want to say, but that s all
right. I m happy just to be able to feel I want to write to someone. And
so I am writing to you. It s. in the evening, I ve had my dinner and
I ve just finished my bath. The place is silent, and its pitch black
outside. I can t see a single light through the window. I usually have a
clear view of the stars from here, but not today, with the clouds.
Everyone here knows a lot about the stars, and they tell me That s
Virgo or That s Sagittarius . They probably learn whether they want
to or not because there s nothing to do here once the sun goes down.
Which is also why they know so much about birds and flowers and
insects. Speaking to them, I realize how ignorant I was about such
things, which is kind of nice.
There are about people living here. In addition, the staff (doctors,
nurses, office staff, etc.) come to just over. its such a wide-open
place, these are not big numbers at all. Far from it: it might be more
accurate to say the place is on the empty side. its big and filled with
nature and everybody lives quietly - so quietly you sometimes feel
that this is the normal, real world, which of course its not. We can
have it this way because we live here under certain preconditions.
I play tennis and basketball. Basketball teams are made up of both
staff and (I hate the word, but there s no way around it) patients. When
I m absorbed in a game, though, I lose track of who are the patients
and who are staff. This is kind of strange. I know this will sound
strange, but when I look at the people around me during a game, they
all look equally deformed.
I said this one day to the doctor in charge of my case, and he told me 
 
that, in a sense, what I was feeling was right, that we are in here not to
correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our
problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own
deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way
he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and
feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it
doesn t happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case,
something else might go funny. He gave me a very simplified
explanation, of course, and its just one small part of the problems we
have, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. It may well
be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable to
find a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that
these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things.
As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being
hurt by them because we know that we are deformed . That s what
distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their
lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours
the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear
feathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our
deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one
another.
In addition to playing sports, we all participate in growing vegetables:
tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, watermelons, strawberries, spring
onions, cabbage, daikon radishes, and so on and on. We grow just
about everything. We use greenhouses, too. The people here know a
lot about vegetable farming, and they put a lot of energy into it. They
read books on the subject and call in experts and talk from morning to
night about which fertilizer to use and the condition of the soil and
stuff like that. I have come to love growing vegetables. its great to
watch different fruits and vegetables getting bigger and bigger each
day. Have you ever grown watermelons? They swell up, just like
some kind of little animals.
 
We eat freshly picked fruits and vegetables every day. They also serve
meat and fish of course, but when you re living here you feel less and
less like eating those because the vegetables are so fresh and
delicious. Sometimes we go out and gather wild plants and
mushrooms. We have experts on that kind of thing (come to think of
it, this place is crawling with experts) who tell us which plants to pick
and which to avoid. As a result of all this, I ve gained over six pounds
since I got here. My weight is just about perfect, thanks to the exercise
and the good eating on a regular schedule.
When we re not farming, we read or listen to music or knit. We don t
have TV or radio, but we do have a very decent library with books and
records. The record collection has everything from Mahler
symphonies to the Beatles, and I m always borrowing records to listen
to in my room.
The one real problem with this place is that once you re here you don t
want to leave - or you re afraid to leave. As long as we re here, we feel
calm and peaceful. Our deformities seem natural. We think we ve
recovered. But we can never be sure that the outside world will accept
us in the same way.
My doctor says its time I began having contact with outside people 
- meaning normal people in the normal world. When he says that, the
only face I see is yours. To tell the truth, I don t want to see my
parents. They re too upset over me, and seeing them puts me in a bad
mood. Plus, there are things I have to explain to you. I m not sure I
can explain them very well, but they re important things I can t go on
avoiding any longer.
Still, you shouldn t feel that I m a burden to you. The one thing I don t
want to be is a burden to anyone. I can sense the good feelings you
have for me. They make me very happy. All I am doing in this letter is
trying to convey that happiness to you. Those good feelings of yours
are probably just what I need at this point in my life. Please forgive
me if anything I ve written here upsets you. As I said before, I am a far 
 
more flawed human being than you realize.
I sometimes wonder: IF you and I had met under absolutely ordinary
circumstances, and IF we had liked each other, what would have
happened? IF I had been normal and you had been normal (which, of
course, you are) and there had been no Kizuki, what would have
happened? Of course, this IF is way too big. I m trying hard at least
to be fair and honest. its all I can do at this point. I hope to convey
some small part of my feelings to you this way.
Unlike an ordinary hospital, this place has free visiting hours. As long
as you call the day before, you can come any time. You can even eat
with me, and there s a place for you to stay. Please come and see me
sometime when its convenient for you. I look forward to seeing you.
I m enclosing a map. Sorry this turned into such a long letter.
I read Naoko s letter all the way through, and then I read it again.
After that I went downstairs, bought a Coke from the vending
machine, and drank it while reading the letter one more time. I put the
seven pages of writing paper back into the envelope and laid it on my
desk. My name and address had been written on the pink envelope in
perfect, tiny characters that were just a bit too precisely formed for
those of a girl. I sat at my desk, studying the envelope. The return
address on the back said Ami Hostel. An odd name. I thought about it
for a
few minutes, concluding that the ami must be from the French word
for friend .
After putting the letter away in my desk drawer, I changed clothes and
went out. I was afraid that if I stayed near the letter I would end up
reading it , , who knew how many times? I walked the streets of
Tokyo on Sunday without a destination in mind, as I had always done
with Naoko. I wandered from one street to the next, recalling her letter
line by line and mulling each sentence over as best I could. When the
sun went down, I returned to the dorm and made a long-distance call 
 
to the Ami Hostel. A woman receptionist answered and asked my
business. I asked if it might be possible for me to visit Naoko the
following afternoon. I left my name and she said I should call back in
half an hour.
The same woman answered when I called back after dinner. It would
indeed be possible for me to see Naoko, she said. I thanked her, hung
up, and put a change of clothes and a few toiletries in my rucksack.
Then I picked up The Magic Mountain again, reading and sipping
brandy and waiting to get sleepy. Even so, I didn t fall asleep until
after one o clock in the morning.
 
As soon as I woke at seven o clock on Monday morning, I washed my
face, shaved, and went straight to the dorm Head s room without
eating breakfast to say that I was going to be gone for two days hiking
in the hills. He was used to my taking short trips when I had free time,
and reacted without surprise. I took a crowded commuter train to
Tokyo Station and bought a bullet-train ticket to Kyoto, literally
jumping onto the first Hikari express to pull out. I made do with
coffee and a sandwich for breakfast and dozed for an hour.
I arrived in Kyoto a few minutes before eleven. Following Naoko s
instructions, I took a city bus to a small terminal serving the northern
suburbs. The next bus to my destination would not be leaving until
. , I was told, and the trip would take a little over an hour. I
bought a ticket and went to a bookshop across the street for a map.
Back in the waiting room, I studied the map to see if I could find
exactly where the Ami Hostel was located. It turned out to be much
farther into the mountains than I had imagined. The bus would have to
cross several hills in its trek north, then turn around where the canyon
road dead-ended and return to the city. My stop would be just before
the end of the line. There was a footpath near the bus stop, according
to Naoko, and if I followed it for minutes I would reach Ami
Hostel. No
wonder it was such a quiet place, if it was that deep in the mountains!
The bus pulled out with about passengers aboard, following the
Kamo River through the north end of Kyoto. The tightly packed city
streets gave way to more sparse housing, then fields and vacant land.
Black tile roofs and vinyl-sided greenhouses caught the early autumn
sun and sent it back with a glare. When the bus entered the canyon,
the driver began hauling the steering wheel this way and that to follow
the twists and curves of the road, and I began to feel queasy. I could 
 
still taste my morning coffee. By the time the number of curves began
to decrease to the point where I felt some relief, the bus plunged into a
chilling cedar forest. The trees might have been old growth the way
they towered over the road, blocking out the sun and covering
everything in gloomy shadows. The breeze flowing into the bus s open
windows turned suddenly cold, its dampness sharp against the skin.
The valley road hugged the river bank, continuing so long through the
trees it began to seem as if the whole world had been buried for ever
in cedar forest - at which point the forest ended, and we came to an
open basin surrounded by mountain peaks. Broad, green farmland
spread out in all directions, and the river by the road looked bright and
clear. A single thread of white smoke rose in the distance. Some
houses had laundry drying in the sun, and dogs were howling. Each
farmhouse had firewood out front piled up to the eaves, usually with a
cat resting somewhere on the pile. The road was lined with such
houses for a time, but I saw not a single person.
The scenery repeated this pattern any number of times. The bus would
enter cedar forest, come out to a village, then go back into forest. It
would stop at a village to let people off, but no one ever got on. Forty
minutes after leaving the city, the bus reached a mountain pass with a
wide-open view. The driver stopped the bus and announced that we
would be waiting there for five or six minutes: people could step down
from the bus if they wished. There were only four passengers left now,
including me. We all got out and stretched or smoked and looked
down at the panorama of Kyoto far below. The driver went off to one
side for a pee. A suntanned man in his early fifties who had boarded
the bus with a big, rope-tied cardboard carton asked me if I was going
out to hike in the mountains. I said yes to keep things simple.
Eventually another bus came climbing up from the other side of the
pass and stopped next to ours. The driver got out, had a short talk with
our driver, and the two men climbed back into their buses. The four of
us returned to our seats, and the buses pulled out in opposite
 
directions. It was not immediately clear to me why our bus had had to
wait for the other one, but a short way down the other side of the
mountain the road narrowed suddenly. Two big buses could never
have passed each other on the road, and in fact passing ordinary cars
coming in the other direction required a good deal of manoeuvring,
with one or the other vehicle having to back up and squeeze into the
overhang of a curve.
The villages along the road were far smaller now, and the level areas
under cultivation even narrower. The mountain was steeper, its walls
pressed closer to the bus windows. They seemed to have just as many
dogs as the other places, though, and the arrival of the bus would set
off a howling competition.
At the stop where I got off, there was nothing - no houses, no fields,
just the bus stop sign, a little stream, and the trail opening. I slung my
rucksack over my shoulder and started up the track. The stream ran
along the left side of the trail, and a forest of deciduous trees lined the
right. I had been climbing
the gentle slope for some minutes when I came to a road leading
into the woods on the right, the opening barely wide enough to
accommodate a car. AMI HOSTEL PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING
read the sign by the road.
Sharply etched tyre tracks ran up the road through the trees. The
occasional flapping of wings echoed in the woods. The sound came
through with strange clarity, as if amplified above the other voices of
the forest. Once, from far away, I heard what might have been a rifle
shot, but it was a small and muffled sound, as though it had passed
through several filters.
Beyond the woods I came to a white stone wall. It was no higher than
my own height and, lacking additional barriers on top, would have
been easy for me to scale. The black iron gate looked sturdy enough,
but it was wide open, and there was no one manning the guardhouse.
Another sign like the last one stood by the gate: AMI HOSTEL
 
PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING. A few clues suggested the guard had
been there until some moments before: the ashtray held three buttends,
a tea cup stood there half empty, a transistor radio sat on a shelf,
and the clock on the wall ticked off the time with a dry sound. I waited
a while for the person to come back, but when that showed no sign of
happening, I gave a few pushes to something that looked as if it might
be a bell. The area just inside the gate was a car park. In it stood a
mini-bus, a four-wheel drive Land Cruiser, and a dark blue Volvo.
The car park could have held cars, but only those three were parked
there now.
Two or three minutes went by, and then a gatekeeper in a navy-blue
uniform came down the forest road on a yellow bicycle. He was a tall
man in his early sixties with receding hair. He leaned the yellow bike
against the guardhouse and said, I m very sorry to have kept you
waiting, though he didn t sound sorry at all. The number was
painted in white on the bike s mudguard. When I gave him my name,
he picked up the phone and repeated it twice to someone on the other
end, replied Yes, uh-huh, I see to the other person, then hung up.
 Go to the main building, please, and ask for Doctor Ishida, he said
to me. You take this road through the trees to a roundabout. Then
take your second left - got that? Your second left - from the
roundabout. You ll see an old house. Turn right and go through
another bunch of trees to a concrete building. That s the main building.
It s easy, just watch for the signs. 
I took the second left from the roundabout as instructed, and where
that path ended I came to an interesting old building that obviously
had been someone s country house once. It had a manicured garden
with well-shaped rocks and a stone lantern. It must have been a
country estate. Turning right through the trees, I saw a three-storey
concrete building. It stood in a hollowed-out area, and so there was
nothing overwhelming about its three storeys. It was simple in design
and gave a strong impression of cleanliness.
 
The entrance was on the second floor. I climbed the stairs and went in
through a big glass door to find a young woman in a red dress at the
reception desk. I gave her my name and said I had been instructed to
ask for Doctor Ishida. She smiled and gestured towards a brown sofa,
suggesting in low tones that I wait there for the doctor to come. Then
she dialled a number. I lowered my rucksack from my back, sank
down into the deep cushions of the sofa, and surveyed the place. It
was a clean, pleasant lobby, with ornamental potted plants, tasteful
abstract paintings, and a polished floor. As I waited, I kept my eyes on
the floor s reflection of my shoes.
At one point the receptionist assured me, The doctor will be here
soon. I nodded. What an incredibly quiet place! There were no
sounds of any kind. It was as though everyone were taking a siesta.
People, animals, insects, plants must all be sound asleep, I thought, it
was such a quiet afternoon.
Before long, though, I heard the soft padding of rubber soles, and a
mature, bristly-haired woman appeared. She swept across the lobby,
sat down next to me, crossed her legs and took my hand. Instead of
just shaking it, she turned my hand over, examining it front and back.
 You haven t played a musical instrument, at least not for some years
now, have you? were the first words out of her mouth.
 No, I said, taken aback. You re right. 
 I can tell from your hands, she said with a smile.
There was something almost mysterious about this woman. Her face
had lots of wrinkles. These were the first thing to catch your eye, but
they didn t make her look old. Instead, they emphasized a certain
youthfulness in her that transcended age. The wrinkles belonged
where they were, as if they had been part of her face since birth. When
she smiled, the wrinkles smiled with her; when she frowned, the
wrinkles frowned, too. And when she was neither smiling nor frowning,
the wrinkles lay scattered over her face in a strangely warm,
ironic way. Here was a woman in her late thirties who seemed not 
 
merely a nice person but whose niceness drew you to her. I liked her
from the moment I saw her.
Wildly chopped, her hair stuck out in patches and the fringe lay
crooked against her forehead, but the style suited her perfectly. She
wore a blue work shirt over a white T-shirt, baggy, cream-coloured
cotton trousers, and tennis shoes. Long and slim, she had almost no
breasts. Her lips moved constantly to one side in a kind of ironic curl,
and the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes moved in tiny twitches. She
looked like a kindly, skilled, but somewhat world-weary female
carpenter.
Chin drawn in and lips curled, she took some time to look me over
from head to toe. I imagined that any minute now she was going to
whip out her tape measure and start measuring me everywhere.
 Can you play an instrument? she asked. Sorry, no, I said.
 Too bad, she said. It would have been fun. 
 I suppose so, I said. Why all this talk about musical instruments?
She took a pack of Seven Stars from her breast pocket, put one
between her lips, lit it with a lighter and began puffing away with
obvious pleasure.
 It crossed my mind that I should tell you about this place, Mr. -
Watanabe, wasn t it? - before you see Naoko. So I arranged for the
two of us to have this little talk. Ami Hostel is kind of unusual - you
might find it a little confusing without any background knowledge.
I m right, aren t I, in supposing that you don t know anything about
this place? 
 Almost nothing. 
 Well, then, first of all - she began, then snapped her fingers. Come
to think of it, have you had lunch? I ll bet you re hungry. 
 You re right, I am. 
 Come with me, then. We can talk over food in the dining hall.
Lunchtime is over, but if we go now they can still make us
something. 
 
She took the lead, hurrying down a corridor and a flight of stairs to the
first-floor dining hall. It was a large room, with enough space for
perhaps people, but only half was in use, the other half partitioned
off, like a resort hotel out of season. The day s menu listed a potato
stew with noodles, salad, orange juice and bread. The vegetables
turned out to be as delicious as Naoko had said in her letter, and I
finished everything on my plate.
 You obviously enjoy your food! said my female companion.
 its wonderful, I said. Plus, I ve hardly eaten anything all day. 
 You re welcome to mine if you like. I m full. Here, go ahead. 
 I will, if you really don t want it. 
 I ve got a small stomach. It doesn t hold much. I make up for what
I m missing with cigarettes. She lit another Seven Star. Oh, by the
way, you can call me Reiko. Everybody does. 
Reiko seemed to derive great pleasure from watching me while I ate
the potato stew she had hardly touched and munched on her bread.
 Are you Naoko s doctor? I asked.
 Me?! Naoko s doctor?! She screwed up her face. What makes you
think I m a doctor? 
 They told me to ask for Doctor Ishida. 
 Oh, I get it. No no no, I teach music here. its a kind of therapy for
some patients, so for fun they call me The Music Doctor and
sometimes Doctor Ishida . But I m just another patient. I ve been here
seven years. I work as a music teacher and help out in the office, so
it s hard to tell any more whether I m a patient or staff. Didn t Naoko
tell you about me? 
I shook my head.
 That s strange, said Reiko. I m Naoko s room-mate. I like living
with her. We talk about all kinds of things. Including you. 
 What about me? 
 Well, first I have to tell you about this place, said Reiko, ignoring 
 
my question. The first thing you ought to know is that this is no
ordinary hospital . its not so much for treatment as for
convalescence. We do have a few doctors, of course, and they give
hourly sessions, but they re just checking people s conditions, taking
their temperature and things like that, not administering treatments 
as in an ordinary hospital. There are no bars on the windows here, and
the gate is always wide open. People enter and leave voluntarily. You
have to be suited to that kind of convalescence to be admitted here in
the first place. In some cases, people who need specialized therapy
end up going to a specialized hospital. OK so far? 
 I think so, I said. But what does this convalescence consist of?
Can you give me a concrete example? 
Reiko exhaled a cloud of smoke and drank what was left of her orange
juice. Just living here is the convalescence, she said. A regular
routine, exercise, isolation from the outside world, clean air, quiet.
Our farmland makes us practically self-sufficient; there s no TV or
radio. We re like one of those commune places you hear so much
about. Of course, one thing different from a commune is that it costs a
bundle to get in here. 
A bundle? 
 Well, its not ridiculously expensive, but its not cheap. Just look at
these facilities. We ve got a lot of land here, a few patients, a big staff,
and in my case I ve been here a long time. True, I m almost staff
myself so I get concessions, but still... Now, how about a cup of
coffee? 
I said I d like some. She stubbed out her cigarette and went over to the
counter, where she poured two cups of coffee from a warm pot and
brought them back to where we were sitting. She put sugar in hers,
stirred it, frowned, and took
a sip.
-You know, she said, this sanatorium is not a profitmaking
enterprise, so it can keep going without charging as much as it might 
 
have to otherwise. The land was a donation. They created a
corporation for the purpose. The whole place used to be the donor s
summer home about years ago. You saw the old house, I m sure? 
I said I had.
 That used to be the only building on the property. its where they did
group therapy. That s how it all got started. The donor s son had a
tendency towards mental illness and a specialist recommended group
therapy for him. The doctor s theory was that if you could have a
group of patients living out in the country, helping each other with
physical labour and have a doctor for advice and check-ups, you could
cure certain kinds of sickness. They tried it, and the operation grew
and was incorporated, and they put more land under cultivation, and
put up the main building five years ago. 
 Meaning, the therapy worked. 
 Well, not for everything. Lots of people don t get better. But also a
lot of people who couldn t be helped anywhere else managed a
complete recovery here. The best thing about this place is the way
everybody helps everybody else. Everybody knows they re flawed in
some way, and so they try to help each other. Other places don t work
that way, unfortunately. Doctors are doctors and patients are patients:
the patient looks for help to the doctor and the doctor gives his help to
the patient. Here, though, we all help each other. We re all each other s
mirrors, and the doctors are part of us. They watch us from the
sidelines and they slip in to help us if they see we need something, but
it sometimes happens that we help them. Sometimes we re better at
something than they are. For example, I m teaching one doctor to play
the piano and another patient is teaching a nurse French. That kind of
thing. Patients with problems like ours are often blessed with special
abilities. So everyone here is equal - patients, staff - and you. You re
one of us while you re in here, so I help you and you help me. Reiko
smiled, gently flexing every wrinkle on her face. You help Naoko
and Naoko helps you. 
 
 What should I do, then? Give me an example. 
 First you decide that you want to help and that you need to be helped
by the other person. Then you are totally honest. You will not lie, you
will not gloss over anything, you will not cover up anything that might
prove embarrassing to you. That s all there is to it. 
 I ll try, I said. But tell me, Reiko, why have you been in here for
seven years? Talking with you like this, I can t believe there s anything
wrong with you. 
 Not while the sun s up, she said with a sombre look. But when
night comes, I start drooling and rolling on the floor. Really? 
 Don t be ridiculous, I m kidding, she said, shaking her head with a
look of disgust. I m completely well - for now, at least. I stay here
because I enjoy helping other people get well, teaching music,
growing vegetables. I like it here. We re all more or less friends.
Compared to that, what have I got in the outside world? I m , going
on. I m not like Naoko. There s nobody waiting for me to get out,
no family to take me back. I don t have any work to speak of, and
almost no friends. And after seven years, I don t know what s going on
out there. Oh, I ll read a paper in the library every once in a while, but
I haven t set foot outside this property all that time. I wouldn t know
what to do if I left. 
 But maybe a new world would open up for you, I said. its worth a
try, don t you think? 
 Hmm, you may be right, she said, turning her cigarette lighter over
and over in her hand. But I ve got my own set of problems. I can tell
you all about them sometime if you like. 
I nodded in response. And Naoko, I said, is she any better? 
 Hmm, we think so. She was pretty confused at first and we had our
doubts for a while, but she s calmed down now and improved to the
point where she s able to express herself verbally. She s definitely
heading in the right direction. But she should have received treatment
a lot earlier. Her symptoms were already apparent from the time that 
 
boyfriend of hers, Kizuki, killed himself. Her family should have seen
it, and she herself should have realized that something was wrong. Of
course, things weren t right at home, either... 
 They weren t? I shot back.
 You didn t know? Reiko seemed more surprised than I was.
I shook my head.
 I d better let Naoko tell you about that herself. She s ready for some
honest talk with you. Reiko gave her coffee another stir and took a
sip. There s one more thing you need to know, she said. According
to the rules here, you and Naoko will not be allowed to be alone
together. Visitors can t be alone with patients. An observer always has
to be present - which in this case means me. I m sorry, but you ll just
have to put up with me. OK? 
 OK, I said with a smile.
 But still, she said, the two of you can talk about anything you d
like. Forget I m there. I know pretty much everything there is to know
about you and Naoko. 
 Everything? 
 Pretty much. We have these group sessions, you know. So we learn a
lot about each other. Plus Naoko and I talk about everything. We don t
have many secrets here. 
I looked at Reiko as I drank my coffee. To tell you the truth, I said,
 I m confused. I still don t know whether what I did to Naoko in
Tokyo was the right thing to do or not. I ve been thinking about it this
whole time, but I still don t know. 
 And neither do I, said Reiko. And neither does Naoko. That s
something the two of you will have to decide for yourselves. See what
I mean? Whatever happened, the two of you can turn it in the right
direction - if you can reach some kind of mutual understanding.
Maybe, once you ve got that taken care of, you can go back and think
about whether what happened was the right thing or not. What do you
say? 
 
I nodded.
 I think the three of us can help each other - you and Naoko and I - if
we really want to, and if we re really honest. It can be incredibly
effective when three people work at it like that. How long can you
stay? 
 Well, I d like to get back to Tokyo by early evening the day after
tomorrow. I have to work, and I ve got a German exam on Thursday. 
 Good, she said. So you can stay with us. That way it won t cost you
anything and you can talk without having to worry about the time. 
 With us ? I asked.
 Naoko and me, of course, said Reiko. We have a separate bedroom,
and there s a sofa bed in the living room, so you ll be able to sleep
fine. Don t worry. 
,,Do they allow that? I asked. Can a male visitor stay in a Woman s
room? 
 I don t suppose you re going to come in and rape us in the middle of
the night? 
 Don t be silly. 
 So there s no problem, then. Stay in our place and we can have some
nice, long talks. That would be the best thing. Then we can really
understand each other. And I can play my guitar for you. I m pretty
good, you know. 
 Are you sure I m not going to be in the way? 
Reiko put her third Seven Star between her lips and lit it after
screwing up the corner of her mouth.
 Naoko and I have already discussed this. The two of us together are
giving you a personal invitation to stay with us. Don t you think you
should just politely accept? 
 Of course, I ll be glad to. 
Reiko deepened the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and looked at
me for a time. You ve got this funny way of talking, she said. Don t
tell me you re trying to imitate that boy in Catcher in the Rye? 
 
 No way! I said with a smile.
Reiko smiled too, cigarette in mouth. You are a good person, though.
I can tell that much from looking at you. I can tell these things after
seven years of watching people come and go here: there are people
who can open their hearts and people who can t. You re one of the
ones who can. Or, more precisely, you can if you want to. 
 What happens when people open their hearts? 
Reiko clasped her hands together on the table, cigarette dangling from
her lips. She was enjoying this. They get better, she said. Ash
dropped onto the table, but she seemed not to notice.
Reiko and I left the main building, crossed a hill, and passed by a
pool, some tennis courts, and a basketball court. Two men - one thin
and middle-aged, the other young and fat were on a tennis court. Both
used their racquets well, but to me the game they were playing could
not have been tennis. It seemed as if the two of them had a special
interest in the bounce of tennis balls and were doing research in that
area. They slammed the ball back and forth with a kind of strange
concentration. Both were drenched in sweat. The young man, in the
end of the court closer to us, noticed Reiko and carne over. They
exchanged a few words, smiling. Near the court, a man with no
expression on his face was using a large mower to cut the grass.
Moving on, we came to a patch of woods where some or neat
little cottages stood at some distance from each other. The same kind
of yellow bike the gatekeeper had been riding was parked at the
entrance to almost every house. Staff members and their families live
here, said Reiko.
 We have just about everything we need without going to the city, 
she said as we walked along. Where food is concerned, as I said
before, we re practically self-sufficient. We get eggs from our own
chicken coop. We have books and records and exercise facilities, our
own convenience store, and every week barbers and beauticians come
to visit. We even have films at weekends. Anything special we need 
 
we can ask a staff member to buy for us in town. Clothing we order
from catalogues. Living here is no problem. 
 But you can t go into town? 
 No, that we can t do. Of course if there s something special, like we
have to go to the dentist or something, that s another matter, but as a
rule we can t go into town. Each person is completely free to leave this
place, but once you ve left you can t come back. You burn your
bridges. You can t go off for a couple of days in town and expect to
come back. It only stands to reason, though. Everybody would be
coming and going. 
Beyond the trees we came to a gentle slope along which, at irregular
intervals, was a row of two-storey wooden houses that had something
odd about them. What made them look strange its hard to say, but that
was the first thing I felt when I saw them. My reaction was a lot like
what we feel when we see unreality painted in a pleasant way. It
occurred to me that this was what you might get if Walt Disney did an
animated version of a Munch painting. All the houses were exactly the
same shape and colour, nearly cubical, in perfect left-to-right
symmetry, with big front doors and lots of windows. The road twisted
its way among them like the artificial practice course of a driving
school. There was a well-manicured flowering shrubbery in front of
every house. The place was deserted, and curtains covered all the
windows.
 This is called Area C. The women live here. Us! There are ten
houses, each containing four units, two people per unit. That s 
people all together, but at the moment there are only of us. 
 Quiet, isn t it? 
 Well, there s nobody here now, Reiko said. I ve been given special
permission to move around freely like this, but everyone else is off
pursuing their individual schedules. Some are exercising, some are
gardening, some are in group therapy, some are out gathering wild
plants. Each person makes up his or her own schedule. lets see,
 
what s Naoko doing now? I think she was supposed to be working on
new paint and wallpaper. I forget. There are a few jobs like that that
don t finish till five. 
Reiko walked into the building marked C- , climbed the stairs at the
far end of the hallway, and opened the door on the right, which was
unlocked. She showed me around the flat, a pleasant, if plain, fourroom
unit: living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bath. It had no extra
furniture or unnecessary decoration, but neither was the place severe.
There was nothing special about it, but being there was kind of like
being with Reiko: you could relax and let the tension leave your body.
The living room had a sofa, a table, and a rocking chair. Another table
stood in the kitchen. Both tables had large ashtrays on them. The
bedroom had two beds, two desks and a closet. A small night table
stood between the beds with a reading lamp on top and a paperback
turned face down. The kitchen had a small electric cooker that
matched the fridge and was equipped for simple cooking.
 No bath, just a shower, but its pretty impressive, wouldn t you say?
Bath and laundry facilities are communal. 
 its almost too impressive. My dorm room has a ceiling and a
window. 
 Ah, but you haven t seen the winters here, said Reiko, touching my
back to guide me to the sofa and sitting down next to me. They re
long and harsh. Nothing but snow and snow and more snow
everywhere you look. It gets damp and chills you to the bone. We
spend the winter shovelling snow. Mostly you stay inside where it s
warm and listen to music or talk or knit. If you didn t have this much
space, you d suffocate. You ll see if you come here in the winter. 
Reiko gave a deep sigh as if picturing wintertime, then folded her
hands on her knees.
 This will be your bed, she said, patting the sofa. We ll
sleep in the bedroom, and you ll sleep here. You should be all right,
don t you think? 
 
 I m sure I ll be fine. 
 So, that settles it, said Reiko. We ll be back around five. Naoko and
I both have things to do until then. Do you mind staying here alone? 
 Not at all. I ll study my German. 
When Reiko left, I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. I lay
there steeping myself in the silence when, out of nowhere, I thought of
the time Kizuki and I went on a motorbike ride. That had been
autumn, too, I realized. Autumn how many years ago? Yes, four. I
recalled the smell of Kizuki s leather jacket and the racket made by
that red Yamaha cc bike. We went to a spot far down the coast,
and came back the same evening, exhausted. Nothing special
happened on the way, but I remembered it well. The sharp autumn
wind moaned in my ears, and looking up at the sky, my hands
clutching Kizuki s jacket, I felt as if I might be swept into outer space.
I lay there for a long time, letting my mind wander from one memory
to another. For some strange reason, lying in this room seemed to
bring back old memories that I had rarely if ever recalled before.
Some of them were pleasant, but others carried a trace of sadness.
How long did this go on? I was so immersed in that torrent of memory
(and it was a torrent, like a spring gushing out of the rocks) that I
failed to notice Naoko quietly open the door and come in. I opened my
eyes, and there she was. I raised my head and looked into her eyes for
a time. She was sitting on the arm of the sofa, looking at me. At first I
thought she might be an image spun into existence by my own
memories. But it was the real Naoko.
 Sleeping? she whispered.
 No, I said, just thinking. I sat up and asked, How are you? 
 I m good, she said with a little smile like a pale, distant scene. I
don t have much time, though. I m not supposed to be here now. I just
got away for a minute, and I have to go back right away. Don t you
hate my hair? 
 Not at all, I said. its cute. Her hair was in a simple schoolgirl
 
style, with one side held in place with a hairslide the way she used to
have it in the old days. It suited her very well, as if she had always
worn it that way. She looked like one of the beautiful little girls you
see in woodblock prints from the Middle Ages.
 its such a pain, I have Reiko cut it for me. Do you really think it s
cute? 
 Really. 
 My mother hates it. She opened the hairslide, let the hair hang
down, smoothed it with her fingers, and closed the hairslide again. It
was shaped like a butterfly.
 I wanted to see you alone before the three of us get together. Not that
I had anything special to say. I just wanted to see your face and get
used to having you here. Otherwise, I d have trouble getting to know
you again. I m so bad with people. 
 Well? I asked. Is it working? 
 A little, she said, touching her hairslide again. But time s up. I ve
got to go. 
I nodded.
 Toru, she began, I really want to thank you for coming to see me. It
makes me very happy. But if being here is any kind of burden to you,
you shouldn t hesitate to tell me so. This is a special place, and it has a
special system, and some people can t get into it. So if you feel like
that, please be honest and let me know. I won t be crushed. We re
honest with each other here. We tell each other all kinds of things with
complete honesty. 
 I ll tell you, I said. I ll be honest. 
Naoko sat down and leaned against me on the sofa. When I put my
arm around her, she rested her head on my shoulder and pressed her
face to my neck. She stayed like that for a time, almost as if she were
taking my temperature. Holding her, I felt warm in the chest. After a
short while, she stood up without saying a word and went out through
the door as quietly as she had come in.
 
With Naoko gone, I went to sleep on the sofa. I hadn t intended to do
so, but I fell into the kind of deep sleep I had not had for a long time,
filled with a sense of Naoko s presence. In the kitchen were the dishes
Naoko used, in the bathroom was the toothbrush Naoko used, and in
the bedroom was the bed in which Naoko slept. Sleeping soundly in
this flat of hers, I wrung the fatigue from every cell of my body, drop
by drop. I dreamed of a butterfly dancing in the half-light.
When I awoke again, the hands of my watch were pointing to..
The light had changed, the wind had died, the shapes of the clouds
were different. I had sweated in my sleep, so I dried my face with a
small towel from my rucksack and put on a fresh vest. Going to the
kitchen, I drank some water and stood there looking through the
window over the sink. I was facing a window in the building opposite,
on the inside of which hung several paper cut-outs - a bird, a cloud, a
cow, a cat, all in skilful silhouette and joined together. As before,
there was no sign of anyone about, and there were no sounds of any
kind. I felt as if I were living alone in an extremely well-cared-for
ruin.
People started coming back to Area C a little after five Looking out of
the kitchen window, I saw three women passing below. All wore hats
that prevented me from telling their ages, but judging from their
voices, they were not very young. Shortly after they had disappeared
around a corner, four more women appeared from the same direction
and, like the first group, disappeared around the same corner. An
evening mood hung over everything. From the living room window I
could see trees and a line of hills. Above the ridge floated a border of
pale sunlight.
Naoko and Reiko came back together at.. Naoko and I exchanged
proper greetings as if meeting for the first time. She seemed truly
embarrassed. Reiko noticed the book I had been reading and asked
what it was. Thomas Mann s The Magic Mountain, I told her.
 How could you bring a book like that to a place like this? she
 
demanded. She was right, of course.
Reiko then made coffee for the three of us. I told Naoko about Storm
Trooper s sudden disappearance and about the last day I saw him,
when he gave me the firefly.
 I m so sorry he s gone, she said. I wanted to hear more stories about
him. Reiko asked who Storm Trooper was, so I told her about his
antics and got a big laugh from her. The world was at peace and filled
with laughter as long as Storm Trooper stories were being told.
At six we went to the dining hall in the main building for supper.
Naoko and I had fried fish with green salad, boiled vegetables, rice
and miso soup. Reiko limited herself to pasta salad and coffee,
followed by another cigarette.
 You don t need to eat so much as you get older, she said by way of
explanation.
Some other people were there in the dining hall. A few newcomers
arrived as we ate, meanwhile some others left. Aside from the variety
in people s ages, the scene looked pretty much like that of the dining
hall in my dormitory. Where it differed was the uniform volume at
which people conversed. There were no loud voices and no whispers,
no one laughing out loud or crying out in shock, no one yelling with
exaggerated gestures, nothing but quiet conversations, all carrying on
at the same level. People were eating in groups of three to five, each
with a single speaker, to whom the others would listen with nods and
grunts of interest, and when that person had finished speaking, the
next would take up the conversation. I could not tell what they were
saying, but the way they said it reminded me of the strange tennis
game I had seen at noon. I wondered if Naoko spoke like this when
she was with them and, strangely enough, I felt a twinge of loneliness
mixed with jealousy.
At the table behind me, a balding man in white with the authentic air
of a doctor was holding forth to a nervouslooking young man in
glasses and a squirrel-faced woman of middle age on the effects of 
 
weightlessness on the secretion of gastric juices. The two listened with
an occasional My goodness or Really? but the longer I listened to
the balding man s style of speaking, the less certain I became that,
even in his white coat, he was really a doctor.
No one in the dining hall paid me any special attention. No one stared
or even seemed to notice I was there. My presence must have been an
entirely natural event.
Just once, though, the man in white spun around and asked me, How
long will you be staying? 
 Two nights, I said. I ll be leaving on Wednesday. 
 its nice here this time of year, isn t it? But come again in winter. It s
really nice when everything s white. 
 Naoko may be out of here by the time it snows, said Reiko to the
man.
 True, but still, the winter s really nice, he repeated with a sombre
expression. I felt increasingly unsure as to whether or not he was a
doctor.
 What do you people talk about? I asked Reiko, who seemed to not
quite follow me.
 What do we talk about? Just ordinary things. What happened that
day, or books we ve read, or tomorrow s weather, you know. Don t tell
me you re wondering if people jump to their feet and shout stuff like:
 It ll rain tomorrow if a polar bear eats the stars tonight! 
 No, no, of course not, I said. I was just wondering what all these
quiet conversations were about. 
 its a quiet place, so people talk quietly, said Naoko. She made a
neat pile of fish bones at the edge of her plate and dabbed at her
mouth with a handkerchief. There s no need to raise your voice here.
You don t have to convince anybody of anything, and you don t have
to attract anyone s attention. 
 I guess not, I said, but as I ate my meal in those quiet surroundings,
I was surprised to find myself missing the hum of people. I wanted to 
 
hear laughter and people shouting for no reason and saying overblown
things. That was just the kind of noise I had become weary of in
recent months, but sitting here eating fish in this unnaturally quiet
room, I couldn t relax. The dining hall had all the atmosphere of a
specialized -machine-tool trade fair. People with a strong interest in a
specialist field came together in a specific place and exchanged
information understood only by themselves.
Back in the room after supper, Naoko and Reiko announced that they
would be going to the Area C communal bath and that if I didn t mind
having just a shower, I could use the one in their bathroom. I would do
that, I said, and after they were gone I undressed, showered, and
washed my hair. I found a Bill Evans album in the bookcase and was
listening to it while drying my hair when I realized that it was the
record I had played in Naoko s room on the night of her birthday, the
night she cried and I took her in my arms. That had been only six
months ago, but it felt like something from a much remoter past.
Maybe it felt that way because I had thought about it so often - too
often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.
The moon was so bright, I turned the lights off and stretched out on
the sofa to listen to Bill Evans piano. Streaming in through the
window, the moonlight cast long shadows and splashed the walls with
a touch of diluted Indian ink. I took a thin metal flask from my
rucksack, let my mouth fill with the brandy it contained, allowed the
warmth to move slowly down my throat to my stomach, and from
there felt it spreading to every extremity. After a final sip, I closed the
flask and returned it to my rucksack. Now the moonlight seemed to be
swaying with the music.
Twenty minutes later, Naoko and Reiko came back from the bath.
 Oh! It was so dark here, we thought you had packed your bags and
gone back to Tokyo! exclaimed Reiko.
 No way, I said. I hadn t seen such a bright moon for years. I wanted
to look at it with the lights off. 
 
 its lovely, though, said Naoko. Reiko, do we still have those
candles from the last power cut? 
 Probably, in a kitchen drawer. 
Naoko brought a large, white candle from the kitchen. I lit it, dripped
a little wax into a plate, and stood it up. Reiko used the flame to light a
cigarette. As the three of us sat facing the candle amid these hushed
surroundings, it began to seem as if we were the only ones left on
some far edge of the world. The still shadows of the moonlight and the
swaying shadows of the candlelight met and melded on the white
walls of the flat. Naoko and I sat next to each other on the sofa, and
Reiko settled into the rocking chair facing us.
 How about some wine? Reiko asked me.
 You re allowed to drink? I asked with some surprise.
 Well, not really, said Reiko, scratching an earlobe with a hint of
embarrassment. But they pretty much let it go. If its just wine or beer
and you don t drink too much. I ve got a friend on the staff who buys
me a little now and then. 
 We have our drinking parties, said Naoko with a mischievous air.
 Just the two of us. 
 That s nice, I said.
Reiko took a bottle of white wine from the fridge, opened it with a
corkscrew and brought three glasses. The wine had a clear, delicious
flavour that seemed almost homemade. When the record ended, Reiko
brought out a guitar from under her bed, and after tuning it with a look
of fondness for the instrument, she began to play a slow Bach fugue.
She missed her fingering every now and then, but it was real Bach,
with real feeling - warm, intimate, and filled with the joy of
performance.
 I started playing the guitar here, said Reiko. There are no pianos in
the rooms, of course. I m self-taught, and I don t have guitar hands, so 
 
I ll never get very good, but I really love the instrument. its small and
simple and easy, kind of like a warm, little room. 
She played one more short Bach piece, something from a suite. Eyes
on the candle flame, sipping wine, listening to Reiko s Bach, I felt the
tension inside me slipping away. When Reiko ended the Bach, Naoko
asked her to play a Beatles song.
 Request time, said Reiko, winking at me. She makes me play
Beatles every day, like I m her music slave. 
Despite her protest, Reiko played a fine Michelle .
 That s a good one, she said. I really like that song. She took a sip
of wine and puffed her cigarette. It makes me feel like I m in a big
meadow in a soft rain. 
Then she played Nowhere Man and Julia . Now and then as she
played, she would close her eyes and shake her head. Afterwards she
would return to the wine and the cigarette.
 Play Norwegian Wood , said Naoko.
Reiko brought a porcelain beckoning cat from the kitchen. It was a
coin bank, and Naoko dropped a ? piece from her purse into its
slot.
 What s this all about? I asked.
 its a rule, said Naoko. When I request Norwegian Wood, I have
to put ? into the bank. its my favourite, so I make a point of
paying for it. I make a request when I really want to hear it. 
 And that way I get my cigarette money! said Reiko.
Reiko gave her fingers a good flexing and then played Norwegian
Wood . Again she played with real feeling, but never allowed it to
become sentimental. I took ? coin from my pocket and dropped it
into the bank.
 Thank you, said Reiko with a sweet smile.
 That song can make me feel so sad, said Naoko. I don t know, I
guess I imagine myself wandering in a deep wood. I m all alone and
it s cold and dark, and nobody comes to save me. That s why Reiko 
 
never plays it unless I request it. 
 
Sounds like Casablanca! Reiko said with a laugh.
She followed Norwegian Wood with a few bossa novas while I kept
my eyes on Naoko. As she had said in her letter, she looked healthier
than before, suntanned, her body firm from exercise and outdoor
work. Her eyes were the same deep clear pools they had always been,
and her small lips still trembled shyly, but overall her beauty had
begun to change to that of a mature woman. Almost gone now was the
sharp edge - the chilling sharpness of a thin blade - that could be
glimpsed in the shadows of her beauty, in place of which there now
hovered a uniquely soothing, quiet calm. I felt moved by this new,
gentle beauty of hers, and amazed to think that a woman could change
so much in the course of half a year. I felt as drawn to her as ever,
perhaps more than before, but the thought of what she had lost in the
meantime also gave me cause for regret. Never again would she have
that self-centred beauty that seems to take its own, independent course
in adolescent girls and no one else.
Naoko said she wanted to hear about how I was spending my days. I
talked about the student strike and Nagasawa. This was the first time I
had ever said anything about him to her. I found it challenging to give
her an accurate account of his odd humanity, his unique philosophy,
and his uncentred morality, but Naoko seemed finally to grasp what I
was trying to tell her. I hid the fact that I went out hunting girls with
him, revealing only that the one person in the dorm I spent any real
time with was this unusual guy. All the while, Reiko went through
another practice of the Bach fugue she had played before, taking
occasional breaks for wine and cigarettes.
 He sounds like a strange person, said Naoko. He is strange, I
said. But you like him? 
 I m not sure, I said. I guess I can t say I like him. Nagasawa is
beyond liking or not liking. He doesn t try to be liked. In that sense,
he s a very honest guy, stoic even. He doesn t try to fool anybody. 
 Stoic sleeping with all those girls? Now that is weird, said Naoko, 
 
laughing. How many girls has he slept with? 
 its probably up to now, I said. But in his case, the higher the
numbers go, the less each individual act seems to mean. Which is
what I think he s trying to accomplish. 
 And you call that stoic ? 
 For him it is. 
Naoko thought about my words for a minute. I think he s a lot sicker
in the head than I am, she said.
 So do I, I said. But he can put all of his warped qualities into a
logical system. He s brilliant. If you brought him here, he d be out in
two days. Oh, sure, I know all that, he d say. I understand
everything you re doing here. He s that kind of guy. The kind people
respect. 
 I guess I m the opposite of brilliant, said Naoko. I don t understand
anything they re doing here - any better than I understand myself. 
 its not because you re not smart, I said. You re normal. I ve got
tons of things I don t understand about myself. We re both normal:
ordinary. 
Naoko raised her feet to the edge of the sofa and rested her chin on
her knees. I want to know more about you, she said.
 I m just an ordinary guy - ordinary family, ordinary education,
ordinary face, ordinary exam results, ordinary thoughts in my head. 
 You re such a big Scott Fitzgerald fan... wasn t he the one who said
you shouldn t trust anybody who calls himself an ordinary man? You
lent me the book! said Naoko with a mischievous smile.
 True, I said. But this is no affectation. I really, truly believe deep
down that I m an ordinary person. Can you find something in me that s
not ordinary? 
 Of course I can! said Naoko with a hint of impatience. Don t you
get it? Why do you think I slept with you? Because I was so drunk I
would have slept with anyone? 
 No, of course I don t think that, I said.
 
Naoko remained silent for a long time, staring at her toes. At a loss for
words, I took another sip of wine.
 How many girls have you slept with, Toru? Naoko asked in a tiny
voice as if the thought had just crossed her mind.
 Eight or nine, I answered truthfully.
Reiko plopped the guitar into her lap. You re not even years old! 
she said. What kind of life are you leading? 
Naoko kept silent and watched me with those clear eyes of hers. I told
Reiko about the first girl I d slept with and how we had broken up. I
had found it impossible to love her, I explained. I went on to tell her
about my sleeping with one girl after another under Nagasawa s
tutelage.
 I m not trying to make excuses, but I was in pain, I said to Naoko.
 Here I was, seeing you almost every week, and talking with you, and
knowing that the only one in your heart was Kizuki. It hurt. It really
hurt. And I think that s why I slept with girls I didn t know. 
Naoko shook her head for a few moments, and then she raised her face
to look at me. You asked me that time why I had never slept with
Kizuki, didn t you? Do you still want to know? 
 I suppose its something I really ought to know, I said.
 I think so, too, said Naoko. The dead will always be dead, but we
have to go on living. 
I nodded. Reiko played the same difficult passage over and over,
trying to get it right.
 I was ready to sleep with him, said Naoko, unclasping her hairslide
and letting her hair down. She toyed with the butterfly shape in her
hands. And of course he wanted to sleep with me. So we tried. We
tried a lot. But it never worked. We couldn t do it. I didn t know why
then, and I still don t know why. I loved him, and I wasn t worried
about losing my virginity. I would have been glad to do anything he
wanted. But it never worked. 
Naoko lifted the hair she had let down and fastened it with the slide.
 
 I couldn t get wet, she said in a tiny voice. I never opened to him.
So it always hurt. I was just too dry, it hurt too much. We tried
everything we could think of - creams and things - but still it hurt me.
So I used my fingers, or my lips. I would always do it for him that
way. You know what I mean. 
I nodded in silence.
Naoko cast her gaze through the window at the moon, which looked
bigger and brighter now than it had before. I never wanted to talk
about any of this, she said. I wanted to shut it up in my heart. I wish
I still could. But I have to talk about it. I don t know the answer. I
mean, I was plenty wet the time I slept with you, wasn t I? 
 Uh-huh, I said.
 I was wet from the minute you walked into my flat the night of my
twentieth birthday. I wanted you to hold me. I wanted you to take off
my clothes, to touch me all over and enter me. I had never felt like
that before. Why is that? Why do things happen like that? I mean, I
really loved him. 
 And not me, I said. You want to know why you felt that way about
me, even though you didn t love me? 
 I m sorry, said Naoko. I don t mean to hurt you, but this much you
have to understand: Kizuki and I had a truly special relationship. We
had been together from the time we were three. its how we grew up:
always together, always talking, understanding each other perfectly.
The first time we kissed it was in the first year of junior school - was
just wonderful. The first time I had my period, I ran to him and cried
like a baby. We were that close. So after he died, I didn t know how to
relate to other people. I didn t know what it meant to love another
person. 
She reached for her wineglass on the table but only managed to knock
it over, spilling wine on the carpet. I crouched down and retrieved the
glass, setting it on the table. Did she want to drink some more? I
asked. Naoko remained silent for a while, then suddenly burst into 
 
tears, trembling all over. Slumping forward, she buried her face in her
hands and sobbed with the same suffocating violence as she had that
night with me. Reiko laid down her guitar and sat by Naoko, caressing
her back. When she put an arm across Naoko s shoulders, she pressed
her face against Reiko s chest like a baby.
 You know, Reiko said to me, it might be a good idea for you to go
out for a little walk. Maybe minutes. Sorry, but I think that would
help. 
I nodded and stood, pulling a jumper on over my shirt. Thanks for
stepping in, I said to Reiko.
 Don t mention it, she said with a wink. This is not your fault. Don t
worry, by the time you come back she ll be OK. 
My feet carried me down the road, which was illuminated by the
oddly unreal light of the moon, and into the woods.
Beneath that moonlight, all sounds bore a strange reverberation. The
hollow sound of my own footsteps seemed to come from another
direction as though I were hearing someone walking on the bottom of
the sea. Behind me, every now and then, I would hear a crack or a
rustle. A heavy pall hung over the forest, as if the animals of the night
were holding their breath, waiting for me to pass.
Where the road sloped upwards beyond the trees, I sat and looked
towards the building where Naoko lived. It was easy to tell her room.
All I had to do was find the one window towards the back where a
faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long
time. It made me think of something like the final pulse of a soul s
dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep
it alive. I went on watching it the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny
light on the opposite shore night after night.
When I walked back to the front entrance of the building half an hour
later, I could hear Reiko practising the guitar. I padded up the stairs
and tapped on the door to the flat. Inside there was no sign of Naoko. 
 
Reiko sat alone on the carpet, playing her guitar. She pointed towards
the bedroom door to let me know Naoko was in there. Then she set
down the guitar on the floor and took a seat on the sofa, inviting me to
sit next to her and dividing what wine was left between our two
glasses.
 Naoko is fine, she said, touching my knee. Don t worry, all she has
to do is rest for a while. She ll calm down. She was just a little worked
up. How about taking a walk with me in the meantime? 
 Good, I said.
Reiko and I ambled down a road illuminated by street lamps. When
we reached the area by the tennis and basketball courts, we sat on a
bench. She picked up a basketball from under the bench and turned it
in her hands. Then she asked me if I played tennis. I knew how to
play, I said, but I was bad at it.
 How about basketball? 
 Not my strongest sport, I said.
 What is your strongest sport? Reiko asked, wrinkling the corners of
her eyes with a smile. Aside from sleeping with girls. 
 I m not so good at that, either, I said, stung by her words. Just
kidding, she said. Don t get angry. But really, though, what are you
good at? 
 Nothing special. I have things I like to do. For instance? 
 Hiking. Swimming. Reading. 
 You like to do things alone, then? 
 I guess so. I could never get excited about games you play with other
people. I can t get into them. I lose interest. 
 Then you have to come here in the winter. We do crosscountry
skiing. I m sure you d like that, tramping around in the snow all day,
working up a good sweat. Under the street lamp, Reiko stared at her
right hand as though she were inspecting an antique musical
instrument.
 Does Naoko often get like that? I asked.
 
 Every now and then, said Reiko, now looking at her left hand.
 Every once in a while she ll get worked up and cry like that. But
that s OK. She s letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being
able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die
inside, then you re in big trouble. 
 Did I say something I shouldn t have? 
 Not a thing. Don t worry. Just speak your mind honestly That s the
best thing. It may hurt a little sometimes, and someone may get upset
the way Naoko did, but in the long run its for the best. That s what
you should do if you re serious about making Naoko well again. Like I
told you in the beginning, you should think not so much about
wanting to help her as wanting to recover yourself by helping her to
recover. That s the way its done here. So you have to be honest and
say everything that comes to mind, while you re here at least. Nobody
does that in the outside world, right? 
 I guess not, I said.
 I ve seen all kinds of people come and go in my time here, she said,
 maybe too many people. So I can usually tell by looking at a person
whether they re going to get better or not, almost by instinct. But in
Naoko s case, I m not sure. I have absolutely no idea what s going to
happen to her. For all I know, she could be per cent recovered
next month, or she could go on like this for years. So I really can t tell
you what to do aside from the most generalized kind of advice: to be
honest and help each other. 
 What makes Naoko such a hard case for you? 
 Probably because I like her so much. I think my emotions get in the
way and I can t see her clearly. I mean, I really like her. But aside
from that, she has a bundle of different problems that are all tangled
up with each other so that its hard to unravel a single one. It may take
a very long time to undo them all, or something could trigger them to
come unravelled all at once. its kind of like that. Which is why I can t
be sure about her. 
 
She picked up the basketball again, twirled it in her hands and
bounced it on the ground.
 The most important thing is not to let yourself get impatient, Reiko
said. This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don t get
impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can t do anything, don t
get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread
before its ready to come undone. You have to realize its going to be a
long process and that you ll work on things slowly, one at a time. Do
you think you can do that? 
 I can try, I said.
 It may take a very long time, you know, and even then she may not
recover completely. Have you thought about that? I nodded.
 Waiting is hard, she said, bouncing the ball. Especially for
someone your age. You just sit and wait for her to get better. Without
deadlines or guarantees. Do you think you can do that? Do you love
Naoko that much? 
 I m not sure, I said honestly. Like Naoko, I m not really sure what it
means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently.
I do want to try my best, though. I have to, or else I won t know where
to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. It s
the only way for either of us to be saved. 
 And are you going to go on sleeping with girls you pick up? 
 I don t know what to do about that either, I said. What do you
think? Should I just keep waiting and masturbating? I m not in
complete control there, either. 
Reiko set the ball on the ground and patted my knee. Look, she said,
 I m not telling you to stop sleeping with girls. If you re OK with that,
then its OK. its your life after all, its something you have to decide.
All I m saying is you shouldn t use yourself up in some unnatural
form. Do you see what I m getting at? It would be such a waste. The
years and are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and
if you allow yourself to become warped when you re that
 
age, it will cause you pain when you re older. its true. So think about
it carefully. If you want to take care of Naoko, take care of yourself,
too. 
I said I would think about it.
 I was myself. Once upon a time. Would you believe it? 
 I believe it. Of course. 
 Deep down? 
 Deep down, I said with a smile.
 And I was cute, too. Not as cute as Naoko, but pretty damn cute. I
didn t have all these wrinkles. 
I said I liked her wrinkles a lot. She thanked me.
 But don t ever tell another woman that you find her wrinkles
attractive, she added. I like to hear it, but I m the exception. 
 I ll be careful, I said.
She slipped a wallet from her trouser pocket and handed me a photo
from the card-holder. It was a colour snapshot of a cute girl around ten
years old wearing skis and a brightly coloured ski-suit, standing on the
snow smiling sweetly for the camera.
 Isn t she pretty? My daughter, said Reiko. She sent me this in
January. She s - what? - nine years old now. 
 She has your smile, I said, returning the photo. Reiko pocketed the
wallet and, with a sniff, put a cigarette between her lips and lit up.
 I was going to be a concert pianist, she said. I had talent, and
people recognized it and made a fuss over me while I was growing up.
I won competitions and had top marks in the conservatoire, and I was
all set to study in Germany after graduation. Not a cloud on the
horizon. Everything worked out perfectly, and when it didn t there was
always somebody to fix it. But then one day something happened, and
it all blew apart. I was in my final year at the conservatoire and there
was a fairly important competition coming up. I practised for it
constantly, but all of a sudden the little finger of my left hand stopped
moving. I don t know why, but it just did. I tried massaging it, soaking 
 
it in hot water, taking a few days off from practice: nothing worked.
So then I got scared and went to the doctor s. They tried all kinds of
tests but they couldn t come up with anything. There was nothing
wrong with the finger itself, and the nerves were OK, they said: there
was no reason it should stop moving. The problem must be
psychological. So I went to a psychiatrist, but he didn t really know
what was going on, either. Probably pre-competition stress, he said,
and advised me to get away from the piano for a while. 
Reiko inhaled deeply and let the smoke out. Then she bent her neck to
the side a few times.
 So I went to recuperate at my grandmother s place on the coast in Izu.
I thought I d forget about that particular competition and really relax,
spend a couple of weeks away from the piano doing anything I
wanted. But it was hopeless. Piano was all I could think about. Maybe
my finger would never move again. How would I live if that
happened? The same thoughts kept going round and round in my
brain. And no wonder: piano had been my whole life up to that point. I
had started playing when I was four and grew up thinking about the
piano and nothing else. I never did housework so as not to injure my
fingers. People paid attention to me for that one thing: my talent at the
piano. Take the piano away from a girl who s grown up like that, and
what s left? So then, snap! MY mind became a complete jumble. Total
darkness. 
She dropped her cigarette to the ground and stamped it out, then bent
her neck a few times again.
 That was the end of my dream of becoming a concert pianist. I spent
two months in the hospital. My finger started to move shortly after I
arrived, so I was able to return to the conservatoire and graduate, but
something inside me had vanished. Some jewel of energy or
something had disappeared - evaporated - from inside my body. The
doctor said I lacked the mental strength to become a professional
pianist and advised me to abandon the idea. So after graduating I took 
 
pupils and taught them at home. But the pain I felt was excruciating. It
was as if my life had ended. Here I was in my early twenties and the
best part of my life was over. Do you see how terrible that would be? I
had such potential, then woke up one day and it had gone. No more
applause, no one would make a big fuss over me, no one would tell
me how wonderful I was. I spent day after day in the house teaching
neighbourhood children Beyer exercises and sonatinas. I felt so
miserable, I cried all the time. To think what I had missed! I would
hear about people who were far less talented than me winning second
place in a competition or holding a recital in such-and-such a hall, and
the tears would pour out of me.
 My parents walked around on tiptoe, afraid of hurting me. But I
knew how disappointed they were. All of a sudden the daughter they
had been so proud of was an ex-mental-patient. They couldn t even
marry me off. When you re living with people, you sense what they re
feeling, and I hated it. I was afraid to go out, afraid the neighbours
were talking about me. So then, snap! It happened again - the jumble,
the darkness. It happened when I was , and this time I spent seven
months in a sanatorium. Not this place: a regular insane asylum with
high walls and locked gates. A filthy place without pianos. I didn t
know what to do with myself. All I knew was I wanted to get out of
there as soon as I could, so I struggled desperately to get better. Seven
months: a long seven months. That s when my wrinkles started. 
Reiko smiled, her lips stretching from side to side.
 I hadn t been out of the hospital for long when I met a man and got
married. He was a year younger than me, an engineer who worked in
an aeroplane manufacturing company, and one of my pupils. A nice
man. He didn t say a lot, but he was warm and sincere. He had been
taking lessons from me for six months when all of a sudden he asked
me to marry him. Just like that - one day when we were having tea
after his lesson. Can you believe it? We had never dated or held
hands. He took me totally off guard. I told him I couldn t get married. 
 
I said I liked him and thought he was a nice person but that, for certain
reasons, I couldn t marry him. He wanted to know what those reasons
were, so I explained everything to him with complete honesty - that I
had been hospitalized twice for mental breakdowns. I told him
everything - what the cause had been, my condition, and the
possibility that it could happen again. He said he needed time to think,
and I encouraged him to take all the time he needed. But when he
came for his lesson a week later, he said he still wanted to marry me. I
asked him to wait three months. We would see each other for three
months, I said, and if he still wanted to marry me at that point, we
would talk about it again.
 We dated once a week for three months. We went everywhere, and
talked about everything, and I got to like him a lot. When I was with
him, I felt as if my life had finally come back to me. It gave me a
wonderful sense of relief to be alone with him: I could forget all those
terrible things that had happened. So what if I hadn t been able to
become a concert pianist? So what if I had spent time in mental
hospitals? My life hadn t ended. Life was still full of wonderful things
I hadn t experienced. If only for having made me feel that way, I felt
tremendously grateful to him. After three months went by, he asked
me again to marry him. And this is what I said to him: If you want to
sleep with me, I don t mind. I ve never slept with anybody, and I m
very fond of you, so if you want to make love to me, I don t mind at
all. But marrying me is a whole different matter. If you marry me, you
take on all my troubles, and they re a lot worse than you can imagine.
 He said he didn t care, that he didn t just want to sleep with me, he
wanted to marry me, to share everything I had inside me. And he
meant it. He was the kind of person who would only say what he
really meant, and do anything he said. So I agreed to marry him. It
was all I could do. We got married, lets see, four months later I think
it was. He fought with his parents over me, and they disowned him.
He was from an old family that lived in a rural part of Shikoku. They 
 
had my background investigated and found out that I had been
hospitalized twice. No wonder they opposed the marriage. So,
anyway, we didn t have a wedding ceremony. We just went to the
registry office and registered our marriage and took a trip to Hakone
for two nights. That was plenty for us: we were happy. And finally, I
remained a virgin until the day I married. I was years old! Can you
believe it? 
Reiko sighed and picked up the basketball again.
 I thought that as long as I was with him, I would be all right, she
went on. As long as I was with him, my troubles would stay away.
That s the most important thing for a sickness like ours: a sense of
trust. If I put myself in this person s hands, I ll be OK. If my condition
starts to worsen even the slightest bit - if a screw comes loose - he ll
notice straight away, and with tremendous care and patience he ll fix
it, he ll tighten the screw again, put all the jumbled threads back in
place. If we have that sense of trust, our sickness stays away. No more
snap! I was so happy! Life was great! I felt as if someone had pulled
me out of a cold, raging sea and wrapped me in a blanket and laid me
in a warm bed. I had a baby two years after we were married, and then
my hands were really full! I practically forgot about my sickness. I d
get up in the morning and do the housework and take care of the baby
and feed my husband when he came home from work. It was the same
thing day after day, but I was happy. It was probably the happiest time
of my life. How many years did it last, I wonder? At least until I was
. And then, all of a sudden, snap! It happened again. I fell apart. 
Reiko lit a cigarette. The wind had died down. The smoke rose
straight up and disappeared into the darkness of night. Just then I
realized that the sky was filled with stars.
 Something happened? I asked.
 Yes, she said, something very strange, as if a trap had been laid for
me. Even now, it gives me a chill just to think about it. Reiko rubbed
a temple with her free hand. I m sorry, though, making you listen to 
 
all this talk about me. You came here to see Naoko, not listen to my
story. 
 I d really like to hear it, though, I said. If you don t mind, I d like to
hear the rest. 
 Well, Reiko began, when our daughter entered kindergarten, I
started playing again, little by little. Not for anyone else, but for
myself. I started with short pieces by Bach, Mozart, Scarlatti. After
such a long blank period, of course, my feel for the music didn t come
back straight away. And my fingers wouldn t move the way they used
to. But I was thrilled to be playing the piano again. With my hands on
the keys, I realized how much I had loved music - and how much I
hungered for it. To be able to perform music for yourself is a
wonderful thing.
 As I said before, I had been playing from the time I was four years
old, but it occurred to me that I had never once played for myself. I
had always been trying to pass a test or practise an assignment or
impress somebody. Those are all important things, of course, if you
are going to master an instrument. But after a certain age you have to
start performing for yourself. That s what music is. I had to drop out of
the elite course and pass my thirty-first birthday before I was finally
able to see that. I would send my child off to kindergarten and hurry
through the housework, then spend an hour or two playing music I
liked. So far so good, right? 
I nodded.
 Then one day I had a visit from one of the ladies of the
neighbourhood, someone I at least knew well enough to say hello to
on the street, asking me to give her daughter piano lessons. I didn t
know the daughter - although we lived in the same general
neighbourhood our houses were still pretty far apart - but according to
the woman, her daughter used to pass my house and loved to hear me
play. She had seen me at some point, too, and now she was pestering
her mother to let me teach her. She was in her fourth year of school 
 
and had taken lessons from a number of people but things had not
gone well for one reason or another and now she had no teacher.
 I turned her down. I had had that blank of several years, and while it
might have made sense for me to take on an absolute beginner, it
would have been impossible for me to pick up with someone who had
had lessons for a number of years. Besides, I was too busy taking care
of my own child and, though I didn t say this to the woman, nobody
can deal with the kind of child who changes teachers constantly. So
then the woman asked me to at least do her daughter the favour of
meeting her once. She was a fairly pushy lady and I could see she was
not going to let me off the hook that easily, so I agreed to meet the girl
- but just meet her. Three days later the girl came to the house by
herself. She was an absolute angel, with a kind of pure, sweet,
transparent beauty. I had never - and have never - seen such a
beautiful little girl. She had long, shiny hair as black as freshly ground
Indian ink, slim, graceful arms and legs, bright eyes, and a soft little
mouth that looked as if someone had just made it. I couldn t speak
when I first saw her, she was so beautiful. Sitting on my sofa, she
turned my living room into a gorgeous parlour. It hurt to look directly
at her: I had to squint. So, anyway, that s what she was like. I can still
picture her clearly. 
Reiko narrowed her eyes as if she were actually picturing the girl.
 Over coffee we talked for a whole hour - talked about all kinds of
things: music, her school, just everything. I could see straight away
she was a smart one. She knew how to hold a conversation: she had
clear, shrewd opinions and a natural gift for drawing out the other
person. It was almost frightening. Exactly what it was that made her
frightening, I couldn t tell at the time. It just struck me how
frighteningly intelligent she was. But in her presence I lost any normal
powers of judgement I might have had. She was so young and
beautiful, I felt overwhelmed to the point where I saw myself as an
inferior specimen, a clumsy excuse for a human being who could only 
 
have negative thoughts about her because of my own warped and
filthy mind. 
Reiko shook her head several times.
 If I were as pretty and smart as she was, I d have been
a normal human being. What more could you want if you were that
smart and that beautiful? Why would you have to torment and walk all
over your weaker inferiors if everybody loved you so much? What
reason could there possibly be for acting that way? 
 Did she do something terrible to you? 
 Well, let me just say the girl was a pathological liar. She was sick,
pure and simple. She made up everything. And while she was making
up her stories, she would come to believe them. And then she would
change things around her to fit her story. She had such a quick mind,
she could always keep a step ahead of you and take care of things that
would ordinarily strike you as odd, so it would never cross your mind
she was lying. First of all, no one would ever suspect that such a pretty
little girl would lie about the most ordinary things. I certainly didn t.
She told me tons of lies for six months before I had the slightest
inkling anything was wrong. She lied about everything, and I never
suspected. I know it sounds crazy. 
 What did she lie about? 
 When I say everything, I mean everything. Reiko gave a sarcastic
laugh. When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up
a bunch of lies to go with the first one. Mythomania is the word for it.
When the usual mythomaniac tells lies, they re usually the innocent
kind, and most people notice. But not with that girl. To protect herself,
she d tell hurtful lies without batting an eyelid. She d use everything
she could get her hands on. And she would lie either more or less
depending on who she was talking to. To her mother or close friends
who would know straight away, she hardly ever lied, or if she had to
tell one, she d be really, really careful to tell lies that wouldn t come
out. Or if they did come out, she d find an excuse or apologize in that 
 
clingy voice of hers with tears pouring out of her beautiful eyes. No
one could stay mad at her then.
 I still don t know why she chose me. Was I another victim to her, or a
source of salvation? I just don t know. Of course, it hardly matters
now. Now that everything is over. Now that I m like this. 
A short silence followed.
 She repeated what her mother had told me, that she had been moved
when she heard me playing as she passed the house. She had seen me
on the street a few times, too, and had begun to worship me. She
actually used that word: worship . It made me turn bright red. I mean,
to be worshipped by such a beautiful little doll of a girl! I don t think
it was an absolute lie, though. I was in my thirties already, of course,
and I could never be as beautiful and bright as she was, and I had no
special talent, but I must have had something that drew her to me,
something that was missing in her, I suppose. That must have been
what got her interested in me to begin with. I believe that now,
looking back. And I m not boasting. 
 No, I think I know what you mean. 
 She had brought some music with her and asked if she could play for
me. So I let her. It was a Bach invention. Her performance was..
interesting. Or should I say strange? It just wasn t ordinary. Of course
it wasn t polished. She hadn t been going to a professional school, and
what lessons she had taken had been an on-and-off kind of thing; she
was very much self-taught. Her sound was untrained. She d have been
rejected immediately at a music-school audition. But she made it
work. Although per cent was just terrible, the other per cent was
there: she made it sing: it was music. And this was a Bach invention!
So I got interested in her. I wanted to know what she was all about.
 Needless to say, the world is full of kids who can play Bach far better
than she could. Twenty times better. But most of their performances
would have nothing to them. They d be hollow, empty. This girl s
technique was bad, but she had that little bit of something that could 
 
draw people - or draw me, at least - into her performance. So I decided
it might be worthwhile to teach her. Of course, retraining her at that
point to where she could become a pro was out of the question. But I
felt it might be possible to make her into the kind of happy pianist I
was then - and still am - someone who could enjoy making music for
herself. This turned out to be an empty hope, though. She was not the
kind of person who quietly goes about doing things for herself. This
was a child who would make detailed calculations to use every means
at her disposal to impress other people. She knew exactly what she
had to do to make people admire and praise her. And she knew exactly
what kind of performance it would take to draw me in. She had
calculated everything, I m sure, and put everything she had into
practising the most important passages over and over again for my
benefit. I can see her doing it.
 Still, even now, after all of this came clear to me, I believe it was a
wonderful performance and I would feel the same chills down my
spine if I could hear it again. Knowing all I know about her flaws, her
cunning and lies, I would still feel it. I m telling you, there are such
things in this world. 
Reiko cleared her throat with a dry rasp and broke off.
 So, did you take her as a pupil? I asked.
 Yeah. One lesson a week. Saturday mornings. Saturday was a day off
at her school. She never missed a lesson, she was never late, she was
an ideal pupil. She always practised for her lessons. After every
lesson, we d have some cake and chat. 
At that point, Reiko looked at her watch as if suddenly remembering
something.
 Don t you think we should be getting back to the room? I m a little
worried about Naoko. I m sure you haven t forgotten about her now,
have you? 
 Of course not, I laughed. its just that I was drawn into your story. 
 If you d like to hear the rest, I ll tell it to you tomorrow. its a long 
 
story - too long for one sitting. You re a regular Scheherazade. 
 I know, she said, joining her laughter with mine. You ll never get
back to Tokyo. 
We retraced our steps through the path in the woods and returned to
the flat. The candles had been extinguished and the living room lights
were out. The bedroom door was open and the lamp on the night table
was on, its pale light spilling into the living room. Naoko sat alone on
the sofa in the gloom. She had changed into a loose-fitting blue gown,
its collar pulled tight about her neck, her legs folded under her on the
sofa. Reiko approached her and rested a hand on her crown.
 Are you all right now? 
 I m fine. Sorry, answered Naoko in a tiny voice. Then she turned
towards me and repeated her apology. I must have scared you. 
 A little, I said with a smile.
 Come here, she said. When I sat down next to her, Naoko, her legs
still folded, leaned towards me until her face was nearly touching my
ear, as though she were about to share a secret with me. Then she
planted a soft kiss by my ear.
 Sorry, she said once more, this time directly into my ear, her voice
subdued. Then she moved away from me.
 Sometimes, she said, I get so confused, I don t know what s
happening. 
 That happens to me all the time, I said.
Naoko smiled and looked at me.
 If you don t mind, I said, I d like to hear more about you. About
your life here. What you do every day. The people you meet. 
Naoko talked about her daily routine in this place, speaking in short
but crystal clear phrases. Wake up at six in the morning. Breakfast in
the flat. Clean out the aviary. Then usually farm work. She took care
of the vegetables. Before or after lunch, she would have either an
hour-long session with her doctor or a group discussion. In the
afternoon she could choose from among courses that might interest 
 
her, outside work, or sports. She had taken several courses: French,
knitting, piano, ancient history.
 Reiko is teaching me piano, she said. She also teaches guitar. We
all take turns as pupils or teachers. Somebody with fluent French
teaches French, one person who used to be in social studies teaches
history, another good at knitting teaches knitting: that s a pretty
impressive school right there. Unfortunately, I don t have anything I
can teach anyone. 
 Neither do I, I said.
 I put a lot more energy into my studies here than I ever did in
university. I work hard and enjoy it - a lot. 
 What do you do after supper? 
 Talk with Reiko, read, listen to records, go to other people s flats and
play games, stuff like that. 
 I do guitar practice and write my autobiography, said Reiko.
 Autobiography? 
 Just kidding, Reiko laughed. We go to bed around ten. Pretty
healthy lifestyle, wouldn t you say? We sleep like babies. 
I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes before nine. I guess you ll
be getting sleepy soon. 
 That s OK. We can stay up late today, said Naoko. I haven t seen
you in such a long time, I want to talk more. So talk. 
 When I was alone before, all of a sudden I started thinking about the
old days, I said. Do you remember when Kizuki and I came to visit
you at the hospital? The one on the seashore. I think it was the first
year of the sixth-form. 
 When I had the chest operation, Naoko said with a smile. Sure, I
remember. You and Kizuki came on a motorbike. You brought me a
box of chocolates and they were all melted together. They were so
hard to eat! I don t know, it seems like such a long time ago. 
 Yeah, really. I think you were writing a poem then, a long one. 
 All girls write poems at that age, Naoko tittered. What reminded 
 
you of that all of a sudden? 
 I wonder. The smell of the sea wind, the oleanders: before I knew it,
they just popped into my head. Did Kizuki come to see you at the
hospital a lot? 
 No way! We had a big fight about that afterwards. He came once,
and then he came with you, and that was it for him. He was terrible.
And that first time he couldn t sit still and he only stayed about ten
minutes. He brought me some oranges and mumbled all this stuff I
couldn t understand, and he peeled an orange for me and mumbled
more stuff and he was out of there. He said he had a thing about
hospitals. 
Naoko laughed. He was always a kid about that kind of stuff. I mean,
nobody likes hospitals, right? That s why people visit people in
hospitals to make them feel better, and perk up their spirits and stuff.
But Kizuki just didn t get it. 
 He wasn t so bad when the two of us came to see you, though. He
was just his usual self. 
 Because you were there, said Naoko. He was always like that
around you. He struggled to keep his weaknesses hidden. I m sure he
was very fond of you. He made a point of letting you see only his best
side. He wasn t like that with me. He d let his guard down. He could
be really moody. One minute he d be chattering away, and the next
he d be depressed. It happened all the time. He was like that from the
time he was little. He did keep trying to change himself, to improve
himself, though. 
Naoko re-crossed her legs on the sofa.
 He tried hard, but it didn t do any good, and that would make him
really angry and sad. There was so much about him that was fine and
beautiful, but he could never find the confidence he needed. I ve got
to do that, I ve got to change this, he was always thinking, right up to
the end. Poor Kizuki! 
 Still, I said, if its true that he was always struggling to show me his 
 
best side, I d say he succeeded. His best side was all that I could see. 
Naoko smiled. He d be thrilled if he could hear you say that. You
were his only friend. 
 And Kizuki was my only friend, I said. There was never anybody I
could really call a friend, before him or after him. 
 That s why I loved being with the two of you. His best side was all
that I could see then, too. I could relax and stop worrying when the
three of us were together. Those were my favourite times. I don t
know how you felt about it. 
 I used to worry about what you were thinking, I said, giving my
head a shake.
 The problem was that that kind of thing couldn t go on for ever, said
Naoko. Such perfect little circles are impossible to maintain. Kizuki
knew it, and I knew it, and so did you. Am I right? 
I nodded.
 To tell you the truth, though, Naoko went on, I loved his weak side,
too. I loved it as much as I loved his good side. There was absolutely
nothing mean or underhand about him. He was weak: that s all. I tried
to tell him that, but he wouldn t believe me. He d always tell me it was
because we had been together since we were three. I knew him too
well, he d say: I couldn t tell the difference between his strong points
and his flaws, they were all the same to me. He couldn t change my
mind about him, though. I went on loving him just the same, and I
could never be interested in anyone else. 
Naoko looked at me with a sad smile.
 Our boy-girl relationship was really unusual, too. It was as if we
were physically joined somewhere. If we happened to be apart, some
special gravitational force would pull us back together again. It was
the most natural thing in the world when we became boyfriend and
girlfriend. It was nothing we had to think about or make any choices
about. We started kissing at and petting at. I d go to his room or 
 
he d come to my room and I d finish him off with my hands. It never
occurred to me that we were being precocious. It just happened as a
matter of course. If he wanted to play with my breasts or pussy, I
didn t mind at all, or if he had cum he wanted to get rid of, I didn t
mind helping him with that, either. I m sure it would have shocked us
both if someone had accused us of doing anything wrong. Because we
weren t.
We were just doing what we were supposed to do. We had always
shown each other every part of our bodies. It was almost as if we
owned each other s bodies jointly. For a while, at least, we made sure
we didn t go any further than that, though. We were afraid of my
getting pregnant, and had almost no idea at that point of how to go
about preventing it... Anyway, that s how Kizuki and I grew up
together, hand in hand, an inseparable pair. We had almost no sense of
the oppressiveness of sex or the anguish that comes with the sudden
swelling of the ego that ordinary kids experience when they reach
puberty. We were totally open about sex, and where our egos were
concerned, the way we absorbed and shared each other s, we had no
strong awareness of them. Do you see what I mean? 
 I think so, I said.
 We couldn t bear to be apart. So if Kizuki had lived, I m sure we
would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing
unhappy. 
 Unhappy? Why s that? 
With her fingers, Naoko combed her hair back several times. She had
taken her hairslide off, which made the hair fall over her face when
she dropped her head forward.
 Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it, 
she said, raising her eyes to mine. The pain of growing up. We didn t
pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why
Kizuki did what he did, and why I m here. We were like kids who
grew up naked on a desert island. If we got hungry, we d just pick a 
 
banana; if we got lonely, we d go to sleep in each other s arms. But
that kind of thing doesn t last for ever. We grew up fast and had to
enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were
the link connecting us with the outside. We were struggling through
you to fit in with the outside world as best we could. In the end, it
didn t work, of course. 
I nodded.
 I wouldn t want you to think that we were using you, though. Kizuki
really loved you. It just so happened that our connection with you was
our first connection with anyone else. And it still is. Kizuki may be
dead, but you are still My only link with the outside world. And just as
Kizuki loved you, I love you. We never meant to hurt you, but we
probably did; we probably ended up making a deep wound in your
heart. It never occurred to us that anything like that might happen. 
Naoko lowered her head again and fell silent.
 Hey, how about a cup of cocoa? suggested Reiko.
 Good. I d really like some, said Naoko.
 I d like to have some of that brandy I brought, if you don t mind, I
said.
 Oh, absolutely, said Reiko. Could I have a sip? Sure, I said,
laughing.
Reiko brought out two glasses and we toasted each other. Then she
went into the kitchen to make cocoa.
 Can we talk about something a little more cheerful? asked Naoko.
I didn t have anything cheerful to talk about. I thought, If only Storm
Trooper were still around! That guy could inspire a string of stories. A
few of those would have made everybody feel good. The best I could
do was talk at length about the filthy habits of the guys in the
dormitory. I felt sick just talking about something so gross, but Naoko
and Reiko practically fell over laughing, it was all so new to them.
Next Reiko did imitations of mental patients. This was a lot of fun,
too. Naoko started looking sleepy after eleven o clock, so Reiko let 
 
down the sofa back and handed me a pillow, sheets and blankets.
 If you feel like raping anybody in the middle of the night, don t get
the wrong one, she said. The unwrinkled body in the left bed is
Naoko s. 
 Liar! Mine s the right bed, said Naoko.
Reiko added, By the way, I arranged for us to skip some of our
afternoon schedule. Why don t the three of us have a little picnic? I
know a really nice place close by. 
 Good idea, I said.
The women took turns brushing their teeth and withdrew to the
bedroom. I poured myself some brandy and stretched out on the sofa
bed, going over the day s events from morning to night. It felt like an
awfully long day. The room continued to glow white in the moonlight.
Aside from the occasional slight creak of a bed, hardly a sound came
from the bedroom where Naoko and Reiko lay sleeping. Tiny
diagrammatic shapes seemed to float in the darkness when I closed
my eyes, and my ears sensed the lingering reverberation of Reiko s
guitar, but neither of these lasted for long. Sleep came and carried me
into a mass of warm mud. I dreamed of willows. Both sides of a
mountain road were lined with willows. An incredible number of
willows. A fairly stiff breeze was blowing, but the branches of the
willow trees never swayed. Why should that be? I wondered, and then
I saw that every branch of every tree had tiny birds clinging to it.
Their weight kept the branches from stirring. I grabbed a stick and hit
a nearby branch with it, hoping to chase away the birds and allow the
branch to sway. But they would not leave. Instead of flying away, they
turned into bird-shaped metal chunks that crashed to the ground.
When I opened my eyes, I felt as if I were seeing the continuation of
my dream. The moonlight filled the room with the same soft white
glow. As if by reflex, I sat up in bed and started searching for the
metal birds, which of course were not there. What I saw instead was
Naoko at the foot of the bed, sitting still and alone, staring out through 
 
the window. She had drawn her knees up and was resting her chin on
them, looking like a hungry orphan. I searched for the watch I had left
by my pillow, but it was not in the place where I knew it should be. I
guessed from the angle of the moonlight that the time must be two or
three o clock in the morning. I felt a violent thirst but I decided to keep
still and continue watching Naoko. She was wearing the same blue
nightdress I had seen her in earlier, and on one side her hair was held
in place by the butterfly hairslide, revealing the beauty of her face in
the moonlight. Strange, I thought, she had taken the slide off before
going to bed.
Naoko stayed frozen in place, like a small nocturnal animal that has
been lured out by the moonlight. The direction of the glow
exaggerated the silhouette of her lips. Seeming utterly fragile and
vulnerable, the silhouette pulsed almost imperceptibly with the
beating of her heart or the motions of her inner heart, as if she were
whispering soundless words to the darkness.
I swallowed in hopes of easing my thirst, but in the stillness of the
night the sound I made was huge. As if this were a signal to her,
Naoko stood and glided towards the head of the bed, gown rustling
faintly. She knelt on the floor by my pillow, eyes fixed on mine. I
stared back at her, but her eyes told me nothing. Strangely transparent,
they seemed like windows to a world beyond, but however long I
peered into their depths, there was nothing I could see. Our faces were
no more than ten inches apart, but she was light years away from me.
I reached out and tried to touch her, but Naoko drew back, lips
trembling faintly. A moment later, she brought her hands
up and began slowly to undo the buttons of her gown. There were
seven in all. I felt as if it were the continuation of my dream as I
watched her slim, lovely fingers opening the buttons one by one from
top to bottom. Seven small, white buttons: when she had unfastened
them all, Naoko slipped the gown from her shoulders and threw it off
completely like an insect shedding its skin. She had been wearing
 
nothing under the gown. All she had on was the butterfly hairslide.
Naked now, and still kneeling by the bed, she looked at me. Bathed in
the soft light of the moon, Naoko s body had the heartbreaking lustre
of newborn flesh. When she moved - and she did so almost
imperceptibly - the play of light and shadow on her body shifted
subtly. The swelling roundness of her breasts, her tiny nipples, the
indentation of her navel, her hipbones and pubic hair, all cast grainy
shadows, the shapes of which kept changing like ripples spreading
over the calm surface of a lake.
What perfect flesh! I thought. When had Naoko come to possess such
a perfect body? What had happened to the body I held in my arms that
night last spring?
A sense of imperfection had been what Naoko s body had given me
that night as I tenderly undressed her while she cried. Her breasts had
seemed hard, the nipples oddly jutting, the hips strangely rigid. She
was a beautiful girl, of course, her body marvellous and alluring. It
aroused me that night and swept me along with a gigantic force. But
still, as I held her and caressed her and kissed her naked flesh, I felt a
strange and powerful awareness of the imbalance and awkwardness of
the human body. Holding Naoko in my arms, I wanted to explain to
her, I am having sex with you now. I am inside you. But really this is
nothing. It doesn t matter. It is nothing but the joining of two bodies.
All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by
the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh. By doing this,
we are sharing our imperfection. But of course I could never have
said such a thing with any hope of being understood. I just went on
holding her tightly. And as I did so, I was able to feel inside her body
some kind of stony foreign matter, something extra that I could never
draw close to. And that sensation both filled my heart for Naoko and
gave my erection a terrifying intensity.
The body that Naoko revealed before me now, though, was nothing
like the one I had held that night. This flesh had been through many
 
changes to be reborn in utter perfection beneath the light of the moon.
All signs of girlish plumpness had been stripped away since Kizuki s
death to be replaced by the flesh of a mature woman. So perfect was
Naoko s physical beauty now that it aroused nothing sexual in me. I
could only stare, astounded, at the lovely curve from waist to hips, the
rounded richness of the breasts, the gentle movement with each breath
of the slim belly and the soft, black pubic shadow beneath.
She exposed her nakedness to me this way for perhaps five minutes
until, at last, she wrapped herself in her gown once more and buttoned
it from top to bottom. As soon as the final button was in place, she
rose and glided towards the bedroom, silently opened the door, and
disappeared.
I stayed rooted to the spot for a very long time until it occurred to me
to leave the bed. I retrieved my watch from where it had fallen on the
floor and turned it towards the light of the moon. It was.. I went to
the kitchen and drank a few glasses of water before stretching out in
bed again, but sleep never came until the morning sunlight crept into
every corner of the room, dissolving all traces of the moon s pale
glow.
I was somewhere on the edge of sleep when Reiko came and slapped
me on the cheek, shouting, Morning! Morning! 
While Reiko straightened out my sofa bed, Naoko went to the kitchen
and started making breakfast. She smiled at me and said Good
morning .
 Good morning, I replied. I stood by and watched her as she put on
water to boil and sliced some bread, humming all the while, but I
could sense nothing in her manner to suggest that she had revealed her
naked body to me the night before.
 Your eyes are red, she said to me as she poured the coffee. Are you
OK? 
 I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn t get back to sleep. 
 I bet we were snoring, said Reiko.
 
 Not at all, I said.
 That s good, said Naoko.
 He s just being polite, said Reiko, yawning.
At first I thought that Naoko was embarrassed or acting innocent for
Reiko, but her behaviour remained unchanged when Reiko
momentarily left the room, and her eyes had their usual transparent
look.
 How d you sleep? I asked Naoko.
 Like a log, she answered with ease. She wore a simple hairpin
without any kind of decoration.
I didn t know what to make of this, and I continued to feel that way all
through breakfast. Buttering my bread or peeling my egg, I kept
glancing across the table at Naoko, in search of a sign.
 Why do you keep looking at me like that? she asked with a smile.
 I think he s in love with somebody, said Reiko.
 Are you in love with somebody? Naoko asked me.
 Could be, I said, returning her smile. When the two women started
joking around at my expense, I gave up trying to think about what had
happened in the night and concentrated on my bread and coffee.
After breakfast, Reiko and Naoko said they would be going to feed the
birds in the aviary. I volunteered to go along. They changed into jeans
and work shirts and white rubber boots. Set in a little park behind the
tennis courts, the aviary had everything in it from chickens and
pigeons to peacocks and parrots and was surrounded by flowerbeds,
shrubberies and benches. Two men in their forties, also apparently
sanatorium patients, were raking up leaves that had fallen in the
pathways. The women walked over to say good morning to the pair,
and Reiko made them laugh with another of her jokes. Cosmos were
blooming in the flowerbeds, and the shrubberies were extremely well
manicured. Spotting Reiko, the birds started chattering and flying
about inside the cage.
The women entered the shed by the cage and came out with a bag of 
 
feed and a garden hose. Naoko screwed the hose to a tap and turned
on the water. Taking care to prevent any birds from flying out, the two
of them slipped into the cage, Naoko hosing down the dirt and Reiko
scrubbing the floor of the cage with a deck brush. The spray sparkled
in the glare of the morning sun. The peacocks flapped around the cage
to avoid getting splashed. A turkey raised its head and glowered at me
like a crotchety old man, while a parrot on the perch above screeched
its displeasure and beat its wings. Reiko meowed at the parrot, which
slunk over to the far corner but soon was calling: Thank you! 
 Crazy! Shithead! 
 I wonder who taught him that kind of language? said Naoko with a
sigh.
 Not me, said Reiko. I would never do such a thing. She started
meowing again, and the parrot shut up.
Laughing, Reiko explained, This guy once had a run-in with a cat.
Now he s scared to death of them. 
When they had finished cleaning, the two set down their tools and
went around filling each of the feeders. Splashing its way through
puddles on the floor, the turkey darted to its feed box and plunged its
head in, too obsessed with eating to be bothered by Naoko s smacks
on its tail.
 Do you do this every morning? I asked Naoko.
 Every morning! she said. They usually give this job to new women.
It s so easy. Like to see the rabbits? 
 Sure, I said. The rabbit hutch was behind the aviary. Some ten
rabbits lay inside, asleep in the straw. Naoko swept up their droppings,
put feed in their box, and picked up one of the babies, rubbing it
against her cheek.
 Isn t it precious? she gushed. She let me hold it. The warm, little ball
of fur cringed in my arms, twitching its nose.
 Don t worry, he won t hurt you, she said to the rabbit, stroking its
head with her finger and smiling at me. It was such a radiant smile, 
 
without a trace of shadow, that I couldn t help smiling myself. And
what about Naoko last night? I wondered. I knew for certain that it
had been the real Naoko and not a dream: she had definitely taken her
clothes off and shown her naked body to me.
Reiko whistled a lovely rendition of Proud Mary as she stuffed a
plastic bag with the debris they had gathered and tied the opening. I
helped them carry the tools and feed bag to the shed.
 Morning is my favourite time of day, said Naoko. its like
everything s starting out fresh and new. I begin to get sad around noon
time, and I hate it when the sun goes down. I live with those same
feelings clay aster day.
 And while you re living with those feelings, you youngsters get old
just like me, said Reiko with a smile. You re thinking about how it s
morning now or night and the next thing you know, you re old. 
 But you like getting old, said Naoko.
 Not really, said Reiko. But I sure don t wish I was young again. 
 Why not? I asked.
 Because its such a pain in the neck! she said. Then she tossed her
broom in and closed the door of the shed, whistling Proud Mary all
the while.
Back at the flat, the women changed their boots for tennis shoes and
said they were going to the farm. Reiko suggested I stayed behind
with a book or something because the work would be no fun to watch
and they would be doing it as part of a group. And while you re
waiting you can wash the pile of dirty underwear we left by the sink, 
she added.
 You re kidding, I said, taken aback.
 Of course I am, she laughed. You re so sweet. Isn t he, Naoko? 
 He really is, said Naoko, laughing with her.
 I ll work on my German, I said with a sigh.
 Yeah, do your homework like a good boy, said Reiko.
 
 We ll be back before lunch. 
The two of them went out tittering. I heard the footsteps and voices of
a number of people walking by downstairs.
I went into the bathroom and washed my face again, then borrowed a
nail clipper and trimmed my nails. For a bathroom that was being
shared by two women, its contents were incredibly simple. Aside from
some neatly arranged bottles
of cleansing cream and lip moisturizer and sun block, there was
almost nothing that could be called cosmetics. When I finished
trimming my nails, I made myself some coffee and drank it at the
kitchen table, German book open. Stripping down to a T-shirt in the
sun-filled kitchen, I had set about memorizing all the forms in a
grammar chart when I was struck by an odd feeling. It seemed to me
that the longest imaginable distance separated irregular German verb
forms from this kitchen table.
The two women came back from the farm at. , took turns in the
shower, and changed into fresh clothes. The three of us went to the
dining hall for lunch, then walked to the front gate. This time the
guardhouse had a man on duty. He was sitting at his desk, enjoying a
lunch that must have been brought to him from the dining hall. The
transistor radio on the shelf was playing a sentimental old pop tune.
He waved to us with a friendly Hi as we approached, and we
hello ed him back.
Reiko explained to him that we were going to walk outside the
grounds and return in three hours.
 Great, he said. You re lucky with the weather. Just stay away from
the valley road, though. It got washed out in that big rain. No problem
anywhere else. 
Reiko wrote her name and Naoko s in a register along with the date
and time.
 Enjoy yourselves, said the guard. And take care. 
 Nice guy, I said.
 
 He s a little strange up here, said Reiko, touching her head.
He had been right about the weather, though. The sky was a freshswept
blue, with only a trace of white cloud clinging to the dome of
heaven like a thin streak of test paint. We walked beside the low stone
wall of Ami Hostel for a time, then moved away to climb a steep,
narrow trail in single file. Reiko led the way, with Naoko in the
middle and me bringing up the rear. Reiko climbed with the confident
stride of one who knew every stretch of every mountain in the area.
We concentrated on walking, with hardly a word among us. Naoko
wore blue jeans and a white blouse and carried her jacket in one hand.
I watched her long, straight hair swaying right and left where it met
her shoulders. She would glance back at me now and then, smiling
when our eyes met. The trail continued upwards so far that it was
almost dizzying, but Reiko s pace never slackened. Naoko hurried to
keep up with her, wiping the sweat from her face. Not having indulged
in such outdoor activities for some time, I found myself running short
of breath.
 Do you do this a lot? I asked Naoko.
 Maybe once a week, she answered. Having a tough time? 
 Kind of, I said.
 We re almost there, said Reiko. This is about two-thirds of the way.
Come on, you re a boy, aren t you? Yeah, but I m out of shape. 
 Playing with girls all the time, muttered Naoko, as if to herself.
I wanted to answer her, but I was too winded to speak. Every now and
then, red birds with tufts on their heads would flit across our path,
brilliant against the blue sky. The fields around us were filled with
white and blue and yellow flowers, and bees buzzed everywhere.
Moving ahead one step at a time, I thought of nothing but the scene
passing before my eyes.
The slope gave out after another ten minutes, and we gained a level
plateau. We rested there, wiping the sweat off, catching
our breath and drinking from our water bottles. Reiko found a leaf and 
 
used it to make a whistle.
The trail entered a gentle downward slope amid tall, waving thickets
of plume grass. We walked on for some minutes before passing
through a village. There were no signs of humanity here, and the
dozen or so houses were all in varying states of decay. Waist-high
grass grew among the houses, and dry, white gobs of pigeon
droppings clung to holes in the walls. Only the pillars survived in the
case of one collapsed building, while others looked ready to be lived
in as soon as you opened the storm shutters. These dead, silent houses
pressed against either side of the road as we slipped through.
 People lived in this village until seven or eight years ago, Reiko
informed me. This was farmland around here. But they all cleared
out. Life was just too hard. They d be trapped when the snow piled up
in the winter. And the soil isn t particularly fertile. They could make a
better living in the city. 
 What a waste, I said. Some of the houses look perfectly usable. 
 Some hippies tried living here at one point, but they gave up.
Couldn t take the winters. 
A little beyond the village we came to a big fenced area that seemed to
be a pasture. Far away on the other side, I caught sight of a few horses
grazing. We followed the fence line, and a big dog came running over
to us, tail wagging. It stood up leaning on Reiko, sniffing her face,
then jumped playfully on Naoko. I whistled and it came over to me,
licking my hand with its long tongue.
Naoko patted the dog s head and explained that the animal belonged to
the pasture. I ll bet he s close to , she said. His teeth are so bad,
he can t eat anything hard. He sleeps in front of the shop all day, and
he comes running when he hears footsteps. 
Reiko took a scrap of cheese from her rucksack. Catching its scent, the
dog bounded over to her and chomped down on it.
 We won t be able to see this fellow much longer, said Reiko, patting
the dog s head. In the middle of October they put the horses and cows 
 
in trucks and take em down to the barn. The only time they let em
graze is the summer, when they open a little café kind of thing for the
tourists. The tourists ! Maybe hikers in a day. Hey, how about
something to drink? 
 Good idea, I said.
The dog led the way to the café, a small, white house with a front
porch and a faded sign in the shape of a coffee cup hanging from the
eaves. He led us up the steps and stretched out on the porch,
narrowing his eyes. When we took our places around a table on the
porch, a girl with a ponytail and wearing a sweatshirt and white jeans
came out and greeted Reiko and Naoko like old friends.
 This is a friend of Naoko s, said Reiko, introducing me. Hi, she
said.
 Hi, I answered.
While the three women traded small talk, I stroked the neck of the dog
under the table. It had the hard, stringy neck of an old dog. When I
scratched the lumpy spots, the dog closed his eyes and sighed with
pleasure.
 What s his name? I asked the girl.
 Pepé, she said.
 Hey, Pepé, I said to the dog, but he didn t budge.
 He s hard of hearing, said the girl. You have to speak up or he can t
hear. 
 Pepé! I shouted. The dog opened his eyes and snapped to attention
with a bark.
 Never mind, Pepé, said the girl. Sleep more and live longer. Pepé
flopped down again at my feet.
Naoko and Reiko ordered cold glasses of milk and I asked for a beer.
 lets hear the radio, said Reiko. The girl switched on an amplifier
and tuned into an FM station. Blood, Sweat and Tears came on with
 Spinning Wheel .
Reiko looked pleased. Now this is what we re here for! We don t have 
 
radios in our rooms, so if I don t come here once in a while, I don t
have any idea what s playing out there. 
 Do you sleep in this place? I asked the girl.
 No way! she laughed. I d die of loneliness if I spent the night here.
The pasture guy drives me into town and I come out again in the
morning. She pointed at a four-wheel drive truck parked in front of
the nearby pasture office.
 You ve got a holiday coming up soon, too, right? asked Reiko.
 Yeah, we ll be shutting up this place soon, said the girl. Reiko
offered her a cigarette, and they smoked.
 I ll miss you, said Reiko.
 I ll be back in May, though, said the girl with a laugh.
Cream came on the radio with White Room . After a commercial, it
was Simon and Garfunkel s Scarborough Fair .
 I like that, said Reiko when it was over.
 I saw the film, I said.
 Who s in it? 
 Dustin Hoffman. 
 I don t know him, she said with a sad little shake of the head. The
world changes like mad, and I don t know what s happening. She
asked the girl for a guitar. Sure, said the girl, switching off the radio
and bringing out an old guitar. The dog raised its head and sniffed the
instrument.
 You can t eat this, Reiko said with mock sternness. A grass-scented
breeze swept over the porch. The mountains lay spread out before us,
the ridge line sharp against the sky.
 its like a scene from The Sound of Music, I said to Reiko as she
tuned up.
 What s that? she asked.
She strummed the guitar in search of the opening chord of
 Scarborough Fair . This was apparently her first attempt at the song,
but after a few false starts she could play it through without hesitating. 
 
She had it down pat the third time and even started adding a few
flourishes. Good ear, she said to me with a wink. I can usually play
just about anything if I hear it three times. 
Softly humming the melody, she did a full rendition of Scarborough
Fair . The three of us applauded, and Reiko responded with a
decorous bow of the head.
 I used to get more applause for a Mozart concerto, she said.
Her milk was on the house if she would play the Beatles Here Comes
the Sun , said the girl. Reiko gave her a thumbs up and launched into
the song. Hers was not a full voice, and too much smoking had given
it a husky edge, but it was lovely, with real presence. I almost felt as if
the sun really was coming up again as I sat there listening and
drinking beer and looking at the mountains. It was a soft, warm
feeling.
Reiko gave back the guitar and asked to hear the radio again. Then she
suggested to Naoko and me that we take an hour and walk around the
area.
 I want to listen to the radio some more and hang out
with her. If you come back by three, that should be OK. 
 Is it all right for us to be alone together so long? 
 Well, actually, its against the rules, but what the hell. I m not a
chaperone, after all. I could use a break. And you came all the way
from Tokyo, I m sure there s tons of stuff you want to talk about. 
Reiko lit another cigarette as she spoke.
 lets go, said Naoko, standing up.
I started after her. The dog woke up and followed us for a while, but it
soon lost interest and went back to its place on the porch. We strolled
down a level road that followed the pasture fence. Naoko would take
my hand every now and then or slip her arm under mine.
 This is kind of like the old days, isn t it? she said.
 That wasn t the old days , I laughed. It was spring of this year! If
that was the old days , ten years ago was ancient history. 
 
 It feels like ancient history, said Naoko. But anyway, sorry about
last night. I don t know, I was a bundle of nerves. I really shouldn t
have done that after you came here all the way from Tokyo. 
 Never mind, I said. Both of us have a lot of feelings we need to get
out in the open. So if you want to take those feelings and smash
somebody with them, smash me. Then we can understand each other
better. 
 So if you understand me better, what then? 
 You don t get it, do you? I said. its not a question of what then .
Some people get a kick out of reading railway timetables and that s all
they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of
matchsticks. So what s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the
world who enjoys trying to understand you? 
 Kind of like a hobby? she said, amused.
 Yeah, I guess you could call it a hobby. Most normal people would
call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a
hobby, that s OK, too. 
 Tell me, said Naoko, you liked Kizuki, too, didn t you? Of
course, I said.
 How about Reiko? 
 I like her a lot, I said. She s really nice. 
 How come you always like people like that - people like us, I mean?
We re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning - me and Kizuki and
Reiko. Why can t you like more normal people? 
 Because I don t see you like that, I said after giving it some thought.
 I don t see you or Kizuki or Reiko as twisted in any way. The guys I
think of as twisted are out there running around. 
 But we are twisted, said Naoko. I can see that. 
We walked on in silence. The road left the fence and came out to a
circular grassy field ringed with trees like a pond.
 Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night so scared, said
Naoko, pressing up against my arm. I m scared I ll never get better 
 
again. I ll always stay twisted like this and grow old and waste away
here. I get so chilled its like I m all frozen inside. its horrible... so
cold... 
I put my arm around her and drew her close.
 I feel like Kizuki is reaching out for me from the darkness,
calling to me, Hey, Naoko, we can t stay apart. When I hear him
saying that, I don t know what to do. What do you do? 
 Well... don t take this the wrong way, now. OK, I won t. 
 I ask Reiko to hold me. I wake her up and crawl into her bed and let
her hold me tight. And I cry. And she strokes me until the ice melts
and I m warm again. Do you think its sick? 
 No. I wish I could be the one to hold you, though, I said.
 So hold me. Now. Right here. 
We sat down on the dry grass of the meadow and put our arms around
each other. The tall grass surrounded us, and we could see nothing but
the sky and clouds above. I gently lay Naoko down and took her in my
arms. She was soft and warm and her hands reached out for me. We
kissed with real feeling.
 Tell me something, Toru, Naoko whispered in my ear.
 What s that? I asked.
 Do you want to sleep with me? 
 Of course I do, I said. Can you wait? Of course I can. 
 Before we do it again, I want to get myself a little better. I want to
make myself into a person more worthy of that hobby of yours. Will
you wait for me to do that? 
 Of course I ll wait. Are you hard now? 
 You mean the soles of my feet? Silly, Naoko tittered.
 If you re asking whether I have an erection, of course I do. Will
you do me a favour and stop saying Of course ? OK, I ll stop. 
 Is it difficult? What? 
 To be all hard like that. Difficult? 
 I mean, are you suffering? 
 
 Well, it depends how you look at it. 
 Want me to help you get rid of it? 
 With your hand? 
 Uh-huh. To tell you the truth, said Naoko, its been sticking into me
ever since we lay down. It hurts. I pulled my hips away. Better? 
 Thanks. 
 You know? I said.
 What? 
 I wish you would do it. 
 OK, she said with a kind smile. Then she unzipped my trousers and
took my stiff penis in her hand. its warm, she said.
She started to move her hand, but I stopped her and unbuttoned her
blouse, reaching around to undo her bra strap. I kissed her soft, pink
nipples. She closed her eyes and slowly started moving her fingers.
 Hey, you re pretty good at that, I said. Be a good boy and shut up, 
said Naoko.
After I came, I held her in my arms and kissed her again. Naoko did
up her bra and blouse, and I zipped up my flies.
 Will that make it easier for you to walk? she asked.
 I owe it all to you. 
 Well, then, Sir, if it suits you, shall we walk a little farther? 
 By all means. 
We cut across the meadow, through a stand of trees, and across
another meadow. Naoko talked about her dead sister, explaining that
although she had hardly said anything about this to anyone, she felt
she ought to tell me.
 She was six years older than me, and our personalities were totally
different, but still we were very close. We never fought, not once. It s
true. Of course, with such a big difference in our ages, there was
nothing much for us to fight about. 
Her sister was one of those girls who are successful at every
 
thing - a super-student, a super-athlete, popular, a leader, kind,
straightforward, the boys liked her, her teachers loved her, her walls
were covered with certificates of merit. There s always one girl like
that in any school. I m not saying this because she s my sister, but she
never let any of this spoil her or make her the least bit stuck-up or a
show-off. its just that, no matter what you gave her to do, she would
naturally do it better than anyone else.
 So when I was little, I decided that I was going to be the sweet little
girl. Naoko twirled a frond of plume grass as she spoke. I mean, you
know, I grew up hearing everybody talking about how smart she was
and how good she was at games and how popular she was. Of course
I m going to assume there s no way I could ever compete with her. My
face, at least, was a little prettier than hers, so I guess my parents
decided they d bring me up cute. Right from the start they put me in
that kind of school. They dressed me in velvet dresses and frilly
blouses and patent leather shoes and gave me piano lessons and ballet
lessons. This just made my sister even crazier about me - you know: I
was her cute little sister. She d give me these cute little presents and
take me everywhere with her and help me with my homework. She
even took me along on dates. She was the best big sister anyone could
ask for.
 Nobody knew why she killed herself. The same as Kizuki. Exactly
the same. She was , too, and she never gave the slightest hint she
was going to commit suicide. She didn t leave a note, either. Really, it
was exactly the same, don t you think? 
 Sounds like it. 
 Everybody said she was too smart or she read too many books. And
she did read a lot. She had tons of books. I read a bunch of them after
she died, and it was so sad. They had her comments in the margins
and flowers pressed between the pages and letters from boyfriends,
and every time I came across something like that I d cry. I cried a lot. 
Naoko fell silent for a few seconds, twirling the plume grass again.
 
 She was the kind of person who took care of things by herself. She d
never ask anybody for advice or help. It wasn t a matter of pride, I
think. She just did what seemed natural to her. My parents were used
to this and thought she d be OK if they left her alone. I would go to
my sister for advice and she was always ready to give it, but she never
went to anyone else. She did what needed to be done, on her own. She
never got angry or moody. This is all true, I mean it, I m not
exaggerating. Most girls, when they have their period or something,
will get grumpy and take it out on others, but she never even did that.
Instead of getting into a bad mood, she would become very subdued.
Maybe once in two or three months this would happen to her: she d
shut herself up in her room and stay in bed, avoid school, hardly eat a
thing, turn the lights off, and space out. She wouldn t be in a bad
mood, though. When I came home from school, she d call me into her
room and sit me down next to her and ask me about my day. I d tell
her all the little things - like what kinds of games I played with my
friends or what the teacher said or my exam results, stuff like that.
She d take in every detail and make comments and suggestions, but as
soon as I left - to play with a friend, say, or go to a ballet lesson - she d
space out again. After two days, she d snap out of it just like that and
go to
school. This kind of thing went on for, I don t know, maybe
four years. My parents were worried at first and I think they went to a
doctor for advice, but, I mean, she d be perfectly fine after two days,
so they thought it would work itself out if they left her alone, she was
such a bright, steady girl.
 After she died, though, I heard my parents talking about a younger
brother of my father s who had died long before. He had also been
very bright, but he had stayed shut up in the house for four years -
from the time he was until he was. And then suddenly one day
he left the house and jumped in front of a train. My father said,
 Maybe its in the blood - from my side . 
 
While Naoko was speaking, her fingers unconsciously teased the
tassel of the plume grass, scattering its fibres to the wind. When the
shaft was bare, she wound it around her fingers.
 I was the one who found my sister dead, she went on. In autumn
when I was in the first year. November. On a dark, rainy day. My
sister was in the sixth-form at the time. I came home from my piano
lesson at. and my mother was making dinner. She told me to tell
my sister it was ready. I went upstairs and knocked on her door and
yelled Dinner s ready , but there was no answer. Her room was
completely silent. I thought this was strange, so I knocked again,
opened the door and peeped inside. I thought she was probably
sleeping. She wasn t in bed, though. She was standing by the window,
staring outside, with her neck bent at a kind of angle like this, like she
was thinking. The room was dark, the lights were out, and it was hard
to see anything. What are you doing? I said to her. Dinner is ready. 
That s when I noticed that she looked taller than usual. What was
going on? I wondered: it was so strange! Did she have high heels on?
Was she standing on something? I moved closer and was just about to
speak to her again when I saw it: there was a rope above her head. It
came straight down from a beam in the ceiling - I mean it was
amazingly straight, like somebody had drawn a line in space with a
ruler. My sister had a white blouse on - yeah, a simple white blouse
like this one - and a grey skirt, and her toes were pointing down like a
ballerina s, except there was a space between the tip of her toes and
the floor of maybe seven or eight inches. I took in every detail. Her
face, too. I looked at her face. I couldn t help it. I thought: I ve got to
go right downstairs and tell my mother. I ve got to scream. But my
body ignored me. It moved on its own, separately from my conscious
mind. It was trying to lower her from the rope while my mind was
telling me to hurry downstairs. Of course, there was no way a little
girl could have the strength to do such a thing, and so I just stood
there, spacing out, for maybe five or six minutes, a total blank, like 
 
something inside me had died. I just stayed that way, with my sister,
in that cold, dark place until my mother came up to see what was
going on. 
Naoko shook her head.
 For three days after that I couldn t talk. I just lay in bed like a dead
person, eyes wide open and staring into space. I didn t know what was
happening. Naoko pressed against my arm. I told you in my letter,
didn t I? I m a far more flawed human being than you realize. My
sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots. And
that s why I want you to go on ahead of me if you can. Don t wait for
me. Sleep with other girls if you want to. Don t let thoughts of me hold
you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up
taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don t want to do. I don t
want to interfere with your life. I don t want to interfere with
anybody s life. Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every
once in a while, and always remember me. That s all I want. 
 its not all I want, though, I said.
 You re wasting your life being involved with me. I m not wasting
anything. 
 But I might never recover. Will you wait for me forever?
Can you wait years, years? 
 You re letting yourself be scared by too many things, I said. The
dark, bad dreams, the power of the dead. You have to forget them. I m
sure you ll get well if you do. 
 If I can, said Naoko, shaking her head.
 If you can get out of this place, will you live with me? I asked.
 Then I can protect you from the dark and from bad dreams. Then
you d have me instead of Reiko to hold you when things got difficult. 
Naoko pressed still more firmly against me. That would be
wonderful, she said.
We got back to the cafe a little before three. Reiko was reading a book 
 
and listening to Brahms Second Piano Concerto on the radio. There
was something wonderful about Brahms playing at the edge of a
grassy meadow without a sign of anyone as far as the eye could see.
Reiko was whistling along with the cello passage that begins the third
movement.
 Backhaus and Bohm, she said. I wore this record out once, a long
time ago. Literally. I wore the grooves out listening to every note. I
sucked the music right out of it. 
Naoko and I ordered coffee.
 Do a lot of talking? asked Reiko.
 Tons, said Naoko.
 Tell me all about his, uh, you know, later. 
 We didn t do any of that, said Naoko, reddening. Really? Reiko
asked me. Nothing? Nothing, I said.
 Bo-o-o-ring! she said with a bored look on her face. True, I said,
sipping my coffee.
The scene in the dining hall was the same as the day before - the
mood, the voices, the faces. Only the menu had changed. The balding
man in white, who yesterday had been talking about the secretion of
gastric juices under weightless conditions, joined the three of us at our
table and talked for a long time about the correlation of brain size to
intelligence. As we ate our soybean burgers, we heard all about the
volume of Bismarck s brain and Napoleon s. He pushed his plate aside
and used a ballpoint pen and notepaper to draw sketches of brains. He
would start to draw, declare No, that s not quite it , and begin a new
one. This happened several times. When he had finished, he carefully
put the remaining notepaper away in a pocket of his white jacket and
slipped the pen into his breast pocket, in which he kept a total of three
pens, along with pencils and a ruler. Having finished his meal, he
repeated what he had told me the day before, The winters here are
really nice. Make sure you come back when its winter, and left the 
 
dining hall.
 Is he a doctor or a patient? I asked Reiko. Which do you think? 
 I really can t tell. In either case, he doesn t seem all that normal. 
 He s a doctor, said Naoko. Doctor Miyata. 
 Yeah, said Reiko, but I bet he s the craziest one here. Mr Omura,
the gatekeeper, is pretty crazy, too, answered
Naoko.
 True, said Reiko, nodding as she stabbed her broccoli. He does
these wild callisthenics every morning, screaming nonsense at the top
of his lungs. And before you came, Naoko, there was a girl in the
business office, Miss Kinoshita, who tried to kill herself. And last year
they sacked a male nurse, Tokushima, who had a terrible drinking
problem. 
 Sounds like patients and staff should swap places, I said.
 Right on, said Reiko, waving her fork in the air. You re finally
starting to see how things work here. 
 I suppose so. 
 What makes us most normal, said Reiko, is knowing that we re not
normal. 
Back in the room, Naoko and I played cards while Reiko practised
Bach on her guitar.
 What time are you leaving tomorrow? Reiko asked me, taking a
break and lighting a cigarette.
 Straight after breakfast, I said. The bus comes at nine. That way I
can get back in time for tomorrow night s work. 
 Too bad. It d be nice if you could stay longer. 
 If I stayed around too long, I might end up living here, I said,
laughing.
 Maybe so, Reiko said. Then, to Naoko, she said, Oh, yeah, I ve got
to go get some grapes at Oka s. I totally forgot. 
 Want me to go with you? asked Naoko.
 
 How about letting me borrow your young Mr Watanabe here? 
 Fine, said Naoko.
 Good. lets just the two of us go for another nighttime stroll, said
Reiko, taking my hand. We Yesterday. lets go all the way tonight. 
 Fine, said Naoko, tittering. Do what you like. 
were almost there.
The night air was cool. Reiko wore a pale blue cardigan over her shirt
and walked with her hands shoved in her jeans pockets. Looking up at
the sky, she sniffed the breeze like a dog. Smells like rain, she said.
I tried sniffing too, but couldn t smell anything. True, there were lots
of clouds in the sky obscuring the moon.
 If you stay here long enough, you can pretty much tell the weather by
the smell of the air, said Reiko.
We entered the wooded area where the staff houses stood. Reiko told
me to wait a minute, walked over to the front door of one house and
rang the bell. A woman came to the door - no doubt the lady of the
house - and stood there chatting and chuckling with Reiko. Then she
ducked inside and came back with a large plastic bag. Reiko thanked
her and said goodnight before returning to the spot where I was
waiting.
 Look, she said, opening the bag.
It held a huge cluster of grapes.
 Do you like grapes? 
 Love them. 
She handed me the top bunch. its OK to eat them. They re washed. 
We walked along eating grapes and spitting the skins and seeds on the
ground. They were fresh and delicious.
 I give their son piano lessons once in a while, and they offer me
different stuff. The wine we had was from them. I sometimes ask them
to do a little shopping for me in town. 
 I d like to hear the rest of the story you were telling me yesterday, I
said.
 
 Fine, said Reiko. But if we keep coming home late, Naoko might
start getting suspicious. 
 I m willing to risk it. 
 OK, then. I want a roof, though. its a little chilly tonight. 
She turned left as we approached the tennis courts. We went down a
narrow stairway and came out at a spot where several storehouses
stood like a block of houses. Reiko opened the door of the nearest one,
stepped in and turned on the lights. Come in, she said. There s not
much to see, though. 
The storehouse contained neat rows of cross-country skis, boots and
poles, and on the floor were piled snow removal equipment and bags
of rock salt.
 I used to come here all the time for guitar practice - when I wanted to
be alone. Nice and cosy, isn t it? 
Reiko sat on the bags of rock salt and invited me to sit next to her. I
did as I was told.
 Not much ventilation here, but mind if I smoke? 
 Go ahead, I said.
 This is one habit I can t seem to break, she said with a frown, but
she lit up with obvious enjoyment. Not many people enjoy tobacco as
much as Reiko did. I ate my grapes, carefully peeling them one at a
time and tossing the skins and seeds into a tin that served as a rubbish
bin.
 Now, lets see, how far did we get last night? Reiko asked.
 It was a dark and stormy night, and you were climbing the steep cliff
to grab the bird s nest. 
 You re amazing, the way you can joke around with such a straight
face, said Reiko. lets see, I think I had got to the point where I was
giving piano lessons to the girl every Saturday morning. 
 That s it. 
 Assuming you can divide everybody in the world into two groups -
 
those who are good at teaching things to people, and those who are not
- I pretty much belong to the first group, said Reiko. I never thought
so when I was young, and I suppose I didn t want to think of myself
that way, but once
I reached a certain age and had attained a degree of selfknowledge I
realized it was true after all: I m good at teaching people things. Really
good. 
 I bet you are. 
 I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I m
much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That s
just the kind of person I am. I m the scratchy stuff on the side of the
matchbox. But that s fine with me. I don t mind at all. Better to be a
first-class matchbox than a second-class match. I got this clear in my
own mind, I d say, after I started teaching this girl. I had taught a few
others when I was younger, strictly as a sideline, without realizing this
about myself. It was only after I started teaching her that I began to
think of myself that way. Hey - I m good at teaching people. That s
how well the lessons went.
As I said yesterday, the girl was nothing special when it came to
technique, and there was no question of her becoming a professional
musician, so I could take it easy. Plus she was going to the kind of
girls school where anybody with halfdecent marks automatically got
into university, which meant she didn t have to kill herself studying,
and her mother was all for going easy with the lessons, too. So I didn t
push her to do anything. I knew the first time I met her that she was
the kind of girl you couldn t push to do anything, that she was the kind
of child who would be all sweetness and say Yes, yes, and absolutely
refuse to do anything she didn t want to do. So the first thing I did was
let her play a piece the way she wanted to - per cent her own way.
Then I would play the same piece several different ways for her, and
the two of us would discuss which was best or which way she liked 
 
most. Then I d have her play the piece again, and her performance
would be ten times better than the first. She would see for
herself what worked best and bring those features into her own
playing. 
Reiko paused for a moment, observing the glowing end of her
cigarette. I went on eating my grapes without a word.
 I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than
me. I used to think it was such a waste! I thought,
,if only she had started out with a good teacher and received the
proper training, she d be so much farther along! But I was wrong. She
wasn t the kind of child who could stand proper training. There just
happen to be people like that. They re blessed with this marvellous
talent, but they can t make the effort to systematize it. They end up
squandering it in little bits and pieces. I ve seen my share of people
like that. At first you think they re amazing. They can sight-read some
terrifically difficult piece and do a damn good job playing it all the
way through. You see them do it, and you re overwhelmed. You think,
 I could never do that in a million years. But that s as far as it goes.
They can t take it any further. And why not? Because they won t put in
the effort. They haven t had the discipline pounded into them. They ve
been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they ve been able to
play things well without any effort and they ve had people telling them
how great they are from an early age, so hard work looks stupid to
them. They ll take some piece another kid has to work on for three
weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher assumes they ve
put enough into it and lets them go on to the next thing. And they do
that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out
what it means to be hammered by the teacher; they lose out on a
crucial element required for character building. its a tragedy. I myself
had tendencies like that, but fortunately I had a very tough teacher, so
I kept them in check.
 Anyway, it was a joy to teach her. Like driving down the highway in 
 
a high-powered sports car that responds to the slightest touch -
responds too quickly, sometimes. The trick to teaching children like
that is not to praise them too much. They re so used to praise it doesn t
mean anything to them. You ve got to dole it out wisely. And you can t
force anything on them. You have to let them choose for themselves.
And you don t let them rush ahead from one thing to the next: you
make them stop and think. But that s about it. If you do those things,
you ll get good results. 
Reiko dropped her cigarette butt on the floor and stamped it out. Then
she took a deep breath as if to calm herself.
 When her lessons ended, we d have tea and chat. Sometimes I d show
her certain jazz piano styles - like, this is Bud Powell, or this is
Thelonious Monk. But mostly she talked. And what a talker she was!
She could draw you right in. As I told you yesterday, I think most of
what she said was made up, but it was interesting. She was a keen
observer, a precise user of language, sharp-tongued and funny. She
could stir your emotions. Yes, really, that s what she was so good at -
stirring people s emotions, moving you. And she knew she had this
power. She tried to use it as skilfully and effectively as possible. She
could make you feel whatever she wanted - angry or sad or
sympathetic or disappointed or happy. She would manipulate people s
emotions for no other reason than to test her own powers. Of course, I
only realized this later. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing
to me. 
Reiko shook her head and ate a few grapes.
 It was a sickness, she said. The girl was sick. She was like the
rotten apple that ruins all the other apples. And no one could cure her.
She ll have that sickness until the day she dies. In that sense, she was a
sad little creature. I would have
pitied her, too, if I hadn t been one of her victims. I would have seen
her as a victim. 
Reiko ate a few more grapes. She seemed to be thinking of how best 
 
to go on with her story.
 Well, anyway, I enjoyed teaching her for a good six months.
Sometimes I d find something she said a little surprising or odd. Or
she d be talking and I d have this rush of horror when I realised the
intensity of her hatred for some person was completely irrational, or it
would occur to me that she was just far too clever, and I d wonder
what she was really thinking. But, after all, everyone has their flaws,
right? And finally, what business was it of mine to question her
personality or character? I was just her piano teacher. All I had to care
about was whether she practised or not. And besides, the truth of the
matter is that I liked her. I liked her a lot.
 Still, I was careful not to tell her anything too personal about myself.
I just had this sixth sense that I d better not talk about such things. She
asked me hundreds of questions - she was dying to know more about
me - but I only told her the most harmless stuff, like things about my
childhood or where I d gone to school, stuff like that. She said she
wanted to know more about me, but I told her there was nothing to
tell: I d had a boring life, I had an ordinary husband, an ordinary child,
and a ton of housework. But I like you so much, she d say and look
me right in the eye in this clingy sort of way. It sent a thrill through
me when she did that - a nice thrill. But even so, I never told her more
than I had to.
 And then one day - a day in May, I think it was - in the middle of her
lesson, she said she felt sick. I saw she was pale and sweating and
asked if she wanted to go home, but she said she thought she d feel
better if she could just lie down for a while. So I took her - almost
carried her - to the bedroom.
We had such a small sofa, the bed was the only place she could lie
down. She apologized for being a nuisance, but I assured her it was no
bother and asked if she wanted anything to drink. She said no, she just
wanted me to stay near her, which I said I d be glad to do.
 A few minutes later she asked me to rub her back. She sounded as 
 
though she was really suffering, and she was sweating like mad, so I
started to give her a good massage. Then she apologized and asked me
if I d mind taking off her bra, as it was hurting her. So, I don t know, I
did it. She was wearing a skin-tight blouse, and I had to unbutton that
and reach behind and undo the bra hooks. She had big breasts for a
 -year-old. Twice as big as mine. And she wasn t wearing any starter
bra but a real adult model, an expensive one. Of course I m not paying
all that much attention at the time, and like an idiot I just carry on
rubbing her back. She keeps apologizing in this pitiful voice as if she s
really sorry, and I keep telling her its OK its OK. 
Reiko tapped the ash from her cigarette to the floor. By then I had
stopped eating grapes and was giving all my attention to her story.
 After a while she starts sobbing. What s wrong? I ask her.
 Nothing, she says. its obviously not nothing, I say. Tell me the
truth. What s bothering you? So she says, I just get like this
sometimes. I don t know what to do. I m so lonely and sad, and I can t
talk to anybody, and nobody cares about me. And it hurts so much, I
just get like this. I can t sleep at night, and I don t feel like eating, and
coming here for my lesson is the only thing I have to look forward to. 
So I say, You can talk to me. Tell me why this happens to you. 
Things are not going well at home, she says. She can t love her
parents, and they don t love her. Her father is seeing another woman
and is hardly ever around, and that makes her mother half crazy and
she takes it out on the girl; she beats her almost every day and she
hates to go home. So now the girl is really wailing, and her eyes are
full of tears, those beautiful eyes of hers. The sight is enough to make
a god weep. So I tell her, if its so terrible to go home, she can come to
my place any time she likes. When she hears that, the girl throws her
arms around me and says, Oh, I m so sorry, but if I didn t have you I
wouldn t know what to do. Please don t turn your back on me. If you
did that, I d have nowhere to go. 
 So, I don t know, I hold her head against me and I m caressing her 
 
and saying There there, and she s got her arms around me and she s
stroking my back, and soon I m starting to feel very strange, my whole
body is kind of hot. I mean, here s this picture-perfect beautiful girl
and I m on the bed with her, and we re hugging, and her hands are
caressing my back in this incredibly sensual way that my own
husband couldn t even begin to match, and I feel all the screws coming
loose in my body every time she touches me, and before I know it she
has my blouse and bra off and she s stroking my breasts. So that s
when it finally hits me that she s an absolute dyed-in-the-wool lesbian.
This had happened to me once before, at school, one of the sixth-form
girls. So then I tell her to stop.
 Oh, please, she says, just a little more. I m so lonely, I m so lonely,
please believe me, you re the only one I have, oh please, don t turn
your back on me, and she takes my hand and puts it on her breast -
her very nicely shaped breast, and, sure, I m a woman, but this electric
something goes through me when my hand makes contact. I have no
idea what to do. I just keep repeating no no no no no, like an idiot. It s
as if I m Paralyzed, I can t move. I had managed to push the girl
away at school, but now I can t do a thing. My body won t take orders.
She s holding my right hand against her with her left hand, and she s
kissing and licking my nipples, and her right hand is caressing my
back, my side, my bottom. So here I am in the bedroom with the
curtains closed and a -year-old girl has me practically naked - she s
been taking my clothes off somehow all along - and touching me all
over and I m writhing with the pleasure of it. Looking back on it now,
it seems incredible. I mean, its insane, don t you think? But at the time
it was as if she had cast a spell on me. 
Reiko paused to puff at her cigarette.
 You know, this is the first time I ve ever told a man about it, she
said, looking at me. I m telling it to you because I think I ought to,
but I m finding it really embarrassing. 
 I m sorry, I said, because I didn t know what else to say.
 
 This went on for a while, and then her right hand started to move
down, and she touched me through my panties. By then, I was
absolutely soaking wet. I m ashamed to say it, but I ve never been so
wet before or since. I had always thought of myself as sort of
indifferent to sex, so I was astounded to be getting so worked up. So
then she puts these slim, soft fingers of hers inside my panties, and...
well, you know, I can t bring myself to put it into words. I mean, it
was totally different from when a man puts his clumsy hands on you
there. It was amazing. Really. Like feathers or down. I thought all the
fuses in my head were going to pop. Still, somewhere in my foggedover
brain, the thought occurred to me that I had to put a stop to this.
If I let it happen once, I d never stop, and if I had to carry around a
secret like that inside me, my head was going to get completely
messed up again. I thought about my daughter, too. What if she saw
me like this? She was supposed to be at my parents house until three
on
Saturdays, but what if something happened and she came home
unexpectedly? This helped me to gather my strength and raise myself
on the bed. Stop it now, please stop! I shouted.
 But she wouldn t stop. Instead, she yanked my panties down and
started using her tongue. I had rarely let even my husband do that, I
found it so embarrassing, but now I had a -year-old girl licking me
all over down there. I just gave up. All I could do was cry. And it was
absolute paradise.
 Stop it! I yelled one more time and slapped her on the side of the
face as hard as I could. She finally stopped, raised herself up and
looked into my eyes. The two of us were stark naked, on our knees, in
bed, staring at each other. She was , I was , but, I don t know,
looking at that body of hers, I felt totally overwhelmed. The image is
still so vivid in my mind. I could hardly believe I was looking at the
body of a -year-old girl, and I still can t believe it. By comparison,
what I had for a body was enough to make you cry. Believe me. 
 
There was nothing I could say, and so I said nothing.
 What s wrong? she says to me. You like it this way, don t you? I
knew you would the first time I met you. I know you like it. its much
better than doing it with a man - isn t it? Look how wet you are. I can
make you feel even better if you ll let me. its true. I can make you feel
like your body s melting away. You want me to, don t you? And she
was right. She was much better than my husband. And I did want her
to do it even more! But I couldn t let it happen. lets do this once a
week, she said. Just once a week. Nobody will find out. It ll be our
little secret . 
 But I got out of bed and put on my dressing-gown and told her to
leave and never come back. She just looked at me. Her eyes were
absolutely flat. I had never seen them like that
before. It was as if they were painted on cardboard. They had no
depth. After she stared at me for a while, she gathered up her clothes
without a word and, as slowly as she could, as though she were
making a show of it, she put on each item, one at a time. Then she
went back into the piano room and took a brush from her bag. She
brushed her hair and wiped the blood from her lips with a
handkerchief, put on her shoes, and left. As she went out, she said,
 You re a lesbian, you know. its true. You may try to hide it, but
you ll be a lesbian until the day you die . 
 Is it true? I asked.
Reiko curved her lips and thought for a while. Well, it is and it isn t. I
definitely felt better with her than with my husband. That s a fact. I
had a time there when I really agonized over the question. Maybe I
really was a lesbian and just hadn t noticed until then. But I don t think
so any more. Which is not to say I don t have the tendencies. I
probably do have them. But I m not a lesbian in the proper sense of the
term. I never feel desire when I look at a woman. Know what I
mean? 
I nodded.
 
 Certain kinds of girls, though, do respond to me, and I can feel it
when that happens. Those are the only times it comes out in me. I can
hold Naoko in my arms, though, and feel nothing special. We go
around in the flat practically naked when the weather s hot, and we
take baths together, sometimes even sleep in the same bed, but
nothing happens. I don t feel a thing. I can see that she has a beautiful
body, but that s all. Actually, Naoko and I played a game once. We
made believe we were lesbians. Want to hear about it? 
 Sure. Tell me. 
 When I told her the story I just told you - we tell each
other everything, you know - Naoko tried an experiment. The two of
us got undressed and she tried caressing me, but it didn t work at all. It
just tickled. I thought I was going to die laughing. Just thinking about
it makes me itchy. She was so clumsy! I ll bet you re glad to hear
that. 
 Yes I am, to tell the truth. 
 Well, anyway, that s about it, said Reiko, scratching near an
eyebrow with the tip of her little finger. After the girl left my house, I
found a chair and sat there spacing out for a while, wondering what to
do. I could hear the dull beating of my heart from deep inside my
body. My arms and legs seemed to weigh a ton, and my mouth felt as
though I d eaten a moth or something, it was so dry. But I dragged
myself to the bathroom, knowing my daughter would be back soon. I
wanted to clean those places where the girl had touched and licked
me. I scrubbed myself with soap, over and over, but I couldn t seem to
get rid of the slimy feeling she had left behind. I knew I was probably
imagining it, but that didn t help. That night, I asked my husband to
make love to me, almost as a way to get rid of the defilement. Of
course, I didn t tell him anything - I couldn t. All I said to him was that
I wanted him to take it slow, to give it more time than usual. And he
did. He concentrated on every little detail, he really took a long, long
time, and the way I came that night, oh yes, it was like nothing I had 
 
ever experienced before, never once in all our married life. And why
do you think that was? Because the touch of that girl s fingers was still
there in my body. That s all it was.
 Oh, man, is this embarrassing! Look, I m sweating! I can t believe I m
saying these things - he made love to me, I came ! Reiko smiled,
her lips curved again. But even this didn t help. Two days went by,
three, and her touch was still there. And her last words were echoing
and echoing in my head.
 She didn t come to my house the following Saturday. My heart was
pounding all day long while I waited, wondering what I would do if
she showed up. I couldn t concentrate on anything. She never did
come, though. Of course. She was a proud little thing, and she had
failed with me in the end. She didn t come the next week, either, nor
the week after that, and soon a month went by. I decided that I would
be able to forget about what had happened when enough time had
passed, but I couldn t forget. When I was alone in the house, I would
feel her presence and my nerves would be on edge. I couldn t play the
piano, I couldn t think, I couldn t do anything during that first month.
And then one day I realized that something was wrong whenever I left
the house. The neighbours were looking at me in a strange way. There
was a new distance in their eyes. They were as polite as ever with
their greetings, but there was something different in their tone of voice
and in their behaviour towards me. The woman next door, who used to
pay me an occasional visit, seemed to be avoiding me. I tried not to let
these things bother me, though. Start noticing things like that, and
you ve got the first signs of illness.
 Then one day I had a visit from another housewife I was on friendly
terms with. We were the same age, and she was the daughter of a
friend of my mother s, and her child went to the same kindergarten as
mine, so we were fairly close. She just showed up one day and asked
me if I knew about a terrible rumour that was going around about me.
 What kind of rumour? I asked. I almost can t say it, its so awful, 
 
she said. Well, you ve got this far, you have to tell me the rest. 
 Still she resisted telling me, but I finally got it all out of her. I mean,
her whole purpose in coming to see me was to tell me what she had
heard, so of course she was going to spit it out eventually. According
to her, people were saying that I was a card-carrying lesbian and had
been in and out of mental hospitals for it. They said that I had stripped
the clothes off my piano pupil and tried to do things to her and when
she had resisted I had slapped her so hard her face swelled up. They
had turned the story on its head, of course, which was bad enough, but
what really shocked me was that people knew I had been hospitalized.
 My friend said she was telling everyone that she had known me for
ever and that I was not like that, but the girl s parents believed her
version and were spreading it around the neighbourhood. In addition,
they had investigated my background and found that I had a history of
mental problems.
 The way my friend heard it, the girl had come home from her lesson
one day - that day, of course - with her face all bloated, her lip split
and bloody, buttons missing from her blouse, and even her underwear
torn. Can you believe it? She had done all this to back up her story, of
course, which her mother had to drag out of her. I can just see her
doing it - putting blood on her blouse, tearing buttons off, ripping the
lace on her bra, making herself cry until her eyes were red, messing up
her hair, telling her mother a pack of lies.
 Not that I m blaming people for believing her. I would have believed
her, too, this beautiful doll with a devil s tongue. She comes home
crying, she refuses to talk because its too embarrassing, but then she
spills it out. Of course people are going to believe her. And to make
matters worse, its true, I do have a history of hospitalization for
mental problems, I did hit her in the face as hard as I could. Who s
going to believe me? Probably just my husband.
A few more days went by while I wrestled with the
question of whether to tell him or not, but when I did, he believed me. 
 
Of course. I told him everything that had happened that day - the kind
of lesbian things she did to me, the way I slapped her in the face. Of
course, I didn t tell him what I had felt. I couldn t have told him that.
So anyway, he was furious and insisted that he was going to go
straight to the girl s family. He said, You re a married woman, after
all. You re married to me. And you re a mother. There s no way you re
a lesbian. What a joke! 
 But I wouldn t let him go. All he could do was make things worse. I
knew. I knew she was sick. I had seen hundreds of sick people, so I
knew. The girl was rotten inside. Peel off a layer of that beautiful skin,
and you d find nothing but rotten flesh. I know its a terrible thing to
say, but its true. And I knew that ordinary people could never know
the truth about her, that there was no way we could win. She was an
expert at manipulating the emotions of the adults around her, and we
had nothing to prove our case. First of all, who s going to believe that
a -year-old girl set a homosexual trap for a woman in her thirties?
No matter what we said, people would believe what they wanted to
believe. The more we struggled, the more vulnerable we d be.
 There was only one thing for us to do, I said: we had to move. If I
stayed in that neighbourhood any longer, the stress would get to me;
my mind would snap again. It was happening already. We had to get
out of there, go somewhere far away where nobody knew me. My
husband wasn t ready to go, though. It hadn t dawned on him yet how
critical I was. And the timing was terrible: he loved his work, and he
had finally succeeded in getting us settled in our own house (we lived
in a little prefab), and our daughter was comfortable in her
kindergarten. Wait a minute, he said, we can t just up sticks and go.
I can t find a job just like that. We d have to sell the house, and we d
have to find another kindergarten. It ll take two months at least. 
 I can t wait two months, I told him. This is going to finish me off
once and for all. I m not kidding. Believe me, I know what I m talking
about. The symptoms were starting already: my ears were ringing,
 
and I was hearing things, and I couldn t sleep. So he suggested that I
leave first, go somewhere by myself, and he would follow after he had
taken care of what had to be done.
 No, I said, I don t want to go alone. I ll fall apart if I don t have
you. I need you. Please, don t leave me alone. He held me and pleaded
with me to hang on a little longer. Just a month, he said. He would
take care of everything - leave his job, sell the house, make
arrangements for kindergarten, find a new job. There might be a
position he could take in Australia, he said. He just wanted me to wait
one month, and everything would be OK. What could I say to that? If
I tried to object, it would only isolate me even more. 
Reiko sighed and looked at the ceiling light.
 I couldn t hold on for a month, though. One day, it happened again:
snap! And this time it was really bad. I took sleeping pills and turned
on the gas. I woke up in a hospital bed, and it was all over. It took a
few months before I had calmed down enough to think, and then I
asked my husband for a divorce. I told him it would be the best thing
for him and for our daughter. He said he had no intention of divorcing
me. We can make a new start, he said. We can go somewhere new,
just the three of us, and begin all over again. its too late, I told him.
 Everything ended when you asked me to wait a month. If you really
wanted to start again, you shouldn t have said that to me. Now, no
matter where we go, no matter how far away we move, the same thing
will happen all over again. And I ll ask you for the same thing, and
make you suffer. I don t want to do that any more. 
 And so we divorced. Or I should say I divorced him. He married
again two years ago, though. I m still glad I made him leave me.
Really. I knew I d be like this for the rest of my life, and I didn t want
to drag anyone down with me. I didn t want to force anyone to live in
constant fear that I might lose my mind at any moment.
 He had been wonderful to me: an ideal husband, faithful, strong and
patient, someone I could put my complete trust in. He had done
 
everything he could to heal me, and I had done everything I could to
be healed, both for his sake and for our daughter s. And I had believed
in my recovery. I was happy for six years from the time we were
married. He got me per cent of the way there, but the other one per
cent went crazy. Snap! Everything we had built up came crashing
down. In one split second, everything turned into nothing. And that
girl was the one who did it. 
Reiko collected the cigarette butts she had crushed underfoot and
tossed them into the tin can.
 its a terrible story. We worked so hard, so hard, building our world
one brick at a time. And when it fell apart, it happened just like that.
Everything was gone before you knew it. 
She stood up and thrust her hands in her pockets. lets go back. It s
late. 
The sky was darker, the cloud cover thicker than before, the moon
invisible. Now, I realized, like Reiko I could smell the rain. And with
it mixed the fresh smell of the grapes in the bag I was holding.
 That s why I can t leave this place, she said. I m afraid to get
involved with the outside world. I m afraid to meet new people and
feel new feelings. 
 I understand, I said. But I think you can do it. I think you can go
outside and make it. 
Reiko smiled, but said nothing.
Naoko was on the sofa with a book. She had her legs crossed and
pressed her hand against her temple as she read. Her fingers almost
seemed to be touching and testing each word that entered her head.
Scattered drops of rain were beginning to tap on the roof. The
lamplight enveloped her, hovering around her like fine dust. After my
long talk with Reiko, Naoko s youthfulness struck me in a new way.
 Sorry we re so late, said Reiko, patting Naoko s head.
 Enjoy yourselves? asked Naoko, looking up.
 Of course, said Reiko.
 
 Doing what? Naoko asked me, - just the two of you. 
 Not at liberty to say, Miss, I answered.
Naoko chuckled and set down her book. Then the three of us ate
grapes to the sound of the rain.
 When its raining like this, said Naoko, it feels as if we re the only
ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us
could stay together. 
 Oh, sure, said Reiko, and while the two of you are going at it, I m
supposed to be fanning you or playing background music on my guitar
like some dumb geisha? No, thanks! 
 Oh, I d let you have him once in a while, said Naoko, laughing.
 OK, then, count me in, said Reiko. Come on, rain, pour down! 
The rain did pour down, and kept pouring. Thunder shook the place
from time to time. When we had finished the grapes, Reiko went back
to her cigarettes and pulled out the guitar from under her bed and
started to play - first, Desafinado and The Girl from Ipanema , then
some Bacharach and a few Lennon and McCartney songs. Reiko and I
sipped wine again, and when that was gone we shared the brandy that
was left in my flask. A warm, intimate mood took hold as the three of
us talked into the night, and I began to wish, with Naoko, that the rain
would keep on falling.
 Will you come to see me again? she asked, looking at me.
 Of course I will, I said.
 And will you write? 
 Every week. 
 And will you add a few lines for me? asked Reiko. That I will, I
said. I d be glad to. 
At eleven o clock, Reiko unfolded the sofa and made a bed for me as
she had the night before. We said goodnight and turned out the lights.
Unable to sleep, I took The Magic Mountain and a torch from my
rucksack and read for a while. Just before midnight, the bedroom door
edged open and Naoko came and crawled in next to me. Unlike the 
 
night before, Naoko was the usual Naoko. Her eyes were in focus, her
movements brisk. Bringing her mouth to my ear, she whispered, I
don t know, I can t sleep. 
 I can t either, I said. Setting my book down and turning out the
torch, I took her in my arms and kissed her. The darkness and the
sound of the rain enfolded us.
 How about Reiko? 
 Don t worry, she s sound asleep. And when she sleeps, she sleeps. 
Then Naoko asked, Will you really come to see me again? 
 Of course I will. 
 Even if I can t do anything for you? 
I nodded in the darkness. I could feel the full shape of her breasts
against me. I traced the outline of her body through her gown with the
flat of my hand. From shoulder to back to hips, I ran my hand over her
again and again, driving the line and the softness of her body into my
brain. After we had been in this gentle embrace for a while, Naoko
touched her lips to my forehead and slipped out of bed. I could see her
pale blue gown flash in the darkness like a fish.
 Goodbye, she called in a tiny voice.
Listening to the rain, I dropped into a gentle sleep.
It was still raining the following morning - a fine, almost invisible
autumn rain unlike the previous night s downpour. You knew it was
raining only because of the ripples on puddles and the sound of
dripping from the eaves. I woke to see a milky white mist enclosing
the window, but as the sun rose a breeze carried the mist away, and
the surrounding woods and hills began to emerge.
As we had done the day before, the three of us ate breakfast then went
out to attend to the aviary. Naoko and Reiko wore yellow plastic
raincapes with hoods. I put on a jumper and a waterproof windcheater.
Outside the air was damp and chilly. The birds, too, were avoiding the
rain, huddled together at the back of the cage.
 
 Gets cold here when it rains, doesn t it? I said to Reiko.
 Every time it rains it ll be a little colder now, until it turns to snow, 
she said. The clouds from the Sea of Japan dump tons of snow when
they pass through here. 
 What do you do with the birds in the winter? 
 Bring them inside, of course. What are we supposed to do - dig them
out of the snow in spring all frozen? We defrost em and bring em
back to life and yell, OK, everybody, come and get it! 
I poked the wire mesh and the parrot flapped its wings and squawked
 Shithead! Thank you! Crazy! 
 Now, that one I d like to freeze, Naoko said with a melancholy look.
 I really think I will go crazy if I have to hear that every morning. 
After cleaning the aviary, we went back to the flat. While I packed my
things, the women put on their farm clothes. We left the building
together and parted just beyond the tennis court. They turned right and
I continued straight ahead. We called goodbye to each other, and I
promised I would come again. Naoko gave a little smile and
disappeared around a corner.
On my way to the gate I passed several people, all wearing the same
yellow raincapes that Naoko and Reiko wore, all with their hoods up.
Colours shone with an exceptional clarity in the rain: the ground was a
deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, and the people
wrapped in yellow looking like otherworldly spirits that were only
allowed to wander the earth on rainy mornings. They floated over the
ground in silence, carrying farm tools, baskets and sacks.
The gatekeeper remembered my name and marked it on the list of
visitors as I left. I see you re here from Tokyo, the old fellow said. I
went there once. Just once. They serve great pork. 
 They do? I asked, uncertain how to answer him.
 I didn t like much of what I ate in Tokyo, but the pork was delicious.
I expect they have some special way of rearing em, eh? 
I said I didn t know, it was the first I d heard of it. When was that, by 
 
the way, when you went to Tokyo? 
 Hmm, lets see, he said, cocking his head, was it the time His
Majesty the Crown prince got married? My son was in Tokyo and said
I ought to see the place at least once. That must have been. 
 Oh, well then, sure, pork must have been good in Tokyo back then, I
said.
 How about these days? he asked.
I wasn t sure, I said, but I hadn t heard anything special about it. This
seemed to disappoint him. He gave every sign of wanting to continue
our conversation, but I told him I had to catch a bus and started
walking in the direction of the road. Patches of fog remained floating
on the path where it skirted the stream, but the breeze carried them
over to the steep flanks of a nearby mountain. Every now and then as I
walked along I would stop, turn, and heave a deep sigh for no
particular reason. I felt as though I had arrived on a planet where the
gravity was a little different. Yes, of course, I told myself, feeling sad:
I was in the outside world now.
Back at the dorm by. , I changed straight away and left for the
record shop in Shinjuku to put in my hours. I looked after the shop
from six o clock to. and sold a few records, but mainly I sat there
in a daze, watching an incredible variety of people streaming by
outside. There were families and couples and drunks and gangsters
and lively-looking girls in short skirts and bearded hippies and bar
hostesses and some indefinable types. Whenever I put on hard rock,
hippies and runaway kids would gather outside to dance and sniff
paint thinner or just sit on the ground doing nothing in particular, and
when I put on Tony Bennett, they would disappear.
Next door was a shop where a middle-aged, sleepy-eyed man sold
 adult toys . I couldn t imagine why anyone would want the kind of
sex paraphernalia he had there, but he seemed to do a roaring trade. In
the alley diagonally across from the record shop I saw a drunken
student vomiting. In the game arcade across from us at another angle, 
 
the cook from a local restaurant was killing time on his break with a
game of bingo that took cash bets. Beneath the eaves of a shop that
had closed for the night, a swarthy homeless guy was crouching,
motionless. A girl with pale pink lipstick who couldn t have been more
than or came in and asked me to play the Rolling Stones 
 Jumpin Jack Flash . When I found the record and put it on for her,
she started snapping her fingers to the rhythm and shaking her hips as
she danced around the shop. Then she asked me for a cigarette. I gave
her one of the manager s, which she smoked gratefully, and when the
record ended she left the shop without so much as a thank you .
Every minutes or so I would hear the siren of an ambulance or
police car. Three drunk company executives in suits and ties came by,
laughing at the top of their voices every time they yelled Nice arse! 
at a pretty, long-haired girl in a phone box.
The more I watched, the more confused I became. What the hell was
this all about? I wondered. What could it possibly mean?
The manager came back from dinner and said to me, Hey, know
what, Watanabe? Night before last I made it with the boutique chick. 
For some time now he had had his eye on the girl who worked at a
boutique nearby, and every once in a while he would take a record
from the shop as a gift for her.
 Good for you, I said to him, whereupon he told me every last detail
of his conquest.
 If you really wanna make a chick, here s what ya gotta do, 
he began, very pleased with himself. First, ya gotta give er presents.
Then ya gotta get er drunk. I mean really drunk. Then ya just gotta do
it. its easy. See what I mean? 
Head mixed up as ever, I boarded the commuter train and went back
to my dorm. Closing the curtains, I turned off the lights, stretched out
in bed, and felt as if Naoko might come crawling in beside me at any
moment. With my eyes closed, I could feel the soft swell of her
breasts on my chest, hear her whispering to me, and feel the outline of 
 
her body in my hands. In the darkness, I returned to that small world
of hers. I smelled the meadow grass, heard the rain at night. I thought
of her naked, as I had seen her in the moonlight, and pictured her
cleaning the aviary and tending to the vegetables with that soft,
beautiful body of hers wrapped in the yellow raincape. Clutching my
erection, I thought of Naoko until I came. This seemed to clear my
brain a little, but it didn t help me sleep. I felt exhausted, desperate for
sleep, but it simply refused to cooperate.
I got out of bed and stood at the window, my unfocused eyes
wandering out towards the flagpole. Without the national flag attached
to it, the pole looked like a gigantic white bone thrusting up into the
darkness of night. What was Naoko doing now? I wondered. Of
course, she must be sleeping, sleeping deeply, shrouded in the
darkness of that curious little world of hers. Let her be spared from
anguished dreams, I found myself hoping.
 
In P.E. class the next morning, Thursday, I swam several lengths of
the -metre pool. The vigorous exercise cleared my head some more
and gave me an appetite. After eating a good-sized lunch at a student
restaurant known for its good-sized lunches, I was on my way to the
literature department library to do some research when I bumped into
Midori Kobayashi. She had someone with her, a petite girl with
glasses, but when she spotted me, she approached me alone.
 Where you going? she asked.
 Lit. library, I said.
 Why don t you forget it and come have lunch with me? I ve already
eaten. 
 So what? Eat again. 
We ended up going to a nearby café where she had a plate of curry
and I had a cup of coffee. She wore a white, longsleeved shirt under a
yellow woollen vest with a fish knitted into the design, a narrow gold
necklace, and a Disney watch. She seemed to enjoy the curry and
drank three glasses of water with it.
 Where ve you been? Midori asked. I don t know how many times I
called. 
 Was there something you wanted to talk about? Nothing special. I
just called. 
 I see. 
 
 You see what? 
 Nothing. Just I see , I said. Any fires lately? 
 That was fun, wasn t it? It didn t do much damage, but
that smoke made it feel real. Great stuff. Midori gulped another glass
of water, took a breath and studied my face for a while. Hey, what s
wrong with you? she asked. You ve got this spaced-out face. Your
eyes aren t focused. 
 I m OK, I said. I just came back from a trip and I m tired. 
 You look like you ve just seen a ghost. I see. 
 Hey, do you have German and R.E. Can you skip en: Not
German. I ve When s it over? Two. 
 OK. How about going into the city with me after that some drinks? 
 At two in the afternoon?! 
 For a change, why not? You look so spaced. Come on, come drinking
with me and get a little life into you. That s what I want to do - drink
with you and get some life into myself.
What do you say? 
 OK, lets go, I said with a sigh. I ll look for you in the Lit. quad at
two. 
After German we caught a bus to Shinjuku and went to an
underground bar called DUG behind the Kinokuniya bookshop. We
each started with two vodka and tonics.
 I come here once in a while, she said. They don t make you feel
embarrassed to be drinking in the afternoon. 
 Do you drink in the afternoon a lot? 
 Sometimes, she said, rattling the ice in her glass. Sometimes, when
the world gets too hard to live in, I come here for a vodka and tonic. 
 Does the world get hard to live in? 
 Sometimes, said Midori. I ve got my own special little problems. 
 Like what? 
 Like family, like boyfriends, like irregular periods. Stuff. So have
another drink. 
 
 I will. 
I beckoned to the waiter and ordered two more vodka and tonics.
 Remember how, when you came over that Sunday, you kissed me? 
Midori asked. I ve been thinking about it. It was nice. Really nice. 
 That s nice. 
 That s nice , she mimicked. The way you talk is so weird! 
 It is? 
 Anyway, I was thinking, that time. I was thinking how great it would
be if that had been the first time in my life a boy had kissed me. If I
could switch around the order of my life, I would absolutely,
absolutely make that my first kiss. And then I would live the rest of
my life thinking stuff like: Hey, I wonder whatever happened to that
boy named Watanabe I gave my first kiss to on the laundry deck, now
that he s ? Wouldn t that be great? 
 Yeah, really, I said, cracking a pistachio nut.
 Hey, what is it with you? Why are you so spaced out? You still
haven t answered me. 
I probably still haven t completely adapted to the world. I said after
giving it some thought. I don t know, I feel like this isn t the real
world. The people, the scene: they just don t seem real to me. 
Midori rested an elbow on the bar and looked at me. There was
something like that in a Jim Morrison song, I m pretty sure. 
 People are strange when you re a stranger. 
 Peace, said Midori.
Peace, I said.
 You really ought to go to Uruguay with me, Midori said, still
leaning on the bar. Girlfriend, family, university - just dump em all. 
 Not a bad idea, I said, laughing.
 Don t you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and
everybody and just go somewhere where you don t know a soul?
Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really, really want to do it
sometimes. Like, suppose you whisked me somewhere far, far away, 
 
I d make lots of babies for you as tough as little bulls. And we d all
live happily ever after, rolling on the floor. 
I laughed and drank my third vodka and tonic.
 I guess you don t really want lots of babies as tough as little bulls
yet, said Midori.
 I m intrigued, I said. I d like to see what they look like. 
 That s OK, you don t have to want them, said Midori, eating a
pistachio. Here I am, drinking in the afternoon, saying whatever pops
into my head: I wanna dump everything and run off somewhere. 
What s the point of going to Uruguay? All they ve got there is donkey
shit. 
 You may be right. 
 Donkey shit everywhere. Here a shit, there a shit, the whole world is
donkey shit. Hey, I can t open this. You take it. Midori handed me a
pistachio nut. I struggled with it until I cracked it open. But oh, what
a relief it was last Sunday! Going up to the laundry deck with you,
watching the fire, drinking beer, singing songs. I don t know how long
it s been since I had such a total sense of relief. People are always
trying to force stuff on me. The minute they see me they start telling
me what to do. At least you don t try to force stuff on me. 
 I don t know you well enough to force stuff on you. 
 You mean, if you knew me better, you d force stuff on me like
everyone else? 
 its possible, I said. That s how people live in the real world:
forcing stuff on each other. 
 You wouldn t do that. I can tell. I m an expert when it comes to
forcing stuff and having stuff forced on you. You re not the type.
That s why I can relax with you. Do you have any idea how many
people there are in the world who like to force stuff on people and
have stuff forced on them? Tons! And then they make a big fuss, like
 I forced her , You forced me! That s what they like. But I don t like
it. I just do it because I have to. 
 
 What kind of stuff do you force on people or they force on you? 
Midori put an ice-cube in her mouth and sucked on it for a while.
 Do you want to get to know me better? she asked. Yeah, kind of. 
 Hey, look, I just asked you, Do you want to get to know me better? 
What sort of answer is that? 
 Yes, Midori, I would like to get to know you better, I said. Really? 
 Yes, really. 
 Even if you had to turn your eyes away from what you saw?
 Are you that bad? 
 Well, in a way, Midori said with a frown. I want another drink. 
I called the waiter and ordered a fourth round of drinks. Until they
came, Midori cupped her chin in her hand with her elbow on the bar. I
kept quiet and listened to Thelonious Monk playing Honeysuckle
Rose . There were five or six other customers in the place, but we
were the only ones drinking alcohol. The rich smell of coffee gave the
gloomy interior an intimate atmosphere.
 Are you free this Sunday? Midori asked.
 I think I told you before, I m always free on Sunday. Until I go to
work at six. 
 OK, then, this Sunday, will you hang out with me? 
 Sure, I said.
 I ll pick you up at your dorm Sunday morning. I m not sure exactly
what time, though. Is that OK? 
 Fine, I said. No problem. 
 Now, let me ask you: do you have any idea what I would like to do
right now? 
 I can t imagine. 
 Well, first of all, I want to lie down in a big, wide, fluffy bed. I want
to get all comfy and drunk and not have any donkey shit anywhere
nearby, and I want to have you lying down next to me. And then, little
by little, you take off my clothes. Sooo tenderly. The way a mother
undresses a little child. Sooo softly. 
 
 Hmm... 
 And I m just spacing out and feeling really nice until, all of a sudden
I realize what s happening and I yell at you Stop it, Watanabe! And
then I say I really like you, Watanabe, but I m seeing someone else. I
can t do this. I m very proper about these things, believe it or not, so
please stop. But you
don t stop. 
 But I would stop, I said.
 I know that. Never mind, this is just my fantasy, said Midori. So
then you show it to me. Your thing. Sticking right up. I immediately
cover my eyes, of course, but I can t help seeing it for a split second.
And I say, Stop it! Don t do that! I don t want anything so big and
hard! 
 its not so big. Just ordinary. 
 Never mind, this is a fantasy. So then you put on this really sad face,
and I feel sorry for you and try to comfort you. There there, poor
thing. 
 And you re telling me that s what you want to do now? That s it. 
 Oh boy. 
We left the bar after five rounds of vodka and tonic. When I tried to
pay, Midori slapped my hand and paid with a brand-new # , note
she took from her purse.
 its OK, she said. I just got paid, and I invited you. Of course, if
you re a card-carrying fascist and you refuse to let a woman buy you a
drink... 
 No no, I m OK. 
 And I didn t let you put it in, either. Because its so big and hard, I
said.
 Right, said Midori. Because its so big and hard. 
A little drunk, Midori missed one step, and we almost fell back down
the stairs. The layer of clouds that had darkened the sky was gone
 
now, and the late afternoon sun poured its gentle light on the city
streets. Midori and I wandered around for a while. She said she
wanted to climb a tree, but unfortunately there were no climbable trees
in Shinjuku, and the Shinjuku Imperial Gardens were closing.
 Too bad, said Midori. I love climbing trees. 
We continued walking and window-shopping, and soon the street
scene seemed more real to me than it had before.
 I m glad I ran into you, I said. I think I m a little more adapted to
the world now. 
Midori stopped short and peered at me. its true, she said. Your
eyes are much more in focus than they were. See? Hanging out with
me does you good. 
 No doubt about it, I said.
At. Midori said she had to go home and make dinner. I said I
would take a bus back to my dorm, and saw her as far as the station.
 Know what I want to do now? Midori asked me as she was leaving.
 I have absolutely no idea what you could be thinking, I said.
 I want you and me to be captured by pirates. Then they strip us and
press us together face to face all naked and wind these ropes around
us. 
 Why would they do a thing like that? 
 Perverted pirates, she said.
 You re the perverted one, I said.
 So then they lock us in the hold and say, In one hour, we re gonna
throw you into the sea, so have a good time
until then . 
 And... ? 
 So we enjoy ourselves for an hour, rolling all over the place and
twisting our bodies. 
 And that s the main thing you want to do now? 
 That s it. 
 Oh boy, I said, shaking my head.
 
Midori came for me at. on Sunday morning. I had just woken up
and hadn t washed my face. Somebody pounded on my door, yelling
 Hey, Watanabe, its a woman! I went down to the lobby to find
Midori sitting there with her legs crossed wearing an incredibly short
denim skirt, yawning. Every student passing by on his way to
breakfast slowed down to stare at her long, slim legs. She did have
really nice legs.
 Am I too early? she asked. I bet you just woke up. 
 Can you give me minutes? I ll wash my face and shave. I don t
mind waiting, but all these guys are staring at
my legs. 
 What d you expect, coming into a men s dorm in such a short skirt?
Of course they re going to stare. 
 Oh, well, its OK. I m wearing really cute panties today - all pink and
frilly and lacy. 
 That just makes it worse, I said with a sigh. I went back to my room
and washed and shaved as fast as I could, put on a blue button-down
shirt and a grey tweed sports coat, then went back down and ushered
Midori out through the dorm gate. I was in a cold sweat.
 Tell me, Watanabe, Midori said, looking up at the dorm buildings,
 do all the guys in here wank - rub-a-dub-dub? Probably, I said.
 Do guys think about girls when they do that? 
 I suppose so. I kind of doubt that anyone thinks about the stock
market or verb conjugations or the Suez Canal when they wank. Nope,
I m pretty sure just about everybody thinks about girls. 
 The Suez Canal? 
 For example. 
 So I suppose they think about particular girls, right? Shouldn t you
be asking your boyfriend about that? I
said. Why should I have to explain stuff like this to you on a Sunday
morning? 
 
 I was just curious, she said. Besides, he d get angry if I asked him
about stuff like that. He d say girls aren t supposed to ask all those
questions. 
 A perfectly normal point of view, I d say. 
 But I want to know. This is pure curiosity. Do guys think about
particular girls when they wank? 
I gave up trying to avoid the question. Well, I do at least.
I don t know about anybody else. 
 Have you ever thought about me while you were doing it?
Tell me the truth. I won t be angry. 
 No, I haven t, to tell the truth, I answered honestly. Why not?
Aren t I attractive enough? 
 Oh, you re attractive, all right. You re cute, and sexy outfits look
great on you. 
 So why don t you think about me? 
 Well, first of all, I think of you as a friend, so I don t want to involve
you in my sexual fantasies, and second - 
 You ve got somebody else you re supposed to be thinking about. 
 That s about the size of it, I said.
 You have good manners even when it comes to something like this, 
Midori said. That s what I like about you. Still, couldn t you allow me
just one brief appearance? I want to be in one of your sexual fantasies
or daydreams or whatever you call them. I m asking you because we re
friends. Who else can I ask for something like that? I can t just walk
up to anyone and say, When you wank tonight, will you please think
of me for a second? its because I think of you as a friend that I m
asking. And I want you to tell me later what it was like. You know,
what you did and stuff. 
I let out a sigh.
 You can t put it in, though. Because we re just friends. Right? As
long as you don t put it in, you can do anything you like, think
anything you want. 
 
 I don t know, I ve never done it with so many restrictions before, I
said.
 Will you just think about me? 
 All right, I ll think about you. 
 You know, Watanabe, I don t want you to get the wrong impression -
that I m a nymphomaniac or frustrated or a tease or anything. I m just
interested in that stuff. I want to know about it. I grew up surrounded
by nothing but girls in a girls school, you know that. I want to find out
what guys are thinking and how their bodies are put together. And not
just from pull-out sections in the women s magazines but actual case
studies. 
 Case studies? I groaned.
 But my boyfriend doesn t like it when I want to know things or try
things. He gets angry, calls me a nympho or crazy. He won t even let
me give him a blow job. Now, that s one thing I m dying to study. 
 Uh-huh. 
 Do you hate getting blow jobs? 
 No, not really, I don t hate it. 
 Would you say you like it? 
 Yeah, I d say that. But can we talk about this next time? Here it is, a
really nice Sunday morning, and I don t want to ruin it talking about
wanking and blow jobs. lets talk about something else. Is your
boyfriend at the same university as us? 
 Nope, he goes to another one, of course. We met at school during a
club activity. I was in the girls school, he was in the boys , and you
know how they do those things, joint concerts and stuff. We got
serious after our exams, though. Hey, Watanabe. 
 What? 
 You only have to do it once. Just think about me, OK? 
 OK, I ll give it a try, next time, I said, throwing in the towel.
We took a commuter train to Ochanomizu. When we transferred at 
 
Shinjuku I bought a thin sandwich at a stand in the station to make up
for the breakfast I hadn t eaten. The coffee I had with it tasted like
boiled printer s ink. The Sunday morning trains were filled with
couples and families on outings. A group of boys with baseball bats
and matching uniforms scampered around inside the carriage. Several
of the girls on the train had short skirts on, but none as short as
Midori s. Midori would pull on hers every now and then as it rode up.
Some of the men stared at her thighs, which made me feel uneasy, but
she didn t seem to mind.
 Know what I d like to do right now? she whispered when we had
been travelling a while.
 No idea, I said. But please, don t talk about that stuff here.
Somebody ll hear you. 
 Too bad. This one s kind of wild, Midori said with obvious
disappointment.
 Anyway, why are we going to Ochanomizu? 
 Just come along, you ll see. 
With all the cram schools around Ochanomizu Station, on Sunday the
area was full of school kids on their way to classes or exam practice.
Midori barged through the crowds clutching the strap of her shoulder
bag with one hand and my hand with the other.
Without warning, she asked me, Hey, Watanabe, can you explain the
difference between the English present subjunctive and past
subjunctive? 
 I think I can, I said.
 Let me ask you, then, what possible use is stuff like that for everyday
life? 
 None at all, I said. It may not serve any concrete purpose, but it
does give you some kind of training to help you grasp things in
general more systematically. 
Midori gave that a moment s serious thought. You re amazing, she
said. That never occurred to me before. I always thought of things 
 
like the subjunctive case and differential calculus and chemical
symbols as totally useless. A pain in the neck. So I ve always ignored
them. Now I have to wonder if my whole life has been a mistake. 
 You ve ignored them? 
 Yeah. Like, for me, they didn t exist. I don t have the slightest idea
what sine and cosine mean. 
 That s incredible! How did you pass your exams? How did you get
into university? 
 Don t be silly, said Midori. You don t have to know anything to
pass entrance exams! All you need is a little intuition - and I have
great intuition. Choose the correct answer from the following three. I
know immediately which one is right. 
 My intuition s not as good as yours, so I have to be systematic to
some extent. Like the way a magpie collects bits of glass in a hollow
tree. 
 Does it serve some purpose? 
 I wonder. It probably makes it easier to do some things. What kind
of things? Give me an example. Metaphysical thought, say.
Mastering several languages. What good does that do? 
 It depends on the person who does it. It serves a purpose for some,
and not for others. But mainly its training. Whether
it serves a purpose or not is another question. Like I said. Hmm, 
said Midori, seemingly impressed. She led me by
the hand down the hill. You know, Watanabe, you re really
good at explaining things to people. 
 I wonder, I said.
 its true. I ve asked hundreds of people what use the
English subjunctive is, and not one of them gave me a good,
clear answer like yours. Not even English teachers. They either
got confused or angry or laughed it off. Nobody ever gave me
a decent answer. If somebody like you had been around when
I asked my question, and had given me a proper explanation,
 
even I might have been interested in the subjunctive. Damn! Hmm, 
I said.
 Have you ever read Das Kapital? 
 Yeah. Not the whole thing, of course, but parts, like most
people. 
 Did you understand it? 
 I understood some bits, not others. You have to acquire the
necessary intellectual apparatus to read a book like Das Kapital.
I think I understand the general idea of Marxism, though. Do you
think a first-year student who hasn t read books
like that can understand Das Kapital just by reading it? That s pretty
nigh impossible, I d say. 
 You know, when I went to university I joined a folk-music
club. I just wanted to sing songs. But the members were a load of
frauds. I get goose-bumps just thinking about them. The first thing
they tell you when you enter the club is you have to read Marx. Read
page so-and-so to such-and-such for next time. Somebody gave a
lecture on how folk songs have to be deeply involved with society and
the radical movement. So, what the hell, I went home and tried as hard
as I could to read it, but I didn t understand a thing. It was worse than
the subjunctive. I gave up after three pages. So I went to the next
week s meeting like a good little scout and said I had read it, but I
couldn t understand it. From that point on they treated me like an idiot.
I had no critical awareness of the class struggle, they said, I was a
social cripple. I mean, this was serious. And all because I said I
couldn t understand a piece of writing. Don t you think they were
terrible? 
 Uh-huh, I said.
 And their so-called discussions were terrible, too. Everybody would
use big words and pretend they knew what was going on. But I would
ask questions whenever I didn t understand something. What is this
imperialist exploitation stuff you re talking about? Is it connected
 
somehow to the East India Company? Does smashing the
educational-industrial complex mean we re not supposed to work for a
company after we graduate? And stuff like that. But nobody was
willing to explain anything to me. Far from it - they got really angry.
Can you believe it? 
 Yeah, I can, I said.
 One guy yelled at me, You stupid bitch, how do you live like that
with nothing in your brain? Well, that did it. I wasn t going to put up
with that. OK, so I m not so smart. I m working class. But its the
working class that keeps the world running, and its the working
classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws
out big words that working-class people can t understand? What kind
of crap social revolution is that? I mean, I d like to make the world a
better place, too. If somebody s really being exploited, we ve got to
put a stop to it. That s what I believe, and that s why I ask questions.
Am I right, or what? 
 You re right. 
 So that s when it hit me. These guys are fakes. All they ve got on
their minds is impressing the new girls with the big words they re so
proud of, while sticking their hands up their skirts. And when they
graduate, they cut their hair short and march off to work for
Mitsubishi or IBM or Fuji Bank. They marry pretty wives who ve
never read Marx and have kids they give fancy new names to that are
enough to make you puke. Smash what educational-industrial
complex? Don t make me laugh! And the new members were just as
bad. They didn t understand a thing either, but they pretended to and
they were laughing at me. After the meeting, they told me, Don t be
silly! So what if you don t understand? Just agree with everything they
say. Hey, Watanabe, I ve got stuff that made me even madder than
that. Wanna hear it? 
 Sure, why not? 
 Well, one time they called a late-night political meeting, and they
 
told each girl to make rice balls for midnight snacks. I mean, talk
about sex discrimination! I decided to keep quiet for a change, though,
and showed up like a good girl with my rice balls, complete with
umeboshi inside and nori outside. And what do you think I got for my
efforts? Afterwards people complained because my rice balls had only
umeboshi inside, and I hadn t brought anything along to go with them!
The other girls stuffed theirs with cod roe and salmon, and they
included nice, thick slices of fried egg. I got so furious I couldn t talk!
Who the hell do these ,revolution -mongers think they are making a
fuss over rice balls? They should be grateful for umeboshi and nori.
Think of the children starving in India! 
I laughed. So then what happened with your club? 
 I left in June, I was so furious, Midori said. Most of these student
types are total frauds. They re scared to death somebody s gonna find
out they don t know something. They all read the same books and they
all spout the same slogans, and they love listening to John Coltrane
and seeing Pasolini movies. You call that revolution? 
 Hey, don t ask me, I ve never actually seen a revolution. Well, if
that s revolution, you can stick it. They d probably shoot me for
putting umeboshi in my rice balls. They d shoot you, too, for
understanding the subjunctive. It could happen. 
 Believe me, I know what I m talking about. I m working class.
Revolution or not, the working class will just keep on scraping a
living in the same old shitholes. And what is a revolution? It sure as
hell isn t just changing the name on city hall. But those guys don t
know that - those guys with their big words. Tell me, Watanabe, have
you ever seen a taxman? 
 Never. 
 Well I have. Lots of times. They come barging in and acting big.
 What s this ledger for? Hey, you keep pretty sloppy records. You
call this a business expense? I want to see all your receipts right
now. Meanwhile, we re crouching in the corner, and when suppertime 
 
comes we have to treat them to sushi deluxe - home delivered. Let me
tell you, though, my father never once cheated on his taxes. That s just
how he is, a real old-fashioned straight arrow. But tell that to the
taxman. All he can do is dig and dig and dig and dig. Income s a little
low here, don t you think? Well, of course the income s low when
you re not making any money! I wanted to scream: Go do this where
they ve got some money! Do you think the taxman s attitude would
change if there was a revolution? 
 Highly doubtful, highly doubtful. 
 That does it, then. I m not going to believe in any damned revolution.
Love is all I m going to believe in. 
 Peace, I said.
 Peace, said Midori.
 Hey, where are we going? I asked.
 The hospital, she said. My father s there. its my turn to stay with
him all day. 
 Your father?! I thought he was in Uruguay! 
 That was a lie, said Midori in a matter-of-fact tone. He s been
screaming about going to Uruguay forever, but he could never do that.
He can hardly get himself out of Tokyo. 
 How bad is he? I asked.
 its just a matter of time, she said.
We walked on in silence.
 I know what I m talking about. its the same thing my mother had. A
brain tumour. Can you believe it? its hardly been two years since she
died of a brain tumour, and now he s got one. 
The University Hospital corridors were noisy and crowded with
weekend visitors and patients who had less serious symptoms, and
everywhere hung that special hospital smell, a cloud of disinfectant
and visitors bouquets, and urine and mattresses, while nurses surged
back and forth with a dry clattering of heels.
Midori s father was in a semi-private room in the bed nearest the door. 
 
Stretched out, he looked like some tiny creature with a fatal wound.
He lay on his side, limp, the drooping left arm inert, jabbed with an
intravenous needle. He was a small, skinny man who gave the
impression that he would only get smaller and thinner. A white
bandage encircled his head, and his pasty white arms were dotted with
the holes left by injections or intravenous drips. His half-open eyes
stared at a fixed point in space, bloodshot spheres that twitched in our
direction when we entered the room. For some ten seconds they stayed
focused on us, then drifted back to that fixed point in space.
You knew when you saw those eyes he was going to die soon. There
was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest trace of what had once
been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all
the fixtures and fittings have been removed, awaiting its final
demolition. Around the dry lips clumps of whiskers sprouted like
weeds. So, I thought, even after so much of a man s life force has been
lost, his beard continues to grow.
Midori said hello to a fat man in the bed by the window. He nodded
and smiled, apparently unable to talk. He coughed a few times and,
after sipping some water from a glass by his pillow, he shifted his
weight and rolled on his side, turning to gaze out of the window.
Beyond the window could be seen only a pole and some power lines,
nothing more, not even a cloud in the sky.
 How are you feeling, Daddy? said Midori, speaking into her father s
ear as if testing a microphone. How are you today? 
Her father moved his lips. <Not good> he said, not so much speaking
the words as forming them from dried air at the back of his throat.
<Head> he said.
 You have a headache? Midori asked.
<Yuh > he said, apparently unable to pronounce more than a syllable
or two at a time.
 Well, no wonder, she said, you ve just had your head cut open. Of
course it hurts. Too bad, but try to be brave. This is my friend,
 
Watanabe. 
 Glad to meet you, I said. Midori s father opened his lips halfway,
then closed them again.
Midori gestured towards a plastic stool near the foot of the bed and
suggested I sit down. I did as I was told. Midori gave her father a
drink of water and asked if he d like a piece of fruit or some jellied
fruit dessert. <No> he said, and when Midori insisted that he had to
eat something, he said <I ate).
A water bottle, a glass, a dish and a small clock stood on a night table
near the head of the bed. From a large paper bag under the table,
Midori took some fresh pyjamas, underwear, and other things,
straightened them out and put them into the locker by the door. There
was food for the patient at the bottom of the bag: two grapefruits, fruit
jelly and three cucumbers.
 Cucumbers?! What are these doing in here? Midori asked. I can t
imagine what my sister was thinking. I told her on the phone exactly
what I wanted her to buy, and I m sure I never mentioned cucumbers!
She was supposed to bring kiwi fruit. 
 Maybe she misunderstood you, I suggested.
 Yeah, maybe, but if she had thought about it she would have realized
that cucumbers couldn t be right. I mean, what s a patient supposed to
do? Sit in bed chewing on raw cucumbers? Hey, Daddy, want a
cucumber? 
<No> said Midori s father.
Midori sat by the head of the bed, telling her father snippets of news
from home. The TV picture had gone fuzzy and she had called the
repairman; their aunt from Takaido would visit in a few days; the
chemist, Mr Miyawaki, had fallen off his bike: stuff like that. Her
father responded with grunts.
 Are you sure you don t want anything to eat? 
<No> her father answered.
 How about you, Watanabe? Some grapefruit? No, I answered.
 
A few minutes later, Midori took me to the TV room and smoked a
cigarette on the sofa. Three patients in pyjamas were also smoking
there and watching some kind of political discussion programme.
 Hey, whispered Midori with a twinkle in her eye. That old guy with
the crutches has been looking at my legs ever since we came in. The
one with glasses in the blue pyjamas. 
 What do you expect, wearing a skirt like that? 
 its nice, though. I bet they re all bored. It probably does them good.
Maybe the excitement helps them get better faster. 
 As long as it doesn t have the opposite effect. 
Midori stared at the smoke rising from her cigarette.
 You know, she said, my father s not such a bad guy. I get angry
with him sometimes because he says terrible things, but deep down
he s honest and he really loved my mother. In his own way, he s lived
life with all the intensity he could muster. He s a little weak, maybe,
and he has absolutely no head for business, and people don t like him
very much, but he s a hell of a lot better than the cheats and liars who
go round smoothing things over because they re so slick. I m as bad as
he is about not backing down once I ve said something, so we fight a
lot, but really, he s not a bad guy. 
Midori took my hand as if she were picking up something someone
had dropped in the street, and placed it on her lap. Half my hand lay
on the skirt, the rest touching her thigh. She looked into my eyes for
some time.
 Sorry to bring you to a place like this, she said, but would
you mind staying with me a little longer? 
 I ll stay with you all day if you want, I said. Until five. I like
spending time with you, and I ve got nothing else to do. 
 How do you usually spend your Sundays? 
 Doing my laundry, I said. And ironing. 
 I don t suppose you want to tell me too much about her... your
girlfriend? 
 
 No, I guess not. its complicated, and I, kind of, don t think I could
explain it very well. 
 That s OK. You don t have to explain anything, said Midori. But do
you mind if I tell you what I imagine is going on? 
 No, go ahead. I suspect anything you d imagine would have to be
interesting. 
 I think she s a married woman. 
 You do? 
 Yeah, she s thirty-two or -three and she s rich and beautiful and she
wears fur coats and Charles Jourdan shoes and silk underwear and
she s hungry for sex and she likes to do really yucky things. The two
of you meet on weekday afternoons and devour each other s bodies.
But her husband s home on Sundays, so she can t see you. Am I
right? 
 Very, very interesting. 
 She has you tie her up and blindfold her and lick every square inch of
her body. Then she makes you put weird things inside her and she gets
into these incredible positions like a contortionist and you take
pictures of her with a Polaroid camera. 
 Sounds like fun. 
 She s dying for it all the time, so she does everything she can think
of. And she thinks about it every day. She s got nothing but free time,
so she s always planning: Hmm, next time Watanabe comes, we ll do
this, or we ll do that. You get in bed and she goes crazy, trying all
these positions and coming three times in each one. And she says to
you, Don t I have a sensational body? You can t be satisfied with
young girls any more. Young girls won t do this for you, will they? Or
this. Feel good? But don t come yet! 
 You ve watched too many porno movies, I said with a laugh.
 You think so? I was kind of worried about that. But I love
porn films. Take me to one next time, OK? 
 Fine, I said. Next time you re free. 
 
 Really? I can hardly wait. lets go to a real S&M one, with whips
and, like, they make the girl pee in front of everyone.
That s my favourite. 
 We ll do it. 
 You know what I like best about porn cinemas? I couldn t begin to
guess. 
 Whenever a sex scene starts, you can hear this Gulp! sound when
everybody swallows all at once, said Midori. I love that Gulp! It s
so sweet! 
Back in the hospital room, Midori aimed a stream of talk at her father
again, and he would either grunt in response or say nothing. Around
eleven the wife of the man in the other bed came to change her
husband s pyjamas and peel fruit for him and so on. She had a round
face and seemed like a nice person, and she and Midori shared a lot of
small talk. A nurse showed up with a new intravenous drip and talked
a little while with Midori and the wife before she left. I let my eyes
wander around the room and out the window to the power lines.
Sparrows would turn up every now and then and perch on them.
Midori talked to her father and wiped the sweat from his brow and
helped him spit phlegm into a tissue and chatted with the
neighbouring patient s wife and the nurse and sent an occasional
remark my way and checked the intravenous contraption.
The doctor did his rounds at. , so Midori and I stepped outside to
wait in the corridor. When he came out, Midori asked him how her
father was doing.
 Well, he s just come out of surgery, and we ve got him on painkillers
so, well, he s pretty drained, said the doctor. I ll need another two or
three days to evaluate the results of the operation. If it went well, he ll
be OK, and if it didn t, we ll have to make some decisions at that
point. 
 You re not going to open his head up again, are you? 
 
 I really can t say until the time comes, said the doctor. Wow, that s
some short skirt you re wearing! 
 Nice, huh? 
 What do you do on stairways? the doctor asked.
 Nothing special. I let it all hang out, said Midori. The nurse
chuckled behind the doctor.
 Incredible. You ought to come and let us open your head one of these
days to see what s going on in there. Do me a favour and use the lifts
while you re in the hospital. I can t afford to have any more patients.
I m way too busy as it is. 
Soon after the doctor s rounds it was lunchtime. A nurse was
circulating from room to room pushing a trolley loaded with meals.
Midori s father was given pottage, fruit, boiled, deboned fish, and
vegetables that had been ground into some kind of jelly. Midori turned
him on his back and raised him up using the handle at the foot of the
bed. She fed him the soup with a spoon. After five or six swallows, he
turned his face aside and said (No more>.
You ve got to eat at least this much. Midori san <Later> he said.
 You re hopeless - if you don t eat properly, you ll never get your
strength back, she said. Don t you have to pee yet? <No> he said.
 Hey, Watanabe, lets go down to the cafeteria. 
I agreed to go, but in fact I didn t much feel like eating. The cafeteria
was packed with doctors, nurses and visitors. Long lines of chairs and
tables filled the huge, windowless underground cavern where every
mouth seemed to be eating or talking - about sickness, no doubt, the
voices echoing and re-echoing as in a tunnel. Now and then the PA
system would break through the reverberation with calls for a doctor
or nurse. While I laid claim to a table, Midori bought two set meals
and carried them over on an aluminium tray. Croquettes with cream
sauce, potato salad, shredded cabbage, boiled vegetables, rice and
miso soup: these were lined up in the tray in the same white plastic
dishes they used for patients. I ate about half of mine and left the rest. 
 
Midori seemed to enjoy her meal to the last mouthful.
 Not hungry? she asked, sipping hot tea. Not really, I said.
 its the hospital, she said, scanning the cafeteria. This always
happens when people aren t used to the place. The smells, the sounds,
the stale air, patients faces, stress, irritation, disappointment, pain,
fatigue - that s what does it. It grabs you in the stomach and kills your
appetite. Once you get used to it, though, its no problem at all. Plus,
you can t really take care of a sick person unless you eat properly. It s
true. I know what I m talking about because I ve done it with my
grandfather, my grandmother, my mother, and now my father. You
never know when you re going to have to , so its important to eat
when you can
 I see what you mean, I said.
 Relatives come to visit and they eat with me here, and they always
leave half their food, just like you. And they always say, Oh, Midori,
it s wonderful you ve got such a healthy appetite. I m too upset to eat. 
But get serious, I m the one who s actually here taking care of the
patient! They just have to drop by and show a little sympathy. I m the
one who wipes up the shit and collects the phlegm and mops the
brows. If sympathy was all it took to clean up shit, I d have times
as much sympathy as anybody else! Instead, they see me eating all my
food and they give me this look and say, Oh Midori, you ve got such
a healthy appetite. What do they think I am, a donkey pulling a cart?
They re old enough to know how the world really works, so why are
they so stupid? its easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether
or not you clean up the shit. I can be hurt, you know. I can get as
exhausted as anyone else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too. I mean,
you try watching a gang of doctors get together and cut open
somebody s head when there s no hope of saving them, and stirring
things up in there, and doing it again and again, and every time they
do it it makes the person worse and a little bit crazier, and see how
you like it! And on top of it, you see your savings disappear. I don t 
 
know if I can keep going to university for another three-and-a-half
years, and there s no way my sister can afford a wedding ceremony at
this rate. 
 How many days a week do you come here? I asked.
 Usually four, said Midori. This place claims to offer total nursing
care, and the nurses are great, but there s just too much for them to do.
Some member of the family has to be around to take up the slack. My
sister s watching the shop, and I ve got my studies. Still, she manages
to get here three days a week, and I come four. And we sneak in every
now and then. Believe me, its a full schedule! 
 How can you spend time with me if you re so busy? 
 I like spending time with you, said Midori, playing with a plastic
cup.
 Get out of here for a couple of hours and go for a walk, I said. I ll
take care of your father for a while. Why? 
 You need to get away from the hospital and relax by yourself - not
talk to anybody, just clear your mind. 
Midori thought about it for a minute and nodded. Hmm, you may be
right. But do you know what to do? How to take care of him? 
 I ve been watching. I ve pretty much got it. You check the
intravenous thing, give him water, wipe the sweat off, and help him
spit phlegm. The bedpan s under the bed, and if he gets hungry I feed
him the rest of his lunch. Anything I can t work out I ll ask the nurse. 
 I think that should do it, said Midori with a smile. There s just one
thing, though. He s starting to get a little funny in the head, so he says
weird things once in a while - things that nobody can understand.
Don t let it bother you if
he does that. 
 I ll be fine, I said.
Back in the room, Midori told her father she had some business to take
care of and that I would be watching him while she was out. He
 
seemed to have nothing to say to this. It might have meant nothing to
him. He just lay there on his back, staring at the ceiling. If he hadn t
been blinking every once in a while, he could have passed for dead.
His eyes were bloodshot as if he had been drinking, and each time he
took
a deep breath his nostrils flared a little. Other than that, he didn t move
a muscle, and made no effort to reply to Midori. I couldn t begin to
grasp what he might be thinking or feeling in the murky depths of his
consciousness.
After Midori left, I thought I might try speaking to her father, but I
had no idea what to say to him or how to say it, so I just kept quiet.
Before long, he closed his eyes and went to sleep. I sat on the stool by
the head of the bed and studied the occasional twitching of his nose,
hoping all the while that he wouldn t die now. How strange it would
be, I thought, if this man were to breathe his last with me by his side.
After all, I had just met him for the first time in my life, and the only
thing binding us together was Midori, a girl I happened to know from
my History of Drama class.
He was not dying, though, just sleeping peacefully. Bringing my ear
close to his face, I could hear his faint breathing. I relaxed and chatted
to the wife of the man in the next bed. She talked of nothing but
Midori, assuming I was her boyfriend.
 She s a really wonderful girl, she said. She takes great care of her
father; she s kind and gentle and sensitive and solid, and on top of all
that, she s pretty. You d better treat her right. Don t ever let her go.
You won t find another one like her. 
 I ll treat her right, I said without elaborating.
 I have a son and daughter at home. He s , she s , and neither of
them would ever think of coming to the hospital. The minute school
finishes, they re off surfing or dating or whatever. They re terrible.
They squeeze me for all the pocket money they can get and then they
disappear. 
 
At. she left the hospital to do some shopping. Both men were
sound asleep. Gentle afternoon sunlight flooded the room, and I felt as
though I might drift off at any moment perching on my stool. Yellow
and white chrysanthemums in a vase on the table by the window
reminded people it was autumn. In the air floated the sweet smell of
boiled fish left over from lunch. The nurses continued to clip-clop up
and down the hall, talking to each other in clear, penetrating voices.
They would peep into the room now and then and flash me a smile
when they saw that both patients were sleeping. I wished I had
something to read, but there were no books or magazines or
newspapers in the room, just a calendar on the wall.
I thought about Naoko. I thought about her naked, wearing only her
hairslide. I thought about the curve of her waist and the dark shadow
of her pubic hair. Why had she shown herself to me like that? Had she
been sleep-walking? Or was it just a fantasy of mine? As time went by
and that little world receded into the distance, I grew increasingly
uncertain whether the events of that night had actually happened. If I
told myself they were real, I believed they were, and if I told myself
they were a fantasy, they seemed like a fantasy. They were too clear
and detailed to have been a fantasy, and too whole and beautiful to
have been real: Naoko s body and the moonlight.
Midori s father woke suddenly and started coughing, which put a stop
to my daydreaming. I helped him spit his phlegm into a tissue, and
wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel.
 Would you like some water? I asked, to which he gave a fourmillimetre
nod. I held the small glass water bottle so that he could sip
a little bit at a time, dry lips trembling, throat twitching. He drank
every bit of the lukewarm water in the bottle.
 Would you like some more? I asked. He seemed to be trying to
speak, so I brought my ear closer.
<That s enough> he said in a small, dry voice - a voice even smaller
and dryer than before.
 
 Why don t you eat something? You must be hungry. He answered
with a slight nod. As Midori had done, I cranked his bed up and
started feeding him alternating spoonfuls of vegetable jelly and boiled
fish. It took an incredibly long time to get through half his food, at
which point he shook his head a little to signal he had had enough.
The movement was almost imperceptible; it apparently hurt him to
make larger gestures.
 What about the fruit? I asked him.
<No> he said. I wiped the corners of his mouth with a towel and made
the bed level again before taking the dishes to the corridor.
 Was that good? I asked him.
<Awful> he answered.
 Yeah, I said with a smile. It looked pretty bad. Midori s father
could not seem to decide whether to open his eyes further or close
them as he lay there silently, staring at me. I wondered if he knew who
I was. He seemed more relaxed when alone with me than when Midori
was around. He had probably mistaken me for someone else. Or at
least that was how I preferred to think of it.
 Beautiful day out there, I said, perching on the stool and crossing
my legs. its autumn, Sunday, great weather, and crowded
everywhere you go. Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you
can do on such a nice day. its exhausting in those crowds. And the air
is bad. I mostly do laundry on Sundays - wash the stuff in the
morning, hang it out on the roof of my dorm, take it in before the sun
goes down, do a good job of ironing it. I don t mind ironing at all.
There s a special satisfaction in making wrinkled things smooth. And
I m pretty good at it, too. Of course I was terrible at it at first. I put
creases in everything. After a month of practice, though, I knew what
I was doing. So Sunday is my day for laundry and ironing. I couldn t
do it today, of course. Too bad: wasted a perfect laundry day.
 That s OK, though. I ll wake up early and take care of it tomorrow.
Don t worry. I ve got nothing else to do on a Sunday.
 
 After I do my laundry tomorrow morning and hang it out to dry, I ll
go to my ten o clock class. its the one I m in with Midori: History of
Drama. I m working on Euripides. Are you familiar with Euripides?
He was an ancient Greek - one of the Big Three of Greek tragedy
along with Aeschylus and Sophocles. He supposedly died when a dog
bit him in Macedonia, but not everybody believes this. Anyway, that s
Euripides. I like Sophocles better, but I suppose its a matter of taste. I
really can t say which is better.
 What marks his plays is the way things get so mixed up the
characters are trapped. Do you see what I mean? Lots of different
people appear, and they all have their own situations and reasons and
excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own idea of justice or
happiness. As a result, nobody can do anything. Obviously. I mean,
it s basically impossible for everybody s justice to prevail or
everybody s happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over. And then what
do you think happens? Simple - a god appears at the end and starts
directing the traffic. You go over there, and you come here, and you
get together with her, and you just sit still for while. Like that. He s a
kind of fixer, and in the end everything works out perfectly. They call
this deus ex machina . There s almost always a deus ex machina in
Euripides, and that s where critical opinion divides over him.
 But think about it - what if there were a deus ex machina in real life?
Everything would be so easy! If you felt stuck or trapped, some god
would swing down from up there and solve all your problems. What
could be easier than that? Anyway, that s History of Drama. This is
more or less the kind of stuff we study at university. 
Midori s father said nothing, but he kept his vacant eyes on me the
whole time I was talking. Of course, I couldn t tell from those eyes
whether he understood anything I was saying.
 Peace, I said.
After all that talk, I felt starved. I had had next to nothing for breakfast
and had eaten only half my lunch. Now I was sorry I hadn t eaten
 
more at lunch, but feeling sorry wasn t going to help. I looked in a
cabinet for something to eat, but found only a can of nori, some Vicks
cough drops and soy sauce. The paper bag was still there with the
cucumbers and grapefruit.
 I m going to eat some cucumbers if you don t mind, I said to
Midori s father. He didn t answer. I washed three cucumbers in the
sink and dribbled a little soy sauce into a dish. Then I wrapped a
cucumber in nori, dipped it in soy sauce and gobbled it down.
 Mmm, great! I said to Midori s father. Fresh, simple, smells like
life. Really good cucumbers. A far more sensible food than kiwi
fruit. 
I polished off one cucumber and attacked the next. The sickroom
echoed with the sound of me munching cucumbers. Only after I had
finished the second whole cucumber was I ready to take a break. I
boiled some water on the gas burner in the hall and made tea.
 Would you like something to drink? Water? Juice? I asked Midori s
father.
<Cucumber> he said.
 Great, I said with a smile. With nori? 
He gave a little nod. I cranked the bed up again. Then I cut a bitesized
piece of cucumber, wrapped it with a strip of nori, stabbed the
combination with a toothpick, dipped it in soy sauce, and delivered it
to the patient s waiting mouth. With almost no change of expression,
Midori s father crunched down on the piece again and again and
finally swallowed it.
 How was that? Good, huh? 
<Good> he said.
 its good when food tastes good, I said. its kind of like proof you re
alive. 
He ended up eating the entire cucumber. When he had finished it, he
wanted water, so I gave him a drink from the bottle. A few minutes
later, he said he needed to pee, so I took the urine jar from under the 
 
bed and held it by the tip of his penis. Afterwards I emptied the jar
into the toilet and washed it out. Then I went back to the sickroom and
finished my tea.
 How are you feeling? I asked.
<My.... head> he said.
 Hurts? 
<A little> he said with a slight frown.
 Well, no wonder, you ve just had an operation. Of course, I ve never
had one, so I don t know what its like. <Ticket> he said.
 Ticket? What ticket? 
<Midori> he said. <Ticket>.
I had no idea what he was talking about, and just kept quiet. He stayed
silent for a time, too. Then he seemed to say <Please>. He opened his
eyes wide and looked at me hard. I guessed that he was trying to tell
me something, but I couldn t begin to imagine what it was.
<Ueno> he said. <Midori>.
 Ueno Station? 
He gave a little nod.
I tried to summarize what he was getting at: Ticket, Midori, please,
Ueno Station, but I had no idea what it meant. I assumed his mind
was muddled, but compared with before his eyes now had a terrible
clarity. He raised the arm that was free of the intravenous contraption
and stretched it towards me. This must have been a major effort for
him, the way the hand trembled in mid-air. I stood and grasped his
frail, wrinkled hand. He returned my grasp with what little strength he
could muster and said again <Please>.
 Don t worry, I said. I ll take care of the ticket and Midori, too. He
let his hand drop back to the bed and closed his eyes. Then, with a
loud rush of breath, he fell asleep. I checked to make sure he was still
alive, then went out to boil more water for tea. As I was sipping the
hot liquid, I realized that I had developed a kind of liking for this little
man on the verge of death.
 
The wife of the other patient came back a few minutes later and asked
if everything was OK. I assured her it was. Her husband, too, was
sound asleep, breathing deeply.
Midori came back after three.
 I was in the park, spacing out, she said. I did what you told me,
didn t talk to anybody, just let my head go empty. 
 How was it? 
 Thanks, I feel much better. I still have that draggy, tired feeling, but
my body feels much lighter than before. I guess I was more tired than
I realized. 
With her father sound asleep, there was nothing for us to do, so we
bought coffee from a vending machine and drank it in the TV room. I
reported to Midori on what had happened in her absence - that her
father had had a good sleep, then woke up and ate some of what was
left of his lunch, then saw me eating a cucumber and asked for one
himself, ate the whole thing and peed.
 Watanabe, you re amazing, said Midori. We re all going crazy
trying to get him to eat anything, and you got him to eat a whole
cucumber! Incredible! 
 I don t know, I think he just saw me enjoying my own cucumber. 
 Or maybe you just have this knack for relaxing people. No way, I
said with a laugh. A lot of people will tell you just the opposite about
me. 
 What do you think about my father? 
 I like him. Not that we had all that much to say to each
other. But, I don t know, he seems nice. Was he quiet? 
 Very. 
 You should have seen him a week ago. He was awful, Midori said,
shaking her head. Kind of lost his marbles and went wild. Threw a
glass at me and yelled terrible stuff - I hope you die, you stupid bitch! 
This sickness can do that to people. They don t know why, but it can 
 
make people get really vicious all of a sudden. It was the same with
my mother. What do you think she said to me? You re not my
daughter! I hate your guts! The whole world turned black for me for a
second when she said that. But that kind of thing is one of the features
of this particular sickness. Something presses on a part of the brain
and makes people say all kinds of nasty things. You know its just part
of the sickness, but still, it hurts. What do you expect? Here I am,
working my fingers to the bone for them, and they re saying all this
terrible stuff to me- 
 I know what you mean, I said. Then I remembered the strange
fragments that Midori s father had mumbled to me.
 Ticket? Ueno Station? Midori said. I wonder what that s all about? 
 And then he said, Please, and Midori. , Please take care of
Midori? 
 Or maybe he wants you to go to Ueno and buy a ticket. The order of
the four words is such a mess, who knows what he means? Does Ueno
Station mean anything special to you? 
 Hmm, Ueno Station. Midori thought about it for a while. The only
thing I can think of is the two times I ran away, when I was eight and
when I was ten. Both times I took a train from Ueno to Fukushima.
Bought the tickets with money I took from the till. Somebody at home
made me really angry, and I did it to get even. I had an aunt in
Fukushima, I kind of liked her, so I went to her house. My father was
the one who brought me home. Came all the way to Fukushima to get
me - a hundred miles! We ate boxed lunches on the train to Ueno. My
father told me all kinds of stuff while we were travelling, just little bits
and pieces with long spaces in between. Like about the big earthquake
of or about the war or about the time I was born, stuff he didn t
usually talk about. Come to think of it, those were the only times my
father and I had something like a good, long talk, just the two of us.
Hey, can you believe this? - my father was smack bang in the middle
of Tokyo during one of the biggest earthquakes in history and he
 
didn t even notice it! 
 No way! 
 its true! He was riding through Koishikawa with a cart on the back
of his bike, and he didn t feel a thing. When he got home, all the tiles
had fallen off the roofs in the neighbourhood, and everyone in the
family was hugging pillars and quaking in their boots. He still didn t
get it and, the way he tells it, he asked, What the hell s going on
here? That s my father s fond recollection of the Great Kanto
Earthquake! Midori laughed. All his stories of the old days are like
that. No drama whatsoever. They re all just a little bit off-centre. I
don t know, when he tells those stories, you kind of get the feeling like
nothing important has happened in Japan for the past or years.
The young officers uprising of , the Pacific War, they re all kind
of Oh yeah, now that you mention it, I guess something like that once
happened kind of things. its so funny!
 So, anyway, on the train, he d tell me these stories in bits and pieces
while we were riding from Fukushima to Ueno. And at the end, he d
always say, So that goes to show you, Midori, its the same wherever
you go. I was young enough to be impressed by stuff like that. 
 So is that your fond recollection of Ueno Station? I asked. Yeah, 
said Midori. Did you ever run away from home, Watanabe? 
 Never. 
 Why not? 
 Lack of imagination. It never occurred to me to run away. You are
so weird! Midori said, cocking her head as though truly impressed.
 I wonder, I said.
 Well, anyway, I think my father was trying to say he wanted you to
look after me. 
 Really? 
 Really! I understand things like that. Intuitively. So tell me, what was
your answer to him? 
 Well, I didn t understand what he was saying, so I just said OK, don t 
 
worry, I d take care of both you and the ticket. 
 You promised my father that? You said you d take care of
me? She looked me straight in the eye with a dead-serious expression
on her face.
 Not like that, I hastened to correct her. I really didn t know what he
was saying, and - 
 Don t worry, I m just kidding, she said with a smile. I love that
about you. 
Midori and I finished our coffee and went back to the room. Her father
was still sound asleep. If you leaned close you could hear his steady
breathing. As the afternoon deepened, the light outside the hospital
window changed to the soft, gentle colour of autumn. A flock of birds
rested on the electric wire outside, then flew on. Midori and I sat in a
corner of the room, talking quietly the whole time. She read my palm
and predicted that I would live to , marry three times, and die in a
traffic accident. Not a bad life, I said.
When her father woke just after four o clock, Midori went to sit by his
pillow, wiped the sweat from his brow, gave him water, and asked
him about the pain in his head. A nurse came and took his
temperature, recorded the number of his urinations, and checked the
intravenous equipment. I went to the TV room and watched a little
football.
At five I told Midori I would be leaving. To her father I explained, I
have to go to work now. I sell records in Shinjuku from six to.. 
He turned his eyes to me and gave a little nod.
 Hey, Watanabe, I don t know how to put this, but I really want to
thank you for today, Midori said to me when she saw me to
reception.
 I didn t do that much, I said. But if I can be of any help, I ll come
next week, too. I d like to see your father again. 
 Really? 
 Well, there s not that much for me to do in the dorm, and if I come 
 
here I get to eat cucumbers. 
Midori folded her arms and tapped the linoleum with the heel of her
shoe.
 I d like to go drinking with you again, she said, cocking her head
slightly.
 How about the porno movies? 
 We ll do that first and then go drinking. And we ll talk about all the
usual disgusting things. 
 I m not the one who talks about disgusting things, I protested. It s
you. 
 Anyway, we ll talk about things like that and get plastered and go to
bed. 
 And you know what happens next, I said with a sigh. I try to do it,
and you don t let me. Right? She laughed through her nose.
 Anyway, I said, pick me up again next Sunday morning. We ll
come here together. 
 With me in a little longer skirt? 
 Definitely, I said.
I didn t go to the hospital that next Sunday, though. Midori s father
died on Friday morning.
She called at. in the morning to tell me that. The buzzer letting me
know I had a phone call went off and I ran down to the lobby with a
cardigan thrown over my pyjamas. A cold rain was falling silently.
 My father died a few minutes ago, Midori said in a small, quiet
voice. I asked her if there was anything I could do. Thanks, she said.
 There s really nothing. We re used to funerals. I just wanted to let you
know. 
A kind of sigh escaped her lips.
 Don t come to the funeral, OK? I hate stuff like that. I don t want to
see you there. 
 I get it, I said.
 
 Will you really take me to a porno movie? Of course I will. 
 A really disgusting one. 
 I ll research the matter thoroughly. Good. I ll call you, she said and
hung up.
A week went by without a word from Midori. No calls, no sign of her
in the lecture hall. I kept hoping for a message from her whenever I
went back to the dorm, but there were never any. One night, I tried to
keep my promise by thinking of her when I masturbated, but it didn t
work. I tried switching over to Naoko, but not even Naoko s image
was any help that time. It seemed so ridiculous I gave up. I took a
swig of whisky, brushed my teeth and went to bed.
I wrote a letter to Naoko on Sunday morning. One thing I told her
about was Midori s father. I went to the hospital to visit the father of a
girl in one of my lectures and ate some cucumbers in his room. When
he heard me crunching on them, he wanted some too, and he ate his
with the same crunching sound. Five days later, though, he died. I still
have a vivid memory of the tiny crunching he made when he chewed
his pieces of cucumber. People leave strange, little memories of
themselves behind when they die. My letter went on:
I think of you and Reiko and the aviary while I lie in bed after waking
up in the morning. I think about the peacock and pigeons and parrots
and turkeys - and about the rabbits. I remember the yellow raincapes
you and Reiko wore with the hoods up that rainy morning. It feels
good to think about you when Im warm in bed. I feel as if you re
curled up there beside me, fast asleep. And I think how great it would
be if it were true.
I miss you terribly sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the
energy I can muster. Just as you take care of the birds and the fields
every morning, every morning I wind my own spring. I give it some 
 
 good twists by the time I ve got up, brushed my teeth, shaved, eaten
breakfast, changed my clothes, left the dorm, and arrived at the
university. I tell myself, OK, lets make this day another good one. I
hadn t noticed before, but they tell me I talk to myself a lot these days.
Probably mumbling to myself while I wind my spring.
It s hard not being able to see you, but my life in Tokyo would be a lot
worse if it weren t for you. its because I think of you when I m in bed
in the morning that I can wind my spring and tell myself I have to live
another good day. I know I have to give it my best here just as you are
doing there.
Today s Sunday, though, a day I don t wind my spring. I ve done my
laundry, and now I m in my room, writing to you. Once I ve finished
this letter and put a stamp on it and dropped it into the postbox, there s
nothing for me to do until the sun goes down. I don t study on
Sundays, either. I do a good enough job on weekdays studying in the
library between lectures, so I don t have anything left to do on
Sundays. Sunday afternoons are quiet, peaceful and, for me, lonely. I
read books or listen to music. Sometimes I think back on the different
routes we used to take in our Sunday walks around Tokyo. I can come
up with a pretty clear picture of the clothes you were wearing on any
particular walk. I remember all kinds of things on Sunday afternoons.
Say Hi from me to Reiko. I really miss her guitar at night.
When I had finished the letter, I walked a couple of blocks to a
postbox, then bought an egg sandwich and a Coke at a nearby bakery.
I had these for lunch while I sat on a bench and watched some boys
playing baseball in a local playground. The deepening of autumn had
brought an increased blueness and depth to the sky. I glanced up to
find two vapour trails heading off to the west in perfect parallel like
tram tracks. A foul ball came rolling my way, and when I threw it
back to them the young players doffed their caps with a polite Thank
you, sir . As in most junior baseball, there were lots of walks and 
 
stolen bases.
After noon I went back to my room to read but couldn t concentrate.
Instead I found myself staring at the ceiling and thinking about
Midori. I wondered if her father had really been trying to ask me to
look after her when he was gone, but I had no way of telling what had
been on his mind. He had probably confused me with somebody else.
In any case, he had died on a Friday morning when a cold rain was
falling, and now it was impossible to know the truth. I imagined that,
in death, he had shrivelled up smaller than ever. And then they had
burned him in an oven until he was nothing but ashes. And what had
he left behind? A nothing-much bookshop in a nothing-much
neighbourhood and two daughters, at least one of whom was more
than a little strange. What kind of life was that? I wondered. Lying in
that hospital bed with his cut-open head and his muddled brain, what
had been on his mind as he looked at me?
Thinking thoughts like this about Midori s father put me into such a
miserable mood that I had to bring the laundry down from the roof
before it was really dry and set off for Shinjuku to kill time walking
the streets. The Sunday crowds gave me some relief. The Kinokuniya
bookshop was as jampacked as a rush-hour train. I bought a copy of
Faulkner s Light in August and went to the noisiest jazz café I could
think of, reading my new book while listening to Ornette Coleman and
Bud Powell and drinking hot, thick, foul-tasting coffee. At. I
closed my book, went outside and ate a light supper. How many
Sundays - how many hundreds of Sundays like this - lay ahead of me?
 Quiet, peaceful, and lonely, I said aloud to myself. On Sundays, I
didn t wind my spring.
 
Halfway through that week I managed to cut my palm open on a piece
of broken glass. I hadn t noticed that one of the glass partitions in a
record shelf was cracked. I could hardly believe how much blood
gushed out of me, turning the floor bright red at my feet. The shop
manager found some towels and tied them tightly around the wound.
Then he made a phone call to casualty. He was a pretty useless guy
most of the time, but he acted with surprising efficiency. The hospital
was nearby, fortunately, but by the time I got there the towels were
soaked in red, and the blood they couldn t soak up had been dripping
on the tarmac. People scurried out of the way for me. They seemed to
think I had been injured in a fight. I felt no pain to speak of, but the
blood wouldn t stop.
The doctor was cool as he removed the blood-soaked towels, stopped
the bleeding with a tourniquet on my wrist, disinfected the wound and
sewed it up, telling me to come again the next day. Back at the record
shop, the manager told me to go home: he would put me down as
having worked my shift. I took a bus to the dorm and went straight to
Nagasawa s room. With my nerves on edge over the cut, I wanted to
talk to somebody, and I hadn t seen Nagasawa for a long time.
I found him in his room, drinking a can of beer and watching a
Spanish lesson on TV. What the hell happened to you? he asked
when he saw my bandage. I said I had cut myself but that it was
nothing much. He offered me a beer and I said no thanks.
 Just wait. This ll be over in a minute, said Nagasawa, and he went
on practising his Spanish pronunciation. I boiled some water and
 
made myself a cup of tea with a tea bag. A Spanish woman recited
example sentences: I have never seen such terrible rain! , Many
bridges were washed away in Barcelona. Nagasawa read the text
aloud in Spanish. What awful sentences! he said. This kind of shit
is all they ever give you. 
When the programme ended, he turned off the TV and took another
beer from his small refrigerator.
 Are you sure I m not in the way? I asked.
 No way. I was bored out of my mind. Sure you don t want a beer? 
 No, I really don t, I said.
 Oh, yeah, they posted the exam results the other day. I passed! 
 The Foreign Ministry exam? 
 That s it. Officially, its called the Foreign Affairs Public Service
Personnel First Class Service Examination . What a joke! 
 Congratulations! I said and gave him my left hand to shake.
 Thanks. 
 Of course, I m not surprised you passed. 
 No, neither am I, laughed Nagasawa. But its nice to have it
official. 
 Think you ll go abroad once you get in? 
 Nah, first they give you a year of training. Then they send you
overseas for a while. 
I sipped my tea, and he drank his beer with obvious satisfaction.
 I ll give you this fridge if you d like it when I get out of here, said
Nagasawa. You d like to have it, wouldn t you? its great for beer. 
 Yeah, I d like to have it, but won t you need it? You ll be living in a
flat or something. 
 Don t be stupid! When I get out of this place, I m buying myself a big
fridge. I m gonna live the high life! Four years in a shithole like this is
long enough. I don t want to have to look at anything I used in this
place. You name it, I ll give it to you - the TV, the thermos flask, the
radio... 
 
 I ll take anything you want to give me, I said. I picked up the
Spanish textbook on his desk and stared at it. You re starting
Spanish? 
 Yeah. The more languages you know the better. And I ve got a knack
for them. I taught myself French and its practically perfect.
Languages are like games. You learn the rules for one, and they all
work the same way. Like women. 
 Ah, the reflective life! I said with a sarcastic edge.
 Anyway, lets eat out soon. 
 You mean cruising for women? 
 No, a real dinner. You, me and Hatsumi at a good restaurant. To
celebrate my new job. My old man s paying, so we ll go somewhere
really expensive. 
 Shouldn t it just be you and Hatsumi? 
 No, it d be better with you there. I d be more comfortable, and so
would Hatsumi. 
Oh no, it was Kizuki, Naoko and me all over again.
 I ll spend the night at Hatsumi s afterwards, so join us just for the
meal. 
 OK, if you both really want me to, I said. But, anyway, what are
you planning to do about Hatsumi? You ll be assigned overseas when
you finish your training, and you probably won t come back for years.
What s going to happen to her? 
 That s her problem. 
 I don t get it, I said.
Feet on his desk, Nagasawa took a swig of beer and yawned.
 Look, I m not planning to get married. I ve made that perfectly clear
to Hatsumi. If she wants to marry someone, she should go ahead and
do it. I won t stop her. If she wants to wait for me, let her wait. That s
what I mean. 
 I have to hand it to you, I said.
 You think I m a shit, don t you? 
 
 I do. 
 Look, the world is an inherently unfair place. I didn t write the rules.
It s always been that way. I have never once deceived Hatsumi. She
knows I m a shit and that she can leave me whenever she decides she
can t take it. I told her that straight from the start. 
Nagasawa finished his beer and lit a cigarette.
 Isn t there anything about life that frightens you? I asked.
 Hey, I m not a total idiot, said Nagasawa. Of course life frightens
me sometimes. I don t happen to take that as the premise for
everything else, though. I m going to give it per cent and go as far
as I can. I ll take what I want and leave what I don t want. That s how I
intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I ll stop and reconsider at
that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that
makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit. 
 Sounds like a pretty self-centred way to live, I said. Perhaps, but
I m not just looking up at the sky and waiting for the fruit to drop. In
my own way, I m working hard. I m working ten times harder than
you are. 
 That s probably true, I said.
 I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the
hell don t these bastards do something? I wonder. They don t do a
fucking thing, and then they moan about it. 
Amazed at the harshness of his tone, I looked at Nagasawa. The way
I see it, people are working hard. They re working their fingers to the
bone. Or am I looking at things wrong? 
 That s not hard work. its just manual labour, Nagasawa said with
finality. The hard work I m talking about is more self-directed and
purposeful. 
 You mean, like studying Spanish while everyone else is taking it
easy? 
 That s it. I m going to have Spanish mastered by next spring. I ve got
English and German and French down pat, and I m almost there with 
 
Italian. You think things like that happen without hard work? 
Nagasawa puffed on his cigarette while I thought about Midori s
father. There was one man who had probably never even thought
about starting Spanish lessons on TV He had probably never thought
about the difference between hard work and manual labour, either. He
was probably too busy to think about such things - busy with work,
and busy bringing home a daughter who had run away to Fukushima.
 So, about that dinner of ours, said Nagasawa. Would this Saturday
be OK for you? 
 Fine, I said.
Nagasawa picked a fancy French restaurant in a quiet backstreet of
Azabu. He gave his name at the door and the two of us were shown to
a secluded private room. Some prints hung on the walls of the
small chamber. While we waited for Hatsumi to arrive, Nagasawa and
I sipped a delicious wine and chatted about the novels of Joseph
Conrad. He wore an expensive-looking grey suit. I had on an ordinary
blue blazer.
Hatsumi arrived minutes later. She was carefully made up and
wore gold earrings, a beautiful deep blue dress, and tasteful red court
shoes. When I complimented her on the colour of her dress, she told
me it was called midnight blue.
 What an elegant restaurant! she said.
 My old man always eats here when he comes to Tokyo, said
Nagasawa. I came here with him once. I m not crazy about these
snooty places. 
 It doesn t hurt to eat in a place like this once in a while, said
Hatsumi. Turning to me, she asked, Don t you agree? I guess so. As
long as I m not paying. 
 My old man usually brings his mistress here, said Nagasawa. He s
got one in Tokyo, you know. Really? asked Hatsumi. I took a sip of
wine, as if I had heard nothing.
 
Eventually a waiter came and took our orders. After choosing hors
d oeuvres and soup, Nagasawa ordered duck, and Hatsumi and I
ordered sea bass. The food arrived at a leisurely pace, which allowed
us to enjoy the wine and conversation. Nagasawa spoke first of the
Foreign Ministry exam. Most of the examinees were scum who might
just as well be thrown into a bottomless pit, he said, though he
supposed there were a few decent ones in the bunch. I asked if he
thought the ratio of good ones to scum was higher or lower than in
society at large.
 its the same, he said. Of course. It was the same everywhere, he
added: an immutable law.
Nagasawa ordered a second bottle of wine and a double Scotch for
himself.
Hatsumi then began talking about a girl she wanted to fix me up with.
This was a perpetual topic between us. She was always telling me
about some cute girl in my club , and I was always running away.
 She s really nice, though, and really cute. I ll bring her along next
time. You ought to talk to her. I m sure you ll like her. 
 its a waste of time, Hatsumi, I said. I m too poor to go out with
girls from your university. I can t talk to them. 
 Don t be silly, she said. This girl is simple and natural and
unaffected. 
 Come on, Watanabe, said Nagasawa. Just meet her. You don t have
to screw her. 
 I should say not! said Hatsumi. She s a virgin. 
 Like you used to be, said Nagasawa.
 Exactly, said Hatsumi with a bright smile. Like I used to be. But
really, she said to me, don t give me that stuff about being too
poor . its got nothing to do with it. Sure, there are a few super-stuckup
girls in every year, but the rest of us are just ordinary. We all eat
lunch in the school cafeteria for ? - 
 Now wait just a minute, Hatsumi, I said, interrupting her. In my
 
school the cafeteria has three lunches: A, B, and C. The A Lunch is
? , the B Lunch is ? , and the C Lunch is ?. Everybody gives
me dirty looks when I eat the A Lunch, and anyone who can t afford
the C Lunch eats ramen noodles for ?. That s the kind of place I go
to. You still think I can talk to girls from yours? 
Hatsumi could barely stop laughing. That s so cheap! she said.
 Maybe I should go there for lunch! But really, Toru, you re such a
nice guy, I m sure you d get along with this girl. She might even like
the ? lunch. 
 No way, I said with a laugh. Nobody eats that stuff because they
like it; they eat it because they can t afford anything else. 
 Anyway, don t judge a book by its cover. its true we go to this hoitytoity
establishment, but lots of us there are serious people who think
serious thoughts about life. Not everybody is looking for a boyfriend
with a sports car. 
 I know that much, I said.
 Watanabe s got a girl. He s in love, said Nagasawa. But he won t
say a word about her. He s as tight-lipped as they come. A riddle
wrapped in an enigma. 
 Really? Hatsumi asked me.
 Really, I said. But there s no riddle involved here. its just that it s
complicated, and hard to talk about. 
 An illicit love? Ooh! You can talk to me! I took a sip of wine to
avoid answering.
 See what I mean? said Nagasawa, at work on his third whisky.
 Tight-lipped. When this guy decides he s not going to talk about
something, nobody can drag it out of him. What a shame, said
Hatsumi as she cut a small slice of terrine and brought it to her lips.
 If you d got on with her, we could have double-dated. 
 Yeah, we could ve got drunk and done a little swapping, said
Nagasawa.
 Enough of that kind of talk, said Hatsumi.
 
 What do you mean that kind of talk ? Watanabe s got his eye on
you, said Nagasawa.
 That has nothing to do with what I m talking about, Hatsumi
murmured. He s not that kind of person. He s sincere and caring. I can
tell. That s why I ve been trying to fix him up. 
 Oh, sure, he s sincere. Like the time we swapped women once, way
back when. Remember, Watanabe? Nagasawa said this with a blasé
look on his face, then slugged back the rest of his whisky and ordered
another.
Hatsumi set her knife and fork down and dabbed at her mouth with
her napkin. Then, looking at me, she asked, Toru, did you really do
that? 
I didn t know how to answer her, and so I said nothing.
 Tell her, said Nagasawa. What the hell. The mood was turning
sour. Nagasawa could get nasty when he was drunk, but tonight his
nastiness was aimed at Hatsumi, not at me. Knowing that made it all
the more difficult for me to go on sitting there.
 I d like to hear about that, said Hatsumi. It sounds very interesting! 
 We were drunk, I said.
 That s all right, Toru. I m not blaming you. I just want you to tell me
what happened. 
 The two of us were drinking in a bar in Shibuya, and we got friendly
with this pair of girls. They went to some college, and they were
pretty plastered, too. So, anyway, we, uh, went to a hotel and slept
with them. Our rooms were right next door to each other. In the
middle of the night, Nagasawa knocked on my door and said we
should change girls, so I went to his room and he came to mine. 
 Didn t the girls mind? 
 No, they were drunk too. 
 Anyway, I had a good reason for doing it, said Nagasawa.
 A good reason? 
 Well, the girls were too different. One was really goodlooking, but 
 
the other one was a dog. It seemed unfair to me. I got the pretty girl,
but Watanabe got stuck with the other one. That s why we swapped.
Right, Watanabe? 
 Yeah, I s pose so, I said. But in fact, I had liked the not-pretty one.
She was fun to talk to and a nice person. After we had sex, we were
enjoying talking to each other in bed when Nagasawa showed up and
suggested we change partners. I asked the girl if she minded, and she
said it was OK with her if that s what we wanted. She probably
thought I wanted to do it with the pretty one.
 Was it fun? Hatsumi asked me.
 Swapping, you mean? 
 The whole thing. 
 Not especially. its just something you do. Sleeping with girls that
way is not all that much fun. 
 So why do you do it? 
 Because of me, said Nagasawa.
 I m asking Toru, Hatsumi shot back at Nagasawa. Why do you do
something like that? 
 Because sometimes I have this tremendous desire to sleep with a
girl. 
 If you re in love with someone, can t you manage one way or another
with her? Hatsumi asked after a few moments thought.
 its complicated. 
Hatsumi sighed.
At that point the door opened and the food was carried in. Nagasawa
was presented with his roast duck, and Hatsumi and I received our sea
bass. The waiters heaped freshcooked vegetables on our plates and
dribbled sauce on them before withdrawing and leaving the three of us
alone again. Nagasawa cut a slice of duck and ate it with gusto,
followed by more whisky. I took a forkful of spinach. Hatsumi didn t
touch her food.
 
 You know, Toru, she said, I have no idea what makes your
situation so complicated , but I do think that the kind of thing you just
told me about is not right for you. You re not that kind of person.
What do you think? She placed her hands on the table and looked me
in the eye.
 Well, I said, I ve felt that way myself sometimes. 
 So why don t you stop? 
 Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth, I answered
honestly. Sometimes, if I can t feel something like the warmth of a
woman s skin, I get so lonely I can t stand it. 
 Here, let me summarize what I think its all about, interjected
Nagasawa. Watanabe s got this girl he likes, but for certain
complicated reasons, they can t do it. So he tells himself Sex is just
sex , and he takes care of his need with somebody else. What s wrong
with that? It makes perfect sense. He can t just stay locked in his room
tossing off all the time, can he? 
 But if you really love her, Toru, shouldn t it be possible for you to
control yourself? 
 Maybe so, I said, bringing a piece of sea bass in cream sauce to my
mouth.
 You just don t understand a man s sexual needs, said Nagasawa to
Hatsumi. Look at me, for example. I ve been with you for three years,
and I ve slept with plenty of women in that time. But I don t remember
a thing about them. I don t know their names, I don t remember their
faces. I slept with each of them exactly once. Meet em, do it, so long.
That s it. What s wrong with that? 
 What I can t stand is that arrogance of yours, said Hatsumi in a soft
voice. Whether you sleep with other women or not is beside the
point. I ve never really been angry with you for sleeping around, have
I? 
 You can t even call what I do sleeping around. its just a game.
 
Nobody gets hurt, said Nagasawa.
 I get hurt, said Hatsumi. Why am I not enough for you? 
Nagasawa kept silent for a moment and swirled the whisky in his
glass. its not that you re not enough for me. That s another phase,
another question. its just a hunger I have inside me. If I ve hurt you,
I m sorry. But its not a question of whether or not you re enough for
me. I can only live with that hunger. That s the kind of man I am.
That s what makes me me. There s nothing I can do about it, don t you
see? 
At last Hatsumi picked up her silverware and started eating her fish.
 At least you shouldn t drag Toru into your games . 
 We re a lot alike, though, Watanabe and me, said Nagasawa.
 Neither of us is interested, essentially, in anything but ourselves. OK,
so I m arrogant and he s not, but neither of us is able to feel any
interest in anything other than what we ourselves think or feel or do.
That s why we can think about things in a way that s totally divorced
from anybody else. That s what I like about him. The only difference
is that he hasn t realized this about himself, and so he hesitates and
feels hurt. 
 What human being doesn t hesitate and feel hurt? Hatsumi
demanded. Are you trying to say that you have never felt those
things? 
 Of course I have, but I ve disciplined myself to where I can minimize
them. Even a rat will choose the least painful route if you shock him
enough. 
 But rats don t fall in love. 
 Rats don t fall in love . Nagasawa looked at me. That s great. We
should have background music for this - a full orchestra with two
harps and - 
 Don t make fun of me. I m serious. 
-We re eating, said Nagasawa. And Watanabe s here. It ,night be
more civil for us to confine serious talk to another occasion. 
 
 I can leave, I said.
 No, said Hatsumi. Please stay. its better with you here. 
 At least have dessert, said Nagasawa.
 I don t mind, really. 
The three of us went on eating in silence for a time. I finished my fish.
Hatsumi left half of hers. Nagasawa had polished off his duck long
before and was now concentrating on his whisky.
 That was excellent sea bass, I offered, but no one took me up on it. I
might as well have thrown a rock down a deep well.
The waiters took away our plates and brought lemon sherbet and
espresso. Nagasawa barely touched his dessert and coffee, moving
directly to a cigarette. Hatsumi ignored her sherbet. Oh boy, I
thought to myself as I finished my sherbet and coffee. Hatsumi stared
at her hands on the table. Like everything she wore, her hands looked
chic and elegant and expensive. I thought about Naoko and Reiko.
What would they be doing now? I wondered. Naoko could be lying on
the sofa reading a book, and Reiko might be playing Norwegian
Wood on her guitar. I felt an intense desire to go back to that little
room of theirs. What the hell was I doing in this place?
 Where Watanabe and I are alike is, we don t give a shit if nobody
understands us, Nagasawa said. That s what makes us different from
everybody else. They re all worried about whether the people around
them understand them. But not me, and not Watanabe. We just don t
give a shit. Self and others are separate. 
 Is this true? Hatsumi asked me.
 No, I said. I m not that strong. I don t feel its OK if nobody
understands me. I ve got people I want to understand and be
understood by. But aside from those few, well, I feel its kind of
hopeless. I don t agree with Nagasawa. I do care if people understand
me. 
 That s practically the same thing as what I m saying, said Nagasawa,
picking up his coffee spoon. It is the same! its the difference
 
between a late breakfast or an early lunch. Same time, same food,
different name. 
Now Hatsumi spoke to Nagasawa. Don t you care whether I
understand you or not? 
 You don t get it, do you? Person A understands Person B because the
time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be
understood by Person A. 
 So is it a mistake for me to feel that I want to be understood by
someone - by you, for example? 
 No, its not a mistake, answered Nagasawa. Most people would call
that love, if you think you want to understand me. My system for
living is way different from other people s systems for living. 
 So what you re saying is you re not in love with me, is that it? 
 Well, my system and your - 
 To hell with your fucking system! Hatsumi shouted. That
was the first and last time I ever heard her shout.
Nagasawa pushed the button by the table, and the waiter
came in with the bill. Nagasawa handed him a credit card. Sorry
about this, Watanabe, said Nagasawa. I m going
to see Hatsumi home. You go back to the dorm alone, OK? You
don t have to apologize to me. Great meal, I said, but
no one said anything in response.
The waiter brought the card, and Nagasawa signed with a ballpoint
pen after checking the amount. Then the three of us stood and went
outside. Nagasawa started to step into the street to hail a taxi, but
Hatsumi stopped him.
 Thanks, but I don t want to spend any more time with you today. You
don t have to see me home. Thank you for dinner. 
,,Whatever, said Nagasawa.
 I want Toru to see me home. 
 Whatever, said Nagasawa. But Watanabe s practically the same as
me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he s incapable 
 
of loving anybody. There s always some part of him somewhere that s
wide awake and detached. He just has that hunger that won t go away.
Believe me, I know what I m talking about. 
I flagged down a taxi and let Hatsumi in first. Anyway, I said to
Nagasawa, I ll make sure she gets home. 
 Sorry to put you through this, said Nagasawa, but I could see that he
was already thinking about something else.
Once inside the cab, I asked Hatsumi, Where do you want to go?
Back to Ebisu? Her flat was in Ebisu.
She shook her head.
 OK. How about a drink somewhere? 
 Yes, she said with a nod.
 Shibuya, I told the driver.
Folding her arms and closing her eyes, Hatsumi sank back into the
corner of the seat. Her small gold earrings caught the light as the taxi
swayed. Her midnight-blue dress seemed to have been made to match
the darkness of the interior. Every now and then her lightly made-up,
beautifully formed lips would quiver slightly as though she had caught
herself on the verge of talking to herself. Watching her, I could see
why Nagasawa had chosen her as his special companion. There were
any number of women more beautiful than Hatsumi, and Nagasawa
could have made any of them his. But Hatsumi had some quality that
could send a tremor through your heart. It was nothing forceful. The
power she exerted was a subtle thing, but it called forth deep
resonances. I watched her all the way to Shibuya, and wondered,
without ever finding an answer, what this emotional reverberation
could be that I was feeling.
It finally hit me some dozen or so years later. I had gone to Santa Fe
to interview a painter and was sitting in a local pizza parlour, drinking
beer and eating pizza and watching a miraculously beautiful sunset.
Everything was soaked in brilliant red - my hand, the plate, the table, 
 
the world - as if some special kind of fruit juice had splashed down on
everything. In the midst of this overwhelming sunset, the image of
Hatsumi flashed into my mind, and in that moment I understood what
that tremor of the heart had been. It was a kind of childhood longing
that had always remained - and would for ever remain - unfulfilled. I
had forgotten the existence of such innocent, almost burnt-in longing:
forgotten for years that such feelings had ever existed inside me. What
Hatsumi had stirred in me was a part of my very self that had long lain
dormant. And when the realization struck me, it aroused such sorrow I
almost burst into tears. She had been an absolutely special woman.
Someone should have done something - anything - to save her.
But neither Nagasawa nor I could have managed that. As so many of
those I knew had done, Hatsumi reached a certain stage in life and
decided - almost on the spur of the moment - to end it. Two years after
Nagasawa left for Germany, she married, and two years after that she
slashed her wrists with a razor blade.
It was Nagasawa, of course, who told me what had
happened. His letter from Bonn said this: Hatsumi s death has
extinguished something. This is unbearably sad and painful, even to
me. I ripped his letter to shreds and threw it away. I never wrote to
him again.
Hatsumi and I went to a small bar and downed several drinks. Neither
of us said much. Like a bored, old married couple, we sat opposite
each other, drinking in silence and munching peanuts. When the place
began to fill up, we went for a walk. Hatsumi said she would pay the
bill, but I insisted on paying because the drinks had been my idea.
There was a deep chill in the night air. Hatsumi wrapped herself in her
pale grey cardigan and walked by my side in silence. I had no
destination in mind as we ambled through the nighttime streets, my
hands shoved deep into my pockets. This was just like walking with
Naoko, it occurred to me.
 
 Do you know somewhere we could play pool around here? Hatsumi
asked me without warning.
 Pool? You play? 
 Yeah, I m pretty good. How about you? 
 I play a little. Not that I m very good at it. 
 OK, then. lets go. 
We found a pool hall nearby and went in. It was a small place at the
far end of an alley. The two of us - Hatsumi in her chic dress and I in
my blue blazer and regimental tie - clashed with the scruffy pool hall,
but this didn t seem to concern Hatsumi at all as she chose and chalked
her cue. She pulled a hairslide from her bag and clipped her hair aside
at one temple to keep it from interfering with her game.
We played two games. Hatsumi was as good as she had claimed to be,
while my own game was hampered by the thick bandage I still wore
on my cut hand. She crushed me.
 You re great, I said in admiration.
 You mean appearances can be deceiving? she asked as she sized up
a shot, smiling.
 Where did you learn to play like that? 
 My grandfather - my father s father - was an old playboy. He had a
table in his house. I used to play pool with my brother just for fun, and
when I got a little bigger my grandfather taught me the right moves.
He was a wonderful guy - stylish, handsome. He s dead now, though.
He always used to boast how he once met Deanna Durbin in New
York. 
She got three in a row, then missed on the fourth try. I managed to
squeeze out a point, then missed an easy shot.
 its the bandage, said Hatsumi to comfort me.
 No, its because I haven t played for so long, I said. Two years and
five months. 
 How can you be so sure of the time? 
 
 My friend died the night after our last game together, I said.
 So you stopped playing? 
 No, not really, I said after giving it some thought. I just never had
the opportunity to play after that. That s all. How did your friend
die? 
 Traffic accident. 
She made several more shots, aiming with deadly seriousness and
adjusting the strength of each shot with precision. Watching her in
action - her carefully set hair swept back out of her eyes, golden
earrings sparkling, court shoes set firmly on the floor, lovely, slender
fingers pressing the green baize as she took her shot - I felt as if her
side of the scruffy pool hall had been transformed into part of some
elegant social event. I had never spent time with her alone before, and
this was a marvellous experience for me, as though I had been drawn
up to a higher plane of life. At the end of the third game - in which, of
course, she crushed me again -my cut began to throb, and so we
stopped playing.
 I m sorry, she said with what seemed like genuine concern, I should
never have suggested this. 
 That s OK, I said. its not a bad cut, I enjoyed playing. Really. 
As we were leaving the pool hall, the skinny woman owner said to
Hatsumi, You ve a good eye, sister. Hatsumi gave her a sweet smile
and thanked her as she paid the bill.
 Does it hurt? she asked when we were outside.
 Not much, I said.
 Do you think it opened? 
 No, its probably OK. 
 I know! You should come to my place. I ll change your bandage for
you. I ve got disinfectant and everything. Come on, I m right over
there. 
I told her it wasn t worth worrying about, that I d be OK, but she
insisted we had to check to see if the cut had opened or not.
 
 Or is it that you don t like being with me? You want to go back to
your room as soon as possible, is that it? she said with a playful
smile.
 No way, I said.
 All right, then. Don t stand on ceremony. its a short walk. 
Hatsumi s flat was a -minute walk from Shibuya towards Ebisu. By
no means a glamorous building, it was more than decent, with a nice
little lobby and a lift. Hatsumi sat me at the kitchen table and went to
the bedroom to change. She came out wearing a Princeton hooded
sweatshirt and cotton trousers - and no more gold earrings. Setting a
first-aid box on the table, she undid my bandage, checked to see that
the wound was still sealed, put a little disinfectant on the area and tied
a new bandage over the cut. She did all this like an expert. How come
you re so good at so many things? I asked.
 I used to do volunteer work at a hospital. Kind of like playing nurse.
That s how I learned. 
When Hatsumi had finished with the bandage, she went and fetched
two cans of beer from the fridge. She drank half of hers, and I drank
mine plus the half she left. Then she showed me pictures of the other
girls in her club. She was right: some of them were cute.
 Any time you decide you want a girlfriend, come to me, she said.
 I ll fix you up straight away. 
 Yes, Miss. 
 All right, Toru, tell me the truth. You think I m an old matchmaker,
don t you? 
 To some extent, I said, telling her the truth, but with a smile.
Hatsumi smiled, too. She looked good when she smiled.
 Tell me something else, Toru, she said. What do you think about
Nagasawa and me? 
 What do you mean what do I think? About what? 
 About what I ought to do. From now on. 
 It doesn t matter what I think, I said, taking a slug of cold beer.
 
 That s all right. Tell me exactly what you think. 
 Well, if I were you, I d leave him. I d find someone with a more
normal way of looking at things and live happily ever after. There s no
way in hell you can be happy with him. The way he lives, it never
crosses his mind to try to make himself happy or to make others
happy. Staying with him will only wreck your nervous system. To me,
it s already a miracle that you ve been with him three years. Of course,
I m very fond of him in my own way. He s fun, and he has lots of great
qualities.
He has strengths and abilities that I could never hope to match. But in
the end, his ideas about things and the way he lives his life are not
normal. Sometimes, when I m talking to him, I feel as if I m going
around and around in circles. The same process that takes him higher
and higher leaves me going around in circles. It makes me feel so
empty! Finally, our very systems are totally different. Do you see
what I m saying? 
 I do, Hatsumi said as she brought me another beer from the fridge.
 Plus, after he gets into the Foreign Ministry and does a year of
training, he ll be going abroad. What are you going to do all that time?
Wait for him? He has no intention of marrying anyone. 
 I know that, too. 
 So I ve got nothing else to say. 
 I see, said Hatsumi.
I slowly filled my glass with beer.
 You know, when we were playing pool before, something popped
into my mind, I said. I was an only child, but all the time I was
growing up I never once felt deprived or wished I had brothers or
sisters. I was happy being alone. But all of a sudden, playing pool with
you, I had this feeling that I wished I had had an elder sister like you -
really chic and a knockout in a midnight-blue dress and gold earrings
and great with a pool cue. 
Hatsumi flashed me a happy smile. That s got to be the nicest thing 
 
anybody s said to me in the past year, she said. Really. 
 All I want for you, I said, blushing, is for you to be happy. It s
crazy, though. You seem like someone who could be happy with just
about anybody, so how did you end up with Nagasawa of all people? 
 Things like that just happen. There s probably not much you can do
about them. its certainly true in my case. Of course, Nagasawa would
say its my responsibility, not his. 
 I m sure he would. 
 But anyway, Toru, I m not the smartest girl in the world. If anything,
I m sort of on the stupid side, and old-fashioned. I couldn t care less
about systems and responsibility . All I want is to get married and
have a man I love hold me in his arms every night and make babies.
That s plenty for me. its all I want out of life. 
 And what Nagasawa wants out of life has nothing to do with that. 
 People change, though, don t you think? Hatsumi asked. You mean,
like, they go out into society and get a kick up the arse and grow up? 
 Yeah. And if he s away from me for a long time, his feelings for me
could change, don t you think? 
 Maybe, if he were an ordinary guy, I said. But he s different. He s
incredibly strong-willed - stronger than you or I can imagine. And he
only makes himself stronger with every day that goes by. If something
smashes into him, he just works to make himself stronger. He d eat
slugs before he d back down to anyone. What do you expect to get
from a man like that? 
 But there s nothing I can do but wait for him, said Hatsumi with her
chin in her hand.
 You love him that much? 
 I do, she answered without a moment s hesitation.
 Oh boy, I said with a sigh, drinking down the last of my beer. It
must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody. 
 I m a stupid, old-fashioned girl, she said. Have another beer? 
 
 No, thanks, I must get going. Thanks for the bandage and beer. 
As I was standing in the hallway putting on my shoes, the telephone
rang. Hatsumi looked at me, looked at the phone,
and looked at me again.
 Good night, I said, stepping outside. As I shut the door, I caught a
glimpse of Hatsumi picking up the receiver. It was the last time I ever
saw her.
It was. by the time I got back to the dorm. I went straight to
Nagasawa s room and knocked on his door. After the tenth knock it
occurred to me that this was Saturday night. Nagasawa always got
overnight permission on Saturday nights, supposedly to stay at his
relatives house.
I went back to my room, took off my tie, put my jacket and trousers
on a hanger, changed into my pyjamas, and brushed my teeth. Oh no, I
thought, tomorrow is Sunday again! Sundays seemed to be rolling
around every four days. Another two Sundays and I would be years
old. I stretched out in bed and stared at my calendar as dark feelings
washed over me.
I sat at my desk to write my Sunday morning letter to Naoko, drinking
coffee from a big cup and listening to old Miles Davis albums. A fine
rain was falling outside, while my room had the chill of an aquarium.
The smell of mothballs lingered in the thick jumper I had just taken
out of a storage box. High up on the window-pane clung a huge, fat
fly, unmoving. With no wind to stir it, the Rising Sun standard hung
limp against the flagpole like the toga of a Roman senator. A skinny,
timid-looking brown dog that had wandered into the quadrangle was
sniffing every blossom in the flowerbed. I couldn t begin to imagine
why any dog would have to go around sniffing flowers on a rainy day.
My letter was a long one, and whenever my cut right palm began to
hurt from holding the pen, I would let my eyes wander out to the rainy 
 
quadrangle.
I began by telling Naoko how I had given my right hand a nasty cut
while working in the record shop, then went on to say that Nagasawa,
Hatsumi and I had had a sort of celebration the night before for
Nagasawa s having passed his Foreign Ministry exam. I described the
restaurant and the food. The meal was great, I said, but the atmosphere
got uncomfortable halfway through.
I wondered if I should write about Kizuki in connection with having
played pool with Hatsumi and decided to go ahead. I felt it was
something I ought to write about.
I still remember the last shot Kizuki took that day - the day he died. It
was a difficult cushion shot that I never expected him to get. Luck
seemed to be with him, though: the shot was absolutely perfect, and
the white and red balls hardly made a sound as they brushed each
other on the green baize for the last score of the game. It was such a
beautiful shot, I still have a vivid image of it to this day. For nearly
two-and-a-half years after that, I never touched a cue.
The night I played pool with Hatsumi, though, the thought of Kizuki
never crossed my mind until the first game ended, and this came as a
real shock to me. I had always assumed that I d be reminded of Kizuki
whenever I played pool. But not until the first game was over and I
bought a Pepsi from a vending machine and started drinking it did I
even think of him. It was the pool hall we used to play in, and we had
often bet drinks on the outcome of our games.
I felt guilty that I hadn t thought of Kizuki straight away, as if I had
somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think
of it like this: two and-a-half years have gone by since it happened,
and Kizuki is still years old. Not that this means my memory of
him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there,
bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they
were new. What I want to say is this: I m going to turn soon. Part of 
 
what Kizuki and I shared when we were and has already
vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can t
explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand
what I felt and what I am trying to say. In fact, you are probably
the only one in the world who can understand.
I think of you now more than ever. its raining today. Rainy Sundays
are hard for me. When it rains I can t do laundry, which means I can t
do ironing. I can t go walking, and I can t lie on the roof. About all I
can do is put the record player on auto repeat and listen to Kind of
Blue over and over while I watch the rain falling in the quadrangle. As
I wrote to you earlier, I don t wind my spring on Sundays. That s why
this letter is so damn long. I m stopping now. I m going to the dining
hall for lunch. Goodbye.
 
There was no sign of Midori at the next day s lecture, either. What had
happened to her? Ten days had gone by since we last talked on the
phone. I thought about calling her, but decided against it. She had said
that she would call me.
That Thursday I saw Nagasawa in the dining hall. He sat down next to
me with a tray full of food and apologized for having made our
 party so unpleasant.
 Never mind, I said. I should be thanking you for a great dinner. I
have to admit, though, it was a funny way to celebrate your first job. 
 You can say that again. 
A few minutes went by as we ate in silence. I made up with
Hatsumi, he said.
 I m not surprised. 
 I was kind of tough on you, too, as I recall it. 
 What s with all the apologizing? I asked. Are you ill? 
 I may be, he said with a few little nods. Hatsumi tells me you told
her to leave me. 
 It only makes sense, I said.
 Yeah, I s pose so, said Nagasawa.
 She s a great girl, I said, slurping my miso soup.
 I know, he said with a sigh. A little too great for me. 
I was sleeping the sleep of death when the buzzer rang to let me know
I had a call. It brought me back from the absolute core of sleep in total 
 
confusion. I felt as if I had been sleeping with my head soaked in
water until my brain swelled up. The clock said. but I had no idea
if that meant a.m. or p.m., and I couldn t remember what day it was. I
looked out of the window and realized there was no flag on the pole. It
was probably p.m. So, raising that flag served some purpose after all.
 Hey, Watanabe, are you free now? Midori asked.
 I don t know, what day is it? 
 Friday. 
 Morning or evening? 
 Evening, of course! You re so weird! lets see, it s, uh,. p.m. 
So it was p.m. after all! That s right, I had been stretched out on my
bed reading a book when I dozed off. Friday. My head started
working. I didn t have to go to the record shop on Friday nights.
 Yeah, I m free. Where are you? 
 Ueno Station. Why don t you meet me in Shinjuku? I ll leave now. 
We set a time and place and hung up.
When I got to DUG, Midori was sitting at the far end of the counter
with a drink. She wore a man s wrinkled, white balmacaan coat, a thin
yellow jumper, blue jeans, and two bracelets on one wrist.
 What re you drinking? I asked.
 Tom Collins. 
I ordered a whisky and soda, then realized there was a big suitcase by
Midori s feet.
I went away, she said. Just got back. 
 Where d you go? 
 South to Nara and north to Aomori. 
 On the same trip?! 
 Don t be stupid. I may be strange, but I can t go north and south at the
same time. I went to Nara with my boyfriend, and then took off to
Aomori alone. 
 
I sipped my whisky and soda, then struck a match to light the
Marlboro that Midori held between her lips. You must have had a
terrible time, what with the funeral and everything. 
 Nah, a funeral s a piece of cake. We ve had plenty of practice. You
put on a black kimono and sit there like a lady and everybody else
takes care of business - an uncle, a neighbour, like that. They bring the
sake, order the sushi, say comforting things, cry, carry on, divide up
the keepsakes. its a breeze. A picnic. Compared to nursing someone
day after day, its an absolute picnic. We were drained, my sister and
me. We couldn t even cry. We didn t have any tears left. Really.
Except, when you do that, they start whispering about you: Those
girls are as cold as ice. So then, we re never going to cry, that s just
how the two of us are. I know we could have faked it, but we would
never do anything like that. The bastards! The more they wanted to
see us cry, the more determined we were not to give them the
satisfaction. My sister and I are totally different types, but when it
comes to something like that, we re in absolute sync. 
Midori s bracelets jangled on her arm as she waved to the waiter and
ordered another Tom Collins and a small bowl of pistachios.
 So then, after the funeral ended and everybody went home, the two of
us drank sake till the sun went down. Polished off one of those huge
half-gallon bottles, and half of another one, and the whole time we
were dumping on everybody -
this one s an idiot, that one s a shithead, one guy looks like a mangy
dog, another one s a pig, so-and-so s a hypocrite, that one s a crook.
You have no idea how great it felt! 
 I can imagine. 
 We got pissed and went to bed - both of us out cold. We slept for
hours, and if the phone rang or something, we just let it go. Dead to
the world. Finally, after we woke up, we ordered sushi and talked
about what to do. We decided to close the shop for a while and enjoy
ourselves. We d been killing ourselves for months and we deserved a 
 
break. My sister just wanted to hang around with her boyfriend for a
while, and I decided I d take mine on a trip for a couple of days and
fuck like crazy. Midori clamped her mouth shut and rubbed her ears.
 Oops, sorry. 
 That s OK, I said. So you went to Nara. 
 Yeah, I ve always liked that place. The temples, the deer park. 
 And did you fuck like crazy? 
 No, not at all, not even once, she said with a sigh. The second we
walked into the hotel room and dumped our bags, my period started. A
real gusher. 
I couldn t help laughing.
 Hey, its not funny. I was a week early! I couldn t stop crying when
that happened. I think all the stress threw me off. My boyfriend got
sooo angry! He s like that: he gets angry straight away. It wasn t my
fault, though. its not like I wanted to get my period. And, well, mine
are kind of on the heavy side anyway. The first day or two, I don t
want to do anything. Make sure you keep away from me then. 
 I d like to, but how can I tell? I asked.
 OK, I ll wear a hat for a couple of days after my period starts. A red
one. That should work, she said with a laugh If you see me on the
street and I m wearing a red hat, don t talk to me, just run away. 
 Great. I wish all girls would do that, I said. So anyway what did
you do in Nara? 
 What else could we do? We fed the deer and walked all over the
place. It was just awful! We had a big fight and I haven t seen him
since we got back. I hung around for a couple of days and decided to
take a nice trip all by myself. So I went to Aomori. I stayed with a
friend in Hirosaki for the first two nights, and then I started travelling
around - Shimokita, Tappi, places like that. They re nice. I once wrote
a map brochure for the area. Ever been there? 
 Never. 
 So anyway, said Midori, sipping her Tom Collins, then wrenching 
 
open a pistachio, the whole time I was travelling by myself, I was
thinking of you. I was thinking how nice it would be if I could have
you with me. 
 How come? 
 How come?! Midori looked at me with eyes focused on nothingness.
 What do you mean How come? ?! 
 Just that. How come you were thinking of me? 
 Maybe because I like you, that s how come! Why else would I be
thinking of you? Who would ever think they wanted to be with
somebody they didn t like? 
 But you ve got a boyfriend, I said. You don t have to think about
me. I took a slow sip of my whisky and soda. Meaning I m not
allowed to think about you if I ve got a boyfriend? 
 No, that s not it, I just - 
 Now get this straight, Watanabe, said Midori, pointing at me. I m
warning you, I ve got a whole month s worth of misery crammed
inside me and getting ready to blow. So watch what you say to me.
Any more of that kind of stuff and I ll flood this place with tears. Once
I get started, I m good for the whole night. Are you ready for that? I m
an absolute animal when I start crying, it doesn t matter where I am!
I m not joking. 
I nodded and kept quiet. I ordered a second whisky and soda and ate a
few pistachios. Somewhere behind the sound of a sloshing shaker and
clinking glasses and the scrape of an ice maker, Sarah Vaughan sang
an old-fashioned love song.
 Things haven t been right between me and my boyfriend ever since
the tampon incident. 
 Tampon incident? 
 Yeah, I was out drinking with him and a few of his friends about a
month ago and I told them the story of a woman in my neighbourhood
who blew out a tampon when she sneezed. Funny, right? 
 That is funny, I said with a laugh.
 
 Yeah, all the other guys thought so, too. But he got mad and said I
shouldn t be talking about such dirty things. Such a wet blanket! 
 Wow. 
 He s a wonderful guy, but he can be really narrow-minded when it
comes to stuff like that, said Midori. Like, he gets mad if I wear
anything but white underwear. Don t you think that s narrow-minded? 
 Maybe so, I said, but its just a matter of taste. It seemed
incredible to me that a guy like that would want a girlfriend like
Midori, but I kept this thought to myself.
 So, what have you been doing? she asked.
 Nothing. Same as ever, I said, but then I recalled my attempt to
masturbate while thinking of Midori as I had promised to do. I told her
about it in a low voice that wouldn t carry to the others around us.
Midori s eyes lit up and she snapped her fingers. How d it go? Was it
good? 
 Nah, I got embarrassed halfway through and stopped. You mean
you lost your erection? 
 Pretty much. 
 Damn, she said, shooting a look of annoyance at me. You can t let
yourself get embarrassed. Think about something really sexy. its OK,
I m giving you permission. Hey, I know what! Next time I ll get on the
phone with you: Oh, oh, that s great... Oh, I feel it... Stop, I m gonna
come... Oh, don t do that! I ll say stuff like that to you while you re
doing it. 
 The dormitory phone is in the lobby by the front door, with people
coming in and out all the time, I explained. The dorm Head would
kill me with his bare hands if he saw me wanking in a place like that. 
 Oh, too bad. 
 Never mind, I said. I ll try again by myself one of these days. 
 Give it your best shot, said Midori. I will, I said.
 I wonder if its me, she said. Maybe I m just not Innately. 
 That s not it, I assured her. its more a question of attitude. 
 
 You know, she said, I have this tremendously sensitive back. The
soft touch of fingers all over... mmmmm. I ll keep that in mind. 
 Hey, why don t we go now and see a dirty film? Midori suggested.
 A really filthy S&M one. 
We went from the bar to an eel shop, and from there to one of
Shinjuku s most run-down adult cinemas to see a triple bill. It was the
only place we could find in the paper that was showing S&M stuff.
Inside, the cinema had some kind of indefinable smell. Our timing
was good: the S&M film was just starting as we took our seats. It was
the story of a secretary and her schoolgirl sister being kidnapped by a
bunch of men and subjected to sadistic tortures. The men made the
older one to do all kinds of awful things by threatening to rape the
sister, but soon the older sister is transformed into a raging masochist,
and the younger one gets really turned on from having to watch all the
contortions they put her through. It was such a gloomy, repetitive film,
I got bored after a while.
 If I were the younger sister, I wouldn t get worked up so easily, said
Midori. I d keep watching. 
 I m sure you would, I said.
 And anyway, don t you think her nipples are too dark for a schoolgirl
- a virgin? 
 Absolutely. 
Midori s eyes were glued to the screen. I was impressed: anyone
watching a film with such fierce intensity was getting more than her
money s worth. She kept reporting her thoughts to me: Oh my God,
will you look at that! or Three guys at once! They re going to tear
her apart! or I d like to try that on somebody, Watanabe. I was
enjoying Midori a lot more than the film.
When the lights went up during the intermission, I realized there were
no other women in the place. One young man sitting near us -
probably a student - took one look at Midori and changed his seat to 
 
the far side.
 Tell me, Watanabe, do you get hard watching this kind of stuff? 
 Well, yeah, sometimes, I said. That s why they make these films. 
 So what you re saying is, every time one of those scenes starts, every
man in the cinema has his thing standing to attention? Thirty or forty
of them sticking up all at once? its so weird if you stop and think
about it, don t you think? 
 Yeah, I guess so, now you mention it. 
The second feature was a fairly normal porn flick, which meant it was
even more boring than the first. It had lots of oral sex scenes, and
every time they started doing fellatio or cunnilingus or sixty-nine the
soundtrack would fill the cinema with loud sucking or slurping sound
effects. Listening to them, I felt strangely moved to think that I was
living out my life on this bizarre planet of ours.
 Who comes up with these sounds, I wonder, I said to Midori.
 I think they re great! she said.
There was also a sound for a penis moving in and out of a vagina. I
had never realized that such sounds even existed. The man was into a
lot of heavy breathing, and the woman came up with the usual sort of
expressions - Yes! or More! - as she writhed under him. You
could also hear the bed creaking. These scenes just went on and on.
Midori seemed to be enjoying them at first, but even she got bored
after a while and suggested we leave. We went outside and took a few
deep breaths. This was the first time in my life the outside air of
Shinjuku felt healthy to me.
 That was fun, said Midori. lets try it again sometime. 
 They just keep doing the same things, I said.
 Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things. 
She had a point there.
We found another bar and ordered drinks. I had more whisky, and
Midori drank three or four cocktails of some indefinable kind. Outside
again, Midori said she wanted to climb a tree.
 
 There aren t any trees around here, I said. And even if there were,
you re too wobbly to do any climbing. 
 You re always so damn sensible, you ruin everything. I m drunk
 cause I wanna be drunk. What s wrong with that? And even if I am
drunk, I can still climb a tree. Shit, I m gonna climb all the way to the
top of a great, big, tall tree and I m gonna pee all over everybody! 
 You wouldn t happen to need the toilet by any chance? 
 Yup.
I took Midori to a pay toilet in Shinjuku Station, put a coin in the slot
and bundled her inside, then bought an evening paper at a nearby
stand and read it while I waited for her to come out. But she didn t
come out. I started getting worried after minutes and was ready to
go and check on her when she finally emerged looking pale.
 Sorry, she said. I fell asleep. 
 Are you OK? I asked, putting my coat around her shoulders.
 Not really, she said.
 I ll take you home. You just have to get home, take a nice, long bath
and go to bed. You re exhausted. 
 I am not going home. What s the point? Nobody s there. I don t want
to sleep all by myself in a place like that. 
 Terrific, I said. So what are you going to do? 
 Go to some love hotel around here and sleep with your arms around
me all night. Like a log. Tomorrow morning we ll have breakfast
somewhere and go to lectures together. 
 You were planning this all along, weren t you? That s why you called
me. 
 Of course.
 You should have called your boyfriend, not me. That s the only thing
that makes sense. That s what boyfriends are for. 
 But I want to be with you. 
 You can t be with me, I said. First of all, I have to be back in the
dorm by midnight. Otherwise, I ll break curfew. The one time I did 
 
that there was all hell to pay. And secondly, if I go to bed with a girl,
I m going to want to do it with her, and the last thing I want is to lie
there struggling to restrain myself. I m not kidding, I might end up
forcing you. 
 You mean you d hit me and tie me up and rape me from behind? 
 Hey, look, I m serious. 
 But I m so lonely! I want to be with someone! I know I m doing
terrible things to you, making demands and not giving you anything in
return, saying whatever pops into my head, dragging you out of your
room and forcing you to take me everywhere, but you re the only one I
can do stuff like that to! I ve never been able to have my own way
with anybody, not once in the years I ve been alive. My father, my
mother, they never paid the slightest attention to me, and my
boyfriend, well, he s just not that kind of guy. He gets angry if I try to
have my own way. So we end up fighting. You re the only one I can
say these things to. And now I m really, really, really tired and I want
to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and
how pretty I am and stuff. That s all I want. And when I wake up, I ll
be full of energy and I ll never make these kinds of selfish demands
again. I swear. I ll be a good girl. 
 I hear you, believe me, but there s nothing I can do. 
 Oh, please! Otherwise, I m going to sit down right here on the ground
and cry my head off all night long. And I ll sleep with the first guy that
talks to me. 
That did it. I called the dorm and asked for Nagasawa.
When he got to the phone I asked him if he would make it look as if I
had come back for the evening. I was with a girl, I explained.
 Fine, he said. its a worthy cause, I ll be glad to help you out. I ll
just turn over your name tag to the in side. Don t worry. Take all the
time you need. You can come in through my window in the morning. 
 Thanks. I owe you one, I said and hung up. All set? Midori asked.
 Pretty much, I said with a sigh. Great, lets go to a disco, its so 
 
early. Wait a minute, I thought you were tired. For something like
this, I m just fine. Oh boy. 
And she was right. We went to a disco, and her energy came back
little by little as we danced. She drank two whisky and cokes, and
stayed on the dance floor until her forehead was drenched in sweat.
 This is so much fun! she exclaimed when we took a break at a table.
 I haven t danced like this in ages. I don t know, when you move your
body, its kind of like your spirit gets liberated. 
 Your spirit is always liberated, I d say. 
 No way, she said, shaking her head and smiling. Anyway, now that
I m feeling better, I m starved! lets go for a pizza. 
I took her to a pizzeria I knew and ordered draught beer and an
anchovy pizza. I wasn t very hungry and ate only four of the twelve
slices. Midori finished the rest.
 You sure made a fast recovery, I said. Not too long ago you were
pale and wobbly. 
 its because my selfish demands got through to somebody,,, she
answered. It unclogged me. Wow, this pizza is great! ,
 Tell me, though. Is there really nobody at home? 
 its true. My sister s staying at her friend s place. Now, that girl s got
a real case of the creeps. She can t sleep alone in the house if I m not
there. 
 lets forget this love hotel crap, then. Going to a place like that just
makes you feel cheap. lets go to your house. You must have enough
bedding for me? 
Midori thought about it for a minute, then nodded. OK, we ll spend
the night at mine. 
We took the Yamanote Line to Otsuka, and soon we were raising the
metal shutter that sealed off the front of the Kobayashi Bookshop. A
paper sign on the shutter read TEMPORARILY CLOSED. The smell
of old paper filled the dark shop, as if the shutter had not been opened
for a long time. Half the shelves were empty, and most of the
 
magazines had been tied in bundles for returns. That hollow, chilly
feeling I had experienced on my first visit had only deepened. The
place looked like a hulk abandoned on the shore.
 You re not planning to open shop again? I asked.
 Nah, we re going to sell it, said Midori. We ll divide the money and
live on our own for a while without anybody s protection . My sister s
getting married next year, and I ve got three more years at university.
We ought to make enough to see us through that much at least. I ll
keep my part-time job, too. Once the place is sold, I ll live with my
sister in a flat for a while. 
 You think somebody ll want to buy it?
 Probably. I know somebody who wants to open a wool shop, She s
been asking me recently if I want to sell. Poor Dad, though. He
worked so hard to get this place, and he was paying off the loan he
took out little by little, and in the end he hardly had anything left. It all
melted away, like foam on a river. 
 He had you, though, I said.
 Me?! Midori said with a laugh. She took a deep breath and let it out.
 lets go upstairs. its cold down here. 
Upstairs, she sat me at the kitchen table and went to warm the bath
water. While she busied herself with that, I put a kettle on to boil and
made tea. Waiting for the tank to heat up, we sat across from each
other at the kitchen table and drank tea. Chin in hand, she took a long,
hard look at me. There were no sounds other than the ticking of the
clock and the hum of the fridge motor turning on and off as the
thermostat kicked in and out. The clock showed that midnight was fast
approaching.
 You know, Watanabe, study it hard enough, and you ve got a pretty
interesting face. 
 Think so? I asked, a bit hurt.
 A nice face goes a long way with me, she said. And yours... well,
the more I look at it, the more I get to thinking, He ll do . 
 
 Me, too, I said. Every once in a while, I think about myself, What
the hell, I ll do . 
 Hey, I don t mean that in a bad way. I m not very good at putting my
feelings into words. That s why people misunderstand me. All I m
trying to say is I like you. Have I told you that before? 
 You have, I said.
 I mean, I m not the only one who has trouble working out what men
are all about. But I m getting there, a little at a time. 
Midori brought over a box of Marlboro and lit one up. When you
start at zero, you ve got a lot to learn. I wouldn t be surprised. 
 Oh, I almost forgot! You want to burn a stick of incense for my
father? 
I followed Midori to the room with the Buddhist altar, lit a stick of
incense in front of her father s photo, and brought my hands together.
 Know what I did the other day? Midori asked. I got all naked in
front of my father s picture. Took off every stitch of clothing and let
him have a good, long look. Kind of in a yoga position. Like, Here,
Daddy, these are my tits, and this is my cunt . 
 Why in the hell would you do something like that? I asked.
 I don t know, I just wanted to show him. I mean, half of me comes
from his sperm, right? Why shouldn t I show him? Here s the
daughter you made. I was a little drunk at the time. I suppose that had
something to do with it. 
 I suppose. 
 My sister walked in and almost fell over. There I was in front of my
father s memorial portrait all naked with my legs spread. I guess you
would be kind of surprised. I s pose so. 
 I explained why I was doing it and said, So take off your clothes too
Momo (her name s Momo), and sit down next to me and show him, 
but she wouldn t do it. She went away shocked. She has this really
conservative streak. 
 In other words, she s relatively normal, you mean. 
 
 Tell me, Watanabe, what did you think of my father? 
 I m not good with people I ve just met, but it didn t bother me being
alone with him. I felt pretty comfortable.
We talked about all kinds of stuff. 
-What kind of stuff? 
-Euripides, I said.
Midori laughed out loud. You re so weird! Nobody talks about
Euripides with a dying person they ve just met! 
,,Well, nobody sits in front of her father s memorial portrait with her
legs spread, either! 
Midori chuckled and gave the altar bell a ring. Night-night, Daddy.
We re going to have some fun now, so don t worry and get some sleep.
You re not suffering any more, right? You re dead, OK? I m sure
you re not suffering. If you are, you d better complain to the gods. Tell
 em its just too cruel. I hope you meet Mum and the two of you really
do it. I saw your willy when I helped you pee. It was pretty
impressive! So give it everything you ve got. Goodnight. 
We took turns in the bath and changed into pyjamas. I borrowed a
nearly new pair of her father s. They were a little small but better than
nothing. Midori spread out a mattress for me on the floor of the altar
room.
 You re not scared sleeping in front of the altar? she asked.
 Not at all. I haven t done anything bad, I said with a smile.
 But you re going to stay with me and hold me until I fall asleep,
right? 
 Right, I said.
Practically falling over the edge of Midori s little bed, I held her in my
arms. Nose against my chest, she placed her hands on my hips. My
right arm curled around her back while I tried to keep from falling out
by hanging on to the bed frame with my left hand. It was not exactly a 
 
situation conducive to sexual excitement. My nose was resting on her
head and her short-cut hair would tickle every now and then.
 Come on, say something to me, Midori said, her face buried in my
chest.
 What do you want me to say? 
 Anything. Something to make me feel good. You re really cute, I
said.
 - Midori, she said. Say my name. 
 You re really cute, Midori, I corrected myself. What do you mean
really cute? 
 So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up. Midori lifted
her face and looked at me. You have this special way with words. 
 I can feel my heart softening when you say that, I said, smiling.
 Say something even nicer. 
 I really like you, Midori. A lot. 
 How much is a lot? 
 Like a spring bear, I said.
 A spring bear? Midori looked up again. What s that all about? A
spring bear. 
 You re walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring, and
this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes
walking along. And he says to you, Hi, there, little lady. Want to
tumble with me? So you and the bear cub spend the whole day in each
other s arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh? 
 Yeah. Really nice. 
 That s how much I like you. 
 That is the best thing I ve ever heard, said Midori, cuddling up
against my chest. If you like me that much, you ll do anything I tell
you to do, right? You won t get angry, right? 
 No, of course not. 
 And you ll take care of me always and always. 
,,Of course I will, I said, stroking her short, soft, boyish hair. Don t 
 
worry, everything is going to be fine. 
 But I m scared, she said.
I held her softly, and soon her shoulders were rising and falling, and I
could hear the regular breathing of sleep. I slipped out of her bed and
went to the kitchen, where I drank a beer. I wasn t the least bit sleepy,
so I thought about reading a book, but I couldn t find anything worth
reading nearby. I considered returning to Midori s room to look for
one, but I didn t want to wake her by rummaging around while she
was sleeping.
I sat there staring into space for a while, sipping my beer, when it
occurred to me that I was in a bookshop. I went downstairs, switched
on the light and started looking through the paperback shelves. There
wasn t much that appealed to me, and most of what did I had read
already, but I had to have something to read no matter what. I picked a
discoloured copy of Hermann Hesse s Beneath the Wheel that must
have been hanging around the shop unsold for a long time, and left the
money for it by the till. This was my small contribution to reducing
the debts of the Kobayashi Bookshop.
I sat at the kitchen table, drinking my beer and reading Beneath the
Wheel. I had first read the novel the year I entered school. And now,
about eight years later, here I was, reading the same book in a girl s
kitchen, wearing the undersized pyjamas of her dead father. Funny. If
it hadn t been for these strange circumstances, I would probably never
have reread
Beneath the Wheel.
The book did have its dated moments, but as a novel it wasn t bad. I
moved through it slowly, enjoying it line by line, in the hushed
bookshop in the middle of the night. A dusty bottle of brandy stood on
a shelf in the kitchen. I poured a little into a coffee cup and sipped it.
It warmed me but did nothing to help me feel sleepy.
I went to check on Midori a little before three, but she was fast asleep.
She must have been exhausted. The lights from the block of shops
 
beyond the window cast a soft white glow, like moonlight, over the
room. Midori slept with her back to the light. She lay so perfectly still,
she might have been frozen stiff. Bending over, I caught the sound of
her breathing. She slept just like her father.
The suitcase from her recent travels stood by the bed. Her white coat
hung on the back of a chair. Her desktop was neatly arranged, and on
the wall over it hung a Snoopy calendar. I nudged the curtain aside
and looked down at the deserted shops. Every shop was closed, their
metal shutters down, the vending machines hunched in front of the
off-licence the only sign of something waiting for the dawn. The moan
of longdistance lorry tyres sent a deep shudder through the air every
now and then. I went back to the kitchen, poured myself another shot
of brandy, and went on reading Beneath the Wheel.
By the time I had finished it the sky was growing light. I made myself
some instant coffee and used some notepaper and a ballpoint pen I
found on the table to write a message to Midori: I drank some of your
brandy. I bought a copy of Beneath the Wheel. its light outside, so I m
going home. Goodbye. Then, after some hesitation, I wrote: You look
really cute when you re sleeping. I washed my coffee cup, switched
off the kitchen light, went downstairs, quietly lifted the shutter, and
stepped outside. I worried that a neighbour might find me suspicious,
but there was no one on the street at. -something in the morning.
Only the crows were on their usual rooftop perch, glaring down at the
street. I glanced up at the pale pink curtains in Midori s window,
walked to the tram stop, rode to the end of the line, and walked to my
dorm. On the way I found an open cafe and ate a breakfast of rice and
miso soup, pickled vegetables and fried eggs. Circling around to the
back of the dorm, I tapped on Nagasawa s ground-floor window. He
let me in immediately.
 Coffee? he asked.
 Nah. 
I thanked him, went up to my room, brushed my teeth, took my
 
trousers off, got under the covers, and clamped my eyes shut. Finally,
a dreamless sleep closed over me like a heavy lead door.
I wrote to Naoko every week, and she often wrote back. Her letters
were never very long. Soon there were references to the cold
November mornings and evenings.
You went back to Tokyo just about the time the autumn weather was
deepening, so for a time I couldn t tell whether the hole that opened up
inside me was from missing you or from the change of the season.
Reiko and I talk about you all the time. She says be sure to say Hi to
you. She is as nice to me as ever. I don t think I would have been able
to stand this place if I didn t have her with me. I cry when I m lonely.
Reiko says its good I can cry. But feeling lonely really hurts. When
I m lonely at night, people talk to me from the darkness. They talk to
me the way trees moan in the wind at night. Kizuki; my sister: they
talk to me like that all the time. They re lonely, too, and looking for
someone to talk to.
I often reread your letters at night when I m lonely and in pain. I get
confused by a lot of things that come from outside, but your
descriptions of the world around you give me wonderful relief. its so
strange! I wonder why that should be? So I read them over and over,
and Reiko reads them, too. Then we talk about the things you tell me.
I really liked the part about that girl Midori s father. We look forward
to getting your letter every week as one of our few entertainments -
yes, in a place like this, letters are our entertainments.
I try my best to set aside a time in the week for writing to you, but
once I actually sit down in front of the blank sheet of paper, I begin to
feel depressed. I m really having to push myself to write this letter,
too. Reiko s been yelling at me to answer you. Don t get me wrong,
though. I have tons of things I want to talk to you about, to tell you
about. its just hard for me to put them into words. Which is why its 
 
so painful for me to write letters.
Speaking of Midori, she sounds like an interesting person. Reading
your letter, I got the feeling she might be in love with you. When I
told that to Reiko, she said, Well, of course she is! Even I am in love
with Watanabe! We re picking mushrooms and gathering chestnuts
and eating them every day. And I do mean every day: rice with
chestnuts, rice with matsutake mushrooms, but they taste so great, we
never get tired of them. Reiko doesn t eat that much, though. For her,
it s still one cigarette after another. The birds and the rabbits are doing
fine.
Goodbye.
Three days after my twentieth birthday, a package arrived for me from
Naoko. Inside I found a wine-coloured crew neck pullover and a
letter.
Happy Birthday! I hope you have a happy year being. My own year
of being looks like its going to end with me as miserable as ever,
but I d really like it if you could have your share of happiness and
mine combined. Really. Reiko and I each knitted half of this jumper.
If I had done it all by myself, it would have taken until next
Valentine s Day. The good half is Reiko s, and the bad half is mine.
Reiko is so good at everything she does, I sometimes hate myself
when I m watching her. I mean, there s not a single thing I m really
good at!
Goodbye.
Be well.
The package had a short note from Reiko, too.
How are you? For you, Naoko may be the pinnacle of happiness, but
for me she s just a clumsy girl. Still, we managed to finish this jumper
in time for your birthday. Handsome, isn t it? We chose the colour and 
 
the style.
Happy Birthday.
 
Thinking back on the year , all that comes to mind for me is a
swamp - a deep, sticky bog that feels as if its going to suck off my
shoe each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In
front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but the endless darkness of a
swamp.
Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The
people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I
hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on
the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John
Coltrane who was joined now by so many others. People screamed
there d be revolutionary changes - which always seemed to be just
ahead, at the curve in the road. But the changes that came were just
two-dimensional stage sets, backdrops without substance or meaning.
I trudged along through each day in its turn, rarely looking up, eyes
locked on the never-ending swamp that lay before me, planting my
right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right,
never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction,
knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time.
I turned , autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing
changed in any significant way. Unexcited, I went to my lectures,
worked three nights a week in the record shop reread The Great
Gatsby now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my washing
and write a long letter to Naoko. Sometimes I would go out with
Midori for a meal or to the zoo or to the cinema. The sale of the
Kobayashi Bookshop went as planned, and Midori and her sister
moved into a two-bedroom flat near Myogadani, a more upmarket
neighbourhood. Midori would move out when her sister got married,
and rent a flat by herself, she said. Meanwhile, she invited me to their 
 
new place for lunch once. It was a sunny, handsome flat, and Midori
seemed to enjoy living there far more than she had above the
Kobayashi Bookshop.
Every once in a while, Nagasawa would suggest that we go out on one
of our excursions, but I always found something else to do instead. I
just didn t want the hassle. Not that I didn t like the idea of sleeping
with girls: it was just that, when I thought about the whole process I
had to go through - drinking in town, looking for the right kind of
girls, talking to them, going to a hotel - it was all too much effort. I
had to admire Nagasawa all the more for the way he could continue
the ritual without ever getting sick and tired of it. Maybe what
Hatsumi had said to me had had some effect: I could make myself feel
far happier just thinking about Naoko than sleeping with some stupid,
anonymous girl. The sensation of Naoko s fingers bringing me to
climax in a grassy field remained vivid inside me.
I wrote to her at the beginning of December to ask if it would be all
right for me to come and visit her during the winter holidays. An
answer came from Reiko saying they would love to have me. She
explained that Naoko was having trouble writing and that she was
answering for her. I was not to take this to mean that Naoko was
feeling especially bad: there was no need for me to worry. These
things came in waves.
When the holidays came, I stuffed my things into my rucksack, put on
snow boots and set out for Kyoto. The odd doctor had been right: the
winter mountains blanketed in snow were incredibly beautiful. As
before, I slept two nights in the flat with Naoko and Reiko, and spent
three days with them doing much the same kind of things as before.
When the sun went down, Reiko would play her guitar and the three
of us would sit around talking. Instead of our picnic, we went crosscountry
skiing. An hour of tramping through the woods on skis left us
breathless and sweaty. We also joined the residents and staff
 
shovelling snow when there was time. Doctor Miyata popped over to
our table at dinner to explain why people s middle fingers are longer
than their index fingers, while with toes it worked the other way. The
gatekeeper, Omura, talked to me again about Tokyo pork. Reiko
enjoyed the records I brought as gifts from the city. She transcribed a
few tunes and worked them out on her guitar.
Naoko was even less talkative than she had been in the autumn. When
the three of us were together, she would sit on the sofa, smiling, and
hardly say a word. Reiko seemed to be chattering away to make up for
her. But don t worry, Naoko told me. This is just one of those
times. its a lot more fun for me to listen to you two than to talk
myself. 
Reiko gave herself some chores that took her out of the flat so that
Naoko and I could get in bed. I kissed her neck and shoulders and
breasts, and she used her hands to bring me to climax as before.
Afterwards, holding her close, I told her how her touch had stayed
with me these two months, that I had thought of her and masturbated.
 You haven t slept with anybody else? Naoko asked. Not once, I
said.
 All right, then, here s something else for you to remember. She slid
down and kissed my penis, then enveloped it in her warm mouth and
ran her tongue all over it, her long, straight hair swaying over my
belly and groin with each movement of her lips until I came a second
time.
 Do you think you can remember that? she asked.
 Of course I can, I said. I ll always remember it. 
I held her tight and slid my hand inside her panties, touching her stilldry
vagina. Naoko shook her head and pulled my hand away. We held
each other for a time, saying nothing.
 I m thinking of getting out of the dorm when term ends and looking
for a flat, I said. I ve had it with dorm life. If I keep working parttime
I can pretty much cover my expenses. How about coming to
 
Tokyo to live with me, the way I suggested before? 
 Oh, Toru, thank you. I m so happy that you would ask me to do
something like that! 
 its not that I think there s anything wrong with this place, I said.
 its quiet, the surroundings are perfect, and Reiko is a wonderful
person. But its not a place to stay for a long time. its too specialized
for a long stay. The longer you re here, I m sure, the harder it is to
leave. 
Instead of answering, Naoko turned her gaze to the outside. Beyond
the window, there was nothing to see but snow. Snow clouds hung
low and heavy in the sky, with only the smallest gap between them
and the snow-covered earth.
 Take your time, think it over, I said. Whatever happens, I m going
to move by the end of March. Any time you decide you want to join
me, you can come. 
Naoko nodded. I wrapped my arms around her as carefully as if I had
been holding a work of art delicately fashioned from glass. She put
her arms around my neck. I was naked, and she wore only the
skimpiest white underwear. Her body was so beautiful, I could have
enjoyed looking at it all day.
 Why don t I get wet? Naoko murmured. That one time was the only
time it ever happened. The day of my twentieth birthday, that April.
The night you held me in your arms. What is wrong with me? 
 its strictly psychological, I m sure, I said. Give it time. There s no
hurry. 
 All of my problems are strictly psychological, said Naoko. What if
I never get better? What if I can never have sex for the rest of my life?
Can you keep loving me just the same? Will hands and lips always be
enough for you? Or will you solve the sex problem by sleeping with
other girls? 
 I m a born optimist, I said.
Naoko sat up in bed and slipped on a T-shirt. She put a flannel shirt 
 
over this, and then climbed into her jeans. I put my clothes on, too.
 Let me think about it, said Naoko. And you think about it, too. 
 I will, I said. And speaking of lips, what you did with them just
now was great. 
She reddened slightly and gave a little smile. Kizuki used to say that,
too. 
 He and I had pretty much the same tastes and opinions, I said,
smiling.
We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and
talking about the old days. She was beginning to talk more about
Kizuki. She would hesitate, and choose her words carefully. Every
now and then, the snow would fall for a while and stop. The sky never
cleared the whole three days I was there. I think I can get back here
in March, I said as I was leaving. I gave her one last, heavily padded
hug with my winter coat on, and kissed her on the lips. Goodbye, 
she said.
 - a year with a whole new sound to it - came along, and that put
an end to my teenage years. Now I could step out into a whole new
swamp. Then it was time for exams, and these I passed with relative
ease. If you have nothing else to do and spend all your time going to
lectures, it takes no special skill to get through end-of-year exams.
Some problems arose in the dorm, though. A few guys active in one of
the political factions kept their helmets and iron pipes hidden in their
rooms. They had a run-in with some of the baseball-players under the
wing of the dorm Head, as a result of which two of them were injured
and six expelled. The aftershock of the incident was felt for a long
time, spawning minor fights on an almost daily basis. The atmosphere
that hung over the dorm was oppressive, and people s nerves were on
edge. I myself was on the verge of getting knocked out by one of the
baseball-players when Nagasawa intervened and managed to smooth
things over. In any case, it was time for me to get out of there.
 
Once most of my exams were out of the way, I started looking for a
flat in earnest. After a week of searching, I came up with the right
place way out in the suburbs of Kichijoji. The location was not exactly
convenient, but it was a house: an independent house - a real find.
Originally a gardener s shack or some other kind of cottage, it stood
by itself in the corner of a good-sized plot of land, separated from the
main house by a large stretch of neglected garden. The landlord would
use the front gate, and I the back, which would make it possible for
me to preserve my privacy. It had one good-sized room, a little
kitchen and bathroom, and an unimaginably huge closet.
It even had a veranda facing the garden. A nice old couple were
renting the house at way below market value on condition that the
tenant was prepared to move out the following year if their grandson
decided to come to Tokyo. They assured me that I could live as I
pleased there; they wouldn t make any demands.
Nagasawa helped me with the move. He managed to borrow a van to
transfer my stuff, and, as promised, he gave me his fridge, TV, and
oversize thermos flask. He might not need them any more, but for me
they were perfect. He himself was scheduled to move out in two days,
to a flat in the Mita neighbourhood.
 I guess we won t be seeing each other for a long time, he said as he
left me, so keep well. I m still sure we ll run across each other in
some strange place years from now. 
 I m already looking forward to it, I said.
 And that time we switched girls, the funny-looking one was way
better. 
 Right on, I said with a laugh. But anyway, Nagasawa, take care of
Hatsumi. Good ones like her are hard to find. And she s a lot more
fragile than she looks. 
 Yeah, I know, he said, nodding. That s why I was hoping you
would take her when I was through. The two of you would make a 
 
great couple. 
 Yeah, right! I said.
 Just kidding, said Nagasawa. Anyway, be happy. I get the feeling a
lot of shit is going to come your way, but you re a stubborn bastard,
I m sure you ll handle it. Mind if I give you one piece of advice? 
 Go ahead. 
 Don t feel sorry for yourself, he said. Only arseholes do that. 
 I ll keep it in mind, I said. We shook hands and went our separate
ways, he to his new world, and I back to my swamp.
Three days after my move, I wrote to Naoko. I described my new
house and said how relieved I was to be away from the idiots in the
dorm and all their stupid brainstorms. Now I could start my new life
with a new frame of mind.
My window looks out on a big garden, which is used as a meeting
place by all the neighbourhood cats. I like to stretch out on the
veranda and watch them. I m not sure how many of them get together,
but this is one big gang of cats. They sunbathe in groups. I don t think
they re too pleased to see me living here, but once when I put out an
old chunk of cheese a few of them crept over and nibbled it. They ll
probably be friends of mine before too long. There s one striped tom
cat in the bunch with half-eaten ears. its amazing how much he looks
like my old dorm Head. I expect him to start raising the flag any day
now.
I m kind of far from university here, but once I start my third year I
won t have too many morning lectures, so it shouldn t be too bad. It
may even be better with the time to read on the train. Now all I have
to do is find some easy work out here that I can do three or four days a
week. Then I can get back to my springwinding life.
I don t want to rush, but April is a good time of year to start new
things, and I can t help feeling that the best thing for us would be to 
 
begin living together then. You could go back to university, too, if it
worked out well. If there s a problem with us actually living together, I
could find a flat for you in the neighbourhood. The most important
thing is for us to be always near each other. It doesn t have to be
spring, of course. If you think summer is better, that s fine by me, too.
Just let me know what you re thinking, OK?
I m planning to put some extra time in at work for a while. To cover
my moving expenses. I m going to need a fair amount of money for
one thing or another once I start living alone: pots and pans, dishes,
stuff like that. I ll be free in March, though, and I definitely want to
come to see you. What dates work best for you? I ll plan a trip to
Kyoto then. I look forward to seeing you and hearing your answer.
I spent the next few days buying the things I needed in the nearby
Kichijoji shopping district and started cooking simple meals for
myself at home. I bought some planks at a local timber yard and had
them cut to size so I could make a desk for myself. I thought I could
study on it and, for the time being, eat my meals there, too. I made
some shelves and got in a good selection of spices. A white cat maybe
six months old decided she liked me and started eating at my place. I
called her Seagull.
Once I had my place sorted out to some extent, I went into town and
found a temporary job as a painter s assistant. I filled two solid weeks
that way. The pay was good, but the work was murder, and the fumes
made my head spin. Every day after work I d eat at a cheap restaurant,
wash it down with beer, go home and play with the cat, then sleep like
a dead man. No answer came from Naoko during that time.
I was in the thick of painting when Midori popped into my mind. I
hadn t been in touch with her for nearly three weeks,
I realized, and hadn t even told her I had moved. I had mentioned to
her that I was thinking of moving, and she had said, Oh, really? and
that was the last time we had talked.
 
I went to a phone box and dialled her number. The woman who
answered was probably her sister. When I gave her my name, she said
 Just a minute , but Midori never came to the phone.
Then the sister, or whoever she was, got back on the line. Midori
says she s too furious to talk to you. You just moved and never said a
thing to her, right? Just disappeared and never told her where you
were going, right? Well, now you ve got her boiling mad. And once
she gets mad, she stays that way. Like some kind of animal. 
 Look, could you just put her on the phone? I can explain. 
 She says she doesn t want to hear any explanations. 
 Can I explain to you, then? I hate to do this to you, but could you just
listen and tell her what I said? 
 Not me! Do it yourself. What kind of man are you? its your
responsibility, so you do it, and do it right. 
It was hopeless. I thanked her and hung up. I really couldn t blame
Midori for being angry. What with all the moving and fixing up and
working for extra cash, I hadn t given her a second thought. Not even
Naoko had crossed my mind the whole time. This was nothing new
for me. Whenever I get involved in something, I shut out everything
else.
But then I began to think how I would have felt if the tables had been
turned and Midori had moved somewhere without telling me where or
getting in touch with me for three weeks. I would have been hurt -
hurt badly, no doubt. No, we weren t lovers, but in a way we had
opened ourselves to each other even more deeply than lovers do. The
thought caused me a good deal of grief. What a terrible thing it is to
wound someone you really care for - and to do it so unconsciously.
As soon as I got home from work, I sat at my new desk and wrote to
Midori. I told her how I felt as honestly as I could. I apologized,
without explanations or excuses, for having been so careless and
insensitive. I miss you, I wrote. I want to see you
as soon as possible. I want you to see my new house. Please write to
 
me, I said, and sent the letter special delivery.
The answer never came.
This was the beginning of one weird spring. I spent the whole holiday
waiting for letters. I couldn t take a trip, I couldn t go home to see my
parents, I couldn t even take a part-time job because there was no
telling when a letter might arrive from Naoko saying she wanted me to
come and see her on such-and-such a date. Afternoons I would spend
in the nearby shopping district in Kichijoji, watching double bills or
reading in a jazz café. I saw no one and talked to almost no one. And
once a week I would write to Naoko. I never suggested to her that I
was hoping for an answer. I didn t want to pressure her in any way. I
would tell her about my painting job, about Seagull, about the peach
blossom in the garden, about the nice old lady who sold tofu, about
the nasty old lady in the local restaurant, about the meals I was
making for myself. But still, she never wrote.
Whenever I was fed up reading or listening to records, I would work a
little in the garden. From my landlord I borrowed a rake and broom
and pruning shears and spent my time pulling weeds and trimming
bushes. It didn t take much to make the garden look good. Once the
owner invited me to join him for a cup of tea, so we sat on the veranda
of the main house drinking green tea and munching on rice crackers,
sharing small talk. After retirement, he had got a job with an insurance
company, he said, but he had left that,
too, after a couple of years, and now he was taking it easy. The house
and land had been in the family for a long time, his children were
grown-up and independent, and he could manage a comfortable old
age without working. Which is why he and his wife were always
travelling together.
 That s nice, I said.
 No its not, he answered. Travelling is no fun. I d much rather be
working. 
He let the garden grow wild, he said, because there were no decent 
 
gardeners in the area and because he had developed allergies that
made it impossible for him to do the work himself. Cutting grass made
him sneeze.
When we had finished our tea, he showed me a storage shed and told
me I could use anything I found inside, more or less by way of thanks
for my gardening. We don t have any use for any of this stuff, he
said, so feel free. 
And in fact the place was crammed with all kinds of things - an old
wooden bath, a kids swimming pool, baseball bats. I found an old
bike, a handy-sized dining table with two chairs, a mirror, and a
guitar. I d like to borrow these if you don t mind, I said.
 Feel free, he said again.
I spent a day working on the bike: cleaning the rust off, oiling the
bearings, pumping up the tyres, adjusting the gears, and taking it to a
bike repair shop to have a new gear cable installed. It looked like a
different bike by the time I had finished. I cleaned a thick layer of dust
off the table and gave it a new coat of varnish. I replaced the strings of
the guitar and glued a section of the body that was coming apart. I
took a wire brush to the rust on the tuning pegs and adjusted those. It
wasn t much of a guitar, but at least I got it to stay in tune. I hadn t had
a guitar in my hands since school, I realized. I sat on the porch and
picked my way through The Drifters Up on the Roof as well as I
could. I was amazed to find I still remembered most of the chords.
Next I took a few planks of wood and made myself a square letterbox.
I painted it red, wrote my name on it, and set it outside my door. Up
until April, the only post that found its way to my box was
something that had been forwarded from the dorm: a notice from the
reunion committee of my school. A class reunion was the last thing I
wanted to have anything to do with. That was the class I had been in
with Kizuki. I threw it in the bin.
I found a letter in the box on the afternoon of April. It said Reiko
Ishida on the back. I made a nice, clean cut across the seal with my 
 
scissors and went out to the porch to read it. I had a feeling this was
not going to be good news, and I was right.
First Reiko apologized for making me wait so long for an answer.
Naoko had been struggling to write me a letter, she said, but she could
never seem to write one through to the end.
I offered to send you an answer in her place, but every time I pointed
out how wrong it was of her to keep you waiting, she insisted that it
was far too personal a matter, that she would write to you herself,
which is why I haven t written sooner. I m sorry, really. I hope you can
forgive me.
I know you must have had a difficult month waiting for an answer, but
believe me, the month has been just as difficult for Naoko. Please try
to understand what she s been going through. Her condition is not
good, I have to say in all honesty. She was trying her best to stand on
her own two feet, but so far the results have not been good.
Looking back, I see now that the first symptom of her problem was
her loss of the ability to write letters. That happened around the end of
November or beginning of December. Then she started hearing things.
Whenever she would try to write a letter, she would hear people
talking to her, which made it impossible for her to write. The voices
would interfere with her attempts to choose her words. It wasn t all
that bad until about the time of your second visit, so I didn t take it too
seriously. For all of us here, these kinds of symptoms come in cycles,
more or less. In her case, they got quite serious after you left. She is
having trouble now just holding an ordinary conversation. She can t
find the right words to speak, and that puts her into a terribly confused
state - confused and frightened. Meanwhile, the things she s hearing
are getting worse.
We have a session every day with one of the specialists. Naoko and
the doctor and I sit around talking and trying to find the exact part of
her that s broken. I came up with the idea that it would be good to add 
 
you to one of our sessions if possible, and the doctor was in favour of
it, but Naoko was against it. I can tell you exactly what her reason
was: I want my body to be clean of all this when I meet him. That
was not the problem, I said to her; the problem was to get her well as
quickly as possible, and I pushed as hard as I could, but she wouldn t
change her mind.
I think I once explained to you that this is not a specialized hospital.
We do have medical specialists here, of course, and they provide
effective treatments, but concentrated therapy is another matter. The
point of this place is to create an effective environment in which the
patient can treat herself or himself, and that does not, properly
speaking, include medical treatment. Which means that if Naoko s
condition grows any worse, they will probably have to transfer her to
some other hospital or medical facility or what have you. Personally, I
would find this very painful, but we would have to do it. That isn t to
say that she couldn t come back here for treatment on a kind of
temporary leave of absence . Or, better yet, she could even be cured
and finish with hospitals completely. In any case, we re doing
everything we can, and Naoko is doing everything she can. The best
thing you can do meanwhile is hope for her recovery and keep sending
her those letters.
It was dated March. After I had read it, I stayed on the porch and
let my eyes wander out to the garden, full now with the freshness of
spring. An old cherry tree stood there, its blossoms nearing the height
of their glory. A soft breeze blew, and the light of day lent its
strangely blurred, smoky colours to everything. Seagull wandered
over from somewhere, and after scratching at the boards of the
veranda for a while, she stretched out next to me and fell asleep.
I knew I should be doing some serious thinking, but I had no idea how
to go about it. And, to tell the truth, thinking was the last thing I
wanted to do. The time would come soon enough when I had no 
 
choice in the matter, and when that time came I would take a good,
long while to think things over. Not now, though. Not now.
I spent the day staring at the garden, propped against a pillar and
stroking Seagull. I felt completely drained. The
afternoon deepened, twilight approached, and bluish shadows
enveloped the garden. Seagull disappeared, but I went on staring at the
cherry blossoms. In the spring gloom, they looked like flesh that had
burst through the skin over festering wounds. The garden filled up
with the sweet, heavy stench of rotting flesh. And that s when I
thought of Naoko s flesh. Naoko s beautiful flesh lay before me in the
darkness, countless buds bursting through her skin, green and
trembling in an almost imperceptible breeze. Why did such a beautiful
body have to be so ill? I wondered. Why didn t they just leave Naoko
alone?
I went inside and drew my curtains, but even indoors there was no
escape from the smell of spring. It filled everything from the ground
up. But the only thing the smell of spring brought to mind for me now
was that putrefying stench. Shut in behind my curtains, I felt a violent
loathing for spring. I hated what the spring had in store for me; I hated
the dull, throbbing ache it aroused inside me. I had never hated
anything in my life with such intensity.
I spent three full days after that all but walking on the bottom of the
sea. I could hardly hear what people said to me, and they had just as
much trouble catching anything I had to say. My whole body felt
enveloped in some kind of membrane, cutting off any direct contact
between me and the outside world. I couldn t touch them , and they 
couldn t touch me. I was utterly helpless, and as long as I remained in
that state, they were unable to reach out to me.
I sat leaning against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. When I felt
hungry I would nibble anything within reach, drink some water, and
when the sadness of it got to me, I d knock myself out with whisky. I
didn t bathe, I didn t shave. This is how the three days went by.
 
A letter came from Midori on April. She invited me to meet her on
campus and have lunch on the tenth when we had to enroll for
lectures. I put off writing to you as long as I could, which makes us
even, so lets make up. I have to admit it, I miss you.
I read the letter again and again, four times all together, and still I
couldn t tell what she was trying to say to me. What could it possibly
mean? My brain was so fogged over, I couldn t find the connection
from one sentence to the next. How would meeting her on enrolment
day make us even ? Why did she want to have lunch with me? I
was really losing it. My mind had gone slack, like the soggy roots of a
subterranean plant. But somehow I knew I had to snap out of it. And
then those words of Nagasawa s came to mind: Don t feel sorry for
yourself. Only arseholes do that. 
 OK, Nagasawa. Right on, I heard myself thinking. I let out a sigh
and got to my feet.
I did my laundry for the first time in weeks, went to the public bath
and shaved, cleaned my place up, shopped for food and cooked myself
a decent meal for a change, fed the starving Seagull, drank only beer,
and did minutes of exercise. Shaving, I discovered in the mirror
that I was becoming emaciated. My eyes were popping. I could hardly
recognize myself.
I went out the next morning on a longish bike ride, and after finishing
lunch at home, I read Reiko s letter one more time. Then thought
seriously about what I ought to do next. The main reason I had taken
Reiko s letter so hard was that it had upset my optimistic belief that
Naoko was getting better. Naoko herself had told me, My sickness is
a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots. And Reiko had
warned me there was no telling what might happen. Still, I had seen
Naoko twice, and had gained the impression she was on the
mend. I had assumed that the only problem was whether she could
 
regain the courage to return to the real world, and that if she managed
to, the two of us could join forces and make
a go of it.
Reiko s letter smashed the illusory castle that I had built on that fragile
hypothesis, leaving only a flattened surface devoid of feeling. I would
have to do something to regain my footing. It would probably take a
long time for Naoko to recover. And even then, she would no doubt be
more debilitated and would have lost even more of her self confidence
than ever. I would have to adapt myself to this new situation. As
strong as I might become, though, it would not solve all the problems.
I knew that much. But there was nothing else I could do: just keep my
own spirits up and wait for her to recover.
Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I ve chosen to live - and to
live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it s
hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left
Naoko behind. But that s something I will never do. I will never, ever,
turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I m
stronger than she is. And I m just going to keep on getting stronger.
I m going to mature. I m going to be an adult. Because that s what I
have to do. I always used to think I d like to stay or if I could.
But not any more. I m not a teenager any more. I ve got a sense of
responsibility now. I m not the same person I was when we used to
hang out together. I m now. And I have to pay the price to go on
living.
 Shit, Watanabe, what happened to you? Midori asked. You re all
skin and bones! 
 That bad, huh? 
 Too much you-know-what with that married girlfriend of yours, I
bet. 
I smiled and shook my head. I haven t slept with a girl since the
 
beginning of October. 
 Whew! That can t be true. We re talking six months here! You
heard me. 
 So how did you lose so much weight? By growing up, I said.
Midori put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye with a
twisted scowl that soon turned into a sweet smile. its true, she said.
 Something s kind of different. You ve changed. 
 I told you, I grew up. I m an adult now. 
 You re fantastic, the way your brain works, she said as though
genuinely impressed. lets eat. I m starving. 
We went to a little restaurant behind the literature department. I
ordered the lunch special and she did the same. Hey, Watanabe, are
you mad at me? What for? 
 For not answering you, just to get even. Do you think I shouldn t
have done that? I mean, you apologized and everything. 
 Yeah, but it was my fault to begin with. That s just how it goes. 
 My sister says I shouldn t have done it. That it was too unforgiving,
too childish. 
 Yeah, but it made you feel better, didn t it, getting even like that? 
 Uh-huh. 
 OK, then, that s that. 
 You are forgiving, aren t you? Midori said. But tell me the truth,
Watanabe, you haven t had sex for six months? 
 Not once. 
 So, that time you put me to bed, you must have really wanted it bad. 
 Yeah, I guess I did. 
 But you didn t do it, did you? 
 Look, you re the best friend I ve got now, I said. I don t want to lose
you. 
 You know, if you had tried to force yourself on me that time, I
wouldn t have been able to resist, I was so exhausted. 
 But I was too big and hard, I said.
 
Midori smiled and touched my wrist. A little before that, I decided I
was going to believe in you. A hundred per cent. That s how I
managed to sleep like that with total peace of mind. I knew I d be all
right, I d be safe with you there. And I did sleep like a log, didn t I? 
 You sure did. 
 On the other hand, if you were to say to me, Hey, Midori, lets do it.
Then everything ll be great, I d probably do it with you. Now, don t
think I m trying to seduce you or tease you. I m just telling you what s
on my mind, with total honesty. 
 I know, I know. 
While we ate lunch, we showed each other our enrolment cards and
found that we had enrolled for two of the same courses. So I d be
seeing her twice a week at least. With that out of the way, Midori told
me about her living arrangements. For a while, neither she nor her
sister could get used to living in a flat - because it was too easy, she
said. They had always been used to running around like mad every
day, taking care of sick people, helping out at the bookshop, and one
thing or another.
 We re finally getting used to it, though, she said. This is the way we
should have been living all along - not having to worry about anyone
else s needs, just stretching out any way we felt like it. It made us both
nervous at first, as if our bodies were floating a few inches off the
ground. It didn t seem real, like real life couldn t actually be like that.
We were both tense, as though everything was about to be tipped
upside down any minute. 
 A couple of worriers, I said with a smile.
 Well, its just that life has been so cruel to us until now, 
Midori said. But that s OK. We re going to get back every thing it
owes us. 
 I bet you are, I said, knowing you. But tell me, what s your sister
doing these days? 
 A friend of hers opened this swanky accessory shop a little while
 
ago. My sister helps out there three times a week. Otherwise, she s
studying cookery, going on dates with her fiancé, going to the cinema,
vegging out, and just enjoying life.
Midori then asked about my new life. I gave her a description of the
layout of the house, and the big garden and Seagull the cat, and my
landlord.
 Are you enjoying yourself? she asked. Pretty much, I said.
 Could have fooled me, said Midori.
 Yeah, and its springtime, too, I said.
 And you re wearing that cool pullover your girlfriend knitted for
you. 
With a sudden shock I glanced down at my wine-coloured jumper.
 How did you know? 
 You re as honest as they come, said Midori. I m guessing, of
course! Anyway, what s wrong with you? 
 I don t know. I m trying to whip up a little enthusiasm. Just
remember, life is a box of chocolates. 
I shook my head a few times and looked at her. Maybe I m not so
smart, but sometimes I don t know what on earth you re talking
about. 
 You know, they ve got these chocolate assortments, and you like
some but you don t like others? And you eat all the ones you like, and
the only ones left are the ones you don t like as much? I always think
about that when something painful comes up. Now I just have to
polish these off, and everything ll be OK. Life is a box of chocolates. 
 I suppose you could call it a philosophy. 
 its true, though. I ve learned it from experience. 
We were drinking our coffee when two girls came in. Midori seemed
to know them from university. The three of them compared enrolment
cards and talked about a million different things: What kind of mark 
 
did you get in German? So-and-so got hurt in the campus riots. 
 Great shoes, where did you buy them? I half-listened, but it felt as
though their comments were coming from the other side of the world.
I sipped my coffee and watched the scene passing by the shop
window. It was a typical university springtime scene as the new year
was getting under way: a haze hanging in the sky, the cherry trees
blooming, the new students (you could tell at a glance) carrying
armloads of new books. I felt myself drifting off a little and thought
about Naoko, unable to return to her studies again this year. A small
glass full of anemones stood by the window.
When the other two went back to their table, Midori and I left to walk
around the neighbourhood. We visited a few second-hand bookshops,
bought some books, went to another café for another cup, played some
pinball at an arcade, and sat on a park bench, talking - or, rather,
Midori talked while I merely grunted in response. When she said she
was thirsty, I ran over to a newsagent s and bought us two Cokes. I
came back to find her scribbling away with her ballpoint pen on some
ruled paper.
 What s that? I asked.
 Nothing, she said.
 I have to go, she announced at.. I m supposed to meet my sister
at the Ginza. 
We walked to the subway station and went off in different directions.
As she left, Midori stuffed the piece of paper, now folded in four, into
my pocket. Read this when you get home, she said. I read it on the
train.
I m writing this letter to you while you re off buying drinks. This is the
first time in my life I ve ever written a letter to somebody sitting next
to me on a bench, but I feel its the only way I can get through to you.
I mean, you re hardly listening to anything I say. Am I right?
Do you realize you did something terrible to me today? You never 
 
even noticed that my hairstyle had changed, did you? I ve been
working on it forever, trying to grow it out, and finally, at the end of
last week, I managed to get it into a style you could actually call
girlish, but you never even noticed. It was looking pretty good, so I
thought I d give you a little shock when you saw me for the first time
after so long, but it didn t even register with you. Don t you think that s
awful? I bet you can t even remember what I was wearing today. Hey,
I m a girl! So what if you ve got something on your mind? You can
spare me one decent look! All you had to say was Cute hair , and I
would have been able to forgive you for being sunk in a million
thoughts, but no!
Which is why I m going to tell you a lie. its not true that I have to
meet my sister at the Ginza. I was planning to spend the night at your
place. I even brought my pyjamas with me. its true. I ve got my
pyjamas and a toothbrush in my bag. I m such an idiot! I mean, you
never even invited me over to see your new place. Oh well, what the
hell, you obviously want to be alone, so I ll leave you alone. Go ahead
and think away to your heart s content!
But don t get me wrong. I m not totally mad at you. I m just sad. You
were so nice to me when I was having my problems, but now that
you re having yours, it seems there s not a thing I can do for you.
You re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try
knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go
right back inside.
So now I see you coming back with our drinks - walking and thinking.
I was hoping you d trip, but you didn t. Now you re sitting next to me
drinking your Coke. I was holding out one last hope that you d notice
and say Hey, your hair s changed! but no. If you had, I would have
torn up this letter and said: lets go to your place. I ll make you a nice
dinner. And afterwards we can go to bed and cuddle. But you re
about as sensitive as a steel plate. Goodbye.
PS. Please don t talk to me next time we meet.
 
I rang Midori s flat from the station when I got off the train in
Kichijoji, but there was no answer. With nothing better to do, I
ambled around the neighbourhood looking for some part-time work I
could take after lectures began. I would be free all day Saturday and
Sunday and could work after five o clock on Mondays, Wednesdays
and Thursdays; but finding a job that fitted my particular schedule was
no easy matter. I gave up and went home. When I went out to buy
groceries for dinner, I tried Midori s place again. Her sister told me
that Midori hadn t come home yet and that she had no idea when she d
be back. I thanked her and hung up.
After eating, I tried to write to Midori, but I gave up after several false
starts and wrote to Naoko instead.
Spring was here, I said, and the new university year was starting. I
told her I missed her, that I had been hoping, one way or another, to be
able to meet her and talk. In any case,
I wrote, I ve decided to make myself strong. As far as I can tell, that s
all I can do.
There s one other thing. Maybe its just to do with me, and you may
not care about this one way or another, but I m not sleeping with
anybody any more. its because I don t want to forget the last time you
touched me. It meant a lot more to me than you might think. I think
about it all of the time.
I put the letter in an envelope, stuck on a stamp, and sat at my desk a
long while staring at it. It was a much shorter letter than usual, but I
had the feeling that Naoko might understand me better that way. I
poured myself an inch-and-a-half of whisky, drank it in two swallows,
and went to sleep.
The next day I found a job near Kichijoji Station that I could do on 
 
Saturdays and Sundays: waiting on tables at a smallish Italian
restaurant. The conditions were pretty poor, but travel
and lunch expenses were included. And whenever somebody on the
late shift took the day off on a Monday, Wednesday or Thursday
(which happened often) I could take their place. This was perfect for
me. The manager said they would raise my pay when I had stayed for
three months, and they wanted me to start that Saturday. He was a
much more decent guy than the idiot who ran the record shop in
Shinjuku.
I tried phoning Midori s flat again, and again her sister answered.
Midori hadn t come back since yesterday, she said, sounding tired, and
now she herself was beginning to worry: did I have any idea where
she might have gone? All I knew was that Midori had her pyjamas and
a toothbrush in her bag.
I saw Midori at the lecture on Wednesday. She was wearing a deep
green pullover and the dark sunglasses she had often worn that
summer. She was seated in the last row, talking with a thin girl with
glasses I had seen once before. I approached her and said I d like to
talk afterwards. The girl with glasses looked at me first, and then
Midori looked at me. Her hairstyle was, in fact, somewhat more
feminine than it had been before: more mature.
 I have to meet someone, she said, cocking her head slightly.
 I won t take up much of your time, I said. Five minutes. 
Midori removed her sunglasses and narrowed her eyes. She might just
as well have been looking at a crumbling, abandoned house some
hundred yards in the distance.
 I don t want to talk to you. Sorry, she said.
The girl with glasses looked at me with eyes that said: She says she
doesn t want to talk to you. Sorry.
I sat at the right end of the front row for the lecture (an overview of 
 
the works of Tennessee Williams and their place in American
literature), and when it was over, I did a long count to three and turned
around. Midori was gone.
April was too lonely a month to spend all alone. In April, everyone
around me looked happy. People would throw off their coats and
enjoy each other s company in the sunshine - talking, playing catch,
holding hands. But I was always by myself. Naoko, Midori,
Nagasawa: all of them had gone away from where I stood. Now I had
no one to say Good morning to or Have a nice day . I even missed
Storm Trooper. I spent the whole month with this hopeless sense of
isolation. I tried to speak to Midori a few times, but the answer I got
from her was always the same: I don t want to talk to you now - and
I knew from the tone of her voice that she meant it. She was always
with the girl with glasses, or else I saw her with a tall, short-haired
guy. He had these incredibly long legs and always wore white
basketball shoes.
April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than
April. In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to
recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun
was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance
of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning,
and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my
eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would
pass - but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache in its
path.
At those times I would write to Naoko. In my letters to her, I would
describe only things that were touching or pleasant or beautiful: the
fragrance of grasses, the caress of a spring breeze, the light of the
moon, a film I d seen, a song I liked, a book that had moved me. I
myself would be comforted by
letters like this when I would reread what I had written. And I would
feel that the world I lived in was a wonderful one. I wrote any number 
 
of letters like this, but from Naoko or Reiko I heard nothing.
At the restaurant where I worked I got to know another student my
age named Itoh. It took quite a while before this gentle, quiet student
from the oil-painting department of an art college would engage me in
conversation, but eventually we started going to a nearby bar after
work and talking about all kinds of things. He also liked to read and to
listen to music, so we d usually talk about books and records we liked.
He was a slim, good-looking guy with much shorter hair and far
cleaner clothes than the typical art student. He never had a lot to say,
but he had his definite tastes and opinions. He liked French novels,
especially those of Georges Bataille and Boris Vian. For music, he
preferred Mozart and Ravel. And, like me, he was looking for a friend
with whom he could talk about such things.
Itoh once invited me to his flat. It was not quite as hard to get to as
mine: a strange, one-floored house behind Inokashira Park. His room
was stuffed with painting supplies and canvases. I asked to see his
work, but he said he was too embarrassed to show me anything. We
drank some Chivas Regal that he had quietly removed from his
father s place, grilled some smelts on his charcoal stove, and listened
to Robert Casadesus playing a Mozart piano concerto.
Itoh was from Nagasaki. He had a girlfriend he would sleep with
whenever he went home, he said, but things weren t going too well
with her lately.
 You know what girls are like, he said. They turn or and all of
a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get superrealistic.
And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and
loveable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing. Now
when I see her, usually after we do it, she starts asking me, What are
you going to do after you graduate? 
 Well, what are you going to do after you graduate? I asked him.
Munching on a mouthful of smelt, he shook his head. What can I do?
I m in oil painting! Start worrying about stuff like that, and nobody s 
 
going to study oil painting! You don t do it to feed yourself. So she s
like, Why don t you come back to Nagasaki and become an art
teacher? She s planning to be an English teacher. 
 You re not so crazy about her any more, are you? 
 That just about sums it up, Itoh admitted. And who on earth wants
to be an art teacher? I m not gonna spend my whole fuckin life
teaching teenaged monkeys how to draw! 
 That s beside the point, I said. Don t you think you ought to break
up with her? For both your sakes. 
 Sure I do. But I don t know how to say it to her. She s planning to
spend her life with me. How the hell can I say, Hey, we ought to split
up. I don t like you any more ? 
We drank our Chivas straight, without ice, and when we ran out of
smelts we cut up some cucumbers and celery and dipped them in
miso. When my teeth crunched down on my cucumber slices, I
thought of Midori s father, which reminded me how flat and tasteless
my life had become without Midori and this put me in a foul mood.
Without my being aware of it, she had become a huge presence inside
me.
 Got a girlfriend? asked Itoh.
 Yeah, I said, then, after a pause added, but I can t be with her at the
moment. 
 But you understand each other s feelings, right? 
 I like to think so. Otherwise, what s the point? I said with a chuckle.
Itoh talked in hushed tones about the greatness of Mozart. He knew
Mozart inside out, the way a country boy knows his mountain trails.
His father loved the music and had exposed him to it ever since he
was tiny. I didn t know so much about classical music, but listening to
this Mozart concerto with Itoh s smart and heartfelt commentary
( There - that part, How about that? ), I felt myself calming down
for the first time in ages. We stared at the crescent moon hanging over
Inokashira Park and drank our Chivas Regal to the last drop. Fantastic 
 
whisky.
Itoh said I could spend the night there, but I told him I had to do
something, thanked him for the whisky and left his flat before nine.
On the way back to my place I called Midori from a phone box. Much
to my surprise she actually answered.
 Sorry, she said, but I don t want to talk to you right now. 
 I know, I know. But I don t want our relationship to end like this.
You re one of the very few friends I have, and it hurts not being able
to see you. When am I going to be able to talk to you? I want you to
tell me that much, at least. 
 When I feel like talking to you, she said.
 How are you? I asked.
 Fine, she said, and hung up.
A letter came from Reiko in the middle of May.
Thanks for writing so often. Naoko enjoys your letters. And so do I.
You don t mind if I read them, do you?
Sorry I haven t been able to answer for such a long time. To tell you
the truth, I ve been feeling a bit exhausted, and there hasn t been much
good news to report. Naoko s not doing well. Her mother came from
Kobe the other day. The four of us - she and Naoko and the doctor and
I - had a good, long talk and we reached the conclusion that Naoko
should move to a real hospital for a while for some intensive treatment
and then maybe come back here depending on the results. Naoko says
she d like to stay here if possible and make herself well, and I know I
am going to miss her and worry about her, but the fact is that it s
getting harder and harder to keep her under control here. She s fine
most of the time, but sometimes her emotions become extremely
unstable, and when that happens we can t take our eyes off her.
There s no telling what she would do. When she has those intense
episodes of hearing voices, she shuts down completely and burrows 
 
inside herself.
Which is why I myself agree that the best thing for Naoko would be
for her to receive therapy at a proper institution for a while. I hate to
say it, but its all we can do. As I told you once before, patience is the
most important thing. We have to go on unravelling the jumbled
threads one at a time, without losing hope. No matter how hopeless
her condition may appear to be, we are bound to find that one loose
thread sooner or later. If you re in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit
tight until your eyes get used to the dark.
Naoko should have moved to that other hospital by the time you
receive this. I m sorry I waited to tell you until the decisions had been
made, but it happened very quickly. The new hospital is a really good
one,
with good doctors. I ll write the address below: please write to Naoko
there. They will be keeping me informed of her progress, too, so I will
let you know what I hear. I hope it will be good news. I know this is
going to be hard for you, but keep your hopes up. And even though
Naoko is not here any more, please write to me once in a while.
Goodbye.
I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko,
several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the
lecture hall, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull on my lap,
I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian
restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces
of my crumbling life.
To Midori I wrote: April and May were painful, lonely months for me
because I couldn t talk to you. I never knew that spring could be so
painful and lonely. Better to have three Februaries than a spring like
this. I know its too late to be saying this, but your new hairstyle looks
great on you. Really cute. I m working at an Italian restaurant now,
and the cook taught me a great way to make spaghetti. I d like to make 
 
it for you soon.
I went to the university every day, worked in the restaurant two or
three times a week, talked with Itoh about books and music, read a
few Boris Vian novels he lent me, wrote letters, played with Seagull,
made spaghetti, worked in the garden, masturbated thinking of Naoko,
and saw lots of films.
It was almost the middle of June by the time Midori started talking to
me. We hadn t said a word to each other for two months. After the end
of one lecture, she sat down next to me, propped her chin in her hand,
and sat there, saying nothing.
Beyond the window, it was raining - a really rainy-season rain,
pouring straight down without any wind, soaking every single thing
beneath. Long after the other students had filed out of the classroom,
Midori went on sitting next to me without a word. Then she took a
Marlboro from the pocket of her jeans jacket, put it between her lips,
and handed me her matches. I struck a match and lit her cigarette.
Midori pursed her lips and blew a gentle cloud of tobacco in my face.
 Like my hairstyle? she asked.
 its great. 
 How great? 
 Great enough to knock down all the trees in all the forests of the
world. 
 You really think so? 
 I really think so. 
She kept her eyes on mine for a while, then held her right hand out to
me. I took it. She looked even more relieved than I felt. She tapped
her ashes onto the floor and rose to her feet.
 lets eat. I m starving, she said.
 Where do you want to go? I asked.
 To the restaurant of the Takashimaya department store in
 
Nihonbashi. 
 Why there of all places? 
 I like to go there sometimes, that s all. 
And so we took the subway to Nihonbashi. The place was practically
empty, maybe because it had been raining all morning. The smell of
rain filled the big, cavernous department store, and all the employees
had that what-do-we-do-now? kind of look. Midori and I went to the
basement restaurant and, after a close inspection of the plastic food in
the window, both decided to have an old-fashioned cold lunch
assortment with rice and pickles and grilled fish and
tempura and teriyaki chicken. Inside, it was far from crowded despite
it being midday.
 God, how long has it been since I last had lunch in a departmentstore
restaurant? I wondered aloud, drinking green tea from one of
those slick, white cups you only get in a department-store restaurant.
 I like to do stuff like this, said Midori. I don t know, it makes me
feel like I m doing something special. Probably reminds me of when I
was a kid. My parents almost never took me to department stores. 
 And I get the sneaking suspicion that s all mine ever did. My mother
was crazy about them. 
 Lucky you! 
 What are you talking about? I don t particularly like going to
department stores. 
 No, I mean, you were lucky they cared enough about you to take you
places. - 
 Well, I was an only child, I said.
 When I was little I used to dream about going to a department-store
restaurant all by myself when I grew up and eating anything I liked.
But what an empty dream! What s the fun of cramming your mouth
full of rice all alone in a place like this? The food s not all that great,
and its just big and crowded and stuffy and noisy. Still, every once in
a while I think about coming here. 
 
 I ve been really lonely these past two months, I said.
 Yeah, I know. You told me in your letters, Midori said, her voice
flat. Anyway, lets eat. That s all I can think about now. 
We finished all the little fried and grilled and pickled items in the
separate compartments of our fancy lacquered half-moon lunch boxes,
drank our clear soup from lacquered bowls, and our green tea from
those white cups. Midori followed lunch with a cigarette. When she
had finished smoking, she stood up without a word and took her
umbrella. I also stood up and took mine.
 Where do you want to go now? I asked.
 The roof, of course. That s the next stop when you ve had lunch in a
department-store restaurant. 
There was no one on the roof in the rain, no clerk in the pet
department, and the shutters were closed in the kiosks and the
children s rides ticket booth. We opened our umbrellas and wandered
among the soaking wet wooden horses and garden chairs and stalls. It
seemed incredible to me that there could be anywhere so devoid of
people in the middle of Tokyo. Midori said she wanted to look
through a telescope, so I put in a coin and held her umbrella over her
while she squinted through the eyepiece.
In one corner of the roof there was a covered game area with a row of
children s rides. Midori and I sat next to each other on some kind of
platform and looked at the rain.
 So talk, Midori said. You ve got something you want to say to me,
I know. 
 I m not trying to make excuses, I said, but I was really depressed
that time. My brain was all fogged over. Nothing was registering with
me. But one thing became crystal clear to me when I couldn t see you
any more. I realized that the only way I had been able to survive until
then was having you in my life. When I lost you, the pain and
loneliness really got to me. 
 Don t you have any idea how painful and lonely its been for me 
 
without you these past two months? 
This took me completely off guard. No, I said. It never occurred to
me. I thought you were angry with me and didn t want to see me. 
 How can you be such an idiot? Of course I wanted to see you! I told
you how much I like you! When I like somebody I really like them. It
doesn t turn on and off for me just like that. Don t you realize at least
that much about me? 
 Well, sure, but - 
 That s why I was so mad at you! I wanted to give you a good kick up
the arse. I mean, we hadn t seen each other that whole time, and you
were so spaced out thinking about this other girl you didn t even look
at me! How could I not get angry at you? But apart from all that, I had
been feeling for a long time that it would be better for me if I kept
away from you for a while. To get things clear in my head. 
 What kind of things? 
 Our relationship, of course. It was getting to the point where I
enjoyed being with you far more than being with him. I mean, don t
you think there s something weird about that? And difficult? Of course
I still like him. He s a little self-centred and narrow-minded and kind
of a fascist, but he s got a lot of good points, and he s the first man I
ever felt serious about. But you, well, you re special to me. When I m
with you I feel something is just right. I believe in you. I like you. I
don t want to let you go. I was getting more and more confused, so I
went to him and asked him what I should do. He told me to stop
seeing you. He said if I was going to see you, I should break up with
him. 
 So what did you do? 
 I broke up with him. Just like that. Midori put a Marlboro in her
mouth, shielded it with her hand as she lit up, and inhaled.
 Why? 
 Why? ! she screamed. Are you crazy? You know the English
subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and
 
you don t know the answer to something as simple as that? Why do
you even have to ask? Why do you have to make a girl say something
like this? I like you more than I like him, that s all. I wish I had fallen
in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn t.
I fell in love with you! 
I tried to speak, but I felt the words catching in my throat.
Midori threw her cigarette into a puddle. Will you please get that
look off your face? You re gonna make me cry. Don t worry, I know
you re in love with somebody else. I m not expecting anything from
you. But the least you can do is give me a hug. These have been two
tough months for me. 
I put up my umbrella, and we went behind the game area and held
each other close. Our bodies strained against each other, and our lips
met. The smell of the rain clung to her hair and her jeans jacket. Girls 
bodies were so soft and warm! I could feel her breasts pressing against
my chest through our clothing. How long had it been since my last
physical contact with another human being?
 The day I last saw you, that night I talked to him, and we broke up, 
Midori said.
 I love you, I said to her. From the bottom of my heart. I don t ever
want to let you go again. But there s nothing I can do. I can t make a
move. 
 Because of her? 
I nodded.
 Tell me, have you slept with her? 
 Once. A year ago. 
 And you haven t seen her since then? 
 I have seen her: twice. But we didn t do anything. Why not?
Doesn t she love you? 
 That s hard to say, I said. its really complicated. And
mixed up. And its been going on for such a long time, I don t know
what s what any more. And neither does she. All I know is, I have a 
 
sort of responsibility in all this as a human being, and I can t just turn
my back on it. At least, that s how I feel about it now. Even if she isn t
in love with me. 
 Let me just tell you this, Watanabe, said Midori, pressing her cheek
against my neck. I m a real, live girl, with real, live blood gushing
through my veins. You re holding me in your arms and I m telling you
that I love you. I m ready to do anything you tell me to do. I may be a
little bit mad, but I m a good girl, and honest, and I work hard, I m
kind of cute, I have nice boobs, I m a good cook, and my father left me
a trust fund. I mean, I m a real bargain, don t you think? If you don t
take me, I ll end up going somewhere else. 
 I need time, I said. I need time to think and sort things out, and
make some decisions. I m sorry, but that s all I can say at this point. 
 Yeah, but you do love me from the bottom of your heart, right? And
you never want to let me go again, right? 
 I said it and I meant it. 
Midori pulled away from me with a smile on her face. OK, I ll wait! I
believe in you, she said. But when you take me, you take only me.
And when you hold me in your arms, you think only about me. Is that
clear? 
 I understand exactly. 
 I don t care what you do to me, but I don t want you to hurt me. I ve
had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to
be happy. 
I drew her close and kissed her on the mouth.
 Drop the damn umbrella and wrap both your arms around me - hard! 
she said.
 But we ll get soaking wet! 
 So what? I want you to stop thinking and hold me tight! I ve been
waiting two whole months for this! 
I set down the umbrella and held her close in the rain. The dull rush of
tyres on the highway enveloped us like a fog. The rain fell without a 
 
break, without a sound, soaking her hair and mine, running like tears
down our cheeks, down to her denim jacket and my yellow nylon
windcheater, spreading in dark stains.
 How about going back under the roof? I said.
 Come to my place. There s nobody home now. We ll both catch colds
like this. 
 its true. 
 its as if we ve just swum across a river, Midori said, smiling. What
a great feeling! 
We bought a good-sized towel in the linen department and took turns
going into the bathroom to dry our hair. Then we took the subway,
with the necessary top-up tickets, to her flat in Myogadani. She let me
shower first and then she showered. Lending me a bathrobe to wear
while my clothes dried, Midori changed into a polo shirt and skirt. We
sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee.
 Tell me about yourself, Midori said.
 What about me? 
 Hmm, I don t know, what do you hate? Chicken and VD and
barbers who talk too much. What else? 
 Lonely April nights and lacy telephone covers. What else? 
I shook my head. I can t think of anything else. 
 My boyfriend - which is to say, my ex-boyfriend - had all kinds of
things he hated. Like when I wore too-short skirts, or when I smoked,
or how I got drunk too quickly, or said disgusting things, or criticized
his friends. So if there s anything about me you don t like, just tell me,
and I ll fix it if I can. 
 I can t think of anything, I said after giving it some thought. There s
nothing. 
 Really? 
 I like everything you wear, and I like what you do and say and how
you walk and how you get drunk. Everything. 
 You mean I m really OK just the way I am? 
 
 I don t know how you could change, so you must be fine the way you
are. 
 How much do you love me? Midori asked.
 Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter, I said. Far out, 
she said with a hint of satisfaction. Will you hold me again? 
We got into her bed and held each other, kissing as the sound of the
rain filled our ears. Then we talked about everything from the
formation of the universe to our preferences in the hardness of boiled
eggs.
 I wonder what ants do on rainy days? Midori asked.
 No idea, I said. They re hard workers, so they probably spend the
day cleaning house or stock-taking. 
 If they work so hard, why don t they evolve? They ve been the same
for ever. 
 I don t know, I said. Maybe their body structure isn t suited to
evolving - compared with monkeys, say. 
 Hey, Watanabe, there s a lot of stuff you don t know. I thought you
knew everything. 
 its a big world out there, I said.
 High mountains, deep oceans, Midori said. She put her hand inside
my bathrobe and took hold of my erection. Then, with a gulp, she
said, Hey, Watanabe, joking aside, this isn t gonna work. I could
never get this big, hard thing inside me. No way. 
 You re kidding, I said with a sigh.
 Yup, she said, giggling. Don t worry. It ll be just fine. I m sure it ll
fit. Er, mind if I have a look? 
 Feel free. 
Midori burrowed under the covers and groped me all over down there,
stretching the skin of my penis, weighing my testicles in the palm of
her hand. Then she poked her head out and sighed. I love it! she
said. No flattery intended! I really love it! 
 Thank you, I said with simple gratitude.
 
 But really, Watanabe, you don t want to do it with me, do you - until
you get all that business straightened out? 
 There s no way I don t want to do it with you, I said. I m going
crazy I want to do it so bad. But it just wouldn t be right. 
 You re so damned stubborn! If I were you, I d just do it - then think
about it afterwards. 
 You would? 
 Only kidding, Midori said in a tiny voice. I probably wouldn t do it,
either, if I were you. And that s what I love about you. That s what I
really really love about you. 
 How much do you love me? I asked, but she didn t answer. Instead,
she pressed against me, put her lips on my nipple and began to move
the hand that was wrapped around my penis. The first thing that
occurred to me was how different it was to the way Naoko moved her
hand. Both were gentle and wonderful, but something was different
about the way they did it, and so it felt like a totally different
experience.
 Hey, Watanabe, I bet you re thinking about that other girl. 
 Not true, I lied.
 Really? 
 Really. 
 Because I would really hate that. 
 I can t think about anybody else, I said.
 Want to touch my breasts, or down there? Midori asked. Oh wow,
I d love to, but I d better not. If we do all those
things at once, it ll be too much for me. 
Midori nodded and rustled around under the covers, pulling
her panties off and holding them against the tip of my penis. You can
come on these, she said. But it ll make a mess of them. 
 Stop it, will you? You re gonna make me cry, said Midori, a if on
the verge of tears. All I have to do is wash them. So don t hold back,
just let yourself come all you want. If you re worried about my
 
panties, buy me a new pair. Or are they going to keep you from
coming because they re mine? 
 No way, I said. Go on then, let go. 
When I was through, Midori inspected my semen. Wow, that s a huge
amount! 
 Too much? 
 Nah, its OK, silly. Come all you want, she said with a smile. Then
she kissed me.
In the evening, Midori did some shopping in the neighbourhood and
made dinner. We ate tempura and rice with green peas at the kitchen
table, and washed it all down with beer.
 Eat a lot and make lots of semen, Midori said. Then I ll be nice and
help you get rid of it. 
 Thanks very much, I said.
 I know all sorts of ways to do it. I learned from the women s
magazines when we had the bookshop. Once they had this special
edition all about how to take care of your husband so he won t cheat
on you while you re pregnant and can t have sex. There s tons of ways.
Wanna try em? 
 I can hardly wait, I said.
After saying goodbye to Midori, I bought a newspaper at the station,
but when I opened it on the train, I realized I had absolutely no desire
to read a paper and in fact couldn t understand what it said. All I could
do was glare at the incomprehensible page of print and wonder what
was going to happen to me from now on, and how the things around
me would be changing. I felt as if the world was pulsating every now
and then. I sighed deeply and closed my eyes. As regards what I had
done that day, I felt not the slightest regret; I knew for certain that if I
had to do it all over again, I would live this day in exactly the same
way. I would hold Midori tight on the roof in the rain; I would get
soaking wet with her; and I would let her fingers bring me to climax in 
 
her bed. I had no doubts about those things. I loved Midori, and I was
happy that she had come back to me. The two of us could make it, that
was certain. As Midori herself had said, she was a real, live girl with
blood in her veins, and she was putting her warm body in my arms. It
had been all I could do to suppress the intense desire I had to strip her
naked, throw open her body, and sink myself in her warmth. There
was no way I could have made myself stop her once she was holding
my penis and moving her hand. I wanted her to do it, she wanted to do
it, and we were in love. Who could have stopped such a thing? It was
true: I loved Midori. And I had probably known as much for a while. I
had just been avoiding the conclusion for a very long time.
The problem was that I could never explain these developments to
Naoko. It would have been hard enough at any point, but with Naoko
in her present condition, there was no way I could tell her I had fallen
in love with another girl. And besides, I still loved Naoko. As twisted
as that love might be, I did love her. Somewhere inside me there was
still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one
else.
One thing I could do was write a letter to Reiko that confessed
everything with total honesty. At home, I sat on the veranda, watching
the rain pour down on the garden at night, and assembling phrases in
my head. Then I went to my desk and wrote the letter. It is almost
unbearable to me that I now have to write a letter like this to you, I
began. I summarized my relationship with Midori and explained what
had happened that day.
I have always loved Naoko, and I still love her. But there is a decisive
finality to what exists between Midori and me. It has an irresistible
power that is bound to sweep me into the future. What I feel for
Naoko is a tremendously quiet and gentle and transparent love, but
what I feel for Midori is a wholly different emotion. It stands and
walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me 
 
to the roots of my being. I don t know what to do. I m confused. I m
not trying to make excuses for myself, but I do believe that I have
lived as sincerely as I know how. I have never lied to anyone, and I
have taken care over the years not to hurt other people. And yet I find
myself tossed into this labyrinth. How can this be? I can t explain it. I
don t know what I should do. Can you tell me, Reiko? You re the only
one I can turn to for advice.
I posted the letter that night by special delivery.
Reiko s answer came five days later, dated June.
Let me start with the good news. Naoko has been improving far more
rapidly than anyone could have expected. I talked to her once on the
phone, and she spoke with real lucidity. She may even be able to come
back here before long.
Now, about you.
I think you take everything too seriously. Loving another person is a
wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into
a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.
My advice to you is very simple. First of all, if you are drawn so
strongly to this Midori person, it is only natural for you to have fallen
in love with her. It might go well, or it might not. But love is like that.
When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it.
That s what I think. its just a form of sincerity.
Second, as to whether or not you should have sex with Midori, that is
for you to work out. I can t say a thing. Talk it over with Midori and
reach your own conclusion, one that makes sense to you.
Third, don t tell any of this to Naoko. If things should develop to the
point where you absolutely have to tell her, then you and I will come
up with a good plan together. So now, just keep it quiet. Leave it to
me.
 
The fourth thing I have to say is that you have been such a great
source of strength for Naoko that even if you no longer have the
feelings of a lover towards her, there is still a lot you can do for her.
So don t brood over everything in that super-serious way of yours. All
of us (by which I mean all of us, both normal and not-so-normal) are
imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don t live
with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all
our lines and angles with rulers and protractors. Am I right?
My own personal feeling is that Midori sounds like a great girl. I
understand just reading your letter why you would be drawn to her.
And I understand, too, why you would also be drawn to Naoko.
There s nothing the least bit sinful about it. Things like that happen all
the time in this great big world of ours. its like taking a boat out on a
beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the
lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up. Things will go where
they re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course.
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when its time for
them to be hurt. Life is like that. I know I sound like I m preaching
from a pulpit, but its about time you learned to live like this. You try
too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. If you don t want to
spend time in an insane asylum, you have to open up a little more and
let yourself go with life s natural flow. I m just a powerless and
imperfect woman, but still there are times when I think to myself how
wonderful life can be! Believe me, its true! So stop what you re doing
this minute and get happy. Work at making yourself happy!
Needless to say, I do feel sorry that you and Naoko could not see
things through to a happy ending. But who can say what s best? That s
why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where
you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My
experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such
chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of
our lives.
 
I m playing the guitar every day for no one in particular. It seems a bit
pointless. I don t like dark, rainy nights, either. I hope I ll have another
chance to play my guitar and eat grapes with you and Naoko in the
room with me.
Ah, well, until then -
Reiko Ishida
 
Reiko wrote to me several times after Naoko s death. It wasn t my
fault, she said. It was nobody s fault, any more than you could blame
someone for the rain. But I never answered her. What could I have
said? What good would it have done? Naoko no longer existed in this
world; she had become a handful of ashes.
They held a quiet funeral for Naoko in Kobe at the end of August, and
when it was over, I went back to Tokyo. I told my landlord I would be
away for a while and my boss at the Italian restaurant that I wouldn t
be coming in to work. To Midori I wrote a short note: I couldn t say
anything just yet, but I hoped she would wait for me a little longer. I
spent the next three days in cinemas, and after I had seen every new
film in Tokyo, I packed my rucksack, took out all my savings from the
bank, went to Shinjuku Station, and got the first express train I could
find going out of town.
Where I went on my travels, its impossible for me to recall. I
remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the
names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in
which I travelled from place to place. I would move from town to
town by train or bus or hitching a lift in a lorry, spreading out my
sleeping bag in empty car parks or stations or parks or on river banks
or the seashore. I once persuaded them to let me sleep in the corner of
a local police station, and another time slept alongside a graveyard. I
didn t care where I slept, provided I was out of people s way and could
stay in my sleeping bag as long as I felt like it. Exhausted from
walking, I would crawl into it, gulp down some cheap whisky, and fall 
 
fast asleep. In nice towns, people would bring me food and mosquito
coils, and in not-so-nice towns, people would call the police and have
me chased out of the parks. It made no difference to me one way or
another. All I wanted was to put myself to sleep in towns I didn t
know.
When I ran low on money, I would work as a labourer for a few days
until I had what I needed. There was always work for me to do. I just
kept moving from one town to the next, no destination in mind. The
world was big and full of weird things and strange people. One time I
called Midori because I had to hear her voice.
 Term started a long time ago, you know, she said. Some courses
are even asking for papers already. What are you going to do? Do you
realize you ve been out of touch for three whole weeks now? Where
are you? What are you doing? 
 Sorry, but I can t go back to Tokyo yet. Not yet. 
 And that s all you re going to tell me? 
 There s really nothing more I can say at this point. Maybe in October.
.. 
Midori hung up without a word.
I went on with my travels. Every now and then I d stay at a dosshouse
and have a bath and shave. What I saw in the mirror looked terrible.
The sun had dried out my skin, my eyes were sunken, and odd stains
and cuts marked my cheekbones. I looked as if I had just crawled out
of a cave somewhere, but it was me after all. It was me.
By that time, I was moving down the coast, as far from Tokyo as I
could get - maybe in Tottori or the hidden side of Hyogo. Walking
along the seashore was easy. I could always find a comfortable place
to sleep in the sand. I d make a fire from driftwood and roast some
dried fish I bought from a local fisherman. Then I d swallow some
whisky and listen to the waves while I thought about Naoko. It was
too strange to think that she was dead and no longer part of this world.
I couldn t absorb the truth of it. I couldn t believe it. I had heard the
 
nails being driven into the lid of her coffin, but I still couldn t adjust to
the fact that she had returned to nothingness.
No, the image of her was still too vivid in my memory. I could still
see her enclosing my penis in her mouth, her hair falling across my
belly. I could still feel her warmth, her breath against me, and that
helpless moment when I could do nothing but come. I could bring all
this back as clearly as if it had happened only five minutes ago, and I
felt sure that Naoko was still beside me, that I could just reach out and
touch her. But no, she wasn t there; her flesh no longer existed in this
world.
Nights when it was impossible for me to sleep, images of Naoko
would come back to me. There was no way I could stop them. Too
many memories of her were crammed inside me, and as soon as one of
them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in
an endless stream, an unstoppable flood: Naoko in her yellow raincape
cleaning the aviary and carrying the feed bag that rainy morning; the
caved-in birthday cake and the feel of Naoko s tears soaking through
my shirt (yes, it had been raining then, too); Naoko walking beside me
in winter wearing her camel-hair coat; Naoko touching the hairslide
she always wore; Naoko peering at me with those incredibly clear
eyes of hers; Naoko sitting on the sofa, legs drawn up beneath her blue
nightdress, chin resting on her knees.
The memories would slam against me like the waves of an incoming
tide, sweeping my body along to some strange new place - a place
where I lived with the dead. There Naoko lived, and I could speak
with her and hold her in my arms. Death in that place was not a
decisive element that brought life to an end. There, death was but one
of many elements comprising life. There Naoko lived with death
inside her. And to me she said, Don t worry, its only death. Don t let
it bother you. 
I felt no sadness in that strange place. Death was death, and Naoko
was Naoko. What s the problem? she asked me with a bashful smile, 
 
 I m here, aren t I? Her familiar little gestures soothed my heart like a
healing balm. If this is death, I thought to myself, then death is not
so bad. its true, said Naoko, death is nothing much. its just death.
Things are so easy for me here. Naoko spoke to me in the spaces
between the crashing of the dark waves.
Eventually, though, the tide would pull back, and I would be left on
the beach alone. Powerless, I could go nowhere; sadness itself would
envelop me in deep darkness until the tears came. I felt less that I was
crying than that the tears were simply oozing out of me like
perspiration.
I had learned one thing from Kizuki s death, and I believed that I had
made it a part of myself in the form of a philosophy: Death exists, not
as the opposite but as a part of life. 
By living our lives, we nurture death. True as this might be, it was
only one of the truths we had to learn. What I learned from Naoko s
death was this: no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a
loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure
that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and
learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing
the next sadness that comes to us without warning. Hearing the waves
at night, listening to the sound of the wind, day after day I focused on
these thoughts of mine. Knapsack on my back, sand in my hair, I
moved farther and farther west, surviving on a diet of whisky, bread
and water.
One windy evening, as I lay wrapped in my sleeping bag, weeping, by
the side of an abandoned hulk, a young fisherman passed by and
offered me a cigarette. I accepted it and had my first smoke in over a
year. He asked why I was crying, and almost by reflex I told him that
my mother had died. I couldn t take the sadness, I said, and so I was
on the road. He expressed his deep sympathy and brought a big bottle
of sake and two glasses from his house.
 
The wind tore along the sand beach as we sat there drinking. He told
me that he had lost his mother when he was. Never healthy, she
had worn herself out working from morning to night. I half-listened to
him, sipping my sake and grunting in response every now and then. I
felt as if I were hearing a story from some far-off world. What the hell
was he talking about? I wondered, and all of a sudden I was filled with
intense rage: I wanted to strangle him. Who gives a shit about your
mother? I ve lost Naoko! Her beautiful flesh has vanished from this
world! Why the hell are you telling me about your fucking mother?!
But my rage disappeared as quickly as it had flared up. I closed my
eyes and went on half-listening to the fisherman s endless talk.
Eventually he asked me if I had eaten. No, I said, but in my rucksack I
had bread and cheese, a tomato and a piece of chocolate. What had I
eaten for lunch? he asked.
Bread and cheese, tomato and chocolate, I answered. Wait here, he
said and ran off. I tried to stop him, but he disappeared into the
darkness without looking back.
All I could do was go on drinking my sake. The shore was littered
with paper flecks from fireworks that had been exploded on the sand,
and waves crashed against the beach with a mad roar. A scrawny dog
came up wagging its tail and sniffing around my little campfire for
something to eat but eventually gave up and wandered away.
The young fisherman came back half an hour later with two boxes of
sushi and a new bottle of sake. I should eat the top box straight away
because that had fish in it, he said, but the bottom box had only nori
rolls and deep-fried tofu skins so they would last all tomorrow. He
filled both our glasses with sake from the new bottle. I thanked him
and polished off the whole top box myself, though it had more than
enough for two. After we had drunk as much sake as we could
manage, he offered to put me up for the night, but when I said I would
rather sleep alone on the beach, he left it at that. As he stood to go, he
took a folded ? , note from his pocket and shoved it into the
 
pocket of my shirt. Here, he said, get yourself some healthy food.
You look awful. I said he had done more than enough for me and that
I couldn t accept money on top of everything else, but he refused to
take it back. its not money, he said, its my feelings. Don t think
about it too much, just take it. All I could do was thank him and
accept it.
When he had gone, I suddenly thought about my old girlfriend, the
one I had first slept with in my last year of school. Chills ran through
me as I realized how badly I had treated her. I had hardly ever thought
about her thoughts or feelings or the pain I had caused her. She was
such a sweet and gentle thing, but at the time I had taken her
sweetness for granted and later hardly gave her a second thought.
What was she doing now? I wondered. And had she forgiven me?
A wave of nausea came over me, and I vomited by the old ship. My
head hurt from too much sake, and I felt bad about having lied to the
fisherman and taken his money. It was time for me to go back to
Tokyo, I decided; I couldn t keep this up for ever. I stuffed my
sleeping bag into my rucksack, slipped my arms through the straps
and walked to the local railway station. I told the man at the ticketoffice
window that I wanted to get to Tokyo as soon as possible. He
checked his timetable and said I could make it as far as Osaka by
morning if I transferred from one night train to another, then I could
take the bullet train from there. I thanked him and used the x , 
note the fisherman gave me to buy a ticket to Tokyo. Waiting for the
train, I bought a newspaper and checked the date: October,. So
I had been travelling for a full month. I knew I had to go back to the
real world.
The month of travelling neither lifted my spirits nor softened the blow
of Naoko s death. I arrived back in Tokyo in pretty much the same
state in which I had left. I couldn t even bring myself to phone Midori.
What could I say to her? How could I begin? its all over now; you
and I can be happy together ? No, that was out of the question.
 
However I might phrase it, though, the facts were the same: Naoko
was dead, and Midori was still here. Naoko was a mound of white ash,
and Midori was a living, breathing human being.
I was overcome with a sense of my own defilement. Though I
returned to Tokyo I did nothing for days but shut myself up in my
room. My memory remained fixed on the dead rather than the living.
The rooms I had set aside in there for Naoko were shuttered, the
furniture draped in white, the windowsills dusty. I spent the better part
of each day in those rooms. And I thought about Kizuki. So you
finally made Naoko yours, I heard myself telling him. Oh, well, she
was yours to begin with. Now, maybe, she s where she belongs. But in
this world, in this imperfect world of the living, I did the best I could
for Naoko. I tried to establish a new life for the two of us. But forget
it, Kizuki. I m giving her to you. You re the one she chose, after all. In
woods as dark as the depths of her own heart, she hanged herself.
Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the
dead, and now Naoko has dragged another part of me into that world.
Sometimes I feel like the caretaker of a museum - a huge, empty
museum where no one ever comes, and I m watching over it for no
one but myself. 
The fourth day after my return to Tokyo, a letter came from Reiko.
Special delivery. It was a simple note: I haven t been able
to get in touch with you for weeks, and I m worried. Please call me. At
 a.m. and p.m. I will be waiting by the telephone.
I called her at nine o clock that night. Reiko picked up after one ring.
 Are you OK? she asked.
 More or less, I said.
 Do you mind if I come and visit you the day after tomorrow? 
 Visit me? You mean here in Tokyo? 
 That s exactly what I mean. I want to have a good, long talk with
you. 
 
 You re leaving the sanatorium? 
 its the only way I can come and see you, isn t it? Anyway, its about
time for me to get out of this place. I ve been here eight years, after all.
If they keep me any longer, I ll start to rot. 
I found it difficult to speak. After a short silence, Reiko went on: I ll
be on the. bullet train the day after tomorrow. Will you meet me
at the station? Do you still remember what I look like? Or have you
lost interest in me now that Naoko s dead? 
 No way, I said. See you at Tokyo Station the day after tomorrow at
.. 
 You won t have any trouble recognizing me. I m the old lady with the
guitar case. There aren t many of those. 
And in fact, I had no trouble finding Reiko in the crowd. She wore a
man s tweed jacket, white trousers, and red trainers. Her hair was as
short as ever, with the usual clumps sticking up. In her right hand she
held a brown leather suitcase, and in her left a black guitar case. She
gave me a big, wrinkly smile the moment she spotted me, and I found
myself grinning back. I took her suitcase and walked beside her to the
train for the western suburbs.
 Hey, Watanabe, how long have you been wearing that awful face? Or
is that the in look in Tokyo these days? 
 I was travelling for a while, ate junk all the time, I said. How did
you find the bullet train? 
 Awful! she said. You can t open the windows. I wanted to buy a
box lunch from one of the station buffets. 
 They sell them on board, you know. 
 Yeah, overpriced plastic sandwiches. A starving horse wouldn t touch
that stuff. I always used to enjoy the boxed lunches at Gotenba
Station. 
 Once upon a time, before the bullet train. 
 Well, I m from once upon a time before the bullet train! 
 
On the train out to Kichijoji, Reiko watched the Musashino landscape
passing the window with all the curiosity of a tourist.
 Has it changed much in eight years? I asked.
 You don t know what I m feeling now, do you, Watanabe? No, I
don t. 
 I m scared, she said. So scared, I could go crazy just like that. I
don t know what I m supposed to do, flung out here all by myself. 
She paused. But Go crazy just like that. Kind of a cool expression,
don t you think? 
I smiled and took her hand. Don t worry, I said. You ll be OK. Your
own strength got you this far. 
 It wasn t my own strength that got me out of that place, Reiko said.
 It was Naoko and you. I couldn t stand it there without Naoko, and I
had to come to Tokyo to talk to you. That s all. If nothing had
happened I probably would have spent the rest of my life there. 
I nodded.
 What are you planning to do from now on? I asked Reiko.
 I m going to Asahikawa, she said. Way up in the wilds of
Hokkaido! An old college friend of mine runs a music school there,
and she s been asking me for two or three years now to help her out. I
told her it was too cold for me. I mean, I finally get my freedom back
and I m supposed to go to Asahikawa? its hard to get excited about a
place like that - some hole in the ground. 
 its not so awful, I said, laughing. I ve been there. its not a bad little
town. Got its own special atmosphere. Are you sure? 
 Absolutely. its much better than staying in Tokyo. 
 Oh, well, she said. I don t have anywhere else to go, and I ve
already sent my stuff there. Hey, Watanabe, promise me you ll come
and visit me in Asahikawa. 
 Of course I will. But do you have to leave straight away?
Can t you stay in Tokyo for a while? 
 I d like to hang around here a few days if I can. Can you put me up? I 
 
won t get in your way. 
 No problem, I said. I have a big closet I can sleep in, in
my sleeping bag. 
 I can t do that to you. 
 No, really. its a huge closet. 
Reiko tapped out a rhythm on the guitar case between her legs. I m
probably going to have to condition myself a little before I go to
Asahikawa. I m just not used to being in the outside world. There s a
lot of stuff I don t get, and I m nervous. Think you can help me out a
little? You re the only one I can ask. 
 I ll do anything I can to help you, I said.
 I hope I m not getting in your way, she said. I don t have any way
for you to get in, I said.
She looked at me and turned up the corners of her mouth in a smile
but said nothing.
We hardly talked the rest of the way to Kichijoji Station or on the bus
back to my place. We traded a few random comments on the changes
in Tokyo and Reiko s time at the College of Music and my one trip to
Asahikawa, but said nothing about Naoko. Ten months had gone by
since I last saw Reiko, but walking by her side I felt strangely calmed
and comforted. This was a familiar feeling, I thought, and then it
occurred to me it was the way I used to feel when walking the streets
of Tokyo with Naoko. And just as Naoko and I had shared the dead
Kizuki, Reiko and I shared the dead Naoko. This thought made it
impossible for me to go on talking. Reiko continued speaking for a
while, but when she realized that I wasn t saying anything, she also
fell silent. Neither of us said a word on the bus.
It was one of those early autumn afternoons when the light is sharp
and clear, exactly as it had been a year earlier when I visited Naoko in
Kyoto. The clouds were white and as narrow as bones, the sky wide
open and high. The fragrance of the breeze, the tone of the light, the 
 
tiny flowers in the grass, the subtle reverberations that accompanied
sounds: all these told me that autumn had come again, increasing the
distance between me and the dead with each cycle of the seasons.
Kizuki was still and Naoko : for ever.
 Oh, what a relief to come to a place like this! Reiko said, looking all
around as we stepped off the bus.
 Because there s nothing here, I said.
As I led her through the back gate through the garden to my cottage,
Reiko was impressed by everything she saw.
 This is terrific! she said. You made these shelves and the desk? 
 Yep, I said, pouring tea.
 You re obviously good with your hands. And you keep the place so
clean! 
 Storm Trooper s influence, I said. He turned me into a cleanliness
freak. Not that my landlord s complaining. 
 Oh, your landlord! I ought to introduce myself to him.
That s his place on the other side of the garden, I suppose. Introduce
yourself to him? What for? 
 What do you mean what for ? Some weird old lady shows up in your
place and starts playing the guitar, he s going to wonder what s going
on. Better to start out on the right foot. I even brought a box of tea
sweets for him. Very clever, I said.
 The wisdom that comes with age. I m going to tell him I m your aunt
on your mother s side, visiting from Kyoto, so don t contradict me.
The age difference comes in handy at times like this. Nobody s going
to get suspicious. 
Reiko took the box of sweets from her bag and went off to pay her
respects. I sat on the veranda, drinking another cup of tea and playing
with the cat. Twenty minutes went by, and when Reiko finally came
back, she pulled a tin of rice crackers from her bag and said it was a
present for me.
 
 What were you talking about for so long? I asked, munching on a
cracker.
 You, of course, said Reiko, cradling the cat and rubbing her cheek
against it. He says you re a very proper young man, a serious
student. 
 Are you sure he was talking about me? 
 There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that he was talking about
you, she said with a laugh. Then, noticing my guitar, she picked it up,
adjusted the tuning, and played Antonio Carlos Jobim s Desafinado .
It had been months since I last heard Reiko s guitar, and it gave me
that old, warm feeling.
 You practising the guitar? she asked.
 It was kicking around the landlord s storehouse, so I borrowed it and
I plunk on it once in a while. That s all. 
 I ll give you a lesson later. Absolutely free. Reiko put down the
guitar and took off her tweed jacket. Sitting against the veranda post,
she smoked a cigarette. She was wearing a madras check short-sleeve
shirt.
 Nice shirt, don t you think? she asked.
 It is, I said. In fact it was a good-looking shirt with a handsome
pattern.
 its Naoko s, said Reiko. I bet you didn t know we were the same
size. Especially when she first came to the sanatorium. She put on a
little weight after that, but still we were pretty much the same size:
blouses, trousers, shoes, hats. Bras were about the only thing we
couldn t share. I ve got practically nothing here. So we were always
swapping clothes. Actually, it was more like joint ownership. 
Now that she mentioned it, I saw that Reiko s build was almost
identical to Naoko s. Because of the shape of her face and her thin
arms and legs, she had always given me the impression of being
smaller and slimmer than Naoko, but in fact she was surprisingly
solid.
 
 The jacket and trousers are hers, too, said Reiko. its all hers. Does
it bother you to see me wearing her stuff? 
 Not at all, I said. I m sure Naoko would be glad to have somebody
wearing her clothes - especially you. 
 its strange, Reiko said with a little snap of the fingers. Naoko
didn t leave a will or anything - except where her clothes were
concerned. She scribbled one line on a memo pad on her desk. Please
give all my clothes to Reiko. She was a funny one, don t you think?
Why would she be concerned about her clothes of all things when
she s getting ready to die? Who gives a damn about clothes? She must
have had tons of other things she wanted to say. 
 Maybe not, I said.
Puffing on her cigarette, Reiko seemed lost in thought. Then she said,
 You want to hear the whole story, in order, I suppose. 
 I do, I said. Please tell me everything. 
 Tests at the hospital in Osaka showed that Naoko s condition was
improving for the moment but that she should stay there on a
somewhat longer-term basis so that they could
continue the intensive therapy for its future benefits. I told you that
much in my letter - the one I sent you somewhere around the tenth of
August. 
 Right. I read that letter. 
 Well, on the th of August I got a call from Naoko s mother asking
if it was OK for Naoko to visit me at the sanatorium. Naoko wanted to
pack the things she had left with me and, because she wouldn t be able
to see me for a while, she wanted to have a nice long talk with me, and
perhaps spend a night in our flat. I said that would be fine. I wanted to
see her really badly and to have a talk with her. So Naoko and her
mother arrived the next day, the th, in a taxi. The three of us worked
together, packing Naoko s things and chatting away. Late in the
afternoon, Naoko said it would be OK for her mother to go home, that 
 
she d be fine, so they called a taxi and the mother left. We weren t
worried at all because Naoko seemed to be in such good spirits. In
fact, until then I had been very worried. I had been expecting her to be
depressed and worn out and emaciated. I mean, I knew how much the
testing and therapy and stuff they do at those hospitals can take it out
of you, so I had some real doubts about this visit. But one look at her
was all it took to convince me she d be OK. She looked a lot healthier
than I had expected and she was smiling and joking and talking much
more normally than when I had seen her last. She had been to the
hairdresser s and was showing off her new hairdo. So I thought there
would be nothing to worry about even if her mother left us alone.
Naoko told me that this time she was going to let those hospital
doctors cure her once and for all, and I said that that would probably
be the best thing to do. So then the two of us went out for a walk,
talking all the time, mainly about the future. Naoko told me that what
she d really like was for the two of us to get out of the sanatorium and
live together somewhere. 
 Live together? You and Naoko? 
 That s right, said Reiko with a little shrug. So I told her it sounded
good to me, but what about Watanabe? And she said, Don t worry,
I ll get everything straight with him. That s all. Then she talked about
where she and I would live and what we d do, that kind of thing. After
that we went to the aviary and played with the birds. 
I took a beer from the fridge and opened it. Reiko lit another cigarette,
the cat sound asleep in her lap.
 That girl had everything worked out for herself. I m sure that s why
she was so full of energy and smiling and healthylooking. It must have
been such a load off her mind to feel she knew exactly what she was
going to do. So then we finished going through her stuff and throwing
what she didn t need into the metal drum in the garden and burning it:
the notebook she had used as a diary, and all the letters she had
received. Your letters, too. This seemed a bit strange to me, so I asked 
 
her why she was burning stuff like that. I mean, she had always been
so careful about putting your letters away in a safe place and reading
them over and over. She said, I m getting rid of everything from the
past so I can be reborn in the future. I suppose I pretty much took her
at her word. It had its own kind of logic to it, sort of. I remember
thinking how much I wanted her to get healthy and happy. She was so
sweet and lovely that day: I wish you could have seen her!
 When that was over, we went to the dining hall for supper the way
we used to. Then we bathed and I opened a bottle of good wine that I
had been keeping for a special occasion like this and we drank and I
played the guitar. The Beatles, as always, Norwegian Wood ,
 Michelle , her favourites. Both of us were feeling pretty good. We
turned out the lights, got undressed and lay in our beds. It was one of
those steaming hot nights. We had the windows wide open, but there
was hardly a breath of wind. It was black as ink outside, the
grasshoppers were screaming, and the smell of the summer grass was
so thick in the room it was hard to breathe. All of a sudden, Naoko
started talking about you - about the night she had sex with you. In
incredible detail. How you took her clothes off, how you touched her,
how she found herself getting wet, how you went inside her, how
wonderful it felt: she told me all of this in vivid detail. So I asked her:
why are you telling me this now, all of a sudden? I mean, up to then,
she had never spoken openly to me about sex. Of course, we had had
some frank sexual talk as a kind of therapy, but she had been too
embarrassed to go into details. Now I couldn t stop her. I was shocked.
 So she says, I don t know, I just feel like talking about it. I ll stop if
you d rather not hear it. No, I said, that s OK. If there s something
you need to talk about, you d better get it all out. I ll listen to anything
you have to say. 
 So she went on with her story: When he went inside me, I couldn t
believe how much it hurt. It was my first time, after all. I was so wet,
he slipped right in, but still, my brain fogged over - it hurt so much. 
 
He put it in as far as he could, I thought, but then he lifted my legs and
went in even farther. That sent chills all through my body, as if I was
soaking in ice water. My arms and legs went numb, and a wave of
cold went through me. I didn t know what was happening. I thought I
might die right there and then, and I didn t care one way or another.
But he realized I was in pain, so he stopped moving, and still deep
inside me, he started kissing me all over - my hair, my neck, my
breasts - for a long, long time. Little by little, the warmth returned to
my body, and then, very slowly, he started to move. Oh, Reiko, it was
so wonderful! Now it felt as if my brain was just going to melt away. I
wanted to stay like that forever, to stay in his arms for the rest of my
life. That s how great it was. 
 So I said to her, If it was so great, why didn t you just stay with
Watanabe and keep doing it every day? But she said, No, Reiko, I
knew it would never happen again. I knew this was something that
would come to me once, and leave, and never come back. This would
be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I had never felt anything like it before,
and I ve never felt anything like it since. I ve never felt that I wanted to
do it again, and I ve never grown wet like that again. 
 Of course, I explained to her that this was something that often
happened to young women and that, in most cases, it cures itself with
age. And, after all, it had worked that one time: there was no need to
worry it wouldn t happen again. I myself had had all kinds of trouble
when I was first married.
 But she said, No, that s not it, Reiko. I m not worried about that at
all. I just don t want anybody going inside me again. I just don t want
to be violated like that again - by anybody . 
I drank my beer, and Reiko finished her second cigarette. The cat
stretched itself in Reiko s lap, found a new position and went back to
sleep. Reiko seemed at a loss how to go on until she had lit her third
cigarette.
 After that, Naoko began to sob. I sat on the edge of her bed and
 
stroked her hair. Don t worry, I said, everything is going to be all
right. A beautiful, young girl like you has got to have a man to hold
her and make her happy. Naoko was drenched in sweat and tears. I
got a bath towel and dried her face and body. Even her panties were
soaked, so I helped her out of
them - now wait a minute, don t get any strange ideas, there was
nothing funny going on. We always used to bathe together. She was
like my little sister. 
 I know, I know, I said.
 Well, anyway, Naoko said she wanted me to hold her. I said it was
far too hot for holding, but she said it was the last time we d be seeing
each other, so I held her. Just for a while. With a bath towel between
us so our sweaty bodies wouldn t stick to each other. And when she
calmed down, I dried her off again, got her nightdress on her and put
her to bed. She fell sound asleep straight away. Or maybe she was just
pretending to sleep. Whatever, she looked so sweet and lovely that
night, she had the face of a girl of or who s never had a bit of
harm done to her since the day she was born. I saw that look on her
face, and I knew I could let myself fall asleep with an easy heart.
When I woke at six in the morning, she was gone. Her nightdress was
there, where she had dropped it, but her clothes and trainers and the
torch I always keep by my pillow were missing. I knew immediately
that something was wrong. I mean, the very fact that she had taken the
torch meant she had left in the dark. I checked her desk just in case,
and
there was the note: Please give all my clothes to Reiko. I woke
up everybody straight away, and we took different paths to look for
her. We searched every inch of the place, from the insides of the
dorms to the surrounding woods. It took us five hours to find her.
She d even brought her own rope. 
Reiko sighed and patted the cat.
 Want some tea? I asked.
 
 Yes, thanks, said Reiko.
I boiled water and brought a pot of tea back to the veranda. Sundown
was approaching. The daylight had grown weak, and long shadows of
trees stretched to our feet. I sipped my tea and looked at the strangely
random garden with its funny mix of yellow globeflowers and pink
azaleas and tall, green nandins.
 So then the ambulance came and took Naoko away and the police
started questioning me. Not that there was much doubt. There was a
kind of suicide note, and it had obviously been a suicide, and they
took it for granted that suicide was just one of those things that mental
patients did. So it was pretty pro forma. As soon as they left, I
telegraphed you. 
 What a sad little funeral it was, I said. Her family was obviously
upset that I knew Naoko had died. I m sure they didn t want people to
know it was suicide. I probably shouldn t even have been there. Which
made me feel even worse. As soon as I got back, I hit the road. 
 Hey, Watanabe, lets go for a walk. We can shop for something to
make for dinner, maybe. I m starving. 
 Sure. Is there something you want to eat? 
 Sukiyaki, she said. I haven t had anything like that for years. I used
to dream about sukiyaki - just stuffing myself with beef and green
onions and noodles and roasted tofu and greens. 
 Sure, we can have that, but I don t have a sukiyaki pan. Just leave it
to me. I ll borrow one from your landlord. She ran off to the main
house and came back with a good
sized pan and gas cooker and rubber hose. Not bad, eh? 
 Not bad! 
We bought all the ingredients at the little shops in the neighbourhood -
beef, eggs, vegetables, tofu. I picked out a fairly decent white wine. I
tried to pay, but Reiko insisted on paying for everything.
 Think how the family would laugh at me if they heard I let my
nephew pay for the food! said Reiko. Besides, I m carrying a fair
 
amount of cash. So don t worry. I wasn t about to leave the sanatorium
broke. 
Reiko washed the rice and put it on to boil while I arranged everything
for cooking on the veranda. When everything was ready, Reiko took
out her guitar and appeared to be testing it with a slow Bach fugue. On
the hard parts she would purposely slow down or speed up or make it
detached or sentimental, listening with obvious pleasure to the variety
of sounds she could draw from the instrument. When she played the
guitar, Reiko looked like a -year-old girl enjoying the sight of a new
dress. Her eyes sparkled, and she pouted with just the hint of a smile.
When she had finished the piece, she leaned back against a pillar and
looked up at the sky as though deep in thought.
 Do you mind if I talk to you? I asked.
 Not at all, she said. I was just thinking how hungry I am. 
 Aren t you planning to see your husband or your daughter while
you re here? They must be in Tokyo somewhere. 
 Close enough. Yokohama. But no, I don t plan to see them. I m sure I
told you before: its better for them if they don t have anything more to
do with me. They ve started a new life. And I d just feel terrible if I
saw them. No, the best thing is to keep away. 
She crumpled up her empty box of Seven Stars cigarettes and took a
new one from her suitcase. She cut the seal and put a cigarette in her
mouth, but she didn t light up.
 I m finished as a human being, she said. All you re looking at is the
lingering memory of what I used to be. The most important part of
me, what used to be inside, died years ago, and I m just functioning by
auto-memory. 
 But I like you now, Reiko, the way you are, lingering memory or
whatever. And what I have to say about it may not make any
difference, but I m really glad that you re wearing Naoko s clothes. 
Reiko smiled and lit her cigarette with a lighter. For such a young
man, you know how to make a woman happy. 
 
I felt myself reddening. I m just saying what I really think. Sure, I
know, said Reiko, smiling. When the rice was done soon after that, I
oiled the pan and arranged the ingredients for sukiyaki.
 Tell me this isn t a dream, said Reiko, sniffing the air.
 No, this is per cent realistic sukiyaki, I said. Empirically
speaking, of course. 
Instead of talking, we attacked the sukiyaki with our chopsticks, drank
lots of beer, and finished up with rice. Seagull turned up, attracted by
the smell, so we shared our meat with her. When we had eaten our fill,
we sat leaning against the porch pillars looking at the moon.
 Satisfied? I asked.
 Totally, she groaned. I ve never eaten so much in my life. 
 What do you want to do now? 
 Have a smoke and go to a public bath. My hair s a mess. I need to
wash it. 
 No problem. There s one down the street. 
 Tell me, Watanabe, if you don t mind. Have you slept with that girl
Midori? 
 You mean have we had sex? Not yet. We decided not to until things
get sorted out. 
 Well, now they re sorted out, wouldn t you say? 
I shook my head. Now that Naoko s dead, you mean? 
 No, not that. You made your decision long before Naoko died - that
you could never leave Midori. Whether Naoko is alive or dead, it has
nothing to do with your decision. You chose Midori. Naoko chose to
die. You re all grown up now, so you have to take responsibility for
your choices. Otherwise, you ruin everything. 
 But I can t forget her, I said. I told Naoko I would go on waiting for
her, but I couldn t do it. I turned my back on her in the end. I m not
saying anyone s to blame: its a problem for me myself. I do think that
things would have worked out the same way even if I hadn t turned
my back on her. Naoko was choosing death all along. But that s beside 
 
the point. I can t forgive myself. You tell me there s nothing I can do
about a natural change in feelings, but my relationship with Naoko
was not that simple. If you stop and think about it, she and I were
bound together at the border between life and death. It was like that
for us from the start. 
 If you feel some kind of pain with regard to Naoko s death, I would
advise you to keep on feeling that pain for the rest of your life. And if
there s something you can learn from it, you should do that, too. But
quite aside from that, you should be happy with Midori. Your pain has
nothing to do with your relationship with her. If you hurt her any more
than you already have, the wound could be too deep to fix. So, hard as
it may be, you have to be strong. You have to grow up more, be more
of an adult. I left the sanatorium and came all the way up here to
Tokyo to tell you that - all the way on that coffin of a train. 
 I understand what you re telling me, I said to Reiko, but I m still not
prepared to follow through on it. I mean, that was such a sad little
funeral! No one should have to die like that. 
Reiko stretched out her hand and stroked my head. We all have to die
like that sometime. I will, and so will you. 
We took the five-minute walk along the river bank to the local public
baths and came home feeling more refreshed. I opened the bottle of
wine and we sat on the veranda drinking it.
 Hey, Watanabe, could you bring out another glass? 
 Sure, I said. But what for? 
 We re going to have our own funeral for Naoko, just the two of us.
One that s not so sad. 
When I handed her the glass, Reiko filled it to the brim and set it on
the stone lantern in the garden. Then she sat on the veranda, leaning
against a pillar, guitar in her arms, and smoked a cigarette.
 And now could you bring out a box of matches? Make it the biggest 
 
one you can find. 
I brought out an economy-size box of kitchen matches and sat down
next to her.
 Now what I want you to do is lay down a match every time I play a
song, just set them in a row. I m going to play every song I can think
of. 
First she played a soft, lovely rendition of Henry Mancini s Dear
Heart .
 You gave a recording of this to Naoko, didn t you? she asked.
 I did. For Christmas the year before last. She really liked that song. 
 I like it, too, said Reiko. So sweet and beautiful... and she ran
through a few bars of the melody one more time before taking another
sip of wine. I wonder how many songs I can play before I get
completely drunk. This ll be a nice funeral, don t you think - not so
sad? 
Reiko moved on to the Beatles, playing Norwegian Wood ,
 Yesterday , Michelle , and Something . She sang and played
 Here Comes the Sun , then played The Fool on the Hill . I laid
seven matches in a row.
 Seven songs, said Reiko, sipping more wine and smoking another
cigarette. Those guys sure knew something about the sadness of life,
and gentleness. 
By those guys Reiko of course meant John Lennon, Paul McCartney
and George Harrison. After a short breather, Reiko crushed her
cigarette out and picked up her guitar again. She played Penny Lane ,
 Blackbird , Julia , When I m , Nowhere Man , And I Love
Her , and Hey Jude .
 How many songs is that? 
 Fourteen, I said.
She sighed and asked me, How about you? Can you play something -
maybe one song? 
 No way. I m terrible. 
 
 So play it terribly. 
I brought out my guitar and stumbled my way through Up on the
Roof . Reiko took a rest, smoking and drinking. When I was through,
she applauded.
Next she played a guitar transcription of Ravel s Pavanne for a Dying
Queen and a beautifully clean rendition of Debussy s Claire de
Lune .
 I mastered both of these after Naoko died, said Reiko. To the end,
her taste in music never rose above the sentimental. 
She performed a few Bacharach songs next: Close to You ,
 Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head , Walk on By , Wedding Bell
Blues .
 Twenty, I said.
 I m like a human jukebox! exclaimed Reiko. My professors would
faint if they could see me now. 
She went on sipping and puffing and playing: several bossa novas,
Rogers and Hart, Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Carole King,
The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Kyu Sakamoto s Sukiyaki Song ,
 Blue Velvet , Green Fields . Sometimes she would close her eyes
and nod or hum to the melody.
When the wine was gone, we turned to whisky. The wine in the glass
in the garden I poured over the stone lantern and replaced it with
whisky.
 How s our count going? Reiko asked. Forty-eight, I said.
For our forty-ninth song Reiko played Eleanor Rigby , and the
fiftieth was another performance of Norwegian Wood . After that she
rested her hands and drank some whisky. Maybe that s enough, she
said.
 It is, I answered. Amazing. 
Reiko looked me in the eye and said, Now listen to me, Watanabe. I
want you to forget all about that sad little funeral you saw. Just
 
remember this marvellous one of ours. 
I nodded.
 Here s one more for good measure, she said, and for her fifty-first
piece she played her favourite Bach fugue. When she was through, she
said in a voice just above a whisper, How about doing it with me,
Watanabe? 
 Strange, I said. I was thinking the same thing. 
We went inside and drew the curtains. Then, in the darkened room,
Reiko and I sought out each other s bodies as if it were the most
natural thing in the world for us to do. I removed her blouse and
trousers, and then her underwear.
 I ve lived a strange life, said Reiko, but I never thought I d have my
panties removed for me by a man years my junior. 
 Would you rather take them off yourself? 
 No, go ahead. But don t be too shocked at all my wrinkles. 
 I like your wrinkles. 
 You re gonna make me cry, she whispered.
I kissed her all over, taking special care to follow the wrinkled places
with my tongue. She had the breasts of a little girl. I caressed them
and took her nipples in my teeth, then slid a finger inside her warm,
moist vagina and began to move it.
 Wrong spot, Watanabe, Reiko whispered in my ear. That s just a
wrinkle. 
 I can t believe you re telling jokes at a time like this! 
 Sorry, she said. I m scared. I haven t done this for years. I feel like
a -year-old girl: I just went to visit a guy in his room, and all of a
sudden I m naked. 
 To tell you the truth, I feel as if I m violating a -year-old girl. 
With my finger in her wrinkle , I moved my lips up her neck to her
ear and took a nipple in my fingers. As her breathing intensified and
her throat began to tremble, I parted her long, slim legs and eased
 
myself inside her.
 You re not going to get me pregnant now, are you? You re taking care
of that, right? Reiko murmured in my ear. I d be so embarrassed if I
got pregnant at this age. 
 Don t worry, I said. Just relax. 
When I was all the way in, she trembled and released a sigh.
Caressing her back, I moved inside her and then, without warning, I
came. It was an intense, unstoppable ejaculation. I clutched at her as
my semen pulsed into her warmth again and again.
 I m sorry, I said. I couldn t stop myself. 
 Don t be silly, Reiko said, giving me a little slap on the rump. You
don t have to worry about that. Do you always have that on your mind
when you re doing it with girls? 
 Yeah, pretty much. 
 Well, you don t have to think about it with me. Forget it.
Just let yourself go as much as you like. Did it feel good? Fantastic.
That s why I couldn t control myself. 
 This is no time for controlling yourself. This is fine. It was
great for me, too. 
 You know, Reiko, I said.
 What s that? 
 You ought to take a lover again. You re terrific. its such a waste. 
 Well, I ll think about it, she said. But I wonder if people take lovers
and things in Asahikawa. 
Growing hard a few minutes later, I went inside her again. Reiko held
her breath and twisted beneath me. I moved slowly and quietly with
my arms around her, and we talked. It felt wonderful to talk that way.
If I said something funny and made her laugh, the tremors came into
me through my penis. We held each other like this for a very long
time.
 Oh, this feels marvellous! Reiko said.
 Moving s not bad either, I said.
 
 Go ahead. Give it a try. 
I lifted her hips and went in as far as I could go, then savoured the
sensation of moving in a circular pattern until, having enjoyed it to the
full, I let myself come.
Altogether, we joined our bodies four times that night. At the end each
time, Reiko would lie in my arms trembling slightly, eyes closed, and
release a long sigh.
 I never have to do this again, said Reiko, for the rest of my life. Oh,
please, Watanabe, tell me its true. Tell me I can relax now because
I ve done enough to last a lifetime. 
 Nobody can tell you that, I said. There s no way of knowing. 
I tried to convince Reiko that taking a plane would be faster and
easier, but she insisted on going to Asahikawa by train.
 I like the ferry to Hokkaido. And I have no desire to fly through the
air, she said. I accompanied her to Ueno Station. She carried her
guitar and I carried her suitcase. We sat on a platform bench waiting
for the train to pull in. Reiko wore the same tweed jacket and white
trousers she had on when she arrived in Tokyo.
 Do you really think Asahikawa s not such a bad place? she asked.
 its a nice town. I ll visit you there soon. 
 Really? 
I nodded. And I ll write to you. 
 I love your letters. Naoko burned all the ones you sent her. And they
were such great letters too! 
 Letters are just pieces of paper, I said. Burn them, and what stays in
your heart will stay; keep them, and what
vanishes will vanish. 
 You know, Watanabe,
Asahikawa by myself. So be sure to write to me. Whenever I read
your letters, I feel you re right there next to me. 
 If that s what you want, I ll write all the time. But don t worry. I know 
 
you: you ll do fine wherever you go. 
 And another thing. I kind of feel like there s something stuck inside
me. Could it be my imagination? 
 Just a lingering memory, I said and smiled. Reiko smiled, too.
 Don t forget about me, she said.
 I won t forget you, I said. Ever. 
 We may never meet again, but no matter where I go, I ll always
remember you and Naoko. 
I saw that she was crying. Before I knew it, I was kissing her. Others
on the platform were staring at us, but I didn t care about such things
any more. We were alive, she and I. And all we had to think about was
continuing to live.
 Be happy, Reiko said to me as she boarded the train. I ve given you
all the advice I have to give. There s nothing left for me to say. Just be
happy. Take my share and Naoko s and combine them for yourself. 
We held hands for a moment, and then we parted.
I phoned Midori.
 I have to talk to you, I said. I have a million things to talk to you
about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world
is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin
everything from the beginning. 
Midori responded with a long, long silence - the silence of all the
misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the
world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited.
At last, Midori s quiet voice broke the silence: Where are you now? 
Where was I now?
Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay
beyond the phone box. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at
all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the
countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I
called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no 
 
place. 
 
Tuesdays Wind-Up Bird
 
Six Fingers and Four Breasts
When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potrul of spaghetti and whistling along
with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossinis The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the
perfect music for cooking pasta.
I wanted to ignore the phone, not only because the spaghetti was nearly done, but because
Claudio Abbado was bringing the London Symphony to its musical climax. Finally, though, I
had to give in. It could have been somebody with news of a job opening. I lowered the flame,
went to the living room, and picked up the receiver.
 Ten minutes, please, said a woman on the other end.
Im good at recognizing peoples voices, but this was not one I knew.
 Excuse me? To whom did you wish to speak? 
 To you, of course. Ten minutes, please. Thats all we need to understand each other. Her
voice was low and soft but otherwise nondescript.
 Understand each other? 
 Each others feelings. 
I leaned over and peeked through the kitchen door. The spaghetti pot was steaming nicely,
and Claudio Abbado was still conducting The Thieving Magpie.
 Sorry, but you caught me in the middle of making spaghetti. Can I ask you to call back
later? 
 Spaghetti!? What are you doing cooking spaghetti at ten-thirty in the morning? 
 Thats none of your business, I said. I decide what I eat and when I eat it. 
 True enough. Ill call back, she said, her voice now flat and expressionless. A little
change in mood can do amazing things to the tone of a persons voice.
 Hold on a minute, I said before she could hang up. If this is some new sales gimmick,
you can forget it. Im out of work. Im not in the market for anything. 
 Dont worry. I know. 
 You know? You know what? 
 That youre out of work. I know about that. So go cook your precious spaghetti. 
 Who the hell- 
She cut the connection.
With no outlet for my feelings, I stared at the phone in my hand until I remembered the
spaghetti. Back in the kitchen, I turned off the gas and poured the contents of the pot into a
colander. Thanks to the phone call, the spaghetti was a little softer than al dente, but it had not
been dealt a mortal blow. I started eating-and thinking.
Understand each other? Understand each others feelings in ten minutes? What was she
talking about? Maybe it was just a prank call. Or some new sales pitch. In any case, it had
nothing to do with me.
After lunch, I went back to my library novel on the living room sofa, glancing every now
and then at the telephone. What were we supposed to understand about each other in ten
minutes? What can two people understand about each other in ten minutes? Come to think of
it, she seemed awfully sure about those ten minutes: it was the first thing out of her mouth. As
if nine minutes would be too short or eleven minutes too long. Like cooking spaghetti al
dente.
I couldnt read anymore. I decided to iron shirts instead. Which is what I always do when
Im upset. Its an old habit. I divide the job into twelve precise stages, beginning with the
collar (outer surface) and ending with the left-hand cuff. The order is always the same, and I
count off each stage to myself. Otherwise, it wont come out right.
I ironed three shirts, checking them over for wrinkles and putting them on hangers. Once I
had switched off the iron and put it away with the ironing board in the hall closet, my mind
felt a good deal clearer.
I was on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water when the phone rang again. I hesitated
for a second but decided to answer it. If it was the same woman, Id tell her I was ironing and
hang up.
This time it was Kumiko. The wall clock said eleven-thirty. How are you? she asked.
 Fine, I said, relieved to hear my wifes voice.
 What are you doing? 
 Just finished ironing. 
 Whats wrong? There was a note of tension in her voice. She knew what it meant for me
to be ironing.
 Nothing. I was just ironing some shirts. I sat down and shifted the receiver from my left
hand to my right. Whats up? 
 Can you write poetry? she asked.
 Poetry!? Poetry? Did she mean... poetry?
 I know the publisher of a story magazine for girls. Theyre looking for somebody to pick
and revise poems submitted by readers. And they want the person to write a short poem every
month for the frontispiece. Pays not bad for an easy job. Of course, its part-time. But they
might add some editorial work if the person- 
 Easy work? I broke in. Hey, wait a minute. Im looking for something in law, not
poetry. 
 I thought you did some writing in high school. 
 Yeah, sure, for the school newspaper: which team won the soccer championship or how
the physics teacher fell down the stairs and ended up in the hospital-that kind of stuff. Not
poetry. I cant write poetry. 
 Sure, but Im not talking about great poetry, just something for high school girls. It
doesnt have to find a place in literary history. You could do it with your eyes closed. Dont
you see? 
 Look, I just cant write poetry-eyes open or closed. Ive never done it, and Im not going
to start now. 
 All right, said Kumiko, with a hint of regret. But its hard to find legal work. 
 I know. Thats why Ive got so many feelers out. I should be hearing something this
week. If its no go, Ill think about doing something else. 
 Well, I suppose thats that. By the way, whats today? What day of the week? 
I thought a moment and said, Tuesday. 
 Then will you go to the bank and pay the gas and telephone? 
 Sure. I was just about to go shopping for dinner anyway. 
 What are you planning to make? 
 I dont know yet. Ill decide when Im shopping. 
She paused. Come to think of it, she said, with a new seriousness, theres no great
hurry about your finding a job. 
This took me off guard. Whys that? I asked. Had the women of the world chosen today
to surprise me on the telephone? My unemployments going to run out sooner or later. I
cant keep hanging around forever. 
 True, but with my raise and occasional side jobs and our savings, we can get by OK if
were careful. Theres no real emergency. Do you hate staying at home like this and doing
housework? I mean, is this life so wrong for you? 
 I dont know, I answered honestly. I really didnt know.
 Well, take your time and give it some thought, she said. Anyhow, has the cat come
back? 
The cat. I hadnt thought about the cat all morning. No, I said. Not yet. 
 Can you please have a look around the neighborhood? Its been gone over a week now. 
I gave a noncommittal grunt and shifted the receiver back to my left hand. She went on:
 Im almost certain its hanging around the empty house at the other end of the alley. The
one with the bird statue in the yard. Ive seen it in there several times. 
 The alley? Since when have you been going to the alley? Youve never said anything- 
 Oops! Got to run. Lots of work to do. Dont forget about the cat. 
She hung up. I found myself staring at the receiver again. Then I set it down in its cradle.
I wondered what had brought Kumiko to the alley. To get there from our house, you had
to climb over the cinder-block wall. And once youd made the effort, there was no point in
being there.
I went to the kitchen for a glass of water, then out to the veranda to look at the cats dish.
The mound of sardines was untouched from last night. No, the cat had not come back. I stood
there looking at our small garden, with the early-summer sunshine streaming into it. Not that
ours was the kind of garden that gives you spiritual solace to look at. The sun managed to find
its way in there for the smallest fraction of each day, so the earth was always black and moist,
and all we had by way of garden plants were a few drab hydrangeas in one corner-and I dont
like hydrangeas. There was a small stand of trees nearby, and from it you could hear the
mechanical cry of a bird that sounded as if it were winding a spring. We called it the wind-up
bird. Kumiko gave it the name. We didnt know what it was really called or what it looked
like, but that didnt bother the wind-up bird. Every day it would come to the stand of trees in
our neighborhood and wind the spring of our quiet little world.
So now I had to go cat hunting. I had always liked cats. And I liked this particular cat. But
cats have their own way of living. Theyre not stupid. If a cat stopped living where you
happened to be, that meant it had decided to go somewhere else. If it got tired and hungry, it
would come back. Finally, though, to keep Kumiko happy, I would have to go looking for our
cat. I had nothing better to do.
•
I had quit my job at the beginning of April- the law job I had had since graduation. Not 
that I had quit for any special reason. I didnt dislike the work. It wasnt thrilling, but the pay
was all right and the office atmosphere was friendly.
My role at the firm was-not to put too fine a point on it-that of professional gofer. And I
was good at it. I might say I have a real talent for the execution of such practical duties. Im a
quick study, efficient, I never complain, and Im realistic. Which is why, when I said I wanted
to quit, the senior partner (the father in this father-and-son law firm) went so far as to offer me
a small raise.
But I quit just the same. Not that quitting would help me realize any particular hopes or
prospects. The last thing I wanted to do, for example, was shut myself up in the house and
study for the bar exam. I was surer than ever that I didnt want to become a lawyer. I knew,
too, that I didnt want to stay where I was and continue with the job I had. If I was going to
quit, now was the time to do it. If I stayed with the firm any longer, Id be there for the rest of
my life. I was thirty years old, after all.
I had told Kumiko at the dinner table that I was thinking of quitting my job. Her only
response had been, I see. I didnt know what she meant by that, but for a while she said
nothing more.
I kept silent too, until she added, If you want to quit, you should quit. Its your life, and
you should live it the way you want to. Having said this much, she then became involved in
picking out fish bones with her chopsticks and moving them to the edge of her plate.
Kumiko earned pretty good pay as editor of a health food magazine, and she would
occasionally take on illustration assignments from editor friends at other magazines to earn
substantial additional income. (She had studied design in college and had hoped to be a
freelance illustrator.) In addition, if I quit I would have my own income for a while from unemployment
insurance. Which meant that even if I stayed home and took care of the house,
we would still have enough for extras such as eating out and paying the cleaning bill, and our
lifestyle would hardly change. And so I had quit my job.
•
I was loading groceries into the refrigerator when the phone rang. The ringing seemed to
have an impatient edge to it this time. I had just ripped open a plastic pack of tofu, which I set
down carefully on the kitchen table to keep the water from spilling out. I went to the living
room and picked up the phone.
 You must have finished your spaghetti by now, said the woman.
 Youre right. But now I have to go look for the cat. 
 That can wait for ten minutes, Im sure. Its not like cooking spaghetti. 
For some reason, I couldnt just hang up on her. There was something about her voice that
commanded my attention. OK, but no more than ten minutes. 
 Now well be able to understand each other, she said with quiet certainty. I sensed her
settling comfortably into a chair and crossing her legs.
 I wonder, I said. What can you understand in ten minutes? 
 Ten minutes may be longer than you think, she said.
 Are you sure you know me? 
 Of course I do. Weve met hundreds of times. 
 Where? When? 
 Somewhere, sometime, she said. But if I went into that, ten minutes would never be
enough. Whats important is the time we have now. The present. Dont you agree? 
 Maybe. But Id like some proof that you know me. 
 What kind of proof? 
 My age, say? 
 Thirty, she answered instantaneously. Thirty and two months. Good enough? 
That shut me up. She obviously did know me, but I had absolutely no memory of her
voice.
 Now its your turn, she said, her voice seductive. Try picturing me. From my voice.
Imagine what Im like. My age. Where I am. How Im dressed. Go ahead. 
 I have no idea, I said.
 Oh, come on, she said. Try. 
I looked at my watch. Only a minute and five seconds had gone by. I have no idea, I
said again.
 Then let me help you, she said. Im in bed. I just got out of the shower, and Im not
wearing a thing. 
Oh, great. Telephone sex.
 Or would you prefer me with something on? Something lacy. Or stockings. Would that
work better for you? 
 I dont give a damn. Do what you like, I said. Put something on if you want to. Stay
naked if you want to. Sorry, but Im not interested in telephone games like this. Ive got a lot
of things I have to- 
 Ten minutes, she said. Ten minutes wont kill you. It wont put a hole in your life. Just
answer my question. Do you want me naked or with something on? Ive got all kinds of
things I could put on. Black lace panties... 
 Naked is fine. 
 Well, good. You want me naked. 
 Yes. Naked. Good. 
Four minutes.
 My pubic hair is still wet, she said. I didnt dry myself very well. Oh, Im so wet!
Warm and moist. And soft. Wonderfully soft and black. Touch me. 
 Look, Im sorry, but- 
 And down below too. All the way down. Its so warm down there, like butter cream. So
warm. Mmm. And my legs. What position do you think my legs are in? My right knee is up,
and my left leg is open just enough. Say, ten-oh-five on the clock. 
I could tell from her voice that she was not faking it. She really did have her legs open to
ten-oh-five, her sex warm and moist.
 Touch the lips, she said. Slooowly. Now open them. Thats it. Slowly, slowly. Let your
fingers caress them. Oh so slowly. Now, with your other hand, touch my left breast. Play with
it. Caress it. Upward. And give the nipple a little squeeze. Do it again. And again. And again.
Until Im just about to come. 
Without a word, I put the receiver down. Stretching out on the sofa, I stared at the clock
and released a long, deep sigh. I had spoken with her for close to six minutes.
The phone rang again ten minutes later, but I left it on the hook. It rang fifteen times. And
when it stopped, a deep, cold silence descended upon the room.
Just before two, I climbed over the cinder-block wall and down into the alley-or what we
called the alley. It was not an alley in the proper sense of the word, but then, there was
probably no word for what it was. It wasnt a road or a path or even a way. Properly
speaking, a way should be a pathway or channel with an entrance and an exit, which takes
you somewhere if you follow it. But our alley had neither entrance nor exit. You couldnt
call it a cul-de-sac, either: a cul-de-sac has at least one open end. The alley had not one dead
end but two. The people of the neighborhood called it the alley strictly as an expedient. It
was some two hundred yards in length and threaded its way between the back gardens of the
houses that lined either side. Barely over three feet in width, it had several spots at which you
had to edge through sideways because of fences sticking out into the path or things that
people had left in the way.
About this alley, the story was-the story I heard from my uncle, who rented us our house 
for next to nothing-that it used to have both an entrance and an exit and actually served the
purpose of providing a shortcut between two streets. But with the rapid economic growth of
the mid-fifties, rows of new houses came to fill the empty lots on either side of the road,
squeezing it down until it was little more than a narrow path. People didnt like strangers
passing so close to their houses and yards, so before long, one end of the path was blocked
off-or, rather, screened off-with an unassertive fence. Then one local citizen decided to enlarge
his yard and completely sealed off his end of the alley with a cinder-block wall. As if in
response, a barbed-wire barrier went up at the other end, preventing even dogs from getting
through. None of the neighbors complained, because none of them used the alley as a
passageway, and they were just as happy to have this extra protection against crime. As a result,
the alley remained like some kind of abandoned canal, unused, serving as little more than
a buffer zone between two rows of houses. Spiders spread their sticky webs in the
overgrowth.
Why had Kumiko been frequenting such a place? I myself had walked down that alley 
no more than twice, and Kumiko was afraid of spiders at the best of times. Oh, what the hellif
Kumiko said I should go to the alley and look for the cat, Id go to the alley and look for the
cat. What came later I could think about later. Walking outside like this was far better than
sitting in the house waiting for the phone to ring.
The sharp sunshine of early summer dappled the surface of the alley with the hard
shadows of the branches that stretched overhead. Without wind to move the branches, the
shadows looked like permanent stains, destined to remain imprinted on the pavement forever.
No sounds of any kind seemed to penetrate this place. I could almost hear the blades of grass
breathing in the sunlight. A few small clouds floated in the sky, their shapes clear and precise,
like the clouds in medieval engravings. I saw everything with such terrific clarity that my own
body felt vague and boundless and flowing... and hot!
I wore a T-shirt, thin cotton pants, and tennis shoes, but walking in the summer sun, I
could feel a light film of sweat forming under my arms and in the hollow of my chest. The Tshirt
and pants had been packed away in a box crammed with summer clothing until I pulled
them out that morning, the sharp smell of mothballs penetrating my nostrils.
The houses that lined the alley fell into two distinct categories: older houses and those
built more recently. As a group, the newer ones were smaller, with smaller yards to match.
Their clothes-drying poles often protruded into the alley, making it necessary for me to thread
my way through the occasional screen of towels and sheets and undershirts. Over some back
walls came the clear sound of television sets and flushing toilets, and the smell of curry
cooking.
The older houses, by contrast, gave hardly any sense of life. These were screened off by
well-placed shrubs and hedges, between which I caught glimpses of manicured gardens.
An old, brown, withered Christmas tree stood in the corner of one garden. Another had
become the dumping ground for every toy known to man, the apparent leavings of several
childhoods. There were tricycles and toss rings and plastic swords and rubber balls and
tortoise dolls and little baseball bats. One garden had a basketball hoop, and another had fine
lawn chairs surrounding a ceramic table. The white chairs were caked in dirt, as if they had
not been used for some months or even years. The table-top was coated with lavender
magnolia petals, beaten down by the rain.
I had a clear view of one living room through an aluminum storm door. It had a matching
leather sofa and chairs, a large TV, a sideboard (atop which sat a tropical-fish tank and two
trophies of some kind), and a decorative floor lamp. The room looked like the set of a TV
drama. A huge doghouse occupied a large part of another garden, but there was no sign of the
dog itself, and the houses door stood open. The screen of the doghouse door bulged outward,
as if someone had been leaning against it for months at a time.
The vacant house that Kumiko had told me about lay just beyond the place with the huge 
doghouse. One glance was all I needed to see that it was empty-and had been for some time. It
was a fairly new two-story house, yet its wooden storm shutters showed signs of severe aging,
and the railings outside the second-story windows were caked with rust. The house had a cozy
little garden, in which, to be sure, a stone statue of a bird stood. The statue rested on a base
that came to chest height and was surrounded by a thick growth of weeds. Tall fronds of
goldenrod were almost touching the birds feet. The bird-I had no idea what kind of bird it
was supposed to be-had its wings open as if it wanted to escape from this unpleasant place as
soon as possible. Aside from the statue, the garden had no decorative features. A pile of aging
plastic lawn chairs stood against the house, and beside them an azalea bush displayed its
bright-red blossoms, their color strangely unreal. Weeds made up the rest.
I leaned against the chest-high chain-link fence for a. while, contemplating the garden. It
should have been a paradise for cats, but there was no sign of cats here now. Perched on the
roofs TV antenna, a single pigeon lent its monotonous cries to the scene. The stone birds
shadow fell on the surrounding undergrowth, breaking apart.
I took a lemon drop from my pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into my mouth. I had
taken my resignation from the firm as an opportunity to quit smoking, but now I was never
without a pack of lemon drops. Kumiko said I was addicted to them and warned me that Id
soon have a mouthful of cavities, but I had to have my lemon drops. While I stood there
looking at the garden, the pigeon on the TV antenna kept up its regular cooing, like some
clerk stamping numbers on a sheaf of bills. I dont know how long I stayed there, leaning
against the fence, but I remember spitting my lemon drop on the ground when, half melted, it
filled my mouth with its sticky sweetness. I had just shifted my gaze to the shadow of the
stone bird when I sensed that someone was calling to me from behind.
I turned, to see a girl standing in the garden on the other side of the alley. She was small
and had her hair in a ponytail. She wore dark sunglasses with amber frames, and a light-blue
sleeveless T-shirt. The rainy season had barely ended, and yet she had already managed to
give her slender arms a nice, smooth tan. She had one hand jammed into the pocket of her
short pants. The other rested on a waist-high bamboo gate, which could not have been
providing much support. Only three feet- maybe four-separated us.
 Hot, she said to me.
 Yeah, right, I answered.
After this brief exchange of views, she stood there looking at me.
Then she took a box of Hope regulars from her pants pocket, drew out a cigarette, and put
it between her lips. She had a small mouth, the upper lip turned slightly upward. She struck a
match and lit her cigarette. When she inclined her head to one side, her hair swung away to
reveal a beautifully shaped ear, smooth as if freshly made, its edge aglow with a downy
fringe.
She flicked her match away and exhaled smoke through pursed lips. Then she looked up
at me as if she had forgotten that I was there. I couldnt see her eyes through the dark,
reflective lenses of her sunglasses.
 You live around here? she asked.
 Uh-huh. I wanted to motion toward our house, but I had turned so many odd angles to
get here that I no longer knew exactly where it was. I ended up pointing at random.
 Im looking for my cat, I explained, wiping a sweaty palm on my pants. Its been gone
for a week. Somebody saw it around here somewhere. 
 What kind of cat? 
 A big torn. Brown stripes. Tip of the tail a little bent. 
 Name? 
 Noboru. Noboru Wataya. 
 No, not your name. The cats. 
 That is my cats name. 
 Oh! Very impressive! 
 Well, actually, its my brother-in-laws name. The cat sort of reminds us of him. We
gave the cat his name, just for fun. 
 How does the cat remind you of him? 
 I dont know. Just in general. The way it walks. And it has this blank stare. 
She smiled now for the first time, which made her look a lot more childlike than she had
seemed at first. She couldnt have been more than fifteen or sixteen. With its slight curl, her
upper lip pointed up at a strange angle. I seemed to hear a voice saying Touch me -the voice
of the woman on the phone. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.
 A brown-striped cat with a bent tail, said the girl. Hmm. Does it have a collar or
something? 
 A black flea collar. 
She stood there thinking for ten or fifteen seconds, her hand still resting on the gate. Then
she dropped what was left of her cigarette and crushed it under her sandal.
 Maybe I did see a cat like that, she said. I dont know about the bent tail, but it was a
brown tiger cat, big, and I think it had a collar. 
 When did you see it? 
 When did I see it? Hmm. No more than three or four days ago. Our yard is a kind of
highway for the neighborhood cats. They all cut across here from the Takitanis to the
Miyawakis. 
She pointed toward the vacant house, where the stone bird still spread its wings, the tall
goldenrod still caught the early-summer sun, and the pigeon went on with its monotonous
cooing atop the TV antenna.
 Ive got an idea, she said. Why dont you wait here? All the cats eventually pass
through our place on their way to the Miyawakis. And somebodys bound to call the cops if
they see you hanging around like that. It wouldnt be the first time. 
I hesitated.
 Dont worry, she said. Im the only one here. The two of us can sit in the sun and wait
for the cat to show up. Ill help. Ive got twenty-twenty vision. 
I looked at my watch. Two twenty-six. All I had to do today before it got dark was take in
the laundry and fix dinner.
I went in through the gate and followed the girl across the lawn. She dragged her right leg
slightly. She took a few steps, stopped, and turned to face me.
 I got thrown from the back of a motorcycle, she said, as if it hardly mattered.
A large oak tree stood at the point where the yards lawn gave out. Under the tree sat two
canvas deck chairs, one draped with a blue beach towel. Scattered on the other were a new
box of Hope regulars, an ashtray and lighter, a magazine, and an oversize boom box. The
boom box was playing hard-rock music at low volume. She turned the music off and took all
the stuff out of the chair for me, dropping it on the grass. From the chair, I could see into the
yard of the vacant house-the stone bird, the goldenrod, the chain-link fence. The girl had
probably been watching me the whole time I was there.
The yard of this house was very large. It had a broad, sloping lawn dotted with clumps of
trees. To the left of the deck chairs was a rather large concrete-lined pond, its empty bottom
exposed to the sun. Judging from its greenish tinge, it had been without water for some time.
We sat with our backs to the house, which was visible through a screen of trees.
The house was neither large nor lavish in its construction. Only the yard gave an
impression of large size, and it was well manicured.
 What a big yard, I said, looking around. It must be a pain to take care of. 
 Must be. 
 I used to work for a lawn-mowing company when I was a kid. 
 Oh? She was obviously not interested in lawns. 
 Are you always here alone? I asked.
 Yeah. Always. Except a maid comes mornings and evenings. During the day its just me.
Alone. Want a cold drink? Weve got beer. 
 No, thanks. 
 Really? Dont be shy. 
I shook my head. Dont you go to school? 
 Dont you go to work? 
 No work to go to. 
 Lost your job? 
 Sort of. I quit a few weeks ago. 
 What kind of job? 
 I was a lawyers gofer. Id go to different government offices to pick up documents, put
materials in order, check on legal precedents, handle court procedures-that kind of stuff. 
 But you quit. 
 Yeah. 
 Does your wife have a job? 
 She does. 
The pigeon across the way must have stopped its cooing and gone off somewhere. I
suddenly realized that a deep silence lay all around me.
 Right over there is where the cats go through, she said, pointing toward the far side of
the lawn. See the incinerator in the Takitanis yard? They come under the fence at that point,
cut across the grass, and go out under the gate to the yard across the way. They always follow
exactly the same route. 
She perched her sunglasses on her forehead, squinted at the yard, and lowered her glasses
again, exhaling a cloud of smoke. In the interval, I saw that she had a two-inch cut next to her
left eye-the kind of cut that would probably leave a scar the rest of her life. The dark
sunglasses were probably meant to hide the wound. The girls face was not a particularly
beautiful one, but there was something attractive about it, probably the lively eyes or the
unusual shape of the lips.
 Do you know about the Miyawakis? she asked.
 Not a thing, I said.
 Theyre the ones who lived in the vacant house. A very proper family. They had two
daughters, both in a private girls school. Mr. Miyawaki owned a few family restaurants. 
 Whyd they leave? 
 Maybe he was in debt. It was like they ran away-just cleared out one night. About a year
ago, I think. Left the place to rot and breed cats. My mothers always complaining. 
 Are there so many cats in there? Cigarette in her lips, the girl looked up at the sky. All
kinds of cats. Some losing their fur, some with one eye... and where the other eye used to be,
a lump of raw flesh. Yuck! I nodded.
 Ive got a relative with six fingers on each hand. Shes just a little older than me. Next to
her pinkie shes got this extra finger, like a babys finger. She knows how to keep it folded up
so most people dont notice. Shes really pretty. I nodded again.
 You think its in the family? What do you call it... part of the bloodline? 
 I dont know much about heredity. 
She stopped talking. I sucked on my lemon drop and looked hard at the cat path. Not one
cat had shown itself so far.
 Sure you dont want something to drink? she asked. Im going to have a Coke. 
I said I didnt need a drink.
She left her deck chair and disappeared through the trees, dragging her bad leg slightly. I
picked up her magazine from the grass and leafed through it. Much to my surprise, it turned
out to be a mens magazine, one of the glossy monthlies. The woman in the foldout wore thin 
panties that showed her slit and pubic hair. She sat on a stool with her legs spread out at weird
angles. With a sigh, I put the magazine back, folded my hands on my chest, and focused on
the cat path again.
•
A very long time went by before the girl came back, with a Coke in her hand. The heat
was getting to me. Sitting under the sun, I felt my brain fogging over. The last thing I wanted
to do was think.
 Tell me, she said, picking up her earlier conversation. If you were in love with a girl
and she turned out to have six fingers, what would you do? 
 Sell her to the circus, I answered.
 Really? 
 No, of course not, I said. Im kidding. I dont think it would bother me. 
 Even if your kids might inherit it? 
I took a moment to think about that.
 No, I really dont think it would bother me. What harm would an extra finger do? 
 What if she had four breasts? 
I thought about that too.
 I dont know. 
Four breasts? This kind of thing could go on forever. I decided to change the subject.
 How old are you? I asked.
 Sixteen, she said. Just had my birthday. First year in high school. 
 Have you been out of school long? 
 My leg hurts if I walk too much. And Ive got this scar near my eye. My schools very
strict. Theyd probably start bugging me if they found out I hurt myself falling off a
motorcycle. So Im out ‘sick. I could take a year off. Im not in any hurry to go up a grade. 
 No, I guess not, I said.
 Anyhow, what you were saying before, that you wouldnt mind marrying a girl with six
fingers but not four breasts... 
 I didnt say that. I said I didnt know. 
 Why dont you know? 
 I dont know-its hard to imagine such a thing. 
 Can you imagine someone with six fingers? 
 Sure, I guess so. 
 So why not four breasts? Whats the difference? 
I took another moment to think it over, but I couldnt find an answer.
 Do I ask too many questions? 
 Do people tell you that? 
 Yeah, sometimes. 
I turned toward the cat path again. What the hell was I doing here? Not one cat had
showed itself the whole time. Hands still folded on my chest, I closed my eyes for maybe
thirty seconds. I could feel the sweat forming on different parts of my body. The sun poured
into me with a strange heaviness. Whenever the girl moved her glass, the ice clinked inside it
like a cowbell.
 Go to sleep if you want, she whispered. Ill wake you if a cat shows up. 
Eyes closed, I nodded in silence.
The air was still. There were no sounds of any kind. The pigeon had long since
disappeared. I kept thinking about the woman on the telephone. Did I really know her? There
had been nothing remotely familiar about her voice or her manner of speaking. But she
definitely knew me. I could have been looking at a De Chirico scene: the womans long 
shadow cutting across an empty street and stretching toward me, but she herself in a place far
removed from the bounds of my consciousness. A bell went on ringing and ringing next to my
ear.
 Are you asleep? the girl asked, in a voice so tiny I could not be sure I was hearing it.
 No, Im not sleeping, I said.
 Can I get closer? Itll be... easier if I keep my voice low. Fine with me, I said, eyes
still closed.
She moved her chair until it struck mine with a dry, wooden clack. Strange, the girls
voice sounded completely different, depending on whether my eyes were open or closed.
 Can I talk? Ill keep real quiet, and you dont have to answer. You can even fall asleep. I
dont mind. 
 OK, I said.
 When people die, its so neat. 
Her mouth was next to my ear now, so the words worked their way inside me along with
her warm, moist breath. Whys that? I asked.
She put a finger on my lips as if to seal them. No questions, she said. And dont open
your eyes. OK? My nod was as small as her voice.
She took her finger from my lips and placed it on my wrist. I wish I had a scalpel. Id cut
it open and look inside. Not the corpse... the lump of death. Im sure there must be something
like that. Something round and squishy, like a softball, with a hard little core of dead nerves. I
want to take it out of a dead person and cut it open and look inside. I always wonder what its
like. Maybe its all hard, like toothpaste dried up inside the tube. Thats it, dont you think?
No, dont answer. Its squishy on the outside, and the deeper you go inside, the harder it gets.
I want to cut open the skin and take out the squishy stuff, use a scalpel and some kind of
spatula to get through it, and the closer you get to the center, the harder the squishy stuff gets,
until you reach this tiny core. Its sooo tiny, like a tiny ball bearing, and really hard. It must be
like that, dont you think? 
She cleared her throat a few times.
 Thats all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every
day. When you dont have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out-so far out
you cant follow them all the way to the end. 
She took the finger from my wrist and drank down the rest of her cola. I knew the glass
was empty from the sound of the ice.
 Dont worry about the cat-Im watching for it. Ill let you know if Noboru Wataya shows
up. Keep your eyes closed. Im sure Noboru Wataya is walking around here someplace. Hell
be here any minute now. Hes coming. I know hes coming-through the grass, under the
fence, stopping to sniff the flowers along the way, little by little Noboru Wataya is coming
closer. Picture him that way, get his image in mind. 
I tried to picture the image of the cat, but the best I could do was a blurry, backlighted
photo. The sunlight penetrating my eyelids destabilized and diffused my inner darkness,
making it impossible for me to bring up a precise image of the cat. Instead, what I imagined
was a failed portrait, a strange, distorted picture, certain distinguishing features bearing some
resemblance to the original but the most important parts missing. I couldnt even recall how
the cat looked when it walked.
The girl put her finger on my wrist again, using the tip to draw an odd diagram of
uncertain shape. As if in response, a new kind of darkness- different in quality from the
darkness I had been experiencing until that moment-began to burrow into my consciousness. I
was probably falling asleep. I didnt want this to happen, but there was no way I could resist
it. My body felt like a corpse-someone elses corpse-sinking into the canvas deck chair.
In the darkness, I saw the four legs of Noboru Wataya, four silent brown legs atop four
soft paws with swelling, rubberlike pads, legs that were soundlessly treading the earth 
somewhere.
But where?
 Ten minutes is all it will take, said the woman on the phone. No, she had to be wrong.
Sometimes ten minutes is not ten minutes. It can stretch and shrink. That was something I did
know for sure.
•
When I woke up, I was alone. The girl had disappeared from the deck chair, which was
still touching mine. The towel and cigarettes and magazine were there, but not the glass or the
boom box.
The sun had begun to sink in the west, and the shadow of an oak branch had crept across
my knees. My watch said it was four-fifteen. I sat up and looked around. Broad lawn, dry
pond, fence, stone bird, golden-rod, TV antenna. Still no sign of the cat. Or of the girl.
I glanced at the cat path and waited for the girl to come back. Ten minutes went by, and
neither cat nor girl showed up. Nothing moved. I felt as if I had aged tremendously while I
slept.
I stood and glanced toward the house, where there was no sign of a human presence. The
bay window reflected the glare of the western sun. I gave up waiting and crossed the lawn to
the alley, returning home. I hadnt found the cat, but I had tried my best.
•
At home, I took in the wash and made preparations for a simple dinner. The phone rang
twelve times at five-thirty, but I didnt answer it. Even after the ringing stopped, the sound of
the bell lingered in the indoor evening gloom like dust floating in the air. With the tips of its
hard claws, the table clock tapped at a transparent board floating in space.
Why not write a poem about the wind-up bird? The idea struck me, but the first line would
not come. How could high school girls possibly enjoy a poem about a wind-up bird?
•
Kumiko came home at seven-thirty. She had been arriving later and later over the past
month. It was not unusual for her to return after eight, and sometimes even after ten. Now that
I was at home preparing dinner, she no longer had to hurry back. They were understaffed, in
any case, and lately one of her colleagues had been out sick.
 Sorry, she said. The work just wouldnt end, and that part-time girl is useless. 
I went to the kitchen and cooked: fish sauteed in butter, salad, and miso soup. Kumiko sat
at the kitchen table and vegged out.
 Where were you at five-thirty? she asked. I tried to call to say Id be late. 
 The butter ran out. I went to the store, I lied.
 Did you go to the bank? 
 Sure. 
 And the cat? 
 Couldnt find it. I went to the vacant house, like you said, but there was no trace of it. I
bet it went farther away than that. 
She said nothing.
When I finished bathing after dinner, Kumiko was sitting in the living room with the
lights out. Hunched down in the dark with her gray shirt on, she looked like a piece of
luggage that had been left in the wrong place.
Drying my hair with a bath towel, I sat on the sofa opposite Kumiko. 
In a voice I could barely catch, she said, Im sure the cats dead. 
 Dont be silly, I replied. Im sure its having a grand old time somewhere. Itll get
hungry and come home soon. The same thing happened once before, remember? When we
lived in Koenji... 
 This times different, she said. This time youre wrong. I know it. The cats dead. Its
rotting in a clump of grass. Did you look in the grass in the vacant house? 
 No, I didnt. The house may be vacant, but it does belong to somebody. I cant just go
barging in there. 
 Then where did you look for the cat? Ill bet you didnt even try. Thats why you didnt
find it. 
I sighed and wiped my hair again with the towel. I started to speak but gave up when I
realized that Kumiko was crying. It was understandable: Kumiko loved the cat. It had been
with us since shortly after our wedding. I threw my towel in the bathroom hamper and went to
the kitchen for a cold beer. What a stupid day it had been: a stupid day of a stupid month of a
stupid year.
Noboru Wataya, where are you? Did the wind-up bird forget to wind your spring?
The words came to me like lines of poetry.
Noboru Wataya,
Where are you?
Did the wind-up bird
Forget to wind your spring?
When I was halfway through my beer, the phone started to ring.
 Get it, will you? I shouted into the darkness of the living room.
 Not me, she said. You get it. 
 I dont want to. 
The phone kept on ringing, stirring up the dust that floated in the darkness. Neither of us
said a word. I drank my beer, and Kumiko went on crying soundlessly. I counted twenty rings
and gave up. There was no point in counting forever.
 
Full Moon and Eclipse of the Sun
 
On Horses Dying in the Stables
Is it possible, finally, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in
the end, how close are we able to come to that persons essence? We convince ourselves that
we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?
I started thinking seriously about such things a week after I quit my job at the law firm.
Never until then- never in the whole course of my life-had I grappled with questions like this.
And why not? Probably because my hands had been full just living. I had simply been too 
busy to think about myself.
Something trivial got me started, just as most important things in the world have small
beginnings. One morning after Kumiko rushed through breakfast and left for work, I threw
the laundry into the washing machine, made the bed, washed the dishes, and vacuumed. Then,
with the cat beside me, I sat on the veranda, checking the want ads and the sales. At noon I
had lunch and went to the supermarket. There I bought food for dinner and, from a sale table,
bought detergent, tissues, and toilet paper. At home again, I made preparations for dinner and
lay down on the sofa with a book, waiting for Kumiko to come home.
Newly unemployed, I found this kind of life refreshing. No more commuting to work on
jam-packed subways, no more meetings with people I didnt want to meet. And best of all, I
could read any book I wanted, anytime I wanted. I had no idea how long this relaxed lifestyle
would continue, but at that point, at least, after a week, I was enjoying it, and I tried hard not
to think about the future. This was my one great vacation in life. It would have to end
sometime, but until it did I was determined to enjoy it.
That particular evening, though, I was unable to lose myself in the pleasure of reading,
because Kumiko was late coming home from work. She never got back later than six-thirty,
and if she thought she was going to be delayed by as little as ten minutes, she always let me
know. She was like that: almost too conscientious. But that day was an exception. She was
still not home after seven, and there was no call. The meat and vegetables were ready and
waiting, so that I could cook them the minute she came in. Not that I had any great feast in
mind: I would be stir frying thin slices of beef, onions, green peppers, and bean sprouts with a
little salt, pepper, soy sauce, and a splash of beer-a recipe from my single days. The rice was
done, the miso soup was warm, and the vegetables were all sliced and arranged in separate
piles in a large dish, ready for the wok. Only Kumiko was missing. I was hungry enough to
think about cooking my own portion and eating alone, but I was not ready to make this move.
It just didnt seem right.
I sat at the kitchen table, sipping a beer and munching some slightly soggy soda crackers I
had found in the back of the cabinet. I watched the small hand of the clock edging toward-and
slowly passing-the seven-thirty position.
It was after nine when she came in. She looked exhausted. Her eyes were bloodshot: a bad
sign. Something bad had always happened when her eyes were red.
OK, I told myself, stay cool, keep it simple and low key and natural. Dont get excited.
 Im so sorry, Kumiko said. This one job wouldnt go right. I thought of calling you,
but things just kept getting in the way. 
 Never mind, its all right, dont let it bother you, I said as casually as I could. And in
fact, I wasnt feeling bad about it. I had had the same experience any number of times. Going
out to work can be tough, not something sweet and peaceful like picking the prettiest rose in
your garden for your sick grandmother and spending the day with her, two streets away.
Sometimes you have to do unpleasant things with unpleasant people, and the chance to call
home never comes up. Thirty seconds is all it would take to say, Ill be home late tonight, 
and there are telephones everywhere, but you just cant do it.
I started cooking: turned on the gas, put oil in the wok. Kumiko took a beer from the
refrigerator and a glass from the cupboard, did a quick inspection of the food I was about to
cook, and sat at the kitchen table without a word. Judging from the look on her face, she was
not enjoying the beer.
 You should have eaten without me, she said.
 Never mind. I wasnt that hungry. 
While I fried the meat and vegetables, Kumiko went to wash up. I could hear her washing
her face and brushing her teeth. A little later, she came out of the bathroom, holding
something. It was the toilet paper and tissues I had bought at the supermarket.
 Why did you buy this stuff? she asked, her voice weary. 
Holding the wok, I looked at her. Then I looked at the box of tissues and the package of
toilet paper. I had no idea what she was trying to say.
 What do you mean? Theyre just tissues and toilet paper. We need those things. Were
not exactly out, but they wont rot if they sit around a little while. 
 No, of course not. But why did you have to buy blue tissues and flower-pattern toilet
paper? 
 I dont get it, I said, controlling myself. They were on sale. Blue tissues are not going
to turn your nose blue. Whats the big deal? 
 It is a big deal. I hate blue tissues and flower-pattern toilet paper. Didnt you know that? 
 No, I didnt, I said. Why do you hate them? 
 How should I know why I hate them? I just do. You hate telephone covers, and thermos
bottles with flower decorations, and bell-bottom jeans with rivets, and me having my nails
manicured. Not even you can say why. Its just a matter of taste. 
In fact, I could have explained my reasons for all those things, but of course I did not. All
right, I said. Its just a matter of taste. But can you tell me that in the six years weve been
married you never once bought blue tissues or flower-pattern toilet paper? 
 Never. Not once. 
 Really? 
 Yes, really. The tissues I buy are either white or yellow or pink. And I absolutely never
buy toilet paper with patterns on it. Im just shocked that you could live with me all this time
and not be aware of that. 
It was shocking to me, too, to realize that in six long years I had never once used blue
tissues or patterned toilet paper.
 And while Im at it, let me say this, she continued. I absolutely detest beef stir fried
with green peppers. Did you know that? 
 No, I didnt, I said.
 Well, its true. And dont ask me why. I just cant stand the smell of the two of them
cooking in the same pan. 
 You mean to say that in six years you have never once cooked beef and green peppers
together? 
She shook her head. Ill eat green peppers in a salad. Ill fry beef with onions. But I have
never once cooked beef and green peppers together. 
I heaved a sigh.
 Havent you ever thought it strange? she asked.
 Thought it strange? I never even noticed, I said, taking a moment to consider whether,
since marrying, I had in fact ever eaten anything stir fried containing beef and green peppers.
Of course, it was impossible for me to recall.
 Youve been living with me all this time, she said, but youve hardly paid any attention
to me. The only one you ever think about is yourself. 
 Now wait just a minute, I said, turning off the gas and setting the wok down on the
range. Lets not get carried away here. You may be right. Maybe I havent paid enough
attention to things like tissues and toilet paper and beef and green peppers. But that doesnt
mean I havent paid any attention to you. I dont give a damn what color my tissues are. OK,
black Id have a little trouble with, but white, blue-it just doesnt matter. If s the same with
beef and green peppers. Together, apart-who cares? The act of stir frying beef and green
peppers could disappear from the face of the earth and it wouldnt matter to me. It has nothing
to do with you, your essence, what makes Kumiko Kumiko. Am I wrong? 
Instead of answering me, she polished off her beer in two big gulps and stared at the
empty bottle.
I dumped the contents of the wok into the garbage. So much for the beef and green
peppers and onions and bean sprouts. Weird. Food one minute, garbage the next. I opened a 
beer and drank from the bottle.
 Whyd you do that? she asked.
 You hate it so much. 
 So you could have eaten it. 
 I suddenly didnt want beef and green peppers anymore. 
She shrugged. Whatever makes you happy. 
She put her arms on the table and rested her face on them. For a while, she stayed like
that. I could see she wasnt crying or sleeping. I looked at the empty wok on the range, looked
at Kumiko, and drank my beer down. Crazy. Who gives a damn about toilet paper and green
peppers?
But I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. OK, I said. I understand now. Ill
never buy blue tissues or flowered toilet paper again. I promise. Ill take the stuff back to the
supermarket tomorrow and exchange it. If they wont give me an exchange, Ill burn it in the
yard. Ill throw the ashes in the sea. And no more beef and green peppers. Never again. Pretty
soon the smell will be gone, and well never have to think about it anymore. OK? 
But still she said nothing. I wanted to go out for an hours walk and find her cheery when
I got back, but I knew there was no chance of that happening. Id have to solve this one
myself.
 Look, youre tired, I said. So take a little rest and well go out for a pizza. Whens the
last time we had a pizza? Anchovies and onions. Well split one. It wouldnt kill us to eat out
once in a while. 
This didnt do it, either. She kept her face pressed against her arms. I didnt know what
else to say. I sat down and stared at her across the table. One ear showed through her short
black hair. It had an earring that I had never seen before, a little gold one in the shape of a
fish. Where could she have bought such a thing? I wanted a smoke. I imagined myself taking
my cigarettes and lighter from my pocket, putting a filter cigarette between my lips, and
lighting up. I inhaled a lungful of air. The heavy smell of- stir-fried beef and vegetables struck
me hard. I was starved.
My eye caught the calendar on the wall. This calendar showed the phases of the moon.
The full moon was approaching. Of course: it was about time for Kumikos period.
Only after I became a married man had it truly dawned on me that I was an inhabitant of
earth, the third planet of the solar system. I lived on the earth, the earth revolved around the
sun, and around the earth revolved the moon. Like it or not, this would continue for eternity
(or what could be called eternity in comparison with my lifetime). What induced me to see
things this way was the absolute precision of my wifes twenty-nine-day menstrual cycle. It
corresponded perfectly with the waxing and waning of the moon. And her periods were
always difficult. She would become unstable- even depressed-for some days before they
began. So her cycle became my cycle. I had to be careful not to cause any unnecessary trouble
at the wrong time of the month. Before we were married, I hardly noticed the phases of the
moon. I might happen to catch sight of the moon in the sky, but its shape at any given time
was of no concern to me. Now the shape of the moon was something I always carried around
in my head.
I had been with a number of women before Kumiko, and of course each had had her own
period. Some were difficult, some were easy, some were finished in three days, others took
over a week, some were regular, others could be ten days late and scare the hell out of me;
some women had bad moods, others were hardly affected. Until I married Kumiko, though, I
had never lived with a woman. Until then, the cycles of nature meant the changing of the
seasons. In winter Id get my coat out, in summer it was time for sandals. With marriage I
took on not only a cohabitant but a new concept of cyclicity: the phases of the moon. Only
once had she missed her cycle for some months, during which time she had been pregnant.
 Im sorry, she said, raising her face. I didnt mean to take it out on you. Im tired, and 
Im in a bad mood. 
 Thats OK, I said. Dont let it bother you. You should take it out on somebody when
youre tired. It makes you feel better. 
Kumiko took a long, slow breath, held it in awhile, and let it out.
 What about you? she asked.
 What about me? 
 You dont take it out on anybody when youre tired. I do. Why is that? 
I shook my head. I never noticed, I said. Funny. 
 Maybe youve got this deep well inside, and you shout into it, ‘The kings got donkeys
ears! and then everythings OK. 
I thought about that for a while. Maybe so, I said.
Kumiko looked at the empty beer bottle again. She stared at the label, and then at the
mouth, and then she turned the neck in her fingers.
 My periods coming, she said. I think thats why Im in such a bad mood. 
 I know, I said. Dont let it bother you. Youre not the only one. Tons of horses die
when the moons full. 
She took her hand from the bottle, opened her mouth, and looked at me.
 Now, where did that come from all of a sudden? 
 I read it in the paper the other day. I meant to tell you about it, but I forgot. It was an
interview with some veterinarian. Apparently, horses are tremendously influenced by the
phases of the moon-both physically and emotionally. Their brain waves go wild as the full
moon approaches, and they start having all kinds of physical problems. Then, on the night
itself, a lot of them get sick, and a huge number of those die. Nobody really knows why this
happens, but the statistics prove that it does. Horse vets never have time to sleep on full-moon
nights, theyre so busy. 
 Interesting, said Kumiko.
 An eclipse of the sun is even worse, though. Nothing short of a tragedy for the horses.
You couldnt begin to imagine how many horses die on the day of a total eclipse. Anyhow, all
I want to say is that right this second, horses are dying all over the world. Compared with that,
its no big deal if you take out your frustrations on somebody. So dont let it bother you.
Think about the horses dying. Think about them lying on the straw in some barn under the full
moon, foaming at the mouth, gasping in agony. 
She seemed to take a moment to think about horses dying in barns.
 Well, I have to admit, she said with a note of resignation, you could probably sell
anybody anything. 
 All right, then, I said. Change your clothes and lets go out for a pizza. 
•
That night, in our darkened bedroom, I lay beside Kumiko, staring at the ceiling and
asking myself just how much I really knew about this woman. The clock said : a.m. She
was sound asleep. In the dark, I thought about blue tissues and patterned toilet paper and beef
and green peppers. I had lived with her all this time, unaware how much she hated these
things. In themselves they were trivial. Stupid. Something to laugh off, not make a big issue
out of. Wed had a little tiff and would have forgotten about it in a couple of days.
But this was different. It was bothering me in a strange new way, digging at me like a
little fish bone caught in the throat. Maybe-just maybe- it was more crucial than it had
seemed. Maybe this was it: the fatal blow. Or maybe it was just the beginning of what would
be the fatal blow. I might be standing in the entrance of something big, and inside lay a world
that belonged to Kumiko alone, a vast world that I had never known. I saw it as a big, dark
room. I was standing there holding a cigarette lighter, its tiny flame showing me only the 
smallest part of the room.
Would I ever see the rest? Or would I grow old and die without ever really knowing her?
If that was all that lay in store for me, then what was the point of this married life I was
leading? What was the point of my life at all if I was spending it in bed with an unknown
companion?
This was what I thought about that night and what I went on thinking about long afterward
from time to time. Only much later did it occur to me that I had found my way into the core of
the problem.
 
Malta Kanos Hat
•
Sherbet Tone and Allen Ginsberg
and the Crusaders
I was in the middle of preparing lunch when the phone rang again. I had cut two slices of
bread, spread them with butter and mustard, filled them with tomato slices and cheese, set the
whole on the cutting board, and I was just about to cut it in half when the bell started ringing.
I let the phone ring three times and cut the sandwich in half. Then I transferred it to a
plate, wiped the knife, and put that in the cutlery drawer, before pouring myself a cup of the
coffee I had warmed up.
Still the phone went on ringing. Maybe fifteen times. I gave up and took it. I would have
preferred not to answer, but it might have been Kumiko.
 Hello, said a womans voice, one I had never heard before. It belonged neither to
Kumiko nor to the strange woman who had called me the other day when I was cooking
spaghetti. I wonder if I might possibly be speaking with Mr. Toru Okada? said the voice, as
if its owner were reading a text.
 You are, I said.
 The husband of Kumiko Okada? 
 Thats right, I said. Kumiko Okada is my wife. 
 And Mrs. Okadas elder brother is Noboru Wataya? 
 Right again, I said, with admirable self-control. Noboru Wataya is my wifes elder
brother. 
 Sir, my name is Malta Kano. 
I waited for her to go on. The sudden mention of Kumikos elder brother had put me on
guard. With the blunt end of the pencil that lay by the phone, I scratched the back of my neck.
Five seconds or more went by, in which the woman said nothing. No sound of any kind came
from the receiver, as if the woman had covered the mouthpiece with her hand and was talking
with someone nearby.
 Hello, I said, concerned now. 
 Please forgive me, sir, blurted the womans voice. In that case, I must ask your
permission to call you at a later time. 
 Now wait a minute, I said. This is- 
At that point, the connection was cut. I stared at the receiver, then put it to my ear again.
No doubt about it: the woman had hung up.
Vaguely dissatisfied, I turned to the kitchen table, drank my coffee, and ate my sandwich.
Until the moment the telephone rang, I had been thinking of something, but now I couldnt
remember what it was. Knife in my right hand poised to cut the sandwich in half, I had
definitely been thinking of something. Something important. Something I had been trying
unsuccessfully to recall for the longest time. It had come to me at the very moment when I
was about to cut the sandwich in two, but now it was gone. Chewing on my sandwich, I tried
hard to bring it back. But it wouldnt come. It had returned to that dark region of my mind
where it had been living until that moment.
•
I finished eating and was clearing the dishes when the phone rang again. This time I took
it right away.
Again I heard a woman saying Hello, but this time it was Kumiko.
 How are you? she asked. Finished lunch? 
 Yup. Whatd you have? 
 Nothing, she said. Too busy. Ill probably buy myself a sandwich later. Whatd you
have? 
I described my sandwich.
 I see, she said, without a hint of envy. Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you this morning.
Youre going to get a call from a Miss Kano. 
 She already called, I said. A few minutes ago. All she did was mention our namesmine
and yours and your brothers-and hang up. Never said what she wanted. What was that
all about? 
 She hung up? 
 Said shed call again. 
 Well, when she does, I want you to do whatever she asks. This is really important. I think
youll have to go see her. 
 When? Today? 
 Whats wrong? Do you have something planned? Are you supposed to see someone? 
 Nope. No plans. Not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow: no plans at all. But who is
this Kano woman? And what does she want with me? Id like to have some idea before she
calls again. If its about a job for me connected with your brother, forget it. I dont want to
have anything to do with him. You know that. 
 No, it has nothing to do with a job, she said, with a hint of annoyance. Its about the
cat. 
 The cat? 
 Oh, sorry, Ive got to run. Somebodys waiting for me. I really shouldnt have taken the
time to make this call. Like I said, I havent even had lunch. Mind if I hang up? Ill get back
to you as soon as Im free. 
 Look, I know how busy you are, but give me a break. I want to know whats going on.
Whats with the cat? Is this Kano woman- 
 Just do what she tells you, will you, please? Understand? This is serious business. I want
you to stay home and wait for her call. Gotta go. 
And she went. 
•
When the phone rang at two-thirty, I was napping on the couch. At first I thought I was
hearing the alarm clock. I reached out to push the button, but the clock was not there. I wasnt
in bed but was on the couch, and it wasnt morning but afternoon. I got up and went to the
phone.
 Hello, I said.
 Hello, said a womans voice. It was the woman who had called in the morning. Mr.
Toru Okada? 
 Thats me. Toru Okada. 
 Sir, my name is Malta Kano, she said.
 The lady who called before. 
 That is correct. I am afraid I was terribly rude. But tell me, Mr. Okada, would you by any
chance be free this afternoon? 
 You might say that. 
 Well, in that case, I know this is terribly sudden, but do you think it might be possible for
us to meet? 
 When? Today? Now? 
 Yes. 
I looked at my watch. Not that I really had to-I had looked at it thirty seconds earlier-but
just to make sure. And it was still two-thirty.
 Will it take long? I asked.
 Not so very long, I think. I could be wrong, though. At this moment in time, it is difficult
for me to say with complete accuracy. I am sorry. 
No matter how long it might take, I had no choice. Kumiko had told me to do as the
woman said: that it was serious business. If she said it was serious business, then it was
serious business, and I had better do as I was told.
 I see, I said. Where should we meet? 
 Would you by any chance be acquainted with the Pacific Hotel, across from Shinagawa
Station? 
 I would. 
 There is a tearoom on the first floor. I shall be waiting there for you at four oclock if that
would be all right with you, sir. 
 Fine, I said.
 I am thirty-one years old, and I shall be wearing a red vinyl hat. 
Terrific. There was something weird about the way this woman talked, something that
confused me momentarily. But I could not have said exactly what made it so weird. Nor was
there any law against a thirty-one-year-old womans wearing a red vinyl hat.
 I see, I said. Im sure Ill find you. 
 I wonder, Mr. Okada, if you would be so kind as to tell me of any external distinguishing
characteristics in your own case. 
I tried to think of any external distinguishing characteristics I might have. Did I in fact
have any?
 Im thirty, Im five foot nine, a hundred and forty pounds, short hair, no glasses. It
occurred to me as I listed these for her that they hardly constituted external distinguishing
characteristics. There could be fifty such men in the Pacific Hotel tearoom. I had been there
before, and it was a big place. She needed something more noticeable. But I couldnt think of
anything. Which is not to say that I didnt have any distinguishing characteristics. I owned a
signed copy of Miles Daviss Sketches of Spain. I had a slow resting pulse rate: forty-seven
normally, and no higher than seventy with a high fever. I was out of work. I knew the names
of all the brothers Karamazov. But none of these distinguishing characteristics was external. 
 What might you be wearing? she asked.
 I dont know, I said. I havent decided yet. This is so sudden. 
 Then please wear a polka-dot necktie, she said decisively. Do you think you might
have a polka-dot necktie, sir? 
 I think I do, I said. I had a navy-blue tie with tiny cream polka dots. Kumiko had given
it to me for my birthday a few years earlier.
 Please be so kind as to wear it, then, she said. Thank you for agreeing to meet me at
four oclock. And she hung up.
•
I opened the wardrobe and looked for my polka-dot tie. There was no sign of it on the tie
rack. I looked in all the drawers. I looked in all the clothes storage boxes in the closet. No
polka-dot tie. There was no way that that tie could be in our house without my finding it.
Kumiko was such a perfectionist when it came to the arrangement of our clothes, my necktie
couldnt possibly be in a place other than where it was normally kept. And in fact, I found
everything-both her clothes and mine-in perfect order. My shirts were neatly folded in the
drawer where they belonged. My sweaters were in boxes so full of mothballs my eyes hurt
just from opening the lid. One box contained the clothing she had worn in high school: a navy
uniform, a flowered minidress, preserved like photos in an old album. What was the point of
keeping such things? Perhaps she had simply brought them with her because she had never
found a suitable opportunity to get rid of them. Or maybe she was planning to send them to
Bangladesh. Or donate them someday as cultural artifacts. In any case, my polka-dot necktie
was nowhere to be found.
Hand on the wardrobe door, I tried to recall the last time I had worn the tie. It was a rather
stylish tie, in very good taste, but a bit too much for the office. If I had worn it to the firm,
somebody would have gone on and on about it at lunch, praising the color or its sharp looks.
Which would have been a kind of warning. In the firm I worked for, it was not good to be
complimented on your choice of tie. So I had never worn it there. Rather, I put it on for more
private-if somewhat formal-occasions: a concert, or dinner at a good restaurant, when Kumiko
wanted us to dress properly (not that there were so many such occasions). The tie went well
with my navy suit, and she was very fond of it. Still, I couldnt manage to recall when I had
last worn it.
I scanned the contents of the wardrobe again and gave up. For one reason or another, the
polka-dot tie had disappeared. Oh, well. I put on my navy suit with a blue shirt and a striped
tie. I wasnt too worried. She might not be able to spot me, but all I had to do was look for a
thirtyish woman in a red vinyl hat.
Dressed to go out, I sat on the sofa, staring at the wall. It had been a long time since I last
wore a suit. Normally, this three-season navy suit would have been a bit too heavy for this
time of year, but that particular day was a rainy one, and there was a chill in the air. It was the
very suit I had worn on my last day of work (in April). Suddenly it occurred to me that there
might be something in one of the pockets. In the inside breast pocket I found a receipt with a
date from last autumn. It was some kind of taxi receipt, one I could have been reimbursed for
at the office. Now, though, it was too late. I crumpled it up and threw it into the wastebasket.
I had not worn this suit once since quitting, two months earlier. Now, after such a long
interval, I felt as if I were in the grip of a foreign substance. It was heavy and stiff, and
seemed not to match the contours of my body. I stood and walked around the room, stopping
in front of the mirror to yank at the sleeves and the coattails in an attempt to make it fit better.
I stretched out my arms, took a deep breath, and bent forward at the waist, checking to see if
my physical shape might have changed in the past two months. I sat on the sofa again, but still
I felt uncomfortable. 
Until this spring, I had commuted to work every day in a suit without its ever feeling
strange. My firm had had a rather strict dress code, requiring even low-ranking clerks such as
myself to wear suits. I had thought nothing of it.
Now, however, just sitting on the couch in a suit felt like some kind of immoral act, like
faking ones curriculum vitae or passing as a woman. Overcome with something very like a
guilty conscience, I found it increasingly difficult to breathe.
I went to the front hall, took my brown shoes from their place on the shelf, and pried
myself into them with a shoehorn. A thin film of dust clung to them.
•
As it turned out, I didnt have to find the woman. She found me. When I arrived at the
tearoom, I did a quick circuit, looking for the red hat. There were no women with red hats.
My watch showed ten minutes left until four oclock. I took a seat, drank the water they
brought me, and ordered a cup of coffee. No sooner had the waitress left my table than I heard
a woman behind me saying, You must be Mr. Toru Okada. Surprised, I spun around. Not
three minutes had gone by since my survey of the room. Under a white jacket she wore a
yellow silk blouse, and on her head was a red vinyl hat. By reflex action, I stood and faced
her. Beautiful was a word that might well have been applied to her. At least she was far
more beautiful than I had imagined from her telephone voice. She had a slim, lovely build and
was sparing in her use of cosmetics. She knew how to dress-except for the red hat. Her jacket
and blouse were finely tailored. On the collar of the jacket shone a gold brooch in the shape of
a feather. She could have been taken for a corporate sery. Why, after having lavished such
care on the rest of her outfit, she would have topped it off with that totally inappropriate red
vinyl hat was beyond me. Maybe she always wore it to help people spot her in situations like
this. In that case, it was not a bad idea. If the point was to have her stand out in a room full of
strangers, it certainly did its job.
She took the seat across the table from mine, and I sat down again. Im amazed you knew
it was me, I said. I couldnt find my polka-dot tie. I know Ive got it somewhere, but it just
wouldnt turn up. Which is why I wore this striped one. I figured Id find you, but how did
you know it was me? 
 Of course I knew it was you, she said, putting her white patent-leather bag on the table.
She took off her red vinyl hat and placed it over the bag, covering it completely. I had the
feeling she was about to perform a magic trick: when she lifted the hat, the bag would have
vanished.
 But I was wearing the wrong tie, I protested. The wrong tie? She glanced at my tie
with a puzzled expression, as if to say, What is this odd person talking about? Then she
nodded. It doesnt matter. Please dont be concerned. 
There was something strange about her eyes. They were mysteriously lacking in depth.
They were lovely eyes, but they did not seem to be looking at anything. They were all surface,
like glass eyes. But of course they were not glass eyes. They moved, and their lids blinked.
How had she been able to pick me out of the crowd in this busy tearoom? Virtually every
chair in the place was taken, and many of them were occupied by men my age. I wanted to
ask her for an explanation, but I restrained myself. Better not raise irrelevant issues.
She called to a passing waiter and asked for a Perrier. They had no Perrier, he said, but he
could bring her tonic water. She thought about this for a moment and accepted his suggestion.
While she waited for her tonic water to arrive, she said nothing, and I did the same.
At one point, she lifted her red hat and opened the clasp of the pocket-book underneath.
From the bag she removed a glossy black leather case, somewhat smaller than a cassette tape.
It was a business card holder. Like the bag, it had a clasp-the first card holder I had ever seen
with a clasp. She drew a card from the case and handed it to me. I reached into my breast 
pocket for one of my own cards, only then realizing that I did not have any with me.
Her name card was made of thin plastic, and it seemed to carry a light fragrance of
incense. When I brought it closer to my nose, the smell grew more distinct. No doubt about it:
it was incense. The card bore a single line of small, intensely black letters:
Malta Kano
Malta? I turned the card over. It was blank.
While I sat there wondering about the meaning of this name card, the waiter came and
placed an ice-filled glass in front of her, then filled it halfway with tonic water. The glass had
a wedge of lemon in it. The waitress came with a silver-colored coffeepot on her tray. She
placed a cup in front of me and poured it full of coffee. With the furtive movements of
someone slipping an unlucky shrine fortune into someone elses hand, she eased the bill onto
the table and left.
 Its blank, Malta Kano said to me.
I was still staring at the back of her name card.
 Just my name. There is no need for me to include my address or telephone number. No
one ever calls me. I am the one who makes the calls. 
 I see, I said. This meaningless response hovered in the air above the table like the
floating island in Gullivers Travels.
Holding her glass with both hands, she took one tiny sip through a straw. The hint of a
frown crossed her face, after which she thrust the glass aside, as if she had lost all interest in
it.
 Malta is not my real name, said Malta Kano. The Kano is real, but the Malta is a
professional name I took from the island of Malta. Have you ever been to Malta, Mr. Okada? 
I said I had not. I had never been to Malta, and I had no plans to go to Malta in the near
future. It had never even crossed my mind to go there. All I knew about Malta was the Herb
Alpert performance of The Sands of Malta, an authentic stinker of a song.
 I once lived in Malta, she said. For three years. The water there is terrible.
Undrinkable. Like diluted seawater. And the bread they bake there is salty. Not because they
put salt in it, but because the water they make it with is salty. The bread is not bad, though. I
rather like Maltas bread. 
I nodded and sipped my coffee.
 As bad as it tastes, the water from one particular place on Malta has a wonderful
influence on the bodys elements. It is very special-even mystical-water, and it is available in
only the one place on the island. The spring is in the mountains, and you have to climb several
hours from a village at the base to get there. The water cannot be transported from the site of
the spring. If it is taken elsewhere, it loses its power. The only way you can drink it is to go
there yourself. It is mentioned in documents from the time of the Crusades. They called it
spirit water. Alien Ginsberg once came there to drink it. So did Keith Richards. I lived there
for three years, in the little village at the foot of the mountain. I raised vegetables and learned
weaving. I climbed to the spring every day and drank the special water. From to.
Once, for a whole week, I drank only that water and ate no food. You must not put anything
but that water in your mouth for an entire week. This is a kind of discipline that is required
there. I believe it can be called a religious austerity. In this way you purify your body. For me,
it was a truly wonderful experience. This is how I came to choose the name Malta for
professional purposes when I returned to Japan. 
 May I ask what your profession is? 
She shook her head. It is not my profession, properly speaking. I do not take money for 
what I do. I am a consultant. I talk with people about the elements of the body. I am also
engaged in research on water that has beneficial effects on the elements of the body. Making
money is not a problem for me. I have whatever assets I need. My father is a doctor, and he
has given my younger sister and myself stocks and real estate in a kind of living trust. An
accountant manages them for us. They produce a decent income each year. I have also written
several books that bring in a little income. My work on the elements of the body is an entirely
nonprofit activity. Which is why my card bears neither address nor telephone number. I am
the one who makes the calls. 
I nodded, but this was simply a physical movement of the head: I had no idea what she
was talking about. I could understand each of the words she spoke, but it was impossible for
me to grasp their overall meaning. Elements of the body?
Alien Ginsberg?
I became increasingly uneasy. Im not one of those people with special intuitive gifts, but
the more time I spent with this woman, the more I seemed to smell trouble.
 Youll have to pardon me, I said, but I wonder if I could ask you to explain things from
the beginning, step by step. I talked to my wife a little while ago, and all she said was that I
should see you and talk to you about our missing cat. To be entirely honest, I dont really get
the point of what youve just been telling me. Does it have anything to do with the cat? 
 Yes, indeed, she said. But before I go into that, there is something I would like you to
know, Mr. Okada. 
She opened the metal clasp of her pocketbook again and took out a white envelope. In the
envelope was a photograph, which she handed to me. My sister, she said. It was a color
snapshot of two women. One was Malta Kano, and in the photo, too, she was wearing a hat-a
yellow knit hat. Again it was ominously mismatched with her outfit. Her sister-I assumed this
was the younger sister whom she had mentioned-wore a pastel-colored suit and matching hat
of the kind that had been popular in the early sixties. I seemed to recall that such colors had
been known as sherbet tone back then. One thing was certain, however: these sisters were
fond of hats. The hairstyle of the younger one was precisely that of Jacqueline Kennedy in her
White House days, loaded with hair spray. She wore a little too much makeup, but she could
be fairly described as beautiful. She was in her early to mid-twenties. I handed the photo back
to Malta Kano, who returned it to its envelope and the envelope to the handbag, shutting the
clasp.
 My sister is five years my junior, she said. She was defiled by Noboru Wataya.
Violently raped. 
Terrific. I wanted to get the hell out of there. But I couldnt just stand up and walk away. I
took a handkerchief from my jacket pocket, wiped my mouth with it, and returned it to the
same pocket. Then I cleared my throat.
 Thats terrible, I said. I dont know anything about this, but if he did hurt your sister,
you have my heartfelt condolences. I must tell you, however, that my brother-in-law and I
have virtually nothing to do with each other. So if you are expecting some kind of- 
 Not at all, Mr. Okada, she declared. I do not hold you responsible in any way. If there
is someone who should be held responsible for what happened, that person is myself. For
being inattentive. For not having protected her as I should have. Unfortunately, certain events
made it impossible for me to do so. These things can happen, Mr. Okada. As you know, we
live in a violent and chaotic world. And within this world, there are places that are still more
violent, still more chaotic. Do you understand what I mean, Mr. Okada? What has happened
has happened. My sister will recover from her wounds, from her defilement. She must. Thank
goodness they were not fatal. As I have said to my sister, the potential was there for
something much, much worse to happen. What I am most concerned about is the elements of
her body. 
 Elements of her body, I said. This elements of the body business was obviously a 
consistent theme of hers.
 I cannot explain to you in detail how all these circumstances are related. It would be a
very long and very complicated story, and although I mean no disrespect to you when I say
this, it would be virtually impossible for you at this stage, Mr. Okada, to attain an accurate
understanding of the true meaning of that story, which involves a world that we deal with on a
professional basis. I did not invite you here in order to voice any complaint to you in that
regard. You are, of course, in no way responsible for what has happened. I simply wanted you
to know that, although it may be a temporary condition, my sisters elements have been
defiled by Mr. Wataya. You and she are likely to have some form of contact with each other
sometime in the future. She is my assistant, as I mentioned earlier. At such time, it would
probably be best for you to be aware of what occurred between her and Mr. Wataya and to
realize that these things can happen. 
A short silence followed. Malta Kano looked at me as if to say, Please think about what I
have told you. And so I did. About Noboru Watayas having raped Malta Kanos sister. About
the relationship between that and the elements of the body. And about the relationship
between those and the disappearance of our cat.
 Do I understand you to be saying, I ventured, that neither you nor your sister intends to
bring a formal complaint on this matter... to go to the police... ? 
 No, of course we will do no such thing, said Malta Kano, her face expressionless.
 Properly speaking, we do not hold anyone responsible. We would simply like to have a more
precise idea of what caused such a thing to happen. Until we solve this question, there is a real
possibility that something even worse could occur. 
I felt a degree of relief on hearing this. Not that it would have bothered me in the least if
Noboru Wataya had been convicted of rape and sent to prison. It couldnt happen to a nicer
guy. But Kumikos brother was a rather well-known figure. His arrest and trial would be
certain to make the headlines, and that would be a terrible shock for Kumiko. If only for my
own mental health, I preferred the whole thing to go away.
 Rest assured, said Malta Kano, I asked to see you today purely about the missing cat.
That was the matter about which Mr. Wataya sought my advice. Mrs. Okada had consulted
him on the matter, and he in turn consulted me. 
That explained a lot. Malta Kano was some kind of clairvoyant or channeler or something,
and they had consulted her on the whereabouts of the cat. The Wataya family was into this
kind of stuff-divination and house physiognomy and such. That was fine with me: people
were free to believe anything they liked. But why did he have to go and rape the younger
sister of his spiritual counselor? Why stir up a lot of pointless trouble?
 Is that your area of expertise? I asked. Helping people find things? 
She stared at me with those depthless eyes of hers, eyes that looked as if they were staring
into the window of a vacant house. Judging from their expression, she had failed to grasp the
meaning of my question.
Without answering the question, she said, You live in a very strange place, dont you,
Mr. Okada? 
 I do? I said. Strange in what way? 
Instead of replying, she pushed her nearly untouched glass of tonic water another six or
eight inches away from herself. Cats are very sensitive creatures, you know. 
Another silence descended on the two of us.
 So our place is strange, and cats are sensitive animals, I said. OK. But weve lived
there a long time-the two of us and the cat. Why now, all of a sudden, did it decide to leave
us? Why didnt it leave before now? 
 That I cannot tell you. Perhaps the flow has changed. Perhaps something has obstructed
the flow. 
 The flow. 
 I do not know yet whether your cat is still alive, but I can be certain of one thing: it is no
longer in the vicinity of your house. You will never find the cat in that neighborhood. 
I lifted my cup and took a sip of my now lukewarm coffee. Beyond the tearoom windows,
a misty rain was falling. The sky was closed over with dark, low-hanging clouds. A sad
procession of people and umbrellas climbed up and down the footbridge outside.
 Give me your hand, she said.
I placed my right hand on the table, palm up, assuming she was planning to read my palm.
Instead, she stretched her hand out and put her palm against mine. Then she closed her eyes,
remaining utterly still, as if silently rebuking a faithless lover. The waitress came and refilled
my cup, pretending not to notice what Malta Kano and I were doing. People at nearby tables
stole glances in our direction. I kept hoping all the while that there were no acquaintances of
mine in the vicinity.
 I want you to picture to yourself one thing you saw before you came here today, said
Malta Kano.
 One thing? I asked.
 Just one thing. 
I thought of the flowered minidress that I had seen in Kumikos clothes storage box. Why
that of all things happened to pop into my mind I have no idea. It just did.
We kept our hands together like that for another five minutes- five minutes that felt very
long to me, not so much because I was being stared at by people as that the touch of Malta
Kanos hand had something unsettling about it. It was a small hand, neither hot nor cold. It
had neither the intimate touch of a lovers hand nor the functional touch of a doctors. It had
the same effect on me as her eyes had, turning me into a vacant house. I felt empty: no
furniture, no curtains, no rugs. Just an empty container. Eventually, Malta Kano withdrew her
hand from mine and took several deep breaths. Then she nodded several times.
 Mr. Okada, she said, I believe that you are entering a. phase of your life in which many
different things will occur. The disappearance of your cat is only the beginning. 
 Different things, I said. Good things or bad things? 
She tilted her head in thought. Good things and bad things. Bad things that seem good at
first, and good things that seem bad at first. 
 To me, that sounds very general, I said. Dont you have any more concrete
information? 
 Yes, I suppose what I am saying does sound very general, said Malta Kano. But after
all, Mr. Okada, when one is speaking of the essence of things, it often happens that one can
only speak in generalities. Concrete things certainly do command attention, but they are often
little more than trivia. Side trips. The more one tries to see into the distance, the more
generalized things become. 
I nodded silently-without the slightest inkling of what she was talking about.
 Do I have your permission to call you again? she asked.
 Sure, I said, though in fact I had no wish to be called by anyone. Sure was about the
only answer I could give.
She snatched her red vinyl hat from the table, took the handbag that had been hidden
beneath it, and stood up. Uncertain as to how I should respond to this, I remained seated.
 I do have one small bit of information that I can share with you Malta Kano said,
looking down at me, after she had put on her red hat. You will find your polka-dot tie, but
not in your house. 
 
High Towers and D e e p Wells
(Or, Far from Nomonhan)
 
Back home, I found Kumiko in a good mood. A very good mood. It was almost six
oclock by the time I arrived home after seeing Malta Kano, which meant I had no time to fix
a proper dinner. Instead, I prepared a simple meal from what I found in the freezer, and we
each had a beer. She talked about work, as she always did when she was in a good mood:
whom she had seen at the office, what she had done, which of her colleagues had talent and
which did not. That kind of thing.
I listened, making suitable responses. I heard no more than half of what she was saying.
Not that I disliked listening to her talk about these things. Contents of the conversation aside,
I loved watching her at the dinner table as she talked with enthusiasm about her work. This, I
told myself, was home. We were doing a proper job of carrying out the responsibilities that
we had been assigned to perform at home. She was talking about her work, and I, after having
prepared dinner, was listening to her talk. This was very different from the image of home
that I had imagined vaguely for myself before marriage. But this was the home I had chosen. I
had had a home, of course, when I was a child. But it was not one I had chosen for myself. I
had been born into it, presented with it as an established fact. Now, however, I lived in a
world that I had chosen through an act of will. It was my home. It might not be perfect, but
the fundamental stance I adopted with regard to my home was to accept it, problems and all,
because it was something I myself had chosen. If it had problems, these were almost certainly
problems that had originated within me.
 So what about the cat? she asked. I summarized for her my meeting with Malta Kano in
the hotel in Shinagawa. I told her about my polka-dot tie: that there had been no sign of it in
the wardrobe. That Malta Kano had managed to find me in the crowded tearoom nonetheless.
That she had had a unique way of dressing and of speaking, which I described. Kumiko
enjoyed hearing about Malta Kanos red vinyl hat, but when I was unable to provide a clear
answer regarding the whereabouts of our lost cat, she was deeply disappointed.
 Then she doesnt know where the cat is, either? Kumiko demanded. The best she could
do was tell you it isnt in our neighborhood any longer? 
 Thats about it, I said. I decided not to mention anything about the obstructed flow of
the place we lived in or that this could have some connection to the disappearance of the cat. I
knew it would bother Kumiko, and for my own part, I had no desire to increase the number of
things we had to worry about. We would have had a real problem if Kumiko insisted on
moving because this was a bad place. Given our present economic situation, it would have
been impossible for us to move.
 Thats what she tells me, I said. The cat is not around here anymore. 
 Which means it will never come home? 
 I dont know, I said. She was vague about everything. All she came up with was little
hints. She did say shed get in touch with me when she found out more, though. 
 Do you believe her? 
 Who knows? I dont know anything about this kind of stuff. 
I poured myself some more beer and watched the head settle. Kumiko rested her elbow on
the table, chin in hand.
 She must have told you she wont accept payment or gifts of any kind, she said.
 Uh-huh. Thats certainly a plus, I said. So whats the problem? She wont take our 
money, she wont steal our souls, she wont snatch the princess away. Weve got nothing to
lose. 
 I want you to understand one thing, said Kumiko. That cat is very important to me. Or
should I say to us. We found it the week after we got married. Together. You remember? 
 Of course I do. 
 It was so tiny, and soaking wet in the pouring rain. I went to meet you at the station with
an umbrella. Poor little baby. We saw him on the way home. Somebody had thrown him into
a beer crate next to the liquor store. Hes my very first cat. Hes important to me, a kind of
symbol. I cant lose him. 
 Dont worry. I know that. 
 So where is he? Hes been missing for ten days now. Thats why I called my brother. I
thought he might know a medium or clairvoyant or something, somebody who could find a
missing cat. I know you dont like to ask my brother for anything, but hes followed in my
fathers footsteps. He knows a lot about these things. 
 Ah, yes, the Wataya family tradition, I said as coolly as an evening breeze across an
inlet. But whats the connection between Noboru Wataya and this woman? 
Kumiko shrugged. Im sure shes just somebody he happened to meet. He seems to have
so many contacts these days. 
 Ill bet. 
 He says she possesses amazing powers but that shes pretty strange. Kumiko poked at
her macaroni casserole. What was her name again? 
 Malta Kano, I said. She practiced some kind of religious austerities on Malta. 
 Thats it. Malta Kano. What did you think of her? 
 Hard to say. I looked at my hands, resting on the table. At least she wasnt boring. And
thats a good thing. I mean, the worlds full of things we cant explain, and somebodys got to
fill that vacuum. Better to have somebody who isnt boring than somebody who is. Right?
Like Mr. Honda, for example. 
Kumiko laughed out loud at the mention of Mr. Honda. He was a wonderful old man,
dont you think? I liked him a lot. 
 Me too, I said.
•
For about a year after we were married, Kumiko and I used to visit the home of old Mr.
Honda once a month. A practitioner of spirit possession, he was one of the Wataya familys
favorite channeler types, but he was terrifically hard of hearing. Even with his hearing aid, he
could barely make out what we said to him. We had to shout so loud our voices would rattle
the shoji paper. I used to wonder if he could hear what the spirits said to him if he was so hard
of hearing. But maybe it worked the other way: the worse your ears, the better you could hear
the words of the spirits. He had lost his hearing in the war. A noncommissioned officer with
Japans Manchurian garrison, the Kwantung Army, he had suffered burst eardrums when an
artillery shell or a hand grenade or something exploded nearby during a battle with a
combined Soviet-Outer Mongolian unit at Nomon-han on the border between Outer Mongolia
and Manchuria.
Our visits to Mr. Hondas place were not prompted by a belief on our part in his spiritual
powers. I had never been interested in these things, and Kumiko placed far less trust in such
supernatural matters than either her parents or her brother. She did have a touch of
superstition, and she could be upset by an ominous prognostication, but she never went out of
her way to involve herself in spiritual affairs.
The only reason we went to see Mr. Honda was because her father ordered us to. It was
the one condition he set for us to marry. True, it was a rather bizarre condition, but we went 
along with it to avoid complications. Neither of us had expected an easy time from her family.
Her father was a government official. The younger son of a not very well-to-do farm family in
Niigata, he had attended prestigious Tokyo University on scholarship, graduated with honors,
and become an elite member of the Ministry of Transport. This was all very admirable, as far
as I was concerned. But as is so often the case with men who have made it like this, he was
arrogant and self-righteous. Accustomed to giving orders, he harbored not the slightest doubt
concerning the values of the world to which he belonged. For him, hierarchy was everything.
He bowed to superior authority without question, and he trampled those beneath him without
hesitation. Neither Kumiko nor I believed that a man like that would accept a poor, twentyfour-year-old
nobody like me, without position or pedigree or even decent grades or future
promise, as a marriage partner for his daughter. We figured that after her parents turned us
down, wed get married on our own and live without having anything to do with them.
Still, I did the right thing. I formally went to ask Kumikos parents for her hand in
marriage. To say that their reception of me was cool would be an understatement. The doors
of all the worlds refrigerators seemed to have been thrown open at once.
That they gave us their permission in the end-with reluctance, but in a near-miraculous
turn of events-was thanks entirely to Mr. Honda. He asked them everything they had learned
about me, and in the end he declared that if their daughter was going to get married, I was the
best possible partner for her; that if she wanted to marry me, they could only invite terrible
consequences by opposing the match. Kumikos parents had absolute faith in Mr. Honda at
the time, and so there was nothing they could do but accept me as their daughters husband.
Finally, though, I was always the outsider, the uninvited guest. Kumiko and I would visit
their home and have dinner with them twice a month with mechanical regularity. This was a
truly loathsome experience, situated at the precise midpoint between a meaningless mortification
of the flesh and brutal torture. Throughout the meal, I had the sense that their dining
room table was as long as a railway station. They would be eating and talking about
something way down at the other end, and I was too far away for them to see. This went on
for a year, until Kumikos father and I had a violent argument, after which we never saw each
other again. The relief this gave me bordered on ecstasy. Nothing so consumes a person as
meaningless exertion.
For a time after our marriage, though, I did exert myself to keep relations between us on a
good footing. And without a doubt, the least painful of my exertions were those monthly
meetings with Mr. Honda.
All payments to Mr. Honda were made by Kumikos father. We merely had to visit Mr.
Hondas home in Meguro once a month with a big bottle of sake, listen to what he had to tell
us, and go home. Simple.
We took to Mr. Honda immediately. He was a nice old man, whose face would light up
whenever he saw the sake we had brought him. We liked everything about him-except
perhaps for the way he left his television on full blast because he was so hard of hearing.
We always went to his house in the morning. Winter and summer, he sat with his legs
down in the sunken hearth. In winter he would have a quilt wrapped around his waist to hold
in the heat of the charcoal fire. In summer he used neither quilt nor fire. He was apparently a
rather famous fortune-teller, but he lived very simply-even ascetically. His house was small,
with a tiny entrance hall barely big enough for one person at a time to tie or untie a pair of
shoes. The tatami mats on his floors were badly worn, and cracked windowpanes were
patched with tape. Across the lane stood an auto repair shop, where there was always
someone yelling at the top of his lungs. Mr. Honda wore a kimono styled midway between a
sleeping robe and a traditional workmans jacket. It gave no evidence of having been washed
in the recent past. He lived alone and had a woman come in to do the cooking and cleaning.
For some reason, though, he never let her launder his robe. Scraggly white whiskers hung on
his sunken cheeks. 
If there was anything in Mr. Hondas house that could be called impressive, it was the
huge color television set. In such a tiny house, its gigantic presence was overwhelming. It was
always tuned to the government-supported NHK network. Whether this was because he loved
NHK, or he couldnt be bothered to change the channel, or this was a special set that received
only NHK, I had no way of telling, but NHK was all he ever watched. Instead of a flower
arrangement or a calligraphic scroll, the living rooms ceremonial alcove was filled with this
huge television set, and Mr. Honda always sat facing it, stirring the divining sticks on the
table atop his sunken hearth while NHK continued to blast out cooking shows, bonsai care
instructions, news updates, and political discussions.
 Legal work might be the wrong thing for you, sonny, said Mr. Honda one day, either to
me or to someone standing twenty yards behind me.
 It might? 
 Yep, it might. The law presides over things of this world, finally. The world where
shadow is shadow and light is light, yin is yin and yang is yang, Im me and hes him. I am
me and / He is him: / Autumn eve. But you dont belong to that world, sonny. The world you
belong to is above that or below that. 
 Which is better? I asked, out of simple curiosity. Above or below? Its not that either
one is better, he said. After a brief coughing fit, he spat a glob of phlegm onto a tissue and
studied it closely before crumpling the tissue and throwing it into a wastebasket. Its not a
question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when youre
supposed to go up and down when youre supposed to go down. When youre supposed to go
up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When youre supposed to go down, find the
deepest well and go down to the bottom. When theres no flow, stay still. If you resist the
flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness. ‘I am he and / He is
me: / Spring nightfall. Abandon the self, and there you are. 
 Is this one of those times when theres no flow? Kumiko asked.
 Hows that? 
 IS THIS ONE OF THOSE TIMES WHEN THERES NO FLOW? Kumiko shouted.
 No flow now, Mr. Honda said, nodding to himself. Nows the time to stay still. Dont
do anything. Just be careful of water. Sometime in the future, this young fellow could
experience real suffering in connection with water. Water thats missing from where its
supposed to be. Water thats present where its not supposed to be. In any case, be very, very
careful of water. 
Kumiko, beside me, was nodding with the utmost gravity, but I could see she was
struggling not to laugh. What kind of water? I asked.
 I dont know, said Mr. Honda. Water. 
On the TV, some university professor was saying that peoples chaotic use of Japanese
grammar corresponded precisely to the chaos in their lifestyles. Properly speaking, of course,
we cannot call it chaos. Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for
using it, but people wont necessarily follow them. It sounded interesting, but Mr. Honda just
went on talking about water.
 Tell you the truth, I suffered over water, he said. There was no water in Nomonhan.
The front line was a mess, and supplies were cut off. No water. No rations. No bandages. No
bullets. It was awful. The big boys in the rear were interested in only one thing: occupying
territory as fast as possible. Nobody was thinking about supplies. For three days, I had almost
no water. If you left a washrag out, itd be wet with dew in the morning. You could wring out
a few drops to drink, but that was it. There was just no other water at all. I wanted to die, it
was so bad. Being thirsty like that is the worst thing in the world. I was ready to run out and
take a bullet. Men who got shot in the stomach would scream for water. Some of them went
crazy with the thirst. It was a living hell. We could see a big river flowing right in front of us,
with all the water anybody could ever drink. But we couldnt get to it. Between us and the 
river was a line of huge Soviet tanks with flamethrowers. Machine gun emplacements bristled
like pincushions. Sharpshooters lined the high ground. They sent up flares at night. All we
had was Model infantry rifles and twenty-five bullets each. Still, most of my buddies went
to the river. They couldnt take it. Not one of them made it back. They were all killed. So you
see, when youre supposed to stay still, stay still. 
He pulled out a tissue, blew his nose loudly, and examined the results before crumpling
the tissue and throwing it into the wastebasket.
 It can be hard to wait for the flow to start, he said, but when you have to wait, you have
to wait. In the meantime, assume youre dead. 
 You mean I should stay dead for now? I asked.
 Hows that? 
 YOU MEAN I SHOULD STAY DEAD FOR NOW? 
 Thats it, sonny. ‘Dying is the only way / For you to float free: / Nomonhan. 
He went on talking about Nomonhan for another hour. We just sat there and listened. We
had been ordered to receive his teaching, but in a year of monthly visits to his place, he
almost never had a teaching for us to receive. He rarely performed divination. The one
thing he talked about was the Nomonhan Incident: how a cannon shell blew off half the skull
of the lieutenant next to him, how he leaped on a Soviet tank and burned it with a Molotov
cocktail, how they cornered and shot a downed Soviet pilot. All his stories were interesting,
even thrilling, but as with anything else, you hear them seven or eight times and they tend to
lose some of their luster. Nor did he simply tell his stories. He screamed them. He could
have been standing on a cliff edge on a windy day, shouting to us across a chasm. It was like
watching an old Kurosawa movie from the very front row of a run-down theater. Neither of us
could hear much of anything for a while after we left his house.
Still, we-or at least I- enjoyed listening to Mr. Hondas stories. Most of them were bloody,
but coming from the mouth of a dying old man in a dirty old robe, the details of battle lost the
ring of reality. They sounded more like fairy tales. Almost half a century earlier, Mr. Hondas
unit had fought a ferocious battle over a barren patch of wilderness on the ManchurianMongolian
border. Until I heard about it from Mr. Honda, I knew almost nothing about the
battle of Nomonhan. And yet it had been a magnificent battle. Almost bare-handed, they had
defied the superior Soviet mechanized forces, and they had been crushed. One unit after another
had been smashed, annihilated. Some officers had, on their own initiative, ordered their
troops to retreat to avoid annihilation; their superiors forced them to commit suicide. Most of
the troops captured by the Soviets refused to participate in the postwar exchange of prisoners,
because they were afraid of being tried for desertion in the face of the enemy. These men
ended up contributing their bones to the Mongolian earth. Sent home with an honorable
discharge after he lost his hearing, Mr. Honda became a practitioner of divination.
 It was probably all to the good, he said. If my hearing hadnt been ruined, I probably
would have died in the South Pacific. Thats what happened to most of the troops who
survived Nomonhan. Nomonhan was a great embarrassment for the Imperial Army, so they
sent the survivors where they were most likely to be killed. The commanding officers who
made such a mess of Nomonhan went on to have distinguished careers in central command.
Some of the bastards even became politicians after the war. But the guys who fought their
hearts out for them were almost all snuffed out. 
 Why was Nomonhan such an embarrassment for the army? I asked. The troops all
fought bravely, and a lot of them died, right? Why did the survivors have to be treated so
badly? 
But Mr. Honda seemed not to hear my question. He stirred and rattled his divining sticks.
 Youd better be careful of water, he said.
And so ended the days session. 
•
After my fight with Kumikos father, we stopped going to Mr. Hondas. It was impossible
for me to continue visiting him, knowing it was being paid for by my father-in-law, and we
were not in any position to pay him ourselves. We could barely hold our heads above water in
those days. Eventually, we forgot about Mr. Honda, just as most busy young people tend to
forget about most old people.
•
In bed that night, I went on thinking about Mr. Honda. Both he and Malta Kano had
spoken to me about water. Mr. Honda had warned me to be careful. Malta Kano had
undergone austerities on the island of Malta in connection with her research on water. Perhaps
it was a coincidence, but both of them had been deeply concerned about water. Now it was
starting to worry me. I turned my thoughts to images of the battlefield at Nomonhan: the
Soviet tanks and machine gun emplacements, and the river flowing beyond them. The
unbearable thirst. In the darkness, I could hear the sound of the river.
 Toru, Kumiko said to me in a tiny voice, are you awake? 
 Uh-huh. 
 About the necktie. I just remembered. I took it to the cleaners in December. It needed
pressing. I guess I just forgot. 
 December? Kumiko, thats over six months ago! 
 I know. And you know I never do anything like that, forgetting things. It was such a
lovely necktie, too. She put her hand on my shoulder. I took it to the cleaners by the
station. Do you think they still have it? 
 Ill go tomorrow. Its probably there. 
 What makes you think so? Six months is a long time. Most cleaners will get rid of things
that arent claimed in three months. They can do that. Its the law. What makes you think its
still there? 
 Malta Kano said Id find it. Somewhere outside the house. 
I could feel her looking at me in the dark.
 You mean you believe in what she says? 
 Im starting to. 
 Pretty soon you and my brother might Start seeing eye-to-eye she said, a note of
pleasure in her voice. ‘
 We just might, I said.
I kept thinking about the Nomonhan battlefield after Kumiko fell asleep. The soldiers
were all asleep there. The sky overhead was filled with stars, and millions of crickets were
chirping. I could hear the river. I ifell asleep listening to it flow.
 
Hooked on Lemon Drops
 
Flightless Bird and WaterIess Well
After doing the breakfast dishes, I rode my bike to the cleaners by the station. The ownera
thin man in his late forties, with deep wrinkles in his forehead-was listening to a tape of the
Percy Faith orchestra on a boom box that had been set on a shelf. It was a large JVC, with
some kind of extra woofers attached and a. mound of cassette tapes standing by. The
orchestra was performing Taras Theme, making the most of its lush string section. The
owner himself was in the back of the shop, whistling along with the music as he ran a steam
iron over a shirt, his movements sharp and energetic. I approached the counter and announced
with suitable apologies that I had brought a necktie in late last year and forgotten to pick it up.
To his peaceful little world at nine-thirty in the morning, this must have been tantamount to
the arrival of a messenger bearing terrible news in a Greek tragedy.
 No ticket, either, I suppose, he said, in a strangely distant voice. He was talking not to
me but to the calendar on the wall by the counter. The photo for June showed the Alps-a green
valley, cows grazing, a hard-edged white cloud floating against Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn
or something. Then he looked at me with an expression on his face that all but said, If you
were going to forget the damned thing, you should have forgotten it! It was a direct and
eloquent look.
 End of the year, huh? Thats a toughie. Were talkin more than six months ago. All
right, Ill have a look, but dont expect me to find it. 
He switched off his iron, set it on the ironing board, and, whistling along with the theme
from A Summer Place, started to rummage through the shelves in the back room.
Back in high school, I had taken my girlfriend to see A Summer Place. It starred Troy
Donahue and Sandra Dee. We saw it in a revival theater on a double bill with Connie
Franciss Follow the Boys. It had been pretty bad, as far as I could remember, but hearing the
music now in a cleaners, thirteen years later, I could bring back only good memories from
that time.
 That was a blue polka-dot necktie? asked the owner. Name Okada? 
 Thats it, I said.
 Youre in luck. 
•
As soon as I got home, I phoned Kumiko at work. They had the tie, I said.
 Incredible, she said. Good for you! 
It sounded artificial, like praise for a son bringing home good grades. This made me feel
uneasy. I should have waited until her lunch break to phone.
 Im so relieved, she said. But Ive got someone on hold right now. Sorry. Could you
call me back at noon? 
 That I will, I said.
After hanging up, I went out to the veranda with the morning paper. As always, I lay on
my stomach with the want ads spread out before me, taking all the time I needed to read them
from one end to the other, the columns filled with incomprehensible codes and clues. The
variety of professions in this world was amazing, each assigned its place amid the papers
neat rows, as on a new graveyard map.
As happened each morning, I heard the wind-up bird winding its spring in a treetop
somewhere. I closed the paper, sat up with my back against a post, and looked at the garden.
Soon the bird gave its rasping cry once more, a long creaking sort of sound that came from the
top of the neighbors pine tree. I strained to see through the branches, but there was no sign of 
the bird, only its cry. As always. And so the world had its spring wound for the day.
Just before ten, it started to rain. Not a heavy rain. You couldnt really be sure it was
raining, the drops were so fine, but if you looked hard, you could tell. The world existed in
two states, raining and nonraining, and there should be a line of demarcation between the two.
I remained seated on the veranda for a while, staring at the line that was supposed to be there.
What should I do with the time until lunch? Go for a swim at the nearby ward pool or to
the alley to look for the cat? Leaning against the veranda post, watching the rain fall in the
garden, I went back and forth between the two. Pool. Cat.
The cat won. Malta Kano had said that the cat was no longer in the neighborhood. But that
morning I had an indefinable urge to go out and look for it. Cat hunting had become a part of
my daily routine. And besides, Kumiko might be cheered somewhat to learn that I had given
it a try. I put on my light raincoat. I decided not to take an umbrella. I put on my tennis shoes
and left the house with the key and a few lemon drops in my coat pocket. I cut across the
yard, but just as I set one hand on the cinder-block wall, a phone rang. I stood still, straining
my ears, but I couldnt tell whether it was our phone or a neighbors. The minute you leave
your house, all phones sound alike. I gave up and climbed over the wall.
I could feel the soft grass through the thin soles of my tennis shoes. The alley was quieter
than usual. I stood still for a while, holding my breath and listening, but I couldnt hear a
thing. The phone had stopped ringing. I heard no bird cries or street noises. The sky was
painted over, a perfect uniform gray. On days like this the clouds probably absorbed the
sounds from the surface of the earth. And not just sounds. All kinds of things. Perceptions, for
example.
Hands shoved into the pockets of my raincoat, I slipped down the narrow alley. Where
clothes-drying poles jutted out into the lane, I squeezed sideways between the walls. I passed
directly beneath the eaves of other houses. In this way I made my silent way down this
passage reminiscent of an abandoned canal. My tennis shoes on the grass made no noise at all.
The only real sound I heard on my brief journey was that of a radio playing in one house. It
was tuned to a talk show discussing callers problems. A middle-aged man was complaining
to the host about his mother-in-law. From the snatches I caught, the woman was sixty-eight
and crazy about horse racing. Once I was past the house, the sound of the radio began to fade
until there was nothing left, as if what had gradually faded into nothingness was not only the
sound of the radio but the middle-aged man and his horse-obsessed mother-in-law, both of
whom must exist somewhere in the world.
I finally reached the vacant house. It stood there, hushed as ever.
(Against the background of gray, low-hanging clouds, its second-story storm shutters
nailed shut, the house loomed as a dark, shadowy presence. It could have been a huge
freighter caught on a reef one stormy night long ago and left to rot. If it hadnt been for the
increased height of the grass since my last visit, I might have believed that time had stopped
in this one particular place. Thanks to the long days of rain, the blades of grass glowed with a
deep-green luster, and they gave off the smell of wild-ness unique to things that sink their
roots into the earth. In the exact center of this sea of grass stood the bird sculpture, in the very
same pose I had seen it in before, with its wings spread, ready to take off. This was one bird
that could never take off, of course. I knew that, and the bird knew that. It would go on
waiting where it had been set until the day it was carted off or smashed to pieces. No other
possibilities existed for it to leave this garden. The only thing moving in there was a small
white butterfly, fluttering across the grass some weeks behind season. It made uncertain
progress, like a searcher who has forgotten what he was searching for. After five minutes of
this fruitless hunt, the butterfly went off somewhere.
Sucking on a lemon drop, I leaned against the chain-link fence and looked at the garden.
There was no sign of the cat. There was no sign of anything. The place looked like a still,
stagnant pool in which some enormous force had blocked the natural flow. 
I felt the presence of someone behind me and whirled around. But there was no one. There
was only the fence on the other side of the alley, and the small gate in the fence, the gate in
which the girl had stood. But it was closed now, and in the yard was no trace of anyone.
Everything was damp and silent. And there were the smells: Grass. Rain. My raincoat. The
lemon drop under my tongue, half melted. They all came together in a single deep breath. I
turned to survey my surroundings once more, but there was no one. Listening hard, I caught
the muffled chop of a distant helicopter. People were up there, flying above the clouds. But
even that sound drew off into the distance, and silence descended once again.
The chain-link fence surrounding the vacant house had a gate, also of chain link, not
surprisingly. I gave it a tentative push. It opened with almost disappointing ease, as if it were
urging me to come in. No problem, it seemed to be telling me. Just walk right in. I didnt
have to rely on the detailed knowledge of the law that I had acquired over eight long years to
know that it could be a very serious problem indeed. If a neighbor spotted me in the vacant
house and reported me to the police, they would show up and question me. I would say I was
looking for my cat; it had disappeared, and I was looking for it all over the neighborhood.
They would demand to know my address and occupation. I would have to tell them I was out
of work. That would make them all the more suspicious. They were probably nervous about
left-wing terrorists or something, convinced that left-wing terrorists were on the move all over
Tokyo, with hidden arsenals of guns and homemade bombs. Theyd call Kumiko at her office
to verify my story. Shed be upset.
Oh, what the hell. I went in, pulling the gate closed behind me. If something was going to
happen, let it happen. If something wanted to happen, let it happen.
I crossed the garden, scanning the area. My tennis shoes on the grass were as soundless as
ever. There were several low fruit trees, the names of which I did not know, and a generous
stretch of lawn. It was all overgrown now, hiding everything. Ugly maypop vines had crawled
all over two of the fruit trees, which looked as if they had been strangled to death. The row of
osmanthus along the fence had been turned a ghastly white from a coating of insects eggs. A
stubborn little fly kept buzzing by my ear for a time.
Passing the stone statue, I walked over to a nested pile of white plastic lawn chairs under
the eaves. The topmost chair was filthy, but the next one down was not bad. I dusted it off
with my hand and sat on it. The overgrown weeds between here and the fence made it
impossible for me to be seen from the alley, and the eaves sheltered me from the rain. I sat
and whistled and watched the garden receiving its bounty of fine raindrops. At first I was
unaware of what tune I was whistling, but then I realized it was the overture to Rossinis
Thieving Magpie, the same tune I had been whistling when the strange woman called as I was
cooking spaghetti.
Sitting here in the garden like this, with no other people around, looking at the grass and
the stone bird, whistling a tune (badly), I had the feeling that I had returned to my childhood. I
was in a secret place where no one could see me. This put me in a quiet mood. I felt like
throwing a stone-a small stone would be OK-at some target. The stone bird would be a good
one. Id hit it just hard enough to make a little clunk. I used to play by myself a lot like that
when I was a kid. Id set up an empty can, back way off, and throw rocks until the can filled
up. I could do it for hours. Just now, though, I didnt have any rocks at my feet. Oh, well. No
place has everything you need.
I pulled up my feet, bent my knees, and rested my chin on my hand. Then I closed my
eyes. Still no sounds. The darkness behind my closed eyelids was like the cloud-covered sky,
but the gray was somewhat deeper. Every few minutes, someone would come and paint over
the gray with a different-textured gray-one with a touch of gold or green or red. I was
impressed with the variety of grays that existed. Human beings were so strange. All you had
to do was sit still for ten minutes, and you could see this amazing variety of grays.
Browsing through my book of gray color samples, I started whistling again, without a 
thought in my head.
 Hey, said someone.
I snapped my eyes open. Leaning to the side, I stretched to see the gate above the weed
tops. It was open. Wide open. Someone had followed me inside. My heart started pounding.
 Hey, the someone said again. A womans voice. She stepped out from behind the statue
and started toward me. It was the girl who had been sunbathing in the yard across the alley.
She wore the same light-blue Adidas T-shirt and short pants. Again she walked with a slight
limp. The one thing different from before was that she had taken off her sunglasses.
 What are you doing here? she asked.
 Looking for the cat, I said.
 Are you sure? It doesnt look that way to me. Youre just sitting there and whistling with
your eyes closed. Itd be kinda hard to find much of anything that way, dont you think? 
I felt myself blushing.
 It doesnt bother me, she went on, but somebody who doesnt know you might think
you were some kind of pervert. She paused. Youre not a pervert, are you? 
 Probably not, I said.
She approached me and undertook a careful study of the nested lawn chairs, choosing one
without too much dirt on it and doing one more close inspection before setting it on the
ground and lowering herself into it.
 And your whistlings terrible, she said. I dont know the tune, but it had no melody at
all. Youre not gay, are you? 
 Probably not, I said. Why? 
 Somebody told me gays are lousy whistlers. Is that true? 
 Who knows? Its probably nonsense. 
 Anyway, I dont care even if you are gay or a pervert or anything. By the way, whats
your name? I dont know what to call you. 
 Toru Okada, I said. She repeated my name to herself several times. Not much of a
name, is it? she said.
 Maybe not, I said. Ive always thought it sounded kind of like some prewar foreign
minister: Toru Okada. See? 
 That doesnt mean anything to me. I hate history. Its my worst subject. Anyhow, never
mind. Havent you got a nickname? Something easier than Toru Okada? 
I couldnt recall ever having had a nickname. Never once in my life. Why was that? No
nickname, I said. Nothing? ‘Bear? Or ‘Frog? Nothing. 
 Gee, she said. Think of something. 
 Wind-up bird, I said.
 Wind-up bird? she asked, looking at me with her mouth open. What is that? 
 The bird that winds the spring, I said. Every morning. In the tree-tops. It winds the
worlds spring. Creeeak. She went on staring at me.
I sighed. It just popped into my head, I said. And theres more. The bird comes over by
my place every day and goes Creeeak in the neighbors tree. But nobodys ever seen it. 
 Thats neat, I guess. So anyhow, youll be Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Thats not very easy to
say, either, but its way better than Toru Okada. 
 Thank you very much. 
She pulled her feet up into the chair and put her chin on her knees. How about your
name? I asked.
 May Kasahara. May... like the month of May. 
 Were you born in May? 
 Do you have to ask? Can you imagine the confusion if somebody born in June was
named May? 
 I guess youre right, I said. I suppose youre still out of school? 
 I was watching you for a long time, she said, ignoring my question.
 From my room. With my binoculars. I saw you go in through the gate. I keep a little pair
of binoculars handy, for watching what goes on in the alley. All kinds of people go through
there. Ill bet you didnt know that.
 And not just people. Animals too. What were you doing here by yourself all that time? 
 Spacing out, I said. Thinking about the old days. Whistling. May Kasahara bit a
thumbnail.
 Youre kinda weird, she said.
 Im not weird. People do it all the time. 
 Maybe so, but they dont do it in a neighbors vacant house. You can stay in your own
yard if all you want to do is space out and think about the old days and whistle. She had a
point there.
 Anyhow, I guess Noboru Wataya never came home, huh? I shook my head.
 And I guess you never saw him, either, after that? I asked.
 No, and I was on the lookout for him, too: a brown-striped tiger cat. Tail slightly bent at
the tip. Right? 
From the pocket of her short pants she took a box of Hope regulars land lit up with a
match. After a few puffs, she stared right at me and said, Your hairs thinning a little, isnt
it? 
My hand moved automatically to the back of my head.
 Not there, silly, she said. Your front hairline. Its higher than it should be, dont you
think? 
 I never really noticed. 
 Well, I did, she said. Thats where youre going to go bald. Your hairlines going to
move up and up like this. She grabbed a handful of her own hair in the front and thrust her
bare forehead in my face. Youd better be careful. 
I touched my hairline. Maybe she was right. Maybe it had receded somewhat. Or was it
my imagination? Something new to worry about.
 What do you mean? I asked. How can I be careful? 
 You cant, I guess. Theres nothing you can do. Theres no way to prevent baldness.
Guys who are going to go bald go bald. When their time comes, thats it: they just go bald.
Theres nothing you can do to stop it. They tell you you can keep from going bald with proper
hair care, but thats bullshit. Look at the bums who sleep in Shinjuku Station. Theyve all got
great heads of hair. You think theyre washing it every day with Clinique or Vidal Sassoon or
rubbing Lotion X into it? Thats what the cosmetics makers will tell you, to get your money. 
 Im sure youre right, I said, impressed. But how do you know so much about
baldness? 
 Ive been working part time for a wig company. Quite a while now. You know I dont go
to school, and Ive got all this time to kill. Ive been doing surveys and questionnaires, that
kind of stuff. So I know all about men losing their hair. Im just loaded with information. 
 Gee, I said.
 But you know, she said, dropping her cigarette butt on the ground and stepping on it,
 in the company I work for, they wont let you say anybodys ‘bald. You have to say ‘men
with a thinning problem. ‘Bald is discriminatory language. I was joking around once and
suggested ‘gentlemen who are follically challenged, and boy, did they get mad! ‘This is no
laughing matter, young lady, they said. Theyre so damned seeerious. Did you know that?
Everybody in the whole damned world is so damned serious. 
I took out my lemon drops, popped one in my mouth, and offered one to May Kasahara.
She shook her head and took out a cigarette.
 Come to think of it, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she said, you were unemployed. Are you
still? 
 Sure am. 
 Are you serious about working? 
 Sure am. No sooner had the words left my mouth than I began to wonder how true they
were. Actually, Im not so sure, I said. I think I need time. Time to think. Im not sure
myself what I need. Its hard to explain. 
Chewing on a nail, May Kasahara looked at me for a while. Tell you what, Mr. Wind-Up
Bird, she said. Why dont you come to work with me one day? At the wig company. They
dont pay much, but the works easy, and you can set your own hours. What do you say?
Dont think about it too much, just do it. For a change of pace. It might help you figure out all
kinds of things. 
She had a point there. Youve got a point there, I said.
 Great! she said. Next time I go, Ill come and get you. Now, where did you say your
house is? 
 Hmm, thats a tough one. Or maybe not. You just keep going and going down the alley,
taking all the turns. On the left youll see a house with a red Honda Civic parked in back. Its
got one of those bumper stickers ‘Let There Be Peace for All the Peoples of the World. Ours
is the next house, but theres no gate opening on the alley. Its just a cinder-block wall, and
you have to climb over it. Its about chin height on me. 
 Dont worry. I can get over a wall that high, no problem. 
 Your leg doesnt hurt anymore? 
She exhaled smoke with a little sighing kind of sound and said, Dont worry. Its
nothing. I limp when my parents are around because I dont want to go to school. Im faking.
It just sort of turned into a habit. I do it even when nobodys looking, when Im in my room
all by myself. Im a perfectionist. What is it they say-Fool yourself to fool others? But anyhow,
Mr. Wind-Up Bird, tell me, have you got guts? 
 Not really, no. 
 Never had ‘em? 
 No, I was never one for guts. Not likely to change, either. 
 How about curiosity? 
 Curiositys another matter. Ive got some of that. 
 Well, dont you think guts and curiosity are kind of similar? said May Kasahara.
 Where theres guts theres curiosity, and where theres curiosity theres guts. No? 
 Hmm, maybe they are kind of similar, I said. Maybe youre right. Maybe they do
overlap at times. 
 Times like when you sneak into somebodys backyard, say. 
 Yeah, like that, I said, rolling a lemon drop on my tongue. When you sneak into
somebodys backyard, it does seem that guts and curiosity are working together. Curiosity can
bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually
evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiositys like a fun friend you cant really
trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own-with whatever guts you
can muster. 
She thought this over for a time. I guess so, she said. I guess thats one way to look at
it. She stood up and brushed off the dirt clinging to the seat of her short pants. Then she
looked down at me. Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, would you like to see the well? 
 The well? I asked. The well?
 Theres a dried-up well here. I like it. Kind of. Want to see it? 
•
We cut through the yard and walked around to the side of the house. It was a round well,
maybe four and a half feet in diameter. Thick planking, cut to shape and size, had been used 
to cap the well, and two concrete blocks had been set on the round wooden cap to keep it in
place. The well curb stood perhaps three feet high, and close by grew a single old tree, as if
standing guard. It was a fruit tree, but I couldnt tell what kind.
Like most everything else connected with this house, the well looked as though it had
been abandoned long before. Something about it felt as if it should be called overwhelming
numbness. Maybe when people take their eyes off them, inanimate objects become even
more inanimate.
Close inspection revealed that the well was in fact far older than the objects that
surrounded it. It had been made in another age, long before the house was built. Even the
wooden cap was an antique. The well curb had been coated with a thick layer of concrete,
almost certainly to strengthen a structure that had been built long before. The nearby tree
seemed to boast of having stood there far longer than any other tree in the area.
I lowered a concrete block to the ground and removed one of the two half-moons that
constituted the wooden cap. Hands on the edge of the well, I leaned over and looked down,
but I could not see to the bottom. It was obviously a deep well, its lower half swallowed in
darkness. I took a sniff. It had a slightly moldy smell.
 It doesnt have any water, said May Kasahara.
A well without water. A bird that cant fly. An alley with no exit. AndMay
picked up a chunk of brick from the ground and threw it into the well. A moment
later came a small, dry thud. Nothing more. The sound was utterly dry, desiccated, as if you
could crumble it in your hands. I straightened up and looked at May Kasahara. I wonder why
it hasnt got any water. Did it dry up? Did somebody fill it in? 
She shrugged. When people fill in a well, dont they fill it all the way to the top? Thered
be no point in leaving a dry hole like this. Somebody could fall in and get hurt. Dont you
think? 
 I think youre right, I said. Something probably made the water dry up. 
I suddenly recalled Mr. Hondas words from long before. When youre supposed to go
up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When youre supposed to go down, find the
deepest well and go down to the bottom. So now I had a well if I needed one.
I leaned over the edge again and looked down into the darkness, anticipating nothing in
particular. So, I thought, in a place like this, in the middle of the day like this, there existed a
darkness as deep as this. I cleared my throat and swallowed. The sound echoed in the
darkness, as if someone else had cleared his throat. My saliva still tasted like lemon drops.
•
I put the cover back on the well and set the block atop it. Then I looked at my watch.
Almost eleven-thirty. Time to call Kumiko during her lunch break.
 Id better go home, I said.
May Kasahara gave a little frown. Go right ahead, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she said. You
fly on home. 
When we crossed the yard, the stone bird was still glaring at the sky with its dry eyes. The
sky itself was still filled with its unbroken covering of gray clouds, but at least the rain had
stopped. May Kasahara tore off a fistful of grass and threw it toward the sky. With no wind to
carry them, the blades of grass dropped to her feet.
 Think of all the hours left between now and the time the sun goes down, she said,
without looking at me.
 True, I said. Lots of hours. 
 
On the Births of Kumiko Okada
and Noboru W a t a y a
 
Raised as an only child, I find it difficult to imagine how grown siblings must feel when they
come in contact with each other in the course of leading their independent lives. In Kumikos
case, whenever the topic of Noboru Wataya came up, she would get a strange look on her
face, as if she had put some odd-tasting thing in her mouth by accident, but exactly what that
look meant I had no way of knowing. In my own feelings toward her elder brother there was
not a trace of anything positive. Kumiko knew this and thought it entirely reasonable. She
herself was far from fond of the man. It was hard to imagine them ever speaking to each other
had the blood relationship not existed between them. But in fact, they were brother and sister,
which made things somewhat more complicated. After I had my argument with her father and
ended all contact with her family, Kumiko had virtually no occasion to see Noboru Wataya.
The argument had been a violent one. I havent had many arguments in the course of my lifeIm
just not the type- but once I do get going, I go all the way. And so my break with
Kumikos father had been complete. Afterward, when I had gotten everything off my chest
that I needed to get off, anger was mysteriously absent. I felt only relief. I never had to see
him again: it was as if a great burden that I had been carrying for a long time had been lifted
from my shoulders. None of the rage or the hatred was left. I even felt a touch of sympathy for
the difficulties he had faced in his life, however stupid and repulsive the shape of that life
might appear to me. I told Kumiko that I would never see her parents again but she was free
to visit them without me anytime she wanted. Kumiko made no attempt to see them.
 Never mind, she said. I wasnt all that crazy about visiting them anyway. 
Noboru Wataya had been living with his parents at the time, but when the argument
started between his father and me, he had simply withdrawn without a word to anyone. This
hadnt taken me by surprise. I was a person of no interest to him. He did his best to avoid
personal contact with me unless it was absolutely necessary. And so, when I stopped seeing
Kumikos parents, there was no longer any reason for me to see Noboru Wataya. Kumiko
herself had no reason to make a point of seeing him. He was busy, she was busy, and they had
never been that close to begin with.
Still, Kumiko would occasionally phone him at his campus office, and he would
occasionally phone her at her company office (though never at our home). She would
announce these contacts to me without going into detail about the substance of their
conversations. I never asked, and she never volunteered the information unless it was
necessary.
I didnt care to know what Kumiko and Noboru Wataya were talking about. Which is not
to say that I resented the fact that they were talking. I just didnt get it. What was there for two
such different human beings to say to each other? Or was it only through the special filter of
the blood relationship that this came about?
•
Though brother and sister, Noboru Wataya and Kumiko were separated in age by nine
years. Another factor behind the lack of any perceptible closeness between the two was
Kumikos having lived for several years with her fathers family. 
Kumiko and Noboru had not been the only children in the Wataya house. Between them
there had been a sister, five years older than Kumiko. At the age of three, however, Kumiko
had been sent from Tokyo to distant Niigata, to be raised for a time by her grandmother.
Kumikos parents later told her that this was done because she had been a sickly child and
they thought she would benefit from the clean air of the countryside, but she never quite
believed this. As far as she herself could remember, she had never been physically weak. She
had never suffered from any major illnesses, and no one in her Niigata home seemed overly
concerned about her health. Im sure it was just some kind of excuse, Kumiko once told me.
Her doubts had been reinforced by something she heard from a relative. Apparently, there
had been a long-standing feud between Kumikos mother and grandmother, and the decision
to bring Kumiko to Niigata was the product of a truce they had concluded. By offering her up
for a time, Kumikos parents had quelled her grandmothers rage, and by having a grandchild
in her possession, the grandmother had obtained concrete confirmation of her ties with her son
(Kumikos father). In other words, Kumiko had been a kind of hostage.
 Besides, Kumiko said to me, they already had two other children. Their third one was
no great loss to them. Not that they were planning to get rid of me: I think they just figured it
wouldnt be too hard on such a young child to be sent away. They probably didnt give it
much thought. It was just the easiest solution to the problem. Can you believe it? I dont know
why, but they had absolutely no idea what something like that can do to a small child. 
She was raised by her grandmother in Niigata from the age of three to six. Nor was there
anything sad or twisted about the life she led in the country. Her grandmother was crazy about
her, and Kumiko had more fun playing with her cousins, who were closer in age to herself,
than with her own brother and sister. She was finally brought back to Tokyo the year she was
to enter elementary school. Her parents had become nervous about the lengthening separation
from their daughter, and they insisted on bringing her back before it was too late. In a sense,
though, it was already too late. In the weeks following the decision to send her back, her
grandmother became increasingly overwrought. She stopped eating and could hardly sleep.
One minute she would be hugging and squeezing little Kumiko with all her might, and the
next she would be slapping her arm with a ruler, hard enough to raise welts. One minute she
would be saying she didnt want to let her go, that she would rather die than lose her, and the
next she would tell her to go away, that she never wanted to see her again. In the foulest
language imaginable, she would tell Kumiko what a terrible woman her mother was. She even
tried to stab herself in the wrist with a pair of scissors. Kumiko could not understand what
was happening around her. The situation was simply too much for her to comprehend.
What she did then was to shut herself off from the outer world. She closed her eyes. She
closed her ears. She shut her mind down. She put an end to any form of thinking or of hoping.
The next several months were a blank. She had no memory of anything that happened in that
time. When she came out of it, she found herself in a new home. It was the home where she
should have been all along. Her parents were there, her brother and her sister. But it was not
her home. It was simply a new environment.
Kumiko became a difficult, taciturn child in these new surroundings. There was no one
she could trust, no one she could depend upon unconditionally. Even in her parents embrace,
she never felt entirely at ease. She did not know their smell. It made her uneasy. She even
hated it at times. In the family, it was only toward her sister that she began, with difficulty, to
open up. Her parents despaired of ever breaking through to her; her brother hardly knew she
existed. But her sister understood the confusion and loneliness that lay behind her stubborn
moods. She stayed with Kumiko through it all, slept in the same room with her, talked with
her, read to her, walked with her to school, helped her with her homework. If Kumiko spent
hours huddled in the corner of her room in tears, the sister would be there, holding her. She
did everything she could to find a way into Kumikos heart. Had she not died from food
poisoning the year after Kumiko returned from Niigata, the situation would have been very 
different.
 If my sister had lived, things might have been better at home, Kumiko said. She was
just a little girl, a sixth grader, but she was the heart of that household. Maybe if she hadnt
died, all of us would have been more normal than we are now. At least I wouldnt be such a
hopeless case. Do you see what I mean? I felt so guilty after that. Why hadnt I died in my
sisters place? I was no good for anybody. I couldnt make anybody happy. Why couldnt I
have been the one? My parents and brother knew exactly how I felt, but they said nothing to
comfort me. Far from it. Theyd talk about my dead sister every chance they got: how pretty
she was, how smart, how much everybody liked her, what a thoughtful person she was, how
well she played the piano. And then they made me take piano lessons! Somebody had to use
the big grand piano after she died. I didnt have the slightest interest in playing. I knew I
could never play as well as she had played, and I didnt need yet another way to demonstrate
how inferior I was to her as a human being. I couldnt take anyones place, least of all hers,
and I didnt want to try. But they wouldnt listen to me. They just wouldnt listen. So to this
day, I hate the sight of a piano. I hate seeing anyone play. 
I felt tremendous anger toward her family when Kumiko told me this. For what they had
done to her. For what they had failed to do for her. This was before we were married. We had
known each other only a little over two months. It was a quiet Sunday morning, and we were
in bed. She talked for a long time about her childhood, as if unraveling a tangled thread,
pausing to assess the validity of each event as she brought it forth. It was the first time she
told me so much about herself. I hardly knew anything about her family or her childhood until
that morning. I knew that she was quiet, that she liked to draw, that she had long, beautiful
hair, that she had two moles on her right shoulder blade. And that sleeping with me was her
first sexual experience.
She cried a little as she spoke. I could understand why she would need to cry. I held her
and stroked her hair. If she had lived, Im sure you would have loved her, said Kumiko.
 Everybody loved her. It was love at first sight. 
 Maybe so, I said. But youre the one I happen to be in love with. Its really very
simple, you know. Its just you and me. Your sisters got nothing to do with it. 
For a while, Kumiko lay there, thinking. Seven-thirty Sunday morning: a time when
everything sounds soft and hollow. I listened to the pigeons shuffling across my apartment
roof, to someone calling a dog in the distance. Kumiko stared at a single spot on the ceiling
for the longest time.
 Tell me, she said at last, do you like cats? 
 Crazy about ‘em, I said. Always had one when I was a kid. I played with it constantly,
even slept with it. 
 Lucky you. I was dying to have a cat. But they wouldnt let me. My mother hated them.
Not once in my life have I managed to get something I really wanted. Not once. Can you
believe it? You cant understand what its like to live like that. When you get used to that kind
of life-of never having anything you want-then you stop knowing what it is you want. I took
her hand. Maybe its been like that for you till now. But youre not a kid anymore. You have
the right to choose your own life. You can start again. If you want a cat, all you have to do is
choose a life in which you can have a cat. Its simple. Its your right... right? 
Her eyes stayed locked on mine. Mmm, she said. Right. A few months later, Kumiko
and I were talking about marriage.
•
If the childhood that Kumiko spent in that house was warped and difficult, Noboru
Watayas boyhood there was strangely distorted in another sense. The parents were mad for
their only son, but they didnt merely shower him with affection; they demanded certain 
things of him as well. The father was convinced that the only way to live a full life in
Japanese society was to earn the highest possible marks and to shove aside anyone and
everyone standing in your path to the top. He believed this with absolute conviction.
It was shortly after I had married his daughter that I heard these very words from the man
himself. All men are not created equal, he said. That was just some righteous-sounding
nonsense they taught you in school. Japan might have the political structure of a democratic
nation, but it was at the same time a fiercely carnivorous society of class in which the weak
were devoured by the strong, and unless you became one of the elite, there was no point in
living in this country. Youd just be ground to dust in the millstones. You had to fight your
way up every rung of the ladder. This kind of ambition was entirely healthy. If people lost that
ambition, Japan would perish. In response to my father-in-laws view, I offered no opinion.
He was not looking for my opinion. He had merely been spouting his belief, a conviction that
would remain unchanged for all eternity.
Kumikos mother was the daughter of a high-ranking official. She had been raised in the
finest Tokyo neighborhood, wanting for nothing, and she possessed neither the opinions nor
the character to oppose her husbands opinions. As far as I could see, she had no opinion at all
about anything that was not set directly in front of her (and in fact, she was extremely
nearsighted). Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in
the wider world, she borrowed her husbands. If this had been all there was to her, she
wouldnt have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered
from an incurable case of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of their own, such
people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other peoples standards or views. The only
principle that governs their minds is the question How do I look? And so Mrs. Wataya
became a narrow, high-strung woman whose only concerns were her husbands place in the
government and her sons academic performance. Anything that failed to enter her narrow
field of vision ceased to have meaning for her.
And so the parents pounded their questionable philosophy and their warped view of the
world into the head of the young Noboru Wataya. They egged him on, providing him with the
best tutors their money could buy. When he took top honors, they rewarded their son by
buying him anything he wanted. His childhood was one of extreme material luxury, but when
he entered the most sensitive and vulnerable phase of life, he had no time for girlfriends, no
chance to go wild with other boys. He had to pour all his energies into maintaining his
position as number one. Whether Noboru Wataya was pleased to live that way or not I do not
know. Kumiko did not know. Noboru Wataya was not the sort of person to reveal his feelings:
not to her, not to his parents, not to anyone. He had no choice anyway. It seems to me that
certain patterns of thought are so simple and one-sided that they become irresistible. In any
case, Noboru Wataya graduated from his elite private preparatory school, majored in
economics at the University of Tokyo, and graduated from this top institution with top grades.
His father expected him to enter the government or a major corporation upon graduation
from the university, but Noboru Wataya chose to remain in academe and become a scholar.
He was no fool. He knew what he was best suited for: not the real world of group action but a
world that called for the disciplined and systematic use of knowledge, that prized the
individual skills of the intellect. He did two years of graduate study at Yale before returning to
the graduate school at Tokyo. He followed his parents promptings shortly thereafter and
agreed to an arranged marriage, but that lasted no more than two years. After his divorce, he
returned to his parents home to live with them. By the time I first met him, Noboru Wataya
was a fully developed oddity, a thoroughly disagreeable character.
About two years after I married Kumiko, Noboru Wataya published a big, thick book. It
was an economics study full of technical jargon, and I couldnt understand a thing he was
trying to say in it. Not one page made sense to me. I tried, but I couldnt make any headway
because I found the writing indecipherable. I couldnt even tell whether this was because the 
contents were so difficult or the writing itself was bad. People in the field thought it was
great, though. One reviewer declared that it was an entirely new kind of economics written
from an entirely new perspective, but that was as much as I could understand of the review
itself. Soon the mass media began to introduce him as a hero for a new age. Whole books
appeared, interpreting his book. Two expressions he had coined, sexual economics and
 excretory economics, became the years buzzwords. Newspapers and magazines carried
feature sections on him as one of the intellectuals of the new age. I couldnt believe that
anyone who wrote these articles understood what Noboru Wataya was saying in his book. I
had my doubts they had even opened it. But such things were of no concern to them. Noboru
Wataya was young and single and smart enough to write a book that nobody could
understand.
It made him famous. The magazines all came to him for critical pieces. He appeared on
television to comment on political and economic questions. Soon he was a regular panel
member on one of the political debate shows. Those who knew Noboru Wataya (including
Kumiko and me) had never imagined him to be suited to such glamorous work. Everyone
thought of him as the high-strung academic type interested in nothing but his field of
specialization. Once he got a taste of the world of mass media, though, you could almost see
him licking his chops. He was good. He didnt mind having a camera pointed at him. If
anything, he even seemed more relaxed in front of the cameras than in the real world. We
watched his sudden transformation in amazement. The Noboru Wataya we saw on television
Wore expensive suits with perfectly matching ties, and eyeglass frames of fine tortoiseshell.
His hair had been done in the latest style. He had obviously been worked on by a professional.
I had never seen him exuding such luxury before. And even if he had been outfitted by the
network, he wore the style with perfect ease, as if he had dressed that way all his life. Who
was this man? I wondered, when I first saw him. Where was the real Noboru Wataya?
In front of the cameras, he played the role of Man of Few Words. When asked for an
opinion, he would state it simply, clearly, and precisely. Whenever the debate heated up and
everyone else was shouting, he kept his cool. When challenged, he would hold back, let his
opponent have his say, and then demolish the persons argument with a single phrase. He had
mastered the art of delivering the fatal blow with a purr and a smile. On the television screen,
he looked far more intelligent and reliable than the real Noboru Wataya. Im not sure how he
accomplished this. He certainly wasnt handsome. But he was tall and slim and had an air of
good breeding. In the medium of television, Noboru Wataya had found the place where he
belonged. The mass media welcomed him with open arms, and he welcomed them with equal
enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, I couldnt stand the sight of him- in print or on TV. He was a man of talent
and ability, to be sure. I recognized that much. He knew how to knock his opponent down
quickly and effectively with the fewest possible words. He had an animal instinct for sensing
the direction of the wind. But if you paid close attention to what he was saying or what he had
written, you knew that his words lacked consistency. They reflected no single worldview
based on profound conviction. His was a world that he had fabricated by combining several
one-dimensional systems of thought. He could rearrange the combination in an instant, as
needed. These were ingenious-even artistic-intellectual permutations and combinations. But to
me they amounted to nothing more than a game. If there was any consistency to his opinions,
it was the consistent lack of consistency, and if he had a worldview, it was a view that proclaimed
his lack of a worldview. But these very absences were what constituted his
intellectual assets. Consistency and an established worldview were excess baggage in the
intellectual mobile warfare that flared up in the mass medias tiny time segments, and it was
his great advantage to be free of such things.
He had nothing to protect, which meant that he could concentrate all his attention on pure
acts of combat. He needed only to attack, to knock his enemy down. Noboru Wataya was an 
intellectual chameleon, changing his color in accordance with his opponents, ad-libbing his
logic for maximum effectiveness, mobilizing all the rhetoric at his command. I had no idea
how he had acquired these techniques, but he clearly had the knack of appealing directly to
the feelings of the mass audience. He knew how to use the kind of logic that moved the great
majority. Nor did it even have to be logic: it had only to appear so, as long as it aroused the
feelings of the masses.
Trotting out the technical jargon was another forte of his. No one knew what it meant, of
course, but he was able to present it in such a way that you knew it was your fault if you
didnt get it. And he was always citing statistics. They were engraved in his brain, and they
carried tremendous persuasive power, but if you stopped to think about it afterward, you
realized that no one had questioned his sources or their reliability.
These clever tactics of his used to drive me mad, but I was never able to explain to anyone
exactly what upset me so. I was never able to construct an argument to refute him. It was like
boxing with a ghost: your punches just swished through the air. There was nothing solid for
them to hit. I was shocked to see even sophisticated intellectuals responding to him. It would
leave me feeling strangely annoyed.
And so Noboru Wataya came to be seen as one of the most intelligent figuresof the day.
Nobody seemed to care about consistency anymore. All they looked for on the tube were the
bouts of intellectual gladiators; the redder the blood they drew, the better. It didnt matter if
the same person said one thing on Monday and the opposite on Thursday.
•
I first met Noboru Wataya when Kumiko and I decided to get married. I wanted to talk to
him before I saw her father. I figured that as a man closer to my own age, he might be
persuaded to smooth the way for me with his father.
 I dont think you should count on his help, Kumiko said to me, with apparent difficulty.
 I cant explain it, exactly, but hes just not the type. 
 Well, Ill have to meet him sooner or later, I said.
 I guess, said Kumiko.
 Its worth a try, I said. You never know. 
 I guess, said Kumiko. Maybe. 
On the phone, Noboru Wataya displayed little enthusiasm for the prospect of meeting me.
If I insisted, he said, he could spare me half an hour. We decided to meet at a coffeehouse
near Ochanomizu Station. He was just a college instructor at the time, long before he had
written his book and long before his sartorial conversion. The pockets of his sports coat
bulged from having had fists thrust into them too long. His hair was at least two weeks
overdue for a trim. His mustard-color polo shirt clashed with his blue and gray tweed jacket.
He had the look of the typical young assistant professor for whom money was an alien object.
His eyes had that sleepy expression of someone who has just slipped out of the library after a
day of research in the stacks, but there was a piercing, cold gleam in them too, if you looked
closely.
After introducing myself, I said that I was planning to marry Kumiko in the near future. I
tried to explain things as honestly as possible. I was working in a law firm, I said, but I knew
this was not the right job for me. I was still searching for myself. For such a person to risk
marriage might seem to be a reckless act, but I loved his sister, I said, and I believed I could
make her happy. The two of us could give each other strength and comfort.
My words appeared lost on Noboru Wataya. He sat with his arms folded, listening in
silence. Even after I finished my little speech, he remained perfectly still. He seemed to be
thinking about something else.
I had felt awkward in his presence from the start and assumed this was because of the 
situation. Anybody would feel awkward telling a total stranger, I want to marry your sister. 
But as I sat there across from him, an unpleasant feeling began to well up inside me. It was
like having some kind of sour-smelling, alien gunk growing in the pit of your stomach. Not
that there was anything in particular about what he said or did that rubbed me the wrong way.
It was his face: the face of Noboru Wataya itself. It gave me the intuitive sense that it was
covered over with a whole other layer of something. Something wrong. It was not his real
face. I couldnt shake off this feeling.
I wanted to get the hell out of there. I actually considered getting up and leaving, but I had
to see things through to the end. I stayed there, sipping my lukewarm coffee and waiting for
him to say something.
When he spoke, it was as if he were deliberately setting the volume of his voice on low to
conserve energy. To tell you the truth, he said, I can neither understand nor care about
what you have been telling me. The things I care about are of an entirely different order,
things that I suspect you can neither understand nor care about. To state my conclusion as
concisely as possible, if you wish to marry Kumiko and she wishes to marry you, I have
neither the right nor any reason to stand in your way. Therefore, I shall not stand in your way.
I wouldnt even think of doing so. But dont expect anything further from me, either. And
most important, dont expect me to waste any more time on this matter than I already have. 
He looked at his watch and stood up. His declaration had been concise and to the point. It
suffered from neither excess nor omission. I understood with perfect clarity both what he
wanted to say and what he thought of me.
And so we parted that day.
After Kumiko and I were married, a number of occasions arose in which it was necessary
for Noboru Wataya and me, as brothers-in-law, to exchange words- if not to engage in actual
conversation. As he had suggested, there was no common ground between us, and so however
much we might speak words in each others vicinity, this could never develop into anything
that could be called a conversation. It was as though we were speaking to each other in
different languages. If the Dalai Lama were on his deathbed and the jazz musician Eric
Dolphy were to try to explain to him the importance of choosing ones engine oil in
accordance with changes in the sound of the bass clarinet, that exchange might have been a
touch more worthwhile and effective than my conversations with Noboru Wataya.
I rarely suffer lengthy emotional distress from contact with other people. A person may
anger or annoy me, but not for long. I can distinguish between myself and another as beings
of two different realms. Its a kind of talent (by which I do not mean to boast: its not an easy
thing to do, so if you can do it, it is a kind of talent-a special power). When someone gets on
my nerves, the first thing I do is transfer the object of my unpleasant feelings to another
domain, one having no connection with me. Then I tell myself, Fine, Im feeling bad, but Ive
put the source of these feelings into another zone, away from here, where I can examine it and
deal with it later in my own good time. In other words, I put a freeze on my emotions. Later,
when I thaw them out to perform the examination, I do occasionally find my emotions still in
a distressed state, but that is rare. The passage of time will usually extract the venom from
most things and render them harmless. Then, sooner or later, I forget about them.
In the course of my life so far, Ive been able to keep my world in a relatively stable state
by avoiding most useless troubles through activation of this emotional management system.
That I have succeeded in maintaining such an effective system all this time is a matter of
some pride to me.
When it came to Noboru Wataya, though, my system refused to function. I was unable
simply to shove Noboru Wataya into a domain having no connection with me. And that fact
itself annoyed the hell out of me. Kumikos father was an arrogant, unpleasant man, to be
sure, but finally he was a small-minded character who had lived by clinging to a simple set of
narrow beliefs. I could forget about someone like that. But not Noboru Wataya. He knew 
what kind of a man he was. And he had a pretty good idea of what made me tick as well. If he
had felt like it, he could have crushed me until there was nothing left. The only reason he
hadnt was that he didnt give a damn about me. I wasnt worth the time and energy it would
have taken to crush me. And thats what got me about him. He was a despicable human being,
an egoist with nothing inside him. But he was a far more capable individual than I was.
After that first meeting of ours, I had a bad taste in my mouth that wouldnt go away. I felt
as if someone had force-fed me a clump of foul-smelling bugs. Spitting them out did no good:
I could still feel them inside my mouth. Day after day, Noboru Wataya was all I could think
about. I tried going to concerts and movies. I even went to a baseball game with the guys from
the office. I drank, and I read the books that I had been waiting to read when I could find the
time. But Noboru Wataya was always there, arms folded, looking at me with those malignant
eyes of his, threatening to suck me in like a bottomless swamp. This set my nerves on edge
and sent tremors through the ground on which I stood.
The next time I saw her, Kumiko asked me my impressions of her brother. I wasnt able to
tell her honestly. I wanted to ask her about the mask he wore and about the twisted
 something that lay behind it. I wanted to tell her everything I had thought about this brother
of hers. But I said nothing. I felt that these were things I would never be able to convey to her,
that if I couldnt express myself clearly I shouldnt express myself at all-not now.
 Hes... different, thats for sure, I said. I wanted to add something to this, but I couldnt
find the words. Nor did she press me for more. She simply nodded in silence.
My feelings toward Noboru Wataya never changed after that. He continued to set my
nerves on edge in the same way. It was like a persistent low-grade fever. I never had a
television in the house, but by some uncanny coincidence, whenever I glanced at a TV
somewhere, he would be on it, making some pronouncement. If I flipped through the pages of
a magazine in a doctors waiting room, there would be a picture of Noboru Wataya, with an
article he had written. I felt as if Noboru Wataya were lying in wait for me just around every
corner in the known world.
OK, lets face it. I hated the guy.
 
The Happy Cleaners
 
And Kano Makes Her Entrance
I took a blouse and skirt of Kumikos to the cleaners by the station. Normally, I brought
our laundry to the cleaners around the corner from us, not because I preferred it but because
it was closer. Kumiko sometimes used the station cleaners in the course of her commute.
Shed drop something off in the morning on her way to the office and pick it up on the way
home. This place,was a little more expensive, but they did a better job than the neighborhood
cleaners, according to Kumiko. And her better dresses she would always bring there. Which
is why on that particular day I decided to take my bike to the station. I figured she would
prefer to have her clothes done there. 
I left the house carrying Kumikos blouse and skirt and wearing a pair of thin green cotton
pants, my usual tennis shoes, and the yellow Van Halen promotional T-shirt that Kumiko had
received from a record company. The owner of the shop had his JVC boom box turned up
loud, as he had on my last trip. This morning it was an Andy Williams tape. Hawaiian
Wedding Song was just ending as I walked in, and Canadian Sunset started. Whistling
happily to the tune, the owner was writing in a notebook with a ballpoint pen, his movements
as energetic as before. In the pile of tapes on the shelf, I spotted such names as Sergio
Mendes, Bert Kaempfert, and Strings. So he was an easy-listenin freak. It suddenly
occurred to me that true believers in hard-driving jazz-Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Cecil
Taylor-could never become owners of cleaning shops in malls across from railroad stations.
Or maybe they could. They just wouldnt be happy cleaners.
When I put the green floral-pattern blouse and sage-colored skirt on the counter, he spread
them out for a quick inspection, then wrote on the receipt, Blouse and Skirt. His writing
was clear and carefully formed. I like cleaners who write clearly. And if they like Andy
Williams, so much the better.
 Mr. Okada, right? I said he was right. He wrote in my name, tore out the carbon copy,
and gave it to me. Theyll be ready next Tuesday, so dont forget to come and get them this
time. Mrs. Okadas? 
 Uh-huh. 
 Very pretty, he said.
A dull layer of clouds filled the sky. The weather forecast had predicted rain. The time
was after nine-thirty, but there were still plenty of men with briefcases and folded umbrellas
hurrying toward the station steps. Late commuters. The morning was hot and humid, but that
made no difference to these men, all of whom were properly dressed in suits and ties and
black shoes. I saw lots of men my age, but not one of them wore a Van Halen T-shirt. Each
wore his companys lapel pin and clutched a copy of the Nikkei News under his arm. The bell
rang, and a number of them dashed up the stairs. I hadnt seen men like this for a long time.
Heading home on my bike, I found myself whistling Canadian Sunset. 
•
Malta Kano called at eleven oclock. Hello. I wonder if this might possibly be the home
of Mr. Toru Okada? she asked.
 Yes, this is Toru Okada. I knew it was Malta Kano from the first hello.
 My name is Malta Kano. You were kind enough to see me the other day. Would you
happen to have any plans for this afternoon? 
None, I said. I had no more plans for the afternoon than a migrating bird has collateral
assets.
 In that case, my younger sister, Kano, will come to visit you at one oclock. 
 Kano? I asked in a flat voice.
 Yes, said Malta Kano. I believe I showed you her photograph the other day. 
 I remember her, of course. Its just that- 
 Her name is Kano. She will come to visit you as my representative. Is one oclock a
good time for you? 
 Fine, I said.
 Shell be there, said Malta Kano, and hung up.
 Kano?
I vacuumed the floors and straightened the house. I tied our old newspapers in a bundle
and threw them in a closet. I put scattered cassette tapes back in their cases and lined them up
by the stereo. I washed the things piled in the kitchen. Then I washed myself: shower,
shampoo, clean clothes. I made fresh coffee and ate lunch: ham sandwich and hard-boiled 
egg. I sat on the sofa, reading the Home Journal and wondering what to make for dinner. I
marked the recipe for Seaweed and Tofu Salad and wrote the ingredients on a shopping list. I
turned on the FM radio. Michael Jackson was singing Billy Jean. I thought about the sisters
Malta Kano and Kano. What names for a couple of sisters! They sounded like a comedy
team. Malta Kano. Kano.
My life was heading in new directions, that was certain. The cat had run away. Strange
calls had come from a strange woman. I had met an odd girl and started visiting a vacant
house. Noboru Wataya had raped Kano. Malta Kano had predicted Id find my necktie.
Kumiko had told me I didnt have to work.
I turned off the radio, returned the Home Journal to the bookshelf, and drank another cup
of coffee.
•
 Kano rang the doorbell at one oclock on the dot. She looked exactly like her picture: a
small woman in her early to mid-twenties, the quiet type. She did a remarkable job of
preserving the look of the early sixties. She wore her hair in the bouffant style I had seen in
the photograph, the ends curled upward. The hair at the forehead was pulled straight back and
held in place by a large, glittering barrette. Her eyebrows were sharply outlined in pencil,
mascara added mysterious shadows to her eyes, and her lipstick was a perfect re-creation of
the kind of color popular back then. She looked ready to belt out Johnny Angel if you put a
mike in her hand.
She dressed far more simply than she made herself up. Practical and businesslike, her
outfit had nothing idiosyncratic about it: a white blouse, a green tight skirt, and no accessories
to speak of. She had a white patent-leather bag tucked under her arm and wore sharp-pointed
white pumps. The shoes were tiny. Their heels thin and sharp as a pencil lead, they looked
like a dolls shoes. I almost wanted to congratulate her on having made it this far on them.
So this was Kano. I showed her in, had her sit on the sofa, warmed the coffee, and served
her a cup. Had she eaten lunch yet? I asked. She looked hungry to me. No, she said, she had
not eaten.
 But dont bother about me, she hastened to add, I dont eat much of anything for
lunch. 
 Are you sure? I asked. Its nothing for me to fix a sandwich. Dont stand on ceremony.
I make snacks and things all the time. Its no trouble at all. 
She responded with little shakes of the head. Its very kind of you to offer, but Im fine,
really. Dont bother. A cup of coffee is more than enough. 
Still, I brought out a plate of cookies just in case. Kano ate four of them with obvious
pleasure. I ate two and drank my coffee.
She seemed somewhat more relaxed after the cookies and coffee. I am here today as the
representative of my elder sister, Malta Kano, she said. is not my real name, of course. My
real name is Setsuko. I took the name when I began working as my sisters assistant. For
professional purposes. is the ancient name for the island of Crete, but I have no connection
with Crete. I have never been there. My sister Malta chose the name to go with her own. Have
you been to the island of Crete, by any chance, Mr. Okada? 
Unfortunately not, I said. I had never been to Crete and had no plans to visit it in the near
future.
 I would like to go there sometime, said Kano, nodding, with a deadly serious look on
her face. Crete is the Greek island closest to Africa. Its a large island, and a great
civilization flourished there long ago. My sister Malta has been to Crete as well. She says its
a wonderful place. The wind is strong, and the honey is delicious. I love honey. I nodded.
Im not that crazy about honey. 
 I came today to ask you a favor, said Kano. Id like to take a sample of the water in
your house. 
 The water? I asked. You mean the water from the faucet? 
 That would be fine, she said. And if there happens to be a well nearby, I would like a
sample of that water also. 
 I dont think so. I mean, there is a well in the neighborhood, but its on somebody elses
property, and its dry. It doesnt produce water anymore. 
 Kano gave me a complicated look. Are you sure? she asked. Are you sure it doesnt
have any water? 
I recalled the dry thud that the chunk of brick had made when the girl threw it down the
well at the vacant house. Yes, its dry, all right. Im very sure. 
 I see, said Kano. Thats fine. Ill just take a sample of the water from the faucet, then,
if you dont mind. 
I showed her to the kitchen. From her white patent-leather bag she removed two small
bottles of the type that might be used for medicine. She filled one with water and tightened
the cap with great care. Then she said she wanted to take a sample from the line supplying the
bathtub. I showed her to the bathroom. Undistracted by all the underwear and stockings that
Kumiko had left drying in there, Kano turned on the faucet and filled the other bottle. After
capping it, she turned it upside down to make certain it didnt leak. The bottle caps were color
coded: blue for the bath water, and green for the kitchen water.
Back on the living room sofa, she put the two vials into a small plastic freezer bag and
sealed the zip lock. She placed the bag carefully in her white patent-leather bag, the metal
clasp of which closed with a dry click. Her hands moved with practiced efficiency. She had
obviously done this many times before.
 Thank you very much, said Kano.
 Is that all? I asked.
 Yes, for today, she said. She smoothed her skirt, slipped her bag under her arm, and
made as if to stand up.
 Wait a minute, I said, with some confusion. I hadnt been expecting her to leave so
suddenly. Wait just a minute, will you, please? My wife wants to know whats happened
with the cat. Its been gone for almost two weeks now. If you know anything at all, Id like
you to share it with me. 
Still clutching the white bag under her arm, Kano looked at me for a moment, then she
gave a few quick nods. When she moved her head, the curled-up ends of her hair bobbed with
an early-sixties lightness. Whenever she blinked, her long fake eyelashes moved slowly up
and down, like the long-handled fans operated by slaves in movies set in ancient Egypt.
 To tell you the truth, my sister says that this will be a longer story than it seemed at
first. 
 A longer story than it seemed? 
The phrase a longer story brought to mind a tall stake set in the desert, where nothing
else stood as far as the eye could see. As the sun began to sink, the shadow of the stake grew
longer and longer, until its tip was too far away to be seen by the naked eye.
 Thats what she says, Kano continued. This story will be about more than the
disappearance of a cat. 
 Im confused, I said. All were asking you to do is help us find the cat. Nothing more.
If the cats dead, we want to know that for sure. Why does it have to be ‘a longer story? I
dont understand. 
 Neither do I, she said. She brought her hand up to the shiny barrette on her head and
pushed it back a little. But please put your faith in my sister. Im not saying that she knows
everything. But if she says there will be a longer story, you can be sure there will be a longer
story. 
I nodded without saying anything. There was nothing more I could say.
Looking directly into my eyes and speaking with a new formality, Creta Kano asked, Are
you busy, Mr. Okada? Do you have any plans for the rest of the afternoon? No, I said, I had
no plans.
 Would you mind, then, if I told you a few things about myself? Creta Kano asked. She
put the white patent-leather bag she was holding down on the sofa and rested her hands, one
atop the other, on her tight green skirt, at the knees. Her nails had been done in a lovely pink
color. She wore no rings.
 Please, I said. Tell me anything youd like. And so the flow of my life-as had been
foretold from the moment Creta Kano rang my doorbell-was being led in ever stranger
directions.
 
 Kanos Long Story
 
An Inquiry into the Nature of Pain
 I was born on May twenty-ninth, Kano began her story, and the night of my twentieth
birthday, I resolved to take my own life. 
I put a fresh cup of coffee in front of her. She added cream and gave it a languid stir. No
sugar. I drank my coffee black, as always. The clock on the shelf continued its dry rapping on
the walls of time.
 Kano looked hard at me and said, I wonder if I should begin at the beginning-where I
was born, family life, that kind of thing. 
 Whatever you like. Its up to you. Whatever you find most comfortable, I said.
 I was the third of three children, she said. Malta and I have an older brother. My father
ran his own clinic in Kanagawa Prefecture. The family had nothing you could call domestic
problems. I grew up in an ordinary home, the kind you can find anywhere. My parents were
very serious people who believed strongly in the value of hard work. They were rather strict
with us, but it seems to me they also gave us a fair amount of autonomy where little things
were concerned. We were well off, but my parents did not believe in giving their children
extra money for frills. I suppose I had a rather frugal upbringing.
 Malta was five years older than I. There had been something different about her from the
beginning. She was able to guess things. Shed know that the patient in room so-and-so had
just died, or exactly where they could find a lost wallet, or whatever. Everybody enjoyed this,
at first, and often found it useful, but soon it began to bother my parents. They ordered her
never to talk about ‘things that did not have a clear basis in fact in the presence of other
people. My father had his position as head of the hospital to think about. He didnt want
people hearing that his daughter had supernatural powers. Malta put a lock on her mouth after
that. Not only did she stop talking about ‘things that did not have a clear basis in fact, but she
rarely joined in even the most ordinary conversations.
 To me, though, she opened her heart. We grew up very close. She would say, ‘Dont ever 
tell anybody I told you this, and then shed say something like, Theres going to be a fire
down the street or ‘Auntie So-and-so in Setagaya is going to get worse. And she was always
right. I was still just a little girl, so I thought it was great fun. It never occurred to me to be
frightened or to find it eerie. Ever since I can remember, I would always follow my big sister
around and expect to hear her ‘messages.
 These special powers of hers grew stronger as she grew older, but she did not know how
to use or nurture them, and this caused her a great deal of anguish. There was no one she
could go to for advice, no one she could look up to for guidance. This made her a very lonely
teenager. She had to solve everything by herself. She had to find all the answers herself. In
our home, she was unhappy. There was never a time when she could find peace in her heart.
She had to suppress her own powers and keep them hidden. It was like growing a large,
powerful plant in a little pot. It was unnatural. It was wrong. All she knew was that she had to
get out of there as soon as possible. She believed that somewhere there was a world that was
right for her, a way of life that was right for her. Until she graduated from high school,
though, she had to keep herself in check.
 She was determined not to go to college, but rather to go abroad after graduating from
high school. My parents had lived a very ordinary life, of course, and they were not prepared
to let her do this. So my sister worked hard to raise the money she would need, and then she
ran away. The first place she went to was Hawaii. She lived on Kauai for two years. She had
read somewhere that Kauais north shore had an area with springs that produced marvelous
water. Already, back then, my sister had a profound interest in water. She believed that human
existence was largely controlled by the elements of water. Which is why she went to live on
Kauai. At the time, there was still a hippie commune in the interior of the island.
She lived as a member of the commune. The water there had a great influence on her
spiritual powers. By taking that water into her body, she was able to attain a ‘greater
harmony between her powers and her physical being. She wrote to me, telling me how
wonderful this was, and her letters made me very happy. But soon the area could no longer
satisfy her. True, it was a beautiful, peaceful land, and the people there sought only spiritual
peace, free of material desires, but they were too dependent on sex and drugs. My sister did
not need these things. After two years on Kauai, she left.
 From there she went to Canada, and after traveling around the northern United States,
she continued on to Europe. She sampled the water everywhere she went and succeeded in
finding marvelous water in several places, but none of it was the perfect water. So she kept
traveling. Whenever she ran out of money, she would do something like fortune-telling.
People would reward her for helping them find lost things or missing persons. She would
have preferred not to take the money. Powers bestowed by heaven should not be exchanged
for worldly goods. At the time, though, it was the only way she could keep herself alive.
People heard about her divination everywhere she went. It was easy for her to make money.
She even helped the police with an investigation in England. A little girl was missing, and she
found where the body had been hidden. She also found the murderers glove nearby. The man
was arrested and confessed. It was in all the papers. Ill show you the clippings sometime.
Anyhow, she went on wandering through Europe like this until she ended up in Malta. Close
to five years had gone by since her departure from Japan, and this place turned out to be her
destination in her search for water. I suppose she must have told you about this herself? 
I nodded.
 All the time she was wandering through the world, Malta would send me letters. Of
course, there were times when she couldnt manage to write, but almost every week I would
receive a long letter from her about where she was and what she was doing. We were still
very close. Even over long distances, we were able to share our feelings with each other
through her letters. And what wonderful letters they were! If you could read them, youd see
what a wonderful person she is. Through her letters, I was able to encounter so many different 
worlds, so many interesting people! Her letters gave me such encouragement! They helped
me grow. For that, I will always be deeply grateful to my sister. I dont negate what she did
for me in any way. But finally, letters are just letters. When I was in my most difficult teenage
years, when I needed my sister more than ever, she was always somewhere far away. I could
not stretch out my hand and find her there next to me. In our family, I was all alone. Isolated.
My teen years were filled with pain- and later I will tell you more about that pain. There was
no one I could go to for advice. In that sense, I was just as lonely as Malta had been. If she
had been near me then, my life would have been different from what it is today. She would
have given me words of advice and encouragement and salvation. But whats the point of
bringing such things up now? Just as Malta had to find her own way by herself, I had to find
my own way by myself. And when I turned twenty, I decided to kill myself. 
Creta Kano took her cup and drank her remaining coffee. What delicious coffee! she
said.
 Thanks, I said, as casually as possible. Can I offer you something to eat? I boiled some
eggs a little while ago. 
After some hesitation, she said she would have one. I brought eggs and salt from the
kitchen and poured her more coffee. With no sense of urgency, Kano and I set about peeling
and eating our eggs and drinking coffee. While we were doing this, the phone rang, but I
didnt answer it. After fifteen or sixteen rings, it stopped. All that time, Kano seemed
unaware of the ringing.
When she finished her egg, Kano took a small handkerchief from her white patent-leather
bag and wiped her mouth. Then she tugged at the hem of her skirt.
 Once I had decided to kill myself, I wanted to leave a note behind. I sat at my desk for an
hour, trying to write down my reasons for dying. I wanted to make it clear that no one else
was to blame, that the reasons were all inside me. I didnt want my family feeling responsible
for something that was not their fault.
 But I could not finish the note. I tried over and over, but each new version seemed worse
than the last. When I read what I had written, it sounded foolish, even comical. The more
serious I tried to make it, the more ridiculous it came out. In the end, I decided not to write
anything at all.
 It was a very simple matter, I felt. I was disappointed with my life. I could no longer
endure the many kinds of pain that my life continued to cause me. I had endured the pain for
twenty years. My life had been nothing but an unremitting source of pain. But I had tried to
bear it as best I could. I have absolute confidence in the validity of my efforts to bear the pain.
I can declare here with genuine pride that my efforts were second to none. I was not giving up
without a fight. But the day I turned twenty, I reached a simple conclusion: life was not worth
it. Life was not worth continuing such a struggle. 
She stopped speaking and spent some time aligning the corners of the white handkerchief
on her lap. When she looked down, her long false eyelashes cast gentle shadows on her face.
I cleared my throat, I felt I ought to say something, but I didnt know what to say, and so I
kept silent. In the distance, I heard the wind-up bird cry.
 The pain was what caused me to decide to die, said Kano. And when I say ‘pain, that
is exactly what I mean. Nothing mental or metaphorical, but physical pain, pure and simple.
Plain, ordinary, direct, physical-and, for that reason, all the more intense-pain: headache,
toothache, menstrual cramps, lower back pain, stiff shoulders, fever, muscle ache, burns,
frostbite, sprains, fractures, blows to the body. All my life I have experienced physical pain
with far greater frequency and intensity than others. Take my teeth, for example. They seemed
to have some inborn defect. They would give me pain from one end of the year to the other.
No matter how carefully I brushed, or how many times a day, or how strictly I avoided
sweets, it did no good. All my efforts ended in cavities. To make matters worse, anesthetics
seemed to have no effect on me. Going to the dentist was always a nightmare. The pain was 
beyond describing. It scared me to death. And then my terrible periods began. They were
incredibly heavy. For a week at a time, I would be in such pain, it was as if someone were
twisting a drill inside me. My head would throb. You probably cant imagine what it was like,
Mr. Okada, but the pain would bring tears to my eyes. For a week out of every month, I
would be tortured by this unbearable pain.
 If I boarded a plane, my head would feel as if it were splitting open from the changes in
air pressure. The doctor said it had something to do with the structure of my ears, that this sort
of thing happens if the inner ear has a shape that is sensitive to pressure changes. The same
thing often happened to me on elevators. I cant take elevators in tall buildings. The pain is so
intense, it feels as if my head is going to split open in several places and the blood gush out.
And then there was my stomach. At least once a week it would give me such sharp, piercing
pain that I couldnt get up in the morning. The doctors could never find a cause. Some
suggested it was mental. But even if it was, the pain still hurt. As much as I was suffering,
though, I could not stay home from school. If I had skipped school every time something hurt
me, I would never have gone at all.
 Whenever I bumped into something, it would leave a bruise on my body. Looking at
myself in the bathroom mirror always made me want to cry. My body was covered with so
many dark bruises I looked like a rotten apple. I hated to let anyone see me in a bathing suit.
Ever since I can remember, Ive hardly ever gone swimming for that reason. Another problem
I had was the difference in the size of my feet. Whenever I bought new shoes, the larger foot
would be in terrible pain until the shoe was broken in.
 Because of all these problems, I almost never did sports. In junior high school, my
friends once dragged me to an ice-skating rink. I fell and hurt my hip so badly that afterward I
would get a terrible ache there every winter. It felt as if I had been jabbed with a big, thick
needle. Any number of times, I fell over trying to get up from a chair.
 I suffered from constipation as well. A bowel movement every few days would be
nothing but pain for me. And my shoulders would stiffen up terribly. The muscles would
tighten until they were literally as hard as a rock. It was so painful, I couldnt stand up, but
lying down was no help, either. I imagined that my suffering must be much like that of a
Chinese punishment I had read about. They would stuff the person in a box for several years.
When my shoulders were at their worst, I could hardly breathe.
 I could go on and on listing all the various pains I have suffered in my life, but it would
only bore you, Mr. Okada, so I will just leave it at this. What I want to convey to you is the
fact that my body was a virtual sample book of pain. I experienced every pain imaginable. I
began to think I had been cursed, that life was so unfair. I might have been able to go on
bearing the pain if the other people in the world had had to live the way I did, but they didnt,
and I couldnt. Pain was not something that was dealt out fairly. I tried asking people about
pain, but nobody knew what real pain was. The majority of people in the world live without
feeling much pain-at least on a daily basis. When this finally hit me (I had just entered junior
high school at the time), it made me so sad I couldnt stop crying. Why me? Why did I have
to be the one to bear such a terrible burden? I wanted to die right then and there.
 But at the same time, another thought came to me. This could not go on forever. One
morning I would wake up and the pain would have disappeared-suddenly, with no
explanation-and a whole new and peaceful life without pain would open up for me. It was not
a thought in which I could place a great deal of faith, however.
 And so I revealed these thoughts of mine to my sister. I told her that I didnt want to go
on living in such pain: what was I to do? After she thought about it for a while, she said this:
There is definitely something wrong with you, Im sure. But I dont know what it is. And I
dont know what you should do about it. I dont have the power yet to make such judgments.
All I know is that you should at least wait until youre twenty. Bear it until you turn twenty,
and then make your decision. That would be the best thing. 
 This was how I decided to go on living until I was twenty. But no matter how much time
went by, the situation did not improve. Far from it. The pain became even more intense. This
taught me only one thing: As the body develops, the volume of pain increases
proportionately. I endured the pain, however, for eight years. I went on living all that time,
trying to see only the good side of life. I didnt complain to anyone. I strove to keep on
smiling, even when the pain was at its worst. I disciplined myself always to present an
exterior of calm when the pain was so intense that I could hardly go on standing. Crying and
complaining could not reduce the pain; it could only make me more miserable than ever. As a
result of my efforts, people loved me. They saw me as a quiet, good-natured girl. I had the
confidence of grown-ups and the friendship of people my own age. I might have had a perfect
life, a perfect adolescence, if it hadnt been for the pain. But it was always there. It was like
my shadow. If I forgot about it for an instant, the pain would attack yet another part of my
body.
 In college, I found a boyfriend, and in the summer of my freshman year I lost my
virginity. Even this-as I could have predicted-gave me only pain. An experienced girlfriend of
mine assured me that it would stop hurting when I got used to it, but it never did. Whenever I
slept with him, the pain would bring tears to my eyes. One day I told my boyfriend that I
didnt want to have sex anymore. I told him, ‘I love you, but I never want to experience this
pain again. He said he had never heard anything so ridiculous. ‘Youve got an emotional
problem, he said. ‘Just relax and itll stop hurting. Itll even feel good. Everybody else does
it, so you can too. Youre just not trying hard enough. Youre babying yourself. Youre using
this pain thing to cover up your problems. Stop complaining; it wont do you any good.
 When I heard this, after all I had endured over the years, I exploded. ‘What do you know
about pain? I shouted at him. The pain I feel is no ordinary pain. I know what pain is like.
Ive had them all. When I say something hurts, it really hurts! I tried to explain by listing
every single pain I had ever experienced, but he didnt understand a thing. Its impossible to
understand real pain unless youve experienced it yourself. So that was the end of our
relationship.
 My twentieth birthday came soon after that. For twenty long years I had endured the
pain, hoping there would be some bright turning point, but it had never happened. I felt utterly
defeated. I wished I had died sooner. My long detour had only stretched out the pain. 
At this point, Creta Kano took a single deep breath. On the table in front of her sat the
dish with eggshells and her empty coffee cup. On her lap lay the handkerchief that she had
folded with such care. As if recalling the time, she glanced at the clock on the shelf. Im very
sorry, she said in a dry little voice. I hadnt intended to talk so long. Ive taken far too much
of your time as it is. I wont impose on you any longer. I dont know how to apologize for
having bored you at such length. 
She grasped the strap of her white patent-leather bag and stood up from the sofa.
This took me off guard. Just a minute, please, I said, flustered. I didnt want her to end
her story in the middle. If youre worried about taking my time, then dont worry. Im free
all afternoon. As long as youve told me this much, why not go to the end? Theres more to
your story, Im sure. 
 Of course there is, she said, looking down at me, both hands in a tight grip on the strap
of her bag. What Ive told you so far is more like an introduction. 
I asked her to wait a moment and went to the kitchen. Standing in front of the sink, I gave
myself time for two deep breaths. Then I took two glasses from the cabinet, put ice in them,
and filled them with orange juice from the refrigerator. Placing the glasses on a small tray, I
brought them into the living room. I had gone through these motions with deliberate slowness,
but I found her standing as I had left her. When I set the glasses of juice on the table, though,
she seemed to have second thoughts. She settled onto the sofa again and placed her bag at her
side. 
 You want me to tell my story to the very end? she asked. Are you sure? 
 Quite sure, I said.
She drank half her orange juice and went on with her story.
 I failed to kill myself, of course. If I had succeeded, I wouldnt be here now, drinking
orange juice with you, Mr. Okada. She looked into my eyes, and I gave her a little smile of
agreement. If I had died according to plan, it would have been the final solution for me.
Dying would have meant the end of consciousness, and I would never have had to feel pain
again. Which is exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, however, I chose the wrong method to
die.
 At nine oclock on the night of May twenty-ninth, I went to my brothers room and asked
to borrow his car. It was a shiny new Toyota MR , and the thought of letting me take it made
him look very unhappy. But I didnt care. He couldnt refuse, because I had lent him money
to help him buy it. I took the key and drove it for half an hour. The car still had barely a
thousand miles on it. A touch of the gas pedal could make it fly. It was the perfect car for my
purposes. I drove as far as the Tama River on the outskirts of the city, and there I found a
massive stone wall of the kind I had in mind. It was the outer wall of a big condominium
building, and it stood at the far end of a dead-end street. I gave myself plenty of room to
accelerate, and then I pressed the accelerator to the floor. I must have been doing close to a
hundred miles an hour when I slammed into the wall and lost consciousness.
 Unfortunately for me, however, the wall turned out to be far less solid than it had
appeared. To save money, they had not anchored it properly. The wall simply crumbled, and
the front end of the car was crushed flat. Thats all that happened. Because it was so soft, the
wall absorbed the impact. As if that werent bad enough, in my confusion I had forgotten to
undo my seat belt.
 And so I escaped death. I was hardly even injured. And strangest of all, I felt almost no
pain. It was the weirdest thing. They took me to the hospital and patched up my one broken
rib. The police came to investigate, but I told them I didnt remember a thing. I said I had
probably mixed up the gas and the brake. And they believed me. I had just turned twenty, and
it had been only six months since I got my license. Besides, I just didnt look like the suicidal
type. Who would try to kill herself with her seat belt fastened?
 Once I was out of the hospital, I had several difficult problems to face. First I had to pay
off the outstanding loan on the MR that I had turned into scrap metal. Through some error
with the insurance company, the car had not been covered.
 Now that it was too late, I realized that to do myself in, I should have rented a car with
the proper insurance. At the time, of course, insurance was the last thing on my mind. It never
occurred to me that my brothers car wouldnt have enough insurance on it or that I would fail
to kill myself. I ran into a stone wall at a hundred miles an hour: it was amazing that I
survived.
 A short time later, I received a bill from the condominium association for repair of the
wall. They were demanding , , yen from me. Immediately. In cash. All I could do was
borrow it from my father. He was willing to give it to me in the form of a loan, but he insisted
that I pay him back. My father was very proper when it came to matters of money. He said it
was my responsibility for having caused the accident, and he expected me to pay him back in
full and on schedule. In fact, at the time, he had very little money to spare. He was in the
process of expanding his clinic and was having trouble raising the money for the project.
 I thought again about killing myself. This time I would do a proper job. I would jump
from the fifteenth floor of the university administration building. There would be no slip-ups
that way. I would die for sure. I made several trial runs. I picked the best window for the job. I
was on the verge of jumping.
 But something held me back. There was something wrong, something nagging at me. At
the last second, that ‘something almost literally pulled me back from the edge. A good deal 
of time went by, though, before I realized what that ‘something was.
 I didnt have any pain.
 I had felt hardly any pain since the accident. What with one thing coming up after
another, I hadnt had a moment to notice, but pain had disappeared from my body. My bowel
movements were normal. My menstrual cramps were gone. No more headaches or
stomachaches. Even my broken rib caused me hardly any pain. I had no idea why such a thing
had happened. But suddenly I was free of pain.
 I decided to go on living for the time being. If only for a little while, I wanted to find out
what it meant to live life without pain. I could die whenever I wanted to.
 But to go on living meant for me to pay back my debt. Altogether, I owed more than
three million yen. In order to pay it back, I became a prostitute. 
 A prostitute?! 
 Thats right, said Kano, as if it were nothing at all. I needed money over the short
term. I wanted to pay off my debts as quickly as possible, and that was the only way I knew of
to raise the money. I didnt have the slightest hesitation. I had seriously intended to die. And I
still intended to die, sooner or later. The curiosity I felt about a life without pain was keeping
me alive, but strictly on a temporary basis. And compared with death, it would be nothing at
all for me to sell my body. 
 I see what you mean, I said.
The ice in her orange juice had melted, and Kano stirred it with her straw before taking a
sip.
 Do you mind if I ask you a question? I asked.
 No, not at all. Please. 
 Didnt you consult with your sister about this? 
 She was practicing her austerities on Malta at the time. As long as that went on, she
refused to send me her address. She didnt want me to disrupt her concentration. It was
virtually impossible for me to write to her during the entire three years she lived on Malta. 
 I see, I said. Would you like some more coffee? 
 Yes, please, said Kano.
I went to the kitchen and warmed the coffee. While I waited, I stared at the exhaust fan
and took several deep breaths. When it was ready, I poured the coffee into fresh cups and
brought it to the living room on a tray, together with a plate of chocolate cookies. We ate and
drank for a while.
 How long ago did you try to kill yourself? I asked.
 I was twenty at the time. That was six years ago, in May of. 
May of was the month that Kumiko and I had married. So, then, the very month we
were married, Kano had tried to kill herself and Malta Kano was practicing her austerities in
Malta.
 I went to a neighborhood that had lots of bars, approached the first likely-looking man I
saw, negotiated a price, went to a hotel, and slept with him, said Kano. Sex no longer gave
me any physical pain at all. Nor any pleasure, either. It was just a physical movement. Neither
did I feel guilt at doing sex for money. I was enveloped in numbness, an absence of feeling so
deep the bottom was lost from view.
 I made very good money this way-close to a million yen in the first month alone. At that
rate, I could easily repay what I owed in three or four months. I would come home from
campus, go out in the evening, and get home from work by ten at the latest. I told my parents
I was waiting on tables, and no one suspected the truth. Of course, they would have thought it
strange if I returned so much money all at once, so I decided to give my father , yen a
month and save the rest.
 But then one night, when I was propositioning men by the station, two men grabbed me
from behind. At first I thought it was the police, but then I realized that they were gangsters. 
They dragged me into a back street, showed me some kind of knife, and took me to their local
headquarters. They shoved me into a back room, stripped my clothes off, strung me up by the
wrists, and proceeded to rape me over and over in front of a video camera. I kept my eyes
closed the entire time and tried not to think. Which was not difficult for me, because I felt
neither pain nor pleasure.
 Afterward, they showed me the video and told me that if I didnt want anyone to see it, I
should join their organization and work for them. They took my student ID from my purse. If
I refused to do what they wanted, they said, they would send a copy of the tape to my parents
and blackmail them for all the money they were worth. I had no choice. I told them I would
do as they said, that it didnt matter to me. And it really didnt matter. Nothing mattered to me
then. They pointed out that my income would go down if I joined their organization, because
they would take seventy percent, but that I would no longer have to go to the trouble of
finding customers by myself or worry about the police. They would send me high-quality
customers. If I went on propositioning men indiscriminately, I would end up strangled to
death in some hotel room.
 After that, I didnt have to stand on street corners anymore. All I had to do was show up
at their office in the evening, and they would tell me which hotel to go to. They sent me good
customers, as they had promised. Im not sure why, but I received special treatment. Maybe it
was because I looked so innocent. I had an air of breeding about me that the other girls
lacked. There were probably a lot of customers who wanted this not-so-professional type. The
other girls had three or more customers a day, but I could get away with seeing only one or, at
most, two. The other girls carried beepers with them and had to hurry to some run-down hotel
when the office called them to sleep with men of uncertain background. In my case, though, I
always had a proper appointment in a proper first-class hotel-or sometimes even a condo. My
customers were usually older men, rarely young ones.
 The office paid me once a week-not as much as I used to make on my own, but not a bad
amount including individual tips from customers. Some customers wanted me to do some
pretty weird things for them, of course, but I didnt mind. The weirder the request, the bigger
the tip. A few of the men started asking for me on a regular basis. These tended to be good
tippers. I saved my money in several different accounts. But actually, by then, the money
didnt matter to me. It was just rows of figures, I was living for one thing only, and that was
to confirm my own lack of feeling.
 I would wake up in the morning and lie there, checking to see that my body was not
sensing anything that could be called pain. I would open my eyes, slowly collect my thoughts,
and then, one part at a time, check the feeling I had in my body from head to foot. I had no
pain at all. Did this mean that there was nothing hurting me or that, even though there was
pain, I was not feeling it? I couldnt tell the difference. Either way, it didnt hurt. In fact, I had
no sensations at all. After this procedure, I would get out of bed, go to the bathroom, and
brush my teeth. Then I would strip off my pajamas and take a hot shower. There was a terrible
lightness to my body. It was so light and airy, it didnt feel like my body. I felt as if my spirit
had taken up residence inside a body that was not my own. I looked at it in the mirror, but
between myself and the body I saw there, I felt a long, terrible distance.
 A life without pain: it was the very thing I had dreamed of for years, but now that I had
it, I couldnt find a place for myself within it. A clear gap separated me from it, and this
caused me great confusion. I felt as if I were not anchored to the world-this world that I had
hated so passionately until then; this world that I had continued to revile for its unfairness and
injustice; this world where at least I knew who I was. Now the world had ceased to be the
world, and I had ceased to be me.
 I began to cry a lot. In the afternoons I would go to a park-the Shin-juku Imperial
Gardens or Yoyogi Park-to sit on the grass and cry. Sometimes I would cry for an hour or two
at a time, sobbing out loud. Passersby would stare at me, but I didnt care. I wished that I had 
died that time, that I had ended my life on the night of May twenty-ninth. How much better
off I would be! But now I could not even die. In my numbness, I lacked the strength to kill
myself. I felt nothing: no pain, no joy. All feeling was gone. And I was not even me. 
Creta Kano took a deep breath and held it. Then she picked up her coffee cup, stared into
it for a while, gave her head a little shake, and put the cup back on the saucer.
 It was around that time that I met Noboru Wataya. 
 Noboru Wataya?! As a customer?! 
Creta Kano nodded in silence.
 But- I began, then stopped to consider my words for a time. Im having a little trouble
with this. Your sister told me the other day that Noboru Wataya raped you. Was that
something separate from what youre telling me now? 
Creta Kano took the handkerchief from her lap and dabbed at her mouth again. Then she
looked directly at me. Something about her eyes stirred my heart in a way I found unsettling.
 Im sorry to bother you, she said, but I wonder if I might have another cup of coffee. 
 Of course, I said. I transferred her cup from the table to the tray and carried it into the
kitchen. Waiting for the coffee to boil, I leaned against the drainboard, with my hands thrust
in my pockets. When I carried the coffee back into the living room, Creta Kano had vanished
from the sofa. Her bag, her handkerchief, every visible sign of her, was gone. I went to the
front entrance, from which her shoes were gone as well.
Terrific.
 
Culverts and an Absolute
Insufficiency of Electricity
•
May Kasaharas Inquiry into
the Nature of Hairpieces
After seeing Kumiko off the next morning, I went to the ward pool for a swim. Mornings
were best, to avoid the crowds. Back home again, I brewed myself some coffee and sat
drinking it in the kitchen, going over Creta Kanos weird, unfinished story, trying to recall
each event of her life in chronological order. The more I recalled, the weirder the story
seemed, but soon the revolutions of my brain slowed down and I began to drift into sleep. I
went to the living room, lay down on the sofa, and closed my eyes. In a moment, I was asleep
and dreaming.
I dreamed about Creta Kano. Before she appeared, though, I dreamed about Malta Kano.
She was wearing a Tyrolean hat with a big, brightly colored feather. The place was crowded
(it was some kind of large hall), but Malta Kanos hat caught my attention immediately. She
was sitting alone at the bar. She had a big tropical drink kind of thing in front of her, but I
couldnt tell whether she was actually drinking it.
I wore my suit and the polka-dot tie. As soon as I spotted Malta Kano, I tried to walk in 
her direction, but the crowd kept getting in my way. By the time I reached the bar, she was
gone. The tropical drink stood there on the bar, in front of her now empty stool. I took the
next seat at the bar and ordered a scotch on the rocks. The bartender asked me what kind of
scotch Id like, and I answered Cutty Sark. I really didnt care which brand of scotch he
served me, but Cutty Sark was the first thing that came to mind.
Before he could give me my drink, I felt a hand take my arm from behind, the touch as
soft as if the person were grasping something that might fall apart at any moment. I turned.
There stood a man without a face. Whether or not he actually had no face, I could not tell, but
the place where his face was supposed to be was wrapped in a dark shadow, and I could not
see what lay beyond it. This way, Mr. Okada, he said. I tried to speak, but before I could
open my mouth, he said to me, Please, come with me. We have so little time. Hurry. Hand
still on my arm, he guided me with rapid steps through the crowd and out into a corridor. I
followed him down the corridor, unresisting. He did know my name, after all. It wasnt as if I
were letting a total stranger take me anywhere he liked. There was some kind of reason and
purpose to all this.
After continuing down the corridor for some time, the faceless man came to a stop in front
of a door. The number on the doorplate was. It isnt locked. You should be the one to
open it. I did as I was told and opened the door. Beyond it lay a large room. It seemed to be
part of a suite of rooms in an old-fashioned hotel. The ceiling was high, and from it hung an
old-fashioned chandelier. The chandelier was not lit. A small wall lamp gave off a gloomy
light, the only source of illumination in the room. The curtains were closed tight.
 If its whiskey you want, Mr. Okada, said the faceless man, we have plenty. Cutty
Sark, wasnt it? Drink as much as youd like. He pointed to a cabinet beside the door, then
closed the door silently, leaving me alone. I stood in the middle of the room for a long time,
wondering what to do.
A large oil painting hung on the wall. It was a picture of a river. I looked at it for a while,
hoping to calm myself down. The moon was up over the river. Its light fell faintly on the
opposite shore, but so very faintly that I could not make out the scenery there. It was all vague
outlines, running together.
Soon I felt a strong craving for whiskey. I thought I would open the cabinet and take a
drink, as suggested by the faceless man, but the cabinet would not open. What looked like
doors were actually well-made imitations of doors. I tried pushing and pulling on the various
protruding parts, but the cabinet remained firmly shut.
 Its not easy to open, Mr. Okada, said Kano. I realized she was standing there-and in
her early-sixties outfit. Some time must go by before it will open. Today is out of the
question. You might as well give up. 
As I watched, she shed her clothes as easily as opening a pea pod and stood before me
naked, without warning or explanation. We have so little time, Mr. Okada, lets finish this as
quickly as possible. I am sorry for the rush, but I have my reasons. Just getting here was hard
enough. Then she came up to me, opened my fly, and, as if it were the most natural thing in
the world, took out my penis. Lowering her eyes, with their false lashes, she enclosed my
penis with her mouth. Her mouth was far larger than I had imagined. Inside, I immediately
came erect. When she moved her tongue, the curled ends of her hair trembled as in a gentle
breeze, caressing my thighs. All I could see was her hair and her false eyelashes. I sat on the
bed, and she went down on her knees, her face buried in my crotch. Stop it, I said. Noboru
Wataya will be here any minute. I dont want to see him here. 
 Kano took her mouth from my penis and said, Dont worry. We have plenty of time for
this, at least. 
She ran the tip of her tongue over my penis. I didnt want to come, but there was no way
of stopping it. I felt as if it were being sucked out of me. Her lips and tongue held on to me
like slippery life forms. I came. I opened my eyes. 
Terrific. I went to the bathroom, washed my soiled underpants, and took a hot shower,
washing myself with care to get rid of the sticky sensations of the dream. How many years
had it been since my last wet dream? I tried to recall exactly but couldnt, it had been so long.
I stepped out of the shower and was still drying myself when the phone rang. It was
Kumiko. Having just had a wet dream over another woman, I felt a little tense speaking with
her.
 Your voice is strange, she said. Whats wrong? Her sensitivity to such things was
frightening.
 Nothing, I said. I was dozing. You woke me up. 
 Oh, really? she said. I could feel her suspicions coming through the earpiece, which
made me all the more tense.
 Anyway, sorry, but Im going to be a little late today, Kumiko said. Maybe as late as
nine. So Ill eat out. 
 Thats OK, I said. Ill find something for myself. Dont worry. 
 I really am sorry, she said. It had the sound of an afterthought. There was a pause, and
then she hung up.
I looked at the receiver for a few seconds. Then I went to the kitchen and peeled an apple.
In the six years since I had married Kumiko, I had never slept with another woman.
Which is not to say that I never felt the desire for another woman or never had the chance.
Just that I never pursued it when the opportunity arose. I cant explain why, exactly, but it
probably has something to do with lifes priorities.
I did once happen to spend the night with another woman. She was someone I liked, and I
knew she would have slept with me. But finally, I didnt do it.
We had been working together at the law firm for several years. She was probably two or
three years younger than I. Her job was to take calls and coordinate everyones schedules, and
she was very good at it. She was quick, and she had an outstanding memory. You could ask
her anything and she would know the answer: who was working where at what, which files
were in which cabinet, that kind of thing. She handled all appointments. Everybody liked her
and depended on her. On an individual basis, too, she and I were fairly close. We had gone
drinking together several times. She was not exactly what you would call a beauty, but I liked
her looks.
When it came time for her to quit her job to get married (she would have to move to
Kyushu in connection with her husbands work), several colleagues and I invited her out for a
last drink together. Afterward, she and I had to take the same train home, and because it was
late, I saw her to her apartment. At the front door, she invited me in for a cup of coffee. I was
worried about missing the last train, but I knew we might never see each other again, and I
also liked the idea of sobering up with coffee, so I decided to go in. The place was a typical
single girls apartment. It had a refrigerator that was just a little too grand for one person, and
a bookshelf stereo. A friend had given her the refrigerator. She changed into something
comfortable in the next room and made coffee in the kitchen. We sat on the floor, talking.
At one point when we had run out of things to say, she asked me, as if it had suddenly
occurred to her, Can you name something-some concrete thing-that youre especially afraid
of? 
 Not really, I said, after a moments thought. I was afraid of all kinds of things, but no
one thing in particular. How about you? 
 Im scared of culverts, she said, hugging her knees. You know what a culvert is, dont
you? 
 Some kind of ditch, isnt it? I didnt have a very precise definition of the word in mind.
 Yeah, but its underground. An underground waterway. A drainage ditch with a lid on. A
pitch-dark flow. 
 I see, I said. A culvert. 
 I was born and raised in the country. In Fukushima. There was a stream right near my
house-a little stream, just the runoff from the fields. It flowed underground at one point into a
culvert. I guess I was playing with some of the older kids when it happened. I was just two or
three. The others put me in a little boat and launched it into the stream. It was probably
something they did all the time, but that day it had been raining, and the water was high. The
boat got away from them and carried me straight for the opening of the culvert. I would have
been sucked right in if one of the local farmers hadnt happened by. Im sure they never
would have found me. 
She ran her left index finger over her mouth as if to check that she was still alive.
 I can still picture everything that happened. Im lying on my back and being swept along
by the water. The sides of the stream tower over me like high stone walls, and overhead is the
blue sky. Sharp, clear blue. Im being swept along in the flow. Swish, swish, faster and faster.
But I cant understand what it means. And then all of a sudden I do understand- that theres
darkness lying ahead. Real darkness. Soon it comes and tries to drink me down. I can feel a
cold shadow beginning to wrap itself around me. Thats my earliest memory. 
She took a sip of coffee.
 Im scared to death, she said. Im so scared I can hardly stand it. I feel like I did back
then, like Im being swept along toward it and I cant get away. 
She took a cigarette from her handbag, put it in her mouth, and lit it with a match,
exhaling in one long, slow breath. This was the first time I had ever seen her smoke.
 Are you talking about your marriage? I asked.
 Thats right, she said. My marriage. 
 Is there some particular problem? I asked. Something concrete? 
She shook her head. I dont think so, she said. Not really. Just a lot of little things. 
I didnt know what to say to her, but the situation demanded that I say something.
 Everybody experiences this feeling to some extent when theyre about to get married, I
think. ‘Oh, no, Im making this terrible mistake!
Youd probably be abnormal if you didnt feel it. Its a big decision, picking somebody to
spend your life with. So its natural to be scared, but you dont have to be that scared. 
 Thats easy to say-Everybody feels like that. Everybodys the same, she said.
Eleven oclock had come and gone. I had to find a way to bring this conversation to a
successful conclusion and get out of there. But before I could say anything, she suddenly
asked me to hold her. Why? I asked, caught off guard. To charge my batteries, she said.
 Charge your batteries? 
 My body has run out of electricity. I havent been able to sleep for days now. The minute
I get to sleep I wake up, and then I cant get back to sleep. I cant think. When I get like that,
somebody has to charge my batteries. Otherwise, I cant go on living. Its true. 
I peered into her eyes, wondering if she was still drunk, but they were once again her
usual cool, intelligent eyes. She was far from drunk.
 But youre getting married next week. You can have him hold you all you want. Every
night. Thats what marriage is for. Youll never run out of electricity again. 
 The problem is now, she said. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next month. Im out
of electricity now. 
Lips clamped shut, she stared at her feet. They were in perfect alignment. Small and
white, they had ten pretty toenails. She really, truly wanted somebody to hold her, it seemed,
and so I took her in my arms. It was all very weird. To me, she was just a capable, pleasant
colleague. We worked in the same office, told each other jokes, and had gone out for drinks
now and then. But here, away from work, in her apartment, with my arms around her, we
were nothing but warm lumps of flesh. We had been playing our assigned roles on the office
stage, but stepping down from the stage, abandoning the provisional images that we had been
exchanging there, we were both just unstable, awkward lumps of flesh, warm pieces of meat 
outfitted with digestive tracts and hearts and brains and reproductive organs. I had my arms
wrapped around her back, and she had her breasts pressed hard against my chest. They were
larger and softer than I had imagined them to be. I was sitting on the floor with my back
against the wall, and she was slumped against me. We stayed in that position for a long time,
holding each other without a word.
 Is this all right? I asked, in a voice that did not sound like my own. It was as if someone
else were speaking for me.
She said nothing, but I could feel her nod.
She was wearing a sweatshirt and a thin skirt that came down to her knees, but soon I
realized that she had nothing on underneath. Almost automatically, this gave me an erection,
and she seemed to be aware of it. I could feel her warm breath on my neck.
In the end, I didnt sleep with her. But I did have to go on charging her batteries until
two in the morning. She pleaded with me to stay with her until she was asleep. I took her to
her bed and tucked her in. But she remained awake for a long time. She changed into pajamas,
and I went on holding and recharging her. In my arms, I felt her cheeks grow hot and her
heart pound. I couldnt be sure I was doing the right thing, but I knew of no other way to deal
with the situation. The simplest thing would have been to sleep with her, but I managed to
sweep that possibility from my mind. My instincts told me not to do it.
 Please dont hate me for this, she said. My electricity is just so low I cant help it. 
 Dont worry, I said. I understand. 
I knew I should call home, but what could I have said to Kumiko? I didnt want to lie, but
I knew it would be impossible for me to explain to her what was happening. And after a
while, it didnt seem to matter anymore. Whatever happened would happen. I left her
apartment at two oclock and didnt get home until three. It was tough finding a cab.
Kumiko was furious, of course. She was sitting at the kitchen table, wide awake, waiting
for me. I said I had been out drinking and playing mah-jongg with the guys from the office.
Why couldnt I have made a simple phone call? she demanded. It had never crossed my mind,
I said. She was not convinced, and the lie became apparent almost immediately. I hadnt
played mah-jongg in years, and I just wasnt cut out for lying in any case. I ended up
confessing the truth. I told her the entire story from beginning to end-without the erection
part, of course-maintaining that I had done nothing with the woman.
Kumiko refused to speak to me for three days. Literally. Not a word. She slept in the other
room, and she ate her meals alone. This was the greatest crisis our marriage had faced. She
was genuinely angry with me, and I understood exactly how she felt.
After her three days of silence, Kumiko asked me, What would you think if you were in
my position? These were the very first words she spoke. What if I had come home at three
oclock Sunday morning without so much as a telephone call? ‘Ive been in bed with a man
all this time, but dont worry, I didnt do anything, please believe me. I was just recharging
his batteries. OK, great, lets have breakfast and go to sleep. You mean to say you wouldnt
get angry, youd just believe me? 
I kept quiet.
 And what you did was even worse than that, Kumiko continued. You lied to me! You
said you were drinking and playing mah-jongg. A total lie! How do you expect me to believe
you didnt sleep with her? 
 Im sorry I lied, I said. I should never have done that. But the only reason I lied was
because the truth was so difficult to explain. I want you to believe me: I really didnt do
anything wrong. 
Kumiko put her head down on the table. I felt as if the air in the room were gradually
thinning out.
 I dont know what to say, I said. I cant explain it other than to ask you to believe me. 
 All right. If you want me to believe you, I will, she said. But I want you to remember 
this: Im probably going to do the same thing to you someday. And when that time comes, I
want you to believe me. I have that right. 
Kumiko had never exercised that right. Every once in a while, I imagined how I would
feel if she did exercise it. I would probably believe her, but my reaction would no doubt be as
complex and as difficult to deal with as Kumikos. To think that she had made a point of
doing such a thing-and for what? Which was exactly how she must have felt about me back
then.
•
 Mr. Wind-Up Bird! came a voice from the garden. It was May Kasahara.
Still toweling my hair, I went out to the veranda. She was sitting on the edge, biting a
thumbnail. She wore the same dark sunglasses as when I had first met her, plus cream-colored
cotton pants and a black polo shirt. In her hand was a clipboard.
 I climbed it, she said, pointing to the cinder-block wall. Then she brushed away the dirt
clinging to her pants. I kinda figured I had the right place. Im glad it was yours! Think if I
had come over the wall into the wrong house! 
She took a pack of Hope regulars from her pocket and lit up.
 Anyhow, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, how are you? 
 OK, I guess. 
 Im going to work now, she said. Why dont you come along? We work in teams of
two, and itd be sooo much better for me to have somebody I know. Some new guyd ask me
all kinds of questions-How old are you? Why arent you in school? Its such a pain! Or
maybe hed turn out to be a pervert. It happens, you know! Do it for me, will you, Mr. WindUp
Bird? 
 Is it that job you told me about- some kind of survey for a toupee maker? 
 Thats it, she said. All you have to do is count bald heads on the Ginza from one to
four. Its easy! And itll be good for you. Youll be bald someday too, the way youre going,
so you better check it out now while you still have hair. 
 Yeah, but how about you? Isnt the truant officer going to get you if they see you doing
this stuff on the Ginza in the middle of the day? 
 Nah. I just tell ‘em its fieldwork for social studies. It always works. 
With no plans for the afternoon, I decided to tag along. May Kasahara phoned her
company to say we would be coming in. On the telephone, she turned into a very proper
young woman: Yes, sir, I would like to team up with him, yes, that is correct, thank you very
much, yes, I understand, yes, we can be there after noon. I left a note for Kumiko saying I
would be back by six, in case she got home early, then I left the house with May Kasahara.
The toupee company was in Shimbashi. On the subway, May Kasahara explained how the
survey worked. We were to stand on a street corner and count all the bald men (or those with
thinning hair) who walked by. We were to classify them according to the degree of their
baldness: C, those whose hair might have thinned somewhat; B, those who had lost a lot; and
A, those who were really bald. May took a pamphlet from her folder and showed me
examples of the three stages.
 You get the idea pretty much, right, which heads fit which categories? I wont go into
detail. Itd take all day. But you get it pretty much, right, which is which? 
 Pretty much, I said, without exuding a great deal of confidence.
On May Kasaharas other side sat an overweight company type-a very definite B-who
kept glancing uneasily at the pamphlet, but she seemed not to notice how nervous this was
making him.
 Ill be in charge of putting them into categories, and you stand next to me with a survey
sheet. You put them in A, B, or C, depending on what I tell you. Thats all there is to it. Easy, 
right? 
 I guess so, I said. But whats the point of taking a survey like this? 
 I dunno, she said. Theyre doing them all over Tokyo-in Shinjuku, Shibuya, Aoyama.
Maybe theyre trying to find out which neighborhood has the most bald men? Or they want to
know the proportions of A, B, and C types in the population? Who knows? Theyve got so
much money, they dont know what to do with it. So they can waste it on stuff like this.
Profits are huge in the wig business. The employees get much bigger bonuses than in just any
old company. Know why? No. Why? 
 Wigs dont last long. Bet you didnt know: toupees are good for two, maybe three years
max. The better made they are, the faster they get used up. Theyre the ultimate consumer
product. Its ‘cause they fit so tightly against the scalp: the hair underneath gets thinner than
ever. Once that happens, you have to buy a new one to get that perfect fit again. And think
about it: What if you were using a toupee and it was no good after two years-what would go
through your mind? Would you think, OK, my wigs worn out. Cant wear it anymore. But
itll cost too much to buy a new one, so tomorrow Ill start going to work without one? Is that
what youd think? 
I shook my head. Probably not, I said.
 Of course not. Once a guy starts using a wig, he has to keep using one. Its, like, his fate.
Thats why the wig makers make such huge profits. I hate to say it, but theyre like drug
dealers. Once they get their hooks into a guy, hes a customer for life. Have you ever heard of
a. bald guy suddenly growing a head of hair? I never have. A wigs got to cost half a million
yen at least, maybe a million for a tough one. And you need a new one every two years!
Wow! Even a car lasts longer than that-four or five years. And then you can trade it in! 
 I see what you mean, I said.
 Plus, the wig makers run their own hairstyling salons. They wash the wigs and cut the
customers real hair. I mean, think about it: you cant just plunk yourself down in an ordinary
barbers chair, rip off your wig, and say, ‘Id like a trim, can you? The income from these
places alone is tremendous. 
 You know all kinds of things, I said, with genuine admiration. The B-category company
type next to May was listening to our conversation with obvious fascination.
 Sure, she said. The guys at the office like me. They tell me everything. The profits in
this business are huge. They make the wigs in Southeast Asia and places like that, where labor
is cheap. They even get the hair there- in Thailand or the Philippines. The women sell their
hair to the wig companies. Thats how they earn their dowries in some places. The whole
worlds so weird! The guy sitting next to you might actually be wearing the hair of some
woman in Indonesia. 
By reflex, I and the B-man looked around at the others in the car.
•
We stopped off at the companys Shimbashi office to pick up an envelope containing
survey sheets and pencils. This company supposedly had a number two market share, but it
was utterly discreet, without even a name plaque at the entrance, so that customers could
come and go with ease. Neither the envelope nor the survey sheets bore the company name.
At the survey department, I filled out a part-time workers registration form with my name,
address, educational background, and age. This office was an incredibly quiet place of
business. There was no one shouting into the telephone, no one banging away at a computer
keyboard with sleeves rolled up. Each individual worker was neatly dressed and pursuing his
or her own task with quiet concentration. As might be expected at a toupee makers office, not
one man here was bald. Some might even be wearing the companys product, but it was
impossible for me to tell those who were from those who werent. Of all the companies I had 
ever visited, this had the strangest ambience.
We took the subway to the Ginza. Early and hungry, we stopped at the Dairy Queen for a
hamburger.
 Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara, would you wear a toupee if you were
bald? 
 I wonder, I said. I dont like things that take time and trouble. I probably wouldnt try
to fight it if I went bald. 
 Good, she said, wiping the ketchup from her mouth with a paper napkin. Thats the
way. Bald men never look as bad as they think. To me, its nothing to get so upset about. 
 I wonder, I said.
•
For the next three hours, we sat at the subway entrance by the Wako Building, counting
the bald-headed men who passed by. Looking down at the heads going up and down the
subway stairs was the most accurate method of determining the degree of baldness of any one
head. May Kasahara would say A or B or C, and I would write it down. She had
obviously done this many times. She never fumbled or hesitated or corrected herself, but
assigned each head to its proper category with great speed and precision, uttering the letters in
low, clipped tones so as not to be noticed by the passersby. This called for some rapid-fire
naming whenever a large group of bald heads passed by at once: CCBABCAAC-CBBB. At
one point, an elegant-looking old gentleman (who himself possessed a full head of snowwhite
hair) stopped to watch us in action, Pardon me, he said to me after a while, but might
I ask what you two are doing? 
 Survey, I said.
 What kind of survey? he asked.
 Social studies, I said.
 C A C A B C, said May Kasahara.
The old gentleman seemed less than convinced, but he went on watching us until he gave
up and wandered off somewhere.
When the Mitsukoshi clock across the street signaled four oclock, we ended our survey
and went back to the Dairy Queen for a cup of coffee. It had not been strenuous work, but I
found my neck and shoulders strangely stiff. Maybe it was from the covert nature of the job, a
guilty feeling I had about counting bald men in secret. All the time we were on the subway
heading back to company headquarters in Shimbashi, I found myself automatically assigning
each bald head I saw to category A or B or C, which almost made me queasy. I tried to stop
myself, but by then a kind of momentum had set in. We handed in our survey forms and received
our pay-rather good pay for the amount of time and effort involved. I signed a receipt
and put the money in my pocket. May Kasahara and I rode the subway to Shinjuku and from
there took the Odakyu Line home. The afternoon rush hour was starting. This was my first
ride on a crowded train in some time, but it hardly filled me with nostalgia.
 Pretty good job, dont you think? said May Kasahara, standing next to me on the train.
 Its easy, pays not bad. 
 Pretty good, I said, sucking on a lemon drop.
 Go with me next time? We can do it once a week. 
 Why not? I said.
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, May Kasahara said after a short silence, as if a thought
had suddenly come to her, I bet the reason people are afraid of going bald is because it
makes them think of the end of life. I mean, when your hair starts to thin, it must feel as if
your life is being worn away... as if youve taken a giant step in the direction of death, the
last Big Consumption. 
I thought about it for a while. Thats one way to look at it, Im sure, I said.
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I sometimes wonder what it must feel like to die little by
little over a long period of time. What do you think? 
Unsure exactly what she was getting at, I changed my grip on the hand strap and looked
into her eyes. Can you give me a concrete example of what you mean by that-to die little by
little? 
 Well... I dont know. Youre trapped in the dark all alone, with nothing to eat, nothing to
drink, and little by little you die.... 
 It must be terrible, I said. Painful. I wouldnt want to die like that if I could help it. 
 But finally, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, isnt that just what life is? Arent we all trapped in the
dark somewhere, and theyve taken away our food and water, and were slowly dying, little
by little... ? 
I laughed. Youre too young to be so... pessimistic, said, using the English word.
 Pessi-what? 
 Pessimistic. It means looking only at the dark side of things. 
 Pessimistic... pessimistic... She repeated the English to herself over and over, and then
she looked up at me with a fierce glare. Im only sixteen, she said, and I dont know much
about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If Im pessimistic, then the adults in this
world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots. 
 
Magic Touch
 
Death in the Bathtub
 
Messenger with Keepsakes
We had moved into our present house in the autumn of the second year we were married.
The Koenji apartment we had lived in until then was slated for renovation. We looked for a
cheap, convenient apartment to move into, but finding such a place was not easy with our
budget. When he heard this, my uncle suggested that we move into a house he owned in
Setagaya. He had bought it in his youth and lived there for ten years. He wanted to tear the old
place down and put up something more functional, but architectural regulations prevented him
from building the kind of house he wanted. He was waiting for a rumored relaxation of the
rules to take effect, but if he left the place vacant in the meantime, he would have to pay the
property taxes, and if he rented it to strangers, there could be trouble when he asked them to
vacate. From us, he would take only a nominal rent to cover the taxes, but in return he wanted
us to agree to give up the place with three months notice when the time came. We had no
problem with that: the part about the taxes was not entirely clear to us, but we jumped at the
chance to live in a real house, if only for a little while, paying the kind of rent we had been
paying to live in an apartment (and a very cheap apartment at that). The house was pretty far
from the nearest station on the Odakyu Line, but it was in a quiet residential neighborhood,
and it had its own small yard. Even though it didnt belong to us, it gave us the feeling, once
we moved in, that we were now part of a real household. 
My mothers younger brother, this uncle of mine never made any demands on us. He was
kind of a cool guy, I suppose, but there was something almost uncanny about him in the way
he left us alone. Still, he was my favorite relative. He had graduated from a college in Tokyo
and gone to work as a radio announcer, but when he got sick of the work after ten years, he
quit the station and opened a bar on the Ginza. It was an almost austere little place, but it
became widely known for the authenticity of its cocktails, and within a few years my uncle
was running a string of bars and restaurants. Every one of his establishments did extremely
well: apparently, he had that special spark you need for business. Once, while I was still in
college, I asked him why every place he opened was such a success. In the very same location
where one restaurant had failed on the Ginza, he might open up the same kind of restaurant
and do just fine. Why was that? He held the palms of both hands out for me to see. Its my
magic touch, he said, without a hint of humor. And that was all he said.
Maybe he really did have a magic touch, but he also had a talent for finding capable
people to work for him. He paid them high salaries and treated them well, and they in turn
worked hard for him. When I know Ive got the right guy, I put a wad of bills in his hand and
let him do his thing, he once told me. Youve got to spend your money for the things that
money can buy, not worry about profit or loss. Save your energy for the things that money
cant buy. 
He married late in life. Only after he had achieved financial success in his mid-forties did
he settle down. His wife was a divorcee, three or four years his junior, and she brought her
own considerable assets to the marriage. My uncle never told me how he happened to meet
her, and all I could tell about her was that she was a quiet sort of woman of good background.
They had no children. She had apparently had no children with her first husband, either,
which may have been the reason for the divorce. In any case, though not exactly a rich man,
my uncle was in a position in his mid-forties where it was no longer necessary for him to
break his back for money. In addition to the profits from his restaurants and bars, he had
rental income from several houses and condos that he owned, plus steady dividend income
from investments. With its reputation for respectable businesses and modest lifestyles, the
family tended to see my uncle as something of a black sheep, and he had never shown much
inclination for consorting with relatives. As his only nephew, though, I had always been of
some concern to him, especially after my mother died the year I entered college and I had a
falling-out with my father, who remarried. When I was living the lonely life of a poor college
student in Tokyo, my uncle often treated me to dinner in one or another of his Ginza
restaurants.
He and his wife now lived in a condo on a hill in Azabu rather than be bothered with
taking care of a house. He was not given to indulging in luxuries, but he did have one hobby,
which was the purchase of rare automobiles. He kept a Jaguar and an Alfa Romeo in the
garage, both of them nearly antiques and extremely well cared for, as shiny as newborn babes.
•
On the phone with my uncle about something else, I took the opportunity to ask him what
he knew about May Kasaharas family.
 Kasahara, you say? He took a moment to think. Never heard of them. I was a bachelor
when I lived there, never had anything to do with the neighbors. 
 Actually, its the house opposite theirs Im curious about, the vacant house on the other
side of the alley from their backyard, I said. I guess somebody named Miyawaki used to
live there. Now its all boarded up. 
 Oh, Miyawaki. Sure, I knew him, said my uncle. He used to own a few restaurants.
Had one on the Ginza too. I met him professionally a few times. His places were nothing
much, tell you the truth, but he had good locations. I thought he was doing all right. He was a 
nice guy, but kind of a spoiled-rich-kid type. He had never had to work hard, or he just never
got the hang of it or something, but he never quite grew up. Somebody got him going on the
stock market, took him for everything he had- house, land, businesses, everything. And the
timing couldnt have been worse. He was trying to open a new place, had his house and land
up as collateral. Bang! The whole thing. Had a couple of daughters, I think, college age. 
 The house has been empty ever since, I guess. 
 No kidding? Ill bet the titles a mess and his assets have been frozen or something.
Youd better not touch that place, no matter what kind of bargain theyre offering you. 
 Who? Me? I laughed. I could never afford a place like that. But what do you mean? 
 I looked into that house when I bought mine. Theres something wrong with it. 
 You mean like ghosts? 
 Maybe not ghosts, but Ive never heard anything good about the place, my uncle said.
 Some fairly well-known army guy lived there till the end of the war, Colonel Somebody-orother,
a real superelite officer. The troops under his command in North China won all kinds of
decorations, but they did some terrible things there-executing five hundred POWs, forcing
tens of thousands of farmers to work for them until half of them dropped dead, stuff like that.
These are the stories that were going around, so I dont know how much is true. He was called
home just before the end of the war, so he was here for the surrender, and he could see from
what was going on that he was likely to be tried as a war criminal. The guys who had gone
crazy in China-the generals, the field officers-were being dragged away by the MPs. Well, he
had no intention of being put on trial. He was not going to be made a spectacle of and hanged
in the bargain. He preferred to take his own life rather than let that happen. So one day when
he saw a GI stop a jeep in front of his house, he blew his brains out on the spot. He would
have preferred to slit his stomach open the old-fashioned samurai way, but there was no time
for that. His wife hanged herself in the kitchen to ‘accompany her husband in death. 
 Wow. 
 Anyhow, it turned out the GI was just an ordinary GI, looking for his girlfriend. He was
lost. He wanted to ask somebody directions. You know how tough it is to find your way
around that place. Deciding its your time to die-that cant be easy for anybody. 
 No, it cant be. 
 The house was vacant for a while after that, until an actress bought it- a movie actress.
You wouldnt know her name. She was around long before your time, and she was never very
famous. She lived there, say, ten years or so. Just she and her maid. She was single. A few
years after she moved in, she contracted some eye disease. Everything looked cloudy to her,
even close up. But she was an actress, after all; she couldnt work with glasses on. And
contact lenses were a new thing back then. They werent very good and almost nobody used
them. So before the crew shot a scene, she would always go over the layout and memorize
how many steps she had to take from A to B. She managed one way or another: they were
pretty simple films, those old Shochiku domestic dramas. Everything was more relaxed in
those days. Then one day, after she had checked over the set and gone back to her dressing
room, a young cameraman who didnt know what was going on moved the props and things
just a little bit. 
 Uh-oh. 
 She missed her footing, fell over, and couldnt walk after that. And her vision started
getting even worse. She was practically blind. It was a shame; she was still young and pretty.
Of course her movie-making days were over. All she could do was stay at home. And then the
maid took all her money and ran off with some guy. This maid was the one person she knew
she could trust, depended on her for everything, and the woman took her savings, her stocks,
everything. Boy, talk about terrible stories! So what do you think she did? 
 Well, obviously this story cant have a bright, happy ending. 
 No, obviously, said my uncle. She filled the tub, stuck her face in, and drowned 
herself. You realize, of course, that to die that way, you have to be pretty damned
determined. 
 Nothing bright and happy about that. 
 No, nothing bright and happy. Miyawaki bought the property soon afterward. I mean, its
a nice place; everybody wants it when they see it. The neighborhood is pleasant, the plot is on
high ground and gets good sunlight, the lot is big. But Miyawaki had heard the dark stories
about the people who had lived there, so he had the whole thing torn down, foundation and
all, and put up a new house. He even had Shinto priests come in to do a purification. But that
wasnt enough, I guess. Bad things happen to anybody who lives there. Its just one of those
pieces of land. They exist, thats all. I wouldnt take it if they gave it to me. 
•
After shopping at the supermarket, I organized my ingredients for making dinner. I then
took in the laundry, folded it neatly, and put it away. Back in the kitchen, I made myself a pot
of coffee. This was a nice, quiet day, without calls from anybody. I stretched out on the sofa
and read a book. There was no one to disturb my reading. Every once in a while, the wind-up
bird would creak in the backyard. It was virtually the only sound I heard all day.
Someone rang the front doorbell at four oclock. It was the postman. Registered mail, he
said, and handed me a thick envelope. I took it and put my seal on the receipt.
This was no ordinary envelope. It was made of old-fashioned heavy rice paper, and
someone had gone to the trouble of writing my name and address on it with a brush, in bold
black characters. The senders name on the back was Tokutaro Mamiya, the address
somewhere in Hiroshima Prefecture. I had absolutely no knowledge of either. Judging from
the brushwork, this Tokutaro Mamiya was a man of advanced age. No one knew how to write
like that anymore.
I sat on the sofa and used a scissors to cut the envelope open. The letter itself, just as oldfashioned
as the envelope, was written on rolled rice paper in a flowing hand by an obviously
cultivated person. Lacking such cultivation myself, I could hardly read it. The sentence style
matched the handwriting in its extreme formality, which only complicated the process, but
with enough time, I managed to decipher the general meaning. It said that old Mr. Honda, the
fortune-teller whom Kumiko and I had gone to see so long ago, had died of a heart attack two
weeks earlier in his Meguro home. Living alone, he had died without company, but the
doctors believed that he had gone quickly and without a great deal of suffering- perhaps the
one bright spot in this sad tale. The maid had found him in the morning, slumped forward on
the low table of his foot warmer. The letter writer, Tokutaro Mamiya, had been stationed in
Manchuria as a first lieutenant and had chanced to share the dangers of war with Corporal
Oishi Honda. Now, in compliance with the strong wishes of the deceased, and in the absence
of surviving relatives, Mamiya had undertaken the task of distributing the keepsakes. The
deceased had left behind extremely minute written instructions in this regard. The detailed
and meticulous will suggests that Mr. Honda had anticipated his own impending death. It
states explicitly that he would be extremely pleased if you, Mr. Toru Okada, would be so kind
as to receive a certain item as a remembrance of him. I can imagine how very busy you must
be, Mr. Okada, but I can assure you, as an old comrade in arms of the deceased with few years
to look forward to myself, that I could have no greater joy than if you were indeed to be so
kind as to receive this item as a small remembrance of the late Mr. Honda. The letter
concluded with the address at which Mr. Mamiya was presently staying in Tokyo, care of
someone else named Mamiya in Hongo -chome, Bunkyo Ward. I imagined he must be in the
house of a relative.
I wrote my reply at the kitchen table. I had hoped to keep the postcard short and simple,
but once I had pen in hand, those few concise phrases were not forthcoming. I was fortunate 
enough to have known the late Mr. Honda and benefited from our brief acquaintance. The
news that he is no longer living brings back memories of those times. Our ages were very
different, of course, and our association lasted but a single year, yetI
always used to feel that there was something about the deceased that moved people
deeply. To be quite honest, I would never have imagined that Mr. Honda would name me
specifically to be the recipient of a keepsake, nor am I certain that I am even qualified to
receive anything from him, but if such was his wish, then I will certainly do so with all due
respect. Please contact me at your earliest convenience. 
When I dropped the card into the nearest mailbox, I found myself murmuring old Mr.
Hondas verse: Dying is the only way / For you to float free: / Nomonhan. 
•
It was close to ten before Kumiko came home from work. She had called before six to say
that she would be late again today, that I should have dinner without her and she would grab
something outside. Fine, I said, and ate a simple meal. Again I stayed home alone, reading a
book. When she came in, Kumiko said she wanted a few sips of beer. We shared a midsize
bottle. She looked tired. Elbows on the kitchen table, she rested her chin in her hands and said
little when I spoke to her. She seemed preoccupied. I told her that Mr. Honda had died. Oh,
really? she said, with a sigh. Oh, well, he was getting on in years, and he was almost deaf. 
When I said that he had left a keepsake for me, though, she was shocked, as if something had
suddenly fallen out of the sky.
 For you?! she exclaimed, her eyebrows twisting into a frown.
 Yeah. Weird, isnt it? 
 He must have liked you. 
 How could that be? I never really talked to the guy, I said. At least I never said much.
And even if I did, he couldnt hear anything. We used to sit and listen to his stories once a
month. And all we ever heard from him was the Battle of Nomonhan: how they threw
Molotov cocktails, and which tank burned, and which tank didnt burn, that kind of stuff. 
 Dont ask me, said Kumiko. He must have liked something about you. I dont
understand people like that, whats in their minds. 
After that, she went silent again. It was a strained silence. I glanced at the calendar on the
wall. Her period was not due yet. I imagined that something unpleasant might have happened
at the office.
 Working too hard? I asked.
 A little, Kumiko said, after taking a sip of beer and staring at what was left in her glass.
There was an almost defiant tone in her voice. Sorry I was so late, but you know how it is
with magazine work when we get busy. And its not as if I do this all the time. I get them to
give me less overtime than most. They know I have a husband to go home to. 
I nodded. Im not blaming you, I said. I know you have to work late sometimes. I was
just worried youre letting yourself get tired out. 
She took a long shower. I drank my beer and flipped through a weekly magazine that she
had brought home.
I shoved my hand in my pants pocket and found the pay there from my recent little parttime
job. I hadnt even taken the cash from the envelope. Another thing I hadnt done was tell
Kumiko about the job. Not that I had been hiding it from her, but I had let the opportunity to
mention it slip by and there had never been another one. As time passed, I found it harder to
bring up the subject, for some strange reason. All I would have had to say was, I met this odd
sixteen-year-old girl from down the street and took a job with her doing a survey for a wig
maker. The pay was pretty good too. 
And Kumiko could have said, Oh, really? Isnt that nice, and that might have been the 
end of it. Or not. She might have wanted to know more about May Kasahara. She might have
been bothered that I was making friends with a sixteen-year-old girl. Then I would have had
to tell her about May Kasahara and explain in detail where, when, and how we happened to
meet. But Im not very good at giving people orderly explanations of things.
I took the money from the envelope and put it in my wallet. The envelope itself I
crumpled and threw in the wastebasket. So this was how secrets got started, I thought to
myself. People constructed them little by little. I had not consciously intended to keep May
Kasahara a secret from Kumiko. My relationship with her was not that big a deal, finally:
whether I mentioned it or not was of no consequence. Once it had flowed down a certain
delicate channel, however, it had become cloaked in the opacity of secretiveness, whatever
my original intention may have been. The same thing had happened with Creta Kano. I had
told Kumiko that Malta Kanos younger sister had come to the house, that her name was
Creta, that she dressed in early-sixties style, that she took samples of our tap water. But I had
remained silent on the fact that she had afterward begun to make startling revelations to me
and had vanished without a word before reaching the end. Creta Kanos story had been too
far-out: I could never have re-created the nuances and conveyed them to Kumiko, and so I had
not tried. Or then again, Kumiko might have been less than pleased that Creta Kano had
stayed here long after her business was through and made all kinds of troubling personal
confessions to me. And so that became another one of my little secrets.
Maybe Kumiko had the same kind of secrets that she was keeping from me. With my own
fund of secrets, I was in no position to blame her if she did, of course. Between the two of us,
I was surely the more secretive. She tended to say what she was thinking. She was the type of
person who thought things out while speaking. I was not like that.
Uneasy with these ruminations, I walked toward the bathroom. The door was wide open. I
stood in the doorway and looked at Kumiko from behind. She had changed into solid-blue
pajamas and was standing in front of the mirror, drying her hair with a towel.
 About a job for me, I said. I have been thinking about it. Ive asked friends to be on the
lookout, and Ive tried a few places myself. There are jobs out there, so I can work anytime I
decide to work. I can start tomorrow if I make up my mind to it. Its making up my mind
thats hard. Im just not sure. Im not sure if its OK for me to pick a job out of a hat like
that. 
 Thats why I keep telling you to do what you want, she said, while looking at herself in
the mirror. You dont have to find a job right away. If youre worried about the economics of
it, you dont have to worry. If it makes you uneasy not to have a job, if its a burden to you to
have me be the only one working outside the house while you stay home and take care of the
housework, then take some job-any job-for a while. I dont care. 
 Of course, Ill have to find a job eventually. I know that, you know that. I cant go on
hanging around like this forever. And I will find a job sooner or later. Its just that right now, I
dont know what kind of a job I should take. For a while after I quit, I just figured Id take
some other law-related job. I do have connections in the field. But now I cant get myself into
that mood. The more time that goes by, the less interest I have in law. I feel more and more
that its simply not the work for me. 
Kumiko looked at me in the mirror. I went on:
 But knowing what I dont want to do doesnt help me figure out what I do want to do. I
could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I dont have an image of the one
thing I really want to do. Thats my problem now. I cant find the image. 
 So, then, she said, putting her towel down and turning to face me, if youre tired of
law, dont do it anymore. Just forget about the bar exam. Dont get all worked up about
finding a job. If you cant find the image, wait until it forms by itself. Whats wrong with
that? 
I nodded. I just wanted to make sure I had explained to you exactly how I felt. 
 Good, she said.
I went to the kitchen and washed my glass. She came in from the bathroom and sat at the
kitchen table.
 Guess who called me this afternoon, she said. My brother. 
 Oh? 
 Hes thinking of running for office. In fact, hes just about decided to do it. 
 Running for office?! This came as such a shock to me, I could hardly speak for a
moment. You mean... for the Diet? 
 Thats right. Theyre asking him to run for my uncles seat in Niigata. 
 I thought it was all set for your uncles son to succeed him. He was going to resign his
directorship at Dentsu or something and go back to Niigata. 
She started cleaning her ears with a cotton swab. That was the plan, but my cousin
doesnt want to do it. Hes got his family in Tokyo, and he enjoys his work. Hes not ready to
give up such an important post with the worlds largest advertising firm and move back to the
wilds of Niigata just to become a Diet member. The main opposition is from his wife. She
doesnt want him sacrificing the family to run for office. 
The elder brother of Kumikos father had spent four or five terms in the Lower House,
representing that electoral district in Niigata. While not exactly a heavyweight, he had
compiled a fairly impressive record, rising at one point to a minor cabinet post. Now,
however, advanced age and heart disease would make it impossible for him to enter the next
election, which meant that someone would have to succeed to his constituency. This uncle
had two sons, but the elder had never intended to go into politics, and so the younger was the
obvious choice.
 Now the people in the district are dying to have my brother run. They want somebody
young and smart and energetic. Somebody who can serve for several terms, with the talent to
become a major power in the central government. My brother has the name recognition, hell
attract the young vote: hes perfect. True, he cant schmooze with the locals, but the support
organization is strong, and theyll take care of that. Plus, if he wants to go on living in Tokyo,
thats no problem. All he has to do is show up for the election. 
I had trouble picturing Noboru Wataya as a Diet member. What do you think of all this? 
I asked.
 Hes got nothing to do with me. He can become a Diet member or an astronaut, for all I
care. 
 But why did he make a point of coming to you for advice? 
 Dont be ridiculous, she said, with a dry voice. He wasnt asking my advice. You
know hed never do that. He was just keeping me informed. As a member of the family. 
 I see, I said. Still, if hes going to run for the Diet, wont it be a problem that hes
divorced and single? 
 I wonder, said Kumiko. I dont know anything about politics or elections or anything.
They just dont interest me. But anyway, Im pretty sure hell never get married again. To
anybody. He should never have gotten married in the first place. Thats not what he wants out
of life. Hes after something else, something completely different from what you or I want. I
know that for sure. 
 Oh, really? 
Kumiko wrapped two used cotton swabs in a tissue and threw them in the wastebasket.
Then she raised her face and looked straight at me. I once saw him masturbating. I opened a
door, and there he was. 
 So what? Everybody masturbates, I said.
 No, you dont understand, she said. Then she sighed. It happened maybe two years
after my sister died. He was probably in college, and I was something like a third grader. My
mother had wavered between getting rid of my sisters things and putting them away, and in 
the end she decided to keep them, thinking I might wear them when I got older. She had put
them in a carton in a closet. My brother had taken them out and was smelling them and doing
it. I kept silent.
 I was just a little girl then. I didnt know anything about sex. I really didnt know what he
was doing, but I could tell that it was something twisted, something I wasnt supposed to see,
something much deeper than,it appeared on the surface. Kumiko shook her head.
 Does Noboru Wataya know you saw him? 
 Of course. We looked right into each others eyes. I nodded.
 And how about your sisters clothes? I asked. Did you wear them when you got
bigger? No way, she said.
 So you think he was in love with your sister? I wonder, said Kumiko. Im not even
sure he had a sexual interest in her, but he certainly had something, and I suspect hes never
been able to get away from that something. Thats what I mean when I say he should never
have gotten married in the first place. 
Kumiko fell silent. For a long time, neither of us said anything. Then she spoke first. In
that sense, I think he may have some serious psychological problems. Of course, we all have
psychological problems to some extent, but his are a lot worse than whatever you or I might
have. Theyre a lot deeper and more persistent. And he has no intention of letting these scars
or weaknesses or whatever they are be seen by anybody else. Ever. Do you understand what
Im saying? This election coming up: it worries me. 
 Worries you? Hows that? 
 I dont know. It just does, she said. Anyhow, Im tired. I cant think anymore today.
Lets go to bed. 
Brushing my teeth in the bathroom, I studied my face in the mirror. For over two months
now, since quitting my job, I had rarely entered the outside world. I had been moving back
and forth between the neighborhood shops, the ward pool, and this house. Aside from the
Ginza and that hotel in Shinagawa, the farthest point I had traveled from home was the
cleaners by the station. And in all that time, I had hardly seen anyone. Aside from Kumiko,
the only people I could be said to have seen in two months were Malta and Kano and May
Kasahara. It was a narrow world, a world that was standing still. But the narrower it became,
and the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow
with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it
seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving. And every time the wind-up bird
came to my yard to wind its spring, the world descended more deeply into chaos.
I rinsed my mouth and went on looking at my face for a time.
I cant find the image, I said to myself. Im thirty, Im standing still, and I cant find the
image.
When I went from the bathroom to the bedroom, Kumiko was asleep.
 
Enter Lieutenant M a m i y a
 
What Came from the Warm Mud
 
Eau de Cologne
Three days later, Tokutaro Mamiya called. At seven-thirty in the morning. I was eating
breakfast with Kumiko at the time.
 I am very, very sorry to be calling you so early in the morning. I do hope I havent
awakened you, said Mr. Mamiya, sounding genuinely apologetic.
I assured him that it was all right: I woke up every morning shortly after six.
He thanked me for my postcard and explained that he wanted to reach me before I left for
work this morning, adding that he would be most grateful if I could see him briefly today
during my lunch break. He was hoping to take an evening bullet train back to Hiroshima. He
had planned to have more time here, he said, but something had come up that made it
necessary for him to return home as soon as possible.
I pointed out that I was presently unemployed, that I was free all day, and that I could see
him at his convenience, be it morning, noon, afternoon, or whenever.
 But surely you must have something planned at some point in the day? he inquired with
the utmost politeness.
I had no plan at all, I replied.
 That being the case, might I be permitted to call upon you at your residence this morning
at ten oclock? 
 That would be fine. 
Only after I hung up did it occur to me that I had forgotten to tell him how to find our
house from the station. Oh, well, I figured, he knows the address; he can make his way here if
he wants to.
 Who was that? asked Kumiko.
 The guy whos distributing Mr. Hondas keepsakes. Hes going to bring mine here later
this morning. 
 No kidding? She took a sip of coffee and spread butter on her toast. Thats very nice of
him. 
 Sure is. 
 By the way, she said, shouldnt we-or at least you-go to pay our respects at Mr.
Hondas: burn a stick of incense, that sort of thing? 
 Good idea. Ill ask him about that. 
Preparing to leave the house, Kumiko asked me to zip her dress up. It was a tight fit, and
closing the zipper took some doing. She was wearing a lovely fragrance behind her earssomething
perfect for a summer morning. New cologne? I asked. Instead of answering, she
glanced at her watch and reached up to fix her hair.
 Im late, she said, and took her handbag from the table.
•
I had straightened up the little room that Kumiko used for work and was emptying the
wastebasket when I noticed a yellow ribbon she had discarded. It was peeking out from under
a crumpled sheet of writing paper and a few pieces of junk mail. Its bright, glossy yellow was
what had caught my eye. It was the kind of ribbon used to wrap presents, the bow tied in the
shape of a flower. I lifted it from the wastebasket and examined it. The ribbon had been
discarded along with some wrapping paper from the Matsuya department store. Under the
paper was a box with the Christian Dior label. The lining inside the box formed the shape of a
bottle. Judging from the box, this had been a pretty expensive item. I took it with me to the
bathroom and opened Kumikos cosmetics cabinet. Inside was a virtually unused bottle of
Christian Dior eau de cologne, shaped like the hollow in the box. I opened the bottles goldcolored
cap and took a sniff. It was the same fragrance I had smelled from behind Kumikos 
ears.
I sat on the sofa, drinking the rest of my morning coffee and collecting my thoughts.
Someone had obviously given Kumiko a gift. An expensive gift. Bought it at the Matsuya
department store and had it wrapped with a ribbon. If the person who did this was a man, he
was someone close to Kumiko. Men didnt give women (especially married women) cologne
unless their relationship was a close one. If a woman friend had given it to her... But did
women give eau de cologne to other women? I could not be sure. One thing I could be sure of,
though, was that there was no particular reason for Kumiko to be receiving presents from
other people at this time of year. Her birthday was in May. So was our anniversary. She might
conceivably have bought herself a bottle of cologne and had it wrapped with a pretty ribbon.
But why?
I sighed and looked at the ceiling.
Should I ask her about it directly? Did somebody give you that cologne? She might
answer: Oh, that. One of the girls at work had a personal problem I helped her out with. Its
too long a story to go into, but she was in a jam, so I did it to be nice. This was a thank-you
gift. Wonderful fragrance, dont you think? Its expensive stuff! 
OK, that makes sense. That does it. No need to ask the question. No need to be concerned.
Except I was concerned. She should have said something to me about it. If she had time to
go to her room, untie the ribbon, tear off the wrapping paper, open the box, throw all three in
the wastebasket, and put the bottle in her cosmetics cabinet, she should have been able to
come to me and say, Look at this present I got from one of the girls at work. Instead, she
had said nothing. Maybe she had thought it wasnt worth mentioning. Now, however, it had
taken on the thin veil of secrecy. That was what was bothering me.
I looked at the ceiling for a long time. I tried to think about something else, but my mind
wouldnt cooperate. I kept thinking about Kumiko at the moment I zipped up her dress: her
smooth white back, the fragrance behind her ears. For the first time in months, I wanted a
smoke. I wanted to put a cigarette in my mouth, light the tip, and suck the smoke into my
lungs. That would have calmed me down somewhat. But I didnt have any cigarettes. I found
a lemon drop and sucked on that.
At ten of ten, the phone rang. I assumed it was Lieutenant Mamiya. This house was not
easy to find. Even people who had been here more than once got lost sometimes. But the call
was not from Lieutenant Mamiya. What I heard coming from the receiver was the voice of the
enigmatic woman who had phoned me the other day.
 Hi, honey, its been a while, she said. Howd you like it last time? Did I get you going
a little bit? Whyd you hang up on me? And just when things were getting interesting! 
For a split second, I thought she was talking about my recent wet dream of Kano. But that
had been a different story. She was talking about the day she called me when I was cooking
spaghetti.
 Sorry, I said, but Im pretty busy right now. Im expecting a visitor in ten minutes, and
Ive got to get the place ready. 
 Youre awfully busy for somebody whos supposed to be out of work, she said, with a
sarcastic edge. The same thing had happened last time: her tone of voice changed from one
second to the next. Youre cooking spaghetti, youre expecting a visitor. But thats all right.
All we need is ten minutes. Lets talk for ten minutes, just you and me. You can hang up
when your guest arrives. 
I wanted to hang up without saying a word, but I couldnt do it. I was probably still upset
about Kumikos cologne. I probably felt like talking to someone, and it didnt much matter
who.
 Look, I said, I dont have any idea who you are. I picked up the pencil lying beside
the phone and twirled it in my fingers as I spoke. Are you sure I know you? 
 Of course you do. I told you last time. I know you and you know me. I wouldnt lie about 
a thing like that. I dont have time to waste calling complete strangers. You must have some
kind of blind spot in your memory. 
 I dont know about that. Really, though- 
 Enough, she said, cutting me off. Stop thinking so much. You know me and I know
you. The important thing is-well, look at it this way: Im going to be very nice to you. But you
dont have to do a thing. Isnt that marvelous? You dont have to do a thing, you have no
responsibilities, and I do everything. Everything. Dont you think thats great? So stop
thinking so much. Stop making everything so complicated. Empty yourself out. Pretend
youre lying in some nice, soft mud on a warm spring afternoon. 
I kept silent.
 Youre asleep. Youre dreaming. Youre lying in nice, warm mud. Forget about your
wife. Forget youre out of work. Forget about the future. Forget about everything. We all
come out of the warm mud, and we all go back to it. Finally- Oh, by the way, Mr. Okada,
when was the last time you had sex with your wife? Do you remember? Quite some time ago,
wasnt it? Yes, indeed, maybe two weeks now. 
 Sorry, my visitor is here, I said.
 More than two weeks, wasnt it? I can tell from your voice. Three weeks, maybe? 
I said nothing.
 Oh, well, never mind, she said, her voice like a little broom sweeping off the dust that
had piled up on the slats of a Venetian blind. Thats between you and your wife. But I will
give you everything you want. And you, Mr. Okada, you need have no responsibilities in
return. Just go round the corner, and there it is: a world youve never seen. I told you you
have a blind spot, didnt I? You still dont understand. 
Gripping the receiver, I maintained my silence.
 Look around, she said. Look all around you and tell me whats there. What is it you
see? 
Just then the doorbell rang. Relieved, I hung up without a word.
•
Lieutenant Mamiya was a bald old gentleman of exceptional height, who wore goldrimmed
glasses. He had the tan, healthy look of a man who has done his share of manual
labor, without an ounce of excess flesh. Three deep wrinkles marked the corner of each eye
with perfect symmetry, as if he were on the verge of squinting because he found the light
harsh. It was difficult to tell his age, though he was certainly no less than seventy. I imagined
he must have been a strapping fellow in his prime. This was obvious from his erect carriage
and efficient movements. His demeanor and speech were of the utmost respectfulness, but
rather than elaborate formality, this gave an impression of unadorned precision. The
lieutenant appeared to be a man accustomed to making his own decisions and taking
responsibility for them. He wore an unremarkable light-gray suit, a. white shirt, and a gray
and black striped tie. The no-nonsense suit appeared to be made of a material that was a bit
too thick for a hot and humid June morning, but the lieutenant was unmarked by a drop of
sweat. He had a prosthetic left hand, on which he wore a thin glove of the same light-gray
color as the suit. Encased in this gray glove, the artificial hand looked especially cold and
inorganic when compared with the tanned and hairy right hand, from which dangled a clothwrapped
bundle, knotted at the top.
I showed him to the living room couch and served him a cup of green tea.
He apologized for not having a name card. I used to teach social studies in a rural public
high school in Hiroshima Prefecture, but I havent done anything since I retired. I raise a few
vegetables, more as a hobby than anything, just simple farm work. For that reason, I do not
happen to carry a name card, although I realize it is terribly rude of me. 
I didnt have a name card, either.
 Forgive me, but I wonder how old you might be, Mr. Okada? 
 Im thirty, I said.
He nodded. Then he took a sip of tea. I had no idea what it meant to him that I was thirty
years old.
 This is such a nice, quiet home you live in, he said, as if to change the subject.
I told him how I came to be renting it from my uncle for so little. Ordinarily, with our
income, we couldnt afford to live in a house half the size, I added. Nodding, he stole a few
hesitant glances around the place. I followed his lead and did the same. Look all around you,
the womans voice had ordered me. Taking this newly conscious look at my surroundings, I
found a certain coldness in the pervading atmosphere.
 I have been in Tokyo two weeks altogether on this trip, said Lieutenant Mamiya, and
you are the very last person to whom I am distributing a keepsake. Now I feel I can go back to
Hiroshima. 
 I was hoping I could visit Mr. Hondas home and perhaps burn a stick of incense in his
memory, I said.
 That is a most laudable intention, but Mr. Hondas home-and now his grave-are in
Asahikawa, Hokkaido. The family came from Asahikawa to sort out the things he left in his
house in Meguro, and now they have gone back. There is nothing left. 
 I see, I said. So Mr. Honda was living alone in Tokyo, then, far away from his family. 
 That is correct. The eldest son, who lives in Asahikawa, was concerned about leaving his
old father to live by himself in the big city, and he knew that it did not look very good.
Apparently, he tried to persuade his father to come and live with him, but Mr. Honda simply
refused. 
 He had a son? I asked, somewhat taken aback. I had always thought of Mr. Honda as
utterly alone in the world. Then I assume Mr. Hondas wife must have passed away some
time ago. 
 Well, that is a rather complicated story. Mrs. Honda committed a lovers suicide with
another man after the war. In or , believe. The details of that event are not
something that I would know about. Mr. Honda never said too much about it, and of course I
was in no position to ask. 
I nodded.
 After that, Mr. Honda raised his children alone-one son and one daughter. When they
became independent, he moved to Tokyo by himself and began his work as a diviner, which is
how you knew him. 
 What sort of work did he do in Asahikawa? 
 He was partners with his brother in a printing business. I tried to imagine Mr. Honda
standing in front of a printing press in coveralls, checking proof, but to me Mr. Honda was a
slightly grimy old man in a grimy old kimono with a sash more suited to a sleeping robe, who
sat, winter and summer, with his legs in the sunken hearth, playing with his divining sticks
atop his low table.
With deft movements, Lieutenant Mamiya used his good hand to untie the cloth bundle he
had brought with him. A package emerged, shaped like a small box of candy. It was wrapped
in kraft paper and tightly tied in several loops of string. The lieutenant placed it on the table
and slid it toward me.
 This is the keepsake that Mr. Honda left with me to give to you, he said.
I picked it up. It weighed practically nothing. I couldnt begin to imagine what was inside.
 Shall I just go ahead and open it? I asked.
Lieutenant Mamiya shook his head. I am sorry, but Mr. Honda indicated that he wished
you to open it when you were alone. I nodded and returned the package to the table. In
fact, said Lieutenant Mamiya, I received the letter from Mr. Honda exactly one day before 
he died. It said something like this: ‘I am going to die very soon. I am not the least bit afraid
of dying. This is the span of life that has been allotted to me by the will of Heaven, Where the
will of Heaven is concerned, all one can do is submit to it. There is, however, something that I
have left undone. In my closet there are various objects-things that I have wanted to pass on to
certain people. Now it appears that I will not be able to accomplish that task. Which is why I
would be most grateful if you would help me by distributing the keepsakes on the attached
list. I fully realize how presumptuous this is of me, but I do hope that you will be so kind as to
think of it as my dying wish and exert yourself this one last time for my sake.
I must say, I was utterly shocked to receive such a letter from Mr. Honda. I had been out
of touch with him for years-perhaps six or seven years without a word. I wrote back to him
immediately, but my reply crossed in the mails with the notice from his son that Mr. Honda
had died. He took a sip of his green tea.
 Mr. Honda knew exactly when he was going to die, Lieutenant Mamiya continued. He
must have attained a state of mind that someone like me could never hope to reach. As you
said in your postcard, there was something about him that moved people deeply. I felt that
from the time I first met him, in the summer of. 
 Oh, were you in the same unit with Mr. Honda at the time of the Nomonhan Incident? 
 No, I wasnt, said Lieutenant Mamiya, biting his lip. We were in different unitsdifferent
divisions, even. We worked together in a small-scale military operation that
preceded the Nomonhan battle. Corporal Honda was later wounded at Nomonhan and sent
back to Japan. I didnt go to Nomonhan. I lost this hand of mine -and here Lieutenant
Mamiya held up his gloved left hand- in the Soviet advance of August , the month the
war ended. I caught a slug in the shoulder from a heavy machine gun during a battle against a
tank unit. I was on the ground, unconscious, when a Soviet tank ran over my hand. I was
taken prisoner, treated in a hospital in Chita, and sent to an internment camp in Siberia. They
kept me there until. was on the continent for twelve years altogether from the time they
sent me over in , never set foot on Japanese soil the whole time. My family thought I had
been killed fighting the Soviets. They made a grave for me in the village cemetery. I had a
kind of understanding with a girl there before I left Japan, but by the time I got back she was
already married to another man. Twelve years is a long time. 
I nodded.
 Im sorry, Mr. Okada, he said. This talk about the old days must be boring to a young
fellow like you. I would like to add one more thing, though. And that is that we were just
ordinary young men, the same as you. I never once thought I wanted to be a soldier. I wanted
to be a teacher. As soon as I left college, though, they sent me my draft notice, stuck me in
officers training, and I ended up on the continent for twelve years. My life went by like a
dream. Lieutenant Mamiya clamped his mouth shut.
 If you wouldnt mind, I said, after some time had passed, I would very much like to
hear the story of how you and Mr. Honda came to know each other. I genuinely wanted to
know what kind of man Mr. Honda had been before I met him.
Hands placed precisely on his knees, Lieutenant Mamiya sat thinking about something.
Not that he was uncertain as to what he should do. He was just thinking.
 That story might be a long one, he said.
 I dont mind, I said.
 Ive never told it to anyone. And Im quite certain that Mr. Honda never told it to
anyone, either. The reason I say that is that we... made a pact... to keep this one thing secret.
But Mr. Honda is dead now. Im the only one left. It wouldnt hurt anyone if I told. 
And so Lieutenant Mamiya began to tell me his story.
 
Lieutenant Mamiyas Long Story: Part I
 
I was shipped to Manchuria at the beginning of , Lieutenant Mamiya began. I was a
brand-new second lieutenant then, and they assigned me to the Kwantung Army General Staff
in Hsin-ching. Geography had been my major in college, so I ended up in the Military Survey
Corps, which specialized in mapmaking. This was ideal for me because, to be quite honest,
the duties I was ordered to perform were among the easiest that anyone could hope for in the
army.
In addition to this, conditions in Manchuria were relatively peaceful- or at least stable.
The recent outbreak of the China Incident had moved the theater of military operations from
Manchuria into China proper. The China Expeditionary Forces were the ones doing the actual
righting now, while the Kwantung Army had an easy time of it. True, mopping-up operations
were still going on against anti-Japanese guerrilla units, but they were confined to the interior,
and in general the worst was over. All that the powerful Kwantung Army had to do was police
our newly independent puppet state of Manchukuo while keeping an eye on the north.
As peaceful as things supposedly were, it was still war, after all, so there were constant
maneuvers. I didnt have to participate in those, either, fortunately. They took place under
terrible conditions. The temperature would drop to forty or fifty degrees below zero. One false
step in maneuvers like that, and you could end up dead. Every single time they held such
maneuvers, there would be hundreds of men in the hospital with frostbite or sent to a hot
spring for treatment. Hsin-ching was no big city, but it was certainly an exotic foreign place,
and if you wanted to have fun there, it provided plenty of opportunities. New single officers
like me lived together in a kind of rooming house rather than in barracks. It was more like an
extension of student life. I took it easy, thinking that I would have nothing to complain about
if my military service ended like this, just one peaceful day after another.
It was, of course, a make-believe peace. Just beyond the edges of our little circle of
sunshine, a ferocious war was going on. Most Japanese realized that the war with China
would turn into a muddy swamp from which we could never extricate ourselves, I believe-or
at least any Japanese with a brain in his head realized this. It didnt matter how many local
battles we won: there was no way Japan could continue to occupy and rule over such a huge
country. It was obvious if you thought about it. And sure enough, as the fighting continued,
the number of dead and wounded began to multiply. Relations with America went from bad to
worse. Even at home, the shadows of war grew darker with every passing day. Those were
dark years then: ,. But living the easy life of an officer in Hsin-ching, you almost
wanted to ask, War? What war? Wed go out drinking and carousing every night, and wed
visit the cafes that had the White Russian girls.
Then, one day late in April , a senior officer of the general staff called me in and
introduced me to a fellow in mufti named Yamamoto. He wore his hair short and had a
mustache. He was not a very tall man. As for his age, Id say he was in his mid-thirties. He
had a scar on the back of his neck that looked as if it might have been made by a blade of
some kind. The officer said to me: Mr. Yamamoto is a civilian. Hes been hired by the army
to investigate the life and customs of the Mongolians who live in Manchukuo. He will next be
going to the Hulunbuir Steppe, near the Outer Mongolian border, and we are going to supply
him with an armed escort. You will be a member of that detachment. I didnt believe a thing 
he was telling me. This Yamamoto fellow might have been wearing civilian clothes, but
anybody could tell at a glance that he was a professional soldier. The look in his eyes, the way
he spoke, his posture: it was obvious. I figured he was a high-ranking officer or had
something to do with intelligence and was on a mission that required him to conceal his
military identity. There was something ominous about the whole thing.
Three of us were assigned to accompany Yamamoto-too few for an effective armed
escort, though a larger group would have attracted the attention of the Outer Mongolian troops
deployed along the border. One might have chosen to view this as a case of entrusting a
sensitive mission to a few handpicked men, but the truth was far from that. I was the only
officer, and I had zero battlefield experience. The only one we could count on for fighting
power was a sergeant by the name of Hamano. I knew him well, as a soldier who had been
assigned to assist the general staff. He was a tough fellow who had worked his way up
through the ranks to become a noncommissioned officer, and he had distinguished himself in
battle in China. He was big and fearless, and I was sure we could count on him in a. pinch.
Why they had also included Corporal Honda in our party I had no idea. Like me, he had just
arrived from home, and of course he had no experience on the battlefield. He was a gentle,
quiet soul who looked as if he would be no help at all in a fight. Whats more, he belonged to
the Seventh Division, which meant that the general staff had gone out of their way to have
him sent over to us specifically for this assignment. Thats how valuable a soldier he was,
though not until much later did the reason for this become clear.
I was chosen to be the commanding officer of the escort because my primary
responsibility was the topography of the western border of Manchukuo in the area of the
Khalkha River. My job was to make sure that our maps of the district were as complete as
possible. I had even been over the area several times in a plane. My presence was meant to
help the mission go smoothly. My second assignment was to gather more detailed
topographical information on the district and so increase the precision of our maps. Two birds
with one stone, as it were. To be quite honest, the maps we had in those days of the Hulunbuir
Steppe border region with Outer Mongolia were crude things-hardly an improvement over the
old Manchu dynasty maps. The Kwantung Army had done several surveys following the
establishment of Manchukuo. They wanted to make more accurate maps, but the area they
had to cover was huge, and western Manchuria is just an endless desert. National borders
dont mean very much in such a vast wilderness. The Mongolian nomads had lived there for
thousands of years without the need-or even the concept-of borders.
The political situation had also delayed the making of more accurate maps. Which is to
say that if we had gone ahead and unilaterally made an official map showing our idea of the
border, it could have caused a full-scale international incident. Both the Soviet Union and
Outer Mongolia, which shared borders with Manchukuo, were extremely sensitive about
border violations, and there had been several instances of bloody combat over just such
matters. In our day, the army was in no mood for war with the Soviet Union. All our force
was invested in the war with China, with none to spare for a large-scale clash with the
Soviets. We didnt have the divisions or the tanks or the artillery or the planes. The first
priority was to secure the stability of Manchukuo, which was still a relatively new political
entity. Establishment of the northern and northwestern borders could wait, as far as the army
was concerned. They wanted to stall for time by keeping things indefinite. Even the mighty
Kwantung Army deferred to this view and adopted a wait-and-see attitude. As a result,
everything had been allowed to drift in a sea of vagueness.
If, however, their best-laid plans notwithstanding, some unforeseen event should lead to
war (which is exactly what did happen the following year at Nomonhan), we would need
maps to fight. And not just ordinary civilian maps, but real combat maps. To fight a war you
need maps that show you where to establish encampments, the most effective place to set up
your artillery, how many days it will take your infantry to march there, where to secure water, 
how much feed you need for your horses: a great deal of detailed information. You simply
couldnt fight a modern war without such maps. Which is why much of our work overlapped
with the work of the intelligence division, and we were constantly exchanging information
with the Kwantung Armys intelligence section or the military secret service in Hailar.
Everyone knew everyone else, but this Ya-mamoto fellow was someone I had never seen
before.
After five days of preparation, we left Hsin-ching for Hailar by train. We took a truck
from there, drove it through the area of the Khandur-byo Lamaist temple, and arrived at the
Manchukuo Armys border observation post near the Khalkha River. I dont remember the
exact distance, but it was something like two hundred miles. The region was an empty
wilderness, with literally nothing as far as the eye could see. My work required me to keep
checking my map against the actual landforms, but there was nothing out there for me to
check against, nothing that one could call a landmark. All I could see were shaggy, grasscovered
mounds stretching on and on, the unbroken horizon, and clouds floating in the sky.
There was no way I could have any precise idea where on the map we were. All I could do
was guess according to the amount of time we had been driving.
Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an
overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is
slowly coming unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly
difficult to keep a balanced grip on ones own being. I wonder if I am making myself clear.
The mind swells out to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that one
loses the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self. That is what I experienced in the midst
of the Mongolian steppe. How vast it was! It felt more like an ocean than a desert landscape.
The sun would rise from the eastern horizon, cut its way across the empty sky, and sink below
the western horizon. This was the only perceptible change in our surroundings. And in the
movement of the sun, I felt something I hardly know how to name: some huge, cosmic love.
At the border post of the Manchukuo Army, we transferred from truck to horseback. They
had everything ready for us there: four horses to ride, plus two packhorses loaded with food,
water, and weapons. We were lightly armed. I and the man called Yamamoto carried only
pistols. Hamano and Honda carried Model regulation infantry rifles and two hand grenades
each, in addition to their pistols.
The de facto commander of our group was Yamamoto. He made all the decisions and
gave us instructions. Since he was supposedly a civilian, military rules required that I act as
commanding officer, but no one doubted that he was the one in charge. He was simply that
kind of man, for one thing, and although I held the rank of second lieutenant, I was nothing
but a pencil pusher without battle experience. Military men can see who holds actual power,
and that is the one they obey. Besides, my superiors had ordered me to follow Yamamotos
instructions without question. My obedience to him was to be something that transcended the
usual laws and regulations.
We proceeded to the Khalkha River and followed it to the south. The river was swollen
with snowmelt. We could see large fish in the water. Sometimes, in the distance, we spotted
wolves. They might have been part wild dog rather than purebred wolves, but in any case they
were dangerous. We had to post a sentry each night to guard the horses from them. We also
saw a lot of birds, most of them migratory fowl on their way back to Siberia. Yamamoto and I
discussed features of the topogra-, phy. Checking our route against the map, we kept detailed
notes on every bit of information that came to our notice. Aside from these technical exchanges,
however, Yamamoto hardly ever spoke to me. He spurred his horse on in silence, ate
away from the rest of us, and went to sleep without a word. I had the impression that this was
not his first trip to the area. He had amazingly precise knowledge of the landforms, directions,
and so forth.
After we had proceeded southward for two days without incident, Yamamoto called me 
aside and told me that we would be fording the Khalkha before dawn the next morning. This
came as a tremendous shock to me. The opposite shore was Outer Mongolian territory. Even
the bank on which we stood was a dangerous area of border disputes. The Outer Mongolians
laid claim to it, and Manchukuo asserted its own claims to the territory, which had led to
continual armed clashes. If we were ever taken prisoner by Outer Mongolian troops on this
side, the differing views of the two countries gave us some excuse for being there, though in
fact there was little danger of encountering them in this season, when snowmelt made fording
so difficult. The far bank was a different story altogether. Mongolian patrols were over there
for certain. If we were captured there, we would have no excuse whatever. It would be a clear
case of border violation, which could stir up all kinds of political problems. We could be shot
on the spot, and our government would be unable to protest. In addition, my superior officer
had given me no indication that it would be all right for us to cross the border. I had, of
course, been told to follow Yamamotos orders, but I had no way of knowing if this included
such a grave offense as a border violation. Secondly, as I said earlier, the Khalkha was quite
swollen, and the current was far too strong to make a crossing, in addition to which the water
must have been freezing cold. Not even the nomadic tribes wanted to ford the river at this
time of year. They usually restricted their crossings to winter, when the river was frozen, or
summer, when the flow was down and the water temperature up.
When I said all this to him, Yamamoto stared at me for a moment. Then he nodded several
times. I understand your concern about the violation of international borders, he said to me,
with a somewhat patronizing air. It is entirely natural for you, as an officer with men under
your command, to consider the locus of responsibility in such a matter. You would never
want to put the lives of your men in danger without good cause. But I want you to leave such
questions to me. I will assume all responsibility in this instance. I am not in a position to
explain a great deal to you, but this matter has been cleared with the highest levels of the
army. As regards the fording of the river, we have no technical obstacles. There is a hidden
point at which it is possible to cross. The Outer Mongolian Army has constructed and secured
several such points. I suspect that you are fully aware of this as well. I myself have crossed
the river a number of times at this point. I entered Outer Mongolia last year at this time at this
same place. There is nothing for you to worry about. 
He was right about one thing. The Outer Mongolian Army, which knew this area in detail,
had sent combat units-though just a few of them-across to this side of the river during the
season of melting snow. They had made sure they could send whole units across at will. And
if they could cross, then this man called Yamamoto could cross, and it would not be
impossible for the rest of us to cross too.
We stood now at one of those secret fords that had most likely been built by the Outer
Mongolian Army. Carefully camouflaged, it would not have been obvious to the casual
observer. A plank bridge, held in place by ropes against the swift current, connected the
shallows on either side beneath the surface of the water. A slight drop in the water level
would make for an easy crossing by troop transport vehicles, armored cars, and such.
Reconnaissance planes could never spot it underwater. We made our way across the rivers
strong flow by clinging to the ropes. Yamamoto went first, to be certain there were no Outer
Mongolian patrols in the area, and we followed. Our feet went numb in the cold water, but we
and our horses struggled across to the far shore of the Khalkha River. The land rose up much
higher on the far side, and standing there, we could see for miles across the desert expanse
from which we had come. This was one reason the Soviet Army would always be in the more
advantageous position when the battle for Nomonhan eventually broke out. The difference in
elevation would also make for a huge difference in the accuracy of artillery fire. In any case, I
remember being struck by how different the view was on either side of the river. I remember,
too, how long it took to regain feeling in limbs that had been soaked in the icy water. I
couldnt even get my voice to work for a while. But to be quite honest, the sheer tension that 
came from knowing I was in enemy territory was enough to make me forget about the cold.
We followed the river southward. Like an undulating snake, the Khalkha flowed on below
us to the left. Shortly after the crossing, Yamamoto advised us to remove all insignia of rank,
and we did as we were told. Such things could only cause trouble if we were captured by the
enemy, I assumed. For this reason, I also removed my officers boots and changed into
gaiters.
We were setting up camp that evening when a man approached us from the distance,
riding alone. He was a Mongol. The Mongols use an unusually high saddle, which makes it
easy to distinguish them from afar. Sergeant Hamano snapped up his rifle when he saw the
figure approaching, but Yamamoto told him not to shoot. Hamano slowly lowered his rifle
without a word. The four of us stood there, waiting for the man to draw closer. He had a
Soviet-made rifle strapped to his back and a Mauser at his waist. Whiskers covered his face,
and he wore a hat with earflaps. His fllthy robes were the same kind as the nomads, but you
could tell from the way he handled himself that he was a professional soldier.
Dismounting, the man spoke to Yamamoto in what I assumed was Mongolian. I had some
knowledge of both Russian and Chinese, and what he spoke was neither of those, so it must
have been Mongolian. Yamamoto answered in the mans own language. This made me surer
than ever that Yamamoto was an intelligence officer.
Yamamoto said to me, Lieutenant Mamiya, I will be leaving with this man. I dont know
how long I will be away, but I want you to wait here- posting a sentry at all times, of course.
If I am not back in thirty-six hours, you are to report that fact to headquarters. Send one man
back across the river to the Manchukuo Army observation post. He mounted his horse and
rode off with the Mongol, heading west.
The three of us finished setting up camp and ate a simple dinner. We couldnt cook or
build a campfire. On that vast steppe, with nothing but low sand dunes to shield our presence
as far as the eye could see, the least puff of smoke would have led to our immediate capture.
We pitched our tents low in the shelter of the dunes, and for supper we ate dry crackers and
cold canned meat. Darkness swiftly covered us when the sun sank beneath the horizon, and
the sky was filled with an incredible number of stars. Mixed in with the roar of the Khalkha
River, the sound of wolves howling came to us as we lay atop the sand, recovering from the
days exertions.
Sergeant Hamano said to me, Looks like a tough spot weve got ourselves in, and I had
to agree with him. By then, the three of us- Sergeant Hamano, Corporal Honda, and I-had
gotten to know each other pretty well. Ordinarily, a fresh young officer like me would be kept
at arms length and laughed at by a seasoned noncommissioned officer like Sergeant Hamano,
but our case was different. He respected the education I had received in a nonmilitary college,
and I took care to acknowledge his combat experience and practical judgment without letting
rank get in the way. We also found it easy to talk to each other because he was from
Yamaguchi and I was from an area of Hiroshima close to Yamaguchi. He told me about the
war in China. He was a soldier all the way, with only grammar school behind him, but he had
his own reservations about this messy war on the continent, which looked as if it would never
end, and he expressed these feelings honestly to me. I dont mind fighting, he said. Im a
soldier. And I dont mind dying in battle for my country, because thats my job. But this war
were fighting now, Lieutenant-well, its just not right. Its not a real war, with a battle line
where you face the enemy and fight to the finish. We advance, and the enemy runs away
without fighting. Then the Chinese soldiers take their uniforms off and mix with the civilian
population, and we dont even know who the enemy is. So then we kill a lot of innocent
people in the name of flushing out ‘renegades or ‘remnant troops, and we commandeer
provisions. We have to steal their food, because the line moves forward so fast our supplies
cant catch up with us. And we have to kill our prisoners, because we dont have anyplace to
keep them or any food to feed them. Its wrong, Lieutenant. We did some terrible things in 
Nanking. My own unit did. We threw dozens of people into a well and dropped hand grenades
in after them. Some of the things we did I couldnt bring myself to talk about. Im telling you,
Lieutenant, this is one war that doesnt have any Righteous Cause. Its just two sides killing
each other. And the ones who get stepped on are the poor farmers, the ones without politics or
ideology. For them, theres no Nationalist Party, no Young Marshal Zhang, no Eighth Route
Army. If they can eat, theyre happy. I know how these people feel: Im the son of a poor
fisherman myself. The little people slave away from morning to night, and the best they can
do is keep themselves alive-just barely. I cant believe that killing these people for no reason
at all is going to do Japan one bit of good. 
In contrast to Sergeant Hamano, Corporal Honda had very little to say about himself. He
was a quiet fellow, in any case. Hed mostly listen to us talk, without injecting his own
comments. But while I say he was quiet, I dont mean to imply there was anything dark or
melancholy about him. Its just that he rarely took the initiative in a conversation. True, that
often made me wonder what was on his mind, but there was nothing unpleasant about him. If
anything, there was something in his quiet manner that softened peoples hearts. He was
utterly serene. He wore the same look on his face no matter what happened. I gathered he was
from Asahikawa, where his father ran a small print shop. He was two years younger than I,
and from the time he left middle school he had joined his brothers, working for his father. He
was the youngest of three boys, the eldest of whom had been killed in China two years earlier.
He loved to read, and whenever we had a spare moment, youd see him curled up somewhere,
reading a book on some kind of Buddhist topic.
As I said earlier, Honda had absolutely no combat experience, but with only one year of
training behind him, he was an outstanding soldier. There are always one or two such men in
any platoon, who, patient and enduring, carry out their duties to the letter without a word of
complaint. Physically strong, with good intuition, they instantly grasp what you tell them and
get the job done right. Honda was one of those. And because he had had cavalry training, he
was the one who knew the most about horses; he took care of the six we had with us. And he
did this in an extraordinary way. It sometimes seemed to us that he understood every little
thing the horses were feeling. Sergeant Hamano acknowledged Corporal Hondas abilities
immediately and let him take charge of many things without the slightest hesitation.
So, then, for such an oddly patched-together unit, we attained an extraordinarily high
degree of mutual understanding. And precisely because we were not a regular unit, we had
none of that by-the-book military formality. We were so at ease with one another, it was
almost as if Karma had brought us together. Which is why Sergeant Hamano was able to say
openly to me things that lay far beyond the fixed framework of officer and noncom.
 Tell me, Lieutenant, he once asked, what do you think of this fellow Yamamoto? 
 Secret service, Im willing to bet, I said. Anybody who can speak Mongol like that has
got to be a pro. And he knows this area like the back of his hand. 
 Thats what I think. At first I thought he might be one of those mounted bandits
connected with top brass, but that cant be it. I know those guys. Theyll talk your ear off and
make up half of what they tell you. And theyre quick on the trigger. But this Yamamoto
guys no lightweight. Hes got guts. He is brass-and way up there. I can smell ‘em a mile
away. I heard something about some kind of secret tactical unit the armys trying to put
together with Mongols from Soviet-trained troops, and that they brought over a few of our
pros to run the operation. He could be connected with that. 
Corporal Honda was standing sentry a little ways away from us, holding his rifle. I had
my Browning lying close by, where I could grab it at any time. Sergeant Hamano had taken
his gaiters off and was massaging his feet.
 Im just guessing, of course, Hamano went on. That Mongol we saw could be some
anti-Soviet officer with the Outer Mongolian Army, trying to make secret contact with the
Japanese Army. 
 Could be, I said. But youd better watch what you say. Theyll have your head. 
 Come on, Lieutenant. Im not that stupid. This is just between us. He flashed me a big
smile, then turned serious. But if any of this is true, its risky business. It could mean war. 
I nodded in agreement. Outer Mongolia was supposedly an independent country, but it
was actually more of a satellite state under the thumb of the Soviet Union. In other words, it
wasnt much different from Manchukuo, where Japan held the reins of power. It did have an
anti-Soviet faction, though, as everyone knew, and through secret contacts with the Japanese
Army in Manchukuo, members of that faction had fomented a number of uprisings. The
nucleus of the insurgent element consisted of Mongolian Army men who resented the highhandedness
of the Soviet military, members of the landowning class opposed to the forced
centralization of the farming industry, and priests of the Lama sect, who numbered over one
hundred thousand. The only external power that the anti-Soviet faction could turn to for help
was the Japanese Army stationed in Manchukuo. And they apparently felt closer to us
Japanese, as fellow Asians, than they did to the Russians. Plans for a large-scale uprising had
come to light in the capital city of Ulan Bator the previous year, , and there had been a
major purge carried out. Thousands of military men and Lamaist priests had been executed as
counterrevolutionary elements in secret touch with the Japanese Army, but still anti-Soviet
feeling continued to smolder in one place or another. So there would have been nothing
strange about a Japanese intelligence officer crossing the Khalkha River and making secret
contact with an anti-Soviet officer of the Outer Mongolian Army. To prevent such activities,
the Outer Mongolian Army had guard units making constant rounds and had declared the
entire band of territory ten to twenty kilometers in from the Manchukuo border to be offlimits,
but this was a huge area to patrol, and they could not keep watch on every bit of it.
Even if their rebellion should succeed, it was obvious that the Soviet Army would
intervene at once to crush their counterrevolutionary activity, and if that happened the
insurgents would request the help of the Japanese Army, which would then give Japans
Kwantung Army an excuse to intervene. Taking Outer Mongolia would amount to sticking a
knife in the guts of the Soviets development of Siberia. Imperial Headquarters back in Tokyo
might be trying to put the brakes on, but this was not an opportunity that the ambitious
Kwantung Army General Staff was about to let slip from their fingers. The result would be no
mere border dispute but a full-scale war between the Soviet Union and Japan. If such a war
broke out on the Manchurian-Soviet border, Hitler might respond by invading Poland or
Czechoslovakia. This was the situation that Sergeant Hamano had been referring to in his
remark on the potential for war.
The sun rose the next morning, and still Yamamoto had not returned. I was the last one to
stand sentry. I borrowed Sergeant Hamanos rifle, sat atop a somewhat higher sand dune, and
watched the eastern sky. Dawn in Mongolia was an amazing thing. In one instant, the horizon
became a faint line suspended in the darkness, and then the line was drawn upward, higher
and higher. It was as if a giant hand had stretched down from the sky and slowly lifted the
curtain of night from the face of the earth. It was a magnificent sight, far greater in scale, as I
said earlier, than anything that I, with my limited human faculties, could fully comprehend.
As I sat and watched, the feeling overtook me that my very life was slowly dwindling into
nothingness. There was no trace here of anything as insignificant as human undertakings. This
same event had been occurring hundreds of millions-hundreds of billions-of times, from an
age long before there had been anything resembling life on earth. Forgetting that I was there
to stand guard, I watched the dawning of the day, entranced.
After the sun rose fully above the horizon, I lit a cigarette, took a sip of water from my
canteen, and urinated. Then I thought about Japan. I pictured my hometown in early May-the
fragrance of the flowers, the babbling of the river, the clouds in the sky. Friends from long
ago. Family. The chewy sweetness of a warm rice puff wrapped in oak leaf. Im not that fond
of sweets, as a rule, but I can still remember how badly I wanted a mochi puff that morning. I 
would have given half a years pay for one just then. And when I thought about Japan, I began
to feel as if I had been abandoned at the edge of the world. Why did we have to risk our lives
to fight for this barren piece of earth devoid of military or industrial value, this vast land
where nothing lived but wisps of grass and biting insects? To protect my homeland, I too
would fight and die. But it made no sense to me at all to sacrifice my one and only life for the
sake of this desolate patch of soil from which no shaft of grain would ever spring.
Yamamoto came back at dawn the following day. I stood final watch that morning too.
With the river at rny back, I was staring toward the west when I heard what sounded like a
horses whinny behind me. I spun around but saw nothing. I stared toward where I had heard
the sound, gun at the ready. I swallowed, and the sound from my own throat was loud enough
to frighten me. My trigger finger was trembling. I had never once shot a gun at anyone.
But then, some seconds later, staggering over the crest of a sand dune, came a horse
bearing Yamamoto. I surveyed the area, finger still on the trigger, but no one else appearedneither
the Mongol who had come for him nor enemy soldiers. A large white moon hung in
the eastern sky like some ill-omened megalith. Yamamotos left arm seemed to have been
wounded. The handkerchief he had wrapped around it was stained with blood. I woke
Corporal Honda to see to the horse. Heavily lathered and breathing hard, it had obviously
come a long way at high speed. Hamano stood sentry in my place, and I got the first-aid kit to
treat Yamamotos wound.
 The bullet passed through, and the bleeding stopped, said Yamamoto. He was right: the
bullet had missed the bone and gone all the way through, tearing only the flesh in its path. I
removed the handkerchief, disinfected the openings of the wound with alcohol, and tied on a
new bandage. He never flinched the whole time, though his upper lip wore a thin film of
sweat. He drank deeply from a canteen, lit a cigarette, and inhaled with obvious relish. Then
he took out his Browning, wedged it under his arm, removed the clip, and with one hand
deftly loaded three rounds into it. We leave here right away, Lieutenant Mamiya, he said.
 Cross the Khalkha and head for the Manchukuo Army observation post. We broke camp
quickly, with hardly a word among us, mounted the horses, and headed for the ford. I asked
Yamamoto nothing about how he had been shot or by whom. I was not in a position to do so,
and even if I had been, he probably wouldnt have told me. The only thought in my mind at
the time was to get out of this enemy territory as quickly as possible, cross the Khalkha River,
and reach the relative safety of the opposite bank.
We rode in silence, urging our horses across the grassy plain. No one spoke, but all were
thinking the same thing: could we make it across that river? If an Outer Mongolian patrol
reached the bridge before we did, it would be the end for us. There was no way we could win
in a fight. I remember the sweat streaming under my arms. It never once dried.
 Tell me, Lieutenant Mamiya, have you ever been shot? Yamamoto asked me after a
long silence atop his horse.
 Never, I replied.
 Have you ever shot anyone? 
 Never, I said again.
I had no idea what kind of impression my answers made on him, nor did I know what his
purpose was in asking me those questions.
 This contains a document that has to be delivered to headquarters, he said, placing his
hand on his saddlebag. If it cant be delivered, it has to be destroyed-burned, buried, it
doesnt matter, but it must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to fall into enemy hands.
Under any circumstances. That is our first priority. I want to be sure you understand this. It is
very, very important. 
 I understand, I said.
Yamamoto looked me in the eye. If the situation looks bad, the first thing you have to do
is shoot me. Without hesitation. If I can do it myself, I will. But with my arm like this, I may 
not be able to. In that case, you have to shoot me. And make sure you shoot to kill. 
I nodded in silence.
•
When we reached the ford, just before dusk, the fear that I had been feeling all along
turned out to be all too well founded. A small detachment of Outer Mongolian troops was
deployed there. Yamamoto and I climbed one of the higher dunes and took turns looking at
them through the binoculars. There were eight men-not a lot, but for a border patrol they were
heavily armed. One man carried a light machine gun, and there was one heavy machine gun,
mounted on a rise. It was surrounded by sandbags and aimed at the river. They had obviously
stationed themselves there to prevent us from crossing to the other bank. They had pitched
their tents by the river and staked their ten horses nearby. It looked as if they were planning to
stay in place until they caught us. Isnt there another ford we could use? I asked.
Yamamoto took his eyes from the binoculars and looked at me, shaking his head. There
is one, but its too far. Two days on horseback. We dont have that much time. All we can do
is cross here, whatever it takes. 
 Meaning we ford at night? 
 Correct. Its the only way. We leave the horses here. We finish off the sentry, and the
others will probably be asleep. Dont worry, the river will blot out most sounds. Ill take care
of the sentry. Theres nothing for us to do until then, so better get some sleep, rest ourselves
now while we have the chance. 
We set our fording operation for three in the morning. Corporal Honda took all the packs
from the horses, drove the animals to a distant spot, and released them. We dug a deep hole
and buried our extra ammunition and food. All that each of us would carry would be a
canteen, a days rations, a gun, and a few bullets. If we were caught by the Outer Mongolians,
with their overwhelmingly superior firepower, we could never outfight them, no matter how
much ammunition we might carry. Now the thing for us to do was to get what sleep we could,
because if we did make it across the river, there would be no chance to sleep for some time.
Corporal Honda would stand sentry first, with Sergeant Hamano taking his place.
Stretching out in the tent, Yamamoto fell asleep immediately. He apparently hadnt slept
at all the whole time. By his pillow was a leather valise, into which he had transferred the
important document. Hamano fell asleep soon after him. We were all exhausted, but I was too
tense to sleep. I lay there for a long time, dying for sleep but kept awake by imagined scenes
of us killing the sentry and being sprayed with machine gun fire as we forded the river. My
palms were dripping with sweat, and my temples throbbed. I could not be sure that when the
time came, I would be able to conduct myself in a manner befitting an officer. I crawled out
of the tent and went to sit by Corporal Honda on sentry duty. You know, Honda, I said,
 were maybe going to die here. 
 Hard to say, he replied.
For a while, neither of us said anything. But there was something in his answer that
bothered me-a particular tone that contained a hint of uncertainty. Intuition has never been my
strong suit, but I knew that his vague remark was intended to conceal something. I decided to
question him about it.
 If you have something to tell me, dont hold back now, I said. This could be the last
time we ever talk to each other, so open up. 
Biting his lower lip, Honda stroked the sand at his feet. I could see he was wrestling with
conflicting feelings. Lieutenant, he said after some time had passed. He looked me straight
in the eye. Of the four of us here, you will live the longest- far longer than you yourself
would imagine. You will die in Japan. 
Now it was my turn to look at him. He continued: You may wonder how I know that, but 
it is something that not even I can explain. I just know. 
 Are you psychic or something? 
 Maybe so, though the word doesnt quite seem to fit what I feel. Its a little too
grandiose. Like I say, I just know, thats all. 
 Have you always had this kind of thing? 
 Always, he said with conviction. Though Ive kept it hidden ever since I was old
enough to realize what was happening. But this is a matter of life and death, Lieutenant, and
you are the one whos asking me about it, so Im telling you the truth. 
 And how about other people? Do you know whats going to happen to them? 
He shook his head. Some things I know, some things I dont know. But youd probably
be better off not knowing, Lieutenant. It may be presumptuous of someone like me to say
such big-sounding things to a college graduate like you, but a persons destiny is something
you look back at after its past, not something you see in advance. I have a certain amount of
experience where these things are concerned. You dont. 
 But anyhow, you say Im not going to die here? 
He scooped up a handful of sand and let it run out between his fingers. This much I can
say, Lieutenant. You wont be dying here on the continent. 
I wanted to go on talking about this, but Corporal Honda refused to say anything more. He
seemed to be absorbed in his own contemplations or meditations. Holding his rifle, he stared
out at the vast prairie. Nothing I said seemed to reach him.
I went back to the low-pitched tent in the shelter of a dune, lay down beside Sergeant
Hamano, and closed my eyes. This time sleep came to take me-a deep sleep that all but pulled
me by the ankles to the bottom of the sea.
 
Lieutenant Mamiyas Long Story: Part II
 
What woke me was the metallic click of a rifles safety being released. No soldier in battle
could ever miss that sound, even in a deep sleep. Its a- how can I say it?-a special sound, as
cold and heavy as death itself. Almost instinctively, I reached for the Browning next to my
pillow, but just then a shoe slammed into my temple, the impact blinding me momentarily.
After I had brought my breathing under control, I opened my eyes just enough to see the man
who must have kicked me. He was kneeling down and picking up my Browning. I slowly
lifted my head, to find the muzzles of two rifles pointed at my face. Beyond the rifles stood
two Mongolian soldiers.
I was sure I had fallen asleep in a tent, but the tent was gone now, and a skyful of stars
shone overhead. Another Mongolian soldier was pointing a light machine gun at the head of
Yamamoto, who was lying beside me. He lay utterly still, as if conserving his energy because
he knew it was useless to resist. All of the Mongols wore long overcoats and battle helmets.
Two of them were aiming large flashlights at Yamamoto and at me. At first I couldnt grasp
what had happened: my sleep had been too deep and the shock too great. But the sight of the
Mongolian soldiers and of Yamamotos face left no doubt in my mind: our tents had been
discovered before we had had a chance to ford the river. 
Then it occurred to me to wonder what had become of Honda and Hamano. I turned my
head very slowly, trying to survey the area, but neither man was there. Either they had been
killed already or they had managed to escape.
These had to be the men of the patrol we had seen earlier at the ford. They were few in
number, and they were equipped with a light machine gun and rifles. In command was a
ruggedly built noncom, the only one of the bunch to be wearing proper military boots. He was
the man who had kicked me. He bent over and picked up the leather valise that Yamamoto
had had by his head. Opening it, he looked inside, then he turned it upside down and shook it.
All that fell to the ground was a pack of cigarettes. I could hardly believe it. With my own
eyes, I had seen Yamamoto putting the document into that bag. He had taken it from a
saddlebag, put it in this valise, and placed the valise by his pillow. Yamamoto struggled to
maintain his cool, but I saw his expression momentarily begin to change. He obviously had no
idea what had happened to the document. But whatever the explanation might be, its
disappearance must have been a great relief to him. As he had said to me earlier, our number
one priority was seeing to it that the document never fell into enemy hands.
The soldiers dumped all our belongings on the ground and inspected them in detail, but
they found nothing important. Next they stripped us and went through our pockets. They
bayoneted our clothing and packs, but they found no documents. They took our cigarettes and
pens, our wallets and notebooks and watches, and pocketed them. By turns, they tried on our
shoes, and anyone they fit took them. The mens arguments over who got what became pretty
intense, but the noncom ignored them. I suppose it was normal among the Mongols to take
booty from prisoners of war and enemy dead. The noncom took only Yamamotos watch,
leaving the other items for his men to fight over. The rest of our equipment-our pistols and
ammunition and maps and compasses and binoculars-went into a cloth bag, no doubt for
sending to Ulan Bator headquarters.
Next they tied us up, naked, with strong, thin rope. At close range, the Mongol soldiers
smelled like a stable that had not been cleaned for a long, long time. Their uniforms were
shabby, filthy with mud and dust and food stains to the point where it was all but impossible
to tell what the original color had been. Their shoes were full of holes and falling off their
feet-quite literally. No wonder they wanted ours. They had brutish faces for the most part,
their teeth a mess, their hair long and wild. They looked more like mounted bandits or
highwaymen than soldiers, but their Soviet-made weapons and their starred insignia indicated
that they were regular troops of the Mongolian Peoples Republic. To me, of course, their
discipline as a fighting unit and their military esprit seemed rather poor. Mongols make for
tough, long-suffering soldiers, but theyre not much suited to modern group warfare.
The night was freezing cold. Watching the white clouds of the Mongolian soldiers breath
bloom and vanish in the darkness, I felt as if a strange error had brought me into the landscape
of someone elses nightmare. I couldnt grasp that this was actually happening. It was indeed
a nightmare, but only later did I come to realize that it was just the beginning of a nightmare
of enormous proportions.
A short time later, one of the Mongolian soldiers came out of the darkness, dragging
something heavy. With a big smile, he threw the object on the ground next to us. It was
Hamanos corpse. The feet were bare: someone had already taken his boots. They proceeded
to strip his clothes off, examining everything they could find in his pockets. Hands reached
out for his watch, his wallet, and his cigarettes. They divided up the cigarettes and smoked
them while looking through the wallet. This yielded a few pieces of Manchukuo paper money
and a photo of a woman who was probably Hamanos mother. The officer in charge said
something and took the money. The photo was flung to the ground.
One of the Mongolian soldiers must have sneaked up behind Hamano and slit his throat
while he was standing guard. They had done to us first what we had been planning to do to
them. Bright-red blood was flowing from the bodys gaping wound, but for such a big wound 
there was not much blood; most of it had probably been lost by then. One of the soldiers
pulled a knife from the scabbard on his belt, its curved blade some six inches long. He waved
it in my face. I had never seen such an oddly shaped knife. It seemed to have been designed
for some special purpose. The soldier made a throat-slashing motion with the knife and
whistled through his teeth. Some of the others laughed. Rather than government issue, the
knife seemed to be the mans personal property. Everyone had a long bayonet at his waist, but
this man was the only one carrying a curved knife, and he had apparently used it to slit
Hamanos throat. After a few deft swirls of the blade, he returned it to its scabbard.
Without a word, and moving only his eyes, Yamamoto sent a glance in my direction. It
lasted just an instant, but I knew immediately what he was trying to say: Do you think
Corporal Honda managed to get away? Through all the confusion and terror, I had been
thinking the same thing:
Where is Corporal Honda? If Honda escaped this sudden attack of the Outer Mongolian
troops, there might be some chance for us-a slim chance, perhaps, and the question of what
Honda could do out there alone was depressing, but some chance was better than no chance at
all. They kept us tied up all night, lying on the sand. Two soldiers were left to watch over us:
one with the light machine gun, the other with a rifle. The rest sat some distance away,
smoking, talking, and laughing, seemingly relaxed now that they had captured us. Neither
Yamamoto nor I said a word. The dawn temperature dropped to freezing in that place, even in
May. I thought we might freeze to death, lying there naked. But the cold itself was nothing in
comparison with the terror I felt. I had no idea what we were in for. These men were a simple
patrol unit: they probably did not have the authority to decide what to do with us. They had to
wait for orders. Which meant that we would probably not be killed right away. After that,
however, there was no way to tell what would happen. Yamamoto was more than likely a spy,
and I had been caught with him, so naturally I would be seen as an accomplice. In any case,
we would not get off easily.
Some time after dawn broke, a sound like the drone of an airplane engine came out of the
distant sky. Eventually, the silver-colored fuselage entered my field of vision. It was a Sovietmade
reconnaissance plane, bearing the insignia of Outer Mongolia. The plane circled above
us several times. The soldiers all waved, and the plane dipped its wing in return. Then it
landed in a nearby open area, sending up clouds of sand. The earth was hard here, and there
were no obstructions, which made it relatively easy to take off and land without a runway. For
all I knew, they might have used the same spot for this purpose any number of times. One of
the soldiers mounted a horse and galloped off toward the plane with two saddled horses in
tow.
When they returned, the two horses carried men who appeared to be high-ranking officers.
One was Russian, the other Mongolian. I assumed that the patrol had radioed headquarters
about our capture and that the two officers had made the trip from Ulan Bator to interrogate
us. They were intelligence officers, no doubt. I had heard that the GPU was at work behind
the scenes in the previous years mass arrest and purge of antigovernment activists.
Both officers wore immaculate uniforms and were clean-shaven. The Russian wore a kind
of trench coat with a belt. His boots shone with an unblemished luster. He was a thin man, but
not very tall for a Russian, and perhaps in his early thirties. He had a wide forehead, a narrow
nose, and skin almost pale pink in color, and he wore wire-rim glasses. Overall, though, this
was a face that made no impression to speak of. Standing next to him, the short, stout, dark
Mongolian officer looked like a little bear.
The Mongolian called the noncom aside, and the three men talked for a while. I guessed
that the officers were asking for a detailed report. The noncom brought over a bag containing
the things they had confiscated from us and showed them to the others. The Russian studied
each object with great care, then put them all back into the bag. He said something to the
Mongolian, who in turn spoke to the noncom. Then the Russian took a cigarette case from his 
breast pocket and opened it for the other two. They went on talking and smoking together.
Several times, as he spoke, the Russian slammed his right fist into his left palm. He looked
somewhat annoyed. The Mongolian officer kept his arms folded and his face grim, while the
noncom shook his head now and then.
Eventually, the Russian officer ambled over to where we lay on the ground. Would you
like a smoke? he asked in Russian. As I said earlier, I had studied Russian in college and
could follow a conversation pretty well, but I pretended not to understand, so as to avoid any
difficulties. Thanks, but no thanks, said Yamamoto in Russian. He was good.
 Excellent, said the Soviet Army officer. Things will go more quickly if we can speak
in Russian. 
He removed his gloves and put them in his coat pocket. A small gold ring shone on his
left hand. ‘As you are no doubt aware, we are looking for a certain something. Looking very
hard for it. And we know you have it. Dont ask how we know; we just know. But you do not
have it on you now. Which means that, logically speaking, you must have hidden it before
you were captured. You havent transported it over there. He motioned toward the Khalkha
River. None of you has crossed the river. The letter must be on this side, hidden somewhere.
Do you understand what I have said to you so far? 
Yamamoto nodded. I understand, he said, but we know nothing about a letter. 
 Fine, said the Russian, expressionless. In that case, I have one little question to ask
you. What were you men doing over here? As you know, this territory belongs to the
Mongolian Peoples Republic. What was your purpose in entering land that belongs to others?
I want to hear your reason for this. 
 Mapmaking, Yamamoto explained. I am a civilian employee of a map company, and
this man and the one they killed were with me for protection. We knew that this side of the
river was your territory, and we are sorry for having crossed the border, but we did not think
of ourselves as having made a territorial violation. We simply wanted to observe the
topography from the vantage point of the plateau on this side. 
Far from amused, the Russian officer curled his lips into a smile. ‘We are sorry? he
said slowly. Yes, of course. You wanted to see the topography from the plateau. Yes, of
course. The view is always better from high ground. It makes perfect sense. 
For a time he said nothing, but stared at the clouds in the sky. Then he returned his gaze to
Yamamoto, shook his head slowly, and sighed.
 If only I could believe what you are telling me! How much better it would be for all of
us! If only I could pat you on the shoulder and say, ‘Yes, yes, I see, now run along home
across the river, and be more careful in the future. I truly wish I could do this. But
unfortunately, I cannot. Because I know who you are. And I know what you are doing here.
We have friends in Hailar, just as you have friends in Ulan Bator. 
He took the gloves from his pocket, refolded them, and put them back. Quite honestly, I
have no personal interest in hurting you or killing you. If you would simply give me the letter,
then I would have no further business with you. You would be released from this place
immediately at my discretion. You could cross the river and go home. I promise you that, on
my honor. Anything else that happened would be an internal matter for us. It would have
nothing to do with you. 
The light of the sun from the east was finally beginning to warm my skin. There was no
wind, and a few hard white clouds floated in the sky. A long, long silence followed. No one
said a word. The Russian officer, the Mongolian officer, the men of the patrol, and
Yamamoto: each preserved his own sphere of silence. Yamamoto had seemed resigned to
death from the moment of our capture; his face never showed the slightest hint of expression.
 The two of you... will... almost certainly... die here, the Russian went on slowly, a
phrase at a time, as if speaking to children. And it will be a terrible death. They... And here
the Russian glanced toward the Mongolian soldiers. The big one, holding the machine gun, 
looked at me with a snaggletoothed grin. They love to kill people in ways that involve great
difficulty and imagination. They are, shall we say, aficionados. Since the days of Genghis
Khan, the Mongols have enjoyed devising particularly cruel ways to kill people. We Russians
are painfully aware of this. It is part of our history lessons in school. We study what the Mongols
did when they invaded Russia. They killed millions. For no reason at all. They captured
hundreds of Russian aristocrats in Kiev and killed them all together. Do you know that story?
They cut huge, thick planks, laid the Russians beneath them, and held a banquet on top of the
planks, crushing them to death beneath their weight. Ordinary human beings would never
think of such a thing, dont you agree? It took time and a tremendous amount of preparation.
Who else would have gone to the trouble? But they did it. And why? Because it was a form of
amusement to them. And they still enjoy doing such things. I saw them in action once. I
thought I had seen some terrible things in my day, but that night, as you can imagine, I lost
my appetite. Do you understand what I am saying to you? Am I speaking too quickly? 
Yamamoto shook his head.
 Excellent, said the Russian. He paused, clearing his throat. Of course, this will be the
second time for me. Perhaps my appetite will have returned by dinnertime. If possible,
however, I would prefer to avoid unnecessary killing. 
Hands clasped together behind his back, he looked up at the sky for a time. Then he took
his gloves out and glanced toward the plane. Beautiful weather, he said. Spring. Still a
little cold, but just about right. Any hotter, and there would be mosquitoes. Terrible
mosquitoes. Yes, spring is much better than summer. He took out his cigarette case again,
put a cigarette between his lips, and lit it with a match. Slowly, he drew the smoke into his
lungs, and slowly he let it out again. Im going to ask you once more: Do you insist that you
really know nothing about the letter? 
Yamamoto said only one word: Nyet. 
 Fine, said the Russian. Fine. Then he said something in Mongolian to the Mongolian
officer. The man nodded and barked an order to the soldiers. They carried over some rough
logs and began to sharpen them with their bayonets, quickly turning them into four stakes.
Pacing off the distance between the stakes, they pounded them into the ground with rocks at
the four corners of a square. All these preparations took some twenty minutes to complete, I
guessed, but I had absolutely no idea what they were for.
The Russian said, To them, an excellent slaughter is like an excellent meal. The longer
they take with their preparations, the more enjoyment they derive from the act. Simply killing
a man is no problem: one pistol shot and its all over. But that would not be -and here he ran
his fingertip slowly over his smooth chin- very interesting. 
They untied Yamamoto and led him to the staked-off area. There they tied his arms and
legs to the four stakes. Stretched out on the ground, stark naked, Yamamoto had several raw
wounds on his body.
 As you know, these people are shepherds, said the Russian officer. And shepherds use
their sheep in many ways: they eat their flesh, they shear their wool, they take their hides. To
them, sheep are the perfect animal. They spend their days with sheep-their whole lives with
sheep. They know how to skin them with amazing skill. The hides they use for tents and
clothing. Have you ever seen them skin a sheep? 
 Just kill me and get it over with, said Yamamoto. The Russian brought his palms
together and, while rubbing them slowly, nodded to Yamamoto. Dont worry, he said. We
will be certain to kill you. I guarantee you that. It may take a little time, but you will die.
There is nothing to worry about on that score. We are in no hurry. Here we are in the vast
wilderness, where there is nothing as far as the eye can see. Only time. All the time we need.
And I have many things I wish to tell you. Now, as to the procedure of skinning: Every band
has at least one specialist-one professional, as it were, who knows everything there is to know
about cutting off the skin, a man of miraculous skill. His skinning is a work of art. He does it 
in the twinkling of an eye, with such speed and dexterity you would think that the creature
being skinned alive never noticed what was happening. But of course -he took the cigarette
case from his breast pocket once again, shifted it to his left hand, and tapped upon it with the
fingers of his right- not to notice such a thing would be out of the question. The one being
skinned alive experiences terrible pain. Unimaginable pain. And it takes an incredibly long
time for death to come. Massive hemorrhaging is what does it finally, but that takes time. 
He snapped his fingers. The Mongolian officer stepped forward. From his coat pocket he
produced a sheathed knife. It was shaped like the one used before by the soldier who had
made the throat-slitting gesture. He pulled the knife from its sheath and held it aloft. In the
morning sun, the blade shone with a dull white gleam.
 This man is one of those professionals of whom I spoke, said the Russian officer. I
want you to look at his knife. Closely. It is a very special knife, designed for skinning, and it
is extraordinarily well made. The blade is as thin and sharp as a razor. And the technical skill
these people bring to the task is extremely high. Theyve been skinning animals for thousands
of years, after all. They can take a mans skin off the way youd peel a peach. Beautifully,
without a single scratch. Am I speaking too quickly for you, by any chance? 
Yamamoto said nothing.
 They do a small area at a time, said the Russian officer. They have to work slowly if
they want to remove the skin cleanly, without any scratches. If, in the meantime, you feel you
want to say something, please let me know. Then you wont have to die. Our man here has
done this several times, and never once has he failed to make the person talk. Keep that in
mind. The sooner we stop, the better for both of us. 
Holding his knife, the bearlike Mongolian officer looked at Yamamoto and grinned. To
this day, I remember that smile. I see it in my dreams. I have never been able to forget it. No
sooner had he flashed this smile than he set to work. His men held Yamamoto down with their
hands and knees while he began skinning Yamamoto with the utmost care. It truly was like
skinning a peach. I couldnt bear to watch. I closed my eyes. When I did this, one of the
soldiers hit me with his rifle butt. He went on hitting me until I opened my eyes. But it hardly
mattered: eyes open or closed, I could still hear Yamamotos voice. He bore the pain without
a whimper-at first. But soon he began to scream. I had never heard such screams before: they
did not seem part of this world. The man started by slitting open Yamamotos shoulder and
proceeded to peel off the skin of his right arm from the top down-slowly, carefully, almost
lovingly. As the Russian officer had said, it was something like a work of art. One would
never have imagined there was any pain involved, if it werent for the screams. But the
screams told the horrendousness of the pain that accompanied the work.
Before long, the entire skin of Yamamotos right arm had come off in a single thin sheet.
The skinner handed it to the man beside him, who held it open in his fingertips, circulating
among the others to give them a good look. All the while, blood kept dripping from the skin.
Then the officer turned to Yamamotos left arm, repeating the procedure. After that he
skinned both legs, cut off the penis and testicles, and removed the ears. Then he skinned the
head and the face and everything else. Yamamoto lost consciousness, regained it, and lost it
again. The screams would stop whenever he passed out and continue when he came to again.
But his voice gradually weakened and finally gave out altogether. All this time, the Russian
officer drew meaningless patterns on the ground with the heel of his boot. The Mongolian
soldiers watched the procedure in silence. Their faces remained expressionless, showing
neither disgust nor excitement nor shock. They watched Yamamotos skin being removed a
piece at a time with the same kind effaces we might have if we were out for a stroll and
stopped to have a look at a construction site.
Meanwhile, I did nothing but vomit. Over and over again. Long after it seemed there was
nothing more for me to bring up, I continued to vomit. At last, the bearlike Mongolian officer
held up the skin of Yamamotos torso, which he had so cleanly peeled off. Even the nipples 
were intact. Never to this day have I seen anything so horrible. Someone took the skin from
him and spread it out to dry the way we might dry a sheet. All that remained lying on the
ground was Yamamotos corpse, a bloody red lump of meat from which every trace of skin
had been removed. The most painful sight was the face. Two large white eyeballs stared out
from the red mass of flesh. Teeth bared, the mouth stretched wide open as if in a shout. Two
little holes were all that remained where the nose had been removed. The ground was a sea of
blood.
The Russian officer spit on the ground and looked at me. Then he took a handkerchief
from his pocket and wiped his mouth. The fellow really didnt know anything, did he? he
said, putting the handkerchief back. His voice sounded somewhat flatter than it had before. If
he had known, he would have talked. Pity. But in any case, the man was a professional. He
was bound to have an ugly death sooner or later. Ah, well, cant be helped. And if he knew
nothing, theres no way that you could know anything. 
He put a cigarette between his lips and struck a match. Which means that you are no
longer of any use to us. Not worth torturing for information. Not worth keeping alive as a
prisoner. We want to dispose of this affair in the utmost secrecy. There could be
complications if we brought you back to Ulan Bator. The best thing, of course, would be to
put a bullet in your brain here and now, then bury you or burn you and throw your ashes into
the Khalkha. That would be a simple end to the matter. Dont you agree? He fixed his eyes
on mine. I continued to pretend that I could not understand him. You dont understand
Russian, I suppose. Its a waste of time to spell this out to you. Ah, well. I might as well be
talking to myself. So hear me out. In any case, I have good news for you. I have decided not
to kill you. Think of this as my own small expression of penitence for having pointlessly
killed your friend in spite of myself. Weve all had our fill of killing this morning. Once a day
is more than enough.
And so I will not kill you. Instead, I will give you a chance to survive. If all goes well, you
may even come out of this alive. The chances of that happening are not good, of course.
Perhaps nonexistent. But a chance is a chance. At least it is far better than being skinned alive.
Dont you agree? 
He raised his hand and summoned the Mongolian officer. With great care, the man had
been washing his knife with water from a canteen and had just finished sharpening it on a
whetstone. The soldiers had laid out the pieces of Yamamotos skin and were standing by
them, discussing something. They seemed to be exchanging opinions on the finer points of the
skinners technique. The Mongolian officer put his knife in its scabbard and then into the
pocket of his coat before approaching us. He looked me in the face for a moment, then turned
to his fellow officer. The Russian spoke a few short Mongolian phrases to him, and without
expression the man nodded. A soldier brought two horses for them.
 Well be going back to Ulan Bator now, the Russian said to me. I hate to return emptyhanded,
but it cant be helped. Win some, lose some. I hope my appetite comes back by
dinnertime, but I rather doubt it will. 
They mounted their horses and left. The plane took off, became a silver speck in the
western sky, then disappeared altogether, leaving me alone with the Mongolian soldiers and
their horses.
They set me on a horse and lashed me to the saddle. Then, in formation, we moved out to
the north. The soldier just in front of me kept singing some monotonous melody in a voice
that was barely audible. Aside from that, there was nothing to be heard but the dry sound of
the horses hooves kicking up sand. I had no idea where they were taking me or what they
were going to do to me. All I knew was that to them, I was a superfluous being of no value
whatever. Over and over in my head I repeated to myself the words of the Russian officer. He
had said he would not kill me. He would not kill me, but my chances of surviving were almost
nonexistent. What could this mean? It was too vague for me to grasp in any concrete way. 
Perhaps they were going to use me in some kind of horrible game. They wouldnt simply
dispatch me, because they planned to enjoy the dreadful contrivance at their leisure.
But at least they hadnt killed me. At least they hadnt skinned me alive like Yamamoto. I
might not be able to avoid being killed in the end, but not like that. I was alive for now; I was
still breathing. And if what the Russian officer had said was true, I would not be killed
immediately. The more time that lay between me and death, the more chance I had to survive.
It might be a minuscule chance, but all I could do was cling to it.
Then, all of a sudden, the words of Corporal Honda flared to life again in my brain: that
strange prognostication of his that I would not die on the continent. Even as I sat there, tied to
the saddle, the skin of my naked back burning in the desert sun, I repeatedly savored every
syllable that he had spoken. I let myself dwell on his expression, his intonation, the sound of
each word. And I resolved to believe him from the bottom of my heart. No, no, I was not
going to lie down and die in a place like this! I would come out of this alive! I would tread my
native soil once again!
We traveled north for two hours or more, coming to a stop near a Lamaist devotional
mound. These stone markers, called oboo, serve both as the guardian deity for travelers and as
valuable signposts in the desert. Here the men dismounted and untied my ropes. Supporting
my weight from either side, two of them led me a short distance away. I figured that this was
where I would be killed. A well had been dug into the earth here. The mouth of the well was
surrounded by a three-foot-high stone curb. They made me kneel down beside it, grabbed my
neck from behind, and forced me to look inside. I couldnt see a thing in the solid darkness.
The noncom with the boots found a fist-sized rock and dropped it into the well. Some time
later came the dry sound of stone hitting sand. So the well was a dry one, apparently. It had
once served as a well in the desert, but it must have dried up long before, owing to a
movement of the subterranean vein of water. Judging from the time it took the stone to hit
bottom, it seemed to be fairly deep.
The noncom looked at me with a big grin. Then he took a large automatic pistol from the
leather holster on his belt. He released the safety and fed a bullet into the chamber with a loud
click. Then he put the muzzle of the gun against my head.
He held it there for a long time but did not pull the trigger. Then he slowly lowered the
gun and raised his left hand, pointing toward the well. Licking my dry lips, I stared at the gun
in his fist. What he was trying to tell me was this: I had a choice between two fates. I could
have him shoot me now-just die and get it over with. Or I could jump into the well. Because it
was so deep, if I landed badly I might be killed. If not, I would die slowly at the bottom of a
dark hole. It finally dawned on me that this was the chance the Russian officer had spoken of.
The Mongolian noncom pointed at the watch that he had taken from Yamamoto and held up
five fingers. He was giving me five seconds to decide. When he got to three, I stepped onto
the well curb and leaped inside. I had no choice. I had hoped to be able to cling to the wall
and work my way down, but he gave me no time for that. My hands missed the wall, and I
tumbled down.
It seemed to take a very long time for me to hit bottom. In reality, it could not have been
more than a few seconds, but I do recall thinking about a great many things on my way down.
I thought about my hometown, so far away. I thought about the girl I slept with just once
before they shipped me out. I thought about my parents. I recall feeling grateful that I had a
younger sister and not a brother: even if I was killed, they would still have her and not have to
worry about her being taken by the army. I thought about rice cakes wrapped in oak leaves.
Then I slammed into dry ground and lost consciousness for a moment. It felt as if all the air
inside me had burst through the walls of my body. I thudded against the well bottom like a
sandbag.
It truly was just a moment that I lost consciousness from the impact, I believe. When I
came to, I felt some kind of spray hitting me. At first I thought it was rain, but I was wrong. It 
was urine. The Mongolian soldiers were all peeing on me where I lay in the bottom of the
well. I looked up to see them in silhouette far above me, taking turns coming to the edge of
the round hole to pee. There was a terrible unreality to the sight, like a drug-induced
hallucination. But it was real. I was really in the bottom of the well, and they were spraying
me with real pee. Once they had finished, someone shone a flashlight on me. I heard them
laughing. And then they disappeared from the edge of the hole. After that, everything sank
into a deep silence.
For a while, I thought it best to lie there facedown, waiting to see if they would come
back. But after twenty minutes had gone by, then thirty (as far as I could tell without a watch),
they did not come back. They had gone away and left me, it seemed. I had been abandoned at
the bottom of a well in the middle of the desert. Once it was clear that they would not be
returning, I decided to check myself over for injuries. In the darkness, this was no easy feat. I
couldnt see my own body. I couldnt tell with my own eyes what condition it was in. I could
only resort to my perceptions, but I could not be sure that the perceptions I was experiencing
in the darkness were accurate. I felt that I was being deceived, deluded. It was a very strange
feeling.
Little by little, though, and with great attention to detail, I began to grasp my situation.
The first thing I realized was that I had been extremely lucky. The bottom of the well was
relatively soft and sandy. If it hadnt been, then the impact of falling such a distance would
have broken every bone in my body. I took one long, deep breath and tried to move. First I
tried moving my fingers. They responded, although somewhat feebly. Then I tried to raise
myself to a sitting position on the earthen surface, but this I was unable to do. My body felt as
if it had lost all sensation. My mind was fully conscious, but there was something wrong with
the connection between my mind and my body. My mind would decide to do something, but
it was unable to convert the thought into muscular activity. I gave up and, for a while, lay
there quietly in the dark.
Just how long I remained still I have no idea. But little by little, my perceptions began to
return. And along with the recovery of my perceptions, naturally enough, came the sensation
of pain. Intense pain. Almost certainly, my leg was broken. And my shoulder might be
dislocated or, perhaps, if luck was against me, even broken.
I lay still, enduring the pain. Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my cheeks-tears
of pain and, even more, tears of despair. I dont think you will ever be able to understand what
it is like-the utter loneliness, the feeling of desperation-to be abandoned in a deep well in the
middle of the desert at the edge of the world, overcome with intense pain in total darkness. I
went so far as to regret that the Mongolian noncom had not simply shot me and gotten it over
with. If I had been killed that way, at least they would have been aware of my death. If I died
here, however, it would be a truly lonely death, a death of no concern to anyone, a silent
death.
Now and then, I heard the sound of the wind. As it moved across the surface of the earth,
the wind made an uncanny sound at the mouth of the well, a sound like the moan of a woman
in tears in a far-off world. That world and this were joined by a narrow shaft, through which
the womans voice reached me here, though only at long, irregular intervals. I had been left all
alone in deep silence and even deeper darkness.
Enduring the pain, I reached out to touch the earthen floor around me. The well bottom
was flat. It was not very wide, maybe five or five and a half feet. As I was groping the ground,
my hand suddenly came upon a hard, sharp object. In reflexive fear, I drew my hand back, but
then slowly and carefully I reached out toward the thing. Again my fingers came in contact
with the sharp object. At first I thought it was a tree branch, but soon enough I realized I was
touching bones. Not human bones, but those of a small animal, which had been scattered at
random, either by the passage of time or by my fall. There was nothing else at the bottom of
the well, just sand: fine and dry. 
Next I ran my palm over the wall. It seemed to be made of thin, flat stones. As hot as the
desert surface became in daytime, that heat did not penetrate to this world belowground. The
stones had an icy chill to them. I ran my hand over the wall, examining the gaps between
stones. If I could get a foothold there, I might be able to climb to the surface. But the gaps
turned out to be too narrow for that, and in my battered state, climbing seemed all but
impossible.
With a tremendous effort, I dragged myself closer to the wall and raised myself against it,
into a sitting position. Every move made my leg and shoulder throb as if they had been stuck
with hundreds of thick needles. For a while after that, each breath made me feel that my body
might crack apart. I touched my shoulder and realized it was hot and swollen.
•
How much time went by after that I do not know. But at one point something happened
that I would never have imagined. The light of the sun shot down from the opening of the
well like some kind of revelation. In that instant, I could see everything around me. The well
was filled with brilliant light. A flood of light. The brightness was almost stifling: I could
hardly breathe. The darkness and cold were swept away in a moment, and warm, gentle
sunlight enveloped my naked body. Even the pain I was feeling seemed to be blessed by the
light of the sun, which now warmly illuminated the white bones of the small animal beside
me. These bones, which could have been an omen of my own impending fate, seemed in the
sunlight more like a comforting companion. I could see the stone walls that encircled me. As
long as I remained in the light, I was able to forget about my fear and pain and despair. I sat in
the dazzling light in blank amazement. Then the light disappeared as suddenly as it had come.
Deep darkness covered everything once again. The whole interval had been extremely short.
In terms of the clock, it must have lasted ten or, at the most, fifteen seconds. No doubt,
because of the angles involved, this was all the sun could manage to shine straight down to
the bottom of the hole in any single day. The flood of sunlight was gone before I could begin
to comprehend its meaning.
After the light faded, I found myself in an even deeper darkness than before. I was all but
unable to move. I had no water, no food, not a scrap of clothing on my body. The long
afternoon went by, and night came, when the temperature plunged. I could hardly sleep. My
body craved sleep, but the cold pricked my skin like a thousand tiny thorns. I felt as if my
lifes core was stiffening and dying bit by bit. Above me, I could see stars frozen in the sky.
Terrifying numbers of stars. I stared up at them, watching as they slowly crept along. Their
movement helped me ascertain that time was continuing to flow on. I slept for a short while,
awoke with the cold and pain, slept a little more, then woke again.
Eventually, morning came. From the round mouth of the well, the sharp pinpoints of
starlight gradually began to fade. Still, even after dawn broke, the stars did not disappear
completely. Faint almost to the point of imperceptibility, they continued to linger there, on
and on. To slake my thirst, I licked the morning dew that clung to the stone wall. The amount
of water was minuscule, of course, but to me it tasted like a bounty from heaven. The thought
crossed my mind that I had had neither food nor water for an entire day. And yet I had no
sense of hunger.
I remained there, still, in the bottom of the hole. It was all I could do. I couldnt even
think, so profound were my feelings of loneliness and despair. I sat there doing nothing,
thinking nothing. Unconsciously, however, I waited for that ray of light, that blinding flood of
sunlight that poured straight down to the bottom of the well for one tiny fraction of the day. It
must have been a phenomenon that occurred very close to noon, when the sun was at the
highest point in the sky and its light struck the surface of the earth at right angles. I waited for
the coming of the light and for nothing else. There was nothing else I could wait for. 
A very long time went by, it seems. At some point I drifted into sleep. By the time I
sensed the presence of something and woke, the light was already there. I realized that I was
being enveloped once again by that overwhelming light. Almost unconsciously, I spread open
both my hands and received the sun in my palms. It was far stronger than it had been the first
time. And it lasted far longer than it had then. At least it felt that way to me. In the light, tears
poured out of me. I felt as if all the fluids of my body might turn into tears and come
streaming from my eyes, that my body itself might melt away like this. If it could have
happened in the bliss of this marvelous light, even death would have been no threat. Indeed, I
felt I wanted to die. I had a marvelous sense of oneness, an overwhelming sense of unity. Yes,
that was it: the true meaning of life resided in that light that lasted for however many seconds
it was, and I felt I ought to die right then and there.
But of course, before anything could happen, the light was gone. I was still there, in the
bottom of that miserable well. Darkness and cold reasserted their grip on me, as if to declare
that the light had never existed at all. For a long time, I simply remained huddled where I was,
my face bathed in tears. As if beaten down by some huge power, I was unable to do-or even to
think-anything at all, unable to feel even my own physical existence. I was a dried-up carcass,
the cast-off shell of an insect. But then, once again, into the empty room of my mind, returned
the prophecy of Corporal Honda: I would not die on the continent. Now, after the light had
come and gone, I found myself able to believe his prophecy. I could believe it now because,
in a place where I should have died, and at a time when I should have died, I had been unable
to die. It was not that I would not die: I could not die. Do you understand what I am saying,
Mr. Okada? Whatever heavenly grace I may have enjoyed until that moment was lost forever.
At this point in his story, Lieutenant Mamiya looked at his watch. And as you can see, 
he added softly, here I am. He shook his head as if trying to sweep away the invisible
threads of memory. Just as Mr. Honda had said, I did not die on the continent. And of the
four of us who went there, I have lived the longest. 
I nodded in response.
 Please forgive me for talking on at such length. It must have been very boring for you,
listening to a useless old man chatter on about the old days. Lieutenant Mamiya shifted his
position on the sofa. My goodness, Ill be late for my train if I stay any longer. 
I hastened to restrain him. Please dont end your story there, I said. What happened
after that? I want to hear the rest. 
He looked at me for a moment.
 How would this be, then? he asked. I really am running late, so why dont you walk
with me to the bus stop? I can probably give you a quick summary along the way. 
I left the house with him and walked to the bus stop.
 On the third morning, I was saved by Corporal Honda. He had sensed that the Mongols
were coming for us that night, slipped out of the tent, and remained in hiding all that time. He
had taken the document from Yamamotos bag with him. He did this because our number one
priority was to see to it that the document not fall into enemy hands, no matter how great the
sacrifice we had to make. No doubt you are wondering why, if he realized that the Mongols
were coming, Corporal Honda ran away by himself instead of waking the rest of us so that we
could escape together. The simple fact of the matter is that we had no hope of winning in such
a situation. They knew that we were there. It was their territory. They had us far outnumbered
and outgunned. It would have been the simplest thing in the world for them to find us, kill us,
and take the document. Given the situation, Corporal Honda had no choice but to escape by
himself. On the battlefield, his actions would have been a clear case of deserting under fire,
but on a special assignment like ours, the most important thing is resourcefulness.
 He saw everything that happened. He watched them skinning Yamamoto. He saw the
Mongolian soldiers take me away. But he no longer had a horse, so he could not follow
immediately. He had to come on foot. He dug up the extra supplies that we had buried in the 
desert, and there he buried the document. Then he came after me. For him to find me down in
the well, though, required a tremendous effort. He didnt even know which direction we had
taken. How did he find the well? I asked.
 I dont know, said Lieutenant Mamiya. He didnt say much about that. He just knew,
Id say. When he found me, he tore his clothing into strips and made a long rope. By then, I
was practically unconscious, which made it all the more difficult for him to pull me up. Then
he managed to find a horse and put me on it. He took me across the dunes, across the river,
and to the Manchukuo Army outpost. There they treated my wounds and put me on a truck
sent out by headquarters. I was taken to the hospital in Hailar. 
 What ever happened to that document or letter or whatever it was? Its probably still
there, sleeping in the earth near the Khalkha River. For Corporal Honda and me to go all the
way back and dig it up would have been out of the question, nor could we find any reason to
make such an effort. We arrived at the conclusion that such a thing should never have existed
in the first place. We coordinated our stories for the armys investigation. We decided to insist
that we had heard nothing about any document. Otherwise, they probably would have held us
responsible for not bringing it back from the desert. They kept us in separate rooms, under
strict guard, supposedly for medical treatment, and they questioned us every day. All these
high-ranking officers would come and make us tell our stories over and over again. Their
questions were meticulous, and very clever. But they seemed to believe us. I told them every
little detail of what I had experienced, being careful to omit anything I knew about the
document. Once they got it all down, they warned me that this was a top-secret matter that
would not appear in the armys formal records, that I was never to mention it to anyone, and
that I would be severely punished if I did. Two weeks later, I was sent back to my original
post, and I believe that Corporal Honda was also returned to his home unit. 
 One thing is still not clear to me, I said. Why did they go to all the trouble of bringing
Mr. Honda from his unit for this assignment? 
 He never said much to me about that. He had probably been forbidden to tell anyone, and
I suspect that he thought it would be better for me not to know. Judging from my
conversations with him, though, I imagine there was some kind of personal relationship
between him and the man they called Yamamoto, something that had to do with his special
powers. I had often heard that the army had a unit devoted to the study of the occult. They
supposedly gathered people with these spiritual or psychokinetic powers from all over the
country and conducted experiments on them. I suspect that Mr. Honda met Yamamoto in that
connection. In any case, without those powers of his, Mr. Honda would never have been able
to find me in the well and guide me to the exact location of the Manchukuo Army outpost. He
had neither map nor compass, yet he was able to head us straight there without the slightest
uncertainty. Common sense would have told you that such a thing was impossible. I was a
professional mapmaker, and I knew the geography of that area quite well, but I could never
have done what he did. These powers of Mr. Honda were probably what Yamamoto was
looking to him for. 
We reached the bus stop and waited.
 Certain things will always remain as riddles, of course, said Lieutenant Mamiya. There
are many things I still dont understand. I still wonder who that lone Mongolian officer was
who met us in the desert. And I wonder what would have happened if we had managed to
bring that document back to headquarters. Why did Yamamoto not simply leave us on the
right bank of the Khalkha and cross over by himself? He would have been able to move
around far more freely that way. Perhaps he had been planning to use us as a decoy for the
Mongolian troops so that he could escape alone. It certainly is conceivable. Perhaps Corporal
Honda realized this from the start and that was why he merely stood by while the Mongolians
killed him.
 In any case, it was a very long time after that before Corporal Honda and I had an 
opportunity to meet again. We were separated from the moment we arrived in Hailar and were
forbidden to speak or even to see each other. I had wanted to thank him one last time, but they
made that impossible. He was wounded in the battle for Nomonhan and sent home, while I
remained in Manchuria until the end of the war, after which I was sent to Siberia. I was only
able to find him several years later, after I was repatriated from my Siberian internment. We
did manage to meet a few times after that, and we corresponded. But he seemed to avoid
talking about what had happened to us at the Khalkha River, and I myself was not too eager to
discuss it. For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not
talking about it. Does this make any sense?
 This has turned into a very long story, but what I wanted to convey to you was my
feeling that real life may have ended for me deep in that well in the desert of Outer Mongolia.
I feel as if, in the intense light that shone for a mere ten or fifteen seconds a day in the bottom
of the well, I burned up the very core of my life, until there was nothing left. That is how
mysterious that light was to me. I cant explain it very well, but as honestly and simply as I
can state it, no matter what I have encountered, no matter what I have experienced since then,
I ceased to feel anything in the bottom of my heart. Even in the face of those monstrous
Soviet tank units, even when I lost this left hand of mine, even in the hellish Soviet
internment camps, a kind of numbness was all I felt. It may sound strange to say this, but
none of that mattered. Something inside me was already dead. Perhaps, as I felt at the time, I
should have died in that light, simply faded away. That was the time for me to die. But, as Mr.
Honda had predicted, I did not die there. Or perhaps I should say that I could not die there.
 I came back to Japan, having lost my hand and twelve precious years. By the time I
arrived in Hiroshima, my parents and my sister were long since dead. They had put my little
sister to work in a factory, which was where she was when the bomb fell. My father was on
his way to see her at the time, and he, too, lost his life. The shock sent my mother to her
deathbed; she finally passed away in. As I told you earlier, the girl to whom I had been
secretly engaged was now married to another man, and she had given birth to two children. In
the cemetery, I found my own grave. There was nothing left for me. I felt truly empty, and
knew that I should not have come back there. I hardly remember what my life has been like
since then. I became a social studies teacher and taught geography and history in high school,
but I was not, in the true sense of the word, alive. I simply performed the mundane tasks that
were handed to me, one after another. I never had one real friend, no human ties with the
students in my charge. I never loved anyone. I no longer knew what it meant to love another
person. I would close my eyes and see Yamamoto being skinned alive. I dreamed about it
over and over. Again and again I watched them peel the skin off and turn him into a lump of
flesh. I could hear his heartrending screams. I also had dreams of myself slowly rotting away,
alive, in the bottom of the well. Sometimes it seemed to me that that was what had really
happened and that my life here was the dream.
 When Mr. Honda told me on the bank of the Khalkha River that I would not die on the
continent, I was overjoyed. It was not a matter of believing or not believing: I wanted to cling
to something then- anything at all. Mr. Honda probably knew that and told me what he did in
order to comfort me. But of joy there was to be none for me. After returning to Japan, I lived
like an empty shell. Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years
it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of
an empty shell. This is what I hope I have made clear to you, Mr. Okada. 
 Does this mean, I ventured, that you never married after returning to Japan? 
 Of course not, answered Lieutenant Mamiya. I have no wife, no parents or siblings. I
am entirely alone. 
After hesitating a moment, I asked, Are you sorry that you ever heard Mr. Hondas
prediction? 
Now it was Lieutenant Mamiyas turn to hesitate. After a moment of silence, he looked 
me straight in the face. Maybe I am, he said. Maybe he should never have spoken those
words. Maybe I should never have heard them.As Mr. Honda said at the time, a persons
destiny is something you look back at afterward, not something to be known in advance. I do
believe this, however: now it makes no difference either way. All I am doing now is fulfilling
my obligation to go on living. 
The bus came, and Lieutenant Mamiya favored me with a deep bow. Then he apologized
to me for having taken up my valuable time. Well, then, I shall be on my way, he said.
 Thank you for everything. I am glad in any case that I was able to hand you the package
from Mr. Honda. This means that my job is done at last. I can go home with an easy mind. 
Using both his right hand and the artificial one, he deftly produced the necessary coins and
dropped them into the fare box.
I stood there and watched as the bus disappeared around the next corner.
After it was gone, I felt a strange emptiness inside, a hopeless kind of feeling like that
of a small child who has been left alone in an unfamiliar neighborhood.
Then I went home, and sitting on the living room couch, I opened the package that Mr.
Honda had left me as a keepsake. I worked up a sweat removing layer after layer of carefully
sealed wrapping paper, until a sturdy cardboard box emerged. It was a fancy Cutty Sark gift
box, but it was too light to contain a bottle of whiskey. I opened it, to find nothing inside. It
was absolutely empty. All that Mr. Honda had left me was an empty box.
Book Two: Bird as Prophet
July to October 
 
As Concrete as Possible
 
Appetite in Literature
Kumiko never came back that night. I stayed up until midnight, reading, listening to music,
and waiting for her, but finally I gave up and went to bed. I fell asleep with the light on. It was 
six in the morning when I woke. The full light of day shone outside the window. Beyond the
thin curtain, birds were chirping. There was no sign of my wife beside me in bed. The white
pillow lay there, high and fluffy. As far as I could see, no head had rested on it during the
night. Her freshly washed, neatly folded summer pajamas lay atop the night table. I had
washed them. I had folded them. I turned off the lamp beside my pillow and took a deep
breath, as if to regulate the flow of time.
I did a tour of the house in my pajamas. I went first to the kitchen, then surveyed the
living room and looked into Kumikos room. I checked the bathroom and, just to make sure,
tried the closets. There was no sign of her anywhere. The house seemed more hushed than
usual. I felt as if, by moving around, I alone was to blame for disrupting the quiet harmony of
the place, and for no good reason.
There was nothing more for me to do. I went to the kitchen, filled the kettle, and lit the
gas. When the water boiled, I made coffee and sat at the kitchen table to take a sip. Then I
made toast and ate some potato salad from the refrigerator. This was the first time in years
that I had eaten breakfast alone. Come to think of it, aside from a single business trip, we had
never once missed breakfast together in all the time since our marriage. We had often missed
lunch, and sometimes even dinner, but never breakfast. We had a kind of tacit understanding
about breakfast: it was almost a ritual for us. No matter how late we might go to bed, we
would always get up early enough to fix a proper morning meal and take the time to enjoy it
together.
But that morning Kumiko was gone. I drank my coffee and ate my toast alone, in silence.
An empty chair was all I had to look at. I looked and ate and thought about the cologne that
she had been wearing the morning before. I thought about the man who might have given it to
her. I thought about her lying in a bed somewhere with him, their arms wrapped around each
other. I saw his hands caressing her naked body. I saw the porcelain of her back as I had seen
it in the morning, the smooth skin beneath the rising zipper.
The coffee seemed to have a soapy taste. I couldnt quite believe it. Shortly after the first
sip, I sensed an unpleasant aftertaste. I wondered if my feelings were playing tricks on me, but
the second sip had the same taste. I emptied the cup into the sink and poured myself more
coffee, in a clean cup. Again the taste of soap. I couldnt imagine why. I had washed the pot
well, and there was nothing wrong with the water. But the taste- or smell-was unmistakable: it
could only have been soap-or possibly moisturizing lotion. I threw out all the coffee in the pot
and started to boil some more water, but it just wasnt worth the trouble. I filled a cup with
water from the tap and drank that instead. I really didnt want coffee all that much anyway.
•
I waited until nine-thirty and dialed Kumikos office. A woman answered the phone.
 May I please speak to Kumiko Okada? I asked.
 Im sorry, but she doesnt seem to be here yet. 
I thanked her and hung up. Then I started ironing shirts, as I always did when I felt
restless. When I ran out of shirts, I tied up old newspapers and magazines, wiped down the
sink and cabinet shelves, cleaned the toilet and bathtub. I polished the mirrors and windows
with glass cleaner. I unscrewed the ceiling fixtures and washed the frosted glass. I stripped the
sheets and threw them in the washing machine, then put on fresh ones.
At eleven oclock I called the office again. The same girl answered, and again she told me
that Kumiko had not come in.
 Was she planning to miss work today? I asked.
 Not to my knowledge, she said, without a trace of feeling. She was just reporting the
facts.
Something was out of the ordinary if Kumiko had still not reported to work at eleven 
oclock. Most publishers editorial offices kept irregular hours, but not Kumikos company.
Producing magazines on health and natural foods, they had to deal with the kind of writers
and other professionals- food producers, farmers, doctors-who went to work early in the
morning and home in the evening. To accommodate them, Kumiko and her colleagues
reported to the company at nine oclock sharp and left by five, unless there was some special
reason to stay later.
Hanging up, I went to the bedroom and looked through her closet. If she had run off,
Kumiko should have taken her clothes. I checked the dresses and blouses and skirts that were
hanging there. Of course, I didnt know every piece of clothing she owned-I didnt know
every piece of clothing that I owned-but I often took her things to the cleaners and picked
them up for her, so I had a pretty good grasp of which items she wore most often and which
were most important to her, and as far as I could tell, just about everything was there.
Besides, she had had no opportunity to take a lot of clothes with her. I tried to recall as
precisely as possible her departure from the house the day before-the clothes she wore, the
bag she carried. All she had had with her was the shoulder bag she always carried to work,
stuffed with notebooks and cosmetics and her wallet and pens and a handkerchief and tissues.
A change of clothing would never have fit inside.
I looked through her dresser drawers. Accessories, stockings, sunglasses, panties, cotton
tops: everything was there, arranged in neat rows. If anything had disappeared, it was
impossible for me to tell. Panties and stockings, of course, she could have managed to take in
her shoulder bag, but come to think of it, why would she have bothered? Those she could
have picked up anywhere.
I went back to the bathroom for another look at her vanity drawers. No sign of change
there, either: just a lot of little cosmetics containers and accessories stuffed inside. I opened
the bottle of Christian Dior cologne and took another sniff. It smelled the same as before: the
fragrance of a white flower, perfect for a summer morning. Again I thought of her ears and
her white back.
I went to the living room and stretched out on the sofa. I closed my eyes and listened.
Virtually the only sound I could hear was that of the clock ticking off time. There were no car
noises or birds chirping. I had no idea what to do now. I decided to call her office again and
got as far as lifting the receiver and dialing the first few numbers, but the thought of having to
talk to that same girl was too much for me, and I put the receiver back. There was nothing
more for me to do. I could only wait. Perhaps it was true that Kumiko was leaving me-for
what reason I did not know, but it was at least a possibility. Even if it was true, though, she
was not the kind of person who would leave without a word. She would do her best to explain
her exact reasons as precisely as possible. Of that I was one hundred percent certain.
Or, then, there might have been an accident. She might have been run down by a car and
rushed to the hospital. She could be unconscious at that moment and receiving a transfusion.
The thought made my heart pound, but I knew that she was carrying her license and credit
cards and address book. The hospital or the police would have contacted me by now.
I went to sit on the veranda and look at the garden, but in fact, I didnt look at anything. I
tried to think, but I couldnt concentrate my attention on any one thing. All that came to mind,
again and again, was Kumikos back as I raised the zipper of her dress-her back, and the smell
of the cologne behind her ears.
After one oclock, the phone rang. I stood up from the sofa and lifted the receiver.
 Pardon me, but would this be Mr. Okadas home? asked a womans voice. It was Malta
Kano. Thats right, I said.
 My name is Malta Kano. I am calling about the cat. The cat? I said with some
confusion. I had forgotten all about it. Now, of course, I remembered, but it seemed like
something from ages ago.
 The cat that Mrs. Okada was searching for, Malta Kano explained.
 Sure, sure, I said.
Malta Kano fell silent at her end, as if gauging something. My tone of voice might have
put her on alert. I cleared my throat and shifted the receiver to my other hand.
After a short pause, Malta Kano said, I must tell you, Mr. Okada, I believe that the cat
will almost certainly never be found. I hate to say this, but the best you can do is resign
yourself to the fact. It is gone forever. Barring some major change, the cat will never come
back. 
 Some major change? I asked. But she did not respond.
Malta Kano remained silent for a long time. I waited for her to say something, but try as I
might, I could not hear the smallest breath from her end of the line. Just as I was beginning to
suspect that the telephone was out of order, she began to speak again.
 It may be terribly rude of me to say this, Mr. Okada, but aside from the cat, isnt there
perhaps something with which I can be of help? 
I could not reply to her immediately. With the receiver in my hand, I leaned back against
the wall. It took some time for the words to come.
 Things are still not very clear to me, I said. I dont know anything for sure. Im trying
to work it out in my own mind. But I think my wife has left me. I explained to her that
Kumiko had not come home the night before or reported to work that morning.
She seemed to be mulling this over at her end. You must be very worried, she said.
 There is nothing I can say at this point, but things should begin to come clear before too
long. Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for
everything. Like the ebb and flow of the tides. No one can do anything to change them. When
it is time to wait, you must wait. 
 Look, Miss Kano, Im grateful for the trouble youve taken with the cat and all, but right
now Im not exactly in the mood for smooth-sounding generalities. Im feeling lost. Really
lost. Something awful is going to happen: I feel it. But I dont know what to do. I have
absolutely no idea what I should do. Is that clear? I dont even know what I should do after I
end this call. What I need right now is facts. Concrete facts. I dont care how stupid and
simple they might be, Ill take any facts I can get-am I making myself clear? I need something
I can see and touch. 
Through the phone I heard the sound of something falling on the floor: something not
very heavy-perhaps a single pearl-dropping onto a wooden floor. This was followed by a
rubbing sound, as if a piece of tracing paper were being held in someones fingertips and
given a vigorous yank. These movements seemed to be occurring someplace neither very
close to nor far from the telephone, but they were apparently of no interest to Malta Kano.
 I see, she said in a flat, expressionless voice. Something concrete. 
 Thats right. As concrete as possible. 
 Wait for a phone call. 
 Waiting for a phone call is all Ive been doing. 
 You should be getting a call soon from a person whose name begins with O. 
 Does this person know something about Kumiko? 
 That I cant say. Im just telling you this because you said you would take any concrete
facts you could get. And here is another one: Before very long, a half-moon will last for
several days. 
 A half-moon? I asked. You mean the moon in the sky? 
 Yes, Mr. Okada, the moon in the sky. In any case, the thing for you to do is wait.
Waiting is everything. Goodbye, then. Ill be talking to you again soon. And she hung up.
•
I brought our address book from my desk and opened to the Os. There were exactly four 
listings, written in Kumikos neat little hand. The first was my father, Tadao Okada. Then
came an old college friend of mine named Onoda, a dentist named Otsuka, and the
neighborhood Omura liquor store.
I could forget about the liquor store. It was ten minutes walk from the house, and aside
from those rare instances when we would order a case of beer to be delivered, we had no
special connection with them. The dentist was also irrelevant. I had gone to him for work on a
molar two years earlier, but Kumiko had never been there. In fact, she had never been to any
dentist since she married me. My friend Onoda I hadnt seen in years. He had gone to work
for a bank after college, was transferred to the Sapporo branch in his second year, and had
been living in Hokkaido ever since. Now he was just one of those people I exchanged New
Years cards with. I couldnt remember whether he had ever met Kumiko.
That left my father, but it was unthinkable that Kumiko would have some special
relationship with him. He had remarried after my mothers death, and I had not seen him or
corresponded with him or spoken with him on the telephone in the years since. Kumiko had
never even met the man.
Flipping through the address book, I was reminded how little the two of us had had to do
with other people. Aside from a few useful connections with colleagues, we had had almost
no relationships outside the house in the six years since our marriage, but instead had lived a
withdrawn sort of life, just Kumiko and me.
I decided to make spaghetti for lunch again. Not that I was the least bit hungry. But I
couldnt just go on sitting on the sofa, waiting for the phone to ring. I had to move my body,
to begin working toward some goal. I put water in a pot, turned on the gas, and until it boiled
I would make tomato sauce while listening to an FM broadcast. The radio was playing an
unaccompanied violin sonata by Bach. The performance itself was excellent, but there was
something annoying about it. I didnt know whether this was the fault of the violinist or of my
own present state of mind, but I turned off the music and went on cooking in silence. I heated
the olive oil, put garlic in the pan, and added minced onions. When these began to brown, I
added the tomatoes that I had chopped and strained. It was good to be cutting things and
frying things like this. It gave me a sense of accomplishment that I could feel in my hands. I
liked the sounds and the smells.
When the water boiled, I put in the salt and a fistful of spaghetti. I set the timer for ten
minutes and washed the things in the sink. Even with the finished spaghetti on the plate in
front of me, though, I felt no desire to eat. I barely managed to finish off half and threw out
the rest. The leftover sauce I put in a container and stored in the refrigerator. Oh, well, the
appetite had not been there to begin with.
Long before, I seemed to recall, I had read some kind of story about a man who keeps
eating while he waits for something to happen. After thinking long and hard about it, I
concluded that it was from Hemingways A Farewell to Arms. The hero (I had forgotten his
name) manages to escape from Italy to Switzerland by boat, and while hes waiting in this
little Swiss town for his wife to give birth, hes constantly going to the cafe across the way for
something to drink or eat. I could hardly remember anything about the plot. What had stuck in
my mind was this one part near the end, in which the hero goes from meal to meal while waiting
in a foreign country for his wife to have her baby. The reason I recalled it so clearly, it
seemed, was that this part of the book had an intense reality to it. It seemed far more real to
me, as literature, for the characters anxiety to cause this abnormal upsurge in appetite rather
than to make him incapable of eating and drinking.
In contrast to A Farewell to Arms, though, I developed no appetite at all as I watched the
hands of the clock in this quiet house, waiting for something to happen. And soon the thought
crossed my mind that my failure to develop an appetite might be owing to the lack within me
of this kind of literary reality. I felt as if I had become part of a badly written novel, that
someone was taking me to task for being utterly unreal. And perhaps it was true.
•
 The phone finally rang, just before two in the afternoon.
 Is this the Okada residence? asked an unfamiliar male voice. It was a young mans
voice, low and smooth.
 Yes, it is, I answered, my own voice somewhat tense.
 Block two, number twenty-six? 
 Thats right. 
 This is the Omura liquor store calling. Thank you for your continued patronage. I was
just about to leave to make my collections, and I wanted to check to see if this was a good
time for you. Collections? 
 Yes, sir. I have you down for two cases of beer and a case of juice. Oh. Fine. Ill be
home for a while yet, I said, bringing our conversation to a close.
After hanging up, I wondered whether that conversation had contained any information
regarding Kumiko. But viewed from all possible angles, it had been nothing but a short,
practical call from a liquor store about collections. I had ordered beer and juice from them,
and they had delivered it, that much was certain. Half an hour later, the fellow came to the
door, and I paid for two cases of beer and a case of juice. The friendly young man smiled as
he filled out the receipt. By the way, Mr. Okada, did you hear about the accident by the station
this morning? About half past nine. 
 Accident? I asked with a shock. Who was in an accident? A little girl, he said. Got
run over by a van backing up. Hurt bad, too, I hear. I got there just after it happened. Its
awful to see something like that first thing in the morning. Little kids scare the heck out of
me: you cant see them in your rearview mirror. You know the cleaners by the station? It
happened right in front of his place. People park their bikes there, and all these cartons are
piled up: you cant see a thing. 
After he left, I felt I couldnt stay in the house a minute longer. All of a sudden, the place
felt hot and stuffy, dark and cramped. I stepped into my shoes and got out of there as fast as I
could. I didnt even lock the door. I left the windows open and the kitchen light on. I
wandered around the neighborhood, sucking on a lemon drop. As I replayed the words of the
young liquor store employee in my mind, it slowly dawned on me that I had left some clothes
at the cleaners by the station. Kumikos blouse and skirt. The ticket was in the house, but if I
just went and asked for them, the man would probably let me have them.
The neighborhood looked a little different to me. The people I passed on the street all had
an unnatural, even artificial, look to them. I examined each face as I walked by, and I
wondered what kind of people these could be. What kind of houses did they live in? What
kind of families did they have? What kind of lives did they lead? Did they sleep with women
other than their wives, or men other than their husbands? Were they happy? Did they know
how unnatural and artificial they looked?
Signs of the mornings accident were still fresh outside the cleaners: on the ground, the
police chalk line; nearby, a few shoppers discussing the accident, with grave expressions on
their faces. Inside, the cleaners shop looked the same as ever. The same black boom box
played the same kind of mood music, while in back an old-fashioned air conditioner roared
along and clouds of steam rose from the iron to the ceiling. The song was Ebb Tide. Robert
Maxwell, harp. I thought how wonderful it would be if I could go to the ocean. I imagined the
smell of the beach and the sound of waves breaking on the shore. Seagulls. Ice-cold cans of
beer.
To the owner, I said only that I had forgotten my receipt. Im pretty sure I brought them
in last Friday or Saturday: a blouse and skirt. 
 Okada... Okada..., he said, and flipped through the pages of a college notebook. Sure,
here it is. One blouse, one skirt. But Mrs. Okada picked them up already. 
 She did? I asked, taken aback.
 Yesterday morning. I clearly remember handing them to her myself. I figured she was on
her way to work. Brought the receipt in too. 
I had no words to answer him with. I could only stare at him.
 Ask the missus, he said. Shes got ‘em, no mistake. He took a cigarette from the box
on the register, put it in his mouth, and lit it with a lighter.
 Yesterday morning? I asked. Not evening? 
 Morning for sure. Eight oclock. Your wife was the first customer of the day. I wouldnt
forget something like that. Hey, when your very first customer is a young woman, it puts you
in a good mood, know what I mean? 
I was unable to fake a smile for him, and the voice that came out of me didnt sound like
my own. Oh, well, I guess that takes care of that. Sorry, I didnt know she picked them up. 
He nodded and glanced at me, crushed out the cigarette, from which he had taken no more
than two or three puffs, and went back to his ironing. He seemed to have become interested in
me, as if he wanted to tell me something but decided in the end to say nothing. And I,
meanwhile, had things I wanted to ask him. How had Kumiko looked when she came for her
cleaning? What had she been carrying? But I was confused and very thirsty. What I most
wanted was to sit down somewhere and have a cold drink. That was the only way I would
ever be able to think about anything again, I felt.
I went straight from the cleaners to the coffeehouse a few doors away and ordered a glass
of iced tea. The place was cool inside, and I was the only customer. Small wall-mounted
speakers were playing an orchestrated version of the Beatles Eight Days a Week. I thought
about the seashore again. I imagined myself barefoot and moving along the beach at the
waters edge. The sand was burning hot, and the wind carried the heavy smell of the tide. I
inhaled deeply and looked up at the sky. Stretching out my hands, palms upward, I could feel
the summer sun burning into them. Soon a cold wave washed over my feet.
Viewed from any angle, it was odd for Kumiko to have picked things up from the
cleaners on her way to work. For one thing, she would have had to squeeze onto a jampacked
commuter train holding freshly pressed clothing on hangers. Then she would have had
to do it again on the way home. Not only would they be something extra to carry, but the
cleaners careful work would have been reduced to a mass of wrinkles. Sensitive as Kumiko
was about such things, I couldnt imagine she would have done something so pointless. All
she had to do was stop by on the way home from work. Or if she was going to be late, she
could have asked me to pick them up. There was only one conceivable explanation: she had
known she was not coming home. Blouse and skirt in hand, she had gone off somewhere.
That way, she would have at least one change of clothing with her, and anything else she
needed she could buy. She had her credit cards and her ATM card and her own bank account.
She could go anywhere she wanted.
And she was with someone- a man. There was no other reason for her to leave home,
probably.
This was serious. Kumiko had disappeared, leaving behind all her clothes and shoes. She
had always enjoyed shopping to add to her wardrobe, to which she devoted considerable care
and attention. For her to have abandoned it and left home with little more than the literal
clothes on her back would have taken a major act of will. And yet without the slightest
hesitation-it seemed to me-she had walked out of the house with nothing more in her hand
than a blouse and skirt. No, her clothing was probably the last thing on her mind.
Leaning back in my chair, half listening to the painfully sanitized background music, I
imagined Kumiko boarding a crowded commuter train with her clothes on wire hangers in the
cleaners plastic bags. I recalled the color of the dress she was wearing, the fragrance of the
cologne behind her ears, the smooth perfection of her back. I must have been exhausted. If I
shut my eyes, I felt, I would float off somewhere else; I would end up in a wholly different 
place.
 
No Good News in This Chapter
I left the coffeehouse and wandered through the streets. The intense heat of the afternoon
began to make me feel sick, even chilled. But the one place I didnt want to go was home. The
thought of waiting alone in that silent house for a phone call that would probably never come
I found suffocating.
All I could think to do was go see May Kasahara. I went home, climbed the wall, and
made my way down the alley to the back of her house. Leaning against the fence of the vacant
house on the other side of the alley, I stared at the garden with its bird sculpture. May would
notice me if I stood here like this. Aside from those few times when she was out working for
the wig company, she was always at home, keeping watch over the alley from her room or
while sunbathing in the yard.
But I saw no sign of May Kasahara. There was not a cloud in the sky. The summer
sunlight was roasting the back of my neck. The heavy smell of grass rose from the ground,
invading my lungs. I stared at the bird statue and tried to think about the stories my uncle had
recently told me of the fates of those who had lived in this house. But all I could think of was
the sea, cold and blue. I took several long, deep breaths. I looked at my watch. I was ready to
give up for the day, when May Kasahara finally came out. She ambled slowly through her
yard to where I stood. She wore denim shorts, a blue aloha shirt, and red thongs. Standing
before me, she smiled through her sunglasses.
 Hello there, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Find your cat- Noboru Wataya? Not yet, I said.
 What took you so long to come out today? She thrust her hands into her hip pockets and
looked all around, amused. Look, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I may have a lot of free time, but I
dont live to stand guard over this alley from morning to night. I have some things to keep me
busy. But anyhow, Im sorry. Were you waiting long? 
 Not so long. I got hot standing out here. 
May Kasahara stared hard at my face, then wrinkled her eyebrows slightly. Whats
wrong, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? You look terrible- like somebody whos just been dug up out of
the ground. Better come over here and rest in the shade for a while. 
She took me by the hand and led me into her yard. There she moved a canvas deck chair
into the shade of the oak tree and sat me down on it. The thick green branches cast cool
shadows that had the fragrance of life. Dont worry, theres nobody here, as usual, she said.
 You dont have to be the least bit concerned. Take your time. Stop thinking and relax. 
 I do have one favor to ask you, I said.
 Try me, she said.
 I want you to make a call for me. Instead of me. Taking out a notepad and pen, I wrote
down the number of Kumikos office. Then I tore off the page and handed it to her. The little
vinyl-covered notepad was warm and damp with sweat. All I want you to do is call this place
and ask if Kumiko Okada is there, and if shes not, ask if she came to work yesterday. 
May Kasahara took the paper and looked at it, with pursed lips. Then she looked at me.
 Fine, Ill take care of it. You just empty your head out and get horizontal. You are not 
allowed to move. Ill be right back. 
Once she was gone, I stretched out and closed my eyes as ordered. I was soaked with
sweat from heat to foot. Trying to think, I felt a throbbing deep in my head, and I seemed to
have a lump of string in the pit of my stomach. Every once in a while, a hint of nausea came
over me. The neighborhood was absolutely silent. It suddenly occurred to me that I had not
heard the wind-up bird for quite some time. When had I last heard it? Probably four or five
days earlier. But my memory was uncertain. By the time I noticed, its cry had been missing
too long to tell. Maybe it was a bird that migrated seasonally. Come to think of it, we had
started hearing it about a month before. And for a time, the wind-up bird had continued each
day to wind the spring of our little world. That had been the wind-up birds season.
After ten minutes, May Kasahara came back. She handed me a large glass. Ice clinked
inside when I took it. The sound seemed to reach me from a distant world. There were several
gates connecting that world with the place where I was, and I could hear the sound because
they all just happened to be open at the moment. But this was strictly temporary. If even one
of them closed, the sound would no longer reach my ears. Drink it, she said. Lemon juice
in water. Itll clear your head. 
I managed to drink half and returned the glass to her. The cold water passed my throat and
made its way down slowly into my body, after which a violent wave of nausea overtook me.
The decomposing lump of string in my stomach began to unravel and make its way up to the
base of my throat. I closed my eyes and tried to let it pass. With my eyes closed, I saw
Kumiko boarding the train, with her blouse and skirt in hand. I thought it might be better to
vomit. But I did not vomit. I took several deep breaths until the feeling diminished and
disappeared altogether. Are you OK? asked May Kasahara.
 Yeah, Im OK, I said.
 I made the call, she said. Told them I was a relative. Thats OK, isnt it? Uh-huh. 
 This person, Kumiko Okada, thats Mrs. Wind-Up Bird, isnt it? Uh-huh. 
 They said she didnt come to work-today or yesterday. Just took off without a word. Its
a real problem for them. Shes not the type to do this kind of thing, they said. 
 Its true. Shes not the type. Shes been gone since yesterday? I nodded.
 Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she said. She sounded as if she really did feel sorry for me.
She put her hand on my forehead. Is there anything I can do? 
 Not now, I said. But thanks. 
 Do you mind if I ask more? Or would you rather I didnt? 
 Go ahead, I said. Im not sure I can answer, though. 
 Did your wife run away with a man? 
 Im not sure, I said. Maybe so. Its possible. 
 But youve been living together all this time. How can you not be sure? 
She was right. How could I not be sure?
 Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she said again. I wish I had something to say to help you, but
I dont know anything about married life. 
I got out of my chair. The effort required to stand was far greater than I would have
imagined. Thanks for everything. Youve been a big help. Ive got to go now. I should be at
home in case word comes. Somebody might call. 
 As soon as you get home, take a shower. First thing. OK? Then put on clean clothes. And
shave. 
 Shave? I stroked my jaw. It was true: I had forgotten to shave. The thought hadnt
crossed my mind all morning.
 The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, May Kasahara said, looking into my
eyes. Go home and take a good look in the mirror. 
 I will, I said.
 Mind if I come over later? 
 Fine, I said. Then I added: Youd be a big help. 
May Kasahara nodded in silence.
•
At home, I looked at my face in the mirror. It was true: I looked terrible. I got undressed,
showered, gave myself a good shampoo, shaved, brushed my teeth, put aftershave lotion on
my face, and went to the mirror again for a close examination. A little better than before, it
seemed. My nausea was gone. My head was still a little foggy, though.
I put on short pants and a fresh polo shirt. I sat on the veranda, leaning against a pillar and
watching the garden while my hair dried. I tried to put the events of recent days in order. First
there was the call from Lieutenant Mamiya. That had been yesterday morning? Yes, no doubt
about it: yesterday morning. Then Kumiko had left the house. I had zipped up her dress. Then
I had found the cologne box. Then Lieutenant Mamiya had come and told me his strange war
stories: how he had been captured by Outer Mongolian troops and thrown into a well. He had
left me the keepsake from Mr. Honda. An empty box. Then Kumiko had failed to come home.
She had picked up her cleaning that morning by the station and afterward just disappeared
somewhere. Without a word to her company. So that was what had happened yesterday.
I could hardly believe that all that had happened in the course of a single day. It was too
much for one day.
As I mulled these things over, I began to feel incredibly sleepy. This was not an ordinary
kind of sleepiness. It was an intense, even violent, sleepiness. Sleep was stripping me of
consciousness the way the clothes might be stripped from the body of an unresisting person. I
went to the bedroom without thinking, took everything off but my underwear, and got in bed.
I tried to look at the clock on the night table, but I couldnt even turn my head sideways. I
closed my eyes and fell instantly into a deep, bottomless sleep.
•
In my sleep, I was zipping up Kumikos dress. I could see her smooth white back. But by
the time I had the zipper to the top, I realized it was not Kumiko but Creta Kano. She and I
were the only ones in the room.
It was the same room as in the last dream: a room in the same hotel suite. On the table was
a bottle of Cutty Sark and two glasses. There was also a stainless-steel ice bucket, full of ice.
In the corridor outside, someone was passing by, speaking in a loud voice. I couldnt catch the
words, which seemed to be in a foreign language. An unlighted chandelier hung from the
ceiling. The only illumination in this murky room came from lamps mounted on the wall.
Again the windows had thick curtains that were closed tight.
Creta Kano was wearing a summer dress of Kumikos: pale blue, with an openwork
pattern of birds. The skirt came to just above her knees. As always, her makeup was in the
Jacqueline Kennedy style. On her left wrist she wore a matched pair of bracelets.
 How did you get that dress? I asked. Is it yours? 
Creta Kano looked at me and shook her head. When she did this, the curled tips of her hair
moved in a pleasant way. No, it is not mine, she said. Im borrowing it. But dont worry,
Mr. Okada, this is not causing anyone any difficulty. 
 Where are we? I asked.
Creta Kano didnt answer. As before, I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I wore a suit
and my polka-dot tie.
 You dont have to think about a thing, Mr. Okada, said Creta Kano. There is nothing to
worry about. Everything is going to be fine. 
And again, as before, she unzipped my fly, took out my penis, and put it in her mouth. 
The one thing different from before was that she did not take off her own clothing. She wore
Kumikos dress the whole time. I tried to move, but it felt as if my body were tied down by
invisible threads. I felt myself growing big and hard inside her mouth.
I saw her fake eyelashes and curled hair tips moving. Her bracelets made a dry sound
against each other. Her tongue was long and soft and seemed to wrap itself around me. Just as
I was about to come, she suddenly moved away and began slowly to undress me. She took off
my jacket, my tie, my pants, my shirt, my underwear, and made me lie down on the bed. Her
own clothes she kept on, though. She sat on the bed, took my hand, and brought it under her
dress. She was not wearing panties. My hand felt the warmth of her vagina. It was deep,
warm, and very wet. My fingers were all but sucked inside.
 Wont Noboru Wataya be here any minute? I asked. Werent you expecting to see him
here? 
Instead of answering, Creta Kano touched my forehead. You dont have to think, Mr.
Okada. Well take care of all that. Leave everything to us. 
 To us? I asked, but there was no reply.
Then Creta Kano mounted me and used her hand to slip me inside her. Once she had me
deep inside, she began a slow rotation of her hips. As she moved, the edges of the pale-blue
dress caressed my naked stomach and thighs. With the skirts of the dress spread out around
her, Creta Kano, riding atop me, looked like a soft, gigantic mushroom that had silently poked
its face up through the dead leaves on the ground and opened under the sheltering wings of
night. Her vagina felt warm and at the same time cold. It tried to envelop me, to draw me in,
and at the same time to press me out. My erection grew larger and harder. I felt I was about to
burst wide open. It was the strangest sensation, something that went beyond simple sexual
pleasure. It felt as if something inside her, something special inside her, were slowly working
its way through my organ into me.
With her eyes closed and her chin lifted slightly, Creta Kano rocked quietly forward and
back as if she were dreaming. I could see her chest rising and falling with each breath beneath
the dress. A few hairs had come loose and hung over her forehead. I imagined myself floating
alone in the middle of a vast sea. I closed my eyes and listened, expecting to hear the sound of
little waves hitting my face. My body was bathed in lukewarm ocean water. I sensed the
gradual flow of the tide. It was carrying me away. I decided to do as Creta Kano had said and
not think about anything. I closed my eyes, let the strength go out of my limbs, and gave
myself up to the current.
All of a sudden, I noticed that the room had gone dark. I tried to look around, but I could
hardly see a thing. The wall lamps had all been extinguished. There was only the faint
silhouette of Creta Kanos blue dress rocking on top of me. Just forget, she said, but it was
not Creta Kanos voice. Forget about everything. Youre asleep. Youre dreaming. Youre
lying in nice, warm mud. We all come out of the warm mud, and we all go back to it. 
It was the voice of the woman on the telephone. The mysterious woman on the phone was
now mounted atop me and joining her body with mine. She, too, wore Kumikos dress. She
and Creta Kano had traded places without my being aware of it. I tried to speak. I did not
know what I was hoping to say, but at least I tried to speak. I was too confused, though, and
my voice would not work. All I could expel from my mouth was a hot blast of air. I opened
my eyes wide and tried to see the face of the woman mounted on top of me, but the room was
too dark.
The woman said nothing more. Instead, she began to move her hips in an even more
erotically stimulating way. Her soft flesh, itself almost an independent organism, enveloped
my erection with a gentle pulling motion. From behind her I heard-or thought I heard-the
sound of a knob being turned. A white flash went through the darkness. The ice bucket on the
table might have shone momentarily in the light from the corridor. Or the flash might have
been the glint of a sharp blade. But I couldnt think anymore. There was only one thing I 
could do: I came.
•
I washed myself off in the shower and laundered my semen-stained underwear by hand.
Terrific, I thought. Why did I have to be having wet dreams at such a difficult time in my life?
Once again I put on fresh clothing, and once again I sat on the veranda, looking at the
garden. Splashes of sunlight danced on everything, filtered through thick green leaves.
Several days of rain had promoted the powerful growth of bright-green weeds here and there,
giving the garden a subtle shading of ruin and stagnation.
Creta Kano again. Two wet dreams in a short interval, and both times it had been Creta
Kano. Never once had I thought of sleeping with her. The desire had not even flashed through
my mind. And yet both times I had been in that room, joining my body with hers. What could
possibly be the reason for this? And who was that telephone woman who had taken her place?
She knew me, and I supposedly knew her. I went through the various sexual partners I had
had in life, but none of them was the telephone woman. Still, there was something about her
that seemed familiar. And that was what annoyed me so.
Some kind of memory was trying to find its way out. I could feel it in there, bumping
around. All I needed was a little hint. If I pulled that one tiny thread, then everything would
come unraveled. The mystery was waiting for me to solve it. But the one slim thread was
something I couldnt find.
I gave up trying to think. Forget everything. Youre asleep. Youre dreaming. Youre
lying in nice, warm mud. We all come out of the warm mud, and we all go back to it. 
•
Six oclock came, and still no phone call. Only May Kasahara showed up. All she wanted,
she said, was a sip of beer. I took a cold can from the refrigerator and split it with her. I was
hungry, so I put some ham and lettuce between two slices of bread and ate that. When she saw
me eating, May said she would like the same. I made her a sandwich too. We ate in silence
and drank our beer. I kept looking up at the wall clock.
 Dont you have a TV in this house? 
 No TV, I said.
She gave the edge of her lip a little bite. I kinda figured that. Dont you like TV? 
 I dont dislike it. I get along fine without it. 
May Kasahara let that sink in for a while. How many years have you been married, Mr.
Wind-Up Bird? 
 Six years, I said.
 And you did without TV for six years? 
 Uh-huh. At first we didnt have the money to buy one. Then we got used to living
without it. Its nice and quiet that way. 
 The two of you must have been happy. 
 What makes you think so? 
She wrinkled up her face. Well, I couldnt live a day without television. 
 Because youre unhappy? 
May Kasahara did not reply to that. But now Kumiko is gone. You must not be so happy
anymore, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. 
I nodded and sipped my beer. Thats about the size of it, I said. That was about the size
of it.
She put a cigarette between her lips and, in a practiced motion, struck a match to light it.
 Now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she said, I want you to tell me the absolute truth: Do you think 
Im ugly? 
I put my beer glass down and took another look at May Kasaharas face. All this time
while talking with her, I had been vaguely thinking of other things. She was wearing an
oversize black tank top, which gave a clear view of the girlish swell of her breasts.
 Youre not the least bit ugly, I said. Thats for sure. Why do you ask? 
 My boyfriend always used to tell me how ugly I was, that I didnt have any boobs. 
 The boy who wrecked the bike? 
 Yeah, him. 
I watched May Kasahara slowly exhaling her cigarette smoke. Boys that age will say
things like that. They dont know how to express exactly what they feel, so they say and do
the exact opposite. They hurt people that way, for no reason at all, and they hurt themselves
too. Anyhow, youre not the least bit ugly. I think youre very cute. No flattery intended. 
May Kasahara mulled that one over for a while. She dropped ashes into the empty beer
can. Is Mrs. Wind-Up Bird pretty? 
 Hmm, thats hard for me to say. Some would say she is, and some would say not. Its a
matter of taste. 
 I see, she said. She tapped on her glass as if bored.
 Whats your biker boyfriend doing? I asked. Doesnt he come to see you anymore? 
 No, he doesnt, said May Kasahara, laying a finger on the scar by her left eye. Ill
never see him again, thats for sure. Two hundred percent sure. Id bet my left little toe on it.
But Id rather not talk about that right now. Some things, you know, if you say them, it makes
them not true? You know what I mean, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? 
 I think I do, I said. Then I glanced at the phone in the living room. It sat on the table,
cloaked in silence. It looked like a deep-sea creature pretending to be an inanimate object,
crouching there in wait for its prey.
 Someday, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, Ill tell you all about him. When I feel like it. But not now.
I just dont feel like it now. 
She looked at her watch. Gotta get home. Thanks for the beer. 
I saw her out to the garden wall. A nearly full moon was pouring its grainy light down to
the earth. The sight of the full moon reminded me that Kumikos period was approaching. But
that would probably have nothing to do with me anymore. The thought sent a sharp pain
through my chest. The intensity of it caught me off guard: it resembled sorrow.
With her hand on the wall, May Kasahara looked at me. Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you
do love Kumiko, dont you? 
 I think I do. 
 Even though she might have gone off with a lover? If she said she wanted to come back
to you, would you take her back? 
I released a sigh. Thats a tough question, I said. Id have to think about it once it really
happened. 
 Sorry for sticking my nose in, said May Kasahara, with a little click of the tongue. But
dont get mad. Im just trying to learn. I want to know what it means for a wife to run away.
Therere all kinds of things I dont know. 
 Im not mad, I said. Then I looked up at the full moon again.
 All right, then, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. You take care of yourself. I hope your wife comes
back and everything works out. Moving with incredible lightness, May Kasahara swung
herself over the wall and disappeared into the summer night.
•
With May Kasahara gone, I was alone again. I sat on the veranda, thinking about the
questions she had raised. If Kumiko had gone off somewhere with a lover, could I take her 
back again? I didnt know the answer. I really didnt know. There were all kinds of things that
I didnt know.
Suddenly the phone rang. My hand shot out in a conditioned reflex and picked up the
receiver.
The voice at the other end belonged to a woman. This is Malta Kano, she said. Please
forgive me for calling you so often, Mr. Okada, but I was wondering if you might happen to
have any plans for tomorrow. 
I had no plans, I said. Plans were simply something I did not have.
 In that case, I wonder if it might be possible for me to see you after noon. 
 Does this have something to do with Kumiko? 
 I do believe that it does, said Malta Kano, choosing her words carefully. Noboru
Wataya will also be joining us, most likely. 
I almost dropped the receiver when I heard this. You mean the three of us will be getting
together to talk? 
 Yes, I believe that is the case, said Malta Kano. The present situation makes this
necessary. I am sorry, but I cannot go into any further detail on the telephone. 
 I see. All right, then, I said.
 Shall we meet at one oclock? In the same place we met before: the tearoom of the
Shinagawa Pacific Hotel. 
One oclock in the tearoom of the Shinagawa Pacific Hotel, I said, and hung up.
•
May Kasahara called at ten oclock. She had nothing in particular to say; she just wanted
to talk to somebody. We chatted about harmless topics for a while. Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up
Bird, she said in the end. Have you had any good news since I was there? No good
news, I said. Nothing. 
 
Noboru Wataya Speaks
 
The Story of the Monkeys of the Shitty Island
I arrived at the tearoom ten minutes early, but Noboru Wataya and Malta Kano had
already found a table and were waiting for me. The lunchtime crowd was thick, but I spotted
Malta Kano immediately. Not too many people wore red vinyl hats on sunny summer
afternoons. It must have been the same hat she had on the day I met her, unless she owned a
collection of vinyl hats, all the same style and color. She dressed with the same tasteful
simplicity as before: a short-sleeved linen jacket over a col-larless cotton top. Both pieces
were perfectly white and perfectly free of wrinkles. No accessories, no makeup. Only the red
vinyl hat clashed with the rest of the outfit, both in ambience and in material. As if she had
been waiting for my arrival to do so, she removed the hat when I took my seat, placing it on 
the table. Beside the hat lay a small yellow leather handbag. She had ordered some sort of
tonic water but had not touched it, as before. The liquid seemed vaguely uncomfortable in its
tall glass, as if it had nothing better to do than produce its little bubbles.
Noboru Wataya was wearing green sunglasses. As soon as I sat down, he removed them
and stared at the lenses for a while, then he put them back on. He wore what looked like a
brand-new white polo shirt under a navy cotton sports coat. There was a glass of iced tea on
the table in front of him, but he had apparently not touched his drink yet, either.
I ordered coffee and took a sip of ice water.
No one said anything. Noboru Wataya appeared not to have even noticed that I had
arrived. In order to make sure that I had not suddenly turned transparent, I put a hand on the
table and watched it as I turned it over and back a few times. Eventually, the waiter came, set
a cup in front of me, and filled it with coffee. After he left, Malta Kano made little throatclearing
sounds as if testing a microphone, but still she said nothing.
The first to speak was Noboru Wataya. I have very little time to spare, so lets make this
as simple and straightforward as possible. He seemed to be talking to the stainless-steel
sugar bowl in the middle of the table, but of course he was speaking to me. The sugar bowl
was just a convenient midpoint between us, toward which he could direct his speech.
 Make what as simple and straightforward as possible? I asked straightforwardly.
At last Noboru Wataya took off his sunglasses, folded them, placed them on the table, and
looked directly at me. More than three years had gone by since I had last met and spoken to
the man, but I felt no sense of the intervening time- thanks, I assumed, to having had his face
thrust in front of me so often by the media. Certain kinds of information are like smoke: they
work their way into peoples eyes and minds whether sought out or not, and with no regard to
personal preference.
Forced now to see the man in person, I couldnt help but notice how much the three years
had changed the impression his face made. That almost stagnant, muddy look of his had been
pushed into the background, to be covered over by something slick and artificial. Noboru
Wataya had managed to find for himself a new, more sophisticated mask-a very well-made
mask, to be sure: perhaps even a new skin. Whatever it was, mask or skin, I had to admit-yes,
even I had to admit-that it had a certain kind of attractive power. And then it hit me: looking
at this face was like looking at a television image. He talked the way people on television
talked, and he moved the way people on television moved. There was always a layer of glass
between us. I was on this side, and he was on that side.
 As I am sure you must realize, we are here today to talk about Kumiko, said Noboru
Wataya. About Kumiko and you. About your future. What you and she are going to do. 
 Going to do? I said, lifting my coffee cup and taking a sip. Can you be a little more
concrete? 
Noboru Wataya looked at me with strangely expressionless eyes. A little more concrete?
Kumiko has taken a lover. Shes left you. Surely you are not suggesting that anyone involved
in the present situation wants it to continue indefinitely. That would not be good for anyone. 
 Taken a lover? I asked.
 Now please, wait just a moment. Malta Kano chose at this point to intervene. A
discussion such as this has its own proper order. Mr. Wataya, Mr. Okada, it is important to
proceed with this discussion in an orderly fashion. 
 I dont see that, said Noboru Wataya, without any sense of life in his voice. Theres no
order to this. What kind of order do you mean? This discussion doesnt have any. 
 Let him speak first, I said to Malta Kano. We can add the proper order afterwardassuming
there is one. 
Malta Kano looked at me for a few seconds with her lips lightly pursed, then gave a little
nod. All right, then, she said. Mr. Wataya first. Please. 
 Kumiko has had another man in her life, he began. And now shes gone off with him. 
This much is clear. Which means there would be no point in your continuing to stay married.
Fortunately, there are no children involved, and in view of the circumstances, no money need
change hands. Everything can be settled quickly. She simply pulls out of your family register.
You just have to sign and put your seal on forms prepared by a lawyer, and that takes care of
that. And let me add this to avoid any misunderstanding: What I am saying now is the final
view of the entire Wataya family. 
I folded my arms and mulled over his words for a time. I have a few questions, I said.
 First of all, how do you know that Kumiko has another man? 
 She told me so herself, said Noboru Wataya.
I did not know what to say to that. I put my hands on the table and remained silent. It was
hard for me to imagine Kumiko going to Noboru Wataya with such a personal matter.
 She called me a week ago and said she had something to discuss, continued Noboru
Wataya. We met and talked. Face-to-face. Thats when Kumiko told me she was seeing a
man. 
For the first time in months, I felt like a smoke. Of course, I had no cigarettes with me.
Instead, I took a sip of coffee and put the cup back in the saucer with a loud, dry clash.
 Then she left home, he said.
 I see, I said. If you say so, it must be true. Kumiko must have had a lover. And she
went to you for advice. Its still hard for me to believe, but I cant imagine your lying to me
about such a thing. 
 No, of course Im not lying, said Noboru Wataya, with the hint of a smile on his lips.
 So is that all you have to tell me? Kumiko left me for another man, so I should agree to a
divorce? 
Noboru Wataya responded with a single small nod, as if he were trying to conserve
energy. I suppose you realize that I was not in favor of Kumikos marrying you, to begin
with. I took no positive steps to interfere, on the assumption that it was a matter that did not
concern me, but now I almost wish I had. He took a sip of water and quietly set his glass on
the table again. Then he continued: From the first day I met you I knew better than to hope
you might amount to anything. I saw no sign of promise, nothing in you that suggested you
might accomplish something worthwhile or even turn yourself into a respectable human
being: nothing there to shine or to shed light on anything. I knew that whatever you set your
hand to would end up half-baked, that you would never see anything through to the end. And
I was right. You have been married to my sister for six years, and what have you done in all
that time? Nothing, right? All youve accomplished in six long years is to quit your job and
ruin Kumikos life. Now youre out of work and you have no plans for the future. Theres
nothing inside that head of yours but garbage and rocks. Why Kumiko ever got together with
the likes of you Ill never understand. Maybe she thought the garbage and rocks in your head
were interesting. But finally, garbage is garbage and rocks are rocks. You were wrong for her
from the start. Which is not to say that Kumiko was all perfection, either. Shes had her own
oddities since childhood, for one reason or another. I suppose thats why she was momentarily
attracted to you. But thats all over now. In any case, the best thing will be to finish this
business as quickly as possible. My parents and I will watch out for Kumiko. We want you to
back off. And dont try to find her. Youve got nothing to do with her anymore. All you can
do is cause trouble if you try to get involved. The best thing you can do is begin a new life in
a new place-a life that is better suited to you. That would be best for you and best for us. 
To signal that he was finished, Noboru Wataya drained the water remaining in his glass,
called the waiter, and ordered more.
 Do you have anything else to say? I asked.
Noboru Wataya responded this time with a single small shake of the head.
 In that case, I said to Malta Kano, where does the proper order come into this
discussion? 
Malta Kano took a small white handkerchief from her bag and used it to wipe the corners
of her mouth. Then she picked up her red vinyl hat from the table and set it on top of the bag.
 Im certain this is all very shocking to you, Mr. Okada, she said. And for my part, I
find it extremely painful to be speaking about such things with you face-to-face, as you can
imagine. 
Noboru Wataya glanced at his watch in order to ascertain that the world was still spinning
on its axis and costing him precious time.
 I see now, Malta Kano continued, that I must tell you this as simply and
straightforwardly as possible. Mrs. Okada came to see me first. She came to me for advice. 
 On my recommendation, interjected Noboru Wataya. Kumiko came to talk to me about
the cat, and I introduced her to Ms. Kano. 
 Was that before I met you or after? I asked Malta Kano. Before, she said.
 In that case, I said, to put things in their proper order, it went something like this.
Kumiko learned about your existence from Noboru Wataya, and she went to see you about the
lost cat. Then, for some reason that is still not clear to me, she hid from me the fact that she
had already met you, and arranged for me to see you-which I did, in this very place. Am I
right? 
 That is approximately correct, said Malta Kano, with some difficulty. My first
discussion with Mrs. Okada was strictly about the cat. I could tell there was something more
to it than that, however, which is why I wanted to meet you and speak with you directly. Then
it became necessary for me to meet with Mrs. Okada one more time and to ask about deeper,
personal matters. 
 Which is when Kumiko told you she had a lover. 
 Yes. In summary, I believe that is the case. Given my position, it is not possible for me to
go into any greater detail than that, said Malta Kano.
I released a sigh. Not that sighing was going to accomplish anything, but it was something
I had to do. So, then, Kumiko had been involved with this man for some time? 
 Two and a half months or thereabouts, I believe. 
 Two and a half months, I said. How could it have been going on for two and a half
months and I didnt notice a thing? 
 Because, Mr. Okada, you had absolutely no doubts about your wife, said Malta Kano.
I nodded. Thats true. It never once crossed my mind. I never imagined Kumiko could lie
to me like that, and I still cant really believe it. 
 Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the
finest qualities a person can possess. 
 Not an easy ability to come by, said Noboru Wataya.
The waiter approached and refilled my coffee cup. A young woman at the next table was
laughing out loud.
 So, then, I said to Noboru Wataya, what is the ultimate purpose of this gathering? Why
are the three of us together here? To get me to agree to divorce Kumiko? Or is there some
deeper objective? There did seem to be a kind of logic to what you said earlier, but all the
important parts are vague. You say Kumiko has a man and has left the house. So where did
she go? What is she doing there? Is she by herself or is she with him? Why hasnt Kumiko
gotten in touch with me? If its true she has another man, thats the end of that. But I wont
believe its true until I hear it directly from her. Do you see what I mean? The only ones who
count here are Kumiko and me. Were the ones who have to talk to each other and decide
things. Youve got nothing to do with this. 
Noboru Wataya pushed his untouched glass of iced tea aside. We are here to inform you
of the situation, he said. I asked Ms. Kano to accompany me, thinking it would be better to
have a third party present. I dont know who Kumikos other man is, and I dont know where
she is now. Kumiko is all grown up. She can do as she pleases. But even if I knew where she 
was, I certainly wouldnt tell you. She hasnt gotten in touch with you because she doesnt
want to talk to you. 
 She did want to talk to you, apparently. How much could she have told you? You and she
are not very close, as I understand it. 
 Well, if you and she were so damn close, why did she sleep with another man? said
Noboru Wataya.
Malta Kano gave a little cough.
Noboru Wataya went on: Kumiko told me she has a relationship with another man. She
said she wants to settle everything once and for all. I advised her to divorce you. She said she
would think about it. 
 Is that all? I asked.
 What else is there? 
 I just dont get it, I said. I dont believe that Kumiko would go to you with something
so important. Youre the last person she would consult on such a matter. She would either
think it out for herself or speak to me directly. She must have said something else to you. If
she had to talk to you in person, it must have been about something else. 
Noboru Wataya allowed the faintest possible smile to play over his lips-a thin, cold smile
like a sliver of a moon hovering in the dawn sky. This is what they mean by letting the truth
slip out, he said, in a soft but clearly audible voice.
 Letting the truth slip out, I said, testing the expression for myself.
 Im sure you see my point, he said. Your wife sleeps with another man. She runs out
on you. And then you try to pin the blame on someone else. Ive never heard of anything so
stupid. Look, I didnt come here for my own pleasure. It was something I had to do. For me,
its just a waste of time. I might as well be throwing my time into the gutter. When he had
finished speaking, a deep silence settled over the table. Do you know the story of the
monkeys of the shitty island? I asked Noboru Wataya.
He shook his head, with no sign of interest. Never heard of it. 
 Somewhere, far, far away, theres a shitty island. An island without a name. An island
not worth giving a name. A shitty island with a shitty shape. On this shitty island grow palm
trees that also have shitty shapes. And the palm trees produce coconuts that give off a shitty
smell. Shitty monkeys live in the trees, and they love to eat these shitty-smelling coconuts,
after which they shit the worlds foulest shit. The shit falls on the ground and builds up shitty
mounds, making the shitty palm trees that grow on them even shittier. Its an endless cycle. I
drank the rest of my coffee.
 As I sat here looking at you, I continued, I suddenly remembered the story of this
shitty island. What Im trying to say is this: A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of
stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propagating itself with its own power in its
own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it-even if the
person himself wants to stop it. 
Noboru Watayas face wore no expression of any kind. The smile was gone, but neither
was there any shadow of annoyance. All I could see was one small wrinkle between his
eyebrows, and I could not recall if it was something that had been there before.
 Are you catching my drift, Mr. Wataya? I went on. I know exactly the sort of man you
are. You say Im like garbage or rocks. And you think you could smash me to bits anytime
you felt like it. But things are not that simple. To you, with your values, I may well be nothing
but garbage and rocks. But Im not as stupid as you think I am. I know exactly what youve
got under that smooth, made-for-TV mask of yours. I know your secret. Kumiko knows and I
know: we both know whats under there. If I wanted to, I could tell it to the world. I could
bring it out into the light. It might take time, but I could do it. I may be a nobody, but at least
Im not a sandbag. Im a living, breathing human being. If somebody hits me, I hit back.
Make sure you keep that in mind. 
Noboru Wataya went on staring at me with that expressionless face of his- a face like a
chunk of rock floating in space. What I had said to him was almost pure bluff. I did not know
Noboru Watayas secret. That he had something profoundly warped inside him was not
difficult to imagine. But I had no way of knowing with any concrete certainty what that might
be. My words, though, seemed to have jabbed at something in there. I could read the effect on
his face. He didnt respond to me the way he always did to his opponents in televised panel
discussions: he didnt sneer at my words or try to trip me up or find some clever opening. He
sat there in silence, without moving a muscle.
Then something very odd began to happen to Noboru Watayas face. Little by little, it
started to turn red. But it did this in the strangest way. Certain patches turned a deep red,
while others reddened only slightly, and the rest appeared to have become weirdly pale. This
made me think of an autumn wood of blotchy colors where deciduous and evergreen trees
grew in a chaotic mix.
Eventually, without a word, Noboru Wataya stood up, took his sunglasses from his
pocket, and put them on. The strange, blotchy colors still covered his face. They looked
almost permanent now. Malta Kano remained perfectly still in her seat, saying nothing. I
myself adopted an expression of complete indifference. Noboru Wataya began to say something
to me but, in the end, seemed to have decided against it. Instead, he walked away from
the table and disappeared into the crowd.
•
For a time after Noboru Wataya left, Malta Kano and I said nothing to each other. I felt
exhausted. The waiter came and offered to refill my coffee cup, but I sent him away. Malta
Kano picked up her red hat from the table and stared at it for a few minutes before setting it
down on the chair next to her.
I sensed a bitter taste in my mouth. I tried to wash it away by drinking some water, but
this did no good.
After another short interval, Malta Kano spoke. Feelings need to be let out sometimes.
Otherwise, the flow can stagnate inside. Im sure you feel better now that you have said what
you wanted to say. 
 A little, I said. But it didnt solve anything. It didnt bring anything to a conclusion. 
 You dont like Mr. Wataya, do you, Mr. Okada? 
 Every time I talk to that guy, I get this incredibly empty feeling inside. Every single
object in the room begins to look as if it has no substance to it. Everything appears hollow.
Exactly why this should be, I could never explain to you with any precision. Because of this
feeling, I end up saying and doing things that are simply not me. And I feel terrible about it
afterward. If I could manage never to see him again, nothing would make me happier. 
Malta Kano shook her head. Unfortunately, you will be required to encounter Mr.
Wataya any number of times again. This is something you will not be able to avoid. 
She was probably right. I couldnt get him out of my life so easily.
I picked up my glass and took another drink of water. Where had that awful taste come
from?
 Theres just one thing I would like to ask you, I said. Whose side are you on here?
Noboru Watayas or mine? 
Malta Kano put her elbows on the table and brought her palms together before her face.
 Neither, she said. There are no sides in this case. They simply do not exist. This is not the
kind of thing that has a top and bottom, a right and left, a front and back, Mr. Okada. 
 Sounds like Zen, I said. Interesting enough in itself as a system of thought, but not
much good for explaining anything. 
She nodded her head. The palms that she was pressing together in front of her face she 
now pulled three inches apart, holding them at a slight angle and aiming them toward me.
They were small, well-shaped palms. I know that what I am saying does not seem to make a
great deal of sense. And I dont blame you for being angry. But if I were to tell you anything
now, it would serve no practical purpose. In fact, it would ruin things. You will have to win
with your own strength. With your own hands. 
 Like on Wild Kingdom, I said with a smile. You get hit, you hit back. 
 Thats it, said Malta Kano. Exactly. Then, with all the care of someone retrieving the
belongings of a person newly dead, she picked up her handbag and put on her red vinyl hat.
When she set the hat on her head, Malta Kano conveyed a strangely tangible impression that a
unit of time had now come to an end.
•
After Malta Kano had left, I went on sitting there alone, with nothing particular on my
mind. I had no idea where I should go or what I should do if I were to stand up. But of course
I couldnt stay there forever. When twenty minutes had gone by like this, I paid for the three
of us and left the tearoom. Neither of the other two had paid.
 
D i v i n e Grace Lost
 
Prostitute of the Mind
At home, I found a thick letter in the mailbox. It was from Lieutenant Mamiya. My name
and address had been written on the envelope in the same bold, handsome characters as
before. I changed clothes, washed my face, and went to the kitchen, where I drank two glasses
of cold water. Once I had had a moment to catch my breath, I cut the letter open.
Lieutenant Mamiya had used a fountain pen to fill some ten thin sheets of letter paper with
tiny characters. I flipped through the pages and put them back into the envelope. I was too
tired to read such a long letter; I didnt have the powers of concentration just then. When my
eyes scanned the rows of handwritten characters, they looked like a swarm of strange blue
bugs. And besides, the voice of Noboru Wataya was still echoing faintly in my mind.
I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes for a long time, thinking of nothing. It was
not hard for me to think of nothing, the way I felt at the moment. In order not to think of any
one thing, all I had to do was think of many things, a little at a time: just think about
something for a moment and fling it into space.
It was nearly five oclock in the evening when I finally decided to read Lieutenant
Mamiyas letter. I went out to the veranda, sat leaning against a pillar, and took the pages
from the envelope.
The whole first page was filled with conventional phrases: extended seasonal greetings,
thanks for my having invited him to my home the other day, and profound apologies for
having bored me with his endless stories. Lieutenant Mamiya was certainly a man who knew 
the civilities. He had survived from an age when such civilities occupied a major portion of
daily life. I skimmed through those and turned to the second page.
Please forgive me for having gone on at such length with these preliminary matters [it
began]. My sole purpose in writing this letter today, knowing full well that my
presumptuousness in doing so can only burden you with an unwanted task, is to inform you
that the events I recently told you about were neither a fabrication of mine nor the dubious
reminiscences of an old man, but are the complete and solemn truth in every particular. As
you know, the war ended a very long time ago, and memory naturally degenerates as the
years go by. Memories and thoughts age, just as people do. But certain thoughts can never
age, and certain memories can never fade.
Up to and including this very day, I have never told any of these things to anyone but you,
Mr. Okada. To most people, these stories of mine would sound like the most incredible
fabrications. The majority of people dismiss those things that lie beyond the bounds of their
own understanding as absurd and not worth thinking about. I myself can only wish that my
stories were, indeed, nothing but incredible fabrications. I have stayed alive all these years
clinging to the frail hope that these memories of mine were nothing but a dream or a delusion.
I have struggled to convince myself that they never happened. But each time I tried to push
them into the dark, they came back stronger and more vivid than ever. Like cancer cells, these
memories have taken root in my mind and eaten into my flesh.
Even now I can recall each tiny detail with such terrible clarity, I feel I am remembering
events that happened yesterday. I can hold the sand and the grass in my hands; I can even
smell them. I can see the shapes of the clouds in the sky. I can feel the dry, sandy wind against
my cheeks. By comparison, it is the subsequent events of my life that seem like delusions on
the borderline of dream and reality.
The very roots of my life-those things that I can say once truly belonged to me alone-were
frozen stiff or burned away out there, on the steppes of Outer Mongolia, where there was
nothing to obstruct ones vision as far as the eye could see. Afterward, I lost my hand in that
fierce battle with the Soviet tank unit that attacked across the border; I tasted unimaginable
hardships in a Siberian labor camp in the dead of winter; I was repatriated and served for
thirty uneventful years as a social studies teacher in a rural high school; and I have since
lived alone, tilling the land. But all those subsequent months and years to me feel like nothing
but an illusion. It is as if they never happened. In an instant, my memory leaps across that
empty shell of time and takes me back to the wilds ofHulunbuir.
What cost me my life, what turned it into that empty shell, I believe, was something in the
light I saw at the bottom of the well-that intense light of the sun that penetrated straight down
to the very bottom of the well for ten or twenty seconds. It would come without warning, and
disappear just as suddenly. But in that momentary flood of light I saw something-saw
something once and for all-that I could never see again as long as I lived. And having seen it,
I was no longer the same person I had been.
What happened down there? What did it mean? Even now, more than forty years later, I
cannot answer those questions with any certainty. Which is why what I am about to say is
strictly a hypothesis, a tentative explanation that I have fashioned for myself without the
benefit of any logical basis. I do believe, however, that this hypothesis of mine is, for now, the
closest that anyone can come to the truth of what it was that I experienced.
Outer Mongolian troops had thrown me into a deep, dark well in the middle of the steppe,
my leg and shoulder were broken, I had neither food nor water: I was simply waiting to die.
Before that, I had seen a man skinned alive. Under these special circumstances, I believe, my
consciousness had attained such a viscid state of concentration that when the intense beam of
light shone down for those few seconds, I was able to descend directly into a place that might
be called the very core of my own consciousness. In any case, I saw the shape of something
there. Just imagine: Everything around me is bathed in light. I am in the very center of a flood 
of light. My eyes can see nothing. I am simply enveloped in light. But something begins to
appear there. In the midst of my momentary blindness, something is trying to take shape.
Some thing. Some thing that possesses life. Like the shadow in a solar eclipse, it begins to
emerge, black, in the light. But I can never quite make out its form. It is trying to come to me,
trying to confer upon me something very much like heavenly grace. I wait for it, trembling.
But then, either because it has changed its mind or because there is not enough time, it never
comes to me. The moment before it takes full shape, it dissolves and melts once again into the
light. Then the light itself fades. The time for the light to shine down into the well has ended.
This happened two days in a row. Exactly the same thing. Something began to take shape
in the overflowing light, then faded before it could reach a state of fullness. Down in the well,
I was suffering with hunger and thirst-suffering terribly. But finally, this was not of major
importance. What I suffered with most down there in the well was the torture of being unable
to attain a clear view of that something in the light: the hunger of being unable to see what I
needed to see, the thirst of being unable to know what I needed to know. Had I been able to
see it clearly, I would not have minded dying right then and there. I truly felt that way. I
would have sacrificed anything for a full view of its form.
Finally, though, the form was snatched away from me forever. The grace came to an end
before it could be given to me. And as I said earlier, the life I led after emerging from that
hole in the ground was nothing but a hollow, empty shell. Which is why, when the Soviet Army
invaded Manchuria just before the end of the war, I volunteered to be sent to the front. In the
Siberian labor camp, too, I purposely strove to have myself placed in the most difficult
circumstances. No matter what I did, however, I could not die. Just as Corporal Honda had
predicted that night, I was fated to return to Japan and live an amazingly long life. I
remember how happy that news made me when I first heard it. But it turned out to be, if anything,
a curse. It was not that I would not die: I could not die. Corporal Honda had been right
about that too: I would have been better off not knowing.
When the revelation and the grace were lost, my life was lost. Those living things that had
once been there inside me, that had been for that reason of some value, were dead now. Not
one thing was left. They had all been burned to ashes in that fierce light. The heat emitted by
that revelation or grace had seared away the very core of the life that made me the person I
was. Surely I had lacked the strength to resist that heat. And so I feel no fear of death. If
anything, my physical death would be, for me, a form of salvation. It would liberate me
forever from this hopeless prison, this pain of being me.
Again I have burdened you with an overlong tale. I beg your forgiveness. But what I want
to convey to you, Mr. Okada, is this: I happened to lose my life at one particular moment in
time, and I have gone on living these forty years or more with my life lost. As a person who
finds himself in such a position, I have come to think that life is a far more limited thing than
those in the midst of its maelstrom realize. The light shines into the act of life for only the
briefest moment-perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and one has failed to grasp
its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of ones life in
hopeless depths of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look
forward to anything. All that such a person holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what
should have been.
In any case, I am grateful for the chance to have met you, Mr. Okada, and to have told
you my story. Whether it will ever be of any use to you, I cannot be certain. But by telling it to
you, I feel that I have attained a kind of salvation. Frail and tenuous though it may be, to me
any kind of salvation is a treasure. Nor can I but sense the presence of the subtle threads of
fate to think that Mr. Honda was the one who guided me to it. Please remember, Mr. Okada,
that there is someone here sending his best wishes to you for a happy life in the years to come.
I read through the letter one more time, with care, and returned it to its envelope.
Lieutenant Mamiyas letter moved my heart in strange ways, but to my mind it brought 
only vague and distant images. Lieutenant Mamiya was a man I could trust and accept, and I
could also accept as fact those things that he declared to be facts. But the very concept of fact
or truth had little power to persuade me just then. What most moved me in his letter was the
sense of frustration that permeated the lieutenants words: the frustration of never quite being
able to depict or explain anything to his full satisfaction.
I went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Then I wandered around the house. In the
bedroom, I sat on the bed and looked at Kumikos dresses lined up in the closet. And I
thought, What has been the point of my life until now? I saw what Noboru Wataya had been
talking about. My first reaction to his words had been anger, but I had to admit that he was
right. You have been married to my sister for six years, he had said, and what have you
done in all that time? Nothing, right? All youve accomplished in six long years is to quit your
job and ruin Kumikos life. Now youre out of work and you have no plans for the future.
Theres nothing inside that head of yours but garbage and rocks. I had no choice but to admit
the accuracy of his remarks. Objectively speaking, I had done nothing meaningful in these six
years, and what I had in my head was indeed something very like garbage and rocks. I was a
zero. Just as he had said.
But was it true that I had ruined Kumikos life?
For a long time, I looked at her dresses and blouses and skirts in the closet. They were the
shadows Kumiko had left behind. Bereft of their owner, these shadows could only hang where
they were, limp. I went to the bathroom and took out the bottle of Christian Dior cologne that
someone had given to Kumiko. I opened it and smelled it. It was the fragrance I had smelled
behind Kumikos ears the morning she had left the house. I slowly poured the entire contents
into the sink. As the liquid flowed down the drain, a strong smell of flowers (the exact name
of which I tried but failed to recall) hung over the sink, stirring up memories with brutal
intensity. In the midst of this intense aroma, I washed my face and brushed my teeth. Then I
decided to go to May Kasaharas.
•
As always, I stood in the alley at the back of the Miyawaki house, waiting for May
Kasahara to appear, but this time it didnt work. I leaned against the fence, sucked on a lemon
drop, looked at the bird sculpture, and thought about Lieutenant Mamiyas letter. Soon,
however, it began to grow dark. After waiting close to half an hour, I gave up. May Kasahara
was probably out somewhere.
I made my way back down the alley to the rear of my house and scaled the wall. Inside, I
found the place filled with the hushed, pale darkness of a summer evening. And Creta Kano
was there. For one hallucinatory moment, I felt I was dreaming. But no, this was the
continuation of reality. A subtle trace of the cologne I had spilled still floated in the air. Creta
Kano was sitting on the sofa, her hands on her knees. I drew closer to her, but as if time itself
had stopped inside her, she made not the slightest movement. I turned on the light and sat in
the chair facing her. The door was unlocked, she said at last. I let myself in. 
 Thats all right, I said. I usually leave the door unlocked when I go out. 
She wore a lacy white blouse, flouncy mauve skirt, and large earrings. On her left wrist
she wore a large pair of matching bracelets. The sight of them sent a shock through me. They
were virtually identical to the bracelets I had seen her wearing in my dream. Her hair and
makeup were both done in the style she always used. Hair spray held the hair perfectly in
place as usual, as if she had just arrived from the beauty parlor.
 There is not much time, she said. I have to return home right away. But I wanted to be
sure I had a chance to talk with you, Mr. Okada. You saw my sister and Mr. Wataya today, I
believe. 
 Sure did. Not that it was the most fun little gathering. 
 Isnt there something you would like to ask me in connection with that? she asked.
All kinds of people were coming to me with all kinds of questions.
 Id like to know more about Noboru -Wataya, I said. I cant help thinking that I have to
know more about him. 
She nodded. I would like to know more about Mr. Wataya myself. I believe that my
sister has already told you that he defiled me once, a very long time ago. I dont have time to
go into that today, but I will, on some future occasion. In any case, it was something done to
me against my will. It had originally been arranged for me to have relations with him. Which
is why it was not rape in the ordinary sense of the word. But he did defile me, and that
changed me as a person in many important ways. In the end, I was able to recover from the
experience. Indeed, it enabled me (with the help of Malta Kano, of course) to bring myself to
a whole new, higher level. Whatever the end results may have been, the fact remains that
Noboru Wataya violated and defiled me at that time against my will. What he did to me was
wrong-and dangerous. The potential was there for me to have been lost forever. Do you see
what I mean? I did not see what she meant.
 Of course, I had relations with you too, Mr. Okada, but it was something done in the
correct way, with a correct purpose. I was in no way defiled by that. 
I looked directly at her for several seconds, as if staring at a wall with colored blotches.
 You had relations with me? 
 Yes, she said. The first time I only used my mouth, but the second time we had
relations. In the same room both times. You remember, of course? We had so little time on
the first occasion, we had to hurry. There was more time to spare on the second occasion. It
was impossible for me to reply to her.
 I was wearing your wifes dress the second time. The blue one. And bracelets like these
on my left arm. Isnt that true? She held her left wrist, with the pair of bracelets, out toward
me. I nodded.
 Creta Kano then said, Of course, we did not have relations in reality. When you
ejaculated, it was not into me, physically, but in your own consciousness. Do you see? It was
a fabricated consciousness. Still, the two of us share the consciousness of having had relations
with each other. 
 Whats the point of doing something like that? 
 To know, she said. To know more-and more deeply. I released a sigh. This was
crazy. But she had been describing the scene of my dream with incredible accuracy. Running
my finger around my mouth, I stared at the two bracelets on her left wrist.
 Maybe Im not very smart, I said, my voice dry, but I really cant claim to have
understood everything youve been telling me. 
 In your second dream, when I was in the midst of having relations with you, another
woman took my place. Isnt that true? I have no idea who she was. But that event was
probably meant to suggest something to you, Mr. Okada. This is what I wanted to convey to
you. I said nothing in return.
 You should have no sense of guilt about having had relations with me, said Creta Kano.
 You see, Mr. Okada, I am a prostitute. I used to be a prostitute of the flesh, but now I am a
prostitute of the mind. Things pass through me. 
At this point, Creta Kano left her seat and went down on her knees beside me, clutching
my hand in both of hers. She had soft, warm, very small hands. Please hold me, Mr. Okada.
Right here and now. 
We stood, and I put my arms around her. I honestly had no idea whether I should be doing
this. But holding Creta Kano just then, just there, did not seem to be a mistake. I could not
have explained it, but that was how I felt. I wrapped my arms around her slender body as if I
were taking my first lesson in ballroom dancing. She was a small woman. The top of her head
came just past the bottom of my chin. Her breasts pressed against my stomach. She held her 
cheek against my chest. And although she made no sound the whole time, she was crying- I
could feel the warmth of her tears through my T-shirt. I looked down, to see her perfectly set
hair trembling. I felt I was having a well-made dream. But it was not a dream.
After we had stayed in that position without moving for a very long time, she pulled away
from me as if she had suddenly remembered something. Maintaining a distance, she looked at
me.
 Thank you so much, Mr. Okada, she said. I will be going home now. She had
supposedly just been crying with some intensity, but her makeup had hardly been disturbed.
The sense of reality was now strangely absent.
 Are you going to be coming into my dreams again sometime? I asked.
 I dont know, she said, with a gentle shake of the head. Not even I can tell you that.
But please have faith in me. Whatever might happen, please dont be afraid of me or feel you
must be on your guard where I am concerned. Will you promise me that, Mr. Okada? I
answered with a nod. Soon afterward, Creta Kano went home.
The darkness of night was thicker than ever. The front of my T-shirt was soaking wet. I
stayed up until dawn, unable to sleep. I didnt feel sleepy, for one thing, and in fact, I was
afraid to sleep- I had the feeling that if I were to go to sleep, I would be enveloped in a flow of
shifting sand that would carry me off to another world, from which I would never be able to
return. I stayed on the sofa until morning, drinking brandy and thinking about Creta Kanos
story. Even after the night had ended, the presence of Creta Kano and the fragrance of
Christian Dior eau de cologne lingered in the house like captive shadows.
 
Views of Distant Towns
 
Eternal H a I f - M o o n
 
Ladder in Place
The telephone rang at almost the exact moment I was falling asleep. I tried to ignore it, but
as if it could read my mind, it kept up its stubborn ringing: ten times, twenty times-it was
never going to stop. Finally, I opened one eye and looked at the clock. Just after six in the
morning. Beyond the window shone the full light of day. The call might be from Kumiko. I
got out of bed, went to the living room, and picked up the receiver.
 Hello, I said, but the caller said nothing. Somebody was obviously there, but the person
did not try to speak. I, too, kept silent. Concentrating on the earpiece, I could just make out
the sound of breathing.
 Who is it? I asked, but the silence continued at the other end.
 If this is the person whos always calling, do me a favor and make it a little later, I said.
 No sex talk before breakfast, please. 
 The person whos always calling? blurted out the voice of May Kasahara. Who do you
talk about sex with? 
 Nobody, I said.
 The woman you were holding in your arms last night? Do you talk about sex with her on 
the telephone? 
 No, shes not the one. 
 Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, just how many women do you have hanging around youaside
from your wife? 
 That would be a very long story, I said. Anyhow, its six in the morning and I havent
had much sleep. So you came to my house last night, huh? 
 And I saw you with her-holding each other. 
 That didnt mean a thing, I said. How can I put it? It was a kind of little ceremony. 
 You dont have to make excuses to me, said May Kasahara. Im not your wife. Its
none of my business, but let me just say this: Youve got a problem. 
 You may be right, I said.
 Youre having a tough time now, I know that. But I cant help thinking its something
you brought on yourself. Youve got some really basic problem, and it attracts trouble like a
magnet. Any woman with any sense would get the hell away from you. 
 You may be right, I said again.
May Kasahara maintained a brief silence on her end of the line. Then she cleared her
throat once and said, You came to the alley last night, didnt you? Standing for a long time at
the back of my house, like some amateur burglar... Dont worry, I saw you there. 
 So why didnt you come out? 
 A girl doesnt always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels
like being nasty-like, if the guys gonna wait, let him really wait. 
I grunted.
 But I still felt bad, she went on. So I dragged myself all the way to your house laterlike
an idiot. 
 And I was holding the woman. 
 Yeah, but isnt she kinda cuckoo? Nobody dresses like that anymore. And that makeup
of hers! Shes, like, in a time warp or something. She should go get her head examined. 
 Dont worry, I said, shes not cuckoo. Different people have different tastes. 
 Well, sure. People can have any taste they want. But ordinary people dont go that far
just for taste. Shes like-what?-right out of an old magazine: everything about her, from head
to foot. 
To that I did not reply.
 Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, did you sleep with her? 
I hesitated a moment and said, No, I didnt. 
 Really? 
 Really. I dont have that kind of physical relationship with her. 
 So why were you holding her? 
 Women feel that way sometimes: they want to be held. 
 Maybe so, said May Kasahara, but an idea like that can be a little dangerous. 
 Its true, I said.
 Whats her name? 
 Creta Kano. 
May Kasahara fell silent at her end. Youre kidding, right? she said at last.
 Not at all. And her sisters name is Malta Kano. 
 Malta?! That cant be her real name. 
 No, it isnt. Its her professional name. 
 What are they, a comedy team? Or do they have some connection with the Mediterranean
Sea? 
 Actually, there is some connection with the Mediterranean. 
 Does the sister dress like a normal person? Pretty much, I said. Her clothing is a lot
more normal than Cretas, at least. Except she always wears this red vinyl hat. 
 Something tells me shes not exactly normal, either. Why do you always have to go out
of your way to hang around with such off-the-wall people? 
 Now, that really would be a long story. If everything settles down sometime, I may be
able to tell you. But not now. My head is too messed up. And things are even more messed
up. 
 Yeah, sure, she said, with a note of suspicion in her voice. Anyway, your wife hasnt
come back yet, has she? 
 No, not yet. 
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, youre a grown man. Why dont you use your head a
little bit? If your wife had changed her mind and come home last night, she would have seen
you with your arms locked around this woman. Then what? 
 True, that was a possibility. 
 And if she had been the one making this call, not me, and you started talking about
telephone sex, what would she have thought about that? 
 Youre right, I said.
 Im telling you, youve got a problem, she said, with a sigh.
 Its true, I do have a problem. 
 Stop agreeing with everything I say! Its not as if youre going to solve everything by
admitting your mistakes. Whether you admit them or not, mistakes are mistakes. 
 Its true, I said. It was true.
 I cant stand it anymore! said May Kasahara. Anyway, tell me, what did you want last
night? You came to my house looking for something, right? 
 Oh, that. Never mind. 
 Never mind? 
 Yeah. Finally, its... never mind. 
 In other words, she gave you a hug, so you dont need me anymore. 
 No, thats not it. It just seemed to me- 
At which point May Kasahara hung up. Terrific. May Kasahara, Malta Kano, Creta Kano,
the telephone woman, and Kumiko. May Kasahara was right: I had just a few too many
women around me these days. And each one came packaged with her own special, inscrutable
problem.
But I was too tired to think. I had to get some sleep. And there was something I would
have to do when I woke up.
I went back to bed and fell asleep.
•
When I did wake up, I took a knapsack from the drawer. It was the one we kept for
earthquakes and other emergencies that might require evacuation. Inside was a water bottle,
crackers, a flashlight, and a lighter. The whole was a set that Kumiko had bought when we
moved into this house, just in case the Big One should hit. The water bottle was empty,
though, the crackers were soggy, and the flashlights batteries were dead. I filled the bottle
with water, threw away the crackers, and put new batteries in the flashlight. Then I went to
the neighborhood hardware store and bought one of those rope ladders they sell as emergency
fire escapes. I thought about what else I might need, but nothing came to mind- besides lemon
drops. I went through the house, shutting windows and turning off lights. I made sure the
front door was locked, but then I reconsidered. Somebody might come looking for me while I
was gone. Kumiko might come back. And besides, there was nothing here worth stealing. I
left a note on the kitchen table: Gone for a while. Will return. T. 
I wondered what it would be like for Kumiko to find this note. How would she take it? I
crumpled it up and wrote a new one: Have to go out for a while on important business. Back 
soon. Please wait. T. 
Wearing chinos, a short-sleeved polo shirt, and the knapsack, I stepped down into the yard
from the veranda. All around me were the unmistakable signs of summer-the genuine article,
without reservations or conditions. The glow of the sun, the smell of the breeze, the blue of
the sky, the shape of the clouds, the whirring of the cicadas: everything. announced the
authentic arrival of summer. And there I was, a pack on my back, scaling the garden wall and
dropping down into the alley.
Once, as a kid, I had run away from home on a beautiful summer morning just like this. I
couldnt recall what had led up to my decision to go. I was probably mad at my parents. I left
home with a knapsack on my back and, in my pocket, all the money I had saved. I told my
mother I would be hiking with some friends and got her to make a lunch for me. There were
good hills for hiking just above our house, and kids often went climbing in them without adult
supervision. Once I was out of the house, I got on the bus that I had chosen for myself and
rode it to the end of the line. To me, this was a strange and distant town. Here I transferred to
another bus and rode it to yet another strange and distant-still more distant-town. Without
even knowing the name of the place, I got off the bus and wandered through the streets. There
was nothing special about this particular town: it was a little more lively than the
neighborhood where I lived, and a little more run-down. It had a street lined with shops, and a
commuter train station, and a few small factories. A stream ran through the town, and facing
the stream stood a movie house. A signboard out front announced they were showing a
western. At noon I sat on a park bench and ate my lunch. I stayed in the town until early
evening, and when the sun began to sink, my heart did too. This is your last chance to go
back, I told myself. Once it gets completely dark, you might never be able to leave here. I
went home on the same buses that had brought me there. I arrived before seven, and no one
noticed that I had run away. My parents had thought I was out in the hills with the other kids.
I had forgotten all about that particular event. But the moment I found myself scaling the
wall wearing a knapsack, the feeling came back to me-the indescribable loneliness I had felt,
standing by myself amid unfamiliar streets and unfamiliar people and unfamiliar houses,
watching the afternoon sun lose its light bit by bit. And then I thought of Kumiko: Kumiko,
who had disappeared somewhere, taking with her only her shoulder bag and her blouse and
skirt from the cleaners. She had passed her last chance to turn back. And now she was
probably standing by herself in some strange and distant town. I could hardly bear to think of
her that way.
But no, she couldnt be by herself. She had to be with a man. That was the only way this
made sense.
I stopped thinking about Kumiko.
•
I made my way down the alley.
The grass underfoot had lost the living, breathing greenness it had seemed to possess
during the spring rains, and now it wore the frankly dull look typical of summer grass. From
among these blades a green grasshopper would leap out now and then as I walked along.
Sometimes even frogs would jump away. The alley had become the world of these little
creatures, and I was simply an intruder come to upset the prevailing order.
When I reached the Miyawakis vacant house, I opened the gate and walked in without
hesitation. I pressed on through the tall grass to the middle of the yard, passed the dingy bird
statue, which continued to stare at the sky, and walked around to the side of the house, hoping
that May Kasahara had not seen me come in.
The first thing I did when I got to the well was to remove the stones that held the cap on,
then take off one of the two wooden half-circles. To make sure there was still no water at the 
bottom, I threw in a pebble, as I had done before. And as before, the pebble hit with a dry
thud. There was no water. I set down the knapsack, took the rope ladder out, and tied one end
of it to the trunk of the nearby tree. I pulled on it as hard as I could to be sure it would hold.
This was something on which it was impossible to lavish too much care. If, by some chance,
the ladder somehow got loose or came undone, I would probably never make it back to the
surface.
Holding the mass of rope in my arms, I began to lower the ladder into the well. The
whole, long thing went in, but I never felt it hit bottom. It couldnt possibly be too short: I had
bought the longest rope ladder they made. But the well was a deep one. I shone the flashlight
straight down inside, but I couldnt see whether or not the ladder had reached bottom. The
rays of light penetrated only so far, and then they were swallowed up by the darkness.
I sat on the edge of the well curb and listened. A few cicadas were screaming in the trees,
as if competing to see which had the loudest voice or the greatest lung capacity. I couldnt
hear any birds, though. I recalled the wind-up bird with some fondness. Maybe it didnt like
competing with the cicadas and had moved off somewhere to avoid them.
I turned my palms upward in the sunlight. In an instant, they felt warm, as though the light
were seeping into the skin, soaking into the very lines of my fingerprints. The light ruled over
everything out here. Bathed in light, each object glowed with the brilliant color of summer.
Even intangibles such as time and memory shared the goodness of the summer light. I popped
a lemon drop in my mouth and went on sitting there until the candy had melted away. Then I
pulled hard on the ladder one more time to be sure it was firmly anchored.
Making my way down the soft rope ladder into the well was much harder work than I had
imagined it would be. A blend of cotton and nylon, the ladder was unquestionably sturdy, but
my footing on the thing was unstable. The rubber bottoms of my tennis shoes would slip
whenever I tried to lower my weight onto either leg. My hands had to keep such a tight grip
on the rope that my palms started to hurt. I let myself down slowly and carefully, one rung at
a time. No matter how far I went, though, there was no bottom. My descent seemed to take
forever. I reminded myself of the sound of the pebble hitting bottom. The well did have a
bottom! Working my way down this damned ladder was what took so much time.
When I had counted twenty rungs, a wave of terror overtook me. It came suddenly, like an
electric shock, and froze me in place. My muscles turned to stone. Every pore of my body
gushed sweat, and my legs began to tremble. There was no way this well could be so deep.
This was the middle of Tokyo. It was right behind the house I lived in. I held my breath and
listened, but I couldnt hear a thing. The pounding of my own heart reverberated in my ears
with such force I couldnt even hear the cicadas screaming up above. I took a deep breath.
Here I was on the twentieth rung, unable either to proceed farther down or to climb back up.
The air in the well was chilling and smelled of the earth. It was a separate world down here,
one cut off from the surface, where the sun shone so un-stintingly. I looked up to the mouth of
the well above me, tiny now. The wells circular opening was cut exactly in half by the half of
the wooden cover I had left in place. From below, it looked like a half-moon floating in the
night sky. A half-moon will last for several days, Malta Kano had said. She had predicted it
on the telephone.
Terrific. And when the thought crossed my mind, I felt some strength leave my body. My
muscles relaxed, and the solid block of breath inside me released and came out.
Squeezing out one last spurt of strength, I started down the ladder again. Just a little
farther down, I told myself. Just a little more. Dont worry, there is a bottom. And at the
twenty-third rung, I reached it. My foot came in contact with the earth in the bottom of the
well.
• 
The first thing I did in the darkness was to feel around the surface of the well bottom with
the tip of my shoe, still holding on to the ladder in case there was something down there I had
to get away from. After making sure there was no water and nothing of a suspicious nature, I
stepped down to the ground. Setting my pack down, I felt for the zipper and took out my
flashlight. The glow of the light gave me my first clear view of the place. The surface of the
ground was neither very hard nor very soft. And fortunately, the earth was dry. A few rocks
lay scattered there, where people must have thrown them. The one other thing that had fallen
to the bottom was an old potato chip bag. Illuminated by the flashlight, the well bottom
reminded me of the surface of the moon as I had seen it on television so long before.
The wells cylindrical concrete wall was blank and smooth, with few irregularities other
than some clumps of mosslike stuff growing here and there. It shot straight upward like a
chimney, with the little half-moon of light at the opening far above. Looking directly up, I
now could grasp how very deep the well was. I gave the rope ladder another hard tug. In my
hands, it felt firm and reassuring. As long as it remained in place, I could go back to the
surface anytime I wanted. Next I took a deep breath. Aside from a slight smell of mold, there
was nothing wrong with the air. My greatest worry had been the air. The air at the bottom of a
well tends to stagnate, and dry wells can have poison gases that seep from the earth. Long
before, I had read in the paper about a well digger who lost his life from methane gas at the
bottom of a well.
Taking a breath, I sat on the floor of the well, with my back against the wall. I closed my
eyes and let my body become accustomed to the place. All right, then, I thought: here I am in
the bottom of a well.
 
Inheriting Property
•
Inquiry on Jellyfish
•
Something Like a Sense of Detachment
I sat in the dark. Far above me, like a sign of something, floated the perfect half-moon of
light given shape by the well cap. And yet none of the light from up there managed to find its
way to the bottom.
As time passed, my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness. Before long, I could
just barely make out the shape of my hand if I brought it close to my face. Other things
around me began slowly to take on their own dim shapes, like timid little animals letting
down their guard in the most gradual stages imaginable. As much as my eyes became used to
it, though, the darkness never ceased to be darkness. Anything I tried to focus on would lose
its shape and burrow its way soundlessly into the surrounding obscurity. Perhaps this could be
called pale darkness, but pale as it might be, it had its own particular kind of density, which
in some cases contained a more deeply meaningful darkness than perfect pitch darkness. In it,
you could see something. And at the same time, you could see nothing at all.
Here in this darkness, with its strange sense of significance, my memories began to take
on a power they had never had before. The fragmentary images they called up inside me were 
mysteriously vivid in every detail, to the point where I felt I could grasp them in my hands. I
closed my eyes and brought back the time eight years earlier when I had first met Kumiko.
It happened in the family members waiting room of the university hospital in Kanda. I
had to be in the hospital almost every day back then, to see a wealthy client concerning the
inheritance of his property. She was coming to the hospital every day between classes in order
to tend to her mother, who was there for a duodenal ulcer. Kumiko would wear jeans or a
short skirt and a sweater, her hair in a ponytail. Sometimes she would wear a coat, sometimes
not, depending on the early-November weather. She had a shoulder bag and always carried a
few books that looked like university texts, plus some kind of sketch pad.
The afternoon of the very first day I went to the hospital, Kumiko was there, sitting on the
sofa with her legs crossed, wearing black low-heeled shoes and concentrating on a book. I sat
opposite her, checking my watch every five minutes until the time for the interview with my
client, which had been moved back an hour and a half for some reason that had not been
shared with me. Kumiko never raised her eyes from the book. She had very nice legs.
Looking at her helped to brighten my spirits somewhat. I found myself wondering what it
must feel like to have such a nice (or at least extremely intelligent) face and great legs.
After we had seen each other in the waiting room several times, Kumiko and I began to
share small talk-exchanging magazines we had finished reading, or eating fruit from a gift
basket someone had brought her mother. We were incredibly bored, after all, and we needed
someone our own age to talk to.
Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those
strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet,
but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast
darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew
more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a
dear old friend.
Soon I found myself dissatisfied with the choppy little conversations we were fitting in
between other things in the hospital area. I kept wishing I could meet her somewhere else, so
that we could really talk to each other for a change. Finally, one day, I decided to ask her for a
date.
 I think both of us could use a change of air, I said. Lets get out of here and go
someplace else-where there arent any patients or clients. 
Kumiko gave it some thought and said, The aquarium? 
And so the aquarium is where we had our first date. Kumiko brought her mother a change
of clothes that Sunday morning and met me in the hospital waiting room. It was a warm, clear
day, and Kumiko was wearing a simple white dress under a pale-blue cardigan. I was always
struck by how well she dressed even then. She could wear the plainest article of clothing and
manage, with the roll of a sleeve or the curl of a collar, to transform it into something
spectacular. It was a knack she had. And I could see that she took care of her clothing with an
attention bordering on love. Whenever I was with her, walking beside her, I would find myself
staring in admiration at her clothes. Her blouses never had a wrinkle. Her pleats hung in
perfect alignment. Anything white she wore looked brand-new. Her shoes were never scuffed
or smudged. Looking at what she wore, I could imagine her blouses and sweaters neatly
folded and lined up in her dresser drawers, her skirts and dresses in vinyl wrappers hanging in
the closet (which is exactly what I found to be the case after we were married).
We spent that first afternoon together in the aquarium of the Ueno Zoo. The weather was
so nice that day, I thought it might be more fun to stroll around the zoo itself, and I hinted as
much to Kumiko on the train to Ueno, but she had obviously made up her mind to go to the
aquarium. If that was what she wanted, it was perfectly all right with me. The aquarium was
having a special display of jellyfish, and we went through them from beginning to end,
viewing the rare specimens gathered from all parts of the world. They floated, trembling, in 
their tanks, everything from a tiny cotton puff the size of a fingertip to monsters more than
three feet in diameter. For a Sunday, the aquarium was relatively uncrowded. In fact, it was
on the empty side. On such a lovely day, anybody would have preferred the elephants and
giraffes to jellyfish.
Although I said nothing to Kumiko, I actually hated jellyfish. I had often been stung by
jellyfish while swimming in the ocean as a boy. Once, when swimming far out by myself, I
wandered into a whole school of them. By the time I realized what I had done, I was
surrounded. I never forgot the slimy, cold feeling of them touching me. In the center of that
whirlpool of jellyfish, an immense terror overtook me, as if I had been dragged into a
bottomless darkness. I wasnt stung, for some reason, but in my panic I gulped a lot of ocean
water. Which is why I would have liked to skip the jellyfish display if possible and go to see
some ordinary fish, like tuna or flounder.
Kumiko, though, was fascinated. She stopped at every single tank, leaned over the railing,
and stayed locked in place as if she had forgotten the passage of time. Look at this, shed
say to me. I never knew there were such vivid pink jellyfish. And look at the beautiful way it
swims. They just keep wobbling along like this until theyve been to every ocean in the world.
Arent they wonderful? 
 Yeah, sure. But the more I forced myself to keep examining jellyfish with her, the more
I felt a tightness growing in my chest. Before I knew it, I had stopped replying to her and was
counting the change in my pocket over and over, or wiping the corners of my mouth with my
handkerchief. I kept wishing we would come to the last of the jellyfish tanks, but there was no
end to them. The variety of jellyfish swimming in the oceans of the world was enormous. I
was able to bear it for half an hour, but the tension was turning my head into mush. When,
finally, it became too painful for me to stand leaning against the railing, I left Kumikos side
and slumped down on a nearby bench. She came over to me and, obviously very concerned,
asked if I was feeling bad. I answered honestly that looking at the jellyfish was making me
dizzy.
She stared into my eyes with a grave expression on her face. Its true, she said. I can
see it in your eyes. Theyve gone out of focus. Its incredible-just from looking at jellyfish! 
Kumiko took me by the arm and led me out of the gloomy, dank aquarium into the sunlight.
Sitting in the nearby park for ten minutes, taking long, slow breaths, I managed to return
to a normal psychological state. The strong autumn sun cast its pleasant radiance everywhere,
and the bone-dry leaves of the ginkgo trees rustled softly whenever the breeze picked up.
 Are you all right? Kumiko asked after several minutes had gone by. You certainly are a
strange one. If you hate jellyfish so much, you should have said so right away, instead of
waiting until they made you sick. 
The sky was high and cloudless, the wind felt good, the people spending their Sunday in
the park all wore happy expressions. A slim, pretty girl was walking a large, long-haired dog.
An old fellow wearing a felt hat was watching his granddaughter on the swing. Several
couples sat on benches, the way we were doing. Off in the distance, someone was practicing
scales on a saxophone.
 Why do you like jellyfish so much? I asked.
 I dont know. I guess I think theyre cute, she said. But one thing did occur to me when
I was really focused on them. What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get
into the habit of thinking, This is the world, but thats not true at all. The real world is in a
much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We
just happen to forget all that. Dont you agree?
Two-thirds of the earths surface is ocean, and all we can see of it with the naked eye is
the surface: the skin. We hardly know anything about whats underneath the skin. 
We took a long walk after that. At five oclock, Kumiko said she had to go back to the
hospital, so I took her there. Thank you for a lovely day, she said when we parted. There 
was a quiet glow in her smile that had not been there before. When I saw it, I realized that I
had managed to draw a little closer to her in the course of the day-thanks, no doubt, to the
jellyfish.
•
Kumiko and I continued to date. Her mother left the hospital without complications, and I
no longer had to spend time there working on my clients will, but we would get together
once a week for a movie or a concert or a walk. We drew closer to each other each time we
met. I enjoyed being with her, and if we should happen to touch, I felt a fluttering in the chest.
I often found it difficult to work when the weekend was drawing near. I was sure she liked
me. Otherwise, she wouldnt see me every weekend.
Still, I was in no hurry to deepen my relationship with Kumiko. I sensed a kind of
uncertainty in her. Exactly what it was I couldnt have said, but it would come out every now
and then in her words or actions. I might ask her something, and a single breath would
intervene before she answered-just the slightest hesitation, but in that split-second interval I
sensed a kind of shadow.
Winter came, and then the new year. We went on seeing each other every week. I never
asked about that something, and she never said a word. We would meet and go someplace and
eat and talk about innocuous things.
One day I took a chance and said, You must have a boyfriend, dont you? 
Kumiko looked at me for a moment and asked, What makes you think so? 
 Just a hunch, I said. We were walking through the wintry and deserted Shinjuku
Imperial Gardens.
 What kind of hunch? 
 I dont know. I get the feeling theres something you want to tell me. You should if you
can. 
The expression on her face wavered the slightest bit-almost imperceptibly. There might
have been a moment of uncertainty, but there had never been any doubt about her conclusion.
 Thanks for asking, she said, but I dont have anything that I want to make a special point
of talking about. 
 You havent answered my question, though. 
 About whether I have a boyfriend? 
 Uh-huh. 
Kumiko came to a stop. Then she slipped her gloves off and put them into her coat pocket.
She took my gloveless hand in hers. Her hand was warm and soft. When I squeezed her hand
in return, it seemed to me that her breaths grew smaller and whiter.
 Can we go to your apartment now? she asked.
 Sure, I said, somewhat taken aback. Its not much of a place, though. 
I was living in Asagaya at the time, in a one-room apartment with a tiny kitchen and a
toilet and a shower the size of a phone booth. It was on the second floor and faced south,
overlooking a construction companys storage yard. That southern exposure was the
apartments only good point. For a long time, Kumiko and I sat next to each other in the flood
of sunlight, leaning against the wall.
I made love to her for the first time that day. It was what she wanted, I was sure. In a
sense, it was she who seduced me. Not that she ever said or did anything overtly seductive.
But when I put my arms around her naked body, I knew for certain that she had intended that
this happen. Her body was soft and completely unresisting.
It was Kumikos first experience of sex. For a long time afterward, she said nothing. I
tried several times to talk to her, but she made no reply. She took a shower, put her clothes on,
and sat in the sunlight again. I had no idea what I should say to her. I simply joined her in the 
patch of sunlight and said nothing. The two of us edged along the wall as the sun moved.
When evening came, Kumiko said she was leaving. I saw her home.
 Are you sure you dont have something you want to say to me? I asked again in the
train.
She shook her head. Never mind about that, she murmured.
I never raised the topic again. Kumiko had chosen to sleep with me of her own volition,
finally, and if indeed she was keeping something inside that she was not able to tell me, this
would probably be resolved in the course of time.
We continued our weekly dates after that, part of which now usually included stopping by
my apartment for sex. As we held and touched each other, she began more and more to talk
about herself, about the things she had experienced, about the thoughts and feelings these
things had given her. And I began to understand the world as Kumiko saw it. I found myself
increasingly able, too, to talk with Kumiko about the world as I saw it. I came to love her
deeply, and she said she never wanted to leave me. We waited for her to graduate from
college, and then we got married.
We were happy with our married life and had no problems to speak of. And yet there were
times when I couldnt help but sense an area inside Kumiko to which I had no access. In the
middle of the most ordinary-or the most excited-conversation, and without the slightest
warning, she might sink into silence. It would happen all of a sudden, for no reason at all (or
at least no reason I could discern). It was like walking along the road and suddenly falling into
a pit. Her silences never lasted very long, but afterward, until a fair amount of time had gone
by, it was as if she were not really there.
The first time I went inside Kumiko, I sensed a strange kind of hesitation. Kumiko should
have been feeling only pain this first time for her, and in fact she kept her body rigid with the
pain she was obviously experiencing, but that was not the only reason for the hesitation I
seemed to feel. There was something oddly lucid there, a sense of separation, of distance,
though I dont know exactly what to call it. I was seized by the bizarre thought that the body I
was holding in my arms was not the body of the woman I had had next to me until a few
moments earlier, the two of us engaged in intimate conversation: a switch had been pulled
without my noticing, and someone elses flesh had taken its place. While I held her, my hands
continued to caress her back. The touch of her small, smooth back had an almost hypnotic
effect on me, and yet, at the same time, Kumikos back seemed to be somewhere far away
from me. The entire time she was in my arms, I could have sworn that Kumiko was somewhere
else, thinking about something else, and the body I was holding was nothing but a
temporary substitute. This might have been the reason why, although I was fully aroused, it
took me a very long time to come.
I felt this way only the first time we had intercourse. After that, I felt her much closer to
me, her physical responses far more sensitive. I convinced myself that my initial sense of
distance had been the result of its being her first experience of sex.
•
Every now and then, while searching through my memories, I would reach out to where
the rope ladder was hanging against the wall and give it a tug to make sure it hadnt come
loose. I couldnt seem to shake the fear that it might simply give way at any moment.
Whenever the thought struck me, down there in the darkness, it made me uneasy. I could actually
hear my own heart pounding. After I had checked a number of times-possibly twenty or
thirty-I began to regain a measure of calm. I had done a good job of tying the ladder to the
tree, after all. It wasnt going to come loose just like that.
I looked at my watch. The luminous hands showed it to be just before three oclock. Three
p.m. I glanced upward. The half-moon slab of light was still floating there. The surface of the 
earth was flooded with blinding summer light. I pictured to myself a stream sparkling in the
sunlight and green leaves trembling in the breeze. The light up there overwhelmed everything,
and yet just below it, down here, there existed such a darkness. All you had to do was climb a
little ways underground on a rope ladder, and you could reach a darkness this profound.
I pulled on the ladder one more time to be certain it was anchored firmly. Then I leaned
my head against the wall and closed my eyes. Eventually, sleep overtook me, like a gradually
rising tide.
 
Recollections and Dialogue on Pregnancy
 
Empirical Inquiry on Pain
When I woke, the half-moon mouth of the well had taken on the deep blue of evening.
The hands of my watch showed seven-thirty. Seven-thirty p.m. Meaning I had been asleep
down here for four and a half hours.
The air at the bottom of the well felt chilly. There had probably been too much nervous
excitement involved for me to think about air temperature when I first climbed down. Now,
though, my skin was reacting to the cold air. Rubbing my bare arms to warm them, I realized I
should have brought something in the knapsack to put on over my T-shirt. It had never
crossed my mind that the temperature in the bottom of the well might be different from the
temperature at the surface.
Now I was enveloped by a darkness that was total. No amount of straining helped my eyes
to see a thing. I couldnt tell where my own hand was. I felt along the wall to where the ladder
hung and gave it a tug. It was still firmly anchored at the surface. The movement of my hand
seemed to cause the darkness itself to shift, but that could have been an illusion.
It felt extremely strange not to be able to see my own body with my own eyes, though I
knew it must be there. Staying very still in the darkness, I became less and less convinced of
the fact that I actually existed.
To cope with that, I would clear my throat now and then, or run my hand over my face.
That way, my ears could check on the existence of my voice, my hand could check on the
existence of my face, and my face could check on the existence of my hand.
Despite these efforts, my body began to lose its density and weight, like sand gradually
being washed away by flowing water. I felt as if a fierce and wordless tug-of-war were going
on inside me, a contest in which my mind was slowly dragging my body into its own territory.
The darkness was disrupting the proper balance between the two. The thought struck me that
my own body was a mere provisional husk that had been prepared for my mind by a
rearrangement of the signs known as chromosomes. If the signs were rearranged yet again, I
would find myself inside a wholly different body than before. Prostitute of the mind, Creta
Kano had called herself. I no longer had any trouble accepting the phrase. Yes, it was possible
for us to couple in our minds and for me to come in reality. In truly deep darkness, all kinds of
strange things were possible.
I shook my head and struggled to bring my mind back inside my body.
In the darkness, I pressed the fingertips of one hand against the fingertips of the other-
thumb against thumb, index finger against index finger. My right-hand fingers ascertained the
existence of my left-hand fingers, and the fingers of my left hand ascertained the existence of
the fingers of my right hand. Then I took several slow, deep breaths. OK, then, enough of this
thinking about the mind. Think about reality. Think about the real world. The bodys world.
Thats why Im here. To think about reality. The best way to think about reality, I had
decided, was to get as far away from it as possible-a place like the bottom of a well, for
example. When youre supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the
bottom, Mr. Honda had said. Leaning against the wall, I slowly sucked the moldy air into my
lungs.
•
We didnt have a wedding ceremony. We couldnt have afforded it, to begin with, and
neither of us wanted to feel beholden to our parents. Beginning our life together, any way we
could manage to do so, was far more important to us than a ceremony. We went to the ward
office early one Sunday morning, woke the clerk on duty when we rang the bell at the Sunday
window, and submitted a registration of marriage. Later, we went to the kind of high-class
French restaurant that neither of us could usually afford, ordered a bottle of wine, and ate a
full-course dinner. That was enough for us.
At the time we married, we had practically no savings (my mother had left me a little
money when she died, but I made a point of never touching it except for a genuine
emergency) and no furniture to speak of. We had no future to speak of, either. Working at a
law firm without an attorneys credentials, I had virtually nothing to look forward to, and
Kumiko worked for a tiny, unknown publisher. If she had wanted to, she could have found a
much better position through her father when she graduated, but she disliked the idea of going
to him and instead found a job on her own. Neither of us was dissatisfied, though. We were
pleased just to be able to survive without intrusion from anyone.
It wasnt easy for the two of us to build something out of nothing. I had that tendency
toward solitude common to only children. When trying to accomplish something serious, I
liked to do it myself. Having to check things out with other people and get them to understand
seemed to me a great waste of time and energy when it was a lot easier to work alone in
silence. And Kumiko, after losing her sister, had closed her heart to her family and grown up
as if alone. She never went to them for advice. In that sense, the two of us were very much
alike.
Still, little by little, the two of us learned to devote our bodies and minds to this newly
created being we called our home. We practiced thinking and feeling about things together.
Things that happened to either of us individually we now strove to deal with together as
something that belonged to both of us. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didnt. But we
enjoyed the fresh, new process of trial and error. And even violent collisions we could forget
about in each others arms.
•
In the third year of our marriage, Kumiko became pregnant. This was a great shock to usor
to me, at least-because of the extreme care we had been taking with contraception. A
moment of carelessness must have done it; not that we could determine which exact moment
it had been, but there was no other explanation. In any case, we simply could not afford the
expense of a child. Kumiko had just gotten into the swing of her publishing job and, if
possible, wanted to keep it. A small company like hers made no provision for anything so
grand as maternity leave. A woman working there who wanted to have a child had no choice
but to quit. If Kumiko had done that, we would have had to survive on my pay alone, for a 
while, at least, but this would have been a virtual impossibility.
 I guess well have to pass, this time, Kumiko said to me in an expressionless voice the
day the doctor gave her the news.
She was probably right. No matter how you looked at it, that was the most sensible
conclusion. We were young and totally unprepared for parenthood. Both Kumiko and I
needed time for ourselves. We had to establish our own life: that was the first priority. Wed
have plenty of opportunities for making children in the future.
•
In fact, though, I did not want Kumiko to have an abortion. Once, in my second year of
college, I had made a girl pregnant, someone I had met where I worked part time. She was a
nice kid, a year younger than I, and we got along well. We liked each other, of course, but
were by no means serious about each other, nor was there any possibility that we would ever
become serious. We were just two lonely youngsters who needed someone to hold.
About the reason for her pregnancy there was never any doubt. I always used a condom,
but that one day I forgot to have one ready. I had run out. When I told her so, she hesitated for
a few seconds and then said, Oh, well, I think Im OK today anyway. One time was all it
took.
I couldnt quite believe that I had made a girl pregnant, but I did know that an abortion
was the only way. I scraped the money together and went with her to the clinic. We took a
commuter train way out to a little town in Chiba, where a friend of hers had put her in touch
with a doctor. We got off at a station I had never heard of and saw thousands of tiny houses,
all stamped out of the same mold, crowded together and stretching over the rolling hills to the
horizon. These were huge new developments that had gone up in recent years for the younger
company employees who could not afford housing in Tokyo. The station itself was brandnew,
and just across from it stretched huge, water-filled rice fields, bigger than any I had ever
seen. The streets were lined with real estate signs.
The clinic waiting room overflowed with huge-bellied young women, most of whom must
have been in their fourth or fifth year of marriage and finally settling down to make children
in their newly mortgaged suburban homes. The only young male in the place was me. The
pregnant ladies all looked my way with the most intense interest-and no hint of goodwill.
Anyone could see at a glance that I was a college student who had accidentally gotten his
girlfriend pregnant and had come with her for an abortion.
After the operation, the girl and I took the train back to Tokyo. Headed into the city in the
late afternoon, the train was nearly empty. I apologized to her. My carelessness had gotten her
into this mess, I said.
 Dont take it so hard, she said. At least you came with me to the clinic, and you paid
for the operation. 
She and I soon stopped seeing each other, so I never knew what became of her, but for a
very long time after the abortion-and even after we drifted apart-my feelings refused to settle
down. Every time I recalled that day, the image would flash into my mind of the pregnant
young women who filled the clinic waiting room to overflowing, their eyes so full of
certainty. And the thought would strike me that I should never have gotten her pregnant.
In the train on the way back, to comfort me-to comfort me-she told me all the details that
had made the operation so easy. Its not as bad as youre thinking, she said. It doesnt take
long, and it doesnt hurt. You just take your clothes off and lie there. Yeah, I suppose its kind
of embarrassing, but the doctor was nice, and so were the nurses. Of course, they did lecture
me a little, said to be more careful from now on. So dont feel so bad. Its partly my fault too.
I was the one who said itd be OK. Right? Cheer up. 
All during the long train ride to the little town in Chiba, and all the way back again, 
though, I felt I had become a different person. Even after I had seen her home and returned to
my room, to lie in bed and look at the ceiling, I could sense the change. I was a new me, and I
could never go back to where I had been before. What was getting to me was the awareness
that I was no longer innocent. This was not a moralistic sense of wrongdoing, or the workings
of a guilty conscience. I knew that I had made a terrible mistake, but I was not punishing
myself for it. It was a physical fact that I would have to confront coolly and logically, beyond
any question of punishment.
•
The first thing that came to mind when I heard that Kumiko was pregnant was the image
of those pregnant young women who filled the clinic waiting room. Or rather, it was the
special smell that seemed to hang in the air there. I had no idea what that smell had been-if it
was the actual smell of something at all. Perhaps it had been something like a smell. When the
nurse called her name, the girl slowly raised herself from the hard vinyl chair and walked
straight for the door. Just before she stood up, she glanced at me with the hint of a smile on
her lips-or what was left of a smile that she had changed her mind about.
I knew that it was unrealistic for us to have a child, but I didnt want Kumiko to have an
abortion, either. When I said this to her, she replied,
 Weve been through all this. If I have a baby now, thats the end of working for me, and
youll have to find a better-paying job to support me and the baby. We wont have money for
anything extra. We wont be able to do anything we want to do. From now on, the realistic
possibilities for us will be narrowed down to nothing. Is that OK with you? 
 Yeah, I said. I think it is OK with me. 
 Really? 
 If I make up my mind to it, I can probably find work-with my uncle, say: hes looking for
help. He wants to open up a new place, but he cant find anybody he can trust to run it. Im
sure Id make a lot more with him than Im making now. Its not a law firm, but so what? Im
not crazy about the work Im doing now. 
 So youd run a restaurant? 
 Im sure I could if I gave it a try. And in an emergency, Ive got a little money my
mother left me. We wouldnt starve to death. 
Kumiko fell silent and stayed that way, thinking, for a long time, making tiny wrinkles at
the corners of her eyes. She had these little expressions that I liked. Does this mean you want
to have a baby? she asked.
 I dont know, I said. I know youre pregnant, but it hasnt really hit me that I might
become a father. And I dont really know how our life would change if we had a baby. You
like your job, and it seems like a mistake to take that away from you. On the one hand, I think
the two of us need more time with each other, but I also think that making a baby would
expand our world. I dont know whats right. Ive just got this feeling that I dont want you to
have an abortion. So I cant make any guarantees. Im not one hundred percent sure about any
of this, and I dont have any amazing solutions. All Ive got is this feeling. 
Kumiko thought about this for a while, rubbing her stomach every now and then. Tell
me, she said. Why do you think I got pregnant? Nothing comes to mind? 
I shook my head. Not really. Weve always been careful. This is just the kind of trouble I
wanted to avoid. So I dont have any idea how it happened. 
 You think I might have had an affair? Havent you thought about that possibility? 
 Never. 
 Why not? 
 I dont know. I cant claim a sixth sense or anything, but Im sure of that much. 
We were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking wine. It was late at night id absolutely silent. 
Kumiko narrowed her eyes and stared at the last sip of wine in the bottom of her glass. She
almost never drank, though she would have a glass of wine when she couldnt get to sleep. It
always worked for her. I was just drinking to keep her company. We didnt have nything so
sophisticated as real wineglasses. Instead, we were drinking from little beer glasses we got
free at the neighborhood liquor store.
 Did you have an affair? I asked, suddenly concerned.
Kumiko smiled and shook her head. Dont be silly. You know I wouldnt do anything
like that. I just brought it up as a theoretical possibility. Then she turned serious and put her
elbows on the table. Sometimes, though, I cant tell about things. I cant tell whats real and
whats not real... what things really happened and what things didnt really happen.... Just
sometimes, though. 
 Is this one of those sometimes? 
 Well, sort of. Doesnt this kind of thing ever happen to you? 
I thought about it for a minute. Not that I can recall as a concrete example, no, I said.
 How can I put this? Theres a kind of gap between what I think is real and whats really
real. I get this feeling like some kind of little something-ir-other is there, somewhere inside
me... like a burglar is in the house, hiding in a closet... and it comes out every once in a while
and messes up whatever order or logic Ive established for myself. The way a magnet can
make a machine go crazy. 
 Some kind of little something-or-other? A burglar? I said. Wow, talk about vague! 
 It is vague. Really, said Kumiko, then drank down the rest of her wine.
I looked at her for a time. And you think theres some kind of connection between that
‘some kind of little something-or-other and the fact that youre pregnant? 
She shook her head. No, Im not saying the two things are related or not related. Its just
that sometimes Im not really sure about the order of things. Thats all Im trying to say. 
There was a growing touch of impatience in her words. The moment had arrived to end
this conversation. It was after one oclock in the morning. I reached across the table and took
her hand.
 You know, said Kumiko, I kind of wish youd let me decide this for myself. I realize
its a big problem for both of us. I really do. But this one I want you to let me decide. I feel
bad that I cant explain very well what Im thinking and feeling. 
 Basically, I think the right to make the decision is yours, I said, and I respect that
right. 
 I think theres a month or so left to decide. Weve been talking about this together all
along now, and I think I have a pretty good idea how you feel about it. So now let me do the
thinking. Lets stop talking about it for a while. 
•
I was in Hokkaido when Kumiko had the abortion. The firm never sent its lackeys out of
town on business, but on that particular occasion no one else could go, so I ended up being the
one sent north. I was supposed to deliver a briefcase stuffed with papers, give the other party a
simple explanation, take delivery of their papers, and come straight home. The papers were
too important to mail or entrust to some courier. Because all return flights to Tokyo were full,
I would have to spend a night in a Sapporo business hotel. Kumiko went for the abortion that
day, alone. She phoned me after ten at the hotel and said, I had the operation this afternoon.
Sorry to be informing you after the fact like this, but they had an opening on short notice, and
I thought it would be easier on both of us if I made the decision and took care of it by myself
while you were away. 
 Dont worry, I said. Whatever you think is best. 
 I want to tell you more, but I cant do it yet. I think Ill have to tell you sometime. 
 We can talk when I get back. 
After the call, I put on my coat and went out to wander through the streets of Sapporo. It
was still early March, and both sides of the roadways were lined with high mounds of snow.
The air was almost painfully cold, and your breath would come out in white clouds that
vanished in an instant. People wore heavy coats and gloves and scarves wrapped up to their
chins and made their way down the icy sidewalks with careful steps. Taxis ran back and forth,
their studded tires scratching at the road. When I couldnt stand the cold any longer, I stepped
into a bar for a few quick straights and went out to walk some more.
I stayed on the move for a very long time. Snow floated down every once in a while, but it
was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance. The second bar I visited was below
street level. It turned out to be a much bigger place than the entrance suggested. There was a
small stage next to the bar, and on it was a slim man with glasses, playing a guitar nd singing.
He sat on a metal chair with his legs crossed, guitar case at his feet.
I sat at the bar, drinking and half listening to the music. Between songs, the man explained
that the music was all his own. In his late twenties, he had a face with no distinguishing
characteristics, and he wore glasses with black plastic frames. His outfit consisted of jeans,
high lace-up boots, and a checked flannel work shirt that hung loose around his waist. The
type of music was hard to define-something that might have been called folk in the old
days, though a Japanese version of folk. Simple chords, simple melodies, unremarkable
words. Not the kind of stuff I d go out of my way to listen to.
Ordinarily, I wouldnt have paid any attention to music like that. I vould have had my
whiskey, paid my bill, and left the place. But that light I was chilled, right to the bone, and
had no intention of going outside again under any circumstances until I had warmed up all the
way through. I drank one straight and ordered another. I made no attempt to remove my coat
or my scarf. When the bartender asked if I wanted a snack, I ordered some cheese and ate a
single slice. I tried to think, but I couldnt get my head to work right. I didnt even know what
it was I wanted to think about. I was a vacant room. Inside, the music produced only a dry,
hollow echo.
When the man finished singing, there was scattered applause, neither overly enthusiastic
nor entirely perfunctory. There were no more than ten or fifteen customers in the place. The
fellow stood and bowed. He seemed to make some kind of funny remarks that caused a few of
the customers to laugh. I called the bartender and ordered my third whiskey. Then, finally, I
took off my coat and my scarf.
 That concludes my show for tonight, announced the singer. He seemedto pause and
survey the room. But there must be some of you here tonight who didnt like my songs. For
you, Ive got a little something extra. I dont do this all the time, so you should consider
yourselves very lucky. 
He set his guitar on the floor and, from the guitar case, took a single thick white candle.
He lit it with a match, dripped some wax into a plate, and stood the candle up. Then, looking
like the Greek philosopher, he held the plate aloft. Can I have the lights down, please? One
of the employees dimmed the lights somewhat. A little darker, if you dont mind. Now the
place became much darker, and the candle flame stood out clearly. Palms wrapped around my
whiskey glass to warm it, I kept my eyes on the man and his candle.
 As you are well aware, the man continued, his voice soft but penetrating, in the course
of life we experience many kinds of pain. Pains of the body and pains of the heart. I know I
have experienced pain in many different forms in my life, and Im sure you have too. In most
cases, though, Im sure youve found it very difficult to convey the truth of that pain to
another person: to explain it in words. People say that only they themselves can understand
the pain they are feeling. But is this true? I for one do not believe that it is. If, before our eyes,
we see someone who is truly suffering, we do sometimes feel his suffering and pain as our
own. This is the power of empathy. Am I making myself clear? 
He broke off and looked around the room once again.
 The reason that people sing songs for other people is because they want to have the
power to arouse empathy, to break free of the narrow shell of the self and share their pain and
joy with others. This is not an easy thing to do, of course. And so tonight, as a kind of
experiment, I want you to experience a simpler, more physical kind of empathy. 
Everyone in the place was hushed now, all eyes fixed on the stage. Amid the silence, the
man stared off into space, as if to insert a pause or to reach a state of mental concentration.
Then, without a word, he held his left hand over the lighted candle. Little by little, he brought
the palm closer and closer to the flame. Someone in the audience made a sound like a sigh or
a moan. You could see the tip of the flame burning the mans palm. You could almost hear
the sizzle of the flesh. A woman released a hard little scream. Everyone else just watched in
frozen horror. The man endured the pain, his face distorted in agony. What the hell was this?
Why did he have to do such a stupid, senseless thing? I felt my mouth going dry. After five or
six seconds of this, he slowly removed his hand from the flame and set the dish with the
candle in it on the floor. Then he clasped his hands together, the right and left palms pressed
against each other.
 As you have seen tonight, ladies and gentlemen, pain can actually burn a persons flesh, 
said the man. His voice sounded exactly as it had earlier: quiet, steady, cool. No trace of
suffering remained on his face. Indeed, it had been replaced by a faint smile. And the pain
that must have been there, you have been able to feel as if it were your own. That is the power
of empathy. 
The man slowly parted his clasped hands. From between them he produced a thin red
scarf, which he opened for all to see. Then he stretched his palms out toward the audience.
There were no burns at all. moment of silence followed, and then people expressed their relief
in wild applause. The lights came up, and the chatter of voices replaced the tension that had
filled the room. As if the whole thing had never happened, the man put his guitar into the
case, stepped down from the age, and disappeared.
When I paid my check, I asked the girl at the register if the man sang there often and
whether he usually performed the trick.
 Im not sure, she said. As far as I know, this was his first time here, never heard of him
until today. And nobody told me he did magic tricks. Wasnt that amazing, though? I wonder
how he does it. I bet hed be a hit n TV. 
 Its true, I said. It looked like he was really burning himself. 
I walked back to the hotel, and the minute I got into bed, sleep came over me as if it had
been waiting all this time. As I drifted off, I thought of Kumiko, but she seemed very far
away, and after that it was impossible for me to think of anything. Through my mind flashed
the face of the man urning his palm. He really seemed to be burning himself, I thought. And
then I fell asleep.
 
The Root of Desire
 
I n Room 
 
Passing Through the Wall
Before dawn, in the bottom of the well, I had a dream. But it was not a dream. It was some
kind of something that happened to take the form of a dream.
I was walking alone. The face of Noboru Wataya was being projected on the screen of a
large television in the center of a broad lobby. His speech had just begun. He wore a tweed
suit, striped shirt, and navy-blue necktie. His hands were folded atop the table before him, and
he was talking into the camera. A large map of the world hung on the wall behind him. There
must have been over a hundred people in the lobby, and each and every one of them stopped
what they were doing to listen to him, with serious expressions on their faces. Noboru Wataya
was about to announce something that would determine peoples fate.
I, too, stopped and looked at the television screen. In practiced-but utterly sincere-tones,
Noboru Wataya was addressing millions of people he could not see. That unbearable
something I always felt when I was face-to-face with him was now hidden in some deep,
invisible place. He spoke in his uniquely persuasive style-the carefully timed pauses, the
ringing of the voice, the variety of facial expressions, all giving rise to a strangely effective
sense of reality. Noboru Wataya seemed to have been growing more polished as an orator
with each day that passed. Much as I hated to, I had to grant him that.
 And so you see, my friends, he was saying, everything is both complicated and simple.
This is the fundamental rule that governs the world. We must never forget it. Things that
appear to be complicated- and that, in fact, are complicated-are very simple where motives
are concerned. It is just a matter of what we are looking for. Motive is the root of desire, so to
speak. The important thing is to seek out the root. Dig beneath the complicated surface of
reality. And keep on digging. Then dig even more until you come to the very tip of the root. If
you will only do that -and here he gestured toward the map- everything will eventually come
clear. That is how the world works. The stupid ones can never break free of the apparent
complexity. They grope through the darkness, searching for the exit, and die before they are
able to comprehend a single thing about the way of the world. They have lost all sense of
direction. They might as well be deep in a forest or down in a well. And the reason they have
lost all sense of direction is because they do not comprehend the fundamental principles. They
have nothing in their heads but garbage and rocks. They understand nothing. Nothing at all.
They cant tell front from back, top from bottom, north from south. Which is why they can
never break free of the darkness. 
Noboru Wataya paused at that point to give his words time to sink into the minds of his
audience.
 But lets forget about people like that, he went on. If people want to lose all sense of
direction, the best thing that you and I can do is let them. We have more important things to
do. 
The more I heard, the angrier I became, until my anger was almost choking me. He was
pretending to talk to the world at large, but in fact he was talking to me alone. And he must
have had some kind of twisted, distorted motive for doing so. But nobody else realized that.
Which is precisely why Noboru Wataya was able to exploit the gigantic system of television
in order to send me secret messages. In my pockets, I clenched my hands into fists, but there
was no way I could vent my anger. And my inability to share this anger with anybody in the
lobby aroused in me a profound sense of isolation.
The place was filled with people straining to catch every word that Noboru Wataya spoke.
I cut across the lobby and headed straight for a corridor that connected with the guest rooms.
The faceless man was standing there. As I approached, he looked at me with that faceless face
of his. Then, soundlessly, he moved to block my way.
 This is the wrong time, he said. You dont belong here now. 
But the deep, slashing pain from Noboru Wataya now urged me on. I reached out and 
pushed the faceless man aside. He wobbled like a shadow and fell away.
 Im saying this for your sake, he called from behind me, his every word lodging in my
back like a piece of shrapnel. If you go any farther, you wont be able to come back. Do you
understand? 
I ignored him and moved ahead with rapid steps. I wasnt afraid of anything now. I had to
know. I had lost all sense of direction, but I couldnt stay like that forever.
I walked down the familiar-looking corridor. I assumed the man with no face would
follow and try to stop me, but when I looked back, there was no one coming. The long,
winding corridor was lined with identical doors. Each door had a number, but I couldnt recall
the number of the room to which I had been taken the last time. I was sure I had been aware
of the number back then, but now my attempts to recall it yielded nothing, and there was no
question of my opening every one.
I wandered up and down the corridor until I passed a room-service waiter carrying a tray.
On it was a new bottle of Cutty Sark, an ice bucket, and two glasses. I let the waiter go by,
then followed after him. Every now and then, the polished tray caught the light of a ceiling
fixture with a bright flash. The waiter never looked back. Chin drawn in purposefully, he
moved straight ahead, his steps in steady rhythm. Sometimes he would whistle a few lines of
music. It was the overture to The Thieving Magpie, the opening where the drums come in. He
was good.
The corridor was a long one, but I encountered no one else in it all the while I followed
the waiter. Eventually, he stopped in front of a door and gave it three gentle knocks. After a
few seconds had passed, someone opened the door and the waiter carried the tray in. I pressed
against the wall, hiding behind a large Chinese-style vase, and waited for the waiter to come
out. The room number was. Of course! Why hadnt I been able to remember it until now?
The waiter was taking a very long time. I glanced at my watch. At some point, though, the
hands had stopped moving. I examined the flowers in the vase and smelled each fragrance.
The flowers seemed to have been brought from a garden only moments before, so perfectly
fresh were they, retaining every bit of their color and aroma. They probably still hadnt
noticed that they had been severed from their roots. A tiny winged insect had worked its way
into the core of a red rose with thick, fleshy petals.
Five minutes or more went by before the waiter came out of the room, empty-handed.
With his chin pulled in as before, he went back the same way he had come. As soon as he had
disappeared around a corner, I walked over to the door. I held my breath and listened,
expecting to hear something. But there was no sound, no sense that anyone was inside. I took
a chance and knocked. Three times. Gently. As the waiter had done. But no one answered, I
let a few seconds pass and knocked three times again, this time a little more forcefully than
before. Still no response.
Next, I tried the knob. It turned, and the door opened soundlessly inward. The room
looked pitch dark at first, but some light was managing to find its way in around the thick
curtains on the window. With effort, I could just barely make out the window itself and a table
and sofa. This was the room in which I had coupled with Creta Kano. It was a suite: the living
room here and the bedroom in back. On the table were the dim forms of the Cutty Sark bottle,
the glasses, and the ice bucket. When I opened the door, the stainless-steel ice bucket had
caught the light from the corridor and sent back a knife-sharp flash. I entered the darkness and
closed the door quietly behind me. The air in the room felt warm, and it carried the heavy
scent of flowers. I held my breath and listened, keeping my left hand on the knob so that I
could open it at any time. There had to be a person in here, somewhere. Someone had ordered
the whiskey, ice, and glasses from room service and had opened the door to let the waiter in.
• 
 Dont turn on the light, said a womans voice. It came from the bedroom. I recognized it
immediately. It was the voice of the enigmatic woman who had made those strange calls to
me. I let go of the knob and began to feel my way toward the voice. The darkness of the inner
room was more nearly opaque than that of the outer room. I stood in the doorway between the
two and strained to see into the darkness.
I could hear the sound of bedsheets shifting. A black shadow moved in the darkness.
 Leave it dark, said the womans voice.
 Dont worry, I said. I wont turn on the light. 
I kept a firm grip on the doorjamb.
 Did you come here alone? the woman asked, sounding vaguely tired.
 Of course, I said. I figured Id find you here. You or Creta Kano. Ive got to know
where Kumiko is. I mean, everything started with that first call from you. You opened
Pandoras box. Then it was one weird thing after another, until finally Kumiko disappeared.
Thats why Im here. Alone. I dont know who you are, but you hold some kind of key. Am I
right? 
 Creta Kano? the woman asked in guarded tones. Never heard of her. Is she here too? 
 I dont know where she is. But Ive met her here more than once. 
Each breath I took brought with it the strong smell of flowers. The air was thick and
heavy. Somewhere in this room was a vase full of flowers. Somewhere in this same darkness,
they were breathing, swaying. In the darkness filled with their intense fragrance, I began to
lose track of my own physicality. I felt as if I had become a tiny insect. Now I was working
my way in among the petals of a giant flower. Sticky nectar, pollen, and soft hairs awaited
me. They needed my invasion and my presence.
 You know, I said to the woman, the very first thing I want to do is find out who you
are. You tell me I know you, and Ive tried as hard as I can to recall you, but without success.
Who are you? 
 Who am I? the woman parroted, but without a hint of mockery. Id like a drink. Pour
two on the rocks, will you? You will drink with me, I suppose? 
I went back to the living room, opened the new bottle of whiskey, put ice in the glasses,
and poured two drinks. In the dark, this took a good deal of time. I carried the drinks into the
bedroom. The woman told me to set one on the night table. And you sit on the chair by the
foot of the bed. 
I did as I was told, placing one glass on the night table and sitting in an upholstered
armchair some distance away, drink in hand. My eyes had perhaps grown somewhat more
used to the darkness. I could see shadows shifting there. The woman seemed to have raised
herself on the bed. Then there was the clink of ice as she drank. I, too, took a sip of whiskey.
For a long time, she said nothing. The longer the silence continued, the stronger the smell
of flowers seemed to become.
 Do you really want to know who I am? the woman asked.
 Thats why Im here, I said, but my voice resounded uneasily in the darkness.
 You came here specifically to learn my name, didnt you? 
Instead of answering, I cleared my throat, but this also had a strange reverberation.
The woman jiggled the ice in her glass a few times. You want to know my name, she
said, but unfortunately, I cant tell you what it is. I know you very well. You know me very
well. But I dont know me. 
I shook my head in the darkness. I dont get it, I said. ‘And Im sick of riddles. I need
something concrete that I can get my hands on. Hard facts. Something I can use as a lever to
pry the door open. Thats what I want. 
The woman seemed to wring a sigh out of the core of her body. Toru Okada, I want you
to discover my name. But no: you dont have to discover it. You know it already. All you have
to do is remember it. If you can find my name, then I can get out of here. I can even help you 
find your wife: help you find Kumiko Okada. If you want to find your wife, try hard to
discover my name. That is the lever you want. You dont have time to stay lost. Every day
you fail to find it, Kumiko Okada moves that much farther away from you. 
I set my whiskey glass on the floor. Tell me, I said, where is this place? How long have
you been here? What do you do here? 
 You have to leave now, said the woman, as if she had suddenly recalled what she was
doing. If he finds you here, therell be trouble. Hes even more dangerous than you think. He
might really kill you. I wouldnt put it past him. Who is this ‘he? 
The woman didnt answer, and I didnt know what else to say. I felt lost. Nothing stirred
in the room. The silence was deep and thick and suffocating. My head felt feverish. The
pollen might have been doing it. Mixed with the air, the microscopic grains were penetrating
my head and driving my nerves haywire.
 Tell me, Toru Okada, said the woman, her voice suddenly very different. The quality of
her voice could change in an instant. Now it had become one with the rooms thick, heavy air.
 Do you ever think youd like to hold me again? That youd like to get inside me? That youd
like to kiss me all over? You can do anything you want to me, you know. And Ill do anything
you want... anything... things that your wife... Kumiko Okada... would never do for you. Ill
make you feel so good youll never forget it. If you- 
With no warning at all, there was a knock on the door. It had the hard, precise sound of a
nail being driven straight in-an ominous sound in the dark.
The womans hand came out of the darkness and took me by the arm. Come this way, 
she whispered. Hurry. Her voice had lost the dreamy quality now. The knocking started
again: two knocks with precisely the same force. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadnt
locked the door.
 Hurry, she said. You have to get out of here. This is the only way. 
I moved through the darkness as the woman drew rne on. I could hear the doorknob
turning slowly. The sound sent chills down my spine. At the very moment the light from the
corridor pierced the darkness, we slipped into the wall. It had the consistency of a gigantic
mass of cold gelatin; I clamped my mouth shut to prevent its coming inside. The thought
struck me: Im passing through the wall! In order to go from one place to another, I was
passing through a wall. And yet, even as it was happening, it seemed like the most natural
thing to do.
I felt the womans tongue coming into my mouth. Warm and soft, it probed every crevice
and it wound around my own tongue. The heavy smell of flower petals stroked the walls of
my lungs. Down in my loins, I felt a dull need to come. Clamping my eyes closed, I fought it.
A moment later, I felt a kind of intense heat on my right cheek. It was an odd sensation. I felt
no pain, only the awareness that there was heat there. I couldnt tell whether the heat was
coming from the outside or boiling up inside me. Soon everything was gone: the womans
tongue, the smell of flowers, the need to come, the heat on my cheek. And I passed through
the wall. When I opened my eyes I was on the other side of the wall-at the bottom of a deep
well.
 
The Well and S t a r s
 
How the Ladder Disappeared
The sky was already bright at something after five in the morning, but even so, I could make
out a lot of stars overhead. It was just as Lieutenant Mamiya had told me: from the bottom of
a well, you can see stars in the daylight. Into the perfect half-moon slice of sky, faintly
glowing stars were packed neatly, like specimens of rare minerals.
Once before, when camping on a mountaintop with some friends in the fifth or sixth
grade, I had seen stars in such numbers that they filled the sky. It almost seemed as if the sky
would break under the weight of all those things and come tumbling down. Never had I seen
such an amazing skyful of stars. Unable to sleep after the others had drowsed off, I crawled
out of the tent and lay on the ground, looking at the sky. Now and then, a shooting star would
trace a bright arc across the heavens. The longer I watched, though, the more nervous it made
me. There were simply too many stars, and the sky was too vast and deep. A huge, overpowering
foreign object, it surrounded me, enveloped me, and made me feel almost dizzy. Until
that moment, I had always thought that the earth on which I stood was a solid object that
would last forever. Or rather, I had never thought about such a thing at all. I had simply taken
it for granted. But in fact, the earth was nothing but a chunk of rock floating in one little
corner of the universe: a. temporary foothold in the vast emptiness of space. It-and all of us
with it-could be blown away tomorrow by a momentary flash of something or a tiny shift in
the universes energy. Beneath this breathtaking skyful of stars, the uncertainty of my own existence
struck me full force (though not in so many words, of course). It was a stunning
discovery for a young boy.
Looking up at the dawn stars from the bottom of a well was a special experience very
different from looking at the full, starry sky on a mountaintop, as if my mind-my self-my very
existence-were firmly bonded through my narrow window to each one of those stars in the
sky. I felt a deep sense of intimacy toward them: they were my stars, visible to no one but me,
down here in the dark well. I embraced them as my own, and they in turn showered me with a
kind of energy and warmth.
As time passed and the sky came increasingly under the sway of the bright morning sun of
summer, one star at a time would obliterate itself from my field of view. They did this with
the utmost gentleness, and I studied the process of obliteration with wide-open eyes. The
summer sun did not, however, erase every star from the sky. A few of the strongest ones
remained. No matter how high the sun climbed, they took a stubborn stance and refused to
disappear. This made me very happy: aside from the occasional cloud that drifted by, the stars
were the only things I could see from down there.
I had sweated in my sleep, and now the sweat was beginning to grow cold and chill me. I
shuddered several times. The sweat made me think of that pitch-dark hotel room and the
telephone woman there. Still ringing in my ears were the words she had spoken-every one of
them-and the sound of the knocking. My nostrils retained the strangely heavy smell of
flowers. And Noboru Wataya was still talking from the other side of the television screen. The
memory of these impressions remained, undimmed by the passage of time. And this was
because it had not been a dream, my memory told me.
Even after I was fully awake, I continued to feel an intense warmth in my right cheek.
Mixed in now with the warmth was a mild sensation of pain, as if the skin had been chafed
with rough sandpaper. I pressed my palm against the spot through my one-day stubble, but
this did nothing to reduce the heat or the pain. Down in the bottom of the dark well, without a
mirror, it was impossible for me to examine what was happening to my cheek.
I reached out and touched the wall, tracing the surface with my fingertips and then 
pressing my palm against it for a time, but I found nothing unusual: it was just an ordinary
concrete wall. I made a fist and gave it a few taps. The wall was hard, expressionless, and
slightly damp. I still had a clear impression of the strange, slippery sensation it had given me
when I passed through it-like tunneling through a mass of gelatin.
I groped in my knapsack for the canteen and took a drink of water. I had gone a full day
now without eating. The thought itself gave me intense hunger pangs, but these began to fade
soon enough as they were absorbed into a limbo-like numbness. I brought my hand to my face
again and tried to gauge the growth of my beard. My jaw now wore a days worth of stubble.
No doubt about it: a whole day had gone by. But my one-day absence was probably not
having an effect on anybody. Not one human being had noticed that I was gone, likely. I
could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the
slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear:
no one needed me.
I turned upward again and looked at the stars. The sight of them gradually calmed the
beating of my heart. Then it occurred to me to grope along the wall for the ladder. Where it
should have been, my hand encountered nothing. I felt over a broad area, checking with the
utmost care, but there was no ladder. It no longer existed in the place where it belonged. I
took a deep breath, pulled the flashlight from the knapsack, and switched it on. But there was
no sign of the ladder. Standing, I shone the light on the floor and then the wall above me, as
far as the beam could reach. The ladder was nowhere. Cold sweat crept down my sides like
some kind of living creature. The flashlight slipped from my hand, fell to the ground, and
switched off from the impact. It was a sign. In that instant, my mind snapped: it was a grain of
sand, absorbed into the surrounding darkness. My body stopped functioning, as if its plug had
been pulled. A perfect nothingness came over me.
This lasted perhaps a few seconds, until I retrieved myself. My physical functions returned
bit by bit. I bent over and picked up the flashlight lying at my feet, gave it a few taps, and
switched it on again. The light returned without a problem. I needed to calm myself and put
my thoughts in order. Fear and panic would solve nothing. When had I last checked the
ladder? Yesterday, late at night, just before I fell asleep. I had made certain it was there and
only then let myself sleep. No mistake. The ladder had disappeared while I was sleeping. It
had been pulled up. Taken away. I cut the switch of the flashlight and leaned against the wall.
Then I closed my eyes. The first thing I felt was hunger. It swept toward me out of the
distance, like a wave, washed over me soundlessly, and glided away. Once it was gone, I
stood there, hollow, empty as a gutted animal. After the initial panic had passed, I no longer
felt either terror or despair. Strangely enough, all I felt at that moment was a kind of
resignation.
•
Back from Sapporo, I held Kumiko and comforted her. She was feeling lost and confused.
She had taken the day off from work. I couldnt sleep a wink last night, she said. The
clinic had an opening at just the right time, so I went ahead and decided by myself. She cried
a little after saying this.
 Its finished now, I said. No point thinking about it anymore. We talked it over, and
this was how it worked out. If theres anything else you want to talk about, better do it here
and now. Then lets just put it out of our minds. Forget about it. You said on the phone you
had something to tell me. 
Kumiko shook her head. Never mind, she said. Youre right. Lets forget about it. 
We went on with our lives for a while, avoiding all mention of Kumikos abortion. But
this wasnt easy to do. We could be talking about something entirely different, when suddenly
both of us would fall silent. On weekends, wed go to movies. In the dark, we might be 
concentrating on the movie, but we might just as well be thinking about things that had
nothing to do with the movie, or we might be resting our brains by thinking about nothing at
all. I knew that Kumiko, sitting next to me, was thinking about something else. I could sense
it.
After the movie, wed go somewhere for a beer or a snack. Sometimes we wouldnt know
what to talk about. This went on for six weeks-a very long six weeks, at the end of which
Kumiko said to me, What do you say we take a trip tomorrow, go away for a little vacation,
just the two of us? Tomorrows Friday: we can take off till Sunday. People need that kind of
thing once in a while. 
 I know what you mean, I said, smiling, but I wonder if anybody at my office even
knows what a vacation is. 
 Call in sick, then. Say its flu or something. Ill do the same. 
We took the train to Karuizawa. I picked that destination because Kumiko said she wanted
a quiet place in the mountains where we could walk all we liked. It was off-season there in
April; the hotel was hushed, most of the shops were closed, but that was exactly what we
wanted. We did nothing but go out for walks every day, from morning to evening.
•
It took a full day and a half for Kumiko to release her feelings. And once she did, she sat
in the hotel room, crying, for nearly two hours. I said nothing the whole time, just held her
and let her cry.
Then, little by little, in fragments, she began to tell me things. About the abortion. About
her feelings at the time. About her extreme sense of loss. About how alone she had felt while I
was in Hokkaido-and how she could have done what she did only while feeling so alone.
 And dont get me wrong, she said finally. Im not regretting what I did. It was the only
way. Im perfectly clear on that. What really hurts, though, is that I want to tell you
everything-absolutely everything-but I just cant do it. I cant tell you exactly how I feel. 
Kumiko pushed her hair up, revealing a small, shapely ear, and she gave her head a shake.
 Im not hiding it from you. Im planning to tell you sometime. Youre the only one I can
tell. But I just cant do it now. I cant put it into words. 
 Something from the past? 
 No, thats not it. 
 Take all the time you need, I said. Until youre ready. Time is the one thing weve got
plenty of. Ill be right here with you. Theres no rush. I just want you to keep one thing in
mind: Anything of yours-anything at all, as long as it belongs to you-I will accept as my own.
That is one thing you will never have to worry about. 
 Thank you, she said. Im so glad I married you. But we did not have all the time I
thought we had. Exactly what was it that Kumiko had been unable to put into words? Did it
have something to do with her disappearance? Maybe, if I had tried dragging it out of her
then, I could have avoided losing her now. But no, I concluded after mulling it over: I could
never have forced her. She had said she couldnt put it into words. Whatever it was, it was
more than she had the strength for.
•
 Hey, down there! Mr. Wind-Up Bird! shouted May Kasahara. In a shallow sleep at the
time, I thought I was hearing the voice in a dream. But it was not a dream. When I looked up,
there was May Kasaharas face, small and far away. I know youre down there! Cmon, Mr.
Wind-Up Bird! Answer me! 
 Im here, I said.
 What on earth for? What are you doing down there? 
 Thinking, I said.
 I dont get it. Why do you have to go to the bottom of a well to think? It must be such a
pain in the butt! 
 This way, you can really concentrate. Its dark and cool and quiet. 
 Do you do this a lot? 
 No, not a lot. Ive never done it before in my life-getting into a well like this. 
 Is it working? Is it helping you to think? 
 I dont know yet. Im still experimenting. 
She cleared her throat. The sound reverberated loudly to the bottom of the well.
 Anyway, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, did you notice the ladders gone? 
 Sure did, I said. A little while ago. 
 Did you know it was me who pulled it up? 
 No, that I didnt know. 
 Well, who did you think did it? 
 I didnt know, I said honestly. I dont know how to put this, but that thought never
really crossed my mind-that somebody took it. I thought it just disappeared, to tell you the
truth. 
May Kasahara fell silent. Then, with a note of caution in her voice, as if she thought my
words contained some kind of trap for her, she said, Just disappeared. Hmm. What do you
mean, ‘it just disappeared? That, all by itself, it... just... disappeared? 
 Maybe so. 
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, its kinda funny for me to bring this up now, but youre
pretty weird. There arent too many people out there as weird as you are. Did you know that? 
 Im not so weird to me, I said.
 Then what makes you think that ladders can just disappear? 
I rubbed my face with both hands and tried to concentrate all my attention on this
conversation with May Kasahara. You pulled it up, didnt you? 
 Of course I did. It doesnt take much brainwork to figure that one out. I did it. I sneaked
out in the night and pulled the ladder up. 
 But why? 
 Why not? Do you know how many times I went to your house yesterday? I wanted you
to go to work with me again. You werent there, of course. Then I found that note of yours in
the kitchen. So I waited a really long time, but you never came back. So then I thought just
maybe you might be at the empty house again. I found the well cover half open and the ladder
hanging down. Still, it never occurred to me you might be down there. I just figured some
workman or somebody had been there and left his ladder. I mean, how many people go to sit
in the bottom of a well when they want to think? 
 Youve got a point there, I said.
 Anyhow, so then I sneaked out at night and went to your place, but you still werent
there. Thats when it popped into my mind. That maybe you were down in the well. Not that I
had any idea what youd be doing down there, but you know, like I said, youre kinda weird. I
came to the well and pulled the ladder up. Bet that gotcha goin. 
 Yeah, youre right. 
 Do you have anything to eat or drink down there? 
 A little water. I didnt bring any food. Ive got three lemon drops,
though. 
 How long have you been down there? 
 Since late yesterday morning. 
 You must be hungry. 
 I guess so. 
 Dont you have to pee or anything? 
Now that she had mentioned it, I realized I hadnt peed once since coming down here.
 Not really, I said. Im not eating or drinking much. 
 Say, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you know what? You might die down there, depending on my
mood. Im the only one who knows youre in there, and Im the one who hid the rope ladder.
Do you realize that? If I just walked away from here, youd end up dead. You could yell, but
no one would hear you. No one would think you were at the bottom of a well. I bet no one
would even notice that you were gone. You dont work for any company, and your wife ran
away. I suppose someone would notice eventually that you were missing and report it to the
police, but youd be dead by then, and theyd never find your body. 
 Im sure youre right. I could die down here, depending on your mood. 
 How do you feel about that? 
 Scared, I said.
 You dont sound scared. 
I was still rubbing my cheeks. These were my hands and my cheeks. I couldnt see them
in the dark, but they were still here: my body still existed. Thats because it hasnt really hit
home with me, I said.
 Well, it has with me, said May Kasahara. I bet its a lot easier to kill somebody than
people think. 
 Probably depends on the method. 
 Itd be so easy! Id just have to leave you there. I wouldnt have to do a thing. Think
about it, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Just imagine how much youd suffer, dying little by little, of
hunger and thirst, down in the darkness. It wouldnt be easy. 
 Im sure youre right, I said.
 You dont really believe me, do you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? You think I couldnt do
anything so cruel. 
 I dont really know, I said. Its not that I believe you could do it, or that I believe you
couldnt do it. Anything could happen. The possibility is there. Thats what I think. 
 Im not talking about possibility, she said in the coldest tone imaginable. Hey, Ive got
an idea. It just occurred to me. You went to all the trouble of climbing down there so you
could think. Why dont I fix it so you can concentrate on your thoughts even better? 
 How can you do that? I asked.
 How? Like this, she said, closing the open half of the well cover. Now the darkness was
total.
 
May Kasahara on Death and Evolution
 
The Thing Made Elsewhere
I was crouching down in the total darkness. All I could see was nothingness. And I was
part of this nothingness. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of my heart, to the sound 
of the blood circulating through my body, to the bellows-like contractions of my lungs, to the
slippery undulations of my food-starved gut. In the deep darkness, every movement, every
throb, was magnified enormously. This was my body, my flesh. But in the darkness, it was all
too raw and physical.
Soon my conscious mind began to slip away from my physical body. I saw myself as the
wind-up bird, flying through the summer sky, lighting on the branch of a huge tree
somewhere, winding the worlds spring. If there really was no more wind-up bird, someone
would have to take on its duties. Someone would have to wind the worlds spring in its place.
Otherwise, the spring would run down and the delicately functioning system would grind to a
halt. The only one who seemed to have noticed that the wind-up bird was gone, however, was
me.
I tried my best to imitate the cry of the wind-up bird in the back of my throat. It didnt
work. All I could produce was a meaningless, ugly sound like the rubbing together of two
meaningless, ugly things. Only the real wind-up bird could make the sound. Only the wind-up
bird could wind the worlds spring the way it was supposed to be wound.
Still, as a voiceless wind-up bird unable to wind the worlds spring, I decided to go flying
through the summer sky-which turned out to be fairly easy. Once you were up, all you had to
do was flap your wings at the right angle to adjust direction and altitude. My body mastered
the art in a moment and sent me flying effortlessly wherever I wanted to go. I looked at the
world from the wind-up birds vantage point. Whenever I had had enough flying, I would
light on a tree branch and peer through the green leaves at rooftops and roadways. I watched
people moving over the ground, carrying on the functions of life. Unfortunately, though, I
could not see my own body. This was because I had never once seen the wind-up bird and had
no idea what it looked like.
For a long time-how long could it have been?-I remained the wind-up bird. But being the
wind-up bird never got me anywhere. The flying part was fun, of course, but I couldnt go on
having fun forever. There was something I had to accomplish down here in the darkness at the
bot-torn of the well. I stopped being the wind-up bird and returned to being myself.
•
May Kasahara paid her second visit a little after three. Three in the afternoon. When she
opened half the well, light flooded in overhead-the blinding glare of a summer day. To protect
my eyes, so accustomed now to total darkness, I closed them and kept my head down for a
while. The mere thought of light up there caused a thin film of tears to ooze.
 Hi there, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. Are you still alive? Mr. Wind-Up
Bird? Answer if youre still alive. 
 Im alive, I said.
 You must be hungry. 
 I think so. 
 Still just ‘I think so? Itll be a while before you starve to death, then. Starving people
dont die so easily, as long as theyve got water. 
 Thats probably true, I said, the uncertainty in my voice echoing in the well. The echo
probably amplified any hint of anything contained in the voice.
 I know its true, said May Kasahara. I did a little research in the library this morning.
All about hunger and thirst. Did you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, somebody once lived
underground for twenty-one days? During the Russian Revolution. 
 No kidding, I said.
 He must have suffered a lot. 
 Yeah, really. 
 He survived, but he lost all his hair and teeth. Everything. Even if he lived, it must have 
been terrible. 
 Yeah, really. 
 Even if you lose your teeth and hair, though, I suppose you can live a pretty normal life if
youve got a decent wig and false teeth. 
 Yeah, and wigs and dentures have made great strides since the time of the Russian
Revolution, too. That might make things a little easier. 
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird..., said May Kasahara, clearing her throat.
 What? 
 If people lived forever-if they never got any older-if they could just go on living in this
world, never dying, always healthy-do you think theyd bother to think hard about things, the
way were doing now? I mean, we think about just about everything, more or less-philosophy,
psychology, logic. Religion. Literature. I kinda think, if there were no such thing as death,
that complicated thoughts and ideas like that would never come into the world. I mean- 
May Kasahara cut herself short and remained silent for a while, during which her I
mean hung in the darkness of the well like a hacked-off fragment of thought. Maybe she had
lost the will to say any more. Or maybe she needed time to think of what came next. I just
waited in silence for her to continue, my head lowered as from the beginning. The thought
crossed my mind that if May Kasahara wanted to kill me right away, it would be no trouble
for her at all. She could just drop a big rock down the well. If she tried a few times, one was
bound to hit me in the head.
 I mean... this is what I think, but... people have to think seriously about what it means
for them to be alive here and now because they know theyre going to die sometime. Right?
Who would think about what it means to be alive if they were just going to go on living
forever? Why would they have to bother? Or even if they should bother, theyd probably just
figure, ‘Oh, well, Ive got plenty of time for that. Ill think about it later. But we cant wait
till later. Weve got to think about it right this second. I might get run over by a truck
tomorrow afternoon. And you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird: you might starve to death. One morning
three days from now, you could be dead in the bottom of a well. See? Nobody knows whats
going to happen. So we need death to make us evolve. Thats what I think. Death is this huge,
bright thing, and the bigger and brighter it is, the more we have to drive ourselves crazy
thinking about things. 
May Kasahara paused.
 Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird... 
 What? 
 Down there in the darkness, have you been thinking about your own death? About how
you would die down there? 
I took a moment to think about her question. Nope, I said. Thats one thing I havent
been thinking about. 
 Why not? May Kasahara asked, with a note of disgust, as if she were speaking to a
deformed animal. Why havent you been thinking about it? Youre literally facing death
right now. Im not kidding around. I told you before, its up to me whether you live or die. 
 You could drop a rock, I said.
 A rock? What are you talking about? 
 You could go find a big rock and drop it on me. 
 Well, sure, I could do that. But she didnt seem to like the idea. Anyhow, Mr. WindUp
Bird, you must be starving. Its just gonna get worse and worse. And youll run out of
water. So how can you not think about death? Dont you think its weird? 
 Yeah, I suppose its kind of weird, I said. But Ive been thinking about other things the
whole time. Ill probably think about death, too, when I start to get really hungry. Ive still got
three weeks before I die, right? 
 Thats if you have water, said May Kasahara. Thats what happened with that Russian 
guy. He was some big landowner or something. The revolutionary guard threw him down an
old mine shaft, but there was water seeping through the wall, so he licked it and kept himself
alive. He was in total darkness, just like you. But you dont have much water, do you? 
 No, I said honestly. Just a little left. 
 Then youd better be careful with it, said May Kasahara. Take little sips. And take
your time thinking. About death. About how youre dying. Youve still got plenty of time. 
 Why are you so determined to make me think about death? Whats in it for you? 
 Nothings in it for me, May Kasahara shot back. What makes you think theres
anything in it for me for you to think about your own death? Its your life. Its got nothing to
do with me. Im just... interested. 
 Out of curiosity? 
 Yeah. Curiosity. About how people die. About how it feels to die.
Curiosity. 
May Kasahara fell silent. When the conversation broke off, a deep stillness filled in the
space around me, as if it had been waiting for this opportunity. I wanted to raise my face and
look up. To see whether May Kasahara was visible from down here. But the light was too
strong. I was sure it would burn my eyes out.
 Theres something I want to tell you, I said. OK. Tell me. 
 My wife had a lover, I said. At least Im pretty sure she did. I never realized it, but for
months, while she was still living with me, she was sleeping with this guy. I couldnt believe
it at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced. Now, looking back, I
can see there were all kinds of little clues. Shed come home at crazy hours, or shed flinch
when I touched her. But I couldnt read the signals. I trusted her. I never thought shed have
an affair. It just never occurred to me. 
 Wow, said May Kasahara.
 So then one day she just left the house and never came back. We had breakfast together
that morning. She went off to work in her usual outfit. All she had with her was her handbag,
and she picked up a blouse and skirt at the cleaners. And that was it. No goodbye. No note.
Nothing. Kumiko was gone. Left all her things-clothes and everything. And shell probably
never come back here-back to me. Not of her own accord, at least. That much I know. 
 Is Kumiko with the other guy now, do you think? 
 I dont know, I said, shaking my head. As my head moved slowly through it, the
surrounding air felt like some kind of heavy water, without the watery feel. They probably
are together. 
 And so now youre crushed, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, and thats why you went down in the
well. 
 Of course I was crushed when I realized what was happening. But thats not why Im in
here. Im not hiding from reality. Like I said before, I needed a place where I could be alone
and concentrate on my thinking. Where and how did my relationship with Kumiko go wrong?
Thats what I cant understand. Not that Im saying everything was perfect until that point. A
man and a woman in their twenties, with two distinct personalities, just happen to meet
somewhere and start living together. Theres not a married couple anywhere without their
problems. But I thought we were doing OK, basically, that any little problems would solve
themselves over time. But I was wrong. I was missing something big, making some kind of
mistake on a really basic level, I suppose. Thats what I came in here to think about. 
May Kasahara said nothing. I swallowed once.
 I wonder if thisll make any sense to you: When we got married, six years ago, the two of
us were trying to make a brand-new world-like building a new house on an empty lot. We had
this clear image of what we wanted. We didnt need a fancy house or anything, just something
to keep the weather out, as long as the two of us could be together. We didnt need any extras.
Things would just get in the way. It all seemed so simple to us. Have you ever had that 
feeling-that youd like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self? 
 Sure, said May Kasahara. I feel that way all the time. 
 Well, thats what we were trying to do when we got married. I wanted to get outside
myself: the me that had existed until then. And it was the same for Kumiko. In that new world
of ours, we were trying to get hold of new selves that were better suited to who we were deep
down. We believed we could live in a way that was more perfectly suited to who we were. 
May Kasahara seemed to shift her center of gravity in the light somewhat. I could sense
her movement. She seemed to be waiting for me to continue. But I had nothing more to say at
that point. Nothing came to mind. I felt tired from the sound of my own voice in the concrete
tube of the well.
 Does this make any sense to you? I asked.
 Sure it does. 
 What do you think about it? 
 Hey, Im still a kid, ya know. I dont know anything about marriage. I dont know what
was in your wifes mind when she started fooling around with another man or when she left
you. But from what you just told me, I think you kinda had the wrong idea from the very
beginning. You know what I mean, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? What you were just talking about... I
dont know, its kind of impossible for anybody to do that stuff, like, ‘OK, now Im gonna
make a whole new world or ‘OK, now Im gonna make a whole new self. Thats what I
think. You might think you made a new world or a new self, but your old self is always gonna
be there, just below the surface, and if something happens, itll stick its head out and say ‘Hi.
You dont seem to realize that. You were made somewhere else. And even this idea you have
of remaking yourself: even that was made somewhere else. Even I know that much, Mr.
Wind-Up Bird. Youre a grown-up, arent you? How come you dont get it? Thats a big
problem, if you ask me. And thats what youre being punished for-by all kinds of things: by
the world you tried to get rid of, or by the self you tried to get rid of. Do you see what Im
saying? 
I remained silent, staring at the darkness that enveloped my feet. I didnt know what to
say.
 OK, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she said softly. You go ahead and think. Think. Think. 
The cover snapped into place, and the well opening was blocked once again.
•
I took the canteen from my knapsack and gave it a shake. The light sloshing sound echoed
in the darkness. Maybe a quarter left. I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes.
May Kasahara was probably right. This person, this self, this me, finally, was made
somewhere else. Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere
else. I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me.
Even I know that much, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. How come you dont get it?
 
Hunger as Pain
 
K u m i k o ‘ s Long Letter
 
Bird as Prophet
I fell asleep a few times and woke up just as often. These were short, unsettled snatches of
sleep, as on an airplane. Whenever deep sleep was about to arrive, I would shrink back and
wake up; whenever full wakefulness was about to arrive, I would drift off into sleep, in
endless repetition. Without changes in the light, time wobbled by like a wagon with a loose
axle. My cramped, unnatural posture robbed my body of rest in small, accumulating doses.
Each time I woke, I would check the time on my watch. Its pace was heavy and uneven.
With nothing better to do, I would pick up the flashlight and shine it at random-at the
ground, at the walls, at the well cover. What I found there was always the same ground, the
same walls, the same well cover. The shadows cast by the moving beam would sway, stretch
and shrink, swell and contract. When I tired of this, I would spend time feeling my face,
probing every line and crevice, examining my features anew to learn their shape. I had never
been seriously concerned about the shape of my ears before this. If someone had told me to
draw a picture of my own ears-even a rough sketch-I would have been at a loss. Now, though,
I would have been able to reproduce every hollow and curve in accurate detail. I found it odd
how different the ears were. I had no idea how this had come about or what effect this lack of
symmetry might have (it probably had some effect).
The hands of my watch showed seven twenty-eight. I must have looked at my watch some
two thousand times since coming down here. Now it was seven twenty-eight at night, that
much was certain; at a ball game, it would be the bottom of the third or the top of the fourth.
When I was a kid, I used to like to sit up high in the outfield stands and watch the summer day
trying not to end. The sun had sunk below the western horizon, but the afterglow was still
brilliant and beautiful. The stadium lights stretched their long shadows across the field as if to
hint at something. First one and then another light would be turned on with the utmost caution
shortly after the game got going. Still, there was enough light in the sky to read a newspaper
by. The memory of the long days glow remained at the door to keep the summer night from
entering.
With patience and persistence, though, the artificial illumination was winning its quiet
victory over the light of the sun, bringing forth a flood of festive colors. The brilliant green of
the playing field, the handsome black earth, the straight white lines newly drawn upon it, the
glinting varnish on the bats of players waiting for their turn at the plate, the cigarette smoke
floating in the beams of light (looking, on windless days, like souls wandering in search of
someone to take them in)-all these would begin to show up with tremendous clarity. The
young beer sellers would hold their hands up in the light, flashing bills tucked between their
fingers. The crowd would rise from their seats to follow the path of a high fly ball, their
voices rising with its arc or dissolving into a sigh. Small flocks of birds returning to their
roosts would fly past toward the sea. This was the stadium at seven-thirty in the evening.
I thought about the baseball games I had seen over the years. The Saint Louis Cardinals
had come to Japan once, when I was little, for a friendship game. I had seen that one with my
father from an infield seat. Before the game itself, the Cardinals players stood along the
perimeter of the field with baskets full of autographed tennis balls, throwing them into the
stands as fast as they could. People went crazy trying to grab a ball for themselves, but I just
stayed in my seat without moving, and before I knew it, I had a ball in my lap. It was a
magical happening: strange and sudden.
I looked at my watch again. Seven thirty-six. Eight minutes had gone by since the last
look. Just eight minutes. I took the watch off and held it against my ear. It was ticking away
just fine. I shrugged my shoulders in the darkness. Something strange was happening to my
sense of time. I decided not to look at my watch for a while. Maybe I didnt have anything 
else to do, but it wasnt healthy to be looking at a watch this often. I had to make a
tremendous effort to keep myself from looking, though. The pain was like what I had felt
when I quit smoking. From the moment I decided to give up thinking about time, my mind
could think of nothing else. It was a kind of contradiction, a schizoid split. The more I tried to
forget about time, the more I was compelled to think about it. Before I knew it, my eyes
would be seeking out the watch on my left wrist. Whenever this happened, I would avert my
face, close my eyes, and struggle not to look. I ended up taking the watch off and stuffing it
into my knapsack. Even so, my mind went on groping for the watch inside the pack, where it
continued to tick off the time.
And so time flowed on through the darkness, deprived of advancing watch hands: time
undivided and unmeasured. Once it lost its points of demarcation, time ceased being a
continuous line and became instead a kind of formless fluid that expanded or contracted at
will. Within this kind of time, I slept and woke and slept and woke, and became slowly and
increasingly accustomed to life without timepieces. I trained my body to realize that I no
longer needed time. But soon I was feeling tremendous anxiety. True, I had been liberated
from the nervous habit of checking my watch every five minutes, but once the frame of
reference of time faded completely away, I began to feel as if I had been flung into the ocean
at night from the deck of a moving ship. No one noticed my screams, and the boat continued
its forward advance, moving farther and farther away until it was about to fade from view.
Abandoning the effort, I took the watch from the knapsack and returned it to my wrist.
The hands were pointing to six-fifteen. Probably six-fifteen a.m. The last time I had looked at
my watch, it had been seven thirty-six. Seven thirty-six at night. It seemed reasonable to
conclude that eleven hours had gone by since then. It could hardly have been twenty-three
hours. But I could not be sure. What was the essential difference between eleven hours and
twenty-three hours? Whichever it was- eleven or twenty-three-my hunger had become far
more intense. The sensation was nothing like what I had vaguely imagined an intense hunger
to be. I had assumed that hunger would be a feeling of absence. Instead, it was closer to pure
physical pain-utterly physical and utterly direct, like being stabbed or throttled. And the pain
was uneven. It lacked consistency. It would rise like a swelling tide until I was on the verge of
fainting, and then it would gradually recede.
To divert my attention from these intensely painful hunger pangs, I tried to concentrate
my thoughts on something else. But it was no longer possible for me to do any serious
thinking. Fragmentary thoughts would drift into my mind, then disappear just as quickly as
they had come. Whenever I tried to grab one, it would slip through my fingers like some
slimy, shapeless animal.
I stood up and stretched and took a deep breath. Every part of my body hurt. Every muscle
and joint cried out in pain from having been in an awkward position for so long. I stretched
myself slowly upward, then did some knee bends, but after ten of those I felt dizzy. Sitting
down again on the well floor, I closed my eyes. My ears were ringing, and sweat streamed
down my face. I wanted to hold on to something, but there was nothing to hold on to. I felt
like throwing up, but there was nothing inside me that I could have thrown up. I tried deep
breathing, hoping to refresh my mind by exchanging the air inside my body and giving my
circulation a charge, but the clouds in my mind refused to clear. My bodys so weak now, I
thought, and in fact I tried saying the words aloud- My bodys so weak now -but my mouth
had difficulty forming the words. If only I could see the stars, I thought, but I could not see
stars. May Kasahara had sealed the mouth of the well.
I assumed that May Kasahara would come to the well again sometime during the morning,
but she never did. I spent the time waiting for her to arrive, leaning against the wall. The sick
feeling stayed with me all morning, and my mind had lost the power to concentrate itself on
any thoughts, however briefly. The hunger pangs continued to come and go, and the darkness
around me grew thicker and thinner, and with each new wave another chunk of my ability to 
concentrate would be taken away, like furniture being stripped a piece at a time by burglars in
an empty house.
Noon passed, and still May Kasahara did not appear. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep,
hoping to dream of Creta Kano, but my sleep was too shallow for dreams. Not long after I
gave up any effort to concentrate on thinking, all kinds of fragmentary memories began to
visit me. They arrived in silence, like water slowly filling an underground cavern. Places I had
gone, people I had met, wounds I had received, conversations I had had, things I had bought,
things I had lost: I was able to recall them all with great vividness and in amazing detail. I
thought of houses and apartments in which I had lived. I thought of their windows and closets
and furniture and lighting fixtures. I thought of teachers and professors I had had, all the way
from elementary school to college. Few if any of these memories had any connection with
each other. They were minute and meaningless and came in no chronological order. Now and
then, my recollections would be interrupted by another painful wave of hunger. But each
memory was incredibly vivid, jolting me physically with the force of a tornado.
I sat there watching my mind pursue these memories, until it brought to life an incident
that had occurred in the office some three or four years earlier. It had been a stupid, pointless
event, but the more time I filled with recreating its absurd details, the more annoyed I felt,
until the annoyance turned to outright anger. The anger that seized me was so intense that it
blotted out everything else-my fatigue, my hunger, my fears-causing me to tremble physically
and my breath to come in gasps. My heart pounded audibly, and the anger pumped my
bloodstream full of adrenaline. It had been an argument that started from a minor misunderstanding.
The other guy had flung some nasty phrases at me, and I had managed to have
my say as well, but we both realized how pointless the whole thing had been and apologized
to each other, putting an end to the matter without any lingering hard feelings. These things
happen: youre busy, youre tired, and you let some careless remark slip out. I just forgot
about the whole thing. Down in the pitch blackness at the bottom of the well, though, far
removed from reality, the memory came back to life with searing vividness. I could feel the
heat of it against my skin, hear it sizzling my flesh. Why had my response to such an
outrageous comment been so feeble? Now I came up with all kinds of things I should have
said to the guy. I polished them, sharpened them, and the sharper they got, the angrier I got.
Then, all of a sudden, the possessing demon fell away, and none of this mattered anymore.
Why did I have to warm up stale memories like this? What good did it do? The other guy had
probably forgotten about the argument long since. I certainly had until this moment. I took a
deep breath, let my shoulders droop and my body sink back into the darkness. I tried pursuing
another memory, but once the incredibly intense anger passed, I had run out of memories. My
head was now as empty as my stomach.
Then, before I knew it, I was talking to myself, mumbling fragmentary thoughts that I
didnt know I was having. I couldnt stop myself. I heard my mouth forming words, but I
could hardly understand a thing I was saying. My mouth was moving by itself, automatically,
spinning long strings of words through the darkness, words the meaning of which I could not
grasp. They came out of one darkness, to be sucked into the next. My body was nothing but
an empty tunnel, a conduit for moving the words from there to here. They were definitely
fragments of thought, but thought that was happening outside my consciousness.
What was going on here? Were my nerves beginning to lose it? I looked at my watch. The
hands said three forty-two. Probably three forty-two in the afternoon. I pictured to myself
what the light looked like at three forty-two on a summer afternoon. I imagined myself in that
light. I listened for any sound my ears might pick up, but there was nothing: no cicada or bird
cries, no childrens voices. Maybe, while I was down here in the well, the wind-up bird had
not wound the spring, and the world had stopped moving. Bit by bit, the spring had run down,
and at one certain point in time, all movement-the rivers flow, the stirring of leaves, birds
flying through the sky-had stopped.
What was May Kasahara doing? Why didnt she come? She hadnt shown up here for a
very long time. The thought struck me that something terrible might have happened to her-a
traffic accident, say. In which case, there was no longer anyone in the world who knew I was
down here. And I really would die a slow death in the bottom of the well. I decided to look at
things differently. May Kasahara was not such a careless person. She was not about to let
herself get run over so easily. She was probably in her room now, scanning this yard every
once in a while with her binoculars and imagining me down here in the well. She was doing
this on purpose: letting a lot of time go by to give me a scare, to make me feel abandoned.
That was my guess. And if she was purposely letting a lot of time go by, then her plan was
succeeding admirably. I really was scared. I did feel abandoned. Whenever the thought struck
me that I might very well just rot down here in the dark over a long period of time, I could
hardly breathe with the fear that gripped me. The more time that went by, the more I would
weaken, until my hunger pangs became violent enough to kill me. Before that happened,
though, I might lose the ability to move my body at will. Even if someone were to lower the
rope ladder to me, I might not be able to climb it. All my hair and teeth might fall out.
Then it occurred to me to worry about the air. I had been down in the bottom of this deep,
narrow concrete tube over two days now, and to make matters worse, the top had been sealed.
There was no circulation to speak of. The air around me suddenly began to feel heavy and
oppressive. I couldnt tell whether this was my imagination playing tricks on me or the air
really was heavier because of the lack of oxygen. To find out, I made several large inhalations
and exhalations, but the more I breathed, the worse it felt. Fear made the sweat gush out of
me. Once I started thinking about the air, death invaded my mind as something real and imminent.
It rose like black, silent water, seeping into every corner of my consciousness. Until
now, I had been thinking about the possibility of starvation, for which there was still plenty of
time. Things would happen much more quickly if the oxygen gave out.
What would it feel like to die of asphyxiation? How long would it take? Would it be a
slow, agonizing process, or would I gradually lose consciousness and die as if falling asleep?
I imagined May Kasahara coming to the well and finding me dead. She would call out to me
several times, and when there was no answer she would drop a few pebbles into the well,
thinking I was asleep. But I would not wake up. Then she would realize that I was dead.
I wanted to shout for someone. I wanted to scream that I was shut up inside here. That I
was hungry. That the air was going bad. I felt as if I had reverted to being a helpless little
child. I had run away on a whim and would never be able to find my home again. I had
forgotten the way. It was a dream I had had any number of times. It was the nightmare of my
youth-going astray, losing the way home. I had forgotten all about those nightmares years
ago. But now, in the bottom of this deep well, they came to life again with terrible vividness.
Time moved backward in the dark, to be swallowed by a different kind of time.
I took the canteen from my knapsack, unscrewed the top, and, with the greatest care, so as
not to spill a single drop, let a small amount of water find its way into my mouth. I kept it
there for a long time, savoring the moisture, then swallowed it as slowly as possible. A loud
sound came from my throat as the water passed through, as if some hard, heavy object had
fallen to the floor, but it was just the sound I made by swallowing a few drops of water.
•
 Mr. Okada! 
Someone was calling me. I heard the voice in my sleep. Mr. Okada! Mr. Okada! Please
wake up! 
It sounded like Creta Kano. I managed to open my eyes, but that changed nothing. I was
still surrounded by darkness and couldnt see a thing. There was no clear border between
sleep and wakefulness. I tried to raise myself, but there was not enough strength in my 
fingers. My body felt cold and shriveled and dull, like a cucumber long forgotten in the back
of the refrigerator. My mind was wrapped tight in exhaustion and weakness. I dont care, do
what you want, Ill get a hard-on in my mind again and come in reality. Go ahead, if thats
what you want. In my clouded consciousness, I waited for her hands to loosen my belt. But
Creta Kanos voice was coming from somewhere far overhead. Mr. Okada! Mr. Okada! it
called. I looked up, to find half the well cover open and above it a beautiful, starry sky, a sky
shaped like a half-moon.
 Im here! 
I raised myself and managed to stand. Looking up, I shouted again,
 Im here! 
 Mr. Okada! said the real Creta Kano. Are you down there? 
 Yes, Im here! 
 How did that happen? 
 Its a long story. 
 Im sorry, I cant hear you very well. Can you speak a little louder? 
 Its a long story! I shouted. Ill tell you about it after I get out of here. Right now, I
cant speak very loudly. 
 Is this your rope ladder up here? 
 Yes, it is. 
 How did you manage to raise it from there? Did you throw it? 
 Of course not! Why would I have done such a thing? How could I have done such a
thing? Of course not! Somebody pulled it up without telling me. 
 But that would just make it impossible for you to get out of there. 
 Of course it would, I said, as patiently as I could manage. Thats what happened. I
cant get out of here. So can you do me a favor and let the ladder down? That way, I can get
out. 
‘ Yes, of course. Ill do it now. 
 Wait a minute! Before you let it down, can you make sure its anchored to the base of the
tree? Otherwise- 
But she was not responding. It seemed there was no one there anymore. I focused as hard
as I could on the well mouth, but I couldnt see anyone. I took the flashlight from my sack
and aimed its beam aloft, but the light caught no human form. What it did reveal was the rope
ladder, hanging where it belonged, as if it had been there all the time. I released a deep sigh,
and as it left me, I felt a hard knot at the core of my body relax and melt away.
 Hey, there! Creta Kano! I shouted, but there was still no answer.
The hands on my watch showed one-oh-seven. One-oh-seven at night, of course. The stars
twinkling overhead told me that much. I slipped my knapsack on my back, took one deep
breath, and started up. The unstable rope ladder was difficult to climb. With each exertion,
every muscle, every bone and joint in my body, creaked and cried out. I took one careful step
at a time, and soon there was a growing hint of warmth in the surrounding air, and then a
distinct smell of grass. The cries of insects reached me now. I got my hands on the edge of the
well curb and with one last effort pulled myself over, all but rolling onto the soft surface of
the earth. That was it: I was aboveground again. For a while, I simply lay there on my back,
thinking of nothing. I looked up at the sky and sucked the air deep into my lungs over and
over-the thick, warmish air of a summer night, filled with the fresh smell of life. I could smell
the earth, smell the grass. The smell alone was enough to give my palms the soft sensation of
touching the earth and the grass. I wanted to take them both in my hands and devour them.
There were no longer any stars to be seen in the sky: not one. The stars up there were
visible only from the bottom of a well. All that hung in the sky was a nearly full, corpulent
moon.
How long I went on lying there I had no idea. For a long time, all I did was listen to the 
beating of my heart. I felt that I could go on living forever, doing only that-listening to the
beating of my heart. Eventually, though, I raised myself from the ground and surveyed my
surroundings. No one was there. The garden stretched out into the night, with the statue of the
bird staring off at the sky, as always. No lights shone inside May Kasaharas house. There
was only one mercury lamp burning in her yard, casting its pale, expressionless light as far as
the deserted alley. Where could Creta Kano have disappeared to?
In any case, the first thing to do was go home-to go home, drink something, eat
something, and take a nice, long shower. I probably stank something awful. I had to get rid of
that smell before anything else. Then I had to fill my empty stomach. Everything else would
come later.
I followed the usual route back home, but to my eyes the alley looked different,
unfamiliar. Maybe because of the strangely naked moonlight, signs of stagnation and
putrefaction stood out with unusual intensity, and I could smell something like the rotting
flesh of dead animals and the very definite stink of feces and urine. In many of the houses,
people were still up, talking or eating while they watched television. From one window
drifted the smell of greasy food, assaulting my brain and stomach. I passed by a groaning airconditioning
unit and received a bath of lukewarm air. I heard the sound of a shower and saw
the blurred shadow of a body on a bathroom window.
I managed to scale the wall behind my house and dropped down into the yard. From here,
the house looked pitch dark and almost seemed to be holding its breath. It retained no sense of
warmth or intimacy. It was supposed to be the house where I was carrying on my life day
after day, but now it was just an empty building without a trace of humanity. If I had any
home to go back to, though, this was it.
I stepped up to the veranda and slid open the glass door. Having been shut up for so long,
the air was heavy and stagnant. It smelled like a mixture of overripe fruit and insecticide. The
short note I had left on the kitchen table was still there. The dishes I had washed remained in
the same arrangement on the drainboard. From the stack I took a glass and filled it over and
over again, drinking water from the tap. The refrigerator had nothing special in it-a haphazard
collection of leftovers and partly used ingredients: eggs, ham, potato salad, eggplant, lettuce,
tomatoes, tofu, cream cheese, milk. I poured some of the milk on a bowl of cornflakes and ate
that. I should have been starved, but after beholding actual food in the refrigerator, I felt
hardly any hunger. If anything, I was a little nauseated. Still, to soften the pain of my empty
stomach, I followed the cornflakes with a few crackers. These did nothing to make me want to
eat more.
I went to the bathroom, took all my clothes off, and threw them into the washing machine.
Stepping under a hot shower, I scrubbed every inch of my body and washed my hair.
Kumikos nylon shower cap still hung in the bathroom. Her special shampoo was there, her
conditioner, and the plastic brush she used for shampooing. Her toothbrush. Her floss. Everything
looked the same as it had before she left. The only change brought about by her absence
was that one simple fact: Kumiko was no longer there.
I stood before the mirror and examined my face. It was covered with black stubble. After
a moment of hesitation, I decided not to shave. If I shaved now, I would probably cut myself.
Tomorrow morning would be fine. I didnt have to see anybody. I brushed my teeth, rinsed
my mouth out several times, and left the bathroom. Then I opened a beer, took tomato and
lettuce from the refrigerator, and made a salad. Once I had eaten that, I began to feel some
desire for food, so I took out some potato salad, spread it between two pieces of bread, and ate
it. I looked at the clock only once.
How many hours had I been down in the well? But just thinking about time made my head
throb. No, I did not want to think about time. That was one thing I most wanted to avoid
thinking about now.
I went to the toilet and took a long pee with my eyes closed. I could hardly believe how 
long it lasted. I felt I might pass out while I was standing there. Afterward, I went to the living
room, stretched out on the sofa, and stared at the ceiling. It was the strangest feeling: my body
was tired, but my mind was wide awake. I didnt feel the least bit sleepy.
•
It suddenly occurred to me to check the mailbox. Someone might have written to me
while I was in the well. I went to the entryway and found that a single letter had arrived. The
envelope bore no return address, but the handwriting on the front was obviously Kumikos,
each tiny character written-almost drawn-with great precision, like a design. It was a timeconsuming
style of writing, but it was the only way she knew. My eyes went immediately to
the postmark. It was smudged and barely legible, but I could make out the character taka and
possibly motsu. Takamatsu in Kagawa Prefecture? Kumiko didnt know anyone in
Takamatsu, as far as I was aware. The two of us had never gone there, and she had never said
anything about having taken the ferry to Shikoku or crossed the new bridge. The name
Takamatsu had simply never entered any of our conversations. Maybe it wasnt Takamatsu.
In any case, I brought the letter to the kitchen, sat down at the table, and used a scissors to
open the envelope, taking care not to cut the stationery within. To calm myself, I took a
swallow of my leftover beer.
 You must have been shocked and worried when I disappeared so suddenly without a
word, Kumiko had written in her usual Mont Blanc blue-black ink. The paper was the
standard thin letter paper sold everywhere.
I meant to write to you sooner and do a proper job of explaining everything, but the time
slipped by while I went on brooding over how I could express my feelings precisely or explain
my present situation so that you would understand. I feel very bad about this for you.
You may have begun to suspect by now that I was seeing a man. I was sexually involved
with him for close to three months. He was someone I met through work, someone you dont
know at all. Nor does it matter very much who he was. I will never see him again. For me, at
least, it is over. This may or may not be of some comfort to you.
Was I in love with him? There is no way I can answer that question. The question itself
seems irrelevant. Was I in love with you? To that I can answer without hesitation: Yes. I was
always extremely glad that I had married you. And I still feel that way. So why, you might ask,
did I have to have an affair and, to top it off, run away from home? I asked myself the same
question over and over again even while it was happening: Why do I have to be doing this?
There is no way I can explain it. I never had the slightest desire to take a lover or have an
affair. Such thoughts were the farthest thing from my mind when I first started seeing him. We
met a few times in connection with business, and though we did find it easy to talk to each
other, the most that happened after that was an occasional remark on the phone that went
beyond business. He was much older than I, had a wife and children, and was not particularly
attractive to me as a man: it never occurred to me that I might become seriously involved with
him.
This is not to say that I was entirely free of thoughts about getting even with you. It still
rankled me that you had once spent the night with a certain woman. I believed you when you
said that you hadnt done anything with her, but the mere fact that you hadnt done anything
with her didnt make it right. It was just how I felt. But still, I didnt have an affair in order to
get even with you. I remember I once said I would, but that was only a threat. I slept with him
because I wanted to sleep with him. Because couldnt bear not to sleep with him. Because I
couldnt suppress my own sexual desire.
We had not seen each other for some time, when we met on a business matter. We
followed this with dinner and then went somewhere for a quick drink. Since I cant drink, of 
course, all I had, to be sociable, was a glass of orange juice without a drop of alcohol in it. So
alcohol had nothing to do with what happened. We were just talking and eating in the most
ordinary way. But then one moment, by accident, we touched, and all I could think of was that
I wanted to be in his arms. The instant we touched, I knew that he wanted my body, and he
seemed to sense that I wanted his. It was a totally irrational, overwhelming charge of
electricity that passed between us. I felt as if the sky had fallen on me. My cheeks were
burning, my heart was pounding, and I had a heavy, melting feeling below the waist. I could
hardly sit straight on the barstool, it was so intense. At first I didnt realize what was
happening inside me, but soon I realized it was lust. I had such a violent desire for him that I
could hardly breathe. Without either of us being the first to suggest it, we walked to a nearby
hotel and went wild with sex.
Writing it out as graphically as this is probably going to hurt you, but I believe that, in the
long run, an honest, detailed account will be the best thing. It may be hard, but I want you to
bear the pain and read on.
What I did with him had virtually nothing to do with love. All I wanted was to be held
by him and have him inside me. Never in my life had I experienced such a suffocating need for
a mans body. I had read about unbearable desire in books, but until that day I could never
really imagine what such a phrase meant.
Why this need arose in me so suddenly, why it happened not with you but with someone
else, I have no idea. But the desire I felt then was impossible to suppress, nor did I even try.
Please understand: not for a moment did it occur to me that I was betraying you in any way.
The sex I had in that hotel bed with him was something close to madness. To be totally honest,
I had never in my life felt anything so good. No, it wasnt that simple: it didnt just feel
good. My flesh was rolling in hot mud. My mind sucked in the sheer pleasure to the point of
bursting-and then it burst. It was absolutely miraculous. It was one of the most wonderful
things that had ever happened to me.
And then, as you know, I kept it hidden all that time. You never realized that I was having
an affair. You never doubted me, even when I began coming home late. Im sure you trusted
me completely. You thought I could never betray you. And for betraying this trust of yours, I
had no sense of guilt. I would call you from the hotel room and say that work was going to
keep me out late. I piled one lie on top of another, but they caused me no pain. It seemed like
the most natural thing in the world to do. My heart needed my life with you. The home I
shared with you was the place where I belonged. It was the world I belonged to. But my body
had this violent need for sex with him. Half of me was here, and half there. I knew that sooner
or later the break would have to come, but at the time, it felt as if this double life would go on
forever. Over here I was living peacefully with you, and over there I was making violent love
with him.
I want you to understand one thing, at least. This was never a matter of your being
sexually inferior to him or lacking in sex appeal, or my being tired of sex with you. It was just
that, at that time, my body experienced this violent, irrepressible hunger. I could do nothing
to resist it. Why such things happen I have no idea. All I can say is that it did happen. A few
times during the weeks that I was sleeping with him, I thought about having sex with you too.
It seemed unfair to me, for your sake, that I would sleep with him but not with you. But in
your arms, I had ceased to feel anything at all. You must have noticed. For close to two
months, I made up all kinds of excuses to avoid having sexual relations with you.
But then one day, he asked me to leave you for him. We were so perfectly matched, he
said, that there was no reason for us not to be together. He would leave his family, he said. I
asked him to give me time to think about it. But on the train home after I left him that night, I
realized that I no longer felt a thing for him. I dont understand it myself, but the moment he
asked me to join him, that special something inside me disappeared as if a strong wind had
come up and blown it away. My desire for him was gone without a trace.
That was when I started to feel guilty toward you. As I wrote earlier, I had felt nothing of
the sort the whole time I was feeling intense desire for him. All had felt was how convenient
it was that you had noticed nothing. I thought I could get away with anything, as (ong as you
failed to notice. My connection with him belonged to a different world from my connection
with you. After my desire for him evaporated, though, I no longer knew where I was.
 have always thought of myself as an honest person. True, I have my faults. But where
important things were concerned, I had never lied to anyone or deceived myself. had never
hidden anything from you. That had been one small source of pride for me. But then, for
months, went on telling you those fatal lies without a twinge of regret.
That very fact is what started to torment me. It made me feel as if I were an empty,
meaningless, worthless person. And in fact, that is probably what I am. But there is one other
thing, in addition, that continues to bother me, and that is: how did I suddenly come to feel
such intense, abnormal sexual desire for a man I didnt even love? This is what I simply
cannot grasp. If it hadnt been for that desire, I would still be enjoying my happy life with
you. And that man would still be a nice friend to chat with on occasion. But that feeling, that
incredible, overwhelming lust, tore down everything we had built up over the years. It took
away everything that was mine: it took away you, and the home that we had made together,
and my work. Why did such a thing have to happen?
After I had my abortion three years ago, I told you that there was something I had to say
to you. Do you remember? Perhaps I should have done it. Perhaps I should have told you
everything that was in my heart before things came to this. This might never have happened if
I had done so. But now that it has happened- even now-I dont believe that I would be able to
tell you what I was feeling then. And that is because it seems to me that once I put it into
words, things would be even more decisively ruined than they are now. Which is why came
to feel that the best thing I could do was to swallow it all and disappear.
I am sorry to have to tell you this, but the fact is that I was never able to have true sexual
pleasure with you, either before or after we were married. I loved it when you held me in your
arms, but all I ever felt was a vague, far-off sense that almost seemed to belong to someone
else. This is in no way your fault. My inability to feel was purely and simply my own
responsibility. There was some kind of blockage inside me, which would always hold any
sexual feeling had in check. When, for reasons I cannot grasp, that blocfeage was swept
away by sex with him, I no longer had any idea what I should do.
There was always something very close and delicate between us, you and me. It was there
from the very beginning. But now it has been lost forever. That perfect meshing of the gears,
that mythical something, has been destroyed. Because I destroyed it. Or more accurately,
some kind of something made me destroy it. I am terribly sorry it ever happened. Not
everyone is lucky enough to have such a chance as I had with you. I hate the thing that caused
all this to happen. You have no idea how much I hate it. I want to know precisely what it is. I
have to know precisely what it is. I have to search out its roots and judge and punish it.
Whether I actually have the strength to do so, I cannot be sure. One thing is certain, however:
this is my problem alone. It has nothing to do with you.
I have only one thing to ask of you, and that is this: please dont concern yourself about
me anymore. Please dont try to find me. Just forget about me and think about beginning a
new life. Where my family is concerned, I will do the proper thing: I will write to them and
explain that this is all my fault, that you are in no way responsible. They will not cause you
any trouble. Formal divorce proceedings will begin fairly soon, I think. That will be best for
both of us. So please dont protest. Just go along with them. As far as the clothing and other
things I have left behind are concerned, Im sorry, but please just dispose of them or donate
them somewhere. Everything belongs to the past now. Anything I ever used in my life with you
I have no right to use now.
Goodbye. 
I read the letter one more time from beginning to end and returned it to its envelope. Then
I took another can of beer from the refrigerator and drank it.
If Kumiko was planning to institute divorce proceedings, that meant she had no intention
of killing herself right away. That gave me some relief. But then I ran up against the fact that I
had not had sex with anyone for almost two months. As she had said in her letter, Kumiko had
resisted sleeping with me all that time. She had symptoms of a mild bladder infection, she
said, and the doctor had told her to refrain from sex for a while. And of course I had believed
her. I had no reason not to.
During those two months, I had had relations with women in my dreams- or in some
world that, within the limits of my vocabulary, I could only call a dream- with Creta Kano
and with the telephone woman. But now that I thought about it, two months had gone by since
the last time I had slept with a real woman in the real world. Lying on the sofa, staring at my
own hands atop my chest, I thought about the last time I had seen Kumikos body. I thought
about the soft curve of her back when I zipped her dress up, and the smell of cologne behind
her ears. If what she said in the letter was the irrevocable truth, however, I would probably
never sleep with Kumiko again. She had written it with such clarity and finality: what else
could it be but the irrevocable truth?
The more I thought about the possibility that my relationship with Kumiko had become a
thing of the past, the more I began to miss the gentle warmth of that body that had once
belonged to me. I had enjoyed sleeping with her. Of course, I had enjoyed it before we were
married, but even after some years had gone by and the initial thrill had faded somewhat, I
enjoyed having sex with Kumiko. Her slender back, the nape of her neck, her legs, her
breasts-I could recall the touch of every part of her with present vividness. I could recall all
the things I had done for her and she had done for me in the course of our sexual union.
But now Kumiko had joined her body with that of someone I did not know-and with an
intensity I could hardly imagine. She had discovered in that a pleasure she had been unable to
obtain from sex with me. Probably, while she was doing it with him, she had squirmed and
writhed enough to make the bed toss and had released groans loud enough to be audible in the
next room. She had probably done things with him that she would never have done with me. I
went and opened the refrigerator, took out a beer, and drank it. Then I ate some potato salad.
Wanting to hear music, I turned on the FM radio, tuning in to a classical station at low
volume. Im so tired today, Kumiko would say. Im just not in the mood. Im sorry.
Really. 
Id answer, Thats OK, no big deal. When Tchaikovskys Serenade for Strings ended, a
little piano piece came on that sounded like something by Schumann. It was familiar, but I
couldnt recall the title. When it was over, the female announcer said it had been the seventh
of Schumanns Forest Scenes, titled Bird as Prophet. I imagined Kumiko twisting her hips
beneath the other man, raising her legs, planting her fingernails in his back, drooling on the
sheets. The announcer explained that Schumann had created a scene of fantasy in which a
mysterious bird lived in the forest, foretelling the future.
What had I ever known about Kumiko? Soundlessly, I crushed the empty beer can in my
hand and threw it into the trash. Could it be true that the Kumiko I had thought I understood,
the Kumiko I had held close to me and joined my body with over the years as my wife-that
Kumiko was nothing but the most superficial layer of the person Kumiko herself, just as the
greater part of this world belongs in fact to the realm of the jellyfish? If so, what about those
six years we had spent together? What had they been? What had they meant?
•
I was reading Kumikos letter yet again when the phone rang. The sound shot me out of 
the sofa. Who could possibly be calling at two in the morning? Kumiko? No, she would never
call here. Probably May Kasahara. She had seen me leave the empty house and decided to
give me a call. Or possibly Creta Kano. She wanted to explain why she had disappeared. It
could be the telephone woman. She might be trying to convey some message to me. May
Kasahara had been right: there were just a few too many women around me. I wiped the sweat
from my face with a towel that lay nearby, and when I was ready I lifted the receiver. Hello, 
I said. Hello, came the voice from the other end. It did not belong to May Kasahara. Neither
was it Creta Kanos voice, or the voice of the enigmatic woman. It was Malta Kano.
 Hello, she said, is that Mr. Okada? My name is Malta Kano. I wonder if you remember
me? 
 Of course. I remember you very well, I said, trying to still the pounding of my heart.
How could I not have remembered her?
 I must apologize for telephoning you so late at night. This is something of an emergency,
however. I fully recognized what a rude intrusion this would be and how angry it would make
you, but I felt compelled to place the call nevertheless. I am terribly sorry. 
She need not be concerned, I assured her: I was up, in any case, and not the least bit
bothered.
 
Discovered When Shaving
 
Discovered When Waking
 The reason I am calling you so late at night, Mr. Okada, is that I felt I should reach you at
the earliest possible opportunity, said Malta Kano. Listening to her speak, I had the
impression that she was choosing and arranging each word into well-ordered sentences
according to strict principles of logic-which was what she always did. If you have no objection,
there are several questions that I wish to be permitted to ask you, Mr. Okada. May I
proceed? 
Receiver in hand, I lowered myself onto the sofa, Go right ahead, ask me anything youd
like, I said.
 Have you by any chance been away these past two days, Mr. Okada? I tried telephoning
you any number of times, but you seemed always to be out. 
 Well, yes, I was out. I wanted to get away from the house for a while. I needed to be
alone to do some thinking. Ive got lots of things I need to think about. 
 Yes, Mr. Okada, I am very much aware of that. I understand how you feel. A change of
scene can be a very good thing when one wishes to think clearly and carefully about
something. In this case, however, Mr. Okada- and I know this will sound as if I am pryingwere
you not somewhere very far away? 
 Well, not so very far away, I said, with deliberate ambiguity. I switched the receiver
from my left hand to my right. How can I put this? I was in a somewhat cut-off place. I
really cant go into it, though, in great detail. I have my reasons. And I just got back a little
while ago. Im too tired for long explanations. 
 Of course, Mr. Okada. I understand. All people have their reasons. I will not press you to 
explain. You must be very tired indeed: I can tell from the sound of your voice. Please do not
concern yourself about me. I should not be bothering you with a lot of questions at a time like
this. I am terribly sorry. We can always discuss this matter at a more appropriate time. I know
it was terribly rude of me to ask such a personal question, but I did so only because I was
worried that something very bad had happened to you over the past several days. 
I tried to make an appropriate response, but the little noise that came out of my throat
sounded less like a response than like the gasp of an aquatic animal that had breathed the
wrong way. Something very bad, I thought. Of all the things that were happening to me,
which were bad and which were not bad? Which were all right and which were not all right?
 Thank you for being so concerned about me, I said, after getting my voice to work
properly, but Im fine at the moment. I cant say that something good happened to me, but
theres been nothing especially bad, either. 
 I am glad to hear that. 
 Im just tired, thats all, I added.
Malta Kano made a dainty little sound of clearing her throat. By the way, Mr. Okada, I
wonder if you might have noticed some kind of major physical change during the past few
days? 
 A physical change? In me? 
 Yes, Mr. Okada. Some kind of change in your body. 
I raised my face and looked at my reflection in the glass patio door, but I couldnt make
out anything that could be called a physical change. I had scrubbed every part of my body in
the shower but had noticed nothing then, either. What kind of change did you have in mind? 
I asked.
 I have no idea what it might be, but it should be very obvious to anyone who looks at
you. 
I stretched my left hand open atop the table and stared at the palm, but it was just my
usual palm. It had not changed in any way that I could perceive. It had not become covered in
gold foil, nor had it developed webs between the fingers. It was neither beautiful nor ugly.
 When you say that it should be very obvious to anyone who looks at me, what do you mean?
Something like wings sprouting on my back? 
 It could be something like that, said Malta Kano, in her usual even tone. Of course, I
mean that as one possibility. 
 Of course, I said.
 So, then, have you noticed some such change? 
 Not really. Not so far, at least. I mean, if wings had sprouted on my back, I probably
couldnt help but notice, dont you think? 
 Probably not, said Malta Kano. But do be careful, Mr. Okada. To know ones own
state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at ones own face with ones own eyes,
for example. One has no choice but to look at ones reflection in the mirror. Through
experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all. 
 Ill be careful, I said.
 I do have one more thing I would like to ask you about, Mr. Okada. For some time now,
I have been unable to establish contact with my sister -just as I lost contact with you. It may
be a coincidence, but I find it very strange. I was wondering if, perhaps, you might have some
knowledge of the circumstances behind this. 
 Creta Kano?! 
 Yes, said Malta Kano. Does anything come to mind in that regard? 
No, nothing came to mind, I replied. I had no clear basis for thinking so, but I felt that for
the time being, it would be better if I said nothing to Malta Kano about the fact that I had
recently spoken with Creta Kano in person and that, immediately afterward, she had
disappeared. It was just a feeling.
 I was worried about having lost contact with you, Mr. Okada. She went out last night,
saying that she planned to visit your home and see what she could find there, but even at this
late hour she has not returned. And for some reason, I can no longer sense her presence. 
 I see. Well, if she should happen to come here, Ill tell her to contact you right away, I
said.
Malta Kano remained silent for some time at her end of the line. To tell you the truth,
Mr. Okada, I am worried about her. As you know, the work that she and I do is far from
ordinary. But she is not as well versed in matters of that world as I am. I do not mean to imply
that she is not gifted. In fact, she is very gifted. But she is not yet fully acclimated to her gift. 
 I see. 
Malta Kano fell silent once again. This silence was longer than the last one. I sensed a
certain indecision on her part.
 Hello. Are you still there? I asked.
 Yes, Mr. Okada, I am still here, she replied.
 If I see her, Ill be sure to tell her to get in touch with you, I said again.
 Thank you very much, said Malta Kano. Then, after apologizing for the late-night call,
she hung up. I hung up, too, and looked at my reflection in the glass one more time. Then the
thought struck me: I might never speak with Malta Kano again. This could be the last contact
I would ever have with her. She could disappear from my life forever. I had no special reason
for thinking this: it was just a feeling that came to me.
•
Suddenly I thought about the rope ladder. I had left it hanging down in the well. Probably,
the sooner I retrieved it, the better. Problems could arise if someone found it there. And then
there was the sudden disappearance of Creta Kano. I had last seen her at the well.
I shoved my flashlight into my pocket, put on my shoes, stepped down into the garden,
and climbed over the wall again. Then I passed down the alley to the vacant house. May
Kasaharas house was pitch dark. The hands of my watch were nearing : a.m. I entered the
yard of the vacant house and went straight for the well. The rope ladder was still anchored to
the base of the tree and hanging down into the well, which was still just half open.
Something prompted me to peer down into the well and call Creta Kanos name in a kind
of whispered shout. There was no answer. I pulled out my flashlight and aimed it down the
well. The beam did not reach bottom, but I heard a tiny moaning sort of sound. I tried calling
the name again.
 Its all right. Im here, said Creta Kano.
 What are you doing in a place like this? I asked, in a low voice.
 What am I doing? Im doing the same thing you were doing, Mr. Okada, she replied,
with obvious puzzlement. Im thinking. This really is a perfect place for thinking, isnt it? 
 Well, yes, I guess it is, I said. But your sister called me at home a little while ago.
Shes very worried about your disappearance. Its the middle of the night and youre still not
home, and she says she cant feel your presence. She wanted me to tell you to get in touch
with her right away if I heard from you. 
 I see. Well, thank you for taking the trouble. 
 Never mind about that, Creta Kano. Will you do me a favor and come out of there? I
have to talk to you. She did not reply.
I switched off my flashlight and returned it to my pocket. Why dont you come down
here, Mr. Okada? The two of us could sit here and talk. 
It might not be a bad idea, I thought, to climb down into the well again and talk with Creta
Kano, but then I thought about the moldy darkness at the bottom of the well and got a heavy
feeling in my stomach.
 No, sorry, but Im not going down there again. And you ought to come out, too.
Somebody might pull the ladder up again. And the air is stale. 
 I know that. But I want to stay down here a little longer. Dont worry yourself about me. 
There was nothing I could do as long as Creta Kano had no intention of coming out of the
well.
 When I talked to your sister on the phone, I didnt tell her I saw you here. I hope that was
the right thing to do. I just sort of had this feeling that itd be better to say nothing. 
 You were right, said Creta Kano. Please dont tell my sister I am here. A moment
later, she added, I dont want to worry her, but I need a chance to think sometimes too. I will
come out as soon as I am done. I would like to be alone now, if you would be so kind. I will
not cause you any trouble. 
I decided to leave her and go back to the house for the time being. I could come in the
morning and check up on her. If May Kasahara should pull the ladder up again during the
night, I could deal with the situation then and manage to help Creta Kano climb out of the
well one way or another. I went home, undressed, and stretched out in bed. Picking up the
book I had been reading, I opened it to my place. I felt I was too much on edge to get to sleep
right away, but before I had read two full pages, I realized I was dozing off. I closed the book,
turned out the light, and in the next moment was sound asleep.
•
It was nine-thirty in the morning by the time I awoke. Concerned about Creta Kano, I
dressed without bothering to wash my face and hurried down the alley to the vacant house.
The clouds hung low in the sky, and the humid morning air seemed to threaten rain at any
moment. The rope ladder was gone from the well. Someone must have untied it from the base
of the tree and carried it off somewhere. Both halves of the well cover were set tightly in
place, with a stone atop each half. Opening one side and peering down into the well, I called
Creta Kanos name. There was no answer. I tried a few more times, waiting after each call.
Thinking she might be asleep, I tossed a few pebbles inside, but there no longer seemed to be
anybody in the bottom of the well. Creta Kano had probably climbed out of the well when
morning came, untied the ladder, and taken it off with her. I set the cover in place and moved
away from the well.
In the alley again, I leaned against the fence of the vacant house, watching May
Kasaharas house for a time. I thought she might notice me there, as she usually did, and
come out, but there was no sign of her. The surroundings were absolutely hushed-no people,
no noises of any kind, not even the cry of a cicada. I passed the time digging at the surface of
the ground with the toe of my shoe. Something felt different about the neighborhood,
unfamiliar-as if, in the days I was down in the well, the old reality of this place had been
shoved away by a new reality, which had settled in and taken over. I had been feeling this,
somewhere deep down, ever since I had emerged from the well and gone home.
Walking back down the alley to my house, I went into the bathroom and brushed my
teeth. Several days worth of black stubble covered my face. I looked like a newly rescued
shipwreck victim. This was the first time in my life I had ever let my beard grow so long. I
toyed with the idea of really letting it grow out but after a few moments thought decided to
shave it. For some reason, it just seemed better to keep the face I had had when Kumiko left.
I softened up my beard with a hot towel and covered my face with a thick layer of shaving
cream. I then proceeded to shave, slowly and carefully, so as-to avoid cutting myself: first the
chin, then the left cheek, then the right cheek. As I was finishing the right cheek, what I saw
in the mirror made me catch my breath. It was a blue-black stain of some kind. At first I
thought I might accidentally have smeared myself with something. I wiped off the remaining
traces of shaving cream, gave my face a good washing with soap and water, and scrubbed at 
the stained area with a washcloth. But still the stain would not come off. It seemed to have
penetrated deep into the skin. I stroked it with a finger. That one patch of skin felt just slightly
warmer than the rest of my face, but otherwise it had no special feeling. It was a mark. I had a
mark on my cheek in the exact location where, in the well, I had had the sensation of heat.
I brought my face up to the mirror and examined the mark with the utmost care. Located
just beyond the right cheekbone, it was about the size of an infants palm. Its bluish color was
close to black, like the blue-black Mont Blanc ink that Kumiko always used.
One possible explanation was that this was an allergic reaction. I might have come in
contact with something in the well that caused an eruption of the skin, the way lacquer can do.
But what could there have been down there, in the bottom of the well, to give rise to such a
thing? I had examined every nook and cranny of the place with my flashlight, finding nothing
there but the dirt bottom and the concrete wall. Besides, did allergies or eruptions ever leave
such clearly outlined marks?
A mild panic overtook me. For a few moments, I lost all sense of direction, as when a
huge wave crashes over you at the beach, dragging you in. The washcloth fell from my hand.
I knocked over the wastebasket and stubbed my foot against something, mumbling
meaningless syllables all the while. Then I managed to regain my composure and, leaning
against the sink, began thinking calmly about how to deal with this fact.
The best thing I could do for now was to wait and see. I could always go to a doctor
afterward. It might be a temporary condition, something that would heal itself, like a lacquer
eruption. It had formed in a few short days, so it might disappear just as easily. I went to the
kitchen and made myself some coffee. I was hungry, but whenever I actually tried to eat anything,
my appetite would vanish like water in a mirage.
I stretched out on the sofa and watched the rain that had begun to fall. Every now and then
I would go to the bathroom and look in the mirror, but I could see no change in the mark. It
had dyed that area of my cheek a deep, dark-almost handsome-blue.
I could think of only one thing that might have caused this, and that Was my having
passed through the wall in my predawn dreamlike illusion in the well, the telephone woman
leading me by the hand. She had pulled me through the wall so that we could escape from the
dangerous someone who had opened the door and was coming into the room. The moment I
passed through the wall, I had had the clear sensation of heat on my cheek-in the exact spot
where I now had this mark. Of course, whatever causal connection there might be between my
passing through the wall and the forming of a mark on my face remained unexplained.
The man without a face had spoken to me in the hotel lobby. This is the wrong time, he
had warned me. You dont belong here now. But I had ignored his warning and continued
on. I was angry at Noboru Wataya, angry at my own confusion. And as a result, perhaps, I had
received this mark.
Perhaps the mark was a brand that had been impressed on me by that strange dream or
illusion or whatever it was. That was no dream, they were telling me through the mark: It
really happened. And every time you look in the mirror now, you will be forced to remember
it.
I shook my head. Too many things were being left unexplained. The one thing I
understood for sure was that I didnt understand a thing. A dull throbbing started in my head.
I couldnt think anymore. I felt no urge to do anything. I took a sip of lukewarm coffee and
went on watching the rain.
•
After noon, I called my uncle for some small talk. I needed to talk to someone- it didnt
matter much who-to do something about this feeling I had that I was being ripped away from
the world of reality.
When he asked how Kumiko was doing, I said fine and let it go at that. She was on a short
business trip at the moment, I added. I could have told him honestly what had been
happening, but to put the recent events into some kind of order that would make sense to a
third party would have been impossible. They didnt make much sense to me, so how could I
explain them to someone else? I decided to keep the truth from my uncle for the time being.
 You used to live in this house, didnt you? I asked.
 Sure did, he said. Six or seven years altogether. Wait a minute... I bought the place
when I was thirty-five and lived there till I was forty-two. Seven years. Moved into this condo
when I got married. I lived there alone that whole time. 
 I was just wondering, did anything bad happen to you while you were here? 
 Anything bad? Like what? 
 Like you got sick or you split up with a woman or something. 
My uncle gave a hearty laugh on his end of the line. I split up with more than one
woman, thats for sure. But not just while I was living there. Nah, I couldnt count that as
something especially bad. Nobody I hated to lose, tell you the truth. As far as getting sick
goes... hmm. No, I dont think so. I had a little growth removed from the back of my neck,
but thats about all I remember. The barber found it, said I ought to have it removed just to be
safe. So I went to the doctor, but it turned out to be nothing much. That was the first time I
went to see the doctor while I was living in that house-and the last. I ought to get a rebate on
my health insurance! 
 No bad memories you associate with the place, then? 
 Nope, none, said my uncle, after he had thought about it for a moment. But whats this
about, all of a sudden? 
 Nothing much, I said. Kumiko saw a fortune-teller the other day and came home with
an earful about this house-that its unlucky, things like that, I lied. I think its nonsense, but
I promised to ask you about it. 
 Hmm. What do they call it? ‘House physiognomy? I dont know anything about that
stuff. You couldnt tell by me. But Ive lived in the place, and my impression is that its OK,
it doesnt have any problems. Miyawakis place is another matter, of course, but youre pretty
far away from there. 
 What kind of people lived here after you moved out? I asked.
 Lets see: after me a high school teacher and his family lived there for three years, and
then a young couple for five years. He ran some kind of business, but I dont remember what
it was. I cant swear that everybody lived a happy life in that house: I had a real estate agent
managing the place for me. I never met the people, and I dont know why they moved out, but
I never heard about anything bad that happened to any of them. I just assumed the place got a
little small for them and they wanted to build their own houses, that kind of thing. 
 Somebody once told me that the flow of this place has been obstructed. Does that ring a
bell? 
 The flow has been obstructed? 
 I dont know what it means, either, I said. Its just what they told me. 
My uncle thought it over for a while. No, nothing comes to mind. But it might have been
a bad idea to fence off both ends of the alley. A road without an entrance or exit is a strange
thing, when you stop to think about it. The fundamental principle of things like roads and
rivers is for them to flow. Block them and they stagnate. 
 I see what you mean, I said. Now, theres one more thing I need to ask you. Did you
ever hear the cry of the wind-up bird in this neighborhood? 
 The wind-up bird, said my uncle. Whats that? 
I explained simply about the wind-up bird, how it came to the tree out back once a day
and made that spring-winding cry.
 Thats news to me, he said. Ive never seen or heard one. I like birds, and Ive always 
made a point of listening to their cries, but this is the first time Ive ever heard of such a thing.
You mean it has something to do with the house? 
 No, not really. I was just wondering if youd ever heard of it. 
 You know, if you really want the lowdown on things like this- the people who lived there
after me and that kind of stuff-you ought to talk to old Mr. Ichikawa, the real estate agent
across from the station. Thats Setagaya Dai-ichi Realtors. Tell him I sent you. He handled
that house for me for years. Hes been living in the neighborhood forever, and he just might
tell you everything youd ever want to know. Hes the one who told me about the Miyawaki
house. Hes one of those old guys that love to talk. You ought to go see him. 
 Thanks. I will, I said.
 So anyway, hows the job hunt going? 
 Nothing yet. To tell you the truth, I havent been looking very hard. Kumikos working,
and Im taking care of the house, and were managing for now. 
My uncle seemed to be thinking about something for a few moments. Then he said, Let
me know if it ever gets to the point where you just cant make it. I might be able to give you a
hand. 
 Thanks, I said. I will. And so our conversation ended.
I thought about calling the old real estate broker and asking him about the background of
this house and about the people who had lived here before me, but it seemed ridiculous even
to be thinking about such nonsense. I decided to forget it.
The rain kept falling at the same gentle rate into the afternoon, wetting the roofs of the
houses, wetting the trees in the yards, wetting the earth. I had toast and soup for lunch and
spent the rest of the afternoon on the sofa. I wanted to do some shopping, but the thought of
the mark on my face made me hesitate. I was sorry I hadnt let my beard grow. I still had
some vegetables in the refrigerator, and there was canned stuff in the cupboard. I had rice and
I had eggs. I could feed myself for another two or three days if I kept my expectations low.
Lying on the sofa, I did no thinking at all. I read a book, I listened to a classical music
tape, I stared out at the rain falling in the garden. My cogitative powers seemed to have
reached an all-time low, thanks perhaps to that long period of all-too-concentrated thinking in
the dark well bottom. If I tried to think seriously about anything, I felt a dull ache in my head,
as if it were being squeezed in the jaws of a padded vise. If I tried to recall anything, every
muscle and nerve in my body seemed to creak with the effort. I felt I had turned into the tin
man from The Wizard of Oz, my joints rusted and in need of oil.
Every now and then I would go to the lavatory and examine the condition of the mark on
my face, but it remained unchanged. It neither spread nor shrank. The intensity of its color
neither increased nor decreased. At one point, I noticed that I had left some hair unshaved on
my upper lip. In my confusion at discovering the mark on my right cheek, I had forgotten to
finish shaving. I washed my face again, spread on shaving cream, and took off what was left.
In the course of my occasional trips to the mirror, I thought of what Malta Kano had said
on the phone: that I should be careful; that through experience, we come to believe that the
image in the mirror is correct. To make certain, I went to the bedroom and looked at my face
in the full-length mirror that Kumiko used whenever she got dressed. But the mark was still
there. It was not just something in the other mirror.
I felt no physical abnormality aside from the mark. I took my temperature, but it was the
same as always. Other than the fact that I felt little hunger, for someone who had not eaten in
almost three days, and that I experienced a slight nausea every now and then (which was
probably a continuation of what I had felt in the bottom of the well), my body was entirely
normal.
The afternoon was a quiet one. The phone never rang. No letters arrived. No one came
down the alley. No voices of neighbors disturbed the stillness. No cats crossed the garden, no
birds came and called. Now and then a cicada would cry, but not with the usual intensity.
I began to feel some hunger just before seven oclock, so I fixed myself a dinner of
canned food and vegetables. I listened to the evening news on the radio for the first time in
ages, but nothing special had been happening in the world. Some teenagers had been killed in
an accident on the expressway when the driver of their car had failed in his attempt to pass
another car and crashed into a wall. The branch manager and staff of a major bank were under
police investigation in connection with an illegal loan they had made. A thirty-six-year-old
housewife from Machida had been beaten to death with a hammer by a young man on the
street. But these were all events from some other, distant world. The only thing happening in
my world was the rain falling in the yard. Soundlessly. Gently. When the clock showed nine, I
moved from the sofa to bed, and after finishing a chapter of the book I had started, I turned
out the light and went to sleep.
I awoke with a start in the middle of some kind of dream. I could not recall what had been
happening in the dream, but it had obviously been one filled with tension, because my heart
was pounding. The room was still pitch dark. For a time after I awoke, I could not remember
where I was. A good deal of time had to go by before I realized that I was in my own house,
in my own bed. The hands of the alarm clock showed it to be just after two in the morning.
My irregular sleeping habits in the well were probably responsible for these unpredictable
cycles of sleep and wakefulness. Once my confusion died down, I felt the need to urinate. It
was probably the beer Id drunk. I would have preferred to go back to sleep, but I had no
choice in the matter. When I resigned myself to the fact and sat up in bed, my hand brushed
against the skin of the person sleeping next to me. This came as no surprise. That was where
Kumiko always slept. I was used to having someone sleeping by my side. But then I realized
that Kumiko wasnt with me anymore. She had left the house. Some other person was
sleeping next to me.
I held my breath and turned on the light by the bed. It was Creta Kano.
 
C r e t a K a n o s Story C o n t i n u e d
Creta Kano was stark naked. Facing toward my side of the bed, she lay there asleep, with
nothing on, not even a cover, revealing two well-shaped breasts, two small pink nipples, and,
below a perfectly flat stomach, a black triangle of pubic hair, looking like a shaded area in a
drawing. Her skin was very white, with a newly minted glow. At a loss to explain her
presence here, I nevertheless went on staring at her beautiful body. She had her knees closed
tightly together and slightly bent, her legs in perfect alignment. Her hair fell forward, covering
half her face, which made it impossible for me to see her eyes, but she was obviously in a
deep sleep: my turning on the bedside lamp had caused not the slightest tremble, and her
breathing was quiet and regular. I myself, though, was now wide awake. I took a thin summer
comforter from the closet and spread it over her. Then I turned out the lamp and, still in my
pajamas, went to the kitchen to sit at the table for a while.
I recalled my mark. That patch on my cheek was still slightly warm to the touch. It was
still there, all right-I had no need to look in the mirror. It wasnt the kind of little nothing that
just disappears by itself overnight. I thought about looking up a nearby dermatologist in the
phone book when it got light out, but how could I answer if a doctor asked me what I thought 
the cause might be? I was in a well for two or three days. No, it had nothing to do with work
or anything; I was just there to do a little thinking. I figured the bottom of a well would be a
good place for that. No, I didnt take any food with me. No, it wasnt on my property; it
belonged to another house. A vacant house in the neighborhood. I went in without permission.
I sighed. I could never say these things to anyone, of course.
I set my elbows on the table and, without really intending to, found myself thinking in
strangely vivid detail about Creta Kanos naked body. She was sound asleep in my bed. I
thought about the time in my dream when I joined my body with hers as she wore Kumikos
dress. I still had a clear impression of the touch of her skin, the weight of her flesh. Without a
step-by-step investigation of that event, I would not be able to distinguish the point at which
the real ended and the unreal took over. The wall separating the two regions had begun to
melt. In my memory, at least, the real and the unreal seemed to be residing together with
equal weight and vividness. I had joined my body with Creta Kanos, and at the same time, I
had not.
To clear my head of these jumbled sexual images, I had to go to the washbasin and splash
my face with cold water. A little while later, I looked in on Creta Kano. She was still sound
asleep. She had pushed the cover down to her waist. From where I stood, I could see only her
back. It reminded me of my last view of Kumikos back. Now that I thought about it, Creta
Kanos figure was amazingly like Kumikos. I had failed to notice the resemblance until now
because their hair and their taste in clothes and their makeup were so utterly different. They
were the same height and appeared to be about the same weight. They probably wore the
same dress size.
I carried my own summer comforter to the living room, stretched out on the sofa, and
opened my book. I had been reading a history book from the library. It was all about Japanese
management of Manchuria before the war and the battle with the Soviets in Nomonhan.
Lieutenant Mamiyas story had aroused my interest in continental affairs of the period, and I
had borrowed several books on the subject. Now, however, less than ten minutes into the
finely detailed historical narrative, I was falling asleep. I laid the book on the floor, intending
to rest my eyes for a few moments, but I fell into a deep sleep, with the lights still on.
A sound from the kitchen woke me up. When I went to investigate, Creta Kano was there,
making breakfast, wearing a white T-shirt and blue shorts, both of which belonged to
Kumiko.
 Where are your clothes? I demanded, standing in the kitchen door.
 Oh, Im sorry. You were asleep, so I took the liberty of borrowing some of your wifes
clothing. I knew it was terribly forward of me, but I didnt have a thing to wear, said Creta
Kano, turning just her head to look at me. At some point since I last saw her, she had reverted
to her usual sixties style of hair and makeup, lacking only the fake eyelashes.
 No, thats no problem, I said. What I want to know is what happened to your clothes. 
 I lost them, she said simply.
 Lost them? 
 Yes. I lost them somewhere. 
I stepped into the kitchen and watched, leaning against the table, as Creta Kano made an
omelette. With deft movements, she cracked the eggs, added seasoning, and beat the mixture.
 Meaning you came here naked? 
 Yes, that is correct, said Creta Kano, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I
was completely naked. You know that, Mr. Okada. You put the cover on me. 
 Well, true enough, I mumbled. But what Id like to know is, where and how did you
lose your clothing, and how did you manage to get here with nothing on? 
 I dont know that any better than you do, said Creta Kano, while shaking the frying pan
to fold the omelette over on itself.
 You dont know that any better than I do, I said. Creta Kano slipped the omelette onto a 
plate and garnished it with a few stalks of freshly steamed broccoli. She had also made toast,
which she set on the table, along with coffee. I put out the butter and salt and pepper. Then,
like a newly married couple, we sat down to breakfast, facing each other.
It was then that I recalled my mark. Creta Kano had shown no surprise when she looked at
me, and she asked me nothing about it. I reached up to touch the spot and found it slightly
warm, as before. Does that hurt, Mr. Okada? No, not at all, I said.
Creta Kano stared at my face for a time. It looks like a mark, she said.
 It looks like a mark to me too, I said. Im wondering whether I should show it to a
doctor or not. 
 It strikes me as something that a doctor would not be able to handle. 
 You may be right, I said. But I cant just ignore it. 
Fork in hand, Creta Kano thought for a moment. If you have shopping or other business,
I could do it for you. You can stay inside as long as you like, if you would rather not go out. 
 Im grateful for the offer, but you must have your own things to do, and I cant just stay
holed up in here forever. 
Creta Kano thought about that for a while too. Malta Kano would probably know how to
deal with this. 
 Would you mind getting in touch with her for me, then? 
 Malta Kano gets in touch with other people, but she does not allow other people to get in
touch with her. Creta Kano bit into a piece of broccoli.
 But_you can get in touch with her, Im sure? 
 Of course. Were sisters. 
 Well, next time you talk to her, why dont you ask her about my mark? Or you could ask
her to get in touch with me. 
 I am sorry, but that is something I cannot do. I am not allowed to approach my sister on
someone elses behalf. Its a sort of rule we have. 
Buttering my toast, I let out a sigh. You mean to say, if I have something I need to talk to
Malta Kano about, all I can do is wait for her to get in touch with me? 
 That is exactly what I mean, said Creta Kano. Then she nodded. But about that mark.
Unless it hurts or itches, I suggest that you forget about it for a while. I never let things like
that bother me. And you should not let it bother you, either, Mr. Okada. People just get these
things sometimes. 
 I wonder, I said.
For several minutes after that, we went on eating our breakfast in silence. I hadnt eaten
breakfast with another person for quite a while now, and this one was particularly delicious.
Creta Kano seemed pleased when I told her this.
 Anyhow, I said, about your clothes... 
 Does it bother you that I put on your wifes clothing without permission? she asked,
with obvious concern.
 No, not at all. I dont care what you wear of Kumikos. She left them here, after all. What
Im concerned about is how you lost your own clothes. 
 And not just my clothes. My shoes too. 
 So how did it happen? 
 I cant remember, said Creta Kano. All I know is I woke up in your bed with nothing
on. I cant remember what happened before that. 
 You did go down into the well, didnt you-after I left? 
 That I do remember. And I fell asleep down there. But I cant remember anything after
that. 
 Which means you dont have any recollection of how you got out of the well? 
 None at all. There is a gap in my memory. Creta Kano held up both index fingers, about
eight inches apart. How much time that was supposed to represent I had no idea.
 I dont suppose you remember what you did with the rope ladder, either. Its gone, you
know. 
 I dont know anything about the ladder. I dont even remember if I climbed it to get out
of the well. 
I glared at the coffee cup in my hand for a time. Do you mind showing me the bottoms of
your feet? I asked.
 No, not at all, said Creta Kano. She sat down in the chair next to mine and stretched her
legs out in my direction so that I could see the soles of her feet. I took her ankles in my hands
and examined her soles. They were perfectly clean. Beautifully formed, the soles had not a
mark on them- no cuts, no mud, nothing at all.
 No mud, no cuts, I said.
 I see, said Creta Kano.
 It was raining all day yesterday. If you lost your shoes somewhere and walked here from
there, you should have some mud on your feet. And you must have come in through the
garden. But your feet are clean, and theres no mud anywhere. 
 I see. 
 Which means you didnt walk here barefoot from anywhere. 
Creta Kano inclined her head slightly to one side as if impressed. This is all logically
consistent, she said.
 It may be logically consistent, but its not getting us anywhere, I said. Where did you
lose your shoes and clothes, and how did you walk here from there? 
Creta Kano shook her head. I have no idea, she said.
•
While she stood at the sink, intently washing the dishes, I stayed at the kitchen table,
thinking about these things. Of course, I had no idea, either.
 Do these things happen to you often-that you cant remember where youve been? I
asked.
 This is not the first time that something like this has happened to me, when I cant recall
where I have been or what I was doing. It doesnt happen often, but it does happen to me now
and then. I once lost some clothes, too. But this is the first time I lost all my clothes and my
shoes and everything. 
Creta Kano turned off the water and wiped the table with a dish towel.
 You know, Creta Kano, I said, you havent told me your whole story. Last time, you
were partway through when you disappeared. Remember? If you dont mind, Id like to hear
the rest. You told me how the mob got hold of you and made you work as one of their
prostitutes, but you didnt tell me what happened after you met Noboru Wataya and slept with
him. 
Creta Kano leaned against the kitchen sink and looked at me. Drops of water on her hands
ran down her fingers and fell to the floor. The shape of her nipples showed clearly through the
white T-shirt, a vivid reminder to me of the naked body I had seen the night before.
 All right, then. I will tell you everything that happened after that. Right now. 
Creta Kano sat down once again in the seat opposite mine.
 The reason I left that day when I was in the middle of my story, Mr. Okada, is that I was
not fully prepared to tell it all. I had started my story precisely because I felt I ought to tell
you, as honestly as possible, what really happened to me. But I found I could not go all the
way to the end. You must have been shocked when I disappeared so suddenly. 
Creta Kano put her hands on the table and looked straight at me as she spoke.
 Well, yes, I was shocked, though it was not the most shocking thing thats happened to
me lately. 
•
 As I told you before, the very last customer I had as a prostitute of the flesh was Noboru
Wataya. The second time I met him, as a client of Malta Kanos, I recognized him
immediately. It would have been impossible for me to forget him. Whether he remembered
me or not I cannot be certain. Mr. Wataya is not a person who shows his feelings.
 But let me go back and put things in order. First I will tell you about the time I had
Noboru Wataya as a customer. That would be six years ago.
 As I told you before, I was in a state at that time in which I had absolutely no perception
of pain. And not only pain: I had no sensations of any kind. I lived in a bottomless numbness.
Of course, I dont mean to say that I was unable to feel any sensations at all-I knew when
something was hot or cold or painful. But these sensations came to me as if from a distance,
from a world that had nothing to do with me. Which is why I felt no resistance to the idea of
having sexual relations with men for money. No matter what anyone did to me, the sensations
I felt did not belong to me. My unfeeling flesh was not my flesh.
 Now, lets see, I told you about how I had been recruited by the mobs prostitution ring.
When they told me to sleep with men I did it, and when they paid me I took it. I left off at that
point. I nodded to her.
 That day they told me to go to a room on the sixteenth floor of a downtown hotel. The
client had the unusual name of Wataya. I knocked on the door and went in, to find the man
sitting on the sofa. He had apparently been drinking room-service coffee while reading a
book. He wore a green polo shirt and brown cotton pants. His hair was short, and he wore
brown-framed glasses. On the coffee table in front of him were his cup and a coffeepot and
the book. He seemed to have been deeply absorbed in his reading: there was a kind of
excitement still in his eyes. His features were in no way remarkable, but those eyes of his had
an energy about them that was almost weird. When I first saw them, I thought for a moment
that I was in the wrong room. But it was not the wrong room. The man told me to come inside
and lock the door.
 Still seated on the sofa, without saying a word, he ran his eyes over my body. From head
to foot. That was what usually happened when I entered a clients room. Most men would
look me over. Excuse me for asking, Mr. Okada, but have you ever bought a prostitute? I
said that I had not.
 Its as if they were looking over merchandise. It doesnt take long to get used to being
looked at like that. They are paying money for flesh, after all; it makes sense for them to
examine the goods. But the way that man looked at me was different. He seemed to be
looking through my flesh to something on the other side. His eyes made me feel uneasy, as if
I had become a half-transparent human being.
 I was a little confused, I suppose: I dropped my handbag on the floor. It made a small
sound, but I was in such an abstracted state that, for a time, I was almost unaware of what I
had done. Then I stooped down to pick up the bag. The clasp had opened when it hit the floor,
and some of my cosmetics had fallen out. I picked up my eyebrow pencil and lip cream and a
small bottle of eau de cologne, returning each of them to my bag. He kept those eyes of his
trained on me the whole time.
 When I had finished gathering up my things from the floor and putting them back in the
bag, he told me to undress. I asked him if it would be all right for me to take a shower first,
because I had been perspiring quite a bit. The weather was hot that day, and I had been sweating
on the subway. He didnt care about that, he said. He didnt have much time. He wanted
me to undress right away.
 Once I was naked, he told me to lie on the bed facedown, which I did. He ordered me to
stay still, to keep my eyes closed, and not to speak until I was spoken to.
 He sat down next to me with his clothes on. That was all he did: sit down. He did not lay
a finger on me. He just sat and looked down at my naked body. He kept this up for some ten
minutes, while I lay there, un-moving, facedown. I could feel his eyes boring into the nape of
my neck, my back, my buttocks, and my legs, with almost painful intensity. It occurred to me
that he might be impotent. Customers like that turn up now and then. They buy a prostitute,
have her undress, and they look at her. Some will undress the woman and finish themselves
off in her presence. All kinds of men buy prostitutes, for all kinds of reasons. I just assumed
he was one of those.
 After a while, though, he reached out and began to touch me. His ten fingers moved
down my body, from my shoulders to my back, from my back to my buttocks, in search of
something. This was not foreplay. Neither, of course, was it a massage. His fingers moved
over my body with the utmost care, as if tracing a route on a map. And all the while he
touched my flesh, he seemed to be thinking-not in any ordinary sense of the word, but
seriously thinking about something with the utmost concentration.
 One minute his fingers would seem to be wandering here and there at random, and the
next they would come to a stop and remain for a long time in the one place. It felt as if the
fingers themselves were going from confusion to certainty. Am I making myself clear? Each
finger seemed to be alive and thinking, with a will of its own. It was a very strange sensation.
Strange and disturbing.
 And yet the touch of his fingers aroused me sexually. For the first time in my life. Sex
had been nothing but a source of pain for me until I became a prostitute. The mere thought of
it had filled me with fear-fear of the pain I knew I would have to endure. Just the opposite
happened after I became a prostitute: I felt nothing. I no longer felt pain, but I felt no other
sensations, either. I would sigh and pretend to be aroused for the pleasure of the customer, but
it was all fake, a professional act. When he touched me, though, my sighs were real. They
came out of my bodys innermost depths. I knew that something inside me had begun to
move, as if my center of gravity were changing locations in my body, first to one place and
then to another.
 Eventually, the man stopped moving his fingers. With his hands on my waist, he seemed
to be thinking. Through his fingertips, I could tell that he was steadying himself, quietly
regularizing his breathing. Then he began to remove his clothing. I kept my eyes closed and
my face buried in the pillow, waiting for what would come next. Once he was naked, he
spread my arms and legs open wide.
 The room was almost frighteningly quiet. The only sound was the soft rush of the air
conditioner. The man himself made almost no perceptible sounds. I couldnt even hear him
breathing. He placed his palms on my back. I went limp. His penis touched my buttocks, but
it was still soft.
 Just then the phone on the night table began to ring. I opened my eyes and turned my
head to look at the mans face, but he seemed unaware that the phone was ringing. It rang
eight or nine times and then stopped. Again the room became silent. 
Creta Kano paused at that point for a few measured breaths. She remained silent, looking
at her own hands. Im sorry, she said, but do you mind if I take a short break? 
 Not at all, I said. I refilled my coffee cup and took a sip. She drank her cold water. We
sat there without speaking for a good ten minutes.
 His fingers began to move again, touching every part of my body, Creta Kano
continued, every part without exception. I lost the power to think. My ears were filled with
the sound of my own heart, pounding but with strange slowness. I could no longer control
myself. I cried out aloud again and again as he caressed me. I tried to keep my voice in check,
but another someone was using my voice to moan and shout. I felt as if every screw in my
body had come loose. Then, after a very long time, and with me still lying facedown, he put
something inside me from behind. What it was, I still have no idea. It was huge and hard, but 
it was not his penis. I am certain of that. I remember thinking that I had been right: he was
impotent, after all.
 Whatever it was that he put inside me, it made me feel pain for the first time since my
failed suicide attempt-real, intense pain that belonged to me and to no one else. How can I put
this? The pain was almost impossibly intense, as if my physical self were splitting in two
from the inside out. And yet, as terrible as it felt, I was writhing as much in pleasure as in
pain. The pleasure and pain were one. Do you see what I mean? The pain was founded on
pleasure, and the pleasure on pain. I had to swallow the two as a single entity. In the midst of
this pain and pleasure, my flesh went on splitting in two. There was no way for me to prevent
it from happening. Then something very weird occurred. Out from between the two cleanly
split halves of my physical self came crawling a thing that I had never seen or touched before.
How large it was I could not tell, but it was as wet and slippery as a newborn baby. I had
absolutely no idea what it was. It had always been inside me, and yet it was something of
which I had no knowledge. This man had drawn it out of me.
 I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to see it with my own eyes. It was a part of me,
after all, I had a right to see it. But this was impossible. I was caught in the torrent of pleasure
and pain. An entirely physical being, I could only cry out, and drool, and churn my hips. The
mere act of opening my eyes was an impossibility.
 I then reached the sexual peak-although, rather than a peak, it felt more as if I were being
thrown down from a high cliff. I screamed, and I felt as if every piece of glass in the room had
shattered. I not only felt it: I actually saw and heard the windows and drinking glasses
shattering into powdered fragments and felt them raining down on me. I then felt horribly sick
to my stomach. My consciousness began to slip away, and my body turned cold. I know this
will sound strange, but I felt as if I had turned into a bowl of cold porridge-all sticky and
lumpy, and the lumps were throbbing, slowly and hugely, with each beat of my heart. I recognized
this throbbing: it had happened to me before. Nor did it take very long for me to recall
what it was. I knew it as that dull, fatal, never-ending pain that I had experienced before my
failed suicide attempt. And, like a crowbar, the pain was prying open the lid of my
consciousness-prying it open with an irresistible force and dragging out the jellied contents of
my memory without reference to my will. Strange as it may sound, this was like a dead
person watching her own autopsy. Do you see what I mean? I felt as if I were watching from
some vantage point as my body was being cut open and one slimy organ after another was
being pulled out of me.
 I continued to lie there, drooling on the pillow, my body racked with convulsions, and
incontinent. I knew that I should try to control myself, but I had lost the power for such
control. Every screw in my body had net only come loose but had fallen out. In my clouded
brain, I felt with incredible intensity exactly how alone and how powerless I was. Everything
came gushing out of me. Things both tangible and intangible turned to liquid and flowed out
through my flesh like saliva or urine. I knew that I should not let this happen, that I should not
allow my very self to spill out this way and be lost forever, but there was nothing I could do
to stanch the flow. I could only watch it happen. How long this continued, I have no idea. It
seemed as if all my memories, all my consciousness, had just slipped away. Everything that
had been inside me was outside now. Eventually, like a heavy curtain falling, darkness
enveloped me in an instant.
 And when I regained consciousness, I was a different person. Creta Kano stopped
speaking at that point and looked at me. That is what happened then, she said softly. I said
nothing but waited instead for the rest of her story.
 
 Creta Kanos New Departure
Creta Kano went on with her story.
 For some days after that, I lived with the feeling that my body had fallen apart. Walking,
I had no sense that my feet were actually touching the ground. Eating, I had no sense that I
was actually chewing on anything. Sitting still, I had the terrifying feeling that my body was
either endlessly falling or endlessly floating up beneath a big balloon kind of thing, through
infinite space. I could no longer connect my bodys movements or sensations with my own
self. They were functioning as they wished, without reference to my will, without order or
direction. And yet I knew no way to bring calm to this intense chaos. All I could do was wait
for things to settle down in their own good time. I locked myself in my room from morning to
night, hardly eating a thing, and telling my family only that I was not feeling well.
 Some days went by like this-three or four days, I would say. And then, all of a sudden,
everything quieted down, as if a wild wind had blown through and gone on its way. I looked
around, and I examined myself, and I realized that I had become a new person, entirely
different from what I had been until then. This was my third self. My first self had been the
one that lived in the endless anguish of pain. My second self had been the one that lived in a
state of pain-free numbness. The first one had been me in my original state, unable to release
the heavy yoke of pain from my neck. And when I did attempt to release it-which is to say,
when I tried to kill myself and failed-I became my second self: an interim me. True, the
physical pain that had tortured me until then had disappeared, but all other sensations had
retreated with it into the haze. My will to live, my physical vitality, my mental powers of
concentration: all these had disappeared along with the pain. After I passed through that
strange period of transition, what emerged was a brand-new me. Whether this was the me that
should have been there all along I could not yet tell. But I did have the sense, however vague
and undefined it might be, that I was at least heading in the right direction. 
Creta Kano raised her eyes and looked directly at me, as if she wanted to hear my
impressions of her story. Her hands still rested on the table. So, then, I said, what youre
saying is that the man gave you a new self, am I right? 
 Perhaps he did, said Creta Kano, nodding. Her face was as expressionless as the bottom
of a dried-up pond. Being caressed by that man, and held by him, and made to feel such
impossibly intense sexual pleasure for the first time in my life, I experienced some kind of
gigantic physical change. Why it happened, and why, of all people, it had to be that man who
made it happen, I have no idea. Whatever the process may have been, the fact remains that at
the end of it, I found myself in a whole new container. And once I had passed through the
deep confusion I mentioned earlier, I sought to accept this new self as something truer-if for
no other reason than that I had been enabled to escape from my profound numbness, which
had been such a suffocating prison to me.
 Still, the bad aftertaste remained with me for a long time, like a dark shadow. Each time I
recalled those ten fingers of his, each time I recalled that thing he put inside me, each time I
recalled that slimy, lumpish thing that came (or felt as if it came) out of me, I felt terribly
uneasy. I felt a sense of anger-and despair-that I had no way to deal with. I tried to erase that
day from my memory, but this I was unable to do, because the man had pried open something
inside my body. The sensation of having been pried open stayed with me, inseparably bonded
to the memory of that man, along with an unmistakable sense of defilement. It was a contradictory
feeling. Do you see what I mean? The transformation that I had experienced was
undoubtedly something right and true, but the transformation had been caused by something 
filthy, something wrong and false. This contradiction-this split-would torment me for a very
long time. 
Again Creta Kano stared at her hands atop the table.
 After that, I stopped selling my body. There was no longer any point to it. Creta Kanos
face remained expressionless.
 You could quit just like that? I asked.
She nodded. Just like that, she said. I didnt say anything to anybody, just stopped
selling myself, but this caused no problem. It was almost disappointingly easy. I had thought
they would at least call me, and I was bracing myself for the day, but it never came. They
never said a thing to me. They knew my address. They knew my phone number. They could
have threatened me. But nothing happened.
 And so, on the surface at least, I had become an ordinary girl again. By that time, I had
repaid my parents everything I owed them, and I had put away a good deal of money. With
what I gave him, my brother had bought another new car to waste his time driving around in,
but he could never have imagined what I had done to pay him back.
 I needed time to get used to my new self. What kind of a being was this self of mine?
How did it function? What did it feel-and how? I had to grasp each of these things through
experience, to memorize and stockpile them. Do you see what I am saying? Virtually
everything inside me had spilled out and been lost. At the same time that I was entirely new, I
was almost entirely empty. I had to fill in that blank, little by little. One by one, with my own
hands, I had to make this thing I called I -or, rather, make the things that constituted me.
 I was still officially a student, but I had no intention of returning to the university. I
would leave the house in the morning, go to a park, and sit by myself on a bench all day,
doing nothing. Or I would wander up and down the paths in the park. When it rained, I would
go to the library, put a book on the table in front of me, and pretend to be reading. I
sometimes spent the whole day in a movie theater or riding round and round the city on the
Yamanote Circle Line. I felt as if I were floating in a pitch-dark space, all by myself. There
was no one I could go to for advice. If my sister Malta had been there, I could have shared
everything with her, but at that time, of course, she was in seclusion far away on the island of
Malta, performing her austerities. I did not know her address. I had no way of contacting her.
And so I had to solve these problems entirely by myself. No book explained the kind of thing
that I had experienced. Still, although I was lonely, I was not unhappy. I was able to cling to
myself. At least now I had a self to cling to.
 My new self was able to feel pain, though not with that earlier intensity. I could feel it,
but at the same time I had learned a method to escape from it. Which is to say, I was able to
separate from the physical self that was feeling the pain. Do you see what I am saying? I was
able to divide myself into a physical self and a nonphysical self. It may sound difficult when I
describe it like this, but once you learn the method, it is not difficult at all. When pain comes
to me, I leave my physical self. Its just like quietly slipping into the next room when
someone you dont want to meet comes along. I can do it very naturally. I recognize that pain
has come to my body; I feel the existence of the pain; but I am not there. I am in the next
room. And so the yoke of the pain is not able to capture me. 
 And you can separate from yourself like that anytime you please? 
 No, said Creta Kano, after thinking about it for a moment. At first I could do it only
when my body was experiencing physical pain. Pain was the key to the splitting off of my
consciousness. Later, with Malta Kanos help, I learned to do it at will to some extent. But
that was much later.
 Before long, a letter arrived from Malta Kano. She told me that she had finally finished
three years of a kind of training she had been doing on Malta and within the week would be
returning to Japan. She planned to live in Japan permanently from then on. I was thrilled at
the prospect of seeing her again. We had been apart for nearly eight years. And as I mentioned 
earlier, Malta was the only person in the world to whom I could freely tell everything that was
in my heart.
 On the day she came back to Japan, I told Malta everything that had happened to me. She
listened to my long, strange story to the very end without comment, without asking a single
question. And when I was finished, she heaved a deep sigh and said to me, ‘I know I should
have been with you, I should have been watching over you all this time. For some reason, I
never realized that you had such profound problems. Perhaps it was because you were simply
too close to me. But in any case, there were things I had to do. There were places I had to go,
alone. I had no choice in the matter.
 I told her that she should not let it bother her. These were my problems, after all, and I
was improving little by little. She thought about this for a while, saying nothing, and then she
said, ‘All the things you have been through ever since I left Japan have been painful and bitter
for you, but as you say, you have been moving toward the proper state, step by step. The
worst is over for you, and it will never come back. Such things will never happen to you
again. It will not be easy, but you will be able to forget many things once a certain amount of
time has passed. Without a true self, though, a person can not go on living. It is like the
ground we stand on. Without the ground, we can build nothing.
 There is one thing, however, which you must never forget, and that is that your body has
been defiled by that man. It is a thing that should never have happened. You could have been
lost forever; you might have had to wander forever through genuine nothingness. Fortunately,
the state of your being just happened not to be the real, original you, and so it had the reverse
effect. Instead of trapping you, it liberated you from your transitory state. This happened
through sheer good luck. The defilement, however, remains inside you, and at some point you
will have to rid yourself of it. This is something that I cannot do for you. I cannot even tell
you how to do it. You will have to discover the method for yourself, and do it by yourself.
 My sister then gave me my new name: Creta Kano. Newly reborn, I needed a new name,
she said. I liked it from the start. Malta Kano then began to use me as a spiritual medium.
Under her guidance, I learned more and more how to control my new self and how to divide
the flesh from the spirit. Finally, for the first time in my life, I became capable of living with a
sense of peace. Of course, my true self was still something that lay beyond my grasp. I was
still lacking too much for that to happen. But now, in Malta Kano, I had a companion by my
side, someone I could depend upon, someone who understood me and accepted me. She became
my guide and my protector. 
 But then you met Noboru Wataya again, didnt you? 
Creta Kano nodded. That is true, she said. I did meet Noboru Wataya again. It
happened early in March of this year. More than five years had passed since I had been taken
by him and undergone my transformation and begun to work with Malta Kano. We came
face-to-face again when he visited our home to see Malta. We did not speak to each other. I
merely caught a glimpse of him in the entryway, but one glimpse was all it took to freeze me
in place as if I had been struck by lightning. It was that man- the last man to buy me.
 I called Malta Kano aside and told her that he was the man who had defiled me. ‘Fine,
she said. ‘Just leave everything to me. Dont worry. You keep out of sight. Make sure he
doesnt see you. I did as I was told. Which is why I do not know what he and Malta Kano
discussed at that point. 
 What could Noboru Wataya have possibly wanted from Malta Kano? Creta Kano
shook her head. I am sorry, Mr. Okada, I have no idea. 
 People come to your house because they want something, isnt that usually the case? 
 Yes, it is. 
 What kinds of things do they come for? 
 All kinds of things. 
 But what kinds of things? Can you give me an example? 
Creta Kano bit her lip for a moment. Lost things. Their destinies. The future.
Everything. 
 And you two know about those things? 
 We do. Not absolutely everything, but most of the answers are in here, said Creta Kano,
pointing at her temple. You just have to go inside. 
 Like going down into a well? 
 Yes, like that. 
I put my elbows on the table and took a long, deep breath. Now, if you dont mind,
theres something Id like you to tell me. You showed up in my dreams a few times. You did
this consciously. You willed it to happen. Am I right? 
 Yes, you are right, said Creta Kano. It was an act of will. I entered your consciousness
and joined my body with yours. 
 You can do things like that? 
 Yes, I can. That is one of my functions. 
 You and I joined our bodies together in my mind. When I heard myself actually
speaking these words, I felt as if I had just hung a bold surrealistic painting on a white wall.
And then, as if looking at the painting from a distance to make sure it was not hanging
crooked, I said the words again: You and I joined our bodies together in my mind. But I
never asked you two for anything. It never even crossed my mind to find out anything from
you. Right? So why did you take it upon yourself to do such a thing? 
 Because I was ordered to by Malta Kano. 
 Meaning that Malta Kano used you as a medium to hunt around inside my mind. What
was she looking for? Answers for Noboru Wataya? Or for Kumiko? 
Creta Kano said nothing for a time. She seemed confused. I dont really know, she said.
 I was not given detailed information. That way, I can function more spontaneously as a
medium. My only job is to have peoples minds pass through me. It is Malta Kanos job to
assign meaning to what I find there. But please understand, Mr. Okada: Malta Kano is
fundamentally on your side. I hate Noboru Wataya, you see, and Malta Kanos first concern is
for me. She did this for your sake, Mr. Okada. That is what I believe. 
Creta Kano went out to shop at the neighborhood supermarket. I gave her money and
suggested that as long as she was going out, she should change into more respectable
clothing. She nodded and went to Kumikos room, where she put on a white cotton blouse and
a floral-pattern skirt. It doesnt bother you, Mr. Okada, for me to put on your wifes
clothing? 
I shook my head. Her letter told me to get rid of it all. No ones going to be bothered if
you wear her things. 
Just as I expected, everything fit her perfectly-almost weirdly so. Even her shoe size was
the same. Creta Kano left the house wearing a pair of Kumikos sandals. The sight of Creta
Kano in Kumikos clothing made me feel once again that reality was changing its direction
somewhat, the way a huge passenger ship lumbers into a new course.
After Creta Kano went out, I lay on the sofa staring at the garden, my mind a blank. She
came back by taxi thirty minutes later, holding three large bags stuffed with groceries. Then
she made me ham and eggs and a sardine salad.
 Tell me, Mr. Okada, do you have any interest in Crete? Creta Kano asked without
warning after we had eaten.
 Crete? I said. You mean the island of Crete, in the Mediterranean? 
 Yes. 
I shook my head. I dont know, I said. Im not uninterested, I suppose. Ive never much
thought about it. Would you like to go to Crete with me? 
 Go to Crete with you? I echoed.
 Well, actually, I would like to get away from Japan for a while. That is what I was 
thinking about the whole time I was in the well after you left. Ever since Malta gave me the
name , I have felt that I would like to go to Crete someday. To prepare, I read many books
about the island. I even studied Greek by myself, so that I would be able to live there when
the time came. I have some fairly substantial savings put away, enough so that we could live
there for a good length of time without difficulty. You would not have to worry about
money. 
 Does Malta Kano know youre planning to go to Crete? 
 No. I havent said anything to her about it, but I am sure she would not be opposed. She
would probably think it was a good thing for me. She has been using me as a medium during
the past five years, but it is not as if she has merely been exploiting me as some kind of tool.
She has been doing it to aid in my recovery as well. She believes that by passing the minds or
egos of a variety of people through me, she will make it possible for me to obtain a firm grasp
on my own self. Do you see what I mean? It works for me as a kind of vicarious experience of
what it feels like to have an ego.
 Come to think of it, I have never once in my life said unambiguously to anybody, ‘I want
to do this. In fact, I have never thought to myself, ‘I want to do this. From the moment of
my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way
to coexist with intense pain. And after I turned twenty and the pain disappeared when I
attempted to kill myself, a deep, deep numbness came to replace the pain. I was like a walking
corpse. A thick veil of unfeeling was draped over me. I had nothing-not a sliver-of what could
be called my own will. And then, when I had my flesh violated and my mind pried open by
Noboru Wataya, I obtained my third self. Even so, I was still not myself. All I had managed to
do was get a grasp on the minimum necessary container for a self-a mere container. And as a
container, under the guidance of Malta Kano, I passed many egos through myself.
 This, then, is how I have spent the twenty-six years of my life. Just imagine if you will:
for twenty-six years, I was nothing. This is the thought that struck me with such force when I
was alone in the well, thinking. During all this long time, the person called ‘me was in fact
nothing at all, I realized. I was nothing but a prostitute. A prostitute of the flesh. A prostitute
of the mind.
 Now, however, I am trying to get a grasp on my new self. I am neither a container nor a
medium of passage. I am trying to establish myself here on the face of the earth. 
 I do understand what you are saying to me, but still, why do you want to go to Crete with
me? 
 Because it would probably be a good thing for both of us: for you, Mr. Okada, and for
me, said Creta Kano. For the time being, there is no need for either of us to be here. And if
that is the case, I feel, it would be better for us not to be here. Tell me, Mr. Okada, do you
have some course of action you must follow-some plan for what you are going to do from this
point on? 
 The one thing I need to do is talk to Kumiko. Until we meet face-to-face and she tells me
that our life together is finished, I cant do anything else. How Im going to go about finding
her, though, I have no idea. 
 But if you do find her and your marriage is, as you say, ‘finished, would you consider
coming to Crete with me? Both of us would have to begin something new at some point, 
said Creta Kano, looking into my eyes. It seems to me that going to the island of Crete would
not be a bad beginning. 
 Not bad at all, I said. Kind of sudden, maybe, but not a bad beginning. 
Creta Kano smiled at me. When I thought about it, I realized this was the first time she
had ever done so. It made me feel that, to some extent, history was beginning to head in the
right direction. We still have time, she said. Even if I hurry, it will take me at least two
weeks to get ready. Please use the time to think it over, Mr. Okada. I dont know if there is
anything I can give you. It seems to me that I dont have anything to give at this point in time. 
I am quite literally empty. I am just getting started, putting some contents into this empty
container little by little. I can give you myself, Mr. Okada, if you say that is good enough for
you. I believe we can help each other. 
I nodded. Ill think about it, I said. Im very pleased that you made me this offer, and I
think it would be great if we could go together. I really do. But Ive got a lot of things I have
to think about and a lot of things I have to straighten out. 
 And if, in the end, you say you dont want to go to Crete, dont worry. I wont be hurt. I
will be sorry, but I want your honest answer. 
•
Creta Kano stayed in my house again that night. As the sun was going down, she invited
me out for a stroll in the neighborhood park. I decided to forget about my bruise and leave the
house. What was the point of worrying about such things? We walked for an hour in the
pleasant summer evening, then came home and ate.
After our supper, Creta Kano said she wanted to sleep with me. She wanted to have
physical sex with me, she said. This was so sudden, I didnt know what to do, which is
exactly what I said to her: This is so sudden. I dont know what to do. 
Looking directly at me, Creta Kano said, Whether or not you go with me to Crete, Mr.
Okada, entirely separately from that, I want you to take me one time-just one time-as a
prostitute. I want you to buy my flesh. Here. Tonight. It will be my last time. I will cease to be
a prostitute, whether of the flesh or of the mind. I will abandon the name of Creta Kano as
well. In order to do that, however, I want to have a clearly visible point of demarcation,
something that says, ‘It ends here. 
 I understand your wanting a point of demarcation, but why do you have to sleep with
me? 
 Dont you see, Mr. Okada? By sleeping with the real you, by joining my body with yours
in reality, I want to pass through you, this person called Mr. Okada. By doing that, I want to
be liberated from this defilement-like something inside me. That will be the point of
demarcation. Well, Im sorry, but I dont buy peoples flesh. Creta Kano bit her lip. How
about this, then? Instead of money, give me some of your wifes clothing. And shoes. Well
make that the pro forma price of my flesh. That should be all right, dont you think? Then I
will be saved. 
 Saved. By which you mean that you will be liberated from the defilement that Noboru
Wataya left inside you? 
 Yes, that is exactly what I mean, said Creta Kano. I stared at her. Without false
eyelashes, Creta Kanos face had a much more childish look. Tell me, I said, who is this
Noboru Wataya guy, really? Hes my wifes brother, but I hardly know him. What is he
thinking? What does he want? All I know for sure is that he and I hate each other. 
 Noboru Wataya is a person who belongs to a world that is the exact opposite of yours, 
said Creta Kano. Then she seemed to be searching for the words she needed to continue. In a
world where you are losing everything, Mr. Okada, Noboru Wataya is gaining everything. In
a world where you are rejected, he is accepted. And the opposite is just as true. Which is why
he hates you so intensely. 
 I dont get it. Why would he even notice that Im alive? Hes famous, hes powerful.
Compared to him, Im an absolute zero. Why does he have to take the time and trouble to
bother hating me? 
Creta Kano shook her head. Hatred is like a long, dark shadow. Not even the person it
falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. It is like a two-edged sword. When you
cut the other person, you cut yourself. The more violently you hack at the other person, the
more violently you hack at yourself. It can often be fatal. But it is not easy to dispose of. 
Please be careful, Mr. Okada. It is very dangerous. Once it has taken root in your heart, hatred
is the most difficult thing in the world to shake off. 
 And you were able to feel it, werent you?-the root of the hatred that was in Noboru
Watayas heart. 
 Yes, I was. I am, said Creta Kano. That is the thing that split my flesh in two, that
defiled me, Mr. Okada. Which is why I do not want him to be my last customer as a
prostitute. Do you understand? 
That night I went to bed with Creta Kano. I took off what she was wearing of Kumikos
and joined my body with hers. Quietly and gently. It felt like an extension of my dream, as if I
were re-creating exactly, in reality, the very acts I had performed with Creta Kano in my
dream. Her body was real and alive. But there was something missing: the clear sense that this
was actually happening. Several times the illusion overtook me that I was doing this with
Kumiko, not Creta Kano. I was sure I would wake up the moment I came. But I did not wake
up. I came inside her. It was reality. True reality. But each time I recognized that fact, reality
felt a little less real. Reality was coming undone and moving away from reality, one small
step at a time. But still, it was reality.
 Mr. Okada, said Creta Kano, with her arms wrapped around my back, lets go to Crete
together. This is not the place for us anymore: not for you and not for me. We have to go to
Crete. If you stay here, something bad is going to happen to you. I know it. I am sure of it. 
 Something bad? 
 Something very, very bad, Creta Kano prophesied-in a small but penetrating voice, like
the prophet bird that lived in the forest.
 
The n I Y Bad Thing That Ever Happened
in May K a s a h a r a s House
•
May Kasahara on the Gooshy Source of Heat
 Hello, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said the womans voice. Pressing the receiver against my ear,
I looked at my watch. Four oclock in the afternoon. When the phone rang, I had been asleep
on the sofa, drenched in sweat. It had been a short, unpleasant nap. And now there remained
with me the physical sensation of someones having been sitting on top of me the whole time
I was asleep. Whoever it was had waited until I was asleep, come to sit on top of me, and
gotten up and gone away just before I woke.
 Hel-looo, cooed the womans voice in a near whisper. The sound seemed to have to
pass through some extra-thin air to reach me. This is May Kasahara calling.... 
 Hey, I tried to say, but my mouth still wasnt moving the way I wanted it to. The word
may have come out sounding to her like some kind of groan.
 What are you doing now? she asked, in an insinuating tone.
 Nothing, I said, moving the mouthpiece away to clear my throat. Nothing. Napping. 
 Did I wake you? 
 Sure you did. But thats OK. It was just a nap. 
May Kasahara seemed to hesitate a moment. Then she said, How about it, Mr. Wind-Up
Bird: would you come over to my house? 
I closed my eyes. In the darkness hovered lights of different colors and shapes.
 I dont mind, I said.
 Im sunbathing in the yard, so just let yourself in from the back. 
 OK. 
 Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, are you mad at me? 
 Im not sure, I said. Anyhow, Im going to take a shower and change, and then Ill
come over. Ive got something I want to talk to you about. 
I took a quick cold shower to clear my head, turned on the hot water to wash, and finished
off cold again. This did manage to wake me up, but my body still felt dull and heavy. My legs
would begin trembling, and at several points during my shower I had to grab the towel bar or
sit on the edge of the tub. Maybe I was more fatigued than I had thought.
After I stepped out of the shower and wiped myself down, I brushed my teeth and looked
at myself in the mirror. The dark-blue mark was still there on my right cheek, neither darker
nor lighter than before. My eyeballs had a network of tiny red lines, and there were dark
circles under my eyes. My cheeks looked sunken, and my hair was in need of a trim. I looked
like a fresh corpse that had just come back to life and dug its way out of the grave.
I put on a T-shirt and short pants, a hat and dark glasses. Out in the alley, I found that the
hot day was far from over. Everything alive above-ground-everything visible-was gasping in
hopes of a sudden shower, but there was no hint of a cloud in the sky. A blanket of hot,
stagnant air enveloped the alley. The place was deserted, as always. Good. On a hot day like
this, and with my face looking so awful, I didnt want to meet anyone.
In the yard of the empty house, the bird sculpture was glaring at the sky, as usual, its beak
held aloft. It looked far more grimy than when I had last seen it, more worn down. And there
was something more strained in its gaze. It seemed to be staring hard at some extraordinarily
depressing sight that was floating in the sky. If only it could have done so, the bird would
have liked to avert its gaze, but with its eyes locked in place the way they were, it had no
choice except to look. The tall weeds surrounding the sculpture remained motionless, like a
chorus in a Greek tragedy waiting breathlessly for an oracle to be handed down. The TV
antenna on the roof apathetically thrust its silver feelers into the suffocating heat. Under the
harsh summer light, everything was dried out and exhausted.
After I had surveyed the yard of the vacant house, I walked into May Kasaharas yard.
The oak tree cast a cool-looking shadow over the lawn, but May Kasahara had obviously
avoided that, to stretch out in the harsh sunlight. She lay on her back in a deck chair, wearing
an incredibly tiny chocolate-colored bikini, its little cloth patches held in place by bits of
string. I couldnt help wondering if a person could actually swim in a thing like that. She wore
the same sunglasses she had on when we first met, and large beads of sweat dotted her face.
Under her deck chair she had a white beach towel, a container of suntan cream, and a few
magazines. Two empty Sprite cans lay nearby, one apparently serving as an ashtray. A plastic
hose with a sprinkler lay out on the lawn, where no one had bothered to reel it in after its last
use.
When I drew near, May Kasahara sat up and reached out to turn off her radio. She had a
far deeper tan than last time. This was no ordinary tan from a weekend at the beach. Every bit
of her body-literally from head to toe-had been beautifully roasted. Sunning was all she did
here all day, it seemed-including the whole time I was in the well, no doubt. I took a moment
to glance at the yard. It looked pretty much as it had before, the broad lawn well manicured,
the pond still unfilled and looking parched enough to make you thirsty.
I sat on the deck chair next to hers and took a lemon drop from my pocket. The heat had
caused the paper wrapper to stick to the candy.
May Kasahara looked at me for some time without saying anything. What happened to
you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? Whats that mark on your face? It is a mark, isnt it? 
 I think it is. Probably. But I dont know how it happened. I looked- and there it was. 
May Kasahara raised herself on one elbow and stared at my face. She brushed away the
drops of sweat beside her nose and gave her sunglasses a little push up to where they
belonged. The dark lenses all but hid her eyes.
 You have no idea at all? No clue where it happened or how it happened? 
 None at all. 
 None? I got out of the well, and a little while later I looked in the mirror, and there it
was. Really. Thats all. 
 Does it hurt? 
 It doesnt hurt, it doesnt itch. It is a little warm, though. 
 Did you go to the doctor? 
I shook my head. Itd probably be a waste of time. 
 Probably, said May Kasahara. I hate doctors too. 
I took off my hat and sunglasses and used my handkerchief to wipe the sweat from my
forehead. The armpits of my gray T-shirt were already black with sweat.
 Great bikini, I said.
 Thanks. 
 Looks like they put it together from scraps-making the maximum use of our limited
natural resources. 
 I take off the top when everybodys out. 
 Well, well, I said.
 Not that theres all that much underneath to uncover, she said, as if by way of excuse.
True, the breasts inside her bikini top were still small and undeveloped. Have you ever
swum in that thing? I asked.
 Never. I dont know how to swim. How about you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? 
 Yeah, I can swim. 
 How far? 
 Far. 
 Ten kilometers? 
 Probably.... Nobody home now? 
 They left yesterday, for our summer house in Izu. They all want to go swimming for the
weekend. ‘All is my parents and my little brother. 
 Not you? 
She gave a tiny shrug. Then she took her Hope regulars and matches from the folds of her
beach towel and lit up.
 You look terrible, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. 
 Of course I look terrible- after days in the bottom of a well with almost nothing to eat or
drink, who wouldnt look terrible? 
May Kasahara took off her sunglasses and turned to face me. She still had that deep cut
next to her eye. Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Are you mad at me? 
 Im not sure. Ive got tons of things I have to think about before I start getting mad at
you. 
 Did your wife come back? 
I shook my head. She sent me a letter. Says shes never coming back. 
 Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. She sat up and reached out to place her
hand lightly on my knee. Poor, poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird. You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you
may not believe this, but I was planning to save you from the well at the very end. I just
wanted to frighten you a little, torment you a little. I wanted to see if I could make you
scream. I wanted to see how much it would take until you were so mixed up you kinda lost 
your world. 
I didnt know how to reply to this, so I just nodded.
 Did you think I was serious when I said I was going to let you die down there? 
Instead of answering right away, I rolled the lemon drop wrapper into a ball. Then I said,
 I really wasnt sure. You sounded serious, but you sounded like you were just trying to scare
me too. When youre down in a well, talking to somebody up top, something weird happens
to the sound: you cant really catch the expression in the other persons voice. But finally, its
not a question of which is right. I mean, reality is kind of made up of these different layers. So
maybe in that reality you were serious about trying to kill me, but in this reality you werent.
It depends on which reality you take and which reality I take. I pushed my rolled-up candy
wrapper into the hole of a Sprite can.
 Say, could you do me a favor, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? said May Kasahara, pointing at the
hose on the lawn. Would you spray me with that? Its sooo hot! My brains gonna fry if I
dont wet myself down. 
I left my deck chair and walked over to pick up the blue plastic hose on the lawn. It was
warm and limp. I reached behind the bushes and turned on the spigot. At first only hot water
that had been warmed inside the hose came out, but it cooled down until it was spraying cold
water. May Kasahara stretched out on the lawn, and I aimed a good, strong spray at her.
She closed her eyes and let the water wash over her body. Oh, that feels so good! You
should do it too, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. 
 This isnt a bathing suit, I said, but May Kasahara looked as if she was enjoying the
water a lot, and the heat was just too intense for me to keep resisting. I took off my sweatsoaked
T-shirt, bent forward, and let the cold water run over my head. While I was at it, I took
a swallow of the water: it was cold and delicious.
 Hey, is this well water? I asked.
 Sure is! It comes up through a pump. Feels great, doesnt it? Its so cold. You can drink
it too. We had a guy from the health department do a water quality inspection, and he said
theres nothing wrong with it, you almost never get water this clean in Tokyo. He was
amazed. But still, were kind of afraid to drink it. With all these houses packed together like
this, you never know whats going to get into it. 
 But dont you think its weird? The Miyawakis well is bone dry, but yours has all this
nice, fresh water. Theyre just across the alley. Why should they be so different? 
 Yeah, really, said May Kasahara, cocking her head. Maybe something caused the
underground water flow to change just a little bit, so their well dried up and ours didnt. Of
course, I dont know what the exact reason would be. 
 Has anything bad happened in your house? I asked.
May Kasahara wrinkled up her face and shook her head. The only bad thing thats
happened in this house in the last ten years is that its so damned boring! 
May Kasahara wiped herself down and asked if I wanted a beer. I said I did. She brought
two cold cans of Heineken from the house. She drank one, and I drank the other.
 So tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, whats your plan from now on? 
 I havent really decided, I said. But Ill probably get out of here. I might even get out
of Japan. 
 Get out of Japan? Where would you go? 
 To Crete. 
 Crete? Does this have something to do with that Whats-her-name woman? 
 Something, yeah. 
May Kasahara thought this over for a moment.
 And was it Whats-her-name that saved you from the well? 
 Creta Kano, I said. Yeah, shes the one. 
 Youve got a lot of friends, dont you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? 
 Not really. If anything, Im famous for having so few friends. 
 Still, I wonder how Creta Kano found out you were down in the well. You didnt tell
anybody you were going down there, right? So how did she figure out where you were? 
 I dont know, I said.
 But anyhow, youre going to Crete, right? 
 I havent really decided Im going to go. Its just one possibility. I have to settle things
with Kumiko first. 
May Kasahara put a cigarette in her mouth and lit up. Then she touched the cut next to her
eye with the tip of her little finger.
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, just about the whole time you were down in the well, I
was out here sunbathing. I was watching the garden of the vacant house, and baking myself,
and thinking about you in the well, that you were starving and moving closer to death little by
little. I was the only one who knew you were down there and couldnt get out. And when I
thought about that, I had this incredibly clear sense of what you were feeling: the pain and
anxiety and fear. Do you see what I mean? By doing that, I was able to get sooo close to you!
I really wasnt gonna let you die. This is true. Really. But I wanted to keep going. Right down
to the wire. Right down to where you would start to fall apart and be scared out of your mind
and you couldnt take it anymore. I really felt that that would be the best thing-for me and for
you. 
 Well, Ill tell you what, I said. I think that if you really had gone down to the wire, you
might have wanted to go all the way. It might have been a lot easier than you think. If you
went that far, all it would have taken was one last push. And then afterward you would have
told yourself that it was the best thing-for me and for you. I took a swig of beer.
May Kasahara thought about that for a time, biting her lip. You may be right, she said.
 Not even I know for sure. 
I took my last swallow of beer and stood up. I put on my sunglasses and slipped into my
sweat-soaked T-shirt. Thanks for the beer. 
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara, last night, after my family left for
the summer house, I went down into the well. I stayed there five or maybe six hours
altogether, just sitting still. 
 So youre the one who took the rope ladder away. 
 Yeah, said May Kasahara, with a little frown. Im the one. I turned my eyes to the
broad lawn. The moisture-laden earth was giving off vapor that looked like heat shimmer.
May Kasahara pushed the butt of her cigarette into an empty Sprite can.
 I didnt feel anything special for the first few hours. Of course, it bothered me a little bit
to be in such a totally dark place, but I wasnt terrified or scared or anything. Im not one of
those ordinary girls that scream their heads off over every little thing. But I knew it wasnt
just dark. You were down there for days, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. You know theres nothing down
there to be afraid of. But after a few hours, I knew less and less who I was. Sitting still down
there in the darkness, I could tell that something inside me-inside my body-was getting bigger
and bigger. It felt like this thing inside me was growing, like the roots of a tree in a pot, and
when it got big enough it would break me apart. That would be the end of me, like the pot
splitting into a million pieces. Whatever this thing was, it stayed put inside me when I was
under the sun, but it, like, sucked up some special kind of nourishment in the darkness and
started growing sooo fast it was scary. I tried to hold it down, but I couldnt. And thats when
I really got scared. It was the scaredest Ive ever been in my life. This thing inside me, this
gooshy white thing like a lump of fat, was taking over, taking me over, eating me up. This
gooshy thing was really small at first, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. 
May Kasahara stopped talking for a little while and stared at her hands, as if she were
recalling what had happened to her that day. I was really scared, she said. I guess thats
what I wanted you to feel. I guess I wanted you to hear the sound of the thing chewing you 
up. 
I lowered myself into a deck chair and looked at the body of May Kasahara, hardly
covered by her little bikini. She was sixteen years old, but she had the build of a girl of
thirteen or fourteen. Her breasts and hips were far from fully matured. Her body reminded me
of those drawings that use the absolute minimum of line yet still give an incredible sense of
reality. But still, at the same time, there was something about it that gave an impression of
extreme old age.
Then, all of a sudden, it occurred to me to ask her, Have you ever had the feeling that
you had been defiled by something? 
 Defiled? She looked at me, her eyes slightly narrowed. You mean physically? You
mean, like, raped? 
 Physically. Mentally. Either. 
May Kasahara looked down at her own body, then returned her gaze to me. Physically,
no. I mean, Im still a virgin. Ive let a boy feel me up. But just through my clothes. 
I nodded.
 Mentally, hmm, Im not sure. I dont really know what it means to be defiled mentally. 
 Neither do I, I said. Its just a question of whether you feel its happened to you or not.
If you dont feel it, that probably means you havent been defiled. 
 Why are you asking me about this? 
 Because some of the people I know have that feeling. And it causes all kinds of
complicated problems. Theres one thing I want to ask you, though. Why are you always
thinking about death? 
She put a cigarette between her lips and nimbly struck a match with one hand. Then she
put on her sunglasses.
 You mean you dont think much about death, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? 
 I do think about death, of course. But not all the time. Just once in a while. Like most
people. 
 Heres what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. Everybodys born with
some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like
a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody
else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up.
What Id really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I
cant seem to do it. They just dont get it. Of course, the problem could be that Im not
explaining it very well, but I think its because theyre not listening very well. They pretend to
be listening, but theyre not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy
things. 
 Crazy things? 
 Like, say, trapping you in the well, or, like, when Im riding on the back of a motorcycle,
putting my hands over the eyes of the guy whos driving. 
When she said this, she touched the wound next to her eye.
 And thats how the motorcycle accident happened? I asked.
May Kasahara gave me a questioning look, as if she had not heard what I said to her. But
every word that I had spoken should have reached her ears. I couldnt make out the expression
in her eyes behind the dark glasses, but a kind of numbness seemed to have spread over her
face, like oil poured on still water.
 What happened to the guy? I asked.
Cigarette between her lips, May Kasahara continued to look at me. Or rather, she
continued to look at my mark. Do I have to answer that question, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? 
 Not if you dont want to. Youre the one who brought it up. If you dont want to talk
about it, then dont. 
May Kasahara grew very quiet. She seemed to be having trouble deciding what to do. 
Then she drew in a chestful of cigarette smoke and let it out slowly. With heavy movements,
she dragged her sunglasses off and turned her face to the sun, eyes closed tight. Watching her,
I felt as if the flow of time were slowing down little by little-as if times spring were beginning
to run down.
 He died, she said at last, in a voice with no expression, as though she had resigned
herself to something.
 He died? 
May Kasahara tapped the ashes off her cigarette. Then she picked up her towel and wiped
the sweat from her face over and over again. Finally, as if recalling a task that she had
forgotten, she said in a clipped, businesslike way, We were going pretty fast. It happened
near Enoshima. 
I looked at her without a word. She held an edge of the beach towel in each hand, pressing
the edges against her cheeks. White smoke was rising from the cigarette between her fingers.
With no wind to disturb it, the smoke rose straight up, like a miniature smoke signal. She was
apparently having trouble deciding whether to cry or to laugh. At least she looked that way to
me. She wavered atop the narrow line that divided one possibility from the other, but in the
end she fell to neither side. May Kasahara pulled her expression together, put the towel on the
ground, and took a drag on her cigarette. The time was nearly five oclock, but the heat
showed no sign of abating.
 I killed him, she said. Of course, I didnt mean to kill him. I just wanted to push the
limits. We did stuff like that all the time. It was like a game. Id cover his eyes or tickle him
when we were on the bike. But nothing ever happened. Until that day... 
May Kasahara raised her face and looked straight at me.
 Anyway, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, no, I dont feel as if Ive been defiled. I just wanted to get
close to that gooshy thing if I could. I wanted to trick it into coming out of me and then crush
it to bits. Youve got to really push the limits if youre going to trick it into coming out. Its
the only way. Youve got to offer it good bait. She shook her head slowly. No, I dont think
Ive been defiled. But I havent been saved, either. Theres nobody who can save me right
now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. The world looks totally empty to me. Everything I see around me
looks fake. The only thing that isnt fake is that gooshy thing inside me. 
May Kasahara sat there for a long while, taking small, regular breaths. There were no
other sounds, no bird or insect cries. A terrible quiet settled over the yard, as though the world
had in fact become empty.
May Kasahara turned to face me in her chair. She seemed to have suddenly remembered
something. Now all expression was gone from her face, as if she had been washed clean. Tell
me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, did you sleep with that Kano person? 
I nodded.
 Will you write to me from Crete? asked May Kasahara.
 Sure I will. If I go. 
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she said after some hesitation, I think I might be going
back to school. 
 Oh, so youve changed your mind about school, huh? 
She gave a little shrug. Its a different one. I absolutely refuse to go back to my old
school. The new ones kinda far from here. So anyway, I probably wont be able to see you
for a while. 
I nodded. Then I took a lemon drop from my pocket and put it into my mouth. May
Kasahara glanced around and lit up a cigarette.
 Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, is it fun to sleep with a bunch of different women? 
 Thats beside the point. 
 Yeah, Ive heard that one already. 
 Right, I said, but I didnt know what else to say. 
 Oh, forget it. But you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, its just because I met you that I finally
decided to go back to school. No kidding. 
 Whys that? I asked.
 Yeah, why is that? May Kasahara said. Then she wrinkled up the corners of her eyes
and looked at me. Maybe I wanted to go back to a more normal world. But really, Mr. WindUp
Bird, its been a lot of fun being with you. No kidding. I mean, youre such a supernormal
guy, but you do such unnormal things. And youre so-what?-unpredictable. So hanging
around with you hasnt been boring in any way. You have no idea how much good thats done
me. Not being bored means not having to think about a lot of stupid stuff. Right? So where
thats concerned, Im glad youve been around. But tell you the truth, its made me nervous
too. 
 In what way? 
 Well, how can I put this? Sometimes, when Im looking at you, I get this feeling like
maybe youre fighting real hard against something for me. I know this sounds weird, but
when that happens, I feel like Im right with you, sweating with you. See what I mean? You
always look so cool, like no matter what happens, its got nothing to do with you, but youre
not really like that. In your own way, youre out there fighting as hard as you can, even if
other people cant tell by looking at you. If you werent, you wouldnt have gone into the well
like that, right? But anyhow, youre not fighting for me, of course. Youre falling all over
yourself, trying to wrestle with this big whatever-it-is, and the only reason youre doing it is
so you can find Kumiko. So theres no point in me getting all sweaty for you. I know all that,
but still, I cant help feeling that you are fighting for me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird-that, in a way,
you probably are fighting for a lot of other people at the same time youre fighting for
Kumiko. And thats maybe why you look like an absolute idiot sometimes. Thats what I
think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. But when I see you doing this, I get all tense and nervous, and I end
up feeling just totally drained. I mean, it looks like you cant possibly win. If I had to bet on
the match, Id bet on you to lose. Sorry, but thats just how it is. I like you a lot, but I dont
want to go broke. 
 I understand completely. 
 I dont want to watch you going under, and I dont want to sweat any more for you than I
already have. Thats why Ive decided to go back to a world thats a little more normal. But if
I hadnt met you here-here, in front of this vacant house- I dont think things would have
turned out this way. I never would have thought about going back to school. Id still be
hanging around in some not-so-normal world. So in that sense, its all because of you, Mr.
Wind-Up Bird. Youre not totally useless. 
I nodded. It was the first time in a long time anyone had said anything nice about me.
 Cmere, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. She raised herself on her deck chair.
I got out of my chair and went to hers.
 Sit down right here, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara.
I did as I was told and sat down next to her.
 Show me your face, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. 
She stared directly at me for a time. Then, placing one hand on my knee, she pressed the
palm of the other against the mark on my cheek.
 Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara, in a near whisper. I know youre going to
take on all kinds of things. Even before you know it. And you wont have any choice in the
matter. The way rain falls in a field. And now close your eyes, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Really
tight. Like theyre glued shut. 
I closed my eyes tightly.
May Kasahara touched her lips to my mark-her lips small and thin, like an extremely wellmade
imitation. Then she parted those lips and ran her tongue across my mark-very slowly,
covering every bit of it. The hand she had placed on my knee remained there the whole time. 
Its warm, moist touch came to me from far away, from a place still farther than if it had
passed through all the fields in the world. Then she took my hand and touched it to the wound
beside her eye. I caressed the half-inch scar As I did so, the waves of her consciousness
pulsed through my fingertips and into me-a delicate resonance of longing. Probably someone
should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than
me. Someone qualified to give her something. Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. See you again
sometime. 
 
The Simplest Thing
 
Revenge in a Sophisticated Form
 
The Thing in the Guitar Case
The next day I called my uncle and told him I might be moving out of the house sometime
in the next few weeks. I apologized for springing it on him so suddenly but explained that it
was because Kumiko had left me, with just as little warning. There was no point in covering
up anymore. I told him that she had written to say she would not be coming back, and that I
wanted to get away from this place, though exactly for how long I could not be sure. My
summary explanation was followed by a thoughtful silence at my uncles end of the line. He
seemed to be mulling something over. Then he said, Mind if I come over there for a visit
sometime soon? Id kind of like to see with my own eyes whats going on. And I havent been
to the house for quite a while now. 
•
My uncle came to the house two evenings later. He looked at my mark but had nothing to
say about it. He probably didnt know what to say about it. He just gave it one funny look,
with his eyes narrowed. He had brought me a good bottle of scotch and a package of fishpaste
cakes that he had bought in Odawara. We sat on the veranda, eating the cakes and
drinking the whiskey.
 What a pleasure it is to be sitting on a veranda again, my uncle said, nodding several
times. Our condo doesnt have one, of course. Sometimes I really miss this place. Theres a
special feeling you get on a veranda that you just cant get anywhere else. 
For a while, he sat there gazing at the moon, a slim white crescent of a moon that looked
as if someone had just finished sharpening it. That such a thing could actually go on floating
in the sky seemed almost miraculous to me.
Then, in an utterly offhand manner, my uncle asked, Howd you get that mark? 
 I really dont know, I said, and took a gulp of whiskey. All of a sudden, it was there.
Maybe a week ago? I wish I could explain it better, but I just dont know how. 
 Did you go to the doctor with it? 
I shook my head.
 I dont want to stick my nose in where Im not wanted, but just let me say this: you really 
ought to sit down and think hard about what it is thats most important to you. 
I nodded. I have been thinking about that, I said. But things are so complicated and
tangled together. I cant seem to separate them out and do one thing at a time. I dont know
how to untangle things. 
My uncle smiled. You know what I think? I think what you ought to do is start by
thinking about the simplest things and go from there. For example, you could stand on a street
corner somewhere day after day and look at the people who come by there. Youre not in any
hurry to decide anything. It may be tough, but sometimes youve got to just stop and take
time. You ought to train yourself to look at things with your own eyes until something comes
clear. And dont be afraid of putting some time into it. Spending plenty of time on something
can be the most sophisticated form of revenge. 
 Revenge?! What do you mean, ‘revenge? Revenge against whom? 
 Youll understand soon enough, said my uncle, with a smile.
•
All told, we sat on the veranda, drinking together, for something over an hour. Then,
announcing that he had stayed too long, my uncle stood up and left. Alone again, I sat on the
veranda, leaning against a pillar and staring out at the garden under the moon. For a time, I
was able to breathe deeply of the air of realism or whatever it was that my uncle left behind,
and to feel, for the first time in a very long time, a sense of genuine relief. Within a few hours,
though, that air began to dissipate, and a kind of cloak of pale sorrow came to envelop me
once again. In the end, I was in my world again, and my uncle was in his.
My uncle had said that I should think about the truly simple things first, but I found it
impossible to distinguish between what was simple and what was difficult. And so the next
morning, after the rush hour had ended, I took the train to Shinjuku. I decided just to stand
there and really look at peoples faces. I didnt know if it would do any good, but it was
probably better than doing nothing. If looking at peoples faces until you got sick of them was
an example of a simple thing, then it couldnt hurt to give it a try. If it went well, it just might
give me some indication of what constituted the simple things for me.
The first day, I spent two full hours sitting on the low brick wall that ran along the edge of
the raised flower bed outside Shinjuku Station, watching the faces of the people who passed
by. But the sheer numbers of people were too great, and they walked too quickly. I couldnt
manage a good look at any one persons face. To make matters worse, some homeless guy
came over to me after I had been there for a while and started haranguing me about
something. A policeman came by several times, glaring at me. So I gave up on the busy area
outside the station and decided to look for a place better suited to the leisurely study of
passersby.
I took the passageway under the tracks to the west side of the station, and after I had spent
some time walking around that neighborhood, I found a small, tiled plaza outside a glass
high-rise. It had a little sculpture and some handsome benches where I could sit and look at
people as much as I liked. The numbers were nowhere near as great as directly outside the
main entrance of the station, and there werent any homeless guys here with bottles of
whiskey stuck in their pockets. I spent the day there, making do for lunch with some
doughnuts and coffee from Dunkin Donuts, and going home before the evening rush.
At first the only ones who caught my eye were the men with thinning hair, thanks to the
training I had received doing surveys with May Kasahara for the toupee maker. Before I knew
it, my gaze would lock onto a bald head and Id have the man classified as A, B, or C. At this
rate, I might just as well have called May Kasahara and volunteered to join her for work
again.
After a few days had gone by, though, I found myself capable of just sitting and watching 
peoples faces without a thought in my head. Most of the ones who passed by that place were
men and women who worked in offices in the high-rise. The men wore white shirts and
neckties and carried briefcases, the women mostly wore high-heeled shoes. Others I saw
included patrons of the buildings restaurants and shops, family groups headed for the
observation deck on the top floor, and a few people who were just passing through the space,
walking from point A to point B. Here most of the people tended not to walk very quickly. I
just let myself watch them all, without any clear purpose. Occasionally there would be people
who attracted my interest for some reason or other, and then I would concentrate on their
faces and follow them with my eyes.
Every day, I would take the train to Shinjuku at ten oclock, after the rush hour, sit on the
bench in the plaza, and stay there almost motionless until : p.m., staring at peoples faces.
Only after I had actually tried this out did I realize that by training my eyes on one passing
face after another, I was able to make my head completely empty, like pulling the cork from a
bottle. I spoke to no one, and no one spoke to me. I thought nothing, I felt nothing. I often had
the sense that I had become part of the stone bench.
Someone did speak to me once, though-a thin, well-dressed middle-aged woman. She
wore a bright-pink, tight-fitting dress, dark sunglasses with tortoiseshell frames, and a white
hat, and she carried a white mesh handbag. She had nice legs and had on expensive-looking
spotless white leather sandals. Her makeup was thick, but not offensively so. She asked me if
I was in some kind of difficulty. Not at all, I replied. I seem to see you here every day, she
said, and asked what I could be doing. I said I was looking at peoples faces. She asked if I
was doing it for some purpose, and I said I was not.
Sitting down beside me, she took a pack of Virginia Slims from her bag and lit up with a
small gold lighter. She offered me one, but I shook my head. Then she took off her sunglasses
and, without a word, stared directly at my face. More precisely, she stared at the mark on my
face. In return, I stared back, into her eyes. But I was unable to read any emotion stirring
there. I saw nothing but two dark pupils that seemed to be functioning as they were meant to.
She had a small, pointed nose. Her lips were thin, and color had been applied to them with
great care. I found it hard to guess her age, but I supposed she was in her mid-forties. She
looked younger than that at first glance, but the lines beside her nose had a special kind of
weariness about them. Do you have any money? she asked.
This took me off guard. Money? What do you mean, do I have any money? 
 Im just asking: Do you have any money? Are you broke? 
 No. At the moment, Im not broke, I said.
She drew her lips slightly to one side, as if examining what I had said, and continued to
concentrate all her attention on me. Then she nodded. And then she put her sunglasses on,
dropped her cigarette to the ground, rose gracefully from her seat, and, without a glance in my
direction, slipped away. Amazed, I watched her disappear into the crowd. Maybe she was a
little crazy. But her immaculate grooming made that hard to believe. I stepped on her
discarded cigarette, crushing it out, and then I did a slow scan of my surroundings, which
turned out to be filled with the usual real world. People were moving from one place to
another, each with his or her own purpose. I didnt know who they were, and they didnt
know who I was. I took a deep breath and went back to my task of looking at the faces of
these people, without a thought in my head.
I went on sitting there for eleven days altogether. Every day, I had my coffee and
doughnuts and did nothing but watch the faces of the people passing by. Aside from the
meaningless little conversation with the well-dressed woman who approached me, I spoke
with no one for the whole eleven days. I did nothing special, and nothing special happened to
me. Even after this eleven-day vacuum, however, I was unable to come to any conclusion. I
was still lost in a complex maze, unable to solve the simplest problem.
But then, on the evening of the eleventh day, something very strange occurred. It was a 
Sunday, and I had stayed there watching faces until later than usual. The people who came to
Shinjuku on a Sunday were different from the weekday crowd, and there was no rush hour. I
caught sight of a young man with a black guitar case. He was of average height. He wore
glasses with black plastic frames, had hair down to his shoulders, was dressed in blue denim
top and bottom, and trudged along in worn-out sneakers. He walked past me looking straight
ahead, a thoughtful expression in his eyes. When I saw him, something struck me. My heart
gave a thump. I know that guy, I thought. Ive seen him somewhere. But it took me a few
seconds to remember who he was-the singer I had seen that night in the snack bar in Sapporo.
No doubt about it: he was the one.
I immediately left my bench and hurried after him. Given his almost leisurely pace, it was
not difficult to catch up with him. I followed ten steps behind, adjusting my pace to his. I
strongly considered the possibility of speaking to him. I would say something like, You were
singing three years ago in Sapporo, werent you? I heard you there. 
 Oh, really? he would say. Thank you very much. 
And then what? Should I say, My wife had an abortion that night. And she left me not
too long ago. She had been sleeping with another man ? I decided just to follow him and see
what happened. Maybe as I walked along I would figure out some good way to handle it.
He was walking away from the station. He passed beyond the string of high-rises, crossed
the Ome Highway, and headed for Yoyogi. He seemed to be deep in thought. Apparently at
home in the area, he never hesitated or looked around. He kept walking at the same pace,
facing straight ahead. I followed after him, thinking about the day that Kumiko had her
abortion. Sapporo in early March. The earth was hard and frozen, and now and then a few
snowflakes would flutter down. I was back in those streets, my lungs full of frozen air. I saw
the white breath coming from peoples mouths.
Then it hit me: that was probably when things started to change. Yes, definitely. That had
been a turning point. After that, the flow around me had begun to evidence a change. Now
that I thought about it, that abortion had been an event of great significance for the two of us.
At the time, however, I had not been able to perceive its true importance. I had been all too
distracted by the act of abortion itself, while the genuinely important thing may have been
something else entirely.
I had to do it, she said. I felt it was the right thing to do, the best thing for both of us. But
theres something else, something you dont know about, something I cant put into words just
yet. Im not hiding anything from you. I just cant be sure whether or not its something real.
Which is why I cant put it into words yet. Back then, she couldnt be sure that that something
was real. And that something, without a doubt, had been more connected with the pregnancy
than with the abortion. Maybe it had had something to do with the child in her womb. What
could it have been? What had sent her into such confusion? Had she had relations with
another man and refused to give birth to his baby? No, that was out of the question. She
herself had declared that it was out of the question. It had been my child, that was certain. But
still, there had been something she was unable to tell me. And that something was inseparably
connected to her decision to leave me. Everything had started from that.
But what the secret was, what had been concealed there, I had no idea. I was the only one
left alone, the only one in the dark. All I knew for certain was that as long as I failed to solve
the secret of that something, Kumiko would never come back to me. Gradually, I began to
sense a quiet anger growing inside my body, an anger directed toward that something that
remained invisible to me. I stretched my back, drew in a deep breath, and calmed the
pounding of my heart. Even so, the anger, like water, seeped soundlessly into every corner of
my body. It was an anger steeped in sorrow. There was no way for me to smash it against
something, nothing I could do to dispel it.
• 
The man went on walking at the same steady pace. He crossed the Odakyu Line tracks,
passed through a block of shops, through a shrine, through a labyrinth of alleys. I followed
after him, adjusting my distance in each situation so as to keep him from spotting me. And it
was clear that he had not spotted me. He never once looked around. There was definitely
something about this man that made him different from ordinary people. Not only did he
never look back; he never once looked to either side. He was so utterly concentrated: what
could he be thinking about? Or was he, rather, thinking about absolutely nothing?
Before long, the man entered a hushed area of deserted streets lined with two-story woodframe
houses. The road was narrow and twisted, and the run-down houses were jammed up
against each other on either side. The lack of people here was almost weird. More than half
the houses were vacant. Boards were nailed across the front doors of the vacant houses, and
notices of planned construction were posted outside. Here and there, like missing teeth, were
vacant lots filled with summer weeds and surrounded by chain-link fences. There was
probably a plan to demolish this whole area in the near future and put up some new high-rises.
Pots of morning glories and other flowers crammed the little space outside one of the few
houses that were occupied. A tricycle lay on its side, and a towel and a childs bathing suit
were being dried in the second-story window. Cats lay everywhere-beneath the windows, in
the doorway-watching me with weary eyes. Despite the bright early-evening hour, there was
no sign of people. The geography of this place was lost on me. I couldnt tell north from
south. I guessed that I was in the triangular area between Yoyogi and Sendagaya and
Harajuku, but I could not be sure.
It was, in any case, a forgotten section of the city. It had probably been overlooked
because the roads were so narrow that cars could hardly pass through. The hands of the
developers had not reached this far. Stepping in here, I felt as if time had turned back twenty
or thirty years. I realized that at some point, the constant roar of car engines had been
swallowed up and was gone now. Carrying his guitar case, the man had made his way through
the maze of streets until he came to a wood-frame apartment house. He opened the front door,
went inside, and closed the door behind him. As far as I could see, the door had not been
locked.
I stood there for a time. The hands of my watch showed six-twenty. I leaned against the
chain-link fence of the vacant lot across the street, observing the building. It was a typical
two-floor wood-frame apartment building. The look of the entrance and the layout of the
rooms gave it away. I had lived in a building like this for a time when I was a student. There
had been a shoe cabinet in the entryway, a shared toilet, a little kitchen, and only students or
single working people lived there. This particular building, though, gave no sense of anyone
living there. It was totally devoid of sound or movement. The plastic-veneer door carried no
nameplate. Where it had apparently been removed, there was a long, narrow blank spot. All
the windows of the place were shut tight, with curtains drawn, despite the lingering afternoon
heat.
This apartment house, like its neighbors, was probably scheduled for demolition soon, and
no one lived there any longer. But if that was true, what was the man with the guitar case
doing here? I expected to see a window slide open after he went inside, but still nothing
moved.
I couldnt just go on hanging around forever in this deserted alley. I walked over to the
front door and gave it a push. I had been right: it was not locked, and it opened easily to the
inside. I stood in the doorway a moment, trying to get a sense of the place, but I could hardly
make out anything in the gloomy interior. With the windows all closed, the place was filled
with hot, stale air. The moldy smell here reminded me of the air at the bottom of the well. My
armpits were streaming in the heat. A drop of sweat ran down behind my ear. After a
moments hesitation, I stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind me. By checking the 
name tags (if there were any) on the mailboxes or the shoe cabinet, I intended to see if anyone
was still living here, but before I could do so I realized that someone was there. Someone was
watching me.
Immediately to the right of the entrance stood a tall shoe cabinet or some such thing, and
the someone was standing just beyond it, as if to hide. I held my breath and peered into the
gloomy warmth. The person standing there was the young man with the guitar case. He had
obviously been hiding behind the shoe cabinet from the time he came inside. My heart
pounded at the base of my throat like a hammer smashing a nail. What was he doing there?
Waiting for me?
 Hello there, I forced myself to say. I was hoping to ask you- 
But the words were barely out of my mouth when something slammed into my shoulder.
Hard. I couldnt tell what was happening. All I felt at the moment was a physical impact of
blinding intensity. I went on standing there, confused. But then, in the next second, I realized
what was going on. With the agility of a monkey, the man had leaped out from behind the
shoe cabinet and hit me with a baseball bat. While I stood there in shock, he raised the bat
again and swung it at me. I tried to dodge, but I was too late. This time the bat hit my left arm.
For a moment, the arm lost all feeling. There was no pain, nothing at all. It was as if the whole
arm had just melted into space.
Before I knew it, though, almost as a reflex action, I was kicking at him. I had never had
formal training in martial arts, but a friend of mine in high school with some ranking in karate
had taught me a few elementary moves. Day after day, he had had me practicing kicksnothing
fancy: just training to kick as hard and high and straight as possible. This was the
single most useful thing to know in an emergency, he had said. And he had been right.
Entirely taken up with swinging his bat, the man had obviously never anticipated the
possibility that he might be kicked. Just as frantic as he was, I had no idea where my kick was
aimed, nor was it very strong, but the shock of it seemed to take the wind out of him. He
stopped swinging his bat, and as if there had been a break in time at that point, he stared at me
with vacant eyes. Given this opening, I aimed a stronger, more accurate kick at his groin, and
when he curled up with the pain, I wrenched the bat from his hands. Then I kicked him hard
in the ribs. He tried to grab my leg, so I kicked him again. And then again, in the same place.
Then I smashed his thigh with the bat. Emitting a dull scream, he fell on the floor.
At first I kicked and beat him out of sheer terror, so as to prevent myself from being hit.
Once he fell on the floor, though, I found my terror turning to unmistakable anger. The anger
was still there, the quiet anger that had welled up in my body earlier while I was walking
along and thinking about Kumiko. Released now, it flared up uncontrollably into something
close to intense hatred. I smashed the mans thigh again with the bat. He was drooling from
the corner of his mouth. My shoulder and left arm were beginning to throb where he had hit
me. The pain aroused my anger all the more. The mans face was distorted with pain, but he
struggled to raise himself from the floor. I couldnt make my left arm work, so I threw the bat
down and stood over him, smashing his face with my right hand. I punched him again and
again. I punched him until the fingers of my right hand grew numb and then started to hurt. I
was going to beat him until he was unconscious. I grabbed his neck and smashed his head
against the wooden floor. Never in my life had I been involved in a fistfight. I had never hit
another person with all my strength. But now hitting was all I could do, and I couldnt seem to
stop. My mind was telling me to stop: This was enough. Any more would be too much. The
man could no longer get to his feet. But I couldnt stop. There were two of me now, I realized.
I had split in two, but this me had lost the power to stop the other me. An intense chill ran
through my body.
Then I realized the man was smiling. Even as I went on hitting him, the man kept smiling
at me-the more I hit him, the bigger the smile, until finally, with blood streaming from his
nose and lips, and choking on his own spit, the man gave out a high, thin laugh. He must be 
crazy, I thought, and I stopped punching him and stood up straight.
I looked around and saw the black guitar case propped against the side of the shoe cabinet.
I left the man where he lay, still laughing, and approached the guitar case. Lowering it to the
floor, I opened the clasps and lifted the cover. There was nothing inside. It was absolutely
empty-no guitar, no candles. The man looked at me, laughing and coughing. I could hardly
breathe. All of a sudden, the hot, steamy air inside this building became unbearable. The smell
of mold, the touch of my own sweat, the smell of blood and saliva, my own sense of anger
and of hatred: all became more than I could bear. I pushed the door open and went outside,
closing the door behind me. As before, there was no sign of anyone in the area. All that
moved was a large brown cat, slowly making its way across the vacant lot, oblivious of me.
I wanted to get out of there before anyone spotted me. I wasnt sure which way I should
go, but I started walking and before long managed to find a bus stop labeled To Shinjuku
Station. I hoped to calm my breathing and straighten my head out before the next bus came,
but failed to do either. Over and over, I told myself: All I was trying to do was look at peoples
faces! I was just looking at the faces of people passing by on the street, the way my
uncle had said. I was just trying to untangle the simplest complications in my life, thats all.
When I entered the bus, the passengers turned toward me. Each of them gave me the same
shocked look and then averted his eyes. I assumed it was because of the mark on my face.
Some time had to go by before I realized it was because of the splatters on my white shirt of
the mans blood (mostly blood from his nose) and the baseball bat I was still clutching in my
hands.
I ended up bringing the bat all the way home with me and throwing it in the closet.
That night I stayed awake until the sun came up. The places on my shoulder and left arm
where the man had hit me with the bat began to swell and to throb with pain, and my right fist
retained the sensation of punching the man over and over and over again. The hand was still a
fist, I realized, still clutched into a ball and ready to fight. I tried to relax it, but the hand
would not cooperate. And where sleeping was concerned, it was less a matter of being unable
to sleep than of not wanting to sleep. If I went to sleep in my present state, there was no way I
could avoid having terrible dreams. Trying to calm myself, I sat at the kitchen table, taking
straight sips of the whiskey my uncle had left with me and listening to quiet music on the
cassette player. I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted someone to talk to me. I set the
telephone on the table and stared at it for hours. Call me, somebody, please, anybody-even the
mysterious phone woman; I didnt care. It could be the most filthy and meaningless talk, the
most disgusting and sinister conversation. That didnt matter. I just wanted someone to talk to
me.
But the telephone never rang. I finished the remaining half-bottle of scotch, and after the
sky grew light, I crawled into bed and went to sleep. Please dont let me dream, please just let
my sleep be a blank space, if only for today.
But of course I did dream. And as I had expected, it was a terrible dream. The man with
the guitar case was in it. I performed the same actions in the dream as I had in realityfollowing
him, opening the front door of the apartment house, feeling the impact of the bat,
and hitting and hitting and hitting the man. But after that it was different. When I stopped
hitting him and stood up, the man, drooling and laughing wildly as he had in reality, pulled a
knife from his pocket-a small, sharp-looking knife. The blade caught the faint evening glow
that spilled in through the curtains, reflecting a white glimmer reminiscent of bone. But the
man did not use the knife to attack me. Instead, he took all his clothes off and started to peel
his own skin as if it were the skin of an apple. He worked quickly, laughing aloud all the
while. The blood gushed out of him, forming a black, menacing pool on the floor. With his
right hand, he peeled the skin of his left arm, and with his bloody, peeled left hand he peeled
the skin of his right arm. In the end, he became a bright-red lump of flesh, but even then, he
went on laughing from the dark hole of his open mouth, the white eyeballs moving 
spasmodically against the raw lump of flesh. Soon, as if in response to his unnaturally loud
laughter, the mans peeled skin began to slither across the floor toward me. I tried to run
away, but my legs would not move. The skin reached my feet and began to crawl upward. It
crept over my own skin, the mans blood-soaked skin clinging to mine as an overlay. The
heavy smell of blood was everywhere. Soon my legs, my body, my face, were entirely
covered by the thin membrane of the mans skin. Then my eyes could no longer see, and the
mans laughter reverberated in the hollow darkness. At that point, I woke up.
Confusion and fear overtook me then. For a while, I even lost hold of my own existence.
My fingers were trembling. But at the same time, I knew that I had reached a conclusion.
I could not-and should not-run away, not to Crete, not to anyplace. I had to get Kumiko
back. With my own hands, I had to pull her back into this world. Because if I didnt, that
would be the end of me. This person, this self that I thought of as me, would be lost.
Book Three: The Birdcatcher
October to December 
 
The W i n d - U p Bird in Winter
 
Between the end of that strange summer and the approach of winter, my life went on
without change. Each day would dawn without incident and end as it had begun. It rained a lot
in September. October had several warm, sweaty days. Aside from the weather, there was
hardly anything to distinguish one day from the next. I worked at concentrating my attention
on the real and useful. I would go to the pool almost every day for a long swim, take walks,
make myself three meals.
But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I
drank, the very air I breathed, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my
hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of
loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four oclock in the morning.
•
And yet there were a few people who wouldnt leave me alone-people from Kumikos
family, who wrote me letters. Kumiko could not go on being married to me, they said, and so 
I should immediately agree to a divorce. That would supposedly solve all the problems. The
first few letters tried to exert pressure on me in a businesslike manner. When I failed to
answer, they resorted to threats and, in the end, turned to pleading. All were looking for the
same thing.
Eventually, Kumikos father called.
 I am not saying that I am absolutely opposed to a divorce, I said. But first I want to see
Kumiko and talk to her, alone. If she can convince me its what she wants, then I will give her
a divorce. That is the only way I will agree to it. 
I turned toward the kitchen window and looked at the dark, rain-filled sky stretching away
into the distance. It had been raining for four straight days, into a wet, black world.
 Kumiko and I talked everything over before we decided to get married, and if we are
going to end that marriage, I want to do it the same way. 
Kumikos father and I went on making parallel statements, arriving nowhere- or nowhere
fruitful, at least.
•
Several questions remained unanswered. Did Kumiko really want to divorce me? And had
she asked her parents to try to convince me to go along with that?
 Kumiko says she doesnt want to see you, her father had told me, exactly as her brother,
Noboru Wataya, had said. This was probably not an out-and-out lie. Kumikos parents were
not above interpreting things in a manner convenient to themselves, but as far as I knew, they
were not the sort to manufacture facts out of nothing. They were, for better or worse, realistic
people. If what her father had said was true, then, was Kumiko now being sheltered by
them?
But that I found impossible to believe. Love was simply not an emotion that Kumiko had
felt for her parents and brother from the time she was a little girl. She had struggled for years
to keep herself independent of them. It could well be that Kumiko had chosen to leave me
because she had taken a lover. Even if I could not fully accept the explanation she had given
me in her letter, I knew that it was not entirely out of the question. But what I could not accept
was that Kumiko could have gone straight from me to them-or to some place they had
prepared for her-and that she could be communicating with me through them.
The more I thought about it, the less I understood. One possibility was that Kumiko had
experienced an emotional breakdown and could no longer sustain herself. Another was that
she was being held against her will. I spent several days arranging and rearranging a variety of
facts and words and memories, until I had to give up thinking. Speculation was getting me
nowhere.
•
 Autumn was drawing to a close, and a touch of winter hung in the air. As I always did in
that season, I raked the dead leaves in the garden and ‘, stuffed them into vinyl bags. I set a
ladder against the roof and cleaned
I the leaves out of the gutters. The little garden of the house I lived in had no trees, but the
wind carried leaves in abundance from the broad-spreading deciduous trees in the gardens on
both sides. I didnt mind the work. The time would pass as I watched the withered leaves
floating down in the afternoon sunshine. One big tree in the neighbors to the right put out
bright-red berries. Flocks of birds would perch there and chirp as if in competition with each
other. These were brightly colored birds, with short, sharp cries that stabbed the air.
I wondered about how best to store Kumikos summer clothing. I could do as she had said
in her letter and get rid of them. But I remembered the care that she had given each piece. And
it was not as if I had no place to keep them. I decided to leave them for the time being where 
they were.
Still, whenever I opened the closet, I was confronted by Kumikos absence. The dresses
hanging there were the husks of something that had once existed. I knew how she looked in
these clothes, and to some of them were attached specific memories. Sometimes I would find
myself sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the rows of dresses or blouses or skirts. I
would have no idea how long I had been sitting there. It could have been ten minutes or an
hour.
Sometimes, as I sat staring at a dress, I would imagine a man I didnt know helping
Kumiko out of it. His hands would slip the dress off, then go on to remove the underwear
beneath. They would caress her breasts and press her thighs apart. I could see those breasts
and thighs in all their white softness, and the other mans hands touching them. I didnt want
to think about such things, but I had no choice. They had probably happened in reality. I had
to get myself used to such images. I couldnt just shove reality aside.
Now and then, I would recall the night I slept with Creta Kano, but the memory of it was
mysteriously vague. I held her in my arms that night and joined my body with hers any
number of times: that was an undeniable fact. But as the weeks passed by, the feeling of
certainty began to disappear. I couldnt bring back concrete images of her body or of the ways
in which it had joined with mine. If anything, the memories of what I had done with her
earlier, in my mind-in unreality-were far more vivid than the memories of the reality of that
night. The image of her mounted on me, wearing Kumikos blue dress, in that strange hotel
room, came back to me over and over again with amazing clarity.
Early October saw the death of the uncle of Noboru Wataya who had served as Niigatas
representative to the Lower House. He suffered a heart attack shortly after midnight in his
hospital bed in Niigata, and by dawn, despite the doctors best efforts, he was nothing but a
corpse. The death had long been anticipated, of course, and a general election was expected
shortly, so the uncles supporters lost no time in formalizing their earlier plan to have Noboru
Wataya inherit the constituency. The late representatives vote-gathering machinery was
solidly based and solidly conservative. Barring some major unforeseen event, Noboru
Watayas election was all but assured.
The first thing that crossed my mind when I read the article in a library newspaper was
how busy the Wataya family was going to be from now on. The farthest thing from anybodys
mind would be Kumikos divorce.
•
The black-and-blue mark on my face neither grew nor shrank. It produced neither fever
nor pain. I gradually forgot I even had it. I stopped trying to hide the mark by wearing
sunglasses or a hat with the brim pulled down low. I would be reminded of it now and then
when I went out shopping and people would stare at me or look away, but even these
reactions stopped bothering me after a while. I wasnt harming them by having a mark on my
face. I would examine it each morning when I washed and shaved, but I could see no change.
Its size, color, and shape remained the same.
The number of individual human beings who voiced concern about the sudden appearance
of a mark on my cheek was exactly four: the owner of the cleaning shop by the station, my
barber, the young man from the Omura liquor store, and the woman at the counter of the
neighborhood library. In each case, when asked about it, I made a show of annoyance and said
something vague, like, I had a little accident. They would mumble, My, my or Thats
too bad, as if apologizing for having mentioned it.
I seemed to be growing more distant from myself with each day that went by. If I stared at
my hand for a while, I would begin to feel that I was looking through it. I spoke with almost
no one. No one wrote to me or called. All I found in my mailbox were utility bills and junk 
mail, and most of the junk mail consisted of designer-brand catalogs addressed to Kumiko,
full of colorful photos of spring dresses and blouses and skirts. The winter was a cold one, but
I sometimes forgot to turn on the heat, unsure whether the cold was real or just something
inside me. I would throw the switch only after a look at the thermometer had convinced me
that it really was cold, but even so, the cold I felt did not diminish.
•
I wrote to Lieutenant Mamiya with a general description of what had been happening to
me. He might be more embarrassed than pleased to receive the letter, but I couldnt think of
anyone else I could write to. I opened with that exact apology. Then I told him that Kumiko
left me on the very day he had visited my house, that she had been sleeping with another man
for some months, that I had spent close to three days in the bottom of a well, thinking, that I
was now living here all alone, and that the keepsake from Mr. Honda had been nothing but an
empty whiskey box.
Lieutenant Mamiya sent me an answer a week later.
To tell you the truth, you have been in my thoughts to an almost strange degree since we
last met. I left your home feeling that we really ought to go on talking, to spill our guts to
each other, so to speak, and the fact that we did not has been no small source of regret to me.
Unfortunately, however, some urgent business had come up, which required me to return to
Hiroshima that night. Thus, in a certain sense, I was very glad to have had the opportunity to
receive a letter from you. I wonder if it was not Mr. Hondas intention all along to bring the
two of us together. Perhaps he believed that it would be good for me to meet you and for you
to meet me. The division of keepsakes may well have been an excuse to have me visit you. This
may explain the empty box. My visit to you itself would have been his keepsake.
I was utterly amazed to hear that you had spent time down in a well, for I, too, continue to
feel myself strongly attracted to wells. Considering my own close call, one would think that I
would never have wanted to see another well, but quite the contrary, even to this day,
whenever I see a well, I cant help looking in. And if it turns out to be a dry well, I feel the
urge to climb down inside. I probably continue to hope that I will encounter something down
there, that if I go down inside and simply wait, it will be possible for me to encounter a
certain something. Not that I expect it to restore my life to me. No, I am far too old to hope for
such things. What I hope to find is the meaning of the life that I have lost. By what was it
taken away from me, and why? I want to know the answers to these questions with absolute
certainty. And I would go so far as to say that if I could have those answers, I would not mind
being even more profoundly lost than I am already. Indeed, I would gladly accept such a
burden for whatever years of life may be left to me.
I was truly sorry to hear that your wife had left you, but that is a matter on which I am
unable to offer you any advice. I have lived far too long a time without the benefit of love or
family and am thus unqualified to speak on such matters. I do believe, however, that if you
feel the slightest willingness to wait a while longer for her to come back, then you probably
should continue to wait there as you are now. That is my opinion, for what it is worth. I
realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has
left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope
for.
If possible, I would like to come to Tokyo sometime in the near future and see you again,
but unfortunately I am having a little problem with one leg, and the treatment for it will take
some time. Please take care and be well.
Sometimes I climbed the garden wall and went down the winding alley to where the
vacant Miyawaki house had stood. Dressed in a three-quarter-length coat, a scarf wrapped
under my chin, I trod the alleys dead winter grass. Short puffs of frozen winter wind whistled 
through the electric lines overhead. The house had been completely demolished, the yard now
surrounded by a high plank fence. I could look in through the gaps in the fence, but there was
nothing in there to see- no house, no paving stones, no well, no trees, no TV antenna, no bird
sculpture: just a flat, black stretch of cold-looking earth, compacted by the treads of a
bulldozer, and a few scattered clumps of weeds. I could hardly believe there had once been a
deep well in the yard and that I had climbed down into it.
I leaned against the fence, looking up at May Kasaharas house, to where her room was,
on the second floor. But she was no longer there. She wouldnt be coming out anymore to say,
 Hi, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. 
•
On a bitter-cold afternoon in mid-February, I dropped in at the real estate office by the
station that my uncle had told me about, Setagaya Dai-ichi Realtors. When I walked in, the
first person I saw was a middle-aged female receptionist. Several desks were lined up near the
entrance, but their chairs were empty, as if all the brokers were out on appointments. A large
gas heater glowed bright red in the middle of the room. On a sofa in a small reception area
toward the back sat a slightly built old man, engrossed in a newspaper. I asked the receptionist
if a Mr. Ichikawa might be there. Thats me, said the old man, turning in my direction. Can
I help you? 
I introduced myself as my uncles nephew and mentioned that I lived in one of the houses
that my uncle owned.
 Oh, I see, said the old man, laying his paper down. So youre Mr. Tsurutas nephew! 
He folded his reading glasses and gave me a head-to-toe inspection. I couldnt tell what kind
of impression I was making on him. Come in, come in. Can I offer you a cup of tea? 
I told him not to bother, but either he didnt hear me or he ignored my refusal. He had the
receptionist make tea. It didnt take her long to bring it to us, but by the time he and I were
sitting opposite each other, drinking tea, the stove had gone out and the room was getting
chilly. A detailed map showing all the houses in the area hung on the wall, marked here and
there in pencil or felt-tip pen. Next to it hung a calendar with van Goghs famous bridge
painting: a bank calendar.
 I havent seen your uncle in quite a while. How is he doing? the old man asked after a
sip of tea.
 I think hes fine, busy as ever. I dont see him much myself, I said.
 Im glad to hear hes doing well. How many years has it been since I last saw him? I
wonder. At least it seems like years. He took a cigarette from his jacket pocket, and after
apparently taking careful aim, he struck a match with a vigorous swipe. I was the one who
found that house for him, and I managed it for him for a long time too. Anyhow, its good to
hear hes keeping busy. 
Old Mr. Ichikawa himself seemed anything but busy. I imagined he must be half retired,
showing up at the office now and then to take care of longtime clients.
 So how do you like the house? No problems? 
 No, none at all, I said.
The old man nodded. Thats good. Its a nice place. Maybe on the small side, but a nice
place to live. Things have always gone well for the people who lived there. For you too? 
 Not bad, I said to him. At least Im alive, I said to myself. I had something I wanted to
ask you about, though. My uncle says you know more than anybody about this area. 
The old man chuckled. This area is one thing I do know, he said. Ive been dealing in
real estate here for close to forty years. 
 The thing I want to ask you about is the Miyawaki place behind ours. Theyve bulldozed
it, you know. 
 Yes, I know, said the old man, pursing his lips as though rummaging through the
drawers in his mind. It sold last August. They finally got all the mortgage and title and legal
problems straightened out and put it on the market. A speculator bought it, to tear down the
house and sell the land. Leave a house vacant that long, I dont care how good it is, its not
going to sell. Of course, the people who bought it are not local. Nobody local would touch the
place. Have you heard some of the stories? 
 Yes, I have, from my uncle. 
 Then you know what Im talking about. I suppose we could have bought it and sold it to
somebody who didnt know any better, but we dont do business that way. It just leaves a bad
taste in your mouth. 
 I nodded in agreement. So who did buy it, then? 
 The old man knit his brow and shook his head, then told me the name of a well-known
real estate corporation. They probably didnt do any research, just snapped it up when they
saw the location and the price, figured theyd turn a quick profit. But its not going to be so
easy. 
 They havent been able to sell it? 
 They came close a few times, the old man said, folding his arms. Its not cheap, buying
a piece of land. Its a lifetime investment. People are careful. When they start looking into
things, any stories come out, and in this case, not one of them is good. You hear stories like
that, and the ordinary person is not going to buy. Most of the people who live around here
know the stories about that place. 
 What are they asking? 
 Asking? 
 The price of the land where the Miyawaki house was. Old Mr. Ichikawa looked at me as
if to say I had aroused his curiosity. Well, lets see. The lot is a little over thirty-five hundred
square feet. Not quite a hundred tsubo. The market price would be one and a half million yen
per tsubo. I mean, thats a first-rate lot-wonderful setting, southern exposure. A million and a
half, no problem, even with the market as slow as it is. You might have to wait a little while,
but youd get your price at that location. Ordinarily. But theres nothing ordinary about the
Miyawaki place. Thats not going to move, no matter how long you wait. So the price has to
go down. Its already down to a million ten per tsubo, so with a little more bargaining you
could probably get the whole place for an even hundred million. 
 Do you think the price will continue to fall? The old man gave a sharp nod. Of course
its going to fall. To nine hundred thousand per tsubo easy. Thats what they bought it for.
Theyre really getting worried now. Theyd be thrilled if they could break even. I dont know
if theyd go any lower. They might take a loss if theyre hurting for cash. Otherwise, they
could afford to wait. I just dont know whats going on inside the company. What I do know
is that theyre sorry they bought the place. Getting mixed up with that piece of land is not
going to do anybody any good. He tapped his ashes into the ashtray.
 The yard has a well, doesnt it? I asked. Do you know anything about the well? 
 Hmm, it does have a well, doesnt it, said Mr. Ichikawa. A deep well. But I think they
filled it in. It was dry, after all. Useless. 
 Do you have any idea when it dried up? 
The old man glared at the ceiling for a while, with his arms folded. That was a long time
ago. I cant remember, really, but Im sure I heard it had water sometime before the war. It
must have dried up after the war. I dont know when, exactly. But I know it was dry when the
actress moved in. There was a lot of talk then about whether or not to fill in the well. But
nobody ever did anything about it. I guess it was too much bother. 
 The well in the Kasahara place across the alley still has plenty of water- good water, Im
told. 
 Maybe so, maybe so. The wells in that area always produced good-tasting water. Its got 
something to do with the soil. You know, water veins are delicate things. Its not unusual to
get water in one place and nothing at all right close by. Is there something about that well that
interests you? 
 To tell you the truth, Id like to buy that piece of land. 
The old man raised his eyes and focused them on mine. Then he lifted his teacup and took
a silent sip. You want to buy that piece of land? 
My only reply was a nod.
The old man took another cigarette from his pack and tapped it against the tabletop. But
then, instead of lighting it, he held it between his fingers. His tongue flicked across his lips.
 Let me say one more time that thats a place with a lot of problems. No one-and I mean no
one- has ever done well there. You do realize that? I dont care how cheap it gets, that place
can never be a good buy. But you want it just the same? 
 Yes, I still want it, knowing what I know. But let me point out one thing: I dont have
enough money on hand to buy the place, no matter how far the price falls below market value.
But I intend to raise the money, even if it takes me a while. So I would like to be kept
informed of any new developments. Can I count on you to let me know if the price changes or
if a buyer shows up? 
For a time, the old man just stared at his unlit cigarette, lost in thought. Then, clearing his
throat with a little cough, he said, Dont worry, youve got time; that place is not going to
sell for a while, I guarantee you. Its not going to move until theyre practically giving it
away, and that wont happen for a while. So take all the time you need to raise the money. If
you really want it. 
I told him my phone number. The old man wrote it down in a little sweat-stained black
notebook. After returning the notebook to his jacket pocket, he looked me in the eye for a
while and then looked at the mark on my cheek.
•
February came to an end, and March was half gone when the freezing cold began to relent
somewhat. Warm winds blew up from the south. Buds appeared on the trees, and new birds
showed up in the garden. On warm days I began to spend time sitting on the veranda, looking
at the garden. One evening I got a call from Mr. Ichikawa. The Miyawaki land was still
unsold, he said, and the price had dropped somewhat.
 I told you it wouldnt move for a while, he added, with a touch of pride. Dont worry,
from now on its just going to creep down. Meanwhile, how are you doing? Funds coming
together? 
•
I was washing my face at eight oclock that night when I noticed that my mark was
beginning to run a slight fever. When I laid my finger against it, I could feel a touch of
warmth that had not been there before. The color, too, seemed more intense than usual, almost
purplish. Barely breathing, I stared into the mirror for a long time-long enough for me to
begin to see my own face as something other than mine. The mark was trying to tell me
something: it wanted something from me. I went on staring at my self beyond the mirror, and
that self went on staring back at me from beyond the mirror without a word.
I have to have that well. Whatever happens, I have to have that well.
This was the conclusion I had reached.
 
Waking from Hibernation
 
One More Name Card
 
The Namelessness of Money
Just wanting the land was not going to make it mine, of course. The amount of money I
could realistically raise was close to zero. I still had a little of what my mother had left me,
but that would evaporate soon in the course of living. I had no job, nothing I could offer as
collateral. And there was no bank in the world that would lend money to someone like me out
of sheer kindness. I would have to use magic to produce the money from thin air. And soon.
One morning I walked to the station and bought ten fifty-million-yen lottery tickets, with
continuous numbers. Using tacks, I covered a section of the kitchen wall with them and
looked at them every day. Sometimes I would spend a whole hour in a chair staring hard at
them, as if waiting for a secret code to rise out of them that only I could see. After several
days of this, the thought struck me from nowhere: Im never going to win the lottery.
Before long, I knew this without a doubt. Things were absolutely not going to be solved
so easily-by just buying a few lottery tickets and waiting for the results. I would have to get
the money through my own efforts. I tore up the lottery tickets and threw them away. Then I
stood in front of the washbasin mirror and peered into its depths. There has to be a way, I said
to myself in the mirror, but of course there was no reply.
Tired of always being shut up in the house with my thoughts, I began to walk around the
neighborhood. I continued these aimless walks for three or four days, and when I tired of the
neighborhood, I took the train to Shinjuku. The impulse to go downtown came to me when I
happened by the station. Sometimes, I thought, it helps to think about things in a different
setting. It occurred to me, too, that I hadnt been on a train for a very long time. Indeed while
putting my money in the ticket machine, I experienced the nervousness one feels when doing
something unfamiliar. When had I last been to the streets of the city? Probably not since I followed
the man with the guitar case from the Shinjuku west entrance- more than six months
earlier.
The sight of the crowds in Shinjuku Station I found overwhelming. The flow of people
took my breath away and even made my heart pound to some extent-and this wasnt even rush
hour! I had trouble making my way through the crush of bodies at first. This was not so much
a crowd as a raging torrent-the kind of flood that tears whole houses apart and sweeps them
away. I had been walking only a few minutes when I felt the need to calm my nerves. I
entered a cafe that faced the avenue and took a seat by one of its large glass windows. Late in
the morning, the cafe was not crowded. I ordered a cup of cocoa and half-consciously
watched the people walking by outside.
I was all but unaware of the passage of time. Perhaps fifteen minutes had gone by, perhaps
twenty, when I realized that my eyes had been following each polished Mercedes-Benz,
Jaguar, and Porsche that crept along the jam-packed avenue. In the fresh morning sunlight
after a night of rain, these cars sparkled with almost painful intensity, like some kind of
symbols. They were absolutely spotless. Those guys have money. Such a thought had never
crossed my mind before. I looked at my reflection in the glass and shook my head. This was
the first time in my life I had a desperate need for money. 
When the lunchtime crowd began to fill the cafe, I decided to take a walk. I had no
particular goal other than to walk through the city I had not seen for so long. I walked from
one street to another, my only thought being to avoid bumping into the people coming toward
me. I turned right or left or went straight ahead, depending on the changing of the traffic
signals or the whim of the moment. Hands in pockets, I concentrated on the physical act of
walking-from the avenues with their rows of department stores and display windows, to the
back alleys with their garishly decorated porno shops, to the lively streets with movie theaters,
through the hushed precincts of a Shinto shrine, and back to the avenues. It was a warm
afternoon, and close to half the crowd had left their coats indoors. The occasional breeze felt
pleasant for a change. Before I realized it, I found myself standing in familiar surroundings. I
looked at the tiles beneath my feet, at the little sculpture that stood there, and at the tall glass
building that towered over me. I was standing in the middle of the small plaza outside the
high-rise, the very one where I had gone last summer to watch the people passing by, as my
uncle had advised me to do. I had kept it up for eleven days then, at the end of which I had
followed the weird man with the guitar case into the strange apartment house lobby, where he
attacked me with the bat. Aimless walking around Shinjuku had brought me to the same exact
place.
As before, I bought myself coffee and a doughnut at Dunkin Donuts and took them with
me to the plaza bench. I sat and watched the faces of the people passing by, which put me in
an increasingly calm and peaceful mood. It felt good for some reason I could not fathom, as
though I had found a comfortable niche in a wall where people would not notice me watching
them. It had been a very long time since I had had such a good look at peoples faces. And not
only peoples faces, I realized. I had hardly looked-really looked-at anything at all over these
past six months. I sat up straight on the bench and poised myself to look at things. I looked at
the people, I looked at the buildings soaring overhead, I looked at the spring sky where the
clouds had parted, I looked at the colorful billboards, I picked up a newspaper lying close by
and looked at it. Color seemed gradually to be returning to things as evening approached.
•
The next morning I took the train to Shinjuku again. I sat on the same bench and looked at
the faces of the people passing by. Again for lunch I had a doughnut and coffee. I took the
train home before the evening rush hour started. I made myself dinner, drank a beer, and
listened to music on the radio. The next day I did exactly the same thing. Nothing happened
that day, either. I made no discoveries, solved no riddles, answered no questions. But I did
have the vague sense that I was, little by little, moving closer to something. I could see this
movement, this gradually increasing closeness, whenever I looked at myself in the mirror
above the sink. The color of my mark was more vivid than before, warmer than before. My
mark is alive, I told myself. Just as I am alive, my mark is alive.
I repeated the routine every day, as I had done the previous summer, boarding the train for
the city just after ten, sitting on the bench in the plaza by the high-rise, and looking at the
people passing back and forth all day, without a thought in my head. Now and then, the real
sounds around me would grow distant and fade away. The only thing I heard at those times
was the deep, quiet sound of water flowing. I thought of Malta Kano. She had talked about
listening to the sound of water. Water was her main motif. But I could not recall what Malta
Kano had said about the sound of water. Nor could I recall her face. All that I could bring
back was the red color of her vinyl hat. Why had she always worn that red vinyl hat?
But then sounds gradually returned to me, and once again I returned my gaze to the faces
of the people.
• 
On the afternoon of the eighth day of my going into town, a woman spoke to me. At that
moment, I happened to be looking in another direction, with an empty coffee cup in my hand.
 Excuse me, she said. I turned and raised my eyes to the face of the woman standing in
front of me. It was the same middle-aged woman I had encountered here last summer-the only
person who had spoken to me during the time I spent in the plaza. It had never occurred to me
that we would meet again, but when in fact she spoke to me, it seemed like the natural
conclusion of a great flow.
As before, the woman was extremely well dressed, in terms of both the quality of the
individual items of clothing she wore and the style with which she had combined them. She
wore dark tortoiseshell sunglasses, a smoky blue jacket with padded shoulders, and a red
flannel skirt. Her blouse was of silk, and on the collar of her jacket shone a finely sculpted
gold brooch. Her red high heels were simple in design, but I could have lived several months
on what they must have cost her. My own outfit was a mess, as usual: the baseball jacket I
bought the year I entered college, a gray sweatshirt with a stretched-out neck, frayed blue
jeans, and formerly white tennis shoes that were now of an indeterminate color.
Despite the contrast, she sat down next to me, crossed her legs, and, without a word, took
a box of Virginia Slims from her handbag. She offered me a cigarette as she had last summer,
and again I declined. She put one between her lips and lit it, using a long, slender gold lighter
the size of an eraser. Then she took off her sunglasses, put them in her jacket pocket, and
stared into my eyes as if searching for a coin she had dropped into a shallow pond. I studied
her eyes in return. They were strange eyes, of great depth but expressionless.
She narrowed her eyes slightly and said, So. Youre back. 
I nodded.
I watched the smoke rise from the tip of her narrow cigarette and drift away on the wind.
She turned to survey the scene around us, as if to ascertain with her own eyes exactly what it
was I had been looking at from the bench. What she saw didnt seem to interest her, though.
She turned her eyes to me again. She stared at my mark for a long time, then at my eyes, my
nose, my mouth, and then my mark again. I had the feeling that what she really wanted to do
was inspect me like a dog in a show: pry my lips open to check my teeth, look into my ears,
and whatever else they do.
 I guess I need some money now, I said.
She paused a moment. How much? 
 Eighty million yen should do it. 
She took her eyes from mine and peered up at the sky as if calculating the amount: lets
see, if I take that from there, and move this from here... I studied her makeup all the while-the
eye shadow faint, like the shadow of a thought, the curl of the eyelashes subtle, like some
kind of symbol.
 Thats not a small amount of money, she said, with a slight diagonal twist of the lips.
 Id say its enormous. 
Her cigarette was only one-third smoked when she dropped it to the ground and carefully
crushed it beneath the sole of her high-heel shoe. Then she took a leather calling card case
from her slim handbag and thrust a card into my hand.
 Come to this address at exactly four oclock tomorrow afternoon, she said.
The address-an office building in the wealthy Akasaka district-was the only thing on the
card. There was no name. I turned it over to check the back, but it was blank. I brought the
card to my nose, but it had no fragrance. It was just a normal white paper card.
 No name? I said.
She smiled for the first time and gently shook her head from side to side. I believe that
what you need is money. Does money have a name? 
I shook my head as she was doing. Money had no name, of course. And if it did have a 
name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night
namelessness, its breathtaking inter-changeability.
She stood up from the bench. You can come at four oclock, then? 
 If I do, youll put money in my hand? 
 I wonder, she said, a smile at the corners of her eyes like wind patterns in the sand. She
surveyed the surrounding scene one more time, then smoothed her skirt with a perfunctory
sweep of the hand.
Taking quick steps, she disappeared into the flow of people. I went on looking at the
cigarette she had crushed out, at the lipstick coloring its filter end. The bright red reminded
me of Malta Kanos vinyl hat.
If I had anything in my favor, it was that I had nothing to lose. Probably.
 
What Happened in the Night
 
The boy heard the hard-edged sound in the middle of the night. He came awake, reached
out for the floor lamp, and, once it was on, sat up and looked around the room. The time on
the wall clock was just before two. The boy could not imagine what might be happening in
the world at a time like this.
Then the sound came again-from outside the window, he was sure. It sounded like
someone winding a huge spring. Who could be winding a spring in the middle of the night?
No, wait: it was like someone winding a spring, but it was not really a spring. It was the cry of
a bird. The boy carried a chair over to the window and climbed up onto it. He pulled the
curtains back and opened the window a crack. In the middle of the sky hung a large white
moon, the full moon of late autumn, filling the yard below with its light. The trees out there
looked very different to the boy at night than they did in the daylight. They had none of their
usual friendliness. The evergreen oak looked almost annoyed as it trembled in the occasional
puff of wind with an unpleasant creaking sound. The stones in the garden looked whiter and
smoother than they ordinarily did, staring up at the sky impassively like the faces of dead
people.
The cry of the bird seemed to be coming from the pine tree. The boy leaned out the
window and looked up, but from this low angle, the large, heavy branches of the pine hid the
bird. He wanted to see what it looked like. He wanted to memorize its color and shape so that
tomorrow he could find it in his illustrated encyclopedia. His intense desire to know had
brought him fully awake now. Finding birds and fish and other animals in his encyclopedia
was his greatest joy. Its big, thick volumes lined one shelf of his room. He had yet to enter
elementary school, but he already knew how to read.
The bird fell silent after winding the spring several times in a row. The boy wondered
whether anyone else had heard the cry. Had his father and mother heard it? His grandmother?
If not, he could tell them all about it in the morning: a bird that sounded just like the winding
of a spring was sitting in the pine tree last night at two oclock. If only he could catch a
glimpse of it! Then he could tell everybody its name.
But the bird never raised its cry again. It fell silent as a stone, up there in the branches of 
the pine bathed in moonlight. Soon a chill wind blew into the room, as if giving him some
kind of warning. The boy shuddered and closed the window. This was a different kind of bird,
he knew, not some sparrow or pigeon, which showed itself to people without hesitation. He
had read in his encyclopedia that most nocturnal birds were cunning and cautious. The bird
probably knew that he was on the lookout for it. It would never come out as long as he waited
for it to appear. The boy wondered if he should go to the bathroom. That would mean walking
down the long, dark corridor. No, he would just go back to bed. It was not so bad that he
couldnt wait until morning.
The boy turned the light out and closed his eyes, but thoughts of the bird in the pine tree
kept him awake. The bright moonlight spilled in from beneath the curtains as if in invitation.
When the wind-up bird cried one more time, the boy leaped out of bed. This time he did not
turn on the light, but slipping a cardigan over his pajamas, he climbed onto the chair by the
window. Parting the curtains just the tiniest bit, he peered up into the pine tree. This way, the
bird would not notice that he was there.
•
What the boy saw this time, though, was the outline of two men. He caught his breath.
The men knelt like two black shadows at the base of the pine tree. Both wore dark clothing.
One had no hat on, the other wore what looked like a felt hat with a brim. Why are these
strange men here in our garden in the middle of the night? the boy wondered. Why wasnt the
dog barking at them? Maybe he ought to tell his parents right away.
But his curiosity held him at the window. He wanted to see what the men were doing.
Then, without warning, the wind-up bird cried out again. More than once, it sent its long,
creaking sound out into the night. But the men did not seem to notice. They never budged,
never looked up. They remained kneeling at the base of the tree, face-to-face. They seemed to
be discussing something in low tones, but with the branches blocking the moonlight, the boy
could not make out their faces. Before long, the two men stood up at the same moment. There
was a good eight-inch difference in their heights. Both men were thin, and the tall one (the
one with the hat) wore a long coat. The short one had on more form-fitting clothes.
The shorter man approached the pine tree and stood there, looking up into the branches.
After a while, he began patting and grabbing the trunk with both hands as if inspecting it,
until, all at once, he jumped up onto it. Then, with no effort whatever (or so it seemed to the
boy), he came zipping up the tree like a circus performer. The boy knew this tree like an old
friend. He knew that climbing it was no easy feat. Its trunk was smooth and slippery, and
there was nothing to hold on to until you got up fairly high. But why was the man climbing
the tree in the middle of the night? Was he trying to catch the wind-up bird?
The tall man stood at the base of the tree, looking up. Soon after, the small man
disappeared from view. The branches rustled now and then, which meant that he must still be
climbing up the tall pine. The wind-up bird would be sure to hear him coming and fly away.
The man might be good at climbing trees, but the wind-up bird would not be that easy to
capture. If he was lucky, though, the boy was hoping he might be able to catch a glimpse of
the wind-up bird as it took off. He held his breath, waiting for the sound of wings. But the
sound of wings never came, nor was there any cry.
•
There was no sound or movement for a very long time. Everything was bathed in the
white, unreal light of the moon, the yard like the wet bottom of a sea from which the water
has just been suddenly removed. Entranced, motionless, the boy went on staring at the pine
tree and the tall man left behind. He could not have torn his eyes away if he had tried. His 
breath clouded the glass. Outdoors, it must be cold. The tall man stood looking up, hands on
hips, never moving, as if he had frozen in place. The boy imagined that he was worried about
his shorter companion, waiting for him to accomplish some mission and come climbing down
out of the pine tree. Nor would it have been strange for the man to be worried: the boy knew
that the tall tree was harder to climb down than up. But then, all of a sudden, the tall man
stalked off into the night, as if abandoning the whole project.
The boy felt that now he was the only one left behind. The small man had disappeared
into the pine tree, and the tall one had gone off somewhere. The wind-up bird maintained its
silence. The boy wondered if he should wake his father. But he knew he could not get him to
believe this. Im sure you just had another dream, his father would say. It was true, the boy
did often dream, and he often mistook his dreams for reality, but he didnt care what anybody
said: this was real- the wind-up bird and the two men in black. They had just disappeared all
of a sudden, that was all. His father would believe him if he did a good job of explaining what
had happened.
It was then that the boy realized: the small man looked a lot like his father. Of course, he
was too short to be his father, but aside from that, he was exactly the same: the build, the
movements. But no, his father could never climb a tree that way. He wasnt that agile or
strong. The more he thought about it, the more confused the boy became.
The tall man came back to the base of the tree. Now he had something in his hands-a
shovel and a large cloth bag. He set the bag down on.the ground and started digging near the
roots of the tree. The shovel cut into the earth with a sharp, clean sound. Now everybody was
bound to wake up, the boy thought. It was such a big, clear sound!
But no one woke up. The man went on digging without a break, seemingly unconcerned
that anyone might hear him. Though tall and thin, he was far more powerful than he looked,
judging from the way he used that shovel. He worked steadily, without wasted motion. Once
he had the size hole he wanted, the man leaned the shovel against the tree and stood there
looking down. He never once looked up, as though he had forgotten all about the man who
had climbed the tree. The only thing on his mind now was the hole, it seemed. The boy did
not like this. He would have been worried about the man in the tree.
The boy could tell from the mound of earth the man had dug out that the hole itself was
not very deep-maybe just up over his own knees. The man seemed satisfied with the shape
and size of the hole. He turned to the bag and gently lifted a blackish, cloth-wrapped object
from inside it. The way the man held it, it seemed soft and limp. Maybe the man was about to
bury some kind of corpse in the hole. The thought made the boys heart race. But the thing in
the cloth was no bigger than a cat. If human, it could only be an infant. But why did he have
to bury something like that in my yard? thought the boy. He swallowed the saliva that he had
unconsciously allowed to collect in his mouth. The loud gulp he made frightened the boy
himself. It might have been loud enough for the man to hear outside.
Just then, as if aroused by the boys gulp, the wind-up bird cried out, winding an even
bigger spring than before: Creeeak. Creeeak.
When he heard this cry, the boy felt intuitively that something very important was about
to happen. He bit his lip and unconsciously scratched the skin of his arms. He should never
have seen any of this, he felt. But now it was too late. Now it was impossible for him to tear
his eyes away from the scene before him. He parted his lips and pressed his nose against the
cold windowpane, transfixed by the strange drama that was now unfolding in his yard. He
was no longer hoping for other members of the family to get out of bed. No one would wake
up anyway, no matter how big a sound they made out there. Im the only person alive who can
hear these sounds. It was that way from the start.
The tall man bent over and, handling it with the utmost care, laid the thing in the black
cloth in the bottom of the hole. Then he rose to his full height and stared down at it lying
there. The boy could not make out the look on the mans face beneath the brim of his hat, but 
he seemed somehow to be wearing a grim, even a solemn, expression. Yes, it had to be some
kind of corpse, thought the boy. Before long, the man reached a point of decision, lifted the
shovel, and began filling in the hole. When he was through shoveling, he lightly tamped the
earth beneath his feet and smoothed it over. Then he set the shovel against the trunk of the
tree and, with the cloth bag in his hand, moved away with slow steps. He never looked back.
He never looked up into the tree. And the wind-up bird never cried again.
The boy turned to look at the clock on his wall. Squinting in the darkness, he could just
barely make out the time as two-thirty. He kept watch on the pine tree for another ten minutes
through the opening in the curtains, in case something should move out there, but an intense
sleepiness overtook him all at once, as if a heavy iron lid were closing over his head. He
wanted to know what would happen with the short man up in the tree and the wind-up bird,
but he couldnt keep his eyes open any longer. Struggling to slip off the cardigan before he
lost consciousness, he burrowed under the covers and sank into sleep.
 
Buying New Shoes
 
The Thing That Came Back Home
I walked from the Akasaka subway station down a lively street lined with restaurants and
bars to the place where the office building stood, a short way up a gentle slope. It was an
unremarkable building, neither new nor old, big nor small, elegant nor dilapidated. A travel
agency occupied part of the ground floor, its large window displaying posters of Mykonos
and a San Francisco cable car. Both posters looked faded from long duty in the window.
Three members of the firm were hard at work on the other side of the glass, talking on the
telephone or typing at a computer keyboard. Pretending to be looking at the posters, I killed
time watching the office scene while waiting for the hour to strike four exactly. For some
reason, both Mykonos and San Francisco seemed light-years from where I stood. The more I
looked at this building, the more I realized how ordinary it was, as if it had been built to
match the pencil sketch a small child might do if told to draw a building, or as if it had been
consciously designed to be inconspicuous in its surroundings. As carefully as I had been
checking the addresses in my search for the place, I came close to passing it by, it was so
plain. The buildings unobtrusive main entrance stood near the door to the travel agency.
Skimming the nameplates, I got the impression that most of the offices were occupied by
small-scale businesses-law offices, architects, importers, dentists. Several of the name-plates
were shiny enough for me to be able to see my face in them, but the one for Room had
changed with age to an indistinct color. The woman had obviously had her office here for
some time. Akasaka Fashion Design, read the inscription. The sheer age of the nameplate
helped to temper my misgivings.
A locked glass door stood between the entryway and the elevator. I rang the bell for 
and looked around for the closed-circuit TV camera I assumed must be sending my image to a
monitor inside. There was a small, camera-like device in a corner of the entryway ceiling. 
Soon the buzzer sounded, unlocking the door, and I went inside.
I took the absolutely unadorned elevator to the sixth floor and, after a few uncertain
moments in the absolutely unadorned corridor, found the door of. First checking to be
certain that the sign on the door said Akasaka Fashion Design, I gave the bell exactly one
short ring.
The door was opened by a slim young man with short hair and extremely regular features.
He was possibly the handsomest man I had ever seen in my life. But even more than his
features, what caught my eye was his clothing. He wore a shirt of almost painful whiteness
and a deep-green necktie with a fine pattern. Not only was the necktie itself stylish, but it had
been tied in a perfect knot, every twist and dip exactly as one might see in a mens fashion
magazine. I could never have tied a tie so well, and I found myself wondering how he did it.
Was it an inborn talent or the fruits of disciplined practice? His pants were dark gray, and he
wore brown tasseled loafers. Everything looked brand-new, as if he had just put it on for the
first time a few minutes before.
He was somewhat shorter than I. The hint of a smile played about his lips, as if he had just
heard a joke and was smiling now in the most natural way. Nor had the joke been a vulgar
one: it was the kind of elegant pleasantry that the minister of foreign affairs might have told
the crown prince at a garden party a generation ago, causing the surrounding listeners to titter
with delight. I began to introduce myself, but he gave his head a slight shake to signal that it
was unnecessary for me to say anything. Holding the door open inward, he ushered me in, and
after a quick glance up and down the hall, he closed the door, saying nothing all the while. He
looked at me with eyes narrowed as if to apologize for being unable to speak because of the
nervous black panther sleeping by his side. Which is not to say that there was a black panther
sleeping by his side: he just looked as if there were.
I was standing now in a reception room with a comfortable-looking leather sofa and chair,
an old-fashioned wooden coatrack, and a floor lamp. There was a single door in the far wall,
which looked as if it must lead to the next room. Beside the door, facing away from the wall,
was a simple oak desk that supported a large computer. The table standing in front of the sofa
might have been just large enough to hold a telephone book. A pleasant pale-green carpet
covered the floor. From hidden speakers, at low volume, flowed the strains of a Haydn
quartet. The walls bore several lovely prints of flowers and birds. One glance told you this
was an immaculate room, with no hint of disorder. Shelves affixed to one wall held fabric
samples and fashion magazines. The offices furnishings were neither lavish nor new, but had
the comforting warmth of the old and familiar.
The young man showed me to the sofa, then went around to the other side of the desk and
sat down facing me. Holding his palms out toward me, he signaled for me to wait awhile.
Instead of saying Sorry to keep you waiting, he produced a slight smile, and instead of
saying It will not take long, he held up one finger. He seemed to be able to express himself
without words. I nodded once to signal that I understood. For one to have spoken in his
presence would have seemed inappropriate and vulgar.
As if holding a broken object, he picked up a book lying next to the computer and opened
it to where he had left off. It was a thick black book without a dust jacket, so I could not make
out the title. From the moment he opened it, you could see that the young mans concentration
on his book was total. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there. I would have liked to
read something too, to pass the time, but nothing had been provided for that. I crossed my
legs, settled into the sofa, and listened to Haydn (though if pressed, I could not have sworn it
was Haydn). It was fairly nice music, but the kind that seems to melt into air the moment it
emerges from its source. On the young mans desk, aside from the computer, was an ordinary
black telephone, a pencil tray, and a calendar,
I was wearing virtually the same outfit I had had on the day before- baseball jacket,
hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes. I had just grabbed whatever came to hand 
before leaving the house. In this immaculate, orderly room, in the presence of this
immaculate, handsome youth, my tennis shoes looked especially dirty and worn out. No, they
were dirty and worn out, the heels practically gone, the color an indeterminate gray, the
uppers full of holes. These shoes had been through a lot, soaking up everything in their path
with fatal certainty. I had worn them every day for the past year, climbing over the back wall
countless times, stepping in dog shit now and then on trips down the alley, climbing down to
the bottom of the well. No wonder they were dirty and worn out. Not since quitting my job
had it occurred to me to think about what shoes I had on. Studying them so closely this way, I
felt with new intensity just how alone I was, just how far the world had left me behind. It was
time for me to buy a new pair of shoes, I told myself. These were just too awful.
Before long, the Haydn came to an end-an abrupt and messy end. After a short pause,
some kind of Bach harpsichord piece started (though I couldnt have sworn this was Bach,
either). I crossed and recrossed my legs. The telephone rang. The young man marked the
place he was reading with a slip of paper, pushed his book aside, and picked up the receiver.
He held it to his ear and gave a slight nod. Focusing on his desktop calendar, he marked it
with a pencil. Then he held the receiver near the surface of the desk and rapped his knuckles
twice against the wood as if knocking on a door. After this, he hung up. The call had lasted
some twenty seconds, during which the young man had spoken not a word. In fact, he had not
made a sound with his voice since letting me into the room. Was he unable to talk? Certainly
he could hear, judging from the way he had answered the phone and listened to what was
being said at the other end.
He sat looking at his phone for a while as if in thought. Then he rose without a sound,
walked around his desk, making straight for where I was sitting, and sat down next to me. He
then placed his hands on his knees in perfect alignment. They were slim, refined hands, as one
might have imagined from his face. His knuckles and finger joints did have a few wrinkles;
there was no such thing as fingers without wrinkles: they needed a few, at least, to move and
bend. But his fingers did not have many wrinkles-no more than the minimum necessary. I
looked at his hands as unobtrusively as I could. This young man must be the womans son, I
thought. His fingers were shaped like hers. Once that thought entered my mind, I started to
notice other points of resemblance: the small, rather sharp nose, the crystalline clarity of the
eyes. The pleasant smile had begun to play about his lips again, appearing and disappearing
with all the naturalness of a seaside cave at the mercy of the waves. Soon he rose to his feet,
in the same swift manner with which he had sat down beside me, and his lips silently formed
the words This way, please. Despite the absence of sound, it was clear to me what he
wanted to say. I stood and followed him. He opened the inner door and guided me through it.
Beyond the door was a. small kitchen and washbasin, and beyond that was yet another
room, one much like the reception room in which I had been sitting, but a size smaller. It had
the same kind of well-aged leather sofa and a window of the same shape. The carpet on the
floor was the same color as the other one as well. In the middle of the room was a large
workbench, with scissors, toolboxes, pencils, and design books laid out in an orderly fashion.
There were two tailors dummies. The window had not merely a blind but two sets of
curtains, cloth and lace, both shut tight. With the ceiling light off, the room was gloomy, as on
the evening of a cloudy day. One bulb of the floor lamp near the sofa had been turned off. A
glass vase holding gladiolus blossoms stood on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The
flowers were fresh, as if cut only moments before, the water in the vase clear. The music was
not audible in this room, nor were there any pictures or clocks on the walls.
The young man gestured silently again, this time for me to sit on the sofa. Once I had
seated myself (on a similarly comfortable couch) in accordance with his instructions, he took
something like a pair of swim goggles from his pants pocket and stretched them out before
my eyes. They were swim goggles, just ordinary goggles made of rubber and plastic, much
the same as the ones I used when swimming in the ward pool. Why he had brought them out 
here I had no idea. I couldnt even imagine.
<Dont be afraid,> the young man said to me. Properly speaking, he said nothing. He
simply moved his lips that way and moved his fingers ever so slightly. Still, I had an accurate
understanding of what he was saying to me. I nodded.
<Please put these on. Dont take them off yourself. I will take them off. You mustnt
move them, either. Do you understand?>
I nodded again.
<I will not harm you in any way. You will be fine. Dont worry.>
I nodded.
The young man walked behind the sofa and put the goggles over my eyes. He stretched
the rubber strap around to the back of my head and adjusted the eye cups so that the foam
pads properly surrounded my eyes. The one way these goggles were different from the ones I
always used was that I couldnt see anything through them. A thick layer of something had
been painted over the transparent plastic. A complete- and artificial-darkness surrounded me.
I couldnt see a thing. I had no idea where the light of the floor lamp was shining. I had the
illusion that I myself had been painted over with a thick layer of something.
The young man rested his hands lightly on my shoulders as if to encourage me. He had
slim, delicate fingers, but they were in no way fragile. They had the strangely assertive
presence of the fingers of a pianist resting on the keyboard, and coming through them I could
sense a kind of goodwill-or, if not precisely goodwill, something very close to it. <Youll be
fine. Dont worry,> they conveyed to me. I nodded. Then he left the room. In the darkness, I
could hear his footsteps drawing into the distance, and then the sound of a door opening and
closing.
•
I went on sitting in the same position for some time after the young man left the room.
The darkness in which I sat had something strange about it. In my being unable to see
anything, it was the same as the darkness I had experienced in the well, but otherwise it had a
certain quality that made it entirely different. It had no direction or depth, no weight or tangibility.
It was less like darkness and more like nothingness. I had merely been rendered
temporarily blind by artificial means. I felt my muscles stiffening, my mouth and throat going
dry. What was going to happen to me? But then I recalled the touch of the young mans
fingers. Dont worry, they had told me. For no clear reason, I felt that those words of his
were something I could believe in.
The room was so utterly still that when I held my breath I was overtaken by a sense that
the world had stopped in its tracks and everything would eventually be swallowed up by
water, sinking to eternal depths. But no, the world was apparently still moving. Before long, a
woman opened the door and stepped quietly into the room.
I knew it was a woman from the delicate fragrance of her perfume. This was not a scent a
man would wear. It was probably expensive perfume. I tried to recall the scent, but I could not
do so with confidence. Suddenly robbed of my sight, I found my sense of smell had also been
thrown off balance. The one thing I could be sure of was that the perfume I was smelling now
was different from that of the well-dressed woman who had directed me to this place. I could
hear the slight sound of the womans clothes rustling as she crossed the room and gently
lowered herself onto the sofa, to my right. So lightly did she settle into the cushions of the
sofa that it was clear she was a small woman.
Sitting there, the woman stared straight at me. I could feel her eyes focused on my face.
You really can feel someone looking at you, even if you cant see, I realized. The woman,
never moving, went on staring at me for a long time. I sensed her slow, gentle breathing but
could not hear a sound. I remained in the same position, facing straight ahead. The mark on 
my cheek felt slightly feverish to me. The color was probably more vivid than usual.
Eventually, the woman reached out and placed her fingertips on my mark, very carefully, as if
inspecting some valuable, fragile thing. Then she began to caress it.
I didnt know how to react to this, or how I was expected to react. I had only the most
distant sense of reality. I felt strangely detached, as if trying to leap from one moving vehicle
to another that was moving at a different speed. I existed in the empty space between the two,
a vacant house. I was now a vacant house, just as the Miyawaki house had once been. This
woman had come into the vacant house and, for some unknown reason, was running her
hands all over the walls and pillars. Whatever her reason might be, vacant house that I was
(and I was that and nothing more), I could do nothing (I needed to do nothing) about it. Once
that thought crossed my mind, I was able to relax somewhat.
The woman said nothing. Aside from the sound of rustling clothes, the room was
enveloped in a deep silence. The woman traced her fingertips over my skin as if trying to read
some minute secret script that had been engraved there ages ago.
Finally, she stopped caressing my mark. She then stood up, came around behind me, and,
instead of her fingertips, used her tongue. Just as May Kasahara had done in the garden last
summer, she licked my mark. The way she did it, however, was far more mature than the way
May Kasahara had done it. Her tongue moved and clung to my flesh with far greater skill.
With varying pressure, changing angles, and different movements, it tasted and sucked and
stimulated my mark. I felt a hot, moist throbbing below the waist. I didnt want to have an
erection. To do so would have been all too meaningless. But I couldnt stop myself.
I struggled to superimpose my own image upon that of a vacant house. I thought of myself
as a pillar, a wall, a ceiling, a floor, a roof, a window, a door, a stone. It seemed the most
reasonable thing to do.
I close my eyes and separate from this flesh of mine, with its filthy tennis shoes, its weird
goggles, its clumsy erection. Separating from the flesh is not so difficult. It can put me far
more at ease, allow me to cast off the discomfort I feel. I am a weed-choked garden, a
flightless stone bird, a dry well. I know that a woman is inside this vacant house that is
myself. I cannot see her, but it doesnt bother me anymore. If she is looking for something
inside here, I might as well give it to her.
The passage of time becomes increasingly unclear. Of all the kinds of time available to me
here, I lose track of which kind I am using. My consciousness goes gradually back into my
flesh, and in turn the woman seems to be leaving. She leaves the room as quietly as she came
in. The rustle of clothing. The shimmering smell of perfume. The sound of a door opening,
then closing. Part of my consciousness is still there as an empty house. At the same time, I am
still here, on this sofa, as me. I think, What should I do now? I cant decide which one is
reality. Little by little, the word here seems to split in two inside me. I am here, but I am
also here. Both seem equally real to me. Sitting on the sofa, I steep myself in this strange
separation.
•
Soon the door opened and someone came into the room. I could tell from the footsteps
that it was the young man. He came around behind me and took off the goggles. The room
was dark, the only light the single bulb of the floor lamp. I rubbed my eyes with my palms,
making them accustomed to the world of reality. The young man was now wearing a suit coat.
Its deep gray, with hints of green, was a perfect match for the color of his tie. With a soft
smile, he took my arm, helped me to stand, and guided me to the back door of the room. He
opened the door to reveal a bathroom on the other side. It had a toilet and, beyond the toilet, a
small shower stall. The toilet lid was down, and he had me sit on top of it while he turned the
shower on. He waited for the hot water to begin flowing, then he gestured for me to take a 
shower. He unwrapped a fresh bar of soap and handed the cake to me. Then he went out of the
bathroom and closed the door. Why did I have to take a shower here? I didnt get it.
I finally got it as I was undressing. I had come in my underpants. I stepped into the hot
shower and washed myself with the new green soap. I rinsed away the semen sticking to my
pubic hair. I stepped out of the shower and dried myself with a large towel. Beside the towel I
found a pair of Calvin Klein boxer shorts and a T-shirt, both still in their vinyl wrappers and
both my size. Maybe they had planned for me to come in my pants. I stared at myself in the
mirror for a while, but my head was not working right. I threw my soiled underwear into a
wastebasket and put on the clean, white new underpants, the clean, white new T-shirt. Then I
put on my jeans and slipped my sweatshirt over my head. I put on my socks and my dirty
tennis shoes and finally my baseball jacket. Then I stepped out of the bathroom.
The young man was waiting for me outside and guided me to the original waiting room.
The room looked as it had earlier. On the desk lay the same opened book, next to which
stood the computer. Anonymous classical music flowed from the speakers. The young man
had me sit on the sofa and brought me a glass of chilled mineral water. I drank half the glass.
 I seem to be tired, I said. The voice didnt sound like mine. Nor had I been intending to
say any such thing. The words had come out of nowhere, without reference to my will. The
voice was definitely mine, though.
The young man nodded. He took a white envelope from the inner pocket of his suit coat
and slipped it into the inner pocket of my baseball jacket. Then he nodded once again. I
looked outside. The sky was dark, and the street was aglow with neon signs, the light from
office building windows, streetlamps, and headlights. The thought of staying in this room any
longer became increasingly intolerable. Without a word, I stood up, crossed the room, opened
the door, and went out. The young man watched me from the place where he stood by his
desk, but he remained as silent as ever and made no attempt to stop me from leaving.
•
The return commute had Akasaka Mitsuke Station churning. In no mood for the bad air of
the subway, I decided to go as far as I could on foot. I walked past the palace for foreign
dignitaries as far as Yotsuya Station. Then I walked along Shinjuku Boulevard and went into
a small place without too many people, to have a glass of draft beer. My first swallow made
me notice how hungry I was, so I ordered a snack. I looked at my watch and realized it was
almost seven oclock. Come to think of it, though, the time of day was of no concern to me.
At one point, I noticed there was something in the inner pocket of my jacket. I had
forgotten all about the envelope the young man had given me on my way out. It was just an
ordinary white envelope, but holding it, I realized it was much heavier than it looked. More
than just heavy, though, its weight had something strange about it, as though there were
something inside holding its breath. After an indecisive moment, I tore it open-which was
something I would have to do sooner or later. Inside was a neat bundle of ten-thousand-yen
notes. Brand-new ten-thousand-yen notes, without a crease or wrinkle. They didnt look real,
they were so new, though I could find no reason for them not to be new. There were twenty
bills in all. I counted them again to be sure. Yes, no doubt about it: twenty bills. Two hundred
thousand yen.
I returned the money to the envelope and the envelope to my pocket.
Then I picked up the fork from the table and stared at it for no reason. The first thing that
popped into my head was that I would use the money to buy myself a new pair of shoes. That
was the one thing I needed most. I paid my bill and went back out to Shinjuku Boulevard,
where there was a large shoe store. I chose some very ordinary blue sneakers and told the
salesman my size without checking the price. I would wear them home if they fit, I said. The
salesman (who might have been the owner) threaded white laces through the eyelets of both 
sneakers and asked, What shall I do with your old shoes? I said he could throw them away,
but then I reconsidered and said I would take them home.
He flashed me a nice smile. An old pair of good shoes can come in handy, even if theyre
a little messy, he said, as if to imply that he was used to seeing such dirty shoes all the time.
Then he put the old ones in the box the new ones had come in and put the box in a shopping
bag. Lying in their new box, the old tennis shoes looked like tiny animal corpses. I paid the
bill with one of the crisp new ten-thousand-yen notes from the envelope, and for change
received a few not-so-new thousand-yen notes. Taking the bag with the old shoes along, I got
on the Odakyu train and went home. I hung on to the strap, mingling with homebound
commuters, and thought about the new items I was wearing-my new underpants and T-shirt
and shoes.
•
Home again, I sat at the kitchen table as usual, drinking a beer and listening to music on
the radio. It then occurred to me that I wanted to talk to someone-about the weather, about
political stupidity; it didnt matter what. I just wanted to talk to somebody, but I couldnt
think of anyone, not one person I could talk to. I didnt even have the cat.
•
Shaving the next morning, I inspected the mark on my face, as usual. I couldnt see any
change in it. I sat on the veranda and, for the first time in a long time, spent the day just
looking at the garden out back. It was a nice morning, a nice afternoon. The leaves of the trees
fluttered in the early-spring breeze.
I took the envelope containing the nineteen ten-thousand-yen notes out of my jacket
pocket and put it in my desk drawer. It still felt strangely heavy in my hand. Some kind of
meaning seemed to permeate the heaviness, but I could not understand what it was. It
reminded me of something, I suddenly realized. What I had done reminded me of something.
Staring hard at the envelope in the drawer, I tried to remember what it was, but I couldnt do
it.
I closed the drawer, went to the kitchen, made myself some tea, and was standing by the
sink, drinking the tea, when I remembered what it was. What I had done yesterday was
amazingly similar to the work Creta Kano had done as a call girl. You go to a designated
place, sleep with someone you dont know, and get paid. I had not actually slept with the
woman (just come in my pants), but aside from that, it was the same thing. In need of a
certain amount of money, I had offered my flesh to someone to get it. I thought about this as I
drank my tea. A dog barked in the distance. Shortly afterward, I heard a small propeller plane.
But my thoughts would not come together. I went out to the veranda again and looked at the
garden, wrapped in afternoon sunlight. When I tired of doing that, I looked at the palms of my
hands. To think that I should have become a prostitute! Who could have imagined that I
would have sold my body for money? Or that I would have first bought new sneakers with the
money?
I wanted to breathe the outside air, so I decided to go shopping nearby. I walked down the
street, wearing my new sneakers. I felt as if these new shoes had transformed me into a new
being, entirely different from what I had been before. The street scene and the faces of the
people I passed looked somewhat different too. In the neighborhood supermarket, I picked up
vegetables and eggs and milk and fish and coffee beans, paying for them with the bills I had
received as change at the shoe store the night before. I wanted to tell the round-faced, middleaged
woman at the register that I had made this money the previous day by selling my body. I
had earned two hundred thousand yen. Two hundred thousand yen! I could slave away at the 
law office where I used to work, doing overtime every day for a month, and I might come
home with a little over one hundred fifty thousand yen. Thats what I wanted to say to her.
But of course I said nothing. I handed over the money and received a paper bag filled with
groceries in return.
One thing was sure: things had started to move. I told myself this as I walked home
clutching my bag of groceries. Now all I had to do was hold on tight to keep from being
knocked off. If I could do that, I would probably end up somewhere-somewhere different
from where I was now, at least.
•
My premonition was not mistaken. When I got home, the cat came out to greet me. Just as
I opened the front door, he let out a loud meow as if he had been waiting all day and came up
to me, bent-tip tail held high. It was Noboru Wataya, missing now for almost a year. I set the
bag of groceries down and scooped him up in my arms.
 
A Place You Can Figure Out
If You Think About It Really, Really Hard
(May Kasaharas Point of View: )
 
Hi, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Ill bet you think Im in a classroom somewhere, studying with a textbook open in front of
me, like any ordinary high school kid. Sure, last time we met I told you myself that I was
going to go to another school, so it would be natural for you to think so. And in fact, I did
go to another school, a private boarding school for girls, far, far away, a fancy one, with big,
clean rooms like hotel rooms, and a cafeteria where you could choose whatever you wanted
to eat, and big, shiny new tennis courts and a swimming pool, sonaturally it was pretty
expensive, a place for rich girls. Problem rich girls. You can imagine what it was like-an
honest-to-goodness refined-country-school kind of thing in the mountains. It was surrounded
by a high wall topped with barbed wire, and it had this huge iron gate that Godzilla himself
couldnt have kicked in and round-the-clock guards clunking around like robots-not so much
to keep people on the outside from getting in as to keep people on the inside from getting out.
So now youre going to ask me, Why go to such an awful place if you know its so
awful? Youre right, but I had no choice. The main thing I wanted was to get out of the
house, but after all the problems I had caused, that was the only school charitable enough
to accept me as a transfer student. So I made up my mind to stick it out. But it really was
awful! People use the word nightmarish, but it was worse than that. I really did have
nightmares in that place- all the time- and Id wake up soaked in sweat, but even then Id
wish I could have kept dreaming, because my nightmares were way better than reality in that
place. I wonder if you know what thats like, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I wonder if youve ever been
in the pits like that. 
So finally, I stayed in this high-class hotel/jail/country school for only one semester. When
I got home for spring vacation, I announced to my parents that if I had to go back there, I was
going to kill myself. Id stuff three tampons down my throat and drink tons of water; Id slash
my wrists; Id dive headfirst off the school roof. And I meant what I said. I wasnt kidding.
Both my parents put together have the imagination of a tree frog, but they knew- from
experience- that when I got going like that, it wasnt an empty threat.
So anyhow, I never went back to the place. From March into April, I shut myself up in the
house, reading, watching TV, and just plain vegging out. And a hundred times a day, Id
think, I want to see Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I wanted to slip down the alley, jump the fence, and
have a nice long talk with you. But it wasnt that easy. It wouldve been a replay of the
summer. So I just watched the alley from my room and wondered to myself, Whats Mr. WindUp
Bird up to now? Spring is slowly, quietly taking over the whole world, and Mr. Wind-Up
Bird is in it too, but whats happening in his life? Has Kumiko come home to him? Whats
going on with those strange women Malta Kano and Creta Kano? Has Noboru Wataya the
cat come back? Has the mark disappeared from Mr. Wind-Up Birds cheek... ?
After a month of living like that, I couldnt take it anymore. I dont know how or when it
happened, but for me that neighborhood is nothing now but Mr. Wind-Up Birds world, 
and when Im in it, Im nothing but the me contained in Mr. Wind-Up Birds world. And
its not just a sort-of-kind-of thing. Its not your fault, of course, but still... So I had to find my
own place.
I thought about it and thought and thought, and finally it hit me where I had to go.
(Hint) Its a place you can figure out if you think about it really, really hard. Youll be
able to imagine where I am if you make the effort. Its not a school, its not a hotel, its not a
hospital, its not a jail, its not a house. Its a kind of special place way far away. Its... a
secret. For now, at least.
Im in the mountains again, in another place surrounded by a wall (but not such a huge
wall), and theres a gate and a nice old man who guards the gate, but you can go in and out
anytime you like. Its a huge piece of land, with its own little woods and a pond, and if you go
for a walk when the sun comes up you see lots
of animals: lions and zebras and-no, Im kidding, but you can see cute little animals like
badgers and pheasants. Theres a dormitory, and thats where I live.
Im writing this letter in a tiny room at a tiny desk near a tiny bed next to a tiny bookcase
beside a tiny closet, none of which have the slightest decorative touch, and all of which are
designed to meet the minimum functional requirements. On the desk is a fluorescent lamp, a
teacup, the stationery for writing this letter, and a dictionary. To be honest, I almost never use
the dictionary. I just dont like dictionaries. I dont like the way they look, and I dont like
what they say inside. Whenever I use a dictionary, I make a face and think, Who needs to
know that? People like me dont get along well with dictionaries. Say I look up transition 
and it says: passage from one state to another. I think, So what? Its got nothing to do with
me. So when I see a dictionary on my desk I feel like Im looking at some strange dog leaving
a twisty piece of poop on our lawn out back. But anyway, I bought a dictionary because I
figured I might have to look something up while I was writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Also Ive got a dozen pencils, all sharpened and laid out in a row. Theyre brand-new. I
just bought them at the stationery store-especially for writing to you (not that Im trying to
make you feel grateful or anything: just-sharpened, brand-new pencils are really nice, dont
you think?). Also Ive got an ashtray and cigarettes and matches. I dont smoke as much as I
used to, just once in a while for a mood change (like right now, for instance). So thats
everything on my desk. The desk faces a window, and the window has curtains. The curtains
have a sweet little flower design-not that I picked them out or anything: they came with the 
window. That flower design is the only thing here that doesnt look absolutely plain and
simple. This is a perfect room for a teenage girl-or maybe not. No, its more like a model jail
cell designed with good intentions for first offenders. My boom box is on the shelf (the big
one-remember, Mr. Wind-Up Bird?), and Ive got Bruce Springsteen on now. Its Sunday
afternoon and everybodys out having fun, so theres nobody to complain if I turn it up loud.
The only thing I do for fun these days is go to the nearby town on weekends and buy the
cassette tapes I want at a record store. (I almost never buy books. If theres something I want
to read, I can get it at our little library.) Im pretty friendly with the girl next door. She bought
a used car, so when I want to go to town, I go with her. And guess what? Ive been learning to
drive it. Theres so much open space here, I can practice all I want. I dont have a license yet,
but Im a pretty good driver.
To tell you the truth, though, aside from buying music tapes, going to town is not all that
much fun. Everybody says they have to get out once a week or theyll go nuts, but I get my
relief by staying here when everybodys gone and listening to my favorite music like this. I
once went on a kind of double date with my friend with the car. Just to give it a try. Shes
from around here, so she knows a lot of people. My date was a nice enough guy, a college
student, but I dont know, I still cant really get a clear sense of all kinds of things. Its as if
theyre out there, far away, lined up like dolls in a shooting gallery, and all these transparent
curtains are hanging down between me and the dolls.
To tell you the truth, when I was seeing you that summer, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, like, when
we were sitting at the kitchen table talking and drinking beer and things, I would think, What
would I do if Mr. Wind-Up Bird all of a sudden pushed me down and tried to rape me? I
didnt know what I would do. Of course, I would have resisted and said, No, Mr. Wind-Up
Bird, you shouldnt do this! But I also would have been thinking I had to explain why it was
wrong and why you shouldnt be doing it, and the more I thought, the more mixed up I would
get, and by that time you probably would have finished raping me. My heart would pound like
crazy when I thought about this, and I would think the whole thing was kind of unfair. Ill bet
you never had any idea I had thoughts like this going on in my head. Do you think this is
stupid? You probably do. I mean, it is stupid. But at the time, I was absolutely, tremendously
serious about these things. Which, I think, is why I pulled the rope ladder out of the well and
put the cover on with you down inside there that time, kind of like sealing you off. That way,
there would be no more Mr. Wind-Up Bird around, and I wouldnt have to be bothered by
those thoughts for a while.
Im sorry, though. I know I should never have done that to you (or to anybody). But I
cant help myself sometimes. I know exactly what Im doing, but I just cant stop. Thats my
greatest weakness.
I dont believe that you would ever rape me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I know that now,
somehow. Its not that you would never, ever do it (I mean, nobody knows for sure whats
going to happen), but maybe that you would at least not do it to confuse me. I dont know how
to put it exactly, but I just sort of feel that way.
All right, enough of this rape stuff.
Anyhow, even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldnt be
able to concentrate. Id be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around
somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. Id be thinking about one unrelated thing
after another. I dont know, I guess finally I want to be alone a little while longer. And I want
to let my thoughts wander freely. In that sense, I guess, Im probably still on the road to
recovery. 
Ill write again soon. Next time, Ill probably be able to go a little further into all kinds of
things.
P.S. Before the next letter comes, try to guess where I am and what Im doing. 
 
Nutmeg and C i n n a m o n
 
The cat was covered from nose to tailtip with clumps of dried mud his fur stuck together
in little balls, as if he had been rolling around on a filthy patch of ground for a long time. He
purred with excitement as I picked him up and examined him all over. He might have been
somewhat emaciated, but aside from that, he looked little different from when I had last seen
him: face, body, fur. His eyes were clear, and he had no wounds He certainly didnt seem like
a cat that had been missing for a year. It was more as if he had come home after a single night
of carousing.
I fed him on the veranda: a plateful of sliced mackerel that I had bought at the
supermarket. He was obviously starved. He polished off the fish slices so quickly he would
gag now and then and spit pieces back into the plate. I found the cats water dish under the
sink and filled it to the brim. He came close to emptying it. Having accomplished this much,
he started licking his mud-caked fur, but then, as if suddenly recalling that I was there, he
climbed into my lap, curled up, and went to sleep
The cat slept with his forelegs tucked under his body, his face buried in his tail. He purred
loudly at first, but that grew quieter, until he entered a state of complete and silent sleep, all
defenses down. I sat in a sunny spot on the veranda, petting him gently so as not to wake him.
I had not thought about the cats special soft, warm touch for a very long time. So much had
been happening to me that I had all but forgotten that the cat had disappeared. Holding this
soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete
trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cats chest and felt his heart
beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted
to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.
Where had this cat been for a year? What had he been doing? Why had he chosen to come
back now, all of a sudden? And where were the traces of the time he had lost? I wished I
could ask him these questions. If only he could have answered me!
•
I brought an old cushion out to the veranda and set the cat down on top of it. He was as
limp as a load of wash. When I picked him up, the slits of his eyes opened, and he opened his
mouth, but he made no sound. He settled himself onto the cushion, gave a yawn, and fell back
asleep. Once I was satisfied he was resting, went to the kitchen to put away the groceries I
had brought home. I placed the tofu and vegetables and fish in their compartments in the
refrigerator, then glanced out to the veranda again. The cat was sleeping in the same position.
We had always called him Noboru Wataya because the look in his eyes resembled that of
Kumikos brother, but that had just been our little joke, not the cats real name. In fact, we
had let six years go by without giving him a name.
Even as a joke, though, Noboru Wataya was no name for a cat of ours. The real Noboru
Wataya had simply become too great a presence in the course of those six years-especially 
now that he had been elected to the House of Representatives. Saddling the cat with that name
forever was out of the question. As long as he remained in this house, it would be necessary to
give him a new name, a name of his own-and the sooner the better. It should be a simple,
tangible, realistic name, something you could see with your eyes and feel with your hands,
something that could erase the sound and memory and meaning of the name Noboru Wataya.
I brought in the plate that had held the fish. It looked as clean as if it had just been washed
and wiped. The cat must have enjoyed his meal. I was glad I had happened to buy some
mackerel just at the time the cat had chosen to come home. It seemed like a good omen,
fortunate for both me and the cat. Yes, that was it: I would call him Mackerel. Rubbing him
behind the ears, I informed him of the change: Youre not Noboru Wataya anymore, I said.
 From now on, your name is Mackerel. I wanted to shout it to the world.
I sat on the veranda next to Mackerel the cat, reading a book until the sun began to set.
The cat slept as soundly as if he had been knocked unconscious, his quiet breathing like a
distant bellows, his body rising and falling with the sound. I would reach out now and then to
feel his warmth and make sure the cat was really there. It was wonderful to be able to do that:
to reach out and touch something, to feel something warm. I had been missing that kind of
experience.
•
Mackerel was still there the next morning. He had not disappeared. When I woke up, I
found him sleeping next to me, on his side, legs stretched straight out. He must have wakened
during the night and licked himself clean. The mud and hair balls were gone. He looked
almost like his old self. He had always had a handsome coat of fur. I held him for a while,
then fed him his breakfast and changed his water. Then I moved away from him and tried
calling him by name: Mackerel. Finally, on the third try, he turned toward me and gave a
little meow.
Now it was time for me to begin my new day. The cat had come back to me, and I had to
begin to move forward to some extent. I took a shower and ironed a freshly laundered shirt. I
put on a pair of cotton pants and my new sneakers. A hazy overcast filled the sky, but the
weather was not especially cold. I decided to wear a thickish sweater without a coat. I took the
train to Shinjuku, as usual, went through the underground passageway to the west exit plaza,
and took a seat on my usual bench.
•
The woman showed up a little after three oclock. She didnt seem astonished to see me,
and I reacted to her approach without surprise. Our encounter was entirely natural. We
exchanged no greetings, as if this had all been prearranged. I raised my face slightly, and she
looked at me with a flicker of the lips.
She wore a springlike orange cotton top, a tight skirt the color of topaz, and small gold
earrings. She sat down next to me and, as always, took a pack of Virginia Slims from her
purse. She put a cigarette in her mouth and lit up with a slim gold lighter. This time she knew
better than to offer me a smoke. And after taking two or three leisurely puffs herself, with an
air of deep thought, she dropped her cigarette to the ground as if testing gravity conditions for
the day. She then patted me on the knee and said, Come with me, after which she stood to
leave. I crushed her cigarette out and did as she said. She raised her hand to stop a passing taxi
and climbed in. I climbed in beside her. She then announced very clearly an address in
Aoyama, after which she said nothing at all until the cab had threaded its way through thick
traffic to Aoyama Boulevard. I watched the sights of Tokyo passing by the window. There
were several new buildings that I had never seen before. The woman took a notebook from 
her bag and wrote something in it with a small gold pen. She looked at her watch now and
then, as if checking on something. The watch was set in a gold bracelet. All the little
accessories she carried with her seemed to be made of gold. Or was it that they turned to gold
the moment she touched them?
She took me into a boutique on Omote Sando that featured designer brands. There she
picked out two suits for me, both of thin material, one blue gray, the other dark gray. These
were not suits I could have worn to the law firm: they even felt expensive. She did not offer
any explanations, and I did not ask for them. I simply did as I was told. This reminded me of
several so-called art films I had seen in college. Movies like that never explained what was
going on. Explanations were rejected as some kind of evil that could only destroy the films
 reality. That was one way of thought, one way to look at things, no doubt, but it felt strange
for me, as a real, live human being, to enter such a world.
I am of average build, so neither suit had to be altered other than to adjust the sleeves and
pant legs. The woman picked out three dress shirts and three ties to match each shirt, then two
belts and a half-dozen pairs of socks. She paid with a credit card and ordered them to deliver
everything to my place. She seemed to have some kind of clear image in her mind of how I
should look. It took her no time to pick out what she bought me. I would have spent more
time at a stationers, picking out a new eraser. But I had to admit that her good taste in clothes
was nothing short of astounding. The color and style of every shirt and tie she chose
seemingly at random were perfectly coordinated, as if she had selected them after long,
careful consideration. Nor were the combinations she came up with the least bit ordinary.
Next, she took me to a shoe store and bought me two pairs of shoes to go with the suits.
This took no time, either. Again she paid with a credit card and asked for the items to be
delivered to my house. Delivery seemed hardly necessary in the case of a couple of pairs of
shoes, but this was apparently her way of doing things: pick things out fast, pay with a credit
card, and have the stuff delivered.
Next, we went to a watchmakers and repeated the process. She bought me a stylish,
elegant watch with an alligator band to go with the suits, and again she took almost no time
picking it out. The price was somewhere up around fifty to sixty thousand yen. I had a cheap
plastic watch, but this was apparently not good enough for her. The watch, at least, she did
not have delivered. Instead, she had them wrap it and handed it to me without a word.
Next, she took me to a unisex hair salon. The place was like a dance studio, with shiny
wooden floors, and mirrors covering the walls. There were fifteen chairs, and everywhere
technicians were coming and going with shears and hairbrushes and whatnot in their hands.
Potted plants stood at various points on the floor, and from two black Bose speakers on the
ceiling came the faint sounds of one of those wandering Keith Jarrett piano solos. I was
shown to a chair immediately. The woman must have set up an appointment for me from one
of the stores we had visited. She gave detailed instructions to the thin man who would be
cutting my hair. They obviously knew each other. As he responded to each of her instructions,
he kept his eyes on my face in the mirror with an expression he might have worn studying a
bowlful of celery fibers he was expected to eat. He had a face like the young Solzhenitsyn.
The woman said to him, Ill be back when youre through, and left the salon with quick
steps.
The man said very little as he cut my hair- This way, please, when it was time for my
shampoo, Excuse me, when he brushed off clippings. At times when he moved away, I
would reach out from under the barber cloth and touch the mark on my right cheek. This was
the first time I had ever seen it in mirrors other than my own at home. The wall-sized mirrors
reflected the images of many people, my image among them. And on my face shone this
bright blue mark. It didnt seem ugly or unclean to me. It was simply part of me, something I
would have to accept. I could feel people looking at it now and then-looking at its reflection
in the mirror. But there were too many images in the mirror for me to be able to tell who. I 
just felt their eyes trained on the mark.
My haircut ended in half an hour. My hair, which had been growing longer and longer
since I left my job, was short once again. I moved to one of the chairs along the wall and sat
there listening to music and reading a magazine in which I had no interest until the woman
came back. She seemed pleased with my new hairstyle. She took a ten-thousand-yen note
from her purse, paid the bill, and led me outside. There she came to a stop and studied me
from head to toe, exactly the same way I always examined the cat, as if to see whether there
was something she had forgotten to do. Apparently, there was not. Then she glanced at her
gold watch and released a kind of sigh. It was nearly seven oclock.
 Lets have dinner, she said. Can you eat? 
I had had one slice of toast for breakfast and one doughnut for lunch. Probably, I said.
She took me to a nearby Italian restaurant. They seemed to know her there. Without a
word, we were shown to a quiet table in the back. As soon as I sat down across from her, she
ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told,
saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I
hope it can find me, I thought. There was nothing special in my pockets: keys, handkerchief,
wallet. She observed them with no show of interest, then picked up the wallet and looked
inside. It contained about fifty-five hundred yen in cash, a telephone card, an ATM card, and
my ward pool ID, nothing else. Nothing unusual. Nothing to prompt anyone to smell it or
measure it or shake it or dip it in water or hold it up to the light. She handed it back to me
with no change of expression.
 I want you to go out tomorrow and buy a dozen handkerchiefs, a new wallet and key
holder, she said. That much you can pick out yourself, Im sure. And when was the last time
you bought yourself new underwear? 
I thought about it for a moment but couldnt remember. I cant remember, I said. Its
been a while, I think, but Im a little clean-crazy, and for a man living alone, Im good about
doing my laund- 
 Never mind. I want you to buy a dozen tops and bottoms. 
I nodded without speaking.
 Just bring me a receipt. Ill pay for them. And make sure you buy the best they have. Ill
pay your cleaning bills too. Dont wear a shirt more than once without sending it to the
cleaners. All right? 
I nodded again. The cleaner by the station would be happy to hear this. But, I thought to
myself, proceeding to extend this one, concise conjunction, clinging to the window by surface
tension, into a proper, full-length sentence: But why are you doing all this-buying me a
whole new wardrobe, paying for my haircuts and cleaning? 
She did not answer me. Instead, she took a Virginia Slim from her pocketbook and put it
in her mouth. A tall waiter with regular features appeared from nowhere and, with practiced
movements, lit her cigarette with a match. He struck the match with a clean, dry sound-the
kind of sound that could stimulate a persons appetite. When he was through, he presented us
with menus. She did not bother to look, however, and she told the waiter not to bother with
the days specials. Bring me a salad and a dinner roll, and some kind of fish with white meat.
Just a few drops of dressing on the salad, and a dash of pepper. And a glass of sparkling
water, no ice. 
 I didnt want to bother looking at the menu. Ill have the same, I said. The waiter
bowed and withdrew. My reality was still having trouble locating me, it seemed.
 Im asking purely out of curiosity, I said, trying once more to elicit an explanation from
her. Im not turning critical after youve bought me all these things, but is it really worth all
the time and trouble and money? 
Still she would not answer.
 Im just curious, I said again. 
Again no answer. She was too busy looking at the oil painting on the wall to answer my
question. It was a picture of what I assumed was an Italian landscape, with a well-pruned pine
tree, and several reddish farmhouses lining the hills. The houses were all somewhat small but
pleasant. I wondered what kind of people might live in such houses: probably normal people
living normal lives. None of them had inscrutable women coming out of nowhere to buy them
suits and shoes and watches. None of them had to calculate the huge funds they would need to
get possession of some dried-up well. I felt a stab of envy for people living in such a normal
world. Envy is not an emotion I feel very often, but the scene in the painting aroused that
sense in me to an almost amazing degree. If only I could have entered the picture right then
and there! If only I could have walked into one of those farmhouses, enjoyed a glass of wine,
then crawled under the covers and gone to sleep without a thought in my head!
The waiter came before long and placed glasses of sparkling water in front of the woman
and me. She crushed out her cigarette in an ashtray.
 Why dont you ask me something else? she said.
While I was thinking about something else to ask, she took a sip of her sparkling water.
 Was that young man in the office in Akasaka your son? I asked.
 Of course, she answered without hesitation.
 Is he unable to speak? 
The woman nodded. He never spoke much to begin with, but all of a sudden, at the age
of six, he stopped speaking entirely. He stopped using his voice in any way. 
 Was there some kind of reason for that? 
She ignored this question. I tried to think of another. If he doesnt talk, how does he
manage to take care of business? 
She wrinkled her brow just the slightest bit. She had not ignored my question, but she
obviously had no intention of answering it.
 Ill bet you picked out everything he was wearing, from head to foot. The way you did
with me. 
 I do not like it when people wear the wrong thing. That is all. It is something I simply
cannot- cannot- abide. I at least want the people around me to dress as well as possible. I want
everything about them to look right, whether or not it can actually be seen. 
 I guess you dont like my appendix, then, I said, trying to make a joke.
 Do you have some problem with the shape of your appendix? she asked, looking
straight at me with an utterly serious expression. I regretted the joke.
 Nothing at the moment, I said. I didnt really mean anything by it. It was just a kind of
‘for instance. 
She kept her questioning stare fixed on me a while longer-she was probably thinking
about my appendix.
 So anyhow, I want the people around me to look right, even if I have to pay for it myself.
That is all there is to it. So dont let it worry you. I am doing this entirely for myself. I feel a
personal, almost physical, revulsion for messy clothing. 
 The way a musician cant stand hearing music played off key? 
 Something like that. 
 So do you buy clothing this way for all the people around you? 
 I guess I do. Not that I have so many people around me, to begin with. I mean, I may not
like what they wear, but I cant exactly buy clothing for all the people in the world now, can
I? 
 Everything has its limits, I said.
 Exactly. 
• 
Soon our salads came to the table, and we ate them. As the woman had specified, each
salad had no more than a few drops of dressing-so few you could have counted them on one
hand.
 Do you have anything else you want to ask me? she asked.
 Id like to know your name, I said. I mean, it would be helpful if you had a name or
something I could use. 
She said nothing for a few moments, as she crunched on a radish. Then she formed a deep
wrinkle between her eyebrows, as if she had just found something bitter in her mouth by
mistake. Why would you have to use my name? You wont be writing me any letters, Im
sure. Names are, if anything, irrelevant. 
 But what if I have to call you from behind, for example? Id need your name for that. 
She laid her fork in her plate and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. I see what you
mean, she said. That never crossed my mind. Youre right, though. You might very well
need my name in a situation like that. 
She sat there thinking for a long time. While she was thinking, I ate my salad.
 Lets see, now: you need a suitable name you can use for things like calling me from
behind, correct? 
 Thats pretty much it. 
 So it doesnt have to be my real name, correct? 
I nodded.
 A name, a name... what kind of name would be best? 
 Something simple, something easy to call out, I would think. If possible, something
concrete, something real, some thing you can really touch and see. That way, it would be easy
to remember. 
 For example? 
 For example, I call my cat Mackerel. In fact, I just named him yesterday. 
 Mackerel, she said aloud, as if to confirm the sound of the word. Then she stared at the
salt and pepper shakers on the table for a while, raised her face to me, and said, Nutmeg. 
 Nutmeg? 
 It just popped into my head. You can call me that, if you dont mind. 
 No, I dont mind at all. So what should I call your son? 
 Cinnamon. 
 Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, I said, with a hint of melody.
 Nutmeg Akasaka and Cinnamon Akasaka. Not bad, dont you think? 
Nutmeg Akasaka and Cinnamon Akasaka: Wouldnt May Kasahara have been shocked if
she knew that I had made the acquaintance of such people! For heavens sake, Mr. Wind-Up
Bird, why cant you ever get involved with people who are a little more normal? Indeed,
why not, May Kasahara? It was a question I could never have answered.
 Come to think of it, I said, last year I met two women named Malta Kano and Creta
Kano. As a result of which, all kinds of things happened to me. Neither of them is around
anymore, though. 
Nutmeg gave a little nod but offered no opinion in response.
 They just disappeared somewhere, I added feebly. Like the dew on a summer
morning. Or like a star at daybreak.
She brought a forkful of something that looked like chicory to her mouth. Then, as if
suddenly recalling a promise made long before, she shot her hand out and took a drink of
water.
 Dont you want to know about that money? The money you got the day before
yesterday? Am I wrong? 
 No, you are not wrong. I would very much like to know about that. 
 I dont mind telling you, but it could be a very long story. 
 One that would end by dessert? 
 Probably not, said Nutmeg Akasaka.
 
The Mystery of the Hanging House
 
SETAGAYA, TOKYO: THE MYSTERY OF THE HANGING HOUSE
Who Bought Jinxed Land After Family Suicide?
Whats Going On in Posh Neighborhood?
[From The ---- Weekly, October ]
Locals call this plot in---- -chome, Setagaya, the hanging house. Located in a quiet
residential neighborhood, this , -square-foot piece of prime real estate with fine southern
exposure is a virtually ideal location for a home, but those in the know agree on one thing:
they wouldnt take it if you gave it to them. And the reason for this is simple: every known
owner of this property, without exception, has met with a terrible fate. Our investigations have
revealed that, since the start of the Showa Period, in , no fewer than seven owner
occupants of this property have ended their lives in suicide, the majority by hanging or
asphyxiation.
[Details on suicides omitted here]
Bogus Firm Buys Jinxed Land
The most recent in what can hardly be considered a coincidental string of tragedies is the
murder-suicide of the family of Kojiro Miyawaki [photo], owner of the long-established
Rooftop Grill restaurant chain, headquartered in the Ginza. Miyawaki sold all his restaurants
and declared bankruptcy two years ago in the face of massive debt, but thereafter he was
pursued by several nonbank lenders with ties to organized crime. Finally, in January of this
year, Miyawaki used his belt to strangle his fourteen-year-old daughter, Yukie, in her sleep at
an inn in Takamatsu City, after which he and his wife, Natsuko, hanged themselves with
ropes they had brought with them for that purpose. The Miyawakis eldest daughter, a college
student at the time, is still missing.
When he bought the property in April , Miyawaki knew of the ominous rumors
surrounding the place, but he laughed them off, declaring, Those were just coincidences. 
After purchasing the land, he had the long-vacant house demolished and the lot graded. To be
on the safe side, he called in a Shinto priest to exorcise any evil spirits that might still be
lurking there, and only then did he have his new, two-story home built. Things went well after
that. The family led a tranquil life. Neighbors agree that the Miyawaki home appeared to be
harmonious, the daughters bright and happy. But after ten years, the family fortunes took that
sudden, disastrous turn.
Miyawaki lost the house, which he had put up as collateral, in the fall of , but
squabbling among his creditors with regard to the order of reimbursement kept final disposal
of it in abeyance until a court-mediated settlement last summer, which opened the way for 
sale of the land. It was purchased initially by a major Tokyo real - estate firm, --Land and
Buildings, -at a price far below current market value. The company proceeded to demolish the
Miyawakis house and tried to sell it as an empty lot. A prime piece of Setagaya property, it
attracted much interest, but every deal fell through when buyers heard about the jinx attached
to the land. According to Mr. M, head of -- Land and Buildings sales division:
 Yes, of course we had heard some of the bad stories connected with the property, but
finally its a great location, and everybodys so desperate for prime real estate these days, we
figured if we set the price low enough somebody was bound to buy it. We were being
optimistic. It hasnt budged since we put it on the market. People dont care about the pricethey
back out as soon as they hear the stories. And talk about bad timing! The poor
Miyawakis committed suicide in January, and all the news reports mentioned the land. Quite
frankly, we didnt know what to do with it. 
The lot finally sold in April of this year. Please dont ask me the buyer or the price, says
Mr. M, so details are hard to come by, but according to the real estate grapevine, --- Land and
Buildings had to let it go for something far below the asking price. Better to take a fair-sized
loss than continue paying the bank interest on a property that would never sell. The
purchasers knew exactly what they were getting into, of course, says Mr. M. We are not in
the habit of deceiving our customers. We explained everything beforehand. They bought it
knowing the entire history of the place. 
Which leads us to the question of who would choose to buy such a jinxed piece of land.
Our investigation has been far more difficult than we had imagined. According to the ward
office registry, the purchaser is a company with offices in Minato Ward known as Akasaka
Research, which claims to be involved in economic research and consulting, their purpose
in buying the land being listed as construction of corporate residence. The corporate
residence was, in fact, built this spring, but the firm itself is a typical paper company. We
visited the Akasaka -chome address listed in the documents but found only a small plaque,
 Akasaka Research, on the door of one apartment in a small condominium building, and no
one answered when we rang the bell.
Tight Security and Secrecy
The present former Miyawaki residence is surrounded by a wall far higher than any
other in the neighborhood. It has a huge, solid, black iron fence built to discourage peeping
(see photo) and a video camera atop the gate pillar. We tried ringing the bell, but there was no
response. Neighbors have seen the electric gate open and a black Mercedes SEL with
tinted windows go in and out several times a day, but there has been no other sign of entry or
egress, and no sounds are ever heard from the place.
Construction began in May, but always behind high fences, so neighbors have no idea
what the house looks like. It was built with incredible speed: two and a half months from start
to finish. A local caterer who delivered lunches to the construction site told us: The building
itself was always hidden behind a canvas screen, so I really cant say, but it sure wasnt a big
house-just one story, kind of like a concrete box, real plain. I remember thinking they were
building a kind of air-raid shelter. It didnt look like an ordinary house that ordinary people
live in-too small and not enough windows. But it wasnt an office building, either. The
landscapers came in and planted some really impressive trees all over the place. The yard
probably cost a bundle. 
We tried calling every major landscaping firm in Tokyo, until we came up with the one
who had worked on the former Miyawaki residence, but the owner could tell us nothing
about the party who had ordered the job. The construction company had supplied them with a
map of the garden and written orders calling for a good assemblage of mature, well-shaped
trees. Our bid was high, but they accepted it and never tried to bargain. 
The landscaper also told us that while they were at work on the garden, a well-digging 
company was called in and dug a deep well.
 They built a scaffolding in one corner of the garden to bring up the dirt. I got a good look
at the job because I was planting a persimmon tree right close by. They were digging out an
old well that had been filled in. It still had the original concrete tube. They seemed to have an
easy time of it, because it had just been filled in not long before. The weird thing is, they
didnt strike water. I mean, it was a dry well to begin with, and they were just restoring it to
its original condition, so there was no way they were going to find water. I dont know, it was
weird, like they had some special reason for doing it. 
Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate the company that dug the well, but we have
been able to determine that the Mercedes SEL is the property of a major leasing company
with headquarters in Chiyoda Ward and that the vehicle was leased for a year beginning in
July by a company in Minato Ward. The identity of their customer could not be revealed to us
by the leasing company, but judging from the confluence of events, it is almost certainly
Akasaka Research. We might point out that the estimated annual leasing fee for a Mercedes
 SEL is ---- yen. The company offers a chauffeur with every car, but we have been unable
to determine whether this particular SEL came with a driver or not.
People in the neighborhood were not anxious to speak with us about the hanging house. 
This is not an area known for its neighborhood socializing, and most people probably do not
want to become involved. Local resident Mr. A said to us:
 I used to keep my eyes open and tried to figure them out when they first came in here,
but Im sure these arent mobsters or a political organization. Too few people go in and out of
the place for that. I dont really get it. Its true they take some pretty impressive security
measures, but I have no reason to complain, and I dont think any of the other neighbors are
concerned. This is a whole lot better than having that vacant house with all the weird rumors. 
Still, wed like to know who the new owner is and what this Mr. X is using the place
for. The mystery only deepens.
 
Down in the W e l l
 
I climb down the steel ladder anchored in the side of the well, and in the darkness at the
bottom, I feel for the bat I always leave propped against the wall-the bat I brought home with
me all but unconsciously from the house where I had followed the man with the guitar case.
The touch of the scarred old bat in the darkness at the bottom of the well fills me with a
strange sense of peace. It helps me, too, to concentrate.
When I find the bat, I form a tight grip on the handle, like a baseball player entering the
batters box, assuring myself that this is my bat. I go on from there to check that nothing has
changed down here in the darkness, where there is nothing to see. I listen hard for anything
new; I take a lungful of air; I scrape the ground with the sole of my shoe; I check the hardness
of the wall with a few taps of the bat tip. These are just rituals designed to calm me down. The
well bottom is like the bottom of the sea. Things down here stay very still, keeping their
original forms, as if under tremendous pressure, unchanged from day to day.
A round slice of light floats high above me: the evening sky. Looking up at it, I think 
about the October evening world, where people must be going about their lives. Beneath
that pale autumn light, they must be walking down streets, going to the store for things,
preparing dinner, boarding trains for home. And they think-if they think at all-that these
things are too obvious to think about, just as I used to do (or not do). They are the vaguely
defined people, and I used to be a nameless one among them. Accepting and accepted, they
live with one another beneath that light, and whether it lasts forever or for a moment, there
must be a kind of closeness while they are enveloped in the light. I am no longer one of them,
however. They are up there, on the face of the earth; I am down here, in the bottom of a well.
They possess the light, while I am in the process of losing it. Sometimes I feel that I may
never find my way back to that world, that I may never again be able to feel the peace of
being enveloped in the light, that I may never again be able to hold the cats soft body in my
arms. And then I feel a dull ache in the chest, as if something inside there is being squeezed to
death.
But as I dig at the soft earth in the bottom of the well with the rubber sole of my tennis
shoe, scenes from the surface of the earth grow ever more distant. The sense of reality
subsides bit by bit, and the closeness of the well comes to envelop me in its place. Down here,
the well is warm and silent, and the softness of the inner earth caresses my skin. The pain
inside me fades like ripples on water. The place accepts me, and I accept the place. I tighten
my grip on the bat. I close my eyes, then open them again to cast my gaze upward.
I pull on the rope to close the well lid, using a pulley arrangement fashioned for me by the
clever young Cinnamon. The darkness is now complete. The well mouth is closed, and all
light gone. Not even the occasional sound of the wind can be heard any longer. The break
between people and me is now total. I dont even have a flashlight with me. This is like a
confession of faith. I mean to show them that I am trying to accept the darkness in its
entirety.
I lower my bottom to the earth, lean my back against the concrete wall, grip the bat
between my knees, and close my eyes, listening to the sound of my heart. There is no need for
me to close my eyes, of course, down here in the darkness, but I do it anyway. Closing the
eyes has its own significance, in darkness or otherwise. I take several deep breaths, letting my
body grow accustomed to this deep, dark, cylindrical space. The smell here is the same as
always, the feel of the air against my skin is the same. The well was completely filled in for a
time, but the air here is strangely unchanged from before. With its moldy smell and its trace of
dampness, the air smells exactly as it did when I first climbed down inside. Down here there
are no seasons. Not even time exists.
I always wear my old tennis shoes and my plastic watch, the one I had on the first time I
came down into the well. Like the bat, they calm me. I check to see in the darkness that these
objects are in firm contact with my body. I check to see that I am not separated from myself. I
open my eyes and, after a time, close them again. This is to help bring the pressure of the
darkness inside me more in line with the pressure of the darkness around me. Time passes by.
Soon, as always, I lose the ability to distinguish between the two kinds of darkness. I can no
longer tell if my eyes are open or closed. The mark on my cheek begins to run a slight fever. I
know that it is taking on a more vivid purple.
In the two increasingly intermingled darknesses, I concentrate on my mark and think
about the room. I try to separate from myself, just as I do whenever I am with the women. I
try to get out of this clumsy flesh of mine, which is crouching down here in the dark. Now I
am nothing but a vacant house, an abandoned well. I try to go outside, to change vehicles, to
leap from one reality to another, which moves at a different speed, and I keep a firm grip on
the bat all the while.
Now a single wall is the only thing separating me from the strange room. I ought to be
able to pass through that wall. I should be able to do it with my own strength and with the
power of the deep darkness in here. 
If I hold my breath and concentrate, I can see what is in the room. I myself am not in
there, but I am looking at what is. This is the hotel suite: Room. Thick curtains cover the
windows. The room is dark. A vase holds a massive bouquet of flowers, and the air is heavy
with their suggestive fragrance. A large floor lamp stands beside the entrance, but its bulb is
white and dead as the morning moon. Still, if I stare hard enough, after a time I can just make
out the shapes of things in the hint of light that manages to find its way into the room, the way
the eyes become used to the darkness in a movie theater. On the small table in the middle of
the room stands a bottle of Cutty Sark, its contents only slightly depleted. The ice bucket
contains newly cracked chunks of ice (judging from their clear, hard edges), and someone has
made a scotch on the rocks in the glass that is standing there. A stainless-steel tray forms a
still, cold pool on the tabletop. There is no way to tell the time. It could be morning or
evening or the middle of the night. Or perhaps this place simply has no time. In the bed at the
back of the suite lies a woman. I hear her moving in the sheets. The ice makes a pleasant
clinking in her glass. Minuscule grains of pollen suspended in the air shudder with the sound,
like living organisms. Each tiny ripple of sound passing through the air brings more of them
to sudden life. The pale darkness opens itself to the pollen, and the pollen, taken in, increases
the density of the darkness. The woman brings the whiskey glass to her lips, allows a few
drops of the liquid to trickle down her throat, and then she tries to speak to me. The bedroom
is dark. I can see nothing but the faint movement of shadows. But she has something to say to
me. I wait for her to speak. I wait to hear her words.
They are there.
•
Like a make-believe bird hanging in a make-believe sky, I see the rooms from above. I
enlarge the view, pull back, and survey the whole, then zoom in to enlarge the details. Each
detail carries much significance, of course. I check each in turn, examining it for shape and
color and texture. From one detail to the next, there is no connection, no warmth. All I am
doing at that point is a mechanical inventory of details. But its worth a try. Just as the
rubbing together of stones or sticks will eventually produce heat and flame, a connected
reality takes shape little by little. It works the way the piling up of random sounds goes on to
produce a single syllable from the monotonous repetition of what at first glance appears to be
meaningless.
I can feel the growth of this faint connection in the farthest depths of the darkness. Yes,
thats it, that will do fine. Its very quiet here, and they still havent noticed my presence. I
sense the wall that separates me from that place melting, turning into jelly. I hold my breath.
Now!
But the moment I step toward the wall, a sharp knock resounds, as if they know what I am
trying to do. Someone is pounding on the door. Its the same knocking I heard before, a hard,
decisive hammering, as if someone is trying to drive a nail straight through the wall. It comes
in the same pattern: two knocks, a pause, two knocks. The woman gasps. The floating pollen
shudders, and the darkness gives a great lurch. The invasive sound slams shut the passageway
that was finally beginning to take shape for me.
It happens this way every time.
•
Once again I am myself inside my own body, sitting in the bottom of the well, my back
against the wall, my hands gripping the baseball bat. The touch of the world on this side 
returns to my hands slowly, the way an image comes into focus. I feel the slight dampness of
sweat against my palms. My heart is pounding in my throat. My ears retain the living sound 
of that harsh, world-stabbing knock, and I can still hear the slow turning of the doorknob in
the darkness. Someone (or some thing) outside is opening the door, preparing silently to enter,
but at that very instant, all images evaporate. The wall is as hard as ever, and I am flung back
to this side.
In the darkness, I tap the wall in front of me with the end of the bat- the same hard, cold
concrete wall. I am enclosed by a cylinder of cement. Almost made it that time, I tell myself.
Im getting closer. Im sure of it. At some point, Im going to break through the barrier and
get inside. I will slip into the room and be standing there, ready, when the knock comes.
But how long is it going to take for this to happen? And how much time is there left to me?
At the same time, I am afraid that it really is going to happen. Because then I will have to
confront whatever it is that must be there.
I remain curled up in the darkness for a time. I have to let my heart quiet down. I have to
peel my hands from the bat. Until I can rise to my feet on the earthen floor of the well, then
climb the steel ladder to the surface, I will need more time, and more strength.
 
The Zoo A t t a c k
(or, A Clumsy Massacre)
 
Nutmeg Akasaka told the story of the tigers, the leopards, the wolves, and the bears that
were shot by soldiers on a miserably hot afternoon in August. She narrated with the
order and clarity of a documentary film projected on a stark white screen. She left nothing
vague. Yet she herself had not actually witnessed the spectacle. While it was happening, she
was standing on the deck of a transport ship carrying refugee settlers home to Japan from
Manchuria. What she had actually witnessed was the surfacing of an American submarine.
Like everyone else, she and the other children had come up from the unbearable steam
bath of the ships hold to lean against the deck rail and enjoy the gentle breezes that moved
across the calm, unbroken sea, when, all at once, the submarine came floating to the surface
as if it were part of a dream. First the antenna and the radar beacon and periscope broke the
surface. Then the conning tower came up, raising a wake as it cut through the water. And
finally, the entire dripping mass of steel exposed its graceful nakedness to the summer sun.
Although in form and shape the thing before her could have been nothing but a submarine, it
looked instead like some kind of symbolic sign-or an incomprehensible metaphor.
The submarine ran parallel to the ship for a while, as if stalking its prey. Soon a hatch
opened, and one crew member, then another and another, climbed onto the deck, moving
slowly, almost sluggishly. From the conning tower deck, the officers examined every detail of
the transport ship through enormous binoculars, the lenses of which would flash every now
and then in the sunlight. The transport ship was full of civilians heading back to Japan, their
destination the port of Sasebo. The majority were women and children, the families of
Japanese officials in the puppet Manchukuo government and of high-ranking personnel of the
Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway, fleeing to the homeland from the chaos that
would follow the impending defeat of Japan in the war. Rather than face the inevitable horror,
they were willing to accept the risk of attack by an American submarine on the open sea-until 
now, at least.
•
The submarine officers were checking to see if the transport ship was unarmed and
without a naval escort. They had nothing to fear. The Americans now had full command of
the air as well. Okinawa had fallen, and few if any fighter planes remained on Japanese soil.
No need to panic: time was on their side. A petty officer barked orders, and three sailors spun
the cranks that turned the deck gun until it was aimed at the transport ship. Two other
crewmen opened the rear-deck hatch and hauled up heavy shells to feed the gun. Yet another
squad of crewmen, with practiced movements, were loading a machine gun they had set on a
raised part of the deck near the conning tower. All the crewmen preparing for the attack wore
combat helmets, although a few of the men were naked from the waist up and nearly half
were wearing short pants. If she stared hard at them, Nutmeg could see brilliant tattoos
inscribed on their arms. If she stared hard, she could see lots of things.
One deck gun and one machine gun constituted the submarines total firepower, but this
was more than enough to sink the rotting old freighter that had been refitted as a transport
ship. The submarine carried only a limited number of torpedoes, and these had to be reserved
for encounters with armed convoys-assuming there were armed convoys left in Japan. This
was the ironclad rule.
Nutmeg clung to the ships handrail and watched as the deck guns black barrel pivoted in
her direction. Dripping wet only moments earlier, it had been baked dry in the summer sun.
She had never seen such an enormous gun before. Back in Hsin-ching, she had often seen
some kind of regimental gun belonging to the Japanese Army, but there was no comparison
between it and the submarines enormous deck gun. The submarine flashed a signal lamp at
the freighter: Heave to. Attack to commence. Immediately evacuate all passengers to lifeboats.
(Nutmeg could not read the signal lamp, of course, but in retrospect she understood it
perfectly.) Aboard the transport ship, which had undergone minimal conversion from an old
freighter on army orders in the chaos of war, there were not enough lifeboats. In fact, there
were only two small boats for more than five hundred passengers and crew. There were
hardly any life vests or life buoys aboard.
Gripping the rail, holding her breath, Nutmeg stared transfixed at the streamlined
submarine. It shone as if brand-new, without a speck of rust. She saw the white-painted
numerals on the conning tower. She saw the radar antenna rotating above it. She saw the
sandy-haired officer with dark glasses. This submarine has come up from the bottom of the
ocean to kill us all, she thought, but theres nothing strange about that, it could happen
anytime. It has nothing to do with the war; it could happen to anyone anywhere. Everybody
thinks its happening because of the war. But thats not true. The war is just one of the things
that could happen.
Face-to-face with the submarine and its huge gun, Nutmeg felt no trace of fear. Her
mother was shouting at her, but the words made no sense. Then she felt something grab her
wrists and pull on them. But her hands stayed locked on the rail. The roar of voices all around
her began to move far away, as if someone were turning down the volume on a radio. Im so
sleepy, she thought. So sleepy. Why am I so sleepy? She closed her eyes, and her
consciousness rushed away, leaving the deck far behind.
•
Nutmeg was seeing Japanese soldiers as they moved through the extensive zoo shooting
any animal that could attack human beings. The officer gave his order, and the bullets from
the Model rifles ripped through the smooth hide of a tiger, tearing at the animals guts. The 
summer sky was blue, and from the surrounding trees the screams of cicadas rained down like
a sudden shower.
The soldiers never spoke. The blood was gone from their sunburned faces, which made
them look like pictures painted on ancient urns. A few days from now-at most, a week from
now-the main force of the Soviet Far East Command would arrive in Hsin-ching. There was
no way to stop the advance. Ever since the war began, the crack troops and once abundant
equipment of the Kwantung Army had been drained away to support the widening southern
front, and now the greater part of both had sunk to the bottom of the sea or was rotting in the
depths of the jungle. The tanks were gone. The anti-tank guns were gone. All but a handful of
the troop transport trucks had broken down, and there were no spare parts. A general
mobilization could still bring together large numbers of troops, but there were not even
enough old-model rifles left to arm every man, or bullets enough to load every rifle. And so
the great Kwantung Army, Bulwark of the North, had been reduced to a paper tiger. The
proud Soviet mechanized units that had crushed the German Army were completing their
transfer by rail to the Far Eastern front, with plenty of equipment and with spirits high. The
collapse of Manchukuo was imminent.
Everyone knew this to be the truth, the Kwantung Army Command most of all. And so
they evacuated their main force to the rear, in effect abandoning both the small border
garrisons and the Japanese civilian homesteaders. These unarmed farmers were slaughtered
by the Soviet Army, which was advancing too rapidly to take prisoners. Many women choseor
were forced to choose-mass suicide over rape. The border garrisons locked themselves into
the concrete bunker dubbed Fortress for the Ages and put up a fierce resistance, but without
support from the rear, they were annihilated by the Soviets overwhelming firepower.
Members of the general staff and other high-ranking officers arranged to have themselves
 transferred to new headquarters in Tonghua, near the Korean border, and the puppet
emperor Henry Pu-yi and his family threw their possessions together and escaped from the
capital by private train. Most of the Chinese soldiers in the Manchukuo Army assigned to
defend the capital deserted as soon as they heard the Soviets were invading, or else they
staged revolts and shot their Japanese commanding officers. They had no intention of laying
down their lives for Japan in a struggle against superior Soviet troops.
As a result of these interrelated developments, the capital city of Manchukuo, the Special
New Capital City, Hsin-ching, which the modern Japanese state had staked its reputation on
to construct in the wilderness, was left floating in a strange political vacuum. In order to avoid
needless chaos and bloodshed, the high-ranking Chinese bureaucrats of Manchukuo argued
that Hsin-ching should be declared an open city and surrendered without armed resistance, but
the Kwantung Army rejected this.
The soldiers dispatched to the zoo had resigned themselves to their fate. In a mere few
days, they assumed, they would die fighting the Soviet Army (though in fact, after
disarmament, they would be sent to work-and, in the case of three of the men, to die-in
Siberian coal mines). All they could do was pray that their deaths would not be too painful.
None of them wanted to be crushed under the treads of a slow-moving tank or roasted in a
trench by flamethrowers or die by degrees with a bullet in the stomach. Better to be shot in the
head or the heart. But first they had to kill these zoo animals.
•
If possible, they were to kill the animals with poison in order to conserve what few bullets
they had left. The young lieutenant in charge of the operation had been so instructed by his
superior officer and told that the zoo had been given enough poison to do the job. The
lieutenant led eight fully armed men to the zoo, a twenty-minute walk from headquarters. The
zoo gates had been closed since the Soviet invasion, and two soldiers were standing guard at 
the entrance, with bayonets on their rifles. The lieutenant showed them his orders and led his
men inside.
The zoos director confirmed that he had indeed been ordered to liquidate the fiercer
animals in case of an emergency and to use poison, but the shipment of poison, he said, had
never arrived. When the lieutenant heard this, he became confused. He was an accountant,
assigned to the paymasters office, and until he was dragged away from his desk at headquarters
for this emergency detail, he had never once been put in charge of a detachment of
men. He had had to rummage through his drawer to find his pistol, on which he had done no
maintenance for years now, and he was not even sure it would fire.
 Bureaucratic work is always like this, Lieutenant, said the zoo director, a man several
years his senior, who looked at him with a touch of pity. The things you need are never
there. 
To inquire further into the matter, the director called in the zoos chief veterinarian, who
told the lieutenant that the zoo had only a very small amount of poison, probably not enough
to kill a horse. The veterinarian was a tall, handsome man in his late thirties, with a blue-black
mark on his right cheek, the size and shape of a babys palm. The lieutenant imagined it had
been there since birth.
From the zoo directors office, the lieutenant telephoned headquarters, seeking further
instructions, but Kwantung Army Headquarters had been in a state of extreme confusion ever
since the Soviet Army crossed the border several days earlier, and most of the high-ranking
officers had disappeared. The few remaining officers had their hands full, burning stacks of
important documents in the courtyard or leading troops to the edge of town to dig antitank
trenches. The major who had given the lieutenant his orders was nowhere to be found. So now
the lieutenant had no idea where they were to obtain the poison they needed. Who in the
Kwantung Army would have been in charge of poisons? His call was transferred from one
office to another, until a medical corps colonel got on the line, only to scream at the
lieutenant, You stupid son of a bitch! The whole goddamn countrys going down the drain,
and youre asking me about a goddamn fucking zoo?! Who gives a shit? 
Who indeed, thought the lieutenant. Certainly not the lieutenant himself. With a dejected
look, he cut the connection and decided to give up on laying in a stock of poison. Now he was
faced with two options. He could forget about killing any animals and lead his men out of
there, or they could use bullets to do the job. Either way would be a violation of the orders he
had been given, but in the end he decided to do the shooting. That way, he might later be
chewed out for having wasted valuable ammunition, but at least the goal of liquidating the
more dangerous animals would have been met. If, on the other hand, he chose not to kill the
animals, he might be court-martialed for having failed to carry out orders. There was some
doubt whether there would even be any courts-martial at this late stage of the war, but finally,
orders were orders. So long as the army continued to exist, its orders had to be carried out.
If possible, Id rather not kill any animals, the lieutenant told himself, in all honesty. But
the zoo was running out of things to feed them, and most of the animals (especially the big
ones) were already suffering from chronic starvation. Things could only get worse-or at least
they were not going to get any better. Shooting might even be easier for the animals
themselves-a quick, clean death. And if starving animals were to escape to the city streets
during intense fighting or air strikes, a disaster would be unavoidable.
The director handed the lieutenant a list of animals for emergency liquidation that he
had been instructed to compile, along with a map of the zoo. The veterinarian with the mark
on his cheek and two Chinese workers were assigned to accompany the firing squad. The
lieutenant glanced at the list and was relieved to find it shorter than he had imagined. Among
the animals slated for liquidation, though, were two Indian elephants. Elephants? the
lieutenant thought with a frown. How in the hell are we supposed to kill elephants?
Given the layout of the zoo, the first animals to be liquidated were the tigers. The 
elephants would be left for last, in any case. The plaque on the tiger cage explained that the
pair had been captured in Manchuria in the Greater Khingan Mountains. The lieutenant
assigned four men to each tiger and told them to aim for the heart-the whereabouts of which
was just another mystery to him. Oh, well, at least one bullet was bound to hit home. When
eight men together pulled back on the levers of their Model s and loaded a cartridge into
each chamber, the ominous dry clicking transformed the whole atmosphere of the place. The
tigers stood up at the sound. Glaring at the soldiers through the iron bars, they let out huge
roars. As an extra precaution, the lieutenant drew his automatic pistol and released the safety.
To calm himself, he cleared his throat. This is nothing, he tried to tell himself. Everybody
does stuff like this all the time.
The soldiers knelt down, took careful aim, and, at the lieutenants command, pulled their
triggers. The recoil shook their shoulders, and for a moment their minds went empty, as if
flicked away. The roar of the simultaneous shots reverberated through the deserted zoo,
echoing from building to building, wall to wall, slicing through wooded areas, crossing water
surfaces, a stab to the hearts of all who heard it, like distant thunder. The animals held their
breath. Even the cicadas stopped crying. Long after the echo of gunfire faded into the
distance, there was not a sound to be heard. As if they had been whacked with a huge club by
an invisible giant, the tigers shot up into the air for a moment, then landed on the floor of the
cage with a great thud, writhing in agony, vomiting blood. The soldiers had failed to finish the
tigers off with a single volley. Snapping out of their trance, the soldiers pulled back on their
rifle levers, ejecting spent shells, and took aim again.
•
The lieutenant sent one of his men into the cage to be certain that both tigers were dead.
They certainly looked dead-eyes closed, teeth bared, all movement gone. But it was important
to make sure. The veterinarian unlocked the cage, and the young soldier (he had just turned
twenty) stepped inside fearfully, thrusting his bayonet ahead of him. It was an odd
performance, but no one laughed. He gave a slight kick to one tigers hindquarters with the
heel of his boot. The tiger remained motionless. He kicked the same spot again, this time a
little harder. The tiger was dead without a doubt. The other tiger (the female) lay equally still.
The young soldier had never visited a zoo in his life, nor had he ever seen a real tiger before.
Which was partly why he couldnt quite believe that they had just succeeded in killing a real,
live tiger. He felt only that he had been dragged into a place that had nothing to do with him
and had there been forced to perform an act that had nothing to do with him. Standing in an
ocean of black blood, he stared down at the tigers corpses, entranced. They looked much
bigger dead than they had when alive. Why should that be? he asked himself, mystified.
The cages concrete floor was suffused with the piercing smell of the big cats urine, and
mixed with it was the warm odor of blood. Blood was still gushing from the holes torn in the
tigers bodies, forming a sticky black pond around his feet. All of a sudden, the rifle in his
hands felt heavy and cold. He wanted to fling it away, bend down, and vomit the entire
contents of his stomach onto the floor. What a relief it would have been! But vomiting was
out of the question-the squad leader would beat his face out of shape. (Of course, this soldier
had no idea that he would die seventeen months later when a Soviet guard in a mine near
Irkutsk would split his skull open with a shovel.) He wiped the sweat from his forehead with
the back of his wrist. His helmet was weighing down upon him. One cicada, then another,
began to cry again, as if finally revived. Soon their cries were joined by those of a birdstrangely
distinctive cries, like the winding of a spring: Creeeak. Creeeak. The young soldier
had moved from a mountain village in Hokkaido across the sea to China with his parents at
the age of twelve, and together they had tilled the soil of a frontier village in Beian until a
year ago, when he had been drafted into the army. Thus he knew all the birds of Manchuria, 
but strangely, he had never heard a bird with that particular cry. Perhaps it was a bird
imported from a distant land, crying in its cage in another part of the zoo. Yet the sound
seemed to come from the upper branches of a nearby tree. He turned and squinted in the
direction of the sound, but he could see nothing. A huge elm tree with dense leaves cast its
cool, sharp shadow on the ground below.
He looked toward the lieutenant, as if requesting instructions. The lieutenant nodded,
ordered him out of the cage, and spread open the zoo map again. So much for the tigers. Next
well do the leopards. Then maybe the wolves. Weve got bears to deal with too. Well think
about the elephants when the others are finished off, he thought. And then he realized how hot
it was. Take a breather, he said to his men. Have some water. They drank from their
canteens. Then they shouldered their rifles, took their places in formation, and headed for the
leopard cage. Up in a tree, the unknown bird with the insistent call went on winding its spring.
The chests and backs of the mens short-sleeved military shirts were stained black with sweat.
As this formation of fully armed soldiers strode along, the clanking of all kinds of metallic
objects sent hollow echoes throughout the deserted zoo. The monkeys clinging to the bars of
their cages rent the air with ominous screams, sending frantic warnings to all the other
animals in the zoo, who in turn joined the chorus in their own distinctive ways. The wolves
sent long howls skyward, the birds contributed a wild flapping of wings, some large animal
somewhere was slamming itself against its cage, as if to send out a threat. A chunk of cloud
shaped like a fist appeared out of nowhere and hid the sun for a time. On that August
afternoon, people, animals-everyone was thinking about death. Today the men would be
killing animals; tomorrow Soviet troops would be killing the men. Probably.
•
We always sat across from each other at the same table in the same restaurant, talking.
She was a regular there, and of course she always picked up the tab. The back part of the
restaurant was divided into private compartments, so that the conversation at any one table
could not be heard at another. There was only one seating per evening, which meant that we
could talk at our leisure, right up to closing time, without interference from anyone-including
the waiters, who approached the table only to bring or clear a dish. She would always order a
bottle of Burgundy of one particular vintage and always leave half the bottle unconsumed.
 A bird that winds a spring? I asked, looking up from my food.
 A bird that winds a spring? said Nutmeg, repeating the words exactly as I had said
them, then curling her lips just a little. I dont understand what youre saying. What are you
talking about? 
 Didnt you just say something about a bird that winds a spring? 
She shook her head slowly. Hmm. Now I cant remember. I dont think I said anything
about a bird. 
I could see it was hopeless. She always told her stories like this. I didnt ask her about the
mark, either.
 So you were born in Manchuria, then? I asked.
She shook her head again. I was born in Yokohama. My parents took me to Manchuria
when I was three. My father was teaching at a school of veterinary medicine, but when the
Hsin-ching city administrators wanted someone sent over from Japan as chief veterinarian for
the new zoo they were going to build, he volunteered for the job. My mother didnt want to
abandon the settled life they had in Japan and go off to the ends of the earth, but my father
insisted. Maybe he wanted to test himself in someplace bigger and more open than Japan. I
was so young, it didnt matter where I was, but I really enjoyed living at the zoo. It was a
wonderful life. My father always smelled like the animals. All the different animal smells
would mix together into one, and it would be a little different each day, like changing the 
blend of ingredients in a perfume. Id climb up onto his lap when he came home and make
him sit still while I smelled him.
 But then the war took a bad turn, and we were in danger, so my father decided to send
my mother and me back to Japan before it was too late. We went with a lot of other people,
taking the train from Hsin-ching to Korea, where a special boat was waiting for us. My father
stayed behind in Hsin-ching. The last I ever saw him, he was standing in the station, waving
to us. I stuck my head out the window and watched him growing smaller and smaller until he
disappeared into the crowd on the platform. No one knows what happened to him after that. I
think he must have been taken prisoner by the Soviets and sent to Siberia to do forced labor
and, like so many others, died over there. Hes probably buried in some cold, lonely patch of
earth without anything to mark his grave.
 I still remember everything about the Hsin-ching zoo in perfect detail. I can bring it all
back inside my head-every pathway, every animal. We lived in the chief veterinarians
official residence, inside the grounds. All the zoo workers knew me, and they let me go
anywhere I wanted- even on holidays, when the zoo was closed. 
Nutmeg closed her eyes to bring back the scene inside her mind. I waited, without
speaking, for her to continue her story.
 Still, though, I cant be sure if the zoo as I recall it was really like that. How can I put it?
I sometimes feel that its too vivid, if you know what I mean. And when I start having
thoughts like this, the more I think about it, the less I can tell how much of the vividness is
real and how much of it my imagination has invented. I feel as if Ive wandered into a
labyrinth. Has that ever happened to you? 
It had not. Do you know if the zoo is still there in Hsin-ching? I asked.
 I wonder, said Nutmeg, touching the end of her earring. I heard that the place was
closed up after the war, but I have no idea if its still closed. 
For a very long time, Nutmeg Akasaka was the only person in the world that I could talk
to. We would meet once or twice a week and talk to each other across the table at the
restaurant. After we had met several times like that, I discovered that she was an extremely
accomplished listener. She was quick on the uptake, and she knew how to direct the flow of
the story by means of skillfully inserted questions and responses.
So as to avoid upsetting her in any way, I always took great care whenever we met to see
that my outfit was neat and clean and well chosen. I would put on a shirt fresh from the
cleaners and choose the tie that best matched it in color. My shoes were always shined and
spotless. The first thing she would do when she saw me was examine me top to bottom, with
the eyes of a chef choosing vegetables. If anything displeased her, she would take me straight
to a boutique and buy me the proper article of clothing. If possible, she would have me change
into it then and there. When it came to clothing, she would accept nothing less than
perfection.
As a result, my closet began to fill up almost before I knew it. Slowly but steadily, new
suits, new jackets, and new shirts were invading the territory that had once been occupied by
Kumikos skirts and dresses. Before long, the closet was becoming cramped, and so I folded
Kumikos things, packed them in cartons with mothballs, and put them in a storage area. If
she ever came back, I knew, she would have to wonder what in the world had happened in her
absence.
I took a long time to explain about Kumiko to Nutmeg, little by little- that I had to save
her and bring her back here. She put her elbow on the table, propping her chin in her hand,
and looked at me for a while.
 So where is it that youre going to save Kumiko from? Does the place have a name or
something? 
I searched for the words in space. But they were not there in space. Neither were they
underground. Someplace far away, I said. 
Nutmeg smiled. Its kind of like The Magic Flute. You know: Mozart. Using a magic
flute and magic bells, they have to save a princess whos being held captive in a faraway
castle. I love that opera. I dont know how many times Ive seen it. I know the lines by heart:
‘Im the birdcatcher, Papageno, known throughout the land. Ever seen it? 
I shook my head. I had never seen it.
 In the opera, the prince and the birdcatcher are led to the castle by three children riding
on a cloud. But whats really happening is a battle between the land of day and the land of
night. The land of night is trying to recapture the princess from the land of day. Midway
through the opera, the heroes cant tell any longer which side is right- who is being held
captive and who is not. Of course, at the end, the prince gets the princess, Papageno gets
Papagena, and the villains fall into hell. Nutmeg ran her finger along the rim of her glass.
 Anyhow, at this point you dont have a birdcatcher or a magic flute or bells. 
 But I do have a well, I said.
•
Whenever I grew tired from talking or I was unable to go on telling my story because I
lost track of the words I needed, Nutmeg would give me a rest by talking about her own early
life, and her stories turned out to be far more lengthy and convoluted than mine. And also,
unlike me, she would impose no order on her stories but would leap from topic to topic as her
feelings dictated. Without explanation, she would reverse chronological order or suddenly
introduce as a major character someone she had never mentioned to me before. In order to
know to which period of her life the fragment belonged that she was presently narrating, it
was necessary to make careful deductions, though no amount of deduction could work in
some cases. She would narrate events she had witnessed with her own eyes, as well as events
that she had never witnessed.
•
They killed the leopards. They killed the wolves. They killed the bears. Shooting the bears
took the most time. Even after the two gigantic animals had taken dozens of rifle slugs, they
continued to crash against the bars of their cage, roaring at the men and slobbering, fangs
bared. Unlike the cats, who were more willing to accept their fate (or who at least appeared to
accept it), the bears seemed unable to comprehend the fact that they were being killed.
Possibly for that reason, it took them far longer than was necessary to reach a final parting
with that temporary condition known as life. When the soldiers finally succeeded in
extinguishing all signs of life in the bears, they were so exhausted they were ready to collapse
on the spot. The lieutenant reset his pistols safety catch and used his hat to wipe the sweat
dripping down his brow. In the deep silence that followed the killing, several of the soldiers
seemed to be trying to mask their sense of shame by spitting loudly on the ground. Spent
shells were scattered about their feet like so many cigarette butts. Their ears still rang with the
crackling of their rifles. The young soldier who would be beaten to death by a Soviet soldier
seventeen months later in a coal mine near Irkutsk took several deep breaths in succession,
averting his gaze from the bears corpses. He was engaged in a fierce struggle to force back
the nausea that had worked its way up to his throat.
In the end, they did not kill the elephants. Once they actually confronted them, it became
obvious that the beasts were simply too large, that the soldiers rifles looked like silly toys in
their presence. The lieutenant thought it over for a while and decided to leave the elephants
alone. Hearing this, the men breathed a sigh of relief. Strange as it may seem-or perhaps it
does not seem so strange-they all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans
on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being 
killed oneself.
Those animals that were now nothing but corpses were dragged from their cages by the
Chinese workers, loaded onto carts, and hauled to an empty warehouse. There, the animals,
which came in so many shapes and sizes, were laid out on the floor. Once he had seen the
operation through to its end, the lieutenant returned to the zoo directors office and had the
man sign the necessary documents. Then the soldiers lined up and marched away in
formation, with the same metallic clanking they had made when they came. The Chinese
workers used hoses to wash off the black stains of blood on the floors of the cages, and with
brushes they scrubbed away the occasional chunk of animal flesh that clung to the walls.
When this job was finished, the workers asked the veterinarian with the blue-black mark on
his cheek how he intended to dispose of the corpses. The doctor was at a loss for an answer.
Ordinarily, when an animal died at the zoo, he would call a professional to do the job. But
with the capital now bracing for a bloody battle, with people now struggling to be the first to
leave this doomed city, you couldnt just make a phone call and get someone to run over to
dispose of an animal corpse for you. Summer was at its height, though, and the corpses would
begin to decompose quickly. Even now, black swarms of flies were massing. The best thing
would be to bury them-an enormous job even if the zoo had access to heavy equipment, but
with the limited help available to them now, it would obviously be impossible to dig holes
large enough to take all the corpses.
The Chinese workers said to the veterinarian: Doctor, if you will let us take the corpses
whole, we will dispose of them for you. We have plenty of friends to help us, and we know
exactly where to do the job. We will haul them outside the city and get rid of every last speck.
We will not cause you any problems. But in exchange, we want the hides and meat.
Especially the bear meat: everybody will want that. Parts of bear and tiger are good for
medicine-they will command a high price. And though its too late now to say this, we wish
you had aimed only at their heads. Then the hides would have been worth a good deal more.
The soldiers were such amateurs! If only you had let us take care of it from the beginning, we
wouldnt have done such a clumsy job. The veterinarian agreed to the bargain. He had no
choice. After all, it was their country.
Before long, ten Chinese appeared, pulling several empty carts behind them. They
dragged the animals corpses out of the warehouse, piled them onto the carts, tied them down,
and covered them with straw mats. They hardly said a word to each other the whole time.
Their faces were expressionless. When they had finished loading the carts, they dragged them
off somewhere. The old carts creaked with the strain of supporting the animals weight. And
so ended the massacre- what the Chinese workers called a clumsy massacre- of zoo animals
on a hot August afternoon. All that was left were several clean-and empty-cages. Still in an
agitated state, the monkeys kept calling out to one another in their incomprehensible
language. The badgers rushed back and forth in their narrow cage. The birds flapped their
wings in desperation, scattering feathers all around. And the cicadas kept up their grating cry.
•
After the soldiers had finished their killing and returned to headquarters, and after the last
two Chinese workers had disappeared somewhere, dragging their cart loaded with animal
corpses, the zoo took on the hollow quality of a house emptied of furniture. The veterinarian
sat on the rim of a waterless fountain, looked up at the sky, and watched the group of hardedged
clouds that were floating there. Then he listened to the cicadas crying. The wind-up
bird was no longer calling, but the veterinarian did not notice that. He had never heard the
wind-up bird to begin with. The only one who had heard it was the poor young soldier who
would be beaten to death in a Siberian coal mine.
The veterinarian took a sweat-dampened pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, put a 
cigarette in his mouth, and struck a match. As he lit up, he realized that his hand was
trembling-so much that it took him three matches to light the cigarette. Not that he had
experienced an emotional trauma. A large number of animals had been liquidated in a moment
before his eyes, and yet, for some inexplicable reason, he felt no particular shock or
sadness or anger. In fact, he felt almost nothing. He was just terribly puzzled.
He sat there for a while, watching the smoke curl upward from his cigarette and trying to
sort out his feelings. He stared at his hands resting on his lap, then looked once again at the
clouds in the sky. The world he saw before him looked as it always had. He could find in it no
signs of change. And yet it ought to have been a world distinctly different from the one he had
known until then. After all, the world that held him now was a world in which bears and tigers
and leopards and wolves had been liquidated. Those animals had existed this morning, but
now, at four oclock in the afternoon, they had ceased to exist. They had been massacred by
soldiers, and even their dead bodies were gone.
There should have been a decisive gap separating those two different worlds. There had to
be a gap. But he could not find it. The world looked the same to him as it always had. What
most puzzled the veterinarian was the unfamiliar lack of feeling inside himself.
Suddenly he realized that he was exhausted. Come to think of it, he had hardly slept at all
the night before. How wonderful it would be, he thought, if I could find the cool shade of a
tree somewhere, to stretch out and sleep, if only for a little while-to stop thinking, to sink into
the silent darkness of unconsciousness. He glanced at his watch. He had to secure food for the
surviving animals. He had to treat the baboon that was running a high fever. There were a
thousand things he had to do. But now, more than anything, he had to sleep. What came
afterward he could think about afterward.
The veterinarian walked into the neighboring wooded area and stretched out on the grass
where no one would notice him. The shaded grass felt cool and good. The smell was
something he remembered fondly from childhood. Several large Manchurian grasshoppers
bounded over his face with a nice strong hum. He lit another cigarette as he lay there, and he
was pleased to see that his hands were no longer trembling so badly. Inhaling the smoke deep
into his lungs, he pictured the Chinese men stripping the hides off all those freshly killed
animals somewhere and cutting up the meat. He had often seen Chinese doing work like that,
and he knew they were anything but clumsy. In a matter of moments, an animal would be
reduced to hide, meat, organs, and bones, as if those elements had originally been quite
separate and had just happened to come together for a little while. By the time I wake from
my nap, Im sure, those pieces of meat will be out there in the marketplace. Thats reality for
you: quick and efficient. He tore off a handful of grass and toyed with its softness awhile.
Then he crushed his cigarette and, with a deep sigh, expelled all the smoke left in his lungs.
When he closed his eyes, the grasshoppers wings sounded much louder in the darkness. The
veterinarian was overtaken by the illusion that huge grasshoppers the size of bullfrogs were
leaping all around him.
Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was
fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot
happened to fall. There were tigers in one section, but no tigers in another. Maybe it was as
simple as that. And there was no logical continuity from one section to another. And it was
precisely because of this lack of logical continuity that choices really didnt mean very much.
Wasnt that why he couldnt feel the gap between one world and another? But that was as far
as his thoughts would go. He wasnt able to think more deeply than that. The fatigue in his
body was as heavy and suffocating as a sodden blanket. No more thoughts came to him, and
he just lay there, inhaling the aroma of the grass, listening to the grasshoppers wings, and
feeling through his skin the dense membrane of shadow that covered him.
And in the end his mind was sucked into the deep sleep of afternoon. 
•
The transport ship cut its engines as ordered, and soon it had come to a standstill on the
surface of the ocean. There was less than one chance in ten thousand that it could have outrun
such a swift, modern submarine. The submarines deck gun and machine gun were still
trained on the transport ship, its crew in a state of readiness to attack. Yet a strange sense of
tranquillity hovered between the two ships. The submarines crew stood in full view on deck,
lined up and watching the transport ship with an air of having time to kill. Many of them had
not even bothered to strap on battle helmets. There was hardly any wind that summer afternoon,
and now, with both engines cut, the only sound was the languid slap of waves against
the two ships hulls. The transport ship signaled to the submarine: We are a transport ship
carrying unarmed civilians. We have neither munitions nor military personnel on board. We
have few lifeboats. To this the submarine responded brusquely: That is not our problem.
Evacuation or no, we commence firing in precisely ten minutes. This ended the exchange of
signal messages between the two ships. The captain of the transport ship decided not to
convey the communication to his passengers. What good would it do? A few of them might
be lucky enough to survive, but most would be dragged to the bottom of the sea with this
miserable old washtub. The captain longed for one last drink, but the whiskey bottle- some
fine old scotch he had been saving-was in a desk drawer in his cabin, and there was no time to
get it now. He took off his hat and looked up at the sky, hoping that, through some miracle, a
squadron of Japanese fighter planes might suddenly appear there. But this was not to be a day
for miracles. The captain had done all he could. He thought about his whiskey again.
As the ten-minute grace period was running out, strange movement began on the deck of
the submarine. There were hurried exchanges among the officers lined up on the conningtower
deck, and one of the officers scrambled down to the main deck and ran among the crew,
shouting some kind of order. Wherever he went, ripples of movement spread among the men
at their battle stations. One sailor shook his head from side to side and punched the barrel of
the deck gun with a clenched fist. Another took his helmet off and stared up at the sky. The
mens actions might have been expressing anger or joy or disappointment or excitement. The
passengers on the transport ship found it impossible to tell what was happening or what this
was leading up to. Like an audience watching a pantomime for which there was no program
(but which contained a very important message), they held their breaths and kept their eyes
locked on the sailors every movement, hoping to find some small hint of meaning.
Eventually, the waves of confusion that had spread among the sailors began to subside, and in
response to an order from the bridge, the shells were removed from the deck gun with great
dispatch. The men turned cranks and swung the barrel away from the transport ship until the
gun was pointing straight ahead again, then they plugged the horrid black hole of the muzzle.
The gun shells were returned be-lowdecks, and the crew ran for the hatches. In contrast to
their earlier movements, they did everything now with speed and efficiency. There was no
chatting or wasted motion.
The submarines engines started with a definite growl, and at almost the same moment the
siren screeched to signal All hands belowdecks! The submarine began to move forward,
and a moment later it was plunging downward, churning up a great white patch of foam, as if
it had hardly been able to wait for the men to get below and fasten the hatches. A membrane
of seawater swallowed the long, narrow deck from front to rear, the gun sank below the
surface, the conning tower slipped downward, cutting through the dark-blue water, and finally
the antenna and the periscope plunged out of sight, as if to rip the air clean of any evidence
they had ever been there. Ripples disturbed the surface of the ocean for a short while, but soon
they also subsided, leaving only the weirdly calm afternoon sea.
Even after the submarine had plunged beneath the surface, with the same amazing
suddenness that had marked its appearance, the passengers stood frozen on the deck, staring at 
the watery expanse. Not a throat was cleared among them. The captain recovered his presence
of mind and gave his order to the navigator, who passed it on to the engine room, and
eventually, after a long fit of grinding, the antique engine started up like a sleeping dog kicked
by its master.
The crew of the transport ship held their breaths, waiting for a torpedo attack. The
Americans might have simply changed their plans, deciding that sinking the ship with a
torpedo would be faster and easier than a time-consuming volley from the gun. The ship ran
in short zigzags, the captain and navigator scanning the oceans surface with their binoculars,
searching for the deadly white wake of a torpedo. But there was no torpedo. Twenty minutes
after the submarine had disappeared beneath the waves, people at last began to break free of
the death curse that had hung over them. They could only half believe it at first, but little by
little they came to feel that it was true: they had come back alive from the verge of death. Not
even the captain knew why the Americans had suddenly abandoned their attack. What could
have changed their minds? (Only later did it become clear that instructions had arrived from
headquarters just moments before the attack was to have begun, advising them to suspend all
hostilities unless attacked by the enemy. The Japanese government had telegraphed the Allied
powers that they were prepared to accept the Potsdam Declaration and surrender
unconditionally.) Released now from the unbearable tension, several passengers plopped
down on the deck where they stood and began to wail, but most of them could neither cry nor
laugh. For several hours-and, in the case of some, for several days-they remained in a state of
total abstraction, the spike of a long and twisted nightmare thrust unmercifully into their
lungs, their hearts, their spines, their brains, their wombs.
Little Nutmeg Akasaka remained sound asleep in her mothers arms all the while this was
happening. She slept for a solid twenty hours, as if she had been knocked unconscious. Her
mother shouted and slapped her cheeks to no avail. She might as well have sunk to the bottom
of the sea. The intervals between her breaths grew longer and longer, and her pulse slowed.
Her breathing was all but inaudible. But when the ship arrived in Sasebo, she woke without
warning, as if some great power had dragged her back into this world. And so Nutmeg did not
herself witness the events surrounding the aborted attack and disappearance of the American
submarine. She heard everything much later, from her mother.
The freighter finally limped into the port of Sasebo a little past ten in the morning on
August , the day after the nonattack. The port was weirdly silent, and no one came out to
greet the ship. Not even at the antiaircraft emplacement by the harbor mouth were there signs
of humanity. The summer sunlight baked the ground with dumb intensity. The whole world
seemed caught in a deep paralysis, and some on board felt as if they had stumbled by accident
into the land of the dead. After years spent abroad, they could only stare in silence at the
country of their ancestors. At noon on August , the radio had broadcast the Emperors
announcement of the wars end. Six days before that, the nearby city of Nagasaki had been
incinerated by a single atomic bomb. The phantom empire of Manchukuo was disappearing
into history. And caught unawares in the wrong section of the revolving door, the veterinarian
with the mark on his cheek would share the fate of Manchukuo.
 
So, Then, the Next Problem
(May Kasaharas Point of View: ) 
 
Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Have you thought about where I am and what Im doing, the way I told you to at the end
of my last letter? Were you able to imagine anything at all?
Oh, well, I guess Ill just go on under the assumption that you couldnt figure out a thingwhich
Im sure is true.
So let me just get it over with and tell you right from the start.
Im working in- lets say-a certain factory. A big factory. Its in a certain provincial cityor,
should I say, in the mountains on the outskirts of a certain provincial city that faces the
Sea of Japan. Dont let the word factory fool you, though. Its not what youd imagine: one
of those macho places full of big, high-tech machines grinding away and conveyor belts
running and smoke pouring out of smokestacks. Its big, all right, but the grounds are spread
out over a wide area and its bright and quiet. It doesnt produce any smoke at all. I never
imagined the world had such widely spread-out factories. The only other factory Ive ever
seen was the Tokyo caramel factory our class visited on afield trip in elementary school, and
all I remember is how noisy and cramped it was and how people were just slaving away with
gloomy expressions on their faces. So to me, a factory was always like some illustration
youd see in a textbook under Industrial Revolution. 
The people working here are almost all girls. Theres a separate building nearby, a
laboratory, where men in white coats work on product development, wearing very serious
looks on their faces, but they make up a very small proportion of the whole. All the rest are
girls in their late teens or early twenties, and maybe seventy percent of those live in the dorms
inside the company compound, like me. Commuting to this place from the town every day by
bus or car is a real pain, and the dorms are nice. The buildings are new, the rooms are all
singles, the food is good and they let you choose what you want, the facilities are complete,
and room and board is cheap for all that. Theres a heated pool and a library, and you can do
things like tea ceremony and flower arranging if you want (but I dont want), and they even
have an active program of sports teams, so a lot of girls who start out commuting end up
moving into a dorm. All of them return home on weekends to eat with their families or go to
the movies or go on dates with their boyfriends and stuff, so on Saturday the place turns into
an empty ruin. There arent too many people like me, without a family to go home to on
weekends. But like I said before, I like the big, hollow, empty feeling of the place on
weekends. I can spend the day reading, or listening to music with the volume turned up, or
walking in the hills, or, like now, sitting at my desk and writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
The girls who work here are all locals-which means farmers daughters. Well, maybe not
every single one, but theyre mostly happy, healthy, optimistic, hardworking girls. There
arent many big industries in this district, so before, girls wouldgo to the city to find jobs
when they graduated from high school. That meant the guys left in town couldnt find anybody
to marry, which only added to the depopulation problem. So then the town got together and
offered businesses this big tract of land to set up a factory, and the girls didnt have to leave. I
think it was a great idea. I mean, look, they got somebody like me to come all the way out
here. So now, when they graduate from high school (or drop out, like me), the girls all go to
work at the factory and save their pay and get married when theyre old enough and quit their
jobs and have a couple of kids and turn into fat walruses that all look alike. Of course, there
are a few who go on working here after they get married, but most of them quit.
This should give you a pretty good idea of what this place is like. OK?
So now the next question for you is this: What do they make in this factory?
Hint: You and I once went out on a job connected with it. Remember? We went to the
Ginza and did a survey.
Oh, come on. Even you must have figured it out by now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird! Thats it! Im
working in a wig factory! Surprised?
I told you before how I got out of that high-class hotel/jail/country school after six months
and just hung around at home, like a dog with a broken leg. Then, all of a sudden, the thought
of the wig companys factory popped into my head. I remembered something my boss at the
company had once said to me, more as a joke than anything, about how they never had
enough girls for the factory and theyd hire me anytime I wanted to go work there. He even
showed me a pamphlet from the place, and I remember sort of thinking it looked like a really
cool factory and I wouldnt mind working there. My boss said the girls all did hand labor,
implanting hairs into the toupees. A hairpiece is a very delicately made product, not like some
aluminum pot you can stamp out one two three. You have to plant little bunches of real hair
very very very carefully, one bunch at a time, to make a quality hairpiece. Doesnt it make
you faint, just thinking about it? I mean, how many hairs do you think there are on a human
head? You have to count them in the hundreds of thousands! And to make a wig you have to
plant them all by hand, the way they plant seedlings in a rice field. None of the girls here
complain about the work, though. They dont mind because this region is in the snow country,
where it has always been the custom for the farm women to do detailed handiwork to make
money during the long winters. Thats supposedly why the company chose this area for its
factory.
To tell you the truth, Ive never minded doing this kind of hand labor. I know I dont look
it, but Im actually pretty good at sewing. I always impressed my teachers. You still dont
believe me? Its true, though! Thats why it ever occurred to me that I might enjoy spending
part of my life in a factory in the mountains, keeping my hands busy from morning to night
and never thinking about anything upsetting. I was sick of school, but I hated the thought of
just hanging around and letting my parents take care of me (and Im sure they hated the
thought of that too), but I didnt have any one thing that I was dying to do, so the more I
thought of it, the more it seemed that the only thing I could do was go to work in this factory.
I got my parents to act as my sponsors and my boss to give me a recommendation (they
liked my survey work), I passed my interview at company headquarters, and the very next
week I was all packed (not that I took anything more than my clothes and my boom box). I got
on the bullet train by myself, transferred to a cute little train that goes up into the hills, and
made it all the way to this nothing little town. But it was like I came to the other side of the
earth. I was sooo bummed out when I got off the train! I figured I had made a terrible
mistake. But finally, no: Ive been here six months now without any special problems, and I
feel settled in.
I dont know what it is, but Ive always been interested in wigs. Or maybe I should say
Ive always been attracted to them, the way some guys are attracted to motorcycles. You
know, I hadnt really been aware of it before, but when I went out to do that market research
and I had a chance to see all those bald men (or what the company calls men with a thinning
problem ), it really struck me what a lot of guys like that there are in the world! Not that I
have personal feelings one way or another toward men who are bald (or have a thinning
problem). I dont especially like them or dislike them. Take you, for example, Mr. WindUp
Bird. Even if your hair were thinner than it is now (and it will be before too long), my
feelings toward you would absolutely not change in any way. The only strong feeling I have
when I see a man with a thinning problem is that sense I think I mentioned to you before of
life being worn away. Now, that is something Im really interested in!
I once heard that people reach the peak of their growth at a certain age (I forget whether
it was nineteen or twenty or what), after which the body starts to wear out. If thats the case,
then its just one part of the wearing away of the body for the hair to fall out and grow
thinner. Theres nothing strange about it at all. Maybe its normal and natural. If theres any
problem in all this, its the fact that some guys go bald young and others never go bald, even 
when theyre old. I know if I were bald, Id think it was unfair. I mean, its a part of the body
that really sticks out! Even I understand how they feel, and the problem of thinning hair has
nothing to do with me.
In most cases, the person losing his hair is in no way responsible for whether the volume
of hair he loses is greater or less than anybody elses. When I was working part time, my boss
told me that the genes determine ninety percent of whether a person is going to go bald or
not. A man who has inherited a gene for thinning hair from his grandfather and father is
going to lose his hair sooner or later, no matter what he does to prevent it. Where theres a
will theres a way just doesnt apply to baldness. When the time comes for the gene to stand
up and say, All right, now, lets get this show on the road (that is, if genes can stand up and
say Lets get this show on the road ), the hair has no choice but to start falling out. It is
unfair, dont you think? I know I think it is.
So now you know Im out here in this factory, far away from where you are, working hard
every day. And you know about my deep personal interest in the toupee and its manufacture.
Next Im going to go into somewhat greater detail on my life and work here.
Nah, forget it. Bye-bye.
 
Is This Shovel a Real Shovel?
(What Happened in the Night: )
 
After he fell into his deep sleep, the boy had a vivid dream. He knew it was a dream,
though, which came as some comfort to him. I know this is a dream, so what happened before
was not a dream. It really, really happened. I can tell the difference between the two.
In his dream, the boy had gone out to the garden. It was still the middle of the night, and
he was alone. He picked up the shovel and started digging out the hole that the tall man had
filled in. The man had left the shovel leaning against the trunk of the tree. Freshly filled in, the
hole was not that hard to dig, but just picking up the heavy shovel was enough to take the
boys breath away. And he had no shoes on. The soles of his feet were freezing cold. Even so,
he went on panting and digging until he had uncovered the cloth bundle that the man had
buried.
The wind-up bird no longer cried. The man who had climbed the tree never came down.
The night was so silent it almost hurt the boys ears. The man had just disappeared, it seemed.
But finally, this is a dream, the boy thought. It was not a dream that the wind-up bird had
cried and the man who looked like his father had climbed the tree. Those things had really
happened. So there must not be any connection between this and that. Strange, though: here
he was, in a dream, digging out the real hole. So how was he to distinguish between what was
a dream and what was not a dream? Was this shovel a real shovel? Or was it a dream shovel?
The more he thought, the less he understood. And so the boy stopped thinking and put all
his energy into digging the hole. Finally, the shovel came up against the cloth bundle.
The boy took great care after that to remove the surrounding dirt so as not to damage the
cloth bundle. Then he went down on his knees and lifted the bundle from the hole. There was
not a cloud in the sky, and there was no one there to block the moist light of the full moon that 
poured down on the ground. In the dream, he was strangely free of fear. Curiosity was the
feeling that dominated him with its power. He opened the bundle, to find a human heart
inside. He recognized its shape and color from the picture he had seen in his encyclopedia.
The heart was still fresh and alive and moving, like a newly abandoned infant. True, it was
sending no blood out through its severed artery, but it continued to beat with a strong pulse.
The boy heard a loud throbbing in his ears, but it was the sound of his own heart. The buried
heart and the boys own heart went on pounding in perfect unison, as if communicating with
each other.
The boy steadied his breathing and told himself firmly, You are not afraid of this. This is
just a human heart, thats all. Just like in the encyclopedia. Everybody has one of these. I have
one. With steady hands, the boy wrapped the beating heart in the cloth again, returned it to
the bottom of the hole, and covered it over with earth. He smoothed the earth with his bare
foot so that no one could tell a hole had been dug there, and he stood the shovel against the
tree as he had found it. The ground at night was like ice. Climbing over the sill of his window,
the boy returned to his own warm, friendly room. He brushed the mud from his feet into his
wastebasket so as not to dirty his sheets, and he started to crawl into bed. But then he realized
that someone was already lying there. Someone was sleeping in his bed, under the covers, in
his place.
Angry now, the boy stripped the covers back. Hey, you, get out of there! This is my bed! 
he wanted to shout at the person. But his voice would not come out, because the one he found
in the bed was himself. He was already in his bed, asleep, breathing peacefully. The boy stood
frozen in place, at a loss for words. If I am already sleeping here, then where should this me
sleep? Now, for the first time, the boy felt afraid, with a. fear that seemed as if it would chill
him to the core. The boy wanted to shout. He wanted to scream as loud as he could to wake
up his sleeping self and everyone else in the house. But his voice would not come. He strained
with all his might, but he could produce no sound.
Nothing at all. So he put his hand on the shoulder of his sleeping self and shook it as hard
as he could. But the sleeping boy would not wake up.
There was nothing more he could do. The boy stripped off his cardigan and flung it on the
floor. Then he pushed his other, sleeping self as hard as he could from the center of the bed
and crammed himself into the small space that was left for him at the edge. He had to secure a
spot for himself here. Otherwise, he might be pushed out of this world where he belonged.
Cramped and without a pillow, the boy nevertheless felt incredibly sleepy as soon as he lay
down. He could not think anymore. In the next moment, he was sound asleep.
•
When he woke up in the morning, the boy was in the middle of the bed, alone. His pillow
was under his head, as always. He raised himself slowly and looked around the room. At first
glance, the room seemed unchanged. It had the same desk, the same bureau, the same closet,
the same floor lamp. The hands of the wall clock pointed to six-twenty. But the boy knew
something was strange. It might all look the same, but this was not the same place where he
had gone to sleep the previous night. The air, the light, the sounds, the smells, were all just a
little bit different from before. Other people might not notice, but the boy knew. He stripped
off the covers and looked at himself. He held his hands up and moved each of his fingers in
turn. They moved as they should. And his legs moved. He felt no pain or itching. He slipped
out of bed and went to the toilet. When he was through peeing, he stood at the sink and
looked at his face in the mirror. He pulled off his pajama top, stood on a chair, and looked at
the reflection of his fair-skinned little body. He found nothing unusual.
Yet something was different. He felt as if his self had been put into a new container. He
knew that he was still not fully accustomed to this new body of his. There was something 
about this one, he felt, that just didnt match his original self. A sudden feeling of helplessness
overtook him, and he tried to call for his mother, but the word would not emerge from his
throat. His vocal cords were unable to stir the air, as if the very word mother had
disappeared from the world. Before long, the boy realized that the word was not what had
disappeared.
 
M ‘ s Secret Cure
 
SHOW BUSINESS WORLD TAINTED BY OCCULT
[From The ---- Monthly, November]
... These occult cures, which have become a kind of craze among members of the
entertainment world, are spread primarily by word of mouth, but in some cases they bear the
mark of certain secret organizations.
Take, for example, M : , debuted ten years ago as supporting actress in a television
dramatic series, well received, leading roles ever since in TV and films, six years ago married
 boy wonder real estate developer, no problems in first two years of marriage. His business
did well, and she recorded some fine performances on film. But then the sideline dinner club
and boutique he opened in her name ran into trouble and he started bouncing checks, for
which she became liable. Never eager to go into business to begin with, M had more or less
had her arm twisted by her husband, who wanted to expand. One view has it that the husband
was taken in by a kind of scam. In addition, there had always been a serious rift between M
and her in-laws.
Soon the gossip spread about the trouble M was having with her husband, and before long
the two were living separately. They concluded formal divorce proceedings two years ago
after an arbitrator helped them settle their debts, but after that M started showing signs of
depression, and the need for therapy put her into virtual retirement. According to one source
at the studio she worked for, M was regularly plagued by serious delusions after the divorce.
She ruined her health with antidepressants, and it got to the point where people were saying,
 Shes had it as an actress. Our source observed, She had lost the powers of concentration
you need to act, and it was shocking what happened to her looks. It didnt help, either, that
she was basically a serious person who would dwell on things to the point where it would
affect her mentally. At least her financial settlement had left her in pretty good shape, so she
could make it for a while without working. 
One distant relative of Ms was the wife of a famous politician and former cabinet
minister. M was practically a daughter to this person, who introduced her to a woman who
practiced a form of spiritual healing for a very limited, upper-class clientele. M went to her
for a year on a regular basis for treatment of her depression, but exactly what this treatment
consisted of, no one knows. M herself kept it absolutely secret. Whatever it was, it seems to
have worked. It wasnt long before M was able to stop taking anti-depressants, as a result of
which she lost the strange puffiness the medicine had caused, her hair regained its fullness,
and her beauty returned. She recovered mentally, as well, and gradually began acting again. 
At that point, she stopped the treatments.
In October of this year, however, just as the memory of her nightmare was beginning to
fade, M had one episode during which, for no apparent reason, her symptoms flared up again.
The timing couldnt have been worse: she had a major acting job just a few days ahead of her,
something she could not have carried off in her present state. M contacted the woman and requested
the usual treatment, but the woman told her that she was no longer in practice. Im
sorry, she said, but I cant do anything for you. Im not qualified anymore. Ive lost my
powers. There is someone I can introduce you to, but youll have to swear absolute secrecy. If
you say one word about it to anyone, youll be sorry. Is that clear? 
M was supposedly instructed to go to a certain place, where she was brought into the
presence of a man with a bluish mark on his face. The man,,around thirty, never spoke while
she was there, but his treatment was incredibly effective. M refused to divulge what she
paid for the session, but we can imagine that the consultation fee was quite substantial.
This is what we know about the mysterious treatment, as told by M to a trusted very
close friend. She first had to go to a certain downtown hotel, where she met a young man
whose job it was to guide her to the healer. They left from a special underground VIP parking
lot in a big black car and went to the place where the treatment was performed. As far as the
treatment itself is concerned, however, we have been able to learn nothing. M is said to have
told her friend, Those people have awesome powers. Something terrible could happen to me
if I broke my promise. 
M paid only one visit to the place, and she has not since suffered any seizures. We tried
approaching M directly for more information on the treatment and the mysterious woman, but
as expected, she refused to see us. According to one well-informed source, this organization 
generally avoids contacts with the entertainment world and concentrates on the more secretive
worlds of politics and finance. Our contacts in the performing arts have, so far, yielded no
more information....
 
The Waiting Man
 
What Couldnt Be Shaken Off
 
No Man Is an Island
Eight oclock went by and everything was dark when I opened the back gate and stepped
out into the alley. I had to squeeze through sideways. Less than three feet high, the gate had
been cleverly camouflaged in the corner of the fence so as to be undetectable from the
outside. The alley emerged from the night, illuminated as always by the cold white light of the
mercury lamp in the garden of May Kasaharas house.
I clicked the gate shut and slipped down the alley. Through one fence after another, I
caught glimpses of people in their dining rooms and living rooms, eating and watching TV
dramas. Food smells drifted into the alley through kitchen windows and exhaust fans. One
teenage boy was practicing a fast passage on his electric guitar, with the volume turned down.
In a second-floor window, a tiny girl was studying at her desk, an earnest expression on her 
face. A married couple in a heated argument sent their voices out to the alley. A baby was
screaming. A telephone rang. Reality spilled out into the alley like water from an overfilled
bowl-as sound, as smell, as image, as plea, as response.
I wore my usual tennis shoes to keep my steps silent. My pace could be neither too fast
nor too slow. The important thing was not to attract peoples attention, not to let that reality 
pick up on my passing presence. I knew all the corners, all the obstructions. Even in the dark I
could slip down the alley without bumping into anything. When I finally reached the back of
my house, I stopped, looked around, and climbed over the low wall.
The house crouched silently in the darkness like the shell of a giant animal. I unlocked the
kitchen door, turned on the light, and changed the cats water. I took a can of cat food from
the cabinet and opened it. Mackerel heard the sound and appeared from nowhere. He rubbed
his head against my leg a few times, then started to tear into his food. While he was eating, I
took a cold beer from the refrigerator. I always had supper in the residence -something that
Cinnamon had prepared for me-and so the most I ever had here was a salad or a slice of
cheese. Drinking my beer, I took the cat on my knees and confirmed his warmth and softness
with my hands. Having spent the day in separate places, we both confirmed the fact that we
were home.
•
Tonight, however, when I slipped my shoes off and reached out to turn the kitchen light
on, I felt a presence. I stopped my hand in the darkness and listened, inhaling quietly. I heard
nothing, but I caught the faint scent of tobacco. There was someone in the house, someone
waiting for me to come home, someone who, a few moments earlier, had probably given up
the struggle and lit a cigarette, taking no more than a few puffs and opening a window to let
the smoke out, but still the smell remained. This could not be a person I knew. The house was
still locked up, and I didnt know anyone who smoked, aside from Nutmeg Akasaka, who
would hardly be waiting in the dark if she wanted to see me.
Instinctively, my hand reached out in the darkness, feeling for the bat. But it was no
longer there. It was at the bottom of the well now. The sound my heart had started making
was almost unreal, as if the heart itself had escaped from my chest and was beating beside my
ear. I tried to keep my breathing regular. I probably didnt need the bat. If someone was here
to hurt me, he wouldnt be sitting around inside. Still, my palms were itching with
anticipation. My hands were seeking the touch of the bat. Mackerel came from somewhere in
the darkness and, as usual, started meowing and rubbing his head against my leg. But he was
not as hungry as always. I could tell from the sounds he made. I reached out and turned on the
kitchen light.
 Sorry, but I went ahead and gave the cat his supper, said the man on the living room
sofa, with an easy lilt to his voice. Ive been waiting a very long time for you, Mr. Okada,
and the cat was all over my feet and meowing, so-hope you dont mind-I found a can of cat
food in the cabinet and gave it to him. Tell you the truth, Im not very good with cats. 
He showed no sign of standing up. I watched him sitting there and said nothing.
 Im sure this was quite a shock to you-finding somebody in your house, waiting for you
in the dark. Im sorry. Really. But if I had turned the light on, you might not have come in.
Im not here to do you any harm, believe me, so you dont have to look at me that way. I just
need to have a little talk with you. 
He was a short man, dressed in a suit. It was hard to guess his height with him seated, but
he couldnt have been five feet tall. Somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old, he
looked like a chubby little frog with a bald head-a definite A in May Kasaharas classification
system. He did have a few clumps of hair clinging to his scalp over his ears, but their oddly
shaped black presence made the bare area stand out all the more. He had a large nose, which 
may have been somewhat blocked, judging from the way it expanded and contracted like a
bellows with each noisy breath he took. Atop that nose sat a pair of thick-looking wire-rim
glasses. He had a way of pronouncing certain words so that his upper lip would curl, revealing
a mouthful of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. He was, without question, one of the ugliest
human beings I had ever encountered. And not just physically ugly: there was a certain
clammy weirdness about him that I could not put into words-the sort of feeling you get when
your hand brushes against some big, strange bug in the darkness. He looked less like an actual
human being than like something from a long-forgotten nightmare.
 Do you mind if I have a smoke? he asked. I was trying not to before, but sitting and
waiting without a cigarette is like torture. Its a very bad habit. 
Finding it difficult to speak, I simply nodded. The strange-looking man took an unfiltered
Peace from his jacket pocket, put it between his lips, and made a loud, dry scratching sound as
he lit it with a match. Then he picked up the empty cat food can at his feet and dropped the
match into it. So he had been using the can as an ashtray. He sucked the smoke into his lungs
with obvious pleasure, drawing his thick eyebrows into one shaggy line and letting out little
moans. Each long puff made the end of the cigarette glow bright red like burning coal. I
opened the patio door and let the outside air in. A light rain was falling. I couldnt see it or
hear it, but I knew it was raining from the smell.
The man had on a brown suit, white shirt, and red tie, all of the same degree of cheapness,
and all worn out to the same degree. The color of the suit was reminiscent of an amateur paint
job on an old jalopy. The deep wrinkles in the pants and jacket looked as permanent as valleys
in an aerial photograph. The white shirt had taken on a yellow tinge, and one button on the
chest was ready to fall off. It also looked one or two sizes too small, with its top button open
and the collar crooked. The tie, with its strange pattern of ill-formed ectoplasm, looked as if it
had been left in place since the days of the Osmond Brothers. Anyone looking at him would
have seen immediately that this was a man who paid absolutely no attention to the
phenomenon of clothing. He wore what he wore strictly because he had no choice but to put
something on when dealing with other people, as if he were hostile to the idea of wearing
clothes at all. He might have been planning to wear these things the same way every day until
they fell apart-like a highland farmer driving his donkey from morning to night until he kills
it.
Once he had sucked all the nicotine he needed into his lungs, he gave a sigh of relief and
produced a strange look on his face that hovered somewhere midway between a smile and a
smirk. Then he opened his mouth.
 Well, now, let me not forget to introduce myself. I am not usually so rude. The name is
Ushikawa. Thats ushi for ‘bull and kawa for ‘river. Easy enough to remember, dont you
think? Everybody calls me Ushi. Funny: the more I hear that, the more I feel like a real bull. I
even feel a kind of closeness whenever I happen to see a bull out in a field somewhere. Names
are funny things, dont you think, Mr. Okada? Take Okada, for example. Now, theres a nice,
clean name: ‘hill-field. I sometimes wish I had a normal name like that, but unfortunately, a
surname is not something youre free to pick. Once youre born into this world as Ushikawa,
youre Ushikawa for life, like it or not. Theyve been calling me Ushi since the day I started
kindergarten. Theres no way around it. You get a guy named Ushikawa, and people are
bound to call him Ushi, right? They say a name expresses the thing it stands for, but I wonder
if it isnt the other way around-the thing gets more and more like its name. Anyhow, just think
of me as Ushikawa, and if you feel like it, call me Ushi. I dont mind. 
I went to the kitchen and brought back a can of beer from the refrigerator. I did not offer
any to Ushikawa. I hadnt invited him here, after all. I said nothing and drank my beer, and
Ushikawa said nothing and drew deeply on his cigarette. I did not sit in the chair across from
him but rather stood leaning against a pillar, looking down at him. Finally, he crushed his butt
out in the empty cat food can and looked up at me. 
 Im sure youre wondering how I got in here, Mr. Okada. True? Youre sure you locked
the door. And in fact, it was locked. But I have a key. A real key. Look, here it is. 
He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out a key ring with one key attached, and
held it up for me to see. It certainly did look like the key to this house. But what attracted my
attention was the key holder. It was just like Kumikos-a simple-styled green leather key
holder with a ring that opened in an unusual way.
 Its the real thing, said Ushikawa. As you can see. And the holder belongs to your
wife. Let me say this to avoid any misunderstanding: This was given to me by your wife,
Kumiko. I did not steal it or take it by force. 
 Where is Kumiko? I asked, my voice sounding somewhat mangled.
Ushikawa took his glasses off, seemed to check on the cloudiness of the lenses, then put
them back on. I know exactly where she is, he said. In fact, I am taking care of her. 
 ‘Taking care of her? 
 Now, dont get me wrong. I dont mean it that way. Dont worry, Ushikawa said, with a
smile. When he smiled, his face broke up asymmetrically from side to side, and his glasses
went up at an angle. Please dont glare at me like that. Im just sort of helping her as part of
my work-running errands, doing odd jobs. Im a gofer, thats all. You know how she cant go
outside. 
 ‘Cant go outside? I parroted his words again.
He hesitated a moment, his tongue flicking across his lips. Well, maybe you dont know.
Thats all right. I cant really say whether she cant go out or doesnt want to go out. Im sure
you would like to know, Mr. Okada, but please dont ask me. Not even I know all the details.
But theres nothing for you to worry about. She is not being held against her will. I mean, this
is not a movie or a novel. We cant really do that sort of thing. 
I set my beer can down carefully at my feet. So anyway, tell me, what did you come here
for? 
After patting his knees several times with outstretched palms, Ushikawa gave one deep,
sharp nod. Ah, yes. I forgot to mention that, didnt I? I go to all the trouble of introducing
myself, and then I forget to tell you what Im here for! That has been one of my most
consistent flaws over the years: to go on and on about foolish things and leave out the main
point. No wonder Im always doing the wrong thing! Well, then, belated though it may be,
here it is: I work for your wife Kumikos elder brother. Ushikawas the name-but I already
told you that, about the Ushi and everything. I work for Dr. Noboru Wataya as a kind of
private sery-though not the usual ‘private sery that a member of the Diet might have. Only a
certain kind of person, a superior kind of person, can be a real ‘private sery. The term covers
a wide range of types. I mean, there are private series, and then there are private series, and
Im as close to the second kind as you can get. Im down there-I mean, way, way down there.
If there are spirits lurking everywhere, Im one of the dirty little ones down in the corner of a
bathroom or a closet. But I cant complain. If somebody this messy came right out in the
open, think of what it could do to Dr. Watayas clean-cut image! No, the ones who face the
cameras have to be slick, intelligent-looking types, not bald midgets. ‘How-dee-doo, folks,
its me, Dr. Watayas private sec-ruh-teh-ree. What a laugh! Right, Mr. Okada? I kept silent
as he prattled on.
 So what I do for the Doctor are the unseen jobs, the ‘shadow jobs, so to speak, the ones
that arent out in the open. Im the fiddler under the porch. Jobs like that are my specialty.
Like this business with Ms. Kumiko. Now, dont get me wrong, though: dont think that
taking care of her is just some busywork for a lowly hack. If what Ive said has given you that
impression, it couldnt be further from the truth. I mean, Ms. Kumiko is the Doctors one and
only dear little sister, after all. I consider it a consummate honor to have been allowed to take
on such an important task, believe me!
 Oh, by the way, this may seem very rude, but I wonder if I could ask you for a beer. All 
this talking has made me very thirsty. If you dont mind, Ill just grab one myself. I know
where it is. While I was waiting, I took the liberty of peeking into the refrigerator. 
I nodded to him. Ushikawa went to the kitchen and took a bottle of beer from the
refrigerator. Then he sat down on the sofa again, drinking straight from the bottle with
obvious relish, his huge Adams apple twitching above the knot of his tie like some kind of
animal.
 I tell you, Mr. Okada, a cold beer at the end of the day is the best thing life has to offer.
Some choosy people say that a too cold beer doesnt taste good, but I couldnt disagree more.
The first beer should be so cold you cant even taste it. The second one should be a little less
chilled, but I want that first one to be like ice. I want it to be so cold my temples throb with
pain. This is my own personal preference, of course. 
Still leaning against the pillar, I took another sip of my own beer. Lips tightly closed in a
straight line, Ushikawa surveyed the room for some moments.
 I must say, Mr. Okada, for a man without a wife, you do keep the house clean. Im very
impressed. I myself am absolutely hopeless, Im embarrassed to say. My place is a mess, a
garbage heap, a pigsty. I havent washed the bathtub for a year or more. Perhaps I neglected
to tell you that I was also deserted by my wife. Five years ago. So I can feel a certain
sympathy for you, Mr. Okada, or to avoid the risk of misinterpretation, let me just say that I
can understand how you feel. Of course, my situation was different from yours. It was only
natural for my wife to leave me. I was the worst husband in the world. Far from complaining,
I have to admire her for having put up with me as long as she did. I used to beat her. No one
else: she was the only one I could beat up on. You can tell what a weakling I am. Got the
heart of a flea. I would do nothing but kiss ass outside the house; people would call me Ushi
and order me around, and I would just suck up to them all the more. So when I got home I
would take it out on my wife. Heh heh heh-pretty bad, eh? And I knew just how bad I was,
but I couldnt stop. It was like a sickness. Id beat her face out of shape until you couldnt
recognize her. And not just beat her: Id slam her against the wall and kick her, pour hot tea
on her, throw things at her, you name it. The kids would try to stop me, and Id end up hitting
them. Little kids: seven, eight years old. And not just push them around: Id wallop them with
everything I had. I was an absolute devil. Id try to stop myself, but I couldnt. I couldnt
control myself. After a certain point, I would tell myself that I had done enough damage, that
I had to stop, but I didnt know how to stop. Do you see what a horror I was? So then, five
years ago, when my daughter was five, I broke her arm-just snapped it. Thats when my wife
finally got fed up with me and left with both kids. I havent seen any of them since. Havent
even heard from them. But what can I do? Its my own fault. 
I said nothing to him. The cat came over to me and gave a short meow, as if looking for
attention.
 Anyway, Im sorry, I wasnt planning to exhaust you with all these boring details. You
must be wondering if I have any business that has brought me here this evening. Well, I have.
I didnt come here for small talk, Mr. Okada. The Doctor- which is to say, Dr. Watayaordered
me to come to see you. I will now tell you exactly what he told me, so please listen.
 First of all, Dr. Wataya is not opposed to the idea of reconsidering a relationship between
you and Ms. Kumiko. In other words, he would not object if both of you decided that you
wanted to go back to your previous relationship. At the moment, Ms. Kumiko herself has no
such intention, so nothing would happen right away, but if you were to reject any possibility
of divorce and insist that you wanted to wait as long as it took, he could accept that. He will
no longer insist upon a divorce, as he has in the past, and so he would not mind if you wanted
to use me as a conduit if there was something you wanted to communicate to Ms. Kumiko. In
other words, no more locking horns on every little thing: a renewal of diplomatic relations, as
it were. This is the first item of business. How does it strike you, Mr. Okada? 
I lowered myself to the floor and stroked the cats head, but I said nothing. Ushikawa 
watched me and the cat for a time, then continued to speak.
 Well, of course, Mr. Okada, you cant say a word until youve heard everything I have to
say. All right, then, I will continue through to the end. Here is the second item of business.
This gets a little complicated, Im afraid. It has to do with an article called ‘The Hanging
House, which appeared in one of the weekly magazines. I dont know if you have read it or
not, Mr. Okada, but it is a very interesting piece. Well written. ‘Jinxed land in posh Setagaya
residential neighborhood. Many people met untimely deaths there over the years. What
mystery man has recently bought the place? What is going on behind that high fence? One
riddle after another
 Anyhow, Dr. Wataya read the piece and realized that the ‘hanging house is very close to
the house you live in, Mr. Okada. The idea began to gnaw at him that there might be some
connection between it and you. So he investigated... or, should I say the lowly Ushikawa, on
his short little legs, took the liberty of investigating the matter, and-bingo!- there you were,
Mr. Okada, just as he had predicted, going back and forth down that back passageway every
day to the other house, obviously very much involved with whatever it is that is going on
inside there. I myself was truly amazed to see such a powerful display of Dr. Watayas penetrating
intelligence.
 Theres only been one article so far, with no follow-up, but who knows? Dying embers
can always rekindle. I mean, thats a pretty fascinating story. So Dr. Wataya is more than a
little nervous. What if his brother-in-laws name were to come out in some unpleasant
connection? Think of the scandal that could erupt! Dr. Wataya is the man of the moment, after
all. The media would have a field day. And then theres this difficult business with you and
Ms. Kumiko. They would blow it up out of all proportion. I mean, everybody has something
he would rather not have aired in public, right? Especially when it comes to personal affairs.
This is a delicate moment in the Doctors political career, after all. He has to proceed with the
utmost caution until hes ready to take off. So what he has in mind for you is a little deal of
sorts hes cooked up. If you will cut all connection with this ‘hanging house, Mr. Okada, he
will give some serious thought to bringing you and Ms. Kumiko back together again. Thats
all there is to it. How does that strike you, Mr. Okada? Have I set it out clearly enough? 
 Probably, I said.
 So what do you think? What is your reaction to all this? 
Stroking the cats neck, I thought about it for a while. Then I said, I dont get it. What
made Noboru Wataya think that I had anything to do with that house? How did he make the
connection? 
Ushikawas face broke up again into one of his big smiles, but his eyes remained as cold
as glass. He took a crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit up with a match. Ah,
Mr. Okada, you ask such difficult questions. Remember, I am just a lowly messenger. A
stupid carrier pigeon. I carry slips of paper back and forth. I think you understand. I can say
this, however: the Doctor is no fool. He knows how to use his brain, and he has a kind of sixth
sense, something that ordinary people do not possess. And also let me tell you this, Mr.
Okada: he has a very real kind of power that he can exercise in this world, a power that grows
stronger every day. You had better not ignore it. You may have your reasons for not liking
him-and that is perfectly fine as far as I am concerned, its none of my business-but things
have gone beyond the level of simple likes and dislikes. I want you to understand that. 
 If Noboru Wataya is so powerful, why doesnt he just stop the magazine from publishing
any more articles? That would be a whole lot simpler. 
Ushikawa smiled. Then he inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
 Dear, dear Mr. Okada, you mustnt say such reckless things. You and I live in Japan,
after all, one of the worlds most truly democratic states. Correct? This is no dictatorship
where all you see around you are banana plantations and soccer fields. No matter how much
power a politician may have in this country, quashing an article in a magazine is not a simple 
thing. It would be far too dangerous. You might succeed in getting the company brass in your
pocket, but someone is going to be left dissatisfied. And that could end up attracting all the
more attention. It just doesnt pay to try pushing people around when such a hot story is involved.
Its true.
 And just between you and me, there may be some vicious players involved in this affair,
types you dont know anything about, Mr. Okada. If thats the case, this is eventually going to
include more than our dear Doctor. Once that happens, we could be talking about a whole
new ball game. Lets compare this to a visit to the dentist. So far, were at the stage of poking
a spot where the novocaines still working. Which is why no ones complaining. But soon the
drill is going to hit a nerve, and then somebodys going to jump out of the chair. Somebody
could get seriously angry. Do you see what Im saying? Im not trying to threaten you, but it
seems to me- to old Ushikawa here-that you are slowly being dragged into dangerous territory
without even realizing it. Ushikawa seemed finally to have made his point. You mean I
should pull out before I get hurt? I asked. Ushikawa nodded. This is like playing catch in
the middle of the expressway, Mr. Okada. Its a very dangerous game. 
 In addition to which, its going to cause Noboru Wataya a lot of trouble. So if I just fold
up my cards, hell put me in touch with Kumiko. 
Ushikawa nodded again. That about sums it up. I took a swallow of beer. Then I said,
 First of all, let me tell you this. Im going to get Kumiko back, but Im going to do it myself,
not with help from Noboru Wataya. I dont want his help. And youre certainly right about
one thing: I dont like Noboru Wataya. As you say, though, this is not just a question of likes
and dislikes. Its something more basic than that. I dont simply dislike him: I cannot accept
the fact of his very existence. And so I refuse to make any deals with him. Please be so kind
as to convey that to him for me. And dont you ever come into this house again without my
permission. It is my house, not some hotel lobby or train station. 
Ushikawa narrowed his eyes and stared at me awhile from behind his glasses. His eyes
never moved. As before, they were devoid of emotion. Not that they were expressionless. But
all he had there was something fabricated temporarily for the occasion. At that point, he held
his disproportionately large right palm aloft, as if testing for rain.
 I understand completely, he said. I never thought this would be easy, so Im not
particularly surprised by your answer. Besides, I dont surprise very easily. I understand how
you feel, and Im glad everything is out in the open like this, no hemming and hawing, just a
simple yes or no. Makes it easier for everybody. All I need as a carrier pigeon is another
convoluted answer where you cant tell black from white! The world has too many of those as
it is! Not that Im complaining, but all I seem to get every day are sphinxes giving me riddles.
This job is bad for my health, let me tell you. Living like this, before you know it, you
become devious by nature. Do you see what I mean, Mr. Okada? You become suspicious,
always looking for ulterior motives, never able to put your faith in anything thats clear and
simple. Its a terrible thing, Mr. Okada, it really is.
 So, fine, Mr. Okada, I will let the Doctor know that you have given him a very clear-cut
answer. But dont expect things to end there, you may want to finish this business, but its not
that simple. I will probably have to come to see you again. Im sorry to put you through this,
having to deal with such an ugly, messy little fellow, but please try to accustom yourself to
my existence, at least. I dont harbor any feelings toward you as an individual, Mr. Okada.
Really. But for the time being, whether you like it or not, Im going to be one of those things
that you cant just sweep away. I know its an odd way to put it, but please try to think of me
like that. I can promise you one thing, though. I will not be letting myself into your house
again. You are quite right: that is not a proper way to behave. I should go down on my knees
and beg to be let in. This time I had no choice. Please try to understand. I am not always so
reckless. Appearances to the contrary, I am an ordinary human being. From now on, I will do
as other people do and call beforehand. That should be all right, dont you think? I will ring 
once, hang up, then ring again. Youll know its me that way, and you can tell yourself, ‘Oh,
its that stupid Ushikawa again, when you pick up the phone. But do pick up the phone.
Otherwise, I will have no choice but to let myself in again. Personally, I would rather not do
such a thing, but I am being paid to wag my tail, so when my boss says ‘Do it! I have to try
my best to do it. You understand. 
I said nothing to him. Ushikawa crushed what was left of his cigarette in the bottom of the
cat food can, then glanced at his watch as if suddenly recalling something. Oh, my, my, mylook
how late it is! First I come barging in, then I talk you to death and take your beer. Please
excuse me. As I said earlier, I dont have anybody to go home to, so when I find someone I
can talk to, I settle in for the night. Sad, dont you think? I tell you, Mr. Okada, living alone is
not something you should do for long. What is it they say? ‘No man is an island. Or is it The
devil finds mischief for idle hands? 
After sweeping some imaginary dust from his lap, Ushikawa stood up slowly.
 No need to see me out, he said. I let myself in, after all; I can let myself out. Ill be sure
to lock the door. One last word of advice, though, Mr. Okada, though you may not want to
hear this: There are things in this world it is better not to know about. Of course, those are the
very things that people most want to know about. Its strange. I know Im being very
general.... I wonder when well meet again? I hope things are better by then. Oh, well, good
night. 
•
The quiet rain continued through the night, tapering off toward dawn, but the sticky
presence of the strange little man, and the smell of his unfiltered cigarettes, remained in the
house as long as the lingering dampness.
 
Cinnamons Strange Sign Language
 
The Musical Offering
 Cinnamon stopped talking once and for all just before his sixth birthday, Nutmeg said to
me. It was the year he should have entered elementary school. All of a sudden, that February,
he stopped talking. And as strange as it may seem, it was night before we noticed that he
hadnt said a word all day. True, he was never much of a talker, but still. When it finally
occurred to me what was happening, I did everything I could to make him speak. I talked to
him, I shook him; nothing worked. He was like a stone. I didnt know whether he had
suddenly lost the power to speak or he had decided on his own that he would stop speaking.
And I still dont know. But hes never said another word-never made another sound. Hell
never scream if hes in pain, and you can tickle him but hell never laugh out loud. 
Nutmeg took her son to several different ear, nose, and throat specialists, but none of them
could locate the cause. All they could determine was that it was not physical. Cinnamon could 
hear perfectly well, but he wouldnt speak. All the doctors concluded that it must be psychological
in origin. Nutmeg took him to a psychiatrist friend of hers, but he also was unable
to determine a cause for Cinnamons continued silence. He administered an IQ. test, but there
was no problem there. In fact, he turned out to have an unusually high IQ. The doctor could
find no evidence of emotional problems, either. Has he experienced some kind of unusual
shock? the psychiatrist asked Nutmeg. Try to think. Could he have witnessed something
abnormal or been subjected to violence at home? But Nutmeg could think of nothing. One
day her son had been normal in every way: he had eaten his meals in the normal way, had
normal conversations with her, gone to bed when he was supposed to, had no trouble falling
asleep. And the next morning he had sunk into a world of deep silence. There had been no
problems in the home. The child was being brought up under the ever watchful gaze of
Nutmeg and her mother, neither of whom had ever raised a hand to him. The doctor
concluded that the only thing they could do was observe him and hope that something would
turn up. Unless they knew the cause, there was no way to treat him. Nutmeg should bring
Cinnamon to see the doctor once a week, in the course of which they might figure out what
had happened. It was possible that he would just start speaking again, like someone waking
from a dream. All they could do was wait. True, the child was not speaking, but there was
nothing else wrong with him....
And so they waited, but Cinnamon never again rose to the surface of his deep ocean of
silence.
•
Its electric motor producing a low hum, the front gate began to swing inward at nine
oclock in the morning, and Cinnamons Mercedes-Benz SEL pulled into the driveway.
The car phones antenna protruded from the back window like a newly sprouted tentacle. I
watched through a crack in the blinds. The car looked like some kind of huge migratory fish,
afraid of nothing. The brand-new black tires traced a silent arc over the concrete surface and
came to a stop in the designated spot. They traced exactly the same arc every morning and
stopped in exactly the same place with probably no more than two inches variation.
I was drinking the coffee that I had brewed for myself a few minutes earlier. The rain had
stopped, but gray clouds covered the sky, and the ground was still black and cold and wet.
The birds raised sharp cries as they flitted back and forth in search of worms on the ground.
The drivers door opened after a short pause, and Cinnamon stepped out, wearing sunglasses.
After a quick scan of the area, he took the glasses off and slipped them into his breast pocket.
Then he closed the car door. The precise sound of the big Mercedess door latch was different
from the sounds other car doors made. For me, this sound marked the beginning of another
day at the Residence.
I had been thinking all morning about Ushikawas visit the night before, wondering
whether I should tell Cinnamon that Ushikawa had been sent by Noboru Wataya to get me to
pull out of the activities conducted at this house. In the end, though, I decided not to tell himfor
the time being, at least. This was something that had to be settled between Noboru Wataya
and me. I didnt want to have any third parties involved.
Cinnamon was stylishly dressed, as always, in a suit. All his suits were of the finest
quality, tailored to fit him perfectly. They tended to be rather conservative in cut, but on him
they looked youthful, as if magically transformed into the latest fashion.
He wore a new tie, of course, one to match that days suit. His shirt and shoes were
different as well. His mother, Nutmeg, had probably picked everything out for him, in her
usual way. His outfit was as spotless, top to bottom, as the Mercedes he drove. Each time he
showed up in the morning, I found myself admiring him-or, I might even say, moved by him.
What kind of being could possibly lie hidden beneath that perfect exterior? 
•
Cinnamon took two paper shopping bags full of food and other necessities out of the trunk
and held them in his arms as he entered the Residence. Embraced by him, even these ordinary
paper bags from the supermarket looked elegant and artistic. Maybe he had some special way
of holding them. Or possibly it was something more basic than that. His whole face lit up
when he saw me. It was a marvelous smile, as if he had just come out into a bright opening
after a long walk in a deep woods. Good morning, I said to him. Good morning, he did
not say to me, though his lips moved. He proceeded to take the groceries out of the bags and
arrange them in the refrigerator like a bright child committing newly acquired knowledge to
memory. The other supplies he arranged in the cupboards. Then he had a cup of coffee with
me. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, just as Kumiko and I had done every
morning long before.
•
 Cinnamon never spent a day in school, finally, said Nutmeg. Ordinary schools
wouldnt accept a child who didnt speak, and I felt it would be wrong to send him to a school
with nothing but handicapped children. The reason for his being unable to speak-whatever it
was- I knew was different from other childrens reasons. And besides, he never showed any
sign of wanting to go to school. He seemed to like it best to stay home alone, reading or
listening to classical music or playing in the yard with the dog we had then. He would go out
for walks too, sometimes, but not with much enthusiasm, because he didnt like to see
children his own age. 
Nutmeg studied sign language and used that to talk with Cinnamon. When sign language
was not enough, they would converse in writing. One day, though, she realized that she and
her son were able to convey their feelings to each other perfectly well without resorting to
such indirect methods. She knew exactly what he was thinking or requesting with only the
slightest gesture or change of expression. From that point on, she ceased to be overly
concerned about Cinnamons inability to speak. It certainly wasnt obstructing any mental
exchange between mother and son. The absence of spoken language did, of course, give her
an occasional sense of physical inconvenience, but it never went beyond the level of
 inconvenience, and in a sense it was this very inconvenience that purified the quality of the
communication between the two.
During lulls between jobs, Nutmeg would teach Cinnamon how to read and write and do
arithmetic. But in fact, there was not that much that she had to teach him. He liked books, and
he would use them to teach himself what he needed to know. She was less a teacher for him
than the one who chose the books he needed. He liked music and wanted to play the piano,
but after learning the basic finger movements in a few months with a professional piano
teacher, he used only manuals and recorded tapes to bring himself to a high level of technical
accomplishment for one so young. He loved to play Bach and Mozart, and aside from Poulenc
and Bartok, he showed little inclination to play anything beyond the Romantics. During his
first six years of study, his interests were concentrated on music and reading, but from the
time he reached middle school age, he turned to the acquisition of languages, beginning with
English and then French. In both cases, he taught himself enough to read simple books after
six months of study. He had no intention of learning to converse in either language, of course;
he wanted only to be able to read books. Another activity he loved was tinkering with
complicated machinery. He bought a complete collection of professional tools, with which he
was able to build radios and tube amplifiers, and he enjoyed taking clocks apart and fixing
them. 
Everyone around him-which is to say, his mother, his father, and his grandmother
(Nutmegs mother)-became accustomed to the fact that he never spoke, and ceased to think of
it as unnatural or abnormal. After a few years, Nutmeg stopped taking her son to the
psychiatrist. The weekly consultations were doing nothing for his symptoms, and as the
doctors had noted in the beginning, aside from his not speaking, there was nothing wrong
with him. Indeed, he was a virtually perfect child. Nutmeg could not recall ever having had to
force him to do anything or to scold him for doing anything he shouldnt have done. He
would decide for himself what he had to do and then he would do it, flawlessly, in his own
way. He was so different from other children- ordinary children- that even comparing him
with them was all but meaningless. He was twelve when his grandmother died (an event that
caused him to go on crying, soundlessly, for several days), after which he took it upon himself
to do the cooking, laundry, and cleaning while his mother was at work. Nutmeg wanted to
hire a housekeeper when her mother died, but Cinnamon would not hear of it. He refused to
have a stranger come in and disrupt the order of the household. It was Cinnamon, then, who
ran the house, and he did so with a high degree of precision and discipline.
•
Cinnamon spoke to me with his hands. He had inherited his mothers slender, well-shaped
fingers. They were long, but not too long. He held them up near his face and moved them
without hesitation, and like some kind of sensible, living creatures they communicated his
messages to me.
<One client will be coming at two oclock this afternoon. That is all for today. There is
nothing you have to do until she gets here. I will take the next hour to finish my work, and
then I will pick her up and bring her back. The weather report calls for overcast skies all day.
You can spend time in the well while it is still light out without hurting your eyes.>
As Nutmeg had said, I had no trouble understanding the words that his fingers conveyed. I
was unacquainted with sign language, but it was easy for me to follow his complex, fluid
movements. It may have been Cinnamons skill that brought his meaning out so naturally, just
as a play performed in a foreign language can be moving. Or then again, perhaps it only
seemed to me that I was watching his fingers move but was not actually doing so. The moving
fingers were perhaps no more than a decorative facade, and I was half-consciously watching
some other aspect of the building behind it. I would try to catch sight of the boundary between
the facade and the background whenever we chatted across the breakfast table, but I could
never quite manage to see it, as if any line that might have marked the border between the two
kept moving and changing its shape.
After our short conversations-or communications-Cinnamon would take his suit jacket
off, put it on a hanger, tuck his necktie inside the front of his shirt, and then do the cleaning or
cooking. As he worked, he would listen to music on a compact stereo. One week he would
listen to nothing but Rossinis sacred music, and another week Vivaldis concertos for wind
instruments, repeating them so often that I ended up memorizing the melodies.
Cinnamon worked with marvelous dexterity and no wasted motion. I used to offer to lend
him a hand at first, but he would only smile and shake his head. Watching how he went about
his chores, I became convinced that things would progress far more smoothly if I left
everything to him. It became my habit after that to avoid getting in his way. I would read a
book on the fitting room sofa while he was doing his morning chores.
The Residence was not a big house, and it was minimally furnished. No one actually lived
there, so it never got particularly dirty or untidy. Still, every day Cinnamon would vacuum
every inch of the place, dust the furniture and shelves, clean the windowpanes, wax the table,
wipe the light fixtures, and put everything in the house back where it belonged. He would
arrange the dishes in the china cabinet and line up the pots according to size, align the edges 
of the linens and towels, point all coffee cup handles in the same direction, reposition the bar
of soap on the bathroom sink, and change the towels even if they showed no sign of having
been used. Then he would gather the trash into a single bag, cinch it closed, and take it out.
He would adjust the time on the clocks according to his watch (which, I would have been
willing to bet, was no more than three seconds off). If, in the course of his cleaning, he found
anything the slightest bit out of place, he would put it back where it belonged with precise and
elegant movements. I might test him by shifting a clock a half inch to the left on its shelf, and
the next morning he would be sure to move it a half inch back to the right.
In none of this behavior did Cinnamon give the impression of obsessiveness. He seemed
to be doing only what was natural and right. Perhaps in Cinnamons mind there was a vivid
imprint of the way this world-or at least this one little world here- was supposed to be, and for
him to keep it that way was as natural as breathing. Perhaps he saw himself as lending just the
slightest hand when things were driven by an intense inner desire to return to their original
forms.
Cinnamon prepared food, stored it in the refrigerator, and indicated to me what I ought to
have for lunch. I thanked him. He then stood before the mirror, straightened his tie, inspected
his shirt, and slipped into his suit coat. Finally, with a smile, he moved his lips to say
goodbye, took one last look around, and went out through the front door. Sitting behind the
wheel of the Mercedes-Benz, he slipped a classical tape into the deck, pressed the remotecontrol
button to open the front gate, and drove out, tracing back over the same arc he had
made when he arrived. Once the car had passed through, the gate closed. I watched through a
crack in the blind, holding a cup of coffee, as before. The birds were no longer as noisy as
they had been when Cinnamon arrived. I could see where the low clouds had been torn in
spots and carried off by the wind, but above them was yet another, thicker layer of cloud.
•
I sat at the kitchen table, setting my cup down and surveying the room upon which
Cinnamons hands had imposed such a beautiful sense of order. It looked like a large, threedimensional
still life, disturbed only by the quiet ticking of the clock. The clocks hands
showed ten-twenty. Looking at the chair that Cinnamon had occupied earlier, I asked myself
once again whether I had done the right thing by not telling them about Ushikawas visit the
night before. Might it not impair whatever sense of trust there might be between Cinnamon
and me or Nutmeg and me?
I preferred, though, to watch for a while to see how things would develop. What was it
about my activities here that disturbed Noboru Wataya so? Which of his tails was I stepping
on? And what kind of countermeasures would he adopt? If I could find the answers to these
questions, I might be able to draw a little closer to his secret. And as a result, I might be able
to draw closer to where Kumiko was.
As the hands of the clock were verging on eleven (the clock that Cinnamon had slid a half
inch to the right, back to its proper place), I went out to the yard to climb down into the well.
•
 I told Cinnamon the story of the submarine and the zoo when he was little-about what I
had seen from the deck of the transport ship in August of and how the Japanese soldiers
shot the animals in my fathers zoo all the while an American submarine was training its
cannon on us and preparing to sink our ship. I had kept that story to myself for a very long
time and never told it to anyone. I had wandered in silence through the gloomy labyrinth that
spread out between illusion and truth. When Cinnamon was born, though, it occurred to me
that he was the only one I could tell my story to. And so, even before he could understand 
words, I began telling it to him over and over again, in a near whisper, telling him everything
I could remember, and as I spoke, the scenes would come alive to me, in vivid colors, as if I
had pried off a lid and let them out.
 As he began to understand language, Cinnamon asked me to tell him the story again and
again. I must have told it to him a hundred, two hundred, five hundred times, but not just
repeating the same thing every time. Whenever I told it to him, Cinnamon would ask me to
tell him some other little story contained in the main story. He wanted to know about a
different branch of the same tree. I would follow the branch he asked for and tell him that part
of the story. And so the story grew and grew.
 In this way, the two of us went on to create our own interlocking system of myths. Do
you see what I mean? We would get carried away telling each other the story every day. We
would talk for hours about the names of the animals in the zoo, about the sheen of their fur or
the color of their eyes, about the different smells that hung in the air, about the names and
faces of the individual soldiers, about their birth and childhood, about their rifles and the
weight of their ammunition, about the fears they felt and their thirst, about the shapes of the
clouds floating in the sky....
 I could see all the colors and shapes with perfect clarity as I told the story to Cinnamon,
and I was able to put what I saw into words-the exact words I needed-and convey them all to
him. There was no end to any of this. There were always more details that could be filled in,
and the story kept growing deeper and deeper and bigger and bigger. 
Nutmeg smiled as she spoke of those days long ago. I had never seen such a natural smile
on her face before.
 But then one day it ended, she said. Cinnamon stopped sharing stories with me that
February morning when he stopped talking. 
Nutmeg paused to light a cigarette.
 I know now what happened. His words were lost in the labyrinth, swallowed up by the
world of the stories. Something that came out of those stones snatched his tongue away. And a
few years later, the same thing
killed my husband. 
•
The wind grew stronger than it had been in the morning, sending one heavy gray cloud
after another on a straight line east. The clouds looked like silent travelers headed for the edge
of the earth. In the bare branches of the trees in the yard, the wind would give a short,
wordless moan now and then. I stood by the well, looking up at the sky. Kumiko was probably
somewhere looking at them too. The thought crossed my mind for no reason. It was just a
feeling I had.
I climbed down the ladder to the bottom of the well and pulled the rope to close the lid.
After taking two or three deep breaths, I gripped the bat and gently lowered myself to a sitting
position in the darkness. The total darkness. Yes, that was the most important thing. This
unsullied darkness held the key. It was kind of like a TV cooking program. Everybody got
that now? The secret to this recipe is total darkness. Make sure you use the thickest kind you
can buy. And the strongest bat you can put your hands on, I added, smiling for a moment in
the darkness.
I could feel a certain warmth in the mark on my cheek. It told me that I was drawing a
little closer to the core of things. I closed my eyes. Still echoing in my ears were the strains of
the music that Cinnamon had been listening to repeatedly as he worked that morning. It was
Bachs Musical Offering, still there in my head like the lingering murmur of a crowd in a
high-ceilinged auditorium. Eventually, though, silence descended and began to burrow its
way into the folds of my brain, one after another, like an insect laying eggs. I opened my eyes, 
then closed them again. The darknesses inside and out began to blend, and I began to move
outside of my self, the container that held me.
As always.
 
This Could Be the End of the Line
(May Kasaharas Point of View: )
 
Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Last time, I got as far as telling you about how Im working in this wig factory in the
mountains far away with a lot of local girls. This is the continuation of that letter.
Lately, its really been bothering me that, I dont know, the way people work like this
every day from morning to night is kind of weird. Hasnt it ever struck you as strange? I
mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I
dont have to think at all. Its like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it
up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases,
then I eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course I have to sleep, like everybody
else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time I have is like nothing. And because
Im so tired from work, the free time I have I mostly spend lying around in a fog. I
dont have any time to sit and think about anything. Of course, I dont have to work on
weekends, but then I have to do the laundry and cleaning Ive let go, and sometimes I go into
town, and before I know it the weekend is over. I once made up my mind to keep a diary, but I
had nothing to write, so I quit after a week. I mean, I just do the same thing over and over
again, day in, day out.
But still- but still- it absolutely does not bother me that Im now just a part of the work I
do. I dont feel the least bit alienated from my life. If anything, I sometimes feel that by
concentrating on my work like this, with all the mindless determination of an ant, Im getting
closer to the real me. I dont know how to put it, but its kind of like by not thinking about
myself I can get closer to the core of my self. Thats what I mean by kind of weird. 
Im giving this job everything Ive got. Not to boast, but Ive even been named worker of
the month. I told you, I may not look it, but Im really good at handiwork. We divide up into
teams when we work, and any team I join improves its figures. I do things like helping the
slower girls when Im finished with my part of a job. So now Im popular with the other girls.
Can you believe it? Me, popular! Anyway, what I wanted to tell you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, is
that all Ive been doing since I came to this factory is work, work, work. Like an ant. Like the
village blacksmith. Have I made myself clear so far?
Anyway, the place where I do my actual work is really weird. Its huge, like a hangar,
with a great, high roof, and wide open. A hundred and fifty girls sit lined up working there.
Its quite a sight. Of course, they didnt have to put up such a monster factory. Its not as if
were building submarines or anything. They could have divided us up into separate rooms.
But maybe they figured it would increase our sense of communal solidarity to have that many
people working together in one place. Or maybe its just easier for the bosses to oversee the
whole bunch of us at once. Ill bet theyre using whatchamacallit psychology on us. Were 
divided up into teams, surrounding workbenches just like the ones in science class where you
dissect frogs, and one of the older girls sits at the end as team leader. Its OK to talk as long
as you keep your hands moving (I mean, you cant just shut up and do this stuff all day long),
but if you talk or laugh too loud or get too engrossed in your conversation, the team leader
will come over to you with a frown and say, All right, Yumiko, lets keep the hands moving,
not the mouth. Looks like youre falling behind, So we all whisper to each other like
burglars in the night.
They pipe music into the factory. The style changes, depending on the time of day. If
youre a big fan of Barry Manilow or Air Supply, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you might like this
place.
It takes me a few days to make one of my wigs. The time differs according to the grade
of the product, of course, but you have to measure the time it takes to make a wig in days.
First you divide the base into checkerboard squares, and then you plant hair into one square
after another in order. Its not assembly line work, though, like the factory in Chaplins
movie, where you tighten one bolt and then the next one comes; each wig is mine. I almost
feel like signing and dating each one when Im through with it- But I dont, of course: theyd
just get mad at me. Its a really nice feeling to know, though, that someone out there in the
world is wearing the wig I made on his head. It sort of gives me a sense of, I dont know,
connectedness.
Life is so strange, though. If somebody had said to me three years ago, Three years from
now, youre going to be in a factory in the mountains making wigs with a lot of country
girls, I would have laughed in their face. I could never have imagined this. And as for what
Ill be doing three years from now: nobody knows the answer to that one, either. Do you
know what youre going to be doing three years from now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? Im sure you
dont. Forget about three years: Id be willing to bet all the money Ive got here that you
dont know what youll be doing a month from now!
The girls around me, though, know pretty much where theyll be in three years. Or at least
they think they do. They think theyre going to save the money they make here, find the right
guy after a few years, and be happily married.
The guys these girls are going to marry are mostly farmers sons or guys who will inherit
the store from their fathers or guys working in small local companies. Like I said before,
theres a chronic shortage of young women here, so they get bought up pretty quickly. It
would take some really bad luck for anybody to be left over, so they all find somebody or
other to marry. Its really something. And as I said in my last letter, most people quit work
when they get married. Their job in the wig factory is just a stage that fills the few years gap
between graduating from high school and getting married- kind of like a room they come into,
stay in a little while, then leave.
Not only does the wig company not mind this; they seem to prefer to have the girls work
just a few years and quit when they get married. Its a lot better for them to have a constant
turnover in workers rather than to have to worry about salaries and benefits and unions and
stuff like that. The company takes somewhat better care of the girls with ability who become
team leaders, but the other, ordinary girls are just consumer goods to them. Theres a tacit
understanding, then, between the girls and the company that they will get married and quit.
So for the girls, imagining what is going to happen three years from now involves only one of
two possibilities: theyll either be looking for a mate while they go on working here, or they
will have quit work to get married. Talk about simplicity!
There just isnt anybody around here like me, who is thinking to herself, I dont know
whats going to happen to me three years from now. They are all good workers. Nobody does
a half-baked job or complains about the work. Now and then, Ill hear somebody griping
about the cafeteria food, thats all. Of course, this is work were talking about, so it cant be
fun all the time; you might have somebody putting in her hours from nine to five because she 
has to, even though she really wants to run off for the day, but for the most part, I think
theyre enjoying the work. It must be because they know this is a finite period suspended
between one world and another. Thats why they want to have as much fun as possible while
theyre here. Finally, this is just a transition point for them.
Not for me, though. This is no time of suspension or transition for me. I have absolutely no
idea where Im going from here. For me, this could be the end of the line. Do you see what I
mean? So strictly speaking, I am not enjoying the work here. All Im doing is trying to accept
the work in every possible way. When Im making a wig, I dont think about anything but
making that wig. Im deadly serious- enough so that I break out in a sweat all over.
I dont quite know how to put this, but lately Ive been sort of thinking about the boy who
got killed in the motorcycle accident. To tell you the truth, I havent thought too much about
him before. Maybe the shock of the accident twisted my memory or something in a weird way,
because all I remembered about him were these weird kinds of things, like his smelly armpits
or what a totally dumb guy he was or his fingers trying to get into strange places of mine.
Every once in a while, though, something not so bad about him comes back to me. Especially
when my mind is empty and Im just planting hairs in a wig base, these things come back to
me out of nowhere. Oh, yeah, Ill think, he was like that. I guess time doesnt flow in order,
does it- A, B, C, D? It just sort of goes where it feels like going.
Can I be honest with you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I mean, really, really, really honest?
Sometimes I get sooo scared! Ill wake up in the middle of the night all alone, hundreds of
miles away from anybody, and its pitch dark, and I have absolutely no idea whats going to
happen to me in the future, and I get so scared I want to scream. Does that happen to you,
Mr. Wind-Up Bird? When it happens, I try to remind myself that I am connected to othersother
things and other people. I work as hard as I can to list their names in my head. On the
list, of course, is you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. And the alley, and the well, and the persimmon tree,
and that kind of thing. And the wigs that Ive made here with my own hands. And the little bits
and pieces I remember about the boy. All these little things (though youre not just another
one of those little things, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but anyhow... ) help me to come back here 
little by little. Then I start to feel sorry I never really let my boyfriend see me naked or touch
me. Back then, I was absolutely determined not to let him put his hands on me. Sometimes,
Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I think Id like to stay a virgin the rest of my life. Seriously. What do you
think about that?
Bye-bye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I hope Kumiko comes back soon.
 
The Worlds Exhaustion and Burdens
 
The Magic Lamp
The phone rang at nine-thirty at night. It rang once, then stopped, and started ringing
again. This was to be Ushikawas signal.
 Hello, Mr. Okada, said Ushikawas voice. Ushikawa here. Im in your neighborhood 
and thought I might drop by, if it would be all right with you. I know its late, but theres
something I wanted to talk to you about in person. What do you say? It has to do with Ms.
Kumiko, so I thought you might be interested. 
I pictured Ushikawas expression at the other end of the line as I listened to him speaking.
He had a self-satisfied smile on his face, lips curled and filthy teeth exposed, as if to say, I
know this is an offer you cant refuse; and unfortunately, he was right.
•
It took him exactly ten minutes to reach my house. He wore the same clothes hed had on
three days earlier. I could have been mistaken about that, but he wore the same kind of suit
and shirt and necktie, all grimy and wrinkled and baggy. These disgraceful articles of clothing
looked as if they had been forced to accept an unfair portion of the worlds exhaustion and
burdens. If, through some kind of reincarnation, it were possible to be reborn as Ushikawas
clothing, with a guarantee of rare glory in the next rebirth, I would still not want to do it.
After asking my permission, Ushikawa helped himself to a beer in the refrigerator,
checking first to see that the bottle felt properly chilled before he poured the contents into a
glass he found nearby. We sat at the kitchen table.
 All right, then, said Ushikawa. In the interest of saving time, I will dispense with the
small talk and plunge directly into the business at hand. You would like to talk with Ms.
Kumiko, wouldnt you, Mr. Okada? Directly. Just the two of you. I believe that is what you
have been wanting for some time now. Your first priority. Am I right? 
I gave this some thought. Or I paused for a few moments, as if giving it some thought.
 Of course I want to talk with her if that is possible. 
 It is not impossible, said Ushikawa softly, with a nod.
 But there are conditions attached... ? 
 There are no conditions attached. Ushikawa took a sip of his beer. I do have a new
proposition for you this evening, however. Please listen to what I have to say, and give it
careful consideration. It is something quite separate from the question of whether or not you
talk to Ms. Kumiko. 
I looked at him without speaking.
 To begin with, then, Mr. Okada, you are renting that land, and the house on it, from a
certain company, are you not? The ‘hanging house, I mean. You are paying a rather large
sum for it each month. You have not an ordinary lease, however, but one with an option to
buy some years hence. Correct? Your contract is not a matter of public record, of course, and
so your name does not appear anywhere-which is the point of all the machinations. You are,
however, the de facto owner of the property, and the rent you pay accomplishes the same
thing as mortgage payments. The total sum you are to pay- lets see- including the house,
comes to something in the neighborhood of eighty million yen, does it not? At this rate, you
should be able to take title to the land and the building in something less than two years. That
is very impressive! Very fast work! I have to congratulate you. 
Ushikawa looked at me for confirmation of everything he had been saying, but I remained
silent.
 Please dont ask me how I know all these details. You dig hard enough, you find what
you want to know-if you know how to dig. And I have a pretty good idea who is behind the
dummy company. Now, that was a tough one! I had to crawl through a labyrinth for it. It was
like looking for a stolen car thats been repainted and had new tires put on and the seats
recovered and the serial number filed off the engine. They covered all the bases. Theyre real
pros. But now I have a pretty good idea of whats going on- probably better than you do, Mr.
Okada. Ill bet you dont even know who it is youre paying the money back to, right? 
 Thats all right. Money doesnt come with names attached. 
Ushikawa laughed. Youre absolutely right, Mr. Okada. Money does not come with
names attached. Very well said! Ill have to write that down. But finally, Mr. Okada, things
dont always go the way you want them to. Take the boys at the tax office, for example.
Theyre not very bright. They only know how to squeeze taxes out of places that have names
attached. So they go out of their way to stick names on where there arent any. And not just
names, but numbers too. They might as well be robots, for all the emotion thats involved in
the process. But that is exactly what this capitalist society of ours is built on.... Which leads us
to the conclusion that the money that you and I are now talking about does indeed have a
name attached, and a very excellent name it is. 
I looked at Ushikawas head as he spoke. Depending on the angle, the light produced
some strange dents in his scalp.
 Dont worry, he said, with a laugh. The tax man wont be coming here. And even if he
did come, with this much of a labyrinth to crawl through, hed be bound to smash into
something. Wham! Hed raise a huge bump on his head. And finally, its just a job for him: he
doesnt want to hurt himself doing it. If he can get his money, hed rather do it the easy way
than the hard way: the easier the better. As long as he gets what hes looking for, the brownie
points are the same. Especially if his boss tells him to take the easy way, any ordinary person
is going to choose that. I managed to find what I did because it was me doing the searching.
Not to boast or anything, but Im good. I may not look it, but Im really good. I know how to
avoid injury. I know how to slip down the road at night when its pitch black out.
 But to tell you the truth, Mr. Okada (and I know youre one person I can really open up
to), not even I know what youre doing in that place. I do know the people who visit you there
are paying an arm and a leg. So you must be doing something special for them thats worth all
that money. That much is as clear as counting crows on snow. But exactly what it is you do,
and why youre so stuck on that particular piece of land, I have no idea. Those are the two
most important points in all this, but they are the very things most hidden, like the center of a
palmists signboard. That worries me. 
 Which is to say, thats what worries Noboru Wataya, I said.
Instead of answering, Ushikawa started pulling on the matted fuzz above his ears.
 This is just between you and me, Mr. Okada, but I have to confess I really admire you.
No flattery intended. This may sound odd, but youre basically a really ordinary guy. Or to
put it even more bluntly, theres absolutely nothing special about you. Sorry about that, but
dont take it the wrong way. Its true, though, in terms of how you fit in society. Meeting you
face-to-face and talking with you like this, though, Im very, very impressed with you-with
how you handle yourself. I mean, look at the way youve managed to shake up a man like Dr.
Wataya! Thats why Im just the carrier pigeon. A completely ordinary person couldnt pull
this off.
 Thats what I like about you. Im not making this up. I may be worthless scum, but I
dont lie about things like that. And I dont think of you in completely objective terms, either.
If theres nothing special about you in terms of how you fit in society, Im a hundred times
worse. Im just an uneducated twerp from an awful background. My father was a tatami
maker in Funabashi, an alcoholic, a real bastard. I used to wish hed die and leave me alone, I
was such a miserable kid, and I ended up getting my wish, for better or worse. Then I went
through storybook poverty. I dont have a single pleasant memory from childhood, never had
a kind word from either parent. No wonder I went bad! I managed to squeak through high
school, but after that it was the school of hard knocks for me. Lived on my wits, what little I
had. Thats why I dont like members of the elite or official government types. All right: I
hate ‘em. Walk right into society through the front door, get a pretty wife, self-satisfied bastards.
I like guys like you, Mr. Okada, whove done it all on their own. 
Ushikawa struck a match and lit a fresh cigarette.
 You cant keep it up forever, though. Youre going to burn out sooner or later. 
Everybody does. Its the way people are made. In terms of evolutionary history, it was only
yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking
complicated thoughts. So dont worry, youll burn out. Especially in the world that youre
trying to deal with: everybody burns out. There are too many tricky things going on in it, too
many ways of getting into trouble. Its a world made of tricky things. Ive been working in
that world since the time of Dr. Watayas uncle, and now the Doctor has inherited it, lock,
stock, and barrel. I used to do risky stuff for a living. If I had kept it up, Id be in jail now- or
dead. No kidding. The Doctors uncle picked me up in the nick of time. So these little eyes of
mine have seen a hell of a lot. Everybody burns out in this world: amateur, pro, it doesnt
matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the OK guys and the not-OK guys both. Thats why
everybody takes out a little insurance. Ive got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That
way, you can manage to survive if you burn out. If youre all by yourself and dont belong
anywhere, you go down once and youre out. Finished.
 Maybe I shouldnt say this to you, Mr. Okada, but youre ready to go down. Its a sure
thing. It says so in my book, in big, black letters about two or three pages ahead: ‘TORU
OKADA READY TO FALL. Its true. Im not trying to scare you. Im a whole lot more accurate
in this world than weather forecasts on TV. So all I want to tell you is this: Theres a time
when things are right for pulling out. 
Ushikawa closed his mouth at that point and looked at me. Then he went on:
 So lets stop all this feeling each other out, Mr. Okada, and get down to business....
Which brings us to the end of a very long introduction, so now I can make you the offer I
came here to make. 
Ushikawa put both hands on the table. Then he flicked his tongue over his lips.
 So lets say Ive just told you that you ought to cut your ties with that land and pull out of
the deal. But maybe you cant pull out, even if you want to. Maybe youre stuck until you pay
off your loan. Ushikawa cut himself short and gave me a searching look. If moneys a
problem, weve got it to give you. If you need eighty million yen, I can bring you eighty
million yen in a nice, neat bundle. Thats eight thousand ten-thousand-yen bills. You can pay
off whatever you owe and pocket the rest, free and clear. Then its party time! Hey, what do
you say? 
 So then the land and building belong to Noboru Wataya? Is that the idea? 
 Yes, I guess it is, the way things work. I suppose there are a lot of annoying details that
will have to be taken care of, though.... 
I gave his proposal some thought. You know, Ushikawa, I really dont get it. I dont see
why Noboru Wataya is so eager to get me away from that property. What does he plan to do
with it once he owns it? 
Ushikawa slowly rubbed one cheek with the palm of his hand. Sorry, Mr. Okada, I dont
know about things like that. As I mentioned to you at first, Im just a stupid carrier pigeon.
My master tells me what to do, and I do it. And most of the jobs he gives me are unpleasant.
When I used to read the story of Aladdin, Id always sympathize with the genie, the way they
worked him so hard, but I never dreamed Id grow up to be like him. Its a sad story, let me
tell you. But finally, everything I have said to you is a message I was sent to deliver. It comes
from Dr. Wataya. The choice is up to you. So what do you say? What kind of answer should I
carry back? 
I said nothing.
 Of course, you will need time to think. That is fine. We can give you time. I dont mean
for you to decide right now, on the spot. I would like to say take all the time you want, but Im
afraid we cant be that flexible. Now, let me just say this, Mr. Okada. Let me give you my
own personal opinion. A nice, fat offer like this is not going to sit on the table forever. You
could look away for a second, and it might be gone when you looked back. It could evaporate,
like mist on a windowpane. So please give it some serious thought- in a hurry. I mean, its not 
a bad offer. Do you see what I mean? 
Ushikawa sighed and looked at his watch. Oh, my, my, my- Ive got to be going.
Overstayed my welcome again, Im afraid. Enjoyed another beer. And as usual, I did all the
talking. Sorry about that. Im not trying to make excuses, but, I dont know, when I come here
I just seem to settle in. You have a comfortable house here, Mr. Okada. That must be it. 
Ushikawa stood up and carried his glass and beer bottle and ashtray to the kitchen sink.
 Ill be in touch with you soon, Mr. Okada. And Ill make arrangements for you to talk
with Ms. Kumiko, that I promise. You can look forward to it soon. 
•
After Ushikawa left, I opened the windows and let the accumulated cigarette smoke out.
Then I drank a glass of water. Sitting on the sofa, I cuddled the cat, Mackerel, on my lap. I
imagined Ushikawa removing his disguise when he was one step beyond my door, and flying
back to Noboru Wataya. It was a stupid thing to imagine.
 
The Fitting Room
 
A Successor
Nutmeg knew nothing about the women who came to her. None of them offered
information about herself, and Nutmeg never asked. The names with which they made their
appointments were obviously made up. But around them lingered that special smell produced
by the combination of power and money. The women themselves never made a show of it, but
Nutmeg could tell from the style and fit of their clothes that they came from backgrounds of
privilege.
She rented space in an office building in Akasaka-an inconspicuous building in an
inconspicuous place, out of respect for her clients hyperactive concern for their privacy.
After careful consideration, she decided to make it a fashion design studio. She had, in fact,
been a fashion designer, and no one would have found it suspicious for a variety of women to
be coming to see her in substantial numbers. Her clients were all women in their thirties to
fifties of a sort that could be expected to wear expensive, tailor-made clothes. She stocked the
room with clothing and design sketches and fashion magazines, brought in the tools and
workbenches and mannequins needed for fashion design, and even went so far as to design a
few outfits to give the place an air of authenticity. The smaller of the two rooms she
designated as the fitting room. Her clients would be shown to this fitting room, and on the
sofa they would be fitted by Nutmeg.
Her client list was compiled by the wife of the owner of a major department store. The
woman had chosen a very carefully limited number of trustworthy candidates from among her
wide circle of friends, convinced that in order to avoid any possibility of scandal, she would
have to make this a club with an exclusive membership. Otherwise, news of the arrangement 
would be sure to spread quickly. The women chosen to become members were warned never
to reveal anything about their fitting to outsiders. Not only were they women of great
discretion, but they knew that if they broke their promise they would be permanently expelled
from the club.
Each client would telephone to make an appointment for a fitting and show up at the
designated time, knowing that she need not fear encountering any other client, that her
privacy would be protected absolutely. Honoraria were paid on the spot, in cash, their size
having been determined by the department store owners wife-at a level much higher than
Nutmeg would have imagined, though this never became an obstacle. Any woman who had
been fitted by Nutmeg always called for another appointment, without exception. You
dont have to let the money be a burden to you, the department store owners wife explained
to Nutmeg. The more they pay, the more assured these women feel. Nutmeg would go to
her office three days a week and do one fitting a day. That was her limit.
Cinnamon became his mothers assistant when he turned sixteen. By then, it had become
difficult for Nutmeg to handle all the clerical tasks herself, but she had been reluctant to hire a
complete stranger. When, after much deliberation, she asked him to help her with her work,
he agreed immediately without even asking what kind of work it was she did. He would go to
the office each morning at ten oclock by cab (unable to bear being with others on buses or
subway trains), clean and dust, put everything where it belonged, fill the vases with fresh
flowers, make coffee, do whatever shopping was needed, put classical music on the cassette
player at low volume, and keep the books.
Before long, Cinnamon had made himself an indispensable presence at the office.
Whether clients were due that day or not, he would put on a suit and tie and take up his
position at the waiting room desk. None of the clients complained about his not speaking. It
never caused them any inconvenience, and if anything, they preferred it that way. He was the
one who took their calls when they made appointments. They would state their preferred time
and date, and he would knock on the desktop in response: once for no and twice for yes. 
The women liked this concision. He was a young man of such classic features that he could
have been turned into a sculpture and displayed in a museum, and unlike so many other
handsome young men, he never undercut his image when he opened his mouth. The women
would talk to him on their way in and out, and he would respond with a smile and a nod.
These conversations relaxed them, relieving the tensions they had brought with them from
the outer world and reducing the awkwardness they felt after their fittings. Nor did
Cinnamon himself, who ordinarily disliked contact with strangers, appear to find it painful to
interact with the women.
At eighteen, Cinnamon got his drivers license. Nutmeg found a kindly driving instructor
to give him private lessons, but Cinnamon himself had already been through every available
instruction book and absorbed the details. All he needed was the practical know-how that
couldnt be obtained from books, and this he mastered in a few days at the wheel. Once he
had his license, he pored over the used-car books and bought himself a Porsche Carrera, using
as a down payment all the money he had saved working for his mother (none of which he ever
had to use for living expenses). He made the engine shine, bought all new parts through mail
order, put new tires on, and generally brought the cars condition to racing level. All he ever
did with it, though, was drive it over the same short, jam-packed route every day from his
home in Hiroo to the office in Akasaka, rarely exceeding forty miles an hour. This made it
one of the rarer Porsche s in the world.
•
Nutmeg continued her work for more than seven years, during which time she lost three
clients: the first was killed in an automobile accident; the second suffered permanent 
expulsion for a minor infraction; and the third went far away in connection with her
husbands work. These were replaced by four new clients, all the same sort of fascinating
middle-aged women who wore expensive clothing and used aliases. The work itself did not
change during the seven years. She went on fitting her clients, and Cinnamon went on
cleaning the office, keeping the books, and driving the Porsche. There was no progress, no
retrogression, only the gradual aging of everyone involved. Nutmeg was nearing fifty, and
Cinnamon turned twenty. Cinnamon seemed to enjoy his work, but Nutmeg was gradually
overcome by a sense of powerlessness. Over the years, she went on fitting the something 
that each of her clients carried within. She never fully understood what it was that she did for
them, but she continued to do her best. The somethings, meanwhile, were never cured. She
could never make them go away; all that her curative powers could do was reduce their
activity somewhat for a time. Within a few days (usually, from three to ten days), each
 something would start up again, advancing and retreating over the short span but growing
unmistakably larger over time-like cancer cells. Nutmeg could feel them growing in her
hands. They would tell her: Youre wasting your time; no matter what you do, we are going to
win in the end. And they were right. She had no hope of victory. All she could do was slow
their progress somewhat, to give her clients a few days of peace.
Nutmeg would often ask herself, Is it not just these women? Do all the women of the
world carry this kind of ‘something inside them? And why are the ones who come here all
middle-aged women? Do I have a ‘something inside me as well? 
But Nutmeg did not really want to know the answers to her questions. All she could be
sure of was that circumstances had somehow conspired to confine her in her fitting room.
People needed her, and as long as they went on needing her, she could not get out. Sometimes
her sense of powerlessness would be deep and terrible, and she would feel like an empty shell.
She was being worn down, disappearing into a dark nothingness. At times like this, she would
open herself to her quiet son, and Cinnamon would nod as he listened intently to his mothers
words. He never said anything, but speaking to him like this enabled her to attain an odd kind
of peace. She was not entirely alone, she felt, and not entirely powerless. How strange, she
thought: I heal others, and Cinnamon heals me. But who heals Cinnamon? Is he like a black
hole, absorbing all pain and loneliness by himself? One time-and only that once-she tried to
search inside him by placing her hand on his forehead the way she did to her clients when she
was fitting them. But she could feel nothing.
Before long, Nutmeg felt that she wanted to leave her work. I dont have much strength
left. If I keep this up, I will burn out completely. Ill have nothing left at all. But people
continued to have an intense need for her fitting. She could not bring herself to abandon her
clients just to suit her own convenience.
Nutmeg found a successor during the summer of that year. The moment she saw the mark
on the cheek of the young man who was sitting in front of a building in Shinjuku, she knew.
 
A Stupid Tree Frog Daughter
(May Kasaharas Point of View: )
 
Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Its two-thirty in the morning. All my neighbors are sound asleep, but I cant sleep
tonight, so Im up, writing this letter to you. To tell you the truth, sleepless nights are as
unusual for me as sumo wrestlers who look good in berets. Usually, just slip right into sleep
when the time comes, and slip right out when its time to wake up. I do have an alarm clock,
but I almost never use it. Every rare once in a while, though, this happens: I wake up in the
middle of the night and cant get back to sleep.
Im planning to stay at my desk, writing this letter to you, until I get sleepy, so I dont
know if this is going to be a long letter or a short one. Of course, I never really know that
anytime I write to you until I get to the end.
Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few
exceptions), they think that the world or life (or whatever) is this place where everything is
(or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent. Talking with my neighbors here often
makes me think that. Like, when something happens, whether its a big event that affects the
whole society or something small and personal, people talk about it like, Oh, well, of course,
that happened because such and such, and most of the time people will agree and say, like,
 Oh, sure, I see, but I just dont get it. A is like this, so thats why B happened. I mean,
that doesnt explain anything. Its like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the
microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there youve got
rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when
the microwave rings? You cant tell whats going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice
pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobodys looking and only then
turns back into rice pudding. We think its only natural to get rice pudding after we put rice
pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me thats just a presumption. I would
be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave
and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin. I suppose Id be shocked, of
course, but I dont know, I think Id be kind of relieved too. Or at least I think I wouldnt be so
upset, because that would feel, in some ways, a whole lot more real.
Why more real ? Trying to explain that logically, in words, would be very, very, very
hard, but maybe if you take the path my life has followed as an example and really think
about it, you can see that it has had almost nothing about it that you could call consistency. 
First of all, its an absolute mystery how a daughter like me could have been born to two
parents as boring as tree frogs. I know its a little weird for me to be saying this, but Im a lot
more serious than the two of them combined. Im not boasting or anything; its just a fact. I
dont mean to say that Im any better than they are, but I am a more serious human being. If
you met them, youd know what I mean, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Those people believe that the
world is as consistent and explainable as the floor plan of a new house in a high-priced
development, so if you do everything in a logical, consistent way, everything will turn out
right in the end. Thats why they get upset and sad and angry when Im not like that.
Why was I born into this world as the child of such absolute dummies? And why didnt I
turn into the same kind of stupid tree frog daughter even though I was raised by those people?
Ive been wondering and wondering about that ever since I can remember. But I cant explain
it. It seems to me there ought to be a good reason, but its a reason that I cant find. And there
are tons of other things that dont have logical explanations. For example, Why does
everybody hate me? I didnt do anything wrong. I was just living my life in the usual way.
But then, all of a sudden, one day I noticed that nobody liked me. I dont understand it.
So then one disconnected thing led to another disconnected thing, and thats how all kinds
of stuff happened. Like, I met the boy with the motorcycle and we had that stupid accident.
The way I remember it-or the way those things are all lined up in my head- theres no This
happened this way, so naturally that happened that way. Every time the bell rings and I take
off the cover, I seem to find something Ive never seen before.
I dont have any idea whats happening to me, and before I know it Im not going to
school anymore and Im hanging around the house, and thats when I meet you, Mr. Wind-Up
Bird. No, before that Im doing surveys for a wig company. But why a wig company? Thats
another mystery. I cant remember. Maybe I hit my head in the accident, and the position of
my brain got messed up. Or maybe the psychological shock of it started me covering up all
kinds of memories, the way a squirrel hides a nut and forgets where hes buried it. (Have you
ever seen that happen, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? I have. When I was little. I thought the stupid
squirrel was sooo funny! It never occurred to me the same thing was going to happen to me.)
So anyhow, I started doing surveys for the wig company, and thats what gave me this
fondness for wigs like they were my destiny or something. Talk about no connection! Why
wigs and not stockings or rice scoops? If it had been stockings or rice scoops, I wouldnt be
working hard in a wig factory like this. Right? And if I hadnt caused that stupid bike
accident, I probably wouldnt have met you in the back alley that summer, and if you hadnt
met me, you probably would never have known about the Miyawakis well, so you wouldnt
have gotten that mark on your face, and you wouldnt have gotten mixed up in all those
strange things... probably. When I think about it like this, I cant help asking myself, Where
is there any logical consistency in the world? 
I dont know-maybe the world has two different kinds of people, and for one kind the
world is this completely logical, rice pudding place, and for the other its all hit-or-miss
macaroni gratin. I bet if those tree frog parents of mine put rice pudding mix in the
microwave and got macaroni gratin when the bell rang, theyd just tell themselves, Oh, we
must have put in macaroni gratin mix by mistake, or theyd take out the macaroni gratin and
try to convince themselves, This looks like macaroni gratin, but actually its rice pudding. 
And if I tried to be nice and explain to them that sometimes, when you put in rice pudding
mix, you get macaroni gratin, they would never believe me. Theyd probably just get mad. Do
you understand what Im trying to tell you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird?
Remember when I kissed your mark that time? Ive been thinking about that ever since I
said goodbye to you last summer, thinking about it over and over, like a cat watching the rain
fall, and wondering what was that all about? I dont think I can explain it myself, to tell you
the truth. Sometime way in the future, maybe ten years or twenty years from now, if we have a
chance to talk about it, and if Im more grown up and a lot smarter than I am now, I might be
able to tell you what it meant. Right now, though, Im sorry to say, I think I just dont have the
ability, or the brains, to put it into the right words.
One thing I can tell you honestly, though, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, is that I like you better
without the mark on your face. No; wait a minute; thats not fair. You didnt put the mark
there on purpose. Maybe I should say that even without your mark, youre good enough for
me. Is that it? No, that doesnt explain anything.
Heres what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. That mark is maybe going to give you something
important. But it also must be robbing you of something. Kind of like a trade-off. And if
everybody keeps taking stuff from you like that, youre going to be worn away until theres
nothing left of you. So, I dont know, I guess what I really want to say is that it wouldnt make
any difference to me if you didnt have that thing.
Sometimes I think that the reason Im sitting here making wigs like this every day is
because I kissed your mark that time. Its because I did that that I made up my mind to leave
that place, to get as far away as I could from you. I know I might be hurting you by saying
this, but I think its true. Still, though, its because of that that I was finally able to find the
place where I belong. So, in a sense, I am grateful to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I dont suppose
its much fun to have somebody be in a sense grateful to you, though, is it?
So now I feel like Ive said just about everything I have to say to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Its almost four oclock in the morning. I have to get up at seven-thirty, so maybe Ill be able
to sleep three hours and a little bit. I hope I can get to sleep right away. Anyhow, Im going to 
end this letter here. Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Please say a little prayer so I can get to
sleep.
 
The Subterranean Labyrinth
 
Cinnamons Two Doors
 Theres a computer in that house, isnt there, Mr. Okada? I dont know whos using it,
though, said Ushikawa.
It was nine oclock at night, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, with the phone to my
ear.
 There is, I said, and left it at that.
Ushikawa made a sniffling sound. I know that much from my usual snooping, he said.
 Of course, Im not saying anything one way or another about the fact that youve got a
computer there. Nowadays, anybody doing any kind of brainwork has to have a computer.
Theres nothing weird about it.
 To make a long story short, though, the idea kind of hit me that it might be good if I
could contact you through the computer. So I looked into it, but damn, its a hell of a lot more
complicated than I imagined. Just calling up on an ordinary phone line wouldnt make the
connection. Plus, you need a special password for access. No password, and the door doesnt
budge. That did it for me. 
I kept silent.
 Now, dont get me wrong, Mr. Okada. Im not trying to crawl inside your computer and
fool around in there. I dont have anything like that in mind. With all the security youve got
in place, I couldnt pull data out even if I wanted to. No, that was never an issue. All I have in
mind is trying to set up a conversation between you and Ms. Kumiko. I promised you Id do
that, remember, that Id do what I could to help you and her talk to each other directly. Its
been a long time since she left your house, and its a bad idea to leave things hanging like
this. The way it stands now, your life is probably just going to get weirder and weirder. Its always
best for people to talk to each other face-to-face, to open themselves up. Otherwise,
misunderstandings are bound to arise, and misunderstandings make people unhappy....
Anyhow, thats how I tried to appeal to Ms. Kumiko. I did everything I could.
 But I just couldnt get her to agree. She insisted she wouldnt talk to you directly- not
even on the phone (since a face-to-face meeting was out of the question). Not even on the
phone! I was ready to give up. I tried every trick in the book, but her mind was made up. Like
a rock. 
Ushikawa paused for me to react, but I said nothing.
 Still, I couldnt just take her at her word and back off. Dr. Wataya would really give it to
me if I started acting like that. The other person can be a rock or a wall, but Ill find that one
tiny point of compromise. Thats our job: finding that point of compromise. If they wont sell
you the refrigerator, make them sell you some ice. So I racked my brains trying to find some 
way to pull this off. Let me tell you, thats what makes us human- coming up with a million
different ideas. So all of a sudden, a good one popped up in my foggy brain, like a star
showing through a break in the clouds. ‘Thats it! I told myself. ‘Why not have a conversation
on computer screens? You know: put words on the screen with a keyboard. You can do
that, cant you, Mr. Okada? 
I had used a computer when I worked in the law firm, researching precedents, looking up
personal data for clients, and communicating with E-mail. Kumiko had also used computers
at work. The health food magazine she edited had computer files on recipes and nutritional
analyses.
 It wouldnt work on just any old computer, continued Ushikawa, but with our machine
and yours, you ought to be able to communicate at a pretty fast pace. Ms. Kumiko says shes
willing to talk with you that way. It was as much as I could get her to bend. Trading messages
real time, it would almost be like talking to each other. Thats the one last point of
compromise I could come up with. Squeezing wisdom out of a monkey. What do you say?
You may not be too crazy about the idea, but I literally put my brains on the rack for that one.
Let me tell you, its tiring work thinking that hard with brains you dont even have! 
I silently shifted the receiver to my left hand. Hello? Mr. Okada? Are you listening? 
 Im listening, I said.
 All right, then: the one thing I need from you is the password to access your computer.
Then I can set up a conversation between you and Ms. Kumiko. What do you say? 
 Id say there are some practical problems standing in the way. 
 Oh? And what might those be? 
 Well, first of all, how can I be sure the other person is Kumiko? When youre talking on
the computer screen, you cant see other peoples faces or hear their voices. Someone else
could be sitting at the keyboard, pretending to be Kumiko. 
 I see what you mean, said Ushikawa, seemingly impressed. I never thought of that. But
Im sure there must be some way around it. Not to flatter you, but its good to view things
with skepticism, to have your doubts. ‘I doubt, therefore I am. All right, then: how about
this? You start out by asking a question that only Ms. Kumiko would know the answer to. If
the other person can come up with the answer, it must be Kumiko. I mean, you lived together
as man and wife for several years; there must be a few things that only the two of you would
know. 
What Ushikawa was saying made sense. That would probably work, I said, but I dont
know the password. Ive never touched that machine. 
•
Nutmeg had told me that Cinnamon had customized every inch of the computers system.
He had compiled his own complex database and protected it from outside access with a secret
code and other ingenious devices. Fingers on the keyboard, Cinnamon was absolute ruler over
this three-dimensional subterranean labyrinth. He knew every one of its intertwined passages
and could leap from one to another with the stroke of a key. For an uninformed invader
(which is to say, anyone but Cinnamon) to grope his way through the labyrinth, past the
alarms and traps, to where important data lay, would have taken months, according to Nutmeg.
Not that the computer installed in the Residence was especially big: it was the same
class of machine as the one in the Akasaka office. Both were hard-wired to the mainframe
they had at home, though. There Cinnamon no doubt stored their client data and did their
complex double bookkeeping, but I imagined that he kept something more in there than the
secrets connected with the work that he and Nutmeg had done over the years.
What led me to believe this, was the depth of the commitment to his machine that
Cinnamon displayed on occasion when he was in our special Residence. He normally stayed 
shut up in the small office he had there, but every now and then he would leave the door ajar,
and I was able to observe him at work- not without a certain guilty sense of invading
someones privacy. He and his computer seemed to be moving together in an almost erotic
union. After a burst of strokes on the keyboard, he would gaze at the screen, his mouth
twisted in apparent dissatisfaction or curled with the suggestion of a smile. Sometimes he
seemed deep in thought as he touched one key, then another, then another; and sometimes he
ran his fingers over the keys with all the energy of a pianist playing a Liszt etude. As he
engaged in silent conversation with his machine, he seemed to be peering through the screen
of his monitor into another world, with which he shared a special intimacy. I couldnt help but
feel that reality resided for him not so much in the earthly world but in his subterranean
labyrinth. Perhaps in that world Cinnamon had a clear, ringing voice, with which he spoke
eloquently and laughed and cried aloud.
•
 Cant I access your computer from the one here? I asked Ushikawa. Then you
wouldnt need a password. 
 No, that wouldnt work. Your transmissions might reach here, but transmissions from
here wouldnt reach there. The problem is the password-the open sesame. Without that,
theres nothing we can do. The door wont open for the wolf, no matter how hard he tries to
disguise his voice. He can knock and say, ‘Hi, its me, your friend Rabbit, but if he hasnt got
the password, he gets turned away at the door. Were talking about an iron maiden here. 
Ushikawa struck a match at his end and lit a cigarette. I pictured his snaggled yellow teeth
and drooping mouth.
 Its a three-character alphanumeric password. You have ten seconds to input it after the
prompt shows. Get it wrong three times, and access is denied, plus the alarm goes off. Not
that there are any sirens that ring or anything, but the wolf leaves his footprints, so you know
he was there. Clever, huh? If you calculate all possible permutations and combinations of
twenty-six letters and ten numbers, its practically infinite. You just have to know the
password, or theres nothing you can do. 
I thought this over for a time without replying.
 Any good ideas, Mr. Okada? 
After the client was driven away in the back seat of the Mercedes the following afternoon,
I walked into Cinnamons small office, sat down in front of his computer, and flipped the
switch. The cool blue light of the monitor came on with a simple message:
Enter password within ten seconds.
I input the three-letter word that I had prepared:
zoo
The computer beeped once and displayed an error message:
Incorrect password.
Enter password within ten seconds.
The ten seconds started counting down on the screen. I changed to upper case and input
the same letters:
ZOO
Again I was refused access:
Incorrect password.
Enter correct password within ten seconds.
If incorrect password is input once more, access will
automatically be denied.
Again the ten seconds began counting down on the screen. This time I made only the Z
uppercase. It was my last chance. 
Zoo
Instead of an error message, a menu screen opened, with the instruction:
Choose one of the following programs.
I released a long, slow breath, then began scrolling through the long list of programs until
I came to communications software. Highlighting this, I pressed the mouse button.
Choose one of the following programs.
I chose Chat Mode and clicked the mouse.
Enter password within ten seconds.
This was an important junction for Cinnamon to lock out access to his computer. And if
the junction was important, the password itself ought to be important. I typed in:
SUB
The screen read:
Incorrect password.
Input correct password within ten seconds.
The countdown began: , ,...
I tried the combination of upper- and lowercase letters that had worked the first time:
Sub
A prompt flashed on the screen:
Input telephone number.
I folded my arms and let my eyes take in this new message. Not bad. I had succeeded in
opening two doors in Cinnamons labyrinth. No, not bad at all. Zoo and Sub would do it.
I clicked on Exit and returned to the main menu, then chose Shutdown, which brought up
the following options:
Record procedures in Operations File? Y/N (Y)
As instructed by Ushikawa, I chose No to avoid leaving a record of the procedures I had
just executed.
The screen quietly died. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. After checking to be certain
that I had left the keyboard and mouse exactly as I had found them, I moved away from the
now cold monitor.
 
Nutmegs Story
 
Nutmeg Akasaka took several months to tell me the story of her life. It was a long, long
story, with many detours, so that what I am recording here is a very simplified (though not
necessarily short) summary of the whole. I cannot honestly claim with confidence that it
contains the essence of her story, but it should at least convey the outline of important events
that occurred at crucial points in her life.
•
Nutmeg and her mother escaped from Manchuria to Japan, their only valuables the
jewelry they were able to wear on their bodies. They traveled up from the port of Sasebo to 
Yokohama, to stay with the mothers family, which had long owned an import-export
business primarily focused on Taiwan. Prosperous before the war, they had lost most of their
business when Japan lost Taiwan. The father died of heart disease, and the familys second
son, who had been second in command, was killed in an air raid just before the war ended.
The eldest son left his teaching post to carry on the family business, but never
temperamentally suited to a life of commerce, he was unable to recoup the family fortunes.
They still had their comfortable house and land, but it was not a pleasant place for Nutmeg
and her mother to live as extra mouths to feed during those straitened postwar years. They
were always at pains to keep their presence as unobtrusive as possible, taking less than the
others at mealtimes, waking earlier than the others each morning, taking on an outsize share
of the household chores. Every piece of clothing the young Nutmeg wore was a hand-medown
from her older cousins-gloves, socks, even underwear. For pencils, she collected the
others cast-off stubs. Just waking up in the morning was painful to her. The thought that a
new day was starting was enough to make her chest hurt.
She wanted to get out of this house, to live alone with her mother someplace where they
didnt always have to feel so constrained, even if it meant living in poverty. But her mother
never tried to leave. My mother had always been an active person, said Nutmeg, but after
we escaped from Manchuria, she was like an empty shell. It was as if the very strength to go
on living had evaporated from inside her. She could no longer rouse herself for anything. All
she could do was tell Nutmeg over and over about the happy times they used to have. This left
to Nutmeg the task of finding for herself the resources to go on living.
Nutmeg did not dislike studying as such, but she had almost no interest in the courses they
offered in high school. She couldnt believe that it would do her any good to stuff her head
full of historical dates or the rules of English grammar or geometric formulas. What she
wanted more than anything was to learn a useful skill and make herself independent as soon
as possible. She was in a place far away from her classmates and their comfortable enjoyment
of high school life.
The only thing she cared about was fashion. Her mind was filled with thoughts of clothing
from morning to night. Not that she had the wherewithal to dress in style: she could only read
and reread the fashion magazines she managed to find, and to fill notebooks with drawings of
dresses in imitation of those she found in the magazines or clothes she had dreamed up
herself. She had no idea what it was about the fancy dresses that so captivated her
imagination. Perhaps, she said, it came from her habit of always playing with the huge
wardrobe that her mother had in Manchuria. Her mother was a genuine clotheshorse. She had
had more kimonos and dresses than room in their chests to store them, and the young Nutmeg
would always pull them out and touch them whenever she had a chance. Most of those
dresses and kimonos had had to remain in Manchuria when the two of them left, and whatever
they had been able to stuff into rucksacks they had had to exchange along the way for food.
Her mother would spread out the next dress to be traded, and sigh over it before letting it go.
 Designing clothes was my secret little door to a different world, said Nutmeg, a world
that belonged only to me. In that world, imagination was everything. The better you were able
to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality. And what I
really liked about it was that it was free. It didnt cost a thing. It was wonderful! Imagining
beautiful clothes in my mind and transferring the images to paper was not just a way for me to
leave reality behind and steep myself in dreams, though. I needed it to go on living. It was as
natural and obvious to me as breathing. So I assumed that everyone else was doing it too.
When I realized that everyone else was not doing it-that they couldnt do it even if they triedI
told myself, ‘Im different from other people, so the life I live will have to be different from
theirs. 
Nutmeg quit high school and transferred to a school of dressmaking. To raise the money
for her tuition, she begged her mother to sell one of her last remaining pieces of jewelry. With 
that, she was able to study sewing and cutting and designing and other such useful skills for
two years. When she graduated, she took an apartment and started living alone. She put
herself through a professional fashion design school by waiting on tables and taking odd jobs
sewing and knitting. And when she had finally graduated from this school, she went to work
for a manufacturer of quality ladies garments, where she succeeded in having herself
assigned to the design department.
There was no question but that she had an original talent. Not only could she draw well,
but her ideas and her point of view were different from those of other people. She had a clear
image of precisely what she wanted to make, and it was not something she had borrowed from
anyone else: it was always her own, and it always came out of her quite naturally. She
pursued the tiny details of her image with all the intensity of a salmon swimming upstream
through a great river to its source. She had no time for sleep. She loved her work and dreamed
only of the day she could become an independent designer. She never thought about having
fun outside of work: in fact, she didnt know how to do any of the things people did to have
fun.
Before long, her bosses came to recognize the quality of her work and took an interest in
her extravagant, free-flowing lines. Her years of apprenticeship thus came to an end, and she
was given full discretion as the head of her own small section-a most unusual promotion.
Nutmeg went on to compile a magnificent record of accomplishment year after year. Her
talent and energy caught the interest of people not only within the company but throughout
the industry. The world of fashion design was a closed world, but at the same time it was a
fair one, a society ruled by competition. A designers power was determined by one thing
alone: the number of advance orders that came in for the clothing that he or she had designed.
There was never any doubt about who had won and who had lost: the figures told the whole
story. Nutmeg never felt that she was competing with anyone, but her record could not be
denied.
She worked with total dedication until her late twenties. She met many people through her
work, and several men showed interest in her, but their relationships proved short and
shallow. Nutmeg could never take a deep interest in living human beings. Her mind was filled
with images of clothing, and a mans designs had a far more visceral impact on her than the
man himself ever could.
When she turned twenty-seven, though, Nutmeg was introduced to a strange-looking man
at an industry New Years party. The mans features were regular enough, but his hair was a
wild mass, and his nose and chin had the hard sharpness of stone tools. He looked more like
some phony preacher than a designer of womens clothing. He was a year younger than
Nutmeg, as thin as a wire, and had eyes of bottomless depth, from which he looked at people
with an aggressive stare that seemed deliberately designed to make them feel uncomfortable.
In his eyes, though, Nutmeg was able to see her own reflection. At the time, he was an unknown
but up-and-coming designer, and the two were meeting for the first time. She had, of
course, heard people talking about him. He had a unique talent, they said, but he was arrogant
and egotistical and argumentative, liked by almost no one.
 We were two of a kind, she said. Both born on the continent. He had also been shipped
back after the war, in his case from Korea, stripped of possessions. His father had been a
professional soldier, and they experienced serious poverty in the postwar years. His mother
had died of typhus when he was very small, and I suppose thats what led to his strong
interest in womens clothing. He did have talent, but he had no idea how to deal with people.
Here he was, a designer of womens clothing, but when he came into a womans presence, he
would turn red and act crazy. In other words, we were both strays who had become separated
from the herd. 
They married the following year, , and the child they gave birth to in the spring of the
year after that (the year of the Tokyo Olympics), was Cinnamon. His name was Cinnamon, 
wasnt it? No sooner was Cinnamon born than Nutmeg brought her mother into the house to
take care of him. She herself had to work nonstop from morning to night and had no time to
be caring for infants. Thus Cinnamon was more or less raised by his grandmother.
•
It was never clear to Nutmeg whether she had ever truly loved her husband as a man. She
lacked any criterion by which to make such a judgment, and this was true for her husband
also. What had brought them together was the power of a chance meeting and their shared
passion for fashion design. Still, their first ten years together was a fruitful time for both. As
soon as they were married, they quit their respective companies and set up their own
independent design studio in a small apartment in a small, west-facing building just behind
Aoyama Avenue. Poorly ventilated and lacking air-conditioning, the place was so hot in
summer that the sweat would make their pencils slip from their grasps. The business did not
go smoothly at first. Nutmeg and her husband were both almost shockingly lacking in
practical business sense, as a result of which they were easily duped by unscrupulous
members of the industry, or they would fail to secure orders because they were ignorant of
standard practice or would make unimaginably simple mistakes that kept them from getting
on track. Their debts mounted up so greatly that at one point it seemed the only solution
would be to abscond. The breakthrough came when Nutmeg happened to meet a capable
business manager who recognized their talent and could serve them with integrity. From that
point on, the company developed so well that all their previous troubles began to seem like a
bad dream. Their sales doubled each year until, by , the little company they had started
on a shoestring had become a miraculous success-so much so that it surprised even the
arrogant, aloof young couple who had started it. They increased their staff, moved to a big
building on the avenue, and opened their own shops in such fashionable neighborhoods as the
Ginza, Aoyama, and Shinjuku. Their original line of designer clothes figured often in the
mass media and became widely known.
•
Once the company had reached a certain size, the nature of the work they divided between
themselves began to change. While designing and manufacturing clothes might be a creative
process, it was also, unlike sculpting or novel writing, a business upon which the fortunes of
many people depended. One could not simply stay at home and create whatever one liked.
Someone would have to go out and present the companys face to the world. This need only
increased as the size of the companys transactions continued to grow. One of them would
have to appear at parties and fashion shows to give little speeches and hobnob with the guests,
and to be interviewed by the media. Nutmeg had absolutely no intention of taking on that role,
and so her husband became the one to step forward. Just as poor at socializing as she was, he
found the whole thing excruciating at first. He was unable to speak well in front of a lot of
strangers, and so he would come home from each such event exhausted. After six months of
this, however, he noticed that he was finding it less painful. He was still not much of a
speaker, but people did not react to his brusque and awkward manner the way they had when
he was young; now they seemed to be drawn to him. They took his curt style (which derived
from his naturally introverted personality) as evidence not of arrogant aloofness but rather of
a charming artistic temperament. He actually began to enjoy this new position in which he
found himself, and before long he was being celebrated as a cultural hero of his time.
 Youve probably heard his name, Nutmeg said. But in fact, by then I was doing twothirds
of the design work myself. His bold, original ideas had taken off commercially, and he
had already come up with more than enough of them to keep us going. It was my job to 
develop and expand them and give them form. No matter how large the company grew, we
never hired other designers. Our support staff expanded, but the crucial part we did ourselves.
All we wanted was to make the clothing we wanted to make, not worry about the class of
people who would buy it. We did absolutely no market research or cost calculations or
strategy planning. If we decided we wanted to make something a certain way, we designed it
that way, used the best materials we could find, and took all the time we needed to make it.
What other houses could do in two steps, we did in four. Where they used three yards of
cloth, we used four. We personally inspected and passed every piece that left our shop. What
didnt sell we disposed of. We sold nothing at discount. Our prices were on the high side, of
course. Industry people thought we were crazy, but our clothing became a symbol of the era,
right along with Peter Max, Woodstock, Twiggy, Easy Rider, and all that. We had so much
fun designing clothes back then! We could do the wildest things, and our clients were right
there with us. It was as if we had sprouted great big wings and could fly anywhere we liked. 
Just as their business was hitting its stride, however, Nutmeg and her husband began to
grow more distant. Even as they worked side by side, she would sense now and then that his
heart was wandering somewhere far away. His eyes seemed to have lost that hungry gleam
they once had. The violent streak that used to make him throw things now almost never
surfaced. Instead, she would often find him staring off into space as if deep in thought. The
two of them hardly ever talked outside the workplace, and the nights when he did not come
home at all grew in number. Nutmeg sensed that he had several women in his life now, but
this was not a source of pain for her. She thought of it as inevitable, because they had long
since ceased having physical relations (mainly because Nutmeg had lost the desire for sex).
•
It was late in , when Nutmeg was forty and Cinnamon eleven, that her husband was
killed. His body was found in an Akasaka hotel room, slashed to bits. The maid found him
when she used her passkey to enter the room for cleaning at eleven in the morning. The
lavatory looked as if it had been the site of a blood bath. The body itself had been virtually
drained dry, and it was missing its heart and stomach and liver and both kidneys and pancreas,
as if whoever had killed him had cut those organs out and taken them somewhere in plastic
bags or some such containers. The head had been severed from the torso and set on the lid of
the toilet, facing outward, the face chopped to mincemeat. The killer had apparently cut and
chopped the head first, then set about collecting the organs.
To cut the organs out of a human being must have taken some exceptionally sharp
implements and considerable technical skill. Several ribs had had to be cut out with a saw-a
time-consuming and bloody operation. Nor was it clear why anyone would have gone to so
much trouble.
Taken up with the holiday rush, the clerk at the front desk recalled only that Nutmegs
husband had checked into his twelfth-floor room at ten oclock the previous night with a
woman-a pretty woman perhaps thirty years of age, wearing a red overcoat and not
particularly tall. She had been carrying nothing more than a small purse. The bed showed
signs of sexual activity. The hair and fluid recovered from the sheets were his pubic hair and
semen. The room was full of fingerprints, but too many to be of use in the investigation. His
small leather suitcase held only a change of underwear, a few toilet articles, a folder holding
some work-related documents, and one magazine. More than one hundred thousand yen in
cash and several credit cards remained in his wallet, but a notebook that he should have had
was missing. There were no signs of struggle in the room.
The police investigated all his known associates but could not come up with a woman
who fit the hotel clerks description. The few women they did find had no causes for deepseated
hatred or jealousy, and all had solid alibis. There were a good number of people who 
disliked him in the fashion world (not a world known for its warm, friendly atmosphere, in
any case), but none who seemed to have hated him enough to kill him, and no one who would
have had the technical training to cut six organs out of his body.
The murder of a well-known fashion designer was of course widely reported in the press,
and with some sensationalism, but the police used a number of technicalities to suppress the
information about the taking of the organs, in order to avoid the glare of publicity that would
surround such a bizarre murder case. The prestigious hotel seems also to have exerted some
pressure to keep its association with the affair to a minimum. Little more was released than
the fact that he had been stabbed to death in one of their rooms. Rumors circulated for a while
that there had been something abnormal involved, but nothing more specific ever emerged.
The police conducted a massive investigation, but the killer was never caught, nor was a
motive established.
 That hotel room is probably still sealed, said Nutmeg.
•
The spring of the year after her husband was killed, Nutmeg sold the company-complete
with retail stores, inventory, and brand name-to a major fashion manufacturer. When the
lawyer who had conducted the negotiations for her brought the contract, Nutmeg set her seal
to it without a word and with hardly a glance at the sale price.
Once she had let the company go, Nutmeg discovered that all trace of her passion for the
designing of clothes had evaporated. The intense stream of desire had dried up, where once it
had been the meaning of her life. She would accept an occasional assignment and carry it off
with all the skill of a first-rate professional, but without a trace of joy. It was like eating food
that had no taste. She felt as if they had plucked out her own innards. Those who knew her
former energy and skill remembered Nutmeg as a kind of legendary presence, and requests
never ceased to come from such people, but aside from the very few that she could not refuse,
she turned them all down. Following the advice of her accountant, she invested her money in
stocks and real estate, and her property expanded in those years of growth.
Not long after she sold the company, her mother died of heart disease. She was wetting
down the pavement out front on a hot August afternoon, when suddenly she complained she
 felt bad. She lay down and slept, her snoring disturbingly loud, and soon she was dead.
Nutmeg and Cinnamon were left alone in the world. Nutmeg closed herself up in the house
for over a year, spending each day on the sofa, looking at the garden, as if trying to recoup all
the peace and quiet that she had missed in her life thus far. Hardly eating, she would sleep ten
hours a day. Cinnamon, who would normally have begun middle school, took care of the
house in his mothers stead, playing Mozart and Haydn sonatas between chores and studying
several languages.
This nearly blank, quiet space in her life had gone on for one year when Nutmeg happened
by chance to discover that she possessed a certain special power, a strange ability of which
she had had no awareness. She imagined that it might have welled up inside her to replace the
intense passion for design that had so wholly evaporated. And indeed, this power became her
new profession, though it was not something she herself had sought out.
•
The first beneficiary of her strange power was the wife of a department store owner, a
bright, energetic woman who had been an opera singer in her youth. She had recognized
Nutmegs talent long before she became a famous designer, and she had watched over her
career. Without this womans support, Nutmegs company might have failed in its infancy.
Because of their special relationship, Nutmeg agreed to help the woman and her daughter 
choose and coordinate their outfits for the daughters wedding, a task that she did not find
taxing.
Nutmeg and the woman were chatting as they waited for the daughter to be fitted when,
without warning, the woman suddenly pressed her hands to her head and knelt down on the
floor unsteadily. Nutmeg, horrified, grabbed her to keep her from falling and began stroking
the womans right temple. She did this by reflex, without thought, but no sooner had her palm
started moving than she felt a certain something there, as if she were feeling an object
inside a cloth bag.
Confused, Nutmeg closed her eyes and tried to think about something else. What came to
her then was the zoo in Hsin-ching - the zoo on a day when it was closed and she was there all
by herself, something only she was permitted as the chief veterinarians daughter. That had
been the happiest time of her life, when she was protected and loved and reassured. It was her
earliest memory. The empty zoo. She thought of the smells and the brilliant light, and the
shape of each cloud floating in the sky. She walked alone from cage to cage. The season was
autumn, the sky high and clear, and flocks of Manchurian birds were winging from tree to
tree. That had been her original world, a world that, in many senses, had been lost forever.
She did not know how much time passed like this, but eventually the woman raised herself to
her full height and apologized to Nutmeg. She was still disoriented, but her headache seemed
to be gone, she said. Some days later, Nutmeg was amazed to receive a far larger payment
than she had anticipated for the job she had done.
The department store owners wife called Nutmeg about a month after the event, inviting
her out to lunch. After they had finished eating, she suggested that they go to her home, where
she said to Nutmeg, I wonder if you would mind putting your hand on my head the way you
did before. Theres something I want to check. Nutmeg had no particular reason to refuse.
She sat next to the woman and placed her palm on the womans temple. She could feel that
same something she had felt before. Now she concentrated all her attention on it to get a
better sense of its shape, but the shape began to twist and change. Its alive! Nutmeg felt a
twinge of fear. She closed her eyes and thought about the Hsin-ching zoo. This was not hard
for her. All she had to do was bring back the story she had told Cinnamon and the scenes she
had described for him. Her consciousness left her body, wandered for a while in the spaces
between memory and story, then came back. When she regained consciousness, the woman
took her hand and thanked her. Nutmeg asked nothing about what had just happened, and the
woman offered no explanations. As before, Nutmeg felt a mild fatigue, and a light film of
sweat clung to her forehead. When she left, the woman thanked her for taking the time and
trouble to visit and tried to hand her an envelope containing money, but Nutmeg refused to
take it-politely, but firmly. This is not my job, she said, and besides, you paid me too much
last time. The woman did not insist.
Some weeks later, the woman introduced Nutmeg to yet another woman. This one was in
her mid-forties. She was small and had sharp, sunken eyes. The clothing she wore was of
exceptionally high quality, but aside from a silver wedding band, she used no accessories. It
was clear from the atmosphere she projected that she was no ordinary person. The department
store owners wife had told Nutmeg, She wants you to do for her the same thing you did for
me. Now, please dont refuse, and when she gives you money, dont say anything, just take it.
In the long run, it will be an important thing for you-and for me. 
Nutmeg went to an inner room with the woman and placed her palm on the womans
temple as she had done before. There was a different something inside this woman. It was
stronger than the one inside the department store owners wife, and its movements were more
rapid. Nutmeg closed her eyes, held her breath, and tried to quell the movement. She
concentrated more strongly and pursued her memories more vividly. Burrowing into the
tiniest folds she found there, she sent the warmth of her memories into the something. 
 And before I knew it, that had become my work, said Nutmeg. She realized that she had 
been enfolded by a great flow. And when he grew up, Cinnamon became his mothers
assistant.
 
The Mystery of the Hanging House: 
 
SETAGAYA, TOKYO: THE PEOPLE OF THE HANGING HOUSE
Famous Politicians Shadow: Now You See It, Now You Dont
Amazing, Ingenious Cloak of Invisibility- What Secret Is It Hiding?
[From The - Weekly, November ]
As first revealed in the October issue of this magazine, there is a house in a quiet
Setagaya residential neighborhood known to locals as the hanging house. All those who
ever lived there have been visited by misfortune and ended their lives in suicide, the majority
by hanging.
[Summary of earlier article omitted]
Our investigations have led us to only one solid fact: namely, that there is a brick wall
standing at the end of every route we have taken in attempting to learn the identity of the new
owner of the hanging house. We managed to find the construction company that built the
house, but all attempts to get information from them were rejected. The dummy company
through which the lot was purchased is legally % clean and offers no opening. The whole
deal was set up with such clever attention to detail, we can only assume there was some
reason for that.
One other thing that aroused our curiosity was the accounting firm that assisted in setting
up the dummy company that bought the land. Our investigations have shown us that the firm
was established five years ago as a kind of shadow subcontractor to an accounting firm well
known in political circles. The prominent accounting firm has several of these
 subcontractors, each designed to handle a particular kind of job and to be dropped like a
lizards tail in case of trouble. The accounting firm itself has never been investigated by the
Prosecutors Office, but according to a political reporter for a certain major newspaper, Its
name has come up in any number of political scandals, so of course the authorities have their
eye on it. Its not hard to guess, then, that there is some kind of connection between the new
resident of the hanging house and some powerful politician. The high walls, the tight
security using the latest electronic equipment, the leased black Mercedes, the cleverly set-up
dummy company: this kind of know-how suggests to us the involvement of a major political
figure.
Total Secrecy
Our news team did a survey of the movements into and out of the hanging house by the
black Mercedes. In one ten-day period, the car made a total of twenty-one visits to the house,
or approximately two visits per day. They observed a regular pattern to these visits. First, the
car would show up at nine oclock in the morning and leave at ten-thirty. The driver was very
punctual, with no more than five minutes variation from day to day. In contrast to the 
predictability of these morning visits, however, the others were highly irregular. Most were
recorded to have occurred between one and three in the afternoon, but the times in and out
varied considerably. There was also considerable variation in the length of time the car would
remain parked in the compound, from under twenty minutes to a full hour.
These facts have led us to the following suppositions:
. The cars regular a.m. visits: These suggest that someone is commuting to this house.
The identity of the commuter is unclear, however, owing to the black tinted glass used all
around the car.
. The cars irregular p.m. visits: These suggest the arrival of guests and are probably
tailored to the guests convenience. Whether these guests arrive singly or with others is
unclear.
. There seems to be no activity in the house at night. It is also unclear whether or not
anyone lives there. From outside the wall, it is impossible to tell if any lights are being used.
One more important point: The only thing to enter or leave the property during our tenday
survey was the black Mercedes: no other cars, no people on foot. Common sense tells us
that something strange is going on here. The someone living in the house never goes out to
shop or to take walks. People arrive and depart exclusively in the large Mercedes with darktinted
windows. In other words, for some reason, they do not want their faces seen, under any
circumstances. What could be the reason for this? Why must they go to so much trouble and
expense in order to do what they do in total secrecy?
We might add here that the front gate is the only way in and out of the property. A narrow
alley runs behind the lot, but this leads nowhere. The only way into or out of this alley is
through someones private property. According to the neighbors, none of the residents is
presently using the alley, which is no doubt why the house has no gate to the back alley. The
only thing there is the towering wall, like huge castle ramparts.
Several times during the ten days, the button on the intercom at the front gate was pushed
by people who appeared to be newspaper canvassers or salesmen, but with no response whatever.
If there was anyone inside, it is conceivable that a closed-circuit video camera was being
used to screen visitors. There were no deliveries of mail or by any of the express services.
For these reasons, the only investigative route left open to us was to tail the Mercedes and
determine its destination. Following the shiny, slow-moving car through city traffic was not
difficult, but we could get only as far as the entrance to the underground parking lot of a firstclass
Akasaka hotel. A uniformed guard was stationed there, and the only way in was with a
special pass card, so our car was unable to follow the Mercedes inside. This particular hotel is
the site of numerous international conferences, which means that many VIPs stay there, as do
many famous entertainers from abroad. To ensure their security and privacy, the VIP parking
lot is separate from that for ordinary guests, and several elevators have been reserved for
VIPs exclusive use, with no external indicators of their movements. This makes it possible
for these special guests to check in and out unobtrusively. The Mercedes is apparently parked
in one of the VIP spaces. According to the hotel managements brief, carefully measured
response to this magazines inquiries, these special spaces are ordinarily leased at a special
rate only to uniquely qualified corporate entities after a thoroughgoing background check, 
but we were unable to obtain any detailed information on either the conditions of use or the
users themselves.
The hotel has a shopping arcade, several cafes and restaurants, four wedding halls, and
three conference halls, which means that it is in use day and night by a wide variety of people
in large numbers. To determine the identities of the passengers in the Mercedes in a place like
that would be impossible without special authority. People could alight from the car, take one
of the nearby exclusive elevators, get off at any floor they liked, and blend in with the crowd.
It should be clear from all this that a system for maintaining absolute secrecy is solidly in
place. We can glimpse here an almost excessive use of money and political power. As can be 
seen from the hotel managements explanation, it is no easy matter to lease and use one of
these VIP parking spaces. Contributing to the need for thoroughgoing background checks, 
no doubt, are the plans of security authorities involved with the protection of foreign
dignitaries, which means that some political connections would have to be involved. Just
having a lot of money would not be enough, though it goes without saying that all of this
would take quite a lot of money.
[Omitted here: conjectures that the property is being used by a religious organization with
the backing of a powerful politician]
 
Jellyfish from All A r o u n d the World
 
Things Metamorphosed
I sit down in front of Cinnamons computer at the appointed time and use the password to
access the communications program. Then I input the numbers Ive been given by Ushikawa.
It will take five minutes for the circuits to connect. I start sipping the coffee I have prepared
and work to steady my breathing. The coffee is tasteless, though, and the air I inhale has a
harsh edge to it.
Finally, the computer beeps and a message appears on the screen, informing me that the
connection has been made and the computer is ready br two-way communication. I specify
that this is to be a collect call. If ‘. am careful to prevent a record of this transaction from
being made, I should be able to keep Cinnamon from finding out that I used the computer
(though of this I am anything but confident: this is his labyrinth; I m nothing but a powerless
stranger here).
A far longer time goes by than I had anticipated, but finally the message appears that the
other party has accepted the charges. Beyond this screen, at the far end of the cable that creeps
through Tokyos underground darkness, may be Kumiko. She, too, should be sitting before a
monitor, with her hands on a keyboard. In reality, all I can see is my monitor, which sits there
making a faint electronic squeal. I click on the box to choose Send mode and type the words
that I have been rehearsing over and over in my brain.
>I have one question for you. Its not much of a question,
but I need proof that its really you out there. Here it is:
The first time we went out together, long before we were married,
we went to the aquarium. I want you to tell me what you
were most fascinated to see there.
I click on the symbol for sending the text (I want you to tell me what you
were most fascinated to see there. -<). Then I switch to Receive mode.
The answer comes back after a short, silent interval. It is a short answer.
>Jellyfish. Jellyfish from all around the world.<
My question and the answer to it are lined up on the upper and lower halves of the screen.
I stare at them for a while. Jellyfish from all around the world.< It has to be 
Kumiko. The real Kumiko. That very fact, though, serves only to fill me with pain. I feel as if
my insides are being ripped out. Why is this the only way that the two of us can talk to each
other? I have no choice now but to accept it, though. And so I begin typing.
>Let me start with the good news. The cat came back this
spring. All of a sudden. He was kind of emaciated, but he was
healthy and unharmed. Hes stayed home ever since. I know I
should have consulted with you before I did this, but I gave
him a new name. Mackerel. Like the fish. Were getting along
together just fine. This is good news, I guess.<
A delay follows. I cant tell whether it is due to the time lag inherent in this form of
communication or a silence on Kumikos part.
>Im so happy to hear the cat is still alive! I was
worried about him.<
I take a sip of coffee to moisten my now dry mouth. Then I start typing again.
>Now for the bad news. Actually, aside from the fact that
the cat is back, it seems that everything else is going to be
bad news. First of all, I still havent been able to solve any
riddles.
I reread what I have written, then continue to type.
First riddle: Where are you now? What are you doing there?
Why do you continue to stay away from me? Why dont you want
to see me? Is there some reason for that? I mean, there are so
many things that you and I have to talk about face-to-face.
Dont you think so?<
It takes her some time to reply to this. I imagine her sitting in front of the keyboard, biting
her lip and thinking. Finally, the cursor begins to dart across the screen in response to the
movement of her fingers.
>Everything I wanted to say to you I wrote in the letter I
sent. What I most want you to understand is that, in many
ways, I am no longer the Kumiko you knew. People change for
all sorts of reasons, and in some cases the transformation
makes them go bad. That is why I dont want to see you. And
that is why I dont want to come back to you.
The cursor halts and remains blinking in one spot, searching for words. I keep my eyes
fixed on it for ten seconds, twenty seconds, waiting for it to form new words on the screen.
The transformation makes them go bad?
If possible, I would like you to forget about me as soon as
you can. The best thing for both of us would be if you were to
complete the formalities for divorce and begin a whole new
life. It doesnt matter where I am now or what I am doing. The
most important thing is that, for whatever reason, you and I
have already been separated into two entirely different
worlds. And there is no way we can ever go back to being what
we were. Please try to understand how painful it is for me to
be communicating with you like this. You probably cant
imagine how it tears me apart.<
I reread Kumikos words several times. I find in them no sign of hesitation, no suggestion
they come from anything but the deepest, most painful conviction. She has probably rehearsed
them in her mind any number of times. But still, I have to find a way to shake this impenetrable
wall of hers, if only to make it tremble. I go back to the keyboard.
>What you say is somewhat vague and difficult for me to
grasp. You say youve gone bad, but what does that mean in 
concrete terms? I just dont understand. Tomatoes go bad. Umbrellas
go bad. That I can understand. Tomatoes rot and
umbrellas get bent out of shape. But what does it mean to say
that you have gone bad ? It doesnt give me any concrete
image. You said in your letter that you had sex with somebody
other than me, but could that make you go bad ? Yes, of
course it was a shock to me. But that is a little different
from making a human being go bad, I would think.<
A long pause follows. I begin to worry that Kumiko has disappeared somewhere. But then
her letters begin to line up on the screen.
>You may be right, but there is more to it than that.
Another deep silence follows. She is choosing her words carefully, pulling them out of a
drawer.
That is just one manifestation. Going bad is something
that happens over a longer period of time. It was something
decided in advance, without me, in a pitch-dark room
somewhere, by someone elses hand. When I met and married you,
it seemed to me that I had a whole new set of possibilities. I
hoped that I might be able to escape through an opening
somewhere. But I guess that was just an illusion. There are
signs for everything, which is why I tried so hard to find our
cat when he disappeared that time.
I keep staring at the message on the screen, but still no Send mark appears. My own
machine is still set to Receive. Kumiko is thinking about what to write next. Going bad 
is something that happens over a longer period of time. What is she
trying to tell me? I concentrate my attention on the screen, but all I find there is a kind of
invisible wall. Once more the letters begin to line up on the screen.
I want you to think about me this way if you can: that I am
slowly dying of an incurable disease-one that causes my face
and body gradually to disintegrate. This is just a metaphor,
of course. My face and body are not actually disintegrating.
But this is something very close to the truth. And that is why
I dont want to show myself to you. I know that a vague
metaphor like this is not going to help you understand
everything about the situation in which I find myself. I dont
expect it to convince you of the truth of what I am saying. I
feel terrible about this, but there is simply nothing more I
can say. All you can do is accept it.<
An incurable disease.
I check to be sure that I am in the Send mode and start typing.
>If you say you want me to accept your metaphor, I dont
mind accepting it. But there is one thing that I simply cannot
understand. Even supposing that you have, as you say, gone
bad and that you have an incurable disease, why of all
people did you have to go to Noboru Wataya with it? Why didnt
you stay here with me? Why arent we together? Isnt that what
we got married for?<
Silence. I can almost feel its weight and hardness in my hands. I fold my hands on the
desk and take several deep breaths. Then the answer comes.
>The reason I am here, like it or not, is because this is
the proper place for me. This is where I have to be. I have no
right to choose otherwise. Even if I wanted to see you, I 
couldnt do it. Do you think I DONT want to see you?
There is a blank moment in which she seems to be holding her breath. Then her fingers
start to move again.
So please, dont torture me about this any longer. If there
is any one thing that you can do for me, it would be to forget
about my existence as quickly as possible. Take those years
that we Lived together and push them outside your memory as if
they never existed. That, finally, is the best thing you can
do for both of us. This is what I truly believe.<
To this I reply:
>You say you want me to forget everything. You say you want
me to leave you alone. But still, at the same time, from
somewhere in this world, you are begging for my help. That
voice is faint and distant, but I can hear it distinctly on
quiet nights. It IS your voice: Im sure of that. I can accept
the fact that one Kumiko is trying hard to get away from me,
and she probably has her reasons for doing so. But there is
another Kumiko, who is trying just as hard to get close to me.
That is what I truly believe. No matter what you may say to me
here, I have to believe in the Kumiko who wants my help and is
trying to get close to me. No matter what you tell me, no
matter how legitimate your reasons, I can never just forget
about you, I can never push the years we spent together out of
my mind. I cant do it because they really happened, they are
part of my life, and there is no way I can just erase them.
That would be the same as erasing my own self. I have to know
what legitimate reason there could be for doing such a thing.<
Another blank period goes by. I can feel her silence through the monitor. Like heavy
smoke, it creeps in through a corner of the screen and drifts across the floor. I know about
these silences of Kumikos. Ive seen them, experienced them any number of times in our life
together. Shes holding her breath now, sitting in front of the computer screen with brows knit
in total concentration. I reach out for my cup and take a sip of cold coffee. Then, with the
empty cup between my hands, I hold my breath and stare at the screen the way Kumiko is
doing. The two of us are linked together by the heavy bonds of silence that pass through the
wall separating our two worlds. We need each other more than anything, I feel without a
doubt.
>I dont know.<
>Well, I DO know.
I set my coffee cup down and type as quickly as I can, as if to catch the fleeting tail of
time.
I know this. I know that I want to find my way to where you
are - you, the Kumiko who wants me to rescue her. What I do
not know yet, unfortunately, is how to get there and what it
is thats waiting for me there. In this whole long time since
you left, Ive lived with a feeling as if I had been thrown
into absolute darkness. Slowly but surely, though, I am getting
closer to the core, to that place where the core of
things is located. I wanted to let you know that. Im getting
closer to where you are, and I intend to get closer still.<
I rest my hands on the keyboard and wait for her answer.
>I dont understand any of this.
Kumiko types this and ends our conversation: 
Goodbye.<<<
•
The screen informs me that the other party has left the circuit. Our conversation is
finished. Still, I go on staring at the screen, waiting for something to happen. Maybe Kumiko
will change her mind and come back on-line. Maybe shell think of something she forgot to
say. But she does not come back. I give up after twenty minutes. I save the file, then go to the
kitchen for a drink of cold water. I empty my mind out for a while, breathing steadily by the
refrigerator. A terrible quiet seems to have descended on everything. I feel as if the world is
listening for my next thought. But I cant think of anything. Sorry, but I just cant think of
anything.
I go back to the computer and sit there, carefully rereading our entire exchange on the
glowing tube from beginning to end: what I said, what she said, what I said to that, what she
said to that. The whole thing is still there on the screen, with a certain graphic intensity. As
my eyes follow the rows of characters she has made, I can hear her voice. I can recognize the
rise and fall of her voice, the subtle tones and pauses. The cursor on the last line keeps up its
blinking with all the regularity of a heartbeat, waiting with bated breath for the next word to
be sent. But there is no next word.
After engraving the entire conversation in my mind (having decided I had better not print
it out), I click on the box to exit communications mode. I direct the program to leave no
record in the operations file, and after checking to be sure that this has been done, I cut the
switch. The computer beeps, and the monitor screen goes dead white. The monotonous
mechanical drone is swallowed up in the silence of the room, like a vivid dream ripped out by
the hand of nothingness.
•
I dont know how much time has gone by since then. But when I realize where I am, I find
myself staring at my hands lying on the table. They bear the marks of having had eyes sharply
focused on them for a long time.
 Going bad is something that happens over a Longer period
of time.
How long a period of time is that?
 
Counting Sheep
 
The Thing in the Center of the Circle
A few days after Ushikawas first visit, I asked Cinnamon to bring me a newspaper 
whenever he came to the Residence. It was time for me to begin getting in touch with the
reality of the outside world. Try as you might to avoid it, when it was time, they came for
you.
Cinnamon nodded, and every day after that he would arrive with three newspapers.
I would look through the papers in the morning after breakfast. I had not bothered with
newspapers for such a long time that they now struck me as strange-cold and empty. The
stimulating smell of the ink gave me a headache, and the intensely black little gangs of type
seemed to stab at my eyes. The layout and the headlines type style and the tone of the writing
seemed unreal to me. I often had to put the paper down, close my eyes, and release a sigh. It
couldnt have been like this in the old days. Reading a newspaper must have been a far more
ordinary experience for me than this. What had changed so much about them? Or rather, what
had changed so much about me?
After I had been reading the papers for a while, I was able to achieve a clear
understanding of one fact concerning Noboru Wataya: namely, that he was constructing an
ever more solid position for himself in society. At the same time that he was conducting an
ambitious program of political activity as one of the up-and-coming new members of the
House of Representatives, he was constantly making public pronouncements as a magazine
columnist and a regular commentator on TV. I would see his name everywhere. For some
reason I could not fathom, people were actually listening to his opinions-and with ever
increasing enthusiasm. He was brand-new on the political stage, but he was already being
celebrated as one of the young politicians from whom great things could be expected. He was
named the countrys most popular politician in a poll conducted by a womens magazine. He
was hailed as an activist intellectual, a new type of intelligent politician that had not been seen
before.
When I had read as much as I could stand about current events and Noboru Watayas
prominent place in them, I turned to my growing collection of books on Manchukuo.
Cinnamon had been bringing me everything he could find on the subject. Even here, though, I
could not escape the shadow of Noboru Wataya. That day it emerged from the pages of a
book on logistical problems. Published in , the library copy had been borrowed only once
before, when the book was new, and returned almost immediately. Perhaps only
acquaintances of Lieutenant Mamiya were interested in logistical problems in Manchukuo.
As early as , according to the author, Japans imperial army was looking into the
possibility of amassing a huge inventory of winter survival gear in anticipation of all-out war
with the Soviets. Equipping the army to fight in bitter cold was viewed as an urgent matter
because they lacked the experience of having fought a real battle anyplace with such extreme
winter cold as Siberia. If a border dispute led suddenly to a declaration of war against the
Soviet Union (which was by no means out of the question in those days), the army was simply
unprepared to persevere in a winter campaign. For this reason, a research team was established
within the General Staff Office to prepare to fight a hypothetical war with the Soviet
Union, the logistics section being charged with investigating the procurement of special
winter clothing. In order to grasp what real cold was like, they went to the far northern island
of Sakhalin, long a point of dispute with Czarist Russia and then the Soviet Union, and used
an actual fighting unit to test insulated boots and coats and underwear. They ran
thoroughgoing tests on equipment currently in use by the Soviet Army and on the kind of
clothing that Napoleons army had used in its Russian campaign, reaching the conclusion that
it would be impossible for the Japanese Army to survive a winter in Siberia with its present
equipment. They estimated that some two-thirds of the foot soldiers on the front lines would
be put out of commission by frostbite. The armys current survival gear had been
manufactured with the somewhat gentler northern China winters in mind, and it was lacking
in terms of absolute numbers as well. The research team calculated the number of sheep
necessary to manufacture sufficient effective winter clothing to outfit ten divisions (the joke 
making the rounds of the team then being that they were too busy counting sheep to sleep),
and they submitted this in their report, along with estimates of the scale of mechanical equipment
that would be needed to process the wool.
The number of sheep on the Japanese home islands was clearly insufficient for fighting an
extended war in the northern territories against the Soviet Army in the event of economic
sanctions or an actual blockade against Japan, and thus it was imperative that Japan secure
both a stable supply of wool (and of rabbit and other pelts) in the Manchuria-Mongolia region
and the mechanical equipment for processing it, said the report. The man dispatched to make
on-the-spot observations in Manchukuo in , immediately after the founding of the puppet
regime there, was a young technocrat newly graduated from the Military Staff College with a
major in logistics; his name was Yoshitaka Wataya.
Yoshitaka Wataya! This could only have been Noborus uncle. There just werent that
many Watayas in the world, and the name Yoshitaka was the clincher.
His mission was to calculate the time that would be needed before such stable supplies of
wool could be secured in Manchukuo. Yoshitaka Wataya seized upon this problem of coldweather
clothing as a model case for modern logistics and carried out an exhaustive numerical
analysis.
When he was in Mukden, Yoshitaka Wataya sought an introduction to- and spent the
entire night drinking and talking with- Lieutenant General Kanji Ishiwara.
Kanji Ishiwara. Another name I knew well. Noboru Watayas uncle had been in touch
with Kanji Ishiwara, the ringleader the year before of the staged Chinese attack on Japanese
troops known as the Manchurian Incident, the event that had enabled Japan to turn
Manchuria into Manchukuo-and that later would prove to have been the first act in fifteen
years of war.
Ishiwara had toured the continent and become convinced not only that all-out war with the
Soviet Union was inevitable but that the key to winning that war lay in strengthening Japans
logistical position by rapidly industrializing the newly formed empire of Manchukuo and
establishing a self-sufficient economy. He presented his case to Yoshitaka Wataya with
eloquence and passion. He argued, too, the importance of bringing farmers from Japan to
systematize Manchukuos farming and cattle industries and to raise the level of their
efficiency.
Ishiwara was of the opinion that Japan should not turn Manchukuo into another
undisguised Japanese colony, such as Korea or Taiwan, and should instead make Manchukuo
a new model Asian nation. In his recognition that Manchukuo would ultimately serve as a
logistical base for war against the Soviet Union-and even against the United States and
England-Ishiwara was, however, admirably realistic. He believed that Japan was now the only
Asian nation with the capability of fighting the coming war against the West (or, as he called
it, the Final War ) and that the other countries had the duty to cooperate with Japan for their
own liberation from the West. No other officer in the Imperial Army at that time had
Ishiwaras combination of a profound interest in logistics and great erudition. Most other
Japanese officers dismissed logistics as an effeminate discipline, believing instead that the
proper Way for his majestys warriors was to fight with bold self-abandonment no matter
how ill-equipped one might be; that true martial glory lay in conquering a mighty foe when
outnumbered and poorly armed. Strike the enemy and advance too swiftly for supplies to
keep up : that was the path of honor.
To Yoshitaka Wataya, the compleat technocrat, this was utter nonsense. Starting a longterm
war without logistical backing was tantamount to suicide, in his view. The Soviets had
vastly expanded and modernized their military capability through Stalins five-year plan of intensive
economic development. The five bloody years of the First World War had destroyed
the old worlds values, and mechanized war had revolutionized European thinking with regard
to strategy and logistics. Having been stationed for two years in Berlin, Yoshitaka Wataya 
knew the truth of this with every bone in his body, but the mentality of the greater part of
Japans military men had not outgrown the intoxication of their victory in the Russo-Japanese
War, nearly thirty years before.
Yoshitaka Wataya went home to Japan a devoted admirer of Ishiwaras arguments, his
worldview, and the charismatic personality of the man himself, and their close relationship
lasted many years. He often went to visit Ishiwara, even after the distinguished officer had
been brought back from Manchuria to take command of the isolated fortress in Maizuru.
Yoshitaka Watayas precise and meticulous report on sheep farming and wool processing in
Manchukuo was submitted to headquarters shortly after he returned to Japan, and it received
high praise. With Japans painful defeat in the battle of Nomonhan, however, and the
strengthening of U.S. and British economic sanctions, the military began to shift its attention
southward, and the activities of the research team waging hypothetical war against the Soviet
Union were allowed to peter out. Of course, one factor behind the decision to finish off the
battle of Nomonhan quickly in early autumn and not allow it to develop into a full-scale war
was the research teams conclusive report that we are unable to wage a winter campaign
against the Soviet Army given our current state of preparedness. As soon as the autumn
winds began to blow, Imperial Headquarters, in a move unusual for the normally faceobsessed
Japanese Army, washed its hands of the fighting and, through diplomatic
negotiations, ceded the barren Hulunbuir Steppe to Outer Mongolian and Soviet troops.
In a footnote, the author pointed out that Yoshitaka Wataya had been purged from holding
public office by MacArthurs Occupation after the war and for a time had lived in seclusion in
his native Niigata, but he had been persuaded by the Conservative Party to run for office after
the purge was lifted and served two terms in the Upper House before changing to the Lower
House. A calligraphic scroll of Kanji Ishiwaras hung on the wall of his office.
I had no idea what kind of Diet member Noboru Watayas uncle had been or what he had
accomplished as a politician. He did serve as a cabinet minister once, and he seems to have
been highly influential with the people of his district, but he never became a leader in national
politics. Now his political constituency had been inherited by his nephew, Noboru Wataya.
•
I put the book away and, folding my arms behind my head, stared out the window in the
vague direction of the front gate. Soon the gate would open inward and the Mercedes-Benz
would appear, with Cinnamon at the wheel. He would be bringing another client. These
 clients and I were joined by the mark on my cheek. Cinnamons grandfather (Nutmegs father)
and I were also joined by the mark on my cheek. Cinnamons grandfather and
Lieutenant Mamiya were joined by the city of Hsin-ching. Lieutenant Mamiya and the
clairvoyant Mr. Honda were joined by their special duties on the Manchurian-Mongolian
border, and Kumiko and I had been introduced to Mr. Honda by Noboru Watayas family.
Lieutenant Mamiya and I were joined by our experiences in our respective wells-his in
Mongolia, mine on the property where I was sitting now. Also on this property had once lived
an army officer who had commanded troops in China. All of these were linked as in a circle,
at the center of which stood prewar Manchuria, continental East Asia, and the short war of
 in Nomonhan. But why Kumiko and I should have been drawn into this historical chain
of cause and effect I could not comprehend. All of these events had occurred long before
Kumiko and I were born.
I sat at Cinnamons desk and placed my hands on the keyboard. The feel of my fingers on
the keys was still fresh from my conversation with Kumiko. That computer conversation had
been monitored by Noboru Wataya, I was sure. He was trying to learn something from it. He
certainly hadnt arranged for us to make contact that way out of the goodness of his heart. He
and his men were almost certainly trying to use the access they had gained to Cinnamons 
computer through the communications link in order to learn the secrets of this place. But I
was not worried about that. The depths of this computer were the very depths of Cinnamon
himself. And they had no way of knowing how incalculably deep that was.
 
The Signal Turns Red
 
The Long Arm Reaches Out
Cinnamon was not alone when he arrived at nine oclock the next morning. Beside him in
the passenger seat was his mother, Nutmeg Akasaka. She had not been here in over a month.
She had arrived with Cinnamon unannounced that time too, had breakfast with me, and left
after an hour or so of small talk.
Cinnamon hung up his suit coat and, while listening to a Handel Concerto Grosso (for the
third day in a row), he went to the kitchen to make tea and toast for his mother, who had not
yet eaten breakfast. He always made perfect toast, like something to be used in a commercial.
Then, while Cinnamon straightened up the kitchen as usual, Nutmeg and I sat at a small table,
drinking tea. She ate only one slice of toast, with a little butter. Outside, a cold, sleety rain
was falling. Nutmeg said little, and I said little-a few remarks about the weather. She seemed
to have something she wanted to say, though. That much was clear from the look on her face
and the way she spoke. She tore off stamp-sized pieces of toast and transported them, one at a
time, to her mouth. We looked out at the rain now and then, as if it were our longtime mutual
friend.
When Cinnamon had finished with the kitchen and started his cleaning, Nutmeg led me to
the fitting room. This one had been made to look exactly like the fitting room in the
Akasaka office. The size and shape were virtually identical. The window here also had two
layers of curtains and was gloomy even during the day. The curtains were never open more
than ten minutes at a time, while Cinnamon was cleaning the room. There was a leather sofa
here, a glass vase, with flowers, on the table, and a tall floor lamp. In the middle of the room
stood a large workbench, on which lay a pair of scissors, scraps of cloth, a wooden box
stuffed with needles and thread, pencils, a design book (in which a few actual design sketches
had been drawn), and several professional tools, the names and purposes of which I did not
know. A large full-length mirror hung on the wall, and one corner of the room was partitioned
off by a screen for changing. The clients who visited the Residence were always shown to this
room.
Why Cinnamon and his mother had had to make an exact reproduction of the original
 fitting room in this house I had no idea. Here there was no need for such camouflage.
Maybe they (and their clients) had become so accustomed to the look of the fitting room in
the Akasaka office that they were unable to come up with any new ideas for decorating this
place. Of course, they could just as well ask, Whats wrong with a fitting room? Whatever
the reason for having it, I myself was pleased with it. It was the fitting room, not any other
room, and I felt a strange sense of security there, surrounded by all kinds of dressmaking 
tools. It was an unreal setting, but not an unnatural one.
Nutmeg had me sit on the leather sofa, and she sat down next to me.
 So. How are you feeling? she asked.
 Not bad, I answered.
Nutmeg was wearing a bright-green suit. The skirt was short, and the large hexagonal
buttons came up to the throat like one of those old Nehru jackets. The shoulders had pads the
size of dinner rolls. The look reminded me of a science fiction movie I had seen a long time
ago, set in the near future. Almost all the women in the movie wore suits like this and lived in
a futuristic city.
Nutmegs earrings were large plastic things, the same exact color as her suit. They were a
unique deep green that seemed to have been made from a combination of several colors, and
so they had probably been special-ordered to match the suit. Or perhaps the opposite was true:
the suit had been made to match the earrings-like making a niche in the wall the exact shape
of a refrigerator. Maybe not a bad way to look at things, I thought. She had come in wearing
sunglasses in spite of the rain, and their lenses had almost certainly been green. Her stockings
were green too. Today was obviously green day.
With her usual series of smooth linked movements, Nutmeg drew a cigarette from her
bag, put it in her mouth, and lit it with her cigarette lighter, curling her lip just slightly. The
lighter, at least, was not green but the expensive-looking slim gold one she always used. It did
go very well with the green, though. Nutmeg then crossed her green-stockinged legs.
Checking her knees carefully, she adjusted her skirt. Then, as if it were an extension of her
knees, she looked at my face.
 Not bad, I said again. The same as always. 
Nutmeg nodded. Youre not tired? You dont feel as if you need some rest? 
 No, not especially. I think Ive gotten used to the work. Its a lot easier for me now than
it was at first. 
Nutmeg said nothing to that. The smoke of her cigarette rose straight up like an Indian
fakirs magic rope, to be sucked in by the ceiling ventilator. As far as I knew, this ventilator
was the worlds quietest and strongest.
 How are you doing? I asked.
 Me? 
 Are you tired? 
Nutmeg looked at me. Do I look tired? 
She had in fact looked tired to me from the moment our eyes first met. When I told her
this, she gave a short sigh.
 There was another article about this place in a magazine that came out this morning-part
of the ‘Mystery of the Hanging House series. Sounds like the title of a horror movie. 
 Thats the second one, isnt it? I said.
 It certainly is, said Nutmeg. And in fact, another magazine carried a related article not
too long ago, but fortunately no one seems to have noticed the connection. So far. 
 Did something new come out? About us? 
She reached toward an ashtray and carefully crushed out her cigarette. Then she gave her
head a little shake. Her green earrings fluttered like butterflies in early spring.
 Not really, she said, then paused. Who we are, what were doing here: no one knows
yet. Ill leave you a copy, so you can read it if youre interested. But what Id really like to ask
you about is something that somebody whispered to me the other day: that you have a
brother-in-law whos a famous young politician. Is it true? 
 Unfortunately, it is, I said. My wifes brother. 
 Meaning the brother of the wife who is no longer with you? 
 Thats right. 
 I wonder if hes caught wind of what youre doing here? 
 He knows I come here every day and that Im doing something. He had somebody
investigate for him. I think he was worried about what I might be doing. But I dont think hes
figured out anything else yet. 
Nutmeg thought about my answer for a while. Then she raised her face to mine and asked,
 You dont like this brother-in-law of yours very much, do you? 
 Not very much, no. 
 And he doesnt like you. 
 To put it mildly. 
 And now hes worried about what youre doing here. Why is that? 
 If it comes out that his brother-in-law is involved with something suspicious, it could
turn into a scandal for him. Hes the man of the moment, after all. I suppose its natural that
he would worry about such things. 
 So he couldnt be the one leaking information about this place to the mass media, then,
could he? 
 To be quite honest, I dont know what Noboru Wataya has in mind. But common sense
tells me hed have nothing to gain by leaking things to the press. Hed be more likely to want
to keep things under wraps. 
For a long time, Nutmeg went on turning the slim gold lighter in her fingers. It looked like
a gold windmill on a day with little wind.
 Why havent you said anything to us about this brother-in-law of yours? Nutmeg asked.
 It isnt just you. I try not to mention him to anybody, I said. We havent liked each
other from the beginning, and now we practically hate each other. I wasnt hiding him from
you. I just didnt think there was any need to bring up the subject. 
Nutmeg released a somewhat longer sigh. You should have told us. 
 Maybe I should have, I said.
 Im sure you can imagine whats involved here. We have clients coming to us from
politics and business. Powerful people. And famous people. Their privacy has to be protected.
Thats why weve taken such extreme precautions. You know that much. I nodded.
 Cinnamon has gone to a lot of time and trouble to put together the precise and
complicated system we have for maintaining our secrecy- a labyrinth of dummy companies,
books under layers of camouflage, a totally anonymous parking space in that hotel in
Akasaka, stringent management of the clientele, control of income and expenses, design of
this house: his mind gave birth to all of this. Until now, the system has worked almost
perfectly in accordance with his calculations. Of course, it takes a lot of money to support
such a system, but money is no problem for us. The important thing is that the women who
come to us can feel secure that they will be protected absolutely. 
 What youre saying is that that security is being undermined. 
 Yes, unfortunately. 
Nutmeg picked up a box of cigarettes and took one out, but she just held it for a long time
between her fingers without lighting it.
 And to make matters worse, I have this fairly famous politician for a brother-in-law,
which only increases the possibility of scandal. 
 Exactly, said Nutmeg, curling her lip slightly.
 So what is Cinnamons analysis of the situation? 
 Hes not saying anything. Like a big oyster on the bottom of the sea. He has burrowed
inside himself and locked the door, and hes doing some serious thinking. 
Nutmegs eyes were fixed on mine. At last, as though recalling that it was there in her
hand, she lit her cigarette. Then she said, I Still think about it a lot-about my husband and the
way he was killed. Why did they have to murder him? Why did they have to smear the hotel
room with blood and tear out his insides and take them away? I just cant think of any reason
for doing such a thing. My husband was not the kind of person who had to be killed in such 
an unusual way.
 But my husbands death is not the only thing. All these inexplicable events that have
occurred in my life so far- the intense passion that welled up inside me for fashion design and
the way it suddenly disappeared; the way Cinnamon stopped speaking; the way I became
swept up in this strange work we do- its as though they were all ingeniously programmed
from the start for the very purpose of bringing me here, where I am today. Its a thought I
cant seem to shake off. I feel as if my every move is being controlled by some kind of
incredibly long arm thats reaching out from somewhere far away, and that my life has been
nothing more than a convenient passageway for all these things moving through it. 
The faint sounds of Cinnamons vacuuming came from the next room. He was performing
his tasks in his usual concentrated, systematic manner. Havent you ever felt that way? 
Nutmeg asked me.
 I dont feel that Ive been ‘swept up in anything, I said. Im here now because it was
necessary for me to be here. 
 So you could blow the magic flute and find Kumiko? 
 Thats right. 
 You have something youre searching for, she said, slowly recross-ing her greenstockinged
legs. And everything has its price. 
I remained silent.
Then, at last, Nutmeg announced her conclusion: Weve decided not to bring any clients
here for a while. It was Cinnamons decision. Because of the magazine articles and your
brother-in-laws entry on the scene, the signal has changed from yellow to red. Yesterday we
canceled all remaining appointments, beginning with todays. 
 How long will ‘a while be? 
 Until Cinnamon can patch the holes in the system and we can be sure that any crisis has
been completely bypassed. Sorry, but we dont want to take any chances-none at all.
Cinnamon will come here every day, as he always has, but there will be no more clients. 
•
By the time Cinnamon and Nutmeg left, the morning rain had cleared. Half a dozen
sparrows were washing their feathers in a puddle in the driveway. When Cinnamons
Mercedes disappeared and the automatic gate closed, I sat at the window, looking at the
cloudy winter sky beyond the tree branches. Nutmegs words came to mind: some kind of incredibly
long arm thats reaching out from somewhere far away. I imagined the arm reaching
down from the dark, low-hanging clouds- like an illustration from a sinister picture book.
 
Triangular Ears
 
Sleigh Bells
I spent the rest of the day reading about Manchukuo. There was no need for me to hurry
back to the house. Thinking I might be late, I had given Mackerel two days worth of dried cat
food when I left in the morning. He might not like it much, but at least he wouldnt starve.
This made the thought of dragging myself home that much less appealing. I wanted to lie
down and take a nap. I took a blanket and pillow from a cabinet, spread them on the sofa in
the fitting room, and turned out the light. Then I lay down, closed my eyes, and began
thinking about Mackerel. I wanted to fall asleep thinking about the cat. He was something that
had come back to me. He had managed to come back to me from somewhere far away. That
had to be a kind of blessing. As I lay there with my eyes closed, I thought about the soft touch
of the pads beneath the cats paws, the cold triangular ears, the pink tongue. In my mind,
Mackerel had curled up and was sleeping quietly. I felt his warmth with the palm of my hand.
I could hear his regular breathing. I was far more on edge than usual, but sleep still came to
me before too long, a deep sleep without dreams.
I awoke in the middle of the night. I thought I had heard sleigh bells somewhere far away,
as in the background of Christmas music.
Sleigh bells?
I sat up on the sofa and felt for my watch on the coffee table. The luminous hands showed
one-thirty. I must have slept more soundly than I had expected to. I sat still and listened hard,
but the only sound I could hear was the faint, dry thumping of my own heart. Maybe I had
imagined the sleigh bells. Maybe I had been dreaming, after all. I decided, still, to check the
house. I stepped into my slippers and padded my way into the kitchen. The sound grew more
distinct when I left the room. It really did sound like sleigh bells, and it seemed to be coming
from Cinnamons office. I stood by the door for a while, listening, then gave a knock. Cinnamon
might have come back to the Residence while I was sleeping. But there was no answer. I
opened the door a crack and looked inside.
Somewhere around waist height in the darkness, I could see a whitish glow with a square
shape. It was the glow of the computer screen, and the bell sound was the machines repeated
beeping (a new kind of beep, which I had not heard before). The computer was calling out to
me. As if drawn toward it, I sat down in front of the glow and read the message on the screen:
You have now gained access to the program The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle. Choose a document ( - ).
Someone had turned the computer on and accessed documents titled The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle. There should have been no one in the Residence besides me. Could someone have
started it from outside the house? If so, it could only have been Cinnamon. The Wind-Up
Bird Chronicle ?
The light, cheery sound, like sleigh bells, continued to emanate from the computer, as if
this were Christmas morning. It seemed to be urging me to make a choice. After some
hesitation, I picked # for no particular reason. The ringing immediately stopped, and a
document opened on the screen like a horizontal scroll painting being spread out before me.
 
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle # 
(or, A Second Clumsy Massacre)
 
The veterinarian woke before : a.m. After washing his face in cold water, he made
himself breakfast. Daybreak came at an early hour in summer, and most of the animals in the
zoo were already awake. The open window let in their cries and the breeze that carried their
smells, which told him the weather without his having to look outside. This was part of his
routine. He would first listen, then inhale the morning air, and so ready himself for each new
day.
Today, however, should have been different from the day before. It had to be different. So
many voices and smells had been lost! The tigers, the leopards, the wolves, the bears: all had
been liquidated- eliminated-by soldiers the previous afternoon. Now, after a night of sleep,
those events seemed like part of a sluggish nightmare he had had long ago. But he knew they
had actually happened. His ears still felt a dull ache from the roar of the soldiers rifles. That
could not be a dream. It was August now, the year was , and he was here in the city of
Hsin-ching, where the Soviet troops that had burst across the border were pressing closer
every hour. This was reality- as real as the sink and toothbrush he saw in front of him.
The sound of the elephants trumpeting gave him some sense of relief. Ah, yes- the
elephants had survived. Fortunately, the young lieutenant in charge of the platoon had had
enough normal human sensitivity to remove the elephants from the list, thought the
veterinarian as he washed his face. Since coming to Manchuria, he had met any number of
stiff-necked, fanatical young officers from his homeland, and the experience always left him
shaken. Most of them were farmers sons who had spent their youthful years in the depressed
thirties, steeped in the tragedies of poverty, while a megalomaniac nationalism was hammered
into their skulls. They would follow without a second thought the orders of a superior, no
matter how outlandish. Commanded in the name of the emperor to dig a hole through the
earth to Brazil, they would grab a shovel and set to work. Some people called this purity, 
but the veterinarian had other words for it. An urban doctors son, educated in the relatively
liberal atmosphere of the twenties, the veterinarian could never understand those young
officers. Shooting a couple of elephants with small arms should have been far easier than
digging through the earth to Brazil, but the lieutenant in charge of the firing squad, though he
spoke with a slight country accent, seemed to be a more normal human being than the other
young officers the veterinarian had met-better educated and more reasonable. The veterinarian
could sense this from the way the young man spoke and handled himself.
In any case, the elephants had not been killed, and the veterinarian told himself he should
probably be grateful. The soldiers, too, must have been glad to be spared the task. The
Chinese workers may have regretted the omission-they had missed out on a lot of meat and
ivory.
The veterinarian boiled water in a kettle, soaked his beard in a hot towel, and shaved.
Then he ate breakfast alone: tea, toast and butter. The food rations in Manchuria were far
from sufficient, but compared with those elsewhere, they were still fairly generous. This was
good news both for him and for the animals. The animals showed resentment at their reduced
allotments of feed, but the situation here was far better than in Japanese homeland zoos,
where foodstuffs had already bottomed out. No one could predict the future, but for now, at
least, both animals and humans were being spared the pain of extreme hunger.
He wondered how his wife and daughter were doing. If all went according to plan, their
train should have arrived in Pusan by now. There his cousin lived who worked for the railway
company, and until the veterinarians wife and daughter were able to board the transport ship
that would carry them to Japan, they would stay with the cousins family. The doctor missed
seeing them when he woke up in the morning. He missed hearing their lively voices as they
prepared breakfast. A hollow quiet ruled the house. This was no longer the home he loved, the
place where he belonged. And yet, at the same time, he could not help feeling a certain
strange joy at being left alone in this empty official residence; now he was able to sense the 
implacable power of fate in his very bones and flesh.
Fate itself was the doctors own fatal disease. From his youngest days, he had had a
weirdly lucid awareness that I, as an individual, am living under the control of some outside
force. This may have been owing to the vivid blue mark on his right cheek. While still a
child, he hated this mark, this imprint that only he, and no one else, had to bear upon his flesh.
He wanted to die whenever the other children taunted him or strangers stared at him. If only
he could have cut away that part of his body with a knife! But as he matured, he gradually
came to a quiet acceptance of the mark on his face that would never go away. And this may
have been a factor that helped form his attitude of resignation in all matters having to do with
fate.
Most of the time, the power of fate played on like a quiet and monotonous ground bass,
coloring only the edges of his life. Rarely was he reminded of its existence. But every once in
a while, when the balance would shift (and what controlled the balance he never knew: he
could discover no regularity in those shifts), the force would increase, plunging him into a
state of near-paralytic resignation. At such times, he had no choice but to abandon everything
and give himself up to the flow. He knew from experience that nothing he could do or think
would ever change the situation. Fate would demand its portion, and until it received that
portion, it would never go away. He believed this with his whole heart.
Not that he was a passive creature; indeed, he was more decisive than most, and he always
saw his decisions through. In his profession, he was outstanding: a veterinarian of exceptional
skill, a tireless educator. He may have lacked a certain creative spark, but in school he always
had superior grades and was chosen to be the leader of the class. In the workplace, too, others
acknowledged his superiority, and his juniors always looked up to him. He was certainly no
 fatalist, as most people use the word. And yet never once in his life had he experienced the
unshakable certainty that he and he alone had arrived at a decision. He always had the sense
that fate had forced him to decide things to suit its own convenience. On occasion, after the
momentary satisfaction of having decided something of his own free will, he would see that
things had been decided beforehand by an external power cleverly camouflaged as free will,
mere bait thrown in his path to lure him into behaving as he was meant to. The only things
that he had decided for himself with complete independence were the kind of trivial matters
which, on closer inspection, revealed themselves to require no decision making at all. He felt
like a titular head of state who did nothing more than impress the royal seal on documents at
the behest of a regent who wielded all true power in the realm-like the emperor of this puppet
empire of Manchukuo.
The doctor loved his wife and child. They were the most wonderful thing that had ever
happened to him in his life-especially his daughter, for whom his love bordered on obsession.
For them, he would have gladly given up his life. Indeed, he had often imagined doing so, and
the deaths he had endured for them in his mind seemed the sweetest deaths imaginable. At the
same time, however, he would often come home from work and, seeing his wife and daughter
there, think to himself, These people are, finally, separate human beings, with whom I have
no connection. They were something other, something of which he had no true knowledge,
something that existed in a place far away from the doctor himself. And whenever he felt this
way, the thought would cross his mind that he himself had chosen neither of these people on
his own-which did not prevent him from loving them unconditionally, without the slightest
reservation. This was, for the doctor, a great paradox, an insoluble contradiction, a gigantic
trap that had been set for him in his life.
The world he belonged to became far simpler, far easier to understand, though, once he
was left alone in his residence at the zoo. All he had to think about was taking care of the
animals. His wife and daughter were gone. There was no need to think about them for now.
The veterinarian and his fate could be alone together.
And it was fate above all, the gigantic power of fate, that held sway over the city of Hsin-
ching in August of -not the Kwantung Army, not the Soviet Army, not the troops of the
Communists or of the Kuo-mintang. Anyone could see that fate was the ruler here and that
individual will counted for nothing. It was fate that had spared the elephants and buried the
tigers and leopards and wolves and bears the day before. What would it bury now, and what
would it spare? These were questions that no one could answer.
The doctor left his residence to prepare for the morning feeding. He assumed that no one
would show up for work anymore, but he found two Chinese boys waiting for him in his
office. He did not know them. They were thirteen or fourteen years old, dark-complected and
skinny, with roving animal eyes. They told us to help you, said one boy. The doctor
nodded. He asked their names, but they made no reply. Their faces remained blank, as if they
had not heard the question. These boys had obviously been sent by the Chinese people who
had worked here until the day before. Those people had probably ended all contact with
Japanese now, in anticipation of changes to come, but assumed that children would not be
held accountable. The boys had been sent as a sign of goodwill. The workers knew that he
could not care for the animals alone.
The veterinarian gave each boy two cookies, then put them to work helping him feed the
animals. They led a mule-drawn cart from cage to cage, providing each animal with its
particular feed and changing its water. Cleaning the cages was out of the question. The best
they could manage was a quick hose-down to wash away the droppings. The zoo was closed,
after all: no one would complain if it stank a little.
As it turned out, the absence of the tigers, leopards, bears, and wolves made the job far
easier. Caring for big carnivores was a major effort-and dangerous. As bad as the doctor felt
when passing their empty cages, he could not suppress a sense of relief to have been spared
that job.
They started the work at eight oclock and finished after ten. The boys then disappeared
without a word. The veterinarian felt exhausted from the hard physical labor. He went back to
the office and reported to the zoo director that the animals had been fed.
•
Just before noon, the young lieutenant came back to the zoo, leading the same eight
soldiers he had brought with him the day before. Fully armed again, they walked with a
metallic clinking that could be heard far in advance of their arrival. Again their shirts were
blackened with sweat, and again the cicadas were screaming in the trees. Today, however,
they had not come to kill animals. The lieutenant saluted the director and said, We need to
know the current status of the zoos usable carts and draft animals. The director informed
him that they had exactly one mule and one wagon. We contributed our only truck and two
horses two weeks ago, he noted. The lieutenant nodded and announced that he would immediately
commandeer the mule and wagon, as per orders of Kwantung Army Headquarters.
 Wait just a minute, the veterinarian interjected. We need those to feed the animals
twice a day. All our local people have disappeared. Without that mule and wagon, our animals
will starve to death. Even with them, we can barely keep up. 
 Were all just barely keeping up, sir, said the lieutenant, whose eyes were red and
whose face was covered with stubble. Our first priority is to defend the city. You can always
let the animals out of their cages if need be. Weve taken care of the dangerous meat-eaters.
The others pose no security risk. These are military orders, sir. Youll just have to manage as
you see fit. 
Cutting the discussion short, the lieutenant had his men take the mule and wagon. When
they were gone, the veterinarian and the director looked at each other. The director sipped his
tea, shook his head, and said nothing.
Four hours later, the soldiers were back with the mule and wagon, a filthy canvas tarpaulin 
covering the mounded contents of the wagon. The mule was panting, its hide foaming with
the afternoon heat and the weight of the load. The eight soldiers marched four Chinese men
ahead of them at bayonet point-young men, perhaps twenty years old, wearing baseball
uniforms and with their hands tied behind their backs. The black-and-blue marks on their
faces made it obvious that they had been severely beaten. The right eye of one man was
swollen almost shut, and the bleeding lips of another had stained his baseball shirt bright red.
The shirtfronts had nothing written on them, but there were small rectangles where the name
patches had been torn off. The numbers on their backs were , , , and. The veterinarian
could not begin to imagine why, at such a time of crisis, four young Chinese men would be
wearing baseball uniforms, or why they had been so badly beaten and dragged here by
Japanese troops. The scene looked like something not of this world-a painting by a mental
patient.
The lieutenant asked the zoo director if he had any picks and shovels he could let them
use. The young officer looked even more pale and haggard than he had before. The
veterinarian led him and his men to a tool-shed behind the office. The lieutenant chose two
picks and two shovels for his men. Then he asked the veterinarian to come with him, and
leaving his men there, walked into a thicket beyond the road. The veterinarian followed.
Wherever the lieutenant walked, huge grasshoppers scattered. The smell of summer grass
hung in the air. Mixed in with the deafening screams of cicadas, the sharp trumpeting of
elephants now and then seemed to sound a distant warning.
The lieutenant went on among the trees without speaking, until he found a kind of opening
in the woods. The area had been slated for construction of a plaza for small animals that
children could play with. The plan had been postponed indefinitely, however, when the
worsening military situation caused a shortage of construction materials. The trees had been
cleared away to make a circle of bare ground, and the sun illuminated this one part of the
woods like stage lighting. The lieutenant stood in the center of the circle and scanned the area.
Then he dug at the ground with the heel of his boot.
 Were going to bivouac here for a while, he said, kneeling down and scooping up a
handful of dirt.
The veterinarian nodded in response. He had no idea why they had to bivouac in a zoo,
but he decided not to ask. Here in Hsin-ching, experience had taught him never to question
military men. Questions did nothing but make them angry, and they never gave you a straight
answer in any case.
 First we dig a big hole here, the lieutenant said, speaking as if to himself. He stood up
and took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Putting a cigarette between his lips, he
offered one to the doctor, then lit both with a match. The two concentrated on their smoking
to fill the silence. Again the lieutenant began digging at the ground with his boot. He drew a
kind of diagram in the earth, then rubbed it out. Finally, he asked the veterinarian, Where
were you born? 
 In Kanagawa, the doctor said. In a town called Ofuna, near the sea. 
The lieutenant nodded.
 And where were you born? the veterinarian asked.
Instead of answering, the lieutenant narrowed his eyes and watched the smoke rising from
between his fingers. No, it never pays to ask a military man questions, the veterinarian told
himself again. They like to ask questions, but theyll never give you an answer. They
wouldnt give you the time of day-literally.
 Theres a movie studio there, said the lieutenant.
It took the doctor a few seconds to realize the lieutenant was talking about Ofuna. Thats
right. A big studio. Ive never been inside, though. 
The lieutenant dropped what was left of his cigarette on the ground and crushed it out. I
hope you make it back there, he said. Of course, theres an ocean to cross between here and 
Japan. Well probably all die over here. He kept his eyes on the ground as he spoke. Tell
me, Doctor, are you afraid of death? 
 I guess it depends on how you die, said the veterinarian, after a moments thought.
The lieutenant raised his eyes and looked at the veterinarian as if his curiosity had been
aroused. He had apparently been expecting another answer. Youre right, he said. It does
depend on how you die. 
The two remained silent for a time. The lieutenant looked as if he might just fall asleep
there, standing up. He was obviously exhausted. An especially large grasshopper flew over
them like a bird and disappeared into a distant clump of grass with a noisy beating of wings.
The lieutenant looked at his watch.
 Time to get started, he said to no one in particular. Then he spoke to the veterinarian.
 Id like you to stay around for a while. I might have to ask you to do me a favor. 
The veterinarian nodded.
•
The soldiers led the Chinese prisoners to the opening in the woods and untied their hands.
The corporal drew a large circle on the ground, using a baseball bat-though why a soldier
would have a bat the veterinarian found another mystery-and ordered the prisoners in
Japanese to dig a deep hole the size of the circle. With the picks and shovels, the four men in
baseball uniforms started digging in silence. Half the squad stood guard over them, while the
other half stretched out beneath the trees. They seemed to be in desperate need of sleep; no
sooner had they hit the ground in full gear than they began snoring. The four soldiers who remained
awake kept watch over the digging nearby, rifles resting on their hips, bayonets fixed,
ready for immediate use. The lieutenant and the corporal took turns overseeing the work and
napping under the trees.
It took less than an hour for the four Chinese prisoners to dig a hole some twelve feet
across and deep enough to come up to their necks. One of the men asked for water, speaking
in Japanese. The lieutenant nodded, and a soldier brought a bucket full of water. The four
Chinese took turns ladling water from the bucket and gulping it down. They drank almost the
entire bucketful. Their uniforms were smeared black with blood, mud, and sweat.
The lieutenant had two of the soldiers pull the wagon over to the hole. The corporal
yanked the tarpaulin off, to reveal four dead men piled in the wagon. They wore the same
baseball uniforms as the prisoners, and they, too, were obviously Chinese. They appeared to
have been shot, and their uniforms were covered with black bloodstains. Large flies were
beginning to swarm over the corpses. Judging from the way the blood had dried, the doctor
guessed they had been dead for close to twenty-four hours.
The lieutenant ordered the four Chinese who had dug the hole to throw the bodies into it.
Without a word, faces blank, the men took the bodies out of the wagon and threw them, one at
a time, into the hole. Each corpse landed with a dull thud. The numbers on the dead mens
uniforms were , , , and. The veterinarian committed them to memory.
When the four Chinese had finished throwing the bodies into the hole, the soldiers tied
each man to a nearby tree. The lieutenant held up his wrist and studied his watch with a grim
expression. Then he looked up toward a spot in the sky for a while, as if searching for
something there. He looked like a stationmaster standing on the platform and waiting for a
hopelessly overdue train. But in fact he was looking at nothing at all. He was just allowing a
certain amount of time to go by. Once he had accomplished that, he turned to the corporal and
gave him curt orders to bayonet three of the four prisoners (numbers , , and ).
Three soldiers were chosen and took up their positions in front of the three Chinese. The
soldiers looked paler than the men they were about to kill. The Chinese looked too tired to
hope for anything. The corporal offered each of them a smoke, but they refused. He put his 
cigarettes back into his shirt pocket.
Taking the veterinarian with him, the lieutenant went to stand somewhat apart from the
other soldiers. Youd better watch this, he said. This is another way to die. 
The veterinarian nodded. The lieutenant is not saying this to me, he thought. Hes saying
it to himself.
In a gentle voice, the lieutenant explained, Shooting them would be the simplest and
most efficient way to kill them, but we have orders not to waste a single bullet-and certainly
not to waste bullets killing Chinese. Were supposed to save our ammunition for the Russians.
Well just bayonet them, I suppose, but thats not as easy as it sounds. By the way, Doctor,
did they teach you how to use a bayonet in the army? 
The doctor explained that as a cavalry veterinarian, he had not been trained to use a
bayonet.
 Well, the proper way to kill a man with a bayonet is this: First you thrust it in under the
ribs-here. The lieutenant pointed to his own torso just above the stomach. Then you drag the
point in a big, deep circle inside him, to scramble the organs. Then you thrust upward to puncture
the heart. You cant just stick it in and expect him to die. We soldiers have this drummed
into us. Hand-to-hand combat using bayonets ranks right up there along with night assaults as
the pride of the Imperial Army-though mainly, its a lot cheaper than tanks and planes and
cannons. Of course, you can train all you want, but finally what youre stabbing is a straw
doll, not a live human being. It doesnt bleed or scream or spill its guts on the ground. These
soldiers have never actually killed a human being that way. And neither have I. 
The lieutenant looked at the corporal and gave him a nod. The corporal barked his order to
the three soldiers, who snapped to attention. Then they took a half-step back and thrust out
their bayonets, each man aiming his blade at his prisoner. One of the young men (number )
growled something in Chinese that sounded like a curse and gave a defiant spit- which never
reached the ground but dribbled down the front of his baseball uniform.
At the sound of the next order, the three soldiers thrust their bayonets into the Chinese
men with tremendous force. Then, as the lieutenant had said, they twisted the blades so as to
rip the mens internal organs, and thrust the tips upward. The cries of the Chinese men were
not very loud-more like deep sobs than screams, as if they were heaving out the breath left in
their bodies all at once through a single opening. The soldiers pulled out their bayonets and
stepped back. The corporal barked his order again, and the men repeated the procedure
exactly as before-stabbing, twisting, thrusting upward, withdrawing. The veterinarian watched
in numbed silence, overtaken by the sense that he was beginning to split in two. He became
simultaneously the stabber and the stabbed. He could feel both the impact of the bayonet as it
entered his victims body and the pain of having his internal organs slashed to bits.
It took much longer than he would have imagined for the Chinese men to die. Their
sliced-up bodies poured prodigious amounts of blood on the ground, but even with their
organs shredded, they went on twitching slightly for quite some time. The corporal used his
own bayonet to cut the ropes that bound the men to the trees, and then he had the soldiers who
had not participated in the killing help drag the fallen bodies to the hole and throw them in.
These corpses also made a dull thud on impact, but the doctor couldnt help feeling that the
sound was different from that made by the earlier corpses-probably because they were not
entirely dead yet.
Now only the young Chinese prisoner with the number on his shirt was left. The three
pale-faced soldiers tore broad leaves from plants at their feet and proceeded to wipe their
bloody bayonets. Not only blood but strange-colored body fluids and chunks of flesh adhered
to the blades. The men had to use many leaves to return the bayonets to their original baremetal
shine.
The veterinarian wondered why only the one man, number , had been left alive, but he
was not going to ask questions. The lieutenant took out another cigarette and lit up. He then 
offered a smoke to the veterinarian, who accepted it in silence and, after putting it between his
lips, struck his own match. His hand did not tremble, but it seemed to have lost all feeling, as
if he were wearing thick gloves.
 These men were cadets in the Manchukuo Army officer candidate school, said the
lieutenant. They refused to participate in the defense of Hsin-ching. They killed two of their
Japanese instructors last night and tried to run away. We caught them during night patrol,
killed four of them on the spot and captured the other four. Two more escaped in the dark. 
The lieutenant rubbed his beard with the palm of his hand. They were trying to make their
getaway in baseball uniforms. I guess they figured theyd be arrested as deserters if they wore
their military uniforms. Or maybe they were afraid of what communist troops would do to
them if they were caught in their Manchukuo uniforms. Anyway, all they had in their barracks
to wear besides their cadet outfits were uniforms of the officer candidate school baseball
team. So they tore off the names and tried to get away wearing these. I dont know if you
know, but the school had a great team. They used to go to Taiwan and Korea for friendship
games. That guy -and here the lieutenant motioned toward the man tied to the tree- was
captain of the team and batted cleanup. We think he was the one who organized the getaway.
He killed the two instructors with a bat. The instructors knew there was trouble in the barracks
and werent going to distribute weapons to the cadets until it was an absolute emergency. But
they forgot about the baseball bats. Both of them had their skulls cracked open. They probably
died instantly. Two perfect home runs. This is the bat. 
The lieutenant had the corporal bring the bat to him. He passed the bat to the veterinarian.
The doctor took it in both hands and held it up in front of his face the way a player does when
stepping into the batters box. It was just an ordinary bat, not very well made, with a rough
finish and an uneven grain. It was heavy, though, and well broken in. The handle was black
with sweat. It didnt look like a bat that had been used recently to kill two human beings.
After getting a feel for its weight, the veterinarian handed it back to the lieutenant, who gave
it a few easy swings, handling it like an expert.
 Do you play baseball? the lieutenant asked the veterinarian.
 All the time when I was a kid. 
 Too grown up now? 
 No more baseball for me, the veterinarian said, and he was on the verge of asking,
 How about you, Lieutenant? when he swallowed the words.
 Ive been ordered to beat this guy to death with the same bat he used, the lieutenant said
in a dry voice as he tapped the ground with the tip of the bat. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth. Just between you and me, I think the order stinks. What the hell good is it going to do
to kill these guys? We dont have any planes left, we dont have any warships, our best troops
are dead. Some kind of special new bomb wiped out the whole city of Hiroshima in a split
second. Were either going to be swept out of Manchuria or well all be killed, and China will
belong to the Chinese again. Weve already killed a lot of Chinese, and adding a few bodies to
the count isnt going to make any difference. But orders are orders. Im a soldier, and I have
to follow orders. We killed the tigers and leopards yesterday, and today we have to kill these
guys. So take a good look, Doctor. This is another way for people to die. Youre a doctor, so
youre probably used to knives and blood and guts, but youve probably never seen anyone
beaten to death with a baseball bat. 
The lieutenant ordered the corporal to bring player number , the cleanup batter, to the
edge of the hole. Once again they tied his hands behind his back, then they blindfolded him
and had him kneel down on the ground. He was a tall, strongly built young man with massive
arms the size of most peoples thighs. The lieutenant called over one young soldier and
handed him the bat. Kill him with this, he said. The young soldier stood at attention and
saluted before taking the bat, but having taken it in his hands, he just went on standing there,
as if stupefied. He seemed unable to grasp the concept of beating a Chinese man to death with 
a baseball bat.
 Have you ever played baseball? the lieutenant asked the young soldier (the one who
would eventually have his skull split open with a shovel by a Soviet guard in a mine near
Irkutsk).
 No, sir, never, replied the soldier, in a loud voice. Both the village in Hokkaido where
he was born and the village in Manchuria where he grew up had been so poor that no family
in either place could have afforded the luxury of a baseball or a bat. He had spent his boyhood
running around the fields, catching dragonflies and playing at sword fighting with sticks. He
had never in his life played baseball or even seen a game. This was the first time he had ever
held a bat.
The lieutenant showed him how to hold the bat and taught him the basics of the swing,
demonstrating himself a few times. See? Its all in the hips, he grunted through clenched
teeth. Starting from the back-swing, you twist from the waist down. The tip of the bat
follows through naturally. Understand? If you concentrate too much on swinging the bat, your
arms do all the work and you lose power. Swing from the hips. 
The soldier didnt seem fully to comprehend the lieutenants instructions, but he took off
his heavy gear as ordered and practiced his swing for a while. Everyone was watching him.
The lieutenant placed his hands over the soldiers to help him adjust his grip. He was a good
teacher. Before long, the soldiers swing, though somewhat awkward, was swishing through
the air. What the young soldier lacked in skill he made up for in muscle power, having spent
his days working on the farm.
 Thats good enough, said the lieutenant, using his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow.
 OK, now, try to do it in one good, clean swing. Dont let him suffer. 
What he really wanted to say was, I dont want to do this any more than you do. Who the
hell could have thought of anything so stupid? Killing a guy with a baseball bat... But an
officer could never say such a thing to an enlisted man.
The soldier stepped up behind the blindfolded Chinese man where he knelt on the ground.
When the soldier raised the bat, the strong rays of the setting sun cast the bats long, thick
shadow on the earth. This is so weird, thought the veterinarian. The lieutenant was right: Ive
never seen a man killed with a baseball bat. The young soldier held the bat aloft for a long
time. The doctor saw its tip shaking.
The lieutenant nodded to the soldier. With a deep breath, the soldier took a backswing,
then smashed the bat with all his strength into the back of the Chinese cadets head. He did it
amazingly well. He swung his hips exactly as the lieutenant had taught him to, the brand of
the bat made a direct hit behind the mans ear, and the bat followed through perfectly. There
was a dull crushing sound as the skull shattered. The man himself made no sound. His body
hung in the air for a moment in a strange pose, then flopped forward. He lay with his cheek on
the ground, blood flowing from one ear. He did not move. The lieutenant looked at his watch.
Still gripping the bat, the young soldier stared off into space, his mouth agape.
The lieutenant was a person who did things with great care. He waited for a full minute.
When he was certain that the young Chinese man was not moving at all, he said to the
veterinarian, Could you do me a favor and check to see that hes really dead? 
The veterinarian nodded, walked over to where the young Chinese lay, knelt down, and
removed his blindfold. The mans eyes were open wide, the pupils turned upward, and brightred
blood was flowing from his ear. His half-opened mouth revealed the tongue lying tangled
inside. The impact had left his neck twisted at a strange angle. The mans nostrils had
expelled thick gobs of blood, making black stains on the dry ground. One particularly alertand
large-fly had already burrowed its way into a nostril to lay eggs. Just to make sure, the
veterinarian took the mans wrist and felt for a pulse. There was no pulse-certainly not where
there was supposed to be one. The young soldier had ended this burly mans life with a single
swing of a bat-indeed, his first-ever swing of a bat. The veterinarian glanced toward the 
lieutenant and nodded to signal that the man was, without a doubt, dead. Having completed
his assigned task, he was beginning slowly to rise to his full height, when it seemed to him
that the sun shining on his back suddenly increased in intensity.
At that very moment, the young Chinese batter in uniform number rose up into a sitting
position, as if he had just come fully awake. Without the slightest uncertainty or hesitation-or
so it seemed to those watching-he grabbed the doctors wrist. It all happened in a split second.
The veterinarian could not understand: this man was dead, he was sure of it. But now, thanks
to one last drop of life that seemed to well up from nowhere, the man was gripping the
doctors wrist with the strength of a steel vise. Eyelids stretched open to the limit, pupils still
glaring upward, the man fell forward into the hole, dragging the doctor in after him. The
doctor fell in on top of him and heard one of the mans ribs crack as his weight came down.
Still the Chinese ballplayer continued to grip his wrist. The soldiers saw all this happening,
but they were too stunned to do anything more than stand and watch. The lieutenant recovered
first and leaped into the hole. He drew his pistol from his holster, set the muzzle against the
Chinese mans head, and pulled the trigger twice. Two sharp, overlapping cracks rang out,
and a large black hole opened in the mans temple. Now his life was completely gone, but still
he refused to release the doctors wrist. The lieutenant knelt down and, pistol in one hand,
began the painstaking process of prying open the corpses fingers one at a time. The
veterinarian lay there in the hole, surrounded by eight silent Chinese corpses in baseball
uniforms. Down in the hole, the screeching of cicadas sounded very different from the way it
sounded aboveground.
Once the veterinarian had been freed from the dead mans grasp, the soldiers pulled him
and the lieutenant out of the grave. The veterinarian squatted down on the grass and took
several deep breaths. Then he looked at his wrist. The mans fingers had left five bright-red
marks. On this hot August afternoon, the veterinarian felt chilled to the core of his body. Ill
never get rid of this coldness, he thought. That man was truly, seriously, trying to take me
with him wherever he was going.
The lieutenant reset the pistols safety and carefully slipped the gun into its holster. This
was the first time he had ever fired a gun at a human being. But he tried not to think about it.
The war would continue for a little while at least, and people would continue to die. He could
leave the deep thinking for later. He wiped his sweaty right palm on his pants, then ordered
the soldiers who had not participated in the execution to fill in the hole. A huge swarm of flies
had already taken custody of the pile of corpses.
The young soldier went on standing where he was, stupefied, gripping the bat. He
couldnt seem to make his hands let go. The lieutenant and the corporal left him alone. He had
seemed to be watching the whole bizarre series of events-the dead Chinese suddenly
grabbing the veterinarian by the wrist, their falling into the grave, the lieutenants leaping in
and finishing him off, and now the other soldiers filling in the hole. But in fact, he had not
been watching any of it. He had been listening to the wind-up bird. As it had been the
previous afternoon, the bird was in a tree somewhere, making that creeeak, creeeak sound as
if winding a spring. The soldier looked up, trying to pinpoint the direction of the cries, but he
could see no sign of the bird. He felt a slight sense of nausea at the back of his throat, though
nothing as violent as yesterdays.
As he listened to the winding of the spring, the young soldier saw one fragmentary image
after another rise up before him and fade away. After they were disarmed by the Soviets, the
young paymaster lieutenant would be handed over to the Chinese and hanged for his
responsibility in these executions. The corporal would die of the plague in a Siberian concentration
camp: he would be thrown into a quarantine shed and left there until dead, though
in fact he had merely collapsed from malnutrition and had not contracted the plague-not, at
least, until he was thrown into the shed. The veterinarian with the mark on his face would die
in an accident a year later. A civilian, he would be taken by the Soviets for cooperating with 
the military and sent to another Siberian camp to do hard labor. He would be working in a
deep shaft of a Siberian coal mine when a flood would drown him, along with many soldiers.
And I..., thought the young soldier with the bat in his hands, but he could not see his own
future. He could not even see the events that were transpiring before his very eyes. He now
closed his eyes and listened to the call of the wind-up bird.
Then, all at once, he thought of the ocean-the ocean he had seen from the deck of the ship
that brought him from Japan to Manchuria. He had never seen the ocean before, nor had he
seen it since. That had happened eight years ago. He could still remember the smell of the salt
air. The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life- bigger and deeper
than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to
time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it
brought his heart peace and comfort. Would he ever see it again? He loosened his grip and let
the bat fall to the ground. It made a dry sound as it struck the earth. After the bat left his
hands, he felt a slight increase in his nausea.
The wind-up bird went on crying, but no one else could hear its call.
•
Here ended The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #. 
 
Cinnamons Missing Links
 
Here ended The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle #. 
•
I exited the document to the original menu and clicked on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
#. I wanted to read the continuation of the story. But instead of a new document, I saw this
message:
Access denied to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle # based on
Code R.
Choose another document.
I chose # , but with the same results.
Access denied to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle # based on
Code R.
Choose another document.
The same thing happened with # -and with all the other documents, including #. I had
no idea what this Code R was, but it was obviously blocking access to everything now.
At the moment I had opened The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle # , I probably could have had
access to any one of them, but # having been opened and closed, the doors were locked to all
of them now. Maybe this program did not permit access to more than one document at a time.
I sat in front of the computer, wondering what to do next. But there was nothing I could 
do next. This was a precisely articulated world, which had been conceived in Cinnamons
mind and which functioned according to his principles. I did not know the rules of the game. I
gave up trying and shut down the computer.
•
Without a doubt, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle # was a story told by Cinnamon. He
had put sixteen stories into the computer under the title The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and it
just so happened that I had chosen and read #. Judging from the length of the one story,
sixteen such stories would have made a fairly thick book if set in type.
What could # signify? The word chronicle in the title probably meant that the stories
were related in chronological order, # following # , # following # , and so on. That was a
reasonable assumption, if not necessarily true. They could just as well have been arranged in a
different order. They might even run backward, from the present to the past. A bolder
hypothesis might make them sixteen different versions of the same story told in parallel. In
any case, the one I had chosen was a sequel to the story that Cinnamons mother, Nutmeg,
had told me about soldiers killing animals in the Hsin-ching zoo in August. It was set in
the same zoo on the following day, and again the central character was Nutmegs father,
Cinnamons grandfather, the nameless veterinarian.
I had no way of telling how much of the story was true. Was every bit of it Cinnamons
creation, or were parts of it based on actual events? Nutmeg had told me that absolutely
nothing was known about what happened to her father after she saw him last. Which meant
that the story could not be entirely true. Still, it was conceivable that some of the details were
based on historical fact. It was possible that during such a time of chaos, a number of cadets
from the Manchukuo Army officer candidate school were executed and buried in a hole in the
Hsin-ching zoo and that the Japanese officer in charge of the operation had been executed
after the war. Incidents of desertion and rebellion by Manchukuo Army troops were by no
means rare at the time, and although it was rather strange to have the murdered Chinese cadets
dressed in baseball uniforms, this could have happened as well. Knowing such facts,
Cinnamon might have combined them with the image he had of his grandfather and made up
ftis own story.
But why, finally, had Cinnamon written such stories? And why stories? Why not some
other form? And why had he found it necessary to use the word chronicle in the title? I
thought about these things while seated on the fitting room sofa, turning a colored design
pencil over and over in my hand.
I probably would have had to read all sixteen stories to find the answers to my questions,
but even after a single reading of # , I had some idea, however vague, of what Cinnamon was
looking for in his writing. He was engaged in a serious search for the meaning of his own
existence. And he was hoping to find it by looking into the events that had preceded his birth.
To do that, Cinnamon had to fill in those blank spots in the past that he could not reach
with his own hands. By using those hands to make a story, he was trying to supply the
missing links. From the stories he had heard repeatedly from his mother, he derived further
stories in an attempt to re-create the enigmatic figure of his grandfather in a new setting. He
inherited from his mothers stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own
stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual. The
question of which parts of a story were factual and which parts were not was probably not a
very important one for Cinnamon. The important question for Cinnamon was not what his
grandfather did but what his grandfather might have done. He learned the answer to this
question as soon as he succeeded in telling the story.
His stories used wind-up bird as a key phrase, and they almost certainly brought the
narrative up to the present day in the form of a chronicle (or perhaps not in the form of a 
chronicle). But wind-up bird was not a term invented by Cinnamon. It was a phrase spoken
unconsciously by his mother, Nutmeg, in a story she told me in the Aoyama restaurant where
we ate together. Nutmeg almost certainly did not know at that time that I had been given the
name Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Which meant that I was connected with their story through some
chance conjunction.
I could not be certain of this, however. Nutmeg might possibly have known that I was
called wind-up bird. The words might have affected her story (or, rather, their story), might
have eaten their way into it on an unconscious level. This story jointly possessed by mother
and son might not exist in a single fixed form but could go on taking in changes and growing
as a story does in oral transmission.
Whether by chance conjunction or not, the wind-up bird was a powerful presence in
Cinnamons story. The cry of this bird was audible only to certain special people, who were
guided by it toward inescapable ruin. The will of human beings meant nothing, then, as the
veterinarian always seemed to feel. People were no more than dolls set on tabletops, the
springs in their backs wound up tight, dolls set to move in ways they could not choose,
moving in directions they could not choose. Nearly all within range of the wind-up birds cry
were ruined, lost. Most of them died, plunging over the edge of the table.
•
Cinnamon had almost certainly monitored my conversation with Kumiko. He probably
knew everything that went on in this computer. He had probably waited until I had finished
before presenting me with the story of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This had clearly not
happened by chance or a sudden whim. Cinnamon had run the machine with a definite
purpose in mind and shown me one story. He had also made sure I knew that there might
possibly exist a whole, huge cluster of stories.
I lay down on the sofa and looked at the ceiling of the fitting room in the half-dark. The
night was deep and heavy, the area almost painfully quiet. The white ceiling looked like a
thick white cap of ice that had been set on top of the room.
Cinnamons grandfather, the nameless veterinarian, and I had a number of unusual things
in common-a mark on the face, a baseball bat, the cry of the wind-up bird. And then there was
the lieutenant who appeared in Cinnamons story: he reminded me of Lieutenant Mamiya.
Lieutenant Mamiya had also been assigned to Kwantung Army Headquarters in Hsin-ching at
that time. The real Lieutenant Mamiya, however, was not a paymaster officer but belonged to
the mapmaking corps, and after the war he was not hanged (fate had denied him death at all)
but rather returned to Japan, having lost his left hand in battle. Still, I could not shake off the
impression that the officer who had directed the executions of the Chinese cadets had really
been Lieutenant Mamiya. At least if it had been Lieutenant Mamiya, that would not have been
the least bit strange.
Then there was the problem of the baseball bats. Cinnamon knew that I kept a bat in the
bottom of the well. Which meant that the image of the bat could have eaten its way into his
story the same way the words wind-up bird chronicle could have. Even if this was true,
however, there was still something about the bat that could not be explained so simply: the
man with the guitar case who attacked me with the bat in the entryway of the abandoned
apartment house. This was the man who had made a show of burning the palm of his hand in
a candle flame in a bar in Sapporo and who later hit me with the bat, only to have me beat him
with it. He was the one who had surrendered the bat to me.
And finally, why did I have burned into my face a mark the same color and shape as that
of Cinnamons grandfather? Was this, too, something that came up in their story as a result of
my presence having eaten its way into it? Did the actual veterinarian not have a mark on his
face? Nutmeg certainly had no need to make up such a thing in describing her father to me. 
The very thing that had led her to find me on the streets of Shinjuku was this mark that we
possessed in common. Everything was intertwined, with the complexity of a threedimensional
puzzle-a puzzle in which truth was not necessarily fact and fact not necessarily
truth.
•
I stood up from the sofa and went to Cinnamons small office once again. There I sat at
the desk, elbows resting on the table, and stared at the computer screen. Cinnamon was
probably inside there. In there, his silent words lived and breathed as stories. They could
think and seek and grow and give off heat. But the screen before me remained as deep in
death as the moon, hiding Cinnamons words in a labyrinthine forest. Neither the monitors
screen nor Cinnamon himself, behind it, tried to tell me any more than I had already been
told.
 
You Just Cant Trust a House
(May Kasaharas Point of View: )
 
How are you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird?
I said at the end of my last letter that I had said just about everything I wanted to say to
you- pretty much as if that were going to be it. Remember? I did some more thinking after
that, though, and I started to get the feeling that I ought to write a little more. So here I am,
creeping around in the middle of the night like a cockroach, sitting at my desk and writing to
you again.
I dont know why, but I think about the Miyawaki family a lot these days- the poor
Miyawakis who used to live in that vacant house, and then the bill collectors came after them,
and they all went off and killed themselves. Im pretty sure I saw something about how only
the eldest daughter didnt die and now nobody knows where she is.... Whether Im working, or
in the dining hall, or in my room listening to music and reading a book, the image of that
family pops into my head. Not that Im haunted by it or anything, but whenever theres an
opening (and my head has lots of openings!) it comes creeping in and sticks around for a
while, the way smoke from a bonfire can come in through the window. Its been happening all
the time this past week or so.
I lived in our house on the alley from the time I was born, and I grew up looking at the
house on the other side. My window looks right at it. They gave me my own room when I
started primary school. By then, the Miyawakis had already built their new house and were
living in it. I could always see some member of the family in the house or yard, tons of clothes
drying out back on nice days, the two girls there, yelling out the name of their big, black
German shepherd (what was his name?). And when the sun went down, the lights would come
on inside the house, looking warm and cozy, and then later the lights would go out one at a
time. The older girl took piano lessons, the younger one violin (the older one was older than 
me, the younger one younger). Theyd have, like, parties and things on birthdays and
Christmas, and lots of friends would come over, and it was happy and lively there. People
who have seen the place only when it was a vacant ruin couldnt imagine what it was like
before.
I used to see Mr. Miyawaki pruning trees and things on weekends. He seemed to enjoy
doing all kinds of chores himself, things that took time, like cleaning the gutters or walking
the dog or waxing his car. Ill never understand why some people enjoy those things, theyre
such a pain, but everybodys different, I guess, and I suppose every family ought to have at
least one person like that. The whole family used to ski, so every winter theyd strap their skis
to the roof of this big car and go off somewhere, looking like they were going to have the
greatest time (I hate skiing myself, but anyhow).
This makes them sound like a typical, ordinary happy family, I suppose, but thats really
just what they were: a typical, ordinary happy family. There was absolutely nothing about
them that would make you raise your eyebrows and say, Yeah, OK, but how about that? 
People in the neighborhood used to whisper, I wouldnt live in a creepy place like that if
you gave it to me free, but the Miyawakis lived such a peaceful life there, it could have been
a picture in a frame without a speck of dust on it. They were the ones in the fairy tale who got
to live happily ever after. At least compared to my family, they seemed to be living ten
times as happily ever after. And the two girls seemed really nice whenever I met them outside.
I used to wish that I had sisters like them. The whole family always seemed to be laughingincluding
the dog.
I could never have imagined that you could blink one day and all of this would be gone.
But thats just what happened. One day I noticed that the whole family- the German shepherd
with them-had disappeared as if a gust of wind had just blown them away, leaving only the
house behind. For a while-maybe a week-no one in the neighborhood noticed that the
Miyawakis had disappeared. It did cross my mind at first that it was strange the lights werent
going on at night, but I figured they must be off on one of their family trips. Then my mother
heard people saying that the Miyawakis seemed to have absconded. I remember asking her
to explain to me what the word meant. Nowadays we just say run away, I guess.
Whatever you call it, once the people who lived there had disappeared, the whole look of
the house changed. It was almost creepy. I had never seen a vacant house before, so I didnt
know what an ordinary vacant house looked like, but I guess I figured it would have a sad,
beaten sort of look, like an abandoned dog or a cicadas cast-off shell. The Miyawakis house,
though, was nothing like that. It didnt look beaten at all. The minute the Miyawakis left, it
got this know-nothing look on its face, like, I never heard of anybody called Miyawaki. At
least thats how it looked to me. It was like some stupid, ungrateful dog. As soon as they were
gone, it turned into this totally self-sufficient vacant house that had nothing at all to do with
the Miyawaki familys happiness. It really made me mad! I mean, the house must have been
just as happy as the rest of the family when the Miyawakis were there. Im sure it enjoyed
being cleaned so nicely and taken care of, and it wouldnt have existed at all if Mr. Miyawaki
hadnt been nice enough to build it in the first place. Dont you agree? You just cant trust a
house.
You know as well as I do what the place was like after that, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. The house
was abandoned, with no one to live in it, and all smeared with bird shit and stuff. That was all
I had to look at from my window for years when I was at my desk, studying-or pretending to
be studying. On clear days, rainy days, snowy days, or in typhoons, it was right there, outside
my window, so I couldnt help but see it when I looked out. And strangely enough, as the
years went by, I tried less and less not to notice it. I could-and often did-spend whole half
hours at a time with my elbow on my desk, doing nothing but look at that vacant house. I
dont know-not very long ago the place had been overflowing with laughter, and clean white
clothes had been flapping in the wind like in a commercial for laundry detergent (I wouldnt 
say Mrs. Miyawaki was abnormal or anything, but she liked to do laundry-way more than
most ordinary people). All of that was gone in a flash, the yard was covered with weeds, and
there was nobody left to remember the happy days of the Miyawaki family. To me that seemed
sooo strange!
Let me just say this: I wasnt especially friendly with the Miyawaki family. In fact, I hardly
ever talked to any of them, except to say Hi on the street. But because I spent so much time
and energy watching them from my window every day, I felt as if the familys happy doings
had become a part of me. You know how in the corner of a family photo therell be a glimpse
of this person who has nothing to do with them. So sometimes I get this feeling like part of me
 absconded with the Miyawakis and just disappeared. I guess thats pretty weird, huh, to
feel like part of you is gone because it absconded with people you hardly know?
As long as Ive started telling you one weird thing, I might as well tell you another one.
Now, this one is really weird!
Lately, I sometimes feel like I have turned into Kumiko. I am actually Mrs. Wind-Up Bird,
and Ive run away from you for some reason and Im hiding here in the mountains, working in
a wig factory. For all kinds of complicated reasons, I have to use the name May Kasahara 
as an alias and wear this mask and pretend Im not Kumiko. And youre just sitting there on
that sad little veranda of yours, waiting for me to come back. I dont know-I really feel like
that.
Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, do you ever get obsessed with these delusions? Not to boast
or anything, but I do. All the time. Sometimes, when theyre really bad, Ill spend the whole
workday wrapped up in a cloud of delusion. Of course, Im just performing these simple
operations, so it doesnt get in the way of my work, but the other girls sometimes give me
strange looks. Or maybe I say crazy things to myself out loud. I hate that, but it doesnt do
any good to try and fight it. When a delusion wants to come, it comes, like a period. And you
cant just meet it at the front door and say, Sorry, Im busy today, try me later. Anyway, I
hope it doesnt bother you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, that I sometimes pretend Im Kumiko. I mean,
Im not doing it on purpose.
Im getting really really really tired. Im going to go to sleep now for three or four hours-I
mean out cold-then get up and work hard from morning to night. Ill put in a good day
making wigs with the other girls, listening to some kind of harmless music. Please dont
worry about me. Im good at doing all kinds of things even when Im in the middle of a
delusion. And in my own way, Im saying little prayers for you, hoping that everything works
out for you, that Kumiko comes back and you can have your quiet, happy life again.
Goodbye.
 
A Vacant House Is Born
 
Nine oclock, then ten oclock, arrived the next morning, with no sign of Cinnamon. 
Nothing like this had ever happened before.. He had never missed a single day, from the time
I started working in this place. At exactly nine oclock each morning, the gate would open
and the bright glare of the Mercedess hood ornament would appear. This simultaneously
mundane and theatrical appearance of Cinnamon would mark the clear beginning of each day
for me. I had become accustomed to this fixed daily routine the way people become
accustomed to gravity or barometric pressure. There was a kind of warmth to Cinnamons
punctilious regularity, something beyond mere mechanical predictability, something that gave
me comfort and encouragement. Which is why a morning without Cinnamons appearance
was like a well-executed landscape painting that lacked a focal point.
I gave up waiting for him, left the window, and peeled myself an apple as a substitute for
breakfast. Then I peeked into Cinnamons room to see if there might be any messages on the
computer, but the screen was as dead as ever. All I could do at that point was follow
Cinnamons example and listen to a tape of Baroque music while doing laundry, vacuuming
the floors, and cleaning windows. To kill time, I purposely performed each function slowly
and carefully, going so far as to clean the blades of the kitchen exhaust fan, but still the time
refused to move.
I ran out of things to do by eleven oclock, so I stretched out on the fitting room sofa and
gave myself up to the languid flow of time. I tried to tell myself that Cinnamon had been
delayed by some minor matter. Maybe the car had broken down, or he had been caught in an
incredible traffic jam. But I knew that couldnt be true. I would have bet all I had on it.
Cinnamons car would never break down, and he always took the possibility of traffic jams
into account. Plus, he had the car phone to call me on in case of an unforeseen emergency in
traffic. No, Cinnamon was not here because he had decided not to come here.
•
I tried calling Nutmegs Akasaka office just before one, but there was no answer. I tried
again and again, with the same results. Then I tried Ushikawas office but got only a message
that the number had been disconnected. This was strange. I had called him at that number just
two days earlier. I gave up and went back to the fitting room sofa again. All of a sudden in the
last two days there seemed to be a conspiracy against contact with me.
I went back to the window and peeked outside through the curtain. Two energetic-looking
little winter birds had come to the yard and were perched on a branch, glancing wide-eyed at
the area. Then, as if they had suddenly become fed up with everything there, they flew off.
Nothing else seemed to be moving. The Residence felt like a brand-new vacant house.
•
I did not go back there for the next five days. For some reason, I seemed to have lost any
desire to go down into the well. I would be losing the well itself before long. The longest I
could afford to keep the Residence going without clients was two months, so I ought to be
using the well as much as possible while it was still mine. I felt stifled. All of a sudden, the
place seemed wrong and unnatural.
I walked around aimlessly without going to the Residence. In the afternoons I would go to
the Shinjuku west exit plaza and sit on my usual bench, killing time doing nothing in
particular, but Nutmeg never appeared before me there. I went to her Akasaka office once,
rang the bell by the elevator and stared into the closed circuit camera, but no reply ever came.
I was ready to give up. Nutmeg and Cinnamon had obviously decided to cut all ties with me.
This strange mother and son had deserted the sinking ship for someplace safer. The intensity
of the sorrow this aroused in me took me by surprise. I felt as if I had been betrayed in the end
by my own family. 
 
Malta Kanos Tail
 
Boris the Manskinner
In my dream (though I didnt know it was a dream), I was seated across the table from
Malta Kano, drinking tea. The rectangular room was too long and wide to see from end to
end, and arranged in it in perfectly straight lines were five hundred or more square tables. We
sat at one of the tables in the middle, the only people there. Across the ceiling, as high as that
of a Buddhist temple, stretched countless heavy beams, from all points of which there hung,
like potted plants, objects that appeared to be toupees. A closer look showed me that they
were actual human scalps. I could tell from the black blood on their undersides. They were
newly taken scalps that had been hung from the beams to dry. I was afraid that the still-fresh
blood might drip into our tea. Blood was dripping all around us like raindrops, the sound
reverberating in the cavernous room. Only the scalps hanging above our table seemed to have
dried enough so that there was no sign of blood dripping down from them.
The tea was boiling hot. Placed beside the teaspoons in each of our saucers were three
lurid green lumps of sugar. Malta Kano dropped two of the lumps into her tea and stirred, but
they would not melt. A dog appeared from nowhere and sat down beside our table. Its face
was that of Ushikawa. It was a big dog, with a chunky black body, but from the neck up it
was Ushikawa, only the shaggy black fur that covered the body also grew on the face and
head. Well, well, if it isnt Mr. Okada, said the dog-shaped Ushikawa. And will you look
at this: a full head of hair. It grew there the second I turned into a dog. Amazing. Ive got
much bigger balls now than I used to have, and my stomach doesnt hurt anymore. And look:
No glasses! No clothes! Im so happy! I cant believe I didnt think of this before. If only I
had become a dog a long time ago! How about you, Mr. Okada? Why dont you give it a try? 
Malta Kano picked up her one remaining green sugar lump and hurled it at the dog. The
lump thudded into Ushikawas forehead and drew ink-black blood that ran down Ushikawas
face. This seemed to cause Ushikawa no pain. Still smiling, without a word, he raised his tail
and strode away. It was true: his testicles were grotesquely huge.
Malta Kano was wearing a trench coat. The lapels were closed tightly across the front, but
from the subtle fragrance of a womans naked flesh I could tell she was wearing nothing
underneath. She had her red vinyl hat on, of course. I lifted my cup and took a sip of tea, but it
had no taste. It was hot, nothing more.
 I am so glad you could come, said Malta Kano, sounding genuinely relieved. Hearing it
for the first time in quite a while, I thought her voice seemed somewhat brighter than it had
before. I was calling you for days, but you always seemed to be out. I was beginning to
worry that something might have happened to you. Thank goodness you are all right. What a
relief it was to hear your voice! In any case, I must apologize for having been out of touch so
long. I cant go into detail on everything that has occurred in my life in the meantime,
especially on the phone like this, so I will just summarize the important points. The main 
thing is that I have been traveling all this time. I came back a week ago. Mr. Okada? Mr.
Okada? Can you hear me? 
 Yes, I can hear you, I said, suddenly realizing that I was holding a phone to my ear.
Malta Kano, on her side of the table, was also holding a receiver. Her voice sounded as if it
were coming through a bad connection on an international call.
 I was away from Japan the whole time, on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean. All
of a sudden one day, the thought crossed my mind, ‘Oh, yes! I must return to Malta and bring
myself near its water. The time for that has come! This happened just after I last talked to
you, Mr. Okada. Do you remember that conversation? I was looking for Creta at the time. In
any case, I really did not mean to be away from Japan so long. I was planning on two weeks
or so. Which is why I did not contact you.
I told hardly anyone I was going, just boarded the plane with little more than the clothes I
was wearing. Once I arrived, however, I found myself unable to leave. Have you ever been to
Malta, Mr. Okada? 
I said that I had not. I remembered having had virtually the same conversation with this
same person some years before.
 Mr. Okada? Mr. Okada? 
 Yes, Im still here, I said.
It seemed to me there was something I had to tell Malta Kano, but I could not remember
what it was. It finally came back to me after I cocked my head and thought about it for a
while. I switched hands on the receiver and said, Oh, yes, theres something Ive been
meaning to call you about for a long time. The cat came back. 
After four or five seconds of silence, Malta Kano said, The cat came back? 
 Yes. Cat hunting was more or less what brought us together originally, so I thought Id
better let you know. 
 When did the cat come back? 
 Early this spring. Its been with me ever since. 
 Is there anything different about its appearance? Anything that has changed since before
it disappeared? 
Changed?
 Come to think of it, I kind of had the feeling that the shape of the tail was a little
different, I said. When I petted the cat the day it came back, it seemed to me the tail used to
have more of a bend in it. I could be wrong, though. I mean, it was gone close to a year. 
 You are sure it is the same cat? 
 Absolutely sure. I had that cat for a very long time. Id know if it was the same one or
not. 
 I see, said Malta Kano. To tell you the truth, though, I am sorry, but I have the cats
real tail right here. 
Malta Kano put the receiver down on the table, then she stood and stripped off her coat.
As I had suspected, she was wearing nothing underneath. The size of her breasts and the
shape of her pubic hair were much the same as Creta Kanos. She did not remove her red
vinyl hat. She turned and showed her back to me.. There, to be sure, attached above her
buttocks, was a cats tail. Proportioned to her body, it was much larger than the original, but
its shape was the same as Mackerels tail. It had the same sharp bend at the tip, but this one
was far more convincingly real than Mackerels.
 Please take a close look, said Malta Kano. This is the actual tail of the cat that
disappeared. The one the cat has now is an imitation. It may look the same, but if you
examine it closely, you will find that it is different. 
I reached out to touch her tail, but she whipped it away from my hand. Then, still naked,
she jumped up onto one of the tables. Into my extended palm fell a drop of blood from the
ceiling. It was the same intense red as Malta Kanos vinyl hat. 
 Creta Kanos babys name is Corsica, Mr. Okada, said Malta Kano from atop her table,
her tail twitching sharply.
 Corsica? 
 ‘No man is an island. That Corsica, piped up the black dog, Ushikawa, from
somewhere.
 Kanos baby?
I woke up, soaked in sweat.
•
It had been a very long time since I last had a dream so long and vivid and unified. And
strange. My heart went on pounding audibly for a while after I woke up. I took a hot shower
and changed into fresh pajamas. The time was something after one in the morning, but I no
longer felt sleepy. To calm myself, I took an old bottle of brandy from the back of the kitchen
cabinet, poured a glass, and drank it down.
Then I went to the bedroom to look for Mackerel. The cat was curled up under the quilt,
sound asleep. I peeled back the quilt and took the cats tail in my hand to study its shape. I ran
my fingers over it, trying to recall the exact angle of the bent tip, when the cat gave an
annoyed stretch and went back to sleep. I could no longer say for sure that this was the same
exact tail the cat had had when it was called Noboru Wataya. Somehow, the tail on Malta
Kanos bottom seemed far more like the real Noboru Wataya cats tail. I could still vividly
recall its shape and color in the dream.
 Kanos babys name is Corsica, Malta Kano had said in my dream.
•
I did not stray far from the house the next day. In the morning, I stocked up on food at the
supermarket by the station and made myself lunch. I fed the cat some large fresh sardines. In
the afternoon, I took a long-delayed swim in the ward pool. Not many people were there.
They were probably busy with New Years preparations. The ceiling speakers were playing
Christmas music. I had swum a leisurely thousand meters, when I got a cramp in my instep
and decided to quit. The wall over the pool had a large Christmas ornament.
At home, I was surprised to find a letter in the mailbox-a thick one. I knew who had sent it
without having to look at the return address. The only person who wrote to me in such a fine
hand with an old-fashioned writing brush was Lieutenant Mamiya.
His letter opened with profuse apologies for his having allowed so much time to go by
since his last letter. He expressed himself with such extreme politeness that I almost felt I was
the one who ought to apologize.
I have been wanting to tell you another part of my story and have thought for months
about writing to you, but many things have come up to prevent me from sitting at my desk and
taking pen in hand. Now, almost before I realized it, the year has nearly run its course. I am
growing old, however, and could die at any moment. I cant postpone the task indefinitely.
This letter might be a long one- not too long for you, I hope, Mr. Okada.
When I delivered Mr. Hondos memento to you last summer, I told you a long story about
my time in Mongolia, but in fact there is even more to tell- a sequel, as it were. There were
several reasons for my not having included this part when I told you my story last year. First
of all, it would have made the tale too long if I had related it in its entirety. You may recall
that I had some pressing business, and there simply wasnt time for me to tell you everything.
Perhaps more important, I was still not emotionally prepared then to tell the rest of my story
to anyone, to relate it fully and honestly.
After I left you, however, I realized that I should not have allowed practical matters to
stand in the way. I should have told you everything to the very end without concealment.
I took a machine gun bullet during the fierce battle of August , , on the outskirts of
Hailar, and as I lay on the ground I lost my left hand under the treads of a Soviet T tank.
They transferred me, unconscious, to the Soviet military hospital in Chita, where the surgeons
managed to save my life. As I mentioned before, I had been attached to the Military Survey
Corps of the Kwantung Army General Staff in Hsin-ching, which had been slated to withdraw
to the rear as soon as the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Determined to die, however, I
had had myself transferred to the Hailar unit, near the border, where I offered myself up as a
human bullet, attacking a Soviet tank with a land mine in my arms. As Mr. Honda had
prophesied on the banks of the Khalkha River, though, I was not able to die so easily. I lost
only my hand, not my life. All the men under my command, I believe, were killed, however.
We may have been acting under orders, but it was a stupid, suicidal attack. Our little portable
mines couldnt have done a thing to a huge T.
The only reason the Soviet Army took such good care of me was that, as I lay delirious, I
said something in Russian. Or so they told me afterward. I had studied basic Russian, as I
have mentioned to you, and my post in the Hsin-ching General Staff Office gave me so much
spare time, I used it to polish what I knew. I worked hard, so that by the time the war was
winding down, I could carry on a fluent conversation in Russian. Many White Russians lived
in Hsin-ching, and I knew a few Russian waitresses, so I was never at a loss for people to
practice on. My Russian seems to have slipped out quite naturally while I was unconscious.
The Soviet Army was planning from the outset to send to Siberia any Japanese prisoners
of war they took in occupying Manchuria, to use them as forced laborers as they had done
with German soldiers after the fighting ended in Europe. The Soviets may have been on the
winning side, but their economy was in a critical state after the long war, and the shortage of
workers was a problem everywhere. Securing an adult male workforce in the form of
prisoners of war was one of their top priorities. For this, they would need interpreters, and
the number of these was severely limited. When they saw that I seemed to be able to speak
Russian, they shipped me to the hospital in Chita instead of letting me die. If I hadnt babbled
something in Russian, I would have been left out there to die on the banks of the Hailar, and
that would have been that. I would have been buried in an unmarked grave. Fate is such a
mysterious thing!
After that, I was subjected to a grueling investigation and given several months of
ideological training before being sent to a Siberian coal mine to serve as an interpreter. I will
omit the details of that period, but let me say this about my ideological training. As a student
before the war, I had read several banned Marxist books, taking care to hide them from the
police, and I was not entirely unsympathetic to the communist line, but I had seen too much to
swallow it whole. Thanks to my work with intelligence, I knew very well the bloody history of
oppression in Mongolia carried out by Stalin and his puppet dictators. Ever since the
Revolution, they had sent tens of thousands of Lamaist priests and landowners and other
forces of opposition to concentration camps, where they were cruelly liquidated. And the
same kind of thing had happened in the Soviet Union itself. Even if I could have believed in
the communist ideology, I could no longer believe in the people or the system that was
responsible for putting that ideology and those principles into practice. I felt the same way
about what we Japanese had done in Manchuria. Im sure you cant imagine the number of
Chinese laborers killed in the course of constructing the secret base at Hailar- killed
purposely so as to shut them up, to protect the secrecy of the bases construction plans.
Besides, I had witnessed that hellish skinning carried out by the Russian officer and his
Mongolian subordinates. I had been thrown into a Mongolian well, and in that strange,
intense light I had lost any passion for living. How could someone like me believe in ideology 
and politics?
As an interpreter, I worked as a liaison between Japanese prisoners of war in the mine
and their Soviet captors. I dont know what it was like in the other Siberian concentration
camps, but in the mine where I worked, streams of people were dying every day. Not that
there was any dearth of causes: malnutrition, overwork, cave-ins, floods, unsanitary
conditions that gave rise to epidemics, winter cold of unbelievable harshness, violent guards,
the brutal suppression of the mildest resistance. There were cases, too, of lynchings of
Japanese by their fellow Japanese. What people felt for each other under such circumstances
was hatred and doubt and fear and despair.
Whenever the number of deaths increased to the point where the labor force was
declining, they would bring in whole trainloads of new prisoners of war. The men would be
dressed in rags, emaciated, and a good quarter of them would die within the first few weeks,
unable to withstand the harsh conditions in the mine. The dead would be thrown into
abandoned mine shafts. There was no way to dig graves for them all. The earth was frozen
solid there year round. Shovels couldnt dent it. So the abandoned mine shafts were perfect
for disposing of the dead. They were deep and dark, and because of the cold, there was no
smell. Now and then, we would put a layer of coal over the bodies. When a shaft filled up,
they would cap it with dirt and rocks, then move on to the next shaft.
The dead were not the only ones thrown into the shafts. Sometimes living men would be
thrown in to teach the rest of us a lesson. Any Japanese soldier who showed signs of
resistance would be taken out by Soviet guards and beaten to a pulp, his arms and legs
broken before they dropped him to the bottom of the pit. To this day, I can still hear their
pitiful screams. It was a literal living hell.
The mine was run as a major strategic facility by politburo members dispatched from
Party Central and policed by the army with maximum security. The top man was said to be
from Stalins own hometown, a cold, hard party functionary still young and full of ambition.
His only concern was to raise production figures. The consumption of laborers was a matter
of indifference to him. As long as the production figures went up, Party Central would
recognize his mine as exemplary and reward him with an expanded labor force. No matter
how many workers died, they would always be replaced. To keep the figures rising, he would
authorize the digging of veins that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been
considered too dangerous to work. Naturally, the number of accidents continued to rise as
well, but he didnt care about that.
The director was not the only coldhearted individual running the mine. Most of the guards
inside the mine were former convicts, uneducated men of shocking cruelty and vindictiveness.
They displayed no sign of sympathy or affection, as if, living out here on the edge of the earth,
they had been transformed over the years by the frigid Siberian air into some kind of
subhuman creatures. They had committed crimes and been sent to Siberian prisons, but now
that they had served out their long sentences, they no longer had homes or families to go back
to. They had taken local wives, made children with them, and settled into the Siberian soil.
Japanese prisoners of war were not the only ones sent to work in the mine. There were
many Russian criminals as well, political prisoners and former military officers who had
encountered Stalins purges. Not a few of these men were well-educated, highly refined
individuals. Among the Russians were a very few women and children, probably the scattered
remains of political prisoners families. They would be put to work collecting garbage,
washing clothes, and other such tasks. Young women were often used as prostitutes. Besides
the Russians, the trains would bring Poles, Hungarians, and other foreigners, some with
dusky skins (Armenians and Kurds, I should imagine). The camp was partitioned into three
living areas: the largest one, where Japanese prisoners of war were kept together; the area
for other criminals and prisoners of war; and the area of noncriminals. In this last there lived
regular miners and mining professionals, officers and guards of the military guard 
detachment, some with families, and ordinary Russian citizens. There was also a large army
post near the station. Prisoners of war and other prisoners were forbidden to leave their
assigned areas. The areas were divided from each other by massive barbed-wire fences and
patrolled by soldiers carrying machine guns.
As a translator with liaison duties, had to visit headquarters each day and was basically
free to move from area to area as long as I showed my pass. Near headquarters was the train
station, and a kind of one-street town with a few shabby stores, a bar, and an inn for officials
and high-ranking officers on inspection tours. The square was lined with horse troughs, and a
big red flag of the USSR flew from a flagpole in the center. Beneath the flag was parked an
armored vehicle, with a machine gun, against which there was always leaning a boredlooking
young soldier in full military gear. The newly built military hospital was situated at
the far end of the square, with a large statue of Joseph Stalin at its entrance.
There is a man I must tell you about now. I encountered him in the spring of ,
probably around the beginning of May, when the snow had finally melted. A year and a half
had already passed since I was sent to the mine. When I first saw him, the man was wearing
the kind of uniform they gave to all the Russian prisoners. He was involved in repair work at
the station with a group of some ten of his compatriots. They were breaking up rocks with
sledgehammers and spreading the crushed rock over the roadway. The clanging of the
hammers against the hard rocks reverberated throughout the area. I was on my way back
from delivering a report to the mine headquarters when I passed the station. The
noncommissioned officer directing the work stopped me and ordered me to show my pass. I
took it from my pocket and handed it to him. The sergeant, a large man, focused a deeply
suspicious gaze on the pass for some time, but he was obviously illiterate. He called over one
of the prisoners at work on the road and told the man to read it aloud. This particular
prisoner was different from the others in his group: he had the look of a well-educated man.
And it was him. When I saw him, I could feel the blood drain from my face. I could hardly
breathe- literally. I felt as if I were underwater, drowning. My breath would not come.
This educated prisoner was none other than the Russian officer who had ordered the
Mongolian soldiers to skin Yamamoto alive on the bank of the Khalkha River. He was
emaciated now, largely bald, and missing a tooth in front. Instead of his spotless officers
uniform, he wore filthy prison garb, and instead of shiny boots, he wore cloth shoes that were
full of holes. The lenses of his eyeglasses were dirty and scratched, the frame was twisted. But
it was the same man, without a doubt. There was no way I could have failed to recognize him.
And he, in turn, was staring hard at me, his curiosity first aroused, no doubt, by my own
stunned expression. Like him, I had also aged and wasted away in the nine intervening years.
I even had a few white hairs now. But he seemed to recognize me nonetheless. A look of
astonishment crossed his face. He must have assumed that I had rotted away in the bottom of
a Mongolian well. And I, of course, never dreamed that I would run across him in a Siberian
mining camp, wearing prisoners garb.
A moment was all it took him to regain his composure and begin reading my pass in calm
tones to the illiterate sergeant, who had a machine gun slung from his neck. He read my
name, my job as translator, my qualification to move among camp areas, and so on. The
sergeant returned my pass and signaled me with a jerk of the chin to go. I walked on a short
way and turned around. The man was looking at me. He seemed to be wearing a faint smile,
though it might have been my imagination. The way my legs were shaking, I couldnt walk
straight for a while. All the terror I had experienced nine years before had come back to me
in an instant.
I imagined that the man had fallen from grace and been sent to this Siberian prison camp.
Such things were not at all rare in the Soviet Union back then. Vicious struggles were going
on within the government, the party, and the military services, and Stalins pathological
suspiciousness pursued the losers without mercy stripped of their positions, such men would 
be tried in kangaroo courts and either summarily executed or sent to the concentration
camps, though finally which group was the more fortunate only a god could say. An escape
from death led only to slave labor of unimaginable cruelty. We Japanese prisoners of war
could at least hope to return to our homeland if we survived, but exiled Russians knew no
such hope. Like the others, this man would end with his bones rotting in the soil of Siberia.
Only one thing bothered me about him, though, and that was that he now knew my name
and where to find me. Before the war, I had participated (all unknowingly, to be sure) in that
secret operation with the spy Yamamoto, crossing the Khalkha River into Mongolian territory
for espionage activities. If the man should leak this information, it could put me in a very
uncomfortable position. Finally, however, he did not inform on me. No, as I was to discover
later, he had far more grandiose plans for me.
I spotted him a week later, outside the station. He was in chains still, wearing the same
filthy prison clothes and cracking rocks with a hammer. I looked at him, and he looked at me.
He rested his hammer on the ground and turned my way, standing as tall and straight as he
had when in military uniform. This time, unmistakably, he wore a smile on his face- a faint
smile, but still a smile, one suggesting a streak of cruelty that sent chills up my spine. It was
the same expression he had worn as he watched Yamamoto being skinned alive. I said nothing
and passed on.
I had one friend at the time among the officers in the camps Soviet Army headquarters.
Like me, he had majored in geography in college (in Leningrad). We were the same age, and
both of us were interested in making maps, so we would find pretexts now and then for
sharing a little shoptalk. He had a personal interest in the strategic maps of Manchuria that
the Kwantung Army had been making. Of course, we couldnt have such conversations when
his superiors were around. We had to snatch opportunities to enjoy this professional patter in
their absence. Sometimes he would give me food or show me pictures of the wife and children
he had left behind in Kiev. He was the only Russian I felt at all close to during the period I
was interned in the Soviet Union.
One time, in an offhand manner, I asked him about the convicts working by the station.
One man in particular had struck me as different from the usual inmate, I said; he looked as if
he might once have held an important post. I described his appearance. The officer-whose
name was Nikolai-said to me with a scowl, That would be Boris the Manskinner. Youd
better not have anything to do with him. 
Why was that? I asked. Nikolai seemed hesitant to say more, but he knew I was in a
position to do him favors, so finally, and reluctantly, he told me how Boris the Manskinner 
had been sent to this mine. Now, dont tell anyone I told you, he warned me. That guy can
be dangerous. Im not kidding--they dont come any worse. I wouldnt touch him with a tenfoot
pole. 
This is what Nikolai told me. The real name of Boris the Manskinner was Boris
Gromov. Just as I had imagined, he had been a major in the NKVD. They had assigned him to
Ulan Bator as a military adviser in , the year Choybal-san took power as prime minister.
There he organized the Mongolian secret police, modeling it after Berias NKVD, and he
distinguished himself in suppressing counterrevolutionary forces. They would round people
up, throw them into concentration camps, and torture them, liquidating anyone of whom they
had the slightest suspicion.
As soon as the battle of Nomonhan ended and the Far Eastern crisis was averted, Boris
was called back to Moscow and reassigned to Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, where he
worked on the purging of the old Polish Army. That is where he earned the nickname Boris
the Manskinner. Skinning people alive, using a man they said he brought with him from
Mongolia, was his special form of torture. The Poles were scared to death of him, needless to
say. Anyone forced to watch a skinning would confess everything without fail. When the
German Army suddenly burst across the border and the war started with Germany, he pulled 
back from Poland to Moscow. Lots of people were arrested then on suspicion of having
colluded with Hitler. They would be executed or sent to prison camps. Here, again, Boris distinguished
himself as Berias right-hand man, employing his special torture. Stalin and Beria
had to cook up their internal-conspiracy theory, covering up their own responsibility for
having failed to predict the Nazi invasion in order to solidify their positions of leadership. A
lot of people died for nothing while being cruelly tortured. Boris and his man were said to
have skinned at least five people then, and rumor had it that he proudly displayed the skins on
the walls of his office.
Boris may have been cruel, but he was also very careful, which is how he survived all the
plots and purges. Beria loved him as a son. But this may have been what led him to become a
little too sure of himself and to overstep his bounds. The mistake he made was a fatal one. He
arrested the commander of an armored battalion on suspicion of his having communicated
secretly with one of Hitlers SS armored ‘battalions during a battle in the Ukraine. He killed
the man with torture, poking hot irons into every opening- ears, nostrils, rectum, penis,
whatever. But the officer turned out to be the nephew of a high-ranking Communist Party
official. Whats more, a thoroughgoing investigation by the Red Army General Staff showed
the man to have been absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing. The party official blew up, of
course, nor was the Red Army just going to withdraw quietly after such a blot on its honor.
Not even Beria was able to protect Boris this time. They stripped him of his rank, put him on
trial, and sentenced both him and his Mongolian adjutant to death. The NKVD went to work,
though, and got his sentence reduced to hard labor in a concentration camp (though the
Mongolian was hanged). Beria sent a secret message to Boris in prison, promising to pull
strings in the army and the party: he would get him out and restore him to power after he had
served a year in the camp. At least this was how Nikolai had heard it.
 So you see, Mamiya, Nikolai said to me, keeping his voice low, everybody thinks Boris
is going back to Moscow someday, that Beria is sure to save him before too long. Its true
that Beria has to be careful: this camp is still run by the party and the army. But none of us
can relax. The wind direction can shift just like that. And when it does, anybody whos given
him a tough time here is in for it. The world may be full of idiots, but nobodys stupid enough
to sign his own death warrant. We have to tiptoe around him. Hes an honored guest here. Of
course, we cant give him servants and treat him as if he were in a hotel. For appearance
sake, we have to put chains on his leg and give him a few rocks to crack, but in fact he has his
own room and all the alcohol and tobacco he wants. If you ask me, hes like a poison snake.
Keeping him alive is not going to do anybody any good. Somebody ought to sneak in there
one night and slash his throat for him. 
Another day when I was walking by the station, that big sergeant stopped me again. I
started to take out my pass, but he shook his head and told me to go instead to the
stationmasters office. Puzzled, I did as I was told and found in the office not the
stationmaster but Boris Gromov. He sat at the desk, drinking tea and obviously waiting for
me to arrive. I froze in the doorway. He no longer had leg irons on. With his hand, he
gestured for me to come in.
 Nice to see you, Lieutenant Mamiya. Its been years, he said cheerily, flashing a big
smile. He offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head.
 Nine years, to be precise, he continued, lighting up himself. Or is it eight? Anyhow,
its wonderful to see you alive and well. What a joy to meet old friends! Especially after such
a brutal war. Dont you agree? And how did you manage to get out of that well? 
I just stood there, saying nothing.
 All right, then, never mind. The important thing is that you did get out. And then you lost
a hand somewhere. And then you learned to speak such fluent Russian! Wonderful, wonderful.
You can always make do without a hand. What matters most is that youre alive. 
 Not by choice, I replied.
Boris laughed aloud. Youre such an interesting fellow, Lieutenant Mamiya. You would
choose not to live, and yet here you are, very much alive. Yes, a truly interesting fellow. But I
am not so easily fooled. No ordinary man could have escaped from that deep well by himselfescaped
and found his way back across the river to Manchuria. But dont worry. I wont tell
anyone.
 Enough about you, though. Let me tell you about myself. As you can see, I lost my former
position and am now a mere prisoner in a concentration camp. But I do not intend to stay
here on the edge of the earth forever, breaking rocks with a sledgehammer. I am as powerful
as ever back at Party Central, and I am using that power to increase my power here day by
day. And so I will tell you in all frankness that I want to have good relations with you
Japanese prisoners of war. Finally, the productivity of this mine depends on you men- on your
numbers and your hard work. We can accomplish nothing if we ignore your power, and that
includes your own individual power, Lieutenant Mamiya. I want you to lend me some of what
you have. You are a former intelligence officer of the Kwantung Army and a very brave man.
You speak fluent Russian. If you would act as my liaison, I am in a position to do favors for
yourself and your comrades. This is not a bad deal that I am offering you. 
 I have never been a spy, I declared, and I have no intention of becoming one now. 
 I am not asking you to become a spy, Boris said, as if to calm me down. All Im saying
is that I can make things easier for your people. Im offering to improve relations, and I want
you to be the go-between. Together, we can knock that shit-eating Georgian politburo son of
a bitch out of his chair. I can do it, dont kid yourself. Im sure you Japanese hate his guts.
Once we get rid of him, you people will be able to have partial autonomy, you can form
committees, you can run your own organization. Then at least youll be able to stop the
guards from dishing out brutal treatment anytime they like. Thats what youve all been
hoping for, isnt it? 
Boris was right about that. We had been appealing to the camp authorities about these
matters for a long time, and they would always turn us down flat.
 And what do you want in return? I asked.
 Almost nothing, he said, with a big smile, holding both arms out. All I am looking for
is close, friendly relations with you Japanese prisoners of war. I want to eliminate a few of my
party comrades, my tovarishes, with whom it seems I am unable to achieve any
understanding, and I need your peoples cooperation to accomplish that. We have many
interests in common, so why dont we join hands for our mutual benefit? What is it the
Americans say? ‘Give-and-take? If you cooperate with me, I wont do anything to your
disadvantage. I have no tricks up my sleeve. I know, of course, that I am in no position to ask
you to like me. You and I share some unpleasant memories, to be sure. But appearances
aside, I am a man of honor. I always keep my promises. So why dont we let bygones be
bygones?
 Take a few days, think about my offer, and let me have a firm reply. I believe its worth a
try. You men have nothing to lose, dont you agree? Now, make sure you mention this only to
people you are absolutely sure you can trust. A few of your men are informers working with
the politburo member. Make sure they dont catch wind of this. Things could turn sour if they
found out. My power here is still somewhat limited. 
I went back to my area and took one man aside to discuss Boriss offer. This fellow had
been a lieutenant colonel in the army. He was a tough man with a sharp mind. Commander of
a unit that had shut itself up in a Khingan Mountain fortress and refused to raise the white
flag even after Japans surrender, he was now the unofficial leader of the camps Japanese
prisoners of war, a force the Russians had to reckon with. Concealing the incident with
Yamamoto on the banks of the Khalkha, I told him that Boris had been a high-ranking officer
in the secret police and explained his offer. The colonel seemed interested in the idea of 
eliminating the present politburo member and securing some autonomy for the Japanese
prisoners of war. I stressed that Boris was a cold-blooded and dangerous man, a past master
of deceit and trickery who could not be taken at face value. You may be right, said the
colonel, but so is our politburo friend: we have nothing to lose. And he was right. If
something came out of the deal, it couldnt make things any worse for us than they already
were, I thought. But I couldnt have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom.
A few days later, I was able to arrange a private meeting between the colonel and Boris in
a place away from prying eyes. I acted as interpreter. A secret pact resulted from their thirtyminute
discussion, and the two shook hands. I have no way of knowing exactly what happened
after that. The two avoided direct contact so as not to attract attention, and instead they seem
to have engaged in a constant exchange of coded messages using some kind of secret means
of communication. This ended my role as intermediary. Which was fine with me. If possible, I
wanted nothing more to do with Boris. Only later would I realize that such a thing was
anything but possible.
As Boris had promised, about a month later, Party Central removed the Georgian
politburo member from office and sent a new member to take his place two days after that.
Another two days went by, and three Japanese prisoners of war were strangled during the
night. They were found hanging from beams to make the deaths look like suicides, but these
were clearly lynchings carried out by other Japanese. The three must have been the informers
Boris had mentioned. There was never any investigation. By then, Boris practically had the
camp in the palm of his hand.
 
The Bat V a n i s h e s
 
THE THIEVING MAGPIE Returns
Wearing a sweater and my pea coat, wool hat pulled down low almost to my eyes, I scaled
the back wall and lowered myself into the alley. The sun would not be up for a while, and
people were still asleep. I padded my way down the alley to the Residence.
Inside, the house was just as I had left it six days earlier, complete with dirty dishes in the
sink. I found no written messages and nothing on the answering machine. The computer
screen in Cinnamons room was is cold and dead as before. The heat pump was keeping the
place at normal room temperature. I took off my coat and gloves, then boiled water and made
myself some tea. I had a few crackers and cheese for breakfast, washed the dishes in the sink,
and put them away. Nine oclock came again, with no sign of Cinnamon.
•
I went out to the yard, took the cover off the well, and leaned over to look inside. There
was the same dense darkness. I knew the well now as if it were an extension of my own body:
its darkness, its smell, and its quiet were part of me. In a sense, I knew the well better than I 
knew Kumiko. Her memory was still fresh, of course. If I closed my eyes, I could bring back
the details of her voice, her face, her body, the way she moved. I had lived in the same house
with her for six years, after all. But still, I felt there were things about her that I could not
bring back so clearly. Or perhaps I simply could not be sure that what I was remembering was
correct-just as I could not recall precisely the curve in the tail of the cat when he came back.
I sat on the well curb, thrust my hands into my coat pockets, and surveyed my
surroundings once again. It felt as if a cold rain or snow might begin falling at any time. There
was no wind, but the air had a deep chill to it. A flock of little birds raced back and forth
across the sky in a complex pattern as if painting a coded hieroglyph up there, and then, with
a rush, they were gone. Soon I heard the low rumble of a jet, but the plane stayed invisible
above the thick layer of clouds. On such a dark, overcast day, I could go into the well without
worrying that the sunlight would hurt my eyes when I came out.
Still, I went on sitting there for some time, doing nothing. I was in no hurry. The day had
hardly begun. Noon would not be here for a while. I gave myself up to thoughts that came to
me without order as I sat on the well curb. Where had they taken the bird sculpture that used
to be in this yard? Was it decorating another yard now, still urged on by an endless, pointless
impulse to soar into the sky? Or had it been discarded as trash when the Miyawakis house
was demolished last summer? I recalled the piece fondly. Without the sculpture of the bird, I
felt, the yard had lost a certain subtle balance.
When I ran out of thoughts, after eleven, I climbed down the steel ladder into the well. I
set foot on the well bottom and took a few deep breaths, as always, checking the air. It was
the same as ever, smelling somewhat of mold but breathable. I felt for the bat where I had left
it propped against the wall. It was not there. It was not anywhere. It had disappeared.
Completely. Without a trace.
•
I lowered myself to the well floor and sat leaning against the wall, sighing.
Who could have taken the bat? Cinnamon was the only possibility. He was the only one
who knew of its existence, and he was probably the only one who would think to climb down
into the well. But what reason could he possibly have had for taking the bat away? This was
something I could not comprehend-one of the many things I could not comprehend.
I had no choice today but to go ahead without the bat. That would be all right too. The bat
was, finally, just a kind of protective talisman. Not having it with me would be no problem. I
had managed to get into that room all right without it, hadnt I? Once I had presented myself
with these arguments, I pulled on the rope that closed the lid of the well. I folded my hands on
my knees and closed my eyes in the darkness.
As had happened last time, I was unable to achieve the mental concentration I wanted. All
kinds of thoughts came crowding in, blocking the way. To get rid of them, I tried thinking
about the pool- the twenty-five-meter indoor ward pool where I usually went for exercise. I
imagined myself doing the crawl there, doing laps. Im not trying for speed, just using a quiet,
steady stroke, over and over. I bring my elbows out smoothly with a minimum of noise and
splashing, then stroke gently, fingers first. I take water into my mouth and let it out slowly, as
if breathing underwater. After a while, I feel my body flowing naturally through the water, as
if its riding on a soft wind. The only sound reaching my ears is that of my own regular
breathing. Im floating on the wind like a bird in the sky, looking down at the earth below. I
see distant towns and tiny people and flowing rivers. A sense of calm envelops me, a feeling
close to rapture. Swimming is one of the best things in my life. It has never solved any
problems, but it has done no harm, and nothing has ever ruined it for me. Swimming.
Just then I heard something.
I realized I was hearing a low, monotonous hum in the dark, something like the droning of 
insect wings. But the sound was too artificial, too mechanical, to be that of insect wings. It
had subtle variations in frequency, like tuning changes in a shortwave broadcast. I held my
breath and listened, trying to catch its direction. It seemed to be coming from one fixed point
in the darkness and, at the same time, from inside my own head. The border between the two
was almost impossible to determine in the deep darkness.
While concentrating all my attention on the sound, I fell asleep. I had no awareness of
feeling sleepy before that happened. All of a sudden, I was asleep, as if I had been walking
down a corridor with nothing particular on my mind when, without warning, I was dragged
into an unknown room. How long this thick, mudlike stupor enveloped me I had no idea. It
couldnt have been very long. It might have been a moment. But when some kind of presence
brought me back to consciousness, I knew I was in another darkness. The air was different,
the temperature was different, the quality and depth of the darkness was different. This
darkness was tainted with some kind of faint, opaque light. And a familiar sharp smell of
pollen struck my nostrils. I was in that strange hotel room.
I raised my face, scanned my surroundings, held my breath.
I had come through the wall.
I was sitting on a carpeted floor, my back leaning against a cloth-covered wall. My hands
were still folded atop my knees. As fearfully deep as my sleep had been just a moment before,
my wakefulness now was complete and lucid. The contrast was so extreme that it took a
moment for my wakefulness to sink in. The quick contractions of my heart were plainly
audible. There was no doubt about it. I was here. I had finally made it all the way into the
room.
•
In the fine-grained, multiveiled darkness, the room looked exactly as I remembered it. As
my eyes became used to the darkness, though, I began to pick out slight differences. First, the
telephone was in a different place. It had moved from the night table to the top of a pillow, in
which it was now all but buried. Then I saw that the amount of whiskey in the bottle had gone
down. There was just a little left in the bottom now. All the ice in the bucket had melted and
was now nothing but old, cloudy water. The glass was dry inside, and when I touched it I
realized it was coated with white dust. I approached the bed, lifted the phone, and put the
receiver to my ear. The line was dead. The room looked as if it had been abandoned, forgotten
for a very long time. There was no sense of a human presence there. Only the flowers in the
vase preserved their strange vividness.
There were signs that someone had been lying in the bed: the sheets and covers and
pillows were in slight disarray. I pulled back the covers and checked for warmth, but there
was none. No smell of cosmetics remained, either. Much time seemed to have gone by since
the person had left the bed. I sat on the edge of the bed, scanned the room again, and listened
for sounds. But I heard nothing. The place was like an ancient tomb after grave robbers had
carried off the body.
•
All of a sudden, the phone began to ring. My heart froze like a frightened cat. The airs
sharp reverberations woke the floating grains of pollen, and the flower petals raised their faces
in the darkness. How could the phone have been ringing? Only a few moments before, it had
been as dead as a rock in the earth. I steadied my breathing, calmed the beating of my heart,
and checked to make sure I was still there, in the room. I stretched out my hand, touched my
fingers to the receiver, and hesitated a moment before lifting it from its cradle. By then, the
phone had rung three or perhaps four times altogether. 
 Hello. The phone went dead as I lifted the receiver. The irreversible heaviness of death
weighed in my hand like a sandbag. Hello, I said again, but my own dry voice came back to
me unaltered, as if rebounding from a thick wall. I set the receiver down, then picked it up
again and listened. There was no sound. I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to control my
breathing as I waited for the phone to ring again. It did not ring. I watched the grains in the air
return to unconsciousness and sink into the darkness. I replayed the sound of the telephone in
my mind. I was no longer entirely certain that it had actually rung. But if I let doubts like that
creep in, there would have been no end to them. I had to draw a line somewhere. Otherwise,
my very existence in this place would have been open to question. The phone had rung; there
could be no mistake. And in the next instant, it had gone dead. I cleared my throat, but that
sound, too, died instantly in the air.
I stood up and made a circuit of the room. I studied the floor, stared up at the ceiling, sat
on the table, leaned against the wall, gave the doorknob a quick twist, turned the switch of the
floor lamp on and off. The doorknob didnt budge, of course, and the lamp was dead. The
window was blocked from the outside. I listened for any sounds I could make out, but the
silence was like a smooth, high wall. Still, I felt the presence of something here that was
trying to deceive me, as if the others were holding their breath, pressing themselves flat
against the wall, obliterating their skin color to keep me from knowing they were there. So I
pretended not to notice. We were very good at fooling each other. I cleared my throat again
and touched my fingers to my lips.
I decided to inspect the room once more. I tried the floor lamp again, but it produced no
light. I opened the whiskey bottle and sniffed what was left inside. The smell was unchanged.
Cutty Sark. I replaced the cap and returned the bottle to the table. I brought the receiver to my
ear one more time, but the phone could not have been any deader than it was. I took a few
slow steps to get a feel of the carpet against my shoes. I pressed my ear against the wall and
concentrated all my attention in an attempt to hear any sounds that might have been coming
through it, but there was, of course, nothing. I stepped to the door and, knowing that to do so
was pointless, gave the knob a twist. It turned easily to the right. For a moment, I could not
absorb this fact as a fact. Before, the knob had been so solid it could have been set in cement.
I went back to square one and tried again, taking my hand from the knob, reaching out for it
again, and turning it back and forth. It turned smoothly in my hand. This gave me the
strangest feeling, as if my tongue were swelling inside my mouth.
The door was open.
I pulled the knob until the door swung in just enough for a blinding light to come
streaming into the room. The bat. If only I had the bat, I would have felt more confident. Oh,
forget the bat! I swung the door wide open. Checking left, then right, to be sure no one was
there, I stepped outside. It was a long, carpeted corridor. A short way down the corridor, I
could see a large vase filled with flowers. It was the vase I had hidden behind while the
whistling waiter was knocking on this door. In my memory, the corridor was a long one, with
many turns and branches along the way. I had managed to get here by coming across the
waiter whistling his way down the corridor and following after him. The number plate on the
door had identified this as Room.
Stepping carefully, I walked toward the vase. I hoped I could find my way to the lobby,
where Noboru Wataya had been appearing on television. Many people had been in the lobby,
moving to and fro. I might be able to find some clue there. But wandering through the hotel
was like venturing into a vast desert without a compass. If I couldnt find the lobby and then
was unable to find my way back to Room , might be sealed up inside this labyrinthine
place, unable to return to the real world.
But now was no time for hesitation. It was probably my last chance. I had waited every
day in the bottom of the well for six months, and now, at last, the door had opened before me.
Besides, the well was going to be taken from me soon. If I failed now, all my time and effort 
would have been for nothing.
I turned several corners. My filthy tennis shoes moved soundlessly over the carpet. I
couldnt hear a thing-no voices, no music, no TV, not even a ventilator fan or an elevator. The
hotel was silent, like a ruin forgotten by time. I turned many corners and passed many doors.
The corridor forked again and again, and I had always gone right, on the assumption that if I
chose to go back, I should be able to find the room by taking only lefts. By now, though, my
sense of direction was gone. I felt no nearer to anything in particular. The numbers on the
doors had no order, and they went by endlessly, so they were no help at all. They trickled
away from my consciousness almost before they had registered in my memory. Now and then
I felt I had passed some of them before. I came to a stop in the middle of the corridor and
caught my breath. Was I circling back over and over the same territory, the way one does
when lost in the woods?
•
As I stood there wondering what to do, I heard a familiar sound in the distance. It was the
whistling waiter. He was in perfect tune. There was no one who could match him. As before,
he was whistling the overture to Rossinis The Thieving Magpie-not an easy tune to whistle,
but it seemed to give him no trouble. I proceeded down the corridor in the direction of the
whistling, which grew louder and clearer. He appeared to be heading in my direction. I found
a good-sized pillar and hid behind it.
The waiter carried a silver tray again, with the usual bottle of Cutty Sark and an ice bucket
and two glasses. He hurried past me, facing straight ahead, with an expression on his face that
suggested he was entranced by the sound of his own whistling. He never looked in my direction;
he was in such a hurry that he couldnt spare a moments wasted motion. Everything is
the same as before, I thought. It seemed my flesh was being carried back in time.
As soon as the waiter passed me, I followed him. His silver tray bobbed pleasantly in time
with the tune he was whistling, now and then catching the glare of a ceiling light. He repeated
the melody of The Thieving Magpie over and over like a magic spell. What kind of opera was
The Thieving Magpie? I wondered. All I knew about it was the monotonous melody of its
overture and its mysterious title. We had had a recording of the overture in the house when I
was a boy. It had been conducted by Toscanini. Compared with Claudio Abbados youthful,
fluid, contemporary performance, Toscaninis had had a blood-stirring intensity to it, like the
slow strangulation of a powerful foe who has been downed after a violent battle. But was The
Thieving Magpie really the story of a magpie that engaged in thievery? If things ever settled
down, I would have to go to the library and look it up in an encyclopedia of music. I might
even buy a complete recording of the opera if it was available. Or maybe not. I might not care
to know the answers to these questions by then.
The whistling waiter continued walking straight ahead, with all the mechanical regularity
of a robot, and I followed him at a fixed distance. I knew where he was going without even
having to think about it. He was delivering the fresh bottle of Cutty Sark and the ice and
glasses to Room. And indeed, he came to a stop in front of Room. He shifted the tray
to his left hand, checked the room number, drew himself up, and gave the door a perfunctory
knock. Three knocks, then another three.
I couldnt tell whether there was any answer from within. I was hiding behind the vase,
watching the waiter. Time passed, but the waiter went on standing at attention, as though
planning to challenge the limits of endurance. He did not knock again but waited for the door
to open. Eventually, as if in answer to a prayer, the door began to open inward.
 
The Job of Making Others Use Their Imaginations
(The Story of Boris the Manskinner, Continued)
 
Boris kept his promise. We Japanese war prisoners were given partial autonomy and
allowed to form a representative committee. The colonel was the committee chairman. From
then on, the Russian guards, both civil and military, were ordered to cease their violent
behavior, and the committee became responsible for keeping order in the camp. As long as we
caused no trouble and met our production quotas, they would leave us alone. That was the
ostensible policy of the new politburo member (which is to say, the policy of Boris). These
reforms, at first glance so democratic, should have been great news for us prisoners of war.
But things were not as simple as they seemed. Taken up with welcoming the new reforms,
we were too stupid to see the cunning trap that Boris had set for us. Supported by the secret
police, Boris was in a far more powerful position than the new politburo member, and he
proceeded to make over the camp and the town as he saw fit. Intrigue and terrorism became
the order of the day. Boris chose the strongest and most vicious men from among the
prisoners and the civilian guards (of which there was no small supply), trained them, and
made them into his own personal bodyguards. Armed with guns and knives and clubs, this
handpicked contingent would take care of anyone who resisted Boris, threatening and
physically abusing them, sometimes even beating them to death on Boriss orders. No one
could lay a hand on them. The soldiers sent out on an individual basis from regular army
units to guard the mine would pretend not to see what was happening under their noses. By
then, not even the army could touch Boris. Soldiers stayed in the background, keeping watch
over the train station and their own barracks, iopting an attitude of indifference with regard
to what went on in the mine and the camp.
Boriss favorite among his handpicked guard was a prisoner known as The Tartar, who
had supposedly been a Mongolian wrestling champion. The man stuck to Boris like a shadow.
He had a big burn scar on his right cheek, which people said he had gotten from torture.
Boris no longer wore prison clothes, and he moved into a neat little cottage that was kept
clean for him by a woman inmate.
According to Nikolai (who was becoming increasingly reluctant to talk about anything),
several Russians he knew had simply disappeared in the night. Offiially, they were listed as
missing or having been involved in accidents, but there /as no doubt they had been taken
care of by Boriss henchmen. Peoples lives sere now in danger if they failed to follow
Boriss orders or if they merely failed to please him. A few men tried to complain directly to
Party Central about the abuses going on in camp, but that was the last anyone ever saw of
them. I heard they even killed a little kid-a seven-year-old-to keep his parents in line. Beat
him to death while they watched, Nikolai whispered to me, pale-faced.
At first Boris did nothing so crude as that in the Japanese zone. He concentrated his
energies instead on gaining complete control over the Russian guards in the area and
solidifying his foothold there. He seemed willing for the moment to leave the Japanese
prisoners in charge of their own affairs. And so, for the first few nonths after the reform, we
were able to enjoy a brief interval of peace. Those were tranquil days for us, a period of
genuine calm. The committee was able to obtain some reduction in the harshness of the labor,
however slight, and we no longer had to fear the violence of the guards. For the first time 
since our arrival, we were able to feel something like hope. People believed that things were
going to get better.
Not that Boris was ignoring us during those few honeymoon months. He was quietly
arranging his pieces to gain the greatest strategic advantage. He worked on the Japanese
committee members individually, behind the scenes, using bribes or threats to bring them
under his control. He avoided overt violence, proceeding with the utmost caution, and so no
one noticed what he was doing. When we did finally notice, it was too late. Under the guise of
granting us autonomy, he was throwing us off our guard while he fashioned a still more
efficient system of control. There was an icy, diabolical precision to his calculations. He
succeeded in eliminating random violence from our lives, only to replace it with a new kind of
coldly calculated violence.
After six months of firming up his control structure, he changed direction and began
applying pressure on us. His first victim was the man who had been the central figure on the
committee: the colonel. He had confronted Boris directly to represent the interests of the
Japanese prisoners of war on several issues, as a result of which he was eliminated. By that
time, the colonel and a few of his cohorts were the only members of the committee who did
not belong to Boris. They suffocated him one night, holding him down while one of them
pressed a wet towel to his face. Boris ordered the job done, of course, though he never dirtied
his own hands when it came to killing Japanese. He issued orders to the committee and had
other Japanese do it. The colonels death was written off simply as the result of illness. We all
knew who had killed him, but no one could talk about it. We knew that Boris had spies among
us, and we had to be careful what we said in front of anyone. After the colonel was murdered,
the committee voted for Boriss handpicked candidate to fill his chair.
The work environment steadily deteriorated as a result of the change in the makeup of the
committee, until finally things were as bad as they had ever been. In exchange for our
autonomy, we made arrangements with Boris on our production quotas, the setting of which
became increasingly burdensome for us. The quota was raised in stages, under one pretext or
another, until finally the work forced upon us became harsher than ever. The number of
accidents also escalated, and many Japanese soldiers lent their bones to the soil of a foreign
land, victims of reckless mining practices. Autonomy meant only that we Japanese now had
to oversee our own labor in place of the Russians who had once done it.
Discontent, of course, only blossomed among the prisoners of war. Where we had once
had a little society that shared its sufferings equally, a sense of unfairness grew up, and with
it deep hatred and suspicion. Those who served Boris were given lighter duties and special
privileges, while those who did not had to live a harsh life-if allowed to live at all. No one
could raise his voice in complaint, for open resistance meant death. One might be thrown into
an icy shed to die of cold and starvation, or have a wet towel pressed over ones face while
asleep, or have the back of ones skull split open with a pick while working in the mine. Down
there, you could end up at the bottom of a shaft. Nobody knew what went on in the darkness of
the mine. People would just disappear.
I couldnt help feeling responsible for having brought Boris and the colonel together. Of
course, if I hadnt become involved, Boris would have burrowed his way in among us sooner
or later by some other route, with similar results, but such thoughts did little to ease my pain.
I had made a terrible mistake.
Suddenly one day I was summoned to the building that Boris used as his office. I had not
seen him for a very long time. He sat at a desk, drinking tea, as he had been doing the time I
saw him in the stationmasters office. Behind him, standing at attention with a large-caliber
automatic pistol in his belt, was The Tartar. When he entered the room, Boris turned around
to the Mongolian and signaled for him to leave. The two of us were alone together.
 So, then, Lieutenant Mamiya, I have kept my promise, you see. 
Indeed, he had, I replied. What he said was unfortunately true. Everything he had
promised me had come to pass. It was like a pact with the devil.
 You have your autonomy, and I have my power, he said with a smile, holding his arms
out wide. We both got what we wanted. Coal production has increased, and Moscows
happy. Who could ask for anything more? I am very grateful to you for having acted as my
mediator, and I would like to do something for you in return. 
There was no such need, I replied.
 Nor is there any need for you to be so distant, Lieutenant. The two of us go way back, 
said Boris, smiling. I want you to work here with me. I want you to be my assistant.
Unfortunately, this place has a critical shortage of men who can think. You may be missing a
hand, but I can see that your sharp mind more than makes up for it. If you will work as my
sery, I will be most grateful and do everything I can to see that you have as easy a time of it
here as possible. That way, you will be sure to survive and make your way back to Japan.
Working closely with me can only do you good. 
Ordinarily, I would have rejected such an offer out of hand. I had no intention of selling
out my comrades and securing an easy time of it for myself by working as Boriss assistant.
And if turning him down meant that he would have me killed, that would have suited me fine.
But the moment he presented his offer, I found a plan forming in my mind.
 What kind of work do you want me to do? I asked.
What Boris had in mind for me was not a simple task. The number of chores waiting to be
taken care of was huge, the single biggest job being the management of Boriss personal
assets. Boris had been helping himself to a good forty percent of the foodstuffs, clothing, and
medical supplies being sent to the camp by Moscow and the International Red Cross, stashing
them in secret storehouses, and selling them to various takers. He had also been sending off
whole trainloads of coal through the black market. There was a chronic shortage of fuel, the
demand for it endless. He would bribe railroad workers and the stationmaster, moving trains
almost at will for his own profit. Food and money could make the soldiers guarding the trains
shut their eyes to what he was doing. Thanks to such business methods, Boris had amassed
an amazing fortune. He explained to me that it was ultimately intended as operating capital
for the secret police. Our activity, as he called it, required huge sums off the public record,
and he was now engaged in procuring those secret funds. But this was a lie. Some of the
money may have been finding its way to Moscow, but I was certain that well over half was
being transformed into Boriss own personal fortune. As far as I could tell, he was sending
the money to foreign bank accounts and buying gold.
For some inexplicable reason, he appeared to have complete faith in me. It seems not to
have occurred to him that I might leak his secrets to the outside, which I now find very
strange. He always treated his fellow Russians and other white men with the utmost suspicion,
but toward Mongolians or Japanese he seemed to feel only the most openhanded trust.
Perhaps he figured that I could do him no harm even if I chose to reveal his secrets. First of
all, whom could I reveal them to? Everyone around me was his collaborator or his underling,
each with his own tiny share in Boriss huge illegal profits. And the only ones who suffered
and died because Boris was diverting their food, clothing, and medicine for his own personal
gain were the powerless inmates of the camp. Besides, all mail was censored, and all contact
with outsiders was prohibited.
And so I became Boriss energetic and faithful private sery. I completely made over his
chaotic books and stock records, systematizing and clarifying the flow of goods and money. I
created categorized ledgers that showed at a glance the amount and location of any one item
and how its price was fluctuating. I compiled a long list of bribe takers and calculated the
 necessary expenses for each. I worked hard for Boris, from morning to night, as a result of
which I lost what few friends I had. People thought of me (probably could not help but think 
of me) as a despicable human being, a man who had sold out to become Boriss faithful
bootlicker. And sadly enough, they probably still think of me that way. Nikolai would no
longer speak to me. The two or three other Japanese prisoners of war I had been close to
would now turn aside when they saw me coming. Conversely, there were some who tried to
approach me when they saw that I had become a favorite of Boris, but I would have nothing
to do with them. Thus I became an increasingly isolated figure in the camp. Only the support
of Boris kept me from being killed. No one could have gotten away with murdering one of his
most prized possessions. People knew how cruel Boris could be; his fame as the
 manskinner had reached legendary proportions even here.
The more isolated I became, the more Boris came to trust me. He was happy with my
efficient, systematic work habits, and he was not stinting in his praise.
 You are a very impressive man, Lieutenant Mamiya. Japan will be sure to recover from
her postwar chaos as long as there are many Japanese like you. My own country is hopeless.
It was almost better under the czars. At least the czar didnt have to strain his empty head
over a lot of theory. Lenin took whatever he could understand of Marxs theory and used it to
his own advantage, and Stalin took whatever he could understand of Lenins theory (which
wasnt much) and used it to his own advantage. The narrower a mans intellectual grasp, the
more power he is able to grab in this country. I tell you, Lieutenant, there is only one way to
survive here. And that is not to imagine anything. A Russian who uses his imagination is done
for. I certainly never use mine. My job is to make others use their imaginations. Thats my
bread and butter. Make sure you keep that in mind. As long as you are in here, at least,
picture my face if you ever start to imagine something, and say to yourself, ‘No, dont do that.
Imagining things can be fatal. These are my golden words of advice to you. Leave the
imagining to someone else. 
Half a year slipped by like this. Now the autumn of was drawing to a close, and I
had become indispensable to Boris. I was in charge of the business side of his activities, while
The Tartar was in charge of the violent side. The secret police had yet to summon Boris back
to Moscow, but by then he no longer seemed to want to go back. He had more or less
transformed the camp and the mine into his own unimpeachable territory, and there he lived
in comfort, steadily amassing a huge fortune, protected by his own private army. Perhaps,
too, rather than bring him back to the center, the Moscow elite preferred to keep him there,
firming up their foothold in Siberia. A continual exchange of letters passed between Boris and
Moscow-not using the post office, of course: they would arrive on the train, in the hands of
secret messengers. These were always tall men with ice-cold eyes. The temperature in a room
seemed to drop whenever one of them walked in.
Meanwhile, the prisoners working the mine continued to die in large numbers, their
corpses thrown into mine shafts as before. Boris did a thoroughgoing assessment of each
prisoners potential, driving the physically weak ones hard and reducing their food rations at
the outset so as to kill them off and reduce the number of mouths he had to feed. The food
diverted from the weak went to the strong in order to raise productivity. Efficiency was
everything in the camp: it was the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest. And whenever
the work force began to dwindle, freight cars would arrive packed with new convicts, like
trainloads of cattle. Sometimes as much as twenty percent of the shipment would die on the
way, but that was of no concern to anyone. Most of the new convicts were Russians and
Eastern Europeans brought in from the West. Fortunately for Boris, Stalins politics of
violence continued to function there.
My plan was to kill Boris. I knew, of course, that getting rid of this one man was no
guarantee that our situation would improve in any way. It would continue to be one form of
hell or another. But I simply could not allow the man to go on living in this world. As Nikolai
had said, he was like a poisonous snake. Someone would have to cut his head off.
I was not afraid to die. If anything, I would have liked Boris to kill me as I killed him. But
there could be no room for error. I had to wait for the one exact moment when I could have
absolute confidence that I would kill him without fail, when I could end his life with a single
shot. I continued to act the part of his loyal sery as I waited for the chance to spring on my
prey. But as I said earlier, Boris was an extremely cautious man. He kept The Tartar by his
side day and night. And even if he should give me a chance at him alone sometime, how was I
to kill him, with my one hand and no weapon? Still I kept my vigil, waiting for the right moment.
If there was a god anywhere in this world, I believed, the chance would come my way.
Early in , a rumor spread through camp that the Japanese prisoners of war were
finally going to be allowed to go home, that a ship would be sent to repatriate us in the
spring. I asked Boris about it.
 It is true, Lieutenant Mamiya, he said. The rumor is true. You will all be repatriated
before very long. Thanks in part to world opinion, we will not be able to keep you working
much longer. But I have a proposition for you, Lieutenant. How would you like to stay in this
country, not as a prisoner of war but as a free Soviet citizen? You have served me very well,
and it will be extremely difficult for me to find a replacement for you. And you, for your part,
will have a far more pleasant time of it if you stay with me than if you go back to endure
hardship and poverty in Japan. They have nothing to eat, I am told. People are starving to
death. Here you would have money, women, power-everything. 
Boris had made this proposal in all seriousness. He was aware that it could be dangerous
to let me go, knowing his secrets as I did. If I turned him down, he might rub me out to keep
me from talking. But I was not afraid. I thanked him for his kind offer but said that I preferred
to return to Japan, being concerned about my parents and sister. Boris shrugged once and
said nothing further.
The perfect chance to kill him presented itself to me one night in March, as the day of
repatriation was drawing near. The Tartar had gone out, leaving me alone with Boris just
before nine oclock at night. I was working on the books, as always, and Boris was at his
desk, writing a letter. It was unusual for us to be in the office so late. He sipped a brandy now
and then as he traced his fountain pen over the stationery. On the coatrack hung Boriss
leather coat, his hat, and his pistol in a leather holster. The pistol was not the typical Soviet
Army-issue monster but a German-made Walther PPK. Boris had supposedly taken it from a
Nazi SS lieutenant colonel captured at the battle of the Danube Crossing. It had the lightning
SS mark on the grip, and it was always clean and polished. I had often observed Boris
working on the gun, and I knew that he kept it loaded, with eight shells in the magazine.
For him to have left the gun on the coatrack was most unusual He was careful to have it
close at hand whenever he was working, concealed in the drawer of the right-hand wing of
his desk. That night, however, he had been in a very good, very talkative mood for some
reason, and because of that, perhaps, he had not exercised his usual caution. It was the kind
of chance I could never hope for again. Any number of times, I had rehearsed in my mind
how, with my one hand, I would release the safety catch and send the first cartridge into the
chamber. Now, making my decision, I stood and walked past the coatrack, pretending to go
for a form. Involved in his letter writing, Boris did not look my way. As I passed by, I slipped
the gun out of the holster. Its small size fit my palm perfectly, its outstanding workmanship
obvious from its heft and balance. I stood before Boris and released the safety. Then, holding
the pistol between my knees, I pulled the slide with my right hand, sending a cartridge into the
chamber. With my thumb, I pulled the hammer back. When he heard the small, dry sound it
made, Boris looked up, to find me aiming the gun at his face.
He shook his head and sighed.
 Too bad for you, Lieutenant, but the gun isnt loaded, he said after clicking the cap of
his fountain pen into place. You can tell by the weight. Give it a little shake up and down. 
Eight. -millimeter cartridges weigh eighty grams. 
I didnt believe him. Without hesitation, I pointed the muzzle at his forehead and pulled
the trigger. The only sound was a click. He was right: it wasnt loaded. I put the gun down
and bit my lip, unable to think. Boris opened the desk drawer and took out a handful of shells,
holding them on his palm for me to see. He had trapped me. The whole thing had been a ruse.
 I have known for a long time that you wanted to kill me, he said softly. You have
imagined yourself doing it, pictured it in your head any number of times, am I right? I am
certain I advised you long ago never to use your imagination. It can only cost you your life.
Ah, well, never mind. There is simply no way that you could ever kill me. 
Boris took two of the shells from his palm and threw them at my feet. They clattered
across the floor to where I stood.
 Those are live shells, he said. This is no trick. Put them in the gun and shoot me. It
will be your last chance. If you really want to kill me, take careful aim. But if you miss, you
must promise never to reveal my secrets. You must tell no one in the world what I have been
doing here. This will be our little deal. 
I nodded to him. I made my promise.
Holding the pistol between my knees again, I pressed the release button, took out the
magazine, and loaded the two cartridges into it. This was no easy feat with one hand-a hand
that was trembling all the while. Boris observed my movements with a cool expression on his
face. There was even the hint of a smile there. Once I had succeeded in thrusting the
magazine back into the grip, I took aim between his eyes, forced my hand to stop trembling,
and pulled the trigger. The room shook with the roar of the gun, but the bullet only passed by
Boriss ear and slammed into the wall. White, pulverized plaster flew in all directions. I had
missed from only six feet away. I was not a poor marksman. When stationed in Hsin-ching, I
had done my target practice with a great deal of enthusiasm. And although I had only my
right hand now, it was stronger than that of most people, and the Walther was the kind of
well-balanced pistol that let you take precise, steady aim. I could not believe that I had
missed. Once again I cocked the hammer and took aim. I sucked in one deep breath and told
myself, You have to kill this man. By killing him, I could make it mean something that I had
lived.
 Take steady aim, now, Lieutenant Mamiya. Its your last bullet. Boris was still smiling.
At that moment, The Tartar came running into the room, his big pistol drawn.
 Keep out of this, Boris barked at him. Let Mamiya shoot me. And if he manages to kill
me, do whatever you like. 
The Tartar nodded and pointed the muzzle of his gun at me.
Gripping the Walther in my right hand, I thrust it straight out, aimed for the middle of
Boriss contemptuous, confident smile, and coolly squeezed the trigger. The pistol kicked, but
I held it steady. It was a perfectly executed shot. But again the bullet grazed Boriss head, this
time smashing the wall clock behind him into a million pieces. Boris never so much as
twitched an eyebrow. Leaning back in his chair, he went on staring at me with his snakelike
eyes. The pistol crashed to the floor.
For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Soon, though, Boris left his chair and bent over to
retrieve the Walther from where I had dropped it. After a long, thoughtful look at the pistol in
his hand, he returned it to its holster on the coat-rack. Then he patted my arm twice, as if to
comfort me.
 I told you you couldnt kill me, didnt I? Boris said. He took a pack of Camels from his
pocket, put a cigarette between his lips, and lit it with his lighter. There was nothing wrong
with your shooting. It was just that you couldnt kill me. You arent qualified to kill me. That
is the only reason you missed your chance. And now, unfortunately, you will have to bear my
curse back to your homeland. Listen: Wherever you may be, you can never be happy. You will
never love anyone or be loved by anyone. That is my curse. I will not kill you. But I do not 
spare you out of goodwill. I have killed many people over the years, and I will go on to kill
many more. But I never kill anyone whom there is no need to kill. Goodbye, Lieutenant
Mamiya. A week from now, you will leave this place for the port of Nakhodka. Bon voyage.
The two of us will never meet again. 
That was the last I ever saw of Boris the Manskinner. The week after that, I left the
concentration camp behind and was shipped by train to Nakhodka. After many convoluted
experiences there, I finally reached Japan at the beginning of the following year.
To tell you the truth, I have no idea what this long, strange story of mine will mean to you,
Mr. Okada. Perhaps it is nothing more than an old mans mutterings. But I wanted to- I had
to- tell you my story. As you can see from having read my letter, I have lived my life in total
defeat. I have lost. I am lost. I am qualified for nothing. Through the power of the curse, I love
no one and am loved by no one. A walking shell, I will simply disappear into darkness.
Having managed at long last, however, to pass my story on to you, Mr. Okada, I will be able
to disappear with some small degree of contentment.
May the life you lead be a good one, a life free of regrets.
 
A Dangerous Place
 
The People Watching Television
 
T h e Hollow Man
The door began to open inward. Holding the tray in both hands, the waiter gave a slight
bow and went inside. I stayed in the shadows of the vase, waiting for him to come out and
wondering what I would do when he did. I could go in as he came out. There was definitely
someone inside Room. If things continued to develop as they had done before (which was
exactly what was happening), the door should be unlocked. On the other hand, I could forget
about the room for now and follow the waiter. That way, I could probably find my way to the
place where he belonged.
I wavered between the two, but in the end I decided to follow the waiter. There was
something dangerous lurking in Room , something that could have fatal consequences. I
had all too clear a memory of the sharp rapping in the darkness and the violent white gleam of
some knife-like thing. I had to be more careful. Let me first see where the waiter would lead
me. Then I could come back to the room. But how was I supposed to do that? I thrust my
hands in my pockets and found there, along with my wallet and change and handkerchief, a
short ballpoint pen. I pulled the pen out and drew a line on my hand to make sure it had ink. I
could use this to mark the walls as I followed the waiter. Then I could follow the marks back
to the room. It should work.
The door opened and the waiter came out, hands empty. He had left everything inside the
room, including the tray. After closing the door, he straightened himself and began whistling
The Thieving Magpie as he hurried back along the route he had followed here. I stepped from
my place in the shadows of the big vase and followed him. Wherever the corridor forked, I 
made a small blue X on the cream-colored wall. The waiter never looked back. There was
something special about the way he walked. He could have been acting as a model for the
World Hotel Waiter Walking-Style Championship. His walk all but proclaimed, This is how
a hotel waiter is supposed to walk: head up, jaw thrust out, back straight, arms swinging
rhythmically to the tune of The Thieving Magpie, taking long strides down the corridor. He
turned many corners, went up and down many short flights of stairs, through stretches where
the lighting was brighter or dimmer, past depressions in the walls that produced different
kinds of shadows. I maintained a reasonable distance behind him to keep from being noticed,
but following him was not particularly difficult. He might disappear for a moment as he
turned a corner, but there was never any danger of my losing him, thanks to his vibrant
whistling.
Just as a salmon migrating upstream eventually reaches a still pool, the waiter came out of
the final corridor into the hotel lobby, the crowded lobby where I had seen Noboru Wataya on
television. This time, however, the lobby was hushed, with only a handful of people sitting in
front of a large television set, watching an NHK news broadcast. The waiter had stopped
whistling as he neared the lobby, so as not to disturb people. Now he cut straight across the
lobby floor and disappeared behind a door marked Staff Only. 
Pretending to be killing time, I ambled around the lobby, sat on a few different sofas,
looked up at the ceiling, checked the thickness of the rug beneath my feet. Then I went to a
pay phone and put in a coin. This phone was as dead as the one in the room had been. I picked
up a hotel phone and punched in , but this phone was also dead.
After that, I went to sit in a chair somewhat apart from where the people were watching
television, to observe them unobtrusively. The group consisted of twelve people, nine men
and three women, mostly in their thirties and forties, with two possibly in their early fifties.
The men all wore suits or sports coats and conservative ties and leather shoes. Aside from
some differences in height and weight, none had any distinguishing features. The three
women were all in their early thirties, well dressed and carefully made up. They could have
been on their way back from a high school reunion, except that they sat separately and gave
no evidence of knowing each other. In fact, all the people in the group appeared to be
strangers whose attention just happened to be locked on the same television screen. There
were no exchanges of opinions or glances or nods.
I sat watching the news for a while from my place somewhat apart from theirs. The stories
were of no special interest to me- a governor cutting a tape at the opening ceremony for a new
road, a recall of childrens crayons that had been discovered to contain a harmful substance,
the death of a truckdriver who had been hit by a tourist bus in Asahikawa because of icy roads
and reduced visibility in a major snowstorm, with injuries to several of the tourists on their
way to a hot-spring resort. The announcer read each of the stories in turn in a restrained voice,
as though dealing out low-numbered cards. I thought about the television in the home of Mr.
Honda, the fortune-teller. His set had always been tuned to NHK too.
These images of the news coming over the air were at the same time very real and very
unreal to me. I felt sorry for the thirty-seven-year-old truckdriver who had died in the
accident. No one wants to die in agony of ruptured internal organs in a blizzard in Asahikawa.
But I was not acquainted with the truckdriver, and he did not know me. And so my sympathy
for him had nothing personal about it. I could feel only a generalized kind of sympathy for a
fellow human being who had met with a sudden, violent death. That generalized emotion
might be very real for me and at the same time not real at all. I turned my eyes from the
television screen and surveyed the big, empty lobby once more. I found nothing there to focus
on. There were no hotel staff members present, and the small bar was not yet open. The only
thing on the wall was a large oil painting of a mountain.
When I turned back to the television screen, there was a large close-up of a familiar faceNoboru
Watayas face. I sat up straight and turned my attention to the reporters words. 
Something had happened to Noboru Wataya, but I had missed the beginning of the story.
Soon the photo disappeared and the reporter came on-screen. He wore a tie and an overcoat,
and he was standing at the entrance to a large building, with a mike in his hand.
 ... rushed to Tokyo Womens Medical University Hospital, where he is now in intensive
care, but all we know is that he has not regained consciousness since his skull was fractured
by an unknown assailant. Hospital authorities have refused to comment on whether or not his
wounds are life-threatening. A detailed report on his condition is to be released sometime
later. Reporting from the main entrance of Tokyo Womens Medical University... 
And the broadcast returned to the studio, where the anchorman began to read a text that
had just been handed to him. According to reports just in, Representative Noboru Wataya
has sustained severe injuries to the head in what appears to have been an attack on his life.
The young assailant burst into his office in Tokyos Minato Ward at eleven-thirty this
morning and, in the presence of the persons with whom Representative Wataya was meeting
at the time, delivered several strong blows to the head with a baseball bat, inflicting severe
injuries. 
The screen showed a picture of the building that housed Noboru Watayas office.
 The man had posed as a caller to Representative Watayas office, bringing the bat in
inside a long cardboard mailing tube. Witnesses say the man pulled the bat out of the tube and
attacked without a word of warning. 
The screen showed the office where the crime had occurred. Chairs were scattered on the
floor, and a black pool of blood could be seen nearby.
 The attack came so suddenly that neither Representative Wataya nor the others with him
had a chance to resist. After checking to be certain that Representative Wataya was
unconscious, the assailant left the scene, still holding the baseball bat. Witnesses say the man,
approximately thirty years of age, was wearing a navy-blue pea coat, a woolen ski hat, also
navy, and dark glasses. He stood some five feet nine inches in height and had a bruiselike
mark on his right cheek. Police are looking for the man, who seems to have managed to lose
himself without a trace in the neighborhood crowds. 
The screen showed police at the scene of the crime and then a lively Akasaka street scene.
Baseball bat? Mark on the face? I bit my lip.
 Noboru Wataya was a rising star among economists and political commentators when,
this spring, he inherited the mantle of his uncle, longtime Diet member Yoshitaka Wataya,
and was elected to the House of Representatives. Widely hailed since then as an influential
young politician and polemicist, Noboru Wataya was a freshman Diet member of whom much
was expected. Police are launching a two-pronged investigation into the crime, assuming that
it could have been either politically motivated or some kind of personal vendetta. To repeat
this late-breaking story: Noboru Wataya, prominent freshman member of the House of
Representatives, has been rushed to the hospital with severe head injuries after an attack late
this morning by an unknown assailant. Details on his condition are not known at this time.
And now, in other news- 
Someone appeared to have switched off the television at that point. The announcers voice
was cut short, and silence enveloped the lobby. People began to relax their tensed postures. It
was obvious that they had gathered in front of the television for the express purpose of
hearing news about Noboru Wataya. No one moved after the set was switched off. No one
made a sound.
Who could have hit Noboru Wataya with a bat? The description of the assailant sounded
exactly like me-the navy pea coat and hat, the sunglasses, the mark on the cheek, height, ageand
the baseball bat. I had kept my own bat in the bottom of the well for months, but it had
disappeared. If that same bat was the one used to crush Noboru Watayas skull, then someone
must have taken it for that purpose.
Just then the eyes of one of the women in the group focused on me- a skinny, fishlike 
woman with prominent cheekbones. She wore white earrings in the very center of her long
earlobes. She had twisted around in her chair and sat in that position for a long time, watching
me, never averting her gaze or changing her expression. Next the bald man sitting beside her,
letting his eyes follow her line of vision, turned and looked at me. In height and build, he
resembled the owner of the cleaning store by the station. One by one, the other people turned
in my direction, as if becoming aware for the first time that I was there with them. Subjected
to their unwavering stares, I could not help but be aware of my navy-blue pea jacket and hat,
my five-foot-nine-inch height, my age, and the mark on my right cheek. These people all
seemed to know, too, that I was Noboru Watayas brother-in-law and that I not only disliked
but actively hated him. I could see it in their eyes. My grip tightened on the arm of my chair
as I wondered what to do. I had not beaten Noboru Wataya with a baseball bat. I was not that
kind of person, and besides, I no longer owned the bat. But they would never believe me, I
was sure. They believed only what they saw on television.
I eased out of my chair and started for the corridor by which I had entered the lobby. I had
to leave that place as soon as possible. I was not welcome there. I had taken only a few steps
when I turned to see that several of the people had left their chairs and were coming after me.
I sped up and cut straight across the lobby for the corridor. I had to find my way back to
Room. The inside of my mouth was dry.
I had finally made it across the lobby and taken my first step into the corridor when,
without a sound, all the lights in the hotel went out. A heavy curtain of blackness fell with the
speed of an ax blow. Someone cried out behind me, the voice much closer to me than I would
have expected, a stony hatred at its core.
I continued on in the darkness, edging forward cautiously with my hands against the wall.
I had to get away from them. But then I bumped into a small table and knocked something
over in the darkness, probably some kind of vase. It rolled, clattering, across the floor. The
collision sent me down on all fours on the carpet. I scrambled to my feet and continued
feeling my way along the corridor. Just then, the edge of my coat received a sharp yank, as if
it had caught on a nail. It took me a moment to realize what was happening. Someone was
pulling on my coat. Without hesitation, I slipped out of it and lunged ahead in the darkness. I
felt my way around a corner, tripped up a stairway, and turned another corner, my head and
shoulders bumping into things all the while. At one point, I missed my footing on a step and
smashed my face against the wall. I felt no pain, though: only an occasional dull twinge
behind the eyes. I couldnt let them catch me here.
There was no light of any kind, not even the emergency lighting that was supposed to
come on in hotels in case of a power failure. After tearing my way through this featureless
darkness, I came to a halt, trying to catch my breath, and listened for sounds from behind me.
All I could hear, though, was the wild beating of my own heart. I knelt down for a moments
rest. They had probably given up the chase. If I went ahead in the darkness now, I would
probably end up lost in the depths of the labyrinth. I decided to stay here, leaning against the
wall, and try to calm myself.
Who could have turned out the lights? I couldnt believe it had been a coincidence. It had
happened the very moment I stepped into the corridor as people were catching up with me.
Probably someone there had done it to rescue me from danger. I took my wool hat off, wiped
the sweat from my face with my handkerchief, and put the hat back on. I was beginning to
notice pain in different parts of my body, but I didnt seem to have any injuries as such. I
looked at the luminous hands of my watch in the darkness, only to remember that the watch
had stopped at eleven-thirty. That was the time I climbed down into the well, and it was also
the time that someone had beaten Noboru Wataya in his office with a baseball bat.
Could I have been the one who did it?
Down here in the darkness like this, that began to seem like one more theoretical
possibility to me. Perhaps, up there, in the real world, I had actually struck him with the bat 
and injured him severely, and I was the only one who didnt know about it. Perhaps the
intense hatred inside me had taken the initiative to walk over there without my knowing it and
administer him a drubbing. Did I say walk? I would have had to take the Odakyu Line to
Shinjuku and transfer there to the subway in order to go to Akasaka. Could I have done such a
thing without being aware of it? No, certainly not-unless there existed another me.
 Mr. Okada, someone said close by in the darkness.
My heart leaped into my throat. I had no idea where the voice had come from. My
muscles tensed as I scanned the darkness, but of course I could see nothing.
 Mr. Okada. The voice came again. A mans low voice. Dont worry, Mr. Okada, Im
on your side. We met here once before. Do you remember? 
I did remember. I knew that voice. It belonged to the man with no face. But I had to be
careful. I was not ready to answer.
 You have to leave this place as soon as possible, Mr. Okada. Theyll come to find you
when the lights go on. Follow me: I know a shortcut. 
The man switched on a penlight. It cast a small beam, but it was enough to show me
where to step. This way, the man urged me. I scrambled up from the floor and hurried after
him.
 You must be the one who turned out the lights for me, is that right? I asked the man
from behind.
He did not answer, but neither did he deny it.
 Thanks, I said. It was a close call. 
 They are very dangerous people, he said. Much more dangerous than you think. 
I asked him, Was Noboru Wataya really injured in some kind of beating? 
 That is what they said on TV, the man replied, choosing his words carefully.
 I didnt do it, though, I said. I was down in a well at the time, alone. 
 If you say so, Im sure you are right, the man said matter-of-factly. He opened a door
and, shining the flashlight on his feet, he began edging his way up the flight of stairs on the
other side. It was such a long stairway that, midway through the process, I lost track of
whether we were climbing or descending. I was not even sure this was a stairway.
 Do you have someone who can swear that you were in the well at the time? the man
asked without turning around.
I said nothing. There was no such person.
 In that case, the wisest thing would be for you to run away. They have decided for
themselves that you are the culprit. 
 Who are ‘they? 
Reaching the top of the stairs, the man turned right and, after a short walk, opened a door
and stepped out into a corridor. There he stopped to listen for sounds. We have to hurry.
Hold on to my jacket. 
I grasped the bottom edge of his jacket as ordered.
The man with no face said, Those people are always glued to the television set. That is
why you are so greatly disliked here. They are very fond of your wifes elder brother. 
 Do you know who I am? I asked.
 Yes, of course I do. 
 So, then, do you know where Kumiko is now? 
The man said nothing. I kept a firm grip on the tail of the mans coat, as if we were
playing some kind of game in the dark, rushing around another corner, down a short staircase,
through a small secret door, through a low-ceilinged hidden passageway, into yet another
corridor. The strange, intricate route taken by the faceless man felt like an endless journey
through the bowels of a huge bronze figure.
 Let me tell you this, Mr. Okada. I dont know everything that happens here. This is a big
place, and my area of responsibility centers on the lobby. There is a lot that I dont know 
anything about. 
 Do you know about the whistling waiter? 
 No, I dont. There are no waiters here, whistling or otherwise. If you saw a waiter in here
somewhere, he wasnt really a waiter: it was something pretending to be a waiter. I failed to
ask you, but you wanted to go to Room , is that correct? 
 That is correct. Im supposed to meet a certain woman there. 
The man had nothing to say to that. He pressed for no details about the woman or what
my business with her might be. He continued down the corridor with the confident stride of a
man who knows his way around, dragging me like a tugboat along a complicated course.
Eventually, with no warning, he came to a stop in front of a door. I bumped into him from
behind, all but knocking him over. His flesh, on impact, felt strangely light and airy, as if I
had bumped into an empty cicada shell. He quickly straightened himself and used his pocket
flashlight to illuminate the number on the door:.
 This door is not locked, said the man. Take this light with you. I can walk back in the
dark. Lock the door when you go in, and dont open it for anyone. Whatever business you
have, get it over with quickly and go back where you came from. This place is dangerous.
You are an intruder here, and I am the only one on your side. Dont forget that. 
 Who are you? I asked.
The faceless man handed me the flashlight as if passing a baton. I am the hollow man, 
he said. Faceless face toward me, he waited in the darkness for me to speak, but I could not
find the right words. Eventually, without a sound, he disappeared. He was right in front of me
one second, swallowed up by darkness the next. I shone the light in his direction, but only the
dull white wall came out of the darkness.
•
As the man had said, the door to Room was unlocked. The knob turned soundlessly in
my hand. I took the precaution of switching the flashlight off, then stepped in as quietly as I
could. As before, the room was silent, and I could sense nothing moving inside. There was the
faint crack of melting ice moving inside the ice bucket. I switched on the flashlight and turned
to lock the door. The dry metallic tumbling of the lock sounded abnormally loud in the room.
On the table in the center stood the unopened bottle of Cutty Sark, clean glasses, and the
bucket full of fresh ice. The silver-colored tray beside the vase shot the beam of the flashlight
back with a sensual gleam, as if it had been waiting for me for a very long time. In response, it
seemed, the smell of the flowers pollen became stronger for a moment. The air around me
grew dense, and the pull of gravity seemed to increase. With my back against the door, I
watched the movement around me in the beam of the flashlight.
This place is dangerous. You are an intruder here, and I am the only one on your side.
Dont forget that.
 Dont shine that light on me, said a womans voice in the inner room. Do you promise
not to shine that light on me? 
 I promise, I said.
 
T h e L i g h t of a F i r e f I y
• 
Breaking the Spell
•
World Where Alarm Clocks Ring in the Morning
 I promise, I said, but my voice had a certain artificial quality, as when you hear a
recording of yourself speaking.
 I want to hear you say it: that you wont shine your light on me. 
 I wont shine the light on you. I promise. 
 Do you really promise? Youre telling me the truth? 
 Im telling you the truth. I wont break my promise. 
 All right, then, what Id really like you to do, if you dont mind, is pour two whiskeys on
the rocks and bring them over here. Lots of ice, please. She spoke with the slightest hint of a
playful, girlish lisp, but the voice itself belonged to a mature, sensual woman. I laid the
penlight lengthwise on the table and in its light went about pouring the two whiskeys, taking a
moment first to steady my breathing. I broke the seal on the Cutty Sark, used tongs to fill the
two glasses, and poured the whiskey over the ice cubes. I had to think clearly about each task
my hands were performing. Large shadows played over the wall with every movement.
I walked into the inner room, holding the two whiskeys in my right hand and lighting my
way along the floor with the flashlight in my left. The air felt somewhat chillier than before. I
must have worked up a sweat in my rush through the darkness, and now was beginning to
cool off. I remembered that I had shed my coat along the way.
In keeping with my promise, I turned out the light and slipped it into my pocket. Then, by
touch, I set one whiskey on the night table and took my own with me to the armchair by the
bed. In the total darkness, I still remembered the layout of the room.
I seemed to hear the sliding of sheets against each other. She was raising herself in bed
and leaning against the headboard, glass now in hand. She gave the glass a little shake,
stirring the ice, and took a sip of whiskey. In the darkness, these were all like sound effects in
a radio play. I inhaled the aroma of the whiskey in my hand, but I did not drink.
 Its been a long time, I said. My voice sounded somewhat more like my own than it had
before.
 Has it? she said. Im not sure what that means: ‘time or ‘a long time. 
 As I recall, its been exactly one year and five months, I said.
 Well, well, she said, unimpressed. I cant recall... exactly. 
I set my glass on the floor and crossed my legs. You werent here last time I came, were
you? 
 Of course I was. Right here. In bed. Im always here. 
 Im sure I was in Room , though. This is Room , isnt it? 
She swirled the ice in her glass and gave a little laugh. And Im sure you werent so sure.
You were in another Room , thats for sure. 
There was a certain unsteadiness in her voice, which gave me a slightly unsettled feeling.
The alcohol might have been affecting her. I took my wool cap off and laid it on my knee.
I said to her, The phone was dead, you know. 
 Yes, I know, she said, with a hint of resignation. They cut it. They knew how I used to
like to make calls. 
•
 Are they the ones who are keeping you here? 
 Hmm, I wonder. I dont really know, she said, with a little laugh. The disturbance in the
air made her voice quaver slightly. 
Facing in her direction, I said, Ive been thinking about you for a very long time. Ever
since I was last here. Thinking about who you are and what youre doing here. 
 Sounds like fun, she said.
 I imagined all sorts of possibilities, but I cant be sure of anything yet. Im still in the
imagining stage. 
 Well, well, she said, as if impressed. So you cant be sure of anything yet, youre still
in the imagining stage. 
 Thats right, I said. And I might as well tell you this: I think youre Kumiko. I didnt
realize it at first, but Im becoming more and more convinced. 
 Oh, are you? she said, after a moments pause, sounding amused. So Im Kumiko, am
I? 
For a moment, I lost all sense of direction, as if everything I was doing was off: I had
come to the wrong place to say the wrong things to the wrong person. It was all a waste of
time, a meaningless detour. But I managed to set myself straight in the dark. To perform a
check on reality, I fastened my hands on the hat in my lap.
 Yes, I think you are Kumiko. Because then all kinds of story lines work out. You kept
calling me on the phone from here. You were trying to convey some kind of secret to me. A
secret of Kumikos. A secret that the real Kumiko in the real world couldnt bring herself to
tell me. So you must have been doing it for her- in words like secret codes. 
She said nothing for a while. She lifted her glass for another sip of whiskey, then said, I
wonder. But if thats what you think, you may be right. Maybe I really am Kumiko. Im still
not sure, though. So, then, if its true... if I really am Kumiko... I should be able to talk with
you here through her voice. Isnt that right? It makes things a little complicated, but do you
mind? 
 No, I dont mind, I said. Once more my voice seemed to have lost a degree of calm and
some sense of reality.
She cleared her throat in the darkness. Here goes, then. I wonder if it will work. Again
she gave a little laugh. Its not easy, though. Are you in a hurry? Can you stay here awhile? 
 I dont really know, I said.
 Wait just a minute. Sorry. Ahem... Ill be ready in a minute. 
I waited.
 So. You came here looking for me. You wanted to see me, is that it? Kumikos earnest
voice resounded in the darkness.
I had not heard Kumikos voice since that summer morning when I zipped her dress up.
She had been wearing new cologne behind the ears, cologne from someone else. She left the
house that day and never came back. Whether the voice in the darkness was the real thing or a
fake, it brought me back to that morning for a moment. I could smell the cologne and see the
white skin of Kumikos back. The memory was dense and heavy in the darkness-perhaps
denser and heavier than in reality. I tightened my grip on my hat.
 Strictly speaking, I didnt come here to see you. I came here to bring you back, I said.
She released a little sigh in the darkness. Why do you want so badly to bring me back? 
 Because I love you, I said. And I know that you love me and want me. 
 You sound pretty sure of yourself, said Kumiko-or Kumikos voice. There was nothing
derisive about her tone of voice-but nothing warm about it, either.
I heard the contents of the ice bucket in the next room shifting.
 I have to solve some riddles, though, if Im going to get you back, I said.
 Isnt it a little late to be starting such things now? I thought you didnt have that much
time. 
She was right. There was not much time left and too much to think about. I wiped the
sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. This was probably my last chance, I told
myself. I had to think.
 I want you to help me, I said.
 I wonder, said Kumikos voice. I may not be able to help you. But Im willing to try. 
 The first question is why you had to leave me. I want to know the real reason. I know
what your letter said-that you had become involved with another man. I read it, of course.
And read it and read it and reread it. And I suppose it does serve as some kind of explanation.
But I cant believe its the real reason. It doesnt quite ring true. Im not saying its a lie, but I
cant help feeling its nothing but a kind of metaphor. 
 A metaphor?! She sounded truly shocked. Maybe I just dont get it, but if sleeping
with other men is a metaphor for something, Id like to know what. 
 What Im trying to say is that it seems to me to be nothing but an explanation for
explanations sake. It doesnt lead anywhere. It just traces the surface. The more I read your
letter, the more I felt that. There must be some other reason that is more basic-more real. And
it almost certainly involves Noboru Wataya. 
I could feel her eyes focused on me in the darkness and was struck by the thought that she
might be able to see me.
 Involves Noboru Wataya? How? asked Kumikos voice.
 Well, finally, the events Ive been through have been tremendously complicated. All
kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after
another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track. Viewed at more
of a distance, though, the thread running through them is perfectly clear. What it all boils
down to is that you have gone over from my world to the world of Noboru Wataya. That shift
is the important thing. Even if you did, in fact, have sex with another man or other men, that
is just a secondary matter. A front. Thats what Im trying to say. 
She inclined her glass somewhat in the darkness. Staring hard toward the source of the
sound, I felt as if I could catch a faint glimpse of her movements, but this was obviously an
illusion.
 People dont always send messages in order to communicate the truth, Mr. Okada, she
said. The voice was no longer Kumikos. Neither was it the original girlish voice. This was a
new voice, which belonged to someone else. It had a poised, intelligent ring to it. ... just as
people dont always meet others in order to reveal their true selves. Do you grasp my
meaning, Mr. Okada? 
 But still, Kumiko was trying to communicate something to me. Whether or not it was the
truth, she was looking to me for something, and that was the truth for me. 
I sensed the darkness around me increasing in density, much as the evening tide comes to
fullness without a sound. I had to hurry. I didnt. have much time left. They might come
looking for me here once the lights came back on. I decided to risk putting into words the
thoughts that had been slowly forming in my mind.
 This is strictly a product of my own imagination, but I would guess that there was some
kind of inherited tendency in the Wataya family bloodline. What kind of tendency I cant be
sure, but it was some kind of tendency-something that you were afraid of. Which is why you
were afraid of having children. When you got pregnant, you panicked because you were
worried the tendency would show up in your own child. But you couldnt reveal the secret to
me. The whole story started from there. 
She said nothing but quietly placed her glass on the night table. I went on: And your
sister, Im sure, didnt die from food poisoning. No, it was more unusual than that. The one
responsible for her death was Noboru Wataya, and you know that for a fact. Your sister
probably said something to you about it before she died, gave you some kind of warning.
Noboru Wataya probably had some special power, and he knew how to find people who were
especially responsive to that power and to draw something out of them. He must have used
that power in a particularly violent way on Creta Kano. She was able, one way or another, to
recover, but your sister was not. She lived in the same house, after all: she had nowhere to run 
to. She couldnt stand it anymore and chose to die. Your parents have always kept her suicide
a secret. Isnt that true? 
There was no reply. The woman kept quiet in an attempt to obliterate her presence in the
darkness.
I went on: How he managed to do it and what the occasion was I have no idea, but at
some point Noboru Wataya increased his violent power geometrically. Through television and
the other media, he gained the ability to train his magnified power on society at large. Now he
is trying to bring out something that the great mass of people keep hidden in the darkness of
their unconscious. He wants to use it for his own political advantage. Its a tremendously
dangerous thing, this thing he is trying to draw out: its fatally smeared with violence and
blood, and its directly connected to the darkest depths of history, because its final effect is to
destroy and obliterate people on a massive scale. 
She sighed in the darkness. I wonder if I could bother you to pour me another whiskey? 
she asked softly.
I walked over to the night table and picked up her empty glass. I could do that much in the
dark without difficulty. I went into the other room and poured a new whiskey on the rocks
with the aid of the flashlight.
 What you just said was strictly a product of your own imagination, right? she asked.
 Thats right. Ive strung a few separate ideas together, I said. Theres no way I can
prove any of this. I dont have any basis for claiming that what I have said is true. 
 But still, Id like to hear the rest-if there is more to tell. 
I went back into the inner room and put the glass on the night table. Then I switched off
the flashlight and returned to my chair. There I concentrated my attention on telling the rest of
my story.
 You didnt know exactly what had happened to your sister, only that she had given you
some kind of warning before she died. You were too small at the time to understand what it
was about. But you did understand, in a vague sort of way. You knew that Noboru Wataya
had somehow defiled and injured your sister. And you sensed the presence in your blood of
some kind of dark secret, something from which you could not remain aloof. And so, in that
house, you were always alone, always tense, struggling by yourself to live with your dormant,
undefinable anxiety, like one of those jellyfish we saw in the aquarium.
 After you graduated from college-and after all the trouble with your family- you married
me and left the Wataya house. Our life was serene, and with each day that went by, you were
able, bit by bit, to forget your dark anxiety. You went out into society, a new person, as you
continued gradually to recover. For a while, it looked as though everything was going to work
out for you. But unfortunately, it wasnt that simple. At some point you noticed that you were
being drawn, unconsciously, toward that dark force that you thought you had left behind. And
when you realized what was happening, you became confused. You didnt know what to do.
Which is why you went to talk to Noboru Wataya, hoping to learn the truth. And you sought
out Malta Kano, hoping that she could give you help. It was only to me that you could not
open up.
 I would guess that all this started after you became pregnant. That, Im sure, was the
turning point. Which is probably why I received my first warning from the guitar player in
Sapporo the night you had the abortion. Getting pregnant may have stimulated and awakened
the dormant something inside you. And that was exactly what Noboru Wataya had been
waiting for. That may be the only way he is capable of sexually committing to a woman. That
is why he was so determined to drag you back from my side to his, once that tendency began
to surface in you. He had to have you. Noboru Wataya needed you to play the role your sister
had once played for him. 
When I finished speaking, a deep silence came to fill in the emptiness. I had given voice
to everything that my imagination had taught me about Kumiko. Parts of it had come from 
vague thoughts I had had until then, and the rest had taken shape in my mind while I spoke in
the darkness. Perhaps the power of darkness had filled in the blank spots in my imagination.
Or perhaps this womans presence had helped. In either case, there was no solid basis for
what I had imagined.
 A very, very interesting story, said the woman. Again her voice had become the one
with the girlish lisp. The speed with which her voice changed seemed to be increasing. Well,
well, well. So I left you to go into hiding with my defiled body. Its like Waterloo Bridge in
the mist, Auld Lang Syne, Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh- 
 Im going to take you out of here, I said, cutting her off. Im going to take you home,
to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards,
and alarm clocks ring in the morning. 
 And how are you going to do that? the woman asked. How are you going to take me
out of here, Mr. Okada? 
 The way they do in the fairy tales, I said. By breaking the spell. 
 Oh, I see, said the voice. But wait a minute, Mr. Okada. You seem to think that I am
Kumiko. You want to take me home as Kumiko. But what if Im not Kumiko? What will you
do then? You may be preparing to take home someone else entirely. Are you absolutely sure
of what youre doing? Shouldnt you think it over one more time? 
I made a fist around the flashlight in my pocket. This couldnt possibly be anyone but
Kumiko, I thought. But I couldnt prove it. It was finally nothing but a hypothesis. Sweat
oozed from the hand in my pocket.
 Im going to take you home, I said again, my voice dry. Thats what I came here to
do. 
I heard movement in the sheets. She was changing her position in the bed.
 Can you say that for sure? Without a doubt? she asked, pressing me for confirmation.
 Yes, I can say it for sure. Im going to take you home. 
 And you have no second thoughts? 
 No, none. My mind is made up, I said.
She followed this with a long silence, as if checking on the truth of something. Then, to
mark the end of this stage in our conversation, she let out a long breath.
 Im going to give you a present, she said. Its not much of a present, but it may come
in handy. Dont turn on the light now, but reach over here-very, very slowly-over to the night
table. 
I left my chair, and gauging the depth of the emptiness, I stretched my right hand out in
the dark. I could feel the airs sharp thorns against my fingertips. And then I touched the
thing. When I realized what it was, the air seemed to lodge in the back of my throat. The
 present was a baseball bat.
I took hold of the grip and held the bat out straight. It was almost certainly the bat I had
taken from the young man with the guitar case. The grip and the weight were right. This had
to be it. But as I felt it over more carefully, I found that there was something, some kind of
debris, stuck to it just above the brand. It felt like a human hair. I took it between my fingertips.
Judging from the thickness and hardness, it had to be a real human hair. Several such
hairs were stuck to the bat, with what seemed to be congealed blood. Someone had used this
bat to smash someone else-probably Noboru Wataya-in the head. It took an effort for me to
expel the air caught in my throat.
 That is your bat, isnt it? she asked.
 Probably, I said, struggling to keep calm. My voice had begun to take on a somewhat
different tone in the deep darkness, as if someone lurking down here were speaking in my
place. I cleared my throat, and after checking to be sure that the one speaking was the real me,
I continued: But somebody seems to have used this to beat someone. 
The woman kept her mouth sealed. Sitting down, I lowered the bat and held it between my 
legs. Im sure you know whats going on, I said. Somebody used this bat to crush Noboru
Watayas skull. The news I saw on TV was true. Noboru Wataya is in the hospital in critical
condition. He might die. 
 Hes not going to die, said Kumikos voice, without emotion. She might have been
reporting a historical fact from a book. He may not regain consciousness, though. He may
just continue to wander through darkness, but what kind of darkness that would be, no one
knows. 
I felt for the glass at my feet and picked it up. I poured its contents into my mouth and,
without thinking, swallowed. The tasteless liquid passed through my throat and down my
gullet. I felt a chill for no reason, then an unpleasant sensation as if something far away were
moving slowly in my direction through a long darkness. As I had known it would, my heart
started beating faster.
 We dont have much time, I said. Just tell me this if you can: where are we? 
 Youve been here before, and you found the way in here- alive and unharmed. You
should know where this is. And anyhow, it doesnt matter anymore. The important thing- 
Just then there was a knock on the door-a hard, dry sound, like someone driving a nail into
the wall, two loud raps followed by two more. It was the same knock I had heard before. The
woman gasped.
 Youve got to get out of here, she said, in a voice that was unmistakably Kumikos. If
you go now, you can still pass through the wall. 
I had no idea if what I was thinking was right or wrong, but I knew that as long as I was
down here, I had to defeat this thing. This was the war that I would have to fight.
 Im not running away this time, I said to Kumiko. Im going to take you home. 
I set my glass on the floor, put my wool hat on, and took the bat from between my knees.
Then I started slowly for the door.
 
Just a Real Knife
 
The Thing That Had Been Prophesied
Lighting my way along the floor and keeping my steps soundless, I moved toward the
door. The bat was in my right hand. I was still walking when the knocks came again: two
knocks, then two more. Harder this time, and more violent. I pressed myself against the side
wall where I would be hidden by the door when it opened. There I waited, keeping my breath
in check.
When the sound of the knocks faded, deep silence descended on everything again, as if
nothing had happened. I could feel the presence of someone on the other side of the door,
though. This someone was standing there the way I was, keeping his breath in check and
listening, trying to hear the sound of breathing or the beating of a heart, or to read the
movement of a thought. I tried to keep my breath from agitating the surrounding air. I am not
here, I told myself. I am not here. I am not anywhere. 
The key turned in the lock. He made each movement with the utmost caution, stretching
out the time it took to perform any one act so that the sounds involved would become isolated
from each other, their meaning lost. The doorknob turned, and this was followed by the
almost imperceptible sound of hinges rotating. The contractions of my heart began to speed
up. I tried to quell the disturbance this caused, but without success.
Someone came into the room, sending ripples through the air. I made a conscious effort to
sharpen each of my five senses and caught the faint smell of a foreign body-a strange mixture
of thick clothing, suppressed breathing, and overwrought nerves steeped in silence. Did he
have the knife in his hand? I had to assume that he did. I remembered its vivid white gleam.
Holding my breath, obliterating my presence, I tightened my grip on the bat.
Once inside, the someone closed the door and locked it from within. Then he stood there,
back to the door, waiting and watching. My hands on the bat were drenched with sweat. I
would have liked to wipe my palms on my pants, but the slightest extra movement could have
had fatal results. I brought to mind the sculpture that had stood in the garden of the abandoned
Miyawaki house. In order to obliterate my presence here, I made myself one with that image
of a bird. There, in the sun-drenched summer garden, I was the sculpture of a bird, frozen in
space, glaring at the sky.
The someone had brought his own flashlight. He switched it on, and its straight, narrow
beam cut through the darkness. The light was not strong. It came from the same kind of
penlight I was carrying. I waited for the beam to pass me as he walked into the room, but he
made no effort to move. The light began to pick out items in the room, one after another-the
flowers in the vase, the silver tray lying on the table (giving off its sensual gleam again), the
sofa, the floor lamp.... It swung past my nose and came to rest on the floor a few inches
beyond the tips of my shoes, licking every corner of the room like the tongue of a snake. I
waited for what felt like an eternity. Fear and tension drilled into my consciousness with
intense pain.
No thinking. You are not allowed to think, I told myself. You are not allowed to use your
imagination. Lieutenant Mamiya had said that in his letter. Imagining things here can be
fatal.
Finally, the flashlight beam began to move forward slowly, very slowly. The man seemed
to be heading for the inner room. I tightened my grip on the bat. It was then I noticed that the
sweat of my hands had dried. If anything, my hands were now too dry.
The man took one slow step forward, then stopped. Then one more step. He seemed to be
checking his footing. He was closer to me than ever now. I took a breath and held it. Two
more steps, and he would be where I wanted him. Two more steps, and I would be able to put
an end to this walking nightmare. But then, without warning, the light disappeared.
Total darkness had swallowed everything again. He had turned off his flashlight. I tried to
make my mind work quickly in the dark, but it would not work at all. An unfamiliar chill ran
through me. He had realized that I was there.
Move, I told myself. Dont just stand there. I tried to dodge to the left, but my legs would
not move. My feet were stuck to the floor, like the feet of the bird sculpture. I bent forward
and barely managed to incline my stiffened upper body to the left. Just then, something
slammed into my right shoulder, and something hard and cold as frozen rain stabbed me to
the bone.
The impact seemed to revive me, and the paralysis went out of my legs. I sprang to the left
and crouched in the darkness, feeling for my opponent. The blood was pounding through my
body, every muscle and cell straining for oxygen. My right shoulder was going numb, but I
had no pain. The pain would come later. I stayed absolutely still, and he did too. We faced
each other in the darkness, holding our breaths. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear.
Again, without warning, the knife came. It slashed past my face like an attacking bee, the
sharp point just catching my right cheek where the mark was. I could feel the skin tearing. No, 
he could not see me, either. If he could, he would have finished me off long before. I swung
the bat in the darkness, aiming in the direction from which the knife had come, but it just
swished through the air, striking nothing. The swing had been a good one, though, and the
crisp sound helped me to loosen up somewhat. We were still an even match. The knife had cut
me twice, but not badly. Neither of us could see the other. And though he had a knife, I had
my bat.
Again, in our mutual blindness, breathing held in check, we felt each other out, waiting for
some hint of movement. I could feel blood dripping down my face, but I was strangely free of
fear. Its just a knife, I said to myself. Its just a cut. I waited. I waited for the knife to come
my way again. I could wait forever. I drew my breath in and expelled it without a sound.
Come on! I said to him in my mind. Move! Im waiting for you to move. Stab me if you want
to. Im not afraid.
Again the knife came. It slashed the collar of my sweater. I could feel the point moving
past my throat, but it never touched my skin. I twisted and jumped to the side, and almost too
impatient to straighten up, I swung the bat through space. It caught him somewhere around
the collarbone. Not enough to bring him down or break any bones, but I knew I had hurt him.
I could feel him recoil from the blow, and I heard a loud gasp. I took a short backswing and
went for him again-in the same direction at a slightly higher angle, where I had heard the
breath drawn in.
It was a perfect swing. I caught him somewhere high on the neck. There was a sickening
sound of cracking bone. A third swing hit home- the skull-and sent him flying. He let out a
weird sound and slumped to the floor. He lay there making little gasps, but those soon
stopped. I closed my eyes and, without thinking, aimed one final swing in the direction of the
sound. I didnt want to do it, but I had no choice. I had to finish him off: not out of hatred or
even out of fear, but as something I simply had to do. I heard something crack open in the
darkness like a piece of fruit. Like a watermelon. I stood still, gripping the bat, holding it out
in front of me. Then I realized I was trembling. All over. And there was no way I could stop
it. I took one step back and pulled the flashlight from my pocket.
 Dont! cried a voice in the darkness. Dont look at it! Kumikos voice was calling to
me from the inner room, trying to stop me from looking. But I had to look. I had to see it. I
had to know what it was, this thing in the center of the darkness that I had just beaten to a
pulp. Part of my mind understood what Kumiko was forbidding me to do. She was right: I
shouldnt look at it. But I had the flashlight in my hand now, and that hand was moving on its
own.
 Please, Im begging you to stop! she screamed. Dont look at it if you want to take me
home again! 
I clenched my teeth and quietly released the air I had locked in my lungs. Still the
trembling would not subside. A sickening smell hung in the air-the smell of brains and
violence and death. I had done this: I was the one who had made the air smell like this. I
found the sofa and collapsed onto it. For a while, I fought against the nausea rising in my
stomach, but the nausea won. I vomited everything in my stomach onto the carpet, and when
that was gone I brought up stomach fluid, then air, and saliva. While vomiting, I dropped the
bat on the floor. I could hear it rolling away in the darkness.
Once the spasms of my stomach began to subside, I wanted to take out my handkerchief
to wipe my mouth, but I could not move my hand. I couldnt get up from the sofa. Lets go
home, I said toward the darkness of the inner room. This is all over now. Lets go. 
She didnt answer.
There was no one in there anymore. I sank into the sofa and closed my eyes.
I could feel the strength going out of me-from my fingers, my shoulders, my neck, my
legs.... The pain of my wounds began to fade as well. My body was losing all sense of mass
and substance. But this gave me no anxiety, no fear at all. Without protest, I gave myself up-
surrendered my flesh-to some huge, warm thing that came naturally to enfold me. I realized
then that I was passing through the wall of jelly. All I had to do was give myself up to the
gentle flow. Ill never come back here again, I said to myself as I moved through the wall.
Everything had come to an end. But where was Kumiko? Where did she go? I was supposed
to bring her back from the room. That was the reason I killed the man. That was the reason I
had to split his skull open like a watermelon. That was the reason I... But I couldnt think
anymore. My mind was sucked into a deep pool of nothingness.
•
When I came to, I was sitting in the darkness again. My back was against the wall, as
always. I had returned to the bottom of the well.
But it was not the usual well bottom. There was something new here, something
unfamiliar. I tried to gather my faculties to grasp what was going on. What was so different?
But my senses were still in a state of near-total paralysis. I had only a partial, fragmentary
sense of my surroundings. I felt as if, through some kind of error, I had been deposited in the
wrong container. As time passed by, though, I began to realize what it was.
Water. I was surrounded by water.
The well was no longer dry. I was sitting in water up to my waist. I took several deep
breaths to calm myself. How could this be? The well was producing water-not cold water,
though. If anything, it felt warm. I felt as if I were soaking in a heated pool. It then occurred
to me to check my pocket. I wanted to know if the flashlight was still there. Had I brought it
back with me from the other world? Was there any link between what had happened there and
this reality? But my hand would not move. I couldnt even move my fingers. All strength had
gone out of my arms and legs. It was impossible for me to stand.
I began a coolheaded assessment of my situation. First of all, the water came up only to
my waist, so I didnt have to worry about drowning. True, I was unable to move, but that was
probably because I had used up every ounce of strength. Once enough time had gone by, my
strength would probably come back. The knife wounds didnt seem very deep, and the
paralysis at least saved me from having to suffer with pain. The blood seemed to have stopped
flowing from my cheek.
I leaned my head back against the wall and told myself, Its OK, dont worry. Everything
had probably ended. All I had to do now was give my body some rest here, then go back to
my original world, the world above-ground, where the sunlight overflowed.... But why had
this well started producing water all of a sudden? It had been dried up, dead, for such a long
time, yet now it had come back to life. Could this have some connection with what I had
accomplished there? Yes, it probably did. Something might have loosened whatever it was
that had been obstructing the vein of water.
•
Shortly after that, I encountered one ominous fact. At first I tried to resist accepting it as a
fact. My mind came up with a list of possibilities that would enable me to do that. I tried to
convince myself that it was a hallucination caused by the combination of darkness and
fatigue. But in the end, I had to recognize its truth. However much I attempted to deceive
myself, it would not go away.
The water level was rising.
The water had risen now from my waist to the underside of my bent knees. It was
happening slowly, but it was happening. I tried again to move my body. With a concentrated
effort, I tried to squeeze out whatever strength I could manage, but it was useless. The most I
could do was bend my neck a little. I looked overhead. The well lid was still solidly in place. I 
tried to look at the watch on my left wrist, without success.
The water was coming in from an opening-and with what seemed like increasing speed.
Where it had been barely seeping in at first, it was now almost gushing. I could hear it. Soon
it was up to my chest. How deep was it going to get?
Be careful of water, Mr. Honda had said to me. I had never paid any heed to his prophecy.
True, I had never forgotten it, either (you dont forget anything as weird as that), but I had
never taken it seriously. Mr. Honda had been nothing more than a harmless episode for
Kumiko and me. I would repeat his words as a joke now and then when something came up:
 Be careful of water. And we would laugh. We were young, and we had no need for
prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy. But Mr. Honda had been right. I almost
wanted to laugh out loud. The water was rising, and I was in trouble.
I thought about May Kasahara. I used my imagination to picture her opening the well
cover-with total reality and clarity. The image was so real and clear that I could have stepped
right into it. I couldnt move my body, but my imagination still worked. What else could I do?
 Hey, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. Her voice reverberated all up and down
the well shaft. I hadnt realized that a well with water echoed more than one without water.
 What are you doing down there? Thinking again? 
 Im not doing any one thing in particular, I said, facing upward. I havent got time to
explain now, but I cant move my body, and the water is rising in here. This isnt a dry well
anymore. I might drown. 
 Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird! said May Kasahara. You emptied yourself out trying so hard
to save Kumiko. And you probably did save her. Right? And in the process, you saved lots of
people. But you couldnt save yourself. And nobody else could save you. You used up your
strength and your fate saving others. All your seeds were planted somewhere else, and now
your bag is empty. Have you ever heard of anything so unfair? I feel sympathy for you, Mr.
Wind-Up Bird, from the bottom of my heart. Its true. But finally, it was a choice you made
yourself. Do you know what I mean? 
 I do, I said.
I felt a dull throb in my right shoulder. It really happened, then, I told myself. The knife
really cut me. It cut me as a real knife.
 Are you afraid to die, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? asked May Kasahara.
 Sure I am, I said. I could hear my voice reverberating in the well. It was my voice, and
at the same time it wasnt. Sure Im afraid when I think about dying down here in a dark
well. 
 Goodbye, then, poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird, said May Kasahara. Sorry, theres nothing I
can do for you. Im far, far away. 
 Goodbye, May Kasahara, I said. You looked great in a bikini. 
May Kasaharas voice was very quiet as she said, Goodbye, poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird. 
The well cover closed tightly again. The image faded. But nothing happened. The image
was not linked to anything. I shouted toward the well mouth, May Kasahara, where are you
now when I need you? 
The water was up to my throat. Now it was wrapped around my neck like a noose. In
anticipation, I was beginning to find it difficult to breathe. My heart, now underwater, was
working hard to tick off the time it had remaining. At this rate, I would have another five
minutes or so before the water covered my mouth and nose and started filling my lungs. There
was no way I could win. I had brought this well back to life, and I would die in its rebirth. It
was not a bad way to die, I told myself. The world is full of much worse ways to die.
I closed my eyes and tried to accept my impending death as calmly as I could. I struggled
to overcome my fear. At least I was able to leave a few things behind. That was the one small
bit of good news. I tried to smile, without much success. I am afraid to die, though, I
whispered to myself. These turned out to be my last words. They were not very impressive 
words, but it was too late to change them. The water was over my mouth now. Then it came
to my nose. I stopped breathing. My lungs fought to suck in new air. But there was no more
air. There was only lukewarm water.
I was dying. Like all the other people who live in this world.
 
The Story of the Duck People
 
Shadows and Tears
 
(May Kasaharas Point of View: )
Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Hey, are these letters really getting to you?
I mean, Ive been writing you tons and tons of letters, and Im really starting to wonder if
they ever reach you. The address Ive been using is a kind of kind of thing, and I dont put
a return address on the envelope, so maybe theyre just piling up on the little letter lost 
shelf in a post office somewhere, unread and all covered with dust. Up to now, I figured: OK,
if theyre not getting through, theyre not getting through, so what? Ive been scratching away
at these things, but the important thing was for me to put my thoughts down on paper. Its
easy for me to write if I think Im writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, I dont know why. Hey,
yeah, why is that?
But this letter is one I really want you to read. I hope and pray it gets to you.
Now Im going to write about the duck people. Yes, I know this is the first time Ive
mentioned them, but here goes.
I told you before how this factory Im working in has this huge property, with woods and a
pond and stuff. Its great for taking walks. The ponds a pretty big one, and thats where the
duck people live, maybe twelve birds altogether. I dont know how their family is organized. I
suppose theyve got their internal arrangements, with some members getting along better with
some and not so well with others, but Ive never seen them fight.
Its December, so ice has started to form on the pond, but not such thick ice. Even when
its cold, theres still enough open water left so the ducks can swim around a little bit. When
its cold enough for thick ice, Im told, some of the girls cone here to ice-skate. Then the duck
people (yes, I know its a weird expression, but Ive gotten in the habit of using it, so it just
comes out) will have to go somewhere else. I dont like ice-skating, so Im kind of hoping
there wont be any ice, but I dont think its going to do any good. I mean, it gets really cold
in this part of the country, so as long as they go on living here, the duck people are going to
have to resign themselves to it.
I come here every weekend these days and kill time watching the duck people. When Im
doing that, two or three hours can go by before I know it. I go out in the cold, armed head to
foot like some kind of polar-bear hunter: tights, hat, scarf, boots, fur-trimmed coat. And I
spend hours sitting on a rock all by myself, spacing out, watching the duck people. Sometimes
I feed them old bread. Of course, theres nobody else here with the time to do such crazy 
things.
You may not know this, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, but ducks are very pleasant people to spend
time with. I never get tired of watching them. Ill never understand why everybody else
bothers to go somewhere way far away and pay good money to see some stupid movie instead
of enjoying these people. Like sometimes theyll come flapping through the air and land on
the ice, but their feet slide and they fall over. Its like a TV comedy! They make me laugh even
with nobody else around. Of course, theyre not clowning around trying to make me laugh.
Theyre doing their best to live very serious lives, and they just happen to fall down
sometimes. I think thats neat.
The duck people have these flat orange feet that are really cute, like theyre wearing little
kids rain boots, but theyre not made for walking on ice, I guess, because I see them slipping
and sliding all over the place, and some even fall on their bottoms. They must not have
nonslip treads. So winter is not a really fun season for the duck people, probably. I wonder
what they think, deep down inside, about ice and stuff. I bet they dont hate it all that much. It
just seems that way to me from watching them. They look like theyre living happily enough,
even if its winter, probably just grumbling to themselves, Ice again? Oh, well... Thats
another thing I really like about the duck people.
The pond is in the middle of the woods, far from everything. Nobody (but me, of course!)
bothers to walk all the way over here at this time of year, except on unusually warm days. I
walk down the path through the woods, and my boots crunch on the ice thats left from a
recent snowfall. I see lots of birds all around. When Ive got my collar up and my scarf
wrapped round and round under my chin, and my breath makes white puffs in the air, and
Ive got a chunk of bread in my pocket, and Im walking down the path in the woods, thinking
about the duck people, I get this really warm, happy feeling, and it hits me that I havent felt
happy like this for a long, long time.
OK, thats enough about the duck people.
To tell you the truth, I woke up an hour ago from a dream about you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,
and Ive been sitting here, writing you this letter. Right now its (I look at my clock) exactly
 : a.m. I got into bed just before ten oclock, as usual, said Good night, everybody to the
duck people, and fell fast asleep, but then, a little while ago, I woke up-bang! Actually, Im
not sure it was a dream. I mean, I dont remember anything I was dreaming about. Maybe I
wasnt dreaming. But whatever it was, J heard your voice right next to my ear. You were
calling to me over and over in this really loud voice. Thats what shocked me awake.
The room wasnt dark when I opened my eyes. Moonlight was pouring through the
window. This great big moon like a stainless-steel tray was hanging over the hill. It was so
huge, it looked as if I could have reached out and written something on it. And the light
coming in the window looked like a big, white pool of water. I sat up in bed, racking my
brains, trying to figure out what had just happened. Why had you been calling my name in
such a sharp, clear voice? My heart kept pounding for the longest time. If I had been in my
own house, I would have gotten dressed-even if it was the middle of the night-and run down
the alley to your house, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. But out here, a million miles away in the
mountains, I couldnt run anywhere, right?
So then you know what I did?
I got naked. Ahem. Dont ask me why. Im really not sure myself. So just be quiet and
listen to the rest. Anyhow, I took every stitch of clothing off and got out of bed. And I got
down on my knees on the floor in the white moonlight. The heat was off and the room must
have been cold, but I didnt feel cold. There was some kind of special something in the
moonlight that was coming in the window, and it was wrapping my body in a thin, protective,
skintight film. At least thats how I felt. I just stayed there naked for a while, spacing out, but
then I took turns holding different parts of my body out to be bathed in the moonlight. I dont 
know, it just seemed like the most natural thing to do. The moonlight was so absolutely, incredibly
beautiful that I couldnt not do it. My head and shoulders and arms and breasts and
tummy and legs and bottom and, you know, around there: one after another, I dipped them in
the moonlight, like taking a bath.
If somebody had seen me from outside, theyd have thought it was very, very strange. I
must have looked like some kind of full-moon pervert going absolutely bonkers in the
moonlight. But nobody saw me, of course. Though, come to think of it, maybe that boy on the
motorcycle was somewhere, looking at me. But thats OK. Hes dead. If he wanted to look,
and if hed be satisfied with that, Id be glad to let him see me.
But anyhow, nobody was looking at me. I was doing it all alone in the moonlight. And
every once in a while, Id close my eyes and think about the duck people, who were probably
sleeping near the pond somewhere. Id think about the warm, happy feeling that the duck
people and I had created together in the daytime. Because, finally, the duck people are an
important kind of magic kind of protective amulet kind of thing for me.
I stayed kneeling there for a long time after that, just kneeling all alone, all naked, in the
moonlight. The light gave my skin a magical color, and it threw a sharp black shadow of my
body across the floor, all the way to the wall. It didnt look like the shadow of my body, but
one that belonged to a much more mature woman. It wasnt a virgin like me, it didnt have my
corners and angles but was fuller and rounder, with much bigger breasts and nipples. But it
was the shadow that I was making--just stretched out longer, with a different shape. When I
moved, it moved. For a while, I tried moving in different ways and watching very, very
carefully to see what the connection was between me and my shadow, trying to figure out why
it should look so different. But I couldnt figure it out, finally. The more I looked, the stranger
it seemed.
Now, here comes the part thats really hard to explain, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I doubt if I can
do it, but here goes.
Well, to make a long story short, all of a sudden I burst into tears. I mean, if it was like in
a film scenario or something, itd go: May Kasahara: Here, with no warning, covers face
with hands, wails aloud, collapses in tears. But dont be too shocked. Ive been hiding it
from you all this time, but in fact, Im the worlds biggest crybaby. I cry for anything. Its my
secret weakness. So for me, the sheer fact that I burst out crying for no reason at all was not
such a surprise. Usually, though, I just have myself a little cry, and then I tell myself its time
to stop. I cry easily, but I stop just as easily. Tonight, though, I just couldnt stop. The cork
popped, and that was that. I didnt know what had started me, so I didnt know how to stop
myself. The tears just came gushing out, like blood from a huge wound. I couldnt believe the
amount of tears I was producing. I seriously started to worry I might get dehydrated and turn
into a mummy if this kept up.
I could actually see and hear my tears dripping down into the white pool of moonlight,
where they were sucked in as if they had always been part of the light. As they fell, the tears
caught the light of the moon and sparkled like beautiful crystals. Then I noticed that my
shadow was crying too, shedding clear, sharp shadow tears. Have you ever seen the shadows
of tears, Mr. Wind-Up Bird? Theyre nothing like ordinary shadows. Nothing at all. They
come here from some other, distant world, especially for our hearts. Or maybe not. It struck
me then that the tears my shadow was shedding might be the real thing, and the tears that I
was shedding were just shadows. You dont get it, Im sure, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. When a naked
seventeen-year-old girl is shedding tears in the moonlight, anything can happen. Its true.
So thats what happened in this room about an hour ago. And now Im sitting at my desk,
writing a letter to you in pencil, Mr. Wind-Up Bird (with my clothes on, of course!).
Bye-bye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. I dont quite know how to put this, but the duck people in the
woods and I are praying for you to be warm and happy. If anything happens to you, dont 
hesitate to call me out loud again.
Good night.
 
Two Different Kinds of News
 
The Thing That Disappeared
 Cinnamon carried you here, said Nutmeg.
The first thing that came to me when I woke was pain, in different, twisted forms. The
knife wound gave me pain, and all the joints and bones and muscles in my body gave me
pain. Different parts of my body must have slammed up against things as I fled through the
darkness. And yet the form of each of these different pains was still not quite right. They were
somewhere close to pain, but they could not exactly be called pain.
Next I realized that I was stretched out on the fitting room sofa, wearing navy-blue
pajamas that I had never seen before and covered with a blanket. The curtains were open, and
bright morning sun streamed through the window. I guessed it must be around ten oclock.
There was fresh air here, and time that moved forward, but why such things existed I could
not quite comprehend.
 Cinnamon brought you here, said Nutmeg. Your wounds are not that bad. The one on
your shoulder is fairly deep, but it didnt hit any major blood vessels, fortunately. The ones on
your face are just scrapes. Cinnamon used a needle and thread to sew up the others so you
wont have scars. Hes good at that. You can take the stitches out yourself in a few days or
have a doctor do it. 
I tried to speak, but I couldnt make my voice work. All I could do was inhale and let the
air out as a rasping sound.
 Youd better not try to move or talk yet, said Nutmeg. She was sitting on a nearby chair
with her legs crossed. Cinnamon says you were in the well too long- it was a very close call.
But dont ask me what happened. I dont know a thing. I got a call in the middle of the night,
phoned for a taxi, and flew over here. The details of what went on before that I just dont
know. Your clothes were soaking wet and bloody. We threw them away. 
Nutmeg was dressed more simply than usual, as if she had indeed rushed out of the house.
She wore a cream-colored cashmere sweater over a mans striped shirt, and a wool skirt of
olive green, no jewelry, and her hair was tied back. She looked a little tired but otherwise
could have been a photo in a catalog. She put a cigarette between her lips and lit it with her
gold lighter, making the usual clean, dry click, then inhaling with eyes narrowed. I really had
not died, I reassured myself when I heard the sound of the lighter. Cinnamon must have
pulled me out of the well in the nick of time.
 Cinnamon understands things in a special way, said Nutmeg. And unlike you or me, he
is always thinking very deeply about the potential for things to happen. But not even he
imagined that water would come back to the well so suddenly. It had simply not been among
the many possibilities he had considered. And because of that, you almost lost your life. It 
was the first time I ever saw that boy panic. 
She managed a little smile when she said that.
 He must really like you, she said.
I couldnt hear what she said after that. I felt an ache deep behind my eyes, and my eyelids
grew heavy. I let them close, and I sank down into darkness as if on an elevator ride.
•
It took two full days for my body to recover. Nutmeg stayed with me the whole time. I
couldnt get up by myself, I couldnt speak, I could hardly eat. The most I could manage was
a few sips of orange juice and a few slivers of canned peaches. Nutmeg would go home at
night and come back in the morning. Which was fine, because I was out cold all night-and
most of the day too. Sleep was obviously what I needed most for my recovery.
I never saw Cinnamon. He seemed to be consciously avoiding me. I would hear his car
coming in through the gate whenever he would drop Nutmeg off or pick her up or deliver
food or clothing- hear that special deep rumble that Porsche engines make, since he had
stopped using the Mercedes- but he himself would not come inside. He would hand things to
Nutmeg at the front door, then leave.
 Well be getting rid of this place soon, Nutmeg said to me. Ill have to take care of the
women again myself. Oh, well. I guess its my fate. Ill just have to keep going until Im all
used up-empty. And you: you probably wont be having anything to do with us anymore.
When this is all over and youre well again, youd better forget about us as soon as you can.
Because... Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. About your brother-in-law. Noboru Wataya. 
Nutmeg brought a newspaper from the next room and unfolded it on the table. Cinnamon
brought this a little while ago. Your brother-in-law collapsed last night in Nagasaki. They
took him to a hospital there, but hes been unconscious ever since. They dont know if hell
recover. 
Nagasaki? I could hardly comprehend what she was saying. I wanted to speak, but the
words would not come out. Noboru Wataya should have collapsed in Akasaka, not Nagasaki.
Why Nagasaki?
 He gave a speech in Nagasaki, Nutmeg continued, and he was having dinner with the
organizers afterward, when he suddenly went limp. They took him to a nearby hospital. They
think it was some kind of stroke-probably some congenital weakness in a blood vessel in his
brain. The paper says hell be bedridden for some time, that even if he regains consciousness
he probably wont be able to speak, so thats probably the end of his political career. What a
shame: he was so young. Ill leave the paper here. You can read it when youre feeling
better. 
It took me a while to absorb these facts as facts. The images from the TV news I had seen
in the hotel lobby were still too vividly burned into my brain- Noboru Watayas office in
Akasaka, the police all over the place, the front door of the hospital, the reporter grim, his
voice tense. Little by little, though, I was able to convince myself that what I had seen was
news that existed only in the other world. I had not, in actuality, in this world, beaten Noboru
Wataya with a baseball bat. I would not, in actuality, be investigated by the police or arrested
for the crime. He had collapsed in public, in full view, from a stroke. There was no crime
involved, no possibility of a crime. This knowledge came to me as a great relief. After all, the
assailant described on television had borne a startling resemblance to me, and I had had
absolutely no alibi.
There had to be some connection between my having beaten someone to death in the other
world and Noboru Watayas collapse. I clearly killed something inside him or something
powerfully linked with him. He might have sensed that it was coming. What I had done,
though, had failed to take Noboru Watayas life. He had managed to survive on the brink of 
death. I should have pushed him over the brink. What would happen to Kumiko now? Would
she be unable to break free while he was still alive? Would he continue to cast his spell over
her from his unconscious darkness?
That was as far as my thoughts would take me. My own consciousness gradually slipped
away, until I closed my eyes in sleep. I had a tense, fragmentary dream. Creta Kano was
holding a baby to her breast. I could not see the babys face. Creta Kanos hair was short, and
she wore no makeup. She told me that the babys name was Corsica and that half the babys
father was me, while the other half was Lieutenant Mamiya. She had not gone to Crete, she
said, but had remained in Japan to bear and raise the child. She had only recently been able to
find a new name for the baby, and now she was living a peaceful life growing vegetables in
the hills of Hiroshima with Lieutenant Mamiya. None of this came as a surprise to me. In my
dream, at least, I had foreseen it all.
 How has Malta Kano been since I last saw her? I asked.
Creta Kano did not reply to this. Instead, she gave me a sad look, and then she
disappeared.
•
On the morning of the third day, I was finally able to get out of bed by myself. Walking
was still too hard for me, but I slowly regained the ability to speak. Nutmeg made me rice
gruel. I ate that and a little fruit.
 How is the cat doing? I asked her. This had been a matter of concern to me for some
time.
 Dont worry, Cinnamon is looking after him. He goes to your house every day to feed
him and change his water. The only thing you have to worry about is yourself. 
 When are you going to get rid of this place? 
 As soon as we can. Probably sometime next month. I think youll be seeing a little
money out of it too. Well probably have to let it go for something less than we paid for it, so
you wont get much, but your share should be a good percentage of what you paid on the
mortgage. That should support you for a while. So you dont have to worry too much about
money. You deserve it, after all: you worked hard here. 
 Is this house going to be torn down? 
 Probably. And theyll probably fill in the well again. Which seems like a waste now that
its producing water again, but nobody wants a big, old-fashioned well like that these days.
They usually just put in a pipe and an electric pump. Thats a lot more convenient, and it takes
up less space. 
 I dont suppose this place is jinxed anymore, I said. Its probably just an ordinary piece
of property again, not the ‘hanging house. 
 You may be right, said Nutmeg. She hesitated, then bit her lip. But that has nothing to
do with me or with you anymore. Right? In any case, the important thing is for you to rest
now and not bother with things that dont really matter. It will take a while until youre fully
recovered. 
Nutmeg showed me the article on Noboru Wataya in the morning paper she had brought
with her. It was a small piece. Still unconscious, Noboru Wataya had been transported from
Nagasaki to a large university hospital in Tokyo, where he was in intensive care, his condition
unchanged. The report said nothing more than that. What crossed my mind at that point, of
course, was Kumiko. Where could she be? I had to get back home. But I still lacked the
strength to walk such a distance.
I made it as far as the bathroom sink late the next morning and saw myself in the mirror
for the first time in three days. I looked terrible- less like a tired living being than a wellpreserved
corpse. As Nutmeg had said, the cut on my cheek had been sewn together with 
professional-looking stitches, the edges of the wound held in good alignment by white thread.
It was at least an inch in length but not very deep. It pulled somewhat if I tried to make a face,
but there was little pain. I brushed my teeth and used an electric shaver on my beard. I
couldnt trust myself to handle a razor yet. As the whiskers came off, I could hardly believe
what I was seeing in the mirror. I set the shaver down and took a good look. The mark was
gone. The man had cut my right cheek. Exactly where the mark had been. The cut was
certainly there, but the mark was gone. It had disappeared from my cheek without a trace.
•
During the night of the fifth day, I heard the faint sound of sleigh bells again. It was a
little after two in the morning. I got up from the sofa, slipped a cardigan over my pajamas, and
left the fitting room. Passing through the kitchen, I went to Cinnamons small office and
peeked inside. Cinnamon was calling to me again from inside the computer. I sat down at the
desk and read the message on the screen.
You have now gained access to the program The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle. Choose a document ( - ).
I clicked on # , and a document opened up before me.
 
The W i n d - U p Bird Chronicle # 
(K u m i k o ‘ s Letter)
 
There are many things I have to tell you. To tell them all would probably take a very long
time-maybe years. I should have opened up to you long ago, confessed everything to you
honestly, but unfortunately, I lacked the courage to do so. And I still harbored the groundless
hope that things would not turn out so badly. The result has been this nightmare for us both.
Its all my fault. But it is also too late for explanations. We dont have enough time for that.
So what I want to do here is tell you the most important thing first.
And that is, I have to kill my brother, Noboru Wataya. I am going to go now to the
hospital room where he is sleeping, to pull the plug on his life-support system. As his sister, I
will be allowed to stay the night with him in place of a nurse. It will take a while before anyone
notices that he has been disconnected. I had the doctor show me yesterday how it works. I
intend to wait until I am sure he is dead, and then I will give myself up to the police. I will tell
them I did what I thought was right but offer no more explanation than that. I will probably be
arrested on the spot and tried for murder. The media will leap in, and people will offer
opinions on death with dignity and other such matters. But I will keep silent. I will offer no
explanation or defense. There is only one truth in all this, and that is that I wanted to end the
life of a single human being, Noboru Wataya. They will probably lock me up, but the prospect
doesnt frighten me. I have already been through the worst.
• 
If it hadnt been for you, I would have lost my mind long ago. I would have handed
myself over, vacant, to someone else and fallen to a point beyond hope of recovery. My
brother, Noboru Wataya, did exactly that to my sister many years ago, and she ended up
killing herself. He defiled us both. Strictly speaking, he did not defile our bodies. What he did
was even worse than that.
The freedom to do anything at all was taken from me, and I shut myself up in a dark
room, alone. No one chained me down or set a guard to watch over me, but I could not have
escaped. My brother held me with yet stronger chains and guards- chains and guards that were
myself. I was the chain that bit into my ankle, and I was the ruthless guard that never slept.
Inside me, of course, there was a self that wanted to escape, but at the same time there was a
cowardly, debauched self that had given up all hope of ever being able to flee from there, and
the first self could never dominate the second because I had been so defiled in mind and body.
I had lost the right to go back to you-not just because I had been defiled by my brother,
Noboru Wataya, but because, even before that, I had defiled myself irreparably.
I told you in my letter that I had slept with a man, but in that letter I was not telling the
truth. I must confess the truth to you here. I did not sleep with just one man. I slept with many
other men. Too many to count. I myself have no idea what caused me to do such a thing.
Looking back upon it now, I think it may have been my brothers influence. He may have
opened some kind of drawer inside me, taken out some kind of incomprehensible something,
and made me give myself to one man after another. My brother had that kind of power, and as
much as I hate to acknowledge it, the two of us were surely tied together in some dark place.
In any case, by the time my brother came to me, I had already defiled myself beyond all
cleansing. In the end, I even contracted a venereal disease. In spite of all this, as I mentioned
in my letter, I was never able to feel at the time that I was wronging you in any way. What I
was doing seemed entirely natural to me-though I can only imagine that it was not the real me
that felt that way. Could this be true, though? Is the answer really so simple? And if so, what,
then, is the real me? Do I have any sound basis for concluding that the me who is now writing
this letter is the real me ? I was never able to believe that firmly in my self, nor am I able
to today.
I often used to dream of you- vivid dreams with clear-cut stories. In these dreams, you
were always searching desperately for me. We were in a kind of labyrinth, and you would
come almost up to where I was standing Take one more step! Im right here! I wanted to
shout, and if only you would find me and take me in your arms, the nightmare would end and
everything would go back to the way it was. But I was never able to produce that shout. And
you would miss me in the darkness and go straight ahead past me and disappear. It was
always like that. But still, those dreams helped and encouraged me. At least I still had the
power to dream, I knew. My brother couldnt prevent me from doing that. I was able to sense
that you were doing everything in your power to draw nearer to me. Maybe someday you
would find me, and hold me, and sweep away the filth that was clinging to me, and take me
away from that place forever. Maybe you would smash the curse and set the seal so that the
real me would never have to leave again. That was how I was able to keep a tiny flame of
hope alive in that cold, dark place with no exit-how I was able to preserve the slightest
remnant of my own voice.
I received the password for access to this computer this afternoon. Someone sent it to me
special delivery. I am sending you this message from the machine in my brothers office. I
hope it reaches you.
•
I have run out of time. The taxi is waiting for me outside. I have to leave for the hospital
now, to kill my brother and take my punishment. Strange, I no longer hate my brother. I am 
calm with the thought that I will have to obliterate his life from this world. I have to do it for
his sake too. And to give my own life meaning.
Take good care of the cat. I cant tell you how happy I am that he is back. You say his
name is Mackerel? I like that. He was always a symbol of something good that grew up
between us. We should not have lost him when we did.
I cant write anymore now. Goodbye.
 
Goodbye
 
 Im so sorry I couldnt show you the duck people, Mr. Wind-Up Bird! 
May Kasahara looked truly sorry.
She and I were sitting by the pond, looking at its thick cap of ice. It was a big pond, with
thousands of little cuts on its surface from ice-skate blades. May Kasahara had taken off from
work especially for me this Monday morning. I had intended to visit her on Sunday, but a
train accident had made me a day late. May Kasahara had wrapped herself in a fur-lined coat.
Her bright-blue woolen hat bore a geometrical design in white yarn and was topped with a
little pom-pom. She had knitted the hat herself, and she said she would make one just like it
for me before next winter. Her cheeks were red, her eyes as bright and clear as the
surrounding air, which made me very happy: she was only seventeen, after all-the potential
was there for almost limitless change.
 The duck people all moved somewhere else after the pond froze over. Im sure you
would have loved them. Come back in the spring, OK? Ill introduce you. 
I smiled. I was wearing a duffle coat that was not quite warm enough, with a scarf
wrapped up to my cheeks and my hands thrust in my pockets. A deep chill ran through the
forest. Hard snow coated the ground. My sneakers were sliding all over the place. I should
have bought some kind of nonslip boots for this trip.
 So youre going to stay here a while longer? I asked.
 I think so. I might want to go back to school after enough time goes by. Or I might not. I
dont know. I might just get married- no, not really. She smiled with a white puff of breath.
 But anyhow, Ill stay for now. I need more time to think. About what I want to do, where I
want to go. I want to take time and think about those things. 
I nodded. Maybe thats what you really ought to do, I said.
 Tell me, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, did you think about those kinds of things when you were
my age? 
 Hmm. Maybe not. I must have thought about them a little bit, but I really dont
remember thinking about things as seriously as you do. I guess I just figured if I went on
living in the usual way, things would kind of work themselves out all right. But they didnt,
did they? Unfortunately. 
May Kasahara looked me in the eye, a calm expression on her face. Then she laid her
gloved hands on her lap, one atop the other.
 So, finally, they wouldnt let Kumiko out of jail? she asked.
 She refused to be let out, I said. She figured shed be mobbed. Better to stay in jail, 
where she could have peace and quiet. Shes not even seeing me. She doesnt want to see
anyone until everything is settled. 
 When does the trial start? 
 Sometime in the spring. Kumiko is pleading guilty. Shes going to accept the verdict,
whatever it is. It shouldnt be a long trial, and theres a good possibility of a suspended
sentence- or, at worst, a light one. 
May Kasahara picked up a stone at her feet and threw it toward the middle of the pond. It
clattered across the ice to the other side.
 And you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird-youll stay home and wait for Kumiko again? 
I nodded.
 Thats good... or is it? 
I made my own big white cloud in the cold air. I dont know-I guess its how we worked
things out. 
It could have been a whole lot worse, I told myself.
Far off in the woods that surrounded the pond, a bird cried. I looked up and scanned the
area, but there was nothing more to hear. Nothing to see. There was only the dry, hollow
sound of a woodpecker drilling a hole in a tree trunk.
 If Kumiko and I have a child, Im thinking of naming it Corsica, I said.
 What a neat name! said May Kasahara.
As the two of us walked through the woods side by side, May Kasahara took off her right
glove and put her hand in my pocket. This reminded me of Kumiko. She often used to do the
same thing when we walked together in the winter, so we could share a pocket on a cold day.
I held May Kasaharas hand in my pocket. It was a small hand, and warm as a sequestered
soul.
 You know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, everybodys going to think were lovers. 
 You may be right. 
 So tell me, did you read all my letters? 
 Your letters? I had no idea what she was talking about. Sorry, but Ive never gotten a
single letter from you. I got your address and phone number from your mother. Which wasnt
easy: I had to stretch the truth quite a bit. 
 Oh, no! Whered they all go? I must have written you five hundred letters! May
Kasahara looked up to the heavens.
•
Late that afternoon, May Kasahara saw me all the way to the station. We took a bus into
town, ate pizza at a restaurant near the station, and waited for the little three-car diesel train
that finally pulled in. Two or three people stood around the big woodstove that glowed red in
the waiting room, but the two of us stayed out on the platform in the cold. A clear, hard-edged
winter moon hung frozen in the sky. It was a young moon, with a sharp curve like a Chinese
sword. Beneath that moon, May Kasahara stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek. I could
feel her cold, thin lips touch me where my mark had been.
 Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, she murmured. Thanks for coming all the way out here
to see me. 
Hands thrust deep in my pockets, I looked into her eyes. I didnt know what to say.
When the train came, she slipped her hat off, took one step back, and said to me, If
anything ever happens to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird, just call out to me in a really loud voice,
OK? To me and the duck people. 
 Goodbye, May Kasahara, I said.
• 
The arc of the moon stayed over my head long after the train had left the station,
appearing and disappearing each time the train rounded a curve. I kept my eyes on the moon,
and whenever that was lost to sight, I watched the lights of the little towns as they went past
the window. I thought of May Kasahara, with her blue wool hat, alone on the bus taking her
back to her factory in the hills. Then I thought of the duck people, asleep in the grassy
shadows somewhere. And finally, I thought of the world that I was heading back to.
 Goodbye, May Kasahara, I said. Goodbye, May Kasahara: may there always be
something watching over you.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But it was not until much later that I was able to get
any real sleep. In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment. 


BOOK 1 APRIL-JUNE
1Q84
CHAPTER 1
Aomame
DONT LET APPEARANCES FOOL YOU
The taxis radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janáeks Sinfonietta probably
not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didnt seem to be
listening very closely, either. With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the
endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman
standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents. Aomame
settled into the broad back seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the music.
How many people could recognize Janáeks Sinfonietta after hearing just the first few
bars? Probably somewhere between very few and almost none. But for some reason,
Aomame was one of the few who could.
Janáek composed his little symphony in 1926. He originally wrote the opening as a fanfare
for a gymnastics festival. Aomame imagined 1926 Czechoslovakia: The First World War had
ended, and the country was freed from the long rule of the Hapsburg Dynasty. As they enjoyed
the peaceful respite visiting central Europe, people drank Pilsner beer in cafés and
manufactured handsome light machine guns. Two years earlier, in utter obscurity, Franz
Kafka had left the world behind. Soon Hitler would come out of nowhere and gobble up this
beautiful little country in the blink of an eye, but at the time no one knew what hardships lay in
store for them. This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time,
no one knew what was coming. Listening to Janáeks music, Aomame imagined the carefree
winds sweeping across the plains of Bohemia and thought about the vicissitudes of history.
In 1926 Japans Taisho Emperor died, and the era name was changed to Showa. It was
the beginning of a terrible, dark time in this country, too. The short interlude of modernism and
democracy was ending, giving way to fascism.
Aomame loved history as much as she loved sports. She rarely read fiction, but history
books could keep her occupied for hours. What she liked about history was the way all its
facts were linked with particular dates and places. She did not find it especially difficult to remember
historical dates. Even if she did not learn them by rote memorization, once she
grasped the relationship of an event to its time and to the events preceding and following it,
the date would come to her automatically. In both middle school and high school, she had always
gotten the top grade on history exams. It puzzled her to hear someone say he had
trouble learning dates. How could something so simple be a problem for anyone?
 Aomame was her real name. Her grandfather on her fathers side came from some little
mountain town or village in Fukushima Prefecture, where there were supposedly a number of
people who bore the name, written with exactly the same characters as the word for green
peas and pronounced with the same four syllables, Ah-oh-mah-meh. She had never been
to the place, however. Her father had cut his ties with his family before her birth, just as her
mother had done with her own family, so she had never met any of her grandparents. She
didnt travel much, but on those rare occasions when she stayed in an unfamiliar city or town,
she would always open the hotels phone book to see if there were any Aomames in the area.
She had never found a single one, and whenever she tried and failed, she felt like a lonely
castaway on the open sea.
Telling people her name was always a bother. As soon as the name left her lips, the other
person looked puzzled or confused.
 Miss Aomame? 
 Yes. Just like ‘green peas. 
Employers required her to have business cards printed, which only made things worse.
People would stare at the card as if she had thrust a letter at them bearing bad news. When
she announced her name on the telephone, she would often hear suppressed laughter. In
waiting rooms at the doctors or at public offices, people would look up at the sound of her
name, curious to see what someone called Green Peas could look like.
Some people would get the name of the plant wrong and call her Edamame or
 Soramame, whereupon she would gently correct them: No, Im not soybeans or fava beans,
just green peas. Pretty close, though. Aomame. How many times in her thirty years had she
heard the same remarks, the same feeble jokes about her name? My life might have been
totally different if I hadnt been born with this name. If I had had an ordinary name like Sato or
Tanaka or Suzuki, I could have lived a slightly more relaxed life or looked at people with
somewhat more forgiving eyes. Perhaps.
Eyes closed, Aomame listened to the music, allowing the lovely unison of the brasses to
sink into her brain. Just then it occurred to her that the sound quality was too good for a radio
in a taxicab. Despite the rather low volume at which it was playing, the sound had true depth,
and the overtones were clearly audible. She opened her eyes and leaned forward to study the
dashboard stereo. The jet-black device shone with a proud gloss. She couldnt make out its
brand name, but it was obviously high end, with lots of knobs and switches, the green numerals
of the station readout clear against the black panel. This was not the kind of stereo you
expected to see in an ordinary fleet cab.
She looked around at the cabs interior. She had been too absorbed in her own thoughts
to notice until now, but this was no ordinary taxi. The high quality of the trim was evident, and
the seat was especially comfortable. Above all, it was quiet. The car probably had extra sound
insulation to keep noise out, like a soundproofed music studio. The driver probably owned his
own cab. Many such owner-drivers would spare no expense on the upkeep of their automo-
biles. Moving only her eyes, Aomame searched for the drivers registration card, without success.
This did not seem to be an illegal unlicensed cab, though. It had a standard taxi meter,
which was ticking off the proper fare: 2,150 yen so far. Still, the registration card showing the
drivers name was nowhere to be found.
 What a nice car, Aomame said, speaking to the drivers back. So quiet. What kind is it? 
 Toyota Crown Royal Saloon, the driver replied succinctly.
 The music sounds great in here. 
 Its a very quiet car. Thats one reason I chose it. Toyota has some of the best soundinsulating
technology in the world. 
Aomame nodded and leaned back in her seat. There was something about the drivers
way of speaking that bothered her, as though he were leaving something important unsaid.
For example (and this is just one example), his remark on Toyotas impeccable sound insulation
might be taken to mean that some other Toyota feature was less than impeccable. And
each time he finished a sentence, there was a tiny but meaningful lump of silence left behind.
This lump floated there, enclosed in the cars restricted space like an imaginary miniature
cloud, giving Aomame a strangely unsettled feeling.
 It certainly is a quiet car, Aomame declared, as if to sweep the little cloud away. And the
stereo looks especially fine. 
 Decisiveness was key when I bought it, the driver said, like a retired staff officer explaining
a past military success. I have to spend so much time in here, I want the best sound
available. And 
Aomame waited for what was to follow, but nothing followed. She closed her eyes again
and concentrated on the music. She knew nothing about Janáek as a person, but she was
quite sure that he never imagined that in 1984 someone would be listening to his composition
in a hushed Toyota Crown Royal Saloon on the gridlocked elevated Metropolitan Expressway
in Tokyo.
Why, though, Aomame wondered, had she instantly recognized the piece to be Janáeks
Sinfonietta? And how did she know it had been composed in 1926? She was not a classical
music fan, and she had no personal recollections involving Janáek, yet the moment she heard
the opening bars, all her knowledge of the piece came to her by reflex, like a flock of birds
swooping through an open window. The music gave her an odd, wrenching kind of feeling.
There was no pain or unpleasantness involved, just a sensation that all the elements of her
body were being physically wrung out. Aomame had no idea what was going on. Could Sinfonietta
actually be giving me this weird feeling?
 Janáek, Aomame said half-consciously, though after the word emerged from her lips,
she wanted to take it back.
 Whats that, maam? 
 Janáek. The man who wrote this music. 
 Never heard of him. 
 Czech composer. 
 Well-well, the driver said, seemingly impressed.
 Do you own this cab? Aomame asked, hoping to change the subject.
 I do, the driver answered. After a brief pause, he added, Its all mine. My second one. 
 Very comfortable seats. 
 Thank you, maam. Turning his head slightly in her direction, he asked, By the way, are
you in a hurry? 
 I have to meet someone in Shibuya. Thats why I asked you to take the expressway. 
 What time is your meeting? 
 Four thirty, Aomame said.
 Well, its already three forty-five. Youll never make it. 
 Is the backup that bad? 
 Looks like a major accident up ahead. This is no ordinary traffic jam. Weve hardly moved
for quite a while. 
She wondered why the driver was not listening to traffic reports. The expressway had
been brought to a standstill. He should be listening to updates on the taxi drivers special radio
station.
 You can tell its an accident without hearing a traffic report? Aomame asked.
 You cant trust them, he said with a hollow ring to his voice. Theyre half lies. The Expressway
Corporation only releases reports that suit its agenda. If you really want to know
whats happening here and now, youve got to use your own eyes and your own judgment. 
 And your judgment tells you that well be stuck here? 
 For quite a while, the driver said with a nod. I can guarantee you that. When it backs up
solid like this, the expressway is sheer hell. Is your meeting an important one? 
Aomame gave it some thought. Yes, very. I have to see a client. 
 Thats a shame. Youre probably not going to make it. 
The driver shook his head a few times as if trying to ease a stiff neck. The wrinkles on the
back of his neck moved like some kind of ancient creature. Half-consciously watching the
movement, Aomame found herself thinking of the sharp object in the bottom of her shoulder
bag. A touch of sweat came to her palms.
 What do you think I should do? she asked.
 Theres nothing you can do up here on the expressway not until we get to the next exit.
If we were down on the city streets, you could just step out of the cab and take the subway. 
 What is the next exit? 
 Ikejiri. We might not get there before the sun goes down, though. 
Before the sun goes down? Aomame imagined herself locked in this cab until sunset. The
Janáek was still playing. Muted strings came to the foreground as if to soothe her heightened
anxiety. That earlier wrenching sensation had largely subsided. What could that have been?
Aomame had caught the cab near Kinuta and told the driver to take the elevated expressway
from Yohga. The flow of traffic had been smooth at first, but suddenly backed up just before
Sangenjaya, after which they had hardly moved. The outbound lanes were moving fine.
Only the side headed toward downtown Tokyo was tragically jammed. Inbound Expressway
Number 3 would not normally back up at three in the afternoon, which was why Aomame had
directed the driver to take it.
 Time charges dont add up on the expressway, the driver said, speaking toward his rearview
mirror. So dont let the fare worry you. I suppose you need to get to your meeting,
though? 
 Yes, of course. But theres nothing I can do about it, is there? 
He glanced at her in the mirror. He was wearing pale sunglasses. The way the light was
shining in, Aomame could not make out his expression.
 Well, in fact, there might be a way. You could take the subway to Shibuya from here, but
youd have to do something a little … extreme. 
 Something extreme? 
 Its not something I can openly advise you to do. 
Aomame said nothing. She waited for more with narrowed eyes.
 Look over there. See that turnout just ahead? he asked, pointing. See? Near that Esso
sign. 
Aomame strained to see through the windshield until she focused on a space to the left of
the two-lane roadway where broken-down cars could pull off. The elevated roadway had no
shoulder but instead had emergency turnouts at regular intervals. Aomame saw that the
turnout was outfitted with a yellow emergency phone box for contacting the Metropolitan Expressway
Public Corporation office. The turnout itself was empty at the moment. On top of a
building beyond the oncoming lanes there was a big billboard advertising Esso gasoline with
a smiling tiger holding a gas hose.
 To tell you the truth, theres a stairway leading from the turnout down to street level. Its
for drivers who have to abandon their cars in a fire or earthquake and climb down to the
street. Usually only maintenance workers use it. If you were to climb down that stairway,
youd be near a Tokyu Line station. From there, its nothing to Shibuya. 
 I had no idea these Metropolitan Expressways had emergency stairs, Aomame said.
 Not many people do. 
 But wouldnt I get in trouble using it without permission when theres no real emergency? 
The driver paused a moment. Then he said, I wonder. I dont know all the rules of the
Corporation, but you wouldnt be hurting anybody. Theyd probably look the other way, dont
you think? Anyway, they dont have people watching every exit. The Metropolitan Expressway
Public Corporation is famous for having a huge staff but nobody really doing any work. 
 What kind of stairway is it? 
 Hmm, kind of like a fire escape. You know, like the ones you see on the backs of old
buildings. Its not especially dangerous or anything. Its maybe three stories high, and you just
climb down. Theres a barrier at the opening, but its not very high. Anybody who wanted to
could get over it easily. 
 Have you ever used one of these stairways? 
Instead of replying, the driver directed a faint smile toward his rearview mirror, a smile that
could be read any number of ways.
 Its strictly up to you, he said, tapping lightly on the steering wheel in time to the music.
 If you just want to sit here and relax and enjoy the music, Im fine with that. We might as well
resign ourselves to the fact that were not going anywhere soon. All Im saying is that there
are emergency measures you can take if you have urgent business. 
Aomame frowned and glanced at her watch. She looked up and studied the surrounding
cars. On the right was a black Mitsubishi Pajero wagon with a thin layer of white dust. A
bored-looking young man in the front passenger seat was smoking a cigarette with his window
open. He had long hair, a tanned face, and wore a dark red windbreaker. The cars luggage
compartment was filled with a number of worn surfboards. In front of him was a gray
Saab 900, its dark-tinted windows closed tight, preventing any glimpse of who might be inside.
The body was so immaculately polished, you could probably see your face in it.
The car ahead was a red Suzuki Alto with a Nerima Ward license plate and a dented
bumper. A young mother sat gripping the wheel. Her small child was standing on the seat
next to her, moving back and forth to dispel its boredom. The mothers annoyance showed on
her face as she cautioned the child to keep still. Aomame could see her mouth moving. The
scene was unchanged from ten minutes earlier. In those ten minutes, the car had probably
advanced less than ten yards.
Aomame thought hard, arranging everything in order of priority. She needed hardly any
time to reach a conclusion. As if to coincide with this, the final movement of the Janáek was
just beginning.
She pulled her small Ray-Ban sunglasses partway out of her shoulder bag and took three
thousand-yen bills from her wallet. Handing the bills to the driver, she said, Ill get out here. I
really cant be late for this appointment. 
The driver nodded and took the money. Would you like a receipt? 
 No need. And keep the change. 
 Thanks very much, he said. Be careful, it looks windy out there. Dont slip. 
 Ill be careful, Aomame said.
 And also, the driver said, facing the mirror, please remember: things are not what they
seem. 
Things are not what they seem, Aomame repeated mentally. What do you mean by that? 
she asked with knitted brows.
The driver chose his words carefully: Its just that youre about to do something out of the
ordinary. Am I right? People do not ordinarily climb down the emergency stairs of the Metropolitan
Expressway in the middle of the day especially women. 
 I suppose youre right. 
 Right. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to
change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. Ive had that experience
myself. But dont let appearances fool you. Theres always only one reality. 
Aomame thought about what he was saying, and in the course of her thinking, the Janáek
ended and the audience broke into immediate applause. This was obviously a live recording.
The applause was long and enthusiastic. There were even occasional calls of Bravo! She
imagined the smiling conductor bowing repeatedly to the standing audience. He would then
raise his head, raise his arms, shake hands with the concertmaster, turn away from the audience,
raise his arms again in praise of the orchestra, face front, and take another deep bow.
As she listened to the long recorded applause, it sounded less like applause and more like an
endless Martian sandstorm.
 There is always, as I said, only one reality, the driver repeated slowly, as if underlining
an important passage in a book.
 Of course, Aomame said. He was right. A physical object could only be in one place at
one time. Einstein proved that. Reality was utterly coolheaded and utterly lonely.
Aomame pointed toward the car stereo. Great sound. 
The driver nodded. What was the name of that composer again? 
 Janáek. 
 Janáek, the driver repeated, as if committing an important password to memory. Then he
pulled the lever that opened the passenger door. Be careful, he said. I hope you get to your
appointment on time. 
Aomame stepped out of the cab, gripping the strap of her large leather shoulder bag. The
applause was still going. She started walking carefully along the left edge of the elevated road
toward the emergency turnout some ten meters ahead. Each time a large truck roared by on
the opposite side, she felt the surface of the road shake or, rather, undulate through her
high heels, as if she were walking on the deck of an aircraft carrier on a stormy sea.
The little girl in the front seat of the red Suzuki Alto stuck her head out of her window and
stared, open-mouthed, at Aomame passing by. Then she turned to her mother and asked,
 Mommy, what is that lady doing? Wheres she going? I want to get out and walk too. Please,
Mommy! Pleeease! The mother responded to her cries in silence, shaking her head and
shooting an accusatory glance at Aomame. The girls loud pleading and the mothers glance
were the only responses to her that Aomame noticed. The other drivers just sat at the wheel
smoking and watching her make her way with determined steps between the cars and the
side wall. They knit their brows and squinted as if looking at a too-bright object but seemed to
have temporarily suspended all judgment. For someone to be walking on the Metropolitan Expressway
was by no means an everyday event, with or without the usual flow of traffic, so it
took them some time to process the sight as an actual occurrence all the more so because
the walker was a young woman in high heels and a miniskirt.
Aomame pulled in her chin, kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, her back straight, and her
pace steady. Her chestnut-colored Charles Jourdan heels clicked against the roads surface,
and the skirts of her coat waved in the breeze. April had begun, but there was still a chill in
the air and a hint of roughness to come. Aomame wore a beige spring coat over her green
light wool Junko Shimada suit. A black leather bag hung over her shoulder, and her shoulderlength
hair was impeccably trimmed and shaped. She wore no accessories of any kind. Five
foot six inches tall, she carried not an ounce of excess fat. Every muscle in her body was well
toned, but her coat kept that fact hidden.
A detailed examination of her face from the front would reveal that the size and shape of
her ears were significantly different, the left one much bigger and malformed. No one ever noticed
this, however, because her hair nearly always covered her ears. Her lips formed a tight
straight line, suggesting that she was not easily approachable. Also contributing to this impression
were her small, narrow nose, somewhat protruding cheekbones, broad forehead,
and long, straight eyebrows. All of these were arranged to sit in a pleasing oval shape,
however, and while tastes differ, few would object to calling her a beautiful woman. The one
problem with her face was its extreme paucity of expression. Her firmly closed lips only
formed a smile when absolutely necessary. Her eyes had the cool, vigilant stare of a superior
deck officer. Thanks to these features, no one ever had a vivid impression of her face. She attracted
attention not so much because of the qualities of her features but rather because of
the naturalness and grace with which her expression moved. In that sense, Aomame resembled
an insect skilled at biological mimicry. What she most wanted was to blend in with
her background by changing color and shape, to remain inconspicuous and not easily remembered.
This was how she had protected herself since childhood.
Whenever something caused her to frown or grimace, however, her features underwent
dramatic changes. The muscles of her face tightened, pulling in several directions at once
and emphasizing the lack of symmetry in the overall structure. Deep wrinkles formed in her
skin, her eyes suddenly drew inward, her nose and mouth became violently distorted, her jaw
twisted to the side, and her lips curled back, exposing Aomames large white teeth. Instantly,
she became a wholly different person, as if a cord had broken, dropping the mask that normally
covered her face. The shocking transformation terrified anyone who saw it, so she was
careful never to frown in the presence of a stranger. She would contort her face only when
she was alone or when she was threatening a man who displeased her.
Reaching the turnout, Aomame stopped and looked around. It took only a moment for her
to find the emergency stairway. As the driver had said, there was a metal barrier across the
entrance. It was a little more than waist high, and it was locked. Stepping over it in a tight
miniskirt could be a slight problem, but only if she cared about being seen. Without hesitating,
she slipped her high heels off and shoved them into her shoulder bag. She would probably ruin
her stockings by walking in bare feet, but she could easily buy another pair.
People stared at her in silence as she removed her shoes and coat. From the open window
of the black Toyota Celica parked next to the turnout, Michael Jacksons high-pitched
voice provided her with background music. Billie Jean was playing. She felt as if she were
performing a striptease. So what? Let them look all they want. They must be bored waiting for
the traffic jam to end. Sorry, though, folks, this is all Ill be taking off today.
Aomame slung the bag across her chest to keep it from falling. Some distance away she
could see the brand-new black Toyota Crown Royal Saloon in which she had been riding, its
windshield reflecting the blinding glare of the afternoon sun. She could not make out the face
of the driver, but she knew he must be watching.
Dont let appearances fool you. Theres always only one reality.
Aomame took in a long, deep breath, and slowly let it out. Then, to the tune of Billie
Jean, she swung her leg over the metal barrier. Her miniskirt rode up to her hips. Who gives
a damn? Let them look all they want. Seeing whats under my skirt doesnt let them really see
me as a person. Besides, her legs were the part of her body of which Aomame was the most
proud.
Stepping down once she was on the other side of the barrier, Aomame straightened her
skirt, brushed the dust from her hands, put her coat back on, slung her bag across her chest
again, and pushed her sunglasses more snugly against her face. The emergency stairway lay
before her a metal stairway painted gray. Plain, practical, functional. Not made for use by
miniskirted women wearing only stockings on their otherwise bare feet. Nor had Junko Shimada
designed Aomames suit for use on the emergency escape stairs of Tokyo Metropolitan
Expressway Number 3. Another huge truck roared down the outbound side of the expressway,
shaking the stairs. The breeze whistled through gaps in the stairways metal framework.
But in any case, there it was, before her: the stairway. All that was left for her to do was climb
down to the street.
Aomame turned for one last look at the double line of cars packed on the expressway,
scanning them from left to right, then right to left, like a speaker on a podium looking for questions
from the audience now that she had finished her talk. There had been no movement at
all. Trapped on the expressway with nothing else to occupy them, people were watching her
every move, wondering what this woman on the far side of the barrier would do next.
Aomame lightly pulled in her chin, bit her lower lip, and took stock of her audience through the
dark green lenses of her sunglasses.
You couldnt begin to imagine who I am, where Im going, or what Im about to do,
Aomame said to her audience without moving her lips. All of you are trapped here. You cant
go anywhere, forward or back. But Im not like you. I have work to do. I have a mission to accomplish.
And so, with your permission, I shall move ahead.
Aomame had the urge at the end to treat her assembled throng to one of her special
scowls, but she managed to stop herself. There was no time for such things now. Once she
let herself frown, it took both time and effort to regain her original expression.
Aomame turned her back on her silent audience and, with careful steps, began to descend
the emergency stairway, feeling the chill of the crude metal rungs against the soles of
her feet. Also chilling was the early April breeze, which swept her hair back now and then, revealing
her misshapen left ear.
1Q84
CHAPTER 2
Tengo
SOMETHING ELSE IN MIND
Tengos first memory dated from the time he was one and a half. His mother had taken off
her blouse and dropped the shoulder straps of her white slip to let a man who was not his
father suck on her breasts. The infant in the crib nearby was probably Tengo himself. He was
observing the scene as a third person. Or could the infant have been his twin? No, not likely.
It was one-and-a-half-year-old Tengo. He knew this intuitively. The infant was asleep, its eyes
closed, its little breaths deep and regular. The vivid ten-second scene was seared into the
wall of his consciousness, his earliest memory in life. Nothing came before or after it. It stood
out alone, like the steeple of a town visited by a flood, thrusting up above the muddy water.
Tengo made a point of asking people how old they were at the time of their first memory.
For most people it was four or five. Three at the very earliest. A child had to be at least three
to begin observing a surrounding scene with a degree of rationality. In the stage before that,
everything registered as incomprehensible chaos. The world was a mushy bowl of loose
gruel, lacking framework or handholds. It flowed past our open windows without forming
memories in the brain.
Surely a one-and-a-half-year-old infant was unable to grasp what it meant for a man who
was not his father to be sucking his mothers breasts. That much was clear. So if this memory
of Tengos was genuine, the scene must have been seared into his retinas as a pure image
free of judgment the way a camera records objects on film, mechanically, as a blend of light
and shadow. And as his consciousness matured, the fixed image held in reserve would have
been analyzed bit by bit, and meaning applied to it. But is such a thing even possible? Was
the infant brain capable of preserving images like that?
Or was this simply a false memory of Tengos? Was it just something that his mind had
later decided for whatever purpose or plan to make up on its own? Tengo had given plenty
of thought to the possibility that this memory might be a fabrication, but he had arrived at the
conclusion that it probably was not. It was too vivid and too deeply compelling to be fake. The
light, the smells, the beating of his heart: these felt overwhelmingly real, not like imitations.
And besides, it explained many things both logically and emotionally to assume that the
scene was real.
This vivid ten-second image would come to him without warning and without consideration
of either time or place. He could be riding on the subway or writing formulas on the blackboard
or having a meal or (as now) sitting and talking to someone across a table, and it would
envelop him like a soundless tsunami. By the time he noticed, it would be directly in front of
him, and his arms and legs would be paralyzed. The flow of time stopped. The air grew thin,
and he had trouble breathing. He lost all connection with the people and things around him.
The tsunamis liquid wall swallowed him whole. And though it felt to him as if the world were
being closed off in darkness, he experienced no loss of awareness. It was just a sense of
having been switched to a new track. Parts of his mind were, if anything, sharpened by the
change. He felt no terror, but he could not keep his eyes open. His eyelids were clamped
shut. Sounds grew distant, and the familiar image was projected onto the screen of his consciousness
again and again. Sweat gushed from every part of his body and the armpits of his
undershirt grew damp. He trembled all over, and his heartbeat grew faster and louder.
If he was with someone when it happened, Tengo would feign momentary dizziness. It
was, in fact, like a dizzy spell. Everything would return to normal in time. He would pull his
handkerchief from his pocket and press it to his mouth. Waiting for the dizziness to pass, he
would raise a hand to signal to the other person that it was nothing to worry about. Sometimes
it would all be over in thirty seconds, at other times it went on for over a minute. As long
as it lasted, the same image would be repeated as if on a tape machine set on automatic. His
mother would drop her shoulder straps and some man would start sucking on her hardened
nipples. She would close her eyes and heave a deep sigh. The warm, familiar scent of mothers
milk hovered faintly in the air. Smell is an infants most acute sense. The sense of smell
reveals a great deal sometimes it reveals everything. The scene was soundless, the air a
dense liquid. All he could hear was the soft beating of his own heart.
Look at this, they say. Look at this and nothing else, they say. You are here. You cant go
anywhere else, they say. The message is played over and over.
This attack was a long one. Tengo closed his eyes, covered his mouth with his handkerchief
as always, and gritted his teeth. He had no idea how long it went on. All he could do was
guess, based on how worn out he felt afterward. He felt physically drained, more fatigued
than he had ever felt before. Some time had to go by before he could open his eyes. His mind
wanted to wake up, but his muscles and internal organs resisted. He might as well have been
a hibernating animal trying to wake up in the wrong season.
 Tengo, Tengo! someone was calling. The muffled voice seemed to reach him from the
depths of a cave. It finally dawned on Tengo that he was hearing his own name. Whats
wrong, Tengo? Is it happening to you again? Are you all right? The voice sounded closer
now.
Tengo finally opened his eyes, managed to focus them, and stared at his own right hand
gripping the edge of the table. Now he could be sure that the world still existed in one piece
and that he was still a part of it. Some numbness remained, but the hand was certainly his.
So, too, was the smell of sweat emanating from him, an oddly harsh odor like a zoo animals.
His throat was dry. Tengo reached for the glass on the table and drank half its contents,
carefully trying not to spill any. After a momentary rest to catch his breath, he drank the remainder.
His mind was gradually coming back to where it belonged and his senses were returning
to normal. He set the empty glass down and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.
 Sorry, he said. Im okay now 
He knew that the man across from him was Komatsu and that they had been talking at a
café near Tokyos Shinjuku Station. The sounds of other nearby conversations now sounded
like normal voices. The couple at the neighboring table were staring at him, obviously concerned.
The waitress stood by with a worried expression on her face as though she expected
her customer to vomit. Tengo looked up and nodded to her, smiling as if to signal, Dont
worry, no problem. 
 That wasnt some kind of fit, was it? Komatsu asked.
 No, its nothing, a kind of dizzy spell. A bad one, Tengo replied. His voice still didnt
sound like his own, though it was getting closer.
 Itd be terrible if that happened while you were driving or something, Komatsu said, looking
directly at him.
 I dont drive. 
 Thats good. I know a guy with a cedar pollen allergy who started sneezing at the wheel
and smashed into a telephone pole. Of course, your thing is not just sneezing. I was shocked
the first time. Im more or less used to it now, though. 
 Sorry. 
Tengo picked up his coffee cup and gulped down what was left. He tasted nothing, just felt
some lukewarm liquid passing down his throat.
 Want to order another glass of water? Komatsu asked.
Tengo shook his head. No, Im okay now. 
Komatsu took a pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket, put one in his mouth, and lit up
with the cafés matches. Then he glanced at his watch.
 What were we talking about again? Tengo asked, trying to get back to normal.
 Good question, Komatsu said, staring off into space, thinking or pretending to. Tengo
could not be sure which. There was a good deal of acting involved in the way Komatsu spoke
and gestured. Thats it the girl Fuka-Eri. We were just getting started on her and Air
Chrysalis. 
Tengo nodded. That was it. He was just beginning to give his opinion on Fuka-Eri and her
novella, Air Chrysalis, when the attack hit him.
Komatsu said, I was going to tell you about that odd one-word pen name of hers. 
 It is odd, isnt it? The ‘Fuka sounds like part of a family name, and the ‘Eri could be an
ordinary girls name: ‘Eri or ‘Eriko. 
 Thats exactly what it is. Her family name is ‘Fukada, and her real first name is ‘Eriko, so
she put them together: ‘Fuka plus ‘Eri equals ‘Fuka-Eri. 
Tengo pulled the manuscript from his briefcase and laid it on the table, resting his hand
atop the sheaf of paper to reaffirm its presence.
 As I mentioned briefly on the phone, the best thing about this Air Chrysalis is that its not
an imitation of anyone. It has absolutely none of the usual new writers sense of ‘I want to be
another so-and-so. The style, for sure, is rough, and the writing is clumsy. She even gets the
title wrong: shes confusing ‘chrysalis and ‘cocoon. You could pick it apart completely if you
wanted to. But the story itself has real power: it draws you in. The overall plot is a fantasy, but
the descriptive detail is incredibly real. The balance between the two is excellent. I dont know
if words like ‘originality or ‘inevitability fit here, and I suppose I might agree if someone insisted
its not at that level, but finally, after you work your way through the thing, with all its
faults, it leaves a real impression it gets to you in some strange, inexplicable way that may
be a little disturbing. 
Komatsu kept his eyes on Tengo, saying nothing. He was waiting to hear more.
Tengo went on. Id hate to see this thing dropped from the competition just because the
style is clumsy. Ive read tons of submissions over the years or maybe I should say
‘skimmed rather than ‘read. A few of them were fairly well written, of course, but most of
them were just awful. And out of all those manuscripts, this Air Chrysalis is the only one that
moved me the least bit. Its the only one that ever made me want to read it again. 
 Well, well, Komatsu said, and then, as if he found this all rather boring, he released a
stream of smoke through his pursed lips. Tengo had known Komatsu too long to be deceived
by such a display, however. Komatsu was a man who often adopted an expression that was
either unrelated to or exactly the opposite of what he was actually feeling. And so Tengo
was prepared to wait him out.
 I read it, too, Komatsu said after a short pause. Right after you called me. The writing is
incredibly bad. Its ungrammatical, and in some places you have no idea what shes trying to
say. She should go back to school and learn how to write a decent sentence before she starts
writing fiction. 
 But you did read it to the end, didnt you? 
Komatsu smiled. It was the kind of smile he might have found way in the back of a normally
unopened drawer. Youre right, I did read it all the way through much to my own surprise.
I never read these new writer prize submissions from beginning to end. I even reread
some parts of this one. Lets just say the planets were in perfect alignment. Ill grant it that
much. 
 Which means it has something, dont you think? 
Komatsu set his cigarette in an ashtray and rubbed the side of his nose with the middle
finger of his right hand. He did not, however, answer Tengos question.
Tengo said, Shes just seventeen, a high school kid. She still doesnt have the discipline
to read and write fiction, thats all. Its practically impossible for this work to take the new
writers prize, I know, but its good enough to put on the short list. You can make that happen,
Im sure. So then she can win next time. 
 Hmm, Komatsu said with another noncommittal answer and a yawn. He took a drink
from his water glass. Think about it, Tengo. Imagine if I put it on the short list. The members
of the selection committee would faint or more likely have a shit fit. But they would definitely
not read it all the way through. All four of them are active writers, busy with their own work.
Theyd skim the first couple of pages and toss it out as if it were some grade school composition.
I could plead with them to give it another try, and guarantee them it would be brilliant with
a little polishing here and there, but whos going to listen to me? Even supposing I could
‘make it happen, Id only want to do that for something with more promise. 
 So youre saying we should drop it just like that? 
 No, that is not what Im saying, Komatsu said, rubbing the side of his nose. Ive got
something else in mind for this story. 
 Something else in mind, Tengo said. He sensed something ominous in Komatsus tone.
 Youre saying we should count on her next work as a winner, Komatsu said. Id like to
be able to do that, too, of course. One of an editors greatest joys is nurturing a young writer
over time. Its a thrill to look at the clear night sky and discover a new star before anybody
else sees it. But to tell you the truth, Tengo, I dont believe this girl has a next work in her. Not
to boast, but Ive been making my living in this business for twenty years now. Ive seen
writers come and go. And if Ive learned anything, its how to tell the difference between
writers who have a next work in them, and those who dont. And if you ask me, this girl
doesnt have one. Her next work is not going to make it, and neither will the one after that or
the one after that. First of all, look at this style. No amount of work is going to make it any better.
Its never going to happen. And the reason its never going to happen is that the writer
herself doesnt give a damn about style: she shows absolutely no intention of wanting to write
well, of wanting to improve her writing. Good style happens in one of two ways: the writer
either has an inborn talent or is willing to work herself to death to get it. And this girl, Fuka-Eri,
belongs to neither type. Dont ask me why, but style as such simply doesnt interest her. What
she does have, though, is the desire to tell a story a fairly strong desire. I grant her that.
Even in this raw form, it was able to draw you in, Tengo, and it made me read the manuscript
all the way through. That alone is impressive, you could say. But she has no future as a novelist.
None. I hate to disappoint you, but thats my honest opinion. 
Tengo had to admit that Komatsu could be right. The man possessed good editorial instincts,
if nothing else.
 Still, it wouldnt hurt to give her a chance, would it? Tengo asked.
 You mean, throw her in, see if she sinks or swims? 
 In a word. 
 Ive done too much of that already. I dont want to watch anybody else drown. 
 Well, what about me? 
 You at least are willing to work hard, Komatsu said cautiously. As far as I can tell, you
dont cut corners. Youre very modest when it comes to the act of writing. And why? Because
you like to write. I value that in you. Its the single most important quality for somebody who
wants to be a writer. 
 But not, in itself, enough. 
 No, of course, not in itself enough. There also has to be that ‘special something, an indefinable
quality, something I cant quite put my finger on. Thats the part of fiction I value
more highly than anything else. Stuff I understand perfectly doesnt interest me. Obviously.
Its very simple. 
Tengo fell silent for a while. Then he said, Does Fuka-Eris writing have something you
dont understand perfectly? 
 Yes, it does, of course. She has something important. I dont know what it is exactly, but
she has it, that much is clear. Its obvious to you, and its obvious to me. Anybody can see it,
like the smoke from a bonfire on a windless afternoon. But whatever she has, Tengo, she
probably cant carry it on her own. 
 Meaning, if we throw her in the water, shell drown? 
 Exactly. 
 And thats why you dont want to put her on the short list. 
 That is exactly why. Komatsu contorted his lips and folded his hands on the table.
 Which brings us to a point in the conversation where I have to be very careful how I express
myself. 
Tengo picked up his coffee cup and stared at the puddle inside. Then he put the cup down
again. Komatsu still had not spoken. Tengo asked, Is this where I find out what you mean by
‘something else? 
Komatsu narrowed his eyes like a teacher gazing upon his prize pupil. He nodded slowly
and said, It is. 
There was something inscrutable about this man Komatsu. You couldnt easily tell from
his expression or tone of voice what he was thinking or feeling. He appeared to derive a good
deal of pleasure from keeping others guessing. Mentally, he was very quick, that was for certain.
He was the type of man who had his own sense of logic and reached his own conclusions
without regard to the opinions of others. He did not engage in pointless intellectual display,
but it was clear that he had read an enormous amount and that his knowledge was both
wide-ranging and deep. Nor was it simply a matter of factual knowledge: he had an intuitive
eye both for people and for books. His biases played a large role here, but for Komatsu bias
was an important element of truth.
He never said a great deal, and he hated long-winded explanations, but when necessary
he could present his views logically and precisely. He could also be quite caustic if he felt like
it, aiming a quick and merciless jab at his opponents weakest point. He had very strong opinions
about both people and literature; the works and individuals he could not tolerate far outnumbered
those he could. Not surprisingly, the number of people who disliked him was far
greater than those who thought well of him which was exactly what he hoped for. Tengo
thought that Komatsu enjoyed the isolation and even relished being openly hated. Komatsu
believed that mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.
At forty-five, Komatsu was sixteen years older than Tengo. A dedicated editor of literary
magazines, he had established a certain reputation as one of the top people in the industry,
but no one knew a thing about his private life. He met with people constantly in his work, but
he never spoke of anything personal. Tengo had no idea where he was born or raised, or
even where he lived. They often had long conversations, but such topics never came up.
People were puzzled that a difficult man like Komatsu was able to solicit manuscripts from
writers he had no friends to speak of and displayed only contempt for the literary world but
over the years he managed, almost effortlessly, to obtain work by famous authors for the
magazine, and more than a few issues owed their contents to his efforts. So even if they
didnt like him, people respected him.
Rumor had it that when Komatsu was a student in the prestigious University of Tokyos
Department of Literature in 1960, he had been one of the leaders of the huge leftist demonstrations
against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. He was said to have been near fellow student
Michiko Kanba when she was killed by riot police, and to have suffered serious injuries
himself. No one knew if this was true, but there was something about Komatsu that made the
stories seem convincing. He was tall and gangly, with an oversized mouth and an undersized
nose. He had long limbs and nicotine-stained fingers, reminiscent of those failed revolutionary
intellectuals in nineteenth-century Russian novels. He rarely smiled, but when he did it was
with his whole face. Not that it made him look especially happy he was more like an old sor-
cerer chuckling to himself over an ominous prophecy he was about to reveal. Clean and decently
groomed, he always wore a tweed jacket, white oxford cloth or pale gray polo shirt, no
tie, gray pants, suede shoes a uniform meant to show the world he didnt care about these
things. Tengo imagined a half-dozen three-button tweed jackets of a subtly different color,
cloth, and pattern that hung, carefully brushed, in Komatsus closet. Perhaps Komatsu had to
attach number tags to distinguish one jacket from another.
Komatsus fine, wiry hair was beginning to show a touch of gray in front. Tangled on the
sides, it was long enough to cover his ears, and it always stayed that length, about a week
overdue for a haircut. Tengo wondered how such a thing was possible. At times Komatsus
eyes would take on a sharp glow, like stars glittering in the winter night sky. And if something
caused him to clam up, he would maintain his silence like a rock on the far side of the moon.
All expression would disappear from his face, and his body seemed to go cold.
Tengo first met Komatsu five years earlier when he was short-listed for the new writers
prize competition of Komatsus magazine. Komatsu called and said he wanted to get together
for a chat. They agreed to meet in a café in Shinjuku (the same one in which they were now
sitting). Komatsu told Tengo there was no way his work would take the prize (and in fact it did
not). Komatsu himself, however, had enjoyed the story. Im not looking for thanks, but I almost
never say this to anyone, he said. (This was in fact true, as Tengo came to learn.) So
Id like you to let me read your next story before you show it to anyone else. Tengo promised
to do that.
Komatsu also wanted to learn about Tengo as a person his experience growing up, what
he was doing now. Tengo explained himself as honestly as he could. He was born in the city
of Ichikawa in nearby Chiba Prefecture. His mother died of an illness shortly after he was
born, or at least that was what his father told him. He had no siblings. His father never remarried
but raised Tengo by himself, collecting NHK television subscription fees door to door to
make a living. Now, however, his father had Alzheimers disease and was living in a nursing
home on the southern tip of Chibas Boso Peninsula. Tengo himself had graduated from
Tsukuba Universitys oddly named School 1 College of Natural Studies Mathematics Major 
and was writing fiction while teaching mathematics at a private cram school in Yoyogi. At the
time of his graduation he could have taken a position at a prefectural high school near home,
but instead chose the relatively free schedule of the Tokyo cram school. He lived alone in a
small apartment in the Koenji District west of downtown Tokyo, which gave him an easy halfhour
commute to school.
Tengo did not know for certain whether he wanted to be a professional novelist, nor was
he sure he had the talent to write fiction. What he did know was that he could not help spending
a large part of every day writing fiction. To him, writing was like breathing.
Komatsu said practically nothing as he listened to Tengos story. He seemed to like
Tengo, though it was not clear why. Tengo was a big man (he had been a key member of his
judo team in middle school, high school, and college), and he had the eyes of an early-waking
farmer. He wore his hair short, seemed always to have a tan, and had cauliflower ears. He
looked neither like a youthful devotee of literature nor like a teacher of mathematics, which
was also something that Komatsu seemed to like about him.
Whenever Tengo finished a story, he would take it to Komatsu. Komatsu would read it and
offer his comments. Tengo would rewrite it following his advice and bring it to Komatsu again,
who would provide new instructions, like a coach raising the bar a little at a time. Your case
might take some time, he said. But were in no hurry. Just make up your mind to write every
single day. And dont throw anything out. It might come in handy later. Tengo agreed to follow
Komatsus advice.
For his part, Komatsu would occasionally send small writing jobs Tengos way. Anonymously,
Tengo wrote copy for the womens magazine produced by Komatsus publisher. He
handled everything: revising letters to the editor, writing background pieces on movies and
books, composing horoscopes. His horoscopes were especially popular because they were
often right. Once when he wrote, Beware an early-morning earthquake, there actually was a
big earthquake early one morning. Tengo was grateful for the extra income and for the writing
practice this work provided. It made him happy to see his writing in print in any
form displayed in the bookstores.
Eventually Tengo was hired as a screener for the literary magazines new writers prize. It
was odd for him to be screening other writers works when he himself was competing for the
prize, but he read everything impartially, not terribly concerned about the delicacy of his situation.
If nothing else, the experience of reading mounds of badly written fiction gave him an
indelible lesson in exactly what constituted badly written fiction. He read around one hundred
works each time, choosing ten that might have some point to them to bring to Komatsu with
written comments. Five works would make it to the short list, and from those the four-person
committee would select the winner.
Tengo was not the only part-time screener, and Komatsu was only one of several editors
engaged in assembling the short list. This was all in the name of fairness, but such efforts
were not really necessary. No matter how many works were entered in the competition, there
were never more than two or three of any value, and no one could possibly miss those. Three
of Tengos stories had made the short list in the past. Each had been chosen not by Tengo
himself, of course, but by two other screeners and then by Komatsu, who manned the editorial
desk. None had won the prize, but this had not been a crushing blow to Tengo. For one
thing, Komatsu had ingrained in him the idea that he just had to give it time. And Tengo him-
self was not all that eager to become a novelist right away.
If he arranged his teaching schedule well, Tengo was able to spend four days a week at
home. He had taught at the same cram school for seven years now, and he was popular with
the students because he knew how to convey the subject succinctly and clearly, and he could
answer any question on the spot. Tengo surprised himself with his own eloquence. His explanations
were clever, his voice carried well, and he could excite the class with a good joke.
He had always thought of himself as a poor speaker, and even now he could be at a loss for
words when confronted face-to-face. In a small group, he was strictly a listener. In front of a
large class, however, his head would clear, and he could speak at length with ease. His own
teaching experience gave him renewed awareness of the inscrutability of human beings.
Tengo was not dissatisfied with his salary. It was by no means high, but the school paid in
accordance with ability. The students were asked to do course evaluations periodically, and
compensation hinged on the results. The school was afraid of having its best teachers lured
away (and, in fact, Tengo had been headhunted several times). This never happened at ordinary
schools. There, salary was set by seniority, teachers private lives were subject to the
supervision of administrators, and ability and popularity counted for nothing. Tengo actually
enjoyed teaching at the cram school. Most of the students went there with the explicit purpose
of preparing for the college entrance exams, and they attended his lectures enthusiastically.
Teachers had only one duty: to teach their classes. This was exactly what Tengo wanted. He
never had to deal with student misbehavior or infractions of school rules. All he had to do was
show up in the classroom and teach students how to solve mathematical problems. And the
manipulation of pure abstractions using numerical tools came naturally to Tengo.
When he was home, Tengo usually wrote from first thing in the morning until the approach
of evening. All he needed to satisfy him was his Mont Blanc pen, his blue ink, and standard
manuscript sheets, each page lined with four hundred empty squares ready to accept four
hundred characters. Once a week his married girlfriend would come to spend the afternoon
with him. Sex with a married woman ten years his senior was stress free and fulfilling, because
it couldnt lead to anything. As the sun was setting, he would head out for a long walk,
and once the sun was down he would read a book while listening to music. He never watched
television. Whenever the NHK fee collector came, he would point out that he had no television
set, and politely refuse to pay. I really dont have one. You can come in and look if you want, 
he would say, but the collector would never come in. They were not allowed to.
 I have something bigger in mind, Komatsu said.
 Something bigger? 
 Much bigger. Why be satisfied with small-scale stuff like the new writers prize? As long
as were aiming, why not go for something big? 
Tengo fell silent. He had no idea what Komatsu was getting at, but he sensed something
disturbing.
 The Akutagawa Prize! Komatsu declared after a moments pause.
 The Akutagawa Prize? Tengo repeated the words slowly, as if he were writing them in
huge characters with a stick on wet sand.
 Come on, Tengo, you cant be that out of touch! The Akutagawa Prize! Every writers
dream! Huge headlines in the paper! TV news! 
 Now youre losing me. Are we still talking about Fuka-Eri? 
 Of course we are Fuka-Eri and Air Chrysalis. Have we been discussing anything else? 
Tengo bit his lip as he tried to fathom the meaning behind Komatsus words. But you
yourself said theres no way Air Chrysalis can take the new writers prize. Havent we been
talking about that all along, how the work will never amount to anything the way it is? 
 Precisely. Itll never amount to anything the way it is. That is for certain. 
Tengo needed time to think. Are you saying it needs to be revised? 
 Its the only way. Its not that unusual for an author to revise a promising work with the advice
of an editor. It happens all the time. Only, in this case, rather than the author, someone
else will do the revising. 
 Someone else? Tengo asked, but he already knew what Komatsus answer would be.
 You. 
Tengo searched for an appropriate response but couldnt find one. He heaved a sigh and
said, You know as well as I do that this work is going to need more than a little patching here
and there. Itll never come together without a fundamental top-to-bottom rewrite. 
 Which is why youll rewrite it from top to bottom. Just use the framework of the story as is.
And keep as much of the tone as possible. But change the language a total remake. Youll
be in charge of the actual writing, and Ill be the producer. 
 Just like that? Tengo muttered, as if to himself.
 Look, Komatsu said, picking up a spoon and pointing it at Tengo the way a conductor
uses his baton to single out a soloist from the rest of the orchestra. This Fuka-Eri girl has
something special. Anyone can see it reading Air Chrysalis. Her imagination is far from ordinary.
Unfortunately, though, her writing is hopeless. A total mess. You, on the other hand,
know how to write. Your story lines are good. You have taste. You may be built like a lumberjack,
but you write with intelligence and sensitivity. And real power. Unlike Fuka-Eri, though,
you still havent grasped exactly what it is you want to write about. Which is why a lot of your
stories are missing something at the core. I know youve got something inside you that you
need to write about, but you cant get it to come out. Its like a frightened little animal hiding
way back in a cave you know its in there, but theres no way to catch it until it comes out.
Which is why I keep telling you, just give it time. 
Tengo shifted awkwardly on the booths vinyl seat. He said nothing.
 The answer is simple, Komatsu said, still lightly waving his spoon. We put the two
writers together and invent a brand-new one. We add your perfect style to Fuka-Eris raw
story. Its an ideal combination. I know youve got it in you. Why do you think Ive been backing
you all this time? Just leave the rest to me. With the two of you together, the new writers
prize will be easy, and then we can shoot for the Akutagawa. I havent been wasting my time
in this business all these years. I know how to pull the right strings. 
Tengo let his lips part as he stared at Komatsu. Komatsu put his spoon back in his saucer.
It made an abnormally loud sound.
 Supposing the story wins the Akutagawa Prize, then what? Tengo asked, recovering
from the shock.
 If it takes the Akutagawa, itll cause a sensation. Most people dont know the value of a
good novel, but they dont want to be left out, so theyll buy it and read it especially when
they hear it was written by a high school girl. If the book sells, itll make a lot of money. Well
split it three ways. Ill take care of that. 
 Never mind the money Tengo said, his voice flat. How about your professional ethics as
an editor? If the scheme became public, itd cause an uproar. Youd lose your job. 
 It wouldnt come out so easily. I can handle the whole thing very carefully. And even if it
did come out, Id be glad to leave the company. Management doesnt like me, and theyve
never treated me decently. Finding another job would be no problem for me. Besides, I
wouldnt be doing it for the money. Id be doing it to screw the literary world. Those bastards
all huddle together in their gloomy cave and kiss each others asses, and lick each others
wounds, and trip each other up, all the while spewing this pompous crap about the mission of
literature. I want to have a good laugh at their expense. I want to outwit the system and make
idiots out of the whole bunch of them. Doesnt that sound like fun to you? 
It did not sound like all that much fun to Tengo. For one thing, he had never actually seen
this literary world. And when he realized that a competent individual like Komatsu had such
childish motives for crossing such a dangerous bridge, he was momentarily at a loss for
words.
 It sounds like a scam to me, he said at length.
 Coauthorship is not that unusual, Komatsu said with a frown. Half the magazines serialized
manga are coauthored. The staff toss around ideas and make up the story, the artist
does simple line drawings, his assistants fill in the details and add color. Its not much different
from the way a factory makes alarm clocks. The same sort of thing goes on in the fiction
world. Romance novels, for example. With most of those, the publisher hires writers to make
up stories following the guidelines theyve established. Division of labor: thats the system.
Mass production would be impossible any other way. In the self-conscious world of literary fiction,
of course, such methods are not openly sanctioned, so as a practical strategy we have to
set Fuka-Eri up as our single author. If the deception comes out, it might cause a bit of a
scandal, but we wouldnt be breaking the law. Wed just be riding the current of the times. And
besides, were not talking about a Balzac or a Murasaki Shikibu here. All wed be doing is
patching the holes in the story some high school girl wrote and making it a better piece of fiction.
Whats wrong with that? If the finished work is good and brings pleasure to a lot of readers,
then no harm done, dont you agree? 
Tengo gave some thought to what Komatsu was saying, and he answered with care. I
see two problems here. Im sure there are more than that, but for now let me concentrate on
these two. One is that we dont know whether the author, Fuka-Eri, would go along with having
someone else rewrite her work. If she says no, of course, thats the end of that. The other
problem, assuming she says okay, is whether I could really do a good job of rewriting it.
Coauthorship is a very delicate matter; I cant believe things would go as easily as you are
suggesting. 
 I know you can do it, Tengo, Komatsu said without hesitation, as if he had been anticipating
Tengos reaction. I have no doubt whatever. I knew it the first time I read Air Chrysalis.
The first thing that popped into my head was ‘Tengo has to rewrite this! Its perfect for you.
Its aching for you to rewrite it. Dont you see? 
Tengo merely shook his head, saying nothing.
 Theres no rush, Komatsu said quietly. This is important. Take two or three days to think
about it. Read Air Chrysalis again, and give some good, careful thought to what Im proposing.
And oh yes, let me give you this. 
Komatsu withdrew a brown envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to Tengo. Inside
the envelope were two standard-size color photos, pictures of a girl. One showed her
from the chest up, the other was a full-length snapshot. They seemed to have been taken at
the same time. She was standing in front of a stairway somewhere, a broad stone stairway.
Classically beautiful features. Long, straight hair. White blouse. Small and slim. Her lips were
trying to smile, but her eyes were resisting. Serious eyes. Eyes in search of something. Tengo
stared at the two photos. The more he looked, the more he thought about himself at that age,
and the more he sensed a small, dull ache in his chest. It was a special ache, something he
had not experienced for a very long time.
 Thats Fuka-Eri, Komatsu said. Beautiful girl, dont you think? Sweet and fresh. Seventeen.
Perfect. We wont tell anyone that her real name is Eriko Fukada. Well keep her as
‘Fuka-Eri. The name alone should cause a stir if she wins the Akutagawa Prize, dont you
think? Shell have reporters swarming around her like bats at sunset. The booksll sell out
overnight. 
Tengo wondered how Komatsu had gotten hold of the photos. Entrants were not required
to send in photos with their manuscripts. But he decided not to ask, partly because he didnt
want to know the answer, whatever it might be.
 You can keep those, Komatsu said. They might come in handy. 
Tengo put them back into the envelope and laid them on the manuscript. Then he said to
Komatsu, I dont know much about how the ‘industry works, but sheer common sense tells
me this is a tremendously risky plan. Once you start lying to the public, you have to keep lying.
It never ends. Its not easy, either psychologically or practically, to keep tweaking the truth
to make it all fit together. If one person whos in on the plan makes one little slip, everybody
could be done for. Dont you agree? 
Komatsu pulled out another cigarette and lit it. Youre absolutely right. It is risky. There
are a few too many uncertainties at this point in time. One slip, and things could get very unpleasant
for us. Im perfectly aware of that. But you know, Tengo, taking everything into consideration,
my instincts still tell me, ‘Go for it! For the simple reason that you dont get
chances like this very often. Ive never had one before, and Im sure Ill never have another
one. Comparing this to gambling might not be the best way to look at it, but weve got all the
right cards and a mountain of chips. The conditions are perfect. If we let a chance like this slip
away, well regret it for the rest of our lives. 
Tengo stared in silence at Komatsus utterly sinister smile.
Komatsu continued: And the most important thing is that we are remaking Air Chrysalis
into a much better work. Its a story that should have been much better written. Theres
something important in it, something that needs someone to bring it out. Im sure you think so
too, Tengo. Am I wrong? We each contribute our own special talents to the project: we pool
our resources for one thing only, and that is to bring out that important something in the work.
Our motives are pure: we can present them anywhere without shame. 
 Well, you can try to rationalize it all you want, you can invent all kinds of noble-sounding
pretexts, but in the end, a scam is a scam. 
 Look, Tengo, youre losing sight of one crucial fact, Komatsu said, his mouth opening in
a big, wide grin the likes of which Tengo had never seen. Or should I say you are deliberately
choosing not to look at it? And thats the simple fact that you want to do this. You already feel
that way ‘risk and ‘morality be damned. I can see it. Youre itching to rewrite Air Chrysalis
with your own hands. You want to be the one, not Fuka-Eri, who brings out that special
something in the work. I want you to go home now and figure out what you really think. Stand
in front of a mirror and give yourself a long, hard look. Its written all over your face. 
Tengo felt the air around him growing thin. He glanced at his surroundings. Was the image
coming to him again? But no, there was no sign of it. The thinness of the air had come
from something else. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from
his brow. Komatsu was always right. Why should that be?
1Q84
CHAPTER 3
Aomame
SOME CHANGED FACTS
Aomame climbed down the emergency stairway in her stocking feet. The wind whistled
past the stairway, which was open to the elements. Snug though her miniskirt was, it filled like
a sail with the occasional strong gust from below, providing enough lift to make her steps unsteady.
She kept a tight grip on the cold metal pipe that served as a handrail, lowering herself
a step at a time, backward, and stopping now and then to brush aside the stray hair hanging
down her forehead and to adjust the position of the shoulder bag slung diagonally across her
chest.
She had a sweeping view of National Highway 246 running below. The din of the city enveloped
her: car engines, blaring horns, the scream of an automobile burglar alarm, an old
war song echoing from a right-wing sound truck, a sledgehammer cracking concrete. Riding
on the wind, the noise pressed in on her from all directions above, below, and 360 degrees
around. Listening to the racket (not that she wanted to listen, but she was in no position to be
covering her ears), she began to feel almost seasick.
Partway down, the stairs became a horizontal catwalk leading back toward the center of
the elevated expressway, then angled straight down again.
Just across the road from the open stairway stood a small, five-story apartment house, a
relatively new building covered in brown brick tile. Each apartment had a small balcony facing
the emergency stairway, but all the patio doors were shut tight, the blinds or curtains closed.
What kind of architect puts balconies on a building that stands nose-to-nose with an elevated
expressway? No one would be hanging out their sheets to dry or lingering on the balcony with
a gin and tonic to watch the evening rush-hour traffic. Still, on several balconies were
stretched the seemingly obligatory nylon clotheslines, and one even had a garden chair and
potted rubber plant. The rubber plant was ragged and faded, its leaves disintegrating and
marked with brown dry spots. Aomame could not help feeling sorry for the plant. If she were
ever reincarnated, let her not be reborn as such a miserable rubber plant!
Judging from the spiderwebs clinging to it, the emergency stairway was hardly ever used.
To each web clung a small black spider, patiently waiting for its small prey to come along. Not
that the spiders had any awareness of being patient. A spider had no special skill other than
building its web, and no lifestyle choice other than sitting still. It would stay in one place waiting
for its prey until, in the natural course of things, it shriveled up and died. This was all genetically
predetermined. The spider had no confusion, no despair, no regrets. No metaphysical
doubt, no moral complications. Probably. Unlike me. I have to move with a purpose, which
is why Im alone now, climbing down these stupid emergency stairs from Metropolitan Ex-
pressway Number 3 where it passes through the useless Sangenjaya neighborhood, even if it
means ruining a perfectly good pair of stockings, all the while sweeping away these damned
spiderwebs and looking at an ugly rubber plant on somebodys stupid balcony.
I move, therefore I am.
Climbing down the stairway, Aomame thought about Tamaki Otsuka. She had not been intending
to think about Tamaki, but once the thoughts began, she couldnt stop them. Tamaki
was her closest friend in high school and a fellow member of the softball team. As teammates,
they went to many different places, and did all kinds of things together. They once
shared a kind of lesbian experience. The two of them took a summer trip and ended up sleeping
together when a small double was the only size bed the hotel could offer. They found
themselves touching each other all over. Neither of them was a lesbian, but, spurred on by
the special curiosity of two young girls, they experimented boldly. Neither had a boyfriend at
the time, and neither had the slightest sexual experience. It was simply one of those things
that remain as an exceptional but interesting episode in life. But as she brought back the images
of herself and Tamaki touching each other that night, Aomame felt some small, deep
part of herself growing hot even as she made her way down the windswept stairway. Tamakis
oval-shaped nipples, her sparse pubic hair, the lovely curve of her buttocks, the shape
of her clitoris: Aomame recalled them all with strange clarity.
As her mind traced these graphic memories, the brass unison of Janáeks Sinfonietta rang
like festive background music. The palm of her hand was caressing the curve of Tamakis
waist. At first Tamaki just laughed as if she were being tickled, but soon the laughter stopped,
and her breathing changed. The music had initially been composed as a fanfare for an athletic
meet. The breeze blew gently over the green meadows of Bohemia in time with the music.
Aomame knew when Tamakis nipples suddenly became erect. And then her own did the
same. And then the timpani conjured up a complex musical pattern.
Aomame halted her steps and shook her head several times. I should not be thinking such
thoughts at a time like this. I have to concentrate on climbing down the stairs. But the
thoughts would not go away. The images came to her one after another and with great vividness.
The summer night, the narrow bed, the faint smell of perspiration. The words they
spoke. The feelings that would not take the form of words. Forgotten promises. Unrealized
hopes. Frustrated longings. A gust of wind lifted a lock of her hair and whipped it against her
cheek. The pain brought a film of tears to her eyes. Successive gusts soon dried the tears
away.
When did that happen, I wonder? But time became confused in her memory, like a tangled
string. The straight-line axis was lost, and forward and back, right and left, jumbled together.
One drawer took the place of another. She could not recall things that should have come back
to her easily. It is now April 1984. I was born in … thats it … 1954. I can remember that
much. These dates were engraved in her mind, but as soon as she recalled them, they lost all
meaning. She saw white cards imprinted with dates scattering in the wind, flying in all directions.
She ran, trying to pick up as many as she could, but the wind was too strong, the sheer
number of cards overwhelming. Away they flew: 1954, 1984, 1645, 1881, 2006, 771,
2041 … all order lost, all knowledge vanishing, the stairway of intellection crumbling beneath
her feet.
Aomame and Tamaki were in bed together. They were seventeen and enjoying their
newly granted freedom. This was their first trip together as friends, just the two of them. That
fact alone was exciting. They soaked in the hotels hot spring, split a can of beer from the refrigerator,
turned out the lights, and crawled into bed. They were just kidding around at first,
poking each other for the fun of it, but at some point Tamaki reached out and grabbed
Aomames nipple through the T-shirt she wore as pajamas. An electric shock ran through
Aomames body. Eventually they stripped off their shirts and panties and were naked in the
summer night. Where did we go on that trip? She could not recall. It didnt matter. Soon,
without either of them being the first to suggest it, they were examining each others bodies
down to the smallest detail. Looking, touching, caressing, kissing, licking, half in jest, half seriously.
Tamaki was small and a bit plump with large breasts. Aomame was taller, lean and
muscular, with smaller breasts. Tamaki always talked about going on a diet, but Aomame
found her attractive just the way she was.
Tamakis skin was soft and fine. Her nipples swelled in a beautiful oval shape reminiscent
of olives. Her pubic hair was fine and sparse, like a delicate willow tree. Aomames was hard
and bristly. They laughed at the difference. They experimented with touching each other in
different places and discussed which areas were the most sensitive. Some areas were the
same, others were not. Each held out a finger and touched the others clitoris. Both girls had
experienced masturbation a lot. But now they saw how different it was to be touched by
someone else. The breeze swept across the meadows of Bohemia.
Aomame came to a stop and shook her head again. She released a deep sigh and
tightened her grip on the metal pipe handrail. I have to stop thinking about these things. I
have to concentrate on climbing down the stairs. By now, I must be more than halfway down.
Still, why is there so much noise here? Why is the wind so strong? They both seem to be reprimanding
me, punishing me.
Setting such immediate sensory impressions aside, Aomame began to worry about what
might await her at the bottom of the stairway. What if someone were there, demanding that
she identify herself and explain her presence? Could she get by with a simple explanation The
traffic was backed up on the expressway and I have such urgent business that I
climbed down the stairs ? Or would there be complications? She didnt want any complications.
Not today.
Fortunately, she found no one at ground level to challenge her. The first thing she did was
pull her shoes from her bag and step into them. The stairway came down to a vacant patch
beneath the elevated expressway, a storage area for construction materials hemmed in
between the inbound and outbound lanes of Route 246 and surrounded by high metal sheeting.
A number of steel poles lay on the bare ground, rusting, probably discarded surplus from
some construction job. A makeshift plastic roof covered one part of the area where three cloth
sacks lay piled. Aomame had no idea what they held, but they had been further protected
from the rain by a vinyl cover. The sacks, too, seemed to be construction surplus, thrown
there at the end of the job because they were too much trouble to haul away. Beneath the
roof, several crushed corrugated cartons, some plastic drink bottles, and a number of manga
magazines lay on the ground. Aside from a few plastic shopping bags that were being
whipped around by the wind, there was nothing else down here.
The area had a metal gate, but a large padlock and several wrappings of chain held it in
place. The gate towered over her and was topped with barbed wire. There was no way she
could climb over it. Even if she managed to do so, her suit would be torn to shreds. She gave
it a few tentative shakes, but it wouldnt budge. There was not even enough space for a cat to
squeeze through. Damn. What was the point of locking the place so securely? There was
nothing here worth stealing. She frowned and cursed and even spit on the ground. After all
her trouble to climb down from the elevated expressway, now she was locked in a storage
yard! She glanced at her watch. The time was still okay, but she couldnt go on hanging
around in this place forever. And doubling back to the expressway now was out of the question.
The heels of both her stockings were ripped. Checking to make sure that there was no
one watching her, she slipped out of her high heels, rolled up her skirt, pulled her stockings
down, yanked them off her feet, and stepped into her shoes again. The torn stockings she
shoved into her bag. This calmed her somewhat. Now she walked the perimeter of the storage
area, paying close attention to every detail. It was about the size of an elementary school
classroom, so a full circuit of the place took no time at all. Yes, she had already found the only
exit, the locked gate. The metal sheeting that enclosed the space was thin, but the pieces
were securely bolted together, and the bolts could not be loosened without tools. Time to give
up.
She went over to the roofed area for a closer look at the crushed cartons. They had been
arranged as bedding, she realized, with a number of worn blankets rolled up inside. They
were not all that old, either. Some street people were probably sleeping here, which explained
the bottles and magazines. No doubt about it. Aomame put her mind to work. If they were using
this place to spend their nights, it must have some kind of secret entrance. Theyre good
at finding hidden places to ward off the wind and rain, she thought. And they know how to secure
secret passageways, like animal trails, for their exclusive use.
Aomame made another round, closely inspecting each metal sheet of the fence and giving
it a shake. As she expected, she found one loose spot where a bolt might have slipped out.
She tried bending it in different directions. If you changed the angle a little and pulled it inward,
a space opened up that was just big enough for a person to squeeze through. The
street people probably came in after dark to enjoy sleeping under the roof, but they would
have problems if someone caught them in here, so they went out during the daylight hours to
find food and collect empty bottles for spare change. Aomame inwardly thanked the nameless
nighttime residents. As someone who had to move stealthily, anonymously, behind the
scenes in the big city, she felt at one with them.
She crouched down and slipped through the narrow gap, taking great care to avoid catching
and tearing her expensive suit on any sharp objects. It was not her favorite suit: it was the
only one she owned. She almost never dressed this way, and she never wore heels. Sometimes,
however, this particular line of work required her to dress respectably, so she had to
avoid ruining the suit.
Fortunately, there was no one outside the fence, either. She checked her clothing once
more, resumed a calm expression on her face, and walked to a corner with a traffic signal.
Crossing Route 246, she entered a drugstore and bought a new pair of stockings, which she
put on in a back room with the permission of the girl at the register. This improved her mood
considerably and obliterated the slight discomfort, like seasickness, that had remained in her
stomach. Thanking the clerk, she left the store.
The traffic on Route 246 was heavier than usual, probably because word had spread that
an accident had stopped traffic on the parallel urban expressway. Aomame abandoned the
idea of taking a cab and decided instead to take the Tokyu Shin-Tamagawa Line from a
nearby station. That would be a sure thing. She had had enough of taxis stuck in traffic.
As she headed for Sangenjaya Station, she passed a policeman on the street. He was a
tall young officer, walking rapidly, heading somewhere in particular. She tensed up for a moment,
but he looked straight ahead, apparently in too much of a hurry even to glance at her.
Just before they passed each other, Aomame noticed that there was something unusual
about his uniform. The jacket was the normal deep navy blue, but its cut was different: the
design was more casual, less tight fitting, and in a softer material, the lapels smaller, even the
navy color a touch paler. His pistol, too, was a different model. He wore a large automatic at
his waist instead of the revolver normally issued to policemen in Japan. Crimes involving fire-
arms were so rare in this country that there was little likelihood that an officer would be caught
in a shootout, which meant an old-fashioned six-shooter was adequate. Revolvers were
simply made, cheap, reliable, and easy to maintain. But for some reason this officer was carrying
the latest model semiautomatic pistol, the kind that could be loaded with sixteen 9mm
bullets. Probably a Glock or a Beretta. But how could that be? How could police uniforms and
pistols have changed without her being aware of it? It was practically unthinkable. She read
the newspaper closely each day. Changes like that would have been featured prominently.
And besides, she paid careful attention to police uniforms. Until this morning, just a few hours
ago, policemen were still wearing the same old stiff uniforms they always had, and still carrying
the same old unsophisticated revolvers. She remembered them clearly. It was very
strange.
But Aomame was in no frame of mind to think deeply about such matters. She had a job
to do.
When the subway reached Shibuya Station, she deposited her coat in a coin locker, then
hurried up Dogenzaka toward the hotel wearing only her suit. It was a decent enough hotel,
nothing fancy, but well equipped, clean, with reputable guests. It had a restaurant on the
street level, as well as a convenience store. Close to the station. A good location.
She walked in and headed straight for the ladies room. Fortunately, it was empty. The first
thing she did was sit down for a good, long pee, eyes closed, listening to the sound like distant
surf, and thinking of nothing in particular. Next she stood at one of the sinks and washed
her hands well with soap and water. She brushed her hair and blew her nose. She took out
her toothbrush and did a cursory brushing without toothpaste. She had no time to floss. It
wasnt that important. She wasnt preparing for a date. She faced the mirror and added a
touch of lipstick and eyebrow pencil. Removing her suit jacket, she adjusted the position of
her underwire bra, smoothed the wrinkles in her white blouse, and sniffed her armpits. No
smell. Then she closed her eyes and recited the usual prayer, the words of which meant nothing.
The meaning didnt matter. Reciting was the important thing.
After the prayer she opened her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror. Fine. The picture
of the capable businesswoman. Erect posture. Firm mouth. Only the big, bulky shoulder bag
seemed out of place. A slim attaché case might have been better, but this bag was more
practical. She checked again to make sure she had all the items she needed in the bag. No
problem. Everything was where it belonged, easy to find by touch.
Now it was just a matter of carrying out the task as arranged. Head-on. With unwavering
conviction and ruthlessness. Aomame undid the top button of her blouse. This would give a
glimpse of cleavage when she bent over. If only she had more cleavage to expose!
No one challenged her as she took the elevator to the fourth floor, walked down the corridor,
and quickly found Room 426. Taking a clipboard from the bag, she clutched it to her
chest and knocked on the door. A light, crisp knock. A brief wait. Another knock, this one a
little harder. Grumbling from inside. Door opened a crack. Mans face. Maybe forty. Marine-blue
shirt. Gray flannel slacks. Classic look of a businessman working with his tie and
jacket off. Red eyes, annoyed. Probably sleep deprived. He seemed surprised to see
Aomame in her business suit, probably expecting her to be a maid, here to replenish the minibar.
 Im terribly sorry to disturb you, sir. My name is Ito, and Im a member of the hotel management
staff. There has been a problem with the air conditioner and I need to do an inspection.
May I come in? It wont take more than five minutes, Aomame announced briskly, with a
sweet smile.
The man squinted at her in obvious displeasure. Im working on something important, a
rush job. Ill be leaving the room in another hour. Can I get you to come back then? Theres
nothing wrong with the air conditioner in this room. 
 Im terribly sorry, sir. Its an emergency involving a short circuit. We need to take care of it
as soon as possible, for safetys sake. Were going from room to room. It wont even take five
minutes … 
 Ah, what the hell, the man said, with a click of his tongue. I made a point of taking a
room so I could work undisturbed. 
He pointed to the papers on the desk a pile of detailed charts and graphs he had printed
out, probably materials he was preparing for a late meeting. He had a computer and a calculator,
and scratch paper with long lines of figures.
Aomame knew that he worked for a corporation connected with oil. He was a specialist on
capital investment in a number of Middle Eastern countries. According to the information she
had been given, he was one of the more capable men in the field. She could see it in the way
he carried himself. He came from a good family, earned a sizable income, and drove a new
Jaguar. After a pampered childhood, he had gone to study abroad, spoke good English and
French, and exuded self-confidence. He was the type who could not bear to be told what to
do, or to be criticized, especially if the criticism came from a woman. He had no difficulty
bossing others around, though, and cracking a few of his wifes ribs with a golf club was no
problem at all. As far as he was concerned, the world revolved around him, and without him
the earth didnt move at all. He could become furious violently angry if anyone interfered
with what he was doing or contradicted him in any way.
 Sorry to trouble you, sir, Aomame said, flashing him her best business smile. As if it
were a fait accompli, she squeezed halfway into the room, pressing her back against the
door, readied her clipboard, and started writing something on it with a ballpoint pen. That
was, uh, Mr. Miyama, I believe …? she asked. Having seen his photo any number of times,
she knew his face well, but it wouldnt hurt to make sure she had the right person. There was
no way to correct a mistake.
 Yes, of course. Miyama, he said curtly. He followed this with a resigned sigh that
seemed to say, All right. Do as you damn please. He took his seat at the desk and, with a
ballpoint pen in one hand, picked up whatever document he had been reading. His suit coat
and a striped tie lay on the fully made double bed where he had thrown them. They were both
obviously very expensive. Aomame walked straight for the closet, her bag hanging from her
shoulder. She had been told that the air conditioner switch panel was in there. Inside she
found a trench coat of soft material and a dark gray cashmere scarf. The only luggage was a
leather briefcase. No change of clothes, no bag for toiletries. He was probably not planning to
stay the night. On the desk stood a coffeepot that had obviously been delivered by room service.
She pretended to inspect the switch panel for thirty seconds and then called out to
Miyama.
 Thank you, Mr. Miyama, for your cooperation. I cant find any problem with the equipment
in this room. 
 Which is what I was trying to tell you from the start, he grumbled.
 Uh … Mr. Miyama …? she ventured. Excuse me, but I think you have something stuck
to the back of your neck. 
 The back of my neck? he said. He rubbed the area and then stared at the palm of his
hand. I dont think so. 
 Please just let me have a look, she said, drawing closer. Do you mind? 
 Sure, go ahead, he said, looking puzzled. What is it? 
 A spot of paint, I think. Bright green. 
 Paint? 
 Im not really sure. Judging from the color, it has to be paint. Is it all right if I touch you
back there? It may come right off. 
 Well, okay, Miyama said, ducking his head forward, exposing the back of his neck to
Aomame. It was bare, thanks to what looked like a recent haircut. Aomame took a deep
breath and held it, concentrating her attention on her fingers nimble search for the right spot.
She pressed a fingertip there as if to mark the place, then closed her eyes, confirming that her
touch was not mistaken. Yes, this is it. Id like to take more time if possible to make doubly
certain, but its too late for that now. Ill just have to do my best with the situation Ive been given.
 Sorry, sir, but do you mind holding that position a bit longer? Ill take a penlight from my
bag. The lighting in here is not very good. 
 Why would I have paint back there, of all things? 
 I have no idea, sir. Ill check it right away. 
Keeping her finger pressed against the spot on the mans neck, Aomame drew a hard
plastic case from her bag, opened it, and took out an object wrapped in thin cloth. With a few
deft moves she unfolded the cloth, revealing something like a small ice pick about four inches
in length with a compact wooden handle. It looked like an ice pick, but it was not meant for
cracking ice. Aomame had designed and made it herself. The tip was as sharp and pointed as
a needle, and it was protected from breakage by a small piece of cork cork that had been
specially processed to make it as soft as cotton. She carefully plucked the cork from the point
and slipped it into her pocket. She then held the exposed point against that special spot on
Miyamas neck. Calm down now, this is it, Aomame told herself. I cant be off by even onehundredth
of an inch. One slip and all my efforts will be wasted. Concentration is the key.
 How much longer is this going to take? Miyama protested.
 Im sorry, sir, Ill be through in a moment. 
Dont worry, she said to him silently, itll all be over before you know it. Wait just a second
or two. Then you wont have to think about a thing. You wont have to think about the oil refining
system or crude oil market trends or quarterly reports to the investors or Bahrain flight reservations
or bribes for officials or presents for your mistress. What a strain it must have been
for you to keep these things straight in your head all this time! So please, just wait a minute.
Im hard at work here, giving it all the concentration I can muster. Dont distract me. Thats all I
ask.
Once she had settled on the location and set her mind to the task, Aomame raised her
right palm in the air, held her breath, and, after a brief pause, brought it straight down not
too forcefully against the wooden handle. If she applied too much force, the needle might
break under the skin, and leaving the needle tip behind was out of the question. The important
thing was to bring the palm down lightly, almost tenderly, at exactly the right angle with
exactly the right amount of force, without resisting gravity, straight down, as if the fine point of
the needle were being sucked into the spot with the utmost naturalness deeply, smoothly,
and with fatal results. The angle and force or, rather, the restraint of force were crucial. As
long as she was careful about those details, it was as simple as driving a needle into a block
of tofu. The needle pierced the skin, thrust into the special spot at the base of the brain, and
stopped the heart as naturally as blowing out a candle. Everything ended in a split second, almost
too easily. Only Aomame could do this. No one else could find that subtle point by
touch. Her fingertips possessed the special intuition that made it possible.
She heard him draw a sharp breath, and then every muscle in his body went stiff. Instantly,
she withdrew the needle and just as quickly took out the small gauze pad she had
ready in her pocket, pressing it against the wound to prevent the flow of blood. Because the
needle was so fine and had remained in his skin for no more than a few seconds, only a
minuscule amount of blood could possibly escape through the opening, but she had to take
every precaution. She must not leave even the slightest trace of blood. One drop could ruin
everything. Caution was Aomames specialty.
The strength began to drain from Miyamas body, which had momentarily stiffened, like air
going out of a basketball. Keeping her finger on the spot on his neck, Aomame let him slump
forward onto the desk. His face lay sideways, pillowed on his documents. His eyes were wide
open in apparent surprise, as if his last act had been to witness something utterly amazing.
They showed neither fear nor pain, only pure surprise. Something out of the ordinary was
happening to him, but he could not comprehend what it was a pain, an itch, a pleasure, or a
divine revelation? There were many different ways of dying in the world, perhaps none of
them as easy as this.
This was an easier death than you deserved, Aomame thought with a scowl. It was just
too simple. I probably should have broken a few ribs for you with a five iron and given you
plenty of pain before putting you out of your misery. That would have been the right kind of
death for a rat like you. Its what you did to your wife. Unfortunately, however, the choice was
not mine. My mission was to send this man to the other world as swiftly and surely and discreetly as
possible. Now, I have accomplished that mission. He was alive until a moment
ago, and now hes dead. He crossed the threshold separating life from death without being
aware of it himself.
Aomame held the gauze in place for a full five minutes, patiently, but without pressing
hard enough for her finger to leave an indentation. She kept her eyes glued on the second
hand of her watch. It was a very long five minutes. If someone had walked in then and seen
her pressing her finger against the mans neck while holding the slender murder weapon in
the other hand, it would have been all over. She could never have talked her way out of it. A
bellhop could bring a pot of coffee. There could be a knock on the door at any moment. But
this was an indispensable five minutes. To calm herself, Aomame took several slow deep
breaths. I cant get flustered now. I cant lose my composure. I have to stay the same calm,
cool Aomame as always.
She could hear her heart beating. And in her head, in time with the beat, resounded the
opening fanfare of Janáeks Sinfonietta. Soft, silent breezes played across the green meadows
of Bohemia. She was aware that she had become split in two. Half of her continued to
press the dead mans neck with utter coolness. The other half was filled with fear. She wanted
to drop everything and get out of this room now. Im here, but Im not here. Im in two places
at once. It goes against Einsteins theorem, but what the hell. Call it the Zen of the killer.
The five minutes were finally up. But just to make sure, Aomame gave it one more minute.
I can wait another minute. The greater the rush, the more care one should take with the job.
She endured the extra minute, which seemed as if it would never end. Then she slowly pulled
her finger away and examined the wound with her penlight. A mosquitos stinger left a larger
hole than this.
Stabbing the special point at the base of the brain with an exceptionally fine needle
causes a death that is almost indistinguishable from a natural sudden death. It would look like
a heart attack to most ordinary doctors. It hit him without warning while he was working at his
desk, and he breathed his last. Overwork and stress. No sign of unnatural causes. No need
for an autopsy.
This man was a high-powered operator, but also prone to overwork. He earned a high
salary, but he couldnt use it now that he was dead. He wore Armani suits and drove a Jaguar,
but finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning.
The very fact that he existed in this world would eventually be forgotten. Such a shame, he
was so young, people might say. Or they might not.
Aomame took the cork from her pocket and placed it on the needle. Wrapping the delicate
instrument in the thin cloth again, she returned it to the hard case, which she placed in the
bottom of the shoulder bag. She then took a hand towel from the bathroom and wiped any fingerprints
she might have left in the room. These would all be on the air conditioner panel and
the doorknob. She had been careful not to touch anything else. She returned the towel to the
bathroom. Placing the mans cup and coffeepot on the room service tray, she set them in the
corridor. This way the bellhop would not have to knock when he came to retrieve them, and
the discovery of the body would be delayed that much more. If all went well, the maid would
find the body after checkout time tomorrow.
When he failed to show up at tonights meeting, people might ring the room, but there
would be no answer. They might think it odd enough to have the manager open the room, but
then again they might not. Things would simply take their course.
Aomame stood before the bathroom mirror to make sure nothing about her clothing was in
disarray. She closed the top button of her blouse. She had not had to flash cleavage. The
bastard had hardly looked at her. What the hell did other people mean to him? She tried out a
medium frown. Then she straightened her hair, massaged her facial muscles with her fingertips
to soften them, and flashed the mirror a sweet smile, revealing her recently cleaned white
teeth. All right, then, here I go, out of the dead mans room and back to the real world. Time to
adjust the atmospheric pressure. Im not a cool killer anymore, just a smiling, capable busi-
nesswoman in a sharp suit.
She opened the door a crack, checked to see that there was no one in the corridor, and
slipped out. She took the stairs rather than the elevator. No one paid her any mind as she
passed through the lobby. Posture erect, she stared straight ahead and walked
quickly though not quickly enough to attract attention. She was a pro, virtually perfect. If only
her breasts were a little bigger, she thought with a twinge, she might have been truly perfect.
A partial frown. But hell, youve gotta work with what youve got.
1Q84
CHAPTER 4
Tengo
IF THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO
The phone woke Tengo. The luminous hands of his clock pointed to a little after one a.m.
The room was dark, of course. Tengo knew the call was from Komatsu. No one but Komatsu
would call him at one in the morning and keep the phone ringing until he picked it up,
however long it took. Komatsu had no sense of time. He would place a call the moment a
thought struck him, never considering the hour. It could be the middle of the night or the crack
of dawn. The other person could be enjoying his wedding night or lying on his deathbed. The
prosaic thought never seemed to enter Komatsus egg-shaped head that a call from him
might be disturbing.
Which is not to say that he did this with everyone. Even Komatsu worked for an organization
and collected a salary. He couldnt possibly go around behaving toward everyone with a
total disregard for common sense. Only with Tengo could he get away with it. Tengo was, for
Komatsu, little more than an extension of Komatsu himself, another arm or leg. If Komatsu
was up, Tengo must be up. Tengo normally went to bed at ten oclock and woke at six, maintaining
a generally regular lifestyle. He was a deep sleeper. Once something woke him,
though, it was hard for him to get to sleep again. He was high-strung to that extent. He had
tried to explain this to Komatsu any number of times, and pleaded with him not to call in the
middle of the night, like a farmer begging God not to send swarms of locusts into his fields before
harvest time.
 Got it, Komatsu declared. No more nighttime calls. But his promise had not sunk deep
roots in his brain. One rainfall was all it took to wash them out.
Tengo crawled out of bed and, bumping into things, managed to find his way to the phone
in the kitchen. All the while, the phone kept up its merciless ringing.
 I talked to Fuka-Eri, Komatsu said. He never bothered with the standard greetings, no
 Were you sleeping? or Sorry to call so late. Pretty impressive. Tengo couldnt help admiring
him.
Tengo frowned in the dark, saying nothing. When roused at night, it took his brain a while
to start working.
 Did you hear what I said? 
 Yes, I did. 
 It was just a phone call. But I did talk to her. Or at her. She just listened. You couldnt exactly
call it a conversation. She hardly talks. And shes got an odd way of speaking. Youll see
what I mean. Anyhow, I gave her a general outline of my plan, like, what did she think of the
idea of going after the new writers prize by having somebody rewrite Air Chrysalis to get it in-
to better shape? I couldnt give her much more than a rough idea on the phone and ask her if
she had any interest, assuming wed meet and talk over the details. I kept it sort of vague. If I
got too direct about stuff like this, I could put myself in an awkward position. 
 And so? 
 No answer. 
 No answer? 
Komatsu paused for effect. He put a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a match.
Hearing the sounds over the phone, Tengo could imagine the scene vividly. Komatsu never
used a lighter.
 Fuka-Eri says she wants to meet you first, Komatsu said, exhaling. She didnt say
whether or not she was interested in the plan, or whether or not she liked the idea. I guess the
main thing is to start by meeting you and talking about it face-to-face. Shell give me her answer
after that, she says. The responsibility is all yours, dont you think? 
 And so? 
 Are you free tomorrow evening? 
His classes started in the morning and ended at four. Fortunately (or unfortunately) he had
nothing after that. Im free, he said.
 Good. I want you to go to the Nakamuraya Café in Shinjuku at six oclock. Ill reserve a
table for you in the back where its quiet. Itll be in my name and on the companys tab, so eat
and drink as much as you like. The two of you can have a nice, long talk. 
 Without you? 
 Thats the way Fuka-Eri wants it. She says theres no point in meeting me yet. 
Tengo kept silent.
 So thats how it is, Komatsu said cheerily. Give it your best shot, Tengo. Youre a big
lug, but you make a good impression on people. And besides, you teach at a cram school.
Youre used to talking to these precocious high school girls. Youre the right guy for the job,
not me. Flash her a smile, win her over, get her to trust you. Ill be looking forward to the good
news. 
 Now, wait just a minute. This was all your idea. I still havent even told you if Ill do it. Like
I said the other day, this is a tremendously risky plan, and I dont see it working all that well. It
could turn into a real scandal. How am I supposed to convince this girl Ive never met to go
along with it when I myself havent decided to take it on? 
Komatsu remained silent at his end. Then, after a moments pause, he said, Now listen,
Tengo. Weve already pulled out of the station. You cant stop the train and get off now. Im
totally committed. And youre more than half committed, Im sure. We share the same fate. 
Tengo shook his head. Share the same fate? When did this melodrama get started? Just
the other day you told me to take my time and think it over, didnt you? 
 Its been five days since then. Youve had plenty of time to think it over. Whats your decision? 
Komatsu demanded.
Tengo was at a loss for words. I dont have a decision, he said honestly.
 So then, why dont you try meeting this Fuka-Eri girl and talking it over? You can make up
your mind after that. 
Tengo pressed his fingertips hard against his temples. His brain was still not working properly.
 All right. Ill talk to her. Six oclock tomorrow at the Shinjuku Nakamuraya. Ill give her my
explanation of the situation. But Im not promising any more than that. I can explain the plan,
but I cant convince her of anything. 
 Thats all I ask, of course. 
 So anyway, how much does Fuka-Eri know about me? 
 I filled her in on the general stuff. Youre twenty-nine or thirty, a bachelor, you teach math
at a Yoyogi cram school. Youre a big guy, but not a bad guy. You dont eat young girls. You
live a simple lifestyle, youve got gentle eyes. And I like your writing a lot. Thats about it. 
Tengo sighed. When he tried to think, reality hovered nearby, then retreated into the distance.
 Do you mind if I go back to bed? Its almost one thirty, and I want at least a little sleep before
the sun comes up. Ive got three classes tomorrow starting in the morning. 
 Fine. Good night, Komatsu said. Sweet dreams. And he hung up.
Tengo stared at the receiver in his hand for a while, then set it down. He wanted to get to
sleep right away if possible, and to have good dreams if possible, but he knew it wouldnt be
easy after having been dragged out of bed and forced to participate in an unpleasant conversation.
He could try drinking himself to sleep, but he wasnt in the mood for alcohol. He ended
up drinking a glass of water, getting back in bed, turning on the light, and beginning to read a
book. He hoped it would make him sleepy, but he didnt actually fall asleep until almost dawn.
Tengo took the elevated train to Shinjuku after his third class ended. He bought a few books
at the Kinokuniya bookstore, and then headed for the Nakamuraya Café. He gave Komatsus
name at the door and was shown to a quiet table in the back. Fuka-Eri was not there yet.
Tengo told the waiter he would wait for the other person to come. Would he want something
to drink while he waited? He said that he would not. The waiter left a menu and a glass of water
on the table. Tengo opened one of his new books and started reading. It was a book on
occultism and it detailed the function of curses in Japanese society over the centuries. Curses
played a major role in ancient communities. They had made up for the gaps and inconsistencies
in the social system. It seemed like an enjoyable time to be alive.
Fuka-Eri had still not come at six fifteen. Unconcerned, Tengo went on reading. It didnt
surprise him that she was late. This whole business was so crazy, he couldnt complain to
anybody if it took another crazy turn. It would not be strange if she changed her mind and decided
not to show up at all. In fact, he would prefer it that way it would be simpler. He could
just report to Komatsu that he waited an hour and she never showed. What would happen
after that was no concern of his. He would just eat dinner by himself and go home, and that
would satisfy his obligation to Komatsu.
Fuka-Eri arrived at 6:22. The waiter showed her to the table and she sat down across from
Tengo. Resting her small hands on the table, not even removing her coat, she stared straight
at him. No Sorry Im late, or I hope I didnt keep you waiting too long. Not even a Hi or a
 Nice to meet you. All she did was look directly at Tengo, her lips forming a tight, straight line.
She could have been observing a new landscape from afar. Tengo was impressed.
Fuka-Eri was a small girl, small all over, and her face was more beautiful than in the pictures.
Her most attractive facial feature was her deep, striking eyes. Under the gaze of two
glistening, pitch-black pupils, Tengo felt uncomfortable. She hardly blinked and seemed almost
not to be breathing. Her hair was absolutely straight, as if someone had drawn each individual
strand with a ruler, and the shape of her eyebrows matched the hair perfectly. As with
many beautiful teenage girls, her expression lacked any trace of everyday life. It also was
strangely unbalanced perhaps because there was a slight difference in the depth of the left
and right eyes causing discomfort in the recipient of her gaze. You couldnt tell what she
was thinking. In that sense, she was not the kind of beautiful girl who becomes a model or a
pop star. Rather, she had something about her that aroused people and drew them toward
her.
Tengo closed his book and laid it to one side. He sat up straight and took a drink of water.
Komatsu had been right. If a girl like this took a literary prize, the media would be all over her.
It would be a sensation. And then what?
The waiter came and placed a menu and a glass of water in front of her. Still she did not
move. Instead of picking up the menu, she went on staring at Tengo. He felt he had no choice
but to say something. Hello. In her presence, he felt bigger than ever.
Fuka-Eri did not return his greeting but continued to stare at him. I know you, she murmured
at last.
 You know me? Tengo said.
 You teach math. 
He nodded. I do. 
 I heard you twice. 
 My lectures? 
 Yes. 
Her style of speaking had some distinguishing characteristics: sentences shorn of embellishment,
a chronic shortage of inflection, a limited vocabulary (or at least what seemed like a
limited vocabulary). Komatsu was right: it was odd.
 You mean youre a student at my school? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri shook her head. Just went for lectures. 
 Youre not supposed to be able to get in without a student ID. 
Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug, as if to say, Grown-ups shouldnt say such dumb things. 
 How were the lectures? Tengo asked, his second meaningless question.
Fuka-Eri took a drink of water without averting her gaze. She did not answer the question.
Tengo guessed he couldnt have made too bad an impression if she came twice. She would
have quit after the first one if it hadnt aroused her interest.
 Youre in your third year of high school, arent you? Tengo asked.
 More or less. 
 Studying for college entrance exams? 
She shook her head.
Tengo could not decide whether this meant I dont want to talk about my college entrance
exams or I wouldnt be caught dead taking college entrance exams. He recalled Komatsus
remark on how little Fuka-Eri had to say.
The waiter came for their orders. Fuka-Eri still had her coat on. She ordered a salad and
bread. Thats all, she said, returning the menu to the waiter. Then, as if it suddenly occurred
to her, she added, And a glass of white wine. 
The young waiter seemed about to ask her age, but she gave him a stare that made him
turn red, and he swallowed his words. Impressive, Tengo thought again. He ordered seafood
linguine and decided to join Fuka-Eri in a glass of white wine.
 Youre a teacher and a writer, Fuka-Eri said. She seemed to be asking Tengo a question.
Apparently, asking questions without question marks was another characteristic of her
speech.
 For now, Tengo said.
 You dont look like either. 
 Maybe not, he said. He thought of smiling but couldnt quite manage it. Im certified as
an instructor and I do teach courses at a cram school, but Im not exactly a teacher. I write fiction,
but Ive never been published, so Im not a writer yet, either. 
 Youre nothing. 
Tengo nodded. Exactly. For the moment, Im nothing. 
 You like math. 
Tengo mentally added a question mark to her comment and answered this new question:
 I do like math. Ive always liked it, and I still like it. 
 What about it. 
 What do I like about math? Hmm. When Ive got figures in front of me, it relaxes me. Kind
of like, everything fits where it belongs. 
 The calculus part was good. 
 You mean in my lecture? 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 Do you like math? 
She gave her head a quick shake. She did not like math.
 But the part about calculus was good? he asked.
Fuka-Eri gave another little shrug. You talked about it like you cared. 
 Oh, really? Tengo said. No one had ever told him this before.
 Like you were talking about somebody important to you, she said.
 I can maybe get even more passionate when I lecture on sequences, Tengo said.
 Sequences were a personal favorite of mine in high school math. 
 You like sequences, Fuka-Eri asked, without a question mark.
 To me, theyre like Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier. I never get tired of them. Theres always
something new to discover. 
 I know the Well-Tempered Clavier. 
 You like Bach? 
Fuka-Eri nodded. The Professor is always listening to it. 
 The Professor? One of your teachers? 
Fuka-Eri did not answer. She looked at Tengo with an expression that seemed to say, Its
too soon to talk about that. 
She took her coat off as if it had only now occurred to her to do so. She emerged from it
like an insect sloughing off its skin. Without bothering to fold it, she set it on the chair next to
hers. She wore a thin crew-neck sweater of pale green and white jeans, with no jewelry or
makeup, but still she stood out. She had a slender build, in proportion to which her full breasts
could not help but attract attention. They were beautifully shaped as well. Tengo had to caution
himself not to look down there, but he couldnt help it. His eyes moved to her chest as if
toward the center of a great whirlpool.
The two glasses of white wine arrived. Fuka-Eri took a sip of hers, and then, after thoughtfully
studying the glass, she set it on the table. Tengo took a perfunctory sip. Now it was time
to talk about important matters.
Fuka-Eri brought her hand to her straight black hair and combed her fingers through it for
a while. It was a lovely gesture, and her fingers were lovely, each seemingly moving according
to its own will and purpose as if in tune with something occult.
 What do I like about math? Tengo asked himself aloud again in order to divert his attention
from her fingers and her chest. Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of
course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the
shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your
eye on them for the route to reveal itself. Thats all it takes. You dont have to do a thing. Just
concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to
you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math. 
Fuka-Eri thought about this for a while. Why do you write fiction, she asked in her expressionless
way.
Tengo converted her question into longer sentences: In other words, if I like math so
much, why do I go to all the trouble of writing fiction? Why not just keep doing math? Is that
it? 
She nodded.
 Hmm. Real life is different from math. Things in life dont necessarily flow over the
shortest possible route. For me, math is how should I put it? math is all too natural. Its like
beautiful scenery. Its just there. Theres no need to exchange it with anything else. Thats
why, when Im doing math, I sometimes feel Im turning transparent. And that can be scary. 
Fuka-Eri kept looking straight into Tengos eyes as if she were looking into an empty
house with her face pressed up against the glass.
Tengo said, When Im writing a story, I use words to transform the surrounding scene into
something more natural for me. In other words, I reconstruct it. That way, I can confirm
without a doubt that this person known as ‘me exists in the world. This is a totally different
process from steeping myself in the world of math. 
 You confirm that you exist, Fuka-Eri said.
 I cant say Ive been one hundred percent successful at it, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri did not look convinced by Tengos explanation, but she said nothing more. She
merely brought the glass of wine to her mouth and took soundless little sips as though drinking
through a straw.
 If you ask me, Tengo said, youre in effect doing the same thing. You transform the
scenes you see into your own words and reconstruct them. And you confirm your own existence. 
Fuka-Eris hand that held her wineglass stopped moving. She thought about Tengos remark
for a while, but again she offered no opinion.
 You gave shape to that process. In the form of the work you wrote, Tengo added. If the
work succeeds in gaining many peoples approval and if they identify with it, then it becomes
a literary work with objective value. 
Fuka-Eri gave her head a decisive shake. Im not interested in form. 
 Youre not interested in form, Tengo said.
 Form has no meaning. 
 So then, why did you write the story and submit it for the new writers prize? 
She put down her wineglass. I didnt, she said.
To calm himself, Tengo picked up his glass and took a drink of water. Youre saying you
didnt submit it? 
Fuka-Eri nodded. I didnt send it in. 
 Well, who did? 
She gave a little shrug, then kept silent for a good fifteen seconds. Finally, she said, It
doesnt matter. 
 It doesnt matter, Tengo repeated, emitting a long, slow breath from his pursed lips. Oh,
great. Things really are not going to go smoothly. I knew it.
Several times, Tengo had formed personal relationships with his female cram school students,
though always after they had left the school and entered universities, and it was always
the girls who took the initiative. They would call and say they wanted to see him. The two of
them would meet and go somewhere together. He had no idea what attracted them to him,
but ultimately he was a bachelor, and they were no longer his students. He had no good reason
to refuse when asked for a date.
Twice the dates had led to sex, but the relationships had eventually faded on their own.
Tengo could not quite relax when he was with energetic young college girls. It was like playing
with a kitten, fresh and fun at first, but tiring in the end. The girls, too, seemed disappointed
to discover that in person, Tengo was not the same as the passionate young math lecturer
they encountered in class. He could understand how they felt.
Tengo was able to relax when he was with older women. Not having to take the lead in
everything seemed to lift a weight from his shoulders. And many older women liked him.
Which is why, after having formed a relationship with a married woman ten years his senior a
year ago, he had stopped dating any young girls. By meeting his older girlfriend in his apartment
once a week, any desire (or need) he might have for a flesh-and-blood woman was
pretty well satisfied. The rest of the week he spent shut up in his room alone, writing, reading,
and listening to music; occasionally he would go for a swim in the neighborhood pool. Aside
from a little chatting with his colleagues at the cram school, he hardly spoke with anyone. He
was not especially dissatisfied with this life. Far from it: for him, it was close to ideal.
But this seventeen-year-old girl, Fuka-Eri, was different. The mere sight of her sent a violent
shudder through him. It was the same feeling her photograph had given him when he first
saw it, but in the living girls presence it was far stronger. This was not the pangs of love or
sexual desire. A certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny
opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him. The void was not one that Fuka-Eri
had made. It had always been there inside Tengo. She had merely managed to shine a special
light on it.
 Youre not interested in writing fiction, and you didnt enter the new writers competition, 
Tengo said as if confirming what she had told him.
With her eyes locked on his, Fuka-Eri nodded in agreement. Then she gave a little shrug,
as if shielding herself from a cold autumn blast.
 You dont want to be a writer. Tengo was shocked to hear himself asking a question
without a question mark. The style was obviously contagious.
 No, I dont, Fuka-Eri said.
At that point their meal arrived a large bowl of salad and a roll for Fuka-Eri, and seafood
linguine for Tengo. Fuka-Eri used her fork to turn over several lettuce leaves, inspecting them
as if they were imprinted with newspaper headlines.
 Well, somebody sent your Air Chrysalis to the publisher for the new writers competition. I
found it when I was screening manuscripts. 
 Air Chrysalis, Fuka-Eri said, narrowing her eyes.
 Thats the title of the novella you wrote, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri kept her eyes narrowed, saying nothing.
 Thats not the title you gave it? Tengo asked with an uneasy twinge.
Fuka-Eri gave her head a tiny shake.
He began to feel confused again, but he decided not to pursue the question of the title.
The important thing was to make some progress with the discussion at hand.
 Never mind, then. Anyway, its not a bad title. It has real atmosphere, and itll attract attention,
make people wonder what it could possibly be about. Whoever thought of it, I have no
problem with it as a title. Im not sure about the distinction between ‘chrysalis and ‘cocoon,
but thats no big deal. What Im trying to tell you is that the work really got to me, which is why
I brought it to Mr. Komatsu. He liked it a lot, too, but he felt that the writing needed work if it
was going to be a serious contender for the new writers prize. The style doesnt quite measure
up to the strength of the story, so what he wants to do is have it rewritten, not by you but
by me. I havent decided whether I want to do it or not, and I havent given him my answer.
Im not sure its the right thing to do. 
Tengo broke off at that point to see Fuka-Eris reaction. There was no reaction.
 What Id like to hear from you now is what you think of the idea of me rewriting Air
Chrysalis instead of you. Even if I decided to do it, it couldnt happen without your agreement
and cooperation. 
Using her fingers, Fuka-Eri picked a cherry tomato out of her salad and ate it. Tengo
stabbed a mussel with his fork and ate that.
 You can do it, Fuka-Eri said simply. She picked up another tomato. Fix it any way you
like. 
 Dont you think you should take a little more time to think it over? This is a pretty big decision. 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. No need.
 Now, supposing I rewrote your novella, Tengo continued, I would be careful not to
change the story but just strengthen the style. This would probably involve some major
changes. But finally, you are the author. It would remain a work by the seventeen-year-old girl
named Fuka-Eri. That would not change. If it won the prize, you would get it. Just you. If it
were published as a book, you would be the only author listed on the title page. We would be
a team the three of us, you, me, and Mr. Komatsu, the editor. But the only name on the
book would be yours. He and I would stay in the background and not say a word, kind of like
prop men in a play. Do you understand what I am telling you? 
Fuka-Eri brought a piece of celery to her mouth with her fork. I understand, she said with
a nod.
 Air Chrysalis belongs entirely to you. It came out of you. I could never make it mine. I
would be nothing but your technical helper, and you would have to keep that fact a complete
secret. Wed be engaged in a conspiracy, in other words, to lie to the whole world. Any way
you look at it, this is not an easy thing to do, to keep a secret locked up in your heart. 
 Whatever you say, Fuka-Eri said.
Tengo pushed his mussel shells to the side of his plate and started to take a forkful of linguine
but then reconsidered and stopped. Fuka-Eri picked up a piece of cucumber and bit it
carefully, as if tasting something she had never seen before.
Fork in hand, Tengo said, Let me ask you one more time. Are you sure you have no objection
to my rewriting your story? 
 Do what you want, Fuka-Eri said, when she had finished the cucumber.
 Any way I rewrite it is okay with you? 
 Okay. 
 Why is that? he asked. You dont know a thing about me. 
Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug, saying nothing.
The two continued their meal wordlessly. Fuka-Eri gave her full concentration to her salad.
Now and then she would butter a piece of bread, eat it, and reach for her wine. Tengo mechanically
transported his linguine to his mouth and filled his mind with many possibilities.
Setting his fork down, he said, You know, when Mr. Komatsu suggested this idea to me, I
thought it was crazy, that there was no way it could work. I was planning to turn him down.
But after I got home and thought about it for a while, I started to feel more and more that I
wanted to give it a try. Ethical questions aside, I began to feel that I wanted to put my own
stamp on the novella that you had written. It was how to put this? a totally natural, spontaneous
desire. 
Or rather than a desire, hunger might be a better way to put it, Tengo added mentally. Just
as Komatsu had predicted, the hunger was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress.
Fuka-Eri said nothing, but from somewhere deep inside her neutral, beautiful eyes, she
looked hard at Tengo. She seemed to be struggling to understand the words that Tengo had
spoken.
 You want to rewrite the story, she asked.
Tengo looked straight into her eyes. I think I do. 
A faint flash crossed Fuka-Eris black pupils, as if they were projecting something. Or at
least they looked that way to Tengo.
Tengo held his hands out, as if he were supporting an imaginary box in the air. The gesture
had no particular meaning, but he needed some kind of imaginary medium like that to
convey his feelings. I dont know how to put it exactly, he said, but in reading Air Chrysalis
over and over, I began to feel that I could see what you were seeing. Especially when the
Little People appear. Your imagination has some special kind of power. Its entirely original,
and quite contagious. 
Fuka-Eri quietly set her spoon on her plate and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin.
 The Little People really exist, she said softly.
 They really exist? 
Fuka-Eri paused before she said, Just like you and me. 
 Just like you and me, Tengo repeated.
 You can see them if you try. 
Her concise speaking style was strangely persuasive. From every word that came to her
lips, he felt a precise, wedge-like thrust. He still could not tell, though, how seriously he should
take her. There was something out of the ordinary about her, a screw slightly loose. It was an
inborn quality, perhaps. He might be in the presence of an authentic talent in its most natural
form, or it could all be an act. Intelligent teenage girls were often instinctively theatrical, purposely
eccentric, mouthing highly suggestive words to confuse people. He had seen a number
of such cases when it was impossible to distinguish the real thing from acting. Tengo decided
to bring the conversation back to reality or, at least, something closer to reality.
 As long as its okay with you, Id like to start rewriting Air Chrysalis tomorrow. 
 If that is what you want to do. 
 It is what I want to do, Tengo replied.
 Theres someone to meet, Fuka-Eri said.
 Someone you want me to meet? 
She nodded.
 Now, who could that be? 
She ignored his question. To talk to, she added.
 I dont mind, Tengo said, if its something I should do. 
 Are you free Sunday morning, she asked, without a question mark.
 I am, Tengo said. Its as if were talking in semaphore, he thought.
They finished eating and parted. At the door of the restaurant, Tengo slipped a few tenyen
coins into the pay phone and called Komatsus work number. He was still in his office, but
it took him a while to come to the phone. Tengo waited with the receiver on his ear.
 How did it go? Komatsu asked right away.
 Fuka-Eri is basically okay with me rewriting Air Chrysalis, I think. 
 Thats great! Komatsu exclaimed. Marvelous! To tell you the truth, I was a little worried
about you. I mean, youre not exactly the negotiator type. 
 I didnt do any negotiating, Tengo said. I didnt have to convince her. I just explained the
main points, and she pretty much decided on her own. 
 I dont care how you did it. The results are what count. Now we can go ahead with the
plan. 
 Except that I have to meet somebody first. 
 Meet somebody? Who? 
 I dont know. She wants me to meet this person and talk. 
Komatsu kept silent for a few seconds. So when are you supposed to do that? 
 This Sunday. Shes going to take me there. 
 Theres one important rule when it comes to keeping secrets, Komatsu said gravely.
 The fewer people who know the secret, the better. So far, only three of us know about the
plan you, me, and Fuka-Eri. If possible, Id like to avoid increasing that number. You understand,
dont you? 
 In theory, Tengo said.
Komatsus voice softened as he said, Anyhow, Fuka-Eri is ready to have you rewrite her
manuscript. Thats the most important thing. We can work out the rest. 
Tengo switched the receiver to his left hand and slowly pressed his right index finger
against his temple. To be honest, he said to Komatsu, this is making me nervous. I dont
have any real grounds for saying so, but I have this strong feeling that Im being swept up in
something out of the ordinary. I didnt feel it when I was with Fuka-Eri, but its been getting
stronger since she left. Call it a premonition, or just a funny feeling, but there is something
strange going on here. Something out of the ordinary. I feel it less with my mind than my
whole body. 
 Was it meeting Fuka-Eri that made you feel this way? 
 Maybe so. Shes probably the real thing. This is just my gut feeling, of course. 
 You mean that she has real talent? 
 I dont know about her talent, Tengo said. Ive just met her, after all. But she may actually
be seeing things that you and I cant see. She might have something special. Thats
whats bothering me. 
 You mean she might have mental issues? 
 Shes definitely eccentric, but I dont think shes crazy. Theres a logical thread to what
she says, more or less. Its just that … I dont know … somethings bothering me. 
 In any case, did she take an interest in you? Komatsu asked.
Tengo searched for the appropriate words with which to answer him, but was unable to
find them. I really cant say about that, he replied.
 Well, she met you, and she must have thought you were qualified to rewrite Air Chrysalis.
That means she liked you. Good work, Tengo! What happens from here on out, I dont know,
either. There is some risk, of course. But risk is the spice of life. Start rewriting the manuscript
right away. We dont have any time to lose. Ive got to return the rewritten manuscript to the
pile of entries as soon as possible, switch it for the original. Can you do the job in ten days? 
Tengo sighed. What a taskmaster! 
 Dont worry, you dont have to make it absolutely polished. We can still touch it up in the
next stage. Just get it into reasonably good shape. 
Tengo did a general estimate of the job in his head. If thats the case, I might be able to
pull it off in ten days. Its still going to be a huge job, though. 
 Just give it everything youve got, Komatsu urged him cheerfully. Look at the world
through her eyes. Youll be the go-between connecting Fuka-Eris world and the real world
we live in. I know you can do it, Tengo, I just 
At this point the last ten-yen coin ran out.
1Q84
CHAPTER 5
Aomame
A PROFESSION REQUIRING
SPECIALIZED TECHNIQUES AND TRAINING
After finishing her job and exiting the hotel, Aomame walked a short distance before
catching a cab to yet another hotel, in the Akasaka District. She needed to calm her nerves
with alcohol before going home to bed. After all, she had just sent a man to the other side.
True, he was a loathsome rat who had no right to complain about being killed, but he was, ultimately,
a human being. Her hands still retained the sensation of the life draining out of him.
He had expelled his last breath, and the spirit had left his body. Aomame had been to the bar
in this Akasaka hotel any number of times. It was the top floor of a high-rise building, had a
great view, and a comfortable counter.
She entered the bar a little after seven. A young piano and guitar duo were playing Sweet
Lorraine. Their version was a copy of an old Nat King Cole record, but they werent bad. As
always, she sat at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic and a plate of pistachios. The place
was still not crowded a young couple drinking cocktails as they took in the view, four men in
suits who seemed to be discussing a business deal, a middle-aged foreign couple holding
martini glasses. She took her time drinking the gin and tonic. She didnt want the alcohol to
take effect too quickly. The night ahead was long.
She pulled a book from her shoulder bag and started reading. It was a history of the South
Manchurian Railway Company of the 1930s. The line and right-of-way had been ceded to Japan
by Russia after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, after which the company had
rapidly expanded its operations, becoming fundamental in Japans invasion of China. It was
broken up by the Soviet army in 1945. Until the outbreak of the Russo-German War in 1941,
one could travel between Shimonoseki and Paris in thirteen days via this line and the TransSiberian
Railway.
Aomame figured that a young woman drinking alone in a hotel bar could not be mistaken
for a high-class hooker on the prowl if she was wearing a business suit, had a big shoulder
bag parked next to her, and sat there absorbed in a book about the South Manchurian Railway
(a hardcover, no less). In fact, Aomame had no idea what kind of outfit a real high-class
hooker would wear. If she herself were a prostitute looking for wealthy businessmen, she
would probably try her best not to look like a prostitute so as to avoid either making potential
clients nervous or having herself ejected from the bar. One way to accomplish that might be
to wear a Junko Shimada business suit and white blouse, keep her makeup to a minimum,
carry a big, practical shoulder bag, and have a book on the South Manchurian Railway open
in front of her. Come to think of it, what she was doing now was not substantially different
from a prostitute on the prowl.
As the time passed, the place gradually filled up. Before she knew it, Aomame was surrounded
by the buzz of conversation. But none of the customers had what she was looking
for. She drank another gin and tonic, ordered some crudités (she hadnt eaten dinner yet),
and continued reading. Eventually a man came and sat a few seats away from her at the bar.
He was alone. Nicely tanned, he wore an expensively tailored blue-gray suit. His taste in
neckties was not bad, either neither flashy nor plain. He must have been around fifty, and
his hair was more than a little thin. He wore no glasses. She guessed he was in Tokyo on
business and, having finished the days work, wanted a drink before going to bed. Like
Aomame herself. The idea was to calm the nerves by introducing a moderate amount of alcohol
into the body.
Few men in Tokyo on business stayed in this kind of expensive hotel. Most chose a cheap
business hotel, one near a train station, where the bed nearly filled the room, the only view
from the window was the wall of the next building, and you couldnt take a shower without
bumping your elbows twenty times. The corridor of each floor had vending machines for
drinks and toiletries. Either the company wouldnt pay for anything better, or the men were
pocketing the travel money left over from staying in such a cheap place. They would drink a
beer from the local liquor store before going to bed, and wolf down a bowl of rice and beef for
breakfast at the eatery next door.
A different class of people stayed at this hotel. When these men came to Tokyo on business,
they never took anything but the bullet trains luxury green cars, and they stayed only
in certain elite hotels. Finishing a job, they would relax in the hotel bar and drink expensive
whiskey. Most held management positions in first-rank corporations, or else they were independent
businessmen or professionals such as doctors or lawyers. They had reached middle
age, and money was no problem for them. They also knew more or less how to have a good
time. This was the type that Aomame had in mind.
Aomame herself did not know why, but ever since the time she was twenty, she had been
attracted to men with thinning hair. They should not be completely bald but have something
left on top. And thin hair was not all it took to please her. They had to have well-shaped
heads. Her ideal type was Sean Connery. His beautifully shaped head was sexy. Looking at
him was all it took to set her heart racing. The man now sitting at the bar two seats away from
her had a very well-shaped head not as perfect as Sean Connerys, of course, but attractive
in its own way. His hairline had receded from the forehead and his sparse remaining hair recalled
a frosty meadow in late autumn. Aomame raised her eyes a little from the pages of her
book and admired his head shape for a while. His facial features were nothing special.
Though not fat, his jowls were just beginning to sag, and he had a hint of bags under his
eyes. He was the kind of middle-aged man you see everywhere. But that head shape of his
she found very much to her liking.
When the bartender brought him a menu and a warm towel, the man ordered a Scotch
highball without looking at the menu. Do you prefer a certain brand? the bartender asked.
 Not really, the man said. Anything will be fine. He had a calm, quiet voice and spoke with a
soft Kansai accent. Then, as if it had just occurred to him, he asked if they had Cutty Sark.
The bartender said they did. Not bad, thought Aomame. She liked the fact that he had not
chosen Chivas Regal or some sophisticated single malt. It was her personal view that people
who are overly choosy about the drinks they order in a bar tend to be sexually bland. She had
no idea why this should be so.
Aomame also had a taste for Kansai accents. She especially enjoyed the mismatch
between vocabulary and intonation when people born and raised in Kansai came up to Tokyo
and tried to use Tokyo words with Kansai pronunciation. She found that special sound to be
strangely calming. So now she made up her mind: she would go for this man. She was dying
to run her fingers through the few strands of hair he had left. So when the bartender brought
him his Cutty Sark highball, she said to the bartender loudly enough so the man was sure to
hear her, Cutty Sark on the rocks, please. Yes, maam, right away, the bartender replied,
his face a blank.
The man undid the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie, which was a dark blue with
a fine-grained pattern. His suit was also dark blue. He wore a pale blue shirt with a standard
collar. She went on reading her book as she waited for her Cutty Sark to come. Discreetly,
she undid the top button of her blouse. The jazz duo played Its Only a Paper Moon. The pianist
sang a single chorus. Her drink arrived, and she took a sip. She sensed the man glancing
in her direction. She raised her head and looked at him. Casually, as if by chance. When
their eyes met, she gave him a faint, almost nonexistent smile, and then immediately faced
forward again, pretending to look at the nighttime view.
It was the perfect moment for a man to approach a woman, and she had created it. But
this man said nothing. What the hell is he waiting for? she wondered. Hes no kid. He should
pick up on these subtle hints. Maybe he hasnt got the guts. Maybe hes worried about the
age difference. Maybe he thinks Ill ignore him or put him down: bald old coot of fifty has some
nerve approaching a woman in her twenties! Damn, he just doesnt get it.
She closed her book and returned it to her bag. Now she took the initiative.
 You like Cutty Sark? 
He looked shocked, as if he could not grasp the meaning of her question. Then he relaxed
his expression. Oh, yes, Cutty Sark, he said, as if it suddenly came back to him. Ive always
liked the label, the sailboat. 
 So you like boats. 
 Sailboats especially. 
Aomame raised her glass. The man raised his highball glass slightly. It was almost a
toast.
Aomame slung her bag on her shoulder and, whiskey glass in hand, slipped over two
seats to the stool next to his. He seemed a little surprised but struggled not to show it.
 I was supposed to meet an old high school girlfriend of mine here, but it looks like Ive
been stood up, Aomame said, glancing at her watch. Shes not even calling. 
 Maybe she got the date wrong. 
 Maybe. Shes always been kind of scatterbrained, Aomame said. I guess Ill wait a little
longer. Mind keeping me company? Or would you rather be alone? 
 No, not at all, the man said, though he sounded somewhat uncertain. He knit his brows
and looked at her carefully, as if assessing an object to be used as collateral. He seemed to
suspect her of being a prostitute. But Aomame was clearly not a prostitute. He relaxed and let
his guard down a little.
 Are you staying in this hotel? he asked.
 No, I live in Tokyo, she said, shaking her head. Im just here to meet my friend. And
you? 
 In town on business, he said. From Osaka. For a meeting. A stupid meeting, but the
company headquarters are in Osaka, so somebody had to come. 
Aomame gave him a perfunctory smile. I dont give a shit about your business, mister, she
thought, I just happen to like the shape of your head.
 I needed a drink after work. Ive got one more job to finish up tomorrow morning, and then
I head back to Osaka. 
 I just finished a big job myself, Aomame said.
 Oh, really? What kind of work do you do? 
 I dont like to talk about my work. Its a kind of specialized profession. 
 Specialized profession, the man responded, repeating her words. A profession requiring
specialized techniques and training. 
What are you, some kind of walking dictionary? Silently, she challenged him, but she just
kept on smiling and said, Hmm, I wonder … 
He took another sip of his highball and a handful of nuts from the bowl. Im curious what
kind of work you do, but you dont want to talk about it. 
She nodded. Not yet, at least. 
 Does it involve words, by any chance? Say, you might be an editor or a university researcher? 
 What makes you think that? 
He straightened the knot of his necktie and redid the top button of his shirt. I dont know,
you seemed pretty absorbed in that big book of yours. 
Aomame tapped her fingernail against the edge of her glass. No, I just like to read.
Without any connection to work. 
 I give up, then. I cant imagine. 
 No, Im sure you cant, she said, silently adding, Ever. 
He gave her a casual once-over. Pretending to have dropped something, she bent over
and gave him a good, long look at her cleavage and perhaps a peek at her white bra with lace
trim. Then she straightened up and took another sip of her Cutty Sark on the rocks. The large,
rounded chunks of ice clinked against the sides of her glass.
 How about another drink? he asked. Ill order one too. 
 Please, Aomame replied.
 You can hold your liquor. 
Aomame gave him a vague smile but quickly turned serious. Oh, yes, I wanted to ask you
something. 
 What would that be? 
 Have policemens uniforms changed lately? And the type of guns they carry? 
 What do you mean by ‘lately? 
 In the past week, she said.
He gave her an odd look. Police uniforms and guns both underwent a change, but that
was some years back. The jackets went from a stiff, formal style to something more casual,
almost like a windbreaker. And they started carrying those new-model automatic pistols. I
dont think there have been any changes since then. 
 Japanese policemen always carried old-fashioned revolvers, Im sure. Right up to last
week. 
The man shook his head. Now there, youre wrong. They all started carrying automatics
quite some time ago. 
 Can you say that with absolute certainty? 
Her tone gave him pause. He wrinkled his brow and searched his memory. Well, if you
put it that way, I cant be one hundred percent sure, but I know I saw something in the papers
about the switch to new pistols. It caused quite a stir. The usual citizens groups were complaining
to the government that the pistols were too high-powered. 
 And this was a while ago? Aomame asked.
The man called over the middle-aged bartender and asked him when the police changed
their uniforms and pistols.
 In the spring two years ago, the bartender replied, without hesitation.
 See? the man said with a laugh. Bartenders in first-class hotels know everything! 
The bartender laughed as well. No, not really, he said. It just so happens my younger
brother is a cop, so I clearly remember that stuff. My brother couldnt stand the new uniforms
and was always complaining about them. And he thought the new pistols were too heavy.
Hes still complaining about those. Theyre 9mm Beretta automatics. One click and you can
switch them to semiautomatic. Im pretty sure Mitsubishis making them domestically under license
now. We almost never have any out-and-out gun battles in Japan; theres just no need
for such a high-powered gun. If anything, the cops have to worry now about having their guns
stolen from them. But it was government policy back then to upgrade the force. 
 What happened to the old revolvers? Aomame asked, keeping her voice as calm as she
could.
 Im pretty sure they were all recalled and dismantled, the bartender said. I remember
seeing it on television. It was a huge job dismantling that many pistols and scrapping all that
ammunition. 
 They should have just sold everything abroad, said the thinning-haired company man.
 The constitution forbids the export of weapons, the bartender pointed out modestly.
 See? Bartenders in first-class hotels 
Aomame cut the man off and asked, Youre telling me that Japanese police havent used
revolvers at all for two years now? 
 As far as I know. 
Aomame frowned slightly. Am I going crazy? I just saw a policeman wearing the old-style
uniform and carrying an old revolver this morning. Im sure I never heard a thing about them
getting rid of every single revolver, but I also cant believe that these two middle-aged men
are wrong or lying to me. Which means I must be mistaken.
 Thanks very much. Ive heard all I need to about that, she said to the bartender, who
gave her a professional smile like a well-timed punctuation mark and went back to work.
 Do you have some special interest in policemen? the middle-aged man asked her.
 No, not really, Aomame answered, adding vaguely, Its just that my memory has gotten
a little foggy 
They drank their new Cutty Sarks the man his highball and Aomame hers on the rocks.
The man talked about sailboats. He moored his small sailboat in the Nishinomiya yacht harbor,
he said. He took it out to the ocean on holidays and weekends. He spoke passionately of
how wonderful it was to feel the wind as you sailed alone on the sea. Aomame didnt want to
hear about any damned sailboats. Better for him to talk about the history of ball bearings or
the distribution of mineral resources in Ukraine. She glanced at her watch and said, Look, its
getting late. Can I just ask you something straight out? 
 Sure, he replied.
 Its, uh, rather personal. 
 Ill answer if I can. 
 Do you have a decent-sized cock? Is it on the big side? 
The mans lips parted and his eyes narrowed as he looked at her for a while. He could not
quite believe he had heard her correctly. But her face was utterly serious. She was not joking.
Her eyes made that clear.
 Let me see, he said, speaking earnestly. Im not really sure. I guess its pretty much normal
size. I dont know what to say when you spring it on me like that. 
 How old are you? Aomame asked.
 I just turned fifty-one last month, but …, he said.
 Youve been living more than fifty years with a normal brain, you have a decent job, you
even own your own sailboat, and still you cant tell whether your cock is bigger or smaller than
normal? 
 Well, I suppose it could be a little bigger, he said with a degree of difficulty after giving it
some thought.
 Youre sure, now? 
 Why are you so concerned? 
 Concerned? Who says Im concerned? 
 Well, no one, but …, he said, recoiling slightly atop his bar stool. That seems to be the
problem were discussing at the moment. 
 Problem? Its no problem. No problem at all, Aomame declared. I just happen to like big
cocks. Visually speaking. Im not saying I need a big one to feel anything, no no. Or that Im
okay with anything as long as its big. All Im saying is I tend to like em on the big side. Is
there something wrong with that? People have their likes and dislikes. But ridiculously big
ones are no good. They just hurt. Do you see what I mean? 
 Well, then, I might be able to please you with mine. Its somewhat bigger than standard, I
think, but its not ridiculously big, either. Its shall I say? just right … 
 Youre not lying to me, now? 
 What would be the point of lying about something like that? 
 Well, all right, then, maybe you should give me a peek. 
 Here? 
Aomame frowned while struggling to control herself. Here?! Are you crazy? What are you
thinking, at your age? Youre wearing a good suit and even a tie, but wheres your social common
sense? You cant just whip out your cock in a place like this. Imagine what the people
around you would think! No, we go to your room now, and I let you take your pants off and
show me. Just the two of us. That much should be obvious to you. 
 So I show you, and then what happens? he asked worriedly.
 What happens after you show it to me? Aomame asked, catching her breath and producing
a major uncontrolled frown. We have sex, obviously. What else? I mean, we go to your
room, you show me your cock, and I say, ‘Thank you very much for showing me such a nice
one. Good night, and I go home? You must have a screw loose somewhere. 
The man gasped to see Aomames face undergoing such dramatic changes before his
eyes. A frown from Aomame could make any man shrivel up. Little children might pee in their
pants, the impact of her frown was so powerful. Maybe I overdid it, she thought. I really
shouldnt frighten him so badly. At least not until Ive taken care of business. She quickly returned
her face to its normal state and forced a smile. Then, as if spelling it out for him, she
said, Heres what happens. We go to your room. We get in bed. We have sex. Youre not gay
or impotent, are you? 
 No, I dont believe so. I have two children … 
 Look, nobodys asking you how many kids youve got. Do I look like a census taker?
Keep the details to yourself. All Im asking is whether you can get it up when youre in bed
with a woman. Nothing else. 
 As far back as I can remember, Ive never failed to perform when necessary, he said.
 But tell me are you a professional? Is this your job? 
 No, it is not my job, so you can stop that right now. I am not a professional, or a pervert,
just an ordinary citizen. An ordinary citizen who wants nothing more than to have intercourse
with a member of the opposite sex. Theres nothing special about me. Im totally normal. What
could be wrong with that? Ive just finished a tough job, the sun is down, Ive had a little to
drink, and Id like to let off steam by having sex with a stranger. To calm my nerves. Thats
what I need. Youre a man, you know how I feel. 
 Of course I do, but … 
 Im not looking for any money. Id almost pay you if you can satisfy me. And Ive got condoms
with me, so you dont have to worry. Am I making myself clear? 
 You certainly are, but … 
 But what? You dont seem all that eager. Am I not good enough for you? 
 Thats not it at all. I just dont get it. Youre young and pretty, and Im old enough to be
your father … 
 Oh, stop it, will you please? Sure youre a lot older than me, but Im not your damn
daughter, and youre not my damn father. That much is obvious. It sets my nerves on edge to
be subjected to such meaningless generalizations. I just like your bald head. I like the way its
shaped. Do you see? 
 Well, I wouldnt exactly call myself bald. I know my hairline is a little … 
 Shut up, will you? Aomame said, trying her best not to frown. I shouldnt scare him too
much, she thought, softening her tone somewhat. Thats really not important. 
Look, mister, I dont care what you think, you are bald. If the census had a bald category,
youd be in it, no problem. If you go to heaven, youre going to bald heaven. If you go to hell,
youre going to bald hell. Have you got that straight? Then stop looking away from the truth.
Lets go now. Im taking you straight to bald heaven, nonstop.
The man paid the bill and they went to his room.
His penis was in fact somewhat larger than normal, though not too large, as advertised.
Aomames expert handling soon made it big and hard. She took off her blouse and skirt.
 I know youre thinking my breasts are small, she said coldly as she looked down at him
in her underwear. You came through with a good-sized cock and all you get in return is these
puny things. I bet you feel cheated. 
 Not at all, he reassured her. Theyre not that small. And theyre really quite beautiful. 
 I wonder, she said. Let me just say this, though. I never wear these frilly lace bras. I had
to put this one on today for work, to show off a little cleavage. 
 What is this work of yours? 
 Look, I told you before. I dont want to discuss my job here. I can say this much, though:
its not that easy being a woman. 
 Well, its not that easy being a man, either. 
 Maybe not, but you never have to put on a lacy bra when you dont want to. 
 True … 
 So dont pretend to know what youre talking about. Women have it much tougher than
men. Have you ever had to climb down a steep stairway in high heels, or climb over a barricade
in a miniskirt? 
 I owe you an apology, the man said simply.
She reached back, unhooked her bra, and threw it on the floor. Then she rolled down her
stockings and threw those on the floor as well. Lying down beside him, she started working on
his penis again. Pretty impressive, she said. Nice shape, just about ideal size, and firm as a
tree trunk. 
 Im glad it meets with your approval, he said with apparent relief.
 Now just let big sister do her thing. Shell make this little man of yours twitch with happiness. 
 Maybe we should shower first. Im pretty sweaty 
 Oh, shut up, Aomame said, giving his right testicle a light snap, as if issuing a warning. I
came here to have sex, not take a shower. Got it? We do it first. Fuck like crazy. To hell with a
little sweat. Im not a blushing schoolgirl. 
 All right, the man said.
When they were finished and she was caressing the back of the mans exposed neck as
he lay facedown, exhausted, Aomame felt a strong urge to plunge her sharp needle into that
special place. Maybe I should really do it, the thought flashed through her mind. The ice pick
was in her bag, wrapped in cloth. The needle that she had spent so much time sharpening
was covered by a specially softened cork. It would have been so easy, just a quick shove of
her right palm against the wooden handle. Hed be dead before he knew what hit him. No
pain. It would be ruled a natural death. But of course she stopped herself. There was no reason
to expunge this man from society, aside from the fact that he no longer served any purpose
for Aomame. She shook her head and swept the dangerous thought from her mind.
This man is not an especially bad person, she told herself. He was pretty good in bed, too.
He had enough control not to ejaculate until he had made her come. The shape of his head
and the degree of his baldness were just the way she liked them. The size of his penis was
exactly right. He was courteous, had good taste in clothes, and was in no way overbearing.
True, he was tremendously boring, which really got on her nerves, but that was not a crime
deserving death. Probably.
 Mind if I turn on the television? she asked.
 Fine, he said, still on his stomach.
Naked in bed, she watched the eleven oclock news to the end. In the Middle East, Iran
and Iraq were still embroiled in their bloody war. It was a quagmire, with no sign of a settlement.
In Iraq, young draft dodgers had been strung up on telephone poles as an example to
others. The Iranian government was accusing Saddam Hussein of having used nerve gas and
biological weapons. In America, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart were battling to become the
Democratic candidate for president. Neither looked like the brightest person in the world.
Smart presidents usually became the target of assassins, so people with higher-than-average
intelligence probably did their best to avoid being elected.
On the moon, the construction of a permanent observation post was making progress.
The United States and the Soviet Union were cooperating on this project, for a change, as
they had done with the Antarctic observation post. An observation post on the moon?
Aomame cocked her head. I havent heard anything about that. What is wrong with me? But
she decided not to think too deeply about it. There were more pressing problems to consider.
A large number of people had died in a mine fire in Kyushu, and the government was looking
into the cause. What most surprised Aomame was the fact that people continued to dig coal
out of the earth in an age when bases were being built on the moon. America was pushing
Japan to open its financial markets. Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch were lighting fires under
the government in search of new sources of profit. Next there was a feature that introduced
a clever cat from Shimane Prefecture that could open a window and let itself out. Once
out, it would close the window. The owner had trained the cat to do this. Aomame watched
with admiration as the slim black cat turned around, stretched a paw out, and, with a knowing
look in its eye, slid the window closed.
There was a great variety of news stories, but no report on the discovery of a body in a
Shibuya hotel. After the news, Aomame turned the TV off with the remote control. The room
was hushed, the only sound the soft, rhythmic breathing of the man sleeping beside her.
That other man, the one in the hotel room, is probably still slumped over his desk, looking
sound asleep, like this one. Without the breathing. That rat can never wake and rise again.
Aomame stared at the ceiling, imagining the look of the corpse. She gave her head a slight
shake and indulged in a lonely frown. Then she slipped out of bed and gathered her clothing
from the floor, piece by piece.
1Q84
CHAPTER 6
Tengo
DOES THIS MEAN
WERE GOING PRETTY FAR FROM THE CITY?
The next call from Komatsu came early Friday morning, shortly after five oclock. Tengo
was just then dreaming about crossing a long stone bridge on a river. He was going to retrieve
a document that he had forgotten on the opposite shore. He was alone. The river was
big and beautiful, with sandbars here and there. The river flowed gently, and willows grew on
the sandbars. He could see the elegant shape of trout in the water. The willows brilliant green
leaves hung down, gently touching the waters surface. The scene could have come from a
Chinese plate. Tengo woke and looked at the clock by his pillow in the dark. Of course he
knew before lifting the receiver who would be calling at such a time.
 Do you have a word processor, Tengo? Komatsu asked. No Good morning, no Were
you up? If he was awake now, Komatsu must have pulled an all-nighter. He had certainly not
awakened early to see the sun rise. He must have recalled something he wanted to tell Tengo
before going to bed.
 No, of course not, Tengo answered. He was still in pitch darkness, halfway across the
long bridge. He rarely had such vivid dreams. Its nothing to boast about, but I cant afford
anything like that. 
 Do you know how to use one? 
 I do. I can pretty much handle either a dedicated word processor or a computer. We have
them at school. I use them all the time for work. 
 Good. I want you to buy one today. I dont know a thing about machines, so Ill leave it to
you to pick out the make and model. Send me a bill afterward. I want you to start revising Air
Chrysalis as soon as possible. 
 You know, were talking about at least 250,000 yen for a cheap one. 
 Thats no problem. 
Tengo cocked his head in wonderment. So, youre saying youre going to buy me a word
processor? 
 That I am from my own little private stash. This job deserves at least that much of an investment.
Well never get anything done playing it cheap. As you know, Air Chrysalis arrived
as a word-processed manuscript, which means well have to use a word processor to rewrite
it. I want you to make the new one look like the old one. Can you start the rewrite today? 
Tengo thought about it a moment. I can start it anytime I decide to, but Fuka-Eri wants
me to meet someone this Sunday before she gives me permission, and of course I havent
met the person yet. If those negotiations break down, anything we do now could be a com-
plete waste of time and money 
 Never mind, itll work out. Dont worry about the details. Start working right away. Were in
a race against time. 
 Are you that sure my interview will go well? 
 Thats what my gut tells me, Komatsu said. I go by the gut. I might not appear to have
any talent, but Ive got plenty of gut instinct if I do say so myself. Thats how Ive survived all
these years. By the way, Tengo, do you know what the biggest difference is between talent
and gut instinct? 
 I have no idea. 
 You can have tons of talent, but it wont necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts,
though, youll never go hungry. 
 Ill keep that in mind, Tengo said.
 All Im saying is, dont worry. You can start the job today. 
 If you say so, its fine with me. I was just trying to avoid kicking myself for starting too
early. 
 Let me worry about that. Ill take complete responsibility. 
 Okay, then. Im seeing somebody this afternoon, but Ill be free to start working after that.
I can shop for a word processor this morning. 
 Thats great, Tengo. Im counting on you. Well join forces and turn the world upside
down. 
Tengos married girlfriend called just after nine, when she was finished dropping her husband
and kids off at the train station for their daily commute. She was supposed to be visiting
Tengos apartment that afternoon. They always got together on Fridays.
 Im just not feeling right, she said. Sorry, but I dont think I can make it today. See you
next week. 
 Not feeling right was her euphemism for her period. She had been raised to prefer delicate,
euphemistic expressions. There was nothing delicate or euphemistic about her in bed,
but that was another matter. Tengo said he was also sorry to miss her that day, but he supposed
it couldnt be helped.
In fact, he was not all that sorry to miss her on this particular Friday. He always enjoyed
sex with her, but his feelings were already moving in the direction of rewriting Air Chrysalis.
Ideas were welling up inside him like life-forms stirring in a primordial sea. This way, Im no
different from Komatsu, he thought. Nothing has been formally settled, and already my feelings
are headed in that direction on their own.
At ten oclock he went to Shinjuku and bought a Fujitsu word processor with his credit
card. It was the latest model, far lighter than earlier versions. He also bought ink ribbon cart-
ridges and paper. He carried everything back to his apartment, set the machine on his desk,
and plugged it in. At work he used a full-sized Fujitsu word processor, and the basic functions
of this portable model were not much different. To reassure himself of its operation, he
launched into the rewriting of Air Chrysalis.
He had no well-defined plan for rewriting the novella, no consistent method or guidelines
that he had prepared, just a few detailed ideas for certain sections. Tengo was not even sure
it was possible to do a logical rewrite of a work of fantasy and feeling. True, as Komatsu had
said, the style needed a great deal of improvement, but would it be possible for him to do that
without destroying the works fundamental nature and atmosphere? Wouldnt this be tantamount
to giving a butterfly a skeleton? Such thoughts only caused him confusion and anxiety.
But events had already started moving, and he had a limited amount of time. He couldnt
just sit there, thinking, arms folded. All he could do was deal with one small, concrete problem
after another. Perhaps, as he worked on each detail by hand, an overall image would take
shape spontaneously.
 I know you can do it, Tengo, Komatsu had declared with confidence, and for some unfathomable
reason, Tengo himself was able to swallow Komatsus words whole for now. In
both word and action, Komatsu could be a questionable character, and he basically thought of
no one but himself. If the occasion arose, he would drop Tengo without batting an eyelash.
But as Komatsu himself liked to say, he had special instincts as an editor. He made all judgments
instantaneously and carried them out decisively, unconcerned what other people might
say. This was a quality indispensable to a brilliant commanding officer on the front lines, but it
was a quality that Tengo himself did not possess.
It was half past twelve by the time Tengo started rewriting Air Chrysalis. He typed the first
few pages of the manuscript into the word processor as is, stopping at a convenient break in
the story. He would rewrite this block of text first, changing none of the content but thoroughly
reworking the style. It was like remodeling a condo. You leave the basic structure intact, keep
the kitchen and bathroom in place, but tear out and replace the flooring, ceiling, walls, and
partitions. Im a skilled carpenter whos been put in charge of everything, Tengo told himself. I
dont have a blueprint, so all I can do is use my intuition and experience to work on each separate
problem that comes up.
After typing it in, he reread Fuka-Eris text, adding explanatory material to sections that felt
too obscure, improving the flow of the language, and deleting superfluous or redundant passages.
Here and there he would change the order of sentences or paragraphs. Fuka-Eri was
extremely sparing in her use of adjectives and adverbs, and he wanted to remain consistent
with that aspect of her style, but in certain places where he felt more descriptions were necessary,
he would supply something appropriate. Her style overall was juvenile and artless, but
the good and the bad passages stood out from each other so clearly that choosing among
them took far less time and trouble than he had expected. The artlessness made some passages
dense and difficult but it gave others a startling freshness. He needed only to throw out
and replace the first type, and leave the second in place.
Rewriting her work gave Tengo a renewed sense that Fuka-Eri had written the piece
without any intention of leaving behind a work of literature. All she had done was record a
story or, as she had put it, things she had actually witnessed that she possessed inside
her, and it just so happened that she had used words to do it. She might just as well have
used something other than words, but she had not come across a more appropriate medium.
It was as simple as that. She had never had any literary ambition, no thought of making the
finished piece into a commodity, and so she felt no need to pay attention to the details of
style, as if she had been making a room for herself and all she needed was walls and a roof
to keep the weather out. This was why it made no difference to her how much Tengo reworked
her writing. She had already accomplished her objective. When she said, Fix it any
way you like, she was almost certainly expressing her true feelings.
And yet, the sentences and paragraphs that comprised Air Chrysalis were by no means
the work of an author writing just for herself. If Fuka-Eris sole objective was to record things
she had witnessed or imagined, setting them down as sheer information, she could have accomplished
that much with a list. She didnt have to go to the trouble of fashioning a story,
which was unmistakably writing that was meant for other people to pick up and read, which
was precisely why Air Chrysalis, though written without the objective of creating a literary
work, and in crude and artless language, still had succeeded in acquiring the power to appeal
directly to the heart. The more he read, however, the more convinced Tengo became that
those other people were almost certainly not the same general public that modern literature
invariably had in mind.
All right, then, what kind of reader was this meant for?
Tengo had no idea.
All he knew for sure was that Air Chrysalis was an utterly unique work of fiction combining
enormous strengths with enormous flaws, and that it seemed to possess an objective that
was something quite special.
. . .
Tengo found that his rewrite was more than doubling the length of the text. The original
was far more often underwritten than overwritten, so rewriting it for coherence and consistency
could not help but increase its volume. Fuka-Eris text was so threadbare! True, with its
more logical style and consistent point of view, the new version was far easier to read, but the
overall flow was becoming strangely sluggish. Its logicality showed through too clearly, dulling
the sharpness of the original.
Once he had filled out this first block of text, Tengos next task was to eliminate from his
bloated manuscript everything that was not strictly necessary, to remove every extra bit of fat.
Subtraction was a far simpler process than addition, and it reduced the volume of his text by
some thirty percent. It was a kind of mind game. He would set a certain time period for expanding
the text as much as possible, then set a certain time period for reducing the text as
much as possible. As he alternated tenaciously between the two processes, the swings
between them gradually shrank in size, until the volume of text naturally settled down where it
belonged, arriving at a point where it could be neither expanded nor reduced. He excised any
hint of ego, shook off all extraneous embellishments, and sent all transparent signs of imposed
logic into the back room. Tengo had a gift for such work. He was a born technician,
possessing both the intense concentration of a bird sailing through the air in search of prey
and the patience of a donkey hauling water, playing always by the rules of the game.
Tengo had been all but lost in the work for some time when he looked up to find it was
nearly three oclock. Come to think of it, he hadnt eaten lunch yet. He went to the kitchen, put
a kettle on to boil, and ground some coffee beans. He ate a few crackers with cheese, followed
those with an apple, and when the water boiled, made coffee. Drinking this from a large
mug, he distracted himself with thoughts of sex with his older girlfriend. Ordinarily, he would
have been doing it with her right about now. He pictured the things that he would be doing,
and the things that she would be doing. He closed his eyes, turned his face toward the ceiling,
and released a deep sigh heavy with suggestion and possibility.
Tengo then went back to his desk, switched circuits in his brain again, and read through
his rewritten opening to Air Chrysalis on the word processors screen the way the general in
the opening scene of Stanley Kubricks Paths of Glory makes his rounds inspecting the
trenches. He approved of what he found. Not bad. The writing was much improved. He was
making headway. But not enough. He still had lots to do. The trench walls were crumbling
here and there. The machine guns ammunition was running out. The barbed wire barriers
had noticeable thin spots.
He printed a draft, saved the document, turned off the word processor, and shifted the machine
to the side of his desk. Now, with pencil in hand, he did another careful read-through of
the text, this time on paper. Again he deleted parts that seemed superfluous, fleshed out passages
that felt underwritten, and revised sections until they fit more smoothly into the rest of
the story. He selected his words with all the care of a craftsman choosing the perfect piece of
tile to fill a narrow gap in a bathroom floor, inspecting the fit from every angle. Where the fit
was less than perfect, he adjusted the shape. The slightest difference in nuance could bring
the passage to life or kill it.
The exact same text was subtly different to read when viewed on the printed pages rather
than on the word processors screen. The feel of the words he chose would change depending
on whether he was writing them on paper in pencil or typing them on the keyboard. It was
imperative to do both. He turned the machine on again and typed each penciled correction
back into the word-processed document. Then he reread the revised text on the screen. Not
bad, he told himself. Each sentence possessed the proper weight, which gave the whole thing
a natural rhythm.
Tengo sat up straight in his chair, stretched his back, and, turning his face to the ceiling,
let out a long breath. His job was by no means done. When he reread the text in a few days,
he would find more things that needed fixing. But this was fine for now. His powers of concentration
had just about reached their limit. He needed a cooling-off period. The hands of the
clock were nearing five, and the light of day was growing dim. He would rewrite the next block
tomorrow. It had taken him almost the whole day to rewrite just the first few pages. This was a
lot more time-consuming than he had expected it to be. But the process should speed up
once the rules were laid down and a rhythm took hold. Besides, the most difficult and timeconsuming
part would be the opening. Once he got through that, the rest 
Tengo pictured Fuka-Eri and wondered how she would feel when she read the rewritten
manuscript. But then he realized that he had no idea how Fuka-Eri would feel about anything.
He knew virtually nothing about her other than that she was seventeen, a junior in high school
with no interest in taking college entrance exams, spoke in a very odd way, liked white wine,
and had a disturbingly beautiful face.
Still, Tengo had begun to have a fairly strong sense that his grasp of the world that FukaEri
was trying to depict (or record) in Air Chrysalis was generally accurate. The scenes that
Fuka-Eri had created with her peculiar, limited vocabulary took on a new clarity and vividness
when reworked by Tengo, who paid such careful attention to detail. They flowed now. He
could see that. All he had provided the work was a level of technical reinforcement, but the
results were utterly natural, as if he himself had written the thing from scratch. Now the story
of Air Chrysalis was beginning to emerge with tremendous power.
This was a great source of happiness for Tengo. The long hours of mental concentration
had left him physically spent but emotionally uplifted. For some time after he had turned off
the word processor and left his desk, Tengo could not suppress the desire to keep rewriting
the story. He was enjoying the work immensely. At this rate, he might manage not to disappoint
Fuka-Eri though in fact he could not picture Fuka-Eri being either disappointed or
pleased. Far from it. He could not even picture her cracking a smile or displaying the slightest
hint of displeasure. Her face was devoid of expression. Tengo could not tell whether she
lacked expression because she had no feelings or the feelings she had were unconnected to
her expression. In any case, she was a mysterious girl.
The heroine of Air Chrysalis was probably Fuka-Eri herself in the past. A ten-year-old girl,
she lived in a special mountain commune (or commune-like place), where she was assigned
to look after a blind goat. All the children in the commune had work assignments. Though the
goat was old, it had special meaning for the community, so the girls duty was to make sure
that no harm came to it. She was not allowed to take her eyes off it for a second. One day,
however, in a moment of carelessness, she did exactly that, and the goat died. As her punishment,
the girl was put in total isolation for ten days, locked in an old storehouse with the
goats corpse.
The goat served as a passageway to this world for the Little People. The girl did not know
whether the Little People were good or bad (and neither did Tengo). When night came, the
Little People would enter this world through the corpse, and they would go back to the other
side when dawn broke. The girl could speak to them. They taught her how to make an air
chrysalis.
What most impressed Tengo was the concrete detail with which the blind goats traits and
actions were depicted. These details were what made the work as a whole so vivid. Could
Fuka-Eri have actually been the keeper of a blind goat? And could she have actually lived in a
mountain commune like the one in the story? Tengo guessed that the answer in both cases
was yes. Because if she had never had these experiences, Fuka-Eri was a storyteller of rare,
inborn talent.
Tengo decided that he would ask Fuka-Eri about the goat and the commune the next time
they met (which was to be on Sunday). Of course she might not answer his questions.
Judging from their previous conversation, it seemed that Fuka-Eri would only answer questions
when she felt like it. When she didnt want to answer, or when she clearly had no intention
of responding, she simply ignored the questions, as if she had never heard them. Like
Komatsu. The two were much alike in that regard. Which made them very different from
Tengo. If someone asked Tengo a question, any question, he would do his best to answer it.
He had probably been born that way.
His older girlfriend called him at five thirty.
 What did you do today? she asked.
 I was writing a story all day, he answered, half truthfully. He had not been writing his own
fiction. But this was not something he could explain to her in any detail.
 Did it go well? 
 More or less. 
 Im sorry for canceling today on such short notice. I think we can meet next week. 
 Ill be looking forward to it. 
 Me too, she said.
After that, she talked about her children. She often did that with Tengo. She had two little
girls. Tengo had no siblings and obviously no children, so he didnt know much about young
children. But that never stopped her from telling Tengo about hers. Tengo rarely initiated a
conversation, but he enjoyed listening to other people. And so he listened to her with interest.
Her older girl, a second grader, was probably being bullied at school, she said. The girl herself
had told her nothing, but the mother of one of the girls classmates had let her know that
this was apparently happening. Tengo had never met the girl, but he had once seen a photograph.
She didnt look much like her mother.
 Why are they bullying her? Tengo asked.
 She often has asthma attacks, so she cant participate in a lot of activities with the other
kids. Maybe thats it. Shes a sweet little thing, and her grades arent bad. 
 I dont get it, Tengo said. Youd think theyd take special care of a kid with asthma, not
bully her. 
 Its never that simple in the kids world, she said with a sigh. Kids get shut out just for
being different from everyone else. The same kind of thing goes on in the grown-up world, but
its much more direct in the childrens world. 
 Can you give me a concrete example? 
She gave him several examples, none of which was especially bad in itself, but which,
continued on a daily basis, could have a severe impact on a child: hiding things, not speaking
to the child, or doing nasty imitations of her. Did you ever experience bullying when you were
a child? 
Tengo thought back to his childhood. I dont think so, he answered. Or maybe I just never
noticed. 
 If you never noticed, it never happened. I mean, the whole point of bullying is to make the
person notice its being done to him or her. You cant have bullying without the victim noticing. 
Even as a child, Tengo had been big and strong, and people treated him with respect,
which was probably why he was never bullied. But he had far more serious problems than
mere bullying to deal with back then.
 Were you ever bullied? Tengo asked.
 Never, she declared, but then she seemed to hesitate. I did do some bullying, though. 
 You were part of a group that did it? 
 Yes, in the fifth grade. We got together and decided not to talk to one boy. I cant remember
why. There must have been a reason, but it probably wasnt a very good one if I cant
even remember what it was. I still feel bad about it, though. Im ashamed to think about it. I
wonder why I went and did something like that. I have no idea what made me do it. 
This reminded Tengo of a certain event, something from the distant past that he would recall
now and then. Something he could never forget. But he decided not to mention it. It would
have been a long story. And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances
when reduced to words. He had never told anyone about it, and he probably never would.
 Finally, his girlfriend said, everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority
but to the excluding majority. You think, Oh, Im glad thats not me. Its basically the same in
all periods in all societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of
troubling things. 
 And those troubling things are all you can think about when youre one of the few. 
 Thats about the size of it, she said mournfully. But maybe, if youre in a situation like
that, you learn to think for yourself. 
 Yes, but maybe what you end up thinking for yourself about is all those troubling things. 
 Thats another problem, I suppose. 
 Better not think about it too seriously, Tengo said. I doubt itll turn out to be that terrible.
Im sure there must be a few kids in her class who know how to use their brains. 
 I guess so, she said, and then she spent some time alone with her thoughts. Holding the
receiver against his ear, Tengo waited patiently for her to gather her thoughts together.
 Thanks, she said finally. I feel a little better after talking to you. She seemed to have
found some answers.
 I feel a little better too, Tengo said.
 Whys that? 
 Talking to you. 
 See you next Friday, she said.
After hanging up, Tengo went out to the neighborhood supermarket. Returning home with
a big bag of groceries, he wrapped the vegetables and fish in plastic and put them in the refrigerator.
He was preparing dinner to the refrains of an FM music broadcast when the phone
rang. Four phone calls in one day was a lot for Tengo. He could probably count the number of
days that such a thing happened in any one year. This time it was Fuka-Eri. About Sunday, 
she said, without saying hello.
He could hear car horns honking at the other end. A lot of drivers seemed to be angry
about something. She was probably calling from a public phone on a busy street.
 Yes, he said, adding meat to the bones of her bare pronouncement. Sunday morning the
day after tomorrow Ill be seeing you and meeting somebody else. 
 Nine oclock. Shinjuku Station. Front end of the train to Tachikawa, she said, setting forth
three facts in a row.
 In other words, you want to meet on the outward-bound platform of the Chuo Line where
the first car stops, right? 
 Right. 
 Where should I buy a ticket to? 
 Anywhere. 
 So I should just buy any ticket and adjust the fare where we get off, he said, supplementing
material to her words the way he was doing with Air Chrysalis. Does this mean were going
pretty far from the city? 
 What were you just doing, she asked, ignoring his question.
 Making dinner. 
 Making what. 
 Nothing special, just cooking for myself. Grilling a dried mackerel and grating a daikon
radish. Making a miso soup with littlenecks and green onions to eat with tofu. Dousing cucumber
slices and wakame seaweed with vinegar. Ending up with rice and nappa pickles. Thats
all 
 Sounds good. 
 I wonder. Nothing special. Pretty much what I eat all the time, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri kept silent. Long silences did not seem to bother her, but this was not the case
for Tengo.
 Oh yes, he said, I should tell you I started rewriting your Air Chrysalis today. I know you
havent given us your final permission, but theres so little time, Id better get started if were
going to meet the deadline. 
 Mr. Komatsu said so, she asked, without a question mark.
 Yes, he is the one who told me to get started. 
 Are you and Mr. Komatsu close, she asked.
 Well, sort of, Tengo answered. No one in this world could actually be close to Komatsu,
Tengo guessed, but trying to explain this to Fuka-Eri would take too long.
 Is the rewrite going well. 
 So far, so good. 
 Thats nice, Fuka-Eri said. She seemed to mean it. It sounded to Tengo as if Fuka-Eri
was happy in her own way to hear that the rewriting of her work was going well, but given her
limited expression of emotion, she could not go so far as to openly suggest this.
 I hope youll like what Im doing, he said.
 Not worried. 
 Why not? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri did not answer, lapsing into silence on her end. It seemed like a deliberate kind
of silence, designed to make Tengo think, but try as he might, Tengo could come up with no
explanation for why she should have such confidence in him.
He spoke to break the silence. You know, theres something Id like to ask you. Did you
actually live in a commune-type place and take care of a goat? The descriptions are so realistic,
I wanted to ask you if these things actually happened. 
Fuka-Eri cleared her throat. I dont talk about the goat. 
 Thats fine, Tengo said. You dont have to talk about it if you dont want to. I just thought
Id try asking. Dont worry. For the author, the work is everything. No explanations needed.
Lets meet on Sunday. Is there anything I should be concerned about in meeting that person? 
 What do you mean. 
 Well … like I should dress properly, or bring a gift or something. You havent given me
any hint what the person is like. 
Fuka-Eri fell silent again, but this time it did not seem deliberate. She simply could not
fathom the purpose of his question or what prompted him to ask it. His question hadnt landed
in any region of her consciousness. It seemed to have gone beyond the bounds of meaning,
sucked into permanent nothingness like a lone planetary exploration rocket that has sailed
beyond Pluto.
 Never mind, he said, giving up. Its not important. It had been a mistake even to ask
Fuka-Eri such a question. He supposed he could pick up a basket of fruit or something along
the way.
 Okay, then, see you at nine oclock Sunday morning, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri hesitated a few moments, and then hung up without saying anything, no Goodbye, 
no See you Sunday, no anything. There was just the click of the connection being cut.
Perhaps she had nodded to Tengo before hanging up the receiver. Unfortunately, though,
body language generally fails to have its intended effect on the phone. Tengo set down the
receiver, took two deep breaths, switched the circuits of his brain to something more realistic,
and continued with the preparations for his modest dinner.
1Q84
CHAPTER 7
Aomame
QUIETLY, SO AS NOT TO WAKE THE BUTTERFLY
Just after one oclock Saturday afternoon, Aomame visited the Willow House. The
grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the
surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls. Quite naturally, the
people of the neighborhood had long called the old, Western-style home Willow House. It
stood atop a steep slope in the fashionable Azabu neighborhood. When Aomame reached the
top of the slope, she noticed a flock of little birds in the willows uppermost branches, barely
weighing them down. A big cat was napping on the sun-splashed roof, its eyes half closed.
The streets up here were narrow and crooked, and few cars came this way. The tall trees
gave the quarter a gloomy feel, and time seemed to slow when you stepped inside. Some
embassies were located here, but few people visited them. Only in the summer would the atmosphere
change dramatically, when the cries of cicadas pained the ears.
Aomame pressed the button at the gate and stated her name to the intercom. Then she
aimed a tiny smile toward the overhead camera. The iron gate drew slowly open, and once
she was inside it closed behind her. As always, she stepped through the garden and headed
for the front door. Knowing that the security cameras were on her, she walked straight down
the path, her back as erect as a fashion models, chin pulled back. She was dressed casually
today in a navy-blue windbreaker over a gray parka and blue jeans, and white basketball
shoes. She carried her regular shoulder bag, but without the ice pick, which rested quietly in
her dresser drawer when she had no need for it.
Outside the front door stood a number of teak garden chairs, into one of which was
squeezed a powerfully built man. He was not especially tall, but his upper body was startlingly
well developed. Perhaps forty years of age, he kept his head shaved and wore a well-trimmed
moustache. On his broad-shouldered frame was draped a gray suit. His stark white shirt contrasted
with his deep gray silk tie and spotless black cordovans. Here was a man who would
never be mistaken for a ward office cashier or a car insurance salesman. One glance told
Aomame that he was a professional bodyguard, which was in fact his area of expertise,
though at times he also served as a driver. A high-ranking karate expert, he could also use
weapons effectively when the need arose. He could bare his fangs and be more vicious than
anyone, but he was ordinarily calm, cool, and even intellectual. Looking deep into his
eyes if, that is, he allowed you to do so you could find a warm glow.
In his private life, the man enjoyed toying with machines and gadgets. He collected progressive
rock records from the sixties and seventies, and lived in another part of Azabu with
his handsome young beautician boyfriend. His name was Tamaru. Aomame could not be sure
if this was his family name or his given name or what characters he wrote it with. People just
called him Tamaru. 
Still seated in his teak garden chair, Tamaru nodded to Aomame, who took the chair opposite
him and greeted him with a simple Hello. 
 I heard a man died in a hotel in Shibuya, Tamaru said, inspecting the shine of his cordovans.
 I didnt know about that, Aomame said.
 Well, it wasnt worth putting in the papers. Just an ordinary heart attack, I guess. Sad
case: he was in his early forties. 
 Gotta take care of your heart. 
Tamaru nodded. Lifestyle is the important thing, he said. Irregular hours, stress, sleep
deprivation: those thingsll kill you. 
 Of course, somethings gonna kill everybody sooner or later. 
 Stands to reason. 
 Think therell be an autopsy? 
Tamaru bent over and flicked a barely visible speck from the instep of his shoe. Like anybody
else, the cops have a million things to do, and theyve got a limited budget to work with.
They cant start dissecting every corpse that comes to them without a mark on it. And the
guys family probably doesnt want him cut open for no reason after hes quietly passed
away. 
 His widow, especially. 
After a short silence, Tamaru extended his thick, glove-like right hand toward Aomame.
She grasped it, and the two shared a firm handshake.
 You must be tired, he said. You ought to get some rest. 
Aomame widened the edges of her mouth somewhat, the way ordinary people do when
they smile, but in fact she produced only the slightest suggestion of a smile.
 Hows Bun? she asked.
 Shes fine, Tamaru answered. Bun was the female German shepherd that lived in this
house, a good-natured dog, and smart, despite a few odd habits.
 Is she still eating her spinach? Aomame asked.
 As much as ever. And with the price of spinach as high as its been, thats no small expense! 
 Ive never seen a German shepherd that liked spinach before. 
 She doesnt know shes a dog. 
 What does she think she is? 
 Well, she seems to think shes a special being that transcends classification. 
 Superdog? 
 Maybe so. 
 Which is why she likes spinach? 
 No, thats another matter. She just likes spinach. Has since she was a pup. 
 But maybe thats where she gets these dangerous thoughts of hers. 
 Maybe so, Tamaru said. He glanced at his watch. Say, your appointment today was for
one thirty, right? 
Aomame nodded. Right. Theres still some time. 
Tamaru eased out of his chair. Wait here a minute, will you? Maybe we can get you in a
little earlier. He disappeared through the front door.
While she waited, Aomame let her eyes wander over the gardens magnificent willow
trees. Without a wind to stir them, their branches hung down toward the ground, as if they
were people deep in thought.
Tamaru came back a short time later. Im going to have you go around to the back. She
wants to see you in the hothouse today. 
The two of them circled the garden past the willows in the direction of the hothouse, which
was behind the main house in a sunny area without trees. Tamaru carefully opened the glass
door just far enough for Aomame to squeeze through without letting the butterflies escape. He
slipped in after her, quickly shutting the door. This was not a motion that a big man would normally
be good at, though he did it very efficiently. He simply didnt think of it as a special accomplishment.
Spring had come inside the big, glass hothouse, completely and unreservedly. Flowers of
all descriptions were blooming in profusion, but most of them were ordinary varieties that
could be seen just about anywhere. Potted gladiolus, anemone, and daisies lined the shelves.
Among them were plants that, to Aomame, could only be weeds. She saw not one that might
be a prize specimen no costly orchids, no rare roses, no primary-colored Polynesian
blooms. Aomame had no special interest in plants, but the lack of affectation in this hothouse
was something she rather liked.
Instead, the place was full of butterflies. The owner of this large glass enclosure seemed
to be far more interested in raising unusual butterflies than rare plant specimens. Most of the
flowers grown here were rich in the nectar preferred by the butterflies. To keep butterflies in a
hothouse calls for a great deal of attention, knowledge, and effort, Aomame had heard, but
she had absolutely no idea where such attention had been lavished here.
The dowager, the mistress of the house, would occasionally invite Aomame into the hothouse
for private chats, though never at the height of summer. The glass enclosure was ideal
to keep from being overheard. Their conversations were not the sort that could be held just
anywhere at full volume, and the owner said it calmed her to be surrounded by flowers and
butterflies. Aomame could see it on her face. The hothouse was a bit too warm for Aomame,
but not unbearable.
The dowager was in her mid-seventies and slightly built. She kept her lovely white hair
short. Today she wore a long-sleeved denim work shirt, cream-colored cotton pants, and dirty
tennis shoes. With white cotton work gloves on her hands, she was using a large metal watering
can to moisten the soil in one pot after another. Everything she wore seemed to be a size
too large, but each piece hung on her body with comfortable familiarity. Whenever Aomame
looked at her, she could not help but feel a kind of esteem for her natural, unaffected dignity.
Born into one of the fabulously wealthy families that dominated finance and industry prior
to World War II, the dowager had married into the aristocracy, but there was nothing showy or
pampered about her. When she lost her husband shortly after the war, she helped run a relatives
small investment company and displayed an outstanding talent for the stock market.
Everyone recognized it as something for which she had a natural gift. Thanks to her efforts,
the company developed rapidly, and the personal fortune left to her expanded enormously.
With this money, she bought several first-class properties in the city that had been owned by
former members of the aristocracy or the imperial family. She had retired ten years earlier,
having increased her fortune yet again by well-timed sales of her holdings. Because she had
always avoided appearing in public, her name was not widely known, though everyone in financial
circles knew of her. It was also rumored that she had strong political connections. On a
personal level, she was simply a bright, friendly woman who knew no fear, trusted her instincts,
and stuck to her decisions.
When she saw Aomame come in, the dowager put down her watering can and motioned
for her to sit in a small iron garden chair near the hothouse entrance. Aomame sat down, and
the woman sat in the chair facing her. None of her movements made any sound. She was like
a female fox cutting through the forest.
 Shall I bring drinks? Tamaru asked.
 Some herbal tea for me, the dowager said. And for you …? She looked at Aomame.
 Ill have the same. 
Tamaru nodded and left the hothouse. After looking around to make sure there were no
butterflies nearby, he opened the door a crack, slipped through, and closed the door again
with the precision of a ballroom dancer.
The dowager took off her work gloves and set them on a table, carefully placing one on
top of the other as she might with silk gloves she had worn to a soirée. Then she looked
straight at Aomame with her lustrous black eyes. These were eyes that had witnessed much.
Aomame returned her gaze as long as courtesy allowed.
 We seem to have lost a valuable member of society, the dowager said. Especially well
known in oil circles, apparently. Still young, but quite the powerhouse, I hear. 
She always spoke softly. Her voice was easily drowned out by a slight gust of wind.
People had to pay attention to what she was saying. Aomame often felt the urge to reach over
and turn up the volume if only there were a knob! She had no choice but to listen intently.
Aomame said, But still, his sudden absence doesnt seem to have inconvenienced anybody.
The world just keeps moving along. 
The dowager smiled. There is no one in this world who cant be replaced. A person might
have enormous knowledge or ability, but a successor can almost always be found. It would be
terrible for us if the world were full of people who couldnt be replaced. Though of
course and here she raised her right index finger to make a point I cant imagine finding
anybody to take your place. 
 You might not find a person that easily, but you could probably find a way without too
much trouble, Aomame noted.
The dowager looked at Aomame calmly, her lips forming a satisfied smile. That may be
true, she said, but I almost surely could never find anything to take the place of what we are
sharing here and now. You are you and only you. Im very grateful for that. More grateful than
I can say. 
She bent forward, stretched out her hand, and laid it on Aomames. She kept it there for a
full ten seconds. Then, with a look of great satisfaction on her face, she withdrew her hand
and twisted around to face the other way. A butterfly came fluttering along and landed on the
shoulder of her blue work shirt. It was a small, white butterfly with a few crimson spots on its
wings. The butterfly seemed to know no fear as it went to sleep on her shoulder.
 Im sure youve never seen this kind of butterfly, the dowager said, glancing toward her
own shoulder. Her voice betrayed a touch of pride. Even down in Okinawa, youd have
trouble finding one of these. It gets its nourishment from only one type of flower a special
flower that only grows in the mountains of Okinawa. You have to bring the flower here and
grow it first if you want to keep this butterfly in Tokyo. Its a lot of trouble. Not to mention the
expense. 
 It seems to be very comfortable with you. 
 This little person thinks of me as a friend. 
 Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly? 
 It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being,
stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but
once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally. 
 Do you give them names? Aomame asked, curious. Like dogs or cats? 
The dowager gave her head a little shake. No, I dont give them names, but I can tell one
from another by their shapes and patterns. And besides, there wouldnt be much point in giving
them names: they die so quickly. These people are your nameless friends for just a little
while. I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them.
When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear. Im sure it means
theyve died, but I can never find their bodies. They dont leave any trace behind. Its as if
theyve been absorbed by the air. Theyre dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they
come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness
again, perhaps to some other world. 
The hothouse air was warm and humid and thick with the smell of plants. Hundreds of butterflies
flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness
without beginning or end. Whenever she came in here, Aomame felt as if she had lost
all sense of time.
Tamaru came back with a silver tray bearing a beautiful celadon teapot and two matching
cups, cloth napkins, and a small dish of cookies. The aroma of herbal tea mingled with the
fragrance of the surrounding flowers.
 Thank you, Tamaru. Ill take over from here, the dowager said.
Tamaru set the tray on the nearby table, gave the dowager a bow, and moved silently
away, opening and closing the hothouse door, exiting with the same light steps as before. The
woman lifted the teapot lid, inhaling the fragrance inside and checking the degree of openness
of the leaves. Then she slowly filled their two cups, taking great care to ensure the
equality of their strength.
 Its none of my business, but why dont you put a screen door on the entrance? Aomame
asked.
The dowager raised her head and looked at Aomame. Screen door? 
 Yes, if you were to add a screen door inside the glass one, you wouldnt have to be so
careful every time to make sure no butterflies escaped. 
The dowager lifted her saucer with her left hand and, with her right hand, brought her cup
to her mouth for a quiet sip of herbal tea. She savored its fragrance and gave a little nod. She
returned the cup to the saucer and the saucer to the tray. After dabbing at her mouth with her
napkin, she returned the cloth to her lap. At the very least, she took three times as long to accomplish
these motions as the ordinary person. Aomame felt she was observing a fairy deep
in the forest sipping a life-giving morning dew.
The woman lightly cleared her throat. I dont like screens, she said.
Aomame waited for the dowager to continue, but she did not. Was her dislike of screens
based on a general opposition to things that restricted freedom, or on aesthetic considerations,
or on a mere visceral preference that had no special reason behind it? Not that it was
an especially important problem. Aomames question about screens had simply popped into
her head.
Like the dowager, Aomame picked up her cup and saucer together and silently sipped her
tea. She was not that fond of herbal tea. She preferred coffee as hot and strong as a devil at
midnight, but perhaps that was not a drink suited to a hothouse in the afternoon. And so she
always ordered the same drink as the mistress of the house when they were in the hothouse.
When offered a cookie, she ate one. A gingersnap. Just baked, it had the taste of fresh
ginger. Aomame recalled that the dowager had spent some time after the war in England. The
dowager also took a cookie and nibbled it in tiny bits, slowly and quietly so as not to wake the
rare butterfly sleeping on her shoulder.
 Tamaru will give you the key when you leave, the woman said. Please mail it back when
youre through with it. As always. 
 Of course. 
A tranquil moment of silence followed. No sounds reached the sealed hothouse from the
outside world. The butterfly went on sleeping.
 We havent done anything wrong, the woman said, looking straight at Aomame.
Aomame lightly set her teeth against her lower lip and nodded. I know. 
 Look at whats in that envelope, the woman said.
From an envelope lying on the table Aomame took seven Polaroid photographs and set
them in a row, like unlucky tarot cards, beside the fine celadon teapot. They were close-up
shots of a young womans body: her back, breasts, buttocks, thighs, even the soles of her
feet. Only her face was missing. Each body part bore marks of violence in the form of lurid
welts, raised, almost certainly, by a belt. Her pubic hair had been shaved, the skin marked
with what looked like cigarette burns. Aomame found herself scowling. She had seen photos
like this in the past, but none as bad.
 You havent seen these before, have you? 
Aomame shook her head in silence. I had heard, but this is the first Ive seen of them. 
 Our man did this, the dowager said. Weve taken care of her three fractures, but one ear
is exhibiting symptoms of hearing loss and may never be the same again. She spoke as
quietly as ever, but her voice took on a cold, hard edge that seemed to startle the butterfly on
her shoulder. It spread its wings and fluttered away.
She continued, We cant let anyone get away with doing something like this. We simply
cant. 
Aomame gathered the photos and returned them to the envelope.
 Dont you agree? the dowager asked.
 I certainly do, said Aomame.
 We did the right thing, the dowager declared.
She left her chair and, perhaps to calm herself, picked up the watering can by her side as
if taking in hand a sophisticated weapon. She was somewhat pale now, her eyes sharply focused
on a corner of the hothouse. Aomame followed her gaze but saw nothing more unusual
than a potted thistle.
 Thank you for coming to see me, the dowager said, still holding the empty watering can.
 I appreciate your efforts. This seemed to signal the end of their interview.
Aomame stood and picked up her bag. Thank you for the tea. 
 And let me thank you again, the dowager said.
Aomame gave her a faint smile.
 You dont have anything to worry about, the dowager said. Her voice had regained its
gentle tone. A warm glow shone in her eyes. She touched Aomames arm. We did the right
thing, Im telling you. 
Aomame nodded. The woman always ended their conversations this way. Perhaps she
was saying the same thing to herself repeatedly, like a prayer or mantra. You dont have anything
to worry about. We did the right thing, Im telling you. 
After checking to be sure there were no butterflies nearby, Aomame opened the hothouse
door just enough to squeeze through, and closed it again. The dowager stayed inside, the watering
can in her hand. The air outside was chilling and fresh with the smell of trees and
grass. This was the real world. Here time flowed in the normal manner. Aomame inhaled the
real worlds air deep into her lungs.
She found Tamaru seated in the same teak chair by the front entrance, waiting for her. His
task was to hand her a key to a post office box.
 Business finished? he asked.
 I think so, Aomame replied. She sat down next to him, took the key, and tucked it into a
compartment of her shoulder bag.
For a time, instead of speaking, they watched the birds that were visiting the garden.
There was still no wind, and the branches of the willows hung motionlessly. Several branches
were nearly touching the ground.
 Is the woman doing okay? Aomame asked.
 Which woman? 
 The wife of the man who suffered the heart attack in the Shibuya hotel. 
 Doing okay? Not really. Not yet, Tamaru said with a scowl. Shes still in shock. She can
hardly speak. Itll take time. 
 Whats she like? 
 Early thirties. No kids. Pretty. Seems like a nice person. Stylish. Unfortunately, she wont
be wearing bathing suits this summer. Maybe not next year, either. Did you see the Polaroids? 
 Yes, just now. 
 Horrible, no? 
 Really, Aomame said.
Tamaru said, Its such a common pattern. Talented guy, well thought of, good family, impressive
career, high social standing. 
 But he becomes a different person at home, Aomame said, continuing his thought.
 Especially when he drinks, he becomes violent. But only toward women. His wife is the only
one he can knock around. To everyone else, he shows only his good side. Everybody thinks
of him as a gentle, loving husband. The wife tries to tell people what terrible things hes doing
to her, but no one will believe her. The husband knows that, so when hes violent he chooses
parts of her body she cant easily show to people, or hes careful not to make bruises. Is this
the ‘pattern? 
Tamaru nodded. Pretty much. Only this guy didnt drink. He was stone-cold sober and out
in the open about it. A really ugly case. She wanted a divorce, but he absolutely refused. Who
knows? Maybe he loved her. Or maybe he didnt want to let go of such a handy victim. Or
maybe he just enjoyed raping his wife. 
Tamaru raised one foot, then the other, to check the shine on his shoes again. Then he
continued, Of course, you can usually get a divorce if you have proof of domestic violence,
but it takes time and it takes money. If the husband hires a good lawyer, he can make it very
unpleasant for you. The family courts are full, and theres a shortage of judges. If, in spite of
all that, you do get a divorce, and the judge awards a divorce settlement or alimony, the number
of men who actually pay up is small. They can get out of it all kinds of ways. In Japan, exhusbands
almost never get put in jail for not paying. If they demonstrate a willingness to pay
and cough up a little bit, the courts usually look the other way. Men still have the upper hand
in Japanese society. 
Aomame said, Maybe so, but as luck would have it, one of those violent husbands
suffered a heart attack in a Shibuya hotel room a few days ago. 
 ‘As luck would have it is a bit too direct for me, Tamaru said with a click of the tongue. I
prefer ‘Due to heavenly dispensation. In any case, no doubts have been raised regarding the
cause of death, and the amount of life insurance was not so high as to attract attention, so the
insurance company wont have any suspicions. Theyll probably pay without a hitch. Finally,
its a decent amount of money, enough for her to begin a new life. Plus shell be saving all the
time and money that would have been eaten up by suing for divorce. When its over, she will
have avoided all the complicated, meaningless legal procedures and all the subsequent mental
anguish. 
 Not to mention that that scummy bastard wont be set loose on some new victim. 
 Heavenly dispensation, Tamaru said. Everythings settled nicely thanks to one heart attack.
Alls well that ends well. 
 Assuming theres an end somewhere, Aomame said.
Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a
smile. There has to be an end somewhere. Its just that nothings labeled ‘This is the end. Is
the top rung of a ladder labeled ‘This is the last rung. Please dont step higher than this? 
Aomame shook her head.
 Its the same thing, Tamaru said.
Aomame said, If you use your common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear
enough where the end is. 
Tamaru nodded. And even if it doesnt he made a falling gesture with his finger the
end is right there. 
They were both quiet for a while as they listened to the birds singing. It was a calm April
afternoon without a hint of ill will or violence.
 How many women are living here now? Aomame asked.
 Four, Tamaru answered, without hesitation.
 All in the same kind of situation? 
 More or less. Tamaru pursed his lips. But the other three cases are not as serious as
hers. Their men are all nasty bastards, as usual, but none are as bad as the character weve
been talking about. These guys are lightweights who like to come on strong, not worth bothering
you about. We can take care of them ourselves. 
 Legally. 
 Pretty much even if we have to lean on them a little. Of course, a heart attack is an entirely
‘legal cause of death. 
 Of course, Aomame chimed in.
Tamaru went silent for a while, resting his hands on his knees and looking at the silent
branches of the willow trees.
After some hesitation, Aomame decided to broach something with Tamaru. You know, 
she said, theres something Id like you to tell me. 
 Whats that? 
 How many years ago did the police get new uniforms and guns? 
Tamaru wrinkled his brow almost imperceptibly. Where did that come from all of a sudden? 
 Nowhere special. It just popped into my head. 
Tamaru looked her in the eye. His own eyes were entirely neutral, free of expression. He
was leaving himself room to go in any direction with this.
 That big shootout near Lake Motosu between the Yamanashi Prefectural Police and the
radical group took place in mid-October of 1981, and the police had their major reorganization
the following year. Two years ago. 
Aomame nodded without changing her expression. She had absolutely no recollection of
such an event, but all she could do now was play along with him.
 It was really bloody. Old-fashioned six-shooters against five Kalashnikov AK-47s. The
cops were totally outgunned. Poor guys: three of them were torn up pretty badly. They looked
as if theyd been stitched on a sewing machine. The Self-Defense Force got involved right
away, sending in their special paratroopers. The cops totally lost face. Prime Minister Nakasone
immediately got serious about strengthening police power. There was an overall restructuring,
a special weapons force was instituted, and ordinary patrolmen were given highpowered
automatic pistols to carry Beretta Model 92s. Ever fired one? 
Aomame shook her head. Far from it. She had never even fired an air rifle.
 I have, Tamaru said. A fifteen-shot automatic. It uses 9mm Parabellum rounds. Its one
of the great pistols. The U.S. Army uses it. Its not cheap, but its selling point is that its not as
expensive as a SIG or a Glock. Its not an easy gun to use, though, is definitely not for amateurs.
The old revolvers only weighed 490 grams, but these weigh 850. Theyre useless in the
hands of an untrained Japanese policeman. Fire a high-powered gun like that in a crowded
country like Japan, and you end up hurting innocent bystanders. 
 Where did you ever fire such a thing? 
 You know, the usual story. Once upon a time I was playing my harp by a spring when a
fairy appeared out of nowhere, handed me a Beretta Model 92, and told me to shoot the white
rabbit over there for target practice. 
 Get serious. 
The creases by Tamarus mouth deepened slightly. Im always serious, he said. In any
case, the cops official guns and uniforms changed two years ago. In the spring. Just about
this time of year. Does that answer your question? 
 Two years ago, Aomame said.
Tamaru gave her another sharp look. You know, if somethings bothering you, youd better
tell me. Are the cops involved in something? 
 No, thats not it, Aomame said, waving off his suspicions with both hands. I was just
wondering about their uniforms, like, when they changed. 
A period of silence followed, bringing the conversation to a natural end. Tamaru thrust out
his right hand again. Anyhow, Im glad it all came off without a hitch. Aomame took his hand
in hers. He understands, she told herself. After a tough job where your life is on the line, what
you need is the warm, quiet encouragement that accompanies the touch of human flesh.
 Take a break, Tamaru said. Sometimes you need to stop, take a deep breath, and
empty your head. Go to Guam or someplace with a boyfriend. 
Aomame stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder, and adjusted the hood of her parka.
Tamaru also got to his feet. He was by no means tall, but when he stood up it looked as if a
stone wall had suddenly materialized. His solidity always took her by surprise.
Tamaru kept his eyes fixed on her back as she walked away. She could feel him looking
at her the whole time. And so she kept her chin pulled in, her back straight, and walked with
firm steps as if following a perfectly straight line. But inside, where she could not be seen, she
was confused. In places of which she was totally unaware, things about which she was totally
unaware were happening one after another. Until a short time before, she had had the world
in her hand, without disruptions or inconsistencies. But now it was falling apart.
A shootout at Lake Motosu? Beretta Model 92?
What was happening to her? Aomame could never have missed such important news.
This worlds system was getting out of whack. Her mind went on churning as she walked.
Whatever might have happened, she would have to do something to make the world whole
again, to make it logical again. And do it now. Otherwise, outlandish things could happen.
Tamaru could probably see the confusion inside her. He was a cautious man with superb
intuition. He was also very dangerous. Tamaru had a profound respect for his employer, and
was fiercely loyal to her. He would do anything to protect her. Aomame and Tamaru acknowledged
each others abilities and liked each other or so it seemed. But if he concluded that
Aomames existence was not to his employers benefit, for whatever reason, then he would
not hesitate to get rid of her. Aomame couldnt blame him for that. It was his job, after all.
The gate opened as she reached the other side of the garden. She gave the friendliest
smile she could manage to the security camera, and a little wave as if there were nothing
bothering her. Once she was outside the wall, the gate slowly shut behind her. As she descended
the steep Azabu slope, Aomame tried to organize her thoughts and make a detailed,
comprehensive list of what she should do from this point forward.
1Q84
CHAPTER 8
Tengo
MEETING NEW PEOPLE IN NEW PLACES
Most people think of Sunday morning as a time for rest. Throughout his youth, however,
Tengo never once thought of Sunday morning as something to enjoy. Instead, it depressed
him. When the weekend came, his whole body felt sluggish and achy, and his appetite would
disappear. For Tengo, Sunday was like a misshapen moon that showed only its dark side. If
only Sunday would never come! he would often think as a boy. How much more fun it would
be to have school every day without a break! He even prayed for Sunday not to come, though
his prayers were never answered. Even now, as an adult, dark feelings would inexplicably
overtake him when he awoke on a Sunday morning. He felt his joints creaking and wanted to
throw up. Such a reaction to Sunday had long since permeated his heart, perhaps in some
deep, unconscious region.
Tengos father was a collector of subscription fees for NHK Japans quasi-governmental
broadcasting network and he would take little Tengo with him as he went from door to door.
These rounds started before Tengo entered kindergarten and continued through the fifth
grade without a single weekend off, excepting only those Sundays when there was a special
function at school. Waking at seven, his father would make him scrub his face with soap and
water, inspect his ears and nails, and dress him in the cleanest (but least showy) clothes he
owned, promising that, in return, he would buy Tengo a yummy treat.
Tengo had no idea whether the other NHK subscription fee collectors kept working on
weekends and holidays, but as far as he could remember, his father always did. If anything,
he worked with even more enthusiasm than usual, because on Sundays he could often catch
people who were usually out during the week.
Tengos father had several reasons for taking him on his rounds. One was that he could
not leave the boy home alone. On weekdays and Saturdays, he could leave Tengo in daycare
or kindergarten or elementary school, but these were all closed on Sundays. Another reason,
he said, was that it was important for a father to show his son the type of work he did. A child
should learn from early on what kind of activity supported his daily life, and he should appreciate
the importance of labor. Tengos father had been sent out to work in the fields, Sunday or
no, from the time he was old enough to understand anything, and he had even been kept out
of school during the busiest seasons on the farm. To him, such a life was a given.
His third and final reason was a more calculating one, which is why it left the deepest
scars on Tengos heart. His father knew that having a small child with him made his job easier.
When a fee collector had a child in hand, people found it more difficult to say to him, I
dont want to pay, so get out of here. With a little person staring up at them, even people de-
termined not to pay would usually end up forking over the money, which was why he saved
the most difficult routes for Sunday. Tengo sensed from the beginning that this was the role
he was expected to play, and he absolutely hated it. But he also felt that he had to act out his
role as cleverly as he could in order to please his father. He might as well have been a trained
monkey. If he pleased his father, he would be treated kindly that day.
Tengos one salvation was that his fathers route was fairly far from home. They lived in a
suburban residential district outside the city of Ichikawa, but his fathers rounds were in the
center of the city. The school district was different there as well. At least he was able to avoid
doing collections at the homes of his kindergarten and elementary school classmates. Occasionally,
though, when walking in the downtown shopping area, he would spot a classmate on
the street. When this happened, he would dodge behind his father to keep from being noticed.
Most of Tengos school friends had fathers who commuted to office jobs in the center of
Tokyo. These men thought of Ichikawa as a part of Tokyo that just happened to have been incorporated
into Chiba Prefecture. On Monday mornings his school friends would talk excitedly
about where they had gone and what they had done on Sunday. They went to amusement
parks and zoos and baseball games. In the summer they would go swimming, in the winter
skiing. Their fathers would take them for drives or to go hiking. They would share their experiences
with enthusiasm, and exchange information about new places. But Tengo had nothing
to talk about. He never went to tourist attractions or amusement parks. From morning to evening
on Sundays, he and his father would ring the doorbells of strangers houses, bow their
heads, and take money from the people who came to the door. If someone didnt want to pay,
his father would threaten or cajole them. With anyone who tried to talk his way out of paying,
he would have an argument. Sometimes he would curse at them like stray dogs. Such experiences
were not the kind of thing Tengo could share with school friends.
When Tengo was in the third grade, word spread that his father was an NHK subscription
fee collector. Someone had probably seen them making their rounds together. He was, after
all, walking all day long behind his father to every corner of the city every Sunday, so it was
almost inevitable that he would be spotted at some point (especially now that he was too big
to hide behind his father). Indeed, it was surprising that it hadnt happened before.
From that point on, Tengos nickname became NHK. He could not help becoming a kind
of alien in a society of middle-class children of white-collar workers. Much of what they took
for granted, Tengo could not. He lived a different kind of life in a different world. His grades
were outstanding, as was his athletic ability. He was big and strong, and the teachers focused
on him. So even though he was an alien, he was never a class outcast. If anything, in most
circumstances he was treated with respect. But whenever the other boys invited him to go
somewhere or to visit their homes on a Sunday, he had to turn them down. He knew that if he
told his father, Some of the boys are getting together this Sunday at so-and-sos house, it
wouldnt make any difference. Soon, people stopped inviting him. Before long he realized that
he didnt belong to any groups. He was always alone.
Sunday collection rounds were an absolute rule: no exceptions, no changes. If he caught
a cold, if he had a persistent cough, if he was running a little fever, if he had an upset stomach,
his father accepted no excuses. Staggering after his father on such days, he would often
wish he could fall down and die on the spot. Then, perhaps, his father might think twice about
his own behavior; it might occur to him that he had been too strict with his son. For better or
worse, though, Tengo was born with a robust constitution. Even if he had a fever or a stomachache
or felt nauseous, he always walked the entire long route with his father, never falling
down or fainting, and never complaining.
Tengos father was repatriated from Manchuria, destitute, when the war ended in 1945.
Born the third son of a farming family in the hardscrabble Tohoku region, he joined a
homesteaders group and crossed over to Manchuria in the 1930s with friends from the same
prefecture. None of them had swallowed whole the governments claims that Manchuria was
a paradise where the land was vast and rich, offering an affluent life to all comers. They knew
enough to realize that paradise was not to be found anywhere. They were simply poor and
hungry. The best they could hope for if they stayed at home was a life on the brink of starvation.
The times were terrible, and huge numbers of people were unemployed. The cities
offered no hope of finding decent work. This left crossing the sea to Manchuria as virtually the
only way to survive. As farmers developing new land, they received basic training in the use
of firearms in case of emergency, were given some minimal information about farming conditions
in Manchuria, were sent off with three cheers from their villages, and then were transported
by train from the port of Dalian to a place near the Manchurian-Mongolian border.
There they were given some land and farming implements and small arms, and together started
cultivating the earth. The soil was poor and rocky, and in winter everything froze. Sometimes
stray dogs were all they had to eat. Even so, with government support the first few
years, they managed to get by.
Their lives were finally becoming more stable when, in August 1945, the Soviet Union
broke its neutrality treaty with Japan and launched a full-scale invasion of Manchuria. Having
ended its operations on the European front, the Soviet army had used the Trans-Siberian
Railway to shift a huge military force to the Far East in preparation for the border crossing.
Tengos father had been expecting this to happen, having been secretly informed of the impending
situation by a certain official, a man he had become friendly with thanks to a distant
connection. The man had told him privately that Japans weakened Kwantung Army could
never stand up to such an invasion, so he should prepare to flee with the clothes on his back
as soon as it happened the sooner the better. The minute he heard the news that the Soviet
army had apparently violated the border, he mounted his horse, galloped to the local train station,
and boarded the second-to-last train for Dalian. He was the only one among his farming
companions to make it back to Japan before the end of the year.
He went to Tokyo after the war and tried making a living as a black marketeer and as a
carpenters apprentice, but nothing seemed to work. He could barely keep himself alive. He
was working as a liquor store delivery man in the Asakusa entertainment district when he
bumped into an acquaintance from his Manchurian days on the street. It was the official who
had warned him of the impending Soviet invasion. The man had originally gone over to work
for the postal service in Japans Manchukuo puppet state, and now that he was back in Japan
he had his old job back with the Ministry of Communications. He seemed to like Tengos father,
both because they came from the same village and because he knew what a hard worker
he was. He invited him to share a bite.
When the man learned that Tengos father was having a hard time finding a decent job, he
asked if he might be interested in working as a subscription fee collector for NHK. He offered
to recommend him to a friend in that department, and Tengos father gladly accepted. He
knew almost nothing about NHK, but he was willing to try anything that promised a steady income.
The man wrote him a letter of recommendation and even served as a guarantor for
him, smoothing his way to become an NHK subscription fee collector. They gave him training,
a uniform, and a quota to fill. People then were just beginning to recover from the shock of defeat
and to look for entertainment in their destitute lives. Radio was the most accessible and
cheapest form of entertainment; and postwar radio, which offered music, comedy, and sports,
was incomparably more popular than its wartime predecessor, with its virtuous exhortations
for patriotic self-sacrifice. NHK needed huge numbers of people to go from door to door collecting
listeners fees.
Tengos father performed his duties with great enthusiasm. His foremost strengths were
his sturdy constitution and his perseverance in the face of adversity. Here was a man who
had barely eaten a filling meal since birth. To a person like that, the collection of NHK fees
was not excruciating work. The most violent curses hurled at him were nothing. Moreover, he
felt much satisfaction at belonging to a gigantic organization, even as one of its lowest-ranking
members. He worked for one year as a commissioned collector without job security,
his only income a percentage of his collections, but his performance and attitude were so
outstanding that he was taken directly into the ranks of the full-fledged employees, an almost
unheard-of achievement in NHK. Part of this had to do with his superior results in an especially
difficult collection area, but also effective here was the influence of his guarantor, the
Communications Ministry official. Soon he received a set basic salary plus expenses. He was
able to move into a corporation-owned apartment and join the health care plan. The difference
in treatment was like night and day. It was the greatest stroke of good fortune he had
ever encountered in life. In other words, he had finally worked his way up to the lowest spot
on the totem pole.
Young Tengo heard this story from his father so many times that he grew sick of it. His
father never sang him lullabies, never read storybooks to him at bedtime. Instead, he would
tell the boy stories of his actual experiences over and over, from his childhood in a poor
farm family in Tohoku, through the ultimate (and inevitable) happy ending of his good fortune
as a fully fledged NHK fee collector.
His father was a good storyteller. There was no way for Tengo to ascertain how much was
based on fact, but the stories were at least coherent and consistent. They were not exactly
pregnant with deep meaning, but the details were lively and his fathers narrative was strongly
colored. There were funny stories, touching stories, and violent stories. There were astounding,
preposterous stories and stories that Tengo had trouble following no matter how many
times he heard them. If a life was to be measured by the color and variety of its episodes, his
fathers life could be said to have been rich in its own way, perhaps.
But when they touched on the period after he became a full-fledged NHK employee, his
fathers stories suddenly lost all color and reality. They lacked detail and wholeness, as if he
thought of them as mere sequels not worth telling. He met a woman, married her, and had a
child that is, Tengo. A few months after Tengo was born, his mother fell ill and died. His
father raised him alone after that, never remarrying, just working hard for NHK. The End.
How he happened to meet Tengos mother and marry her, what kind of woman she was,
what had caused her death (could it have had something to do with Tengos birth?), whether
her death had been a relatively easy one or she had suffered greatly his father told him almost
nothing about such matters. If Tengo tried asking, his father would just evade the question
and, finally, never answer. Most of the time, such questions put him in a foul mood, and
he would clam up. Not a single photo of Tengos mother had survived, and not a single wedding
photo. We couldnt afford a ceremony, he explained, and I didnt have a camera. 
But Tengo fundamentally disbelieved his fathers story. His father was hiding the facts, remaking
the story. His mother had not died some months after he was born. In his only
memory of her, she was still alive when he was one and a half. And near where he was sleeping,
she was in the arms of a man other than his father.
His mother took off her blouse, dropped the straps of her slip, and let a man not his father
suck on her breasts. Tengo slept next to them, his breathing audible. But at the same time,
Tengo was not asleep. He was watching his mother.
This was Tengos souvenir photograph of his mother. The ten-second scene was burned
into his brain with perfect clarity. It was the only concrete information he had about his mother,
the one tenuous connection his mind could make with her. They were linked by a hypothetical
umbilical cord. His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of
the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengos
brain or that, like a cow in the meadow, Tengo was endlessly regurgitating fragments of the
scene to chew on, a cud from which he obtained essential nutrients. Father and son: each
was locked in a deep, dark embrace with his secrets.
It was a clear, pleasant Sunday morning. There was a chill in the mid-April breeze,
though, a reminder of how easily the seasons can turn backward. Over a thin, black crewneck
sweater, Tengo wore a herringbone jacket that he had owned since his college days. He
also had on beige chino pants and brown Hush Puppies. The shoes were rather new. This
was as close as he could come to dapper attire.
When Tengo reached the front end of the outward-bound Chuo Line platform in Shinjuku
Station, Fuka-Eri was already there, sitting alone on a bench, utterly still, staring into space
with narrowed eyes. She wore a cotton print dress that had to be meant for midsummer. Over
the dress she wore a heavy, grass-green winter cardigan, and on her bare feet she wore
faded gray sneakers a somewhat odd combination for the season. The dress was too thin,
the cardigan too thick. On her, though, the outfit did not seem especially out of place. Perhaps
she was expressing her own special worldview by this mismatch. It was not entirely out of the
question. But probably she had just chosen her clothing at random without much thought.
She was not reading a newspaper, she was not reading a book, she was not listening to a
Walkman, she was just sitting still, her big, black eyes staring straight ahead. She could have
been staring at something or looking at nothing at all. She could have been thinking about
something or not thinking at all. From a distance, she looked like a realistic sculpture made of
some special material.
 Did I keep you waiting? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri glanced at him and shook her head a centimeter or two from side to side. Her
black eyes had a fresh, silken luster but, as before, no perceptible expression. She looked as
though she did not want to speak with anyone for the moment, so Tengo gave up on any attempt
to keep up a conversation and sat beside her on the bench, saying nothing.
When the train came, Fuka-Eri stood up, and the two of them boarded together. There
were few passengers on the weekend rapid-service train, which went all the way out to the
mountains of Takao. Tengo and Fuka-Eri sat next to each other, silently watching the cityscape
pass the windows on the other side. Fuka-Eri said nothing, as usual, so Tengo kept silent
as well. She tugged the collar of her cardigan closed as if preparing for a wave of bitter
cold to come, looking straight ahead with her lips drawn into a perfectly straight line.
Tengo took out a small paperback he had brought along and started to read, but after
some hesitation he stopped reading. Returning the book to his pocket, he folded his hands on
his knees and stared straight ahead, adopting Fuka-Eris pose as if to keep her company. He
considered using the time to think, but he couldnt think of anything to think about. Because
he had been concentrating on the rewrite of Air Chrysalis, it seemed, his mind refused to form
any coherent thoughts. At the core of his brain was a mass of tangled threads.
Tengo watched the scenery streaming past the window and listened to the monotonous
sound of the rails. The Chuo Line stretched on and on straight westward, as if following a line
drawn on the map with a ruler. In fact, as if was probably unnecessary: they must have done
just that when they laid it out a hundred years earlier. In this part of the Kanto Plain there was
not a single topographical obstruction worth mentioning, which led to the building of a line
without a perceivable curve, rise, or fall, and no bridges or tunnels. All they needed back then
was a ruler, and all the trains did now was run in a perfectly straight line to the mountains out
west.
At some point, Tengo fell asleep. When the swaying of the train woke him, they were
slowing down for the stop in Ogikubo Station, no more than ten minutes out of Shinjuku a
short nap. Fuka-Eri was sitting in the same position, staring straight ahead. Tengo had no
idea what she was, in fact, looking at. Judging from her air of concentration, she had no intention
of getting off the train for some time yet.
 What kind of books do you read? Tengo asked Fuka-Eri when they had gone another
ten minutes and were past Mitaka. He raised the question not only out of sheer boredom but
because he had been meaning to ask her about her reading habits.
Fuka-Eri glanced at him and faced forward again. I dont read books, she answered
simply.
 At all? 
She gave him a quick nod.
 Are you just not interested in reading books? he asked.
 It takes time, she said.
 You dont read books because it takes time? he asked, not quite sure he was understanding
her properly.
Fuka-Eri kept facing forward and offered no reply. Her posture seemed to convey the
message that she had no intention of negating his suggestion.
Generally speaking, of course, it does take some time to read a book. Its different from
watching television, say, or reading manga. The reading of a book is an activity that involves
some continuity; it is carried out over a relatively long time frame. But in Fuka-Eris statement
that it takes time, there seemed to be included a nuance somewhat different from such generalities.
 When you say, ‘It takes time, do you mean … it takes a lot of time? Tengo asked.
 A lot, Fuka-Eri declared.
 A lot longer than most people? 
Fuka-Eri gave him a sharp nod.
 That must be a problem in school, too. Im sure you have to read a lot of books for your
classes. 
 I just fake it, she said coolly.
Somewhere in his head, Tengo heard an ominous knock. He wished he could ignore it,
but that was out of the question. He had to know the truth.
 Could what youre talking about be what they call ‘dyslexia? he asked.
 Dyslexia. 
 A learning disability. It means you have trouble making out characters on a page. 
 They have mentioned that. Dys 
 Who mentioned that? 
She gave a little shrug.
 In other words, Tengo went on, searching for the right way to say it, is this something
youve had since you were little? 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 So that explains why youve hardly read any novels. 
 By myself, she said.
This also explained why her writing was free of the influence of any established authors. It
made perfect sense.
 You didnt read them ‘by yourself, Tengo said.
 Somebody read them to me. 
 Your father, say, or your mother read books aloud to you? 
Fuka-Eri did not reply to this.
 Maybe you cant read, but you can write just fine, I would think, Tengo asked with growing
apprehension.
Fuka-Eri shook her head. Writing takes time too. 
 A lot of time? 
Fuka-Eri gave another small shrug. This meant yes.
Tengo shifted his position on the train seat. Which means, perhaps, that you didnt write
the text of Air Chrysalis by yourself. 
 I didnt. 
Tengo let a few seconds go by. A few heavy seconds. So who did write it? 
 Azami, she said.
 Whos Azami? 
 Two years younger. 
There was another short gap. This other girl wrote Air Chrysalis for you. 
Fuka-Eri nodded as though this were an absolutely normal thing.
Tengo set the gears of his mind spinning. In other words, you dictated the story, and
Azami wrote it down. Right? 
 Typed it and printed it, Fuka-Eri said.
Tengo bit his lip and tried to put in order the few facts that he had been offered so far.
Once he had done the rearranging, he said, In other words, Azami printed the manuscript
and sent it in to the magazine as an entry in the new writers contest, probably without telling
you what she was doing. And shes the one who gave it the title Air Chrysalis. 
Fuka-Eri cocked her head to one side in a way that signaled neither a clear yes nor a clear
no. But she did not contradict him. This probably meant that he generally had the right idea.
 This Azami is she a friend of yours? 
 Lives with me. 
 Shes your younger sister? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. Professors daughter. 
 The Professor, Tengo said. Are you saying this Professor also lives with you? 
Fuka-Eri nodded. Why bother to ask something so obvious? she seemed to be saying.
 So the person Im going to meet now must be this ‘Professor, right? 
Fuka-Eri turned toward Tengo and looked at him for a moment as if observing the flow of
a distant cloud or considering how best to deal with a slow-learning dog. Then she nodded.
 We are going to meet the Professor, she said in a voice lacking expression.
This brought their conversation to a tentative end. Again Tengo and Fuka-Eri stopped talking
and, side by side, watched the cityscape stream past the train window opposite them.
Featureless houses without end stretched across the flat, featureless earth, thrusting numberless
TV antennas skyward like so many insects. Had the people living in those houses paid
their NHK subscription fees? Tengo often found himself wondering about TV and radio reception
fees on Sundays. He didnt want to think about them, but he had no choice.
Today, on this wonderfully clear mid-April morning, a number of less-than-pleasant facts
had come to light. First of all, Fuka-Eri had not written Air Chrysalis herself. If he was to take
what she said at face value (and for now he had no reason to think that he should not), FukaEri
had merely dictated the story and another girl had written it down. In terms of its produc-
tion process, it was no different from some of the greatest landmarks in Japanese literary history the
Kojiki, with its legendary history of the ruling dynasty, for example, or the colorful
narratives of the warring samurai clans of the twelfth century, The Tale of the Heike. This fact
served to lighten somewhat the guilt he felt about modifying the text of Air Chrysalis, but at
the same time it made the situation as a whole significantly more complicated.
In addition, Fuka-Eri had a bad case of dyslexia and couldnt even read a book in the normal
way. Tengo mentally reviewed his knowledge of dyslexia. He had attended lectures on
the disorder when he was taking teacher training courses in college. A person with dyslexia
could, in principle, both read and write. The problem had nothing to do with intelligence.
Reading simply took time. The person might have no trouble with a short selection, but the
longer the passage, the more difficulty the persons information processing faculty encountered,
until it could no longer keep up. The link between a character and what it stood for
was lost. These were the general symptoms of dyslexia. The causes were still not fully understood,
but it was not surprising for there to be one or two dyslexic children in any classroom.
Einstein had suffered from dyslexia, as had Thomas Edison and Charles Mingus.
Tengo did not know whether people with dyslexia generally experienced the same difficulties
in writing as in reading, but it seemed to be the case with Fuka-Eri. One was just as
difficult for her as the other.
What would Komatsu say when he found out about this? Tengo caught himself sighing.
This seventeen-year-old girl was congenitally dyslexic and could neither read books nor write
extended passages. Even when she engaged in conversation, she could only speak one sentence
at a time (assuming she was not doing so intentionally). To make someone like this into
a professional novelist (even if only for show) was going to be impossible. Even supposing
that Tengo succeeded in rewriting Air Chrysalis, that it took the new writers prize, and that it
was published as a book and praised by the critics, they could not go on deceiving the public
forever. It might go well at first, but before long people would begin to think that something 
was funny. If the truth came out at that point, everyone involved would be ruined. Tengos
career as a novelist would be cut short before it had hardly begun.
There was no way they could pull off such a flawed conspiracy. He had felt they were
treading on thin ice from the outset, but now he realized that such an expression was far too
tepid. The ice was already creaking before they ever stepped on it. The only thing for him to
do was go home, call Komatsu, and announce, Im withdrawing from the plan. Its just too
dangerous for me. This was what anyone with any common sense would do.
But when he started thinking about Air Chrysalis, Tengo was split with confusion. As dangerous
as Komatsus plan might be, he could not possibly stop rewriting the novella at this
point. He might have been able to give up on the idea before he started working on it, but that
was out of the question now. He was up to his neck in it. He was breathing the air of its world,
adapting to its gravity. The storys essence had permeated every part of him, to the walls of
his viscera. Now the story was begging him to rework it: he could feel it pleading with him for
help. This was something that only Tengo could do. It was a job well worth doing, a job he
simply had to do.
Sitting on the train seat, Tengo closed his eyes and tried to reach some kind of conclusion
as to how he should deal with the situation. But no conclusion was forthcoming. No one split
with confusion could possibly produce a reasonable conclusion.
 Does Azami take down exactly what you say? Tengo asked.
 Exactly what I tell her. 
 You speak, and she writes it down. 
 But I have to speak softly 
 Why do you have to speak softly? 
Fuka-Eri looked around the car. It was almost empty. The only other passengers were a
mother and her two small children on the opposite seat a short distance away from Tengo
and Fuka-Eri. The three of them appeared to be headed for someplace fun. There existed
such happy people in the world.
 So they wont hear me, Fuka-Eri said quietly.
 ‘They? Tengo asked. Looking at Fuka-Eris unfocused eyes, it was clear that she was
not talking about the mother and children. She was referring to particular people that she
knew well and that Tengo did not know at all. Who are ‘they? Tengo, too, had lowered his
voice.
Fuka-Eri said nothing, but a small wrinkle appeared between her brows. Her lips were
clamped shut.
 Are ‘they the Little People? Tengo asked.
Still no answer.
 Are ‘they somebody who might get mad at you if your story got into print and was released
to the public and people started talking about them? 
Fuka-Eri did not answer this question, either. Her eyes were still not focused on any one
point. He waited until he was quite sure there would be no answer, and then he asked another
question.
 Can you tell me about your ‘Professor? Whats he like? 
Fuka-Eri gave him a puzzled look, as if to say, What is this person talking about? Then
she said, You will meet the Professor. 
 Yes, of course, Tengo said. Youre absolutely right. Im going to meet him in any case. I
should just meet him and decide for myself. 
At Kokubunji Station, a group of elderly people dressed in hiking gear got on. There were
ten of them altogether, five men and five women in their late sixties and early seventies. They
carried backpacks and wore hats and were chattering away like schoolchildren. All carried
water bottles, some strapped to their waists, others tucked in the pockets of their backpacks.
Tengo wondered if he could possibly reach that age with such a sense of enjoyment. Then he
shook his head. No way. He imagined these old folks standing proudly on some mountaintop,
drinking from their water bottles.
In spite of their small size, the Little People drank prodigious amounts of water. They preferred
to drink rainwater or water from the nearby stream, rather than tap water. And so the
girl would scoop water from the stream during daylight hours and give it to the Little People to
drink. Whenever it rained, she would collect water in a bucket because the Little People preferred
rainwater to water gathered from the stream. They were therefore grateful for the girls
kindness.
Tengo noticed he was having trouble staying focused on any one thought. This was not a
good sign. He felt an internal confusion starting. An ominous sandstorm was developing
somewhere on the plane of his emotions. This often happened on Sundays.
 Is something wrong, Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark. She seemed able to sense
the tension that Tengo was feeling.
 I wonder if I can do it. 
 Do what. 
 If I can say what I need to say. 
 Say what you need to say, Fuka-Eri asked. She seemed to be having trouble understanding
what he meant.
 To the Professor. 
 Say what you need to say to the Professor, she repeated.
After some hesitation, Tengo confessed. I keep thinking that things are not going to go
smoothly, that everything is going to fall apart, he said.
Fuka-Eri turned in her seat until she was looking directly at Tengo. Afraid, she asked.
 What am I afraid of? Tengo rephrased her question.
She nodded silently.
 Maybe Im just afraid of meeting new people. Especially on a Sunday morning. 
 Why Sunday, Fuka-Eri asked.
Tengos armpits started sweating. He felt a suffocating tightness in the chest. Meeting new
people and having new things thrust upon him. And having his present existence threatened
by them.
 Why Sunday, Fuka-Eri asked again.
Tengo recalled his boyhood Sundays. After they had walked all day, his father would take
him to the restaurant across from the station and tell him to order anything he liked. It was a
kind of reward for him, and virtually the only time the frugal pair would eat out. His father
would even order a beer (though he almost never drank). Despite the offer, Tengo never felt
the slightest bit hungry on these occasions. Ordinarily, he was hungry all the time, but he never
enjoyed anything he ate on Sunday. To eat every mouthful of what he had ordered which
he was absolutely required to do was nothing but torture for him. Sometimes he even came
close to vomiting. This was what Sunday meant for Tengo as a boy.
Fuka-Eri looked into Tengos eyes in search of something. Then she reached out and took
his hand. This startled him, but he tried not to let it show on his face.
Fuka-Eri kept her gentle grip on Tengos hand until the train arrived in Kunitachi Station,
near the end of the line. Her hand was unexpectedly hard and smooth, neither hot nor cold. It
was maybe half the size of Tengos hand.
 Dont be afraid. Its not just another Sunday, she said, as if stating a well-known fact.
Tengo thought this might have been the first time he heard her speak two sentences at
once.
1Q84
CHAPTER 9
Aomame
NEW SCENERY, NEW RULES
Aomame went to the ward library closest to home. At the reference desk, she requested
the compact edition of the newspaper for the three-month period from September to November,
1981. The clerk pointed out that they had such editions for four newspapers the Asahi,
the Yomiuri, the Mainichi, and the Nikkei and asked which she preferred. The bespectacled
middle-aged woman seemed less a regular librarian than a housewife doing part-time work.
She was not especially fat, but her wrists were puffy, almost ham-like.
Aomame said she didnt care which newspaper they gave her to read: they were all pretty
much the same.
 That may be true, but I really need you to decide which you would like, the woman said
in a flat voice meant to repel any further argument. Aomame had no intention of arguing, so
she chose the Mainichi, for no special reason. Sitting in a cubicle, she opened her notebook
and, ballpoint pen in hand, started scanning one article after another.
No especially major events had occurred in the early autumn of 1981. Charles and Diana
had married that July, and the aftereffects were still in evidence reports on where they went,
what they did, what she wore, what her accessories were like. Aomame of course knew about
the wedding, but she had no particular interest in it, and she could not figure out why people
were so deeply concerned about the fate of an English prince and princess. Charles looked
less like a prince than a high school physics teacher with stomach trouble.
In Poland, Lech Walesas Solidarity movement was deepening its confrontation with the
government, and the Soviet government was expressing its concern. More directly, the Soviets
were threatening to send in tanks, just as they had prior to the 1968 Prague Spring, if the
Polish government failed to bring things under control. Aomame generally remembered these
events as well. She knew that the Soviet government eventually gave up any thought of interfering
in the situation, so there was no need for her to read these articles closely. One thing
did catch her attention, though. When President Reagan issued a declaration meant to discourage
the Soviets from intervening in Polish internal affairs, he was quoted as saying, We
hope that the tense situation in Poland will not interfere with joint U.S.-Soviet plans to construct
a moon base. Construct a moon base? She had never heard of such a plan. Come to
think of it, though, there had been some mention of that on the TV news the other day that
night when she had sex with the balding, middle-aged man from Kansai in the Akasaka hotel.
On September 20, the worlds largest kite-flying competition took place in Jakarta, with
more than ten thousand participants. Aomame was unfamiliar with that particular bit of news,
but there was nothing strange about it. Who would remember news about a giant kite-flying
competition held in Jakarta three years ago?
On October 6, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by radical Islamic terrorists.
Aomame recalled the event with renewed pity for Sadat. She had always been fond of
Sadats bald head, and she felt only revulsion for any kind of religious fundamentalists. The
very thought of such peoples intolerant worldview, their inflated sense of their own superiority,
and their callous imposition of their own beliefs on others was enough to fill her with rage.
Her anger was almost uncontrollable. But this had nothing to do with the problem she was
now confronting. She took several deep breaths to calm her nerves, and then she turned the
page.
On October 12, in a residential section of the Itabashi Ward of Tokyo, an NHK subscription
fee collector (aged fifty-six) became involved in a shouting match with a college student
who refused to pay. Pulling out the butcher knife he always carried in his briefcase, he
stabbed the student in the abdomen, wounding him seriously. The police rushed to the scene
and arrested him on the spot. The collector was standing there in a daze with the bloody knife
in his hand. He offered no resistance. According to one of his fellow collectors, the man had
been a full-time staff member for six years and was an extremely serious worker with an outstanding
record.
Aomame had no recollection of such an event. She always took the Yomiuri newspaper
and read it from cover to cover, paying close attention to the human interest stories especially
those involving crimes (which comprised fully half the human interest stories
in the evening edition). There was almost no way she could have failed to read an article as
long as this one. Of course, something could have come up that caused her to miss it, but this
was very unlikely unlikely, but not unthinkable.
She knit her brow and mulled over the possibility that she could have missed such a report.
Then she recorded the date in her notebook, with a summary of the event.
The collectors name was Shinnosuke Akutagawa. Impressive. Sounded like the literary
giant Ryunosuke Akutagawa. There was no photograph of the collector, only of the man he
stabbed, Akira Tagawa, age twenty-one. Tagawa was a third-year student in the undergraduate
law program of Nihon University and a second-rank practitioner of Japanese swordsmanship.
Had he been holding a bamboo practice sword at the time, the collector would not have
been able to stab him so easily, but ordinary people do not hold bamboo swords in hand
when they talk to NHK fee collectors. Of course, ordinary NHK fee collectors dont walk
around with butcher knives in their briefcases, either. Aomame followed the next several days
worth of reports on the case but found nothing to indicate that the student had died. He had
probably survived.
On October 16 there had been a major accident at a coal mine in Yubari, Hokkaido. A fire
broke out at the extraction point one thousand meters underground, and more than fifty
miners suffocated. The fire spread upward toward the surface, and another ten men died. To
prevent the fire from spreading further, the company pumped the mine full of water without
first ascertaining the whereabouts of the remaining miners. The final death toll rose to ninetythree.
This was a heartrending event. Coal was a dirty energy source, and its extraction was
dangerous work. Mining companies were slow to invest in safety equipment, and working
conditions were terrible. Accidents were common and miners lungs were destroyed, but there
were many people and businesses that required coal because it was cheap. Aomame had a
clear memory of this accident.
The aftermath of the Yubari coal mine accident was still being reported in the paper when
Aomame found the event that she was looking for. It had occurred on October 19, 1981. Not
until Tamaru told her about it several hours earlier was Aomame aware that such an incident
had ever happened. This was simply unimaginable. The headline appeared on the front page
of the morning edition in large type:
YAMANASHI GUNFIGHT WITH RADICALS: 3 OFFICERS DIE
A large photo accompanied the article, an aerial shot of the location where the battle had
occurred near Lake Motosu, in the hills of Yamanashi Prefecture. There was also a simple
map of the site, which was in the mountains away from the developed area of lakeside vacation
homes. There were three portrait photos of the dead officers from the Yamanashi Prefectural
Police. A Self-Defense Force special paratroop unit dispatched by helicopter. Camouflage
fatigues, sniper rifles with scopes, short-barreled automatics.
Aomame scowled hugely. In order to express her feelings properly, she stretched every
muscle in her face as far as it would go. Thanks to the partitions on either side of her, no one
else sitting at the library tables was able to witness her startling transformation. She then took
a deep breath, sucking in all the surrounding air that she possibly could, and letting every bit
of it out, like a whale rising to the surface to exchange all the air in its giant lungs. The sound
startled the high school student studying at the table behind her, his back to hers, and he
spun around to look at her. But he said nothing. He was just frightened.
After distorting her face for a while, Aomame made an effort to relax each of her facial
muscles until she had resumed a normal expression. For a long time after that, she tapped at
her front teeth with the top end of her ballpoint pen and tried to organize her thoughts. There
ought to be a reason. There has to be a reason. How could I have overlooked such a major
event, one that shook the whole of Japan?
And this incident is not the only one. I didnt know anything about the NHK fee collectors
stabbing of the college student. Its absolutely mystifying. I couldnt possibly have missed one
major thing after another. Im too observant, too meticulous for that. I know when somethings
off by a millimeter. And I know my memory is strong. This is why, in sending a number of men
to the other side, Ive never made a single mistake. This is why Ive been able to survive. I
read the newspaper carefully every day, and when I say read the newspaper carefully, that
means never missing anything that is in any way significant.
The newspaper continued for days to devote major space to the Lake Motosu Incident. 
The Self-Defense Force and the Yamanashi Prefectural Police chased down ten escaped
radicals, staging a large-scale manhunt in the surrounding hills, killing three of them, severely
wounding two, and arresting four (one of whom turned out to be a woman). The last person
remained unaccounted for. The paper was filled with reports on the incident, completely obliterating
any follow-up reports on the NHK fee collector who stabbed the college student in Itabashi
Ward.
Though no one at NHK ever said so, of course, the broadcasters must have been extremely
relieved. For if something like the Lake Motosu Incident had not occurred, the media
would almost certainly have been screaming about the NHK collections system or raising
doubts about the very nature of NHKs quasi-governmental status. At the beginning of that
year, information on the ruling Liberal Democratic Partys objections to an NHK special on the
Lockheed scandal was leaked, exposing how the NHK had, in response, changed some of
the content. After these revelations, much of the nation was quite reasonably beginning to
doubt the autonomy of NHK programming and to question its political fairness. This in turn
gave added impetus to a campaign against paying NHK subscription fees.
Aside from the Lake Motosu Incident and the incident involving the NHK fee collector,
Aomame clearly remembered the other events and incidents and accidents that had occurred
at the time, and she clearly remembered having read all the newspaper reports about them.
Only in those two cases did her powers of recall seem to fail her. Why should that be? Why
should there be absolutely nothing left in her memory from those two events alone? Even
supposing this is all due to some malfunction in my brain, could I possibly have erased those
two matters so cleanly, leaving everything else intact?
Aomame closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips against her temples hard. Maybe
such a thing is, in fact, possible. Maybe my brain is giving rise to some kind of function that is
trying to remake reality, that singles out certain news stories and throws a black cloth over
them to keep me from seeing or remembering them the police departments switch to new
guns and uniforms, the construction of a joint U.S.-Soviet moon base, an NHK fee collectors
stabbing of a college student, a fierce gun battle at Lake Motosu between a radical group and
a special detachment of the Self-Defense Force.
But what do any of these things have in common?
Nothing at all, as far as I can see.
Aomame continued tapping on her teeth with the top end of her ballpoint pen as her mind
spun furiously.
She kept this up for a long time until finally, the thought struck her: Maybe I can look at it
this way the problem is not with me but with the world around me. Its not that my consciousness
or mind has given rise to some abnormality, but rather that some kind of incomprehensible
power has caused the world around me to change.
The more she thought about it, the more natural her second hypothesis began to feel to
her because, no matter how much she searched for it, she could not find in herself a gap or
distortion in her mind.
And so she carried this hypothesis forward:
Its not me but the world thats deranged.
Yes, that settles it.
At some point in time, the world I knew either vanished or withdrew, and another world
came to take its place. Like the switching of a track. In other words, my mind, here and now,
belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already changed into something else.
So far, the actual changes carried out in that process are limited in number. Most of the new
world has been retained from the world I knew, which is why the changes have presented
(virtually) no impediments to my daily life so far. But the changes that have already taken
place will almost certainly create other, greater, differences around me as time goes by.
Those differences will expand little by little and will, in some cases, destroy the logicality of
the actions I take. They could well cause me to commit errors that are for me literally fatal.
Parallel worlds.
Aomame scowled as if she had bitten into something horribly sour, though the scowl was
not as extreme as the earlier one. She started tapping her ballpoint pen against her teeth
again, and released a deep groan. The high school student behind her heard it rattle in her
throat, but this time pretended not to hear.
This is starting to sound like science fiction.
Am I just making up a self-serving hypothesis as a form of self-defense? Maybe its just
that Ive gone crazy. I see my own mind as perfectly normal, as free of distortion. But dont all
mental patients insist that they are perfectly fine and its the world around them that is crazy?
Arent I just proposing the wild hypothesis of parallel worlds as a way to justify my own madness?
This calls for the detached opinion of a third party.
But going to a psychiatrist for analysis is out of the question. The situation is far too complicated
for that, and theres too much that I cant talk about. Take my recent work, for example,
which, without a doubt, is against the law. I mean, Ive been secretly killing men with a
homemade ice pick. I couldnt possibly tell a doctor about that, even if the men themselves
have been utterly despicable, twisted individuals.
Even supposing I could successfully conceal my illegal activities, the legal parts of the life
Ive led since birth could hardly be called normal, either. My life is like a trunk stuffed with dirty
laundry. It contains more than enough material to drive any one human being to mental aberration maybe
two or three peoples worth. My sex life alone would do. Its nothing I could talk
about to anyone.
No, I cant go to a doctor. I have to solve this on my own.
Let me pursue this hypothesis a little further if I can.
If something like this has actually happened if, that is, this world Im standing in now has
in fact taken the place of the old one then when, where, and how did the switching of the
tracks occur, in the most concrete sense?
Aomame made another concentrated effort to work her way back through her memory.
She had first become aware of the changes in the world a few days earlier, when she took
care of the oil field development specialist in a hotel room in Shibuya. She had left her taxi on
the elevated Metropolitan Expressway No. 3, climbed down an emergency escape stairway to
Route 246, changed her stockings, and headed for Sangenjaya Station on the Tokyu Line. On
the way to the station, she passed a young policeman and noticed for the first time that
something about his appearance was different. Thats when it all started. Which means the
world switched tracks just before that. The policeman I saw near home that morning was
wearing the same old uniform and carrying an old-fashioned revolver.
Aomame recalled the odd sensation she had felt when she heard the opening of Janáeks
Sinfonietta in the taxi caught in traffic. She had experienced it as a kind of physical wrenching,
as if the components of her body were being wrung out like a rag. Then the driver told me
about the Metropolitan Expressways emergency stairway. I took off my high heels and
climbed down. The entire time I climbed down that precarious stairway in my stocking feet
with the wind tearing at me, the opening fanfare of Janáeks Sinfonietta echoed on and off in
my ears. That may have been when it started, she thought.
There had been something strange about that taxi driver, too. Aomame still remembered
his parting words. She reproduced them as precisely as she could in her mind:
After you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little.
Things may look different to you than they did before. But dont let appearances fool you.
Theres always only one reality.
At the time, Aomame had found this odd, but she had had no idea what he was trying to
tell her, so she hadnt given it much thought. She had been in too much of a hurry to puzzle
over riddles. Thinking back on it now, though, his remarks had come out of nowhere, and they
were truly strange. They could be taken as cautionary advice or an evocative message. What
was he trying to convey to me?
And then there was the Janáek music.
How was I able to tell instantly that it was Janáeks Sinfonietta? And how did I know it was
composed in 1926? Janáeks Sinfonietta is not such popular music that anyone can recognize
it on hearing the first few bars. Nor have I ever been such a passionate fan of classical music.
I cant tell Haydn from Beethoven. Yet the moment it came flowing through the car radio, I
knew what it was. Why was that, and why should it have given me such an intensely physical and
intensely personal jolt?
Yes, that jolt was utterly personal. It felt as if something had awakened a memory that had
been asleep inside me for years. Something seemed to grab my shoulder and shake me.
Which means I might have had a deep connection with that music at some point in my life.
The music started playing, threw an automatic switch to on, and perhaps some kind of
memory came fully awake. Janáeks Sinfonietta.
But though she tried to probe her memory, Aomame could come up with nothing else. She
looked around, stared at her palms, inspected the shape of her fingernails, and grabbed her
breasts through her shirt to check the shape. No change. Same size and shape. Im still the
same me. The world is still the same world. But something has started to change. She could
feel it. It was like looking for differences between two identical pictures. Two pictures hang on
the wall side by side. They look exactly alike, even with careful comparison. But when you examine
the tiniest details, minuscule differences become apparent.
Aomame switched mental gears, turned the page of the compact-edition newspaper, and
started taking detailed notes on the gun battle at Lake Motosu. There was speculation that the
five Chinese-made Kalashnikov AK-47s had been smuggled in through the Korean Peninsula.
They were most likely used military surplus in fairly good condition and came with lots of ammunition.
The Japan Seas coast was a long one. Bringing in weapons and ammunition under
cover of night and using a spy ship disguised as a fishing vessel was not that difficult. That
was how drugs and weapons were brought into Japan in exchange for massive quantities of
Japanese yen.
The Yamanashi Prefectural Police had been unaware that the radicals were so heavily
armed. They obtained a search warrant on the (purely pro-forma) charge of inflicting bodily injury,
and were carrying only their usual weapons when they piled into two patrol cars and a
minibus and headed for the farm. This was the headquarters of a group that called itself
Akebono, or First Light. On the face of it, the group members were simply operating an organic
farm. They refused to allow the police to search their property. A confrontation ensued,
and at some point it turned into a gun battle.
The Akebono group owned high-powered Chinese-made hand grenades, which fortunately
they did not use, purely because they had obtained the grenades so recently that they
had not had time to learn how to operate them. If the radicals had used hand grenades, casualties
among the police and the Self-Defense Force would almost certainly have been much
greater. Initially, the police did not even bring bulletproof vests with them. Critics singled out
the police authorities poor intelligence analysis and the departments aging weaponry. What
most shocked people, however, was the very fact that there still survived in Japan such an
armed radical group operating so actively beneath the surface. The late sixties bombastic
calls for revolution were already a thing of the past, and everyone assumed that the remnants
of the radicals had been wiped out in the police siege of the Asama Mountain Lodge in
1972.
When she had finished taking all her notes, Aomame returned the compact newspaper to
the reference counter. Choosing a thick book called Composers of the World from the music
section, she returned to her table and opened the book to Janáek. 
. . .
Leoš Janáek was born in a village in Moravia in 1854 and died in 1928. The article included
a picture of him in his later years. Far from bald, his head was covered by a healthy
thatch of white hair. It was so thick that Aomame couldnt tell much about the shape of his
head. Sinfonietta was composed in 1926. Janáek had endured a loveless marriage, but in
1917, at the age of sixty-three, he met and fell in love with a married woman named Kamila.
He had been suffering through a slump, but his encounter with Kamila brought back a vigorous
creative urge, and he published one late-career masterpiece after another.
He and Kamila were walking in a park one day when they came across an outdoor concert
and stopped to listen. Janáek felt a surge of joy go through his entire body, and the motif for
his Sinfonietta came to him. Something seemed to snap in his head, he recounted years later,
and he felt enveloped in ecstasy. By chance, he had been asked around that time to compose
a fanfare for a major athletic event. The motif that came to him in the park and the motif of the
fanfare became one, and Sinfonietta was born. The small symphony label is ordinary
enough, but the structure is utterly nontraditional, combining the radiant brass of the festive
fanfare with the gentle central European string ensemble to produce a unique mood.
Aomame took careful notes on the commentary and the biographical factual material, but
the book gave no hint as to what kind of connection there was or could have
been between herself and this Sinfonietta. She left the library and wandered aimlessly
through the streets as evening approached, often talking to herself or shaking her head.
Of course, its all just a hypothesis, Aomame told herself as she walked. But its the most
compelling hypothesis I can produce at the moment. Ill have to act according to this one, I
suppose, until a more compelling hypothesis comes along. Otherwise, I could end up being
thrown to the ground somewhere. If only for that reason, Id better give an appropriate name
to this new situation in which I find myself. Theres a need, too, for a special name in order to
distinguish between this present world and the former world in which the police carried oldfashioned
revolvers. Even cats and dogs need names. A newly changed world must need
one, too.
1Q84 thats what Ill call this new world, Aomame decided.
Q is for question mark. A world that bears a question.
Aomame nodded to herself as she walked along.
Like it or not, Im here now, in the year 1Q84. The 1984 that I knew no longer exists. Its
1Q84 now. The air has changed, the scene has changed. I have to adapt to this world-with-aquestion-mark
as soon as I can. Like an animal released into a new forest. In order to protect
myself and survive, I have to learn the rules of this place and adapt myself to them.
. . .
Aomame went to a record store near Jiyugaoka Station to look for Janáeks Sinfonietta.
Janáek was not a very popular composer. The Janáek section was quite small, and only one
record contained Sinfonietta, a version with George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra.
The A side was Bartóks Concerto for Orchestra. She knew nothing about these performances,
but since there was no other choice, she bought the LP. She went back to her apartment,
took a bottle of Chablis from the refrigerator and opened it, placed the record on the
turntable, and lowered the needle into the groove. Drinking the well-chilled wine, she listened
to the music. It started with the same bright fanfare. This was the music she had heard in the
cab, without a doubt. She closed her eyes and gave the music her complete concentration.
The performance was not bad. But nothing happened. It was just music playing. She felt no
wrenching of her body. Her perceptions underwent no metamorphosis.
After listening to the piece all the way through, she returned the record to its jacket, sat
down on the floor, and leaned against the wall, drinking wine. Alone and absorbed in her
thoughts, she could hardly taste the wine. She went to the bathroom sink, washed her face
with soap and water, trimmed her eyebrows with a small pair of scissors, and cleaned her
ears with a cotton swab.
Either Im funny or the worlds funny, I dont know which. The bottle and lid dont fit. It
could be the bottles fault or the lids fault. In either case, theres no denying that the fit is bad.
Aomame opened her refrigerator and examined its contents. She hadnt been shopping
for some days, so there wasnt much to see. She took out a ripe papaya, cut it in two, and ate
it with a spoon. Next she took out three cucumbers, washed them, and ate them with mayonnaise,
taking the time to chew slowly. Then she drank a glass of soy milk. That was her entire
dinner. It was a simple meal, but ideal for preventing constipation. Constipation was one of
the things she hated most in the world, on par with despicable men who commit domestic violence
and narrow-minded religious fundamentalists.
When she was through eating, Aomame got undressed and took a hot shower. Stepping
out, she dried herself off and looked at her naked body in the full-length mirror on the back of
the door. Flat stomach, firm muscles. Lopsided breasts, pubic hair like a poorly tended soccer
field. Observing her nakedness, she suddenly recalled that she would be turning thirty in another
week. Another damn birthday. To think Im going to have my thirtieth birthday in this incomprehensible
world, of all places! She knit her brows.
1Q84.
That was where she was now.
1Q84
CHAPTER 10
Tengo
A REAL REVOLUTION WITH REAL BLOODSHED
 Transfer, Fuka-Eri said. Then she took Tengos hand again. This was just before the
train pulled into Tachikawa Station.
They stepped off the train and walked down one set of stairs and up another to a different
platform. Fuka-Eri never once let go of Tengos hand. They probably looked like a pair of fond
lovers to the people around them. There was quite an age difference, but Tengo looked
younger than his actual age. Their size difference also probably amused some onlookers. A
happy Sunday-morning date in the spring.
Through the hand holding his, however, Tengo felt no hint of affection for the opposite
sex. The strength of her grip never changed. Her fingers had something like the meticulous
professionalism of a doctor taking a patients pulse. It suddenly occurred to Tengo: Perhaps
this girl thinks we can communicate wordlessly through the touch of fingers and palms. But
even supposing such communication had actually taken place, it was all traveling in one direction
rather than back and forth. Fuka-Eris palm might well be absorbing what was in
Tengos mind, but that didnt mean that Tengo could read Fuka-Eris mind. This did not especially
worry Tengo, however. There was nothing in his mind no thoughts or feelings that he
would be concerned to have her know.
Even if she has no feeling for me as a member of the opposite sex, she must like me to
some extent, Tengo surmised. Or at least she must not have a bad impression of me. Otherwise,
whatever her purpose, she wouldnt go on holding my hand like this for such a long
time.
Having changed now to the platform for the Oume Line, they boarded the waiting train.
This station, Tachikawa, was the beginning of the Oume Line, which headed yet farther toward
the hills northwest of Tokyo. The car was surprisingly crowded, full of old folks and family
groups in Sunday hiking gear. Tengo and Fuka-Eri stood near the door.
 We seem to have joined an outing, Tengo said, scanning the crowd.
 Is it okay to keep holding your hand, Fuka-Eri asked Tengo. She had not let go even
after they boarded the train.
 Thats fine, Tengo said. Of course 
Fuka-Eri seemed relieved and went on holding his hand. Her fingers and palm were as
smooth as ever, and free of sweat. They still seemed to be trying to find and verify something
inside him.
 Youre not afraid anymore, she asked without a question mark.
 No, Im not, Tengo answered. He was not lying. His Sunday-morning panic attack had
certainly lost its force, thanks perhaps to Fuka-Eris holding his hand. He was no longer
sweating, nor could he hear his heart pounding. The hallucination paid him no visit, and his
breathing was as calm as usual.
 Good, she said without inflection.
Yes, good, Tengo also thought.
There was a simple, rapidly spoken announcement that the train would soon depart, and
the train doors rumbled closed, sending an outsized shudder through the train as if some
huge, ancient animal were waking itself from a long sleep. As though it had finally made up its
mind, the train pulled slowly away from the platform.
Still holding hands with Fuka-Eri, Tengo watched the scenery go past the train window. At
first, it was just the usual residential area scenery, but the farther they went, the more the flat
Musashino Plain gave way to views of distant mountains. After nearly a dozen stops, the twotrack
line narrowed down to a single line of rails, and they had to transfer to a four-car train.
The surrounding mountains were becoming increasingly prominent. Now they had gone beyond
commuting distance from downtown Tokyo. The hills out here retained the withered look
of winter, which brought out the brilliance of the evergreens. The smell of the air was different,
too, Tengo realized, as the train doors opened at each new station, and sounds were subtly
different. Fields lay by the tracks, and farmhouses increased in number. Pickup trucks
seemed to outnumber sedans. Weve really come a long way, Tengo thought. How far do we
have to go?
 Dont worry, Fuka-Eri said, as if she had read his mind.
Tengo nodded silently. I dont know, it feels like Im going to meet her parents to ask for
her hand in marriage, he thought.
Finally, after five stops on the single-track section of the line, they got off at a station
called Futamatao. Tengo had never heard of the place before. What a strange name. Forked
Tail? The small station was an old wooden building. Five other passengers got off with them.
No one got on. People came to Futamatao to breathe the clean air on the mountain trails, not
to see a performance of Man of La Mancha or go to a disco with a wild reputation or visit an
Aston Martin showroom or eat gratin de homard at a famous French restaurant. That much
was obvious from the clothing of the passengers who left the train here.
There were virtually no shops by the station, and no people. There was, however, one taxi
parked there. It probably showed up whenever a train was scheduled to arrive. Fuka-Eri
tapped on the window, and the rear door opened. She ducked inside and motioned for Tengo
to follow her. The door closed, Fuka-Eri told the driver briefly where she wanted to go, and he
nodded in response.
They were not in the taxi very long, but the route was tremendously complicated. They
went up one steep hill and down another along a narrow farm road where there was barely
enough room to squeeze past other vehicles. The number of curves and corners was beyond
counting, but the driver hardly slowed down for any of them. Tengo clutched the doors grip in
terror. The taxi finally came to a stop after climbing a hill as frighteningly steep as a ski slope
on what seemed to be the peak of a small mountain. It felt less like a taxi trip than a spin on
an amusement park ride. Tengo produced two thousand-yen bills from his wallet and received
his change and receipt in return.
A black Mitsubishi Pajero and a large, green Jaguar were parked in front of the old Japanese
house. The Pajero was shiny and new, but the Jaguar was an old model so coated with
white dust that its color was almost obscured. It seemed not to have been driven in some
time. The air was startlingly fresh, and a stillness filled the surrounding space. It was a stillness
so profound one had to adjust ones hearing to it. The perfectly clear sky seemed to soar
upward, and the warmth of the sunlight gently touched any skin directly exposed to it. Tengo
heard the high, unfamiliar cry of a bird now and then, but he could not see the bird itself.
The house was large and elegant. It had obviously been built long ago, but it was well
cared for. The trees and bushes in the front yard were beautifully trimmed. Several of the
trees were so perfectly shaped and matched that they looked like plastic imitations. One large
pine cast a broad shadow on the ground. The view from here was unobstructed, but it revealed
not a single house as far as the eye could see. Tengo guessed that a person would
have to loathe human contact to build a home in such an inconvenient place.
Turning the knob with a clatter, Fuka-Eri walked in through the unlocked front door and
signaled for Tengo to follow her. No one came out to greet them. They removed their shoes in
the quiet, almost too-large front entry hall. The glossy wooden floor of the corridor felt cool
against stocking feet as they walked down it to the large reception room. The windows there
revealed a panoramic view of the mountains and of a river meandering far below, the sunlight
reflecting on its surface. It was a marvelous view, but Tengo was in no mood to enjoy it. FukaEri
sat him down on a large sofa and left the room without a word. The sofa bore the smell of
a distant age, but just how distant Tengo could not tell.
The reception room was almost frighteningly free of decoration. There was a low table
made from a single thick plank. Nothing lay on it no ashtray, no tablecloth. No pictures adorned
the walls. No clocks, no calendars, no vases. No sideboard, no magazines, no books.
The floor had an antique rug so faded that its pattern could not be discerned, and the sofa
and easy chairs seemed just as old. There was nothing else, just the large, raft-like sofa on
which Tengo was sitting and three matching chairs. There was a large, open-style fireplace,
but it showed no signs of having contained a fire recently. For a mid-April morning, the room
was downright chilly, as if the cold that had seeped in through the winter had decided to stay
for a while. Many long months and years seemed to have passed since the room had made
up its mind never to welcome any visitors. Fuka-Eri returned and sat down next to Tengo, still
without speaking.
Neither of them said anything for a long time. Fuka-Eri shut herself up in her own enigmatic
world, while Tengo tried to calm himself with several quiet deep breaths. Except for the occasional
distant bird cry, the room was hushed. Tengo listened to the silence, which seemed
to offer several different meanings. It was not simply an absence of sound. The silence
seemed to be trying to tell him something about itself. For no reason, he looked at his watch.
Raising his face, he glanced at the view outside the window, and then looked at his watch
again. Hardly any time had passed. Time always passed slowly on Sunday mornings.
Ten minutes went by like this. Then suddenly, without warning, the door opened and a
thinly built man entered the reception room with nervous footsteps. He was probably in his
mid-sixties. He was no taller than five foot three, but his excellent posture prevented him from
looking unimpressive. His back was as straight as if it had a steel rod in it, and he kept his
chin pulled in smartly. His eyebrows were bushy, and he wore black, thick-framed glasses
that seemed to have been made to frighten people. His movements suggested an exquisite
machine with parts designed for compactness and efficiency. Tengo started to stand and introduce
himself, but the man quickly signaled for him to remain seated. Tengo sat back down
while the man rushed to lower himself into the facing easy chair, as if in a race with Tengo.
For a while, the man simply stared at Tengo, saying nothing. His gaze was not exactly penetrating,
but his eyes seemed to take in everything, narrowing and widening like a cameras diaphragm
when the photographer adjusts the aperture.
The man wore a deep green sweater over a white shirt and dark gray woolen trousers.
Each piece looked as if it had been worn daily for a good ten years or more. They conformed
to his body well enough, but they were also a bit threadbare. This was not a person who paid
a great deal of attention to his clothes. Nor, perhaps, did he have people close by who did it
for him. The thinness of his hair emphasized the rather elongated shape of his head from
front to back. He had sunken cheeks and a square jaw. A plump childs tiny lips were the one
feature of his that did not quite match the others. His razor had missed a few patches on his
face or possibly it was just the way the light struck him. The mountain sunlight pouring
through the windows seemed different from the sunlight Tengo was used to seeing.
 Im sorry I made you come all this way, the man said. He spoke with an unusually clear
intonation, like someone long accustomed to public speaking and probably about logical
topics. Its not easy for me to leave this place, so all I could do was ask you to go to the
trouble of coming here. 
Tengo said it was no trouble at all. He told the man his name and apologized for not having
a business card.
 My name is Ebisuno, the man said. I dont have a business card either. 
 Mr. ‘Ebisuno? Tengo asked.
 Everybody calls me ‘Professor. I dont know why, but even my own daughter calls me
‘Professor. 
 What characters do you write your name with? 
 Its an unusual name. I hardly ever see anybody else with it. Eri, write the characters for
him, will you? 
Fuka-Eri nodded, took out a kind of notebook, and slowly, painstakingly, wrote the characters
for Tengo on a blank sheet with a ballpoint pen. The Ebisu part was the character normally
used for ancient Japans wild northern tribes. The no was just the usual character for
 field. The way Fuka-Eri wrote them, the two characters could have been scratched into a
brick with a nail, though they did have a certain style of their own.
 In English, my name could be translated as ‘field of savages perfect for a cultural anthropologist,
which is what I used to be. The Professors lips formed something akin to a
smile, but his eyes lost none of their attentiveness. I cut my ties with the research life a very
long time ago, though. Now, Im doing something completely different. Im living in a whole
new ‘field of savages. 
To be sure, the Professors name was an unusual one, but Tengo found it familiar. He was
fairly certain there had been a famous scholar named Ebisuno in the late sixties who had published
a number of well-received books. He had no idea what the books were about, but the
name, at least, remained in some remote corner of his memory. Somewhere along the way,
though, he had stopped encountering it.
 I think Ive heard your name before, Tengo said tentatively.
 Perhaps, the Professor said, looking off into the distance, as if speaking about someone
not present. In any case, it would have been a long time ago. 
Tengo could sense the quiet breathing of Fuka-Eri seated next to him slow, deep breathing.
 Tengo Kawana, the Professor said as if reading a name tag.
 Thats right, Tengo said.
 You majored in mathematics in college, and now you teach math at a cram school in
Yoyogi, the Professor said. But you also write fiction. Thats what Eri tells me. Is that about
right? 
 Yes, it is, Tengo said.
 You dont look like a math teacher. You dont look like a writer, either. 
Tengo gave him a strained smile and said, Somebody said exactly the same thing to me
the other day. Its probably my build. 
 I didnt mean it in a bad sense, the Professor said, pressing back the bridge of his blackframed
glasses. Theres nothing wrong with not looking like something. It just means you
dont fit the stereotype yet. 
 Im honored to have you say that. Im not a writer yet. Im still just trying to write fiction. 
 Trying. 
 Its still trial and error for me. 
 I see, the Professor said. Then, as if he had just noticed the chilliness of the room, he
rubbed his hands together. Ive also heard that youre going to be revising the novella that Eri
wrote in the hopes that she can win a literary magazines new writers prize. Youre planning
to sell her to the public as a writer. Is my interpretation correct? 
 That is basically correct, Tengo said. An editor named Komatsu came up with the idea. I
dont know if the plan is going to work or not. Or whether its even ethical. My only role is to
revise the style of the work, Air Chrysalis. Im just a technician. Komatsu is responsible for
everything else. 
The Professor concentrated on his thoughts for a while. In the hushed room, Tengo could
almost hear his brain working. The Professor then said, This editor, Mr. Komatsu, came up
with the idea, and youre cooperating with him on the technical side. 
 Correct. 
 Ive always been a scholar, and, to tell you the truth, Ive never read fiction with much enthusiasm.
I dont know anything about customary practice in the world of writing and publishing
fiction, but what you people are planning to do sounds to me like a kind of fraud. Am I
wrong about that? 
 No, you are not wrong. It sounds like fraud to me, too, Tengo said.
The Professor frowned slightly. You yourself obviously have ethical doubts about this
scheme, and still you are planning to go along with it, out of your own free will. 
 Well, its not exactly my own free will, but I am planning to go along with it. That is correct. 
 And why is that? 
 Thats what Ive been asking myself again and again all week, Tengo said honestly.
The Professor and Fuka-Eri waited in silence for Tengo to continue.
 Reasoning, common sense, instinct they are all pleading with me to pull out of this as
quickly as possible. Im basically a cautious, commonsensical kind of person. I dont like
gambling or taking chances. If anything, Im a kind of coward. But this is different. I just cant
bring myself to say no to Komatsus plan, as risky as it is. And my only reason is that Im so
strongly drawn to Air Chrysalis. If it had been any other work, I would have refused out of
hand. 
The Professor gave Tengo a quizzical look. In other words, you have no interest in the
fraudulent part of the scheme, but you have a deep interest in the rewriting of the work. Is that
it? 
 Exactly. Its more than a ‘deep interest. If Air Chrysalis has to be rewritten, I dont want to
let anyone else do it. 
 I see, the Professor said. Then he made a face, as if he had accidentally put something
sour in his mouth. I see. I think I understand your feelings in the matter. But how about this
Komatsu person? What is he in it for? Money? Fame? 
 To tell you the truth, Im not sure what Komatsu wants, Tengo said. But I do think its
something bigger than money or fame. 
 And what might that be? 
 Well, Komatsu himself might not see it that way, but he is another person who is obsessed
with literature. People like him are looking for just one thing, and that is to find, if only
once in their lifetimes, a work that is unmistakably the real thing. They want to put it on a tray
and serve it up to the world. 
The Professor kept his gaze fixed on Tengo for a time. Then he said, In other words, you
and he have very different motives motives that have nothing to do with money or fame. 
 I think youre right. 
 Whatever your motives might be, though, the plan is, as you said, a very risky one. If the
truth were to come out at some point, it would be sure to cause a scandal, and the publics
censure would not be limited to you and Mr. Komatsu. It could deliver a fatal blow to Eris life
at the tender age of seventeen. Thats the thing that worries me most about this. 
 And you should be worried, Tengo said with a nod. Youre absolutely right. 
The space between the Professors thick, black eyebrows contracted half an inch. But
what you are telling me is that you want to be the one to rewrite Air Chrysalis even if it could
put Eri in some danger. 
 As I said before, that is because my desire comes from a place that reason and common
sense cant reach. Of course I would like to protect Eri as much as possible, but I cant promise
that she would never be harmed by this. That would be a lie. 
 I see, the Professor said. Then he cleared his throat as if to mark a turning point in the
discussion. Well, you seem to be an honest person, at least. 
 Im trying to be as straightforward with you as I can. 
The Professor stared at the hands resting on his knees as if he had never seen them before.
First he stared at the backs of his hands, and then he flipped them over and stared at his
palms. Then he raised his face and said, So, does this editor, this Mr. Komatsu, think that his
plan is really going to work? 
 Komatsus view is that there are always two sides to everything, Tengo said. A good
side and a not-so-bad side. 
The Professor smiled. A most unusual view. Is this Mr. Komatsu an optimist, or is he selfconfident? 
 Neither, Tengo said. Hes just cynical. 
The Professor shook his head lightly. When he gets cynical, he becomes an optimist. Or
he becomes self-confident. Is that it? 
 He might have such tendencies. 
 A hard man to deal with, it seems. 
 He is a pretty hard man to deal with, Tengo said. But hes no fool. 
The Professor let out a long, slow breath. Then he turned to Fuka-Eri. How about it, Eri?
What do you think of this plan? 
Fuka-Eri stared at an anonymous point in space for a while. Then she said, Its okay. 
 In other words, you dont mind letting Mr. Kawana here rewrite Air Chrysalis? 
 I dont mind, she said.
 It might cause you a lot of trouble. 
Fuka-Eri said nothing in response to this. All she did was tightly grip the collar of her cardigan
together at the neck, but the gesture was a direct expression of her firm resolve.
 Shes probably right, the Professor said with a touch of resignation.
Tengo stared at her little hands, which were balled into fists.
 There is one other problem, though, the Professor said to Tengo. You and this Mr. Komatsu
plan to publish Air Chrysalis and present Eri to the public as a novelist, but shes dyslexic.
Did you know that? 
 I got the general idea on the train this morning. 
 She was probably born that way. In school, they think she suffers from a kind of retardation,
but shes actually quite smart even wise, in a very profound way. Still, her dyslexia
cant help your plan, to put it mildly. 
 How many people know about this? 
 Aside from Eri herself, three, the Professor said. Theres me, of course, my daughter
Azami, and you. No one else knows. 
 You mean to say her teachers dont know? 
 No, they dont. Its a little school in the countryside. Theyve probably never even heard of
dyslexia. And besides, she only went to school for a short time. 
 Then we might be able to hide it. 
The Professor looked at Tengo for a while, as if judging the value of his face.
 Eri seems to trust you, he said a moment later. I dont know why, but she does. And I 
Tengo waited for him to continue.
 And I trust Eri. So if she says its all right to let you rewrite her novella, all I can do is give
my approval. On the other hand, if you really do plan to go ahead with this scheme, there are
a few things you should know about Eri. The Professor swept his hand lightly across his right
knee several times as if he had found a tiny piece of thread there. What her childhood was
like, for example, and where she spent it, and how I became responsible for raising her. This
could take a while to tell. 
 Im listening, Tengo said.
Next to him on the sofa, Fuka-Eri sat up straight, still holding the collar of her cardigan
closed at the throat.
 All right, then, the Professor said. The story goes back to the sixties. Eris father and I
were close friends for a long time. I was ten years older, but we both taught in the same department
at the same university. Our personalities and worldviews were very different, but for
some reason we got along. Both of us married late, and we both had daughters shortly after
we got married. We lived in the same faculty apartment building, and our families were always
together. Professionally, too, we were doing very well. People were starting to notice us as
‘rising stars of academe. We often appeared in the media. It was a tremendously exciting
time for us.
 Toward the end of the sixties, though, things started to change for the worse. The second
renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty was coming in 1970, and the student movement
was opposed to it. They blockaded the university campuses, fought with the riot police, had
bloody factional disputes, and as a result, people died. All of this was more than I wanted to
deal with, and I decided to leave the university. I had never been that temperamentally suited
to the academic life, but once these protests and riots began, I became fed up with it. Establishment,
antiestablishment: I didnt care. Ultimately, it was just a clash of organizations, and I
simply didnt trust any kind of organization, big or small. You, I would guess, were not yet old
enough to be in the university in those days. 
 No, the commotion had all died down by the time I started. 
 The party was over, you mean. 
 Pretty much. 
The Professor raised his hands for a moment and then lowered them to his knees again.
 So I quit the university, and two years later Eris father left. At the time, he was a great believer
in Mao Zedongs revolutionary ideology and supported Chinas Cultural Revolution. We
heard almost nothing in those days about how terrible and inhumane the Cultural Revolution
could be. It even became trendy with some intellectuals to hold up Maos Little Red Book.
Eris father went so far as to organize a group of students into a kind of Red Guard on campus,
and he participated in the strike against the university. Some student-believers on other
campuses came to join his organization, and for a while, under his leadership, the faction became
quite large. Then the university got the riot police to storm the campus. He was holed
up there with his students, so he was arrested with them, convicted, and sentenced. This led
to his de facto dismissal from the university. Eri was still a little girl then and probably doesnt
remember any of this. 
Fuka-Eri remained silent.
 Her fathers name is Tamotsu Fukada. After leaving the university, he took with him ten
core students from his Red Guard unit and they entered the Takashima Academy. Most of the
students had been expelled from the university. They all needed someplace to go, and
Takashima Academy was not a bad choice for them. The media paid some attention to their
movements at the time. Do you know anything about this? 
Tengo shook his head. No, nothing. 
 Fukadas family went with him meaning his wife and Eri here. They all entered Takashima
together. You know about the Takashima Academy, dont you? 
 In general, Tengo said. Its organized like a commune. They live a completely communal
lifestyle and support themselves by farming. Dairy farming, too, on a national scale. They
dont believe in personal property and own everything collectively. 
 Thats it. Fukada was supposedly looking for a utopia in the Takashima system, the Professor
said with a frown. But utopias dont exist, of course, anywhere in any world. Like alchemy
or perpetual motion. What Takashima is doing, if you ask me, is making mindless robots.
They take the circuits out of peoples brains that make it possible for them to think for
themselves. Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. Im sure you
realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It
makes life a lot easier. You dont have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what
your superiors tell you to do. You never have to starve. To people who are searching for that
kind of environment, the Takashima Academy may well be utopia.
 But Fukada is not that kind of person. He likes to think things out for himself, to examine
every aspect of an issue. Thats how he made his living all those years: it was his profession.
He could never be satisfied with a place like Takashima. He knew that much from the start.
Kicked out of the university with a bunch of book-smart students in tow, he didnt have anywhere
else to go, so he chose Takashima as a temporary refuge. What he was looking for
there was not utopia but an understanding of the Takashima system. The first thing they had
to do was learn farming techniques. Fukada and his students were all city people. They didnt
know any more about farming than I know about rocket science. And there was a lot for them
to learn: distribution systems, the possibilities and limits of a self-sufficient economy, practical
rules for communal living, and so on. They lived in Takashima for two years, learning
everything they could. After that, Fukada took his group with him, left Takashima, and went
out on his own. 
 Takashima was fun, Fuka-Eri said.
The Professor smiled. Im sure Takashima is fun for little children. But when you grow up
and reach a certain age and develop an ego, life in Takashima for most young people comes
close to a living hell. The leaders use their power to crush peoples natural desire to think for
themselves. Its foot-binding for the brain. 
 Foot-binding, Fuka-Eri asked.
 In the old days in China, they used to cram little girls feet into tiny shoes to keep them
from growing, Tengo explained to her.
She pictured it to herself, saying nothing.
The Professor continued, The core of Fukadas splinter group, of course, was made up of
ex-students who were with him from his Red Guard days, but others came forward too, so the
size of the group snowballed beyond anyones expectations. A good number of people had
entered Takashima for idealistic reasons but were dissatisfied and disappointed with what
they found: people who had been hoping for a hippie-style communal life, leftists scarred by
the university uprisings, people dissatisfied with ordinary life and searching for a new world of
spirituality, single people, people who had their families with them like Fukada a motley crew
if ever there was one, and Fukada was their leader. He had a natural gift for leadership, like
Moses leading the Israelites. He was smart, eloquent, and had outstanding powers of judgment.
He was a charismatic figure a big man. Just about your size, come to think of it.
People placed him at the center of the group as a matter of course, and they followed his
judgment. 
The Professor held out his arms to indicate the mans physical bulk. Fuka-Eri stared first
at the Professors arms and then at Tengo, but she said nothing.
 Fukada and I are totally different, both in looks and personality. But even given our differences,
we were very close friends. We recognized each others abilities and trusted each other.
I can say without exaggeration that ours was a once-in-a-lifetime friendship. 
Under Tamotsu Fukadas leadership, the group had found a depopulated village that
suited their purposes in the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture. The village was on the brink
of death. The few old people who remained there could not manage the crops themselves
and had no one to carry on the farm work after they were gone. The group was able to purchase
the fields and houses for next to nothing, including the vinyl greenhouses. The village
office provided a subsidy on condition that the group continue to cultivate the established
farmland, and they were granted preferential tax treatment for at least the first few years. In
addition, Fukada had his own personal source of funds, but Professor Ebisuno had no idea
where the money came from.
 Fukada refused to talk about it, and he never revealed the secret to anybody, but somewhere
he got hold of a considerable amount of cash that was needed to establish the commune.
They used the money to buy farm machinery and building materials, and to set up a reserve
fund. They repaired the old houses by themselves and built facilities that would enable
their thirty members to live. This was in 1974. They called their new commune Sakigake, or
 Forerunner. 
Sakigake? The name sounded familiar to Tengo, but he couldnt remember where he
might have heard it before. When his attempt to trace the memory back ended in failure, he
felt unusually frustrated.
The Professor continued, Fukada was resigned to the likelihood that the operation of the
commune would be tough for the first several years until they became accustomed to the
area, but things went more smoothly than he had expected. They were blessed with good
weather and helpful neighbors. People readily took to Fukada as leader, given his sincere
personality, and they admired the hardworking young members they saw sweating in the
fields. The locals offered useful advice. In this way, the members were able to absorb practical
knowledge about farming techniques and learn how to live off the land.
 While they continued to practice what they had learned in Takashima, Sakigake also
came up with several of their own innovations. For example, they switched to organic farming,
eschewing chemical pesticides and growing their vegetables entirely with organic fertilizers.
They also started a mail-order food service pitched directly to affluent urbanites. That way
they could charge more per unit. They were the first of the so-called ecological farmers, and
they knew how to make the most of it. Having been raised in the city, the communes members
knew that city people would be glad to pay high prices for fresh, tasty vegetables free of
pollutants. They created their own distribution system by contracting with delivery companies
and simplifying their routes. They were also the first to make a virtue of the fact that they were
selling ‘un-uniform vegetables with the soil still clinging to them. 
The professor went on. I visited Fukada on his farm any number of times. He seemed invigorated
by his new surroundings and the chance to try new possibilities there. It was probably
the most peaceful, hope-filled time of his life, and his family also appeared to have adapted
well to this new way of living.
 More and more people would hear about Sakigake farm and show up there wanting to
become members. The name had gradually become more widely known through the mail order
business, and the mass media had reported on it as an example of a successful commune.
More than a few people were eager to escape from the real worlds mad pursuit of
money and its flood of information, instead earning their living by the sweat of their brow.
Sakigake appealed to them. When these people showed up, Sakigake would interview and investigate
them, and give the promising ones membership. They couldnt admit everyone who
came. They had to preserve the members high quality and ethics. They were looking for
people with strong farming skills and healthy physiques who could tolerate hard physical
labor. They also welcomed women in hopes of keeping something close to a fifty-fifty malefemale
ratio. Increasing the numbers would mean enlarging the scale of the farm, but there
were plenty of extra fields and houses nearby, so that was no problem. Young bachelors
made up the core of the farms membership at first, but the number of people joining with families
gradually increased. Among the newcomers were well-educated professionals doctors,
engineers, teachers, accountants, and the like. Such people were heartily welcomed by the
community since their professional skills could be put to good use. 
Tengo asked, Did the commune adopt Takashimas type of primitive communist system? 
The Professor shook his head. No, Fukada avoided the communal ownership of property.
Politically, he was a radical, but he was also a coolheaded realist. What he was aiming for
was a more flexible community, not a society like an ant colony. His approach was to divide
the whole into a number of units, each leading its own flexible communal life. They recognized
private property and apportioned out compensation to some extent. If you werent satisfied
with your unit, you could switch to another one, and you were free to leave Sakigake itself
anytime you liked. There was full access to the outside world, too, and there was virtually no
ideological inculcation or brainwashing. He had learned when they were in Takashima that a
natural, open system would increase productivity. 
Under Fukadas leadership, the operation of Sakigake farm remained on track, but eventually
the commune split into two distinct factions. Such a split was inevitable as long as they
kept Fukadas flexible unit system. On one side was a militant faction, a revolutionary group
based on the Red Guard unit that Fukada had originally organized. For them, the farming
commune was strictly preparatory for the revolution. Farming was just a cover for them until
the time came for them to take up arms. That was their unshakable stance.
On the other side was the moderate faction. As the majority, they shared the militant factions
opposition to capitalism, but they kept some distance from politics, instead preferring
the creation of a self-sufficient communal life in nature. Insofar as farming was concerned,
each faction shared the same goals, but whenever it became necessary to make decisions
regarding operational policy of the commune as a whole, their opinions split. Often they could
find no room for rapprochement, and this would give rise to violent arguments. The breakup of
the commune was just a matter of time.
Maintaining a neutral stance became increasingly difficult with each passing day. Eventually,
Fukada found himself trapped between the two factions. He was generally aware that
1970s Japan was not the place or time for mounting a revolution. What he had always had in
mind was the potential of a revolution revolution as a metaphor or hypothesis. He believed
that exercising that kind of antiestablishment, subversive will was indispensable for a healthy
society. But his students wanted a real revolution with real bloodshed. Of course Fukada bore
some responsibility for this. He was the one who had planted such baseless myths in their
heads. But he never told them that his revolution had quotation marks around it.
And so the two factions of the Sakigake commune parted ways. The moderate faction
continued to call itself Sakigake and remained in the original village, while the militant faction
moved to a different, abandoned village a few miles away and made it the base of their revolutionary
movement. The Fukada family remained in Sakigake with all the other families.
The split was a friendly one. It appears that Fukada obtained the funds for the new commune
from his usual unspecified source. Even after their separation, the two farms maintained a cooperative
relationship. They traded necessary materials and, for economic reasons, used the
same distribution routes for their products. The two small communities had to help each other
if they were to survive.
One thing did change, however, shortly after the split: the effective cessation of visits
between the old Sakigake members and the new commune. Only Fukada himself continued
to correspond with his former radical students. Fukada felt a strong sense of responsibility for
them, as the one who had originally organized and led them into the mountains of Yamanashi.
In addition, the new commune needed the secret funds that Fukada controlled.
 Fukada was probably in a kind of schizoid state by then, the Professor said. He no
longer believed with his whole heart in the possibility or the romance of the revolution.
Neither, however, could he completely disavow it. To do so would mean disavowing his life
and confessing his mistakes for all to see. This was something he could not do. He had too
much pride, and he worried about the confusion that would surely arise among his students
as a result. At that stage, he still wielded a certain degree of control over them.
 This is how he found himself living a life that had him running back and forth between
Sakigake and the new commune. He took upon himself the simultaneous duties of leader of
one and adviser to the other. So a person who no longer truly believed in the revolution continued
to preach revolutionary theory. The members of the new commune carried on with their
farm work while they submitted to the harsh discipline of military training and ideological indoctrination.
And politically, in contrast to Fukada, they became increasingly radicalized. They
adopted a policy of obsessive secrecy, and they no longer allowed outsiders to enter. Aware
of their calls for armed revolution, the security police identified them as a group that needed to
be watched and placed them under surveillance, though not at a high level of alert. 
The Professor stared at his knees again, and then looked up.
 Sakigake split in two in 1976, he went on. Eri escaped from Sakigake and came to live
with us the following year. Around that time the new commune began calling itself
‘Akebono. 
Tengo looked up and narrowed his eyes. Wait a minute, he said. Akebono. Im absolutely
certain Ive heard that name, too. But the memory was vague and incoherent. All he
could grab hold of were a few fragmentary, fact-like details. This Akebono … didnt they
cause some kind of big incident a while ago? 
 Exactly, Professor Ebisuno said, looking at Tengo more intently than he had until now.
 Were talking about the famous Akebono, of course, the ones who staged the gun battle with
the police in the mountains near Lake Motosu. 
Gun battle, Tengo thought. I remember hearing about that. It was big news. I cant remember
the details, though, for some reason, and Im confused about the sequence of events.
When he strained to recall more, he experienced a wrenching sensation through his whole
body, as though his top and bottom halves were being twisted in opposite directions. He felt a
dull throbbing deep in his head, and the air around him suddenly went thin. Sounds became
muffled as though he were underwater. He was probably about to have an attack. 
 Is something wrong? the Professor asked with obvious concern. His voice seemed to be
coming from a very great distance.
Tengo shook his head and in a strained voice said, Im fine. Itll go away soon. 
1Q84
CHAPTER 11
Aomame
THE HUMAN BODY IS A TEMPLE
The number of people who could deliver a kick to the balls with Aomames mastery must
have been few indeed. She had studied kick patterns with great diligence and never missed
her daily practice. In kicking the balls, the most important thing was never to hesitate. One
had to deliver a lightning attack to the adversarys weakest point and do so mercilessly and
with the utmost ferocity just as when Hitler easily brought down France by striking at the
weak point of the Maginot Line. One must not hesitate. A moment of indecision could be fatal.
Generally speaking, there was no other way for a woman to take down a bigger, stronger
man one-on-one. This was Aomames unshakable belief. That part of the body was the weakest
point attached to or, rather, hanging from the creature known as man, and most of the
time, it was not effectively defended. Not to take advantage of that fact was out of the question.
As a woman, Aomame had no concrete idea how much it hurt to suffer a hard kick in the
balls, though judging from the reactions and facial expressions of men she had kicked, she
could at least imagine it. Not even the strongest or toughest man, it seemed, could bear the
pain and the major loss of self-respect that accompanied it.
 It hurts so much you think the end of the world is coming right now. I dont know how else
to put it. Its different from ordinary pain, said a man, after careful consideration, when
Aomame asked him to explain it to her.
Aomame gave some thought to his analogy. The end of the world?
 Conversely, then, she said, would you say that when the end of the world is coming
right now, it feels like a hard kick in the balls? 
 Never having experienced the end of the world, I cant be sure, but that might be right, 
the man said, glaring at a point in space with unfocused eyes. Theres just this deep sense of
powerlessness. Dark, suffocating, helpless. 
Sometime after that, Aomame happened to see the movie On the Beach on late-night
television. It was an American movie made around 1960. Total war broke out between the
U.S. and the USSR and a huge number of missiles were launched between the continents
like schools of flying fish. The earth was annihilated, and humanity was wiped out in almost
every part of the world. Thanks to the prevailing winds or something, however, the ashes of
death still hadnt reached Australia in the Southern Hemisphere, though it was just a matter of
time. The extinction of the human race was simply unavoidable. The surviving human beings
there could do nothing but wait for the end to come. They chose different ways to live out their
final days. That was the plot. It was a dark movie offering no hope of salvation. (Though,
watching it, Aomame reconfirmed her belief that everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for
the end of the world to come.)
In any case, watching the movie in the middle of the night, alone, Aomame felt satisfied
that she now had at least some idea of what it felt like to be kicked in the balls.
After graduating from a college of physical education, Aomame spent four years working
for a company that manufactured sports drinks and health food. She was a key member of
the companys womens softball team (ace pitcher, cleanup batter). The team did fairly well
and several times reached the quarterfinals of the national championship playoffs. A month
after Tamaki Otsuka died, though, Aomame resigned from the company and marked the end
of her softball career. Any desire she might have had to continue with the game had vanished,
and she felt a need to start her life anew. With the help of an older friend from college,
she found a job as an instructor at a sports club in Tokyos swank Hiroo District.
Aomame was primarily in charge of classes in muscle training and martial arts. It was a
well-known, exclusive club with high membership fees and dues, and many of its members
were celebrities. Aomame established several classes in her best area, womens self-defense
techniques. She made a large canvas dummy in the shape of a man, sewed a black work
glove in the groin area to serve as testicles, and gave female club members thorough training
in how to kick in that spot. In the interest of realism, she stuffed two squash balls into the
glove. The women were to kick this target swiftly, mercilessly, and repeatedly. Many of them
took special pleasure in this training, and their skill improved markedly, but other members
(mostly men, of course) viewed the spectacle with a frown and complained to the clubs management
that she was going overboard. As a result, Aomame was called in and instructed to
rein in the ball-kicking practice.
 Realistically speaking, though, she protested, its impossible for women to protect themselves
against men without resorting to a kick in the testicles. Most men are bigger and
stronger than women. A swift testicle attack is a womans only chance. Mao Zedong said it
best. You find your opponents weak point and make the first move with a concentrated attack.
Its the only chance a guerrilla force has of defeating a regular army. 
The manager did not take well to her passionate defense. You know perfectly well that
were one of the few truly exclusive clubs in the metropolitan area, he said with a frown.
 Most of our members are celebrities. We have to preserve our dignity in all aspects of our
operations. Image is crucial. I dont care what the reason is for these drills of yours, its less
than dignified to have a gang of nubile women kicking a doll in the crotch and screeching their
heads off. Weve already had at least one case of a potential member touring the club and
withdrawing his application after he happened to see your class in action. I dont care what
Mao Zedong said or Genghis Khan, for that matter: a spectacle like that is going to make
most men feel anxious and annoyed and upset. 
Aomame felt not the slightest regret at having caused male club members to feel anxious
and annoyed and upset. Such unpleasant feelings were nothing compared with the pain experienced
by a victim of forcible rape. She could not defy her superiors orders, however, and
so her self-defense classes had to lower the level of their aggressiveness. She was also forbidden
to use the doll. As a result, her drills became much more lukewarm and formal.
Aomame herself was hardly pleased by this, and several members raised objections, but as
an employee, there was nothing she could do.
It was Aomames opinion that, if she were unable to deliver an effective kick to the balls
when forcefully attacked by a man, there would be very little else left for her to try. In the actual
heat of combat, it was virtually impossible to perform such high-level techniques as
grabbing your opponents arm and twisting it behind his back. That only happened in the
movies. Rather than attempting such a feat, a woman would be far better off running away
without trying to fight.
In any case, Aomame had mastered at least ten separate techniques for kicking men in
the balls. She had even gone so far as to have several younger men she knew from college
put on protective cups and let her practice on them. Your kicks really hurt, even with the cup
on, one of them had screamed in pain. No more, please! If the need arose, she knew, she
would never hesitate to apply her sophisticated techniques in actual combat. If theres any
guy crazy enough to attack me, Im going to show him the end of the world close up. Im going
to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. Im going to send him straight to the
Southern Hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the
wallabies.
. . .
As she pondered the coming of the kingdom, Aomame sat at the bar taking little sips of
her Tom Collins. She would glance at her wristwatch every now and then, pretending that she
was here to meet someone, but in fact she had made no such arrangement. She was simply
keeping an eye out for a suitable man among the bars arriving patrons. Her watch said eight
thirty. She wore a pale blue blouse beneath a dark brown Calvin Klein jacket and a navy-blue
miniskirt. Her handmade ice pick was not with her today. It was resting peacefully, wrapped in
a towel in her dresser drawer at home.
This was a well-known singles bar in the Roppongi entertainment district. Single men
came here on the prowl for single women or vice versa. A lot of them were foreigners. The
bar was meant to look like a place where Hemingway might have hung out in the Bahamas. A
stuffed swordfish hung on the wall, and fishing nets dangled from the ceiling. There were lots
of photographs of people posing with giant fish they had caught, and there was a portrait of
Hemingway. Happy Papa Hemingway. The people who came here were apparently not concerned
that the author later suffered from alcoholism and killed himself with a hunting rifle.
Several men approached Aomame that evening, but none she liked. A pair of typically
footloose college students invited her to join them, but she couldnt be bothered to respond.
To a thirtyish company employee with creepy eyes she said she was here to meet someone
and turned him down flat. She just didnt like young men. They were so aggressive and selfconfident,
but they had nothing to talk about, and whatever they had to say was boring. In
bed, they went at it like animals and had no clue about the true enjoyment of sex. She liked
those slightly tired middle-aged men, preferably in the early stages of baldness. They should
be clean and free of any hint of vulgarity. And they had to have well-shaped heads. Such men
were not easy to find, which meant that she had to be willing to compromise.
Scanning the room, Aomame released a silent sigh. Why were there so damn few
 suitable men around? She thought about Sean Connery. Just imagining the shape of his
head, she felt a dull throbbing deep inside. If Sean Connery were to suddenly pop up here, I
would do anything to make him mine. Of course, theres no way in hell that Sean Connery is
going to show his face in a Roppongi fake Bahamas singles bar.
On the bars big wall television, Queen was performing. Aomame didnt much like Queens
music. She tried her best not to look in that direction. She also tried hard not to listen to the
music coming from the speakers. After the Queen video ended, ABBA came on. Oh, no.
Something tells me this is going to be an awful night.
. . .
Aomame had met the dowager of Willow House at the sports club where she worked. The
woman was enrolled in Aomames self-defense class, the short-lived radical one that emphasized
attacking the doll. She was a small woman, the oldest member of the class, but her
movements were light and her kicks sharp. In a tight situation, Im sure she could kick her opponent
in the balls without the slightest hesitation. She never speaks more than necessary,
and when she does speak she never beats around the bush. Aomame liked that about her.
 At my age, theres no special need for self-defense, the woman said to Aomame with a dignified
smile after class.
 Age has nothing to do with it, Aomame snapped back. Its a question of how you live
your life. The important thing is to adopt a stance of always being deadly serious about protecting
yourself. You cant go anywhere if you just resign yourself to being attacked. A state of
chronic powerlessness eats away at a person. 
The dowager said nothing for a while, looking Aomame in the eye. Either Aomames
words or her tone of voice seemed to have made a strong impression on her. She nodded
gravely. Youre right. You are absolutely right, she said. You have obviously done some
solid thinking about this. 
A few days later, Aomame received an envelope. It had been left at the clubs front desk
for her. Inside Aomame found a short, beautifully penned note containing the dowagers address
and telephone number. I know you must be very busy, it said, but I would appreciate
hearing from you sometime when you are free. 
A man answered the phone a secretary, it seemed. When Aomame gave her name, he
switched her to an extension without a word. The dowager came on the line and thanked her
for calling. If its not too much bother, Id like to invite you out for a meal, she said. Id like to
have a nice, long talk with you, just the two of us. 
 With pleasure, Aomame said.
 How would tomorrow night be for you? 
Aomame had no problem with that, but she had to wonder what this elegant older woman
could possibly want to speak about with someone like her.
The two had dinner at a French restaurant in a quiet section of Azabu. The dowager had
been coming here for a long time, it seemed. They showed her to one of the better tables in
the back, and she apparently knew the aging waiter who provided them with attentive service.
She wore a beautifully cut dress of unfigured pale green cloth (perhaps a 1960s Givenchy)
and a jade necklace. Midway through the meal, the manager appeared and offered her his respectful
greetings. Vegetarian cuisine occupied much of the menu, and the flavors were elegant
and simple. By coincidence, the soup of the day was green pea soup, as if in honor of
Aomame. The dowager had a glass of Chablis, and Aomame kept her company. The wine
was just as elegant and simple as the food. Aomame ordered a grilled cut of white fish. The
dowager took only vegetables. Her manner of eating the vegetables was beautiful, like a work
of art. When you get to be my age, you can stay alive eating very little, she said. Of the
finest food possible, she added, half in jest.
She wanted Aomame to become her personal trainer, instructing her in martial arts at her
home two or three days a week. Also, if possible, she wanted Aomame to help her with
muscle stretching.
 Of course I can do that, Aomame said, but Ill have to ask you to arrange for the personal
training away from the gym through the clubs front desk. 
 Thats fine, the dowager said, but lets make scheduling arrangements directly. There is
bound to be confusion if other people get involved. Id like to avoid that. Would that be all right
with you? 
 Perfectly all right. 
 Then lets start next week, the dowager said.
This was all it took to conclude their business.
The dowager said, I was tremendously struck by what you said at the gym the other day.
About powerlessness. About how powerlessness inflicts such damage on people. Do you remember? 
Aomame nodded. I do. 
 Do you mind if I ask you a question? It will be a very direct question. To save time. 
 Ask whatever you like, Aomame said.
 Are you a feminist, or a lesbian? 
Aomame blushed slightly and shook her head. I dont think so. My thoughts on such matters
are strictly my own. Im not a doctrinaire feminist, and Im not a lesbian. 
 Thats good, the dowager said. As if relieved, she elegantly lifted a forkful of broccoli to
her mouth, elegantly chewed it, and took one small sip of wine. Then she said, Even if you
were a feminist or a lesbian, it wouldnt bother me in the least. It wouldnt influence anything.
But, if I may say so, your not being either will make it easier for us to communicate. Do you
see what Im trying to say? 
 I do, Aomame said.
Aomame went to the dowagers compound twice a week to guide her in martial arts. The
dowager had a large, mirrored practice space built years earlier for her little daughters ballet
lessons, and it was there that she and Aomame did their carefully ordered exercises. For
someone her age, the dowager was very flexible, and she progressed rapidly. Hers was a
small body, but one that had been well cared for over the years. Aomame also taught her the
basics of systematic stretching, and gave her massages to loosen her muscles.
Aomame was especially skilled at deep tissue massage. She had earned better grades in
that field than anyone else at the college of physical education. The names of all the bones
and all the muscles of the human body were engraved in her brain. She knew the function
and characteristics of each muscle, both how to tone it and how to keep it toned. It was
Aomames firm belief that the human body was a temple, to be kept as strong and beautiful
and clean as possible, whatever one might enshrine there.
Not content with ordinary sports medicine, Aomame learned acupuncture techniques as a
matter of personal interest, taking formal training for several years from a Chinese doctor. Impressed
with her rapid progress, the doctor told her that she had more than enough skill to be
a professional. She was a quick learner, with an unquenchable thirst for detailed knowledge
regarding the bodys functions. But more than anything, she had fingertips that were endowed
with an almost frightening sixth sense. Just as certain people possess perfect pitch or the
ability to find underground water veins, Aomames fingertips could instantly discern the subtle
points on the body that influenced its functionality. This was nothing that anyone had taught
her. It came to her naturally.
Before long, Aomame and the dowager would follow up their training and massage sessions
with a leisurely chat over a cup of tea. Tamaru would always bring the tea utensils on
the silver tray. He never spoke a word in Aomames presence during the first month, until
Aomame felt compelled to ask the dowager if by any chance Tamaru was incapable of speaking.
One time, the dowager asked Aomame if she had ever used her testicle-kicking technique
in actual self-defense.
 Just once, Aomame answered.
 Did it work? the dowager asked.
 It had the intended effect, Aomame answered, cautiously and concisely.
 Do you think it would work on Tamaru? 
Aomame shook her head. Probably not. He knows about things like that. If the other person
has the ability to read your movements, theres nothing you can do. The testicle kick only
works with amateurs who have no actual fighting experience. 
 In other words, you recognize that Tamaru is no amateur. 
 How should I put it? Aomame paused. He has a special presence. Hes not an ordinary
person. 
The dowager added cream to her tea and stirred it slowly.
 So the man you kicked that time was an amateur, I assume. A big man? 
Aomame nodded but did not say anything. The man had been well built and stronglooking.
But he was arrogant, and he had let his guard down with a mere woman. He had
never had the experience of being kicked in the balls by a woman, and never imagined such a
thing would ever happen to him.
 Did he end up with any wounds? the dowager asked.
 No, no wounds, Aomame said. He was just in intense pain for a while. 
The dowager remained silent for a moment. Then she asked, Have you ever attacked a
man before? Not just causing him pain but intentionally wounding him? 
 I have, Aomame replied. Lying was not a specialty of hers.
 Can you talk about it? 
Aomame shook her head almost imperceptibly. Im sorry, but its not something I can talk
about easily. 
 Of course not, the dowager said. Thats fine. Theres no need to force yourself. 
The two drank their tea in silence, each with her own thoughts.
Finally, the dowager spoke. But sometime, when you feel like talking about it, do you
think I might be able to have you tell me what happened back then? 
Aomame said, I might be able to tell you sometime. Or I might not, ever. I honestly dont
know, myself. 
The dowager looked at Aomame for a while. Then she said, Im not asking out of mere
curiosity. 
Aomame kept silent.
 As I see it, you are living with something that you keep hidden deep inside. Something
heavy. I felt it from the first time I met you. You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up
your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside.
Heavy things. That is how I can see it in you. There is no need to hurry, but you will be better
off, at some point in time, if you bring it outside yourself. I am nothing if not discreet, and I
have several realistic measures at my disposal. If all goes well, I could be of help to you. 
Later, when Aomame finally opened up to the dowager, she would also open a new door
in her life.
 Hey, what are you drinking? someone asked near Aomames ear. The voice belonged to
a woman.
Aomame raised her head and looked at the speaker. A young woman with a fifties-style
ponytail was sitting on the neighboring barstool. Her dress had a tiny flower pattern, and a
small Gucci bag hung from her shoulder. Her nails were carefully manicured in pale pink. By
no means fat, the woman was round everywhere, including her face, which radiated a truly
friendly warmth, and she had big breasts.
Aomame was somewhat taken aback. She had not been expecting to be approached by a
woman. This was a bar for men to approach women.
 Tom Collins, Aomame said.
 Is it good? 
 Not especially. But its not that strong, and I can sip it. 
 I wonder why they call it ‘Tom Collins. 
 I have no idea, Aomame said. Maybe its the name of the guy who invented it. Not that
its such an amazing invention. 
The woman waved to the bartender and said, Ill have a Tom Collins too. A few moments
later, she had her drink.
 Mind if I sit here? she asked.
 Not at all. Its an empty seat. And youre already sitting in it, Aomame thought without
speaking the words.
 You dont have a date to meet anybody here, do you? the woman asked.
Instead of answering, Aomame studied the womans face. She guessed the woman was
three or four years younger than herself.
 Dont worry, Im not interested in that, the woman whispered, as if sharing a secret. If
thats what youre worried about. I prefer men, too. Like you. 
 Like me? 
 Well, isnt that why you came here, to find a guy? 
 Do I look like that? 
The woman narrowed her eyes somewhat. That much is obvious. Its what this place is
for. And Im guessing that neither of us is a pro. 
 Of course not, Aomame said.
 Hey, heres an idea. Why dont we team up? Its probably easier for a man to approach
two women than one. And we can relax more and sort of feel safer if were together instead of
alone. We look so different, too Im more the womanly type, and you have that trim, boyish
style Im sure were a good match. 
Boyish, Aomame thought. Thats the first time anyones ever called me that. Our taste in
men might be different, though, she said. Hows that supposed to work if were a ‘team? 
The woman pursed her lips in thought. True, now that you mention it. Taste in men, huh?
Hmm. What kind do you like? 
 Middle-aged if possible, Aomame said. Im not that into young guys. I like em when
theyre just starting to lose their hair. 
 Wow. I get it. Middle-aged, huh? I like em young and lively and good-looking. Im not
much interested in middle-aged guys, but Im willing to go along with you and give it a try. Its
all experience. Are middle-aged guys good? At sex, I mean. 
 It depends on the guy, Aomame said.
 Of course, the woman replied. Then she narrowed her eyes, as if verifying some kind of
theory. You cant generalize about sex, of course, but if you were to say overall … 
 Theyre not bad. They eventually run out of steam, but while theyre at it they take their
time. They dont rush it. When theyre good, they can make you come a lot. 
The woman gave this some thought. Hmm, I may be getting interested. Maybe Ill try that
out. 
 You should! 
 Say, have you ever tried four-way sex? You switch partners at some point. 
 Never. 
 I havent, either. Interested? 
 Probably not, Aomame said. Uh, I dont mind teaming up, but if were going to do stuff
together, even temporarily, can you tell me a little more about yourself? Because we could be
on completely different wavelengths. 
 Good idea, she said. So, what do you want to know about me? 
 Well, for one thing, what kind of work do you do? 
The woman took a drink of her Tom Collins and set it down on the coaster. Then she
dabbed at her lips with a paper napkin. Then she examined the lipstick stains on the napkin.
 This is a pretty good drink, she said. It has a gin base, right? 
 Gin and lemon juice and soda water. 
 True, its no great invention, but it tastes pretty good. 
 Im glad. 
 So, then, what kind of work do I do? Thats kind of tough. Even if I tell you the truth, you
might not believe me. 
 So Ill go first, Aomame said. Im an instructor at a sports club. I mostly teach martial
arts. Also muscle stretching. 
 Martial arts! the woman exclaimed. Like Bruce Lee kind of stuff? 
 Kind of. 
 Are you good at it? 
 Okay. 
The woman smiled and raised her glass as if in a toast. So, in a pinch, we might be an
unbeatable team. I might not look it, but Ive been doing aikido for years. To tell you the truth,
Im a policewoman. 
 A policewoman?! Aomames mouth dropped open, but no further words emerged from it.
 Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. I dont look the part, do I? 
 Certainly not, Aomame said.
 Its true, though. Absolutely. My name is Ayumi. 
 Im Aomame. 
 Aomame. Is that your real name? 
Aomame gave her a solemn nod. A policewoman? You mean you wear a uniform and
carry a gun and ride in a police car and patrol the streets? 
 Thats what Id like to be doing. Its what I joined the police force to do. But they wont let
me, Ayumi said. She took a handful of pretzels from a nearby bowl and started munching
them noisily. I wear a ridiculous uniform, ride around in one of those mini patrol
cars basically, a motor scooter and give parking tickets all day. They wont let me carry a
pistol, of course. Theres no need to fire warning shots at a local citizen whos parked his
Toyota Corolla in front of a fire hydrant. I got great marks at shooting practice, but nobody
gives a damn about that. Just because Im a woman, theyve got me going around with a
piece of chalk on a stick, writing the time and license plate numbers on the asphalt day after
day 
 Speaking of pistols, do you fire a Beretta semiautomatic? 
 Sure. Theyre all Berettas now. Theyre a little too heavy for me. Fully loaded, they probably
weigh close to a kilogram. 
 The body of a Beretta alone weighs 850 grams, Aomame said.
Ayumi looked at Aomame like a pawnbroker assessing a wristwatch. How do you know
something like that? she asked.
 Ive always had an interest in guns, Aomame said. Of course, Ive never actually fired
one. 
 Oh, really? Ayumi seemed convinced. Im really into shooting pistols. True, a Beretta is
heavy, but it has less of a recoil than the older guns, so even a small woman can handle one
with enough practice. The top guys dont believe it, though. Theyre convinced that a woman
cant handle a pistol. All the higher-ups in the department are male chauvinist fascists. I had
super grades in nightstick techniques, too, at least as good as most of the men, but I got no
recognition at all. The only thing I ever heard from them was filthy double entendres. ‘Say,
you really know how to grab that nightstick. Let me know any time you want some extra practice.
Stuff like that. Their brains are like a century and a half behind the times. 
Ayumi took a pack of Virginia Slims from her shoulder bag, and with practiced movements
eased a cigarette from the pack, put it between her lips, lit it with a slim gold lighter, and
slowly exhaled the smoke toward the ceiling.
 Whatever gave you the idea of becoming a police officer? Aomame asked.
 I never intended to, Ayumi replied. But I didnt want to do ordinary office work, and I
didnt have any professional skills. That really limited my options. So in my senior year of college
I took the Metropolitan Police employment exam. A lot of my relatives were cops my
father, my brother, one of my uncles. The police are a kind of nepotistic society, so its easier
to get hired if youre related to a policeman. 
 The police family 
 Exactly. Until I actually got into it, though, I had no idea how rife the place was with
gender discrimination. Female officers are more or less second-class citizens in the police
world. The only jobs they give you to do are handling traffic violations, shuffling papers at a
desk, teaching safety education at elementary schools, or patting down female suspects:
boooring! Meanwhile, guys who clearly have less ability than me are sent out to one interesting
crime scene after another. The higher-ups talk about ‘equal opportunity for the sexes, but
its all a front, it just doesnt work that way. It kills your desire to do a good job. You know what
I mean? 
Aomame said she understood.
 It makes me so mad! 
 Dont you have a boyfriend or something? Aomame asked.
Ayumi frowned. For a while, she glared at the slim cigarette between her fingers. Its
nearly impossible for a policewoman to have a boyfriend. You work irregular hours, so its
hard to coordinate times with anyone who works a normal business week. And even if things
do start to work out, the minute an ordinary guy hears youre a cop, he just scoots away like a
crab running from the surf. Its awful, dont you think? 
Aomame said that she did think it was awful.
 Which leaves a workplace romance as the only possibility except there arent any decent
men there. Theyre all brain-dead jerks who can only tell dirty jokes. Theyre either born
stupid or they think of nothing else but their advancement. And these are the guys responsible
for the safety of society! Japan does not have a bright future. 
 Somebody as cute as you should be popular with the men, I would think, Aomame said.
 Well, Im not exactly unpopular as long as I dont reveal my profession. So in places like
this I just tell them I work for an insurance company. 
 Do you come here often? 
 Not ‘often. Once in a while, Ayumi said. After a moments reflection, she said, as if revealing
a secret, Every now and then, I start craving sex. To put it bluntly, I want a man. You
know, more or less periodically. So then I get all dolled up, put on fancy underwear, and come
here. I find a suitable guy and we do it all night. That calms me down for a while. Ive just got
a healthy sex drive Im not a nympho or sex addict or anything, Im okay once I work off the
desire. It doesnt last. The next day Im hard at work again, handing out parking tickets. How
about you? 
Aomame picked up her Tom Collins glass and took a sip. About the same, I guess. 
 No boyfriend? 
 I made up my mind not to have a boyfriend. I dont want the bother. 
 Having one man is a bother? 
 Pretty much. 
 But sometimes I want to do it so bad I cant stand it, Ayumi said.
 That expression you used a minute ago, ‘Work off the desire, is more my speed. 
 How about ‘Have an opulent evening? 
 Thats not bad, either, Aomame said.
 In any case, it should be a one-night stand, without any follow-up. 
Aomame nodded.
Elbow on the bar, Ayumi propped her chin on her hand and thought about this for a while.
 We might have a lot in common, she said.
 Maybe so, Aomame agreed. Except youre a female cop and I kill people. Were inside
and outside the law. I bet that counts as one big difference.
 Lets play it this way, Ayumi said. We both work for the same casualty insurance company,
but the name of the company is a secret. Youre a couple years ahead of me. There
was some unpleasantness in the office today, so we came here to drown our sorrows, and
now were feeling pretty good. Hows that for our ‘situation? 
 Fine, except I dont know a thing about casualty insurance. 
 Leave that to me. Im good at making up stories. 
 Its all yours, then, Aomame said.
 Now, it just so happens that two sort-of-middle-aged guys are sitting at the table right behind
us, and theyve been looking around with hungry eyes. Can you check em out without
being obvious about it? 
Aomame glanced back casually as instructed. A tables width away from the bar stood a
table with two middle-aged men. Both wore a suit and tie, and both looked like typical company
employees out for a drink after a hard days work. Their suits were not rumpled, and
their ties were not in bad taste. Neither man appeared unclean, at least. One was probably
just around forty, and the other not yet forty. The older one was thin with an oval face and a
receding hairline. The younger one had the look of a former college rugby player who had recently
started to put on weight from lack of exercise. His face still retained a certain youthfulness,
but he was beginning to grow thick around the chin. They were chatting pleasantly over
whiskey-and-waters, but their eyes were very definitely searching the room.
Ayumi began to analyze them. Id say theyre not used to places like this. Theyre here
looking for a good time, but they dont know how to approach girls. Theyre probably both
married. They have a kind of guilty look about them. 
Aomame was impressed with Ayumis precise powers of observation. She must have
taken all this in quite unnoticed while chatting away with Aomame. Maybe it was worth being
a member of the police family.
 The one with the thinning hair is more to your taste, isnt he? Ayumi asked. Ill take the
stocky one, okay? 
Aomame glanced backward again. The head shape of the thin-haired one was more or
less acceptable light-years away from Sean Connery, but worth a passing grade. She
couldnt ask too much on a night like this, with nothing but Queen and ABBA to listen to all
evening.
 Thats fine with me, Aomame said, but how are you going to get them to invite us to join
them? 
 Not by waiting for the sun to come up, thats for sure! We crash their party, all smiles. 
 Are you serious? 
 Of course I am! Just leave it to me Ill go over and start up a conversation. You wait
here. Ayumi took a healthy swig of her Tom Collins and rubbed her palms together. Then she
slung her Gucci bag over her shoulder and put on a brilliant smile.
 Okay, time for a little nightstick practice. 
1Q84
CHAPTER 12
Tengo
THY KINGDOM COME
The Professor turned to Fuka-Eri and said, Sorry to bother you, Eri, but could you make
us some tea? 
The girl stood up and left the reception room. The door closed quietly behind her. The Professor
waited, saying nothing, while Tengo, seated on the sofa, brought his breathing under
control and regained a normal state of consciousness. The Professor removed his blackframed
glasses and, after wiping them with a not-very-clean-looking handkerchief, put them
back on. Beyond the window, some kind of small, black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly.
Or it might have been someones soul being blown to the far side of the world.
 Im sorry, Tengo said. Im all right now. Just fine. Please go on with what you were saying. 
The Professor nodded and began to speak. There was nothing left of Akebono after that
violent gun battle. That happened in 1981, three years ago four years after Eri came here to
live. But the Akebono problem has nothing to do with what Im telling you now.
 Eri was ten years old when she started living with us. She just showed up on our doorstep
one day without warning, utterly changed from the Eri I had known until then. True, she
had never been very talkative, and she would not open up to strangers, but she had always
been fond of me and talked freely with me even as a toddler. When she first showed up here,
though, she was in no condition to talk to anybody. She seemed to have lost the power to
speak at all. The most she could do was nod or shake her head when we asked her questions. 
The Professor was speaking more clearly and rapidly now. Tengo sensed that he was trying
to move his story ahead while Fuka-Eri was out of the room.
 We could see that Eri had had a terrible time finding her way to us up here in the mountains.
She was carrying some cash and a sheet of paper with our address written on it, but
she had grown up in those isolated surroundings and she couldnt really speak. Even so, she
had managed, with the memo in hand, to make all the necessary transfers and find her way to
our doorstep.
 We could see immediately that something awful had happened to her. Azami and the woman
who helps me out here took care of her. After Eri had been with us a few days and
calmed down somewhat, I called the Sakigake commune and asked to speak with Fukada,
but I was told that he was ‘unable to come to the phone. I asked what the reason for that
might be, but couldnt get them to tell me. So then I asked to speak to Mrs. Fukada and was
told that she couldnt come to the phone either. I couldnt speak with either of them. 
 Did you tell the person on the phone that you had Eri with you? 
The Professor shook his head. No, I had a feeling Id better keep quiet about that as long
as I couldnt tell Fukada directly. Of course after that I tried to get in touch with him any number
of times, using every means at my disposal, but nothing worked. 
Tengo knit his brow. You mean to say you havent been able to contact her parents even
once in seven years? 
The Professor nodded. Not once. Seven years without a word. 
 And her parents never once tried to find their daughters whereabouts in seven years? 
 I know, its absolutely baffling. The Fukadas loved and treasured Eri more than anything.
And if Eri was going to go to someone for help, this was the only possible place. Both Fukada
and his wife had cut their ties with their families, and Eri grew up without knowing either set of
grandparents. Were the only people she could come to. Her parents had even told her this is
where she should come if anything ever happened to them. In spite of that, I havent heard a
word. Its unthinkable. 
Tengo asked, Didnt you say before that Sakigake was an open commune? 
 I did indeed. Sakigake had functioned consistently as an open commune since its founding,
but shortly before Eri escaped it had begun moving gradually toward a policy of confinement
from the outside. I first became aware of this when I started hearing less frequently from
Fukada. He had always been a faithful correspondent, sending me long letters about goings-on
in the commune or his current thoughts and feelings. At some point they just stopped
coming, and my letters were never answered. I tried calling, but they would never put him on
the phone. And the few times they did, we had only the briefest, most limited conversations.
Fukadas remarks were brusque, as if he was aware that someone was listening to us. 
The Professor clasped his hands on his knees.
 I went out to Sakigake a few times myself. I needed to talk to Fukada about Eri, and since
neither letters nor phone calls worked, the only thing left for me to do was to go directly to the
place. But they wouldnt let me into the compound. Far from it they chased me away from
the gate. Nothing I said had any effect on them. By then they had built a high fence around
the entire compound, and all outsiders were sent packing.
 There was no way to tell from the outside what was happening in the commune. If it were
Akebono, I could see the need for secrecy. They were aiming for armed revolution, and they
had a lot to hide. But Sakigake was peacefully running an organic farm, and they had always
adopted a consistently friendly posture toward the outside world, which was why the locals
liked them. But the place had since become an absolute fortress. The attitude and even the
facial expressions of the people inside had totally changed. The local people were just as stymied
as I was by the change in Sakigake. I was worried sick that something terrible had
happened to Fukada and his wife, but all I could do was take Eri under my wing. Since then,
seven years have gone by, with the situation as murky as ever. 
 You mean, you dont even know if Fukada is alive? Tengo asked.
 Not even that much, the Professor said with a nod. I have no way of knowing. Id rather
not think the worst, but I havent heard a word from Fukada in seven years. Under ordinary
circumstances, that would be unthinkable. I can only imagine that something has happened to
them. He lowered his voice. Maybe theyre being held in there against their will. Or possibly
its even worse than that. 
 ‘Even worse? 
 Im saying that not even the worst possibility can be excluded. Sakigake is no longer a
peaceful farming community. 
 Do you think the Sakigake group has started to move in a dangerous direction? 
 I do. The locals tell me that the number of people going in and out of there is much larger
than it used to be. Cars are constantly coming and going, most of them with Tokyo license
plates, and a lot of them are big luxury sedans you dont often see in the country. The number
of people in the commune has also suddenly increased, it seems. So has the number of buildings
and facilities, too, all fully equipped. Theyre increasingly aggressive about buying up the
surrounding land at low prices, and bringing in tractors and excavation equipment and concrete
mixers and such. They still do farming, which is probably their most important source of
income. The Sakigake brand of vegetables is better known than ever, and the commune is
shipping them directly to restaurants that capitalize on their use of natural ingredients. They
also have contractual agreements with high-quality supermarkets. Their profits must have
been rising all the while, but in parallel with that, they have apparently also been making
steady progress in something other than farming. Its inconceivable that sales of produce are
the only thing financing the large-scale expansion they have been undergoing. Whatever this
other thing theyre developing may be, their absolute secrecy has given the local people the
impression that it must be something they cant reveal to the general public. 
 Does this mean theyve started some kind of political activity again? Tengo asked.
 I doubt it, the Professor answered without hesitation. Sakigake always moved on a separate
axis from the political realm. It was for that very reason that at one point they had to let
the Akebono group go. 
 Yes, but after that, something happened inside Sakigake that made it necessary for Eri to
escape. 
 Something did happen, the Professor said. Something of great significance. Something
that made her leave her parents behind and run away by herself. But she has never said a
word about it. 
 Maybe she cant put it into words because it was too great a shock, or it somehow
scarred her for life. 
 No, shes never had that air about her, that she had experienced a great shock or that
she was afraid of something or that she was uneasy being alone and separated from her parents.
Shes just impassive. Still, she adapted to living here without a problem almost too
easily. 
The Professor glanced toward the door and then returned his gaze to Tengo.
 Whatever happened to Eri, I didnt want to pry it out of her. I felt that what she needed
was time. So I didnt question her. I pretended I wasnt concerned about her silence. She was
always with Azami. After Azami came home from school, they would rush through dinner and
shut themselves up in their room. What they would do in there, I have no idea. Maybe they
found a way to converse when they were alone together. I just let them do as they pleased,
without intruding. Aside from Eris not speaking, her living with us presented no problem. She
was a bright child, and she did what she was told. She and Azami were inseparable. Back
then, though, Eri couldnt go to school. She couldnt speak a word. I couldnt very well send
her to school that way. 
 Was it just you and Azami before that? 
 My wife died about ten years ago, the Professor said, pausing for a moment. She was
killed in a car crash. Instantly. A rear-ender. The two of us were left alone. We have a distant
relative, a woman, who lives nearby and helps us run the house. She also looks after both
girls. Losing my wife like that was terrible, for Azami and for me. It happened so quickly, we
had no way to prepare ourselves. So whatever brought Eri to us, we were glad to have her.
Even if we couldnt hold a conversation with her, just having her in the house was strangely
calming to both of us. Over these seven years, Eri has, though very slowly, regained the use
of words. To other people, she may sound odd or abnormal, but we can see she has made
remarkable progress. 
 Does she go to school now? Tengo asked.
 No, not really. Shes officially registered, but thats all. Realistically speaking, it was impossible
for her to keep up with school. I gave her individual instruction in my spare time, and
so did students of mine who came to the house. What she got was very fragmentary, of
course, nothing you could call a systematic education. She couldnt read books on her own,
so we would read out loud to her whenever we could, and I would give her books on tape.
That is about the sum total of the education she has received. But shes a startlingly bright
girl. Once she has made up her mind to learn something, she can absorb it very quickly,
deeply, and effectively. Her abilities on that score are amazing. But if something doesnt interest
her, she wont look at it twice. The difference is huge. 
The reception room door was still not opening. It was taking quite a bit of time for Eri to
boil water and make tea.
Tengo said, I gather Eri dictated the story Air Chrysalis to Azami. Is that correct? 
 As I said before, Eri and Azami would always shut themselves in their room at night, and I
didnt know what they were doing. They had their secrets. It does seem, however, that at
some point, Eris storytelling became a major part of their communication. Azami would take
notes or record Eris story and then type it into the computer in my study. Eri has gradually
been recovering her ability to experience emotion since then, I think. Her apathy was like a
membrane that covered everything, but that has been fading. Some degree of expression has
returned to her face, and she is more like the happy little girl we used to know. 
 So she is on the road to recovery? 
 Well, not entirely. Its still very uneven. But in general, youre right. Her recovery may well
have begun with her telling of her story. 
Tengo thought about this for a time. Then he changed the subject.
 Did you talk to the police about the loss of contact with Mr. and Mrs. Fukada? 
 Yes, I went to the local police. I didnt tell them about Eri, but I did say that I had been unable
to get in touch with my friends inside for a long time and I feared they were possibly being
held against their will. At the time, they said there was nothing they could do. The
Sakigake compound was private property, and without clear evidence that criminal activity
had taken place there, they were unable to set foot inside. I kept after them, but they wouldnt
listen to me. And then, after 1979, it became truly impossible to mount a criminal investigation
inside Sakigake. 
 Something happened in 1979? Tengo asked.
 That was the year that Sakigake was granted official recognition as a religion. 
Tengo was astounded. A religion?! 
 I know. Its incredible. Sakigake was designated a ‘Religious Juridical Person under the
Religious Corporation Law. The governor of Yamanashi Prefecture officially granted the title.
Once it had the ‘Religious Juridical Person label, Sakigake became virtually immune to any
criminal investigation by the police. Such a thing would be a violation of the freedom of religious
belief guaranteed by the Constitution. The Prefectural Police couldnt touch them.
 I myself was astounded when I heard about this from the police. I couldnt believe it at
first. Even after they showed it to me in writing and I saw it with my own eyes, I had trouble
believing it could be true. Fukada was one of my oldest friends. I knew him his character, his
personality. As a cultural anthropologist, my ties with religion were by no means shallow. Unlike
me, though, Fukada was a totally political being who approached everything with logic
and reason. He had, if anything, a visceral disgust for religion. There was no way he would
ever accept a ‘Religious Juridical Person designation even if he had strategic reasons for doing
so. 
 Obtaining such a designation couldnt be very easy, either, I would think. 
 Thats not necessarily the case, the Professor said. True, you have to go through a lot
of screenings and red tape, but if you pull the right political strings, you can clear such hurdles
fairly easily. Drawing distinctions between religions and cults has always been a delicate business.
Theres no hard and fast definition. Interpretation is everything. And where there is
room for interpretation, there is always room for political persuasion. Once you are certified to
be a ‘Religious Juridical Person, you can get preferential tax treatment and special legal protections. 
 In any case, Sakigake stopped being an ordinary agricultural commune and became a religious
organization a frighteningly closed-off religious organization, Tengo ventured.
 Yes, a ‘new religion, the Professor said. Or, to put it more bluntly, a cult. 
 I dont get it, Tengo said. Something major must have occurred for them to have undergone
such a radical conversion. 
The Professor stared at the backs of his hands, which had a heavy growth of kinky gray
hair. Youre right about that, of course, he said. Ive been wondering about it myself for a
very long time. Ive come up with all sorts of possibilities, but no final answers. What could
have caused it to happen? But theyve adopted a policy of such total secrecy, its impossible
to find out what is going on inside. And not only that, Fukada, who used to be the leader of
Sakigake, has never once publicly surfaced since they underwent their conversion. 
 And meanwhile, the Akebono faction ceased to exist after their gun battle three years
ago, Tengo said.
The Professor nodded. Sakigake survived once they had cut themselves off from Akebono,
and now theyre steadily developing as a religion. 
 Which means the gunfight was no great blow to Sakigake, I suppose. 
 Far from it, the Professor said. It was good advertising for them. Theyre smart. They
know how to turn things to their best advantage. In any case, this all happened after Eri left
Sakigake. As I said earlier, it has no direct connection with Eri. 
Tengo sensed that the Professor was hoping to change the subject. He asked him, Have
you yourself read Air Chrysalis? 
 Of course, the Professor answered.
 What did you think of it? 
 Its a very interesting story, the Professor said. Very evocative. Evocative of what,
though, Im not sure, to tell you the truth. I dont know what the blind goat is supposed to
mean, or the Little People, or the air chrysalis itself. 
 Do you think the story is hinting at something that Eri actually experienced or witnessed
in Sakigake? 
 Maybe so, but I cant tell how much is real and how much is fantasy. It seems like a kind
of myth, or it could be read as an ingenious allegory. 
 Eri told me the Little People actually exist, Tengo said.
A thoughtful frown crossed the Professors face when he heard this. He asked, Do you
think Air Chrysalis describes things that actually happened? 
Tengo shook his head. All Im trying to say is that every detail in the story is described
very realistically, and that this is a great strength of the work as a piece of fiction. 
 And by rewriting the story in your own words, with your own style, you are trying to put
that something the story is hinting at into a clearer form? Is that it? 
 Yes, if all goes well. 
 My specialty is cultural anthropology, the Professor said. I gave up being a scholar
some time ago, but Im still permeated with the spirit of the discipline. One aim of my field is to
relativize the images possessed by individuals, discover in these images the factors universal
to all human beings, and feed these universal truths back to those same individuals. As a result
of this process, people might be able to belong to something even as they maintain their
autonomy. Do you see what Im saying? 
 I think I do. 
 Perhaps that same process is what is being demanded of you. 
Tengo opened his hands on his knees. Sounds difficult. 
 But its probably worth a try. 
 Im not even sure Im qualified to do it. 
The Professor looked at Tengo. There was a special gleam in his eye now.
 What I would like to know is what happened to Eri inside Sakigake. Id also like to know
the fate of Fukada and his wife. Ive done my best over the past seven years to shed light on
these questions, but I havent managed to grasp a single clue. I always come up against a
thick, solid wall standing in my way. The key to unlock the mystery may be hidden in Air
Chrysalis. As long as there is such a possibility, however slim, I want to pursue it. I have no
idea whether you are qualified to do the job, but I do know that you think highly of the story
and are deeply involved in it. Perhaps that is qualification enough. 
 There is something I have to ask you, though, and I need to receive a clear yes or no
from you, Tengo said. Its what I came to see you about today. Do I have your permission to
rewrite Air Chrysalis? 
The Professor nodded. Then he said, I myself am looking forward to reading your rewrite,
and I know that Eri seems to have a great deal of faith in you. She doesnt have anyone else
she can look to like that aside from Azami and me, of course. So you ought to give it a try.
Well put the work in your hands. In a word, the answer is yes. 
When the Professor stopped speaking, a heavy silence settled over the room like a finalized
destiny. At precisely that moment, Fuka-Eri came in with the tea.
On the way back to the city, Tengo was alone. Fuka-Eri went out to walk the dog. The
Professor called a cab that took Tengo to Futamatao Station in time for the next train. Tengo
transferred to the Chuo Line at Tachikawa.
When the train reached Mitaka, a mother and her little girl got on and sat across from
Tengo. Both were neatly dressed. Their clothing was by no means expensive or new, but all
items were clean and well cared for, the whites exceptionally white, and everything nicely
ironed. The girl was probably a second or third grader, with large eyes and good features.
The mother was quite thin. She wore her hair tied in a bun in back, had black-framed glasses,
and carried a faded bag of thick cloth. The bag seemed to be crammed full of something. The
mothers features were also nicely symmetrical, but a hint of nervous exhaustion showed at
her eyes outer edges, making her look older than she probably was. It was only mid-April, but
she carried a parasol, on which the cloth was wrapped so tightly around the pole that it looked
like a dried-out club.
The two sat beside each other in unbroken silence. The mother looked as though she
might be devising a plan. The girl seemed at a loss for something to do. She looked at her
shoes, at the floor, at ads hanging from the train ceiling, and now and then she stole a glance
at Tengo sitting opposite her. His large build and his cauliflower ears seemed to have aroused
her interest. Little children often looked at Tengo that way, as if he were some kind of rare but
harmless animal. The girl kept her body and head very still, allowing just her eyes to dart
around from object to object.
The mother and child left the train at Ogikubo. As the train was slowing to a stop, the
mother rose quickly to her feet, parasol in her left hand and cloth bag in her right. She said
nothing to the girl, who also quickly left her seat and followed her out of the car. As she was
standing, though, the girl took one last look at Tengo. In her eyes, he saw a strange light, a
kind of appeal or plea directed at him. It was only a faint, momentary gleam, but Tengo was
able to catch it. She was sending out some kind of signal, he felt. Even if this were true, of
course, and it was a signal meant for him, there was nothing he could do. He had no knowledge
of her situation, nor could he become involved with her. The girl left the train with her
mother at Ogikubo Station, and Tengo, still in his seat, continued on toward the next station.
Three middle school students now sat where the girl had been sitting. They started jabbering
about the practice test they had just taken, but still there lingered in their place the after-image
of the silent girl.
The girls eyes reminded Tengo of another girl, one who had been in Tengos third- and
fourth-grade classes. She, too, had looked at him stared hard at him with eyes like this
one …
The girls parents had belonged to a religious organization called the Society of Witnesses.
A Christian sect, the Witnesses preached the coming of the end of the world. They
were fervent proselytizers and lived their lives by the Bible. They would not condone the
transfusion of blood, for example. This greatly limited their chances of surviving serious injury
in a traffic accident. Undergoing major surgery was virtually impossible for them. On the other
hand, when the end of the world came, they could survive as Gods chosen people and live a
thousand years in a world of ultimate happiness.
Like the little girl on the train, the one whose parents were Witnesses also had big, beautiful
eyes. Impressive eyes. Nice features. But her face always seemed to be covered by a kind
of opaque membrane. It was meant to expunge her presence. She never spoke to people unless
it was absolutely necessary. Her face never showed emotion. She kept her thin lips compressed
in a perfectly straight line.
Tengo first took an interest in the girl when he saw her out on weekends with her mother,
doing missionary work. Children in Witness families were expected to begin accompanying
their parents in missionary activity as soon as they were old enough to walk. From the time
she was three, the girl walked from door to door, mostly with her mother, handing out pamphlets
titled Before the Flood and expounding on the Witnesses doctrines. The mother would
explain in basic language the many signs of coming destruction that were apparent in the
present world. She referred to God as the Lord. At most homes, of course, they would have
the door slammed in their faces. This was because their doctrines were simply too narrow-minded,
too one-sided, too divorced from reality or at least from what most people
thought of as reality. Once in a great while, however, they would find someone who was willing
to listen to them. There were people in the world who wanted someone to talk to about
anything, no matter what. Among these few individuals, there would occasionally be the exceedingly
rare person who would actually attend one of their meetings. They would go from
house to house, ringing doorbells, in search of that one person in a thousand. They had been
entrusted with the sacred duty to guide the world toward an awakening, however minimal,
through their continued efforts. The more taxing their duty, the higher the thresholds, and the
more radiant was the bliss that would be granted them.
Whenever Tengo saw her, the girl was making the rounds, proselytizing with her mother.
In one hand, the mother held a cloth bag stuffed with copies of Before the Flood, and the other
hand usually held a parasol. The girl followed a few steps behind, lips compressed in a
straight line as always, face expressionless. Tengo passed the girl on the street several times
this way while he was making the rounds with his father, collecting NHK subscription fees. He
would recognize her, and she would recognize him. Whenever this happened, he thought he
could see some kind of secret gleam in her eye. Of course, they never spoke. No greeting
passed between them. Tengos father was too busy trying to increase his collections, and the
girls mother was too busy preaching the coming end of the world. The boy and girl simply
rushed past each other on the Sunday street in their parents wake, exchanging momentary
glances.
All the children in their class knew that the girl was a Witness believer. For religious reasons, 
she never participated in the schools Christmas events or in school outings or study
tours when these involved visits to Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples. Nor did she participate
in athletic meets or the singing of the school song or the national anthem. Such behavior,
which could only be viewed as extreme, served increasingly to isolate the girl from her classmates.
The girl was also required to recite in a loud, clear voice, so that the other children
could hear every word a special prayer before she ate her school lunches. Not surprisingly,
her classmates found this utterly creepy. She could not have been all that eager to perform in
front of them. But it had been instilled in her that prayers must be recited before meals, and
you were not allowed to omit them simply because no other believers were there to observe
you. The Lord saw everything every little thing from on high.
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may
Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our
humble pathways. Amen.
How strange a thing is memory! Tengo could recall every word of her prayer even though
he hadnt heard it for twenty years. May Thy kingdom come to us. What kind of kingdom
could that be? Tengo, as an elementary school boy, had wondered each time he heard the
girls prayer. Did that kingdom have NHK? No, probably not. If there was no NHK, there would
be no fee collections, of course. If that was true, maybe the sooner the kingdom came, the
better.
Tengo had never said a word to the girl. They were in the same class, but there had been
no opportunity for them to talk directly to each other. She always kept to herself, and would
not talk to anyone unless she had to. The atmosphere of the classroom provided no opportunity
for him to go over and talk to her. In his heart, though, Tengo sympathized with her. On
Sundays, children should be allowed to play with other children to their hearts content, not
made to go around threatening people until they paid their fees or frightening people with
warnings about the impending end of the world. Such work to the extent that it is necessary
at all should be done by adults.
Tengo did once extend a helping hand to the girl in the wake of a minor incident. It
happened in the autumn when they were in the fourth grade. One of the other pupils reprimanded
the girl when they were seated at the same table performing an experiment in science.
Tengo could not recall exactly what her mistake had been, but as a result a boy made fun of
her for handing out stupid pamphlets door to door. He also called her Lord. This was a
rather unusual development which is to say that, instead of bullying or teasing her, the other
children usually just ignored her, treating her as if she didnt exist. When it came to a joint
activity such as a science experiment, however, there was no way for them to exclude her.
On this occasion, the boys words contained a good deal of venom. Tengo was in the group at
the next table, but he found it impossible to pretend that he had not heard anything. Exactly
why, he could not be sure, but he could not leave it alone.
Tengo went to the other table and told the girl she should join his group. He did this almost
reflexively, without deep thought or hesitation. He then gave the girl a detailed explanation of
the experiment. She paid close attention to his words, understood them, and corrected her
mistake. This was the second year that she and Tengo were in the same class, but it was the
first time he ever spoke to her (and the last). Tengo had excellent grades, and he was a big,
strong boy, whom the others treated with respect, so no one teased him for having come to
the girls defense at least not then and there. But later his standing in the class seemed to
fall a notch, as though he had caught some of her impurity.
Tengo never let that bother him. He knew that she was just an ordinary girl.
But they never spoke again after that. There was no need or opportunity to do so.
Whenever their eyes happened to meet, however, a hint of tension would show on her face.
He could sense it. Perhaps, he thought, she was bothered by what he had done for her during
the science experiment. Maybe she was angry at him and wished that he had just left her
alone. He had difficulty judging what she felt about the matter. He was still a child, after all,
and could not yet read subtle psychological shifts from a persons expression.
Then, one day, the girl took Tengos hand. It happened on a sunny afternoon in early
December. Beyond the classroom window, he could see the clear sky and a straight, white
cloud. Class had been dismissed, and the two of them happened to be the last to leave after
the children had finished cleaning the room. No one else was there. She strode quickly across
the room, heading straight for Tengo, as if she had just made up her mind about something.
She stood next to him and, without the slightest hesitation, grabbed his hand and looked up at
him. (He was ten centimeters taller, so she had to look up.) Taken by surprise, Tengo looked
back at her. Their eyes met. In hers, he could see a transparent depth that he had never seen
before. She went on holding his hand for a very long time, saying nothing, but never once relaxing
her powerful grip. Then, without warning, she dropped his hand and dashed out of the
classroom, skirts flying.
Tengo had no idea what had just happened to him. He went on standing there, at a loss
for words. His first thought was how glad he felt that they had not been seen by anyone. Who
knew what kind of commotion it could have caused? He looked around, relieved at first, but
then he felt deeply shaken.
The mother and daughter who sat across from him between Mitaka and Ogikubo could
well have been Witness believers themselves. They might even have been headed for their
usual Sunday missionary activity. But no, they were more likely just a normal mother and
daughter on their way to a lesson the girl was taking. The cloth sack might have been holding
books of piano music or a calligraphy set. Im just being hypersensitive to lots of things,
Tengo thought. He closed his eyes and released a long, slow breath. Time flows in strange
ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.
At home, Tengo fixed himself a simple dinner. Come to think of it, he hadnt had lunch.
When he was through eating, he thought about calling Komatsu, who would be wanting to
hear the results of his meeting. But this was Sunday; Komatsu wouldnt be at the office.
Tengo didnt know his home phone number. Oh well, if he wants to know how it went, he can
call me.
The phone rang as the hands of the clock passed ten and Tengo was thinking of going to
bed. He assumed it was Komatsu, but the voice on the phone turned out to be that of his married
older girlfriend. I wont be able to get away very long, but do you mind if I come over for
a quick visit the day after tomorrow in the afternoon? she asked.
He heard some notes on a piano in the background. Her husband must not be home yet,
he guessed. Fine, he said. If she came over, his rewriting of Air Chrysalis would be interrupted
for a time, but when he heard her voice, Tengo realized how much he desired her. After
hanging up he went to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of Wild Turkey, and drank it
straight, standing by the sink. Then he went to bed, read a few pages of a book, and fell
asleep.
This brought Tengos long, strange Sunday to an end.
1Q84
CHAPTER 13
Aomame
A BORN VICTIM
When she woke, she realized what a serious hangover she was going to have. Aomame
never had hangovers. No matter how much she drank, the next morning her head would be
clear and she could go straight into her next activity. This was a point of pride for her. But
today was different. She felt a dull throbbing in her temples and she saw everything through a
thin haze. It felt as if she had an iron ring tightening around her skull. The hands of the clock
had passed ten, and the late-morning light jabbed deep into her eyeballs. A motorcycle tearing
down the street out front filled the room with the groaning of a torture machine.
She was naked in her own bed, but she had absolutely no idea how she had managed to
make it back. Most of the clothes she had been wearing the night before were scattered all
over the floor. She must have torn them off her body. Her shoulder bag was on the desk.
Stepping over the scattered clothes, she went to the kitchen and drank one glass of water
after another from the tap. Going from there to the bathroom, she washed her face with cold
water and looked at her naked body in the big mirror. Close inspection revealed no bruises.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Still, her lower body retained a trace of that special feeling that
was always there the morning after an intense night of sex the sweet lassitude that comes
from having your insides powerfully churned. She seemed to notice, too, an unfamiliar sensation
between her buttocks. My god, Aomame thought, pressing her fingers against her
temples. They did it there, too? Damn, I dont remember a thing.
With her brain still clouded and her hand against the wall, she took a hot shower, scrubbing
herself all over with soap and water in hopes of expunging the memory or the nameless
something close to a memory of last night. She washed her genitals and anus with special
care. She also washed her hair. Next she brushed her teeth to rid her mouth of its sticky
taste, cringing all the while from the mint flavor of the toothpaste. Finally she picked up last
nights underthings and stockings from the bedroom floor and, averting her gaze, threw them
in the laundry basket.
She examined the contents of the shoulder bag on the table. The wallet was right where it
belonged, as were her credit and ATM cards. Most of her money was in there, too. The only
cash she had spent last night, apparently, was for the return taxi fare, and the only things
missing from the bag were some of her condoms four, to be exact. Why four? The wallet
contained a folded sheet of memo paper with a Tokyo telephone number. She had absolutely
no memory of whose phone number it could be.
She stretched out in bed again and tried to remember what she could about last night. Ayumi
went over to the mens table, arranged everything in her charming way, the four had
drinks and the mood was good. The rest unfolded in the usual manner. They took two rooms
in a nearby business hotel. As planned, Aomame had sex with the thin-haired one, and Ayumi
took the big, young one. The sex wasnt bad. Aomame and her man took a bath together and
then engaged in a long, deliberate session of oral sex. She made sure he wore a condom before
penetration took place.
An hour later the phone rang, and Ayumi asked if it was all right for the two of them to
come to the room so they could have another little drink together. Aomame agreed, and a few
minutes later Ayumi and her man came in. They ordered a bottle of whiskey and some ice
and drank that as a foursome.
What happened after that, Aomame could not clearly recall. She was drunk almost as
soon as all four were together again, it seemed. The choice of drink might have done it;
Aomame almost never drank whiskey. Or she might have let herself get careless, having a female
companion nearby instead of being alone with a man. She vaguely remembered that
they changed partners. I was in bed with the young one, and Ayumi did it with the thin-haired
one on the sofa. Im pretty sure that was it. And after that … everything after that is in a deep
fog. I cant remember a thing. Oh well, maybe its better that way. Let me just forget the whole
thing. I had some wild sex, thats all. Ill probably never see those guys again.
But did the second guy wear a condom? That was the one thing that worried Aomame. I
wouldnt want to get pregnant or catch something from such a stupid mistake. Its probably
okay, though. I wouldnt slip up on that, even if I was drunk out of my mind.
Hmm, did I have some work scheduled today? No work. Its Saturday. No work on Saturday.
Oh, wait. I do have one thing. At three oclock Im supposed to go to the Willow House
and do muscle stretching with the dowager. She had to see the doctor for some kind of test
yesterday. Tamaru called a few days ago to see if I could switch our appointment to today. I
totally forgot. But Ive got four and a half hours left until three oclock. My headache should be
gone by then, and my brain will be a lot clearer.
She made herself some hot coffee and forced a few cups into her stomach. Then she
spent the rest of the morning in bed, with nothing but a bathrobe on, staring at the ceiling.
That was the most she could get herself to do stare at the ceiling. Not that the ceiling had
anything of interest about it. But she couldnt complain. Ceilings werent put on rooms to
amuse people. The clock advanced to noon, but she still had no appetite. Motorcycle and car
engines still echoed in her head. This was her first authentic hangover.
All of that sex did seem to have done her body a lot of good, though. Having a man hold
her and gaze at her naked body and caress her and lick her and bite her and penetrate her
and give her orgasms had helped release the tension of the spring wound up inside her. True,
the hangover felt terrible, but that feeling of release more than made up for it.
But how long am I going to keep this up? Aomame wondered. How long can I keep it up?
Ill be thirty soon, and before long forty will come into view.
She decided not to think about this anymore. Ill get to it later, when I have more time. Not
that Im faced with any deadlines at the moment. Its just that, to think seriously about such
matters, Im 
At that point the phone rang. It seemed to roar in Aomames ears, like a super-express
train in a tunnel. She staggered from the bed and lifted the receiver. The hands on the large
wall clock were pointing to twelve thirty.
A husky female voice spoke her name. It was Ayumi.
 Yes, its me, she answered.
 Are you okay? You sound like youve just been run over by a bus. 
 Thats maybe not far off. 
 Hangover? 
 Yeah, a bad one, Aomame said. How did you know my home phone? 
 You dont remember? You wrote it down for me. Mine should be in your wallet. We were
talking about getting together soon. 
 Oh, yeah? I dont remember a thing. 
 I thought you might not. I was worried about you. Thats why Im calling, Ayumi said. I
wanted to make sure you got home okay. I did manage to get you into a cab at Roppongi
Crossing and tell the driver your address, though. 
Aomame sighed. I dont remember, but I guess I made it here. I woke up in my own bed. 
 Well, thats good. 
 What are you doing now? 
 Im working, what Im supposed to be doing, Ayumi said. Ive been riding around in a
mini patrol and writing parking tickets since ten oclock. Im taking a break right now. 
 Very impressive, Aomame said. She meant it.
 Im a little sleep deprived, of course. Last night was fun, though! Best time I ever had,
thanks to you. 
Aomame pressed her fingertips against her temples. To tell you the truth, I dont remember
much of the second half. After you guys came to our room, I mean. 
 What a waste! Ayumi said in all seriousness. It was amazing! The four of us did
everything. You wouldnt believe it. It was like a porno movie. You and I played lesbians. And
then 
Aomame rushed to cut her off. Never mind all that. I just want to know if I was using condoms.
Thats what worries me. I cant remember. 
 Of course you were. Im very strict about that. I made absolutely sure, so dont worry. I
mean, when Im not writing tickets I go around to high schools in the ward, holding assemblies
for the girls and teaching them, like, the right way to put on condoms. I give very detailed instructions. 
 The right way to put on condoms? Aomame was shocked. What is a policewoman doing
teaching stuff like that to high school kids? 
 Well, the original idea was for me to give information to prevent sex crimes, like the
danger of date rape or what to do about gropers on the subway, but I figure as long as Im at
it, I can add my own personal message about condoms. A certain amount of student sex is
unavoidable, so I tell them to make sure they avoid pregnancy and venereal disease. I cant
say it quite that directly, of course, with their teachers in the room. Anyhow, its like professional
instinct with me. No matter how much Ive been drinking, I never forget. So you dont
have to worry. Youre clean. ‘No condom, no penetration. Thats my motto. 
 Thank you, Aomame said. Thats a huge relief. 
 Hey, want to hear about all the stuff we did? 
 Maybe later, Aomame said, expelling the congealed air that had been sitting in her
lungs. Ill let you tell me the juicy details some other time. If you did it now, my head would
split in two. 
 Okay, I get it. Next time I see you, then, Ayumi said brightly. You know, ever since I
woke up Ive been thinking what a great team we can make. Mind if I call you again? When I
get in the mood for another night like last night, I mean. 
 Sure, Aomame said.
 Oh, great. 
 Thanks for the call. 
 Take care of yourself, Ayumi said, and hung up.
Her brain was much clearer by two oclock, thanks to the black coffee and a nap. Her
headache was gone, too, thankfully. All that was left of her hangover was a slight heavy feeling
in her muscles. She left the apartment carrying her gym bag without the special ice pick,
of course, just a change of clothes and a towel. Tamaru met her at the front door as usual.
He showed her to a long, narrow sunroom. A large open window faced the garden, but it
was covered by a lace curtain for privacy. A row of potted plants stood on the windowsill.
Tranquil baroque music played from a small ceiling speaker a sonata for recorder and harpsichord.
In the middle of the room stood a massage table. The dowager was already lying
facedown on top of it, wearing a white robe.
When Tamaru left the room, Aomame changed into looser clothing. The dowager turned
her head to watch Aomame change from her perch on the massage table. Aomame was not
concerned about being seen naked by a member of the same sex. It was an everyday occurrence
for team athletes, and the dowager herself was nearly naked during a massage, which
made checking the condition of her muscles that much easier. Aomame took off her cotton
pants and blouse, putting on a matching jersey top and bottom. She folded her street clothing
and set them down in a corner.
 Youre so firm and well toned, the dowager said. Sitting up, she took off her robe, leaving
only thin silk on top and bottom.
 Thank you, Aomame said.
 I used to be built like you. 
 I can tell that, Aomame said. Even now, in her seventies, the dowager retained physical
traces of youth. Her body shape had not disintegrated, and even her breasts had a degree of
firmness. Moderate eating and daily exercise had preserved her natural beauty. Aomame
guessed that this had been supplemented with a touch of plastic surgery some periodic
wrinkle removal, and some lifting around the eyes and mouth.
 Your body is still quite lovely, Aomame said.
The dowagers lips curled slightly. Thank you, but its nothing like it used to be. 
Aomame did not reply to this.
 I gained great pleasure from my body back then. I gave great pleasure with it, too, if you
know what I mean. 
 I do, Aomame said.
 And are you enjoying yours? 
 Now and then, Aomame said.
 Now and then may not be enough, the dowager said, lying facedown again. You have to
enjoy it while youre still young. Enjoy it to the fullest. You can use the memories of what you
did to warm your body after you get old and cant do it anymore. 
Aomame recalled the night before. Her anus still retained a slight feeling of having been
penetrated. Would memories of this actually warm her body in old age?
Aomame placed her hands on the dowagers body and concentrated on stretching one set
of muscles after another. Now the earlier remaining dullness in her own body was gone. Once
she had changed her clothes and touched the dowagers flesh, her nerves had sharpened into
clarity.
Aomames fingers traced the dowagers muscles as though following roads on a map. She
remembered in detail the degree of each muscles tension and stiffness and resistance the
way a pianist memorizes a long score. In matters concerning the body, Aomame possessed
minute powers of memory. And if she should forget, her fingers remembered. If a muscle felt
the slightest bit different than usual, she would stimulate it from various angles using varying
degrees of strength, checking to see what kind of response she got from it, whether pain or
pleasure or numbness. She would not simply loosen the knots in a pulled muscle but direct
the dowager to move it using her own strength. Of course there were parts of the body that
could not be relieved merely by her own strength, and for those parts, Aomame concentrated
on stretching. What muscles most appreciated and welcomed, however, was daily self-help
efforts.
 Does this hurt? Aomame asked. The dowagers groin muscles were far stiffer than usual nastily
so. Placing her hand in the hollow of the dowagers pelvis, Aomame very slightly
bent her thigh at a special angle.
 A lot, the dowager said, grimacing.
 Good, Aomame said. Its good that you feel pain. If it stopped hurting, youd have
something seriously wrong with you. This is going to hurt a little more. Can you stand it? 
 Yes, of course, the dowager said. There was no need to ask her each time. She could
tolerate a great deal of pain. Most of the time, she bore it in silence. She might grimace but
she would never cry out. Aomame had often made big, strong men cry out in pain from her
massages. She had to admire the dowagers strength of will.
Setting her right elbow against the dowager like a fulcrum, Aomame bent her thigh still
farther. The joint moved with a dull snap. The dowager gasped, but she made no sound with
her voice.
 That should do it for you, Aomame said. Youll feel a lot better. 
The dowager released a great sigh. Sweat glistened on her forehead. Thank you, she
murmured.
Aomame spent a full hour unknotting muscles all over the dowagers body, stimulating
them, stretching them, and loosening joints. The process involved a good deal of pain, but
without such pain nothing would be resolved. Both Aomame and the dowager knew this perfectly
well, and so they spent the hour almost wordlessly. The recorder sonata ended at some
point, and the CD player fell silent. All that could be heard was the calls of birds in the garden.
 My whole body feels so light now! the dowager said after some time had passed. She
was slumped facedown on the massage table, the large towel spread beneath her dark with
sweat.
 Im glad, Aomame said.
 Its such a help to have you with me! Id hate for you to leave. 
 Dont worry, I have no plans to go anywhere just yet. 
The dowager seemed to hesitate for a moment, and only after a brief silence she asked, I
dont mean to get too personal, but do you have someone youre in love with? 
 I do, Aomame said.
 Im glad to hear that. 
 Unfortunately, though, hes not in love with me. 
 This may be an odd thing to ask, but why do you think he doesnt love you? Objectively
speaking, I think you are a fascinating young woman. 
 He doesnt even know I exist. 
The dowager took a few minutes to think about what Aomame had said.
 Dont you have any desire to convey to him the fact that you do exist? 
 Not at this point, Aomame said.
 Is there something standing in the way something preventing you from taking the initiative? 
 There are a few things, most of which have to do with my own feelings. 
The dowager looked at Aomame with apparent admiration. Ive met lots of odd people in
my lifetime, but you may be one of the oddest. 
Aomame relaxed the muscles around her mouth somewhat. Theres nothing odd about
me. Im just honest about my own feelings. 
 You mean that once youve decided on a rule, you follow it? 
 Thats it. 
 So youre a little stubborn, and you tend to be short-tempered. 
 That may be true. 
 But last night you went kind of wild. 
Aomame blushed. How do you know that? 
 Looking at your skin. And I can smell it. Your body still has traces of it. Getting old
teaches you a lot. 
Aomame frowned momentarily. I need that kind of thing. Now and then. I know its nothing
to brag about. 
The dowager reached out and gently placed her hand on Aomames.
 Of course you need that kind of thing once in a while. Dont worry, Im not blaming you.
Its just that I feel you ought to have a more ordinary kind of happiness marry someone you
love, happy ending. 
 I wouldnt mind that myself. But it wont be so easy. 
 Why not? 
Aomame did not answer this. She had no simple explanation.
 If you ever feel like talking to someone about these personal matters, please talk to me, 
the dowager said, withdrawing her hand from Aomames and toweling the sweat from her
face. About anything at all. I might have something I can do for you. 
 Thanks very much, Aomame said.
 Some things cant be solved just by going wild every now and then. 
 Youre absolutely right. 
 You are not doing anything that will destroy you? the dowager said. Nothing at all?
Youre sure of that, are you? 
 Yes, Im sure, Aomame said. Shes right. Im not doing anything that is going to destroy
me. Still, there is something quiet left behind. Like sediment in a bottle of wine.
Even now, Aomame still recalled the events surrounding the death of Tamaki Otsuka. It
tore her apart to think that she could no longer see and talk to Tamaki. Tamaki was the first
real friend she ever had. They could tell each other everything. Aomame had had no one like
that before Tamaki, and no one since. Nor could anyone take her place. Had she never met
Tamaki, Aomame would have led a far more miserable and gloomy life.
She and Tamaki were the same age. They had been teammates in the softball club of
their public high school. From middle school into high school, Aomame had been passionately
devoted to the game of softball. She had joined reluctantly at first when begged to help fill out
a shorthanded team, and her early efforts were halfhearted at best, but eventually softball became
her reason for living. She clung to the game the way a person clings to a post when a
storm threatens to blow him away. And though she had never realized it before, Aomame was
a born athlete. She became a central member of both her middle and high school teams and
helped them breeze through one tournament after another. This gave her something very
close to self-confidence (but only close: it was not, strictly speaking, self-confidence). Her
greatest joy in life was knowing that her importance to the team was by no means small and
that, as narrow as that world might be, she had been granted a definite place in it. Someone
needed her.
Aomame was pitcher and cleanup batter literally the central player of the team, both on
offense and defense. Tamaki Otsuka played second base, the linchpin of the team, and she
also served as captain. Tamaki was small but had great reflexes and knew how to use her
brain. She could read all the complications of a situation instantaneously. With each pitch, she
knew toward which side to incline her center of gravity, and as soon as the batter connected
with the ball, she could gauge the direction of the hit and move to cover the proper position.
Not a lot of infielders could do that. Her powers of judgment had saved the team from many a
tight spot. She was not a distance hitter like Aomame, but her batting was sharp and precise,
and she was quick on her feet. She was also an outstanding leader. She brought the team together
as a unit, planned strategy, gave everyone valuable advice, and fired them up on the
field. Her coaching was tough, but she won the other players confidence, as a result of which
the team grew stronger day by day. They went as far as the championship game in the Tokyo
regional playoffs and even made it to the national interscholastic tournament. Both Aomame
and Tamaki were chosen to be on the Kanto area all-star team.
Aomame and Tamaki recognized each others talents and without either taking the initiative naturally
drew close until each had become the others best friend. They spent long
hours together on team trips to away games. They told each other about their backgrounds,
concealing nothing. When she was a fifth grader, Aomame had made up her mind to break
with her parents and had gone to live with an uncle on her mothers side. The uncles family
understood her situation and welcomed her warmly as a member of the household, but it was,
ultimately, not her family. She felt lonely and hungry for love. Unsure where she was to find a
purpose or meaning to her life, she passed one formless day after another. Tamaki came
from a wealthy household of some social standing, but her parents terrible relationship had
turned the home into a wasteland. Her father almost never came home, and her mother often
fell into states of mental confusion. She would suffer from terrible headaches, and was unable
to leave her bed sometimes for days at a time. Tamaki and her younger brother were all but
ignored. They often ate at neighborhood restaurants or fast-food places or made do with
ready-made boxed lunches. Each girl, then, had her reasons for becoming obsessed with
softball.
Given all their problems, the two lonely girls had a mountain of things to tell each other.
When they took a trip together one summer, they touched each others naked bodies in the
hotel bed. It happened just that one time, spontaneously, and neither of them ever talked
about it. But because it had happened, their relationship grew all the deeper and all the more
conspiratorial.
Aomame kept playing softball after her graduation from high school when she went on to a
private college of physical education. Having won a national reputation as an outstanding
softball player, she was recruited and given a special scholarship. In college, too, she was a
key member of the team. While devoting much energy to softball, she was also interested in
sports medicine and started studying it in earnest, along with martial arts.
Tamaki entered the law program in a first-rank private university. She stopped playing
softball upon graduating from high school. For an outstanding student like Tamaki, softball
was merely a phase. She intended to take the bar exam and become a lawyer. Though their
paths in life diverged, Aomame and Tamaki remained best friends. Aomame lived in a college
dormitory with free room and board while Tamaki continued commuting from her family home.
The place was as much of an emotional wasteland as ever, but at least it gave her economic
freedom. The two would meet once a week to share a meal and catch up. They never ran out
of things to talk about.
Tamaki lost her virginity in the autumn of her first year in college. The man was one year
older than Tamaki, a fellow member of the college tennis club. He invited her to his room after
a club party, and there he forced her to have sex with him. Tamaki had liked this man, which
was why she had accepted the invitation to his room, but the violence with which he forced
her into having sex and his narcissistic, self-centered manner came as a terrible shock. She
quit the tennis club and went into a period of depression. The experience left her with a profound
feeling of powerlessness. Her appetite disappeared, and she lost fifteen pounds. All
she had wanted from the man was a degree of understanding and sympathy. If he had shown
a trace of it and had taken the time to prepare her, the mere physical giving of herself to him
would have been no great problem. She found it impossible to understand his actions. Why
did he have to become so violent? It had been absolutely unnecessary!
Aomame comforted Tamaki and advised her to find a way to punish him, but Tamaki could
not agree. Her own carelessness had been a part of it, she said, and it was too late now to
lodge any complaints. I bear some responsibility for going to his room alone, she said. All I
can do now is forget about it. But it was painfully clear to Aomame how deeply her friend had
been wounded by the incident. This was not about the mere loss of her virginity but rather the
sanctity of an individual human beings soul. No one had the right to invade such sacred precincts
with muddy feet. And once it happened, that sense of powerlessness could only keep
gnawing away at a person.
Aomame decided to take it upon herself to punish the man. She got his address from Tamaki
and went to his apartment carrying a softball bat in a plastic blueprint tube. Tamaki was
away for the day in Kanazawa, attending a relatives memorial service or some such thing,
which was a perfect alibi. Aomame checked to be sure the man was not at home. She used a
screwdriver and hammer to break the lock on his door. Then she wrapped a towel around the
bat several times to dampen the noise and proceeded to smash everything in the apartment
that was smashable the television, the lamps, the clocks, the records, the toaster, the vases:
she left nothing whole. She cut the telephone cord with scissors, cracked the spines of all the
books and scattered their pages, spread the entire contents of a toothpaste tube and shaving
cream canister on the rug, poured Worcestershire sauce on the bed, took notebooks from a
drawer and ripped them to pieces, broke every pen and pencil in two, shattered every lightbulb,
slashed all the curtains and cushions with a kitchen knife, took scissors to every shirt in
the dresser, poured a bottle of ketchup into the underwear and sock drawers, pulled out the
refrigerator fuse and threw it out a window, ripped the flapper out of the toilet tank and tore it
apart, and crushed the bathtubs showerhead. The destruction was utterly deliberate and
complete. The room looked very much like the recent news photos she had seen of the
streets of Beirut after the shelling.
Tamaki was an intelligent girl (with grades in school that Aomame could never hope to
match), and in softball she had always been on her toes. Whenever Aomame got herself into
a difficult situation on the mound, Tamaki would run over to her, offer her a few quick words of
advice, flash her a smile, pat her on the butt with her glove, and go back to her position in the
infield. Her view of things was broad, her heart was warm, and she had a good sense of humor.
She put a great deal of effort into her schoolwork and could speak with real eloquence.
Had she continued with her studies, she would undoubtedly have made a fine lawyer.
In the presence of men, however, Tamakis powers of judgment fell totally to pieces. Tamaki
liked handsome men. She was a sucker for good looks. As Aomame saw it, this tendency
of her friends ranked as a sickness. Tamaki could meet men of marvelous character or
with superior talents who were eager to woo her, but if their looks did not meet her standards,
she was utterly unmoved. For some reason, the ones who aroused her interest were always
sweet-faced men with nothing inside. And when it came to men, she would stubbornly resist
anything Aomame might have to say. Tamaki was always ready to accept and even respect Aomames
opinions on other matters, but if Aomame criticized her choice of boyfriend,
Tamaki simply refused to listen. Aomame eventually gave up trying to advise her. She didnt
want to quarrel with Tamaki and destroy their friendship. Ultimately, it was Tamakis life. All
Aomame could do was let her live it. Tamaki became involved with many men during her college
years, and each one led to trouble. They would always betray her, wound her, and abandon
her, leaving Tamaki each time in a state close to madness. Twice she resorted to abortions.
Where relations with the opposite sex were concerned, Tamaki was truly a born victim.
Aomame never had a steady boyfriend. She was asked out on dates now and then, and
she thought that a few of the men were not at all bad, but she never let herself become
deeply involved.
Tamaki asked her, Are you going to stay a virgin the rest of your life? 
 Im too busy for that, Aomame would say. I can barely keep my life going day to day. I
dont have time to be fooling around with a boyfriend. 
After graduation, Tamaki stayed on in graduate school to prepare for the bar exam.
Aomame went to work for a company that made sports drinks and health food, and she
played for the companys softball team. Tamaki continued to commute from home, while
Aomame went to live in the company dorm in Yoyogi Hachiman. As in their student days, they
would meet for a meal on weekends and talk.
When she was twenty-four, Tamaki married a man two years her senior. As soon as they
became engaged, she left graduate school and gave up on continuing her legal studies. He
insisted that she do so. Aomame met Tamakis fiancé only once. He came from a wealthy
family, and, just as she had suspected, his features were handsome but utterly lacking in
depth. His hobby was sailing. He was a smooth talker and clever in his own way, but there
was no substance to his personality, and his words carried no weight. He was, in other words,
a typical Tamaki-type boyfriend. But there was more about him, something ominous, that
Aomame sensed. She disliked him from the start. And he probably didnt like her much,
either.
 This marriage will never work, Aomame said to Tamaki. She hated to offer unwanted advice
again, but this was marriage, not playing house. As Tamakis best and oldest friend,
Aomame could not keep silent. This led to their first violent argument. Aomames opposition
to her marriage made Tamaki hysterical, and she screamed harsh words at Aomame, among
them words that Aomame least wanted to hear. Aomame did not attend the wedding.
The two of them made up before long. As soon as she came back from her honeymoon,
Tamaki showed up at Aomames without warning and apologized for her behavior. I want you
to forget everything I said that time, she pleaded. I wasnt myself. I was thinking about you
all during my honeymoon. Aomame told her not to worry, that she had already forgotten
everything. They held each other close. Soon they were joking and laughing.
But still, after the wedding, there was a sudden decline in the number of occasions when
Aomame and Tamaki could meet face-to-face. They exchanged frequent letters and talked on
the telephone, but Tamaki seemed to find it difficult to arrange times when the two of them
could get together. Her excuse was that she had so much to do at home. Being a full-time
housewife is hard work, she would say, but there was something in her tone of voice suggesting
that her husband did not want her meeting people outside the house. Also, Tamaki
and her husband were living in the same compound as his parents, which seemed to make it
difficult for her to go out. Aomame was never invited to Tamakis new home.
Her married life was going well, Tamaki would tell Aomame whenever she had the
chance. My husband is gentle with me, and his parents are very kind. Were quite comfortable.
We often take the yacht out of Enoshima on weekends. Im not sorry I stopped studying
law. I was feeling a lot of pressure over the bar exam. Maybe this ordinary kind of life was the
right thing for me all along. Ill probably have a child soon, and then Ill really be just a typical
boring mother. I might not have any time for you! Tamakis voice was always cheery, and
Aomame could find no reason to doubt her words. Thats great, she would say, and she
really did think it was great. She would certainly prefer to have her premonitions miss the
mark than to be on target. Something inside Tamaki had finally settled down where it belonged,
she guessed. Or so she tried to believe.
Aomame had no other real friends; as her contact with Tamaki diminished, she became
increasingly unsure what to do with each passing day. She could no longer concentrate on
softball as she used to. Her very feeling for the game seemed to wane as Tamaki grew more
distant from her life. Aomame was twenty-five but still a virgin. Now and then, when she felt
unsettled, she would masturbate, but she didnt find this life especially lonely. Deep personal
relationships with people were a source of pain for Aomame. Better to keep to herself.
Tamaki committed suicide on a windy late-autumn day three days before her twenty-sixth
birthday. She hanged herself at home. Her husband found her the next evening when he returned
from a business trip.
 We had no domestic problems, and I never heard of any dissatisfaction on her part. I
cant imagine what would have caused her to take her own life, the husband told the police.
His parents said much the same thing.
But they were lying. The husbands constant sadistic violence had left Tamaki covered
with scars both physical and mental. His actions toward her had verged on the monomaniacal,
and his parents generally knew the truth. The police could also tell what had happened
from the autopsy, but their suspicions never became public. They called the husband in and
questioned him, but the case was clearly a suicide, and at the time of death the husband was
hundreds of miles away in Hokkaido. He was never charged with a crime. Tamakis younger
brother subsequently revealed all this to Aomame in confidence.
The violence had been there from the beginning, he said, and it only grew more insistent
and more gruesome with the passage of time. But Tamaki had been unable to escape from
her nightmare. She had not said a word about it to Aomame because she knew what the answer
would be if she asked for advice: Get out of that house now. But that was the one thing
she could not do.
At the very end, just before she killed herself, Tamaki wrote a long letter to Aomame. It
started by saying that she had been wrong and Aomame had been right from the start. She
closed the letter this way:
I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I dont
know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prison. I entered
of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key. This marriage was of course
a mistake, just as you said. But the deepest problem is not in my husband or in my married
life. It is inside me. I deserve all the pain I am feeling. I cant blame anyone else. You are my
only friend, the only person in the world I can trust. But I am beyond saving now. Please remember
me always if you can. If only we could have gone on playing softball together forever!
Aomame felt horribly sick as she read Tamakis letter. Her body would not stop trembling.
She called Tamakis house several times, but no one took the call. All she got was the machine.
She took the train to Setagaya and walked to Tamakis house in Okusawa. It was on a
large plot of land behind a high wall. Aomame rang the intercom bell, but no one answered
this, either. There was only the sound of a dog barking inside. All she could do was give up
and go home. She had no way of knowing it, but Tamaki had already drawn her last breath.
She was hanging alone from a rope she had tied to the stairway handrail. Inside the hushed
house, the telephones bell and the front-door chime had been ringing in emptiness.
Aomame received the news of Tamakis death with little sense of surprise. Somewhere in
the back of her mind, she must have been expecting it. She felt no sadness welling up. She
gave the caller a perfunctory answer, hung up, and settled into a chair. After she had been sitting
there for a considerable length of time, she felt all the liquids in her body pouring out of
her. She could not get out of the chair for a very long time. She telephoned her company to
say she felt sick and would not be in for several days. She stayed in her apartment, not eating,
not sleeping, hardly drinking even water. She did not attend the funeral. She felt as if,
with a distinct click, something had switched places inside her. This marks a borderline, she
felt strongly. From now on, I will no longer be the person I was.
Aomame resolved in her heart to punish the man for what he had done. Whatever happens,
I must be sure to present him with the end of the world. Otherwise, he will do the same
thing to someone else.
Aomame spent a great deal of time formulating a meticulous plan. She had already
learned that a needle thrust into a certain point on the back of the neck at a certain angle
could kill a person instantly. It was not something that just anyone could do, of course. But
she could do it. First, she would have to train herself to find the extremely subtle point by
touch in the shortest possible time. Next she would have to have an instrument suited to such
a task. She obtained the necessary tools and, over time, fashioned for herself a special implement
that looked like a small, slender ice pick. Its needle was as sharp and cold and pointed
as a merciless idea. She found many ways to undertake the necessary training, and she did
so with great dedication. When she was satisfied with her preparation, she put her plan into
action. Unhesitatingly, coolly, and precisely, she brought the kingdom down upon the man.
And when she was finished she even intoned a prayer, its phrases falling from her lips almost
as a matter of reflex:
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may
Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our
humble pathways. Amen.
It was after this that Aomame came to feel an intense periodic craving for mens bodies.
1Q84
CHAPTER 14
Tengo
THINGS THAT MOST READERS
HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE
Komatsu and Tengo had arranged to meet in the usual place, the café near Shinjuku Station.
Komatsu arrived twenty minutes late as always. Komatsu never came on time, and
Tengo was never late. This was standard practice for them. Komatsu was carrying his leather
briefcase and wearing his usual tweed jacket over a navy-blue polo shirt.
 Sorry to keep you waiting, Komatsu said, but he didnt seem at all sorry. He appeared to
be in an especially good mood, his smile like a crescent moon at dawn.
Tengo merely nodded without answering.
Komatsu took the chair across from him and said, Sorry to hurry you. Im sure it was
tough. 
 I dont mean to exaggerate, but I didnt know whether I was alive or dead these past ten
days, Tengo said.
 You did great, though. You got permission from Fuka-Eris guardian, and you finished rewriting
the story. Its an amazing accomplishment for somebody who lives in his own little
world. Now I see you in a whole new light. 
Tengo ignored Komatsus praise. Did you read the report-thing I wrote on Fuka-Eris
background? The long one. 
 I sure did. Of course. Every word. Thanks for writing it. Shes got a what should I
say? a complicated history. It could be part of a roman-fleuve. But what really surprised me
was to learn that Professor Ebisuno is her guardian. What a small world! Did he say anything
about me? 
 About you? 
 Yes, did the Professor say anything about me? 
 No, nothing special. 
 Thats strange, Komatsu said, evidently quite puzzled by this. Professor Ebisuno and I
once worked together. I used to go to his university office to pick up his manuscripts. It was a
really long time ago, of course, when I was just getting started as an editor. 
 Maybe he forgot, if it was such a long time ago. He asked me to tell him about you what
sort of person you are. 
 No way, Komatsu said with a frown and a shake of the head. Thats impossible. He never
forgets a thing. His memory is so good its almost frightening. He and I talked about all
kinds of stuff, Im sure he remembers.… Anyway, hes not an easy guy to deal with. And according
to your report, the situation surrounding Fuka-Eri is not going to be easy to deal with,
either. 
 Thats putting it mildly. Its like were holding a time bomb. Fuka-Eri is in no way ordinary.
Shes not just another pretty seventeen-year-old. If the novella makes a big splash, the media
are going to pounce on this and reveal all kinds of tasty facts. Itll be terrible. 
 True, it could be a real Pandoras box, Komatsu said, but he was still smiling.
 So should we cancel the plan? 
 Cancel the plan?! 
 Yes, itll be too big a deal, and too dangerous. Lets put the original manuscript back in
the pile. 
 Its not that easy, Im afraid. Your Air Chrysalis rewrite has already gone out to the printers.
Theyre making the galleys. As soon as its printed itll go to the editor in chief and the
head of publications and the four members of the selection committee. Its too late to say,
‘Excuse me, that was a mistake. Please give it back and pretend you never saw it. 
Tengo sighed.
 Whats done is done. We cant turn the clock back, Komatsu said. He put a Marlboro
between his lips, narrowed his eyes, and lit the cigarette with the cafés matches. Ill think
about what to do next. You dont have to think about anything, Tengo. Even if Air Chrysalis
takes the prize, well keep Fuka-Eri under wraps. Shell be the enigmatic girl writer who
doesnt want to appear in public. I can pull it off. As the editor in charge of the story, Ill be her
spokesman. Dont worry, Ive got it all figured out. 
 I dont doubt your abilities, but Fuka-Eri is no ordinary girl. Shes not the type to shut up
and do as shes told. If she makes up her mind to do something, shell do it. She doesnt hear
what she doesnt want to hear. Thats how shes made. Its not going to be as easy as you
seem to think. 
Komatsu kept silent and went on turning over the matchbox in his hand. Then he said, In
any case, Tengo, weve come this far. All we can do now is make up our minds to keep going.
First of all, your rewrite of Air Chrysalis is marvelous, really wonderful, far exceeding my expectations.
Its almost perfect. I have no doubt that its going to take the new writers prize and
cause a big sensation. Its too late now for us to bury it. If you ask me, burying a work like that
would be a crime. And as I said before, things are moving full speed ahead. 
 A crime?! Tengo exclaimed, looking straight at Komatsu.
 Well, take these words, for example, Komatsu said. ‘Every art and every inquiry, and
similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the
good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. 
 What is that? 
 Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Have you ever read Aristotle? 
 Almost nothing. 
 You ought to. Im sure youd like it. Whenever I run out of things to read, I read Greek
philosophy. I never get tired of the stuff. Theres always something new to learn. 
 So whats the point of the quotation? 
 The conclusion of things is the good. The good is, in other words, the conclusion at which
all things arrive. Lets leave doubt for tomorrow, Komatsu said. That is the point. 
 What does Aristotle have to say about the Holocaust? 
Komatsus crescent-moon smile further deepened. Here, Aristotle is mainly talking about
things like art and scholarship and crafts. 
Tengo had far more than a passing acquaintance with Komatsu. He knew the mans public
face, and he had seen his private face as well. Komatsu appeared to be a lone wolf in the
literary industry who had always survived by doing as he pleased. Most people were taken in
by that image. But if you observed him closely, taking into account the full context of his actions,
you could tell that his moves were highly calculated. He was like a player of chess or
shogi who could see several moves ahead. It was true that he liked to plot outlandish
schemes, but he was also careful to draw a line beyond which he would not stray. He was, if
anything, a high-strung man whose more outrageous gestures were mostly for show.
Komatsu was careful to protect himself with various kinds of insurance. For example, he
wrote a literary column once a week in the evening edition of a major newspaper. In it, he
would shower writers with praise or blame. The blame was always expressed in highly
acerbic prose, which was a specialty of his. The column appeared under a made-up name,
but everyone in the industry knew who was writing it. No one liked being criticized in the
newspaper, of course, so writers tried their best not to ruffle his feathers. When asked by him
to write something, they avoided turning him down whenever possible. Otherwise, there was
no telling what might be said about them in the column.
Tengo was not fond of Komatsus more calculating side, the way he displayed contempt
for the literary world while exploiting its system to his best advantage. Komatsu possessed
outstanding editorial instincts, and he had been enormously helpful to Tengo. His advice on
the writing of fiction was almost always valuable. But Tengo was careful to keep a certain distance
between them. He was determined not to draw too close to Komatsu and then have the
ladder pulled out from under him for overstepping certain boundaries. In that sense, Tengo,
too, was a cautious individual.
 As I said a minute ago, your rewrite of Air Chrysalis is close to perfect. A great job, Komatsu
continued. Theres just one part really, just one that Id like to have you redo if possible.
Not now, of course. Its fine at the ‘new writer level. But after the committee picks it to
win the prize and just before the magazine prints it, at that stage Id like you to fix it. 
 What part? Tengo asked.
 When the Little People finish making the air chrysalis, there are two moons. The girl looks
up to find two moons in the sky. Remember that part? 
 Of course I remember it. 
 In my opinion, you havent written enough about the two moons. Id like you to give it
more concrete detail. Thats my only request. 
 It is a little terse, maybe. I just didnt want to overdo it with detail and destroy the flow of
Fuka-Eris original. 
Komatsu raised the hand that had a cigarette tucked between the fingers. Think of it this
way, Tengo. Your readers have seen the sky with one moon in it any number of times, right?
But I doubt theyve seen a sky with two moons in it side by side. When you introduce things
that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them
with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction
is the description of things that most readers have seen. 
 I get it, Tengo said. Komatsus request made a lot of sense. Ill fill out the part where the
two moons appear. 
 Good. Then it will be perfect, Komatsu said. He crushed out his cigarette.
 Im always glad to have you praise my work, Tengo said, but its not so simple for me
this time. 
 You have suddenly matured, Komatsu said slowly, as if pausing for emphasis. You
have matured both as a manipulator of language and as an author. It should be simple
enough for you to be glad about that. Im sure rewriting Air Chrysalis taught you a lot about
the writing of fiction. It should be a big help the next time you write your own work. 
 If there is a next time, Tengo said.
A big grin crossed Komatsus face. Dont worry. You did your job. Now its my turn. You
can go back to the bench and take it easy, just watch the game unfold. 
The waitress arrived and poured cold water into their glasses. Tengo drank half of his before
realizing that he had absolutely no desire for water. He asked Komatsu, Was it Aristotle
who said the human soul is composed of reason, will, and desire? 
 No, that was Plato. Aristotle and Plato were as different as Mel Tormé and Bing Crosby.
In any case, things were a lot simpler in the old days, Komatsu said. Wouldnt it be fun to
imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table? 
 Ive got a pretty good idea who would lose that one. 
 What I like about you, Komatsu said, raising an index finger, is your sense of humor. 
This is not humor, Tengo thought, but he kept it to himself.
After leaving Komatsu, Tengo walked to Kinokuniya, bought several books, and started
reading them over a beer in a nearby bar. This was the sort of moment in which he should
have been able to relax most completely.
On this particular night, though, he could not seem to concentrate on his books. The recurring
image of his mother floated vaguely before his eyes and would not go away. She had
lowered the straps of her white slip from her shoulders, revealing her well-shaped breasts,
and was letting a man suck on them. The man was not his father. He was larger and more
youthful, and had better features. The infant Tengo was asleep in his crib, eyes closed, his
breathing regular. A look of ecstasy suffused his mothers face while the man sucked on her
breasts, a look very much like his older girlfriends when she was having an orgasm.
Once, out of curiosity, Tengo had asked his girlfriend to try wearing a white slip for him.
 Glad to, she replied with a smile. Ill wear one next time if youd like that. Do you have any
other requests? Ill do anything you want. Just ask. Dont be embarrassed. 
 Can you wear a white blouse, too? A very simple one. 
She showed up the following week wearing a white blouse over a white slip. He took her
blouse off, lowered the shoulder straps of the slip, and sucked on her breasts. He adopted the
same position and angle as the man in his vision, and when he did this he felt a slight dizziness.
His mind misted over, and he lost track of the order of things. In his lower body there
was a heavy sensation that rapidly swelled, and no sooner was he aware of it than he
shuddered with a violent ejaculation.
 Tengo, whats wrong? Did you come already? she asked, astounded.
He himself was not sure what had just happened, but then he realized that he had gotten
semen on the lower part of her slip.
 Im sorry, he said. I wasnt planning to do that. 
 Dont apologize, she said cheerily. I can rinse it right off. Its just the usual stuff. Im glad
its not soy sauce or red wine! 
She took the slip off, scrubbed the semen-smeared part at the bathroom sink, and hung it
over the shower rod to dry.
 Was that too strong? she asked with a gentle smile, rubbing Tengos belly with the palm
of her hand. You like white slips, huh, Tengo? 
 Not exactly, Tengo said, but he could not explain to her his real reason for having made
the request.
 Just let big sister know any time youve got a fantasy you want to play out, honey. Ill go
along with anything. I just love fantasies! Everybody needs some kind of fantasy to go on living,
dont you think? You want me to wear a white slip next time, too? 
Tengo shook his head. No, thanks, once was enough. 
Tengo often wondered if the young man sucking on his mothers breasts in his vision
might be his biological father. This was because Tengo in no way resembled the man who
was supposed to be his father the stellar NHK collections agent. Tengo was a tall, strapping
man with a broad forehead, narrow nose, and tightly balled ears. His father was short and
squat and utterly unimpressive. He had a narrow forehead, flat nose, and pointed ears like a
horses. Virtually every facial feature of his contrasted with Tengos. Where Tengo had a generally
relaxed and generous look, his father appeared nervous and tightfisted. Comparing the
two of them, people often openly remarked that they did not look like father and son.
Still, it was not their different facial features that made it difficult for Tengo to identify with
his father; rather, it was their psychological makeup and tendencies. His father showed no
sign at all of what might be called intellectual curiosity. True, his father had not had a decent
education. Having been born in poverty, he had not had the opportunity to establish in himself
an orderly intellectual system. Tengo felt a degree of pity regarding his fathers circumstances.
But still, a basic desire to obtain knowledge at a universal level which Tengo assumed
to be a more or less natural urge in people was lacking in the man. There was a certain
practical wisdom at work in him that enabled him to survive, but Tengo could discover no
hint of a willingness in his father to raise himself up, to deepen himself, to view a wider, larger
world.
But Tengos father never seemed to suffer discomfort from the narrowness and the stagnant
air of his cramped little world. Tengo never once saw him pick up a book at home. They
never had newspapers (watching the regular NHK news broadcasts was enough, he would
say). He had absolutely no interest in music or movies, and he never took a trip. The only
thing that seemed to interest him was his assigned collection route. He would make a map of
the area, mark it with colored pens, and examine it whenever he had a spare moment, the
way a biologist classifies chromosomes.
By contrast, Tengo was regarded as a math prodigy from early childhood. His grades in
arithmetic were always outstanding. He could solve high school math problems by the time he
was in the third grade. He won high marks in the other sciences as well without any apparent
effort. And whenever he had a spare moment, he would devour books. Hugely curious about
everything, he would absorb knowledge from a broad range of fields with all the efficiency of a
power shovel scooping earth. Whenever he looked at his father, he found it inconceivable that
half of the genes that made his existence possible could come from this narrow, uneducated
man.
My real father must be somewhere else. This was the conclusion that Tengo reached in
boyhood. Like the unfortunate children in a Dickens novel, Tengo must have been led by
strange circumstances to be raised by this man. Such a possibility was both a nightmare and
a great hope. He became obsessed with Dickens after reading Oliver Twist, plowing through
every Dickens volume in the library. As he traveled through the world of the stories, he
steeped himself in reimagined versions of his own life. The reimaginings (or obsessive fantasies)
in his head grew ever longer and more complex. They followed a single pattern, but with
infinite variations. In all of them, Tengo would tell himself that this was not the place where he
belonged. He had been mistakenly locked in a cage. Someday his real parents, guided by
sheer good fortune, would find him. They would rescue him from this cramped and ugly cage
and bring him back where he belonged. Then he would have the most beautiful, peaceful, and
free Sundays imaginable.
Tengos father exulted over the boys outstanding schoolwork. He prided himself on
Tengos excellent grades, and boasted of them to people in the neighborhood. At the same
time, however, he showed a certain displeasure regarding Tengos brightness and talent. Often
when Tengo was at his desk, studying, his father would interrupt him, seemingly on purpose.
He would order the boy to do chores or nag Tengo about his supposedly offensive behavior.
The content of his fathers nagging was always the same: he was running himself
ragged every day, covering huge distances and sometimes enduring peoples curses as a
collections agent, while Tengo did nothing but take it easy all the time, living in comfort. They
had me working my tail off around the house when I was your age, and my father and older
brother would beat me black and blue for anything at all. They never gave me enough food,
and treated me like an animal. I dont want you thinking youre so special just because you
got a few good grades. His father would go on like this endlessly.
This man may be envious of me, Tengo began to think after a certain point. Hes jealous either
of me as a person or of the life Im leading. But does a father really feel jealousy
toward his own son? As a child, Tengo did not judge his father, but he could not help feeling a
pathetic kind of meanness that emanated from his fathers words and deeds and this he
found almost physically unbearable. Often he felt that this man was not only envious of him,
but that he actually hated something in his son. It was not that his father hated Tengo as a
person but rather that he hated something inside Tengo, something that he could not forgive.
Mathematics gave Tengo an effective means of retreat. By fleeing into a world of numerical
expression, he was able to escape from the troublesome cage of reality. As a little boy, he
noticed that he could easily move into a mathematical world with the flick of a switch in his
head. He remained free as long as he actively explored that realm of infinite consistency. He
walked down the gigantic buildings twisted corridor, opening one numbered door after another.
Each time a new spectacle opened up before him, the ugly traces of the real world would
dissipate and then simply disappear. The world governed by numerical expression was, for
him, a legitimate and always safe hiding place. As long as he stayed in that world, he could
forget or ignore the rules and burdens forced upon him by the real world.
Where mathematics was a magnificent imaginary building, the world of story as represented
by Dickens was like a deep, magical forest for Tengo. When mathematics stretched infinitely
upward toward the heavens, the forest spread out beneath his gaze in silence, its dark,
sturdy roots stretching deep into the earth. In the forest there were no maps, no numbered
doorways.
In elementary and middle school, Tengo was utterly absorbed by the world of mathematics.
Its clarity and absolute freedom enthralled him, and he also needed them to survive.
Once he entered adolescence, however, he began to feel increasingly that this might not be
enough. There was no problem as long as he was visiting the world of math, but whenever he
returned to the real world (as return he must), he found himself in the same miserable cage.
Nothing had improved. Rather, his shackles felt even heavier. So then, what good was mathematics?
Wasnt it just a temporary means of escape that made his real-life situation even
worse?
As his doubts increased, Tengo began deliberately to put some distance between himself
and the world of mathematics, and instead the forest of story began to exert a stronger pull on
his heart. Of course, reading novels was just another form of escape. As soon as he closed
their pages he had to come back to the real world. But at some point Tengo noticed that returning
to reality from the world of a novel was not as devastating a blow as returning from the
world of mathematics. Why should that have been? After much deep thought, he reached a
conclusion. No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of
story, there was never a clear-cut solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a
story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending
on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative.
Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper
bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no
immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to
decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.
The older he became, the more Tengo was drawn to this kind of narrative suggestion.
Mathematics was a great joy for him even now, as an adult. When he was teaching students
at the cram school, the same joy he had felt as a child would come welling up naturally. To
share the joy of that conceptual freedom with someone was a wonderful thing. But Tengo was
no longer able to lose himself so unreservedly in a world of numerical expression. For he
knew that no amount of searching in that world would give him the solution he was really looking
for.
When he was in the fifth grade, after much careful thinking, Tengo declared that he
wanted to stop making the rounds with his father on Sundays to collect the NHK subscription
fees. He told his father that he wanted to use the time for studying and reading books and
playing with other kids. Just as his father had his own work, he had things that he had to do.
He wanted to live a normal life like everybody else.
Tengo said what he needed to say, concisely and coherently.
His father, of course, blew up. He didnt give a damn what other families did, he said; it
had nothing to do with them. We have our own way of doing things. And dont you dare talk to
me about a normal life, Mr. Know-it-all. What do you know about a normal life ? Tengo did
not try to argue with him. He merely stared back in silence, knowing that nothing he said
would get through to his father. If that was what Tengo wanted, his father continued, that was
what he would get. But if he couldnt listen to his father, his father couldnt go on feeding him
anymore. Tengo should get the hell out.
Tengo did as he was told. He packed a bag and left home. He had made up his mind. No
matter how angry his father got, no matter how much he screamed and shouted, Tengo was
not going to be afraid even if his father raised a hand to him (which he did not do). Now that
Tengo had been given permission to leave his cage, he was more relieved than anything
else.
But still, there was no way a ten-year-old boy could live on his own. When class was dismissed
at the end of the day, he confessed his predicament to his teacher and said he had no
place to spend the night. He also explained to her what an emotional burden it had been for
him to make the rounds with his father on Sundays collecting NHK subscription fees. The
teacher was a single woman in her mid-thirties. She was far from beautiful and she wore
thick, ugly glasses, but she was a fair-minded, warmhearted person. A small woman, she was
normally quiet and mild-mannered, but she could be surprisingly quick-tempered; once she let
her anger out, she became a different person, and no one could stop her. The difference
shocked people. Tengo, however, was fond of her, and her temper tantrums never frightened
him.
She heard Tengo out with understanding and sympathy, and she brought him home to
spend the night in her house. She spread a blanket on the sofa and had him sleep there. She
made him breakfast in the morning. That evening she took him to his fathers place for a long
talk.
Tengo was told to leave the room, so he was not sure what they said to each other, but finally
his father had to sheathe his sword. However extreme his anger might be, he could not
leave a ten-year-old boy to wander the streets alone. The duty of a parent to support his child
was a matter of law.
As a result of the teachers talk with his father, Tengo was free to spend Sundays as he
pleased. He was required to devote the morning to housework, but he could do anything he
wanted after that. This was the first tangible right that Tengo had ever won from his father. His
father was too angry to talk to Tengo for a while, but this was of no great concern to the boy.
He had won something far more important than that. He had taken his first step toward freedom
and independence.
Tengo did not see his fifth-grade teacher for a long time after he left elementary school.
He probably could have seen her if he had attended the occasional class reunion, to which he
was invited, but he had no intention of showing his face at such gatherings. He had virtually
no happy memories from that school. He did, however, think of his teacher now and then and
recall what she had done for him.
The next time he saw her, Tengo was in his second year of high school. He belonged to
the judo club, but he had injured his calf at the time and was forced to take a two-month break
from judo matches. Instead, he was recruited to be a temporary percussionist in the schools
brass band. The band was only days away from a competition, but one of their two percussionists
suddenly transferred to another school, and the other one came down with a bad
case of influenza. All they needed was a human being who could hold two sticks, the music
teacher said, pleading with Tengo to help them out of their predicament since his injury had
left him with time to kill. There would be several meals in it for Tengo, and the teacher promised
to go easy on his grade if he would join the rehearsals.
Tengo had never performed on a percussion instrument nor had any interest in doing so,
but once he actually tried playing, he was amazed to find that it was perfectly suited to the
way his mind worked. He felt a natural joy in dividing time into small fragments, reassembling
them, and transforming them into an effective row of tones. All of the sounds mentally appeared
to him in the form of a diagram. He proceeded to grasp the system of one percussion
instrument after another the way a sponge soaks up water. His music teacher introduced him
to a symphony orchestras percussionist, from whom he learned the techniques of the timpani.
He mastered its general structure and performance technique with only a few hours lessons.
And because the score resembled numerical expression, learning how to read it was no
great challenge for him.
The music teacher was delighted to discover Tengos outstanding musical talent. You
seem to have a natural sense for complex rhythms and a marvelous ear for music, he said.
 If you continue to study with professionals, you could become one yourself. 
The timpani was a difficult instrument, but it was deep and compelling in its own special
way, its combination of sounds hinting at infinite possibilities. Tengo and his classmates were
rehearsing several passages excerpted from Janáeks Sinfonietta, as arranged for wind in-
struments. They were to perform it as their free-choice piece in a competition for high school
brass bands. Janáeks Sinfonietta was a difficult piece for high school musicians, and the timpani
figured prominently in the opening fanfare. The music teacher, who doubled as the band
leader, had chosen Sinfonietta on the assumption that he had two outstanding percussionists
to work with, and when he suddenly lost them, he was at his wits end. Obviously, then,
Tengo had a major role to fill, but he felt no pressure and wholeheartedly enjoyed the performance.
The bands performance was flawless (good enough for a top prize, if not the championship),
and when it was over, Tengos old fifth-grade teacher came over to congratulate him on
his fine playing.
 I knew it was you right away, Tengo, she said. He recognized this small woman but
couldnt recall her name. The timpani sounded so good, I looked to see who could be playing and
it was you, of all people! Youre a lot bigger than you used to be, but I recognized
your face immediately. When did you start playing? 
Tengo gave her a quick summary of the events that had led up to this performance, which
made her all the more impressed. Youre such a talented boy, and in so many ways! 
 Judo is a lot easier for me, Tengo said, smiling.
 So, hows your father? she asked.
 Hes fine, Tengo responded automatically, though he didnt know and didnt want to
know how his father was doing. By then Tengo was living in a dormitory and hadnt spoken
to his father in a very long time.
 Why are you here? he asked the teacher.
 My niece plays clarinet in another high schools band. She wanted me to hear her play a
solo. Are you going to keep up with your music? 
 Ill go back to judo when my leg gets better. Judo keeps me fed. My school supports judo
in a big way. They cover my room and board. The band cant do that. 
 I guess youre trying not to depend on your father? 
 Well, you know what hes like, Tengo said.
She smiled at him. Its too bad, though. With all your talents! 
Tengo looked down at the small woman and remembered the night she put him up at her
place. He pictured the plain and practical but neat and tidy little apartment in which she
lived. The lace curtains and potted plants. The ironing board and open book. The small pink
dress hanging on the wall. The smell of the sofa where he slept. And now here she stood before
him, he realized, fidgeting like a young girl. He realized, too, that he was no longer a
powerless ten-year-old boy but a strapping seventeen-year-old broad-chested, with stubble
to shave and a sex drive in full bloom. He felt strangely calm in the presence of this older wo-
man.
 Im glad I ran into you, she said.
 I am too, Tengo replied. He really was glad. But he still couldnt remember her name.
1Q84
CHAPTER 15
Aomame
FIRMLY, LIKE ATTACHING AN ANCHOR
TO A BALLOON
Aomame devoted a great deal of attention to her daily diet. Vegetarian dishes were central
to the meals she prepared for herself, to which she added seafood, mostly white fish. An occasional
piece of chicken was about all the meat she would eat. She chose only fresh ingredients
and kept seasonings to a minimum, rejecting high-fat ingredients entirely and keeping
her intake of carbohydrates low. Salads she would eat with a touch of olive oil, salt, and lemon
juice, never dressings. She did not just eat a lot of vegetables, she also studied their nutritional
elements in detail and made sure she was eating a well-balanced selection. She fashioned
her own original menus and shared them with sports club members when asked.
 Forget about counting calories, she would always advise them. Once you develop a knack
for choosing the proper ingredients and eating in moderation, you dont have to pay attention
to numbers. 
This is not to say that she clung obsessively to her ascetic menus. If she felt a strong desire
for meat, she would pop into a restaurant and order a thick steak or lamb chops. She believed
that an unbearable desire for a particular food meant that the body was sending signals
for something it truly needed, and she would follow the call of nature.
She enjoyed wine and sake, but she established three days a week when she would not
drink at all in order to avoid excessive alcohol intake, as a way to both protect her liver and
control the sugar in her bloodstream. For Aomame, her body was sacred, to be kept clean always,
without a fleck of dust or the slightest stain. Whatever one enshrined there was another
question, to be thought about later.
Aomame had no excess flesh, only muscle. She would confirm this for herself in detail
each day, standing stark naked in front of the mirror. Not that she was thrilled at the sight of
her own body. Quite the opposite. Her breasts were not big enough, and they were asymmetrical.
Her pubic hair grew like a patch of grass that had been trampled by a passing army. She
couldnt stop herself from scowling at the sight of her own body, but there was nothing there
for her to pinch.
She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her
money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality
wines. On those rare occasions when she ate out, she would choose restaurants that prepared
their food with the greatest care. Almost nothing else mattered to her not clothing, not
cosmetics, not accessories. Jeans and a sweater were all she needed for commuting to work
at the sports club, and once she was there she would spend the day in a jersey top and bot-
tom without accessories, of course. She rarely had occasion to go out in fancy clothing.
Once Tamaki Otsuka was married, she no longer had any women friends to dine out with.
She would wear makeup and dress well when she was out in search of a one-night stand, but
that was once a month and didnt require an extensive wardrobe.
When necessary, Aomame would make the rounds of the boutiques in Aoyama to have
one killer dress made and to buy an accessory or two and a pair of heels to match. That was
all she needed. Ordinarily she wore flats and a ponytail. As long as she washed her face well
with soap and water and applied moisturizer, she always had a glow. The most important
thing was to have a clean, healthy body.
Aomame had been used to living a simple, unadorned life since childhood. Self-denial and
moderation were the values pounded into her as long as she could remember. Her familys
home was free of all extras, and waste was their most commonly used word. They had no
television and did not subscribe to a newspaper. Even news was looked upon in her home as
a nonessential. Meat and fish rarely found their way to the dining table. Her school lunches
provided Aomame with the nutrients she needed for development. The other children would
complain how tasteless the lunches were, and would leave much of theirs uneaten, but she
almost wished she could have what they wasted.
She wore only hand-me-downs. The believers would hold periodic gatherings to exchange
their unneeded articles of clothing, as a result of which her parents never once bought her
anything new, the only exceptions being things like the gym clothes required by the school.
She could not recall ever having worn clothing or shoes that fit her perfectly, and the items
she did have were an assemblage of clashing colors and patterns. If the family could not afford
any other lifestyle, she would have just resigned herself to the fact, but Aomames family
was by no means poor. Her father was an engineer with a normal income and savings. They
chose their exceedingly frugal lifestyle entirely as a matter of belief.
Because the life she led was so very different from those of the children around her, for a
long time Aomame could not make friends with anyone. She had neither the clothing nor the
money that would have enabled her to go out with a friend. She was never given an allowance,
so that even if she had been invited to someones birthday party (which, for better or
worse, never happened), she would not have been able to bring along a little gift.
Because of all this, Aomame hated her parents and deeply despised both the world to
which they belonged and the ideology of that world. What she longed for was an ordinary life
like everybody elses. Not luxury: just a totally normal little life, nothing more. She wanted to
hurry up and become an adult so she could leave her parents and live alone eating what
and as much as she wanted, using the money in her purse any way she liked, wearing new
clothes of her own choosing, wearing shoes that fit her feet, going where she wanted to go,
making lots of friends and exchanging beautifully wrapped presents with them.
Once she became an adult, however, Aomame discovered that she was most comfortable
living a life of self-denial and moderation. What she wanted most of all was not to go out with
someone all dressed up, but to spend time alone in her room dressed in a jersey top and bottom.
After Tamaki died, Aomame quit the sports drink company, left the dormitory she had
been living in, and moved into a one-bedroom rental condo in the lively, freewheeling Jiyugaoka
neighborhood, away from the center of the city. Though hardly spacious, the place
looked huge to her. She kept her furnishings to a minimum except for her extensive collection
of kitchen utensils. She had few possessions. She enjoyed reading books, but as soon as
she was through with them, she would sell them to a used bookstore. She enjoyed listening to
music, but was not a collector of records. She hated to see her belongings pile up. She felt
guilty whenever she bought something. I dont really need this, she would tell herself. Seeing
the nicer clothing and shoes in her closet would give her a pain in the chest and constrict her
breathing. Such sights suggestive of freedom and opulence would, paradoxically, remind
Aomame of her restrictive childhood.
What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed
to escape from one cage, werent you just in another, larger one?
Whenever Aomame sent a designated man into the other world, the dowager of Azabu
would provide her with remuneration. A wad of bills, tightly wrapped in blank paper, would be
deposited in a post-office box. Aomame would receive the key from Tamaru, retrieve the contents
of the box, and later return the key. Without breaking the seal on the pack of bills to
count the money, she would throw the package into her banks safe-deposit box, which now
contained two hard bricks of cash.
Aomame was unable to use up her monthly salary from the sports club, and she even had
a bit of savings in the bank. She had no use whatever for the dowagers money, which she
tried to explain to her the first time she received the remuneration.
 This is a mere external form, the dowager said softly but firmly. Think of it as a kind of
set procedure a requirement. You are at least required to receive it. If you dont need the
money, then you dont have to use it. If you hate the idea of taking it, I dont mind if you
donate it anonymously to some charity. You are free to do anything you like with it. But if you
ask me, the best thing for you to do would be to keep it untouched for a while, stored away
somewhere. 
 I just dont like the idea of money changing hands for something like this, Aomame said.
 I understand how you feel, but remember this: thanks to the fact that these terrible men
have been so good as to remove themselves from our presence, there has been no need for
divorce proceedings or custody battles, and no need for the women to live in fear that their
husbands might show up and beat them beyond recognition. Life insurance and survivors annuities
have been paid. Think of the money you get as the outward form of the womens gratitude.
Without a doubt, you have done the right thing. But your act must not go uncompensated.
Do you understand why? 
 No, not really, Aomame replied honestly.
 Because you are neither an angel nor a god. I am quite aware that your actions have
been prompted by your pure feelings, and I understand perfectly well that, for that very reason,
you do not wish to receive money for what you have done. But pure, unadulterated feelings
are dangerous in their own way. It is no easy feat for a flesh-and-blood human being to
go on living with such feelings. That is why it is necessary for you to fasten your feelings to
the earth firmly, like attaching an anchor to a balloon. The money is for that. To prevent you
from feeling that you can do anything you want as long as its the right thing and your feelings
are pure. Do you see now? 
After thinking about it a while, Aomame nodded. I dont really understand it very well, but
Ill do as you say for now. 
The dowager smiled and took a sip of her herbal tea. Now, dont do anything silly like putting
it in your bank account. If the tax people found it, theyd have a great time wondering
what it could be. Just put the cash in a safe-deposit box. It will come in handy sometime. 
Aomame said that she would follow the dowagers instructions.
. . .
Home from the club, she was preparing dinner when the phone rang.
 Hi there, Aomame, a womans voice said. A slightly husky voice. It was Ayumi.
Pressing the receiver to her ear, Aomame reached out and lowered the gas flame as she
spoke: Hows police work these days? 
 Im handing out parking tickets like crazy. Everybody hates me. No men around, just
good, hard work. 
 Glad to hear it. 
 What are you doing now? Ayumi asked.
 Making supper. 
 Are you free the day after tomorrow? At night, I mean. 
 Im free, but Im not ready for another night like the last one. I need a break. 
 Me, too, Ayumi said. I was just thinking I havent seen you for a while. Id like to get together
and talk, thats all. 
Aomame gave some thought to what Ayumi was suggesting, but she couldnt make up her
mind right away.
 You know, you caught me in the middle of stir-frying, she said. I cant stop now. Can
you call me again in half an hour? 
 Sure thing, Ayumi said. Half an hour it is. 
Aomame hung up and finished stir-frying her vegetables. Then she made some miso soup
with bean sprouts and had that with brown rice. She drank half a can of beer and poured the
rest down the drain. She had washed the dishes and was resting on the sofa when Ayumi
called again.
 I thought it might be nice to have dinner together sometime, she said. I get tired of eating
alone. 
 Do you always eat alone? 
 I live in a dormitory, with meals included, so I usually eat in a big, noisy crowd. Sometimes,
though, I want to have a nice, quiet meal, maybe go someplace a little fancy. But not
alone. You know what I mean? 
 Of course I do, Aomame said.
 I just dont have anybody man or woman to eat with at times like that. They all like to
hang out in cheap bars. With you, though, I thought just maybe, if you wouldnt mind … 
 No, I wouldnt mind at all, Aomame said. Lets do it. Lets go have a fancy meal together.
I havent done something like that for a long time. 
 Really? Im thrilled! 
 You said the day after tomorrow is good for you? 
 Right. Im off duty the day after that. Do you know a nice place? 
Aomame mentioned a certain French restaurant in the Nogizaka neighborhood.
Ayumi gasped. Are you kidding? Its only the most famous French restaurant in the city. I
read in a magazine its insanely expensive, and you have to wait two months for a reservation.
Thats no place for anybody on my salary! 
 Dont worry, the owner-chef is a member of my gym. Im his personal trainer, and I kind of
advise him on his menus nutritional values. If I ask him, Im sure hell save us a table and
knock the bill way down, too. I cant guarantee wed get great seats, of course. 
 Id be happy to sit in a closet in that place, Ayumi said.
 Youd better wear your best dress, Aomame advised her.
When she had hung up, Aomame was somewhat shocked to realize that she had grown
fond of the young policewoman. She hadnt felt like this about anyone since Tamaki Otsuka
died. And though the feelings were utterly different from what she had felt for Tamaki, this
was the first time in a very long time that she would share a meal with a friend or even want
to do such a thing. To add to which, this other person was a police officer! Aomame sighed.
Life was so strange.
Aomame wore a small white cardigan over a blue-gray short-sleeve dress, and she had
on her Ferragamo heels. She added earrings and a narrow gold bracelet. Leaving her usual
shoulder bag at home (along with the ice pick), she carried a small Bagagerie purse. Ayumi
wore a simple black jacket by Comme des Garçons over a scoop-necked brown T-shirt, a
flower-patterned flared skirt, the Gucci bag she carried before, small pearl pierced earrings,
and brown low-heeled shoes. She looked far lovelier and more elegant than last time and
certainly not like a police officer.
They met at the bar, sipped mimosas, and then were shown to their table, which turned
out to be a rather good one. The chef stepped out of the kitchen for a chat with Aomame and
noted that the wine would be on the house.
 Sorry, its already been uncorked, and one tastings worth is gone. A customer complained
about the taste yesterday and we gave him a new bottle, but in fact there is absolutely
nothing wrong with this wine. The man is a famous politician who likes to think hes a wine
connoisseur, but he doesnt know a damn thing about wine. He did it to show off. ‘Im afraid
this might have a slight edge, he says. We had to humor him. ‘Oh, yes, you may be right
about that, sir. Im sure the importers warehouse is at fault. Ill bring another bottle right away.
But bravo, sir! I dont think another person in the country could have caught this! That was
the best way to make everybody happy, as you can imagine. Now, I cant say this too loudly,
but we had to inflate the bill a little to cover our loss. He was on an expense account, after all.
In any case, theres no way a restaurant with our reputation could serve a returned bottle. 
 Except to us, you mean. 
The chef winked. You dont mind, do you? 
 Of course not, Aomame said.
 Not at all, Ayumi chimed in.
 Is this lovely lady your younger sister, by any chance? the chef asked Aomame.
 Does she look it? Aomame asked back.
 I dont see a physical resemblance, but theres a certain atmosphere … 
 Shes my friend, Aomame said. My police officer friend. 
 Really? He looked again at Ayumi with an expression of disbelief. You mean, with a pistol
and everything? 
 Ive never shot anyone, Ayumi said.
 I dont think I said anything incriminating, did I? 
Ayumi shook her head. Not a thing. 
The chef smiled and clasped his hands across his chest. In any case, this is a highly respected
Burgundy that we can serve to anyone with confidence. From a noble domain, a
good year. I wont say how many ten-thousand-yen bills wed ordinarily have to charge for this
one. 
The chef withdrew and the waiter approached to pour their wine. Aomame and Ayumi
toasted each other, the clink of their glasses a distant echo of heavenly bells.
 Oh! Ive never tasted such delicious wine before! Ayumi said, her eyes narrowed after
her first sip. Who could possibly object to a wine like this? 
 You can always find somebody to complain about anything, Aomame said.
The two women studied the menu. Ayumi went through every item twice with the sharp
gaze of a smart lawyer reading a major contract: was she missing something important, a
clever loophole? She mentally scrutinized all the provisos and stipulations and pondered their
likely repercussions, carefully weighing profit and loss.
Aomame enjoyed watching this spectacle from across the table. Have you decided? she
asked.
 Pretty much, Ayumi said.
 So, what are you going to order? 
 Ill have the mussels, the three-onion salad, and the Bordeaux-braised Iwate veal stew.
How about you? 
 Id like the lentil soup, the warm spring green salad, and the parchment-baked monkfish
with polenta. Not much of a match for a red wine, but its free, so I cant complain. 
 Mind sharing a little? 
 Not at all, Aomame said. And if you dont mind, lets share the deep-fried shrimp to
start. 
 Marvelous! 
 If were through choosing, wed better close the menus, Aomame said. Otherwise the
waiter will never come. 
 True, Ayumi said, closing her menu with apparent regret and setting it on the table. The
waiter came over immediately and took their order.
 Whenever I finish ordering in a restaurant, I feel like I got the wrong thing, Ayumi said
when the waiter was gone. How about you? 
 Even if you do order the wrong thing, its just food. Its no big deal compared with mistakes
in life. 
 No, of course not, Ayumi said. But still, its important to me. Its been that way ever
since I was little. Always after Ive ordered I start having regrets ‘Oh, if only I had ordered
the fried shrimp instead of a hamburger! Have you always been so cool? 
 Well, for various reasons, my family never ate out. Ever. As far back as I can remember, I
never set foot in a restaurant, and I never had the experience until much later of choosing
food from a menu and ordering what I wanted to eat. I just had to shut up and eat what I was
served day after day. I wasnt allowed to complain if the food was tasteless or if it didnt fill me
up or if I hated it. To tell you the truth, even now, I really dont care what I eat, as long as its
healthy 
 Really? Can that be true? I dont know much about your situation, but you sure dont look
it. To me, you look like somebody whos been used to coming to places like this since you
were little. 
This Aomame owed entirely to the guidance of Tamaki Otsuka. How to behave in an elegant
restaurant, how to choose your food without making a fool of yourself, how to order wine,
how to request dessert, how to deal with your waiter, how to use your cutlery properly: Tamaki
knew about all these things, and she taught them all in great detail to Aomame. She also
taught Aomame how to choose her clothing, how to wear accessories, and how to use
makeup. These were all new discoveries for Aomame. Tamaki grew up in an affluent Yamanote
household. A socialite, her mother was exceedingly particular about manners and clothing,
as a result of which Tamaki had internalized all that knowledge as early as her high
school days. She could socialize comfortably with grown-ups. Aomame absorbed this knowledge
voraciously; she would have been a far different person if she had never met an excellent
teacher like Tamaki. She often felt that Tamaki was still alive and lurking inside of her.
Ayumi seemed a little anxious at first, but each sip of wine relaxed her.
 Uh, I want to ask you something, Ayumi said. You dont have to answer if you dont
want to, but I just feel like asking. You wont get mad, will you? 
 No, I wont get mad. 
 Its kind of a strange question, but I dont have any ulterior motive in asking it. I want you
to understand that. Im just a curious person. But some people get really angry about these
things. 
 Dont worry, I wont get angry. 
 Are you sure? Thats what everybody says, and then they blow up. 
 Im special, so dont worry. 
 Did you ever have the experience of having a man do funny things to you when you were
little? 
Aomame shook her head. No, I dont think so. Why? 
 I just wanted to ask. If it never happened to you, fine, Ayumi said. Then she changed the
subject. Tell me, have you ever had a lover? I mean, someone you were seriously involved
with? 
 Never. 
 Not even once? 
 Not even once, Aomame said. Then, after some hesitation, she added, To tell you the
truth, I was a virgin until I turned twenty-six. 
Ayumi was at a loss for words. She put down her knife and fork, dabbed at her mouth with
her napkin, and stared at Aomame with narrowed eyes.
 A beautiful woman like you? I cant believe it. 
 I just wasnt interested. 
 Not interested in men? 
 I did have one person I fell in love with, Aomame said. It happened when I was ten. I
held his hand. 
 You fell in love with a boy when you were ten? Thats all? 
 Thats all. 
Ayumi picked up her knife and fork and seemed deep in thought as she sliced one of her
shrimp. So, where is the boy now? Whats he doing? 
Aomame shook her head. I dont know. We were in the same third- and fourth-grade
classes in Ichikawa in Chiba, but I moved to a school in Tokyo in the fifth grade, and I never
saw him again, never heard anything about him. All I know is that, if hes still alive, he should
be twenty-nine years old now. Hell probably turn thirty this fall. 
 Are you telling me you never thought about trying to find out where he is or what hes doing?
It wouldnt be that hard, you know. 
Aomame gave another firm shake of her head. I never felt like taking the initiative to find
out. 
 Thats so strange. If it were me, Id do everything I could to locate him. If you love him
that much, you should track him down and tell him so to his face. 
 I dont want to do that, Aomame said. What I want is for the two of us to meet somewhere
by chance one day, like, passing on the street, or getting on the same bus. 
 Destiny. A chance encounter. 
 More or less, Aomame said, taking a sip of wine. Thats when Ill open up to him. ‘The
only one Ive ever loved in this life is you. 
 How romantic! Ayumi said, astonished. But the odds of a meeting like that are pretty
low, Id say. And besides, you havent seen him for twenty years. He might look completely
different. You could pass him on the street and never know. 
Aomame shook her head. Id know. His face might have changed, but Id know him at a
glance. I couldnt miss him. 
 How can you be so sure? 
 Im sure. 
 So you go on waiting, believing that this chance encounter is bound to happen. 
 Which is why I always pay attention when I walk down the street. 
 Incredible, Ayumi said. But as much as you love him, you dont mind having sex with
other men at least after you turned twenty-six. 
Aomame thought about this for a moment. Then she said, Thats all just in passing. It
doesnt last. 
A short silence ensued, during which both women concentrated on their food. Then Ayumi
said, Sorry if this is getting too personal, but did something happen to you when you were
twenty-six? 
Aomame nodded. Something did happen. And it changed me completely. But I cant talk
about it here and now. Sorry. 
 Thats perfectly okay, Ayumi said. Did I put you in a bad mood asking all these questions? 
 Not in the least, Aomame said.
The waiter brought the starters, and they ate for a while in silence. Their conversation
picked up again after they had put their spoons down and the waiter cleared their bowls from
the table.
 Arent you afraid, though? Ayumi asked Aomame.
 Afraid of what? 
 Dont you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting
could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you
have to see theres a huge possibility youll never be able to meet him again. And even if you
do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isnt that
so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with
the one person you love in all the world. Dont you find that scary? 
Aomame stared at the red wine in her glass. Maybe I do, she said. But at least I have
someone I love. 
 Even if he never loved you? 
 If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then theres salvation in
life. Even if you cant get together with that person. 
Ayumi thought this over for a while. The waiter approached and refilled their wineglasses.
Taking a sip, Aomame thought, Ayumi is right. Who could possibly object to a wine like this?
 Youre amazing, Ayumi said, the way you can put this in such a philosophical perspective. 
 Im not being philosophical. Im just telling you what I honestly think. 
 I was in love with somebody once, Ayumi said with a confidential air. Right after I graduated
from high school. The boy I first had sex with. He was three years older than me. But he
dumped me for somebody else right away. I went kind of wild after that. It was really hard on
me. I got over him, but I still havent recovered from the wild part. He was a real two-timing
bastard, a smooth talker. But I really loved him. 
Aomame nodded, and Ayumi picked up her wineglass and took a drink.
 He still calls me once in a while, says he wants to get together. All he wants is my body,
of course. I know that. So I dont see him. I know it would just be another mess if I did. Or
should I say my brain knows it, but my body always reacts. It wants him so badly! When these
things build up, I let myself go crazy again. I wonder if you know what I mean. 
 I certainly do, Aomame said.
 Hes really an awful guy, pretty nasty, and hes not that good in bed, either. But at least
hes not scared of me, and while Im with him he treats me well. 
 Feelings like that dont give you any choice, do they? Aomame said. They come at you
whenever they want to. Its not like choosing food from a menu. 
 It is in one way: you have regrets after you make a mistake. 
They shared a laugh.
Aomame said, Its the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think
were choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be
that everythings decided in advance and we pretend were making choices. Free will may be
an illusion. I often think that. 
 If thats true, life is pretty dark. 
 Maybe so. 
 But if you can love someone with your whole heart even if hes a terrible person and
even if he doesnt love you back life is not a hell, at least, though it might be kind of dark. Is
that what youre saying? Ayumi asked.
 Exactly. 
 But still, Ayumi said, it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic
and kindness. 
 You may be right, Aomame said. But its too late to trade it in for another one. 
 The exchange window expired a long time ago, Ayumi said.
 And the receipts been thrown away. 
 You said it. 
 Oh, well, no problem, Aomame said. The worlds going to end before we know it. 
 Sounds like fun. 
 And the kingdom is going to come. 
 I can hardly wait, Ayumi said.
They ate dessert, drank espresso, and split the bill (which was amazingly cheap). Then
they dropped into a neighborhood bar for cocktails.
 Oh, look at him over there, Ayumi said. Hes your type, isnt he? 
Aomame swung her gaze in that direction. A tall, middle-aged man was drinking a martini
alone at the end of the bar. He looked like a high school scholar-athlete who had entered
middle age virtually unchanged. His hair was beginning to thin, but he still had a youthful face.
 He may be, but were not having anything to do with men today, Aomame declared. And
besides, this is a classy bar. 
 I know. I just wanted to see what youd say. 
 Well do that next time. 
Ayumi looked at Aomame. Does that mean youll go with me next time? Searching for
men, I mean. 
 For sure, Aomame said. Lets do it. 
 Great! Something tells me that together, we can do anything! 
Aomame was drinking a daiquiri, Ayumi a Tom Collins.
 Oh, by the way, Aomame said, on the phone the other day you said we were doing lesbian
stuff. What kind of stuff? 
 Oh, that, Ayumi said. It was nothing special. We just faked it a bit to liven things up. You
really dont remember anything? You were pretty hot. 
 Not a thing. My memory is wiped clean. 
 We were naked and touching each others breasts and kissing down there and 
 Kissing down there?! Aomame exclaimed. After the words escaped her lips, she
nervously glanced around. She had spoken too loudly in the quiet bar, but fortunately no one
seemed to have heard what she said.
 Dont worry, like I said, we were faking it. No tongues. 
 Oh, man, Aomame sighed, pressing her temples. What the hell was that all about? 
 Im sorry, Ayumi said.
 Its not your fault. I should never have let myself get so drunk. 
 But really, Aomame, you were so sweet and clean down there. Like new. 
 Well, of course, I really am almost new down there. 
 You mean you dont use it all that often? 
Aomame nodded. Thats exactly what I mean. So, tell me: are you interested in women? 
Ayumi shook her head. No, I never did anything like that before. Really. But I was pretty
drunk, too, and I figured I wouldnt mind doing a little of that stuff as long as it was with you.
Faking it. Just for fun. How about you? 
 No, I dont have those kinds of feelings, either. Once, though, when I was in high school, I
kind of did stuff like that with a good friend of mine. Neither of us had been planning it. It just
sort of happened. 
 Its probably not that unusual. Did you feel anything that time? 
 I did, I think, Aomame answered honestly. But only that once. I also felt it was wrong
and never did anything like it again. 
 You mean you think lesbian sex is wrong? 
 No, not at all. Im not saying lesbian sex is wrong or dirty or anything. I mean I just felt I
shouldnt get into that kind of a relationship with that particular friend. I didnt want to change
an important friendship into anything so physical. 
 I see, Ayumi said. You know, if its okay with you, would you mind putting me up tonight?
I dont feel like going back to the dorm. The minute I walk in there it will just ruin the elegant
mood weve managed to create this evening. 
Aomame took her last sip of daiquiri and set her glass on the bar. I dont mind putting you
up, but no fooling around. 
 No, no, thats fine, Im not looking for that. I just want to stay with you a little longer. I dont
care where you put me to bed. I can sleep anywhere even on the floor. And Im off duty tomorrow,
so we can hang out in the morning, too. 
They took the subway back to Aomames apartment in Jiyugaoka, arriving just before eleven.
Both were pleasantly drunk and sleepy. Aomame put bedding on the sofa and lent Ayumi
a pair of pajamas.
 Can I get in bed with you for a minute or two? Ayumi asked. I want to stay close to you
just a little bit longer. No funny business, I promise. 
 I dont mind, Aomame said, struck by the fact that a woman who had killed three men
would be lying in bed with an active-duty policewoman. Life was so strange!
Ayumi crawled under the covers and wrapped her arms around Aomame, her firm breasts
pressing against Aomames arm, her breath smelling of alcohol and toothpaste. Dont you
think my breasts are too big? she asked Aomame.
 Not at all. Theyre beautiful. 
 Sure, but, I dont know, big boobs make you look stupid, dont you think? Mine bounce
when I run, and Im too embarrassed to hang my bras out to dry theyre like two big salad
bowls. 
 Men seem to like them like that. 
 And even my nipples are too big. Ayumi unbuttoned her pajama top and pulled out a
breast. Look. This is a big nipple! Dont you think its odd? 
Aomame looked at Ayumis nipple. It was certainly not small, but not so big as to cause
concern, maybe a little bit bigger than Tamakis. Its nice. Did somebody tell you your nipples
are too big? 
 Yeah, one guy. He said theyre the biggest hes ever seen in his life. 
 Im sure he hadnt seen very many. Yours are ordinary. Mine are too small. 
 No, I like your breasts. Theyre very elegantly shaped, and they give this intellectual impression. 
 Thats ridiculous. Theyre too small, and theyre different sizes. I have trouble buying bras
because one side is bigger than the other. 
 Really? I guess we all have our issues. 
 Exactly. Now go to sleep, Aomame said.
Ayumi stretched her arm down and started to put a finger into Aomames pajamas.
Aomame grabbed her hand.
 No, you promised. 
 Sorry, Ayumi said, pulling her hand back. Youre right, I did promise, didnt I? I must be
drunk. But Im crazy about you. Like some mousy little high school girl. 
Aomame said nothing.
Almost whispering, Ayumi said, What I think is that youre saving the one thing thats
most important to you for that boy. Its true, isnt it? I envy you. That youve got somebody to
save yourself for. 
She could be right, Aomame thought. But what is the one thing thats most important to
me?
 Now go to sleep, Aomame said. Ill hold you until you fall asleep. 
 Thank you, Ayumi said. Sorry for putting you to so much trouble. 
 Dont apologize. This is no trouble. 
Aomame continued to feel Ayumis warm breath against her side. A dog howled in the distance,
and someone slammed a window shut. All the while, Aomame kept stroking Ayumis
hair.
Aomame slipped out of bed after Ayumi was sound asleep. She would be the one sleeping
on the sofa tonight, it seemed. She took a bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator and
drank two glasses from it. Then she stepped out onto her small balcony and sat in an aluminum
chair, looking at the neighborhood stretched out below. It was a soft spring night. The
breeze carried the roar of distant streets like a man-made ocean. The glitter of neon had diminished
somewhat now that midnight had passed.
Im fond of this girl Ayumi, no doubt about it. I want to be as good to her as I can. After Tamaki
died, I made up my mind to live without deep ties to anyone. I never once felt that I
wanted a new friend. But for some reason I feel my heart opening to Ayumi. I can even confess
my true feelings to her with a certain degree of honesty. She is totally different from you,
of course, Aomame said to the Tamaki inside. You are special. I grew up with you. No one
else can compare.
Aomame leaned her head back and looked up at the sky for a time. Even as her eyes took
in the sky, her mind wandered through distant memories. The time she spent with Tamaki, the
talking they did, and the touching.… Soon, she began to sense that the night sky she saw
above her was somehow different from the sky she was used to seeing. The strangeness of it
was subtle but undeniable.
Some time had to pass before she was able to grasp what the difference was. And even
after she had grasped it, she had to work hard to accept it. What her vision had seized upon,
her mind could not easily confirm.
There were two moons in the sky a small moon and a large one. They were floating
there side by side. The large one was the usual moon that she had always seen. It was nearly
full, and yellow. But there was another moon right next to it. It had an unfamiliar shape. It was
somewhat lopsided, and greenish, as though thinly covered with moss. This was what her vision
had seized upon.
Aomame stared at the two moons with narrowed eyes. Then she closed her eyes, let a
moment pass, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again, expecting to find that
everything had returned to normal and there was only one moon. But nothing had changed.
The light was not playing tricks on her, nor had her eyesight gone strange. There could be no
doubt that two moons were clearly floating in the sky side by side a yellow one and a green
one.
She thought of waking Ayumi to ask if there really were two moons up there, but she decided
against it. Ayumi might say, Of course there are two moons in the sky. They increased
in number last year. Or then again, she might say, What are you talking about? Theres only
one moon up there. Something must be wrong with your eyes. Neither response would solve
the problem now facing her. Both would only deepen it.
Aomame raised her hands to cover the lower half of her face, and she continued staring at
the two moons. Something is happening, for sure, she thought. Her heartbeat sped up.
Somethings wrong with the world, or somethings wrong with me: one or the other. The bottle
and the cap dont fit: is the problem with the bottle or the cap?
She went back inside, locked the balcony door, and drew the curtain. She took a bottle of
brandy from the cabinet and poured herself a glassful. Ayumi was sleeping nicely in bed, her
breathing deep and even. Aomame kept watch over her and took a sip of brandy now and
then. Planting her elbows on the kitchen table, she struggled not to think about what lay bey-
ond the curtain.
Maybe the world really is ending, she thought.
 And the kingdom is coming, Aomame muttered to herself.
 I can hardly wait, somebody said somewhere.
1Q84
CHAPTER 16
Tengo
IM GLAD YOU LIKED IT
Tengo had spent ten days reworking Air Chrysalis before handing it over to Komatsu as a
newly finished work, following which he was visited by a string of calm, tranquil days. He
taught three days a week at the cram school, and got together once a week with his married
girlfriend. The rest of his time he spent doing housework, taking walks, and writing his own
novel. April passed like this. The cherry blossoms scattered, new buds appeared on the trees,
the magnolias reached full bloom, and the seasons moved along in stages. The days flowed
by smoothly, regularly, uneventfully. This was the life that Tengo most wanted, each week
linking automatically and seamlessly with the next.
Amid all the sameness, however, one change became evident. A good change. Tengo
was aware that, as he went on writing his novel, a new wellspring was forming inside him. Not
that its water was gushing forth: it was more like a tiny spring among the rocks. The flow may
have been limited, but it was continuous, welling up drop by drop. He was in no hurry. He felt
no pressure. All he had to do was wait patiently for the water to collect in the rocky basin until
he could scoop it up. Then he would sit at his desk, turning what he had scooped into words,
and the story would advance quite naturally.
The concentrated work of rewriting Air Chrysalis might have dislodged a rock that had
been blocking his wellspring until now. Tengo had no idea why that should be so, but he had
a definite sense that a heavy lid had finally come off. He felt as though his body had become
lighter, that he had emerged from a cramped space and could now stretch his arms and legs
freely. Air Chrysalis had probably stimulated something that had been deep inside him all
along.
Tengo sensed, too, that something very like desire was growing inside him. This was the
first time in his life he had ever experienced such a feeling. All through high school and college,
his judo coach and older teammates would often say to him, You have the talent and
the strength, and you practice enough, but you just dont have the desire. They were probably
right. He lacked that drive to win at all costs, which is why he would often make it to the
semifinals and the finals but lose the all-important championship match. He exhibited these
tendencies in everything, not just judo. He was more placid than determined. It was the same
with his fiction. He could write with some style and make up reasonably interesting stories, but
his work lacked the strength to grab the reader by the throat. Something was missing. And so
he would always make it to the short list but never take the new writers prize, as Komatsu
had said.
After he finished rewriting Air Chrysalis, however, Tengo was truly chagrined for the first
time in his life. While engaged in the rewrite, he had been totally absorbed in the process,
moving his hands without thinking. Once he had completed the work and handed it to Komatsu,
however, Tengo was assaulted by a profound sense of powerlessness. Once the
powerlessness began to abate, a kind of rage surged up from deep inside him. The rage was
directed at Tengo himself. I used another persons story to create a rewrite that amounts to a
literary fraud, and I did it with far more passion than I bring to my own work. Isnt a writer
someone who finds the story hidden inside and uses the proper words to express it? Arent
you ashamed of yourself? You should be able to write something as good as Air Chrysalis if
you make up your mind to do it. Isnt that true?
But he had to prove it to himself.
Tengo decided to discard the manuscript he had written thus far and start a brand-new
story from scratch. He closed his eyes and, for a long time, listened closely to the dripping of
the little spring inside him. Eventually the words began to come naturally to him. Little by little,
taking all the time he needed, he began to form them into sentences.
In early May Komatsu called him for the first time in quite a while. The phone rang just before
nine oclock at night.
 Its all set, Komatsu said, with a note of excitement in his voice. This was rare for him.
Tengo could not tell at first what Komatsu was talking about. Whats all set? 
 What else? Air Chrysalis took the new writers award a few minutes ago. The committee
reached a unanimous decision, with none of the usual debate. I guess you could say it was
inevitable, its such a powerful work. In any case, things have started to move. Were in this
together from now on, Tengo. Lets give it our best shot. 
Tengo glanced at the calendar on the wall. Come to think of it, today was the day the
screening committee was going to pick the winner. Tengo had been so absorbed in writing his
own novel, he had lost all sense of time.
 So what happens now? Tengo asked. In terms of the prize schedule, I mean. 
 Tomorrow the newspapers announce it every paper in the country. Theyll probably
have photos, too. A pretty seventeen-year-old girl wins: that alone will cause a sensation.
Dont take this the wrong way, but that has a lot more news value than if the new writers prize
had gone to some thirty-year-old cram school teacher who looks like a bear coming out of hibernation. 
 Way more, Tengo said.
 Then comes the award ceremony on May 16 in a Shinbashi hotel. The press conference
is all arranged. 
 Will Fuka-Eri be there? 
 Im sure she will, this time at least. Theres no way the winner of a new writers prize
wouldnt be present at the award ceremony. If we can get through that without any major mishaps,
we can then adopt a policy of total secrecy. ‘Sorry, but the author does not wish to
make public appearances. We can hold them at bay like that, and the truth will never come
out. 
Tengo tried to imagine Fuka-Eri holding a press conference in a hotel ballroom. A row of
microphones, cameras flashing. He couldnt picture it.
 Do you really need to have a press conference? he asked Komatsu.
 Well have to, at least once, to keep up appearances. 
 Its bound to be a disaster! 
 Which is why its your job, Tengo, to make sure it doesnt turn into a disaster. 
Tengo went silent. Ominous dark clouds appeared on the horizon.
 Hey, are you still there? Komatsu asked.
 Im here, Tengo said. What does that mean its my job? 
 You have to drill Fuka-Eri on how a press conference works and how to deal with it.
Pretty much the same sorts of questions come up every time, so you should prepare answers
for questions theyre likely to ask, and have her memorize them word for word. You teach at a
cram school. You must know how to do stuff like that. 
 You want me to do it? 
 Of course. She trusts you, for some reason. Shell listen to you. Theres no way I can do
it. She hasnt even agreed to meet me. 
Tengo sighed. He wished he could cut all ties with Air Chrysalis. He had done everything
asked of him, and now he just wanted to concentrate on his own work. Something told him,
however, that it was not going to be that simple, and he knew that bad premonitions have a
far higher accuracy rate than good ones.
 Are you free in the evening the day after tomorrow? Komatsu asked.
 I am. 
 Six oclock at the usual café in Shinjuku. Fuka-Eri will be there. 
 I cant do what youre asking me to do, Tengo said to Komatsu. I dont know anything
about press conferences. Ive never even seen one. 
 You want to be a novelist, right? So imagine it. Isnt that the job of the novelist to imagine
things hes never seen? 
 Yes, but arent you the one who told me all I had to do was rewrite Air Chrysalis, that
youd take care of everything else after that, that I could just sit on the sidelines and watch the
rest of the game? 
 Look, Id gladly do it if I could. Im not crazy about asking people to do things for me, but
thats exactly what Im doing now, pleading with you to do this job because I cant do it. Dont
you see? Its as if were in a boat shooting the rapids. Ive got my hands full steering the rudder,
so Im letting you take the oar. If you tell me you cant do it, the boats going to capsize
and we all might go under, including Fuka-Eri. You dont want that to happen, do you? 
Tengo sighed again. Why did he always get himself backed into a corner where he
couldnt refuse? Okay, Ill do my best. But I cant promise its going to work. 
 Thats all Im asking, Komatsu said. Ill owe you big for this. I mean, Fuka-Eri seems to
have made up her mind not to talk to anyone but you. And theres one more thing. You and I
have to set up a new company. 
 A company? 
 Company, office, firm call it anything you like. To handle Fuka-Eris literary activities. A
paper company, of course. Officially, Fuka-Eri will be paid by the company. Well have Professor
Ebisuno be her representative and youll be a company employee. We can make up
some kind of title for you, it doesnt matter, but the main thing is the company will pay you. Ill
be in on it, too, but without revealing my name. If people found out that I was involved, that
would cause some serious trouble. Anyway, thats how we divide up the profits. All I need is
for you to put your seal on a few documents, and Ill take care of the rest. I know a good lawyer. 
Tengo thought about what Komatsu was telling him. Can you please just drop me from
your plan? I dont need to be paid. I enjoyed rewriting Air Chrysalis, and I learned a lot from it.
Im glad that Fuka-Eri got the prize and Ill do my best to prepare her for the press conference.
But thats all. I dont want to have anything to do with this convoluted ‘company arrangement.
That would be straight-up fraud. 
 You cant turn back now, Tengo, Komatsu said. Straight-up fraud? Maybe so. But you
must have known that from the start when we decided to pull the wool over peoples eyes with
this half-invented author, Fuka-Eri. Am I right? Of course something like this is going to involve
money, and thats going to require a sophisticated system to handle it. This is not childs
play. Its too late to start saying you dont want to have anything to do with it, that its too dangerous,
that you dont need money. If you were going to get out of the boat, you should have
done it before, while the stream was still gentle. You cant do it now. We need an official head
count to set up a company, and I cant start bringing in new people now who dont know
whats going on. You have to do it. Youre right in the thick of whats happening now. 
Tengo racked his brain without producing a single useful thought. I do have one question,
though, he said to Komatsu. Judging from what youre saying, Professor Ebisuno intends to
give his full approval to the plan. It sounds as if hes already agreed to set up the fake com-
pany and act as a representative. 
 As Fuka-Eris guardian, the Professor understands and approves of the entire situation
and has given us the green light. I called him as soon as you told me about your talk with him.
He remembered me, of course. I think he didnt say anything about me because he wanted to
get your uncensored opinion of me. He said you impressed him as a sharp observer of
people. What in the world did you tell him about me? 
 What does Professor Ebisuno have to gain from participating in this plan? He cant possibly
be doing it for the money. 
 Youre right about that. Hes not the kind of guy to be influenced by a little spare change. 
 So why would he let himself get involved in such a risky plan? Does he have something
to gain from it? 
 I dont know any better than you do. Hes a hard one to read. 
 And so are you. That gives us a lot of deep motives to guess about. 
 Well, anyway, Komatsu said, the Professor may look like just another innocent old guy,
but in fact hes quite inscrutable. 
 How much does Fuka-Eri know about the plan? 
 She doesnt know and she doesnt need to know anything about the behind-the-scenes
stuff. She trusts Professor Ebisuno and she likes you. Thats why Im asking
you for more help. 
Tengo shifted the phone from one hand to the other. He felt a need to trace the progress
of the current situation. By the way, Professor Ebisuno is not a scholar anymore, is he? He
left the university, and hes not writing books or anything. 
 True, hes cut all ties with academia. He was an outstanding scholar, but he doesnt seem
to miss the academic world. But then, he never did want much to do with authority or the organization.
He was always something of a maverick. 
 What sort of work is he doing now? 
 I think hes a stockbroker, Komatsu said. Or, if that sounds too old-fashioned, hes an investment
consultant. He manages money for people, and while he moves it around for them,
he makes his own profit on the side. He stays holed up on the mountaintop, issuing suggestions
to buy or sell. His instinct for it is frighteningly good. He also excels at analyzing data
and has put together his own system. It was just a hobby for him at first, but it became his
main profession. So thats the story. Hes pretty famous in those circles. One things for sure:
hes not hurting for money. 
 I dont see any connection between cultural anthropology and stock trading, Tengo said.
 In general, there is no connection, but there is for him. 
 And hes a hard one to read. 
 Exactly. 
Tengo pressed his fingertips against his temples. Then, resigning himself to his fate, he
said, Ill meet Fuka-Eri at the usual café in Shinjuku at six oclock the day after tomorrow, and
well prepare for the press conference. Thats what you want me to do, right? 
 Thats the plan, Komatsu said. You know, Tengo, dont think too hard about this stuff for
the time being. Just go with the flow. Things like this dont happen all that often in one lifetime.
This is the magnificent world of a picaresque novel. Just brace yourself and enjoy the smell of
evil. Were shooting the rapids. And when we go over the falls, lets do it together in grand
style! 
Tengo met Fuka-Eri at the Shinjuku café in the evening two days later. She wore a slim
pair of jeans and a thin summer sweater that clearly revealed the outline of her breasts. Her
hair hung down long and straight, and her skin had a fresh glow. The male customers kept
glancing in her direction. Tengo could feel their gazes. Fuka-Eri herself, though, seemed
totally unaware of them. When this girl was announced as the winner of a literary magazines
new writers prize, it would almost certainly cause a commotion.
Fuka-Eri had already received word that she had won the prize, but she seemed neither
pleased nor excited by it. She didnt care one way or the other. It was a summerlike day, but
she ordered hot cocoa and clutched the cup in both hands, savoring every drop. No one had
told her about the upcoming press conference, but when Tengo explained, she had no reaction.
 You do know what a press conference is, dont you? 
 Press conference … Fuka-Eri repeated the words.
 You sit up on the podium and answer questions from a bunch of newspaper and
magazine reporters. Theyll take your picture. There might even be TV cameras. The whole
country will see reports on the questions and answers. Its very unusual for a seventeen-year-old
girl to win a literary magazines new writers award. Itll be big news. Theyll
make a big deal of the fact that the committees decision was unanimous. That almost never
happens. 
 Questions and answers, Fuka-Eri asked.
 They ask the questions, you give the answers. 
 What kind of questions. 
 All kinds of questions. About the work, about you, about your private life, your hobbies,
your plans for the future. It might be a good idea to prepare answers now for those kinds of
questions. 
 Why. 
 Its safer that way. So you arent at a loss for answers and dont say anything that might
invite misunderstanding. It wouldnt hurt to get ready for it now. Kind of like a rehearsal. 
Fuka-Eri drank her cocoa in silence. Then she looked at Tengo with eyes that said, Im
really not interested in doing such a thing, but if you think its necessary … Her eyes could be
more eloquent or at least speak more full sentences than her words. But she could hardly
conduct a press conference with her eyes.
Tengo took a piece of paper from his briefcase and unfolded it on the table. It contained a
list of questions that were likely to come up at the press conference. Tengo had put a lot of
time and thought into compiling it the night before.
 Ill ask a question, and you answer me as if Im a newspaper reporter, okay? 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 Have you written lots of stories before? 
 Lots, Fuka-Eri replied.
 When did you start writing? 
 A long time ago. 
 Thats fine, Tengo said. Short answers are good. No need to add anything extra. Like,
the fact that Azami did the writing for you. Okay? 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 You shouldnt say anything about that. Its just our little secret, yours and mine. 
 I wont say anything about that, Fuka-Eri said.
 Did you think youd win when you submitted your work for the new writers prize? 
She smiled but said nothing.
 So you dont want to answer that? 
 No. 
 Thats fine. Just keep quiet and smile when you dont want to answer. Theyre stupid
questions, anyway. 
Fuka-Eri nodded again.
 Where did you get the story line for Air Chrysalis? 
 From the blind goat. 
 Good answer. What are your friends at school saying about your winning the prize? 
 I dont go to school. 
 Why dont you go to school? 
No answer.
 Do you plan to keep writing fiction? 
Silence again.
Tengo drank the last of his coffee and returned the cup to the saucer. From the speakers
recessed in the cafés ceiling, a string performance of soundtrack music from The Sound of
Music played at low volume.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens …
 Are my answers bad, Fuka-Eri asked.
 Not at all, Tengo said. Not at all. Theyre fine. 
 Good, Fuka-Eri said.
Tengo meant it. Even though she could not speak more than a sentence at a time and
some punctuation marks were missing, her answers were, in a sense, perfect. The best thing
was her instant response to every question. Also good was the way she looked directly into
the eyes of the questioner without blinking. This proved that her answers were honest and
their shortness was not meant as a put-down. Another bonus was that no one was likely to be
able to grasp her precise meaning. That was the main thing that Tengo was hoping for that
she should give an impression of sincerity even as she mystified her listeners.
 Your favorite novel is …? 
 The Tale of the Heike. 
Tengo was astounded. To think that a thirteenth-century samurai war chronicle should be
her favorite novel ! What a great answer!
 What do you like about The Tale of the Heike? 
 Everything. 
 How about another favorite? 
 Tales of Times Now Past. 
 But thats even older! Dont you read any new literature? 
Fuka-Eri gave it a moment of thought before saying, ‘Sansho the Bailiff. 
Wonderful! Ogai Mori must have written that one around 1915. This was what she thought
of as new literature. 
 Do you have any hobbies? 
 Listening to music. 
 What kind of music? 
 I like Bach. 
 Anything in particular? 
 BWV 846 to 893. 
Tengo mulled that one over. The Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II. 
 Yes. 
 Why did you answer with the BWV numbers? 
 Theyre easier to remember. 
The Well-Tempered Clavier was truly heavenly music for mathematicians. It was composed
of prelude and fugue pairs in major and minor keys using all twelve tones of the scale,
twenty-four pieces per book, forty-eight pieces in all, comprising a perfect cycle.
 How about other works? Tengo asked.
 BWV 244. 
Tengo could not immediately recall which work of Bachs had a BWV number of 244.
Fuka-Eri began to sing.
 Buß und Reu
 Buß und Reu
 Knirscht das Sündenherz entzwei
 Buß und Reu
 Buß und Reu
 Knirscht das Sündenherz entzwei
 Knirscht das Sündenherz entzwei
 Buß und Reu Buß und Reu
 Knirscht das Sündenherz entzwei
 Buß und Reu
 Knirscht das Sündenherz entzwei
 Daß die Tropfen meiner Zähren
 Angenehme Spezerei
 Treuer Jesu, dir gebären.
Tengo was momentarily dumbstruck. Her singing was not exactly on key, but her German
pronunciation was amazingly clear and precise.
 ‘St. Matthew Passion, Tengo said. You know it by heart. 
 No I dont, the girl said.
Tengo wanted to say something, but the words would not come to him. All he could do
was look down at his notes and move on to the next question.
 Do you have a boyfriend? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head.
 Why not? 
 I dont want to get pregnant. 
 Its possible to have a boyfriend without getting pregnant. 
Fuka-Eri said nothing but instead blinked several times.
 Why dont you want to get pregnant? 
Fuka-Eri kept her mouth clamped shut. Tengo felt sorry for having asked such a stupid
question.
 Okay, lets stop, Tengo said, returning the list to his briefcase. We dont really know
what theyre going to ask, and youll be fine answering them any way you like. You can do it. 
 Thats good, Fuka-Eri said with apparent relief.
 Im sure you think its a waste of time to prepare these answers. 
Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug.
 I agree with you. Im not doing this because I want to. Mr. Komatsu asked me to do it. 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 But, Tengo said, please dont tell anyone that I rewrote Air Chrysalis. You understand
that, dont you? 
Fuka-Eri nodded twice. I wrote it by myself. 
 In any case, Air Chrysalis is your work alone and no one elses. That has been clear from
the outset. 
 I wrote it by myself, Fuka-Eri said again.
 Did you read my rewritten Air Chrysalis? 
 Azami read it to me. 
 How did you like it? 
 Youre a good writer. 
 Which means you liked it, I suppose? 
 Its like I wrote it, Fuka-Eri said.
Tengo looked at her. She picked up her cocoa cup and took a sip. He had to struggle not
to look at the lovely swell of her chest.
 Im glad to hear that, he said. I really enjoyed rewriting Air Chrysalis. Of course, it was
very hard work trying not to destroy what youd done with it. So its very important to me to
know whether you liked the finished product or not. 
Fuka-Eri nodded silently. Then, as if trying to ascertain something, she brought her hand
up to her small, well-formed earlobe.
The waitress approached and refilled their water glasses. Tengo took a swallow to
moisten his throat. Then, screwing up his courage, he gave voice to a thought that he had
been toying with for a while.
 I have my own request to make of you now, if you dont mind. 
 Whats that. 
 Id like you to go to the press conference in the same clothes youre wearing today. 
Fuka-Eri gave him a puzzled look. Then she looked down to check each article of clothing
she had on, as if she had been unaware until this moment of what she was wearing.
 You want me to go wearing this, she asked.
 Right. Id like you to go to the press conference wearing exactly what youre wearing
now. 
 Why. 
 It looks good on you. It shows off the shape of your chest beautifully. This is strictly my
own hunch, but I suspect the reporters wont be able to stop themselves from looking down
there and theyll forget to ask you tough questions. Of course, if you dont like the idea, thats
fine. Im not insisting. 
Fuka-Eri said, Azami picks all my clothes. 
 Not you? 
 I dont care what I wear. 
 So Azami picked your outfit today? 
 Azami picked it. 
 Even so, it looks great on you. 
 So this outfit makes my chest look good, she asked without a question mark.
 Most definitely. Its a real attention-getter. 
 This sweater and bra are a good match. 
Fuka-Eri looked straight into his eyes. Tengo felt himself blushing.
 I cant tell what kind of matching is involved, but the, uh, effect is excellent. 
Fuka-Eri was still staring into Tengos eyes. Gravely, she asked, You cant stop yourself
from looking down there. 
 Its true, I must confess, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri pulled on the collar of her sweater and all but stuck her nose inside as she
looked down, apparently to check out what kind of bra she had on today. Then she focused
her eyes on Tengos bright red face for a moment as if looking at some kind of curiosity. I will
do as you say, she said a moment later.
 Thank you, Tengo said, bringing their session to an end.
Tengo walked Fuka-Eri to Shinjuku Station. Many people on the street had their jackets
off. A few women wore sleeveless tops. The bustle of people combined with the traffic created
the liberated sound unique to the city. A fresh early-summer breeze swept down the street.
Tengo was mystified: where could such a wonderful-smelling wind come from to reach the
crowded streets of Shinjuku?
 Are you going back to your house in the country? Tengo asked Fuka-Eri. The trains were
jammed; it would take her forever to get home.
Fuka-Eri shook her head. I have a room in Shinano-machi. Just a few minutes away from
here. 
 You stay there when it gets too late to go home? 
 Futamatao is too far away. 
As before, Fuka-Eri held Tengos left hand while they were walking to the station. She did
it the way a little girl holds a grown-ups hand, but still it made Tengos heart pound to have
his hand held by such a beautiful girl.
When they reached the station, she let go of his hand and bought a ticket to Shinano-machi
from the machine.
 Dont worry about the press conference, Fuka-Eri said.
 Im not worried. 
 Even if you dont worry, I can do it okay. 
 I know that, Tengo said. Im not the least bit worried. Im sure it will be okay. 
Without speaking, Fuka-Eri disappeared through the ticket gate into the crowd.
After leaving Fuka-Eri, Tengo went to a little bar near the Kinokuniya bookstore and
ordered a gin and tonic. This was a bar he would go to now and then. He liked the oldfashioned
decor and the fact that they had no music playing. He sat alone at the bar and
stared at his left hand for a while, thinking nothing in particular. This was the hand that FukaEri
had been holding. It still retained her touch. He thought about her chest, its beautiful
curves. The shape was so perfect it had almost no sexual meaning.
As he thought about these things, Tengo found himself wanting to talk with his older girlfriend
on the telephone to talk about anything at all: her complaints about child raising, the
approval rating of the Nakasone government, it didnt matter. He just wanted to hear her
voice. If possible, he wanted to meet her somewhere right away and have sex with her. But
calling her at home was out of the question. Her husband might answer. One of her children
might answer. He never did the phoning. That was one of the rules they had established.
Tengo ordered another gin and tonic, and while he waited for it he imagined himself in a
little boat shooting the rapids. On the phone Komatsu had said, When we go over the falls,
lets do it together in grand style! But could Tengo take him at his word? Wouldnt Komatsu
leap onto a handy boulder just before they reached the falls? Sorry, Tengo, he would say,
 but I just remembered some business I have to take care of. Ill leave the rest of this to you. 
And the only one to go over the falls in style would be Tengo himself. It was not inconceivable.
Indeed, it was all too conceivable.
. . .
He went home, went to bed, and dreamed. He hadnt had such a vivid dream in a very
long time. He was a tiny piece in a gigantic puzzle. But instead of having one fixed shape, his
shape kept changing. And so of course he couldnt fit anywhere. As he tried to sort out
where he belonged, he was also given a set amount of time to gather the scattered pages of
the timpani section of a score. A strong wind swept the pages in all directions. He went
around picking up one page at a time. He had to check the page numbers and arrange them
in order as his body changed shape like an amoeba. The situation was out of control. Eventually
Fuka-Eri came along and grabbed his left hand. Tengos shape stopped changing. The
wind suddenly died and stopped scattering the pages of the score. What a relief! Tengo
thought, but in that instant his time began to run out. This is the end, Fuka-Eri informed him
in a whisper. One sentence, as always. Time stopped, and the world ended. The earth ground
slowly to a halt, and all sound and light vanished.
When he woke up the next day, the world was still there, and things were already moving
forward, like the great karmic wheel of Indian mythology that kills every living thing in its path.
1Q84
CHAPTER 17
Aomame
WHETHER WE ARE HAPPY OR UNHAPPY
Aomame stepped out onto her balcony again the next night to find that there were still two
moons in the sky. The big one was the normal moon. It wore a mysterious white coating, as if
it had just burrowed its way there through a mountain of ash, but aside from that it was the
same old moon she was used to seeing, the moon that Neil Armstrong marked with a first
small step but giant leap in that hot summer of 1969. Hanging next to it was a small, green,
lopsided moon, nestled shyly by the big moon like an inferior child.
There must be something wrong with my mind, Aomame thought. There has always been
only one moon, and there should only be one now. If the number of moons had suddenly increased
to two, it should have caused some actual changes to life on earth. The tides, say,
should have been seriously altered, and everyone would be talking about it. I couldnt possibly
have failed to notice it until now. This is different from just happening to miss some articles in
the paper.
Or is it really so different? Can I declare that with one hundred percent certainty?
Aomame scowled for a time. Strange things keep happening around me these days. The
world is moving ahead on its own without my being aware of it, as if were playing a game in
which everybody else can move only when I have my eyes closed. Then it might not be so
strange for there to be two moons hanging in the sky side by side. Perhaps, at some point
when my mind was sleeping, the little one happened along from somewhere in space and decided
to settle into the earths gravitational field, looking like a distant cousin of the moon.
Police officers were issued new uniforms and new pistols. The police and a radical group
staged a wild gun battle in the mountains of Yamanashi. These things occurred without my
being aware of them. There was also a news report that the U.S. and the USSR jointly constructed
a moon base. Could there be some connection between that and the increase in the
number of moons? Aomame probed her memory to see if there had been an article about the
new moon in the compact edition of the newspaper she read in the library, but could think of
nothing.
She wished that she could ask someone about these things, but she had no idea whom to
ask nor how to go about it. Would it be all right for her just to say, Hey, I think there are two
moons in the sky. Do you mind having a look for me? No, it would be a stupid question under
any circumstances. If the number of moons had in fact increased to two, it would be strange
for her not to know that. If there was still only the one moon, people would think she had gone
crazy.
She lowered herself into the aluminum chair, resting her feet on the balcony railing. She
thought of ten different ways of asking the question, and some she even tried out loud, but
they all sounded as stupid as the first. Oh, what the hell. The whole situation defies common
sense. Theres no way to come up with a sensible question about it, obviously.
She decided to shelve the question of the second moon for the time being. Ill just wait and
see what happens. Its not causing me any practical problems for now. And maybe at some
point Ill notice that it disappeared when I wasnt looking.
She went to the sports club in Hiroo the following afternoon, taught two martial arts
classes, and had one private lesson. Stopping by the front desk, she was surprised to find a
message for her from the dowager in Azabu, asking her to call when she was free.
Tamaru answered the phone as always. He explained that the dowager wondered if
Aomame could come to the house the following day if possible. She wanted the usual program,
to be followed by a light supper.
Aomame said she could come after four and that she would be delighted to join the dowager
for supper. Tamaru confirmed the appointment, but before he could hang up, Aomame
asked him if he had seen the moon lately.
 The moon? Tamaru asked. You mean the moon up in the sky? 
 Yes, the moon. 
 I cant say I recall consciously looking at it recently. Is something going on with the
moon? 
 Nothing special, Aomame said. All right, see you after four tomorrow. 
Tamaru hesitated a moment before hanging up.
There were two moons again that night, both two days past full. Aomame had a glass of
brandy in one hand as she stared at the pair of moons, big and small, as if at an unsolvable
puzzle. The more she looked, the more enigmatic the combination felt to her. If only she could
ask the moon directly, How did you suddenly come by this little green companion of yours? !
But the moon would not favor her with a reply.
The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed
all of the phenomena occurring and all of the acts carried out on this earth. But the
moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with cool,
measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect
for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon. Aomame
raised her glass to the moon and asked, Have you gone to bed with someone in your arms
lately? 
The moon did not answer.
 Do you have any friends? she asked.
The moon did not answer.
 Dont you get tired of always playing it cool? 
The moon did not answer.
Tamaru met her at the front door as always. I saw the moon last night! he said immediately.
 Oh, really? Aomame said.
 Thanks to you, I started wondering about it. I hadnt stopped and looked at the moon in
quite a while. Its nice. Very calming. 
 Were you with a lover? 
 Exactly, Tamaru said, tapping the side of his nose. Is something up with the moon? 
 Not at all, Aomame said, then added cautiously, Its just that, I dont know, Ive been
concerned about the moon lately. 
 For no reason at all? 
 Nothing in particular, Aomame said.
Tamaru nodded in silence. He seemed to be drawing his own conclusions. This man did
not trust things that lacked reasons. Instead of pursuing the matter, however, he led Aomame
to the sunroom. The dowager was there, dressed in a jersey top and bottom for exercise,
seated in her reading chair and listening to John Dowlands instrumental piece Lachrimae 
while reading a book. This was one of her favorite pieces of music. Aomame had heard it
many times and knew the melody.
 Sorry for the short notice, the dowager said. This time slot just happened to open up
yesterday. 
 You dont have to apologize to me, Aomame said.
Tamaru carried in a tray holding a pot of herbal tea and proceeded to fill two elegant cups.
He closed the door on his way out, leaving the two women alone. They drank their tea in silence,
listening to Dowland and looking at the blaze of azalea blossoms in the garden.
Whenever she came here, Aomame felt she was in another world. The air was heavy, and
time had its own special way of flowing.
The dowager said, Often when I listen to this music, Im struck by mysterious emotions
with regard to time. She seemed almost to have read Aomames mind. To think that people
four hundred years ago were listening to the same music were hearing now! Doesnt it make
you feel strange? 
 It does, Aomame said, but come to think of it, those people four hundred years ago
were looking at the same moon we see. 
The dowager looked at Aomame with a hint of surprise. Then she nodded. Youre quite
right about that. Looking at it that way, I guess theres nothing mysterious about people listening
to the same music four hundred years apart. 
 Perhaps I should have said almost the same moon, Aomame said, looking at the dowager.
Her remark seemed to have made no impression on the older woman.
 The performance on this CD uses period instruments, the dowager said, exactly as it
was written at the time, so the music sounds pretty much as it did back then. Its like the
moon. 
Aomame said, Even if things were the same, peoples perception of them might have
been very different back then. The darkness of night was probably deeper then, so the moon
must have been that much bigger and brighter. And of course people didnt have records or
tapes or CDs. They couldnt hear proper performances of music anytime they liked: it was always
something special. 
 Im sure youre right, the dowager said. Things are so convenient for us these days, our
perceptions are probably that much duller. Even if its the same moon hanging in the sky, we
may be looking at something quite different. Four hundred years ago, we might have had richer
spirits that were closer to nature. 
 It was a cruel world, though. More than half of all children died before they could reach
maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio
and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably werent very many people who
lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time
they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were
forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced
to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys, too, I suspect. Most people led minimal
lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full
of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at
the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of
Dowland. 
The dowager smiled. What an interesting person you are! 
Aomame said, Im a very ordinary human being. I just happen to like reading books. Especially
history books. 
 I like history books too. They teach us that were basically the same, whether now or in
the old days. There may be a few differences in clothing and lifestyle, but theres not that
much difference in what we think and do. Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers passageways for
genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation
to generation. Genes dont think about what constitutes good or evil. They dont care whether
we are happy or unhappy. Were just a means to an end for them. The only thing they think
about is what is most efficient for them. 
 In spite of that, we cant help but think about what is good and what is evil. Is that what
youre saying? 
The dowager nodded. Exactly. People have to think about those things. But genes are
what control the basis for how we live. Naturally, a contradiction arises, she said with a smile.
Their conversation about history ended there. They drank the rest of their herbal tea and
proceeded with martial arts training.
That day they shared a simple dinner in the dowagers home.
 A simple meal is all I can offer you, if thats all right, the dowager said.
 Thats fine with me, Aomame said.
Tamaru rolled their meal in on a wagon. A professional chef had doubtless prepared the
food, but it was Tamarus job to serve it. He plucked the bottle of white wine from its ice bucket
and poured with practiced movements. The dowager and Aomame both tasted the wine. It
had a lovely bouquet and was perfectly chilled. The dinner consisted of boiled white asparagus,
salade Niçoise, a crabmeat omelet, and rolls and butter, nothing more. All the ingredients
were fresh and delicious, and the portions were moderate. The dowager always ate
small amounts of food. She used her knife and fork elegantly, bringing one tiny bite after another
to her mouth like a small bird. Tamaru stayed in the farthest corner of the room
throughout the meal. Aomame was always amazed how such a powerfully built man could obscure
his own presence for such a long time.
The two women spoke only in brief snatches during the meal, concentrating instead on
what they ate. Music played at low volume a Haydn cello concerto. This was another of the
dowagers favorites.
After the dishes were taken away, a coffeepot arrived. Tamaru poured, and as he backed
away, the dowager turned to him with a finger raised.
 Thank you, Tamaru. That will be all. 
Tamaru nodded respectfully and left the room, his footsteps silent as always. The door
closed quietly behind him. While the two women drank their coffee, the music ended and a
new silence came to the room.
 You and I trust each other, wouldnt you say? the dowager said, looking straight at
Aomame.
Aomame agreed succinctly, but without reservation.
 We share some important secrets, the dowager said. We have put our fates in each others
hands. 
Aomame nodded silently.
This was the room in which Aomame first confessed her secret to the dowager. Aomame
remembered the day clearly. She had known that someday she would have to share the burden
she carried in her heart with someone. She could keep it locked up inside herself only so
long, and already she was reaching her limit. And so, when the dowager said something to
draw her out, Aomame had flung open the door.
She told the dowager how her best friend had lost her mental balance after two years of
physical violence from her husband and, unable to flee from him, in agony, she had committed
suicide. Aomame allowed nearly a year to pass before concocting an excuse to visit the
mans house. There, following an elaborate plan of her own devising, she killed him with a
single needle thrust to the back of the neck. It caused no bleeding and left no visible wound.
His death was treated simply as the result of illness. No one had any suspicions. Aomame felt
that she had done nothing wrong, she told the dowager, either then or now. Nor did she feel
any pangs of conscience, though this fact did nothing to lessen the burden of having purposely
taken the life of a human being.
The dowager had listened attentively to Aomames long confession, offering no comment
even when Aomame occasionally faltered in her detailed account. When Aomame finished
her story, the dowager asked for clarification on a few particulars. Then she reached over and
firmly grasped Aomames hand for a very long time.
 What you did was right, she said, speaking slowly and with conviction. If he had lived,
he eventually would have done the same kind of thing to other women. Men like that always
find victims. Theyre made to do it over and over. You severed the evil at the root. Rest assured,
it was not mere personal vengeance. 
Aomame buried her face in her hands and cried. She was crying for Tamaki. The dowager
found a handkerchief and wiped her tears.
 This is a strange coincidence, the dowager said in a low but resolute voice, but I also
once made a man vanish for almost exactly the same reason. 
Aomame raised her head and looked at the dowager. She did not know what to say. What
could she be talking about?
The dowager continued, I did not do it directly, myself, of course. I had neither the physical
strength nor your special training. But I did make him vanish through the means that I had
at my disposal, leaving behind no concrete evidence. Even if I were to turn myself in and confess,
it would be impossible to prove, just as it would be for you. I suppose if there is to be
some judgment after death, a god will be the one to judge me, but that doesnt frighten me in
the least. I did nothing wrong. I reserve the right to declare the justice of my case in anyones
presence. 
The dowager sighed with apparent relief before continuing. So, then, you and I now have
our hands on each others deepest secrets, dont we? 
Aomame still could not fully grasp what the dowager was telling her. She made a man
vanish? Caught between deep doubt and intense shock, Aomames face began to lose its
normal shape. To calm her down, the dowager began to explain what had happened, in a
tranquil tone of voice.
Circumstances similar to those of Tamaki Otsuka had led her daughter to end her own life,
the dowager said. Her daughter had married the wrong man. The dowager had known from
the beginning that the marriage would not go well. She could clearly see that the man had a
twisted personality. He had already been involved in several bad situations, their cause almost
certainly deeply rooted. But no one could stop the daughter from marrying him. As the
dowager had expected, there were repeated instances of domestic violence. The daughter
gradually lost whatever self-respect and self-confidence she had and sank into a deep depression.
Robbed of the strength to stand on her own, she felt increasingly like an ant trapped
in a bowl of sand. Finally, she washed down a large number of sleeping pills with whiskey.
The autopsy revealed many signs of violence on her body: bruises from punching and
severe battering, broken bones, and numerous burn scars from cigarettes pressed against
the flesh. Both wrists showed signs of having been tightly bound. The man apparently enjoyed
using a rope. Her nipples were deformed. The husband was called in and questioned
by the police. He was willing to admit to some use of violence, but he maintained that it had
been part of their sexual practice, under mutual consent, to satisfy his wifes preferences.
As in Tamakis case, the police were unable to find the husband legally responsible. The
wife had never filed a complaint, and now she was dead. The husband was a man of some
social standing, and he had hired a capable criminal lawyer. And finally, there was no room
for doubt that the death had been a suicide.
 Did you kill the man? Aomame ventured to ask.
 No, I didnt kill him not that man, the dowager said.
Unclear where this was heading, Aomame simply stared at her in silence.
The dowager said, My daughters former husband, that contemptible man, is still alive in
this world. He wakes up in bed every morning and walks down the street on his own two feet.
Mere killing is not what I had planned for him. 
She paused for a moment to allow Aomame to absorb her words fully.
 I have socially destroyed my former son-in-law, leaving nothing behind. It just so happens
that I possess that kind of power. The man is a weakling. He has a degree of intelligence, he
speaks well, and has gained some social recognition, but he is basically weak and despicable.
Men who wield great violence at home against their wives and children are invariably
people of weak character. They prey upon those who are weaker than themselves precisely
because of their own weakness. Destroying him was easy. Once men like that are destroyed,
they can never recover. My daughter died a long time ago, but I have kept watch over him to
this day. If he ever shows signs of recovery, I will not allow it to happen. He goes on living, but
he might as well be a corpse. He wont kill himself. He doesnt have the courage to do that.
And I wont do him the favor of killing him, either. My method is to go on tormenting him mercilessly
without letup but without killing him, as though skinning him alive. The man I made
vanish was another person. A practical reason made it necessary for me to have him move to
another place. 
The dowager went on to explain this to Aomame. The year after her daughter killed herself,
the dowager set up a private safe house for women who were suffering from the same
kind of domestic violence. She owned a small, two-story apartment building on a plot of land
adjoining her Willow House property in Azabu and had kept it unoccupied, intending to demolish
it before long. Instead, she decided to renovate the building and use it as a safe house for
women who had nowhere else to go. She also opened a downtown consultation office 
through which women suffering from domestic violence could seek advice, primarily from lawyers
in the metropolitan area. It was staffed by volunteers who took turns doing interviews and
giving telephone counseling. The office kept in touch with the dowager at home. Women who
needed an emergency shelter would be sent to the safe house, often with children in tow
(some of whom were teenage girls who had been sexually abused by their fathers). They
would stay there until more permanent arrangements could be made for them. They would be
provided with basic necessities food, clothing and they would help each other in a kind of
communal living arrangement. The dowager personally took care of all their expenses.
The lawyers and counselors made regular visits to the safe house to check on the womens
progress and discuss plans for their futures. The dowager would also drop in when she
had time, listening to each womans story and offering her advice. Sometimes she would find
them jobs or more permanent places to live. When troubles arose requiring intervention of a
physical nature, Tamaru would head over to the safe house and handle them say, for example,
when a husband would learn of his wifes whereabouts and forcibly try to take her
back. No one could deal with such problems as quickly and expeditiously as Tamaru.
 There are those cases, however, that neither Tamaru nor I can fully deal with and for
which we can find no practical remedy through the law, the dowager said.
Aomame noticed that, as the dowager spoke, her face took on a certain bronze glow and
her usual mild-mannered elegance faded until it had disappeared entirely. What took its place
was a certain something that transcended mere anger or disgust. It was probably that small,
hard, nameless core that lies in the deepest part of the mind. In spite of the facial change,
however, her voice remained as cool and dispassionate as ever.
 Of course, a persons existence (or nonexistence) cannot be decided on the basis of
mere practical considerations for example, if he is no longer there, it will eliminate the difficulties
of divorce, say, or hasten the payment of life insurance. We take such action only as a
last resort, after examining all factors closely and fairly, and arriving at the conclusion that the
man deserves no mercy. These parasitical men, who can only live by sucking the blood of the
weak! These incurable men, with their twisted minds! They have no interest in rehabilitating
themselves, and we can find no value in having them continue to live in this world! 
The dowager closed her mouth and momentarily glared at Aomame with eyes that could
pierce a rock wall. Then she went on in her usual calm tone, All we can do with such men is
make them vanish one way or another but always taking care not to attract peoples attention. 
 Is such a thing possible? 
 There are many ways for people to vanish, the dowager said, pausing to let her words
sink in. Then she continued, I can arrange for people to vanish in certain ways. I have that
kind of power at my disposal. 
Aomame struggled to understand, but the dowagers words were too obscure.
The dowager said, You and I have both lost people who were important to us. We lost
them in outrageous ways, and we are both deeply scarred from the experience. Such wounds
to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds
forever. We must stand up and move on to the next action not for the sake of our own individual
vengeance but for the sake of a more far-reaching form of justice. Will you help me in
my work? I need a capable collaborator in whom I can put my trust, someone with whom I can
share my secrets and my mission. Will you be that person? Are you willing to join me? 
Aomame took some time to fully comprehend what the dowager had said to her. It was an
incredible confession and an equally incredible proposal. Aomame needed even more time to
decide how she felt about the proposal. As she sorted this out for herself, the dowager maintained
a perfect silence, sitting motionless in her chair, staring hard at Aomame. She was in
no hurry. She seemed prepared to wait as long as it took.
Without a doubt, this woman has been enveloped by a form of madness, thought
Aomame. But she herself is not mad or psychologically ill. No, her mind is rock steady, unshakably
cool. That fact is backed up by positive proof. Rather than madness, its something
that resembles madness. A correct prejudice, perhaps. What she wants now is for me to
share her madness or prejudice or whatever it is. With the same coolheadedness that she
has. She believes that I am qualified to do that.
How long had she been thinking? She seemed to have lost her grasp of time at some
point while she was deeply absorbed in her own thoughts. Only her heart continued to tick off
the time in its hard, fixed rhythm. Aomame visited several little rooms she possessed inside
her, tracing time backward the way a fish swims upstream. She found there familiar sights
and long-forgotten smells, gentle nostalgia and severe pain. Suddenly, from some unknown
source, a narrow beam of light pierced Aomames body. She felt as though, mysteriously, she
had become transparent. When she held her hand up in the beam, she could see through it.
Suddenly there was no longer any weight to her body. At this moment Aomame thought, Even
if I give myself over to the madness or prejudice here and now, even if doing so destroys
me, even if this world vanishes in its entirety, what do I have to lose?
 I see, Aomame said to the dowager. She paused, biting her lip. And then she said, I
would like to help in any way I can. 
The dowager reached out and grasped Aomames hands. From that moment onward,
Aomame and the dowager shared their secrets, shared their mission, and shared that
something that resembled madness. It may well have been sheer madness itself, though
Aomame was unable to locate the dividing line. The men that she and the dowager together
dispatched to a faraway world were ones for whom there were no grounds, from any point of
view, for granting them mercy.
 Not much time has gone by since you moved that man in the Shibuya hotel to another
world, the dowager said softly. The way she talked about moving him to another world, she
could as well have been talking about a piece of furniture.
 In another four days, it will be exactly two months. 
 Still less than two months, is it? the dowager went on. I really shouldnt be asking you to
do another job so soon. I would prefer to put at least six months between them. If we space
them too closely, it will increase your psychological burden. This is not how should I put
it? an ordinary task. In addition to which, someone might start suspecting that the number of
heart attack deaths among men connected with my safe house was a bit too high. 
Aomame smiled slightly and said, Yes, there are so many distrustful people around. 
The dowager also smiled. She said, As you know, I am a very, very careful person. I dont
believe in coincidence or forecasts or good luck. I search for the least drastic possibilities in
dealing with these men, and only when it becomes clear that no such possibilities exist do I
choose the ultimate solution. And when, as a last resort, I take such a step, I eliminate all conceivable
risks. I examine all the elements with painstaking attention to detail, make unstinting
preparations, and only after I am convinced that it will work do I come to you. Which is why,
so far, we have not had a single problem. We havent, have we? 
 No, youre absolutely right, Aomame said, and she meant it. She would prepare her
equipment, make her way to the designated place, and find the situation arranged exactly as
planned. She would plunge her needle once into the one precise spot on the back of the
mans neck. Finally, after making sure that the man had moved to another place, she would
leave. Up to now, everything had worked smoothly and systematically.
 About this next case, though, the dowager continued, sorry to say, I am probably going
to have to ask you to do something far more challenging. Our timetable has not fully matured
yet, and there are many uncertainties. I may not be able to give you the kind of well-prepared
situation we have provided so far. In other words, things will be somewhat different this time. 
 Different how? 
 Well, the man is not someone in an ordinary position, the dowager said. By which I
mean, first of all, that he has extremely tight security. 
 Is he a politician or something? 
The dowager shook her head. No, he is not a politician. Ill tell you more about that later.
Ive tried to find a solution that would save us from having to send you in, but none of them
seems likely to work. No ordinary approach can meet this challenge. I am sorry, but I have not
been able to come up with anything other than asking you to do it. 
 Is it an urgent matter? Aomame asked.
 No, it is not especially urgent. Neither is there a fixed deadline by which it must be accomplished.
But the longer we put it off, the more people there are who could be hurt. And the
opportunity that has been given to us is limited in nature. There is no way of telling when the
next one would come our way. 
It was dark out. The sunroom was enveloped in silence. Aomame wondered if the moon
was up. But she could not see it from where she was sitting.
 I intend to explain the situation to you in all possible detail. Before I do that, however, I
have someone I would like you to meet. Shall we go now to see her? 
 Is she living in your safe house? 
The dowager inhaled slowly and made a small sound in the back of her throat. Her eyes
took on a special gleam that Aomame had not seen before.
 She was sent here six weeks ago by our consultation office. For the first four weeks, she
didnt say a word. She was in some sort of dazed state and had simply lost the ability to
speak. We knew only her name and age. She had been taken into protective custody when
she was found sleeping in a train station in terrible condition, and after being passed around
from one office to another she ended up with us. Ive spent hours talking to her bit by bit. It
took a long time for me to convince her that this is a safe place and she doesnt have to be
afraid. Now she can talk to some extent. She speaks in a confused, fragmented way, but, put-
ting the pieces together, Ive been able to form a general idea of what happened to her. Its almost
too terrible to talk about, truly heartbreaking. 
 Another case of a violent husband? 
 Not at all, the dowager said drily. Shes only ten years old. 
The dowager and Aomame cut through the garden and, unlocking a small gate, entered
the adjoining yard. The safe house was a small, wood-frame apartment building. It had been
used in the old days as a residence for some of the many servants who had worked for the
dowagers family. A two-story structure, the house itself had a certain old-fashioned charm,
but it was too age worn to rent out. As a temporary refuge for women who had nowhere else
to go, however, it was perfectly adequate. An old oak tree spread out its branches as if to protect
the building, and the front door contained a lovely panel of ornamental glass. There were
ten apartments altogether, all full at times but nearly empty at other times. Usually five or six
women lived there quietly. Lights shone in the windows of roughly half the rooms now. The
place was oddly hushed except for the occasional sounds of small childrens voices. The
building itself almost appeared to be holding its breath. It lacked the normal range of sounds
associated with everyday life. Bun, the female German shepherd, was chained near the front
gate. Whenever people approached, she would let out a low growl and then a few barks. The
dog had been trained how or by whom it was not clear to bark fiercely whenever a man
approached, though the person she trusted most was Tamaru.
The dog stopped barking as soon as the dowager drew near. She wagged her tail and
snorted happily. The dowager bent down and patted her on the head a few times. Aomame
scratched her behind the ears. The dog seemed to remember Aomame. She was a smart
dog. For some reason, she liked to eat raw spinach. The dowager opened the front door with
a key.
 One of the women here is looking after the girl, the dowager said to Aomame. Ive
asked her to live in the same apartment and try not to take her eyes off her. Its still too soon
to leave her alone. 
The women of the safe house looked after each other on a daily basis and were implicitly
encouraged to tell each other stories of what they had been through, to share their pain.
Those who had been there for a while would give the newcomers tips on how to live in the
house, passing along necessities. The women would generally take turns doing the cooking
and cleaning, but there were of course some who wanted only to keep to themselves and not
talk about their experiences, and their desire for privacy and silence was respected. The majority
of women, however, wanted to talk and interact with other women who had been
through similar trials. Aside from prohibitions against drinking, smoking, and the presence of
unauthorized individuals, the house had few restrictions.
The building had one phone and one television set, both of which were kept in the common
room next to the front door. Here there was also an old living room set and a dining table.
Most of the women apparently spent the better part of each day in this room. The television
was rarely switched on, and even when it was, the volume was kept at a barely audible
level. The women preferred to read books or newspapers, knit, or engage in hushed tête-à-
têtes. Some spent the day drawing pictures. It was a strange space, its light dull and stagnant,
as if in a transient place somewhere between the real world and the world after death.
The light was always the same here, on sunny or cloudy days, in daytime or nighttime.
Aomame always felt out of place in this room, like an insensitive intruder. It was like a club
that demanded special qualifications for membership. The loneliness of these women was different
in origin from the loneliness that Aomame felt.
The three women in the common room stood up when the dowager walked in. Aomame
could see at a glance that they had profound respect for the dowager. The dowager urged
them to be seated.
 Please dont stop what youre doing. We just wanted to have a little talk with Tsubasa. 
 Tsubasa is in her room, said a woman whom Aomame judged to be probably around the
same age as herself. She had long, straight hair.
 Saeko is with her. Tsubasa still cant come down, it seems, said a somewhat older woman.
 No, it will probably take a little more time, the dowager said with a smile.
Each of the three women nodded silently. They knew very well what take more time 
meant.
Aomame and the dowager climbed the stairs and entered one of the apartments. The
dowager told the small, rather unimposing woman inside that she needed some time with
Tsubasa. Saeko, as the woman was called, gave her a wan smile and left them with ten-yearold
Tsubasa, closing the door behind her as she headed downstairs. Aomame, the dowager,
and Tsubasa took seats around a small table. The window was covered by a thick curtain.
 This lady is named Aomame, the dowager said to the girl. Dont worry, she works with
me. 
The girl glanced at Aomame and gave a barely perceptible nod.
 And this is Tsubasa, the dowager said, completing the introductions. Then she asked the
girl, How long has it been, Tsubasa, since you came here? 
The girl shook her head again almost imperceptibly as if to say she didnt know.
 Six weeks and three days, the dowager said. You may not be counting the days, but I
am. Do you know why? 
Again the girl gave a slight shake of the head.
 Because time can be very important, the dowager said. Just counting it can have great
significance. 
To Aomame, Tsubasa looked like any other ten-year-old girl. She was rather tall for her
age, but she was thin and her chest had not begun to swell. She looked chronically malnourished.
Her features were not bad, but the face gave only the blandest impression. Her eyes
made Aomame think of frosted windows, so little did they reveal of what was inside. Her thin,
dry lips gave an occasional nervous twitch as if they might be trying to form words, but no actual
sound ever emerged from them.
From a paper bag she had brought with her, the dowager produced a box of chocolates
with a Swiss mountain scene on the package. She spread its contents on the table: a dozen
pretty pieces of varied shapes. She gave one to Tsubasa, one to Aomame, and put one in her
own mouth. Aomame put hers in her mouth. After seeing what they had done, Tsubasa also
put a piece of chocolate in her mouth. The three of them ate chocolate for a while, saying
nothing.
 Do you remember things from when you were ten years old? the dowager asked
Aomame.
 Very well, Aomame said. She had held the hand of a boy that year and vowed to love
him for the rest of her life. A few months later, she had had her first period. A lot of things
changed inside Aomame at that time. She left the faith and cut her ties with her parents.
 I do too, the dowager said. My father took us to Paris when I was ten, and we stayed
there for a year. He was a foreign service officer. We lived in an old apartment house near the
Luxembourg Gardens. The First World War was in its final months, and the train stations were
full of wounded soldiers, some of them almost children, others old men. Paris is breathtakingly
beautiful in all seasons of the year, but bloody images are all I have left from that time.
There was terrible trench warfare going on at the front, and people who had lost arms and
legs and eyes wandered the city streets like abandoned ghosts. All that caught my eye were
the white of their bandages and the black of the armbands worn by mourning women. Horse
carts hauled one new coffin after another to the cemeteries, and whenever a coffin went by,
people would avert their eyes and clamp their mouths shut. 
The dowager reached across the table. After a moment of thought, the girl brought her
hand out from her lap and laid it in the dowagers hand. The dowager held it tight. Probably,
when she was a girl passing horse carts stacked with coffins on the streets of Paris, her father
or mother would grasp her hand like this and assure her that she had nothing to worry about,
that she would be all right, that she was in a safe place and neednt be afraid.
 Men produce several million sperm a day, the dowager said to Aomame. Did you know
that? 
 Not the exact figure, Aomame said.
 Well, of course, I dont know the exact figure, either. Its more than anyone can count.
And they come out all at once. The number of eggs a woman produces, though, is limited. Do
you know how many that is? 
 Not exactly, no. 
 Its only around four hundred in the course of her lifetime, the dowager said. And they
are not made anew each month: they are all already stored inside the womans body from the
time she is born. After her first period, she produces one ripened egg a month. Little Tsubasa
here has all her eggs stored inside her already. They should be pretty much intact packed
away in a drawer somewhere because her periods havent started. It goes without saying, of
course, that the role of each egg is to be fertilized by a sperm. 
Aomame nodded.
 Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences
in their reproductive systems. From a purely physiological point of view, women live
to protect their limited egg supply. Thats true of you, of me, and of Tsubasa. Here the dowager
gave a wan little smile. That should be in the past tense in my case, of course. 
Aomame did some quick mental calculations. That means Ive already ejected some two
hundred eggs. About half my supply is left inside, maybe labeled reserved. 
 But Tsubasas eggs will never be fertilized, the dowager said. I asked a doctor I know to
examine her last week. Her uterus has been destroyed. 
Aomame looked at the dowager, her face distorted. Then, tilting her head slightly, she
turned toward the girl. She could hardly speak. Destroyed? 
 Yes, destroyed, the dowager said. Not even surgery can restore it to its original condition. 
 But who would do such a thing? Aomame asked.
 Im still not sure, said the dowager.
 The Little People, said the girl.
1Q84
CHAPTER 18
Tengo
NO LONGER ANY PLACE FOR A BIG BROTHER
Komatsu phoned after the press conference to say that everything had gone well.
 A brilliant job, he said with unusual excitement. I never imagined shed carry it off so
flawlessly. The repartee was downright witty. She made a great impression on everybody. 
Tengo was not at all surprised to hear Komatsus report. Without any strong basis for it, he
had not been especially worried about the press conference. He had assumed she would at
least handle herself well. But made a great impression ? Somehow, that didnt fit with the
Fuka-Eri he knew.
 So none of our dirty laundry came out, I suppose? Tengo asked to make sure.
 No, we kept it short and deflected any awkward questions. Though in fact, there werent
any tough questions to speak of. I mean, not even newspaper reporters want to look like bad
guys grilling a sweet, lovely, seventeen-year-old girl. Of course, I should add ‘for the time being.
No telling how itll go in the future. In this world, the wind can change direction before you
know it. 
Tengo pictured Komatsu standing on a high cliff with a grim look on his face, licking his
finger to test the wind direction.
 In any case, your practice session did the trick, Tengo. Thanks for doing such a good job.
Tomorrows evening papers will report on the award and the press conference. 
 What was Fuka-Eri wearing? 
 What was she wearing? Just ordinary clothes. A tight sweater and jeans. 
 A sweater that showed off her boobs? 
 Yes, now that you mention it. Nice shape. They looked brand new, fresh from the oven, 
Komatsu said. You know, Tengo, shes going to be a huge hit: girl genius writer. Good looks,
maybe talks a little funny, but smart. Shes got that air about her: you know shes not an ordinary
person. Ive been present at a lot of writers debuts, but shes special. And when I say
somebodys special, theyre really special. The magazine carrying Air Chrysalis is going to be
in the bookstores in another week, and Ill bet you anything my left hand and right leg itll
be sold out in three days. 
Tengo thanked Komatsu for the news and ended the call with some sense of relief. They
had cleared the first hurdle, at least. How many more hurdles were waiting for them, though,
he had no idea.
The next evenings newspapers carried reports of the press conference. Tengo bought
four of them at the station after work at the cram school and read them at home. They all said
pretty much the same thing. None of the articles was especially long, but compared with the
usual perfunctory five-line report, the treatment given to the event was unprecedented. As Komatsu
had predicted, the media leapt on the news that a seventeen-year-old girl had won the
prize. All reported that the four-person screening committee had chosen the work unanimously
after only fifteen minutes of deliberation. That in itself was unusual. For four egotistical
writers to gather in a room and be in perfect agreement was simply unheard of. The work was
already causing a stir in the industry. A small press conference was held in the same room of
the hotel where the award ceremony had taken place, the newspapers reported, and the
prizewinner had responded to reporters questions clearly and cheerfully. 
In answer to the question Do you plan to keep writing fiction? she had replied, Fiction is
simply one form for expressing ones thoughts. It just so happens that the form I employed
this time was fiction, but I cant say what form I will use next time. Tengo found it impossible
to believe that Fuka-Eri had actually spoken in such long continuous sentences. The reporters
might have strung her fragments together, filled in the gaps, and made whole sentences out
of them. But then again, she might well have spoken in complete sentences like this. He
couldnt say anything about Fuka-Eri with absolute certainty.
When asked to name her favorite work of fiction, Fuka-Eri of course mentioned The Tale
of the Heike. One reporter then asked which part of The Tale of the Heike she liked best, in
response to which she recited her favorite passage from memory, which took a full five
minutes. Everyone was so amazed, the recitation was followed by a stunned silence. Fortunately
(in Tengos opinion), no one asked for her favorite song.
In response to the question Who was the happiest for you about winning the new writers
prize? she took a long time to think (a scene that came easily to mind for Tengo), finally answering,
 Thats a secret. 
As far as he could tell from the news reports, Fuka-Eri said nothing in the question-and-answer
session that was untrue. Her picture was in all the papers, looking even more
beautiful than the Fuka-Eri of Tengos memory. When he spoke with her in person, his attention
was diverted from her face to her physical movements to her changes of expression to
the words she formed, but seeing her in a still photograph, he was able to realize anew what
a truly beautiful girl she was. A certain glow was perceptible even in the small shots taken at
the press conference (in which he was able to confirm that she was wearing the same summer
sweater). This glow was probably what Komatsu had called that air about her: you know
shes not an ordinary person. 
Tengo folded the evening papers, put them away, and went to the kitchen. There he made
himself a simple dinner while drinking a can of beer. The work that he himself had rewritten
had won the new writers prize by unanimous consent, had already attracted much attention,
and was on the verge of becoming a bestseller. The thought made him feel very strange. He
wanted simply to celebrate the fact, but it also made him feel anxious and unsettled. He had
been expecting this to happen, but he wondered if it was really all right for things to move
ahead so smoothly.
While fixing dinner, he noticed that his appetite had disappeared. He had been quite
hungry, but now he didnt want to eat a thing. He covered the half-made food in plastic wrap
and put it away in the refrigerator. Then he sat in a kitchen chair and drank his beer in silence
while staring at the calendar on the wall. It was a free calendar from the bank containing photos
of Mount Fuji. Tengo had never climbed Mount Fuji. He had never gone to the top of
Tokyo Tower, either, or to the roof of a skyscraper. He had never been interested in high
places. He wondered why not. Maybe it was because he had lived his whole life looking at the
ground.
Komatsus prediction came true. The magazine containing Fuka-Eris Air Chrysalis nearly
sold out the first day and soon disappeared from the bookstores. Literary magazines never
sold out. Publishers continued to absorb the losses each month, knowing that the real purpose
of these magazines was to find and publish fiction that would later be collected and sold
in a hardcover edition and to discover new young writers through the prize competitions. No
one expected the magazines themselves to sell or be profitable. Which is why the news that a
literary magazine had sold out in a single day drew as much attention as if snow had fallen in
Okinawa (though its having sold out made no difference to its running in the red). Komatsu
called to tell him the news.
 This is just great, Komatsu said. When a magazine sells out, people cant wait to read
the piece to find out what its like. So now the printers are going crazy trying to rush the book
version of Air Chrysalis out top priority! At this rate, it doesnt matter whether the piece wins
the Akutagawa Prize or not. Gotta sell em while theyre hot! And make no mistake about it,
this is going to be a bestseller, I guarantee you. So, Tengo, youd better start planning how
youre going to spend all your money. 
One Saturday-evening newspapers literary column discussed Air Chrysalis under a headline
exclaiming that the magazine had sold out in one day. Several literary critics gave their
opinions, which were generally favorable. The work, they claimed, displayed such stylistic
power, keen sensitivity, and imaginative richness that it was hard to believe a seventeen-year-old
girl had written it. It might even hint at new possibilities in literary style. One critic
said, The work is not entirely without a regrettable tendency for its more fantastical elements
to sometimes lose touch with reality, which was the only negative remark Tengo noticed.
But even that critic softened his tone at the end, concluding, I will be very interested to
see what kind of works this young girl goes on to write. No, there was nothing wrong with the
wind direction for now.
Fuka-Eri called Tengo four days before the hardcover version of Air Chrysalis was due
out. It was nine in the morning.
 Are you up, she asked in her usual uninflected way, without a question mark.
 Of course Im up, Tengo said.
 Are you free this afternoon. 
 After four, any time. 
 Can you meet me. 
 I can, Tengo said.
 Is that last place okay, Fuka-Eri asked.
 Fine, Tengo said. Ill go to the same café in Shinjuku at four oclock. Oh, and your photos
in the paper looked good. The ones from the press conference. 
 I wore the same sweater, she said.
 It looked good on you, Tengo said.
 Because you like my chest shape. 
 Maybe so. But more important in this case was making a good impression on people. 
Fuka-Eri kept silent at her end, as if she had just set something on a nearby shelf and was
looking at it. Maybe she was thinking about the connection between the shape of her chest
and making a good impression. The more he thought about it, the less Tengo himself could
see the connection.
 Four oclock, Fuka-Eri said, and hung up.
. . .
Fuka-Eri was already waiting for Tengo when he walked into the usual café just before
four. Next to her sat Professor Ebisuno. He was dressed in a pale gray long-sleeved shirt and
dark gray pants. As before, his back was perfectly straight. He could have been a sculpture.
Tengo was somewhat surprised to find the Professor with her. Komatsu had said that the Professor
almost never came down from the mountains. 
Tengo took a seat opposite them and ordered a cup of coffee. The rainy season hadnt
even started, but the weather felt like midsummer. Even so, Fuka-Eri sat there sipping a hot
cup of cocoa. Professor Ebisuno had ordered iced coffee but hadnt touched it yet. The ice
had begun to melt, forming a clear layer on top.
 Thanks for coming, the Professor said.
Tengos coffee arrived. He took a sip.
Professor Ebisuno spoke slowly, as if performing a test of his speaking voice: Everything
seems to be going as planned for now, he said. You made major contributions to the project.
Truly major. The first thing I must do is thank you. 
 Im grateful to hear you say that, but as you know, where this matter is concerned, officially
I dont exist, Tengo said. And officially nonexistent people cant make contributions. 
Professor Ebisuno rubbed his hands over the table as if warming them.
 You neednt be so modest, the Professor said. Whatever the public face of the matter
may be, you do exist. If it hadnt been for you, things would not have come this far or gone
this smoothly. Thanks to you, Air Chrysalis became a much better work, deeper and richer
than I ever imagined it could be. That Komatsu fellow really does have an eye for talent. 
Beside him, Fuka-Eri went on drinking her cocoa in silence, like a kitten licking milk. She
wore a simple white short-sleeved blouse and a rather short navy-blue skirt. As always, she
wore no jewelry. Her long, straight hair hid her face when she leaned forward to drink.
 I wanted to be sure to tell you this in person, which is why I troubled you to come here
today, Professor Ebisuno said.
 You really dont have to worry about me, Professor. Rewriting Air Chrysalis was a very
meaningful project for me. 
 I still think I need to thank you for it properly. 
 It really isnt necessary, Tengo said. If you dont mind, though, theres something personal
I want to ask you about Eri. 
 No, I dont mind, if its a question I can answer. 
 I was just wondering if you are Eris legal guardian. 
The Professor shook his head. No, I am not. I would like to become her legal guardian if
possible, but as I told you before, I havent been able to make the slightest contact with her
parents. I have no legal rights as far as she is concerned. But I took her in when she came to
my house seven years ago, and I have been raising her ever since. 
 If thats the case, then, wouldnt the most normal thing be for you to want to keep her existence
quiet? If she steps into the spotlight like this, it could stir up trouble. Shes a minor,
after all … 
 Trouble? You mean if her parents sued to regain custody, or if she were forced to return
to the commune? 
 Yes, I dont quite get whats involved here. 
 Your doubts are entirely justified. But the other side is not in any position to take conspicuous
action, either. The more publicity Eri receives, the more attention they are going to
attract if they attempt anything involving her. And attention is the one thing they most want to
avoid. 
 By ‘they, I suppose you mean the Sakigake people? 
 Exactly, the Professor said. The Religious Juridical Person Sakigake. Dont forget, Ive
devoted seven years of my life to raising Eri, and she herself clearly wants to go on living with
us. Whatever situation her parents are in, the fact is theyve ignored her for seven long years.
Theres no way I can hand her over just like that. 
Tengo took a moment to organize his thoughts. Then he said, So Air Chrysalis becomes
the bestseller its supposed to be. And Eri attracts everyones attention. And that makes it
harder for Sakigake to do anything. That much I understand. But how are things supposed to
go from there in your view, Professor Ebisuno? 
 I dont know any better than you do, the Professor said matter-of-factly. What happens
from here on out is unknown territory for anybody. Theres no map. We dont find out whats
waiting for us around the next corner until we turn it. I have no idea. 
 You have no idea, Tengo said.
 Yes, it may sound irresponsible of me, but ‘I have no idea is the gist of this story. You
throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the
surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond,
holding our breath. 
This brought conversation at the table to a momentary halt. Each of the three pictured
ripples spreading on a pond. Tengo waited patiently for his imaginary ripples to settle down
before speaking again.
 As I said the first time we met, what we are engaged in is a kind of fraud, possibly an offense
to our whole society. A not inconsiderable amount of money may enter the picture as
well before long, and the lies are going to snowball until finally the situation is beyond anyones
control. And when the truth comes out, everyone involved including Eri here will be
hurt in some way, perhaps even ruined, at least socially. Can you go along with that? 
Professor Ebisuno touched the frame of his glasses. I have no choice but to go along with
it. 
 But I understand from Mr. Komatsu that you are planning to become a representative of
the phony company that he is putting together in connection with Air Chrysalis, which means
you will be fully participating in Komatsus plan. In other words, you are taking steps to have
yourself smeared in the mud. 
 That might well be the end result. 
 As far as I understand it, Professor, you are a man of superior intellect, with broad practical
wisdom and a unique worldview. In spite of that, you dont know where this plan is
headed. You say you cant predict what will come up around the next corner. How a man like
you can put himself into such a tenuous, risky position is beyond me. 
 Aside from all the embarrassing overestimation of ‘a man like me, the Professor said,
taking a breath, I understand what youre trying to say. 
A moment of silence followed.
 Nobody knows what is going to happen, Fuka-Eri interjected, without warning. Then she
went back into her silence. Her cup of cocoa was empty.
 True, the Professor said. Nobody knows what is going to happen. Eri is right. 
 But you must have some sort of plan in mind, I would think, Tengo said.
 I do have some sort of plan in mind, Professor Ebisuno said.
 May I guess what it is? 
 Of course you may. 
 The publication of Air Chrysalis might lead to revelations about what happened to Eris
parents. Is that what you mean about throwing a stone in a pond? 
 Thats pretty close, Professor Ebisuno said. If Air Chrysalis becomes a bestseller, the
media are going to swarm like carp in a pond. In fact, the commotion has already started.
After the press conference, requests for interviews started pouring in from magazines and TV.
Im turning them all down, of course, but things are likely to get increasingly overheated as
publication of the book draws near. If we dont do interviews, theyll use every tool at their disposal
to look into Eris background. Sooner or later it will come out who her parents are,
where and how she was raised, whos looking after her now. All of that should make for interesting
news.
 Im not doing this for fun or profit. I enjoy my nice, quiet life in the mountains, and I dont
want to get mixed up with anything that is going to draw the attention of the public. What I am
hoping is that I can spread bait to guide the attention of the media toward Eris parents.
Where are they now, and what are they doing? In other words, I want the media to do for me
what the police cant or wont do. Im also thinking that, if it works well, we might even be able
to exploit the flow of events to rescue the two of them. In any case, Fukada and his wife are
both very important to me and of course to Eri. I cant just leave them unaccounted for like
this. 
 Yes, but assuming the Fukadas are in there, what possible reason could there have been
for them to have been kept under restraint for seven years? Thats a very long time! 
 I dont know any better than you do. I can only guess, Professor Ebisuno said. As I told
you last time, the police did a search of Sakigake in connection with the Akebono shootout,
but all they found was that Sakigake had absolutely nothing to do with the case. Ever since
then, Sakigake has continued steadily to strengthen its position as a religious organization.
No, what am I saying? Not steadily: they did it quite rapidly. But even so, people on the outside
had almost no idea what they were actually doing in there. Im sure you dont know anything
about them. 
 Not a thing, Tengo said. I dont watch TV, and I hardly read the newspaper. You cant
tell by me what people in general know. 
 No, its not just you who dont know anything about them. They purposely keep as low a
profile as possible. Other new religions do showy things to get as many converts as they can,
but not Sakigake. Their goal is not to increase the number of their believers. They want
healthy, young believers who are highly motivated and skilled in a wide variety of professional
fields. So they dont go out of their way to attract converts. And they dont admit just anybody.
When people show up asking to join, they interview them and admit them selectively. Sometimes
they go out of their way to recruit people who have particular skills they are looking for.
The end result is a militant, elite religious organization. 
 Based on what kind of doctrine? 
 They probably dont have any set scriptures. Or if they do, theyre very eclectic. Roughly,
the group follows a kind of esoteric Buddhism, but their everyday lives are centered not so
much on particular doctrines as on labor and ascetic practice quite stern austerities. Young
people in search of that kind of spiritual life hear about them and come from all over the country.
The group is highly cohesive and obsessed with secrecy. 
 Do they have a guru? 
 Ostensibly, no. They reject the idea of a personality cult, and they practice collective leadership,
but what actually goes on in there is unclear. Im doing my best to gather what intelligence
I can, but very little seeps out. The one thing I can say is that the organization is developing
steadily and seems to be very well funded. The land owned by Sakigake keeps expanding,
and its facilities are constantly improving. Also, the wall around the property has been
greatly reinforced. 
 And at some point, the name of Fukada, the original leader of Sakigake, stopped appearing. 
 Exactly. Its all very strange. Im just not convinced by what I hear, Professor Ebisuno
said. He glanced at Fuka-Eri and turned back to Tengo. Some kind of major secret is hidden
inside there. Im sure that, at some point, a kind of realignment occurred in Sakigakes organization.
What it consisted of, I dont know. But because of it, Sakigake underwent a major
change of direction from agricultural commune to religion. I imagine that something like a
coup détat occurred at that point, and Fukada was swept up in it. As I said before, Fukada
was a man without the slightest religious inclinations. He must have poured every ounce of
his strength into trying to put a stop to such a development. And probably he lost the battle for
supremacy in Sakigake at that time. 
Tengo considered this for a moment and said, I understand what you are saying, but
even if you are right, isnt this something that could have been solved just by expelling
Fukada from Sakigake, like the peaceful splitting off of Akebono from Sakigake? They
wouldnt have had to lock him up, would they? 
 Youre quite right about that. Under ordinary circumstances, there would have been no
need to take the trouble of locking him up. But Fukada would almost certainly have had his
hands on some of Sakigakes secrets by then, things that Sakigake would have found very
awkward if they were exposed to the public. So just throwing him out was not the answer.
 As the original founder of the community, Fukada had acted as its virtual leader for years
and must have witnessed everything that had been done on the inside. He must have known
too much. In addition to which, he himself was quite well known to the public at large. So even
if Fukada and his wife wanted to renounce their ties with the group, Sakigake could not simply
let them go. 
 And so you are trying to shake up the stalemate indirectly? You want to stir up public interest
by letting Eri have a sensational debut as a writer, with Air Chrysalis a bestseller? 
 Seven years is a very long time, and nothing I have tried over the years has done any
good. If I dont take this drastic measure now, the riddle may never be solved. 
 So you are using Eri as bait to try to lure a big tiger out of the underbrush. 
 No one knows what is going to come out of the underbrush. It wont necessarily be a tiger. 
 But you do seem to be expecting something violent to happen, I gather. 
 True, there is that possibility, the Professor said with a thoughtful air. You yourself
should know that anything can happen inside homogeneous, insular groups. 
A heavy silence followed, in the midst of which Fuka-Eri spoke up.
 Its because the Little People came, she said softly.
Tengo looked at her seated beside the Professor. As always, her face lacked anything
that might be called an expression.
 Are you saying that something changed in Sakigake because the Little People came? 
Tengo asked her.
She said nothing in reply. Her fingers toyed with the top button of her blouse.
Professor Ebisuno then spoke as if taking up where Eris silence left off. I dont know
what the Little People are supposed to mean, and Eri either cant or wont explain in words
what the Little People are. It does seem certain, however, that the Little People played some
role in the sudden drastic change of Sakigake from an agricultural commune to a religious organization. 
 Or something Little People-ish did, Tengo said.
 Thats true, the Professor said. I dont know, either, whether it was the Little People
themselves or something Little People-ish. But it does appear to me, at least, that Eri is trying
to say something important by introducing the Little People in her Air Chrysalis. 
The Professor stared at his hands for a time, then looked up and said, George Orwell introduced
the dictator Big Brother in his novel 1984, as Im sure you know. The book was an
allegorical treatment of Stalinism, of course. And ever since then, the term ‘Big Brother has
functioned as a social icon. That was Orwells great accomplishment. But now, in the real
year 1984, Big Brother is all too famous, and all too obvious. If Big Brother were to appear before
us now, wed point to him and say, ‘Watch out! Hes Big Brother! Theres no longer any
place for a Big Brother in this real world of ours. Instead, these so-called Little People have
come on the scene. Interesting verbal contrast, dont you think? 
Looking straight at Tengo, the Professor had something like a smile on his face.
 The Little People are an invisible presence. We cant even tell whether they are good or
evil, or whether they have any substance or not. But they seem to be steadily undermining
us. The Professor paused, then continued on. It may be that if we are ever to learn what
happened to Fukada and his wife or what happened to Eri, we will first have to find out what
the Little People are. 
 So, then, is it the Little People that you are trying to lure out into the open? Tengo asked.
 I wonder, ultimately, whether it is possible for us to lure something out when we cant
even tell whether it has substance or not, the Professor said, the smile still playing about his
lips. The ‘big tiger you mentioned could be more realistic, dont you think? 
 Either way, that doesnt change the fact that Eri is being used for bait. 
 No, ‘bait is not the right word. She is creating a whirlpool: that is a closer image. Eventually,
those at the edge of the whirlpool will start spinning along with it. That is what I am waiting
to see. 
The Professor slowly twirled his finger in space. Then he continued, The one in the center
of the whirlpool is Eri. There is no need for the one in the center of a whirlpool to move. That
is what those around the edge must do. 
Tengo listened in silence.
 If I may borrow your unsettling figure of speech, all of us may be functioning as bait, not
just Eri. The Professor looked at Tengo with narrowed eyes. You included. 
 All I had to do, supposedly, was rewrite Air Chrysalis. I was just going to be a hired hand,
a technician. That was how Mr. Komatsu put it to me to begin with. 
 I see. 
 But things seem to have changed a bit along the way, Tengo said. Does this mean that
you revised his original plan, Professor? 
 No, that is not how I see it. Mr. Komatsu has his intentions and I have my intentions. At
the moment, they share the same direction. 
 So the plan is proceeding as if the two of you just happened to be riding together. 
 I suppose you could say that. 
 Two men with different destinations are riding the same horse down the road. Their
routes are identical to a certain point, but neither knows what is going to happen after that. 
 Well put, like a true writer. 
Tengo sighed. Our prospects are not very bright, I would say. But theres no turning back
now, is there? 
 Even if we could turn back, wed probably never end up where we started, the Professor
said.
This brought the conversation to a close. Tengo could think of nothing further to say.
Professor Ebisuno left the café first. He had to see someone in the neighborhood, he said.
Fuka-Eri stayed behind. Sitting on opposite sides of the table, Tengo and Fuka-Eri remained
silent for a while.
 Are you hungry? Tengo asked.
 Not really, Fuka-Eri said.
The café was filling up. The two of them left, though neither had been the first to suggest
it. For a while they walked the streets of Shinjuku aimlessly. Six oclock was drawing near,
and many people were hurrying toward the station, but the sky was still bright. Early-summer
sunlight enveloped the city, its brightness feeling strangely artificial after the underground
café.
 Where are you going now? Tengo asked.
 No place special, Fuka-Eri replied.
 Shall I see you home? Tengo asked. To your Shinano-machi condo, I mean. I suppose
youll be staying there today? 
 Im not going there, Fuka-Eri said.
 Why not? 
She did not reply.
 Are you saying you feel youd better not go there? 
Fuka-Eri nodded, saying nothing.
Tengo thought about asking her why she felt she had better not go there, but he sensed
that it wouldnt get him a straight answer.
 So, will you be going back to the Professors? 
 Futamatao is too far away. 
 Do you have somewhere else in mind? 
 I will stay at your place, Fuka-Eri said.
 That … might … not … be a … good idea, Tengo said. My place is small, I live alone,
and Im sure Professor Ebisuno wouldnt permit it. 
 The Professor wont mind, Fuka-Eri said with a kind of shrug of the shoulders. And I
wont mind. 
 But I might mind, Tengo said.
 Why. 
 Well …, Tengo started to say, but no further words came out. He was not even sure
what he had intended to say. This often happened when he was talking with Fuka-Eri. He
would momentarily lose track of what he was going to say. It was like sheet music being
scattered by a gust of wind.
Fuka-Eri reached out and gently grasped Tengos left hand in her right hand as if to comfort
him.
 You dont get it, she said.
 Dont get what? 
 We are one. 
 We are one? Tengo asked with a shock.
 We wrote the book together. 
Tengo felt the pressure of Fuka-Eris fingers against his palm. It was not strong, but it was
even and steady.
 Thats true. We wrote Air Chrysalis together. And when we are eaten by the tiger, well be
eaten together. 
 No tiger will come out, Fuka-Eri said, her voice unusually grave.
 Thats good, Tengo said, though it didnt make him especially happy. A tiger might not
come out, but there was no telling what might come out instead.
They stood in front of Shinjuku Stations ticket machines. Fuka-Eri looked up at him, still
gripping his hand. People streamed past them on both sides.
 Okay, if you want to stay at my place, you can, Tengo said, resigning himself. I can
sleep on the sofa. 
 Thank you, Fuka-Eri said.
Tengo realized this was the first time he had ever heard anything resembling polite language
from Fuka-Eris mouth. No, it might not have been the first time, but he could not recall
when he might have heard it before.
1Q84
CHAPTER 19
Aomame
WOMEN SHARING A SECRET
 The Little People? Aomame asked gently, peering at the girl. Tell us, who are these
‘Little People? 
But having pronounced only those few words, Tsubasas mouth clamped shut again. As
before, her eyes had lost all depth, as though the effort of speaking the words had exhausted
most of her energy.
 Somebody you know? Aomame asked.
Again no answer.
 She has mentioned those words several times before, the dowager said. ‘The Little
People. I dont know what she means. 
The words had an ominous ring, a subtle overtone that Aomame sensed like the sound of
distant thunder.
She asked the dowager, Could these ‘Little People have been the ones who injured
her? 
The dowager shook her head. I dont know. But whatever they are, the ‘Little People undoubtedly
carry great significance for her. 
Hands resting side by side atop the table, the girl sat utterly still, her opaque eyes staring
at a fixed point in space.
 What in the world could have happened to her? Aomame asked.
The dowager replied almost coolly, There is observable evidence of rape. Repeated rape.
Terrible lacerations on the outer lips of her vagina, and injury to the uterus. An engorged adult
male sex organ penetrated her small uterus, which is still not fully mature, largely destroying
the area where a fertilized egg would become implanted. The doctor thinks she will probably
never be able to become pregnant. 
The dowager appeared almost intentionally to be discussing these graphic details in the
girls presence. Tsubasa listened without comment and without any perceptible change of expression.
Her mouth showed slight movements now and then but emitted no sound. She almost
seemed to be listening out of sheer politeness to a conversation about a stranger far
away.
 And that is not all, the dowager continued quietly. Even if some procedure managed to
restore the function of her uterus, the girl will probably never want to have sex with anyone. A
good deal of pain must have accompanied any penetration that could cause such terrible
damage, and it was done to her repeatedly. The memory of that much pain wont simply fade
away. Do you see what I mean? 
Aomame nodded. Her fingers were tightly intertwined atop her knees.
 In other words, the eggs prepared inside her have nowhere to go. They the dowager
glanced at Tsubasa and went on, have already been rendered infertile. 
Aomame could not tell how much of this Tsubasa understood. Whatever her mind was
able to grasp, her living emotions appeared to be somewhere else. They were not here, at
least. Her heart seemed to have been shut up inside a small, dark room with a locked door, a
room located in another place.
The dowager went on, I am not saying that a womans only purpose in life is to bear children.
Each individual is free to choose the kind of life she wants to lead. It is simply not permissible
for someone to rob her by force of her innate right as a woman before she has the
opportunity to exercise it. 
Aomame nodded in silence.
 Of course it is not permissible, the dowager repeated. Aomame noticed a slight quaver in
her voice. She was obviously finding it difficult to keep her emotions in check. This child ran
away, alone, from a certain place. How she was able to manage it, I do not know. But she has
nowhere else to go but here. Nowhere else is safe for her. 
 Where are her parents? 
The dowager scowled and tapped the tabletop with her fingernails. We know where her
parents are. But they are the ones who allowed this terrible thing to happen. They are the
ones she ran away from. 
 Youre saying that the parents approved of having their own daughter raped? 
 They not only approved of it, they encouraged it. 
 But why would anyone …? Aomame could not find the words to go on.
The dowager shook her head. I know, its terrible. Such things should never be allowed to
happen. But the situation is a difficult one. This is not a simple case of domestic violence. The
doctor said we have to report it to the police, but I asked him not to. Hes a good friend, so I
managed to convince him to hold off. 
 But why didnt you want to report it to the police? Aomame asked.
 This child was clearly the victim of a savage, inhuman act. Moreover, it was a heinous
crime that society should punish with severe criminal penalties, the dowager said. But even
if we were to report it to the police, what could they do? As you see, the child herself can
hardly speak. She cant properly explain what happened or what was done to her. And even if
she were able to, we have no way to prove it. If we handed her over to the police, she might
just be sent back to her parents. There is no place else for her to go, and they do have parental
rights. Once she was back with them, the same thing would probably be done to her
again. We cannot let that happen. 
Aomame nodded.
 I am going to raise her myself, the dowager declared. I will not send her anywhere. I
dont care who comes for her her parents or anyone I will not give her up. I will hide her
somewhere else and take charge of her upbringing. 
Aomame sat for a while, looking back and forth between the dowager and the girl.
 So, then, can we identify the man who committed such sexual violence against this child?
Was it one man? Aomame asked.
 We can identify him. He was the only one. 
 But theres no way to take him to court? 
 He is a very powerful man, the dowager said. He can exert his influence on people directly.
This girls parents were under his influence. And they still are. They do whatever he orders
them to do. They have no individual character, no powers of judgment of their own. They
take his word as the absolute truth. So when he tells them they must give him their daughter,
they cannot refuse. Far from it, they do his bidding without question and hand her over gladly,
knowing full well what he plans to do to her. 
It took Aomame some time to comprehend what the dowager was telling her. She set her
mind to work on the problem and put things in order.
 Is this a special group you are talking about? 
 Yes, indeed, a special group that shares a sick and narrow spirit. 
 A kind of cult, you mean? Aomame asked.
The dowager nodded. Yes, a particularly vicious and dangerous cult. 
Of course. It could only be a cult. People who do whatever they are ordered to do. People
without individual character or powers of judgment. The same thing could have happened to
me, Aomame thought, biting her lip.
Of course, people were not embroiled in rape in the Society of Witnesses. In her case at
least, it never came to a sexual threat. The brothers and sisters around her were all mildmannered,
sincere people. They thought seriously about their faith, and they lived with reverence
for their doctrines to the point of staking their lives on them. But decent motives dont
always produce decent results. And the body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not
always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.
Seeing Tsubasa reminded Aomame of herself at that age. My own will made it possible for
me to escape back then. But when youre as seriously wounded as this girl, it may not be possible
to bring yourself back. You might never be able to return your heart to its normal condition
again. The thought sent a stab of pain through Aomames chest. What she had discovered
in Tsubasa was herself as she might have been.
 I have to confess something to you, the dowager said softly to Aomame. I can tell you
this now, but the fact is, though I knew it was a disrespectful thing to do, I ran a background
check on you. 
The remark brought Aomame back to the present. She looked at the dowager.
 It was right after the first time I invited you to the house and we talked. I hope youre not
offended. 
 No, not at all, Aomame said. In your situation, it was a natural thing to do. The work we
are engaged in is by no means ordinary. 
 Exactly. We are walking a very delicate, fine line. We have to be able to trust each other.
No matter who the other person is, though, you cant have trust if you dont know what you
need to know. So I had them look up everything about you. From the present all the way back
into the past. I suppose I should say ‘almost everything, of course. No one can know
everything about another person. Not even God, probably. 
 Or the devil, Aomame said.
 Or the devil, the dowager repeated with a faint smile. I know that you carry cultconnected
psychological scars from when you were a girl. Your parents were and still
are ardent believers in the Society of Witnesses, and they have never forgiven you for
abandoning the faith. That causes you pain even now. 
Aomame nodded silently.
 To give you my honest opinion, the dowager went on, the Society of Witnesses is not a
proper religion. If you had been badly injured or come down with an illness that required surgery,
you might have lost your life then and there. Any religion that would prohibit life-saving
surgery simply because it goes against the literal word of the Bible can be nothing other than
a cult. This is an abuse of dogma that crosses the line. 
Aomame nodded. The rejection of blood transfusion is the first thing pounded into the
heads of Witness children. They are taught that it is far better to die and go to heaven with an
immaculate body and soul than to receive a transfusion in violation of Gods teaching and go
to hell. There is no room for compromise. Its one road or the other: you go either to hell or to
heaven. Children have no critical powers. They have no way of knowing whether such a doctrine
is correct, either as an idea widely accepted by society or as a scientific concept. All they
can do is believe what their parents teach them. If I had been caught in the position of needing
a transfusion when I was little, Im sure I would have followed my parents orders and
chosen to reject the transfusion and die. Then I supposedly would have been transported to
heaven or someplace who-knows-where.
 Is this cult youre talking about well known? Aomame asked.
 Its called ‘Sakigake. Im sure youve heard of it. At one point it was being mentioned in
the paper almost every day. 
Aomame could not recall having heard the name ‘Sakigake, but rather than say so, she
nodded vaguely to the dowager. She felt she had better just leave it at that, aware that she
was no longer living in 1984 but in the changed world of 1Q84. That was still just a hypothesis,
but one that was steadily increasing in reality with each passing day. There seemed to be
a great deal of information in this new world of which she knew nothing. She would have to
pay closer attention.
The dowager went on, Sakigake originally started out as a small agricultural commune
run by a core new-left group who had fled from the city, but it suddenly changed direction at
one point and turned into a religion. How and why this came about is not well understood. 
The dowager paused for breath and then continued speaking.
 Very few people know this, but the group has a guru they call ‘Leader. They view him as
having special powers, which he supposedly uses to cure serious illnesses, to predict the future,
to bring about paranormal phenomena, and such. Theyre all elaborate ruses, Im sure,
but they are another reason that many people are drawn to him. 
 Paranormal phenomena? 
The dowagers beautifully shaped eyebrows drew together. I dont have any concrete information
on what that is supposed to mean. Ive never had the slightest interest in matters of
the occult. People have been repeating the same kinds of fraud throughout the world since
the beginning of time, using the same old tricks, and still these despicable fakes continue to
thrive. That is because most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were
the truth. Their eyes may be wide open, but they dont see a thing. Tricking them is as easy
as twisting a babys arm. 
 Sakigake. Aomame tried out the word. What did it mean, anyway? Forerunner? Precursor?
Pioneer? It sounded more like the kind of name that would be attached to a Japanese super-express
train than to a religion.
Tsubasa lowered her eyes momentarily when she heard the word Sakigake, as though
reacting to a special sound concealed within it. When she raised her eyes again, her face was
as expressionless as before, as if a small eddy had suddenly begun to swirl inside her and
had immediately quieted down.
 Sakigakes guru is the one who raped Tsubasa, the dowager said. He took her by force
on the pretext of granting her a spiritual awakening. The parents were informed that the ritual
had to be completed before the girl experienced her first period. Only such an undefiled girl
could be granted a pure spiritual awakening. The excruciating pain caused by the ritual would
be an ordeal she would have to undergo in order to ascend to a higher spiritual level. The par-
ents took him at his word with complete faith. It is truly astounding how stupid people can be.
Nor is Tsubasas the only such case. According to our intelligence, the same thing has been
done to other girls in the cult. The guru is a degenerate with perverted sexual tastes. There
can be no doubt. The organization and the doctrines are nothing but a convenient guise for
masking his individual desires. 
 Does this ‘guru have a name? 
 Unfortunately, we havent learned that yet. Hes just called ‘Leader. We dont know what
sort of person he is, what he looks like, or anything about his background. No matter how
much we dig, the information is not forthcoming. It has been totally blocked. He stays shut up
in cult headquarters in the mountains of Yamanashi, and almost never appears in public.
Even inside the cult, the number of individuals allowed to see him is highly restricted. He is
said to be always in the dark, meditating. 
 And we cant allow him to continue unchecked. 
The dowager glanced at Tsubasa and nodded slowly. We cant let there be any more victims,
dont you agree? 
 In other words, we have to take steps. 
The dowager reached over and laid her hand atop Tsubasas, steeping herself in a moment
of silence. Then she said, Exactly 
 It is quite certain, then, that he repeatedly engages in these perverted acts? Aomame
asked.
The dowager nodded. We have proof that he is systematically raping girls. 
 If its true, its unforgivable, Aomame said softly. You are right: we cant let there be any
more victims. 
Several different thoughts seemed to be intertwined and competing for space in the dowagers
mind. Then she said, We must learn a great deal more about this ‘Leader person. We
must leave no ambiguities. After all, a human life hangs in the balance. 
 This person almost never comes out in public, you say? 
 Correct. And he probably has extremely tight security 
Aomame narrowed her eyes and pictured to herself the specially made ice pick in the
back of her dresser drawer, the sharp point of its needle. This sounds like a very tough job. 
 Yes, unusually difficult, the dowager said. She drew her hand back from Tsubasas and
pressed the tip of her middle finger against her eyebrow. This was a sign not one she displayed
very often that the dowager had run out of ideas.
Aomame said, Realistically speaking, it would be next to impossible for me to go out to
the Yamanashi hills on my own, sneak into this heavily guarded cult, dispatch their Leader,
and come out unscathed. It might work in a ninja movie, but … 
 I am not expecting you to do any such thing, of course, the dowager said earnestly before
realizing that Aomames last remark had been a joke. It is out of the question, she added
with a wan smile.
 One other thing concerns me, Aomame said, looking into the dowagers eyes. The Little
People. Who or what are they? What did they do to Tsubasa? We need more information
about them. 
Finger still pressed against her brow, the dowager said, Yes, they concern me, too. Tsubasa
here hardly speaks at all, but the words ‘Little People have come out of her mouth a
number of times, as you heard earlier. They probably mean a lot to her, but she wont tell us a
thing about them. She clams up as soon as the topic arises. Give me a little more time. Ill
look into this matter, too. 
 Do you have some idea how we can learn more about Sakigake? 
The dowager gave her a gentle smile. There is nothing tangible in this world you cant
buy if you pay enough, and I am prepared to pay a lot especially where this matter is concerned.
It may take a little while, but I will obtain the necessary information without fail. 
There are some things you cant buy no matter how much you pay, Aomame thought. For
example, the moon.
Aomame changed the subject. Are you really planning to raise Tsubasa yourself? 
 Of course, I am quite serious about that. I intend to adopt her legally. 
 Im sure you are aware that the formalities will not be simple, especially given the situation. 
 Yes, I am prepared for that, the dowager said. I will use every means at my disposal, do
everything I can. I will not give her up to anyone. 
The dowagers voice trembled with emotion. This was the very first time she had displayed
such feeling in Aomames presence. Aomame found this somewhat worrisome, and the dowager
seemed to read this in her expression.
 I have never told this to anyone, the dowager said, lowering her voice as if preparing to
reveal a long-hidden truth. I have kept it to myself because it was too painful to speak about.
The fact is, when my daughter committed suicide, she was pregnant. Six months pregnant.
She probably did not want to give birth to the boy she was carrying. And so she took him with
her when she ended her own life. If she had delivered the child, he would have been about
the same age as Tsubasa here. I lost two precious lives at the same time. 
 Im sorry to hear that, Aomame said.
 Dont worry, though. I am not allowing such personal matters to cloud my judgment. I will
not expose you to needless danger. You, too, are a precious daughter to me. We are already
part of the same family 
Aomame nodded silently.
 We have ties more important than blood, the dowager said softly.
Aomame nodded again.
 Whatever it takes, we must liquidate that man, the dowager said, as if trying to convince
herself. Then she looked at Aomame. At the earliest possible opportunity, we must move him
to another world before he injures someone else. 
Aomame looked across the table at Tsubasa. The girls eyes had no focus. She was staring
at nothing more than an imaginary point in space. To Aomame, the girl looked like an
empty cicada shell.
 But at the same time, we mustnt rush things along, the dowager said. We have to be
careful and patient. 
Aomame left the dowager and the girl Tsubasa behind in the apartment when she walked
out of the safe house. The dowager had said she would stay with Tsubasa until the girl fell
asleep. The four women in the first-floor common room were gathered around a circular table,
leaning in closely, engaged in a hushed conversation. To Aomame, the scene did not look
real. The women seemed to be part of an imaginary painting, perhaps with the title Women
Sharing a Secret. The composition exhibited no change when Aomame passed by.
Outside, Aomame knelt down to pet the German shepherd for a while. The dog wagged
her tail with happy abandon. Whenever she encountered a dog, Aomame would wonder how
dogs could become so unconditionally happy. She had never once in her life had a
pet neither dog nor cat nor bird. She had never even bought herself a potted plant. Aomame
suddenly remembered to look up at the sky, which was covered by a featureless gray layer of
clouds that hinted at the coming of the rainy season. She could not see the moon. The night
was quiet and windless. There was a hint of moonlight filtering through the overcast, but no
way to tell how many moons were up there.
Walking to the subway, Aomame kept thinking about the strangeness of the world. If, as
the dowager had said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead
such strangely shaped lives? Wouldnt our genetic purpose to transmit DNA be served just
as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted
entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to
lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?
A man who finds joy in raping prepubescent girls, a powerfully built gay bodyguard, people
who choose death over transfusion, a woman who kills herself with sleeping pills while six
months pregnant, a woman who kills problematic men with a needle thrust to the back of the
neck, men who hate women, women who hate men: how could it possibly profit the genes to
have such people existing in this world? Did the genes merely enjoy such deformed episodes
as colorful entertainment, or were these episodes utilized by them for some greater purpose?
Aomame didnt know the answers to these questions. All she knew was that it was too late
to choose any other life for herself. All I can do is live the life I have. I cant trade it in for a
new one. However strange and misshapen it might be, this is it for the gene carrier that is me.
I hope the dowager and Tsubasa will be happy, Aomame thought as she walked along. If
they can become truly happy, I dont mind sacrificing myself to make it happen. I myself probably
have no future to speak of. But I cant honestly believe that the two of them are going to
have tranquil, fulfilled lives or even ordinary lives. The three of us are more or less the
same. Each of us has borne too great a burden in the course of our lives. As the dowager
said, we are like a single family but an extended family engaged in an endless battle, united
by deep wounds to the heart, each bearing some undefined absence.
In the course of pursuing these thoughts, Aomame became aware of her own intense urge
for male flesh. Why, of all things, should I start wanting a man at a time like this? She shook
her head as she walked along, unable to judge whether this increased sexual desire had
been brought about by psychological tension or was the natural cry of the eggs stored inside
her or just a product of her own genes warped machinations. The desire seemed to have
very deep roots or, as Ayumi might say, I want to fuck like crazy. What should I do now?
Aomame wondered. I could go to one of my usual bars and look for the right kind of guy. Its
just one subway stop to Roppongi. But she was too tired for that. Nor was she dressed for seduction:
no makeup, only sneakers and a vinyl gym bag. Why dont I just go home, open a
bottle of red wine, masturbate, and go to sleep? Thats it. And let me stop thinking about the
moon.
One glance was all it took for Aomame to realize that the man sitting across from her on
the subway home from Hiroo to Jiyugaoka was her type mid-forties, oval face, hairline beginning
to recede. Head shape not bad. Healthy complexion. Slim, stylish black-framed
glasses. Smartly dressed: light cotton sport coat, white polo shirt, leather briefcase on lap.
Brown loafers. A salaried working man from the look of him, but not at some straitlaced corporation.
Maybe an editor at a publishing company, or an architect at a small firm, or
something to do with apparel, that was probably it. He was deeply absorbed in a paperback,
its title obscured by a bookstores plain wrapper.
Aomame thought she would like to go somewhere and have hot sex with him. She imagined
herself touching his erect penis. She wanted to squeeze it so tightly that the flow of
blood nearly stopped. Her other hand would gently massage his testicles. The hands now
resting in her lap began to twitch. She opened and closed her fingers unconsciously. Her
shoulders rose and fell with each breath. Slowly, she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.
But her stop was coming up soon. She had to get off at Jiyugaoka. She had no idea how
far the man would be going, unaware that he was the object of her sexual fantasies. He just
kept sitting there, reading his book, obviously unconcerned about the kind of woman who was
sitting across from him. When she left the train, Aomame felt like ripping his damned paperback
to shreds, but of course she stopped herself.
Aomame was sound asleep in bed at one oclock in the morning, having an intensely
sexual dream. In the dream, her breasts were large and beautiful, like two grapefruits. Her
nipples were hard and big. She was pressing them against the lower half of a man. Her
clothes lay at her feet, where she had cast them off. Aomame was sleeping with her legs
spread. As she slept, Aomame had no way of knowing that two moons were hanging in the
sky side by side. One of them was the big moon that had always hung there, and the other
was a new, smallish moon.
Tsubasa and the dowager were also asleep, in Tsubasas room. Tsubasa wore new
checked pajamas and slept curled into a tight little ball in bed. The dowager, still wearing her
street clothes, was stretched out in a long chair, a blanket over her knees. She had been
planning to leave after Tsubasa fell asleep, but had fallen asleep there. Set back from the
street in its hilltop location, the apartment house was hushed, its grounds silent but for the occasional
distant scream of an accelerating motorcycle or the siren of an ambulance. The German
shepherd also slept, curled up outside the front door. The curtains had been drawn
across the window, but they glowed white in the light of a mercury-vapor lamp. The clouds
began to part, and from the rift, now and then two moons peeked through. The worlds oceans
were adjusting their tides.
Tsubasa slept with her cheek pressed against the pillow, her mouth slightly open. Her
breathing could not have been any quieter, and aside from the occasional tiny twitch of one
shoulder, she barely moved. Her bangs hung over her eyes.
Soon her mouth began to open wider, and from it emerged, one after another, a small
troupe of Little People. Each one carefully scanned the room before emerging. Had the dowager
awakened at that point, she might have been able to see them, but she remained fast
asleep. She would not be waking anytime soon. The Little People knew this. There were five
of them altogether. When they first emerged, they were the size of Tsubasas little finger, but
once they were fully on the outside, they would give themselves a twist, as though unfolding a
tool, and stretch themselves to their full one-foot height. They all wore the same clothing
without distinguishing features, and their facial features were equally undistinguished, making
it impossible to tell them apart.
They climbed down from the bed to the floor, and from under the bed they pulled out an
object about the size of a Chinese pork bun. Then they sat in a circle around the object and
started feverishly working on it. It was white and highly elastic. They would stretch their arms
out and, with practiced movements, pluck white, translucent threads out of the air, applying
them to the fluffy, white object, making it bigger and bigger. The threads appeared to have a
suitably sticky quality. Before long, the Little People themselves had grown to nearly two feet
in height. They were able to change their height freely as needed.
Several hours of concentrated work followed, during which time the Little People said
nothing at all. Their teamwork was tight and flawless. Tsubasa and the dowager remained
sound asleep the whole time, never moving a muscle. All the other women in the safe house
enjoyed deeper sleeps than usual. Stretched out on the front lawn, perhaps dreaming, the
German shepherd let out a soft moan from the depths of its unconscious.
Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.
1Q84
CHAPTER 20
Tengo
THE POOR GILYAKS
Tengo couldnt sleep. Fuka-Eri was in his bed, wearing his pajamas, sound asleep. Tengo
had made simple preparations for sleeping on the couch (no great imposition, since he often
napped there), but he had felt not the slightest bit sleepy when he lay down, so he was writing
his long novel at the kitchen table. The word processor was in the bedroom; he was using a
ballpoint pen on a writing pad. This, too, was no great imposition. The word processor was
undeniably more convenient for writing speed and for saving documents, but he loved the
classic act of writing characters by hand on paper.
Writing fiction at night was rather rare for Tengo. He enjoyed working when it was light
outside and people were walking around. Sometimes, when he was writing at night while
everything was hushed and wrapped in darkness, the style he produced would be a little too
heavy, and he would have to rewrite the whole passage in the light of day. Rather than go to
that trouble, it was better to write in daylight from the outset.
Writing at night for the first time in ages, though, using a ballpoint pen and paper, Tengo
found his mind working smoothly. His imagination stretched its limbs and the story flowed
freely. One idea would link naturally with the next almost without interruption, the tip of the
pen raising a persistent scrape against the white paper. Whenever his hand tired, he would
set the pen down and move the fingers of his right hand in the air, like a pianist doing imaginary
scales. The hands of the clock were nearing half past one. He heard strangely few sounds
from the outside, as though extraneous noises were being soaked up by the clouds covering
the citys sky like a thick cotton layer.
He picked up his pen again and was still arranging words on paper when suddenly he remembered:
tomorrow was the day his older girlfriend would be coming. She always showed
up around eleven oclock on Friday mornings. He would have to get rid of Fuka-Eri before
then. Thank goodness she wore no perfume or cologne! His girlfriend would be sure to notice
right away if the bed had someone elses smell. Tengo knew how observant and jealous she
could be. It was fine for her to have sex with her husband now and then, but she became seriously
angry if Tengo went out with another woman.
 Married sex is something else, she explained. Its charged to a separate account. 
 A separate account? 
 Under a whole different heading. 
 You mean you use a different part of your feelings? 
 Thats it. Even if I use the same body parts, I make a distinction in the feelings I use. So it
really doesnt matter. I have the ability to do that as a mature woman. But youre not allowed
to sleep with other girls and stuff. 
 Im not doing that! Tengo said.
 Even if youre not having sex with another girl, I would feel slighted just to think such a
possibility exists. 
 Just to think such a possibility exists? Tengo asked, amazed.
 You dont understand a womans feelings, do you? And you call yourself a novelist! 
 This seems awfully unfair to me. 
 It may be unfair. But Ill make it up to you, she said. And she did.
Tengo was satisfied with this relationship with his older girlfriend. She was no beauty, at
least in the general sense. Her facial features were, if anything, rather unusual. Some might
even find her ugly. But Tengo had liked her looks from the start. And as a sexual partner, she
was beyond reproach. Her demands on him were few: to meet her once a week for three or
four hours, to participate in attentive sex twice, if possible and to keep away from other
women. Basically, that was all she asked of him. Home and family were very important to her,
and she had no intention of destroying them for Tengo. She simply did not have a satisfying
sex life with her husband. Her interests and Tengos were a perfect fit.
Tengo had no particular desire for other women. What he wanted most of all was uninterrupted
free time. If he could have sex on a regular basis, he had nothing more to ask of a woman.
He did not welcome the unavoidable responsibility that came with dating a woman his
own age, falling in love, and having a sexual relationship. The psychological stages through
which one had to pass, the hints regarding various possibilities, the unavoidable collisions of
expectations: Tengo hoped to get by without taking on such burdens.
The concept of duty always made Tengo cringe. He had lived his life thus far skillfully
avoiding any position that entailed responsibility, and to do so, he was prepared to endure
most forms of deprivation.
In order to flee from responsibility, Tengo learned early on in life to make himself inconspicuous.
He worked hard to negate his presence by publicly displaying very little of his true
abilities, by keeping his opinions to himself, and by avoiding situations that put him at the center
of attention. He had to survive on his own, without depending on others, from the time he
was a child. But children have no real power. And so, whenever a strong wind began to blow,
he would have to take shelter and grab onto something to prevent himself from being blown
away. It was necessary for him to keep such contrivances in mind at all times, like the
orphans in Dickenss novels.
But while it could be said that things had gone well for Tengo so far, several tears had begun
to appear in the fabric of his tranquil life since he first laid his hands on the manuscript of
Fuka-Eris Air Chrysalis. First of all, he had been dragged almost bodily into Komatsus dan-
gerous plan. Secondly, the beautiful girl who wrote the book had shaken his heart from a
strange angle. And it seemed that the experience of rewriting Air Chrysalis had begun to
change something inside of him. Now Tengo felt driven by a powerful urge to write his own
novel. This, of course, was a change for the better. But it was also true that his neat, selfsatisfied
lifestyle was being tested.
In any case, tomorrow was Friday. His girlfriend would be coming. He had to get rid of
Fuka-Eri before then.
Fuka-Eri woke up just after two oclock in the morning. Dressed in his pajamas, she
opened the bedroom door and came out to the kitchen. She drank a big glass of water and,
rubbing her eyes, sat down at the kitchen table across from Tengo.
 Am I in your way, Fuka-Eri asked in her usual style free of question marks.
 Not especially, Tengo said. I dont mind. 
 What are you writing. 
Tengo closed the pad and set his ballpoint pen down.
 Nothing much, Tengo said. Anyway, I was just thinking of quitting. 
 Mind if I stay up with you a while, she asked.
 Not at all. Im going to have a little wine. Want some? 
The girl shook her head. I want to stay out here a while. 
 Thats fine. Im not sleepy, either. 
Tengos pajamas were too big on Fuka-Eri. She had the sleeves and cuffs rolled up.
Whenever she leaned forward, the collar revealed glimpses of the swell of her breasts. The
sight of Fuka-Eri wearing his pajamas made it strangely difficult for Tengo to breathe. He
opened the refrigerator and poured the wine left in the bottom of a bottle into a glass.
 Hungry? Tengo asked. On their way back to his apartment earlier, they had had some
spaghetti at a small restaurant near Koenji Station. The portions had not been very big, and
several hours had elapsed in the meantime. I can make you a sandwich or something else
simple if youd like. 
 Im not hungry. Id rather have you read me what you wrote. 
 You mean what I was writing just now? 
 Uh-huh. 
Tengo picked up his pen and twirled it between his fingers. It looked ridiculously small in
his big hand. I make it a policy not to show people manuscripts until theyre finished and revised.
I dont want to jinx my writing. 
 ‘Jinx. 
 Its an English word. ‘To cause bad luck. Its a kind of rule of mine. 
Fuka-Eri looked at Tengo for several moments. Then she drew the pajama collar closed.
 So read me a book. 
 You can get to sleep if someone reads you a book? 
 Uh-huh. 
 I suppose Professor Ebisuno has read you lots of books. 
 Because he stays up all night. 
 Did he read you The Tale of the Heike? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. I listened to a tape. 
 So thats how you memorized it! Must have been a very long tape. 
Fuka-Eri used two hands to suggest a pile of cassette tapes. Very long. 
 What part did you recite at the press conference? 
 ‘General Yoshitsunes Flight from the Capital. 
 Thats the part after the defeat of the Heike where the victorious Genji general Yoshitsune
flees from Kyoto, with his brother Yoritomo in pursuit. The Genji have won the war against the
Heike, but then the family starts fighting among themselves. 
 Right. 
 What other sections can you recite from memory? 
 Tell me what you want to hear. 
Tengo tried to recall some episodes from The Tale of the Heike. It was a long book, with
an endless number of stories. Off the top of his head, Tengo named The Battle of Dan-noura. 
Fuka-Eri took some twenty seconds to collect her thoughts in silence. Then she began to
chant a decisive part of the final sea battle in the original verse:
 The Genji warriors had boarded the Heike ships to find
 The sailors and helmsmen pierced by arrows or slashed by swords,
 Their corpses lying in the bilge, leaving no one to steer.
 Aboard a small boat, New Middle Counselor Tomomori
 Approached the Imperial Ship and said:
 And so it seems to have come to this.
 Heave everything unsightly into the ocean. 
 He ran from stem to stern, sweeping, scrubbing,
 Gathering litter, cleaning everything with his own hands.
 The ladies-in-waiting asked, How goes the battle, Counselor? 
 Soon you will behold those marvelous men of the east, 
 He replied with caustic laughter.
 How dare you jest at a time like this? the women cried.
 Observing this state of affairs, the Nun of Second Rank
 Proceeded to carry out the plan
 Upon which she had settled long before.
 Hooding herself under two dark-gray robes,
 She lifted high the hems of her glossy silk split skirt,
 Tucked the Imperial Bead Strand under one arm,
 Thrust the Imperial Sword under her sash,
 And took the Child Emperor himself in her arms.
 Mere woman though I am, I shall never fall into enemy hands.
 I shall go wherever His Majesty goes.
 All you women whose hearts are with him,
 Follow us without delay. So saying,
 She strode to the gunwale.
 His Majesty had turned but eight that year,
 Yet he exhibited a maturity far beyond his age.
 His handsome countenance radiated an Imperial glow,
 And his glossy black hair could cascade down his back past the waist.
 Confused by all the commotion, he asked,
 Grandmother, where are you taking me? 
 She turned to the innocent young Sovereign and,
 Fighting back her tears, she said,
 Do you not know yet what is happening?
 For having followed the Ten Precepts in your previous life,
 You were born to be a Lord commanding
 Ten thousand charioteers,
 But now, dragged down by an evil karma,
 Your good fortune has exhausted itself.
 Turn first now to the east,
 And say your farewell to the Grand Shrine of Ise.
 Then turn toward the west and call upon Amida Buddha
 That his heavenly hosts may guide you to the Western Pure Land.
 This country is no better than a scattering of millet,
 A place where hearts know only sadness.
 I am taking you, therefore, to a wonderful pure land called ‘Paradise. 
 Her tears escaped as she spoke thus to him.
 His Majesty wore a robe of olive-tinged gray,
 And his hair was bound on either side in boyish loops.
 Tears streaming from his eyes, he joined his darling hands.
 First, he bowed toward the east
 And spoke his farewell to the Grand Shrine of Ise.
 Then he turned to the west and, once he had called upon Amida Buddha,
 The Nun of Second Rank clasped him to her breast and,
 Comforting him with the words,
 There is another capital beneath the waves, 
 She plunged ten thousand fathoms beneath the sea.
Listening to her recite the story with his eyes closed, Tengo felt as though he were hearing
it the traditional way, chanted by a blind priest accompanying himself on the lute, and he was
reminded anew that The Tale of the Heike was a narrative poem handed down through an oral
tradition. Fuka-Eris normal style of speaking was extremely flat, lacking almost all accent
and intonation, but when she launched into the tale, her voice became startlingly strong, rich,
and colorful, as if something had taken possession of her. The magnificent sea battle fought
in 1185 on the swirling currents between Honshu and Kyushu came vividly to life. The Heike
side was doomed to defeat, and Kiyomoris wife Tokiko, the Nun of Second Rank, plunged
into the waves holding her grandson, the child emperor Antoku, in her arms. Her ladies-inwaiting
followed her in death rather than fall into the hands of the rough eastern warriors. Tomomori,
concealing his grief, jokingly urged the ladies to kill themselves. Youll have nothing
but a living hell if you go on like this, he had told them. You had best end your lives here and
now.
 Want me to go on, Fuka-Eri asked.
 No, thats fine. Thank you, Tengo answered, stunned. He understood how those news
reporters, at a loss for words, must have felt. How did you manage to memorize such a long
passage? 
 Listening to the tape over and over. 
 Listening to the tape over and over, an ordinary person still wouldnt be able to memorize
it. 
It suddenly dawned on Tengo that precisely to the degree she could not read a book, the
girls ability to memorize what she had heard might be extraordinarily well developed, just as
certain children with savant syndrome can absorb and remember huge amounts of visual information
in a split second.
 I want you to read me a book, Fuka-Eri said.
 What kind of book would you like? 
 Do you have the book you were talking about with the Professor, Fuka-Eri asked. The
one with Big Brother. 
 1984? I dont have that one. 
 What kind of story is it. 
Tengo tried to recall the plot. I read it once a long time ago in the school library, so I dont
remember the details too well. It was published in 1949, when 1984 seemed like a time far in
the future. 
 Thats this year. 
 Yes, by coincidence. At some point the future becomes reality. And then it quickly becomes
the past. In his novel, George Orwell depicted the future as a dark society dominated
by totalitarianism. People are rigidly controlled by a dictator named Big Brother. Information is
restricted, and history is constantly being rewritten. The protagonist works in a government office,
and Im pretty sure his job is to rewrite words. Whenever a new history is written, the old
histories all have to be thrown out. In the process, words are remade, and the meanings of
current words are changed. What with history being rewritten so often, nobody knows what is
true anymore. They lose track of who is an enemy and who an ally. Its that kind of story. 
 They rewrite history. 
 Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves.
Its a crime. 
Fuka-Eri thought about that for a moment.
Tengo went on, Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective
memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective
memory is taken from us is rewritten we lose the ability to sustain our true selves. 
 You rewrite stuff. 
Tengo laughed and took a sip of wine. All I did was touch up your story, for the sake of
expedience. Thats totally different from rewriting history. 
 But that Big Brother book is not here now, she asked.
 Unfortunately, no. So I cant read it to you. 
 I dont mind another book. 
Tengo went to his bookcase and scanned the spines of his books. He had read many
books over the years, but he owned few. He tended to dislike filling his home with a lot of possessions.
When he finished a book, unless it was something quite special, he would take it to
a used-book store. He bought only books he knew he was going to read right away, and he
would read the ones he cared about very closely, until they were ingrained in his mind. When
he needed other books he would borrow them from the neighborhood library.
Choosing a book to read to Fuka-Eri took Tengo a long time. He was not used to reading
aloud, and had almost no clue which might be best for that. After a good deal of indecision, he
pulled out Anton Chekhovs Sakhalin Island, which he had just finished reading the week before.
He had marked the more interesting spots with paper tags and figured this would make it
easy to choose suitable passages to read.
Tengo prefaced his reading with a brief explanation of the book that Chekhov was only
thirty years old when he traveled to Sakhalin Island in 1890; that no one really knew why the
urbane Chekhov, who had been praised as one of the most promising young writers of the
generation after Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and who was living a cosmopolitan life in Moscow,
would have made up his mind to go off to live on Sakhalin Island, which was like the end of
the earth. Sakhalin had been developed primarily as a penal colony, and to most people it
symbolized only bad luck and misery. Furthermore, the Trans-Siberian Railway had not yet
been built, which meant that Chekhov had to make more than 2,500 miles of his trip in a
horse-drawn cart across frozen earth, an act of self-denial that subjected the young man in
poor health to merciless suffering. And finally, when he ended his eight-month-long journey to
the Far East and published Sakhalin as the fruit of his labor, the work did little more than bewilder
most readers, who found that it more closely resembled a dry investigative report or
gazetteer than a work of literature. People whispered amongst themselves, Why did Chekhov
do such a wasteful, pointless thing at such an important stage in his literary career? One
critic answered scathingly, It was just a publicity stunt. Another view was that Chekhov had
gone there looking for a new subject because he had run out of things to write about. Tengo
showed Fuka-Eri the location of Sakhalin on the map included in the book.
 Why did Chekhov go to Sakhalin, Fuka-Eri asked.
 You mean, why do I think he went? 
 Uh-huh. Did you read the book. 
 I sure did. 
 What did you think. 
 Chekhov himself might not have understood exactly why he went, Tengo said. Or
maybe he didnt really have a reason. He just suddenly felt like going say, he was looking at
the shape of Sakhalin Island on a map and the desire to go just bubbled up out of nowhere.
Ive had that kind of experience myself: Im looking at a map and I see someplace that makes
me think, ‘I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what. And most of the time, for
some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know
what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. Its like measles you
cant show other people exactly where the passion comes from. Its curiosity in the purest
sense. An inexplicable inspiration. Of course, traveling from Moscow to Sakhalin in those
days involved almost unimaginable hardships, so I suspect that wasnt Chekhovs only reason
for going. 
 Name another one. 
 Well, Chekhov was both a novelist and a doctor. It could be that, as a scientist, he
wanted to examine something like a diseased part of the vast Russian nation with his own
eyes. Chekhov felt uncomfortable living as a literary star in the city. He was fed up with the atmosphere
of the literary world and was put off by the affectations of other writers, who were
mainly interested in tripping each other up. He was disgusted by the malicious critics of the
day. His journey to Sakhalin may have been an act of pilgrimage designed to cleanse him of
such literary impurities. Sakhalin Island overwhelmed him in many ways. I think it was precisely
for this reason that Chekhov never wrote a single literary work based on his trip to
Sakhalin. It was not the kind of half-baked experience that could be easily made into material
for a novel. The diseased part of the country became, so to speak, a physical part of him,
which may have been the very thing he was looking for. 
 Is the book interesting, Fuka-Eri asked.
 I found it very interesting. Its full of dry figures and statistics and, as I said earlier, not
much in the way of literary color. The scientist side of Chekhov is on full display. But that is
the very quality of the book that makes me feel I can sense the purity of the decision reached
by Anton Chekhov the individual. Mixed in with the dry records are some very impressive examples
of observation of character and scenic description. Which is not to say there is anything
wrong with the dry passages that relate only facts. Some of them are quite marvelous.
For example, the sections on the Gilyaks. 
 The Gilyaks, Fuka-Eri said.
 The Gilyaks were the indigenous people of Sakhalin long before the Russians arrived to
colonize it. They originally lived at the southern end of the island, but they moved up to the
center when they were displaced by the Ainu, who moved north from Hokkaido. Of course,
the Ainu themselves had also been pushed northward by the Japanese. Chekhov struggled
to observe at close hand and to record as accurately as possible the rapidly disappearing
Gilyak culture. 
Tengo opened to a passage on the Gilyaks. At some points he would introduce suitable
omissions and changes to the text in order to make it easily understandable to his listener.
The Gilyak is of strong, thick-set build, and average, even small, in height. Tall stature
would hamper him in the taiga. [ Thats a Russian forest, Tengo added.] His bones are thick
and are distinctive for the powerful development of all the appendages and protuberances to
which the muscles are attached, and this leads one to assume firm, powerful muscles and a
constant strenuous battle with nature. His body is lean and wiry, without a layer of fat; you do
not come across obese, plump Gilyaks. Obviously all the fat is expended in warmth, of which
the body of a Sakhalin inhabitant needs to produce such a great deal in order to compensate
for the loss engendered by the low temperature and the excessive dampness of the air. Its
clear why the Gilyak consumes such a lot of fat in his food. He eats rich seal, salmon, sturgeon
and whale fat, meat and blood, all in large quantities, in a raw, dry, often frozen state,
and because he eats coarse, unrefined food, the places to which his masticatory muscles are
attached are singularly well developed and his teeth are heavily worn. His diet is made up exclusively
of animal products, and rarely, only when he happens to have his dinner at home or
if he eats out at a celebration, will he add Manchurian garlic or berries. According to Nevelskoys
testimony, the Gilyaks consider working the soil a great sin; anybody who begins to dig
the earth or who plants anything will infallibly die. But bread, which they were acquainted with
by the Russians, they eat with pleasure, as a delicacy, and it is not a rarity these days in Alexandrovsk
or Rykovo to meet a Gilyak carrying a round loaf under his arm.
Tengo stopped reading at that point for a short breather. Fuka-Eri was listening intently,
but he could not read any reaction from her expression.
 What do you think? Do you want me to keep reading? Or do you want to switch to another
book? he asked.
 I want to know more about the Gilyaks. 
 Okay, Ill keep going. 
 Is it okay if I get in bed? Fuka-Eri asked.
 Sure, Tengo said.
They moved into the bedroom. Fuka-Eri crawled into bed, and Tengo brought a chair next
to the bed and sat in it. He continued with his reading.
The Gilyaks never wash, so that even ethnographers find it difficult to put a name to the
real colour of their faces; they do not wash their linen, and their fur clothing looks as if it has
just been stripped off a dead dog. The Gilyaks themselves give off a heavy, acid smell, and
you know you are near their dwellings from the repulsive, sometimes hardly bearable odour of
dried fish and rotting fish offal. By each yurt usually lies a drying ground filled to the brim with
split fish, which from a distance, especially when the sun is shining on them, look like filaments
of coral. Around these drying grounds Kruzenshtern saw a vast number of maggots
covering the ground to the depth of an inch.
 Kruzenshtern. 
 I think he was an early explorer. Chekhov was a very studious person. He had read every
book ever written about Sakhalin. 
 Lets keep going. 
In winter the yurts are full of acrid smoke which comes from the open fireplace, and on top
of all this the Gilyaks, their wives and even the children smoke tobacco. Nothing is known
about the morbidity and mortality of the Gilyaks, but one must form the conclusion that these
unhealthy hygienic arrangements must inevitably have a bad effect on their health. Possibly it
is to this they owe their small stature, the puffiness of their faces, and a certain sluggishness
and laziness of movement.
 The poor Gilyaks! Fuka-Eri said.
Writers give varying accounts of the Gilyaks character, but all agree on one thing that
they are not a warlike race, they do not like quarrels or fights, and they get along peacefully
with their neighbours. They have always treated the arrival of new people with suspicion, with
apprehension about their future, but have met them every time amiably, without the slightest
protest, and the worst thing they would do would be to tell lies at peoples arrival, painting
Sakhalin in gloomy colours and thinking by so doing to frighten foreigners away from the island.
They embraced Kruzenshterns travelling companions, and when Shrenk fell ill this
news quickly spread among the Gilyaks and aroused genuine sorrow. They tell lies only when
trading or talking to a suspicious and, in their opinion, dangerous person, but, before telling a
lie, they exchange glances with each other in an utterly childlike manner. Every sort of lie and
bragging in the sphere of everyday life and not in the line of business is repugnant to them.
 The wonderful Gilyaks! Fuka-Eri said.
The Gilyaks conscientiously fulfil commissions they have undertaken, and there has not
yet been a single case of a Gilyak abandoning mail halfway or embezzling other peoples belongings.
They are perky, intelligent, cheerful, and feel no stand-offishness or uneasiness
whatever in the company of the rich and powerful. They do not recognize that anybody has
power over them, and, it seems, they do not possess even the concept of senior and
 junior. People say and write that the Gilyaks do not respect family seniority either. A father
does not think he is superior to his son, and a son does not look up to his father but lives just
as he wishes; an elderly mother has no greater power in a yurt than an adolescent girl.
Boshnyak writes that he chanced more than once to see a son striking his own mother and
driving her out, and nobody daring to say a word to him. The male members of the family are
equal among themselves; if you entertain them with vodka, then you also have to treat the
very smallest of them to it as well. But the female members are all equal in their lack of rights;
be it grandmother, mother or baby girl still being nursed, they are ill treated in the same way
as domestic animals, like an object which can be thrown out, sold or shoved with ones foot
like a dog. However, the Gilyaks at least fondle their dogs, but their womenfolk never. Marriage
is considered a mere trifle, of less importance, for instance, than a drinking spree, and it
is not surrounded by any kind of religious or superstitious ceremony. A Gilyak exchanges a
spear, a boat or a dog for a girl, takes her back to his own yurt and lies with her on a
bearskin and that is all there is to it. Polygamy is allowed, but it has not become widespread,
although to all appearances there are more women than men. Contempt toward women, as if
for a lower creature or object, reaches such an extreme in the Gilyak that, in the field of the
question of womens rights, he does not consider reprehensible even slavery in the literal and
crude sense of the word. Evidently with them a woman represents the same sort of trading
object as tobacco or nankeen. The Swedish writer Strindberg, a renowned misogynist, who
desired that women should be merely slaves and should serve mens whims, is in essence of
one and the same mind as the Gilyaks; if he ever chanced to come to northern Sakhalin, they
would spend ages embracing each other.
Tengo took a break at that point, but Fuka-Eri remained silent, offering no opinion on the
reading. Tengo continued.
They have no courts, and they do not know the meaning of justice. How hard it is for
them to understand us may be seen merely from the fact that up till the present day they still
do not fully understand the purpose of roads. Even where a road has already been laid, they
will still journey through the taiga. One often sees them, their families and their dogs, picking
their way in Indian file across a quagmire right by the roadway.
Fuka-Eri had her eyes closed and was breathing very softly. Tengo studied her face for a
while but could not tell whether she was sleeping or not. He decided to turn the page and
keep reading. If she was sleeping, he wanted to give her as sound a sleep as possible, and
he also felt like reading more Chekhov aloud.
Formerly the Naibuchi Post stood at the river mouth. It was founded in 1866. Mitzul found
eighteen buildings here, both dwellings and non-residential premises, plus a chapel and a
shop for provisions. One correspondent who visited Naibuchi in 1871 wrote that there were
twenty soldiers there under the command of a cadet-officer; in one of the cabins he was entertained
with fresh eggs and black bread by a tall and beautiful female soldier, who eulogized
her life here and complained only that sugar was very expensive.
Now there are not even traces left of those cabins, and, gazing round at the wilderness,
the tall, beautiful female soldier seems like some kind of myth. They are building a new house
here, for overseers offices or possibly a weather center, and that is all. The roaring sea is
cold and colourless in appearance, and the tall grey waves pound upon the sand, as if wishing
to say in despair: Oh God, why did you create us? This is the Great, or, as it is otherwise
known, the Pacific, Ocean. On this shore of the Naibuchi river the convicts can be heard rapping
away with axes on the building work, while on the other, far distant, imagined shore, lies
America … to the left the capes of Sakhalin are visible in the mist, and to the right are more
capes … while all around there is not a single living soul, not a bird, not a fly, and it is beyond
comprehension who the waves are roaring for, who listens to them at nights here, what they
want, and, finally, who they would roar for when I was gone. There on the shore one is overcome
not by connected, logical thoughts, but by reflections and reveries. It is a sinister sensation,
and yet at the very same time you feel the desire to stand for ever looking at the monotonous
movement of the waves and listening to their threatening roar.
It appeared that Fuka-Eri was now sound asleep. He listened for her quiet breathing. He
closed the book and set it on the little table by the bed. Then he stood up and turned the light
off, taking one final look at Fuka-Eri. She was sleeping peacefully on her back, her mouth a
tight, straight line. Tengo closed the bedroom door and went back to the kitchen.
It was impossible for him to continue with his own writing, though. His mind was now fully
occupied by Chekhovs desolate Sakhalin coastal scenes. He could hear the sound of the
waves. When he closed his eyes, Tengo was standing alone on the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk,
a prisoner of his own meditations, sharing in Chekhovs inconsolable melancholy. What
Chekhov must have felt there at the end of the earth was an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
To be a Russian writer at the end of the nineteenth century must have meant bearing
an inescapably bitter fate. The more they tried to flee from Russia, the more deeply Russia
swallowed them.
After rinsing his wineglass and brushing his teeth, Tengo turned off the kitchen light,
stretched out on the sofa, pulled a blanket over himself, and tried to sleep. The roar of the
ocean still echoed in his ears, but eventually he began to lose consciousness and was drawn
into a deep sleep.
He awoke at eight thirty in the morning. There was no sign of Fuka-Eri in his bed. The pajamas
he had lent her were balled up and tossed into the bathroom washing machine, the
cuffs and legs still rolled up. He found a note on the kitchen table: How are the Gilyaks doing
now? Im going home. Written in ballpoint pen on notepaper, the characters were small,
square, and indefinably strange, like an aerial view of characters written on a beach in seashells.
He folded the paper and put it in his desk drawer. If his girlfriend found something like
this when she arrived at eleven, she would make a terrible fuss.
Tengo straightened the bed and returned the fruits of Chekhovs labor to the bookcase.
Then he made himself coffee and toast. While eating breakfast, he noticed that some kind of
heavy object had settled itself in his chest. Some time had to go by before he figured out what
it was. Fuka-Eris tranquil sleeping face.
Could I be in love with her? No, impossible, Tengo told himself. It just so happens that
something inside her has physically shaken my heart. So, then, why am I so concerned about
the pajamas she had on her body? Why did I (almost unconsciously) pick them up and smell
them?
There were too many questions. It was probably Chekhov who said that the novelist is not
someone who answers questions but someone who asks them. It was a memorable phrase,
but Chekhov applied this attitude not only to his works but to his life as well. His life presented
many questions but answered none. Although he knew quite well that he was suffering from
an incurable lung disease (as a doctor, he could not help but know), he tried hard to ignore
the fact, and refused to believe he was dying until he was actually on his deathbed. He died
young, violently coughing up blood.
Tengo left the kitchen table, shaking his head. My girlfriend is coming today. I have to do
laundry and clean the place up now. Thinking is something I can save for later.
1Q84
CHAPTER 21
Aomame
NO MATTER HOW FAR AWAY I TRY TO GO
Aomame went to the ward library and, following the same procedures as before, opened
the compact edition of the newspaper on a desk. She was there to read once again about the
gun battle between the radical faction and the police that had taken place in Yamanashi Prefecture
in the autumn three years earlier. The headquarters of Sakigake, the religious group
that the dowager had mentioned, was located in the mountains of Yamanashi, and the gun
battle had also occurred in the mountains of Yamanashi. This might have been a mere coincidence,
but Aomame was not quite ready to accept that. There might well have been some
link between the two. And the expression that the dowager had used such a major incident also
seemed to suggest a connection.
The gunfight had occurred three years earlier, in 1981 (or, according to Aomames hypothesis,
three years prior to 1Q84), on October 19. Having read the news reports during her
previous trip to the library, Aomame had fairly detailed knowledge of the facts. This enabled
her to skim through that material and concentrate instead on subsequent related articles and
analyses that viewed the affair from different angles.
In the first battle, three officers had been killed and two badly wounded by Chinese-made
Kalashnikov automatic rifles. After that, the radical group fled into the mountains with their
weapons and the police staged a major manhunt. Fully armed Self-Defense Force paratroopers
were also sent in by helicopter. Three radicals who resisted the onslaught were shot to
death, two were gravely wounded (one of those died in the hospital three days later, but the
fate of the other was not clearly stated in the article), and four others were arrested unharmed
or slightly wounded. Wearing high-performance bulletproof vests, the police and Self-Defense
troops suffered no further casualties except for one policemans broken leg when he fell off a
cliff in pursuit of the radicals. Only one of the radicals was listed as whereabouts unknown. He
had apparently managed to disappear in spite of the extensive search.
Once the initial shock of the gun battle wore off, the newspaper started carrying detailed
reports on the origins of the radical group, which was seen as the fallout from the university
campus uprisings that occurred around 1970. More than half of the members were veterans
of the takeover of Yasuda Hall at the University of Tokyo or the sit-in at Nihon University. After
their fortresses had fallen to the riot police, these students (and a few faculty members) had
been expelled from their universities or become disillusioned with urban political action
centered on the university campuses. They overcame their factional differences and started a
communal farm in Yamanashi Prefecture. At first they participated in the agricultural commune
known as the Takashima Academy, but they were not satisfied with the life there. They
reorganized, went independent, bought an abandoned village deep in the mountains at an exceptionally
low price, and started farming there. They experienced many hardships at first, but
they eventually succeeded in the mail order sale of vegetables when the use of organically
grown produce began a quiet boom in the cities. Their farm grew. They were, ultimately, serious,
hardworking people whose leader had organized them well. The name of the commune
was Sakigake.
Aomame twisted her face into a major grimace and swallowed hard. She let out a deep
groan and started tapping the surface of the desk with her ballpoint pen.
She continued reading. She read through the news reports that explained how a deep split
grew within the ranks of Sakigake between a moderate group that rejected a violent revolution
as acceptable for contemporary Japan, and a radical faction that eventually founded a nearby
commune and took the name Akebono. She learned how they were granted religious status
by the government in 1979.
After the radical group moved to their own property, they underwent secret military training
even as they continued to farm, which gave rise to several clashes with neighboring farmers.
One such clash involved water rights over a stream that flowed through Akebonos land. The
stream had always been used as a common source of water by farms in the area, but Akebono
denied neighboring residents entry. The dispute went on for a number of years, until
several Akebono members severely beat a resident who had complained about the barbed
wire fence surrounding their land. The Yamanashi Prefectural Police obtained a search warrant
and headed for Akebono to question the suspects, only to become involved in a wholly
unanticipated shootout.
After Akebono was all but obliterated by the intense gun battle in the mountains, the religious
organization Sakigake lost no time in issuing a formal statement. A handsome, young
spokesman in a business suit read the document to the media at a press conference. The
point of the statement was quite clear. Whatever their relationship might have been in the
past, Sakigake and Akebono now had no connection at all. After the two groups parted ways,
there had been hardly any contact aside from certain operational matters. They had separated
amicably after concluding that, as a community devoted to farming, respect for the law,
and longing for a peaceful spiritual world, Sakigake could no longer work with the members of
Akebono, who pursued a radical revolutionary ideology. After that, Sakigake had become a
religious organization and had been legally certified as a Religious Juridical Person. That
such an incident involving bloodshed had occurred was truly unfortunate, and Sakigake
wished to express its deep sympathy for the families of the officers who had lost their lives in
the course of their duties, but Sakigake was in no way involved. Still, it was an undeniable fact
that Sakigake had been the parent organization of Akebono. Consequently, if the authorities
deemed it necessary to conduct some sort of investigation in connection with the present incident,
Sakigake was fully prepared to comply so as to avoid pointless misunderstanding.
A few days later, as if in response to Sakigakes formal statement, the Yamanashi Prefectural
Police entered the organizations precincts with a search warrant. They spent an entire
day covering all parts of Sakigakes extensive property and carefully examining their buildings
interiors and their files. They also questioned several members of the groups leadership.
The police suspected that the two groups contacts were as active as ever and that
Sakigake was surreptitiously involved in Akebonos activities. But they found no evidence to
support this view. Scattered along the trails winding through the beautiful deciduous forest
were wood-frame meditation huts where many members dressed in ascetic robes were engaged
in religious austerities, nothing more. Nearby, other adherents were engaged in farming.
There was an array of well-maintained farming implements and heavy farm machinery.
The police found no trace of weapons or anything else suggesting violence. Everything was
clean and orderly. There was a nice little dining hall, a lodging house, and a simple (but adequately
equipped) medical facility. The two-floored library was well stocked with Buddhist
scriptures and books, among which several experts were engaged in studies and translations.
Overall, the place seemed less like a religious establishment than the campus of a small
private college. The police left deflated, having found almost nothing of value.
Some days later, the group welcomed television and newspaper reporters, who observed
much the same scenes the police had found. They were not taken around on carefully controlled
tours, as might be expected, but were allowed to wander freely throughout the property
unaccompanied, to speak with anyone they wanted to interview, and to write up their discoveries
as they wished. The one restriction agreed upon was that the media would use only
television and photographic images approved by the group in order to protect the privacy of
individual members. Several ascetic-robed members of the leadership answered reporters
questions in a large assembly hall, explaining the organizations origins, doctrines, and administration.
Their manner of speaking was courteous but direct, eschewing any hint of the
kind of propaganda often associated with religious groups. They seemed more like top employees
of an advertising agency, skilled presenters, rather than leaders of a religion. The
only thing different was the clothes they wore.
We do not have any set, clear-cut doctrine, they explained. We perform theoretical research
on early Buddhism and put into actual practice the ascetic disciplines that were engaged
in back then, aiming for a more fluid religious awakening. We do not hold that doctrine
gives rise to awakening but rather that the individual awakenings come first. This is our fundamental
principle. In that sense, our origin differs greatly from those of established religions.
Now, as to our funding: like most other religious organizations, we depend in part on the
spontaneous contributions of our believers. Our ultimate goal, however, is to establish a
frugal, self-sufficient lifestyle through our farming, rather than depending on contributions. For
us, less is more : we aim to achieve spiritual peace through the purification of the body and
the discipline of the mind. One after another, people who have sensed the emptiness of competitive
societys materialism have entered our gates in search of a different and deeper spiritual
axis. Many of them are highly educated professionals with social standing. We are not
trying to be one of those fast food, new religions that pretend to take on peoples worldly
suffering and save anyone and everyone. Salvation of the weak is of course an important
task, but it may be best to think of us as a kind of graduate school, providing a suitable place
and appropriate support to people who are strongly motivated to save themselves.
Major differences of opinion arose at one point between us and the people of the Akebono
commune concerning matters of administrative policy, and we were at odds with them for a
time, but talks between us led to an amicable meeting of the minds. We then separated, each
of us following a different path. Akebono pursued its ideals in its own pure-minded and ascetic
way, but with those disastrous and genuinely tragic results. The single greatest cause was
that they had become too doctrinaire and lost touch with actual, living society. For us, too, the
event has driven home the message that we must continue to be an organization that keeps a
window open to the outside even as we impose ever stricter discipline upon ourselves. We
believe that violence solves nothing. We hope you understand that we do not force religion on
anyone. We do not proselytize, nor do we attack other religions. All we do is offer an appropriate
and effective communal environment to people in search of spiritual awakening.
. . .
Most of the journalists present left with a favorable impression of the organization. All of
the believers, both men and women, were slim, relatively young (though older people had
been spotted on occasion), and beautifully clear-eyed. They were courteous in speech and
behavior. None of them evidenced an inclination to speak extensively about their pasts, but
most did indeed appear to be highly educated. The lunch served to the journalists had been
simple fare (much the same sort of food eaten by believers, supposedly) but delicious in its
own way, all ingredients having been freshly harvested on the organizations land.
Subsequently, the media defined Akebono as a mutant offspring that Sakigake had had to
shake off. A revolutionary ideology based on Marxism had become outmoded and useless in
1980s Japan. The youth with radical political aspirations in 1970 were now working for corporations,
engaged in the forefront of fierce fighting on an economic battlefield. Or else they had
put distance between themselves and the battle and clamor of real society, each in search of
personal values in a place apart. In any case, the times had changed, and the season for
politics was now a thing of the distant past. Sakigake was one hopeful option for a new world;
Akebono had no future.
Aomame set down her pen and took a deep breath. She pictured to herself the eyes of
Tsubasa, so utterly lacking in expression or depth. Those eyes had been looking at Aomame,
but at the same time they had been looking at nothing. Something important was missing.
Its not as simple as all that, Aomame thought. Sakigake cant be this clean. It has a hidden
dark side. The dowager says this Leader person is raping preteen girls and calling it a
religious act. The media didnt seem to know anything about that. They were only there half a
day. They were guided through the orderly facilities for religious practice, they were fed a
lunch made with fresh ingredients, they were treated to beautiful explanations of spiritual
awakening, and they went home satisfied. They never had a glimpse of what was really going
on inside.
Aomame went straight from the library to a café, where she ordered a cup of coffee and
used the phone to call Ayumi at her office, on the number that Ayumi had told her she could
call anytime. A colleague picked up the phone. Ayumi was out making rounds but should be
back at the station in about two hours, he said. Ill call again later, Aomame said without giving
her name.
She went back to her apartment and dialed the number again two hours later. This time
Ayumi answered the phone herself.
 Hi, Aomame, how are you? 
 Fine, how are you? 
 Nothing wrong with me that a good man wouldnt fix. How about you? 
 Same here, Aomame said.
 Too bad, Ayumi said. There must be something wrong with the world if women like us
have to complain to each other about overly healthy sex drives. Well have to do something
about that. 
 True, but … uh, is it okay for you to be saying stuff like that out loud? Youre on duty,
right? Isnt anybody else around? 
 Dont worry, you can talk to me about anything. 
 Well, Ive got a favor to ask if its something you can do for me. I cant think of anyone
else I can go to for this. 
 Sure, Ayumi said. I dont know if I can help or not, but give it a try. 
 Do you know of a religious group called Sakigake? Its headquartered in Yamanashi Prefecture,
in the hills. 
 Sakigake? Hmm. Ayumi took some ten seconds to search her memory. I think I know it.
Its a kind of religious commune, isnt it? The Akebono radicals that started the gun battle in
Yamanashi used to belong to it. Three prefectural policemen died in the shootout. It was a
real shame. But Sakigake had nothing to do with it. Their compound was searched after the
shootout and came up clean. So …? 
 Id like to know if Sakigake was involved in any kind of incident after the
shootout criminal, civil, anything. But I dont know how to go about looking into such things. I
cant read all the compact editions of all the newspapers, but I figured the police probably had
some way of finding out. 
 Its easy, we just have to do a quick search on our computer or, at least, I wish I could
say that, but Im afraid computerization is not so advanced in Japans police forces. I suspect
itll take a few more years to get to that stage. So for now, if I wanted to find out about
something like that, Id probably have to ask the Yamanashi Prefectural Police to send copies
of the related materials in the mail. And for that Id first have to fill out a materials request form
and get my bosss okay. Of course Id have to give a good reason for the request. And were
a government office, after all, so were getting paid to make things as complicated as possible. 
 I see, Aomame said with a sigh. So thats out. 
 But why do you want to know something like that? Is some friend of yours mixed up in
some kind of case connected to Sakigake? 
Aomame hesitated a moment before deciding to tell Ayumi the truth. Close. It involves
rape. I cant go into detail yet, but its about the rape of young girls. Ive been informed that
theyre systematically raping them in there under cover of religion. 
Aomame could sense Ayumi wrinkling her brow at the other end. The rape of young girls,
huh? We cant let that happen, Ayumi said.
 Of course we cant, Aomame said.
 What do you mean by ‘young? 
 Maybe ten, or even younger. Girls who havent had their first period, at least. 
Ayumi went silent for a while. Then, in a flat voice, she said, I see what you mean. Ill
think of something. Can you give me two or three days? 
 Sure. Just let me know. 
They spent the next few minutes in unrelated chatter until Ayumi said, Okay, Ive got to
get back to work. 
After hanging up, Aomame sat in her reading chair by the window and stared at her right
hand for a while. Long, slim fingers, closely trimmed nails. Nails well cared for but unpolished.
Looking at her nails, Aomame had a strong sense of what a fragile, fleeting thing her own existence
was. Something as simple as the shape of her fingernails: it had been decided without
her. Somebody else made the decision, and all I could do was go along with it, like it or not.
Who could have decided that this was how my nails would be shaped?
The dowager had recently said to her, Your parents were and still are ardent believers
in the Society of Witnesses. Which meant that they were probably still devoting themselves
to missionary work even now. Aomame had a brother four years her senior, a docile young
man. At the time Aomame made up her mind to leave home, he was still living according to
his parents instructions, keeping the faith. What could he be doing now? Not that Aomame
had an actual desire to know what was happening with her family. To her, they were just a
part of her life that had ended. The ties had snapped.
Aomame had struggled for a long time to forget everything that had happened to her before
the age of ten. My life actually started when I was ten. Everything before that was some
kind of miserable dream. Let me throw those memories away somewhere. But try as she
might, her heart was constantly being drawn back into that nightmarish world. It seemed to
her that almost everything she possessed had its roots sunk in that dark soil and was deriving
its nourishment from it. No matter how far away I try to go, I always have to come back here,
she thought.
I must send that Leader into the other world, Aomame told herself, for my own sake as
well.
A phone call came from Ayumi three nights later. Ive got some facts for you, she said.
 About Sakigake? 
 Yes. I was mulling it over when all of a sudden I remembered that the uncle of one of my
police academy classmates is on the Yamanashi Prefectural Police force a fairly highranking
officer. So I tried asking my old classmate. I told him a relative of mine, a young girl,
ran into some trouble when she was in the process of converting to that faith, so I was collecting
information on Sakigake, and if he wouldnt mind, could he help me? Im pretty good at
making up stuff like that. 
 Thanks, Ayumi. I appreciate it, Aomame said.
 So he called his uncle in Yamanashi and explained the situation, and the uncle introduced
me to the officer in charge of investigating Sakigake. So I spoke to him directly. 
 Oh, wonderful. 
 Yup. Well, I had a long talk with him and got all kinds of information about Sakigake, but
you probably know everything that was in the papers, so Ill just tell you the stuff that wasnt,
the parts that arent known to the public, okay? 
 Thats fine. 
 First of all, Sakigake has had a number of legal problems civil suits, mostly concerning
land deals. They seem to have a lot of money, and theyre buying up all the property around
them. Sure, land is cheap in the country, but still. And a lot of times theyre pretty much for-
cing people to sell. They hide their involvement behind fake companies and buy up everything
they can get their hands on. That way they start trouble with landowners and local governments.
I mean, they operate like any ordinary landshark. Up to now, though, its all been civil
actions, so the police havent had to get involved. Theyve come pretty close to crossing the
line into criminal territory, but so far things havent gone public. They might be involved with
organized crime or politicians. The police back off when politicians are mixed up in it. Of
course, itll be a whole new ball game if something blows up and the prosecutor has to step
in. 
 So Sakigake is not as clean as it looks where economic activity is concerned. 
 I dont know about their ordinary believers, but as far as I can tell from the records of their
real estate transactions, the top people in charge of the funds are probably not that clean.
Even trying to cast it in the best light, its almost inconceivable that they would be using their
money in search of pure spirituality. And besides, these guys hold land and buildings not just
in Yamanashi but in downtown Tokyo and Osaka first-class properties! Shibuya, Minami-Aoyama,
Shoto: the organization seems to be planning to expand its religious activities
on a national scale assuming its not going to switch from religion to the real estate business. 
 I thought they wanted to live in natural surroundings and practice pure, stringent religious
austerities. Why in the world would such an organization have to branch out to the middle of
Tokyo? 
 And where do they get the kind of cash theyre throwing around? Ayumi added. Theres
no way they could have amassed such a fortune selling daikon radishes and carrots. 
 Squeezing donations out of their believers. 
 Thats part of it, Im sure, but nowhere near enough. They must have some other major
source of funds. I also discovered another fact of some concern, something you might be interested
in. There are a fair number of believers children in the compound. They generally attend
the local public elementary school, but most of them drop out before long. The school insists
that the children follow the standard education program, but the organization wont cooperate.
They tell the school that some of their children simply dont want to go there, that
they themselves are providing an education for those children, so there is no need to worry
about their studies. 
Aomame recalled her own experience in elementary school. She could well understand
why children from the religion wouldnt want to go to school, where they would be bullied as
outsiders or ignored. The kids probably feel out of place in a public school, she said.
 Besides, its not that unusual for children not to go to school. 
 Yes, but according to the teachers who had those kids in their classes, most of
them boys and girls alike appear to have some kind of emotional problems. They show up
normal in first grade, just bright, outgoing children, but year by year they grow less talkative,
their faces lose any hint of expression. Eventually they become utterly apathetic and stop
coming to school. Almost all of the Sakigake kids seem to go through the same stages and
exhibit the same symptoms. The teachers are puzzled and worried about the kids who have
stopped coming and stay shut up inside the compound. They want to know if the kids are
okay, but they cant get in to see them. Nobody is allowed inside. 
These were the same symptoms Tsubasa had, Aomame thought. Extreme apathy, lack of
expression, barely talking.
Ayumi said to Aomame, You imagine the kids in Sakigake are being abused. Systematically.
Maybe including rape. 
 But the police cant make a move based on unconfirmed accusations by an ordinary citizen. 
 Of course not. The police departments just another bureaucratic government agency,
after all. The top brass dont think of anything but their own careers. Some are not like that,
but most of them have worked their way up playing it safe, and their goal is to find a cushy job
in a related organization or private industry after they retire. So they dont want to touch anything
the least bit risky or hot. They probably dont even eat pizza without letting it cool off. It
would be an entirely different story if you could bring us a real victim who could prove
something in court, but Im guessing that would be hard for you to do. 
 True, it might be hard, Aomame said. But anyhow, thanks. This is really useful information.
Ill have to find a way to thank you. 
 Never mind that. Lets just have another night out in Roppongi sometime soon and forget
about our problems. 
 Sounds good to me, Aomame said.
 Now youre talking! Ayumi said. By the way, are you at all interested in playing with
handcuffs? 
 Probably not, Aomame said. Playing with handcuffs?
 No? Too bad, Ayumi said, sounding genuinely disappointed.
1Q84
CHAPTER 22
Tengo
THAT TIME COULD TAKE ON
DEFORMED SHAPES AS IT MOVED AHEAD
Tengo thought about his brain. Lots of things made him do this.
The size of the human brain had increased four times over the past two and a half million
years. In terms of weight, the brain occupied only two percent of the human body, but it consumed
some forty percent of the bodys total energy (according to a book he had recently
read). Owing to the dramatic expansion of the brain, human beings had been able to acquire
the concepts of time, space, and possibility.
The concepts of time, space, and possibility.
Tengo knew that time could become deformed as it moved forward. Time itself was uniform
in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. One period of time
might be terribly heavy and long, while another could be light and short. Occasionally the order
of things could be reversed, and in the worst cases order itself could vanish entirely.
Sometimes things that should not be there at all might be added onto time. By adjusting time
this way to suit their own purposes, people probably adjusted the meaning of their existences.
In other words, by adding such operations to time, they were able but just barely to preserve
their own sanity. Surely, if a person had to accept the time through which he had just
passed uniformly in the given order, his nerves could not bear the strain. Such a life, Tengo
felt, would be sheer torture.
Through the expansion of the brain, people had acquired the concept of temporality, but
they simultaneously learned ways in which to change and adjust time. In parallel with their
ceaseless consumption of time, people would ceaselessly reproduce time that they had mentally
adjusted. This was no ordinary feat. No wonder the brain was said to consume forty percent
of the bodys total energy!
Tengo often wondered whether he had actually witnessed the memory he retained from
the age of one and a half or, at most, two the scene in which his mother in underclothes let
a man who was not his father suck on her breasts. Her arms were wrapped around the man.
Could a one- or two-year-old infant distinguish such details and remember them so vividly?
Wasnt this a false memory that he had later conveniently fashioned to protect himself?
That was entirely conceivable. At some point Tengos brain might have subconsciously
created the memory of another man (his possibly real father) in order to prove that he was
not the biological child of the man who was supposed to be his father. This was how he tried
to eliminate the man who was supposed to be his father from the tight circle of blood. By establishing
inside himself the hypothetical existence of a mother who must be alive somewhere
and a real father, he was trying to create a portal leading out of his limited, suffocating life.
The problem with this view was that the memory came with such a vivid sense of reality. It
had such an authentic feel, and weight, and smell, and depth. It was stubbornly fastened to
the walls of his mind like an oyster clinging to a sunken ship. He could never manage to
shake it off, to wash it away. He found it impossible to believe that such a memory was a
mere counterfeit that his mind had created in response to some need. It was too real, too solid,
to be imaginary.
What if it was real, then? Tengo thought.
His infant self would certainly have been frightened to witness such a scene. Someone
else, some other human being, was sucking on breasts that should have been for
him someone bigger and stronger. And it appeared that Tengos mother had at least temporarily forgotten
about him, creating a situation that threatened his very survival, small and
weak as he was. The primal terror of that moment may have been indelibly imprinted on the
photo paper of his mind.
The memory of that terror came rushing back to him when he least expected it, attacking
him with all the ferocity of a flash flood, and putting him into a near panic. This terror spoke to
him, forcing him to remember: Wherever you go, whatever you do, you can never escape the
pressure of this water. This memory defines who you are, shapes your life, and is trying to
send you to a place that has been decided for you. You can writhe all you want, but you will
never be able to escape from this power.
It suddenly occurred to Tengo: When I lifted the pajamas that Fuka-Eri wore from the
washing machine and smelled them, I might have been hoping to find my mothers smell. But
why do I have to look for my departed mothers image in, of all things, the smell of a seventeen-year-old
girl? There should be a more likely place to look in the body of my older girlfriend,
for one thing.
. . .
Tengos girlfriend was ten years his senior, but for some reason he never sought his mothers
image in her. Neither did he have any particular interest in her smell. She took the lead in
most of their sexual activity. Tengo simply did as she directed, hardly thinking, making neither
choices nor judgments. She demanded only two things of him: good erections and well-timed
ejaculations. Dont come yet, she would command. Hold on a little longer. And he would
pour all his energy into holding on. Okay, now! Come now! she would whisper by his ear,
and he would let go at precisely that point with as intense an ejaculation as he could manage.
Then she would praise him, caressing his cheek: Oh, Tengo! Youre wonderful! Tengo had
an innate knack for precision in all realms, including correct punctuation and discovering the
simplest possible formula necessary to solve a math problem.
It didnt work this way when he had sex with younger women. He would have to think from
beginning to end, making choices and judgments. This made Tengo uncomfortable. All the responsibilities
fell on his shoulders. He felt like the captain of a small boat on a stormy sea,
having to take the rudder, inspect the setting of the sails, keep in mind the barometric pressure
and the wind direction, and modulate his own behavior so as to boost the crews trust in
him. The slightest mistake or accident could lead to tragedy. This felt less like sex than the
discharging of a duty. As a result he would tense up and miss the timing of an ejaculation or
fail to become erect when necessary. This would only increase his doubts about himself.
Such mistakes never happened with his older girlfriend. She fully appreciated him. She always
praised and encouraged him. After the one time he ejaculated prematurely, she was
careful never to wear a white slip again. And not just slips: she stopped wearing any white
lingerie at all.
That day she was wearing black lingerie a matching top and bottom as she performed
fellatio on him, fully enjoying the hardness of his penis and the softness of his testicles. Tengo
could see her breasts moving up and down, enfolded in the black lace of her bra, as she
moved her mouth. To keep himself from coming too soon, he closed his eyes and thought
about the Gilyaks.
They have no courts, and they do not know the meaning of justice. How hard it is for
them to understand us may be seen merely from the fact that up till the present day they still
do not fully understand the purpose of roads. Even where a road has already been laid, they
will still journey through the taiga. One often sees them, their families and their dogs, picking
their way in Indian file across a quagmire right by the roadway.
Tengo imagined the scene: the shabbily dressed Gilyaks walking through the thick forest
in line beside the road with their dogs and women, hardly speaking. In their concepts of time,
space, and possibility, roads did not exist. Rather than walk on a road, they probably gained a
clearer grasp of their own raison dêtre by making their way quietly through the forest, in spite
of the inconvenience.
The poor Gilyaks! Fuka-Eri had said.
Tengo thought of Fuka-Eris face as she slept. She had fallen asleep wearing Tengos toolarge
pajamas, the sleeves and cuffs rolled up. He had lifted them from the washing machine,
held them to his nose, and smelled them.
I cant let myself think about that! Tengo told himself, but it was already too late.
The semen surged out of him in multiple violent convulsions and into his girlfriends
mouth. She took it in until he finished, then stepped out of bed and went to the bathroom. He
heard her open the spigot, run the water, and rinse her mouth. Then, as if it had been nothing
at all, she came back to the bed.
 Sorry, Tengo said.
 I guess you couldnt stop yourself, she said, caressing his nose with her fingertip. Thats
okay, its no big deal. Did it feel that good? 
 Fantastic, he said. I think I can do it again in a few minutes. 
 I can hardly wait, she said, pressing her cheek against Tengos bare chest. She closed
her eyes, keeping very still. Tengo could feel the soft breath from her nose against his nipple.
 Can you guess what your chest reminds me of when I see it? she asked Tengo.
 No idea. 
 A castle gate in a Kurosawa samurai movie. 
 A castle gate, Tengo said, caressing her back.
 You know, like in Throne of Blood or Hidden Fortress. Theres always a big, sturdy castle
gate in those old black-and-white movies of his, all covered with these huge iron rivets. Thats
what I think of. Thick, solid … 
 I dont have any rivets, though. 
 I hadnt noticed, she said.
Fuka-Eris Air Chrysalis placed on the bestseller lists the second week after it went on
sale, rising to number one on the fiction list in the third week. Tengo traced the process of the
books ascent through the newspapers they kept in the cram schools teachers lounge. Two
ads for the book also appeared in the papers, featuring a photo of the books cover and a
smaller shot of Fuka-Eri wearing the familiar tight-fitting summer sweater that showed off her
breasts so beautifully (taken, no doubt, at the time of the press conference). Long, straight
hair falling to her shoulders. Dark, enigmatic eyes looking straight at the camera. Those eyes
seemed to peer through the lens and focus directly on something the viewer kept hidden deep
in his heart, of which he was normally unaware. They did so neutrally but gently. This seventeen-year-old
girls unwavering gaze was disconcerting. It was just a small black-and-white
photograph, but the mere sight of it almost certainly prompted many people to buy the book.
Komatsu had sent two copies of the book to Tengo a few days after it went on sale, but
Tengo opened only the package, not the vinyl around the books themselves. True, the text inside
the book was something he himself had written, and this was the first time his writing had
taken the shape of a book, but he had no desire to open it and read it or even glance at its
pages. The sight of it gave him no joy. The sentences and paragraphs may have been his,
but the story they comprised belonged entirely to Fuka-Eri. Her mind had given birth to it. His
minor role as a secret technician had ended long before, and the works fate from this point
onward had nothing to do with him. Nor should it. He shoved the two volumes into the back of
his bookcase, out of sight, still wrapped in vinyl.
For a while after the one night Fuka-Eri slept in his apartment, Tengos life flowed along
uneventfully. It rained a lot, but Tengo paid almost no attention to the weather, which ranked
far down on his list of priorities. From Fuka-Eri herself, he heard nothing. The lack of contact
probably meant that she had no particular problems for him to solve.
In addition to writing his novel every day, Tengo wrote a number of short pieces for
magazines anonymous jobs that anyone could do. They were a welcome change of pace,
though, and the pay was good for the minimal effort involved. Three times a week, as usual,
Tengo taught math at the cram school. He burrowed more deeply than ever into the world of
mathematics in order to forget his concerns issues involving Air Chrysalis and Fuka-Eri,
mainly. Once he entered the mathematical world, his brain switched circuits (with a little click),
his mouth emitted different kinds of words, his body began to use different kinds of muscles,
and both the tone of his voice and the look on his face changed. Tengo liked the way this
change of gears felt. It was like moving from one room into another or changing from one pair
of shoes into another.
In contrast to the time he spent performing daily tasks or writing fiction, Tengo was able to
attain a new level of relaxation and even to become more eloquent when he entered the
world of mathematics. At the same time, however, he also felt he had become a somewhat
more practical person. He could not decide who might be the real Tengo, but the switch was
both natural and almost unconscious. He also knew that it was something he more or less
needed.
As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students heads how voraciously mathematics demanded
logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning, but once you had succeeded
in proving something, the worlds riddles settled into the palm of your hand like a
tender oyster. Tengos lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves
swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve
mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance
concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female
students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds
through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions
stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears. Since meeting Fuka-Eri,
however, Tengo no longer felt sexual interest in such girls, nor did he have any urge to smell
their pajamas.
Fuka-Eri is surely a special being, Tengo realized. She cant be compared with other girls.
She is undoubtedly someone of special significance to me. She is how should I put it? an
all-encompassing image projected straight at me, but an image I find it impossible to decipher.
Still, Id better end any involvement with Fuka-Eri. Tengos rational mind reached this lucid
conclusion. I should also put as much distance as possible between myself and the piles of
Air Chrysalis displayed in the front of all the bookstores, and the inscrutable Professor
Ebisuno, and that ominously mysterious religious organization. Id also better keep away from
Komatsu, at least for the time being. Otherwise, Im likely to be carried into even more chaotic
territory, pushed into a dangerous corner without a shred of logic, driven into a situation from
which I can never extricate myself.
But Tengo was also well aware that he could not easily withdraw from the twisted conspiracy
in which he was now fully involved. He was no Hitchcockian protagonist, embroiled in a
conspiracy before he knew what was happening. He had embroiled himself, knowing full well
that it contained an element of risk. The machine was already in motion, gaining too much forward
momentum for him to stop it. Tengo himself was one of its gears and an important one
at that. He could hear the machines low groaning, and feel its implacable motion.
Komatsu called Tengo a few days after Air Chrysalis topped the bestseller list for the
second week in a row. The phone rang after eleven oclock at night. Tengo was already in
bed in his pajamas. He had been reading a book for a while, lying on his stomach, and was
just about to turn off the bedside light. Judging from the ring, he knew it was Komatsu. Exactly
how, he could not explain, but he could always tell when the call was from Komatsu. The
phone rang in a special way. Just as writing had a particular style, Komatsus calls had a particular
ring.
Tengo got out of bed, went to the kitchen, and picked up the receiver. He did not really
want to answer the call and would have preferred to go quietly to sleep, to dream of Iriomote
cats or the Panama Canal, or the ozone layer, or Basho anything, as long as it was as far
from here as possible. If he didnt answer the phone now, though, it would just ring again in
another fifteen minutes or half an hour. Better to take the call now.
 Hey, Tengo, were you sleeping? Komatsu asked, easygoing as usual.
 I was trying, Tengo said.
 Sorry about that, Komatsu said, sounding not the least bit sorry. I just wanted to let you
know that Air Chrysalis is selling well. 
 Thats great. 
 Like hotcakes. They cant keep up. The poor guys at the printer are working through the
night. Anyhow, I figured the numbers would be pretty good, of course. The author is a beautiful
seventeen-year-old girl. People are talking about it. All the elements are in place for a bestseller. 
 Unlike novels written by a thirty-year-old cram school teacher who looks like a bear, you
mean. 
 Exactly. But still, you couldnt call this a commercial novel. Its got no sex scenes, its not
a tearjerker. Not even I imagined it would sell so spectacularly. 
Komatsu paused as if he expected a response from Tengo. When Tengo said nothing, he
went on:
 Its not just selling a lot, either. The critical reception is wonderful, too. This is no lightweight
drama slapped together on a whim by some youngster. The story itself is outstanding.
Of course your superb revision made this possible, Tengo. That was an absolutely perfect
piece of work you did. 
Made this possible. Ignoring Komatsus praise, Tengo pressed his fingertips against his
temples. Whenever Komatsu openly praised Tengo, it was bound to be followed by
something unpleasant.
Tengo asked Komatsu, So tell me, whats the bad news? 
 How do you know theres bad news? 
 Look what time youre phoning me! There has to be some bad news. 
 True, Komatsu said, in apparent admiration. Youve got that special sensitivity, Tengo. I
should have known. 
Sensitivitys got nothing to do with it, Tengo thought. Its just plain old experience. But he
said nothing and waited to see what Komatsu was getting at.
 Unfortunately, youre right, I do have a piece of unpleasant news, Komatsu said. He
paused meaningfully. Tengo imagined Komatsu at the other end, his eyes gleaming like a
mongooses in the dark.
 It probably has something to do with the author of Air Chrysalis, am I right? 
 Exactly. It is about Fuka-Eri. And its not good. Shes been missing for a while. 
Tengos fingers kept pressing against his temples. ‘A while? Since when? 
 Three days ago, on Wednesday morning, she left her house in Okutama for Tokyo. Professor
Ebisuno saw her off. She didnt say where she was going. Later in the day she phoned
to say she wouldnt be coming back to the house in the hills, that she was going to spend the
night in their Shinano-machi condo. Professor Ebisunos daughter was also supposed to
spend the night there, but Fuka-Eri never showed up. They havent heard from her since. 
Tengo traced his memory back three days, but could think of nothing relevant.
 They have absolutely no idea where she is. I thought she might have contacted you. 
 I havent heard a thing, Tengo said. More than four weeks must have gone by since she
spent the night in his apartment.
Tengo momentarily wondered whether he ought to tell Komatsu what she had said back
then that she had better not go back to the Shinano-machi condo. She might have been
sensing something ominous about the place. But he decided not to mention it. He didnt want
to have to tell Komatsu that Fuka-Eri had stayed at his apartment.
 Shes an odd girl, Tengo said. She might have just gone off somewhere by herself
without telling anybody 
 No, I dont think so. She may not look it, but Fuka-Eri is a very conscientious person.
Shes always very clear about her whereabouts, always phoning to say where she is or where
shes going and when. Thats what Professor Ebisuno tells me. For her to be out of touch for
three full days is not at all usual for her. Something bad might have happened. 
 Something bad, Tengo growled.
 The Professor and his daughter are both very worried, Komatsu said.
 In any case, if she stays missing like this, itll put you in a difficult position, Im sure, 
Tengo said to Komatsu.
 True, especially if the police get involved. I mean, think about it: beautiful teenage writer
of runaway bestseller disappears! You know the media would go crazy over that one. Then
theyre going to drag me out for comments as her editor. No good can come of that. Im
strictly a shadow figure, I dont do well in the sunlight. Once something like that gets going the
truth could come out at any point. 
 What does Professor Ebisuno say? 
 That hes going to file a search request with the police, maybe as soon as tomorrow, Komatsu
said. I got him to hold off for a few days, but its not something that can be postponed
for very long. 
 If the media get wind of the search request, theyll be all over this. 
 I dont know how the police are going to respond, but Fuka-Eri is the girl of the moment,
not just some teenage runaway. Keeping this out of the public eye will likely be impossible. 
That might have been exactly what Professor Ebisuno was hoping for, Tengo thought: to
cause a sensation using Fuka-Eri as bait, exploit it to clarify the relationship of Sakigake to
Fuka-Eris parents, and learn the couples whereabouts. If so, then the Professors plan was
working as he had imagined it would. But had the Professor fully grasped how dangerous this
might prove to be? He certainly should have: Professor Ebisuno was not a thoughtless person.
Indeed, deep thinking was exactly what he did for a living. And besides, there seemed to
be a number of important facts surrounding Fuka-Eris situation of which Tengo was unaware,
as though he were trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without having been given all the
pieces. A wise person would have avoided getting involved from the beginning.
 Do you have any idea where she might be, Tengo? Komatsu asked.
 Not at the moment. 
 No? Komatsu said with a perceptible note of fatigue in his voice. He was not a man who
often let such human failings show. Sorry I woke you in the middle of the night. 
To hear words of apology coming from Komatsus mouth was also a rare occurrence.
 Thats okay, Tengo said. Given the situation. 
 You know, Tengo, if I had my way I would have preferred not to involve you in these realworld
complications. Your only job was to do the writing, and you carried that off splendidly.
But things never work out as smoothly as we want them to. And, as I said to you once before,
were all shooting the rapids 
 In the same boat, Tengo mechanically finished the sentence.
 Exactly. 
 But come to think of it, Tengo added, wont Air Chrysalis just sell all the more if FukaEris
disappearance becomes news? 
 Its selling enough already, Komatsu said with a note of resignation. We dont need any
more publicity. The only thing a scandal will net us is trouble. What we ought to be thinking
about is a nice, quiet spot to land in. 
 A spot to land in, Tengo said.
Komatsu made a sound as though he were swallowing some imaginary thing. Then he
lightly cleared his throat. Well, lets have a nice, long talk about that over dinner sometime.
After this mess gets cleaned up. Good night, Tengo. You ought to get a good nights rest. 
Komatsu hung up. As if he had just had a curse laid on him, Tengo could no longer sleep.
He felt tired, but he couldnt get to sleep.
What was this You ought to get a good nights rest business? He thought about doing
some work at the kitchen table, but he wasnt in the mood. He took a bottle of whiskey from
the cabinet, poured some into a glass, and drank it straight in small sips.
Maybe Fuka-Eri had been kidnapped by Sakigake. It seemed entirely plausible to Tengo.
A bunch of them had staked out her Shinano-machi condo, forced her into a car, and taken
her away. It was by no means impossible, if they had chosen the right moment and acted
quickly. Maybe Fuka-Eri had already sensed their presence when she said she had better not
go back to the condo.
Both the Little People and air chrysalises actually existed, Fuka-Eri had told Tengo. She
had met the Little People in the Sakigake commune when she was being punished for having
carelessly let the blind goat die, and she had made an air chrysalis with them for several
nights running. As a result, something of great significance had happened to her. She had put
the events into a story, and Tengo had refashioned the story into a finished piece of fiction. In
other words, he had transformed it into a commodity, and that commodity was (to borrow Komatsus
expression) selling like hotcakes. This in turn might be distressing to Sakigake. The
stories of the Little People and the air chrysalis might be major secrets that must not be divulged
to the outside world. And so, to prevent any further leaks, they had kidnapped Fuka-
Eri and shut her up. They had resorted to force, even if it meant risking the possibility that her
disappearance might arouse public suspicion.
This was, of course, nothing more than Tengos hypothesis. He had no evidence he could
offer, no way he could prove it. Even if he told people, The Little People and air chrysalises
actually exist, who could possibly take him seriously? First of all, Tengo himself did not know
what it meant to say that such things actually exist. 
Another possibility was that Fuka-Eri had become sick of all the hype surrounding her
bestseller and had gone into hiding. This was entirely conceivable, of course. It was all but impossible
to predict what she would do, but assuming she went into hiding, she would probably
have left some kind of message for Professor Ebisuno and his daughter, Azami. There would
have been no reason for her to worry them.
It was easy for Tengo to imagine, however, that Fuka-Eri might be in great danger if she
had actually been abducted by Sakigake. Just as there had been no word from her parents,
all word of Fuka-Eri might be lost. Even if the relationship between Fuka-Eri and Sakigake
were revealed (which would not take a very long time), and this gave rise to a media scandal,
it would all be for nothing if the police refused to get involved on the grounds that there was
 no physical evidence that she was abducted. She might remain locked up somewhere inside
the high-walled religious commune. Had Professor Ebisuno concocted a plan that included
such a worst-case scenario?
Tengo wanted to call Professor Ebisuno and ask him all these questions, but it was
already past midnight, and he could only wait until tomorrow.
The next morning Tengo dialed the number he was given to call Professor Ebisunos
house, but the call did not go through. All he got was the recorded message, The number
you have dialed is not presently in service. Please check the number and dial again. He tried
again several times, but always with the same results. He guessed that they had changed
phone numbers after Fuka-Eris debut, due to an onslaught of calls requesting interviews.
Nothing unusual happened during the following week. Air Chrysalis went on selling in the
same high numbers, coming out again at the top of the national bestseller list. No one contacted
Tengo during the week. He tried phoning Komatsu at his office a few times, but he was always
out (which was not unusual). Tengo left a message with the editorial office for Komatsu
to call, but no call came (which was also not unusual). He read the newspaper every day, but
he found no report that a search request had been filed for Fuka-Eri. Could Professor Ebisuno
have decided not to file one? Perhaps he had filed a request but the police had not publicized
it so as to search for her in secret, or they had not taken it seriously, treating it as just another
case of a runaway teenager.
As always, Tengo taught mathematics at the cram school three days a week, continued
writing his novel on other days, and spent Friday afternoon having intense sex with his girlfriend
when she visited his apartment. But he could not focus. He spent day after day feeling
uneasy and muddled, like someone who has mistakenly swallowed a thick swatch of cloud.
He began losing his appetite. He would wake up at odd times in the middle of the night, unable
to get back to sleep. Then he would think about Fuka-Eri. Where was she now? What
was she doing? Whom was she with? What was happening to her? He imagined a variety of
situations, all of them, with minor variations, deeply pessimistic. In the scenes he imagined,
she was always wearing her thin, tight-fitting sweater that showed off the lovely shape of her
breasts. The image made him gasp for breath and only added to his agitation.
It was on the Thursday of the sixth week after Air Chrysalis became a permanent fixture
on the bestseller list that Fuka-Eri finally got in touch with him.
1Q84
CHAPTER 23
Aomame
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING
Aomame and Ayumi were the perfect pair to host intimate but fully erotic all-night sex
feasts. Ayumi was petite and cheerful, comfortable with strangers, and talkative. She brought
a positive attitude to just about any situation once she had made up her mind to do so. She
also had a healthy sense of humor. By contrast, Aomame, slim and muscular, tended to be
rather expressionless and reserved, and she found it hard to be witty with a man she was
meeting for the first time. In her speech there was a subtle note of cynicism and even hostility,
and in her eyes an equally subtle gleam of intolerance. Still, when she felt like it, Aomame
gave off a cool aura that naturally attracted men. It was like the sweet, sexually stimulating
fragrance that animals or insects give off when necessary. This was not something that could
be learned through conscious effort. It was probably inborn. But no she might well have acquired
the fragrance for some reason at a certain stage of life. In any case, this aura subtly
aroused not only her sexual partners but also Ayumi, adding color and a positive warmth to
their evenings.
Whenever they encountered suitable men, first Ayumi approached them with her natural
cheer. Then Aomame would join them at an appropriate moment, creating a unique atmosphere
that was part operetta, part film noir. Once things got to that point, the rest was simple.
They would move to an appropriate place and (as Ayumi bluntly put it) fuck like mad. The
hardest thing was finding suitable partners. Preferably, they should be two men together clean,
and reasonably good-looking. They had to be at least somewhat intellectual, but
too much so could be a problem: boring conversation could turn the evening sterile. They also
had to look like men who had money to spend. Obviously, the men paid for the drinks and the
hotel rooms.
When they tried to hold a nice little sex feast near the end of June, however (in what
would turn out to be their last team activity), they simply could not find suitable men. They put
a lot of time into it, changing venues several times, always with the same results. In spite of
the fact that it was the last Friday of the month, all the clubs they tried, from Roppongi to Akasaka,
were shockingly quiet, almost deserted, giving them no real choice. Maybe it had
something to do with the heavy clouds that hung in the sky, as if the whole of Tokyo were in
mourning for someone.
 It doesnt look good today, Aomame said. Maybe we should give up. It was already ten
thirty.
Ayumi reluctantly agreed. Ive never seen such a dead Friday night. And here Im wearing
my sexy purple underwear! 
 So go home and get carried away with yourself in the mirror. 
 Not even I have the guts to do that in the police dorm bathroom! 
 Anyhow, lets just forget it. Well have a nice, quiet drink, then head home and go to bed. 
 That may be the best thing, Ayumi said. Then, as if she had suddenly recalled
something, she added, Say, lets have a bite to eat before we go home. Ive got an extra
thirty thousand yen in my purse. 
Aomame frowned. Extra? How come? Youre always complaining how little they pay
you. 
Ayumi scratched the side of her nose. Actually, the last time, the guy gave me thirty thousand
yen. He called it ‘taxi fare and handed it to me when we said good-bye. You know, the
time we did it with those real estate guys. 
 And you just took it? Aomame asked, shocked.
 Maybe he thought we were semi-pros, Ayumi said with a chuckle. I bet it never crossed
his mind he was dealing with a cop and a martial arts instructor. Anyhow, whats the difference?
Im sure he makes tons of money in real estate more than he knows what to do with. I
kept it separate, figured Id spend it with you on a nice meal or something. I mean, money like
that you dont want to use on just regular expenses. 
Aomame did not tell Ayumi how she felt about this. To have taken money for casual sex
with a man she didnt know she could hardly comprehend the fact that such a thing had occurred.
She felt as if she were looking at a twisted image of herself in a warped mirror. Ethically,
which was better taking money for killing men or taking money for having sex with
men?
 Tell me, Ayumi asked Aomame uneasily, does the idea of taking money from a man
bother you? 
Aomame shook her head. It doesnt bother me so much as make me feel a little mystified.
But what about you? I would have expected a female cop to feel reluctant to do anything like
prostitution. 
 Not at all, Ayumi insisted cheerfully. I have no problem with that. You know, a prostitute
is somebody who agrees on a price and gets her money before having sex. The first rule is
‘Pay me before you take your pants off. She couldnt make a living if guys told her, ‘Gee, I
dont have any money after it was all over. But when theres no prior negotiation of a price,
and afterward the guy gives you a little something for ‘taxi fare, its just an expression of gratitude.
Thats different from professional prostitution. Theres a clear distinction between the
two. 
What Ayumi had to say made a certain kind of sense.
The men that Aomame and Ayumi had chosen the last time were in their late thirties or
early forties. Both had full heads of hair, but Aomame was willing to compromise on that point.
They said they were with a company that dealt in real estate, but judging from their Hugo
Boss suits and Missoni Uomo neckties, they were not just ordinary employees of giant conglomerates
like Mitsubishi or Mitsui, whose employees were bound by finicky rules, tradition,
and endless meetings, but rather they worked for a more aggressive, flexible company with a
cool, foreign-sounding name, a place that looked for individual talent and richly rewarded success.
One of the men carried keys to a brand-new Alfa Romeo. Tokyo was short on office
space, they said. The economy had recovered from the oil shocks and was showing signs of
heating up again. Capital was growing ever more fluid, and soon it would be impossible to
meet the need for space no matter how many new high-rise buildings they put up.
 Sounds like real estate is where the money is, Aomame said to Ayumi.
 Thats true, Ayumi said. If you have anything extra lying around, you ought to invest it in
real estate. Huge amounts of money are just pouring into Tokyo, which is only so big. Land
prices are bound to soar. Buy now, and theres no way you can lose. Its like betting on
horses when you know you hold the winning ticket. Unfortunately, low-ranking public employees
like me dont have anything to spare. But how about you, Aomame? Do you do any investing? 
Aomame shook her head. I dont trust anything but cash. 
Ayumi laughed out loud. You have the mind of a criminal! 
 The thing to do is keep your cash in your mattress so in a jam, you can grab it and escape
out the window. 
 Thats it! Ayumi said, snapping her fingers. Like in The Getaway. The Steve McQueen
movie. A wad of bills and a shotgun. I love that kind of stuff. 
 More than being on the side that enforces the law? 
 Personally, yes, Ayumi said with a smile. Im more drawn to outlaws. Theyre a whole lot
more exciting than riding around in a mini patrol car and handing out parking tickets. Thats
what I like about you. 
 Do I look like an outlaw? 
Ayumi nodded. How should I put it? I dont know, you just have that atmosphere about
you, though maybe not like a Faye Dunaway holding a machine gun. 
 I dont need a machine gun, Aomame said.
 About that religious commune we were talking about last time, Sakigake …, Ayumi said.
The two were sharing a light meal and a bottle of Chianti at a small, late-night Italian restaurant
in Iikura, a quiet neighborhood. Aomame was having a salad with strips of raw tuna,
while Ayumi had ordered a plate of gnocchi with basil sauce.
 Uh-huh, Aomame said.
 You got me interested, so I did a little searching on my own. And the more I looked, the
fishier it began to smell. Sakigake calls itself a religion, and it even has official certification,
but its totally lacking any religious substance. Doctrine-wise, its kind of deconstructionist or
something, just a jumble of images of religion thrown together. Theyve added some new-age
spiritualism, fashionable academicism, a return to nature, anticapitalism, occultism, and stuff,
but thats all: it has a bunch of flavors, but no substantial core. Or maybe thats what its all
about: this religions substance is its lack of substance. In McLuhanesque terms, the medium
is the message. Some people might find that cool. 
 McLuhanesque? 
 Hey, look, even I read a book now and then, Ayumi protested. McLuhan was ahead of
his time. He was so popular for a while that people tend not to take him seriously, but what he
had to say was right. 
 In other words, the package itself is the contents. Is that it? 
 Exactly. The characteristics of the package determine the nature of the contents, not the
other way around. 
Aomame considered this for a moment and said, The core of Sakigake as a religion is unclear,
but that has nothing to do with why people are drawn to it, you mean? 
Ayumi nodded. I wouldnt say its amazing how many people join Sakigake, but the numbers
are by no means small. And the more people who join, the more money they put together.
Obviously. So, then, what is it about this religion that attracts so many people? If you ask
me, its primarily that it doesnt smell like a religion. Its very clean and intellectual, and it looks
systematic. Thats what attracts young professionals. It stimulates their intellectual curiosity. It
provides a sense of achievement they cant get in the real world something tangible and
personal. And these intellectual believers, like an elite officers corps, form the powerful brains
of the organization.
 Plus, Ayumi continued, their ‘Leader seems to have a good deal of charisma. People
idolize him. His very presence, you might say, functions like a doctrinal core. Its close in origin
to primitive religion. Even early Christianity was more or less like that at first. But this guy
never comes out in the open. Nobody knows what he looks like, or his name, or how old he is.
The religion has a governing council that supposedly runs everything, but another person
heads the council and acts as the public face of the religion in official events, though I dont
think hes any more than a figurehead. The one who is at the center of the system seems to
be this mysterious ‘Leader person. 
 Sounds like he wants to keep his identity hidden. 
 Well, either he has something to hide or he keeps his existence obscure on purpose to
heighten the mysterious atmosphere around him. 
 Or else hes tremendously ugly, Aomame said.
 Thats possible, I suppose. A grotesque creature from another world, Ayumi said, with a
monsters growl. But anyway, aside from the founder, this religion has too many things that
stay hidden. Like the aggressive real estate dealings I mentioned on the phone the other day.
Everything on the surface is there for show: the nice buildings, the handsome publicity, the intelligent-sounding
theories, the former social elites who have converted, the stoic practices,
the yoga and spiritual serenity, the rejection of materialism, the organic farming, the fresh air
and lovely vegetarian diet theyre all like calculated photos, like ads for high-class resort
condos that come as inserts in the Sunday paper. The packaging is beautiful, but I get the
feeling that suspicious plans are hatching behind the scenes. Some of it might even be illegal.
Now that Ive been through a bunch of materials, thats the impression I get. 
 But the police arent making any moves now. 
 Something may be happening undercover, but I wouldnt know about that. The Yamanashi
Prefectural Police do seem to be keeping an eye on them to some extent. I kind of
sensed that when I spoke to the guy in charge of the investigation. I mean, Sakigake gave
birth to Akebono, the group that staged the shootout, and its just guesswork that Akebonos
Chinese-made Kalashnikovs came in through North Korea: nobodys really gotten to the bottom
of that. Sakigake is still under some suspicion, but theyve got that ‘Religious Juridical
Person label, so they have to be handled with kid gloves. The police have already investigated
the premises once, and that made it more or less clear that there was no direct connection
between Sakigake and the shootout. As for any moves the Public Security Intelligence
Agency might be making, we just dont know. Those guys work in absolute secrecy and have
never gotten along with us. 
 How about the children who stopped coming to public school? Do you know any more
about them? 
 No, nothing. Once they stop going to school, I guess, they never come outside the walls
of the compound again. We dont have any way of investigating their cases. It would be different
if we had concrete evidence of child abuse, but for now we dont have anything. 
 Dont you get any information about that from people who have quit Sakigake? There
must be a few people at least who become disillusioned with the religion or cant take the
harsh discipline and break away. 
 Theres constant coming and going, of course people joining, people quitting. Basically,
people are free to quit anytime. When they join, they make a huge donation as a ‘Permanent
Facility Use Fee and sign a contract stipulating that it is entirely nonrefundable, so as long as
theyre willing to accept that loss, they can come out with nothing but the clothes on their
backs. Theres an organization of people who have quit the religion, and they accuse
Sakigake of being a dangerous, antisocial cult engaged in fraudulent activity. Theyve filed a
suit and put out a little newsletter, but theyre such a small voice they have virtually zero impact
on public opinion. The religion has a phalanx of top lawyers, and theyve put together a
watertight defense. One lawsuit cant budge them. 
 Havent the ex-members made any statements about Leader or the children inside? 
 I dont know, Ayumi said. Ive never read their newsletter. As far as Ive been able to
check, though, all the dissidents are from the lowest ranks of the group, just small fry.
Sakigake makes a big deal about how they reject all worldly values, but part of the organization
is completely hierarchical, sharply divided between the leadership and the rest of them.
You cant become a member of the leadership without an advanced degree or specialized
professional qualifications. Only elite believers in the leadership group ever get to see or receive
direct instruction from Leader or make contact with key figures of the organization. All
the others just make their required donations and spend one sterile day after another performing
their religious austerities in the fresh air, devoting themselves to farming, or spending
hours in the meditation rooms. Theyre like a flock of sheep, led out to pasture under the
watchful eye of the shepherd and his dog, and brought back to their shed at night, one peaceful
day after the next. They look forward to the day when their position rises high enough in
the organization for them to come into the presence of Big Brother, but that day never comes.
Thats why ordinary believers know almost nothing about the inner workings of the organization.
Even if they quit Sakigake, they dont have any important information they can offer the
outside world. Theyve never even seen Leaders face. 
 Arent there any members of the elite who have quit? 
 Not one, as far as I can tell. 
 Does that mean youre not allowed to leave once youve learned the secrets? 
 There might be some pretty dramatic developments if it came to that, Ayumi said with a
short sigh. Then she said to Aomame, So tell me, about that raping of little girls you mentioned:
how definite is that? 
 Pretty definite, but theres still no proof. 
 Its being done systematically inside the commune? 
 Thats not entirely clear, either. We do have one actual victim, though. Ive met the girl.
They did terrible things to her. 
 By ‘rape, do you mean actual penetration? 
 Yes, theres no question about that. 
Ayumi twisted her lips at an angle, thinking. Ive got it! Let me dig into this a little more in
my own way. 
 Dont get in over your head, now. 
 Dont worry, Ayumi said. I may not look it, but Im very cautious. 
They finished their meal, and the waiter cleared the table. They declined to order dessert
and, instead, continued drinking wine.
Ayumi said, Remember how you told me that no men had fooled around with you when
you were a little girl? 
Aomame glanced at Ayumi, registering the look on her face, and nodded. My family was
very religious. There was never any talk of sex, and it was the same with all the other families
we knew. Sex was a forbidden topic. 
 Well, okay, but being religious has nothing to do with the strength or weakness of a persons
sex drive. Everybody knows the clergy is full of sex freaks. In fact, we arrest a lot of
people connected with religion and with education for stuff like prostitution and groping women
on commuter trains. 
 Maybe so, but at least in our circles, there was no hint of that kind of thing, nobody who
did anything they shouldnt. 
 Well, good for you, Ayumi said. Im glad to hear it. 
 It was different for you? 
Instead of responding immediately, Ayumi gave a little shrug. Then she said, To tell you
the truth, they messed around with me a lot when I was a girl. 
 Who were ‘they? 
 My brother. And my uncle. 
Aomame grimaced slightly. Your brother and uncle? 
 Thats right. Theyre both policemen now. Not too long ago, my uncle even received official
commendation as an outstanding officer thirty years of continuous service, major contributions
to public safety in the district and to improvement of the environment. He was featured
in the paper once for saving a stupid dog and her pup that wandered into a rail crossing. 
 What did they do to you? 
 Touched me down there, made me give them blow jobs. 
The wrinkles of Aomames grimace deepened. Your brother and uncle? 
 Separately, of course. I think I was ten and my brother maybe fifteen. My uncle did it before
that two or three times, when he stayed over with us. 
 Did you tell anybody? 
Ayumi responded with a few slow shakes of the head. I didnt say a word. They warned
me not to, threatened that theyd get me if I said anything. And even if they hadnt, I was
afraid if I told, theyd blame me for it and punish me. I was too scared to tell anybody. 
 Not even your mother? 
 Especially my mother, Ayumi said. My brother had always been her favorite, and she
was always telling me how disappointed she was in me I was sloppy, I was fat, I wasnt
pretty enough, my grades in school were nothing special. She wanted a different kind of
daughter a slim, cute little doll to send to ballet lessons. It was like asking for the impossible. 
 So you didnt want to disappoint her even more. 
 Right. I was sure if I told her what my brother was doing, shed hate me even more. Shed
say it was my fault instead of blaming him. 
Aomame used her fingers to smooth out the wrinkles in her face. My mother refused to
talk to me after I announced that I was abandoning the faith at the age often. Shed hand me
notes when it was absolutely necessary to communicate something, but she would never
speak. I ceased to be her daughter. I was just the one who abandoned the faith. I moved out
after that.
 But there was no penetration? Aomame asked Ayumi.
 No penetration, Ayumi said. As bad as they were, they couldnt do anything that painful
to me. Not even they would demand that much. 
 Do you still see this brother and uncle of yours? 
 Hardly ever after I took a job and left the house. But we are relatives, after all, and were
in the same profession. Sometimes I cant avoid seeing them, and when I do Im all smiles. I
dont do anything to rock the boat. I bet they dont even remember that something like that
ever happened. 
 Dont remember? 
 Sure, they can forget about it, Ayumi said. I never can. 
 Of course not, Aomame said.
 Its like some historic massacre. 
 Massacre? 
 The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did.
They can turn away from things they dont want to see. But the surviving victims can never
forget. They cant turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. Thats what
the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories. 
 True, Aomame said, scowling slightly. An endless battle of contrasting memories?
 To tell you the truth, Ayumi said, I kind of thought that you must have had the same kind
of experience as me. 
 Why did you think that? 
 I dont know, I cant really explain it, I just sort of figured. Maybe I thought that having wild
one-night stands with strange men was a result of something like that. And in your case, I
thought I detected some kind of anger, too. Anyhow, you just dont seem like someone who
can do the ordinary thing, you know, like everybody else does: find a regular boyfriend, go out
on a date, have a meal, and have sex in the usual way with just the one person. Its more or
less the same with me. 
 Youre saying that you couldnt follow the normal pattern because someone messed
around with you when you were little? 
 Thats how I felt, Ayumi said. She gave a little shrug. To tell you the truth, Im afraid of
men. Or, rather, Im afraid of getting deeply involved with one particular man, of completely
taking on another person. The very thought of it makes me cringe. But being alone can be
hard sometimes. I want a man to hold me, to put his thing inside me. I want it so bad I cant
stand it sometimes. Not knowing the man at all makes it easier. A lot easier. 
 Because youre afraid of men? 
 I think thats a large part of it. 
 I dont think I have any fear of men, Aomame said.
 Is there anything you are afraid of? 
 Of course there is, Aomame said. The thing Im most afraid of is me. Of not knowing
what Im going to do. Of not knowing what Im doing right now. 
 What are you doing right now? 
Aomame stared at the wineglass in her hand for a time. I wish I knew. She looked up.
 But I dont. I cant even be sure what world Im in now, what year Im in. 
 Its 1984. Were in Tokyo, in Japan. 
 I wish I could declare that with such certainty. 
 Youre strange, Ayumi said with a smile. Theyre just self-evident truths. ‘Declaring and
‘certainty are beside the point. 
 I cant explain it very well, but I cant say theyre self-evident truths to me. 
 You cant? Ayumi said as if deeply impressed. Im not quite sure what youre talking
about, but I will say this: whatever time and place this might be, you do have one person you
love deeply, and thats something I can only envy. I dont have anybody like that. 
Aomame set her wineglass down on the table and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin.
Then she said, You may be right. Whatever time and place this might be, totally unrelated to
that, I want to see him. I want to see him so badly I could die. Thats the only thing that seems
certain. Its the only thing I can say with confidence. 
 Want me to have a look at the police materials? If you give me the basic information, we
might be able to find out where he is and what hes doing. 
Aomame shook her head. Please dont look for him. I think I told you before, Ill run into
him sometime, somewhere, strictly by chance. Ill just keep patiently waiting for that time to
come. 
 Like a big, romantic TV series, Ayumi said, impressed. I love stuff like that. I get chills
just thinking about it. 
 Its tough on the one whos actually doing it, though. 
 I know what you mean, Ayumi said, lightly pressing her fingers against her temples. But
still, even though youre that much in love with him, you feel like sleeping with strange men
every once in a while. 
Aomame clicked her fingernails against the rim of the thin wineglass. I need to do it. To
keep myself in balance as a flesh-and-blood human being. 
 And it doesnt destroy the love you have inside you. 
Aomame said, Its like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values
and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays
fastened to the axle and doesnt move. 
 Marvelous, Ayumi said. The Tibetan Wheel of the Passions, huh? 
And she drank down the wine remaining in her glass.
Two days later, a little after eight oclock at night, a call came from Tamaru. As always, he
skipped the preliminary greetings and went straight to business.
 Are you free tomorrow afternoon? 
 I dont have a thing in the afternoon. I can come over whenever you need me. 
 How about four thirty? 
Aomame said that would be fine.
 Good, Tamaru said. She could hear his ballpoint pen scratching the time into his calendar.
He was pressing down hard.
 How is Tsubasa doing? Aomame asked.
 Shes doing well, I think. Madame is going there every day to look after her. The girl
seems to be growing fond of her. 
 Thats good news. 
 Yes, it is good news, but something else happened that is not so good. 
 Something not so good? Aomame knew that when Tamaru said something was not so
good, it had to be terrible.
 The dog died, Tamaru said.
 The dog? You mean Bun? 
 Yes, the funny German shepherd that liked spinach. She died last night. 
Aomame was shocked to hear this. The dog was maybe five or six years old, not an age
for dying. She was perfectly healthy the last time I saw her. 
 She didnt die from illness, Tamaru said, his voice flat. I found her this morning in
pieces. 
 In pieces?! 
 As if she had exploded. Her guts were splattered all over the place. It was pretty intense.
I had to go around picking up chunks of flesh with paper towels. The force of the blast turned
her body inside out. It was as if somebody had set off a small but powerful bomb inside her
stomach. 
 The poor dog! 
 Oh, well, theres nothing to be done about the dog, Tamaru said. Shes dead and wont
be coming back. I can find another guard dog to take her place. What worries me, though, is
what happened. It wasnt something that any ordinary person could do setting off a bomb inside
a dog like that. For one thing, that dog barked like crazy whenever a stranger approached.
This was not an easy thing to carry off. 
 Thats for sure, Aomame said in a dry tone of voice.
 The women in the safe house are scared to death. The one in charge of feeding the dog
found her like that this morning. First she puked her guts out and then she called me. I asked
if anything suspicious happened during the night. Not a thing, she said. Nobody heard an explosion.
If there had been such a big sound, everybody would have woken up for sure. These
women live in fear even in the best of times. It must have been a soundless explosion. And
nobody heard the dog bark. It was an especially quiet night, but when morning came, there
was the dog, inside out. Fresh organs had been blown all over, and the neighborhood crows
were having a great time. For me, though, it was nothing but worries. 
 Something weird is happening. 
 Thats for sure, Tamaru said. Something weird is happening. And if what Im feeling is
right, this is just the beginning of something. 
 Did you call the police? 
 Hell, no, Tamaru said, with a contemptuous little snort. The police are useless looking
in the wrong place for the wrong thing. Theyd just complicate matters. 
 What does Madame say? 
 Nothing. She just nodded when I gave her my report, Tamaru said. All security measures
are my responsibility, from beginning to end. Its my job. 
A short silence followed, a heavy silence having to do with responsibility.
 Tomorrow at four thirty, Aomame said.
 Tomorrow at four thirty, Tamaru repeated, and quietly hung up.
1Q84
CHAPTER 24
Tengo
WHATS THE POINT OF ITS BEING
A WORLD THAT ISNT HERE?
It rained all Thursday morning, not a heavy downpour, but persistent rain. There had been
no letup since the previous afternoon. Whenever it seemed about to stop it would start pouring
again. June was half gone without a sign the rainy season would ever end. The sky remained
dark, as if covered with a lid, and the world wore a heavy dampness.
Just before noon, Tengo put on a raincoat and hat and was headed out to the local market
when he noticed a brown padded envelope in his mailbox. It bore no postmark, stamps, or address,
and no return address, either. His name had been written with a ballpoint pen in the
middle of the front in small, stiff characters that might have been scratched into dry clay with a
nail Fuka-Eris writing, without question. He tore it open to find a single bare sixty-minute
TDK audiotape cassette. No letter or memo accompanied it. It was not in a plastic case, and
the cassette bore no label.
After a moment of uncertainty, Tengo decided to forget about shopping and listen to the
tape. Back in his apartment, he held the cassette in the air and gave it several shakes. For all
the mystery surrounding its arrival, it was obviously just an ordinary mass-produced object.
There was nothing suggesting that it would explode after he played it.
Taking off his raincoat, he set a radio cassette player on the kitchen table. He removed
the cassette from the padded envelope and inserted it into the player, next to which he placed
memo paper and a ballpoint pen in case he wanted to take notes. After looking around to
make certain there was no one else present, he pressed the play button.
There was no sound at first. This lasted for some time. Just as he was beginning to suspect
that it was nothing but a blank tape, there were some sudden bumping sounds like the
moving of a chair. Then a light clearing of the throat (it seemed). Then, without warning, FukaEri
began to speak.
 Tengo, she said, as if in a sound test. As far as he could recall, this was probably the
first time she had actually called him by name.
She cleared her throat again. She seemed tense.
I should write you a letter, but Im bad at that, so Ill record a tape. Its easier for me to talk
this way than on the phone. Somebody might be listening on the phone. Wait, I need water.
Tengo heard what he thought were the sounds of Fuka-Eri picking up a glass, taking a
drink, and setting the glass back down on a table. Recorded on tape, her uniquely unaccented
manner of speech without question marks or other punctuation sounded even stranger
than in conversation. It was almost unreal. On tape, however, as opposed to conversation,
she was able to speak several sentences in a row.
I hear you dont know where I am. You might be worried. But you dont have to be. This is
not a dangerous place. I wanted to tell you that. I really shouldnt do this, but I felt like I ought
to.
[Ten seconds of silence.]
They told me not to tell anyone. That Im here. The Professor filed a search request with
the police to look for me. But theyre not doing anything. Kids run away all the time. So I will
just stay still here a while.
[Fifteen seconds of silence.]
This place is far away. No one will find me if I dont go out walking. Very far away. Azami
will bring this tape to you. Better not send it in the mail. Gotta be careful. Wait, Ill make sure
its recording.
[A click. An empty interval. Another click.]
Good, its recording.
Children shouting in the distance. Faint sounds of music. These were probably coming
through an open window. There might have been a kindergarten nearby.
Thanks for putting me up that time. I needed you to do that. I also needed to get to know
you. Thanks for reading the book to me. I felt close to the Gilyaks. Why do the Gilyaks walk
through the forest swamps and not on the wide roads.
[Tengo secretly added a question mark at the end.]
Even if the roads are convenient, its easier for the Gilyaks to keep away from the roads
and walk through the forest. To walk on the roads, they would have to completely remake the
way they walk. If they remade the way they walk, they would have to remake other things. I
couldnt live like the Gilyaks. I would hate for men to hit me all the time. I would hate to live
with a lot of maggots around so dirty! But I dont like to walk on wide roads, either. I need
more water.
Fuka-Eri took another drink of water. After a short silence, her glass came back to the table
with a clunk. Then there was an interval while she wiped her lips with her fingertips. Didnt
this girl realize that tape recorders have pause buttons?
I think it might be trouble for you that I went away. But I dont want to be a novelist, and I
dont plan to write anymore. I asked Azami to look up stuff about the Gilyaks for me. She went
to the library. The Gilyaks live in Sakhalin and are like the Ainu and American Indians: they
dont have writing. They dont leave records. Im the same. Once it gets written down, the
story is not mine anymore. You did a good job of writing my story. I dont think anybody else
could do that. But its not my story anymore. But dont worry. Its not your fault. Im just walking
in a place away from the road.
Here Fuka-Eri inserted another pause. Tengo imagined her trudging along silently, alone,
off to the side, away from a road.
The Professor has big power and deep wisdom. But the Little People have just as deep
wisdom and big power as he does. Better be careful in the forest. Important things are in the
forest, and the Little People are in the forest, too. To make sure the Little People dont harm
you, you have to find something the Little People dont have. If you do that, you can get
through the forest safely.
Having managed to say all this in one go, Fuka-Eri paused to take a deep breath. She did
this without averting her face from the microphone, thereby recording what sounded like a
huge gust of wind blowing between buildings. When that quieted down, there came the deep,
foghorn-like sound of a large truck honking in the distance. Two short blasts. Apparently
Fuka-Eri was in a place not far from a major highway.
[Clearing of throat.] Im getting hoarse. Thanks for worrying about me. Thanks for liking my
chest shape and putting me up in your apartment and lending me your pajamas. We probably
cant see each other for a while. The Little People may be mad that they were put into writing.
But dont worry. Im used to the forest. Bye.
There was a click, and the recording ended.
Tengo stopped the tape and rewound to the beginning. Listening to the rain dripping from
the eaves, he took several deep breaths and twirled the plastic ballpoint pen in his fingers.
Then he set the pen down. He had not taken a single note. He had merely listened in fascination
to Fuka-Eris normally peculiar narrative style. Without resorting to note taking, he had
grasped the three main points of her message:
1
She had not been abducted, but was merely in temporary hiding. There was no need to
worry about her.
2
She had no intention of publishing any more books. Her story was meant for oral transmission,
not print.
3
The Little People possessed no less wisdom and power than Professor Ebisuno. Tengo
should be careful.
These were the points she hoped to convey. She also spoke of the Gilyaks, the people
who had to stay off broad roads when they walked.
Tengo went to the kitchen and made himself some coffee. While drinking his coffee, he
stared aimlessly at the cassette tape. Then he listened to it again from the beginning. This
time, just to make sure, he occasionally pushed the pause button and took brief notes. Then
he let his eyes make their way through the notes. This led to no new discoveries.
Had Fuka-Eri made her own simple notes at first and followed them as she spoke into the
recorder? Tengo could not believe she had done that. She wasnt the type to do such a thing.
She had undoubtedly spoken her thoughts into the mike as they came to her in real time
(without even pushing the pause button).
What kind of place could she be in? The recorded background noises provided Tengo with
few hints. The distant sound of a door slamming. Childrens shouts apparently coming in
through an open window. A kindergarten? A truck horn. She was obviously not deep in the
woods but somewhere in a city. The time of the recording was probably late morning or early
afternoon. The sound of the door might suggest that she was not alone.
One thing was clear: Fuka-Eri had gone into hiding on her own initiative. No one had
forced her to make the tape: that much was obvious from the sound of her voice and the way
she spoke. There was some perceptible nervousness at the beginning, but otherwise it sounded
as if she had freely spoken her own thoughts into the microphone.
The Professor has big power and deep wisdom. But the Little People have just as deep
wisdom and big power as he does. Better be careful in the forest. Important things are in the
forest, and the Little People are in the forest, too. To make sure the Little People dont harm
you, you have to find something the Little People dont have. If you do that, you can get
through the forest safely.
. . .
Tengo played that part back one more time. Fuka-Eri narrated this section somewhat
more rapidly than the others. The intervals between sentences were a touch shorter. The
Little People were beings who possessed the potential for harming both Tengo and Professor
Ebisuno, but he could not discern in Fuka-Eris tone of voice any suggestion that she had written
them off as evil. Judging from the way she spoke of them, they seemed like neutral beings
who could go either way. Tengo had misgivings about another passage:
The Little People may be mad that they were put into writing.
If the Little People were, in fact, angry, it stood to reason that Tengo himself would be one
of the objects of their anger. He was, after all, one of those most responsible for having publicized
their existence in print. Even if he were to beg their forgiveness on the grounds that he
had done so without malice, they were not likely to listen to him.
What kind of harm did the Little People inflict on others? Tengo could hardly be expected
to know the answer. He rewound the tape again, returned it to the envelope, and stuffed it in a
drawer. Putting his raincoat and hat on again, he set out for the market once more in the
pouring rain.
Komatsu telephoned after nine oclock that night. Once again, Tengo knew it was Komatsu
before he lifted the receiver. He was in bed, reading. He let the phone ring three times,
eased himself out of bed, and sat at the kitchen table to answer the call.
 Hey, Tengo, Komatsu said. Having a drink? 
 No, Im sober. 
 You may want to take a drink after this call, Komatsu said.
 Must be about something enjoyable. 
 I wonder. I dont think its all that enjoyable. It might have a certain amount of paradoxical
humor about it, though. 
 Like a Chekhov short story. 
 Exactly, Komatsu said. ‘Like a Chekhov short story. Well said! Your expressions are always
concise and to the point, Tengo. 
Tengo remained silent. Komatsu went on.
 Things have taken a somewhat problematic turn. The police have responded to Professor
Ebisunos search request by formally initiating a search for Fuka-Eri. I dont think theyll go so
far as to actually mount a full-scale search, though, especially since theres been no ransom
demand or anything. Theyll probably just go through the motions so it wont be too embarrassing
for them if something really does come up. Otherwise, itll look as if they stood by with
their arms folded. The media are not going to let it go so easily, though. Ive already gotten
several inquiries from the papers. I pretended to know nothing, of course. I mean, theres
nothing to say at this point. By now theyve probably uncovered the relationship between
Fuka-Eri and Professor Ebisuno, as well as her parents background as revolutionaries. Lots
of facts like that are going to start coming out. The problem is with the weekly magazines.
Their freelancers or journalists or whatever you call them will start circling like sharks smelling
blood. Theyre all good at what they do, and once they latch on, they dont let go. Their livelihood
depends on it, after all. They cant afford to have little things like good taste or peoples
privacy stand in their way. They may be ‘writers like you, Tengo, but theyre a different breed,
they dont live in your literary ivory tower. 
 So Id better be careful too, I suppose. 
 Absolutely. Get ready to protect yourself. Theres no telling what theyll sniff out. 
Tengo imagined a small boat surrounded by sharks, but only as a single cartoon frame
without a clever twist. You have to find something the Little People dont have, Fuka-Eri had
said. What kind of something could that possibly be?
Tengo said to Komatsu, But isnt this working out the way Professor Ebisuno planned it
from the beginning? 
 Well, maybe so, Komatsu said. Maybe itll turn out that he was just discreetly using us.
But to some extent we knew what he was up to right from the start. He wasnt hiding his plan
from us. In that sense, it was a fair transaction. We could have said, ‘Sorry, Professor, too
dangerous, we cant get involved. Thats what any normal editor would have done. But as
you know, Tengo, Im no normal editor. Besides, things were already moving forward by then,
and there was a little greed at work on my part, too. Maybe thats why I had let my defenses
down somewhat. 
There was silence on the telephone a short but dense silence.
Tengo spoke first. In other words, your plan was more or less hijacked by Professor
Ebisuno. 
 I suppose you could say that. Ultimately, his agenda trumped mine. 
Tengo said, Do you think Professor Ebisuno will be able to make things work his way? 
 Well, he certainly thinks he can. He knows how to read a situation, and he has plenty of
self-confidence. It just might go his way. But if this new commotion exceeds even Professor
Ebisunos expectations, he might not be able to control the outcome. Theres a limit to what
one person can do, even the most outstanding individual. So youd better tighten your seat
belt! 
 Not even the tightest seat belt is going to do you any good if your plane crashes. 
 No, but at least it makes you feel a little better. 
Tengo couldnt help smiling if somewhat feebly. Is that the point of this call the thing
that might not be all that enjoyable but might have a certain amount of paradoxical humor
about it? 
 To tell you the truth, I am feeling sorry I got you involved in this, Komatsu said in an expressionless
voice.
 Dont worry about me. I dont have a thing to lose no family, no social position, no future
to speak of. What Im worried about is Fuka-Eri. Shes just a seventeen-year-old girl. 
 That concerns me, too, of course. Theres no way it couldnt. But we can rack our brains
here and it wont change anything for her. For now, lets just think about how were going to
tie ourselves down somewhere so this storm doesnt blow us away. Wed better keep a close
eye on the papers. 
 Ive been making sure I check the papers every day. 
 Good, Komatsu said. Which reminds me, do you have any idea at all where Fuka-Eri
might be? Nothing comes to mind? 
 Not a thing, Tengo said. He was not a good liar. And Komatsu was strangely sensitive
about such things. But he did not seem to notice the slight quaver in Tengos voice. His head
was probably too full of himself at that point.
 Ill get in touch with you if anything else comes up, Komatsu said, terminating the call.
The first thing Tengo did after hanging up was pour an inch of bourbon into a glass. Komatsu
had been right: he needed a drink.
On Friday Tengos girlfriend came for her regular visit. The rain had stopped, but every
inch of the sky was covered in gray cloud. They had a light meal and got into bed. Even during
sex, Tengo went on thinking one fragmentary thought after another, but this did nothing to
dull his physical pleasure. As always, she skillfully drew a weeks worth of desire out of Tengo
and took care of it with great efficiency. She experienced full satisfaction, too, like a talented
accountant who finds deep pleasure in the complex manipulation of figures in a ledger. Still,
she seemed to notice that something else was on Tengos mind.
 Hmm, your whiskey level seems to be going down, she said. Her left hand rested on
Tengos thick chest, enjoying the aftertaste of sex. Her third finger bore a smallish but sparkling
diamond wedding ring. She was referring to the bottle of Wild Turkey that had been sitting
on the shelf for months. Like most older women in sexual relationships with younger men, she
was quick to note even tiny changes in his surroundings.
 Ive been waking up a lot at night, Tengo said.
 Youre not in love, are you? 
Tengo shook his head. No, Im not in love. 
 Your writings not going well, then? 
 No, its moving along where to, Im not sure. 
 But still, somethings bothering you. 
 I wonder. I just cant sleep very well. That rarely happens to me. Ive always been a
sound sleeper. 
 Poor Tengo! she said, caressing his testicles with the palm of the ringless hand. Are you
having nightmares? 
 I almost never dream, Tengo said, which was true.
 I dream a lot. Some dreams I have over and over so much so that I realize in the
dream, ‘Hey, Ive had this one before. Strange, huh? 
 What kind of dreams do you have? Tell me one. 
 Well, theres my dream of a cottage in a forest. 
 A cottage in a forest, Tengo said. He thought about people in forests: the Gilyaks, the
Little People, and Fuka-Eri. What kind of cottage? 
 You really want to know? Dont you find other peoples dreams boring? 
 No, not at all. Tell me, if you dont mind, Tengo said honestly.
 Im walking alone in the forest not the thick, ominous forest that Hansel and Gretel got
lost in, but more of a brightish, lightweight sort of forest. Its a nice, warm afternoon, and Im
walking along without a care in the world. So then, up ahead, I see this little house. Its got a
chimney and a little porch, and gingham-check curtains in the windows. Its friendly looking. I
knock on the door and say, ‘Hello. Theres no answer. I try knocking again a little harder and
the door opens by itself. It wasnt completely closed, you see. I walk in yelling, ‘Hello! Is anybody
home? Im coming in! 
She looked at Tengo, gently stroking his testicles. Do you get the mood so far? 
 Sure, I do. 
 Its just a one-room cottage. Very simply built. It has a little kitchen, beds, and a dining
area. Theres a woodstove in the middle, and dinner for four has been neatly set out on the
table. Steam is rising from the dishes. But theres nobody inside. Its as if they were all set to
start eating when something strange happened like, a monster showed up or something,
and everybody ran out. But the chairs are not in disarray. Everything is peaceful and almost
strangely ordinary. There just arent any people there. 
 What kind of food is on the table? 
She had to think about that for a moment, cocking her head to one side. I cant remember.
Good question: what kind of food is it? I guess the question isnt so much what theyre
eating as that its freshly cooked and still hot. So anyhow, I sit in one of the chairs and wait for
the family that lives there to come back. Thats what Im supposed to do: just wait for them to
come home. I dont know why Im supposed to. I mean, its a dream, so not everything is
clearly explained. Maybe I want them to tell me the way home, or maybe I have to get
something: that kind of thing. So Im just sitting there, waiting for them to come home, but no
matter how long I wait, nobody comes. The meal is still steaming. I look at the hot food and
get tremendously hungry. But just because Im starved, I have no right to touch the food on
the table without them there. It would be natural to think that, dont you think? 
 Sure, Id probably think that, Tengo said. Of course, its a dream, so I cant be sure what
I would think. 
 But soon the sun goes down. The cottage grows dark inside. The surrounding forest gets
deeper and deeper. I want to turn the light on, but I dont know how. I start to feel uneasy.
Then at some point I realize something strange: the amount of steam rising from the food
hasnt decreased at all. Hours have gone by, but its still nice and hot. Then I start to think that
something odd is going on. Something is wrong. Thats where the dream ends. 
 You dont know what happens after that? 
 Im sure something must happen after that, she said. The sun goes down, I dont know
how to go home, and Im all alone in this weird cottage. Something is about to happen and I
get the feeling its not very good. But the dream always ends there, and I keep having the
same dream over and over. 
She stopped caressing his testicles and pressed her cheek against his chest. My dream
might be suggesting something, she said.
 Like what? 
She did not answer Tengos question. Instead, she asked her own question. Would you
like to know what the scariest part of the dream is? 
 Yes, tell me. 
She let out a long breath that grazed Tengos nipple like a hot wind blowing across a narrow
channel. Its that I might be the monster. The possibility struck me once. Wasnt it because
they had seen me approaching that the people had abandoned their dinner and run out
of the house? And as long as I stayed there, they couldnt come back. In spite of that, I had to
keep sitting in the cottage, waiting for them to come home. The thought of that is what scares
me so much. It seems so hopeless, dont you think? 
 Or else, Tengo said, maybe its your own house, and your self ran away and youre
waiting for it to come back. 
After the words left his mouth, Tengo realized he should not have spoken them. But it was
too late to take them back. She remained silent for a long time, and then she squeezed his
testicles hard so hard he could barely breathe.
 How could you say such a terrible thing? 
 I didnt mean anything by it, Tengo managed to groan. It just popped into my head. 
She softened her grip on his testicles and released a sigh. Then she said, Now tell me
one of your dreams, Tengo. 
Breathing normally again, he said, Like I said before, I almost never dream. Especially
these days. 
 You must have some dreams. Everybody in the world dreams to some extent. Dr. Freuds
gonna feel bad if you say you dont dream at all. 
 I may be dreaming, but I dont remember my dreams after I wake up. I might have a
lingering sensation that I was having a dream, but I can never remember what it was about. 
She slipped her open palm under Tengos limp penis, carefully noting its weight, as if the
weight had an important story to tell her. Okay, never mind the dreams. Tell me about the
novel youre writing instead. 
 I prefer not to talk about a piece of fiction while Im writing it. 
 Hey, Im not asking you to tell me every last detail from beginning to end. Not even I
would ask for that. I know youre a much more sensitive young man than your build would
suggest. Just tell me a little something a part of the setting, or some minor episode, anything
at all. I want you to tell me something that nobody else in the world knows to make up for
the terrible thing you said to me. Do you see what Im saying? 
 I think I might, Tengo said uncertainly.
 Okay, go! 
With his penis still resting on the palm of her hand, Tengo began to speak. The story is
about me or about somebody modeled on me. 
 Im sure it is, she said. Am I in it? 
 No, youre not. Im in a world that isnt here. 
 So Im not in the world that isnt here. 
 And not just you. The people who are in this world are not in the world that isnt here. 
 How is the world that isnt here different from this world? Can you tell which world youre
in now? 
 Of course I can. Im the one whos writing it. 
 What I mean is, for people other than you. Say, if I just happened to wander into that
world now, could I tell? 
 I think you could, Tengo said. For example, in the world that isnt here, there are two
moons. So you can tell the difference. 
The setting of a world with two moons in the sky was something he had taken from Air
Chrysalis. Tengo was in the process of writing a longer and more complicated story about that
same world and about himself. The fact that the setting was the same might later prove to
be a problem, but for now, his overwhelming desire was to write a story about a world with
two moons. Any problems that came up later he would deal with then.
 In other words, she said, if there are two moons up there when night comes and you
look at the sky, you can tell, ‘Aha! This is the world that isnt here! 
 Right, thats the sign. 
 Do the two moons ever overlap or anything? she asked.
Tengo shook his head. I dont know why, but the distance between the two moons always
stays the same. 
His girlfriend thought about that world for a while. Her finger traced some kind of diagram
on Tengos bare chest.
 Hey, Tengo, do you know the difference between the English words ‘lunatic and
‘insane? she asked.
 Theyre both adjectives describing mental abnormality. Im not quite sure how they differ. 
 ‘Insane probably means to have an innate mental problem, something that calls for professional
treatment, while ‘lunatic means to have your sanity temporarily seized by the luna,
which is ‘moon in Latin. In nineteenth-century England, if you were a certified lunatic and you
committed a crime, the severity of the crime would be reduced a notch. The idea was that the
crime was not so much the responsibility of the person himself as that he was led astray by
the moonlight. Believe it or not, laws like that actually existed. In other words, the fact that the
moon can drive people crazy was actually recognized in law. 
 How do you know stuff like that? Tengo asked, amazed.
 It shouldnt come as that much of a surprise to you. Ive been living ten years longer than
you, so I ought to know a lot more than you do. 
Tengo had to admit that she was right.
 As a matter of fact, I learned it in an English literature course at Japan Womens University,
in a lecture on Dickens. We had an odd professor. Hed never talk about the story itself
but go off on all sorts of tangents. But all I wanted to say to you was that one moon is
enough to drive people crazy, so if you had two moons hanging in the sky, it would probably
just make them that much crazier. The tides would be thrown off, and more women would
have irregular periods. I bet all kinds of funny stuff would happen. 
 You may be right, Tengo said, after giving it some thought.
 Is that what happens in the world youre writing about? Do people go crazy all the time? 
 No, not really. They do pretty much the same things we do in this world. 
She squeezed Tengos penis softly. So in the world that isnt here, people do pretty much
the same things as those of us who are in this world. If thats the case, then, whats the point
of its being a world that isnt here? 
 The point of its being a world that isnt here is in being able to rewrite the past of the
world that is here, Tengo said.
 So you can rewrite the past any way you like, as much as you like? 
 Thats right. 
 Do you want to rewrite the past? 
 Dont you want to rewrite the past? 
She shook her head. No, I dont have the slightest desire to rewrite the past or history or
whatever. What Id like to rewrite is the present, here and now. 
 But if you rewrote the past, obviously, the present would change, too. What we call the
present is given shape by an accumulation of the past. 
She released another deep sigh. Then, as if testing the operation of an elevator, she
raised and lowered the hand on which Tengos penis lay. I can only say one thing. You used
to be a math prodigy and a judo belt holder and youre even writing a long novel. In spite of all
that, you dont understand anything at all about this world. Not one thing. 
Tengo felt no particular shock at this sweeping judgment. These days, not understanding
anything had more or less become the normal state of affairs for him. This was not a new discovery.
 It doesnt matter, though, even if you dont understand anything, his older girlfriend said,
turning to press her breasts against him. Youre a dreaming math teacher who keeps writing
his long novel day after day, and I want you to stay just like that. I love your wonderful
penis the shape, the size, the feel. I love it when its hard and when its soft, when youre
sick and when youre well. And for the time being, at least, it belongs only to me. It does,
doesnt it? 
 That is correct, Tengo assured her.
 I have told you that Im a terribly jealous person, havent I? 
 You certainly have jealous beyond reason. 
 All reason. Ive been very consistent that way for many years now. She slowly began
moving her fingers in three dimensions. Ill get you hard again right away. You wouldnt have
any objection to that, would you? 
Tengo said that he would have no objection.
 What are you thinking about now? 
 You as a student, listening to a lecture at Japan Womens University. 
 The text was Martin Chuzzlewit. I was eighteen and wearing a cute pleated dress. My
hair was in a ponytail. I was a very serious student, and still a virgin. I feel like Im talking
about something from an earlier life. Anyhow, the difference between ‘lunatic and ‘insane
was the first bit of knowledge I ever learned at the university. What do you think? Does it get
you excited to imagine that? 
 Of course it does, he said, closing his eyes, imagining her pleated dress and her ponytail.
A very serious student, a virgin. But jealous beyond all reason. The moon illuminating
Dickenss London. The insane people and the lunatics wandering around London. They wore
similar hats and similar beards. How was it possible to distinguish one from the other? With
his eyes closed, Tengo could not be sure which world he now belonged to.
1Q84
BOOK 2 JULY-SEPTEMBER
1Q84
CHAPTER 1
Aomame
IT WAS THE MOST BORING TOWN IN THE WORLD
Although the rainy season had not been declared officially over, the Tokyo sky was intensely
blue and the midsummer sun beat down on the earth. With their newly thickened burden
of green leaves, the willows once again cast dense, trembling shadows on the street.
Tamaru met Aomame at the front door, wearing a dark summer suit, white shirt, and solid-color
tie. There was not a drop of sweat on him. Aomame always found it mysterious that
such a big man did not sweat on even the hottest summer days.
He gave her a slight nod, and, after uttering a short greeting that she found barely audible,
he said nothing further. Today there was none of their usual banter. He walked ahead of her
down a long corridor and did not look back, instead guiding her to where the dowager waited.
Aomame guessed that he was in no mood for small talk. Maybe the death of the dog was still
bothering him. We need a new guard dog, he had said on the phone, as if commenting on
the weather, though Aomame knew this was no indication of how he actually felt. The female
German shepherd had been important to him: they had been close for many years. He had
taken her sudden, baffling death as both a personal insult and a challenge. As she looked at
silent Tamarus back, as broad as a classroom blackboard, Aomame could imagine the quiet
anger he was feeling.
Tamaru opened the living-room door to let Aomame in, and stood in the doorway awaiting
instructions from the dowager.
 We wont be needing anything to drink now, she said.
Tamaru gave her a silent nod and quietly closed the door, leaving the two women alone. A
round goldfish bowl, with two goldfish inside, had been placed on the table beside the armchair
in which the dowager was sitting an utterly ordinary goldfish bowl with utterly ordinary
goldfish and the requisite green strip of seaweed. Aomame had been in this large, handsome
living room any number of times, but had never seen the goldfish before. She felt an occasional
puff of cool air against her skin and guessed that the air conditioner must be running on
low. On a table behind the dowager stood a vase containing three white lilies. The flowers
were large and fleshy white, like little animals from an alien land that were deep in meditation.
The dowager waved Aomame over to the sofa beside her. White lace curtains covered the
windows facing the garden, but still the summer afternoon sun was strong. In its light the dowager
looked tired, which was unusual for her. Slumped in the big chair, she rested her chin on
her hand, eyes sunken, neck more wrinkled than before, lips drained of color. The outer tips
of her long eyebrows had dropped a notch, as if they had given up the struggle against gravity.
Perhaps the efficiency of her circulatory system had declined: her skin appeared to have
white, powdery blotches. She had aged at least five or six years since their last meeting. And
today, for a change, it didnt seem to bother her to show such obvious fatigue. This was not
normal for her. As far as Aomame had observed, the dowager always tried with much success to
keep her appearance smart, her inner strength fully mobilized, her posture perfectly
erect, her expression focused, and all signs of aging hidden.
Aomame noticed that many things in the house were different today. Even the light had
taken on a different color. And the bowl of goldfish, such a common object, did not fit in with
the elegant high-ceilinged room full of antique furniture.
The dowager remained silent for a time, chin in hand, staring into the space adjacent to
Aomame, where, Aomame knew, there was nothing special to be seen. The dowager simply
needed a spot where she could temporarily park her vision.
 Do you need something to drink? the dowager asked softly.
 No, thanks, Im not thirsty, Aomame answered.
 Theres iced tea over there. Pour yourself a glass if you like. 
The dowager pointed toward a side table set next to the door. On it was a pitcher of tea
containing ice and lemon slices, and, next to that, three cut-glass tumblers of different colors.
 Thank you, Aomame said, remaining seated and waiting for the dowagers next words.
For a time, however, the dowager maintained her silence. She had something she needed
to talk to Aomame about, but if she actually put it into words, the facts contained in the
 something might irretrievably become more definite as facts, so she wanted to postpone that
moment, if only briefly. Such was the apparent significance of her silence. She glanced at the
goldfish bowl next to her chair. Then, as if resigning herself to the inevitable, she finally focused
her gaze directly on Aomame. Her lips were clenched in a straight line, the ends of
which she had deliberately turned up.
 You heard from Tamaru that the safe house guard dog died, didnt you in that inexplicable
way? 
 Yes, I did. 
 After that, Tsubasa disappeared. 
Aomame frowned slightly. Disappeared? 
 She just vanished. Probably during the night. This morning she was gone. 
Aomame pursed her lips, searching for something she could say, but the words did not
come to her immediately. But … from what you told me last time … I thought Tsubasa always
had somebody nearby when she slept … in the same room … as a precaution. 
 Yes, that is true, but the woman fell into an unusually deep sleep and was totally unaware
that Tsubasa had left. When the sun came up, there was no sign of Tsubasa in the bed. 
 So the German shepherd died, and the next day Tsubasa disappeared, Aomame said,
as if to verify the accuracy of her understanding.
The dowager nodded. So far, we dont know for sure if the two events are related, but I
think that they are. 
Aomame glanced at the goldfish bowl on the table for no particular reason. The dowager
followed Aomames glance. The two goldfish swam coolly back and forth in their glass pond,
barely moving their fins. The summer sunlight refracted strangely in the bowl, creating the illusion
that one was peering into a mysterious ocean cave.
 I bought these goldfish for Tsubasa, the dowager said by way of explanation, looking at
Aomame. There was a little festival at one of the Azabu shopping streets, so I took her for a
walk there. I thought it wasnt healthy for her to be locked up in her room all the time. Tamaru
came with us, of course. I bought her the fish at one of the stands. She seemed fascinated by
them. She put them in her room and spent the rest of the day staring at them. When we realized
she was gone, I brought them here. Now Im spending a lot of time watching the fish.
Just staring at them, doing nothing. Strangely enough, you really dont get tired of watching
them. Ive never done this before stared at goldfish so intently. 
 Do you have any idea where Tsubasa might have gone? Aomame asked.
 None whatsoever, the dowager answered. She doesnt have any relatives. As far as I
know, the child has nowhere to go in this world. 
 What is the chance that someone took her away by force? 
The dowager gave a nervous little shake of the head, as if she were chasing away an invisible
fly. No, she just left. No one came and forced her to go. If that had happened, it would
have awakened someone around her. Those women are all light sleepers. No, Im sure she
made up her mind and left on her own. She tiptoed downstairs, quietly unlocked the front
door, and went out. I can see it happening. She didnt make the dog bark it had died the
night before. She didnt even change her clothes. The next days clothing was all nicely folded
nearby, but she went out in her pajamas. I dont think she has any money, either. 
Aomames grimace deepened. All by herself in pajamas? 
The dowager nodded. Yes, where could a ten-year-old girl all alone, in pajamas, with no
money possibly go in the middle of the night? Its inconceivable, using ordinary common
sense. But for some reason, I dont find it all that strange. Far from it. I even get the feeling
that it was something that had to happen. Were not even looking for her. Im not doing anything,
just watching the goldfish like this. 
She glanced toward the goldfish bowl as she spoke. Then she turned back toward
Aomame.
 I know that it would be pointless to search for her. She has gone somewhere out of our
reach. 
The dowager stopped resting her chin on her hand and, with her hands on her knees, she
slowly released a breath that she had held inside for a very long time.
 But why would she have done such a thing? Aomame asked. Why would she have left
the safe house? She was protected as long as she stayed, and she had nowhere else to go. 
 I dont know why. But I feel that the dogs death was the trigger. She loved the dog, and
the dog loved her. They were like best friends. The fact that the dog died and died in such a
bloody, incomprehensible way was a great shock to her. Of course. It was a shock to everyone
in the house. Now that I think of it, however, the killing of the dog might have been a kind
of message to Tsubasa. 
 A message? 
 That she should not stay here. That they knew she was hiding here. That she had to
leave. That even worse things might happen to the people around her if she didnt go. 
The dowagers fingers ticked off an imaginary interval on her lap. Aomame waited for the
rest of what the dowager had to say.
 She probably understood the message and left on her own. Im sure she didnt leave because
she wanted to. She had to go, even knowing that she had no place to go. I can hardly
stand the thought that a ten-year-old girl was forced to make such a decision. 
Aomame wanted to reach out and hold the dowagers hand, but she stopped herself.
There was still more to tell.
The dowager continued, It was a great shock to me, of course. I feel as if a part of me
has been physically torn out. I was planning to formally adopt her, as you know. I knew that
things would not work out so easily, but even recognizing all the difficulties involved, it was
something I wanted to do. I was in no position to complain to anyone if it did not work out, but,
to tell you the truth, at my age, these things take an enormous toll. 
Aomame said, But Tsubasa might suddenly come back one day soon. She has no
money, and theres no place she can go … 
 Id like to think youre right, but that is not going to happen, the dowager said, her voice
completely flat. Shes only ten years old, but she has ideas of her own. She made up her
mind and left. I doubt she would ever decide to come back. 
 Excuse me a moment, Aomame said, walking over to the table by the door, where she
poured herself some iced tea into a green cut-glass tumbler. She was not particularly thirsty,
but she wanted to introduce a pause into the conversation by leaving her seat. She then returned
to the sofa, took a sip of tea, and set the tumbler down on the glass tabletop.
The dowager waited for Aomame to settle onto the sofa again and said, Thats enough
about Tsubasa for now, stretching her neck and clasping her hands together to give herself
an emotional pause. Lets talk about Sakigake and its Leader. Ill tell you what we have been
able to find out. This is the main reason I called you here today. Of course, it also has to do
with Tsubasa. 
Aomame nodded. She had been expecting this.
 As I told you last time, we absolutely must ‘take care of this Leader. We must transport
him into another world. You know, of course, that he is in the habit of raping preteen girls,
none of whom have had their first period. He makes up ‘doctrine and exploits the religions
system to justify such actions. I have had this researched in as much detail as possible and
paid quite a bit of money for the information. It wasnt easy. The cost far exceeded my expectations,
but we succeeded in identifying four girls he is likely to have raped. Tsubasa was the
fourth. 
Aomame lifted her glass and took a sip of iced tea, tasting nothing, as if her mouth were
stuffed with cotton that absorbed all flavor.
 We still dont know all the details, but at least two of the girls are still living in the religions
compound, the dowager said. Were told they serve Leader as his own personal shrine
maidens. They never appear before the ordinary believers. We dont know if they stay there of
their own free will or are simply unable to run away. We also dont know if there is still a sexual
relationship between them and Leader. In any case, they all live in the same place, like a
family. The area of Leaders residence is strictly off-limits to ordinary believers. Many things
are still shrouded in mystery 
The cut-glass tumbler was beginning to sweat on the tabletop. The dowager paused to
catch her breath and then continued.
 We do know one thing for certain. The first of the four victims is Leaders own daughter. 
Aomame frowned. Her facial muscles began to move involuntarily, becoming greatly distorted.
She wanted to say something, but her voice would not form the words.
 Its true, the dowager said. They think that the first girl he violated was his own daughter.
It happened seven years ago, when she was ten. 
The dowager lifted the intercom and told Tamaru to bring them a bottle of sherry and two
glasses. They fell silent while they waited for him, each woman putting her thoughts in order.
Tamaru came in, carrying a tray with a new bottle of sherry and two slim, elegant crystal
glasses. After lining up everything on the table, he twisted open the bottle with a sharp, precise
movement, as if wringing a chickens neck. The sherry gurgled as he poured it. The dowager
nodded, and Tamaru bowed and left the room, saying nothing, as usual. Not even his
steps made a sound.
The dog is not the only thing thats bothering him, Aomame thought. The girls disappearance
is another deep wound for him. She was so important to the dowager, and yet she vanished
before his very eyes! Strictly speaking, the girl was not his responsibility. He was not a
live-in bodyguard; he slept in his own home at night, a ten-minute walk away, unless some
special task kept him at the dowagers. Both the dogs death and the girls disappearance had
happened at night, when he was absent. He could have prevented neither. His job was to protect
the dowager and her Willow House. His duties did not extend to security for the safe
house, which lay outside the compound. Even so, the events were a personal defeat for
Tamaru, an unforgivable slight.
 Are you prepared to take care of that man? the dowager asked Aomame.
 Fully prepared, Aomame assured her.
 Its not going to be easy, the dowager said. Of course, none of the work I ask you to do
is easy. But this is especially difficult. Well do everything we can to set it up, but Im not sure
of the extent to which we can guarantee your safety. It will probably involve a greater risk than
usual. 
 I understand. 
 As I have told you before, I would rather not send you into dangerous situations, but to be
honest, our choices are limited this time. 
 I dont mind, Aomame said. We cant leave that man alive in this world. 
The dowager lifted her glass and let some of her sherry glide over her tongue. Then she
watched the goldfish again for a while.
 Ive always enjoyed sherry at room temperature on a summer afternoon. Im not fond of
cold drinks on hot days. Ill take a drink of sherry and, a little later, lie down for a nap, and fall
asleep before I know it. When I wake up, some of the days heat is gone. I hope I can die that
way drink a little sherry on a summer afternoon, stretch out on a sofa, drop off to sleep, and
never wake up. 
Aomame also lifted her sherry glass and took a small sip. She was not fond of sherry, but
she definitely needed a drink. This time the taste got through to her, unlike the iced tea. The
alcohol stabbed at her tongue.
 I want you to tell me the truth, the dowager said. Are you afraid to die? 
Aomame needed no time at all to answer. Shaking her head, she said, Not particularly living
as myself scares me more. 
The dowager gave a fleeting smile that seemed to revive her a little. Her lips now had a
touch of color. Maybe speaking with Aomame had helped, or perhaps the sip of sherry was
having its effect.
 I believe you said there is a particular man you are in love with. 
 Yes, its true, but the chances of my actually being with him are infinitely close to zero. So
even if I were to die, the resulting loss would also be infinitely close to zero. 
The dowager narrowed her eyes. Is there a concrete reason that you think you probably
will never be united with him? 
 Not in particular, Aomame said. Other than the fact that I am me. 
 Dont you have any intention of taking the initiative to approach him? 
Aomame shook her head. The most important thing to me is the fact that I want him with
my whole heart. 
The dowager kept her eyes fixed on Aomame for a while in apparent admiration. You are
very clear about your own ideas, arent you? she said.
 I had to be that way, Aomame said, going through the motions of bringing the sherry
glass to her lips. It was not a matter of choice. 
Silence filled the room for a short while. The lilies continued hanging their heads, and the
goldfish continued swimming in the refracted summer sunlight.
 We can set things up so that you are alone with Leader, the dowager said. It wont be
easy, and it will take a good deal of time, but I can make it happen. All you have to do is what
you always do for us. Except this time, youll have to disappear afterward. Have plastic surgery.
Quit your current job, of course, and go far away. Change your name. Get rid of all your
possessions. Become another person. Of course you will be compensated with a suitable
payment. I will be responsible for everything else. Is this all right with you? 
Aomame said, As I said before, I dont have anything to lose. My work, my name, this life
of mine in Tokyo: none of them mean anything to me. I have no objections at all. 
 And your face? You dont mind if it changes? 
 Would it change for the better? 
 If you wanted, of course we could do that, the dowager replied with a somber expression.
 We can make a face according to your wishes within limits, of course. 
 As long as were at it, I might as well have them do a breast enlargement. 
The dowager nodded. That may be a good idea for disguise purposes, I mean, of
course. 
 Im just kidding, Aomame said, softening her expression. Im not exactly proud of them,
but I dont mind leaving them just the way they are. Theyre light and easy to carry. And it
would be such a pain to buy all new bras. 
 Thats nothing. Id buy you as many as you liked. 
 No, Im kidding about that, too, Aomame said.
The dowager cracked a smile. Sorry, Im not used to hearing jokes from you. 
 I dont have any objection to plastic surgery, Aomame said. Ive never felt I wanted to
have it, but I dont have any reason to refuse it, either. Ive never really liked my face, and I
dont have anybody who likes it especially, either. 
 Youll lose all your friends, too, you know. 
 I dont have any ‘friends, Aomame said, but then Ayumi came to mind. If I were to just
disappear without saying anything to her, she might be sad. She might even feel betrayed.
But there had been a problem with calling her a friend right from the start. Aomame was
traveling too dangerous a road to make friends with a police officer.
 I had two children, the dowager said. A boy and a girl. She was three years younger
than he. As I told you before, she died she committed suicide. She had no children. My son
and I have had our troubles and have not gotten along well for a very long time. I hardly ever
talk to him now. I have three grandchildren, but I havent seen them for a long time, either.
When I die, though, most of my estate will go to my only son and his children, almost automatically.
Wills dont carry much force these days, unlike the way it used to be. For now,
though, my discretionary funds are quite considerable. Id like to leave a lot of that money to
you, if you succeed in this new task. Please dont misunderstand, though: Im not trying to buy
you off. All I want to say is that I think of you as my own daughter. I wish you were my actual
daughter. 
Aomame gazed quietly at the dowager, who set her sherry glass on the table as if suddenly
recalling that she was holding it. She then turned to look at the glossy petals of the lilies
behind her. Inhaling their rich fragrance, she looked once again at Aomame.
 As I said before, I was planning to adopt Tsubasa, but now Ive lost her, too. I couldnt
help her. I did nothing but stand by and watch her disappear alone into the dark of night. And
now, Im getting ready to send you into far greater danger than ever before. I dont really want
to do that, but unfortunately, I cant think of any other way to accomplish our goal. All I can do
is offer you tangible compensation. 
Aomame listened attentively without comment. When the dowager fell silent, the chirping
of a bird came clearly through the windowpane. It continued for a while, until the bird flew off
somewhere.
 That man must be ‘taken care of, no matter what, Aomame said. That is the most important
thing now. I have nothing but the deepest gratitude for the way you feel about me. I
think you know that I rejected my parents and they abandoned me when I was a child; we
both had our reasons. I had no choice but to take a path without anything like family affection.
In order to survive on my own, I had to adapt myself to such a frame of mind. It wasnt easy. I
often felt that I was nothing but scum some kind of meaningless, filthy residue which is
why I am so grateful to you for what you just said to me. But its a bit too late for me to change
my attitude or lifestyle. This is not true of Tsubasa, however. Im sure she can still be saved.
Please dont resign yourself to losing her so easily. Dont lose hope. Get her back! 
The dowager nodded. Im afraid I didnt put it very well. I am of course not resigned to losing
her. I will do everything in my power to bring her back. But as you can see, Im too tired
right now. My failure to help her has filled me with a deep sense of powerlessness. I need a
little time to get my energy back. On the other hand, I may just be too old. The energy might
never come back, no matter how long I wait. 
Aomame got up from the sofa and went over to the dowager. Sitting on the arm of her
armchair, she grasped the womans slim, elegant hand.
 Youre an incredibly tough woman, Aomame said. You can go on living with more
strength than anybody. You just happen to be exhausted. You ought to lie down and get
some rest. When you wake up, youll be your old self, Im sure. 
 Thank you, the dowager said, squeezing Aomames hand in return. Youre right: I
should probably get some sleep. 
 Ill be leaving, then, Aomame said. I will be waiting to hear from you. Ill put my things in
order not that I own so many ‘things to put in order. 
 Prepare yourself to travel light. If theres anything you need, well take care of it. 
Aomame released the dowagers hand and stood up. Good night. Im sure everything is
going to go well. 
The dowager nodded. Still cradled in her chair, she closed her eyes. Aomame took one
last glance at the goldfish bowl and one last whiff of the lilies before she left the high-ceilinged
living room.
. . .
Tamaru was waiting for her at the front door. Five oclock had come, but the sun was still
high in the sky, its intensity undiminished. The glare of its light reflected off Tamarus black
cordovan shoes, which were perfectly polished as usual. A few white summer clouds appeared
in the sky, but they gathered at its corners, where they could not block the sun. The
end of the rainy season was not yet near, but there had been several days in a row of midsummer-like
weather, complete with the cries of cicadas, which now sounded from the
gardens trees. The cries were not very strong. If anything, they seemed somewhat restrained.
But they were a positive sign of the season to come. The world was still working as it
always did. The cicadas cried, the clouds moved along, Tamarus shoes were spotless. But
all of this seemed fresh and new to Aomame: that the world should continue along as usual.
Aomame asked Tamaru, Can we talk a little? Do you have time? 
 Fine, Tamaru said. His expression did not change. I have time. Killing time is part of
what I do for a living. He lowered himself into one of the garden chairs by the front door.
Aomame sat in the chair next to his. The overhanging eaves blocked the sunlight. The two of
them sat in their cool shadow. There was the smell of fresh grass.
 Summers here already, Tamaru said.
 The cicadas have started crying, Aomame replied.
 They seem a little early this year. This areas going to get very noisy again for a while.
That piercing cry hurts your ears. I heard exactly the same sound when I stayed in the town of
Niagara Falls. It just kept going from morning to night without a letup, like a million cicadas. 
 So youve been to Niagara Falls. 
Tamaru nodded. It was the most boring town in the world. I stayed there alone for three
days and there was nothing to do but listen to the sound of the falls. It was too noisy to read. 
 What were you doing alone in Niagara Falls for three days? 
Instead of answering, Tamaru just shook his head.
Tamaru and Aomame went on listening to the faint cries of the cicadas, saying nothing.
 Ive got a favor to ask of you, Aomame said.
This seemed to pique Tamarus interest. Aomame was not in the habit of asking people
for favors.
She said, Its kind of unusual. I hope it doesnt annoy you. 
 I dont know if Ill be able to accommodate you, but Ill be glad at least to listen. Its not polite
to be annoyed when a lady asks a favor. 
 I need a gun, Aomame said flatly. One that would fit in a handbag. Something with a
small recoil but still fairly powerful and dependable. Not a modified fake or one of those
Filipino copies. Ill only need to use it once. And one bullet should be enough. 
Silence. Tamaru kept his eyes on Aomame the whole time, unwavering.
Then, speaking slowly and carefully, Tamaru said, You do know that it is illegal in this
country for an ordinary citizen to own a handgun, dont you? 
 Of course I do. 
 And just so you know, let me say this, Tamaru continued. I have never once been
charged with a crime. That is to say, I have no police record. Now, this may be owing to some
oversights on the part of the justice system, I dont deny that. But at least as far as the written
record is concerned, Im a good citizen. Honest, upright, pure. Im gay, but thats not against
the law. I pay my taxes as ordered, and I vote in elections though no candidate I voted for
was ever elected. Ive even paid all my parking tickets before the due date. I havent been
stopped for speeding in the past ten years. Im enrolled in the National Health Insurance system.
I pay my NHK licensing fee automatically from my bank account, and I carry both an
American Express card and a MasterCard. Although I have no intention of doing so now, I
could qualify for a thirty-year mortgage if I wanted one, and it always pleases me immensely
to think that I am in such a position. In other words, I could be called a pillar of society without
the least bit of irony. Do you realize that you are asking such a person to provide you with a
gun? 
 Which is why I said I hoped you wouldnt be annoyed. 
 Yes, I heard you say that. 
 Sorry, but I couldnt think of anyone besides you I could ask. 
Tamaru made a small, strangled sound in the back of his throat that could well have been
the suppression of a sigh. Now, just supposing that I were in a position to provide you with
what you are asking for, common sense tells me that I would probably want to ask you this:
Whom do you intend to shoot? 
Aomame pointed her index finger toward her own temple. Right here, probably. 
Tamaru stared at the finger expressionlessly for a moment. My next question would probably
be, ‘Why? 
 Because I dont want to be captured, Aomame said. Im not afraid to die. And although I
probably wouldnt like it, I could tolerate going to prison. But I refuse to be held hostage and
tortured by some unknown bunch of people. I just dont want to give away anybodys name.
Do you see what I am saying? 
 I think I do. 
 I dont plan to shoot anybody or to rob a bank. So I dont need some big, twenty-shot
semiautomatic. I want something compact without much kick. 
 A drug would be another option. Its more practical than trying to get ahold of a gun. 
 Taking out a drug and swallowing it would take time. Before I could crush a capsule in my
teeth, somebody might stick a hand in my mouth and stop me. With a gun, I could hold the
other person off while I took care of things. 
Tamaru thought about this for a moment, his right eyebrow slightly raised.
 Id rather not lose you, if I can help it, he said. I kind of like you. Personally, that is. 
Aomame gave him a little smile. For a human female, you mean? 
Without changing his expression, Tamaru said, Male, female, human, dog I dont have
that many individuals Im fond of. 
 No, of course not, Aomame said.
 At the same time, my single most important duty is protecting Madames health and
safety. And Im what should I say? kind of a pro. 
 That goes without saying. 
 So let me see what I can do. I cant guarantee anything, but I might be able to find somebody
I know who can respond to your request. This is a very delicate business, though. Its
not like buying an electric blanket by mail order. It might take a week before I can get back to
you. 
 That would be fine, Aomame said.
Tamaru squinted up at the trees where the cicadas were buzzing. I hope everything goes
well. Ill do whatever I can, within reason. 
 Thanks, Tamaru. This next job will probably be my last. I might never see you again. 
Tamaru spread his arms, palms up, as if he were standing in a desert, waiting for the rain
to fall, but he said nothing. He had big, fleshy palms marked with scars. His hands looked
more like parts of a giant machine than of a human body.
 I dont like good-byes, Tamaru said. I didnt even have a chance to say good-bye to my
parents. 
 Are they dead? 
 I dont know whether theyre alive or dead. I was born on Sakhalin Island the year before
the war ended. The south end of Sakhalin was a Japanese territory called Karafuto, but the
Soviets occupied it, and my parents were taken prisoner. My father apparently had some kind
of job with the harbor facilities. Most of the Japanese civilian prisoners were returned to Japan
soon enough, but my parents couldnt go to Japan because they were Koreans who had been
sent to Sakhalin as laborers. The Japanese government refused to take them. Once Japan
lost the war, Koreans were no longer subjects of the empire of Japan. It was terrible. The government
didnt have a shred of sympathy for them. They could have gone to North Korea if
they wanted to, but not to the South, because the Soviet Union at the time didnt recognize
the existence of South Korea. My parents came from a fishing village near Pusan and had no
desire to go to the North. They had no relatives or friends up there. I was still a baby. They
put me in the hands of a couple being repatriated to Japan, and those people took me across
the straits to Hokkaido. The food situation in Sakhalin at the time was horrendous, and the
Soviet armys treatment of their prisoners was terrible. My parents had other small children
and must have figured it would be hard to bring me up there. They probably figured they
would send me over to Hokkaido first and join me later. Or maybe it was just an excuse to get
rid of me. I dont know the details. In any case, we were never reunited. Theyre probably still
in Sakhalin to this day assuming they havent died yet. 
 You dont remember them? 
 Not a thing. I was just a little over a year old when we separated. The couple kept me for
a while and then sent me to a facility for orphans in the mountains near Hakodate, way down
near the southern tip of Hokkaido, about as far as you could go from Sakhalin and still be on
Hokkaido. They probably couldnt afford to keep me. Some Catholic organization ran the
orphanage, which was a very tough place. There were tons of orphans after the war, and not
enough food or heat for them all. I had to do all kinds of things to survive. Tamaru glanced
down at the back of his right hand. So an adoption was arranged for forms sake, I became a
Japanese citizen, and got a Japanese name: Kenichi Tamaru. All I know about my original
name is the surname: Park and there are as many Koreans named ‘Park as there are stars
in the sky. 
Sitting side by side with Tamaru, Aomame listened to the cries of the cicadas.
 You should get another dog, Aomame said.
 Madame says so too. The safe house needs another guard dog, at least. But I just dont
feel like it yet. 
 I understand. But you should get one. Not that Im in any position to be advising people. 
 I will, Tamaru said. We do need a trained guard dog, in the end. Ill get in touch with a
breeder right away. 
Aomame looked at her watch and stood up. There was still some time left until sunset, but
already a hint of evening marked the sky a different blue mixed in with the blue of the afternoon.
She could feel some of the lingering effects of the sherry. Could the dowager still be
sleeping?
 According to Chekhov, Tamaru said, rising from his chair, once a gun appears in a
story, it has to be fired. 
 Meaning what? 
Tamaru stood facing Aomame directly. He was only an inch or two taller than she was.
 Meaning, dont bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at
some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away with all useless ornamentation. 
Aomame straightened the sleeves of her dress and slung her bag over her shoulder. And
that worries you if a pistol comes on the scene, its sure to be fired at some point. 
 In Chekhovs view, yes. 
 So youre thinking youd rather not hand me a pistol. 
 Theyre dangerous. And illegal. And Chekhov is a writer you can trust. 
 But this is not a story. Were talking about the real world. 
Tamaru narrowed his eyes and looked hard at Aomame. Then, slowly opening his mouth,
he said, Who knows? 
1Q84
CHAPTER 2
Tengo
I DONT HAVE A THING EXCEPT MY SOUL
He set his recording of Janáeks Sinfonietta on the turntable and pressed the auto-play 
button. Seiji Ozawa conducting the Chicago Symphony. The turntable started to spin at 33
RPM, the tonearm moved over the edge of the record, and the needle traced the groove. Following
the brass introduction, the ornate timpani resounded from the speakers. It was the section
that Tengo liked best.
While listening to the music, Tengo faced the screen of his word processor and typed in
characters. It was a daily habit of his to listen to Janáeks Sinfonietta early in the morning. The
piece had retained a special significance for him ever since he performed it as an impromptu
high school percussionist. It gave him a sense of personal encouragement and protection or
at least he felt that it did.
He sometimes listened to Janáeks Sinfonietta with his older girlfriend. Not bad, she
would say, but she liked old jazz records more than classical the older the better. It was an
odd taste for a woman her age. Her favorite record was a collection of W. C. Handy blues
songs, performed by the young Louis Armstrong, with Barney Bigard on clarinet and Trummy
Young on trombone. She gave Tengo a copy, though less for him than for herself to listen to.
After sex, they would often lie in bed listening to the record. She never tired of it.
 Armstrongs trumpet and singing are absolutely wonderful, of course, but if you ask me, the
thing you should concentrate on is Barney Bigards clarinet, she would say. Yet the actual
number of Bigard solos on the record was small, and they tended to be limited to a single
chorus. Louis Armstrong was the star of this record. But she obviously loved those few Bigard
solos, the way she would quietly hum along with every memorized note.
She said she supposed there might be more talented jazz clarinetists than Barney Bigard,
but you couldnt find another one who could play with such warmth and delicacy. His best performances
always gave rise to a particular mental image. Tengo could not, off the top of his
head, name any other jazz clarinetists, but as he listened to this record over and over, he
began to appreciate the sheer, unforced beauty of its clarinet performances their richly nourishing
and imaginative qualities. He had to listen closely and repeatedly for this to happen,
and he had to have a capable guide. He would have missed the nuances on his own.
His girlfriend once said, Barney Bigard plays beautifully, like a gifted second baseman.
His solos are marvelous, but where he really shines is in the backup he gives the other musicians.
That is so hard, but he does it like its nothing at all. Only an attentive listener can fully
appreciate his true worth. 
Whenever the sixth tune on the flip side of the LP, Atlanta Blues, began, she would grab
one of Tengos body parts and praise Bigards concise, exquisite solo, which was sandwiched
between Armstrongs song and his trumpet solo. Listen to that! Amazing that first, long wail
like a little childs cry! What is it surprise? Overflowing joy? An appeal for happiness? It turns
into a joyful sigh and weaves its way through a beautiful river of sound until its smoothly absorbed
into some perfect, unknowable place. There! Listen! Nobody else can play such thrilling
solos. Jimmy Noone, Sidney Bechet, Pee Wee Russell, Benny Goodman: theyre all great
clarinetists, but none of them can create such perfectly sculptured works of art. 
 How come you know so much about old-time jazz? Tengo once asked.
 I have lots of past lives that you dont know anything about past lives that no one can
change in any way, she said, gently massaging Tengos scrotum with the palm of her hand.
When he was finished writing for the morning, Tengo walked to the station and bought a
paper at the newsstand. This he carried into a nearby café, where he ordered a morning set 
of buttered toast and a hard-boiled egg. He drank coffee and opened the paper while waiting
for his food to come. As Komatsu had predicted, there was an article about Fuka-Eri on the
human interest page. Not very large, the article appeared above an ad for Mitsubishi automobiles,
under the headline Popular High School Girl Writer Runaway? 
Fuka-Eri (penname of Eriko Fukada, 17), author of the current bestseller Air Chrysalis,
has been listed as missing, it was revealed yesterday afternoon. According to her guardian,
cultural anthropologist Takayuki Ebisuno (63), who filed the search request with the Oume police
station, Eriko has failed to return either to her home in Oume City or to her Tokyo apartment
since the night of June 27, and there has been no word from her since then. In response
to this newspapers telephone inquiry, Mr. Ebisuno said that Eriko was in her usual good spirits
when he last saw her, that he could think of no reason she would want to go into hiding,
that she had never once failed to come home without permission, and that he is worried
something might have happened to her. The editor in charge of Air Chrysalis at the ** publishing
company, Yuji Komatsu, said, The book has been at the top of the bestseller list for six
straight weeks and has garnered a great deal of attention, but Miss Fukada herself has not
wanted to make public appearances. We at the company have been unable to determine
whether her current disappearance might have something to do with her attitude toward such
matters. While young, Miss Fukada is an author with abundant talent from whom much can
be expected in the future. We hope that she reappears in good health as soon as possible. 
The police investigation is proceeding with several possible leads in view.
That was probably about as much as the newspapers could say at this stage, Tengo concluded.
If they gave it a more sensational treatment and Fuka-Eri showed up at home two
days later as if nothing had happened, the reporter who wrote the article would be embar-
rassed and the newspaper itself would lose face. The same was true for the police. Both issued
brief, neutral statements like weather balloons to see what would happen. The story
would turn big once the weekly magazines got ahold of it and the TV news shows turned up
the volume. That would not happen for a few more days.
Sooner or later, though, things would heat up, that was for certain. A sensation was inevitable.
There were probably only four people in the world who knew that she had not been abducted
but was lying low somewhere, alone. Fuka-Eri herself knew it, of course, and Tengo
knew it. Professor Ebisuno and his daughter Azami also knew it. No one else knew that the
fuss over her disappearance was a hoax meant to attract broad attention.
Tengo could not decide whether his knowledge of the truth was something he should be
pleased or upset about. Pleased, probably: at least he didnt have to worry about Fuka-Eris
welfare. She was in a safe place. At the same time it was also clear that Tengo was complicit
in this complicated plot. Professor Ebisuno was using it as a lever, in order to pry up an ominous
boulder and let the sunlight in. Then he would wait to see what crawled out from under
the rock, and Tengo was being forced to stand right next to him. Tengo did not want to know
what would crawl out from under the rock. He would prefer not to see it. It was bound to be a
huge source of trouble. But he sensed he would have no choice but to look.
After he had drunk his coffee and eaten his toast and eggs, Tengo exited the café, leaving
his rumpled newspaper behind. He went back to his apartment, brushed his teeth, showered,
and prepared to leave for school.
. . .
During the noon break at the cram school, Tengo had a strange visitor. He had just finished
his morning class and was reading a few of the days newspapers in the teachers
lounge when the school directors secretary approached him and said there was someone
who wanted to see him. The secretary was a capable woman one year older than Tengo who,
in spite of her title, handled virtually all of the schools administrative business. Her facial features
were a bit too irregular for her to be considered beautiful, but she had a nice figure and
marvelous taste in clothes.
 He says his name is Mr. Ushikawa. 
Tengo did not recognize the name.
For some reason, a slight frown crossed her face. He says he has ‘something important
to discuss with you and wants to see you alone if possible. 
 Something important? Tengo asked, taken aback. No one ever brought him something
important to discuss at the cram school.
 The reception room was empty, so I showed him in there. Teachers arent supposed to
use that room without permission, but I figured … 
 Thanks very much, Tengo said, and gave her his best smile.
Unimpressed, she hurried off somewhere, the hem of her new agnès b. summer jacket
flapping in the breeze.
Ushikawa was a short man, probably in his mid-forties. His trunk had already filled out so
that it had lost all sign of a waist, and excess flesh was gathering at his throat. But Tengo
could not be sure of his age. Owing to the peculiarity (or the uncommonness) of his appearance,
the clues necessary for guessing his age were difficult to find. He could have been
older than that, or he could have been younger anywhere between, say, thirty-two and fiftysix.
His teeth were crooked, and his spine was strangely curved. The large crown of his head
formed an abnormally flat bald area with lopsided edges. It was reminiscent of a military heliport
that had been made by cutting away the peak of a small, strategically important hill.
Tengo had seen such a heliport in a Vietnam War documentary. Around the borders of the
flat, lopsided area of his head clung thick, black, curly hair that had been allowed to grow too
long, hanging down shaggily over the mans ears. Ninety-eight people out of a hundred would
probably be reminded by it of pubic hair. Tengo had no idea what the other two would think.
Everything about the man his face, his body seemed to have been formed asymmetrically.
Tengo noticed this right away. Of course, all peoples bodies are asymmetrical to some
extent: that in itself was not contrary to the laws of nature. Tengo himself was aware that his
own two eyelids had slightly different shapes, and his left testicle hung slightly lower than the
right one. Our bodies are not mass-produced in a factory according to fixed standards. But in
this mans case, the differences between right and left went far beyond the bounds of common
sense. This imbalance, obvious to any observer, could not help but annoy those in his
presence and cause them the same kind of discomfort they would feel in front of a funhouse
mirror.
The mans gray suit had countless tiny wrinkles, which made it look like an expanse of
earth that had been ground down by a glacier. One flap of his white dress shirts collar was
sticking out, and the knot of his tie was contorted, as if it had twisted itself from the sheer discomfort
of having to exist in that place. The suit, the shirt, and the tie were all slightly wrong in
size. The pattern on his tie might have been an inept art students impressionistic rendering of
a bowl of tangled, soggy noodles. Each piece of clothing looked like something he had bought
at a discount store to fill an immediate need. But the longer Tengo studied them, the sorrier
he felt for the clothes themselves, for having to be worn by this man. Tengo paid little attention
to his own clothing, but he was strangely concerned about the clothing worn by others. If
he had to compile a list of the worst dressers he had met in the past ten years, this man
would be somewhere near the top. It was not just that he had terrible style: he also gave the
impression that he was deliberately desecrating the very idea of wearing clothes.
When Tengo entered the reception room, the man stood and produced a business card
from his card case, handing it to Tengo with a bow. Toshiharu Ushikawa, it said in both Japanese
characters and Roman script. An ordinary enough first name, but Ushikawa ? Bull
River ? Tengo had never seen that one before. The card further identified the man as Fulltime
Director, New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts, located
downtown in Kojimachi, Chiyoda Ward, and gave the foundations telephone number.
Tengo had no idea what kind of organization the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement
of Scholarship and the Arts might be, nor what it meant to be a full-time director of anything.
The business card, though, was a handsome one, with an embossed logo, not a makeshift
item. Tengo studied it for several moments before looking at the man again. He felt sure there
could not be many people in the world whose appearance was so out of keeping with the
grandiose title Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship
and the Arts. 
They sat in easy chairs on opposite sides of a low table and looked at each other. The
man gave his sweaty forehead a few vigorous rubs with a handkerchief and returned the pitiful
cloth to his jacket pocket. The receptionist brought in two cups of green tea on a tray.
Tengo thanked her as she left.
Ushikawa said nothing to her, but to Tengo he said, Please forgive me for interrupting
your break and for arriving without having first made an appointment. The words themselves
were polite and formal enough, but his tone was strangely colloquial, and Tengo found it almost
offensive. Have you finished lunch? If you like, we could go out and talk over a meal. 
 I dont eat lunch when Im working, Tengo said. Ill have something light after my afternoon
class, so dont worry. 
 I see. Well, then, with your permission, Ill tell you what I have in mind and we can discuss
it here. This seems like a nice, quiet place where we can talk without interruption. He
surveyed the reception room as though appraising its value. There was nothing special about
the room. It had one big oil painting hanging on the wall a picture of some mountain, more
impressive for the weight of its paint than anything else. A vase had an arrangement of
flowers resembling dahlias dull blossoms reminiscent of a slow-witted matron. Tengo
wondered why a cram school would keep such a gloomy reception room.
 Let me belatedly introduce myself. As you can see from the card, my name is Ushikawa.
My friends all call me ‘Ushi, never ‘Ushikawa. Just plain, old ‘Ushi, as if I were a bull, Ushikawa
said, smiling.
Friends? Tengo wondered out of pure curiosity what kind of person would ever want to
be this mans friend.
On first impression, Ushikawa honestly made Tengo think of some creepy thing that had
crawled out of a hole in the earth a slimy thing of uncertain shape that in fact was not supposed
to come out into the light. He might conceivably be one of the things that Professor
Ebisuno had lured out from under a rock. Tengo unconsciously wrinkled his brow and placed
the business card, which was still in his hand, on the table. Toshiharu Ushikawa. That was
this mans name.
 I am sure that you are very busy, Mr. Kawana, so with your permission I will abbreviate
any preliminary background and proceed directly to the heart of the matter, Ushikawa said.
Tengo answered with a little nod.
Ushikawa took a sip of tea and launched into the business at hand. You have probably
never heard of the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts,
Mr. Kawana. Tengo nodded. We are a relatively new foundation that concentrates on selecting
and supporting young people especially those young people who are not yet widely
known who are engaged in original activity in the fields of scholarship and the arts. In other
words, our aim is to nourish the budding youth who will carry the next generation on their
shoulders in all fields of Japans contemporary culture. We contract with specialists to propose
candidates for us in each category. We choose five artists and scholars each year and
provide them with grants. They can do anything they like for one year, no strings attached. All
we ask is that they submit a simple report at the end of their year a mere formality outlining
their activities and results, to be included in the foundations magazine. Nothing more burdensome
than that. We have just begun this activity, so the important thing for us is to produce
tangible results. We are, in other words, still in the seed-planting stage. In concrete terms,
what this means is that we will provide each recipient with an annual stipend of three million
yen. 
 Very generous, Tengo said.
 It takes both time and money to build up or discover something important. Of course, time
and money are not in themselves a guarantee of great results, but they cant hurt. The total
amount of time available is especially limited. The clock is ticking as we speak. Time rushes
past. Opportunities are lost right and left. If you have money, you can buy time. You can even
buy freedom if you want. Time and freedom: those are the most important things that people
can buy with money. 
Hearing this, Tengo almost reflexively glanced at his watch. True, time was ticking past
without a letup.
 Sorry for taking so much of your time, Ushikawa added, obviously interpreting Tengos
gesture as a demonstration of his own argument. Let me be quick about this. These days, of
course, a mere three million yen is not going to enable a lavish lifestyle, but it ought to help a
young person pay the bills very nicely. Which is our basic purpose: to make it possible for recipients
to spend a full year concentrating on their research or creative projects without struggling
to support themselves. And if the governing board determines at the end-of-year evaluation
that the person produced noteworthy results during the period, the possibility remains
for the stipend to be extended beyond the single year. 
Tengo said nothing but waited for Ushikawa to continue.
 The other day I took the liberty of listening to you lecture for a full hour here at the cram
school, Mr. Kawana. Believe me, I found it very interesting. I am a total outsider when it
comes to mathematics, or should I say Ive always been terrible at it and absolutely hated
math class in school. I just had to hear the word ‘mathematics to start writhing in agony and
to run away as far as I could. But your lecture, Mr. Kawana, was utterly enjoyable. Of course,
I didnt understand a thing about the logic of calculus, but just listening to you speak about it, I
thought, if its really so interesting, I ought to start studying math. You can be proud of yourself.
You have a special talent a talent for drawing people in, should I say. I had heard that
you were a popular teacher, and I could see why. 
Tengo had no idea when or where Ushikawa could have heard him lecture. He always
paid close attention to who was in the room when he was teaching, and though he had not
memorized every students face, he could never have missed anyone as strange-looking as
Ushikawa, who would have stood out like a centipede in a sugar bowl. He decided not to pursue
the matter, however, which would only have prolonged a conversation that was already
too long.
 As you must know, Mr. Ushikawa, Im just an employee here, somebody the cram school
hires to teach a few courses, Tengo began, anxious to waste as little time as possible. I
dont do any original research in mathematics. I just take knowledge that is already out there
and explain it to students as simply and entertainingly as I can. All Im doing is teaching them
more effective methods for solving problems on college placement tests. I may have a certain
talent for that, but I gave up the idea of being a professional researcher in the field a long time
ago. For one thing, I couldnt afford to stay in school any longer, and I never thought I had the
aptitude or the ability to make a name for myself in the academic world. In that sense, Im just
not the kind of person youre looking for. 
Ushikawa hurriedly raised his hand. No, thats not what Im getting at at all. Im sorry, I
might have made this more complicated than it has to be. Its true that your math lectures are
interesting and unique and original. But I didnt come here today about that. What we have
our eye on, Mr. Kawana, is your activity as a novelist. 
Tengo was so unprepared for this that he was momentarily at a loss for words.
 My activity as a novelist? 
 Exactly. 
 I dont understand. Its true, Ive been writing fiction for several years, but nothing of mine
has ever been published. You cant call someone like that a novelist. How could I have possibly
attracted your attention? 
At Tengos reaction, Ushikawa smiled in great delight, revealing a mouthful of horribly
crooked teeth. Like seaside pilings that had been hit by huge waves, they pointed off in all directions
and were befouled in a great many ways. They were surely beyond help from orthodontia,
but someone should at least teach him how to brush his teeth properly, Tengo
thought.
 Thats what makes our foundation unique, Ushikawa said proudly. The researchers we
contract with take note of things that other people have yet to notice. That is one of our goals.
As you say, none of your work has been properly published, and we are quite aware of that.
But we also know that, under a penname, you have entered various literary magazines new
writers competitions almost every year. You have not won yet, unfortunately, but a few times
your work made it through to the last stage of the screening process, so that, quite naturally, a
not inconsiderable number of people got to read them, and several of those people took note
of your talent. Our researcher has concluded that you are certain to win a new writers award
in the near future and make your debut as a writer. ‘Investing in futures would be a rather
crude way to put it, but as I said before, our aim is to ‘nourish the budding youth who will carry
the next generation on their shoulders. 
Tengo picked up his cup and took a drink of his tea, which, by now, was somewhat cool.
 So, what youre saying is that Im a candidate for a grant as a fledgling novelist, is that it? 
 That is it exactly. Except that youre not so much a candidate as a finalist. If you say that
you are willing to accept the grant, then I am authorized to finalize the arrangements. If you
will be so good as to sign the necessary documents, the three million yen will be transferred
electronically into your bank account immediately. You will be able to take six months or a
years leave from this cram school and devote all your energies to writing. We have heard that
you are presently writing a long novel. This would be a perfect opportunity, dont you think? 
 How do you know Im writing a long novel? Tengo asked with a frown.
Ushikawa gave him another toothy grin, but upon closer inspection, Tengo realized that
his eyes were not smiling at all. The glow from them was icy cold.
 Our researchers are eager and capable. They choose a number of candidates and examine
them from every angle. Probably a few people around you know that you are writing a
novel. Word gets out … 
Komatsu knew he was writing a novel, and so did his older girlfriend. Was there anyone
else? Probably not.
 Id like to ask a few things about your foundation, Tengo said.
 Please do. Ask anything at all. 
 Where does it get the money it needs to operate? 
 From a certain individual. Or, you might say, from an organization of his. Realistically
speaking just between us it also serves as one of his many tax write-offs. Of course, quite
aside from that, this individual has a deep interest in scholarship and the arts, and he wants to
support members of the younger generation. I cant go into any more detail here. The person
wishes to remain anonymous and that includes his organization as well. All day-to-day operations
are entrusted to the foundations committee, of which yours truly is, for now, a member. 
Tengo thought about this for a moment, but there really wasnt that much to think about.
All he did was put the things that Ushikawa had told him in order.
 Would you mind very much if I smoked? Ushikawa asked.
 Not at all, Tengo said, pushing a heavy glass ashtray in his direction.
Ushikawa took a box of Seven Stars cigarettes from his breast pocket, put a cigarette in
his mouth, and lit it with a gold lighter. The lighter was slim and expensive-looking.
 So, what do you say, Mr. Kawana? Ushikawa asked. Will you do us the honor of accepting
our grant? Speaking for myself, quite honestly, after having heard your delightful lecture, I
am very much looking forward to seeing what kind of world you go on to create in your literature. 
 I am very grateful to you for bringing me this offer, Tengo said. Its far more than I deserve.
But Im afraid I cant accept it. 
Smoke rose from the cigarette between Ushikawas fingers. He looked at Tengo with his
eyes narrowed. By which you mean …? 
 First of all, I dont like the idea of taking money from people I hardly know. Secondly, as
things stand now, I dont really need the money. I have managed well enough so far by teaching
three days a week at the cram school and using the other days to concentrate on my writing.
Im not ready to change that lifestyle. 
Thirdly, Mr. Ushikawa, I personally dont want to have anything to do with you. Fourthly,
no matter how you look at it, theres something fishy about this grant. It just sounds too good
to be true. Theres something going on behind the scenes. I certainly dont have the best intuition
in the world, but I can tell that much from the smell. Tengo, of course, said none of this.
 I see, Ushikawa said, filling his lungs with cigarette smoke and exhaling with a look of
deep satisfaction. I see. I think, in my own way, I understand your view of the matter. What
you say is quite logical. But really, Mr. Kawana, there is no need for you to give me your answer
right now. Why dont you go home and take a good two or three days to think it over?
Take more time to reach your conclusion. Were not in any hurry. Its not a bad offer. 
Tengo gave his head a decisive shake. Thank you, thats very kind, but it will save us
both a lot of time and trouble if we reach a final decision today. I am honored to have been
nominated for a grant, and Im sorry to have put you to the trouble of making a special trip
here, but Im afraid I will have to decline. This is my final conclusion, and there is no possibility
that I would reconsider. 
Ushikawa nodded a few times and regretfully used the ashtray to crush out the cigarette,
from which he had taken only two puffs.
 Thats fine, Mr. Kawana. I see where you are coming from, and I want to respect your
wishes. I am sorry for having taken up your time. Its unfortunate, but I will have to resign myself
to it. I will be going now. 
But Ushikawa showed no sign of standing up. He simply treated the back of his head to a
thorough scratching and looked at Tengo with narrowed eyes.
 However, Mr. Kawana, you yourself may not be aware of it, but people are expecting
great things from you as a writer. You have talent. Mathematics and literature probably have
no direct connection, but listening to you lecture on mathematics is like listening to someone
tell a story. This is not something that any ordinary person can do. You have something special
that needs to be told. That is clear even to the likes of me. So be sure to take care of
yourself. Forgive me if I am being oversolicitous, but please try not to become embroiled in
extraneous matters, and make up your mind to walk straight down your own path in life. 
 Extraneous matters? Tengo asked.
 For example, you seem to have how should I put this? some sort of connection with
Miss Eriko Fukada, the author of Air Chrysalis. Or at least you have met her a few times, am I
correct? By coincidence, I just happened to read in todays paper that she has apparently disappeared.
The media will have a field day with this delicious item, Im sure. 
 Assuming I have met Eriko Fukada, is that supposed to mean something? 
Again Ushikawa raised his hand to stop Tengo. It was a small hand, but the fingers were
short and stubby. Now, now, please dont get worked up over this. I dont mean any harm. All
I am trying to say is that selling off ones talents and time in dribs and drabs to make ends
meet never produces good results. It may sound presumptuous of me to say this, but your talent
is a genuine diamond in the rough, and I dont want to see it wasted and ruined on pointless
things. If the relationship between you and Miss Fukada becomes public knowledge, Mr.
Kawana, someone is bound to seek you out at home. Theyll start stalking you, and theyll
turn up all kinds of half-truths. Theyre a persistent bunch. 
Tengo stared at Ushikawa, saying nothing. Ushikawa narrowed his eyes and started
scratching one of his big earlobes. The ears themselves were small, but Ushikawas earlobes
were strangely big. Ushikawas physical oddities were an unending source of fascination.
 Now, dont get the wrong idea. My lips are sealed, Ushikawa said, gesturing as if zipping
his mouth closed. I promise you that. I may not look it, but I know how to keep a secret.
People say I must have been a clam in a previous life. Ill keep this matter locked up inside as
a sign of my personal regard for you. No one else will know. 
Finally he stood up and made several attempts to smooth out the tiny wrinkles in his suit
but succeeded only in making them more obvious.
 If you should change your mind about the grant, please call the number on my card
whenever you feel like it. There is still plenty of time. If this year is no good for you, well,
theres always next year. With raised index fingers, Ushikawa mimed the earth revolving
around the sun. We are in no hurry. At least I succeeded in meeting you and having this little
talk with you, and I believe that you have gotten our message. 
After one more smile, all but flaunting his ruined dentition, Ushikawa turned and left the reception
room.
Tengo used the time until his next class to think through Ushikawas remarks in his head.
The man seemed to know that Tengo had participated in the rewrite of Air Chrysalis. There
were hints of it everywhere in his speech. All I am trying to say is that selling off ones talents
and time in dribs and drabs to make ends meet never produces good results, Ushikawa had
said pointedly.
 We know surely, that was the message.
I succeeded in meeting you and having this little talk with you, and I believe that you have
gotten our message.
Could they have dispatched Ushikawa to see Tengo and offer him the three-million-yen
grant for no other purpose than to deliver this message? No, it didnt make sense. There was
no need for them to devise such an elaborate plot. They already knew where he was weakest.
If they had wanted to threaten Tengo, all they had to do was bring out the facts. Or were
they trying to buy him off with the grant? It was all too dramatic. And who were they after all?
Was the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts connected
with Sakigake? Did it even exist?
Tengo went to see the secretary, carrying Ushikawas business card. I need to ask you to
do me another favor, he said.
 What would that be? she asked, remaining seated at her desk and looking up at Tengo.
 Id like you to call this number and ask if theyre the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement
of Scholarship and the Arts. Also, ask whether this director, Mr. Ushikawa, is in.
Theyll probably say hes not there, so ask when hes due back in the office. If they ask your
name, just make something up. Id do it myself, except it might be a problem if they recognize
my voice. 
The secretary dialed the numbers and a standard back-and-forth ensued a concise exchange
between two professionals. When it ended, the secretary reported to Tengo, The
New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts does exist. A woman
answered, probably in her early twenties, a normal receptionist. Mr. Ushikawa actually
works there. Hes supposed to be back around three thirty. She didnt ask my name which I
certainly would have done. 
 Of course, Tengo said. Anyhow, thanks. 
 Youre welcome, she said, handing Ushikawas card back to Tengo. Is this Mr. Ushikawa
the person who came to see you? 
 Thats him. 
 I barely looked at him, but he seemed kind of creepy. 
Tengo put the card into his wallet. I suspect that impression wouldnt change even if you
had more time to look at him, he said.
 I always tell myself not to judge people by their appearance. Ive been wrong in the past
and had some serious regrets. But the minute I saw this man, I got the feeling he couldnt be
trusted. I still feel that way. 
 Youre not alone, Tengo said.
 Im not alone, she echoed, as if to confirm the grammatical accuracy of Tengos sentence.
 Thats a beautiful jacket youre wearing, Tengo said, meaning it quite honestly. He
wasnt just flattering her. After Ushikawas crumpled heap of a suit, her stylishly cut linen jacket
looked like a lovely piece of fabric that had descended from heaven on a windless afternoon.
 Thank you, she said.
 But just because somebody answered the phone, it doesnt necessarily mean that the
New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts actually exists. 
 Thats true. It could be an elaborate ruse. You just have to put in a phone line and hire
somebody to answer it. Like in The Sting. But why would they go to all that trouble? Forgive
me, Tengo, but you dont look like somebody whod have enough money to squeeze out of
you. 
 I dont have a thing, Tengo said, except my soul. 
 Sounds like a job for Mephistopheles, she said.
 Maybe I should walk over to this address and see if theres really an office there. 
 Tell me what you find out, she said, inspecting her manicure with narrowed eyes.
The New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts actually existed.
After class, Tengo took the subway to Yotsuya and walked to Kojimachi. At the address
on Ushikawas card he found a four-story building with a metal nameplate by the front entrance:
 New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. The office
was on the third floor. Also on that floor were Mikimoto Music Publishers and Koda Accountants.
Judging from the scale of the building, none of them could be very big offices. None appeared
to be flourishing, either, though their true condition was impossible to judge from outside.
Tengo considered taking the elevator to the third floor. He wanted to see what kind of office
it was, or at least what its door looked like. But things could prove awkward if he ran into
Ushikawa in the hallway.
Tengo took another subway home and called Komatsus office. For a change, Komatsu
was in, and he came to the phone right away.
 I cant talk now, Komatsu said, speaking more quickly than usual, his tone of voice
somewhat higher than normal. Sorry, but I dont think I can talk about anything here right
now. 
 This is very important, Tengo said. A very strange guy came to see me at school today.
He seemed to know something about my connection with Air Chrysalis. 
Komatsu went silent for a few seconds at his end. I think I can call you in twenty minutes.
Are you at home? 
Tengo said that he was. Komatsu hung up. While he waited for Komatsu to call, Tengo
sharpened two kitchen knives on a whetstone, boiled water, and poured himself some tea.
The phone rang exactly twenty minutes later, which was again unusual for Komatsu.
This time Komatsu sounded far calmer than he had before. He seemed to be phoning
from a quieter place. Tengo gave him a condensed account of what Ushikawa had said in the
reception room.
 The New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts? Never
heard of it. And that three-million-yen grant for you is hard to figure, too. I agree, of course,
that you have a great future as a writer, but you still havent published anything. Its kind of incredible.
Theyve got some ulterior motive. 
 Thats what I thought. 
 Give me a little time. Ill find out what I can about this New Japan Foundation for the Advancement
of Scholarship and the Arts. Ill get in touch with you if I learn anything. But this
Ushikawa guy knows youre connected with Fuka-Eri, huh? 
 Looks that way. 
 Thats a bit of a problem. 
 Somethings starting to happen, Tengo said. Its fine that Professor Ebisuno managed to
pry up his rock, but some kind of monster seems to have crawled out from underneath. 
Komatsu sighed into the phone. Its coming after me, too. The weekly magazines are going
crazy. And the TV guys are poking around. This morning the cops came to the office to
question me. Theyve already latched on to the connection between Fuka-Eri and Sakigake.
And of course the disappearance of her parents. The media will start blowing up that angle
soon. 
 Whats Professor Ebisuno doing? 
 Nobodys been able to get in touch with him for a while. Phone calls dont go through, and
he doesnt get in touch with anybody. He may be having a tough time too. Or he could be
working on another secret plan. 
 Oh, by the way, to change the subject a bit, have you told anybody that Im writing a long
novel? Tengo asked Komatsu.
 No, nobody, Komatsu responded immediately. Why would I tell anyone about that? 
 Thats okay, then. Just asking. 
Komatsu fell silent for a moment, and then he said, Its kind of late for me to be saying
this, but we might have gotten ourselves into nasty territory. 
 Whatever weve gotten ourselves into, theres no backing out now, thats for sure. 
 And if we cant back out, all we can do is keep going forward, even if youre right about
that monster. 
 Better fasten your seat belt, Tengo said.
 You said it, Komatsu said, and hung up.
It had been a long day. Tengo sat at the kitchen table, drinking his cold tea and thinking
about Fuka-Eri. What could she be doing all day, locked up alone in her hiding place? Of
course, no one ever knew what Fuka-Eri was doing.
In her recorded message, Fuka-Eri had said that the Little Peoples wisdom and power
might cause harm to the Professor and to Tengo. Better be careful in the forest. Tengo found
himself looking at his surroundings. True, the forest was their world.
1Q84
CHAPTER 3
Aomame
YOU CANT CHOOSE HOW YOURE BORN,
BUT YOU CAN CHOOSE HOW YOU DIE
One night near the end of July, the thick clouds that had long covered the sky finally
cleared, revealing two moons. Aomame stood on her apartments small balcony, looking at
the sky. She wanted to call someone right away and say, Can you do me a favor? Stick your
head out the window and look at the sky. Okay, how many moons do you see up there?
Where I am, I can see two very clearly. How about where you are? 
But she had no one to whom she could make such a call. Ayumi was one possibility, but
Aomame preferred not to further deepen their personal relationship. She was a policewoman,
after all. Aomame would more than likely be killing another man before long, after which she
would change her face, change her name, move to a different area, and disappear. Obviously,
she wouldnt be able to see or contact Ayumi anymore. Once you let yourself grow
close to someone, cutting the ties could be painful.
She went back inside, closed the balcony door, and turned on the air conditioner. Then
she drew the curtains to place a barrier between herself and the moons. The two moons in
the sky were disturbing to her. They subtly disrupted the balance of the earths gravity, and
they seemed to be affecting her physically as well. Her period was not due for a while, but her
body felt strangely listless and heavy. Her skin was dry, and her pulse abnormal. She told
herself not to think about the moons anymore even if they were something that she ought to
think about.
To combat the listlessness, Aomame lay on the carpet to stretch her muscles, systematically
engaging one muscle after another that she had little chance to use on a daily basis, and
stretching it as far as it would go. Each muscle responded with wordless screams, and her
sweat rained down on the floor. She had devised this stretching program herself and modified
it each day, making it increasingly radical and effective. It was strictly for her own use. She
could not have introduced it into her sports club classes. Ordinary people could never bear
that much pain. Most of her fellow instructors screamed for mercy when she tried it on them.
While going through her program, she played a recording of Janáeks Sinfonietta conducted
by George Szell. The music took twenty-five minutes to play, which was the right amount
of time to effectively torture every muscle in her body neither too short nor too long. By the
time the music ended, the turntable stopped, and the automatic tonearm returned to its rest,
both her mind and her body felt like rags that had been thoroughly wrung out.
By now, Aomame had memorized every note of Sinfonietta. Listening to the music while
stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simul-
taneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced. This sense of inner-directed
self-sufficiency was what she wanted most of all. It gave her deep solace. Janáeks Sinfonietta
was effective background music for that purpose.
Just before ten oclock that night, the phone rang. Lifting the receiver, she heard Tamarus
voice.
 Any plans for tomorrow? 
 I get out of work at six thirty. 
 Think you can stop by after that? 
 Im sure I can, Aomame said.
 Good, Tamaru said. She could hear his ballpoint pen writing on his calendar.
 Have you found a new dog yet? Aomame asked.
 Dog? Uh-huh. Another female German shepherd. I still dont know everything about her
disposition, but shes been trained in the basics and she seems to obey commands. She arrived
about ten days ago and is pretty well settled in. The women are relieved to have a dog
again. 
 Thats good. 
 This ones satisfied with ordinary dog food. Less bother. 
 Ordinary German shepherds dont eat spinach. 
 That was one strange dog. And depending on the season, spinach can be expensive, 
Tamaru complained nostalgically. After a few seconds pause, he added, Its a nice night for
moon viewing. 
Aomame frowned slightly into the phone. Where did that come from all of a sudden? 
 Even I am not unaware of natural beauty, Ill have you know. 
 No, of course not, Aomame said. But youre not the type to discuss poetic subjects on
the phone without some particular reason, either.
After another short silence at his end, Tamaru said, Youre the one who brought up moon
viewing the last time we talked on the phone, remember? Ive been thinking about it ever
since, especially when I looked up at the sky a little while ago and it was so clear not a cloud
anywhere. 
Aomame was on the verge of asking him how many moons he had seen in that clear sky,
but she stopped herself. It was too fraught with danger. Tamaru had told her about his life last
time about having been raised as an orphan who never knew his parents faces, about his
nationality. He had never spoken at such length before, but he was not a man much given to
talking about himself in any case. He had taken a personal liking to Aomame and had more or
less opened himself up to her. But ultimately, he was a professional, trained to take the
shortest route to see his mission through. There was no point in saying too much to him.
 I think I can get there around seven oclock tomorrow night after work, she said.
 Fine, Tamaru said. Youll probably be hungry. The cook is off tomorrow, so we cant
serve you anything decent, but if a sandwich or something is all right with you, I can do the
preparations. 
 Thanks, Aomame said.
 Youll be needing your drivers license, your passport, and your health insurance card.
Wed like you to bring those tomorrow. Plus, wed like a copy of your apartment key. Can you
have all those ready for us? 
 Yes, I think so. 
 And one more thing. Id like to see you alone about that business from before. So keep
some time open for me after youre through with Madame. 
 Business from before? 
Tamaru fell silent for a moment. His silence had all the weight of a sandbag. I believe
there was something you wanted to get ahold of. Have you forgotten? 
 No, of course I remember, Aomame hurried to say. In a corner of her mind, she had still
been thinking about the moons.
 Tomorrow at seven, then, Tamaru said and hung up.
The number of moons had not changed the following night. When she took a quick shower
after work and left the club, two pale-colored moons had already appeared side by side in the
still-bright sky. Aomame stood on the pedestrian footbridge spanning Gaien-nishi Dori Avenue,
leaning against the handrail and gazing at the two moons for a time. No one else made a
point of looking at the moons like this. The people passing by did no more than cast puzzled
glances in Aomames direction as she stood there looking up at the sky. They hurried toward
the subway station as if they had absolutely no interest in either the sky or the moon. As she
gazed upward, Aomame began to feel the same physical lassitude she had experienced the
day before. I have to stop staring at the moons like this, she told herself. It cant have a good
effect on me. But try as she might not to look at the moons, she could not help feeling their
gaze against her skin. Even if I dont look at them, theyre looking at me. They know what Im
about to do.
Using ornate cups from a bygone era, the dowager and Aomame drank thick hot coffee.
The dowager dribbled in a little milk at the edge of her cup and drank the coffee without stirring
it. She used no sugar. Aomame drank hers black, as usual. Tamaru served them the
sandwiches he had promised. He had cut them into bite-sized pieces. Aomame ate several.
They were simple cucumber and cheese sandwiches on brown bread, but were subtly
flavored. Tamaru had a fine touch in making such simple dishes, wielding a kitchen knife with
skill, cutting each of his ingredients to the perfect size and thickness. He knew the proper or-
der with which to undertake each task. This was all it took to make an amazing difference in
how things tasted.
 Have you finished organizing your things? the dowager asked.
 I donated my extra clothing and books to charity. Ive packed a bag with everything Ill
need in my new life, ready to go at any time. The only things left in my apartment are the basics
Ill need for the time being: electrical appliances, cookware, bed and bedding, a few
dishes. 
 Well take care of anything thats left. And you dont have to think about your lease or other
such details. You can just walk out with the few things you really need in your luggage. 
 Should I let them know at work? It could raise suspicions if I suddenly disappeared one
day. 
The dowager quietly returned her coffee cup to the table. You dont have to think about
that, either. 
Aomame responded with a nod. She ate another sandwich and took a sip of coffee.
 By the way, do you have money in the bank? the dowager asked. I have six hundred
thousand yen in a regular savings account and two million yen in a CD. 
The dowager did some calculations. Theres no problem with your withdrawing up to four
hundred thousand yen from the savings account if you do it in stages, but dont touch the CD.
It wouldnt be a good idea for you to cancel it all of a sudden. They might be watching your
personal affairs. We cant be too careful. Ill cover the difference later. Do you have any other
property or assets? 
 Theres the money you paid me before. Its just sitting in a safe-deposit box. 
 Take the cash out, but dont keep it in your apartment. Think about someplace good to
put it. 
 All right. 
 Thats all we need you to do for now. Otherwise, just go about your business as usual,
not changing your lifestyle or doing anything that would attract attention. And make sure you
dont talk about anything important on the telephone. 
Once she had finished saying this much, the dowager settled more deeply into her chair,
as if she had used up her entire reserve of energy.
 Has the date been set? Aomame asked.
 Not yet, unfortunately, the dowager said. Were still waiting for them to contact us. The
arrangements have been made, but they wont decide their schedule until the last minute. It
could be another week, or it could be another month. We dont know the place, either. We just
have to ask you to stand by, Im afraid, on pins and needles. 
 I dont mind waiting, Aomame said, but I wonder if you can give me even a general idea
about the ‘arrangements. 
 Youll be giving him a muscle-stretching session, the dowager said. What you always
do. He has some kind of physical problems. Theyre not life-threatening, but weve heard they
give him a lot of trouble. In addition to orthodox medicine, hes tried a number of alternative
treatments in an attempt to solve these ‘problems shiatsu, acupuncture, massage but
none of them seems to help. These physical problems are the only weak spot of this man
they call ‘Leader. Its the breach in his defenses that weve been looking for. 
The curtains were drawn on the window behind the dowager, concealing the moons, but
Aomame could feel their cool gaze against her skin. Their conspiratorial silence seemed to be
stealing into the room.
 We have a spy inside the Sakigake organization, and weve used him to pass the word
that you are an outstanding expert in muscle stretching. This was not especially difficult, because
it happens to be true. Now they are very interested in you. At first, they wanted to bring
you into their compound in Yamanashi, but we made it clear that you are far too busy with
your work to leave Tokyo. In any case, the man comes to Tokyo at least once a month on
business. He stays incognito in a downtown hotel. You will be giving him a stretching session
there. All you have to do is take the usual steps with him once youre inside. 
Aomame imagined the scene. A hotel room. A man is lying on a yoga mat, and she is
stretching his muscles. She cant see his face. On his stomach, he leaves the back of his
neck exposed to her, defenseless. She reaches over and takes the ice pick from her bag.
 So he and I can be alone together in his room? Aomame asked.
The dowager nodded. Leader keeps his physical problems hidden from others in the organization,
so there should be no one else present. You and he will be alone. 
 Do they know my name and where I work? 
 They are exceedingly cautious people. Theyve already done a thorough background
check on you and found no problems. We received word yesterday that they will want you to
come to where he is staying. They will let us know as soon as the time and place are set. 
 I come here so often, dont you think there is some chance they will find our relationship
suspicious? 
 Im just a member of the sports club where you work, and you come to my house as a
personal trainer. They have no reason to think that there might be any more to our relationship
than that. 
Aomame responded with a nod.
The dowager said, Whenever this Leader person leaves the compound and moves
around, he has two bodyguards who accompany him. Both are believers and karate belt hold-
ers. We dont know yet if they also carry weapons, but they are apparently good at what they
do. They train every day. According to Tamaru, though, they are amateurs. 
 Unlike Tamaru. 
 Yes, unlike Tamaru. He used to belong to a Self-Defense Force Ranger unit. Those
people have it pounded into them to carry out whatever needs to be done to accomplish the
mission, and to do it instantly, without the slightest hesitation. The important thing is not to
hesitate, no matter who the opponent might be. Amateurs hesitate especially when the opponent
is, say, a young woman. 
The dowager sank her head back into the chair and sighed deeply. Then she straightened
herself again and looked directly at Aomame.
 The two bodyguards will most likely wait in the next room of the suite while you are administering
your treatment to Leader. Youll be alone with him for an hour. That is how we
have set things up for now. How it will actually go is anybodys guess. Things can be fluid.
Leader never reveals his plan of action until the very last minute. 
 How old a man is he? 
 Probably in his mid-fifties. Weve heard hes a big man. Unfortunately, we dont know any
more than that. 
Tamaru was waiting at the front door. She gave him her spare apartment key, drivers license,
passport, and health insurance card. He stepped inside and made copies of the documents.
After checking to see that he had all the necessary copies, he handed the originals
back to Aomame. Then he showed Aomame to his office, which was next to the front door. It
was a small, square space lacking any decoration. A tiny window opened to the garden. The
wall-mounted air conditioner hummed along. He had Aomame sit in a small wooden chair,
while he sat at his desk. On the wall above the desk hung a row of four monitor screens with
changeable camera angles. Four video decks constantly recorded their images. The screens
showed views outside the walls. The far right one displayed an image of the front door of the
safe house where the women were living. The new guard dog was also visible, resting on the
ground. It was somewhat smaller than the previous dog.
 The tape didnt show how the dog died, Tamaru said, as if anticipating a question from
Aomame. She wasnt tied up at the time. Theres no way she could have untied herself, so
possibly someone untied her. 
 Someone who could approach without causing her to bark. 
 Thats what it amounts to. 
 Strange. 
Tamaru nodded but said nothing. He had thought about the various possibilities so much
on his own that he was sick of thinking about them. There was nothing left for him to say to
anybody else.
Tamaru reached over and opened a drawer of the cabinet by his desk, taking out a black
plastic bag. From the bag he took a faded blue bath towel, and when he spread the towel
open, a lustrous black object emerged a small automatic pistol. Saying nothing, he handed it
to Aomame, who also remained silent as she took it. She tested the weight of it in her hand. It
was much lighter than it appeared to be. Such a small, light object could deliver death to a human
being.
 You just made two major mistakes. Do you know what they were? Tamaru asked.
Aomame thought over the actions she had just taken but could discover no mistakes. All
she had done was take the gun that was handed to her. I dont know, she said.
 First, when you took the gun, you didnt check to see if it was loaded or not and, if it was
loaded, whether the safety was on. The second was that, after you took the gun, you pointed
it even if only for one split second at me. You broke two absolute rules. Also, you should
never put your finger inside the trigger guard if you have no intention of firing the gun. 
 I see. Ill be careful from now on. 
 Emergency situations aside, you should never handle or hand over or carry a gun that
has even one bullet in it. And whenever you see a gun, you should treat it as loaded until you
know for sure otherwise. Guns are made to kill people. You can never be too careful with
them. Some people might laugh at me for being too cautious, but stupid accidents happen all
the time, and the ones who get killed or badly wounded are usually the ones who were laughing. 
Tamaru drew a plastic bag from his jacket pocket. Inside were seven new bullets. He set
them on his desk. As you can see, the bullets are not in the gun. The magazine is in place,
but its empty. The chamber is empty, too. 
Aomame nodded.
 This is a personal gift from me. Even so, if you dont use it, Id like to have it back. 
 Of course, Aomame said, her voice dry. But it must have cost you something. 
 Dont let that worry you, Tamaru said. You have other things to worry about. Lets talk
about those. Have you ever fired a gun? 
Aomame shook her head. Never. 
 Revolvers tend to be easier to use than automatics, especially for amateurs. Their mechanism
is simpler, and its easier to learn how to operate them, and youre less likely to make
mistakes with them. But a good revolver can be bulky and inconvenient to carry around. So I
figured an automatic would be better for you. This is a Heckler & Koch HK4. A German make.
Weighs 480 grams without bullets. Its small and light, but its 9mm Short cartridges pack a
punch, and it has a small recoil. Its not very accurate for long distances, but its perfect for
what you have in mind. Heckler & Koch started up after the war, but this HK4 is based on the
Mauser HSc, a well-respected model from before the war. Theyve been making it since 1968,
and its still widely used. So its dependable. This is not a new one, but its been well taken
care of by somebody who obviously knew what he was doing. Guns are like cars: you can
trust a good used one better than one thats brand-new. 
Tamaru took the gun back from Aomame and showed her how to handle it how to lock
and unlock the safety, how to remove and replace the magazine.
 Make sure the safety is on when you take the magazine out. After you open the catch
and pull the magazine out, you pull the slide back and the bullet pops out of the chamber not
now, of course, since the gun isnt loaded. After that, the slide stays open, so then
you pull the trigger like this and the slide closes but the hammer stays cocked. You pull the
trigger again and the hammer falls. Then you put in a new magazine. 
Tamaru went through the sequence of motions with practiced speed. Then he repeated
the same sequence slowly, demonstrating each separate operation. Aomame watched intently.
 Now you try it. 
Aomame carefully extracted the magazine, pulled the slide back, emptied the chamber,
lowered the hammer, and reinserted the magazine.
 Thats fine, Tamaru said. Then he took the gun from Aomame, pulled out the magazine,
carefully loaded it with seven bullets, and shoved it back into the gun with a loud click. Pulling
back the slide, he sent a bullet into the chamber. Then he pushed down a lever on the left
side of the gun to set the safety.
 Now do the same thing you did before. Only, this time its loaded with real bullets. Theres
one in the chamber, too. The safety is on, but you still shouldnt point the muzzle of the gun
toward anyone, Tamaru said.
Taking the loaded gun, Aomame found it noticeably heavier than before. Now it had the
unmistakable feel of death. This was a precision tool designed to kill people. She could feel
her armpits sweating.
Checking once more to make sure the safety was on, she opened the catch, pulled out the
magazine, and set it on the table. Pulling back the slide, she ejected the bullet from the chamber.
It fell on the wooden floor with a dry thump. She pulled the trigger to close the slide, and
pulled the trigger one more time, lowering the hammer. Then, with a trembling hand, she
picked up the bullet from where it lay by her feet. Her throat was dry, and each breath she
took was accompanied by a painful burning sensation.
 Not bad for your first time, Tamaru said, pressing the fallen 9mm bullet back into the
magazine. But you need a lot more practice. Your hands are shaking. You should practice
the movements for ejecting and reinserting the magazine several times a day until your hands
learn the feel of the gun. You should be able to do it as quickly and automatically as I did. In
the dark. In your case, you shouldnt have to change magazines in mid-use, but the movements
themselves are the most basic of the basic for people who handle pistols. You have to
memorize them. 
 Dont I need to practice firing? 
 Well, its not as if youre going to shoot somebody with this. Youre just going to shoot
yourself, right? 
Aomame nodded.
 In that case, you dont have to practice firing. You just have to learn to load it, release the
safety, and get the feel of the trigger. And anyway, where were you planning to practice firing
it? 
Aomame shook her head. She had no idea.
 Also, how were you planning to shoot yourself? Here, give it a try. 
Tamaru inserted the loaded magazine, checked to make sure the safety was on, and
handed the gun to Aomame. The safety is on, he said.
Aomame pressed the muzzle against her temple. She felt the chill of the steel. Looking at
her, Tamaru slowly shook his head several times.
 Trust me, you dont want to aim at your temple. Its a lot harder than you think to shoot
yourself in the brain that way. Peoples hands usually shake, and it throws their aim off. You
end up grazing your skull, but not killing yourself. You certainly dont want that to happen. 
Aomame silently shook her head.
 Look what happened to General Tojo after the war. When the American military came to
arrest him, he tried to shoot himself in the heart by pressing the muzzle against his chest and
pulling the trigger, but the bullet missed and hit his stomach without killing him. Here you had
the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didnt know how to kill himself with a
gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team
could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. Its a terrible way to die. A persons
last moments are an important thing. You cant choose how youre born, but you can choose
how you die. 
Aomame bit her lip.
 The surest way is to shove the gun barrel in your mouth and blow your brains out from
below. Like this. 
Tamaru took the gun from Aomame to demonstrate. She knew that the safety was on, but
the sight still made her tense up. She could hardly breathe, as if something were stuck in her
throat.
 But even this isnt one hundred percent certain. I actually know a guy who failed to kill
himself and ended up in terrible shape. We were together in the Self-Defense Force. He
shoved a rifle barrel in his mouth and fired the gun by pressing his big toes against a spoon
he had fastened to the trigger. I suppose the barrel must have moved a little. Instead of dying,
he became a vegetable. He lived that way for another ten years. Its not so easy for people to
end their own lives. Its not like in the movies. There, they do it like nothing, no pain, and its
all over, theyre dead. The reality is not like that. You lie in bed for ten years with the piss oozing
out of you. 
Aomame nodded in silence.
Tamaru took the bullets out of the magazine and gun and put them in a plastic bag. Then
he handed Aomame the gun and the bullets separately. Now its not loaded. 
Aomame took them with a nod.
 Trust me, the smart thing is to think about surviving. Its the most practical thing, too.
Thats my advice to you. 
 I see, Aomame said drily. Then she wrapped a scarf around the Heckler & Koch HK4,
which was like a crude machine too, and thrust it to the bottom of her shoulder bag. This
made the bag a pound or so heavier, but it didnt change its shape. The HK4 was a small pistol.
 Its not a gun for amateurs, Tamaru said. Speaking from experience, not much good can
come of it. But you should be able to handle it all right. Youre like me in some ways. In a
pinch, you can put the rules ahead of yourself. 
 Probably because the ‘self doesnt really exist. 
Tamaru had nothing to say to that.
 You were in the Self-Defense Force? Aomame asked.
 Yeah, in the toughest unit. They fed us rats and snakes and locusts. Theyre not inedible,
but they sure dont taste good. 
 What did you do after that? 
 All kinds of stuff. Security work, mainly as a bodyguard though maybe thats too fancy a
word for what I was doing in some cases. Im not much of a team player, so I tend to work
alone. I was involved in the underworld, too, for a little while, when that was the only thing I
could find. I saw a lot of stuff going down things that most people never have to see in their
lifetimes. Still, I never got into the worst of the worst. I was always careful not to cross the line.
Im careful by nature, and I dont think much of the yakuza. So, like I said before, my record is
clean. After that, I came here. Tamaru pointed straight down. My life has been very settled
ever since. Not that a stable life is all Im looking for, but Id like to try to keep things as they
are for now. It isnt easy finding jobs you like. 
 No, of course not, Aomame said. But really, shouldnt I pay you something for this? 
Tamaru shook his head. No, I dont want your money. The world moves less by money
than by what you owe people and what they owe you. I dont like to owe anybody anything, so
I keep myself as much on the lending side as I can. 
 Thank you, Aomame said.
 If, by any chance, the cops end up grilling you about where you got the gun, I dont want
you giving them my name. And if they do come here, Ill deny everything, of course. Theyll
never find out anything about my past. If they go after Madame, though, I wont have a leg to
stand on. 
 I wont give your name, of course. 
Tamaru pulled a folded piece of notepaper from his pocket and handed it to Aomame. On
it was written a mans name.
Tamaru said, On July 4, you met this man at the Renoir Café near Sendagaya Station.
He gave you the gun and seven bullets, and you paid him five hundred thousand yen in cash.
He contacted you after he heard that you were looking for a gun. If he is questioned by police,
he is supposed to freely admit to the charges and spend a few years in prison. You dont have
to tell them any more than that. As long as they can establish how the gun got into your
hands, the police will come off looking good. And you might spend a little while behind bars
too, for violating the Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law. 
Aomame memorized the name and handed the slip of paper back to Tamaru. He tore it into
little pieces and threw it into the wastebasket. Then he said, Like I said before, Im very
careful by nature. I almost never depend on anybody for anything, and even when I do, I still
dont trust them. I never leave things to work themselves out. But what Im most hoping for in
this case is that the gun will come back to me unused. Then no one gets in trouble, no one
dies, no one gets hurt, and no one goes to prison. 
Aomame nodded. Meaning, you want me to violate Chekhovs rule. 
 Exactly. Chekhov was a great writer, but not all novels have to follow his rules. Not all
guns in stories have to be fired, Tamaru said. Then he frowned slightly, as if recalling
something. Oh, yes, I almost forgot something important. I have to give you a pager. 
He took a small device from his drawer and set it on the desk. It had a metal clip to attach
to clothing or a belt. Tamaru picked up the phone and punched in a three-digit quick-dial
code. The phone rang three times, and the pager responded by emitting a series of electronic
beeps. After turning up the volume as high as it would go, Tamaru pressed a switch to turn it
off. He squinted at the device to make sure it displayed the callers number, and then handed
it to Aomame.
 Id like you to keep this on you at all times if possible, Tamaru said, or at least dont get
too far away from it. If it rings, that means you have a message from me. An important message.
I wont signal you to talk about the weather. Call the number you see in the display.
Right away. From a public phone. And one other thing: if you have luggage, put it in a coin
locker in Shinjuku Station. 
 Shinjuku Station, Aomame repeated.
 It goes without saying that you should be ready to travel light. 
 Of course. 
Back at her apartment, Aomame closed her curtains and took the Heckler & Koch HK4
and the bullets from her shoulder bag. Sitting at the kitchen table, she practiced ejecting and
inserting the empty magazine a few times. Her speed increased with each repetition. Her
movements developed a rhythm, and her hands stopped trembling. Then she wrapped the
pistol in an old T-shirt and hid it in a shoe box, which she shoved to the back of the closet.
The bag of bullets she stored inside the pocket of a raincoat on a hanger. Suddenly very
thirsty, she took a pitcher of chilled barley tea from the refrigerator and drank three glassfuls.
Her shoulder muscles were tense and stiff, and the sweat of her armpits had an unusual
smell. The awareness that she now possessed a pistol was enough to make the world look a
little different. Her surroundings had taken on a strange, unfamiliar coloration.
She undressed and took a hot shower to wash off the unpleasant sweat smell. Not all
guns have to be fired, she told herself in the shower. A pistol is just a tool, and where Im living
is not a storybook world. Its the real world, full of gaps and inconsistencies and anticlimaxes.
Two weeks passed uneventfully. Aomame went to work at the sports club as usual, teaching
her martial arts and stretching classes. She was not supposed to change her daily pattern.
She followed the dowagers instructions as strictly as possible. Coming home, she would eat
dinner alone. Afterward, she would close the curtains, sit at the kitchen table, and practice
handling the Heckler & Koch HK4 until its weight and hardness, the smell of its machine oil,
its brute force and quietness all became a part of her.
Sometimes she practiced blindfolded, using a scarf. Soon she could nimbly load the
magazine, release the safety, and pull back the slide without seeing a thing. The terse, rhythmical
sound produced by each operation was pleasing to her ears. In the dark, she gradually
lost track of the difference between the sounds the implement actually made and her aural
perception of the sounds. The boundary between herself and her actions gradually faded until
it disappeared entirely.
At least once a day she would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and put the muzzle of
the loaded gun in her mouth. Feeling the hardness of the metal against the edges of her
teeth, she imagined herself pulling the trigger. That was all it would take to end her life. In the
next instant, she would have vanished from this world. To the self she saw standing in the
mirror, she said, A few important points: not to let my hand shake; to brace for the recoil; not
to be afraid; and, most important, not to hesitate.
I could do it now if I wanted to, Aomame thought. Id just have to pull my finger inward half
an inch. It would be so easy. Why dont I just go ahead and do it? But she reconsidered and
took the pistol from her mouth, returned the hammer to its uncocked position, set the safety,
and laid the gun down by the sink between the toothpaste tube and her hairbrush. No, its too
soon for that. Theres something I have to do first.
As instructed by Tamaru, Aomame kept the pager with her at all times. She set it next to
the alarm clock when she slept. She was ready to deal with it whenever it rang, but another
week went by in silence.
The pistol in the shoe box, the seven bullets in the raincoat pocket, the silent pager, her
handmade ice pick, its deadly point, the suitcase packed with her personal effects; the new
face and the new life that must be awaiting her; the bundle of bills in a Shinjuku Station coin
locker: Aomame spent the midsummer days in their presence. More and more people went
off on full-fledged summer vacations. Shops closed their shutters. The streets had fewer
passersby. The number of cars declined, and a hush fell over the city. She sometimes felt she
was on the verge of losing track of her location. Is this actually the real world? she asked herself.
If its not, then where should I look for reality? She had no idea where else to look, and
so she had no choice for now but to recognize this as the one and only reality and to use all
her strength to ride it out.
Im not afraid to die, Aomame reassured herself. What Im afraid of is having reality get the
better of me, of having reality leave me behind.
She had gotten everything ready. She was emotionally prepared as well. She could leave
her apartment at any time, as soon as Tamaru contacted her. But she heard nothing from
him. The end of August was approaching. Soon summer would begin to wind down, and the
cicadas outside would wring out their final cries. How could a whole month have shot by like
this even though each day felt horribly long?
Aomame came home from work at the sports club, threw her sweat-soaked clothes into
the hamper, and changed into a tank top and shorts. A violent downpour broke out after noon.
The sky turned dark. Pebble-sized raindrops smacked down on the streets, and thunder
rumbled. The streets were left soaking wet, but then the sun came out again and used all its
energy to evaporate the standing water, shrouding the city in a shimmering curtain of steam.
Clouds appeared as the sun was going down, covering the sky in a thick veil and hiding the
moons.
She felt the need to relax a bit before preparing her supper. Drinking a cold cup of barley
tea and nibbling on some edamame she had steamed earlier, she spread the evening paper
on the kitchen table and proceeded to skim it in order, first page to last. Nothing piqued her interest.
It was just an ordinary evening paper. When she opened to the human interest pages,
however, the first thing to attract her attention was a photo of Ayumi. Aomame caught her
breath and frowned.
No, it cant be Ayumi, she thought at first. Aomame assumed she must be mistaken: it was
someone who looked a lot like her young policewoman friend. Ayumi would never be so
prominently featured in the newspaper, complete with a photo. The more she looked, though,
the more certain she became that this was her erstwhile partner in those little sex feasts. In
the close-up photo, Ayumi had the hint of a smile on her face an artificial, uncomfortable
smile. The real Ayumi always smiled in a natural, open way with her whole face. This photo
looked like one that had been taken for some kind of public album. There was something unnerving
in her apparent discomfort.
Aomame did not want to read the article, if possible. If she read the big headline next to
the picture, she would be able to guess what had happened. But not reading the article was
out of the question. This was reality. Whatever it might be, she could not pass reality by.
Aomame took a deep breath and started reading.
Ayumi Nakano (26). Single. Resident of Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo.
The article reported that Ayumi had been found dead in a Shibuya hotel room. She had
been strangled with a bathrobe sash. Stark naked, she was handcuffed to the bed, a piece of
clothing stuffed in her mouth. A hotel staff person had found the body when inspecting the
room before noon. Ayumi and a man had taken the room before eleven oclock the night before,
and the man had left alone at dawn. The charges had been paid in advance. This was
not a terribly unusual occurrence in the big city, where the commingling of people gave off
heat, often in the form of violence. The newspapers were full of such events. This one,
however, had unusual aspects. The victim was a policewoman, and the handcuffs that appeared
to have been used as a sex toy were the authentic government-issue type, not the
cheap kind sold in porno shops. Quite naturally, this was news that attracted peoples attention.
1Q84
CHAPTER 4
Tengo
IT MIGHT BE BETTER
NOT TO WISH FOR SUCH A THING
Where is she now, and what could she be doing? Does she still belong to the Society of
Witnesses?
I sure hope not, Tengo thought. Of course, religious faith was a matter of individual freedom.
He shouldnt be weighing in on it. But as he recalled, she gave no indication as a young
girl that she enjoyed being a believer in the Society of Witnesses.
In college, Tengo worked part-time in a liquor wholesalers warehouse. The pay wasnt
bad, but moving heavy cases around was hard work, even for the sturdy Tengo, whose every
joint would ache at the end of the day. By coincidence, two young fellows who had grown up
as second-generation members of the Society of Witnesses worked alongside him. Both
were polite young men, nice guys. They were the same age as Tengo, and serious workers.
They worked without complaint and without cutting corners. Once after work the three of them
went to a bar and had a pint of beer together. The two of them had been friends since childhood,
they said, but a few years earlier they had abandoned the faith. On separating from the
religion, they had set foot in the real world. As far as Tengo could see, however, neither of
them had fully adapted to their new world. Because they had been raised in a narrow, closeknit
community, they found it hard to understand and accept the rules of the broader world.
Often they would lose what confidence they had in their own judgments and end up perplexed.
They felt liberated by their abandonment of the faith, but they simultaneously retained
a nagging suspicion that their decision had been a mistake.
Tengo could not help but sympathize with them. If they had separated from that world
while they were still children, before their egos had been firmly established, they would have
had a much better chance of adapting to the social mainstream, but once they missed that
chance, they had no choice but to live in the Witness community, conforming with its values.
Or else, with considerable sacrifice, and depending entirely on their own strength, they had to
remake their customs and attitudes from the ground up. When he spoke with them, Tengo
would recall the girl and hope that she had not experienced the same pain as these two
young men.
After the girl finally let go of his hand and dashed out of the classroom without looking
back, Tengo could only stand there, unable to do a thing. She had gripped his left hand with
considerable strength, and a vivid sense of her touch remained in that hand for several days.
Even after more time went by and the direct sensation began to fade, his heart retained the
deep impression she had made there.
Shortly after that, Tengo experienced his first ejaculation. A very small amount of liquid
emerged from the tip of his erect penis. It was somewhat thicker than urine and was accompanied
by a faintly painful throbbing. Tengo did not realize that this was the precursor of fullfledged
semen. He had never seen such a thing before, and it worried him. Something scary
might be happening to him. It was not something he could discuss with his father, however,
nor could he ask his classmates about it. That night, he woke from a dream (the contents of
which he could not remember) to find his underpants slightly damp. It seemed to Tengo as if,
by squeezing his hand, the girl had drawn something out of him.
He had no contact with her after that. Aomame maintained the same isolated position in
the class, spoke with no one, and recited the usual prayer before lunch in the same clear
voice. Even if they happened to pass each other somewhere, her expression exhibited not the
slightest change, as if there had been nothing between them as if she had not even seen
Tengo.
Tengo, for his part, took to observing Aomame closely and covertly whenever he had the
chance. He realized now, on closer inspection, that she had a nice face nice enough for him
to feel he could like her. She was long and thin, and she always wore faded clothing that was
too big for her. When she put on gym clothes, he could tell that her chest had not yet begun to
develop. Her face displayed virtually no expression, she hardly ever talked, and her eyes,
which always seemed to be focused on something far away, had no sign of life in them.
Tengo found this strange, because, on that day when her eyes had looked straight into his,
they had been so clear and luminous.
After she squeezed his hand like that, Tengo came to see that this skinny little girl was far
tougher inside than the average person. Her grip itself was impressive, but it was more than
that. She seemed to possess an even greater strength of mind. Ordinarily she kept this energy
hidden where the other students couldnt see it. When the teacher called on her in class,
she would say no more than minimally necessary to answer the question (and sometimes not
even that much), but her posted test scores were never bad. Tengo guessed that she could
earn still better grades if she wanted to, but she might be deliberately holding back on exams
so as not to attract attention. Perhaps this was the wisdom with which a child in her position
survived: by minimizing her wounds staying as small as possible, as nearly transparent as
possible.
How great it would be, Tengo thought, if only she were a totally ordinary girl with whom he
could have a lighthearted conversation! Maybe they could have been good friends. For a tenyear-old
boy and girl to become good friends was not easy under any circumstances. Indeed,
it might be one of the most difficult accomplishments in the world. But while they ought to
have managed the occasional friendly chat, such an opportunity never presented itself to
Tengo and Aomame. So rather than make the effort to forge a real relationship with the fleshand-blood
Aomame, Tengo chose to relate to her through the silent realm of imagination and
memory.
The ten-year-old Tengo had no concrete image of sex. All he wanted from the girl was for
her to hold his hand again if possible. He wanted her to squeeze his hand again someplace
where the two of them could be alone. And he wanted her to tell him
something anything about herself, to whisper some secret about what it meant to be
Aomame, what it meant to be a ten-year-old girl. He would try hard to understand it, and that
would be the beginning of something, though even now, Tengo still had no idea what that
 something might be.
April came, and the new school year began. Now they were fifth graders, but Tengo and
the girl were put into separate classes. Sometimes they would pass each other in the hall or
wait at the same bus stop, but the girl continued to act as if she were unaware of Tengos existence or
at least it appeared that way to Tengo. He could be right next to her and she
wouldnt move an eyebrow. She wouldnt even bother to look away from him. As before, all
depth and brightness were gone from her eyes. Tengo wondered what that incident in the
classroom could have meant. Often it seemed to him like something that had happened in a
dream. And yet his hand still retained the vivid feel of Aomames extraordinary grip. This
world was far too full of riddles for Tengo.
Then at some point he realized that the girl named Aomame was no longer in school. She
had transferred to another school, but that was all he found out. No one knew where she had
moved to. He was probably the only one in the entire elementary school even slightly
bothered by the fact that she had ceased to exist among them.
For a very long time after that, Tengo continued to regret his actions or, more precisely,
his lack of action. Now, finally, he could think of the words that he should have spoken to her.
Inside him at last were the things that he wanted to tell her, the things he should have told
her. It would not have been so hard. He should have stopped her on the street and said
something. If only he had found a good opportunity and whipped up a tiny bit of courage! But
that had been impossible for Tengo. And now the chance was lost forever.
Tengo often thought about Aomame after he graduated from the elementary school and
advanced to a public middle school. He started having erections more often and masturbated
while thinking of her. He always used his left hand the hand that retained the touch of her
grasp. In his memory, Aomame remained a skinny little girl without breasts, but he was able
to bring himself to ejaculation with the thought of her in gym clothes.
In high school, he started dating girls his own age. Their brand-new breasts showed
clearly through their clothes, and the sight made it hard for Tengo to breathe. But even so, in
bed, before he fell asleep at night, Tengo would move his left hand while thinking of
Aomames flat chest, which lacked even a hint of swelling. There must be something wrong
with him, something perverted, Tengo thought.
Once he entered college, though, Tengo no longer thought about Aomame all the time.
The main reason for this was that he started dating real women, actually having sex with
some of them. Physically, at least, he was a mature man, for whom the image of a skinny little
ten-year-old girl in gym clothes had, naturally enough, grown removed from the objects of his
desire.
Still, Tengo never again experienced the same intense shuddering of the heart that he had
felt when Aomame gripped his hand in the elementary school classroom. None of the women
he met in college or after leaving college to the present day made as distinct an impression
on his heart as Aomame. He could not find what he was really looking for in any of them.
There had been beautiful ones and warmhearted ones and ones who truly cared for him, but
they had come and gone, like vividly colored birds perching momentarily on a branch before
flying off somewhere. They could not satisfy him, and he could not satisfy them.
Even now, on the verge of turning thirty, Tengo was surprised to find his thoughts drifting
back to the ten-year-old Aomame. There she was, in the deserted classroom, staring straight
at him with her crystal-clear eyes, her hand tightly gripping his. Sometimes her skinny frame
was draped in gym clothes. Or she was walking behind her mother down the Ichikawa shopping
mall on a Sunday morning, her lips clamped shut, her eyes staring at a place that was no
place.
At such times, Tengo would think, I guess Ill never be able to detach myself from her. And
he would kick himself again, now that it was too late, for never having spoken to her in the
hallway. If only I had made myself do it! If only I had said something to her, my life might be
very different.
What reminded him of Aomame was buying edamame in the supermarket. He was choosing
among the branches of fresh edamame in the refrigerator case when the thought of
Aomame came to him quite naturally. Before he knew it, he was standing there, lost in a daydream.
How long this went on, he had no idea, but a womans voice saying, Excuse me 
brought him back. He was blocking access to the edamame section with his large frame.
Tengo stopped daydreaming, apologized to the woman, dropped the edamame branch into
his shopping basket, and brought it to the cashier along with his other groceries shrimp,
milk, tofu, lettuce, and crackers. There, he waited in line with the housewives of the neighborhood.
It was the crowded evening shopping hour and the cashier was a slow-moving trainee,
which made for a long line, but this didnt bother Tengo.
Assuming she was in this line at the cash register, would I know it was Aomame just by
looking at her? I wonder. We havent seen each other in twenty years. The possibility of our
recognizing each other must be pretty slim. Or, say we pass on the street and I think, Could
that be Aomame?, would I be able to call out to her on the spot? I cant be sure of that,
either. I might just lose heart and let her go without doing a thing. And then Id be filled with
regret again Why couldnt I have said something to her just one word? 
Komatsu often said to Tengo, Whats missing in you is desire and a positive attitude. 
And maybe he was right. When Tengo had trouble making up his mind, he would think, Oh
well, and resign himself. That was his nature.
But if, by chance, we were to come face-to-face and were fortunate enough to recognize
each other, I would probably open up and tell her everything honestly. Wed go into some
nearby café (assuming she had the time and accepted my invitation) and sit across from each
other, drinking something, while I told her everything.
There were so many things he wanted to tell her! I still remember when you squeezed my
hand in that classroom. After that, I wanted to be your friend. I wanted to get to know you better.
But I just couldnt do it. There were lots of reasons for that, but the main problem was that
I was a coward. I regretted it for years. I still regret it. And I think of you all the time. Of
course he would not tell her that he had masturbated while picturing her. That would be in a
whole different dimension than sheer honesty.
It might be better not to wish for such a thing, though. It might be better never to see her
again. I might be disappointed if I actually met her, Tengo thought. Maybe she had turned into
some boring, tired-looking office worker. Maybe she had become a frustrated mother shrieking
at her kids. Maybe the two of them would have nothing in common to talk about. Yes, that
was a very real possibility. Then Tengo would lose something precious that he had cherished
all these years. It would be gone forever. But no, Tengo felt almost certain it wouldnt be like
that. In that ten-year-old girls resolute eyes and strong-willed profile he had discovered a decisiveness
that time could not have worn down.
By comparison, what about Tengo himself?
Such thoughts made him uneasy.
Wasnt Aomame the one who would be disappointed if they met again? In elementary
school, Tengo had been recognized by everyone as a math prodigy and received the top
grades in almost every subject. He was also an outstanding athlete. Even the teachers
treated him with respect and expected great things from him in the future. Aomame might
have idolized him. Now, though, he was just a part-time cram school instructor. True, it was
an easy job that put no constraints on his solitary lifestyle, but he was far from being a pillar of
society. While teaching at the cram school, he wrote fiction on the side, but he was still un-
published. For extra income, he wrote a made-up astrology column for a womens magazine.
It was popular, but it was, quite simply, a pack of lies. He had no friends worth mentioning,
nor anyone he was in love with. His weekly trysts with a married woman ten years his senior
were virtually his sole human contact. So far, the only accomplishment of which he could be
proud was his role as the ghostwriter who turned Air Chrysalis into a bestseller, but that was
something he could never mention to anyone.
Tengos thoughts had reached this point when the cashier picked up his grocery basket.
He went back to his apartment with a bag of groceries in his arms. Changing into shorts,
he took a cold can of beer from the refrigerator and drank it, standing, while he heated a large
pot of water. Before the water boiled, he stripped all the leathery edamame pods from the
branch, spread them on a cutting board, and rubbed them all over with salt. When the water
boiled, he threw them into the pot.
Tengo wondered, Why has that skinny little ten-year-old girl stayed in my heart all these
years? She came over to me after class and squeezed my hand without saying a word. That
was all. But in that time, Aomame seemed to have taken part of him with her part of his
heart or body. And in its place, she had left part of her heart or body inside him. This important
exchange had taken place in a matter of seconds.
Tengo chopped a lot of ginger to a fine consistency. Then he sliced some celery and
mushrooms into nice-sized pieces. The Chinese parsley, too, he chopped up finely. He
peeled the shrimp and washed them at the sink. Spreading a paper towel, he laid the shrimp
out in neat rows, like troops in formation. When the edamame were finished boiling, he
drained them in a colander and left them to cool. Next he warmed a large frying pan and
dribbled in some sesame oil and spread it over the bottom. He slowly fried the chopped
ginger over a low flame.
I wish I could meet Aomame right now, Tengo started thinking again. Even if she turned
out to be disappointed in him or he was a little disappointed in her, he didnt care. He wanted
to see her in any case. All he wanted was to find out what kind of life she had led since then,
what kind of place she was in now, what kinds of things gave her joy, and what kinds of things
made her sad. No matter how much the two of them had changed, or whether all possibility of
their getting together had already been lost, this in no way altered the fact that they had exchanged
something important in that empty elementary school classroom so long ago.
He put the sliced celery and mushrooms into the frying pan. Turning the gas flame up to
high and lightly jogging the pan, he carefully stirred the contents with a bamboo spatula,
adding a sprinkle of salt and pepper. When the vegetables were just beginning to cook, he
tossed the drained shrimp into the pan. After adding another dose of salt and pepper to the
whole thing, he poured in a small glass of sake. Then a dash of soy sauce and finally a scat-
tering of Chinese parsley. Tengo performed all these operations on automatic pilot. This was
not a dish that required complicated procedures: his hands moved on their own with precision,
but his mind stayed focused on Aomame the whole time.
When the stir-fried shrimp and vegetables were ready, Tengo transferred the food from
the frying pan to a large platter along with the edamame. He took a fresh beer from the refrigerator,
sat at the kitchen table, and, still lost in thought, proceeded to eat the steaming food.
Ive obviously been changing a lot over the past several months. Maybe you could say Im
growing up mentally and emotionally … at last … on the verge of turning thirty. Well, isnt that
something! With his partially drunk beer in hand, Tengo shook his head in self-derision.
Really, isnt that something! How many years will it take me to reach full maturity at this rate?
In any case, though, it seemed clear that Air Chrysalis had been the catalyst for the
changes going on inside him. The act of rewriting Fuka-Eris story in his own words had produced
in Tengo a strong new desire to give literary form to the story inside himself. And part
of that strong new desire was a need for Aomame. Something was making him think about
Aomame all the time now. At every opportunity, his thoughts would be drawn back to that
classroom on an afternoon twenty years earlier the way a strong riptide could sweep the feet
out from under a person standing on the shore.
Tengo drank only half his beer and ate only half his shrimp and vegetables. He poured the
leftover beer into the sink, and the food he transferred to a small plate, covered it with plastic
wrap, and put it in the refrigerator.
After the meal, Tengo sat at his desk, switched on his word processor, and opened his
partially written document.
True, rewriting the past probably had almost no meaning, Tengo felt. His older girlfriend
had been right about that. No matter how passionately or minutely he might attempt to rewrite
the past, the present circumstances in which he found himself would remain generally unchanged.
Time had the power to cancel all changes wrought by human artifice, overwriting all
new revisions with further revisions, returning the flow to its original course. A few minor facts
might be changed, but Tengo would still be Tengo.
What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while
standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as though he were
rewriting the past. It was the only way.
 Contrition and repentance
 Tear the sinful heart in two.
 O that my teardrops may be
 A sweet balm unto thee,
 Faithful Jesus.
This was the meaning of the aria from the St. Matthew Passion that Fuka-Eri had sung the
other day. He had wondered about it and listened again to his recording at home, looking up
the words in translation. It was an aria near the beginning of the Passion concerned with the
so-called Anointing in Bethany. When Jesus visits the home of a leper in the town of Bethany,
a woman pours very costly fragrant oil on his head. The disciples around him scold her for
wasting the precious ointment, saying that she could have sold it and used the money to help
the poor. But Jesus quiets the angry disciples and says that the woman has done a good
deed. For in pouring this fragrant oil on my body, she did it for my burial. 
The woman knew that Jesus would have to die soon. And so, as though bathing him in
her tears, she could do no less than pour the valuable, fragrant oil on his head. Jesus also
knew that he would soon have to tread the road to death, and he told his disciples, Wherever
this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a
memorial to her. 
None of them, of course, was able to change the future.
Tengo closed his eyes again, took a deep breath, found the words he needed and set
them in a row. Then he rearranged them to give the image greater clarity and precision. Finally,
he improved the rhythm.
Like Vladimir Horowitz seated before eighty-eight brand-new keys, Tengo curved his ten
fingers suspended in space. Then, when he was ready, he began typing characters to fill the
word processors screen.
He depicted a world in which two moons hung side by side in the evening eastern sky, the
people living in that world, and the time flowing through it.
 Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also
be told as a memorial to her. 
1Q84
CHAPTER 5
Aomame
THE VEGETARIAN CAT
MEETS UP WITH THE RAT
Once she had managed to comprehend the sheer fact that Ayumi had died, Aomame
went through a brief period involving a certain process of mental adjustment. Eventually,
when the first phase of the process ended, she began to cry. She cried quietly, even silently,
burying her face in her hands, her shoulders quivering, as if she wanted to be sure that no
one else in the world could tell that she was crying.
The window curtains were shut tight, but still, someone might be watching. That night
Aomame spread the newspaper on the kitchen table, and, in its presence, she cried without
interruption. Now and then a sob escaped her, but the rest of the time she cried soundlessly.
Her tears ran down her hands and onto the paper.
Aomame did not cry easily in this world. Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead
become angry at someone else or at herself which meant that it was rare for her to shed
tears. Once they started pouring out of her, though, she couldnt stop them. She hadnt had
such a long cry since Tamaki Otsuka killed herself. How many years ago had that been? She
could not remember. In any case, it had been a long time before, and she had cried forever. It
went on for days. She ate nothing the whole time, and stayed shut up indoors. Now and then
she would replenish the water that she had cried out in tears, and then she would collapse
and doze. That was all. The rest of the time she went on weeping. That was the last time she
did anything like this.
Ayumi was no longer in this world. She was now a cold corpse that was probably being
sent for forensic dissection. When that ended, they would sew her back together, probably
give her a simple funeral, send her to the crematorium, and burn her. She would turn into
smoke, rise up into the sky, and mix with the clouds. Then she would come down to the earth
again as rain, and nurture some nameless patch of grass with no story to tell. But Aomame
would never see Ayumi alive again. This seemed warped and misguided, in opposition to the
flow of nature, and horribly unfair.
Ayumi was the only person for whom Aomame had been able to feel anything like friendship
since Tamaki Otsuka left the world. Unfortunately, however, there had been limits to her
friendship. Ayumi was an active-duty police officer, and Aomame a serial murderer. True, she
was a murderer motivated by conviction and conscience, but a murderer is, in the end, a murderer,
a criminal in the eyes of the law.
For this reason, Aomame had to make an effort to harden her heart and not respond when
Ayumi sought to deepen their ties. Ayumi must have realized this to some extent that
Aomame had some kind of personal secret or secrets that caused her deliberately to put a
certain distance between them. Ayumi had excellent intuition. At least half of her easy openness
was an act, behind which lurked a soft and sensitive vulnerability. Aomame knew this to
be true. Her own defensiveness had probably saddened Ayumi, making her feel rejected and
distanced. The thought was like a needle stabbing Aomame in the chest.
And so Ayumi had been murdered. She had probably met a man in the city, had drinks
with him, and gone to the hotel. Then, in the dark, sealed room, their elaborate sex game had
begun. Handcuffs, a gag, a blindfold. Aomame could picture the scene. The man tightened
the sash of his bathrobe around the womans neck, and as he watched her writhe in agony,
his excitement mounted until he ejaculated. But the man tightened the sash with too much
force. What was supposed to have ended at the point of crisis did not end.
Ayumi must have feared that such a thing might happen. She needed intense sexual
activity at regular intervals. Her flesh needed it and so, perhaps, did her mind. Like
Aomame, she did not want a regular lover. But Ayumi tended to wade in deeper than
Aomame. She preferred wilder, riskier sex, and perhaps, unconsciously, she wanted to be
hurt. Aomame was different. She was more cautious, and she refused to be hurt by anyone.
She would fiercely resist if a man tried such a thing; but Ayumi tended to respond to a mans
desire, whatever it might be, and she looked forward to finding out what he would give her in
return. It was a dangerous tendency. These sexual partners of hers were, ultimately, passing
strangers. It was impossible to find out what desires they possessed, what tendencies they
were hiding, until the critical moment. Ayumi herself recognized the danger, of course, which
was why she needed a stable partner like Aomame someone to put on the brakes and
watch over her with care.
In her own way, Aomame, too, needed Ayumi, who possessed abilities that she herself
happened to lack an open, cheerful personality that put people at ease, a friendly manner, a
natural curiosity, a positive attitude, a talent for interesting conversation, large breasts that attracted
attention. All Aomame had to do was stay next to Ayumi with a mysterious smile on
her face. The men would want to find out what lay behind that smile. In that sense, Aomame
and Ayumi were an ideal team an invincible sex machine.
I should have been more open and accepting with that girl, Aomame thought. I should
have reciprocated her feelings and held her tight. That was the one thing she was hoping
for to be accepted and embraced unconditionally, to be comforted by someone, if only for a
moment. But I could not respond to her need. My instinct for self-preservation is too strong,
and so is my determination to keep Tamaki Otsukas memory unsullied.
So Ayumi went out to the city at night alone, without Aomame, to be strangled to death,
shackled by the cold steel of genuine handcuffs, blindfolded, her stockings or underwear
stuffed in her mouth. The thing that Ayumi had always feared had become a reality. If
Aomame had accepted her more willingly, Ayumi would probably not have gone out that
night. She would have called and asked Aomame to go with her. They would have gone to a
safer place, and checked on each other as they lay in their mens arms. But Ayumi had probably
been hesitant to impose on Aomame. And Aomame had never once called Ayumi to suggest
an outing.
It was nearly four oclock in the morning when Aomame found that she could no longer
bear to stay alone in her apartment. She stepped into a pair of sandals and went out, walking
aimlessly through the predawn streets, wearing only shorts and a tank top. Someone called
out to her, but she kept walking straight ahead. She walked until she was thirsty. Then she
stopped by an all-night convenience store, bought a large carton of orange juice, and drank it
on the spot. Then she went back to her apartment to cry. I loved Ayumi, she thought, even
more than I realized. If she wanted to touch me, I should have let her touch me anywhere she
liked, as much as she liked.
The next days paper carried another report, under the heading Policewoman Strangled
in Shibuya Hotel. The police were doing everything in their power to catch the man, it said,
and the womans fellow officers were utterly perplexed. Ayumi was a cheerful person who
was well liked by everyone, a responsible and energetic individual who had always earned
high marks for her police work. Several of her relatives, including her father and brother, were
also police officers, and their family ties were strong. All were puzzled as to how such a thing
could have happened to her.
None of them know, Aomame thought. But I know. Ayumi had a great emptiness inside
her, like a desert at the edge of the earth. You could try watering it all you wanted, but
everything would be sucked down to the bottom of the world, leaving no trace of moisture. No
life could take root there. Not even birds would fly over it. What had created such a wasteland
inside Ayumi, only she herself knew. No, maybe not even Ayumi knew the true cause. But
one of the biggest factors had to be the twisted sexual desires that the men around Ayumi
had forced upon her. As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to
create the sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that
she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it.
Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically on a lonely rainy afternoon,
or at dawn when she woke from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to
be held by someone, anyone.
Aomame took the Heckler & Koch HK4 from the shoe box, loaded the magazine with practiced
movements, released the safety, pulled back the slide, sent a bullet into the chamber,
raised the hammer, and aimed the gun at a point on the wall with both hands solidly on the
grip. The barrel was rock steady. Her hands no longer trembled. Aomame held her breath,
went into a moment of total concentration, and then let out one long breath. Lowering the pistol,
she reset the safety and tested the weight of the gun in her hand, staring at its dull gleam.
The gun had almost become a part of her body.
I have to keep my emotions in check, Aomame told herself. Even if I were to punish Ayumis
uncle or brother, they wouldnt know what they were being punished for. And nothing I
could do to them now would bring Ayumi back. Poor kid, something like this had to happen
sooner or later. Ayumi was on a slow but unavoidable approach toward the center of a deadly
whirlpool. And even if I had been warmer to her, there were probably limits to how much that
could have accomplished. Its time for me to stop crying. Ill have to change my attitude again.
Ill have to put the rules ahead of my self. Thats the important thing, as Tamaru said.
On the morning of the fifth day after Ayumi died, the pager finally rang. At the time, she
was in the kitchen, boiling water to make coffee and listening to the news on the radio. The
pager was sitting on the kitchen table. She read the telephone number displayed on the small
screen. It was not one she knew. But it had to be a message from Tamaru. She went to a
nearby pay phone and dialed the number. Tamaru answered after the third ring.
 All set to go? Tamaru asked.
 Of course, Aomame answered.
 Here is Madames message: seven oclock tonight in the lobby of the Hotel Okuras main
building. Dress for work as usual. Sorry for the short notice, but this could only be arranged at
the last minute. 
 Seven oclock tonight in the lobby of the Hotel Okuras main building, Aomame repeated
mechanically.
 Id like to wish you luck, but Im afraid a good luck wish from me wont do any good, 
Tamaru said.
 Because you dont believe in luck. 
 Even if I wanted to, I dont know what its like, Tamaru said. Ive never seen it. 
 Thats okay, I dont need good wishes. Theres something Id like you to do for me instead.
I have a potted rubber plant in my apartment. Id like you to take care of it. I couldnt
bring myself to throw it out. 
 Ill take care of it. 
 Thanks. 
 A rubber plants a lot easier to take care of than a cat or a tropical fish. Anything else? 
 Not a thing. Just throw out everything I leave behind. 
 When youve finished the job, go to Shinjuku Station and call this number again. Ill give
you your next instructions then. 
 When I finish the job, I go to Shinjuku Station and call this number again, Aomame repeated.
 I think you know not to write down the telephone number. When you leave home, break
the pager and get rid of it somewhere. 
 I see. Okay. 
 Weve lined up everything to the last detail. You dont have to worry about a thing. Just
leave the rest to us. 
 I wont worry, Aomame said.
Tamaru kept silent for a moment. Do you want my honest opinion? 
 Sure. 
 I dont mean to say that what you two are doing is useless, I really dont. Its your problem,
not mine. But I do think that, at the very least, its reckless. And theres no end to it. 
 You may be right, Aomame said. But its beyond changing now. 
 Like avalanches in the spring. 
 Probably. 
 But sensible people dont go into avalanche country in avalanche season. 
 A sensible person wouldnt be having this conversation with you. 
 You may be right, Tamaru had to admit. Anyhow, are there any relatives we should be
contacting in case an avalanche does occur? 
 None at all. 
 You mean there arent any, or theyre there but theyre not. 
 Theyre there but theyre not. 
 Thats fine, Tamaru said. Its best to travel light. A rubber plant is just about the ideal
family. 
 Seeing those goldfish in Madames house suddenly made me want to have some of my
own. Theyd be nice to have around. Theyre little and quiet and probably dont make too
many demands. So I went to a shop by my station the next day thinking I was going to buy
some, but when I actually saw them in the tank I didnt want them anymore. Instead, I bought
this sad little rubber plant, one of the last ones they had. 
 Id say you made the right choice. 
 I might never be able to buy goldfish ever. 
 Maybe not, Tamaru said. You could buy another rubber plant. 
A short silence ensued.
 Seven oclock tonight in the lobby of the Hotel Okuras main building, Aomame said
again to reconfirm.
 You just have to sit there. Theyll find you. 
 Theyll find me. 
Tamaru cleared his throat. By the way, do you know the story about the vegetarian cat
who met up with the rat? 
 Never heard that one. 
 Would you like to? 
 Very much. 
 A cat met up with a big male rat in the attic and chased him into a corner. The rat, trembling,
said, ‘Please dont eat me, Mr. Cat. I have to go back to my family. I have hungry children
waiting for me. Please let me go. The cat said, ‘Dont worry, I wont eat you. To tell you
the truth, I cant say this too loudly, but Im a vegetarian. I dont eat any meat. You were lucky
to run into me. The rat said, ‘Oh, what a wonderful day! What a lucky rat I am to meet up with
a vegetarian cat! But the very next second, the cat pounced on the rat, held him down with
his claws, and sank his sharp teeth into the rats throat. With his last, painful breath, the rat
asked him, ‘But Mr. Cat, didnt you say youre a vegetarian and dont eat any meat? Were you
lying to me? The cat licked his chops and said, ‘True, I dont eat meat. That was no lie. Im
going to take you home in my mouth and trade you for lettuce. 
Aomame thought about this for a moment. Whats the point? 
 No point, really. I suddenly remembered the story when we were talking about luck before.
Thats all. You can take whatever you like from it, of course. 
 What a heartwarming story. 
 Oh, and another thing. Im pretty sure theyre going to pat you down and search your bag
before they let you in. Theyre a careful bunch. Better keep that in mind. 
 Ill keep it in mind. 
 All right, then, Tamaru said, lets meet again somewhere. 
 Again somewhere, Aomame repeated by reflex.
Tamaru cut the connection. Aomame looked at the receiver for a moment, grimaced
slightly, and put it down. Then, after committing the telephone number displayed on the pager
to memory, she deleted it. Again somewhere, Aomame repeated to herself. But she knew she
would probably never see Tamaru again.
Aomame scoured the morning paper but found nothing on Ayumis murder. This probably
meant that the investigation had turned up nothing new. No doubt all the weekly magazines
would be mining the case for every weird angle they could find. A young, active-duty policewoman
engages in sex games with handcuffs in a Shibuya love hotel and is strangled, stark
naked. Aomame didnt want to read any sensationalistic reports. She had avoided turning on
the television ever since it happened, not wanting to hear some female news announcer re-
porting on Ayumis death in the usual artificial high-pitched tones.
Of course, she wanted the perpetrator to be caught. He had to be punished, no matter
what. But would it make any difference if he were arrested, tried, and all the details of the
murder came out? It wouldnt bring Ayumi back, that much was certain. In any case, the sentence
would be a light one. It would probably be judged to have been not a homicide but involuntary
manslaughter an accident. Of course, not even a death penalty could make up for
what had happened. Aomame closed the paper, rested her elbows on the table, and covered
her face with her hands for a while. She thought about Ayumi, but the tears no longer came.
Now she was just angry.
She still had a lot of time until seven oclock in the evening but nothing to do in the meantime,
no work at the sports club. Following Tamarus instructions, she had already deposited
her small travel bag and shoulder bag in a coin locker at Shinjuku Station. The travel bag contained
a sheaf of bills and enough clothing (including underwear and stockings) for several
days. She had been going to Shinjuku once every three days to deposit more coins in the slot
and double-check on the contents. She had no need to clean her apartment, and even if she
wanted to cook, the refrigerator was nearly empty. Aside from the rubber plant, there was almost
nothing left in the room that still had the smell of life. She had gotten rid of everything
connected to her personal information. All the drawers were empty. And as of tomorrow, I
wont be here, either. Not a trace of me will be left.
The clothes she would wear that evening were nicely folded and stacked on the bed. Next
to them she had placed a blue gym bag. Inside was a complete set of stretching equipment.
She checked the contents of the bag once more for safetys sake: jersey top and bottom,
yoga mat, large and small towels, and small hard case containing the fine-pointed ice pick.
Everything was there. She took the ice pick out of the case, pulled off the cork, and touched
the point to make sure it was still plenty sharp. To make doubly sure, she gave it a light
sharpening with her finest whetstone. She pictured the needle sinking soundlessly into that
special point on the back of the mans neck, as if being sucked inside. As usual, everything
should end in an instant no screaming, no bleeding, just a momentary spasm. Aomame
thrust the needle back into the cork and carefully returned the ice pick to its case.
Next she pulled the T-shirt-wrapped Heckler & Koch from its shoe box and, with practiced
movements, loaded seven 9mm bullets into the magazine. With a dry sound, she sent a cartridge
into the chamber. She released the safety catch and set it again. She wrapped the pistol
in a white handkerchief and put it in a vinyl pouch. This she hid in a change of underwear.
Now, was there anything else I had to do?
She couldnt think of anything. Standing in the kitchen, Aomame made coffee with the
boiled water. Then she sat at the table, drinking it with a croissant.
This may be my last job, Aomame thought. Its also going to be my most important and
most difficult job. Once Ive finished this assignment, I wont have to kill anyone anymore.
Aomame was not opposed to losing her identity. If anything, she welcomed it. She was not
particularly attached to her name or her face and could think of nothing about her past that
she would regret losing. A reset of my life: this may be the one thing Ive longed for most.
Strangely enough, the one thing that Aomame felt she did not want to lose was her rather
sad little breasts. From the age of twelve, she had lived with an unwavering dissatisfaction
with regard to the shape and size of her breasts. It often occurred to her that she might have
been able to live a far more serene life if only her breasts had been a little larger. And yet
now, when she was being given a chance to enlarge them (a choice that carried with it a certain
necessity), she found that she had absolutely no desire to make the change. They were
fine as they were. Indeed, they were just right.
She touched her breasts through her tank top. They were the same breasts as always,
shaped like two lumps of dough that had failed to rise because of a failure to properly combine
the ingredients and subtly different in size. She shook her head. But never mind. These
are me.
What will be left of me besides these breasts?
Tengos memory will stay with me, of course. The touch of his hand will stay. My shuddering
emotion will stay. The desire to be in his arms will stay. Even if I become a completely different
person, my love for Tengo can never be taken from me. Thats the biggest difference
between Ayumi and me. At my core, there is not nothing. Neither is it a parched wasteland. At
my core, there is love. Ill go on loving that ten-year-old boy named Tengo forever his
strength, his intelligence, his kindness. He does not exist here, with me, but flesh that does
not exist will never die, and promises unmade are never broken.
The thirty-year-old Tengo inside of Aomame was not the real Tengo. That Tengo was
nothing but a hypothesis, as it were, created entirely in Aomames mind. Tengo still had his
strength and intelligence and kindness, and now he was a grown man with thick arms, a
broad chest, and big, strong genitals. He could be by her side whenever she wanted him
there, holding her tightly, stroking her hair, kissing her. Their room was always dark, and
Aomame couldnt see him. All that her eyes could take in was his eyes. Even in the dark, she
could see his warm eyes. She could look into them and see the world as he saw it.
Aomames occasional overwhelming need to sleep with men came, perhaps, from her
wish to keep the Tengo she nurtured inside her as unsullied as possible. By engaging in wild
sex with unknown men, what she hoped to accomplish, surely, was the liberation of her flesh
from the desire that bound it. She wanted to spend time alone with Tengo in the calm, quiet
world that came to her after the liberation, just the two of them together, undisturbed. Surely
that was what Aomame wanted.
Aomame spent several hours that afternoon thinking about Tengo. She sat on the aluminum
chair on her narrow balcony, looking up at the sky, listening to the roar of the traffic, occasionally
holding a leaf of her sad little rubber plant between her fingers as she thought of him.
There was still no moon to be seen in the afternoon sky. That wouldnt happen for some
hours yet. Where will I be at this time tomorrow? Aomame wondered. I have no idea. But
thats a minor matter compared with the fact that Tengo exists in this world.
Aomame gave her rubber plant its last watering, and then she put Janáeks Sinfonietta on
the record player. It was the only record she had kept after getting rid of all the others. She
closed her eyes and listened to the music, imagining the windswept fields of Bohemia. How
wonderful it would be to walk with Tengo in such a place! They would be holding hands, of
course. The breeze would sweep past, soundlessly swaying the soft green grass. Aomame
could feel the warmth of Tengos hand in hers. The scene would gradually fade like a movies
happy ending.
Aomame then lay down on her bed and slept for thirty minutes, curled up in a ball. She did
not dream. It was a sleep that required no dreaming. When she woke, the hands of the clock
were pointing to four thirty. Using the food still left in the refrigerator, she made herself some
ham and eggs. She drank orange juice straight from the carton. The silence after her nap was
strangely heavy. She turned on the FM radio to find Vivaldis Concerto for Woodwinds playing.
The piccolo was trilling away like the chirping of a little bird. To Aomame, this sounded
like music intended to emphasize the unreality of her present reality.
After clearing the dishes from the table, Aomame took a shower and changed into the outfit
she had prepared weeks ago for this day simple clothes that made for easy movement:
pale blue cotton pants and a white short-sleeved blouse free of ornamentation. She gathered
her hair in a bun and put it up, holding it in place with a comb. No accessories. Instead of putting
the clothes she had been wearing into the hamper, she stuffed them into a black plastic
garbage bag for Tamaru to get rid of. She trimmed her fingernails and took time brushing her
teeth. She also cleaned her ears. Then she trimmed her eyebrows, spread a thin layer of
cream over her face, and put a tiny dab of cologne on the back of her neck. She inspected the
details of her face from every angle in the mirror to be sure there were no problems, and then,
picking up a vinyl gym bag with a Nike logo, she left the room.
Standing by the front door, she turned for one last look, aware that she would never be
coming back. The thought made the apartment appear unbelievably shabby, like a prison that
only locked from the inside, bereft of any picture or vase. The only thing left was the bargain-sale
rubber plant on the balcony, which she had bought instead of goldfish. She could
hardly believe she had spent years of her life in this place without question or discontent.
 Good-bye, she murmured, bidding farewell not so much to the apartment as to the self
that had lived here.
1Q84
CHAPTER 6
Tengo
WE HAVE VERY LONG ARMS
The situation showed little development for a while. No one contacted Tengo. No messages
arrived from Komatsu or Professor Ebisuno or Fuka-Eri. They all might have forgotten
him and gone off to the moon. Tengo would have no problem with that if it were true, but
things would never work out so conveniently for him. No, they had not gone to the moon.
They just had a lot to do that kept them busy day after day, and they had neither the time nor
the consideration to let Tengo know what they were up to.
Tengo tried to read the newspaper every day, in keeping with Komatsus instructions,
but at least in the paper he read nothing further about Fuka-Eri appeared. The newspaper
industry actively sought out events that had already happened, but took a relatively passive
attitude toward ongoing events. Thus, it probably carried the tacit message, Nothing much is
happening now. Having no television himself, Tengo did not know how television news
shows were handling the case.
As for the weekly magazines, virtually all of them picked up the story. Not that Tengo actually
read them. He just saw the magazine ads in the newspaper with their sensational headlines:
 Truth about the enigmatic disappearance of the beautiful bestselling teenage author, 
 Air Chrysalis author Fuka-Eri (17): Where did she disappear to? ‘Hidden background of
beautiful runaway teenage author. Several of the ads even included Fuka-Eris photo, the
one taken at the press conference. Tengo was, of course, not uninterested in what the articles
might say, but he was not about to spend the money it would take to compile a complete set
of weeklies. Komatsu would probably let him know if there was anything in them that he
should be concerned about. The absence of contact meant that, for the moment, there had
been no new developments. In other words, people had still not realized that Air Chrysalis
had (perhaps) been the product of a ghostwriter.
Judging from the headlines, the media were focused on the identity of Fuka-Eris father as
a once-famous radical activist, the fact that she had spent an isolated childhood in a commune
in the hills of Yamanashi, and her present guardian, Professor Ebisuno (a formerly wellknown
intellectual). And even as the whereabouts of the beautiful, enigmatic teenage author
remained a mystery, Air Chrysalis continued to occupy the bestseller list. Such questions
were enough to arouse peoples interest.
If it appeared that Fuka-Eris disappearance was going to drag on, however, it was probably
just a matter of time until investigations would begin to probe into broader areas. Then
things might get sticky. If anyone decided to look into Fuka-Eris schooling, for example, they
might discover that she was dyslexic and, possibly for that reason, hardly went to school at
all. Her grades in Japanese or her compositions (assuming she wrote any) might come out,
and that might naturally lead to the question of how a dyslexic girl had managed to produce
such sterling prose. It didnt take a genius to imagine how, at that point, people might start
wondering if she had had help.
Such doubts would be brought to Komatsu first. He was the editor in charge of the story
and had overseen everything regarding its publication. Komatsu would surely insist that he
knew nothing about the matter. With a cool look on his face, he would maintain that his only
role had been to pass the authors manuscript on to the selection committee, that he had had
nothing to do with the process of its creation. Komatsu was good at keeping a straight face
when saying things he didnt believe, though this was a skill mastered by all experienced editors
to some degree. No sooner had he denied any knowledge of the deception than he would
call Tengo and dramatically say something like, Hey, Tengo, its starting: the heat is on, as if
he himself were enjoying the mess.
And maybe he was. Tengo sometimes felt that Komatsu had a certain desire for selfdestruction.
Maybe deep down he was hoping to see the whole plan exposed, a big juicy
scandal blow up, and all connected parties blasted into the sky. And yet, at the same time,
Komatsu could be a hardheaded realist. He would be more likely to cast his desire aside than
to sail over the edge toward destruction.
Komatsu probably had it all figured out so that no matter what happened, he at least
would survive. Just how he would manage it in this case, Tengo did not know, but Komatsu
probably had his own clever ways of exploiting anything, be it a scandal or even total destruction.
He was a shrewd player who was in no position to be criticizing Professor Ebisuno in that
regard. But Tengo told himself with some confidence that Komatsu would be sure to contact
him if clouds of suspicion began to appear on the horizon concerning the authorship of Air
Chrysalis. So far, Tengo had merely functioned as a convenient and effective tool for Komatsu,
but now he was also Komatsus Achilles heel. If Tengo were to disclose all the facts,
that would put Komatsu in a terrible position, so Komatsu could not afford to ignore him. All
Tengo had to do was wait for Komatsu to call; as long as there was no call, the heat was not
 on. 
Tengo was more interested in what Professor Ebisuno might be doing at the moment. No
doubt he was making things happen with the police, hounding them with the possibility that
Sakigake was involved in Fuka-Eris disappearance, exploiting the event to pry open the religious
organizations hard shell. But were the police moving in that direction? Yes, they probably
were. The media were already foaming at the mouth over the relationship of Fuka-Eri
and Sakigake. If the police did nothing and important facts later emerged along that line, they
would be attacked for having failed to investigate. In any case, however, their investigation
would be carried out behind the scenes, which meant that no substantial new information was
to be gleaned from either the weekly magazines or TV news.
Coming home from the cram school one day, Tengo found a thick envelope shoved into
his mailbox in the apartment buildings front entrance. It bore Komatsus name as sender, the
logo of his publisher, and six special-delivery postmarks. Back in his apartment, Tengo
opened it to find copies of all the latest reviews of Air Chrysalis and a letter from Komatsu.
Deciphering Komatsus scrawl took a good bit of time.
Tengo-
There have been no major developments so far. They still havent found Fuka-Eri. The
weekly magazines and TV reports are mainly concentrating on the question of her birth and
childhood, and fortunately the damage has not spread to us. The book keeps selling more
and more, which may or may not be a cause for celebration, its hard to say. The companys
very happy, though, and the boss gave me a certificate of commendation and a cash bonus.
Ive been working for this publisher for over twenty years, but this is the first time hes ever
had anything nice to say about me. It kind of makes me want to see the look on their faces if
they found out the truth.
I am enclosing copies of reviews and other articles regarding Air Chrysalis. Have a look at
them for your own enlightenment when you get a chance. I think some of them will be of special
interest to you, and a few will make you laugh if youre in the mood for laughing, that is.
I had an acquaintance of mine look into that New Japan Foundation for the Advancement
of Scholarship and the Arts we talked about. It was set up a few years ago, received government
approval, and is now actively operating. It has an office and submits its annual financial
reports. It awards grants to a number of scholars and writers each year or so they claim. My
source cant tell where they get their money, and he finds the whole thing just plain fishy. It
could be a front established as a tax write-off. A detailed investigation might turn up some
more information, but we dont have that kind of time and effort to spare. As I said to you
when we last talked, Im not quite convinced that a place like that wants to give three million
yen to an unknown writer like you. Theres something going on behind the scenes, and we
cant discount the possibility that Sakigake has something to do with it. If so, it means theyve
sniffed out your connection to Air Chrysalis. In any case, it makes sense for you to have nothing
to do with that organization.
Tengo returned Komatsus letter to the envelope. Why would Komatsu have bothered to
write him a letter? It could simply be that, as long as he was sending the reviews, he put a letter
in with them, but that was not like Komatsu. If he had something to tell Tengo, he would
have done it on the phone as usual. A letter like this could remain as evidence in the future.
Cautious Komatsu could not have failed to think about that. Or possibly Komatsu was less
worried about evidence remaining than the possibility of a wiretap.
Tengo looked over at his phone. A wiretap? It had never occurred to him that anyone
might be tapping his phone. Though, come to think of it, no one had called him in the past
week. Maybe it was common knowledge that this phone was being tapped. He had not even
heard from his older girlfriend, who liked talking on the phone. That was very unusual.
Even more unusual was the fact that she had not come to his apartment last Friday. She
always called if something came up to prevent her from visiting him say, her child was home
from school with a cold, or her period had started all of a sudden. That Friday, however, she
had not contacted him; she simply never showed up. Tengo had prepared a simple lunch for
them in anticipation of her arrival, but ended up spending the day alone. Perhaps she was
stuck dealing with some emergency, but it was not normal not to have had the slightest word
from her. Meanwhile, he was not able to contact her from his end.
Tengo stopped thinking about both his girlfriend and the telephone. He sat at the kitchen
table to read the book reviews in order. They had been assembled chronologically, the title of
the newspaper or magazine and date of publication written in ballpoint pen in the upper lefthand
corner. Komatsu must have had his part-time female assistant do it; he would never
have undertaken such drudgery himself. Most of the reviews were positive. Many of the reviewers
praised the storys depth and boldness and acknowledged the precision of the style,
several of them finding it incredible that the work had been written by a seventeen-year-old
girl.
Not a bad guess, Tengo thought.
One article called the author a Françoise Sagan who has absorbed the air of magical
realism. This piece, though vague and filled with reservations, generally seemed to be in
praise of the work.
More than a few of the reviewers seemed perplexed by or simply undecided about the
meaning of the air chrysalis and the Little People. One reviewer concluded his piece, As a
story, the work is put together in an exceptionally interesting way and it carries the reader
along to the very end, but when it comes to the question of what is an air chrysalis, or who are
the Little People, we are left in a pool of mysterious question marks. This may well be the authors
intention, but many readers are likely to take this lack of clarification as a sign of
‘authorial laziness. While this may be fine for a debut work, if the author intends to have a
long career as a writer, in the near future she may well need to explain her deliberately cryptic
posture. 
Tengo cocked his head in puzzlement. If an author succeeded in writing a story put together
in an exceptionally interesting way that carries the reader along to the very end, who
could possibly call such a writer lazy ?
But Tengo, in all honesty, had nothing clear to say to this. Maybe his thoughts on the matter
were mistaken and the critic was right. He had immersed himself so deeply in the rewriting
of Air Chrysalis that he was practically incapable of any kind of objectivity. He now saw the air
chrysalis and the Little People as things that existed inside himself. Not even he could honestly
say he knew what they meant. Nor was this so very important to him. The most meaningful
thing was whether or not one could accept their existence as a fact, and Tengo was
able to do this quite readily, which was precisely why he had been able to immerse his heart
and soul in rewriting Air Chrysalis. Had he not been able to accept the story on its own terms,
he would never have participated in the fraud, even if tempted with a fortune or faced with
threats.
Still, Tengos reading of the story was his and his alone. He could not help feeling a certain
sympathy for the trusting men and women who were left in a pool of mysterious question
marks after reading Air Chrysalis. He pictured a bunch of dismayed-looking people clutching
at colorful flotation rings as they drifted aimlessly in a large pool full of question marks. In the
sky above them shone an utterly unrealistic sun. Tengo felt a certain sense of responsibility
for having foisted such a state of affairs upon the public.
But who can possibly save all the people of the world? Tengo thought. You could bring all
the gods of the world into one place, and still they couldnt abolish nuclear weapons or eradicate
terrorism. They couldnt end the drought in Africa or bring John Lennon back to life. Far
from it the gods would just break into factions and start fighting among themselves, and the
world would probably become even more chaotic than it is now. Considering the sense of
powerlessness that such a state of affairs would bring about, to have people floating in a pool
of mysterious question marks seems like a minor sin.
Tengo read about half of the Air Chrysalis reviews that Komatsu had sent before stuffing
them back into the envelope. He could pretty well imagine what the rest were like. As a story,
Air Chrysalis was fascinating to many people. It had fascinated Tengo and Komatsu and Professor
Ebisuno and an amazing number of readers. What more did it have to do?
The phone rang just after nine oclock Tuesday night. Tengo was listening to music and
reading a book. This was his favorite time of day, reading to his hearts content before going
to sleep. When he tired of reading, he would fall asleep.
This was the first time he had heard the phone ring in quite a while, and there was
something ominous about it. This was not Komatsu calling. The phone had a different ring
when it was from Komatsu. Tengo hesitated, wondering whether he should pick it up at all. He
let it ring five times. Then he lifted the needle from the record groove and picked up the receiver.
It might be his girlfriend.
 Mr. Kawana? a man said. It was the voice of a middle-aged man, soft and deep. Tengo
did not recognize it.
 Yes, Tengo said cautiously.
 Im sorry to call so late at night. My name is Yasuda, the man said in a neutral voice,
neither friendly nor hostile, neither impersonal nor intimate.
Yasuda? The name was ordinary enough, but he couldnt think of any Yasudas he knew.
 Im calling to give you a message, the man said. He then inserted a slight pause, rather
like putting a bookmark in between the pages of a book. My wife will not be able to visit your
home anymore, I believe. That is all I wanted to tell you. 
Yasuda! That was his girlfriends name. Kyoko Yasuda. She never had occasion to speak
her name in Tengos presence, which accounted for the lag in recognition. This man on the
phone was Kyokos husband. Tengo felt as if something were stuck in his throat.
 Have I managed to make myself clear? the man asked, his voice entirely free of emotion or
none that Tengo could hear. He spoke with a slight accent, possibly from Hiroshima
or Kyushu. Tengo could not be sure.
 Not be able to visit, Tengo echoed the words.
 Yes, she will no longer be able to visit. 
Tengo mustered up the courage to ask, Has something happened to her? 
Silence. Tengos question hung in space, unanswered. Then the man said, So what Im
telling you, Mr. Kawana, is that you will probably never see my wife again. I just wanted to let
you know that. 
The man knew that Tengo had been sleeping with his wife. Once a week. For a year.
Tengo could tell that he knew. But the mans voice was strangely lacking in either anger or resentment.
It contained something else not so much a personal emotion as an objective
scene: an abandoned, overgrown garden, or a dry riverbed after a major flood a scene like
that.
 Im not sure what you are trying to 
 Then lets just leave it at that, the man said, before Tengo could finish. A trace of fatigue
was discernible in his voice. One thing should be perfectly clear. My wife is irretrievably lost.
She can no longer visit your home in any form. That is what I am saying. 
 Irretrievably lost, Tengo repeated.
 I did not want to make this call, Mr. Kawana. But I couldnt sleep at night if I just let it go
and said nothing. Do you think I like having this conversation? 
No sounds of any kind came from the other end when the man stopped talking. He
seemed to be phoning from an incredibly quiet place. Either that or the emotion inside him
was acting like a vacuum, absorbing all sound waves in the vicinity.
Tengo felt he ought to ask the man a question or two. Otherwise, it seemed, this whole
thing would end as a collection of inscrutable hints. He mustnt let the conversation die! But
this man had no intention of informing Tengo of any situational details. What kind of question
could he ask when the other person had no intention of revealing the actual state of affairs?
What kind of words should he give voice to when facing a vacuum? Tengo was still struggling
to discover any words that might work when, without warning, the connection was cut. The
man had set down the receiver without saying anything and left Tengos presence. Probably
forever.
Tengo kept the dead receiver pressed to his ear for a time. If anyone else was listening in
to the call, he might be able to grasp that persons presence. He held his breath and listened,
but there were no telltale sounds. All he could hear was the beating of his own heart. The
more he listened, the more he felt like a thief who has crept into a strangers house at night,
hidden in the shadows, holding his breath, and waiting for the family to fall asleep.
He boiled some water in a kettle and made green tea to calm his nerves. Cradling the
handleless cup in his hands, he sat at the kitchen table and mentally reviewed the telephone
call.
 My wife is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form. That is what I
am saying. In any form: that phrase disturbed Tengo the most. It suggested something dark,
damp, and slimy.
What this man named Yasuda wanted to convey to Tengo, it seemed, was the message
that even if his wife wanted to visit Tengos apartment again, it was literally impossible for her
to carry out that wish. Impossible in what way? In what context? And what did it mean to say
that she was irretrievably lost ? An image formed in his mind of Kyoko Yasuda with serious
injuries from an accident or having come down with an incurable disease or her face horribly
disfigured by violence. She was confined to a wheelchair or had lost a limb or was wrapped
head to toe in bandages, unable to move. Or then again she was being held in an underground
room, fastened like a dog on a thick chain. All of these possibilities, however, seemed
far-fetched.
Kyoko Yasuda (as Tengo was now calling her in his mind) had hardly ever spoken of her
husband. Tengo had learned nothing about him from her his profession, his age, his looks,
his personality, where they had met, when they had married, whether he was skinny or fat, tall
or short, or whether or not they got along well. All Tengo knew was that she was not particularly
hard-pressed economically (she appeared to be quite comfortable, in fact), and that she
seemed dissatisfied with either the frequency or the quality of the sex she had with her husband,
though even these were entirely matters of conjecture on his part. She and Tengo
spent their afternoons in bed talking of many things, but never once had the subject of her
husband come up, nor had Tengo wanted to know about him. He preferred to remain ignorant
of the man whose wife he was stealing. It seemed only proper. Now that this new situation
had developed, however, he was sorry that he had never asked her about her husband (she
would almost certainly have responded frankly if he had asked). Was her husband jealous?
Possessive? Did he have violent tendencies?
He tried to put himself in the mans place. How would he feel if the situation were reversed?
Say, he has a wife, two small children, and a tranquil home life, but he discovers that
his wife is sleeping with another man once a week a man ten years her junior, and the affair
has been going on for over a year. What would he think if he found himself in such a situation?
What emotions would rule his heart? Violent anger? Deep disappointment? Vague
sadness? Scornful indifference? A sense of having lost touch with reality? Or an indistinguishable
blend of several emotions?
No amount of thinking enabled Tengo to hit upon exactly how he would feel. What came
to mind through all his hypothesizing was the image of his mother in a white slip giving her
breasts to a young man he did not know. Destiny seems to have come full circle, Tengo
thought. The enigmatic young man was perhaps Tengo himself, the woman in his arms Kyoko
Yasuda. The composition was exactly the same; only the individuals had changed. Does this
mean that my life has been nothing but a process through which I am giving concrete form to
the dormant image inside me? And how much responsibility do I bear for her having become
irretrievably lost?
Tengo could not get back to sleep again. He kept hearing the voice of the man who called
himself Yasuda. The hints that he had left behind weighed heavily on Tengo, and the words
he had spoken bore a strange reality. Tengo thought about Kyoko Yasuda. He pictured her
face and body in minute detail. He had last seen her on Friday, two weeks prior. As always,
they had spent a lot of time having sex. After the phone call from her husband, though, it
seemed like something that had happened in the distant past, like an episode out of history.
On his shelf remained several LP records that she had brought from home to listen to in
bed with him, all jazz records from long, long ago Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday (this one,
too, had Barney Bigard as a sideman), some 1940s Duke Ellington. She had listened to
them and handled them with great care. The jackets had faded somewhat with the years,
but the records themselves looked brand-new. Tengo picked up one jacket after another.
Gazing at them, he felt with growing certainty that he might never see her again.
Tengo was not, strictly speaking, in love with Kyoko Yasuda. He had never felt that he
wanted to spend his life with her or that saying good-bye to her could be painful. She had
never made him feel that deep trembling of the heart. But he had grown accustomed to having
this older girlfriend as part of his life, and naturally, he had grown fond of her. He looked
forward to welcoming her to his apartment once a week and joining his naked flesh with hers.
Their relationship was an unusual one for Tengo. He had never been able to feel very close to
many women. In fact, most women whether he was in a sexual relationship with them or
not made Tengo feel uncomfortable. And in order to curb that discomfort, Tengo had to
fence off a certain territory inside himself. In other words, he had to keep certain rooms in his
heart locked tight. With Kyoko Yasuda, however, such complex operations were unnecessary.
First of all, she seemed to grasp exactly what Tengo wanted and what he did not want. And
so Tengo counted himself lucky that they had happened to find each other.
Now, however, something had happened, and she was irretrievably lost. For some unknowable
reason, she could never visit here in any form. And, according to her husband, it
was better for Tengo to know nothing about either the reason or its consequence.
. . .
Still unable to sleep, Tengo was sitting on the floor, listening to the Duke Ellington record
at low volume, when the phone rang again. The hands of the wall clock were pointing to
10:12. Tengo could think of no one other than Komatsu who might call at a time like this, but
the ring didnt sound like Komatsus, which was always more high-strung and impatient. It
might be Yasuda again; perhaps he had forgotten to tell Tengo something else. Tengo did not
want to answer. Experience had taught him that phone calls at this time of night were never
very pleasant. Thinking of his current situation, however, he had no choice but to answer it.
 That is Mr. Kawana, isnt it? said a man. It was not Komatsu. Nor was it Yasuda. The
voice belonged unmistakably to Ushikawa, speaking as if he had a mouthful of water or
some other elusive liquid. His strange face and flat, misshapen head came to Tengos mind
automatically.
 Uh, sorry for calling so late. Its Ushikawa. I know I burst in on you the other day and took
much of your valuable time. Today, too, I wish I could have called earlier, but some urgent
business came up, and the next thing I knew it was already this late. Believe me, I know
youre a real early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, Mr. Kawana, and thats a very admirable thing.
Staying up until all hours, frittering away your time, doesnt do anyone any good. The best
thing is to go to bed as soon as possible after it gets dark and wake with the sun in the morning.
But, I dont know, call it intuition, it just popped into my mind that you might still be up tonight,
Mr. Kawana, so even though I knew it was not the most polite thing to do, I decided to
give you a call. Have I caught you at a bad time? 
Tengo did not like what Ushikawa was saying, and he did not like it that Ushikawa knew
his home phone number. Intuition had nothing to do with it: he had called because he knew
perfectly well that Tengo was up, unable to sleep. Maybe he knew that Tengos lights were
on. Could someone be watching this apartment? He could almost picture one of Ushikawas
 eager and capable researchers observing Tengos apartment from somewhere with a
pair of high-powered binoculars.
 I am up tonight, in fact, Tengo said. That ‘intuition of yours is correct. Maybe I drank too
much strong green tea. 
 That is too bad, Mr. Kawana. Wakeful nights often give people useless thoughts. How
about it, then, do you mind talking with me a while? 
 As long as its not about something that makes it harder for me to sleep. 
Ushikawa burst out laughing. At his end of the line someplace in this world his misshapen
head shook in its own misshapen way. Very funny, Mr. Kawana. Of course, what I
have to say may not be as comforting as a lullaby, but the subject itself is not so deadly serious
as to keep you awake at night, I assure you. Its a simple question of yes or no. The business
about the, uh, grant. Its an attractive proposition, dont you think? Have you thought it
over? We have to have your final answer now. 
 I believe I declined the grant quite clearly the last time we talked. I appreciate the offer,
but I have everything I need at the moment. Im not hard-pressed financially, and if possible
Id like to keep my life going along at its present pace. 
 Meaning, you dont want to be beholden to anyone. 
 In a word, yes. 
 I suppose that is very admirable of you, Mr. Kawana, Ushikawa said with a sound like a
light clearing of the throat. You want to make it on your own. You want to have as little as
possible to do with organizations. I understand how you feel, but Im concerned about you,
Mr. Kawana. Look at the world we live in. Anything could happen at any time. So we all need
some kind of insurance, something to lean on, a shelter from the wind. I hate to say this, Mr.
Kawana, but at the moment you have, uh, exactly nothing that you can lean on. Not one of
the people around you can be counted on, it seems to me: all of them would most likely
desert you in a pinch. Am I right? You know what they say ‘Better safe than sorry. Its important
to insure yourself for when the pinch does come, dont you think? And Im not just talking
about money. Money, ultimately, is just a kind of symbol of something else. 
 Im not quite sure what youre getting at, Tengo said. That intuitive sense of distaste he
experienced when first meeting Ushikawa was creeping up on him again.
 No, of course not. Youre still young and healthy. Maybe thats why you dont understand
what I am saying. Let me give you an example. Once you pass a certain age, life becomes
nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to
slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that
come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your
dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one
by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just
disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never
get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. Its all very painful as painful
as actually being cut with a knife. You will be turning thirty soon, Mr. Kawana, which means
that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight portion of life you will be getting older.
You are probably beginning to grasp that painful sense that you are losing something, are you
not? 
Tengo wondered if this man could be dropping hints about Kyoko Yasuda. Perhaps he
knew that they had been meeting here once a week, and that recently something had caused
her to leave him.
 You seem to know a great deal about my private life, Tengo said.
 No, not at all, Ushikawa insisted. Im just talking about life in general. Really. I know
very little about your private life. 
Tengo remained silent.
 Please, Mr. Kawana, Ushikawa said with a sigh, be so good as to accept our grant.
Frankly speaking, you are in a rather precarious position. We can back you up in a pinch. We
can throw you a life preserver. If things go on like this, you might find yourself in an inextricable
situation. 
 An inextricable situation, Tengo said.
 Exactly. 
 Can you tell me specifically what kind of ‘situation you mean? 
Ushikawa paused momentarily. Then he said, Believe me, Mr. Kawana, there are things it
is better not to know. Certain kinds of knowledge rob people of their sleep. Green tea is no
match for these things. They might take restful sleep away from you forever. What I, uh, want
to say to you is this. Think about it this way: its as if you opened a special spigot and let a
special something out before you knew what was happening, and its having an effect on the
people around you a rather less-than-desirable effect. 
 Do the Little People have anything to do with this? 
It was a shot in the dark, but it shut Ushikawa up for a while. His was a heavy silence, like
a black stone sunk to the bottom of a deep body of water.
 I want to know the truth, Mr. Ushikawa. Lets stop throwing riddles at each other and talk
more concretely. What has happened to her? 
 ‘Her? I dont know what you mean. 
Tengo sighed. This was too delicate a matter to discuss on the phone.
 Im sorry, Mr. Kawana, but Im just a messenger sent by my client. For now, my job is to
speak of fundamental matters as indirectly as possible, Ushikawa said circumspectly. Im
sorry if I seem to be deliberately tantalizing you, but Im only allowed to talk about this in the
vaguest terms. And, to tell you the truth, my own knowledge of the matter is quite limited. In
any case, though, I really dont know anything about ‘her, whoever she might be. Youll have
to be a little more specific. 
 All right, then, who are the Little People? 
 Again, Mr. Kawana, I dont know anything at all about these ‘Little People or at least
nothing more than that they appear in the book Air Chrysalis. I will tell you this, however:
judging from the drift of your remarks, it seems to me that you have let something out of the
bag before you yourself knew what it was all about. That can be awfully dangerous under certain
circumstances. My client knows very well just how dangerous it is and what kind of
danger it poses, and they have a degree of understanding regarding how to deal with the
danger, which is precisely why we have tried to extend a helping hand to you. To put it quite
bluntly, we have very long arms long and strong. 
 Who is this ‘client you keep mentioning? Someone connected with Sakigake? 
 Unfortunately, I have not been granted the authority to divulge any names, Ushikawa
said with what sounded like genuine regret. I can say, however, without going into detail, that
they have their own very special power. Formidable power. We can stand behind you. Please
understand this is our final offer. You are free to take it or leave it. Once you make up your
mind, however, there is no going back. So please think about it very carefully. And let me say
this: if you are not on their side, regrettably, under certain circumstances, their long arms
could, when extended, have certain undesirable though unintended effects on you. 
 What kind of ‘undesirable effects? 
Ushikawa did not immediately reply to Tengos question. Instead, Tengo heard what sounded
like the faint sucking of saliva at both sides of Ushikawas mouth.
 I dont know the exact answer to that, Ushikawa said. They havent told me anything
specific, which is why I am speaking in generalities. 
 So, what is it that I supposedly let out of the bag? Tengo asked.
 I dont know the answer to that, either, Ushikawa said. At the risk of repeating myself, I
am nothing but a hired negotiator. By the time the full reservoir of information reaches me, its
squeezed down to a few droplets. All Im doing is passing on to you exactly what my client
has told me to with the limited authority I have been granted. You may wonder why the client
doesnt just contact you directly, which would speed things up, and why they have to use this
strange man as an intermediary, but I dont know any better than you do. 
Ushikawa cleared his throat and waited for another question, but when there was none, he
continued, Now, Mr. Kawana, you were asking what it is that you let out of the bag, right? 
Tengo said yes, that was right.
 Well, Mr. Kawana, Im not sure why exactly, but I cant help wondering if it might be
something for which a third party couldnt offer a simple solution. I suspect its something you
would need to go out on your own and work up a sweat to find out. And it could very well be
that after youve gone through all that and reached a point where youve figured out the answer,
its too late. To me, it seems obvious that you have a, uh, very special talent a superior
and beautiful talent, a talent that ordinary people do not possess. Which is precisely why
your recent accomplishment carries an authority that cannot be easily overlooked. And my client
appears to value that talent of yours very highly. That is why we are offering you this
grant. Unfortunately, however, sheer talent is not enough. And depending upon how you look
at it, possessing an outstanding talent that is not sufficient may be more dangerous than possessing
nothing at all. That is my impression, however vague, of the recent matter. 
 So what you are saying, then, is that your client has sufficient knowledge and ability to tell
about such things. 
 Hmm, I really cant say about that, dont you think? I mean, nobody can ever declare
whether such qualities are ‘sufficient. 
 Why do they need me? 
 If I may use the analogy of epidemic, you people may be playing the role of pardon
me the main carriers of a disease. 
 ‘You people? Tengo said. Are you talking about Eriko Fukada and me? 
Ushikawa did not answer the question. Uh, if I may use a classical analogy here, you
people might have opened Pandoras box and let loose all kinds of things in the world. This
seems to be what my client thinks youve done, judging from my own impressions. The two of
you may have joined forces by accident, but you turned out to be a far more powerful team
than you ever imagined. Each of you was able to make up for what the other lacked. 
 But thats not a crime in any legal sense. 
 That is true. It is not, of course, a, uh, crime in any legal sense, or in any this-worldly
sense. If I may be allowed to quote from George Orwells great classic, however or, rather,
from his novel as a great source of quotations it is very close to what he called a ‘thought
crime. By an odd coincidence, this year just happens to be 1984. Shall we call it a stroke of
fate? But I seem to have been talking a bit too much tonight, Mr. Kawana. And most of what I
have been saying is nothing but my own clumsy guesswork, pure speculation, without any
firm evidence to support it. Because you asked, I have given you my general impressions,
that is all. 
Ushikawa fell silent, and Tengo started thinking. His own clumsy guesswork ? How much
of what this man is saying can I believe?
 Oh, well, Ill have to be calling it a day, Ushikawa said. Its such an important matter, Ill
give you a little more time. Just a little. The clock is counting off the time. Tick-tock, tick-tock,
without a break. Please consider our offer carefully once more. Ill probably be getting in touch
with you again soon. Good night, then. Im glad we had a chance to talk. I, uh, hope you will
be able to sleep well, Mr. Kawana. 
Ushikawa hung up. Tengo stared at the dead receiver in his hand for a while, the way a
farmer stares at a withered vegetable he has picked up from his drought-wracked field. These
days, a lot of people were hanging up on Tengo.
As he had imagined, restful sleep paid Tengo no visits that night. Until the pale light of
dawn began coloring the curtains and the tough city crows woke to begin their days work,
Tengo sat on the floor, leaning against the wall and thinking about his girlfriend and about the
long, strong arms reaching toward him from some unknown place. Such thoughts, however,
carried him nowhere. They merely circled aimlessly around the same spot.
Tengo looked around and heaved a sigh and realized that he was absolutely alone. Ushikawa
had been right. He had nothing and no one to lean on.
1Q84
CHAPTER 7
Aomame
WHERE YOU ARE ABOUT TO SET FOOT
With its high ceiling and muted lighting, the capacious lobby of the Hotel Okuras main
building seemed like a huge, stylish cave. Against the cave walls, like the sighing of a disemboweled
animal, bounced the muted conversations of people seated on the lobbys sofas.
The floors thick, soft carpeting could have been primeval moss on a far northern island. It absorbed
the sound of footsteps into its endless span of accumulated time. The men and women
crossing and recrossing the lobby looked like ghosts tied in place by some ancient curse,
doomed to the endless repetition of their assigned roles. Men were armored in tight-fitting
business suits. Slim young women were swathed in chic black dresses, here to attend a ceremony
in one of the hotels many reception rooms. They wore small but expensive accessories,
like vampire finches in search of blood, longing for a hint of light they could reflect. A large
foreign couple loomed like an old king and queen past their prime, resting their tired bodies on
thrones in the corner.
In this place so full of legend and suggestion, Aomame was truly out of place, with her
pale blue cotton pants, simple white blouse, white sneakers, and blue Nike gym bag. She
probably looked like a babysitter sent by her agency to work for a hotel guest, she thought, as
she killed time sitting in a big easy chair. Oh well, Im not here for socializing. Sitting there,
she sensed that someone was watching her, but, try as she might to scan the area, she could
not find anyone who seemed to be focused on her. Never mind, she told herself. Let them
look all they want.
When the hands of her watch hit 6:50, Aomame stood up and went to the ladies room,
carrying her gym bag. She washed her hands with soap and water and checked once more to
make sure there were no problems with her appearance. Then, facing the large, clear mirror,
she took several deep breaths. This was a spacious restroom, and she was the only one in it.
It might be even bigger than her whole apartment. This is going to be my last job, she said in
a low voice to the mirror. Once I carry this off, I disappear. Poof! Like a ghost. Im here now,
but not tomorrow. In a few days, Ill have a different name and a different face.
She returned to the lobby and took her seat again, setting the gym bag on the table next
to her. In the bag was a small automatic pistol with seven bullets and a sharp needle made for
thrusting into the back of a mans neck. Ive got to calm down, she told herself. This job is important,
and its my last. I have to be the usual cool, tough Aomame.
But she could not shake off the awareness that she was not in a normal state. Her breathing
was strangely labored, and the heightened speed of her heartbeat concerned her. A film
of sweat moistened her armpits. Her skin was tingling. Im not just tense, though. Im having a
premonition of something. And the premonition is giving me a warning. It keeps knocking on
the door of my mind. Its telling me, Its still not too late. Get out of here now and forget all
this. 
Aomame wanted to heed the warning if she could, abandon everything and turn her back
on this hotel lobby. There was something ominous here, the lingering presence of circuitous
death a slow, quiet, but inescapable death. But I cant just run away with my tail between my
legs. Thats not the Aomame way to live.
It was a long ten minutes. Time refused to move ahead. She stayed on the sofa, trying to
get her breathing under control. The lobby ghosts kept spouting their hollow reverberations.
People drifted silently over the thick carpet like souls groping for their eternal resting places.
The only actual noise to reach her ears now and then was the clinking of a coffee set on a
tray whenever a waitress passed by. But even that sound contained a dubious secondary
sound within it. Things were not heading in a good direction. If Im already this tense, I wont
be able to do a thing when the time comes. Aomame closed her eyes and almost by reflex intoned
a prayer, the one that she had been taught to recite before every meal from as long ago
as she could remember. That had been a long, long time ago, but she remembered every
word with perfect clarity 
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may
Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our
humble pathways. Amen.
However grudgingly, Aomame had to admit that this prayer, which had given her nothing
but pain in the past, now provided a source of support. The sound of the words calmed her
nerves, stopped her fears at the doorway, and helped her breathing to quiet down. She
pressed her fingers against her eyelids and repeated the prayer to herself over and over.
. . .
 Miss Aomame, I believe, a man said close by. It was the voice of a young man.
Aomame opened her eyes, slowly raised her head, and looked at the owner of the voice.
Two young men were standing in front of her. Both wore the same kind of dark suit. Judging
by the fabric and cut, these were not expensive clothes probably bought right off the rack at
a discount store. They didnt quite fit in every detail, but they were admirably free of wrinkles.
Perhaps the men pressed them every time they put them on. Neither man wore a tie. One
had his white shirt buttoned all the way to the top, while the other wore a kind of gray crewneck
shirt under his suit jacket. They had on the plainest black shoes possible.
The man in the white shirt must have been a good six feet tall, and he wore his hair in a
ponytail. He had long eyebrows, the ends of which turned up at a distinct angle like a line
graph. His face was serene, with well-balanced features that could have belonged to an actor.
The other man must have been five foot five and had a buzz cut and a snub nose. A tiny
beard grew at the tip of his chin like a mistakenly applied shadow, and there was a small scar
by his right eye. Both men were slim, with sunken cheeks and tanned faces. There was not
an ounce of fat to be seen on either of them, and judging from the spread of their suits
shoulders there were some serious muscles underneath. They were probably in their mid- to
late twenties. The look in their eyes was deep and sharp, and the eyeballs moved no more
than necessary, as with animals on the hunt.
As if by reflex, Aomame stood up from her chair and looked at her watch. The hands pointed
to seven oclock exactly. Right on time.
 Yes, I am Aomame. 
Neither man displayed any expression. They did a swift examination of Aomames attire
and looked at the blue gym bag next to her.
 Is this all you brought with you? Buzzcut asked.
 Yes, this is it, Aomame said.
 Thats fine. Lets go, then. Are you ready? Buzzcut asked. Ponytail said nothing as he
kept his eyes on Aomame.
 Yes, of course, Aomame said. She guessed that the shorter man was somewhat older
than the other one and the leader of the two.
Buzzcut went ahead with leisurely steps, crossing the lobby toward the elevators.
Aomame followed him, gym bag in hand. Ponytail followed about six feet behind her. This
meant she was sandwiched between them. They know what theyre doing, she thought. They
walked with erect posture, their gait strong and precise. The dowager had said they both
practiced karate. Aomame knew from her martial arts training that in a face-to-face confrontation
with these two, there was probably no way she could win. But she did not sense from
these men the kind of overpowering menace that Tamaru projected. Defeating them was not
entirely out of the question. The first thing she would have to do in hand-to-hand combat
would be to render Buzzcut powerless. He called the shots. If Ponytail was her only opponent,
she could manage to survive and escape.
The three of them boarded the elevator, and Ponytail pushed the button for the seventh
floor. Buzzcut stood next to Aomame, and Ponytail stood in the corner, facing them at an
angle. They did all this wordlessly, systematically, like a second baseman and shortstop who
live to make double plays.
In the midst of such thoughts, it suddenly dawned on Aomame that her breathing and
heartbeat had returned to their normal rhythms. Nothing to worry about, she thought. Im my
usual self the cool, tough Aomame. Everything will probably go well. No more bad premonitions.
The elevator door opened soundlessly. Ponytail kept the Door Open button depressed
while Buzzcut stepped out followed by Aomame, and then he released the button and left the
elevator. Buzzcut led the way down the corridor, Aomame followed, and Ponytail continued
playing rear guard. The broad corridor was totally deserted: perfectly silent and perfectly
clean, well cared for in every detail, befitting a first-class hotel no trays of used room-service
dishes parked in front of doors, no cigarette butts in the ashtray outside the elevator, the fragrance
of fresh-cut flowers wafting from well-placed vases. They turned several corners and
came to a stop in front of a door. Ponytail knocked twice and then, without waiting for an answer,
opened the door with a key card. He stepped inside, looked around to make sure there
was nothing wrong, and gave Buzzcut a curt nod.
 Please, Buzzcut said to Aomame drily.
Aomame walked in. Buzzcut came in after her and closed the door, locking it from the inside
with a chain. The room was a big one. No ordinary hotel room, it was outfitted with a
large set of reception-room furniture and an office desk. The television set and refrigerator
were also full-size. This was clearly the living area of a special suite. The window provided a
sweeping view of Tokyo at night. It had to be an expensive room. Buzzcut checked his watch
and urged Aomame to sit on the sofa. She did as she was told and set her blue gym bag next
to her.
 Will you be changing clothes? Buzzcut asked.
 If possible, Aomame said. Id prefer to change into workout clothes. 
Buzzcut nodded. First well have to do a search, if you dont mind. Sorry, but its part of
our job. 
 Thats fine, search all you want, Aomame said. There was no hint of tension in her voice.
If anything, there was a perceptible touch of amusement at their neurotic attention to detail.
Ponytail came over to Aomame and did a body search to make sure she was not carrying
anything suspicious. All she had on was a pair of thin cotton pants and a blouse; it didnt take
a search to know there could be nothing hidden under those. He was just going through the
motions. His hands seemed tense and stiff. It would have been hard to compliment him on his
skill at this. He probably had little experience at doing body searches on women. Buzzcut
watched him work, leaning against the desk.
When the body search was over, Aomame opened her gym bag for him. Inside were a
thin summer cardigan, a matching jersey top and bottom for work, and two towels, one large
and one small. A simple makeup set and a paperback. There was a small beaded purse containing
a wallet, a change purse, and a key ring. Aomame handed each item to Ponytail. Finally
she took out a black vinyl pouch and unzipped it. Inside was a change of underwear and
a few tampons and sanitary napkins.
 I sweat when I work, so I need to have a change of clothes, Aomame said. She took out
matching lace-trimmed bra and panties and started to spread them out for Ponytail to see. He
blushed slightly and gave several quick nods as if to say, All right, Ive seen enough. 
Aomame began to suspect that this man could not speak at all.
With unhurried movements, Aomame returned her underthings and sanitary products to
the pouch, zipped it closed, and replaced it in the bag. These guys are amateurs, she
thought. What kind of bodyguard blushes at the sight of cute lingerie and a few tampons? If
Tamaru had been doing this job, he would have searched Snow White down to the hairs of
her crotch. He would have examined the bottom of that pouch if it meant digging through a
warehouses worth of bras, camisoles, and panties. Things like that are nothing but rags to
him well, true, hes as gay as they come. At the very least, he would have picked up the
pouch to check its weight. And then he would have been sure to find the Heckler & Koch
wrapped in a handkerchief (and weighing in at some 500 grams) and the small homemade ice
pick in its hard case.
These guys are amateurs. They may have some skill at karate, and they may have vowed
absolute loyalty to their Leader, but theyre nothing but a couple of amateurs. Just as the dowager
predicted. Aomame had assumed they wouldnt go through a pouch stuffed with womens
things, and she had been right. It had been a gamble, of course, but she had not gone
so far as to think about what she would do if the gamble hadnt paid off. About all she could
have done in that case was pray. But she knew this much: prayer works.
Aomame went into the suites large powder room and changed into her jersey outfit, folding
her blouse and cotton pants and placing them in the bag. Next she checked to see that
her hair was pinned tightly in place. Then she sprayed her mouth with a breath freshener. She
took the Heckler & Koch out of the pouch and, after flushing the toilet to mask the sound, she
pulled back the slide to send a bullet into the chamber. Now all she would have to do was release
the safety. Finally, she moved the case with the ice pick to the top of the bag where she
could have immediate access to it. Once she had finished with these preparations, she faced
the mirror and relaxed her tensed expression. Fine. Ive kept my cool so far.
Coming out of the powder room, Aomame found Buzzcut standing at attention with his
back to her, speaking at low volume into a telephone. When he saw her, he cut his call short,
quietly hung up the receiver, and gave her a once-over in her jersey outfit.
 All set? he asked.
 Whenever you are, Aomame said.
 First I have a request to make, Buzzcut said.
Aomame gave him a token smile.
 That you not say a word about tonight to anyone, Buzzcut said. He paused a moment so
that his message could sink in. It was as if he had scattered water on dry earth and was waiting
for it to be absorbed and disappear. She watched him the whole time without saying anything.
Buzzcut continued, Pardon me if this sounds crass, but we are planning to offer you generous
remuneration, and we may be requesting your services from time to time in the future.
So we would like to ask you to forget anything and everything that happens here tonight.
Whatever you see or hear. Everything. 
 As you know, Aomame said, adopting a somewhat frosty tone, my work involves
peoples bodies, so I believe I am well versed in the ways of professional confidentiality. No
information of any kind regarding an individuals body will leave this room. If that is what concerns
you, I can assure you there is no need to worry. 
 Excellent. That is what we wanted to hear, Buzzcut said. But let me just add that we
would appreciate it if you would view this as a case that goes beyond professional confidentiality
in the most general sense. Where you are about to set foot is, so to speak, a sacred
space. 
 A sacred space? 
 It may sound a bit much, but, believe me, it is no exaggeration. The one you are about to
lay eyes on, and to place your hands upon, is a sacred person. There is no other appropriate
way to put it. 
Aomame nodded, saying nothing. This was no time for remarks from her.
Buzzcut said, We took the liberty of running a background check on you. I hope youre
not offended, but it was something we had to do. We have our reasons for taking every precaution. 
Aomame stole a glance at Ponytail as she listened. He was sitting motionless in a chair
beside the door, his back perfectly straight, hands on his knees, chin pulled back. He could
have been posing for a photo. His eyes were locked on her the whole time.
Buzzcut looked down at his feet as if to check how worn out his black shoes might be,
then raised his face and looked at Aomame again. In short, we found no problems, which is
why we have asked you to come today. You have a reputation as a talented instructor, and in
fact people think very highly of you. 
 Thank you very much, Aomame said.
 I understand you used to be a Society of Witnesses believer. Is that true? 
 Yes, it is. Both of my parents were believers, and they naturally made me one, too, from
the time I was born. I didnt choose it for myself, and I left the religion a long time ago. 
I wonder if their investigation turned up the fact that Ayumi and I used to go out man hunting
in Roppongi? Oh well, it doesnt make any difference. If they did find out, it obviously
didnt bother them. Otherwise, I wouldnt be here now.
 We know about that, too, Buzzcut said. But you did live in faith at one time in your
life that especially impressionable time of early childhood. So I assume you have a good
idea what I mean when I speak of something as ‘sacred. In any religion, the sacred lies at the
very root of faith. We must never tread upon that world. There is a sacred region into which
we dare not stray. The first step of all faith is to recognize its existence, accept it, and revere it
absolutely. You do understand what I am trying to say, dont you? 
 I think so, Aomame said, though whether I accept it or not is another matter. 
 Of course, Buzzcut said. Of course there is no need for you to accept it. It is our faith,
not yours. But, transcending the question of belief or nonbelief, you are likely to witness special
things a being who is by no means ordinary. 
Aomame kept silent. A being who is by no means ordinary.
Buzzcut narrowed his eyes for a time, gauging the meaning of Aomames silence. Then,
speaking unhurriedly, he said, Whatever you happen to witness today, you must not mention
it to anyone on the outside. For that would cause an ineradicable defilement of the holiness,
as if a clear, beautiful pond were polluted by a foreign body. Whatever the world at large
might think, or the laws of this world might stipulate, that is how we feel about it. If we can
count on you, and if you will keep your promise, we can, as I said before, provide you with
generous remuneration. 
 I see, Aomame said.
 We are a small religious body, but we have strong hearts and long arms, Buzzcut said.
You have long arms, Aomame thought. I guess Ill be testing to find out just how long they
are.
Leaning against the desk with his arms folded, Buzzcut studied Aomame, as if checking to
see whether a picture hanging on the wall was crooked or straight. Ponytail remained motionless,
never once taking his eyes off of Aomame.
Buzzcut checked his watch.
 Lets go, then, he said. He cleared his throat once, then moved slowly across the room
with the careful steps of a pilgrim crossing the surface of a lake. He gave two soft knocks on
the door to the connecting room and, without waiting for a response, pulled the door open,
gave a slight bow, and entered. Aomame followed, carrying the gym bag. Sinking step after
careful step into the deep carpet, she made sure that her breathing was under control. Her
finger was cocked and ready to pull the trigger of the pistol in her imagination. Nothing to
worry about. Im the same as always. But still, Aomame was afraid. A chunk of ice was stuck
to her spine ice that showed no sign of melting. Im cool, calm, and deep down afraid.
We must never tread upon that world. There is a sacred region into which we dare not
stray, Buzzcut had said. Aomame knew what he meant by that. She herself had once lived in
a world that placed such a region at its core. In fact, I might still be living in that world. I just
may not be aware of it.
Aomame soundlessly repeated the words of her prayer with her lips. Then she took one
deep breath, made up her mind, and walked into the next room.
1Q84
CHAPTER 8
Tengo
TIME FOR THE CATS TO COME
Tengo spent the next week or more in a strange silence. One night, the man named Yasuda
had called to tell Tengo that his wife had been lost and would never visit Tengo again. An
hour later Ushikawa had called to tell him that Tengo and Fuka-Eri were functioning together
as a carrier of a thought crime epidemic. Each caller had conveyed to Tengo a message
containing (he could only believe that it did contain) a deep meaning, the way a toga-clad Roman
would mount a platform in the middle of the Forum to make a proclamation to concerned
citizens. And once each man had spoken his piece, he had hung up on Tengo.
Not one person had contacted Tengo since those two nighttime calls. There were no
phone calls, no letters, no knocks on the door, no carrier pigeons. Neither Komatsu nor Professor
Ebisuno nor Fuka-Eri nor Kyoko Yasuda had anything at all they needed to convey to
Tengo.
And Tengo felt as if he had lost all interest in those people. Nor was it just them: he
seemed to have lost interest in anything at all. He didnt care about the sales of Air Chrysalis
or what its author, Fuka-Eri, might be doing now, or what was happening with Komatsus
scheme or whether Professor Ebisunos coolly conceived plan was progressing well, or how
close the media had come to sniffing out the truth, or what kind of moves Sakigake might be
making. If the boat they were all riding in was plunging over the falls upside down, there was
nothing to do but fall with it. Tengo could struggle all he wanted to at this point, and it would
do nothing to change the flow of the river.
He was, of course, worried about Kyoko Yasuda. He had no real idea what was happening
to her, but he would spare no effort to help her if he could. Whatever problems she was
facing at the moment, however, were out of his reach. There was nothing he could do.
He stopped reading the papers. The world was moving ahead in a direction unconnected
with him. Apathy enveloped him as if it were his own personal haze. He was so sick of seeing
the piles of Air Chrysalis on display that he stopped going to bookstores. He would travel in a
straight line from home to the school and back. Most people were enjoying summer vacation,
but the cram schools had summer courses, which kept him busier than ever. He welcomed
this schedule. At least while he was lecturing, he didnt have to think about anything but mathematics.
He gave up on writing his novel, too. He might sit at his desk, switch on the word processor,
and watch the screen light up, but he couldnt find the motivation to write. Whenever
he tried to think of anything, snatches of his conversations with Kyoko Yasudas husband or
with Ushikawa would come to mind. He couldnt concentrate on his novel.
My wife is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form.
That was what Kyoko Yasudas husband had said.
If I may use a classical analogy here, you people might have opened Pandoras box and
let loose all kinds of things in the world. The two of you may have joined forces by accident,
but you turned out to be a far more powerful team than you ever imagined. Each of you was
able to make up for what the other lacked.
So said Ushikawa.
Both seemed to be trying to say the same thing: Tengo had unleashed some kind of
power before fully comprehending it himself, and it was having a real impact (probably not a
desirable impact) on the world around him. Tengo turned off the word processor, sat down on
the floor, and stared at the telephone. He needed more hints, more pieces of the puzzle. But
no one would give him those. Kindness was one of the things presently (or permanently) in
short supply in the world.
He thought about phoning someone Komatsu or Professor Ebisuno or Ushikawa. But he
couldnt make himself actually do it. He had had enough of their inscrutable, deliberately
cryptic pronouncements. If he sought a hint concerning one riddle, all they would give him
was another riddle. He couldnt keep up the game forever. Fuka-Eri and Tengo were a powerful
team. Thats all they needed to say. Tengo and Fuka-Eri. Like Sonny and Cher. The Beat
Goes On.
Day after day went by. Finally Tengo grew tired of staying holed up in his apartment, waiting
for something to happen. He shoved his wallet and a paperback into his pockets, put on a
baseball cap and sunglasses, and went out, walking with decisive strides as far as Koenji, the
nearby station. There he showed his pass and boarded the Chuo Line inbound rapid-service
train. The car was empty. He had nothing planned that day. Wherever he went and whatever
he did (or didnt do) was entirely up to him. It was ten oclock on a windless summer morning,
and the sun was beating down.
Wondering if one of Ushikawas researchers might be following him, he paid special attention
on the way to the station, stopping suddenly to glance behind him, but there was no
sign of anyone suspicious. At the station, he purposely went to the wrong platform and then,
pretending to change his mind all of a sudden, he dashed down the stairs and went to the
platform for trains headed in the other direction. But no one else seemed to take those same
maneuvers. He must be having a typical delusion of being pursued. Of course no one was following
him. Not even Tengo knew where he was going or what he was about to do. He himself
was the one who most wanted to watch his own forthcoming actions from a distance.
The train he had boarded passed Shinjuku, Yotsuya, Ochanomizu, and arrived at Tokyo
Central Station, the end of the line. Everyone got off, and he followed suit. Then he sat on a
bench and gave some thought to where he ought to go. Im in downtown Tokyo now, Tengo
thought. I have nothing planned all day. I can go anywhere I decide to. The day looks as if its
going to be a hot one. I could go to the seashore. He raised his head and looked at the platform
guide.
At that point he suddenly realized what he had been doing all along.
He tried shaking his head a few times, but the idea that had struck him would not go away.
He had probably made up his mind unconsciously from the moment he boarded the inbound
Chuo Line train at his station in Koenji. He heaved a sigh, stood up from the bench, went
down the platform stairs, and headed for the Sobu Line platform. On the way, he asked a station
employee for the fastest connection to Chikura, and the man flipped through the pages of
a thick volume of train schedules. He should take the 11:30 special express train to
Tateyama, transfer there to a local, and he would arrive at Chikura shortly after two oclock.
He bought a Tokyo-Chikura round-trip ticket and a reserved seat on the express train. Then
he went to a restaurant in the station and ordered rice and curry and a salad. He killed time
after the meal by drinking a cup of thin coffee.
Going to see his father was a depressing prospect. He had never much liked the man, and
his father probably had no special love for him, either. Tengo had no idea if his father had any
desire to see him. His father had retired from NHK four years earlier and, soon afterward,
entered a sanatorium in Chikura that specialized in care for patients with cognitive disorders.
Tengo had visited him there no more than twice before the first time just after the father
entered the facility when an administrative procedural problem had required Tengo, as the
only relative, to travel out there. The second time had involved a pressing administrative matter
as well. Two times: that was it.
The sanatorium stood on a large plot of land across the road from the shoreline. Originally
the country villa of a wealthy family connected with one of the prewar zaibatsu large, influential,
family-controlled financial/industrial monopolies it had been bought as a life insurance
companys welfare facility and, more recently, converted into a sanatorium primarily for the
treatment of people with cognitive disorders. To an outside observer, it appeared to be an odd
combination of elegant old wooden buildings and new three-story reinforced-concrete buildings.
The air there was fresh, however, and aside from the roar of the surf, it was always
quiet. One could walk along the shore on days when the wind was not too strong. An imposing
pine grove lined the garden as a windbreak. And the medical facilities were excellent.
With his health insurance, retirement bonus, savings, and pension, Tengos father could
probably spend the rest of his life there quite comfortably, all because he had been lucky
enough to be hired as a full-time employee of NHK. He might not be able to leave behind any
sizable inheritance, but at least he could be taken care of, for which Tengo was tremendously
grateful. Whether or not the man was his true biological father, Tengo had no intention of taking
anything from him or giving him anything. They were two separate human beings who had
come from and were heading toward entirely different places. By chance, they had spent
some years of life together, that was all. It was a shame that things had come to that, Tengo
believed, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Tengo knew that the time had come for him to visit his father again. He didnt much like
the idea, and he would have preferred to take a U-turn and go straight back to his apartment.
But he already had his round-trip and expresstrain tickets in his pocket. He was all set to go.
He left the table, paid his bill, and went to the platform to wait for the Tateyama express
train to arrive. He scanned his surroundings once more, but saw no likely researchers in the
area. His only fellow passengers were happy-looking families heading out for a few days at
the beach. He took off his sunglasses, shoved them into a pocket, and readjusted his baseball
cap. Who gives a damn? he thought. Let them spy on me all they want. Im going to a
seaside town in Chiba to see my father, who is suffering from dementia. He might remember
his son, or then again he might not. His memory was already pretty shaky last time. Its probably
gotten worse since then. Cognitive disorders move ahead, never back. Or so Ive been
told. Theyre like gears that can only move in one direction.
When the train left Tokyo Station, Tengo took out the paperback he had brought along
and started reading it. It was an anthology of short stories on the theme of travel and included
one tale about a young man who journeyed to a town ruled by cats. Town of Cats was the
title. It was a fantastical piece by a German writer with whom he was not familiar. According to
the books editorial note, the story had been written in the period between the two world wars.
Carrying a single bag, the young man is traveling alone at his whim with no particular destination
in mind. He goes by train and gets off at any stop that arouses his interest. He takes a
room, sees the sights, and stays as long as he likes. When he has had enough, he boards
another train. He spends every vacation this way.
One day he sees a lovely river from the train window. Gentle green hills line the meandering
stream, and below them lies a quiet-looking, pretty little town with an old stone bridge over
the river. The scene attracts him. Tasty river fish should be available in a place like this. The
train stops at the station, and the young man steps down with his bag. No one else gets off
there. As soon as he alights, the train departs.
No workers man the station, which must see very little activity. The young man crosses
the stone bridge and walks into the town. It is utterly still, with no one to be seen. All the
shops are shuttered, the town hall deserted. No one occupies the desk at the towns only
hotel. He rings the bell, but no one comes out. The place seems totally uninhabited. Perhaps
all the people are off napping somewhere. But it is only ten thirty in the morning, way too early
for that. Perhaps something caused all the people to abandon the town. In any case, the next
train will not come until the following morning, so he has no choice but to spend the night
here. He wanders around the town to kill time.
In fact, however, this is a town of cats. When the sun starts to go down, many cats cross
the bridge into town cats of all different kinds and colors. They are much larger than ordinary
cats, but they are still cats. The young man is shocked to see this spectacle. He rushes into
the bell tower in the center of town and climbs to the top to hide. The cats go about their business
raising the shop shutters or seating themselves at their town hall desks to start their
days work. Soon, still more cats come, crossing the bridge into town like the others. They
enter the shops to buy things or go to the town hall to handle administrative matters or have a
meal at the hotel restaurant or drink beer at the tavern and sing lively cat songs. One plays a
concertina and others dance to the music. Because cats can see in the dark, they need almost
no lights, but that particular night the glow of the full moon floods the town, enabling the
young man to see every detail from his perch in the bell tower. When dawn approaches, the
cats close up shop, finish their work or official business, and swarm back across the bridge to
where they came from.
By the time the sun comes up, the cats are gone, and the town is deserted again. The
young man climbs down, picks one of the hotel beds for himself, and goes to sleep. When he
gets hungry, he eats the bread and cooked fish left in the hotel kitchen. When darkness approaches,
he hides in the top of the bell tower again and observes the cats activities until
dawn. Trains stop at the station before noon and before evening. If he took the morning train
he could continue his journey, and if he took the afternoon train he could go back where he
came from. No passengers alight at the station, and no one boards here, either. Still, the
trains stop at the station for exactly one minute as scheduled and pull out again. He could
take one of the trains and leave the creepy cat town behind. But he doesnt. Being young, he
has a lively curiosity and boundless ambition and is ready for adventure. He wants to see
more of the strange spectacle of the cat town. If possible, he wants to find out when and how
it became a town of cats, how the town is organized, and what the cats are doing there. He is
probably the only human being who has ever seen this strange sight.
On the night of the third day, a hubbub breaks out in the square below the bell tower.
 Hey, do you smell something human? one of the cats says. Now that you mention it, I
thought there was a funny smell the past few days, another chimes in, twitching his nose.
 Me too, says yet another cat. Thats weird. There shouldnt be any humans here, someone
adds. No, of course not. Theres no way a human could get into this town of cats. Still, that
smell of theirs is definitely here. 
The cats form into groups and search the town from top to bottom like vigilante bands.
Cats have an excellent sense of smell when they want to use it, so it takes them very little
time to discover that the bell tower is the source of the smell. The young man hears their soft
paws padding their way up the stairs. Thats it, theyve got me! he thinks. His smell seems to
have aroused the cats to anger. They have big, sharp claws and white fangs. Humans are not
supposed to set foot in this town. He has no idea what terrible fate awaits him if he is discovered,
but he is sure they will never let him leave the town alive now that he has learned
their secret.
Three cats climb to the top of the bell tower and sniff the air. Strange, one cat says,
twitching his whiskers. I smell a human, but theres no one here. 
 It is strange, says a second cat. But there is definitely no one here. Lets look somewhere
else. 
 I dont get it, though. 
The three cats cock their heads, puzzled, then retreat down the stairs. The young man
hears their footsteps going down and fading into the dark of night. He breathes a sigh of relief,
but he doesnt get it, either. He was literally nose-to-nose with the cats in this small space.
There was no way they could have missed him. But for some reason they did not see him. He
brings his hand to his eyes and can see it perfectly well. It hasnt turned transparent. Strange.
In any case, though, when morning comes, he knows he should go to the station and take the
train away from this town. Staying here would be too dangerous. His luck cant last forever.
The next day, however, the morning train does not stop at the station. He watches it pass
by without slowing down. The afternoon train does the same. He can even see the engineer
seated at the controls. The passengers faces, too, are visible through the windows. But the
train shows no sign of stopping. It is as though people cannot see the young man waiting for a
train or even see the station itself. Once the afternoon train disappears down the track, the
place grows quieter than ever. The sun begins to sink. It is time for the cats to come. He
knows that he is irretrievably lost. This is no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place
where he is meant to be lost. It is a place not of this world that has been prepared especially
for him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to bring him back to
his original world.
Tengo read the story twice. The phrase the place where he is meant to be lost attracted
his attention. He closed the book and let his eyes wander aimlessly across the drab coastal
industrial scene passing by the train window the flame of an oil refinery, the gigantic gas
tanks, the squat but equally gigantic smokestacks shaped like long-range cannons, the line of
tractor-trailers and tank trucks moving down the road. It was a scene remote from Town of
Cats, but it had its own sense of fantasy about it, as though it were the netherworld support-
ing urban life from below.
Soon afterward Tengo closed his eyes and imagined Kyoko Yasuda closed up in her own
 lost place, where there were no trains or telephones or mail. During the day there was nothing
but absolute loneliness, and with night came the cats relentless searching, the cycle repeating
itself with no apparent end. Apparently, he had drifted off to sleep in his seat not a
long nap, but a deep one. He woke covered in sweat. The train was moving along the southern
coastline of the Boso Peninsula in midsummer.
He left the express train in Tateyama, transferred to a local, and went as far as Chikura.
Stepping from the train, he caught a whiff of the old familiar smell of the seashore. Everyone
on the street was darkly tanned. He took a cab from the station to the sanatorium. At the reception
desk, he gave his name and his fathers name.
The middle-aged nurse at the desk asked, Have you by any chance notified us of your intention
to visit today? There was a hard edge to her voice. A small woman, she wore metal-frame
glasses, and her short hair had a touch of gray. The ring on her stubby ring finger
might have been bought as part of a matching set with the glasses. Her name tag said
 Tamura. 
 No, it just occurred to me to come this morning and I hopped on a train, Tengo answered
honestly.
The nurse gave him a look of mild disgust. Then she said, Visitors are supposed to notify
us before they arrive to see a patient. We have our schedules to keep, and the wishes of the
patient must also be taken into account. 
 Im sorry, I didnt know. 
 When was your last visit? 
 Two years ago. 
 Two years ago, Nurse Tamura said as she checked the list of visitors with a ballpoint
pen in hand. You mean to say that you have not made a single visit in two years? 
 Thats right, Tengo said.
 According to our records, you are Mr. Kawanas only relative. 
 That is correct. 
She set the list on the desk and glanced at Tengo, but she said nothing. Her eyes were
not blaming Tengo, just checking the facts. Apparently, Tengos case was not exceptional.
 At the moment, your father is in group rehabilitation. That will end in half an hour. You
can see him then. 
 How is he doing? 
 Physically, hes healthy. He has no special problems. Its in the other area that he has his
ups and downs, she said, touching her temple with an index finger. Ill leave it to you to see
what I mean about ups and downs. 
Tengo thanked her and went to pass the time in the lounge by the entrance, sitting on a
sofa that smelled like an earlier era and reading more of his book. A breeze passed through
now and then, carrying the scent of the sea and the cooling sound of the pine windbreak outside.
Cicadas clung to the branches of the trees, screeching their hearts out. Summer was
now at its height, but the cicadas seemed to know that it would not last long.
Eventually bespectacled Nurse Tamura came to tell Tengo that he could see his father
now that the rehabilitation session was over.
 Ill show you to his room, she said. Tengo got up from the sofa and, passing by a large
mirror on the wall, realized for the first time what a sloppy outfit he was wearing a Jeff Beck
Japan Tour T-shirt under a faded dungaree shirt with mismatched buttons, chinos with specks
of pizza sauce near one knee, long-unwashed khaki-colored sneakers, a baseball cap: no
way for a thirty-year-old son to dress on his first hospital visit to his father in two years. Nor
did he have anything with him that might serve as a gift on such an occasion. He had a paperback
book shoved into one pocket, nothing more. No wonder the nurse had given him that
look of disgust.
As they crossed the sanatorium grounds toward the wing in which his fathers room was
located, the nurse gave him a general description of the place. There were three wings divided
according to the severity of the patients illness. Tengos father was now housed in the
 moderate wing. People usually started in the mild wing, moved to moderate, and then to
 severe. As with a door that opens in only one direction, backward movement was not an option.
There was nowhere to go beyond the severe wing other than the crematorium. The
nurse did not add that remark, of course, but her meaning was clear.
His father was in a double room, but his roommate was out attending some kind of class.
The sanatorium offered several rehabilitation classes ceramics, or gardening, or exercise.
Though all were supposedly for rehabilitation, they did not aim at recovery. Their purpose,
rather, was to slow the advance of the disease as much as possible. Or just to kill time.
Tengos father was seated in a chair by the open window, looking out, hands on his knees. A
nearby table held a potted plant. Its flowers had several delicate, yellow petals. The floor was
made of some soft material to prevent injury in case of a fall. There were two plain woodframe
beds, two writing desks, and two dressers. Next to each desk was a small bookcase,
and the window curtains had yellowed from years of exposure to sunlight.
Tengo did not realize at first that the old man seated by the window was his own father.
He had become a size smaller though shriveled up might be more accurate. His hair was
shorter and as white as a frost-covered lawn. His cheeks were sunken, which may have been
why the hollows of his eyes looked much larger than they had before. Three deep creases
marked his forehead. The shape of his head seemed more deformed than it had, probably because
his shorter hair made it more obvious. His eyebrows were extremely long and thick,
and white hair poked out from both ears. His large, pointed ears were now larger than ever
and looked like bat wings. Only the shape of the nose was the same round and pudgy, in
marked contrast to the ears, and it wore a reddish black tinge. His lips drooped at both ends,
seemingly ready to drool at any moment. His mouth was slightly open, revealing uneven
teeth. Sitting so still at the window, his father reminded Tengo of one of van Goghs last selfportraits.
Although Tengo entered the room, the man did nothing but glance momentarily in his direction,
after which he continued to stare outside. From a distance, he looked less like a human
being than some kind of creature resembling a rat or a squirrel a creature that might
not be terribly clean but that possessed all the cunning it needed. It was, however, without a
doubt, Tengos father or, rather, the wreckage of Tengos father. The two intervening years
had taken much from him physically, the way a merciless tax collector strips a poor familys
house of all its possessions. The father that Tengo remembered was a tough, hardworking
man. Introspection and imagination may have been foreign qualities to him, but he had his
own moral code and a simple but strong sense of purpose. He was a stoic individual; Tengo
never once heard him whine or make excuses for himself. But the man Tengo saw before him
now was a mere empty shell, a vacant house deprived of all warmth.
 Mr. Kawana! the nurse said to Tengos father in a crisp, clear tone of voice she must
have been trained to use when addressing patients. Mr. Kawana! Look whos here! Its your
son! 
His father turned once more in Tengos direction. His expressionless eyes made Tengo
think of two empty swallows nests hanging from the eaves.
 Hello, Tengo said.
 Mr. Kawana, your son is here from Tokyo! the nurse said.
His father said nothing. Instead, he looked straight at Tengo as if he were reading a bulletin
written in a foreign language.
 Dinner starts at six thirty, the nurse said to Tengo. Please feel free to stay until then. 
Tengo hesitated for a moment after the nurse was gone, and then approached his father,
sitting down in the chair that faced his a faded, cloth-covered chair, its wooden parts scarred
from long use. His fathers eyes followed his movements.
 How are you? Tengo asked.
 Fine, thank you, his father said formally.
Tengo did not know what to say after that. Toying with the third button of his dungaree
shirt, he turned his gaze toward the pine trees outside and then back again to his father.
 You have come from Tokyo, is it? his father asked, apparently unable to remember
Tengo.
 Yes, from Tokyo. 
 You must have come by express train. 
 Thats right, Tengo said. As far as Tateyama. There I transferred to a local for the trip
here to Chikura. 
 Youve come to swim? his father asked.
 Im Tengo. Tengo Kawana. Your son. 
 Where do you live in Tokyo? his father asked.
 In Koenji. Suginami Ward. 
The three wrinkles across his fathers forehead deepened. A lot of people tell lies because
they dont want to pay their NHK subscription fee. 
 Father! Tengo called out to him. This was the first time he had spoken the word in a very
long time. Im Tengo. Your son. 
 I dont have a son, his father declared.
 You dont have a son, Tengo repeated mechanically.
His father nodded.
 So, what am I? Tengo asked.
 Youre nothing, his father said with two short shakes of the head.
Tengo caught his breath. He could find no words. Nor did his father have any more to say.
Each sat in silence, searching through his tangled thoughts. Only the cicadas sang without
confusion, screeching at top volume.
He may be speaking the truth, Tengo felt. His memory may have been destroyed, and his
mind might be sunk in mud, but the words on his lips are probably true. Tengo understood
this intuitively.
 What are you talking about? Tengo asked.
 You are nothing, his father repeated the words, his voice devoid of emotion. You were
nothing, you are nothing, and you will be nothing. 
Thats enough, Tengo thought.
He wanted to get up out of his chair, walk to the station, and go back to Tokyo. He had
heard what he needed to hear. But he could not stand up. He was like the young man who
traveled to the town of cats. He had curiosity. He wanted to know what lay behind those
words. He wanted a clearer answer. There was danger lurking there, of course. But if he let
this opportunity escape, he would lose any chance to learn the secret about himself forever. It
would sink into total chaos.
Tengo arranged and rearranged words in his head until, at last, he was ready to speak
them. This was the question he had come close to asking since childhood but could never
quite manage to utter.
 What youre saying, then, is that you are not my biological father, correct? You are telling
me that there is no blood connection between us, is that it? 
His father looked at him without speaking. It was impossible to tell from his expression
whether he had understood the meaning of Tengos question.
 Stealing radio waves is an unlawful act, his father said, looking into Tengos eyes. It is
no different from stealing money or valuables, dont you think? 
 Youre probably right, Tengo decided to agree for now.
His father nodded several times with apparent satisfaction.
 Radio waves dont come falling out of the sky for free like rain or snow, his father said.
With his lips closed Tengo stared at his fathers hands. They were lined up neatly on his
knees, right hand on right knee, left hand on left knee, stock still. Small, dark hands, they
looked tanned to the core by long years of outdoor work.
 My mother didnt really die of an illness when I was little, did she? Tengo asked slowly,
speaking phrase by phrase.
His father did not answer. His expression did not change, and his hands did not move. His
eyes focused on Tengo as if they were observing something unfamiliar.
 My mother left you. She got rid of you and left me behind. She probably went off with another
man. Am I wrong? 
His father nodded. It is not good to steal radio waves. You cant get away with it, doing
anything you like. 
This man understands my questions perfectly well. He just doesnt want to answer them
directly, Tengo felt.
 Father, Tengo addressed him. You may not actually be my father, but Ill call you that
for now because I dont know what else to call you. To tell you the truth, Ive never liked you.
Maybe Ive even hated you most of the time. You know that, dont you? But even supposing
you are not my real father and there is no blood connection between us, I no longer have any
reason to hate you. I dont know if I can go so far as to be fond of you, but I think that at least I
should be able to understand you better than I do now. I have always wanted to know the
truth about who I am and where I came from. Thats all. But no one ever told me. If you will
tell me the truth right now, I wont hate you or dislike you anymore. In fact, I would welcome
the opportunity not to have to hate you or dislike you any longer. 
His father went on staring at Tengo with expressionless eyes, saying nothing, but Tengo
felt he might be seeing the tiniest gleam of light flashing somewhere deep within those empty
swallows nests.
 I am nothing, Tengo said. You are right. Im like someone whos been thrown into the
ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers.
I have no connection to anything. The closest thing I have to a family is you, but you
hold on to the secret and wont even try to tell me anything. Meanwhile, in this seaside town,
your memory goes through repeated ups and downs as it steadily deteriorates day by day.
Like your memory, the truth about me is being lost. Without the aid of truth, I am nothing, and
I can never be anything. You are right about that, too. 
 Knowledge is a precious social asset, his father said in a monotone, though his voice
was somewhat quieter than before, as if someone behind him had reached over and turned
down the volume. It is an asset that must be amassed in abundant stockpiles and utilized
with the utmost care. It must be handed down to the next generation in fruitful forms. For that
reason, too, NHK needs to have all of your subscription fees and 
This is a kind of mantra for him, thought Tengo. He has protected himself all these years
by reciting such phrases. Tengo felt he had to smash this obstinate amulet of his, to pull the
living human being out from behind the surrounding barrier.
He cut his father short. What kind of person was my mother? Where did she go? What
happened to her? 
His father brought his incantation to a sudden halt.
Tengo went on, Im tired of living in hatred and resentment. Im tired of living unable to
love anyone. I dont have a single friend not one. And, worst of all, I cant even love myself.
Why is that? Why cant I love myself? Its because I cant love anyone else. A person learns
how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do
you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly
love himself. No, Im not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim.
You probably dont know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that? 
His father was closed off in silence, lips shut tight. It was impossible to tell from his expression
whether he had understood Tengo or not. Tengo also fell silent and settled more
deeply into his chair. A breeze blew in through the open window, stirred the sun-bleached curtains
and the delicate petals of the potted plant, and slipped through the open door into the
corridor. The smell of the sea was stronger than before. The soft sound of pine needles
brushing against each other blended with the cries of the cicadas.
His voice softer now, Tengo went on, A vision often comes to me the same one, over
and over, ever since I can remember. I suspect its probably not so much a vision as a
memory of something that actually happened. Im one and a half years old, and my mother is
next to me. She and a young man are holding each other. The man is not you. Who he is, I
have no idea, but he is definitely not you. I dont know why, but the scene is permanently
burned into me. 
His father said nothing, but his eyes were clearly seeing something else something not
there. The two maintained their silence. Tengo was listening to the suddenly stronger breeze.
He did not know what his father was listening to.
 I wonder if I might ask you to read me something, his father said in formal tones after a
long silence. My sight has deteriorated to the point where I cant read books anymore. I cant
follow the words on the page for long. That bookcase has some books. Choose any one you
like. 
Tengo gave up and left his chair to scan the spines of the volumes in the bookcase. Most
of them were historical novels set in ancient times when samurai roamed the land. All the
volumes of Sword of Doom were there. Tengo couldnt bring himself to read his father some
musty old book full of archaic language.
 If you dont mind, Id rather read a story about a town of cats, Tengo said. I brought it to
read myself. 
 A story about a town of cats, his father said, savoring the words. Please read that to me,
if it is not too much trouble. 
Tengo looked at his watch. Its no trouble at all. I have plenty of time before my train
leaves. Its an odd story; I dont know if youll like it or not. 
Tengo pulled out his paperback and started reading Town of Cats. His father listened to
him read the entire story, not changing his position in the chair by the window. Tengo read
slowly in a clearly audible voice, taking two or three breaks along the way to catch his breath.
He glanced at his father whenever he stopped reading but saw no discernible reaction on his
face. Was he enjoying the story or not? He could not tell. When he was through reading the
story, his father was sitting perfectly still with his eyes closed. He looked as if he could be
sound asleep, but he was not. He was simply deep inside the story, and it took him a while to
come back out. Tengo waited patiently for that to happen. The afternoon light had begun to
weaken and blend with touches of evening. The ocean breeze continued to shake the pines.
 Does that town of cats have television? his father asked.
 The story was written in Germany in the 1930s. They didnt have television yet back then.
They did have radio, though. 
 I was in Manchuria, but I didnt even have a radio. There werent any stations. The newspaper
often didnt arrive, and when it did it was two weeks old. There was hardly anything to
eat, and we had no women. Sometimes there were wolves roaming around. It was like the
edge of the earth out there. 
He fell silent for a while, thinking, probably recalling the hard life he led as a young pioneer
in distant Manchuria. But those memories soon clouded over, swallowed up into nothingness.
Tengo could read these movements of his fathers mind from the changing expressions on his
face.
 Did the cats build the town? Or did people build it a long time ago and the cats came to
live there? his father asked, speaking toward the windowpane as if to himself, though the
question seemed to have been directed to Tengo.
 I dont know, Tengo said. But it does seem to have been built by human beings long before.
Maybe the people left for some reason say, they all died in an epidemic and the cats
came to live there. 
His father nodded. When a vacuum forms, something has to come along to fill it. Because
thats what everybody does. 
 Thats what everybody does? 
 Exactly. 
 What kind of vacuum are you filling? 
His father scowled. His long eyebrows came down to hide his eyes. Then he said with a
touch of sarcasm in his voice, Dont you know? 
 I dont know, Tengo said.
His fathers nostrils flared. One eyebrow rose slightly. This was the expression he always
used when he was dissatisfied with something. If you cant understand it without an explanation,
you cant understand it with an explanation. 
Tengo narrowed his eyes, trying to read the mans expression. Never once had his father
employed such odd, suggestive language. He always spoke in concrete, practical terms. To
say only what was necessary when necessary: that was his unshakable definition of a conversation.
But there was no expression on his face to be read.
 I see. So you are filling in some kind of vacuum, Tengo said. All right, then, who is going
to fill the vacuum that you have left behind? 
 You, his father declared, raising an index finger and thrusting it straight at Tengo. Isnt it
obvious? I have been filling in the vacuum that somebody else made, so you will fill in the vacuum
that I have made. Like taking turns. 
 The way the cats filled in the town after the people were gone. 
 Right. Lost like the town, his father said. Then he stared vacantly at his own outstretched
index finger as if looking at some mysterious, misplaced object.
 Lost like the town, Tengo repeated his fathers words.
 The woman who gave birth to you is not anywhere anymore. 
 ‘Not anywhere. ‘Lost like the town. Are you saying shes dead? 
His father made no reply to that.
Tengo sighed. So, then, who is my father? 
 Just a vacuum. Your mother joined her body with a vacuum and gave birth to you. I filled
in that vacuum. 
Having said that much, his father closed his eyes and closed his mouth.
 Joined her body with a vacuum? 
 Yes. 
 And you raised me. Is that what youre saying? 
After one ceremonious clearing of his throat, his father said, as if trying to explain a simple
truth to a slow-witted child, That is why I said, ‘If you cant understand it without an explanation,
you cant understand it with an explanation. 
 So youre telling me that I came out of a vacuum? Tengo asked.
No answer.
Tengo folded his hands in his lap and looked straight into his fathers face once more. This
man is no empty shell, no vacant house. He is a flesh-and-blood human being with a narrow,
stubborn soul and shadowed memories, surviving in fits and starts on this patch of land by the
sea. He has no choice but to coexist with the vacuum that is slowly spreading inside him. The
vacuum and his memories are still at odds, but eventually, regardless of his wishes, the vacuum
will completely swallow up whatever memories are left. It is just a matter of time. Could
the vacuum that he is confronting now be the same vacuum from which I was born?
Tengo thought he might be hearing the distant rumble of the sea mixed with the earlyevening
breeze slipping through the pine branches. Though it could have been an illusion.
1Q84
CHAPTER 9
Aomame
WHAT COMES AS A PAYMENT
FOR HEAVENLY GRACE
When Aomame walked into the adjoining room, Buzzcut followed and swiftly closed the
door. The room was totally dark. Thick curtains covered the window, and all lights had been
extinguished. A few rays of light seeped in through a gap between the curtains, serving only
to emphasize the darkness of everything else.
It took time for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, as in a movie theater or planetarium.
The first thing she saw was the display of an electric clock on a low table. Its green figures
read 7:20 p.m. When a few more seconds passed, she could tell that there was a large bed
against the back wall. The clock was near the head of the bed. This room was somewhat
smaller than the spacious adjoining room, but it was still larger than an ordinary hotel room.
On the bed was a deep black object, like a small mountain. Still more time had to go by
before Aomame could tell that its irregular outline indicated the presence of a human body.
During this interval, the outline remained perfectly unbroken. She could detect no signs of life.
There was no breathing to be heard. The only sound was the soft rush of air from the air conditioner
near the ceiling. Still, the body was not dead. Buzzcuts actions were based on the
premise that this was a living human being.
This was a very large person, most likely a man. She could not be sure, but the person did
not seem to be facing in this direction and did not seem to be under the covers but rather was
lying facedown on the made-up bed, like a large animal at the back of a cave, trying not to expend
its physical energy while it allows its wounds to heal.
 It is time, Buzzcut announced in the direction of the shadow. There was a new tension in
his voice.
Whether or not the man heard Buzzcuts voice was unclear. The dark mound on the bed
remained perfectly still. Buzzcut stood stiffly by the door, waiting. The room was enveloped in
a silence so deep Aomame could hear someone swallow, and then she realized that the
sound of swallowing had come from her. Gripping her gym bag in her right hand, Aomame,
like Buzzcut, was waiting for something to happen. The clock display changed to 7:21, then
7:22, then 7:23.
Eventually the outline on the bed began to show a slight degree of motion a faint shudder
that soon became a clear movement. The person must have been in a deep sleep or a
state resembling sleep. The muscles awoke, the upper body began to rise, and, in time, the
consciousness was regained. The shadow sat straight up on the bed, legs folded. Its definitely
a man, thought Aomame.
 It is time, Buzzcut said again.
Aomame heard the man release a long breath. It was like a heavy sigh slowly rising from
the bottom of a deep well. Next came the sound of a large inhalation. It was as wild and unsettling
as a gale tearing through a forest. Then the cycle started again, the two utterly different
types of sound repeated, separated by a long silence. This made Aomame feel uneasy.
She sensed that she had found her way into a region that was completely foreign to her a
deep ocean trench, say, or the surface of an unknown asteroid: the kind of place it might be
possible to reach with great effort, but from which return was impossible.
Her eyes refused to adapt fully to the darkness. She could now see to a certain point but
no farther. All that her eyes could reach was the mans dark silhouette. She could not tell
which way he was facing or what he was looking at. All she could see was that he was an extremely
large man and that his shoulders seemed to rise and fall quietly but enormously with
each breath. This was not normal breathing. Rather, it was breathing that had a
special purpose and function and that was performed with the entire body. She pictured the
large movements of his shoulder blades and diaphragm expanding and contracting. No ordinary
human being could breathe with such fierce intensity. It was a distinctive method of
breathing that could only be mastered through long, intense training.
Buzzcut stood next to her at full attention, back straight, chin in. His breathing was shallow
and quick, in contrast to that of the man on the bed. He was trying to minimize his presence
as he waited for the intense deep breathing sequence to end: apparently it was an activity the
man practiced routinely. Like Buzzcut, Aomame could do nothing but wait for it to end. It was
probably a process the man needed to go through to become fully awake.
Finally, the special breathing ended in stages, the way a large machine stops running. The
intervals between breaths grew gradually longer, concluding with one long breath that
seemed to squeeze everything out. A deep silence fell over the room once again.
 It is time, Buzzcut said a third time.
The mans head moved slowly. He now seemed to be facing Buzzcut.
 You may leave the room, the man said. His voice was a deep, clear baritone decisive
and unambiguous. His body had apparently attained complete wakefulness.
Buzzcut gave one shallow bow in the darkness and left the room the way he had entered
it, with no unnecessary movements. The door closed, leaving Aomame alone in the room with
the man.
 Im sorry its so dark, the man said, most likely to Aomame.
 I dont mind, Aomame said.
 We had to make it dark, the man said softly. But dont worry. You will not be hurt. 
Aomame nodded. Then, recalling that she was in darkness, she said aloud, I see. Her
voice was somewhat harder and higher than normal.
For a time, the man stared at Aomame in the darkness. She felt herself being stared at intensely.
His gaze was precise and attentive to detail. He was not so much looking at her as
 viewing her. He seemed able to survey every inch of her body. She felt as if he had, in an instant,
stripped off every piece of clothing and left her stark naked. But his gaze didnt stop
with the skin; it pierced through to her muscles and organs and uterus. He can see in the
dark, she thought. He is viewing far more than the eyes can see.
 Things can be seen better in the darkness, he said, as if he had just seen into her mind.
 But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground
where the light is. You have to call a stop to it at some point. 
Having said this, he spent another interval observing Aomame. There was nothing sexual
in his gaze. He was just viewing her as an object, the way a boat passenger stares at the
shape of a passing island. But this was no ordinary passenger. He was trying to see through
to everything about the island. With prolonged exposure to such a relentless, piercing gaze,
Aomame strongly felt the imperfections of her own fleshly self. This was not how she felt normally.
Aside from the size of her breasts, she was, if anything, proud of her body. She trained
it daily and kept it beautiful. Her muscles were smooth and taut without the slightest excess
flesh. Stared at by this man, however, she could not help but feel that her flesh was a wornout
old bag of meat.
As though he had read her thoughts, the man stopped staring at her. She felt the power
suddenly go out of his gaze. It was as if someone had been spraying water with a hose when
another person behind the building turned off the spigot.
 Sorry, but could you open the curtains just a bit? the man asked softly. Im sure you
could use some light, too, for your work. 
Setting the gym bag on the floor, Aomame went over to the window and pulled on the
cords at the side to open, first, the thick, heavy curtains and then the inner white lace curtains.
Nighttime Tokyo poured its light into the room. Tokyo Towers floodlights, the lamps lining the
elevated expressway, the moving headlights of cars, the lighted windows of high-rise buildings,
the colorful rooftop neon signs: they all combined to illuminate the hotel room with that
mixed light unique to the big city, but just barely, enough so that Aomame was now able to
make out some of the rooms furnishings. Aomame saw the light with a pang of familiarity.
This was light from the world to which she herself belonged. She suddenly realized how urgently
she needed such light. As weak as it was, though, it appeared to be too strong for the
mans eyes. Still seated on the bed in the lotus position, he covered his face with his two large
hands.
 Are you all right? Aomame asked.
 Dont worry, he said.
 Shall I close the curtains a bit more? 
 No, thats fine. I have a problem with my retinas. It takes time for them to adjust to light.
Ill be all right in a minute. Have a seat over there. 
A problem with his retinas? Aomame wondered. People with retinal problems are usually
on the verge of going blind. But this was of no concern to Aomame now. She was not here to
deal with this mans sight.
While the man was covering his face with his hands and letting his eyes adjust to the light
streaming in from the window, Aomame sat on a sofa and watched him. Now it was her turn
to study him in detail.
He was a very large man. Not fat, just large. Tall and broad and powerful looking. She had
heard about his large size from the dowager, but she had not expected him to be this big.
There was, of course, no reason that a religious guru should not be huge. She imagined tenyear-old
girls being raped by this big man and found herself scowling. She imagined him naked
and mounted on a tiny girl. There was no way for such girls to resist. Even an adult woman
would have a difficult time of it.
The man was wearing something like thin sweatpants that narrowed at the ankles with
elastic bands, and a solid-color long-sleeved shirt that had a slight, silk-like sheen. The loosefitting
shirt buttoned up the front, but the man had left the top two buttons open. Both the
pants and the shirt appeared to be white or a light cream color. These were not pajamas but
more like comfortable lounging clothes or an outfit that would look normal under palm trees in
southern lands. His bare feet looked big. The broad stone wall of his shoulders brought to
mind an experienced martial arts combatant.
After waiting for a pause in Aomames observation, the man said, Thanks for coming
today. 
 Its my job, Aomame said in a voice devoid of emotion. I go where Im needed. Even as
she spoke, however, she felt like a prostitute who had come when called. Perhaps this was
due to the way he had undressed her in the darkness with that penetrating gaze.
 How much do you know about me? the man asked Aomame, his hands still covering his
face.
 How much do I know about you? 
 Thats right. 
 Almost nothing, Aomame said, choosing her words carefully. I have not even been told
your name. All I know is that you are the head of a religious organization in Nagano or
Yamanashi, that you have some kind of physical problem, and that I may be able to help you
with it. 
The man gave his head a few quick shakes and took his hands away from his face. Now
he and Aomame were looking directly at each other.
His hair was long. His abundant head of hair hung straight down to his shoulders. It had
much gray mixed in. The man was probably somewhere in his late forties or early fifties. He
had a large nose that occupied a good deal of his face. It was admirably straight and brought
to mind a calendar photo of the Alps. The mountain had a broad base and great dignity. It
was the first thing one noticed when looking at his face, and it contrasted sharply with his
eyes, which were set so deeply into his face that it was hard to tell what they were looking at.
Like his body, his face was broad and thick. Clean-shaven, it bore no scars or moles. The features
worked well together, producing a look of serenity and intelligence but also something
peculiar, out of the ordinary, something that did not inspire easy trust. It was the kind of face
that, on first impression, gives people pause. Perhaps it was because the nose was too big.
Because of it, the face was missing a certain balance, perhaps the root of what left the observer
feeling unsettled. Or perhaps it was the deep-set eyes that did it, the way they gave off
the quiet glow of an ancient glacier. Then again, it might have been the cruel impression created
by the thin lips, which looked as if they were ready to spit out unpredictable words at any
moment.
 And besides that? he asked.
 Besides that I have heard very little. All I was told was to be prepared to perform stretching
exercises. The muscles and joints are my area of expertise. I dont need to know much
about my clients positions or personalities. 
Just like a whore, Aomame thought.
 I understand what you are saying, the man said in a deep voice. But in my case, you
might need some explanation. 
 I would be glad to listen to anything you might wish to share. 
 People call me ‘Leader. But I almost never show my face to anyone. Most of our believers,
although they belong to the religion and live in the same compound, have no idea what I
look like. 
Aomame nodded.
 But here I am, letting you see my face. For one thing, I can hardly ask you to treat me in
the dark or blindfolded. And there is also the question of courtesy 
 What I do is not a ‘treatment, Aomame calmly corrected him. It is simply the stretching
of the muscles. I am not licensed to perform medical procedures. All I do is force people to
stretch the muscles they dont normally use or the ones that are difficult to use, and that way
we prevent the deterioration of their physical strength. 
The man appeared to smile faintly, though it might have been a mere illusion caused by a
slight twitching of his facial muscles.
 I am quite aware of that. I simply used the word ‘treat for conveniences sake. Dont
worry. All I was trying to say was that you are now seeing something that most people are not
able to see, and I wanted you to be aware of that. 
 I was warned in there not to say anything about this to anyone, Aomame said, pointing
toward the door to the adjoining room. But none of you need to worry. Nothing that I observe
here will find its way outside. I touch many peoples bodies in my work. You may be someone
in a special position, but to me you are merely one of many people with muscle problems.
The only part of you that concerns me is your muscles. 
 I hear you were a Society of Witnesses believer as a child. 
 Its not as if I chose to become a believer. I was simply raised that way. There is a big difference
between the two. 
 Indeed, a very big difference, the man said. But people can never fully divorce themselves
from the images implanted during early childhood. 
 For better or worse, Aomame said.
 The Witnesses doctrines are very different from those of the religion that I belong to. If
you ask me, any religion that takes the end of the world as one of its central tenets is more or
less bogus. In my view, the only thing that ever ‘ends is the individual. That said, the Society
of Witnesses is an amazingly tough religion. Its history is not very long, but it has withstood
many tests and has steadily continued to increase the number of its believers. There is a lot
that can be learned from that. 
 It probably just shows how close-minded theyve been. The smaller and narrower such a
group is, the more firmly they can resist outside pressure. 
 You are probably right about that, the man said, pausing for a few moments. In any
case, were not here to discuss religion. 
Aomame said nothing.
 What I want you to understand is the fact that my body has many special things about it. 
Aomame, still seated, waited for him to go on.
 As I said before, my eyes cant stand strong light. This symptom appeared some years
ago. I had no particular problem until that time, but all at once, at some point, it started. This
was the main reason I stopped coming into peoples presence. I spend practically all my time
in dark rooms. 
 Im afraid I cant do anything for vision problems, Aomame said. As I said before, the
muscles are my area of expertise. 
 Yes, I am quite aware of that. And of course I consulted medical specialists. I have been
to any number of famous eye doctors and had many tests. But they tell me there is nothing
they can do at this point. My retinas have been damaged, but they dont know the cause. The
symptoms are slowly progressing. If things go on like this, I will lose my sight before long. As
you say, of course, this is a problem that has nothing to do with the muscles. But let me list
my physical problems in order, and when I am through, we can think about what you can and
cannot do. 
Aomame nodded.
 The next problem is that my muscles often go stiff, the man said. I quite literally ‘cant
move a muscle. They become rock hard and stay that way for hours. All I can do at such
times is lie down. I dont feel any pain. All the muscles of my body simply become immobile. I
cant even move a finger. The only thing I can manage to move, through sheer willpower, is
my eyeballs. This happens once or twice a month. 
 Do you have any sign beforehand that it is about to happen? 
 First I have spasms. My muscles start twitching all over. That goes on for ten to twenty
minutes. After that, my muscles go dead, as if someone has turned off a switch. During those
ten or twenty minutes after the warning comes, I go to a place where I can stretch out, and I
lie down. Like a boat seeking shelter from a storm in a cove, I wait there in hiding for the paralysis
to pass over me. And though the paralysis is complete when it comes, my mind remains
fully awake. No, if anything, it is awake with a special clarity. 
 You say you have no pain? 
 I lose all sensation. If you jabbed me with a needle, I wouldnt feel it. 
 Have you consulted a doctor about that? 
 I have been to all the best hospitals and any number of doctors, but all they can tell me is
that this is an unprecedented affliction for which current medical knowledge can do nothing. I
have tried traditional Chinese remedies, osteopathic physicians, acupuncture, moxibustion,
massage, hot spring cures everything I could think of but have had no results worth talking
about. 
Aomame frowned slightly. All my approach does is to stimulate the normal bodily functions.
I doubt that it will have much effect on such severe problems. 
 Yes, I am quite aware of that as well. But I am trying to exhaust every possibility. Even if
your method has no effect, that is not your responsibility. Just do to me what you always do. I
would like to see how my body responds to it. 
Aomame pictured the mans huge body lying motionless in some dark place like a hibernating
animal.
 When was the last time you experienced the paralysis? 
 Ten days ago, the man said. And this is a bit difficult to bring up, but there is one
more thing I should probably mention. 
 Feel free to tell me anything. 
 All the time my muscles are in that state of suspended animation, I have an erection. 
Aomames frown deepened. You mean to say that your sex organ remains hard for hours
at a time? 
 That is correct. 
 But you have no feeling. 
 None at all, he said. No sexual desire, either. I just harden up. Like a rock, the way my
muscles do. 
Aomame gave her head a little shake and did her best to resume a normal expression. I
dont believe I can do anything about that, either. Its quite far from my area of expertise. 
 This is very difficult for me to talk about, and you probably dont want to hear about it
either, but may I tell you a bit more? 
 Please do. Your secrets are safe with me. 
 During this interval, it happens that I am physically joined with girls. 
 Girls?! 
 I have a number of females around me. Whenever I go into my paralytic state, they take
turns mounting me and having sexual relations with me. I have no feeling at all. I feel no sexual
pleasure. But I do ejaculate. With each of them. 
Aomame kept silent.
He continued, All together, there are three girls, all in their teens. I am sure you must be
wondering why I have such young girls around me and why they must have sex with me. 
 Could it be, perhaps, part of a religious practice? 
Still sitting cross-legged on the bed, the man took a deep breath. It is thought that these
paralyses of mine are a form of grace bestowed by heaven, a kind of sacred state. Thus,
when I am visited by those states, the girls come to me and join their bodies with mine. They
are trying to become impregnated. With my heir. 
Aomame looked at him, saying nothing. He also fell silent.
 So, then, what you are telling me is that the girls purpose is to become pregnant? To
carry your child? Aomame then asked.
 That is correct. 
 And during this several-hour period while you lie there paralyzed, you have three ejaculations
with these three girls? 
 That is correct. 
Aomame could not help but realize that she had gotten herself into a terribly complicated
situation. She was about to murder this man, to send him to the other side. Yet here she was,
being given the strange secrets of his flesh.
 I dont quite understand the precise nature of your problem. All the muscles of your body
become paralyzed once or twice a month. When that happens, your three girlfriends come
and have sex with you. True, that is not exactly normal in commonsense terms, but 
 They are not my girlfriends, the man said, cutting her short. They serve me as shrine
maidens. Joining their bodies with mine is one of their duties. 
 Duties? 
 It is a role that has been assigned to them to become pregnant with my heir. 
 Assigned by whom? Aomame asked.
 That would be a long story, the man said. The problem is that all of this is steadily leading
toward the destruction of my flesh. 
 So, then, have they gotten pregnant? 
 No, not yet. And there is little possibility that any of them will. They have not started their
periods. Still, they are hoping for a miracle through heavenly grace. 
 None of them have gotten pregnant. They are not menstruating, Aomame said. And
your flesh is headed for destruction. 
 Little by little, the time of each paralytic episode is growing longer. And the episodes are
increasing in number. They started seven years ago. Back then, I would have one episode in
two or three months. Now it is once or twice a month, and after each paralysis ends, my body
is racked by excruciating pain and exhaustion. I have to live this way for a week or more each
time. I feel as if my whole body is being stabbed by thick needles. I have intense headaches
and an overwhelming fatigue. I find it impossible to sleep, and no medicine has done anything
to alleviate the pain. 
The man sighed. Then he continued, The second week after the episode is better than
the first, but still the pain never entirely goes away. Intense pain comes over me like a wave
several times a day. I can hardly breathe. My organs dont function properly. My joints creak
like a machine that needs oiling. My flesh is being devoured and my blood sucked out. I can
feel it happening. But what is gnawing away at me is neither cancer nor a parasite. I have had
every test they can think of, but they can never find the cause. They tell me Im the picture of
health. Medical science cannot explain my torment. The only conclusion is that this is the
price I must pay for the heavenly grace I experience. 
This man is surely on the road to destruction, Aomame thought. But she could find no hint
of emaciation about him. He seemed sturdily built in every way and appeared to have the dis-
cipline to withstand intense pain. And yet she could sense that his flesh was headed for destruction.
This man is diseased. I dont know what his disease might be, but even if I dont
take steps to dispatch him right now, he will suffer intense pain as his flesh is slowly destroyed
and he encounters inevitable death.
 I cant stop its progress, the man said, as if he had read Aomames thoughts. Every part
of me is being eaten away, my body hollowed out, and a horribly painful death awaits me.
Theyll just throw me away like a useless old car. 
 ‘They? Aomame asked. Who are ‘they? 
 I am talking about the ones who are eating away at my flesh like this, the man said. But
never mind that. What I am looking for now is some way to have my very real pain eased to
some extent. That is what I need more than anything, even if the solution is not complete.
This pain is unbearable. At times at certain times the pain deepens dramatically, as if it
has a direct link to the center of the earth. It is a kind of pain that no one else besides me can
grasp. It has robbed me of many things, but in return it has given me much. Deep, special
pain bestows deep, special grace not that the grace alleviates the pain, of course. Nor can it
prevent the coming destruction. 
A deep silence followed for some moments.
Aomame finally managed to speak. I know I keep saying the same thing, but I cant help
thinking that the techniques at my disposal can do almost nothing for your problem especially
if it is something that has come to you as a payment for heavenly grace. 
Leader sat up straight and looked at Aomame with those small, deep-set, glacier-like
eyes. Then he opened his long, thin lips.
 No, I think you can do something for me something that only you can do. 
 I hope youre right. 
 I am right, I know it, the man said. I know a lot of things. If you are willing, I would like to
have you start now. Do what you always do. 
 Ill try, Aomame said, her voice tense and hollow. What I always do, Aomame thought.
1Q84
CHAPTER 10
Tengo
YOU HAVE DECLINED OUR OFFER
Tengo said good-bye to his father just before six p.m. While he waited for the taxi to come,
the two of them sat across from each other by the window, saying nothing. Tengo indulged in
his own unhurried thoughts while his father stared hard at the view outside the window, frowning.
The sun had dropped down, and the skys pale blue was slowly deepening.
He had many more questions he wanted to ask, but he knew that there would be no answers
coming back. The sight of his fathers tightly clenched lips told him that. His father had
obviously decided to say nothing more, so Tengo decided not to ask any more. If you couldnt
understand something without an explanation, you couldnt understand it with an explanation.
As his father had said.
When the time for him to leave drew near, Tengo said, You told me a lot today. It was indirect
and often hard to grasp, but it was probably as honest and open as you could make it. 
Tengo looked at his father, but there was no change of expression.
 I still have some things Id like to ask you, but I know they would only cause you pain. All I
can do is guess the rest from what youve told me. You are probably not my father by blood.
That is what I assume. I dont know the details, but I have to think that in general. If Im wrong,
please tell me so. 
His father made no reply.
Tengo continued, If my assumption is correct, that makes it easier for me. Not because I
hate you, but as I said before because I no longer need to hate you. You seem to have
raised me as your son even though we had no blood ties. I should be grateful for that. Unfortunately,
we were never very good at being father and son, but thats another problem. 
Still his father said nothing, his eyes fixed on the outdoor scene like a soldier on guard
duty, determined not to miss the next signal flare sent up by the savage tribe on the distant
hill. Tengo tried looking out along his fathers line of vision, but found nothing resembling a
flare. The only things out there were the pine trees tinted with the coming sunset.
 Im sorry to say it, but there is virtually nothing I can do for you other than to hope that
the process forming a vacuum inside you is a painless one. Im sure you have suffered a lot.
You must have loved my mother as deeply as you knew how. I do get that sense. But she
went off somewhere. I dont know whether the man she went with was my biological father or
not, and you apparently have no intention of telling me. But in any case she left you. And me,
too, an infant. Maybe you decided to raise me because you figured she would come back to
you if you had me with you. But she never came back to you or to me. That must have been
hard on you, like living in an empty town. Still, you raised me in that empty town as if to fill in
the vacuum. 
His fathers expression did not change. Tengo could not tell whether he was understanding or
even hearing what he was saying.
 My assumption may be wrong, and that might be all for the better. For both of us. But
thinking about it that way helps all kinds of things to fit together nicely inside me, and my
doubts are more or less resolved. 
A pack of crows cut across the sky, cawing. Tengo looked at his watch. It was time for him
to leave. He stood up, went over to his father, and put his hand on his shoulder.
 Good-bye, Father. Ill come again soon. 
Grasping the doorknob, Tengo turned around one last time and was shocked to see a
single tear running down from his fathers eye. It shone a dull silver color under the ceilings
fluorescent light. To release that tear, his father must have squeezed every bit of strength
from what little emotion he still had left. The tear crept slowly down his fathers cheek and fell
onto his lap. Tengo opened the door and left the room. He took the cab to the station and
boarded the train that had brought him here.
The Tokyo-bound express train from Tateyama was more crowded and noisy than the outbound
train had been. Most of the passengers were families returning from a stay at the
beach. Looking at them, Tengo thought about being in elementary school. He had never once
experienced such a family outing or trip. During the Bon Festival, or New Years, his father
would do nothing but stretch out at home and sleep, looking like some kind of grubby machine
with the electricity switched off.
Taking his seat, he thought he might read the rest of his paperback, until he realized he
had left it in his fathers room. He sighed but then realized on second thought that this was
probably just as well. Anything he might read now would probably not register with him. And
 Town of Cats was a story that belonged more in his fathers room than in Tengos possession.
The scenery moved past the window in the opposite order: the dark, deserted strip of
coastline pressed in upon by mountains eventually gave way to the more open coastal industrial
zone. Most of the factories were still operating even though it was nighttime. A forest of
smokestacks towered in the darkness, spitting fire like snakes sticking out their long tongues.
Big trucks strong headlights flooded the roadway. The ocean beyond looked like thick, black
mud.
It was nearly ten oclock by the time he arrived home. His mailbox was empty. Opening his
apartment door, he found the place looking even emptier than usual, the same vacuum he
had left behind that morning. The shirt he had thrown on the floor, the switched-off word processor,
the swivel chair with the indentation his weight had left in the seat, the eraser crumbs
scattered over his desk. He drank two glasses of water, undressed, and crawled straight into
bed. Sleep came over him immediately a deep sleep such as he had not had lately.
When he woke up after eight oclock the next morning, Tengo realized that he was a
brand-new person. Waking up felt good. The muscles of his arms and legs felt free of all stiffness
and ready to deal with any wholesome stimulus. His physical weariness was gone. He
had that feeling he remembered from childhood when he opened a new textbook at the beginning
of the term, ignorant of its contents but sensing the new knowledge to come. He went into
the bathroom and shaved. Drying his face and slapping on aftershave lotion, he studied
himself in the mirror, confirming that he was, indeed, a new person.
Yesterdays events all seemed as if they had happened in a dream, not in reality. While
everything was quite vivid, he noticed touches of unreality around the edges. He had boarded
a train, visited the Town of Cats, and come back. Fortunately, unlike the hero of the story,
he had managed to board the train for the return trip. And his experiences in that town had
changed Tengo profoundly.
Of course, nothing at all had changed about the actual situation in which he found himself,
compelled to walk on dangerous, enigmatic ground. Things had developed in totally unforeseen
ways, and he had no idea what was going to happen to him next. Still, Tengo had a
strong sense that somehow he would be able to overcome the danger.
Ive finally made it to the starting line, Tengo thought. Not that any decisive facts had
come to light, but from the things his father had said, and his fathers attitude, he had begun
to gain some vague understanding of his own origins. That image that had long tormented
and confused him was no meaningless hallucination. How much it reflected actuality, he could
not say with any precision, but it was the single piece of information left him by his mother,
and, for better or worse, it comprised the foundation of his life. With that much now clear,
Tengo was able to feel that he had lowered a great burden from his back.
And, having set it down once and for all, he realized what a heavy load he had been carrying.
A strangely quiet and peaceful two weeks went by, like a calm sea. He taught four days a
week at the cram school during summer vacation, and allocated the rest of his time to writing
his novel. No one contacted him. Tengo knew nothing about how the Fuka-Eri disappearance
case was progressing or whether Air Chrysalis was still selling. Nor did he want to know. Let
the world move along as it pleased. If it had any business with him, it would be sure to tell
him.
August ended, and September came. As he made his morning coffee, Tengo found himself
silently wishing that this peaceful time could go on forever. If he said it aloud, some keeneared
demon somewhere might overhear him. And so he kept his wish for continued tranquil-
ity to himself. But things never go the way you want them to, and this was no exception. The
world seemed to have a better sense of how you wanted things not to go.
The phone rang just after ten oclock that morning. He let it ring seven times, gave up,
reached out, and lifted the receiver.
 Can I come over now, a subdued voice asked. As far as Tengo knew, there was only
one person in the world who could ask questions without a question mark like that. In the
background Tengo could hear some kind of announcement and the sound of car exhausts.
 Where are you now? Tengo asked.
 At the front door of the Marusho. 
His apartment was less than two hundred yards from that supermarket. She was calling
from the pay phone out front.
Tengo instinctively glanced around his apartment. Dont you think its risky? Somebody
might be watching my apartment. And youre supposed to be ‘whereabouts unknown. 
 Somebody might be watching your apartment, she asked, parroting his words.
 Right, Tengo said. All kinds of weird things have been going on around me, probably
having to do with Air Chrysalis. 
 Cause people are mad. 
 Probably. Theyre mad at you, and I think theyre a little mad at me, too. Because I rewrote
Air Chrysalis. 
 I dont care, Fuka-Eri said.
 You dont care. Now Tengo was parroting her words. The habit was catching. About
what? 
 Your apartment being watched. If it is. 
He was momentarily at a loss for words. Well, maybe I do care, he said at last.
 We should be together, Fuka-Eri said. Join forces. 
 Sonny and Cher, Tengo said. The strongest male/female duo. 
 The strongest what? 
 Never mind. My own little joke. 
 Im coming over. 
Tengo was about to say something when he heard the connection cut. Everybody was
hanging up on him. Like chopping down a rope bridge.
Fuka-Eri showed up ten minutes later with a plastic supermarket bag in each arm. She
wore a blue-striped long-sleeve shirt and slim jeans. The shirt was a mens shirt, unironed,
straight from the clothesline. A canvas bag hung from one shoulder. She wore a pair of oversized
sunglasses to hide her face, but it didnt look like an effective disguise. If anything, it
would attract attention.
 I thought we should have lots of food, Fuka-Eri said, transferring the contents of the
plastic bags to the refrigerator. Most of what she had bought was ready-made food that only
needed heating in a microwave oven. There were also crackers and cheese, apples, tomatoes,
and some canned goods.
 Wheres the microwave? she asked, looking around the kitchen.
 I dont have one, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri wrinkled her brow in thought, but had nothing to say. She seemed to have
trouble imagining a world without a microwave oven.
 I want you to put me up, she said, as if conveying an objective fact.
 How long? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri shook her head. This meant she didnt know.
 What happened to your hiding place? 
 I dont want to be alone when something happens. 
 You think something is going to happen? 
Fuka-Eri did not reply.
 I dont mean to keep repeating myself, but this is not a safe place, Tengo said. Some
kind of people seem to be keeping an eye on me. I dont know who they are yet, but … 
 There is no such thing as a safe place, Fuka-Eri said, narrowing her eyes meaningfully
and tugging on an earlobe. Tengo could not tell what this body language was supposed to
mean. Probably nothing.
 So it doesnt matter where you are, Tengo said.
 There is no such thing as a safe place, Fuka-Eri repeated.
 You may be right, Tengo said with resignation. After a certain point, theres no difference
in the level of danger. In any case, I have to go to work soon. 
 To the cram school. 
 Right. 
 Ill stay here, Fuka-Eri said.
 Youll stay here, Tengo echoed her. You should. Just dont go outside, and dont answer
if anybody knocks. Dont answer the phone if it rings. 
Fuka-Eri nodded silently.
 So, anyhow, whats happening with Professor Ebisuno? 
 They searched Sakigake yesterday 
 You mean, the police searched the Sakigake compound looking for you? Tengo asked,
surprised.
 You arent reading the papers. 
 Im not reading the papers, Tengo echoed. I just havent felt like it lately. So I dont know
whats happening. But I would think the Sakigake people would be very upset by that. 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
Tengo released a deep sigh. They must be even angrier than before, like hornets having
their nest poked. 
Fuka-Eri narrowed her eyes and went into a short silence. She was probably imagining a
swarm of furious hornets pouring out of their nest.
 Probably, Fuka-Eri said in a tiny voice.
 So, did they find out anything about your parents? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. They still knew nothing about them.
 In any case, the organization is angry, Tengo said. And if the police find out that your
disappearance was an act, theyll be mad at you too. And mad at me for covering up for you
even though I know the truth. 
 Which is precisely why we have to join forces, Fuka-Eri said.
 Did you just say, ‘Which is precisely? 
Fuka-Eri nodded. Did I say it wrong? she asked.
Tengo shook his head. Not at all. The words sounded fresh, thats all. 
 If its a bother for you, I can go somewhere else, Fuka-Eri said.
 I dont mind if you stay here, Tengo said, resigned. Im sure you dont have anyplace
else in mind, right? 
Fuka-Eri answered with a curt nod.
Tengo took some cold barley tea from the refrigerator and drank it. Angry hornets would
be too much for me, but Im sure I can manage to look after you. 
Fuka-Eri looked hard at Tengo for a few moments. Then she said, You look different. 
 What do you mean? 
Fuka-Eri twisted her lips into a strange angle and then returned them to normal. Cant explain. 
 No need to explain, Tengo said. If you cant understand it without an explanation, you
cant understand it with an explanation.
As he left the apartment, Tengo said, When I call, Ill let it ring three times, hang up, and
call again. Then you answer. Okay? 
 Okay, Fuka-Eri said. Ring three times, hang up, call again, answer. She sounded as if
she could be translating aloud from an ancient stone monument.
 Its important, so dont forget, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri nodded twice.
Tengo finished his two classes, went back to the teachers lounge, and was getting ready
to go home. The receptionist came to tell him that the man named Ushikawa was here to see
him. She spoke with an apologetic air, like a kindhearted messenger bearing unwelcome
news. Tengo flashed her a bright smile and thanked her. No sense blaming the messenger.
Ushikawa was in the cafeteria by the front lobby, drinking a café au lait as he waited for
Tengo. Tengo could not imagine a drink less well suited to Ushikawa, whose strange exterior
looked all the stranger amid the energetic, young students. Only the part of the room where
he was sitting seemed to have different gravity and air density and light refractivity. Even from
a distance, there was no mistaking that he looked like bad news. The cafeteria was crowded
between classes, but not one person shared his six-person table. The students natural instincts
led them to avoid Ushikawa, just as antelope keep away from wild dogs.
Tengo bought a coffee at the counter and carried it over to Ushikawas table, sitting down
opposite him. Ushikawa seemed to have just finished eating a cream-filled pastry. The
crumpled wrapper lay atop the table, and crumbs stuck to the corner of his mouth. Cream
pastries also seemed totally unsuited to Ushikawa.
 Its been quite a while, hasnt it, Mr. Kawana? Ushikawa said to Tengo, raising himself
slightly from his chair. Sorry to barge in on you again all of a sudden. 
Tengo dispensed with the polite chatter and got down to business. Im sure youre here
for my answer. To the offer you made the other day, that is. 
 Well, yes, that is true, Ushikawa said. In a word. 
 I wonder, Mr. Ushikawa, if I can get you to speak a little more concretely and directly
today. What is it that you people want from me in return for this ‘grant thing? 
Ushikawa cast a cautious glance around the room, but there was no one near them, and
the cafeteria was so noisy with student voices that there was no danger of their conversations
being overheard.
 All right, then. Let me give you our best deal and lay it all out with total honesty, Ushikawa
said, leaning across the table and lowering his voice a notch. The money is just a pretext.
For one thing, the grant is not all that big. The most important thing that my client can offer
you is your personal safety. In other words, no harm will come to you. We guarantee it. 
 In return for which …? Tengo said.
 In return for which all they want from you is your silence and forgetting. You participated
in this affair, but you didnt know what you were getting yourself into. You were just a foot soldier
acting under orders. They wont hold you personally responsible. So all you have to do is
forget everything. We can make it as though nothing ever happened. Word will never get out
that you ghostwrote Air Chrysalis. You are not and never will be connected with it in any
way. That is what they want from you. And it would be to your advantage as well, Im sure you
see. 
 No harm will come to me. In other words, harm will come to the other participants? Is that
what you are saying? 
 That would be handled, uh, ‘case by case, as they say in English, Ushikawa said with
apparent difficulty. I am not the one who decides, so I cant say specifically, but some steps
will have to be taken, I should think. 
 And your arms are both long and strong. 
 Exactly. Very long, and very strong, as I mentioned before. So, then, Mr. Kawana, what
kind of answer can we hope for from you? 
 Let me first say that for me to accept money from you people is out of the question. 
Without speaking, Ushikawa reached for his glasses, took them off, carefully wiped the
lenses with a handkerchief he produced from his pocket, and put them back on, as if to say
that there might be some sort of connection between his vision and what he had just heard.
 Do I understand this to mean that you have rejected our offer? 
 That is correct. 
Ushikawa stared at Tengo through his glasses as if he were looking at an oddly shaped
cloud. And why would that be? In my humble opinion, it is by no means a bad deal for you. 
 In the end, all of us connected with the story are in the same boat. Its out of the question
for me to be the only one who runs away 
 Im mystified! Ushikawa said, as if truly mystified. I cant understand it. I maybe
shouldnt say this, but none of the others are the least bit concerned about you. Its true. They
throw a little spare change your way and use you any way they like. And for that you get
dragged into the mess. If you ask me, youd be totally justified to tell them all to go to hell. If it
were me, Id be fuming. But youre ready to protect them. ‘Its out of the question for me to be
the only one who runs away, he says! Boat schmoat! I dont get it. Why wont you take it? 
 One reason has to do with a woman named Kyoko Yasuda. 
Ushikawa picked up his cold café au lait and winced as he sipped it. Kyoko Yasuda? 
 You people know something about Kyoko Yasuda, Tengo said.
Ushikawa let his mouth hang open, as if he had no idea what Tengo was talking about.
 No, honestly, I dont know a thing about a woman by that name. I swear, really. Who is she? 
Tengo looked at Ushikawa for a while, saying nothing, but he could not read anything on
his face. A woman I know. 
 Would she, by any chance, be someone with whom you have a … relationship? 
Tengo did not reply to that. What I want to know is whether you people did something to
her. 
 Did something? No way! We havent done a thing, Ushikawa said. Im not lying. I just
told you, I dont know a thing about her. You cant do anything to somebody youve never
even heard of. 
 But you said you hired a capable ‘researcher and investigated every last thing about me.
He even hit upon the fact that I had rewritten Eriko Fukadas work. He knows a lot about my
private life, too. It only makes sense that he should know about Kyoko Yasuda and me. 
 Yes, its true, we have hired a capable researcher. And he has been finding out about you
in great detail. So it could be that he has discovered your relationship with Kyoko Yasuda, as
you say. But even assuming he has discovered it, the information has not reached me. 
 I was seeing Kyoko Yasuda for quite some time, Tengo said. I used to see her once a
week. In secret. Because she had a family. But suddenly one day, without saying a word to
me, she disappeared. 
Ushikawa used the handkerchief with which he had wiped his glasses to dab at the sweat
on the tip of his nose. And so, Mr. Kawana, you think that, in one way or another, we have
something to do with the fact that this married woman disappeared, is that it? 
 Maybe you informed her husband that she was seeing me. 
Ushikawa pursed his lips as if taken aback. What possible reason could we have for doing
such a thing? 
Tengo clenched his fists in his lap. I keep thinking about something you said on the
phone the last time we talked. 
 And what could that have been? 
 Once you pass a certain age, life is just a continuous process of losing one thing after another.
One after another, things you value slip out of your hands the way a comb loses teeth.
People you love fade away one after another. That sort of thing. Surely, you must remember. 
 Yes, I remember. I did say something like that the other day. But really, Mr. Kawana, I
was just speaking in generalities. I was offering my own humble view of the pain and difficulty
of aging. I certainly was not pointing specifically to Whats-her-name Yasuda. 
 But to my ears it sounded like a warning. 
Ushikawa gave his head several vigorous shakes. Nothing of the sort! It wasnt even remotely
meant as a warning. It was simply my personal view. Really, I swear, I dont know anything
at all about Mrs. Yasuda. She disappeared? 
Tengo went on, And you also said this: if I go on refusing to listen to you people, it might
have an undesirable effect on everyone around me. 
 Yes, I did say something like that. 
 Isnt that a warning too? 
Ushikawa stuffed his handkerchief into his jacket pocket and let out a sigh. True, it might
have sounded like a warning, but there, too, I was speaking strictly generally. Im telling you,
Mr. Kawana, I dont know anything about this Mrs. Yasuda. Ive never even heard the name. I
swear to all the gods and goddesses of heaven and earth. 
Tengo studied Ushikawas face again. This man really might not know anything about Kyoko
Yasuda. The expression of bewilderment on his face certainly looked like the real thing.
But even if he knew nothing, it didnt necessarily mean that they hadnt done anything to her.
It could just be that they hadnt told him about it.
 Its none of my business, Mr. Kawana, but having an affair with a married woman is a
dangerous business. Youre a young, healthy single male. You should be able to have any
number of single young girls without doing such dangerous things. Having said this, Ushikawa
deftly licked the crumbs from the corner of his mouth.
Tengo watched Ushikawa in silence.
Ushikawa said, Of course, male-female relationships dont work by logic and reason.
Even monogamous marriage has its own set of contradictions. Im telling you for your own
good, though, if she has left you, it might be best to let the situation stay as it is. What Im trying
to say is this: there are things in this world that are better left as unknowns. The business
about your mother, for example. Learning the truth would just hurt you. And once you do learn
the truth, you end up having to take on a certain responsibility for it. 
Tengo scowled, holding his breath for a few seconds. You know something about my
mother? 
Ushikawa flicked his tongue over his lips. Yes, to some extent, I do. Our researcher investigated
that area very thoroughly. So if you ever want to learn about that, I can hand you
all the materials on your mother as is. As I understand it, you grew up knowing absolutely
nothing about her. However, there might be some not-very-pleasant information included in
the file. 
 Please leave now, Mr. Ushikawa, Tengo said, pushing his chair back and standing up. I
have no desire to talk to you any more. And please dont ever show your face to me again.
Whatever ‘harm might be coming to me, it would be better than having to deal with you. I
dont want that ‘grant of yours or your guarantees of ‘safety. Theres only one thing I want,
and that is never to see you again. 
Ushikawa showed no discernible reaction to this. Perhaps he had had worse things said to
him any number of times. There was even a hint of a smile gleaming deep in his eyes.
 Thats fine, Ushikawa said. Im glad I got your answer at least. A definite no. You have
declined our offer. Clear and easy to understand. I will convey it to my superiors in that form. I
am just a lowly errand boy. Now, simply because your answer is no, that doesnt mean that
harm will come to you right away. It just might, is all I am saying. It might never happen.
Thats what I am hoping for. No, really, with all my heart. Because I like you, Mr. Kawana. Im
sure thats the last thing you want for me to like you but thats just the way it is. This nonsensical
guy who shows up with nonsensical deals, terrible to look at. Ive never had the problem
of being liked too much. But the simple fact is that I have good feelings toward you, Mr.
Kawana, as unwelcome as you may find them. And I hope that you go on to achieve great
success in life. 
Having said this, Ushikawa proceeded to stare at his own fingers. They were short, stubby
fingers. He turned them over a few times. Then he stood up.
 Well, then, Ill be excusing myself. Now that you mention it, this will probably be the last
time you see me. Yes, I will do my best to honor your wishes. May things go well for you in
the future. Good-bye. 
Ushikawa picked up the worn-out leather case he had set on the chair and disappeared
into the cafeterias crowd. As he walked, the mass of young male and female students parted
naturally to make way for him, like medieval village children trying to avoid a fearsome slave
trader.
Tengo dialed his own apartment from the public phone in the school lobby. He was planning
to hang up after three rings, but Fuka-Eri picked up at the second ring.
 I was going to let it ring three times and then call again. We had an arrangement, Tengo
said wearily.
 I forgot, Fuka-Eri said with apparent unconcern.
 Im sure I asked you not to forget. 
 Want to do it again, Fuka-Eri asked.
 No, never mind, were talking. Has anything unusual happened since I left? 
 No calls. Nobody came. 
 Good. Im through working. Ill be coming back now. 
 A big crow came and cawed outside the window, Fuka-Eri said.
 He comes every evening. Nothing to worry about. Its like a social call. Anyhow, I should
be back by seven. 
 Better hurry. 
 Whys that? Tengo asked.
 The Little People are stirring. 
 The Little People are stirring, Tengo repeated her words. In my apartment? 
 No. Somewhere else. 
 Somewhere else. 
 Way far away. 
 But you can hear them. 
 I can hear them. 
 Does it mean something? Tengo asked.
 That something extra ordinary is starting. 
It took Tengo a moment to realize she meant extraordinary. And what kind of extraordinary
something would that be? 
 I cant tell that much. 
 The Little People are going to make this extraordinary thing happen? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. He could feel it through the phone. It meant she didnt know.
 Better come back before the thunder starts, she said.
 Thunder? 
 If the train stops running, well be apart. 
Tengo turned and looked out the window. It was a calm late-summer evening without a
cloud in the sky. It doesnt look like thunder. 
 You cant tell from looks. 
 Ill hurry, Tengo said.
 Better hurry, Fuka-Eri said, and hung up.
Tengo stepped outside, looked up once again at the clear evening sky, and walked briskly
toward Yoyogi Station, Ushikawas words resounding in his head like a tape on auto-repeat.
What Im trying to say is this: there are things in this world that are better left as unknowns.
The business about your mother, for example. Learning the truth would just hurt you.
And once you do learn the truth, you end up having to take on a certain responsibility for it.
And somewhere the Little People are stirring. They apparently have something to do with
an extraordinary event that is coming our way. For now, the sky is beautiful and clear, but you
cant tell by how things look. Maybe the thunder will roar, the rain will fall, and the trains will
stop. Got to hurry back to the apartment. Fuka-Eris voice was strangely compelling.
 We have to join forces, she had said.
Those long arms were reaching out from somewhere. We have to join forces. Because
well be the worlds strongest male/female duo.
The Beat Goes On.
1Q84
CHAPTER 11
Aomame
BALANCE ITSELF IS THE GOOD
Aomame spread her blue foam yoga mat on the carpeted bedroom floor. Then she told
the man to take off his top. He got down from the bed and pulled off his shirt. He looked even
bigger without a shirt on. He was deep-chested, with bulging muscles, and had no drooping
excess flesh. To all appearances, this was a very healthy body.
Following Aomames directions, he lay facedown on the mat. Aomame touched his wrist
and took his pulse. It was strong and steady.
 Are you doing some kind of regular exercise? Aomame asked.
 Not really, he said. Just breathing. 
 Just breathing? 
 Its a little different from ordinary breathing, the man said.
 Like you were doing before in the dark, I suppose. Deep, repetitive breathing with all the
muscles of your body. 
Facedown, he gave a little nod.
Aomame could not quite grasp it. While his intense style of breathing certainly must take a
good deal of physical strength, was it possible for mere breathing to maintain such a tight,
powerful body?
 What Im about to do now involves a good deal of pain, Aomame said in a voice without
inflection. It has to hurt for it to do any good. On the other hand, I can adjust the amount of
pain. So if it hurts, dont just bear it speak up. 
The man paused for a moment before saying, If there is a pain Ive never tasted, Id like
to try it. This sounded mildly sarcastic to her.
 Pain is not fun for anybody. 
 But a painful technique is more effective, is that it? I can bear any pain as long as it has
meaning. 
Aomame allowed herself a momentary facial expression in the pale darkness. Then she
said, I understand. Lets both see how it goes. 
As always, Aomame started with the stretching of the shoulder blades. The first thing she
noticed when she touched his flesh was its suppleness. This was fine, healthy flesh, fundamentally
different in composition from the tired, stiff flesh of the urbanites with whom she dealt
at the gym. At the same time, however, she had a strong sense that its natural flow was being
blocked by something, the way a rivers flow can be blocked temporarily by floating timber
or other debris.
Leaning her weight into her elbow, Aomame squeezed the mans shoulder upward slowly
at first, but then with a serious application of strength. She knew he was feeling
pain intense pain that would make any ordinary human being cry out. But he bore it in silence.
His breathing remained calm, nor was there any hint of a frown on his face. He tolerates
pain well, she thought. She decided to see how much he could stand. She held nothing
back from her next push, until the shoulder blade joint gave out with a dull snap and she could
tell that the track had been switched. The mans breathing paused momentarily but immediately
resumed its quiet, steady pace.
 Your shoulder blade was tremendously obstructed, Aomame explained, but that took
care of it. Now the flow is back to normal. 
She jammed her fingers in under the shoulder blade up to the second joint. The muscles
here were meant to be flexible, and once the obstruction was removed they would quickly return
to normal.
 That feels much better, the man murmured.
 It must have hurt quite a bit. 
 Not more than I could stand. 
 I myself have a rather high tolerance for pain, but if someone had done the same thing to
me, Im pretty sure I would have cried out. 
 In most cases, one pain is alleviated or canceled out by another pain. The senses are, ultimately,
relative. 
Aomame placed her hand on his left shoulder blade, felt for the muscles with her fingertips,
and determined that they were in about the same condition that the right ones had been.
Lets see just how relative this can be. Ill do the left side now. It should hurt about as much
as the right side did. 
 Do what you need to. Dont worry about me. 
 Meaning, I shouldnt hold back at all? 
 No need for that. 
Following the same procedure, Aomame corrected the joints and the muscles around the
left shoulder blade. As instructed, she did not hold back. Once she had decided she would not
hold anything back, Aomame took the shortest possible route without hesitation. The man reacted
even more calmly than he had with the right side. He accepted the pain with complete
equanimity, making only one brief swallowing sound in his throat. All right, lets see how much
he can stand, Aomame thought.
She started working on his muscles one after another in order, loosening them up, following
her mental checklist. All she had to do was mechanically follow the usual route, like a capable
and fearless night watchman making the rounds of his building with a flashlight.
All of his muscles were more or less blocked, like a region that has suffered a horrible
disaster, its waterways obstructed, their embankments collapsed. Any ordinary human being
in such a condition would probably not be able to stand up or even breathe normally. This
man was supported by his sturdy flesh and strong will. However despicable his behavior
might have been, Aomame could not deny him her professional admiration for his ability to
bear such intense pain in silence.
She worked on one muscle after another, forcing it to move, bending and stretching it to
the limit, and each time the joint would release a dull pop. She was fully aware that this was
something close to torture. She had performed this muscle stretching on many athletes, tough
men used to living with physical pain, but even the toughest of them at some point couldnt
stop themselves from letting out a cry or something close to a cry. Some even wet themselves.
But this man never even groaned. He was very impressive. Still, it was possible to
guess the pain he was feeling from the sweat oozing on the back of his neck. Aomame herself
was starting to develop a film of sweat on her body.
It took close to thirty minutes for her to loosen up the muscles on the back of his body.
When this was finished, she took a moments break to wipe the sweat from her forehead.
This is very odd, Aomame thought. I came here to kill this man. In my bag is the superfine
ice pick I made. If I hold its point at the right spot on the back of his neck and punch the
handle, it will be all over. He would never know what happened to him as his life came to an
instantaneous end and he moved on to another world. That way, in effect, his body would be
released from all pain. Instead, Im spending all my energy to ease the pain that he is feeling
in the real world.
I am probably doing it because this is the work that I have been given to do, Aomame
thought. Whenever I have work before me, I have to pour all my strength into getting it done.
That is just the way I am. If I am given the job of curing problem muscles, then I will pour all
my strength into that. If I have to kill a person and have a proper reason for doing so, I will do
that with all my strength.
Obviously, though, I cant do both at the same time. The two jobs have conflicting purposes
and call for incompatible methods. I can only do one at a time. At the moment I am trying
to bring this mans muscles back to as normal a state as possible. I am concentrating my
mind on that task and mobilizing all the strength I can muster up. I can think about the other
task after this one is finished.
At the same time, Aomame was unable to suppress her curiosity. The mans far-fromordinary
illness; the fine, healthy muscles so terribly obstructed by it; the strong will and
powerful flesh that enabled him to bear the intense pain he called his payment for heavenly
grace : all aroused her curiosity. She wanted to see what she could do for this man, what kind
of response his flesh would show. It was a matter of both professional curiosity and personal
curiosity. Also, if I killed him now, I would have to leave right away. If the job ends too quickly,
the two men in the next room might find it suspicious. I told them that it would take an hour at
the very least.
 Im halfway done. Now Ill do the second half. Could you please turn over onto your
back? 
The man rolled over slowly like some large aquatic animal that has been cast up on the
shore.
 The pain is definitely lessening, the man said after releasing a long breath. None of the
treatments I have tried thus far have done as much. 
 I am only treating the symptoms, however, not solving the basic problem. Until you identify
the cause, the same thing will probably keep happening. 
 I know that. I considered using morphine, but I would rather not use drugs if possible.
Long-term use of drugs destroys the function of the brain. 
 I will go on with the rest of the treatment now, Aomame said. I gather you are all right
with my not holding back. 
 It goes without saying. 
Aomame emptied her mind and worked on the mans muscles with total concentration.
The structure of each muscle in the human body was engraved in her professional
memory its function, the bones to which it was attached, its unique characteristics, its sensitivities.
She inspected, shook, and effectively worked on each muscle and joint in order, the
way zealous inquisitors used to test every point of pain in their victims bodies.
Thirty minutes later, they were bathed in sweat, panting like lovers who have just had miraculously
deep sex. The man said nothing for a time, and Aomame was at a loss for words.
Finally, the man spoke: I dont want to exaggerate, but I feel as if every part of my body
has been replaced. 
Aomame said, You might experience something of a backlash tonight. During the night
your muscles might tighten up tremendously and let out a scream, but dont worry, they will be
back to normal tomorrow morning. 
If you have a tomorrow morning, Aomame thought.
Sitting cross-legged on the yoga mat, the man took several deep breaths, as though testing
the condition of his body. Then he said, You really do seem to have a special talent. 
Aomame toweled the sweat from her face as she said, What I do is strictly practical. I
studied the structure and function of the muscles in college and have expanded my knowledge
through actual practice. Ive put together my own system by making tiny adjustments to
my technique, just doing things that are obvious and reasonable. ‘Truth here is for the most
part observable and provable. It also involves a good deal of pain, of course. 
The man opened his eyes and looked at Aomame as though intrigued. So that is what
you believe. 
 What do you mean? Aomame asked.
 That truth is strictly something observable and provable. 
Aomame pursed her lips slightly. Im not saying it is true for all truths, just that it happens
to be the case in my professional field. Of course, if it were true in all fields, things in general
would be a lot easier to grasp. 
 Not at all, the man said.
 Why is that? 
 Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied
by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful,
comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where
religion comes from. 
The man turned his neck several times before continuing.
 If a certain belief call it ‘Belief A makes the life of that man or this woman appear to be
something of deep meaning, then for them Belief A is the truth. If Belief B makes their lives
appear to be powerless and puny, then Belief B turns out to be a falsehood. The distinction is
quite clear. If someone insists that Belief B is the truth, people will probably hate him, ignore
him, or, in some cases, attack him. It means nothing to them that Belief B might be logical or
provable. Most people barely manage to preserve their sanity by denying and rejecting images
of themselves as powerless and puny. 
 But peoples flesh all flesh, with only minor differences is a powerless and puny thing.
This is self-evident, dont you think? 
 I do, the man said. All flesh, with only minor differences, is a powerless and puny thing
doomed soon to disintegrate and disappear. That is an unmistakable truth. But what, then, of
a persons spirit? 
 I try my best not to think about the spirit. 
 And why is that? 
 Because there is no particular need to think about it. 
 Why is there no particular need to think about the spirit? Setting aside the question of
whether it has any practical value to do so, thinking about ones own spirit is one of the most
indispensable of all human tasks, is it not? 
 I have love, Aomame declared.
Oh, no, what am I doing? she thought. Talking about love to this man Im about to kill!
As a breeze sends ripples over the surface of a quiet pond, a faint smile spread across the
mans face, conveying a natural and even friendly emotion.
 Do you think that love is all a person needs? he asked.
 I do. 
 Now, this ‘love of yours does it have a particular individual as its object? 
 It does, Aomame said. It is directed toward a specific man. 
 Powerless, puny flesh and an absolute love free of shadows …, he murmured. Then,
after a brief pause, he added, You dont seem to have any need for religion. 
 Maybe I dont have any need. 
 Because your attitude is itself the very essence of religion, as it were. 
 You said before that religion offers not so much truth as beautiful hypotheses. Where
does that leave the religion that you head? 
 To tell you the truth, I dont consider what I do to be a religious activity, the man said.
 What I am doing is listening to the voices and transmitting them to people. I am the only one
who can hear the voices. That I can hear them is an unmistakable truth, but I cant prove that
their messages are the truth. All I can do is to embody their accompanying traces of heavenly
grace. 
Lightly biting her lip, Aomame set down her towel. She wanted to ask what kinds of grace
he was talking about, but she stopped herself. This could go on forever. She still had an important
task she had to complete.
 Can you lie facedown again? Im going to work on loosening up your neck muscles, 
Aomame said.
The man stretched out his huge frame again on the yoga mat and presented the back of
his thick neck to Aomame.
 In any case, you have a magic touch, he said, using the English expression.
 Magic touch? 
 Fingers that give off extraordinary power. An acute sense for locating those special points
on the body. A special capacity that is granted to very few individuals. This is not something
you can learn through study and practice. I have something a very different kind of
something that came to me in the same way. But as with all forms of heavenly grace, people
have to pay a price for the gifts they are given. 
 Ive never thought of it that way, Aomame said. I simply developed my techniques
through study and a lot of practice. They were not ‘granted to me by anybody. 
 Im not going to get involved in a debate with you. Just remember this: the gods give, and
the gods take away. Even if you are not aware of having been granted what you possess, the
gods remember what they gave you. They dont forget a thing. You should use the abilities
you have been granted with the utmost care. 
Aomame looked at her ten fingers. Then she placed them on the back of the mans neck,
concentrating all her awareness into her fingertips. The gods give, and the gods take away.
 Ill be through soon. This is the finishing touch, she announced drily to the mans back.
She seemed to hear thunder in the distance. She raised her face and looked out the window.
There was nothing to see but the dark sky. Again the sound came, reverberating hollowly
in the quiet room.
 It is going to rain any time now, the man declared in a voice without feeling.
Hands on the back of the mans thick neck, Aomame searched for the special spot. This
required unusual powers of concentration. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and listened
for the flow of his blood there. Her fingertips strained to read detailed information from the
elasticity of his skin and the conduction of his body heat. There was only one special spot,
and it was exceptionally small. On some people, it was easy to find, but much more difficult
on others. This man they called Leader was clearly the latter type. This was like trying to find
a single coin in a pitch-dark room entirely by feel, while taking care not to make any sound. At
last, however, she found it. She placed her fingertip on it and engraved the feel and its precise
position into her mind as though marking a map, a special ability that had been imparted
to her.
 Please stay in that exact position, Aomame said to the man as he lay there prone. She
reached out for the gym bag lying next to them and from it took out the hard case holding the
little ice pick.
 One spot is left on the back of your neck where the flow is still blocked, Aomame said
calmly, and I cant seem to resolve it with only the strength of my fingers. If I can remove the
blockage in this one place, it should give you great relief from your pain. I want to place one
simple acupuncture needle there. Dont worry, Ive done this any number of times. Do you
mind? 
The man released a deep breath. I am leaving it entirely up to you. I will accept anything
from you that will erase the pain I am feeling. 
She took the ice pick from the case and slipped the cork from its tip. The point had its usual
deadly sharpness. She held the ice pick in her left hand and used the index finger of her
right hand to locate the point she had found earlier. This was the spot, without the slightest
doubt. She placed the point against the spot and took a deep breath. Now all she needed to
do was bring her right hand down on the handle like a hammer and drive the needles exceedingly
fine point deep into the spot. Then it would all be over.
But something held her back. For some reason, she was unable to bring down the fist she
was holding aloft. With this, it will be all over, Aomame thought. With one stroke, I can send
this man to the other side. Then I leave the room looking cool, change my face and name,
and take on a new personality. I can do it. Without fear, without pangs of conscience. This
man has repeatedly committed loathsome acts that deserve death, there can be no doubt.
But, for some reason, she could not bring herself to do it. What held her right hand back was
an incoherent yet persistent doubt. This is all happening too easily, her instincts were warning
her.
Reason had nothing to do with it. She simply knew: something was wrong. Something was
not natural. All her powers and abilities were clashing inside her, their disparate elements engaged
in a fierce struggle. Her face performed deep contortions in the darkness.
 What is it? the man called out. Im waiting. Im waiting for you to finish once and for all. 
When she heard this, Aomame finally realized what was holding her back. This man
knows. He knows what I am about to do to him.
 There is no need for you to hesitate, the man said calmly. Its all right. What you want is
also what I want. 
The thunder continued to rumble, but there was no lightning to be seen, just a roar like
distant cannons. The battlefield was still far off. The man continued.
 If there were ever a perfect treatment, that is it. You did a careful job of stretching out my
muscles. I have only the purest respect for your skill. But as you pointed out yourself, it is, ultimately,
nothing but a symptomatic treatment. My pain has advanced to the point where it can
only be resolved by severing my life at the roots, by going down to the basement and cutting
the main switch. You are about to do that for me. 
Aomame maintained her pose, the left hand holding the needle against the special spot on
the back of his neck, the right hand held aloft. She could move neither forward nor back.
 If you want to put a stop to what you are about to do, there are any number of ways you
can do that. Its simple, he said. Try bringing your right hand down. 
As directed, Aomame tried to lower her right hand. But it would not budge. It was frozen in
midair, like the hand of a stone statue.
 I have the power to do that not that it was something I ever hoped to obtain. All right,
you can move your right hand now. Now you are in complete control of my life. 
Aomame became aware that she could now move her right hand freely. She clenched her
fist and opened it. It felt entirely normal. He must have employed something like hypnotism.
Whatever it was, it was very powerful.
 They have granted me these special powers, but in return they have impressed certain
demands upon me. Their desires have become my desires implacable desires that I have
been unable to defy. 
 They? Aomame asked. Do you mean the Little People? 
 So you know about them. Good. That will save time explaining. 
 All I know is that name. I dont know who or what the Little People are. 
 Probably no one knows for sure who the Little People are, the man said. All that people
are able to learn is that they exist. Have you read Frazers The Golden Bough? 
 No, I havent. 
 It is a very interesting book that has much to teach us. In certain periods of history in several
parts of the world in ancient times, of course the king was often killed at the end of his
reign, usually after a fixed period of ten to twelve years. When the term ended, the people
would gather together and slaughter him. This was deemed necessary for the community,
and the kings themselves willingly accepted it. The killing had to be cruel and bloody, and it
was considered a great honor bestowed upon the one who was king. Now, why did the king
have to be killed? It was because in those days the king was the one who listened to the
voices, as the representative of the people. Such a person would take it upon himself to become
the circuit connecting ‘us with ‘them. And slaughtering the one who listened to the
voices was the indispensable task of the community in order to maintain a balance between
the minds of those who lived on the earth and the power manifested by the Little People. In
the ancient world, ‘to rule was synonymous with ‘listening to the voices of the gods. Such a
system was at some point abandoned, of course. Kings were no longer killed, and kingship
became secular and hereditary. In this way, people stopped hearing the voices. 
Unconsciously opening and closing her elevated right hand, Aomame listened to what the
man was saying.
 They have been called by many different names, but in most cases have not been called
anything at all. They were simply there. The expression ‘Little People is just an expedient. My
daughter called them that when she was very young and brought them with her. 
 Then you became a king. 
The man drew a strong breath in through his nose and held it in his lungs for a time before
releasing it slowly. I am no king. I became one who listens to the voices. 
 And now you are seeking to be slaughtered. 
 No, it need not be a slaughter. This is 1984, and we are in the middle of the big city.
There is no need for a brutal, bloody killing. All you have to do is take my life. It can be neat
and simple. 
Aomame shook her head and relaxed the muscles of her body. The point of the needle
was still pressed against the spot on the back of his neck, but she found it impossible to summon
the will to kill this man.
Aomame said, You have raped many young girls girls barely ten years old, some perhaps
even younger. 
 That is true, the man said. There are aspects to what I did, I must admit, that can be
viewed that way in the light of commonly held concepts. In the eyes of earthly law, I am a
criminal. I did have physical relations with girls who had still not reached maturity even if it
was something that I myself did not seek. 
All that Aomame could do was inhale and exhale deeply. She had no idea how to go
about quieting the intense emotional currents streaming through her body. Her face was
greatly distorted, and her right and left hands seemed to be longing for entirely different
things.
 I would like you to take my life, the man said. It makes no sense for me to go on living in
this world. I should be obliterated in order to maintain the worlds balance. 
 What would happen after I killed you? 
 The Little People would lose one who listens to their voices. I still have no successor. 
 How is it possible to believe this? Aomame practically spit the words out between her
taut lips. You may just be a sexual pervert trying to justify your despicable actions with convenient
rationalizations. There never were any ‘Little People, no voices of the gods, no heavenly
grace. You may be just another phony claiming to be a prophet or religious leader. 
 See the clock over there? the man said without lifting his head. On the right-hand chest
of drawers. 
Aomame looked to the right. There was a rounded, waist-high chest, on top of which sat a
clock embedded in a marble frame obviously, a heavy object.
 Keep your eyes on it. Dont look away. 
As instructed, Aomame kept her neck turned in that direction and fixed her eyes on the
clock. Beneath her fingers, she could feel every muscle in the mans body turning to stone
and filling with an incredibly intense power. As if in response to that power, the marble clock
rose slowly from the surface of the chest. She watched it begin to tremble, as if hesitating,
come to rest at a point some three inches in the air, and stay there for a full ten seconds.
Then the mans muscles lost their strength, and the clock dropped back to the chest with a
dull thud, as if it had just remembered the earths gravity.
The man took a long time to release a deep, exhausted-sounding breath.
 Even a little thing like that takes a huge amount of energy, he said once he had expelled
every last breath in his body. Enough to shorten my life. But I hope you see it now: at least I
am no phony. 
Aomame did not answer him. The man took time bringing his strength back with a series
of deep breaths. The clock went on silently displaying the time as though nothing had
happened. Only its position on top of the chest had shifted slightly on a diagonal. Aomame
stared hard at the clock while the second hand made a circuit.
 You do have special powers, Aomame said drily.
 As you have now seen. 
 There is an episode involving the devil and Christ in The Brothers Karamazov, I recall.
The Christ is undergoing harsh austerities in the wilderness when the devil challenges him to
perform a miracle to change a stone into bread. But the Christ ignores him. Miracles are the
devils temptation. 
 Yes, I know that. I, too, have read The Brothers Karamazov. And what you say is true:
this kind of showing off doesnt solve a thing. But I had to convince you in the limited amount
of time we have, so I went ahead and performed for you. 
Aomame remained silent.
 In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil, the man said. Good and evil
are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into
an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky
depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance
between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes
difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good. This is what I
mean when I say that I must die in order to keep things in balance. 
 I dont feel any need to kill you at this point, Aomame declared. As you probably know,
that is what I came here to do. I cant permit a person like you to exist. I was determined to
obliterate you from this world. But I no longer feel that determination. You are suffering terribly,
I can tell. You deserve to die slowly, going to pieces bit by bit, in terrible pain. I cant find
it in me to grant you an easy death. 
Still lying facedown, the man responded with a small nod. If you were to kill me, my
people would be sure to track you down. They are absolute fanatics, and they are powerful
and persistent. With me gone, the religion would lose its centripetal force. But once it is
formed, a system takes on a life of its own. 
Aomame listened to him speak as he lay there facedown.
 What I did to your friend was very bad. 
 My friend? 
 Your girlfriend with the handcuffs. Now, what was her name again …? 
A sudden calm filled Aomame. The inner conflict was gone. A heavy silence hung over her
now.
 Ayumi Nakano, Aomame said.
 Poor girl. 
 Did you do that? Aomame asked coldly. Are you the one who killed Ayumi? 
 No, not at all. I didnt kill her. 
 But for some reason you know that someone killed her. 
 Our researcher found out, the man said. We dont know who killed her. All we know is
that your friend, the policewoman, was strangled to death in a hotel. 
Aomames right hand became tightly clenched again. But you said, ‘What I did to your
friend was very bad. 
 That I was unable to prevent it. Whoever may have killed her, the fact is that they always
go after your weakest point the way wolves chase down the weakest sheep in the herd. 
 Youre saying that Ayumi was a weak point of mine? 
The man did not answer.
Aomame closed her eyes. But why did they have to kill her? She was such a good person!
She would never hurt anyone. Why? Because I am involved in this? If so, wouldnt it
have been enough just to destroy me? 
The man said, They cant destroy you. 
 Why not? Aomame asked. Why cant they destroy me? 
 Because you have long since become a special being. 
 Special being? Aomame asked. In what way ‘special? 
 You will discover that eventually. 
 Eventually? 
 When the time comes. 
Aomame screwed up her face again. I cant understand what you are saying. 
 You will at some point. 
Aomame shook her head. In any case, they cant attack me for now. And so they aimed
at a weak point near me. In order to give me a warning. To keep me from taking your life. 
The man remained silent. It was a silence of affirmation.
 Its too terrible, Aomame said. She shook her head. What real difference could it possibly
have made for them to murder her? 
 No, they are not murderers. They never destroy anyone with their own hands. What killed
your friend, surely, was something she had inside of her. The same kind of tragedy would
have happened sooner or later. Her life was filled with risk. All they did was to provide the
stimulus. Like changing the setting on a timer. 
Setting on a timer?
 She was no electric oven! She was a living human being! So what if her life was full of
risk? She was a dear friend of mine. You people took that from me like nothing at all. Mean-
inglessly. Callously. 
 Your anger is entirely justified, the man said. You should direct it at me. 
Aomame shook her head. Even if I take your life here, that wont bring Ayumi back. 
 No, but it would provide some degree of retaliation against the Little People. You could
have your revenge, as it were. They dont want me to die yet. If I die now, it will open up a vacuum at
least a temporary vacuum, until a successor comes into being. It would be a strike
against them. At the same time, it would be a benefit to you. 
 Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge, 
Aomame said.
 Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empires
budget deficits. It has no moral significance. 
 Never mind about morals. You are going to die in agony while some strange thing eats
you up whether I raise a hand against you or not. I have no reason to sympathize with you for
that. Even if the world were to lose all morals and go to pieces, it wouldnt be my fault. 
The man took another deep breath. All right, I see what you are saying. How about this,
then? Lets make a deal. If you will take my life, I will spare the life of Tengo Kawana. I still
have that much power left. 
 Tengo, Aomame said. The strength went out of her body. So you know about that, too. 
 I know everything about you. Or perhaps I should say almost everything. 
 But you cant possibly tell that much. Tengos name has never taken a step outside my
heart. 
 Please, Miss Aomame, the man said. Then he released a brief sigh. There is nothing in
this world that never takes a step outside a persons heart. And it just so happens should I
say? that Tengo Kawana has become a figure of no little significance to us at the moment. 
Aomame was at a loss for words.
The man said, But then again, chance has nothing to do with it. Your two fates did not
cross through mere happenstance. The two of you set foot in this world because you were
meant to enter it. And now that you have entered it, like it or not, each of you will be assigned
your proper role here. 
 Set foot in this world? 
 Yes, in this year of 1Q84. 
 1Q84? Aomame said, her face greatly distorting. I made that word up!
 True, it is a word you made up, the man said, as if reading her mind. I am just borrowing
it from you. 
Aomame formed the word 1Q84 in her mouth.
 There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a persons heart, Leader repeated
softly.
1Q84
CHAPTER 12
Tengo
MORE THAN I COULD COUNT
ON MY FINGERS
Tengo managed to return to his apartment before the rains came. He hurried on foot from
the station to his building. There was not a cloud to be seen in the evening sky, no sign that
rain was on its way, no suggestion of coming thunder. None of the people around him was
carrying an umbrella. It was the kind of pleasant late-summer evening that called for a draft
beer at a baseball game. But he had recently entered a new frame of mind, and that was to
assume that anything Fuka-Eri said might be true. Better to believe than not to believe, Tengo
thought, basing it not so much on logic as experience.
He peeked into his mailbox to find a business envelope with no return address. He tore it
open on the spot. Inside was a notice that 1,627,534 yen had been electronically transferred
into his bank account. The payer was listed as Office ERI, which was almost certainly Komatsus
fabricated company. Or possibly Professor Ebisuno had made the transfer. Komatsu
had informed Tengo that he would be paid a part of the Air Chrysalis royalties as an honorarium,
and perhaps this was that part. No doubt the payment had been listed as an assistance
fee or research fee. After checking the figure again, Tengo returned the notice to the envelope
and stuffed it into his pocket.
1.6 million yen was a lot of money to Tengo (in fact, he had never received such a lump
sum in his life), but he felt neither happy nor surprised. Money was not a major problem for
him at this point in time. He had his regular income, which enabled him to get by without undue
strain, and for the moment, at least, he had no anxiety about his future. In spite of that,
everyone wanted to give him large chunks of money. It was a strange world.
Where the rewriting of Air Chrysalis was concerned, however, Tengo had a sneaking suspicion
that 1.6 million yen was not sufficient recompense for his having been drawn into this
much trouble. If, on the other hand, someone were to ask him straight out, All right, then,
how much would be a fair amount?, he would have been hard-pressed to come up with a figure.
First of all, he did not know if there was such a thing as a fair price for trouble. There
must surely be many different kinds of trouble in the world for which there was no way to attach
a price or for which there was no one willing to pay. Air Chrysalis was still selling well,
apparently, which meant that there might be further payments into his account, but the more
the deposits increased, the more problems they would give rise to. Each increase in compensation
only served to increase the extent of Tengos involvement with Air Chrysalis as an
established fact.
He thought about sending the money back to Komatsu first thing tomorrow morning. That
would enable him to evade some sort of responsibility. It might also provide some psychological
relief. In any case it would establish the fact that he had rejected compensation. Not that
it would expunge his moral responsibility or justify the actions he had taken. All it would give
him was possible extenuating circumstances, though it might end up doing just the opposite
by making his actions appear all the more suspicious, as though he had returned the money
because he felt guilty about it.
As he went on agonizing about the money, his head started to hurt, so he decided to stop.
He could think about it again later, when he had time to spare. Money was not a living thing. It
wouldnt run off anywhere if he left it alone. Probably.
The problem I have to deal with now is how to give my life a new start, Tengo thought as
he climbed the three flights of stairs to his apartment. Having gone to see his father at the
southern tip of the Boso Peninsula, he had become generally convinced that the man was not
his real father. He felt he had also succeeded in reaching a turning point in his life. It might be
the perfect opportunity. Now might be a good time to make a break with all his troubles and
start his life over again: a new job, a new place, new relationships. Though not yet entirely
confident, he had a kind of presentiment that he might be able to lead a somewhat more coherent
life than he had so far.
Before he could do that, however, there were things he had to take care of. He couldnt
simply shrug off Fuka-Eri and Komatsu and Professor Ebisuno and disappear somewhere. Of
course, he had no obligations toward them, no ethical responsibilities. As Ushikawa had said,
where this current matter was concerned, Tengo was the one being put upon by them. Still,
though he could claim to have been all but dragged into the situation and to have been ignorant
of its underlying plot, the fact was that he had still been involved. He couldnt simply announce
that he would have nothing more to do with it and that the others could do as they
pleased. Wherever he might go from here on out, he wanted first to bring things to some sort
of conclusion and clean up his personal affairs. Otherwise, his fresh new life might be tainted
from the outset.
 Tainted reminded Tengo of Ushikawa. Ushikawa, huh? Tengo thought with a sigh. Ushikawa
had his hands on some information regarding Tengos mother, information that he said
he could share with Tengo.
If you ever want to learn about that, I can hand you all the materials on your mother as is.
However, there might be some not-very-pleasant information included in the file.
Tengo had not even bothered to reply to this. He had no wish to hear news about his
mother from Ushikawas mouth. Any kind of information would be sullied the moment it
emerged from that orifice. No, Tengo had no desire to hear such information from anyones
mouth. If he was going to be given news about his mother, it had to come not in bits and
pieces but as a comprehensive revelation. It had to be, as it were, a vivid cosmic landscape,
the full vast expanse of which could be seen in a split second.
Tengo did not know, of course, if he would be granted such a dramatic revelation sometime
in the future. It might never come. But what he needed was something so enormous, on
such an overwhelming scale, that it could rival and even surpass the striking images of the
 waking dream that had disoriented and jolted and tormented him over these many years. He
needed something that would totally purge him of this image. Fragmentary information would
do him no good at all.
These were the thoughts that ran through Tengos mind as he climbed three flights of
stairs.
Tengo stood in front of his apartment door, pulled his key from his pocket, inserted the key
in the lock, and turned it. Then, before opening the door, he knocked three times, paused,
and knocked twice more. Finally, he eased the door open.
Fuka-Eri was sitting at the table, drinking tomato juice from a tall glass. She was dressed
in the same clothes she had been wearing when she arrived a striped mens shirt and slim
blue jeans. But the impression she made on Tengo was very different from the one she had
given him that morning. It took Tengo a while to realize why: she had her hair tied up, revealing
her ears and the back of her neck. Those small, pink ears of hers looked as though they
had been daubed with powder using a soft brush and had just been made a short time ago for
purely aesthetic reasons, not for the practical purpose of hearing sounds. Or at least they
looked that way to Tengo. The slim, well-shaped neck below the ears had a lustrous glow, like
vegetables raised in abundant sunshine, immaculate and well suited to morning dew and
ladybugs. This was the first time he had seen her with her hair up, and it was a miraculously
intimate and beautiful sight.
Tengo had closed the door by reaching around behind himself, but he went on standing
there in the entrance. Her bared ears and neck disoriented him as much as another womans
total nakedness. Like an explorer who has discovered the secret spring at the source of the
Nile, Tengo stared at Fuka-Eri with narrowed eyes, speechless, hand still clutching the
doorknob.
 I took a shower, she said to Tengo as he stood there transfixed. She spoke in grave
tones, as though she had just recalled a major event. I used your shampoo and rinse. 
Tengo nodded. Then, exhaling, he finally wrenched his hand from the doorknob and
locked the door. Shampoo and rinse? He stepped forward, away from the door.
 Did the phone ring after I called? Tengo asked.
 Not at all, Fuka-Eri said. She gave her head a little shake.
Tengo went to the window, parted the curtains slightly, and looked outside. The view from
the third floor had nothing unusual about it no suspicious people lurking there or suspicious
cars parked out front, just the usual drab expanse of this drab residential neighborhood. The
misshapen trees lining the street wore a layer of gray dust. The pedestrian guardrail was full
of dents. Rusty bicycles lay abandoned by the side of the road. A wall bore the police slogan
 Driving Drunk: A One-Way Street to a Ruined Life. (Did the police have slogan-writing specialists
in their ranks?) A nasty-looking old man was walking a stupid-looking mutt. A stupid-looking
woman drove by in an ugly subcompact. Nasty-looking wires stretched from one
ugly utility pole to another. The scene outside the window suggested that the world had
settled in a place somewhere midway between being miserable and lacking in joy, and
consisted of an infinite agglomeration of variously shaped microcosms.
On the other hand, there also existed in the world such unexceptionably beautiful views as
Fuka-Eris ears and neck. In which should he place the greater faith? It was not easy for him
to decide. Like a big, confused dog, Tengo made a soft growling noise in his throat, closed
the curtains, and returned to his own little world.
 Does Professor Ebisuno know that youre here? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri shook her head. The professor did not know.
 Dont you plan to tell him? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. I cant contact him. 
 Because it would be dangerous to contact him? 
 The phone may be tapped. Mail might not get through. 
 Im the only one who knows youre here? 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 Did you bring a change of clothing and stuff? 
 A little, Fuka-Eri said, glancing at her canvas shoulder bag. Certainly a little was all it
could hold.
 I dont mind, the girl said.
 If you dont mind, of course I dont mind, Tengo said.
Tengo went into the kitchen, put the kettle on to boil, and spooned some tea leaves into
the teapot.
 Does your lady friend come here, Fuka-Eri asked.
 Not anymore, Tengo gave her a short answer.
Fuka-Eri stared at Tengo in silence.
 For now, Tengo added.
 Is it my fault, Fuka-Eri asked.
Tengo shook his head. I dont know whose fault it is. But I dont think its yours. Its probably
my fault. And maybe hers to some extent. 
 But anyhow, she wont come here anymore. 
 Right, she wont come here anymore. Probably. So its okay for you to stay. 
Fuka-Eri spent a few moments thinking about that. Was she married, she asked.
 Yes, and she had two kids. 
 Not yours. 
 No, of course not. She had them before she met me. 
 Did you love her. 
 Probably, Tengo said. Under certain limited conditions, Tengo added to himself.
 Did she love you. 
 Probably. To some extent. 
 Were you having intercourse. 
It took a moment for the word intercourse to register with Tengo. It was hard to imagine
that word coming from Fuka-Eris mouth.
 Of course. She wasnt coming here every week to play Monopoly. 
 Monopoly, she asked.
 Never mind, Tengo said.
 But she wont come here anymore. 
 Thats what I was told, at least. That she wont come here anymore. 
 She told you that, Fuka-Eri asked.
 No, I didnt hear it directly from her. Her husband told me. That she was irretrievably lost
and couldnt come here anymore. 
 Irretrievably lost. 
 I dont know exactly what it means either. I couldnt get him to explain. There were lots of
questions but not many answers. Like a trade imbalance. Want some tea? 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
Tengo poured the boiling water into the teapot, put the lid on, and waited.
 Oh well, Fuka-Eri said.
 What? The few answers? Or that she was lost? 
Fuka-Eri did not reply.
Tengo gave up and poured tea into two cups. Sugar? 
 A level teaspoonful, Fuka-Eri said.
 Lemon or milk? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. Tengo put a spoonful of sugar into the cup, stirred it slowly, and
set it in front of the girl. He added nothing to his own tea, picked up the cup, and sat at the table
across from her.
 Did you like having intercourse, Fuka-Eri asked.
 Did I like having intercourse with my girlfriend? Tengo rephrased it as an ordinary question.
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 I think I did, Tengo said. Having intercourse with a member of the opposite sex that
youre fond of. Most people enjoy that. 
To himself he said, She was very good at it. Just as every village has at least one farmer
who is good at irrigation, she was good at sexual intercourse. She liked to try different methods.
 Are you sad she stopped coming, Fuka-Eri asked.
 Probably, Tengo said. Then he drank his tea.
 Because you cant do intercourse. 
 Thats part of it, naturally. 
Fuka-Eri stared straight at Tengo again for a time. She seemed to be having some kind of
thoughts about intercourse. What she was actually thinking about, no one could say.
 Hungry? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri nodded. I have hardly eaten anything since this morning. 
 Ill make dinner, Tengo said. He himself had hardly eaten anything since the morning,
and he was feeling hungry. Also, he could not think of anything to do for the moment aside
from making dinner.
Tengo washed the rice, put it in the cooker, and turned on the switch. He used the time
until the rice was ready to make miso soup with wakame seaweed and green onions, grill a
sun-dried mackerel, take some tofu out of the refrigerator and flavor it with ginger, grate a
chunk of daikon radish, and reheat some leftover boiled vegetables. To go with the rice, he
set out some pickled turnip slices and a few pickled plums. With Tengo moving his big body
around inside it, the little kitchen looked especially small. It did not bother him, though. He
was long used to making do with what he had there.
 Sorry, but these simple things are all I can make, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri studied Tengos skillful kitchen work in great detail. With apparent fascination,
she scrutinized the results of that work neatly arranged on the table and said, You know how
to cook. 
 Ive been living alone for a long time. I prepare my meals alone as quickly as possible
and I eat alone as quickly as possible. Its become a habit. 
 Do you always eat alone. 
 Pretty much. Its very unusual for me to sit down to a meal like this with somebody. I used
to eat lunch here once a week with the woman we were talking about. But, come to think of it,
I havent eaten dinner with anybody for a very long time. 
 Are you nervous. 
Tengo shook his head. No, not especially. Its just dinner. It does seem a little strange,
though. 
 I used to eat with lots of people. We all lived together when I was little. And I ate with lots
of different people after I moved to the Professors. He always had visitors. 
He had never heard Fuka-Eri speak so many sentences in a row.
 But you were eating alone all the time you were in hiding? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 Where were you in hiding? Tengo asked.
 Far away. The Professor arranged it for me. 
 What were you eating alone? 
 Instant stuff. Packaged food, Fuka-Eri said. I havent had a meal like this in a long time. 
Fuka-Eri put a lot of time into tearing the flesh of the mackerel from the bones with her
chopsticks. She brought the pieces of fish to her mouth and put more time into chewing them,
as though she were eating some rare new food. Then she took a sip of miso soup, examined
the taste, made some kind of judgment, set her chopsticks on the table, and went on thinking.
Just before nine oclock, Tengo thought he might have caught the sound of thunder in the
distance. He parted the curtains slightly and looked outside. The sky was totally dark now,
and across it streamed a number of ominously shaped clouds.
 You were right, Tengo said after closing the curtain. The weathers looking very ugly out
there. 
 Because the Little People are stirring, Fuka-Eri said with a somber expression.
 When the Little People begin stirring, it does extraordinary things to the weather? 
 It depends. Weather is a question of how you look at it. 
 A question of how you look at it? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. I dont really get it. 
Tengo didnt get it either. To him, weather seemed to be an independent, objective condition.
But he probably couldnt get anywhere pursuing this question further. He decided to ask
another question instead.
 Do you think the Little People are angry about something? 
 Something is about to happen, the girl said.
 What kind of something? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. Well see soon. 
Together they washed and dried the dishes and put them away, after which they sat facing
each other across the table, drinking tea. He would have liked a beer, but decided it
might be better to refrain from drinking today. He sensed some kind of danger in the air, and
thought he should remain as clearheaded as possible in case something happened.
 It might be better to go to sleep early, Fuka-Eri said, pressing her hands against her
cheeks like the screaming man on the bridge in the Munch picture. Not that she was screaming:
she was just sleepy.
 Okay, you can use my bed, Tengo said. Ill sleep on the sofa like before. Dont worry, I
can sleep anywhere. 
It was true. Tengo could fall asleep anywhere right away. It was almost a talent.
Fuka-Eri only nodded. She looked straight at Tengo for a while, offering no opinions. Then
she briefly touched her freshly made ears, as if to check that they were still there. Can you
lend me your pajamas. I didnt bring mine. 
Tengo took his extra pajamas from the bedroom dresser drawer and handed them to
Fuka-Eri. They were the same pajamas he had lent her the last time she stayed here plain
blue cotton pajamas, washed and folded from that time. Tengo held them to his nose to check
for odors, but there were none. Fuka-Eri took them, went to the bathroom to change, and
came back to the dining table. Now her hair was down. The pajama legs and arms were rolled
up as before.
 Its not even nine oclock, Tengo said, glancing at the wall clock. Do you always go to
bed so early? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. Today is special. 
 Because the Little People are stirring outside? 
 Im not sure. Im just tired now. 
 You do look sleepy, Tengo admitted.
 Can you read me a book or tell me a story in bed, Fuka-Eri asked.
 Sure, Tengo said. I dont have anything else to do. 
It was a hot and humid night, but as soon as she got into bed, Fuka-Eri pulled the quilt up
to her chin, as if to form a firm barrier between the outside world and her own world. In bed,
somehow, she looked like a little girl no more than twelve years old. The thunder rumbling
outside the window was much louder than before, as though the lightning were beginning to
strike somewhere quite close by. With each thunderclap, the windowpanes would rattle.
Strangely, though, there were no lightning flashes to be seen, just thunder rolling across the
pitch-dark sky. Nor was there any hint of rain. Something was definitely out of balance.
 They are watching us, Fuka-Eri said.
 You mean the Little People? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri did not answer him.
 They know were here, Tengo said.
 Of course they know, Fuka-Eri said.
 What are they trying to do to us? 
 They cant do anything to us. 
 Thats good. 
 For now, that is. 
 They cant touch us for now, Tengo repeated feebly. But theres no telling how long that
will go on. 
 No one knows, Fuka-Eri declared with conviction.
 But even if they cant do anything to us, they can, instead, do something to the people
around us? Tengo asked.
 Maybe so. 
 Maybe they can make terrible things happen to them? 
Fuka-Eri narrowed her eyes for a time with a deadly serious look, like a sailor trying to
catch the song of a ships ghost. Then she said, In some cases. 
 Maybe the Little People used their powers against my girlfriend. To give me a warning. 
Fuka-Eri slipped a hand out from beneath the quilt and gave her freshly made ear a
scratching. Then she slipped the hand back inside. What the Little People can do is limited. 
Tengo bit his lip for a moment. Then he said, Exactly what kinds of things can they do, for
example? 
Fuka-Eri started to offer an opinion on the matter but then had second thoughts and
stopped. Her opinion, unvoiced, sank back into the place it had originated from a deep,
dark, unknown place.
 You said that the Little People have wisdom and power. 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 But they have their limits. 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 And thats because they are people of the forest; when they leave the forest, they cant
unleash their powers so easily. And in this world, there exist something like values that make
it possible to resist their wisdom and power. Is that it? 
Fuka-Eri did not answer him. Perhaps the question was too long.
 Have you ever met the Little People? Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri stared at him vaguely, as though she could not grasp the meaning of his question.
 Have you ever actually seen them? Tengo rephrased his question.
 Yes, Fuka-Eri said.
 How many of the Little People did you see? 
 I dont know. More than I could count on my fingers. 
 But not just one. 
 Their numbers can sometimes increase and sometimes decrease, but there is never just
one. 
 The way you depicted them in Air Chrysalis. 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
Tengo took this opportunity to ask Fuka-Eri a question he had been wanting to ask her for
some time. Tell me, he said, how much of Air Chrysalis is real? How much of it really
happened? 
 What does ‘real mean, Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.
Tengo had no answer for this, of course.
A great clap of thunder echoed through the sky. The windowpanes rattled. But still there
was no lightning, no sound of rain. Tengo recalled an old submarine movie. One depth charge
after another would explode, jolting the ship, but everyone was locked inside the dark steel
box, unable to see outside. For them, there was only the unbroken sound and the shaking of
the sub.
 Will you read me a book or tell me a story, Fuka-Eri asked.
 Sure, Tengo said, but I cant think of a good book for reading out loud. I dont have the
book here, but I can tell you a story called ‘Town of Cats, if you like. 
 ‘Town of Cats. 
 Its the story of a town ruled by cats. 
 I want to hear it. 
 It might be a little too scary for a bedtime story, though. 
 Thats okay. I can sleep, whatever story you tell. 
Tengo brought a chair next to the bed, sat down, folded his hands in his lap, and started
telling Town of Cats, with the thunder as background music. He had read the story twice on
the express train and once again, aloud, to his father in the sanatorium, so he knew the plot
pretty well. It was not such a complex or finely delineated story, nor had it been written in a
terribly elegant style, so he felt little hesitation in altering it as he pleased, omitting the more
tedious parts or adding episodes that occurred to him as he recited the story for Fuka-Eri.
The original story had not been very long, but telling it took a lot longer than he had imagined
because Fuka-Eri would not hesitate to ask any questions that occurred to her. Tengo
would interrupt the story each time and give her careful answers, explaining the details of the
town or the cats behavior or the protagonists character. When they were things not described
in the story (which was usually the case), Tengo would make them up, as he had with
Air Chrysalis. Fuka-Eri seemed to be completely drawn in by Town of Cats. She no longer
looked tired. She would close her eyes sometimes, imagining scenes of the town of cats.
Then she would open her eyes and urge Tengo to go on with the story.
When he was through telling her the story, Fuka-Eri opened her eyes wide and stared at
Tengo the way a cat widens its pupils to stare at something in the dark.
 Did you go to a town of cats, Fuka-Eri asked Tengo, as if pressing him to reveal a truth.
 Me?! 
 You went to your town of cats. Then came back on a train. 
 Is that what you feel? 
With the summer quilt pulled up to her chin, Fuka-Eri gave him a quick little nod.
 Youre quite right, Tengo said. I went to a town of cats and came back on a train. 
 Did you do a purification afterward, she asked.
 Purification? No, I dont think so, not yet. 
 You have to do it. 
 What kind of purification? 
Instead of answering him, Fuka-Eri said, If you go to a town of cats and dont do anything
about it afterward, bad stuff can happen. 
A great thunderclap seemed to crack the heavens in two. The sound was increasing in ferocity.
Fuka-Eri recoiled from it in bed.
 Come here and hold me, Fuka-Eri said. We have to go to a town of cats together. 
 Why? 
 The Little People might find the entrance. 
 Because I havent done a purification? 
 Because the two of us are one, the girl said.
1Q84
CHAPTER 13
Aomame
WITHOUT YOUR LOVE
 1Q84, Aomame said. Are you talking about the fact that I am living now in the year
called 1Q84, not the real 1984? 
 What the real world is: that is a very difficult problem, the man called Leader said as he
lay on his stomach. What it is, is a metaphysical proposition. But this is the real world, there
is no doubt about that. The pain one feels in this world is real pain. Deaths caused in this
world are real deaths. Blood shed in this world is real blood. This is no imitation world, no imaginary
world, no metaphysical world. I guarantee you that. But this is not the 1984 you know. 
 Like a parallel world? 
The mans shoulders trembled with laughter. Youve been reading too much science fiction.
No, this is no parallel world. You dont have 1984 over there and 1Q84 branching off
over here and the two worlds running along parallel tracks. The year 1984 no longer exists
anywhere. For you and for me, the only time that exists anymore is this year of 1Q84. 
 We have entered into its time flow once and for all. 
 Exactly. We have entered into this place where we are now. Or the time flow has entered
us once and for all. And as far as I understand it, the door only opens in one direction. There
is no way back. 
 I suppose it happened when I climbed down the Metropolitan Expressways emergency
stairway. 
 Metropolitan Expressway? 
 Near Sangenjaya, Aomame said.
 The place is irrelevant, the man said. For you, it was Sangenjaya. But the specific place
is not the question. The question here, in the end, is the time. The track, as it were, was
switched there, and the world was transformed into 1Q84. 
Aomame imagined a number of Little People joining forces to move the device that
switches the tracks. In the middle of the night. Under the pale light of the moon.
 And in this year of 1Q84, there are two moons in the sky, arent there? 
 Correct: two moons. That is the sign that the track has been switched. That is how you
can tell the two worlds apart. Not that all of the people here can see two moons. In fact, most
people are not aware of it. In other words, the number of people who know that this is 1Q84 is
quite limited. 
 Most people in this world are not aware that the time flow has been switched? 
 Correct. To most people, this is just the plain old everyday world theyve always known.
This is what I mean when I say, ‘This is the real world. 
 So the track has been switched, Aomame said. If it had not been switched, we would
not be meeting here like this. Could that be what you are saying? 
 That is the one thing that no one knows. Its a question of probability. But that is probably
the case. 
 Is what you are saying an objective fact, or just a hypothesis? 
 Good question. But distinguishing between the two is virtually impossible. Remember
how the old song goes, ‘Without your love, its a honky-tonk parade? He hummed the
melody. Do you know it? 
 ‘Its Only a Paper Moon. 
 Thats it. 1984 and 1Q84 are fundamentally the same in terms of how they work. If you
dont believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter
which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line
separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the
inner eye, the eye of the mind. 
 Who switched the tracks? 
 Who switched the tracks? That is another difficult question. The logic of cause and effect
has little power here. 
 In any case, some kind of will transported me into this world of 1Q84, Aomame said. A
will other than my own. 
 That is true. You were carried into this world when the train you were on had its tracks
switched. 
 Do the Little People have anything to do with that? 
 In this world there are the so-called Little People. Or at least, that is what they are called
in this world. But they do not always have a shape or a name. 
Aomame bit her lip in thought. Then she said, What you are saying sounds contradictory
to me. Lets assume it was these ‘Little People who switched the track and carried me into
this world of 1Q84. Why would they do such a thing if they dont want me to do what I am
about to do to you? It would be far more advantageous to get rid of me. 
 That is not easy to explain, the man said, his voice lacking all intonation. But you are a
very quick thinker. You might be able to grasp, however vaguely, what I am trying to tell you.
As I said before, the most important thing with regard to this world in which we live is for there
to be a balance maintained between good and evil. The so-called Little People or some kind
of manifestations of will certainly do have great power. But the more they use their power,
the more another power automatically arises to resist it. In that way, the world maintains a
delicate balance. This fundamental principle is the same in any world. Precisely the same
thing can be said in this world of 1Q84 that now contains us. When the Little People began to
manifest their enormous power, a power opposing the Little People also automatically came
into being. And this opposing momentum must have drawn you into the year 1Q84. 
Lying like a beached whale on his blue yoga mat, the giant man released a huge breath.
 To continue with the train analogy: it is possible for them to switch tracks, as a result of
which the train has entered its current line the 1Q84 line. One thing they are not able to do,
however, is to distinguish one passenger on the train from another to choose among them.
Which means that there may be passengers aboard who, to them, are undesirable. 
 Uninvited passengers. 
 Exactly. 
Again there was a rumble of thunder. This one was much louder than before. But there
was no lightning. Just the sound. Strange, Aomame thought. The thunder is so close, but the
lightning doesnt flash. And no rain is falling.
 Have I managed to make myself clear thus far? 
 Im listening, she said, having already moved the needle away from the spot on his neck.
Now she had it pointed cautiously toward empty space. She had to concentrate all her attention
on what he was saying.
Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be
light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung said this about
‘the Shadow in one of his books: ‘It is as evil as we are positive … the more desperately we
try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be
black and evil and destructive.… The fact is that if one tries beyond ones capacity to be perfect,
the Shadow descends to hell and becomes the devil. For it is just as sinful from the
standpoint of nature and of truth to be above oneself as to be below oneself.
 We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense,
something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them
since long, long ago from a time before good and evil even existed, when peoples minds
were still benighted. But the important thing is that, whether they are good or evil, light or
shadow, whenever they begin to exert their power, a compensatory force comes into being. In
my case, when I became an ‘agent of the so-called Little People, my daughter became
something like an agent for those forces opposed to the Little People. In this way, the balance
was maintained. 
 Your daughter? 
 Yes, the first one to usher in the so-called Little People was my daughter. She was ten
years old at the time. Now she is seventeen. The Little People emerged from the darkness at
some point, coming here through her, and they made me their agent. My daughter became a
Perceiver and I became a Receiver. Apparently we were suited to such roles by nature. In
any case, they found us. We did not find them. 
 And so you raped your own daughter. 
 I had congress with her, he said. That expression is closer to the truth. And the one I
had congress with was, strictly speaking, my daughter as a concept. ‘To have congress with
is an ambiguous term. The essential point was for us to become one as Perceiver and Receiver. 
Aomame shook her head. I cant understand what you are saying. Did you have sex with
your daughter or didnt you? 
 The answer to that question is, finally, both yes and no. 
 Is this true of little Tsubasa as well? 
 Yes, in principle. 
 But Tsubasas uterus was destroyed not ‘in principle but in reality. 
The man shook his head. What you saw was the outward manifestation of a concept, not
an actual substance. 
Aomame was unable to follow the swift flow of the conversation. She paused to bring her
breathing under control. Then she asked, Are you saying that a concept took on human
shape and ran away on its own two feet? 
 To put it simply. 
 The Tsubasa I laid eyes on was not actual substance? 
 Which is why she was retrieved. 
 Retrieved, Aomame said.
 She was retrieved and is now being healed. She is receiving the treatment she needs. 
 I dont believe you, Aomame declared.
 I cant blame you, the man said without emotion.
Aomame was at a loss to say anything for a time. Then she asked another question. By
violating your daughter, conceptually and ambiguously, you became an agent of the Little
People. But simultaneously, your daughter compensated by leaving you and becoming, as it
were, an opponent of the Little People. Is this what you are asserting? 
 That is correct. And in order to do so, she had to leave her own dohta behind, the man
said. That doesnt mean anything to you, though, does it? 
 ‘Dohta? Aomame asked.
 Something like a living shadow. Here another character becomes involved an old friend
of mine. A man I can trust. I put my daughter in his care. Then, not too long ago, yet another
character became involved, someone you know very well by the name of Tengo Kawana.
Sheer chance brought Tengo and my daughter together as a team. 
Time seemed to come to a sudden halt. Aomame could find no words to speak. She went
stiff from head to toe, waiting for time to begin to move once again.
The man continued speaking. Each happened to have qualities that augmented the other.
What Tengo lacked, Eriko possessed, and what Eriko lacked, Tengo possessed. They joined
forces to complete a single work. And the fruits of their collaboration turned out to have a
great impact. That is to say, in the context of establishing an opposition to the Little People. 
 They made a team? 
 Not that the two have a romantic or physical relationship. So there is nothing for you to
worry about if that is what you have in mind. Eriko will never have a romantic relationship
with anyone. She has transcended such things. 
 What are the fruits of their collaboration, exactly? 
 In order to explain that, I must bring up a second analogy. The two have, so to speak, invented
an antibody to a virus. If we take the actions of the Little People to be a virus, Tengo
and Eriko have created and spread the antibody to combat it. This is, of course, a one-sided
analogy. From the Little Peoples point of view, Tengo and Eriko are, conversely, the carriers
of a virus. All things are arranged as mirrors set face-to-face. 
 Is this what you call the compensatory function? 
 Exactly. In joining forces, the man you love and my daughter have succeeded in giving
rise to such a function. Which is to say that, in this world, you and Tengo are literally in step
with each other. 
 But that is not simply a matter of chance, according to you. You say I was led into this
world by some form of will. Is that it? 
 That is it exactly. You came with a purpose, led by a form of will, to this world of 1Q84.
That you and Tengo have come to have a relationship here in whatever form it might
take is by no means a product of chance. 
 What kind of will, and what kind of purpose? 
 It has not been given to me to explain that, sorry to say, the man said.
 Why are you unable to explain it? 
 It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are
lost forever the moment they are explained in words. 
 All right, then, let me try another question, Aomame said. Why did I have to be the
one? 
 You still dont understand why, do you? 
Aomame gave her head several strong shakes. No, I dont understand why. Not at all. 
 It is very simple, actually. It is because you and Tengo were so powerfully drawn to each
other. 
Aomame maintained a long silence. She sensed a hint of perspiration oozing from the
pores of her face. It felt as if her whole face were covered by a thin membrane invisible to the
naked eye.
 Drawn to each other, she said.
 Yes, to each other. Very powerfully 
An emotion resembling anger welled up inside her as if from nowhere, accompanied by a
vague sense of nausea. I cant believe that. He couldnt possibly remember me. 
 No, Tengo knows very well that you exist in this world, and he wants you. To this day, he
has never once loved any woman other than you. 
Aomame was momentarily at a loss for words, during which time the violent thunder continued
at short intervals, and rain seemed to have finally begun to fall. Large raindrops began
pelting the hotel room window, but the sound barely reached Aomame.
The man said, You can believe it or not as you wish. But you would do better to believe it
because it is the unmistakable truth. 
 You mean to say that he still remembers me even though twenty years have gone by
since we last met? Even though we never really spoke to each other? 
 In that empty classroom, you strongly gripped his hand. When you were ten years old.
You had to summon up every bit of your courage to do it. 
Aomame twisted her face out of shape. How could you possibly know such a thing? 
The man did not answer her. Tengo never forgot about that. And he has continued to
think of you all this time. You would do well to believe it. I know many things. For example, I
know that, even now, you think of Tengo when you masturbate. You picture him. I am right
about that, arent I? 
Aomame let her mouth fall open slightly, but she was at a total loss for words. All she did
was take one shallow breath after another.
The man went on, It is nothing to be ashamed of. It is a natural human function. Tengo
does the same thing. He thinks of you at those times, even now. 
 But how could you possibly …? 
 How could I possibly know such things? By listening closely. That is my job to listen to
the voices. 
She wanted to laugh out loud, and, simultaneously, she wanted to cry. But she could do
neither. She could only stay transfixed, somewhere between the two, inclining her center of
gravity in neither direction, at a loss for words.
 You need not be afraid, the man said.
 Afraid? 
 You are afraid, just as the people of the Vatican were afraid to accept the Copernican
theory. Not even they believed in the infallibility of the Ptolemaic theory. They were afraid of
the new situation that would prevail if they accepted the Copernican theory. They were afraid
of having to reorder their minds to accept it. Strictly speaking, the Catholic Church has still not
publicly accepted the Copernican theory. You are like them. You are afraid of having to shed
the armor with which you have long defended yourself. 
Aomame covered her face with her hands and let out several convulsive sobs. This was
not what she wanted to do, but she was unable to stop herself. She would have preferred to
appear to be laughing, but that was out of the question.
 You and Tengo were, so to speak, carried into this world on the same train, the man said
softly. By teaming up with my daughter, Tengo took steps against the Little People, and you
are trying to obliterate me for other reasons. In other words, each of you, in your own way, is
doing something dangerous in a very dangerous place. 
 And you are saying that some kind of will wanted us to do these things? 
 Perhaps. 
 For what conceivable purpose? No sooner had the question left her mouth than
Aomame realized it was pointless. There was no hope she would ever receive a reply.
 The most welcome resolution would be for the two of you to meet somewhere and leave
this world hand in hand, the man said, without answering her question. But that would not be
an easy thing to do. 
 Not be an easy thing to do, Aomame repeated his words unconsciously.
 Not an easy thing to do, and, sad to say, that is putting it as mildly as possible. In fact, it
is just about impossible. The adversary that you two are facing, whatever you care to call it, is
a fierce power. 
 So then Aomame said, her voice dry. She cleared her throat. By now she had overcome
her confusion. This is no time to cry, she thought. So then comes your proposition, is
that it? I give you a painless death, in return for which you can give me something a different
choice. 
 Youre very quick on the uptake, the man said, still lying facedown. That is correct. My
proposition is a choice having to do with you and Tengo. It may not be the most pleasant
choice. But at least it does give you room to choose. 
. . .
 The Little People are afraid of losing me, the man said. They still need me. I am useful
to them as their human agent. Finding my replacement will not be easy for them. And at this
point in time, they have not prepared my successor. Many difficult conditions have to be met
in order to become their agent, and I happen to meet all of them, which makes me a rare find.
They are afraid of losing me. If that were to happen, it would give rise to a temporary vacuum.
This is why they are trying to prevent you from taking my life. They want to keep me alive a
little while longer. The thunder you hear outside is a sign of their anger. But they cant raise a
hand against you directly. All they can do is warn you of their anger. For the same reason,
they drove your friend to her death using possibly devious methods. And if things go on like
this they will almost surely inflict some kind of harm upon Tengo. 
 Inflict harm on Tengo? 
 Tengo wrote a story about the Little People and their deeds. Eriko furnished the basic
story, and Tengo converted it into an effective piece of writing. It was their collaborative effort,
and it acted as an antibody, countering the momentum of the Little People. It was published
as a book and became a bestseller, as a result of which, if only temporarily, the Little People
found that many potential avenues had been closed for them, and limits were placed on several
of their actions. You have probably heard of the book: it is called Air Chrysalis. 
Aomame nodded. Ive seen articles about the book in the newspaper. And the publishers
advertisements. I havent read the book, though. 
 The one who did the actual writing of Air Chrysalis was Tengo. And now he is writing a
new story of his own. In Air Chrysalis which is to say, in its world with two moons he discovered
his own story. A superior Perceiver, Eriko inspired the story as an antibody inside
him. Tengo seems to have possessed superior ability as a Receiver. That ability may be what
brought you here in other words, what put you onto that train. 
Aomame severely distorted her face in the gloom. She had to try her best to follow what
this man was saying. Are you telling me that I was transported into this other world of 1Q84
by Tengos storytelling ability or, as you put it, by his power as a Receiver? 
 That is, at least, what I surmise, the man said.
Aomame stared at her hands. Her fingers were wet with tears.
 If things go on as they are now, Tengo will in all likelihood be liquidated. At the moment,
he is the number one threat to the so-called Little People. And, after all, this is the real world,
where real blood is shed and real deaths occur. Death, of course, lasts forever. 
Aomame bit her lip.
 I would like you to think about it this way, the man said. If you kill me here and eliminate
me from this world, the Little People will no longer have any reason to harm Tengo. If I cease
to exist as a channel, Tengo and my daughter can obstruct that channel all they want without
presenting any threat to them. The Little People will just forget about the two of them and look
for a channel somewhere else a channel with another origin. That will become their first priority.
Do you see what I mean? 
 In theory, at least, Aomame said.
 On the other hand, if I am killed, the organization that I have created will never leave you
alone. True, it might take them some time to find you because you will surely change your
name, change where you live, and maybe even change your face. Still, they will track you
down and punish you severely. That is the kind of system that we have created: close-knit, violent,
and irreversible. That is one choice you have. 
Aomame took time to organize her thoughts about what he had told her. The man waited
for his logic to permeate her mind.
Then he went on. Conversely, if you do not kill me here and now, what will happen? You
will simply withdraw from this place and I will go on living. So then the Little People will use all
their powers to eliminate Tengo in order to protect me, their agent. The protective cloak he
wears is not yet strong enough. They will find his weak point and do everything they can to
destroy him because they cannot tolerate any further dissemination of the antibody. Meanwhile,
you cease to be a threat, and they no longer have any reason to punish you. That is
your other choice. 
 In that case, Aomame said, summarizing what the man had told her, Tengo dies and I
go on living here, in this world of 1Q84. 
 Probably, he said.
 But there is no point in my living in a world where Tengo no longer exists. All possibility of
our meeting would be lost forever. 
 That may be the case from your point of view. 
Aomame bit down hard on her lip, imagining such a state of affairs.
 But all I have to go on is what you are saying, she pointed out. Why do I have to take
you at your word? Is there some basis or backing for that? 
The man shook his head. You are right. There is no basis or backing. Its just what I tell
you. But you saw my special powers a little while ago. There are no strings attached to that
clock, and its very heavy. Go look at it yourself. Do you accept what I am saying or dont
you? Decide one way or the other. We dont have much time left. 
Aomame looked over at the clock on the chest of drawers. Its hands were showing just
before nine. The clock was slightly out of place, facing at an odd angle, having been lifted into
the air and dropped back again.
The man said, At this point in this year of 1Q84, there seems to be no way to rescue you
both at the same time. You have two possibilities to choose from. In one, you probably die
and Tengo lives. In the other, he probably dies and you live. As I said before, it is not a pleasant
choice. 
 But no other possibilities exist to choose between. 
The man shook his head. At this point in time, you can only choose between those two. 
Aomame filled her lungs with air and slowly exhaled.
 Its too bad for you, the man said. If you had stayed in the year 1984, you would not
have been faced with this choice. But at the same time, if you had stayed in 1984, you would
almost surely never have learned that Tengo has continued to long for you all this time. It is
precisely because you were transported to 1Q84 that you were able to learn this fact the
fact that your hearts are, in a sense, intertwined. 
Aomame closed her eyes. I will not cry, she thought. It is not the time to cry yet.
 Is Tengo really longing for me? Can you swear to that without deception? 
 To this day, Tengo has never loved anyone but you with his whole heart. It is a fact.
There is not the slightest room for doubt. 
 But still, he never looked for me. 
 Well, you never looked for him. Isnt that true? 
Aomame closed her eyes and, in a split second, reviewed the long span of years as if
standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, surveying an ocean channel far below. She could smell
the sea. She could hear the deep sighing of the wind.
She said, We should have had the courage to search for each other long ago, I suppose.
Then we could have been united in the original world. 
 Theoretically, perhaps, the man said. But you would never have even thought such a
thing in the world of 1984. Cause and effect are linked that way in a twisted form. You can pile
up all the worlds you like and the twisting will never be undone. 
Tears poured from Aomames eyes. She cried for everything she had lost. She cried for
everything she was about to lose. And eventually how long had she been crying? she arrived
at a point where she could cry no longer. Her tears dried up, as if her emotions had run
into an invisible wall.
 All right, then, Aomame said. There is no firm basis. Nothing has been proved. I cant
understand all the details. But still, it seems I have to accept your offer. In keeping with your
wishes, I will obliterate you from this world. I will give you a painless, instantaneous death so
that Tengo can go on living. 
 This means that you will agree to my bargain, then? 
 Yes. We have a bargain. 
 You will probably die as a result, you know, the man said. You will be chased down and
punished. And the punishment may be terrible. They are fanatics. 
 I dont care. 
 Because you have love. 
Aomame nodded.
The man said, ‘Without your love, its a honky-tonk parade. Like in the song. 
 You are sure that Tengo will be able to go on living if I kill you? 
The man remained silent for a while. Then he said, Tengo will go on living. You can take
me at my word. I can give you that much without fail in exchange for my life. 
 And my life, too, Aomame said.
 Some things can only be done in exchange for life, the man said.
Aomame clenched her fists. To tell the truth, though, I would have preferred to stay alive
and be united with Tengo. 
A short silence came over the room. Even the thunder stopped. Everything was hushed.
 I wish I could make that happen, the man said softly. Unfortunately, however, that is not
one of the options. It was not available in 1984 nor is it in 1Q84, in a different sense in each
case. 
 Our paths would never have crossed Tengos and mine in 1984? Is that what you are
saying? 
 Exactly. You would have had no connection whatever, but you likely would have kept on
thinking about each other as each of you entered a lonely old age. 
 But in 1Q84 I can at least know that I am going to die for him. 
The man took a deep breath, saying nothing.
 There is one thing I want you to tell me, Aomame said.
 If I can, the man said, lying on his stomach.
 Will Tengo find out in some form or other that I died for him? Or will he never know anything
about it? 
The man thought about the question for a long time. That is probably up to you. 
 Up to me? Aomame asked with a slight frown. What do you mean by that? 
The man quietly shook his head. You are fated to pass through great hardships and trials.
Once you have done that, you should be able to see things as they are supposed to be. That
is all I can say. No one knows for certain what it means to die until they actually do it. 
Aomame picked up a towel and carefully dried the tears still clinging to her face. Then she
examined the slender ice pick in her hand again to be certain that its fine point had not been
broken off. With her right index finger, she searched again for the fatal point on the back of
the mans neck as she had done before. She was able to find it right away, so vividly was it
etched into her brain. She pressed the point softly with her fingertip, gauged its resilience, and
made sure once again that her intuition was not mistaken. Taking several slow, deep breaths,
she calmed the beating of her heart and steadied her heightened nerves. Her head would
have to be perfectly clear. She swept away all thoughts of Tengo for the moment. Hatred, anger,
confusion, pity: all these she sealed off in a separate space. Error was unacceptable.
She had to concentrate her attention on death itself, as if focusing a narrow beam of light.
 Let us complete our work, Aomame said calmly. I must remove you from this world. 
 Then I can leave behind all the pain that I have been given. 
 Leave behind all the pain, the Little People, a transformed world, those hypotheses
… and love. 
 And love. You are right, the man said as if speaking to himself. I used to have people I
loved. All right, then, let each of us finish our work. You are a terribly capable person,
Aomame. I can tell that. 
 You, too, Aomame said. Her voice had taken on the strange transparency of one who
will deliver death. You, too, are surely a very capable, superior person. I am sure there must
have been a world in which there was no need for me to kill you. 
 That world no longer exists, the man said. These were the last words he spoke.
That world no longer exists.
Aomame placed the sharp point against that delicate spot on the back of his neck. Concentrating
all her attention, she adjusted the angle of the ice pick. Then she raised her right
fist in the air. Holding her breath, she waited for a signal. No more thinking, she said to herself.
Let each of us complete our work. That is all. There is no need to think, no need for explanations.
Just wait for the signal. Her fist was as hard as a rock, devoid of feeling.
Outside the window, the thunder-without-lightning rumbled with increased force. Raindrops
pelted the glass. The two of them were in an ancient cave a dark, damp, low-ceilinged
cave. Dark beasts and spirits surrounded the entrance. For the briefest instant around her,
light and shadow became one. A nameless gust of wind blew through the distant channel.
That was the signal. Aomame brought her fist down in one short, precise movement.
Everything ended in silence. The beasts and spirits heaved a deep breath, broke up their
encirclement, and returned to the depths of a forest that had lost its heart.
1Q84
CHAPTER 14
Tengo
A PACKAGE IN HIS HANDS
 Come here and hold me, Fuka-Eri said. The two of us have to go to the town of cats together
one more time. 
 Hold you? Tengo asked.
 You dont want to hold me, Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.
 No, thats not it. Its just that I didnt quite get what you were saying. 
 This will be a purification, she informed him in uninflected tones. Come here and hold
me. You put on pajamas, too, and turn out the light. 
As instructed, Tengo turned out the bedroom ceiling light. He undressed, took out his pajamas,
and put them on. When was the last time I washed these? he wondered as he slipped
into his pajamas. Judging from the fact that he could not remember, it must have been quite
some time ago. Fortunately, they did not smell of sweat. Tengo had never sweated very
much, and he did not have a strong body odor. But still, he reflected, I ought to wash my pajamas
more often. Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal
with that is to keep your pajamas washed.
He got into bed and gingerly wrapped his arms around Fuka-Eri, who laid her head on
Tengos right arm. She lay very still, like a creature about to enter hibernation. Her body was
warm, and so soft as to feel utterly defenseless. But she was not sweating.
The thunder increased in intensity, and now it was beginning to rain. As though crazed
with anger, the raindrops slammed sideways against the window glass. The air was damp
and sticky, and the world felt as if it might be oozing its way toward its dark finale. The time of
Noahs flood might have felt like this. If so, it must have been quite depressing in the violent
thunderstorm to have the narrow ark filled with the rhinoceroses, the lions, the pythons, and
so forth, all in pairs, all used to different modes of living, with limited communication skills, and
the stink something special.
The word pair made Tengo think of Sonny and Cher, but Sonny and Cher might not be
the most appropriate pair to put aboard Noahs ark to represent humanity. Though they might
not be entirely inappropriate, either. There must be some other couple who would be a more
appropriate human sample.
Embracing Fuka-Eri in bed like this, with her wearing his own pajamas, Tengo had a
strange feeling. He even felt as if he might be embracing a part of himself, as if he were holding
someone with whom he shared flesh and body odor and whose mind was linked with his.
Tengo imagined the two of them having been chosen as a pair to board Noahs ark instead
of Sonny and Cher. But even they could hardly be said to be the most appropriate
sample of humanity. The very fact of our embracing each other in bed like this is far from appropriate,
no matter how you look at it. The thought kept Tengo from being able to relax. He
decided instead to imagine Sonny and Cher becoming good friends with the python pair on
the ark. It was an utterly pointless thing to imagine, but at least it enabled him to relax the tension
in his body.
Lying in Tengos arms, Fuka-Eri said nothing. Nor did she move or open her mouth.
Tengo didnt say anything either. Even embracing Fuka-Eri in bed, he felt almost nothing that
could be called sexual desire. To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a
means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no
possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him. He realized, too, that what FukaEri
was looking for was not his sexual desire. She was looking for something else from him,
but what that something else was, he could not tell.
The purpose of doing so aside, the sheer act of holding a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl
in his arms was by no means unpleasant. Her ear would touch his cheek now and then. Her
warm breath grazed his neck. Her breasts were startlingly large and firm for a girl with such a
slim body. He could feel them pressed against him in the area above his stomach. Her skin
exuded a marvelous fragrance. It was the special smell of life that could only be exuded by
flesh still in the process of formation, like the smell of dew-laden flowers in midsummer. He
had often experienced that smell as an elementary school student on his way to earlymorning
radio exercises.
I hope I dont have an erection, Tengo thought. If he did have an erection, she would know
immediately, given their relative positions. If that happened, it would make things somewhat
uncomfortable. With what words and in what context could he explain to a seventeen-year-old
girl that erections simply happen sometimes, even when not directly driven by sexual desire?
Fortunately, however, no erection had happened so far, nor did he have any sign of one. Let
me stop thinking about smells. I have to concentrate my mind on things having as little to do
with sex as possible.
He thought again of the socializing between Sonny and Cher and the two pythons. Would
they have anything to talk about? And if so, what could it be? Finally, when his ability to imagine
the ark in the storm gave out, he tried multiplying sets of three-digit numbers. He would
often do that when he was having sex with his older girlfriend. This would enable him to delay
the moment of ejaculation (the moment of ejaculation being something about which she was
particularly demanding). Tengo did not know if it would also work to hold off an erection, but it
was better than doing nothing. He had to do something.
 I dont mind if it gets hard, Fuka-Eri said, as if she had read his mind.
 You dont mind? 
 There is nothing wrong with that. 
 There is nothing wrong with that, Tengo said, echoing her words. Sounds like a grade
school kid in sex education. Now, boys, there is nothing shameful or bad about having an
erection. But of course you must choose the proper time and occasion. 
 So, anyhow, has the purification begun? Tengo asked in order to change the subject.
Fuka-Eri did not reply. Her small, beautiful ear seemed still to be trying to catch something
in the rumbling of the thunder. Tengo could tell that much, and so he decided not to say any
more. He also gave up trying to multiply three-digit numbers. If Fuka-Eri doesnt mind, whats
the difference if I get hard? he thought. In any case, his penis showed no signs of movement.
For now, it was just peacefully lying in the mud.
 I like your thingy, his older girlfriend had said. I like its shape and color and size. 
 Im not so crazy about it, Tengo said.
 Why not? she asked, slipping her palm under Tengos flaccid penis as if handling a
sleeping pet, testing its weight.
 I dont know, Tengo said. Probably because I didnt choose it for myself. 
 Youre so weird, she said. Youve got a weird way of thinking. 
That had happened once upon a time. Before Noahs flood, probably.
Fuka-Eris warm, silent breath grazed Tengos neck in a regular rhythm. Tengo could see
her ear in the faint green light from the electric clock or in the occasional flash of lightning,
which had finally started. The ear looked like a soft secret cave. If this girl were my lover, I
would probably never tire of kissing her there, Tengo thought. While I was inside her, I would
kiss that ear, give it little bites, run my tongue over it, blow my breath into it, inhale its fragrance.
Not that I want to do that now. This was just a momentary fantasy based on pure hypothesis
concerning what he would do if she were his lover. Morally, it was nothing for him to
be ashamed of probably.
But whether this involved a moral question or not, he should not have been thinking about
it. Tengos penis began to wake from its tranquil sleep in the mud, as if it had been poked in
its back by a finger. It gave a yawn and slowly raised its head, gradually growing harder until,
like a yacht whose sails are filled by a strong northwest tailwind, it achieved a full, unreserved
erection. As a result, his hardened penis could not help but press against Fuka-Eris hip.
Tengo released a deep mental sigh. He had not had sex for more than a month following the
disappearance of his girlfriend. Probably that was the cause. He should have continued multiplying
three-digit figures.
 Dont let it bother you, Fuka-Eri said. Getting hard is only natural. 
 Thank you, Tengo said. But maybe the Little People are watching from somewhere. 
 Just watching. They cant do anything. 
 Thats good, Tengo said, his voice unsettled. But it does kind of bother me to think that
Im being watched. 
Again a lightning bolt cracked the sky in two, like the ripping of an old curtain, and the
thunder gave the windowpane a violent shake as if they were seriously trying to shatter the
glass. The glass might actually break before long, it seemed. The window had a sturdy aluminum
frame, but it might not hold up if such ferocious shaking continued. Big, hard raindrops
went on knocking against the glass like bullets slamming into a deer.
 The thunderbolts have hardly moved, it seems, Tengo said. Lightning storms dont usually
go on this long. 
Fuka-Eri looked up at the ceiling. It wont go anywhere for a while. 
 How long a while? 
Fuka-Eri did not answer him. Tengo went on holding Fuka-Eri apprehensively, his unanswered
question and his useless erection both intact.
 We will go to the cat town again, Fuka-Eri said. So we have to sleep. 
 Do you think we can sleep with all this thunder going? And its barely past nine, Tengo
said anxiously.
Tengo arranged mathematical formulas in his head. It was a problem concerning long,
complex mathematical formulas, but he already knew the answer. The assignment was to find
how quickly and by how short a route he could arrive at the answer. He wasted no time setting
his mind in motion, pushing his brain to the point of abuse. But this did nothing to relieve
his erection. Its hardness only seemed to increase.
 We can sleep, Fuka-Eri said.
And she was right. Even in the midst of the violent downpour, surrounded by thunder rattling
the building, and beset by his jangled nerves and his stubborn erection, Tengo drifted into
sleep before he knew it. He couldnt believe such a thing was possible, and yet …
This is total chaos, Tengo thought just before he fell asleep. Ive got to find the shortest
route to the solution. Time is running out, and theres so little space on the examination sheet
they distributed. Tick-tock, tick-tock, the clock dutifully counted off time.
He was naked when he awoke, and so was Fuka-Eri. Completely and totally naked. Her
breasts were perfect hemispheres. Her nipples were not overly large, and they were soft, still
quietly groping for the maturity that was to come. Her breasts themselves were large,
however, and fully ripe. They seemed to be virtually uninfluenced by the force of gravity, the
nipples turned beautifully upward, like a vines new tendrils seeking sunlight. The next thing
that Tengo became aware of was that Fuka-Eri had no pubic hair. Where there should have
been pubic hair there was only smooth, bare white skin, its whiteness giving emphasis to its
utter defenselessness. She had her legs spread; he could see her vagina. Like the ear he had
been staring at, it looked as if it had just been made only moments before. And perhaps it
really had been made only moments before. A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina
look very much alike, Tengo thought. Both appeared to be turned outward, trying to listen
closely to something something like a distant bell.
I was sleeping, Tengo realized. He had fallen asleep still erect. And even now he was
firmly erect. Had the erection continued the whole time he was sleeping? Or was this a new
erection, following the relaxation of the first (like Prime Minister So-and-Sos Second Cabinet)?
How long was I sleeping? But whats the difference? Im still erect now, and it shows no
sign of subsiding. Neither Sonny and Cher nor three-digit multiplication nor complex mathematics
had managed to bring it down.
 I dont mind, Fuka-Eri said. She had her legs spread and was pressing her freshly made
vagina against his belly. He could detect no hint of embarrassment on her part. Getting hard
is not a bad thing, she said.
 I cant move my body, he said. It was true. He was trying to raise himself, but he couldnt
move a finger. He could feel his body feel the weight of Fuka-Eris body on top of his feel
the hardness of his erection but his body was as heavy and stiff as if it had been fastened
down by something.
 You have no need to move it, Fuka-Eri said.
 I do have a need to move it. Its my body, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri said nothing in response to that.
Tengo could not even be sure whether what he was saying was vibrating in the air as vocal
sounds. He had no clear sense that the muscles around his mouth were moving and forming
the words he tried to speak. The things he wanted to say were more or less getting
through to Fuka-Eri, it seemed, but their communication was as uncertain as a long-distance
phone call with a bad connection. She, at least, could get by without hearing what she had no
need to hear. But this was not possible for Tengo.
 Dont worry, Fuka-Eri said, moving her body lower down on his. The meaning of her
movement was clear. Her eyes had taken on a certain gleam, the hue of which he had never
seen before.
It seemed inconceivable that his adult penis could penetrate her small, newly made vagina.
It was too big and too hard. The pain should have been enormous. Before he knew it,
though, every bit of him was inside her. There had been no resistance whatever. The look on
her face remained totally unchanged as she brought him inside. Her breathing became
slightly agitated, and the rhythm with which her breasts rose and fell changed subtly for five or
six seconds, but that was all. Everything else seemed like a normal, natural part of everyday
life.
Having brought Tengo deep inside her, Fuka-Eri remained utterly still, as did Tengo, feeling
himself deep inside of her. He remained incapable of moving his body, and she, eyes
closed, perched on top of him like a lightning rod, stopped moving. He could see that her
mouth was slightly open and her lips were making delicate, rippling movements as if groping
in space to form some kind of words. Aside from this, she exhibited no movement at all. She
seemed to be holding that posture as she waited for something to happen.
A deep sense of powerlessness came over Tengo. Even though something was about to
happen, he had no idea what that something might be, and had no way of controlling it
through his own will. His body felt nothing. He could not move. But his penis had feeling or,
rather than feeling, it had what might have been closer to a concept. In any case, it was telling
him that he was inside Fuka-Eri and that he had the consummate erection. Shouldnt he be
wearing a condom? He began to worry. It could be a real problem if she got pregnant. His
older girlfriend was extremely strict about birth control, and she had trained Tengo to be just
as strict.
He tried as hard as he could to think of other things, but in fact he was unable to think
about anything at all. He was in chaos. Inside that chaos, time seemed to have come to a
stop. But time never stopped. That was a theoretical impossibility. Perhaps it had simply lost
its uniformity. Taking the long view, time moved ahead at a fixed pace. There could be no
mistake about that. But if you considered any one particular part of time, it could cease to be
uniform. In these momentary periods of slackness, such things as order and probability lost all
value.
 Tengo, Fuka-Eri said. She had never called him by his first name before. She said it
again: Tengo as if practicing the pronunciation of a foreign word. Why is she calling me by
my name all of a sudden? Tengo wondered. Fuka-Eri then leaned forward slowly, bringing her
face close to his. Her partially open lips now opened wide, and her soft, fragrant tongue
entered his mouth, where it began a relentless search for unformed words, for a secret code
engraved there. Tengos own tongue responded unconsciously to this movement and soon
their tongues were like two young snakes in a spring meadow, newly wakened from their hibernation
and hungrily intertwining, each led on by the others scent.
Fuka-Eri then stretched out her right hand and grasped Tengos left hand. She took it
powerfully, as if to envelope his hand in hers. Her small fingernails dug into his palm. Then,
bringing their intense kiss to an end, she righted herself. Close your eyes. 
Tengo did as he was told. Inside his closed eyes he found a deep, gloomy space so
deep that it appeared to extend to the center of the earth. Then a light evocative of dusk
broke into this space, the kind of sweet, nostalgic dusk that comes at the end of a long, long
day. He could see, suspended in the light, numberless fine-grained cross-section-like
particles dust, perhaps, or pollen, or something else entirely. Eventually the depths began to
contract, the light began to grow brighter, and the surrounding objects came into view.
The next thing he knew he was ten years old and in an elementary school classroom. This
was real time and a real place. The light was real, and so was his ten-year-old self. He was
really breathing the air of the room, smelling its varnished woodwork and the chalk dust permeating
its erasers. Only he and the girl were in the room. There was no sign of other children.
She was quick to seize the opportunity and she did so boldly. Or perhaps she had been
waiting for this to happen. In any case, standing there, she stretched out her right hand and
grasped Tengos left hand, her eyes looking straight into his.
His mouth felt parched. It all happened so suddenly, he had no idea what he should do or
say. He simply stood there, letting his hand be squeezed by the girl. Eventually, deep in his
loins, he felt a faint but deep throbbing. This was nothing he had ever experienced before, a
throbbing like the distant roar of the sea. At the same time actual sounds reached his
ears the shouts of children resounding through the open window, a soccer ball being kicked,
a bat connecting with a softball, the high-pitched complaints of a girl in one of the younger
classes, the uncertain notes of a recorder ensemble practicing The Last Rose of Summer. 
After-school activities.
He wanted to return the girls grasp with equal force, but the strength would not come into
his hand. Part of it was that the girls grip was too strong. But Tengo realized, too, that he
could not make his body move. Why should that be? He couldnt move a finger, as if he were
totally paralyzed.
Time seems to have stopped, Tengo thought. He breathed quietly, listening to his own inhalations
and exhalations. The sea went on roaring. Suddenly he realized that all actual
sounds had ceased. The throbbing in his loins had transformed into something different,
something more limited, and soon he felt a particular kind of tingling. The tingling in turn became
a fine, dust-like substance that mixed with his hot, red blood, coursing through his veins
to all parts of his body, by the power of his hardworking heart. A dense, little, cloud-like thing
formed in his chest, changing the rhythm of his breathing and stiffening the beating of his
heart.
Im sure Ill be able to understand the meaning and purpose of this incident sometime in
the future, Tengo thought. What I have to do now, in order to make that happen, is to record
this moment in my mind as clearly and accurately as possible. Now Tengo again was nothing
more than a ten-year-old boy who happened to be good at math. A new door stood before
him, but he did not know what awaited him on the other side. He felt powerless and ignorant,
emotionally confused, and not a little afraid. This much he knew. And the girl, for her part, had
no hope of being understood at that moment. All she wanted was to make sure that her feelings
were delivered to Tengo, stuffed into a small, sturdy box, wrapped in a spotless sheet of
paper, and tied with a narrow cord. She was placing such a package in his hands.
You dont have to open the package right now, the girl was telling him wordlessly. Open it
when the time comes. All you have to do is take it now.
She already knows all kinds of things, Tengo thought. They were things that he did not
know yet. She was the leader in this new arena. There were new rules here, new goals and
new dynamics. Tengo knew nothing. But she knows.
At length she released the grip of her right hand on Tengos left hand, and, without saying
anything or looking back, she hurried from the big classroom. Tengo stood there all alone.
Childrens voices resounded through the open window.
In the next second, Tengo realized that he was ejaculating. The violent spasm went on for
several seconds, releasing a great deal of semen in a powerful surge. Where is my semen
going? Tengos garbled mind wondered. Ejaculating like this after school in a grade school
classroom was not an appropriate thing to do. He could be in trouble if someone saw him. But
this was not a grade school classroom anymore. Now he realized that he was inside Fuka-Eri,
ejaculating toward her uterus. This was not something that he wanted to be doing. But he
could not stop himself. Everything was happening beyond his control.
 Dont worry, Fuka-Eri said a short time afterward in her usual flat voice. I will not get
pregnant. I havent started my periods yet. 
Tengo opened his eyes and looked at Fuka-Eri. She was still mounted on him, looking
down. Her perfect breasts were there in front of him, moving with each calm, regular breath.
Tengo wanted to ask her if this was what going to the town of cats meant. What kind of a
place was the town of cats? He tried to put the question into actual words, but the muscles of
his mouth would not budge.
 This was necessary, Fuka-Eri said, as if reading Tengos mind. It was a concise answer
and no answer at all, as usual.
Tengo closed his eyes again. He had gone there, ejaculated, and come back here again.
It had been a real ejaculation discharging real semen. If Fuka-Eri said it was necessary, it had
surely been necessary. Tengos flesh was still paralyzed and had no feeling. And the lassitude
that follows ejaculation enveloped his body like a thin membrane.
Fuka-Eri maintained her position for a long time, effectively squeezing out the last drop of
semen from Tengo, like an insect sucking nectar from a flower. She literally left not a drop behind.
Then, sliding off of Tengos penis, without a word, she left the bed and went into the
bathroom. Tengo realized now that the thunder had stopped. The violent rain had also
cleared before he knew it. The thunderclouds, which had stayed so stubbornly fixed above
them, had now vanished without a trace. The silence was almost unreal. All he could hear
was the faint sound of Fuka-Eri showering in the bathroom. Tengo stared at the ceiling, waiting
for the feeling to come back to his flesh. Even after ejaculating, he was still erect, though
at least the hardness had abated somewhat.
Part of his mind was still in the grade school classroom. The touch of the girls fingers remained
as a vivid impression in his left hand. He could not lift the hand to look at it, but the
palm of that hand probably still had red fingernail marks in it. His heartbeat retained traces of
his arousal. The dense cloud had faded from his chest, but its imaginary space near his heart
still cried out with its pleasant dull ache.
Aomame, Tengo thought.
I have to see Aomame, Tengo thought. I have to find her. Why has it taken me so long to
realize something so obvious? She handed me that precious package. Why did I toss it aside
and leave it unopened all this time? He thought of shaking his head, but that was something
he could not yet do. His body had still not recovered from its paralysis.
Fuka-Eri came back to the bedroom a short time later. Wrapped in a bath towel, she sat
on the edge of the bed for a while.
 The Little People are not stirring anymore, she said, like a cool, capable scout reporting
on conditions at the front. Then she used her fingertip to draw a little circle in the air a perfect,
beautiful circle such as an Italian Renaissance painter might draw on a church wall: no
beginning, no end. The circle hung in the air for a while. All done. 
Having said this, the girl stood and undid her bath towel. Completely naked, she stayed
there for a while, as if allowing her damp body to dry naturally in the still air. It was a lovely
sight: the smooth breasts, the lower abdomen free of pubic hair.
She bent over and picked up the pajamas where they had fallen on the floor, putting them
on directly next to her skin without underwear, buttoning the top and tying the bottoms cord.
Tengo watched all this in the darkened room, as if studying an insect undergoing metamorphosis.
Tengos pajamas were too big for her, but she looked comfortable in them. Fuka-Eri
slipped into bed, found her narrow space, and rested her head on Tengos shoulder. He could
feel the shape of her little ear against his naked shoulder and her warm breath against the
base of his neck. All the while, his paralysis began to fade, just as the tide ebbs when the time
comes.
The air was still damp but no longer unpleasantly sticky. Outside, the insects were beginning
to chirp. By now Tengos erection had subsided and his penis was beginning to sink into
the peaceful mud again. Things seemed to have run their course, bringing the cycle to an
end. A perfect circle had been drawn in the air. The animals had left the ark and scattered
across the earth they craved, all the pairs returning to the places where they belonged.
 Youd better sleep, she said. Very deeply 
Sleep very deeply, Tengo thought. Sleep, and then wake up. What kind of world will be
there tomorrow?
 No one knows the answer to that, Fuka-Eri said, reading his mind.
1Q84
CHAPTER 15
Aomame
TIME NOW FOR GHOSTS
Aomame took a spare blanket from the closet and laid it over the mans big body. Then
she placed a finger on the back of his neck again and confirmed that his pulse had completely
stopped. This man they called Leader had already moved on to another world. What kind of
world that was, she could not be sure, but it was definitely not 1Q84. In this world, he had now
become what would be called the deceased. The man had crossed the divide that separates
life and death, and he had done so without making the slightest sound, with just a momentary
shiver, as if he had felt a chill. Nor had he shed a drop of blood. Now he had been released
from all suffering, lying silent and dead, facedown on the blue yoga mat. As always, her work
had been swift and precise.
She placed the cork on the needle and returned the ice pick to the hard case. This went
into the gym bag. She took the Heckler & Koch from the vinyl pouch and slipped it under the
waistband of her sweatpants, safety released and bullet in the chamber. The hard metal
against her backbone reassured her. Stepping over to the window, she pulled the thick curtain
closed and made the room dark again.
She picked up the gym bag and headed for the door. With her hand on the knob, she
turned for one last look at the large man lying in the dark room. He appeared only to be sound
asleep, as he had when she first saw him. Aomame herself was the only person in the world
who knew that he was no longer alive. No, the Little People probably knew, which was why
they had stopped the thunder. They knew it would be useless to go on sending such warnings.
The life of their chosen agent had come to an end.
Aomame opened the door and stepped into the bright room, averting her eyes from the
glare. She closed the door soundlessly. Buzzcut was sitting on the sofa, drinking coffee. On
the table was a coffeepot and a large room service tray holding a stack of sandwiches. The
sandwiches were half gone. Two unused coffee cups stood nearby. Ponytail was sitting in a
rococo chair beside the door, his back straight, as he had been earlier. It seemed as though
both men had spent the whole time in the same position, saying nothing. Such was the reserved
atmosphere that pervaded the room.
When Aomame came in, Buzzcut set his coffee cup onto its saucer and quietly stood up.
 Im through, Aomame said. Hes asleep now. It took quite a while. I think it was hard on
his muscles. You should let him get some sleep. 
 Hes sleeping? 
 Very soundly, Aomame said.
Buzzcut looked Aomame straight in the face. He peered deep into her eyes. Then he
slowly moved his gaze down to her toes and back again, as if to inspect for possible irregularities.
 Is that normal? 
 Many people react that way, falling into a deep sleep after they have been released from
extreme muscular stress. It is not unusual. 
Buzzcut walked over to the bedroom door, quietly turned the knob, and opened the door
just enough to peer inside. Aomame rested her right hand on the waist of her sweatpants so
that she could take the pistol out as soon as anything happened. The man spent some ten
seconds observing the situation in the bedroom, then finally drew his face back and closed
the door.
 How long do you think he will sleep? he asked Aomame. We cant just leave him lying
on the floor like that forever. 
 He should wake up in two hours or so. It would be best to leave him in that position until
then. 
Buzzcut checked his watch and gave Aomame a slight nod.
 I see. Well leave him like that for a while, Buzzcut said. Would you like to take a
shower? 
 I dont need to shower, but let me change my clothes again. 
 Of course. Please use the powder room. 
Aomame would have preferred not to change her clothes and to get out of there as quickly
as possible, but she had to be sure not to arouse their suspicions. She had changed clothes
when she arrived, so she must change her clothes on her way out. She went into the bathroom
and took off her sweat suit and her sweat-soaked underwear, dried her body with a bath
towel, and put on fresh underwear and her original cotton pants and blouse. She shoved the
pistol under her belt so that it would not be visible from the outside. She tested various movements
of her body to make sure that they would not appear unnatural. She washed her face
with soap and water and brushed her hair. Facing the large mirror over the sink, she twisted
her face into every scowl she could think of in order to relax any facial muscles that had
stiffened from tension. After continuing that for a while, she returned her face to normal. After
such prolonged frowning, it took her some moments to recall what her normal face even
looked like, but after several attempts she was able to settle on a reasonable facsimile. She
glared into the mirror, studying her face in detail. No problem, she thought. This is my normal
face. I can even smile if I have to. My hands are not shaking, either. My gaze is steady. Im
the usual cool Aomame.
Buzzcut, though, had stared hard at her when she first came out of the bedroom. He might
have noticed the streaks left by her tears. There must have been something left after all that
crying. The thought made Aomame uneasy. He must have found it odd that she would have
had to shed tears while stretching a clients muscles. It might have led him to suspect that
something strange had occurred. He might have opened the bedroom door, gone in to check
on Leader, and discovered that his heart had stopped …
Aomame reached around to check the grip of her pistol. I have to calm down, she told herself.
I cant be afraid. Fear will show on my face and raise suspicions.
Resigning herself to the worst, Aomame cautiously stepped out of the bathroom with the
gym bag in her left hand, right hand ready to reach for the gun, but there was no sign of anything
unusual in the room. Buzzcut stood in the center, his arms folded, eyes narrowed in
thought. Ponytail was still in the chair by the door, coolly observing the room. He had the calm
eyes of a bombers tail gunner, accustomed to sitting there all alone, looking at the blue sky,
eyes taking on the skys tint.
 You must be worn out, Buzzcut said. How about a cup of coffee? We have sandwiches,
too. 
 Thanks, but Ill have to pass on that. I cant eat right after work. My appetite starts to
come back after an hour or so. 
Buzzcut nodded. Then he pulled a thick envelope from his inner jacket pocket. After
checking its weight, he handed it to Aomame.
The man said, I believe you will find here something more than the agreed-upon fee. As I
said earlier, we strongly urge you to keep this matter a secret. 
 Hush money? Aomame said jokingly.
 For the extra effort we have put you through, the man said, without cracking a smile.
 I have a policy of strict confidentiality, whatever the fee. That is part of my work. No word
of this will leak out under any circumstances, Aomame said. She put the unopened envelope
into her gym bag. Do you need a receipt? 
Buzzcut shook his head. That will not be necessary. This is just between us. There is no
need for you to report this as income. 
Aomame nodded silently.
 It must have taken a great deal of strength, Buzzcut said, as if probing for information.
 More than usual, she said.
 Because he is no ordinary person. 
 So it would seem. 
 He is utterly irreplaceable, he said. He has suffered terrible physical pain for a very long
time. He has taken all of our suffering and pain upon himself, as it were. We can only hope
that he can have some small degree of relief. 
 I cant say for sure because I dont know the basic cause of his pain, Aomame said,
choosing her words carefully, but I do think that his pain may have been reduced somewhat. 
Buzzcut nodded. As far as I can tell, you seem quite drained. 
 Perhaps I am, Aomame said.
While Aomame and Buzzcut were speaking, Ponytail remained seated by the door, wordlessly
observing the room. His face was immobile; only his eyes moved. His expression never
changed. She had no idea whether he was even hearing their conversation. Isolated, taciturn,
attentive, he kept watch for any sign of enemy fighter planes among the clouds. At first they
would be no bigger than poppy seeds.
After some hesitation, Aomame asked Buzzcut, This may be none of my business, but
drinking coffee, eating ham sandwiches: are these not violations of your religion? 
Buzzcut turned to look at the coffeepot and the tray of sandwiches on the table. Then the
faintest possible smile crossed his lips.
 Our religion doesnt have such strict precepts. Alcohol and tobacco are generally forbidden,
and there are some prohibitions regarding sexual matters, but we are relatively free
where food is concerned. Most of the time we eat only the simplest foods, but coffee and ham
sandwiches are not especially forbidden. 
Aomame just nodded, offering no opinion on the matter.
 The religion brings many people together, so some degree of discipline is necessary, of
course, but if you focus too much on formalities, you can lose sight of your original purpose.
Things like precepts and doctrines are, ultimately, just expedients. The important thing is not
the frame itself but what is inside the frame. 
 And your Leader provides the content to fill the frame. 
 Exactly. He can hear the voices that we cannot hear. He is a special person. Buzzcut
looked into Aomames eyes again. Then he said, Thank you for all your efforts today. And
luckily the rain seems to have stopped. 
 The thunder was terrible, Aomame said.
 Yes, very, Buzzcut said, though he himself did not seem particularly interested in the
thunder and rain.
Aomame gave him a little bow and headed for the door, gym bag in hand.
 Wait a moment, Buzzcut called from behind. His voice had a sharp edge.
Aomame came to a stop in the center of the room and turned around. Her heart made a
sharp, dry sound. Her right hand casually moved to her hip.
 The yoga mat, the young man said. Youre forgetting your yoga mat. Its still on the bedroom
floor. 
Aomame smiled. He is lying on top of it, sound asleep. We cant just shove him aside and
pull it out. Ill give it to you if you like. Its not expensive, and its had a lot of use. If you dont
need it, throw it away. 
Buzzcut thought about this for a moment and finally nodded. Thank you again. Im sure
youre very tired. 
As Aomame neared the door, Ponytail stood and opened it for her. Then he bowed
slightly. That one never said a word, Aomame thought. She returned his bow and started to
slip past him.
In that moment, however, a violent urge penetrated Aomames skin, like an intense electric
current. Ponytails hand shot out as if to grab her right arm. It should have been a swift,
precise movement like grabbing a fly in thin air. Aomame had a vivid sense of its happening
right there. Every muscle in her body stiffened up. Her skin crawled, and her heart skipped a
beat. Her breath caught in her throat, and icy insects crawled up and down her spine. A blazing
hot white light poured into her mind: If this man grabs my right arm, I wont be able to
reach for the pistol. And if that happens, I have no hope of winning. He feels it. He feels that
Ive done something. His intuition recognizes that something happened in this hotel room. He
doesnt know what, but it is something that should not have happened. His instincts are telling
him, You have to stop this woman, ordering him to wrestle me to the floor, drop his whole
weight on me, and dislocate my shoulders. But he has only instinct, no proof. If his feeling
turns out to be wrong, hell be in big trouble. He was intensely conflicted, and now hes given
up. Buzzcut is the one who makes the decisions and gives the orders. Ponytail is not qualified.
He struggled to suppress the impulse of his right hand and let the tension go out of his
shoulder. Aomame had a vivid sense of the stages through which Ponytails mind had passed
in that second or two.
Aomame stepped out into the carpeted hallway and headed for the elevator without looking
back, walking coolly down the perfectly straight corridor. Ponytail, it seemed, had stuck his
head out the door and was following her movements with his eyes. She continued to feel his
sharp, knifelike gaze piercing her back. Every muscle in her body was tingling, but she refused
to look back. She must not look back. Only when she turned the corner did she feel the
tension go out of her. But still she could not relax. There was no telling what could happen
next. She pushed the elevators down button and reached around to hold the pistol grip until
the elevator came (which took an eternity), ready to draw the gun if Ponytail changed his mind
and came after her. She would have to shoot him without hesitation before he put his powerful
hands on her. Or shoot herself without hesitation. She could not decide which. Perhaps
she would not be able to decide.
But no one came after her. The hotel corridor was hushed. The elevator door opened with
a ring, and Aomame got on. She pressed the button for the lobby and waited for the door to
close. Biting her lip, she glared at the floor number display. Then she exited the elevator,
walked across the broad lobby, and stepped into a cab waiting for passengers at the front
door. The rain had cleared up completely, but the cab had water dripping from its entire
chassis, as if it had made its way here underwater. Aomame told the driver to take her to the
west exit of Shinjuku Station. As they pulled away from the hotel, she exhaled every bit of air
she was holding inside. Then she closed her eyes and emptied her mind. She didnt want to
think about anything for a while.
A strong wave of nausea hit her. It felt as if the entire contents of her stomach were surging
up toward her throat, but she managed to force them back down. She pressed the button
to open her window halfway, sending the damp night air deep into her lungs. Then she leaned
back and took several deep breaths. Her mouth produced an ominous smell, as though
something inside her were beginning to rot.
It suddenly occurred to her to search in her pants pocket, where she found two sticks of
chewing gum. Her hands trembled slightly as she tore off the wrappers. She put the sticks in
her mouth and began chewing slowly. Spearmint. The pleasantly familiar aroma helped to
quiet her nerves. As she moved her jaw, the bad smell in her mouth began to dissipate. Its
not as if I actually have something rotting inside me. Fear is doing funny things to me, thats
all.
Anyhow, its all over now, Aomame thought. I dont have to kill anyone anymore. And what
I did was right, she told herself. He deserved to be killed for what he did. It was a simple case
of just punishment. And as it happened (strictly by chance), the man himself had a strong desire
to be killed. I gave him the peaceful death he was hoping for. I did nothing wrong. All I did
was break the law.
Try as she might, however, Aomame was unable to convince herself that this was true.
Only moments before, she had killed a far-from-ordinary human being with her own hands.
She retained a vivid memory of how it felt when the needle sank soundlessly into the back of
the mans neck. That far-from-ordinary feeling was still there, in her hands, upsetting her to no
small degree. She opened her palms and stared at them. Something was different, utterly different.
But she was unable to discover what had changed, and how.
If she was to believe what he had told her, she had just killed a prophet, one entrusted
with the voice of a god. But the master of that voice was no god. It was probably the Little
People. A prophet is simultaneously a king, and a king is destined to be killed. She was, in
other words, an assassin sent by destiny. By violently exterminating a being who was both
prophet and king, she had preserved the balance of good and evil in the world, as a result of
which she must die. But when she performed the deed, she struck a bargain. By killing the
man and, in effect, throwing her own life away, she would save Tengos life. That was the
content of the bargain. If she was to believe what he had told her.
Aomame had no choice but to believe fundamentally in what he had said. He was no fanatic,
and dying people do not lie. Most importantly, his words had genuine persuasive power.
They carried the weight of a huge anchor. All ships carry anchors that match their size and
weight. However despicable his deeds may have been, the man was truly reminiscent of a
great ship. Aomame had no choice but to recognize that fact.
Taking care that the driver did not see her, Aomame slipped the Heckler & Koch from her
belt, set the safety catch, and put the gun in its pouch, relieving herself of 500 grams of solid,
lethal weight.
 Wasnt that thunder something? the driver said. And the rain was incredible. 
 Thunder? Aomame said. It seemed to have happened a long time ago, though it had
been a mere thirty minutes earlier. Yes, come to think of it, there had been some thunder.
 Yes, really, incredible thunder. 
 The weather forecast said absolutely nothing about it. It was supposed to be beautiful all
day. 
She tried to make her mind work. I have to say something. But I cant think of anything
good to say. My brain seems to have fogged over. Weather forecasts are never right, she
said.
The driver glanced at Aomame in the rearview mirror. Maybe there was something funny
about the way she spoke. The driver said, I hear the water in the streets overflowed and ran
down into the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station onto the tracks. It was because the rain all fell
in one small area. They stopped the Ginza Line and the Marunouchi Line. I heard it on the radio
news. 
The concentrated downpour brought the subway to a stop. Will this have any influence on
my actions? Ive got to make my brain work faster. I go to Shinjuku Station to get my travel
bag and shoulder bag out of a coin locker. Then I call Tamaru for instructions. If Im going to
have to use the Marunouchi Line from Shinjuku, things could get very messy. I only have two
hours to make my getaway. Once two hours have gone by, theyll begin to wonder why Leader
isnt waking up. Theyll probably go into the bedroom and discover that hes drawn his last
breath. Theyll go into action immediately.
 Do you think the Marunouchi Line is still not running? Aomame asked the driver.
 I wonder. I really dont know. Want me to turn on the news? 
 Yes, please. 
According to Leader, the Little People caused that downpour. They concentrated the intense
rain on a small area in the Akasaka District and caused the subway to stop. Aomame
shook her head. Maybe they did it on purpose. Things dont always go according to plan.
The driver tuned the radio to NHK. They were broadcasting a music program folk songs
sung by Japanese singers popular in the late sixties. Having listened to such music on the radio
as a girl, Aomame remembered it vaguely, but in no way fondly. If anything, the memories
it called up for her were unpleasant ones, things she would rather not think about. She put up
with it for a while, but there was no sign of news about the subway situation.
 Sorry, thats enough. Could you please turn off the radio? Aomame said. Ill just go to
Shinjuku Station and see whats happening. 
The driver turned off the radio. That place will be jammed, he said.
As the driver had said, Shinjuku Station was horribly congested. Because the stalled Marunouchi
Line connected with the National Railways here, the flow of passengers had been
disrupted, and people were wandering in all directions. The evening rush hour had ended, but
even so, pushing her way through the crowd was hard work for Aomame.
At last she made her way to the coin locker and took out her shoulder bag and her black
imitation-leather travel bag. The travel bag contained the cash she had taken from her safedeposit
box. She took the items out of her gym bag and divided them between the shoulder
and travel bags: the envelope of cash she had received from Buzzcut, the vinyl pouch containing
the pistol, the hard case with the ice pick. The now useless Nike gym bag she put into
a nearby locker, inserted a hundred-yen coin, and turned the key. She had no intention of reclaiming
it. It contained nothing that could be traced to her.
Travel bag in hand, Aomame walked around looking for a pay phone in the station.
Crowds had formed at every phone. People stood in long lines, waiting their turn to call home
and say they would be late because the train had stopped. Aomame put her face into a light
frown. I guess the Little People are not going to let me get away that easily. Leader said they
cant touch me directly, but they can interfere with my movements through the back door, using
other methods.
Aomame gave up on waiting her turn for a phone. Leaving the station, she walked a short
distance, went into the first café she saw, and ordered an iced coffee. The pink pay phone
here was also in use, but at least it had no line. She stood behind a middle-aged woman and
waited for her long conversation to end. The woman flashed annoyed glances at Aomame but
resigned herself to hanging up after she talked for five more minutes.
Aomame slipped all her coins into the phone and punched in the number she had memorized.
After three rings, a mechanical recorded announcement came on: Sorry, but we cant
come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the beep. 
The beep sounded, and Aomame said into the mouthpiece, Hello, Tamaru, please pick
up if youre there. 
Someone lifted the receiver, and Tamaru said, Im here. 
 Good! Aomame said.
Tamaru seemed to sense an unusual tension in her voice. Are you all right? he asked.
 For now. 
 How did the job go? 
Aomame said, Hes in a deep sleep. The deepest sleep possible. 
 I see, Tamaru said. He sounded truly relieved, and it colored his voice. This was unusual
for him. Ill pass on the news. Shell be glad to hear it. 
 It wasnt easy. 
 Im sure it wasnt. But you did it. 
 One way or another, Aomame said. Is this phone safe? 
 Im using a special circuit. Dont worry. 
 I got my bags out of the Shinjuku Station coin locker. Now what? 
 How much time do you have? 
 An hour and a half, Aomame said. She explained briefly. After another hour and a half,
the two bodyguards would check the bedroom and find that Leader was not breathing.
 An hour and a half is plenty, Tamaru said.
 Do you think theyll call the police right away? 
 I dont know. Just yesterday, the police went into the groups headquarters to start an investigation.
Theyre still at the questioning stage and havent launched the investigation itself,
but it could be real trouble for them if the head of the religion suddenly turned up dead. 
 You think they might just handle it themselves without making anything public? 
 That would be nothing for them. Well know what happened when we see tomorrows
newspaper whether they reported the death or not. Im no gambler, but if I had to make a
bet, Id put my money on their not reporting it. 
 They wont just assume it happened naturally? 
 They wont be able to tell by appearances. And they wont know whether it was a natural
death or murder without a meticulous autopsy. In any case, the first thing theyre going to
want to do is talk to you. You were the last one to see him alive, after all. And once they learn
that youve cleared out of your apartment and gone into hiding, theyll be pretty sure it was no
natural death. 
 So then theyll start looking for me with every resource at their disposal. 
 Thats for sure, Tamaru said.
 Do you think we can manage to keep me hidden? 
 Weve got it all planned out in great detail. If we follow the plan carefully and persistently,
no ones going to find you. The worst thing would be to panic. 
 Im doing my best, Aomame said.
 Keep it up. Act quickly and get time on your side. Youre a careful and persistent person.
Just keep doing what youre doing. 
Aomame said, There was a huge downpour in the Akasaka area, and the subways have
stopped running. 
 I know, Tamaru said. Dont worry, we werent planning for you to use the subway. Youll
be taking a cab and going to a safe house in the city. 
 In the city? Wasnt I supposed to be going somewhere far away? 
 Yes, of course you will be going far away, Tamaru said slowly, as if spelling things out
for her. But first we have to get you ready change your name and your face. And this was a
particularly tough job: you must be all keyed up. Nothing good can come of running around
crazily at a time like this. Hide out in the safe house for a while. Youll be fine. Well provide all
the support you need. 
 Where is this ‘safe house? 
 In the Koenji neighborhood. Maybe twenty minutes from where you are now. 
Koenji, Aomame thought, tapping her nails against her teeth. She knew it was somewhere
west of the downtown area, but she had never set foot there.
Tamaru told her the address and the name of the condo. As usual, she took no notes but
engraved it on her brain.
 On the south side of Koenji Station. Near Ring Road 7. Apartment 303. Press 2831 to unlock
the front door. 
Tamaru paused while Aomame repeated 303 and 2831 to herself.
 The key is taped to the bottom of the doormat. The apartment has everything youll need
for now, so you shouldnt have to go out for a while. Ill make contact from my end. Ill ring the
phone three times, hang up, and call again twenty seconds later. Wed like to avoid having
you call. 
 I see, Aomame said.
 Were his men tough? Tamaru asked.
 There were two of them, and both seemed pretty tough. I had some scary moments. But
theyre no pros. They cant touch you. 
 There arent too many people like me. 
 Too many Tamarus could be a problem. 
 Could be, Tamaru said.
. . .
Carrying her bags, Aomame headed for the stations taxi stand, where she encountered
another long line. Subway operations had still not returned to normal, it seemed. She had no
choice but to take her place in line.
Joining the many other annoyed-looking commuters and patiently waiting her turn,
Aomame mentally repeated the safe house address, the name of the building and apartment
number, the code for unlocking the front door, and Tamarus phone number. She was like an
ascetic sitting on a rock on a mountaintop, intoning his precious mantra. Aomame had always
had confidence in her powers of memory. She could easily memorize those few bits of information.
But these figures were now a lifeline. If she forgot even one of them in this situation, it
could put her survival in jeopardy. She had to make sure they were engraved on her brain.
By the time Aomame finally got a taxi, a full hour had passed since she had left Leaders
corpse in the hotel room. So far, it was taking her twice as long as she had planned a delay
that the Little People had caused, no doubt. No, it could be sheer coincidence. Maybe Im just
letting the specter of some nonexistent Little People frighten me.
Aomame gave the driver her destination and then settled back in the seat, closing her
eyes. Right about now, those two guys in their dark suits are probably checking their watches
and waiting for their guru to wake up. Aomame pictured them. Buzzcut was drinking coffee
and thinking about all sorts of things. Thinking was his job. Thinking and deciding. Maybe he
had grown suspicious: Leaders sleep was all too quiet. But Leader always slept soundly,
without making noises no snoring or even heavy breathing. Still, there was always his presence.
The woman had said that Leader would be sound asleep for at least two hours, that it
was important to let him rest quietly so that his muscles could recover. Only an hour had gone
by, but something was bothering Buzzcut. Maybe he should check on Leaders condition.
What should he do?
Ponytail was the dangerous one, though. Aomame still had a vivid image of that momentary
hint of violence he had displayed as she was leaving the hotel room. He was silent, but
his instincts were sharp. His fighting skills must also be outstanding probably much more so
than she had imagined until that moment. Her own command of martial arts was surely no
match for his. In a fight, he would probably not give her a chance to reach for her gun. Fortunately,
though, he was no professional. He had let his rational mind interfere before he put his
intuition into action. He was used to taking orders unlike Tamaru. Tamaru would subdue his
opponent and render him powerless before thinking. Action came first trust the instincts and
let rational judgments come later. A split-seconds hesitation and it was all over.
Recalling that moment at the door, Aomame felt her underarms growing moist. She shook
her head. I was just lucky. At least I avoided being captured on the spot. I have to be a lot
more careful from now on. Tamaru was right: the most important things are to be careful and
persistent. Danger comes the moment you relax.
The driver was a polite-spoken middle-aged man. He pulled out a map, stopped the car,
turned off the meter, and kindly found the exact location of the condo building. Aomame
thanked him and stepped out of the cab. It was a handsome new six-story building in the
middle of a residential area. There was no one at the entrance. Aomame punched in 2831 to
unlock the front door, went inside, and rode a clean but narrow elevator up to the third floor.
The first thing she did upon exiting the elevator was find the location of the emergency stairway.
Then she removed the key taped to the back of the doormat of apartment 303 and used
it to go inside. The entryway lights were set to go on automatically when the door opened.
The place had that new-apartment smell. All of the furniture and appliances looked brand-new
and unused, as if they had just come out of the boxes and plastic wrapping matching pieces
that could have been chosen by a designer to equip a model condo: simple, functional design,
free of the smell of daily life.
To the left of the entry was a living/dining room. Off a hallway was a bathroom and beyond
that were two rooms. One had a queen-sized bed that was already made. The blinds were
closed. Opening the window that faced the street, she heard the traffic on Ring Road 7 like
the distant roar of the ocean. Closing it again, she could hear almost nothing. There was a
small balcony off the living room. It overlooked a small park across the street. There were
swings, a slide, a sandbox, and a public toilet. A tall mercury-vapor lamp made everything unnaturally
bright. A large zelkova tree spread its branches over the area. This was a third-floor
condo, but there were no other tall buildings nearby from which she might have to worry about
being watched.
Aomame thought about the Jiyugaoka apartment she had just vacated. It was in an old
building, not terribly clean, with the occasional cockroach, and the walls were thin not exactly
the kind of place to which one became attached. Now, though, she missed it. In this
brand-new, spotless condo, she felt like an anonymous person, stripped of memory and individuality.
Aomame opened the refrigerator to find four cans of Heineken chilling in the door. She
opened one and took a swallow. Switching on the twenty-one-inch television, she sat down in
front of it to watch the news. There was a report on the thunderstorm. The top story concerned
the flooding of Akasaka-Mitsuke Station and the stopping of the Marunouchi and
Ginza lines. The water overflowing the street had poured down the station steps like a waterfall.
Station employees in rain ponchos had piled sandbags at the entrances, but they were
obviously too late. The subway lines were still not running, and there was no estimate of when
they would return to normal. The reporter thrust a mike at one stranded commuter after another.
One man complained, The morning forecast said it would be clear all day! 
She watched the news program until it ended. Of course, there was no report yet on the
death of Sakigakes Leader. Buzzcut and Ponytail were probably still waiting in the next room
for the full two hours to pass. Then they would learn the truth. She took the pouch from her
travel bag and pulled out the Heckler & Koch, setting it on the dining table. On the new table,
the German-made automatic pistol looked terribly crude and taciturn and black through and
through but at least it gave a focal point to the otherwise impersonal room. Landscape with
Pistol, Aomame muttered, as if titling a painting. In any case, I have to keep this within reach
at all times whether I use it to shoot someone else or myself.
The large refrigerator had been stocked with enough food for her to stay for two weeks or
more: fruit, vegetables, and several processed foods ready for eating. The freezer held various
meats, fish, and bread. There was even some ice cream. In the cabinets she found a
good selection of foods in vacuum pouches and cans, plus spices. Rice and pasta. A generous
supply of mineral water. Two bottles of red wine and two white. She had no idea who put
these supplies together, but the person had done a very thorough job. For now, she couldnt
think of anything that was missing.
Feeling a little hungry, she took out some Camembert, cut a wedge, and ate it with crackers.
When the cheese was half gone, she washed a stalk of celery, spread it with mayonnaise,
and munched it whole.
Next she examined the contents of the dresser drawers in the bedroom. The top one held
pajamas and a thin bathrobe new ones still in their plastic packs. More well-chosen supplies.
The next drawer held three sets of T-shirts, socks, and underwear. All were simple,
white things that seemed chosen to match the design of the furniture, and all were still packed
in plastic. These were probably the same things they gave to the women staying in the safe
house, made of good materials but very much supplied by an institution.
The bathroom had shampoo, conditioner, skin cream, and cologne, everything she
needed. She rarely put on makeup and so needed few cosmetics. There were a toothbrush,
interdental brush, and a tube of toothpaste. They had also thoughtfully supplied her with a
hairbrush, cotton swabs, razor, small scissors, and sanitary products. The place was well
stocked with toilet paper and tissues. Bath and face towels had been neatly folded and piled
in a cabinet. Everything was there.
She looked in the bedroom closet, wondering if, by any chance, she would find dresses
and shoes of her size Armani and Ferragamo, preferably. But no, the closet was empty.
There was a limit to how far they could go. They knew the difference between thoroughness
and overkill. It was like Jay Gatsbys library: the books were real, but the pages uncut. Besides,
she would not need street clothes while she was here. They wouldnt supply things she
didnt need. There were plenty of hangers, though.
She used those hangers for the clothes she had brought in her travel bag, taking each
piece out, checking it for wrinkles, and hanging it in the closet. She knew that it would be
more convenient, as a fugitive, to leave the clothes in her bag rather than hanging them up,
but the thing she hated most in the world was wearing creased clothing.
I guess I can never be a coolheaded professional criminal, Aomame thought, if Im going
to be worried about wrinkled clothes at a time like this! She suddenly recalled a conversation
she had once had with Ayumi.
 The thing to do is keep your cash in your mattress so in a jam you can grab it and escape
out the window. 
 Thats it, Ayumi said, snapping her fingers. Like in The Getaway. The Steve McQueen
movie. A wad of bills and a shotgun. I love that kind of stuff. 
Its not much fun to live like that, Aomame said to the wall.
Aomame went into the bathroom, stripped, and showered. The hot water took off the remaining
unpleasant sweat still clinging to her body. Then she went into the kitchen, sat at the
counter, and took another swallow from her beer can while toweling her hair.
In the course of this one day, several things have taken a decisive step forward, Aomame
thought. The gears have turned forward with a click. And gears that have turned forward never
turn back. That is one of the worlds rules.
Aomame picked up the gun, turned it upside down, and put the muzzle into her mouth.
The steel felt horrendously cold and hard against her teeth. She caught the faint scent of
grease. This is the best way to blow the brains out. Pull the hammer, squeeze the trigger.
Everything ends just like that. No need to think. No need to run around.
Aomame was not particularly afraid of dying. I die, Tengo lives. He goes on living in this
1Q84, this world with two moons. But Im not in it. I dont get to meet him in this world. Or any
world. At least, thats what Leader says.
Aomame took another slow scan of the room. Its like a model apartment, she thought.
Clean and uniform, with every need supplied. But distant and devoid of individuality. Papier-mâché.
It wouldnt be very pleasant to die in a place like this. But even if you changed the
backdrop to something more desirable, is there really a pleasant way to die in this world? And
come to think of it, isnt this world we live in itself like a gigantic model room? We come in, sit
down, have a cup of tea, gaze out the window at the scenery, and when the time comes we
say thank you and leave. All the furniture is fake. Even the moon hanging in the window may
be made of paper.
But I love Tengo. Aomame murmured the words aloud. I love Tengo. This is no honkytonk
parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain,
and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon. It or they are real moons. And
in this world, I have willingly accepted death for Tengos sake. I wont let anyone call this fake.
Aomame looked at the round clock on the wall. A simple design, by Braun. Well matched
to the Heckler & Koch. The clock was the only thing hanging on the walls of this apartment.
The clock hands had passed ten. Just about time for the two men to find Leaders corpse.
In the bedroom of an elegant suite at the Hotel Okura, a man had breathed his last. A big
man. A man who was far from ordinary. He had moved on to another world. No one could do
anything to bring him back.
Time now for ghosts.
1Q84
CHAPTER 16
Tengo
LIKE A GHOST SHIP
What kind of world will be there tomorrow?
 No one knows the answer to that, Fuka-Eri said.
But the world to which Tengo awoke did not appear especially changed from the world he
had seen as he fell asleep the night before. The bedside clock said it was just after six. Outside,
it was fully light, the air perfectly clear. A wedge of light came in through the curtains.
Summer was winding down, it seemed. The cries of the birds were sharp and clear. Yesterdays
violent thunderstorm felt like an apparition or else something that had happened in an
unknown place in the distant past.
The first thing that came to Tengos mind upon waking was that Fuka-Eri might have disappeared
during the night. But no, there she was, next to him, sound asleep, like a little animal
in hibernation. Her face was beautiful in sleep, a few narrow strands of black hair against
her white cheek forming a complex pattern, her ears hidden. Her breathing was soft. Tengo
stared at the ceiling for a while, listening. Her breathing sounded like a tiny bellows.
He retained a vivid tactile memory of last nights ejaculation. He had actually released semen a
lot of semen inside this young girl. The thought made his head swim. But now that
morning was here, it seemed as unreal as that violent storm, like something that happened in
a dream. He had experienced wet dreams several times in his teens. He would have a realistic
sexual dream, ejaculate, and then wake up. The events had all happened in the dream, but
the release of semen was real. What he felt now was a lot like that.
It had not been a wet dream, though. He had unquestionably come inside Fuka-Eri. She
had deliberately penetrated herself with his penis and squeezed every drop of semen out of
him. He had simply followed her lead. He had been totally paralyzed at the time, unable to
move a finger. And as far as he was concerned, he was coming while in the elementary
school classroom, not in Fuka-Eri, who later told him there was no chance shed become
pregnant because she had no periods. He couldnt fully grasp that such a thing had actually
happened. But it had actually happened. As a real event in the real world. Probably.
He got out of bed, got dressed, went to the kitchen, boiled water, and made coffee. While
making the coffee, he tried to put his head in order, like arranging the contents of a desk
drawer. He couldnt get things straight, though. All he succeeded in doing was rearranging the
items in the drawer, putting the paper clips where the eraser had been, the pencil sharpener
where the paper clips had been, and the eraser where the pencil sharpener had been, exchanging
one form of confusion for another.
After drinking a fresh cup of coffee, he went to the bathroom and shaved while listening to
a baroque music program on the FM radio: Telemanns partitas for various solo instruments.
This was his normal routine: make coffee in the kitchen, drink it, and shave while listening to
Baroque Music for You on the radio. Only the musical selections changed each day. Yesterday
it had almost certainly been Rameaus keyboard music.
The commentator was speaking.
Telemann won high praise throughout Europe in the early eighteenth century, but came to
be disdained as too prolific by people in the nineteenth century. This was no fault of Telemanns,
however. The purposes for which music is composed underwent great changes as
the structure of European society changed, leading to this reversal in his reputation.
Is this the new world? he wondered.
He took another look at his surroundings. Still there was no sign of change. For now, there
was no sign of disdainful people. In any case, what he had to do was shave. Whether the
world had changed or not, no one was going to shave for him. He would have to do it himself.
When he was through shaving, he made some toast, buttered and ate it, and drank another
cup of coffee. He went into the bedroom to check on Fuka-Eri, but she was still in a very
deep sleep, it seemed: she hadnt moved at all. Her hair still formed the same pattern on her
cheek. Her breathing was as soft as before.
For the moment, he had nothing planned. He would not be teaching at the cram school.
No one would be coming to visit, nor did he have any intention of visiting anyone. He could
spend the day any way he liked. Tengo sat at the kitchen table and continued writing his novel,
filling in the little squares on the manuscript paper with a fountain pen. As always, his attention
became focused on his work. Switching channels in his mind made everything else
disappear from his field of vision.
. . .
It was just before nine when Fuka-Eri woke. She had taken off his pajamas and was wearing
one of Tengos T-shirts the Jeff Beck Japan Tour T-shirt he was wearing when he visited
his father in Chikura. Her nipples showed clearly through the shirt, which could not help but
revive in Tengo the feeling of last nights ejaculation, the way a certain date brings to mind related
historical facts.
The FM radio was playing a Marcel Dupré organ piece. Tengo stopped writing and fixed
her breakfast. Fuka-Eri drank Earl Grey tea and ate strawberry jam on toast. She devoted as
much time and care to spreading the jam on the toast as Rembrandt had when he painted the
folds in a piece of clothing.
 I wonder how many copies your book has sold, Tengo said.
 You mean Air Chrysalis? Fuka-Eri asked.
 Uh-huh. 
 I dont know, Fuka-Eri said, lightly creasing her brow. A lot. 
Numbers were not important to her, Tengo thought. Her a lot brought to mind clover
growing on a broad plane as far as the eye could see. The clover suggested only the idea of
 a lot, but no one could count them all.
 A lot of people are reading Air Chrysalis, Tengo said.
Saying nothing, Fuka-Eri inspected how well she had spread the jam on her toast.
 Ill have to see Mr. Komatsu. As soon as possible, Tengo said, looking at Fuka-Eri
across the table. As always, her face showed no expression. You have met Mr. Komatsu,
havent you? 
 At the press conference. 
 Did you talk? 
Fuka-Eri gave her head a slight shake, meaning they had hardly talked at all.
Tengo could imagine the scene vividly. Komatsu was talking his head off at top speed,
saying everything he was thinking or not thinking while she hardly opened her mouth or
listened to what he had to say. Komatsu was not concerned about that. If anyone ever asked
Tengo for a concrete example of two perfectly incompatible personalities, he would name
Fuka-Eri and Komatsu.
Tengo said, I havent seen Mr. Komatsu for a very long time. And I havent heard from
him, either. He must be very busy these days. Ever since Air Chrysalis became a bestseller,
hes been swept up in the circus. Its about time, though, for us to get together and have a
serious talk. Weve got all kinds of problems to discuss. Now would be a good chance to do
that, since youre here. How about it? Want to see him together? 
 The three of us? 
 Uh-huh. Thatd be the quickest way to settle things. 
Fuka-Eri thought about this for a moment. Or else she was imagining something. Then
she said, I dont mind. If we can. 
If we can, Tengo repeated mentally. It had a prophetic sound.
 Are you thinking we might not be able to? Tengo asked with some hesitation.
Fuka-Eri did not reply.
 Assuming we can, well meet him. Are you okay with that? 
 Meet him and do what? 
 ‘Meet him and do what? Well, first Id return some money to him. A fairly good-sized
payment was transferred into my bank account the other day for my rewriting of Air Chrysalis,
but Id rather not take it. Not that I have any regrets about having done the work. It was a
great inspiration for my own writing and guided me in a good direction. And it turned out pretty
well, if I do say so myself. Its been well received critically and the book is selling. I dont believe
it was a mistake for me to take it on. I just never expected it to blow up like this. Of
course, I am the one who agreed to do it, and I certainly have to take responsibility for that.
But I just dont want to be paid for it. 
Fuka-Eri gave her shoulders a little shrug.
Tengo said, Youre right. It might not change a thing. But Id like to make it clear where I
stand. 
 Who for? 
 Well, mainly for myself, Tengo said, lowering his voice somewhat.
Fuka-Eri picked up the lid of the jam jar and stared at it as if she found it fascinating.
 But it may already be too late, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri had nothing to say to that.
When Tengo tried phoning Komatsus office after one oclock (Komatsu never came to
work in the morning), the woman who answered said that Komatsu had not been in for the
past several days. That was all she knew. Or, if she knew more, she obviously had no intention
of sharing it with Tengo. He asked her to connect him with another editor he knew. Tengo
had written short columns under a pseudonym for the monthly magazine edited by this man,
who was two or three years older than Tengo and generally well disposed toward him, in part
because they had graduated from the same university.
 Komatsu has been out for over a week now, the editor said. He called in on the third
day to say he wouldnt be coming to work for a while because he wasnt feeling well, and we
havent seen him since. The guys in the book division are going crazy. Hes in charge of Air
Chrysalis and so far hes handled everything himself. Hes supposed to restrict himself to the
magazine side of things, but he ignored that fact and hasnt let anybody else lay a finger on
this project, even when it went into book production. So if he takes off now, nobody knows
what to do. If hes really sick, I suppose theres nothing we can say, but still … 
 Whats wrong with him? 
 I dont know. All he said was hes not feeling well. And then he hung up. Havent heard a
word from him since. We wanted to ask him a few things and tried calling him, but all we got
was the answering machine. Nobody knows what to do. 
 Doesnt he have a family? 
 No, he lives alone. He used to have a wife and a kid, but Im pretty sure hes been divorced
for a long time. He doesnt tell anybody anything, so I dont really know, but thats what
Ive heard. 
 Anyhow, its strange that hes been out a week and youve only heard from him once. 
 Well, you know Komatsu. Common sense isnt really his thing. 
Receiver in hand, Tengo thought about this remark. Its true, you never know what hell
do next. Hes socially awkward and he can be self-centered, but as far as I know hes not irresponsible
about his work. I dont care how sick he is, he wouldnt just let everything go and
not contact the office when Air Chrysalis is selling like this. Hes not that bad. 
 Youre absolutely right, the editor said. Maybe somebody should go to his place and see
whats up. There was all that trouble with Sakigake over Fuka-Eris disappearance, and we
still dont know where she is. Something might have happened. I cant believe hed fake being
sick so he could take off from work and hide out with Fuka-Eri, right? 
Tengo said nothing. He could hardly tell the man that Fuka-Eri was right there in front of
him, cleaning her ears with a cotton swab.
 And not just this case. Everything involving this book. I dont know, theres something
wrong with it. Were glad its selling so well, but theres something about it thats not quite
right. And Im not the only one: a lot of people at the company feel that way about it. Oh, by
the way, Tengo, did you have something you wanted to talk to Komatsu about? 
 No, nothing special. I havent talked to him for a while, so I was just wondering what hes
up to. 
 Maybe the stress of it all finally got to him. Anyhow, Air Chrysalis is the first bestseller this
company has ever had. Im looking forward to this years bonus. Have you read the book? 
 Of course, I read the manuscript when it was submitted for the competition. 
 Oh, thats right. You were a screener. 
 I thought it was well written and pretty interesting, too. 
 Oh, its interesting all right, and well worth a read. 
Tengo detected an ominous ring to his remark. But something about it bothers you? 
 Well, this is just an editors intuition. Youre right: it is well written. A little too well written
for a debut by a seventeen-year-old girl. And now shes disappeared. And we cant get in
touch with her editor. The book is like one of those old ghost ships with nobody aboard: it just
keeps sailing along, all sails set, straight down the bestseller seaway. 
Tengo managed a vague grunt.
 Its creepy. Mysterious. Too good to be true. This is just between you and me, but people
around here are whispering that Komatsu himself might have fixed up the manuscript more
than common sense would allow. I cant believe it, but if its true, we could be holding a time
bomb. 
 Maybe it was just a series of lucky coincidences. 
 Even so, good luck can only last so long, the editor said.
Tengo thanked him and ended the call.
After hanging up, Tengo said to Fuka-Eri, Mr. Komatsu hasnt been to work for the past
week. They cant get in touch with him. 
Fuka-Eri said nothing.
 The people around me seem to be disappearing one after another, Tengo said.
Still Fuka-Eri said nothing.
Tengo suddenly recalled the fact that people lose fifty million skin cells every day. The
cells get scraped off, turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing
but skin cells as far as the world is concerned. If so, theres nothing mysterious about somebody
suddenly disappearing one day.
 I may be next, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri gave her head a tight, little shake. Not you, she said.
 Why not me? 
 Because I did a purification. 
Tengo contemplated this for several seconds without reaching a conclusion. He knew
from the start that no amount of thinking could do any good. Still, he could not entirely forgo
the effort to think.
 In any case, we cant see Mr. Komatsu right now, Tengo said. And I cant give the
money back to him. 
 The money is no problem, Fuka-Eri said.
 Then what is a problem? Tengo asked.
Of course, he did not receive an answer.
Tengo decided to follow through on last nights resolution to search for Aomame. If he
spent the whole day in a concentrated effort, he should at least be able to come up with some
kind of clue. But in fact, it turned out not to be that easy. He left Fuka-Eri in his apartment
(after warning her repeatedly not to open the door for anyone) and went to the telephone
companys main office, which had a complete set of telephone books for every part of the
country, available for public use. He went through all the phone books for Tokyos twentythree
central wards, looking for the name Aomame. Even if he didnt find Aomame herself, a
relative might be living there, and he could ask that person for news of Aomame.
But he found no one with the name Aomame. He broadened his search to include the entire
Tokyo metropolis and still found no one. He further broadened his search to include the
entire Kanto region the prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama. At that point, his time
and energy ran out. After glaring at the phone books tiny type all day, his eyeballs were
aching.
Several possibilities came to mind.
1
She was living in a suburb of the city of Utashinai on Hokkaido.
2
She had married and changed her name to Ito. 
3
She kept her number unlisted to protect her privacy.
4
She had died in the spring two years earlier from a virulent influenza.
There must have been any number of possibilities besides these. It didnt make sense to
rely strictly on the phone books. Nor could he read every one in the country. It could be next
month before he finally reached Hokkaido. He had to find another way.
Tengo bought a telephone card and entered a booth at the telephone company. From
there he called their old elementary school in Ichikawa and asked the female office worker
who answered the phone to look up the address they had on file for Aomame, saying he
wanted to reach her on alumni association business. The woman seemed kind and unhurried
as she went through the roster of graduates. Aomame had transferred to another school in
the fifth grade and was not a graduate. Her name therefore did not appear in the roster, and
they did not know her current address. It would be possible, however, to find the address to
which she moved at the time. Did he want to know that?
Tengo said that he did want to know that.
He took down the address and telephone number, c/o Koji Tasaki in Tokyos Adachi
Ward. Aomame had apparently left her parents home at the time. Something must have
happened. Figuring it was probably hopeless, Tengo tried dialing the phone number. As he
had expected, the number was no longer in use. It had been twenty years, after all. He called
Information and gave them the address and the name Koji Tasaki, but learned only that no
telephone was listed under that name.
Next Tengo tried finding the phone number for the headquarters of the Society of Witnesses,
but no contacts were listed for them in any of the phone books he perused nothing
under Before the Flood, nothing under Society of Witnesses or anything else of that ilk. He
tried the classified directory under Religious Organizations but found nothing. At the end of
this struggle, Tengo concluded that they probably didnt want anyone contacting them.
This was, upon reflection, rather odd. They showed up all the time. Theyd ring the bell or
knock on the door, unconcerned that you might be otherwise occupied be it baking a soufflé,
soldering a connection, washing your hair, training a mouse to do tricks, or thinking about
quadratic functions and, with a big smile, invite you to study the Bible with them. They had
no problem coming to see you, but you were not free to go to see them (unless you were a
believer, probably). You couldnt ask them one simple question. This was rather inconvenient.
But even if he did manage to find the Societys phone number and get in touch with them,
it was hard to imagine that such a wary organization would freely disclose information on an
individual believer. No doubt they had their reasons for being so guarded. Many people hated
them for their extreme, eccentric doctrines and for the close-minded nature of their faith. They
had caused several social problems, as a result of which their treatment often bordered on
persecution. It had probably become second nature for them to protect their community from
a less-than-welcoming outside world.
In any case, Tengos search for Aomame had been shut down, at least for now. He could
not immediately think of what additional search methods might remain. Aomame was such an
unusual name, you could never forget it once youd heard it. But in trying to trace the footsteps
of one single human being who bore that name, he quickly collided with a hard wall. It
might be quicker to go around asking Society of Witnesses members directly. Headquarters
would probably doubt his motives and refuse to tell him anything, but if he were to ask some
individual member, he felt, they would probably be kind enough to tell him. But Tengo did not
know even one member of the Society of Witnesses. Come to think of it, no one from the Society
had knocked on his door for a good ten years now. Why did they not come when you
wanted them and come only when you didnt want them?
One possibility was to put a classified ad in the paper. Aomame, please contact me immediately.
Kawana. Stupid sounding. Tengo couldnt believe that Aomame would bother to
contact him even if she saw such an ad. It would probably just end up scaring her away.
 Kawana was not such a common name, either, but Tengo couldnt believe that Aomame
would still remember it. Kawana whos that? She simply wouldnt contact him. And besides,
who read classified ads, anyway?
Another approach might be to hire a private detective. They should know how to look for
people. They have their methods and connections. The clues Tengo already had might be
enough for them to find her right away. And it probably wouldnt be too expensive. But that
might be something to set aside as a last resort, Tengo thought. He would try a little harder to
see what he could come up with himself.
When the daylight began to fade, he went home to find Fuka-Eri sitting on the floor, listening
to records old jazz records left by his girlfriend. Record jackets were spread on the
floor Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Billie Holliday. Spinning on the turntable just then
was Louis Armstrong singing Chantez les Bas, a memorable song. It reminded him of his
girlfriend. They had often listened to this one between bouts of lovemaking. Near the end, the
trombonist, Trummy Young, gets carried away, forgets to end his solo at the agreed-upon
point, and plays an extra eight bars. Here, this is the part, his girlfriend had explained to him.
When it ended, it was Tengos job to get out of bed naked, go to the next room, and turn the
LP over to play the second side. He felt a twinge of nostalgia recalling those days. Though he
never thought the relationship would last forever, he had not expected it to end so abruptly.
Tengo felt odd seeing Fuka-Eri listening intently to the records that Kyoko Yasuda had left
behind. Wrinkling her brow in complete concentration, she seemed to be trying to hear
something beyond the old music, straining to see the shadow of something in its tones.
 You like this record? 
 I listened to it a lot, Fuka-Eri said. Is that okay. 
 Sure, its okay. But arent you bored here all by yourself? 
Fuka-Eri gave her head a little shake. I have stuff to think about. 
Tengo wanted to ask Fuka-Eri about what had happened between them during the thunderstorm.
Why did you do that? He couldnt believe that Fuka-Eri had any sexual desire for
him. It must have been an act that somehow took shape unconnected with sex. If so, what
possible meaning could it have had?
Even if he asked her about it outright, though, he doubted he would receive a straight answer.
And Tengo couldnt quite bring himself to broach a subject like that directly on such a
peaceful, quiet September evening. It was an act that had been performed in hiding at a dark
hour in a dark place in the midst of a raging thunderstorm. Brought out into everyday circumstances,
the nature of its meaning might change.
So Tengo approached the question from a different angle, one that admitted a simple yesor-no
answer. You dont have periods? 
 No was Fuka-Eris curt reply.
 Youve never had even one? 
 No, not even one. 
 This may be none of my business, but youre seventeen years old. Its probably not normal
that youve never had a period. 
Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug.
 Have you seen a doctor about it? 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. It wouldnt do any good. 
 Why wouldnt it do any good? 
Fuka-Eri did not answer. She gave no sign that she had even heard the question. Maybe
her ears had a special valve that sensed a questions appropriateness or inappropriateness,
opening and closing as needed, like a mermaids gills.
 Are the Little People involved in this, too? Tengo asked.
Again no answer.
Tengo sighed. He couldnt think of anything else to ask that would enable him to approach
a clarification of last nights events. The narrow, uncertain path gave out at that point, and
only a deep forest lay ahead. He checked his footing, scanned his surroundings, and looked
up to the heavens. This was always the problem with talking to Fuka-Eri. All roads inevitably
gave out. A Gilyak might be able to continue on even after the road ended, but for Tengo it
was impossible.
Instead he brought up a new subject. Im looking for a certain person, he said. A woman. 
There was no point in talking about this to Fuka-Eri. Tengo was fully aware of that. But he
wanted to talk about it to someone. He wanted to hear himself telling
someone anyone what he was thinking about Aomame. Unless he did so, he felt Aomame
would grow even more distant from him.
 I havent seen her for twenty years. I was ten when I last saw her. She and I are the same
age. We were in the same class in elementary school. Ive tried different ways of finding her
without any luck. 
The record ended. Fuka-Eri lifted it from the turntable, narrowed her eyes, and sniffed the
vinyl a few times. Then, handling it carefully by the edges so as not to leave fingerprints on it,
she slipped it into its paper envelope and slid the envelope into the record jacket gently, lovingly,
like transferring a sleeping kitten to its bed.
 You want to see this person, Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.
 Yes, she is very important to me. 
 Have you been looking for her for twenty years, Fuka-Eri asked.
 No, I havent, Tengo said. While searching for the proper words to continue, Tengo folded
his hands on the table. To tell you the truth, I just started looking for her today. 
 Today, she said.
 If shes so important to you, why have you never looked for her until today? Tengo asked
for Fuka-Eri. Good question. 
Fuka-Eri looked at him in silence.
Tengo put his thoughts into some kind of order. Then he said, Ive probably been taking a
long detour. This girl named Aomame has been how should I put this? at the center of my
consciousness all this time without a break. She has functioned as an important anchor to my
very existence. In spite of that fact is it? I guess I havent been able to fully grasp her significance
to me precisely because she has been all too close to the center. 
Fuka-Eri stared at Tengo. It was impossible to tell from her expression whether this young
girl had the slightest comprehension of what he was saying. But that hardly mattered. Tengo
was half talking to himself.
 But it has finally hit me: she is neither a concept nor a symbol nor a metaphor. She actually
exists: she has warm flesh and a spirit that moves. I never should have lost sight of that
warmth and that movement. It took me twenty years to understand something so obvious. It
always takes me a while to think of things, but this is a little too much. It may already be too
late. But one way or another, I want to find her. 
With her knees on the floor, Fuka-Eri straightened up, the shape of her nipples showing
through the Jeff Beck T-shirt.
 Ah-oh-mah-meh, Fuka-Eri said slowly, as if pondering each syllable.
 Yes. Green Peas. Its an unusual name. 
 You want to meet her, Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.
 Yes, of course I want to meet her, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri chewed her lower lip as she took a moment to think about something. Then she
looked up as if she had hit upon a new idea and said, She might be very close by. 
1Q84
CHAPTER 17
Aomame
PULL THE RAT OUT
The seven a.m. television news carried a big report on the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway stations
flooding, but there was no mention of the death of Sakigakes Leader in a suite at the
Hotel Okura. When NHKs news ended, Aomame switched channels and watched the news
on a few other channels, but none of them announced that large mans painless death.
They hid his body, Aomame thought, scowling. Tamaru had predicted such a possibility,
but she had found it hard to believe that they would actually do it. Somehow they had managed
to carry Leaders corpse from the Hotel Okura suite, load it into a car, and take it away.
He was a big man, and the corpse must have been tremendously heavy. The hotel was full of
guests and employees. Security cameras were everywhere. How had they succeeded in carrying
the corpse to the hotels underground parking lot without having anyone notice?
They must have transported the body at night to the headquarters in Yamanashi and then
held a discussion of what to do with it. At least they were not going to formally report his death
to the police. Once youve hidden something, you have to keep it hidden.
Aomame, of course, had no idea how they intended to fill the vacuum created by Leaders
death. But they would exhaust every means available to them to maintain the organization. As
the man himself had said, the system would endure with or without a leader. Who could inherit
Leaders mantle? That problem had nothing to do with Aomame. Her assignment had been
to liquidate Leader, not to crush a religion.
She thought about the two bodyguards in their dark suits. Buzzcut and Ponytail. When
they got back to headquarters, would they be held responsible for having allowed Leader to
be wiped out before their very eyes? Aomame imagined their next assignment: Find that woman,
no matter what. Dont come back here until you do. It was possible.
She ate an apple for breakfast, but she had almost no appetite. Her hands still retained
the sensation of driving the needle into the back of the mans neck. While peeling the apple
with a small knife in her right hand, she felt a slight trembling in her body a trembling she
had never experienced before. When she had killed someone in the past, the memory of it
had nearly faded after a nights sleep. Though it never felt good to take a persons life, those
were all men who didnt deserve to go on living. They inspired more disgust than human pity.
But this time was different. Objectively, what this man had been doing was perhaps an affront
to humanity. But he himself was, in many senses, an extraordinary human being, and his extraordinariness,
at least in part, appeared to transcend standards of good and evil. Ending his
life had also been something extraordinary. It had left a strange kind of resonance in her
hands an extraordinary resonance.
What he had left behind was a promise. This was the conclusion to which Aomames
thoughts led her. The weight of that promise was left in her hands as a sign. She understood
this. The sign might not fade from her hands ever.
The phone rang shortly after nine a.m. It was Tamaru. It rang three times, stopped, and
started again twenty seconds later.
 They didnt call the police after all, Tamaru said. Its not on the TV news or in the paper. 
 He did die, though. Im sure of that. 
 Yes, of course, I know. No question he died. There were a few movements around there.
Theyve already cleared out of the hotel. They called in several people from their city branch
office in the middle of the night, probably to help deal with the body. Theyre good at things
like that. Around one a.m., an S-Class Mercedes and a Toyota Hiace van left the hotel parking
lot. Both had dark glass and Yamanashi plates. They were probably back in Sakigake
headquarters by sunrise. The police investigated the compound the day before yesterday, but
it wasnt a full-scale operation, and all the officers were long gone by then. Sakigake has a big
incinerator. If you threw a body in there, it wouldnt leave a bone, just clean smoke. 
 Creepy. 
 Theyre a creepy bunch, all right. Even if their Leader is dead, the organization will keep
moving for a while, like a snake that keeps going even after its head is cut off. Head on or off,
it knows exactly where its headed. Nobody can say what will happen in the future. It might
die. Or grow a new head. 
 He was no ordinary man. 
Tamaru offered no opinion on that matter.
 Completely different from the others, Aomame said.
Tamaru took a moment to gauge the resonance of her words. Then he said, Yes, I can
imagine this was different from the others. But wed better start thinking about what happens
from now on, and be a little more practical. Otherwise you wont be able to survive. 
Aomame thought she should say something, but the words would not come. The trembling
was still there in her body.
 Madame tells me she wants to talk to you, Tamaru said. Can you talk? 
 Of course, Aomame said.
The dowager took the phone. Aomame could sense relief in her voice.
 I am so grateful to you, more than I can ever say. You handled this one perfectly. 
 Thank you very much. But I dont think Ill be able to do it again, Aomame said.
 No, I realize that. We asked too much of you. Im so happy youre all right. We wont be
asking you to do this anymore. This was the last time. We have prepared a place for you to
settle into. You wont have to worry about a thing. Just lie low for a while in the safe house. In
the meantime, well make arrangements for you to move into your new life. 
Aomame thanked her.
 Do you have everything you need there? If not, let us know. Ill have Tamaru take care of
it right away. 
 No, thank you. As far as I can tell, everything I need is here. 
The dowager lightly cleared her throat. Now, this is something I want you to keep in mind.
What we did was absolutely right. We punished the man for his crimes and prevented him
from committing any more. There will be no more victims. We put a stop to that. You must not
let this bother you. 
 He said the same thing. 
 ‘He? 
 Sakigakes Leader. The man I took care of last night. 
The dowager remained silent for a full five seconds. Then she said, He knew? 
 Yes, he knew I was there to take care of him, and still he let me in. He was, if anything,
hoping for death. His body had already suffered serious injury and was heading toward a slow
but inevitable end. All I did was speed up the process somewhat and provide relief to a body
tortured by intense pain. 
The dowager seemed seriously shocked to hear this. Again she was at a loss for words,
something most unusual for her.
 You mean to say the dowager said, looking for the right words, that he himself was
hoping for punishment for his deeds? 
 What he wanted was to end his painful life as soon as possible. 
 And he made up his mind to let you kill him. 
 Exactly. 
Aomame said nothing about the bargain she had struck with Leader. In exchange for letting
Tengo go on living in this world, she herself would have to die: this was an agreement
known only to Aomame and the man. No one else was to be told.
Aomame said, The things he did were deviant and deserving of death, but he was no ordinary
human being. Or at least he possessed something special. 
 Something special? the dowager said.
 Its hard to explain, Aomame said. It was at the same time both a special power or gift
and a cruel burden. It was, I think, eating him alive from the inside. 
 Could it be that this special something urged him on toward his deviant behavior? 
 Probably. 
 In any case, you put a stop to it. 
 That is true, Aomame said, her voice dry.
Holding the receiver in her left hand, Aomame spread out her right hand, with its lingering
sensation of death, and stared at the palm. What did it mean to have ambiguous congress 
with those girls? Aomame could neither understand it nor explain it to the dowager.
 As always, I made the death appear to have been a natural one, but they will probably
not do us the favor of seeing it that way. Given the circumstances, Im sure they will conclude
that I had something to do with it. And as you know, his death has not been reported to the
police yet. 
 Whatever steps they choose to take, we will do everything in our power to protect you, 
the dowager said. They have their organization, but we have strong connections and ample
funds. Also, you are a careful, intelligent person. We wont let them have their way. 
 Have you not yet found Tsubasa? Aomame asked.
 We still dont know where she went. My thought is that she is in the Sakigake compound.
She has nowhere else to go. We havent found a way to bring her back yet, but I suspect that
Leaders death has put the group into a state of confusion. We may be able to do something
to exploit that confusion in order to save her. That child must be protected. 
That child in the safe house was not actual substance, according to Leader. She was
merely one form of a concept and had since been retrieved. But Aomame could hardly say
this to the dowager now. Aomame herself did not know what it meant. She did, however, remember
the levitation of the marble clock. She had seen it happen with her own eyes.
Aomame asked, How many days will I be hiding out in this safe house? 
 You should assume it will be from four days to a week. After that you will be given a new
name and situation and moved to a faraway place. Once you have settled down there, we will
have to cut off all contact with you for your own safety. I wont be able to see you for a while.
Considering my age, I might never be able to see you again. It might have been better if I had
never lured you into this troublesome business. I have thought about that many times. Then I
would not have had to lose you this way. But 
The dowagers voice caught in her throat. Aomame waited quietly for her to continue
speaking.
 But I have no regrets. Everything was more or less destined to happen. I had to involve
you. I had no choice. A very strong force was at work, and that is what has moved me. Still, I
feel bad for you that it has come to this. 
 On the other hand, we have shared something, something important, something we could
not have shared with anyone else, something we could not have had any other way. 
 Yes, you are right, the dowager said.
 Sharing it was something that I needed, too. 
 Thank you for saying that. It gives me a measure of salvation. 
Aomame was also pained to think that she could no longer see the dowager, who was one
of the few ties she possessed with the outside world.
 Be well, Aomame said.
 You, too, the dowager said. And be happy. 
 If possible, Aomame said. Happiness was one of the farthest things away from her.
Tamaru came on the phone.
 You havent used it so far, have you? he asked.
 No, not yet. 
 Try your best not to use it. 
 Ill keep that in mind. 
After a momentary pause, Tamaru said, I think I told you the other day that I grew up in
an orphanage in the mountains of Hokkaido. 
 You were put in there after you were evacuated from Sakhalin when you were separated
from your parents. 
 There was a boy in that orphanage two years younger than I was. He was mixed: half Japanese,
half black. I think his father was a soldier from the American base in Misawa. I dont
know about his mother, but she was probably a prostitute or a bar hostess. She abandoned
him soon after he was born, and he was put in the orphanage. He was a lot bigger than me,
but not very smart. The other kids teased him, of course, mainly because his color was different.
You know how that goes. 
 I guess. 
 I wasnt Japanese, either, so it fell to me one way or another to be his protector. Our situations
were similar a Korean evacuee and the illegitimate mixed-race kid of a black guy and
a whore. You cant get much lower than that. But it did me good: it toughened me up. Not him,
though. He could never be tough. Left on his own, he would have died for sure. In that place,
you had to have a quick wit or be a tough fighter if you wanted to survive. 
Aomame waited quietly for him to go on.
 He was bad at everything. He couldnt do anything right. He couldnt button his own shirt
or wipe his ass. Carving, though, was something else. He was great at that. Give him a few
carving tools and a block of wood and before you knew it he had made a really fine carving.
No sketches or anything: the image would pop into his head and he would produce an accurate
three-dimensional figure, tremendously detailed and realistic. He was a kind of genius. It
was amazing. 
 A savant, Aomame said.
 Yes, sure. I learned about that stuff later, the so-called savant syndrome. People with extraordinary
powers. But nobody knew about that back then. People assumed he was mentally
retarded or something a kid with a slow brain but gifted hands that made him good at
carving. For some reason, though, the only thing he would ever carve was rats. He could do
those beautifully. They looked alive from any angle. But he never, ever carved anything but
rats. Everybody would urge him to carve some other animal a horse or a bear and they
even took him to the zoo for that purpose, but he never showed the slightest interest in other
creatures. So then they just gave up and let him have his way, making nothing but rats. He
made rats of every shape and size and pose. It was strange, I guess. By which I mean that
there werent any rats in the orphanage. It was too cold there, and there was nothing for them
to eat. The place was too poor even for rats. Nobody could figure out why he was so fixated
on rats.… Well, anyway, word got out about the rats he was making. The local paper carried a
story, and people started asking to buy them. The head of the orphanage, a Catholic priest,
got a craft shop to carry the carved rats and sell them to tourists. They must have brought in
some decent money, but of course none of it ever came back to the boy. I dont know what
they did with it, but I suspect the top people in the orphanage used it for themselves. All the
boy ever got was more carving tools and wood to keep making rats in the workshop. True, he
was spared the hard fieldwork; all he had to do was carve rats by himself while the rest of us
were out. He was lucky to that extent. 
 What finally happened to him? 
 I really dont know. I ran away from the orphanage when I was fourteen and lived on my
own after that. I headed straight for the ferry, crossed over to the main island, and I havent
set foot in Hokkaido since then. The last I saw him, he was bent over a workbench, concentrating
on his carving. You couldnt get through to him at those times, so we never even said
good-bye. If hes still alive, I imagine hes still carving rats somewhere. It was all he could do. 
Aomame kept silent and waited for the rest of the story.
 I often think of him even now. Life in the orphanage was terrible. They fed us next to
nothing, and we were always hungry. The winters were cold. The work was harsh, and the
older kids bullied us something awful. But he never seemed to find the life there all that painful.
He appeared to be happy as long as he could carve. Sometimes he would go half mad
when he picked up his carving tools, but otherwise he was a truly docile little fellow. He didnt
make trouble for anyone but just kept quietly carving his rats. Hed pick up a block of wood
and stare at it for a long time until he could see what kind of rat in what kind of pose was lurking
inside. It took a long while before he could see the figure, but once that happened, all he
had to do was pull the rat out of the block with his knives. He often used to say that: ‘Im going
to pull the rat out. And the rats he pulled out looked as if they might start moving at any moment.
He kept on freeing these imaginary rats that were locked up in their blocks of wood. 
 And you were the boys protector. 
 Yes, but not because I wanted to be. I just ended up in that position. And once you were
given a position, you had to live up to it, no matter what. That was the rule. Say, if one of the
other boys took away his carving tools just to be nasty, I would go and beat him up. Even if
the other kid was older or bigger or there was more than one of them, I had to beat him up. Of
course, there were times when they beat me up. Lots of times. But it didnt matter whether I
won or lost those fights: I always got the tools back for him. That was the main thing. See
what I mean? 
 I think so, Aomame said. But finally you had to abandon him. 
 Well, I had to go on living. I couldnt stay with him forever, taking care of him. I didnt have
that luxury, obviously. 
Aomame opened her right hand again and stared at it.
 Ive seen you holding a little carved rat now and then. Did he make that? 
 Yes, he gave me a little one. I took it when I ran away. I keep it with me. 
 You know, Tamaru, youre not the kind of guy who usually talks about himself. Why
now? 
 One thing I wanted to tell you is that I often think of him, Tamaru said. Not that I want to
see him again or anything. I really dont. We wouldnt have anything to talk about, for one
thing. Its just that I still have this vivid image of him ‘pulling rats out of blocks of wood with
total concentration, and that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference
point. It teaches me something or tries to. People need things like that to go on living mental
landscapes that have meaning for them, even if they cant explain them in words.
Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things. Thats what I think. 
 Are you saying that theyre like a basis for us to live? 
 Maybe so. 
 I have such mental landscapes, too. 
 Youd better handle them with care. 
 I will. 
 I have one more thing to say, and that is that I will do everything I can to protect you. If
theres somebody I have to beat up, Ill go out and beat them up. Win or lose, I wont abandon
you. 
 Thank you. 
A few tranquil seconds of silence followed.
 Dont leave that apartment for a while. Just think of it as a jungle one step outside your
door. Okay? 
 Got it, Aomame said.
The connection was cut. Hanging up, Aomame realized how tightly she had been gripping
the receiver.
What Tamaru wanted to convey to me was that Im now an indispensable part of their
family, that ties once formed will never be cut, Aomame thought. We are bound by artificial
blood, so to speak. Aomame was grateful to Tamaru for having delivered that message. He
must have realized what a painful time this was for Aomame. It was precisely because he
thought of her as a member of the family that he had begun to share some of his secrets.
To think that such a close connection could only be formed through violence was almost
too much for Aomame to bear. We can only share these deep feelings because of my unique
circumstances: Ive broken the law, killed several people, and now someone is after me and
may even kill me. Would it have been possible to form such a relationship if murder had not
been involved? Could we have formed such bonds of trust if I were not an outlaw? I doubt it.
She watched the TV news, drinking tea. There were no more reports on the flooding of the
Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station. Once the water receded the next day and the trains were
running normally again, it had become old news. The death of Sakigakes Leader was still not
public knowledge. Only a handful of people knew about that. Aomame imagined the large
mans corpse being consumed by the high-temperature incinerator. Tamaru had said that not
a single bone would be left. Unrelated to either grace or pain, everything would become
smoke and blend into the early-autumn sky. Aomame could picture the smoke and the sky.
There was a report on the disappearance of the seventeen-year-old girl who wrote the
bestselling book Air Chrysalis. Eriko Fukada, or Fuka-Eri, as she was known, had been
missing for over two months. The police had received a search request from her guardian and
were carrying on a thorough investigation, but nothing had come to light as yet, the announcer
said. The screen showed a stack of copies of Air Chrysalis in a bookstore, and a poster
with the photo of the beautiful author hung on the store wall. A young female bookstore clerk
was interviewed: The book is still selling like crazy. I bought a copy myself and read it. Its
really good very imaginative! I hope they find out where Fuka-Eri is soon. 
The report said nothing about a relationship between Eriko Fukada and Sakigake. The
media were very cautious when religious organizations were involved.
In any case, Eriko Fukada was missing. She had been violated by her father when she
was ten years old. They had had ambiguous congress, if Aomame was to accept his terminology.
Through that act, they had led the Little People into him. How did he put it, again?
Thats it they were Perceiver and Receiver. Eriko Fukada was the one who perceived, and
her father was the one who received. Then the man started to hear special voices. He became
the agent of the Little People and the founder of the religion called Sakigake. She left
the religion after that. Then, as a force against the Little People, she teamed up with Tengo
and wrote the novella Air Chrysalis, which became a bestseller. Now, for some reason or other,
she has disappeared, and the police are looking for her.
Meanwhile, last night, using a specially made ice pick, I killed Eriko Fukadas father, leader
of the religion called Sakigake. People from the religion transported his corpse from the
hotel and secretly disposed of it. Aomame could not imagine how Eriko Fukada would deal
with the news of her fathers death. It was a death that he himself asked for, a painless
 mercy killing, but the fact is that I used these hands of mine to end the life of a human being.
A persons life may be a lonely thing by nature, but it is not isolated. To that life other lives are
linked, and I surely have to bear some responsibility for those as well.
Tengo is also deeply involved in these events. The Fukadas father and daughter are
what bind us together: Perceiver and Receiver. Where could Tengo be now, and what is he
doing? Could he have something to do with the disappearance of Eriko Fukada? Are the two
of them still working together? The television news, of course, tells me nothing about Tengos
fate. So far, no one seems to know that he was the actual writer of Air Chrysalis. But I know.
It appears that he and I are narrowing the distance between us bit by bit. Circumstances
carried us into this world and are bringing us closer together as though we are being drawn
into a great whirlpool. It may be a lethal whirlpool. But Leader suggested that we would never
find each other outside such a lethal place, just as violence creates certain kinds of pure relationships.
She took a deep breath. Then she reached out toward the Heckler & Koch on the table
and assured herself of its hardness. She imagined its muzzle being shoved into her mouth
and her finger tightening on the trigger.
A large crow suddenly appeared on her balcony, perched on the railing, and let out a number
of piercing cries. Aomame and the crow observed each other through the glass. The crow
moved the big, bright eye on the side of his head, watching Aomames movements in the
room. He seemed to understand the significance of the pistol in her hand. Crows were intelligent
animals. They knew that this block of steel had great importance. Somehow or other,
they knew.
The crow spread its wings and flew off as suddenly as it had arrived, apparently having
seen what it was supposed to see. Once it was gone, Aomame stood up, turned off the television,
and sighed, hoping that the crow was not a spy for the Little People.
Aomame practiced her usual stretching on the living-room carpet. She worked her
muscles to the limit for an hour, passing the time with the appropriate pain. One by one, she
summoned up each muscle of her body and subjected it to an intense, detailed interrogation.
She had the name, function, and quality of each muscle minutely engraved in her mind, missing
none. She sweated profusely, working her lungs and heart to the fullest, and switching the
channels of her consciousness. She listened to the flow of the blood in her veins, and received
the wordless messages that her heart was issuing. The muscles of her face contorted
every which way as she sank her teeth into the messages.
Next she washed the sweat off in the shower. She stepped on the scale to make sure
there had been no major change in her weight. Confirming in the mirror that the size of her
breasts and the shape of her pubic hair had not changed, she scowled immensely. This was
her morning ritual.
When she was finished in the bathroom, she changed into a jersey sportswear top and
bottom for easy movement. Then, to kill time, she decided to examine the contents of the
apartment again, beginning with the kitchen: the foods and the eating and cooking utensils.
She memorized each item and devised a plan for which foods she would prepare and eat in
what order. She estimated that, even if she never set foot outside the apartment, she could
live here for at least ten days without going hungry, and she could make it last two weeks if
she was careful in parceling out the supplies. They had stocked the place with that much
food.
Then she went through the non-food items: toilet paper, tissues, laundry detergent, rubber
gloves. Nothing was missing. The shopping had been done with great care. A woman must
have participated in the preparations probably an experienced housewife, judging from the
obvious care that had been lavished on the task. Someone had meticulously calculated what
and how much would be needed for a healthy thirty-year-old single woman to live here alone
for a short time. This was not something a man could have done though perhaps it would be
possible for a highly observant gay man.
The bedroom linen closet was well stocked with sheets, blankets, and spare pillows, all
with the smell of new linen, and all plain white. Ornamentation had been carefully avoided,
there being no need for taste or individuality.
The living room had a television, a VCR, and a small stereo with a record player and a
cassette deck. On the wall opposite the window, there was a waist-high wooden sideboard.
She bent over and opened it to find some twenty books lined up inside. Someone had done
their best to assure that Aomame would not be bored while hiding out here. The books were
all new hardcover volumes that showed no evidence of having been opened. Most of them
were recent, probably chosen from displays of current bestsellers at a large bookstore. The
person had exercised some standards of selection if not exactly taste in choosing about
half fiction and half nonfiction. Air Chrysalis was among them.
With a little nod, Aomame picked it up and sat on the living-room sofa in the warm sunshine.
It was not a thick book. It was light, and the type was large. She looked at the dust
jacket and at the name of the author, Fuka-Eri, printed there, balanced the book on her palm
to gauge its weight, and read the publishers copy on the colorful band around the jacket.
Then she sniffed the book for that special smell that new books have. Though his name was
nowhere printed on it, Tengos presence was here. The text printed inside it had passed
through Tengos body. She calmed herself and opened to the first page.
Her teacup and the Heckler & Koch were both where she could reach them.
1Q84
CHAPTER 18
Tengo
THAT LONELY, TACITURN SATELLITE
 She might be very close by, Fuka-Eri said after some moments of biting her lip in serious
thought.
Tengo unfolded and refolded his hands on the table, looking into Fuka-Eris eyes. Very
close by? You mean here, in Koenji? 
 Within walking distance. 
How do you know that? Tengo wanted to ask her, but he was at least prescient enough to
know that he would not get an answer to such a question. She needed practical questions
that could be answered with a simple yes or no.
 Are you saying that I can meet Aomame if I look for her in this neighborhood? Tengo
asked.
Fuka-Eri shook her head. You cant meet her just by walking around. 
 Shes within walking distance, but I cant find her just by walking around. Is that what you
are saying? 
 Because shes hiding. 
 Hiding? 
 Like a wounded cat. 
Tengo got an image of Aomame curled up under a moldy-smelling porch somewhere.
 Why? Is she hiding from someone? he asked.
This, of course, she did not answer.
 But the fact that she is hiding must mean that she is in some kind of critical situation,
doesnt it? 
 Crit-i-cal sit-choo-ay-shun, Fuka-Eri said, echoing Tengo, with a look on her face like that
of a child being shown a bitter medicine. She probably didnt like the sound of the words.
 Like, someone is chasing after her, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri cocked her head slightly, meaning she didnt understand. But she is not going to
stay here forever. 
 Our time is limited. 
 Yes, limited. 
 But now she is sitting somewhere like a wounded cat, so she wont be out taking walks. 
 No, she wont do that, the beautiful young girl said with conviction.
 In other words, Id have to look for her someplace special. 
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 What kind of special place would that be? Tengo asked.
Needless to say, he received no answer.
 You remember some things about her, Fuka-Eri said after a short pause. One of them
might help. 
 Might help, Tengo said. Are you saying that if I remember something about her, I might
get a hint about where she is hiding? 
Without answering, she gave a little shrug. The gesture might have contained an affirmative
nuance.
 Thank you, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri gave him a tiny nod, like a contented cat.
Tengo prepared lunch in the kitchen. Fuka-Eri was intently choosing records from the record
shelf. Not that he had a lot of records there, but it took her time to choose. At the end of
her deliberations, she took out an old Rolling Stones album, put it on the turntable, and
lowered the tonearm. It was a record that he had borrowed from somebody in high school
and, for some reason, never given back. He hadnt heard it in years.
Listening to tracks like Mothers Little Helper and Lady Jane, he made rice pilaf using
ham and mushrooms and brown rice, and miso soup with tofu and wakame. He boiled cauliflower
and flavored it with curry sauce he had prepared. He made a green bean and onion
salad. Cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always used it as a time to think about everyday
problems, about math problems, about his writing, or about metaphysical propositions.
He could think in a more orderly fashion while standing in the kitchen and moving his hands
than while doing nothing. Today, however, no amount of thinking would tell him what kind of
 special place Fuka-Eri had been talking about. Trying to impose order on something where
there had never been any was a waste of effort. The number of places he could arrive at was
limited.
The two of them sat across from each other eating dinner. Their conversation was virtually
nonexistent. Like a bored married couple, they transported the food to their mouths in silence,
each thinking or not thinking separate thoughts. It was especially difficult to distinguish
between the two in Fuka-Eris case. When the meal ended, Tengo drank coffee and Fuka-Eri
ate a pudding she found in the refrigerator. Whatever she ate, her expression never changed.
Chewing seemed to be the only thing she was thinking about.
Tengo sat at his desk, and, following Fuka-Eris suggestion, he tried hard to recall
something about Aomame.
You remember some things about her. One of them might help.
But Tengo could not concentrate. Another Rolling Stones record was playing. Little Red
Rooster a performance from the time Mick Jagger was crazy about Chicago blues. Not bad,
but not a song written for people engaged in deep thinking or in the midst of seriously digging
through old memories. The Rolling Stones were not a band much given to such kindness. He
needed someplace quiet where he could be alone.
 Im going out for a while, Tengo said.
Studying the Rolling Stones album jacket in her hand, Fuka-Eri nodded, as if to say,
 Fine. 
 If anyone comes here, dont open the door for them, Tengo said.
Tengo walked toward the station wearing a navy-blue long-sleeved T-shirt, chinos from
which the crease had long since faded, and sneakers. Just before reaching the station, he
turned into a bar called Barleyhead and ordered a draft beer. The place served drinks and
snacks. It was small enough so that twenty customers filled it up. He had come here any
number of times before. Young people made it quite noisy late at night, but there were relatively
few customers in the hour between seven and eight, when the mood was nice and
hushed. It was perfect for sitting alone in a corner and reading a book while drinking a beer.
The chairs were comfortable, too. He had no idea where the bars name came from or what it
meant. He could have asked one of the employees, but he was not good at small talk with
strangers, and not knowing the source of the name didnt really matter. It was just a pleasant
bar that happened to be named Barleyhead.
Fortunately, no music was playing. Tengo sat at a table by a window, drinking Carlsberg
draft and munching on mixed nuts from a small bowl, thinking about Aomame. Picturing
Aomame meant that Tengo himself became a ten-year-old boy again. It also meant that he
experienced a major turning point in his life once again. After Aomame grasped his hand
when they were ten, he refused to make any more rounds with his father doing NHK subscription
collections. Shortly after that he experienced a definite erection and his first ejaculation.
That was a watershed in his life. Of course, the transformation would have come sooner or
later whether or not Aomame grasped his hand, but Aomame urged him on and promoted
the change as if she had given his back a gentle shove.
He stared at the open palm of his left hand for a long time. That ten-year-old girl grasped
this hand and hugely changed something inside me, but I cant give a reasonable explanation
of how such a thing could have happened. Still, the two of us understood each other and accepted
each other in a very natural way in every last particular almost miraculously so. Such
things dont happen all that often in this life. For some people, they might never happen. At
the time, however, Tengo had not been able to fully comprehend the events decisive meaning.
And not just back then. He had not truly been able to understand its meaning until almost
the present moment. He had only vaguely embraced the girls image in his heart over the
years.
She was thirty now, and her outward appearance might be very different from what he remembered
from when they were ten. She must have grown taller, her chest developed, and
her hairstyle must have changed. If she left the Society of Witnesses, she was probably wearing
makeup. She might be sporting expensive, stylish clothing. Tengo found it hard to imagine
Aomame striding down the street wearing a Calvin Klein suit and high heels. But such a thing
was, of course, conceivable. People grow up, and when they grow up they change. She could
be in this bar right this moment without my realizing it.
Tipping back his beer glass, Tengo took another look at his surroundings. She was somewhere
close by. Within walking distance. Fuka-Eri said so. And Tengo accepted Fuka-Eri at
her word. If she said it, it must be true.
The only other customers in the room were a young couple, probably students, sitting at
the bar, engaged in an intense and intimate conversation, their foreheads practically touching.
Seeing them, Tengo felt a profound loneliness, the sort he had not experienced for a very
long time. Im alone in this world, he thought. I have no ties with anyone.
Tengo closed his eyes and concentrated on the elementary school classroom once again.
He had closed his eyes and visited that place last night, too with a tremendously concrete
sense of reality when he and Fuka-Eri joined bodies during the violent thunderstorm. Because
of that, the picture he conjured now came back with special vividness, as if it had been
cleansed of all dust by last nights rain.
Unease and expectation and fear scattered to the farthest corners of the spacious
classroom, and hid themselves in the rooms many objects like cowardly little animals. Tengo
was able to re-create the scene in meticulous detail the blackboard with its partially erased
mathematical formulas, the broken pieces of chalk, the cheap, sun-damaged curtains, the
flowers in the vase on the teachers podium (though he couldnt tell what type), the childrens
paintings pinned to the wall, the world map behind the podium, the smell of the floor wax, the
waving of the curtains, the childrens shouts coming through the window. His eyes could trace
each omen or plan or riddle they contained.
During those several seconds when Aomame was holding his hand, Tengo had seen
many things and accurately seared each image on his retinas, like a camera taking a photograph.
These images comprised one of the basic landscapes that helped him survive his
pain-filled teens. The scene always included the strong sensation of the girls fingers. Her
right hand never failed to encourage Tengo during the agonizing process of becoming an
adult. Dont worry, Im with you, the hand declared.
You are not alone.
She is in hiding, Fuka-Eri had said. Like a wounded cat.
Come to think of it, this was a strange coincidence. Fuka-Eri herself was in hiding here.
She wouldnt set foot outside of Tengos apartment. In this same section of Tokyo, two women
were lying low, running away from something. Both women had deep connections with
Tengo. Could that be significant? Or was it a mere coincidence?
No answers were forthcoming, of course, just an aimless bunch of questions. Too many
questions, too few answers. It was always like this.
When he finished his beer, a young waiter came over and asked him if he would like
something else. Tengo hesitated a moment and then requested a bourbon on the rocks and
another bowl of mixed nuts. The only bourbon we have is Four Roses, if thats okay. Tengo
said it would be okay. Anything at all. Then he went back to thinking about Aomame. The fragrance
of a baking pizza wafted toward him from the kitchen.
From whom could Aomame possibly be hiding? The police? But Tengo could not believe
that she had become a criminal. What kind of crime could she have committed? No, it could
not be the police who were chasing her. Whoever or whatever it might be, the law surely had
nothing to do with it.
Maybe theyre the same ones who are after Fuka-Eri, it suddenly occurred to Tengo. The
Little People? Why would the Little People have to pursue Aomame?
But if they are really the ones pursuing Aomame, am I at the center of this? Tengo of
course had no idea why he had to be the pivotal figure in such a chain of events, but if there
was a connection between the two women, Fuka-Eri and Aomame, it could not be anyone
other than Tengo himself. Without even being aware of it, I may have been using some kind
of power to draw Aomame closer to me.
Some kind of power?
He stared at his hands. I dont get it. Where could I have that kind of power?
His Four Roses on the rocks arrived along with a new bowl of nuts. He took a swallow of
Four Roses, and, taking several nuts in the palm of his hand, he shook them like dice.
Anyhow, Aomame is in this neighborhood. Within walking distance. Thats what Fuka-Eri
says. And I believe it. Id be hard-pressed to explain why, but I do believe it. Still, how can I go
about finding Aomame in her hiding place? Its hard enough finding someone living a normal
life, but the task obviously becomes more challenging when someone is deliberately hiding.
Should I go through the streets calling her name on a loudspeaker? Sure, like thats going to
get her to step right up. It would just alert others to her presence and expose her to added
danger.
There must be something else I should recall about her, Tengo thought.
 You remember some things about her. One of them might help, Fuka-Eri had said. But
even before she said that to him, Tengo had long suspected that he might have failed to recall
an important fact or two regarding Aomame. It had begun to make him feel uneasy now and
then, like a pebble in his shoe. The feeling was vague but persistent.
Tengo swept his mind clean, as if erasing a blackboard, and started unearthing memories
again memories of Aomame, memories of himself, memories of the things around them,
dredging the soft, muddy bottom like a fisherman dragging his net, putting the items in order
and mulling them over with great care. Ultimately, though, these were things that had
happened twenty years earlier. As vividly as he might recall them, there was a limit to how
much he could bring back.
It occurred to him to try thinking about lines of vision. What had Aomame been looking at?
And what had Tengo himself been looking at? Let me think back along our moving lines of
vision and the flow of time.
The girl was holding his hand and looking straight into his eyes. Her line of vision never
wavered. Tengo, initially at a loss to understand her actions, sought an explanation in her
eyes. This must be some kind of misunderstanding or mistake, Tengo had thought. But there
was no misunderstanding or mistake here. What he realized was that the girls eyes were almost
shockingly deep and clear. He had never seen eyes of such absolute clarity. They were
like two springs, utterly transparent, but too deep to see the bottoms. He felt he might be
sucked inside if he went on looking into them. And so he had no choice but to turn away from
them.
He looked first at the floorboards beneath his feet, then at the entrance to the empty
classroom, and finally he bent his neck slightly to look outside through the window. All this
time, Aomames gaze never wavered. She kept staring at Tengos eyes even as he looked
outside the window. He could feel her line of vision stinging his skin and her fingers gripping
his left hand with unwavering strength and with complete conviction. She was not afraid.
There was nothing she had to fear. And she was trying to convey that feeling to Tengo
through her fingertips.
Because their encounter followed the cleaning of the classroom, the window had been left
wide open for fresh air, and the white curtains were softly waving in the breeze. Beyond them
stretched the sky. December had come, but it was still not that cold. High up in the sky floated
a cloud a straight, white cloud that retained a vestige of autumn, like a brand-new brushstroke
across the sky. And there was something else there, hanging beneath the cloud. The
sun? No, it was not the sun.
Tengo held his breath, pressed his fingers to his temple and tried to peer into a stilldeeper
place in his memory, tracing a frail thread of consciousness that was ready to snap at
any moment.
Thats it. The moon was up there.
Sunset was still some time away, but there it was the moon standing out against the
sky, about three-quarters full. Tengo was impressed that he could see such a large, bright
moon while it was still so light out. He remembered that. The unfeeling chunk of rock hung
low in the sky as if, having nothing better to do, it was suspended on an invisible thread. It
had a certain artificial air about it. At first glance, it looked like a fake moon used as a stage
prop. But it was the actual moon, of course. Nobody would take the time and effort to hang a
fake moon in a real sky.
Suddenly Tengo realized that Aomame was no longer looking at him. Her line of vision
was turned in the same direction as his. Like him, Aomame was staring at the moon in broad
daylight, still gripping his hand, her face deadly serious. He looked at her eyes again. They
were not as clear as before. That had been a special, momentary clarity, and in its place he
now could see something hard and crystalline. It was at once beguiling and severe, with a
quality reminiscent of frost. Tengo could not grasp its meaning.
Eventually the girl seemed to have made up her mind. She suddenly released her grip on
his hand, turned her back on him, and rushed out of the room without a word or a backward
glance, leaving Tengo in a deep vacuum.
Tengo opened his eyes, relaxed his mental concentration, released a deep breath, and
took a swallow of his bourbon. He felt the whiskey pass through his throat and down his gullet.
He took another breath and exhaled. He could no longer see Aomame. She had turned
her back on him and left the classroom, erasing herself from his life.
Twenty years went by.
It was the moon, Tengo thought.
I was looking at the moon, and so was Aomame. That gray chunk of rock hanging in the
still-bright sky at three thirty in the afternoon. That lonely, taciturn satellite. We stood side by
side, looking at that moon. But what does it mean? That the moon will guide me to her?
It suddenly crossed Tengos mind that back then, Aomame might have entrusted the
moon with her feelings. She and the moon might have reached a kind of secret agreement.
Her gaze at the moon contained something frighteningly serious that could stir the imagination
this way.
Tengo had no idea, of course, what Aomame had offered to the moon that time, but he
could well imagine what the moon had given her: pure solitude and tranquillity. That was the
best thing the moon could give a person.
Tengo paid his bill and walked out of the Barleyhead. Then he looked up at the sky but
could not find the moon. The sky was clear, and the moon should be up, but it could not be
seen from street level with buildings all around. Hands thrust in his pockets, Tengo walked
from one street to the next, looking for the moon. He wanted to go someplace with an open
field of vision, but finding such a place in a neighborhood like Koenji was no easy matter. The
area was so flat that finding even a slight incline involved a major effort, and there were no
hills at all. The best place might be the roof of a tall building with a view in all directions, but
he couldnt see the kind of building in the area that let people up to the roof.
As he went on walking around aimlessly, Tengo recalled that there was a playground
nearby, one that he often passed on walks. It was not a large playground, but it probably had
a slide. If he climbed that, he should be able to have a better view of the sky. It wasnt a tall
slide, but the view should be better than from street level. He headed for the playground. His
watch hands were pointing to nearly eight oclock.
There was no one in the playground. A tall mercury-vapor lamp stood in the middle, illuminating
every corner of the place. There was a large zelkova tree, its leaves still thick and
luxuriant. There were several low shrubs, a water fountain, a bench, swings, and a slide.
There was also a public toilet, but it had been locked by a worker at sunset, perhaps to keep
vagrants out. During the daytime, young mothers brought their children who were not yet old
enough for kindergarten, and kept up their lively chattering while the children played. Tengo
had observed such scenes any number of times. Once the sun went down, however, almost
no one visited this place.
Tengo climbed the slide and, still standing, looked up at the night sky. A new six-story
condo stood on the north side of the park. He had never noticed it before. It must have been
built quite recently. It blocked the northern sky like a wall. Only low buildings stood on the other
three sides of the playground. Tengo turned to scan the area and found the moon in the
southwest, hanging over an old two-story house. It was about three-quarters full. Just like the
moon of twenty years ago, Tengo thought. Exactly the same size and shape. A complete coincidence.
Probably.
But this bright moon, hanging in the early-autumn night sky, had sharp, clear outlines and
the introspective warmth characteristic of this season. The impression it gave was very different
from that of the moon at three thirty in the December afternoon sky. Its calm, natural glow
had the power to soothe and heal the heart like the flow of clear water or the gentle stirring of
tree leaves.
Standing on the very top of the slide, Tengo looked up at that moon for a very long time.
From the direction of Ring Road 7 came the blended sound of different-sized tires, like the
roar of the sea. All at once the sound reminded Tengo of the sanatorium where his father was
staying on the Chiba shore.
The citys earthly lights blotted out the stars as always. The sky was nice and clear, but
only a few stars were visible, the very bright ones that twinkled as pale points here and there.
Still, the moon stood out clearly against the sky. It hung up there faithfully, without a word of
complaint concerning the city lights or the noise or the air pollution. If he focused hard on the
moon, he could make out the strange shadows formed by its gigantic craters and valleys.
Tengos mind emptied as he stared at the light of the moon. Inside him, memories that had
been handed down from antiquity began to stir. Before human beings possessed fire or tools
or language, the moon had been their ally. It would calm peoples fears now and then by illuminating
the dark world like a heavenly lantern. Its waxing and waning gave people an understanding
of the concept of time. Even now, when darkness had been banished from most
parts of the world, there remained a sense of human gratitude toward the moon and its unconditional
compassion. It was imprinted upon human genes like a warm collective memory.
Come to think of it, I havent looked hard at the moon like this for a very long while, Tengo
thought. When could the last time have been? Living one hectic day after another in the city,
you tend to look down at the ground. You forget to even look at the night sky.
It was then that Tengo realized there was another moon hanging in the sky. At first, he
thought it might be an optical illusion, a mere trick of light rays, but the more he looked at it,
the surer he became that there was a second moon with solid outlines up there. His mind
went blank as he stared in its direction, open-mouthed. What am I seeing? He could not make
up his mind. The outline and the substance refused to overlap, as when word and concept fail
to cohere.
Another moon?
He closed his eyes, opened his palms, and rubbed his cheeks. Whats wrong with me? I
didnt drink that much. He drew in a long, quiet breath and then quietly expelled it. He
checked to be sure his mind was clear. Who am I? Where am I now? What am I doing? he
asked himself in the darkness behind his closed eyelids. Its September 1984, Im Tengo
Kawana, Im in a playground in Koenji in Suginami Ward, and Im looking up at the moon in
the night sky. No doubt about it.
Then he slowly opened his eyes and looked at the sky again, carefully, his mind calm, but
still there were two moons.
This is no illusion. There are two moons. Tengo balled his hand into a fist and kept it that
way for a long time.
The moon was as taciturn as ever. But it was no longer alone.
1Q84
CHAPTER 19
Aomame
WHEN THE DOHTA WAKES UP
Air Chrysalis was a fantastical story, but it took the form of a very readable novella narrated
from beginning to end in a simple, colloquial style, by a ten-year-old girl. It was not
overly complex in terms of its vocabulary or logic, and it did not contain long-winded explanations
or wordy expressions. The words and style of the young narrator were universally appealing concise
and, in most cases, pleasant but they explained almost nothing about the
events that unfolded. Rather, the girl simply let the narrative flow as she recounted what she
had seen with her own eyes, never stopping to consider What is going on here? or What
could this mean? The book moved forward at an easy pace appropriate to the story she was
telling. Her readers followed along, very naturally adopting her point of view, and before they
knew it, they were in another world a world that was not this world, a world in which the Little
People made air chrysalises.
Reading the first ten pages, Aomame felt herself responding strongly to the novels style.
If indeed this was Tengos creation, he was certainly a talented writer. The Tengo that
Aomame knew was primarily a mathematical genius. He was said to be a prodigy, easily able
to solve mathematical problems that were too difficult for most adults. His grades had been
outstanding in other subjects, too, if not quite up to his work in mathematics. He was also
physically big and an all-around athlete, but Aomame did not recall anything about his being
an especially good writer. Probably that talent was obscured at the time in the shadow of his
mathematics.
On the other hand, Tengo might have done nothing more than transfer the authors narrative
voice to the page just as he had initially read it. His own originality might not have contributed
much of anything to the style. She felt, though, that this was not the case. While the writing
was deceptively simple, a closer read revealed that it was in fact calculated and arranged
with great care. No part of it was overwritten, but at the same time it had everything it needed.
Figurative expressions were kept to a minimum, but the descriptions were still vivid and richly
colored. Above all, the style had a wonderfully musical quality. Even without reading it aloud,
the reader could recognize its deep sonority. This was not writing that flowed naturally from
the pen of a seventeen-year-old girl.
Having ascertained all this, Aomame proceeded to read the rest with great care.
The heroine is a young girl. She belongs to a small mountain community known as the
 Gathering. Her mother and father live a communal life in the Gathering. She has no brothers
or sisters. Because she was brought here shortly after her birth, the girl has virtually no knowledge
of the outside world. All three members of the family have busy schedules that give
them little opportunity to spend time together in relaxed conversation, but still they are close.
The girl spends her days in the local elementary school while her parents are primarily engaged
in farm work. The children also help with the farming when they have free time.
The adults of the Gathering all hate the outside world. At every opportunity, they like to
say that the world in which they live is a beautiful, solitary island floating in a sea of cap-i-talizum, 
a for-tress. The girl does not know what they mean by cap-i-tal-izum (or the other
word they sometimes use, ma-teer-ee-al-izum ), but, judging from the scornful tone they use
whenever they speak the words, cap-i-tal-izum and ma-teer-ee-al-izum must be very twisted
things that are opposed to nature and rightness. The girl has been taught that, in order to
keep her body and her thoughts clean, she must limit her contact with the outside world. Otherwise,
her mind will become po-loo-ted. 
The Gathering is composed of some fifty relatively young men and women, divided into
two groups. One group aims at rev-a-loo-shun, while the other group aims at peese. The
girls parents tend to belong to the peese group. Her father is the oldest member of that
group, and he has played a central role since the founding of the Gathering.
The ten-year-old girl cannot, of course, give a logical explanation of the opposition of the
two groups, nor does she understand the difference between rev-a-loo-shun and peese. 
She has only the vague impression that rev-a-loo-shun is a kind of pointed way of thinking,
while peese has a rather more rounded shape. Each way of thinking has its own shape
and color, which wax and wane like the moon. That is about all she understands.
The girl does not know much about how the Gathering came into being, either. She has
been told that, almost ten years earlier, just after she was born, there was a big movement in
society, and people stopped living in the city and came out to an isolated village in the mountains.
She does not know much about the city. She has never ridden on a subway or taken an
elevator. She has never seen a building with more than three stories. There is just too much
she doesnt know about. All she can understand are the things around her that she can see
and touch.
Still, the girls low-angled line of vision and unadorned narrative voice vividly and naturally
depict the small community called the Gathering, its makeup and scenery, and the customs
and ways of thinking of the people who live there.
Despite the split in the residents ways of thinking, their sense of solidarity is strong. They
share the conviction that it is good to live separately from cap-i-tal-izum, and they are well
aware that even though the shape and color of their ways of thinking may differ, they have to
stand together if they hope to survive. They are barely able to make ends meet. People work
hard every day without a break. They grow vegetables, barter with the neighboring villages,
sell their surplus products, avoid the use of mass-produced items as much as possible, and
generally spend their lives in nature. When they must use an electrical appliance, they find
one in a pile of discards somewhere and repair it. Almost all the clothes they wear are used
items sent to them from somewhere else.
Some members of the community, unable to adapt to this pure but difficult life, eventually
leave the Gathering, but others come to join it. New members outnumber those who leave,
and so the Gatherings population gradually increases. This is a welcome trend. The abandoned
village in which they make their life has many homes that can be lived in with a few repairs,
and many fields remaining that can be farmed. The community is delighted to have new
workers.
The number of children in the community varies between eight and ten. Most of the children
were born in the Gathering. The eldest child is the heroine of the story, the girl. The children
attend a local elementary school, walking together to and from the school each day.
They are required by law to attend a school in the district, and the Gatherings founders believe
that preserving good relations with the people of the district is indispensable to the survival
of the community. The local children, however, are unnerved by the children of the Gathering,
and they either avoid them or bully them, as a result of which the Gathering children
move as one. They stay together to protect themselves, both from physical harm and from
 po-loo-shun of the mind.
Quite separate from the district public school, the Gathering has its own school, and members
take turns teaching the children. This is not a great burden, since most of the members
are highly educated, and several of them hold teaching certificates. They make their own textbooks
and teach the children basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. They also teach the basics
of chemistry, physics, physiology, biology, and the workings of the outside world. The
world has two systems, cap-i-tal-izum and com-yoon-izum, that hate each other. Both systems,
though, have big problems, so the world is generally moving in a direction that is not
good. Com-yoon-izum was originally an outstanding ideology with high ideals, but it was
twisted out of shape by self-serving politicians. The girl was shown a photograph of one of
the self-serving politicians. With his big nose and big, black beard, the man made her think
of the king of the devils.
There is no television in the Gathering, and listening to the radio is not allowed except on
special occasions. Newspapers and magazines are also limited. News that is considered necessary
is reported orally during dinner at the Assembly Hall. The people respond to each
item of news with cheers or groans far more often with groans. This is the girls only experience
of media. She has never seen a movie. She has never read a cartoon. She is only allowed
to listen to classical music. There is a stereo set in the Assembly Hall and lots of records
that someone probably brought in as a single collection. During free moments, it is pos-
sible to listen to a Brahms symphony or a Schumann piano piece or Bach keyboard music or
religious music. These are precious times for the girl and virtually her only entertainment.
Then one day something happens that makes it necessary for the girl to be punished. She
has been ordered that week to take care of the Gatherings small herd of goats each morning
and night, but, overwhelmed with her homework and other daily chores, one night it slips her
mind. The next morning, the oldest animal, a blind goat, is found cold and dead. As her punishment,
the girl is to be isolated from the rest of the Gathering for ten days.
That particular goat was thought by the community to have a special significance, but it
was quite old, and some kind of illness had sunk its talons into the goats wasted body, so
whether anyone took care of it or not, there was no hope it would recover. Still, that does not
lessen the severity of the girls crime in any way. She is blamed not only for the death of the
goat itself but for the dereliction of her duties. Isolation is one of the most serious punishments
that the Gathering can impose.
The girl is locked in a small, old earthen storehouse with the dead blind goat. The storehouse
is called the Room for Reflection. Anyone who has broken the Gatherings rules goes
there in order to reflect upon his or her offense. No one speaks to the girl while she is in isolation.
She must endure ten full days of total silence. A minimal amount of water and food is
brought to her, but the storehouse is dark, cold, and damp, and it smells of the dead goat.
The door is locked from the outside. In one corner of the room is a bucket where she can relieve
herself. High on one wall is a small window that admits the light of the sun and the
moon. A few stars can also be seen through it when the sky is not clouded over. There is no
other light. She stretches out on the hard mattress on top of the board floor, wraps herself in
two old blankets, and spends the night shivering. It is April, but the nights are cold in the
mountains. When darkness falls, the dead goats eye sparkles in the starlight. Afraid, the girl
can hardly sleep.
On the third night, the goats mouth opens wide. It has been pushed open from the inside,
and out of the mouth comes a number of tiny people, six in all. They are only four inches high
when they first emerge, but as soon as they set foot on the ground, they begin to grow like
mushrooms sprouting after the rain. Even so, they are no more than two feet tall. They tell the
girl that they are called the Little People.
This is like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the girl thinks, recalling a story her father
read to her when she was little. But theres one missing.
 If youd rather have seven, we can be seven, one of the Little People says to her in a soft
voice. Apparently, they can read her mind. She counts them again, and now there are seven.
The girl does not find this especially strange, however. The rules of the world had already
changed when the Little People came out of the goats mouth. Anything could happen after
that.
 Why did you come out of the dead goats mouth? she asks, noticing that her voice
sounds odd. Her manner of speaking is also different from usual, probably because she has
not spoken with anyone for three days.
 Because the goats mouth turned into a passageway, one of the Little People with a
hoarse voice says. We didnt know it was a dead goat until we actually came out. 
A screechy-voiced one adds, We dont mind at all, though. A goat, a whale, a peapod: as
long as its a passageway. 
 You made the passageway, so we thought wed give it a try and see where it came out, 
the soft-voiced one says.
 I made the passageway? the girl says. No, it does not sound like her own voice.
 You did us a favor, says one of the Little People with a small voice.
Some of the others voice their agreement.
 Lets play, says one with a tenor voice. Lets make an air chrysalis. 
 Yes, replies a baritone. Since we went to all the trouble of coming here. 
 An air chrysalis? the girl asks.
 We pluck threads out of the air and make a home. We make it bigger and bigger! the
bass says.
 A home? Who is it for? the girl asks.
 Youll see, the baritone says.
 Youll see when it comes out, the bass says.
 Ho ho, another one takes up the beat.
 Can I help? the girl asks.
 Of course, the hoarse one says.
 You did us a favor, the tenor says. Lets work together. 
Once the girl begins to get the hang of it, plucking threads out of the air is not too difficult.
She has always been good with her hands, so she is able to master this operation right away.
If you look closely, there are lots of threads hanging in the air. You can see them if you try.
 Yes, thats it, youre doing it right, the small-voiced one says.
 Youre a very clever girl. You learn quickly, says the screechy-voiced one.
All the Little People wear the same clothing and their faces look alike, but each one has a
distinctly different voice.
The clothing they wear is utterly ordinary, the kind that can be seen anywhere. This is an
odd way to put it, but there is no other way to describe their clothing. Once you take your eyes
off their clothes, you cant possibly remember what they looked like. The same can be said of
their faces, the features of which are neither good nor bad. They are just ordinary features,
the kind that can be seen anywhere. Once you take your eyes off their faces, you cant possibly
remember what they looked like. It is the same with their hair, which is neither long nor
short, just ordinary hair. One thing they do not have is any smell.
When the dawn comes and the cock crows and the eastern sky lightens, the seven Little
People stop working and begin stretching. Then they hide the partially finished air chrysalis which
is only about the size of a baby rabbit in the corner of the room, probably so that
the person who brings the meals will not see it.
 Its morning, says the one with the small voice.
 The night has ended, says the bass.
Since they have all these different voices, they ought to form a chorus, the girl thinks.
 We have no songs, says the tenor.
 Ho ho, says the keeper of the beat.
The Little People all shrink down to their original four-inch size, form a line, and enter the
dead goats mouth.
 Well be back tonight, the small-voiced one says before closing the goats mouth from
the inside. You must not tell anyone about us. 
 If you do tell someone about us, something very bad will happen, the hoarse one adds
for good measure.
 Ho ho, says the keeper of the beat.
 I wont tell anyone, the girl says.
And even if I did, they wouldnt believe me. The girl has often been scolded by the grownups
around her for saying what is in her mind. People have said that she does not distinguish
between reality and her imagination. The shape and color of her thoughts seem to be very different
from those of other people. She cant understand what they consider so wrong about
her. In any case, she had better not tell anyone about the Little People.
After the Little People have disappeared and the goats mouth has closed, the girl does a
thorough search of the area where they hid the air chrysalis, but she is unable to find it. They
did such a good job of hiding it! The space is confined, but still she cant discover where it
might be. Where could they have hidden it?
After that, she wraps herself in the blankets and goes to sleep her first truly restful sleep
in a long time: no dreams, no interruptions. She enjoys the unusually deep sleep.
The dead goat stays dead all day, its body stiff, its eyes clouded like marbles. When the
sun goes down, though, and darkness comes to the storehouse, the eye sparkles in the starlight,
the mouth snaps open, and the Little People emerge, as if guided by the light. This time
there are seven from the beginning.
 Lets pick up where we left off last night, the hoarse-voiced one says.
Each of the other six voices his approval in his own way.
The seven Little People and the girl sit in a circle around the chrysalis and continue to
work on it, plucking white threads from the air and adding them to the chrysalis. They hardly
speak, concentrating their energies on the job. Engrossed in moving her hands, the girl is not
bothered by the nights coldness. She is hardly aware of the passing of time, and she feels
neither bored nor sleepy. The chrysalis grows in size, slowly but visibly.
 How big are we going to make it? the girl asks when dawn is nearing. She wants to know
if the job will be done within the ten days she is locked in the storehouse.
 As big as we can, the screechy-voiced one replies.
 When it gets to a certain size, it will break open all by itself, the tenor says gleefully.
 And something will come out, the baritone says in vibrant tones.
 What kind of thing? the girl asks.
 What will come out? the small-voiced one says.
 Just you wait! the bass says.
 Ho ho, says the keeper of the beat.
 Ho ho, the other six join in.
. . .
A peculiar darkness pervaded the novellas style. As she became aware of it, Aomame
frowned slightly. This was like a fabulous childrens story, but hidden down deep somewhere
it had a strong, dark undercurrent. Aomame could hear its ominous rumble beneath the
storys simple phrases, a gloomy suggestion of illness to come a deadly illness that quietly
gnaws away a persons spirit from the core. What brought the illness with them was the chorus-like
group of seven Little People. There is something unhealthy here, without question,
Aomame thought. And yet she could hear in their voices something that she recognized in
herself something almost fatally familiar.
Aomame looked up from the book and recalled what Leader had said about the Little
People before he died.
 We have lived with them since long, long ago from a time before good and evil even existed,
when peoples minds were still benighted. 
Aomame went on reading the story.
The Little People and the girl continue working, and after several days the air chrysalis
has grown to something like the size of a large dog.
 My punishment ends tomorrow. After that Ill get out of here, the girl says to the Little
People as dawn is beginning to break.
The seven Little People listen quietly to what the girl is telling them.
 So I wont be able to make the air chrysalis with you anymore. 
 We are very sorry to hear that, the tenor says, sounding genuinely sorry.
 You helped us very much, the baritone says.
The one with the screechy voice says, But the chrysalis is almost finished. It will be ready
once we add just a little bit more. 
The Little People stand in a row, staring at the air chrysalis as if to measure the size of
what they have made so far.
 Just a tiny bit more! the hoarse-voiced one says as if leading the chorus in a monotonous
boatmans song.
 Ho ho, intones the keeper of the beat.
 Ho ho, the other six join in.
The girls ten days of isolation end and she returns to the Gathering. Her communal life
starts again, and she is so busy following all the rules that she has no more time to be alone.
She can, of course, no longer work on the air chrysalis with the Little People. Every night before
she goes to bed, she imagines to herself the seven Little People continuing to sit around
the air chrysalis and make it bigger. It is all she can think about. It even feels as if the whole
air chrysalis has actually slipped inside her head.
The girl is dying to know what could possibly be inside the air chrysalis. What will appear
when the chrysalis ripens and pops open? She is filled with regret to think that she cannot witness
the scene with her own eyes. I worked so hard helping them to make it, I should be allowed
to be there when it opens. She even thinks seriously of committing another offense so
that she can be punished with another period of isolation in the storehouse. But even if she
were to go to all that trouble, the Little People might not appear. The dead goat has been carried
away and buried somewhere. Its eye will not sparkle in the starlight again.
The story goes on to describe the girls daily life in the community the disciplined schedule,
the fixed tasks, the guidance and care she provides the other children as the oldest child
in the community, her simple meals, the stories her parents read her before bedtime, the classical
music she listens to whenever she can find a spare moment. A life without po-loo-shun. 
The Little People visit her in dreams. They can enter peoples dreams whenever they like.
They tell her that the air chrysalis is about to break open, and they urge her to come and see
it. Come to the storehouse with a candle after sunset. Dont let anyone see you. 
The girl cannot suppress her curiosity. She slips out of bed and pads her way to the storehouse
carrying the candle she has prepared. No one is there. All she finds is the air chrysalis
sitting quietly where it has been left on the storehouse floor. It is twice as big as it was when
she last saw it, well over four feet long. Its entire surface radiates a soft glow, and its beauti-
fully curved shape has a waist-like narrowed area in the middle that was not there before,
when it was smaller. The Little People have obviously been working hard. The chrysalis is
already breaking open. A vertical crack has formed in its side. The girl bends over and peers
in through the opening.
She discovers that she herself is inside the chrysalis. She stares at this other self of hers
lying naked on her back, eyes closed, apparently unconscious, not breathing, like a doll.
One of the Little People speaks to her the one with the hoarse voice: That is your
dohta, he says, and then clears his throat.
The girl turns to find the seven Little People fanned out behind her in a row.
 Dohta, she says, mechanically repeating the word.
 And what you are called is ‘maza, the bass says.
 Maza and dohta, the girl says.
 The dohta serves as a stand-in for the maza, the screechy-voiced one says.
 Do I get split in two? the girl asks.
 Not at all, the tenor says. This does not mean that you are split in two. You are the
same you in every way. Dont worry. A dohta is just the shadow of the mazas heart and mind
in the shape of the maza. 
 When will she wake up? 
 Very soon. When the time comes, the baritone says.
 What will this dohta do as the shadow of my heart and mind? the girl asks.
 She will act as a Perceiver, the small-voiced one says furtively.
 Perceiver, the girl says.
 Yes, says the hoarse one. She who perceives. 
 She conveys what she perceives to the Receiver, the screechy one says.
 In other words, the dohta becomes our passageway, the tenor says.
 Instead of the goat? the girl asks.
 The dead goat was only a temporary passageway, the bass says. We must have a living
dohta as a Perceiver to link the place we live with this place. 
 What does the maza do? the girl asks.
 The maza stays close to the dohta, the screechy one says.
 When will the dohta wake up? the girl asks.
 Two days from now, or maybe three, the tenor says.
 One or the other, says the one with the small voice.
 Make sure you take good care of this dohta, the baritone says. She is your dohta. 
 Without the mazas care, the dohta cannot be complete. She cannot live long without it, 
the screechy one says.
 If she loses her dohta, the maza will lose the shadow of her heart and mind, the tenor
says.
 What happens to a maza when she loses the shadow of her heart and mind? the girl
asks.
The Little People look at each other. None of them will answer the question.
 When the dohta wakes up, there will be two moons in the sky, the hoarse one says.
 The two moons cast the shadow of her heart and mind, the baritone says.
 There will be two moons, the girl repeats mechanically.
 That will be a sign. Watch the sky with great care, the small-voiced one says furtively.
 Watch the sky with great care, he says again. Count the moons. 
 Ho ho, says the keeper of the beat.
 Ho ho, the other six join in.
The girl runs away.
There was something mistaken there. Something wrong. Something greatly misshapen.
Something opposed to nature. The girl knows this. She does not know what the Little People
want, but the image of herself inside the air chrysalis sends shivers through her. She cannot
possibly live with her living, moving other self. She has to run away from here. As soon as she
possibly can. Before her dohta wakes up. Before that second moon appears in the sky.
In the Gathering it is forbidden for individuals to own money. But the girls father once
secretly gave her a ten-thousand-yen bill and some coins. Hide this so that no one can find
it, he told her. He also gave her a piece of paper with someones name, address, and telephone
number written on it. If you ever have to run away from this place, use the money to
buy a train ticket and go there. 
Her father must have known back then that something bad might happen in the Gathering.
The girl does not hesitate. Her actions are swift. She has no time to say good-bye to her parents.
From a jar she buried in the earth, she takes out the ten-thousand-yen bill and the coins
and the paper. During class, she tells the teacher she is not feeling well and gets permission
to go to the nurses office. Instead she leaves the school and takes a bus to the station. She
presents her ten-thousand-yen bill at the window and buys a ticket to Takao, west of Tokyo.
The man at the window gives her change. This is the first time in her life she has ever bought
a ticket or received change or gotten on a train, but her father gave her detailed instructions,
and she has memorized what she must do.
As indicated on the paper, the girl gets off the train at Takao Station on the Chuo Line,
and she uses a public telephone to call the number her father gave her. The man who answers
is an old friend of her fathers, an artist who paints in the traditional Japanese style. He
is ten years older than her father and he lives in the hills with his daughter near Mount Takao.
His wife died a short time before. The daughter is named Kurumi and she is one year younger
than the girl. As soon as he hears from the girl, the man comes to get her at the station, and
he warmly welcomes this young escapee into his home.
The day after she is taken into the painters home, the girl looks at the sky from her room
and discovers that the number of moons up there has increased to two. Near the usual moon
a smaller second moon hangs like a slightly shriveled green pea. My dohta must have
awakened, the girl thinks. The two moons cast the shadow of her heart and mind. Her heart
gives a shudder. The world has changed. And something is beginning to happen.
The girl hears nothing from her parents. Perhaps no one in the Gathering has noticed her
disappearance. That is because her other self, her dohta, has remained behind. The two of
them look exactly alike, so most people cant tell the difference. Her parents, of course,
should be able to tell that the dohta is not the actual girl, that she is nothing but the girls other
self, that their actual daughter has run away from the Gathering, leaving the dohta behind in
her place. There is only one place where the girl might have gone, but still her parents never
try to contact her. This in itself might be a wordless message to the girl to stay away.
The girl goes to school irregularly. The new outside world is simply too different from the
world of the Gathering where she grew up. The rules are different, the aims are different, the
words they use are different. For this reason, she has trouble making friends in this new
world. She cant get used to life in the school.
In middle school, however, she befriends a boy. His name is Toru. He is small and skinny,
and his face has several deep wrinkles like that of a monkey. He seems to have suffered from
a serious illness when little and cant participate in strenuous activities. His backbone is
somewhat curved. At recess time, he always stays by himself, reading a book. Like the girl,
he has no friends. He is too small and too ugly. During one lunch break, the girl sits next to
him and starts to talk to him. She asks about the book he is reading. He reads it aloud to her.
She likes his voice, which is small and hoarse but very clear to her. The stories he tells with
that voice all but carry her away. He reads prose so beautifully that it sounds as if he is reciting
poetry. Soon she is spending every lunchtime with him, sitting very still and listening with
deep attention to the stories he reads her.
Before long, however, Toru is lost to the girl. The Little People snatch him away from her.
One night an air chrysalis appears in Torus room. The Little People make it bigger and
bigger each night while he sleeps, and they show the scene to the girl through her dreams.
The girl can do nothing to stop them. Eventually the chrysalis reaches full size and a vertical
split appears in its side, just as it happened with the girl. But inside this chrysalis are three big,
black snakes. The three snakes are tightly intertwined, so tightly that no one including them-
selves can pull them apart. They look like a shiny perpetual tangle with three heads. The
snakes are terribly angry that they cannot pull free. They writhe in a frantic effort to separate
themselves from each other, but the more they writhe, the more entangled they become. The
Little People show these creatures to the girl. The boy called Toru sleeps on beside them, unaware.
Only the girl can see all this.
The boy suddenly falls ill a few days later and is sent to a distant sanatorium. The nature
of his illness is not disclosed. In any case, Toru will surely never return to the school. He has
been irretrievably lost.
The girl realizes that this is a message from the Little People. Apparently they cannot do
anything to the girl, a maza, directly. What they can do instead is harm and even destroy the
people around her. But they cannot do this to just anyone they cannot touch her guardian,
the painter, or his daughter, Kurumi. Instead they choose the weakest ones for their prey.
They dragged the three black snakes from the depths of the boys mind and woke them from
their slumber. By destroying the boy, they have sent a warning to the girl and are trying their
best to bring her back to her dohta. You, finally, are the one who caused this to happen, 
they are telling her.
The girl returns to her loneliness. She stops going to school. Making friends with someone
can only expose that person to danger. That is what it means to live beneath two moons. That
is what she has learned.
The girl eventually makes up her mind and begins fashioning her own air chrysalis. She is
able to do this. The Little People said that they had come to her world down a passageway
from the place they belong. If that is the case, she herself should be able to go to that place
down a passageway in the opposite direction. If she goes there, she can learn the secrets regarding
why she is here and what the meaning of maza and dohta could be. She might
also succeed in saving the lost Toru. The girl begins making a passageway. All she has to do
is pluck threads from the air and weave a chrysalis. This will take time, but if she does take
the time, she can do it.
Sometimes, however, she becomes unsure and confusion overtakes her. Am I really a
maza? Couldnt I have switched places somewhere with my dohta? The more she thinks
about it, the less certain she becomes. How can I prove that I am the real me?
The story ends symbolically when the girl is opening the door of her passageway. It says
nothing about what will happen beyond the door probably because it has not happened yet.
Dohta, Aomame thought. Leader used that word before he died. He said that his own
daughter had run away, leaving her dohta behind, in order to establish a force opposed to the
Little People. It might have actually happened. And I am not the only one to see two moons.
Still, Aomame felt she could understand why this novella had gained such a wide readership.
Although it was a story about the fantastical experiences of a girl placed in unusual circumstances,
it also had something that called forth peoples natural sympathies. It probably
aroused some subconscious something, which was why readers were pulled in and kept turning
pages.
Tengo undoubtedly had contributed much to the books literary qualities, its vivid, precise
descriptions, but she could not confine her admiration to that fact alone. She had to focus on
the parts of the story where the Little People enter the action. For Aomame, this was a highly
practical story a virtual instruction manual upon which hinged the life and death of actual
people. She needed to gain concrete knowledge from it, to add whatever solidity and detail
she could to her understanding of the world into which she had strayed.
Air Chrysalis was not just a wild fantasy dreamed up by a seventeen-year-old girl. The
names may have been changed, but Aomame firmly believed that the majority of things depicted
in it were unmistakable reality as experienced firsthand by the girl herself. Fuka-Eri had
recorded those events from her own life as accurately as possible in order to reveal those hidden
secrets to the world at large, to inform large numbers of people of the existence and the
deeds of the Little People.
The dohta that the girl had left behind must have become a passageway for the Little
People and guided them to Leader, the girls father, who was then transformed by them into a
Receiver. They then drove the Akebono members, who were of no use to them, into a suicidal
bloodbath, and transformed the remaining Sakigake group into a smart, militant, and xenophobic
religious organization, which was probably the most comfortable and convenient environment
for the Little People.
Aomame wondered if Fuka-Eris dohta had been able to survive for long without her maza.
The Little People had said that it was virtually impossible for a dohta to go on living without
her maza. And what about a maza? What was it like for her to live after having lost the shadow
of her heart and mind?
After the girl escaped from Sakigake, the Little People had probably used the same process
to make more new dohtas, their purpose being to widen and stabilize the passageway
by which they came and went, like adding new lanes to a highway. This was how the dohtas
became Perceivers for the Little People and played the role of shrine maidens. Tsubasa had
been one of them. If Leader had sexual relations not with the girls actual mazas but with their
other selves, their dohtas, then Leaders expression ambiguous congress made sense. It
also explained Tsubasas flat, depthless eyes and her near inability to speak. Aomame had
no idea how or why the dohta, Tsubasa, had escaped from the religious organization, but she
had almost certainly been put into an air chrysalis and retrieved to be taken back to her
maza. The bloody killing of the dog had been a warning from the Little People, like what was
done to Toru in the story.
The dohtas wanted to become pregnant with Leaders child, but, lacking substance themselves,
they were not menstruating. Still, according to Leader, their desire to become pregnant
was intense. Why should that have been?
Aomame shook her head. There was still much that she did not understand.
Aomame wished that she could tell this to the dowager as soon as possible that the man
might actually have raped nothing more than the girls shadows; that they might not have had
to kill him after all.
But even if she explained these things, it would not be easy for her to get the dowager to
believe her. Aomame knew how the dowager would feel. The dowager or any sane person would
have trouble accepting as fact this stuff about the Little People, mazas, dohtas, or
air chrysalises. To sane people, these things would seem like nothing more than the kinds of
fabrications that appear in fiction, no more real than the Queen of Hearts or the white rabbit
with the watch in Alice in Wonderland.
But Aomame herself had actually seen two moons the old one and the new
one hanging in the sky. She had actually been living under their light. She had felt their lopsided
gravity in her skin. And with her own hands she had killed the man called Leader in a
dark hotel room.
Aomame did not know what the Little People were hoping to accomplish by taking control
of Sakigake. Perhaps they wanted things that transcended good and evil, but the young protagonist
of Air Chrysalis intuitively recognized those things as not right, and she tried to strike
back in her own way. Her vehicle was her story. Tengo became her partner to help get the
story going. Tengo himself probably did not understand the meaning of what he was doing at
that point, and he might not understand it even now.
In any case, the story called Air Chrysalis was the important key.
Everything started from this story.
But where do I fit into it?
From the moment I heard Janáeks Sinfonietta and climbed down the escape stairs from
the traffic jam on the Metropolitan Expressway, I was drawn into this world with two moons in
the sky, into this enigma-filled world of 1Q84. What could it mean?
She closed her eyes and continued to think.
I have probably been drawn into the passageway of the force opposed to the Little
People created by Fuka-Eri and Tengo. That force carried me into this side. What other explanation
could there be? And the role I am playing in this story is by no means small. I may
even be one of the central characters.
Aomame looked at her surroundings. In other words, I am in the story that Tengo set in
motion. In a sense, I am inside him inside his body, she realized. I am inside that shrine, so
to speak.
I saw an old science fiction movie on television long ago. It was the story of a small group
of scientists who shrank their bodies down to microscopic size, boarded a submarine-like
vehicle (which had also been shrunk down), and entered their patients blood vessels, through
which they gained entry to his brain in order to perform a complex operation that would have
been impossible under ordinary circumstances. Maybe my situation is like that. Im in Tengos
blood and circulating through his body. I battled the white blood cells that attacked the invading
foreign body (me) as I headed for the root cause of the disease, and I must have succeeded
in deleting that cause when I killed Leader at the Hotel Okura.
Aomame was able to warm herself somewhat with such thoughts. I carried out my assigned
mission. It was a difficult mission, that is for sure, and I was afraid, but I carried it off
coolly and flawlessly in the midst of all that thunder and perhaps with Tengo looking on. She
felt proud of what she had accomplished.
To continue with the blood analogy, I should soon be drawn into a vein, spent, having
served my purpose. Before long, I will be expelled from the body. That is the rule by which the
bodys system works an inescapable destiny. But so what? I am inside Tengo now, enveloped
by his warmth, guided by his heartbeat, guided by his logic and his rules, and perhaps
by the very language he is writing. How marvelous to be inside him like this!
Still sitting on the floor, Aomame closed her eyes. She pressed her nose against the
pages of the book, inhaling its smells the smell of the paper, the smell of the ink. She quietly
gave herself up to its flow, listening hard for the sound of Tengos heart.
This is the kingdom, she thought.
I am ready to die, anytime at all.
1Q84
CHAPTER 20
Tengo
THE WALRUS AND THE MAD HATTER
No doubt about it: there were two moons.
One was the moon that had always been there, and the other was a far smaller, greenish
moon, somewhat lopsided in shape, and much less bright. It looked like a poor, ugly, distantly
related child that had been foisted on the family by unfortunate events and was welcomed by
no one. But it was undeniably there, neither a phantom nor an optical illusion, hanging in
space like other heavenly bodies, a solid mass with a clear-cut outline. Not a plane, not a
blimp, not an artificial satellite, not a papier-mâché moon that someone made for fun. It was
without a doubt a chunk of rock, having quietly, stubbornly settled on a position in the night
sky, like a punctuation mark placed only after long deliberation or a mole bestowed by destiny.
Tengo stared at the new moon for a long time as if to challenge it, never averting his gaze,
hardly even blinking. But no matter how long he kept his eyes locked on it, it refused to
budge. It stayed hunkered down in its spot in the sky with silent, stonehearted tenacity.
Tengo unclenched his right fist and, almost unconsciously, gave his head a slight shake.
Damn, its the same as in Air Chrysalis! A world with two moons hanging in the sky side by
side. When a dohta is born, a second moon appears.
 That will be a sign. Watch the sky with great care, one of the Little People said to the girl.
Tengo was the one who wrote those words. Following Komatsus advice, he had made his
description of the new moon as concrete and detailed as possible. It was the part on which he
had worked the hardest. The look of the new moon was almost entirely Tengos creation.
Komatsu had said, Think of it this way, Tengo. Your readers have seen the sky with one
moon in it any number of times, right? But I doubt theyve seen a sky with two moons in it side
by side. When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of
fiction, you have to describe them with as much precise detail as possible. 
It made a lot of sense.
Still looking up at the sky, Tengo shook his head again. The newly added moon was absolutely
the same size and shape as the one for which he had invented a description. Even the
figurative language that he had used fit this one almost perfectly.
This cant be, Tengo thought. What kind of reality mimics fictional creations? No, this
cant be, he actually said aloud. Or tried to. His voice barely worked. His throat was parched,
as if he had just run a very long distance. Theres no way this can be. Thats a fictional world,
a world that does not exist in reality. It was a world in a fantastic story that Fuka-Eri had told
Azami night after night and that Tengo himself had fleshed out.
Could this mean, then Tengo asked himself that this is the world of the novel? Could I
have somehow left the real world and entered the world of Air Chrysalis like Alice falling down
the rabbit hole? Or could the real world have been made over so as to match exactly the story
of Air Chrysalis? Does this mean that the world that used to be the familiar world with only
one moon no longer exists anywhere? And could the power of the Little People have
something to do with this in one way or another?
He looked around, hoping for answers, but all that appeared before his eyes was the perfectly
ordinary urban residential neighborhood. He could find nothing about it that seemed odd
or unusual no Queen of Hearts, no walrus, no Mad Hatter. There was nothing in his surroundings
but an empty sandbox and swings, a mercury-vapor lamp emitting its sterile light,
the spreading branches of a zelkova tree, a locked public toilet, a new six-story condo (only
four units of which had lighted windows), a ward notice board, a red vending machine with a
Coca-Cola logo, an illegally parked old-model green Volkswagen Golf, telephone poles and
electric lines, and primary-color neon signs in the distance. The usual city noise, the usual
lights. Tengo had been living here in Koenji for seven years. Not because he particularly liked
it, but because he had just happened to find a cheap apartment that was not too far from the
station. It was convenient for commuting, and moving somewhere else would have been too
much trouble, so he had stayed on. But he at least knew the neighborhood inside and out and
would have noticed any change immediately.
How long had there been more than one moon? Tengo could not be sure. Perhaps there
had been two moons for years now and he simply hadnt noticed. He had missed lots of
things that way. He wasnt much of a newspaper reader, and he never watched television.
There were countless things that everybody knew but him. Perhaps something had occurred
just recently to increase the number of moons to two. He wanted to ask someone, Excuse
me, this is a strange question, but how long have there been two moons? I just thought you
might know. But there was nobody there to ask literally, not even a cat.
No, there was someone there. Nearby, someone was using a hammer to pound a nail into
a wall. Bang bang bang. The sound kept up without a break, a very hard nail going into a very
hard wall. Who could be pounding nails at a time like this? Puzzled, Tengo looked around, but
he could see no wall, nor was there anyone pounding nails.
A moment later, Tengo realized that he was hearing the sound of his own heart. Spurred
on by adrenaline, his heart was pumping surges of blood through his body. It pounded in his
ears.
The sight of the two moons gave Tengo a slight dizzy feeling, as if it had put his nervous
system out of balance. He sat down on top of the slide, leaning against the handrail, and
closed his eyes, fighting the dizziness. He felt as if the force of gravity around him had subtly
changed. Somewhere the tide was rising, and somewhere else the tide was receding. Their
faces devoid of expression, people were moving back and forth between insane and
 lunatic. 
In his dizziness, it suddenly occurred to Tengo that the image of his mother wearing a
white slip had not attacked him for a very long time. He had almost forgotten that he had been
tormented by that illusion for years. When could he have last seen it? He could not recall exactly,
but it was probably around the time he started writing his new novel. For some unfathomable
reason, his mothers ghost had stopped haunting him from that point onward.
Instead, Tengo now sat on top of a slide in a playground in Koenji, looking at a pair of
moons in the sky. An inscrutable new world silently surrounded him like lapping dark water.
Perhaps a new trouble had chased out the old one. Perhaps the old, familiar riddle had been
replaced by a fresh, new one. The thought came to Tengo without irony. Nor did he feel any
need to complain about it. Whatever the composition of this new world might be, I surely have
no choice but to accept it in silence. Theres no way to pick and choose. Even in the world
that existed until now, there was no choice. Its the same thing. And besides, he asked himself,
even if I wanted to lodge a complaint, who is there for me to complain to?
The hard, dry sound of his heart continued, but the dizzy sensation was gradually subsiding.
With his heart pounding in his ears, Tengo leaned his head against the handrail of the
slide and looked at the two moons hanging in the Koenji sky. What a strange sight it was a
new world with a new moon. Everything was uncertain, and ultimately ambiguous. But there is
one thing I can declare with certainty, Tengo thought: No matter what happens to me in the
future, this view with two moons hanging up there side by side will never ever seem ordinary
and obvious to me.
What kind of secret pact had Aomame concluded with the moon that time, Tengo
wondered. And he recalled the deadly serious look in her eye as she stared at the moon in
broad daylight. What could she have offered the moon?
And what is going to happen to me from now on?
At ten years old, as a frightened boy standing before the rooms big door, Tengo had
wondered this again and again while Aomame continued to grip his hand in the empty
classroom. Even now Tengo continued to wonder that same thing. He felt the same anxiety,
the same fear, the same trembling. The door now was new and bigger. The moon was
hanging there again, but this time there were two moons, not one.
Where could Aomame be?
Tengo scanned the area again from his perch on the slide, but nowhere could he find what
he was hoping to discover. He spread out his left hand and struggled to find some clue, but
there was nothing in his palm besides its natural deeply carved lines. In the flat light of the
mercury-vapor lamp they looked like the canals on the surface of Mars, but they told him absolutely
nothing. The most he could glean from this big hand was the fact that he had come a
very long way since the age of ten all the way to the top of this slide in a little Koenji playground
where two moons were hanging in the sky.
Where could Aomame be? Tengo asked himself again. Where is she hiding?
 She might be very close by, Fuka-Eri had said. Within walking distance. 
Supposedly somewhere close by, could Aomame also see the two moons?
Yes, Im sure she can, Tengo thought. He had no proof, of course, but he had a mysterious
conviction that it must be true. She could see what he could see, without a doubt. He
balled his left hand into a tight fist and pounded on the surface of the slide hard enough to
hurt.
That is why it has to happen: we have to run into each other somewhere within walking
distance of this place. Someone is after Aomame, and shes hiding like a wounded cat. I dont
have much time to find her. But where could she be? Tengo had no idea.
 Ho ho, called the keeper of the beat.
 Ho ho, the other six joined in.
1Q84
CHAPTER 21
Aomame
WHAT SHOULD I DO?
That night, Aomame stepped out onto the balcony in her slippers and gray jersey workout
clothes to look at the moons. She was holding a cup of cocoa. It was the first time in a very
long time that she felt like drinking cocoa, but the sight of a can of Van Houten cocoa in a kitchen
cabinet had suddenly inspired her. Two moons a big one and a little one hung in the
perfectly clear southwestern sky. Instead of sighing, she produced a tiny moan. A dohta had
been born from an air chrysalis, and now there were two moons. 1984 had changed to 1Q84.
The old world had vanished, and she could never get back to it.
Sitting on the balconys garden chair, taking little sips of the hot cocoa and looking at the
two moons through narrowed eyes, Aomame tried to recall things from the old world. All she
could bring back at the moment, however, was the potted rubber plant she had left in her
apartment. Where could it be now? Was Tamaru looking after it as he had promised? Of
course. Theres nothing to worry about, Aomame told herself: Tamaru is a man who keeps his
word. He might kill you without hesitation if necessary, but even so, he would care for your
rubber plant to the end.
But why am I so concerned about that rubber plant?
Aomame had barely thought about the thing until the day she left it behind in her apartment.
It was nothing but a sad-looking rubber plant, its color pale and dull, its poor health obvious
at a glance. It had carried an 1,800-yen price tag in a special sale, but the cashier had
further dropped the price to 1,500 yen without being asked, and if Aomame had bargained it
might have gotten cheaper still. It had obviously remained unsold for a long time, and all the
way home she had regretted having bought it on impulse, not only because it was sadlooking,
bulky, and hard to carry, but because it was a living thing.
That was the first time in her life that she had owned something alive. Whether a pet or a
potted plant, she had never bought one or received one or found one. The rubber plant was
her very first experience of living with a thing that had a life of its own. The moment she had
seen the two little red goldfish in the living room and heard from the dowager that she had
bought them for Tsubasa at a night stall in a street fair, Aomame had wanted to have her own
fish badly. She could hardly keep her eyes off them. Where had this desire come from all of
a sudden? Perhaps she felt envious of Tsubasa. No one had ever bought Aomame anything
at a street fair or even taken her to one. Ardent members of the Society of Witnesses, faithful
in every way to the teachings of the Bible, her parents had disdained and avoided all the
secular worlds festivals.
And so Aomame had made up her mind to go to a discount store near the station in her
Jiyugaoka neighborhood and buy a goldfish. If no one was going to buy her a goldfish and
bowl, then she would do it herself. Whats wrong with that? she had thought. Im a grown-up,
Im thirty years old, and I live in my own apartment. Ive got bricks of money piled up in my
safe-deposit box. I dont have to ask anyones permission to buy myself a damned goldfish.
But when she went to the pet department and saw actual goldfish swimming in the tank,
their lacy fins waving, Aomame felt incapable of buying one. She could not help but feel that
paying money to take ownership of a living organism was inappropriate. It made her think,
too, of her own young self. The goldfish was powerless, trapped in a small glass bowl, unable
to go anywhere. This fact did not appear to bother the goldfish itself. It probably had nowhere
it wanted to go. But to Aomame this was a matter of genuine concern.
She had felt none of this when she saw the two goldfish in the dowagers living room.
They had appeared to be enjoying themselves swimming in their glass bowl so elegantly, the
summer light rippling through the water. Living with goldfish seemed like a wonderful thought.
It should add a certain richness to her own life. But the sight of the goldfish in the pet department
of the discount store by the station only made Aomame feel short of breath. No, its out
of the question. I cant possibly keep a goldfish.
What caught her eye at that point was the rubber plant, over in a corner of the store. It
seemed to have been shoved into the least noticeable spot in the place, hiding like an abandoned
orphan. Or at least it appeared so to Aomame. It was lacking in color and sheen, and
its shape was out of kilter, but with hardly a thought in her head, she bought it not because
she liked it but because she had to buy it. And in fact, even after she brought it home and set
it down, she hardly looked at it except on those rare occasions when she watered it.
Once she had left it behind, however, and realized that she would never see it again,
Aomame couldnt stop herself from worrying about the plant. She frowned hugely, the way
she often did when she wanted to scream out loud in confusion, stretching every muscle in
her face until she looked like a completely different person. When she had finished distorting
her face into every possible angle, Aomame finally returned it to normal.
Why am I so concerned about that rubber plant?
. . .
In any case, I know for sure that Tamaru will treat the plant well. He is used to loving and
caring for living things. Unlike me. He treats his dogs like second selves. He even uses his
spare time to go through the dowagers garden, inspecting her plants in great detail. When he
was in the orphanage, he risked his own life to protect a younger boy with impaired abilities. I
could never do anything like that, Aomame thought. I cant afford to take responsibilities for
others lives. Its all I can do to bear the weight of my own life and my own loneliness.
 Loneliness reminded Aomame of Ayumi.
Some man had handcuffed her to a bed in a love hotel, violently raped her, and strangled
her to death with a bathrobe sash. As far as Aomame knew, the perpetrator had not been
taken into custody. Ayumi had a family and colleagues, but she was lonely so lonely that
she had to experience such a horrible death. Still, I wasnt there for her. She wanted
something from me, that was certain. But I had my own secrets and my own loneliness that
had to be protected. I could never share them with Ayumi. Why did she choose
me, of all people, when there are so many others in this world?
Aomame closed her eyes and pictured the potted rubber plant that she had left in her
empty apartment.
Why am I so concerned about that rubber plant?
Aomame spent the next several minutes crying. Whats wrong with me? she wondered,
shaking her head. Im crying too much these days. Crying was the last thing she wanted to
do. But she couldnt stop the tears. Her shoulders trembled. Ive got nothing left. Anything of
value I ever possessed has disappeared, one thing after another. Everything is gone except
for the warmth of my memory of Tengo.
Ive got to stop this crying, Aomame told herself. Here I am, inside of Tengo, like the scientists
in Fantastic Voyage. Yes, thats it! The movies title was Fantastic Voyage. Satisfied
that she had recalled the title, Aomame calmed down and stopped crying. No matter how
many tears I shed, its not going to solve anything. Ive got to go back to being the cool, tough
Aomame.
Who wants that to happen?
I want that to happen.
She looked at her surroundings. There were still two moons in the sky.
 That will be a sign. Watch the sky with great care, one of the Little People, the smallvoiced
one, had said.
 Ho ho, said the keeper of the beat.
. . .
Just then Aomame noticed something: she was not the only person looking up at the
moons. She could see a young man in the playground across the street. He was sitting on top
of the slide and looking in the same direction that she was. He is seeing two moons, just like
me, she knew intuitively. No mistake, he is looking at what I am looking at. He can tell: there
are two moons in this world. But Leader had said that not everyone living in this world could
see both moons.
There was no room for doubt: this large young man was looking at a pair of moons in the
sky. Id bet anything on that. I can tell. Hes sitting there, looking at the big, yellow moon and
the small, lopsided, greenish mossy-colored moon. He appears to be thinking hard about their
meaning. Could he too have drifted into 1Q84? Maybe he is confused, unable to grasp the
meaning of this new world. Yes, that must be it. That must be why he had to climb to the top
of the slide in this playground at night, staring at the moons all alone, mentally listing all the
possibilities, all the hypotheses he could think of, and examining them in detail.
But no, that might not be it at all. He could be working for Sakigake. He could be here
looking for me.
The thought set Aomames heart racing. Her right hand unconsciously reached for the
automatic pistol in her waistband, tightening on its hard grip.
It was impossible, though, to find any sense of tension or urgency in the man on the slide,
and there was nothing about him that suggested violence. He was just sitting up there alone,
his head against the handrail, looking straight up at the moons in the sky, absorbed in his own
thoughts. Aomame was on her third-story balcony, and he was down below. She sat in the
garden chair, looking down at the man through the gap between the balconys opaque plastic
screen and the metal railing. Even if he were to look up toward Aomame, he would probably
not be able to see her, but in any case the man appeared to be completely engrossed, staring
at the sky without the slightest sense that someone might be staring at him.
Aomame calmed herself down and quietly released the breath that she was holding in.
She relaxed the tension in her fingers and took her hand from the pistol. Maintaining her position,
she continued to observe the man. From her vantage point, she could only see his profile.
The playgrounds mercury-vapor lamp cast its bright light on him from above. He was a
tall man with broad shoulders. He had a stiff-looking head of hair, cut short, and he wore a
long-sleeved T-shirt, its sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Not exactly handsome, but he had
good, solid features, and the shape of his head was not bad. If he were a little older and his
hair thinning, he would be quite nice-looking.
Then Aomame suddenly knew:
It was Tengo.
No, she thought, that couldnt possibly be. She gave her head several short, sharp
shakes. No way. I must be wrong. Things dont work out like that. She found it impossible to
breathe normally. Her body wasnt working right. Thought and action refused to sync. Ive got
to take another good look at him, she thought, but for some reason she couldnt get her eyes
to focus. Something seemed to be causing the vision of her right and left eyes to become
hugely different, all of a sudden. She unconsciously twisted her features out of shape.
What should I do?
She got out of her garden chair and looked around helplessly. Then she recalled that
there had been a small pair of Nikon binoculars in the sideboard, and she went in to get them.
She hurried back to the balcony holding the binoculars and looked at the slide. The young
man was still there. In the same position, in profile, looking at the sky. With trembling fingers,
she focused the binoculars and looked at his profile close-up, holding her breath, concentrating.
No doubt about it: it was Tengo. Twenty years might have gone by, but she knew for
sure: it could not be anyone but Tengo.
What most surprised Aomame was that Tengos appearance had hardly changed from the
time he was ten, as if the ten-year-old boy had aged directly into a thirty-year-old man. This
was not to say that he looked childish. His body and his head were, of course, far bigger than
they used to be, and his features were now those of an adult. His facial expression had a new
depth to it. The hands resting on his knees were big and strong, very different from the hand
she had grasped in that elementary school classroom twenty years earlier. Even so, the aura
projected by his physical presence was the same. His solid, massive body gave her a deep,
natural sense of warmth and security. She felt a strong desire to press her cheek against his
chest, and that filled her with joy. He was sitting on a playground slide, looking at the sky,
staring hard at exactly the same things that she was looking at the two moons. Yes, it is
possible for us to see the same things.
What should I do?
Aomame had no idea what to do next. She set the binoculars in her lap and clenched her
fists tightly enough for her nails to leave marks in her skin. Her clenched fists were trembling
slightly.
What should I do?
She listened to her labored breathing. Before she knew it, her body seemed to have split
down the middle. One half was willing to accept the fact that Tengo was right there in front of
her. The other half refused to accept it, trying to convince itself that this was not happening.
Inside her, these two forces clashed, each trying to drag her in its own direction. It was as if
every bit of her flesh was being shredded, her joints torn apart, her bones smashed.
Aomame wanted to run straight to the playground, climb the slide, and speak to Tengo
there. But what should she say? She didnt know how to move the muscles of her mouth.
Could she manage to squeeze out a few words? My name is Aomame. I held your hand in
an elementary school classroom in Ichikawa twenty years ago. Do you remember me? 
Is that what she should say?
There should be something a little better.
The other Aomame gave her an order: Stay hidden on this balcony. Theres nothing more
you can do. You know that. You struck a bargain with Leader last night: you would save
Tengo and help him to go on living in this world by throwing away your own life. That was the
gist of your bargain. The contract has been concluded. You have sent Leader to the other
world and agreed to offer your own life. What good would it do you now to see Tengo and talk
about the past? And what would you do if he didnt remember you or if he knew you only as
‘that strange girl who used to say the creepy prayers? Then how would you feel as you went
to your death? 
The thought made her go stiff all over. She began to shiver uncontrollably, as if she had
caught a bad cold and might freeze to the core. She hugged herself for a time, shivering, but
never once did she take her eyes off Tengo sitting on top of the slide and looking at the sky.
He might disappear somewhere the moment she looked away from him.
She wanted Tengo to hold her in his arms, to caress her with his big hands. She wanted
her whole body to feel his warmth, to have him stroke her from head to toe and warm her up. I
want him to take away this chill I feel in my bodys core. Then I want him to come inside me
and stir me with all his might, like a spoon in a cup of cocoa, slowly, to the very bottom. If he
would do that for me, I wouldnt mind dying right then and there. Really.
No, can that really be true? Aomame thought. If that really happened, I might not want to
die anymore. I might want to stay with him forever and ever. My resolve to die might simply
evaporate, like a drop of dew in the morning sun. Or then again, I might feel like killing him,
shooting him first with the Heckler & Koch, and then blowing my own brains out. I cant begin
to predict what would happen or what I would be capable of.
What should I do?
Aomame could not decide. Her breathing became harsh. A jumble of thoughts came to
her, one after another, tangled thoughts defying all her attempts to impose order upon them.
What was right? What was wrong? She knew only one thing for sure: she wanted those thick
arms of his to be holding her right now. What happened after that would happen: let God or
the devil decide.
. . .
Aomame made up her mind. She went to the bathroom and wiped away the traces of her
tears. She looked in the mirror and swiftly straightened her hair. Her face was an absolute
mess. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her outfit was terrible faded jersey workout clothes with a
weird bulge in back where she had a 9mm automatic pistol shoved into her waistband. This
was no way to present herself to the man for whom shed been burning with desire for twenty
years. Why wasnt she wearing something a little more decent? But it was too late. She had
no time to be changing clothes. She slipped on a pair of sneakers and ran down three floors
on the condo buildings emergency stairway, crossed the street, entered the empty playground,
and walked to the slide, where there was no sign of Tengo. Bathed in the artificial
light of the mercury-vapor lamp, the top of the slide was deserted darker, colder, and emptier
than the far side of the moon.
Could it have been a hallucination?
No, it was no hallucination, Aomame told herself, out of breath. Tengo was there until a
moment ago, without a doubt. She climbed to the top of the slide and stood there, looking all
around. No sign of anybody. But he could not have gone very far. He was here until a very
few minutes ago four or five minutes at the most. If I run, I should be able to catch up with
him.
But Aomame changed her mind. She stopped herself almost by force. No, I cant do that. I
dont even know which way he walked from here. I dont want to be running aimlessly around
the streets of Koenji at night. That is not something I should be doing. While Aomame had
hesitated on the balcony, wondering what she should do, Tengo had climbed down from the
slide and left. Come to think of it, this is the fate I have been handed. I hesitated and hesitated
and momentarily lost my powers of judgment, and in that time Tengo went away. That is what
happened to me.
Its just as well this way, Aomame told herself. Its probably the best thing that could have
happened. At least I succeeded in finding Tengo. I saw him just across the street. I trembled
with the possibility of having his arms around me. If only for a few moments, I was able to
taste that intense joy and anticipation. She closed her eyes and grasped the slide handrail,
biting her lip.
Aomame sat down on top of the slide in the same posture that Tengo had adopted. She
looked up at the southwestern sky, where the two moons, large and small, hung side by side.
Until only moments ago, she had been watching Tengo from the balcony of her apartment,
where her deep hesitation seemed to be lingering still.
1Q84: that is the name given to this world. I entered it six months ago without meaning to,
and now I am about to leave it quite deliberately. Tengo will stay here after I am gone. I have
no idea, of course, what kind of world it will be for Tengo. There is no way I can see it through
to the end. But so what? I am going to die for him. I was unable to live for myself: that possibility
had already been stripped from me. Instead, I will be able to die for him. That is enough. I
can die smiling.
This is no lie.
Aomame struggled to feel whatever hint of Tengos presence might be left at the top of the
slide, but no warmth of any kind remained there. The night wind, with its presentiment of autumn,
cut through the leaves of the zelkova tree, removing all traces of Tengo. Even so,
Aomame went on sitting there, looking up at the moons, bathed in their odd, emotionless light.
The city sounds blended together into one urban noise surrounding her with its basso continuo.
She thought of the little spiders that had spun their webs on the emergency stairway of
the Metropolitan Expressway. Were those spiders still alive and maintaining their webs?
She smiled.
Im ready, she thought. Ive made my preparations.
But there was one place she would have to visit first.
1Q84
CHAPTER 22
Tengo
AS LONG AS THERE ARE
TWO MOONS IN THE SKY
After climbing down from the slide and leaving the playground, Tengo wandered aimlessly
through the streets of Koenji, from one block to the next, hardly conscious of where his feet
were taking him. He tried to organize the jumble of ideas in his head, but unified thinking was
beyond him now, probably because he had thought about too many different things at once
while sitting on the slide: about the increase in the number of moons, about blood ties, about
a new chapter in his life, about his dizzyingly realistic daydream, about Fuka-Eri and Air
Chrysalis, and about Aomame, who was probably in hiding somewhere nearby. With his head
a confused tangle of thoughts, Tengo felt his powers of concentration being tested to the limit.
He wished he could just go to bed and be fast asleep. He could continue this process in the
morning. No amount of additional thinking would bring him any clarity now.
Back at his apartment, he found Fuka-Eri sitting at his desk, intently sharpening pencils
with a small pocketknife. Tengo always kept ten pencils in his pencil holder, but now there
were at least twenty. She had done a beautiful job of sharpening them. Tengo had never seen
such beautifully sharpened pencils. Their points were like needles.
 You had a phone call, she said, checking the sharpness of the current pencil with her finger.
 From Chikura. 
 You werent supposed to be answering the phone. 
 It was an important call. 
She had probably been able to tell it was important from the ring.
 What was it about? Tengo asked.
 They didnt say. 
 But it was from the sanatorium in Chikura, right? 
 They want a call. 
 They want me to call them? 
 Today. Even if its late. 
Tengo sighed. You dont know the number, I suppose. 
 I do. 
She had memorized the number. Tengo wrote it down. Then he looked at the clock. Eight
thirty.
 What time did they call? he asked.
 A little while ago. 
Tengo went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Resting his hands on the edge of
the sink, he closed his eyes and confirmed that his brain was functioning normally. Then he
went to the phone and dialed the number. Perhaps his father had died. Or at least it was a
life-and-death issue of some sort. They would not have called this late if it were not about
something important.
A woman answered the phone. Tengo gave his name and said he was calling in response
to an earlier message.
 Mr. Kawanas son? the woman asked.
 Yes, Tengo said.
 We met here the other day, she said.
Tengo pictured the middle-aged nurse with metal-framed glasses. He could not recall her
name.
He uttered a few polite words, adding, I gather you called earlier? 
 Yes, I did. Ill connect you with the doctor in charge so you can talk to him directly. 
With the receiver pressed against his ear, Tengo waited and waited for the doctor to
pick up. Home on the Range seemed as if it would go on playing forever. Tengo closed his
eyes and pictured the sanatorium on the Boso Peninsula shore. The thickly overlapping pine
trees, the sea breeze blowing through them, the Pacific Ocean waves breaking endlessly on
the beach. The hushed entryway lobby without visitors. The sound of movable beds being
wheeled down the corridors. The sun-damaged curtains. The well-pressed white uniforms of
the nurses. The thin, flat coffee in the lunchroom.
Finally, the doctor picked up the phone.
 Sorry to keep you waiting. I got an emergency call from one of the other sickrooms a few
minutes ago. 
 Thats fine, Tengo said. He tried to recall what his fathers doctor looked like, until it occurred
to him that he had never met the man. His brain was still not functioning properly. So,
is something wrong with my father? 
The doctor paused a moment and then said, Well, its not that something in particular
happened today, just that his condition has not been good lately. I hate to tell you this, but he
is in a coma. 
 You mean, hes completely unconscious? 
 Exactly. 
Tengo struggled to make his brain work. Did he come down with something that made
him go into a coma? 
 Properly speaking, no, the doctor said with apparent difficulty.
Tengo waited.
 Its difficult to explain on the phone, but there is not one particular thing wrong with him.
He does not have cancer or pneumonia or any other illness that we can name. Medically
speaking, we cant see any distinguishing symptoms. We dont know what the cause might
be, but in your fathers case, it appears that his natural life-sustaining force is visibly weakening.
And since we dont know the cause, we dont know what treatment to apply. We are continuing
to feed him intravenously, but this is strictly treating the symptoms. 
 Is it all right for me to ask you a very direct question? Tengo asked.
 Yes, of course, the doctor said.
 Are you saying that my father is not going to last much longer? 
 That might be a strong possibility if he stays in his current condition. 
 So hes more or less wasting away of old age? 
The doctor made a vague sound into the phone. Then he said, Your father is still in his
sixties, not yet ready to ‘waste away of old age. He is basically healthy. We havent found
anything wrong with him other than his impaired cognitive abilities. He gets rather good
scores on the periodic strength tests we perform. We are not aware of a single problem he
might have. 
The doctor stopped talking at that point. Then he went on:
 But … come to think of it … observing him these past few days, there may be some degree
of what you call ‘wasting away of old age. His physical functions overall have declined,
and he seems to be losing the will to live. Normally, these symptoms dont emerge until the
patient passes his mid-eighties. When a person gets that old, we often see him grow tired of
living and abandon the effort to maintain life. But I have no idea why that should be happening
to a man in his sixties like Mr. Kawana. 
Tengo bit his lip and gave this some thought.
 When did the coma start? Tengo asked.
 Three days ago, the doctor said.
 You mean he hasnt awakened for three days? 
 Not once. 
 And his vital signs are gradually weakening? 
The doctor said, Not drastically, but as I just said, the level of his life-sustaining force is
gradually but visibly going down, like a train dropping its speed little by little as it begins to
stop. 
 How much time do you think he has left? 
 I cant say for sure. If his present condition continues as is, he might have another week
in the worst case, the doctor said.
Tengo changed his grip on the receiver and bit his lip again.
 Ill be there tomorrow, Tengo said. Even if you hadnt called, I was thinking of going
there soon. But Im glad you called. Im very grateful to you. 
The doctor seemed relieved to hear this. Please do come. The sooner you see him the
better, I think. He may not be able to talk to you, but Im sure your father will be glad youre
here. 
 He is completely unconscious, though, isnt he? 
 Yes. He is not conscious. 
 Do you think he is in pain? 
 For now, no, probably not. That is the one silver lining in all this. He is sound asleep. 
 Thank you very much, Tengo said.
 You know, Mr. Kawana, the doctor said, your father was a very easy patient to take care
of. He never gave anyone any trouble. 
 Hes always been like that, Tengo said. Then, thanking the doctor once again, he ended
the call.
Tengo warmed his coffee and drank it at the kitchen table, sitting across from Fuka-Eri.
 Youll be leaving tomorrow, Fuka-Eri asked.
Tengo nodded. Tomorrow morning I have to take the train and go to the cat town again. 
 Youre going to the cat town, Fuka-Eri asked without expression.
 You will be waiting here, Tengo asked. Living with Fuka-Eri, he had become used to asking
questions without question marks.
 I will be waiting here. 
 Ill go to the cat town alone, Tengo said. He took a sip of coffee. Then it suddenly occurred
to him to ask her, Do you want something to drink? 
 White wine if you have some. 
Tengo opened the refrigerator to see if he had any chilled white wine. In back he found a
bottle of Chardonnay he had recently bought on sale. The label had a picture of a wild boar.
He pulled the cork, poured some into a wineglass, and placed it before Fuka-Eri. After some
hesitation, he poured himself a glass as well. He was definitely more in the mood for wine
than coffee. It was a bit too chilled, and a bit too sweet, but the alcohol calmed Tengos
nerves somewhat.
 Youll be going to the cat town tomorrow, Fuka-Eri asked again.
 Ill take a train first thing in the morning, Tengo said.
Tipping back his glass of white wine, Tengo recalled that he had ejaculated into the body
of the beautiful seventeen-year-old girl now sitting across the table from him. It had happened
only the night before, but it seemed like something that had occurred in the distant
past almost a historical event. Still, the sensation of it remained as vivid as ever inside him.
 The number of moons increased, Tengo said, as if sharing a secret, slowly turning the
wineglass in his hand. When I looked at the sky a little while ago, there were two moons a
big, yellow one and a small, green one. They might have been there from before, but I never
noticed them. I finally realized it just a little while ago. 
Fuka-Eri had nothing to say regarding the fact that the number of moons had increased,
nor could Tengo discern any sense of surprise at the news. Her expression had not changed
at all. She did not even give her usual little shrug. It did not appear to be news to her.
 I dont have to tell you that having two moons in the sky is the same as the world of Air
Chrysalis, Tengo said. And the new moon looks exactly as I described it the same size
and color. 
Fuka-Eri had nothing to say. She never answered questions that needed no answers.
 Why do you think such a thing has happened? How could such a thing have happened? 
Still no answer.
Tengo decided to ask her directly, Could this mean that we have entered into the world
depicted in Air Chrysalis? 
Fuka-Eri spent several moments carefully examining the shapes of her fingernails. Then
she said, Because we wrote the book together. 
Tengo set his wineglass on the table. Then he asked Fuka-Eri, We wrote Air Chrysalis
and published it. It was a joint effort. Then the book became a bestseller, and information regarding
the Little People and mazas and dohtas was revealed to the world. As a result of that,
you and I together entered into this newly altered world. Is that what it means? 
 You are acting as a Receiver. 
 Im acting as a Receiver, Tengo said, echoing her words. True, I wrote about Receivers
in Air Chrysalis, but I didnt understand any of that. What does a Receiver do, specifically? 
Fuka-Eri gave her head a little shake, meaning she could not explain it.
 If you cant understand it without an explanation, you cant understand it with an explanation, 
Tengos father had said.
 We had better stay together, Fuka-Eri said, until you find her. 
Tengo looked at Fuka-Eri for a time, trying to read her expression, but as always, there
was no expression on her face to read. Unconsciously, he turned aside to look out the window,
but there were no moons to be seen, only an ugly, twisted mass of electric lines.
 Does it take some special talent to act as a Receiver? 
Fuka-Eri moved her chin slightly up and down, meaning that some talent was required.
 But Air Chrysalis was originally your story, a story you wrote from scratch. It came from
inside of you. All I did was take on the job of fixing the style. I was just a technician. 
 Because we wrote the book together, Fuka-Eri said as before.
Tengo unconsciously brought his fingertips to his temple. Are you saying I was acting as
a Receiver from then on without even knowing it? 
 From before that, Fuka-Eri said. She pointed her right index finger at herself and then at
Tengo. Im a Perceiver, and youre a Receiver. 
 In other words, you ‘perceive things and I ‘receive them? 
Fuka-Eri gave a short nod.
Tengo frowned slightly. So you knew that I was a Receiver or had a Receivers special
talent, and thats why you let me rewrite Air Chrysalis. Through me, you turned what you had
perceived into a book. Is that it? 
No answer.
Tengo undid his frown. Then, looking into Fuka-Eris eyes, he said, I still cant pinpoint the
exact moment, but Im guessing that around that time, I had already entered this world with
two moons. Ive just overlooked that fact until now. I never had occasion to look up at the
night sky, so I never noticed that the number of moons had increased. Thats it, isnt it? 
Fuka-Eri kept silent. Her silence floated up and hung in the air like fine dust. This was dust
that had been scattered there only moments before by a swarm of moths from a special
space. For a while, Tengo looked at the shapes the dust had made in the air. He felt he had
become a two-day-old evening paper. New information was coming out day after day, but he
was the only one who knew none of it.
 Cause and effect seem to be all mixed up, Tengo said, recovering his presence of mind.
 I dont know which came before and which came after. In any case, though, we are now inside
this new world. 
Fuka-Eri raised her face and peered into Tengos eyes. He might have been imagining it,
but he thought he caught a hint of an affectionate gleam in her eyes.
 In any case, the original world no longer exists, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug. We will go on living here. 
 In the world with two moons? 
Fuka-Eri did not reply to this. The beautiful seventeen-year-old girl tensed her lips into a
perfectly straight line and looked directly into Tengos eyes exactly the way Aomame had
looked into the ten-year-old Tengos eyes in the empty classroom, with strong, deep mental
concentration. Under Fuka-Eris intense gaze, Tengo felt he might turn into stone, transforming
into the new moon the lopsided little moon. A moment later, Fuka-Eri finally relaxed her
gaze. She raised her right hand and pressed her fingertips to her temple as if she were trying
to read her own secret thoughts.
 You were looking for someone, the girl asked.
 Yes. 
 But you didnt find her. 
 No, I didnt find her, Tengo said.
He had not found Aomame, but instead he had discovered the two moons. This was because
he had followed Fuka-Eris suggestion to dig deep into his memory, as a result of which
he had thought to look at the moon.
The girl softened her gaze somewhat and picked up her wineglass. She held a mouthful of
wine for a while and then swallowed it carefully, like an insect sipping dew.
Tengo said, You say shes hiding somewhere. If thats the case, it wont be easy to find
her. 
 You dont have to worry, the girl said.
 I dont have to worry, Tengo echoed her words.
Fuka-Eri nodded deeply.
 You mean, Im going to find her? 
 She is going to find you, Fuka-Eri said in a voice like a breeze passing over a field of soft
grass.
 Here, in Koenji? 
Fuka-Eri inclined her head to one side, meaning she did not know. Somewhere, she
said.
 Somewhere in this world, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri gave him a little nod. As long as there are two moons in the sky. 
Tengo thought about this for a moment and said with some resignation, I guess I have no
choice but to believe you. 
 I perceive and you receive, Fuka-Eri said thoughtfully.
 You perceive and I receive, Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri nodded.
And is that why we joined our bodies? Tengo wanted to ask Fuka-Eri. In that wild storm
last night. What did that mean? But he did not ask those questions, which might have been inappropriate,
and which he knew she never would have answered.
If you cant understand it without an explanation, you cant understand it with an explanation,
Tengos father said somewhere.
 You perceive and I receive, Tengo repeated once again. The same as when I rewrote
Air Chrysalis. 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. Then she pushed her hair back, revealing one beautiful, little ear
as though raising a transmitters antenna.
 It is not the same, Fuka-Eri said. You changed. 
 I changed, Tengo repeated.
Fuka-Eri nodded.
 How have I changed? 
Fuka-Eri stared for a long time into the wineglass she was holding, as if she could see
something important inside.
 You will find out when you go to the cat town, the beautiful girl said. Then, with her ear
still showing, she took a sip of white wine.
1Q84
CHAPTER 23
Aomame
PUT A TIGER IN YOUR TANK
Aomame woke at just after six oclock in the morning. It was a clear, beautiful day. She
made herself a pot of coffee, toasted some bread, and boiled an egg. While eating breakfast,
she checked the television news to confirm that there was still no report of the Sakigake
Leaders death. They had obviously disposed of the body in secret without filing a report with
the police or letting anyone else know. No problem with that. A dead person was still a dead
person no matter how you got rid of him.
At eight oclock she showered, gave her hair a thorough brushing at the mirror, and applied
a barely perceptible touch of lipstick. She put on stockings. Then she put on the white
silk blouse she had hanging in the closet and completed her outfit with her stylish Junko Shimada
suit. While shaking and twisting her body a few times to help her padded underwire bra
conform more comfortably to her shape, she found herself again wishing that her breasts
could have been somewhat bigger. She must have had that same thought at least 72,000
times while looking in the mirror. But so what? I can think what I want as many times as I
want. This could be the 72,001st time, but whats wrong with that? As long as Im alive, I can
think what I want, when I want, any way I want, as much as I want, and nobody can tell me
any different. She put on her Charles Jourdan high heels.
She stood at the full-length mirror by the front door and checked to see that her outfit was
flawless. She raised one shoulder slightly and considered the possibility that she might look
something like Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair. Faye Dunaway played a coolheaded
insurance investigator in that movie a woman like a cold knife: sexy, great-looking in
a business suit. Of course Aomame didnt look like Faye Dunaway, but the atmosphere she
projected was somewhat close or at least not entirely different. It was that special atmosphere
that only a first-class professional could exude. In addition, her shoulder bag contained
a cold, hard automatic pistol.
. . .
Putting on her slim Ray-Ban sunglasses, she left the apartment. She crossed the street to
the playground, walked up to the slide where Tengo had been sitting, and replayed last
nights scene in her head. It had happened twelve hours earlier. The actual Tengo had been
right there just across the street from me. He sat there for a long time, alone, looking up at
the moons the same two moons that she had been looking at.
It felt almost like a miracle to Aomame a kind of revelation that she had come so close
to Tengo. Something had brought her into his presence. And the event, it seemed, had largely
restructured her physical being. From the moment she woke up in the morning, she had con-
tinued to feel a sort of friction throughout her entire body. He appeared before me and departed.
We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed
many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a
cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.
She stood there for a full five minutes, one hand on a step of the slide, frowning slightly,
jabbing at the ground with the sharp heel of her shoe. She was checking the degree to which
she had been stirred both physically and mentally, and savoring the sensation. Finally, she
made up her mind, walked out of the playground to the nearest big street, and caught a cab.
 I want you to go out to Yohga first, then take the Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 inbound
until just before the Ikejiri exit, she announced to the driver, who was understandably
confused by these instructions.
 So, miss, can you tell me exactly what your final destination is? he asked, his tone rather
on the easygoing side.
 The Ikejiri exit. For now. 
 Well, then, it would be much closer to go straight to Ikejiri from here. Going all the way
out to Yohga would be a huge detour. And at this time of the morning, the inbound lanes of
Number 3 are going to be completely jammed. Theyll hardly be moving. Im as sure of that as
I am that today is Wednesday. 
 I dont care if the expressway is jammed. I dont care if today is Thursday or Friday or the
Emperors Birthday. I want you to get on the Metropolitan Expressway from Yohga. Ive got all
the time in the world. 
The driver was a man in his early thirties. He was slim, with a long, pale face, and looked
like a timid grazing animal. His chin stuck out like those of the stone faces on Easter Island.
He was looking at Aomame in his rearview mirror, trying to decide from her expression whether
his current passenger was totally bonkers or just an ordinary human being in a complicated
situation. It was not easy for him to tell, though, especially from the image in the small mirror.
Aomame took her wallet out of her shoulder bag and thrust a brand-new ten-thousand-yen
bill toward his face. The money looked as if it had just been printed.
 No change needed, and no receipt, Aomame said curtly. So keep your opinions to yourself
and do what youre told. Go first to Yohga, get on the expressway, and go to Ikejiri. This
should cover the fare even if we get caught in traffic. 
 Its more than enough, of course, the driver said, though he still seemed dubious. Do
you have some special business on the expressway? 
Aomame shook the bill at him like a pennant in the wind. If you dont want to take me, Ill
get out and find another cab. So make up your mind, please. Now. 
The driver stared at the ten-thousand-yen bill for a good ten seconds with his brows knit.
Then he made up his mind and took the money. After holding the bill up to the light to check
its authenticity, he shoved it into his business bag.
 All right, then, lets go, Metropolitan Expressway Number 3. Its going to be badly backed
up, though, Im telling you, miss. And theres no exit between Yohga and Ikejiri. No toilet,
either. So if theres any chance you might need to go, better take care of it now. 
 Dont worry, just take me straight there. 
The driver made his way out of the network of residential streets to Ring Road Number 8
and joined the thick traffic heading for Yohga. Neither he nor Aomame said a word. He
listened to the news, and she was lost in thought. As they neared the entrance to the Metropolitan
Expressway, the driver lowered the radios volume and asked Aomame a question.
 This may be none of my business, miss, but are you in some special line of work? 
 Im an insurance investigator, Aomame said without hesitation.
 An insurance investigator, the driver repeated her words carefully, as if tasting a new
food.
 I find evidence in cases of insurance fraud, Aomame said.
 Wow, the driver said, obviously impressed. Does Metropolitan Expressway Number 3
have something to do with this insurance fraud stuff? 
 It does indeed. 
 Just like that movie, isnt it? 
 What movie? 
 Its a really old one, with Steve McQueen. I dont remember what its called. 
 The Thomas Crown Affair, Aomame said.
 Yeah, thats it. Faye Dunaway plays an insurance investigator. Shes a specialist in theft
insurance. McQueen is this rich guy who commits crimes for fun. That was a great movie. I
saw it when I was in high school. I really liked the music. It was very cool. 
 Michel Legrand. 
The driver hummed the first few bars of the theme song. Then he looked in the mirror for
another close look at Aomame.
 Come to think of it, miss, something about you reminds me of Faye Dunaway. 
 Thank you, Aomame said, struggling somewhat to hide the smile that formed around her
lips.
The inbound side of Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 was, as the driver had predicted,
beautifully backed up. The slowdown started less than a hundred yards from the entrance, an
almost perfect specimen of chaos, which was exactly what Aomame wanted. The same outfit,
the same road, the same traffic jam. Unfortunately, Janáeks Sinfonietta was not playing on
the car radio, and the sound quality didnt measure up to that of the stereo in the Toyota
Crown Royal Saloon, but that would have been asking for too much.
The cab inched ahead, hemmed in by trucks. It would stay in one place for a long time
and then unpredictably creep ahead. The young driver of the refrigerated truck in the next
lane was absorbed in his manga magazine during the long stops. The middle-aged couple in
a cream Toyota Corona Mark II sat looking straight ahead, frowning, but never saying a word
to each other. They probably had nothing to talk about, or maybe they had talked and now
they were silent as a result. Aomame settled deeply into her seat. The taxi driver listened to
the broadcast on his radio.
The cab finally passed a sign for Komazawa as it continued to crawl along toward Sangenjaya
at a snails pace. Aomame looked up now and then to stare out the window. I wont
be seeing this neighborhood anymore. Im going somewhere far away. But she was not about
to start feeling nostalgic for the streets of Tokyo. All the buildings along the expressway were
ugly, stained with the soot of automobile exhaust, and they carried garish billboards. The sight
weighed on her heart. Why do people have to build such depressing places? Im not saying
that every nook and cranny of the world has to be beautiful, but does it have to be this ugly?
Finally, after some time, a familiar area entered Aomames field of vision the place
where she had stepped out of the cab. The middle-aged driver had told her, as if hinting at
some deeper significance, that there was an emergency stairway at the side of the roadway.
Just ahead was the large billboard advertising Esso gasoline. A smiling tiger held up a gas
hose. It was the same billboard as before.
 Put a tiger in your tank. 
Aomame suddenly noticed that her throat was dry. She coughed once, thrust her hand into
her shoulder bag, and took out a box of lemon-flavored cough drops. After putting a drop in
her mouth, she returned the box to the bag. While her hand was in there, she gave the handle
of the Heckler & Koch a strong squeeze, reassured by its weight and hardness. Good, she
thought. The cab moved ahead somewhat.
 Get into the left lane, will you? Aomame said to the driver.
 The right lane is moving better, he objected softly. And the Ikejiri exit is on the right. If I
get into the left lane here, Ill just have to move over again. 
Aomame was not ready to accept his objections. Never mind, just get into the left lane. 
 If you say so, miss, the driver said with resignation.
Leaning over and sticking his hand out the front passenger window, he signaled to the refrigerated
truck behind him in the left lane. After making sure the driver had seen him, he
raised the window again and squeezed the cab into the left lane. They moved ahead another
fifty yards until the traffic came to a full stop again.
 Now open the door for me. Im getting out here, Aomame said.
 Getting out? the driver asked, astonished. He made no move to pull the lever that
opened the passenger door. Here?! 
 Yes, this is where Im getting out. I have something to do here. 
 But were right in the middle of the Metropolitan Expressway. It would be too dangerous
to get out here, and even if you did, theres no place you could go. 
 Dont worry, theres an emergency stairway right there. 
 Emergency stairway. He shook his head. I dont know if theres an emergency stairway
or not, but if anyone found out I let a passenger out in a place like this, Id be in big trouble
with the cab company and the expressway management company. So please, miss, give me
a break … 
 Sorry, I have to get out here, Aomame said. She took another ten-thousand-yen bill from
her wallet, gave it a snap, and shoved it at the driver. I know Im asking you to do something
you shouldnt do. This will pay for your trouble. So please stop arguing and let me out. 
The driver did not take the money, but he gave up and pulled the lever. The left-side passenger
door opened.
 No, thanks, youve already paid me more than enough. But please be careful. The expressway
doesnt have shoulders, and no matter how backed up the traffic might be, its very
dangerous for anybody to walk up here. 
 Thank you, Aomame said. After stepping out, she knocked on the passenger-side front
window and had him lower the glass. Leaning inside, she thrust the ten-thousand-yen bill into
the drivers hand.
 Never mind, just take it. Dont worry, I have more money than I know what to do with. 
The driver looked back and forth between the bill and Aomames face.
Aomame said, If this gets you into trouble with the police or the company, just tell them I
threatened you with a pistol. You had no choice but to let me out. Thatll shut them up. 
The driver seemed unable to grasp what she was saying. More money than she knew
what to do with? Threatened him with a pistol? Still, he took the money, probably fearing that
she might do something even more unreasonable if he refused.
Just as she had done before, Aomame made her way between the expressways sidewall
and the cars in the left lane, heading toward Shibuya. She had some fifty yards to pass.
People in the cars looked at her, incredulous, but Aomame did not let them bother her. She
walked ahead with long, confident strides, her back straight, like a fashion model on the Paris
runway. The wind stirred her hair. Trucks speeding along the wide-open lanes heading in the
other direction shook the roadway. The Esso billboard grew larger as she approached, until finally
she reached the familiar emergency turnout.
Everything looked as it had before the metal barrier, the yellow box next to it containing
an emergency telephone.
This is where the year 1Q84 started, Aomame thought.
One world took the place of another from the time I climbed down this emergency stairway
to Route 246 below. So Im going to try climbing down again. The first time I did it, it was April,
and I was wearing my beige coat. Now its early September, and the weather is too hot for a
coat. Aside from the coat, though, Im wearing exactly the same outfit I had on that day, when
I killed that awful man who worked in oil my Junko Shimada suit and Charles Jourdan high
heels. White blouse. Stockings and white underwire bra. I pulled my miniskirt up to step over
the barrier and climbed down the emergency stairway from here.
Ill try doing the same thing again purely out of curiosity. I just want to know what will
happen if I do the same thing in the same place wearing the same outfit. Im not hoping this
will save me. Im not especially afraid to die. If it comes to that, Ill do it without hesitation. I
can die smiling. But Aomame did not want to die ignorant, failing to grasp how things worked.
I want to push myself to my limits, and if things dont work out, then I can give up. But I will do
everything I can until the bitter end. That is how I live.
Aomame leaned over the metal barrier and looked for the emergency stairway. It was not
there.
She looked again and again, with the same result. The emergency stairway had vanished.
Aomame bit her lip and twisted her face out of shape.
This is not the wrong place. It was definitely this turnout. Everything around here looks the
same. The Esso billboard is right there. The emergency stairway existed in that place in the
world of 1984. Aomame had found it easily, exactly where the strange taxi driver had said it
would be. She had been able to step over the barrier and climb down. But in the world of
1Q84, the emergency stairway no longer existed.
Her exit was blocked.
Aomame untwisted her face and carefully observed her surroundings. She looked up at
the Esso billboard again. Gas hose in hand, curly tail held high, the tiger looked out from the
frame with a sly, knowing glance and a happy smile a smile so utterly joyful it seemed to say
that any greater satisfaction was an impossibility.
Yes, of course, Aomame thought.
She had known it from the start. Leader had said so before she killed him in the Hotel Okura
suite: there was no way to return from 1Q84 to 1984. The door to this world only opened
in one direction.
Even so, Aomame needed to confirm this fact with her own two eyes. It was her nature.
And now she had confirmed it. It was all over. The proof was finished. QED.
Aomame leaned against the metal barrier and looked up at the sky. The weather was perfect.
Several long, narrow clouds traced straight lines across a deep blue background. She
could view the sky far into the distance. It didnt seem like a citys sky. But there were no
moons to be seen. Where could the moons have gone? Oh well, a moon is a moon, and I am
me. Each of us has a different way to live. We each have our own plans.
If she had been Faye Dunaway, at this point Aomame would have taken out a slim cigarette
and coolly lit it with a cigarette lighter, elegantly narrowing her eyes. But Aomame did not
smoke, and she had neither cigarettes nor a lighter with her. About all she had in her bag was
a box of lemon cough drops. That plus a steel 9mm automatic pistol and a specially made ice
pick she had used to stab a number of men in the back of the neck. Both might be somewhat
more lethal than cigarettes.
She looked at the backed-up line of cars. Inside their vehicles, people were staring intently
at her. Of course. Not often did people have the chance to see an ordinary citizen walking
along the Metropolitan Expressway, and especially not a young woman, wearing a miniskirt
and spike heels, with green sunglasses and a smile on her lips. Anyone who did not look
must have something wrong with them.
The majority of vehicles stuck on the roadway were large trucks. They were bringing all
sorts of goods from all sorts of places to Tokyo. The drivers had probably been at the wheel
all night. And now they were stuck in this fated morning traffic jam. They were bored, fed up,
and tired. All they wanted was to take a bath, shave, lie down, and go to sleep. They stared
blankly at Aomame, as if they were looking at some unfamiliar animal. They were too tired to
engage with her positively.
Wedged between these many trucks, like a graceful antelope caught in a herd of clumsy
rhinoceros, was a silver Mercedes-Benz coupe. Its beautiful body, looking fresh from the factory,
reflected the newly risen morning sun. Its hubcaps had been color coordinated with the
body. The car was an import, with its steering wheel on the left side. The drivers window was
down, and a well-dressed middle-aged woman was looking straight at Aomame. Givenchy
sunglasses. Hands visible on the steering wheel. Rings glittering.
The woman had a kind face, and she seemed to be worried about Aomame. She was obviously
wondering what a well-dressed young woman was doing out on the roadway of the
Metropolitan Expressway and what could have caused her to be there. She looked ready to
call out to Aomame. If asked, she might drive her anywhere she wanted to go.
Aomame took off her Ray-Bans and put them in the pocket of her suit top. Squinting in the
bright morning light, she spent some time rubbing the dents left on either side of her nose by
the glasses. She ran her tongue across her dry lips and caught the faint taste of lipstick. She
looked up at the clear sky and checked the ground under her feet once.
She opened her shoulder bag and slowly drew out the Heckler & Koch, dropping the bag
at her feet to free up her hands. With her left hand, she released the safety catch and pulled
back the slide, sending a round into the chamber. She performed the sequence of movements
rapidly and precisely with a few satisfying clicks. She lightly shook the gun in her hand,
testing its weight. The gun itself weighed 480 grams, to which the weight of seven bullets was
added. No question, its loaded. She could tell by the difference in weight.
A smile still played around Aomames straight lips. People were focused on her actions.
No one was surprised to see her pull a gun out of her bag or at least they did not show surprise
on their faces. Maybe they didnt believe it was a real gun. It is, though, Aomame told
them mentally.
Next she turned the gun upward and thrust the muzzle into her mouth. Now it was aimed
directly at her cerebrum the gray labyrinth where consciousness resided.
The words of a prayer came to her automatically, with no need to think. She intoned them
quickly with the muzzle of the gun still in her mouth. Nobody can hear what I am saying, Im
sure. But so what? As long as God can hear me. When a little girl, Aomame could hardly understand
the phrases she was reciting, but the words had permeated her to the core. She had
to be sure to recite them before her school lunches, all by herself, but in a loud voice, unconcerned
about the curious stares and scornful laughter of the other children. The important
thing is that God is watching you. No one can avoid his gaze.
Big Brother is watching you.
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may
Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our
humble pathways. Amen.
The nice-looking middle-aged lady at the wheel of the brand-new Mercedes-Benz was still
looking straight at Aomame. Like the other people watching, she seemed unable to grasp the
meaning of the gun that Aomame was holding. If she understood, she would have to look
away from me, Aomame thought. If she sees my brain splatter in all directions, she probably
wont be able to eat her lunch today or her dinner. I wont blame you if you look the other
way, Aomame said to her wordlessly. Im not over here brushing my teeth. Ive got this German-made
automatic pistol, a Heckler & Koch, shoved in my mouth. Ive said my prayers.
You should know what that means.
Here is my advice to you important advice. Dont look at anything. Just drive your brandnew
Mercedes-Benz straight home your beautiful home, where your precious husband and
children are waiting and go on living your peaceful life. This is not something that someone
like you should see. This is an ugly pistol, a real gun, loaded with seven ugly 9mm bullets.
And, as Anton Chekhov said, once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired at some point.
That is what we mean by a story. 
But the middle-aged lady would not look away from Aomame. Resigned, Aomame gave
her head a little shake. Sorry, but I cant wait any longer. My time is up. Lets get the show on
the road.
Put a tiger in your tank.
 Ho ho, said the keeper of the beat.
 Ho ho, the six other Little People joined in.
 Tengo! said Aomame, and started to squeeze the trigger.
1Q84
CHAPTER 24
Tengo
AS LONG AS THIS WARMTH REMAINS
Tengo took a morning special express train from Tokyo Station to Tateyama, changed
there to a local, and rode it as far as Chikura. The morning was clear and beautiful. There
was no wind, and there was hardly a wave to be seen on the ocean. Summer was long gone.
He wore a thin cotton jacket over a short-sleeved shirt, which turned out to be exactly right for
the weather. Without bathers, the seaside town was surprisingly deserted and quiet. Like a
real town of cats, Tengo thought.
He had a simple lunch by the station and took a taxi to the sanatorium, arriving just after
one oclock. The same middle-aged nurse greeted him at the reception desk the woman
who had taken his phone call the night before. Nurse Tamura. She remembered Tengo and
was somewhat friendlier than she had been the first time, even managing a little smile, perhaps
influenced by Tengos nicer outfit.
She guided Tengo first to the lunchroom and poured him a cup of coffee. Please wait
here. The doctor will come to see you, she said. Ten minutes later, his fathers doctor appeared,
drying his hands with a towel. Flecks of white were beginning to appear among the
stiff hairs of his head. He was probably around fifty. He was not wearing a white jacket, as if
he had just completed some task. Instead he wore a gray sweatshirt, matching gray sweatpants,
and an old pair of jogging shoes. He was well built and looked less like a doctor than a
college sports coach who had never been able to rise past Division II.
The doctor told Tengo pretty much the same thing he had said on the phone the night before.
Judging from his expression and his words, he seemed genuinely saddened when he
said, Im sorry to say there is almost nothing we can do for him medically at this point. The
only thing left to do is let him hear his sons voice. It might enhance his will to live. 
 Do you think he can hear what people say? Tengo asked.
The doctor frowned thoughtfully as he sipped his lukewarm green tea. To tell you the
truth, not even I know the answer to that. Your father is in a coma. He shows absolutely no
physical response when we speak to him. There have been cases, though, where someone in
a deep coma has been able to hear people talking and sometimes even understand what was
being said. 
 But you cant tell by looking at them. 
 No, we cant. 
 I can stay here until six thirty tonight, Tengo said. Ill sit with him all day and talk to him
as much as possible. Lets see if it does any good. 
 Please let me know if he shows any kind of reaction, the doctor said. Ill be around here
somewhere. 
A young nurse showed Tengo to his fathers room. She wore a name badge that read
 Adachi. His father had been moved to a private room in the new wing, the wing for more serious
patients. In other words, the gears had advanced one more notch. There was nowhere
else to move after this. It was a drab little room, long and narrow, and more than half filled by
the bed. Beyond the window stretched the pine woods that acted as a windbreak. The dense
grove looked like a wall, separating the sanatorium from the vitality of the real world. The
nurse went out, leaving Tengo alone with his father, who lay on his back, sound asleep.
Tengo sat on a small wooden stool by the bed and looked at his father.
Near the head of the bed stood an intravenous feeding device, the liquid in its plastic bag
being sent into a vein in his fathers arm through a tube. A catheter had been inserted to catch
urine, surprisingly little of which had been collected. His father seemed to have shrunk another
size or two since the month before. His emaciated cheeks and chin wore perhaps two
days growth of white beard. His father had always had sunken eyes, but now they were more
deeply set than ever. Tengo couldnt help wondering if it might be necessary to pull the eyeballs
up from their holes with some kind of medical device. His eyelids were tightly shut at the
bottoms of those caverns like lowered shutters, and his mouth was slightly open. Tengo
couldnt hear his fathers breathing, but, bringing his ear close, he could feel the slight movement
of air. Life was being quietly maintained there at a minimal level.
The doctors words on the phone last night like a train, dropping its speed little by little
as it begins to stop began to feel terribly real to Tengo. This father train was gradually
lowering its speed, waiting for its momentum to run down, and preparing to come to a quiet
stop in the middle of an empty prairie. At least there was no longer a single passenger
aboard, no one to raise a complaint even if the train came to a halt. That was the only salvation.
Tengo felt he ought to start talking to his father, but he did not know what he should say,
how he should say it, or what tone of voice to use. All right, say something, he told himself,
but no meaningful words came to mind.
 Father, he ventured in a whisper, but no other words followed.
He got up from the stool, approached the window, and looked at the well-tended lawn and
garden and the sky stretching high above the pine woods. A solitary crow sat perched on a
large antenna, glaring at the area with disdain as it caught the sunlight. A combination transistor
radio/alarm clock had been placed near the head of the bed, but his father required
neither of its functions.
 Its me Tengo. I just came from Tokyo. Can you hear me? he said, standing at the window,
looking down at his father, who did not respond at all. After vibrating in the air for a moment,
the sound of his voice was absorbed without a trace by the void that had come to occupy
the room.
This man is trying to die, Tengo thought. He could tell by looking at the deeply sunken
eyes. He made up his mind to end his life, and then he closed his eyes and went into a deep
sleep. No matter what I say to him, no matter how much I try to rouse him, it will be impossible
to overturn his resolution. Medically speaking, he was still alive, but life had already
ended for this man. He no longer had the reason or the will to continue to struggle. All that
Tengo could do was respect his fathers wishes and let him die in peace. The look on his face
was utterly tranquil. He did not seem to be suffering at all. As the doctor had said on the
phone, that was the one salvation.
Still, Tengo had to speak to his father, if only because he had promised the doctor that he
would do so. The doctor seemed to be caring for his father with genuine warmth. Secondly,
there was the question of what he thought of as courtesy. Tengo had not had a full-fledged
conversation with his father for a very long time, not even small talk. The truth was that Tengo
had probably been in middle school the last time they had had a real conversation. Tengo
hardly ever went near their home after that, and even when he had some business that required
him to go to the house, he did his best to avoid seeing his father.
Now, having made a de facto confession to Tengo that he was not his real father, the man
could lay down his burden at last. He looked in some way relieved. That means that each of
us was able to lay down his burden at the last possible moment.
Here was the man who had raised Tengo as his own son, listing him as such in the family
register despite the absence of blood ties, and raising him until he was old enough to fend for
himself. I owe him that much. I have some obligation to tell him how I have lived my life thus
far, as well as some of the thoughts I have had in the course of living that life, Tengo thought.
No, its not so much an obligation as a courtesy. It doesnt matter if the things I am saying
reach his ears or whether telling him serves any purpose.
Tengo sat on the stool by the bed once again and began to narrate a summary of his life
to date, beginning from the time he left the house and started living in the judo dorm when he
entered high school. From that time onward, he and his father had lost nearly all points of
contact, creating a situation in which neither had the least concern for what the other was doing.
Tengo felt he should probably fill in such a large vacuum as best he could.
Ultimately, however, there was almost nothing for Tengo to tell about his life in high
school. He had entered a private high school in Chiba Prefecture that had a strong reputation
for its judo program. He could easily have gotten into a better school, but the conditions
offered him by that school were the best. They waived his tuition and allowed him to live in the
dormitory, providing him with three meals a day. Tengo became a star member of the judo
team, studied between practice sessions (he could maintain some of the highest grades in his
class without having to study too hard), and he earned extra money during vacations by doing
assorted manual labor with his teammates. With so much to do, he found himself pressed for
time day after day. There was little to say about his three years of high school other than that
it was a busy time for him. It had not been especially enjoyable, nor had he made any close
friends. He never liked the school, which had a lot of rules. He did what he had to do in order
to get along with his teammates, but they werent really on the same wavelength. In all honesty,
Tengo never once felt totally committed to judo as a sport. He needed to win in order to
support himself, so he devoted a lot of energy to practice in order not to betray others expectations.
It was less a sport to him than a practical means of survival a job. He spent the three
years of high school wanting to graduate so that he could begin living a more serious life as
soon as possible.
Even after entering college, however, he continued with judo, living basically the same life
as before. Keeping up his judo meant he could live in the dormitory and thus be spared any
difficulty in finding a place to sleep or food to eat (minimal though it was). He also received a
scholarship, though it was nowhere nearly enough to get by on. His major was mathematics,
of course. He studied fairly hard and earned good grades in college, too. His adviser even
urged him to continue into graduate school. As he advanced into the third year and then the
fourth year of college, however, his passion for mathematics as an academic discipline rapidly
cooled. He still liked mathematics as much as ever, but he had no desire to make a profession
of research in the field. It was the same as it had been with judo. It was fine as an amateur
endeavor, but he had neither the personality nor the drive to stake his whole life on it,
which he well knew.
As his interest in mathematics waned and his college graduation drew near, his reasons
for continuing judo evaporated and he had no idea what path he should next pursue. His life
seemed to lose its center of gravity not that he had ever really had one, but up to that point,
other people had placed certain demands and expectations upon him, and responding to
them had kept him busy. Once those demands and expectations disappeared, however, there
was nothing left worth talking about. His life had no purpose. He had no close friends. He was
drifting and unable to concentrate his energies on anything.
He had a number of girlfriends during his college years, and a lot of sexual experience. He
was not handsome in the usual sense. He was not a particularly sociable person, nor was he
especially amusing or witty. He was always hard up for money and wasnt at all stylish. But
just as the smell of certain kinds of plants attracts moths, Tengo was able to attract certain
kinds of women and very strongly, at that.
He discovered this fact around the time he turned twenty (which was just about the time
he began losing his enthusiasm for mathematics as an academic discipline). Without doing
anything about it himself, he always had women who were interested enough to take the initiative
in approaching him. They wanted him to hold them in his big arms or at least they never
resisted him when he did so. He couldnt understand how this worked at first and reacted
with a good deal of confusion, but eventually he got the hang of it and learned how to exploit
this ability, after which Tengo was rarely without a woman. He never had a positive feeling of
love toward any of them, however. He just went with them and had sex with them. They filled
each others emptiness. Strange as it may seem, he never once felt a strong emotional attraction
to any of the women who had a strong emotional attraction to him.
Tengo recounted these developments to his unconscious father, choosing his words
slowly and carefully at first, more smoothly as time went by, and finally with some passion. He
even spoke as honestly as he could about sexual matters. Theres no point getting embarrassed
about such things now, he told himself. His father lay faceup, unmoving, his deep
sleep unbroken, his breathing unchanged.
A nurse came before three oclock, changed the plastic bag of intravenous fluid, replaced
the bag of collected urine with an empty one, and took his fathers temperature. She was a
strongly built, full-bosomed woman in her late thirties. The name on her tag read Omura. 
Her hair was pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head, with a ballpoint pen thrust into it.
 Has there been any change in his condition? she asked Tengo while recording numbers
on a clipboard with the ballpoint pen.
 None at all. Hes been fast asleep the whole time, Tengo said.
 Please push that button if anything happens, she said, pointing toward the call switch
hanging over the head of the bed. Then she shoved the ballpoint pen back into her hair.
 I see. 
Shortly after the nurse went out, there was a quick knock on the door and bespectacled
Nurse Tamura poked her head in.
 Would you like to have a bite to eat? You could go to the lunchroom. 
 Thanks, but Im not hungry yet, Tengo said.
 How is your father doing? 
Tengo nodded. Ive been talking to him the whole time. I cant tell whether he can hear
me or not. 
 Its good to keep talking to them, she said. She smiled encouragingly. Dont worry, Im
sure he can hear you. 
She closed the door softly. Now it was just Tengo and his father in the little room again.
Tengo went on talking.
He graduated from college and started teaching mathematics at a cram school in the city.
No longer was he a math prodigy from whom people expected great things, nor was he a
promising member of a judo team. He was a mere cram school instructor. But that very fact
made Tengo happy. He could catch his breath at last. For the first time in his life, he was free:
he could live his own life as he wanted to without having to worry about anyone else.
Eventually, he started writing fiction. He entered a few of his finished stories in competitions,
which led him to become acquainted with a quirky editor named Komatsu. This editor
gave him the job of rewriting Air Chrysalis, a story by a seventeen-year-old girl named FukaEri
(whose real name was Eriko Fukada). Fuka-Eri had created the story, but she had no talent
for writing, so Tengo took on that task. He did such a good job that the piece won a debut
writers prize from a magazine and then was subsequently published as a book that became a
huge bestseller. Because the book was so widely discussed, the selection committee for the
Akutagawa Prize, the most prestigious literary award, kept their distance from it. So while it
did not win that particular prize, the book sold so many copies that Komatsu, in his typically
brusque way, said, Who the hell needs that? 
Tengo had no confidence that his story was reaching his fathers ears, and even if it was,
he had no way of telling whether or not his father was understanding it. He felt his words had
no impact and he could see no response. Even if his words were getting through, Tengo had
no way of knowing if his father was even interested. Maybe the old man just found them annoying.
Maybe he was thinking, Who gives a damn about other peoples life stories? Just let
me sleep! All Tengo could do, though, was continue to say whatever came to his mind. He
couldnt think of anything better to do while crammed into this little room with his father.
His father never made the slightest movement. His eyes were closed tightly at the bottom
of those two deep, dark hollows. He might as well have been waiting for winter to come and
the hollows to fill up with snow.
 I cant say that things are going all that well for the moment, but if possible Id like to
make my living by writing not just rewriting somebody elses work but writing what I want to
write, the way I want to write it. Writing and especially fiction writing is well suited to my
personality, I think. Its good to have something you want to do, and now I finally have it.
Nothing of mine has ever been published with my name on it, but that ought to happen soon
enough. Im really not a bad writer, if I do say so myself. At least one editor gives me some
credit for my talent. Im not worried on that front. 
And I seem to have the qualities needed to be a Receiver, Tengo thought of adding. So
much so that I have been drawn into the fictional world that I myself have written. But this was
no place to start talking about such complicated matters. That was a whole different story. He
decided to change the subject.
 A more pressing problem for me is that I have never been able to love anyone seriously. I
have never felt unconditional love for anyone since the day I was born, never felt that I could
give myself completely to that one person. Never once. 
Even as he said this, Tengo found himself wondering if this miserable-looking old man before
him had ever experienced loving someone with his whole heart. Perhaps he had seriously
loved Tengos mother, which may have been why he was willing to raise Tengo as his
own child, even though he knew they had no blood tie. If so, that meant he had lived a far
more spiritually fulfilling life than Tengo.
 The one possible exception is a girl I remember very well. We were in the same class in
the third and fourth grades in Ichikawa. Yes, Im talking about something that happened a
good twenty years ago. I was very strongly drawn to her. Ive thought about her all this time,
and even now I still think about her a lot. But I never really talked to her. She changed
schools, and I never saw her again. But something happened recently that made me want to
find her. I finally realized that I need her, that I want to see her and talk to her about all kinds
of things. But I havent been able to track her down. I suppose I should have started looking
for her a lot sooner. It might have been much easier then. 
Tengo fell silent, waiting for the things he had talked about so far to sink into his fathers
mind or, rather, to sink into his own mind. Then he started speaking again.
 Yes, I was too much of a coward where these things were concerned. The same reason
kept me from investigating my own family register. If I wanted to find out whether my mother
really died or not, I could have looked it up easily. All I had to do was go to the city hall and
look up the record. In fact, I thought about doing it any number of times. I even walked as far
as the city hall. But I couldnt make myself request the documents. I was afraid to see the
truth before my eyes. I was afraid to expose it with my own hands. And so I waited for it to
happen by itself, naturally. 
Tengo released a sigh.
 Oh well, all that aside, I should have started looking for the girl a lot sooner. I took a huge
detour. I couldnt get myself going. I just how should I put this? Im a coward when it
comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw. 
Tengo got up from the stool, went to the window, and looked out at the pine woods. The
wind had died. He couldnt hear the roar of the ocean. A large cat was crossing the garden.
Judging from its sagging middle, it was probably pregnant. It lay down at the base of a tree,
spread its legs, and started licking its belly.
Leaning against the windowsill, Tengo continued to speak to his father.
 But anyhow, lately it has begun to seem as if my life has finally started to change. I feel
that way. To tell you the truth, I hated you for a long time. From the time I was little, I used to
think that I didnt belong in such a miserable little place, that I was someone who deserved to
be in more comfortable circumstances. I felt it was unfair for you to treat me as you did. My
classmates all seemed to be living happy, satisfying lives. Kids whose gifts and talents were
far inferior to mine were having much more fun than I was every day. I used to seriously wish
that you were not my father. I imagined that this had to be some mistake; you couldnt possibly
be my real father; there couldnt possibly be any blood relationship. 
Tengo looked out of the window again at the cat. It was still absorbed in licking its swollen
belly, unaware that it was being watched. Tengo kept his gaze on the cat as he continued
talking.
 I dont feel that way anymore. Now I think that I was in the right circumstances for me and
had the right father. I really mean it. To tell you the truth, I was a useless human being, a person
of no value. In a sense, Im the one who ruined me: I did it myself. I can see that now. I
was a math prodigy when I was little, thats for sure. Even I know I had a real talent. Everybody
kept their eye on me and made a big deal over me. But ultimately, it was a talent that
had no hope of developing into anything meaningful. It was just there. I was always a big boy
and good at judo, and I always did well in the prefectural tournaments. But when I went out into
the wider world, there were lots of guys who were stronger than I was. I was never chosen
to represent my university in the national tournaments. This was a great shock to me, and for
a while I no longer knew who I was. But that was only natural, because in fact I was nobody. 
Tengo opened the bottle of mineral water he had brought with him and took a drink. Then
he sat down on the stool again.
 I told you this before, but Im grateful to you. I believe Im not your real son. Im almost
sure of it. Im grateful to you for having raised me even though we had no blood tie. Im sure it
wasnt easy for a man to raise a small child alone. Now, though, when I recall how you took
me around on your NHK collections, I feel sick at heart. I have only terrible memories of that.
But Im sure that you could think of no other way to communicate with me. How should I put
it? It was probably the best you could do. That was your only point of contact with society, and
you wanted to show me what it was like out there. I can see that now. Of course, you also calculated
that having a child with you would make it easier for you to collect the money. But that
wasnt all you had in mind, I suspect. 
Tengo paused briefly to let his words sink in and to organize his own thoughts.
 Of course, as a child, I couldnt see it that way. It was just embarrassing and painful to
me that I had to go around with you making collections while my classmates spent their
Sundays having fun. I cant tell you how much I hated it when Sundays came around. But
now, at least to some extent, I can understand what you did. Im not saying that it was right. It
left me with scars. It was hard for a child. But whats done is done. Dont let it bother you. One
good thing it did was to make me tougher. I learned firsthand that its not easy making your
way through this world. 
Tengo opened his hands and looked at his palms for a while.
 Im going to go on living one way or another. I think I can do a better job of it from now on,
without such pointless detours. I dont know what you want to do. Maybe you just want to go
on sleeping quietly, without ever waking up again. Thats what you should do if you want to. I
cant stand in your way if thats what you are hoping for. All I can do is let you go on sleeping.
In any case, I wanted to say all this to you to tell you what I have done so far in life and what
I am thinking. Maybe you would have preferred not to hear any of this, and if thats the case,
Im sorry to have inflicted it on you. Anyhow, I have nothing more to tell you. Ive pretty much
said everything I thought I ought to say. I wont bother you anymore. Now you can sleep as
much as you like. 
After five oclock, Nurse Omura, the one with the ballpoint pen in her hair, came to the
room and checked the amount of intravenous fluid in the bag. This time she did not check his
fathers temperature.
 Anything to report? she asked.
 Not really. Hes just been sleeping the whole time, Tengo answered.
The nurse nodded. The doctor will be here soon. How late can you stay here today, Mr.
Kawana? 
Tengo glanced at his watch. Ill be catching the train just before seven, so I can stay as
late as six thirty. 
The nurse wrote something on his fathers chart and put the pen back into her hair.
 Ive been talking to him all afternoon, but he doesnt seem to hear me, Tengo said.
The nurse said, If I learned anything in nursing school, its that bright words make the
eardrums vibrate brightly. They have their own bright sound. So even if the patient doesnt understand
what youre saying, his eardrums will physically vibrate on that bright wavelength.
Were taught to always talk to the patient in a big, bright voice whether he can hear you or
not. It definitely helps, whatever the logic involved. I can say that from experience. 
Tengo thought about this remark. Thank you, he said. Nurse Omura nodded lightly and,
with a few quick steps, left the room.
After that, Tengo and his father maintained a long silence. Tengo had nothing more to
say, but the silence was not an uncomfortable one for him. The afternoon light was gradually
fading, and hints of evening hung in the air. The suns last rays moved silently and stealthily
through the room.
Tengo suddenly wondered if he had said anything to his father about the two moons. He
had the feeling that he had probably not done so. Tengo was now living in a world with two
moons. Its a very strange sight, no matter how many times I see it, he wanted to say, but he
also felt that there wouldnt be much point to mentioning it. The number of moons in the sky
was of no concern to his father. This was a problem that Tengo would have to handle on his
own.
Ultimately, though, whether this world (or that world) had only one moon or two moons or
three moons, there was only one Tengo. What difference did it make? Whatever world he was
in, Tengo was just Tengo, the same person with his own unique problems and his own unique
characteristics. The real question was not in the moons but in Tengo himself.
Half an hour later, Nurse Omura came into the room again. For some reason, she no
longer had a pen in her hair. Where could it have gone? Tengo found himself strangely concerned
about the pen. Two male staff members came with her, wheeling a movable bed. Both
men were stockily built and dark-complexioned, and neither of them said a word. They might
have been foreigners.
 We have to take your father for some tests, Mr. Kawana, the nurse said. Would you like
to wait here? 
Tengo looked at the clock. Is something wrong with him? 
The nurse shook her head. No, not at all. We just dont have the testing equipment in this
room, so were taking him to where it is. Its nothing special. The doctor will probably talk to
you afterward. 
 I see. Ill wait here. 
 You could go to the lunchroom for some hot tea. You should get some rest. 
 Thank you, Tengo said.
The two men gently lifted his fathers thin body, with the intravenous tubes still attached,
and transferred him to the wheeled bed, moving the bed and intravenous stand into the corridor
with quick, practiced movements. Still they did not say a word.
 This wont take too long, the nurse said.
But his father did not return to the room for a long time. The light coming in the window
grew slowly weaker, but Tengo did not turn on the lamp. If he did so, he felt, something important
here would be lost.
An indentation remained in the bed where his father had been lying. His father now probably
weighed next to nothing, but still he had left a clear impression of his shape. Looking at
the indentation, Tengo had a strong feeling that he had been left behind in this world all alone.
He even felt that the dawn might never come again, once the sun had set tonight.
Sitting on the stool by the bed, steeped in the colors of the approaching evening, Tengo
stayed in the same position, lost in thought. Then suddenly it occurred to him that he had not
actually been thinking at all but had been aimlessly submerging himself in a vacuum. He
stood up slowly, went to the toilet, and relieved himself. After washing his face with cold water,
he dried his face with his handkerchief and looked at himself in the mirror. Then, recalling
what the nurse had said, he went downstairs to the lunchroom and drank some hot green tea.
His father had still not been brought back to the room when Tengo returned there after
twenty minutes downstairs. Instead, what he found, in the hollow that his father had left in the
bed, was a white object that he had never seen before.
Nearly five feet in length, it had smooth, beautiful curves. At first sight, it seemed to be
shaped like a peanut shell, its entire surface covered with something like short, soft down that
emitted a faint but even glow. In the rapidly darkening room, the pale bluish light enveloped
the object softly. The thing lay still in the bed, as if to fill the individual space that his father
had temporarily left behind. Tengo halted in the doorway, hand on the knob, staring at the
mysterious object. His lips seemed to move somewhat, but no words emerged from them.
What is this thing? Tengo asked himself as he stood there, frozen to the spot, eyes narrowed.
How had this come to be here in his fathers place? No doctor or nurse had brought it
in, that much was obvious. Around it hovered some special kind of air that was out of sync
with reality.
Then it suddenly hit him: This is an air chrysalis!
This was the first time that Tengo had ever seen an air chrysalis. He had described some
in great detail in the novella, but of course he had never seen a real one with his own eyes,
and he had never thought of them as things that actually existed. But what he saw before him
now was the very object his mind had imagined and his words had described: an air chrysalis.
He experienced such a violent sense of déjà vu that it felt as if a metal band had been
tightened around his stomach. Nevertheless, he stepped inside the room and closed the door.
Better not let anyone see him. He swallowed the saliva that had been collecting in his mouth,
making a strange sound in his throat.
Tengo crept toward the bed, stopping when there was no more than a yard between him
and it, examining the air chrysalis in greater detail. Now he could be sure that it looked exactly
like the picture he had drawn of an air chrysalis at the time he wrote the story. He had done a
simple pencil sketch before attempting to create a description of an air chrysalis, first putting
the image in his mind into visual form and then transferring it into words. He had left the picture
pinned to the wall over his desk while he rewrote Air Chrysalis. It was shaped more like a
cocoon than a chrysalis, but air chrysalis was the only name by which Fuka-Eri (and Tengo
himself) could possibly call the thing.
During his revision, Tengo had created most of the external features of an air chrysalis
and added them to his descriptions, including the gracefully narrowed waist in the middle and
the swelling, round, decorative protuberance at either end. These came entirely from Tengos
mind. There had been no mention of them in Fuka-Eris original narrative. To Fuka-Eri, an air
chrysalis was simply that an air chrysalis, something midway between an object and a
concept and she seemed to feel little need to describe its appearance in words. Tengo had
to invent all the details himself, and the air chrysalis that he was now seeing had these same
details exactly: the waist in the middle and the lovely protuberances at either end.
This is the very air chrysalis I sketched and described, Tengo thought. The same thing
happened with the two moons. For some reason, every detail he had put into writing had now
become a reality. Cause and effect were jumbled together.
All four of Tengos limbs felt a strange, nervous, twisting sensation, and his flesh began to
crawl. He could no longer distinguish how much of this present world was reality and how
much of it fiction. How much of it belonged to Fuka-Eri, how much was Tengos, and how
much was ours ?
A small tear had opened at the very top of the air chrysalis: the chrysalis was about to
break in two. The gap that had formed was perhaps an inch long. If he bent over and brought
his eye to the opening, he could probably see what was inside. But Tengo could not find the
courage to do so. He sat down on the stool by the bed, staring at the air chrysalis while his
shoulders rose and fell imperceptibly as he struggled to bring his breathing under control. The
white chrysalis lay there still, emitting its faint glow, quietly waiting, like a mathematical proposition,
for Tengo to approach it.
What could possibly be inside the chrysalis?
What was it trying to show him?
In the novella Air Chrysalis, the young girl protagonist discovers her own other self inside.
Her dohta. She leaves her dohta behind and runs away from the community alone. But what
could possibly be inside of Tengos air chrysalis? (Tengo felt intuitively that this air chrysalis
must be his own.) Was it something good or something evil? Was it something that would
guide him somewhere or something that would stand in his way? And who could possibly
have sent this air chrysalis to him here?
Tengo knew quite well that he was being asked to act. But he could not find the courage
that would enable him to stand and look inside the chrysalis. He was afraid. The thing inside
the chrysalis might wound him or greatly change his life. The thought caused Tengo to grow
stiff, sitting on the little stool like someone who has lost a place of refuge. He was feeling the
same kind of fear that had kept him from looking up his parents family register or searching
for Aomame. He did not want to know what was inside the air chrysalis that had been pre-
pared for him. If he could get by without knowing what was in there, that was how he wanted
to walk out of this room. If possible, he wanted to leave this room now, get on the train, and
go back to Tokyo. He wanted to close his eyes, block his ears, and burrow himself in his own
little world.
But Tengo also knew that this was impossible. If I leave here without seeing what is inside,
Ill regret it for the rest of my life. Ill probably never be able to forgive myself for having
averted my eyes from that something, whatever it might be.
Tengo remained seated on the stool for a long time, unsure of what he should do, unable
to go either forward or back. Folding his hands on his knees, he stared at the air chrysalis on
the bed, glancing occasionally out the window, as if hoping to escape. The sun had set, and a
pale afterglow was slowly enveloping the pine woods. Still there was no wind, nor could he
hear the sound of the waves. It was almost mysteriously quiet. And as the rooms darkness
increased, the light emitted by the white object became deeper and more vivid. The chrysalis
itself seemed like a living thing to Tengo, with its soft glow of life, its unique warmth, its nearly
imperceptible vibration.
Finally Tengo made up his mind, stood up from the stool, and leaned over the bed. Running
away now was out of the question. He couldnt live forever like a frightened child, averting
his eyes from the things before him. Only by learning the truth whatever that truth might
be could people be given the right kind of power.
The tear in the air chrysalis was unchanged, neither bigger nor smaller than before.
Squinting, he looked in through the opening, but he could not see very far inside. It was dark
in there, and a thin membrane seemed to be stretched across the space inside. Tengo steadied
his breathing and made sure his hands were not shaking. Then he put his fingers into the
inch-long opening and slowly spread it apart, as if opening the two leaves of a double sliding
door. It opened easily with little resistance and no sound, as if it had been waiting for his
hands.
Now the light of the air chrysalis itself was softly illuminating its interior, like light reflected
from snow. He was able to see inside, however dimly.
What Tengo found in there was a beautiful ten-year-old girl.
She was sound asleep. She wore a simple white dress or nightgown free of decoration,
her small hands folded on top of her flat chest. Tengo knew instantly who this was. She had a
slender face, and her lips formed a straight line, as if drawn with a ruler. Perfectly straight
bangs lay over a smooth, well-shaped forehead. Her little nose seemed to be searching for
something, aimed tentatively upward into space. Her cheekbones stretched slightly to either
side. Her eyes were closed, but Tengo knew what they would look like when they opened.
How could he not know? He had lived for twenty years holding the image of this girl in his
heart.
 Aomame, Tengo said aloud.
The girl was sound asleep a deep and utterly natural sleep, with the faintest possible
breathing. The beating of her heart was too ephemeral to be heard. She did not have enough
strength to raise her eyelids. The time for that had not come yet. Her conscious mind was not
here but rather somewhere far away. Still, the word that Tengo had spoken was able to impart
the slightest vibration to her eardrums. It was her name.
Aomame heard the call from far away. Tengo, she thought. She formed the word clearly
with her mouth, though it didnt move the lips of the girl in the air chrysalis or reach Tengos
ears.
As if his soul had been snatched, Tengo stared insatiably at the girl, taking one shallow
breath after another. Her face looked totally peaceful, without the slightest shadow of sadness
or pain or anxiety. Her thin, little lips seemed ready to begin moving at any moment to form
meaningful words. Her eyelids appeared ready to open. Tengo prayed from the heart for this
to happen. His prayer took no precise words, but his heart spun this formless prayer and sent
it out into space. The girl, however, showed no sign of waking.
 Aomame, Tengo called again.
There were things he had to say to Aomame, feelings he had to convey to her. He had
been living with them, keeping them inside, for years. But all that Tengo could do now was
speak her name.
 Aomame, he called.
He dared then to reach out and touch the hand of the girl who lay in the air chrysalis, placing
his big grown-up hand on hers. This was the little hand that had so tightly grasped the
hand of his ten-year-old self. This hand had come straight for him, wanting him, giving him encouragement.
The unmistakable warmth of life was there in the hand of the girl asleep inside
the pale glow. Aomame came here to convey her warmth to me, Tengo thought. That was the
meaning of the package she handed to me in that classroom twenty years ago. Now at last he
was able to open the package and view its contents.
 Aomame, Tengo said. I will find you, no matter what. 
After the air chrysalis had gradually lost its glow and disappeared, as if sucked into the
darkness, and the young Aomame had disappeared as well, Tengo found himself unable to
judge whether all of this had really happened. But his fingers retained the touch and the intimate
warmth of her little hand.
This warmth will almost surely never fade, Tengo thought, sitting aboard the special express
train heading for Tokyo. Tengo had lived for the past twenty years with the memory of
her touch. He should be able to go on living with this new warmth.
The express train traced a huge arc along the ocean shore beneath the towering mountains,
until it reached a point along the coast where the two moons were visible, hanging side
by side in the sky above the quiet sea. They stood out sharply the big, yellow moon and the
small, green one vivid in outline but their distance impossible to grasp. In their light, the
oceans tiny ripples shone mysteriously like scattered shards of glass. As the train continued
around the curve, the two moons moved slowly across the window, leaving those delicate
shards behind, like wordless hints, until they disappeared from view.
Once the moons were gone, the warmth returned to Tengos chest. Faint as it was, the
warmth was surely there, conveying a promise like a lamp a traveler sees in the far distance.
I will go on living in this world, Tengo thought, closing his eyes. He did not know yet how
this world was put together or under what principles it moved, and he had no way of predicting
what would happen there. But that was all right. He didnt have to be afraid. Whatever
might be waiting for him, he would survive in this world with two moons, and he would find the
path he needed to take as long as he did not forget this warmth, as long as he did not lose
this feeling in his heart.
He kept his eyes closed like this for a long time. Eventually, he opened his eyes to stare
into the darkness of the early-autumn night beyond the window. The ocean had long since
disappeared.
I will find Aomame, Tengo swore to himself again, no matter what happens, no matter
what kind of world it may be, no matter who she may be.
1Q84
BOOK 3 OCTOBER-DECEMBER
1Q84
CHAPTER 1
Ushikawa
SOMETHING KICKING
AT THE FAR EDGES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
 I wonder if you would mind not smoking, Mr. Ushikawa, the shorter man said.
Ushikawa gazed steadily at the man seated across the desk from him, then down at the
Seven Stars cigarette between his fingers. He hadnt lit it yet.
 Id really appreciate it, the man added politely.
Ushikawa looked puzzled, as if he were wondering how such an object possibly found its
way into his hand.
 Sorry about that, he said. I wont light up. I just took it out without thinking. 
The mans chin moved up and down, perhaps a half inch, but his gaze didnt waver. His
eyes remained fixed on Ushikawas. Ushikawa stuck the cigarette back in its box, the box in a
drawer.
The taller of the two men, the one with a ponytail, stood in the doorway, leaning so lightly
against the door frame that it was hard to tell if he was actually touching it. He stared at Ushikawa
as if he were a stain on the wall. What a creepy pair, Ushikawa thought. This was the
third time he had met with these men, and they made him uneasy every time.
Ushikawas cramped office had a single desk, and the shorter of the two men, the one
with a buzz cut, sat across from him. He was the one who did the talking. Ponytail didnt say a
word. Like one of those stone guardian dogs at the entrance to a Shinto shrine, he stood
stock-still, not moving an inch, watching Ushikawa.
 It has been three weeks, Buzzcut noted.
Ushikawa picked up his desk calendar, checked what was written on it, and nodded.
 Correct. It has been exactly three weeks since we last met. 
 And in the meantime you havent reported to us even once. As Ive mentioned before, Mr.
Ushikawa, every moment is precious. We have no time to waste. 
 I completely understand, Ushikawa replied, fiddling with his gold lighter in place of the cigarette.
 Theres no time to waste. I am well aware of this. 
Buzzcut waited for Ushikawa to go on.
 The thing is, Ushikawa said, I dont like to talk in fits and starts. A little of this, a little of
that. I would like to wait until I start to see the big picture and things begin to fall into place
and I can see whats behind all this. Half-baked ideas can only lead to trouble. I know this
sounds selfish, but thats the way I do things. 
Buzzcut gazed coolly at Ushikawa. Ushikawa knew the man didnt think much of him, not
that this really worried him much. As far as he could recall, no one had ever had a good im-
pression of him. He was used to it. His parents and siblings had never liked him, and neither
had his teachers or classmates. It was the same with his wife and children. If someone did
like him, now then he would be concerned. But the other way around didnt faze him.
 Mr. Ushikawa, we would like to respect your way of doing things. And I believe we have
done that. So far. But things are different this time. Im sorry to say we dont have the luxury of
waiting until we know all the facts. 
 I understand, Ushikawa said, but I doubt youve just been sitting back all this time waiting
for me to get in touch. I suspect youve been running your own investigations? 
Buzzcut didnt respond. His lips remained pressed in a tight horizontal line, and his expression
didnt give anything away. But Ushikawa could tell that he wasnt far from the truth.
Over the past three weeks, their organization had geared up, and, although they had probably
used different tactics from Ushikawa, they had been searching for the woman. But they must
not have found anything, which is why they had turned up again in Ushikawas office.
 It takes a thief to catch a thief, Ushikawa said, spreading his hands wide, as if disclosing
some fascinating secret. Try to hide something, and this thief can sniff it out. I know Im not
the most pleasant-looking person, but I do have a nose for things. I can follow the faintest
scent to the very end. Because Im a thief myself. I have to do things my way, at my own
pace. I completely understand that time is pressing, but I would like you to wait a little longer.
You have to be patient, otherwise the whole thing may collapse. 
Ushikawa toyed with his lighter. Buzzcuts eyes patiently followed Ushikawas movements,
and then he looked up.
 I would appreciate it if you would tell me what youve found, even if its incomplete. Granted,
you have your own way of doing things, but if I dont take something concrete back to my
superiors, well be in a tough spot. I think youre in a bit of a precarious situation yourself, Mr.
Ushikawa. 
These guys really are up a creek, Ushikawa realized. The two of them were martial arts
experts, which is why they were selected to be Leaders bodyguards. Despite that, Leader
had been murdered right under their noses. Not that there was actually any evidence that he
had been murdered several doctors in the religion had examined the body and found no external
injuries. But medical equipment within the religion was rudimentary at best. And time
was of the essence. If a thorough, legal autopsy had been performed by a trained pathologist,
they might very well have discovered evidence of foul play, but it was too late now. The body
had been secretly disposed of within the Sakigake compound.
At any rate, these two bodyguards had failed in their assignment to protect Leader, and
their position in the religion was shaky. Their role now was to locate this woman, after she
had seemingly vanished into thin air. The order was out: leave no stone unturned until they
found her. But so far they had come up empty-handed. They were trained bodyguards, but
when it came to finding missing persons, they lacked the right skills.
 I understand where youre coming from, Ushikawa replied. And I will tell you some
things Ive discovered. Not the whole story, but I can reveal parts of it. 
Buzzcut sat there for a while, his eyes narrowed. And then he nodded. That would be
fine. We have uncovered a few details ourselves, things you may already be aware of, or perhaps
not. We should share whatever information we have. 
Ushikawa put the lighter down and tented his fingers on top of the desk.
 The young woman, Aomame, he began, was asked to come to a suite at the Hotel Okura,
and helped Leader to relax his muscles by working his body through a series of stretching
exercises. This was at the beginning of September, on the evening of that tremendous
thunderstorm. Aomame treated him for around an hour in a separate room, then left Leader
while he slept. She told you to let him sleep undisturbed for two hours, and you followed her
instructions. But Leader wasnt asleep. He was already dead. There were no external injuries,
and it appeared to be a heart attack. Right after this, the woman vanished. She had cleared
out of her apartment beforehand. The place was empty. And the next day her resignation letter
arrived at the sports club. Everything seemed to follow a preset plan. The inevitable conclusion
is that this Miss Aomame was the one who murdered Leader. 
Buzzcut nodded. It all sounded correct to him.
 Your goal is to get to the bottom of what actually occurred, Ushikawa added. Whatever
it takes, you need to catch this woman. 
 If this Aomame really is the one who killed Leader, we need to know why, and whos behind
it. 
Ushikawa looked down at his ten fingers resting on the desk, as if they were some curious
object he had never set eyes on before. He raised his head and looked at the man across
from him.
 Youve already run a background check on Aomames family, correct? All of her family
members are devout members of the Witnesses. Her parents are still quite active and they
have continued to proselytize door to door. Her older brother, who is thirty-four, works at the
religion headquarters in Odawara. He is married and has two children. His wife is also a devout
Witness. Aomame is the only one in the family who left the religion an apostate, they
called her and she was essentially disowned. I have found no evidence that the family has
had any contact with her for nearly the last twenty years. I think its impossible her family
would hide her. At the age of eleven, she cut all ties with her family, and has been on her own
pretty much ever since. She lived with her uncle for a while, but since she entered high school
she has effectively been independent. Quite an impressive feat. And quite a strong-willed wo-
man. 
Buzzcut didnt say a word. He might have already had all this information.
 There is no way that the Witnesses are involved, Ushikawa went on. They are well
known to be pacifists, following the principle of nonresistance. Its not possible that their organization
itself was aiming to take Leaders life. On that we can be agreed, I think. 
Buzzcut nodded. The Witnesses arent involved in this. That much I know. Just to be
sure, though, we had a talk with her brother. We took every possible precaution. But he didnt
know anything. 
 By every possible precaution you dont mean ripping off his fingernails, do you? 
Buzzcut ignored the question.
 Dont look so upset, Ushikawa said. Im joking. Im sure her brother knew nothing about
her actions or her whereabouts. Im a born pacifist myself and would never do something so
harsh, but that much I can figure out. Aomame has nothing to do with either her family or the
Witnesses. Still, she couldnt have pulled off something this complicated on her own. Things
were carefully arranged, and she just followed the plan. And that was also a pretty nimble
vanishing act she pulled. She had to have a lot of help and a generous amount of funding.
Theres got to be someone or some organization who is backing her, someone who
wanted Leader dead. Theyre the ones that plotted all this. Agreed? 
Buzzcut nodded. Generally speaking, yes. 
 But theres no clue what sort of organization were talking about, Ushikawa said. I assume
you checked out her friends and acquaintances? Buzzcut silently nodded.
 And let me guess you found no friends to speak of, Ushikawa said. No friends, no
boyfriend. She has a few acquaintances at work, but outside of work she doesnt hang out
with anybody. At least I wasnt able to find any evidence of her having any close relationship
with anyone. Why would that be? She is a young, healthy, decent-looking woman. 
Ushikawa glanced at Ponytail, standing by the door, seemingly frozen in time. He was
devoid of all expression to begin with, so what was there to change? Does this guy even have
a name? Ushikawa wondered. He wouldnt be surprised if he didnt.
 You two are the only ones who have actually seen Miss Aomame, Ushikawa said. How
about it? Did you notice anything unusual about her? 
Buzzcut shook his head slightly. As you said, she is a fairly attractive young woman. Not
beautiful enough to turn heads, though. A very quiet, calm person. She seemed quite confident
in her abilities as a physical therapist. But nothing else really leapt out at us. Its strange,
in fact, how little of an impression her outward appearance made. I cant even remember
much about her face. 
Ushikawa again glanced over at Ponytail by the door. Perhaps he had something to add?
But he didnt look like he was about to open his mouth.
Ushikawa looked back at Buzzcut. Im sure you checked out Miss Aomames phone record
for the past few months? 
Buzzcut shook his head. We havent done that yet. 
 You should, Ushikawa smiled. Its definitely worth checking out. People call all sorts of
places and get all sorts of calls. Investigate a persons phone records and you get a good
idea of the kind of life they lead. Miss Aomame is no exception. Its no easy thing to get ahold
of private phone records, but it can be done. It takes a thief to catch one, right? 
Buzzcut was silent, waiting for him to continue.
 In looking over Miss Aomames phone records, several facts came to light. Quite unusually
for a woman, she doesnt like talking on the phone. There werent so many calls, and
those that she made didnt last long. Occasionally there were some long calls, but these are
the exception. Most of the calls were to her workplace, but since she works freelance half the
time, she also made calls related to private business in other words, appointments she
made directly with clients rather than going through the sports club desk. There were quite a
few calls like that. But as far as I could tell, none of them were suspicious. 
Ushikawa paused, and as he examined the nicotine stains on his fingers from a number of
angles, he thought about cigarettes. He lit an imaginary cigarette, inhaled the imaginary
smoke, and exhaled.
 There were two exceptions, however. Two calls were to the police. Not 911 calls, but to
the Traffic Bureau in the Shinjuku police station. And there were several calls from the station
to her. She doesnt drive, and policemen cant afford private lessons at an expensive gym. So
it must mean she has a friend working in that division. Who it is, though, I have no idea. One
other thing that bothered me is that she had several long conversations with an unknown
number. The other party always called her. She never once called them. I tried everything but
couldnt trace the number. Obviously there are numbers that can be manipulated so that the
partys name remains undisclosed. But even these, with some effort, should be traceable. I
tried my best, but I couldnt find out anything. Its locked up tight. Quite extraordinary, really. 
 This other person, then, can do things that arent ordinary. 
 Exactly. Professionals are definitely involved. 
 Another thief, Buzzcut said.
Ushikawa rubbed his bald, misshapen head with his palm, and grinned. Thats right. Another
thief and a pretty formidable one at that. 
 So at least we understand that professionals are backing her, Buzzcut commented.
 Correct. Miss Aomame is connected to some sort of organization. And this isnt some organization
run by amateurs in their spare time. 
Buzzcut lowered his eyelids halfway and studied Ushikawa. Then he turned around, toward
the door. His eyes met Ponytails, and Ponytail gave a slight single nod to indicate he
understood their conversation. Buzzcut turned his gaze back to Ushikawa.
 So? Buzzcut asked.
 So Ushikawa said, its my turn to ask you the questions. Do you have any idea which
group or organization might want to rub out Leader? 
Buzzcuts long eyebrows became one as he frowned. Three wrinkles appeared above his
nose.
 Listen, Mr. Ushikawa. Think about it. We are a religious organization. We seek a peaceful
heart and a spiritual life. We live in harmony with nature, spending our days farming and in religious
training. Who could possibly view us as an enemy? What is there to gain? 
A vague smile played around the corners of Ushikawas mouth. There are fanatics in
every area of life. Who knows what kind of ideas fanatics will come up with? 
 We have no idea who could be behind this, Buzzcut replied, his face blank, ignoring
Ushikawas sarcasm.
 What about Akebono? There are still members of that group at large, arent there? 
Buzzcut shook his head once more, this time decisively, meaning this was impossible.
Anyone connected with Akebono must have been so thoroughly crushed that there were no
fears about them. So there was no trace of Akebono left.
 Fine. So you have no idea who it could be either. The reality is, though, that some organization
somewhere targeted your Leader and took his life. Very cleverly, very efficiently. And
then they vanished, leaving nothing behind. Like smoke. 
 And we have to find out who is behind this. 
 Without getting the police involved. 
Buzzcut nodded. This is our problem, not a legal problem. 
 Fine, Ushikawa said. Understood. Youve made that clear. But theres one more thing I
would like to ask you. 
 Go ahead, Buzzcut said.
 How many people within your religion know that Leader has died? 
 There would be the two of us, Buzzcut said. And the two other people who helped transport
the body. Subordinates of mine. Only five of the council know about this. That would
make nine people. We havent told his three shrine maidens yet, but they will find out soon
enough. They serve him personally, so we cant hide it from them for very long. And then
theres you, Mr. Ushikawa. Of course you know about it too. 
 So all together, thirteen people. 
Buzzcut didnt reply.
Ushikawa sighed deeply. May I speak frankly? 
 Please do, Buzzcut said.
 I know it doesnt do much good to say this now, Ushikawa said, but when you found out
Leader was dead you should have contacted the police immediately. You should have made
his death public. This kind of major event cant be hidden forever. Any secret known by more
than ten people isnt a secret anymore. You could soon find yourself in a lot of trouble. 
Buzzcuts expression didnt change. It is not my job to decide. I just follow orders. 
 So who makes the decisions? 
No reply.
 The person who has taken over for Leader? 
Buzzcut maintained his silence.
 Fine, Ushikawa said. Someone above you instructed you to take care of Leaders
corpse behind closed doors. In your organization, orders from above cant be questioned. But
from a legal standpoint this clearly involves willful destruction and disposal of a dead body,
which is quite a serious crime. Youre aware of this, Im sure. 
Buzzcut nodded.
Ushikawa sighed deeply again. I mentioned this before, but if by some chance the police
get involved, please make it clear that I was never informed of Leaders death. Criminal
charges are the last thing I need. 
 You were never told about Leaders death, Buzzcut said. We hired you as an outside investigator
to locate a woman named Aomame, thats all. You have done nothing illegal. 
 That works, Ushikawa said.
 You know, we had no desire to have an outsider like yourself find out about Leaders
death. But youre the one who conducted the initial background check on Aomame, the one
who cleared her. So youre already involved. We need your help to locate her. And we need
you to keep the whole thing confidential. 
 Keeping secrets is what my profession is all about. There is nothing to worry about. I assure
you that no one else will ever hear about this from me. 
 If it does get out, and we find out that you were the source, this could lead to something
unpleasant. 
Ushikawa looked down at his desk again, at the ten plump fingers resting on it. He looked
surprised to discover that these fingers were his.
 Something unpleasant, he repeated, and looked up.
Buzzcuts eyes narrowed slightly. Above all we have to keep Leaders death a secret.
And were not concerned about the means we use to accomplish this. 
 I will keep your secret. Rest assured, Ushikawa said. So far, weve worked together perfectly
well. Ive done a number of things behind the scenes that would have been hard for you
to do openly. The work hasnt always been easy, but the compensation is more than adequate.
So okay double zippers on my mouth. I have no religious beliefs, but Leader helped
me personally, so I am doing all I possibly can to locate Miss Aomame. I will do my utmost to
uncover what is behind this. And Im starting to see some progress. So please, be patient for
just a while longer. Before too long, I should have some good news. 
Buzzcut shifted ever so slightly in his chair. Standing by the door, Ponytail shifted in tandem,
moving his weight to his other leg.
 Is this all the information youre able to share? Buzzcut asked.
Ushikawa mulled this over. As I said, Miss Aomame called the Traffic Bureau of the Shinjuku
Metropolitan Police Precinct twice, and the other party called her a number of times. I
dont know the other partys name yet. Its the police. I cant just ask them. But an idea did
flash through this inept brain of mine. There was something I remembered about the Traffic
Bureau in the Shinjuku Precinct. I thought about it a lot, wondering what it was that was clinging
to the edges of my pathetic memory. It took quite some time before it came to me. Its no
fun growing old, no fun at all. The drawers where you store memories get harder to open. I
used to be able to just yank them open with no problem, but this time it took me a good week
before it finally dawned on me. 
Ushikawa stopped talking, and a theatrical smile rose to his lips. He gazed at Buzzcut,
who waited patiently for him to go on.
 In August of this year, a young female police officer with the Traffic Bureau in the Shinjuku
Precinct was found strangled to death in a love hotel in Maruyama Ward, in Shibuya.
Stark naked, handcuffed with her own police-issue handcuffs. Naturally this caused a scandal.
The phone conversations between Miss Aomame and the Shinjuku Precinct were in the
several months before this incident. There were no calls at all after the murder. What do you
think? Too much to see this as mere coincidence? 
Buzzcut was silent for a while, then finally spoke. So youre saying that the person
Aomame contacted was this female police officer who was murdered? 
 The officers name was Ayumi Nakano. Age twenty-six. A very charming-looking young
woman. She came from a police family. Her father and older brother were both in the force.
She was a fairly top-ranked officer. Needless to say, the police have tried very hard to locate
the murderer, but with no luck so far. I apologize for being so forward with this question, but is
there any chance that you might know something about this incident? 
Buzzcuts eyes, staring at Ushikawa, were cold, as if only minutes ago he had been extracted
from a glacier. Im not sure what you mean, he said. Are you thinking that we may in
some way be involved in this incident? That one of us took this female police officer to a disreputable
hotel, handcuffed her, and strangled her to death? 
Ushikawa pursed his lips and shook his head. Dont be absurd! The thought never
crossed my mind. All Im asking is whether you have any ideas about this case. Anything at
all. I would welcome even the smallest clue. No matter how hard I try to squeeze out
whatever I can from this brain of mine, I cant find a connection between these two murders. 
Buzzcut gazed at Ushikawa for a time, as if measuring something. Then he slowly let out
his breath. I understand. I will let my superiors know, he said. He took out a pocket notebook
and made some notes. Ayumi Nakano. Twenty-six. Traffic Bureau, Shinjuku Precinct. Possibly
connected with Aomame. 
 Exactly. 
 Anything else? 
 Theres one more thing. Someone within your religion must have brought up Miss
Aomames name. Someone who knew of a fitness trainer in Tokyo who was very good at
stretching exercises. As you pointed out, I was hired to investigate the womans background.
Im not trying to excuse myself, but I did my absolute best. Yet I didnt find anything out of the
ordinary, nothing at all suspicious. Shes as clean as they come. And you all asked her to
come to the suite at the Hotel Okura. So who was it who recommended her in the first place? 
 I dont know. 
 You dont know? Ushikawa exclaimed. He looked like a child who has just heard a word
he doesnt understand. You mean that while someone within your religion must have first
raised Miss Aomames name, no one can recall who it was? Is that what youre saying? 
 Correct, Buzzcut replied, his expression unchanged.
 Thats pretty weird, Ushikawa said, in a tone that reflected just how odd he found it.
Buzzcut didnt say a word.
 So we dont know when her name came up, or from whom, and things went forward
seemingly on their own. Is that what youre saying? 
 To tell you the truth, the one who most enthusiastically supported the idea was Leader
himself, Buzzcut said, choosing his words carefully. Within the leadership, some thought it
might be dangerous to allow a complete stranger to take care of Leader like that. As bodyguards
we felt the same way. But Leader wasnt worried. In fact, he is the one who insisted
that we go forward with it. 
Ushikawa picked up his lighter again, flipped open the top, and flicked it on, as if testing it.
Then he quickly snapped the top shut.
 I always heard Leader was a very cautious person, he said.
 He was. Very careful, very cautious, Buzzcut said. Silence continued for a time.
 There is one more thing I would like to ask, Ushikawa said. About Tengo Kawana. He
was seeing an older, married woman named Kyoko Yasuda. She came to his apartment once
a week, and they would spend some intimate time together. Hes young, so thats only to be
expected. But suddenly one day her husband calls him, telling him she wont be paying him
any more visits. And he hasnt heard a peep from her since. 
Buzzcut frowned. I dont understand why youre telling me this. Are you saying that Tengo
Kawana was involved in all this? 
 I wouldnt go that far. Its just that something has been bothering me. Whatever the circumstances
might be, you would expect the woman to at least give him a call. But she hasnt
gotten in touch. She just vanished, without a trace. Loose ends bother me, so thats why I
posed the question, to be on the safe side. Do you know anything about this? 
 Personally, I have no knowledge about this woman, Buzzcut said in a flat tone. Kyoko
Yasuda. She had a relationship with Tengo Kawana. 
 She was married, and ten years older than him. 
Buzzcut noted down the name in his notebook. I will let my superiors know. 
 Thats fine, Ushikawa said. By the way, have you located the whereabouts of Eriko
Fukada? 
Buzzcut raised his head and stared at Ushikawa as if he were examining a crooked picture
frame. And why should we know where Eriko Fukada is? 
 Youre not interested in locating her? 
Buzzcut shook his head. It is not our concern. She is free to go wherever she wants. 
 And youre not interested in Tengo Kawana either? 
 He has nothing to do with us. 
 At one time it seemed like you were quite interested in both of them, Ushikawa said.
Buzzcut narrowed his eyes for a moment, then opened his mouth. At this point we are focused
solely on Aomame. 
 Your focus shifts from day to day? 
Buzzcuts lips parted a fraction, but he didnt reply.
 Mr. Buzzcut, have you read the novel Eriko Fukada wrote, Air Chrysalis? 
 No, I have not. In the religion we are strictly forbidden to read anything other than books
on Sakigake doctrine. We cant even touch them. 
 Have you ever heard the term Little People? 
 No, Buzzcut said, without missing a beat.
 Thats fine, Ushikawa replied.
Their conversation came to an end. Buzzcut slowly rose from his chair and straightened
the collar of his jacket. Ponytail took one step forward from the wall.
 Mr. Ushikawa, as I mentioned before, time is of the essence. Buzzcut stood and looked
down at Ushikawa, who had remained seated. We have to locate Aomame as soon as possible.
We are doing our very best, and we need you to do the same, from a different angle. If
Aomame isnt found, it could be bad for both of us. You are, after all, one of the few who know
an important secret. 
 With great knowledge comes great responsibility. 
 Exactly, Buzzcut replied without a trace of emotion. He turned and swiftly exited the
room. Ponytail followed Buzzcut out, noiselessly shutting the door.
After they had left, Ushikawa pulled open a desk drawer and switched off the tape recorder
inside. He opened the lid of the recorder, extracted the cassette tape, and wrote the date
and time on it with a ballpoint pen. For a man with his sort of odd looks, his handwriting was
neat and graceful. He grabbed the pack of Seven Stars cigarettes beside him, extracted one,
and lit it with his lighter. He took a long puff, exhaled deeply toward the ceiling, then closed
his eyes for a moment. He opened his eyes and looked over at the wall clock. The clock
showed 2:30. What a creepy pair indeed, Ushikawa told himself once more.
If Aomame isnt found, it could be bad for both of us, Buzzcut had said.
Ushikawa had twice visited the headquarters of Sakigake, deep in the mountains of
Yamanashi Prefecture, and had seen the huge incinerator in the woods behind the compound.
It was built to burn garbage and waste, but since it operated at an extremely high temperature,
if you threw a human corpse inside there wouldnt be a single bone left. He knew
that in fact several peoples bodies had been disposed of in this way. Leaders body was
probably one of them. Naturally enough, Ushikawa didnt want to suffer the same fate.
Someday he would die, but if possible he would prefer something a bit more peaceful.
But there were some facts that Ushikawa hadnt revealed. Ushikawa preferred not to show
all his cards at once. It was okay to show them a few of the lower-value cards, but the face
cards he kept hidden. One needed some insurance like the secret conversation he had recorded.
When it came to this kind of game, Ushikawa was an expert. These young bodyguards
had nowhere near the experience he had.
Ushikawa had gotten ahold of Aomames private client list. As long as you dont mind the
time and effort, and you know what youre doing, you can get ahold of almost any kind of information.
Ushikawa had made a decent enough investigation of the backgrounds of the
twelve private clients. Eight women and four men, all of them of high social standing and fairly
well off. Not a single one the type who would lend a hand to an assassin. But one of them, a
wealthy woman in her seventies, provided a safe house for women escaping domestic violence.
She allowed battered women to live in a two-story apartment building on the extensive
grounds of her estate, next door to her house.
This was, in itself, a wonderful thing to do. There was nothing suspicious about it. Yet
something bothered Ushikawa, kicking around the edges of his consciousness. And as this
vague notion rattled around in his mind, Ushikawa tried to pinpoint what it was. He was
equipped with an almost animal-like sense of smell, and he trusted his intuition more than
anything. His sense of smell had saved him a few times. Violence was perhaps the keyword
here. This elderly woman had a special awareness of the violent, and thus went out of her
way to protect those who were its victims.
Ushikawa had actually gone over to see this safe house. The wooden apartment building
was on a rise in Azabu, prime real estate. It was a fairly old building, but had character.
Through the grille of the front gate, he saw a beautiful flower bed in front of the entrance, and
an extensive garden. A large oak cast a shadow onto the ground. A small die-cut plate glass
was set into the front door. It was the kind of building that was fast disappearing from Tokyo.
For all its tranquillity, the building was heavily secured. The walls around it were high, and
topped with barbed wire. The solid metal gate was securely locked, and a German shepherd
patrolled the grounds and barked loudly if anyone approached. There were several cameras
set up to scan the vicinity. Hardly any pedestrians walked on the road in front of the apartment
building, so one couldnt loiter there long. It was a quiet residential area, with several
embassies nearby. If a strange-looking man like Ushikawa were seen loitering, someone
would be sure to question his presence.
The security was a little too tight. For a place meant to shelter battered women, they went
a bit overboard. Ushikawa felt he would have to find out all there was to know about this safe
house. No matter how tightly it was guarded, he would somehow have to pry it open. No the
more tightly it was guarded, the more he had to pry it open. And to do so, he would have to
wrack his brain to come up with a plan.
Ushikawa recalled the part of his conversation with Buzzcut concerning the Little People.
 Have you ever heard the term Little People? 
 No. 
The reply had come a little too fast. If you had never heard that name before, you would
normally pause a beat before answering. Little People? You would let the sound roll around in
your mind for a second to see if anything clicked. And then you would reply. Thats what most
people would do.
Buzzcut had heard the term Little People before. Ushikawa didnt know if he knew what it
meant or what it was, but it was definitely not the first time hed heard it.
Ushikawa extinguished his now stubby cigarette. He was lost in thought for a while, and
then he pulled out a new cigarette and lit it. He had decided years ago not to worry about getting
lung cancer. If he wanted to concentrate, he had to get some nicotine into his system.
Who knew what his fate was, even two or three days down the road? So what was the point
in worrying about how his health would be fifteen years from now?
As he smoked his third Seven Stars, an idea came to him. Ah! he thought. This might actually
work.
1Q84
CHAPTER 2
Aomame
ALONE, BUT NOT LONELY
When it got dark she sat on a chair on the balcony and gazed out at the playground
across the street. This was the most important part of her daily schedule, the focal point of her
life. On sunny days, cloudy days, even when it rained, she kept a close watch, without missing
a day. As October came around, the air grew cooler. On cold nights she wore many layers,
kept a blanket for her legs, and sipped hot cocoa. She watched the slide until ten thirty,
then took a leisurely bath to warm herself up, and went to bed.
Of course, there was a possibility that Tengo might appear even in the daytime. But most
likely he wouldnt. If he was going to show up at the park, it would be after the mercury-vapor
lamp went on and the moon was in the sky. Aomame had a quick supper, dressed so she
could run outside, straightened her hair, then sat down on a garden chair and fixed her gaze
on the slide. She always had an automatic pistol and a pair of small Nikon binoculars with her.
Fearing that Tengo might appear if she went inside to the bathroom, she restricted her drinks
to the hot cocoa.
Aomame kept up her watch without missing a day. She didnt read, didnt listen to music,
just stared at the park, her ears poised to catch any sound outside. She rarely even changed
her position in the chair. She would raise her head from time to time and if it was a cloudless
night look at the sky to make sure there were still two moons. And then she would quickly
shift her gaze back to the park. As Aomame kept a close watch on the park, the moons kept a
close watch over her.
But Tengo didnt come.
Not many people visited the playground at night. Occasionally young lovers would appear.
They would sit on a bench, hold hands, and, like a pair of tiny birds, exchange a few short,
nervous kisses. But the park was too small, and too well lit. Soon they would grow restless
and move on. Someone might show up to use the public toilet, find the door locked, and go
away disappointed (or perhaps angry). The occasional office worker on his way home from
work would sometimes sit alone on the bench, head bowed, undoubtedly hoping to sober up.
Or maybe he just didnt want to go straight home. And there was an old man who took his dog
for a walk late at night. Both the dog and the man were taciturn, and looked like they had given
up all hope.
Most of the time, though, the playground was empty at night. Not even a cat ran across it.
Just the mercury-vapor lamps anonymous light illuminating the swings, the slide, the sandbox,
the locked public toilet. When Aomame looked at this scene for a long time, she began to
feel as if she had been abandoned on a deserted planet. Like that movie that showed the
world after a nuclear war. What was the title?
On the Beach.
Still, Aomame sat there, her mind focused as she kept watch over the playground. As if
she were a sailor who had climbed a tall mast and was scanning the vast ocean in search of
schools of fish, or the ominous shadow of a periscope. Her watchful pair of eyes were on the
lookout for one thing only Tengo Kawana.
Perhaps Tengo lived in some other town, and had just happened to be passing by that
night. In that case, the chances of his revisiting this park were close to zero. But Aomame
didnt think so. When he sat on the slide that night, something about his manner, and his
clothes, made her feel that he was taking a late-night stroll in the neighborhood, that he had
stopped by the park and climbed up the slide. Probably to get a better look at the moons.
Which meant he must live within walking distance.
In the Koenji District it wasnt easy to find a place to see the moon. The area was mostly
flat, with hardly any tall buildings from which you could look at the sky. This made the slide in
the playground a decent place to do so. It was quiet, and no one would bother you. If he decided
he wanted to look at the moon again, he would show up Aomame was certain of it.
But then the next moment a thought struck her: Things might not work out that easily. Maybe
hes already found a better place to view the moon.
Aomame gave a short, decisive shake of her head. She shouldnt overthink things. The
only choice I have is to believe that Tengo will return to this playground, and to wait here patiently
until he does. I cant leave this is the only point of contact between him and me.
Aomame hadnt pulled the trigger.
It was the beginning of September. She was standing in a turnout on the Metropolitan Expressway
No. 3, in the midst of a traffic jam, bathed in bright morning sunlight as she stuck
the black muzzle of a Heckler & Koch in her mouth. Dressed in a Junko Shimada suit and
Charles Jourdan high heels.
People were watching her from their cars, as if something was about to occur but they had
no idea what. There was a middle-aged woman in a silver Mercedes coupe. There were suntanned
men looking down at her from the high cab of a freight truck. Aomame planned to blow
her brains out right before their very eyes with a 9mm bullet. Taking her life was the only way
she could vanish from this 1Q84 world. That way she would be able to save Tengos life. At
least Leader had promised that. He had promised that much, and sought his own death.
Aomame didnt find it particularly disappointing that she had to die. Everything, she felt,
had already been decided, ever since she was first pulled into this 1Q84 world. Im just following
the plan that has already been laid out. Continuing to live, alone, in this unreasonable
world where there are two moons in the sky, one large, one small, where something called
Little People control the destiny of others what meaning could it have anyway?
In the end, though, she didnt pull the trigger. At the last moment she relaxed her right index
finger and removed the muzzle from her mouth. Like a person surfacing from deep under
water she took a long breath, and exhaled, as if replacing every molecule of air within her.
She stopped moving toward death because she had heard a distant voice. At that point,
she was in a soundless space. From the moment she put pressure on the trigger, all noise
around her vanished. She was wrapped in silence, as if at the bottom of a pool. Down there,
death was neither dark nor fearful. Like amniotic fluid to a fetus, it was natural, self-evident.
This isnt so bad, Aomame thought, and almost smiled. That was when she heard a voice.
The voice sounded far away, as if coming from a distant time. She didnt recognize it. It
reached her only after many twists and turns, and in the process it lost its original tone and
timbre. What was left was a hollow echo, stripped of meaning. Still, within that sound,
Aomame could detect a warmth she hadnt felt for years. The voice seemed to be calling her
name.
She relaxed her finger on the trigger, narrowed her eyes, and listened carefully, trying to
hear the words the voice was saying. But all she could make out, or thought that she made
out, was her name. The rest was wind whistling through a hollow space. In the end the voice
grew distant, lost any meaning at all, and was absorbed into the silence. The void enveloping
her disappeared, and, as if a cork had been pulled, the noise and clamor around her rushed
in. And she no longer wanted to die.
Maybe I can see Tengo one more time at that little playground, she thought. I can die after
that. Ill take a chance on that happening. Living not dying means the possibility of seeing
Tengo again. I want to live, she decided. It was a strange feeling. Had she ever experienced
that feeling before in her life?
She released the hammer of the automatic pistol, set the safety, and put it inside her
shoulder bag. She straightened up, put on her sunglasses, and walked in the opposite direction
of traffic back to her taxi. People silently watched her, in her high heels, striding down the
expressway. She didnt have to walk for long. Even in the traffic jam, her taxi had managed to
inch forward and had come up to where she was now standing.
Aomame knocked on the window and the driver lowered it.
 Can I get in again? 
The driver hesitated. That thing you put in your mouth over there looked like a pistol. 
 It was. 
 A real one? 
 No way, Aomame replied, curling her lips.
The driver opened the door, and she climbed in. She took the bag off her shoulder and
laid it on the seat and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. She could still taste the metal
and the residue of gun oil.
 So, did you find an emergency stairway? the driver asked.
Aomame shook her head.
 Im not surprised. I never heard of an emergency stairway anywhere around here, the
driver said. Would you still like to get off at the Ikejiri exit? 
 Yes, that would be fine, Aomame replied.
The driver rolled down his window, stuck his hand out, and pulled over into the right lane
in front of a large bus. The meter in the cab was unchanged from when she had gotten out.
Aomame leaned back against the seat, and, breathing slowly, she gazed at the familiar
Esso billboard. The huge tiger was looking in her direction, smiling, with a gas hose in his
paw. Put a Tiger in Your Tank, the ad read.
 Put a tiger in your tank, she whispered.
 Excuse me? the driver said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
 Nothing. Just talking to myself. 
I think Ill stay alive here a bit longer, and see with my own eyes whats going to happen. I
can still die after that it wont be too late. Probably.
The day after she gave up on killing herself, Tamaru called her. So Aomame told him that
the plan had changed that she was going to stay put, and not change her name or get
plastic surgery.
On the other end of the line Tamaru was silent. Several theories noiselessly aligned themselves
in his mind.
 In other words, youre saying you dont want to move to another location? 
 Correct, Aomame replied. I would like to stay here for the time being. 
 That place is not set up to hide someone for an extended period. 
 If I stay inside and dont go out, they shouldnt find me. 
 Dont underestimate them, Tamaru said. They will do everything they can to pinpoint
who you are and hunt you down. And you wont be the only one in danger. It could involve
those around you. If that happens, I could be put in a difficult position. 
 Im very sorry about that. But I need a bit more time. 
 A bit more time? Thats a little vague, Tamaru said.
 Thats the only way I can put it. 
Tamaru was silent, in thought. He seemed to have sensed how firm her decision was.
 I have to keep my priorities straight, he said. Do you understand that? 
 I think so. 
Tamaru was silent again, and then continued.
 All right. I just wanted to make sure I wasnt misunderstanding. Since you insist on staying,
you must have your reasons. 
 I do, Aomame said.
Tamaru briefly cleared his throat. As I have told you before, we have committed to take
you someplace safe, and far away to erase any trail, change your face and name. Maybe it
wont be a total transformation, but as close to total as we can manage. I thought we were
agreed on this. 
 Of course I understand. Im not saying I dont like the plan itself. Its just that something
unexpected occurred, and I need to stay put for a while longer. 
 I am not authorized to say yes or no to this, Tamaru said, making a faint sound in the
back of his throat. It might take a while to get an answer. 
 Ill be here, Aomame said.
 Glad to hear it, Tamaru said, and hung up.
The phone rang the next morning, just before nine. Three rings, then it stopped, and rang
again. It had to be Tamaru.
Tamaru launched right in without saying hello. Madame also is concerned about you
staying there for very long. It is just a safe house, and it is not totally secure. Both of us agree
that its best to move you somewhere far away, somewhere more secure. Do you follow me? 
 I do. 
 But you are a calm, cautious person. You dont make stupid mistakes, and I know you are
committed. We trust you implicitly. 
 I appreciate that. 
 If you insist that you want to stay in that place for a bit longer then you must have your
reasons. We dont know what your rationale is, but Im sure its not just a whim. So she is
thinking that she would like to follow your wishes as much as she can. 
Aomame said nothing.
Tamaru continued. You can stay there until the end of the year. But thats the limit. 
 After the first of the year, then, I need to move to another place. 
 Please understand we are doing our very best to respect your wishes. 
 I understand, Aomame said. Ill be here until the end of the year, then I will move. 
But this wasnt her real intention. She didnt plan to take one step out of this apartment until
she saw Tengo again. If she mentioned this now, though, complications would set in. She
could delay things for over three months, until the end of the year. After that she would consider
what to do next.
 Fine, Tamaru said. Well deliver food and other necessities once a week. At one p.m.
each Tuesday the supply masters will stop by. They have a key, so they can get in on their
own. They will only go to the kitchen, nowhere else. While they are at the apartment, I want
you to go into the back bedroom and lock the door. Dont show your face, or speak. When
theyre leaving, they will ring the doorbell once. Then you can come out of the bedroom. If
theres anything special you need, let me know right now and Ill have it included in the next
delivery. 
 It would be nice to have equipment so I could do some strength training, Aomame said.
 Theres only so much you can do exercising and stretching without equipment. 
 Full-scale gym equipment is out of the question, but we could supply some home equipment,
the kind that doesnt take up much space. 
 Something very basic would be fine, Aomame said.
 A stationary bike and some auxiliary equipment for strength training. Would that do it? 
 That would be great. If possible, Id also like to get a metal softball bat. 
Tamaru was silent for a few seconds.
 A bat has many uses, Aomame explained. Just having it next to me makes me calm. Its
like I grew up with a bat in my hand. 
 Okay. Ill get one for you, Tamaru said. If you think of anything else you need, write it on
a piece of paper and leave it on the kitchen counter. Ill make sure you get it the next time we
bring supplies. 
 Thank you. But I think I have everything I need. 
 How about books and videos and the like? 
 I cant think of anything I particularly want. 
 How about Prousts In Search of Lost Time? Tamaru asked. If youve never read it this
would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing. 
 Have you read it? 
 No, Ive never been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless
you have those kinds of opportunities, you cant read the whole of Proust. 
 Do you know anybody who has read the whole thing? 
 Ive known some people who have spent a long period in jail, but none were the type to
be interested in Proust. 
 Id like to give it a try, Aomame said. If you can get ahold of those books, bring them the
next time you bring supplies. 
 Actually, I already got them for you, Tamaru said.
The so-called supply masters came on Tuesday afternoon at one p.m. on the dot. As instructed,
Aomame went into the back bedroom, locked it from the inside, and tried not to
make a sound. She heard the front door being unlocked and people opening the door and
coming in. Aomame had no idea what kind of people these supply masters were. From the
sounds they made she got the feeling there were two of them, but she didnt hear any voices.
They carried in several boxes and silently went about putting things away. She heard them at
the sink, rinsing off the food they had bought and then stacking it in the fridge. They must
have decided beforehand who would be in charge of what. They unwrapped some boxes, and
she could hear them folding up the wrapping paper and containers. It sounded like they were
wrapping up the kitchen garbage as well. Aomame couldnt take the bag of garbage downstairs
to the collection spot, so she had to have somebody take it for her.
The people seemed to do their work efficiently, with no wasted effort. They tried not to
make any unnecessary noise, and their footsteps, too, were quiet. They were finished in
about twenty minutes. Then they opened the front door and left. She heard them lock the front
door from the outside, and then the doorbell rang once as a signal. To be on the safe side,
Aomame waited fifteen minutes. Then she exited the bedroom, made sure no one else was
there, and locked the dead bolt on the front door.
The large fridge was crammed full of a weeks worth of food. This time it wasnt the kind of
food you popped in the microwave, but mostly fresh groceries: a variety of fruits and vegetables;
fish and meat; tofu, wakame, and natto. Milk, cheese, and orange juice. A dozen eggs.
So there wouldnt be any extra garbage, they had taken everything out of their original containers
and then neatly rewrapped them in plastic wrap. They had done a good job understanding
the type of food she normally ate. How would they know this? she wondered. A stationary
bicycle was set down next to the window, a small but high-end model. The digital display
on it showed speed, distance, and calories burned. You could also monitor rpms and
heart rate. There was a bench press to work on abs, deltoids, and triceps, the kind of equipment
that was easy to assemble and disassemble. Aomame was quite familiar with it. It was
the newest type, a very simple design yet very effective. With these two pieces of equipment
she would have no trouble keeping in shape.
A metal bat in a soft case was there as well. Aomame took it out of the case and took a
few swings. The shiny, new silver bat swished sharply through the air. The old familiar heft of
it calmed her. The feel of the bat in her hands brought back memories of her teenage years,
and the time she had spent with Tamaki Otsuka.
All seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time were piled up on the dining table. They were
not new copies, but they appeared to be unread. Aomame flipped through one. There were
several magazines, too weekly and monthly magazines and five brand-new videos, still in
their plastic wrap. She had no idea who had chosen them, but they were all new movies she
had never seen. She was not in the habit of going to movie theaters, so there were always a
lot of new films that she missed.
There were three brand-new sweaters in a large department-store shopping bag, in different
thicknesses. There were two thick flannel shirts, and four long-sleeved T-shirts. All of
them were in plain fabric and simple designs. They were all the perfect size. There were also
some thick socks and tights. If she was going to be here until December, she would need
them. Her handlers knew what they were doing.
She took the clothes into the bedroom and folded them to store in drawers or hung them
on hangers in the closet. She had gone back to the kitchen and was drinking coffee when the
phone rang. It rang three times, stopped, then rang again.
 Did you get everything? Tamaru asked.
 Yes, thank you. I think I have everything I need now. The exercise equipment is more
than enough. Now I just have to crack open Proust. 
 If there is anything that weve overlooked, dont hesitate to tell me. 
 I wont, Aomame said. Though I dont think it would be easy to find anything you have
overlooked. 
Tamaru cleared his throat. This might not be my business, but do you mind if I give you a
warning? 
 Go right ahead. 
 Unless you have experienced it, being shut up in a small place by yourself, unable to see
or talk to anyone else, is not the easiest thing in the world. No matter how tough a person
might be, eventually he is going to make a sound. Especially when someone is after you. 
 I havent been living in very spacious places up till now. 
 That could be an advantage, Tamaru said. Still, I want you to be very careful. If a person
remains tense for a long time he might not notice it himself, but its like his nerves are a
piece of rubber that has been stretched out. Its hard to go back to the original shape. 
 Ill be careful, Aomame said.
 As I said before, you are a very cautious person. Youre practical and patient, not overconfident.
But no matter how careful a person might be, once your concentration slips, you
will definitely make one or two mistakes. Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you. 
 I dont think Im lonely, Aomame declared. She said this half to Tamaru, and half to herself.
 Im all alone, but Im not lonely. 
There was silence on the other end of the phone, as if Tamaru were giving serious
thought to the difference between being alone and being lonely.
 At any rate Ill be more cautious than I have been, Aomame said. Thank you for the advice. 
 There is one thing Id like you to understand, Tamaru said. We will do whatever we can
to protect you. But if some emergency situation arises what that might be, I dont know you
may have to deal with it yourself. I can run over there as fast as possible and still might not
make it in time. Depending on the situation, I may not be able to get there at all. For instance,
if it is no longer desirable for us to have a connection with you. 
 I understand completely. I plan to protect myself. With the bat, and with the thing you
gave me. 
 Its a tough world. 
 Wherever theres hope theres a trial, Aomame said.
Tamaru was silent again for a moment, and then spoke. Have you heard about the final
tests given to candidates to become interrogators for Stalins secret police? 
 No, I havent. 
 A candidate would be put in a square room. The only thing in the room is an ordinary
small wooden chair. And the interrogators boss gives him an order. He says, ‘Get this chair to
confess and write up a report on it. Until you do this, you cant leave this room. 
 Sounds pretty surreal. 
 No, it isnt. Its not surreal at all. Its a real story. Stalin actually did create that kind of
paranoia, and some ten million people died on his watch most of them his fellow countrymen.
And we actually live in that kind of world. Dont ever forget that. 
 Youre full of heartwarming stories, arent you. 
 Not really. I just have a few set aside, just in case. I never received a formal education. I
just learned whatever looked useful, as I experienced it. Wherever theres hope theres a trial.
Youre exactly right. Absolutely. Hope, however, is limited, and generally abstract, while there
are countless trials, and they tend to be concrete. That is also something I had to learn on my
own. 
 So what kind of confession did the interrogator candidates extract from the chairs? 
 That is a question definitely worth considering, Tamaru said. Sort of like a Zen koan. 
 Stalinist Zen, Aomame said.
After a short pause, Tamaru hung up.
That afternoon she worked out on the stationary bike and the bench press. Aomame enjoyed
the moderate workout, her first in a while. Afterward she showered, then made dinner
while listening to an FM station. In the evening she checked the TV news (though not a single
item caught her interest). After the sun had set she went out to the balcony to watch the playground,
with her usual blanket, binoculars, and pistol. And her shiny brand-new bat.
If Tengo doesnt show up by then, she thought, I guess I will see out this enigmatic year of
1Q84 in this corner of Koenji, one monotonous day after another. Ill cook, exercise, check the
news, and work my way through Proust and wait for Tengo to show up at the playground.
Waiting for him is the central task of my life. Right now that slender thread is what is barely
keeping me alive. Its like that spider I saw when I was climbing down the emergency stairway
on the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3. A tiny black spider that had spun a pathetic little web
in a corner of the grimy steel frame and was silently lying in wait. The wind from under the
bridge had blown the spider web, which hung there precariously, tattered and full of dust.
When I first saw it, I thought it was pitiful. But right now Im in the same situation.
I have to get ahold of a recording of Janáeks Sinfonietta. I need it when Im working out. It
makes me feel connected. Its as if that music is leading me to something. To what, though, I
cant say. She made a mental note to add that to the next list of supplies.
It was October now. There were less than three months left of her reprieve. The clock kept
ticking away, ceaselessly. Aomame sank down into her garden chair and continued to watch
the slide in the playground through the plastic blinds. The little childrens playground looked
pale under the mercury-vapor lamp. The scene made Aomame think of deserted hallways in
an aquarium at night. Invisible, imaginary fish were swimming noiselessly through the trees,
never halting their silent movements. And two moons hung in the sky, waiting for Aomames
acknowledgment.
 Tengo, she whispered. Where are you? 
1Q84
CHAPTER 3
Tengo
THE ANIMALS ALL WORE CLOTHES
In the afternoons Tengo would visit his father in the hospital, sit next to his bed, open the
book he brought, and read aloud. After reading five pages he would take a short break, then
read five more pages. He read whatever book he happened to be reading on his own at the
time. Sometimes it was a novel, or a biography, or a book on the natural sciences. What was
most important was the act of reading the sentences aloud, not the contents.
Tengo didnt know if his father actually heard his voice. His face never showed any reaction.
This thin, shabby-looking old man had his eyes closed, and he was asleep. He didnt
move at all, and his breathing wasnt audible. He was breathing, but unless you brought your
ear very close, or held a mirror up to his nose to see if it clouded, you couldnt really tell. The
liquid in the IV drip went into his body, and a tiny amount of urine oozed out the catheter. The
only thing that revealed that he was alive was this silent, slow movement in and out. Occasionally
a nurse would shave his beard with an electric razor and use a tiny pair of scissors
with rounded-off tips to clip the white hairs growing out of his ears and nose. She would trim
his eyebrows as well. Even though he was unconscious, these continued to grow. As he
watched his father, Tengo started to have doubts about the difference between a person being
alive and being dead. Maybe there really wasnt much of a difference to begin with, he
thought. Maybe we just decided, for conveniences sake, to insist on a difference.
At three the doctor came and gave Tengo an update on his fathers condition. The explanation
was always concise, and it was nearly the same from one day to the next. There was no
change. The old man was simply asleep, his life gradually fading away. In other words, death
was approaching, slowly but certainly, and there was nothing medically speaking that could
be done. Just let him lie here, quietly sleeping. Thats about all the doctor could say.
In the evenings two male nurses would come and take his father to an examination room.
The male nurses differed depending on the day, but both of them were taciturn. Perhaps the
masks they wore had something to do with it, but they never said a word. One of them looked
foreign. He was short and dark skinned, and was always smiling at Tengo through his mask.
Tengo could tell he was smiling by his eyes. Tengo smiled back and nodded.
Anywhere from a half hour to an hour later, his father would be brought back to his room.
Tengo had no idea what kind of examinations they were conducting. While his father was
gone he would go to the cafeteria, have some hot green tea, and stay about fifteen minutes
before going back to the hospital room. All the while he held on to the hope that when he returned
an air chrysalis would once again materialize, with Aomame as a young girl lying inside.
But all that greeted him in the gloomy hospital room was the smell of a sick person and
the depressions left behind in the empty bed.
Tengo stood by the window and looked at the scene outside. Beyond the garden and lawn
was the dark line of the pine windbreak, through which came the sound of waves. The rough
waves of the Pacific. It was a thick, darkish sound, as if many souls were gathered, each
whispering his story. They seemed to be seeking more souls to join them, seeking even more
stories to be told.
Before this, in October, Tengo had twice taken day trips, on his days off, to the sanatorium
in Chikura. He would take the early-morning express train. Once there, he would sit beside
his fathers bed, and talk to him sometimes. There was nothing even close to a response. His
father just lay there, faceup, sound asleep. Tengo spent most of his time gazing out the window.
As evening approached he waited for something to happen, but nothing ever did. The
sun would silently sink, and the room would be wrapped in the gathering gloom. He would ultimately
give up, leave, and take the last express train back to Tokyo.
Maybe I should be more patient, stay with him longer, Tengo thought once. Maybe visiting
him for the day and then leaving isnt enough. Whats needed, perhaps, is a deeper commitment.
He had no concrete evidence that this was true. He just felt that way.
After the middle of November he took the vacation leave he had accumulated, telling the
cram school that his father was in critical condition and he needed to look after him. This in itself
wasnt a lie. He asked a classmate from college to take over his classes. He was one of
the relatively few people with whom Tengo had kept in touch, albeit just once or twice a year.
Even in the math department, which had more than its share of oddballs, this guy was particularly
odd, as well as smart beyond compare. After graduating, though, he didnt get a job or go
on to grad school. Instead, when he felt like it, he taught math at a private cram school for junior
high students. Other than that, he read, went fly fishing, and did whatever he wanted.
Tengo happened to know, however, that he was a very capable teacher. The thing was, he
was tired of being so capable. Plus, he was from a wealthy family and there was no need for
him to force himself to work. He had substituted for Tengo once before and the students had
liked him. Tengo called him and explained the situation, and he immediately agreed to step in.
There was also the question of what to do about Fuka-Eri. Tengo couldnt decide if leaving
this naive girl behind in his apartment for a long time was the right thing to do. And besides,
she was trying to hide out, to stay out of sight. So he asked her directly. Are you okay on
your own here for a while? Or would you like to go someplace else, temporarily? 
 Where are you going, Fuka-Eri asked, a serious look in her eyes.
 To the cat town, Tengo explained. My father wont regain consciousness. Hes been in a
deep sleep for a while. They say he might not last long. 
He didnt say a word about the air chrysalis appearing in the hospital room bed one evening.
Or how Aomame appeared inside as a young girl, asleep. Or how the air chrysalis was
exactly as Fuka-Eri had described it in her novel, down to the last detail. Or how he was
secretly hoping that it would again appear before him.
Fuka-Eri narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and stared straight at Tengo, as if trying to
make out a message written in tiny letters. Almost unconsciously he touched his face, but it
didnt feel as though something was written on it.
 Thats fine, Fuka-Eri said after a while, and she nodded several times. Do not worry
about me. I will stay at home. After thinking for a moment she added, Right now there is no
danger. 
 Right now there is no danger, Tengo repeated.
 Do not worry about me, she said again.
 Ill call you every day. 
 Do not get abandoned in the cat town. 
 Ill be careful, Tengo said.
Tengo went to the supermarket and bought enough food so Fuka-Eri wouldnt have to go
shopping, all things that would be simple to prepare. Tengo was well aware that she had
neither the ability nor the desire to do much cooking. He wanted to avoid coming back in two
weeks to a fridge full of mushy, spoiled food.
He stuffed a vinyl bag full of clothes and toiletries, a few books, pens, and paper. As usual
he took the express train from Tokyo Station, changed to a local train at Tateyama, and got
off at Chikura. He went to the tourist information booth in front of the station to look for a fairly
inexpensive hotel. It was the off-season, so he had no trouble finding a room in a simple Japanese-style
inn that catered mainly to people coming to fish. The cramped but clean room
smelled of fresh tatami. The fishing harbor was visible from the second-floor window. The
charge for the room, which included breakfast, was cheaper than he had expected.
 I dont know yet how long Ill be staying, Tengo said, but Ill go ahead and pay for three
days. The proprietress of the inn had no objection. The doors shut at eleven, and bringing a
woman to his room would be problematic, she explained in a roundabout way. All this sounded
fine to him. Once he settled into his room, he phoned the sanatorium. He told the nurse
(the same middle-aged nurse he had met before) that he would like to visit his father at three
p.m. and asked if that would be convenient. That would be fine, she replied. Mr. Kawana just
sleeps all the time, she said.
Thus began Tengos days at the cat town beside the sea. He would get up early, take a
walk along the shore, watch the fishing boats go in and out of the harbor, then return to the
inn for breakfast. Breakfast was exactly the same every day dried horse mackerel and fried
eggs, a quartered tomato, seasoned dried seaweed, miso soup with shijimi clams, and
rice but for some reason it tasted wonderful every morning. After breakfast he would sit at a
small desk and write. He hadnt written in some time and found the act of writing with his fountain
pen enjoyable. Working in an unfamiliar place, away from your daily routine, was invigorating.
The engines of the fishing boats chugged monotonously as they pulled into the harbor.
Tengo liked the sound.
The story he was writing began with a world where there were two moons in the sky. A
world of Little People and air chrysalises. He had borrowed this world from Fuka-Eris Air
Chrysalis, but by now it was entirely his own. As he wrote, his mind was living in that world.
Even when he lay down his pen and stood up from the desk, his mind remained there. There
was a special sensation of his body and his mind beginning to separate, and he could no
longer distinguish the real world from the fictional. The protagonist of the story who entered
the cat town probably experienced the same sensation. Before he knew it, the worlds center
of gravity had shifted. And the protagonist would (most likely) be unable to ever board the
train to get out of town.
At eleven Tengo had to leave his room so they could clean it. When the time came he
stopped writing, went out, walked to the front of the station, and drank coffee in a nearby coffee
shop. Occasionally he would have a light sandwich, but usually he ate nothing. He would
then pick up the morning paper and check it closely to see if there was any article that might
have something to do with him. He found no such article. Air Chrysalis had long since disappeared
from the bestseller lists. Number one on the list now was a diet book entitled Eat as
Much as You Want of the Food You Love and Still Lose Weight. What a great title. The whole
book could be blank inside and it would still sell.
After he finished his coffee and was done with the paper, Tengo took the bus to the sanatorium.
He usually arrived between one thirty and two. He chatted a bit with the nurse who was
always at the front desk. When Tengo began staying in the town and visiting his father every
day, the nurses grew kinder to him, and treated him in a friendly way as warmly as the prodigal
sons family must have welcomed him back home.
One of the younger nurses always gave an embarrassed smile whenever she saw Tengo.
She seemed to have a crush on him. She was petite, wore her hair in a ponytail, and had big
eyes and red cheeks. She was probably in her early twenties. But ever since the air chrysalis
had appeared with the sleeping girl inside, all Tengo could think about was Aomame. All other
women were faint shadows in comparison. An image of Aomame was constantly playing at
the edges of his mind. Aomame was alive somewhere in this world he could feel it. He knew
she must be searching for him, which is why on that evening she chose to find him. She had
not forgotten him either.
If what I saw wasnt an illusion.
Sometimes he remembered his older girlfriend, and wondered how she was. Shes irretrievably
lost now, her husband had said on the phone. She can no longer visit your home. Irretrievably
lost. Even now those words gave Tengo an uncomfortable, uneasy feeling. They
had an undeniably ominous ring.
Still, she became less and less of a presence in his mind as time went on. He could recall
the afternoons they had spent together only as events in the past, undertaken to fulfill certain
goals. Tengo felt guilty about this. But before he had known it, gravity had changed. It had
shifted, and it wouldnt be going back to its original location.
When he arrived at his fathers room, Tengo would sit in the chair next to his bed and
briefly greet him. Then he would explain, in chronological order, what he had done since the
previous night. He hadnt done much. He had gone back to town on the bus, had a simple
dinner at a restaurant, drunk a beer, returned to the inn, and read. Hed gone to bed at ten. In
the morning he would take a walk, eat breakfast, and work on his novel for about two hours.
He repeated the same things every day, but even so, Tengo gave the unconscious man a detailed
report on all his activities. There was no response from his listener. It was like talking to
a wall. A formality he had to go through. Still, sometimes simple repetition has meaning.
Then Tengo would read from the book he had brought along. He didnt stick to just one
book. He would read aloud the book that he himself was reading at the time. If a manual for
an electric lawn mower had been his current reading material, thats what he would have
read. Tengo read in a deliberately clear voice, slowly, so that it was easy to understand. That
was the one thing he made sure to do.
The lightning outside grew steadily stronger and for a while the greenish light illuminated
the road, but there was no rumble of thunder. Maybe there was thunder, but he felt unfocused.
It was as if he couldnt hear it. Rainwater flowed in small rivers along the road. After
wading through the water, customers came into the shop, one after another.
His friend turned and stared. He went strangely quiet. There was a sudden commotion as
customers pushed toward them, making it hard to breathe.
Someone cleared his throat, perhaps because a piece of food had gotten stuck; it was a
strange voice, more of a snuffling cough, as if it were a dog.
Suddenly there was a huge flash of lightning that shone all the way inside the place, illuminating
the people on the dirt floor. And just then a clap of thunder sounded, ready to crack
the roof. Surprised, he stood up, and the crowd of people at the entrance turned as one to
face him. Then he saw that theirs were the faces of animals dogs or foxes, he wasnt
sure and the animals all wore clothes, and some of them had long tongues hanging out, licking
around the corners of their mouths.
Tengo read to there and looked at his fathers face. The end, he said. The story stopped
there.
No reaction.
 What do you think? 
As expected, there was no response from his father.
Sometimes he would read what he himself had written that morning. After he had read it,
he would rewrite in ballpoint pen the parts he wasnt satisfied with, and reread the parts he
had edited. If he still wasnt satisfied at the way it sounded, he would rewrite it again, and then
read the new version.
 The rewritten version is better, he said to his father, as if hoping he would agree. His
father, predictably, didnt express an opinion. He didnt say that it was better, or that the earlier
version was better, or that there really wasnt much of a difference between the two. The
lids on his sunken eyes were shut tight, like a sad house with its heavy shutters lowered.
Sometimes Tengo would stand up from his chair and stretch and go to the window and
look at the scenery outside. After several overcast days, it was raining. The continual afternoon
rain made the pine windbreak dark and heavy. He couldnt hear the waves at all. There
was no wind, just the rain falling straight down from the sky. A flock of black birds flew by in
the rain. The hearts of those birds were dark, and wet, too. The inside of the room was also
wet. Everything there, pillows, books, desk, was damp. But oblivious to it all to the weather,
the damp, the wind, the sound of the waves his father continued in an uninterrupted coma.
Like a merciful cloak, paralysis enveloped his body. After a short break Tengo went back to
reading aloud. In the damp, narrow room, that was all he was able to do.
When he tired of reading aloud, Tengo sat there, gazing at the form of his sleeping father
and trying to surmise what kinds of things were going through his brain. Inside in the inner
parts of that stubborn skull, like an old anvil what sort of consciousness lay hidden there? Or
was there nothing left at all? Was it like an abandoned house from which all the possessions
and appliances had been moved, leaving no trace of those who had once dwelled there?
Even if it was, there should be the occasional memory or scenery etched into the walls and
ceilings. Things cultivated over such a long time dont just vanish into nothingness. As his
father lay on this plain bed in the sanatorium by the shore, at the same time he might very
well be surrounded by scenes and memories invisible to others, in the still darkness of a back
room in his own vacant house.
The young nurse with the red cheeks would come in, smile at Tengo, then take his fathers
temperature, check how much remained in the IV drip, and measure the amount of urine he
had produced. She would note all the numbers down on a clipboard. Her actions were automatic
and brisk, as if prescribed in a training manual. Tengo watched this series of move-
ments and wondered how she must feel to live her life in this sanatorium by the sea, taking
care of senile old people whose prognosis was grim. She looked young and healthy. Beneath
her starched uniform, her waist and her breasts were compact but ample. Golden down
glistened on her smooth neck. The plastic name tag on her chest read Adachi.
What could possibly have brought her to this remote place, where oblivion and listless
death lay hovering over everything? Tengo could tell she was a skilled and hardworking
nurse. She was still young and worked quite efficiently. She could have easily worked in some
other field of health care, something more lively and engaging, so why did she choose this
sad sort of place to work? Tengo wondered. He wanted to find out the reason and the background.
If he did ask her, he knew she would be honest. He could sense that about her. But it
would be better not to get involved, Tengo decided this was, after all, the cat town. Some
day he would have to get on the train and go back to the world from which he came.
The nurse finished her tasks, put the clipboard back, and gave Tengo an awkward smile.
 His condition is unchanged. The same as always. 
 So hes stable, Tengo said in as cheerful a voice as he could manage. To put a positive
spin on it. 
A half-apologetic smile rose to her lips and she inclined her head just a touch. She
glanced at the book on his lap. Are you reading that to him? 
Tengo nodded. I doubt he can hear it, though. 
 Still, its a good thing to do, the nurse said.
 Maybe it is, or maybe it isnt, but I cant think of anything else I can do. 
 But not everybody else would do that. 
 Most people have busier lives than I do, Tengo said.
The nurse looked like she was about to say something, but she hesitated. In the end she
didnt say a thing. She looked at his sleeping father, and then at Tengo.
 Take care, she said.
 Thanks, Tengo answered.
After Nurse Adachi left, Tengo waited a while, then began reading aloud once more.
In the evening, when his father was wheeled on a gurney to the examination room, Tengo
went to the cafeteria, drank some tea, then phoned Fuka-Eri from a pay phone.
 Is everything okay? Tengo asked her.
 Yes, everything is okay, she said. Just like always. 
 Everythings fine with me, too. Doing the same thing every day. 
 But time is moving forward. 
 Thats right, Tengo said. Every day time moves forward one days worth. 
And what has gone forward cant go back to where it came from.
 The crow came back again just a little while ago, Fuka-Eri said. A big crow. 
 In the evening that crow always comes up to the window. 
 Doing the same thing every day. 
 Thats right, Tengo said. Just like us. 
 But it doesnt think about time. 
 Crows cant think about time. Probably only humans have the concept of time. 
 Why, she asked.
 Humans see time as a straight line. Its like putting notches on a long straight stick. The
notch here is the future, the one on this side is the past, and the present is this point right
here. Do you understand? 
 I think so. 
 But actually time isnt a straight line. It doesnt have a shape. In all senses of the term, it
doesnt have any form. But since we cant picture something without form in our minds, for the
sake of convenience we understand it as a straight line. At this point, humans are the only
ones who can make that sort of conceptual substitution. 
 But maybe we are the ones who are wrong. 
Tengo mulled this over. You mean we may be wrong to see time as a straight line? 
No response.
 Thats a possibility. Maybe were wrong and the crow is right. Maybe time is nothing at all
like a straight line. Perhaps its shaped like a twisted doughnut. But for tens of thousands of
years, people have probably been seeing time as a straight line that continues on forever.
And thats the concept they based their actions on. And until now they havent found anything
inconvenient or contradictory about it. So as an experiential model, its probably correct. 
 Experiential model, Fuka-Eri repeated.
 After taking a lot of samples, you come to view one conjecture as actually correct. 
Fuka-Eri was silent for a time. Tengo had no idea if she had understood him or not.
 Hello? Tengo said, checking if she was still there.
 How long will you be there, Fuka-Eri asked, omitting the question mark.
 You mean how long will I be in Chikura? 
 Yes. 
 I dont know, Tengo answered honestly. All I can say right now is that Ill stay here until
certain things make sense. There are some things I dont understand. I want to stay for a
while and see how they develop. 
Fuka-Eri was silent on the other end again. When she was silent it was like she wasnt
there at all.
 Hello? Tengo said again.
 Dont miss the train, Fuka-Eri said.
 Ill be careful, Tengo replied, not to be late for the train. Is everything okay with you? 
 One person came here a while ago. 
 What kind of person? 
 An N H K person. 
 A fee collector from NHK? 
 Fee collector, she asked, again without the question mark.
 Did you talk to him? Tengo asked.
 I did not understand what he was saying. 
She apparently had no idea what NHK was. The girl lacked some essential cultural knowledge.
 It will take too long to explain over the phone, Tengo said, but basically its a large organization.
A lot of people work there. They go around to all the houses in Japan and collect
money every month. You and I dont need to pay, because we dont receive anything from
them. I hope you didnt unlock the door. 
 No, I did not unlock it. Like you told me. 
 Im glad. 
 But he said, ‘You are a thief. 
 You dont need to worry about that, Tengo said.
 We have not stolen anything. 
 Of course we havent. You and I havent done anything wrong. 
Fuka-Eri was again silent on the other end of the line. Hello? Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri didnt reply. She might have already hung up. Though he didnt hear any sound
that indicated this.
 Hello? Tengo repeated, this time more loudly.
Fuka-Eri coughed lightly. That person knew a lot about you. 
 The fee collector? 
 Yes. The N H K person. 
 And he called you a thief. 
 No. He didnt mean me. 
 He meant me? 
Fuka-Eri didnt reply.
 Anyway, Tengo said, I dont have a TV. So Im not stealing anything from NHK. 
 But that person was very angry that I didnt unlock the door. 
 It doesnt matter. Let him be angry. But no matter what happens, no matter what anyone
tells you, never, ever unlock the door. 
 I wont unlock it. 
After saying this, Fuka-Eri suddenly hung up. Or perhaps it wasnt so sudden. Perhaps for
her, hanging up the phone at that point was an entirely natural, even logical act. To Tengos
ear, though, it sounded abrupt. But Tengo knew that even if he were to try his hardest to
guess what Fuka-Eri was thinking and feeling, it wouldnt do any good. As an experiential
model.
Tengo hung up the phone and went back to his fathers room.
His father had not been brought back to his room yet. The bed still had a depression in it
from his body. No air chrysalis was there. In the room, darkened by the dim, chill dusk, the
only thing present was the slight trace of the person who had occupied it until moments ago.
Tengo sighed and sat down on the chair. He rested his hands on his lap and gazed for a
long while at the depression in the sheets. Then he stood, went to the window, and looked
outside. The rain had stopped, and the autumn clouds lingered over the pine windbreak. It
would be a beautiful sunset, the first in some time.
Tengo had no idea why the fee collector knew a lot about him. The last time an NHK fee
collector had come around had been about a year ago. At that time he had stood at the door
and politely explained to the man that there was no TV in his apartment. He never watched
TV, he continued. The fee collector hadnt been convinced, but he had left without saying any
more, muttering some snide remark under his breath.
Was it the same fee collector who had come today? He had the impression that that man
had also said something about his being a thief. It was a bit odd that the same collector would
show up a year later and say he knew a lot about Tengo. They had only stood at the door and
chatted for five minutes or so, thats all.
Whatever. What was important was that Fuka-Eri had kept the door locked. The fee collector
wouldnt be paying another visit anytime soon. He had a quota to meet and had to be
tired of standing around quarreling with people who refused to pay their subscription fees. In
order not to waste time, he would skip the troublesome customers places and collect the fees
from people who didnt have a problem paying.
Tengo looked again at the hollow his father had left in the bed, and he remembered all the
pairs of shoes his father had worn out. As his father had pounded the Tokyo pavement collecting
fees, he had consigned countless pairs of shoes to oblivion. All of the shoes looked
the same cheap, no-nonsense leather shoes, black, with thick soles. He had worn them
hard, until they were worn out and falling apart, the heels warped out of shape. As a boy,
every time Tengo saw these terribly misshapen shoes it pained him. He didnt feel sorry for
his father, but for the shoes. They reminded him of a pitiful work animal, driven as hard as
possible and hovering on the verge of death.
But come to think of it, wasnt his father now like a work animal about to die? No different
from a worn-out pair of leather shoes?
Tengo gazed out the window again as the colors of the sunset deepened in the western
sky. He remembered the air chrysalis emitting a faint, pale light, and Aomame, as a young
girl, sleeping inside.
Would that air chrysalis ever appear here again?
Was time really a straight line?
 It seems Ive reached a deadlock, Tengo mumbled to the wall. There are too many variables.
Even for a former child prodigy, its impossible to find an answer. 
The walls didnt have a response. Nor did they express an opinion. They simply, and silently,
reflected the color of the setting sun.
1Q84
CHAPTER 4
Ushikawa
OCCAMS RAZOR
Ushikawa found it hard to get his head around the idea that the elderly dowager who lived
in a mansion in Azabu could somehow be involved with the assassination of Sakigakes Leader.
He had dug up background information on her. She was a well-known figure in society, so
the investigation had not taken much effort. Her husband had been a prominent businessman
in the postwar era, influential in the political sphere. His business focused mainly on investments
and real estate, though he had also branched out into large-scale retail stores and
transport-related businesses. After her husbands death in the mid-1950s, the woman had
taken over his company. She had a talent for managing business, as well as an ability to
sense impending danger. In the late 1960s she felt that the company had overextended itself,
so she deliberately sold at a high price its stock in various fields, and systematically
downsized the business. She put all her physical and mental strength into the remaining
areas. Thanks to this, she was able to weather the era of the oil shock that occurred soon
after with minimal damage and set aside a healthy amount of liquid assets. She knew how to
turn other peoples crises into golden opportunities for herself.
She was retired now and in her mid-seventies. She had an abundance of money, which
allowed her to live in comfort in her spacious mansion, indebted to no one. But why would a
woman like that deliberately plot to murder someone?
Even so, Ushikawa decided to dig a little deeper. One reason was that he couldnt find
anything else that even resembled a clue. The second reason was that there was something
about this safe house that bothered him. There was nothing especially unnatural about
providing a free shelter for battered women. It was a sound and useful service to society. The
dowager had the financial resources, and the women must be very grateful to her for her kindness.
The problem was that the security at that apartment building the heavy locked gate,
the German shepherd, the surveillance cameras was too tight for a facility of its type. There
was something excessive about it.
The first thing Ushikawa did was check the deed for the land and the house that the dowager
lived in. This was public information, easily ascertained by a trip to city hall. The deed to
both the land and the house were in her name alone. There was no mortgage. Everything
was quite clear-cut. As private assets, the property tax would come to quite a sum, but she
probably didnt mind paying such an amount. The future inheritance tax would also be huge,
but this didnt seem to bother her, which was unusual for such a wealthy person. In Ushikawas
experience, nobody hated paying taxes more than the rich.
After her husbands death, she continued to live alone in that enormous mansion. No
doubt she had a few servants, so she wasnt totally alone. She had two children, and her son
had taken over the company. The son had three children. Her daughter had married and died
fifteen years ago of an illness. She left no children behind.
This much was easy to find out. But once he tried to dig deeper into the womans background,
a solid wall loomed up out of nowhere, blocking his way. Beyond this, all paths were
closed. The wall was high, and the door had multiple locks. What Ushikawa did know was that
this woman wanted to keep anything private about her completely out of public view. And she
had poured considerable effort and money into carrying out that policy. She never responded
to any sort of inquiry, never made any public statements. And no matter how many materials
he raked through, not once did he come up with a photograph of her.
The womans number was listed in the Minato Ward phone book. Ushikawas style was to
tackle things head on, so he went ahead and dialed it. Before the phone had rung twice, a
man picked up.
Ushikawa gave a phony name and the name of some investment firm and said, Theres
something I would like to ask the lady of the house about, regarding her investment funds. 
The man replied, She isnt able to come to the phone. But you can tell me whatever she
needs to know. His businesslike tone sounded mechanical, manufactured.
 Its company policy not to reveal these things to anyone other than the client, Ushikawa
explained, so if I cant speak with her directly now, I can mail the documents to her. She will
have them in a few days. 
 That would be fine, the man said, and hung up.
Ushikawa wasnt particularly disappointed that he couldnt speak to the dowager. He
wasnt expecting to. What he really wanted to find out was how concerned she was about protecting
her privacy. Extremely so, it would appear. She seemed to have several people with
her in the mansion who kept a close guard over her. The tone of this man who answered the
phone her secretary, most likely made this clear. Her name was printed in the telephone
directory, but only a select group could actually speak to her. All others were flicked away, like
ants who had crawled into the sugar bowl.
. . .
Pretending to be looking for a place to rent, he made the rounds of local real estate agencies,
indirectly asking about the apartment building used as the safe house. Most of the
agents had no idea there was an apartment building at that address. This neighborhood was
one of the more upscale residential areas in Tokyo. These agents only dealt with high-end
properties and couldnt be bothered with a two-story, wooden apartment building. One look at
Ushikawas face and clothes, too, and they essentially gave him the cold shoulder. If a three-
legged, waterlogged dog with a torn-off tail and mange had limped in the door, they would
have treated it more kindly than they treated him.
Just when he was about to give up, a small local agency that seemed to have been there
for years caught his eye. The yellowed old man at the front desk said, Ah, that place, and
volunteered information. The mans face was shriveled up, like a second-rate mummy, but he
knew every nook and cranny of the neighborhood and always jumped at the chance to bend
someones ear.
 That building is owned by Mr. Ogatas wife, and yes, in the past it was rented out as
apartments. Why she happened to have that building, I dont really know. Her circumstances
did not exactly demand that she manage an apartment building. I imagine she mostly used it
to house their employees. I dont know much about it now, but it seems to be used for
battered women, kind of like those kakekomidera, temples in the old days that sheltered
wives running away from abusive husbands. Anyway, it isnt going to fatten a real estate
agents wallet. 
The old man laughed, with his mouth shut. He sounded like a woodpecker.
 A kakekomidera, eh? Ushikawa said. He offered him a Seven Stars cigarette. The old
man took it, let Ushikawa light it for him with his lighter, and took a deep, appreciative drag on
it. This is exactly what the Seven Stars must long for, Ushikawa mused to be enjoyed so
thoroughly.
 Women whose husbands smack them around and run away, their faces all puffed up,
they they take shelter there. They dont have to pay rent. 
 Like a kind of public service, Ushikawa said.
 Yes, that sort of thing. They had this extra apartment building so they used it to help
people in trouble. Shes tremendously wealthy, so she could do whatever she wanted, without
worrying about making money. Not like the rest of us. 
 But why did Mrs. Ogata start doing that? Was there something that led up to it? 
 I dont know. Shes so rich that maybe its like a hobby? 
 Well, even if it is a hobby, Ushikawa said, beaming, thats a wonderful thing, to help
people in trouble like that. Not everyone with money to burn takes the initiative to help others. 
 Of course its a nice thing to do, the old man agreed. Years ago I used to hit my old lady
all the time, so Im not one to talk. He opened his mouth, showing off his missing teeth, and
guffawed, as if hitting your wife every once in a while were one of lifes notable pleasures.
 So I take it that several people live there now? Ushikawa asked.
 I go past there when I take a walk every morning, but you cant see anything from outside.
But it does seem like a few people are living there. I guess there will always be men in
the world who beat their wives. 
 There are always far more people in the world who make things worse, rather than help
out. 
The old man guffawed again loudly, his mouth wide open. You got that right. There are a
lot more people who do bad things than do good. 
The old man seemed to have taken a liking to Ushikawa. This made Ushikawa uncomfortable.
 By the way, what sort of person is Mrs. Ogata? Ushikawa asked, trying to sound casual.
 I really dont know that much about her, the old man replied, knitting his brow like the
spirit of an old, withered tree. She lives a very quiet, reserved life. Ive done business here for
many years, but at most Ive just caught glimpses of her from afar. When she goes out she always
has a chauffeur, and her maids do all the shopping. She has a man who is like her personal
secretary and he takes care of most everything. I mean, shes a well-bred, wealthy woman,
and you cant expect her to talk with the hoi polloi. The old man frowned, and from the
midst of those wrinkles came a wink, directed at Ushikawa.
By hoi polloi, the old man with the yellowed face seemed to be talking about a group composed
primarily of two people: himself and Ushikawa.
Ushikawa asked another question. How long has Mrs. Ogata been active in providing a
safe house for victims of domestic violence? 
 Im not really sure. Ive only heard from others that the place is a kind of kakekomidera.
But about four years ago, people started to go in and out of that apartment building. Four or
five years, something like that. The old man lifted the teacup to his lips and drank his cold
tea. It was about then that they built a new gate and the security got tighter. Its a safe house,
after all, and if anyone can just wander in, the folks who live there wont be able to relax. 
The old man seemed to come back to the present. He looked at Ushikawa a bit suspiciously.
 So you said youre looking for a reasonably priced place to rent? 
 Thats correct. 
 Then you better try somewhere else. This neighborhood is full of expensive mansions
and even if there are places for rent that come on the market, theyre all high-end rentals
aimed at foreigners who work in the embassies. A long time ago there were a lot of regular
people who lived around here, ones who werent so wealthy. As a matter of fact, finding
places for them is how our business got started. But there arent any affordable houses left,
so Im thinking of closing the business. Land prices in Tokyo have skyrocketed and small fry
like me cant handle it anymore. Unless you have bags of cash to spare, I suggest you try
elsewhere. 
 Ill do that, Ushikawa said. The truth is, I am a bit strapped. Ill try some other location. 
The old man breathed out cigarette smoke and a sigh. But once Mrs. Ogata passes, you
can bet that mansion will disappear. That son of hers is a real go-getter, and theres no way
hes going to let a prime piece of real estate like that in a premium area just sit around. Hell
knock it down in a flash and put up an ultra-high-end condo. He may very well be drawing up
the blueprints as we speak. 
 If that happens this whole neighborhood wont be quite as serene as it is now. 
 Yup, you wont recognize it. 
 You mentioned her son. What business is he in? 
 Basically hes in real estate. The same as me. But the difference between us is like chalk
and cheese. Like a Rolls-Royce and an old bicycle. He takes a huge amount of capital and
then makes investments on his own, one after another. He licks up all the honey himself,
without leaving a drop behind. Nothing spills over in my direction, I can tell you that. The world
sucks, thats for sure. 
 I was just walking around a while ago and wandered all around the outskirts of that mansion.
I was impressed. Its quite a place. 
 Well, its definitely the best residence in this neighborhood. When I picture those beautiful
willow trees being chopped down, it hurts. The old man shook his head as if he really were in
pain. I can only hope that Mrs. Ogata lives a little longer. 
 I hear you, Ushikawa agreed.
Ushikawa found a listing for the Center for Victims of Domestic Violence in the phone
book and decided to contact them. It was a nonprofit organization, run by volunteers and
headed by several lawyers. Ushikawa made an appointment in the name of his phony office,
the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. He led them to
believe he might be a potential donor, and they set the time for the appointment.
Ushikawa proffered his business card (which was the same as the one he had given to
Tengo) and explained how one of the purposes of his foundation was to pinpoint an outstanding
nonprofit organization that was making a real contribution to society, and provide them
with a grant. Though he couldnt reveal who the sponsor was, the grant could be used in any
way the recipient wished. The only requirement was to submit a simple report by the end of
the year.
Ushikawas appearance didnt inspire any goodwill or trust, and the young lawyer he
spoke with eyed him warily at first. However, they were chronically short on funds, and had to
accept any support, no matter the source.
 Ill need to know more about your activities, Ushikawa said. The lawyer explained how
they had started the organization. Ushikawa found this history boring, but he listened carefully,
his expression one of devoted interest. He made all the appropriate noises, nodded in all
the right places, and kept his expression docile and open. As he did, the lawyer warmed up to
him. Ushikawa was a highly trained listener, adopting such a sincere and receptive manner
that he almost always succeeded in putting the other person at ease.
He found the opportunity to casually nudge the conversation in the direction of the safe
house. For the unfortunate women who are running away from domestic violence, he asked, if
they cant find an appropriate place to go, where do they end up living? He put on an expression
that showed his deep sympathy for these women whose fate was like that of leaves
tossed about in some outrageously strong wind.
 In instances like that we have several safe houses where they can go, the young lawyer
replied.
 Safe houses? 
 Temporary refuges. There arent many, but there are places that charitable people have
offered us. One person has even provided an entire apartment building for us to use. 
 An entire apartment building, Ushikawa said, sounding impressed. I guess some people
can be quite generous. 
 Thats right. Whenever our activities are covered in newspapers or magazines, inevitably
well get a call from people wanting to help out. Without offers from people like that, we would
never be able to keep this organization going, since we depend almost entirely on contributions. 
 What youre doing is very meaningful, Ushikawa said.
The lawyer flashed him a vulnerable smile. Nobodys easier to fool, Ushikawa thought,
than the person who is convinced that he is right.
 How many women would you say are living in that apartment building now? 
 It depends, but lets see I would say usually four or five, the lawyer said.
 About that charitable person who provided that apartment building, Ushikawa said, how
did this person get involved? Im thinking there must have been some event that led up to this
interest. 
The lawyer tilted his head. I really dont know. Though in the past this person was, it
seems, involved in similar activities, on an individual level. As far as were concerned, were
just grateful for this individuals kindness. We dont ask the reasons behind it. 
 Of course, Ushikawa nodded. I assume you keep the locations of your safe houses
secret? 
 Correct. We have to make sure that the women are protected, plus many of our donors
prefer to remain anonymous. I mean, were dealing with acts of violence, after all. 
They talked for a while longer, but Ushikawa was unable to extract any more useful information.
What Ushikawa knew were the following facts: the Center for Victims of Domestic
Violence had begun operations in earnest four years ago. Not long afterward, a certain
 donor had contacted them and offered them use of a vacant apartment building as a safe
house. The donor had read about their activities in the newspaper. The donor had set one
condition, namely, that the donors name never be revealed. Still, from what was said, Ushikawa
could deduce that, beyond any doubt, the donor was the elderly dowager living in
Azabu, the one who owned the old apartment building.
 Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, Ushikawa said warmly to the
idealistic young lawyer. Your organization is certainly making a valuable contribution. Ill
present what I have learned here to our board of directors. We should be getting in touch with
you fairly soon. In the meantime, my very best wishes for your continued success. 
Next, Ushikawa began to investigate the death of the dowagers daughter. The daughter
had married an elite bureaucrat in the Ministry of Transport and was only thirty-six when she
died. He didnt know the cause yet. Not long after she died, her husband left the Ministry of
Transport. These were the only facts Ushikawa had unearthed so far. He didnt know why the
husband had left the ministry, or what sort of life he had led afterward. The Ministry of Transport
was not the sort of government office that willingly revealed information regarding its inner
workings to ordinary citizens. But Ushikawa had a sharp sense of smell, and something
smelled fishy. He couldnt believe that losing his wife would have made the man so overcome
with grief that he would quit his job and go into hiding.
Ushikawa knew there werent many thirty-six-year-old women who died of illness. Not that
there werent some. No matter how old you are, or how blessed your circumstances, you can
suddenly fall ill and die from cancer, a brain tumor, peritonitis, acute pneumonia. The human
body is a fragile thing. But for an affluent woman of thirty-six to join the ranks of the dead in
all likelihood it was not a natural death, but either an accident or suicide.
Let me speculate here, Ushikawa said to himself. Following the famous rule of Occams
razor, Ill try to find the simplest possible explanation. Eliminate all unnecessary factors, boil it
all down to one logical line, and then look at the situation.
Lets say the dowagers daughter didnt die of illness but by suicide. Ushikawa rubbed his
hands together as he pondered this. It wouldnt be too hard to pretend that a suicide was actually
death by illness, especially for someone with money and influence. Take this a step further
and say that this daughter was the victim of domestic violence, grew despondent, and
took her own life. Certainly not an impossibility. It was a well-known fact that certain members
of the so-called elite had disgusting personalities and dark, twisted tendencies, as if they had
taken more than the share of darkness allotted to them.
If that were the case, what would the rich old dowager do? Would she call it fate, say that
nothing else could be done, and give up? Not very likely. She would take suitable revenge
against whatever force had driven her daughter to her untimely end. Ushikawa felt he had a
better understanding of the dowager. She was a daring, bright woman, with a clear vision and
a strong will. And she would spare neither fortune nor influence to avenge the death of the
one she loved.
Ushikawa had no way of knowing what kind of retaliation she had actually taken toward
her daughters husband, since all trace of him had vanished into thin air. He didnt think that
the dowager had gone so far as to take the mans life. But he had no doubt that she had
taken some sort of decisive action. And it was hard to believe that she had left any trail behind.
Ushikawas conjectures thus far seemed to make sense, though he had no proof. His theory,
however, did clear up a lot of questions. Licking his lips, Ushikawa vigorously rubbed his
hands together. Beyond this point, though, things started to get a little hazy.
The dowager had set up the safe house to sublimate her desire for revenge, turning it into
something more useful and positive. Then, at the sports club she frequented, she got to know
the young instructor Aomame, and somehow he had no idea how they came to a secret
understanding. After meticulous preparation, Aomame got access to the suite at the Hotel Okura
and murdered Leader. The method she used was unclear. Aomame might be quite proficient
in murdering people using a special technique. As a result, despite being closely
guarded by two very dedicated and able bodyguards, Leader wound up dead.
Up to this point, the threads tying his conjectures held together barely but when it came
to linking Sakigakes Leader to the center for battered women, Ushikawa was at a total loss.
At this point his thought process hit a roadblock and a very sharp razor neatly severed all the
threads.
. . .
What Sakigake wanted from Ushikawa at this point were answers to two questions: Who
planned the murder of Leader? and Where was Aomame?
Ushikawa was the one who had run the original background check on Aomame, and he
had found nothing suspicious about her at all. But after she had left, Leader expired. And right
after that, Aomame disappeared. Poof like a gust of smoke in the wind. Sakigake had to
have been very upset with Ushikawa, convinced that his investigation hadnt been thorough
enough.
But in fact, as always, his investigation left nothing to be desired. As he had told Buzzcut,
Ushikawa was a stickler for making sure all the bases were covered. He could be faulted for
not having checked her phone records beforehand, but unless there was something extraordinarily
suspicious about a situation, that wasnt something he normally did. And as far as
he could tell from his investigations, there wasnt a single suspect thing about Aomame.
Ushikawa didnt want them to be upset with him forever. They paid him well, but they were
a dangerous bunch. Ushikawa was one of the few who knew how they had secretly disposed
of Leaders body, which made him a potential liability. He knew he had to come up with
something concrete to show them so they would know he was a valuable resource, someone
worth keeping alive.
He had no proof that the old dowager from Azabu was mixed up in Leaders murder. At
this point it was pure speculation. He did know that some deep secret lay hidden inside that
mansion with its magnificent willows. Ushikawas sense of smell told him this, and his job was
to bring that truth to light. It wouldnt be easy. The place was under heavy guard, with professionals
involved.
Yakuza?
Perhaps. Businessmen, those involved in real estate in particular, are often involved in
secret negotiations with yakuza. When the going gets rough, the yakuza get called in. It was
possible the old dowager might be making use of their influence. But Ushikawa wasnt very
certain of this the old dowager was too well bred to deal with people like them. Also, it was
hard to imagine that she would use yakuza to protect women who were victims of domestic violence.
Probably she had her own security apparatus in place, one that she paid for herself.
Her own personal system she had refined. It would cost her, but then, she wasnt hurting for
funds. And this system of hers might employ violence when there was a perceived need.
If Ushikawas hypothesis was correct, then Aomame must have gone into hiding somewhere
far away, with the aid of the old dowager. They would have carefully erased any trail,
given her a new identity and a new name, possibly even a new face. If that was the case,
then it would be impossible for Ushikawas painstaking little private investigation to track her
down.
At this point the only thing to do was to try to learn more about the dowager. His hope was
that he would run across a seam that would lead him to discover something about Aomames
whereabouts. Things might work out, and then again they might not. But Ushikawa had some
strong points: his sharp sense of smell and his tenaciousness. He would never let go of
something once he latched onto it. Besides these, he asked himself, what other talents do I
have worth mentioning? Do I have other abilities I can be proud of?
Not one, Ushikawa answered himself, convinced he was right.
1Q84
CHAPTER 5
Aomame
NO MATTER HOW LONG YOU KEEP QUIET
Aomame didnt find it painful to be shut away, living a monotonous, solitary existence. She
got up every day at six thirty and had a simple breakfast. Then she would spend an hour or so
doing laundry, ironing, or mopping the floor. For an hour and a half in the morning she used
the equipment Tamaru had obtained for her to do a strenuous workout. As a fitness instructor
she was well versed in how much stimulation all the various muscles needed every day how
much exercise was just right, and how much was excessive.
Lunch was usually a green salad and fruit. The afternoon was spent sitting on the sofa
and reading, or taking a short nap. In the evening she would spend an hour preparing dinner,
which she would finish before six. Once the sun set, she would be out on the balcony, seated
on her garden chair, keeping watch over the playground. Then to bed at ten thirty. One day
was the same as the next, but she never felt bored.
She was not very social to begin with, and never had a problem going long stretches
without seeing or talking with other people. Even when she was in elementary school, she
seldom talked with her classmates. More accurately, unless it was absolutely necessary, no
one else ever spoke to her.
Compared with the harsh days of her childhood, being holed up in a neat little apartment,
not talking to anybody, was nothing. Compared with staying silent while those around her
chatted away, it was much easier and more natural to be silent in a place where she was
all alone. And besides, she had a book she should read. She had started reading the Proust
volumes that Tamaru had left for her. She read no more than twenty pages a day. She read
each and every word carefully, working her way through each days reading. Once she finished
that section, she read something else. And just before bed she made sure to read a few
pages of Air Chrysalis. This was Tengos writing, and it had become a sort of manual she followed
to live in 1Q84.
She also listened to music. The elderly dowager had sent over a box of classical music
cassettes: Mahler symphonies, Haydn chamber music, Bach keyboard pieces all varieties
and types of classical music. There was a tape of Janáeks Sinfonietta as well, which she had
specifically requested. She would listen to the Sinfonietta once a day as she noiselessly went
through her exercise routine.
Autumn quietly deepened. She had the feeling that her body was slowly becoming transparent.
Aomame tried her best to keep her mind clear of any thoughts, but it was impossible
not to think of anything. Nature abhors a vacuum. At the very least, though, she felt that now
there was nothing for her to hate. There was no need to hate her classmates and teacher
anymore. Aomame was no longer a helpless child, and no one was forcing her to practice a
religion now. There was no need to hate the men who beat up women. The anger she had felt
before, like a high tide rising up within her the overwrought emotions that sometimes made
her want to smack her fists against the closest wall had vanished before shed realized it.
She wasnt sure why, but those feelings were entirely gone. She was grateful for this. As
much as possible, she wanted never to hurt anyone, ever again. Just as she didnt want to
hurt herself.
On nights when she found it hard to sleep, she thought of Tamaki Otsuka and Ayumi Nakano.
When she closed her eyes, the memory of holding their bodies close came rushing
back to her. Both of them had had soft, lustrous skin and warm bodies. Gentle, profound bodies,
with fresh blood coursing through them, hearts beating regular, blessed beats. She could
hear them sigh softly and giggle. Slender fingers, hardened nipples, smooth thighs.… But
these two women were no longer in the world.
Like dark, soft water, sadness took over Aomames heart, soundlessly, and with no warning.
The best antidote at a time like this was to just shut off that stream of memories and think
only of Tengo. Focus, and recall the touch of the ten-year-old boys hand as she had held it
for a fleeting moment. And then she called forth from memory the thirty-year-old Tengo sitting
on top of the slide, she imagined what it would feel like to be held in those large, strong arms.
He was almost within reach.
Maybe if I hold out my hand the next time, I really will be able to reach him. In the darkness
she closed her eyes and immersed herself in that possibility. She gave herself up to her
longing.
But if I never do see him again, she thought, her heart trembling, then what? Things had
been a whole lot simpler when there was no actual point of contact between them. Meeting
the adult Tengo had been a mere dream, an abstract hypothesis. But now that she had seen
the real him before her very eyes, his presence was more concrete, more powerful, than it
had ever been before. She had to see him, to have him hold her, caress every part of her.
Just the very thought that this might not come to pass made her feel as if her heart and body
were being ripped in two.
Maybe back there in front of the Esso tiger on the billboard, I should have shot that 9mm
bullet into my skull. Then I wouldnt have to live like this, feeling such sadness and pain. But
she just couldnt pull the trigger. She had heard a voice. From far off, someone calling her
name. I might be able to see Tengo again, she had thought and once this thought had
struck her, she had to go on living. Even if what Leader had said was true, that doing so
would make things dangerous for Tengo, she had no other choice. She had felt an unbearably
strong surge of the life force, beyond the bounds of logic. The upshot was that she was
burning with a fierce desire for him. It was a thirst that wouldnt quit, and a premonition of despair.
A realization struck her. This is what it means to live on. When granted hope, a person
uses it as fuel, as a guidepost to life. It is impossible to live without hope. Aomames heart
clenched at the thought, as if every bone in her body were suddenly creaking and screaming
out.
She sat at the dining table and picked up the automatic pistol. She pulled back the slide,
sending a bullet into the chamber, thumbed back the hammer, and stuck the muzzle in her
mouth. Just a touch more pressure with her trigger finger and all this sadness would disappear.
Just a touch more. One more centimeter. No, if I pull my finger just five millimeters toward
me, I will shift over to a silent world where there are no more worries. The pain will only
last an instant. And then there will be a merciful nothingness. She closed her eyes. The Esso
tiger from the billboard, gas hose in hand, grinned at her. Put a Tiger in Your Tank.
She pulled the hard muzzle out of her mouth and slowly shook her head.
I cant die. In front of the balcony is the playground. The slide is there, and as long as I
have the hope that Tengo will show up again, I wont be able to pull this trigger. This possibility
drew her back from the brink. One door closed inside her heart and another door opened,
quietly, without a sound. Aomame pulled the slide again, ejecting the bullet, set the safety,
and placed the pistol back on the table. When she closed her eyes she sensed something in
the darkness, a faint light, fading away by the moment. What it could be, she had no idea.
She sat down on the sofa and focused on the pages of Swanns Way. She imagined the
scenes depicted in the story, trying hard not to let other thoughts intrude. Outside a cold rain
had started to fall. The weather report on the radio said a gentle rain would continue until the
next morning. A weather front was stalled out in the Pacific like a lonely person, lost in
thought, oblivious of time.
Tengo wont be coming, she thought. The sky was covered from one end to the other with
thick clouds, blocking out the moon. Still she would probably go out onto the balcony, a hot
cup of cocoa in hand, and watch the playground. She would keep binoculars and the pistol
nearby, wear something decent enough so that she could quickly run outside, and gaze at the
slide in the rain. This was the only meaningful act she could undertake.
At three p.m., someone at the entrance of the building rang her bell. Aomame ignored it. It
wasnt possible that anyone would be visiting her. She had the kettle on for tea, but to be on
the safe side she switched off the gas and listened. The bell rang three or four times and then
was silent.
About five minutes later a bell rang again. This time it was the doorbell to her apartment.
Now someone was inside the building, right outside her door. The person may have followed
a resident inside, or else had rung somebody elses bell and talked their way in. Aomame
kept perfectly still. If somebody comes, dont answer, Tamaru had instructed her. Set the
dead bolt and dont make a sound.
The doorbell must have rung ten times. A little too persistent for a salesman they usually
give up at three rings. As she held her breath, the person began to knock on the door with his
fist. It wasnt that loud a sound, but she could sense the irritation behind it. Miss Takai, a
low, middle-aged mans voice said. A slightly hoarse voice. Miss Takai. Can you please answer
the door? 
Takai was the fake name on the mailbox.
 Miss Takai, I know this isnt a good time, but I would like to see you. Please. 
The man paused for a moment, waiting for a response. When there was none, he knocked
on the door again, this time a little louder.
 I know youre inside, Miss Takai, so lets cut to the chase and open the door. I know
youre in there and can hear me. 
Aomame picked up the automatic pistol from the table and clicked off the safety. She
wrapped the pistol in a towel and held it by the grip.
She had no idea who this could be, nor what he could possibly want. His anger seemed
directed at her why, she had no clue and he was determined to get her to open the door.
Needless to say, in her present position this was the last thing she wanted.
The knocking finally stopped and the mans voice echoed again in the hallway.
 Miss Takai, I am here to collect your NHK fee. Thats right, good old NHK. I know youre
at home. No matter how much you try to stay quiet, I can tell. Working this job for so many
years, I know when someone is really out, and when theyre just pretending. Even when a
person tries to stay very quiet, there are still signs hes there. People breathe, their hearts
beat, their stomachs continue to digest food. Miss Takai, I know youre in there, and that
youre waiting for me to give up and leave. Youre not planning to open the door or answer
me. Because you dont want to pay the subscription fee. 
The mans voice was louder than it needed to be, and it reverberated down the hallway of
the building. That was his intention calling out the persons name so loudly that it would
make them feel ridiculed and embarrassed. And so it would be a warning to all the neighbors.
Aomame kept perfectly silent. She wasnt about to respond. She put the pistol back on the table.
Just to be sure, though, she kept the safety off. The man could just be pretending to be
an NHK fee collector. Seated at the dining table, she stared at the front door.
She wanted to stealthily pad over to the door, look through the peephole, and check out
what kind of person he was. But she was glued to the chair. Better not do anything unnecessary after
a while he would give up and leave.
The man, however, seemed ready to deliver an entire lecture.
 Miss Takai, lets not play hide and seek anymore, okay? Im not doing this because I like
to. Even I have a busy schedule. Miss Takai, I know you watch TV. And everyone who
watches TV, without exception, has to pay the NHK subscription fee. You may not like it, but
thats the law. Not paying the fee is the same as stealing, Miss Takai, you dont want to be
treated as a thief because of something as petty as this, do you? This is a fancy building you
live in, and I dont think you will have any trouble paying the fee. Right? Hearing me proclaim
this to the world cant be much fun for you. 
Normally Aomame wouldnt care if an NHK fee collector was making a racket like this. But
right now she was in hiding, trying to keep out of sight. She didnt want anything to attract the
attention of other residents. But there was nothing she could do about it. She had to keep still
and wait until he went away.
 I know Im repeating myself, Miss Takai, but I am sure youre in there, listening to me.
And youre thinking this: Why, of all places, did you have to choose my apartment to stand
outside of? I wonder, too, Miss Takai. Its probably because I dont like people pretending not
to be at home. Pretending not to be at home is just a temporary solution, isnt it? I want you to
open the door and tell me to my face that you dont have any intention of paying the NHK fee.
You would feel much better, and so would I. That would leave some room for discussion. Pretending
to be out is not the way to go. Its like a pitiful little rat hiding in the dark. It only sneaks
out when people arent around. What a miserable way to live your life. 
This mans lying, Aomame thought. Thats just ridiculous, that he can sense when somebody
is at home. I havent made a sound. His real goal is to just stand in front of a random
apartment, make a racket, and intimidate all the other residents, to make people decide they
would prefer to pay the fee than to have him plant himself outside their door like that. This
man must have tried the same tactics elsewhere and had good results.
 Miss Takai, I know you find me unpleasant. I can understand perfectly what youre thinking.
And youre right I am an unpleasant person. Im aware of that. But you have to understand,
Miss Takai, that pleasant people dont make good fee collectors. There are tons of
people in the world who have decided they arent going to pay the NHK subscription fee, and
if youre going to collect from people like that you cant always act so nice. I would rather
leave with no problem, just say, Is that right? You dont want to pay the fee? I understand.
Sorry to bother you. But I cant. Collecting the fee is my job, and besides, personally I dont
like it when people pretend not to be at home. 
The man stopped and paused. And then he knocked on the door ten times in a row.
 Miss Takai, you must be finding this annoying. Arent you starting to feel like a real thief
by now? Think about it. Were not talking about a lot of money here. Enough to buy a modest
dinner at your neighborhood chain restaurant. Just pay it, and you wont be treated like a
thief. You wont have anyone yelling at you outside or banging on your door anymore. Miss
Takai, I know youre hiding in there. You think you can hide and get away from me forever.
Well go ahead and try. You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody
is going to find you. You cant act so sneaky forever. Consider this: there are people a whole
lot poorer than you all over Japan who faithfully pay their fee every month. Is that fair? 
Fifteen knocks on the door followed. Aomame counted them.
 I get it, Miss Takai. Youre pretty stubborn too. Fine. Ill be going now. I cant stand outside
here forever. But rest assured, Ill be back. Once I decide on something, I dont give up
easily. And I dont like people pretending to be out. Ill be back, and Ill knock on your door. Ill
keep banging on your door until the whole world has heard it. I promise you this, a promise
just between you and me. All right? Well, Ill be seeing you soon. 
She didnt hear any footsteps. Perhaps he had on rubber soles. Aomame stayed still there
for five minutes, staring at the door. The hallway outside was quiet again, and she couldnt
hear a thing. She crept to the front door, summoned her courage, and peered out the peephole.
No one was there.
She reset the safety on the pistol and took some deep breaths to get her heart rate back
down. She switched on the gas, heated up water, made green tea, and drank it. It was only
an NHK collector, she told herself. But there was something malicious, sick even, about his
voice. Whether this was directed at her personally or at the fictitious Miss Takai, she couldnt
tell. Still, that husky voice and persistent knock disturbed her, like something clammy sticking
to your bare skin.
Aomame undressed and took a shower. She carefully scrubbed herself in the hot water.
After she finished and had put on clean clothes, she felt a bit better. The clammy sensation
was gone. She sat down on the sofa and drank the rest of the tea. She tried to read her book
but couldnt concentrate on the words. Fragments of the mans voice came back to her.
 You think you can hide and get away from me forever. Well go ahead and try. You can
keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you. 
She shook her head. The man just said whatever nonsense popped into his head, yelling
things just to make people feel bad. He doesnt know a thing about me what Ive done, why
Im here. Still, her heart wouldnt stop pounding.
You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.
The fee collectors words sounded like they had deeper implications. Maybe it was just a
coincidence, she thought, but that man knew exactly what to say to upset me. Aomame gave
up reading and closed her eyes as she lay on the sofa.
Tengo, where are you? she wondered. She said it out loud. Tengo, where are you? Find
me now. Before someone else does.
1Q84
CHAPTER 6
Tengo
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
Tengo led a very orderly life in the small town by the sea. Once his days fell into a pattern,
he tried his best to keep them that way. He wasnt sure why he did so, but it seemed important.
In the morning he would take a walk, work on his novel, then go to see his father in the
sanatorium and read whatever he had at hand. Then he would go back to his room and sleep.
One day followed the next like the monotonous rhythm of the work songs farmers sing as they
plant their rice paddies.
There were several warm nights, followed by surprisingly cold ones. Autumn advanced a
step, then retreated, but was steadily deepening. The change in seasons didnt bring any
change to Tengos life, however he simply modeled each day on the one preceding it. He
tried his best to become an invisible observer, staying quiet, keeping the effect of his presence
to a minimum, silently waiting for that time to come. As the days passed, the difference
between one day and the next grew fainter. A week passed, then ten days. But the air
chrysalis never materialized. In the afternoon when his father was at the examination room,
the only thing on his bed was the small, pitiful, person-shaped depression.
Was that just a one-time event? Tengo thought, biting his lip as he sat in the small room in
the gathering twilight. A special revelation never to appear again? Or did I just see an illusion?
No one answered him. The only sound that reached him was the roar of the far-off sea, and
the wind blowing through the pine windbreak.
Tengo wasnt certain that he was doing the right thing. Maybe the time he was spending
here, in this room in a sanatorium in a town far from Tokyo, was meaningless. Even if it was,
though, he didnt think he could leave. Here in this room, he had seen the air chrysalis, and
inside, in a faint light, the small sleeping figure of Aomame. He had touched it. Even if this
was a one-time event, even if it was nothing more than a fleeting illusion, he wanted to stay
as long as he possibly could, tracing with his minds eye the scene as he had witnessed it.
. . .
Once they discovered that he was not going back to Tokyo, the nurses began to act more
friendly. They would take a short break between tasks and stop to chat. If they had a free moment
they came to his fathers room to talk with him. They brought him tea and cakes. Two
nurses alternated in caring for Tengos father Nurse Omura, who was in her mid-thirties (she
was the one who wore her hair up with a ballpoint pen stuck through her bun), and Nurse
Adachi, who had rosy cheeks and wore her hair in a ponytail. Nurse Tamura, a middle-aged
nurse with metal-framed glasses, usually staffed the reception desk, but if they happened to
be shorthanded she would pitch in and care for his father too. All three of them seemed to
take a personal interest in Tengo.
Except for his special hour at twilight, Tengo had plenty of time on his hands and talked
with them about all kinds of things. It was more like a question-and-answer session, though,
with the nurses asking questions about his life and Tengo responding as honestly as he
could.
The nurses talked about their own lives as well. All three had been born in this area, had
entered nursing school after high school, and had become nurses. They all found work at the
sanatorium monotonous and boring, the working hours long and irregular, but they were
happy to be able to work in their hometown. The work was much less stressful than being at a
general hospital, where they would face life-and-death situations on a daily basis. The old
people in the sanatorium gradually lost their memory and died, not really understanding their
situation. There was little blood, and the staff minimized any pain. No one was brought there
by ambulance in the middle of the night, and there were no distraught, sobbing families to
deal with. The cost of living was low in the area, so even with a salary that wasnt the most
generous they were able to comfortably get by. Nurse Tamura, the one with glasses, had lost
her husband five years earlier in an accident, and lived in a nearby town with her mother.
Nurse Omura, who wore the ballpoint pen in her hair, had two little boys and a husband who
drove a cab. Young Miss Adachi lived in an apartment on the outskirts of town with her sister,
who was three years older and worked as a hair stylist.
 You are such a kind person, Tengo, Nurse Omura said as she changed an IV bag.
 Theres no one else I know who comes here to read aloud to an unconscious patient. 
The praise made Tengo uncomfortable. I just happen to have some vacation days, he
said. But I wont be here all that long. 
 No matter how much free time someone might have, they dont come to a place like this
because they want to, she said. Maybe I shouldnt say this, but these are patients who will
never recover. As time passes it makes people get more and more depressed. 
 My father asked me to read to him. He said he didnt mind what I read. This was a long
time ago, when he was still conscious. Besides, I dont have anything else to do, so I might as
well come here. 
 What do you read to him? 
 All kinds of things. I just pick whatever book Im in the midst of reading, and read aloud
from wherever Ive left off. 
 What are you reading right now? 
 Isak Dinesens Out of Africa. 
The nurse shook her head. Never heard of it. 
 It was written in 1937. Dinesen was from Denmark. She married a Swedish nobleman,
moved to Africa just before the First World War, and they ran a plantation there. After she divorced
him, she continued to run the plantation on her own. The book is about her experiences
at the time. 
The nurse took his fathers temperature, noted it on his chart, then returned the ballpoint
pen to her hair and brushed back her bangs. I wonder if I could hear you read for a bit, she
said.
 I dont know if youll like it, Tengo said.
She sat down on a stool and crossed her legs. They were sturdy looking, fleshy, but nicely
shaped. Just go ahead and read, if you would. 
Tengo slowly began to read from where he had left off. It was the kind of passage that
was best read slowly, like time flowing over the African landscape.
When in Africa in March the long rains begin after four months of hot, dry weather, the
richness of growth and the freshness and fragrance everywhere are overwhelming.
But the farmer holds back his heart and dares not trust to the generosity of nature, he
listens, dreading to hear a decrease in the roar of the falling rain. The water that the earth is
now drinking in must bring the farm, with all the vegetable, animal and human life on it,
through four rainless months to come.
It is a lovely sight when the roads of the farm have all been turned into streams of running
water, and the farmer wades through the mud with a singing heart, out to the flowering and
dripping coffee-fields. But it happens in the middle of the rainy season that in the evening the
stars show themselves through the thinning clouds; then he stands outside his house and
stares up, as if hanging himself on to the sky to milk down more rain. He cries to the sky:
 Give me enough and more than enough. My heart is bared to thee now, and I will not let thee
go except thou bless me. Drown me if you like, but kill me not with caprices. No coitus interruptus,
heaven, heaven! 
 Coitus interruptus? the nurse asked, frowning.
 Shes the kind of person who doesnt mince words. 
 Still, it seems awfully graphic to use when youre addressing God. 
 Im with you on that, Tengo said.
Sometimes a cool, colourless day in the months after the rainy season calls back the time
of the marka mbaya, the bad year, the time of the drought. In those days the Kikuyu used to
graze their cows round my house, and a boy amongst them who had a flute, from time to time
played a short tune on it. When I have heard this tune again, it has recalled in one single moment
all our anguish and despair of the past. It has got the salt taste of tears in it. But at the
same time I found in the tune, unexpectedly surprisingly, a vigour, a curious sweetness, a
song. Had those hard times really had all these in them? There was youth in us then, a wild
hope. It was during those long days that we were all of us merged into a unity, so that on another
planet we shall recognize one another, and the things cry to each other, the cuckoo
clock and my books to the lean-fleshed cows on the lawn and the sorrowful old Kikuyus: You
also were there. You also were part of the Ngong farm. That bad time blessed us and went
away.
 Thats a wonderful passage, the nurse said. I can really picture the scene. Isak
Dinesens Out of Africa, you said? 
 Thats right. 
 You have a nice voice, too. Its deep, and full of emotion. Very nice for reading aloud. 
 Thanks. 
The nurse sat on the stool, closed her eyes for a while, and breathed quietly, as if she
were still experiencing the afterglow of the passage. Tengo could see the swell of her chest
under her uniform rise and fall as she breathed. As he watched this, Tengo remembered his
older girlfriend. Friday afternoons, undressing her, touching her hard nipples. Her deep sighs,
her wet vagina. Outside, beyond the closed curtains, a tranquil rain was falling. She was feeling
the heft of his balls in her hand. But these memories didnt arouse him. The scenery and
emotions were distant and vague, as though seen through a thin film.
Some time later the nurse opened her eyes and looked at Tengo. Her eyes seemed to
read his thoughts. But she was not accusing him. A faint smile rose to her lips as she stood
up and looked down at him.
 I have to be going. She patted her hair to check that the ballpoint pen was there, spun
around, and left the room.
Every evening he called Fuka-Eri. Nothing really happened today, she would tell him. The
phone had rung a few times, but she followed instructions and didnt answer. Im glad, 
Tengo told her. Just let it ring. 
When Tengo called her he would let it ring three times, hang up, then immediately dial
again, but she didnt always follow this arrangement. Most of the time she picked up on the
first set of rings.
 We have to follow our plan, Tengo cautioned her each time this happened.
 I know who it is. There is no need to worry, Fuka-Eri said.
 You know its me calling? 
 I dont answer the other phone calls. 
I guess thats possible, Tengo thought. He himself could sense when a call was coming in
from Komatsu. The way it rang was sort of nervous and fidgety, like someone tapping their
fingers persistently on a desktop. But this was, after all, just a feeling. It wasnt as if he knew
who was on the phone.
Fuka-Eris days were just as monotonous as Tengos. She never set foot outside the
apartment. There was no TV, and she didnt read any books. She hardly ate anything, so at
this point there was no need to go out shopping.
 Since Im not moving much theres not much need to eat, Fuka-Eri said.
 What are you doing by yourself every day? 
 Thinking. 
 About what? 
She didnt answer the question. Theres a crow that comes, too. 
 The crow comes once every day. 
 It comes many times, not just once, she said.
 Is it the same crow? 
 Yes. 
 Nobody else comes? 
 The N-H-K person came again. 
 Is it the same NHK person as before? 
 He says, Mr. Kawana, youre a thief, in a loud voice. 
 You mean he yells that right outside my door? 
 So everyone else can hear him. 
Tengo pondered this for a moment. Dont worry about that. It has nothing to do with you,
and its not going to cause any harm. 
 He said he knows you are hiding in here. 
 Dont let it bother you, Tengo said. He cant tell that. Hes just saying it to intimidate me.
NHK people do that sometimes. 
Tengo had witnessed his father do exactly the same thing any number of times. A Sunday
afternoon, his fathers voice, filled with malice, ringing out down the hallway of a public housing
project. Threatening and ridiculing the resident. Tengo lightly pressed the tips of his fingers
against his temple. The memory brought with it a heavy load of other baggage.
As if sensing something from his silence, Fuka-Eri asked, Are you okay. 
 Im fine. Just ignore the NHK person, okay? 
 The crow said the same thing. 
 Glad to hear it, Tengo said.
Ever since he saw two moons in the sky, and an air chrysalis materializing on his fathers
bed in the sanatorium, nothing surprised Tengo very much. Fuka-Eri and the crow exchanging
opinions by the windowsill wasnt hurting anybody.
 I think Ill be here a little longer. I cant go back to Tokyo yet. Is that all right? 
 You should be there as long as you want to be. 
And then she hung up. Their conversation vanished in an instant, as if someone had taken
a nicely sharpened hatchet to the phone line and chopped it in two.
Afterward Tengo called the publishing company where Komatsu worked. He wasnt in. He
had put in a brief appearance around one p.m. but then had left, and the person on the phone
had no idea where he was or if he was coming back. This wasnt that unusual for Komatsu.
Tengo left the number for the sanatorium, saying that was where he could be found during the
day, and asked that Komatsu call back. If he had left the inns number and Komatsu ended up
calling in the middle of the night, that would be a problem.
The last time he had heard from Komatsu had been near the end of September, just a
short talk on the phone. Since then Komatsu hadnt been in touch, and neither had Tengo.
For a three-week period starting at the end of August, Komatsu had disappeared. He had
called the publisher with some vague excuse, claiming he was ill and needed time off to rest,
but hadnt called afterward, as if he were a missing person. Tengo was concerned, but not
overly worried. Komatsu had always done his own thing. Tengo was sure that he would show
up before long and saunter back into the office.
Such self-centered behavior was usually forbidden in a corporate environment. But in Komatsus
case, one of his colleagues always smoothed things over so he didnt get in trouble.
Komatsu wasnt the most popular man, but somehow there always seemed to be a willing
person on hand, ready to clean up whatever mess he left behind. The publishing house, for its
part, was willing, to a certain extent, to look the other way. Komatsu was self-centered, uncooperative,
and insolent, but when it came to his job, he was capable. He had handled, on his
own, the bestseller Air Chrysalis. So they werent about to fire him.
As Tengo had predicted, one day Komatsu simply returned, without explaining why he
was away or apologizing for his absence, and came back to work. Tengo heard the news
from another editor he worked with who happened to mention it.
 So how is Mr. Komatsu feeling? Tengo asked the editor.
 He seems fine, the man replied. Though he seems less talkative than before. 
 Less talkative? Tengo asked, a bit surprised.
 How should I put it hes less sociable than before. 
 Was he really quite sick? 
 How should I know? the editor said, apathetically. He says hes fine, so I have to go with
that. Now that hes back weve been able to take care of the work that has been piling up.
While he was away there were all sorts of things to do with Air Chrysalis that were a real pain,
things I had to take care of in his absence. 
 Speaking of Air Chrysalis, are there any developments in the case of the missing author,
Fuka-Eri? 
 No, no updates. No progress at all, and not any idea where the author is. Everybody is at
their wits end. 
 Ive been reading the newspapers but havent seen a single mention of it recently. 
 The media has mostly backed off the story, or maybe theyre deliberately distancing
themselves from it. And the police dont appear to be actively pursuing the case. Mr. Komatsu
will know the details, so he would be the one to ask. But as I said, he has gotten a bit less
talkative. Actually hes not himself at all. He used to be brimming with confidence, but he has
toned that down, and has gotten more introspective, I guess you would say, just sitting there
half the time. Hes more difficult to get along with, too. Sometimes it seems like he has totally
forgotten that there are other people around, like he is all by himself inside a hole. 
 Introspective, Tengo said.
 Youll know what I mean when you talk with him. 
Tengo had thanked him and hung up.
A few days later, in the evening, Tengo called Komatsu. He was in the office. Just like the
editor had told him, the way Komatsu spoke had changed. Usually the words slipped out
smoothly without a pause, but now there was awkwardness about him, as if he were preoccupied.
Something must be bothering him, Tengo thought. At any rate, this was no longer the
cool Komatsu he knew.
 Are you completely well now? Tengo asked.
 What do you mean? 
 Well, you took a long break from work because you werent feeling well, right? 
 Thats right, Komatsu said, as if he had just recalled the fact. A short silence followed.
 Im fine now. Ill tell you all about it sometime, before long. I cant really explain it at this
point. 
Sometime, before long. Tengo mulled over the words. There was something odd about
the sound of Komatsus voice. The sense of distance that you would normally expect was
missing, and his words were flat, without any depth.
Tengo found an appropriate point in the conversation to say good-bye, and hung up. He
decided not to bring up Air Chrysalis or Fuka-Eri. Something in Komatsus tone indicated he
was trying to avoid these topics. Had Komatsu ever had trouble discussing anything before?
This phone call, at the end of September, was the last time he had spoken to Komatsu.
More than two months had passed since then. Komatsu usually loved to have long talks on
the phone. Tengo was, as it were, the wall against which Komatsu hit a tennis ball. Maybe he
was going through a period when he just didnt want to talk to anyone, Tengo surmised.
Everybody has times like that, even somebody like Komatsu. And Tengo, for his part, didnt
have anything pressing he had to discuss with him. Air Chrysalis had stopped selling and had
practically vanished from the public eye, and Tengo knew exactly where the missing Fuka-Eri
happened to be. If Komatsu had something he needed to discuss, then he would surely call.
No calls simply meant he didnt have anything to talk about.
But Tengo was thinking that it was getting about time to call him. Ill tell you all about it
sometime, before long. Komatsus words had stuck with him, oddly enough, and he couldnt
shake them.
Tengo called his friend who was subbing for him at the cram school, to see how things
were going.
 Everythings fine, his friend replied. How is your father doing? 
 He has been in a coma the whole time, Tengo explained. Hes breathing, and his temperature
and blood pressure are low but stable. But hes unconscious. I dont think hes in any
pain. Its like he has gone over completely to the dream world. 
 Not such a bad way to go, his friend said, without much emotion. What he was trying to
say was This might sound a little insensitive, but depending on how you look at it, thats not
such a bad way to die. But he had left out such prefatory remarks. If you study for a few years
in a mathematics department, you get used to that kind of abbreviated conversation.
 Have you looked at the moon recently? Tengo suddenly asked. This friend was probably
the only person he knew who wouldnt find it suspicious to be asked, out of the blue, about
the moon.
His friend gave it some thought. Now that you mention it, I dont recall looking at the
moon recently. Whats going on with the moon? 
 When you have a chance, would you look at it for me? And tell me what you think. 
 What I think? From what standpoint? 
 Any standpoint at all. I would just like to hear what you think when you see the moon. 
A short pause. It might be hard to find the right way to express what I think about it. 
 No, dont worry about expression. Whats important are the most obvious characteristics. 
 You want me to look at the moon and tell you what I think are the most obvious characteristics? 
 Thats right, Tengo replied. If nothing strikes you, then thats fine. 
 Its overcast today, so I dont think you can see the moon, but when it clears up Ill take a
look. If I remember. 
Tengo thanked him and hung up. If he remembers. This was one of the problems with
math department graduates. When it came to areas they werent interested in, their memory
was surprisingly short-lived.
When visiting hours were over and Tengo was leaving the sanatorium he said good-bye to
Nurse Tamura, the nurse at the reception desk. Thank you. Good night, he said.
 How many more days will you be here? she asked, pressing the bridge of her glasses on
her nose. She seemed to have finished her shift, because she had changed from her uniform
into a pleated dark purple skirt, a white blouse, and a gray cardigan.
Tengo came to a halt and thought for a minute. Im not sure. It depends on how things
go. 
 Can you still take time off from your job? 
 I asked somebody to teach my classes for me, so I should be okay for a while. 
 Where do you usually eat? the nurse asked.
 At a restaurant in town, he replied. They only provide breakfast at the inn so I go someplace
nearby and eat their set meal, or a rice bowl, that sort of thing. 
 Is it good? 
 I wouldnt say that. Though I dont really notice what it tastes like. 
 That wont do, the nurse said, looking displeased. You have to eat more nutritious food.
I mean, look these days your face reminds me of a horse sleeping standing up. 
 A horse sleeping standing up? Tengo asked, surprised.
 Horses sleep standing up. Youve never seen that? 
Tengo shook his head. No, I never have. 
 Their faces look like yours, the middle-aged nurse said. Go check out your face in the
mirror. At first glance you cant tell theyre asleep, but if you look closely you will see that their
eyes are open, but they arent seeing anything. 
 Horses sleep with their eyes open? 
The nurse nodded deeply. Just like you. 
For a moment Tengo did think about going to the bathroom and looking at himself in the
mirror, but he decided against it. I understand. Ill try to eat better from now on. 
 Would you care to go out to get some yakiniku? 
 Yakiniku? Tengo didnt eat much meat. He didnt usually crave it. But now that she had
brought it up, he thought it might be good to have some meat for a change. His body might indeed
be crying out for more nourishment.
 All of us were talking about going out now to eat some yakiniku. You should join us. 
 All of us? 
 The others finish work at six thirty and well meet afterward. There will be three of us. Interested? 
The other two were Nurse Omura and Nurse Adachi. The three of them seemed to enjoy
spending time together, even after work. Tengo considered the idea of going out to eat
yakiniku with them. He didnt want to disrupt his simple lifestyle, but he couldnt think of a
plausible excuse in order to refuse. It was obvious to them that in a town like this Tengo
would have plenty of free time on his hands.
 If you dont think Ill be a bother. 
 Of course you wont, the nurse said. I dont invite people out if I think theyll be a bother.
So dont hesitate to come with us. It will be nice to have a healthy young man along for a
change. 
 Well, healthy I definitely am, Tengo said in an uncertain voice.
 That is the most important thing, the nurse declared, giving it her professional opinion.
It wasnt easy for all three nurses to be off duty at the same time, but once a month they
managed it. The three of them would go into town, eat something nutritious, have a few
drinks, sing karaoke, let loose, and blow off some steam. They definitely needed a change of
scenery. Life in this rural town was monotonous, and with the exception of the doctors and
other nurses at work, the only people they saw were the elderly, those devoid of memory and
signs of life.
The three nurses ate and drank a lot, and Tengo couldnt keep up. As they got livelier, he
sat beside them, quietly eating a moderate amount of grilled meat and sipping his draft beer
so he didnt get drunk. After they left the yakiniku place, they went to a bar, bought a bottle of
whiskey, and belted out karaoke. The three nurses took turns singing their favorite songs,
then teamed up to do a Candies number, complete with choreographed steps. Tengo was
sure they had practiced, they were that good. Tengo wasnt into karaoke, but he did manage
one Yosui Inoue song he vaguely remembered.
Nurse Adachi was normally reserved, but after a few drinks, she turned animated and
bold. Once she got a bit tipsy, her red cheeks turned a healthy tanned color. She giggled at
silly jokes and leaned back, in an entirely natural way, on Tengos shoulder. Nurse Omura
had changed into a light blue dress and had let down her hair. She looked three or four years
younger and her voice dropped an octave. Her usually brisk, businesslike manner was subdued,
and she moved languidly, as if she had taken on a different personality. Only Nurse
Tamura, with her metal-framed glasses, looked and acted the same as always.
 My kids are staying with a neighbor tonight, Nurse Omura explained. And my husband
has to work the night shift. You have to take advantage of times like this to just go out and
have fun. Its important to get away from it all sometimes. Dont you agree, Tengo? 
The three nurses had started calling him by his first name. Most people around him
seemed to do that naturally. Even his students called him Tengo behind his back.
 Yes, thats for sure, Tengo agreed.
 We just have to get out sometimes, Nurse Tamura said, sipping a glass of Suntory Old
whiskey and water. Were just flesh and blood, after all. 
 Take off our uniforms, and were just ordinary women, Miss Adachi said, and giggled at
her comment.
 Tell me, Tengo, Nurse Omura said. Is it okay to ask this? 
 Ask what? 
 Are you seeing anybody? 
 Yes, tell us, Nurse Adachi said, crunching down on some corn nuts with her large, white
teeth.
 Its not an easy thing to talk about, Tengo said.
 We dont mind if its not easy to talk about, the experienced Nurse Tamura said. We
have lots of time, and we would love to hear about it. Im dying to hear this hard-to-talk-about
story. 
 Tell us, tell us! Nurse Adachi said, clapping her hands lightly and giggling.
 Its not all that interesting, Tengo said. Its kind of trite and pointless. 
 Well, then just cut to the chase, Nurse Omura said. Do you have a girlfriend, or not? 
Tengo gave in. At this point, Im not seeing anyone. 
 Hmm, Nurse Tamura said. She stirred the ice in her glass with a finger and licked it.
 That wont do. That wont do at all. A young, vigorous man like yourself without a girlfriend,
its such a waste. 
 Its not good for your body, either, the large Nurse Omura said. If you keep it stored inside
you for a long time, youll go soft in the head. 
Young Nurse Adachi was still giggling. Youll go soft in the head, she said, and poked
her forehead.
 I did have someone until recently, Tengo said, somewhat apologetically.
 But she left? Nurse Tamura said, pushing up the bridge of her glasses.
Tengo nodded.
 You mean she dumped you? 
 I dont know, Tengo said, inclining his head. Maybe she did. I think I probably was
dumped. 
 By any chance is that person a lot older than you? Nurse Tamura asked, her eyes narrowed.
 Yes, she is, Tengo said. How did she know that?
 Didnt I tell you? Nurse Tamura said, looking proudly at the other two nurses. They nodded.
 I told the others that, Nurse Tamura said, that you were going out with an older woman.
Women can sniff out these things. 
 Sniff, sniff, went Nurse Adachi.
 On top of that, maybe she was already married, Nurse Omura said in a lazy tone. Am I
right? 
Tengo hesitated for a moment and then nodded. Lying was pointless.
 You bad boy, Nurse Adachi said, and poked him in the thigh.
 Ten years older, Tengo said.
 Goodness! Nurse Omura exclaimed.
 Ah, so you had an experienced, older married woman loving you, Nurse Tamura, herself
a mother, said. Im envious. Maybe I should do that myself. And comfort lonely, gentle young
Tengo here. I might not look it, but I still have a pretty decent body. 
She grabbed Tengos hand and was about to press it against her breasts. The other two
women managed to stop her. Even if you were letting your hair down, there was a line that
shouldnt be crossed between nurses and a patients relative. Thats what they seemed to
think or else they were afraid that someone might spot them. It was a small town, and rumors
spread quickly. Maybe Nurse Tamuras husband was the jealous type. Tengo had
enough problems and didnt want to get caught up in any more.
 Youre really something, Nurse Tamura said, wanting to change the subject. You come
all this way here, sit by your fathers bedside for hours a day reading aloud to him … Not
many people would do that. 
Young Nurse Adachi tilted her head a bit. I agree, he really is something. I really respect
you for that. 
 You know, were always praising you, Nurse Tamura said.
Tengos face reddened. He wasnt in this town to nurse his father. He was staying here
hoping to again see the air chrysalis, and the faint light it gave off, and inside it, the sleeping
figure of Aomame. That was the only reason he remained here. Taking care of his unconscious
father was only a pretext. But he couldnt reveal the truth. If he did, he would have to
start by explaining an air chrysalis.
 Its because I never did anything for him up till now. Awkwardly, he scrunched up his
large frame in the narrow wooden chair, sounding uncomfortable. But the nurses found his attitude
appealingly humble.
Tengo wanted to tell them he was sleepy so he could get up and go back to his inn, but he
couldnt find the right opportunity. He wasnt the type, after all, to assert himself.
 Yes, but Nurse Omura said, and cleared her throat. To get back to what we were talking
about, I wonder why you and that married woman ten years older than you broke up. I
imagine you were getting along all right? Did her husband find out or something? 
 I dont know the reason, Tengo said. At one point she just stopped calling, and I havent
heard from her since. 
 Hmm, Nurse Adachi said. I wonder if she was tired of you. 
Nurse Omura shook her head. She held one index finger pointing straight up and turned to
her younger colleague. You still dont know anything about the world. You dont get it at all. A
forty-year-old married woman who snags a young, vigorous, delicious young man like this one
and enjoys him to the fullest doesnt then just up and say Thanks. It was fun. Bye! Its impossible.
Of course, the other way around happens sometimes. 
 Is that right? Nurse Adachi said, inclining her head just a fraction. I guess Im a bit naive. 
 Yes, thats the way it is, Nurse Omura declared. She looked at Tengo for a while, as if
stepping back from a stone monument to examine the words chiseled into it. Then she nodded.
 When you get a little older youll understand. 
 Oh, my its been simply ages, Nurse Tamura said, sinking deeper into her chair.
For a time the three nurses were lost in a conversation about the sexual escapades of
someone he didnt know (another nurse, he surmised). With his glass of whiskey and water in
hand, Tengo surveyed these three nurses, picturing the three witches in Macbeth. The ones
who chant Fair is foul, and foul is fair, as they fill Macbeths head with evil ambitions. But
Tengo wasnt seeing the three nurses as evil beings. They were kind and straightforward women.
They worked hard and took good care of his father. Overworked, living in this small,
less-than-stimulating fishing town, they were just letting off steam, as they did once every
month. But when he witnessed how the energy in these three women, all of different generations,
was converging, he couldnt help but envision the moors of Scotland a gloomy, overcast
sky, a cold wind and rain howling through the heath.
In college he had read Macbeth in English class, and somehow a few lines remained with
him.
 By the pricking of my thumbs,
 Something wicked this way comes,
 Open, locks,
 Whoever knocks!
Why should he remember only these lines? He couldnt even recall who spoke them in the
play. But they made Tengo think of that persistent NHK collector, knocking at the door of his
apartment in Koenji. Tengo looked at his own thumbs. They didnt feel pricked. Still,
Shakespeares skillful rhyme had an ominous ring to it.
 Something wicked this way comes …
Tengo prayed that Fuka-Eri wouldnt unlock the door.
1Q84
CHAPTER 7
Ushikawa
IM HEADING YOUR WAY
For a while Ushikawa had to give up collecting more information on the elderly dowager in
Azabu. The security around her was just too tight, and he knew he would come smack up
against a high wall whatever direction he went in. He wanted to find out more about the safe
house, but it was too risky hanging out in the neighborhood any longer. There were security
cameras, and given his looks, Ushikawa was too conspicuous. Once the other party was on
its guard, things could get a bit sticky, so he decided to stay away from the Willow House and
try a different approach.
The only different approach he could come up with, though, was to reinvestigate Aomame.
He had already asked a PI firm he had worked with to collect more information on her, and he
did some of the legwork himself, questioning people involved with her. Nothing suspicious or
opaque surfaced. Ushikawa frowned, sighing deeply. I must have overlooked something, he
thought. Something critical.
Ushikawa took out an address book from a drawer of his desk and dialed a number.
Whenever he needed information that could only be obtained illegally, this was the number he
called. The man on the other end lived in a much darker world than Ushikawa. As long as you
paid, he could dig up almost any information you needed. The more tightly guarded the information,
the higher the fee.
Ushikawa was after two pieces of information. One was personal background on
Aomames parents, who were still devout members of the Witnesses. Ushikawa was positive
that the Witnesses had a central database with information on all their members. They had
numerous followers throughout Japan, with much coming and going between the headquarters
and the regional branches. Without a centralized database, the system wouldnt run
smoothly. Their headquarters was located in the suburbs of Odawara. They owned a magnificent
building on a generous plot of land, and had their own factory to print pamphlets, and an
auditorium and guest facilities for followers from all over the country. All their information was
sourced from this location, and you could be sure it was under strict control.
The second piece of information was Aomames employment record at the sports club.
Ushikawa wanted to know the details of her job there, and the names of her personal clients.
This kind of information wouldnt be as closely guarded. Not that you could waltz in, say, I
wonder if you would mind showing me Miss Aomames file, please?, and have them gladly
hand it over.
Ushikawa left his name and phone number on the machine. Thirty minutes later he got a
call back.
 Mr. Ushikawa, a hoarse voice said.
Ushikawa related the particulars of what he was looking for. He had never actually met the
man. They always did business by phone, with materials sent over by special delivery. The
mans voice was a bit husky, and he occasionally cleared his throat. He might have had
something wrong with it. There was always a perfect silence on the other end of the line, as if
he were phoning from a soundproof room. All Ushikawa could hear was the mans voice, and
the grating sound of his breathing. Beyond that, nothing. The sounds he heard were all a bit
exaggerated. What a creepy guy, Ushikawa thought each time. The world is sure full of
creepy guys, he mused, knowing full well that, objectively speaking, this category would include
himself. He had secretly nicknamed the man Bat.
 In both cases, then, youre after information concerning the name Aomame, right? Bat
said huskily, and cleared his throat.
 Correct. Its an unusual name. 
 You want every bit of information I can get? 
 As long as it involves the name Aomame, I want it all. If possible, I would also like a photo
of her, with a clear shot of her face. 
 The gym should be easy. They arent expecting anyone to steal their information. The
Witnesses, though, are a different story. Theyre a huge organization, with a lot of money, and
tight security. Religious organizations are some of the hardest groups to crack. They keep
things tight to protect their members personal security, and there are always tax issues involved. 
 Do you think you can do it? 
 There are ways to pry open the door. What is more difficult is making sure you close it afterward.
If you dont do that, youll have a homing missile chasing you. 
 You make it sound like a war. 
 Thats exactly what it is. Some pretty scary things might pop out, the man rasped. Ushikawa
could tell from his tone of voice that this battle was something he enjoyed.
 So, youll take it on for me? 
The man lightly cleared his throat. All right. But itll cost you. 
 How much are we talking about, roughly? 
The man gave him an estimate. Ushikawa had to swallow before he accepted. He had put
aside enough of his own funds to cover it, and if the man came through, he could get reimbursed
later on.
 How long will it take? 
 I assume this is a rush job? 
 Correct. 
 Its hard to give an exact estimate, but Im thinking a week to ten days. 
 Fine, Ushikawa said. He would have to let Bat determine the pace.
 When Ive gathered the material, Ill call you. Ill definitely get in touch before ten days are
up. 
 Unless a missile catches up with you, Ushikawa said.
 Exactly, Bat said, totally blasé.
After he hung up, Ushikawa hunched over his desk, turning things over in his mind. He
had no idea how Bat would gather the information via some back door. Even if he asked, he
knew he wouldnt get an answer. The only thing for sure was that his methods werent legal.
He would start by trying to bribe somebody inside. If necessary he might try trespassing. If
computers were involved, things could get complicated.
There were only a few government offices and companies that managed information by
computer. It cost too much and took too much effort. But a religious organization of national
scale would have the resources to computerize. Ushikawa himself knew next to nothing about
computers. He did understand, however, that computers were becoming an indispensable
tool for gathering information. Earlier ways of finding information going to the National Diet
Library, sitting at a desk with piles of bound, small-sized editions of old newspapers, or almanacs might
soon become a thing of the past. The world might be reduced to a battlefield,
the smell of blood everywhere, where computer managers and hackers fought it out. No, the
smell of blood isnt accurate, Ushikawa decided. It was a war, so there was bound to be
some bloodshed. But there wouldnt be any smell. What a weird world. Ushikawa preferred a
world where smells and pain still existed, even if the smells and pain were unendurable. Still,
people like Ushikawa might become out-of-date relics.
But Ushikawa wasnt pessimistic. He had an innate sense of intuition, and his unique olfactory
organ let him sniff out and distinguish all sorts of odors. He could physically feel, in his
skin, how things were trending. Computers couldnt do this. This was the kind of ability that
couldnt be quantified or systematized. Skillfully accessing a heavily guarded computer and
extracting information was the job of a hacker. But deciding which information to extract, and
sifting through massive amounts of information to find what is useful, was something only a
flesh-and-blood person could do.
Maybe I am just an ugly, middle-aged, outdated man, Ushikawa thought. Nope, no
maybes about it. I am, without a doubt, one ugly, middle-aged, outdated man. But I do have a
couple of talents nobody else has. And as long as I have these talents, no matter what sort of
weird world I find myself in, Ill survive.
Im going to get you, Miss Aomame. You are quite clever, to be sure. Skilled, and cautious.
But Im going to chase after you until I catch you. So wait for me. Im heading your way.
Can you hear my footsteps? I dont believe you can. Im like a tortoise, hardly making a
sound. But step by step, I am getting closer.
But Ushikawa felt something else pressing on him from behind. Time. Pursuing Aomame
meant simultaneously shaking off time, which was in pursuit of him. He had to track her down
quickly, clarify who was backing her, and present it all, nice and neat, on a plate to the people
from Sakigake. He had been given a limited amount of time. It would be too late to find out
everything, say, three months from now. Up until recently he had been a very valuable person
to them. Capable and accommodating, well versed in legal matters, a man they could count
on to keep his mouth shut. Someone who could work off the grid. But in the end, he was
simply a hired jack-of-all-trades. He wasnt one of them, a member of their family. He was a
man without a speck of religious devotion. If he became a danger to the religion, they might
eliminate him with no qualms whatever.
While he waited for Bat to return his call, Ushikawa went to the library to look into the history
and activities of the Witnesses. He took notes and made copies of relevant documents.
He liked doing research at a library. He liked the feeling of accumulating knowledge in his
brain. It was something he had enjoyed ever since he was a child.
Once he had finished at the library, he went to Aomames apartment in Jiyugaoka, to
make sure once more that it was unoccupied. The mailbox still had her name on it, but no one
seemed to be living there. He stopped by the office of the real estate agent who handled the
rental.
 I heard that there was a vacant apartment in the building, Ushikawa said, and I was
wondering if I could rent it. 
 It is vacant, yes, the agent told him, but no one can move in until the beginning of February.
The rental contract with the present occupant doesnt expire until the end of next January.
They are going to be paying the monthly rent the same as always until then. They have
moved everything out and the electricity and water have been shut off. But the lease remains
intact. 
 So until the end of January, theyre paying rent for an empty apartment? 
 Correct, the real estate agent said. They said they will pay the entire amount owed on
the lease so they would like us to keep the apartment as it is. As long as they pay the rent, we
cant object. 
 Its a strange thing wasting money to pay for an empty apartment. 
 Well, I was concerned myself, so I had the owner accompany me and let me in to take a
look at the place. I wouldnt want there to be a mummified body in the closet or anything. But
nothing was there. The place had been nicely cleaned. It was simply empty. I have no idea,
though, what the circumstances are. 
Aomame was obviously no longer living there. But for some reason they still wanted her
listed as nominally renting the place, which is why they were paying four months rent for an
empty apartment. Whoever they were, they were cautious, and not hurting for money.
Precisely ten days later, in the early afternoon, Bat called Ushikawas office in Kojimachi.
 Mr. Ushikawa, the hoarse voice said. In the background, there was the usual emptiness a
complete lack of any sound.
 Speaking. 
 Do you mind if we talk now? 
 That would be fine, Ushikawa said.
 The Witnesses had very tight security. But I was expecting that. I was able to get the information
related to Aomame okay. 
 No homing missile? 
 Nothing so far. 
 Glad to hear it. 
 Mr. Ushikawa, the man said, and he cleared his throat a few times. Im really sorry, but
could you put out the cigarette? 
 Cigarette? he asked, glancing at the Seven Stars between his fingers. Smoke silently
swirled up toward the ceiling. Youre right, I am smoking, but how can you tell? 
 Obviously I cant smell it. Just hearing your breathing makes it hard for me to breathe. I
have terrible allergies, you see. 
 I see. I hadnt noticed. My apologies. 
The man cleared his throat a few times. Im not blaming you, Mr. Ushikawa. I wouldnt expect
you to notice. 
Ushikawa crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray and poured some tea he had been
drinking over it. He stood up and opened the window wide.
 I put out the cigarette, opened the window, and let in some fresh air. Not that the air outside
is all that clean. 
 Sorry for the trouble. 
Silence continued for about ten seconds. A total, absolute quiet.
 So, you were able to get the information from the Witnesses? Ushikawa asked.
 Yes. Quite a lot, actually. The Aomame family are devout, long-time members, so there
was plenty of material related to them. It is probably easiest if I give you the whole file, and
then at your end you decide what is important material and what isnt. 
Ushikawa agreed. That was what he had been hoping for.
 The sports club wasnt much of a problem just open the door, go in, do your job, shut
the door, thats it. Time was kind of limited, so I grabbed everything I could. Theres a lot of
material here too. Ill send over a folder with both sets of material. As usual, in exchange for
the fee. 
Ushikawa wrote down the fee that Bat gave him. It was about twenty percent higher than
the estimate. Not that he had a choice.
 I dont want to use the mail this time, so a messenger will bring it over to your place tomorrow.
Please have the fee ready. And as usual, dont expect a receipt. 
 All right, Ushikawa replied.
 I mentioned this before, but I will repeat it just to make sure. I was able to get all the available
information on the topic you asked me to look into. So even if you arent satisfied with it, I
take no responsibility. I did everything that was technically possible. Compensation was for
the time and effort involved, not the results. So please dont ask me to give your money back
if you dont find the information youre looking for. I would like you to acknowledge this point. 
 I do, Ushikawa replied.
 Another thing is that I wasnt able to obtain a photograph of Miss Aomame, no matter how
much I tried, Bat said. All photos of her have been carefully removed. 
 Understood. Thats okay, Ushikawa said.
 Her face may be different by now, Bat commented.
 Maybe so, Ushikawa said.
Bat cleared his throat several times. Well, thats it, he said, and hung up.
Ushikawa put the phone back in its cradle, sighed, and placed a new cigarette between
his lips. He lit it with his lighter, and slowly exhaled smoke in the direction of the phone.
The next afternoon, a young woman visited his office. She was probably not yet twenty.
She had on a short white dress that revealed the curves of her body, matching white high
heels, and pearl earrings. Her earlobes were large for her small face. She was barely five feet
tall. She wore her hair long and straight, and her eyes were big and bright. She looked like a
fairy in training. The woman looked straight at Ushikawa and smiled a cheerful, intimate smile,
as if she were viewing something precious she would never forget. Neatly aligned white teeth
peeked out happily from between her tiny lips. Perhaps it was just her business smile. Very
few people did not flinch when they came face-to-face with Ushikawa for the first time.
 I have brought the materials that you requested, the woman said, and extracted two
large, thick manila envelopes from the cloth bag hanging from her shoulders. As if she were a
shamaness transporting an ancient stone lithograph, she held up the envelopes in front of
her, then carefully placed them on Ushikawas desk.
From a drawer Ushikawa took out the envelope he had ready and passed it over to her.
She opened the envelope, extracted the sheaf of ten-thousand-yen bills, and counted them as
she stood there. She was very adept at counting, her beautiful, slim fingers moving swiftly.
She finished counting, returned the bills to the envelope, and put the envelope in her cloth
bag. She showed Ushikawa an even bigger, warmer smile than before, as if nothing could
have made her happier than to meet him.
Ushikawa tried to imagine what connection this woman could have with Bat. Passing
along the material, receiving payment. That was perhaps the only role she played.
After the small woman had left, Ushikawa stared at the door for the longest time. She had
shut the door behind her, but there was still a strong sense of her in the room. Maybe in exchange
for leaving a trace of herself behind, she had taken away a part of Ushikawas soul.
He could feel that new void within his chest. Why did this happen? he wondered, finding it
odd. And what could it possibly mean?
After about ten minutes, he finally took the materials out of the envelopes, which had been
sealed with several layers of adhesive tape. The inside was stuffed with a jumble of printouts,
photocopies, and original documents. Ushikawa didnt know how Bat had accomplished it, but
he had certainly come up with a lot of material in such a short time. As always, the man did an
impressive job. Still, faced with that bundle of documents, Ushikawa was hit by a deep sense
of impotence. No matter how much he might rustle around in it, would he ever arrive anywhere?
Or would he spend a small fortune just to wind up with a stack of wastepaper? The
sense of powerlessness he experienced was so deep that he could stare as much as he
wanted into the well and never get a glimpse of its bottom. Everything Ushikawa could see
was covered in a gloomy twilight, like an intimation of death. Perhaps this was due to
something that woman left behind, he thought. Or perhaps due to something she took away
with her.
Somehow, though, Ushikawa recovered his strength. He patiently went through the stack
of materials until evening, copying the information he felt was important into a notebook, organizing
it under different categories. By concentrating on this, he was able to dispel the mysterious
listlessness that had grabbed hold of him. And by the time it grew dark and he
switched on his desk lamp, Ushikawa was thinking that the information had been worth every
yen he had paid for it.
He began by reading through the material from the sports club. Aomame was a highly
skilled trainer, popular with the members. Along with teaching general classes, she was also
a personal trainer. Looking through the copies of the daily schedule he could figure out when,
where, and how she trained these private clients. Sometimes she trained them individually at
the club, sometimes she went to their homes. Among the names of her clients was a well-
known entertainer, and a politician. The dowager of the Willow House, Shizue Ogata, was her
oldest client.
Her connection with Shizue Ogata began not long after Aomame started working at the
club four years earlier, and continued until just before she disappeared. This was exactly the
same period during which the two-story apartment building at the Willow House became a
safe house for victims of domestic violence. Maybe it was a coincidence, but maybe not. At
any rate, according to the records, their relationship appeared to have deepened over time.
Perhaps a personal bond had grown between Aomame and the old dowager. Ushikawas
intuition sensed this. At first it started out as the relationship between a sports club instructor
and a client, but at a certain point, the nature of this relationship changed. As Ushikawa went
through the businesslike descriptions in chronological order, he tried to pinpoint that moment.
Something happened that transformed their relationship beyond that of mere instructor and
client. They formed a close personal relationship that transcended the difference in age and
status. This may even have led to some secret emotional understanding between the two, a
secret understanding that eventually led Aomame down the path to murder Leader at the
Hotel Okura. Ushikawas sense of smell told him so.
But what was that path? And what secret understanding did they have?
That was as far as Ushikawas conjectures could take him.
Most likely, domestic violence was one factor in it. At first glance this seemed to be a critical
theme for the older woman. According to the records, the first time Shizue Ogata came in
contact with Aomame was at a self-defense class. It wasnt very common for a woman in her
seventies to take a self-defense class. Something connected with violence must have brought
the old lady and Aomame together.
Or maybe Aomame herself had been the victim of domestic violence. And Leader had
committed domestic violence. Perhaps they found out about this and decided to punish him.
But these were all simply hypotheses, and these hypotheses didnt square with the image
Ushikawa had of Leader. Certainly people, no matter who they are, have something hidden
deep down inside, and Leader was a deeper person than most. He was, after all, the driving
force behind a major religious organization. Wise and intelligent, he also had depths no one
else could access. But say he really had committed domestic violence? Would these acts
have been so significant to these women that, when they learned of them, they planned out a
meticulous assassination one of them giving up her identity, the other risking her social
standing?
One thing was for sure: the murder of Leader was not carried out on a whim. Behind it
stood an unwavering will, a clear-cut, unclouded motivation, and an elaborate system a system
that had been meticulously crafted using a great deal of time and money.
The problem was that there was no concrete proof to back up his conjectures. What Ushikawa
had before him was nothing more than circumstantial evidence based on theories.
Something that Occams razor could easily prune away. At this stage he couldnt report anything
to Sakigake. Still, he knew he was on to something. There was a certain smell to it, a
distinctive texture. All the elements pointed in a single direction. Something to do with domestic
violence made the dowager direct Aomame to kill Leader and then hide her away. Indirectly,
all the information Bat had provided him supported this conclusion.
Plowing through the materials dealing with the Witnesses took a long time. There were an
enormous number of documents, most of them useless to Ushikawa. The majority of the materials
were reports on what Aomames family had contributed to the activities of the Witnesses.
As far as these documents were concerned, Aomames family were earnest, devout
followers. They had spent the better part of their lives propagating the religions message. Her
parents presently resided in Ichikawa, in Chiba Prefecture. In thirty-five years they had moved
twice, both times within Ichikawa. Her father, Takayuki Aomame (58), worked in an engineering
firm, while her mother, Yasuko (56), wasnt employed. The couples eldest son, Keiichi
Aomame (34), had worked in a small printing company in Tokyo after graduating from a prefectural
high school in Ichikawa, but after three years he quit the company and began working
at the Witnesses headquarters in Odawara. There he also worked in printing, making pamphlets
for the religion, and was now a supervisor. Five years earlier he had married a woman
who was also a member of the Witnesses. They had two children and rented an apartment in
Odawara.
The record for the eldest daughter, Masami Aomame, ended when she was eleven. That
was when she abandoned the faith. And the Witnesses seemed to have no interest at all in
anyone who had left the faith. To the Witnesses, it was the same as if Masami Aomame had
died at age eleven. After this, there wasnt a single detail about what sort of life she led not
even whether or not she was alive.
In this case, Ushikawa thought, the only thing to do is visit the parents or the brother and
ask them. Maybe they will provide me with some hint. From what he gathered from the documentary
evidence, he didnt imagine they would be too pleased to answer his questions.
Aomames family as far as Ushikawa could see it, that is were narrow-minded in their
thinking, narrow-minded in the way they lived. They were people who had no doubt whatsoever
that the more narrow-minded they became, the closer they got to heaven. To them, anyone
who abandoned the faith, even a relative, was traveling down a wicked, defiled path. Who
knows, maybe they didnt even think of them as relatives anymore.
Had Aomame been the victim of domestic violence as a girl?
Maybe she had, maybe she hadnt. Even if she had, her parents most likely would not
have seen this as abuse. Ushikawa knew very well how strict members of the Witnesses were
with their children. In many cases this included corporal punishment.
But would a childhood experience like that form such a deep wound that it would lead a
person, after she grew up, to commit murder? This wasnt out of the realm of possibility, but
Ushikawa thought it was pushing the limits of conjecture to an extreme. Carrying out a premeditated
murder on ones own wasnt easy. It was dangerous, to begin with, and the emotional
toll was enormous. If you got caught, the punishment was stiff. There had to be a
stronger motivation behind it.
Ushikawa picked up the sheaf of documents and carefully reread the details about
Masami Aomames background, up to age eleven. Almost as soon as she could walk, she
began accompanying her mother to proselytize. They went from door to door handing out
pamphlets, telling people about the judgment to come at the end of the world and urging them
to join the faith. Joining meant you could survive the end of the world. After that, the heavenly
kingdom would appear. A church member had knocked on Ushikawas door any number of
times. Usually it was a middle-aged woman, wearing a hat or holding a parasol. Most wore
glasses and stared fixedly at him with eyes like those of a clever fish. Often she had a child
along. Ushikawa pictured little Aomame trundling around from door to door with her mother.
Aomame didnt attend kindergarten, but went into the local neighborhood municipal public
elementary school in Ichikawa. And when she was in fifth grade she withdrew from the Witnesses.
It was unclear why she left. The Witnesses didnt record each and every reason a
member renounced the faith. Whoever fell into the clutches of the devil could very well stay
there. Talking about paradise and the path to get there kept members busy enough. The
righteous had their own work to do, and the devil, his a spiritual division of labor.
In Ushikawas brain someone was knocking on a cheaply made, plywood partition. Mr.
Ushikawa! Mr. Ushikawa! the voice was yelling. Ushikawa closed his eyes and listened carefully.
The voice was faint, but persistent. I must have overlooked something, he thought. A
critical fact must be written here, somewhere, in these very documents. But I cant see it. The
knock must be telling me this.
Ushikawa turned again to the thick stack of documents, not just following what was written,
but trying to imagine actual scenes in his mind. Three-year-old Aomame going with her
mother as she spread the gospel door to door. Most of the time people slammed the door in
their faces. Next shes in elementary school. She continues proselytizing. Her weekends are
taken up entirely with propagating their faith. She doesnt have any time to play with friends.
She might not even have had any friends. Most children in the Witnesses were bullied and
shunned at school. Ushikawa had read a book on the Witnesses and was well aware of this.
And at age eleven she left the religion. That must have taken a great deal of determination.
Aomame had been raised in the faith, had had it drummed into her since she was born. The
faith had seeped into every fiber of her being, so she couldnt easily slough it off, like changing
clothes. That would mean she was isolated within the home. They wouldnt easily accept
a daughter who had renounced the faith. For Aomame, abandoning the faith was the same as
abandoning her family.
When Aomame was eleven, what in the world had happened to her? What could have
made her come to that decision?
The Ichikawa Municipal ** Elementary School. Ushikawa tried saying the name aloud.
Something had happened there. Something had most definitely happened … He inhaled
sharply. Ive heard the name of that school before, he realized.
But where? Ushikawa had no ties to Chiba Prefecture. He had been born in Urawa, a city
in Saitama, and ever since he came to Tokyo to go to college except for the time he lived in
Chuorinkan, in Kanagawa Prefecture he had lived entirely within the twenty-three wards of
Tokyo. He had barely set foot in Chiba Prefecture. Only once, as he recalled, when he went
to the beach at Futtsu. So why did the name of an elementary school in Ichikawa ring a bell?
It took him a while to remember. He rubbed his misshapen head as he concentrated. He
fumbled through the dark recesses of memory, as if sticking his hand deep down into mud. It
wasnt so long ago that he first heard that name. Very recently, in fact. Chiba Prefecture
… Ichikawa Municipal ** Elementary School. Finally he grabbed onto one end of a thin
rope.
Tengo Kawana. Thats it Tengo Kawana was from Ichikawa! And I think he attended a
municipal public elementary school in town, too.
Ushikawa pulled down from his document shelf the file on Tengo. This was material he
had compiled a few months back, at the request of Sakigake. He flipped through the pages to
confirm Tengos school record. His plump finger came to rest on Tengos name. It was just as
he had thought: Masami Aomame had attended the same elementary school as Tengo
Kawana. Based on their birthdates, they were probably in the same year in school. Whether
they were in the same class or not would require further investigation. But there was a high
probability they knew each other.
Ushikawa put a Seven Stars cigarette in his mouth and lit up with his lighter. He had the
distinct feeling that things were starting to fall into place. He was connecting the dots, and
though he was unsure of what sort of picture would emerge, before long he should be able to
see the outlines.
Miss Aomame, can you hear my footsteps? Probably not, since Im walking as quietly as I
can. But step by step Im getting closer. Im a dull, silly tortoise, but Im definitely making pro-
gress. Pretty soon Ill catch sight of the rabbits back. You can count on it.
Ushikawa leaned back from his desk, looked up at the ceiling, and slowly let the smoke
rise up from his mouth.
1Q84
CHAPTER 8
Aomame
NOT SUCH A BAD DOOR
Except for the silent men who brought supplies every Tuesday afternoon, for the next two
weeks no one else visited Aomames apartment. The man who claimed to be an NHK fee collector
had insisted that he would be back. He had been determined, or at least that was the
way it sounded to Aomame. But there hadnt been a knock on the door since. Maybe he was
busy with another route.
On the surface, these were quiet, peaceful days. Nothing happened, nobody came by, the
phone didnt ring. To be on the safe side, Tamaru called as little as possible. Aomame always
kept the curtains closed, living as quietly as she could so as not to attract attention. After dark,
she turned on the bare minimum number of lights.
Trying to stay as quiet as possible, she did strenuous workouts, mopped the floor every
day, and spent a lot of time preparing meals. She asked for some Spanish-language tapes
and went over the lessons aloud. Not speaking for a long time makes the muscles around the
mouth grow slack. She had to focus on moving her mouth as much as she could, and foreign
language drills were good for that. Plus Aomame had long fantasized about South America. If
she could go anywhere, she would like to live in a small, peaceful country in South America,
like Costa Rica. She would rent a small villa on the coast and spend the days swimming and
reading. With the money she had stuffed in her bag she should be able to live for ten years
there, if she watched her expenses. She couldnt see them chasing her all the way to Costa
Rica.
As she practiced Spanish conversation Aomame imagined a quiet, peaceful life on the
Costa Rican beach. Could Tengo be a part of her life there? She closed her eyes and pictured
the two of them sunbathing on a Caribbean beach. She wore a small, black bikini and
sunglasses and was holding Tengos hand. But a sense of reality, the kind that would move
her, was missing from the picture. It was nothing more than an ordinary tourist brochure
photo.
When she ran out of things to do, she cleaned the pistol. She followed the manual and
disassembled the Heckler & Koch, cleaned each part with a cloth and brush, oiled them, and
then reassembled it. She made sure the action was smooth. By now she had mastered the
operation and the pistol felt like a part of her body.
She would go to bed at ten, read a few pages in her book, and fall asleep. Aomame had
never had trouble falling asleep. As she read, she would get sleepy. She would switch off the
bedside lamp, rest her head on the pillow, and shut her eyes. With few exceptions, when she
opened her eyes again it was morning.
Ordinarily she didnt tend to dream much. Even if she did, she usually had forgotten most
of the dream by the time she woke up. Sometimes faint scraps of her dream would get caught
on the wall of her consciousness, but she couldnt retrace these fragments back to any coherent
narrative. All that remained were small, random images. She slept deeply, and the
dreams she did have came from a very deep place. Like fish that live at the bottom of the
ocean, most of her dreams werent able to float to the surface. Even if they did, the difference
in water pressure would force a change in their appearance.
But after coming to live in this hiding place, she dreamed every night. And these were
clear, realistic dreams. She would be dreaming and wake up in the middle of a dream, unable
to distinguish whether she was in the real world or the dream world. Aomame couldnt remember
ever having had this experience before. She would look over at the digital clock beside
her bed. The numbers would say 1:15, 2:37, or 4:07. She would close her eyes and try to
fall asleep again, but it wasnt easy. The two different worlds were silently at odds within her,
fighting over her consciousness, like the mouth of a river where the seawater and the fresh
water flow in.
Not much I can do about it, she told herself. Im not even sure if this world with two moons
in the sky is the real reality or not. So it shouldnt be so strange, should it? That in a world like
this, if I fall asleep and dream, I find it hard to distinguish dream from reality? And lets not forget
that Ive killed a few men with my own hands. Im being chased by fanatics who arent
about to give up, and Im hiding out. How could I not be tense, and afraid? I can still feel the
sensation, in my hands, of having murdered somebody. Maybe Ill never be able to sleep
soundly the rest of my life. Maybe thats the responsibility I have to bear, the price I have to
pay.
The dreams she had at least the ones she could recall fell into three set categories.
The first was a dream about thunder. She is in a dark room, with thunder roaring continuously.
But there is no lightning, just like the night she murdered Leader. There is something in
the room. Aomame is lying in bed, naked, and something is wandering about around her,
slowly, deliberately. The carpet is thick, and the air lies heavy and still. The windowpane
rattles slightly in the thunder. She is afraid. She doesnt know what is there in the room. It
might be a person. Maybe its an animal. Maybe its neither one. Finally, though, whatever it is
leaves the room. Not through the door, nor by the window. But still its presence fades away
until it has completely disappeared. She is alone now in the room.
She fumbles for the light near her bed. She gets out of bed, still naked, and looks around
the room. There is a hole in the wall opposite her bed, a hole big enough for one person to
barely make it through. The hole isnt in a set spot. It changes shape and moves around. It
shakes, it moves, it grows bigger, it shrinks as if its alive. Something left through that hole.
She stares into the hole. It seems to be connected to something else, but its too dark inside
to see, a darkness so thick that its as if you could cut it out and hold it in your hand. She is
curious, but at the same time afraid. Her heart pounds, a cold, distant beat. The dream ends
there.
The second dream took place on the shoulder of the Metropolitan Expressway. And here,
too, she is totally nude. Caught in the traffic jam, people leer at her from their cars, shamelessly
ogling her naked body. Most are men, but there are a few women, too. The people are
staring at her less-than-ample breasts and her pubic hair and the strange way it grows, all of
them evaluating her body. Some are frowning, some smiling wryly, others yawning. Others
are staring intently at her, their faces blank. She wants to cover herself up at least her
breasts and groin, if she can. A scrap of cloth would do the trick, or a sheet of newspaper. But
there is nothing around her she can pick up. And for some reason (she has no idea why) she
cant move her arms. From time to time the wind blows, stimulating her nipples, rustling her
pubic hair.
On top of this as if things couldnt get any worse it feels like she is about to get her
period. Her back feels dull and heavy, her abdomen hot. What should she do if, in front of all
these people, she starts bleeding?
Just then the drivers-side door of a silver Mercedes coupe opens and a very refined
middle-aged woman steps out. Shes wearing bright-colored high heels, sunglasses, and silver
earrings. Shes slim, about the same height as Aomame. She wends her way through the
backed-up cars, and when she comes over she takes off her coat and puts it on Aomame. Its
an eggshell-colored spring coat that comes down to her knees. Its light as a feather. Its
simple, but obviously expensive. The coat fits her perfectly, like it was made for her. The woman
buttons it up for her, all the way to the top.
 I dont know when I can return it to you. Im afraid I might bleed on it, Aomame says.
Without a word, the woman shakes her head, then weaves her way back through the cars
to the Mercedes coupe. From the drivers side it looks like she lifts her hand in a small wave
to Aomame, but it may be an illusion. Wrapped in the light, soft spring coat, Aomame knows
she is protected. Her body is no longer exposed to anyones view. And right then, as if it could
barely wait, a line of blood drips down her thigh. Hot, thick, heavy blood. But as she looks at it
she realizes it isnt blood. Its colorless.
The third dream was hard to put into words. It was a rambling, incoherent dream without
any setting. All that was there was a feeling of being in motion. Aomame was ceaselessly
moving through time and space. It didnt matter when or where this was. All that mattered was
this movement. Everything was fluid, and a specific meaning was born of that fluidity. But as
she gave herself up to it, she found her body growing transparent. She could see through her
hands to the other side. Her bones, organs, and womb became visible. At this rate she might
very well no longer exist. After she could no longer see herself, Aomame wondered what
could possibly come then. She had no answer.
At two p.m. the phone rang and Aomame, dozing on the sofa, leapt to her feet. Is
everything going okay? Tamaru asked.
 Yes, fine, Aomame replied.
 How about the NHK fee collector? 
 I havent seen him at all. Maybe he was just threatening me, saying he would be back. 
 Could be, Tamaru said. We set it up so the NHK subscription fee is automatically paid
from a bank account, and an up-to-date sticker is on the door. Any fee collector would be
bound to see it. We called NHK and they said the same thing. It must be some kind of clerical
error. 
 I just hope I dont have to deal with him. 
 Yes, we need to avoid any kind of attention. And I dont like it when there are mistakes. 
 But the world is full of mistakes. 
 The world can be that way, but I have my own way of doing things, Tamaru said. If there
is anything that bothers you anything at all make sure you get in touch. 
 Is there anything new with Sakigake? 
 Everything has been quiet. I imagine something is going on below the surface, but we
cant tell from the outside. 
 I heard you had an informant within the organization. 
 Weve gotten some reports, but theyre focused on details, not the big picture. It does
seem as if they are tightening up control of the faith. The faucet has been shut. 
 But they are definitely still after me. 
 Since Leaders death, there has clearly been a large gap left in the organization. They
havent decided yet who is going to succeed him, or what sort of policies Sakigake should
take. But when it comes to pursuing you, opinion is unwavering and unanimous. Those are
the facts we have been able to find out. 
 Not very heartwarming facts, are they. 
 Well, with facts whats important is their weight and accuracy. Warmth is secondary. 
 Any way, Aomame said, if they capture me and the truth comes to light, that will be a
problem for you as well. 
 That is why we want to get you to a place they cant reach, as soon as we can. 
 I know. But I need you to wait a little longer. 
 She said that we would wait until the end of the year. So of course thats what Ill do. 
 I appreciate it. 
 Im not the one you should be thanking. 
 Be that as it may, Aomame said. There is one item Id like to add to the list the next time
you bring over supplies. Its hard to say this to a man, though. 
 Im like a rock wall, Tamaru said. Plus, when it comes to being gay, Im in the big
leagues. 
 I would like a home pregnancy test. 
There was silence. Finally Tamaru spoke. You believe theres a need for that kind of
test. 
It wasnt a question, so Aomame didnt reply.
 Do you think you might be pregnant? Tamaru asked.
 No, that isnt the reason. 
Tamaru quickly turned this over in his mind. If you were quiet, you could actually hear the
wheels turning.
 You dont think youre pregnant. Yet you need a pregnancy test. 
 Thats right. 
 Sounds like a riddle to me. 
 All I can tell you is that I would like to have the test. The kind of simple home test you can
pick up in a drugstore is fine. Id also appreciate a handbook on the female body and menstruation. 
Tamaru was silent once more a hard, concentrated silence.
 I think it would be better if I called you back, he said. Is that okay? 
 Of course. 
He made a small sound in the back of his throat, and hung up the phone.
. . .
The phone rang again fifteen minutes later. It had been a long while since Aomame had
heard the dowagers voice. She felt like she was back in the greenhouse. That humid, warm
space where rare butterflies flutter about, and time passes slowly.
 Are you doing all right there? 
 Im trying to keep to a daily routine, Aomame replied. Since the dowager wanted to
know, Aomame gave her a summary of her daily schedule, her exercising and meals.
 It must be hard for you, the dowager said, not being able to go outside. But you have a
strong will, so Im not worried about you. I know you will be able to get through it. I would like
to have you leave there as soon as possible and get you to a safer place, but if you want to
stay there longer, I will do what I can to honor your wishes. 
 I am grateful for that. 
 No, Im the one who should be grateful to you. You have done a wonderful thing for us. A
short silence followed, and then the dowager continued. Now, I understand you have requested
a pregnancy test. 
 My period is nearly three weeks late. 
 Are your periods usually regular? 
 Since they began when I was ten, I have had a period every twenty-nine days, almost
without fail. Like the waxing and waning of the moon. Ive never skipped one. 
 You are in an unusual situation right now. Your emotional balance and physical rhythm
will be thrown off. Its possible your period might stop, or the timing may be off. 
 It has never happened before, but I understand how it could. 
 According to Tamaru you dont see how you could be pregnant. 
 The last time I had sexual relations with a man was the middle of June. After that, nothing
at all. 
 Still, you suspect you might be pregnant. Is there any evidence for that? Other than your
period being late? 
 I just have a feeling about it. 
 A feeling? 
 A feeling inside me. 
 A feeling that you have conceived? 
 Once we talked about eggs, remember? The evening we went to see Tsubasa. About
how women have a set number of them? 
 I remember. The average woman has about four hundred eggs. Each month, she releases
one of them. 
 Well, I have the distinct sensation that one of those eggs has been fertilized. I dont know
if sensation is the right word, though. 
The dowager pondered this. I have had two children, so I think I have a very good idea of
what you mean by sensation. But youre saying youve been impregnated without having had
sex with a man. That is a little difficult to accept. 
 I know. I feel the same way. 
 Im sorry to have to ask this, but is it possible youve had sexual relations with someone
while you werent conscious? 
 That is not possible. My mind is always clear. 
The dowager chose her words carefully. I have always thought of you as a very calm, logical
person. 
 Ive always tried to be, Aomame said.
 In spite of that, you think you are pregnant without having had sex. 
 I think that possibility exists. To put it more accurately, Aomame replied. Of course, it
might not make any sense even to consider it. 
 I understand, the dowager said. Lets wait and see what happens. The pregnancy kit will
be there tomorrow. It will come at the same time and in the same way as the rest of the supplies.
We will include several types of tests, just to be sure. 
 I really appreciate it, Aomame said.
 If it does turn out that you are pregnant, when do you think it happened? 
 I think it was that night when I went to the Hotel Okura. The night there was a storm. 
The dowager gave a short sigh. You can pinpoint it that clearly? 
 I calculated it, and that night just happened to be the day when I was most fertile. 
 Which would mean that you are two months along. 
 Thats right, Aomame said.
 Do you have any morning sickness? This would normally be when you would have the
worst time of it. 
 No, I dont feel nauseous at all. I dont know why, though. 
The dowager took her time, and carefully chose her next words. If you do the test and it
does turn out youre pregnant, how do you think youll react? 
 I suppose Ill try to figure out who the childs biological father could be. This would be very
important to me. 
 But you have no idea. 
 Not at the moment, no. 
 I understand, the dowager said, calmly. At any rate, whatever does happen, I will always
be with you. Ill do everything in my power to protect you. I want you to remember that. 
 Im sorry to cause so much trouble at a time like this, Aomame said.
 Its no trouble at all, the dowager said. This is the most important thing for a woman.
Lets wait for the test results, and then decide what well do. Just relax. 
And she quietly hung up.
Someone knocked at the door. Aomame was in the bedroom doing yoga, and she
stopped and listened carefully. The knock was hard and insistent. She remembered that
sound.
She took the automatic pistol from the drawer and switched off the safety. She pulled back
the slide to send a round into the chamber. She stuck the pistol in the back of her sweatpants
and softly padded out to the dining room. She gripped the softball bat in both hands and
stared at the door.
 Miss Takai, a thick, hoarse voice called out. Are you there, Miss Takai? NHK here,
come to collect the subscription fee. 
Plastic tape was wrapped around the handle of the bat so it wouldnt slip.
 Miss Takai, to repeat myself, I know youre in there. So please stop playing this silly
game of hide-and-seek. Youre inside, and youre listening to my voice. 
The man was saying almost exactly the same things he had said the previous time, like a
tape being replayed.
 I told you I would be back, but you probably thought that was just an empty threat. You
should know that I always keep my promises. And if there are fees to collect, I most definitely
will collect them. Youre in there, Miss Takai, and youre listening. And youre thinking this: If I
just stay patient, the collector will give up and go away. 
He knocked on the door again for some time. Twenty, maybe twenty-five times. What sort
of hands does this man have? Aomame wondered. And why doesnt he use the doorbell?
 And I know youre thinking this, too, the fee collector said, as if reading her mind. You
are thinking that this man must have pretty tough hands. And that his hands must hurt,
pounding on the door like this so many times. And there is another thing you are thinking:
Why in the world is he knocking, anyway? Theres a doorbell, so why not ring that? 
Aomame grimaced.
The fee collector continued. No, I dont want to ring the bell. If I do, all you hear is the bell
ringing, thats all. No matter who pushes the bell, it makes the same harmless little sound.
Now, a knock that has personality. You use your physical body to knock on something and
theres a flesh-and-blood emotion behind it. Of course my hand does hurt. Im not Superman,
after all. But it cant be helped. This is my profession. And every profession, no matter high or
low, deserves respect. Dont you agree, Miss Takai? 
Knocks pounded on the door again. Twenty-seven in all, powerful knocks with a fixed
pause between each one. Aomames hands grew sweaty as they gripped the bat.
 Miss Takai, people who receive the NHK TV signal have to pay the fee its the law.
There are no two ways about it. It is a rule we have to follow. So why dont you just cheerfully
pay the fee? Im not pounding on your door because I want to, and I know you dont want this
unpleasantness to go on forever. You must be thinking, Why do I have to go through this? So
just cheerfully pay up. Then you can go back to your quiet life again. 
The mans voice echoed loudly down the hallway. This man is enjoying the sound of his
own voice, Aomame thought. Hes getting a kick out of insulting people, making fun of them
and abusing them. She could sense the perverse pleasure he was getting from this.
 Youre quite the stubborn lady, arent you, Miss Takai. Im impressed. Youre like a shellfish
at the bottom of a deep ocean, maintaining a strict silence. But I know youre in there.
Youre there, glaring at me through the door. The tension is making your underarms sweat.
Do I have that right? 
Thirteen more knocks. Then he stopped. Aomame realized she was, indeed, sweating under
her arms.
 All right. Thats enough for today. But Ill be back soon. Im starting to grow fond of this
door. There are lots of doors in the world, and this one is not bad at all. It is definitely a door
worth knocking on. At this rate I wont be able to relax unless I drop by here regularly to give it
a few good knocks. Good-bye, Miss Takai. Ill be back. 
Silence reigned. The fee collector had apparently left for good, but she hadnt heard any
footsteps. Maybe he was pretending to have left and was waiting outside the door. Aomame
gripped the bat even tighter and waited a couple of minutes.
 Im still here, the fee collector suddenly announced. Ha! You thought I left, didnt you?
But Im still here. I lied. Sorry about that, Miss Takai. Thats the sort of person I am. 
She heard him cough. An intentionally grating cough.
 Ive been at this job for a long time. And over the years Ive become able to picture the
people on the other side of the door. This is the truth. Quite a few people hide behind their
door and try to get away with not paying the NHK fee. Ive been dealing with them for decades.
Listen, Miss Takai. 
He knocked three times, louder than he ever had.
 Listen, Miss Takai. Youre very clever at hiding, like a flounder on the sea floor covered in
sand. Mimicry, they call it. But in the end you wont be able to escape. Someone will come
and open this door. You can count on it. As a veteran NHK fee collector, I guarantee it. You
can hide as cleverly as you like, but in the final analysis mimicry is deception, pure and
simple. It doesnt solve a thing. Its true, Miss Takai. Ill be on my way soon. Dont worry, this
time for real. But Ill be back soon. When you hear a knock, youll know its me. Well, see you,
Miss Takai. Take care! 
She couldnt hear any footsteps this time, either. She waited five minutes, then went up to
the door and listened carefully. She squinted through the peephole. No one was outside. This
time the fee collector really had left, it seemed.
Aomame leaned the metal bat up against the kitchen counter. She slid the round out of
the pistols chamber, set the safety, wrapped it back up in a pair of thick tights, and returned it
to the drawer. She lay down on the sofa and closed her eyes. The mans voice still rang in her
ears.
But in the end you wont be able to escape. Someone will come and open this door.
At least this man wasnt from Sakigake. They would take a quieter, more indirect approach.
They would never yell in an apartment hallway, insinuate things like that, putting their
target on guard. That was not their MO. Aomame pictured Buzzcut and Ponytail. They would
sneak up on you without making a sound. And before you knew it, they would be standing
right behind you.
Aomame shook her head, and breathed quietly.
Maybe he really was an NHK fee collector. If so, it was strange that he didnt notice the
sticker that said they paid the subscription fee automatically. Aomame had checked that the
sticker was pasted to the side of the door. Maybe the man was a mental patient. But the
things he said had a bit too much reality to them for that. The man certainly did seem to sense
my presence on the other side of the door. As if he had sniffed out my secret, or a part of it.
But he did not have the power to open the door and come in. The door had to be opened from
inside. And Im not planning on opening it.
No, she thought, its hard to say that for sure. Someday I might open the door. If Tengo
were to show up at the playground, I wouldnt hesitate to open the door and rush outside. It
doesnt matter what might be waiting for me.
Aomame sank down into the garden chair on the balcony and gazed as usual through the
cracks in the screen at the playground. A high school couple were sitting on the bench underneath
the zelkova tree, discussing something, serious expressions on their faces. Two young
mothers were watching their children, not yet old enough for kindergarten, playing in the
sandbox. They were deep in conversation yet kept their eyes glued to their children. A typical
afternoon scene in a park. Aomame stared at the top of the slide for a long time.
She brought her hand down to her abdomen, shut her eyes, and listened carefully, trying
to pick up the voice. Something was definitely alive inside her. A small, living something. She
knew it.
Dohta, she whispered.
Maza, something replied.
1Q84
CHAPTER 9
Tengo
BEFORE THE EXIT IS BLOCKED
The four of them had yakiniku, then went to another place where they sang karaoke and
polished off a bottle of whiskey. It was nearly ten p.m. when their cozy but boisterous little
party broke up. After they left the bar, Tengo took Nurse Adachi back to her apartment. The
other two women could catch a bus near the station, and they casually let things work out that
way. Tengo and the young nurse walked down the deserted streets, side by side, for a
quarter of an hour.
 Tengo, Tengo, Tengo, she sang out. Such a nice name. Tengo. Its so easy to say. 
Nurse Adachi had drunk a lot, but her cheeks were normally rosy so it was hard to tell, just
by looking at her face, how drunk she really was. Her words werent slurred and her footsteps
were solid. She didnt seem drunk. Though people had their own ways of being drunk.
 I always thought it was a weird name, Tengo said.
 It isnt at all. Tengo. It has a nice ring to it and its easy to remember. Its a wonderful
name. 
 Speaking of which, I dont know your first name. Everybody calls you Ku. 
 Thats my nickname. My real name is Kumi. Kind of a nothing name. 
 Kumi Adachi, Tengo said aloud. Not bad. Compact and simple. 
 Thank you, Kumi Adachi said. But putting it like that makes me feel like a Honda Civic
or something. 
 I meant it as a compliment. 
 I know. I get good mileage, too, she said, and took Tengos hand. Do you mind if I hold
your hand? It makes it more fun to walk together, and more relaxed. 
 I dont mind, Tengo replied. Holding hands like this with Kumi Adachi, he remembered
Aomame and the classroom in elementary school. It felt different now, but there was
something in common.
 I must be a little drunk, Kumi said.
 You think so? 
 Yup. 
Tengo looked at the young nurses face again. You dont look drunk. 
 I dont show it on the outside. Thats just the way I am. But Im wasted. 
 Well, you were knocking them back pretty steadily. 
 I know. I havent drunk this much in a long time. 
 You just have to get out like this sometimes, Tengo said, quoting Mrs. Tamura.
 Of course, Kumi said, nodding vigorously. People have to get out sometimes have
something good to eat, have some drinks, belt out some songs, talk about nothing in particular.
But I wonder if you ever have times like that. Where you just get it out of your system, to
clear your head? You always seem so cool and composed, Tengo. 
Tengo thought about it. Had he done anything lately to unwind? He couldnt recall. If he
couldnt recall, that probably meant he hadnt. The whole concept of getting something out of
his system was something he might be lacking.
 Not so much, I guess, Tengo admitted.
 Everybodys different. 
 There are all sorts of ways of thinking and feeling. 
 Just like there are lots of ways of being drunk, the nurse said, and giggled. But its important,
Tengo. 
 You may be right, he said.
They walked on in silence for a while, hand in hand. Tengo felt uneasy about the change
in the way she spoke. When she had on her nurses uniform, Kumi was invariably polite. But
now in civilian clothes, she was more outspoken, probably partly due to the alcohol. That informal
way of talking reminded him of someone. Somebody had spoken the same way.
Someone he had met fairly recently.
 Tengo, have you ever tried hashish? 
 Hashish? 
 Cannabis resin. 
Tengo breathed in the night air and exhaled. No, I never have. 
 How about trying some? Kumi Adachi asked. Lets try it together. I have some at home. 
 You have hashish? 
 Looks can be deceiving. 
 They certainly can, Tengo said vaguely. So a healthy young nurse living in a seaside
little town on the Boso Peninsula had hashish in her apartment. And she was inviting him to
smoke some.
 How did you get ahold of it? Tengo asked.
 A girlfriend from high school gave it to me for a birthday present last month. She had
gone to India and brought it back. Kumi began swinging Tengos hand with her own in a wide
arc.
 But theres a stiff penalty if youre caught smuggling pot into the country. The Japanese
police are really strict about it. They have pot-sniffing dogs at the airports. 
 Shes not the type to worry about little details, Kumi said. Anyhow, she got through customs
okay. Would you like to try it? Its high-quality stuff, very potent. I checked into it, and
medically speaking theres nothing dangerous about it. Im not saying it isnt habit forming, but
its much milder than tobacco, alcohol, or cocaine. Law enforcement says its addictive, but
thats ridiculous. If you believe that, then pachinko is far more dangerous. You dont get a
hangover, so I think it would be good for you to try it to blow off some steam. 
 Have you tried it yourself? 
 Of course. It was fun. 
 Fun, Tengo repeated.
 Youll understand if you try it, Kumi said, and giggled. Say, did you know? When Queen
Victoria had menstrual cramps she used to smoke marijuana to lessen the pain. Her court
doctor actually prescribed it to her. 
 Youre kidding. 
 Its true. I read it in a book. 
Which book? Tengo was about to ask, but decided it was too much trouble. That was as
far as he wanted to go picturing Queen Victoria having menstrual cramps.
 So how old were you on your birthday last month? Tengo asked, changing subjects.
 Twenty-three. A full-fledged adult. 
 Of course, Tengo said. He was already thirty, but yet to have a sense of himself as an
adult. It just felt to him like he had spent thirty years in the world.
 My older sister is staying over tonight at her boyfriends, so Im by myself. So come on
over. Dont be shy. Im off duty tomorrow so I can take it easy. 
Tengo searched for a reply. He liked this young nurse. And she seemed to like him, too.
But she was inviting him to her place. He looked up at the sky, but it was covered with thick
gray clouds and he couldnt see the moons.
 The other day when my girlfriend and I smoked hashish, Kumi began, that was my first
time, but it felt like my body was floating in the air. Not very high, just a couple of inches. You
know, floating at that height felt really good. Like it was just right. 
 Plus you wont hurt yourself if you fall. 
 Yeah, its just the right height, so you can feel safe. Like youre being protected. Like
youre wrapped in an air chrysalis. Im the dohta, completely enveloped in the air chrysalis,
and outside I can just make out maza. 
 Dohta? Tengo asked. His voice was surprisingly hard. Maza? 
The young nurse was humming a tune, swinging their clasped hands as they walked down
the deserted streets. She was much shorter than Tengo, but it didnt seem to bother her at all.
An occasional car passed by.
 Maza and dohta. Its from the book Air Chrysalis. Do you know it? she asked.
 I do. 
 Have you read it? 
Tengo silently nodded.
 Great. That makes things easier. I love that book. I bought it in the summer and read it
three times. I hardly ever read a book three times. And as I was smoking hashish for the first
time in my life I thought it felt like I was inside an air chrysalis myself. Like I was enveloped in
something and waiting to be born. With my maza watching over me. 
 You saw your maza? Tengo asked.
 Yes, I did. From inside the air chrysalis you can see outside, to a certain extent. Though
you cant see in from outside. Thats how its structured. But I couldnt make out her expression.
She was a vague outline. But I knew it was my maza. I could feel it very clearly. That
this person was my maza. 
 So an air chrysalis is actually a kind of womb. 
 I guess you could say that. I dont remember anything from when I was in the womb, so I
cant make an exact comparison, Kumi Adachi said, and giggled again.
It was the kind of cheaply made two-story apartment building you often find in the suburbs
of provincial cities. It looked fairly new, yet it was already starting to fall apart. The outside
stairway creaked, and the doors didnt quite hang right. Whenever a large truck rolled by outside,
the windows rattled. The walls were thin, and if anyone were to practice a bass guitar in
one of the apartments, the whole building would end up being one large sound box.
Tengo wasnt all that drawn to the idea of smoking hashish. He had a sane mind, yet he
lived in a world with two moons. There was no need to distort the world any more than that.
He also didnt have any sexual desire for Kumi Adachi. Certainly he did feel friendly toward
this young twenty-three-year-old nurse. But friendliness and sexual desire were two different
things, at least for Tengo. So if she hadnt mentioned maza and dohta, most likely he would
have made up an excuse and not gone inside. He would have taken a bus back, or, if there
werent any buses, he would have had her call a cab, and then returned to the inn. This was,
after all, the cat town. It was best to avoid any dangerous spots. But once Kumi mentioned
the words maza and dohta, Tengo couldnt turn down her invitation. Maybe she could give
him a hint as to why the young Aomame had appeared in the air chrysalis in the hospital
room.
The apartment was a typical place for two sisters in their twenties living together. There
were two small bedrooms, plus a combined kitchen and dining room that connected to a tiny
living room. The furniture looked thrown together from all over, with no unifying style. Above
the laminated dining table there hung a tacky imitation Tiffany lamp, quite out of place. If you
were to open the curtain, with its tiny floral pattern, outside there was a cultivated field, and
beyond that, a thick, dark grove of various trees. The view was nice, with nothing to obstruct
it, but far from heartwarming.
Kumi sat Tengo down on the love seat in the living room a gaudy, red love seat facing
the TV. She took out a can of Sapporo beer from the fridge and set it down, with a glass, in
front of him.
 Im going to change into something more comfortable, so wait here. Ill be right back. 
But she didnt come back for a long time. He could hear the occasional sound from behind
the door across the narrow corridor the sound of drawers that didnt slide well, opening and
closing, the thud of things clunking to the ground. With each thud, Tengo couldnt help but
look in that direction. Maybe she really was drunker than she looked. He could hear a TV
through the thin walls of the apartment. He couldnt make out what the people were saying,
but it appeared to be a comedy show, and every ten or fifteen seconds there was a burst of
laughter from the audience. Tengo regretted not having turned down her invitation. At the
same time, though, in a corner of his mind he felt it was inevitable that he had come here.
The love seat was cheap, and the fabric itched whenever his skin touched it. Something
bothered him, too, about the shape of it, and he couldnt get comfortable no matter how he
shifted around. This only amplified his sense of unease. Tengo took a sip of beer and picked
up the TV remote from the table. He stared at it for a time, as if it were some odd object, and
then hit the on button. He surfed through a few channels, finally settling on an NHK documentary
about railroads in Australia. He chose this program simply because it was quieter
than the others. While an oboe piece played in the background, a woman announcer was
calmly introducing the elegant sleeper cars in the line that ran across the whole of Australia.
Tengo sat there in the uncomfortable love seat, unenthusiastically following the images on
the screen, but his mind was on Air Chrysalis. Kumi Adachi had no idea that he was the one
who had really written the book. Not that it mattered what did matter was that while he had
written such a detailed description of the air chrysalis, Tengo knew next to nothing about it.
What was an air chrysalis? And what did maza and dohta signify? He had no idea what they
meant when he wrote Air Chrysalis, and he still didnt. Still, Kumi liked the book and had read
it three times. How could such a thing be possible?
Kumi came back out as the show was discussing the dining-car menu. She plunked down
on the love seat next to Tengo. It was so narrow their shoulders touched. She had changed
into an oversized long-sleeved shirt and faded cotton pants. The shirt had a large smiley face
on it. The last time Tengo had seen a smiley face was the beginning of the 1970s, back when
Grand Funk Railroad rattled the jukeboxes with their crazy loud songs. But the shirt didnt look
that old. Somewhere, were people still manufacturing smiley-face shirts?
Kumi took a fresh beer from the fridge, loudly popped it open, poured it in her glass, and
chugged down a third of it. She narrowed her eyes like a satisfied cat and pointed at the TV
screen. In between red cliffs the train was traveling down an endlessly straight line.
 Where is this? 
 Australia, Tengo said.
 Australia, Kumi Adachi said, as if searching the recesses of memory. The Australia in
the Southern Hemisphere? 
 Right. The Australia with the kangaroos. 
 I have a friend who went to Australia, Kumi said, scratching next to her eye. It was right
during the kangaroo mating season. He went to one town and the kangaroos were doing it all
over the place. In the parks, in the streets. Everywhere. 
Tengo thought he should make a comment, but he couldnt think of anything. Instead he
took the remote and turned off the TV. With the TV off, the room suddenly grew still. The
sound of the TV next door, too, was gone. The occasional car would pass by on the road outside,
but other than that it was a quiet night. If you listened carefully, though, there was a
muffled, far-off sound. It was steady and rhythmic, but Tengo had no idea what it was. It
would stop for a time, then start up again.
 Its an owl, the nurse explained. He lives in the woods nearby. He hoots at night. 
 An owl, Tengo repeated vaguely.
Kumi rested her head on his shoulder and held his hand. Her hair tickled his neck. The
love seat was still uncomfortable. The owl continued hooting knowingly off in the woods. That
voice sounded encouraging to Tengo, but at the same time like a warning. Or maybe a warning
that contained a note of encouragement. It was a very ambiguous sound.
 Tell me, do you think Im too forward? Kumi Adachi asked.
Tengo didnt reply. Dont you have a boyfriend? 
 Thats a perplexing question, she said, indeed looking a bit perplexed. Most of the smart
young men head off to Tokyo as soon as they graduate from high school. There are no good
colleges here, and not enough decent jobs, either. They have no other choice. 
 But youre here. 
 Yes. Considering the lousy pay they give us, the work is pretty hard. But I kind of like living
here. The problem is finding a boyfriend. Im open to it if I find someone, but there arent
so many chances. 
The hands of the clock on the wall pointed to just before eleven. If he didnt go back to the
inn by the eleven oclock curfew, he wouldnt be able to get in. But Tengo couldnt rouse himself
from the cramped love seat. His body just wouldnt listen. Maybe it was the shape of the
chair, or maybe he was drunker than he thought. He listened vaguely to the owls hooting, felt
Kumis hair tickle his neck, and gazed at the faux Tiffany lamp.
Kumi Adachi whistled cheerfully as she prepared the hashish. She used a safety razor to
slice thin slices off a black ball of hash, stuffed the shavings into a small, flat pipe, and then,
with a serious look on her face, lit a match. A unique, sweetly smoky smell soon filled the
room. Kumi took the first hit. She inhaled deeply, held it in her lungs for a long time, then
slowly exhaled. She motioned to Tengo to do the same. Tengo took the pipe and followed her
example. He tried to hold the smoke in his lungs as long as possible, and then let it out ever
so slowly.
They leisurely passed the pipe back and forth, never exchanging a word. The neighbor
next door switched on his TV and they could hear the comedy show again. The volume was a
bit louder than before. The happy laughter of the studio audience swelled up, the laughter
only stopping during the commercials.
They took turns smoking for about five minutes, but nothing happened. The world around
Tengo was unchanged colors, shapes, and smells were the same as before. The owl kept
on hooting in the woods, Kumi Adachis hair on his neck still itched. The two-person love seat
remained uncomfortable. The second hand on the clock ticked away at the same speed and
the people on TV kept on laughing out loud when someone said something funny, the kind of
laugh that you could laugh forever but never end up happy.
 Nothings happening, Tengo said. Maybe it doesnt work on me. 
Kumi lightly tapped his knee twice. Dont worry. It takes time. 
And she was right. Finally it hit him. He heard a click, like a secret switch being turned on,
and then something inside his head sloshed thickly. It felt like tipping a bowl of rice porridge
sideways. My brain is vibrating, Tengo thought. This was a new experience for
him considering his brain as an object apart from the rest of him, physically experiencing the
viscosity of it. The deep hoot of the owl came in through his ears, mixed with the porridge inside,
and melted into it.
 The owl is inside me, Tengo commented. The owl had become a part of his consciousness,
a vital part that couldnt be separated out.
 The owl is the guardian deity of the woods. He knows all and gives us the wisdom of the
night, Kumi said.
But where and how should he seek this wisdom? The owl was everywhere, and nowhere.
 I cant think of a question to ask him, Tengo said.
Kumi Adachi held his hand. Theres no need for questions. All you need to do is go into
the woods yourself. That way is much simpler. 
He could hear laughter again from the comedy next door. Applause as well. The shows
assistant, off camera, was probably holding up cue cards to the audience that said Laugh and
Applaud. Tengo closed his eyes and thought of the woods, of himself going into the woods.
Deep in the dark forest was the realm of the Little People. But the owl was still there too. The
owl knows all and gives us the wisdom of the night.
Suddenly all sound vanished, as if someone had come up behind him stealthily and stuck
corks in his ears. Someone had closed one lid, while someone else, somewhere, had opened
another lid. Entrance and exit had switched.
Tengo found himself in an elementary school classroom.
The window was wide open and childrens voices filtered in from the schoolyard. The wind
blew, almost as an afterthought, and the white curtains waved in the breeze. Aomame was
beside him, holding his hand tightly. It was the same scene as always but something was
different. Everything he could see was crystal clear, almost painfully clear, fresh and focused
down to the texture. He could make out each and every detail of the forms and shapes of
things around him. If he reached out his hand, he could actually touch them. The smell of the
early-winter afternoon hit him strongly, as if what had been covering up those smells until then
had been yanked away. Real smells. The set smells of the season: of the blackboard erasers,
the floor cleaner, the fallen leaves burning in the incinerator in a corner of the schoolyard all
these were mixed inseparably together. When he breathed in these scents, he felt them
spread out deep and wide within his mind. The structure of his body was being reassembled.
His heartbeat was no longer just a heartbeat.
For an instant, he could push the door of time inward. Old light mixed with the new light,
the two becoming one. The old air mixed in with the new to become one. It is this light, and
this air, Tengo thought. He understood everything now. Almost everything. Why couldnt I remember
this smell until now? Its so simple. Its such a straightforward world, yet I didnt get it.
 I wanted to see you, Tengo said to Aomame. His voice was far away and faltering, but it
was definitely his voice.
 I wanted to see you, too, the girl said. The voice sounded like Kumi Adachis. He couldnt
make out the boundary between reality and imagination. If he tried to pin it down, the bowl
slipped sideways and his brains sloshed around.
Tengo spoke. I should have started searching for you long ago. But I couldnt. 
 Its not too late. You can still find me, the girl said.
 But how can I find you? 
No response. The answer was not put into words.
 But I know I can find you, Tengo said.
The girl spoke. Because I could find you. 
 You found me? 
 Find me, the girl said. While theres still time. 
Like a departed soul that had failed to leave in time, the white curtain soundlessly and
gently wavered. That was the last thing Tengo saw.
When he came to, he was lying in a narrow bed. The lights were out, the room faintly lit by
the streetlights filtering in through a gap in the curtains. He was wearing a T-shirt and boxers.
Kumi wore only her smiley-face shirt. Underneath the long shirt, she was nude. Her soft
breasts lay against his arm. The owl was still hooting in Tengos head. The woods lingered inside
him he was still clinging to the nighttime woods.
Even in bed like this with the young nurse, he felt no desire. Kumi seemed to feel the
same way. She wrapped her arms around his body and giggled. What was so funny? Tengo
had no idea. Maybe somebody, somewhere, was holding out a sign that said Laugh.
What time could it be? He lifted his head to look for a clock but couldnt see any. Kumi
suddenly stopped laughing and wrapped her arms around his neck.
 I was reborn, she said, her hot breath brushing his ear.
 You were reborn, Tengo said.
 Because I died once. 
 You died once, Tengo repeated.
 On a night when there was a cold rain falling, she said.
 Why did you die? 
 So I would be reborn like this. 
 You would be reborn, Tengo said.
 More or less, she whispered very quietly. In all sorts of forms. 
Tengo pondered this statement. What did it mean to be reborn more or less, in all sorts of
forms? His brain was heavy, and was brimming with the germs of life, like some primeval sea.
Not that these led him anywhere.
 Where do air chrysalises come from, anyway? 
 Thats the wrong question, Kumi said, and chuckled.
She twisted her body on top of his and Tengo could feel her pubic hair against his thighs.
Thick, rich hair. It was like her pubic hair was a part of her thinking process.
 What is necessary in order to be reborn? Tengo asked.
 The biggest problem when it comes to being reborn, the small nurse said, as if revealing
a secret, is that people arent reborn for their own sakes. They can only do it for someone
else. 
 Which is what you mean by more or less, in all sorts of forms. 
 When morning comes you will be leaving here, Tengo. Before the exit is blocked. 
 When morning comes Ill be leaving here, Tengo repeated the nurses words.
Once more she rubbed her rich pubic hair against his thigh, as if to leave behind some
sort of sign. Air chrysalises dont come from somewhere. They wont come no matter how
long you wait. 
 You know that. 
 Because I died once, she said. Its painful to die. Much more painful than you imagine,
Tengo. You are utterly lonely. Its amazing how completely lonely a person can be. You had
better remember that. But you know, unless you die once, you wont be reborn. 
 Unless you die once, you wont be reborn, Tengo confirmed.
 But people face death while theyre still alive. 
 People face death while theyre still alive, Tengo repeated, unsure of what it meant.
The white curtain continued to flutter in the breeze. The air in the classroom smelled of a
mixture of blackboard erasers and cleaner. There was the scent of burning leaves. Someone
was practicing the recorder. The girl was squeezing his hand tightly. In his lower half he felt a
sweet ache, but he didnt have an erection. That would come later on. The words later on
promised him eternity. Eternity was a single long pole that stretched out without end. The
bowl tipped a bit again, and again his brains sloshed to one side.
When he woke up, it took Tengo a while to figure out where he was, and to piece together
the events of the previous night. Bright sunlight shone in through the gap between the flowery
curtains, while birds whistled away noisily outside. He had been sleeping in an uncomfortable,
cramped position in the narrow bed. He found it hard to believe he could have slept the whole
night in such a position. Kumi was lying beside him, her face pressed into the pillow, sound
asleep. Her hair was plastered against her cheeks, like lush summer grass wet with dew.
Kumi Adachi, Tengo thought. A young nurse who just turned twenty-three. His wristwatch had
fallen to the floor. The hands showed 7:20 7:20 in the morning.
Tengo slipped quietly out of bed, careful not to wake Kumi, and looked out the window
through a crack in the curtains. There was a cabbage field. Rows of cabbages crouched
stolidly on the dark soil. Beyond the field was the woods. Tengo remembered the hoot of the
owl. Last night it had definitely been hooting. The wisdom of the night. Tengo and the nurse
had listened to it as they smoked hashish. He could still feel her stiff pubic hair on his thigh.
Tengo went to the kitchen, scooped up water from the faucet with his hands, and drank.
He was so thirsty he drank and drank, and still wanted more. Other than that, nothing else
had changed. His head didnt hurt, and his body wasnt listless. His mind was clear. But
somehow, inside him, things seemed to flow a bit too well as if pipes had been carefully,
and professionally, cleaned. In his T-shirt and boxers he padded over to the toilet and took a
good long pee. In the unfamiliar mirror, his face didnt look like his own. Tufts of hair stood up
here and there on his head, and he needed a shave.
He went back to the bedroom and gathered up his clothes. His discarded clothes lay
mixed in with Kumis, scattered on the floor. He had no memory of when, or how, he had undressed.
He located both socks, tugged on his jeans, buttoned up his shirt. As he did, he
stepped on a large, cheap ring. He picked it up and put it on the nightstand next to the bed.
He tugged on his crew-neck sweater and picked up his windbreaker. He checked that his wallet
and keys were in his pocket. The young nurse was sleeping soundly, the blanket pulled up
to just below her ears. Her breathing was quiet. Should he wake her up? Even though they
hadnt he was pretty sure done anything, they had spent the night in bed together. It
seemed rude to leave without saying good-bye. But she was sleeping so soundly, and she
had said this was her day off. Even if he did wake her, what were they supposed to do then?
He found a memo pad and ballpoint pen next to the telephone. Thanks for last night, he
wrote. I had a good time. Im going back to my inn. Tengo. He wrote down the time. He
placed the memo on the nightstand, and put the ring he had picked up on top, as a paperweight.
He then slipped on his worn-out sneakers and left.
He walked down the road for a while, until he came across a bus stop. He waited there for
five minutes and soon a bus heading for the station arrived. The bus was full of noisy high
school boys and girls, and he rode with them to the end of the line. The people at the inn took
his unshaven eight a.m. arrival in stride. It didnt seem to be that out of the ordinary for them.
Without a word, they briskly prepared his breakfast.
As he ate his hot breakfast and drank tea, Tengo went over the events of the previous
night. The three nurses had invited him out and they went to have yakiniku. Then on to a bar,
where they sang karaoke. Then he went to Kumi Adachis apartment, where they smoked Indian
hashish, while an owl hooted outside. Then his brain felt like it had changed into hot,
thick porridge. And suddenly he was in his elementary school classroom in winter, he could
smell the air, and he was talking with Aomame. Then Kumi, in bed, was talking about death
and resurrection. There were wrong questions, ambiguous answers. The owl in the woods
went on hooting, people on a TV show went on laughing.
His memory was patchy and there were definitely several gaps. But the parts he did recall
were amazingly vivid and clear. He could retrace each and every word they spoke. Tengo recalled
the last thing Kumi said. It was both advice and a warning.
When morning comes you will be leaving here, Tengo. Before the exit is blocked.
Maybe this was the right time to leave. He had taken off from his job and come to this
town hoping to see ten-year-old Aomame inside the air chrysalis once more. And he had
spent nearly two weeks going every day to the sanatorium, reading aloud to his father. But
the air chrysalis had never appeared. Instead, when he was about to give up, Kumi Adachi
had prepared a different kind of vision just for him. And in it he was able once more to see
Aomame as a girl, and speak with her. Find me, Aomame had said. While theres still time.
Actually, it may have been Kumi who said that. Tengo couldnt tell. Not that it mattered. Kumi
had died once, and been reborn. Not for herself, but for someone else. For the time being,
Tengo decided to believe what he had heard from her. It was important to do so. At least, he
was pretty sure it was.
This was the cat town. There was something specific that could only be found here. Thats
why he had taken the train all the way to this far-off place. But everything he found here held
an inherent risk. If he believed Kumis hints, these risks could be fatal. By the pricking of my
thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
It was time to go back to Tokyo before the exit was blocked, while the train still stopped
at this station. But before that he needed to go to the sanatorium again, and say good-bye to
his father. There were things he still needed to clarify.
1Q84
CHAPTER 10
Ushikawa
GATHERING SOLID LEADS
Ushikawa traveled to Ichikawa. It felt like quite a long excursion, but actually Ichikawa was
just over the river in Chiba Prefecture, not far from downtown Tokyo. At the station he
boarded a cab and gave the driver the name of the elementary school. It was after one p.m.
when he arrived at the school. Lunch break was over and classes had just begun for the afternoon.
He heard a chorus singing in the music room and a gym class was playing soccer outside.
Children were yelling as they chased after the ball.
Ushikawa didnt have good memories of his own days in elementary school. He wasnt
good at sports, particularly any kind that involved a ball. He was short, a slow runner, had
astigmatism, and was uncoordinated. Gym class was a nightmare. His grades in other
classes were excellent, though. He was pretty bright and applied himself to his schoolwork
(which led to passing the difficult bar exam when he was only twenty-five). But nobody liked
him, or respected him. Not being good at sports may have been one reason. And then there
was his face. Since he was a child, he had had this big, ugly face, with a misshapen head. His
thick lips sagged at the corners and looked as if they were about to drool at any moment,
though they never actually did. His hair was frizzy and unruly. These were not the sort of
looks to attract others.
In elementary school he hardly ever spoke. He knew he could be eloquent if necessary,
but he didnt have any close friends and never had the opportunity to show others how well
spoken he could be. So he always kept his mouth shut. He kept his ears open and listened
closely to whatever anyone else had to say, aiming to learn something from everything he
heard. This habit eventually became a useful tool. Through this, he discovered a number of
important realities, including this one: most people in the world dont really use their brains to
think. And people who dont think are the ones who dont listen to others.
At any rate, his elementary school days were not a page of his life that Ushikawa enjoyed
reminiscing over. Just thinking that he was about to visit an elementary school depressed
him. Despite any differences between Saitama and Chiba prefectures, elementary schools
were pretty much alike anywhere you went in Japan. They looked the same and operated on
the same principles. Still, Ushikawa insisted on going all the way to visit this school in Ichikawa
himself. This was important, something he couldnt leave up to anyone else. He had
called the schools front office and already had an appointment for one thirty.
The vice principal was a petite woman in her mid-forties, slim, attractive, and nicely
dressed. Vice principal? Ushikawa was puzzled. He had never heard that term before. But it
was ages ago when he graduated from elementary school. Lots of things must have changed
since then. The woman must have dealt with many people over the years, for she didnt blink
an eye when faced with Ushikawas extraordinary features. Or perhaps she was just a very
well-mannered person. She showed Ushikawa to a tidy reception room and invited him to
take a seat. She sat down in the chair across from him and smiled broadly, as if wondering
what sort of enjoyable conversation they were about to have.
She reminded Ushikawa of a girl who had been in his class in school. The girl had been
pretty, got good grades, was kind and responsible. She was well brought up and good at piano.
She was one of the teachers favorites. During class Ushikawa spent a lot of time gazing
at her, mainly at her back. But he never once talked with her.
 I understand that youre looking into one of the graduates of our school? the vice principal
asked.
 Im sorry, I should have given you this before, Ushikawa said, and passed her his business
card. It was the same card he had given Tengo, the one with his title on it: Full-time Director,
New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. What he told
the woman was the same fabricated story he had told Tengo. Tengo Kawana, who had
graduated from this school, had become a writer and was on a short list to receive a grant
from the foundation. Ushikawa was just running an ordinary background check on him.
 Thats wonderful news, the vice principal said, beaming. Its a great honor for our
school, and we will do everything we can to help you. 
 I was hoping to meet and speak directly with the teacher who taught Mr. Kawana, Ushikawa
said.
 Ill check into that. Its more than twenty years ago, so she may be retired already. 
 I appreciate that, Ushikawa said. If its all right, theres one other thing I would like you
to look into, if you would. 
 And what would that be? 
 There was a girl in the same year, I believe, as Mr. Kawana, a Miss Masami Aomame.
Would you be able to check into whether she was in the same class as Mr. Kawana? 
The vice principal looked a bit dubious. Is this Miss Aomame in some way connected with
the question of funding for Mr. Kawana? 
 No, its not that. In one of the works by Mr. Kawana, there is a character who seems to be
modeled on someone like Miss Aomame, and I have a few questions of my own on this topic
that I need to clear up. Its nothing very involved. Basically a formality. 
 I see, the vice principal said, the corners of her lips rising ever so slightly. I am sure you
understand, however, that in some cases we may not be able to give you information that
might touch on a persons privacy. Grades, for instance, or reports on a pupils home environment. 
 Of course, Im fully aware of that. All we are after is information on whether or not she
was actually in the same class as Mr. Kawana. And if she was, I would appreciate it very
much if you could give me the name and contact information for the teacher in charge of their
class at the time. 
 I understand. That shouldnt be a problem. Miss Aomame, was it? 
 Correct. Its written with the characters for green and peas. An uncommon name. 
Ushikawa wrote the name Masami Aomame in pen on a page on his pocket notebook
and passed the page to the vice principal. She looked at it for a few seconds, then placed it in
the pocket of a folder on her desk.
 Could you please wait here for a few minutes? Ill go check our staff records. Ill have the
person in charge photocopy whatever can be made public. 
 Im sorry to bother you with this when you are obviously so busy, Ushikawa said.
The vice principals flared skirt swished prettily as she exited the room. She had beautiful
posture, and she moved elegantly. Her hairstyle was attractive too. She was clearly aging
gracefully. Ushikawa shifted in his seat and killed time by reading a paperback book he had
brought along.
The vice principal came back fifteen minutes later, a brown business envelope clutched to
her breast.
 It turns out that Mr. Kawana was quite the student. He was always at the top of his class
as well as a very successful athlete. He was especially good at arithmetic and mathematics,
and even in elementary school he was able to solve high-school-level problems. He won a
math contest and was written up in the newspaper as a child prodigy. 
 Thats amazing, Ushikawa said.
 Its odd that while he was touted as a math prodigy, today he has distinguished himself in
literature. 
 Abundant talent is like a rich vein of water underground that finds all sorts of places to
gush forth. Presently he is teaching math while writing novels. 
 I see, the vice principal said, raising her eyebrows at a lovely angle. Unlike Tengo, there
wasnt much on Masami Aomame. She transferred to another school in fifth grade. She was
taken in by relatives in Adachi Ward in Tokyo and transferred to a school there. She and
Tengo Kawana were classmates in third and fourth grades. 
Just as I suspected, Ushikawa thought. There was some connection between the two of
them.
 A Miss Ota was in charge of their class then. Toshie Ota. Now shes teaching at a municipal
elementary school in Narashino. 
 If I contact that school, perhaps I will be able to get in touch with her? 
 We have already made the call, the vice principal said, smiling faintly. When we explained
the situation, she said she would be very pleased to meet with you. 
 I really appreciate that, Ushikawa said. She wasnt just a pretty face, he thought, but an
efficient administrator, too.
On the back of her business card, the vice principal wrote down the teachers name and
the phone number of the school, the Tsudanuma elementary school, and handed it to Ushikawa.
Ushikawa carefully stashed the card in his billfold.
 I heard that Miss Aomame was raised with some sort of religious background, Ushikawa
said. We are a bit concerned about this. 
The vice principal frowned, tiny lines forming at the corners of her eyes. The kind of
subtle, charming, intelligent lines acquired only by middle-aged women who have taken great
care to train themselves.
 Im sorry, but that is not a subject we can discuss here, she said.
 It touches on areas of personal privacy, doesnt it, Ushikawa asked.
 Thats correct. Especially issues dealing with religion. 
 But if I meet with this Miss Ota, I might be able to ask her about this. 
The vice principal inclined her slender jaw slightly to the left and smiled meaningfully. If
Miss Ota wishes to speak as a private individual, that is no concern of ours. 
Ushikawa stood up and politely thanked her. She handed him the brown business envelope.
 The materials we could copy are inside. Documents pertaining to Mr. Kawana. Theres
a little bit, too, concerning Miss Aomame. I hope its helpful to you. 
 Im sure it will be. Thank you very much for all you have done. Youve been very kind. 
 When the results of that grant are decided, youll be sure to let us know, wont you? This
will be a great honor for our school. 
 Im positive there will be a good outcome, Ushikawa said. I have met him a number of
times and he is a talented young man with a promising future. Ushikawa stopped at a diner in
front of Ichikawa Station, ate a simple lunch, and looked through the material in the envelope.
There was a basic record of attendance at the school for both Tengo and Aomame, as well as
records of awards given to Tengo for his achievements in academics and sports. He did indeed
seem to be an extraordinary student. He probably never once thought of school as a
nightmare. There was also a copy of a newspaper article about the math contest he had won.
It was an old article and the photo wasnt very clear, but it was obviously Tengo as a boy.
After lunch Ushikawa phoned the Tsudanuma elementary school. He spoke with Miss Ota,
the teacher, and made an appointment to meet her at four at her school. After four Im free to
talk, she had said.
I know its my job, Ushikawa sighed, but two elementary schools in one day is a bit much.
Just thinking about it made him depressed. But so far it had been worth the effort. He now
had proof that Tengo and Aomame were classmates for two years a huge step forward.
Tengo had helped Eriko Fukada to revise Air Chrysalis into a decent novel, and make it a
bestseller. Aomame had secretly murdered Erikos father, Tamotsu Fukada, in a suite at the
Hotel Okura. It would appear that they shared the goal of attacking, in their own ways, the religious
organization Sakigake. Perhaps they were working together. Thats what most people
would conclude.
But it wouldnt do to tell that duo from Sakigake about this not yet. Ushikawa didnt like to
reveal information in fits and starts. He much preferred gathering as much information as he
could, making absolutely sure of all the facts, and then, when he had solid proof, revealing the
results with a flourish. It was a theatrical gesture he still retained from his days as a lawyer.
He would act self-deprecating so that other people would let down their guard. Then, just
when things were drawing to a conclusion, he would bring forth his irrefutable evidence and
turn the tables.
As he rode the train to Tsudanuma, Ushikawa mentally assembled a number of hypotheses.
Tengo and Aomame might be lovers. They wouldnt have been lovers when they were ten,
of course, but it was possible to see them, after they graduated from elementary school, running
into each other and growing intimate. And for some reason the reason was still unclear they
decided to work together to destroy Sakigake. This was one hypothesis.
As far as Ushikawa could tell, however, there was no evidence of Tengo and Aomame
having a relationship. Tengo had maintained an ongoing affair with a married woman ten
years older than himself. If Tengo had been deeply involved with Aomame, he would not then
regularly cheat on her with another woman he wasnt adroit enough to pull that off. Ushikawa
had previously investigated Tengos habits over a two-week period. He taught math at a
cram school three days a week, and on the other days he was mostly alone in his apartment.
Writing novels, most likely. Other than occasionally shopping or going for a walk, he seldom
left his place. It was a very monotonous, simple lifestyle, easy to fathom. There was nothing
mysterious about it. Somehow Ushikawa just couldnt picture him involved in a plot that involved
murdering someone.
Personally, Ushikawa liked Tengo. Tengo was an unaffected, straightforward young man,
independent and self-reliant. As is often the case with physically large people, he tended to
be a bit slow on the uptake at times, but he wasnt sly or cunning in the least. He was the kind
of guy who, once he decided on a course of action, never deviated from it. The kind who
would never make it as a lawyer or a stockbroker. Rather, he was more likely to get tripped up
and stumble at the most critical juncture. He would make a good math teacher and novelist,
though. He wasnt particularly sociable or eloquent, but he did appeal to a certain type of woman.
In a nutshell, he was the polar opposite of Ushikawa.
In contrast to what he knew about Tengo, Ushikawa knew next to nothing about
Aomame other than her background with the Witnesses and that she had later been a star
softball player. When it came to her personality her way of thinking, her strong points and
weaknesses, what sort of private life she led he was clueless. The facts that he had assembled
were nothing more than what you would find on a résumé.
But while comparing the backgrounds of Tengo and Aomame, some similarities came to
light. First of all, both of them must have had unhappy childhoods. Aomame was dragged all
over town by her mother to proselytize, slogging from house to house, ringing doorbells. All
the Witness children were made to do that. In Tengos case, his father was an NHK fee collector.
This was another job that involved making the rounds from one house to the next. Had
Tengo been dragged along with him? Maybe he had. If Ushikawa had been Tengos father,
he probably would have taken Tengo with him on his rounds. Having a child with you helped
you collect more fees, and you saved on babysitting money two birds with one stone. For
Tengo this couldnt have been much fun. Perhaps these two children even passed each other
on the streets of Ichikawa.
Second, as they grew older, Tengo and Aomame worked hard to win athletic scholarships
so they could get far away from home as quickly as possible. And both of them turned out to
be superb athletes. They both must have been pretty talented to begin with. But there was
also a reason they had to be superb. Being an athlete was a way to be recognized by others,
and having outstanding records in sports was just about the only way they could win their independence.
This was the valuable ticket they needed to survive. They thought differently
from average teenagers. They confronted the world differently.
When he thought about it, Ushikawa realized his own situation somewhat resembled
theirs.
Im from an affluent family and had no need to get a scholarship. I always had plenty of
spending money. But in order to get into a top university, and pass the bar exam, I had to
study like mad, just like Tengo and Aomame. I had no time to have fun like my classmates. I
had to abstain from all worldly pleasures not that I had much chance of obtaining them to
begin with and focus solely on my studies. I was always stuck between feelings of inferiority
and superiority. I often used to think I was like Raskolnikov, except I never met Sonia.
Enough about me. Thinking about that wont change anything. I have to get back to Tengo
and Aomame.
Say Tengo and Aomame did happen to run across each other sometime in their twenties
and started talking. They would have been so amazed at all the things they had in common.
And there would be so many things they had to talk about. Maybe they found themselves attracted
to each other, as a man and a woman. Ushikawa had a vivid mental image of this
scene a fateful meeting, the ultimate romantic moment.
But had such a meeting actually taken place? Had a romance blossomed? Ushikawa
didnt know. But it would make sense if they had actually met. That would explain how they
joined forces to attack Sakigake, each of them from a different angle Tengo with his pen,
Aomame no doubt with some special skill she had. Somehow, though, Ushikawa couldnt
warm to this hypothesis. On one level it all made sense, but he wasnt convinced.
If indeed Tengo and Aomame did have such a deep relationship, there would be evidence.
This fateful meeting would have had fateful results, and this would not have passed unnoticed
by Ushikawas observant eyes. Aomame might have been able to hide it, but not
Tengo.
In general, Ushikawa saw things logically. Without proof, he couldnt go forward. However,
he also trusted his natural intuition. When it came to a scenario where Tengo and Aomame
had conspired together, his intuition shook its head no. It was just a little shake, but insistent
nonetheless. Maybe the two of them werent even aware of each others existence. Maybe it
just turned out that they were both simultaneously involved with Sakigake.
Even if it was hard to picture such a coincidence, Ushikawas intuition told him that this hypothesis
felt more likely than the conspiracy theory. The two of them, driven by different
motives, and approaching things from different angles, just happened to simultaneously
shake Sakigake to the core. Two story lines at work, with different starting points but running
parallel to each other.
The question was, would the Sakigake twosome accept such a convenient hypothesis?
No way, Ushikawa concluded. Instead, they would jump at the conspiracy theory, for they
loved anything that hinted of sinister plots. Before he handed over any raw information, he
needed solid proof. Otherwise they would be misled and it might wind up hurting him.
As Ushikawa rode the train from Ichikawa to Tsudanuma, he pondered all this. Without
realizing it, he must have been frowning, sighing, and glaring into space, because an elementary-school
girl in the seat across from him was looking at him oddly. To cover his embarrassment,
he relaxed his expression and rubbed his balding head. But this gesture only
ended up making the little girl frightened, and just before Nishi-Funabashi Station, she leapt to
her feet and rushed away.
He spoke with Toshie Ota in her classroom after school. She looked to be in her midfifties.
Her appearance was the polar opposite of the refined vice principal back at the Ichi-
kawa elementary school. Miss Ota was short and stocky and, from behind, had a weird sort of
gait, like a crustacean. She wore tiny metal-framed glasses, but the space between her eyebrows
was flat and broad and you could clearly see the downy hair growing there. She had on
a wool suit of indeterminate age, though no doubt it was already out of fashion by the time it
was manufactured, and it carried with it a faint odor of mothballs. The suit was pink, but an
odd sort of pink, like some other color had been accidentally mixed in. They had probably
been aiming for a classy, subdued sort of hue, but because they didnt get it right, the pink of
her suit sank deeply back into diffidence, concealment, and resignation. Thanks to this, the
brand-new white blouse peeking out of the collar looked like some indiscreet person who had
wandered into a wake. Her dry hair, with some white strands mixed in, was pinned back with
a plastic clip, probably the nearest thing she had had on hand. Her limbs were on the beefy
side, and she wore no rings on her stubby fingers. There were three thin wrinkles at her neckline,
sharply etched, like notches on the road of life. Or maybe they were marks to commemorate
when three wishes had come true though Ushikawa had serious doubts that this had
ever happened.
The woman had been Tengo Kawanas homeroom teacher from third grade until he
graduated from elementary school. Teachers changed classes every two years, but in this
case she had happened to be in charge of his class for all four. Aomame was in her class in
only third and fourth grades.
 I remember Mr. Kawana very well, she said.
In contrast to her gentle-looking exterior, her voice was strikingly clear and youthful. It was
the kind of voice that would pierce the farthest reaches of a noisy classroom. Your profession
really molds you, Ushikawa thought, impressed, sure that she must be a most capable teacher.
 Mr. Kawana was an outstanding pupil in every area of school. I have taught countless
students in a number of schools, for over twenty-five years, yet I have never run across a student
as brilliant as he was. He outdid everyone in anything he tried. He was quite personable
and had strong leadership qualities. I knew he could make it in any field he chose. In elementary
school he particularly stood out in arithmetic and math, but I wasnt so surprised to hear
that he has been a success in literature. 
 I understand that his father was an NHK fee collector. 
 Yes, thats right, the teacher said.
 Mr. Kawana told me that his father was quite strict, Ushikawa said. This was just a shot
in the dark.
 Exactly so, she said, without hesitating. His father did have a strict way about him. He
was proud of his work a wonderful thing but this seemed to be a burden at times for
Tengo. 
Ushikawa had skillfully tied topics together and teased out the details from her. This was
his forte to let the other person do the talking, as much as possible. Tengo hated having to
tag along with his father on his rounds on the weekend, she told him, and in fifth grade he ran
away from home. It was more like he was kicked out rather than ran away, she explained.
So Tengo had been forced to go with his father to collect the fees, Ushikawa mused.
And just as he thought this must have taken an emotional toll on the boy.
Miss Ota had taken the temporarily homeless Tengo into her home for the night. She prepared
a bed for him, and made sure he ate breakfast the next morning. That evening she
went to Tengos house and convinced his father to take him back. From the way she talked
about this event, you would have thought it was the highlight of her entire life. She told him
too about how they happened to run into each other again at a concert when Tengo was in
high school. Tengo had played the timpani, wonderfully, she added.
 It was Janáeks Sinfonietta. Not an easy piece, by any means. Tengo had first taken up
the timpani only a few weeks before. But even with such little preparation he played his part
beautifully. It was miraculous. 
This lady has deep feelings for Tengo, Ushikawa thought admiringly. Almost a kind of unconditional
love. What would it feel like to be loved that deeply by someone else?
 Do you remember Masami Aomame? Ushikawa asked.
 I remember her very well, the teacher replied. But her voice wasnt as happy as when
she had talked about Tengo. The tone of her voice had dropped two notches on the scale.
 Quite an unusual name, isnt it? Ushikawa said.
 Yes, very unusual. But I dont remember her just because of her name. 
A short silence followed.
 I heard her family were devout members of the Witnesses, Ushikawa said, sounding her
out.
 Could you keep this between just the two of us? the teacher asked.
 Of course. I wont repeat it to anyone. 
The woman nodded. There is a large branch office of the religion in Ichikawa, so I have
had several children from the Witnesses in my class over the years. As a teacher this led to
some delicate problems I had to address. But no one was as devout as Miss Aomames parents. 
 In other words, they were uncompromising. 
As if recalling the time, the teacher bit her lip. Exactly. When it came to their principles
they were extremely firm, and I think they sought the same strict obedience from their children.
This made Miss Aomame quite isolated in the class. 
 So in a sense she was someone rather special. 
 She was, the teacher admitted. But you cant blame the child for this. Responsibility for
it lies in the intolerance that can take over a persons mind. 
The teacher explained more about Aomame. Generally the other children just ignored her.
They tried to treat her as if she wasnt there. She was a foreign element, brandishing strange
principles that bothered others. The class was all in agreement on this. Aomame reacted by
keeping a low profile.
 I tried to do my best, but childrens unity is stronger than you might think, and the way
Miss Aomame reacted to this was to transform herself into something close to a ghost.
Nowadays we would have referred her to counseling, but such a system wasnt in place back
then. I was still young, and it took all I had to get everybody in the class on the same page.
Though Im sure that sounds like Im trying to excuse myself. 
Ushikawa could understand what she was getting at. Being an elementary school teacher
was hard work. To a certain extent, you had to let the children figure out things on their own.
 There is always just a thin line separating deep faith from intolerance, Ushikawa said.
 And its very hard for people to do anything about it. 
 Absolutely, the woman said. But still, at a different level there should have been
something I could do. I tried talking with Miss Aomame any number of times, but she would
barely respond. She had a very strong will, and once she was set on something she wouldnt
change her mind. She was quite bright, very quick-witted, with a strong desire to learn. But
she tried hard to suppress any of that, to keep it from showing. Probably not standing out was
her only way of protecting herself. Im sure if she had been living in a normal environment she
would have been an outstanding pupil. I feel really bad looking back on it now. 
 Did you ever speak with her parents? 
The teacher nodded. Many times. Her parents came to school to complain about religious
persecution. When they did, I asked them to try to make more of an effort to help their daughter
fit in to the class. I asked if they could bend their principles just a little. They refused pointblank.
Their top priority was keeping true to the rules of their faith. To them the highest happiness
lay in going to heaven, and life in this profane world was merely transient. But this was
the logic of an adult worldview. Unfortunately, I could never get them to see how much pain it
was causing their young daughter to be ignored in class, shunned by the other children how
this would lead to an emotional wound that might never heal. 
Ushikawa told her how Aomame was a leading softball player on teams in college and in a
company, and how she was working as a very capable fitness instructor in a high-class sports
club. Or rather, had been working until recently, he should have said, but he didnt insist on
making the distinction.
 Im very glad to hear that, the woman said. She blushed slightly. Im so relieved to hear
that she grew up all right, and is healthy and independent now. 
 There was one thing, though, that I wasnt able to find out, Ushikawa said, a seemingly
innocent smile rising to his lips. Do you think it was possible that Tengo Kawana and Miss
Aomame had a close personal relationship? 
The woman teacher linked her fingers together and thought about this. That may have
been possible. But I never saw it myself, or heard about it. I find it hard to picture any child in
that class ever being really friendly with Miss Aomame. Perhaps Tengo did reach out to her.
He was a very kind, responsible sort of boy. But even supposing it did happen, Miss Aomame
wouldnt have opened up that easily. She was like an oyster stuck on a rock. It cant easily be
pried open. 
The teacher stopped for a moment, and then added, It pains me to have to put it this way,
but there was nothing I could do at the time. As I said before, I was inexperienced and not
very effective. 
 If Mr. Kawana and Miss Aomame did have a close relationship, that would have caused
quite a sensation in class, and you would have heard of it. Am I right? 
The teacher nodded. There was intolerance on both sides. 
 It has been very helpful to be able to talk with you, Ushikawa said, thanking her.
 I hope what Ive said about Miss Aomame wont become an obstacle in awarding the
grant, the teacher said worriedly. As the teacher in charge of the class I had ultimate responsibility
for problems like that arising in the classroom. It wasnt the fault of either Tengo or
Miss Aomame. 
Ushikawa shook his head. Please dont worry about that. Im merely checking the background
behind a work of fiction. Religious issues, as Im sure you know, can be very complicated.
Mr. Kawana is a major talent, and I know he will soon make a name for himself. 
Hearing this, the teacher gave a satisfied smile. Something in her small eyes caught the
sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain. She is remembering
Tengo when he was a boy, Ushikawa surmised. It was twenty-some years ago, but for her it
was like yesterday.
As he waited near the main gate of the school for the bus back to Tsudanuma Station,
Ushikawa thought about his own teachers in elementary school. Did they still remember him?
Even if they did, it wouldnt make their eyes sparkle with a friendly glimmer.
What he had verified was very close to his hypothesis. Tengo was the top student in his
class, and he was popular. Aomame had no friends and was ignored by everyone. There was
little possibility that the two of them would have gotten close. They were simply too unalike.
Plus, when she was in fifth grade Aomame moved out of Ichikawa and went to another
school. Any connection was severed then.
If he had to list one thing they had in common in elementary school, it would be this: they
had both unwillingly had to obey their parents. Their parents goals might have been different proselytizing
and fee collection but both Tengo and Aomame were required to traipse
all over town with their parents. In class they were in totally different positions, yet both of
them must have been equally lonely, searching desperately for something. Something that
would accept them unconditionally and hold them close. Ushikawa could imagine their feelings.
In a sense, these were feelings that he shared.
Okay, Ushikawa said to himself. He was seated in an express train from Tsudanuma back
to Tokyo, arms folded. Okay, now what? I was able to find some connections between Tengo
and Aomame. Very interesting connections. Unfortunately, however, this doesnt prove anything.
Theres a tall stone wall towering in front of me. It has three doors, and I have to choose
one. Each door is labeled. One says Tengo, one says Aomame, and the third says the Dowager
from Azabu. Aomame vanished, as they say, like smoke. Without a trace. And the Azabu
Willow House is locked up tight as a bank vault. Nothing I can do to get in. Which leaves only
one door.
It looks like Ill be sticking with Tengo for the time being, Ushikawa decided. Theres no
other choice a perfect example of the process of elimination. So perfect an example, it
makes me want to print it up in a pamphlet and hand it out to people on the street. Hi, how are
you? Check out the process of elimination.
Tengo, always the nice young man. Mathematician and novelist. Judo champion and
teachers pet. Right now hes the only way to unravel this knotty tangle. The more I think
about it, the less I seem to understand, like my brain is a tub of tofu past its expiration date.
So what about Tengo? Did he see the whole picture here? Probably not. As far as Ushikawa
could make out, Tengo was doing things through trial and error, taking detours where
he found the need. He must be confused himself, trying out various hypotheses. Still, he was
a born mathematician. A master at fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. And he probably
has a lot more pieces of the puzzle than I do.
For the time being Ill keep watch over Tengo Kawana. Im sure hell lead me somewhere if
I get lucky, right to Aomames hideout. Ushikawa was a master at sticking to somebody,
like a remora to a shark. Once he made up his mind to latch onto someone, there was
no way they could shake free of him.
Once he had decided, Ushikawa closed his eyes and switched off his thinking process.
Time to get a little shut-eye, he thought. It had been a rough day, given that he had had to visit
two elementary schools out in crummy old Chiba Prefecture and listen to two female school-
teachers, a beautiful vice principal and a teacher who walked like a crab. After that you need
to relax. Soon his huge misshapen head began to bob up and down in time to the movement
of the train, like a life-sized sideshow doll that spat out unlucky fortunes.
The train was crowded, but no one dared sit down beside him.
1Q84
CHAPTER 11
Aomame
A SERIOUS SHORTAGE
OF BOTH LOGIC AND KINDNESS
On Tuesday morning Aomame wrote a memo to Tamaru explaining how the man calling
himself an NHK fee collector had come again how he had banged on the door and yelled,
insulting Aomame (or a person named Takai who lived there), berating her. The whole thing
was too much, too bizarre. She needed to remain vigilant.
Aomame placed the memo in an envelope, sealed it, and put it on the kitchen table. She
wrote the initial T on the envelope. The men who delivered supplies would make sure it got to
Tamaru.
Just before one p.m. she went into her bedroom, locked the door, lay down in bed, and
continued where she had left off with Proust. At one oclock on the dot the doorbell rang once.
After a pause the door was unlocked and the supply team came inside. As always, they
briskly resupplied the fridge, got the garbage together, and checked the supplies on the
shelves. In fifteen minutes they had finished their appointed tasks, left the apartment, shut the
door, and locked it from the outside. Then the doorbell rang once again as a signal the
same procedure as usual.
Just to be on the safe side, Aomame waited until the clock showed 1:30 before she came
out of her bedroom and went to the kitchen. The memo to Tamaru was gone, replaced by a
paper bag on the table with the name of a pharmacy printed on it. There was also a thick
book Tamaru had gotten for her, The Womens Anatomical Encyclopedia. Inside the paper
bag there were three different home pregnancy tests. She opened the boxes one by one and
read over the instructions, comparing them. They were all the same. You could use the tests
if your period was a week or more late. The tests were 95 percent accurate, but if they were
positive, the instructions said in other words, if they did show you were pregnant then you
should be examined by a medical specialist as soon as possible. You should not jump to conclusions.
The tests indicated merely the possibility that one was pregnant.
The test itself was simple. Just urinate into a clean container and then dip the indicator
stick into it. Or, alternately, urinate directly onto the stick. Then wait a few minutes. If the color
changes to blue youre pregnant, if it doesnt change color, youre not. In one version, if two
vertical lines appear in the little window, youre pregnant. One line, and youre not. The details
might vary but the principle was the same. The presence or absence of human chorionic gonadotropin
in urine indicated whether or not you were pregnant.
Human chorionic gonadotropin? Aomame frowned. She had been a female for thirty years
and had never once heard that term. All this time, some crazy substance was stimulating her
sex glands?
Aomame opened up The Womens Anatomical Encyclopedia.
Human chorionic gonadotropin is secreted during the early stages of pregnancy, the book
said, and helps maintain the corpus luteum. The corpus luteum secretes progestogens and
estrogen to preserve the inner lining of the womb and prevent menstruation. In this way the
placenta gradually takes form. In seven to nine weeks, once the placenta is complete, there is
no more need for the corpus luteum and the role of the human chorionic gonadotropin is over.
In other words, this hormone was secreted from the time of implantation for seven to nine
weeks. The timing was a little tricky in her case. One thing she could say was that if the test
came back positive, she was without a doubt pregnant. If it was negative, then the conclusion
wouldnt be so clear-cut. It was possible that she had passed the time when she was secreting
the hormone.
She didnt feel the need to urinate. She went to the fridge, took out a bottle of mineral water,
and had two glasses. But she still didnt feel the need to go. Well, no need to rush it, she
thought. She forgot about the pregnancy kits for a while and sat down on the sofa and concentrated
on Proust.
It was after three when she felt the need to urinate. She peed into a container she found
and stuck the test strip in it. As she watched, the strip changed color, until it was a vivid blue.
A lovely shade of blue that would work well as the color of a car. A small blue convertible with
a tan top. How great it would feel to drive along the coast in a car like that, racing through the
summer breeze. But in the bathroom of an apartment in the middle of the city, in the deepening
autumn, what this blue told her was the fact that she was pregnant or, at least, that there
was a 95 percent chance of it. Aomame stood in front of the mirror and gazed at the thin strip
of paper, now blue. No matter how long she stared, the color wasnt about to change.
Just to be sure, she tried another test. This one instructed you to urinate directly onto the
tip of the stick. But since she wouldnt feel the need to pee for a while she dipped the stick into
the container of urine. Freshly collected urine. Pee directly on it or dip it in pee what is the
difference? You would get the same result. Two vertical lines clearly appeared in the little
plastic window. This, too, told Aomame she might be pregnant.
Aomame poured the urine into the toilet and flushed it down. She wrapped the test strip in
a wad of tissue and threw it in the trash, and rinsed the container in the bath. She went to the
kitchen and drank two more glasses of water. Tomorrow I will try again and do the third test,
she thought. Three is a good number to stop at. Strike one, strike two. Waiting, with bated
breath, for the final pitch.
Aomame boiled some water and made hot tea, sat down on the sofa, and continued reading
Proust. She laid out some cheese biscuits on one of a set of matching plates and
munched on them as she sipped her tea. A quiet afternoon, perfect for reading. Her eyes followed
the printed words, but nothing stayed with her. She had to reread the same spot several
times. She gave up, shut her eyes, and she was driving a blue convertible, the top down,
speeding along the shore. The light breeze, fragrant with the smell of the sea, rustled her hair.
A sign along the road had two vertical lines. These meant Warning: You May Be Pregnant.
Aomame sighed and tossed her book aside.
She knew very well there was no need to try the third test. She could do it a hundred times
and the result would be the same. It would be a waste of time. My human chorionic gonadotropin
would still maintain the same attitude toward my womb keeping the corpus luteum intact,
obstructing my period from coming, helping form the placenta. Face it: Im pregnant. The
human chorionic gonadotropin knows that. And so do I. I can feel it as a pinpoint in my lower
abdomen. Its still tiny nothing more than a hint of something. But eventually it will have a
placenta, and grow bigger. It will take nutrition from me and, in the dark, heavy liquid,
grow steadily, unceasingly.
This was the first time she had been pregnant. She was always a very careful person, and
only trusted what she could see with her own eyes. When she had sex she made absolutely
sure her partner used a condom. Even when she was drunk, she never failed to check. As
she had told the dowager, ever since her first menstruation at age ten, she had never missed
a period. Her periods were regular, never more than a day late. Her cramps were light. She
merely bled for a few days, that was all. It never got in the way of her exercising or playing
sports.
She got her first period a few months after holding Tengos hand in the elementary school
classroom. Somehow, she felt that the two events were connected. The feel of Tengos hand
may have stirred something inside her. When she told her mother she got her period, her
mother made a face, like it was one more burden to add to all the others she carried. Its a
little early, her mother commented. But that didnt bother Aomame. It was her problem, not
her mothers or anybody elses. She had stepped into a brand-new world.
And now she was pregnant.
She thought about her eggs. Of my allotted four hundred or so, one of them (near the
middle of the bunch, she imagined) went and got herself fertilized. Most likely on that September
night, during the terrible storm. In a dark room when I murdered a man. When I stuck a
sharp needle from the base of his neck into the lower part of his brain. But that man was completely
different from the men I had killed before. He knew he was about to be murdered, and
he wanted it to happen. I actually gave him what he wanted. Not as punishment, but more as
an act of mercy. In exchange for which, he gave me what I was seeking. An act of negotiation
carried out in a deep, dark place. Very quietly, fertilization took place that night. I know it, she
thought.
With these hands I took a mans life, and almost simultaneously, a new life began inside
me. Was this part of the transaction?
Aomame shut her eyes and stopped thinking. Her head empty, something silently flowed
inside. And before she knew it, she was praying.
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may
Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our
humble pathways. Amen.
Why would a prayer come to my lips at a time like this? I dont believe in things like heaven
or paradise or the Lord, yet the words are chiseled into my brain. Ever since I was three or
four and didnt even know what they meant, I could recite this prayer from memory. If I made
the slightest mistake, I got the back of my hands smacked with a ruler. Though you couldnt
normally see it, when something happened it would rise to the surface, like a secret tattoo.
What would my mother say if I told her I got pregnant without having had sex? She might
see it as a terrible sacrilege against her faith. In any case, it was a kind of immaculate conception though
Aomame was certainly not a virgin. But still. Or maybe her mother wouldnt
be bothered to even deal with it, not even listen to her. Because she sees me as a failure,
someone who long ago had fallen from her world.
Let me think about it in a different way, Aomame thought. I wont try to force an explanation
on the inexplicable, but instead Ill examine the phenomenon from a different angle, as
the riddle that it is.
Am I seeing this pregnancy as something good, something to be welcomed? Or as
something unwelcome, something inappropriate?
I cant reach a conclusion no matter how hard I think about it. Im still in a state of shock.
Im mixed up, confused. In certain ways I feel split in two. And understandably Im having
trouble swallowing this new reality.
Yet Aomame also had to recognize that she was watching this little heat source with a
positive sense of anticipation. She simply had to see what happened to this thing growing inside
her. Obviously she was anxious and scared. It might be more than she could imagine. It
might be a hostile foreign entity that greedily devoured her from the inside. She could imagine
all sorts of negative possibilities. But she was in thrall to a healthy curiosity. Like a sudden
flash of light in the dark, a thought abruptly sprang to her mind.
Maybe this is Tengos child inside my womb.
Aomame frowned a bit and considered this. Why do I have to be pregnant with Tengos
child?
How about looking at it like this? she thought. On that chaotic night, when so much took
place, some process was at work in this world and Tengo sent his semen into my womb.
Somehow, through a gap in the thunder and rain, the darkness and the murder, a special kind
of passageway opened, through some logic I cant understand. Just for an instant. And in that
instant we took advantage of the passageway. I took that opportunity to greedily accept
Tengo into me. I became pregnant. Egg 201 or was it 202? grabbed onto one of his millions
of spermatozoa, a single sperm cell that was as healthy and clever and straightforward
as the one who produced it.
Thats a pretty wild idea. It doesnt make any sense. I could try to explain it until I went
hoarse and nobody would ever believe me. But the whole notion of me being pregnant itself
doesnt make any sense. But remember this is the year 1Q84. A strange world where anything
can happen.
What if this really is Tengos child? she wondered.
That morning at the turnout on Metropolitan Expressway No. 3 through Tokyo, I didnt pull
the trigger. I really went there, and stuck the muzzle in my mouth, planning to die. I wasnt
afraid of death, because I was dying to save Tengo. But some higher power acted on me and
snatched me away from death. From far away I heard a voice calling my name. Maybe it
called me because I was pregnant? Was something trying to tell me of this new life inside
me?
Aomame recalled the dream, and the refined older woman who put her coat on her to cover
her nakedness. She got out of her silver Mercedes and gave me her light, soft eggshell-colored
coat. She knew then that I was pregnant, and she gently protected me from
peoples stares, the cold wind, and other vicious things.
This was a good sign.
Aomames tight face relaxed, her expression returned to normal. Someone is watching
over me, protecting me, she believed. Even in this 1Q84 world, Im not alone. Probably.
Aomame took her now cold tea over to the window. She went out to the balcony and sank
into the garden chair so no one could spot her, and gazed out through the gaps in the screen
at the playground. She tried to think of Tengo. For some reason, though, today her thoughts
just wouldnt go to him. What she saw instead was the face of Ayumi Nakano. Ayumi was
smiling cheerfully, a totally natural, unreserved smile. The two of them were at a restaurant
seated across from each other, drinking wine. They were both pretty drunk. The excellent
Burgundy in their blood gently coursed through their bodies, giving the world around them a
faint purplish tinge.
 But still, Ayumi said, it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic
and kindness. 
 Oh well, no problem, Aomame said. The worlds going to end before we know it. 
 Sounds like fun. 
 And the kingdom is going to come. 
 I can hardly wait, Ayumi said.
Why did I talk about the kingdom then, I wonder? Aomame found it odd. Why would I suddenly
bring up a kingdom that I dont even believe in? And not long after that Ayumi died.
I think when I mentioned the kingdom, the mental image I had was different from the kingdom
the Witnesses believe in. Probably it was a more personal kind of kingdom, which is why
the term could slip out so naturally. But what sort of kingdom do I believe in? What sort of
kingdom do I think will appear after the world has been destroyed?
She gently laid her hands on her stomach and listened carefully. No matter how hard she
listened, she didnt hear a thing.
Ayumi Nakano was cast off by this world. Her hands were tightly bound with cold handcuffs,
and she was choked to death with a rope (and, as far as Aomame knew, the murderer
had yet to be caught). An official autopsy was conducted, then she was sewn back up, taken
to a crematorium, and burned. The person known as Ayumi Nakano no longer existed in this
world. Her flesh and her blood were lost forever. She only remained in the realm of documents
and memory.
No, maybe thats not entirely true. Maybe she was still alive and well in 1984. Still
grumbling that she wasnt allowed to carry a pistol, still sticking parking tickets under the
wipers of illegally parked cars. Still going around to high schools to teach girls about contraception.
 If he doesnt have on a condom, girls, then there shouldnt be any penetration. 
Aomame desperately wanted to see Ayumi. If she could climb back up that emergency
stairway on the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3 and return to the world of 1984, then maybe
she would see her again. Maybe there Ayumi is still alive, and Im not being chased by these
Sakigake freaks. Maybe we could stop by that restaurant on Nogizaka again and enjoy another
glass of Burgundy. Or perhaps 
Climb back up that emergency stairway?
Like rewinding a cassette tape, Aomame retraced her thoughts. Why havent I thought of
that before? I tried to go down that emergency stairway again but couldnt find the entrance.
The stairway, which should have been across from the Esso billboard, had vanished. But
maybe if I took it from the opposite direction it would work out not climb down the stairway
but go up. Slip into that storage area under the expressway and go the opposite direction,
back up to the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3. Go back up the passage. Maybe thats the answer.
Aomame wanted to race out that very minute to Sangenjaya and see if it was possible. It
might actually work out. Or maybe it wouldnt. But it was worth trying. Wear the same suit, the
same high heels, and climb back up that spiderweb-infested stairway.
But she suppressed the impulse.
No, it wont work. I cant do that. It was because I came to the 1Q84 world that I was able
to see Tengo again, and to be pregnant with what is most likely his child. I have to see him
one more time in this new world. I have to meet him again. Face-to-face. I cant leave this
world until that happens.
Tamaru called her the following afternoon.
 First, about the NHK fee collector, Tamaru began. I called the NHK business office and
checked into it. The fee collector who covers the Koenji District said he had no memory of
knocking on the door of apartment 303. He said he checked beforehand that there was a
sticker on the door indicating that the fee was paid automatically from the account. Plus he
said there was a doorbell, so he wouldnt have knocked. He said that would only make his
hand hurt. And on the day the fee collector was at your place, this man was making the
rounds in another district. I dont think hes lying. Hes a fifteen-year veteran, and he has a
reputation as a very patient, courteous person. 
 Which means Aomame said.
 Which means that theres a strong possibility that the fee collector who came to your
place was a fake someone pretending to be from NHK. The person I talked to on the phone
was concerned about this too. The last thing they want are phony NHK collectors popping up.
The person in charge asked to see me and get more details. As you can imagine, I turned him
down. There was no actual harm done, and I dont want it to get all blown out of proportion. 
 Maybe he was a mental patient? Or someone whos after me? 
 I dont think anyone pursuing you would act like that. It wouldnt do any good, and would
actually put you on your guard. 
 If the man was crazy, I wonder why he would choose this particular door. There are lots
of other doors around. Im always careful to make sure no light leaks out, and Im very quiet. I
always keep the curtains closed and never hang laundry outside to dry. But still that guy
picked this door to bang on. He knows Im hiding inside here or at least he insists he knows
that and he tries whatever he can to get me to open up. 
 Do you think hes going to come back? 
 I dont know. But if hes really serious about getting me to open up, Im betting hell keep
coming back until I do. 
 And that unsettles you. 
 I wouldnt say it unsettles me, exactly, Aomame replied. I just dont like it. 
 I dont like it either, not one little bit. But even if that phony collector comes back again,
we cant call NHK or the police. And if you call me and I race over, he will probably have vanished
by the time I get there. 
 I think I can handle it myself, Aomame said. He can be as intimidating as he wants, but
all I have to do is keep the door shut. 
 Im sure he will use whatever means he can to intimidate you. 
 No doubt, Aomame said.
Tamaru cleared his throat for a moment and changed the subject.
 Did you get the test kits all right? 
 It was positive, Aomame said straight out.
 A hit, in other words. 
 Exactly. I tried two tests and the results were identical. 
There was silence. Like a lithograph with no words carved on it yet.
 No room for doubt? Tamaru asked.
 I knew it from the start. The tests merely confirmed it. 
Tamaru silently rubbed the lithograph for a time with the pads of his fingers.
 I have to ask a pretty forward question, he said. Do you plan to have the baby? Or are
you going to deal with it? 
 Im not going to deal with it. 
 Which means you will give birth. 
 If things go smoothly, the due date will be between June and July of next year. 
Tamaru did the math in his head. Which means we will have to make some changes in
our plans. 
 Im sorry about that. 
 No need to apologize, Tamaru said. All women have the right to give birth. We have to
protect that right as much as we can. 
 Sounds like a Declaration of Human Rights, Aomame said.
 Im asking this again just to make sure, but you have no idea who the father is? 
 Since June I havent had a sexual relationship with anyone. 
 So this is a kind of immaculate conception? 
 I imagine religious people would get upset if you put it that way. 
 If you do anything out of the ordinary, you can be sure someone, somewhere, will get upset, 
Tamaru said. But when youre dealing with a pregnancy, its important to get a specialist
to check you over. You cant just stay shut up in that room waiting it out. 
Aomame sighed. Let me stay here until the end of the year. I promise I wont be any
trouble. 
Tamaru was silent for a while. Then he spoke. You can stay there until the end of the
year, like we promised. But once the new year comes, we have to move you to a less dangerous
place, where you can easily get medical attention. You understand this, right? 
 I do, Aomame said. She wasnt fully convinced, though. If I dont see Tengo, she
thought, will I really be able to leave here?
 I got a woman pregnant once, Tamaru said.
Aomame didnt say anything for a time. You? But I thought you were 
 Gay? I am. A card-carrying homosexual. I have always been that way, and I imagine I always
will be. 
 But still you got a woman pregnant. 
 Everybody makes mistakes, Tamaru said, with no hint of humor. I dont want to go into
the details, but it was when I was young. I did it once, but bang! A bulls-eye. 
 What happened to the woman? 
 I dont know, Tamaru said.
 You dont know? 
 I know how she was up to her sixth month. But after that I have no idea. 
 If you get to the sixth month, abortion is not an option. 
 Thats my understanding. 
 So theres a high possibility she had the baby, Aomame said.
 Most likely. 
 If she really did have the baby, dont you want to see it? 
 Im not that interested, Tamaru said without missing a beat. Thats not the kind of life I
lead. What about you? Would you want to see your child? 
Aomame gave it some thought. I am someone whose parents threw her away when she
was small, so its hard for me to imagine what it would be like to have my own child. I have no
good model to follow. 
 Still, youre going to be bringing that child into the world into this violent, mixed-up
world. 
 Its because Im looking for love, Aomame said. Not love between me and the child,
though. I havent reached that stage yet. 
 But the child is part of that love. 
 I think so, in one way or another. 
 But if things dont turn out like you expect, and that child isnt part of the love youre looking
for, then hell end up hurt. Just like the two of us. 
 Its possible. But I dont sense that will happen. Call it intuition. 
 I respect intuition, Tamaru said. But once the ego is born into this world, it has to
shoulder morality. You would do well to remember that. 
 Who said that? 
 Wittgenstein. 
 Ill keep it in mind, Aomame said. If your child was born, how old would it be? 
Tamaru did the math in his head. Seventeen. 
 Seventeen. Aomame imagined a seventeen-year-old boy, or girl, shouldering morality.
 Ill let Madame know about this, Tamaru said. She has been wanting to talk with you directly.
As I have said a number of times, however, from a security standpoint I am none too
happy about the idea. On a technical level Im taking all necessary precautions, but the telephone
is still a risky means of communication. 
 Understood. 
 But she is very concerned about what has happened, and is worried about you. 
 I understand that, too. And Im grateful for her concern. 
 It would be the smart thing to trust her, and follow her advice. She is a very wise person. 
 Of course, Aomame said.
But apart from that, Aomame told herself, I need to hone my own mind and protect myself.
The dowager is certainly a very wise person. And she wields a considerable amount of power.
But there are some things she has no way of knowing. I doubt she knows what principles the
year 1Q84 is operating on. I mean has she even noticed that there are two moons in the
sky?
After she hung up, Aomame lay on the sofa and dozed for a half hour. It was a short, deep
sleep. She dreamed, but her dream was like a big, blank space. Inside that space she was
thinking about things. And she was writing, with invisible ink, in that pure white notebook.
When she woke up, she had an indistinct yet strangely clear image in her mind. I will give
birth to this child. This little life will be safely born into the world. Like Tamaru had put it, as an
unavoidable bearer of morality.
She laid her palm on her abdomen and listened. She couldnt hear a thing. For now.
1Q84
CHAPTER 12
Tengo
THE RULES OF THE WORLD
ARE LOOSENING UP
After he finished breakfast, Tengo took a shower. He washed his hair and shaved at the
sink, then changed into the clothes he had washed and dried. He left the inn, bought the
morning edition of the paper at a kiosk at the station, and went to a coffee shop nearby and
had a cup of hot black coffee.
There wasnt much of interest in the newspaper. At least as far as this particular mornings
paper was concerned, the world was a dull, boring place. It felt like he was rereading a paper
from a week ago, not today. Tengo folded up the paper and glanced at his watch. It was nine
thirty. Visiting hours at the sanatorium began at ten.
It didnt take long to pack for the trip back home. He didnt have much luggage, just a few
changes of clothes, toiletries, a few books, and a sheaf of manuscript paper. He stuffed it all
inside his canvas shoulder bag. He slung the bag over his shoulder, paid his bill for the inn,
and took a bus from the station to the sanatorium. It was the beginning of winter, and there
were few people this morning heading to the beach. Tengo was the only one getting out at the
stop in front of the sanatorium.
At the reception desk he wrote his name and the time in the visitors log. A young nurse he
had never seen before was stationed at the reception desk. Her arms and legs were terribly
long and thin, and a smile played around the corners of her lips. She made him think of a
kindly spider guiding people along the path through a forest. Usually it was Nurse Tamura, the
middle-aged woman with glasses, who sat at the reception desk, but today she wasnt there.
Tengo felt a bit relieved. He had been dreading any suggestive comments she might make
because he had accompanied Kumi Adachi back to her apartment the night before. Nurse
Omura, too, was nowhere to be seen. They might have been sucked into the earth without a
trace. Like the three witches in Macbeth.
But that was impossible. Kumi Adachi was off duty today, but the other two nurses said
they were working as usual. They must just be working somewhere else in the facility right
now.
Tengo went upstairs to his fathers room, knocked lightly, twice, and opened the door. His
father was lying on the bed, sleeping as always. An IV tube came out of his arm, a catheter
snaked out of his groin. There was no change from the day before. The window was closed,
as were the curtains. The air in the room was heavy and stagnant. All sorts of smells were
mixed together a medicinal smell, the smell of the flowers in the vase, the breath of a sick
person, the smell of excreta all the smells that life brings with it. Even if the life force here
was weak, and his father was unconscious, metabolism went on unchanged. His father was
still on this side of the great divide. Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety
of smells.
The first thing Tengo did when he entered the sickroom was go straight to the far wall,
where he drew the curtains and flung open the window. It was a refreshing morning, and the
room was in desperate need of fresh air. It was chilly outside, but not what you would call
cold. Sunlight streamed in and the curtain rustled in the sea breeze. A single seagull, legs
tucked neatly underneath, caught a draft of wind and glided over the pine trees. A ragged line
of sparrows sat on an electrical line, constantly switching positions like musical notes being
rewritten. A crow with a large beak came to rest on top of a mercury-vapor lamp, cautiously
surveying his surroundings as he mulled over his next move. A few streaks of clouds floated
off high in the sky, so high and far away that they were like abstract concepts unrelated to the
affairs of man.
With his back to the patient, Tengo gazed for a while at this scene outside. Things that are
living and things that are not. Things that move and things that dont. What he saw out the
window was the usual scenery. There was nothing new about it. The world has to move forward.
Like a cheap alarm clock, it does a halfway decent job of fulfilling its assigned role.
Tengo gazed blankly at the scenery, trying to postpone facing his father even by a moment,
but he couldnt keep delaying forever.
Finally Tengo made up his mind, turned, and sat down on the stool next to the bed. His
father was lying on his back, facing the ceiling, his eyes shut. The quilt that was tucked up to
his neck was neat and undisturbed. His eyes were deeply sunken. It was like some piece was
missing, and his eye sockets couldnt support his eyeballs, which had quietly caved in. Even if
he were to open his eyes, what he would see would be like the world viewed from the bottom
of a hole.
 Father, Tengo began.
His father didnt answer. The breeze blowing in the room suddenly stopped and the curtains
hung limply, like a worker in the midst of a task suddenly remembering something else
he had to do. And then, after a while, as if gathering itself together, the wind began to blow
again.
 Im going back to Tokyo today, Tengo said. I cant stay here forever. I cant take any
more time off from work. Its not much of a life, but I do have a life to get back to. 
There was a two- to three-day growth of whiskers on his fathers cheeks. A nurse shaved
him with an electric razor, but not every day. His whiskers were salt-and-pepper. He was only
sixty-four, but he looked much older, like someone had mistakenly fast-forwarded the film of
his life.
 You didnt wake up the whole time I was here. The doctor says your physical condition is
still not so bad. The strange thing is, youre almost as healthy as you used to be. 
Tengo paused, letting the words sink in.
 I dont know if you can hear what Im saying or not. Even if the words are vibrating your
eardrums, the circuit beyond that might be shot. Or maybe the words I speak are actually
reaching you but youre unable to respond. I dont really know. But I have been talking to you,
and reading to you, on the assumption that you can hear me. Unless I assume that, theres no
point in me speaking to you, and if I cant speak to you, then theres no point in me being
here. I cant explain it well, but Im sensing something tangible, as if the main points of what
Im saying are, at least, getting across. 
No response.
 What Im about to say may sound pretty stupid. But Im going back to Tokyo today and I
dont know when I might be back here. So Im just going to say whats in my mind. If you find
it dumb, then just go ahead and laugh. If you can laugh, I mean. 
Tengo paused and observed his fathers face. Again, there was no response.
 Your body is in a coma. You have lost consciousness and feeling, and you are being kept
alive by life-support machines. The doctor said youre like a living corpse though he put it a
bit more euphemistically. Medically speaking, thats what it probably is. But isnt that just a
sham? I have the feeling your consciousness isnt lost at all. You have put your body in a
coma, but your consciousness is off somewhere else, alive. Ive felt that for a long time. Its
just a feeling, though. 
Silence.
 I can understand if you think this is a crazy idea. If I told anybody else, they would say I
was hallucinating. But I have to believe its true. I think you lost all interest in this world. You
were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your
physical body. You went to a world apart and youre living a different kind of life there. In a
world thats inside you. 
Again more silence.
 I took time off from my job, came to this town, rented a room at an inn, and have been
coming here every day and talking to you for almost two weeks now. But I wasnt just doing
it to see how you were doing or to take care of you. I wanted to see where I came from, what
sort of bloodline I have. None of that matters anymore. I am who I am, no matter who or what
Im connected with or not connected with. Though I do know that you are the one who is my
father. And thats fine. Is this what you call a reconciliation? I dont know. Maybe I just reconciled
with myself. 
Tengo took a deep breath. He spoke in a softer tone.
 During the summer, you were still conscious. Your mind was muddled, but your consciousness
was still functioning. At that time I met a girl here, in this room, again. After they
took you to the examination room she appeared. I think it must have been something like her
alter ego. I came to this town again and have stayed here this long because I have been hoping
I could see her one more time. Honestly, thats why I came. 
Tengo sighed and brought his hands together on his lap.
 But she didnt come. What brought her here last time was a thing called an air chrysalis, a
capsule she was encased in. It would take too long to explain the whole thing, but an air
chrysalis is a product of the imagination, a fictitious object. But its not fictitious anymore. The
boundary between the real world and the imaginary one has grown obscure. There are two
moons in the sky now. These, too, were brought over from the world of fiction. 
Tengo looked at his fathers face. Could he follow what Tengo was saying?
 In that context, saying your consciousness has broken away from your body and is freely
moving about some other world doesnt sound so farfetched. Its like the rules that govern the
world have begun to loosen up around us. As I said before, I have this strange sense that you
are actually doing that. Like you have gone to my apartment in Koenji and are knocking on
the door. You know what I mean? You announce youre an NHK fee collector, bang hard on
the door, and yell out a threat in a loud voice. Just like you used to do all the time when we
made the rounds in Ichikawa. 
He felt a change in the air pressure in the room. The window was open, but there was
barely any sound coming in. There was just the occasional burst of chirping sparrows.
 There is a girl staying in my apartment in Tokyo. Not a girlfriend or anything something
happened and shes taking shelter there temporarily. A few days ago she told me on the
phone about an NHK collector who came by, how he knocked on the door, and what he did
and said out in the corridor. It was strange how closely it resembled the methods you used to
use. The words she heard were exactly the same lines I remember, the expressions I was
hoping I could totally erase from my memory. And Im thinking now that that fee collector
might actually have been you. Am I wrong? 
Tengo waited thirty seconds. His father didnt twitch a single eyelash.
 Theres just one thing I want: for you to never knock on my door again. I dont have a TV.
And those days when we went around together collecting fees are long gone. I think we
already agreed on that, that time in front of my teacher I dont remember her name, the one
who was in charge of my class. A short lady, with glasses. You remember that, right? So dont
knock on my door ever again, okay? And not just my place. Dont knock on any more doors
anywhere. Youre not an NHK fee collector anymore, and you dont have the right to scare
people like that. 
Tengo stood up, went to the window, and looked outside. An old man in a bulky sweater,
clutching a cane, was walking in front of the woods. He was probably just taking a stroll. He
was tall, with white hair, and excellent posture. But his steps were awkward, as if he had forgotten
how to walk, as if with each step forward he was remembering how to do it. Tengo
watched him for a while. The old man slowly made his way across the garden, then turned the
corner of the building and disappeared. It didnt look like he had recalled the art of walking.
Tengo turned to face his father.
 Im not blaming you. You have the right to send your consciousness wherever you want.
Its your life, and your consciousness. You have your own idea of what is right, and youre
putting it into practice. Maybe I dont have the right to say these things. But you need to understand:
you are not an NHK fee collector anymore. So you shouldnt pretend to be one. Its
pointless. 
Tengo sat down on the windowsill and searched for his next words in the air of the
cramped hospital room.
 I dont know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced.
But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you cant go around seeking it at other
peoples doors. Even if it is at the place youre most familiar with, and the sort of act that is
your forte. 
Tengo gazed silently at his fathers face.
 I dont want you to knock on anybodys door anymore. Thats all I ask of you, Father. I
have to be going. I came here every day talking to you in your coma, reading to you. And I
think at least a part of us has reconciled, and I think that reconciliation has actually taken
place in the real world. Maybe you wont like it, but you need to come back here again, to this
side. This is where you belong. 
Tengo lifted his shoulder bag and slung it across his shoulder. Well, Ill be off, then. 
His father said nothing. He didnt stir and his eyes remained shut the same as always.
But somehow it seemed like he was thinking about something. Tengo was quiet and paid
careful attention. It felt to him like his father might pop open his eyes at any moment and abruptly
sit up in bed. But none of that happened.
The nurse with the spidery limbs was still at the reception desk as he left. A plastic name
tag on her chest said Tamaki.
 Im going back to Tokyo now, Tengo told her.
 Its too bad your father didnt regain consciousness while you were here, she said, consolingly.
 But Im sure he was happy you could stay so long. 
Tengo couldnt think of a decent response. Please tell the other nurses good-bye for me.
You have all been so helpful. 
He never did see bespectacled Nurse Tamura or busty Nurse Omura and her everpresent
ballpoint pen. It made him a little sad. They were outstanding nurses, and had always
been kind to him. But perhaps it was for the best that he didnt see them. After all, he was
slipping out of the cat town alone.
As the train pulled out of Chikura Station, he recalled spending the night at Kumi Adachis
apartment. It had only just happened yesterday. The gaudy Tiffany lamp, the uncomfortable
love seat, the TV comedy show he could hear from next door. The hooting of the owl in the
woods. The hashish smoke, the smiley-face shirt, the thick pubic hair pressed against his leg.
It had been less than a day, but it felt like long ago. His mind felt unstable. Like an unbalanced
set of scales, the core of his memories wouldnt settle down in one spot.
Suddenly anxious, Tengo looked around him. Was this reality actually real? Or had he
once again boarded the wrong reality? He asked a passenger nearby and made sure this
train was indeed headed to Tateyama. Its okay, dont worry, he told himself. At Tateyama I
can change to the express train to Tokyo. He was drawing farther and farther away from the
cat town by the sea.
As soon as he changed trains and took his seat, as if it could barely wait, sleep claimed
him. A deep sleep, like he had lost his footing and fallen into a bottomless hole. His eyelids
closed, and in the next instant his consciousness had vanished. When he opened his eyes
again, the train had passed Makuhari. The train wasnt particularly hot inside, yet he was
sweating under his arms and down his back. His mouth had an awful smell, like the stagnant
air he had breathed in his fathers sick room. He took a stick of gum out of his pocket and
popped it in his mouth.
Tengo was sure he would never visit that town again at least not while his father was
alive. While there was nothing in this world that he could state with one hundred percent certainty,
he knew there was probably nothing more he could do in that seaside town.
When he got back to the apartment, Fuka-Eri wasnt there. He knocked on the door three
times, paused, then knocked two more times. Then he unlocked the door. Inside, the apartment
was dead silent. He was immediately struck by how neat and clean everything was. The
dishes were neatly stacked away in the cupboard, everything on the table and desk was
neatly arranged, and the trash can had been emptied. There were signs that the place had
been vacuumed as well. The bed was made, and no books or records lay scattered about.
Dried laundry lay neatly folded on top of the bed.
The oversized shoulder bag that Fuka-Eri used was also gone. It didnt appear, however,
that she had remembered something she had to do or that something had suddenly come up
and she had hurriedly left. Nor did it look like she had just gone out for a short time. Instead,
all indications were that she had decided to leave for good, that she had taken her time cleaning
the apartment and then left. Tengo tried picturing her pushing around the vacuum cleaner
and wiping here and there with a wet cloth. It just didnt fit her image at all.
He opened the mail slot inside the front door and found the spare key. From the amount of
mail, she must have left yesterday or the day before. The last time he had called her had
been in the morning two days earlier, and she had still been in the apartment. Last night he
had had dinner with the three nurses and had gone back to Kumis place. What with one thing
and another, he had forgotten to call her.
Normally she would have left a note behind in her unique cuneiform-like script, but there
was no sign of one. She had left without a word. Tengo wasnt particularly surprised or disappointed.
No one could predict what the girl was thinking or what she would do. She just
showed up when she wanted to, and left when she felt like it like a capricious, independent-minded
cat. In fact, it was unusual for her to have stayed put this long in one place.
The refrigerator was more full of food than he had expected. He guessed that a few days
earlier, Fuka-Eri must have gone out and done some shopping on her own. There was a pile
of steamed cauliflower as well, which seemed to have been cooked recently. Had she known
that Tengo would be back in Tokyo in a day or two? Tengo was hungry, so he fried some
eggs and ate them with the cauliflower. He made some toast and drank two mugs of coffee.
Next he phoned his friend who had covered for him at school and told him he expected to
be back at work at the beginning of the week. His friend updated him on how much they had
covered in the textbook.
 You really helped me out. I owe you one. 
 I dont mind teaching, the friend said. I even enjoy it at times. But I found that the longer
you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself. 
Tengo had often had an inkling of the same thing.
 Anything out of the ordinary happen while I was gone? 
 Not really. Oh, you did get a letter. I put it in a drawer in your desk. 
 A letter? Tengo asked. From whom? 
 A thin young girl brought it by. She had straight hair down to her shoulders. She came up
to me and said she had a letter to give to you. She spoke sort of strangely. I think she might
be a foreigner. 
 Did she have a large shoulder bag? 
 She did. A green shoulder bag. Stuffed full of things. 
Fuka-Eri may have been afraid to leave the letter behind in his apartment, scared that
someone else might read it, or take it away. So she went directly to the cram school and gave
it to his friend.
Tengo thanked his friend again and hung up. It was already evening, and he didnt feel
like taking the train all the way to Yoyogi to pick up the letter. He would leave it for tomorrow.
Right afterward he realized he had forgotten to ask his friend about the moon. He started
to dial again but decided against it. Most likely his friend had forgotten all about it. This was
something he would have to resolve on his own.
Tengo went out and aimlessly sauntered down the twilight streets. With Fuka-Eri gone, his
apartment was too quiet and he couldnt settle down. When they had been living together he
didnt really sense her presence all that much. He followed his daily routine, and she followed
hers. But without her there, Tengo noticed a human-shaped void she had left behind.
It wasnt because he was attracted to her. She was a beautiful, attractive young girl, for
sure, but since Tengo first met her he had never felt anything like desire for her. Even after
sharing the same apartment for so long, he never felt anything stirring within his heart. How
come? Is there some reason I shouldnt feel sexual desire for her? he wondered. It was true
that on that stormy night they had had intercourse. But it wasnt what he had wanted. It had all
been her doing.
Intercourse was exactly the right word to describe the act. She had climbed on top of
Tengo, who had been numb and unable to move, and inserted his penis inside her. Fuka-Eri
had seemed to be in some transcendent state then, like a fairy in the throes of a lewd dream.
Afterward they lived together in the tiny apartment as if nothing had happened. The storm
had stopped, morning came, and Fuka-Eri acted like she had completely forgotten the incident.
And Tengo didnt bring it up. He felt that if she really had forgotten, it was better to let her
stay that way. It might be best if he himself forgot it too. Still, the question remained why had
she suddenly done such a thing? Was there some objective behind it all? Or had she been
temporarily possessed?
There was only one thing Tengo knew for sure: it wasnt an act of love. Fuka-Eri had a
natural affinity for Tengo that seemed certain. But it was farfetched to believe that she loved
him, or desired him, or felt anything even close to these emotions. She felt no sexual desire
for anyone. Tengo wasnt confident in his powers of observation when it came to people, but
still he couldnt quite imagine Fuka-Eri passionately making love with a man, her breath hot
and heavy. Or even engaged in not-so-passionate sex. That just wasnt her.
These thoughts ran through his head as he walked the streets of Koenji. The sun had set
and a cold wind had picked up, but he didnt mind. He liked to think while he walked, then sit
down at his desk and give form to his thoughts. That was his way of doing things. That was
why he walked a lot. It might rain, it might be windy, he didnt care. As he walked he found
himself in front of a bar called Mugiatama Ears of Wheat. Tengo couldnt think of anything
better to do, so he popped inside and ordered a Carlsberg draft beer. The bar had just
opened and he was the only customer. He stopped thinking for a while, kept his mind a blank,
and slowly sipped his beer.
But just like nature abhors a vacuum, Tengo wasnt afforded the leisure of keeping his
mind blank for long. He couldnt help thinking of Fuka-Eri. Like a scrap of a dream, she wended
her way into his mind.
That person may be very close. Somewhere you can walk to from here.
Fuka-Eri had said this. Which is why I went out to look for her. And came inside this bar.
What other things did she say?
Do not worry. Even if you cannot find that person, that person will find you.
Just as Tengo was searching for Aomame, Aomame was searching for him. Tengo hadnt
really grasped that. He had been caught up in himself searching for her. It had never occurred
to him that Aomame might be looking for him too.
I perceive and you receive.
This was also something Fuka-Eri had said. She perceives it, and Tengo receives it. But
Fuka-Eri only made clear what she perceived when she felt like it. Whether she was operating
on some principle or theory, or merely acting on a whim, Tengo couldnt tell.
Again Tengo remembered the time they had intercourse. The beautiful seventeen-year-old
climbed on top of him and put his penis inside her. Her ample breasts moved lithely in the air,
like ripe fruit. She closed her eyes in rapture, her nostrils flaring with desire. Her lips formed
something that didnt come together as actual words. He could see her white teeth, her pink
tongue darting out from between them every now and then. Tengo had a vivid memory of that
scene. His body may have been numb, but his mind was clear. And he had a rock-hard erection.
But no matter how clearly he relived the scene in his head, Tengo didnt feel any stir of
sexual excitement. And it didnt cross his mind to want to have sex with her again. He hadnt
had sex for the nearly three months since that encounter. More than that, he hadnt even
come once. For him this was quite unusual. He was a healthy, thirty-year-old single guy, with
a normal sex drive, the sort of desire that had to be taken care of one way or another.
Still, when he was in Kumi Adachis apartment, in bed with her, her pubic hair pressing
against his leg, he had felt no desire at all. His penis had remained flaccid the whole time.
Maybe it was the hashish. But that wasnt the reason, he decided. On that stormy night when
he had had sex with Fuka-Eri, she had taken something important away, from his heart. Like
moving furniture out of a room. He was convinced of it.
Like what, for instance?
Tengo shook his head.
When he had polished off the beer, he ordered a Four Roses on the rocks and some
mixed nuts. Just like the last time.
Most likely his erection on that stormy night was too perfect. It was far harder, and bigger,
than he had ever experienced. It didnt look like his own penis. Smooth and shiny, it seemed
less an actual penis than some conceptual symbol, and when he ejaculated it was powerful,
heroic even, the semen copious and thick. This must have reached her womb, or even beyond.
It was the perfect orgasm.
But when something is so complete, there has to be a reaction. Thats the way things go.
What kind of erections have I had since? Tengo wondered. He couldnt recall. Maybe he
hadnt even had one. Or if he had, it was obviously not very memorable, a subpar hard-on. If
his erection had been a movie, it would have been low budget, straight to video. Not an erection
even worth discussing. Most likely.
Maybe Im fated to drift through life with nothing but second-rate erections, he asked himself,
or not even second-rate ones? That would be a sad sort of life, like a prolonged twilight.
But depending on how you look at it, it might be unavoidable. At least once in his life he had
had the perfect erection, and the perfect orgasm. It was like the author of Gone With the
Wind. Once you have achieved something so magnificent, you have to be content with it.
He finished his whiskey, paid the bill, and continued wandering the streets. The wind had
picked up and the air was chillier than before. Before the worlds rules loosen up too much, he
thought, and all logic is lost, I have to find Aomame. Nearly the only hope he could cling to
now was the thought that he might run across her. If I dont find her, then what value is there
to my life? he wondered. She had been here, in Koenji, in September. If he were lucky, she
was still in the same place. Not that he could prove it but all he could do right now was pursue
that possibility. Aomame is somewhere around here. And she is searching for me, too.
Like two halves of a coin, each seeking the other.
He looked up at the sky, but he couldnt see the moons. I have to go someplace where I
can see the moon, Tengo decided.
1Q84
CHAPTER 13
Ushikawa
IS THIS WHAT THEY MEAN
BY BACK TO SQUARE ONE?
Ushikawas appearance made him stand out. He did not have the sort of looks suited for
stakeouts or tailing people. As much as he might try to lose himself in a crowd, he was as inconspicuous
as a centipede in a cup of yogurt.
His family wasnt like that at all. Ushikawas family consisted of his parents, an older and
younger brother, and a younger sister. His father ran a health clinic, where his mother was the
bookkeeper. Both brothers were outstanding students, attended medical school, and became
doctors. His older brother worked in a hospital in Tokyo, while his younger brother was a research
doctor at a university. When his father retired, his older brother was due to take over
the family clinic in Urawa, a suburb of Tokyo. Both brothers were married and had one child.
Ushikawas sister had studied at a college in the United States and was now back in Japan,
working as an interpreter. She was in her mid-thirties but still single. All his siblings were slim
and tall, with pleasantly oval features.
In almost every respect, particularly in looks, Ushikawa was the exception in his family. He
was short, with a large, misshapen head and unkempt, frizzy hair. His legs were stumpy and
bent like cucumbers. His popping eyes always looked startled, and he had a thick layer of
flesh around his neck. His eyebrows were bushy and large and nearly came together in the
middle. They looked like two hairy caterpillars reaching out to each other. In school he had
generally gotten excellent grades, but his performance in some subjects was erratic and he
was particularly hopeless at sports.
In this affluent, self-satisfied, elite family, he was the foreign element, the sour, dissonant
note that ruined the familial harmony. In family photos he looked like the odd man out, the insensitive
outsider who had pushed his way into the group and had his picture taken with
them.
The other members of his family couldnt understand how someone who didnt resemble
them in the least could be one of them. But there was no mistaking the fact that his mother
had given birth to him, with all the attendant labor pains (her recollection was how particularly
painful that birth had been). No one had laid him at their doorstep in a basket. Eventually,
someone recalled that there was a relative who also had an oversized, misshapen
head Ushikawas grandfathers cousin. During the war he had worked in a metal shop in
Koto Ward in Tokyo, but he died in the massive air raid in the spring of 1945. His father had
never met the man, though he had a photo of him in an old album. When the family saw the
photo, they exclaimed, It all makes sense now! Ushikawa and his uncle were such peas in a
pod that you would think that Ushikawa was the man reincarnated. The genetic traits of this
uncle had, for whatever reason, surfaced once more.
The Ushikawa family of Urawa, Saitama Prefecture, would have been the perfect family in
both looks and academic and career achievements if only Ushikawa hadnt existed.
They would have been the kind of memorable, photogenic family that anyone would envy. But
with Ushikawa in the mix, people tended to frown and shake their heads. People might begin
to think that somewhere along the line a joker or two had tripped up the goddess of beauty.
No, they definitely must think this, his parents decided, which is why they tried their hardest to
keep him out of the public eye or at least make sure he didnt stand out (though the attempt
was always pointless).
Being put in this situation, however, never made Ushikawa feel dissatisfied, sad, or lonely.
He wasnt sociable to begin with and usually preferred to stay in the shadows. He wasnt particularly
fond of his brothers and sister. From Ushikawas perspective, they were irretrievably
shallow. To him, their minds were dull, their vision narrow and devoid of imagination, and all
they cared about was what other people thought. More than anything, they were completely
lacking in the sort of healthy skepticism needed to attain any degree of wisdom.
Ushikawas father was a moderately successful doctor of internal medicine in the countryside,
but he was so utterly boring that talking with him gave you chest pains. Like the king
whose touch turned everything to gold, every single word he uttered turned into insipid grains
of sand. But as a man of few words he was able probably unintentionally to conceal how
boring and ignorant he really was. In contrast, his mother was a real talker, a hopeless snob.
Money was everything to her, and she was self-centered and proud, loved anything gaudy
and showy, and could always be counted on to bad-mouth other people in a shrill voice. Ushikawas
older brother had inherited his fathers disposition; his younger brother had his mothers.
His sister was very independent. She was irresponsible and had no consideration for
others. As the baby of the family, she had been totally pampered and spoiled by her parents.
All of which explained why, since he was a boy, Ushikawa had kept to himself. When he
came home from school, he had shut himself in his room and gotten lost in books. He had no
friends other than his dog, so he never had the chance to talk with someone about what he
had learned, or debate anyone. Still, he was convinced that he was a clear, eloquent, logical
thinker, and he patiently honed these abilities all by himself. For instance, he would propose
an idea for discussion and debate it, taking both sides. He would passionately argue in support
of the proposition, then argue just as vigorously against it. He could identify equally
with either of the two positions and was completely and sincerely absorbed by whatever position
he happened to be supporting at the moment. Before he had realized it, these exercises
had given him the talent to be skeptical about his own self, and he had come to the recogni-
tion that most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. Subject and object
are not as distinct as most people think. If the boundary separating the two isnt clear-cut to
begin with, it is not such a difficult task to intentionally shift back and forth from one to the other.
In order to use logic and rhetoric more clearly and effectively, he filled his mind with
whatever knowledge he could find both what he thought would be useful and what he was
pretty sure was the opposite. He chose things he agreed with, and things that, initially, he opposed.
It wasnt cultivation and learning in the usual sense that he was after, but more tangible
information something you could actually handle, something with a real shape and
heft.
That huge, misshapen head of his turned out to be the perfect container for these quantities
of accumulated information. Thanks to all this, he was far more erudite than any of his
contemporaries. If he felt like it, he knew he could shoot down anybody in an argument not
just his siblings or classmates, but his teachers and parents as well. But he didnt want to attract
any kind of attention if he could avoid it, so he kept this ability hidden. Knowledge and
ability were tools, not things to show off.
Ushikawa began to think of himself as a nocturnal creature, concealed in a dark forest,
waiting for prey to wander by. He waited patiently for an opportunity, and when it came he
would leap out and grab it. But until that point, he couldnt let his opponent know he was
there. It was critical to keep a low profile and catch the other person off guard. Even as an
elementary school pupil, he had thought this way. He never depended on others or readily revealed
his emotions.
Sometimes he imagined how his life would be if he had been born a little better-looking.
He didnt need to be handsome. There was no need to look that impressive. He just needed
to be normal-looking, or enough so that people wouldnt turn and stare. If only I had been
born like that, he wondered, what sort of life would I have led? But this was a supposition that
exceeded his powers of imagination. Ushikawa was too Ushikawa-like, and there was no
room in his brain for such hypotheses. It was precisely because of his large, misshapen head,
his bulging eyes, and his short, bandy legs that he was who he was, a skeptical young boy,
full of intellectual curiosity, quiet but eloquent.
As the years passed the ugly boy grew up into an ugly youth, and before he knew it, into
an ugly middle-aged man. At every stage of his life, people continued to turn and stare. Children
would stare unabashedly at him. When I become an ugly old man, Ushikawa sometimes
thought, then maybe I wont attract so much attention. But he wouldnt know for sure. Maybe
he would end up the ugliest old man the world had ever seen.
At any rate, he was not equipped with the skills needed to blend into the background. And
to make matters worse, Tengo knew what he looked like. If he was discovered hanging
around outside Tengos building, the whole operation would come crashing down.
In situations like this, Ushikawa normally hired someone from a PI agency. Ever since he
was a lawyer, he had made use of these sorts of organizations, which mostly employed
former policemen who were adept at digging up information, shadowing people, and conducting
surveillance. But in this case, he didnt want to involve any outsiders. Things were too
touchy, and a serious crime murder was involved. Besides, Ushikawa wasnt even sure
what he might gain by putting Tengo under surveillance.
What Ushikawa wanted was to make clear the connection between Tengo and Aomame,
but he wasnt even sure what Aomame looked like. He had tried all sorts of methods but had
yet to come up with a decent photo. Even Bat hadnt been able to obtain one. Ushikawa had
looked at her high school graduation album, but in the class photo her face was tiny and
somehow unnatural-looking, like a mask. In the photo of her company softball team she had
on a wide-brimmed cap and her face was in shadow. So even if Aomame were to pass him
on the street, he would have no way of knowing if it was really her. He knew she was nearly
five feet six inches tall and had a trim body and good posture. Her eyes and cheekbones were
distinctive, and she wore her hair down to her shoulders. But there were plenty of women in
the world who fit that description.
So it looked like Ushikawa would have to undertake the surveillance by himself. He would
have to keep his eyes open, patiently waiting for something to happen, and, when it did, instantly
react. He couldnt ask someone else to handle such a delicate undertaking.
Tengo was living on the third floor of an old, three-story concrete apartment building. At
the entrance was a row of mailboxes for all the residents, one of them with a name tag on it
that said Kawana. Some of the mailboxes were rusty, the paint peeling off. They all had locks,
but most of the residents left them unlatched. The front door of the building was unlocked,
and anyone could go inside.
The dark corridor inside had that special odor you find in older apartment buildings. It is a
peculiar mix of smells of unrepaired leaks, old sheets washed in cheap detergent, stale tempura
oil, a dried-up poinsettia, cat urine from the weed-filled front yard. Live there long enough
and you would probably get used to the smell. But no matter how used to it you got, the fact
remained that this was not a heartwarming odor.
Tengos apartment faced the main road. It wasnt all that noisy, but there was a fair
amount of foot traffic. An elementary school was nearby and at certain times of day there
were large groups of children outside. Across from the building was a clump of small singlefamily
homes, two-story houses with no garden. Just down the road were a liquor store and a
stationery store catering to elementary school children. And two blocks farther down was a
small police substation. There was nowhere to hide, and if he were to stand by the road and
look up at Tengos apartment even if Tengo didnt discover him the neighbors would be
sure to cast a suspicious eye his way. And since he was such an unusual-looking character,
the locals alert level would be ratcheted up a couple of levels. He might be mistaken for a
pervert waiting for the kids to get out of school, and neighbors might call the police.
In surveillance the first requirement is finding a suitable place from which to watch, a place
to track your targets movements and maintain a steady supply of water and food. The ideal
situation would be to have a room from which Ushikawa could see Tengos apartment. He
could set up a camera with a telephoto lens on a tripod and keep watch over movement in the
apartment and who came in and out. Since he was alone on the assignment, twenty-four-hour
coverage was impossible, but Ushikawa figured he could cover it for ten hours a day. Needless
to say, however, finding a suitable place was going to be tricky.
Even so, Ushikawa walked the neighborhood, searching. He wasnt the type to give up
easily. Tenaciousness was, after all, his forte. But after pounding the pavement of every nook
and cranny of the neighborhood, Ushikawa called it quits. Koenji was a densely populated
residential area, flat with no tall buildings. The number of places from which Tengos apartment
was visible was very limited, and there was not a single one he thought he could use.
Whenever Ushikawa had trouble coming up with a good idea, he liked to take a long, lukewarm
soak in the tub, so he went back home and drew a bath. As he lay in the acrylic
bathtub, he listened to Sibeliuss violin concerto on the radio. He didnt particularly want to
listen to Sibelius and Sibeliuss concerto wasnt exactly the right music to listen to at the end
of a long day as you soaked in the tub. Perhaps, he mused, Finnish people liked to listen to
Sibelius while in a sauna during their long nights. But in a tiny, one-unit bathroom of a twobedroom
condo in Kohinata, Bunkyo Ward, Sibeliuss music was too emotional, too tense.
Not that this bothered him as long as there was some background music, he was fine. A
concerto by Rameau would do just as well, nor would he have complained if it had been
Schumanns Carnaval. The radio station just happened to be broadcasting Sibeliuss violin
concerto. That was all there was to it.
As usual, Ushikawa let half his mind go blank and thought with the other half. David Oistrakhs
performance of Sibelius went through the blank half of his mind, like a gentle breeze
wafting in through a wide-open entrance and out through a wide-open exit. Maybe it was not
the most laudable way of appreciating music. If Sibelius knew his music was being treated
this way, it was easy to imagine how those large eyebrows would frown, the folds of his thick
neck coming together. But Sibelius had died long ago, and even Oistrakh had long since gone
to his grave. So Ushikawa could do as he pleased and let the music filter from right to left, as
the unblank half of his brain toyed with random thoughts.
In times like these, Ushikawa didnt like to have a set objective. He let his thoughts run
free, as if he were releasing dogs on a broad plain. He would tell them to go wherever they
wanted and do whatever they liked, and then he would just let them go. He sank down in the
bathwater up to his neck, closed his eyes, and, half listening to the music, let his mind
wander. The dogs frolicked around, rolled down slopes, gamboled after each other tirelessly,
chased pointlessly after squirrels, then came back, covered in mud and grass, and Ushikawa
patted their heads and fastened their collars back on. The music came to an end. Sibeliuss
violin concerto was a roughly thirty-minute piece just the right length. The next piece, the announcer
intoned, is Janáeks Sinfonietta. Ushikawa had a vague memory of hearing the name
of the piece before, but he couldnt remember exactly. When he tried to recall, his vision
turned strangely cloudy and indistinct, as if a cream-colored mist had settled over his eyeballs.
He must have stayed too long in the bath, he decided. He gave up, switched off the radio,
got out of the bathtub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and got a beer from the fridge.
Ushikawa lived by himself. He used to have a wife and two small daughters. They had
bought a house in the Chuorinkan District in Yamato, in Kanagawa Prefecture. It was a small
house, but they had a garden and a dog. His wife was good-looking enough, and his daughters
were even pretty. Neither daughter had inherited anything of Ushikawas looks, which
was a great relief.
Then, like a sudden blackout on the stage between acts, he was alone. He found it hard to
believe that there had ever been a time when he had a family and lived with them in a house
in the suburbs. Sometimes he was even sure the whole thing must be a misunderstanding,
that he had unconsciously fabricated this past for himself. But it had actually happened. He
had actually had a wife he shared a bed with and two children who shared his bloodline. In his
desk drawer, he had a family photo of the four of them. They were all smiling happily. Even
the dog seemed to be grinning.
There was no likelihood that they would ever be a family again. His wife and daughters
lived in Nagoya now. The girls had a new father, the kind of father with normal looks who
wouldnt embarrass them when he showed up at parent-teacher conference day. The girls
hadnt seen Ushikawa for nearly four years, but they didnt seem to regret this. They never
even wrote to him. It didnt bother Ushikawa much either that he couldnt see his daughters.
This didnt mean that his daughters werent important to him. It was just that now his top priority
was simply keeping himself secure, so for the time being he had to switch off any unnecessary
emotional circuits and focus on the tasks at hand.
Plus, he knew this: that no matter how far away his daughters went from him, his blood
still flowed inside them. His daughters might forget all about him, but that blood would not lose
its way. Blood had a frighteningly long memory. And the sign of that large head would, sometime,
somewhere in the future, reappear, in an unexpected time and unexpected place. When
it did, people would sigh and remember that Ushikawa had once existed.
Ushikawa might be alive to witness this eruption, or perhaps not. It didnt really matter. He
was satisfied just to know that it was possible. It wasnt like he was hoping for revenge.
Rather, he felt content to know that he was, unavoidably, an inherent part of the worlds structure.
He sat down on his sofa, plopped his stubby legs up on the table, and, as he sipped his
beer, a thought suddenly came to him. It might not work out, he thought, but it was worth trying.
Its so simple why hadnt it occurred to me? he wondered, finding it odd. Maybe the
easiest things are the hardest to come up with. Like they say, people miss whats going on
right under their noses.
The next morning Ushikawa went to Koenji again. He saw a real estate agency, went inside,
and asked if there were any apartments available for rent in Tengos building. But this
agency didnt handle that building. All rentals in that apartment building were handled by an
agency in front of the station.
 I sort of doubt there are any units available, the agent said. The rent is reasonable, and
its a convenient location, so few people move out. 
 Well, Ill ask anyway, just to make sure, Ushikawa said.
He stopped by the agency in front of the station. A young man in his early twenties was
the one who dealt with him. The man had jet-black hair, hardened with gel to the consistency
of a birds nest. He wore a bright white shirt and a brand-new tie. He probably hadnt been
working there long. He still had marks from pimples on his cheeks. The man flinched a bit
when he looked at Ushikawa, but soon recovered and gave him a pleasant, professional
smile.
 Youre in luck, sir, the young man said. The couple on the first floor had some family issues
that arose and they had to move out quickly, so one of the units has been vacant for a
week. We finished cleaning it yesterday but havent advertised it yet. Its on the first floor so it
might be a bit noisy, and it doesnt get a lot of sun, but its a wonderful location. There is one
condition of the contract, however: in five or six years the owner plans to completely rebuild
the place, so when you receive notice of that renovation six months ahead of time, youll need
to move out, with no complaints. Plus, theres no parking lot there. 
 Not a problem, Ushikawa replied. He didnt plan to stay there that long, and he didnt
have a car.
 Excellent. If you agree to those conditions, then you can move in at once. I imagine you
would like to see the apartment first? 
 Yes, of course, Ushikawa replied. The young man took a key out of a desk drawer and
passed it to him.
 Im very sorry, but I have an errand to run, so if you dont mind, could you check out the
place by yourself? The apartment is empty, and all you need to do is drop off the key on your
way back. 
 That sounds fine, Ushikawa said, but what if Im some evil man who never gives the key
back, or makes a copy and sneaks in later to ransack the place? What would you do then? 
The young man stared in surprise at Ushikawa for a time. Yes, good point. I see. Just to
be on the safe side, could you give me a card? 
Ushikawa took out one of his New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship
and the Arts business cards and handed it to him.
 Mr. Ushikawa, the young man frowned as he read the name. But then he looked relieved.
 You dont look to me like someone who would do something bad. 
 Much appreciated, Ushikawa replied. And he smiled, a smile as meaningless as the title
listed on his card.
No one had ever told him this before. Maybe it meant his looks were too unusual for him
to ever do anything bad. It would be too easy for anyone to describe him, and a simple matter
to draw a police sketch. If a warrant were issued for his arrest, he wouldnt last three days.
The apartment was nicer than he had imagined. Tengos third-floor apartment was two
stories directly above, so it was impossible to observe his place. But the front entrance was
visible from his window so he could see when Tengo entered and exited the building, and
spot anyone visiting him. He could just camouflage a telephoto lens and take pictures of each
persons face.
In order to rent this apartment he had to pay two months security deposit: one months
rent up front, plus a fee equivalent to the second months rent. The rent itself wasnt that high,
and the security deposit would be returned when the lease was up, but still, this all came to a
hefty sum. Having just paid Bat, his resources were severely depleted, but he knew he had to
rent that apartment. There was no other choice. Ushikawa went back to the real estate
agency, took out the cash he had already prepared in an envelope, and signed the lease. The
lease was with the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts.
He told them he would mail them a certified copy of the foundations registry later. This didnt
seem to faze the young real estate agent. Once the lease was signed, the agent again
handed him the keys.
 Mr. Ushikawa, the apartment is ready for you to move in today. The electricity and water
are on, but you will have to be present when they turn on the gas, so please contact Tokyo
Gas yourself. What will you do about a phone? 
 Ill handle that myself, Ushikawa said. It took a lot of time and effort to get a contract with
the phone company, and a workman would have to come to the apartment to install it. It was
easier to use a nearby pay phone.
Ushikawa went back to the apartment and drew up a list of items he would be needing.
Thankfully the previous resident had left the curtains up. They were old, flowery curtains, but
as long as they were curtains, he felt lucky to have them. Curtains of some kind were indispensable
to a stakeout.
The list of necessary items wasnt all that long. The main things he would need were food
and drinking water, a camera with a telephoto lens, and a tripod. The rest of his list included
toilet paper, a heavy-duty sleeping bag, portable kerosene containers, a camping stove, a
sharp knife, a can opener, garbage bags, basic toiletries, and an electric razor, several towels,
a flashlight, and a transistor radio. The minimal amount of clothes and a carton of cigarettes.
That was about it. No need for a fridge, a table, or bedding. As long as he had a place
to keep out of the weather, he considered himself lucky. Ushikawa returned to his own house
and put a single reflex and a telephoto lens in a camera bag, as well as an ample amount of
film. He then stuffed all the items on his list into a travel bag. He bought the additional things
he still needed in the shopping district in front of Koenji Station.
He set up his tripod next to the window, attached the latest Minolta automatic camera to it,
screwed on the telephoto lens, aimed it at the level of the faces of anyone who came in or exited
the building, and set the camera to manual. He made it so he could use a remote control
to work the shutter and set the motor drive. He fashioned a cardboard cone to go around the
lens so that light wouldnt reflect off the lens. From the outside, part of a paper tube was visible
at one end of the slightly raised curtain, but no one would ever notice it. No one would
ever imagine that someone was secretly photographing the entrance of such a nondescript
apartment building.
Ushikawa took a few test shots of people coming in and out of the building. Because of
the motor drive he was able to get three quick shots of each person. As a precaution he
wrapped a towel around the body of the camera to muffle any noise. As soon as he finished
the first roll, he took it to the photo store next to the station. The clerk placed it in a machine
that would automatically develop and print the photos. It handled great numbers of photos at
high speed, so no one ever noticed or cared about the images printed on them.
The photos came out fine not very artistic, to be sure, but serviceable. The faces of the
people entering and exiting the building were clear enough to distinguish one from another.
On the way back from the photo shop, Ushikawa bought some mineral water and several
cans of food. And he bought a carton of Seven Stars at a smoke shop. Holding his bags of
purchases in front of him to hide his face, he returned to the apartment and sat down again in
front of the camera. As he kept watch over the entrance he drank some water, ate canned
peaches, and smoked a couple of cigarettes. The electricity was on, but for some reason not
the water. When he turned on the tap there was a rumbling sound in the wall, but nothing
came out. Something had to be holding them up from turning on the water. He thought of contacting
the real estate agent, but, wanting to limit his trips in and out of the building, he decided
to wait and see. No running water meant he couldnt use the toilet, so instead he peed
into an old bucket the cleaning company had conveniently forgotten to take away.
The impatient early-winter twilight came quickly and the room grew totally dark, but still he
didnt turn on the lights. Ushikawa rather welcomed the darkness. The light came on at the
entrance and he continued to survey the faces that passed by under the yellowish light.
As evening came, the foot traffic into and out of the building increased a bit, though the
number of people was still not that great. It was, after all, a small apartment building. Tengo
was not among them, and neither was anyone who could possibly be Aomame. Tengo was
scheduled to teach at the cram school today. He would be coming back in the evening. He
didnt usually stop off anywhere on the way home after work. He preferred to make his own
dinner rather than eat out, and he liked to eat alone while reading. Ushikawa knew all this. But
Tengo didnt come home. Perhaps he was meeting someone after work.
A variety of people lived in the building, everyone from young, single working people, to
college students, to couples with small children, to elderly people living alone people from all
walks of life. But all of them entered the frame of the lens, unaware they were under surveillance.
Despite some differences in age and circumstances, every one of them looked worn
out, tired of life. They appeared hopeless, abandoned by ambition, their emotions worn away,
with only resignation and numbness filling the void left behind. As if they had just had a tooth
pulled, their faces were dark, their steps heavy.
But he may have been mistaken. Some of them may have actually been enjoying life to
the fullest. Once they opened their doors, there was some breathtaking little paradise waiting
just for them. Perhaps some of them were pretending to live a Spartan life to avoid getting
audited by the Tax Bureau. This was possible. But through the telephoto lens, they all looked
like dead-end city dwellers not going anywhere in life, clinging to a cheap apartment scheduled
to be torn down.
That night Tengo didnt make an appearance and Ushikawa saw no one who could be
connected to him. When ten thirty rolled around, he decided to call it a day. He hadnt quite
settled into a routine and didnt want to push it. There will be many days to come, he decided,
so this is enough for now. He did a variety of stretches to loosen his stiff muscles, then ate a
sweet anpan bun, poured coffee from his thermos into the cap, and drank it. He tried the
faucet in the sink, and now the water was running. He washed his face with soap, brushed his
teeth, and took a good, long pee. He leaned back against the wall and smoked a cigarette. He
longed for a sip of whiskey, but he had decided that as long as he was here, he wouldnt
touch a drop of alcohol.
He stripped to his underwear and snuggled into the sleeping bag. The cold made him
tremble slightly. At night the empty apartment was unexpectedly chilly. He thought he might
need a small electric space heater.
As he lay shivering, alone in the sleeping bag, he recalled the days when he had been
surrounded by his family. He didnt particularly miss those days. His life now was so completely
different that these memories merely popped up to illustrate that fact. Even when he
was living with his family, Ushikawa had felt lonely. He never opened up to anyone and
thought that his ordinary life would never last. Deep down he was convinced that one day it
would all too easily fall apart his busy days as a lawyer, his generous income, his nice
house in Chuorinkan, his not-bad-looking wife, his cute daughters, both attending private elementary
school, his pedigreed dog. So when his life steadily fell apart bit by bit and he was
left all alone, he was actually relieved. Thank God, he thought. Nothing to worry about now.
Im back right where I started.
Is this what it means to go back to square one?
He curled up like a maggot in the sleeping bag and stared at the dark ceiling. He had sat
in the same position for too long and his joints ached. Shivering in the cold, making do with a
cold bun for dinner, standing watch over the entrance of a cheap apartment that was ready to
be torn down, watching the unattractive people coming in and out, peeing into a wash bucket.
Is this what it means to go back to square one? he asked again. He remembered something
he had forgotten to do. He crawled out of the sleeping bag, poured the urine in the bucket into
the toilet, pushed the wobbly handle, and flushed it down. The sleeping bag had just started
to warm up, and he had hesitated to get out. Just leave it, he had thought but if he
happened to slip in the dark he would regret it. Afterward he crawled back into the sleeping
bag and shivered in the cold again.
Is this what it means to go back to square one?
Most likely. He had nothing left to lose, other than his life. It was all very clear-cut. In the
darkness, a razor-thin smile came to Ushikawas lips.
1Q84
CHAPTER 14
Aomame
THIS LITTLE ONE OF MINE
For the most part, Aomames life had become filled with confusion. She felt as though she
were blindly groping around in the dark. Ordinary logic and reason didnt function in this 1Q84
world, and she couldnt predict what was going to happen to her next. She felt sure, though,
that she would survive the next few months and give birth to the baby. This was nothing more
than a hunch, though a strong one. Everything was proceeding on the premise that she would
give birth to this child. She could just sense it.
She remembered the last words that Leader had spoken. You are fated to pass through
great hardships and trials, he had said. Once you have done that, you should be able to see
things as they are supposed to be. 
He knew something. Something vital. And he had tried in vague and ambiguous
terms to give me this message, Aomame thought. The hardship he spoke of may have been
when I took myself to the brink of death, when I took the pistol to that spot in front of the Esso
sign, meaning to kill myself. But I came back, without dying, and discovered I was pregnant.
This, too, might have been preordained.
As they entered December, the winds grew fierce for a few days. The fallen zelkova
leaves whipped against the plastic screen on the balcony with a dry, biting sound. The cold
wind let out a warning as it whistled between the bare branches of the trees. The caws of the
crows grew sharper, keener. Winter had arrived.
Every day, she became even more convinced that the baby growing in her womb was
Tengos child, until this theory became an established fact. It wasnt logical enough to convince
a third party, but it made sense to her. It was obvious.
If Im pregnant without having had sex, who could the man possibly be other than Tengo?
In November she had begun putting on weight. She couldnt go outside, but she more
than made up for it by continuing to work out and strictly watching her diet. After age twenty
she never weighed more than 115 pounds. But one day the scale showed she weighed 119,
and after that her weight never dropped below it. She felt like her face, too, had rounded out.
No doubt this little one wanted its mother to plump up.
Together with this little one she continued to keep watch over the playground at night,
hoping to spot the silhouette of a large young man sitting alone on the slide. As she gazed at
the two moons, lined up side by side in the early-winter sky, Aomame rubbed her belly
through the blanket. Occasionally tears would well up for no reason. She would find a tear
rolling down her cheek and falling to the blanket on her lap. Maybe it was because she was
lonely, or because she was anxious. Or maybe pregnancy had made her more sensitive. Or
maybe it was merely the cold wind stimulating the tear ducts to produce tears. Whatever the
reason, Aomame let the tears flow without wiping them away.
Once she had cried for a while, at a certain point the tears would stop, and she would continue
her lonely vigil. No, she thought, Im not that lonely. I have this little one with me. There
are two of us two of us looking up at the two moons, waiting for Tengo to appear. From time
to time she would pick up her binoculars and focus on the deserted slide. Then she would
pick up the automatic pistol to check its heft and what it felt like. Protecting myself, searching
for Tengo, and providing this little one with nourishment. Those are my duties now.
One time, as the cold wind blew and she kept watch over the playground, Aomame realized
she believed in God. It was a sudden discovery, like finding, with the soles of your feet,
solid ground beneath the mud. It was a mysterious sensation, an unexpected awareness.
Ever since she could remember, she had always hated this thing called God. More precisely,
she rejected the people and the system that intervened between her and God. For years she
had equated those people and that system with God. Hating them meant hating God.
Since the moment she was born they had been near her, controlling her, ordering her
around, all in the name of God, driving her into a corner. In the name of God, they stole her
time and her freedom, putting shackles on her heart. They preached about Gods kindness,
but preached twice as much about his wrath and intolerance. At age eleven, Aomame made
up her mind and was ultimately able to break free from that world. In doing so, though, much
had been sacrificed.
If God didnt exist, then how much brighter my life would be, how much richer. Aomame
often thought this. Then she should be able to share all the beautiful memories that normal
children had, without the constant anger and fear that tormented her. And then how much
more positive, peaceful, and fulfilling her life might be.
Despite all this, as she sat there, her palm resting on her belly, peeking through the slats
of the plastic boards at the deserted playground, she couldnt help but come to the realization
that she believed in God. When she had mechanically repeated the words of the prayer, when
she brought her hands together, she had believed in a God outside the conscious realm. It
was a feeling that had seeped into her marrow, something that could not be driven away by
logic or emotion. Even hatred and anger couldnt erase it.
But this isnt their God, she decided. Its my God. This is a God I have found through sacrificing
my own life, through my flesh being cut, my skin ripped off, my blood sucked away, my
nails torn, all my time and hopes and memories being stolen from me. This is not a God with
a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This God has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts.
No reward, no punishment. This God doesnt give, and doesnt take away. There is no heaven
up in the sky, no hell down below. When its hot, and when its cold, God is simply there.
From time to time, she would recall Leaders final words before he died. She could never
forget his rich baritone. Just like she could never forget the feeling of stabbing a needle into
the back of his neck.
Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow, there must be light.
There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow…. We do not know if the socalled
Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, something that surpasses our understanding
and our definitions. We have lived with them since long, long ago from a time before
good and evil even existed, when peoples minds were still benighted.
Are God and the Little People opposites? Or two sides of the same thing?
Aomame had no idea. What she did know was that she had to protect this little one inside
her. And to do so it became necessary to somehow believe in God. Or to recognize the fact
that she believed in God.
Aomame pondered the idea of God. God has no form, yet is able to take on any form. The
image she had was of a streamlined Mercedes coupe, a brand-new car just delivered from
the dealer. An elegant, middle-aged woman coming out of that car, in the middle of an expressway
running through the city, offering her beautiful spring coat to the naked Aomame.
To protect her from the chilly wind, and peoples rude stares. And then, without a word, getting
back in her silver coupe. The woman knew that Aomame had a baby within her. That
Aomame had to be protected.
. . .
She began to have a new dream. In the dream she is imprisoned in a white room. A small,
cube-shaped room, no windows, a single door. A plain bed, no frills, on which she lies sleeping,
faceup. A light hanging over the bed illuminates her hugely swollen belly. It doesnt look
like her own body, but it is definitely a part of Aomames flesh. It is getting close to the time for
the babys delivery.
The room is guarded by Buzzcut and Ponytail. The duo is dead set against making any
more errors. They made a mistake once and they need to recover their reputation. Their assignment
is to make sure that Aomame does not leave this room, and that no one enters.
They wait for the birth of the little one. It seems they plan to snatch it away from Aomame the
moment it is born.
Aomame calls out, desperately seeking help. But this room is built of special material. The
walls, floor, and ceiling immediately absorb any sound. She cant even hear her own scream.
Aomame prays that the woman in the Mercedes coupe will come and rescue her her and
the little one. But her voice is sucked, in vain, into the walls of that white room.
The little one absorbs nourishment through its umbilical cord, and is growing larger by the
minute. Hoping to break out of that lukewarm darkness, it kicks against the walls of her womb.
Hoping for light, and freedom.
Tall Ponytail sits in a chair beside the door, hands in his lap, staring at a point in space.
Perhaps a small, dense cloud is floating there. Buzzcut stands next to the bed. They wear the
same dark suits as before. Buzzcut raises his arm from time to time to glance at his watch,
like somebody waiting for an important train to pull into the station.
Aomame cant move her arms and legs. It doesnt feel like she is tied down, but still she
cant move. There is no feeling in her fingers. She has a premonition that her labor pains are
about to begin. Like that fateful train drawing nearer to the station, exactly on schedule. She
can hear the slight vibration of the rails as it gets closer.
And then she wakes up.
She took a shower to wash off the sweat and changed clothes. She tossed her sweaty
clothes into the washer. There was no way she wanted to have this dream, but it came upon
her anyway. The details sometimes changed, but the place and outcome were always the
same: the cube-shaped white room, the approaching labor pains, the duo in their bland, dark
suits.
The two men knew she was pregnant with the little one or they were going to find out.
Aomame was prepared. If need be, she would have no problem pumping all the 9mm bullets
she had into Ponytail and Buzzcut. The God that protected her was also, at times, a bloody
God.
. . .
A knock came at the door. Aomame sat down on a stool in the kitchen and gripped the
automatic pistol tight, the safety off. Outside a cold rain had been falling since morning. The
world was enveloped in the smell of winter rain.
The knocks stopped. Hello, Miss Takai, a mans voice said on the other side of the door.
 Its me, your friendly NHK collector. Sorry to bother you again, but Im back to collect the subscription
fee. I know youre there, Miss Takai. 
Aomame faced the door and silently spoke. We called NHK and asked about this. Youre
nothing but someone posing as an NHK man. Who are you? And what do you want here?
 When people receive things, they have to pay for them. Thats the way the world works.
You receive a TV signal, so you have to pay the fee. Receiving without paying isnt fair. Its
the same as stealing. 
His voice echoed loudly in the hallway. A hoarse, but piercing voice.
 My personal feelings are not involved in this at all. I dont hate you, and Im not trying to
punish you whatsoever. Its just that I cant stand when things are unfair. People have to pay
for what they receive. Miss Takai, as long as you dont open up, Ill be back again and again
to bang on your door. And I dont think thats what you want. Im not some unreasonable old
coot. If we talk, Im sure we can come to an understanding. So would you be kind enough to
open the door? 
The knocking continued.
Aomame gripped the pistol tighter. This man must know Im having a baby. A thin sheen
of sweat formed under her arms and on the tip of her nose. I am never going to open this
door. He can try to use a duplicate key, or try to force it open, but if he does Im going to
empty this entire clip into his belly NHK collector or not.
No, that probably wouldnt happen. And she knew it. He couldnt open the door. As long
as she didnt open it from the inside, the door was set up so it couldnt be opened. Which is
why the man got so irritated and voluble, using every verbal trick in the book trying to make
her tense and on edge.
Ten minutes later, the man left. But only after he had, in a thunderous voice, threatened
and ridiculed her, slyly tried to win her over to his side, denounced her in no uncertain terms,
and finally announced he would be back to pay her another visit.
 You cant escape, Miss Takai. As long as you get the TV signal I will be back. Im not the
kind of man who gives up so easily. Thats just my personality. Well, we will be seeing each
other again very soon. 
She didnt hear his footsteps, but he was no longer standing outside the door. Aomame
peeked through the peephole to make sure. She set the safety on the pistol and washed her
face in the sink. Her armpits were soaked. As she changed to a fresh shirt she stood, naked,
in front of the mirror. Her stomach still wasnt showing enough to notice, but she knew an important
secret lay hidden within.
She spoke to the dowager on the phone. After Tamaru had gone over a few points with
her, he handed the phone to the dowager without a word. They used a roundabout way of
speaking, avoiding any clear-cut terms. At least at first.
 We have already secured a new place for you, the dowager said. There you can perform
the task youve been planning on. Its a safe place and you can get checked out regularly
by a specialist. If youre willing, you can move there as soon as you would like. 
Should she tell the dowager about the people who were after her little one? How in her
dreams the guys from Sakigake were trying to get hold of her child? How the phony NHK collector
using all his wiles to get her to open the door was probably after the same thing? But
Aomame gave up the idea. She trusted the dowager, and respected her deeply. But that
wasnt the issue. Which world was she living in? For the time being, that was the point.
 How have you been feeling? the dowager asked.
 Everything seems to be going well so far, Aomame replied.
 Im very glad to hear it, the dowager said. But your voice seems different somehow.
Maybe Im just imagining things, but you sound a little tense and guarded. If theres anything
thats bothering you, anything at all, please dont hesitate to tell us. We might be able to help
you. 
 I think being in one place for so long has made me anxious, maybe, without my even
realizing it. But Im taking good care of myself. Thats my field, after all, Aomame replied,
careful with her tone of voice.
 Of course, the dowager responded. She paused again. A little while ago a suspicious
man was hanging around our place for a couple of days. He seemed mainly interested in
checking out the safe house. I asked the three women staying there to look at the pictures on
our security cameras, but none of them recognized him. It might be somebody whos after
you. 
Aomame frowned slightly. You mean theyve figured out our connection? 
 Im not sure about that. Were at the point where we need to consider that possibility,
though. This man looks quite unusual. He has a big, misshapen head. The top is flat, and hes
balding. Hes short, with stubby arms and legs, and stocky. Does that sound at all familiar? 
A misshapen head? From the balcony I keep a close eye on the people walking down the
street, but Ive never seen anyone that fits that description. He sounds like the kind of person
you couldnt miss. 
 Exactly. He sounds like a colorful circus clown. If hes the one they selected and sent to
check us out, I would say its an odd choice. 
Aomame agreed. Sakigake wouldnt deliberately send a person who stood out like that to
reconnoiter. They couldnt be that desperate for help. Which meant that the man probably had
nothing to do with the religion, and that Sakigake still didnt know about her relationship with
the dowager. But then who was this man, and what was he doing checking out the safe
house? Maybe he was the same man who pretended to be an NHK fee collector and kept on
bothering her? She had no proof. She had just mentally linked the fee collectors eccentric
manner and the description of this other weird man.
 If you see him, please get in touch. We may have to take steps. 
 Of course I will get in touch right away, Aomame replied.
The dowager was silent again. This was rather unusual, for usually when they talked on
the phone she was quite no-nonsense, and hated to waste any time.
 Are you well? Aomame asked casually.
 The same as always. I have no complaints, the dowager said. But Aomame could hear a
faint hesitation in her voice something else that was unusual.
Aomame waited for her to continue.
Finally, as if resigned to it, the dowager spoke. Its just that recently I feel old more often
than I used to. Especially after you left. 
 I never left, Aomame said brightly. Im still here. 
 I know. Youre there and we can still speak on the phone. Its just that when we were able
to meet regularly and exercise together, some of your vitality rubbed off on me. 
 You have a lot of your own vitality to begin with. All I did was help bring it out. Even if Im
not there, you should be able to make it on your own. 
 To tell you the truth, I thought the same thing until a while ago, the dowager said, giving
a laugh that was best characterized as dry. I was confident that I was a special person. But
time slowly chips away at life. People dont just die when their time comes. They gradually die
away, from the inside. And finally the day comes when you have to settle accounts. Nobody
can escape it. People have to pay the price for what theyve received. I have only just learned
that truth. 
You have to pay the price for what youve received. Aomame frowned. It was the same
line that the NHK collector had spoken.
 On that night in September, when there was the huge thunderstorm, this thought suddenly
came to me, the dowager said. I was in my house, alone in the living room, anxious
about you, watching the flashes of lightning. And a flash of lightning lit up this truth for me,
right in front of my eyes. That night I lost you, I also lost something inside me. Or perhaps
several things. Something central to my existence, the very support for who I am as a person. 
 Was anger a part of this? Aomame ventured.
There was a silence, like after the tide had gone out. Finally the dowager spoke. You
mean was my anger among the things I lost then? Is that what youre asking? 
 Yes. 
The dowager slowly breathed in. The answer to your question is yes. Thats what
happened. In the midst of that tremendous lightning, the seething anger I had had was suddenly
gone at least, it had retreated far away. It was no longer the blazing anger I used to
have. It had transformed into something more like a faintly colored sorrow. I thought such an
intense anger would last forever.… But how do you know this? 
 Because the same thing happened to me, Aomame said, that night when there was all
that thunder. 
 Youre talking about your own anger? 
 Thats right. I cant feel the pure, intense anger I used to have anymore. It hasnt completely
disappeared, but like you said, it has withdrawn to someplace far away. For years this
anger has occupied a large part of me. Its been what has driven me. 
 Like a merciless coachman who never rests, the dowager said. But it has lost power,
and now you are pregnant. Instead of being angry. 
Aomame calmed her breathing. Exactly. Instead of anger, theres a little one inside me.
Something that has nothing to do with anger. And day by day it is growing inside me. 
 I know I dont need to say this, the dowager said, but you need to take every precaution
with it. That is another reason you need to move as soon as possible to a more secure location. 
 I agree, but before that happens, theres something I need to take care of. 
After she hung up, Aomame went out to the balcony, looked down through the plastic slats
at the afternoon road below, and gazed at the playground. Twilight was fast approaching. Before
1Q84 is over, she thought, before they find me, I have to find Tengo.
No matter what it takes.
1Q84
CHAPTER 15
Tengo
NOT SOMETHING
HES ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT
Tengo left the bar, Mugiatama, and wandered the streets, lost in thought. Eventually, he
made up his mind and headed toward the small childrens playground the place where he
had first discovered two moons in the sky. I will climb the slide like last time, he thought, and
look up at the sky once more. He might be able to see the moons from there again. And they
might tell him something.
As he walked, he wondered when exactly he had last visited the playground. He couldnt
recall. The flow of time wasnt uniform anymore, the sense of distance uncertain. But it probably
had been in the early autumn. He remembered wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt. And now
it was December.
A cold wind was blowing the mass of clouds off toward Tokyo Bay. The free-form clouds
looked stiff and hard, as if made of putty. The two moons were visible, occasionally hiding behind
the clouds. The familiar yellow moon, and the new, smaller green moon, both of them
past full, about two-thirds size. The smaller moon was like a child hiding in its mothers skirts.
The moons were in almost the same location as the time he saw them before, as if they had
been patiently waiting for Tengos return.
There was no one else in the playground. The mercury-vapor lamp shone brighter than
before, a cold, harsh light. The bare branches of the zelkova tree reminded him of ancient
white bones. It was the sort of night when you would expect to hear an owl. But there were no
owls to be found in the citys parks. Tengo tugged the hood of his yacht parka over his head
and stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He climbed up the slide, leaned
against the handrail, and gazed up at the two moons as they appeared, then disappeared,
among the clouds. Beyond that, the stars twinkled silently. The amorphous filth that hangs
over the city was blown away in the wind, leaving the air pure and clear.
Right now, how many people besides me have noticed these two moons? Tengo considered
this. Fuka-Eri knew about it, because this was something that she initiated. Most
likely. Other than her, though, nobody he knew had mentioned that the number of moons had
increased. Have people not noticed? Or they dont dare to bring it up in conversation? Is it just
common knowledge? Either way, other than the friend who filled in for him at the cram school,
Tengo hadnt asked anybody about the moons. Actually, he had been careful not to bring it up
in conversation, like it was some morally inappropriate subject.
Why?
Perhaps the moons wanted it that way, Tengo thought. Maybe these two moons are a
special message meant just for me, and I am not permitted to share this information with anyone
else.
But this was a strange way to see it. Why would the number of moons be a personal message?
And what could they be trying to tell him? To Tengo it seemed less a message than a
kind of complicated riddle. And if its a riddle, then who made it? Whos not permitting things?
The wind rushed between the branches of the zelkova tree, making a piercing howl, like
the coldhearted breath leaking out between the teeth of a person who has lost all hope.
Tengo gazed at the moons, not paying much attention to the sound of the wind, sitting there
until his whole body was chilled to the bone. It must have been around fifteen minutes. No,
maybe more. His sense of time had left him. His body, initially warmed by the whiskey, now
felt hard and cold, like a lonely boulder at the bottom of the sea.
The clouds continued to scud off toward the south. No matter how many were blown
away, others appeared to take their place. There was an inexhaustible source of clouds in
some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms,
working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders
make webs, and war makes widows.
Tengo looked at his watch. It was almost eight. The playground was still deserted. Occasionally
people would walk by quickly on the street in front. People who have finished work
and are on the way home all walk the same way. In the new six-story apartment building on
the other side of the street the lights were on in half the units. On windy winter nights, a window
with a light shining in it acquires a gentle warmth. Tengo looked from one lit window to
the next, in order, like looking up at a huge luxury cruise liner from a tiny fishing boat bobbing
in the night sea. As if by prearrangement, all the curtains at the windows were closed. Seen
from a freezing-cold slide in a park at night, they looked like a totally different world a world
founded on different principles, a world that ran by different rules. Beyond those curtains there
must be people living their quite ordinary lives, peaceful and content.
Quite ordinary lives?
The only image that Tengo had of quite ordinary lives was stereotypical, lacking depth and
color. A married couple, probably with two kids. The mother has on an apron. Steam rising
from a bubbling pot, voices around the dining table thats as far as his imagination took him
before plowing into a solid wall. What would a quite ordinary family talk about around the dinner
table? He had no memory himself of ever talking with his father at the dinner table. They
each just stuffed food into their mouths, silently, whenever they felt like it. And what they ate
was hard to call a real meal.
After checking out all the illuminated windows in the building, Tengo again looked up at
the pair of moons. But no matter how long he waited, neither moon said anything to him. Their
faces were expressionless as they floated in the sky beside each other, like a precarious
couplet in need of reworking. Today there was no message. That was the only thing they conveyed
to Tengo.
The clouds swept tirelessly toward the south. All sizes and shapes of clouds appeared,
then disappeared. Some of them had very unusual shapes, as if they had their own unique
thoughts small, hard, clearly etched thoughts. But Tengo wanted to know what the moons
were thinking, not the clouds.
He finally gave up and stood, stretching his arms and legs, then climbed down from the
slide. Thats all I can do. I was able to see that the number of moons hasnt changed, and I
will leave it at that for now. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, left the
playground, and strode back to his apartment. As he walked he suddenly thought of Komatsu.
It was about time for them to talk. He had to sort out, even if just barely, what had transpired
between them. And Komatsu, too, had some things he must need to talk to Tengo about.
Tengo had left the number of the sanatorium in Chikura with Komatsus office, but he had
never heard from him. He would give Komatsu a call tomorrow. Before that, though, he
needed to go to the cram school and read the letter that Fuka-Eri had left for him.
Fuka-Eris letter was in his desk drawer, unopened. For such a tightly sealed envelope, it
was a short letter. On a page and a half of notebook paper, in blue ink, was her writing, that
distinctive cuneiform-like script, the kind of writing that would be more appropriate on a clay
tablet than notebook paper. Tengo knew it must have taken her a long time to write like that.
Tengo read the letter over and over. She had to get out of his place. Right this minute, she
had written, because they were being watched. She had underlined these three places with a
soft, thick pencil. Terribly eloquent underlining.
Who was watching us, and how she knew this about this she said nothing. In the world
that Fuka-Eri lived in, it seemed that facts were not conveyed directly. Like a map showing
buried pirate treasure, things had to be connected through hints and riddles, ellipses and variations.
He had grown used to it and, for the time being, provisionally, accepted whatever
Fuka-Eri announced. When she said that they were being watched, no doubt they actually
were being watched. When she felt that she had to get out, that meant the time had come for
her to leave. The first thing to do was to accept all those statements as one comprehensive
fact. Later on he could discover, or surmise, the background, the details, the basis for these
hypotheses or else just give up on it from the very beginning.
Were being watched.
Did this mean people from Sakigake had found Fuka-Eri? They knew about his relationship
with her. They had uncovered the fact that he was the one, at Komatsus request, who
rewrote Air Chrysalis, which would explain why Ushikawa tried to get closer to Tengo. And if
that was true, then there was a distinct possibility his apartment was under surveillance.
If this was true, though, they were really taking their time. Fuka-Eri had settled down in his
apartment for nearly three months. These were organized people, people with real power and
influence. If they had wanted to, they could have grabbed her anytime. There was no need to
go to all the trouble of putting his apartment under surveillance. And if they really were watching
her, they wouldnt let her just leave.
The more Tengo tried to follow the logic of it, the more confused he got. All he concluded
was that they werent trying to grab Fuka-Eri. Maybe at a certain point they had changed objectives.
They werent after Fuka-Eri, but someone connected to her. For some reason they
no longer viewed Fuka-Eri as a threat to Sakigake. If you accept that, though, then why go to
the trouble of putting Tengos apartment under surveillance?
Tengo used the pay phone at the cram school to call Komatsus office. It was Sunday, but
Tengo knew that he liked to come in and work on the weekend. The office could be a nice
place, he liked to say, if there was nobody else there. But no one answered. Tengo glanced at
his watch. It was eleven a.m., too early for Komatsu to show up at work. He started his day,
and it didnt matter what day of the week it was, after the sun had reached its zenith. Tengo,
on a chair in the cafeteria, sipped the weak coffee and reread the letter from Fuka-Eri. As always
she used hardly any kanji at all, and no paragraphs or punctuation.
Tengo you are back from the cat town and are reading this letter thats good but were being
watched so I have to get out of this place right this minute do not worry about me but I
cant stay here any longer as I said before the person you are looking for is within walking distance
of here but be careful not to let somebody see you
Tengo read this telegram-like letter again three times, then folded it and put it in his pocket.
As before, the more he read it, the more believable her words became. He was being
watched by someone. Now he accepted this as a certainty. He looked up and scanned the
cram school cafeteria. Class was in session so the cafeteria was nearly deserted. A handful
of students were there, studying textbooks or writing in their notebooks. But he didnt spot
anyone in the shadows stealthily spying on him.
A basic question remained: If they werent watching Fuka-Eri, then why would there be
surveillance here? Were they interested in Tengo himself, or was it his apartment? Tengo
considered this. This was all at the level of conjecture. Somehow, he didnt feel he was the
object of their interest. His role in Air Chrysalis was long past.
Fuka-Eri had barely taken a step out of his apartment, so her sense that she was being
watched meant that his apartment was under surveillance. But where could somebody keep
his place under watch? The area where he lived was a crowded urban neighborhood, but
Tengos third-floor apartment was, oddly enough, situated so that it was almost out of anyones
line of sight. That was one of the reasons he liked the place and had lived there so long.
His older girlfriend had liked the apartment for the same reason. Putting aside how the place
looks, she often said, its amazingly tranquil. Much like the person who lives here. 
Just before the sun set each day, a large crow would fly over to his window. This was the
crow Fuka-Eri had talked about on the phone. It settled in the window box and rubbed its
large, jet-black wings against the glass. This was part of the crows daily routine, to rest for a
spell outside his apartment before homing back to its nest. This crow seemed to be curious
about the interior of Tengos apartment. The large, inky eyes on either side of its head shifted
swiftly, gathering information through a gap in the curtain. Crows are highly intelligent animals,
and extremely curious. Fuka-Eri claimed to be able to talk with this crow. Still, it was ridiculous
to think that a crow could be somebodys tool to reconnoiter Tengos apartment.
So how were they watching him?
On the way home from the station Tengo stopped by a supermarket and bought some vegetables,
eggs, milk, and fish. Standing at the entrance to his building, paper bag in hand, he
glanced all around just to make sure. Nothing looked suspicious, the same scene as always the
electric lines hanging in the air like dark entrails; the small front yard, its lawn
withered in the winter cold; the rusty mailboxes. He listened carefully, but all he could hear
was the distinctive, incessant background noise of the city, like the faint hum of wings.
He went into his apartment, put away the food, then went over to the window, drew back
the curtains, and inspected the scene outside. Across the road were three old houses, twostory
homes built on minuscule lots. The owners were all long-term, elderly residents, people
with crabby expressions who loathed any kind of change, so they werent about to welcome a
newcomer to their second floor. Plus, even if someone was on the second floor and leaned
way out the window, all they would be able to see was a glimpse of his ceiling.
Tengo closed the window, boiled water, and made coffee. As he sat at the dining table
and drank it, he considered every scenario he could think of. Someone nearby was keeping
him under watch. And Aomame was (or had been) within walking distance. Was there some
connection between the two? Or was it all mere coincidence? He thought long and hard, but
he couldnt reach a conclusion. His thoughts went around and around, like a poor mouse
stuck in an exitless maze allowed only to smell the cheese.
He gave up thinking about it and glanced through the newspaper he had bought at the
station kiosk. Ronald Reagan, just reelected president that fall, had taken to calling Prime
Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone Yasu, and Nakasone was calling him Ron. It might have been
the way the photo was taken, but the two of them looked like a couple of men in the construction
industry discussing how they were going to switch to cheap, shoddy building material. Riots
in India following the assassination of Indira Gandhi were still ongoing, with Sikhs being
butchered throughout the country. In Japan there was an unprecedented bumper crop of
apples. But nothing in the paper aroused Tengos interest.
He waited until the clock showed two and then called Komatsus office once more.
As always, it took twelve rings before Komatsu picked up. Tengo wasnt sure why, but it
always seemed hard for him to get to the phone.
 Tengo, its been a while, Komatsu said. His voice sounded like the old Komatsu.
Smooth, a bit forced, difficult to pin down.
 I took two weeks off from work and was in Chiba. I just got back last night. 
 You said your father wasnt doing so well. It must have been hard on you. 
 Not really. Hes in a deep coma, so I just spent time with him, gazing at his sleeping face.
The rest of the time I was at the inn, writing. 
 Still, youre talking about a life-or-death situation, so it couldnt have been easy for you. 
Tengo changed the subject. When we talked last, quite a while ago, you mentioned having
to talk with me about something. 
 I remember, Komatsu said. I would like to have a nice long talk with you, if youre free? 
 If its something important, maybe the sooner the better? 
 Yes, sooner is better. 
 Tonight could work for me. 
 That would be fine. Im free tonight, too. Say, seven? 
 Seven it is, Tengo said.
Komatsu told him to meet him in a small bar near his office, a place Tengo had been to a
number of times. Its open on Sundays, Komatsu added, but there are hardly any people
there then. So we can have a nice, quiet talk. 
 Is this going to be a long story? 
Komatsu thought about this. Im not sure. Until I actually tell it to you, I have no idea how
long it will be. 
 Thats all right. Ill be happy to listen. Because were in the same boat together, right? Or
have you changed to another? 
 No, not at all, Komatsu said, his tone more serious. Were still in the same boat. Anyway,
Ill see you at seven. Ill tell you everything then. 
After he hung up, Tengo sat down at his desk, switched on his word processor, and typed
up the story he had written out in fountain pen at the inn in Chikura. As he reread the story, he
pictured the town in his mind: the sanatorium, the faces of the three nurses; the wind from the
sea rustling through the pine trees, the pure white seagulls floating up above. Tengo stood
up, pulled back the curtains, opened the sliding glass door, and deeply inhaled the cold air.
Tengo you are back from the cat town and are reading this letter thats good
So wrote Fuka-Eri in her letter. But this apartment he had returned to was under surveillance.
There could even be a hidden camera right here in the room. Anxious now that he had
thought of this, Tengo scoured every corner of the apartment. But he found no hidden camera,
no electronic bugs. This was, after all, an old, tiny, one-room unit, and anything like that
would be next to impossible to keep hidden.
Tengo kept typing his manuscript until it grew dark. It took him much longer than he expected
because he rewrote parts as he typed. He stopped for a moment to turn on the desk
lamp and realized that the crow hadnt come by today. He could tell when it came by from the
sound, the large wings rubbing against the window. It left behind faint smudge marks on the
glass, like a code waiting to be deciphered.
At five thirty he made a simple dinner. He wasnt that hungry, but he had barely eaten anything
for lunch. Best to get something in my stomach, he figured. He made a tomato and
wakame salad and ate a slice of toast. At six fifteen he pulled on a black, high-neck sweater
and an olive-green corduroy blazer and left the apartment. As he exited the front door he
stopped and looked around again, but nothing caught his eye no man hiding in the shadows
of a telephone pole, no suspicious-looking car parked nearby. Even the crow wasnt there.
But this made Tengo all the more uneasy. All the seemingly benign things around him
seemed to be watching him. Who knew if the people around the housewife with her shopping
basket; the silent old man taking his dog for a walk; the high school students, tennis
rackets slung over their shoulders, pedaling by, ignoring him might be part of a cleverly disguised
Sakigake surveillance team.
Im being paranoid, Tengo told himself. I need to be careful, but its no good to get overly
jumpy. He hurried on toward the station, shooting an occasional glance behind him to make
sure he wasnt being followed. If he was being shadowed, Tengo was sure he would know it.
His peripheral vision was better than most peoples, and he had excellent eyesight. After glancing
back three times, he was certain that there was no one tailing him.
He arrived at the bar at five minutes before seven. Komatsu was not there yet, and Tengo
was the first customer of the evening. A lush arrangement of bright flowers was in a large
vase on the counter and the smell of freshly cut greenery wafted toward him. Tengo sat in a
booth in the back and ordered a draft beer. He took a paperback out of the pocket of his jacket
and began reading.
Komatsu came at seven fifteen. He had on a tweed jacket, a light cashmere sweater, a
cashmere muffler, wool trousers, and suede shoes. His usual outfit. High-quality, tasteful
clothes, nicely worn out. When he wore these, the clothes looked like he had been born in
them. Maybe any new clothes he bought he then slept in and rolled around in. Maybe he
washed them over and over and laid them out to dry in the shade. Only once they were
broken in and faded would he wear them in front of others. At any rate, the clothes did make
him look like a veteran editor. From the way he was dressed, that was the only possible thing
he could be. Komatsu sat down across from Tengo and also ordered a draft beer.
 You seem the same as ever, Komatsu commented. How is the new novel coming? 
 Im getting there, slowly but surely. 
 Im glad to hear it. Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars
endlessly chewing on leaves. Its like I told you taking on the rewrite of Air Chrysalis would
have a good influence on your own writing. Was I right? 
Tengo nodded. You were. Doing that rewrite helped me learn a lot about fiction writing. I
started noticing things I had never noticed before. 
 Not to brag or anything, but I know exactly what you mean. You just needed the right opportunity. 
 But I also had a lot of hard experiences because of it. As you are aware. 
Komatsus mouth curled up neatly in a smile, like a crescent moon in winter. It was the
kind of smile that was hard to read.
 To get something important, people have to pay a price. Thats the rule the world operates
by. 
 You may be right. But I cant tell the difference between whats important and the price
you have to pay. It has all gotten too complicated. 
 Complicated it definitely is. Its like trying to carry on a phone conversation when the
wires are crossed. Absolutely, Komatsu said, frowning. By the way, do you know where
Fuka-Eri is now? 
 I dont know where she is at present, no, Tengo said, choosing his words carefully.
 At present, Komatsu repeated meaningfully.
Tengo said nothing.
 But until a short while ago she was living in your apartment, Komatsu said. At least,
thats what I hear. 
Tengo nodded. Thats right. She was at my place for about three months. 
 Three months is a long time, said Komatsu. And you never told anybody. 
 She told me not to tell anyone, so I didnt. Including you. 
 But now she isnt there anymore. 
 Right. She took off when I was in Chikura, and left behind a letter. I dont know where she
is now. 
Komatsu took out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and lit a match. He narrowed his eyes
and looked at Tengo.
 After she left your place Fuka-Eri went back to Professor Ebisunos house, on top of the
mountain in Futamatao, he said. Professor Ebisuno contacted the police and withdrew the
missing persons report, since she had just gone off on her own and hadnt been kidnapped.
The police must have interviewed her about what happened. She is a minor, after all. I
wouldnt be surprised if theres an article in the paper about it before long, though I doubt it
will say much. Since nothing criminal was involved, apparently. 
 Will it come out that she stayed with me? 
Komatsu shook his head. I dont think Fuka-Eri will mention your name. You know how
she is. It can be the cops shes talking to, the military police, a revolutionary council, or Mother
Teresa once she has decided not to say something, then mums the word. So I wouldnt
let that worry you. 
 Im not worried. I would just like to know how things are going to work out. 
 Whatever happens, your name wont be made public. Rest assured, Komatsu said. His
expression turned serious. But there is something I need to ask you. I hesitate to bring it up. 
 How come? 
 Well, its very personal. 
Tengo took a sip of beer and put the glass back on the table. No problem. If its
something I can answer, I will. 
 Did you and Fuka-Eri have a sexual relationship? While she was staying at your place, I
mean. Just a simple yes or no is fine. 
Tengo paused for a moment and slowly shook his head. The answer is no. I didnt have
that kind of relationship with her. 
Tengo made an instinctive decision that he shouldnt reveal what had taken place
between them on that stormy night. Besides, it wasnt really what you would call a sex act.
There was no sexual desire involved, not in the normal sense. On either side.
 So you didnt have a sexual relationship. 
 We didnt, Tengo said, his voice dry.
Komatsu scrunched up his nose. Tengo, Im not doubting you. But you did hesitate before
you replied. Maybe something close to sex happened? Im not blaming you. Im just trying to
ascertain certain facts. 
Tengo looked straight into Komatsus eyes. I wasnt hesitating. I just felt weird, wondering
why in the world you were so concerned about whether Fuka-Eri and I had a sexual relationship.
Youre usually not the type to stick your head into other peoples private lives. You avoid
that. 
 I suppose, Komatsu said.
 Then why are you bringing something like that up now? 
 Who you sleep with or what Fuka-Eri does is basically none of my business. Komatsu
scratched the side of his nose. As you have pointed out. But as you are well aware, Fuka-Eri
isnt just some ordinary girl. How should I put it? Every action she takes is significant. 
 Significant, Tengo repeated.
 Logically speaking, all the actions that everybody takes have a certain significance, Komatsu
said. But in Fuka-Eris case they have a deeper meaning. Something about her is different
that way. So we need to be certain of whatever facts we can. 
 By we, who do you mean, exactly? Tengo asked.
Komatsu looked uncharacteristically nonplussed. Truth be told, its not me who wants to
know whether the two of you had a sexual relationship, but Professor Ebisuno. 
 So Professor Ebisuno knows that Fuka-Eri stayed at my apartment? 
 Of course. He knew that the first day she showed up at your place. Fuka-Eri told him
where she was. 
 I had no idea, Tengo said, surprised. She had told him she hadnt revealed to anyone
where she was. Not that it mattered much now. Theres one thing I just dont get. Professor
Ebisuno is her legal guardian and protector, so you would expect him to pay attention to
things like that. But in the crazy situation were in now you would think his top priority would
be to make sure shes safe not whether shes staying chaste or not. 
Komatsu raised one corner of his lips. I dont really know the background. He just asked
me to find out to see you and ask whether the two of you had a physical relationship. That is
why I asked you this, and the answer was no. 
 Thats correct. Fuka-Eri and I did not have a physical relationship, Tengo said firmly,
gazing steadily into Komatsus eyes. Tengo didnt feel like he was lying.
 Good, then, Komatsu said. He put another Marlboro between his lips, and lit a match.
 Thats all I need to know. 
 Fuka-Eri is an attractive girl, no question about it, Tengo said. But as you are well
aware, I have gotten mixed up in something quite serious, unwillingly. I dont want things to
get any more complicated than they are. Besides, I was seeing somebody. 
 I understand perfectly, Komatsu said. I know youre a very clever person when it comes
to things like that, with a very mature way of thinking. I will tell Professor Ebisuno what you
said. Im sorry I had to ask you. Dont let it bother you. 
 It doesnt especially bother me. I just thought it was strange, why such a thing like that
would come up at this point. Tengo paused for a moment. What was it you wanted to tell
me? 
Komatsu had finished his beer and ordered a Scotch highball from the bartender.
 Whats your pleasure? he asked Tengo.
 Ill have the same, Tengo said.
Two highballs in tall glasses were brought over to their table.
 Well, first of all, Komatsu began after a long silence, I think that as much as possible we
need to unravel some things about the situation that weve gotten entangled in. After all, were
all in the same boat. By we I mean the four of us you, me, Fuka-Eri, and Professor
Ebisuno. 
 A very interesting group, Tengo said, but his sarcasm didnt seem to register with Komatsu.
Komatsu went on. I think each of the four of us had his own expectation regarding this
plan, and were not all on the same level, or moving in the same direction. To put it another
way, we werent all rowing our oars at the same rhythm and at the same angle. 
 This isnt the sort of group you would expect to be able to work well together. 
 That might be true. 
 And our boat was headed down the rapids toward a waterfall. 
 Our boat was indeed headed down the rapids toward a waterfall, Komatsu admitted. Im
not trying to make excuses, but from the start this was an extremely simple plan. We fool
everybody, we make a bit of money. Half for laughs, half for profit. That was our goal. But
ever since Professor Ebisuno got involved, the plot has thickened. A number of complicated
subplots lie just below the surface of the water, and the water is picking up speed. Your reworking
of the novel far exceeded my expectations, thanks to which the book got great reviews
and had amazing sales. And then this took our boat off to an unexpected place a
somewhat perilous place. 
Tengo shook his head slightly. Its not a somewhat perilous place. Its an extremely dangerous
place. 
 You could be right. 
 Dont act like this doesnt concern you. Youre the one who came up with this idea in the
first place. 
 Granted. Im the one who had the idea and pushed the start button. Things went well at
first, but unfortunately as it progressed I lost control. I do feel responsible for it, believe me.
Especially about getting you involved, since I basically forced you into it. But its time for us to
stop, take stock of where we are, and come up with a plan of action. 
After getting all this out, Komatsu took a breath and drank his highball. He picked up the
glass ashtray and, like a blind man feeling an object all over to understand what it is, carefully
ran his long fingers over the surface.
 To tell you the truth, he finally said, I was imprisoned for seventeen or eighteen days
somewhere. From the end of August to the middle of September. The day it happened I was
in my neighborhood, in the early afternoon, on my way to work. I was on the road to the Gotokuji
Station. This large black car stopped beside me and the window slid down and
someone called my name. I went over, wondering who it could be, when two men leapt out of
the car and dragged me inside. Both of them were extremely powerful. One pinned my arms
back, and the other put chloroform or something up to my nose. Just like in a movie, huh? But
that stuff really does the trick, believe me. When I came to, I was being held in a tiny, windowless
room. The walls were white, and it was like a cube. There was a small bed and a small
wooden desk, but no chair. I was lying on the bed. 
 You were kidnapped? Tengo asked.
Komatsu finished his inspection of the ashtray, returned it to the table, and looked up at
Tengo. Thats right. A real kidnapping. Like in that old movie, The Collector. I dont imagine
most people in the world ever think they will end up kidnapped. The idea never occurs to
them. Right? But when they kidnap you, believe me, youre kidnapped. Its kind of how shall
I put it? surreal. You cant believe you are actually being kidnapped by someone. Could you
believe it? 
Komatsu stared at Tengo, as if looking for a reply. But it was a rhetorical question. Tengo
was silent, waiting for him to continue. He hadnt touched his highball. Beads of moisture had
formed on the outside, wetting the coaster.
1Q84
CHAPTER 16
Ushikawa
A CAPABLE, PATIENT, UNFEELING MACHINE
The next morning Ushikawa again took a seat by the window and continued his surveillance
through a gap in the curtain. Nearly the same lineup of people who had come back to
the apartment building the night before, or at least people who looked the same, were now
exiting. Their faces were still grim, their shoulders hunched over. A new day had barely begun
and yet they already looked fed up and exhausted. Tengo wasnt among them, but Ushikawa
went ahead and snapped photos of each and every face that passed by. He had plenty of film
and it was good practice so he could be more efficient at stealthily taking photos.
When the morning rush had passed and he saw that everyone who was going out had
done so, he left the apartment and slipped into a nearby phone booth. He dialed the Yoyogi
cram school and asked to speak with Tengo.
 Mr. Kawana has been on leave for the last ten days, said the woman who answered the
phone.
 I hope hes not ill? 
 No, someone in his family is, so he went to Chiba. 
 Do you know when he will be back? 
 Im afraid I havent asked him that, the woman said.
Ushikawa thanked her and hung up.
Tengos family, as far as Ushikawa knew, meant just his father the father who used to be
an NHK fee collector. Tengo still didnt know anything about his mother. And as far as Ushikawa
was aware, Tengo and his father had always had a bad relationship. Yet Tengo had
taken more than ten days off from work in order to take care of his sick father. Ushikawa
found this hard to swallow. How could Tengos antagonism for his father soften so quickly?
What sort of illness did his father have, and where in Chiba was he in the hospital? There
should be ways of finding out, though it would take at least a half a day to do so. And he
would have to put his surveillance on hold while he did.
Ushikawa wasnt sure what to do. If Tengo was away from Tokyo, then it was pointless to
stake out this building. It might be smarter to take a break from surveillance and search in another
direction. He should find out where Tengos father was a patient, or investigate
Aomames background. He could meet her classmates and colleagues from her college days
and from the company she used to work for, and gather more personal information. Who
knows but this might provide some new clues.
But after mulling it over, he decided to stay put and continue watching the apartment building.
First, if he suspended his surveillance at this point, it would put a crimp in the daily rhythm
he had established, and he would have to start again from scratch. Second, even if he located
Tengos father, and learned more about Aomames friendships, the payoff might not be worth
the trouble. Pounding the pavement on an investigation can be productive up to a point, but
oddly, once you pass that point, nothing much comes of it. He knew this through experience.
Third, his intuition told him, in no uncertain terms, to stay put to stay right where he was,
watch all the faces that passed by, and let nothing get by him.
So he decided that, with or without Tengo, he would continue to stake out the building. If
he stayed put, by the time Tengo came back Ushikawa would know each and every face.
Once he knew all the residents, then he would know in a glance if someone was new to the
building. Im a carnivore, Ushikawa thought. And carnivores have to be forever patient. They
have to blend in with their surroundings and know everything about their prey.
Just before noon, when the foot traffic in and out of the building was at its most sparse,
Ushikawa left the apartment. He tried to disguise himself a bit, wearing a knit cap and a
muffler pulled up to his nose, but still he couldnt help but draw attention to himself. The beige
knit cap perched on top of his huge head like a mushroom cap. The green muffler looked like
a big snake coiled around him. Trying a disguise didnt work. Besides, the cap and muffler
clashed horribly.
Ushikawa stopped by the film lab near the station and dropped off two rolls of film to be
developed. Then he went to a soba noodle shop and ordered a bowl of soba noodles with
tempura. It had been a while since he had had a hot meal. He savored the tempura noodles
and drank down the last drop of broth. By the time he finished he was so hot he had started to
perspire. He put on his knit cap, wrapped the muffler around his neck again, and walked back
to the apartment. As he smoked a cigarette, he lined up all the photos that he had had printed
on the floor. He collated the photos of people going out in the morning and the ones of people
coming back, and if any matched he put them together. In order to easily distinguish them, he
made up names for each person, and wrote the names on the photos with a felt-tip pen.
Once the morning rush hour was over, hardly any residents left the building. One young
man a college student, by the looks of him hurried out around ten a.m., a bag slung over
his shoulder. An old woman around seventy and a woman in her mid-thirties also went out but
then returned lugging bags of groceries from a supermarket. Ushikawa took their photos as
well. During the morning the mailman came and sorted the mail into the various mailboxes at
the entrance. A deliveryman with a cardboard box came in and left, empty-handed, five
minutes later.
Once an hour Ushikawa left his camera and did some stretching for five minutes. During
that interval his surveillance was put on hold, but he knew from the start that total coverage by
one person was impossible. It was more important to make sure his body didnt get numb. His
muscles would start to atrophy and then he wouldnt be able to react quickly if need be. Like
Gregor Samsa when he turned into a beetle, he deftly stretched his rotund, misshapen body
on the floor, working the kinks out of his tight muscles.
He listened to AM radio with an earphone to keep from getting bored. Most of the daytime
programs appealed to housewives and elderly listeners. The people who appeared on the
programs told jokes that fell flat, pointlessly burst out laughing, gave their moronic, hackneyed
opinions, and played music so awful you felt like covering your ears. Periodically they gave
blaring sales pitches for products no one could possibly want. At least this is how it all sounded
to Ushikawa. But he wanted to hear peoples voices, so he endured listening to the inane
programs, wondering all the while why people would produce such idiotic shows and go to the
trouble of using the airwaves to disseminate them.
Not that Ushikawa himself was involved in an operation that was so lofty and productive hiding
behind the curtains in a cheap one-room apartment, secretly snapping photos of
people. He couldnt very well criticize the actions of others.
It was not just now, either. Back when he was a lawyer it was the same. He couldnt remember
having done anything that helped society. His biggest clients ran small and medium-sized
financial firms and had ties to organized crime. Ushikawa created the most efficient
ways to disperse their profits and made all the arrangements. Basically, it was money laundering.
He was also involved in land sharking: when investors had their eyes on an area, he
helped drive out longtime residents so they could knock down their houses and sell the remaining
large lot to condo builders. Huge amounts of money rolled in. The same type of
people were involved in this as well. He also specialized in defending people brought up on
tax-evasion charges. Most of the clients were suspicious characters that an ordinary lawyer
would hesitate to have anything to do with. But as long as a client wanted him to represent
him and as long as a certain amount of money changed hands Ushikawa never hesitated.
He was a skilled lawyer, with a decent track record, so he never hurt for business. His relationship
with Sakigake began in the same way. For whatever reason, Leader took a personal
liking to him.
If he had followed the path that ordinary lawyers take, Ushikawa would probably have
found it hard to earn a living. He had passed the bar exam not long after he left college, and
he had become a lawyer, but he had no connections or influential backers. With his looks, no
prestigious law firm would ever hire him, so if he had stayed on a straight and narrow path he
would have had very few clients. There cant be many people in the world who would go out
of their way to hire a lawyer who looked as unappealing as Ushikawa, plus pay the high fees
involved. The blame might lie with TV law dramas, which have conditioned people to expect
lawyers to be both bright and attractive.
So as time went on, Ushikawa became linked with the underworld. People in the underworld
didnt care about his looks. In fact, his peculiar appearance was one element that
helped them trust and accept him, since neither of them were accepted by the ordinary world.
They recognized his quick mind, his practical abilities, his eloquence. They put him in charge
of moving vast sums of money (a task they couldnt openly undertake), and compensated him
generously. Ushikawa quickly learned the ropes how to evade the authorities while still doing
what was barely legal. His intuitiveness and strong will were a big help. Unfortunately,
though, he got too greedy, made some assumptions he shouldnt have, and went over the
line. He avoided criminal punishment barely but was expelled from the Tokyo Bar Association.
Ushikawa switched off the radio and smoked a Seven Stars. He breathed the smoke deep
into his lungs, then leisurely exhaled. He used an empty can of peaches as an ashtray. If he
went on like this, he would probably die a miserable death. Before long he would make a false
step and fall alone in some dark place. Even if I left this world, I doubt anyone would notice. I
would shout out from the dark, but no one would hear me. Still, I have to keep soldiering on
until I die, the only way I know how. Not a laudable sort of life, but the only life I know how to
live. And when it came to not very laudable things, Ushikawa was more capable than almost
anyone.
At two thirty a young woman wearing a baseball cap exited the building. She had no bags
with her and quickly strode across Ushikawas line of sight. He hurriedly pushed the motor
drive switch in his hand and got off three quick shots. It was the first time he had seen her.
She was a beautiful young girl, thin and long limbed with wonderful posture, like a ballerina.
She looked about sixteen or seventeen and had on faded jeans, white sneakers, and a mans
leather jacket. Her hair was tucked into the collar of the jacket. After leaving the building the
girl took a couple of steps, then stopped, frowned, and looked intently up above the electric
pole in front. She then lowered her gaze to the ground and started off again. She turned left
and disappeared from Ushikawas sight.
That girl looks like somebody, he thought. Somebody he knew, that he had seen recently.
With her looks she might be a TV personality. Ushikawa never watched anything on TV but
news, and had never been interested in cute girl TV stars.
Ushikawa pushed his memory accelerator to the floor and shifted his brain into high gear.
He narrowed his eyes and squeezed his brain cells hard, like wringing out a dishrag. His
nerves ached painfully with the effort. And suddenly it came to him: that somebody was none
other than Eriko Fukada. He had never seen her in person, only a photo of her in the literary
column of the papers. But the sense of aloof transparency that hung over her was exactly the
same impression he had gotten from the tiny black-and-white photo of her in the paper. She
and Tengo must have met each other during the rewriting of Air Chrysalis. It was entirely possible
that she had grown fond of Tengo and was lying low in his apartment.
Almost without thinking, Ushikawa grabbed his knit cap, yanked on his navy-blue pea
coat, and wrapped his muffler around his neck. He left the building and trotted off in the direction
he had last seen her.
She was a very fast walker. It might be impossible to catch up with her, he thought. But
she was carrying nothing, which meant she wasnt going far. Instead of shadowing her and
risking drawing her attention, wouldnt it make more sense to wait patiently for her to return?
Ushikawa pondered this, but couldnt stop following her. The girl had a certain illogical
something that shook him. The same feeling as the moment at twilight when a mysteriously
colored beam of light conjures up a special memory.
After a while he spotted her. Fuka-Eri had stopped in front of a tiny stationery store and
was peering intently inside, where something had undoubtedly caught her interest. Ushikawa
casually turned his back on her and stood in front of a vending machine. He took some coins
out and bought a can of hot coffee.
Finally the girl took off again. Ushikawa laid the half-finished can of coffee at his feet and
followed her at a safe distance. The girl seemed to be concentrating very hard on the act of
walking, as if she were gliding across the surface of a placid lake. Walk in this special way,
and you wont sink or get your shoes wet. It was as if she had grasped the key to doing this.
There was something different about this girl. She had a special something most people
didnt. Ushikawa didnt know a lot about Eriko Fukada. From what he had gathered, she was
Leaders only daughter, had run away from Sakigake at age ten, had grown up in the household
of a well-known scholar named Professor Ebisuno, and had written a novel entitled Air
Chrysalis, which was reworked by Tengo Kawana and became a bestseller. But she was supposedly
missing now a missing persons report had been filed with the police, and the police
had searched Sakigake headquarters not long ago.
The contents of Air Chrysalis were problematic for Sakigake, it appeared. Ushikawa had
bought the novel and read through it carefully, though which parts were troublesome, and for
what reason, he had no idea. He found the novel fascinating and well written. But to him, it
seemed a harmless work of fantasy and he was sure the rest of the world must agree. Little
People emerge from a goats mouth, create an air chrysalis, the main character splits into
maza and dohta, and there are two moons. So where in the midst of this fantastical story are
there elements that would damage Sakigake if they came out?
But when Eriko Fukada was in the public eye, it would have been too risky to take any action
against her. Which is why, Ushikawa surmised, they wanted him to approach Tengo. In
Ushikawas view Tengo was a mere bit player in the bigger scheme of things. Ushikawa still
couldnt grasp why they were so fixated on Tengo. But as Ushikawa was just a foot soldier in
these operations, he had to unquestioningly follow orders. The problem was, Tengo had
quickly rejected the generous proposal that Ushikawa had worked hard to create, and the
plan he had made to forge a connection with Tengo had come to a screeching halt. Right
when he had been trying to think of another approach, Eriko Fukadas father, Leader, had
died, and things were left as they were.
So Ushikawa was in the dark regarding Sakigakes focus. He didnt even know who was in
charge now that they had lost Leader. In any case, they were trying to locate Aomame, find
out why Leader had been murdered, and who was behind it. No doubt they would mete out
some pretty harsh punishment on whoever had done it. And they were determined not to get
the law involved.
So what about Eriko Fukada? What was Sakigakes take now on Air Chrysalis? Did they
still view the book as a threat?
Eriko Fukada didnt slow down or turn around, like a homing pigeon heading straight to
her goal. He soon determined that that goal was a midsized supermarket, the Marusho. Shopping
basket in hand, Fuka-Eri went from one aisle to another, selecting various canned and
fresh foods. Just selecting a single head of lettuce took time, as she examined it from every
possible angle. This is going to take a while, Ushikawa thought. He left the supermarket, went
across the street to a bus stop, and pretended to be waiting for a bus while he kept an eye on
the stores entrance.
But no matter how long he waited, the girl didnt emerge. Ushikawa started to get worried.
Maybe she had left by another exit? As far as he could tell, though, the market had only the
one door, facing the main street. Probably shopping was just taking time for her. Ushikawa recalled
the serious, strangely depthless eyes of the girl as she contemplated heads of lettuce
and decided to sit tight. Three buses came and went. Each time Ushikawa was the only one
left behind. He regretted not having brought a newspaper. He could have hidden behind it.
When you are shadowing someone a newspaper or magazine is an absolute must. But there
was nothing he could do he had dropped everything and rushed out of the apartment emptyhanded.
When Fuka-Eri finally emerged, his watch showed 3:35. The girl didnt glance his way but
marched off in the direction from which she had come. Ushikawa let some time pass and then
set off in pursuit. The two shopping bags she carried looked heavy, but she carried them
lightly, tripping down the street like a water skipper skimming across a puddle.
What an odd young woman, Ushikawa thought again as he kept her in sight. Its like
watching some rare exotic butterfly. Pleasant to watch, but you cant touch it, for as soon as
you do, it dies, its brilliance gone. That would put an end to his exotic dream.
Ushikawa quickly calculated whether it made sense to let the Sakigake duo know he had
discovered Fuka-Eris whereabouts. It was a tough decision. If he did tell them he had located
her, he would definitely score some points. At the very least, it wouldnt hurt his standing with
them he could show them he was making decent progress. But if he got too involved with
Fuka-Eri, he might very well miss the chance to find the real object of his search, Aomame.
That would be a disaster. So what should he do? He stuffed his hands deep into the pockets
of his pea coat, pulled the muffler up to his nose, and continued following her, keeping a
longer distance between them than before.
Maybe Im only following her because I wanted to see her. The thought suddenly occurred
to him. Just watching her stride along the road, bags of groceries clutched to her, made his
chest grow tight. Like a person hemmed in between two walls, he could go neither forward
nor back. His breathing turned ragged and forced, and he found it almost impossible to
breathe, like he was caught up in a tepid blast of wind. A thoroughly strange feeling he had
never experienced.
At any rate, Ill let her go for a while. Ill stick to the original plan and focus on Aomame.
Aomame is a murderer. It doesnt matter what reason she may have had for doing it she deserves
to be punished. Turning her over to Sakigake didnt bother him. But this young girl was
different. She was a quiet little creature living deep in the woods, with pale wings like the
shadow of a spirit. Just observe her from a distance, he decided.
Ushikawa waited a while after Fuka-Eri had disappeared into the entrance of the apartment,
grocery bags in hand, before he went in. He went to his room, took off his muffler and
cap, and plopped back down in front of the camera. His cheeks were cold from the wind. He
smoked a cigarette and drank some mineral water. His throat felt parched, as if he had eaten
something very spicy.
Twilight fell, streetlights snapped on, and it was getting near the time people would be
coming home. Still wearing his pea coat, Ushikawa held the remote control for the shutter and
intently watched the entrance to the building. As the memory of the afternoon sunlight faded,
his empty room rapidly grew chilly. It looked like tonight would be much colder than last night.
Ushikawa considered going to the discount electrical goods store in front of the station and
buying an electric space heater or electric blanket.
Eriko Fukada came out of the entrance again at four forty-five. She had on the same black
turtleneck sweater and jeans, but no leather jacket. The tight sweater revealed the swell of
her breasts. She had generous breasts for such a slim girl. Ushikawa watched this lovely
swelling through his viewfinder, and as he did again he felt the same tightness and difficulty
breathing.
Since she wasnt wearing a jacket, she couldnt be going far. As before, she stopped at
the entrance, narrowed her eyes, and looked up above the electric pole in front. It was getting
dark, but if you squinted you could make out the outlines of things. She stood there for a while
as if searching for something. But she apparently didnt find what she was looking for. She
gave up looking above the pole and, like a bird, twisted her head and gazed at her surroundings.
Ushikawa pushed the remote button and snapped photos of her.
As if she had heard the sound of the shutter, Fuka-Eri turned to look right in the direction
of the camera. Through the viewfinder Ushikawa and Fuka-Eri were face-to-face. Ushikawa
could see her face quite clearly. He was looking through a telephoto lens, after all. On the other
end of the lens, though, Fuka-Eri was staring steadily right at him. Deep within the lens,
she could see him. Ushikawas face was clearly reflected within those soft, jet-black eyes. He
found it strange that they were directly in touch like this. He swallowed. This cant be real.
From where she is, she cant see anything. The telephoto lens is camouflaged, the sound of
the shutter dampened by the towel wrapped around it, so theres no way she could hear it
from where she is. Still, there she stood at the entrance, staring right at where he was hiding.
That emotionless gaze of hers was unwavering as it stared straight at Ushikawa, like starlight
shining on a nameless, massive rock.
For a long time Ushikawa had no idea just how long the two of them stared at each
other. Suddenly Fuka-Eri twisted around and strode through the entrance, as if she had seen
all that she needed to see. After she disappeared, Ushikawa let all the air out of his lungs,
waited a moment, then breathed fresh air in deeply. The chilled air became countless thorns,
stinging his lungs.
People were coming back, just like last night, passing under the light at the entrance, one
after another. Ushikawa, though, was no longer gazing through his viewfinder. His hand was
no longer holding the shutter remote. The girls open, unreserved gaze had plucked the
strength right out of him as if a long steel needle had been stabbed right into his chest, so
deep it felt like it was coming out the other side.
The girl knew that he was secretly watching her, that she was being photographed by a
hidden camera. He couldnt say how, but Fuka-Eri knew this. Maybe she understood it
through some special tactile sense she possessed.
He really needed a drink, to fill a glass of whiskey to the brim and drink it down in one
gulp. He considered going out to buy a bottle. There was a liquor store right nearby. But he
gave it up drinking wouldnt change anything. On the other side of the viewfinder, she had
seen him. That beautiful girl saw me, my misshapen head and dirty spirit, hiding here, secretly
snapping photos. Nothing could change that fact.
Ushikawa left his camera, leaned back against the wall, and looked up at the stained ceiling.
Soon everything struck him as empty. He had never felt so utterly alone, never felt the
dark to be this intense. He remembered his house back in Chuorinkan, his lawn and his dog,
his wife and two daughters, the sunlight shining there. And he thought of the DNA he had given
to his daughters, the DNA for a misshapen head and a twisted soul.
Everything he had done seemed pointless. He had used up all the cards hed been
dealt not that great a hand to begin with. He had taken that lousy hand and used it as best
he could to make some clever bets. For a time things looked like they were going to work out,
but now he had run out of cards. The light at the table was switched off, and all the players
had filed out of the room.
That evening he didnt take a single photo. Leaning against the wall, he smoked Seven
Stars, and opened another can of peaches and ate it. At nine he went to the bathroom,
brushed his teeth, tugged off his clothes, slipped into the sleeping bag, and, shivering, tried to
sleep. The night was cold, but his shivering wasnt just brought on by the cold alone. The chill
seemed to be arising from inside his body. Where in the world did I come from? he asked
himself in the dark. And where the hell am I going?
The pain of her gaze still stabbed at him. Maybe it would never go away. Or was it always
there, he wondered, and I just didnt notice it?
The next morning, after a breakfast of cheese and crackers washed down by instant coffee,
he pulled himself together and sat back down in front of the camera. As he did the day
before, he observed the people coming and going and took a few photos. Tengo and FukaEri,
though, were not among them. Instead it was more hunched-over people, carried by force
of habit into the new day. The weather was fine, the wind strong. Peoples white breath
swirled away in the air.
Im not going to think of anything superfluous, Ushikawa decided. Be thick-skinned, have a
hard shell around my heart, take one day at a time, go by the book. Im just a machine. A capable,
patient, unfeeling machine. A machine that draws in new time through one end, then
spits out old time from the other end. It exists in order to exist. He needed to revert back again
to that pure, unsullied cycle that perpetual motion that would one day come to an end. He
pumped up his willpower and put a cap on his emotions, trying to rid his mind of the image of
Fuka-Eri. The pain in his chest from her sharp gaze felt better now, little more than an occasional
dull ache. Good. Cant ask for more. Im a simple system again, he told himself, a
simple system with complex details.
Before noon he went to the discount store near the station and bought a small electric
space heater. He then went to the same noodle place he had been to before, opened his
newspaper, and ate an order of hot tempura soba. Before going back to his apartment he
stood at the entrance and gazed above the electric pole at the spot Fuka-Eri had been so focused
on yesterday, but he found nothing to draw his attention. All that was there were a
transformer and thick black electric lines entwined like snakes. What could she have been
looking at? Or was she looking for something?
Back in his room, he switched on the space heater. An orange light flickered into life and
he felt an intimate warmth on his skin. It was not enough to fully heat the place, but it was
much better than nothing. Ushikawa leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and took a short
nap in a tiny spot of sunlight. A dreamless sleep, a pure blank in time.
He was pulled out of this happy, deep sleep by the sound of a knock. Someone was
knocking on his door. He bolted awake and gazed around him, unsure for a moment of his
surroundings. He spotted the Minolta single-lens reflex camera on a tripod and remembered
he was in a room in an apartment in Koenji. Someone was pounding with his fist on the door.
As he hurriedly scraped together his consciousness, Ushikawa thought it was odd that
someone would knock on the door. There was a doorbell all you had to do was push the
button. It was simple enough. Still this person insisted on knocking pounding it for all he was
worth, actually. Ushikawa frowned and checked his watch. One forty-five. One forty-five p.m.,
obviously. It was still light outside.
He didnt answer the door. Nobody knew he was here, and he wasnt expecting any visitors.
It must be a salesman, or someone selling newspaper subscriptions. Whoever it was
might need him, but he certainly didnt need them. Leaning against the wall, he glared at the
door and maintained his silence. The person would surely give up after a time and go away.
But he didnt. He would pause, then start knocking once more. A barrage of knocks, nothing
for ten or fifteen seconds, then a new round. These were firm knocks, nothing hesitant
about them, each knock almost unnaturally the same as the next. From start to finish they
were demanding a response from Ushikawa. He grew uneasy. Was the person on the other
side of the door maybe Eriko Fukada? Coming to complain to him about his despicable behavior,
secretly photographing people? His heart started to pound. He licked his lips with his
thick tongue. But the banging against this steel door could only be that of a grown mans fist,
not that of a girls.
Or had she informed somebody else of what Ushikawa was up to, and that person was
outside the door? Somebody from the rental agency, or maybe the police? That couldnt be
good. But the rental agent would have a master key and could let himself in, and the police
would announce themselves. And neither one would bang on the door like this. They would
simply ring the bell.
 Mr. Kozu, a man called out. Mr. Kozu! 
Ushikawa remembered that Kozu was the name of the previous resident of the apartment.
His name remained on the mailbox. Ushikawa preferred it that way. The man outside must
think Mr. Kozu still lived here.
 Mr. Kozu, the man intoned. I know youre in there. I can sense youre holed up inside,
trying to stay perfectly quiet. 
A middle-aged mans voice, not all that loud, but slightly hoarse. At the core his voice had
a hardness to it, the hardness of a brick fired in a kiln and carefully allowed to dry. Perhaps
because of this, his voice echoed throughout the building.
 Mr. Kozu, Im from NHK. Ive come to collect your monthly subscription fee. So I would
appreciate it if youd open the door. 
Ushikawa wasnt planning to pay any NHK subscription fee. It might be faster, he thought,
to just let the man in and show him the place. Tell him, look, no TV, right? But if he saw Ushikawa,
with his odd features, shut up alone in an apartment in the middle of the day without a
stick of furniture, he couldnt help but be suspicious.
 Mr. Kozu, people who have TVs have to pay the subscription fee. Thats the law. Some
people say they never watch NHK, so theyre not going to pay. But that argument doesnt hold
water. Whether you watch NHK or not, if you have a TV you have to pay. 
So its just a fee collector. Let him get it out of his system. Dont respond, and hell go
away. But how could he be so sure theres someone in this apartment? After he came back
an hour or so ago, Ushikawa hadnt been out again. He hardly made a sound, and he always
kept the curtains closed.
 Mr. Kozu, I know very well that you are in there, the man said, as if reading Ushikawas
thoughts. You must think it strange that I know that. But I do know it that youre in there.
You dont want to pay the NHK fee, so youre trying to not make a sound. Im perfectly aware
of this. 
The homogeneous knocks started up again. There would be a slight pause, like a wind instrument
player pausing to take a breath, then once more the pounding would start, the
rhythm unchanged.
 I get it, Mr. Kozu. You have decided to ignore me. Fine. Ill leave today. I have other
things to do. But Ill be back. Mark my words. If I say Ill be back, you can count on it. Im not
your average fee collector. I never give up until I get what is coming to me. I never waver from
that. Its like the phases of the moon, or life and death. There is no escape. 
A long silence followed. Just when Ushikawa thought he might be gone, the collector
spoke up again.
 Ill be back soon, Mr. Kozu. Look forward to it. When youre least expecting it, there will
be a knock on the door. Bang bang! And that will be me. 
No more knocks now. Ushikawa listened intently. He thought he heard footsteps fading
down the corridor. He quickly went over to his camera and fixed his gaze on the entrance to
the apartment. The fee collector should finish his business in the building soon and be leaving.
He had to check and see what sort of man he was. NHK collectors wear uniforms, so he
should be able to spot him right away. But maybe he wasnt really from NHK. Maybe he was
pretending to be one to try to get Ushikawa to open the door. Either way, he had to be
someone Ushikawa had never seen before. The remote for the shutter in his right hand, he
waited expectantly for a likely-looking person to appear.
For the next thirty minutes, though, no one came into or out of the building. Eventually a
middle-aged woman he had seen a number of times emerged and pedaled off on her bike.
Ushikawa had dubbed her Chin Lady because of the ample flesh dangling below her chin. A
half an hour later Chin Lady returned, a shopping bag in the basket of her bike. She parked
her bike in the bike parking area and went into the building, bag in hand. After this, a boy in
elementary school came home. Ushikawas name for him was Fox, since his eyes slanted
upward. But no one who could have been the fee collector appeared. Ushikawa was puzzled.
The building had only one way in and out, and he had kept his eyes glued to the entrance
every second. If the collector hadnt come out, that could only mean he was still inside.
He continued to watch the entrance without a break. He didnt go to the bathroom. The
sun set, it grew dark, and the light at the entrance came on. But still no fee collector. After six,
Ushikawa gave up. He went to the bathroom and let out all the pee he had been holding in.
The man was definitely still in the building. Why, he didnt know. It didnt make any sense. But
that weird fee collector had decided to stay put.
The wind, colder now, whined through the frozen electric lines. Ushikawa turned on the
space heater, and as he smoked a cigarette he tried to make sense of it all. Why did the man
have to speak in such an aggressive, challenging tone? Why was he so positive that
someone was inside the apartment? And why hadnt he left the building? If he hasnt left here,
then where is he?
Ushikawa left the camera, leaned against the wall, and stared for the longest time at the
orange filament of the space heater.
1Q84
CHAPTER 17
Aomame
I ONLY HAVE ONE PAIR OF EYES
It was a windy Saturday, nearly eight p.m., when the phone rang. Aomame was wearing a
down jacket, a blanket on her lap, sitting on the balcony. Through a gap in the screen, she
kept an eye on the slide in the playground, which was illuminated by the mercury-vapor lamp.
Her hands were under the blanket so they wouldnt get numb. The deserted slide looked like
the skeleton of some huge animal that had died in the Ice Age.
Sitting outside on a cold night might not be good for the baby, but Aomame decided it
wasnt cold enough to present a problem. No matter how cold you may be on the outside, amniotic
fluid maintained nearly the same temperature as blood. There are plenty of places in
the world way colder and harsher, she concluded. And women keep on having babies, even
there. But above all, this cold was something she felt she had to endure if she wanted to see
Tengo again.
As always, the large yellow moon and its smaller green companion floated in the winter
sky. Clouds of assorted sizes and shapes scudded swiftly across the sky. The clouds were
white and dense, their outlines sharply etched, and they looked to her like hard blocks of ice
floating down a snowmelt river to the sea. As she watched the clouds, appearing from somewhere
only to disappear again, Aomame felt she had been transported to a spot near the
edge of the world. This was the northern frontier of reason. There was nothing north of
here only the chaos of nothingness.
The sliding glass door was open just a crack, so the ringing phone sounded faint, and
Aomame was lost in thought, but she didnt miss the sound. The phone rang three times,
stopped, then twenty seconds later rang one more time. It had to be Tamaru. She threw aside
the blanket, slid open the cloudy glass door, and went inside. It was dark inside and the heat
was at a comfortable level. Her fingers still cold, she lifted the receiver.
 Still reading Proust? 
 But not making much progress, Aomame replied. It was like an exchange of passwords.
 You dont like it? 
 Its not that. How should I put it its a story about a different place, somewhere totally
unlike here. 
Tamaru was silent, waiting for her to go on. He was in no hurry.
 By different place, I mean its like reading a detailed report from a small planet light-years
away from this world Im living in. I can picture all the scenes described and understand them.
Its described very vividly, minutely, even. But I cant connect the scenes in that book with
where I am now. We are physically too far apart. Ill be reading it, and I find myself having to
go back and reread the same passage over again. 
Aomame searched for the next words. Tamaru waited as she did.
 Its not boring, though, she said. Its so detailed and beautifully written, and I feel like I
can grasp the structure of that lonely little planet. But I cant seem to go forward. Its like Im in
a boat, paddling upstream. I row for a while, but then when I take a rest and am thinking
about something, I find myself back where I started. Maybe that way of reading suits me now,
rather than the kind of reading where you forge ahead to find out what happens. I dont know
how to put it exactly, but there is a sense of time wavering irregularly when you try to forge
ahead. If what is in front is behind, and what is behind is in front, it doesnt really matter, does
it. Either way is fine. 
Aomame searched for a more precise way of expressing herself.
 It feels like Im experiencing someone elses dream. Like were simultaneously sharing
feelings. But I cant really grasp what it means to be simultaneous. Our feelings seem extremely
close, but in reality theres a considerable gap between us. 
 I wonder if Proust was aiming for that sort of sensation. 
Aomame had no idea.
 Still, on the other hand, Tamaru said, time in this real world goes ever onward. It never
stands still, and never reverses course. 
 Of course. In the real world time goes forward. 
As she said this Aomame glanced at the glass door. But was it really true? That time was
always flowing forward?
 The seasons have changed, and we are getting close to the end of 1984, Tamaru said.
 I doubt Ill finish In Search of Lost Time by the end of the year. 
 It doesnt matter, Tamaru said. Take your time. It was written over fifty years ago. Its
not like its crammed with hot-off-the-press information or anything. 
You might be right, Aomame thought. But maybe not. She no longer had much trust in
time.
 Is that thing inside you doing all right? Tamaru asked.
 So far, so good. 
 Im glad to hear it, Tamaru said. By the way, you heard about the short balding guy who
has been loitering outside the Willow House, right? 
 I did. Is he still hanging around? 
 No. Not recently. He did for a couple of days and then he disappeared. But he went to the
rental agencies in the area, pretending to be looking for an apartment, gathering information
about the safe house. This guy really stands out. As if that werent bad enough, his clothes
are awful. So everyone who talked with him remembers him. It was easy to track his move-
ments. 
 He doesnt sound like the right type to be doing investigations or reconnaissance. 
 Exactly. With looks like those, hes definitely not cut out for that kind of work. He has a
huge head, too, like one of those Fukusuke good-luck dolls. But he does seem to be good at
what he does. He knows how to pound the pavement and dig up information. And he seems
quite sharp. He doesnt skip what is important, and he ignores what isnt. 
 And he was able to gather a certain amount of information on the safe house. 
 He knows its a refuge for women fleeing domestic violence, and that the dowager has
provided it free of charge. I think he must also have discovered that the dowager is a member
of the sports club where you worked, and that you often visited her mansion to do private
training sessions with her. If I were him, I would have been able to find out that much. 
 Youre saying hes as good as you are? 
 As long as you dont mind the effort involved, you can learn how to best gather information
and train yourself to think logically. Anyone can do that much. 
 I cant believe there would be that many people like that in the world. 
 Well, there are a few. Professionals. 
Aomame sat down and touched the tip of her nose. It was still cold from being outside.
 And that man isnt hanging around outside the mansion anymore? Aomame asked.
 I think he recognizes that he stands out too much. And he knows about the security cameras.
So he gathered as much information as he could in a short time and then moved on. 
 So he knows about the connection between me and the dowager, that this is more than
just a relationship between a sports club trainer and a wealthy client, and that the safe house
is connected, too. And that we were involved in some sort of project together. 
 Most likely, Tamaru said. As far as I can tell, the guy is getting close to the heart of
things. Step by step. 
 From what youre saying, though, it sounds like hes working on his own, not as part of
some larger organization. 
 I had the same impression. Unless they had some special ulterior motive, a large organization
would never hire a conspicuous man like that to undertake a secret investigation. 
 So why is he doing this investigation and for whom? 
 You got me, Tamaru said. All I know is hes good at what he does and hes dangerous.
Anything beyond that is just speculation. Though my own modest speculation leads me to believe
that, in some form or another, Sakigake is involved. 
Aomame considered this prospect. And the man has moved on. 
 Right. I dont know where he has gone, though. But if I had to make a logical guess I
would say that he is trying to track you down. 
 But you told me it was next to impossible to find this place. 
 Correct. A person could investigate all he wanted and never discover anything that linked
the dowager to the apartment. Any possible connection has been erased. But Im talking
about the short term. If its long term, chinks in the armor will appear, just where you least expect
them. You might wander outside, for instance, and be spotted. Thats just one possibility. 
 I dont go outside, Aomame insisted. But this wasnt entirely true. She had left the apartment
twice: once when she ran over to the playground in search of Tengo, the other time
when she took the taxi to the turnout on the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3, near Sangenjaya,
in search of an exit. But she couldnt reveal this to Tamaru.
 Then how is he going to locate this place? 
 If I were him, I would take another look at your personal information. Consider what kind
of person you are, where you came from, what kind of life you have led up till now, what
youre thinking, what youre hoping for in life, what youre not hoping for. I would take all the
information I could get my hands on, lay it all out on a table, verify it, and dissect it from top to
bottom. 
 Expose me, in other words. 
 Thats right. Expose you under a cold, harsh light. Use tweezers and a magnifying glass
to check out every nook and cranny, to discover patterns in the way you act. 
 I dont get it. Would an analysis like that really turn up where I am now? 
 I dont know, Tamaru said. It might, and it might not. It depends. Im just saying thats
what I would do. Because I cant think of anything else. Every person has his set routines
when it comes to thinking and acting, and where theres a routine, theres a weak point. 
 It sounds like a scientific investigation. 
 People need routines. Its like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions
and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.
In the present situation, you dont want to move from where you are now. At least until the
end of the year you have refused to move to a safer location because youre searching for
something there. And until you find that something you cant leave. Or you dont want to
leave. 
Aomame was silent.
 What that might be, or how much you really want it, I have no idea. And I dont plan to
ask. But from my perspective that something constitutes your personal weak point. 
 You may be right, Aomame admitted.
 And Bobbleheads going to follow that. He will mercilessly trace that personal element
thats restraining you. He thinks it will lead to a breakthrough provided he is as skilled as I
imagine and is able to trace fragmentary clues to arrive at that point. 
 I dont think he will be able to, Aomame said. He wont be able to find a path. Because
its something that is found only in my heart. 
 Youre a hundred percent sure of that? 
Aomame thought about it. Not a hundred percent. Call it ninety-eight. 
 Well, then you had better be very concerned about that two percent. As I said, this guy is
a professional. He is very smart, and very persistent. 
Aomame didnt reply.
 A professional is like a hunting dog, Tamaru said. He can sniff out what normal people
cant smell, hear what they cant pick up. If you do the same things everyone else does, in the
same way, then youre no professional. Even if you are, youre not going to survive for long.
So you need to be vigilant. I know you are a very cautious person, but you have to be much
more careful than you have been up till now. The most important things arent decided by percentages. 
 Theres something I would like to ask you, Aomame said.
 What would that be? 
 What do you plan to do if Bobblehead shows up there again? 
Tamaru was silent for a moment. The question seemed to have caught him by surprise. I
probably wont do anything. Ill just leave him be. Theres nothing he can do around here. 
 But what if he starts to do something that bothers you? 
 Like what, for instance? 
 I dont know. Something thats a nuisance. 
Tamaru made a small sound in the back of his throat. I think I would send him a message. 
 As a fellow professional? 
 I suppose. But before I actually did anything, I would need to find out who hes working
with. If he has backup, I could be the one in danger instead of him. I would want to make sure
of that before I did anything. 
 Like checking the depth of the water before jumping in a pool. 
 That is one way of putting it. 
 But you believe he is acting on his own. You said he probably doesnt have any backup. 
 I did, but sometimes my intuition is off, Tamaru said. And unfortunately, I dont have
eyes in the back of my head. At any rate, I would like you to keep an eye out, all right? See if
theres anyone suspicious around, any change in the scenery outside, anything out of the ordinary.
If you notice anything unusual, no matter how small, make sure you let me know. 
 I understand. I will be careful, Aomame said. She didnt need to be told. Im looking for
Tengo, so I wont miss the most trivial detail. Still, like Tamaru said, I only have one pair of
eyes.
 Thats about it from me, he said.
 How is the dowager? Aomame asked.
 She is well, Tamaru replied. Then he added, Though she seems kind of quiet these
days. 
 She never was one to talk much. 
Tamaru gave a low growl in the back of his throat, as if his throat were equipped with an
organ to express special emotions. She is even quieter than usual. 
Aomame pictured the dowager, alone on her chair, a large watering can at her feet, endlessly
watching butterflies. Aomame knew very well how quietly the old lady breathed.
 I will include a box of madeleines with the next supplies, Tamaru said as he wound up
the conversation. That might have a positive effect on the flow of time. 
 Thank you, Aomame said.
Aomame stood in the kitchen and made cocoa. Before going back outside to resume her
watch, she needed to warm up. She boiled milk in a pan and dissolved cocoa powder in it.
She poured this into an oversized cup and added a cap of whipped cream she had made
ahead of time. She sat down at the dining table and slowly sipped her cocoa as she reviewed
her conversation with Tamaru. The man with the large, misshapen head is laying me out bare
under a cold, harsh light. Hes a skilled professional, and dangerous.
She put on the down jacket, wrapped the muffler around her, and, the cup of half-drunk
cocoa in hand, went out again to the balcony. She sat down on the garden chair and spread
the blanket on her lap. The slide was deserted, as usual. But just then she spotted a child
leaving the playground. It was strange for a child to be visiting the playground alone at this
hour. A stocky child wearing a knit cap. She was looking at him from well above, through a
gap in the screen on the balcony, and the child quickly cut across her field of vision and disappeared
into the shadows of the building. His head seemed too big for a child, but it might
just have been her imagination.
It certainly wasnt Tengo, so Aomame gave it no more thought and turned back to the
slide. She sipped her cocoa, warming her hands with the cup, and watched one bank of
clouds after another scud across the sky.
Of course, it wasnt a child that Aomame saw for a moment, but Ushikawa. If the light had
been better, or if she had seen him a little longer, she would have noticed that his large head
wasnt that of a child. It would have dawned on her that that dwarfish, huge-headed person
was none other than the man Tamaru had described. But Aomame had only glimpsed him for
a few seconds, and at less than the ideal angle. Luckily, for the same reasons, Ushikawa
hadnt spotted Aomame out on the balcony.
At this point, a number of if s came to mind. If Tamaru had hung up a little earlier, if
Aomame hadnt made cocoa while mulling over things, she would have seen Tengo, on top of
the slide, gazing up at the sky. She would have raced out of the room, and they would have
been reunited after twenty years.
If that had happened, however, Ushikawa, who had been tailing Tengo, would have noticed
that this was Aomame, would have figured out where she lived, and would have immediately
informed the duo from Sakigake.
So its hard to say if Aomames not seeing Tengo at this point was an unfortunate or fortunate
occurrence. Either way, as he had done before, Tengo climbed up to the top of the slide
and gazed steadily at the two moons floating in the sky and the clouds crossing in front. Ushikawa
watched Tengo from the shadows. In the interim Aomame left the balcony, talked with
Tamaru on the phone, and made her cocoa. In this way, twenty-five minutes elapsed. A fateful
twenty-five minutes. By the time Aomame had put on her down jacket and returned to the
balcony, Tengo had left the playground. Ushikawa didnt immediately follow after him. Instead,
he stayed at the playground, checking on something he needed to make sure of. When
he had finished, he quickly left the playground. It was during those few seconds that Aomame
spotted him from the balcony.
The clouds were still racing across the sky, moving south, over Tokyo Bay and then out to
the broad Pacific. After that, who knows what fate awaited them, just as no one knows what
happens to the soul after death.
At any rate, the circle was drawing in tighter. But Tengo and Aomame werent aware that
the circle around them was closing in. Ushikawa sensed what was happening, since he was
actively taking steps to tighten it, but even he couldnt see the big picture. He didnt know the
most important point: that the distance between him and Aomame was now no more than a
couple dozen meters. And unusually for Ushikawa, when he left the playground his mind was
incomprehensibly confused.
By ten it was too cold to stay outside, so Aomame reluctantly got up and went back into
the warm apartment. She undressed and climbed into a hot bath. As she soaked in the water,
letting the heat take away the lingering cold, she rested a hand on her belly. She could feel
the slight swelling there. She closed her eyes and tried to feel the little one that was inside.
There wasnt much time left. Somehow she had to let Tengo know: that she was carrying his
child. And that she would fight desperately to protect it.
She dressed, got into bed, lay on her side in the dark, and fell asleep. Before she fell into
a deep sleep she had a short dream about the dowager.
Aomame is in the greenhouse at the Willow House as they watch butterflies together. The
greenhouse is like a womb, dim and warm. The rubber tree she left behind in her old apartment
is there. It has been well taken care of and is so green that she hardly recognizes it. A
butterfly from a southern land that she has never seen before is resting on one of its thick
leaves. The butterfly has folded its brightly colored wings and seems to be sleeping peacefully.
Aomame is happy about this.
In the dream her belly is hugely swollen. It seems near her due date. She can make out
the heartbeat of the little one. Her heartbeat and that of the little one blend together into a
pleasant, joint rhythm.
The dowager is seated beside her, her back ramrod straight as always, her lips a straight
line, quietly breathing. The two of them dont talk, in order not to wake the sleeping butterfly.
The dowager is detached, as if she doesnt notice that Aomame is next to her. Aomame of
course knows how closely the dowager protects her, but even so, she cant shake a sense of
unease. The dowagers hands in her lap are too thin and fragile. Aomames hands unconsciously
feel for the pistol, but cant find it.
She is swallowed up by the dream, yet at the same time aware it is a dream. Sometimes
Aomame has those kinds of dreams, where she is in a distinct, vivid reality but knows it isnt
real. It is a detailed scene from a small planet somewhere else.
In the dream, someone opens the door to the greenhouse. An ominous cold wind blows
in. The large butterfly opens its eyes, spreads its wings, and flutters off, away from the rubber
tree. Who is it? She twists her head to look in that direction. But before she can see who it is,
the dream is over.
She was sweating when she woke up, an unpleasant, clammy sweat. She stripped off her
damp pajamas, dried herself with a towel, and put on a new T-shirt. She sat up in bed for a
time. Something bad might be about to happen. Somebody might be trying to get the little
one. And whoever that is might be very close by. She had to find Tengo there was not a moment
to lose. But other than watching the playground every night, there wasnt a thing she
could do. Nothing other than what she was already doing carefully, patiently, dutifully, keeping
her eyes open, trained on this one tiny section of the world, that single point at the top of
the slide. Even with such focus, though, a person can overlook things. Because she only has
one pair of eyes.
Aomame wanted to cry, but the tears wouldnt come. She lay down again in bed, rested
her palms on her stomach, and quietly waited for sleep to overtake her.
1Q84
CHAPTER 18
Tengo
WHEN YOU PRICK A PERSON WITH A NEEDLE,
RED BLOOD COMES OUT
 Nothing happened for three days after that, Komatsu said. I ate the food they gave me,
slept at night in the narrow little bed, woke up when morning came, and used the small toilet
in one corner of the room. The toilet had a partition for privacy, but no lock on it. There was
still a lot of residual summer heat at the time, but the ventilator shaft seemed to be connected
to an AC, so it didnt feel hot. 
Tengo listened to Komatsus story without comment.
 They brought food three times a day. At what time, I dont know. They took my watch
away, and the room didnt have a window, so I didnt even know if it was day or night. I
listened carefully but couldnt hear a sound. I doubt anyone could hear any sound from me. I
had no idea where they had taken me, though I did have a vague sense that we were somewhere
off the beaten track. Anyhow, I was there for three days, and nothing happened. Im
not actually certain it was three days. They brought me nine meals altogether, and I ate them
when they brought them. The lights in the room were turned out three times, and I slept three
times. Usually Im a light, irregular sleeper, but for some reason I slept like a log. Its kind of
strange, if you think about it. Do you follow me so far? 
Tengo silently nodded.
 I didnt say a word for the entire three days. A young man brought my meals. He was thin
and had on a baseball cap and a white medical face mask. He wore a kind of sweatshirt and
sweatpants, and dirty sneakers. He brought my meals on a tray and then took them away
when I was finished. They used paper plates and flimsy plastic knives, forks, and spoons. The
food they brought was ordinary prepared food in silver foil packages not very good, but not
so bad you wouldnt eat it. They didnt bring much each meal, and I was hungry, so I ate
every bite. This was kind of weird, too. Usually I dont have much of an appetite, and if Im not
careful, sometimes I even forget to eat. They gave me milk and mineral water to drink. They
didnt provide coffee or tea. No single-malt whiskey or draft beer. No smokes, either. But
whatre you going to do? It wasnt like I was lounging around some nice hotel. 
As if he had just remembered that now he could smoke at his leisure, Komatsu pulled out
a red Marlboro pack, stuck a cigarette between his lips, and lit it with a paper match. He
sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, exhaled, and then frowned.
 The man who brought the meals never said a word. He must have been ordered by his
superiors not to say anything. Im sure he was at the bottom of the totem pole, a kind of allpurpose
gofer. I think he must have been trained in one of the martial arts, though. He had a
sort of focus to the way he carried himself. 
 You didnt ask him anything? 
 I knew that if I spoke to him, he wouldnt respond, so I just kept quiet and let things be. I
ate the food they brought me, drank my milk, went to bed when they turned out the lights,
woke up when they turned them back on. In the morning the young guy would come and bring
me an electric razor and toothbrush, and I would shave and brush my teeth. When I was done
he would take them back. Other than toilet paper, there was nothing else to speak of in the
room. They didnt let me take a shower or change my clothes, but I never felt like taking a
shower or changing. There was no mirror in the room, but that didnt bother me. The worst
thing was definitely the boredom. I mean, from the time I woke up till the time I went to sleep, I
had to sit there alone, not speaking to anyone, in this white, completely square, dice-like
room. I was bored to tears. Im kind of a print junkie, I always need to have something to read
with me a room-service menu, you name it. But I didnt have any books, newspapers, or
magazines. No TV or radio, no games. No one to talk to. Nothing to do but sit in the chair and
stare at the floor, the walls, the ceiling. It was a totally absurd feeling. I mean, youre walking
down the road when some people jump out of nowhere, grab you, put chloroform or
something over your nose, drag you off somewhere, and hold you in a strange, windowless
little room. A weird situation no matter how you cut it. And you get so bored you think youre
going to lose your mind. 
Komatsu stared with deep feeling at the cigarette between his fingers, the smoke curling
up, then flicked the ash into the ashtray.
 I think they must have thrown me into that tiny room for three days, with nothing to do,
trying to get me to break down. They seemed to know what they were doing when it came to
breaking a persons spirit, pushing someone to the edge. On the fourth day after I had my
fourth breakfast, in other words two other men came in. I figured this was the pair that had
kidnapped me. I was attacked so suddenly that I didnt get a good look at their faces. But
when I saw them on the fourth day, it started to come back to me how they had pulled me
into the car so roughly that I thought they were going to twist my arm off, how they had stuffed
a cloth soaked with some kind of drug on my nose and mouth. The two of them didnt say a
word the whole time, and it was over in an instant. 
Remembering the events, Komatsu frowned.
 One of them wasnt very tall, but he was solidly built, with a buzzcut. He had a deep tan
and prominent cheekbones. The other one was tall, with long limbs, sunken cheeks, his hair
tied up behind him in a ponytail. Put them side by side and they looked like a comedy team.
Youve got your tall, thin one, and your short, stocky one with a goatee. But I could tell at a
glance these were no comedians. They were a dangerous pair. They would never hesitate to
do whatever had to be done, without making a big scene. They acted very relaxed, which
made them all the more scary, and their eyes were frighteningly cold. They both wore black
cotton trousers and white short-sleeved shirts. They were probably in their mid- to late twenties,
the bald one maybe a little older than the other one. Neither one wore a watch. 
Tengo was silent, waiting for him to go on.
 Buzzcut did all the talking. Ponytail just stood there in front of the door, ramrod straight,
without moving a muscle. It seemed like he was listening to our conversation, but then again,
maybe not. Buzzcut sat down right across from me in a folding metal chair he had brought,
and talked. There were no other chairs, so I sat on the bed. The guy had no facial expression
at all. His mouth moved when he spoke, but other than that, his face was frozen, like a ventriloquists
dummy. 
The first thing Buzzcut said when he sat down across from Komatsu was this: Are you
able to guess who we are, and why we brought you here? 
 No, I cant, Komatsu replied.
Buzzcut stared at Komatsu for a while with his depthless eyes. But say you had to make
a guess, he went on, what would you say? His words were polite enough, but his tone was
forceful, his voice as hard and cold as a metal ruler left for a long time in a fridge.
Komatsu hesitated, but then said, honestly, that if he were forced to make a guess, he
would say it had something to do with the Air Chrysalis affair. Nothing else came to mind.
 That would mean you two are probably from Sakigake, he continued, and we are in your
compound. 
Buzzcut neither confirmed nor denied what Komatsu had said. He just stared at him. Komatsu
kept silent as well.
 Lets talk, then, based on that hypothesis, Buzzcut quietly began. What were going to
say from now on is an extension of that hypothesis of yours, all based on the assumption that
this is indeed the case. Is that acceptable? 
 That would be fine, Komatsu replied. They were going to talk about this as indirectly as
they could. This was not a bad sign. If they were planning not to let him out of here alive, they
wouldnt go to the trouble.
 As an editor at a publishing house, you were in charge of publishing Eriko Fukadas Air
Chrysalis. Am I correct? 
 You are, Komatsu admitted. This was common knowledge.
 Based on our understanding, there was some fraud involved in the publication. Air
Chrysalis received a literary prize for debut novelists from a literary journal. But before the selection
committee received the manuscript, a third party rewrote it considerably at your direction.
After the work was secretly revised, it won the prize, was published as a book, and be-
came a bestseller. Do I have my facts correct? 
 It depends on how you look at it, Komatsu said. There are times when a submitted
manuscript is rewritten, on advice of the editor 
Buzzcut put his hand up to cut him off. Theres nothing dishonest about the author revising
parts of the novel based on the editors advice. Youre right. But having a third party rewrite
the work is unscrupulous. Not only that, but forming a phony company to distribute royalties I
dont know how this would be interpreted from a legal standpoint, but morally speaking
these actions would be roundly condemned. Its inexcusable. Newspapers and magazines
would have a field day over it, and your companys reputation would suffer. Im sure you understand
this very well, Mr. Komatsu. We know all the facts, and have incontrovertible proof
we can reveal to the world. So its best not to try to talk your way out of it. Its a waste of time,
for both of us. 
Komatsu nodded.
 If it did come to that, obviously you would have to resign from the company. Plus, you
know that you would be blackballed from the field. There would be no place left for you in
publishing. For legitimate work, at least. 
 I imagine not, Komatsu said.
 But at this point only a limited number of people know the truth, Buzzcut said. You,
Eriko Fukada, Professor Ebisuno, and Tengo Kawana, who rewrote the book. And just a
handful of others. 
Komatsu chose his words carefully. According to our working hypothesis, this handful of
others would be members of Sakigake. 
Buzzcut nodded, barely. Yes. According to our hypothesis, that would be the case. 
Buzzcut paused, allowing the hypothesis to sink in. And then he went on.
 And if that hypothesis is indeed true, then they can do whatever they want to you. They
can keep you here as their guest of honor for as long as they like. No problem at all. Or, if
they wanted to shorten the length of your stay, there are any number of other choices they
can make including ones that would be unpleasant for both sides. Either way, they have the
power and the means. I believe you already have a pretty good grasp of that. 
 I think I do, Komatsu replied.
 Good, Buzzcut said.
Buzzcut raised a finger, and Ponytail left the room. He soon returned with a phone. He
plugged it into a jack on the wall and handed the phone to Komatsu. Buzzcut directed him to
call his company.
 You have had a terrible cold and a fever and have been in bed for a few days. It doesnt
look like youll be able to come in to work for a while. Tell them that and then hang up. 
Komatsu asked for one of his colleagues, briefly explained what he had to say, and hung
up without responding to his questions. Buzzcut nodded and Ponytail unplugged the phone
from the jack and took the phone and left the room. Buzzcut intently studied the back of his
hands, then turned to Komatsu. There was a faint tinge of kindness in his voice.
 Thats it for today, he said. Well talk again another day. Until then, please consider
carefully what we have discussed. 
The two of them left, and Komatsu spent the next ten days in silence, in that room. Three
times a day the masked young man would bring in the mediocre meals. After the fourth day,
Komatsu was given a change of clothes a cotton pajama-like top and bottom but until the
very end, they didnt let him take a shower. The most he could do was wash his face in the
tiny sink attached to the toilet. His sense of times passage grew more uncertain.
Komatsu thought that he had been taken to the cults headquarters in Yamanashi. He had
seen it on TV. It was deep in the mountains, surrounded by a tall fence, like some independent
realm. Escape, or finding help, was out of the question. If they did end up killing him
(which must be what they had meant by an unpleasant choice), his body would never be
found. He had never felt death so real, or so close.
Ten days after he had made that forced call to his company (most likely ten days, though
he wouldnt bet on it), the same duo made another appearance. Buzzcut seemed thinner than
before, which made his cheekbones all the more prominent. His cold eyes were now bloodshot.
As before, he sat down on the folding chair he had brought, across the table from Komatsu.
He didnt say a word for a long time. He simply stared at Komatsu with his red eyes.
Ponytail looked the same. Again he stood, ramrod straight, in front of the door, his emotionless
eyes fixed on an imaginary point in space. They were again dressed in black trousers
and white shirts, most likely a sort of uniform.
 Lets pick up where we left off last time, Buzzcut finally said. We were saying that we
can do whatever we like with you. 
Komatsu nodded. Including choices that wouldnt be pleasant for either side. 
 You really do have a great memory, Buzzcut said. You are correct. An unpleasant outcome
is looming. 
Komatsu was silent. Buzzcut went on.
 In theory, that is. Practically speaking, they would much prefer not to make an extreme
choice. If you were suddenly to disappear now, Mr. Komatsu, that would lead to unwanted
complications. Just like it did when Eriko Fukada disappeared. There arent many people who
would be sad if you were gone, but youre a respected editor, prominent in your field. And Im
sure that if you fall behind in your alimony payments, your wife will have something to say
about it. For them, this would not be a very favorable development. 
Komatsu gave a dry cough and swallowed.
 Theyre not criticizing you personally, or trying to punish you. They understand that in
publishing Air Chrysalis you werent intending to attack a specific religious organization. At
first you didnt even know the connection between the novel and that organization. You perpetrated
this fraud for fun and out of ambition. And money became a factor, too, as things developed.
Its very hard for a mere company employee to pay alimony and child support, isnt
it? And you brought Tengo Kawana an aspiring novelist and cram school instructor who
didnt know anything about the circumstances into the mix. The plan itself was smart, but
your choice of the novel and the writer? Not so much. And things got more complicated than
you imagined. You were like ordinary citizens who had wandered across the front lines and
stepped into a minefield. You cant go forward, and cant go back. Am I correct in this, Mr. Komatsu? 
 That might sum it up, I suppose, Komatsu replied.
 There still seem to be some things you dont entirely understand, Buzzcut said, his eyes
narrowing a fraction. If you did, you wouldnt pretend that this has nothing to do with you.
Lets make things crystal clear. You are, frankly, in the middle of a minefield. 
Komatsu silently nodded.
Buzzcut closed his eyes, and ten seconds later opened them. This situation has put you
in a bind, but understand that it has created some real problems for them as well. 
Komatsu took the plunge and spoke. Do you mind if I ask you a question? 
 If its something I can answer. 
 By publishing Air Chrysalis we created a little trouble for the religious organization. Is that
what youre saying? 
 More than a little trouble, Buzzcut said. He grimaced slightly. The voice no longer
speaks to them. Do you have any idea what that means? 
 No, Komatsu croaked, his voice dry.
 Fine. I cant explain any more to you than that. And its better for you not to know. The
voice no longer speaks to them. Thats all I can tell you now. Buzzcut paused. And this unhappy
turn of events was brought about by the publication of Air Chrysalis. 
Komatsu posed a question. And did Eriko Fukada and Professor Ebisuno expect that by
making Air Chrysalis public, they would bring about this unhappy turn of events? 
Buzzcut shook his head. No, I dont think Professor Ebisuno knew things would turn out
this way. Its unclear what Eriko Fukadas intentions were. Saying it was unintentional is just
conjecture. But even if you assume it was intentional, I dont believe it was her intention. 
 People read Air Chrysalis as a fantasy novel, Komatsu said. A harmless, dreamy little
tale written by a high school girl. Actually the novel was criticized quite a lot for being a bit too
surreal. No one ever suspected that some great secret, or concrete information, was exposed
in the pages of the book. 
 I imagine youre right, Buzzcut said. The vast majority of people would never notice. But
thats not the issue. Those secrets should never have been made public. In any form whatsoever. 
Ponytail stood rooted to a spot in front of the door, staring at the wall, at some prospect
that no one else could see.
 What they want is to get the voice back, Buzzcut said, choosing his words. The well
hasnt run dry. It has just sunk down deeper, where it cant be seen. It will be quite difficult to
restore, but it can be done. 
Buzzcut looked deep into Komatsus eyes. He looked like he was measuring the depths of
something inside, like eyeballing a room to see if a piece of furniture would fit.
 As I said earlier, all of you have wandered into a minefield. You cant go forward, and you
cant go back. What they can do is show you the path, so you can get out safely. If they do,
youll have a narrow escape, and theyll peacefully manage to get rid of some bothersome intruders. 
Buzzcut folded his arms.
 We would like you to quietly withdraw from all this. They arent really concerned if you
leave here in one piece. But it will present problems if we make a lot of noise here right now.
So, Mr. Komatsu, I will show you the way to retreat. I will guide you back to a safe place.
What I ask for in return is the following: You must stop publishing Air Chrysalis. You wont
print any more copies, or reprint it in paperback. And all advertising for the book will cease.
And you will sever all connections with Eriko Fukada. What do you say? You have enough influence
to handle that. 
 It wont be easy, but maybe I can manage it, Komatsu said.
 Mr. Komatsu, we didnt bring you all the way here to talk about maybes. Buzzcuts eyes
grew even redder and sharper. Were not asking you to collect all the copies of the book that
are out there. Do that, and the media would jump on the story. And we know your influence
doesnt extend that far. We would just like you to quietly take care of things. We cant undo
what has already happened. Once somethings ruined, it cant go back to the way it was.
What they would like is to remove this from the spotlight. Do you follow me? 
Komatsu nodded.
 Mr. Komatsu, as I have explained, there are several facts here that must not come to
light. If they did, all those involved would suffer repercussions. So for the sake of both parties,
we would like to conclude a truce. They will not hold you responsible beyond this point. Peace
will be guaranteed. You will have nothing further to do with Air Chrysalis. This isnt such a bad
deal, you know. 
Komatsu thought it over. All right. I will begin by making sure Air Chrysalis is no longer
published. It may take some time, but Ill find a way. And speaking personally, I can put this
entire matter out of my mind. I think Tengo Kawana can do the same. He wasnt enthusiastic
about it from the very beginning. I got him involved against his will. His role in this is long past.
And I dont think Eriko Fukada will be a problem. She said that she doesnt plan to write any
more novels. Professor Ebisuno is the only one whose reaction I cant gauge. Ultimately he
wanted to determine if his friend, Tamotsu Fukada, was all right. He wants to know where he
is now and what hes doing. Whatever I might tell him, he may continue to pursue information
on Mr. Fukada. 
 Tamotsu Fukada is dead, Buzzcut said. His voice was quiet, uninflected, but there was
something terribly heavy within.
 Dead? Komatsu asked.
 It happened recently, Buzzcut said. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. He died
of a heart attack. It was over in a moment, and he didnt suffer. Due to the circumstances, we
didnt submit a notification of death, and we held the funeral secretly at our compound. For religious
reasons the body was incinerated, the bones crushed and sprinkled in the nearby
mountains. Legally, this constitutes desecration of a body, but it would be difficult to make a
formal case against us. But this is the truth. We never lie when it comes to matters of life and
death. I would like you to let Professor Ebisuno know about this. 
 A natural death. 
Buzzcut nodded deeply. Mr. Fukada was a very important person for us. No important is
too trite a term to express what he was. He was a giant. His death has only been reported to
a limited number of people. They grieved deeply for the loss. His wife Eriko Fukadas mother died
several years ago of stomach cancer. She refused chemotherapy, and passed away
within our treatment facility. Her husband, Tamotsu, cared for her to the end. 
 Even so, you didnt file a notification of her death, Komatsu asked.
No words of denial came.
 And Tamotsu Fukada passed away recently. 
 Correct, Buzzcut said.
 Was this after Air Chrysalis was published? 
Buzzcuts gaze went down to the table for a moment, then he raised his head and looked
at Komatsu.
 Thats right. Mr. Fukada passed away after Air Chrysalis was published. 
 Are the two events related? Komatsu dared to ask.
Buzzcut didnt say anything for a while, pondering how he should respond. Finally, as if he
had made up his mind, he spoke. Fine. I think it might be best to let Professor Ebisuno know
all the facts, so he will understand. Mr. Tamotsu Fukada was the real Leader, the one who
hears the voice. When his daughter, Eriko Fukada, published Air Chrysalis, the voice stopped
speaking to him, and at that point Mr. Fukuda himself put an end to his existence. It was a
natural death. More precisely, he put an end to his own existence naturally. 
 Eriko Fukada was the daughter of Leader, Komatsu murmured.
Buzzcut gave a concise, abbreviated nod.
 And Eriko Fukada ended up driving her father to his death, Komatsu continued.
Buzzcut nodded once more. That is correct. 
 But the religion still continues to exist. 
 The religion does still exist, Buzzcut replied, and he stared at Komatsu with eyes like ancient
pebbles frozen deep within a glacier. Mr. Komatsu, the publication of Air Chrysalis has
done more than a little damage to Sakigake. However, they are not thinking to punish you for
this. There is nothing to be gained from punishing you at this point. They have a mission they
must accomplish, and in order to do so, quiet isolation is required. 
 So you want everyone to take a step back and forget it all happened. 
 In a word, yes. 
 Was it absolutely necessary to kidnap me in order to get this message across? 
Something akin to an expression crossed Buzzcuts face for the first time, a superficial
emotion, located somewhere in the interstice between humor and sympathy. They went to
the trouble of bringing you here because they wanted you to understand the seriousness of
the situation. They didnt want to do anything drastic, but if something is necessary, they dont
hesitate. They wanted you to really feel this, viscerally. If all of you do not keep your promise,
then something quite unpleasant will occur. Do you follow me? 
 I do, Komatsu replied.
 To tell you the truth, Mr. Komatsu, you were very fortunate. Because of all the heavy fog
you may not have noticed this, but you were just a few inches from the edge of a cliff. It would
be best if you remember this. At the moment they do not have the freedom to deal with you.
There are many more pressing matters at hand. And in that sense, too, you are quite fortunate.
So while this good fortune still continues … 
As he said this he turned his palms faceup, like someone checking to see if it was raining.
Komatsu waited for his next words, but there werent any. Now that he had finished speaking,
Buzzcut looked exhausted. He slowly rose from his chair, folded it, and exited the cubeshaped
room without so much as a glance back. The heavy door closed, the lock clicking
shut. Komatsu was left all alone.
 They kept me locked away in that square little room for four more days. We had already
discussed what was important. They had told me what they wanted to say and we had come
to an agreement. So I couldnt see the point of keeping me there any longer. That duo never
appeared again, and the young man in charge of me never uttered a word. I ate the same
monotonous food, shaved with the electric razor, and spent my time staring at the ceiling and
the walls. I slept when they turned off the lights, woke up when they switched them on. And I
pondered what Buzzcut had told me. What really struck me most was the fact that he said we
were fortunate. Buzzcut was right. If these guys wanted to, they could do anything they
wanted. They could be as cold-blooded as they liked. While I was locked up in there, I really
came to believe this. I think they must have kept me locked up for four more days knowing
that would be the result. They dont miss a beat theyre very meticulous. 
Komatsu picked up his glass and took a sip of the highball.
 They drugged me again with chloroform or whatever, and when I woke up it was daybreak
and I was lying on a bench in Jingu Gaien. It was the end of September, and the mornings
were cold. Thanks to this I actually did wind up with a cold and a fever and I really was in
bed for the next three days. But I guess I should consider myself fortunate if thats the worst
that happened to me. 
Komatsu seemed to be finished with his story. Did you tell this to Professor Ebisuno? 
Tengo asked.
 Yes, after I was released, and a few days after my fever broke, I went to his house on the
mountain. I told him pretty much what I told you. 
 What was his reaction? 
Komatsu drained the last drop of his highball and ordered a refill. He urged Tengo to do
the same, but Tengo shook his head.
 Professor Ebisuno had me repeat the story over and over and asked a lot of detailed
questions. I answered whatever I could. I could repeat the same story as many times as he
wished. I mean, after I last spoke with Buzzcut, I was locked up alone for four days in that
room. I had nobody to talk to, and plenty of time on my hands. So I went over what he had
told me and was able to accurately remember all the details. Like I was a human tape recorder. 
 But the part about Fuka-Eris parents dying was just something they claimed happened.
Right? Tengo asked.
 Thats right. They insisted it happened, but theres no way to verify it. They didnt file a
death notice. Still, considering the way Buzzcut sounded, it didnt seem like he was making it
up. As he said, Sakigake considers peoples lives and deaths a sacred thing. After I finished
my story, Professor Ebisuno was silent for a time, thinking it over. He really thinks about
things deeply, for a long time. Without a word, he stood up, left the room, and didnt come
back for quite a while. I think he was trying to accept his friends deaths, trying to understand
them as inevitable. He may have already half expected that they were no longer of the world
and had resigned himself to that fact. Still, actually being told that two close friends have died
has got to hurt. 
Tengo remembered the bare, spartan living room, the chilly, deep silence, the occasional
sharp call of a bird outside the window. So, he asked, have we actually backed our way out
of the minefield? 
A fresh highball was brought over. Komatsu took a sip.
 No conclusion was reached right then. Professor Ebisuno said he needed time to think.
But what other choice do we have than to do what they told us? I got things rolling right away.
At work I did everything I could and stopped them from printing additional copies of Air
Chrysalis, so in effect its out of print. There will be no paperback edition, either. The book
already sold a lot of copies and made the company plenty of money, so they wont suffer a
loss. In a large company like this you have to have meetings about it, the president has to
sign off on it but when I dangled before them the prospect of a scandal connected with a
ghostwriter, the higher-ups were terrified and in the end did what I wanted. It looks like Ill be
given the silent treatment from now on, but its okay. Im used to it. 
 Did Professor Ebisuno accept what they said about Fuka-Eris parents being dead? 
 I think so, Komatsu said. But I imagine it will take some time for it to really sink in, for
him to fully accept it. As far as I could tell, those guys were serious. They would make a few
concessions, but I think theyre hoping to avoid any more trouble. Which is why they resorted
to kidnapping they wanted to make absolutely sure we got the message. And they didnt
need to tell me about how they secretly incinerated the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Fukada. Even
though it would be hard to prove, desecration of bodies is a major crime. But still they brought
it up. They laid their cards on the table. Thats why I think most of what Buzzcut told me was
the truth. Maybe not every detail, but the overall picture, at least. 
Tengo went over what Komatsu had told him. Fuka-Eris father was the one who heard
the voice. A prophet, in other words. But when his daughter published Air Chrysalis and it became
a bestseller, the voice stopped speaking to him, and as a result the father died a natural
death. 
 Or rather he put an end to his own existence naturally, Komatsu said.
 And so its critical for Sakigake to gain a new prophet. If the voice stops speaking, then
the religions whole reason for existence is lost. So they dont have the time to worry about
the likes of us. In a nutshell, thats the story, right? 
 I think so. 
 Air Chrysalis contains information of critical importance to them. When it was published
and became widely read, the voice went silent. But what critical information could the book be
pointing toward? 
 During those last four days of my confinement I thought a lot about that, Komatsu said.
 Air Chrysalis is a pretty short novel. In the story the world is filled with Little People. The tenyear-old
girl who is the protagonist lives in an isolated community. The Little People secretly
come out at night and create an air chrysalis. The girls alter ego is inside the chrysalis and a
mother-daughter relationship is formed the maza and the dohta. There are two moons in
that world, a large one and a small one, probably symbolizing the maza and the dohta. In the
novel the protagonist based on Fuka-Eri herself, I think rejects being a maza and runs
away from the community. The dohta is left behind. The novel doesnt tell us what happened
to the dohta after that. 
Tengo stared for a time at the ice melting in his glass.
 I wonder if the one who hears the voice needs the dohta as an intermediary, Tengo said.
 Its through her that he can hear the voice for the first time, or perhaps through her that the
voice is translated into comprehensible language. Both of them have to be there for the message
of the voice to take its proper form. To borrow Fuka-Eris terms, theres a Receiver and
a Perceiver. But first of all the air chrysalis has to be created, because the dohta can only be
born through it. And to create a dohta, the proper maza must be there. 
 Thats your opinion, Tengo. 
Tengo shook his head. I wouldnt call it an opinion. As I listened to you summarize the
plot, I just thought that must be the way it is. 
As he rewrote the novel, and afterward, Tengo had pondered the meaning of the maza
and the dohta, but he was never quite able to grasp the overall picture. But now, as he talked
with Komatsu, the pieces gradually fell into place. Though he still had questions: Why did an
air chrysalis materialize above his fathers bed in the hospital? And why was Aomame, as a
young girl, inside?
 Its a fascinating system, Komatsu said. But isnt it a problem for the maza to be separated
from the dohta? 
 Without the dohta, its hard to see the maza as a complete entity. As we saw with FukaEri,
its difficult to pinpoint exactly what that means, but there is something missing like a
person who has lost his shadow. What the dohta is like without the maza, I have no idea.
Probably theyre both incomplete, because, ultimately, the dohta is nothing more than an alter
ego. But in Fuka-Eris case, even without the maza by her side, the dohta may have been
able to fulfill her role as a kind of medium. 
Komatsus lips were stretched in a tight line for a while, then turned up slightly. Are you
thinking that everything in Air Chrysalis really took place? 
 Im not saying that. Im just making an assumption hypothesizing that its all real, and
going from there. 
 All right, Komatsu said. So even if Fuka-Eris alter ego goes far away from her body,
she can still function as a medium. 
 Which explains why Sakigake isnt forcing her to return, even if they know her whereabouts.
Because in her case, even if the maza isnt nearby, the dohta can still fulfill her duties.
Maybe their connection is that strong, even if theyre far apart. 
 Okay … 
Tengo continued, I imagine that they have multiple dohtas. The Little People must use
the chance to create many air chrysalises. They would be anxious if all they had was one Perceiver.
Or the number of dohtas who can function correctly might be limited. Maybe there is
one powerful, main dohta, and several weaker auxiliary dohtas, and they function collectively. 
 So the dohta that Fuka-Eri left behind was the main dohta, the one who functions properly? 
 That seems possible. Throughout everything that has happened, Fuka-Eri has always
been at the center, like the eye of a hurricane. 
Komatsu narrowed his eyes and folded his hands together on the table. When he wanted
to, he could really focus on an issue.
 You know, Tengo, I was thinking about this. Couldnt you hypothesize that the Fuka-Eri
we met is actually the dohta and what was left behind at Sakigake was the maza? 
This came as a bit of a shock. The idea had never occurred to Tengo. For him, Fuka-Eri
was an actual person. But put it that way, and it started to sound possible. I have no periods.
So theres no chance Ill get pregnant. Fuka-Eri had announced this, after they had had intercourse
that night. If she was nothing more than an alter ego, her inability to get pregnant
would make sense. An alter ego cant reproduce itself only the maza can do it. Still, Tengo
couldnt accept that hypothesis that it was possible he had had intercourse with her alter
ego, not the real Fuka-Eri.
 Fuka-Eri has a distinct personality. And her own code of conduct. I sort of doubt an alter
ego could have those. 
 Exactly, Komatsu agreed. If she has nothing else, Fuka-Eri does have her own distinct
personality and code of conduct. I would have to agree with you on that one. 
Still, Fuka-Eri was hiding a secret, a critical code hidden away inside this lovely girl, a
code he had to crack. Tengo sensed this. Which one was the real person and which one the
alter ego? Or was the whole notion of classifying into real and alter ego a mistake? Maybe
Fuka-Eri was able, depending on the situation, to manipulate both her real self and her alter
ego?
 There are several things I still dont understand, Komatsu said, resting his hands on the
table and staring at them. For a middle-aged man, his fingers were long and slender.
 The voice has stopped speaking, the water in the well has dried up, the prophet has died.
What will happen to the dohta after that? She wont follow him in death like widows do in India. 
 When theres no more Receiver, theres no need for a Perceiver. 
 If we take your hypothesis a step further, that is, Komatsu said. Did Fuka-Eri know that
would be the result when she wrote Air Chrysalis? That Sakigake man told me it wasnt intentional.
At least it wasnt her intention. But how could he know this? 
 I dont know, Tengo said. But I just cant see Fuka-Eri intentionally driving her father to
his death. I think her father was facing death for some other reason. Maybe thats why she left
in the first place. Or maybe she was hoping that her father would be freed from the voice. Im
just speculating, though, and I have nothing to back it up. 
Komatsu considered this for a long time, wrinkles forming on either side of his nose. Finally
he sighed and glanced around. What a strange world. With each passing day, its getting
harder to know how much is just hypothetical and how much is real. Tell me, Tengo, as a
novelist, what is your definition of reality? 
 When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out thats the real world, 
Tengo replied.
 Then this is most definitely the real world, Komatsu said, and he rubbed his inner forearm.
Pale veins rose to the surface. They were not very healthy-looking blood vessels blood
vessels damaged by years of drinking, smoking, an unhealthy lifestyle, and various literary intrigues.
Komatsu drained the last of his highball and clinked the ice around in the empty
glass.
 Could you go on with your hypothesis? Its getting more interesting. 
 They are looking for a successor to the one who hears the voice, Tengo said. But they
also have to find a new, properly functional dohta. A new Receiver will need a new Perceiver. 
 In other words, they need to find a new maza as well. And in order to do so, they have to
make a new air chrysalis. That sounds like a pretty large-scale operation. 
 Which is why theyre so deadly serious. 
 Exactly. 
 But they cant be going about this blind, Tengo said. Theyve got to have somebody in
mind. 
Komatsu nodded. I got that impression, too. Thats why they wanted to get rid of us as
fast as they could so we dont bother them anymore. I think we were quite a blot on their
personal landscape. 
 How so? 
Komatsu shook his head. He didnt know either.
 I wonder what message the voice told them until now. And what connection there is
between the voice and the Little People. 
Komatsu shook his head listlessly again. This, too, went beyond anything the two of them
could imagine.
 Did you see the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey? 
 I did, Tengo said.
 Were like the apes in the movie, Komatsu said. The ones with shaggy black fur,
screeching out some nonsense as they dance around the monolith. 
A new pair of customers came into the bar, sat down at the counter like they were regulars,
and ordered cocktails.
 Theres one thing we can say for sure, Komatsu said, sounding like he wanted to wind
things down. Your hypothesis is convincing. It makes sense. I always really enjoy having
these talks with you. But were going to back out of this scary minefield, and probably never
see Fuka-Eri or Professor Ebisuno again. Air Chrysalis is nothing more than a harmless
fantasy novel, with not a single piece of concrete information in it. And what that voice is, and
what message its transmitting, have nothing to do with us. We need to leave it that way. 
 Get off the boat and get back to life onshore. 
Komatsu nodded. You got it. Ill go to work every day, gathering manuscripts that dont
make a difference one way or another in order to publish them in a literary journal. You will go
to cram school and teach math to promising young people, and in between teaching, youll
write novels. Well each go back to our own peaceful, mundane lives. No rapids, no waterfalls.
Well quietly grow old. Any objection? 
 We dont have any other choice, do we? 
Komatsu stretched out the wrinkles next to his nose with his finger. Thats right. We have
no other choice. I can tell you this I dont want to ever be kidnapped again. Being locked up
in that room once is more than enough. If there were a next time, I might not see the light of
day. Just the thought of meeting that duo again makes my heart quake. They only need to
glare at you and you would keel over. 
Komatsu turned to face the bar and signaled with his glass for a third highball. He stuck a
fresh cigarette in his mouth.
 But why havent you told me this until now? It has been quite some time since the kidnapping,
over two months. You should have told me earlier. 
 I dont know, Komatsu said, slightly inclining his head. Youre right. I was thinking I
should tell you, but I kept putting it off. Im not sure why. Maybe I had a guilty conscience. 
 Guilty conscience? Tengo said, surprised. He had never expected to hear Komatsu say
that.
 Even I can have a guilty conscience, Komatsu said.
 About what? 
Komatsu didnt reply. He narrowed his eyes and rolled the unlit cigarette around between
his lips.
 Does Fuka-Eri know her parents have died? Tengo asked.
 I think she probably does. I imagine at some point Professor Ebisuno told her about it. 
Tengo nodded. Fuka-Eri must have known about it a long time ago. He had a distinct feeling
she did. He was the only one who hadnt been told.
 So we get out of the boat and return to our lives onshore, Tengo repeated.
 Thats right. We edge away from the minefield. 
 But even if we want to do that, do you think we can go back to our old lives that easily? 
 All we can do is try, Komatsu said. He struck a match and lit the cigarette. What specifically
bothers you? 
 Lots of things around us are already starting to fall into strange patterns. Some things
have already been transformed, and it may not be easy for them to go back the way they
were. 
 Even if our lives are on the line? 
Tengo gave an ambiguous shake of his head. He had been feeling for some time that he
was caught up in a strong current, one that never wavered. And that current was dragging
him off to some unknown place. But he couldnt really explain it to Komatsu.
Tengo didnt reveal to Komatsu that the novel he was writing now carried on the world in
Air Chrysalis. Komatsu probably wouldnt welcome the news. And Sakigake would certainly
be less than pleased. If he wasnt careful, he might step into a different minefield, or get the
people around him mixed up in it. But a narrative takes its own direction, and continues on, almost
automatically. And whether he liked it or not, Tengo was a part of that world. To him, this
was no longer a fictional world. This was the real world, where red blood spurts out when you
slice open your skin with a knife. And in the sky in this world, there were two moons, side by
side.
1Q84
CHAPTER 19
Ushikawa
WHAT HE CAN DO
THAT MOST PEOPLE CANT
It was a quiet, windless Thursday morning. Ushikawa woke as usual before six and
washed his face with cold water. He brushed his teeth as he listened to the NHK news on the
radio, and he shaved with the electric razor. He boiled water in a pot, made instant ramen,
and, after he finished eating, drank a cup of instant coffee. He rolled up his sleeping bag,
stowed it in the closet, and sat down at the window in front of his camera. The eastern sky
was beginning to grow light. It looked like it was going to be a warm day.
The faces of all the people who left for work in the morning were etched in his mind. There
was no need to take any more photos. From seven to eight thirty they hurried out of the apartment
building to the station the usual suspects. Ushikawa heard the lively voices of a group
of elementary school pupils heading off for school. The childrens voices reminded him of
when his daughters were little. His daughters had thoroughly enjoyed elementary school.
They took piano and ballet lessons, and had lots of friends. To the very end, Ushikawa had
found it hard to accept that he had these ordinary, happy kids. How could someone like him
possibly be the father of children like these?
After the morning rush, almost no one came in or out of the building. The childrens lively
voices had disappeared. Ushikawa laid aside the remote control for the shutter, leaned
against the wall, smoked a cigarette, and kept an eye on the entrance through a gap in the
curtain. As always, just after ten a.m., the mailman came on his small red motorcycle and adeptly
sorted the mail into all the boxes. From what Ushikawa could make out, half of it was
junk mail, stuff that would be tossed away, unopened. As the sun rose higher, the temperature
went up, and most of the people along the street took off their coats.
It was after eleven when Fuka-Eri appeared at the entrance to the building. She wore the
same black turtleneck as before, a gray short coat, jeans, sneakers, and dark sunglasses.
And an oversized green shoulder bag slung diagonally across her shoulder. The bag was bulging
with, no doubt, all sorts of things. Ushikawa left the wall he was leaning against, went
over to the camera on the tripod, and squinted through the viewfinder.
The girl was leaving there, that much he understood. She had stuffed all her belongings in
that bag and was setting off for somewhere else. She would never be back there again. He
could sense it. Maybe she decided to leave here, he thought, because she noticed I was staking
out the place. The thought made his heart race.
As she stepped out of the entrance, she came to a halt and stared up at the sky like she
had done before, searching for something among the tangle of electric lines and the trans-
formers. Her sunglasses caught the light and glittered. Had she found what she was looking
for? Or maybe not? He couldnt read her expression through the sunglasses. She must have
stood there, frozen, for a good thirty seconds, gazing up at the sky. Then, almost as an afterthought,
she turned her head and looked straight at the window behind which Ushikawa was
hiding. She took off her sunglasses and stuck them in a coat pocket. She frowned and focused
her gaze right on the camouflaged telephoto lens. She knows, Ushikawa thought once
again. The girl knows Im hiding in here, that shes being secretly watched. And she was looking
at him in the opposite direction, watching Ushikawa through the lens and back through the
viewfinder. Like water flowing backward though a curved pipe. Ushikawa felt the flesh crawl
on both his arms.
Fuka-Eri blinked every few moments. Like independent, silent living creatures, her eyelids
slowly went up and down in a studied way. Nothing else moved. She stood there like some
lofty bird with neck twisted, staring straight at Ushikawa. He couldnt pull his eyes away from
her. It felt as if the entire world had come to a momentary halt. There was no wind, and
sounds no longer made the air vibrate.
Finally Fuka-Eri stopped looking at him. She raised her head again and gazed up at the
sky, as she had done a moment before. This time, though, she stopped after a couple of
seconds. Her expression was unchanged. She took the dark sunglasses out of her pocket,
put them on again, and headed toward the street. She walked with a smooth, unhesitant
stride.
I should go out and follow her. Tengo isnt back yet, and I have the time to find out where
shes going. It couldnt hurt to find out where shes moving to. But somehow Ushikawa
couldnt stand up from the floor. His body was numb. That sharp gaze she had sent through
the viewfinder had robbed him of the strength he needed to take action.
Its okay, Ushikawa told himself as he sat there on the floor. Aomame is the one I have to
locate. Eriko Fukada is a fascinating girl, but shes not my main priority here. Shes just a supporting
actress. If shes leaving, why not just let her go?
Once on the main street, Fuka-Eri hurried off toward the station. She didnt look back.
Through the gap in the sun-bleached curtains, Ushikawa watched as she went. Once the
green shoulder bag, swinging back and forth, disappeared from view, he practically crawled
away from the camera and leaned against the wall again, waiting for his strength to return. He
took out a Seven Stars, lit it, and inhaled the smoke deeply. But the cigarette was tasteless.
His strength didnt return. His arms and legs still felt numb. He suddenly realized a strange
space had formed inside him, a kind of pure hollow. This space signified a simple lack, a
nothingness. Ushikawa sat there in the midst of this unknown void, unable to rise. He felt a
dull pain in his chest not exactly pain, but more like the difference in air pressure at the point
where the material and the immaterial meet.
He sat for a long time at the bottom of that void, leaning against the wall, smoking tasteless
cigarettes. When that girl left, she left behind this void. No, maybe not. Maybe she just
showed me something that was already there, inside me.
Ushikawa knew that Eriko Fukada had literally shaken him to his core. Her unwavering,
pointed gaze shook him not only physically, but to the center of his being, like someone who
had fallen passionately in love. He had never felt this way before in his life.
No, that cant be right, he thought. Why should I be in love with that girl? We have to be
the most ill-matched pair one could possibly imagine. He didnt need to check himself out in
the mirror to confirm this. But it wasnt just about looks. In every possible aspect, he decided,
no one is further removed from her than me. Sexually, he wasnt attracted to her. As far as
sexual desire was concerned, a couple of times a month Ushikawa called a prostitute he
knew, and that was enough. Call her up, have her over to a hotel room, and have sex like
going to the barber.
It had to be something on a more spiritual level, Ushikawa concluded. It was hard to accept,
but Ushikawa and that lovely girl had while staring at each other through opposite
ends of the camouflaged telephoto lens reached a kind of understanding that emanated
from the deepest, darkest recesses of their beings. It had happened in an instant, yet they
had laid bare their very souls. And then she had gone off, leaving Ushikawa behind, alone in
this void.
The girl knew I was secretly observing her through this telephoto lens, and she must have
known, too, that I followed her to the supermarket near the station. She never looked back
even once then, but she definitely knew I was there. But he hadnt seen any criticism in her
eyes. Ushikawa felt that somehow, in some far-off, deep place, she had understood him.
The girl had shown up, then left. We came from different directions, our paths happened
to cross, our eyes met for an instant, then we moved off in different directions once more. I
probably wont ever run across Eriko Fukada again.
Leaning against the wall, Ushikawa looked through the gap in the curtain and watched
people coming and going. Maybe Fuka-Eri would come back. Maybe she would remember
something important she had left back in the apartment. But she didnt. She had made up her
mind to move on to somewhere else, and she would never return.
Ushikawa spent the afternoon feeling deeply powerless. This sense of impotence was
formless, weightless. His blood moved slowly, sluggishly, through his veins. It was as if his
vision were covered by a fine mist, while the joints in his arms and legs felt creaky and dull.
When he shut his eyes, the ache of her gaze stabbed at his ribs, the ache rolling in and out
like gentle waves at the shore, rolling in again, then receding. Sometimes the pain was so
great it made him wince. At the same time, though, Ushikawa realized it gave him a warm
feeling, like nothing he had ever experienced.
His wife and two daughters, his snug little house with a lawn in Chuorinkan they had
never made him feel this warm. He had always had something like a clod of frozen dirt stuck
in his heart a hard, cold core he had always lived with. He had never even felt it as cold. For
him this was the normal temperature. Even so, Fuka-Eris gaze had, if even for a moment,
melted that icy core. And it brought on the dull ache. The warmth and the pain came as a pair,
and unless he accepted the pain, he wouldnt feel the warmth. It was a kind of trade-off.
In a little sunny spot, Ushikawa experienced the pain and the warmth simultaneously.
Quietly, without moving a muscle. It was a calm, peaceful winters day. People on the street
passed through the delicate sunshine as they strolled by, but the sun was steadily moving
west, hidden in the shadow of the building, and the little pool of sunlight he was in soon disappeared.
The warmth of the afternoon was gone, and the cold of the night was gathering
around him.
Ushikawa sighed deeply and reluctantly peeled himself away from the wall. His body still
had a lingering numbness, but not enough to stop him from moving about the room. He finally
rose to his feet, stretched his limbs, and moved his short, thick neck around to work out the
kinks. He balled his fists, then stretched out his fingers, again and again. Then he got down
on the tatami and did his usual stretching exercises. All his joints crackled dully, and his
muscles slowly regained their normal suppleness.
It was now the time of day when people came back from work and school. I need to continue
to keep a watch over them, he told himself. This isnt a question of whether I want to or
not, or whether its the right thing to do. Once I start something, I have to see it through.
Ushikawa sat down again behind the camera. It was completely dark outside now, and the
light at the entrance had come on. It must be on a timer, he thought. Like nameless birds returning
to their shabby nests, people stepped into the entrance. Tengo Kawana wasnt among
them, but Ushikawa figured he would be back before long. He couldnt take care of his sick
father forever. Most likely he would be back in Tokyo before the new week started, so he
could return to work. Within a few days or maybe even today or tomorrow.
I may well be just a cheerless, grubby little creature, a bug on the damp underside of a
rock. So be it Ill be the first to admit it. But Im a relentlessly capable, patient, tenacious bug.
I dont give up easily. Once I get ahold of a clue, I pursue it to the bitter end. Ill climb up the
highest wall youve got. I have to get back that cold core inside me. Right now, thats exactly
what I need.
Ushikawa rubbed his hands together in front of the camera, and checked to make sure all
ten fingers were working properly.
There are lots of things ordinary people can do that I cant. Thats for sure. Playing tennis,
skiing, for instance. Working in a company, having a happy family. On the other hand, there
are a few things I can do that most other people cant. And I do these few things very, very
well. Im not expecting applause or for people to shower me with coins. But I do need to show
the world what Im capable of.
At nine thirty Ushikawa ended his surveillance for the day. He heated a can of chicken
soup over the portable stove and carefully sipped it with a spoon. He ate two cold rolls, then
polished off an apple, peel and all. He peed, brushed his teeth, spread out his sleeping bag,
stripped down to his underwear, and snuggled inside. He zipped the bag up to his neck and
curled up like a bug.
And thus Ushikawas day was over. It hadnt been a very productive day. All he had been
able to do was watch Fuka-Eri exit the building with all her belongings. He didnt know where
she had gone. Somewhere, but where? Inside the sleeping bag he shook his head. Wherever
she went, it didnt concern him. After a time his frozen body warmed up, his mind faded, and
he fell into a deep sleep. Once more, the tiny frozen core occupied a solid place in his soul.
Nothing much happened the next day. Two days later was Saturday, another warm,
peaceful day. Most people slept in during the morning. Ushikawa, though, sat by the window,
listening to a tiny radio the news, traffic updates, the weather report.
Just before ten a large crow flew up and stood at the empty front steps of the building. The
crow looked around meticulously, moving its head a few times like it was nodding. It bobbed
its thick large beak up and down, its brilliant black feathers glistening in the sunlight. The mailman
pulled up on his small red motorcycle and the crow reluctantly spread its wings wide and
flew off. As it flew away it squawked once. After the mailman had sorted all the mail into the
mailboxes and left, a flock of sparrows twittered over. They bustled around the entrance but
found nothing worthwhile and flew away. Next it was a striped cats turn. He had on a flea collar
and probably belonged to a neighbor. Ushikawa had never seen the cat before. The cat
peed in the dried-up flower bed, sniffed the result, and apparently displeased with what it
found twitched its whiskers, as if it were bored. Tail up, it disappeared behind the building.
In the morning several residents exited the building. From the way they were dressed, it
looked like they were going out for a relaxed day, or going shopping in the neighborhood one
or the other. Ushikawa knew almost all their faces by now, but he had not a speck
of interest in their personalities or private lives. He never even tried to imagine them.
Your own lives are surely very important to each one of you. Very precious to you. I get it.
But to me they dont matter one way or the other. To me, youre just flimsy paper dolls walking
across a stage. Theres only one thing Im asking of all of you remain paper dolls and dont
interfere with my job here.
 Isnt that right, Mrs. Pear? He had given the woman currently passing this nickname, because
she was pear shaped with a huge rear end. Youre just a cutout paper doll. Youre not
real. Do you realize that? Though you are a bit on the chunky side for a paper doll. 
As he thought this, though, everything in the scene before him began to seem meaningless,
to not matter one way or the other. Maybe the scene in front of him didnt exist in the first
place. Maybe he was the one being deceived, by cutout people who didnt really exist. Ushikawa
grew uneasy. Being locked up in this empty apartment, day after day, spying on people,
must be getting to him something that would definitely get on a persons nerves. He decided
to verbalize his thoughts, to pull himself out of this funk.
 Gmorning, there, Long Ears, he said, looking through the viewfinder and addressing a
tall, thin old man. The tips of the old mans ears stuck out like horns from beneath his white
hair. Out for a walk? Walkings good for you. Its nice out today, so have a good time. I would
love to take a walk and stretch my limbs a bit, but Im stuck here keeping watch over this
crummy entrance day after day. 
The old man had on a cardigan and wool trousers, and had excellent posture. He would
look perfect taking a faithful white dog out for a walk, but pets werent allowed in the building.
Once the old man was gone, Ushikawa was suddenly struck by a sense of impotence. This
surveillance is going to end up being a waste of time, he decided. My intuition is worthless,
and all the hours Ive spent in this vacant room are leading me exactly nowhere. All I have to
show for it is a set of frayed nerves, worn away like the bald head of a Jizo statue that
passing children rub for good luck.
After twelve Ushikawa ate an apple and some cheese and crackers, and a rice ball with
pickled plum inside. He then leaned back against the wall and fell asleep. It was a short,
dreamless sleep, yet when he awoke he couldnt remember where he was. His memory was
a perfectly square, perfectly empty box. The only thing in the box was empty space. Ushikawa
gazed around the space. He found it wasnt just a void, but a dim room empty, cold, without
a stick of furniture. He didnt recognize the place. There was an apple core on an unfolded
newspaper next to him. Ushikawa felt confused. Why am I in such a weird place?
Finally it came to him, and he remembered what he had been doing: staking out the entrance
to Tengos apartment. Thats right. Thats why I have this single-lens reflex Minolta with
a telephoto lens. He remembered the old man with white hair and long ears out for a walk
alone. Like birds flying home to their nests at twilight, memories gradually returned to the
empty box. And two solid facts emerged:
1
Eriko Fukada has left.
2
Tengo Kawana hasnt come back yet.
No one was in Tengo Kawanas third-floor apartment. The curtains were drawn, and silence
enveloped the deserted space. Other than the compressor of the fridge switching on
from time to time, nothing disturbed the silence. Ushikawa let his imagination wander over the
scene. Imagining a deserted room was a lot like imagining the world after death. Suddenly he
remembered the NHK fee collector and his obsessive knocking. He had kept constant watch
but never saw any trace that this mysterious man had left the building. Could he be a resident
here? Or was it someone who lived here who liked to pretend to be a fee collector to harass
the other residents? If the latter, what would possibly be the point? This was a very morbid
theory, but what else could explain such a strange situation? Ushikawa had no idea.
Tengo Kawana showed up at the entrance to the apartment building just before four that
afternoon. He wore an old windbreaker with the collar turned up, a navy-blue baseball cap,
and a travel bag slung over his shoulder. He didnt pause at the entrance, didnt glance
around, and went straight inside. Ushikawas mind was still a bit foggy, but he couldnt miss
that large figure.
 Welcome back, Mr. Kawana, Ushikawa muttered aloud, and snapped three photos with
the motor-drive camera. Hows your father doing? You must be exhausted. Please rest up.
Nice to come home, isnt it, even to a miserable place like this. By the way, Eriko Fukada
moved out, with all her belongings, while you were gone. 
But his voice didnt reach Tengo. He was just muttering to himself. Ushikawa glanced at
his watch and wrote a memo in his notebook. 3:56 p.m., Tengo Kawana back home from trip.
At the same moment that Tengo appeared at the entrance, a door somewhere opened
wide and Ushikawa felt reality returning. Like air rushing into a vacuum, his nerves were instantly
sharp, his body filled with a fresh vitality. He was again a useful part of the outside
world. There was a satisfying click as things fell into place. His circulation sped up, and just
the right amount of adrenaline surged through his body. Good, this is how it should be. This is
the way Im supposed to be, the way the world is supposed to be.
It was after seven p.m. when Tengo appeared at the entrance again. The wind had picked
up after sunset, and the temperature had dropped. Tengo wore a sweater under a windbreaker
with faded jeans. He stepped outside and stood there, looking around, but he didnt see
anything. He glanced at where Ushikawa was hiding, but didnt pick out the observer. Hes different
from Eriko Fukada, Ushikawa thought. Shes special. She can see what others cant.
But you, Tengo for better or worse youre an ordinary person. You cant see me sitting here.
Seeing that nothing had changed outside, Tengo zipped his jacket up to his neck, stuck
his hands in his pockets, and walked out onto the main road. Ushikawa hurriedly put on his
knit cap, wrapped the muffler around his neck, slipped on his shoes, and went out to follow
Tengo.
Tengo strolled slowly down the street and turned around to look behind him a few times,
but Ushikawa was careful and Tengo didnt see him. Tengo seemed to have something on his
mind. Perhaps he was thinking about Fuka-Eri being gone. He was apparently heading toward
the station. Maybe he was going to take a train somewhere? That would make tailing
him difficult. The station was well lit, and on a Saturday night there wouldnt be many passengers.
Ushikawa would be extremely conspicuous. In that case, it would be smarter to give up.
But Tengo wasnt heading toward the station. He walked for a while and then turned down
a nearly deserted street and came to a halt in front of a bar named Mugiatama. It was a bar
for young people, by the look of it. Tengo glanced at his watch to check the time, stood there
pondering for a few seconds, then went inside. Mugiatama, Ushikawa thought. He shook his
head. What a stupid name for a bar.
Ushikawa hid in the shadow of a telephone pole and checked out his surroundings. Tengo
was probably going to have a couple of drinks there and a bite to eat, so it would take at least
a half hour. Worst-case scenario, Ushikawa would have to stay put for an hour. He looked
around for a good place nearby to kill time while he watched the people going in and out of
the bar. Unfortunately, though, there was just a milk distributor, a small Tenrikyo meeting hall,
and a rice wholesaler, and all of them were closed. Man, I never get a break, he thought. The
strong northwest wind blew the clouds swiftly by. The warmth of the daytime seemed like a
dream now. Ushikawa wasnt relishing the idea of standing in the freezing cold for thirty
minutes to an hour, doing nothing.
Maybe I should give it up. Tengos just having a meal here. There is no need to go to all
the trouble of shadowing him. Ushikawa considered popping in to some place himself, having
a hot meal, then going home. Tengo would come back home before long. That was a very attractive
choice. Ushikawa pictured himself in a cozy little restaurant, enjoying a piping hot
bowl of oyakodon rice topped with chicken and eggs. These last few days he hadnt eaten
anything worth mentioning. Some hot sake would hit the spot too. In this cold, one step outside
and youll sober up quick.
But another scenario came to him. Tengo might be meeting somebody at Mugiatama.
When Tengo left his apartment, he went straight there, and he checked his watch just before
he went in. Someone might be waiting for him inside, or might be on his way. If that was the
case, Ushikawa had to know who this person was. His ears might freeze off, but he had to
stand watch and see who went into the bar. He resigned himself to this, wiping the picture of
oyakodon and hot sake from his mind.
The person hes meeting might be Fuka-Eri. Or Aomame. Ushikawa pulled himself together.
After all, perseverance is my strong point. If there was a glimmer of hope, he clung to it
desperately. The rain could pelt him, the wind could blow, he could be burned by the sun and
beaten with a stick, but he would never let go. Once you let go, you never know when you will
get ahold of it again. He knew full well there were more painful things than this in the world a
thought that helped him endure his own suffering.
He leaned against the wall, in the shadows of the telephone pole and a sign advertising
the Japanese Communist Party, and kept a sharp watch over the front door of Mugiatama. He
wrapped the green muffler up to his nose and stuck his hands inside the pockets of his pea
coat. Other than occasionally extracting a tissue from his pocket to blow his nose, he didnt
move an inch. Announcements over the PA system at Koenji Station would filter over, on the
wind, from time to time. Some pedestrians looked nervous when they saw Ushikawa huddled
in the shadows, and hurried past. Since it was dark, though, they couldnt make out his features.
His stocky frame loomed in the shadows like some ominous ornament and sent people
scurrying away in fright.
What could Tengo be drinking and eating in there? The more he thought about it, the hungrier,
and colder, he got. But he couldnt help imagining it. Anythings fine doesnt have to be
hot sake or oyakodon. I just want to go someplace warm and have a regular meal. But if I can
stand being out here in the cold, I can take anything.
Ushikawa had no choice. There was no other path for him to take than this one, freezing
in the cold wind until Tengo finished his meal. Ushikawa thought about his home in
Chuorinkan, and the dining table there. There must have been hot meals on that table every
day, but he couldnt recall them. What in the world did I eat back then? It was like something
out of antiquity. Long, long ago, a fifteen-minute walk from Chuorinkan Station on the Odakyu
Line, there had been a newly built house and a warm, inviting dinner table. Two little girls
played piano, and a small pedigreed puppy scampered about the tiny garden and lawn.
Tengo came out of the bar thirty-five minutes later. Not bad. It could have been a lot
worse, Ushikawa reassured himself. The thirty-five minutes had been terrible, but it was certainly
better than an awful hour and a half. His body was chilled, but at least his ears hadnt
frozen. While Tengo was in the bar, there was no one going in or out of Mugiatama who
caught Ushikawas attention. Just one couple went inside, and no one came out. Tengo must
have just had a few drinks and a light meal. Keeping the same distance as before, Ushikawa
followed behind him. Tengo walked down the same street, most likely headed back to his
apartment.
But Tengo turned off this street and headed down a road that Ushikawa had never been
on before. It looked like Tengo was not on his way home after all. Ushikawa was convinced
that he was still lost in thought, maybe even more so than before. He didnt glance back this
time. Ushikawa kept track of the scenery passing by, checked the street signs, trying to memorize
the route so he could retrace it later on. Ushikawa wasnt familiar with this area, but from
the increasing buzz of traffic, like the rushing of a river, he surmised they must be getting
closer to the Ring Road. Before long Tengo picked up the pace. Getting closer to his destination,
perhaps.
Not bad. So this guy is heading somewhere. It was worth tailing him after all.
Tengo quickly cut through a residential street. It was a Saturday night, with a cold wind
blowing, so everyone else was inside, in front of the TV, enjoying a hot drink. The street was
practically deserted. Ushikawa followed behind Tengo, making sure to keep enough distance
between them. Tengo was an easy type of person to shadow. He was tall and big-boned, and
wouldnt get lost in a crowd. He just forged on ahead and didnt get sidetracked. He was always
looking slightly down, thinking. He was essentially a straightforward, honest man, not
the type to hide anything. Totally different from me, Ushikawa thought.
Ushikawas wife had also liked to hide things. No it wasnt that she liked to hide things,
she couldnt help it. Ask her what time it was, and she probably wouldnt tell you the correct
time. Ushikawa wasnt like this. He only hid things when it was necessary, only when it pertained
to work. If someone asked him the time and there was no reason for him to be dishonest,
he would tell them, and be nice about it. Not like his wife. She even lied about her age,
shaving four years off. When they submitted the documents for their marriage license he
found out how old she really was, but pretended not to notice. Ushikawa couldnt fathom why
she had to lie about something that was going to come out anyway. Who cared if his wife
happened to be seven years older?
As they got even farther from the station, there were fewer people on the street. Eventually
Tengo turned into a little park, a nothing little playground in one corner of a residential district.
The park was deserted. Of course it is, Ushikawa thought. Who feels like spending time
in a playground on a cold, windy December night? Tengo passed under the cold light of a
mercury-vapor lamp and headed straight toward the slide. He stepped onto it and climbed to
the top.
Ushikawa hid behind a phone booth and kept an eye on Tengo. A slide? Ushikawa
frowned. Why does a grown man have to climb to the top of a slide on a freezing cold night
like this? This wasnt near Tengos apartment. There must be some reason he would go out
of his way to come here. It wasnt exactly the most appealing playground. It was cramped and
shabby. In addition to the slide there were two swings, a small jungle gym, and a sandbox. A
single mercury-vapor lamp that looked like it had illuminated the end of the world more than a
few times, a single crude, leafless zelkova tree. A locked-up public toilet was the perfect can-
vas for graffiti. There was not a thing in this park to warm peoples hearts, or to stimulate the
imagination. Perhaps on a bracing May afternoon there might be something. But on a windy
December night? Forget it.
Was Tengo meeting up with somebody here? Waiting for somebody to show? Ushikawa
didnt think so. Tengo didnt give any signs to indicate that he was looking for someone. When
he entered the park, he ignored all the other equipment. The only thing on his mind seemed
to be the slide. Tengo came here to climb up that slide.
Maybe he had always liked to sit on top of slides when he needed to think. Maybe the top
of a slide in a park at night was the perfect place to think about the plot of the novel he was
writing, or mathematical formulas. Maybe the darker it was, the colder the wind blew, the
shabbier the park, the better he could think. What or how novelists (or mathematicians)
thought was way beyond anything Ushikawa could imagine. His practical mind told him that
he had to stay put, patiently keeping an eye on Tengo. His watch showed exactly eight p.m.
Tengo sat down on top of the slide, as if folding his large frame. He looked up at the sky.
He moved his head back and forth, then settled on a single spot, and gazed upward, his head
still.
Ushikawa recalled a sentimental old pop song by Kyu Sakamoto. It began: Look up at the
night sky / see the little stars. He didnt know how the rest of it went and he really didnt care
to know. Sentiment and a sense of justice were Ushikawas two weakest areas. Up on top of
the slide, was Tengo feeling sentimental as he gazed at the stars?
Ushikawa tried looking up at the sky himself, but he couldnt see any stars. Koenji, Suginami
Ward, Tokyo, was not the best place to observe the night sky. Neon signs and lights
along the street dyed the whole sky a weird color. Some people, if they squinted hard, might
be able to make out a few stars, but that would require extraordinary vision and concentration.
On top of that, the clouds tonight were blowing hard across the sky. Still, Tengo sat motionless
on top of the slide, his eyes on a fixed point in the sky.
What a pain in the butt this guy is, Ushikawa decided. What possible reason could there
be to sit on a slide, gaze up at the sky, and ponder things on a windy winter night like this?
Not that he had any right to criticize Tengo. Ushikawa had taken it upon himself, after all, to
secretly observe Tengo, and shadow him. Tengo was a free citizen and had every right to
look at what he wanted, where he wanted, the whole year round.
Still, its damn cold. He had needed to pee for some time, but had held it in. The public toilet
was locked, though, and even in a deserted place like this he couldnt very well just pee
next to a phone booth. Come on, he thought, stamping his feet, cant you just get up and
leave already? You might be lost in thought, overtaken by sentiment, deep into your astronomical
observations, but Tengo you gotta be freezing too. Time to go back to your place
and warm up, dont you think? Neither of us has anyone waiting for us, but its still a hell of a
lot better than hanging out here and freezing our rear ends off.
Tengo didnt seem about to get up, though. He finally stopped gazing at the sky, and he
turned his attention to the apartment building across the way. It was a new condo, six stories
tall, with lights on in about half the windows. Tengo stared at the building. Ushikawa did the
same but found nothing that caught his attention. It was just an ordinary condo. It was not an
exclusive building, but fairly high-class nonetheless. High-quality design, expensive tile exterior.
The entrance was beautiful and well lit. It was a different animal entirely from the cheap,
slated-to-be-torn-down place that Tengo called home.
As he gazed up at the condo, was Tengo wishing he could live in a place like that? Ushikawa
didnt think so. As far as Ushikawa knew, Tengo wasnt the type to care about where he
lived. Just like he didnt care much about clothes. Most likely he was happy with his shabby
apartment. A roof over your head and a place to keep out of the cold that was enough for
him. Whatever was running through his head up there on the slide must be something else.
After Tengo had looked at all the windows in the condo, he turned his gaze once more to
the sky. Ushikawa followed suit. From where he was hidden, the branches of the zelkova tree,
the electric lines, and the other buildings got in the way. He could only see half the sky. What
particular point in the sky Tengo was looking at wasnt at all clear. Countless clouds ceaselessly
scudded across the sky like some overwhelming army bearing down on them.
Eventually, Tengo stood up and silently climbed down from the slide, like a pilot having
just landed after a rough solo flight at night. He cut across the playground and left. Ushikawa
hesitated, then decided not to follow him. Most likely Tengo was on his way back to his place.
Plus Ushikawa had to pee like crazy. After he saw Tengo disappear, he went into the playground,
hustled behind the public toilet, and in the darkness where no one could see him, he
peed into a bush. His bladder was ready to burst.
He finally finished peeing the operation taking as long as it would take a long freight train
to cross a bridge zipped up his pants, shut his eyes, and gave a deep sigh of relief. His
watch showed 8:17. Tengo had been on top of the slide for about fifteen minutes. Ushikawa
checked again that Tengo wasnt around and headed toward the slide. He clambered up the
ladder with his short, bandy legs, sat down on the very top of the freezing slide, and looked
up. What could he have been staring at so intently?
Ushikawa had pretty good eyesight. Astigmatism made his eyes a bit out of balance, but
generally he could get by every day without glasses. Still, no matter how hard he looked, he
couldnt make out a single star. What caught his attention instead was the large moon in the
sky, about two-thirds full. Its dark, bruised exterior was clearly exposed between the clouds.
Your typical winter moon. Cold, pale, full of ancient mysteries and inklings. Unblinking like the
eyes of the dead, it hung there, silent, in the sky.
Ushikawa gulped. For a while, he forgot to breathe. Through a break in the clouds, there
was another moon, a little way apart from the first one. This was much smaller than the original
moon, slightly warped in shape, and green, like it had moss growing on it. But it was undoubtedly
a moon. No star was that big. And it couldnt be a satellite. Yet there it was, pasted
onto the night sky.
Ushikawa shut his eyes, then a few seconds later opened them again. This must be an illusion.
That kind of thing cant be there. But no matter how many times he opened and closed
his eyes, the little moon was still in the sky. Passing clouds hid it occasionally, but once they
passed by, there it was, in the same exact spot.
This is what Tengo was looking at. Tengo Kawana had come to this playground to see this
scene, or perhaps to check that it still existed. He has known for some time that there are two
moons. No doubt about it. He didnt look at all surprised to see it. On top of the slide, Ushikawa
sighed deeply. What kind of crazy world is this? he asked himself. What sort of world
have I gotten myself into? But no answer came. Swept by countless clouds racing by, the two
moons one big, one small hung in the sky like a riddle.
Theres one thing I can say for sure, he decided. This isnt the world I came from. The
earth I know has only one moon. That is an undeniable fact. And now it has increased to two.
Ushikawa began to have a sense of déjà vu. Ive seen the same thing before somewhere,
he thought. He focused, desperately searching his memory. He frowned, grit his teeth,
dredging the dark sea bottom of his mind. And it finally hit him. Air Chrysalis.
He looked around, but all he saw was the same world as always. White lace curtains were
drawn in windows in the condo across the street, peaceful lights on behind them. Nothing out
of the ordinary. Only the number of moons was different.
He carefully climbed down from the slide, and hurriedly left the playground as if running
from the eyes of the moons. Am I going nuts? he wondered. No, that cant be it. Im not going
crazy. My mind is like a brand-new steel nail hard, sober, straight. Hammered at just the
right angle, into the core of reality. Theres nothing wrong with me. Im completely sane.
Its the world around me thats gone crazy.
And I have to find out why.
1Q84
CHAPTER 20
Aomame
ONE ASPECT OF MY TRANSFORMATION
On Sunday the wind had died down. It was a warm, calm day, totally different from the
night before. People took off their heavy coats and enjoyed the sunshine. Aomame, however,
did not enjoy the nice weather she spent the day as always, shut away in her room, the curtains
closed.
As she listened to Janáeks Sinfonietta, the sound down low, she stretched and then
turned to her exercise machine to do some resistance training. She was gradually adding
routines to her training workout and it now took nearly two hours to complete. Afterward she
cooked, cleaned the apartment, and lay on the sofa to read In Search of Lost Time. She had
finally begun volume three, The Guermantes Way. She tried her best to keep busy. She only
watched TV twice a day the NHK news broadcasts at noon and seven p.m. As always, nothing
big was going on no, actually, lots of big events were happening in the world. People all
around the world had lost their lives, many of them in tragic ways train wrecks, ferry boats
sinking, plane crashes. A civil war went on with no end in sight, an assassination, a terrible
ethnic massacre. Weather shifts had brought on drought, floods, famine. Aomame deeply
sympathized with the people caught up in these tragedies and disasters, but even so, not a
single thing had occurred that had a direct bearing on her.
Neighborhood children were playing in the playground across the street, shouting
something. She could hear the crows gathered on the roof, cawing out the latest gossip. The
air had that early-winter city smell.
It suddenly hit her that ever since she had been living in this condo she had never once
felt any sexual desire. Not once had she felt like having sex. She hadnt even masturbated.
Maybe it was due to her pregnancy and her bodys hormonal changes. Still, Aomame was relieved.
This wasnt exactly the place to find a sexual outlet, should she decide she had to
sleep with someone. She was happy, too, to not have any more periods. Her periods had
never been heavy, but still she felt as if she had set down a load she had been carrying
forever. It was one less thing to have to think about.
In the three months that she had been here, her hair had grown long. In September it had
barely touched her shoulders, but now it was down to her shoulder blades. When she was a
child her mother had always trimmed it short, and from junior high onward, because sports
had been her life, she had never let it grow out. It felt a bit too long now, but she couldnt very
well cut it herself. She trimmed her bangs, but that was all. She kept her hair up during the
day and let it down at night. And then, while listening to music, she brushed it a hundred
strokes, something you can only do if you have plenty of time on your hands.
Normally she wore almost no makeup, and now especially there was no need for it. But
she wanted to keep a set daily routine as much as she could, so she made sure to take good
care of her skin. She massaged her skin with creams and lotions, put on a face mask before
bedtime. She was basically a very healthy person, and just a little extra care was all it took for
her skin to be beautiful and lustrous. Or maybe this, too, was a by-product of being pregnant?
She had heard that pregnant women had beautiful skin. Either way, when she sat at her mirror,
let down her hair, and examined her face, she did feel she looked prettier than ever before.
Or at least she was taking on the composure of a mature woman. Probably.
Aomame had never once felt beautiful. No one had ever told her that she was. Her mother
treated her like she was an ugly child. If only you were prettier, her mother always
said meaning if she were prettier, a cuter child, they could recruit more converts. So
Aomame had always avoided looking at herself in mirrors. When she absolutely had to, she
quickly, efficiently, checked out her reflection.
Tamaki Otsuka had told her she liked her features. Not bad at all, she had said. They are
actually very nice. You should have more confidence. That had made Aomame happy. She
was just entering puberty, and her friends warm words calmed her. Maybe Im not as ugly as
my mother said I was, she began to think. But even Tamaki had never called her beautiful.
Now, however, for the first time in her life, Aomame saw something beautiful in her face.
She was able to sit in front of the mirror longer than ever before and examine her face more
thoroughly. She wasnt being narcissistic. She inspected her face from a number of angles, as
if it were somebody elses. Had she really become beautiful? Or was it her way of appreciating
everything that had changed, not her face itself? Aomame couldnt decide.
Occasionally she would put on a big frown in the mirror. Her frowning face looked the
same as it always had. The muscles in her face stretched in all directions, her features unraveled,
each distinct from the other. All possible emotions in the world gushed out from her
face. It was neither beautiful nor ugly. From one angle she looked demonic, from a different
angle comic. And from yet another angle her face was a chaotic jumble. When she stopped
frowning her facial muscles gradually relaxed, like ripples vanishing on the surface of water,
and her usual features returned. And then Aomame discovered a new, slightly different version
of herself.
 You should smile more naturally, Tamaki had often told her. Your features are gentle
when you smile, so its a shame that you dont do so more often. But Aomame could never
smile easily, or casually, in front of people. When she forced it, she ended up with a tight
sneer, which made others even more tense and uncomfortable. Tamaki was different: she
had a natural, cheerful smile. People meeting her for the first time immediately felt friendly toward
her. In the end, though, disappointment and despair drove Tamaki to take her own life,
leaving Aomame who couldnt manage a decent smile behind.
It was a quiet Sunday. The warm sunshine had led many people to the playground across
the road. Parents stood around, their children playing in the sandbox or on the swings. Some
kids were playing on the slide. Elderly people sat on the benches, intently watching the children
at play. Aomame went out on her balcony, sat on her garden chair, and half-heartedly
watched through a gap in the screen. It was a peaceful scene. Time was marching on in the
world. Nobody there was under threat of death, nobody there was on the trail of a killer.
Nobody there had a fully loaded 9mm automatic pistol wrapped in tights in her dresser drawer.
Will I ever be able to participate in that quiet, normal world again? Aomame asked herself.
Will there ever come a day when I can lead this little one by the hand, go to the park, and let it
play on the swings, on the slides? Lead my daily life without thinking about who I will kill next,
or who will kill me? Is that possible in this 1Q84 world? Or is it only possible in some other
world? And most important of all will Tengo be beside me?
Aomame stopped looking at the park and went back inside. She closed the sliding glass
door and shut the curtains. She couldnt hear the childrens voices now and a sadness tugged
at her. She was cut off from everything, stuck in a place that was locked from the inside. Ill
stop watching the playground during the day. Tengo wont come in the daytime. What he was
looking for was a clear view of the two moons.
After she had a simple dinner and washed the dishes, Aomame dressed warmly and went
out on the balcony once more. She lay the blanket on her lap and sank back in the chair. It
was a windless night. The kind of clouds that watercolor artists like lingered faintly in the sky,
a test of the artists delicate brushstrokes. The larger moon, which was not blocked by the
clouds, was two-thirds full and shone bright, distinct light down on the earth below. At this
time of evening, from where she sat Aomame couldnt see the second, smaller moon. It was
just behind a building, but Aomame knew it was there. She could feel its presence. No doubt
it would soon appear before her.
Ever since she had gone into hiding, she had been able to intentionally shut thoughts out
of her mind. Especially when she was on the balcony like this, gazing at the playground, she
could make her mind a complete blank. She kept her eyes focused on the playground, especially
on the slide, but she wasnt thinking of anything no, her mind might have been thinking
of something, but this was mostly below the surface. What her mind was doing below the surface,
she had no idea. At regular intervals something would float up, like sea turtles and porpoises
poking their faces through the surface of the water to breathe. When that happened,
she knew that indeed she had been thinking of something up till then. Then her consciousness,
lungs full of fresh oxygen, sank back below the surface. It was gone again, and
Aomame no longer thought of anything. She was a surveillance device, wrapped in a soft cocoon,
her gaze absorbed in the slide.
She was seeing the park, but at the same time she was seeing nothing. If anything new
came across her line of vision, her mind would react immediately. But right now nothing new
was happening. There was no wind. The dark branches of the zelkova tree stuck out, unmoving,
like sharp probes pointed toward the sky. The whole world was still. She looked at her
watch. It was after eight. Today might end as always, with nothing out of the ordinary. A
Sunday night, as quiet as could be.
The world stopped being still at exactly 8:23.
She suddenly noticed a man on top of the slide. He sat down and looked up at one part of
the sky. Aomames heart shrunk to the size of a childs fist, and stayed that size so long she
was afraid it would never start pumping again. But it just as quickly swelled up to normal size
and started beating again. With a dull sound it began furiously pumping fresh blood
throughout her body. Aomames mind quickly broke through to the surface of the water, shook
itself, and stood by, ready to take action.
Its Tengo, she thought instinctively.
But once her vision cleared, she knew it wasnt him. The man sitting there was short, like
a child, with a large square head, wearing a knit hat. The knit hat was stretched out oddly because
of the shape of his head. He had a green muffler wrapped around his neck and wore a
navy-blue coat. The muffler was too long, and the buttons on his coat were straining around
his stomach, ready to pop. Aomame knew this was the child she had seen last night coming
out of the park. But this was no child. He was more near middle age. He was short and
stocky, with short limbs. And his head was abnormally large, and misshapen.
Aomame remembered what Tamaru had said about the man with a head as large as a
Fukusuke good-luck doll, the one they had nicknamed Bobblehead. The person who had
been loitering around outside the Azabu Willow House, checking out the safe house. This
man on top of the slide perfectly fit the description Tamaru had given her last night. That
weird man hadnt given up on his investigation, and now he had crept up on her. I have to get
the pistol. Why of all nights did I leave it back in the bedroom? Aomame took a deep breath,
let the chaos of her heart settle and her nerves calm down. I mustnt panic. Theres no need
for the pistol at this point.
The man wasnt, after all, watching her building. Seated at the top of the slide, he was
staring at the sky like Tengo had done, at the very same spot. And he seemed lost in thought.
He didnt move a muscle for the longest time, like he had forgotten how to move. He didnt
pay any attention to the direction of her room. This confused Aomame. Whats going on? This
man came here searching for me. Hes probably a member of Sakigake. No doubt at all hes
a skilled pursuer. I mean, he was able to follow the trail all the way from the Azabu mansion to
here. For all that, there he is now, defenseless, exposed, staring vacantly at the night sky.
Aomame stealthily rose to her feet, slid open the glass door a crack, slipped inside, and
sat down in front of the phone. With trembling hands she began dialing Tamarus number.
She had to report this to him that she could see Bobblehead from where she was, on top of
a slide in a playground across the street. Tamaru would decide what to do, and would no
doubt deftly handle the situation. But after punching in the first four numbers she stopped, the
receiver clutched in her hand, and bit her lip.
Its too soon, Aomame thought. There are still too many things we dont know about this
man. If Tamaru simply sees him as a risk factor and takes care of him, all those things we
dont know about him will remain unknown. Come to think of it, the man is doing exactly what
Tengo did the other day. The same slide, the same pose, the same part of the sky, as if hes
retracing Tengos movements. He must be seeing the two moons as well. Aomame understood
this. Maybe this man and Tengo are linked in some way. And maybe this man hasnt
noticed yet that Im hiding out in an apartment in this building, which is why hes sitting there,
defenseless, his back to me. The more she thought about it, the more persuasive she found
this theory. If thats true, then following the man might lead me right to Tengo. Instead of
searching me out, this guy can serve as my guide. The thought made her heart contract even
more, and then start to pound. She laid down the phone.
Ill tell Tamaru about it later, she decided. Theres something I have to do first. Something
risky, because it involves the pursued following the pursuer. And this man is no doubt a pro.
But even so I cant let this golden opportunity slip by. This may be my last chance. And from
the way he looks, he seems to be in a bit of a daze, at least for the moment.
She hurried into the bedroom, opened the dresser drawer, and took out the Heckler &
Koch semiautomatic. She flicked off the safety, racked a round into the chamber, and reset it.
She stuffed the pistol into the back of her jeans and went out to the balcony again. Bobblehead
was still there, staring at the sky. His misshapen head was perfectly still. He seemed
totally captivated by what he was seeing in the sky. Aomame knew how he felt. That was
most definitely a captivating sight.
Aomame went back inside and put on a down jacket and a baseball cap. And a pair of
nonprescription glasses with a simple black frame, enough to give her face a different appearance.
She wound a gray muffler around her neck and put her wallet and apartment key in her
pocket. She ran down the stairs and went out of the building. The soles of her sneakers were
silent as she stepped out on the asphalt. It had been so long since she had felt hard, steady
ground beneath her feet, and the feeling encouraged her.
As she walked down the road she checked that Bobblehead was still in the same place.
The temperature had dropped significantly after the sun had set, but there was still no wind.
She actually found the cold pleasant. Her breath white, Aomame walked as silently as she
could past the entrance to the park. Bobblehead showed no sign that he had noticed her. His
gaze was fixed straight up from the slide, on the sky. From where she was, Aomame couldnt
see them, but she knew that at the end of his gaze there were two moons one large, one
small. No doubt they were snuggled up close to each other in the freezing, cloudless sky.
She passed by the park, and when she got to the next corner, she turned and retraced her
steps. She hid in the shadows and watched the man on the slide. The pistol against her back
was as hard and cold as death, and the feeling soothed her.
She waited five minutes. Bobblehead slowly got to his feet, brushed off his coat, and
gazed up one more time at the sky. Then, as if he had made up his mind, he clambered down
the steps of the slide. He left the park and walked off in the direction of the station. Shadowing
him wasnt particularly hard. There were few people on a residential street on a Sunday night,
and even keeping her distance, she wouldnt lose him. He also had not the slightest suspicion
that someone was observing him. He never looked back, kept walking at a set pace, the pace
people keep when theyre preoccupied. How ironic, Aomame thought. The pursuers blind
spot is that he never thinks hes being pursued.
After a while it dawned on her that Bobblehead wasnt heading toward Koenji Station.
Back in the apartment, using a Tokyo map of all twenty-three wards, she had gone over the
district again and again until she had memorized the local geography so she would know
what direction to take in an emergency. So though he was initially headed toward the station,
she knew that when he turned at one corner he was going in a different direction. Bobblehead
didnt know the neighborhood, she noticed. Twice he stopped at a corner, looked around as if
unsure where to go, and checked the address plaques on telephone poles. He was definitely
not from around here.
Finally Bobblehead picked up the pace. Aomame surmised that he was back on familiar
territory. He walked past a municipal elementary school, down a narrow street, and went inside
an old three-story apartment building.
Aomame waited for five minutes after the man had disappeared inside. Bumping into him
at the entrance was the last thing she wanted. There were concrete eaves at the entrance, a
round light bathing the front door in a yellowish glow. She looked everywhere but couldnt find
a sign for the name of the building. Maybe the apartment building didnt have a name. Either
way, it had been built quite a few years ago. She memorized the address indicated on the
nearby telephone pole.
After five minutes she headed toward the entrance. She passed quickly under the yellowish
light and hurriedly opened the door. There was no one in the tiny entrance hall. It was an
empty space, devoid of warmth. A fluorescent light on its last legs buzzed above her. The
sound of a TV filtered in from somewhere, as did the shrill voice of a child pestering his mother.
Aomame took her apartment key out of the pocket of her down jacket and lightly jiggled it
in her hands so if anyone saw her it would look like she lived in the building. She scanned the
names on the mailboxes. One of them might be Bobbleheads. She wasnt hopeful but
thought it worth trying. It was a small building, with not that many residents. When she ran
across the name Kawana on one of the boxes, all sound faded away.
She stood frozen in front of that mailbox. The air felt terribly thin, and she found it hard to
breathe. Her lips, slightly parted, were trembling. Time passed. She knew how stupid and
dangerous this was. Bobblehead could show up any minute. Still, she couldnt tear herself
away from the mailbox. One little card with the name Kawana had paralyzed her brain, frozen
her body in place.
She had no positive proof that this resident named Kawana was Tengo Kawana. Kawana
wasnt that common a name, but certainly not as unusual as Aomame. But if, as she surmised,
Bobblehead had some connection with Tengo, then there was a strong possibility that
this Kawana was none other than Tengo Kawana. The room number was 303, coincidentally
the same number as the apartment where she was currently staying.
What should I do? Aomame bit down hard on her lip. Her mind kept going in circles and
couldnt find an exit. What should I do? Well, she couldnt stay planted in front of the mailbox
forever. She made up her mind and walked up the uninviting concrete stairs to the third floor.
Here and there on the gloomy floor were thin cracks from years of wear and tear. Her sneakers
made a grating noise as she walked.
Aomame now stood outside apartment 303. An ordinary steel door with a printed card
saying Kawana in the name slot. Just the last name. Those two characters looked brusque,
inorganic. At the same time, a deep riddle lay within them. Aomame stood there, listening
carefully, her senses razor sharp. But she couldnt hear any sound at all from behind the door,
or even tell if there was a light on inside. There was a doorbell next to the door.
Aomame was confused. She bit her lip and contemplated her next step. Am I supposed to
ring the bell? she asked herself.
Or was this some clever trap? Maybe Bobblehead was hiding behind the door, like an evil
dwarf in a dark forest, an ominous smile on his face as he waited. He deliberately revealed
himself on top of that slide to lure me over here and take me captive. Fully aware that Im
searching for Tengo, hes using that as bait. A low-down, cunning man who knows exactly
what my weak point is. Thats the only way he could ever get me to open my door from the inside.
She checked that no one else was around and pulled the pistol out of her jeans. She
flicked off the safety and stuffed the pistol into the pocket of her down jacket so she could get
to it easily. She gripped the pistol in her right hand, finger on the trigger, and with her left hand
pressed the doorbell.
The doorbell rang inside the apartment. A leisurely chime, out of step with her racing
heart. She gripped the pistol tight, waiting for the door to open. But it didnt. And there didnt
seem to be anyone peering out at her through the peephole. She waited a moment, then rang
the bell again. The bell was loud enough to get all the people in Suginami Ward to raise their
heads and prick up their ears. Aomames right hand on the pistol grip started to sweat a little.
But there was no response.
Better leave, she decided. The Kawana who lives in 303, whoever he is, isnt at home.
And that ominous Bobblehead is still lurking somewhere in this building. Too dangerous to
stay any longer. She rushed down the stairs, shooting a glance at the mailbox as she passed,
and left the building. Head down, she hurried under the yellow light and headed toward the
street. She glanced back to make sure no one was following her.
There were lots of things she needed to think about, and an equal number of decisions
she had to make. She felt in her pocket and reset the safety on the pistol. Then, away from
any possible prying eyes, she shoved the pistol in the back of her jeans. I cant get my expectations
or hopes up too high, she told herself. The Kawana who lived there might be
Tengo. And then again he might not. Once you get your hopes up, your mind starts acting on
its own. And when your hopes are dashed you get disappointed, and disappointment leads to
a feeling of helplessness. You get careless and let your guard down. And right now, she
thought, thats the last thing I can afford.
I have no idea how much Bobblehead knows. But the reality is that hes getting close to
me. Almost close enough to reach out and touch. I need to pull myself together and stay alert.
Im dealing with someone who is totally dangerous. The tiniest mistake could be fatal. First of
all, I have to stay away from that old apartment building. Hes hiding in there, scheming how
to capture me like a poisonous, blood-sucking spider who has spun a web in the darkness.
By the time she got back to her apartment Aomames mind was made up. There was but
one path she could follow.
This time she dialed Tamarus entire number. She let it ring twelve times, then hung up.
She took off her cap and coat, returned the pistol to the drawer, then gulped down two
glasses of water. She filled the kettle and boiled water for tea. She peeked through a gap in
the curtain at the park across the street, to make sure no one was there. She stood in front of
the bathroom mirror and brushed her hair. Even after that her fingers didnt work right. The
tension remained. She was pouring hot water in the teapot when the phone rang. It was
Tamaru, of course.
 I just saw Bobblehead, she told him.
Silence. By just saw him you mean hes not there anymore? 
 Thats right, Aomame said. A little while ago he was in the park across from my building.
But hes not there anymore. 
 How long ago do you mean by a little while ago? 
 About forty minutes ago. 
 Why didnt you call me forty minutes ago? 
 I had to follow him right away and didnt have the time. 
Tamaru exhaled ever so slowly, as if squeezing out the breath. Follow him? 
 I didnt want to lose him. 
 I thought I told you never to go outside. 
Aomame chose her words carefully. But I cant just sit by when dangers approaching me.
Even if I had called you, you wouldnt have been able to get here right away. Right? 
Tamaru made a small sound in the back of his throat. So you followed Bobblehead. 
 It looks like he had no idea at all he was being followed. 
 A pro can act like that, Tamaru cautioned.
Tamaru was right. It all might have been an elaborate ruse. Not that she would admit that.
 Im sure you would be able to do that, but as far as I could tell, Bobblehead isnt on the same
level. He may be skilled, but hes different from you. 
 He might have had backup. 
 No. He was definitely on his own. 
Tamaru paused for a moment. All right. So did you find out where he was heading? 
Aomame told him the address of the building and described its exterior. She didnt know
which apartment he was in. Tamaru took notes. He asked a few questions, and Aomame
answered as accurately as she could.
 You said that when you first saw him he was in the park across the street from you, 
Tamaru said.
 Correct. 
 What was he doing there? 
Aomame told him how the man was sitting on top of the slide and staring at the night
sky. She didnt mention the two moons. That was only to be expected.
 Looking at the sky? Tamaru asked. Aomame could hear the gears shift in his mind.
 The sky, or the moon, or the stars. One of those. 
 And he let himself be exposed like that, defenseless, on the slide. 
 Thats right. 
 Dont you find that odd? Tamaru asked. His voice was hard and dry, reminding her of a
desert plant that could survive a whole year on one days worth of rain. That man had run
you down. He was one step away from you. Pretty impressive. Yet there he was, on top of a
slide, leisurely gazing up at the night sky, not paying any attention to the apartment where you
live. It doesnt add up. 
 I agree it doesnt make much sense. Be that as it may, I couldnt very well let him go. 
Tamaru sighed. But I still think it was dangerous. 
Aomame didnt say anything.
 Did following him help you get any closer to solving the riddle? Tamaru asked.
 No, Aomame said. But there was one thing that caught my attention. 
 Which was? 
 When I looked at the mailboxes I saw that a person named Kawana lives on the third
floor. 
 So? 
 Have you heard of Air Chrysalis? The bestselling novel this past summer? 
 Even I read newspapers, you know. The author, Eriko Fukada, was the daughter of a follower
of Sakigake. She disappeared and they suspected she was abducted by the cult. The
police investigated it. I havent read the novel yet. 
 Eriko Fukada isnt just the daughter of a follower. Her father was Leader, the head of
Sakigake. Shes the daughter of the man I sent on to the other side. Tengo Kawana was hired
by the editor as a ghostwriter, and rewrote Air Chrysalis. In reality the novel is a joint work
between the two of them. 
A long silence descended. Long enough to walk to the end of a long, narrow room, look up
something in a dictionary, and walk back. Finally Tamaru broke the silence.
 You have no proof that the Kawana who lives in that building is Tengo Kawana. 
 Not yet, no, Aomame admitted. But if he is the same person, then this all makes sense. 
 Certain parts do mesh together, Tamaru said. But how do you know that this Tengo
Kawana ghostwrote Air Chrysalis? That cant have been made public. It would have caused a
major scandal. 
 I heard it from Leader himself. Right before he died, he told me. 
Tamarus voice turned a little cold. Dont you think you should have told me this before? 
 At the time I didnt think it was so important. 
There was silence again for a time. Aomame couldnt tell what Tamaru was thinking, but
she knew he didnt like excuses.
 Okay, he finally said. Well put that on hold. Lets cut to the chase. What youre trying to
say is that Bobblehead marked this Tengo Kawana. And using that as a lead, he was tracking
down your whereabouts. 
 Thats what I think. 
 I dont get it, Tamaru said. Why would Tengo Kawana be a lead to find you? There isnt
any connection between you and Kawana, is there? Other than that you dealt with Eriko
Fukadas father, and Tengo was the ghostwriter for her novel. 
 There is a connection, Aomame said, her voice flat.
 Theres a direct relationship between you and Tengo Kawana. Is that what youre saying? 
 He and I were in the same class in elementary school. And I believe hes the father of my
baby. But I cant explain any more beyond that. Its very how should I put it? personal. 
On the other end of the phone she heard a ballpoint pen tapping on a desk. That was the
only sound she could hear.
 Personal, Tamaru repeated, in a voice that sounded like he had spied some weird
creature on top of a rock in a garden.
 Im sorry, Aomame said.
 I understand. Its a very personal thing. I wont ask anymore, Tamaru said. So, specifically,
what do you want from me? 
 Well, the first thing I would like to know is if the Kawana who lives in that building is actually
Tengo Kawana. If it were possible, I would like to make sure of that myself, but its too
risky to go there again. 
 Agreed. 
 And Bobblehead is probably holed up somewhere in that building, planning something. If
hes getting close to locating me, we have to do something about it. 
 He already knows a certain amount about the connection between you and the dowager.
He has painstakingly hauled in these various leads and is trying to tie them all together. We
cant ignore him. 
 I have one other request of you, Aomame said.
 Go ahead. 
 If it is really Tengo Kawana living there, I dont want any harm to come to him. If its unavoidable
that he is going to get hurt, then I want to take his place. 
Tamaru was silent again for a time. No more ballpoint pen tapping this time. There were
no sounds at all, in fact. He was considering things in a world devoid of sound.
 I think I can take care of the first two requests, Tamaru said. Thats part of my job. But I
cant say anything about the third. It involves very personal things, and theres too much
about it I dont understand. Speaking from experience, taking care of three items at once isnt
easy. Like it or not, you end up prioritizing. 
 I dont mind. You can prioritize them however you like. I just want you to keep this in
mind: while Im still alive, I have to meet Tengo. Theres something I have to tell him. 
 Ill keep it in mind, Tamaru said. While theres still spare room in my mind, that is. 
 Thank you. 
 I have to report what you have told me to the dowager. This is a rather delicate issue, and
I cant decide things on my own. So Ill hang up for now. Listen do not go outside anymore.
Lock the door and stay put. If you go outside, it could cause problems. Maybe it already has. 
 But it helped me find out a few things about him. 
 All right, Tamaru said, sounding resigned. From what you have told me, it sounds like
you did an excellent job. Ill admit that. But dont let your guard down. We dont know yet what
hes got up his sleeve. And considering the situation, most likely he has an organization behind
him. Do you still have the thing I gave you? 
 Of course. 
 Best to keep it nearby. 
 Will do. 
A short pause, then the phone connection went dead.
Aomame sank back into the bathtub, which she had filled to the brim, and while she
warmed up, she thought about Tengo the Tengo who might or might not be living in an
apartment in that old building. She pictured the uninviting steel door, the slot for the name
card, the name Kawana printed on the card. What kind of place was beyond that door? And
what kind of life was he living?
In the hot water she touched her breasts, rubbing them. Her nipples had grown larger and
harder than before, and more sensitive. I wish these were Tengos hands instead of mine, she
thought. She imagined his hands, large and warm. Strong, but surely gentle. If her breasts
were enveloped in his hands how much joy, and peace, she would feel. Aomame also noticed
that her breasts were now slightly larger. It was no illusion. They definitely were swollen,
the curves softer. Its probably due to my pregnancy. Or maybe they just got bigger, unrelated
to being pregnant. One aspect of my transformation.
She put her hands on her abdomen. It was still barely swollen, and she didnt have any
morning sickness, for some reason. But there was a little one hidden within. She knew it. Wait
a moment, she thought. Maybe theyre not after my life, but after this little one? As revenge
for me killing Leader, are they trying to get to it, along with me? The thought made her shud-
der. Aomame was doubly determined now to see Tengo. Together, the two of them had to
protect the little one. I have had so many precious things stolen from me in my life. But this is
one I am going to hold on to.
She went to bed and read for a while, but sleep didnt come. She shut her book, and
gently rolled into a ball to protect her abdomen. With her cheek against the pillow, she thought
of the winter moon in the sky above the park, and the little green moon beside it. Maza and
dohta. The mixed light of the two moons bathing the bare branches of the zelkova tree. At this
very moment Tamaru must be figuring out a plan, his mind racing at top speed. She could see
him, brows knit, tip of his ballpoint pen tapping furiously on the desktop. Eventually, as if led
by that monotonous, ceaseless rhythm, the soft blanket of sleep wrapped itself around her.
1Q84
CHAPTER 21
Tengo
SOMEWHERE INSIDE HIS HEAD
The phone was ringing. The hands on his alarm clock showed 2:04. Monday, 2:04 a.m. It
was still dark out and Tengo had been sound asleep. A peaceful, dreamless sleep.
First he thought it was Fuka-Eri. She would be the only person who would possibly call at
this ungodly hour. Or it could be Komatsu. Komatsu didnt have much common sense when it
came to time. But somehow the ring didnt sound like Komatsu. It was more insistent, and
businesslike. And besides, he had just seen Komatsu a few hours earlier.
One option was to ignore the call and go back to sleep Tengos first choice. But the
phone kept on ringing. It might go on ringing all night, for that matter. He got out of bed,
bumping his shin as he did, and picked up the receiver.
 Hello, Tengo said, his voice still slurry from sleep. It was like his head was filled with
frozen lettuce. There must be some people who dont know youre not supposed to freeze
lettuce. Once lettuce has been frozen, it loses all its crispness which for lettuce is surely its
best characteristic.
When he held the receiver to his ear, he heard the sound of wind blowing. A capricious
wind rushing through a narrow valley, ruffling the fur of beautiful deer bent over to drink from a
clear stream. But it wasnt the sound of wind. It was someones breathing, amplified by the
phone.
 Hello, Tengo repeated. Was it a prank call? Or perhaps the connection was bad.
 Hello, the person on the other end said. A womans voice he had heard before. It wasnt
Fuka-Eri. Nor was it his older girlfriend.
 Hello, Tengo said. Kawana here. 
 Tengo, the person said. They were finally on the same page, though he still didnt know
who it was.
 Whos calling? 
 Kumi Adachi, the woman said.
 Oh, hi, Tengo said. Kumi Adachi, the young nurse who lived in the apartment with the
hooting owl. Whats going on? 
 Were you asleep? 
 Yes, Tengo said. How about you? 
This was a pointless question. People who are sleeping cant make phone calls. Why did I
say such a stupid thing? he wondered. It must be the frozen lettuce in my head.
 Im on duty now, she said. She cleared her throat. Mr. Kawana just passed away. 
 Mr. Kawana just passed away, Tengo repeated, not comprehending. Was someone
telling him he himself had just died?
 Your father just breathed his last breath, Kumi said, rephrasing.
Tengo pointlessly switched the receiver from his right hand to his left. Breathed his last
breath, he repeated.
 I was dozing in the nurses lounge when the bell rang, just after one. It was the bell for
your fathers room. He has been in a coma for so long, and he couldnt ring the bell by himself,
so I thought it was odd, and went to check it out. When I got there his breathing had
stopped, as had his heart. I woke up the on-call doctor and we tried to revive him, but
couldnt. 
 Are you saying my father pressed the call button? 
 Probably. There was no one else who could have. 
 What was the cause of death? Tengo asked.
 I really cant say, though he didnt seem to have suffered. His face looked very peaceful.
It was like a windless day at the end of autumn, when a single leaf falls from a tree. But
maybe thats not a good way to put it. 
 No, thats okay, Tengo said. Thats a good way of putting it. 
 Tengo, can you get here today? 
 I think so. His classes at the cram school began again today, Monday, but for something
like this, he would be able to get out of them.
 Ill take the first express train. I should be there before ten. 
 I would appreciate it if you would. There are all sorts of formalities that have to be taken
care of. 
 Formalities, Tengo said. Is there anything in particular I should bring with me? 
 Are you Mr. Kawanas only relative? 
 Im pretty sure I am. 
 Then bring your registered seal. You might need it. And do you have a certificate of registration
for the seal? 
 I think I have a spare copy. 
 Bring that, too, just in case. I dont think theres anything else you especially need. Your
father arranged everything beforehand. 
 Arranged everything? 
 Um, while he was still conscious, he gave detailed instructions for everything the money
for his funeral, the clothes he would wear in the coffin, where his ashes would be interred. He
was very thorough when it came to preparations. Very practical, I guess you could say. 
 Thats the kind of person he was, Tengo said, rubbing his temple.
 I finish my rotation at seven a.m. and then am going home to sleep. But Nurse Tamura
and Nurse Omura will be on duty in the morning and they can explain the details to you. 
 Thank you for all youve done, Tengo said.
 Youre quite welcome, Kumi Adachi replied. And then, as if suddenly remembering, her
tone turned formal. My deepest sympathy for your loss. 
 Thank you, Tengo said.
He knew he couldnt go back to sleep, so he boiled water and made coffee. That woke
him up a bit. Feeling hungry, he threw together a sandwich of tomatoes and cheese that were
in the fridge. Like eating in the dark, he could feel the texture but very little of the flavor. He
then took out the train schedule and checked the time for the next express to Tateyama. He
had only returned two days earlier from the cat town, on Saturday afternoon, and now here he
was, setting off again. This time, though, he would probably only stay a night or two.
At four a.m. he washed his face in the bathroom and shaved. He used a brush to tame his
cowlicks but, as always, was only partly successful. Let it be, he thought, it will fall into place
before long.
His fathers passing didnt particularly shock Tengo. He had spent two solid weeks beside
his unconscious father. He already felt that his father had accepted his impending death. The
doctors werent able to determine what had put him into a coma, but Tengo knew. His father
had simply decided to die, or else had abandoned the will to live any longer. To borrow
Kumis phrase, as a single leaf on a tree, he turned off the light of consciousness, closed the
door on any senses, and waited for the change of seasons.
From Chikura Station he took a taxi and arrived at the seaside sanatorium at ten thirty.
Like the previous day, Sunday, it was a calm early-winter day. Warm sunlight streamed down
on the withered lawn, as if rewarding it, and a calico cat that Tengo had never seen before
was sunning itself, leisurely grooming its tail. Nurse Tamura and Nurse Omura came to the
entrance to greet him. Quietly, they each expressed their condolences, and Tengo thanked
them.
His fathers body was being kept in an inconspicuous little room in an inconspicuous
corner of the sanatorium. Nurse Tamura led Tengo there. His father was lying faceup on a
gurney, covered in a white cloth. In the square, windowless room, the white fluorescent light
overhead made the white walls even brighter. On top of a waist-high cabinet was a glass vase
with three white chrysanthemums, probably placed there that very morning. On the wall was a
round clock. It was an old, dusty clock, but it told the time correctly. Its role, perhaps, was to
be a witness of some kind. Besides this, there were no furniture or decorations. Countless
bodies of elderly people must have passed through here entering without a word, exiting
without a word. A straightforward but solemn atmosphere lay over the room like an unspoken
fact.
His fathers face didnt look much different from when he was alive. Even up close, it didnt
seem like he was dead. His color wasnt bad, and perhaps because someone had been kind
enough to shave him, his chin and upper lip were strangely smooth. There didnt seem to be
all that much difference from when he was alive, deeply asleep, except that now the feeding
tubes and catheters were unnecessary. Leave the body like this, though, and in a few days
decay would set in, and then there would be a big difference between life and death. But the
body would be cremated before that happened.
The doctor with whom Tengo had spoken many times before came in, expressed his sympathy,
then explained what had led up to his fathers passing. He was very kind, very thorough
in his explanation, but it really all came down to one conclusion: the cause of death was
unknown. None of their tests had ever determined what was wrong with him. The closest the
doctor could say was that Tengos father died of old age but he was still only in his midsixties,
too young for such a diagnosis.
 As the attending physician Im the one who fills out the death certificate, the doctor said
hesitantly. Im thinking of writing that the cause of death was ‘heart failure brought on by an
extended coma, if that is all right with you? 
 But actually the cause of death was not ‘heart failure brought on by an extended coma. Is
that what youre saying? 
The doctor looked a bit embarrassed. True, until the very end we found nothing wrong
with his heart. 
 But you couldnt find anything wrong with any of his other organs. 
 Thats right, the doctor said reluctantly.
 But the form requires a clear cause of death? 
 Correct. 
 This isnt my field, but right now his heart is stopped, right? 
 Of course. His heart has stopped. 
 Which is a kind of organ failure, isnt it? 
The doctor considered this. If the heart beating is considered normal, then yes, it is a sort
of organ failure, as you say. 
 So please write it that way. ‘Heart failure brought on by an extended coma, was it? I have
no objection. 
The doctor seemed relieved. I can have the death certificate ready in thirty minutes, he
said. Tengo thanked him. The doctor left, leaving only bespectacled Nurse Tamura behind.
 Shall I leave you alone with your father? Nurse Tamura asked Tengo. Since she had to
ask it was standard procedure the question sounded a bit matter-of-fact.
 No, theres no need. Thanks, Tengo said. Even if he were left alone with his father, there
was nothing in particular he wanted to say to him. It was the same as when he was alive. Now
that he was dead, there werent suddenly all sorts of topics Tengo wanted to discuss.
 Would you like to go somewhere else, then, to discuss the arrangements? You dont
mind? Nurse Tamura asked.
 I dont mind, Tengo replied.
Before Nurse Tamura left, she faced the corpse and brought her hands together in prayer.
Tengo did the same. People naturally pay their respects to the dead. The person had, after
all, just accomplished the personal, profound feat of dying. Then the two of them left the windowless
little room and went to the cafeteria. There was no one else there. Bright sunlight
shone in through the large window facing the garden. Tengo stepped into that light and
breathed a sigh of relief. There was no sign of the dead there. This was the world of the living no
matter how uncertain and imperfect a world it might be.
Nurse Tamura poured hot roasted hojicha tea into a teacup and passed it to him. They sat
down across from each other and drank their tea in silence for a while.
 Are you staying over somewhere tonight? Nurse Tamura asked.
 Im planning to stay over, but I havent made a reservation yet. 
 If you dont mind, why dont you stay in your fathers room? Nobodys using it, and you
can save on hotel costs. If it doesnt bother you. 
 It doesnt bother me, Tengo said, a little surprised. But is it all right to do that? 
 We dont mind. If youre okay with it, its okay with us. Ill get the bed ready later. 
 So, Tengo said, broaching the topic, what am I supposed to do now? 
 Once you get the death certificate from the attending physician, go to the town office and
get a permit for cremation, and then take care of the procedures to remove his name from the
family record. Those are the main things you need to do now. There should be other things
youll need to take care of his pension, changing names on his savings account but talk to
the lawyer about those. 
 Lawyer? This took Tengo by surprise.
 Mr. Kawana your father, that is spoke with a lawyer about the procedures for after his
death. Dont let the word lawyer scare you. Our facility has a lot of elderly patients, and since
many are not legally competent, we have paired up with a local law office to provide consultations,
so people can avoid legal problems related to division of estates. They also make up
wills and provide witnesses. They dont charge a lot. 
 Did my father have a will? 
 I cant really say anything about it. Youll need to talk to the lawyer. 
 I see. Can I see him soon? 
 We got in touch with him, and hell be coming here at three. Is that all right? It seems like
were rushing things, but I know youre busy, so I hope you dont mind that we went ahead. 
 I appreciate it. Tengo was thankful for her efficiency. For some reason all the middleaged
women he knew were very efficient.
 Before that, though, make sure you go to the town office, Nurse Tamura said, get his
name removed from your family record, and get a permit for cremation. Nothing can happen
until youve done that. 
 Well, then I have to go to Ichikawa. My fathers permanent legal residence should be Ichikawa.
If I do that, though, I wont be able to make it back by three. 
The nurse shook her head. No, soon after he came here your father changed his official
residence from Ichikawa to Chikura. He said it should make things easier if and when the time
came. 
 He was well prepared, Tengo said, impressed. It was as if he knew from the beginning
that this was where he would die.
 He was, the nurse agreed. No one else has ever done that. Everyone thinks they will
just be here for a short time. Still, though …, she began to say, and stopped, quietly bringing
her hands together in front of her to suggest the rest of what she was going to say. At any
rate, you dont need to go to Ichikawa. 
Tengo was taken to his fathers room, the room where he spent his final months. The
sheets and covers had been stripped off, leaving only a striped mattress. There was a simple
lamp on the nightstand, and five empty hangers in the narrow closet. There wasnt a single
book in the bookshelf, and all his personal effects had been taken away. But Tengo couldnt
recall what personal effects had been there in the first place. He put his bag on the floor and
looked around.
The room still had a medicinal smell, and you could still detect the breath of a sick person
hanging in the air. Tengo opened the window to let in fresh air. The sun-bleached curtain
fluttered in the breeze like the skirt of a girl at play. How wonderful it would be if Aomame
were here, he thought, just holding my hand tight, not saying a word.
. . .
He took a bus to the Chikura town hall, showed them the death certificate, and received a
permit for cremation. Once twenty-four hours had passed since the time of death, the body
could be cremated. He also applied to have his fathers name removed from the family record,
and received a certificate to that effect. The procedures took a while, but were almost disap-
pointingly simple nothing that would cause any soul searching. It was no different from reporting
a stolen car. Nurse Tamura used their office copier to make three copies of the documents
he received.
 At two thirty, before the lawyer comes, someone will be here from Zenkosha, a funeral
parlor, Mrs. Tamura said. Please give him one copy of the cremation permit. The person
from the funeral parlor will take care of the rest. While he was still alive, your father talked to
the funeral director and decided on all the arrangements. He also put enough money aside to
cover it, so you dont need to do anything. Unless you have an objection. 
 No, no objection, Tengo said.
His father had left hardly any belongings behind. Old clothes, a few books that was all.
 Would you like something as a keepsake? All there is, though, is an alarm clock radio, an
old self-winding watch, and reading glasses, Nurse Tamura said.
 I dont want anything, Tengo told her. Just dispose of it any way you like. 
At precisely two thirty the funeral director arrived, dressed in a black suit. He moved silently.
A thin man, in his early fifties, he had long fingers, large eyes, and a single dry, black
wart next to his nose. He seemed to have spent a great deal of time outdoors, because his
face was suntanned all over, down to the tips of his ears. Tengo wasnt sure why, but he had
never seen a fat funeral director. The man explained the main procedures for the funeral. He
was very polite and spoke slowly, deliberately, as if indicating that they could take all the time
they needed.
 While your father was alive, he said he wanted as simple a funeral as possible. He
wanted a simple, functional casket, and he wanted to be cremated as is. He did not want any
ceremony, no scriptures read, no posthumous Buddhist name, or flowers, or a eulogy. And he
didnt want a grave. He instructed me to have his ashes simply put in a suitable communal facility.
That is, if there are no objections … 
He paused and looked entreatingly at Tengo with his large eyes.
 If that is what my father wanted, then I have no objection, Tengo said, looking straight
back at those eyes.
The funeral director nodded, and cast his eyes down. Today would be the wake, and for
one night we will have the body lie in state in our funeral home. So we will need to transport
the body to our place. The cremation will take place tomorrow at one thirty in the afternoon in
a crematorium nearby. I hope this is satisfactory? 
 I have no objection. 
 Will you be attending the cremation? 
 I will, Tengo said.
 There are some who do not like to attend, and it is entirely up to you. 
 I will be there, Tengo said.
 Very good, the man said, sounding a little relieved. Im sorry to bother you with this now,
but this is the same amount I showed your father while he was still alive. I would appreciate it
if you would approve it. 
The funeral director, his long fingers like insect legs, extracted a statement from a folder
and passed it to Tengo. Tengo knew almost nothing about funerals, but he could see this was
quite inexpensive. He had no objection. He borrowed a ballpoint pen and signed the agreement.
The lawyer came just before three and he and the funeral director stood there chatting for
a moment a clipped conversation, one specialist to another. Tengo couldnt really follow
their conversation. The two of them seemed to know each other. This was a small town. Probably
everybody knew everybody else.
Near the morgue was an inconspicuous back door, and the funeral parlors small van was
parked just outside. Except for the drivers window, all the windows were tinted black, and the
jet-black van was devoid of any sign or markings. The thin funeral director and his whitehaired
assistant moved Tengos father onto a rolling gurney and pushed it toward the van.
The van had been refitted to have an especially high ceiling and rails onto which they slid the
body. They shut the back doors of the van with an earnest thud, the funeral director turned to
Tengo and bowed, and the van pulled away. Tengo, the lawyer, Nurse Tamura, and Nurse
Omura all faced the rear door of the black Toyota van and brought their hands together in
prayer.
Tengo and the lawyer talked in a corner of the cafeteria. The lawyer looked to be in his
mid-forties, and was quite obese, the exact opposite of the funeral director. His chin had
nearly disappeared, and despite the chill of winter his forehead was covered with a light
sheen of sweat. He must sweat something awful in the summer, Tengo thought. His gray
wool suit smelled of mothballs. He had a narrow forehead, and above it an overabundance of
thick, luxurious black hair. The combination of the obese body and the thick hair didnt work.
His eyelids were heavy and swollen, his eyes narrow, but behind them was a friendly glint.
 Your father entrusted me with his will. The word will implies something significant, but this
isnt like one of those wills from a detective novel, the lawyer said, and cleared his throat. Its
actually closer to a simple memo. Let me start by briefly summarizing its contents. The will
begins by outlining arrangements for his funeral. I believe the gentleman from Zenkosha has
explained this to you? 
 Yes, he did. Its to be a simple funeral. 
 Very good, the lawyer said. That was your fathers wish, that everything be done as
plainly as possible. The funeral expenses will be paid out of a reserve fund he set aside, and
medical and other expenses will come out of the security deposit your father paid when he
checked into this facility. There will be nothing you will have to pay for out of your own pocket. 
 He didnt want to owe anybody, did he? 
 Exactly. Everything has been prepaid. Also, your father has money in an account at the
Chikura post office, which you, as his son, will inherit. You will need to take care of changing it
over to your name. To do that, youll need the proof that your father has been removed from
the family register, and a copy of your family register and seal certificate. You should go directly
to the Chikura post office and sign the necessary documents yourself. The procedures
take some time. As you know, Japanese banks and the post office are quite particular about
filling in all the proper forms. 
The lawyer took a large white handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wiped the sweat
from his forehead.
 Thats all I need to tell you about the inheritance. He had no assets other than the post office
account no insurance policies, stocks, real estate, jewelry, art objects nothing of this
sort. Very straightforward, you could say, and fuss free. 
Tengo nodded silently. It sounded like his father. But taking over his postal account made
Tengo feel a little depressed. It felt like being handed a pile of damp, heavy blankets. If possible,
he would rather not have it. But he couldnt say this.
 Your father also entrusted an envelope to my care. I have brought it with me and would
like to give it to you now. 
The thick brown envelope was sealed tight with packing tape. The obese lawyer took it
from his black briefcase and laid it on the table.
 I met Mr. Kawana soon after he came here, and he gave this to me then. He was
still conscious then. He would get confused occasionally, but he was generally able to function
fine. He told me that when he died, he would like me to give this envelope to his legal
heir. 
 Legal heir, Tengo repeated, a bit surprised.
 Yes. That was the term he used. Your father didnt specify anyone in particular, but in
practical terms you would be the only legal heir. 
 As far as I know. 
 Then, as instructed, here you go, the lawyer said, pointing to the envelope on the table.
 Could you sign a receipt for it, please? 
Tengo signed the receipt. The brown office envelope on the table looked anonymous and
bland. Nothing was written on it, neither on the front nor on the back.
 Theres one thing I would like to ask you, Tengo said to the lawyer. Did my father ever
mention my name? Or use the word son? 
As he mulled this over, the lawyer pulled out his handkerchief again and mopped his brow.
He shook his head slightly. No, Mr. Kawana always used the term legal heir. He didnt use
any other terms. I remember this because I found it odd. 
Tengo was silent. The lawyer collected himself and spoke up.
 But you have to understand that Mr. Kawana knew you were the only legal heir. Its just
that when we spoke he didnt use your name. Does that bother you? 
 Not really, Tengo said. My father was always a bit odd. 
The lawyer smiled, as if relieved, and gave a slight nod. He handed Tengo a new copy of
their family register. If you dont mind, since it was this sort of illness, I would like you to
check the family register so we can make sure there are no legal problems with the procedure.
According to the record, you are Mr. Kawanas sole child. Your mother passed away a
year and a half after giving birth to you. Your father didnt remarry, and raised you by himself.
Your fathers parents and siblings are already deceased. So you are clearly Mr. Kawanas
sole legal heir. 
After the lawyer stood up, expressed his condolences, and left, Tengo remained seated,
gazing at the envelope on the table. His father was his real blood father, and his mother was
really dead. The lawyer had said so. So it must be true or, at least, a fact, in a legal sense.
But it felt like the more facts that were revealed, the more the truth receded. Why would that
be?
Tengo returned to his fathers room, sat down at the desk, and struggled to open the
sealed envelope. The envelope might contain the key to unlocking some mystery. Opening it
was difficult. There were no scissors or box cutters in the room, so he had to peel off the
packing tape with his fingernails. When he finally managed to get the envelope open, the contents
were in several other envelopes, all of them in turn tightly sealed. Just the sort of thing
he expected from his father.
One envelope contained 500,000 yen in cash exactly fifty crisp new ten-thousand-yen
bills, wrapped in layers of thin paper. A piece of paper included with it said Emergency cash.
Definitely his fathers writing, small letters, nothing abbreviated. This money must be in case
there were unanticipated expenses. His father had anticipated that his legal heir wouldnt
have sufficient funds on hand.
The thickest of the envelopes was stuffed full of newspaper clippings and various award
certificates, all of them about Tengo. His certificate from when he won the math contest in ele-
mentary school, and the article about it in the local paper. A photo of Tengo next to his trophy.
The artistic-looking award Tengo received for having the best grades in his class. He had the
best grades in every subject. There were various other articles that showed what a child
prodigy Tengo had been. A photo of Tengo in a judo gi in junior high, grinning, holding the
second-place banner. Tengo was really surprised to see these. After his father had retired
from NHK, he left the company housing he had been in, moved to another apartment in Ichikawa,
and finally went to the sanatorium in Chikura. Probably because he had moved by himself
so often, he had hardly any possessions. And father and son had basically been
strangers to each other for years. Despite this, his father had lovingly carried around all these
mementos of Tengos child-prodigy days.
The next envelope contained various records from his fathers days as an NHK fee collector.
A record of the times when he was the top producer of the year. Several simple certificates.
A photo apparently taken with a colleague on a company trip. An old ID card. Records of
payment to his retirement plan and health insurance.… Though his father worked like a dog
for NHK for over thirty years, the amount of material left was surprisingly little next to nothing
when compared with Tengos achievements in elementary school. Society might see his fathers
entire life as amounting to almost zero, but to Tengo, it wasnt next to nothing. Along with
a postal savings book, his father had left behind a deep, dark shadow.
There was nothing in the envelope to indicate anything about his fathers life before he
joined NHK. It was as if his fathers life began the moment he became an NHK fee collector.
He opened the final envelope, a thin one, and found a single black-and-white photograph.
That was all. It was an old photo, and though the contrast hadnt faded, there was a thin
membrane over the whole picture, as if water had seeped into it. It was a photo of a family a
father, a mother, and a tiny baby. The baby looked less than a year old. The mother, dressed
in a kimono, was lovingly cradling the baby. Behind them was a torii gate at a shrine. From
the clothes they had on, it looked like winter. Since they were visiting a shrine, it was most
likely New Years. The mother was squinting, as if the light were too bright, and smiling. The
father, dressed in a dark coat, slightly too big for him, had frown lines between his eyes, as if
to say he didnt take anything at face value. The baby looked confused by how big and cold
the world could be.
The young father in the photo had to be Tengos father. He looked much younger, though
he already had a sort of surprising maturity about him, and he was thin, his eyes sunken. It
was the face of a poor farmer from some out-of-the-way hamlet, stubborn, skeptical. His hair
was cut short, his shoulders a bit stooped. That could only be his father. This meant that the
baby must be Tengo, and the mother holding the baby must be Tengos mother. His mother
was slightly taller than his father, and had good posture. His father was in his late thirties,
while his mother looked to be in her mid-twenties.
Tengo had never seen the photograph before. He had never seen anything that could be
called a family photo. And he had never seen a picture of himself when he was little. They
couldnt afford a camera, his father had once explained, and never had the opportunity to take
any family photos. And Tengo had accepted this. But now he knew it was a lie. They had
taken a photo together. And though their clothes werent exactly luxurious, they were at least
presentable. They didnt look as if they were so poor they couldnt afford a camera. The photo
was taken not long after Tengo was born, sometime between 1954 and 1955. He turned the
photo over, but there was no date or indication of where it had been taken.
Tengo studied the woman. In the photo her face was small, and slightly out of focus. If
only he had a magnifying glass! Then he could have made out more details. Still, he could
see most of her features. She had an oval-shaped face, a small nose, and plump lips. By no
means a beauty, though sort of cute the type of face that left a good impression. At least
compared with his fathers rustic face she looked far more refined and intelligent. Tengo was
happy about this. Her hair was nicely styled, but since she had on a kimono, he couldnt tell
much about her figure.
At least as far as they looked in this photo, no one could call them a well-matched couple.
There was a great age difference between them. Tengo tried to imagine his parents meeting
each other, falling in love, having him but he just couldnt see it. You didnt get that sense at
all from the photo. So if there wasnt an emotional attachment that brought them together,
there must have been some other circumstances that did. No, maybe it wasnt as dramatic as
the term circumstances made it sound. Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of
events and nothing more.
Tengo tried to figure out if the mother in this photo was the mysterious woman who appeared
in his daydreams, or in his fog of childhood memories. But he realized he didnt have
any memories of the womans face whatsoever. The woman in his memory took off her
blouse, let down the straps of her slip, and let some unknown man suck her breasts. And her
breathing became deeper, like she was moaning. Thats all he remembered some man
sucking his mothers breasts. The breasts that should have been his alone were stolen away
by somebody else. A baby would no doubt see this as a grave threat. His eyes never went to
the mans face.
Tengo returned the photo to the envelope, and thought about what it meant. His father
had cherished this one photograph until he died, which might mean he still cherished Tengos
mother. Tengo couldnt remember his mother, for she had died from illness when he was too
young to have any memories of her. According to the lawyers investigation, Tengo was the
only child of his mother and his father, the NHK fee collector, a fact recorded in his family re-
gister. But official documents didnt guarantee that that man was Tengos biological father.
 I dont have a son, his father had declared to Tengo before he fell into a coma.
 So, what am I? Tengo had asked.
 Youre nothing, was his fathers concise and peremptory reply.
His fathers tone of voice had convinced Tengo that there was no blood connection
between him and this man. And he had felt freed from heavy shackles. As time went on,
however, he wasnt completely convinced that what his father had said was true.
Im nothing, Tengo repeated.
Suddenly he realized that his young mother in the photo from long ago reminded him of
his older girlfriend. Kyoko Yasuda was her name. In order to calm his mind, he pressed his
fingers hard against the middle of his forehead. He took the photo out again and stared at it. A
small nose, plump lips, a somewhat pointed chin. Her hairstyle was so different he hadnt noticed
at first, but her features did somewhat resemble Kyokos. But what could that possibly
mean?
And why did his father think to give this photo to Tengo after his death? While he was
alive he had never provided Tengo with a single piece of information about his mother. He
had even hidden the existence of this family photo. One thing Tengo did know was that his
father never intended to explain the situation to him. Not while he was alive, and not even
now after his death. Look, heres a photo, his father must be saying. Ill just hand it to you. Its
up to you to figure it out.
Tengo lay faceup on the bare mattress and stared at the ceiling. It was a painted white
plywood ceiling, flat with no wood grain or knots, just several straight joints where the boards
came together the same scene his fathers sunken eyes must have viewed during the last
few months of life. Or maybe those eyes didnt see anything. At any rate his gaze had been
directed there, at the ceiling, whether he had been seeing it or not.
Tengo closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself slowly moving toward death. But for a
thirty-year-old in good health, death was something far off, beyond the imagination. Instead,
breathing softly, he watched the twilight shadows as they moved across the wall. He tried to
not think about anything. Not thinking about anything was not too hard for Tengo. He was too
tired to keep any one particular thought in his head. He wanted to catch some sleep if he
could, but he was overtired, and sleep wouldnt come.
Just before six p.m. Nurse Omura came and told him dinner was ready in the cafeteria.
Tengo had no appetite, but the tall, busty nurse wouldnt leave him alone. You need to get
something, even a little bit, into your stomach, she told him. This was close to a direct order.
When it came to telling people how to maintain their health, she was a pro. And Tengo wasnt
the type especially when the other person was an older woman who could resist.
They took the stairs down to the cafeteria and found Kumi Adachi waiting for them. Nurse
Tamura was nowhere to be seen. Tengo ate dinner at the same table as Kumi and Nurse
Omura. Tengo had a salad, cooked vegetables, and miso soup with asari clams and scallions,
washed down with hot hojicha tea.
 When is the cremation? Kumi asked him.
 Tomorrow afternoon at one, Tengo said. When thats done, Ill probably go straight back
to Tokyo. I have to go back to work. 
 Will anyone else be at the cremation besides you, Tengo? 
 No, no one else. Just me. 
 Do you mind if I join you? Kumi asked.
 At my fathers cremation? Tengo asked, surprised.
 Yes. Actually I was pretty fond of him. 
Tengo involuntarily put his chopsticks down and looked at her. Was she really talking
about his father? What did you like about him? he asked her.
 He was very conscientious, never said more than he needed to, she said. In that sense
he was like my father, who passed away. 
 Huh, Tengo said.
 My father was a fisherman. He died before he reached fifty. 
 Did he die at sea? 
 No, he died of lung cancer. He smoked too much. I dont know why, but fishermen are all
heavy smokers. Its like smoke is rising out of their whole body. 
Tengo thought about this. It might have been better if my father had been a fisherman
too. 
 Why do you think that? 
 Im not really sure, Tengo replied. The thought just occurred to me that it would have
been better for him than being an NHK fee collector. 
 If your father had been a fisherman, would it have been easier for you to accept him? 
 It would have made many things simpler, I suppose. 
Tengo pictured himself as a child, early in the morning on a day when he didnt have
school, heading off on a fishing boat with his father. The stiff Pacific wind, the salt spray hitting
his face. The monotonous drone of the diesel engine. The stuffy smell of the fishing nets.
Hard, dangerous work. One mistake and you could lose your life. But compared with being
dragged all over Ichikawa to collect subscription fees, it would have to be a more natural, fulfilling
life.
 But collecting NHK fees couldnt have been easy work, could it? Nurse Omura said as
she ate her soy-flavored fish.
 Probably not, Tengo said. At least he knew it wasnt the kind of job he could handle.
 Your father was really good at his job, wasnt he? Kumi asked.
 I think he was, yes, Tengo said.
 He showed me his award certificates, Kumi said.
 Ah! Darn, Nurse Omura said, suddenly putting down her chopsticks. I totally forgot.
Darn it! How could I forget something so important? Could you wait here for a minute? I have
something I have to give you, and it has to be today. 
Nurse Omura wiped her mouth with a napkin, stood up, and hurried out of the cafeteria,
her meal half eaten.
 I wonder whats so important? Kumi said, tilting her head.
Tengo had no idea.
As he waited for Nurse Omuras return, he dutifully worked his way through his salad.
There werent many others eating dinner in the cafeteria. At one table there were three old
men, none of them speaking. At another table a man in a white coat, with a sprinkling of gray
hair, sat alone, reading the evening paper as he ate, a solemn look on his face.
Nurse Omura finally trotted back. She was holding a department-store shopping bag. She
took out some neatly folded clothes.
 I got this from Mr. Kawana about a year or so ago, while he was still conscious, the large
nurse said. He said when he was put in the casket he would like to be dressed in this. So I
sent it to the cleaners and had them store it in mothballs. 
There was no mistaking the NHK fee collectors uniform. The matching trousers had been
nicely ironed. The smell of mothballs hit Tengo. For a while he was speechless.
 Mr. Kawana told me he would like to be cremated wearing this uniform, Nurse Omura
said. She refolded the uniform neatly and put it back in the shopping bag. So Im giving it to
you now. Tomorrow, give this to the funeral home people and make sure they dress him in it. 
 Isnt it a problem to have him wear this? The uniform was just on loan to him, and when
he retired it should have been returned to NHK, Tengo said, weakly.
 I wouldnt worry about it, Kumi said. If we dont say anything, whos going to know? NHK
isnt going to be in a tight spot over a set of old clothes. 
Nurse Omura agreed. Mr. Kawana walked all over the place, from morning to night, for
over thirty years for NHK. Im sure it wasnt always pleasant. Who cares about one uniform?
Its not like youre using it to do something bad or anything. 
 Youre right. I still have my school uniform from high school, Kumi said.
 An NHK collectors uniform and a high school uniform arent exactly the same thing, 
Tengo interjected, but no one took up the point.
 Come to think of it, I have my old school uniform in the closet somewhere too, Nurse
Omura said.
 Are you telling me you put it on sometimes for your husband? Along with white bobby
socks? Kumi said teasingly.
 Hmm now thats a thought, Nurse Omura said, her chin in her hands on the table, her
expression serious. Probably get him all hot and bothered. 
 Anyway …, Kumi said. She turned to Tengo. Mr. Kawana definitely wanted to be
cremated in his NHK uniform. I think we should help him make his wish come true. Dont you
think so? 
Tengo took the bag containing the uniform and went back to the room. Kumi Adachi came
with him and made up the bed. There were fresh sheets, with a still-starchy fragrance, a new
blanket, a new bed cover, and a new pillow. Once all this was arranged, the bed his father
had slept in looked totally transformed. Tengo randomly thought of Kumis thick, luxuriant pubic
hair.
 Your father was in a coma for so long, Kumi said as she smoothed out the wrinkles in
the sheets, but I dont think he was completely unconscious. 
 Why do you say that? Tengo asked.
 Well, he would sometimes send messages to somebody. 
Tengo was standing at the window gazing outside, but he spun around and looked at
Kumi. Messages? 
 He would tap on the bed frame. His hand would hang down from the bed and he would
knock on the frame, like he was sending Morse code. Like this. 
Kumi lightly tapped the wooden bed frame with her fist.
 Dont you think it sounds like a signal? 
 Thats not a signal. 
 Then what is it? 
 Hes knocking on a door, Tengo said, his voice dry. The front door of a house. 
 I guess that makes sense. It does sound like someone knocking on a door. She narrowed
her eyes to slits. So are you saying that even after he lost consciousness he was still
making his rounds to collect fees? 
 Probably, Tengo said. Somewhere inside his head. 
 Its like that story of the dead soldier still clutching his trumpet, Kumi said, impressed.
There was nothing to say to this, so Tengo stayed silent.
 Your father must have really liked his job. Going around collecting NHK subscription
fees. 
 I dont think its a question of liking or disliking it, Tengo said.
 Then what? 
 It was the one thing he was best at. 
 Hmm. I see, Kumi said. She pondered this. But that might very well be the best way to
live your life. 
 Maybe so, Tengo said as he looked out at the pine windbreak. It might really be so.
 Whats the one thing you can do best? 
 I dont know, Tengo said, looking straight at her. I honestly have no idea. 
1Q84
CHAPTER 22
Ushikawa
THOSE EYES LOOKED RATHER FULL OF PITY
Tengo showed up at the entrance to the apartment building on Sunday evening, at six fifteen.
As soon as he stepped outside he halted and gazed around, as if looking for something.
First to the right, then the left. Then from left to right. He looked up at the sky, then down at
his feet. But nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, as far as he was concerned.
Ushikawa didnt follow him then. Tengo was carrying nothing with him. His hands were
stuffed in the pockets of his unpleated chinos. He had on a high-neck sweater and a wellworn
olive-green corduroy jacket, and his hair was unruly. A thick paperback book peeped out
of a jacket pocket. Ushikawa figured he must be going out to eat dinner in a nearby restaurant.
Fine, he decided, just let him go where he wants.
Tengo had several classes he had to teach on Monday. Ushikawa had found this out by
phoning the cram school. Yes, a female office worker had told him, Mr. Kawana will be teaching
his regular classes from the beginning of the week. Good. From tomorrow, then, Tengo
was finally going back to his normal schedule. Knowing him, he probably wouldnt be going
far this evening. (If Ushikawa had followed him that night, he would have found out that Tengo
was on his way to meet with Komatsu at the bar in Yotsuya.)
Just before eight, Ushikawa threw on his pea coat, muffler, and knit hat and, looking
around him as he did, hurried out of the building. Tengo had not yet returned at this point. If
he was really eating somewhere in the neighborhood, it was taking longer than it should. If
Ushikawa was unlucky, he might actually bump into him on his way back. But he was willing
to run the risk, since there was something he absolutely had to do, and it had to be done now,
at this time of night.
He relied on his memory of the route as he turned several corners, passed a few semifamiliar
landmarks, and though he hesitated a few times, unsure of the direction, he eventually
arrived at the playground. The strong north wind of the previous day had died down, and
it was warm for a December evening, but as expected, the park was deserted. Ushikawa
double-checked that there was no one else around, then climbed up the slide. He sat down
on top of the slide, leaned back against the railing, and looked up at the sky. The moons were
there, almost in the same location as the night before. A bright moon, two-thirds full. Not a
single cloud nearby. And beside it, a small green, misshapen moon snuggled close.
So its no mistake, then, Ushikawa thought. He exhaled and shook his head. He wasnt
dreaming or hallucinating. Two moons, one big, one small, were definitely visible there, above
the leafless zelkova tree. The two moons looked like they had stayed put since last night,
waiting for him to return to the top of the slide. They knew that he would be back. As if pre-
arranged, the silence around them was suggestive. And the moons wanted Ushikawa to
share that silence with them. You cant tell anybody else about this, they warned. They held
an index finger, covered with a light dusting of ash, to their mouths to make sure he didnt say
a thing.
As he sat there, Ushikawa moved his facial muscles this way and that, to make sure there
wasnt something unnatural or unusual about this feeling he was having. He found nothing unnatural
about it. For better or for worse, this was his normal face.
Ushikawa always saw himself as a realist, and he actually was. Metaphysical speculation
wasnt his thing. If something really existed, you had to accept it as a reality, whether or not it
made sense or was logical. That was his basic way of thinking. Principles and logic didnt give
birth to reality. Reality came first, and the principles and logic followed. So, he decided, he
would have to begin by accepting this reality: that there were two moons in the sky.
The rest of it he would think about later. He sat there, trying not to think, completely absorbed
in observing the two moons. He tried to get used to the scene. I have to accept these
guys as they are, he said to himself. He couldnt explain why something like this could be possible,
but it wasnt a question he needed to delve into deeply at this point. The question was
how to deal with it. That was the real issue. To do so he needed to start by accepting what he
was seeing, without questioning the logic of it.
Ushikawa was there for some fifteen minutes. He sat, leaning against the railing of the
slide, hardly moving a muscle. Like a diver slowly acclimatizing his body to a change in water
pressure, he let himself be bathed in the light from these moons, let it seep into his skin. Ushikawas
instinct told him this was important.
Finally this small man with a misshapen head stood up, climbed down from the slide, and,
completely caught up in indescribable musings, walked back to the apartment building.
Things looked a little different from when he came. Maybe its the moonlight, he told himself.
That moonlight is gradually displacing how things appear. Thanks to this, he took the wrong
turn a number of times. Before he walked inside the building he looked up at the third floor to
check that Tengos lights were still off. Tengo was still out. It didnt seem likely that he had just
gone out to eat someplace nearby. Maybe he was meeting somebody? And maybe that
somebody was Aomame. Or Fuka-Eri. Have I let a golden opportunity slip through my fingers?
he wondered. But it was too late to worry about it now. It was too risky to tail Tengo
every time he went out. Tengo only had to spot him once to bring the whole operation crashing
down.
Ushikawa went back to his apartment and removed his coat, muffler, and hat. He opened
a tin of corned beef, spread some on a roll, and ate it, standing up in the kitchen. He drank a
container of lukewarm canned coffee. Nothing had any taste. He could feel the texture of the
food, but he couldnt taste anything. Whether this was the fault of the food and drink or his
own sense of taste, he couldnt say. Maybe it could be blamed on those two moons. He heard
a faint doorbell ring somewhere. A pause, then it rang again. He didnt care. It wasnt his
chime ringing, but somebody elses, far away, on a different floor.
He finished his sandwich, drained the coffee, then leisurely smoked a cigarette to bring his
mind back to reality. He reconfirmed what it was he had to do here, and sat down behind the
camera at the window. He switched on the electric space heater and warmed his hands in
front of the orange light. It was Sunday evening, not yet nine. Traffic into and out of the building
was sparse, but Ushikawa was determined to see what time Tengo returned.
A moment later a woman in a black down jacket came out of the entrance, a woman he
had never seen before. She had on a gray muffler up to her mouth, dark-framed glasses, and
a baseball cap the perfect getup to hide yourself from prying eyes. She was empty-handed
and was walking briskly, taking long strides. Instinctively Ushikawa switched on the cameras
motor drive and snapped three quick shots. He had to find out where she was going, but by
the time he had gotten to his feet, the woman had reached the road and vanished into the
night. Ushikawa frowned and gave up. At the pace she was walking, by the time he got his
shoes on and chased after her, it would be too late to catch up.
He did an instant replay in his mind of what he had just seen. The woman was about five
feet six inches tall, and wore narrow blue jeans and white sneakers. All her clothes looked
strangely brand-new. He would put her at mid-twenties to about thirty. Her hair was stuffed in
her collar, so he couldnt tell how long it was. The puffy down jacket made it hard to tell what
sort of figure she had, but judging from her legs, she must be fairly slim. Her good posture
and quick pace indicated she was young and healthy. She must be into sports. All these characteristics
fit the Aomame that Ushikawa knew about, though he couldnt make too many assumptions.
Still, she seemed to be very cautious. You could tell how tense her whole body
was, like an actress being stalked by paparazzi.
Lets suppose for the moment, he thought, that this was Aomame.
She came here to see Tengo, but Tengo was out somewhere. The lights in his place were
off. She came to see him, but there was no answer when she knocked, so she gave up and
left. Maybe she was the one who had been ringing the doorbell. But something about this
didnt make sense. Aomame was being pursued, and should be trying to stay out of sight.
Why wouldnt she have called Tengo ahead of time to make sure he would be at home? That
way she wouldnt unnecessarily expose herself to danger.
Ushikawa mulled this over as he sat in front of the camera, but he couldnt come up with a
working hypothesis that made any sense. The womans actions disguising herself in this
non-disguise, leaving the place where she was hiding didnt fit what Ushikawa knew about
her. She was more cautious and careful than that. The whole thing left him befuddled.
Anyhow, he decided he would go to the photo shop near the station tomorrow and develop
the film he had taken. This mystery woman should be in the photos.
He kept watch with his camera until past ten, but after the woman left no one else came in
or out of the building. The entrance was silent and deserted, like a stage abandoned after a
poorly attended performance. Ushikawa was puzzled about Tengo. As far as he knew, he
rarely stayed out this late, and he had classes to teach tomorrow. Maybe he had already
come home while Ushikawa was out, and had long since gone to bed?
After ten Ushikawa realized how exhausted he was. He could barely keep his eyes open.
This was unusual, since he normally kept late hours. Usually he could stay up as late as he
needed. But tonight, sleep was bearing down on him from above, like the stone lid of an ancient
coffin.
Maybe I looked at those two moons for too long, he thought, absorbed too much of their
light. Their vague afterimage remained in his eyes. Their dark silhouettes numbed the soft
part of his brain, like a bee stinging and numbing a caterpillar, then laying eggs on the surface
of its body. The bee larvae use the paralyzed caterpillar as a convenient source of food and
devour it as soon as theyre born. Ushikawa frowned and shook this ominous image from his
mind.
Fine, he decided. I cant wait here forever for Tengo to get back. When he gets back is entirely
up to him, and hell just go to sleep as soon as he does. He doesnt have anywhere else
to come back to besides this apartment. Most likely.
Ushikawa listlessly tugged off his trousers and sweater and, stripped to his long-sleeved
shirt and long johns, slipped into his sleeping bag. He curled up and soon fell asleep. It was a
deep sleep, almost coma-like. As he was falling asleep he thought he heard a knock at the
door. But by then his consciousness had shifted over to another world and he couldnt distinguish
one thing from another. When he tried, his body creaked. So he kept his eyes shut,
didnt try to figure out what the sound could mean, and once more sank down into the soft
muddy oblivion of sleep.
It was about thirty minutes after Ushikawa fell into this deep sleep that Tengo came back
home after meeting Komatsu. He brushed his teeth, hung up his jacket which reeked of cigarette
smoke changed into pajamas, and went to sleep. Until a phone call came at two
a.m. telling him that his father was dead.
When Ushikawa awoke, it was past eight a.m., Monday morning, and Tengo was already
on the express train to Tateyama, fast asleep to make up for the hours he had missed. Ushikawa
sat behind his camera, waiting to catch Tengo on his way to the cram school, but of
course he never made an appearance. At one p.m. Ushikawa gave up. He went to a nearby
public phone and called the cram school to see if Tengo was teaching his regular classes
today.
 Mr. Kawana had a family emergency, so his classes are canceled for today, the woman
on the phone said. Ushikawa thanked her and hung up.
Family emergency? The only family Tengo had was his father. His father must have died.
If that was the case, then Tengo would be leaving Tokyo again. Maybe he had already left
while I was sleeping. What was wrong with me? I slept so long I missed him.
At any rate, Tengo is now all alone in the world, thought Ushikawa. A lonely man to begin
with, he was now even lonelier. Utterly alone. Before he was even two, his mother had been
strangled to death at a hot springs resort in Nagano Prefecture. The man who murdered her
was never caught. She had left her husband and, with Tengo in tow, had absconded with a
young man. Absconded a quite old-fashioned term. Nobody uses it anymore, but for a certain
kind of action its the perfect term. Why the man killed her wasnt clear. It wasnt even
clear if that man had been the one who murdered her. She had been strangled at night with
the belt from her robe, in a room at an inn. The man she had been with was gone. It was hard
not to suspect him. When Tengos father got the news, he came from Ichikawa and took back
his infant son.
Maybe I should have told Tengo about this, Ushikawa thought. He has a right to know. But
he told me he didnt want to hear anything about his mother from the likes of me, so I didnt
say anything. Well, what are you going to do? Thats not my problem, its his.
At any rate, whether Tengo is here or not, I have to keep up my surveillance of this place,
Ushikawa told himself. Last night was that mysterious woman who looked a lot like Aomame.
I have no proof its her, but theres a strong possibility it is. Thats what my misshapen head is
telling me. And if that woman is Aomame, shell be back to visit Tengo before long. She
doesnt know yet that his father has died. These were Ushikawas deductions as he mulled
over the situation. Tengo must have gotten the news about his father during the night and set
off early this morning. And there must be some reason why the two of them couldnt get in
touch by phone. Which means she would definitely be coming back here. Something was so
important to her that she would come here, despite the danger. This time he was going to find
out where she was going.
Doing so might also begin to explain why there were two moons. This was a fascinating
question that Ushikawa was dying to solve. But really it was of secondary importance. His job
was to find out where Aomame was hiding, and hand her over, nice and neat, to the creepy
Sakigake duo. Until I do so, whether there are two moons or only one, he decided, I have to
be realistic. That has always been my strong point. Its what defines me.
Ushikawa went to the photo store near the station and handed over five thirty-sixexposure
rolls of film. Once the film had been processed and printed, he went to a nearby
chain restaurant and looked through them in chronological order while eating a meal of chicken
curry. Most were photos of people he was now familiar with. There were three people he
was most interested in: Fuka-Eri and Tengo, and last nights mystery woman.
Fuka-Eris eyes made him nervous. Even in the photo she was staring straight into his
face. No doubt about it, Ushikawa thought. She knew she was being observed. She probably
knew about the hidden camera, too, and that he was taking photos. Her clear eyes saw
through everything, and they didnt like what Ushikawa was up to. That unwavering gaze
stabbed mercilessly to the depths of his heart. There was no excuse whatsoever for the activities
he was engaged in. At the same time, though, she wasnt condemning him, or despising
him. In a sense, those gorgeous eyes forgave him. No, not forgiveness, Ushikawa decided,
rethinking it. Those eyes pitied him. She knew how ugly Ushikawas actions were, and she felt
compassion for him.
Looking at her eyes, he had felt a sharp stab of pain between his ribs, as if a thick knitting
needle had been thrust in. He felt like a twisted, ugly person. So what? he thought. I really am
twisted and ugly. The natural, transparent pity that colored her eyes sank deep into his heart.
He would have much preferred to be openly accused, reviled, denounced, and convicted.
Much better even to be beaten senseless with a baseball bat. That he could stand. But not
this.
Compared with her, Tengo was much easier to deal with. In the photo he was standing at
the entrance, also looking in his direction. Like Fuka-Eri, he carefully examined his surroundings.
But there was nothing in his eyes. Pure, ignorant eyes like those couldnt locate the
camera hidden behind the curtains, or Ushikawa.
Ushikawa turned to the photos of the mystery woman. There were three photos. Baseball
cap, dark-framed glasses, gray muffler up to her nose. It was impossible to make out her features.
The lighting was poor in all the photos, and the baseball cap cast a shadow over her
face. Still, this woman perfectly fit his mental image of Aomame. He picked up the photos
and, like checking out a poker hand, went through them in order, over and over. The more he
looked at them, the more convinced he was that this had to be Aomame.
He called the waitress over and asked her about the days dessert. Peach pie, she replied.
Ushikawa ordered a piece and a refill of coffee.
If this isnt Aomame, he thought as he waited for the pie, then I might never see her as
long as I live.
The peach pie was much tastier than expected. Juicy peaches inside a crisp, flaky crust.
Canned peaches, no doubt, but not too bad for a dessert at a chain restaurant. Ushikawa ate
every last bite, drained the coffee, and left the restaurant feeling content. He picked up three
days worth of food at a supermarket, then went back to the apartment and his stakeout in
front of the camera.
As he continued his surveillance of the entrance, he leaned back against the wall, in a
sunny spot, and dozed off a few times. This didnt bother him. He felt sure he hadnt missed
anything important while he slept. Tengo was away from Tokyo at his fathers funeral, and
Fuka-Eri wasnt coming back. She knew he was continuing his surveillance. The chances
were slim that the mystery woman would visit while it was light out. She would be cautious,
and wait until dark to make a move.
But even after sunset the mystery woman didnt appear. The same old lineup came and
went shopping bags in hand, out for an evening stroll, those coming back from work looking
more beaten and worn out than when they had set off in the morning. Ushikawa watched
them come and go but didnt snap any photos. There wasnt any need. Ushikawa was focused
on only three people. Everyone else was just a nameless pedestrian. But to pass time
Ushikawa called out to them, using the nicknames he had come up with.
 Hey, Chairman Mao. (The mans hair looked like Mao Tse-tungs.) You must have
worked hard today. 
 Warm today, isnt it, Long Ears perfect for a walk. 
 Evening, Chinless. Shopping again? Whats for dinner? 
Ushikawa kept up his surveillance until eleven. He gave a big yawn and called it a day.
After he brushed his teeth, he stuck out his tongue and looked at it in the mirror. It had been a
while since he had examined his tongue. Something like moss was growing on it, a light
green, like real moss. He examined this moss carefully under the light. It was disturbing. The
moss adhered to his entire tongue and didnt look like it would come off easily. If I keep up like
this, he thought, Im going to turn into a Moss Monster. Starting with my tongue, green moss
will spread here and there on my skin, like the shell of a turtle that lives in a swamp. The very
thought was disheartening.
He sighed, and in a voiceless voice decided to stop worrying about his tongue. He turned
off the light, slowly undressed in the dark, and snuggled into his sleeping bag. He zipped the
bag and curled up like a bug.
It was dark when he woke up. He turned to check the time, but his clock wasnt where it
should be. This confused him. His long-standing habit was to always check for the clock before
he went to sleep. So why wasnt it there? A faint light came in through a gap in the curtain,
but it only illuminated a corner of the room. Everywhere else was wrapped in middle-ofthe-night
darkness.
Ushikawa felt his heart racing, working hard to pump adrenaline through his system. His
nostrils flared, his breathing was ragged, like he had woken in the middle of a vivid, exciting
dream.
But he wasnt dreaming. Something really was happening. Somebody was standing right
next to him. Ushikawa could sense it. A shadow, darker than the darkness, was looming over
him, staring down at his face. His back stiffened. In a fraction of a second, his mind regrouped
and he instinctively tried to unzip the sleeping bag.
In the blink of an eye, the person wrapped his arm around Ushikawas throat. He didnt
even have time to get out a sound. Ushikawa felt a mans strong, trained muscles around his
neck. This arm constricted his throat, squeezing him mercilessly in a viselike grip. The man
never said a word. Ushikawa couldnt even hear him breathing. He twisted and writhed in his
sleeping bag, tearing at the inner nylon lining, kicking with both feet. He tried to scream, but
even if he could, it wouldnt help. Once the man had settled down on the tatami he didnt
budge an inch, except for his arm, which gradually increased the amount of force he applied.
A very effective, economical movement. As he did, pressure grew on Ushikawas windpipe,
and his breathing grew weaker.
In the midst of this desperate situation, what flashed through Ushikawas mind was this:
How had the man gotten in here? The door was locked, the chain inside set, the windows
bolted shut. So how did he get in? If he picked the lock, it would have made a sound.
This guy is a real pro. If the situation called for it, he wouldnt hesitate to take a persons
life. He is trained precisely for this. Was he sent by Sakigake? Have they finally decided to get
rid of me? Did they conclude that I was useless to them, a hindrance they had to get rid of? If
so, theyre flat-out wrong. Im one step away from locating Aomame. Ushikawa tried to speak,
to tell the man this. Listen to me first, he wanted to plead. But no voice would come. There
wasnt enough air to vibrate his vocal cords, and his tongue in the back of his mouth was a
solid rock.
Now his windpipe was completely blocked. His lungs desperately struggled for oxygen,
but none was to be found, and he felt his body and mind split apart. His body continued to
writhe inside the sleeping bag, but his mind was dragged off into the heavy, gooey air. He
suddenly had no feeling in his arms and legs. Why? his fading mind asked. Why do I have to
die in such an ugly place, in such an ugly way? There was no answer. An undefined darkness
descended from the ceiling and enveloped everything.
When he regained consciousness, Ushikawa was no longer inside the sleeping bag. He
couldnt feel his arms or legs. All he knew was that he had on a blindfold and his cheek felt
pressed up against the tatami. He wasnt being strangled anymore. His lungs audibly heaved
like bellows breathing in new air. Cold, winter air. The oxygen made new blood, and his heart
pumped this hot red liquid to all his nerve endings at top speed. He coughed wretchedly and
focused on breathing. Gradually, feeling was returning to his extremities. His heart pounded
hard in his ears. Im still alive, Ushikawa told himself in the darkness.
Ushikawa was lying facedown on the tatami. His hands were bound behind him, tied up in
something that felt like a soft cloth. His ankles were tied up as well not tied so tightly, but in
an accomplished, effective way. He could roll from side to side, but that was all. Ushikawa
found it astounding that he was alive, still breathing. So that wasnt death, he thought. It had
come awfully close to death, but it wasnt death itself. A sharp pain remained, like a lump, on
either side of his throat. He had urinated in his pants and his underwear was wet and starting
to get clammy. But it wasnt such a bad sensation. In fact he rather welcomed it. The pain and
cold were signs that he was still alive.
 You wont die that easily, the mans voice said. Like he had been reading Ushikawas
mind.
1Q84
CHAPTER 23
Aomame
THE LIGHT WAS DEFINITELY THERE
It was past midnight, the day had shifted from Sunday to Monday, but still sleep wouldnt
come.
Aomame finished her bath, put on pajamas, slipped into bed, and turned out the light.
Staying up late wouldnt accomplish a thing. For the time being she had left it all up to
Tamaru. Much better to get some sleep and think again in the morning when her mind was
fresh. But she was wide awake, and her body wanted to be up and moving. It didnt look like
she would be getting to sleep anytime soon.
She gave up, got out of bed, and threw a robe over her pajamas. She boiled water, made
herbal tea, and sat at the dining table, slowly sipping it. A thought came to her, but what it was
exactly, she couldnt say. It had a thick, furtive form, like far-off rain clouds. She could make
out its shape but not its outline. There was a disconnect of some kind between shape and
outline. Mug in hand, she went over to the window, and looked out at the playground through
a gap in the curtains.
There was no one there, of course. Past one a.m. now, the sandbox, swings, and slide
were deserted. It was a particularly silent night. The wind had died down, and there wasnt a
single cloud in the sky, just the two moons floating above the frozen branches of the trees.
The position of the moons had shifted with the earths rotation, but they were still visible.
Aomame stood there, thinking about Bobbleheads run-down apartment building, and the
name card in the slot on the door of apartment 303. A white card with the typed name
Kawana. The card wasnt new, by any means. The edges were curled up, and there were
faint moisture stains on it. The card had been in the slot for some time.
Tamaru would find out for her if it was really Tengo Kawana who lived there, or someone
else with the same last name. At the latest, he would probably report back by tomorrow. He
wasnt the kind of person who wasted time. Then she would know for sure. Depending on the
outcome, she thought, I might actually see Tengo before much longer. The possibility made it
hard to breathe, like the air around her had suddenly gotten thin.
But things might not work out that easily. Even if the person living in 303 was Tengo
Kawana, Bobblehead was hidden away somewhere in the same building. And he was planning
something what, she didnt know, but it couldnt be good. He was undoubtedly hatching
a clever plan, breathing down their necks, doing what he could to prevent them from seeing
each other.
No, theres nothing to worry about, Aomame told herself. Tamaru can be trusted. Hes
more meticulous, capable, and experienced than anyone I know. If I leave it up to him, he will
fend off Bobblehead for me. Bobblehead is a danger not just to me, but to Tamaru as well, a
risk factor that has to be eliminated.
But what if Tamaru decides that it isnt advisable for Tengo and me to meet, then what will
I do? If that happens, then Tamaru will surely cut off any possibility of Tengo and me ever
seeing each other. Tamaru and I are pretty friendly, but his top priority is what will benefit the
dowager and keep her out of harms way. Thats his real job he isnt doing all this for my
sake.
This made her uneasy. Getting Tengo and her together, letting them see each other
again where did this fall on Tamarus list of priorities? She had no way of knowing. Maybe
telling Tamaru about Tengo had been a fatal mistake. Shouldnt I have taken care of
everything myself?
But whats done is done. Ive told Tamaru everything. I had no choice. Bobblehead must
be lying in wait for me, and it would be suicide to waltz right in all alone. Time is ticking away
and I dont have the leisure to put things on hold and see how they might develop. Opening
up to Tamaru about everything, and putting it all in his hands, was the best choice at the time.
Aomame decided to stop thinking about Tengo and stop looking at the moons. The
moonlight wreaked havoc on her mind. It changed the tides in inlets, stirred up life in the
woods. She drank the last of her herbal tea, left the window, went to the kitchen, and rinsed
out the mug. She longed for a sip of brandy, but she knew she shouldnt have any alcohol
while pregnant.
She sat on the sofa, switched on the small reading lamp beside it, and began rereading
Air Chrysalis. She had read the novel at least ten times. It wasnt a long book, and by now
she had nearly memorized it. But she wanted to read it again, slowly, attentively. She figured
she might as well, since she wasnt about to get to sleep. There might be something in it she
had overlooked.
Air Chrysalis was like a book with a secret code, and Eriko Fukada must have told the
story in order to get a message across. Tengo rewrote it, creating something more polished,
more effective. They had formed a team to create a novel with a wider appeal. As Leader had
said, it was a collaborative effort. If Leader was to be believed, when Air Chrysalis became a
bestseller and certain secrets were revealed within, the Little People lost their power, and the
voice no longer spoke. Because of this, the well dried up, the flow was cut off. This is how
much influence the novel had exerted.
She focused on each line as she read.
By the time the clock showed 2:30, she was already two-thirds of the way through the novel.
She closed the book and tried to put into words the strong emotions she was feeling.
Though she wouldnt go so far as to call it a revelation, she had a strong, specific image in her
mind.
I wasnt brought here by chance.
This is what the image told her.
Im here because Im supposed to be.
Up until now, she thought, I believed I was dragged into this 1Q84 world not by my own
will. Something had intentionally engaged the switch so the train I was on was diverted from
the main line and entered this strange new world. Suddenly I realized I was here a world of
two moons, haunted by Little People. Where there is an entrance, but no exit.
Leader had explained it this way just before he died. The train is the story that Tengo
wrote, and I was trapped inside that tale. Which explains exactly why I am here now entirely
passive, a confused, clueless bit player wandering in a thick fog.
But thats not the whole picture, Aomame told herself. Thats not the whole picture at all.
I am not just some passive being mixed up in this because someone else willed it. That
might be partly true. But at the same time I chose to be here. I chose to be here of my own
free will. She was sure of this.
And theres a clear reason Im here. One reason alone: so I can meet Tengo again. If you
look at it the other way around, thats the only reason why this world is inside of me. Maybe
its a paradox, like an image reflected to infinity in a pair of facing mirrors. I am a part of this
world, and this world is a part of me.
There was no way for Aomame to know what sort of plot Tengos new story contained.
Most likely there were two moons in that world, and it was frequented by Little People. That
was about as far as she could speculate. This might be Tengos story, she thought, but its my
story, too. This much she understood.
She realized this when she got to the scene where the young girl, the protagonist, was
working to create an air chrysalis every night in the shed with the Little People. As she read
through this detailed, clear description, she felt something warm and oozy in her abdomen, a
sort of melting warmth with a strange depth. Though tiny, there was an intense heat source
there. What that heat source was, and what it meant, was obvious to her she didnt need to
think about it. The little one. It was emitting heat in response to the scene in which the protagonist
and the Little People together weaved the air chrysalis.
Aomame put the book on the table next to her, unbuttoned her pajama top, and rested a
hand on her belly. She could feel the heat being given off, almost like a dim orange light was
there inside her. She switched off the reading lamp, and in the darkened bedroom stared hard
at that spot, a luminescence almost too faint to see. But the light was definitely there no mistake
about it. I am not alone. We are connected through this, by experiencing the same story
simultaneously.
And if that story is mine as well as Tengos, then I should be able to write the story line
too. I should be able to comment on whats there, maybe even rewrite part of it. I have to be
able to. Most of all, I should be able to decide how its going to turn out. Right?
She considered the possibility.
Okay, but how do I do it?
Aomame didnt know, though she knew it had to be possible. At this point it was a mere
theory. In the silent darkness she pursed her lips and contemplated. This was critical, and she
had to put her mind to it.
The two of us are a team. Like Tengo and Eriko Fukada made up a brilliant team when
they created Air Chrysalis, Tengo and I are a team for this new story. Our wills or maybe
some undercurrent of our wills are becoming one, creating this complex story and propelling
it forward. This process probably takes place on some deep, invisible level. Even if we arent
physically together, we are connected, as one. We create the story, and at the same time the
story is what sets us in motion. Right?
But I have a question. A very important question.
In this story that the two of us are writing, what could be the significance of this little one?
What sort of role will it play?
Inside my womb is a subtle yet tangible heat that is emitting a faint orange light, exactly
like an air chrysalis. Is my womb playing the role of an air chrysalis? Am I the maza, and the
little one my dohta? Is the Little Peoples will involved in all this in my being pregnant with
Tengos child, although we didnt have sex? Have they cleverly usurped my womb to use as
an air chrysalis? Using me as a device to extract another new dohta?
No. Thats not whats going on. She was positive about it. Thats not possible.
The Little People have lost their power. Leader said so. The popularity of the novel Air
Chrysalis essentially blocked what they normally do. So they must not know about this pregnancy.
But who or what power made this pregnancy possible? And why?
Aomame had no idea.
What she did know was that this little one was something she and Tengo had formed.
That it was a precious, priceless life. She placed her hand on her abdomen again, pressing
gently against the outline of that faint orange glow. She let the warmth she felt there slowly
permeate her whole body. Ive got to protect this little one, at all costs, she told herself.
Nobody is ever going to take it away from me, or harm it. The two of us have to keep it safe.
In the darkness, she made up her mind.
She went into the bedroom, took off her robe, and got into bed. She lay faceup, and once
more touched her abdomen and felt the warmth there. Her feeling of unease was gone. She
knew what had to be done. I have to be stronger, she told herself. My mind and body have to
be one. Finally sleep came, silently, like smoke, and wrapped her in its embrace. Two moons
were still floating in the sky, side by side.
1Q84
CHAPTER 24
Tengo
LEAVING THE CAT TOWN
Tengos fathers corpse was dressed in his neatly ironed NHK fee collectors uniform and
placed inside the simple coffin. Probably the cheapest coffin available, it was a sullen little
casket that looked only slightly more sturdy than the boxes for castella cakes. The deceased
was a small person, yet there was barely any room to spare. The casket was made of plywood,
and had minimal ornamentation. Is this casket all right? the funeral director had
asked, making sure. Its fine, Tengo replied. This was the casket his father had chosen from
the catalog, for which he had prepaid. If the deceased had no problem with it, then neither did
Tengo.
Dressed in his NHK uniform, lying in the crude coffin, his father didnt look dead. He
looked like he was taking a nap on a work break and would soon get up, put on his cap, and
go out to collect the rest of the fees. The uniform, with the NHK logo sewed into it, looked like
a second skin. He was born in this uniform and would leave this world in the same way as he
went up in flames. When Tengo actually saw him in it, he couldnt imagine his father wearing
anything else. Just like Wagners warriors on their funeral pyre could only be dressed in armor.
Tuesday morning, in front of Tengo and Kumi Adachi, the lid of the coffin was closed,
nailed shut, then placed inside the hearse. It wasnt much of a hearse, just the same businesslike
Toyota van they had used to transport his body to the funeral home. This hearse,
too, must have been the cheapest available. Stately was the last word you would use to describe
it. And there was certainly no Götterdämmerung music as a send-off. But Tengo
couldnt find anything to complain about, and Kumi didnt seem to have any problems with it
either. What was more important was that a person had vanished from the face of the earth,
and those left behind had to grasp what that entailed. The two of them got into a taxi and followed
the black van.
They left the seaside road, drove a short way into the hills, and arrived at the crematorium.
It was a relatively new building but utterly devoid of individuality. It seemed less a crematorium
than some sort of factory or government office building. The garden was lovely and well
tended, though the tall chimney rising majestically into the sky hinted that this was a facility
with a special mission. The crematorium must not have been very busy that day, since the
casket was taken right away. The casket was gently laid inside the incinerator, then the heavy
lid was shut, like a submarine hatch. The old man in charge, wearing gloves, turned and
bowed to Tengo, then hit the ignition switch. Kumi turned to the closed lid and put her hands
together in prayer, and Tengo followed suit.
During the hourlong cremation, Tengo and Kumi waited in the buildings lounge. Kumi
bought two cans of hot coffee from the vending machine and they silently drank them as they
sat side by side on a bench, facing a large picture window. Outside was a spacious lawn,
dried up now in the winter, and leafless trees. Two black birds were on one of the branches.
Tengo didnt know what kind of bird they were. They had long tails, and though small, they
gave loud, sharp squawks. When they called out, their tails stood on end. Above the trees
was the broad, cloudless, blue winter sky. Beneath her cream-colored duffle coat, Kumi wore
a short black dress. Tengo wore a black crew-neck sweater under a dark gray herringbone
jacket. His shoes were dark brown loafers. It was the most formal outfit he owned.
 My father was cremated here too, Kumi said. All the people who attended were smoking
like crazy. There was a cloud of smoke hanging up near the ceiling. Maybe to be expected,
since they were all fishermen. 
Tengo pictured it. A gaggle of sunburned men, uncomfortable in their dark suits, puffing
away, mourning a man who had died of lung cancer. Now, though, Tengo and Kumi were the
only ones in the lounge. It was quiet all around. Other than an occasional chirp from the birds
in the trees, nothing else broke the silence no music, no voices. Peaceful sunlight poured in
through the picture window and formed a taciturn puddle at their feet. Time was flowing leisurely,
like a river approaching an estuary.
 Thank you for coming with me, Tengo said after the long silence.
Kumi reached out and put her hand on top of his. Its hard doing it alone. Better to have
somebody with you. 
 You may be right, Tengo admitted.
 Its a terrible thing when a person dies, whatever the circumstances. A hole opens up in
the world, and we need to pay the proper respects. If we dont, the hole will never be filled in
again. 
Tengo nodded.
 The hole cant be left open, Kumi went on, or somebody might fall in. 
 But in some cases the dead person has secrets, Tengo said. And when the holes filled
in, those secrets are never known. 
 I think thats necessary too. 
 How come? 
 Certain secrets cant be left behind. 
 Why not? 
Kumi let go of his hand and looked at him right in the face. Theres something about
those secrets that only the deceased person can rightly understand. Something that cant be
explained, no matter how hard you try. Theyre what the dead person has to take with him to
his grave. Like a valuable piece of luggage. 
Tengo silently looked down at the puddle of light at his feet. The linoleum floor shone
dully. In front of him were his worn loafers and Kumis simple black pumps. They were right in
front of him but looked miles away.
 There must be things about you, too, Tengo, that you cant explain to others? 
 Could be, Tengo replied.
Kumi didnt say anything, and crossed her slim black-stockinged legs.
 You told me you died once before, didnt you? Tengo asked.
 Um. I did die once. On a lonely night when a cold rain was falling. 
 Do you remember it? 
 I think so. Ive dreamt about it for a long time. A very realistic dream, always exactly the
same. So I have to believe that it happened. 
 Was it like reincarnation? 
 Reincarnation? 
 Where youre reborn. Transmigration. 
Kumi gave it some thought. I wonder. Maybe it was. Or maybe it wasnt. 
 After you died, were you cremated like this? 
Kumi shook her head. I dont remember that far, since that would be after I died. What I
remember is the moment I died. Someone was strangling me. A man I had never seen before. 
 Do you recall his face? 
 Of course. I saw him many times in my dreams. If I ran across him on the street, I would
recognize him right away. 
 What would you do if you saw him in real life? 
Kumi rubbed her nose, as if checking to see if it was still there. Ive thought about that
too what I would do if I ran across him on the street. Maybe I would run away. Or maybe I
would follow him so he wouldnt notice me. Unless I was actually put in that situation, I dont
know what I would do. 
 If you followed him, what would you do then? 
 I dont know. But maybe that man holds some vital secret about me. And if I play my
cards right, he might reveal it to me. 
 What kind of secret? 
 For instance, the reason why Im here. 
 But that guy might kill you again. 
 Maybe, Kumi said, lips slightly pursed. I know its dangerous. It might be better to just
run away. But still the secret draws me in. Like when theres a dark entrance and cats cant
help but peep in. 
The cremation was over, and Tengo and Kumi, following tradition, picked up select bones
from his fathers remains and placed them in a small urn. The urn was handed to Tengo. He
had no idea what he should do with it, though he knew he couldnt just abandon it. So he
clutched the vase in his hands as he and Kumi took a taxi to the station.
 I will take care of any remaining details, Kumi told him in the cab. After a moment she
added, If you would like, I could see about interring the bones, too. 
Tengo was startled. You can do that? 
 I dont see why not, Kumi said. There are some funerals where not a single person from
the family attends. 
 That would be a big help, Tengo said. And he handed her the urn, feeling a little guilty,
but honestly relieved. I will probably never see these bones again, he thought. All that is left
will be memories, and eventually they, too, will vanish like dust.
 Im from here, so I think I can take care of it. Its better if you go back to Tokyo right away.
We all like you a lot here, but this isnt a place you should stay for long. 
Im leaving the cat town, Tengo mused.
 Thank you for everything youve done, Tengo said.
 Tengo, do you mind if I give you some advice? I know I have no right to do so. 
 Of course. 
 Your father may have had a secret that he took with him to the other side. And that
seems to be causing you confusion. I think I can understand how you feel. But you shouldnt
peep anymore into that dark entrance. Leave that up to cats. If you keep doing so, you will
never go anywhere. Better to think about the future. 
 The hole has to be closed up, Tengo said.
 Exactly, Kumi said. The owl says the same thing. Do you remember the owl? 
 Of course. 
The owl is the guardian deity of the woods, knows all, and gives us the wisdom of the
night.
 Is that owl still hooting in the woods? 
 The owls not going anywhere, Kumi replied. Hell be there for a long time. 
Kumi saw him off on the train to Tateyama as though she needed to make sure, with her
own eyes, that he had boarded the train and left town. She stood on the platform and kept
waving to him, until he couldnt see her anymore.
It was seven p.m. on Tuesday when he got back to his apartment in Koenji. Tengo turned
on the lights, sat down at his dining table, and looked around the room. The place looked the
same as when he had left early the previous morning. The curtains were closed tight, and
there was a printout of the story he was writing on top of his desk. Six neatly sharpened pencils
in a pencil holder, clean dishes still in the rack in the sink. Time was silently ticking by, the
calendar on the wall indicating that this was the final month of the year. The room seemed
even more silent than ever. A little too silent. Something excessive seemed included in that silence.
Though maybe he was imagining it. Maybe it was because he had just witnessed a
person vanishing right before his eyes. The hole in the world might not yet be fully closed up.
He drank a glass of water and took a hot shower. He shampooed his hair thoroughly,
cleaned his ears, clipped his nails. He took a new pair of underwear and a shirt from his drawer
and put them on. He had to get rid of all the smells that clung to him, the smells of the cat
town. We all like you a lot here, but this isnt a place you should stay for long, Kumi Adachi
had told him.
He had no appetite. He didnt feel like working or opening a book. Listening to music held
no appeal. His body was exhausted, but his nerves were on edge, so he knew that even if he
lay down he wouldnt get any sleep. Something about the silence seemed contrived.
It would be nice if Fuka-Eri were here, Tengo thought. I dont care what silly, meaningless
things she might talk about. Her fateful lack of intonation, the way her voice rose at the end of
questions its all fine by me. I havent heard her voice in a while and I miss it. But Tengo
knew that she wouldnt be coming back to his apartment again. Why he knew this, he couldnt
say exactly. But he knew she would never be there again. Probably.
He wanted to talk with someone. Anyone. His older girlfriend would be nice, but he
couldnt reach her. She was irretrievably lost.
He dialed Komatsus office number, his direct extension, but nobody answered. After fifteen
rings he gave up.
He tried to think of other people he could call, but there wasnt anyone. He thought of calling
Kumi, but realized he didnt have her number.
His mind turned to a dark hole somewhere in the world, not yet filled in. Not such a big
hole, but very deep. If I look in that hole and speak loudly enough, would I be able to talk with
my father? Will the dead tell me what the truth is?
 If you do that, youll never go anywhere, Kumi Adachi had told him. Better to think about
the future. 
I dont agree. Thats not all there is to it. Knowing the secret may not take me anywhere,
but still, I have to know the reason why it wont. If I truly understand the reason, maybe I will
be able to go somewhere.
Whether you are my real father or not doesnt matter anymore, Tengo said to the dark
hole. Either one is fine with me. Either way, you took a part of me with you to the grave, and I
remain here with a part of you. That fact wont change, whether we are related by blood or
not. Enough time has passed for that to be the case, and the world has moved on.
He thought he heard an owl hooting outside, but it was only his ears playing tricks on him.
1Q84
CHAPTER 25
Ushikawa
COLD OR NOT, GOD IS PRESENT
 You wont die that easily, the mans voice said from behind him. Like he had been reading
Ushikawas mind. You just lost consciousness for a moment. Though you were right on
the edge of it. 
It was a voice he had never heard before. Neutral, utterly devoid of expression. Not too
high or low, neither too hard nor too soft. The kind of voice that announces airplane departures
or stock market reports.
What day of the week is it? Ushikawa thought randomly. Must be Monday night. No, technically
it might already be Tuesday.
 Ushikawa, the man said. You dont mind if I call you Ushikawa, do you? 
Ushikawa didnt reply. There was silence for a good twenty seconds. Then, without warning,
the man gave him a short, clipped punch to his left kidney. Silent, but a punch with force
behind it. Excruciating pain shot through his whole body. All his internal organs clenched, and
until the pain had subsided a little he couldnt breathe. Finally he was able to get out a dry
wheeze.
 I asked you politely, and I expect a reply. If you still cant talk, then just nod or shake your
head. Thats enough. Thats what it means to be polite, the man said. Its okay to call you
Ushikawa? 
Ushikawa nodded several times.
 Ushikawa. An easy name to remember. I went through the wallet in your trousers. Your
drivers license and business cards were in there. Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation
for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. A pretty fancy title, wouldnt you say? What
would a Full-time Director of the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship
and the Arts be doing shooting photos with a hidden camera in a place like this? 
Ushikawa was silent. He still couldnt get the words out easily.
 You had best reply, the man said. Consider this a warning. If your kidney bursts, itll hurt
like hell the rest of your life. 
 Im doing surveillance on the residents, Ushikawa finally managed to say. His voice was
unsteady, cracking in spots. To him, blindfolded, it didnt sound like his own.
 You mean Tengo Kawana. 
Ushikawa nodded.
 The Tengo Kawana who ghostwrote Air Chrysalis. 
Ushikawa nodded again and then had a fit of coughing. The man knew all this already.
 Who hired you to do this? the man asked.
 Sakigake. 
 That much I could figure out, Ushikawa, the man said. The question is why, at this late
date, Sakigake would want to keep watch over Tengo Kawanas movements. Tengo Kawana
cant be that important to them. 
Ushikawas mind raced, trying to figure out who this man was and how much he knew. He
didnt know who the man was, but it was clear Sakigake hadnt sent him. Whether that was
good news or bad, Ushikawa didnt know.
 There is a question pending, the man said. He pressed a finger against Ushikawas left
kidney. Very hard.
 Theres a woman hes connected with, Ushikawa groaned.
 Does this woman have a name? 
 Aomame. 
 Why are they pursuing Aomame? the man asked.
 She brought harm to Leader, the head of Sakigake. 
 Brought harm, the man said, as if verifying the phrase. You mean she killed him, right?
To put it more simply. 
 Thats right, Ushikawa said. He knew he couldnt hide anything from this man. Sooner or
later he would have to talk.
 Its a secret within the religion. 
 How many people in Sakigake know this secret? 
 A handful. 
 Including you. 
Ushikawa nodded.
 So you must occupy a very high position. 
 No, Ushikawa said, and shook his head, his bruised kidney aching. Im simply a messenger.
I just happened to find out about it. 
 In the wrong place at the wrong time. Is that what youre saying? 
 I think so. 
 By the way, Ushikawa, are you working alone? 
Ushikawa nodded.
 I find that strange. Normally a team would conduct surveillance. To do a decent job of it,
you would also need someone to run supplies, so three people at the minimum. And youre
already deeply connected with an organization. Doing it all alone strikes me as unnatural. In
other words, Im not exactly pleased with your reply. 
 I am not a follower of the religion, Ushikawa said. His breathing had calmed down and
he was finally able to speak close to normally. I was hired by them. They call on me when
they think its more convenient to hire an outsider. 
 As a Full-time Director of the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship
and the Arts? 
 Thats just a front. Theres no such organization. It was mainly set up by Sakigake for tax
purposes. Im an individual contractor, with no ties to the religion. I just work for them. 
 A mercenary of sorts. 
 No, not a mercenary. Im collecting information at their request. If anything rough needs
to get done, its handled by other people. 
 So, Ushikawa, you were instructed by Sakigake to do surveillance here on Tengo, and
probe into his connection with Aomame. 
 Correct. 
 No, the man said. Thats the wrong answer. If Sakigake knew for a fact that theres a
connection between Aomame and Tengo Kawana, they wouldnt have sent you by yourself on
the stakeout. They would have put together a team of their own people. That would reduce
the chance for mistakes, and they could resort to force if need be. 
 Im telling you the truth. Im just doing what the people above me told me to do. Why
theyre having me do it alone, I have no idea. The pitch of Ushikawas voice was still unsteady,
and it cracked in places.
If he finds out that Sakigake doesnt yet know the connection between Aomame and
Tengo, Ushikawa thought, I might be whacked right here and now. If Im no longer in the picture,
then nobody will be any the wiser about their connection.
 Im not very fond of incorrect answers, the man said in a chilly tone. I think you of all
people are well aware of that. I wouldnt mind giving your kidney another punch, but if I hit you
hard my hand will hurt, and permanently damaging your kidney isnt what I came here to do. I
have no personal animosity toward you. I have just one goal, to get the right answer. So Im
going to try a different approach. Im sending you to the bottom of the sea. 
The bottom of the sea? Ushikawa thought. What is this guy talking about?
The man pulled something out of his pocket. There was a rustling sound like plastic rubbing
together, and then something covered Ushikawas head. A plastic bag, the thick freezer
bag kind. Then a thick, large rubber band was wrapped around his neck. This guy is trying to
suffocate me, Ushikawa realized. He tried breathing in but got a mouthful of plastic instead.
His nostrils were blocked as well. His lungs were screaming for air, but there wasnt any. The
plastic molded tight to his whole face like a death mask. Soon all his muscles started to convulse
violently. He tried to reach out to rip away the bag, but his hands wouldnt move. They
were tied tight behind his back. His brain blew up like a balloon and felt ready to explode. He
tried to scream. He had to get air. But no sound came out. His tongue filled his mouth as his
consciousness drained away.
Finally the rubber band was taken from his neck, the plastic bag peeled away from his
head. Ushikawa desperately gulped down the air in front of him. For a few minutes he bent
forward, breathing mightily, like an animal lunging at something just out of reach.
 How was the bottom of the sea? the man asked after Ushikawas breathing had settled
down. His voice was, as before, expressionless. You went quite deep down. I imagine you
saw all sorts of things youve never seen before. A valuable experience. 
Ushikawa couldnt respond. His voice wouldnt come.
 Ushikawa, as I have said a number of times, I am looking for the correct answer. So Ill
ask you once again: Were you instructed by Sakigake to track Tengo Kawanas movements
and search for his connection with Aomame? This is a critical point. A persons life is on the
line. Think carefully before you answer. Ill know if youre lying. 
 Sakigake doesnt know about this, Ushikawa managed to stammer.
 Good, thats the correct answer. Sakigake doesnt know yet about the connection
between Aomame and Tengo Kawana. You havent told them yet. Is that correct? 
Ushikawa nodded.
 If you had answered correctly from the start, you wouldnt have had to visit the bottom of
the sea. Pretty awful, wasnt it? 
Ushikawa nodded.
 I know. I went through the same thing once, the man said, as easily as if he were chatting
about some trivial gossip. Only people who have experienced it know how horrible it
really is. You cant easily generalize about pain. Each kind of pain has its own characteristics.
To rephrase Tolstoys famous line, all happiness is alike, but each pain is painful in its own
way. I wouldnt go so far, though, as to say you savor it. Dont you agree? 
Ushikawa nodded. He was still panting a little.
The man went on. So lets be frank with each other, and totally honest. Does that sound
like a good idea, Ushikawa? 
Ushikawa nodded.
 Any more incorrect answers and Ill have you take another walk on the bottom of the sea.
A longer, more leisurely stroll this time. Well push the envelope a bit more. If we botch it, you
might not come back. I dont think you want to go there. What do you say, Ushikawa? 
Ushikawa shook his head.
 It seems like we have one thing in common, the man said. Were both lone wolves. Or
maybe dogs who got separated from the pack? Rogue operators who dont fit in with society.
People who have an instinctive dislike of organizations, or arent accepted by any organization.
We take care of business alone decide things on our own, take action on our own, take
responsibility on our own. We take orders from above, but have no colleagues or subordinates.
All we depend on is our brain and our abilities. Do I have it right? 
Ushikawa nodded.
The man continued. Thats our strength, but also at times our weak point. For example, in
this case I think you were a little too eager to be successful. You wanted to sort it out by yourself,
without informing Sakigake. You wanted to wrap things up neatly and take all the credit.
Thats why you let your guard down, isnt it? 
Ushikawa nodded once more.
 Why did you have to take things that far? 
 Because it was my fault Leader died. 
 How so? 
 Im the one who ran the background check on Aomame. I did a thorough check on her
before letting her see Leader. And I couldnt find anything suspicious at all. 
 But she got close to Leader hoping to kill him, and actually did deliver a fatal blow. You
messed up your assignment, and you knew that someday you would have to answer for it.
Youre just a disposable outsider, after all. And you know too much for your own good. To survive
this, you knew you had to deliver Aomames head to them. Am I correct? 
Ushikawa nodded.
 Sorry about that, the man said.
Sorry about that? Ushikawas misshapen head pondered this. Then it came to him.
 Are you the one who planned Leaders murder? he asked.
The man didnt respond. But Ushikawa took his silence as not necessarily a denial.
 What are you going to do with me? Ushikawa asked.
 What indeed. Truth be told, I havent decided yet. Im going to take my time and think
about it. It all depends on how you play this, Tamaru said. I still have a few questions I want
to ask you. 
Ushikawa nodded.
 I would like you to tell me the phone number of your contact at Sakigake. You must report
to someone there. 
Ushikawa hesitated a moment, but then told him the number. With his life hanging in the
balance, he wasnt about to hide it. Tamaru wrote it down.
 His name? 
 I dont know his name, Ushikawa lied. Tamaru didnt seem to mind.
 Pretty tough characters? 
 Id say so. 
 But not real pros. 
 Theyre skilled, and they follow orders from the top, no questions asked. But theyre not
pros. 
 How much do they know about Aomame? Tamaru asked. Do they know where shes
hiding? 
Ushikawa shook his head. They dont know yet, which is why I stayed here doing surveillance
on Tengo Kawana. If I knew where Aomame is, I would have moved operations over
there a long time ago. 
 Makes sense, Tamaru said. Speaking of which, how did you figure out the connection
between Aomame and Tengo Kawana? 
 Legwork. 
 How so? 
 I reviewed her background, from A to Z. I went back to her childhood, when she was attending
the public elementary school in Ichikawa. Tengo Kawana is also from Ichikawa, so I
wondered if there could have been a connection. I went to the elementary school to look into
it, and sure enough, they were in the same class for two years. 
Tamaru made a low, catlike growl deep in his throat. I see. A very tenacious investigation,
Ushikawa, I must say. It must have taken a lot of time and energy. Impressive. 
Ushikawa said nothing. There wasnt a question pending.
 To repeat my question, Tamaru said, at the present time you are the only one who
knows about the connection between Aomame and Tengo Kawana? 
 You know about it. 
 Not counting me. Those you associate with. 
Ushikawa nodded. I am the only one involved who knows, yes. 
 Youre telling the truth? 
 I am. 
 By the way, did you know that Aomame is pregnant? 
 Pregnant? Ushikawa said. His voice revealed his surprise. Whose child is it? 
Tamaru didnt answer his question. You really didnt know? 
 No, I didnt. Believe me. 
Tamaru silently considered his response for a moment, and then spoke.
 All right. It does appear that you didnt know this. Ill believe you. On another topic: you
were sniffing around the Willow House in Azabu for a while. Correct? 
Ushikawa nodded.
 Why? 
 The lady who owns it went to a local sports club and Aomame was her personal trainer. It
seems they had a close personal relationship. That lady also set up a safe house for battered
women on the grounds of her estate. The security there was extremely tight. In my opinion, a
little too tight. So I assumed Aomame might be hiding in that safe house. 
 And then what happened? 
 I decided that wasnt the case. The lady has plenty of money and power. If she wanted to
hide Aomame, she wouldnt do it so close at hand. She would put her somewhere far away.
So I gave up checking out the Azabu mansion and turned my attention to Tengo Kawana. 
Tamaru gave a low growl again. You have excellent intuition. Youre very logical, not to
mention patient. Kind of a waste to have you be an errand boy. Have you always been in this
line of work? 
 I used to be a lawyer, Ushikawa said.
 I see. You must have been very good. But I imagine you got carried away, botched up
things, and took a fall. These are hard times now, and youre working for next to nothing as an
errand boy for this new religious group. Do I have this right? 
Ushikawa nodded. Yes, that about sums it up. 
 Nothing you can do about it, Tamaru said. For mavericks like us its not easy to live a
normal, everyday life. It might look like were doing okay for a while, but then we definitely trip
up. Thats the way the world operates. Tamaru cracked his knuckles, a sharp, ominous
sound. So does Sakigake know about the Willow House? 
 I havent told anyone, Ushikawa replied truthfully. When I said that something about the
mansion smells fishy, that was my own conjecture, nothing more. The security was too tight
for me to confirm anything. 
 Good, Tamaru said.
 You were the one who made sure of that, werent you? 
Tamaru didnt answer.
 Up till now youve answered truthfully, Tamaru said. In general, at least. Once you sink
to the bottom of the sea, you lose the power to lie. If you tried to lie now, it would show in your
voice. Thats what fear will do to you. 
 Im not lying, Ushikawa said.
 Glad to hear it, Tamaru said. No one wants to feel any more pain than they have to. By
the way, have you heard of Carl Jung? 
Under the blindfold Ushikawa instinctively frowned. Carl Jung? What was this guy getting
at?
 Carl Jung the psychologist? 
 Exactly. 
 I know a little about him, Ushikawa said carefully. He was born at the end of the nineteenth
century in Switzerland. He was a disciple of Freuds, but broke with him. He coined the
term ‘collective unconscious. Thats about all I know. 
 Thats plenty, Tamaru said.
Ushikawa waited for him to continue.
 Carl Jung, Tamaru said, had an elegant house in a quiet lakeside residential area of
Zurich, and lived an affluent life with his family. But he needed a place where he could be
alone in order to meditate on weighty issues. He found a small parcel of land on one corner of
the lake in an area called Bollingen and built a small house there. Not exactly a villa or anything
that grand. He piled the stones one by one himself and constructed a round house with
high ceilings. The stones had been taken from a nearby quarry. In those days in Switzerland
you had to have a stonemasons license in order to build anything out of stone, so Jung went
to the trouble of obtaining a license. He even joined the stonemasons guild. Building this
house, and doing it with his own hands, was very important to him. His mothers death also
seemed to be one of the major factors that led to him constructing this home. 
Tamaru paused for a moment.
 This house was dubbed the ‘Tower. He designed it so it resembled the village huts he
had seen on a trip to Africa. The inside was one big open space where everything went on. A
very simple residence. He felt this was all one needed to live. The house had no electricity,
gas, or running water. He got water from the nearby mountains. What he found out later,
though, was that this was just an archetype and nothing else. As time went on, he found it necessary
to build partitions and divisions in the house, and a second floor, and later he added
on several wings. He created paintings himself on the wall. These were suggestive of the development
and split in individual consciousness. The whole house functioned as a sort of
three-dimensional mandala. It took him twelve years to complete the entire house. For Jungian
researchers, its an extremely intriguing building. Have you heard of this before? 
Ushikawa shook his head.
 The house is still standing on the banks of the lake in Zurich. Jungs descendants manage
it, but unfortunately its not open to the public, so people cant view the interior. Rumor
has it, though, that at the entrance to the original tower there is a stone into which Jung
carved some words with his own hand. ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present. Thats what he carved
into the stone himself. 
Tamaru paused again.
 ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present, he intoned, quietly, once more.
 Do you know what this means? 
Ushikawa shook his head. No, I dont. 
 I can imagine. Im not sure myself what it means. Theres some kind of deep allusion
there, something difficult to interpret. But consider this: in this house that Carl Jung built, piling
up the stones with his own hands, at the very entrance, he found the need to chisel out, again
with his own hands, these words. I dont know why, but Ive been drawn to these words for a
long time. I find them hard to understand, but the difficulty in understanding makes it all the
more profound. I dont know much about God. I was raised in a Catholic orphanage and had
some awful experiences there so I dont have a good impression of God. And it was always
cold there, even in the summer. It was either really cold or outrageously cold. One or the other.
If there is a God, I cant say he treated me very well. Despite all this, those words of Jungs
quietly sank deep into the folds of my soul. Sometimes I close my eyes and repeat them over
and over, and they make me strangely calm. ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present. Sorry, but could
you say that out loud? 
 ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present, Ushikawa repeated in a weak voice, not really sure what
he was saying.
 I cant hear you very well. 
 ‘Cold or Not, God Is Present. This time Ushikawa said it as distinctly as he could.
Tamaru shut his eyes, enjoying the overtones of the words. Eventually, as if he had made
up his mind about something, he took a deep breath and let it out. He opened his eyes and
looked at his hands. He had on disposable latex gloves so he wouldnt leave behind any fingerprints.
 Im sorry about this, Tamaru said in a low voice. His tone was solemn. He took out the
plastic bag again, put it over Ushikawas head, and wrapped the thick rubber band around his
neck. His movements were swift and decisive. Ushikawa was about to protest, but the words
didnt form, and they never reached anyones ears. Why is he doing this? Ushikawa thought
from inside the plastic bag. I told him everything I know. So why does he have to kill me?
In his head, about to burst, he thought of his little house in Chuorinkan, and about his two
young daughters. And the dog they owned. The dog was small and low to the ground and
Ushikawa never could bring himself to like it. The dog never liked him, either. The dog wasnt
very bright, and barked incessantly. It chewed the rugs and peed on the new flooring in the
hallway. It was a totally different creature from the clever mutt he had had as a child. Still,
Ushikawas final conscious thoughts in this life were of the silly little dog scampering around
the lawn in their backyard.
Tamaru watched as Ushikawa, his body tightly bound into a ball, writhed on the tatami like
some huge fish out of water. Ushikawas arms and legs were tied behind him, so no matter
how much he struggled, the neighbors next door wouldnt hear a thing. Tamaru knew very
well what a hideous way to die this was. But it was the most efficient, cleanest way to kill
someone. No screams, no blood. Tamaru followed the second hand on his Tag Heuer divers
watch. After three minutes Ushikawa stopped thrashing around. His body trembled slightly, as
if resonating to something, and then the trembling stopped. Tamaru looked at his wristwatch
for another three minutes. He felt Ushikawas wrist for a pulse and confirmed that all signs of
life had vanished. There was a faint whiff of urine. Ushikawa had lost control of his bladder
again, this time emptying it completely. Understandable, considering how much he had
suffered.
Tamaru removed the rubber band and peeled away the plastic bag. The bag had been
partly sucked into his mouth. Ushikawas eyes were wide, his mouth open and twisted to one
side in death. His dirty, irregular teeth were bared, his tongue with its greenish moss visible. It
was the kind of expression Munch might have painted. Ushikawas normally misshapen head
looked even more lopsided. He must have suffered terribly.
 Im sorry about this, Tamaru said. I didnt do it because I wanted to. 
Tamaru used his fingers to relax the muscles of Ushikawas face, straighten out the jaw,
and make his face more presentable. He used a kitchen towel to wipe away the drool from
Ushikawas mouth. It took a while, but his face began to look a bit better. At least a person
looking at it wouldnt avert their eyes. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldnt get Ushikawas
eyes to shut.
 Shakespeare said it best, Tamaru said quietly as he gazed at that lumpish, misshapen
head. Something along these lines: if we die today, we do not have to die tomorrow, so let us
look to the best in each other. 
Was this from Henry IV, or maybe Richard III? Tamaru couldnt recall. To him, though, that
wasnt important, and he doubted Ushikawa wanted to know the precise reference. Tamaru
untied his arms and legs. He had used a soft, towel-like rope, and he had a special way of tying
it so as to not leave marks. He took the rope, the plastic bag, and the heavy-duty rubber
band and stowed them in a plastic bag he had brought with him for that purpose. He rummaged
through Ushikawas belongings and collected every photo he had taken. He put the
camera and tripod in the bag as well. It would only lead to trouble if it got out that Ushikawa
had been conducting surveillance. People would ask who he was watching, and the chances
were pretty good that Tengo Kawanas name would surface. He took Ushikawas notebook,
too, crammed full of detailed notes. He made sure to collect anything of importance. All that
was left behind were the sleeping bag, eating utensils, extra clothes, and Ushikawas pitiful
corpse. Finally, Tamaru took out one of Ushikawas business cards, the ones that said he was
Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts,
and pocketed it.
 Im really sorry, Tamaru said again as he was leaving.
. . .
Tamaru went into a phone booth near the station, inserted a telephone card into the slot,
and dialed the number Ushikawa had given him. It was a local Tokyo number, Shibuya Ward
by the look of it. The phone rang six times before someone answered.
Tamaru skipped the preliminaries and told him the address and room number of the apartment
in Koenji.
 Did you write it down? 
 Could you repeat it? 
Tamaru did so. The man wrote it down and read it back.
 Ushikawa is there, Tamaru said. You are familiar with Ushikawa? 
 Ushikawa? 
Tamaru ignored what he said and continued. Ushikawa is there, and unfortunately he
isnt breathing anymore. It doesnt look like a natural death. There are several business cards
with Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the
Arts on them in his business card holder. If the police find these, eventually they will figure out
the connection with you. That wouldnt be to your advantage, I imagine. Best to dispose of
everything as soon as you can. Thats what youre good at. 
 Who are you? the man asked.
 Lets just say Im a kind informant, Tamaru said. Im not so fond of the police myself.
Same as you. 
 Not a natural death? 
 Well, he didnt die of old age, or very peacefully. 
The man was quiet for a moment. What was this Ushikawa doing there? 
 I dont know. You would have to ask him the details, and as I explained, hes not in a position
to respond. 
The man on the other end of the line paused. You must be connected with the young woman
who came to the Hotel Okura? 
 Thats not the sort of question to which you can expect an answer. 
 Im one of the people who met her. Tell her that and shell understand. I have a message
for her. 
 Im listening. 
 Were not planning to harm her, the man said.
 My understanding is that you are trying your best to track her down. 
 Thats right. Weve been trying to locate her for some time. 
 Yet youre telling me you dont plan to harm her, Tamaru said. Why is that? 
There was a short silence before the response came.
 At a certain point the situation changed. Leaders death was deeply mourned by everyone.
But thats over, finished. Leader was ill, and, in a sense, he was hoping to put an end to
his suffering. So we dont plan to pursue Aomame any further regarding this matter. Instead,
we would simply like to talk with her. 
 About what? 
 Areas of common interest. 
 Thats just what your people want. You may feel the need to speak with her, but maybe
that isnt what she wants. 
 There should be room for discussion. There are things that we can provide you. Freedom,
for instance, and safety. Knowledge and information. Cant we find a neutral place to
discuss this? Name the location. We will go wherever you say. I guarantee her safety, one
hundred percent and not just hers, but the safety of everyone involved. Theres no need to
run away anymore. I think this is a reasonable request, for both sides. 
 Thats what you say, Tamaru said. But there is no reason I should trust you. 
 At any rate, I would appreciate it if you would let Aomame know, the man said patiently.
 Time is of the essence, and were still willing to meet you halfway. If you need more proof of
our reliability, well provide it. You can call here anytime and get in touch with us. 
 I wonder if you could give me a few more details. Why is she so important to you? What
happened to bring about this transformation? 
The man took a short breath before he replied. We have to keep hearing the voice. For
us its like a never-ending well. And we cant ever lose it. Thats all I can tell you at this time. 
 And you need Aomame in order to keep that well. 
 Its hard to explain. Its connected, but thats all I can say. 
 What about Eriko Fukada? You dont need her anymore? 
 No, not anymore. We dont care where she is, or what shes doing. Her mission is finished. 
 What mission? 
 Thats sensitive information, the man said after a pause. Im sorry, but I cant reveal
anything more at this time. 
 I suggest you consider your position very carefully, Tamaru said. In this game were
playing, its my serve. We can get in touch with you anytime we want, but you cant get in
touch with us. You dont even know who we are. Correct? 
 Youre right. You do have the advantage. We dont know who you are. But this isnt
something we should speak about on the phone. Ive already said too much, more than Im
authorized to. 
Tamaru was silent for some time. All right. Well consider your proposal. We need to talk
it over on our end. I will probably be getting in touch with you later. 
 I will be waiting to hear from you, the man said. As I said before, this could be to the advantage
of both sides. 
 What if we ignore your proposal, or reject it? 
 Then we would have to do things our way. We have a certain amount of power, and unfortunately,
things might get a little rough. This could cause problems for everyone involved.
No matter who you are, you wont come through this unscathed. I dont see how that could be
the ideal outcome for either of us. 
 You may be right. But it will take a while before we get to that point. And as you said, time
is of the essence. 
The man gave a small cough. It might take time. Or maybe not so much. 
 You wont know unless you try. 
 Exactly, the man said. Theres one more important thing I need to point out. To borrow
your metaphor, in this game its your serve. But it doesnt seem to me like youre familiar with
the basic rules of the game. 
 Thats another thing you cant know unless you actually try it. 
 If you do try it and it doesnt work, that would be a shame. 
 For both of us, Tamaru said.
A short, suggestive silence followed.
 What do you plan to do about Ushikawa? Tamaru asked.
 Well take charge of him at the earliest opportunity. As early as tonight. 
 The apartment is unlocked. 
 Much appreciated, the man said.
 By the way, will you all deeply mourn Ushikawas death? 
 We deeply mourn any persons death. 
 You should mourn over him. He was, in his own way, a capable man. 
 But not capable enough. Is that what youre saying? 
 No man is capable enough to live forever. 
 So you say, the man said.
 Yes, I do think that. Dont you? 
 Ill wait for your call, the man said, without answering, his voice cold.
Tamaru silently hung up the phone. There was no need for any more talk. If he wanted to
talk further, he would call them. He left the phone booth and walked to where he had parked
his car an old, drab, dark blue Toyota Corolla van, totally inconspicuous. He drove for fifteen
minutes, pulled up next to an empty park, checked that there was no one watching, and
tossed the plastic bag with the rope and the rubber band into a trash can. Plus the surgical
gloves.
 They deeply mourn any persons death, Tamaru said in a low voice as he started the engine
and snapped on his seatbelt. Good thats whats most important, he thought. Everyones
death should be mourned. Even if just for a short time.
1Q84
CHAPTER 26
Aomame
VERY ROMANTIC
The phone rang at just past noon on Tuesday. Aomame was seated on her yoga mat, legs
wide apart, stretching her iliopsoas muscles. It was a much more strenuous exercise than it
looked. A light sheen of perspiration was starting to seep through her shirt. She stopped,
wiped her face with a towel, and answered the phone.
 Bobblehead is no longer in that apartment, Tamaru said, as always omitting any sort of
greeting. No hellos for him.
 Hes not there anymore? 
 No, hes not. He was persuaded. 
 Persuaded, Aomame repeated. She imagined this meant that Tamaru had, through
some means, forcibly removed Bobblehead.
 Also, the person named Kawana who lives in that building is the Tengo Kawana you have
been looking for. 
The world around Aomame expanded, then contracted, as if it were her own heart.
 Are you listening? Tamaru asked.
 I am. 
 But Tengo Kawana isnt in his apartment right now. He has been gone for a couple of
days. 
 Is he all right? 
 Hes not in Tokyo now, but hes definitely all right. Bobblehead rented an apartment in
Tengos building, and was waiting there for you to come see Tengo. He had set up a hidden
camera and was keeping watch over the entrance. 
 Did he take my picture? 
 He took three photos of you. It was nighttime, and you had on a hat, glasses, and a
muffler, so you cant see any facial details in the photos. But its you. If you had gone there
one more time, things could have gotten sticky. 
 So I made the right choice leaving things up to you? 
 If there is such a thing as a right choice here. 
 Anyway, Aomame said, I dont have to worry about him. 
 That man wont be trying to do you any harm anymore. 
 Because you persuaded him. 
 I had to adjust some things as we went, but in the end, yes, Tamaru said. I got all the
photos. Bobbleheads aim was to wait until you showed up, and Tengo Kawana was merely
the bait he was using to reel you in. So I cant see that they would have any reason now to
harm Tengo. He should be fine. 
 Thats a relief, Aomame said.
 Tengo teaches math at a cram school in Yoyogi. He is apparently an excellent teacher,
but he only works a few days a week, so he doesnt make much money. Hes still single, and
he lives modestly in that simple apartment. 
When Aomame closed her eyes she could hear her heartbeat inside her ears. The boundary
between herself and the world seemed blurred.
 Besides teaching math at the cram school, he is writing a novel. A long one. Ghostwriting
Air Chrysalis was just a side job. He has his own literary ambitions, which is a good thing. A
certain amount of ambition helps a person grow. 
 How did you find all this out? 
 Hes gone now, so I let myself into his apartment. It was locked, not that I would count
that as a lock. I feel bad about invading his privacy, but I needed to do a basic check. For a
man living alone, he keeps his place clean. He had even scrubbed the gas stove. The inside
of his fridge was very neat, no rotten cabbage or anything tucked away in the back. I could
see he had done some ironing as well. Not a bad partner for you to have. As long as he isnt
gay, I mean. 
 What else did you find out? 
 I called the cram school and asked about his teaching schedule. The girl who answered
the phone said that Tengos father passed away late Sunday night in a hospital somewhere in
Chiba Prefecture. He had to leave Tokyo for the funeral, and his Monday classes were canceled.
She didnt know when or where the funeral would take place. His next class is on
Thursday, so it seems he will be back by then. 
Aomame remembered that Tengos father was an NHK fee collector. On Sundays Tengo
had made the rounds of his fathers collection route with him. She and Tengo had run across
each other a number of times on the streets of Ichikawa. She couldnt remember his fathers
face very well. He was a small, thin man who wore a fee collectors uniform. He didnt look at
all like Tengo.
 Since theres no more Bobblehead, is it all right if I go see Tengo? 
 Thats not a good idea, Tamaru shot back. Bobblehead was persuaded, but I had to get
in touch with Sakigake to get them to take care of one last piece of business. There was one
particular article I didnt want to fall into the hands of the authorities. If that had been discovered,
the residents of the apartment would have been gone over with a fine-tooth comb,
and your friend might have gotten mixed up in it too. It would have been difficult for me to
wrap up everything by myself. If the authorities spotted me lugging that article out in the
middle of the night and questioned me, I dont know how I would talk my way out of it.
Sakigake has the manpower and the resources, and thats the sort of thing theyre used to.
Like the time they transported another article out of the Hotel Okura. Do you follow what Im
saying? 
In her mind Aomame translated Tamarus terminology into more straightforward vocabulary.
 So this persuasion got rather rough, I take it. 
Tamaru gave a low groan. I feel bad about it, but that man knew too much. 
 Was Sakigake aware of what Bobblehead was doing in that apartment? 
 He was working for them, but on that front he was acting on his own. He hadnt yet reported
to his superiors on what he was doing. Fortunately for us. 
 But by now they must know that he was up to something. 
 Correct. So you had best not go near there for a while. Tengo Kawanas name and address
have to be on their checklist. I doubt they know yet about the personal connection
between you and Tengo. But when they search for the reason Bobblehead was in that apartment,
Tengos name will surface. Its only a matter of time. 
 If were lucky, it might be some time before they discover it. They might not make the
connection between Bobbleheads death and Tengo right away. 
 If were lucky, Tamaru said. If theyre not as meticulous as I think they are. But I never
count on luck. Thats how Ive survived all these years. 
 So I shouldnt go near that apartment building. 
 Correct, Tamaru said. We made a narrow escape, and we cant be too careful. 
 I wonder if Bobblehead figured out that Im hiding in this apartment. 
 If he had, right now you would be somewhere I couldnt get to. 
 But he came so close. 
 He did. But that was just coincidence, nothing more. 
 Thats why he could sit there on the slide, totally exposed. 
 Right, Tamaru said. He had no idea that you were watching him. He never expected it.
And that was his fatal mistake. I said that, didnt I? That there is a very fine line between life
and death? 
A few seconds of silence descended on them. A heavy silence that a persons any persons death
brings on.
 Bobblehead might be gone, but the cult is still after me. 
 Im not so sure about that, Tamaru said. At first they wanted to grab you and find out
what organization planned Leaders murder. They know you couldnt have done it on your
own. It was obvious that you must have had backup. If they had caught you, you would have
been in for some tough questioning. 
 Which is why I needed a pistol, Aomame said.
 Bobblehead was well aware of all this, Tamaru went on. He knew the cult was after you
to grill you and punish you. But somehow the situation has drastically shifted. After Bobblehead
left the stage, I spoke with one of the cult members. He said they have no plans to do
you any harm. He asked me to give you this message. It could be a trap, but it sounded genuine
to me. The guy explained that Leader was actually hoping to die, that it was a kind of selfdestruction.
So theres no need anymore to punish you. 
 Hes right, Aomame said in a dry tone. Leader knew from the outset that I had gone
there to kill him. And he wanted me to kill him. 
 His security detail hadnt seen through you, but Leader had. 
 Thats right. I dont know why, but he knew everything beforehand, Aomame said. He
was waiting for me there. 
Tamaru paused briefly, and then said, What happened? 
 We made a deal. 
 This is the first Ive heard of it, Tamaru said, his voice stiff.
 I never had the opportunity to tell you. 
 Tell me what sort of deal you made. 
 I massaged his muscles for a good hour, and all the while he talked. He knew about
Tengo. And somehow he knew about the connection between Tengo and me. He told me he
wanted me to kill him. He wanted to escape the terrible physical pain he was in as soon as
possible. If I would give him death, he said, he would spare Tengos life for me. So I made up
my mind and took his life. Even if I hadnt carried it out, he already had one foot in the grave,
and when I considered the kinds of things he had done, I almost felt like letting him stay as he
was, in such agony. 
 You never reported to Madame about this deal you made. 
 I went there to kill Leader, and I carried out my assignment, Aomame said. The issue
with Tengo was private. 
 All right, Tamaru said, sounding half resigned. You most definitely did carry out your assignment,
Ill give you that. And the issue of Tengo Kawana is indeed a private matter. But
somewhere either before or after this, you became pregnant. Thats not something that can
be easily overlooked. 
 Not before or after. I got pregnant on that very night, the night of the huge rainstorm and
terrible lightning that hit the city. On the same exact night when I dealt with Leader. As I said
before, without any sex involved. 
Tamaru sighed. Considering what were talking about, I either have to believe you or not
believe you, one or the other. I have always found you to be a trustworthy person and I want
to believe you, but I cant fathom the logic. Understand, I am a person who can only follow deductive
reasoning. 
Aomame was silent.
Tamaru went on. Is there a cause-and-effect relationship between Leaders murder and
this mysterious pregnancy? 
 I really cant say. 
 Is it possible that the fetus inside you is Leaders child? That he used some method what
that would be I have no idea and impregnated you? If thats true, then I understand
why theyre trying to get ahold of you. They need a successor to Leader. 
Aomame clutched the phone tight and shook her head. Thats impossible. This is Tengos
child. I know it for a fact. 
 Thats another thing I have to either trust you on or not. 
 Beyond that, I cant explain anything. 
Tamaru sighed again. All right. For the time being Ill accept what youre saying that this
baby is yours and Tengos, and that you know this for a fact. Still, I dont see how it makes
sense. At first they wanted to capture you and punish you severely, but at a certain point
something happened or they found out something. Now they need you. They said they guarantee
your safety, and that they have something to offer you, and they want to meet directly
to discuss this. What could have happened to account for this sudden turnaround? 
 They dont need me, Aomame said. They need whats inside my belly. Somewhere
along the line they realized this. 
 Ho, ho, one of the Little People intoned from somewhere.
 Things are moving a bit too fast for me, Tamaru said. He gave a little groan again in the
back of his throat. I still dont see the logical connection here. 
Well, nothings been logical since the two moons appeared, Aomame thought. Thats what
stole the logic from everything. Not that she said this aloud.
 Ho, ho, six other Little People joined in.
 They need someone to hear the voice, Tamaru said. The man I talked with on the
phone was insistent about that. If they lose the voice, it could be the end of the religion. What
hearing the voice actually means, I have no idea. But thats what the man said. Does this
mean that the child inside you is the one who hears the voice? 
Aomame laid a gentle hand on her abdomen. Maza and dohta, she thought to herself. The
moons cant hear about this.
 Im not really sure, Aomame said, carefully choosing her words. But I cant think of any
other reason they would need me. 
 But why would this child have that kind of special power? 
 I dont know. In exchange for his life, maybe Leader entrusted his successor to me, she
thought. In order to accomplish that, on that stormy night he might have temporarily opened
the circuits where worlds intersect, and joined Tengo and me as one.
Tamaru went on. No matter who the father of that child is, or whatever abilities that child
may or may not have when its born, you have no intention of negotiating with the cult, correct?
You dont care what they give you in exchange. Even if they solve all the riddles youve
been wondering about. 
 Ill never do it, Aomame said.
 Despite your intentions, they may take what they want by force. By any means necessary, 
Tamaru said. Plus, you have a weak spot: Tengo Kawana. Perhaps the only weak spot
you have, but its a big one. When they discover that, thats where theyll focus their attack. 
Tamaru was right. Tengo was both her reason for living and her Achilles heel.
Tamaru went on. Its too dangerous for you to stay there any longer. You need to move to
a more secure location before they figure out the connection between you and Tengo. 
 There are no more secure places in this world, Aomame said.
Tamaru mulled over her opinion. Tell me what youre thinking, he said quietly.
 First, I have to see Tengo. Until that happens, I cant leave here. No matter how dangerous
it might be. 
 What are you going to do when you see him? 
 I know what I need to do. 
Tamaru was silent for a moment. Youre crystal clear on that? 
 I dont know if it will work out, but I know what I have to do. Im crystal clear on that, yes. 
 But youre not planning on telling me what it involves. 
 Im sorry, but I cant. Not just you, but anybody. If I told anyone about it, at that instant it
would be disclosed to the whole world. 
The moons were listening carefully. So were the Little People. And this very room she was
in. She couldnt let it out of her heart, not one centimeter. She had to surround her heart with
a thick wall so nothing could escape.
On the other end of the line Tamaru was tapping the tip of a ballpoint pen on a desk.
Aomame could hear the dry, rhythmic noise. It was a lonely sound, lacking any resonance.
 Okay, then lets get in touch with Tengo Kawana. Before that, though, Madame must
agree to it. The task Ive been given is to move you, as soon as possible, to another location.
But you said you cant leave there until you see Tengo. It doesnt look like it will be easy to explain
the reason to her. You understand that, right? 
 Its very difficult to logically explain the illogical. 
 Exactly. As difficult as finding a real pearl in a Roppongi oyster bar. But Ill do my best. 
 Thank you, Aomame said.
 What youre insisting on doesnt make sense to me, no matter how I look at it. Still, the
more I talk with you, the more I feel that maybe I can accept it. I wonder why. 
Aomame kept silent.
 Madame trusts you and believes in you, Tamaru said, so if you insist on it that much, I
cant see her finding a reason not to let you see Tengo. You and Tengo seem to have an unwavering
connection to each other. 
 More than anything in the world, Aomame said.
More than anything in any world, she repeated to herself.
 Even if I say its too dangerous, and refuse to contact Tengo, youll still go to that apartment
to see him. 
 Im sure I will. 
 And no one can stop you. 
 Its pointless to try. 
Tamaru paused for a moment. What message would you like me to give Tengo? 
 Come to the slide after dark. After it gets dark, anytime is fine. I will be waiting. If you tell
him Aomame said this, hell understand. 
 Okay. Ill let him know. Come to the slide after dark. 
 If he has something important he doesnt want to leave behind, tell him to bring it with
him. But tell him he has to be able to keep both hands free. 
 Where are you going to take that luggage? 
 Far away, Aomame said.
 How far away? 
 I dont know, Aomame said.
 All right. As long as Madame gives her permission, Ill let Tengo know. And I will do my
best to keep you safe. But theres still danger here. Were dealing with desperate men. You
need to protect yourself. 
 I understand, Aomame said quietly. Her palm still lay softly on her abdomen. Not just
myself, she thought.
After she hung up, she collapsed onto the sofa. She closed her eyes and thought about
Tengo. She couldnt think of anything else. Her chest felt tight, and it hurt, but it was a good
sort of pain. It was the kind of pain she could put up with. Tengo was so close, almost within
reach. Less than a ten-minute walk away. The very thought warmed her to her core. Tengo is
a bachelor, and teaches math at a cram school. He lives in a neat, humble little apartment. He
cooks, irons, and is writing a long novel. Aomame envied Tamaru. If it were possible, she
would like to get into Tengos apartment like that, when he was out. Tengos Tengo-less
apartment. In the deserted silence she wanted to touch each and every object there check
out how sharp his pencils were, hold his coffee cup, inhale the odor of his clothes. She
wanted to take that step first, before actually coming face-to-face with him.
Without that prefatory knowledge, if they were suddenly together, just the two of them, she
couldnt imagine what she should say. The thought made it hard to breathe, and her mind
went blank. There were too many things. Still, when it came down to it, perhaps nothing
needed to be said. The things she most wanted to tell him would lose their meaning the moment
she put them into words.
All she could do now was simply wait calmly, with eyes wide open. She prepared a bag
so she could run outside as soon as she spotted Tengo. She stuffed an oversized black leather
shoulder bag with everything she would need so she wouldnt have to come back here.
There werent all that many things. Some cash, a few changes of clothes, and the Heckler &
Koch, fully loaded. That was about it. She put the bag where she could get to it at a moments
notice. She took her Junko Shimada suit from the hanger in the closet and, after checking that
it wasnt wrinkled, hung it on the wall in the living room. She also took out the white blouse
that went with the suit, stockings, and her Charles Jourdan high heels. And the beige spring
coat. The same outfit she was wearing when she climbed down the emergency stairway on
Metropolitan Expressway No. 3. The coat was a bit thin for a December evening, but she had
no other choice.
After getting all this ready, she sat in the garden chair on the balcony and looked out
through the slit in the screen at the slide in the park. Tengos father died late Sunday night. A
minimum of twenty-four hours had to elapse between the time a person died and the time
they could be cremated. She was sure there was a law that said that. Tuesday would be the
earliest they could do the cremation. Today was Tuesday. The earliest Tengo would be back
in Tokyo from wherever after the funeral would be this evening. And then Tamaru could give
him the message. So Tengo wouldnt be coming to the park anytime before that. Plus, it was
still light out.
On his death, Leader set this little one inside my womb, she thought. Thats my working
supposition. Or maybe I should say intuition. Does this mean Im being manipulated by the
will he left behind, being led to a destination that he established?
Aomame grimaced. I cant decide anything. Tamaru surmised that I got pregnant with the
one who hears the voice as a result of Leaders plan. Probably as an air chrysalis. But why
does it have to be me? And why does my partner have to be Tengo? This was another thing
she couldnt explain.
Be that as it may, things are moving forward around me, even though I cant figure out the
connections, or sort out the principles at work behind them, or see where things are headed.
Ive just wound up entangled in it all. Until now, that is, she told herself.
Her lips twisted and she grimaced even more.
From now on, things will be different. Nobody elses will is going to control me anymore.
From now on, Im going to do things based on one principle alone: my own will. Im going to
protect this little one, whatever it takes. This is my life, and my child. Somebody else may
have programmed it for their own purposes, but theres no doubt in my mind that this is
Tengos and my child. Ill never hand it over to anyone else. Never. From here on out, Im the
one in charge. Im the one who decides whats good and whats bad and which way were
headed. And people had better remember that.
The phone rang the next day, Wednesday, at two in the afternoon.
 I gave him the message, Tamaru said, as usual omitting any greeting. Hes in his apartment
now. I talked to him this morning on the phone. He will be at the slide tonight at precisely
seven. 
 Did he remember me? 
 He remembered you well. He seems to have been searching all over for you. 
It was just as Leader said. Tengo is looking for me. Thats all I need to know. Aomames
heart was filled with an indescribable joy. No other words in this world had any meaning for
her.
 He will be bringing something important with him then, as you asked. Im guessing that
this will include the novel hes writing. 
 Im sure of it, Aomame said.
 I checked around that humble building he lives in. All looks clear to me. No suspicious
characters hanging around. Bobbleheads apartment is deserted. Everythings quiet, but not
too quiet. Those guys took care of the article during the night and left. They probably thought
it wouldnt be good to stay too long. I made sure of this, so I dont think I overlooked anything. 
 Good. 
 Probably, though, is the operative word here, at least for now. The situation is changing
by the moment. And obviously Im not perfect. I might be overlooking something important. It
is possible that those guys might turn out to be one notch ahead of me. 
 Which is why it all comes down to me needing to protect myself. 
 As I said. 
 Thank you for everything. Im very grateful to you. 
 I dont know what you plan to do from now on, Tamaru said, but if you do go somewhere
far away, and I never see you again, I know Ill feel a little sad. Youre a rare sort of
character, a type Ive seldom come across before. 
Aomame smiled into the phone. Thats pretty much the impression I wanted to leave you
with. 
 Madame needs you. Not for the work you do, but on a personal level, as a companion.
So I know she feels quite sad that she has to say good-bye like this. She cant come to the
phone now. I hope youll understand. 
 I do, Aomame said. I might have trouble, too, if I had to talk with her. 
 You said youre going far away, Tamaru said. How far away are we talking about? 
 Its a distance that cant be measured. 
 Like the distance that separates one persons heart from anothers. 
Aomame closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was on the verge of tears, but was
able to hold it together.
 Im praying that everything will go well, Tamaru said quietly.
 Im sorry, but I may have to hold on to the Heckler & Koch, Aomame said.
 Thats fine. Its my gift to you. If it gets troublesome to have, just toss it into Tokyo Bay.
The world will take one small step closer to disarmament. 
 I might end up never firing the pistol. Contrary to Chekhovs principle. 
 Thats fine, too, Tamaru said. Nothing could be better than not firing it. Were drawing
close to the end of the twentieth century. Things are different from back in Chekhovs time. No
more horse-drawn carriages, no more women in corsets. Somehow the world survived the
Nazis, the atomic bomb, and modern music. Even the way novels are composed has
changed drastically. So its nothing to worry about. But I do have a question. You and Tengo
are going to meet on the slide tonight at seven. 
 If things work out, Aomame said.
 If you do see him, what are you going to do there? 
 Were going to look at the moon. 
 Very romantic, Tamaru said, gently.
1Q84
CHAPTER 27
Tengo
THE WHOLE WORLD MAY NOT BE ENOUGH
On Wednesday morning when the phone rang, Tengo was still asleep. He hadnt been
able to fall asleep until nearly dawn, and the whiskey he had drunk still remained in him. He
got out of bed, and was surprised to see how light it was outside.
 Tengo Kawana? a man said. It was a voice he had never heard before.
 Yes, Tengo replied. The mans voice was quiet and businesslike, and he was sure it
must be more paperwork regarding his fathers death. But his alarm clock showed it was just
before eight a.m. Not the time that a city office or funeral home would be calling.
 I am sorry to be calling so early, but I was rather in a hurry. 
Something urgent. What is it? Tengos brain was still fuzzy.
 Do you recall the name Aomame? the man asked.
Aomame? His hangover and sleepiness vanished. His mind reset quickly, like after a short
blackout in a stage play. Tengo regripped the receiver.
 Yes, I do, he replied.
 Its quite an unusual name. 
 We were in the same class in elementary school, Tengo said, somehow able to get his
voice back to normal.
The man paused. Mr. Kawana, do you have interest at this moment in talking about
Aomame? 
Tengo found the mans way of speaking odd. His diction was unique, like listening to lines
from an avant-garde translated play.
 If you do not have any interest, then it will be a waste of time for both of us. Ill end this
conversation right away. 
 I am interested, Tengo said hurriedly. Sorry, but what is your connection here? 
 I have a message from her, the man said, ignoring his question. Aomame is hoping to
see you. What about you, Mr. Kawana? Would you care to see her as well? 
 I would, Tengo said. He coughed and cleared his throat. I have been wanting to see her
for a long time. 
 Fine. She wants to see you. And you are hoping to see her. 
Tengo suddenly realized how cold the room was. He grabbed a nearby cardigan and
threw it over his pajamas.
 So what should I do? Tengo asked.
 Can you come to the slide after dark? the man said.
 The slide? Tengo asked. What was this guy talking about?
 She said if I told you that, you would understand. She would like you to come to the top of
the slide. Im merely telling you what Aomame said. 
Tengos hand went to his hair, which was a mass of cowlicks and knots after sleeping.
The slide. Where I saw the two moons. Its got to be that slide.
 I think I understand, he replied, his voice dry.
 Fine. Also, if there is something valuable you would like to take with you, make sure you
have it on you. So youre all set to move on, far away. 
 Something valuable I would like to take with me? Tengo repeated in surprise.
 Something you dont want to leave behind. 
Tengo pondered this. Im not sure I totally understand, but by moving on far away, do you
mean never coming back here? 
 I wouldnt know, the man said. As I said previously, I am merely transmitting her message. 
Tengo ran his fingers through his tangled hair and considered this. Move on? I might
have a fair amount of papers I would want to bring. 
 That shouldnt be a problem, the man said. You are free to choose whatever you like.
However, when it comes to luggage, I have been asked to tell you that you should be able to
keep both hands free. 
 Keep both hands free, Tengo repeated. So, a suitcase wouldnt work, would it? 
 I wouldnt think so. 
From the mans voice it was hard to guess his age, looks, or build. It was the sort of voice
that provided no tangible clues. Tengo felt he wouldnt remember the voice at all, as soon as
the man hung up. Individuality or emotions assuming there were any to begin with were
hidden deep down, out of sight.
 Thats all that I need to relay, the man said.
 Is Aomame well? Tengo asked.
 Physically, shes fine, the man said, choosing his words carefully. Though right now
shes caught in a somewhat tense situation. She has to watch her every move. One false step
and it might all be over. 
 All be over, Tengo repeated mechanically.
 It would be best not to be too late, the man said. Time has become an important factor. 
Time has become an important factor, Tengo repeated to himself. Was there an issue with
this mans choice of words? Or am I too much on edge?
 I think I can be at the slide at seven tonight, Tengo said. If for some reason Im not able
to come tonight, Ill be there tomorrow at the same time. 
 Understood. And you know which slide were talking about. 
 I think so. 
Tengo glanced at the clock. He had eleven hours to go.
 By the way, I heard that your father passed away on Sunday. My deepest condolences. 
Tengo instinctively thanked him, but then wondered how this man could possibly know
about his father.
 Could you tell me a little more about Aomame? Tengo said. For instance, where she is,
and what she does? 
 Shes single. She works as a fitness instructor at a sports club in Hiroo. Shes a first-rate
instructor, but circumstances have changed and she has taken leave from her job. And, by
sheer coincidence, she has been living not far from you. For anything beyond that, I think it
best you hear directly from her. 
 Even what sort of tense situation shes in right now? 
The man didnt respond. Either he didnt want to answer or he felt there was no need. For
whatever reason, people like this seemed to flock to Tengo.
 Today at seven p.m., then, on top of the slide, the man said.
 Just a second, Tengo said quickly. I have a question. I was warned by someone that I
was being watched, and that I should be careful. Excuse me for asking, but did they mean
you? 
 No, they didnt mean me, the man said immediately. It was probably someone else who
was watching you. But it is a good idea to be cautious, as that person pointed out. 
 Does my being under surveillance have something to do with Aomames unusual situation? 
 Somewhat tense situation, the man said, correcting him. Yes, most likely there is some
sort of connection. 
 Is this dangerous? 
The man paused, and chose his words carefully, as if separating out varieties of beans
from a pile. If you call not being able to see Aomame anymore something dangerous, then
yes, there is definitely danger involved. 
Tengo mentally rearranged this mans roundabout phrasing into something he could understand.
He didnt have a clue about the background or the circumstances, but it was obvious
that things were indeed fraught.
 If things dont go well, we might not be able to see each other ever again. 
 Exactly. 
 I understand. Ill be careful, Tengo said.
 Im sorry to have called so early. It would appear that I woke you up. 
Without pausing, the man hung up. Tengo gazed at the black receiver in his hand. As he
had predicted, as soon as they hung up, the mans voice had vanished from his memory.
Tengo looked at the clock again. Eight ten. How should I kill all this time between now and
seven p.m.? he wondered.
He started by taking a shower, washing his hair, and untangling it as best he could. Then
he stood in front of the mirror and shaved, brushed his teeth, and flossed. He drank some tomato
juice from the fridge, boiled water, ground coffee beans and made coffee, toasted a
slice of bread. He set the timer and cooked a soft-boiled egg. He concentrated on each action,
taking more time than usual. But still it was only nine thirty.
Tonight I will see Aomame on top of the slide.
The thought sent his senses spinning. His hands and legs and face all wanted to go in different
directions, and he couldnt gather his emotions in one place. Whatever he tried to do,
his concentration was shot. He couldnt read, couldnt write. He couldnt sit still in one place.
The only thing he seemed capable of was washing the dishes, doing the laundry, straightening
up his drawers, making his bed. Every five minutes he would stop whatever he was doing
and glance at the clock. Thinking about time only seemed to slow it down.
Aomame knows.
He was standing at the sink, sharpening a cleaver that really didnt need to be sharpened.
She knows Ive been to the slide in that playground a number of times. She must have seen
me, sitting there, staring up at the sky. Otherwise it makes no sense. He pictured what he
looked like on top of the slide, lit up by the mercury-vapor lamp. He had had no sense of being
observed. Where had she been watching him from?
It doesnt matter, Tengo thought. No big deal. No matter where she saw me from, she recognized
me. The thought filled him with joy. Just as Ive been thinking of her, shes been
thinking of me. Tengo could hardly believe it that in this frantic, labyrinth-like world, two
peoples hearts a boys and a girls could be connected, unchanged, even though they
hadnt seen each other for twenty years.
But why didnt Aomame call out to me then, when she saw me? Things would be so much
simpler if she had. And how did she know where I live? How did she or that man find out
my phone number? He didnt like to get calls, and had an unlisted number. You couldnt get it
even if you called the operator.
There was a lot that remained unknown and mysterious, and the lines that constructed
this story were complicated. Which lines connected to which others, and what sort of causeand-effect
relationship existed, was beyond him. Still, ever since Fuka-Eri showed up in his
life, he felt he had been living in a place where questions outnumbered answers. But he had a
faint sense that this chaos was, ever so slowly, heading toward a denouement.
At seven this evening, though, at least some questions will be cleared up, Tengo thought.
Well meet on top of the slide. Not as a helpless ten-year-old boy and girl, but as an independent,
grown-up man and woman. As a math teacher in a cram school and a sports club instructor.
What will we talk about then? I have no idea. But we will talk we need to fill in the
blanks between us, exchange information about each other. And to borrow the phrasing of
the man who called we might then move on somewhere. So I need to make sure to bring
whats important to me, what I dont want to leave behind and pack it away so that I can
have both hands free.
I have no regrets about leaving here. I lived here for seven years, taught three days a
week at the cram school, but never once felt it was home. Like a floating island bobbing along
in the flow, it was just a temporary place to rest, and nothing more. My girlfriend is no longer
here. Fuka-Eri, too, who shared the place briefly gone. Tengo had no idea where these two
women were now, or what they were doing. They had simply, and quietly, vanished from his
life. If he left the cram school, someone else would surely take over. The world would keep on
turning, even without him. If Aomame wanted to move on somewhere with him, there was
nothing to keep him from going.
What could be the important thing he should take with him? Fifty thousand yen in cash
and a plastic debit card that was the extent of the assets he had at hand. There was also
one million yen in a savings account. No there was more. His share of the royalties from Air
Chrysalis was in the account as well. He had been meaning to return it to Komatsu but hadnt
gotten around to it. Then there was the printout of the novel he had begun. He couldnt leave
that behind. It had no real value to anyone else, but to Tengo it was precious. He put the
manuscript in a paper bag, then stuffed it into the hard, russet nylon shoulder bag he used
when he went to the cram school. The bag was really heavy now. He crammed floppy disks
into the pocket of his leather jacket. He couldnt very well take his word processor along with
him, but he did add his notebooks and fountain pen to his luggage. What else? he wondered.
He remembered the envelope the lawyer had given him in Chikura. Inside were his fathers
savings book and seal, a copy of their family record, and the mysterious family photo (if
indeed that was what it was). It was probably best to take that with him. His elementary
school report cards and the NHK commendations he would leave behind. He decided against
taking a change of clothes or toiletries. They wouldnt fit in the now-bulging bag, and besides,
he could buy them as needed.
Once he had packed everything in the bag, he had nothing left to do. There were no
dishes to wash, no shirts left to iron. He looked at the wall clock again. Ten thirty. He thought
he should call his friend to take over his classes at the cram school, but then remembered
that his friend was always in a terrible mood if you phoned before noon.
Tengo lay down on his bed, fully clothed, and let his mind wander through various possibilities.
The last time he saw Aomame was when he was ten. Now they were both thirty. They
had both gone through a lot of experiences in the interim. Good things, things that werent so
good (probably slightly more of the latter). Our looks, our personalities, the environment
where we live have all gone through changes, he thought. Were no longer a young boy and a
young girl. Is the Aomame over there really the Aomame he had been searching for? And
was he the Tengo Kawana she had been looking for? Tengo pictured them on the slide tonight
looking at each other, disappointed at what they saw. Maybe they wouldnt find anything
to talk about. That was a real possibility. Actually, it would be kind of strange if it didnt turn
out that way.
Maybe we shouldnt meet again. Tengo stared up at the ceiling. Wasnt it better if they
kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That
way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame
that warmed them to their core a tiny flame to cup ones hands around and protect from the
wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.
Tengo stared at the ceiling for a good hour, two conflicting emotions surging through him.
More than anything, he wanted to meet Aomame. At the same time, he was afraid to see her.
The cold disappointment and uncomfortable silence that might ensue made him shudder. His
body felt like it was going to be torn in half. But he had to see her. This is what he had been
wanting, what he had been hoping for with all his might, for the last twenty years. No matter
what disappointment might come of it, he knew he couldnt just turn his back on it and run
away.
Tired of staring at the ceiling, he fell asleep on the bed, still lying faceup. A quiet, dreamless
sleep of some forty or forty-five minutes the deep, satisfying sleep you get after concentrating
hard, after mental exhaustion. He realized that for the last few days he had only slept
in fits and starts and hadnt gotten a good nights sleep. Before it got dark, he needed to rid
himself of the fatigue that had built up. He had to be rested and relaxed when he left here and
headed for the playground. He knew this instinctively.
As he was falling asleep, he heard Kumi Adachis voice or he felt like he heard it. When
morning comes youll be leaving here, Tengo. Before the exit is blocked.
This was Kumis voice, and at the same time it was the voice of the owl at night. In his
memory the voices were mixed, and hard to distinguish from each other. What Tengo needed
then more than anything was wisdom the wisdom of the night that had put down roots into
the soil. A wisdom that might only be found in the depths of sleep.
At six thirty Tengo slung his bag diagonally across his shoulders and left his apartment.
He had on the same clothes as the last time he went to the slide: gray windbreaker and old
leather jacket, jeans, and brown work boots. All of them were worn but they fit well, like an extension
of his body. I probably wont ever be back here again, he thought. As a precaution he
took the typed cards with his name on them out of the door slot and the mailbox. What would
happen to everything else? He decided not to worry about it for now.
As he stood at the entrance to the apartment building, he peered around cautiously. If he
believed Fuka-Eri, he was being watched. But just as before, there was no sign of surveillance.
Everything was the same as always. Now that the sun had set, the road in front of him
was deserted. He set off for the station, at a slow pace. He glanced back from time to time to
make sure he wasnt being followed. He turned down several narrow streets he didnt need to
take, then came to a stop and checked again to see if anyone was tailing him. You have to be
careful, the man on the phone had cautioned. For yourself, and for Aomame, whos in a tense
situation.
But does the man on the phone really know Aomame? Tengo suddenly wondered.
Couldnt this be some kind of clever trap? Once this thought took hold, he couldnt shake off a
sense of unease. If this really was a trap, then Sakigake had to be behind it. As the
ghostwriter of Air Chrysalis he was probably no, make that definitely on their blacklist.
Which is why that weird guy, Ushikawa, came to him with that suspicious story about a grant.
On top of that, Tengo had let Fuka-Eri hide out in his apartment for three months. There were
more than enough reasons for the cult to be upset with him.
Be that as it may, Tengo thought, inclining his head, why would they go to the trouble of
using Aomame as bait to lure me into a trap? They already know where I am. Its not like Im
running away and hiding. If they have some business with me, they should approach me directly.
Theres no need to lure me out to that slide in the playground. Things would be different
if the opposite were true if they were using me as bait to get Aomame.
But why lure her out?
He couldnt understand it. Was there, by chance, some connection between Aomame and
Sakigake? Tengos deductive reasoning hit a dead end. The only thing he could do was to
ask Aomame herself assuming he could meet her.
At any rate, as the man on the phone said, he would have to be cautious. Tengo scrupulously
took a roundabout route and made sure no one was following him. Once certain of that,
he hurried off in the direction of the playground.
. . .
He arrived at the playground at seven minutes to seven. It was dark out already, and the
mercury-vapor lamp shone its even, artificial illumination into every nook and cranny of the
tiny park. The afternoon had been lovely and warm, but now that the sun had set the temperature
had dropped sharply, and a cold wind was blowing. The pleasant Indian summer weather
they had had for a few days had vanished, and real winter, cold and severe, had settled in
for the duration. The tips of the zelkova trees branches trembled, like the fingers of some ancient
person shaking out a warning, with a desiccated, raspy sound.
Lights were on in several of the windows in the buildings nearby, but the playground was
deserted. Tengos heart under the leather jacket beat out a slow but heavy rhythm. He rubbed
his hands together repeatedly, to see if they had normal sensation. Everythings fine, he told
himself. Im all set. Nothing to be afraid of. He made up his mind and started climbing up the
ladder of the slide.
Once on top, he sat down as he had before. The bottom of the slide was cold and slightly
damp. With his hands in his pockets, he leaned against the railing and looked up at the sky.
There were clouds of all sizes several large ones, several small ones. Tengo squinted and
looked for the moons, but at the moment they werent visible, hidden behind the clouds.
These werent dense, heavy clouds, but rather smooth white ones. Still, they were thick and
substantial enough to hide the moons from his gaze. The clouds were gliding slowly from
north to south. The wind didnt seem too strong. Or maybe the clouds were actually higher up
than they looked? At any rate, they werent in much of a hurry.
Tengo glanced at his watch. The hands showed three past seven, ticking away the time
ever more accurately. Still no Aomame. Tengo spent several minutes gazing at the hands of
his watch as if they were something extraordinary. Then he shut his eyes. Like the clouds on
the wind, he was in no hurry. If things took time, he didnt mind. He stopped thinking and gave
himself over to the flow of time. At this moment, times natural, even flow was the most important
thing.
With his eyes closed, he carefully listened to the sounds around him, as if searching for
stations on a radio. He could hear the ceaseless hum of traffic on the expressway. It reminded
him of the Pacific surf at the sanatorium in Chikura. A few seagull calls must have
been mixed in as well. He could hear the intermittent beep as a large truck backed up, and a
huge dog barking a short, sharp warning. Far away someone was shouting out a persons
name. He couldnt tell where all these sounds were coming from. With his eyes closed for this
long, each and every sound lost its sense of direction and distance. The freezing wind swirled
up from time to time, but he didnt feel the cold.
Tengo had temporarily forgotten how to feel or react to all stimulations and sensations.
He was suddenly aware of someone sitting beside him, holding his right hand. Like a
small creature seeking warmth, a hand slipped inside the pocket of his leather jacket and
clasped his large hand. By the time he became fully aware, it had already happened. Without
any preface, the situation had jumped to the next stage. How strange, Tengo thought, his
eyes still closed. How did this happen? At one point time was flowing along so slowly that he
could barely stand it. Then suddenly it had leapt ahead, skipping whatever lay between.
This person held his big hand even tighter, as if to make sure he was really there. Long
smooth fingers, with an underlying strength.
Aomame. But he didnt say it aloud. He didnt open his eyes. He just squeezed her hand in
return. He remembered this hand. Never once in twenty years had he forgotten the feeling. Of
course, it was no longer the tiny hand of a ten-year-old girl. Over the past twenty years her
hand had touched many things. It had clasped untold numbers of objects in every possible
shape. And the strength within it had grown. Yet Tengo knew right away: this was the very
same hand. The way it squeezed his own hand and the feeling it was trying to convey were
exactly the same.
Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything
that had accumulated over the years all he had seen, all the words he had spoken, all the
values he had held all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which
was spinning like a potters wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the
destruction and rebirth of a planet.
Aomame kept silent as well. The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding
hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. A
classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of winter. They had neither the power nor
the knowledge to know what they should offer to each other, what they should be seeking.
They had never, ever, been truly loved, or truly loved someone else. They had never held
anyone, never been held. They had no idea, either, where this action would take them. What
they entered then was a doorless room. They couldnt get out, nor could anyone else come in.
The two of them didnt know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire
world. Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness.
How much time had passed? Five minutes, perhaps, or was it an hour? Or a whole day?
Or maybe time had stood still. What did Tengo understand about time? He knew he could
stay like this forever, the two of them silent on top of the slide, holding hands. He had felt that
way at age ten, and now, twenty years on, he felt the same.
He knew, too, that it would take time for him to acclimate himself to this new world that
had come upon him. His entire way of thinking, his way of seeing things, the way he breathed,
the way he moved his body he would need to adjust and rethink every single element of life.
And to do that, he needed to gather together all the time that existed in this world.
No maybe the whole world wouldnt be enough.
 Tengo, Aomame whispered, a voice neither low or high a voice holding out a promise.
 Open your eyes. 
Tengo opened his eyes. Time began to flow again in the world.
 Theres the moon, Aomame said.
1Q84
CHAPTER 28
Ushikawa
AND A PART OF HIS SOUL
The fluorescent light on the ceiling shone down on Ushikawas body. The heat was turned
off, and a window was open, so the room was as freezing as an icehouse. Several conference
tables had been shoved together in the center of the room, and on top of them, Ushikawa
lay faceup. He had on winter long johns, and an old blanket was thrown on top of him.
Under the blanket, his stomach was swollen, like an anthill in a field. A small piece of cloth
covered his questioning, opened eyes eyes that no one had been able to close. His lips
were slightly parted, lips from which no breath or words would ever slip out again. The crown
of his head was flatter, and more enigmatic-looking, than it had been while he was alive.
Thick, black, frizzy hair reminiscent of pubic hair shabbily surrounded that crown.
Buzzcut had on a navy-blue down jacket, while Ponytail was wearing a brown suede
ranchers coat with a fur-trimmed collar. Both were slightly ill-fitting, as if they had hurriedly
grabbed them from a limited supply of clothing that happened to be on hand. They were indoors,
but their breath was white in the cold. The three of them were the sole occupants of
the room. Buzzcut, Ponytail, and Ushikawa. There were three aluminum-sash windows on
one wall, near the ceiling, and one of them was wide open to help keep the temperature
down. Other than the tables with the body, there was no other furniture. It was an entirely
bland, no-nonsense room. Placed there, even a corpse even Ushikawas looked like a colorless,
utilitarian object.
No one was talking. The room was utterly devoid of sound. Buzzcut had a lot to ponder,
and Ponytail never spoke anyway. Buzzcut was lost in thought, pacing back and forth in front
of the table that held Ushikawas body. Except for the moment when he reached the wall and
had to turn around, his pace never slackened. His leather shoes were totally silent as they
trod upon the cheap, light yellow-green carpeting. As usual, Ponytail staked out a spot near
the door and stood there, motionless, legs slightly apart, back straight, staring off at an invisible
point in space. He didnt seem tired or cold, not at all. The only evidence that he was still
among the living was an occasional rapid burst of blinks, and the measured white breath that
left his mouth.
Earlier that day, a number of people had gathered in that freezing room to discuss the
situation. One of Sakigakes high-ranking members had been on a trip and it had taken a day
to get everyone together. The meeting was secret, and they spoke in hushed tones so no one
outside could hear. All this time, Ushikawas corpse had lain there on the table, like a sample
at an industrial machinery convention. Rigor mortis had set in on the corpse, and it would be
another three days before that broke and the body was pliable again. Everyone shot the occa-
sional quick glance at the body as they discussed several practical matters.
While they were discussing things there was no sense even when the talk turned to the
deceased that they were paying respects to him or feeling regret for his passing. The stiff,
stocky corpse simply reminded them of certain lessons, and reconfirmed a few reflections on
life. Nothing more. Once time has passed, it cant be taken back. If death brings about any
resolution, its one that only applies to the deceased. Those sorts of lessons, those sorts of
reflections.
What should they do with Ushikawas body? They knew the answer before they began.
Ushikawa had died of unnatural causes, and if he were discovered, the police would launch
an all-out investigation that would inevitably uncover his connection with Sakigake. They
couldnt risk that. As soon as the rigor mortis was gone, they would secretly transport the
corpse to the industrial-sized incinerator on the grounds of their compound and dispose of it.
Soon it would become nothing but black smoke and white ash. The smoke would be absorbed
into the sky, the ash would be spread on the fields as fertilizer for the vegetables.
They had performed the same operation a number of times, under Buzzcuts supervision.
Leaders body had been too big, so they had handled it by using a chain saw to cut it into
pieces. There was no need to do so this time, for Ushikawa was nowhere near as big.
Buzzcut was grateful for that. He didnt like any operations that got too gory. Whether it was
dealing with the living or the dead, he preferred not to see any blood.
His superior asked Buzzcut some questions. Who could have killed Ushikawa? And what
was Ushikawa doing in that rented apartment in Koenji, anyway? As head of security, Buzzcut
had to respond, though he really didnt know the answers.
Before dawn on Tuesday he had gotten the call from that mysterious man (who was, of
course, Tamaru) and learned that Ushikawas body was in the apartment. Their conversation
was at once practical and indirect. As soon as he hung up, Buzzcut immediately put out a call
to a couple of followers in Tokyo. They changed into work uniforms, pretending to be movers,
and headed out to the apartment in a Toyota HiAce van. Before they went inside, they made
sure it wasnt a trap. They parked the van and one of them scouted out the surroundings for
anything suspicious. They needed to be very cautious. The police might be lying in wait,
ready to arrest them as soon as they set foot in the place, something they had to avoid at all
costs.
They had brought along a container, the kind used in moving, and somehow were able to
stuff the already-stiff body inside. Then they shouldered it out of the building and into the bed
of the van. It was late at night, and cold, so fortunately there was no one else around. It took
some time to comb through the apartment to make sure no telling evidence was left behind.
Using flashlights, they searched every square inch, but they found nothing incriminating, just
food, a small electric space heater, a sleeping bag, and a few other basic necessities. The
garbage can was mainly full of empty cans and plastic bottles. It appeared that Ushikawa had
been holed up there doing surveillance. Buzzcuts sharp eye noted the indentations in the
tatami near the window that indicated the presence of a camera tripod, though there was no
camera and there were no photographs. The person who had taken Ushikawas life must
have also taken the camera away, along with the film. Since Ushikawa was dressed only in
his underwear, he must have been attacked while asleep. The attacker must have silently
slipped inside the apartment. It looked like Ushikawa had suffered horribly, for his underwear
was completely saturated with urine.
Buzzcut and Ponytail were the only ones in the van when they transported the body to
Yamanashi. The other two stayed behind in Tokyo to handle anything that might come up.
Ponytail drove the entire way. The HiAce left the Metropolitan Expressway, got onto the Chuo
Highway, and headed west. It was still dark out and the expressway was nearly deserted, but
they kept their speed under the limit. If the police stopped them now it would be all over. Their
license plates both front and rear were stolen, and the container in back contained a dead
body. There would be no way to talk their way out of that situation. The two of them were silent
for the entire trip.
When they arrived at the compound at dawn, a Sakigake doctor examined Ushikawas
body and confirmed that he had died of suffocation. There were no signs of strangulation
around the neck, however. The doctor guessed that a bag or something that didnt leave any
evidence must have been placed over the victims head. There were no marks, either, to indicate
that the victims hands and feet had been tied. He didnt appear to have been beaten or
tortured. His expression didnt show any signs of agony. If you had to describe his expression,
you would say it was one of pure confusion, as if he had been asking a question he knew
wouldnt be answered. It was obvious that he had been murdered, but the corpse was remarkably
untouched, which the doctor found odd. Whoever had killed him may have massaged
his features after his death, to give him a calmer, more natural expression.
 Whoever did this was a real professional, Buzzcut explained to his superior. There are
no marks on him at all. He probably never had a chance to even scream. It happened in the
middle of the night, and if he had yelled out in pain, everyone in the building would have
heard him. This is the work of a professional hit man. 
But why had Ushikawa ended up murdered by a professional killer?
Buzzcut chose his words carefully. I think Mr. Ushikawa must have stepped on somebodys
tail, someone he never should have crossed. Before he even realized what he had
done. 
Was this the same person who had disposed of Leader?
 I dont have any proof, but the chances are pretty good, Buzzcut said. And I think Mr.
Ushikawa must have undergone something close to torture. I dont know what exactly was
done to him, but he definitely was interrogated ruthlessly. 
How much did he say?
 Im sure he told everything he knew, Buzzcut said. I have no doubt about it. But Ushikawa
only had limited knowledge of what was going on. So I dont think that anything he told
them will come back to hurt us. 
Buzzcut didnt have access to everything that was going on within Sakigake, though he
knew a lot more than an outsider.
By professional, do you mean this person is connected to organized crime? the superior
asked.
 This isnt the work of the yakuza or organized criminals, Buzzcut said, shaking his head.
 Theyre less subtle and more gory. They wouldnt do something this intricate. Whoever killed
Ushikawa was sending us a message. Hes telling us he has a sophisticated system backing
him up, and if anybody tries anything, there will be consequences. And that we should keep
our noses out of it. 
It?
Buzzcut shook his head. What exactly he means by that, I dont know. Ushikawa was
working on his own. I asked him any number of times to give me a progress report, but he insisted
that he still didnt have enough material. I think he wanted to gather all the facts together
by himself first. Which is why he was the only one who knew what was going on when he
was murdered. It was Leader himself who had originally singled out Ushikawa. He worked as
a kind of independent agent. He didnt like organizations. Considering the chain of command,
I wasnt in a position to give him orders. 
Buzzcut wanted to make it absolutely clear how far his responsibility extended. Sakigake
was itself an established organization. All organizations have rules, and breaking these rules
could lead to punishment. He did not want to be blamed for mishandling this affair.
Who was Ushikawa watching in that apartment building?
 We dont know yet. Normally you would expect it to be someone who lives in the building,
or in the vicinity. The men I left back in Tokyo are investigating as we speak, but they havent
reported in yet. It will take some time. It might be best if I go back to Tokyo and look into it myself. 
Buzzcut wasnt all that confident in the abilities of the men he had left behind. They were
devoted, but not the sharpest pencils in the box. And he hadnt explained the situation in
much detail to them. It would be much more efficient for him to take charge directly. They
should go through Ushikawas office as well, though the man on the phone might have
already beaten them to it. His superior, however, didnt permit him to return to Tokyo. Until
things got a bit clearer, he and Ponytail were to stay put. That was an order.
Was Aomame the person Ushikawa had been watching?
 No, it couldnt have been Aomame, Buzzcut said. If Aomame had been there, he would
have immediately reported it. That would have completed his assignment. I think the person
he had under watch was connected to or might have been connected to Aomames whereabouts.
Otherwise it doesnt add up. 
And while he had that person under surveillance, someone found out about him, and took
steps to stop him?
 That would be my guess, Buzzcut said. He was getting too close to something dangerous.
He may have found some vital clue. If there had been several people on the surveillance
work, they could have watched each others backs and things might have ended up differently. 
You spoke directly to that man on the phone. Does it look as though well be able to meet
Aomame and talk with her?
 I really cant predict. I would imagine, though, that if Aomame isnt willing to negotiate with
us, the chances are slim that there will be any meeting. That would be my guess. Everything
depends on how she wants to play it. 
They should be pleased that were willing to overlook what happened to Leader and guarantee
her safety.
 They want more information. Such as, why do we want to meet with Aomame? Why are
we seeking a truce? What exactly are we hoping to negotiate? 
The fact that they want to learn more means they dont have any solid information.
 Exactly. But we dont have any solid information about them, either. We still dont even
know the reason they went to all the time and trouble to concoct a plan to murder Leader. 
Either way, while we wait for their reply, we have to keep on searching for Aomame. Even
if it means stepping on somebodys tail.
Buzzcut paused a moment, and then spoke. We have a close-knit organization here. We
can put a team together and get them out in the field in no time at all. We have a sense of
purpose and high morale. People are literally willing to sacrifice themselves, if need be. But
from a purely technical perspective, were nothing more than a band of amateurs. We havent
had any specialized training. Compared with us, the other side are consummate professionals.
They know what theyre doing, they take action calmly, and they never hesitate. They
seem like real veterans. As youre aware, Mr. Ushikawa was no slouch himself. 
How exactly do you propose to continue the search?
 At present I think its best to pursue the valuable lead that Mr. Ushikawa himself unearthed.
Whatever it may be. 
Meaning we dont have any valuable leads of our own?
 Correct, Buzzcut admitted.
No matter how dangerous it might become, and what sacrifices have to be made, we have
to find and secure this woman Aomame. As quickly as possible.
 Is this what the voice has directed us to do? Buzzcut asked. That we should secure
Aomame as quickly as possible? By whatever means necessary? 
His superior didnt reply. Information beyond this was above Buzzcuts pay grade. He was
not one of the top brass, merely the head foot soldier. But Buzzcut knew that this was the final
message given by them, most likely the final voice that the shrine maidens had heard.
As Buzzcut paced in front of Ushikawas corpse in the freezing-cold room, a thought suddenly
flashed through his head. He came to an abrupt halt, frowning, his brow knit, as he tried
to grab hold of it. The moment he stopped pacing, Ponytail moved. A fraction. He let out a
deep breath, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
Koenji, Buzzcut thought. He frowned slightly, searching the dark depths of memory. Ever
so cautiously, he pulled at a thin thread, tugging it toward him. Somebody else involved in this
affair lives in Koenji. But who?
He took a thick, crumpled memo pad out of his pocket and flipped through it. Tengo
Kawana. His address was in Koenji, Suginami Ward. The same exact address, in fact, as the
building in which Ushikawa died. Only the apartment numbers were different the third floor
and the first floor. Had Ushikawa been secretly watching Tengos movements? There was no
doubt about it. The two of them living in the same building was too big a coincidence.
But why, in this situation, did Ushikawa have to trace Tengos movements? Buzzcut hadnt
recalled Tengos address up till now because he was no longer concerned about him. Tengo
was nothing more than a ghostwriter. There had been nothing else about him that they
needed to know. Sakigakes interest was now entirely focused on locating Aomame. Despite
this, Ushikawa had focused all his attention on the cram school instructor, setting up an elaborate
stakeout. And losing his own life in the bargain. Why?
Buzzcut couldnt figure it out. Ushikawa clearly had some sort of lead. He must have
thought that sticking close to Tengo would lead him to Aomame which is why he went to the
trouble of securing that apartment, setting up a camera on a tripod, and observing Tengo,
probably for some time. But what connection could there be between Tengo and Aomame?
Without a word, Buzzcut left the room, went into the room next door which was
heated and made a phone call to Tokyo, to a unit in a condo in Sakuragaoka in Shibuya. He
ordered one of his subordinates to immediately go back to Ushikawas apartment in Koenji
and keep watch over Tengos movements. Tengo is a large man, with short hair, so you cant
miss him, he instructed him. If he leaves the building, the two of you are to tail him, but make
sure he doesnt spot you. Dont let him out of your sight. Find out where hes going. At all
costs, youve got to keep him under surveillance. Well join you as soon as we can.
Buzzcut went back to the room that held Ushikawas body and told Ponytail they would be
leaving right away for Tokyo. Ponytail gave a slight nod. He didnt ask for an explanation. He
grasped what was asked of him and leapt into action. After they left the room, Buzzcut locked
it so that no outsiders would have access. They went out of the building and chose, from a
line of ten cars, a black Nissan Gloria. They got in, and Ponytail turned the key, already in the
ignition, and started the engine. As per their rules, the cars gas tank was full. Ponytail would
drive, as usual. The license plates for the Gloria sedan were legal, the registration clean, so
even if they exceeded the speed limit a bit, it wouldnt be a problem.
They had been on the highway for a while by the time it occurred to Buzzcut that he hadnt
gotten permission from his superiors to go back to Tokyo. This could come back to haunt him,
but it was too late now. There wasnt a moment to lose. He would have to explain the situation
to them after he got to Tokyo. He frowned a bit. Sometimes the restrictions disgusted him.
The number of rules increased, but never decreased. Still, he knew he couldnt survive outside
the system. He was no lone wolf. He was one cog among many, following orders from
above.
He switched on the radio and listened to the regular eight oclock news. When the broadcast
was done, Buzzcut turned off the radio, adjusted his seat, and took a short nap. When he
woke up he felt hungry How long has it been since Ive had a decent meal? he
wondered but there was no time to stop at a rest area for a bite to eat. They were in too
much of a hurry.
By this time, however, Tengo had been reunited with Aomame on top of the slide in the
park. Buzzcut and Ponytail had no idea where Tengo was headed. Above Tengo and
Aomame, the two moons hung in the sky.
Ushikawas body lay there in the frozen darkness. No one else was in the room. The lights
were off, the door locked from the outside. Through the windows near the ceiling, pale moonlight
shone in. But the angle made it impossible for Ushikawa to see the moon. So he couldnt
know if there was one moon, or two.
There was no clock in the room, so it was unclear what time it was. Probably an hour or so
had passed since Buzzcut and Ponytail had left. If someone else had been there, he would
have seen Ushikawas mouth suddenly begin to move. He would have been frightened out of
his wits. This was a terrifying, wholly unexpected event. Ushikawa had long since expired and
his body was stiff as a board. Despite this, his mouth continued to tremble slightly. Then, with
a dry sound, it opened wide.
If someone had been there, he would no doubt have expected Ushikawa to say
something. Some pearls of wisdom that only the dead could impart. Terrified, the person
would have waited with bated breath. What secret could he be about to reveal?
But no voice came out. What came out were not words, not a drawn-out breath, but six
tiny people, each about two inches tall. Their little bodies were dressed in tiny clothes, and
they trod over the greenish mossy tongue, clambering over the dirty, irregular teeth. One by
one they emerged, like miners returning to the surface after a hard days labor. But unlike
miners their clothes and faces were sparkling clean, not soiled at all. They were free of all dirt
and wear.
Six Little People came out of Ushikawas mouth and climbed down to the conference table,
where each one shook himself and gradually grew bigger. When needed, they could adjust
their size, but they never grew taller than a yard or shorter than an inch. When they grew
to between twenty-four and twenty-eight inches tall, they stopped shaking and then, in order,
descended from the table to the floor. The Little Peoples faces had no expression. But they
werent like masks. They had quite ordinary faces smaller, but no different from yours or
mine. Its just that, at that moment, they felt no need for any expression.
They seemed neither in a hurry nor too relaxed. They had exactly the right amount of time
for the work that they needed to do. That time was neither too long nor too short. Without any
obvious signal, the six of them quietly sat down on the floor in a circle. It was a perfect little
circle, precisely two yards in diameter.
Wordlessly, one of them reached out and grabbed a single thin thread from the air. The
thread was about six inches long, nearly a transparent white, almost creamy color. He placed
the thread on the floor. The next person did exactly the same, the same color and thread
length. The next three followed suit. Only the last one did something different. He stood up,
left the circle, clambered back up on the conference table, reached out, and plucked one
frizzy hair from Ushikawas misshapen head. The hair came out with a tiny snap. This was his
substitute thread. With practiced hands the first of the Little People wove together those five
air threads and the single hair from Ushikawas head.
And thus the Little People made a new air chrysalis. No one talked now, or chanted out a
rhythm. They silently pulled threads from the air, plucked hairs from Ushikawas head,
and in a set, smooth rhythm briskly wove together an air chrysalis. Even in the freezing
room their breath wasnt white. If anyone else had been there to see it, he might have found
this odd too. Or perhaps he wouldnt have even noticed, given all the other surprising things
going on.
No matter how intently the Little People worked (and they never stopped), completing an
air chrysalis in one night was out of the question. It would take at least three days. But they
didnt appear to be rushing. It would be another two days before Ushikawas rigor mortis had
passed and his body could be taken to the incinerator. They were well aware of this. If they
got most of it done in two nights, that would be fine. They had enough time for what they
needed to do. And they never got tired.
Ushikawa lay on the table, bathed in pale moonlight. His mouth was wide open, as were
his unclosable eyes, which were covered by thick cloth. In their final moment, those eyes had
seen a house, and a tiny dog scampering about a small patch of lawn.
And a part of his soul was about to change into an air chrysalis.
1Q84
CHAPTER 29
Aomame
ILL NEVER LET GO OF YOUR HAND AGAIN
 Tengo, open your eyes, Aomame whispered. Tengo opened his eyes. Time began to
flow again in the world.
 Theres the moon, Aomame said.
Tengo raised his face and looked up at the sky. The clouds had parted and above the
bare branches of the zelkova tree he could make out the moons. A large yellow moon and a
smaller, misshapen green one. Maza and dohta. The glow colored the edges of the passing
clouds, like a long skirt whose hem had been accidentally dipped in dye.
Tengo turned now to look over at Aomame sitting beside him. She was no longer a skinny,
undernourished ten-year-old girl, dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-downs, her hair crudely
trimmed by her mother. There was little left of the girl she had been, yet Tengo knew her at a
glance. This was clearly Aomame and no other. Her eyes, brimming with expression, were
the same, even after twenty years. Strong, unclouded, clear eyes. Eyes that knew exactly
what they longed for. Eyes that knew full well what they should see, and werent going to let
anyone get in her way. And those eyes were looking right at him. Straight into his heart.
Aomame had spent the last twenty years somewhere unknown to him. During that time,
she had grown into a beautiful woman. Instantly and without reservation, Tengo absorbed all
those places, and all that time, and they became a part of his own flesh and blood. They were
his places now. His time.
I should say something, Tengo thought, but no words would come. He moved his lips, just
barely, searching for proper words in the air, but they were nowhere to be found. All that
came out from between his lips were swirls of white breath, like a wandering solitary island.
As she gazed into his eyes, Aomame gave a slight shake of her head, just once. Tengo understood
what that meant. You dont have to say a thing. She continued to hold his hand inside
his pocket. She didnt let go, not even for a moment.
 Were seeing the same thing, Aomame said quietly as she gazed deep into his eyes.
This was, at once, a question and a confirmation.
 There are two moons, Aomame said.
Tengo nodded. There are two moons. He didnt say this aloud. For some reason his voice
wouldnt come. He just thought it.
Aomame closed her eyes. She curled up and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her
ear was right above his heart. She was listening to his thoughts. I needed to know this, 
Aomame said. That were in the same world, seeing the same things. 
Tengo suddenly noticed that the whirling pillar rising up inside him had vanished. All that
surrounded him now was a quiet winter night. There were lights on in a few of the windows in
the apartment building across the way, hinting at people other than themselves alive in this
world. This struck the two of them as exceedingly strange, even as somehow illogical that
other people could also exist, and be living their lives, in the same world.
Tengo leaned over slightly and breathed in the fragrance of Aomames hair. Beautiful,
straight hair. Her small, pink ears peeped out like shy little creatures.
It was such a long time, Aomame thought.
It was such a long time, Tengo thought too. At the same time, though, he noticed how the
twenty years that had passed now held no substance. It had all passed by in an instant, and
took but an instant to be filled in.
Tengo took his hand out of his pocket and put it around her shoulder. Through his palm he
could feel the wholeness of her body. He raised his face and looked up at the moons again.
Through breaks in the clouds, the odd pair of moons was still bathing the earth in a strange
mix of color. The clouds made their way leisurely across the sky. Under that light, Tengo once
again keenly felt the minds ability to relativize time. Twenty years was a long time. But Tengo
knew that if he were to meet Aomame in another twenty years, he would feel the same way
he did now. Even if they were both over fifty, he would still feel the same mix of excitement
and confusion in her presence. His heart would be filled with the same joy and certainty.
Tengo kept these thoughts to himself, but he knew that Aomame was listening carefully to
these unspoken words. Her little pink ear pressed against his chest. She was hearing
everything that went on in his heart, like a person who can trace a map with his fingertip and
conjure up vivid, living scenery.
 I want to stay here forever and forget all about time, Aomame said in a small voice. But
theres something the two of us have to do. 
We have to move on, Tengo thought.
 Thats right, we have to move on, Aomame said. The sooner the better. We dont have
much time left. Though I cant yet put into words where were going. 
Theres no need for words, Tengo thought.
 Dont you want to know where were going? Aomame asked.
Tengo shook his head. The winds of reality had not extinguished the flame in his heart.
There was nothing more significant.
 We will never be apart, Aomame said. Thats more clear than anything. We will never let
go of each others hand again. 
A new cloud appeared and gradually swallowed up the moons. The shadow enveloping
the world grew one shade deeper.
 We have to hurry, Aomame whispered. The two of them stood up on the slide. Once
again their shadows became one. Like little children groping their way through a dark forest,
they held on tightly to each others hand.
 Were going to leave the cat town, Tengo said, speaking aloud for the first time. Aomame
treasured this fresh, newborn voice.
 The cat town? 
 The town at the mercy of a deep loneliness during the day and, come night, of large cats.
Theres a beautiful river running through it, and an old stone bridge spanning the river. But its
not where we should stay. 
We call this world by different names, Aomame thought. I call it the year 1Q84, while he
calls it the cat town. But it all means the same thing. Aomame squeezed his hand even tighter.
 Youre right, were going to leave the cat town now. The two of us, together, Aomame
said. Once we leave this town, day or night, we will never be apart. 
As the two of them hurried out of the park, the pair of moons remained hidden behind the
slowly moving clouds. The eyes of the moons were covered. And the boy and the girl, hand in
hand, made their way out of the forest.
1Q84
CHAPTER 30
Tengo
IF IM NOT MISTAKEN
After they left the park, they walked out onto the main street and hailed a cab. Aomame
told the driver to take them to Sangenjaya, via Route 246.
For the first time, Tengo noticed what Aomame was wearing. She had on a light-colored
spring coat, too thin for this cold time of year. The coat was belted in front. Underneath was a
nicely tailored green suit. The skirt was short and tight. She had on stockings and lustrous
high heels, and carried a black leather shoulder bag. The bag was bulging and looked heavy.
She wasnt wearing any gloves or a muffler, no rings or necklace or earrings, no hint of perfume.
To Tengo, what she had on, and what she had omitted, looked entirely natural. He
could think of nothing that needed to be added or removed.
The taxi sped down Ring Road 7 toward Route 246. Traffic was flowing along unusually
smoothly. For a long time after they got in the taxi, the two of them didnt speak. The radio in
the taxi was off, and the young driver was very quiet. All the two of them heard was the
ceaseless, monotonous hum of tires. Aomame leaned against Tengo, still clutching his large
hand. If she let go she might never find him again. Around them the night city flowed by like a
phosphorescent tide.
 There are several things I need to say to you, Aomame said, after a while. I dont think I
can explain everything before we arrive there. We dont have that much time. But maybe if we
had all the time in the world I still couldnt explain it. 
Tengo shook his head slightly. There was no need to explain everything now. They could
fill in all the gaps later, as they went if there were indeed gaps that needed to be filled.
Tengo felt that as long as it was something the two of them could share even a gap they
had to abandon or a riddle they never could solve he could discover a joy there, something
akin to love.
 What do I need to know about you at this point? Tengo asked.
 What do you know about me? Aomame asked in return.
 Almost nothing, Tengo said. Youre an instructor at a sports club. Youre single. Youve
been living in Koenji. 
 I know almost nothing about you, too, Aomame said, though I do know a few small
things. You teach math at a cram school in Yoyogi. You live alone. And youre the one who
really wrote Air Chrysalis. 
Tengo looked at her face, his lips parted in surprise. There were very few people who
knew this about him. Did she have some connection with the cult?
 Dont worry. Were on the same side, she said. If I told you how I came to know this, it
would take too long. But I do know that you wrote Air Chrysalis together with Eriko Fukada.
And that you and I both entered a world where there are two moons in the sky. And theres
one more thing. Im carrying a child. I believe its yours. For now, these are the important
things you ought to know. 
 Youre carrying my child? The driver might be listening, but Tengo wasnt worrying about
it at this point.
 We havent seen each other in twenty years, Aomame said, but yes, Im carrying your
child. Im going to give birth to your child. I know it sounds totally crazy. 
Tengo was silent, waiting for her to continue.
 Do you remember that terrible thunderstorm in the beginning of September? 
 I remember it well, Tengo said. The weather was nice all day, then after sunset it turned
stormy, with wild lightning. Water flowed down into the Akasaka-Mitsuke Station and they had
to shut down the subway for a while. The Little People are stirring, Fuka-Eri had said.
 I got pregnant the night of that storm, Aomame said. But I didnt have those sorts of relations
with anyone on that day, or for several months before and after. 
She paused and waited until this reality had sunk in, then continued.
 But it definitely happened that night. And Im certain that the child Im carrying is yours. I
cant explain it, but I know its true. 
The memory of the strange sexual encounter he had with Fuka-Eri that night came back to
him. Lightning was crashing outside, huge drops of rain lashing the window. The Little People
were indeed stirring. He was lying there, faceup in bed, his whole body numb, and Fuka-Eri
straddled him, inserted his penis inside her, and squeezed out his semen. She looked like she
was in a complete trance. Her eyes were closed from start to finish, as if she were lost in
meditation. Her breasts were ample and round, and she had no pubic hair. The whole scene
was unreal, but he knew it had really happened.
The next morning, Fuka-Eri had acted as if she had no memory of the events of the previous
night, or else tried to give the impression that she didnt remember. To Tengo it had felt
more like a business transaction than sex. On that stormy night, Fuka-Eri used his body to
collect his semen, down to the very last drop. Even now, Tengo could recall that strange sensation.
Fuka-Eri had seemed to become a totally different person.
 There is something I recall, Tengo said dryly. Something that happened to me that night
that logic cant explain. 
Aomame looked deep into his eyes.
 At the time, he went on, I didnt know what it meant. Even now, Im not sure. But if you
did get pregnant that night, and theres no other possible explanation for it, then the child in-
side you has to be mine. 
Fuka-Eri must have been the conduit. That was the role she had been assigned, to act as
the passage linking Tengo and Aomame, physically connecting the two of them over a limited
period of time. Tengo knew this must be true.
 Someday Ill tell you exactly what happened then, Tengo said, but right now I dont think
I have the words to explain it. 
 But you really believe it, right? That the little one inside me is your child? 
 From the bottom of my heart, Tengo said.
 Good, Aomame said. Thats all I wanted to know. As long as you believe that, then I
dont care about the rest. I dont need any explanations. 
 So youre pregnant, Tengo asked again.
 Four months along, Aomame said, guiding his hand to rest on her belly.
Tengo was quiet, seeking signs of life there. It was still very tiny, but his hand could feel
the warmth.
 Where are we moving on to? You, me, and the little one. 
 Somewhere thats not here, Aomame replied. A world with only one moon. The place
where we belong. Where the Little People have no power. 
 Little People? Tengo frowned slightly.
 You described the Little People in detail in Air Chrysalis. What they look like, what they
do. 
Tengo nodded.
 They really exist in this world, Aomame said. Just like you described them. 
When he had rewritten the novel, he had thought the Little People were merely the figment
of the active imagination of a seventeen-year-old girl. Or that they were at most a kind of
metaphor or symbol. But Tengo could now believe that the Little People really existed, that
they had real powers.
 Not just the Little People, Aomame said, but all of it really exists in this world air
chrysalises, maza and dohta, two moons. 
 And you know the pathway out of this world? 
 Well take the pathway I took to get into this world so that we can get out of it. Thats the
only exit I can think of. She added, Do you have the manuscript of the novel youre writing? 
 Right here, Tengo said, lightly tapping the russet-colored bag slung over his shoulder. It
struck him as strange. How did she know about this?
Aomame gave a hesitant smile. I just know. 
 It looks like you know a lot of things, Tengo said. It was the first time he had seen her
smile. It was the faintest of smiles, yet he felt the tides start to shift all over the world. He
knew it was happening.
 Dont let go of it, Aomame said. Its very important for us. 
 Dont worry. I wont. 
 We came into this world so that we could meet. We didnt realize it ourselves, but that
was the purpose of us coming here. We faced all kinds of complications things that didnt
make sense, things that defied explanation. Weird things, gory things, sad things. And sometimes,
even beautiful things. We were asked to make a vow, and we did. We were forced to
go through hard times, and we made it. We were able to accomplish the goal that we came
here to accomplish. But danger is closing in fast. They want the dohta inside of me. You know
what the dohta signifies, I imagine. 
Tengo took a deep breath. Youre having our dohta yours and mine. 
 I dont know all the details of whatever principles behind it, but Im giving birth to a dohta.
Either through an air chrysalis, or else Im the air chrysalis. And theyre trying to get ahold of
all three of us. To make a new system so they can hear the voice. 
 But whats my role in this? Assuming I have a role beyond being the father of the dohta. 
 You are Aomame began, and stopped. The next words wouldnt come. There were
several gaps that remained, gaps they would have to work together, over time, to fill in.
 I decided to find you, Tengo said, but I couldnt. You found me. I actually didnt do anything.
It seems how should I put it? unfair. 
 Unfair? 
 I owe you a lot. But in the end, I wasnt much help. 
 You dont owe me anything, Aomame said firmly. Youre the one who guided me this
far. In an invisible way. The two of us are one. 
 I think I saw that dohta, Tengo said. Or at least what the dohta signifies. It was you as a
ten-year-old, asleep inside the faint light of an air chrysalis. I could touch her fingers. It only
happened once. 
Aomame leaned her head on Tengos shoulder. We dont owe each other anything. Not a
thing. But what we do need to worry about is protecting this little one. Theyre closing in. Almost
on top of us. I can hear their footsteps. 
 I wont ever let anyone else get the two of you you or the little one. Now that weve met
each other, weve found what we were looking for when we came to this world. This is a dangerous
place. But you said you know where theres an exit. 
 I think so, Aomame said. If Im not mistaken. 
1Q84
CHAPTER 31
Tengo and Aomame
LIKE A PEA IN A POD
Aomame recognized the spot as they got out of the taxi. She stood at the intersection
looking around and found the gloomy storage area, surrounded by a metal panel fence, down
below the expressway. Leading Tengo by the hand, she crossed at the crosswalk and headed
toward it.
She couldnt remember which of the metal panels had the loose bolts, but after patiently
testing each one, she found a space that a person could manage to slip through. Aomame
bent down and, careful to keep her clothes from getting snagged, slipped inside. Tengo
hunched down as much as his large body would allow, and followed behind her. Inside the
storage area, everything was exactly as it had been in April, when Aomame had last seen it.
Discarded, faded bags of cement, rusty metal pipes, weary weeds, scattered old wastepaper,
splotches of hardened white pigeon excrement here and there. In eight months, nothing had
changed. During that time, perhaps no one had ever set foot in here. It was like a sandbar on
a main highway in the middle of the city a completely abandoned, forgotten little spot.
 Is this the place? Tengo asked, looking around.
Aomame nodded. If theres no exit here, then were not going anywhere. 
In the darkness Aomame searched for the emergency stairway she had climbed down, the
narrow stairs linking the expressway and the ground below. The stairway has to be here, she
told herself. I have to believe it.
And she found it. It was actually closer to a ladder than a stairway. It was shabbier and
more rickety than she remembered. She was amazed that she had managed to clamber
down it before. At any rate, though, here it was. All they needed to do now was climb up, step
by step, instead of down. She took off her Charles Jourdan high heels, stuffed them into her
bag, and slung the bag across her shoulders. She stepped onto the first rung of the ladder in
her stocking feet.
 Follow me, Aomame said, turning around to Tengo.
 Maybe I should go first? Tengo asked worriedly.
 No, Ill go first. This was the path she had come down, and she would have to be the first
to climb back up.
The stairway was colder than when she had come down it. Her hands got so numb that
she thought she would lose all feeling. The wind whipped between the support columns under
the expressway. It was much more sharp and piercing than it had been before. The stairway
was aloof and uninviting. It promised her nothing.
At the beginning of September when she had searched for the stairway on the expressway,
it had vanished. The route had been blocked. Yet now the route from the storage area,
going up, was still here, just as she had predicted. She had had a feeling that if she started
from this direction, she would find it. If this little one inside me, she thought, has any special
powers, then it will surely protect me and show me the right way to go.
The stairway existed, but whether it really connected up to the expressway, she didnt
know. It might be blocked halfway, a dead end. In this world, anything could happen. The only
thing to do was to climb up with her own hands and feet and find out what was there and
what was not.
She cautiously climbed up one step after another. She looked down and saw Tengo right
behind her. A fierce wind howled, making her spring coat flutter. It was a cutting wind. The
hem of her short skirt had crept up to her thighs. The wind had made a mess of her hair, plastering
it against her face and blocking her vision, so much so that she found it hard to breathe.
Aomame regretted not having tied her hair back. And I should have worn gloves, too, she
thought. Why didnt I think of that? But regretting it wasnt going to be any help. She had only
thought to wear exactly the same thing as before. She had to cling to the rungs and keep on
climbing.
As she shivered in the cold, patiently climbing upward, she looked over at the balcony of
the apartment building across the road. A five-story building made of brown brick tiles, the
same building she had seen when she had climbed down. Lights were on in half the rooms. It
was so close by she could almost reach out and touch it. It might lead to trouble if one of the
residents happened to spot them climbing up the emergency stairway like this in the middle of
the night. The two of them were lit up well under the lights from Route 246.
Fortunately, no one appeared at any of the windows. All the curtains were drawn tight.
This was only to be expected, really. Who was going to come out on their balcony in the
middle of a freezing night to watch an emergency stairway on an expressway?
There was a potted rubber plant on one of the balconies, crouching down next to a grubby
lawn chair. In April when she had climbed down she had seen the same rubber plant a
much more pathetic little plant than the one she had left behind at her apartment in Jiyugaoka.
This little rubber plant must have been there the whole eight months, huddled in the
same exact spot. It was faded and bedraggled, shoved away into the most inconspicuous
spot in the world, completely forgotten, probably hardly ever watered. Still, that little plant
gave Aomame courage and certainty as she struggled up the rickety stairway, her hands and
legs freezing, her mind anxious and confused. Its okay, she told herself, Im on the right
track. At least Im following the same path I took when I came here, from the opposite direction.
This little rubber plant has been a landmark for me. A sober, solitary landmark.
When I climbed down the stairs back then, I came across a few spiderwebs. And I thought
of Tamaki Otsuka, how during summer break in high school we took a trip together, and at
night, in bed, we stripped naked and explored each others bodies. Why had that memory
suddenly come to her then, of all times, while climbing down an emergency stairway on the
expressway? As she now climbed in the opposite direction, Aomame thought again of Tamaki.
She remembered her smooth, beautifully shaped breasts. So different from my own underdeveloped
chest, she thought. But those beautiful breasts are now gone forever.
She thought of Ayumi Nakano, the lonely policewoman who, one August night, wound up
in a hotel room in Shibuya, handcuffed, strangled with a bathrobe belt. A troubled young woman
walking toward the abyss of destruction. She had had beautiful breasts as well.
Aomame mourned the deaths of these two friends deeply. It saddened her to think that
these women were forever gone from the world. And she mourned their lovely
breasts breasts that had vanished without a trace.
Please, she pleaded. Protect me. I beg you I need your help. She believed that her
voiceless words had reached the ears of her unfortunate friends. Theyll protect me. I know it.
When she finally came to the top of the ladder, she was faced with a catwalk that connected
up to the side of the road. The catwalk had a low railing, and she would have to crouch
low to pass through. Beyond the catwalk was a zigzagging stairway. Not a proper stairway,
really, but certainly a far cry better than the ladder. As Aomame recalled, once she ascended
the stairs she would come out onto the turnout along the expressway. Trucks barreling down
the road sent shocks that rocked the catwalk, as if it were a small boat hit from the side by a
wave. The roar of the traffic had increased.
She checked that Tengo, who had come to the top of the ladder, was right behind her, and
she reached out and took his hand. His hand was warm. She found it odd that his hand could
be so warm on such a cold night, after holding on to a freezing ladder.
 Were almost there, Aomame said in his ear. With the traffic noise and the wind she had
to raise her voice. Once we get up those stairs well be on the expressway. 
That is, if the stairs arent blocked, she thought, but she kept this thought to herself.
 You were planning to climb these stairs from the beginning? Tengo asked.
 Right. If I could locate them. 
 And you went to the trouble of dressing like that. Tight skirt, high heels. Not exactly the
right outfit to wear to climb steep stairs. 
Aomame smiled again. I had to wear these clothes. Someday Ill explain it to you. 
 You have beautiful legs, Tengo said.
 You like them? 
 You bet. 
 Thanks, Aomame said. On the narrow catwalk she reached up and gently kissed his ear.
A crumpled, cauliflower-like ear. His ear was freezing cold.
She turned back, proceeded along the catwalk, and began climbing up the narrow, steep
stairs. Her feet were freezing, her fingertips numb. She was careful not to slip. She continued
up the stairs, brushing away her hair as the wind whipped by. The freezing wind brought tears
to her eyes. She held on tightly to the handrail so she could keep her balance in the swirling
wind, and as she took one cautious step after another, she thought of Tengo right behind her.
Of his large hand, and his freezing-cold cauliflower ear. Of the little one sleeping inside her.
Of the black automatic pistol inside her shoulder bag. And the seven 9mm cartridges in the
clip.
We have to get out of this world. To do that I have to believe, from the bottom of my heart,
that these stairs will lead to the expressway. I believe, she told herself. She suddenly remembered
something Leader had said on the stormy night, before he died. Lyrics to a song.
She could recall them all, even now.
 Its a Barnum and Bailey world,
 Just as phony as it can be,
 But it wouldnt be make-believe
 If you believed in me.
No matter what happens, no matter what I have to do, I have to make it real, not makebelieve.
No the two of us, Tengo and I, have to do that. We have to make it real. We have to
put our strength together, every last ounce of strength we possess. For our sake, and for the
sake of this little one.
Aomame stopped on a landing halfway up and turned around. Tengo was still there. She
reached out her hand, and Tengo took it. She felt the same warmth as before, and it gave her
a certain strength. She reached up again and brought her mouth close to his ear.
 You know, once I almost gave up my life for you, she said. Just a little more and I would
have died. A couple of millimeters more. Do you believe me? 
 I do, Tengo said.
 Will you tell me you believe it from the bottom of your heart? 
 I believe it from the bottom of my heart, Tengo replied.
Aomame nodded, and let go of his hand. She faced forward and began climbing the stairs
again.
A few minutes later, she reached the top and came out onto Metropolitan Expressway No.
3. The stairway hadnt been blocked. Before she scrambled over the metal fence, she
reached up with the back of her hand and wiped away the cold tears in her eyes.
Tengo looked around without saying a word. Finally, he said, as if impressed, Its Metropolitan
Expressway No. 3. This is the exit out of this world, isnt it. 
 Thats right, Aomame replied. Its the entrance and the exit. 
Tengo helped her from behind as she clambered over the fence, her tight skirt riding up to
her hips. Beyond the fence was a turnout just big enough for two cars. This was the third time
she had been here. The large Esso billboard was right in front of her. Put a Tiger in Your
Tank. The same slogan. The same tiger. She stood there in her stocking feet without a word.
She inhaled the car exhaust deep into her lungs. This was the most refreshing air she could
possibly imagine. Im back, Aomame thought. Were back.
The traffic on the expressway was bumper to bumper, just as she had left it. The Shibuyabound
traffic was barely inching along. This surprised her, and she wondered why. Whenever
I come here, the traffics always backed up. But at this time of day its pretty rare for the lanes
heading into the city on Expressway No. 3 to be like this. There must be an accident somewhere
up ahead. The lanes going the other direction were flowing along nicely but the ones
heading into the city were crushingly crowded.
Tengo climbed over the metal fence, lifting one foot up high to nimbly leap over, then
came to stand beside her. They stood there together, wordlessly watching the throng of
traffic, like people standing beside the Pacific Ocean for the first time in their lives, awestruck
at the waves crashing on the shore.
The people in the barely moving cars stared back at them. They seemed confused, uncertain
how to react. Their eyes were filled less with curiosity than suspicion. What could this
young couple possibly be up to? They had suddenly popped up out of the dark and were
standing in a turnout on the expressway. The woman had on a fashionable suit, but her coat
was a thin spring one, and she was standing there in stocking feet, with no shoes. The man
was stocky, and was wearing a well-worn leather jacket. Both of them had bags slung diagonally
across their shoulders. Had their car broken down? Had they been in an accident? There
was no sign of any car nearby. And they didnt look like they were asking for help.
Aomame finally pulled herself together and took her high heels out of her bag. She tugged
the hem of her skirt down, put the strap of her bag over one shoulder, and tied the belt on her
coat. She licked her dry lips, straightened her hair with her fingers, took out a handkerchief,
and wiped away her tears. And she once more nestled close to Tengo.
Just as they had done on that December day twenty years earlier, in a classroom after
hours, they stood silently side by side, holding hands. They were the only two people in the
world. They watched the leisurely flow of cars before them. But they saw nothing. What they
were seeing, what they were hearing none of it mattered. The sights around them the
sounds, the smells had all been drained of meaning.
 So, were in a different world now? Tengo managed to say.
 Most likely, Aomame said.
 Maybe we should make sure. 
There was only one way to make sure, and they didnt need to put it into words. Silently,
Aomame raised her face and looked up at the sky. At nearly the same instant, Tengo did so
too. They were searching for the moon. Considering the angle, the moon should be somewhere
above the Esso billboard. But they couldnt find it. It seemed to be hidden behind the
clouds. The clouds were flowing toward the south, sedately moving along in the wind. The two
of them waited no need to rush. They had plenty of time. Enough time to recover the time
they had lost. The time they shared. No need to panic. A pump in one hand, a knowing smile
on his face, the Esso tiger, in profile, watched over the two of them holding hands.
Aomame was struck by a sudden thought. Something was different, but she couldnt put
her finger on it. She narrowed her eyes and focused. And then it hit her. The left side of the
Esso tigers face was toward them. But in her memory it was his right side that had faced the
world. The tiger had been reversed. Her face instinctively grimaced, her heart skipped a beat
or two. It felt like something inside her had changed course. But could she really say for sure?
Is my memory really that accurate? Aomame wasnt certain. She just had a feeling about it.
Sometimes our memory betrays us.
Aomame kept her doubts to herself. She shut her eyes for a moment to let her breathing
and heart rate get back to normal, and waited for the clouds to pass.
People continued to stare at the two of them through the car windows. What are these two
looking at? And why are they clutching each others hand so tightly? A number of them
craned their heads, trying to see what the couple was staring at, but all that was visible were
white clouds and an Esso billboard. Put a Tiger in Your Tank, the billboard tigers profile said,
facing to the left, urging those driving by to consume even more gasoline, his orange-striped
tail jauntily raised to the sky.
. . .
The clouds finally broke and the moon came into view.
There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently
floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose a gleaming, round saucer over
the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the rooftops of fastasleep
houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore, that softly shone on the
fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night. The moon that, as a crescent,
shaved slivers from the soul or, as a new moon, silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness.
That moon. The moon was fixed in the sky right above the Esso billboard, and there
was no smaller, misshapen greenish moon beside it. It was hanging there, taciturn, beholden
to no one. Simultaneously, the two of them looked at the same scene. Wordlessly Aomame
clutched Tengos hand. The feeling of an internal backflow had vanished.
Were back in 1984, Aomame told herself. This isnt 1Q84 anymore. This is the world of
1984, the world I came from.
But is it? Could the world really go back so easily to what it was? Hadnt Leader, just before
he died, asserted that there was no pathway back to the old world?
Could this be another, altogether different place? Did we move from one world to yet another,
third world? Where the Esso tiger shows us the left side of his face, not his right?
Where new riddles and new rules await us?
It might well be, Aomame thought. At least at this point I cant swear that it isnt. But there
is one thing I can say for sure. No matter how you look at it, this isnt that world, with its two
moons in the sky. And I am holding Tengos hand. The two of us entered a dangerous place,
where logic had no purpose, and we managed to survive some terrible ordeals, found each
other, and slipped away. Whether this place weve arrived in is the world we started out from
or a whole new world, what do I have to be afraid of? If there are new trials ahead for us, we
just have to overcome them, like weve done before. Thats all. But at least were no longer
alone.
Believing in what she needed to believe, she relaxed, leaning back against Tengos large
body. She pressed her ear against his chest and listened to his heartbeat, and gave herself
up to his arms. Just like a pea in a pod.
 Where should we go now? Tengo asked Aomame after some time had passed. They
couldnt stay here forever. That much was clear. But there was no shoulder on the Metropolitan
Expressway. The Ikejiri exit was relatively close, but even in a traffic jam like this it was too
dangerous for a pedestrian to walk through the backup of cars. They were certain, too, that
holding out their thumbs to hitchhike wasnt likely to get them any rides. They could use the
emergency phone to call for help from the Japan Highway Public Corporation, but then they
would have to come up with a reasonable explanation for why they were stranded. Even if
they were able to make it on foot to the Ikejiri exit, the toll collector would be sure to question
them. Going back down the same stairs they had climbed up was out of the question.
 I dont know, Aomame said.
She really had no idea what they should do, or where they should go. Once they had
climbed the emergency stairway, her role was over. She was too drained to think, or make a
judgment call. There wasnt a drop left in her tank. She could only let some other power take
over.
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may
Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our
humble pathways. Amen.
The prayer flowed out from her like a conditioned reflex. She didnt have to think about it.
Each individual word had no meaning. The phrases were nothing more than sounds to her
now, a list of signs and nothing more. Still, as she mechanically recited the prayer, a strange
feeling came over her, something you might even call reverence. Something deep inside her
struck a chord in her heart. Despite all that happened, I never lost myself, she thought. Thank
goodness I can be here, as me. Wherever here is.
May Thy kingdom come, Aomame intoned once more, like she had done in elementary
school before lunch, so many years ago. Whatever that might mean, she wished it. May Thy
kingdom come.
Tengo stroked her hair, as if combing it.
Ten minutes later Tengo was able to flag down a passing taxi. At first they couldnt believe
their eyes. A single taxi, absent of any passengers, was slowly making its way along the
traffic jam on the expressway. Tengo raised a skeptical hand, the back door swung open right
away, and they climbed aboard, quickly, hurriedly, afraid that this phantom would vanish. The
young driver, wearing glasses, turned to face them.
 Because of the traffic jam I would like to get off at the Ikejiri exit coming up, if thats all
right with you? the driver asked. He had a rather high-pitched voice for a man, but it wasnt irritating.
 That would be fine, Aomame replied.
 Its actually against the law to pick up passengers on the expressway. 
 Which law would that be? Aomame asked. Her face, reflected in the rearview mirror,
wore a slight frown.
The driver couldnt come up with the name of the law that prohibits picking up passengers
on highways. Plus, Aomames face in the rearview mirror was starting to frighten him a little.
 Well, whatever, the driver said, abandoning the topic. Anyway, where would you like to
go? 
 You can let us off near Shibuya Station, Aomame said.
 I havent set the meter, the driver said. Ill just charge you for the distance after we get
off the expressway. 
 Why were you on the expressway with no passenger? Tengo asked him.
 Its sort of a long story, the driver said, his voice etched with fatigue. Would you like to
hear it? 
 I would, Aomame said. Long and boring was fine by her. She wanted to hear peoples
stories in this new world. There might be new secrets there, new hints.
 I picked up a fare, a middle-aged man, near Kinuta Park, and he asked me to take him
near Aoyama Gakuin University. He wanted me to take the expressway since there would be
too much traffic around Shibuya. At this point, there wasnt any bulletin about a traffic jam on
the expressway. Traffic was supposed to be moving along just fine. So I did what he asked
and got on the expressway at Yoga. But then there was an accident around Tani, apparently,
and you can see the result. Once we were stuck, we couldnt even get to the Ikejiri exit to get
off. Meanwhile, the passenger spied a friend of his. Around Komazawa, when we werent
moving an inch, there was a silver Mercedes coupe next to us that just happened to be driven
by a woman who was a friend of his. They rolled down the windows and chatted and she
wound up inviting him to ride with her. The man apologized and asked if he could pay up and
go over to her car. Letting a passenger out in the middle of a highway is unheard of, but since
we actually werent moving, I couldnt say no. So the man got into the Mercedes. He felt bad
about it, so he added a little extra to what he paid to sweeten the deal. But still it was annoying.
I mean, I couldnt move at all. Anyway, bit by bit I made my way here, nearly to the Ikejiri
exit. And then I saw you raising your hand. Pretty hard to believe, dont you think? 
 I can believe it, Aomame said concisely.
That night the two of them stayed in a high-rise hotel in Akasaka. They turned the lights
out, undressed, got into bed, and held each other. There was a lot they needed to talk about,
but that could wait till morning. They had other priorities. Without a word passing between
them, they leisurely explored each others bodies in the dark. With their fingers and palms,
one by one, they checked where everything was, what they were shaped like. They felt excited,
like little children on a treasure hunt in a secret room. Once they found each part, they
kissed it with a seal of approval.
After they had leisurely finished this process, Aomame held Tengos hard penis in her
hand just like years before, when she had held his hand in the classroom after school. It felt
harder than anything she had ever known, miraculously hard. Aomame spread her legs,
moved close, and slowly inserted him inside of her. Straight in, deep inside. She closed her
eyes in the darkness and gulped a deep and dark intake of breath. Then, ever so slowly, she
exhaled. Tengo felt her hot breath on his chest.
 Ive always imagined being held by you like this, Aomame said, whispering in his ear as
she stopped moving.
 Having sex with me? 
 Yes. 
 Since you were ten youve been imagining this? Tengo asked.
Aomame laughed. No, that came when I was a little older. 
 Ive been imagining the same thing. 
 Being inside me? 
 Thats right, Tengo said.
 Is it like you imagined? 
 I still cant believe its real, Tengo admitted. I feel like Im imagining things. 
 But this is real. 
 It feels too good to be real. 
In the darkness Aomame smiled. And she kissed him. They explored each others
tongues.
 My breasts are kind of small, dont you think? Aomame said.
 Theyre just right, Tengo said, cupping them.
 You really think so? 
 Of course, he said. If they were any bigger then it wouldnt be you. 
 Thank you, Aomame said. Theyre not just small, she added, but the right and left are
also different sizes. 
 Theyre fine the way they are, Tengo said. The right ones the right one, the left ones
the left. No need to change a thing. 
Aomame pressed an ear against his chest. Ive been lonely for so long. And Ive been
hurt so deeply. If only I could have met you again a long time ago, then I wouldnt have had to
take all these detours to get here. 
Tengo shook his head. I dont think so. This way is just fine. This is exactly the right time.
For both of us. 
Aomame started to cry. The tears she had been holding back spilled down her cheeks and
there was nothing she could do to stop them. Large teardrops fell audibly onto the sheets like
rain. With Tengo buried deep inside her, she trembled slightly as she went on crying. Tengo
put his arms around her and held her. He would be holding her close from now on, a thought
that made him happier than he could imagine.
 We needed that much time, Tengo said, to understand how lonely we really were. 
 Start moving, Aomame breathed in his ear. Take your time, and do it slowly. 
Tengo did as he was told. He began pumping slowly. Breathing quietly, listening to his
heartbeat. Aomame clung to him like she was drowning. She gave up crying, gave up thinking,
distanced herself from the past, from the future, and became one with his movements.
Near dawn they slipped on hotel bathrobes, stood next to the large window, and sipped
the red wine they had ordered from room service. Aomame took just a token sip. They didnt
need to sleep yet. From their room on the seventeenth floor they could enjoy watching the
moon to their hearts content. The clouds had drifted away, and nothing impeded their view.
The dawn moon had moved quite a distance, though it still hovered just above the city skyline.
The moon was an ashy white, and looked about ready to fall to earth, its job complete.
At the front desk Aomame had asked for a room high up with a view of the moon, even if it
cost more. Thats the most important thing having a nice view of the moon, she said.
The clerk was kind to this young couple who had shown up without a reservation. It also
helped that the hotel wasnt busy. She felt kindly toward the couple from the moment she set
eyes on them. She had the bellboy go up to look at the room to make sure it had the view
they wanted, and only then handed Aomame the key to the junior suite. She gave them a
special discount, too.
 Is it a full moon or something tonight? the woman clerk asked Aomame, her interest
aroused. Over the years she had heard every kind of demand, hope, and desire from guests
you could imagine. But this was a first, having guests who were looking for a room with a
good view of the moon.
 No, Aomame replied. The moons past full. Its about two-thirds full. But that doesnt
matter. As long as we can see it. 
 You enjoy watching the moon, then? 
 Its important to us, Aomame smiled. More important than you can know. 
Even as dawn approached, the number of moons didnt increase. It was just the same old
familiar moon. The one and only satellite that has faithfully circled the earth, at the same
speed, from before human memory. As she stared at the moon, Aomame softly touched her
abdomen, checking one more time that the little one was there, inside her. She could swear
her belly had grown from the night before.
I still dont know what sort of world this is, she thought. But whatever world were in now,
Im sure this is where I will stay. Where we will stay. This world must have its own threats, its
own dangers, must be filled with its own type of riddles and contradictions. We may have to
travel down many dark paths, leading who knows where. But thats okay. Its not a problem.
Ill just have to accept it. Im not going anywhere. Come what may, this is where well remain,
in this world with one moon. The three of us Tengo and me, and the little one.
Put a tiger in your tank, the Esso tiger said, his left profile toward them. But either side
was fine. That big grin of his facing Aomame was natural and warm. Im going to believe in
that smile, she told herself. Thats whats important here. She did her own version of the tigers
smile. Very naturally, very gently.
She quietly stretched out a hand, and Tengo took it. The two of them stood there, side by
side, as one, wordlessly watching the moon over the buildings. Until the newly risen sun
shone upon it, robbing it of its nighttime brilliance. Until it was nothing more than a gray paper moon, hanging in the sky.

HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD by Haruki Murakami Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949. He met his wife, Yoko, at university and they opened a jazz club in Tokyo called Peter Cat. The massive success of his novel Norwegian Wood (1987) made him a national celebrity. He fled Japan and did not return until 1995. His other books include after the quake, Dance Dance Dance, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Underground, his first work of non-fiction, Sputnik Sweetheart and South of the Border, West of the Sun. He has translated into Japanese the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, John Irving and Raymond Carver. Alfred Birnbaum was born in Washington D.C. in 1957 and grew up in Tokyo. He is the translator of Dance Dance Dance and A Wild Sheep Chase. He has also translated works by Natsuki Ikezawa, Kyoji Kobayashi, Miyuki Miyabe, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa and Gen ichiro Takahashi and compiled the anthology Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction. Also by Haruki Murakami Fiction Dance Dance Dance The Elephant Vanishes A Wild Sheep Chase Norwegian Wood The Wind-up Bird Chronicle South of the Border, West of the Sun Sputnik Sweetheart after the quake Non-Fiction Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche Haruki Murakami HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY Alfred Birnbaum Elevator, Silence, Overweight THE elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn t moving at all. But lets just assume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I d gone up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I d circled the globe. How would I know? Every last thing about this elevator was worlds apart from the cheap die-cut job in my apartment building, scarcely one notch up the evolutionary scale from a well bucket. You d never believe the two pieces of machinery had the same name and the same purpose. The two were pushing the outer limits conceivable as elevators. First of all, consider the space. This elevator was so spacious it could have served as an office. Put in a desk, add a cabinet and a locker, throw in a kitchenette, and you d still have room to spare. You might even squeeze in three camels and a mid-range palm tree while you were at it. Second, there was the cleanliness. Antiseptic as a brand-new coffin. The walls and ceiling were absolutely spotless polished stainless steel, the floor immaculately carpeted in a handsome moss-green. Third, it was dead silent. There wasn t a sound literally not one sound from the moment I stepped inside and the doors slid shut. Deep rivers run quiet. Another thing, most of the gadgets an elevator is supposed to have were missing. Where, for example, was the panel with all the buttons and switches? No floor numbers to press, no door open and door close, no emergency stop. Nothing whatsoever. All of which made me feel utterly defenseless. And it wasn t just no buttons; it was no indication of advancing floor, no posted capacity or warning, not even a manufacturer s name-plate. Forget about trying to locate an emergency exit. Here I was, sealed in. No way this elevator could have gotten fire department approval. There are norms for elevators after all. Staring at these four blank stainless-steel walls, I recalled one of Houdini s great escapes I d seen in a movie. He s tied up in how many ropes and chains, stuffed into a big trunk, which is wound fast with another thick chain and sent hurtling, the whole lot, over Niagara Falls. Or maybe it was an icy dip in the Arctic Ocean. Given that I wasn t all tied up, I was doing okay; insofar as I wasn t clued in on the trick, Houdini was one up on me. Talk about not clued in, I didn t even know if I was moving or standing still. I ventured a cough, but it didn t echo anything like a cough. It seemed flat, like clay thrown against a slick concrete wall. I could hardly believe that dull thud issued from my own body. I tried coughing one more time. The result was the same. So much for coughing. I stood in that hermetically sealed vault for what seemed an eternity. The doors showed no sign of ever opening. Stationary in unending silence, a still life: Man in Elevator. I started to get nervous. What if the machinery had malfunctioned? Or suppose the elevator operator assuming there was one in the building forgot I was here in this box? People have lost track of me before. I strained to hear something, anything, but no sound reached my ears. I pressed my ear against the stainless-steel wall. Sure enough, not a sound. All I managed was to leave an outline of my ear on the cold metal. The elevator was made, apparently, of a miracle alloy that absorbed all noise. I tried whistling Danny Boy, but it came out like a dog wheezing with asthma. There was little left to do but lean up against a wall and count the change in my pockets. For someone in my profession, knowing how to kill time is as important a method of training as gripping rubber balls is for a boxer. Although, in any strict sense, its not killing time at all. For only through assiduous repetition is it possible to redistribute skewed tendencies. I always come prepared with pockets full of loose change. In my right pocket I keep onehundred- and five-hundred-yen coins, in my left fifties and tens. One-yen and five-yen coins I carry in a back pocket, but as a rule these don t enter into the count. What I do is thrust my hands simultaneously into both pockets, the right hand tallying the hundreds and five-hundreds in tandem with the left hand adding up the fifties and tens. its hard for those who ve never attempted the procedure to grasp what it is to calculate this way, and admittedly it is tricky at first. The right brain and the left brain each keep separate tabs, which are then brought together like two halves of a split watermelon. No easy task until you get the hang of it. Whether or not I really do put the right and left sides of my brain to separate accounts, I honestly can t say. A specialist in neurophysiology might have insights to offer on the matter. I m no neurophysiologist, however. All I know is that when I m actually in the midst of counting, I feel like I m using the right side and left side of my brain differently. And when I m through counting, it seems the fatigue that sets in is qualitatively quite distinct from what comes with normal counting. For convenience sake, I think of it as right-brain-totals-right-pocket, left-brain-totals-left-pocket. On the whole, I think of myself as one of those people who take a convenience-sake view of prevailing world conditions, events, existence in general. Not that I m such a blase, convenience-sake sort of guy although I do have tendencies in that direction but because more often than not I ve observed that convenient approximations bring you closest to comprehending the true nature of things. For instance, supposing that the planet earth were not a sphere but a gigantic coffee table, how much difference in everyday life would that make? Granted, this is a pretty farfetched example; you can t rearrange facts of life so freely. Still, picturing the planet earth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the clutter those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the international dateline and the equator, those nagging details that arise from the spherical view. I mean, for a guy leading a perfectly ordinary existence, how many times in the course of a lifetime would the equator be a significant factor? But to return to the matter at hand or rather, hands, the right and the left each going about its own separate business it is by no means easy to keep running parallel counts. Even for me, to get it down took the longest time. But once you do, once you ve gotten the knack, its not something you lose. Like riding a bike or swimming. Which isn t to say you can t always use a little more practice. Repetition can improve your technique and refine your style. If for no other reason than this, I always keep my hands busy. This time I had three five-hundred-yen coins and eighteen hundreds in the one pocket, and seven fifties and sixteen tens in the other. Making a grand total of three-thousand eight-hundred-ten yen. Calculations like this are no trouble at all. Simpler than counting the fingers on my hands. Satisfied, I leaned back against the stainless-steel wall and looked straight ahead at the doors. Which were still not opening. What could be taking so long? I tentatively wrote off both the equipment-malfunction theory and the forgotten-by-operator theory. Neither very realistic. This was not to say that equipment malfunction or operator negligence couldn t realistically occur. On the contrary, I know for a fact that such accidents are all too common in the real world. What I mean to say is that in a highly exceptional reality this ridiculously slick elevator a case in point the non-exceptional can, for convenience sake, be written off as paradoxically exceptional. Could any human being capable of designing this Tom Swift elevator fail to keep the machinery in working order or forget the proper procedures once a visitor stepped inside? The answer was obvious. No. Never happen. Not after they had been so meticulous up to that point. They d seen to minute details, measuring each step I d taken virtually to the millimeter. I d been stopped by two guards at the entrance to the building, asked whom I was there to see, matched against a visitors list, made to produce my driver s license, logged into a central computer for verification, after which I was summarily pushed into this elevator. You don t get this much going over when you visit the Bank of Japan. It was unthinkable that they, having done all that, should slip up now. The only possibility was that they had intentionally placed me in this particular situation. They wanted the elevator s motions to be opaque to me. They wanted the elevator to move so slow I wouldn t be able to tell if it were going up or down. They were probably watching me with a hidden TV camera now. To ward off the boredom, I thought about searching for the camera lens. But on second thought, what would I have to gain if I found it? That would alert them, they d halt the elevator, and I d be even later for my appointed hour. So I decided to do nothing. I was here in proper accordance with my duties. No need to worry, no cause for alarm. I leaned against the elevator wall, thrust my hands in my pockets, and once more counted my change. Three-thousand seven-hundred-fifty yen. Nothing to it. Done in a flash. Three-thousand seven-hundred-fifty yen? Something was wrong. I d made a mistake somewhere. My palms began to sweat. In three years of counting, never once had I screwed up. This was a bad sign. I shut my eyes and made my right brain and left brain a blank, in a way you might clean your glasses. Then withdrawing both hands from my pockets, I spread my fingers to dry the sweat. Like Henry Fonda in Warlock, where he steels himself before a gun fight. With palms and fingers completely dry, both hands dived into my pockets to do a third count. If the third sum corresponded to either of the other sums I d feel better. Everybody makes mistakes. Under the peculiar conditions I found myself, I may have been anxious, not to mention a little overconfident. That was my first mistake. Anyway, an accurate recount was all I needed to remedy the situation, to put things right. But before I could take the matter in hand, the elevator doors opened. No warning, no sound, they just slid open to either side. I was concentrating so hard on the critical recount that I didn t even notice. Or more precisely, my eyes had seen the opening doors, but I didn t fully grasp the significance of the event. Of course, the doors opening meant the linking of two spaces previously denied accessible continuity by means of those very doors. And at the same time, it meant the elevator had reached its destination. I turned my attention to what lay beyond the doors. There was a corridor and in the corridor stood a woman. A young woman, turned out in a pink suit, wearing pink high heels. The suit was coutured of a polished material, her face equally polished. The woman considered my presence, then nodded succinctly. Come this way, she seemed to indicate. I gave up all hope of that recount, and removing my hands from my pockets, I exited the elevator. Whereupon the elevator doors closed behind me as if they d been waiting for me to leave. Standing there in the corridor, I took a good look around, but I encountered no hint of the nature of my current circumstances. I did seem to be in an interior passage of a building, but any school kid could have told you as much. The interior was gloomy, featureless. Like the elevator. Quality materials throughout; no sign of wear. Marble floors buffed to a high luster; the walls a toasted off-white, like the muffins I eat for breakfast. Along either side of the corridor were tall wooden doors, each affixed with metal room numbers, but out of order. <936> was next to <1213> next to <26>. Something was screwy. Nobody numbers rooms like that. The young woman hardly spoke. This way, please, was all she told me, but it was more her lips forming the words than speaking, because no sound came out. Having taken two months of lip reading since starting this line of work, I had no problem understanding what she said. Still, I thought there was something wrong with my ears. After the dead silence of the elevator, the flattened coughs and dessicated whistling, I had to be losing my hearing. So I coughed. It sounded normal. I regained some confidence in my hearing. Nothing s happened to my ears. The problem must be with the woman s mouth. I walked behind her. The clicks of her pointy high heels echoed down the empty corridor like an afternoon at the quarry. Her full, stockinged legs reflected clearly in the marble. The woman was on the chubby side. Young and beautiful and all that went with it, but chubby. Now a young, beautiful woman who is, shall we say, plump, seems a bit off - Walking behind her, I fixated on her body. Around young, beautiful, fat women, I am generally thrown into confusion. I don t know why. Maybe its because an image of their dietary habits naturally congeals in my mind. When I see a goodly sized woman, I have visions of her mopping up that last drop of cream sauce with bread, wolfing down that final sprig of watercress garnish from her plate. And once that happens, its like acid corroding metal: scenes of her eating spread through my head and I lose control. Your plain fat woman is fine. Fat women are like clouds in the sky. They re just floating there, nothing to do with me. But your young, beautiful, fat woman is another story. I am demanded to assume a posture toward her. I could end up sleeping with her. That is probably where all the confusion comes in. Which is not to say that I have anything against fat women. Confusion and repulsion are two different things. I ve slept with fat women before and on the whole the experience wasn t bad. If your confusion leads you in the right direction, the results can be uncommonly rewarding. But of course, things don t always take the right course. Sex is an extremely subtle undertaking, unlike going to the department store on Sunday to buy a thermos. Even among young, beautiful, fat women, there are distinctions to be made. Fleshed out one way, they ll lead you in the right direction; fleshed out another way, they ll leave you lost, trivial, confused. In this sense, sleeping with fat women can be a challenge. There must be as many paths of human fat as there are ways of human death. This was pretty much what I was thinking as I walked down the corridor behind this young, beautiful, fat woman. A white scarf swirled around the collar of her chic pink suit. From the fullness of her earlobes dangled square gold earrings, glinting with every step she took. Actually, she moved quite lightly for her weight. She may have strapped herself into a girdle or other paraphernalia for maximum visual effect, but that didn t alter the fact that her wiggle was tight and cute. In fact, it turned me on. She was my kind of chubby. Now I m not trying to make excuses, but I don t get turned on by that many women. If anything, I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. So when I do get turned on, I don t trust it; I have to investigate the source. I scooted up next to her and apologized for being eight or nine minutes late for the appointment. I had no idea the entrance procedures would take so long, I said. And then the elevator was so slow. I was ten minutes early when I got to the building. She gave me a brisk I-know sort of nod. A hint of eau de cologne drifted from her neckline. A scent reminiscent of standing in a melon patch on a summer s morn. It put me in a funny frame of mind. A nostalgic yet impossible pastiche of sentiments, as if two wholly unrelated memories had threaded together in an unknown recess. Feelings like this sometimes come over me. And most often due to specific scents. Long corridor, eh? I tried to break the ice. She glanced at me, but kept walking. I guessed she was twenty or twenty-one. Well-defined features, broad forehead, clear complexion. It was then that she said, Proust . Or more precisely, she didn t pronounce the word Proust , but simply moved her lips to form what ought to have been Proust . I had yet to hear a genuine peep out of her. It was as if she were talking to me from the far side of a thick sheet of glass. Proust? Marcel Proust? I asked her. She gave me a look. Then she repeated, Proust. I gave up on the effort and fell back in line behind her, trying for the life of me to come up with other lip movements that corresponded to Proust . Truest? … Brew whist? … Blue is it? … One after the other, quietly to myself, I pronounced strings of meaningless syllables, but none seemed to match. I could only conclude that she had indeed said, Proust . But what I couldn t figure was, what was the connection between this long corridor and Marcel Proust? Perhaps she d cited Marcel Proust as a metaphor for the length of the corridor. Yet, supposing that were the case, wasn t it a trifle flighty not to say inconsiderate as a choice of expression? Now if she d cited this long corridor as a metaphor for the works of Marcel Proust, that much I could accept. But the reverse was bizarre. A corridor as long as Marcel Proust? Whatever, I kept following her down that long corridor. Truly, a long corridor. Turning corners, going up and down short flights of stairs, we must have walked five or six ordinary buildings worth. We were walking around and around, like in an Escher print. But walk as we might, the surroundings never seemed to change. Marble floors, muffinwhite walls, wooden doors with random room numbers. Stainless-steel door knobs. Not a window in sight. And through it all, the same staccato rhythm of her heels, followed by the melted rubber gumminess of my jogging shoes. Suddenly she pulled to a halt. I was now so tuned in to the sound of my jogging shoes that I walked right into her backside. It was wonderfully cushioning, like a firm rain cloud. Her neck effused that melon eau de cologne. She was tipping forward from the force of my impact, so I grabbed her shoulders to pull her back upright. Excuse me, I said. I was somewhere else in my thoughts. The chubby young woman blushed. I couldn t say for sure, but she didn t seem at all bothered. Tozum sta, she said with a trace of a smile. Then she shrugged her shoulders and added, Sela. She didn t actually say that, but need I repeat, her lips formed the words. Tozum sta? I pronounced to myself. Sela? Sela, she said with conviction. Turkish perhaps? Problem was, I d never heard a word of Turkish. I was so flustered, I decided to forget about holding a conversation with her. Lipreading is very delicate business and not something you can hope to master in two months of adult education classes. She produced a lozenge-shaped electronic key from her suit pocket and inserted it horizontally, just so, into the slot of the door bearing the number <728>. It unlocked with a click. Smooth. She opened the door, then turned and bid me, Saum te, sela. Which, of course, is exactly what I did. Golden Beasts WITH the approach of autumn, a layer of long golden fur grows over their bodies. Golden in the purest sense of the word, with not the least intrusion of another hue. Theirs is a gold that comes into this world as gold and exists in this world as gold. Poised between all heaven and earth, they stand steeped in gold. When I first came to the Town it was in the spring the beasts had short fur of varying colors. Black and sandy gray, white and ruddy brown. Some were a piebald of shadow and bright. These beasts of every imaginable shade drifted quietly over the newly greening countryside as if wafted about on a breeze. Almost meditative in their stillness, their breathing hushed as morning mist, they nibbled at the young grass with not a sound. Then, tiring of that, they folded their legs under them to take a short rest. Spring passed, summer ended, and just now as the light takes on a diaphanous glow and the first gusts of autumn ripple the waters of the streams, changes become visible in the beasts. Golden hairs emerge, in scant patches at first, chance germinations of some unseasonal herb. Gradually whole fields of feelers knit out through the shorter fur, until at length the whole coat is gleaming gold. It takes not more than a week from start to finish for this ritual to transpire. They commence their metamorphosis almost at the same time; almost at once they are done. Within a week every animal has been completely transformed into a beast of gold. When the morning sun rises and casts newly golden over the world, autumn has descended upon the earth. Only that long, single horn protruding from the middle of their forehead stays white from base to slender tip. It reminds one less of a horn than a broken bone that has pierced the skin and lodged in place. But for the white of their horns and the blue of their eyes, the beasts are gold. They shake their heads, as if trying on a new suit, thrusting horns into the high autumn sky. They wade into the streams; they stretch their necks to nibble on the autumnal bounty of red berries. As dusk falls over the Town, I climb the Watchtower on the western Wall to see the Gatekeeper blow the horn for the herding of the beasts. One long note, then three short notes such is the prescribed call. Whenever I hear the horn, I close my eyes and let the gentle tones spread through me. They are like none other. Navigating the darkling streets like a pale transparent fish, down cobbled arcades, past the enclosures of houses and stone walls lining the walkways along the river, the call goes out. Everything is immersed in the call. It cuts through invisible airborne sediments of time, quietly penetrating the furthest reaches of the Town. When the horn sounds, the beasts look up, as if in answer to primordial memories. All thousand or more, all at once assume the same stance, lifting their heads in the direction of the call. Some reverently cease chewing the leaves of the broom trees, others pause their hoofs on the cobblestones, still others awaken from their napping in that last patch of sun; each lifts its head into the air. For that one instant, all is still, save their golden hair which stirs in the evening breeze. What plays through their heads at this moment? At what do they gaze? Faces all at one angle, staring off into space, the beasts freeze in position. Ears trained to the sound, not twitching, until the dying echoes dissolve into twilight. Then suddenly, as if some memory beckons, the beasts rise and walk in the same direction. The spell is broken and the streets resound with countless hooves. I imagine flumes of foam rising from underground, filling the alleyways, climbing over house walls, drowning even the Clocktower. But on opening my eyes, the flow immediately vanishes. It is only hoofbeats, and the Town is unchanged. The beasts pour through the cobbled streets, swerving in columns hither and yon, like a river. No one animal at the fore, no one animal leading. The beasts lower their eyes and tremble at the shoulders as they follow their unspoken course. Yet among the beasts registers some unshakable inner bond, an indelible intimacy of memories long departed from their eyes. They make their way down from the north, crossing the Old Bridge to the south bank, where they meet with others of their kind coming in from the east, then proceed along the Canals through the Industrial Sector, turn west and file into a passageway under a foundry, emerging beyond the foot of the Western Hill. There on the slopes they string along the elderly beasts and the young, those unable to stray far from the Gate, waiting in expectation of the procession. Here the group changes directions and goes north across the West Bridge until they arrive at the Gate. No sooner have the first animals plodded up to the Gate than the Gatekeeper has it opened. Reinforced with thick horizontal iron bands, the doors are rugged and heavy. Perhaps fifteen feet high, crowned with a bristle of spikes. The Gatekeeper swings the right of these massive doors toward him effortlessly, then herds the gathered beasts out through the Gate. The left door never opens. When all the animals have been ushered out, the Gatekeeper closes the right door again and lowers the bolt in place. This West Gate is, to my knowledge, the sole passage in and out of the Town. The entire community is surrounded by an enormous Wall, almost thirty feet high, which only birds can clear. Come morning, the Gatekeeper once again opens the gate, sounds the horn, and lets the beasts in. When they are back within the dominion, he closes the door and lowers the bolt. Really no need for the bolt, the Gatekeeper explains to me. Nobody but me is strong enough to open a gate this heavy. Even if people try teaming up. But rules are rules. The Gatekeeper pulls his wool cap down to his eyebrows, and there is not another word out of him. The Gatekeeper is a giant of a man, thick-skinned and brawny, as big as I have ever seen. His shirt would seem ready to rip at a flex of his muscles. There are times he closes his eyes and sinks into a great silence. I cannot tell if he is overcome by melancholy, or if this is simply the switch of some internal mechanism. Once the silence envelops him, I can say nothing until he regains his senses. As he slowly reopens his eyes, he looks at me blankly, the fingers of his hands moving vaguely on his lap as if to divine why I exist there before him. Why do you round up the beasts at nightfall and send them outside the walls, only to let them back in again in the morning? I ask the Gatekeeper as soon as he is conscious. The Gatekeeper stares at me without a trace of emotion. We do it that way, he says, and that is how it is. The same as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Apart from opening and closing the Gate, the Gatekeeper seems to spend his time sharpening tools. The Gatehouse is arrayed with all manner of hatchets, adzes, and knives, so that his every free moment is devoted to honing them on his whetstone. The honed blades attain an unnatural gleam, frozen white, aglow from within. When I look at the rows of blades, the Gatekeeper smiles with satisfaction, attentively following my gaze. Careful, one touch can cut, says the Gatekeeper, pointing a stocky finger at his arsenal. These are not toys. I made them all, hammered each one out. I was a blacksmith, and this is my handiwork. Good grip, perfect balance. Not easy to match a handle to a blade. Here, hold one. But be careful about the blade. I lift the smallest hatchet from the implements on the table and swing it through the air. Truly, at the slightest flick of the wrist at scarcely my thought of it the sharpened metal responds like a trained hunting dog. The Gatekeeper has reason to be proud. I made the handle, too. Carved it from ten-year-old ash. Some people like other wood, but my choice is ten-year ash. No younger, no older. Ten-year is prime grain. Strong and moist, plenty of flex. The Eastern Woods is my ash stock. What ever do you need so many knives for? Different things, says the Gatekeeper. In winter, I use them the most. Wait till winter, I can show you. Winter is mighty long here. There is a place for the beasts outside the Gate. An enclosure where they sleep at night, transversed by a stream that gives them drink. Beyond that are apple trees, as far as the eye can see, vast wooded seas that stretch on and on. Nobody but you watches the animals, says the Gatekeeper. You just got here, though. You get used to living here, and things fall into place. You lose interest in them. Everybody does. Except for one week at the beginning of spring. For one week at the beginning of spring, the Gatekeeper tells me, people climb the Watchtower to see the beasts fight. This is the time when instinct compels the males to clash after they have shed their winter coats, a week before the females bear young. They become so fierce, wounding each other viciously, one would never imagine how peaceful they usually are. These autumn beasts crouch in a hush, each to each, their long golden fur radiant in the sunset. Unmoving, like statues set in place, they wait with lifted heads until the last rays of the day sink into the apple trees. When finally the sun is gone and the gloom of night draws over them, the beasts lower their heads, laying their one white horn to earth, and close their eyes. So comes to an end one day in the Town. Rain Gear, INKlings, Laundry I WAS conducted into a big, empty room. The walls were a white, the ceiling a white, the carpet a mocha brown all decorator colors. Yes, even in whites, there are tasteful whites and there are crass whites, shades that might as well not be white. The opaque windows blocked all view to the world outside, but the light that was filtering in could only be sunlight. Which placed us somewhere above ground. So the elevator had risen. Knowing this put me at ease: it was as I had imagined after all. The woman motioned for me to sit on the leather sofa in the center of the room. I obliged, and crossed my legs, whereupon she exited by a different door. The room had very little furniture. Before the sofa was a low coffee table set with a ceramic ashtray, lighter, and cigarette case. I flipped open the cigarette case; it was empty. On the walls, not a painting, nor a calendar; nor a photo. Pretty bleak. Next to the window was a large desk. I got up from the sofa and walked over to the window, inspecting the desk as I passed by. A solid affair with a thick panel top, ample drawers to either side. On the desk were a lamp, three ballpoint pens, and an appointment book, beside which lay scattered a handful of paperclips. The appointment book was open to today s date. In one corner of the room stood three very ordinary steel lockers, entirely out of keeping with the interior scheme. Straight-cut industrial issue. If it had been up to me, I would have gone for something more elegant say, designer wardrobes. But no one was asking me. I was here to do a job, and gray steel lockers or pale peach jukebox was no business of mine. The wall to my left held a built-in closet fitted with an accordion door. That was the last item of furnishing of any kind in the room. There was no bookcase, no clock, no phone, no pencil sharpener, no letter tray, no pitcher of water. What the hell kind of room was it supposed to be? I returned to the sofa, recrossed my legs, and yawned. Ten minutes later, the woman reappeared. And without so much as a glance in my direction, she opened one of the lockers and removed an armload of some shiny black material, which she brought over to the coffee table. The black material turned out to be a rubberized slicker and boots. And topping the lot was a pair of goggles, like the ones pilots in World War I wore. I hadn t the foggiest what all this was leading up to. The woman said something, but her lips moved too fast for me to make it out. E… excuse me? I m only a beginner at lipreading, I said. This time she moved her lips slowly and deliberately: Put these on over your clothes, please. Really, I would have preferred not to, but it would have been more bothersome to complain, so I shut up and did as told. I removed my jogging shoes and stepped into the boots, then slipped into the slicker. It weighed a ton and the boots were a couple of sizes too big, but did I have a choice? The woman swung around in front of me and did up the buttons of my slicker, pulling the hood up over my head. As she did so, her forehead brushed the tip of my nose. Nice fragrance, I complimented her on her eau de cologne. Thanks, she mouthed, doing the hood snaps up to right below my nose. Then over the hood came the goggles. And there I was, all slicked up and nowhere to go or so I thought. That was when she pulled open the closet door, led me by the hand, and shoved me in. She turned on the light and pulled the door shut behind her. Inside, it was like any clothes closet any clothes closet without clothes. Only coat hangers and mothballs. It probably wasn t even a clothes closet. Otherwise, what reason could there be for me getting all mummied up and squeezed into a closet? The woman jiggled a metal fitting in the corner, and presently a portion of the facing wall began to open inward, lifting up like the door of the trunk of a compact car. Through the opening it was pitch black, but I could feel a chill, damp air blowing. There was also the deep rumble of water. There s a river in there, she appeared to say. The sound of the water made it seem as if her speaking were simply drowned out. Somehow I found myself understanding what she was saying. Odd. Up toward the headwaters, there s a big waterfall which you pass right under. Beyond that s Grandfather s laboratory. You ll find out everything once you get there. Once I get there? Your grandfather s waiting for me? That s right, she said, handing me a large waterproof flashlight with a strap. Stepping into total blackness wasn t my idea of fun, but I toughened up my nerve and planted one foot inside the gaping hole. I crouched forward to duck head and shoulders through, coaxing my other foot along. With all the bulky rain gear, this proved no mean effort. I turned and looked back though my goggles at the chubby woman standing inside the closet. She was awfully cute. Be careful. You mustn t stray from the river or go down a side path, she cautioned, stooping down to peer at me. Straight ahead, waterfall? I shouted. Straight ahead, waterfall, she repeated. As an experiment, I mouthed the word sela . This brought a smile and a sela from her, before she slammed the wall panel shut. All at once I was plunged into darkness, literally, without a single pinprick of light. I couldn t see a thing. I couldn t even make out my hand raised up to my face. I stood there dumbfounded, as if I d been hit by a blunt object, overcome by the chilling realization of my utter helplessness. I was a leftover wrapped in black plastic and shoved into the cooler. For an instant, my body went limp. I felt for the flashlight switch and sent a welcome beam of light straight out across nowhere. I trained the light on my feet, then slowly took my bearings. I was standing on a three-meter-square concrete platform jutting out over bottomless nothingness. No railing, no enclosure. Wish she d told me about this, I huffed, just a tad upset. An aluminum ladder was propped against the side of the platform, offering a way down. I strapped the flashlight diagonally across my chest, and began my descent, one slippery rung at a time. The lower I got, the louder and more distinct the sound of water became. What was going on here? A closet in an office building with a river chasm at the bottom? And smack in the middle of Tokyo! The more I thought about it, the more disturbed I got. First that eerie elevator, then that woman who spoke without ever saying anything, now this leisurely jaunt. Maybe I should have turned down the job and gone home. But no, here I was, descending into the abyss. And for what? Professional pride? Or was it the chubby woman in the pink suit? Okay, I confess: she d gotten to me, and now I had to go through with this nonsense. Twenty rungs down the ladder I stopped to catch my breath, then continued another eighteen rungs to the ground. At the bottom, I cautiously shined my light over the level stone slab beneath my feet and discovered the river ahead. The surface of the water rippled in the flashlight beam. The current was swift, but I could get no sense of the depth or even the color of the water. All I could tell was that it flowed from left to right. Pouring light into the ground at my feet, I slowly made my way upstream. Now and again I could swear something was moving nearby, but I saw nothing. Only the vertical hewnrock walls to either side of the river. I was probably anxious from the darkness. After five or six minutes of walking, the ceiling dropped low or so it seemed from the echo. I pointed my flashlight beam up but could not discern anything above me. Next, just as the woman had warned, I saw what seemed to be tunnels branching off to either side. They weren t so much side paths as fissures in the rock face, from which trickled veins of water that fed into the river. I walked over and shined my flashlight into one of the cracks. A black hole that got bigger, much bigger, further in. Very inviting. Gripping the flashlight tightly in my right hand, I hurried upstream like a fish midevolution. The stone slab was wet, so I had to step carefully. If I slipped now or broke my flashlight, that d be it. All my attention was on my feet. When I happened to glance up, I saw a light closing in, a mere seven or eight meters away. I immediately switched off the flashlight. I reached into the slicker for my knife and got the blade open, the darkness and the roar of the water making a perfect cover. The instant I switched off my flashlight, the yellowish beacon riveted to a pinpoint stop. It then swung around in an arc to describe two large circles in the air. This seemed to be a signal: Everything all right not to worry. Nonetheless, I stood poised on guard and waited for them to move. Presently, the light began to come toward me, waving through empty space like a giant glowbug coupled to a higher brain. I stared at it, right hand clutching the knife, left hand on the switched-off flashlight. The light stopped its advance scarcely three meters from me. It motioned upward and downward. It was weak. I eventually realized it was trying to illuminate a face. The face of a man wearing the same crazy goggles and slicker as I had on. In his hand was the light, a small lantern like the kind they sell in camping supply shops. He was yelling to me over the noise of the water, but I couldn t hear him; and because it was too dark, I couldn t I read his lips. … ing except that… time. Or you d… in that regard, since… the man appeared to be saying. Indecipherable. But he seemed to pose no threat, so I turned my flashlight back on and shined it on my face, touching a finger to my ear to signal that I could barely hear him. The man nodded several times, then he set down his lantern and fumbled with both hands in his pockets. Suddenly, the roar subsided from all around me, like a tide receding. I thought I was passing out. Expecting unconsciousness though why I should be passing out, I had no idea I braced myself for a fall. Seconds passed. I was still standing. In fact, I felt just fine. The noise of the water, however, had faded. I came t meet you, the man said. Perfectly clear. I shook my head, tucked the flashlight under my arm, folding the knife and pocketing it. Going to be one of those days, I could just tell. What happened to the sound? I asked the man. Oh yes, the sound. It was loud, wasn t it? I turned it down. Sorry about that. its all right now, said the man, nodding repeatedly. The roar of the river was now the babble of a brook. Well then, shall we? he said with an abrupt about-face, then began walking back upstream with surefooted ease. I followed, shining my flashlight in his steps. You turned the sound down? Then its artificial, I take it? Not at all, the man said. That s natural sound, that is. But how do you turn down natural sound? I asked. Strictly speaking, I don t turn it down, the man replied. I take it out. Well, I guess, if he said so. I kept walking, saying nothing. Everything was very peaceful now, thanks to his softening the sound of the water. I could even hear the squish-squish of my rubber boots. From overhead there came a weird grinding as if someone were rubbing pebbles together. Twice, three times, then it stopped. I found signs that those INKlings were sneakin in here. I got worried, so I came t fetch you. By rights INKlings shouldn t ever make it this far in, but sometimes these things happen. A real problem, the man said. INKlings? I said. Even someone like you, bet y wouldn t fancy runnin into an INKling down here, eh? said the man, bursting into a loud guffaw. I suppose not, I said. INKling or whatling, I wasn t up for a rendezvous in a dark place like this. That s why I came t get you, the man repeated. Those INKlings are bad news. Much obliged, I said. We walked on until we came within hearing of what sounded like a faucet running full blast. The waterfall. With only a quick shine of my flashlight, I could see it wasn t your garden variety. If the sound hadn t been turned down, it would have made a mean rumble. I moved forward, my goggles wet with spray. Here s where we go under, right? I asked. That s right, son, said the man. And without further explanation, he headed straight into the waterfall and disappeared. I had little choice but to head straight into the waterfall, too. Fortunately, our route took us through what proved to be a dry part of the waterfall, but this was becoming absurd. Even all suited up in this rain gear, I was getting drenched under sheets of water. And to think the old man had to do this every time he entered or left the laboratory. No doubt this was for information-security purposes, but there had to be a more graceful way. Inside the waterfall, I stumbled and struck my kneecap on a rock. With the sound turned down, I had gotten confused by the sheer discrepancy between the non-sounds and the reality that would have produced them had they been audible. Which is to say, a waterfall ought to have a waterfall s worth of sound. On the far side of the falls was a cave barely big enough for one man. Dead center was an iron door. The man pulled what looked like a miniature calculator out of his pocket, inserted it into a slot, and after he maneuvered it a bit, the door opened silently inward. Well, here we are. After you, said the man. He stepped in after me and locked the door. Rough goin , eh? No, uh… that wasn t… The man laughed, lantern hanging by a cord around his neck, goggles and hood still in place. A jolly ho-ho-ho sort of laugh. The room we d entered was like a swimming pool locker room, the shelves stacked with a half dozen sets of the same gear we had on. I took off my goggles and climbed out of the slicker, draping it over a hanger, then placed my boots on the shelf. The flashlight I hung on a hook. Sorry t cause you so much trouble, the man apologized, but we can t be slack on security. Got t take the necessary precautions. There s types out there lyin in wait for us. INKlings? I prompted. Yessir. And those INKlings, in case you were wonderin , aren t the only ones, said the man, nodding to himself. He then conducted me to a reception room beyond the lockers. Out of his slicker, my guide proved to be a kindly old man. Short and stout; not fat so much as sturdily built. He had good color to his complexion and when he put on his rimless spectacles, he was the very image of a major pre-War political figure. He motioned for me to sit on the leather sofa, while he himself took a seat behind the desk. This room was of exactly the same mold as the other room. The carpet, the walls, the lighting, everything was the same. On the coffee table in front of the sofa was an identical smoking set, on the desk an identical appointment book and an identical scattering of paperclips. Had I been led around in a circle back to the same room? Maybe in fact I had; maybe in fact I hadn t. Hard to memorize the precise position of each scattered paperclip. The old man looked me over. Then he picked up a paperclip and unbent it to scrape at a fingernail cuticle. His left index finger cuticle. When he d finished with the cuticle, he discarded the straightened paperclip into the ashtray. If I ever get reincarnated, it occurred to me, let me make certain I don t come back as a paperclip. Accordint my information, those INKlings are like this with the Semiotecs, said the old man. Not that they re in cahoots, mind you. INKlings re too wary, and your Semiotec s got his own agenda planned out way ahead. So cooperation s got t be limited to the very few. Still, it doesn t bode well. The fact that we ve got INKlings pokin around right here, where there oughn t t be INKlings tall, just shows how bad things are. If it keeps on like this, this place s goint be swarmin with INKlings day and night. And that ll make real problems for me. Quite, I concurred, quite. I hadn t the vaguest idea what sort of operants these INKlings were, but if for any reason they d joined forces with the Semiotecs, then the outlook wasn t too bright for me either. Which was to say that the contest between our side and the Semiotechnicians was already in a delicate balance, and the slightest tampering could overturn the whole thing. For starters, I knew nothing about these INKlings, yet they knew about me. This already tipped the scales in their favor. Of course, to a lower-echelon field independent like myself, not knowing about INKlings was only par for the course, whereas the Brass at the top were probably aware of them ages ago. Well, if its all right with you, lets get hoppin , said the old man. Absolutely, I said. I asked them t send round their crackest Calcutec, and seems you ve got that reputation. Everyone speaks mighty highly of you. You got the knack, got the gumption, you do a crack job. Other than a certain lack of team spirit, you got no strikes against you. An exaggeration, I m sure, I said. The old man guffawed again. And team spirit s no great shakes. The real question is gumption. You don t get t be a first-string Calcutec without your share of spunk. That s how you command such high wages, eh? Yet another guffaw. Then the old man guided me into an adjoining workroom. I m a biologist, he said. But the word biology doesn t begin t cover all that I do. Everythin from neurophysiology to acoustics, linguistics to comparative religion. Not your usual bag of tricks, if I do say so myself. These days I m researchin the mammalian palate. Palate? The mouth, son. The way the mouth s put together. How the mouth works, how it gives voice, and various related topics. Here, take a look at this. Whereupon he flicked a switch on the wall and the lab lights came on. The whole back of the room was flush with shelves, each lined with skulls. Giraffe, horse, panda, mouse, every species of mammal imaginable. There must have been three hundred or four hundred skulls. Naturally, there were human skulls, too. Caucasoid, Negroid, Asiatic, Indian, one male and one female of each. Got the whale and elephant in the storeroom downstairs. Take up a lot of space, they do, said the old man. Well, I guess, I said. A few whale skulls and there goes the neighborhood. All the skulls had their mouths propped open, a chorus ready for inspection; all stared at the opposite wall with empty sockets. Research specimens or no, the atmosphere in the room was not exactly pleasant. On other shelves, although not so numerous as the skulls, were jars of tongues and ears and lips and esophagi. What d y think? Quite a collection, eh? twinkled the old man. Some folks collect stamps, some folks collect records. Me, I collect skulls. Takes all kinds t make a world, eh? Er, yes. From early on, I had this interest in mammalian skulls, and I ve been buildin up the collection bit by bit. Been at it close t forty years. Unscramblin the skulls has taken me longer than I ever thought possible. Would ve been easier t figure out living flesh-andblood human beings. I really think so. Granted, of course, someone young as yourself s probably more interested in the flesh and nothing but, eh? the old man laughed. For me, its taken thirty years t get t where I can hear the sounds bones make. Thirty years, now that s a good long time. Sounds? I said. Bones produce sounds? Of course they do, said the old man. Every bone has unique sound. its the hidden language of bones. And I don t mean metaphorically. Bones literally speak. Research I m engaged in proposes t decode that language. Then, t render it artificially controllable. The details escaped me, but if what the old man said were true, he had his work cut out for him. Very valuable research, I offered. Truly, said the old man with a nod. That s why those types have all got designs on my findings. Fraid the word s out. They all want my research for their own ends. F r instance, suppose you could draw out the memories stored in bones; there d be no need for torture. All you d have t do is kill your victim, strip the meat clean off the skull, and the information would be in your hands. Lovely, I said. Granted, for better or worse, research hasn t gotten that far. At this stage, you d get a clearer memory log taking the brain out. Oh. Remove the skull, remove the brain, some difference. That s why I called for your services. So those Semiotecs can t steal my experiment data. Civilization, the old man pronounced, faces serious crises because science is used for evil or good. I put my trust in science for the sake of pure science. I can t say I understand, I said. I m here on a matter of pure business. Except my orders didn t come from System Central and they didn t come from any official agent. They came directly from you. Highly irregular. And more to the point, probably in violation of professional regulations. If reported, I could lose my license. I hope you understand this. I do indeed, said the old man. You re not without cause for concern. But rest assured, this request was cleared through the proper System channels. Only the business procedures were dropped. I contacted you directly t keep everything undercover. You won t be losin any license. Can you guarantee this? The old man pulled out a folder and handed it to me. I leafed through it. Official System request forms, no mistake about it. The papers, the signatures, all in order. Well enough, I said, returning the folder. I pull double-scale at my rank, you realize. Double-scale means Twice the standard fee, right? Fine by me. Fsct is, as a bonus, I m willint go to a full triple-scale. Very trusting of you, I must say. This is an important job. Plus I already had you go under the waterfall. Ho-ho-ho. Then may I see the data, I said. We can decide the calc-scheme after I see the figures. Which of us will do the computer-level tabulations? I ll be usin my computer here. You just take care of the before and after. That is, if you don t mind. So much the better. Saves me a lot of trouble. The old man stood up from his chair and pressed a coordinate on the wall behind him. An ordinary wall until it opened. Tricks within tricks. The old man took out another folder and closed the wall. Resealed, it looked like any other plain white wall. No distinguishing features or seams, no nothing. I skimmed the seven pages of numerics. Straightforward data. This shouldn t take too much time to launder I said. Infrequent number series like these virtually rule out temporary bridging. Theoretically, of course, there s always that possibility. But there d be no proving the syntactical validity, and without such proof you couldn t shake the error tag. Like trying to cross the desert without a compass. Maybe Moses could do it. Moses even crossed the sea. Ancient history. To my knowledge, at this level, never once has a Semiotec succeeded in securing illegal access. You re sayin a single-conversion trap s sufficient, eh? A double-conversion trap is too risky. It would effectively reduce the possibility of temporary bridging to zero, but at this point its still a freak stunt. The trapping process isn t solidly grounded. The research isn t complete. Who said anything bout double-conversion trapping? said the old man, working another paperclip into his cuticle. The right index finger this time. What is it you re saying, then? Shuffling, son. I m talkin shuffling. I want you to launder and shuffle. That s why I called on you. If it was simple brainwash laundry, there wouldn t have been any need t call you. I don t get it, I said, recrossing my legs. How do you know about shuffling? That s classified information. No outsider s supposed to know about it. Well, I do. I ve got a pretty open pipeline to the top of the System. Okay, then run this through your pipeline. Shuffling procedures are completely frozen at this time. Don t ask me why. Obviously some kind of trouble. Whatever the case, shuffling is now prohibited. The old man handed me the request folder once again. Have yourself a good look at the last page. Should be shuffling procedure clearance there somewhere. I opened the folder to the last page and ran my eyes over the documentation. Sure enough, shuffling clearance authorized. I read it over several times. Official. Five signatures, no less. What the hell could the Brass be thinking? You dig a hole and the next thing they say is fill it in; fill it in and they tell you to dig a hole. They re always screwing with the guy in the field. Could I ask you to make color copies of all pages of this request. I might find myself driven into a nasty corner without them. Fine, said the old man. Glad to make you your copies. Nothing to worry bout. Everything s on the up and up. I ll give you half your fee today, the other half on final receipt. Fair and square? Fair enough. Now, to get on with the laundry. After I m done, I ll take the wash home with me and do the shuffling there. Shuffling requires special precautions. I ll be back with the shuffled data when I m through. Noon, four days from now. It can t be any later. Plenty of time. I beg of you, son, whatever you do, don t be late, the old man pleaded. If you re late, something terrible will happen. World going to fall apart? I kidded. In a way, said the old man, yes. Not this time. I never come in late, I said. Now, if its not too much to ask, could I please trouble you for some ice water and a thermos of hot black coffee. And maybe a small snack. Please. Something tells me this is going to be a long job. Something told me right. It was a long, hard job. The numerics themselves were the proverbial piece of cake, but with so many case-determinant step-functions, the tabulations took much more doing than they first appeared to require. I input the data-asgiven into my right brain, then after converting it via a totally unrelated sign-pattern, I transfer it to my left brain, which I then output as completely recoded numbers and type up on paper. This is what is called laundering. Grossly simplified, of course. The conversion code varies with the Calcutec. This code differs entirely from a random number table in its being diagrammatic. In other words, the way in which right brain and left brain are split (which, needless to say, is a convenient fiction; left and right are never actually divided) holds the key. Drawn, it might look something like this: Significantly, the way the jagged edges do not precisely match up means that it is impossible to reconvert data back into its original form. Nonetheless, Semiotecs can occasionally decode stolen data by means of a temporary bridge. That is, they holographically reproduce the jagged edges from an analysis of the data-as-retrieved. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn t. The more we Calcutecs up our technologies, the more they up their counter-technologies. We safeguard the data, they steal it. Your classic cops-and-robbers routine. Semiotecs traffic illegally obtained data and other information on the black market, making megaprofits. And what s worse, they keep the most valuable bits of information for themselves and the benefit of their own organization. Our organization is generally called the System, theirs the Factory. The System was originally a private conglomerate, but as it grew in importance it took on quasigovernmental status. In the same way as, say, Ma Bell in America. We rank-and-file Calcutecs work as individual independents not unlike tax accountants or attorneys, yet we need licenses from the state and can only take on jobs from the System or through one of the official agents designated by the System. This arrangement is intended to prevent misuse of technologies by the Factory. Any violation thereof, and they revoke your license. I can t really say whether these preventative measures make sense or not. The reason being that any Calcutec stripped of his qualifications eventually ends up getting absorbed into the Factory and going underground to become a Semiotec. As for the Factory, much less is known. It apparently started off as a small-scale venture and grew by leaps and bounds. Some refer to it as the Data Mafia, and to be certain, it does bear a marked resemblance in its rhizomic penetration to various other underworld organizations. The difference is that this Mafia deals only in information. Information is clean and information makes money. The Factory stakes out a computer, hacks it for all its worth, and makes off with its information. I drank a whole pot of coffee while doing the laundry. One hour on the job, thirty minutes rest regular as clockwork. Otherwise the right-brain-left-brain interface becomes muddled and the resulting tabulations glitched. During those thirty-minute breaks, I shot the breeze with the old man. Anything to keep my mouth moving. Best method for repolarizing a tired brain. What are all these figures? I asked. Experiment data, said the old man. One-year s worth of findings. Numeric conversions of 3-D graphic-simulated volume mappings of the skulls and palates of various animals, combined with a three-element breakdown of their voices. I was tellin you how it took me thirty years t get t where I could tune in each bone s waveform. Well, when this here calculation s completed, we ll finally be able t extract that sound not empirically, but theoretically. Then it ll be possible to control things artificially? Right on the mark, said the old man. So we have artifical control where does that get us? The old man licked his upper lip. All sorts of things could happen, he said after a moment. Truly all sorts of things. I can t go spoutin off about them, but things you can t begin t imagine. Sound removal being only one of them? The old man launched into another round of his belly laugh. Oh-ho-ho, right you are, son. Tunin in the signal of the human skull, we ll take the sound out or turn it up. Each person s got a different shaped skull, though, so we won t be able t take it out completely. But we can turn it down pretty low, eh? Ho-ho-ho. We match the sound-positive to a sound-negative and make them resonate together. Sound removal s just one of the more harmless applications. Harmless? Fiddling with the volume was screwy enough. What was the rest going to be like? its possible t remove sound from both speakin and hearin , resumed the old man. In other words, we can erase the sound of the water from hearing like I just did or we can erase speech. You plan to present these findings to the world? Tosh said the old man, wiping his hands, now why would I want t let others in on something this much fun? I m keepin it for my own personal enjoyment. The old man burst out laughing some more. Ho-ho-ho. He even had me laughing. My research is purely for the specialist. Nobody s got any interest in acoustics anyway, the old man said. All the idiot savants in the world couldn t make head or tail of my theories if they tried. Only the world of science pays me any mind. That may be so, but your Semiotec is no idiot. When it comes to deciphering, they re genius class, the whole lot of them. They ll crack your findings to the last digit. I know, I know. That s why I ve withheld all my data and processes, so they wouldn t be pokin into things. Probably means even the world of science doesn t take me seriously, but what of that? Tosh, a hundred years from now my theories will alI ve been proved. That s enough, isn t it? Hmm. Okay, son, launder and shuffle everything. Yessir, I said, yessir. For the next hour, I concentrated on tabulations. Then took another rest. One question, if I might, I said. What s that? asked the old man. That young woman at the entrance. You know, the one with the pink suit, slightly plump… ? That s my granddaughter, said the old man. Extremely bright child. Young s she is, she helps me with my research. Well, uh, my question is… was she born mute that way? Darn, said the old man, slapping his thigh. Plum forgot. She s still sound-removed from that experiment. Darn, darn, darn. Got t go and undo it right now. Oh. The Library The Town centers around a semicircular plaza directly north of the Old Bridge. The other semicircular fragment, that is, the lower half of the circle, lies across the river to the south. These two half-circles are known as the North and South Plazas respectively. Regarded as a pair, the two can impress one only as complete opposites, so unlike each other as they are. The North Plaza is heavy with an air of mystery, laden with the silence of the surrounding quarter, whereas the South Plaza seems to lack any atmosphere at all. What is one meant to feel here? All is adrift in a vague sense of loss. Here, there are relatively fewer households than north of the Bridge. The flowerbeds and cobblestones are not well kept. In the middle of the North Plaza stands a large Clock-tower piercing skyward. To be precise, one should say it is less a clocktower than an object retaining the form of a clocktower. The clock has long forfeited its original role as a timepiece. It is a square stone tower, narrowing up its height, its faces oriented in compass fashion toward the cardinal directions. At the top are dials on all four sides, their hands frozen in place at thirty-five minutes past ten. Below, small portals give into what is likely a hollow interior. One might imagine ascending by ladder within but for the fact that no entrance is to be found at the base. The tower climbs so high above the plaza that one has to cross the Old Bridge to the south even to see the clock. Several rings of stone and brick buildings fan out from the North Plaza. No edifice has any outstanding features, no decorations or plaques. All doors are sealed tight; no one is seen entering or leaving. Here, is this a post office for dead letters? This, a mining firm that engages no miners? This, a crematorium without corpses to burn? The resounding stillness gives the structures an impression of abandonment. Yet each time I turn down these streets, I can sense strangers behind the facades, holding their breath as they continue pursuits I will never know. The Library stands in one block of this quarter. None the more distinguished for being a library, it is an utterly ordinary stone building. There is nothing to declare it a library. With its old stone walls faded to a dismal shade, the shallow eaves over the iron-grilled windows and the heavy wooden doors, it might be a grain warehouse. If I had not asked the Gatekeeper to explain the way there in some detail, I would never have recognized it as a library. Soon as you get settled, go to the Library, the Gatekeeper tells me my first day in town. There is a girl who minds the place by herself. Tell her the Town told you to come read old dreams. She will show you the rest. Old dreams? I say. What do you mean by old dreams ? The Gatekeeper pauses from whittling a round peg, sets down his penknife, and sweeps the wood shavings from the table. Old dreams are… old dreams. Go to the Library. You will find enough of them to make your eyes roll. Take out as many as you like and read them good and long. The Gatekeeper inspects the pointed end of his finished peg, finds it to his approval, and puts it on the shelf behind him. There, perhaps twenty of the same round pegs are lined. Ask whatever questions you want, but remember, I may not answer, declares the Gatekeeper, folding his arms behind his head. There are things I cannot say. But from now on you must go to the Library every day and read dreams. That will be your job. Go there at six in the evening. Stay there until ten or eleven at night. The girl will fix you supper. Other times, you are free to do as you like. Understand? Understood, I tell him. How long am I to continue at that job? How long? I cannot say, answers the Gatekeeper. Until the right time comes. Then he selects another scrap of wood from a pile of kindling and starts whittling again. This is a poor town. No room for idle people wandering around. Everybody has a place, everybody has a job. Yours is in the library reading dreams. You did not come here to live happily ever after, did you? Work is no hardship. Better than having nothing to do, I say. There you are, says the Gatekeeper, nodding squarely as he eyes the tip of his knife. So the sooner you get yourself to work, the better. From now on you are the Dreamreader. You no longer have a name. Just like I am the Gatekeeper. Understand? Understood, I say. Just like there is only one Gatekeeper in this Town, there is only one Dreamreader. Only one person can qualify as Dreamreader. I will do that for you now. The Gatekeeper takes a small white tray from his cupboard, places it on the table, and pours oil into it. He strikes a match and sets the oil on fire. Next he reaches for a dull, rounded blade from his knife rack and heats the tip for ten minutes. He blows out the flame and lets the knife cool. With this, I will give you a sign, says the Gatekeeper. It will not hurt. No need to be afraid. He spreads wide my right eye with his fingers and pushes the knife into my eyeball. Yet as the Gatekeeper said, it does not hurt, nor am I afraid. The knife sinks into my eyeball soft and silent, as if dipping into jelly. He does the same with my left eye. When you are no longer a Dreamreader, the scars will vanish, says the Gatekeeper, putting away the tray and knife. These scars are the sign of the Dreamreader. But as long as you bear this sign, you must beware of light. Hear me now, your eyes cannot see the light of day. If your eyes look at the light of the sun, you will regret it. So you must only go out at night or on gray days. When it is clear, darken your room and stay safe indoors. The Gatekeeper then presents me with a pair of black glasses. I am to wear these at all times except when I sleep. So it was I lost the light of day. It is in the evening a few days later that I go my way to the Library. The heavy wooden door makes a scraping noise as I push it open. I find a long straight hallway before me. The air is dusty and stale, an atmosphere the years have forsaken. The floorboards are worn where once tread upon, the plaster walls yellowed to the color of the light bulbs. There are doors on either side of the hallway, each doorknob with a layer of white dust. The only unlocked door is at the end, a delicate frosted glass panel behind which shines lamplight. I rap upon this door, but there is no answer. I place my hand on the tarnished brass knob and turn it, whereupon the door opens inward. There is not a soul in the room. A great empty space, a larger version of a waiting room in a train station, exceedingly spare, without a single window, without particular ornament. There is a plain table and three chairs, a coal-burning iron stove, and little else besides an upright clock and a counter. On the stove sits a steaming, chipped black enamel pot. Behind the counter is another frosted glass door, with lamplight beyond. I wonder whether to knock, but decide to wait for someone to appear. The counter is scattered with paperclips. I pick up a handful, then take a seat at the table. I do not know how long it is before the Librarian appears through the door behind the counter. She carries a binder with various papers. When she sees me, her cheeks flush red with surprise. I am sorry, she says to me. I did not know you were here. You could have knocked. I was in the back room, in the stacks. Everything is in such disorder. I look at her and say nothing. Her face comes almost as a reminiscence. What about her touches me? I can feel some deep layer of my consciousness lifting toward the surface. What can it mean? The secret lies in distant darkness. As you can see, no one visits here. No one except the Dreamreader. I nod slightly, but do not take my eyes off her face. Her eyes, her lips, her broad forehead and black hair tied behind her head. The more closely I look, as if to read something, the further away retreats any overall impression. Lost, I close my eyes. Excuse me, but perhaps you have mistaken this for another building? The buildings here are very similar, she says, setting her binder down by the paperclips. Only the Dreamreader may come here and read old dreams. This is forbidden to anyone else. I am here to read dreams, I say, as the Town tells me to. Forgive me, but would you please remove your glasses? I take off my black glasses and face the woman, who peers into the two pale, discolored pupils that are the sign of the Dreamreader. I feel as if she is seeing into the core of my being. Good. You may put your glasses on. She sits across the table from me. Today I am not prepared. Shall we begin tomorrow? she says. Is this room comfortable for you? I can unlock any of the other reading rooms if you wish. Here is fine, I tell her. Will you be helping me? Yes, it is my job to watch over the old dreams and to help the Dreamreader. Have I met you somewhere before? She stares at me and searches her memory, but in the end shakes her head. As you may know, in this Town, memory is unreliable and uncertain. There are things we can remember and things we cannot remember. You seem to be among the things I cannot. Please forgive me. Of course, I say. It was not important. Perhaps we have met before. This is a small town. I arrived only a few days ago. How many days ago? she asks, surprised. Then you must be thinking of someone else. I have never been out of this Town. Might it have been someone who looks like me? I suppose, I say. Still, I have the impression that elsewhere we may all have lived totally other lives, and that somehow we have forgotten that time. Have you ever felt that way? No, she says. Perhaps it is because you are a Dreamreader. The Dreamreader thinks very differently from ordinary people. I cannot believe her. Or do you know where this was? I wish I could remember, I say. There was a place, and you were there. The Library has high ceilings, the room is quiet as the ocean floor. I look around vacantly, paperclips in hand. She remains seated. I have no idea why I am here either, I say. I gaze at the ceiling. Particles of yellow light seem to swell and contract as they fall. Is it because of my scarred pupils that I can see extraordinary things? The upright clock against the wall metes out time without sound. I am here for a purpose, I am told. This is a very quiet town, she says, if you came seeking quiet. I do not know. She slowly stands. You have nothing to do here today. Your work starts tomorrow. Please go home to rest. I look up at the ceiling again, then back at her. It is certain: her face bears a fatal connection to something in me. But it is too faint. I shut my eyes and search blindly. Silence falls over me like a fine dust. I will return tomorrow at six o clock in the evening, I say. Good-bye, she says. On leaving the Library, I cross the Old Bridge. I lean on the handrail and listen to the the River. The Town is now devoid of beasts. The Clocktower and the Wall that surrounds the Town, the buildings along the riverbank, and the sawtooth mountains to the north are all tinged with the blue-gray gloom of dusk. No sound reaches my ears except for the murmur of the water. Even the birds have taken leave. If you came seeking quiet I hear her words. Darkness gathers all around. As the streetlights by the River blink on, I set out down the deserted streets for the Western Hill. Tabulations, Evolution, Sex Drive While the old man went back above ground to rectify the sound-removed state in which he d left his granddaughter, I plugged away in silence at my tabulations. How long the old man was gone, I didn t really know. I had my digital alarm clock set to an alternating one-hour-thirty-minutes-one-hour-thirty-minutes cycle by which I worked and rested, worked and rested. The clock face was covered over so I couldn t read it. Time gets in the way of tabulations. Whatever the time was now, it had no bearing on my work. My work begins when I start tabulating and it ends when I stop. The only time I need to know about is the one-hour-thirty-minutes-one-hour-thirty-minutes cycle. I must have rested two or three times during the old man s absence. During these breaks, I went to the toilet, crossed my arms and put my face down on the desk, and stretched out on the sofa. The sofa was perfect for sleeping. Not too soft, not too hard; even the cushions pillowed my head just right. Doing different tabulation jobs, I ve slept on a lot of sofas, and let me tell you, the comfortable ones are few and far between. Typically, they re cheap deadweight. Even the most luxurious-looking sofas are a disappointment when you actually try to sleep on them. I never understand how people can be lax about choosing sofas. I always say a prejudice on my part, I m sure you can tell a lot about a person s character from his choice of sofa. Sofas constitute a realm inviolate unto themselves. This, however, is something that only those who have grown up sitting on good sofas will appreciate. its like growing up reading good books or listening to good music. One good sofa breeds another good sofa; one bad sofa breeds another bad sofa. That s how it goes. There are people who drive luxury cars, but have only second- or third-rate sofas in their homes. I put little trust in such people. An expensive automobile may well be worth its price, but its only an expensive automobile. If you have the money, you can buy it, anyone can buy it. Procuring a good sofa, on the other hand, requires style and experience and philosophy. It takes money, yes, but you also need a vision of the superior sofa. That sofa among sofas. The sofa I presently stretched out on was first-class, no doubt about it. This, more than anything, gave me a warm feeling about the old man. Lying there on the sofa with my eyes closed, I thought about him and his quirks, his hokey accent, that outlandish laugh. And what about that sound-removal scheme of his? He bad to be a top-rank scientist. Sound removal wouldn t even occur to your ordinary researcher. And another thing you always hear about these oddball scientificos, but what kind of eccentric or recluse would build a secret laboratory behind a subterranean waterfall just to escape inquisitive eyes? He was one strange individual. As a commercial product, his sound-alteration technolo-gies would have all sorts of applications. Imagine, concert hall PA equipment obsolete no more massive amps and speakers. Then, there was noise reduction. A sound-removal device would be ideal for people living near airports. Of course, sound-alteration would be ripe for military or criminal abuse. I could see it now: silent bombers and noiseless guns, bombs that explode at brain-crushing volumes, a whole slew of toys for destruction, ushering in a whole new generation of refinements in mass slaughter. The old man had obviously seen this too, giving him greater reason to hide his research from the world. More and more, I was coming to respect the old guy. I was into the fifth or sixth time around in the work cycle when the old man returned, toting a large basket. Brought you fresh coffee and sandwiches, he said. Cucumber, ham, and cheese. Hope that s all right. Thanks. Couldn t ask for more, I said. Want t eat right away? No, after the next tab-cycle. By the time the alarm went off, I d finished laundering five of the seven pages of numeric data lists. One more push. I took a break, yawned, and turned my attention to food. There were enough sandwiches for a small crowd. I devoured more than half of them myself. Long-haul tabulations work up a mean appetite. Cucumber, ham, cheese, I tossed them down in order, washing the lot down with coffee. For every three I ate, the old man nibbled at one, looking like a terribly well-mannered cricket. Have as many as you like, said the old man. When you get t my age, your eatin declines. Can t eat as much, can t work as much. But a young person ought t eat plenty. Eat plenty and fatten up plenty. People nowadays hate t get fat, but if you ask me, they re looking at fat all wrong. They say it makes you unhealthy or ugly, but it d never happen tall if you fatten up the right way. You live a fuller life, have more sex drive, sharpen your wits. I was good and fat when I was young. Wouldn t believe it t look at me now. Ho-ho-ho. The old man could hardly contain his laughter. How bout it? Terrific sandwiches, eh? Yes, indeed. Very tasty, I said. The sandwiches really were very tasty. And I m as demanding a critic of sandwiches as I am of sofas. My granddaughter made them. She s the one deserves your compliments, the old man said. The child knows the finer points of making a sandwich. She s definitely got it down. Chefs can t make sandwiches this good. The child d be overjoyed to hear that, I m sure. We don t get many visitors, so there s hardly any chance t make a meal for someone. Whenever the child cooks, its just me and her eatin . You two live alone? Yessiree. Just us two loners, but I don t think its so healthy for her. She s bright, strong as can be, but doesn t even try t mix with the world outside. That s no good for a young person. Got t let your sex drive out in some constructive way. Tell me now, the child s got womanly charms, hasn t she? Well, er, yes, on that account, I stammered. Sex drive s decent energy. Y can t argue about that. Keep sex drive all bottled up inside and you get dull-witted. Throws your whole body out of whack. Holds the same for men and for women. But with a woman, her monthly cycle can get irregular, and when her cycle goes off, it can make her unbalanced. Uh, yes. That child ought t have herself relations with the right type of man at the earliest opportunity. I can say that with complete conviction, both as her guardian and as a biologist, said the old man, salting his cucumbers. Did you manage with her to… uh… did you get her sound back in? I asked. I didn t especially feel like hearing about people s sex drive, not while I was still in the middle of a job. Oh yes, I forgot t tell you, said the old man. I got her sound back t normal, no trouble. Sure glad you thought t remind me. No telling how many more days she would ve had t be without sound like that. Once I hole up down here, I don t generally go back up for a few days. Poor child, livin without sound. I can imagine. Like I was sayin , the child s almost totally out of contact with society. Shouldn t make much difference for the most part, but if the phone were t ring, could be trouble. She d have a hard time shopping if she couldn t speak. Tosh, shoppin wouldn t be so bad, said the old man. They ve got supermarkets out there where you can shop and not say a word. The child really likes supermarkets, she s always going to them. Office to supermarket, supermarket to office. That s her whole life. Doesn t she go home? The child likes the office. its got a kitchen and a shower, everything she needs. At most she goes home once a week. I drank my coffee. But say, you managed t talk with her all right, the old man said. How d you do it? Telepathy? Lipreading. I studied it in my spare time. Lipreading, of course, the old man said, nodding with approval. A right effective technique. I know a bit myself. What say we try carrying on a silent conversation, the two of us? Mind if we don t? I hastened to reply. Granted, lipreading s an extremely primitive technique. It has shortcomings aplenty, too. Gets too dark and you can t understand a thing. Plus you have t keep your eyes glued to somebody s mouth. Still, as a halfway measure, it works fine. Must say you had uncanny foresight t learn lipreading. Halfway measure? Right-o, said the old man with another nod. Now listen up, son. I m tellin this to you and you alone: The world ahead of us is goint be sound-free. Sound-free? I blurted out. Yessir. Completely sound-free. That s because sound is of no use to human evolution. In fact, it gets in the Way. So we re going t wipe sound out, morning to night. Hmph. You re saying there ll be no birds singing or brooks babbling. No music? Course not. its going to be a pretty bleak world, if you ask me. Don t blame me. That s evolution. Evolution s always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution, said the old man. He stood up and walked around his desk to retrieve a pair of nail clippers from a drawer. He came back to the sofa and set at trimming all ten fingernails. The research is underway, but I can t give you the details. Still, the general drift of it is… well, that s what s comin . You musn t breathe a word of this to anyone. The day this reaches Semiotec ears, all pandemonium s goint break loose. Rest easy. We Calcutecs guard our secrets well. Much relieved t hear that, said the old man, sweeping up his nail clippings with an index card and tossing them into the trash. Then he helped himself to another cucumber sandwich. These sure are good, if I do, say so myself. Is all her cooking this good? Mmm, not especially. its sandwiches where she excels. Her cooking s not bad, mind you, but it just can t match her sandwiches. A rare gift, I said. Tis, the old man agreed. I must say, I do believe it takes someone like you to fully appreciate the child. I could entrust her to a young man like you and know I d done the right thing. Me? I started. Just because I said I liked her sandwiches? You don t like her sandwiches? I m very fond of her sandwiches. The way I see it, you ve got a certain quality. Or else, you re missin something. I sometimes think so myself. We scientists see human traits as being in the process of evolution. Sooner or later you ll see it yourself. Evolution is mighty gruelin . What do you think the most gruelin thing about evolution is? I don t know. Tell me, I said. its being unable to pick and choose. Nobody chooses to evolve. its like floods and avalanches and earthquakes. You never know what s happening until they hit, then its too late. I thought about this for a bit. This evolution, I began, what does it have to do with what you mentioned before? You mean to say I m going to lose my powers of speech? Now that s not entirely accurate. its not a question of speaking or not speaking. its just a step. I don t understand. In fact, I didn t understand. On the whole, I m a regular guy. I say I understand when I do, and I say I don t when I don t. I try not to mince words. It seems to me a lot of trouble in this world has its origins in vague speech. Most people, when they go around not speaking clearly, somewhere in their unconscious they re asking for trouble. What say we drop the subject? said the old man. Too much complicated talk. It ll spoil your tabulations. lets leave it at that for now. No complaints from this department. Soon after, the alarm rang and I went back to work. Whereupon the old man opened a drawer and pulled out what looked like a pair of stainless-steel fire tongs. He walked over to the shelves of skulls and, like a master violinist examining his Stradivarius collection, picked up one or another of them, tapping them with the fire tongs to listen to their pitch. They gave out a range of timbre and tones, everything from the clink you might get from tapping a whiskey glass, to the dull thud from an oversized flower pot. To think that each skull once had skin and flesh and was stuffed with gray matter in varying quantities teeming with thoughts of food and sex and dominance. All now vanished. I tried to picture my own head stripped of skin and flesh, brains removed and lined up on a shelf, only to have the old guy come around and give me a rap with stainless-steel fire tongs. Wonderful. What could he possibly learn from the sound of my skull? Would he be able to read my memories? Or would he be tapping into something beyond memory? .1 wasn t particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don t have to die the next. All quite simple, if you want to look at it that waVrjfe s no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe s my own to fool with. Hence I can live with it. But after I m dead, can t I just lie in peace? Those Egyptian pharoahs had a point, wanting to shut themselves up inside pyramids. Several hours later, the laundry was finally done. I couldn t say how many hours it had taken, but from the state of my fatigue I would guess a good eight or nine hours. I got up from the sofa and stretched my stressed muscles. The Calcutec manual includes how-to illustrations for limbering up a total of twenty-six muscle groups. Mental wear-and-tear takes care of itself if you relieve these stress points after a tab-session, and the working life of your Calcutec is extended that much longer. its been less than ten years since the whole Calcutec profession began, so nobody really knows what that life expectancy ought to be. Some say ten years, others twenty; either way you keep at it until you the day you die. Did I really want to know how long? If its only a matter of time before you burn yourself out, all I can do is keep my muscles loose and my fingers crossed. After working the knots in my body out, I sat back down on the sofa, closed my eyes, and slowly brought my right brain and left brain together again. Thus concluded all work for the day. Manual-perfect. The old man had a large canine skull set out on his desk and was taking measurements with slide calipers, noting the figures on a photo of the specimen. Finished, have you? asked the old man. All done. You put in a very hard day, he said. I ll be heading home to sleep now. Tomorrow or the next day I ll shuffle the data and have it back to you by noon two days later. Without fail. Is that satisfactory? Fine, fine, said the old man, nodding. But remember, time is absolutely critical. If you re later than noon, there ll be trouble. There ll be real trouble. I understand. And I beg of you, make certain no one steals that list. If it gets stolen, it ll be both our necks. Don t worry. We receive quite thorough training on that count. There ll be no inadvertent straying of tabulated data. I withdrew a flex-metal document cache from a pocket behind my left knee, inserted the data list, and locked it. I m the only one who can open this. If someone tampers with the lock, the contents are destroyed. Mighty clever, the old man said. I slipped the document cache back behind my knee. Say now, sure you won t have any more to eat? There re a few sandwiches left. I don t eat much when I m caught up in research. Be a shame t let them go to waste. I was still hungry, so I squared away the remaining sandwiches. The old man poured me a fresh cup of coffee. I climbed back into rain gear, pulled on my goggles, took flashlight in hand, and headed back into the subterranean passage. This time the old man didn t come along. Already put out ultrasonic waves t drive those INKlings away, so shouldn t be any of them sneakin around for the time bein , the old man reassured me. Apparently, these INKlings were some kind of subterranean entity, which made me feel a bit squeamish about walking all alone out there in the dark. It didn t help that I didn t know a thing about INKlings, not their habits nor what they looked like nor how to defend myself against them. Flashlight in my left hand, knife in my right, I braced myself for the return trip. When I saw the chubby pink-suited young woman waving her flashlight and coming my way, I felt saved. I made it over toward her. She was saying something which I couldn t hear over the rumble of the de-sound-removed river. Nor could I see her lips in the darkness. Up the long aluminum ladder we went, to where there was light. I climbed/first, she followed. Coming down, I hadn t been ableTiTsee anything, so there was nothing to be afraid of, relatively speaking, but going back up was something else entirely. I could picture the height only too well a two- or three-story drop. I wanted to stop to regather my wits, but she was on my tail. Safety first, I always say, so I kept climbing. We made it through the closet back into the first room and stripped off our rain gear. Work go well? she asked. Her voice, now audible for the first time, was soft and clear. Well enough, thanks. I really appreciate your telling Grandfather about my sound-removal. I would have been like that for a whole week. Why didn t you tell me that in writing? You could have been straightened up a lot sooner, and I wouldn t have been so confused. She did a quick turn around the table without a word, then adjusted both of her earrings. Rules are rules, she said. Against communicating in writing? That s one of them. Hmph. Anything that might lead to devolution. Oh, I said. Talk about precautions. How old are you? she asked out of the blue. Thirty-five. And you? Seventeen. You re the first Calcutec I ve ever met. But then, I ve never met any Semiotecs either. You re really only seventeen? I asked, surprised. Yes, why should I lie? I m really seventeen. I don t look seventeen, though, do I? No, you look about twenty. its because I don t want to look seventeen, she said. Tell me, what s it like to be a Calcutec? We re normal ordinary people, just like everyone else. Everyone may be ordinary, but they re not normal. Yes, there is that school of thought, I said. But there s normal and then there s normal. I mean the kind of normal that can sit down next to you on the train and you wouldn t even notice. Normal. We eat food, drink beer oh, by the way, the sandwiches were great. Really? she said, beaming. I don t often get good sandwiches like that. I practically ate them all myself. How about the coffee? The coffee wasn t bad either. Really? Would you like some now? That way we could sit and talk a little while longer. No thanks, I ve had more than enough already, I said. I don t think I can manage another drop. And besides, I need to get myself home to bed quick. That s too bad. Too bad for me, too. Well, let me at least walk you to the elevator. The corridors a-e extremely complex. I bet you couldn t find your way on your own. I doubt it myself. The girl picked up what looked like a round hatbox, sealed several times over with wide adhesive tape, and handed it to me. What s this? I asked. A gift for you from Grandfather. Take it home and open it. I weighed the box in my hapds. It was much lighter than I would have guessed, and it would have had to be an awfully big hat. I shook the box. No sound. its fragile, so please be careful with it, the girl cautioned. Some kind of souvenir? I don t know. You ll find out when you open it, won t you? / Then the girl opened her pink handbag and gave me an envelope with a Bank check. Filled out for an amount slightly in excess of what I d expected. I slipped it into my wallet. Receipt? No need, she said. We exited the room and walked the same long maze of corridors back to the elevator. Her high heels made the same pleasant clicking on the floor, but her plumpness didn t make as strong an impression as it had at first. As we walked along together, I almost forgot about her weight. Given time, I d probably even get used to it. Are you married? she asked, turning to me. No, I m not, I said. I used to be, but not now. Did you get divorced because you became a Calcutec? I always hear how Calcutecs don t have families. That s not true. Some Calcutecs are fine family men. Though certainly, most seem to pursue their careers without a home life. its a nerve-racking line of work, sometimes very risky. You wouldn t want to endanger a wife and kids. Is that how it was with you? I became a Calcutec after I got divorced. The two had nothing to do with each other. Sorry for prying. its just that you re my first Calcutec and there re so many things I don t know. I don t mind. Well then, I ve also heard that Calcutecs, when they ve finished a job, that they get all pumped up with sex drive. I couldn t… umm… really say. Maybe so. We do work ourselves into a very peculiar mental condition on the job. At those times, who do you sleep with? A special somebody? I don t have a special somebody . So then, who do you sleep with? You re not one of those people who have no interest in sex. You re not gay or anything, are you? No, I m not, I said. So who do you sleep with? I guess I sleep with different women. Would you sleep with me? No. Probably not. Why not? That s just the way I am. I don t like to sleep with people I know. It only complicates things. And I don t sleep with business contacts. Dealing with other people s secrets like I do, you have to draw the line somewhere. Are you sure its not because I m fat or I m ugly? Listen, you re not that overweight, and you re not ugly at all, I said. She pouted. If that s the way you feel, then, do you simply pick up someone and go to bed with her? Well… yes. Or do you just buy a girl? I ve done that too. If I offered to sleep with you for money, would you take me up on it? I don t think so, I replied. I m twice your age. It wouldn t be right. It d be different with me. Maybe so, but no offense intended, I d really rather not. I think its for the best. Grandfather says the first man I sleep with should be over thirty. He also says if sex drive builds up to a particular point, it affects your mental stability. Yes, I heard this from your grandfather. Do you think its true? I m afraid I m not a biologist. Are you well endowed? I beg your pardon? I nearly choked. Well, its just that I don t know anything about my own sex drive yet, she explained. So I d like to try lots of different things. We reached the elevator. It waited with open doors. What a relief! / Until next time, then, she said. I got in theVelevator and the doors slid shut without a sound. I leaned against the stainless-steel wall and heaved a big sigh. matter is leached of whatever color it might originally have had. The jutting jaw is locked slightly open, as if suddenly frozen when about to speak. The eye sockets, long bereft of their contents, lead to the cavernous recesses behind. The skull is unnaturally light, with virtually no material presence. Nor does it offer any image of the species that had breathed within. It is stripped of flesh, warmth, memory. In the middle of the forehead is a small depression, rough to the touch. Perhaps this is the vestige of a broken horn. Shadow THE first old dream she places on the table is nothing I know as an old dream. I stare at the object before me, then look up at her. She stands next to me looking down at it. How is this an old dream ? The sound of the words old dream led me to expect something else old writings perhaps, something hazy, amorphous. Here we have an old dream, says the Librarian. Her voice is distant, aimless; her tone wants not so much to explain to me as to reconfirm for herself. Or it is possible to say, the old dream is inside of this. I nod, but do not understand. Take it in your hands, she prompts. I pick it up and run my eyes over the surface to see if I can find some trace of an old dream. But there is not a clue. It is only the skull of an animal, and not a very big animal. Dry and brittle, as if it had lain in the sun for years, the bone. Is this a skulTof one of the Town unicorns? I ask her. Yes. The old dream is sealed inside. I am to reacVan old dream from this? That is the work of the Dreamreader, says the Librarian. And what do I do with the dreams I read? Nothing. You have only to read them. How can that be? I say. I know that I am to read an old dream from this. But then not to do anything with it, I do not understand. What can be the point of that? Work should have a purpose. She shakes her head. I cannot explain. Perhaps the dream-reading will tell you. I can only show you how it is done. I set the skull down on the table and lean back to look at it. The skull is enveloped in a profound silence that seems nothingness itself. The silence does not reside on the surface, but is held like smoke within. It is unfathomable, eternal, a disembodied vision cast upon a point in the void. There is a sadness about it, an inherent pathos. I have no words for it. Please show me, I say. I pick the skull up from the table once again and feel its weight in my hands. Smiling faintly, she takes the skull from me and painstakingly wipes off the dust. She returns a whiter skull to the table. This is how to read old dreams, the Librarian begins. Watch carefully. Yet please know I can only imitate, I cannot actually read. You are the only one who can read the dreams. First, turn the skull to face you in this way, then gently place your hands on either side. She touches her fingertips to the temples of the skull. Now gaze at the forehead. Do not force a stare, but focus softly. You must not take your eyes from the skull. No matter how brilliant, you must not look away. Brilliant? Yes, brilliant. Before your eyes, the skull will glow and give off heat. Trace that light with your fingertips. That is how old dreams are read. I go over the procedure in my head. It is true that I cannot picture what kind of light she means or how it should feel, but I understand the method. Looking at the skull beneath her slender fingers, I am overcome with a strong sense of deja vu. Have I seen this skull before? The leached colorlessness, the depression in the forehead. I feel a humming, just as when I first saw her face. Is this a fragment of a real memory or has time folded back on itself? I cannot tell. What is wrong? she asks. I shake my head. Nothing. I think I see how. Let me try. Perhaps we should eat first, she says. Once you begin to work, there will not be time. She brings out a pot of vegetable stew and warms it on the stove. The minestra simmers, filling the room with a wonderful aroma. She ladles it out into two bowls, slices walnut bread, and brings this simple fare to the table. We sit facing each other and speak not a word as we eat. The seasoning is unlike anything I have ever tasted, but good nonetheless. By the time I finish eating, I am warmed inside. Then she brings us cups of hot tea. It is an herbal infusion, slightly bitter and green. Dreamreading proves not as effortless as she has explained. The threads of light are so fine that despite how I concentrate the energies in my fingertips, I am incapable of unravelling the chaos of vision. Even so, I clearly sense the presence of dreams at my fingertips. It is a busy current, an endless stream of images. My fingers are as yet unable to grasp any distinct message, but I do apprehend an intensity there. By the time I finally manage to extract two dreams, it is already past ten o clock. I return to her the dream-spent skull, take off my glasses, and rub my eyes. Are you tired? she asks. A little, I reply. My eyes are not accustomed to this. Drinking in the light of the old dreams makes my eyes hurt. I cannot look too long for the pain. I am told it is this way at first, she says. Your eyes are not used to the light; the readings are difficult. Work slowly for a while. Returning the old dream to the vaults, the Librarian prepares to go home. She opens the lid of the stove, scoops out the red coals with a tiny shovel, and deposits them in a bucket of sand. You must not let fatigue set in, she warns. That is what my mother said. Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself. Good advice. To tell the truth, I do not know this thing called mind , what it does or how to use it. It is only a word I have heard. The mind is nothing you use, I say. The mind is just there. It is like the wind. You simply feel its movements. She shuts the lid of the stove, takes away the enamel pot and cup to wash, and returns wrapped in a blue coat of coarse material. A remnant torn from a bolt of the sky, worn so many years that it too has lost memory of its origins. She stands, absorbed in thought, in front of the extinguished stove. Did you come from some other land? she asks, as if the thought had only then occurred to her. I think so. And what was that land like? I cannot remember, I say. I cannot recall a single thing. They seem to have taken all memory of my old world when they took my shadow. I only know it was far, far away. But you understand these things of mind? A little. My mother also had mind, she says. But my mother disappeared when I was seven. Perhaps it was because she had this mind, the same as you. Disappeared? Yes, she vanished. I do not want to talk about it. It is wrong to talk about people who have disappeared. Tell me about the town where you lived. You must remember something. I can only remember two things, I say. That the town I lived in had no wall around it, and that our shadows followed us wherever we walked. Yes, we all had shadows. They were with us constantly. But when I came to this Town, my shadow was taken away. You cannot come into Town with that, said the Gatekeeper. Either you lose the shadow or forget about coming inside. I surrendered my shadow. The Gatekeeper had me stand in an open space beside the Gate. The three-o clock afternoon sun fixed my shadow fast to the ground. Keep still now, the Gatekeeper told me. Then he produced a knife and deftly worked it in between the shadow and the ground. The shadow writhed in resistance. But to no avail. Its dark form peeled neatly away. Severed from the body, it was an altogether poorer thing. It lost strength. The Gatekeeper put away his blade. What do you make of it? Strange thing once you cut it off, he said. Shadows are useless anyway. Deadweight. I drew near the shadow. Sorry, I must leave you for now, I said. It was not my idea. I had no choice. Can you accept being alone for a while? A while? Until when? asked the shadow. I did not know. Sure you won t regret this later? said the shadow in a hushed voice. its wrong, I tell you. There s something wrong with this place. People can t live without their shadows, and shadows can t live without people. Yet they re splitting us apart. I don t like it. There s something wrong here. But it was too late. My shadow and I were already torn apart. ( Once I am settled in, I will be back for you, I said. This is only temporary, not forever. We will be back together again. The shadow sighed weakly, and looked up at me. The sun was bearing down on us both. Me without my shadow, my shadow without me. That s just wishful thinking, said the shadow. I don t like this place. We have to escape and go back to where we came from, the two of us. How can we return? We do not know the way back. Not yet, but I ll find out if its the last thing I do. We need to meet and talk regularly. You ll come, won t you? I nodded and put my hand on my shadow s shoulder, then returned to the Gatekeeper. While the shadow and I were talking, the Gatekeeper had been gathering up stray rocks and flinging them away. As I approached, the Gatekeeper brushed the dust from his hands on his shirttails and threw a big arm around me. Whether this was intended as a sign of welcome or to draw my attention to his strength, I could not be certain. Trust me. Your shadow is in good hands, said the Gatekeeper. We give it three meals a day, let it out once a day for exercise. Nothing to worry about. Can I see him from time to time? Maybe, said the Gatekeeper. If I feel like letting you, that is. And what would I have to do if I wanted my shadow back? I swear, you are blind. Look around, said the Gatekeeper, his arm plastered to my back. Nobody has a shadow in this Town, and anybody we let in never leaves. Your question is meaningless. So it was I lost my shadow. Leaving the Library, I offer to walk her home. No need to see me to my door, she says. I am not frightened of the night, and your house is far in the opposite direction. I want to walk with you, I say. Even if I went straight home, I would not sleep. We walk side-by-side over the Old Bridge to the south. On the sandbar midstream, the willows sway in the chill spring breeze. A hard-edged moon shines down on the cobblestones at our feet. The air is damp, the ground slick. Her long hair is tied with twine and pulled around to tuck inside her coat. Your hair is very beautiful, I say. Is it? she says. Has anyone ever complimented you on your hair before? No, she says, looking at me, her hands in her pockets. When you speak of my hair, are you also speaking about something in you? Am I? It was just a simple statement. She smiles briefly. I am sorry. I suppose I am unused to your way of speaking. Her home is in the Workers Quarter, an area in disrepair at the southwest corner of the Industrial Sector. The whole of this district is singularly desolate. No doubt the Canals once conducted a brisk traffic of barges and launches, where now-stopped sluices expose dry channel beds, mud shriveling like the skin of a prehistoric organism. Weeds have rooted in cracks of the loading docks, broad stone steps descending to where the waterline once was. Old bottles and rusted machine parts poke up through the mire; a flat-bottom boat slowly rots nearby. Along the Canals stand rows of empty factories. Their gates are shut, windowpanes are missing, handrails have rusted off fire escapes, walls a tangle of ivy. Past these factory row is the Workers Quarter. Betraying a former opulence, the estate is a confusion of subdivided rooms parceled out to admass occupation of impoverished laborers. Even now, she explains, the laborers have no trade to practice. The factories have closed, leaving the disowned with a meager livelihood, making small artifacts for the Town. Her father had been one of these craftsmen. Crossing a short stone bridge over the last canal brings us to the precinct of her housing block. A nexus of passageways, like medieval battlements, entrenches the cramped grounds between one building and the next. The hour approaches midnight. All but a few windows are dark. She takes me by the hand and leads me through this maze as if trying to evade predatory eyes. She stops in front of one building and bids me good-night. Good-night, I say. Whereupon I climb the slope of the Western Hill alone and return to my own lodgings. Skull, Lauren Bacall, Library Outside it was dark, it was drizzling, and the streets were filled with people going home from work. It took forever to catch a cab. Even under usual circumstances I have a hard time catching cabs. By which I should explain that in order to avoid potentially dangerous situations, I make a point of not taking the first two empty cabs that come my way. The Semiotecs had fake taxis, and you sometimes heard about them swooping off with a Calcutec who d just finished a job. Of course, these might have been rumors, since I don t know anyone it actually happened to. Still, you can t be too careful. That s why I always take the subway or bus. But this time I was so tired and drowsy that I couldn t face the prospect of cramming into a rush-hour train. I decided to take a taxi, even if it took longer. Once in the cab, I nearly dozed off several times and panicked to false alert. As soon as I got home to my own bed, I could sleep to my heart s content. A cab was no place to sleep. To keep myself awake, I concentrated on the baseball game being broadcast on the cab radio. I don t follow baseball, so for convenience sake I rooted for the team currently at bat and against the team in the field. My team was behind, 3-1. It was two outs with a man on second base when there was a hit, but the runner stumbled between second and third, ending the side without a run. The sportscaster called it rotten playing, and even I thought so too. Sure, anyone can take a spill, but you don t stumble between second and third in the middle of a baseball game. This blunder apparently so fazed my team s pitcher that he threw the opponent s lead-off batter an easy ball down the middle, which the guy walloped into the left-field bleachers for a home run. When the taxi reached my apartment, the score was 4-1. I paid the fare, collected my hatbox and foggy brain, and got out. The drizzle had almost stopped. There wasn t a speck of mail in the mailbox. Nor any message on the answering machine. No one had any business with me, it seemed. Fine. I had no business with anyone else either. I took some ice out of the freezer, poured myself a large quantity of whiskey, and added a splash of soda. Then I got undressed and, crawling under the covers, sat up in bed and sipped my drink. I felt like I was going to fade out any second, but I had to allow myself this luxury. A ritual interlude I like so much between the time I get into bed and the time I fall asleep. Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book. As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air. I d finished half my whiskey when the telephone rang. The telephone was perched on a round table two meters away from the foot of the bed. I wasn t about to leave my nice warm bed and walk all the way over to it, so I simply watched the thing ring. Thirteen rings, fourteen rings, what did I care? If this had been a cartoon, the telephone would be vibrating midair, but of course that wasn t happening. The telephone remained humbly on the table ringing on and on. I drank my whiskey and just looked at it. Next to the telephone were my wallet and knife and that gift hatbox. It occurred to me that I should open it. Maybe it was something perishable that I should put in the refrigerator, something living, or even something urgent . But I was too tired. Besides, if any of the above had been the giver s intention, you would think he d have told me about it. When the telephone stopped ringing, I bottomed-up my whiskey, turned off the bedside light, and shut my eyes. A huge black net of sleep that had been poised in ambush fell over me. As I drifted off, I thought, do you really expect me to know what s going on? When at last I awoke, it was half light out. The clock read six-fifteen, but I couldn t tell whether it was morning or evening. I pulled on a pair of slacks and leaned out my door to check the neighbor s doormat. The morning edition was lying there, which led me to conclude it was morning. Subscribing to a paper comes in handy at times like this. Maybe I ought to. So I d slept ten hours. My body still craved rest. With nothing particular that required my attention for the day, I could happily have gone back to bed. But on second thought, I got up. Rise and shine with the sun, I always say. I took a shower, scrubbing my body well, and shaved. I did my usual twenty-five minutes of calisthenics, I threw together breakfast. The refrigerator was all but plundered of its contents. Time to restock. I sat down with my orange juice and wrote out a shopping list. It filled up one page and spilled over onto a second. I dumped my dirty clothes into the washing machine and was busily brushing off my tennis shoes at the sink when I remembered the old man s mystery present. Dropping the shoes, I washed my hands and went to get the hatbox. Light as ever for its bulk a nasty lightness somehow. Lighter than it had any need to be. Something put me on edge. Call it occupational intuition. I did a quick scan of the room. It was unnervingly quiet. Almost sound-removed. But my test cough did sound like a cough. And when I flicked open my spring-action knife and whacked the handle on the table, the noise was right. Having experienced sound-removal, I had gotten suspicious. I opened a window onto the balcony. I could hear cars and birds. What a relief. Evolution or no evolution, a world ought to have sound. / I cut the tape, careful not to damage the contents of the box. On top was crumpled newspaper. I spread open a few sheets the Mainichi Shimbun, three weeks old, no news of note. I crumpled the pages up again and tossed them away. There must have been two weeks worth of wadded newspapers in the box, all of them Mainichi. With the newspapers out of the way, I now found a layer of those polyethylene? styrofoam? those pinkie-sized wormoids they use for packing. I scooped them up and into the garbage they went. This was getting to be one chore of a present. With half the plastic cheez puffs out of the way, there surfaced an item wrapped in more newspaper. I didn t like the look of it. I went into the kitchen and returned with a can of Coke. I sat on the edge of the bed and drank the whole thing. I trimmed a fingernail. A black-breasted bird appeared on the balcony and hopped around on the deck table, pecking spryly at some crumbs. A peaceful morning scene. Eventually, I turned my attention back to the newspaper-wrapped object and gently removed it from the box. The newspaper was wound with further orbits of tape, looking very much like a piece of contemporary art. An elongated watermelon in shape, though again, with hardly any weight to it. I cleared the table and undid the tape and newspaper. It was an animal skull. Great, I thought, just great. Did the old duffer really imag-ine I d be overjoyed to receive this? He had to have a screw loose, giving a skull for a present. The skull was similar to a horse s in shape, but considerably smaller. From my limited knowledge of biology, I deduced that the skull had been attached to the shoulders of a narrow-faced, hoofed, herbivorous, and not overly large species of mammal. lets see now. I checked my mental catalogue of animals matching that description. Deer, goat, sheep, donkey, antelope… I couldn t remember any others. I placed the skull on top of the TV. Very stylish. If I were Ernest Hemingway, I d have put it over the mantle, next to the moose head. But my apartment, of course, had no fireplace. No fireplace and no sideboard, not even a coat closet. So on top of the TV it was. I dumped the rest of the packing material into the trash. There at the bottom of the box was a long object rolled up in newspaper. Unwrapping it, I found a pair of stainless-steel fire tongs exactly like the ones the old man had used on his skull collection. I was reminded of the ivory baton of a Berlin Philharmonic conductor. All right, all right, I ll play along, I said out loud. I went over to the skull on the TV and tapped it on the forehead. Out came a mo-oan like the nasal whine of a large dog. Not the hard clunk that I expected. Odd, yes, but nothing to get upset about. If that whiny moan was the noise it made, who was I to argue? Tapping the skull got old quick. I sat down and dialed the System to check my schedule. My rep answered and told me he d penciled in a job four days hence, was that okay? No problem, I told him. I thought about verifying the shuffling clearance, but decided not to. It would have entailed a lot of extra talk. The papers were all in order, the remuneration already squared away. Besides, the old man said he d avoided going through agents to keep things secret. Better not complicate matters. Added to which, I was none too enthused with my rep. Tall, trim, thirtyish, the type who thinks he s on top of every-thing. I try my best to avoid talking with guys like that any more than I have to. I finished my business and hung up, then went into the living room and relaxed on the sofa with a beer to watch a video of Humphrey Bogart s Key Largo. I love Lauren Bacall in Key Largo. Of course, I love Bacall in The Big Sleep too, but in Key Largo she s practically allegorical. Watching the TV screen, my eyes just naturally drifted up to the animal skull resting on top. Which robbed me of my usual concentration. I stopped the video where the hurricane hits, promising myself to see the rest later, and kicked back with the beer, gazing blankly at the item atop the TV. I got the sneaking suspicion that Vd seen the skull before. But where? And how? I pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer and threw it over the skull so I could finish watching Key Largo. Finally, I could concentrate on Lauren Bacall. At eleven o clock, I left the apartment, headed for the supermarket near the station, stopping next at the liquor store for some red wine, soda water, and orange juice. At the cleaners I claimed a jacket and two shirts; at the stationery shop I purchased a pen, envelopes, and letter paper; at the hardware store, the finest-grain whetstone in the place. Then to the bookshop for two magazines, the electrical goods store for light bulbs and cassette tapes, the photo store for a pack of Polaroid film. Last, it was the record shop, where I picked out a few disks. By now, the whole back seat of my tiny coupe was taken up with shopping bags. I must be a born shopper. Every time I go to town, I come back, like a squirrel in November, with mounds of little things. Even the car I drove was purely for shopping. I only bought it because I was already buying too much stuff to carry home by myself. I was lugging a shopping bag when I happened to pass a used-car dealer and went in and saw all the different cars they had. Now I m not particulary crazy about cars, nor do I know much about them. So I said simply: I want a car, any make, nothing fancy, nothing big. The middle-aged salesman started to pull out a catalog, but I didn t want to look at any catalog. I only wanted a car for shopping, I told the guy, pure and simple. It didn t need go fast for the highway, didn t need to look smart for dates. No family outings either. I had no use for a high-performance engine or air-conditioning. No car stereo, no sun roof, no super radials. All I wanted was a decent compact that cornered well, didn t belch exhaust, wasn t too noisy, and wouldn t break down on me. And if it came in dark blue, so much the better. The car the guy showed me was yellow. I didn t think much of the color, but otherwise it was just what I described. And because it was an old model, the price was right. This is how cars were meant to be, said the salesman. If you really want to know, I think people are nuts. No argument from me. That s how I came to own my shopping car. I wound up my purchases and pulled into my convenient neighborhood fast-food restaurant. I ordered shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer. The shrimp were straight out of the freezer, the onion rings soggy. Looking around the place, though, I failed to spot a single customer banging on a tray or complaining to a waitress. So I shut up and finished my food. Expect nothing, get nothing. From the restaurant window I could see the expressway, with cars of all makes, colors, and styles barrelling along. I remembered the jolly old man and his chubby granddaughter. No matter how much I liked them, I couldn t help thinking they had to be living in the outer limits. That inane elevator, the open pit in the back of a closet, INKlings, and sound removal I wouldn t believe it in a novel. And then, they give me an animal skull as a memento. Waiting for my after-meal coffee, I thought about the chubby girl. I thought about her square earrings and pink suit and pink high heels. I thought about her body, her calves and the flesh around her neck and the build of her face and… well, things like that. I could recall each detail with alarming clarity, yet the composite was indistinct. Curious. Maybe it was because I hadn t slept with an overweight woman in a while that I just couldn t picture a heavyset woman in the altogether. The last time I d slept with a fat female was the year of the Japanese Red Army shoot-out in Karuizawa. The woman had extraordinary thighs and hips. She was a bank teller who had always exchanged pleasantries with me over the counter. I knew her from the midriff up. We became friendly, went out for a drink once, andWled up sleeping together. Not until we were in bed did I notice that the lower half of her body was so demographically disproportionate. It was because she played table tennis all through school, she had me know, though I didn t quite grasp the causal relationship. I didn t know table tennis led to below-the-belt corporeality. Still, her plumpness was charming. Resting an ear on her hip was like lying in a meadow on an idyllic spring afternoon, her thighs as soft as freshly aired futon, the rolling flow of her curves leading gracefully to her pubis. When I complimented her on her qualities, though, all she said was, Oh yeah? After I left the restaurant, I went to the library nearby. At the reference desk sat a slender young woman with long black hair, engrossed in a paperback book. Do you have any reference materials pertaining to the mammalian skull? I asked. Huh? she said, looking up. References on mammalian skulls, I repeated, saying each word separately. Mam-ma-li-an-skulls? she repeated, almost singing. It sounded so lovely the way she said it, like the first line of a poem. She bit her lower lip briefly and thought. Just a minute, please. I ll check, she said, turned around to type the word mammal on her computer keyboard. Some twenty titles appeared on the screen. She used a light pen and two-thirds of the titles disappeared at once. She then hit the memory function, and this time she typed the word skeleton. Seven or eight titles appeared, of which she saved two and then entered into the memory alongside the previous selections. Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps. While she was nimbly operating her computer, I was looking down at her long hair and elegant backside. I didn t know exactly what to make of her. She was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn t a reason in the world not to find her appealing. She pressed the copy button for a printout of the screen data, which she handed to me. You have nine titles to select from, she said. 1. A GUIDE TO MAMMALS 2. PICTORIAL ATLAS OF MAMMALS 3. THE MAMMALIAN SKELETON 4. THE HISTORY OF MAMMALS 5. I, A MAMMAL 6. MAMMALIAN ANATOMY 7. THE MAMMALIAN BRAIN 8. ANIMAL SKELETONS 9. BONES SPEAK I had an allowance of three books with my card. I chose nos. 2, 3, and 8. Nos. 5 and 9 did sound intriguing, but they didn t seem to have much to do with my investigation, so I left them for some other time. I m sorry to say that Pictorial Atlas of Mammals is for library use only and cannot be borrowed overnight, she said, scratching her temple with a pen. This is extremely important. Please, do you think it would be at all possible to lend it to me for just one day? I begged, I ll have it back tomorrow noon, I promise. I m sorry, but the Pictorial Atlas series is very popular, and these are library rules. I could get in trouble for lending out reference materials. One day. Please. Nobody will find out. She hesitated, teasing the tip of her tongue between her teeth. A cute pink tongue. / Okay. But it has to be pack here by nine-thirty in the morning. Thank you, I said. You re welcome, she said. Really, I m very grateful. May I offer you some token of my thanks. Anything special I could do for you? Yes, as a matter of fact. There s a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor across the way. I d love a double cone of mocha chip on top of pistachio. Would you mind? Mocha chip on pistachio coming right up! Whereupon I left the library and headed for the Baskin-Robbins. She was still not back with the books by the time I returned, so I stood there at her desk with ice cream cone in hand. Two old men reading newspapers took turns stealing looks at this curious sight. Luckily the ice cream was frozen solid. Having it drip all over the place was the only thing that could have made me feel more foolish. The paperback she d been reading was face-down on the desk. Time Traveller, a biography of H. G.Weils, volume two. It was not a library book. Next to it were three well-sharpened pencils and some paperclips. Paperclips! Everywhere I went, paperclips! What was this? Perhaps some fluctuation in the gravitational field had suddenly inundated the world with paperclips. Perhaps it was mere coincidence. I couldn t shake the feeling that things weren t normal. Was I being staked out by paperclips? They were everywhere I went, always just a glance away. Something went ding. Come to think of it, there d been a couple of dings lately. First animal skulls, now paperclips. It seemed as if a pattern was establishing itself, but what relationship could there be between skulls and paperclips? Before much longer, the woman returned carrying the three volumes. She handed them to me, accepting the ice cream cone in exchange. Thank you very much, she said. Thank you, I said. She held the cone low behind the desk. Glimpsed from above, the nape of her neck was sweet and defenseless. By the way, though, why all the paperclips? I asked. Pa-per-clips? she sang back. To keep papers together, of course. Everybody uses them. Don t you? She had a point. I thanked her again and left the library. Paperclips were indeed used by everyone. A thousand yen will buy you a lifetime supply. Sure, why not? I stopped into a stationery shop and bought myself a lifetime supply. Then I went home. Back at the apartment, I put away the groceries. I hung my clothes in the wardrobe. Then, on top of the TV, right next to the skull, I spread a handful of paperclips. Nice and artsy. Like a composition of down pillow with ice scraper, ink bottle with lettuce. I went out on the balcony to get a better look at my TV-top arrangement. There was nothing to suggest how the skull and the paperclips went together. Or was there? I sat down on the bed. Nothing came to mind. Time passed. An ambulance, then a rightwing campaign sound-truck passed. I wanted a whiskey, but I passed on that too. I needed to have my brain absolutely sharp. I went to the kitchen and sat down with the library books. First I looked up medium-sized herbivorous mammals and their skeletal structures. The world had far more mediumsized herbivorous mammals than I d imagined. No fewer than thirty varieties of deer alone. I fetched the skull from the TV, set it on the table, and began the long, laborious process of comparing it with each of the pictures in the books. One hour and twenty minutes and ninety-three species later, I had made no progress. I shut all three books and piled them up in one corner of the table. Then I threw up my arms and stretched. What to do? Put on a video of John Ford s Quiet Man. I was sprawled on the bed, ha&h-browned, when the doorbell rang. I looked through the peephole and saw a middle-aged man in a Tokyo Gas uniform. I cracked open the door with the chain still bolted. Routine safety check, said the man. One moment please, I replied, slipping into the bedroom to pocket my knife before opening the door. I smelled something fishy. There d been a gas inspector visit the month before. I let the guy in and went on watching The Quiet Man. The inspector pulled out a pressure gauge and proceeded to check the water heater for the bath, then went into the kitchen where the skull was sitting on the table. I left the TV on and tiptoed to the kitchen in time to catch him whisking the skull into a black plastic bag. I flicked open my knife and dived at him, circling around to clamp him in an armlock, the blade thrust right under his nose. The man immediately threw the bag down. I… I didn t mean any harm, he stammered. I just saw the thing and suddenly wanted it. A sudden impulse. Forgive me. Like hell, I sneered. Tell me the truth or I ll slit your throat, I said. It sounded unbelievably phony especially since the knife wasn t under his chin but the man was convinced. Okay, okay, don t hurt me. I ll tell the truth, he whim-pered. The truth is, I got paid to come in here and steal the thing. Two guys came up to me on the street and asked if I wanted to make a quick fifty-thousand yen. If I came through, I d get another fifty thousand. I didn t want to do it, but one of the guys was a gorilla. Honest. Please, don t kill me. I ve got two daughters in high school. Two daughters in high school? Y… yeah. Which high school? The older one s a junior at Shimura Metropolitan. The younger one just started at Futaba in Yotsuya, he said. The combination was odd enough to be real. I decided to believe him. As a precaution, I fished the man s wallet out of his pocket and checked its contents. Five crisp ten-thousand-yen bills. Also a Tokyo Gas ID and a color photo of his family. Both daughters were done up in fancy New Year s kimono, neither of them exactly a beauty. I couldn t tell which was Shimura and which Futaba. Other than that, there was only a Sugamo-Shinanomachi train pass. The guy looked harmless, so I folded the knife up and let him go. All right, get out of here, I said, handing back his wallet. Thank you, thank you, the gas inspector said. But what do I do now? I took their money but didn t come through with the goods. I had no idea. Those Semiotecs I m sure that s who they were weren t what you could call gentlemen. They did whatever they felt like, whenever. Which is why no one could read their modus operandi. They might gouge this guy s eyes out, or they might hand him the other fifty thousand yen and wish him better luck next time. One guy s a real gorilla, you say? I asked. That s right. A monster. The other guy s small, only about a meter and a half; he was wearing a tailor-made suit. Both looked like very tough characters. I instructed the man to leave the building through the parking garage. There was a narrow passage out back, which was not easy to detect. Probably he d get away without incident. Thank you very much, said the gas inspector. Please don t tell my company about this. Fine, I told him. Then I pushed him out, locked the door, and bolted the chain. I went into the kitchen and removed the skull from the plastic bag. Well, at least I d learned one thing: the Semiotecs wanted the skull. I considered the circumstances. I had the skull, but didn t know what it meant. They knew what/it meant or had a vague notion of what it meant but/didn t have the skull. Evensteven. At this point, I had two! options: one, explain everything to the System, so they d protect me from the Semiotecs and safeguard the skull; or two, contact the chubby girl and get the lowdown on the skull. I didn t like option no. 1. There d be pointless debriefings and investigations. Huge organizations and me don t get along. They re too inflexible, waste too much time, have too many stupid people. Option no. 2, however, was impossible. I didn t know how to go about contacting the chubby girl. I didn t have her phone number. Of course, I could have gone to the building, but leaving my own apartment now was dangerous. And how was I going to talk my way into that top-security building? I made up my mind: I would do nothing. I picked up the stainless-steel tongs and once again tapped the crown of the skull lightly. It made the same mo-oan as before. A hollow, pathetic cry, almost as if it were alive. How was this possible? I picked up the skull. I tapped it again. That mo-oan again. Upon closer scrutiny, the sound seemed to emanate from one particular point on the skull. I tapped again and again, and eventually located the exact position. The moaning issued from a shallow depression of about two centimeters in diameter in the center of the forehead. I pressed my fingertip into the depression. It felt slightly rough. Almost as if something had been broken off. Something, say, like a horn… A horn? If it really were a horn, that d make it a one-horned animal. A one-horned animal? I flipped through the Pictorial Atlas of Mammals again, looking for any mammal with a single horn in the middle of its forehead. The rhinoceros was a possibility, but this was not a rhinoceros skull. Wrong size, wrong shape. I got some ice out of the refrigerator and poured myself an Old Crow. It was getting late in the day, and a drink seemed like a good idea. I opened a can of asparagus, which I happen to like. I canapeed some smoked oysters on crispbread. I had another whiskey. Okay. For convenience sake, I agreed to entertain the remote hypothesis that the owner of said skull might be, conceivably, a unicorn. What else did I have to go on? I had a unicorn skull on my hands. Great, I thought, just great. Why were all these bizarre things happening to me? What had I ever done to deserve this? I was just your practical-minded, lone-wolf Calcutec. I wasn t overly ambitious, wasn t greedy. Didn t have family, friends, or lovers. I saved my money. When I retired, I was planning to settle down and learn the cello or Greek. How on earth did I get mixed up in this? After that second whiskey, I opened the telephone book and dialed the number. Reference desk, please, I said. Ten seconds later, the long-haired librarian was on the line. Pictorial Atlas of Mammals here, I said. Hello. Thank you for the ice cream, she said. You re welcome, I said. But could I ask you for another favor? A favor? she said. Depends on the species of favor. Can you look up what you ve got on unicorns? U-ni-corns? she repeated. Is that too much to ask? Silence. She was probably biting her lip. You want me to look up what about unicorns? Everything, I said. Please, its four-fifteen. The library gets very busy around closing time. Why don t you come around first thing tomorrow morning? Then you could look up all about unicorns or tricorns or whatever you like. This can t wait. I m afraid its exceedingly urgent. Oh, really? she said. How urgent? its a matter of evolution, I said. E-vo-lu-ti-on? She seemed to be caught off guard. By evolution, you wouldn t be referring to the evolving-over-mil-lions-of-years kind of evolution, would you? Excuse me if I misunderstand, but why then do you need things so quickly? What s one more day? There s evolution that takes millions of years and there s evolution that only takes three hours. I can t explain over the phone. But I want you to believe me, this is dead urgent. This will affect the next step in human evolution. Like in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Exactly, I said. I d watched it countless times on video. She didn t say anything. Can t decide if I m some kind of a maniac or a harmless nut? I took a shot. You got it, she said. I don t know how I m going to convince you, but I m really not crazy. A little narrowminded or stubborn maybe, but crazy I m not. Hmph, was all she said to that. Well, you talk normal enough. And you didn t seem too weird. You even bought me ice cream. All right, at six-thirty, meet me at the cafe across from the library. I ll bring you the books. Fair enough? Unfortunately, its not so simple. I, uh, can t go into details, but I can t leave my place unattended just now. Sorry, but You mean… she trailed off. I could her hear drumming her front teeth with her nails. Let me get this straight. You want me to bring the books to your doorstep? You must be crazy. That s the general idea, I said sheepishly. Though, of course, I m not demanding. I m requesting. You re requesting an awful lot. I know, I know, I said. But you wouldn t believe what s been going on. Another lengthy silence. I ve worked in this library for five years now and never have I come across any borrower as impudent as you, she fumed. Nobody asks to have books hand-delivered. And with no previous record! Don t you think you re being just a little high-handed? Actually, I do think so, too. I m very sorry. I realize its highly irregular, but I have no other choice. I don t know why I m doing this, she said, but I don t suppose you d want to tell me the way to your place? The Colonel I doubt you can regain your shadow, speaks the Colonel as he sips his coffee. Like most persons accustomed to years of giving orders, he speaks with his spine straight and his chin tucked in. It is greatly to his credit that his long career in the military has not made him officious. Rather, it has bestowed an order to his life, along with many decorations. Exceedingly quiet and thoughtful, the Colonel is an ideal neighbor for me. He is also a veteran chessplayer. As the Gatekeeper warned you, the old officer continues, one of the conditions of this Town is that you cannot possess a shadow. Another is that you cannot leave. Not as long as the Wall surrounds the Town. I did not know I would forfeit my shadow forever, I say. I thought it would be temporary. No one told me about this. No one tells you anything in this Town, says the Colonel. The Town has its own protocol. It has no care for what you know or do not know. Regrettable… What will become of my shadow? Nothing at all. It waits and then it dies. Have you seen it since your arrival? No. I tried several times and the Gatekeeper turned me away. For security reasons, he said. Predictable, the Colonel says, shaking his head. The Gatekeeper is entrusted with the care of shadows. He shoulders the entire responsibility. The Gatekeeper can be a difficult man; harsh when not called for, blind to his own faults. Your only move is to wait for his mood to change. Then I will wait, I say. Yet what does he have to fear from me? The Colonel finishes his coffee, then takes out a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. The white square of cloth, like his uniform, is worn but clean and pressed. He fears that you and your shadow will become one again. At that, he returns his attention to the chessboard. This chess differs from the game I know in its pieces and their movements. Hence the old officer always wins. Ape takes High Priest, you realize? Go ahead, I say. I move a Parapet to cover the Ape s retreat. The Colonel nods, then glares again at the board. The tides of fortune have almost swept victory to the old officer s feet. Even so, he does not rush into the fray as he compounds strategem upon strategem. For him, the game is not to defeat the opponent, but to challenge his own abilities. It is not easy to surrender your shadow and simply let it die, he says, deftly maneuvering his Knight between the Parapet and my King. This leaves my King vulnerable. He will have checkmate in three moves. No, it is not easy, stresses the Colonel. The pain is the same for everyone, though it is one thing to tear the shadow away from an innocent child who has not gotten attached tf> it, and quite another to do it to an old fool. I was in my sixtf fifth year when they put my shadow to death. By that age we already had had a lifetime together. How long do shadows live once they have Been torn away? That depends on the shadow, says the old officef Some shadows are fit and some are not. In this Town, severed shadows do not live long. The climate is harsh and the winters long. Few shadows live to see the spring. I study the chessboard and concede defeat. You can gain yourself five moWs, says the Colonel. Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over. Then give me a moment, I say. While I reassess my options, the Colonel walks over to the window and parts the thick curtains slightly to peer out. These few weeks will be the hardest for you. It is the same as with broken bones. Until they set, you cannot do anything. Believe me. You mean to say I am anxious because my shadow still is not dead? I do, the old officer nods. I, too, remember the feeling. You are caught between all that was and all that must be. You feel lost. Mark my words: as soon as the bones mend, you will forget about the fracture. You mean to say, as soon as my mind vanishes? The Colonel does not answer. Excuse me for asking so many questions, I say. I know nothing about this Town. How it works, why it needs the Wall, why the beasts are herded in and out every day. I do not understand any of it. You are the only one I can ask. Not even I know all the rules, says the old officer under his breath. There are things that cannot and should not be explained. But there is no cause for concern. The Town is fair in its own way. The things you need, the things you need to know, one by one the Town will set these before you. Hear me now: this Town is perfect. And by perfect, I mean complete. It has everything. If you cannot see that, then it has nothing. A perfect nothing. Remember this well. That is as much as anyone can tell you; the rest you must learn for yourself. Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can. If the Workers Quarter, where the Librarian lives, is a place of past brilliance, then the Bureaucratic Quarter, which spreads to the southwest, is a place of color fading into parched light. Here, the spectacle of spring has dissolved into summer, only to be eroded by the winter winds. All along the gentle slope known as the Western Hill stand rows of two-story Official Residences. The buildings, originally three-family dwellings with common entrance halls, are painted white. The siding and doors and window frames every detail is white. None of the these Official Residences have hedges, only narrow flower beds below tiny porches. The flower beds are carefully tended, with plantings of crocus and pansy and marigold in spring, cosmos in autumn. The flowers in bloom make the buildings look all the more tawdry. Strolling the Hill, one can imagine its former splendor: children playing gaily in the streets, piano music in the air, warm supper scents. Memories feign through scarcely perceived doors of my being. Only later did this slope become the Bureaucratic Quarter, which, as the name suggests, was an area for government officials, undistinguished ranks of officialdom lodged in mediocrity. They too have gone, but to where? After the bureaucrats came the retired military. Surrendering their shadows, cast off like molted insect shells, each pursues his own end on the windswept Western Hill. With little left to protect, they live a half dozen old majordomos to a house. The Gatekeeper indicated that I was to find my room in one of these Official Residences. My cohabitants proved to be the Colonel, four commissioned officers under him, and a sergeant, who cooks the meals and does the chores. The Colonel passes judgment on everything, as was his duty in the army. These career soldiers have known numerous battle preparations and maneuvers, revolutions and counterrevolutions and outright wars. They who had never wanted family are now lonely old men. Rising early each morning, they charge through breakfast before going their own way, as if by tacit order, to their respective tasks. One scrapes peeling paint from the building, one repairs furniture, one takes a wa£on down the Hill to haul food rations back up. Their morning duties done, they reassemble to spend the rest of the day sitting in the sun, reminiscing about past campaigns. The room assigned to me is on the upper story facing east. The view is largely blocked by hills in the foreground, although I can see the River and the Clocktower. The plaster walls of the room are stained, the window sills thick with dust. There is an old bed, a small dining table, and two chairs. The windows are hung with mildewed curtains. The floorboards are badly damaged and creak when I walk. In the morning, the Colonel appears from the adjacent room. We eat breakfast together, then repair to a dark, curtained room for a session of chess. There is no other way to pass the daylight hours. It must be frustrating. A young man like you should not be shut indoors on such a beautiful day, says the Colonel. I think so too. Though I must say, I appreciate gaining a chess companion. The rest of the men have no interest in games. I suppose I am the only one with any desire to play chess at this late date. Tell me, why did you give up your shadow? The old officer examines his fingers, sun-strafed against the curtains, before leaving the window to reinstall himself across the table. I wish I could say. It may have been that I spent so long defending this Town I could not walk away. If I left, my whole life would have been for nothing. Of course, it makes no difference now. Do you ever regret giving up your shadow? I have no regrets, speaks the old officer, shaking his head. I never do anything regrettable. I crush his Ape with my Parapet, creating an opening for my King. Good move, says the Colonel. Parapet guards against penetration and frees up the King. At the same time, it allows my Knight greater range. While the old officer contemplates his next move, I boil water for a new pot of coffee. Appetite, Disappointment, Leningrad While I waited for her, I fixed supper. I mashed an umeboshi salt plum with mortar and pestle to make a sour-sweet dressing; I fried up a few sardines with abura-age tofu-puffs in grated yama-imo taro batter; I sauteed a celery-beef side dish. Not a bad little meal. There was time to spare, so I had a beer as I tossed together some soy-simmered myoga wild ginger and green beans with tofu-sesame sauce. After which I stretched out on my bed, gazed at the ceiling, and listened to old records. The hour was well past seven, and outside it was quite dark. But still no sign of her. Maybe she thought better of the whole proposition and decided not to come. Could I blame her? The reasonable thing would have been not to come. Yet, as I was choosing the next record, the doorbell rang. I checked through the fisheye lens, and there stood the woman from the library with an armload of books. I opened the door with the chain still in place. See anyone milling around in the hall? I asked. Not a soul, she said. I undid the chain, let her in, and quickly relocked the door. Something sure smells good, she said. Mind if I peek in the kitchen? Go right ahead. But are you sure there weren t any strange characters hanging around the entrance? No one doing street repairs, or just sitting in a parked car? Nothing of the kind, she said, plunking the books down on the kitchen table. Then she lifted the lid of each pot on the range. You make all this yourself? Sure thing. I can dish some up if you want. Pretty everyday fare, though. Not at all. I m wild about this sort of food. I set out the dishes on the kitchen table. We sat down to eat, and I watched awestruck as she, with casual aplomb, lay the entire spread to waste. She had a stunning appetite. I made myself a big Old Crow on the rocks, flash-broiled a block of atsu-age fried tofu, and topped it with grated daikon radish to go along with my drink. I offered her a drink, but she wasn t interested. Could I have a bit of that atsu-age, though? she asked. I pushed the remaining halfblock over to her and just drank my bourbon. There s rice, if you like. And I can whip up some miso soup in a jiff, I said. Fabulous! she exclaimed. I prepared a katsuobushi dried-bonito broth and added wakatne seaweed and scallions for the miso soup. I served it alongside a bowl of rice and umeboshi. Again she leveled it all in no time flat. All that remained was a couple of plum pits. Then she sighed with satisfaction. Mmm, that was good. My compliments to the chef, she said. Never in my life had I seen such a slim nothing of a figure eat like such a terror. As the cook, I was gratified, and I had to hand it to her she d done the job with a certain allconsuming beauty. I was overwhelmed. And maybe a little disgusted, Tell me, do you always eat this much? I blurted out. Why, yes. This is about normal for me, she said, unembarrassed. But you re so thin. Gastric dilation, she confessed. It doesn t matter matter how much I eat. I don t gain weight. Must run up quite a food bill, I said. Truth was, she d gastrically dilated her way through tomorrow s dinner in one go- its frightening, she said. Most of my salary disappears into my stomach. Once again, I offered her something to drink, and this time she agreed to a beer. I pulled one out from the refrigerator and, just in case, a double ration of frankfurter links, which I tossed into the frying pan. Incredible, but except for the two franks I fended for myself, she polished off the whole lot. A regular machine gun of a hunger, this girl! As a last resort, I set out ready-made potato salad, then dashed off a quick wakame-tuna. combo for good measure. Down they went with her second beer. Boy, this is heaven! she purred. I d hardly touched a thing and was now on my third Old Crow on the rocks. While you re at it, there s chocolate cake for dessert, I surrendered. Of course, she indulged. I watched in disbelief, almost seeing the food backing up in her throat. Probably that was the reason I couldn t get an erection. It was the first time I hadn t risen to the occasion since the Tokyo Olympic Year. its all right, nothing to get upset about, she tried to comfort me. After dessert, we d had another round of bourbon and beer, listened to a few records, then snuggled into bed. And like I said, I didn t get an erection. Her naked body fit perfectly next to mine. She lay there stroking my chest. It happens to everyone. You shouldn t get so worked up over it. But the more she tried to cheer me, the more it only drove home the fact that I d flopped. Aesthetically, I remembered reading, the flaccid penis is more pleasing than the erect. But somehow, under the circumstances, this was little consolation. When was the last time you slept with someone? she asked. Maybe two weeks ago, I said. And that time, everything went okay? Of course, I said. Was my sex life to be questioned by everyone these days? Your girlfriend? A call girl. A call girl? Don t you feel, how shall I put it, guilt? Well… no. And nothing… since then? What was this cross-examination? No, I said. I ve been so busy with work, I haven t had time to pick up my dry-cleaning, much less wank. That s probably it, she said, convinced. What s probably it? Overwork. I mean, if you were really that busy… Maybe so. Maybe it was because I hadn t slept in twenty-six hours the night before. What s your line of work? Oh, computer-related business. My standard reply. It wasn t really a lie, and since most people don t know much about computers, they generally don t inquire any further. Must involve long hours of brain work. I imagine the stress just builds up and knocks you temporarily out of service. That was a kind enough explanation. All this crazihess all over the place. Small wonder I wasn t worse than impotent. Why don t you put your ear to my tummy, she said, rolling the blanket to the foot of the bed. Her body was sleek and beautiful. Not a gram of fat, her breasts cautious buds. I placed my ear against the soft, smooth expanse above her navel, which, uncannily, betrayed not the least sign of the quantities of food within. It was like that magic coat of Harpo Marx, devouring everything in sight. Hear anything? she asked. I held my breath and listened. There was only the slow rhythm of her heartbeat. I don t hear a thing, I said. You don t hear my stomach digesting all that food? she asked. I doubt digestion makes much sound. Only gastric juices dissolving things. Of course, there should be some peristaltic activity, but that s got to be quiet, too. But I can really feel my stomach churning. Why don t you listen again? I was content to keep in that position. I lazily eyed the wispy mound of pubic hair just ahead. I heard nothing that sounded like gastrointestinal action. I recalled a scene like this in The Enemy Below. Right below my ear, her iron stomach was stealthily engaged in digestive operations, like that U-boat with Curt Jurgens on board. I gave up and lifted my head from her body. I leaned back and put my arm around her. I smelled the scent of her hair. Got any tonic water? she asked. In the refrigerator, I said. I have an urge for a vodka tonic. Could I? Why not? Can I fix you one? You bet. She got out of bed and walked naked to the kitchen to mix two vodka tonics. While she did that, I put on my favorite Johnny Mathis album. The one with Teach Me Tonight. Then I hummed my way back to bed. Me and my limp penis and Johnny Mathis. How old are you? she asked, returning with the drinks. Thirty-five, I said. How about you? Almost thirty. I look young, but I m really twenty-nine, she said. Honestly, though, aren t you a baseball player or something? I was so taken aback, I spit out vodka tonic all over my chest. Where d you get an idea like that? I said. I haven t even touched a baseball in fifteen years. I don t know, I thought maybe I d seen your face on TV. A ball game. Or maybe you were on the News? Never done anything newsworthy. A commercial? Nope, I said. Well, maybe it was your double. You sure don t look like a computer person, she said, pausing. You re hard to figure. You go on about evolution and unicorns, and you carry a switchblade. She pointed to my slacks on the floor. The knife was sticking out of the back pocket. Oh, I said, in my line of work, you can t be too careful. I process data. Biotechnology, that sort of thing. Corporate interests involved. Lately there s been a lot of data piracy. She didn t swallow a word of it. Why don t we deal with our unicorn friends. That was your original purpose in calling me over here, wasn t it? Now that you mention it, I said. She unhanded me and picked up the two volumes from the bedside. One was Archaeology of Animals, by Burtland Cooper, and the other Jorge Luis Borges s Book of Imaginary Beings. Let me give you a quick gloss, she began. Borges treats the unicorn as a product of fantasy, not unlike dragons and mermaids. Whereas Cooper doesn t rule out the possibility that unicorns might have existed at one time, and approaches the matter more scientifically. Unfortunately neither one has much to report about the subject. Even dragons and trolls fare better. My guess is that unicorns never made much noise, so to speak. That s about all I could come up with at the library. That s plenty. I really appreciate it. Now I have another request. Do you think you could read a few of the better parts and tell me about them? She first opened The Book of Imaginary Beings. And this is what we learned: There are two types of unicorns: the Western variety, which originates in Greece, and the Chinese variety. They differ completely in appearance and in people s perception of them. Pliny, for instance, described the unicorn of the Greeks like this: His body resembles a horse, his head a stag, his feet an Elephant, his taile a boar; he loweth after an hideous manner, one black home he hath in the mids of his forehead, bearing out two cubits in length: by report, this wild beast cannot possibly be caught aliue. By contrast, there is the Chinese unicorn: It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and the hooves of a horse. Its short horn, which grows out of its forehead, is made of flesh; its coat, on its back, is of five mixed colours, while its belly is brown or yellow. The difference was not simply one of appearance. East and West could not agree on character and symbolism either. The West saw the unicorn as fierce and aggressive. Hence a horn one meter long. Moreover, according to Leonardo da Vinci, the only way to catch a unicorn was to snare its passions. A young virgin is set down in front of it and the beast is so overcome with desire that it forgets to attack, and instead rests its head on the lap of the maiden. The significance of the horn is not easily missed. The Chinese unicorn, on the other hand, is a sacred animal of portent. It ranks along with the dragon, the phoenix, and the tortoise as one of the Four Auspicious Creatures, and merits the highest status amongst the Three-Hundred-Sixty-Five Land Animals. Extremely gentle in temperament, it treads with such care that even the smallest living thing is unharmed, and eats no growing herbs but only withered grass. It lives a thousand years, and the visitation of a unicorn heralds the birth of a great sage. So we read that the mother of Confucius came upon a unicorn when she bore the philosopher in her womb: Seventy years later, some hunters killed a qilin, which still had a bit of ribbon around its horn that Confucius mother had tied there. Confucius went to look at the Unicorn and wept because he felt what the death of this innocent and mysterious animal foretold, and because in that ribbon lay his past. The qilin appears again in Chinese history in the thirteenth century. On the eve of a planned invasion of India, advance scouts of Genghis Khan encounter a unicorn in the middle of the desert. This unicorn has the head of a horse and the body of a deer. Its fur is green and it speaks in a human tongue: Time is come for you to return to the kingdom of your lord. One of the Genghis s Chinese ministers, upon consultation, explained to him that the t animal was a jiao-shui, a variety of the qilin. For four hundred years the great army has been warring in western regions, he said. Heaven, which has a horror of bloodshed, gives warning through the jiao-shui. Spare the Empire for Heaven s sake; moderation will give boundless pleasure. The Emperor desisted in his war plans. In the East, peace and tranquility; in the West, aggression and lust. Nonetheless, the unicorn remains an imaginary animal, an invention that can embody any value one wishes to project. There is, however, one species of porpoise called the narwhal or sea unicorn . It does not have a horn so much as an overgrown fang of the upper jaw protruding from the top of its head. The horn measures an average of two-and-half meters and is spiralled with a drill-like threading. This cetacean is rather rare and does not figure in medieval records. Other mammals resembling the unicorn existed in the Mesozoic, but gradually died out. She picked up the Archaeology of Animals and continued: Two species of ruminants existed during the Mesozoic Period, approximately twenty million years ago, on the North American continent. One is the cyntetokerus, the other is the curanokerus. Both have three horns, although clearly one of the horns is freestanding. The cyntetokerus is a smallish horse cum deer with a horn on either temple and a long Yshaped prong at the end of its nose. The curanokerus is slightly rounder in the face, and sprouts two deer-like antlers from its crown and an addi-tional horn that curves up and out in back. Grotesque creatures on the whole. Within the mammal class, single-horned or odd-number-horned animals are a rarity and even something of an evolutionary anomaly. That is to say, they are evolutionary orphans, and for the most part, odd-horned species like these have virtually perished from the earth. Even among dinosaurs, the three-horned giant tricerotops was an exception. Considering that horns are close-range weapons, three would be superfluous. As with the tines of forks, the larger number of horns serves to increase surface resistance, which would in turn render the act of thrusting cumbersome. Furthermore, the laws of dynamics dictate a high risk of triadic horns becoming wedged into mid-range objects, so that none of the three horns might actually penetrate the body of the opponent. In the event of an animal confronting several predators, having three horns could hamper fluidity of motion; extracting horns from the body of one for redirection to the next could be awkward. These drawbacks proved the downfall of the three-horned animal: the twin horn or single horn was a superior design. The advantage of two horns rests with the bilateral symmetry of the animal body. All animals, manifesting a right-left balance that parcels their strength into two ligatures, regulate their patterns of growth and movement accordingly. The nose and even the mouth bear this symmetry that essentially divides functions into two. The navel, of course, is singular, though this is something of a retrograde feature. Conversely, the penis and vagina form a pair. Most important are the eyes. Both for offense and defense, the eyes act as the control tower, so a horn located in close proximity to the eyes has optimum effectiveness. The prime example is the rhinoceros, which in principle is a unicorn . It is also extremely myopic, and that single horn is the very cause. For all practical purposes, the rhinoceros is a cripple. In spite of this potentially fatal flaw, the rhinoceros has survived for two unrelated reasons: it is an herbivore and its body is covered with thick armor plating. Hence it does not want for defense. And for that reason, the rhinoceros falls by body-type to the tricerotops category. Nonetheless, all pictures that exist of unicorns show the breed to be of a different stripe. It has no armor; it is entirely defenseless, not unlike a deer. If the unicorn were then also nearsighted, the defect could be disastrous. Even highly developed senses of smell or hearing would be inadequate to save it. Hunters would find it easy prey. Moreover, having no horn to spare, as it were, could severely disadvantage the unicorn in the event of an accident. Still another failing of the single horn is the difficulty of wielding it with force, just as incisors cannot distribute a force equivalent to that of molars due to principles of balance. The heavier the mass, the greater the stability when force is applied. Obviously, the unicorn suffers physio-dynamic defects. You re a real whiz at these explanations, aren t you? I interrupted her. She burst into a smile and trekked two fingers up my chest. Logically, she continued, there s only one thing that could have saved the unicorn from extinction. And this is very important. Any idea? I folded my hands where her fingers were and thought it over a bit, inconclusively. No natural predators? I ventured. Bingo, she said, and gave me a little peck on the lips. Now think: what conditions would give you no natural predators? Well, isolation, for one thing. Somewhere no hunter could get to, I hypothesized. Someplace, say, on a high plateau, like in Conan Doyle s Lost World. Or down deep, like a crater. Brill! she exclaimed, tapping her index finger now on my heart. And in fact, there is a recorded instance of a unicorn discovered under exactly such circumstances. I gulped. Uh-oh. She resumed her exposition: In 1917, the very item was discovered on the Russian front. This was September, one month prior to the October Revolution, during the First World War, under the Kerensky Cabinet, immediately before the start of the Bolshevik Coup. At the Ukranian front line, a Russian infantryman unearthed a mysterious object while digging a trench. He tossed it aside, thinking it a cow or an elk skull. Had that been the end of it, the find would have remained buried in the obscurity of history. It happened, however, that the soldier s commanding lieutenant had been a graduate student in biology at the University of Petrograd. He noted a peculiarity to the skull and, returning with it to his quarters, he subjected it to thorough examination. He determined the specimen to be the skull of a species of animal as yet unknown. Immediately, he contacted the Chairman of the Faculty of Biology at the University and requested that a survey team be dispatched. None, of course, was forthcoming. Russia was in upheaval at the time. Food, gunpowder, and medicine had first priority. With communications crippled by strikes, it was impossible for a scientific team to reach the front. Even if they had, the circumstances would not have been conducive to a site survey. The Russian army was suffering defeat after defeat; the front line was being pushed steadily back. Very probably the site was already German territory. The lieutenant himself came to an ignoble end. He was hanged from a telegraph pole in November that year. Many bourgeois officers were disposed of similarly along the Ukraine-Moscow telegraph line. The lieutenant had been a simple biology major without a shred of politics in him. Nonetheless, immediately before the Bolshevik army seized control, the lieutenant did think to entrust the skull to a wounded soldier being sent home, promising him a sizable compensation upon delivery of the skull, packed securely in a box, to the Faculty Chairman in Petrograd. The soldier was released from military hospital but waited until February of the following year before visiting the University, only to find the gates closed indefinitely. Most of the lecturers either had been driven away or had fled the country. Prospects for the University reopening were not very promising. He had little choice but to attempt to claim his money at a later date. He stored the skull with his brother-in-law who kept a stable in Petrograd, and returned to his home village some three hundred kilometers from the former Imperial Capital. The soldier, for reasons undetermined, never visited Petrograd again, and the skull lay in the stable, forgotten. The skull next saw the light of day in 1935. Petrograd had since become Leningrad. Lenin was dead, Trotsky was in exile, and Stalin was in power. No one rode horses in Leningrad. The old stablemaster had sold half his premises, and in the remaining half he opened a small hockey goods shop. Hockey? I dropped my jaw. In the Soviet thirties? Don t ask me. That s just what I read. But who knows? Post-Revolution Leningrad was quite your modern grad. Maybe hockey was all the rage. In any case, while inventorying his storeroom, the former stablemaster happened upon the box his brother-in-law had left with him in 1918. There in the box was a note addressed to the Chairman of the Faculty of Biology, Petrograd University. The note read: Please bestow fair compensation upon the bearer of this item. Naturally, the purveyor of hockey goods took the box to the University now Leningrad University and sought a meeting with the Chairman. This proved impossible. The Chairman was a Jew who had been sent to Siberia after Trotsky s downfall. This former stablemaster, however, was no fool. With no other prospect, rather than hold onto an unidentified animal skull for the remainder of his days and not receive a kopek, he found another professor of biology, recounted the tale, and prevailed upon him for a likely sum. He went home a few rubles richer. The professor examined every square millimeter of the skull, and ultimately arrived at the same conclusion as had the lieutenant eighteen years earlier to wit, that the skull did not correspond to any extant animal, nor did it correspond to any animal known to have existed previously. The morphology most closely resembled that of a deer. It had to have been a hoofed herbivore, judging by the shape of the jaw, with slightly fuller cheeks. Yet the greatest difference between this species and the deer was, lo and behold, the single horn that modified the middle of its forehead. The horn was still intact. It was not in its entirety, to be sure, but what remained sufficed to enable the reconstruction of a straight horn of approximately twenty centimeters in length. The horn had been broken off close to the three-centimeter mark, its basal diameter approximately two centimeters. Two centimeters, I repeated to myself. The skull I d received from the old man had a depression of exactly two centimeters in diameter. Professor Petrov for that was his name summoned several assistants and graduate students, and the team departed for the Ukraine on a one-month dig at the site of the young lieutenant s trenches. Unfortunately, they failed to find any similar skull. They did, however, discover a number of curious facts about the region, a tableland commonly known as the Voltafil. The area rose to a moderate height and as such formed one of the few natural strategic vantage points over the rolling plains. During the First World War, the German and Austro-Hungarian armies repeatedly engaged the Russians in bloody confrontations on all sides. During the Second World War, the entire plateau was bombarded beyond recognition, but that was years later. What interested Professor Petrov about the Voltafil was that the bones unearthed there differed significantly from the distribution of species elsewhere in that belt of land. It prompted the professor to conjecture that the present tableland had in ancient times not been an outcropping at all, but a crater, the cradle for untold flora and fauna. In other words, a lost world. A plateau out of a crater might tax the imagination, but that is precisely what occurred. The walls of the crater were perilously steep, but over millions of years the walls crumbled due to an intractable geological shift, convexing the base into an ordinary hill. The unicorn, an evolutionary misfit, continued to live on this outcropping isolated from all predation. Natural springs abounded, the soil was fertile, conditions were idyllic. Professor Petrov submitted these findings to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in a paper entitled A Consideration of the Lifeforms of the Voltafil Tableland, detailing a total of thirty-six zoological, botanical, and geological proofs for his lost world thesis. This was August 1936. It was dismally received. No one in the Academy took him seriously. His defense of his paper coincided with a power struggle within this august institution between Moscow University and Leningrad University. The Leningrad faction was not faring well; their purportedly non-dialectical research incurred a summary trouncing. Still, Petrov s hypothesis aside, there was the undeniably physical evidence of the skull itself. A cadre of specialists devoted the next year to excruci-ating study of the object in question. They were forced to conclude that it, indeed, was not a fabrication but the unadulterated skull of a single-horned animal. Ultimately, the Committee at the Soviet Academy of Sciences pronounced the embarrassing artifact a spontaneous mutation in Cervidce odocoileus with no evolutionary consequence, and as such not a subject fit for research. The skull was returned to Professor Petrov at Leningrad University. Thereafter, Professor Petrov waited valiantly for the winds of fortune to shift and his research to achieve recognition, but the onslaught of the German-Soviet War in 1940 dashed all such hopes and he died in 1943, a broken man. It was during the 1941 Siege of Leningrad that the skull vanished. Leningrad University was reduced to rubble by German shelling. Virtually the entire campus let alone a single animal skull was destroyed. And so the one piece of solid evidence proving the existence of the unicorn was no more. So there s not one concrete thing that remains? I said. Nothing except for photographs. Photographs? That s right, photographs of the skull. Professor Petrov took close to a hundred photos of the skull, a few of which escaped destruction in the war. They ve been preserved in the Leningrad University library reference collection. Here, photographs like this. She handed me the book and pointed to a black-and-white reproduction on the page. A somewhat indistinct photograph, but it did convey the general shape of the skull. It had been placed on a table covered with white cloth, next to a wristwatch for scale, a circle drawn around the middle of the forehead to indicate the position of the horn. It appeared to be of the same species as the skull the old man had given me. I glanced over at the skull atop the TV. The T-shirt covering made it look like a sleeping cat. Should I tell her? Nah, a secret s a secret because you don t let people in on it. Do you think the skull really was lost in the War? I asked her. I suppose, she said, teasing her bangs around her little finger. If you believe the book, the city of Leningrad was practically steamrollered, and seeing how the University district was the hardest hit, its probably safe to say that the skull was obliterated along with everything else. Of course, Professor Petrov could well have whisked it away somewhere before the fighting started. Or it could have been among the spoils carted off by the German troops… Whatever happened to it, nobody has spoken of seeing the skull since. I studied the photograph and slammed the book shut. Could the skull in my possession be the very same Voltafil-Leningrad specimen? Or was it yet another unicorn skull excavated at a different place and time? The simplest thing would be to ask the old man. Like, where did you get that skull? And why did you give it to me? Well, I was supposed to see the old prankster when I handed over the shuffled data. I d ask him then. Meanwhile, not to be worrying. I stared absently at the ceiling, with her head on my chest, her body snug against my side. I put my arm around her. I felt relieved, in a way, about the unicorn skull, but the state of my prowess was unchanged. No matter. Erection or not, she kept on drawing dreamy patterns on my stomach. The Wall ON an overcast afternoon I make my way down to the Gatehouse and find my shadow working with the Gatekeeper. They have rolled a wagon into the clearing, replacing the old floorboards and sideboards. The Gatekeeper planes the planks and my shadow hammers them in place. The shadow appears altogether unchanged from when we parted. He is still physically well, but his movements seem wrong. Ill-humored folds brew about his eyes. As I draw near, they pause in their labors to look up. Well now, what brings you here? asks the Gatekeeper. I must talk to you about something, I say. Wait till our next break, says the Gatekeeper, readdressing himself to the half-shaved board. My shadow glances in my direction, then resumes working. He is furious with me, I can tell. I go into the Gatehouse and sit down at the table to wait for the Gatekeeper. The table is cluttered. Does the Gatekeeper clean only when he hones his blades? Today the table is an accumulation of dirty cups, coffee grounds, wood shavings, and pipe ash. Yet, in the racks on the wall, his knives are ordered in what approaches an aesthetic ideal. The Gatekeeper keeps me waiting. I gaze at the ceiling, with arms thrown over the back of the chair. What do people do with so much time in this Town? Outside, the sounds of planing and hammering are unceasing. When finally the door does open, in steps not the Gatekeeper but my shadow. I can t talk long, whispers my shadow as he hurries past. I came to get some nails from the storeroom. He opens a door on the far side of the room, goes into the right storeroom, and emerges with a box of nails. I ll come straight to the point, says my shadow under his breath as he sorts through the nails. First, you need to make a map of the Town. Don t do it by asking anyone else. Every detail of the map must be seen with your own eyes. Everything you see gets written down, no matter how small. How soon do you need it? I say. By autumn, speaks the shadow at a fast clip. Also, I want a verbal report. Particularly about the Wall. The lay of it, how it goes along the Eastern Woods, where the River enters and where it exits. Got it? And without even looking my way, my shadow disappears out the door. I repeat everything he has told me. Lay of the Wall, Eastern Woods, River entrance and River exit. Making a map is not a bad idea. It will show me the Town and use my time well. Soon the Gatekeeper enters. He wipes the sweat and grime off his face, and drops his bulk in the chair across from me. Well, what is it? May I see my shadow? I ask. The Gatekeeper nods a few times. He tamps tobacco into his pipe and lights up. Not yet, he says. It is too soon. The shadow is too strong. Wait till the days get shorter. Just so there is no trouble. He breaks his matchstick in half and flips it onto the table. For your own sake, wait, he continues. Getting too close to your shadow makes trouble. Seen it happen before. I say nothing. He is not sympathetic. Still, I have spoken with my shadow. Surely the Gatekeeper will let down his guard again. The Gatekeeper rises. He goes to the sink, and sloshes down cup after cup of water. How is the work? Slow, but I am learning, I say. Good, says the Gatekeeper. Do a good job. A body who works bad thinks bad, I always say. I listen to my shadow nailing steadily. How about a walk? proposes the Gatekeeper. I want to show you something. I follow him outside. As we enter the clearing, I see my shadow. He is standing on the wagon, putting the last sideboard in place. The Gatekeeper strides across the clearing toward the Watchtower. The afternoon is humid and gray. Dark clouds sweep low over the Wall from the west, threatening to burst at any second. The sweat-soaked shirt of the Gatekeeper clings to his massive trunk and gives off a sour stink. This is the Wall, says the Gatekeeper, slapping the broad side of the battlements. Seven yards tall, circles the whole Town. Only birds can clear the Wall. No entrance or exit except this Gate. Long ago there was the East Gate, but they walled it up. You see these bricks? Nothing can dent them, not even a cannon. The Gatekeeper picks up a scrap of wood and expertly pares it down to a tiny sliver. Watch this, he says. He runs the sliver of wood between the bricks. It hardly penetrates a fraction of an inch. He tosses the wood away, and draws the tip of his knife over the bricks. This produces an awful sound, but leaves not a mark. He examines his knife, then puts it away. This Wall has no mortar, the Gatekeeper states. There is no need. The bricks fit perfect; not a hair-space between them. Nobody can put a dent in the Wall. And nobody can climb it. Because this Wall is perfect. So forget any ideas you have. Nobody leaves here. The Gatekeeper lays a giant hand on my back. You have to endure. If you endure, everything will be fine. No worry, no suffering. It all disappears. Forget about the shadow. This is the End of the World. This is where the world ends. Nowhere further to go. On my way back to my room, I stop in the middle of the Old Bridge and look at the River. I think about what the Gatekeeper has said. The End of the World. Why did I cast off my past to come here to the End of the World? What possible event or meaning or purpose could there have been? Why can I not remember? Something has summoned me here. Something intractable. And for this, I have forfeited my shadow and my memory. The River murmurs at my feet. There is the sandbar midstream, and on it the willows sway as they trail their long branches in the current. The water is beautifully clear. I can see fish playing among the rocks. Gazing at the River soothes me. Steps lead down from the bridge to the sandbar. A bench waits under the willows, a few beasts lay nearby. Often have I descended to the sandbar and offered crusts of bread to the beasts. At first they hesitated, but now the old and the very young eat from my hand. As the autumn deepens, the fathomless lakes of their eyes assume an ever more sorrowful hue. The leaves turn color, the grasses wither; the beasts sense the advance of a long, hungry season. And bowing to their vision, I too know a sadness. Dressing, Watermelon, Chaos The clock read half past nine when she got out of bed, picked up her clothes from the floor, and slowly, leisurely, put them on. I stayed in bed, sprawled out, one elbow bent upright, watching her every move out of the corner of my eye. One piece of clothing at a time, liltingly graceful, not a motion wasted, achingly quiet. She zipped up her skirt, did the buttons of her blouse from the top down, lastly sat down on the bed to pull on her stockings. Then she kissed me on the cheek. Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress? Now completely composed, she ran her hand through her long black hair. All at once, the room breathed new air. Thanks for the food, she said. My pleasure. Do you always cook like that? When I m not too busy with work, I said. When things get hectic, its catch-as-catchcan with leftovers. Or I eat out. She grabbed a chair in the kitchen and lit up a cigarette. I don t do much cooking myself. When I think about getting home after work and fixing a meal that I m going to polish off in ten minutes anyway, its so-o depressing. While I got dressed, she pulled a datebook out of her handbag and scribbled something, which she tore off and handed to me. Here s my phone number, she said. If you have food to spare or want to get together or whatever, give me a call. I ll be right over. After she left, carrying off the several volumes on mammals to be returned to the library, I went over to the TV and removed the T-shirt. I reflected upon the unicorn skull. I didn t have an iota of proof, but I couldn t help feeling that this mystery skull was the very same specimen of Voltafil-Leningrad renown. I seemed to sense, somehow, an odor of history drifting about it. True, the story was still fresh in my mind and the power of suggestion was strong. I gave the skull a light tap with the stainless-steel tongs and went into the kitchen. I washed the dishes, then wiped off the kitchen table. It was time to start. I switched the telephone over to my answering service so I wouldn t be disturbed. I disconnected the door chimes and turned out all the lights except for the kitchen lamp. For the next few hours I needed to concentrate my energies on shuffling. My shuffling password was End of the World . This was the title of a profoundly personal drama by which previously laundered numerics would be reordered for computer calculation. Of course, when I say drama, I don t mean the kind they show on TV. This drama was a lot more complex and with no discernible plot. The word is only a label, for convenience sake. All the same, I was in the dark about its contents. The sole thing I knew was its title, End of the World. The scientists at the System had induced this drama. I had undergone a full year of Calcutec training. After I passed the final exam, they put me on ice for two weeks to conduct comprehensive tests on my brainwaves, from which was extracted the epicenter of encephalographic activity, the core of my consciousness. The patterns were transcoded into my shuffling password, then re-input into my brain this time in reverse. I was informed that End of the World was the title, which was to be my shuffling password. Thus was my conscious mind completely restructured. First there was the overall chaos of my conscious mind, then inside that, a distinct plum pit of condensed chaos as the center. They refused to reveal any more than this. There is no need for you to know more. The unconscious goes about its business better than you ll ever be able to. After a certain age our calculations put it at twenty-eight years human beings rarely experience alterations in the overall configuration of their consciousness. What is commonly referred to as self-improvement or conscious change hardly even scratches the surface. Your End of the World core consciousness will continue to function, unaffected, until you take your last breath. Understand this far? I understand, I said. All efforts of reason and analysis are, in a word, like trying to slice through a watermelon with sewing needles. They may leave marks on the outer rind, but the fruity pulp will remain perpetually out of reach. Hence, we separate the rind from the pulp. Of course, there are idle souls out there who seem to enjoy just nibbling away on the rind. In view of all contingencies, they went on, we must protect your password-drama, isolating it from any superficial turbulence, the tides of your outer consciousness. Suppose we were to say to you, your End of the World is inhered with such, such, and such elements. It would be like peeling away the rind of the watermelon for you. The temptation would be irresistible: you would stick your fingers into the pulp and muck it up. And in no time, the hermetic extractability of our password-drama would be forfeited. Poof! You would no longer be able to shuffle. That s why we re giving you back your watermelon with an extra thick rind, one scientist interjected. You can call up the drama, because it is your own self, after all. But you can never know its contents. It transpires in a sea of chaos into which you submerge empty-handed and from which you resurface empty-handed. Do you follow? I believe so, I said. One more point, they intoned in solemn chorus. Properly speaking, should any individual ever have exact, clear knowledge of his own core consciousness? I wouldn t know, I said. Nor would we, said the scientists. Such questions are, as they say, beyond science. Speaking from experience, we cannot conclude otherwise, admitted one. So in this sense, this is an extremely sensitive experiment. Experiment? I recoiled. Yes, experiment, echoed the chorus. We cannot tell you any more than this. Then they instructed me on how to shuffle: Do it alone, preferably at night, on neither a full nor empty stomach. Listen to three repetitions of a sound-cue pattern, which calls up the End of the World and plunges consciousness into a sea of chaos. Therein, shuffle the numerical data. When the shuffling was done, the End of the World call would abort automatically and my consciousness would exit from chaos. I would have no memory of anything. Reverse shuffling was the literal reverse of this process. For reverse shuffling, I was to listen to a reverse-shuffling sound-cue pattern. This mechanism was programmed into me. An unconscious tunnel, as it were, input right through the middle of my brain. Nothing more or less. Understandably, whenever I shuffle, I am rendered utterly defenseless and subject to mood swings. With laundering, its different. Laundering is a pain, but I myself can take pride in doing it. All sorts of abilities are brought into the equation. Whereas shuffling is nothing I can pride myself on. I am merely a vessel to be used. My consciousness is borrowed and something is processed while I m unaware. I hardly feel I can be called a Calcutec when it comes to shuffling. Nor, of course, do I have any say in choice of calc-scheme. I am licensed in both shuffling and laundering, but can only follow the prescribed order of business. And if I don t like it, well, I can quit the profession. I have no intention of turning in my Calcutec qualifications. Despite the meddling and the raised eyebrows at the System, I know of no line of work that allows the individual as much freedom to exercise his abilities as being a Calcutec. Plus the pay is good. If I work fifteen years, I will have made enough money to take it easy for the rest of my life. Shuffling is not impeded by drinking. In fact, the experts indicate that moderate drinking may even help in releasing nervous tension. With me, though, its part of my ritual that I always shuffle sober. I remain wary about the whole enterprise. Especially since they ve put the freeze on shuffling for two months now. I took a cold shower, did fifteen minutes of hard calisthenics, and drank two cups of black coffee. I opened my private safe, removed a miniature tape recorder and the typewritten paper with the converted data, and set them out on the kitchen table. Then I readied a notepad and a supply of five sharpened pencils. I inserted the tape, put on headphones, then started the tape rolling. I let the digital tape counter run to 16, then rewound it to 9, then forwarded it to 26. Then I waited with it locked for ten seconds until the counter numbers disappeared and the signal tone began. Any other order of operation would have caused the sounds on the tape to self-erase. Tape set, brand new notepad at my right hand, converted data at my left. All preparations completed. I switched on the red light to the security devices installed on the apartment door and on all accessible windows. No slip-ups. I reached over to push the PLAY switch on the tape recorder and as the signal tone began, gradually a warm chaos noiselessly drank me in. A Map of the End of the World The day after meeting my shadow, I immediately set about making a map of the Town. At dusk, I go to the top of the Western Hill to get a full perspective. The Hill, however, is not high enough to afford me a panorama, nor is my eyesight as it once was. Hence the effort is not wholly successful. I gain only the most general sense of the Town. The Town is neither too big nor too small. That is to say, it is not so vast that it eclipses my powers of comprehension, but neither is it so contained that the entire picture can be easily grasped. This, then, is the sum total of what I discern from the summit of the Western Hill: the heights of the Wall encompass the Town, and the River transects it north and south. The evening sky turns the River a leaden hue. Presently the Town resounds with horn and hoof. In order to determine the route of the Wall, I will ulti-mately need to follow its course on foot. Of course, as I can be outdoors only on dark, overcast days, I must be careful when venturing far from the Western Hill. A stormy sky might suddenly clear or it might let loose a downpour. Each morning, I ask the Colonel to monitor the sky for me. The Colonel s predictions are nearly always right. Harbor no fears about the weather says the old officer with pride. I know the direction of the clouds. I will not steer you wrong. Still, there can be unexpected changes in the sky, unaccountable even to the Colonel. A walk is always a risk. Furthermore, thickets and woods and ravines attend the Wall at many points, rendering it inaccessible. Houses are concentrated along the River as it flows through the center of the Town; a few paces beyond these areas, the paths might stop short or be swallowed in a patch of brambles. I am left with the choice either to forge past these obstacles or to return by the route I had come. I begin my investigations along the western edge of the Town, that is, from the Gatehouse at the Gate in the west, circling clockwise around the Town. North from the Gate extend fields deep to the waist in wild grain. There are few obstructions on the paths that thread through the grasses. Birds resembling skylarks have built their nests in the fields; they fly up from the weeds to gyre the skies in search of food. Beasts, their heads and backs floating in this sea of grasses, sweep the landscape for edible green buds. Further along the Wall, toward the south, I encounter the remains of what must once have been army barracks. Plain, unadorned two-story structures in rows of three. Beyond these is a cluster of small houses. Trees stand between the structures, and a low stone wall circumscribes the compound. Everything is deep in weeds. No one is in sight. The fields, it would seem, served as training grounds. I see trenches and a masonry flag stand. Perhaps the same military men, now retired to the Official Residences where I have my room, were at one time quar-tered in these buildings. I am in a quandary as to the circumstances that warranted their transfer to the Western Hill, thus leaving the barracks to ruin. Toward the east, the rolling fields come to an end and the Woods begin. They begin gradually, bushes rising in patches amongst intertwining tree trunks, the branches reaching to a height between my shoulders and head. Beneath, the undergrowth is dotted with tiny grassflowers. As the ground slopes, the trees increase in number, variety, and scale. If not for the random twittering of birds, all would be quiet. As I head up a narrow brush path, the trees grow thick, the high branches coming together to form a forest roof, obscuring my view of the Wall. I take a southbound trail back into Town, cross the Old Bridge, and go home. So it is that even with the advent of autumn, I can trace only the vaguest outline of the Town. In the most general terms, the land is laid out east to west, abutted by the North Wood and Southern Hill. The eastern slope of the Southern Hill breaks into crags that extend along the base of the Wall. To the east of the Town spreads a forest, more dark and dense than the North Wood. Few roads penetrate this wilderness, except for a footpath along the river-bank that leads to the East Gate and adjoins sections of the Wall. The East Gate, as the Gatekeeper had said, is cemented in solidly, and none may pass through. The River rushes down in a torrent from the Eastern Ridge, passes under the Wall, suddenly appears next to the East Gate, and flows due west through the middle of the Town under three bridges: the East Bridge, the Old Bridge, and the West Bridge. The Old Bridge is not only the most ancient but also the largest and most handsome. The West Bridge marks a turning point in the River. It shifts dramatically to the south, flowing back first slightly eastward. At the Southern Hill, the River cuts a deep Gorge. The River does not exit under the Wall to the south. Rather it forms a Pool at the Wall and is swallowed into some vast cavity beneath the surface. According to the Colonel, beyond the Wall lies a plain of limestone boulders, which stand vigil over countless veins of underground water. Of course, I continue my dreamreading in the evenings. At six o clock, I push open the door, have supper with the Librarian, then read old dreams. In the course of an evening, I read four, perhaps five dreams. My fingers nimbly trace out the labyrinthine seams of light as I grow able to invoke the images and echoes with increasing clarity. I do not understand what dreamreading means, nor by what principle it works, but from the reactions of the Librarian I know that that my efforts are succeeding. My eyes no longer hurt from the glow of the skulls, and I do not tire so readily. After I am through reading a skull, the Librarian places it on the counter in line with the skulls previously read that night. The next evening, the counter is empty. You are making progress, she says. The work goes much faster than I expected. How many skulls are there? A thousand, perhaps two thousand. Do you wish to see them? She leads me into the stacks. It is a huge schoolroom with rows of shelves, each shelf stacked with white beast skulls. It is a graveyard. A chill air of the dead hovers silently. How many years will it take me to read all these skulls? You need not read them all, she says. You need read only as many as you can read. Those that you do not read, the next Dreamreader will read. The old dreams will sleep. And you will assist the next Dreamreader? No, I am here to help you. That is the rule. One assistant for one Dreamreader. When you no longer read, I too must leave the Library. I do not fully comprehend, but this makes sense. We lean against the wall and gaze at the shelves of white skulls. Have you ever been to the Pool in the south? I ask her. Yes, I have. A long time ago. When I was a child, my mother walked with me there. Most people would not go there, but Mother was different. Why do you ask about the Pool? It intrigues me. She shakes her head. It is dangerous. You should stay away. Why would you want to go there? I want to learn everything about this place. If you choose not to guide me, I will go alone. She stares at me, then exhales deeply. Very well. If you will not listen, I must go with you. Please remember, though, I am so afraid of the Pool. There is something malign about it. It will be fine, I assure her, if we are together, and if we are careful. She shakes her head again. You have never seen the Pool. You cannot know how frightening it is. The water is cursed. It calls out to people. We will not to go too close, I promise, holding her hand. We will look at it from a distance. On a dark November afternoon, we set out for the Pool. Dense undergrowth closes in on the road where the River has carved the Gorge in the west slope of the Western Hill. We must change our course to approach from the east, via the far side of the Southern Hill. The morning rain has left the ground covered with leaves, which dampen our every step. We pass two beasts, their golden heads swaying as they stride past us, expressionless. Winter is near, she explains. Food is short, and the animals are searching for nuts and berries. Otherwise, they do not go very far from the Town. We clear the Southern Hill, and there are no more beasts to be seen, nor any road. As we continue west through deserted fields and an abandoned settlement, the sound of the Pool reaches our ears. It is unearthly, resembling nothing that I know. Different from the thundering of a waterfall, different from the howl of the wind, different from the rumble of a tremor. It may be described as the gasping of a gigantic throat. At times it groans, at times it whines. It breaks off, choking. The Pool seems to be snarling, I remark. She turns to me, disturbed, but says nothing. She parts the overhanging branches with her gloved hands and forges on ahead. The path is much worse, she says. It was not like this. Perhaps we should turn back. We have come this far. Let us go as far as we can. We continue for several minutes over the thicketed moor, guided only by the eerie call of the Pool, when suddenly a vista opens up before us. The wilderness stops and a meadow spreads flat out. The River emerges from the Gorge to the right, then widens as it flows toward where we stand. From the final bend at the edge of the meadow, the water appears to slow and back up, turning a deep sapphire blue, swelling like a snake digesting a small animal. This is the Pool. We proceed along the River toward the Pool. Do not go close, she warns, tugging at my arm. The surface may seem calm, but below is a whirlpool. The Pool never gives back what it takes. How deep is it? I do not know. I have been told the Pool only grows deeper and deeper. The whirlpool is a drill, boring away at the bottom. There was a time when they threw heretics and criminals into it. What happened to them? They never came back. Did you hear about the caverns? Beneath the Pool, there are great halls where the lost wander forever in darkness. The gasps of the Pool resound everywhere, rising like huge clouds of steam. They echo with anguish from the depths. She finds a piece of wood the size of her palm and throws it into the middle of the Pool. It floats for a few seconds, then begins to tremble and is pulled below. It does not resurface. Do you see? We sit in the meadow ten yards from the Pool and eat the bread we have carried in our pockets. The scene is a picture of deceptive repose. The meadow is embroidered in autumn flowers, the trees brilliant with crimson leaves, the Pool a mirror. On its far side are white limestone cliffs, capped by the dark brick heights of the Wall. All is quiet, save for the gasping of the Pool. Why must you have this map? she asks. Even with a map, you will never leave this Town. She brushes away the bread crumbs that have fallen on her lap and looks toward the Pool. Do you want to leave here? she asks again. I shake my head. Do I mean this as a no , or is it only that I do not know? I just want to find out about the Town, I say. The lay of the land, the history, the people… I want to know who made the rules, what has sway over us. I want even to know what lies beyond. She slowly rolls her head, then fixes upon my eyes. There is no beyond, she says. Did you not know? We are at the End of the World. We are here forever. I lie back and gaze up at the sky. Dark and overcast, the only sky I am allowed to see. The ground beneath me is cold and damp after the morning rain, but the smell of the earth is fresh. Winter birds take wing from the brambles and fly over the Wall to the south. The clouds sweep in low. Winter readies to lay siege. Frankfurt, Door, Independent Operants AS always, consciousness returned to me progressively from the edges of my field of vision. The first things to claim recognition were the bathroom door emerging from the far right and a lamp from the far left, from which my awareness gradually drifted inward like ice flowing together toward the middle of a lake. In the exact center of my visual field was the alarm clock, hands pointing to ten-twenty-six. An alarm clock I received as a memento of somebody s wedding. One of those clever designs. You had to press the red button on the left side of the clock and the black button on the right side simultaneously to stop it from ringing, which was said to preempt the reflex of killing the alarm and falling back to sleep. True, in order to press both left and right buttons simultaneously, I did have to sit upright in bed with the thing in my lap, and by then I had made a step into the waking world. I repeat myself, I know, but the clock was a thanks-for-coming gift from a wedding. Whose, I can t remember. But back in my late twenties, there d been a time when I had a fair number of friends. One year I attended wedding after wedding, whence came this clock. I would never buy a dumb clock like this of my own free will. I happen to be very good at waking up. As my field of vision came together at the alarm clock, I reflexively picked it up, set it on my lap, and pushed the red and black buttons with my right and left hands. Only then did I realize that it hadn t been ringing to begin with. I hadn t been sleeping, so I hadn t set the alarm. I put the alarm clock back down and looked around. No noticeable changes in the apartment. Red security-device light still on, empty coffee cup by the edge of the table, the librarian s cigarette lying in a saucer. Marlboro Light, no trace of lipstick. Come to think of it, she hadn t worn any makeup at all. I ran down my checklist. Of the five pencils in front of me, two were broken, two were worn all the way down, and one was untouched. The notepad was filled with sixteen pages of tiny digits. The middle finger of my right hand tingled, slightly, as it does after a long stint of writing. Finally, I compared the shuffled data with the laundered data to see that the number of entries under each heading matched, just like the manual recommends, after which I burned the original list in the sink. I put the notepad in a strongbox and transferred it and the tape recorder to the safe. Shuffling accomplished. Then I sat down on the couch, exhausted. I poured myself two fingers of whiskey, closed my eyes, and drank it in two gulps. The warm feel of alcohol traveled down my throat and spread to every part of my body. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, drank some water, and used the toilet. I returned to the kitchen, resharpened the pencils, and arranged them neatly in a tray. Then I placed the alarm clock by my bed and switched the telephone back to normal. The clock read eleven-fifty-seven. I had a whole day tomorrow ahead of me. I scrambled out of my clothes, dove into bed, and turned off the bedside light. Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn t stop it. I was going to sleep. I replayed my usual fantasy of the joys of retirement from Calcutecdom. I d have plenty of savings, more than enough for an easy life of cello and Greek. Stow the cello in the back of the car and head up to the mountains to practice. Maybe I d have a mountain retreat, a pretty little cabin where I could read my books, listen to music, watch old movies on video, do some cooking… And it wouldn t be half bad if my longhaired librarian were there with me. I d cook and she d eat. As the menus were unfolding, sleep descended. All at once, as if the sky had fallen. Cello and cabin and cooking now dust to the wind, abandoning me, alone again, asleep like a tuna. Somebody had drilled a hole in my head and was stuffing it full of something like string. An awfully long string apparently, because the reel kept unwinding into my head. I was flailing my arms, yanking at it, but try as I might the string kept coming in. I sat up and ran my hands over my head. But there was no string. No holes either. A bell was ringing. Ringing, ringing, ringing. I grabbed the alarm clock, threw it on my lap, and slapped the red and black buttons with both hands. The ringing didn t stop. The telephone! The clock read four-eighteen. It was dark outside. Four-eighteen a.m. I got out of bed and picked up the receiver. Hello? I said. No sound came from the other end of the line. Hello! I growled. Still no answer. No disembodied breathing, no muffled clicks. I fumed and hung up. I grabbed a carton of milk out of the refrigerator and drank whole white gulps before going back to bed. The phone rang again at four-forty-six. Hello, I said. Hello, came a woman s voice. Sorry about the time before. There s a disturbance in the sound field. Sometimes the sound goes away. The sound goes away? Yes, she said. The sound field s slipping. Can you hear me? Loud and clear, I said. It was the granddaughter of that kooky old scientist who d given me the unicorn skull. The girl in the pink suit. Grandfather hasn t come back up. And now, the sound field s starting to break up. Something s gone wrong. No one answers when I call the laboratory. Those INKlings have gotten Grandfather, I just know it. Are you sure? Maybe he s gotten all wrapped up in one of his experiments and forgotten to come home. He let you go a whole week sound-removed without noticing, didn t he? its not like that. Not this time. I can tell. Something s happened to Grandfather. Something is wrong. Anyway, the sound barrier s broken, and the underground sound field s erratic. The what s what? The sound barrier, the special audio-signal equipment to keep the INKlings away. They ve forced their way through, and we re losing sound. They ve got Grandfather for sure! How do you know? They ve had their beady little eyes on Grandfather s studies. INKlings. Semiotics. Them. They ve been dying to get their hands on his research. They even offered him a deal, but that just made him mad. Please, come quick. You ve got to help, please. I imagined what it would be like coming face to face with an INKling down there. Those creepy subterranean passageways were enough to make my hair stand on end. I know you re going to think I m terrible, but tabulations are my job. Nothing else is in my contract. I ve got plenty to worry about as it is. I d like to help, honest, but fighting INKlings and rescuing your grandfather is a little out of my line. Why don t you call the police or the authorities at the System? They ve been trained for this sort of thing. I can t call the police. I d have to tell them everything. If Grandfather s research got out now, it d be the end of the world. The end of the world? Please, she begged. I need your help. I m afraid that we ll never get him back. And next they re going to go after you. Me? You maybe, but me? I don t know the first thing about your grandfather s research. You re the key. Without you the door won t open. I have absolutely no idea what you re talking about, I said. I can t explain over the phone. Just believe me. This is important. More than anything you ve ever done. Really! For your own sake, act while you still can. Before its too late. I couldn t believe this was happening to me. Okay, I gave in, but while you re at it, you d better get out of there. It could be dangerous. Where should I go? I gave her directions to an all-night supermarket in Aoyama. Wait for me at the snack bar. I ll be there by five-thirty. I m scared. Somehow it The sound just died. I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun. Was the rupture in the sound field spreading? I hung up, stepped into my trousers, threw on a sweatshirt. I did a quick onceover with the shaver, splashed water on my face, combed my hair. My puss was puffy like cheap cheesecake. I wanted sleep. Was that too much to ask? First unicorns, now INKlings why me? I threw on a windbreaker, and pocketed my wallet, knife, and loose change. Then, after a moment s thought, I wrapped the unicorn skull in two bath towels, gathered up the fire tongs and the strongbox with the shuffled data, and tossed everything into a Nike sports bag. The apartment was definitely not secure. A pro could break into the place and crack the safe in less time than it takes to wash a sock. I slipped into my tennis shoes, one of them still dirty, then headed out the door with the bag. There wasn t a soul in the hallway. I decided against the elevator and sidestepped down the stairs. There wasn t a soul in the parking garage either. It was quiet, too quiet. If they were really after my skull, you d think they d have at least one guy staked out. It was almost as if they d forgotten about me. I got in the car, set the bag next to me, and started the engine. The time, a little before five. I looked around warily as I pulled out of the garage and headed toward Aoyama. The streets were deserted, except for taxis and the occasional night-transport truck. I checked the rearview mirror every hundred meters; no sign of anyone tailing me. Strange how well everything was going. I d seen every Semiotec trick in the book, and if they were up to something, they weren t subtle about it. They wouldn t hire some bungling gas inspector, they wouldn t forget a lookout. They chose the fastest, most surefire methods, and executed them without mercy. A couple of years ago, they captured five Cal-cutecs and trimmed off the tops of their crania with one buzz of a power saw. Five Calcutec bodies were found floating in Tokyo Bay minus their skullcaps. When the Semiotecs meant business, they did business. Something didn t make sense here. I pulled into the Aoyama supermarket parking garage at five-twenty-eight. The sky to the east was getting light. I entered the store carrying my bag. Almost no one was in the place. A young clerk in a striped uniform sat reading a maga-zine; a woman of indeterminate age was buying a cartload of cans and instant food. I turned past the liquor display and went straight to the snack bar. There were a dozen stools, and she wasn t on any of them. I took a seat on one end and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. The milk was so cold I could hardly taste it, the sandwich a soggy ready-made wrapped in plastic. I chewed the sandwich slowly, measuring my sips to make the milk last. I eyed a poster of Frankfurt on the wall. The season was autumn, the trees along the river blazing with color. An old man in a pointed cap was feeding the swans. A great old stone bridge was on one side, and in the background, the spire of a cathedral. People sat on benches, everyone wore coats, the women had scarves on their heads. A pretty postcard picture. But it gave me the chills. Not because of the cold autumn scene. I always get the chills when I see tall, sharp spires. I turned my gaze to the poster on the opposite wall. A shiny-faced young man holding a filter-tip was staring obliquely into the distance. Uncanny how models in cigarette ads always have that not-watching-anything, not-thinking-anything look in their eyes. At six o clock, the chubby girl still hadn t shown. Unaccountable, especially since this was supposed to be so urgent. I was here; where was she? I ordered a coffee. I drank it black, slowly. The supermarket customers gradually increased. Housewives buying the breakfast bread and milk, university students hungry after a long night out, a young woman squeezing a roll of toilet paper, a businessman snapping up three different newspapers, two middleaged men lugging their golf clubs in to purchase a bottle of whiskey. I love supermarkets. I waited until half past six. I went out to the car and drove to Shinjuku Station. I walked to the baggage-check counter and asked to leave my Nike sports bag. Fragile, I told the clerk. He attached a red handle with care tag with a cocktail glass printed on it. I watched as he placed the bag on the shelf. He handed me the claim ticket. I went to a station kiosk. For two hundred sixty yen, I bought an envelope and stamps. I put the claim ticket into the envelope, sealed it, stamped it, and addressed it to a p.o. box I d been keeping under a fictitious company name. I scribbled express on it and dropped the goods into the post. Then I got in the car and went home. I showered and tumbled into bed. At eleven o clock, I had visitors. Considering the sequence of events, it was about time. Still, you d think they could have rung the bell before trying to break the door down. No, they had to come in like an iron wrecking ball, making the floor shake. They could have saved themselves the trouble and wrangled the key out of the superintendent. They could also have saved me a mean repair bill. While my visitors were rearranging the door, I got dressed and slipped my knife into my pocket. Then, to be on the prudent side, I opened the safe and pushed the erase button on the tape recorder. Next, I got potato salad and a beer from the refrigerator for lunch. I thought about escaping via the emergency rope ladder on the balcony, but why bother? Running away wouldn t solve anything. Solve what? I didn t even know what the problem was. I needed a reality check. Nothing but question marks. I finished my potato salad, I finished my beer, and just as I was about to burp, the steel door blew wide open and banged flat down. Enter one mountain of a man, wearing a loud aloha shirt, khaki army-surplus pants stained with grease, and white tennis shoes the size of scuba-diving flippers. Skinhead, pug snout, a neck as thick as my waist. His eyelids formed gun-metal shells over eyes that bulged molten white. False eyes, I thought immediately, until a flicker of the pupils made them seem human. He must have stood two meters tall, with shoulders so broad that the buttons on his aloha shirt were practically flying off his chest. The hulk glanced at the wasted door as casually as he might a popped wine cork, then turned his attentions toward me. No complex feelings here. He looked at me like I was another fixture. Would that I were. He stepped to one side, and behind him there appeared a rather tiny guy. This guy came in at under a meter and a half, a slim, trim figure. He had on a light blue Lacoste shirt, beige chinos, and brown loafers. Had he bought the whole outfit at a nouveau riche children s haberdashery? A gold Rolex gleamed on his wrist, a normal adult model guess they didn t make kiddie Rolexes so it looked disproportionately big, like a communicator from Star Trek. I figured him for his late thirties, early forties. The hulk didn t bother removing his shoes before trudging into the kitchen and swinging around to pull out the chair opposite me. Junior followed presently and quietly took the seat. Big Boy parked his weight on the edge of the sink. He crossed his arms, as thick as normal human thighs, his eyes trained on a point just above my kidneys. I should have escaped while I could have. Junior barely acknowledged me. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and placed them on the table. Benson & Hedges and a gold Dupont. If Junior s accoutrements were any indication, the trade imbalance had to have been fabricated by foreign governments. He twirled the lighter between his fingers. Never a dull moment. I looked around for the Budweiser ashtray I d gotten from the liquor store, wiped it with my fingers, and set it out in front of the guy. He lit up with a clipped flick, narrowed his eyes, and released a puff of smoke. Junior didn t say a word, choosing instead to contemplate the lit end of his cigarette. This was where tht Jean-Luc Godard scene would have been titled 1/ regardait le feu de son tabac. My luck that Godard films were no longer fashionable. When the tip of Junior s cigarette had transformed into a goodly increment of ash, he gave it a measured tap, and the ash fell on the table. For him, an ashtray was extraneous, About the door, began Junior, in a high, piercing voice. It was necessary to break it. That s why we broke it. We could have opened it more gentleman-like if we wanted to. But it wasn t necessary. I hope you don t think bad of us. There s nothing in the apartment, I said. Search it, you ll see. Search? pipped the little man. Search? Cigarette at his lips, he scratched his palm. And what might we be searching for? Well, I don t know, but you must ve come here looking for something. Breaking the door down and all. Can t say I capisce, he spoke, measuredly. Surely you must be mistaken. We don t want nothing. We just came for a little chat. That s all. Not looking and not taking. However, if you would care to offer me a Coca-Cola, I d be happy to oblige. I fished two cans of Coke from the refrigerator, which I set out on the table along with a couple of glasses. I don t suppose he d drink something, too? I said, pointing to the hulk behind me. Junior curled his index finger and Big Boy tiptoed forward to claim a can of Coke. He was amazingly agile for his frame. After you re finished drinking, give him your free demonstration, Junior said to Big Boy. its a little side show, he said to me. I turned around to watch the hulk chug the entire can in one go. Then, after upending it to show that it was empty, he pressed the can between his palms. Not the slightest change came over his face as the familiar red can was crushed into a pathetic scrap of metal. A little trick, anybody could do, said Junior. Next, Big Boy held the flattened aluminum toy up with his fingertips. Effortlessly, though a faint shadow now twitched on his lip, he tore the metal into shreds. Some trick. He can bend hundred-yen coins, too. Not so many humans alive can do that, said Junior with authority. I nodded in agreement. Ears, he rips em right off. I nodded in agreement. Up until three years ago, he was a pro wrestler, Junior explained. Wasn t a bad wrestler. He was young and fast. Championship material. But you know what he did? He went and injured his knee. And in pro wrestling, you gotta be able to move fast. I nodded a third agreement. Since his untimely injury, I ve been looking after him. He s my cousin, you know. Average body types don t run in your family? I queried. Care to say that again? said Junior, glaring at me. Just chatting, I said. Junior collected his thoughts for the next few moments. Then he flicked his cigarette to the floor and ground it out under his shoe. I decided no comment. You really oughta relax more. Open up, take things easy. If you don t relax, how re we have gonna have our nice heart-to-heart? said Junior. You re still too tense. May I get a beer? Certainly. Of course. its your beer in your refrigerator in your apartment. Isn t it? It was my door, too, I added. Forget about the door. You keep thinking so much, no wonder you re tense. It was a tacky cheapo door anyway. You make good money, you oughta move someplace with classier doors. I got my beer. Junior poured Coke in his glass and waited for the foam to go down before drinking. Then he spoke. Forgive the complications. But I wanna explain some things first. We ve come to help you. By breaking down my door? The little man s face turned instantly red. His nostrils flared. There you go with that door again. Didn t I tell you to drop it? he bit his words. Then he turned to Big Boy and repeated the question. Didn t I? The hulk nodded his agreement. We re here on a goodwill mission, Junior went on. You re lost, so we came to give you moral guidance. Well, perhaps lost is not such a nice thing to say. How about confused? Is that better? Lost? Confused? I said. I don t have a clue. No idea, no door. Junior grabbed his gold lighter and threw it hard against the refrigerator, making a dent. Big Boy picked the lighter off the floor and returned it to its owner. Everything was back to where we were before, except for the dent. Junior drank the rest of his Coke to calm down. What s one, two lousy doors? Consider the gravity of the situation. We could service this apartment in no time flat. lets not hear another word about that door. My door. It didn t matter how cheap it was. That wasn t the issue. The door stood for something. All right, forget about the door, I said. This commotion could get me thrown out of the building. If anyone says anything to you, just give me a call. We got an outreach program that ll make believers out of them. Relax. I shut up and drank my beer. And a free piece of advice, Junior offered. Anybody over thirty-five really oughta kick the beer habit. Beer s for college students or people doing physical labor. Gives you a paunch. No class at all. Great advice. I drank my beer. But who am I to tell you what to do? Junior went on. Everybody has his weak points. With me, its smoking and sweets. Especially sweets. Bad for the teeth, leads to diabetes. He lit another cigarette, and glanced at the dial of his Rolex. Well then, Junior cleared his throat. There s not much time, so lets cut the socializing out. Relaxed a bit? A bit, I said. Good. On to the subject at hand, said Junior. Like I was saying, our purpose in coming here was to help you unravel your confusion. Anything you don t know? Go ahead and ask. Junior made a c mon-anything-at-all gesture with his hand. Okay, just who are you guys? I had to open my big mouth. Why are you here? What do you know about what s going on? Smart questions, Junior said, looking over to Big Boy for a show of agreement. You re pretty sharp. You don t waste words, you get right to the point. Junior tapped his cigarette into the ashtray. Kind of him. Think about it this way. We re here to help you. For the time being, what do you care which organization we belong to. We know lots. We know about the Professor, about the skull, about the shuffled data, about almost everything. We know things you don t know too. Next question? Fine. Did you pay off a gas inspector to steal the skull? Didn t I just tell you? said the little man. We don t want the skull, we don t want nothing. Well, who did? Who bought off the gas inspector? That s one of the things we don t know, said Junior. Why don t you tell us? You think I know? I said. All I know is I don t need the grief. We figured that. You don t know nothing. You re being used. So why come here? Like I said, a goodwill courtesy call, said Junior, banging his lighter on the table. Thought we d introduce ourselves. Maybe get together, share a few ideas. Your turn now. What do you think s going on? You want me to speculate? Go right ahead. Let yourself go, free as a bird, vast as the sea. Nobody s gonna stop you. All right, I think you guys aren t from either the System or the Factory. You ve got a different angle on things. I think you re independent operants, looking to expand your turf. Eyeing Factory territory. See? Junior remarked to his giant cousin. Didn t I tell you? The man s sharp. Big Boy nodded. Amazingly sharp for someone living in a dump like this. Amazingly sharp for someone whose wife ran out on him. It had been ages since anyone praised me so highly. I blushed. You speculate good, Junior said. We re going to get our hands on the Professor s research and make a name for us. We got these infowars all figured out. We done our homework. We got the backing. We re ready to move in. We just need a few bits and pieces. That s the nice thing about infowars. Very democratic. Track record counts for nothing. its survival of the sharpest. Survival in a big way. I mean, who s to say we can t cut the pie? Is Japan a total monopoly state or what? The System monopolizes everything under the info sun, the Factory monopolizes everything in the shadows. They don t know the meaning of competition. What ever happened to free enterprise? Is this unfair or what? All we need is the Professor s research, and you. Why me? I said. I m just a terminal worker ant. I don t think about anything but my own work. So if you re thinking of enlisting me You don t seem to get the picture, said Junior, with a click of his tongue. We don t wanna enlist you. We just wanna get our hands on you. Next question? Oh, I see, I said. How about telling me something about the INKlings then. INKlings? A sharp guy like you don t know about INKlings? A.k.a. Infra-Nocturnal Kappa. You thought kappa were folktales? They live underground. They hole up in the subways and sewers, eat the city s garbage, and drink gray-water. They don t bother with human beings. Except for a few subway workmen who disappear, that is, heh heh. Doesn t the government know about them? Sure, the government knows. The state s not that dumb. Then why don t they warn people? Or else drive the INKlings away? First of all, he said, it d upset too many people. Wouldn t want that to happen, would you? INKlings swarming right under their feet, people wouldn t like that. Second, forget about exterminating them. What are you gonna do? Send the whole Japanese SelfDefense Force down into the sewers of Tokyo? The swamp down there in the dark is their stomping grounds. It wouldn t be a pretty picture. Another thing, the INKlings have set up shop not too far from the Imperial Palace. its a strategic move, you understand. Any trouble and they crawl up at night and drag people under. Japan would be upside-down, heh. Am I right? That s why the government doesn t mind INKlings and INKlings doesn t mind the government. But I thought the Semiotecs had made friends with the INKlings, I broke in. A rumor. And even if it was true, it d only mean one group of INKlings got sweet on the Semiotecs. A temporary engagement, not a lasting marriage. Nothing to worry about. But haven t the INKlings kidnapped the Professor? We heard that too. But we don t know for sure. Could be the Professor staged it. Why would the Professor do that? The Professor answers to nobody, Junior said, sizing up his lighter from various angles. He s the best and he knows it. The Semiotecs know it, the Calcutecs know it. He just plays the in-betweens. That way he can push on, doing what he pleases with his research. One of these days he s gonna break through. That s where you fit in. Why would he need me? I don t have any special skills. I m a perfectly ordinary guy. We re trying to figure that one out for ourselves, Junior) admitted, flipping the lighter around in his hands. We got some ideas. Nothing definite. Anyway, he s been studymgall about you. He s been preparing something for a long time now. Oh yeah? So you re waiting for him to put the last piece in place, and then you ll have me and the research. On the money, said Junior. We got some strange weather blowing up. The Factory has sniffed something in the wind and made a move. So we gotta make moves, too. What about the System? No, they re slow on the take. But give em time. They know the Professor real well. What do you mean? The Professor used to work for the System. The System? Right, the Professor is an ex-colleague of yours. Of course, he wasn t doing your kind of work. He was in Central Research. Central Research? This was getting too complicated to follow. I was standing in the middle of it all, only I couldn t see a thing. This System of yours is big, too big. The right hand never knows what the left hand is doing. Too much information, more than you can keep track of. And the Semiotecs are just as bad. That s why the Professor quit the organization and went out on his own. He s a brain man. He s into psychology and all kinds of other stuff about the head. He s what you call a Renaissance Man. What does he need the System for? And I had explained laundering and shuffling to this man? He d invented the tech! What a joke I was. Most of the Calcutec compu-systems around are his design. That s no exaggeration. You re like a worker bee stuffed full of the old man s honey, pronounced the little man. Not a very nice metaphor, maybe. Don t mind me, I said. The minute the Professor quit, who should come knock-ing on his door but scouts from the Factory. But the Professor said no go. He said he had his own windows to wash, which lost him a lotta admirers. He knew too much for the Cal-cutecs, and the Semiotecs had him pegged for a round hole. Anyone who s not for you is against you, right? So when he built his laboratory underground next to the INKlings, it was the Professor against everybody. You been there, I believe? I nodded. Real nuts but brilliant. Nobody can get near that laboratory. The whole place is crawling with INKlings. The Professor comes and goes. He puts out sound waves to scare the INKlings. Perfect defense. That girl of his and you are the only people who s ever been inside. Goes to show how important you are. So we figure, the Professor s about to throw you in the box and tie things up. I grunted. This was getting weird. Even if I believed him, I wouldn t believe it. Are you telling me that all the experiment data I processed for the Professor was just so he could lure me in? No-o, not at all, said the little man. He cast another quick glance at his watch. The data was a program. A time bomb. Time comes and booom! Of course, this is just our guess. Only your Professor knows for sure. Well, I see time s running out, so I think we cut short our little chit-chat. We got ourselves a little appointment after this. Wait a second, what s happened to the Professor s granddaughter? Something happened to the kid? Junior asked innocently. We don t know nothing about it. Can t watch out for everybody, you know. Had something for the little sweetheart, did you? No, I said. Well, probably not. Junior stood up from his chair without taking his eyes off me, swept up his lighter and cigarettes from the table and slipped them into his pocket. I believe it was nice getting to know you. But let me back up and tell you a secret. Right now, we re one step ahead of the Semiotecs. Still, we re small, so if they decide to get their tails in gear, we get crushed; We need to keep them occupied. Capisce? I suppose, I said. Now if you were in our position, what do you think d keep them nice and occupied? The System? was my guess. See? Junior again remarked to Big Boy. Sharp and to the point. Didn t I tell you? Then he looked back at me. But for that, we need bait. No bait, no bite. I don t really feel up to that sort of thing, I said quickly. We re not asking you how you feel, he said. We re in a bit of a hurry. So now its our turn for one little question. In this apartment, what things do you value the most? There s nothing here, I said. Nothing of any value. its all cheap stuff. We know that. But there s gotta be something, some trinket you don t wanna see destroyed. Cheap or not, its your life here, eh? Destroyed? I said. What do you mean, destroyed? Destroyed, you know… destroyed. Like with the door, said the little man, pointing to the thing lying blown off its twisted hinges. Destruction. What for? Destruction for the sake of destruction. You want an explanation? Why don t you just tell us what you don t want to see destroyed. We want to show them the proper respect. Well, the videodeck, I said, giving in. And the TV. They re kind of expensive and I just bought them. Then there s my collection of whiskeys. Anything else? My new suit and my leather jacket. its a U.S. Air Force bomber jacket with a fur collar. Anything else? That s all, I said. The little man nodded. The big man nodded. Immediately, Big Boy went around opening all the cupboards and closets. He found the Bullworker I sometimes use for exercising, and swung it around behind him to do a full back-press. Very impressive. He then gripped the shaft like a baseball bat. I leaned forward to see what he was up to. He went over to the TV, raised the Bullworker, and took a full swing at the picture tube. Krrblam! Glass shattered everywhere, accompanied by a hundred short sputtering flashes. Hey!… I shouted, clamoring to my feet before Junior slapped his palm flat on the table to silence me. Next Big Boy lifted the videodeck and pounded it over and over again on a corner of the former TV. Switches went flying, the cord shorted, and a cloud of white smoke rose up into the air like a saved soul. Once the videodeck was good and destroyed, Big Boy tossed the carcass to the floor and pulled a switchblade from his pocket. The blade sprang open. Now he was going through my wardrobe and retailoring close to two-hundredthousand-yen worth of bomber jacket and Brooks Brothers suit. But you said you were going to leave my valuables alone, I cried. I never said that. I said we were gonna show them the proper respect. We always start with the best. Our little pol-icy. Big Boy was bringing new meaning to the word destruction in my cozy, tasteful apartment. I pulled another can of beer out of the refrigerator and sat back to watch the fireworks. Woods IN due time, autumn too vanishes. One morning I awake, and from a glance at the sky I know winter is near. Gone are the high, sprightly autumn clouds; in their place a heavy cloud bank glowers over the Northern Ridge, like a messenger bearing ill tidings. Autumn had been welcomed as a cheerful and comely visitor; its stay was too brief, its departure too abrupt. The passing of autumn leaves a temporary blank, an empty hole in the year that is not of a season at all. The beasts begin to lose the sheen from their coats, lose their golden hue, bleaching slowly white. It is an announcement that winter draws near. All living things in the Town hang their heads, their bodies braced for the freezing season. Signs of winter shroud the Town like an invisible skin. The sound of the wind, the swaying of the grasses, the clack of heels on the cobblestones in the still of night, all grow remote under an ominous weight. Even the waters of the River, once so pleasant as they lapped at the sandbars, no longer soothe me. There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself. The short cries of the birds grow thin and shrill; at times only the flapping of their wings disturbs the void. This winter promises to be especially harsh, observes the Colonel. You can tell from the look of the clouds. Here, see for yourself how dark they are. The old officer leads me to the window and points toward the thick clouds astride the hills. Each year at this time, the first wave of winter clouds stations itself along the Northern Ridge. They are the emissaries of the onslaught to come. Light, flat clouds mean mild temperatures. Thicker clouds, colder weather. Most fearsome of all are the clouds that spread their wings, like birds of prey. When they appear, a bitter winter is on its way. For example, that cloud there. Squinting, I scan the sky above the Northern Ridge. Faint though it is, I do recognize the cloud the old officer has described. Massive as a mountain, it stretches the entire length of the ridge, an evil roc ready to swoop down from the heights. Once every fifty or sixty years, there comes a killing winter, says the Colonel. You have no coat, do you? No, I do not, I say. I have only the light cotton jacket I was given when I first came to Town. The old officer opens his wardrobe and brings out a dark blue military coat. He hands it to me. The coat is heavy as stone, its wool rough to the touch. A little large, but it will serve you well. I procured it for you a short while ago. How is the size? I slip into the coat. The shoulders are too wide and the form somehow not right, but it will do. As the old officer has said, it will serve me well. Are you still drawing your map? the Colonel asks. I am, I say. There are some areas I do not know, but I am determined to finish it. I will not discourage you from your maps. That is your own concern, and it bothers no one. No, I will not say it is wrong, although after winter is here, you must stop all excursion into the Woods. Venturing far from inhabited areas is not wise, especially this winter. The Town, as you know, is not extensive, but you can lose your way. It would be better to leave your mapmaking for spring. I understand, I say. When does winter begin? With the snow. The first flakes of snow signal the beginning of winter. When the snow melts from the sandbars in the River, winter is at its end. We gaze at the clouds on the Northern Ridge, drinking our morning coffee. One more important thing, the Colonel resumes. Keep your distance from the Wall and from the Woods. In winter, they take on an awesome power. What is this about the Woods? What is it that they have? Nothing at all, says the old military man after a moment of reflection. Nothing at all. At least, it is nothing we need. For us, the Woods are an unnecessary terrain. Does no one live in the woods? The old officer lifts the trap on the stove and sweeps out the ash. He then lays in a few twigs of kindling and some coal. We may need to light the stoves beginning tonight, he says. Our firewood and coal are from the Woods. Yes, and mushrooms and tea and other provisions as well. So in that sense, the Woods are of use to us. But that is all. Other than that, nothing is there. Then there are persons in the Woods who make their living by shovelling the coal and gathering firewood and mushrooms? Yes, a few do live there. They bring their coal and firewood and mushrooms to Town, and in return we give them grain and clothing. There is a place where these exchanges take place weekly, but it is carried out only by specified individuals. No other contact with the Woodsfolk is to be had. They do not come near the Town; we do not go near the Woods. Their existence is wholly different from our own. How so? In every sense, says the old officer, they are different from us. But it is not wise to take an interest in them. They are dangerous. They can exert an influence over you. You are not yet formed as a person here. And until such time as various aspects of you are determined, I advise you to protect yourself from such danger. The Woods are but woods. You need merely write Woods on your map. Is that understood? Understood. Then, there is the Wall. The winter Wall is the height of danger. In winter, particularly, the Wall shuts the Town in. It is impenetrable and it encloses us irrevocably. The Wall sees everything that transpires within. Be careful to do nothing that takes you near the Wall. I must repeat: you are as yet unformed. You have doubts, you have contradictions, you have regrets, you are weak. Winter is the most dangerous season for you. All the same, before winter sets in, I must venture forth into the Woods. It will soon be time to deliver the map, as promised, to my shadow. He has expressly asked that I investigate the Woods. After I have done that, the map will be ready. The cloud on the Northern Ridge poses, lifting its wings, leaning forward as if to sail out over the Town. The sun is setting. The sky is overcast, a pallid cover through which the light filters and settles. To my eyes that are less than eyes, this is a season of relief. Gone, the days of brazen clear skies. There will be no headstrong breezes to sweep away the clouds. I enter the Woods from the riverside road, intending to walk straight into the interior, keeping parallel to the Wall so I do not to lose my way. Thus will I also sketch the outline of the Wall around the Woods. This does not prove easy. Mid-route there are deep hollows where the ground drops away. I step carefully, yet find myself plunged into thick blackberry brambles. Marshy ground thwarts passage; elsewhere spiders hang their webs to net my face and hands. An awning of enormous branches tinges the Woods in sea-bottom gloom. Roots crawl through the forest floor like a virulent skin disease. At times I imagine I hear movement in the dense undergrowth. Yet once I turn from the Wall and set foot in the forest interior, there unfolds a mysteriously peaceful world. Infused with the life breath one senses in the wild, the Woods give me release. How can this be the minefield of dangers the old Colonel has warned me against? Here the trees and plants and tiny living things partake of a seamless living fabric; in every stone, in every clod of earth, one senses an immutable order. The farther I venture from the Wall and proceed into the forest interior, the stronger these impressions become. All shades of misfortune soon dissipate, while the very shapes of the trees and colors of the foliage grow somehow more restive, the bird songs longer and more leisurely. In the tiny glades, in the breezes that wend through the inner woodlands, there is none of the darkness and tension I have felt nearer the Wall. Why should these surroundings make so marked a difference? Is it the power of the Wall that disturbs the air? Is it the land itself? No matter how pleasant this walk deeper into the Woods may be, I dare not relinquish sight of the Wall. For should I stray deep into the Woods, I will have lost all direction. There are no paths, no landmarks to guide me. I moderate my steps. I do not meet any forest dwellers. I see not a footprint, not an artifact shaped by human hands. I walk, afraid, expectant. Perhaps I have not traveled far enough into the interior. Perhaps they are skillfully avoiding me. On the third or fourth day of these explorations, coming to a point where the eastern Wall takes a sharp turn to the south, I discover a small glade. It is open space, which fans briefly outward from a tuck in the bend of the Wall. Inexplicably, it is untouched by the surrounding growth of dense forest. This one clearing is permeated with a repose that seems uncharacteristic so close to the Wall, a tranquillity such as I have known only in the inner Woods. A lush carpet of grass spreads over the ground, while overhead a puzzle-piece of sky cuts through the treetops. At one extreme of the glade stands a raised masonry foundation that once supported a building. The foundation suggests that the walls of this edifice had been laid out with meticulous precision. Tracing the floorplan, I find three separate rooms in addition to what I imagine were a kitchen, bath, and hallway. I struggle to understand why a home had been built so deep in the Woods, why it has been so completely abandoned. Behind the kitchen are the remains of a stone well. It is overgrown with grass. Would the occupants themselves have filled it in? I sit down, leaning against the well and gazing up at the sky. A wind blowing in off the Northern Ridge rustles the branches of the trees around me. A cloud, heavy with moisture, edges across the sky. I turn up my collar and watch it move slowly past. The Wall looms behind the ruins of the house. Never in the Woods have I been this close to the Wall. It is literally breathtaking. Here in this tiny clearing in the Eastern Woods, resting by this old well, listening to the sound of the wind, looking up at the Wall, I fully understand the words of the Gatekeeper: This Wall is perfect. A perfect creation. It rises as it has risen from the beginning. Like the clouds above, like the River etched into the earth. The Wall is far too grand to capture on a map. It is not static. Its pulse is too intense, its curves too sublime. Its face changes dramatically with each new angle. An accurate rendering on paper cannot be possible. I feel a futility in my attempt to do so in my sketchbook. I shut my eyes to doze. The wind swirls at an incessant pitch, but the trees and the Wall offer protection from the chill. I think about my shadow. I think of the map he has asked for. There is not much time left. My map is lacking in precision and detail. The inner reaches of the Woods are a near blank. But winter is almost here. There will be less and less opportunity to explore further. In the sketchbook I have drawn a general outline of the Town, including the location of landmarks and buildings. I have made annotations of facts I have learned. It is not certain that the Gatekeeper will allow me near my shadow, even as he has promised to let us meet once the days are shorter and my shadow is weaker. Now that winter is near, these conditions would seem surely to be fulfilled. My eyes still closed, I think about the Librarian. I am filled with sadness, although I cannot locate the source of these feelings. I have been seeing the Librarian daily, but the void in me remains. I have read the old dreams in the Library. She has sat beside me. We have supped together. I have walked her home. We have talked of many things. Unreasonably, my sorrow only seems to grow, to deepen. Whatever is the loss becomes greater each time we meet. It is a well that will never be filled. It is dark, unbearably so. I suppose these feelings are linked to forgotten memories. I have sought for some connection in her. I learn nothing in myself. The mystery does not yield. My own existence seems weak, uncertain. I shake these convoluted thoughts from my head and seek out sleep. I awake to find that the day is nearly over, that the temperature has dropped sharply. I am shivering. I pull niy coat tight around me. As I stand and brush off the grass, flakes of snow touch my cheek. I look up. The clouds are low, a forbidding gloom builds. There is a flurry of large snowflakes drifting gently down. Winter is come. Before I begin my way back, I steal one more glance at the Wall. Beneath the snowswept heavens, it rears up more stately, more perfect than ever. As I gaze up at it, I feel them peering at me. What are you doing here? they seem to say. What are you looking for? Questions I cannot answer. The short sleep in the cold has consumed all warmth in me, leaving my head swimming with abstract shapes. Do I occupy the body of another? Everything is so ponderously heavy, so vague. I race through the Woods, toward the East Gate, determined now not to look at the Wall. It is a long distance I must travel. The darkness gathers moment by moment. My balance degenerates. I stop again and again to stir up the strength to persevere, to press the numbness from my nerves. I feel the visit of night. I may hear the sounding of the horn in the Woods. It passes through my awareness without trace. At last I emerge from the Woods onto the bank of the River. The ground is clothed in blankness. No moon, no stars, all has been subdued by the flurries of snow. I hear the chill sound of the water, the wind taunting through the trees behind me. How much further to the Library? I cannot remember. All I recall is a road along the River, leading on and on. The willows sway in the shadows, the wind whips overhead. I walk and walk, but there is no end in sight. She sits me in front of the stove and places her hand on my forehead. Her hand is as ice. My reflex is to push it away, but I cannot raise my hand. For when I do, I feel a sudden nausea. You are fevered, she says. Where on the earth have you gone? I find it impossible to answer. I am without words. I cannot even comprehend what it is she asks. She brings several blankets and wraps me in them. I lie by the stove. Her hair touches my cheek. I do not want her to go away. I cannot tell if the thought is mine or if it has floated loose from some fragment of memory. I have lost so many things. I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting, away. Which part of me is thinking this? She holds my hand. Sleep well, I hear her say, from beyond a dark distance. Whiskey, Torture, Turgenev Big BOY didn t leave one bottle unbroken. Not one lousy bottle of my collection of whiskeys. I had a standing relationship with the neighborhood liquor dealer who would bring over any bargains in imported whiskey, so it had gotten to be quite a respectable stash. Not any more. The hulk started with two bottles of Wild Turkey, moving next to one Cutty Sark and three I. W. Harpers, then demolished two Jack Daniels, the Four Roses, the Haig, saving the half dozen bottles of Chivas Regal for last. The racket was intense, but the smell was worse. I m getting drunk just sitting here, Junior said with admiration. , There wasn t much for me to do but plant my elbows on the table and watch the mound of broken glass pile up in the sink. Big Boy whistled through it all. I couldn t recog-nize the tune, supposing there was one. First high and shrill, then low and harsh, it sounded more like a scraping violin bow. The screech of it was insanity itself. Big Boy was methodical with the meaningless destruction. Maybe it made sense to them, not to me. He overturned the bed, slit the mattress, rifled through my wardrobe, dumped my desk drawers onto the floor, ripped the air-conditioner panel off the wall. He knocked over the trash, then plowed through the bedding closet, breaking whatever happened to be in the way. Swift and efficient. Then it was on to the kitchen: dishes, glasses, coffeepot, the works. Junior and I moved our seats to the living room. We righted the toppled sofa, which by a freak stroke of fortune was otherwise unscathed, and sat on opposite armrests. Now this was a truly comfortable sofa, a top-of-the-line model I d bought cheap off a cameraman friend who d blown his fuse in the middle of a thriving commercial career and split for the back country of Nagano. Too bad about the fuse, not so bad about the sofa I d acquired as a result. And there was a chance that the sofa would be salvageable still. For all the noise that Big Boy was making, not one other resident of the apartment building came to investigate. True, almost everyone on my floor was single and at work during the day a fact apparently not lost upon my visitors. These guys were thugs, but they weren t dumb. The little man eyed his Rolex from time to time as if to check the progress of the operation, while Big Boy continued his tour of destructive duty with never a wasted motion. He was so thorough, I couldn t have hidden away a pencil if I had wanted to. Yet, like Junior had announced at the beginning, they weren t really looking for anything. They were simply making a point. For what? To convince a third party of their attention to detail? And who might that third party be? I drank the rest of my beer and set the empty can on the coffee table. Big Boy had gotten to the food: salt, flour, and rice went flying everywhere; a dozen frozen shrimp, a beef filet, natural ice cream, premium butter, a thirty-centimeter length of salmon roe, my homemade tomato sauce on the linoleum floor like meteorites nosediving into asphalt. Next, Big Boy picked up the refrigerator and flipped it door-side down to the floor. The wiring shorted and let loose with a shower of sparks. What electrician was going to believe this? My head hurt. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the destruction stopped. No ifs, ands, or buts the demolition came to an instant halt, Big Boy standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, very nonchalant. How long had it taken him to total my apartment so exquisitely? Fifteen minutes, thirty minutes? Something like that. Too long for fifteen, too short for thirty. But however long it took, the way that Junior was proudly eyeing his Rolex suggested that Big Boy had made good time. As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to. Seems like you re gonna be busy cleaning up, Junior said to me. And paying for it too, I added. Money s no object here. This is war. Nobody would win a war if they stopped to calculate the cost. its not my war. Whose war don t matter. Whose money don t matter either. That s what war is. Junior coughed into a white handkerchief, inspecting it before putting it back into his pocket. Never trust a man who carries a handkerchief, I always say. One of many prejudicial rules of thumb. Now listen, Junior got serious, not too long after we leave, the boys from the System will be stopping by to pay their respects. You go ahead and tell them about us. Say we broke in and busted up the place hunting for something. Tell them we asked you where the skull was, but you didn t know nothing about no skull. Got it? You can t squeal about something you don t know and you can t fork over something you don t have. Even under torture. That s why we re gonna leave empty-handed as when we came. Torture? I choked. Nobody s gonna doubt you. They don t even know you paid a visit to the Professor. For the time being, we re the only ones who know that. So no harm s gonna come to you. A Calcutec like yourself with a Record of Excellence? Hell, they got no choice but to trust you. They re gonna think we re Factory. And they re gonna wanna do something about it. We got it all worked out. Torture? I choked again. What do you mean, torture? You ll find out soon enough, said the little man. What if I spilled the whole works to the folks at Headquarters? Just thought I d ask. Don t be dumb. You d get rubbed out by your own fellas. That s not an exaggeration. Think about it. You went to the Professor s place on a job, you didn t tell the System. You broke the freeze on shuffling. And worse, you let the Professor use you in his experiments. They gonna like that? You re doing a very dangerous balancing act, pal. Our faces met from either end of the sofa. I have a question, I said. How do I stand to benefit from cooperating with you and lying to the System? I know zero about you guys. What s in it for me? That s easy, Junior chirped. We got the lowdown on what s in store for you, but we re letting you live. Your organization doesn t know nothing about the situation you re in. But if they did, they might decide to eliminate you. I figure your odds are way better with us. Sooner or later, the System is going to find out about this situation, as you call it. I don t know what this situation is, but the System s not so stupid. Maybe so, said Junior. But that s later. This is now. If all goes according to schedule, you and us, we re gonna have our problems solved in the meantime. That s your choice, if you re looking for one. Let me put it another way: its like chess. You get checked, you beat a retreat. And while you re scrambling around, maybe your opponent will screw up. Everybody screws up, even the smartest players. Junior checked his watch again, then turned to Big Boy and snapped his fingers. Whereupon the hulk blinked to life, a robot with the juice switched on. He lifted his jaw and hunkered over to the sofa, positioning himself like a room divider. No, not a room divider, more like a drive-in movie screen. His body blocked the ceiling light, throwing me into a pale shadow, like when I was in elementary school and all the kids held up a pane of glass smoked with candle soot to view a solar eclipse. A quarter of a century ago that was. Look where that quarter of a century had gotten me. And now, he resumed, I m afraid we re gonna have to make things a little unpleasant. Well, maybe you re gonna think its more than a little unpleasant. But just remember, we re doing it for you. its not like we wanna do it. We re doing it because we got no choice. Take off your pants. I did as I was told. As if 7 had any choice. Kneel down. I kneeled down. I felt funny doing it in my sweatshirt and jockey shorts, but there wasn t much time for meditation as Big Boy swooped in behind me and pinned my wrists to the small of my back. Then he locked my ankles firmly between his legs. His movements were very fluid. I didn t particularly feel tied down, but when I tried to budge, a sharp pain shot through me. I was immobilized, like a duck sitting in a shooting gallery. Meanwhile, Junior found Big Boy s knife. He flicked the seven-centimeter blade open, then ran the blade through the flame of his lighter. This compact knife didn t look like a lethal weapon, but it was obviously no dime-store toy. It was sharp enough to slice a person to pieces. The human fruit is always ripe for peeling. After sterilizing the blade, Junior let it cool slightly. Then he yanked down the waistband of my jockey shorts and exposed my penis. Now this is going to hurt a little, he said. A tennis-ball-sized lump of air bounced up from my stomach and lodged in my throat. Sweat beaded up on my nose. I was shaking. At this rate, I d never be able to get an erection. But no, the guy didn t do anything to my cock. He simply gripped it to death, while he took the still-warm blade and glided it across my stomach. Straight as a ruler, a sixcentimeter horizontal gash, two centimeters below my navel. I tried to suck in my gut, but between Big Boy s clamp on my back and Junior s grip on my cock, I couldn t move a hair. Cold sweat gushed from every pore of my body. Then, a moment after the surgery was over, I was wracked with searing pain. Junior wiped the blood off the knife with a kleenex and folded the blade away. Big Boy let me drop. My white jockey shorts were turning red. Big Boy fetched a towel from the bathroom, and I pressed it to the wound. Seven stitches and you ll be like new, Junior diagnosed. It ll leave a scar, but nobody s gonna see it. Sorry we had to do it, but you ll live. I pulled back the towel and looked at the wound. The cut wasn t very deep, but deep enough to see pink. We re gonna go now. When your System boys show up, let em see this little example of wanton violence. Tell em when you wouldn t tell us where the skull was, we went nuts. But next time, our aims won t be so high, and we might have to go for your nuts, heh heh. You can tell em we said that. Anyway, you didn t know nothing, so you didn t tell us nothing. That s why we decided to take a rain check. Got it? We can do a real nice job if we want to. Maybe one day soon, if we have the time, we ll give you another demonstration. I crouched there with the towel pressed against my gut. Don t ask me why, but I got the feeling I d be better off playing their game. So you did set up that poor gas inspector, I sputtered. You had him blow the act on purpose so I would go hide the stuff. Clever, clever, said the little man. Keep that head of yours working and maybe you ll survive. On that note, my two visitors left. There was no need to see them out. The mangled frame of my steel door was now open for all the world. I stripped off my blood-stained underwear and threw it in the trash, then I moistened some gauze and wiped the blood from the wound. The gash throbbed pain with every move. The sleeves of my sweatshirt were also bloody, so I tossed it too. Then from the clothes scattered on the floor, I found a dark T-shirt which wouldn t show the blood too much, a pair of jockeys, and some loose trousers. Thirty minutes later, right on schedule, three men from Headquarters arrived. One of whom was the smart-ass young liaison who always came around to pick up data, outfitted in the usual business suit, white shirt, and bank clerk s tie. The other two were dressed like movers. Even so, they didn t look a thing like a bank clerk and movers; they looked like they were trying to look like a bank clerk and movers. Their eyes shifted all over the place; every motion was tense. They didn t knock before walking into the apartment, shoes and all, either. The two movers began immediately to check the apartment while the bank clerk proceeded to debrief me. He scribbled the facts down with a mechanical pencil in a black notebook. As I explained to him, a two-man unit had broken in, wanting a skull. I didn t know anything about a skull; they got violent and slashed my stomach. I pulled my briefs down. The clerk examined the wound momentarily, but made no comment about it. Skull? What the hell were they talking about? I have no idea, I said. I d like to know myself. You really don t know? the bank clerk probed further, his voice uninflected. This is critical, so think carefully. You won t be able to alter your statement later. Semiotecs don t make a move if they have nothing to go on. If they came to your apartment looking for a skull, they must have had a reason for thinking you had a skull in your apartment. They don t dream things up. Furthermore, that skull must have been valuable enough to come looking for. Given these obvious facts, its hard to believe you don t know anything about it. If you re so smart, why don t you tell me what this skull business is supposed to be about, I said. There will be an investigation, the bank clerk said, tapping his mechanical pencil on his notebook. A thorough investigation, and you know how thorough the System can be. If you re discovered to be hiding something, you will be dealt with commensurately. You are aware of this? I was aware of this, I told him. I didn t know how this was going to turn out, but neither did they. Nobody can outguess the future. We had a hunch the Semiotecs were up to something. They re mobilizing. But we don t know what they re after, and we don t know how you fit into it. We don t know what to make of this skull either. But as more clues come in, you can be sure we ll get to the heart of the matter. We always do. So what am I supposed to do? Be very careful. Cancel any jobs you have. Pay attention to anything unusual. If anything comes up, contact me immediately. Is the telephone still in service? I lifted the receiver and got a dial tone. Obviously, the two thugs had chosen to leave the telephone alone. The line s okay. Good, he said. Remember, if anything happens, no matter how trivial, get in touch with me right away. Don t even think about trying to solve things yourself. Don t think about hiding anything. Those guys aren t playing softball. Next time you won t get off with a scratch. Scratch? You call that a scratch? The movers reported back after completing their survey of the premises. We ve conducted a full search, said the older mover. They didn t overlook a thing, went about it very smoothly. Professional job. Semiotecs. The liaison nodded, and the two operants exited. It was now the liaison and me. If all they were looking for was a skull, I wondered out loud, why would they rip up my clothes? How was I supposed to hide a skull there? If there was a skull, I mean. They were professionals. Professionals think of every contingency. You might have put the skull in a coin locker and they were looking for the key. A key can be hidden anywhere. True, I said. Quite true. By the way, did these Factory henchmen make you a proposition? A proposition? Yeah, a propostion. That you go to work for them, for example. An offer of money, a position. If they did, I sure didn t hear it. They just demanded their skull. Very well, said the liaison. If anyone makes you an offer, you are to forget it. You are not to play along. If the System ever discovers you played ball with them, we will find you, wherever you are, and we will terminate you. This is not a threat; this is a promise. The System is the state. There is nothing we cannot do. I ll keep that in mind, I said. When I was alone again, I went over the story piece by piece. No matter how I stacked the essential details, they didn t lead anywhere. At the heart of the mystery was the Professor and whatever he was up to. If I didn t know that, I couldn t know anything. And I didn t have the vaguest notion what was whirling around in that old head of his. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had let myself betray the System. If they found that out and soon enough they would that d be the end, exactly as my smart-ass bank-clerk liaison had been kind enough to point out. Even if I had been coerced into lying like I did. The System wasn t known for making exceptions on any account. As I was assessing these circumstances, my wound began to throb. Better go to the hospital. I rang up for a taxi. Then I stepped into my shoes. Bending over to tie my laces, I was in such pain I thought my body was going to shear in two. I left the apartment wide open as if I had any other option and took the elevator down. I waited for the cab behind the hedge by the entranceway. It was one-thirty by my watch. Two and a half hours since the demolition derby had begun. A very long two-and-a-half hours ago. Housewives filed past, leek and daikon radish tops sticking up from supermarket bags. I found myself envying them. They hadn t had their refrigerators raped or their bellies slashed. Leeks and daikon and the kids grades all was right with the world. No unicorn skulls or secret codes or consciousness transfers. This was normal, everyday life. I thought, of all things, about the frozen shrimp and beef and tomato sauce on the kitchen floor. Probably should eat the stuff before the day was out. Waste not, want not. Trouble was, I didn t want. The mailman scooted up on a red Supercub and dis-tributed the mail to the boxes at the entrance of the building. Some boxes received tons of mail, others hardly anything at all. The mailman didn t touch my box. He didn t even look at it. Beside the mailboxes was a potted rubber plant, the ceramic container littered with popsicle sticks and cigarette butts. The rubber plant looked as worn out as I felt. Seemed like every passerby had heaped abuse on the poor thing. I didn t know how long it d been sitting there. I must have walked by it every day, but until I got knifed in the gut, I never noticed it was there. When the doctor saw my wound, the first thing he asked was how I managed to get a cut like that. A little argument over a woman, I said. It was the only story I could come up with. In that case, I have to inform the police, the doctor said. Police? No, it was me who was in the wrong, and luckily the wound isn t too deep. Could we leave the police out of it, please? The doctor muttered and fussed, but eventually he gave in. He disinfected the wound, gave me a couple of shots, then brought out the needle and thread. The nurse glared suspiciously at me as she plastered a thick layer of gauze over the stitches, then wrapped a rubber belt of sorts around my waist to hold it in place. I felt ridiculous. Avoid vigorous activity, cautioned the doctor. No sex or belly-laughing. Take it easy, read a book, and come back tomorrow. I said my thanks, paid the bill, and went home. With great pain and difficulty, I propped the door up in place, then, as per doctor s orders, I climbed into what there was of my bed with Turgenev s Rudin. Actually, I d wanted to read Spring Torrents, but I would never have found it in my shambles of an apartment. And besides, if you really think about it, Spring Torrents isn t that much better a novel than Rudin. I got up and went to the kitchen, where I poked around in the mess of broken bottles in the sink. There under spears of glass, I found the bottom of a bottle of Chivas that was fairly intact, holding maybe a jigger of precious amber liquid. I held the bottle-bottom up to the light, and seeing no glass bits, I took my chances on the lukewarm whiskey for a bedtime nurse. I d read Rudin before, but that was fifteen years ago in university. Rereading it now, lying all bandaged up, sipping my whiskey in bed in the afternoon, I felt new sympathy for the protagonist Rudin. I almost never identify with anybody in Dostoyevsky, but the characters in Turgenev s old-fashioned novels are such victims of circumstance, I jump right in. I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky s characters don t generate pathos, but they re flawed in ways that don t come across as faults. And while I m on the subject, Tolstoy s characters faults are so epic and out of scale, they re as static as backdrops. I finished Rudin and tossed the paperback on top of what had been a bookcase, then I returned to the glass pile in the sink in search of another hidden pocket of whiskey. Near the bottom of the heap I spied a scant shot of Jack Daniels, which I coaxed out and took back to bed, together with Stendhal s The Red and the Black. What can I say? I seemed to be in the mood for passe literature. In this day and age, how many young people read The Red and the Black? I didn t care. I also happened to identify with Julien Sorel. Sorel s basic character flaws had all cemented by the age of fifteen, a fact which further elicited my sympathy. To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age was, by any standard, a tragedy. It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon. Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom. Walls. A world completely surrounded by walls. I shut the book and bid the last thimbleful of Jack Daniels farewell, turning over in my mind the image of a world within walls. I could picture it, with no effort at all. A very high wall, a very large gate. Dead quiet. Me inside. Beyond that, the scene was hazy. Details of the world seemed to be distinct enough, yet at the same time everything around me was dark and blurred. And from some great obscure distance, a voice was calling. It was like a scene from a movie, a historical blockbuster. But which? Not El Cid, not Ben Hur, not Spartacus. No, the image had to be something my subconscious dreamed up. I shook my head to drive the image from my mind. I was so tired. Certainly, the walls represented the limitations hemming in my life. The silence, residue of my encounter with sound-removal. The blurred vision of my surroundings, an indication that my imagination faced imminent crisis. The beckoning voice, the everything-pink girl, probably. Having subjected the hallucination to this quick-and-dirty analysis, I reopened my book. But I was no longer able to concentrate. My life is nothing, I thought. Zero. Zilch. A blank. What have I done with my life? Not a damned thing. I had no home. I had no family. I had no friends. Not a door to my name. Not an erection either. Pretty soon, not even a job. That peaceful fantasy of Greek and cello was vaporizing as I lay there. If I lost my job, I could forget about taking life easy. And if the System was going to chase me to the ends of the earth, when would I find the time to memorize irregular Greek verbs? I shut my eyes and let out a deep sigh, then rejoined The Red and the Black. What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back. I wouldn t have noticed that the day was over were it not for the Turgenevo-Stendhalian gloom that had crept in around me. By my keeping off my feet, the pain in my stomach had subsided. Dull bass beats throbbed occasionally from the wound, but I just rode them out. Awareness of the pain was passing. The clock read seven-twenty, but I felt no hunger. You d think I might have wanted to eat something after the day I d had, but I cringed at the very thought of food. I was short of sleep, my gut was slashed, and my apartment was gutted. There was no room for appetite. Looking at the assortment of debris around me, I was reminded of a near-future world turned wasteland buried deep in its own garbage. A science fiction novel I d read. Well, my apartment looked like that. Shredded suit, broken videodeck and TV, pieces of a flowerpot, a floor lamp bent out of shape, trampled records, tomato sauce, ripped-out speaker wires… Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy novels spattered with dirty vase water, cut gladioli lying in niemorium on a fallen cashmere sweater with a blob of Pelikan ink on the sleeve… All of it, useless garbage. When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal. But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn t make anything. Where does a busted videodeck get you? I went back to the kitchen to try to salvage a few more sips of whiskey, but the proverbial last drop was not to be found. Gone down the drain, to the world of the INKlings. As I rummaged through the sink, I cut a finger on a sliver of glass. I studied my finger as the blood fell drop by drop onto a whiskey label. After a real wound, what s a little cut? Nobody ever died from a cut on his finger. I let the blood run and drip. The bleeding showed no sign of stopping, so I finally staunched it with kleenex. Several empty beer cans were lying around like shell casings after a mortar barrage. I stooped to pick one up; the metal was warm. Better warm drops of beer than none, I thought. So I ferried the empties back to bed and continued reading The Red and the Black while extracting the last few milliliters out of each can. I needed something to release the tensions and let me rest. Was that too much to ask? I wanted to nod out for as long as it took the earth to spin one Michael Jackson turnaround. Sleep came over me in my wasteland of a home a little before nine o clock. I tossed The Red and the Black to the floor, switched off the light, and curled up to sleep. Embryonic amid devastation. But only for a couple of hours. At eleven, the chubby girl in her pink suit was shaking me by the shoulders. Wake up, please. Please! she cried. This is no time to be sleeping! She pounded on me with her fists. Please. If you don t get up, the world is going to end! The Coming of Winter I WAKE amidst reassuringly familiar smells. I am in my bed, my room. But the impression of everything is slightly altered. The scene seems recreated from memory. The stains on the ceiling, the marks on the plaster walls, small details. It is raining outside. I hear it, ice cold, striking the roof, pouring into the ground. The sounds could be coming from my bedside, or from a mile away. I see the Colonel sitting at the window, back as straight as ever, unmoving as he gazes out at the rain. What can there be to watch so intently in the rain? I try to raise my hand, but my arm refuses to move. I try to speak but no voice will issue; I cannot force the air out of my lungs. My body is unbearably heavy, drained. It is all I can do to direct my eyes to the old officer by the window. What has happened to me? When I try to remember, my head throbs with pain. Winter, says the Colonel, tapping his finger on the windowpane. Winter is upon us. Now you understand why winter inspires such fear. I nod vaguely. Yes, it was winter that hurt me. I was running, from the Woods, toward the Library. The Librarian brought you here. With the help of the Gatekeeper. You were groaning with a high fever, sweating profusely. The day before yesterday. The day before yesterday… ? Yes, you have slept two full days, says the old officer. We worried you would never awaken. Did I not warn you about going into the Woods? Forgive me. The Colonel ladles a bowl of soup from a pot simmering on the stove. Then he props me up in bed and wedges a backrest in place. The backrest is stiff and creaks under my weight. First you eat, he says. Apologize later if you must. Do you have an appetite? No, I say. It is difficult even trying to inhale. Just this, then. You must eat this. Three mouthfuls and no more. Please. The herbal stew is horribly bitter, but I manage to swallow the three mouthfuls. I can feel the strain melt from my body. Much better, says the Colonel, returning the spoon to the bowl. It is not pleasant to taste, but the soup will force the poisons from your body. Go back to sleep. When you awaken, you will feel much better. When I reawaken, it is already dark outside. A strong wind is pelting rain against the windowpanes. The old officer sits at my bedside. How do you feel? Some better? Much better than before, yes, I say. What time is it? Eight in the evening. I move to get out of bed, but am still dizzy. Where are you going? asks the Colonel. To the Library. I have dreamreading to do. Just try walking that body of yours five yards, young fool! he scolds. But I must work. The Colonel shakes his head. Old dreams can wait. The Librarian knows you must rest. The Library will not be open. The old officer goes to the stove, pours himself a cup of tea, and returns to my bedside. The wind rattles the window. From what I can see, you seem to have taken a fancy to the Librarian, volunteers the Colonel. I do not mean to pry, but you called out to her in your fever dream. It is nothing to be ashamed of. All young people fall in love. I neither affirm nor deny. She is very worried about you, he says, sipping his tea. I must tell you, however, that such love may not be prudent. I would rather not have to say this, but it is my duty. Why would it not be prudent? Because she cannot requite your feelings. This is no fault of anyone. Not yours, not hers. It is nothing you can change, any more than you can turn back the River. I rub my cheeks with both hands. Is it the mind you are speaking of? The old officer nods. I have a mind and she does not. Love her as I might, the vessel will remain empty. Is that right? That is correct, says the Colonel. Your mind may no longer be what it once was, but she has nothing of the sort. Nor do I. Nor does anyone here. But are you not being extremely kind to me? Seeing to my needs, attending my sickbed without sleep? Are these not signs of a caring mind? No. Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant. I close my eyes and try to collect my scattered thoughts. From what I gather, I begin, the mind is lost when the shadow dies. Is that not true? It is. If her shadow is dead, as she tells me, does this mean that she can never regain her mind? The Colonel nods. I have seen her records in the Town Hall. There has been no mistake. Her shadow died when she was seventeen. It was buried in the Apple Grove, as dictated. She may remember. Nonetheless, the girl was stripped of her shadow before she attained an awareness of the world, so she does not know what it is to have a mind. This is different from someone like me, who lost his shadow late in life. That is why I can account for the movements of your mind, while she cannot. But she remembers her mother. And her mother had a mind. Does that have no significance? He stirs the tea in his cup, then slowly drinks. No, says the Colonel. The Wall leaves nothing to chance. The Wall has its way with all who possess a mind, absorbing them or driving them out. That seems to have been the fate of her mother. Is love then a thing of mind? I do not want to see you disappointed. The Town is powerful and you are weak. This much you should have learned by now. The old officer stares into his empty cup. In time your mind will not matter. It will go, and with it goes all sense of loss, all sorrow. Nor will love matter. Only liv-ing will remain. Undisturbed, peaceful living. You are fond of the girl and I believe she is fond of you. Expect no more. It is so strange, I say. I still have a mind, but there are times I lose sight of it. Or no, the times I lose sight of it are few. Yet I have confidence that it will return, and that conviction sustains me. The sun does not show its face for a long time thereafter. When the fever subsides, I get out of bed and open the window to breathe the outside air. I can rise to my feet, but my strength eludes me for two days more. I cannot even turn the doorknob. Each evening the Colonel brings more of the bitter herbal soup, along with a gruel. And he tells me stories, memories of old wars. He does not mention the girl or the Wall again, nor do I dare to ask. On the third day, I borrow the Colonel s walking stick and take a long constitutional about the Official Residences. As I walk, my body feels light and unmanageable. Perhaps the fever has burnt off, but that cannot be all. Winter has given everything around me a mysterious weight; I alone seem an outsider to that ponderous world. From the slope of the Hill where stand the Official Residences, one looks out over the western half of the Town: the River, the Clocktower, the Wall, and far in the distance, the Gate in the west. My weak eyes behind black glasses cannot distinguish greater detail, although I have the impression that the winter air must give the Town a clarity. I remember the map I must deliver to my shadow. It is now finished, but being bedridden has caused me to miss our appointed day by nearly a week. My shadow is surely worrying about me. Or he may have abandoned hope for me entirely. The thought depresses me. I beg a pair of work boots from the Colonel. My shadow wears only thin summer shoes, I say. He will need these as winter gets colder. I remove the inner sole of one, conceal the map, and replace the sole. I approach the Colonel again. The Gatekeeper is not someone I can trust. Will you see that my shadow receives these? Certainly, he says. Before evening, he returns, stating that he has handed the boots to my shadow personally. Your shadow expressed concern about you. How does he look? I ask. The cold is beginning to diminish him. But he is in good spirits. On the evening of the tenth day after my fever, I am able to descend to the base of the Western Hill and go to the Library. As I push open the Library door, the air in the building hangs still and musty, more so than I recall. It is unlit and only my footfalls echo in the gloom. The fire in the stove is extinguished, the coffeepot cold. The ceiling is higher than it was. The counter lies under dust. She is not to be found. There is no human presence. I sit on a wooden bench for lack of anything to do. I wait for her to come. If the door is unlocked, as it was, then she will. I keep my vigil, but there is no sign of her. All time outside the Library has ceased. I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing. The room is heavy with winter, its every item nailed fast. My limbs lose their weight. My head expands and contracts of its own will. I rise from the bench and turn on the light. Then I scoop coal from the bucket to fuel the stove, strike a match to it, and sit back down. Somehow the light makes the room even gloomier, the fire in the stove turns it cold. Perhaps I plumb too deep. Or perhaps a lingering numbness in the core of my body has lured me into a brief sleep. When I look up again, she is standing before me. A yellow powder of light diffuses in a halo behind her, veiling her silhouette. She wears her blue coat, her hair gathered round inside her collar. The scent of the winter wind is on her. I thought you would not come, I say. I have been waiting for you. She rinses out the coffeepot and puts fresh water on to heat. Then she frees her hair from inside her collar and removes her coat. Did you not think I would come? she asks. I do not know, I say. It was just a feeling. I will come as long as you need me. Surely I do need her. Even as my sense of loss deepens each time we meet, I will need her. I want you to tell me about your shadow, I say. I may have met her in my old world. Yes, that may be so. I remember the time you said we might have met before. She sits in front of the stove and gazes into the fire. I was four when my shadow was taken away and sent outside the Wall. She lived in the world beyond, and I lived here. I do not know who she was there, just as she lost touch of me. When I turned seventeen, my shadow returned to the Town to die. Shadows always return to die. The Gatekeeper buried her in the Apple Grove. That is when you became a citizen of the Town? Yes. The last of my mind was buried in the name of my shadow. You said that the mind is like the wind, but perhaps it is we who are like the wind. Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying. Did you meet with your shadow before she died? She shakes her head. No, I did not see her. There was no reason for us to meet. She had become something apart from me. The pot on the stove begins to murmur, sounding to my ears like the wind in the distance. End of the World, Charlie Parker, Time Bomb PLEASE, cried the chubby girl. If you don t get up, the world is going to end! Let it end, I said, groaning. The wound in my gut hurt too much for me to care. Why are you saying that? What s wrong? What s happened here? I grabbed a T-shirt and wiped the sweat off my face. A couple of guys busted in and gave my stomach a six-centimeter gash, I spat out. With a knife? Like a piggy bank. But why? I ve been trying to figure that one out myself, I said. It occurred to me that the two guys with the knife might be friends of yours. The chubby girl stared at me. How could you think such a thing? she cried. Oh, I don t know. I just wanted to blame somebody. Makes me feel better. But that doesn t solve anything. It doesn t solve anything, I seconded. But so what. This had nothing to do with me. Your grandfather waved his hands, and suddenly I wind up in the middle of it. Another boxcar of pain rolled in. I shut my mouth and waited at the crossing. Take today, for example. First, you call at who-knows-what hour of the morning. You tell me your grandfather s disappeared and you want me to help. I go to meet you; you don t show. I come back home to sleep; the Dynamic Duo busts into my apartment and knifes me in the gut. Next the guys from the System arrive and interrogate me. Now you re here. Seems like you all have things scheduled. Great little team you got. I took a breath. All right, you re going to tell me everything you know about what s going on. I swear, I don t know any more than you do. I helped with Grandfather s research, but I only did what I was told. Errands. Do this, do that, go there, come here, make a phone call, write a letter, things like that. I don t really know anything else. But you did help with the research. I helped, but I just processed data. Technical stuff. I don t have the academic background, so I never understood anything more. I tried to regroup my thoughts. I needed to figure things out before the situation dragged me under. Okay, just now, you were saying the world was going to end. What was that all about? I don t know. its something Grandfather said. If I had this in me, it d be the end of the world. Grandfather doesn t joke about things like that. If he said the world is going to end, then honest, the world is going to end. I don t get it, I said. What s it supposed to mean, this end-of-the-world talk? What exactly did he say? Are you sure he didn t say, The world is going to be obliterated or The world is going to be destroyed ? No, he said, The world is going to end . More mental regrouping. So then, this… uh… end of the world has something to do with me? I guess so. Grandfather said you were the key. He started researching all about you a couple of years ago. A couple of years ago! I couldn t believe what I was hearing. What else? Anything about a time bomb? A time bomb? That s what the guy who knifed me said. That the data I processed for your grandfather was like a time bomb waiting to explode. Know anything about that? Only hunches, said the chubby girl. Grandfather has been studying human consciousness for a long time. And I don t believe shuffling is all there was to it. At least up until the time he came out with shuffling, Grandfather would tell me all kinds of things about his research. Like I said, I had practically no background, but Grandfather kept things simple, and it was really interesting. I used to love those little talks of ours. But then, once he finalized his system for shuffling, he clammed up? That s right. Grandfather shut himself up in his underground laboratory and never told me anything more. Whenever I d ask him about his research, he d change the subject. Didn t that strike you as odd? Well, it did make me unhappy. And very lonely. Then, looking me in the face, she asked, Do you think I could I get under the covers with you? its awfully cold in here. As long as you don t touch my wound or move around too much, I said. She circled over to the opposite side of the bed and slipped under the covers, pink suit and all. I handed her a pillow. She fluffed it up a bit before placing it under her head. Her neckline exuded the same melon scent. I struggled to shift my body to face her. So here we were, lying face to face in the same bed. This is the first time I ve ever been so close to a man, said the chubby girl. Uh-oh. I ve hardly ever even been out in town. That s why I couldn t find my way to that Aoyama supermarket this morning. I was going to ask you for better directions, but the sound went dead. You could have told any cab driver to take you there. I hardly had any money. I ran out of the building so quickly, I forgot to take more with me. So I had to walk. Don t you have any other family? I asked, not quite believing her. When I was six, my parents and brother were killed in an accident. A truck plowed into our car from behind and the gas tank exploded. They were burned to death. And you were the only who survived? I was in the hospital at the time. They were coming to visit me. Ah, yes, I said. Ever since then, Grandfather watched over me. I didn t even go to school, hardly ever went out, didn t have any friends… Why didn t you go to school? Grandfather said it wasn t necessary, she answered matter-of-factly. He taught me all the subjects English and Russian and anatomy, everything. Stuff like cooking and sewing, I learned from Auntie. Your aunt? Well, not my real aunt. She was the live-in lady who did the cleaning and chores. A really wonderful person. She died from cancer three years ago. Since Auntie died, its been just Grandfather and me. So you didn t go to school after you were six years old? That s right, but what difference does that make? I mean, I can do all sorts of things. I can speak four foreign languages, I can play piano and alto sax, I can assemble a wireless, I ve studied navigation and tightrope walking, I ve read tons of books. And my sandwiches were good, weren t they? Very good, I admitted. Grandfather always said school s a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either. Incredible, I said. But didn t you feel deprived not having friends your own age? Well, I can t really say. I was so busy, I never had time to think about it. And besides, I don t know what I could have said to people my own age. Hmm. On the other hand, she perked up, you fascinate me. Huh? I mean, here you are so exhausted, and yet your exhaustion seems to give you a kind of vitality. its tremendous, she chirped. I bet you d be good at sax! Excuse me? Do you have any Charlie Parker records? I believe so. But I m in no condition to look for them in this disaster zone. The stereo s broken, so you couldn t listen anyway. Can you play an instrument? Nope. May I touch you? No! I laid down the law. I m in too much pain besides. When the wound heals, can I touch? When the wound heals, if the world hasn t come to an end… lets just go back to what we were talking about. You said your grandfather clammed up after he invented his system of shuffling. Oh yes, that s right. From that point on, Grandfather seemed to change radically. He would hardly talk to me. He was irritable, always muttering to himself. Do you remember if he said anything else about shuffling? The chubby girl fingered one gold earring. Well, I remember him saying shuffling was a door to a new world. He said that although he d developed it as a method for scrambling computer data, with a little doing a person might scramble the world. Kind of like nuclear physics. But if shuffling is the door to a new world, why am I supposed to hold the key? I don t know. I longed for a big glass of whiskey on the rocks. Lots of luck around my place. lets try this again. Was it your grandfather s purpose to end the world? No. Nothing like that. Grandfather may be moody and a bit presumptuous and he may not like people in general, but deep down he really is a good person. Like me and you. Thanks. No one ever said that about me before. He was also afraid his research would fall into the wrong hands. He quit the System because he knew if he stayed on, the System would use his findings for anything they felt like. That s when he opened up his own laboratory. But the System does good, I said. It keeps the Semiotecs from robbing data banks and selling on the black market, thereby upholding the rightful ownership of information. The chubby girl shrugged her shoulders. Grandfather didn t seem too concerned about good or bad. Or at least, he said, it had nothing to do with claims of ownership. Well, maybe not, I said, backing off. Grandfather never trusted any form of authority. He did temporarily belong to the System, but that was only so he could get free use of data and experimental resources and a mainframe simulator. That so? Tell me, when your grandfather quit the System, did he, by any chance, take my personal file from the data bank with him? I don t know, she said. But if it did occur to him to do it, who would have stopped him? I mean, he was the head of Central Research. He had full clearance to do as he pleased with the data. So that was the deal. The Professor had walked out with the data on me. He d applied it to some private research project of his, with me as the sample on which to advance the principle of shuffling generations beyond anyone else. And now, as my friend Junior had suggested, the Professor was ready for me. His primary sample was to become his guinea pig. He d probably given me bogus data to shuffle, planting it with a code that would react in my consciousness. If that was in fact the case, then the reaction had already begun. A time bomb. What if Junior was right? I did a quick mental calculation. It was last night when I came to after the shuffling. Since then nearly twenty-four hours had passed. Twenty-four hours. I had no idea when the time bomb was set to go off, but I d already lost a whole day. One more question. You did say it was the world is going to end , didn t you? Yes, that s right. That s what Grandfather said. Would your grandfather have started this end-of-the-world talk before he got to researching my data? Or only after? After, she said. At least I think so. I mean, Grandfather just started saying the world is going to end quite recently. Why is it important? What s this got to do with anything? I m not sure. But I ve got a feeling there s a hook in it somewhere. My shuffling password is End of the World . Now I can t believe that s pure coincidence. What s your End of the World story about? I wasn t told. its part of my consciousness, but its inaccessible to me. The only thing I know about it is the code name, End of the World . Couldn t you retrieve it? Reverse the process or something? Impossible, I said. The process is safeguarded by System Central. A whole army division couldn t pry the information loose. Security is unbelievable. And Grandfather pulled the file? Probably. But I m only guessing. We d have to ask your grandfather himself. Then you ll help save Grandfather from the INKlings? Pressing my gut wound in, I got out of bed. My head lit up with pain like a busy switchboard. I don t have much choice, it seems, I said. I don t know what your grandfather s endof-the-world scenario means, but from the look of things, I don t think I can afford to ignore it. Either way, we have to help Grandfather. Because all three of us are good people? Of course, said the chubby girl. Dreamreading Unable to know my own mind, I return to the task of dreamreading. As winter deepens, I concentrate on this effort, and the sense of loss that haunts me is forgotten, albeit temporarily. On the other hand, the more old dreams I read, the more I apprehend my own helplessness. I cannot divine the message of the dreams. I read them without any understanding of them. They are as indecipherable texts passing before my eyes night after night. I could as well be gazing at the waters of the River. My dreamreading has improved. I have become proficient at the technique and can manage quantities of old dreams. But to what avail? What does dreamreading mean? I ask the Librarain. My job, as you have said, is to read the old dreams out of these skulls. But the dreams go through me, for no reason. I feel tired more and more. Even so, you read the dreams as if possessed. Is that not so? I don t know, I answer. There is also the fact that I concentrate as I do to fill my emptiness. As she has said, though, there is something in dreamreading that has me possessed. Perhaps the problem is in you, she says. A problem in me? I wonder if you need to unclose your mind. I do not understand things of the mind very well, but perhaps yours is too firmly sealed. The old dreams need to be read by you and you need to seek the old dreams. What makes you think so? That is dreamreading. As the birds leave south or north in their season, the Dreamreader has dreams to read. Then she reaches out across the table and places her hand on mine. She smiles. A smile that promises spring. Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams. In time I take up each old dream, and conscientiously give myself over to it. I select a skull from the long shelves and carry it to the table. She helps me, first, to wipe off the dust with a dampened cloth. With meticulous care, she then polishes it with a dry cloth until the skull becomes like sleet. I gently place both hands upon the skull and stare, waiting for a warm glow to emanate. When it reaches a certain temperature like a patch of sun in winter the white-polished skull offers up its old dreams. I strain my eyes and breathe deeply, using my fingertips to trace the intricate lines of the tale it commenees to tell. The voice of the light remains ever so faint; images quiet as ancient constellations float across the dome of my dawning mind. They are indis-tinct fragments that never merge into a sensate picture. There would be a landscape I have not seen before, unfamiliar melodic echoes, whisperings in a chaos of tongues. They drift up fitfully and as suddenly sink into darkness. Between one fragment and the next there is nothing in common. I experiment with ways to concentrate my energies into my fingertips, but the outcome never varies. For while I recognize that the old dreams relate to something in me, I am lost. Perhaps I am inadequate as a dreamreader. Perhaps the light has dimmed, the language eroded over untold years. Or again, are these dimensions of a different order? Does there exist an intractable chasm between my waking time and the dream time of the skulls? I watch the disparate fragments float up and disappear, without comment. To be sure, the skulls also show me scenes well within my ken. Grasses moving in the breeze, white clouds traveling across the sky, sunlight reflecting on a stream pure unpretentious visions. In my mind, however, these simple scenes summon forth a sadness that I can find no words for. Like a ship sailing past a window, they appear only to disappear without a trace. I read and the old dream slowly loses its warmth, like a tide receding, claimed back into the cold white skull it was. The old dream returns to its ageless sleep. And all the water of vision slips through the fingers and spills to the ground. My dreamreading is an endless repetition of this. When the old dreams are spent, I hand the skull to the Librarian and she lines it on the counter. In the pause I rest, both hands on the table, and unravel my powers. I have found that at most I can read six skulls in a night. More than that and my concentration fails; the dreams garble into noise. By eleven o clock, I can scarcely stand from fatigue. At the end of each session, she serves coffee. Occasionally we share biscuits or fruitbread she bakes at home. We do not speak as we eat. Am I hindering your dreamreading? she asks me. Perhaps your mind is hard shut because I cannot respond to you? As always, we sit on the narrow steps that lead from the Old Bridge down to the sandbar. A pale silver moon trembles on the face of the water. A wooden boat lashed to a post modulates the sound of the current. Sitting with her, I feel her warm against my arm. its not that way at all, I say. It is something in me. My mind is turning away from me. I m confused. Is the mind beyond you? I don t know, I say. There are times when the understanding does not come until later, when it no longer matters. Other times I do what I must do, not knowing my own mind, and I am led astray. How can the mind be so imperfect? she says with a smile. I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose. It may well be imperfect, I say, but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow. Where do they lead? To oneself, I answer. That s what the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere. I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall. Not one thing is your fault, I comfort her. Hamburgers, Skyline, Deadline WE decided to get something to eat before venturing off. I wasn t really hungry myself, but who knew when we d have a chance to sit down to a meal later. Anyway, the girl said she d only had enough money for a chocolate bar for lunch and was starving. I maneuvered my legs into jeans, trying not to aggravate the wound, pulled on a shirt over my T-shirt and a light sweater over that, then a nylon windbreaker over that. Her pink suit wasn t quite right for a spelunking expedition, but there was little in what was left of my wardrobe to fit her. I was ten centimeters taller than her; she was ten kilos heavier than me. I supposed we should get her a more appropriate outfit, but no stores were going to be open at this hour, so I got her to squeeze into my old Gl-surplus flight jacket. Her high heels presented a problem, but she said she had jogging shoes and galoshes at the office. Pink jogging shoes and pink galoshes. You seem to like pink, I said. Grandfather likes it. He says I look pretty in pink. You do, I said. And she did. Chubby girls in pink tend to conjure up images of big strawberry shortcakes waltzing on a dance floor, but in her case the color suited her. I dragged my knapsack out from under a pile of bedding, and after checking that it too hadn t been slashed, I packed it with a small flashlight, a magnet, gloves, towels, a large knife, a cigarette lighter, rope, and solid fuel. Next I went into the kitchen and scavenged bread and cans of corned beef, peaches, vienna sausage, and grapefruit from the holocaust on the floor. I filled my canteen with water, then stuffed all the cash I had in the apartment into my pocket. This reminds me of a picnic, said the girl. You bet. I stopped to take a last look at my scrap heap of an apartment. Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy. Sure, I d gotten tired of this tiny space, but I d had a good home here. In the time it takes to swill two cans of beer, all had sublimed like morning mist. My job, my whiskey, my peace and quiet, my solitude, my Somerset Maugham and John Ford collections all of it trashed and worthless. The splendor of the fields, the glory of the flowers, I recited under my breath. Then I reached up and pulled the breaker switch to cut the electricity. I was in too much pain, physically, to reflect more deeply on closing this chapter in my life. I hurt too much and I was too tired. Better not to think at all than to think halfway. We got into the elevator, went down to the basement garage, and put our things on the back seat of the car. I didn t even bother to look for hidden pursuers. They could be waiting in a stakeout, they could be tailing us, what did it matter now? And anyway, who the hell would they have been? Semiotecs? The boys from the System? That friendly tag team? Was it to be fun and games with all three? I love sur-prises. If they had a job to do, they could damn well do it. I didn t want to drive the car, the way I was hurting, but the girl didn t know how. Sorry. But I can ride a horse, she said. That s okay. You may need to ride a horse yet, I said. The fuel gauge read almost full. I nosed the car out. Winding our way out of the residential backstreets, we got to the main drag. It was surprisingly busy for this hour, mostly taxis. Why were so many people out racing around in the middle of the night? Why couldn t they just leave work at six o clock, go home, and lights-out by ten? But that, as they say, was none of my business, opec would go on drilling for oil, regardless of anyone s opinion, conglomerates would make electricity and gasoline from that oil, people would be running around town late at night using up that gasoline. At the moment, however, I had my own problems to deal with. I sat there at a red light, both hands on the wheel, and yawned. To the right of us was a white Skyline. In it sat a young man and woman, on their way to or back from a night on the town, looking vaguely bored. Duran Duran blared from the car stereo. The woman, two silver bracelets on the hand she dangled out the window, cast a glance in my direction. I could have been a Denny s restaurant sign or a traffic signal, it would have been no different. She was your regular sort of beautiful young woman, I guess. In a TV drama, she d be the female lead s best friend, the face that appears once in a cafe scene to say, What s the matter? You haven t been yourself lately. The light turned green, and in the time it took the truck ahead to gear up, the white Skyline zoomed off with a flamboyant show of exhaust. Watch the cars behind us, will you? I told the chubby girl. Tell me if you think anybody s following us. The girl nodded and turned around. Do you think we re in for a chase? No idea, I said. Just curious. How about a hamburger? It d be quick. Fine. I pulled the car into the first drive-in burger place I saw. A waitress in a red microminiskirt fastened trays to our windows, then asked for our orders. A double cheeseburger with french fries and a hot chocolate, said the chubby girl. A regular burger and a beer, I said. I m sorry, but we don t serve beer, said the waitress. A regular burger and a Coke, I corrected myself. What was I thinking? While we waited for the food to come, no cars entered the drive-in. Of course, if anyone were really tailing us, the last thing they d do is drive into the same parking lot with us. They d be somewhere out of sight, sitting tight, waiting for our next move. I turned my attention to the food that had arrived, and mechanically shovelled hamburger with its expressway-ticket-sized leaf of lettuce down the hatch. Miss Pink, on the other hand, relished each bite of her cheeseburger, while daintily picking at her fries and slurping her hot chocolate. Care for some french fries? she asked me. No thanks, I said. The girl polished off everything on her tray. She savored the last sip of hot chocolate, licked the ketchup and mustard from her fingers, then wiped her hands and mouth with the napkin. Now, then, about your grandfather, I said, we probably ought to go to his underground laboratory first. Yes. There might be something to give us a lead. But do you think we ll be able to get by the INKlings? The ultrasonic repel system is broken, isn t it? It is, but there s a small device for emergencies. its not very powerful, but if we carry it with us, the INKlings will stay away. Good, I said, relieved. The battery only lasts for thirty minutes, though, she added. After that, it has to be recharged. How long to recharge? Fifteen minutes. But for just going back and forth between the office and the lab, we should have time to spare. Okay, better than nothing. We left the drive-in, and stopped at an all-night supermarket for a couple cans of beer and a flask of whiskey. Whereupon I immediately drank both cans of beer and a fourth of the whiskey. There, that took the edge off things. I recapped the whiskey and passed it to the girl, who packed it in the knapsack. Why do you drink so much? she wanted to know. It makes me feel brave, I said. I m scared too, but you don t see me drinking. Your scared and my scared are two different things. What s that supposed to mean? she asked. As you get older, you don t recover from things so easy. And as you get older, you also get tired? Yeah, I said, you get tired. She turned toward me, reached out her hand, and touched my earlobe. its all right. Don t worry. I ll be by your side, she said. Thanks. I parked the car in the lot of her grandfather s office building. Shouldering the knapsack, I felt the wound throb sharply. Like rain, the pain would pass, I told myself, and loped after the girl. At the entrance to the building was a muscular young watchman who asked for her resident s ID. She produced a plastic card, which the watchman then inserted into a tabletop computer slot. After confirming her name and room number in the monitor, he flipped a switch to open the door. This is an extraordinary building, the girl explained to me as we cut across the large, open floor. Everyone in the building has some secret that needs protecting. Important research or business dealings, stuff like that. That s why all this security. They check you at the door, then they watch you with TV cameras to make sure you reach your room. So even if someone had been following us, they wouldn t be able to get to us inside. Do they know that your grandfather dug a shaft through the building? Probably not. Grandfather had the office specifically designed to connect directly to the sub-basement at the time the building went up. Only the owner of the building and the architect know about it. The construction crew was told it was a media well, a communications cortex that would house fiber-optic networks later. I think the blueprints are fudged also. I bet it must have cost. I m sure it did. But Grandfather s got oodles of money, said the girl. Me, too. I m very well-off. I multiplied my inheritance and the life-insurance money I got on the stock market. She took a key out of her pocket and opened the elevator door. Back into that overgrown vacu-pac elevator. Stock market? Sure, Grandfather taught me the tricks. He taught me how to choose among all the information, how to read the market, how to dodge taxes, how to transfer funds to banks overseas, stuff like that. Stocks are a lot of fun. Ever tried? Afraid not, I said. I d never opened a fixed-term com-pounded-interest account. The elevator moved at its requisite impossible ascending-or-descending speed. Grandfather says that schools are too inefficient to produce top material. What do you think? she asked. Well, probably so, I answered. I went to school for many years and I don t believe it made that much difference in my life. I can t speak any languages, can t play any instruments, can t play the stock market, can t ride a horse. So why didn t you quit school? You could have quit any time you wanted, couldn t you? I guess so, I said. I could have quit, but I didn t want to. I guess it didn t occur to me to do anything like that. Unlike you, I had a perfectly average, ordinary upbringing. I never had what it takes to make a first-rate anything. That s wrong, she declared. Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. its just a matter of drawing it out, isn t it? But school doesn t know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. its no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down. Like me, I said. No, you re different. I can tell there s something special about you. The emotional shell around you is so hard, everything inside has got to be still intact. Emotional shell? That s right, she said. That s why its not too late. After all this is over, why don t we live together? its not like we d have to get married or anything. We could move to Greece or Finland or somewhere easy-going like that and pass the time riding horses and singing songs. We d have plenty of money, and meanwhile you could be reborn as a firstrate human being. Hmm. Not a bad offer. The elevator came to a stop. She stepped out and I followed. She walked at a fast pace, as she had the first time we met, the click of her high heels echoing down the long corridor. Before my eyes, her pleasing wiggle, her flashing gold earrings. But suppose I took you up on the offer, I spoke to her back, you d be doing all the giving and I d be doing all the taking. That doesn t strike me as fair. She slowed her pace to walk beside me. There s bound to be something you can give me, she said. For instance? For instance, your emotional shell. That s something I really want to find out about. I want to know what its made up of and how it functions and stuff like that. its nothing to get excited about, I said. Everybody has more or less of an emotional shell if that s what you want to call it. You ve never been out in the world. You don t know how the mind of the ordinary person works. You act as if you re worthless! exclaimed the chubby girl. You can shuffle, can t you? Of course I can. But that s just a matter of practice. Not so different from using an abacus or playing the piano. That is not all there is to it, she said. Everyone thought that way at first. That with the necessary training, anyone anyone who passed the tests, that is could shuffle. Even Grandfather thought so. Well, twenty-six people happened to have the same surgery and training, and all of them got the ability to shuffle. In the beginning, there weren t any problems Hey, I never heard about any problems at all. I heard everything went according to plan. Officially, yes, she spoke with authority. But the truth is, out of these twenty-six, twenty-five died within a year and a half after training. Only one of them is still alive. What? You mean You. You re the only survivor after three years. You ve gone on with your shuffling, and you ve had no problems or breakdowns. Do you still think you re so ordinary? You are a most important person! I thrust both hands in my pockets and continued down the corridor. It was getting to be too much, the way the scale of this thing kept expanding. Why did the others die? I asked the girl. I don t think they know. There was no visible cause of death. Some brain malfunction, nothing clear. They must have some idea. Well, Grandfather put it like this. Really ordinary persons probably can t tolerate irradiation of their brain, which was done to catalyze the core consciousness. The brain cells try to produce antibodies and react with overkill. I m sure its more complicated than that, but that s a simple explanation. Then what s the reason I m alive? Perhaps you had natural antibodies. Your emotional shell . For some reason you already had a safeguard factor in your brain that allowed you to survive. Grandfather tried to simulate this shell, but it didn t hold up. I thought this over. This antibody factor or guard or whatever, is it an innate faculty? Or is it something I acquired? Part inborn and part learned, I seem to remember. But beyond that, Grandfather wouldn t say. Knowing too much could have put me in jeopardy. Although, according to his hypothesis, people with your natural antibodies are about one in a million to a million and a half. And even then, short of actually endowing them with shuffling, there s no way to single these people out. Which means, if your grandfather s hypothesis is correct, that my happening to be among those twenty-six was an incredible fluke. That s why you re so valuable as a sample. That s why you re the key. What did your grandfather have planned for me? The data he gave me to shuffle, that unicorn skull what was that all about? If I knew that, I could save you right here and now, said the girl. Me and the world. The office had been ransacked, not to the same degree as my apartment, but someone had done a number on the place. Papers were strewn everywhere, the desk overturned, the safe pried open, the cabinet drawers flung across the room, the Professor s and the girl s change of clothes pulled out of their lockers and tossed like salad over a bed of shredded sofa. The girl s clothes were, verifiably, all pink. An orchestration of pink in every gradation from light rose to deep fuchsia. Unforgivable! she cried. They must have come up from below. INKlings? No, not them. INKlings wouldn t come up this far above ground. And if they had, you could tell by the smell. What smell? A fishy kind of swampy kind of horrible smell. INKlings didn t do this. I bet they were the people who trashed your apartment. I looked around the room. In front of the overturned desk, a whole box of scattered paperclips glinted in the fluorescent light. There was something about them, I didn t know what. I picked one up from the floor and slipped it into my pocket. Was anything of importance kept here? I asked. No, she said. Practically everything here is expendable. Just account ledgers and receipts and general research stuff. Nothing was irreplaceable. How about the INKling-repel device? Is that still in one piece? She rooted through the debris in front of the lockers, throwing aside a flashlight and radio-cassette player and alarm clock and a can of cough drops to find a small black box with something like a VU-meter, which she tested several times. its all right, it works fine. They probably thought it was a useless contraption. Lucky for us, because the mechanism s so simple, one little whack could have broken it. Then the chubby girl went over to a corner of the room and crouched down to undo the cover of an electrical outlet. Pushing a tiny switch inside, she stood up, gently pressed her palms flat against a section of the adjacent wall, and a panel the size of a telephone directory popped open, revealing a safe within. Not bad, eh? Bet nobody would think of looking here, eh? she congratulated herself. Then she dialed the combination and opened the safe. Holding back the pain, I helped her right the desk and set out the contents of the safe. There was a thick rubber-banded bundle of bank books, a stack of stock certificates, a cloth bag holding something solid, a black leather notebook, and a brown envelope. She poured out the contents of the envelope: a gold ring and a discolored old Omega watch, its crystal crazed. A memento of my father, said the girl. The ring was my mother s. Everything else got burned. She slipped the ring and watch back into the envelope. Next, from the cloth bag, she removed an object in an old shirt; unwrapped, it turned out to be a small automatic pistol. It bore no resemblance to a toy. This was a real gun that shot real bullets. I m no expert, but my years of moviegoing told me it was either a Browning or a Beretta. With the gun was a spare cartridge and a box of bullets. I guess you Calcutecs are all good shots, said the girl. You ve got to be kidding. I ve never even held a gun before. Really? Shooting s another thing I learned by not going to school. I like it as a sport. Anyway, seeing as how you don t have any experience with a gun, I ll hold on to it. By all means. Just don t shoot me by mistake. I don t think I could stand any more damage to my body. Don t worry. I m very careful, she said, slipping the automatic into her pocket. She then opened the black leather notebook to a middle page and studied it under the light. The page was scribbled entirely in an unintelligible rune of numbers and letters. This is Grandfather s notebook, she explained. its written in a code that only he and I know. Plans, events of the day, he writes it all down here. So then what s this now? September 28th, you re down as having finished laundering the data. That s right. There s a (1) written there. Probably the first step. Then, he has you finishing the shuffling on the 29th or the 30th. Or is that wrong? Not at all. That s (2). The second step. Next, there s… uh, lets see… noon, the 2nd, which is (3). Cancel Program . I was supposed to meet your grandfather on the 2nd at noon. My guess is that he was going to disarm whatever program he d set inside me. So that the world wouldn t end. But a lot has changed. And something s happened to him. He s been dragged off somewhere. Hold on, she said, still reading the notebook. The code gets pretty involved. While she read, I organized the knapsack, making sure to include her pink jogging shoes. Slickers and boots were scattered about, but thankfully they weren t slashed or anything like that. Going under the waterfall without rain gear would mean getting soaked and chilled to the bone; it would also mean wonders for my wound. My watch read a little before midnight. The notebook is full of complicated calculations. Electrical charge and decay rates, resistance factors and offsets, stuff like that. I don t understand any of it. Skip it. We don t have much time, I said. Just decode what you can make out. There s no need to decode. Why not? She handed me the notebook and pointed to the spot. There was no code, only a huge scrawl: Do you suppose this marks the deadline? she asked. Either that, or its (4). Meaning, if the program is cancelled at (3), X won t happen. But if for some reason it doesn t get cancelled and the program keeps on reading, then I think we get to X. So that means we have to get to Grandfather by noon of the 2nd. If my guess is correct. How much time is left? Before the big bang… Thirty-six hours, I said. I didn t need to look at my watch. The time it takes the earth to complete one and a half rotations. Two morning papers and one evening edition would be delivered. Alarm clocks would ring twice, men would shave twice. Fortunate souls would have sex two or three times. Thirty-six hours and no more. One over seven-teen-thousand thirty-three of a life expectancy of seventy years. Then, after those thirty-six hours, the world was supposed to come to an end. What do we do now? asked the girl. I located some painkillers in the first-aid kit lying on the floor and swallowed them with a gulp of water from the canteen. Then I hiked the knapsack up on my shoulders. There s nothing to do but go underground, I said. The Death of the Beasts THE beasts have already lost several of their number. The first ice-bound morning, a few of the old beasts succumbed, their winter-whitened bodies lying under two inches of snow. The morning sun tore through the clouds, setting the frozen landscape agleam, the frosty breath of more than a thousand beasts dancing whitely in the air. I awake before dawn to find the Town blanketed in snow. It is a wondrous scene in the somber light. The Clocktower soars black above the whitened world, the dark band of the River flows below. I put on my coat and gloves and descend to the empty streets. There is not yet a footprint in the snow. When I gather the snow in my hands, it crumbles. The edges of the River are frozen, with a dusting of snow. There is no wind, no birds, no movement in the Town. I hear nothing but the crunching of snow under my feet. I walk to the Gate and see the Gatekeeper out by the Shadow Grounds. The Gatekeeper is under the wagon that he and my shadow repaired. He is lubricating the axles. The wagon is loaded with ceramic crocks of the kind used to hold rapeseed oil, all roped fast to the sideboards. I wonder why the Gatekeeper would have need for so much oil. The Gatekeeper emerges from under the wagon and raises his hand to greet me. He seems in a good mood. Up early, eh? What wind blows you this way? I have come out to see the snow, I say. It was so beautiful from up on the Hill. The Gatekeeper scoffs and throws a big arm around me as he has done before. He wears no gloves. You are a strange one. Winter here is nothing but snow, and you come down from your Hill just to see it. Then he belches, a locomotive cloud of steam, and looks toward the Gate. But I will say, you came at the right time, he smiles. Want to climb the Watchtower? Something you ought to see from there. A winter treat, ha ha. In a little while I will blow the horn, so keep your eyes open. A treat? You will see. I climb the Watchtower beside the Gate, not knowing what to expect. I look at the world beyond the Wall. Snow is deep in the Apple Grove, as if a storm cloud had specifically sought it out. The Northern and Eastern Ridges are powdered white, with a few darklimned crags to mar their complexion. Immediately below the Watchtower are the beasts, sleeping as they usually do at this hour. Legs folded under them, they huddle low to the ground, their horns thrust forward, each seeking sleep. All peacefully unaware of the thick coat of snow that has fallen upon them. The clouds disperse and the sun begins to illuminate the earth. Beams of sun slant across the land. My eyes strain in the brightness to see the promised treat . Presently, the Gatekeeper pushes open the Gate and sounds the horn. One long note, then three short notes. The beasts awaken at the first tone and lift their heads in the direction of the call. White breaths charge the air anew, heralding the start of the new day. The last note of the horn fades, and the beasts are risen to their feet. They prow their horns at the sky, then shake off the snow as if they had not previously noticed it. Finally they walk toward the Gate. As the beasts amble by, some hang their heads low, some paw their hooves quietly. Only after they have filed inside do I understand what the Gatekeeper has wanted me to see. A few beasts have frozen to death in their posture of sleep. Yet they appear not dead so much as deep in meditation. No breath issues from them. Their bodies unmoving, their awareness swallowed in darkness. After all the other beasts have gone through the Gate, these dead remain like growths on the face of the earth. Their horns angle up into space, almost alive. I gaze at their hushed forms as the morning sun rises and the shadow of the Wall withdraws, the brilliance melting the snow from the ground. Will the morning sun thaw away even their death? At any moment, will these apparently lifeless forms stand and go about their usual morning routine? They do not rise. The sun but glistens on their wet fur. My eyes behind black glasses begin to hurt. Descending the Watchtower, I cross the River and go back to my quarters on the Western Hill. I discover that the morning sun has done harm to my eyes, severely. When I close my eyes, the tears do not stop. I hear each drop fall to my lap. I darken the room and stare for hours at the weirdly shaped patterns that drift and recede in a space of no perspective. At ten o clock the Colonel, bringing coffee, knocks on my door and finds me face down on the bed, rubbing my eyes with a cold towel. There is a pain in the back of my head, but at least the tears have subsided. What has happened to you? he asks. The morning sun is stronger than you think. Especially on snowy mornings. You knew that a Dreamreader cannot tolerate strong light. Why did you want to go outdoors? I went to see the beasts, I say. Many died. Eight, nine head. No, more. And many more will die with each snowfall. Why do they die so easily? I ask the old officer, removing the towel from my face to look at him. They are weak. From the cold and from hunger. It has always been this way. Do they never die out? The old officer shakes his head. The creatures have lived here for many millenia, and so will they continue. Many will die over the winter, but in spring the survivors will foal. New life pushes old out of the way. The number of beasts that can live in this Town is limited. Why don t they move to another place? There are trees in the Woods. If they went south, they would escape the snow. Why do they need to stay? Why, I cannot tell you, he says. But the beasts cannot leave. They belong to the Town; they are captured by it. Just as you and I are. By their own instincts, they know this. What happens to the bodies? They are burned, replies the Colonel, warming his great parched hands on his coffee cup. For the next few weeks, that will be the main work of the Gatekeeper. First he cuts off their heads, scrapes out their brains and eyes, then boils them until the skulls are clean. The remains are doused with oil and set on fire. Then old dreams are put into those skulls for the Library, is that it? I ask the Colonel. Why? The old officer does not answer. All I hear is the creaking of the floorboards as he walks away from me, toward the window. You will learn that when you see what old dreams are, he says. I cannot tell you. You are the Dreamreader. You must find the answer for yourself. I wipe away the tears with the towel, then open my eyes. The Colonel stands, a blur by the window. Many things will become clear for you over the course of the winter, he continues. Whether or not you like what you learn, it will all come to pass. The snow will fall, the beasts will die. No one can stop this. In the afternoon, gray smoke will rise from the burning beasts. All winter long, every day. White snow and gray smoke. Bracelets, Ben Johnson, Devi! Beyond the closet opened the same dark inner sanctum as before, but now that I knew about the INKlings, it seemed a deep, chill horror show. She went down the ladder ahead of me. With the INKling-repel device stuffed in a large pocket of her slicker and her large flashlight slung diagonally across her body, she swiftly descended alone. Then, flashlight thrust in my pocket, I started down the slick rungs of the ladder. It was a bigger drop than I remembered. All the way down, I kept thinking about that young couple in the Skyline, Duran Duran on stereo. Oblivious to everything. I wished I could have been a little more oblivious. I put myself in the driver s seat, woman sitting next to me, cruising the late night streets to an innocuous pop beat. Did the woman take off her bracelets during sex? Nice if she didn t. Even if she was naked, those two bracelets needed to be there. Probably she did take them off. Women tend to remove their jewelry before they shower. Which meant, therefore, sex before showering. Or getting her to keep her bracelets on. Now, which was the better option? Anyway, I m in bed with her, with her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a pleasant muffled clinking on the sheets. I have a hard-on. Which, halfway down the ladder, is what I noticed. Just great. Why now? Why didn t I get an erection when I needed one? And why was I getting so excited over two lousy bracelets? Especially under this slicker, with the wcgld about to end. She was shining her light around when I reached bottom. There are INKlings about. Listen, she said. Those sounds. Sounds? Fins flapping. Listen carefully. You can feel them. I strained, but didn t detect anything of the kind. Once you know what to listen for, you can even detect their voices. its not really speech; its closer to sound waves. They re like bats. Humans can only hear a portion of their vocal range. So then how did the Semiotecs make contact with them? If they couldn t communicate verbally? A translation device isn t so hard to make. Grandfather could have, easy. But he decided not to. Why not? Because he didn t want to talk to them. They re disgusting creatures and they speak a disgusting language. Whatever they eat or drink has got to be almost putrified. They don t consume anything fresh? No. If they catch you, they immerse you in water for days. When your body starts to rot, they eat it. Lovely. I was ready to turn back, but we forged on. She knew every step of the way and scampered ahead. When I trained my light on her from behind, her gold earrings flashed. Tell me, do you take off your earrings when you take a shower? I spoke up. I leave them on, she slowed down to answer. Only my earrings. Sexy? I guess. Why did I have to go and bring up the subject? What else do you think is sexy? I m not very experienced, as I said. Nobody teaches you these things. Nobody will. its something you have to find out for yourself, I said. I made a conscious effort to sweep all images of sex from my head. Umm, I changed the subject, you say this device of yours emits ultrasonic waves that put off the INKlings? As long as the device is sending out signals, they won t come within fifteen meters of us. So you should try to stay close to me. Otherwise, they ll nab you and pickle you for a snack. In your condition, your stomach would be the first thing to rot. And their teeth and claws are razor sharp. I scooted up right behind her. Does your stomach wound still hurt? she asked. Only when I move, I replied. But thanks to the painkillers, its not so bad. If we find Grandfather, he ll be able to remove the pain. Your grandfather? How s he going to help? Simple. He s done it for me lots of times. Like when I have a terrible headache, he uses an impulse to cancel out my awareness of pain. Really, though, pain is an important signal from the body, so you shouldn t do it too much. In this case, its an emergency. I m sure he ll help. Thanks, I said. Don t thank me. Thank Grandfather. If we find him, she reminded. Panning her powerful light left and right, she continued upstream along the subterranean river. Moisture seeped out from between the rocks, running in rivulets past our feet. Slimy layers of moss coated wherever this groundwater trickled through. The moss appeared unnaturally green, inexplicable for these depths beyond the reach of photosynthesis. Say, do you suppose the INKlings know we re walking around down here now? Of course, they do, she said, without emotion. This is their world. They re all around, watching us. I ve been hearing noises the whole time we ve been down here. I swung my flashlight beam to the side, but all I saw were rocks and moss. They re in the cracks and boreholes, where the light doesn t reach, she said. Or else they re creeping up on us from behind. How many minutes has it been since you switched on the device? I asked. Ten minutes, she said, looking at her watch. Ten minutes, twelve seconds. Another five minutes to the waterfall. We re doing fine. Exactly five minutes later we arrived at the waterfall. Again the roar of the waterfall had been selectively suppressed; apparently the sound-removal equipment was still functioning. Odd, she remarked, ducking under the noiseless cascade. This sound removal means the laboratory wasn t broken into. If the INKlings had attacked, they would have torn the whole place apart. They hate this laboratory. Sure enough, the laboratory door was still locked. She inserted the electronic key; the door swung open. The labo-ratory interior was dark and cold and smelled of coffee. She anxiously shut the door behind us, tested the lock, and only then switched on the lights. It was true that the laboratory was basically a repeat of the upheaval in the office above: papers everywhere, furniture overturned, cups and plates smashed, the carpet an abstract expressionist composition of what must have been a bucket of coffee grounds. But there was a pattern to the destruction. The demolition crew had clearly distinguished between what was and was not to be destroyed. The former had been shown no mercy, but the computer, telecommunications console, sound-removal equipment, and electric generator were untouched. The next room was like that as well. A hopeless mess, but the destruction was carefully calculated. The shelves of skulls had been left perfectly intact, instruments necessary for experimental calibrations set aside with care. Less critical, inexpensive equipment and replaceable research materials had been dashed to pieces. The girl went to the safe to check its contents. The safe door wasn t locked. She scooped out two handfuls of white ash. The emergency auto-incinerator did its stuff, she said. They didn t get any papers. Who do you think did it? I asked. Humans, first of all. The Semiotecs or whoever may have had INKling help to get in here, but only they came inside. They even locked the door to keep the INKlings from finishing the job. Doesn t look like they took anything valuable. No. But they did get your grandfather, the most valuable property of all, I said. That leaves me stuck with whatever he planted inside me. Now I m really screwed. Not so fast, said the chubby girl. Grandfather wasn t abducted at all. There s a secret escape route from here. I m sure he got away, using the other INKling-repel device. How can you be so sure? Grandfather s not the type to let himself get caught. If he heard someone breaking in, he d get himself out of here. So he s safe above ground? Above ground, no, she corrected. The escape route is like a maze. At the very fastest, it d take five hours to get through, and the INKling-repel device only lasts thirty minutes. He s still in the maze. Or else he s been caught by the INKlings. I don t think so. Grandfather prepared an extra-safe shelter for himself, exactly for times like these. its the one place underground no INKling will go near. I bet he s there, waiting for us to show up. Where is that? Grandfather explained the way once, but there should be a shorthand map in the notebook. It shows all the danger points to look out for. What kind of danger points? The kind that you re probably better off not knowing. You seem to get nervous when you hear too much. Sure, kid. I didn t want to argue. How long does it take to reach that shelter? About a half hour to the approach. And from there, another hour or hour and a half to Grandfather. Once we make the approach we ll be okay; its the first half hour that s the problem. Unless we really hurry, the INKling-repel device s battery will run out. What happens if our porta-pack dies midway? Wish us luck. We d have to keep swinging our flashlights like crazy. Then we d better get moving, I said. The INKlings wouldn t waste any time telling the Semiotecs we re here. They ll be back any minute. She peeled off her rain gear and got into the GI jacket and jogging shoes I d packed. Meanwhile I stripped off my slicker and pulled on my nylon windbreaker. Then I traded my sneakers for rain boots and shouldered the knapsack again. My watch read almost twelve-thirty. The girl went to the closet in the far room and threw the hangers onto the floor. As she rotated the clothes rod, there was the sound of gears turning, and a square panel in the lower right closet wall creaked open. In blew cold, moldy air. Your grandfather must be some kind of cabinet fetishist, I remarked. No way, she defended. A fetishist s someone who s got a fixation on one thing only. Of course, Grandfather s good at cabinetry. He s good at everything. Genius doesn t specialize; genius is reason in itself. Forget genius. It doesn t do much for innocent bystanders. Especially if everyone s going to want a piece of the action. That s why this whole mess happened in the first place. Genius or fool, you don t live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody s going to come along and screw up the works. Your grandfather is no exception. Thanks to him, I got my gut slashed, and now the world s going to end. Once we find Grandfather, it ll be all right, she said, drawing near to plant a little peck by my ear. You can t go back now. The girl kept her eye on the INKling-repel device while it recharged. Then, when it was done, she took the lead and I followed, same as before. Once through the hole, she cranked a handle to seal the opening. With each crank, the patch of light grew smaller and smaller, becoming a slit, then disappearing. What made your grandfather choose this for an escape route? Because it links directly to the center of the INKling lair, she said, without hesitation. They themselves can t go near it. its their sanctuary. Sanctuary? I ve never actually seen it myself, but that s what Grandfather called it. They worship a fish. A huge fish with no eyes, she told me, then flashed her light ahead. lets get going. We haven t got much time. The cave ceiling was low; we had to crouch as we walked, banging our heads on stalactites. I thought I was in good shape, but now, bent low like this, each pitch of my hips stabbed an ice pick into my gut. Still, the pain had to be a hell of a lot better than wandering around here alone if I ever let her out of my sight. The further we traveled in the darkness, the more I began to feel estranged from my body. I couldn t see it, and after a while, you start to think the body is nothing but a hypothetical construct. Sure, I could feel my wound and the ground beneath the soles of my feet. But these were just kinesthesis and touch, primitive notions stemming from the premise of a body. These sensations could continue even after the body is gone. Like an amputee getting itchy toes. Thoughts on the run, literally, as I chased after the chubby girl. Her pink skirt poked out from under the olive drab GI jacket. Her earrings sparkled, a pair of fireflies flitting about her. She never checked to see if I was following; she simply forged ahead, with girl scout intensity. She stopped only when she came to a fork in the path, where she pulled out the map and held it under the light. That was when I managed to catch up with her. Okay up there? We re on the right path? I asked. For the time being at least, she replied. How can you tell? I can tell we re on course because we are, she said authoritatively, shining her light at our feet. See? Take a look. I looked at the illuminated circle of ground. The pitted rock surface was gleaming with tiny bits of silver. I picked one up a paperclip. See? she said, snidely. Grandfather passed this way. He knew we d be following, so he left those as trail markers. Got it, I said, put in my place. Fifteen minutes gone. lets hurry, she pressed. There were more forks in the path ahead. But each time, scattered paperclips showed us the way. There were also boreholes in the passage floor. These had been marked on the map, spots where we had to walk with care, with flashlights trained on the ground. The path wormed left and right but kept going further and further down. There were no steep inclines, only a steady, even descent. Five minutes later, we came to a large chamber. We knew this from the change in the air and the sound of our footsteps. She took out the map to check our location. I shone my light all around. The room was circular in shape; the ceiling formed a dome. The curved walls were smooth and slick, clearly the work of… human hands? In the very center of the floor was a shallow cavity one meter in diameter, filled with an unidentifiable slime. A tincture of something was in the air, not overpowering, but it left a disagreeable acid gumminess in your mouth. This seems to be the approach to the sanctuary, she said. That means we re safe from INKlings. For the time being. Great, but how do we get out of here? Leave that up to Grandfather. He ll have a way. On either side of the sanctuary entrance was an intricate relief. Two fishes in a circle, each with the other s tail in its mouth. Their heads swelled into aeroplane cowlings, and where their eyes should have been, two long tendril-like feelers sprouted out. Their mouths were much too large for the rest of their bodies, slit back almost to the gills, beneath which were fleshy organs resembling severed animal limbs. On each of these appendages were three claws. Claws? The dorsal fins were shaped like tongues of flames, the scales rasped out like thorns. Mythical creatures? Do you suppose they actually exist? I asked her. Who knows? she said, picking up some paperclips. Quick, lets go in. I ran my light over the carving one more time before following her through the entrance. It was nothing short of amazing that the INKlings could render such detail in absolute darkness. Okay, they could see in the dark, but this vision of theirs was otherworldly. And now they were probably watching our every move. The approach to the sanctuary sloped gradually upward, the ceiling at the same time rising progressively higher until finally it soared out of the flashlight s illumination. From here on, we climb the mountain, she said. Not a real mountain, anyway. More like a hill. But to them, its a mountain. That s what Grandfather said. its the only documented subterranean mountain, a sacred mountain. Then we re defiling it. Not at all. The reverse. The mountain was filthy from the beginning. This place is a Pandora s box sealed over by the earth s crust. Filth was concentrated here. And we re going to pass right through the center of it. You make it sound like hell. You said it. I don t think I m ready for this. Oh come on, you ve got to believe, said my pink cheerleader. Think of nice things, people you loved, your childhood, your dreams, music, stuff like that. Don t worry, be happy. Is Ben Johnson happy enough? I asked. Ben Johnson? He played in those great old John Ford movies, riding the most beautiful horses. You really are one of a kind, she laughed. I really like you. Thanks, I said, but I can t play any musical instruments. As she had forecast, the path began to get steeper, until finally we were scaling a rock face. But my thoughts were on my happy-time hero. Ben Johnson on horseback. Ben Johnson in Fort Defiance and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Wagonmaster and Rio Grande. Ben Johnson on the prairie, sun burning down, blue sky streaked with clouds. Ben Johnson and a herd of buffalo in a canyon, womenfolk wiping hands on gingham aprons as they lean out the door. Ben Johnson by the river, light shimmering in the dry heat, cowboys singing. The camera dollies, and there s Ben Johnson, riding across the landscape, swift as an arrow, our hero forever in frame. As I gripped the rocks and tested for foothold, it was Ben Johnson on his horse that sustained me. The pain in my gut all but subsided. Maybe he was the signal to put physical pain out of mind. We continued scaling the mountain in the dark. You couldn t hold your flashlight and still use your hands to climb, so I stuffed my flashlight in my jeans, she strapped hers up across her back. Which meant we saw nothing. Her flashlight beam bounced on her hip, veering off uselessly into space. And all I saw by mine were mute rock surfaces going up, up, up. From time to time she called out to make sure I kept pace. You okay? she d say. Just a little more. Then, a while later, it was Why don t we sing something? Sing what? I wanted to know. Anything, anything at all. I don t sing in dark places. Aw, c mon. Okay, then, what the hell. So I sang the Russian folksong I learned in elementary school: Snow is falling all night long Hey-ey! Pechka, ho! Fire is burning very strong Hey-ey! Pechka, ho! Old dreams bursting into song Hey-ey! Pechka, ho! I didn t know any more of the lyrics, so I made some up: Everyone s gathered around the fire the pechka when a knock comes at the door and Father goes to inquire, and there s a reindeer standing on wounded feet, saying, I m hungry, give me something to eat ; so they feed it canned peaches. In the end everyone s sitting around the stove, singing along. Wonderful. You sing just fine, she said. Sorry I can t applaud, but I ve got my hands full. We cleared the bluff and reached a flat area. Catching our breath, we panned our flashlights around. The plateau was vast; the tabletop-slick surface spread in all directions. She crouched and picked up another half dozen paperclips. How far can your grandfather have gone? I asked. Not much farther. He s mentioned this plateau many times. You mean to say your grandfather s come here out of choice? Of course. Grandfather had to cover this terrain in order to draw up his subterranean map. He knows everything about this place. He surveyed it all by himself? Certainly, she said. Grandfather likes to operate alone. its not that he doesn t like people or can t trust them; its just that nobody can keep up with him. I can believe it, I said. But tell me, what s the low-down on this plateau? This mountain is where the INKlings first lived. They dug holes into the rock face and lived together inside. The area we re standing on now is where religious ceremonies were held. its supposed to be the dwelling place of their gods, where they made living sacrifices to them. You mean those gruesome clawed fish? According to Grandfather, the fish are supposed to have led the INKlings ancestors here. She trained her light at our feet and showed me a shallow trough carved into the ground. The trough led straight off into the darkness. If you follow this trough, you get to the ancient altar. its the holiest spot in this sanctuary. No INKling would go near it. That s probably where Grandfather is, safe and sound-removed. We followed the trough. It soon got deeper, the path descending steadily, the walls to either side rising higher and higher. The walls seemed ready to close in and crush us flat any second, but nothing moved. Only the queer squishing rhythm of our rubber boots echoed between the walls. I looked up time and again as I walked. It was the urge to look up at the sky. But of course there was no sun nor moon nor stars overhead. Darkness hung heavy over me. Each breath I took, each wet footstep, everything wanted to slide like mud to the ground. I lifted my left hand and pressed on the light of my digital wristwatch. Two-twenty-one. It was midnight when we headed underground, so only a little over two hours had passed. We continued walking down, down the narrow trench, mouths clamped tight. I could no longer tell if my eyes were open or shut. The only thing impinging on my senses at this point was the echo of footsteps. The freakish terrain and air and darkness distorted what reached my ears. I tried to impose a verbal meaning on the sounds, but they would not conform to any words I knew. It was an unfamiliar language, a string of tones and inflections that could not be accommodated within the range of Japanese syllables. In French or German or English perhaps it might approximate this: Even through be shopped degreed well Still, when I actually pronounced the words, they were far from the sounds of those footsteps. A more accurate transcription would have been: Efgven gthouv bge shpevg egvele wgevl Finnish? Yet another gap in my linguistic abilities. If pressed to give a meaning, I might have said something like, A Farmer met the aged Devil on the road. Just my impression, of course. I kept trying to puzzle together various words and phrases as I walked. I pictured her pink jogging shoes, right heel onto ground, center of gravity shifting to tiptoe, then just before lifting away, left heel onto ground. An endless repetition. Time was getting slower, the clock spring running down, the hands hardly advancing. Efgven gthouv bge shpevg egvele wgevl Efgven gthouv bge shpevg egvele wgevl Efgven gthouv bge The aged Devil sat on a rock by the side of a Finnish country road. The Devil was ten thousand, maybe twenty thousand years old, and very tired. He was covered in dust. His whiskers were wilting. Whither be ye gang in sich aste? the Devil called out to a Farmer. Done broke me ploughshare and must to fixe it, the Farmer replied. Not to hurrie, said the Devil, the sunne still playes o er head on highe, wherefore be ye scurrying? Sit ye doun and eare m tale. The Farmer knew no good could come of passing time with the Devil, but seeing him so utterly haggard, the Farmer Something struck my cheek. Something flat, fleshy, not too hard. But what? I tried to think, and it struck my cheek again. I raised my hand to brush it away, to no avail. An unpleasant glare was swimming in my face. I opened my eyes, which until then I hadn t even noticed were closed. It was her flashlight on me, her hand slapping me. Stop it, I shouted. its too bright. It hurts. You can t fall asleep here like this! Get up! Get up! she screamed back. Get up? What are you talking about? I switched on my flashlight and shone it around me. I was on the ground, back against a wall, dripping wet. I had dozed off without knowing it. I slowly raised myself to my feet. What happened? One minute I m keeping pace, the next I m asleep. I have no recollection of sitting down or going to sleep. That s the trap, she said. They ll do anything to make us fall asleep. They? Whoever or whatever it is that lives in this mountain. Gods, evil spirits, I don t know them. They set up interference. I shook my head. Everything got so hazy. Your shoes were making those sounds and… My shoes? I told her about her Finnish footsteps. The old Devil. The Farmer That was all a trick, she broke in. Hypnosis. If I hadn t looked back, you probably would have slept there for… forages. Ages? Yes, that s right. You d have been a goner, she intoned. Too far gone for what, she didn t say. You have rope in the knapsack, don t you? Uh-huh, about five meters. Out with it. I unstrapped the knapsack from my back, reached inside among the cans, whiskey, and canteen, and pulled it out. She tied one end of the rope to my belt, winding the other end around her waist. There. That ought to do, she said. This way we won t get separated. Unless we both fall asleep, I said. Don t add to our problems. lets get going. And so off we went, tied together. I tried hard not to hear her footsteps. I maintained flashlight contact with the back of her GI jacket. I bought that jacket in 1971, I was pretty sure. The Vietnam War was still going on, Nixon and his ugly mug were still in the White House. Everybody and his brother had long hair, wore dirty sandals and armysurplus jackets with peace signs on the back, tripped out to psychedelic music, thought they were Peter Fonda, screaming down the road on a Chopped Hog to a full-blast charge of Born to Be Wild, blurring into I Heard It through the Grapevine. Similar intros different movie? What are you thinking about? asked the chubby girl. Oh nothing, I said. Shall we sing something? Do we have to? Well, then, think of something else. lets have a conversation. About what? How about rain? Sure. What do you associate with rain? It rained the night my folks died. How about something more cheerful? That s okay. I don t mind talking about it, she said. Unless you don t want to hear it. If you want to talk about it, you should talk about it, I replied. It wasn t really raining. The sky was overcast, and I was in the hospital. There was a camphor tree by the window. I lay in bed and memorized every branch. A lot of birds came. Sparrows and shrikes and starlings, and other more beautiful birds. But when it was about to rain, the birds wouldn t be there. Then they d be back, chirping thanks for the clear weather. I don t know why. Maybe because when rain stops, bugs come out of the ground. Were you in the hospital a long time? About one month. I had a heart operation. Funny, isn t it? I was the only one sick, now I m the only one alive. The day they died was a busy day for the birds. They had the heat turned up in the hospital, so the window was steamed up and I had to get up out of bed to wipe the window. I wasn t supposed to get out of bed, but I had to see the tree and birds and rain. There were these couple of birds with black heads and red wings. That s when I thought, how strange the world is. I mean, there must be millions of camphor trees in the world of course, they didn t all have to be camphor trees but on that one day, when it rained and stopped and rained and stopped, how many birds must have been flying back and forth? It made me really sad. It made you sad? Because, like I said, there s got to be millions of trees in the world and millions of birds and millions of rainfalls. But I couldn t even figure one out, and I d probably die that way. I just cried and cried, I felt so lonely. And that was the night my whole family got killed. Though they didn t tell me until much later. That must have been horrible. Well, it was the end of the world for me. Everything got so dark and lonely and miserable. Do you know what that feels like? I can imagine, I said. Her thoughts on rain occupied my thoughts. So much so I didn t notice that she d stopped and I bumped into her, again. Sorry, I said. Shh! She grabbed hold of my arm. I hear something. Listen! We stood absolutely still and strained our ears. At first, faint, almost imperceptible. A deep rumbling, like a tremor. The sound got louder. The air began to tremble. Everything told us something was about to happen. An earthquake? I asked. No, the girl shuddered. its much worse than that. Gray Smoke As the Colonel forewarned, one sees smoke almost every day. Gray smoke that rises from the vicinity of the Apple Grove and ascends into the clouds. If one watches long enough, the Apple Grove will seem itself to create these clouds. The first signs of smoke are visible at exactly three in the afternoon, and the burning goes on according to the number of dead. The day after a blizzard or a freezing night, a thick column of smoke will continue for hours. Why is there not a scheme to prevent the beasts from dying? Could not a shelter be built for them? I ask the Colonel while we play chess. Should they not be protected from the snow and wind and cold? A simple roofed enclosure would save many of them. It would do no good, is all he responds, never lifting his eyes from the chessboard. They would never take to the shelter. They would continue to sleep on the ground as always. They would sleep out in the elements, even if it means they die. The Colonel threatens, placing his High Priest directly before my King. To either side, two Horns are positioned in fire line. I wait for them to initiate the attack. It almost seems the beasts wish to suffer and die, I say. In a way, yes. That is natural to them. Cold and discomfort. That might even be their salvation. The Colonel falls silent, allowing me to entrench my Ape beside his Wall. Perhaps I can lure the Wallinto moving. The Colonel reaches to take the bait, only to pull back one of his Knights and fortify his defenses. Getting your wiles, are you now? says the military man with a laugh. Nowhere near you, of course. I also laugh. What do you mean by their salvation ? Odd to say, dying might be what saves them. They die and are reborn in the spring. As new young, that is. But then those newborn young grow to suffer and die all the same. Why must they suffer so? Because it is ordained, he pronounces. Your turn. You cannot win unless you eliminate my High Priest. After three days of snow appears a sudden sky of clarity. Rays of sun spill a blinding glare upon the frozen white Town. I hear snow falling from branches everywhere. I stay indoors and draw the curtains against the light, but I cannot escape. The ice-encrusted Town refracts like a huge, many-faceted jewel, sending knives of light to stab my eyes. I pass the afternoons face down on my bed. I strain to hear the songs of the birds that visit the windowsills for breadcrumbs the old men leave. I can hear the old men themselves sitting in front of the house, talking in the sun. I alone shun the warm bounty of sunshine. When the sun sets, I get out of bed and bathe my sore eyes in cold water. I put on my black glasses and descend the snowbanked slope to the Library. I cannot read as much as usual. After only one skull, the glowing of the old dreams pricks needles of pain into my eyeballs. The vague hollows behind my vision grow heavy, my fingertips lose their sensitivity. At these times, the Librarian brings me a cool towel compress for my eyes and some light broth or warm milk to drink. They are gritty on my tongue, wholly lacking in flavor. I grow accustomed to this, but I still do not find the taste agreeable. You are gradually adjusting to the Town, she says. The food here is different than elsewhere. We use only a few basic ingredients. What resembles meat is not. What resembles eggs is not. What resembles coffee only resembles coffee. Everything is made in the image of something. The soup is good for you. It warms you. Yes, it does, I say. My head is not so heavy, my body not as cold. I thank her and close my eyes to rest. Is there something else you require? she asks. What makes you say that? Surely there is something that v/ould help to unclose your winter shell. What I want is the sun, I say. Whereupon I remove my black glasses and wipe the lenses with a rag. But its impossible. My eyes can t tolerate light. Something more true than sunlight. Something perhaps from your former world that gave you comfort. I chase up the pieces of memory left to me, but none completes the puzzle. its no good. I cannot remember a thing. I ve lost it all. Something small, anything, the first thing that comes to you. Let me help you. My memory is solid rock. It does not budge. My head hurts. Losing my shadow, I have lost much. What is left is sealed over in the winter cold. She puts her hand on my temple. We can think about this later. Perhaps you will remember. Let me read one last old dream, I insist. You are tired. Should you not wait until tomorrow? There is no need to strain yourself. The old dreams will keep. No, I would rather read dreams than do nothing. At least then, I don t have to think about anything. She stands, and disappears into the stacks. I sit there, eyes shut, plunging into darkness. How long will this winter last? A killing winter, the Colonel has said. And it has only begun. Will my shadow survive? No, the question is, will I survive, uncertain as I am? She places a skull on the table and wipes it with a dampened cloth, as usual, followed by a dry cloth. I sit there, head resting on my hand, and watch her fingers at work. Is there nothing else I can do for you? she says, looking up unexpectedly. You do so much for me already, I say. She stays her hand and sits facing me. I mean something else. Perhaps you wish to sleep with me. I shake my head. I do not understand, she implores. You said you needed me. I do. But now it is not right. She says nothing and at length returns to polishing the skull. I look at the ceiling, at the yellowed light hanging from it. No matter how hard my mind becomes, no matter how winter closes me, it is not for me to be sleeping with her. It is the Town that wants me to sleep with her. That is how they would claim my mind. She places the polished skull before me, but I do not pick it up. I am looking at her fingers on the table. I try to read meaning from her fingers, but they tell me nothing. Tell me more about your mother, I say. My mother? Yes. Anything at all. Well, she begins, her hands on the skull, it seems I felt differently toward my mother than I did toward others. I cannot recall well, it was so long ago. Why that should be, I do not know. That s the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain. She smiles. That seems wrong. That s the way it is, I say. Do you not miss your mother? I do not know. She moves the skull to stare at it from various angles. Is the question too vague? Yes, probably. Shall we talk of something else? I suggest. What sort of things did your mother like? Can you remember? Yes, I remember very well. On warm days we took walks and watched the beasts. The Townfolk do not often take walks, unlike you. Yes, I enjoy walking, I say. What else can you recall? When she was alone in her room, I would hear her talking, although I do not know if it pleased her. What sort of things did she say? I do not remember. It was not talking as one usually does. I do not know how to explain, but it seemed to have importance to Mother. Importance? Yes, the talking had a… an accent to it. Mother would draw words out or she would make them short. Her voice would sound high and low, like the wind. That is singing, I suddenly realize. Can you talk like that? Singing is not talking. It is song. Can you do it too? she says. I take a deep breath but find no music in my memory. I m sorry. I cannot remember a single song, I say. Is it impossible to bring the songs back? A musical instrument might help. If I could play a few notes, perhaps a song would cqme to me. What does a musical instrument look like? There are hundreds of musical instruments, all different shapes and sizes. Some are so large, four persons are needed to lift them; others will fit in the palm of the hand. The sounds are different as well. Having said this, I begin to feel a string of memory slowly unravelling inside me. There may be a musical instrument in the Collection Room. It is not really a collection, but there are many things from the past. I have only glanced in there. May we look? I ask. It seems I can do no more dreamreading today. We walk past the stacks of skulls to another hallway, arriving at frosted glass doors like those at the Library entrance. She enters, finds the light switch, and a dim illumination filters down over a confined space. The floor is cluttered with trunks and valises, piles of suitcases large and small. Too many to count, all are covered with dust. Among them are odd objects, either lying open or in fitted cases. Why are these things here? I kneel to open one of these cases. A cloud of white dust flies up. Inside sits a curious machine, with rows of round keys on its slanted face. It is apparently well used, the black paint flaked in places on its iron frame. Do you know what this is? No, she says, standing over me. Is it a musical instrument? No, this does not make music. It makes words. I think they called it a typewriter. I close the case on the ancient mechanism, moving now to the wicker basket next to it. I raise the lid and find a complete set of knives and forks, cups, plates, and yellowed napkins neatly packed. A large leather portmanteau contains an old suit, shirts neckties, socks, and undergarments. Between layers of clothing are a set of toiletries, the shaving brush caked with dirty soap, and a liquor flask devoid of odor. Each piece of luggage I open reveals a similar tawdry inventory. Clothes and some few sundry items, all seem to have been packed for a sudden journey. Yet each wants for identifying detail, each impresses as somehow unremarkable, lacking in particularity. The clothes are neither quality tailored items, nor tatttered hand-me-downs. They show differences in period, season, and gender, varying in their cut according to age, yet nothing is especially striking. They even smell alike. It is as if someone has painstakingly removed any indication of individuality. Only person-less dregs remain. After examining five or six suitcases, I relinquish the effort. If any musical instruments are to be found in the Town, they will not be here. lets go, I say. The dust scratches my eyes. Are you disappointed not to find a musical instrument? We can try looking somewhere else, I say. I bid her good-night and climb the Western Hill alone. The winter wind whips between the trees, driving at my back. I look behind me to find the moon hovering half-obscured over the Clocktower, the heavens boiling thick with cloud matter. In the less than lunar light, the River recedes black as tar. I remember seeing a warm scarf among the clothes in the Collection Room. It has more than a few moth holes, but wrapped around several times, it will stave off the cold. I must ask whether those suitcases have owners, and whether I might have use of the contents. Standing in the wind with no scarf, I shiver; my ears sting as if slashed. I shall visit the Gatekeeper tomorrow. I also must see after my shadow. I turn away to the Town, and resume my steps up the frozen incline toward the Official Residences. Holes, Leeches, Tower its not an earthquake, the girl shuddered. its much worse than that. Like what? She didn t answer, only swallowed her breath and shook her head in distress. No time for explanations now. Run! That s the only thing that can save us. You might rip your stitches, but its better than dying. Tethered by nylon rope, we ran full speed straight ahead. The light in her hand swung violently, tracing a jagged seis-mographic pattern between the walls. My knapsack bounced on my back. I d have liked to dump it, but there was no time. There was no way to slacken my pace; I was on a leash. The rumble grew louder the farther we got. We seemed to be heading directly into its source. What started as an underground tremor was now a grating, hissing, bubbling, rasping I don t know what else. I cringed as we ran my body wanted to go the other way but she was leading and I was following. Fortunately, there were no turns or obstacles. The trough was flat as a bowling alley. No boreholes or rocks to worry about. Then came a series of sharp creaks and cracks, like boulders scraping together with tremendous force. All was relentless noise; suddenly silence. A second of nothing at allThen everywhere was filled with a weird hissing, as if thousands of old men were sucking air between their teeth. A reedy whistling echoing through the darkness like the humming of thousands of subterranean insects triggered by the same stimulus. The sound did not wish us well. At the same time, I got the uncanny feeling that the sound was beckoning us, a beast lying in wait for its prey. Whatever horror was out there, it knew we were coming. Whatever it was, I had no idea. We d left my imagination a long way back. We kept running for how long? My sense of time was paralyzed. I ran and ran but felt no fatigue, my gut wound allocated to a far corner of my consciousness. My elbows felt stiff, but that was my only body sensation. I was hardly aware I was running. My legs flew and bounded. A dense mass of air was pushing me from behind. I was poetry in motion when she screamed out a warning, which I didn t hear. I smashed into her, knocking her to the ground. I continued my forward motion, falling in an arc over her. I didn t even hear myself hit. An instant after my head slammed into the hard rock slab, the thought occurred to me: it was as if I were sound-removed. Or was evolution creeping up on me? Next or more accurately, overlapping with this I was blinded with pain in my frontal lobe. The darkness exploded before my eyes. I was sure I had a concussion. Had I fractured my skull? Maybe I was brain-dead, and this was a vestigial lizard-tail of pain firing away in my cortex. That all passed in an instant. I was alive. I was alive and breathing. And breathing, I felt pain. I felt tears on my cheeks, streaming into the corner of my mouth and down onto the rock slab. I thought I would pass out, but I fastened the pain to the darkness. I d been doing something. Yes, I was running. I was running from something. I fell. In the cut ends of my memory, I labored to get to my knees. As awareness spliced together, I noted the nylon rope. I was a piece of laundry blown off the line by gale winds. I had developed a habit of transposing my circumstances into all sorts of convenient analogues. The next thing I realized was that my body was missing from the waist down. I reassessed the situation. My lower half was there, just unable to feel anything. I shut my eyes and concentrated. Trying to resurrect sensations below the belt reminded me of trying to get an erection. The effort of forcing energy into a vacuum. So here I was, thinking about my friendly librarian with the gastric dilation and the whole bedroom fiasco. That s where everything began going wrong, it now struck me. Still, getting a penis to erect itself is not the sole purpose of life. That much I understood when I read Stendhal s Charterhouse of Parma years ago. My lower half seemed to be stuck in some halfway strait. Or cantilevered out over empty space or… dangling off the edge of the rock slab. It was only my upper half that prevented me from falling. That s why my hands were clinging to the rope so desperately. I opened my eyes into bright light. The chubby girl was shining her flashlight in my face. I gripped the rope and struggled to drag my lower half up onto solid rock. Hurry up! yelled the girl, or we ll both be killed! My body was dead heavy, the ground slippery with blood. My wound had probably split open. I dropped the rope and arm-pressed myself up, agonizing. My belt caught on the edge of the rock slab, while the nylon rope wanted to pull me forward. Don t yank! I shouted at the approaching light. I ll manage myself. Don t touch the rope. Are you all right? All right enough. Belt still caught on the rock edge, I squeezed out all of my strength to throw one foot up. Sorry I couldn t help you, she said. I was trying to hold on to the rocks so the two of us wouldn t fall over the edge. That I don t mind, I said. But why didn t you tell me about this hole? There wasn t time. That s why I yelled for you to stop. I couldn t hear. lets not argue. We re almost there. We ve got to get out of here. If we don t, we ll get the blood sucked out of us. Blood? She shined her flashlight into the hole. It was perfectly round, about a meter in diameter. Then she panned the light, revealing rows of identical holes as far as the ey could see. We were walking on a honeycomb. Except that the ground appeared to be like shifting sand. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me after the blow to my head. But my hands, when held under the light, showed no particular sign of trembling. Which meant the ground really was moving. Leeches! she squealed. Zillions of leeches are crawling up from the holes. If we hang around here, they ll suck us dry. Uggh. I felt sick. Is this what s supposed to be worse than an earthquake? No. The leeches are only the beginning. The real incredible part comes later. Still leashed together, we ventured out onto the viscous surface, squashing leeches with every step. It made me squirm involuntarily. Don t slip. If you fall into a hole, that ll be the end of you. She clung to my elbow. I held onto the tail of her jacket. For anyone not accustomed to this sort of thing, stepping on thirty-centimeter wide sections of slick rock crawling with leeches in the dark is an experience likely to be memorable. The squashed leeches made a thick layer of sticky, gelatinous mush. Leeches must have gotten on me when I stumbled. I could feel a couple sucking on my neck and ears. I tried not to make too much of this because I couldn t stand the thought of it. Also, my hands were occupied. To be exact, I had a flashlight in my left hand and her in my right. I couldn t just stop to yank the damn things off. Each time I shined my flashlight on the ground, I saw a sickening ooze of leeches. They just kept coming. I ll bet the INKlings used to throw their sacrificial victims into these holes. You re very smart, she said. Aren t I, though, I answered. The leeches, Grandfather says, are acolytes of those fish. So the INKlings make offerings to the leeches too. Fresh meat, warm blood, humans dragged under from the surface world. Gasping noises seemed to be rushing up from the dark holes. Twisting whips of air, like feelers from below, completely enveloped us in a bristling night forest. The water is almost here, she announced. The leeches were only the beginning. Once they disappear, we get the water. It gushes up from the holes. We ve got to reach the altar before the water rises. You knew all this? Why the hell didn t you tell me? Because I didn t know, okay? its not like the water rises every day. It only happens once or twice a month. How was I to know today would be one of those days? There was no end to the holes. My shoes were so sticky with leech innards, I couldn t walk straight. Funny thing. Just a little more, she assured me. Just a little more and we ll be safe. It was too much trouble to speak. I nodded instead, which was less than meaningless in total darkness. Can you hear me? You okay? she called out. I feel like puking, but I m fine. I m not such a wimp usually, but a sundae of leeches, all squashed and sticky on top of darkness and fatigue and lack of sleep was testing the limits of my cool. Gastric juices backed up, acid sweet, into my throat. I didn t dare look at my watch. Thoughts of the sky intruded. Morning, trees, hot coffee,- newspaper… I wanted light, any light, real light. Once we get out of this spot, you can throw up all you want. Hang in there. She gripped my elbow. Not me. You won t see me throwing up. I only feel like it, I gurgled inside my mouth. It happens to everyone. I know its horrible, but its got to end sometime. Trust me, she said with irrepressible optimism. No, these holes could go on forever. And I would never get to read that morning edition. The fresh ink coming off on your fingers. Thick with all the advertising inserts. The Prime Minister s wake-up time, stock market reports, whole family suicides, chqwanmushi recipes, the length of skirts, record album reviews, real estate… The only thing was, I didn t subscribe to a newspaper. I d given up on newspapers three years ago. Why? I felt disconnected. Converting numbers in my brain was my only connection to the world. Most of my free time I chose to spend alone, reading old novels, watching old Hollywood movies on video, drinking. I had no need for a newspaper. Even so, deprived of light in this netherworld, I found myself longing for the morning edition. To sit down in a sunny spot and lap it up like a cat at its dish of milk, first page to last, to read every word of print. There s the altar, she said abruptly. Another ten meters. At that moment, as if to underscore her words, the air wheezing out of the holes stopped, cut off by a single giant razor stroke. No forewarning, no aftertones, all that noise pressure, gone. And with it the entire aural space, and my equilibrium. Total silence. Once the sound was severed, that was it. Both she and I froze in position, straining our ears for… what? I swallowed, but it sounded as raucous as a needle striking the edge of a turntable. The water s receded? I asked hopefully. The water s about to spew, she said. All that noise was the air being forced out of the water table. its all out now. The action comes after this. She took my hand as we crossed the last few holes. At last we were over the worst part. The leeches seemed to have fled in the opposite direction. Even if we drowned now, it beat a slow slimy death in a leech pit. I reached up to peel the sucker off my neck, but she stopped me. Don t! You ll tear your skin. A few leeches never hurt anyone, she said. Anyway, we have to climb the tower quick. Didn t they ever teach you about leeches in school? No, I admitted. That s me, dumb as the anchor under a buoy. A little farther on, she shined her light up at the the tower that rose before us. It was a smooth, featureless cylinder that loomed like a lighthouse, seeming to narrow from base to top. I couldn t tell its height, but it was very tall. Without a word, she started up the steps . I, of course, had to be pulled along. Seen from a slight distance in limited light, this tower had appeared to be a noble monument constructed over centuries, but close up, you realized it was a natural rock formation. And a rather crude stalagmite at that. Even the winding steps chiseled into this deceptive pylon were not quite stairs. Uneven and irregular, barely wide enough for one foot, sometimes missing entire footholds. We scrambled and fell and plastered ourselves against the rock face. After thirty-six steps I m a habitual step counter we were met by the sound of a loud slap, as if a huge cut of roast beef had been flung against a stone wall. Followed by a tentative half beat of quiet. The something was coming. It came. Torrents of water, gushing up from those hundreds of leech-infested holes. Tons of water, sluicing through darkness. In the next instant, I am a child in.a movie theater, watching a newsreel orthe inauguration of a dam. The floodgates are open, a massive column of water leaps from the screen. The governor, wearing a helmet, has done the honors and pushed the button. Billowing clouds of spray, a deafening roar. What are you doing down there? she barked. How high do you think the water will rise? I blinked awake and shouted up. High, was her pointed reply. The only sure thing is the water won t reach the top. How many more steps? Lots. Another nice answer. We kept climbing. Her flashlight swung about wildly by its shoulder strap. I gave up counting the steps after two hundred. The sound of the angry torrent slowed to a hungry maelstrom to a racy gurgle. No doubt about it, the water level was rising. At any moment now, the water would be licking my heels. Couldn t we swim? I asked her. We could float up. its got to be easier than this. No, she ruled. There s a whirlpool under the surface. If you get caught in the undertow, you re not going to do a whole lot of swimming. Which meant this way was the only way. Plodding up these miserable steps, not knowing when the water was going to get to us. I was sick of it. Back to the newsreel, arcs of water shooting across the screen, spillway emptying into the big bowl below. Dozens of camera angles: up, down, head on, this side, that side, long, medium, zoom in close-up on the tumbling waters. An enormous shadow of the arching water is cast against the concrete expanse. I stare, and the shadow gradually becomes my shadow. I sit there, transfixed. I know its my shadow flickering on the curve of the dam, but I don t know how to react as a member of the audience. I m a ten-year-old boy, wideeyed and afraid to act. Should I get my shadow back from the screen? Should I rush into the projection room and steal the film? I do nothing. My shadow stays on screen, a figure in the distance, unsteady through the shimmering heat. The shadow cannot speak, knows no sign language, is helpless, like me. The shadow knows I am sitting here, watching. The shadow is trying to tell me something. No one in the audience realizes that the shadow is really my shadow. My older brother, sitting next to me, doesn t notice either. If he had, he wouldn t miss the opportunity to box my ears. He s that kind of brother. Nor do I let on that its my shadow. No one would believe me anyway. Instantly the dam segment ends and the news changes to the coronation of a king. A team of horses with fancy headgear is pulling a fairy-tale carriage across a flagstone plaza. I search for my shadow in the procession, but all I see are shadows of the horses and carriage. There ended the memory. Though I couldn t be sure any of it had really happened to me. I had no recollection. Perhaps this was a hallucination induced by the sounds of the water in the darkness, a daydream dredged up in the face of extreme circumstances. But the image was too vivid. It had the smell of memory, real memory. This had happened to me, it came to me with a jolt. Until this moment the memory, it seemed, had been sealed off from the sludge of my consciousness by an intervening force. An intervening force? Or an operation, like the one done on my brain to give me shuffling faculty. They had shoved memories out of my conscious awareness. They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn t care what happened. I want to live! I told myself. I will live. I will get out of this insane netherworld and get back my stolen memories back and live. Forget the end of the world, I was ready to reclaim my whole self. A rope! she yelled out of nowhere. Rope? Quick, get on up here. There s a rope hanging down. I hurried up the next three or four steps to where she stood and felt along the rock surface with my hand. Most definitely, there was a rope, a length of mountaineering line, the end of which reached chest-high on me. I pulled at it to test its strength. It seemed to be secured at the other end. its got to be Grandfather s doing, she exclaimed. Grandfather s dropped a line for us. To give us a better start, lets go around once more. Exasperating as it was to keep checking each step, especially in my tennis shoes, we ascended one more circle around the tower and found the rope hanging in the same position. There were knots for footing every thirty centimeters or so. lets hope they went up all the way to the top. its Grandfather all right/Only he would think of such details. I ll say, I said. Can you climb rope? Of course, she retorted. I ve been a climber since I was a little girl. Didn t I tell you? Well then, you first, I said. When you get to the top flash me a signal with your light. Then I ll start my climb. But by then the water will have reached here. We d better climb together. No, one rope, one person. That s a mountaineering rule. There s the strength of the rope to consider, plus it takes more time for two people to climb the same rope. And even if the water does rise this high, as long as I hold onto the rope I ll be safe. You re braver than you look, she said. She was up the rope without so much as another word. I clung with both hands to the rocks and stared up at her swinging, like the assumption of a drunken soul. I craved a swig of whiskey, but it was in the knapsack on my back and the idea of twisting around to extract the bottle did not seem altogether wise. Nix on that. So I thought about having a drink instead. A quiet bar, MjQ s Vendome playing low, a bowl of nuts, a double whiskey on the rocks. The glass is sitting on the counter, untouched for a moment, just looked at. Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then its time to drink. This scene set up, it came to me I didn t have the right clothes. The two thugs had taken care of that. What to do? Get some new clothes. A dark blue tweed suit. Three buttons, natural shoulder, no taper, old-fashioned cut. A George Peppard number from the early sixties. The shirt, a lighter shade of blue, Oxford broadcloth, regular collar. The necktie, a two-color stripe, a subdued red with a might-be-blue-might-be-green storm-swept seafoam shade. The drink, Scotland s finest. Bringing the glass to my lips, I noticed that the sound of the water had stopped. Did this mean that the water had stopped gushing up from the holes? Or merely that the water level had risen to where it drowned out the sound? I no longer cared. The water could rise all it wanted. I was set to survive. To get back my memories. I would be manipulated no more. I d shout it out loud. I m mad as hell! Nobody s pushing me around any more! Do you hear! Not that it would do much good to shout it out while clinging to a rock in subterranean darkness. I decided to forgo the proclamations and craned my neck to look up again. The chubby girl had climbed a good three or four flights worth of department store steps. Up in the women s wear or kimono department. How tall was this mountain anyway? Why couldn t her grandfather be waiting for us in a saner, less baroque place? Finally, she signaled with her light that she d made it to the top. I signaled back, then shined the light downward to see how far the water had risen. I couldn t make out a thing. My watch read four-twelve in the morning. Not yet dawn. The morning papers still not delivered, trains not yet running, citizens of the surface world fast asleep, oblivious to all this. I pulled the rope taut with both hands, took a deep breath, then slowly began my climb. Shadow Grounds THREE days of clear weather have come to an end. I know it as soon as I awaken. I open my eyes with no discomfort. The sun is stripped of light and warmth, the sky is cloaked in heavy clouds. Trees send up crooked, leafless branches into the chill gray, like cracks in the firmament. Surely snow will fall through, yet the air is still. It will not snow today, the Colonel informs me. Such clouds do not bring snow. I open the window to look out, but cannot know what the Colonel understands. The Gatekeeper sits before his iron stove, shoes removed, warming his feet. The stove is like the one in the Library. It has a flat heating surface for a kettle and a drawer at the bottom for the ash. The front opens with a large metal pull, which the Gatekeeper uses as his footrest. The Gatehouse is stuffy from kettle steam and cheap pipe tobacco, or more probably some surrogate. The Gatekeeper s feet also smell. I need a scarf, I begin. I get chills in my head. I can see that, snorts the Gatekeeper. Does not surprise me at all. There are old clothes in the Collection Room at the back of the Library. I was wondering if I might borrow a few. Oh, those things, says the Gatekeeper. You can help yourself to any of them. Take a muffler, take a coat, take whatever you like. And the owners? Forget about the owners Even if the owners are around, they have forgotten about those things. But say, I heard you were looking for a musical instrument? He knows everything. Officially, the Town has no musical instruments, he says. But that does not rule out the possibility. You do serious work, so what could be wrong if you had yourself an instrument. Go to the Power Station and ask the Caretaker. He might find you something. Power Station? I ask, surprised. We use power, you know, he says, pointing to the light overhead. You think power grows on apple trees? The Gatekeeper laughs as he draws a map. You take the road along the south bank of the River, going upstream. Then after thirty minutes, you see an old granary on your right-hand side. The shed with the roof caved in and no door. You make a right turn there, and follow the road until you see a hill. Beyond the hill is the Woods. Go five hundred yards into the Woods, and there is the Power Station. Understand? I believe so, I say. But it is dangerous to go into the Woods in winter. Everyone tells me so. I fell ill the last time. Ah, yes, I nearly forgot. I had to carry you up the Hill, says the Gatekeeper. Are you better now? Much better, thank you. A little less foolish? Yes, I hope so. The Gatekeeper grins broadly and shifts his feet on the stove handle. You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less. You get my meaning? I nod appropriately. No need to worry about the Power Station. It sits right at the entrance to the Woods. Only one path, you cannot get lost. No Woodsfolk around there. The real danger is deep in the Woods, and near the Wall. If you stay away from them, everything will be fine. Keep to the path, do not go past the Power Station. Is the Caretaker one of the Woodsfolk? Not him. Not Woodsfolk and not Townfolk. We call him nobody. He stays at the edge of the Woods, never comes to Town. Harmless, got no guts. What are Woodsfolk like? The Gatekeeper turns his head and pauses before saying, Like I believe I told you the very first time, you can ask whatever questions you please, but I can answer or not answer as I see fit. I open my mouth, a question on my lips. Forget it. Today, no answers, says the Gatekeeper. But say, you wanted to see your shadow? Time you saw it, no? The shadow is down in strength since winter come along. No reason for you not to see it. Is he sick? No, not sick. Healthy as can be. It has a couple of hours exercise every day. Healthy appetite, ha ha. Just that when winter days get short and cold, any shadow is bound to lose a little something. No fault of mine. Just the way things go. Well, let it speak for itself. The Gatekeeper retrieves a ring of keys from the wall and puts them in his pocket. He yawns as he laces up his leather boots. They look heavy and sturdy, with iron cleats for walking in snow. My shadow lives between the Town and the outside. As I cannot leave to go to the world beyond the Wall, my shadow cannot come into Town. So the one place we can meet is the Shadow Grounds, a close behind the Gatehouse. It is small and fenced in. The Gatekeeper takes the keys out of his pocket and opens the iron gate to the enclosure. We enter the Shadow Grounds. It is a perfect square, one side backed up almost against the Wall. In the center is an HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD by Haruki Murakami Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949. He met his wife, Yoko, at university and they opened a jazz club in Tokyo called Peter Cat. The massive success of his novel Norwegian Wood (1987) made him a national celebrity. He fled Japan and did not return until 1995. His other books include after the quake, Dance Dance Dance, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Underground, his first work of non-fiction, Sputnik Sweetheart and South of the Border, West of the Sun. He has translated into Japanese the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, John Irving and Raymond Carver. Alfred Birnbaum was born in Washington D.C. in 1957 and grew up in Tokyo. He is the translator of Dance Dance Dance and A Wild Sheep Chase. He has also translated works by Natsuki Ikezawa, Kyoji Kobayashi, Miyuki Miyabe, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa and Gen ichiro Takahashi and compiled the anthology Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction. Also by Haruki Murakami Fiction Dance Dance Dance The Elephant Vanishes A Wild Sheep Chase Norwegian Wood The Wind-up Bird Chronicle South of the Border, West of the Sun Sputnik Sweetheart after the quake Non-Fiction Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche Haruki Murakami HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY Alfred Birnbaum Elevator, Silence, Overweight THE elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn t moving at all. But lets just assume it was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I d gone up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I d circled the globe. How would I know? Every last thing about this elevator was worlds apart from the cheap die-cut job in my apartment building, scarcely one notch up the evolutionary scale from a well bucket. You d never believe the two pieces of machinery had the same name and the same purpose. The two were pushing the outer limits conceivable as elevators. First of all, consider the space. This elevator was so spacious it could have served as an office. Put in a desk, add a cabinet and a locker, throw in a kitchenette, and you d still have room to spare. You might even squeeze in three camels and a mid-range palm tree while you were at it. Second, there was the cleanliness. Antiseptic as a brand-new coffin. The walls and ceiling were absolutely spotless polished stainless steel, the floor immaculately carpeted in a handsome moss-green. Third, it was dead silent. There wasn t a sound literally not one sound from the moment I stepped inside and the doors slid shut. Deep rivers run quiet. Another thing, most of the gadgets an elevator is supposed to have were missing. Where, for example, was the panel with all the buttons and switches? No floor numbers to press, no door open and door close, no emergency stop. Nothing whatsoever. All of which made me feel utterly defenseless. And it wasn t just no buttons; it was no indication of advancing floor, no posted capacity or warning, not even a manufacturer s name-plate. Forget about trying to locate an emergency exit. Here I was, sealed in. No way this elevator could have gotten fire department approval. There are norms for elevators after all. Staring at these four blank stainless-steel walls, I recalled one of Houdini s great escapes I d seen in a movie. He s tied up in how many ropes and chains, stuffed into a big trunk, which is wound fast with another thick chain and sent hurtling, the whole lot, over Niagara Falls. Or maybe it was an icy dip in the Arctic Ocean. Given that I wasn t all tied up, I was doing okay; insofar as I wasn t clued in on the trick, Houdini was one up on me. Talk about not clued in, I didn t even know if I was moving or standing still. I ventured a cough, but it didn t echo anything like a cough. It seemed flat, like clay thrown against a slick concrete wall. I could hardly believe that dull thud issued from my own body. I tried coughing one more time. The result was the same. So much for coughing. I stood in that hermetically sealed vault for what seemed an eternity. The doors showed no sign of ever opening. Stationary in unending silence, a still life: Man in Elevator. I started to get nervous. What if the machinery had malfunctioned? Or suppose the elevator operator assuming there was one in the building forgot I was here in this box? People have lost track of me before. I strained to hear something, anything, but no sound reached my ears. I pressed my ear against the stainless-steel wall. Sure enough, not a sound. All I managed was to leave an outline of my ear on the cold metal. The elevator was made, apparently, of a miracle alloy that absorbed all noise. I tried whistling Danny Boy, but it came out like a dog wheezing with asthma. There was little left to do but lean up against a wall and count the change in my pockets. For someone in my profession, knowing how to kill time is as important a method of training as gripping rubber balls is for a boxer. Although, in any strict sense, its not killing time at all. For only through assiduous repetition is it possible to redistribute skewed tendencies. I always come prepared with pockets full of loose change. In my right pocket I keep onehundred- and five-hundred-yen coins, in my left fifties and tens. One-yen and five-yen coins I carry in a back pocket, but as a rule these don t enter into the count. What I do is thrust my hands simultaneously into both pockets, the right hand tallying the hundreds and five-hundreds in tandem with the left hand adding up the fifties and tens. its hard for those who ve never attempted the procedure to grasp what it is to calculate this way, and admittedly it is tricky at first. The right brain and the left brain each keep separate tabs, which are then brought together like two halves of a split watermelon. No easy task until you get the hang of it. Whether or not I really do put the right and left sides of my brain to separate accounts, I honestly can t say. A specialist in neurophysiology might have insights to offer on the matter. I m no neurophysiologist, however. All I know is that when I m actually in the midst of counting, I feel like I m using the right side and left side of my brain differently. And when I m through counting, it seems the fatigue that sets in is qualitatively quite distinct from what comes with normal counting. For convenience sake, I think of it as right-brain-totals-right-pocket, left-brain-totals-left-pocket. On the whole, I think of myself as one of those people who take a convenience-sake view of prevailing world conditions, events, existence in general. Not that I m such a blase, convenience-sake sort of guy although I do have tendencies in that direction but because more often than not I ve observed that convenient approximations bring you closest to comprehending the true nature of things. For instance, supposing that the planet earth were not a sphere but a gigantic coffee table, how much difference in everyday life would that make? Granted, this is a pretty farfetched example; you can t rearrange facts of life so freely. Still, picturing the planet earth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away the clutter those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the international dateline and the equator, those nagging details that arise from the spherical view. I mean, for a guy leading a perfectly ordinary existence, how many times in the course of a lifetime would the equator be a significant factor? But to return to the matter at hand or rather, hands, the right and the left each going about its own separate business it is by no means easy to keep running parallel counts. Even for me, to get it down took the longest time. But once you do, once you ve gotten the knack, its not something you lose. Like riding a bike or swimming. Which isn t to say you can t always use a little more practice. Repetition can improve your technique and refine your style. If for no other reason than this, I always keep my hands busy. This time I had three five-hundred-yen coins and eighteen hundreds in the one pocket, and seven fifties and sixteen tens in the other. Making a grand total of three-thousand eight-hundred-ten yen. Calculations like this are no trouble at all. Simpler than counting the fingers on my hands. Satisfied, I leaned back against the stainless-steel wall and looked straight ahead at the doors. Which were still not opening. What could be taking so long? I tentatively wrote off both the equipment-malfunction theory and the forgotten-by-operator theory. Neither very realistic. This was not to say that equipment malfunction or operator negligence couldn t realistically occur. On the contrary, I know for a fact that such accidents are all too common in the real world. What I mean to say is that in a highly exceptional reality this ridiculously slick elevator a case in point the non-exceptional can, for convenience sake, be written off as paradoxically exceptional. Could any human being capable of designing this Tom Swift elevator fail to keep the machinery in working order or forget the proper procedures once a visitor stepped inside? The answer was obvious. No. Never happen. Not after they had been so meticulous up to that point. They d seen to minute details, measuring each step I d taken virtually to the millimeter. I d been stopped by two guards at the entrance to the building, asked whom I was there to see, matched against a visitors list, made to produce my driver s license, logged into a central computer for verification, after which I was summarily pushed into this elevator. You don t get this much going over when you visit the Bank of Japan. It was unthinkable that they, having done all that, should slip up now. The only possibility was that they had intentionally placed me in this particular situation. They wanted the elevator s motions to be opaque to me. They wanted the elevator to move so slow I wouldn t be able to tell if it were going up or down. They were probably watching me with a hidden TV camera now. To ward off the boredom, I thought about searching for the camera lens. But on second thought, what would I have to gain if I found it? That would alert them, they d halt the elevator, and I d be even later for my appointed hour. So I decided to do nothing. I was here in proper accordance with my duties. No need to worry, no cause for alarm. I leaned against the elevator wall, thrust my hands in my pockets, and once more counted my change. Three-thousand seven-hundred-fifty yen. Nothing to it. Done in a flash. Three-thousand seven-hundred-fifty yen? Something was wrong. I d made a mistake somewhere. My palms began to sweat. In three years of counting, never once had I screwed up. This was a bad sign. I shut my eyes and made my right brain and left brain a blank, in a way you might clean your glasses. Then withdrawing both hands from my pockets, I spread my fingers to dry the sweat. Like Henry Fonda in Warlock, where he steels himself before a gun fight. With palms and fingers completely dry, both hands dived into my pockets to do a third count. If the third sum corresponded to either of the other sums I d feel better. Everybody makes mistakes. Under the peculiar conditions I found myself, I may have been anxious, not to mention a little overconfident. That was my first mistake. Anyway, an accurate recount was all I needed to remedy the situation, to put things right. But before I could take the matter in hand, the elevator doors opened. No warning, no sound, they just slid open to either side. I was concentrating so hard on the critical recount that I didn t even notice. Or more precisely, my eyes had seen the opening doors, but I didn t fully grasp the significance of the event. Of course, the doors opening meant the linking of two spaces previously denied accessible continuity by means of those very doors. And at the same time, it meant the elevator had reached its destination. I turned my attention to what lay beyond the doors. There was a corridor and in the corridor stood a woman. A young woman, turned out in a pink suit, wearing pink high heels. The suit was coutured of a polished material, her face equally polished. The woman considered my presence, then nodded succinctly. Come this way, she seemed to indicate. I gave up all hope of that recount, and removing my hands from my pockets, I exited the elevator. Whereupon the elevator doors closed behind me as if they d been waiting for me to leave. Standing there in the corridor, I took a good look around, but I encountered no hint of the nature of my current circumstances. I did seem to be in an interior passage of a building, but any school kid could have told you as much. The interior was gloomy, featureless. Like the elevator. Quality materials throughout; no sign of wear. Marble floors buffed to a high luster; the walls a toasted off-white, like the muffins I eat for breakfast. Along either side of the corridor were tall wooden doors, each affixed with metal room numbers, but out of order. <936> was next to <1213> next to <26>. Something was screwy. Nobody numbers rooms like that. The young woman hardly spoke. This way, please, was all she told me, but it was more her lips forming the words than speaking, because no sound came out. Having taken two months of lip reading since starting this line of work, I had no problem understanding what she said. Still, I thought there was something wrong with my ears. After the dead silence of the elevator, the flattened coughs and dessicated whistling, I had to be losing my hearing. So I coughed. It sounded normal. I regained some confidence in my hearing. Nothing s happened to my ears. The problem must be with the woman s mouth. I walked behind her. The clicks of her pointy high heels echoed down the empty corridor like an afternoon at the quarry. Her full, stockinged legs reflected clearly in the marble. The woman was on the chubby side. Young and beautiful and all that went with it, but chubby. Now a young, beautiful woman who is, shall we say, plump, seems a bit off - Walking behind her, I fixated on her body. Around young, beautiful, fat women, I am generally thrown into confusion. I don t know why. Maybe its because an image of their dietary habits naturally congeals in my mind. When I see a goodly sized woman, I have visions of her mopping up that last drop of cream sauce with bread, wolfing down that final sprig of watercress garnish from her plate. And once that happens, its like acid corroding metal: scenes of her eating spread through my head and I lose control. Your plain fat woman is fine. Fat women are like clouds in the sky. They re just floating there, nothing to do with me. But your young, beautiful, fat woman is another story. I am demanded to assume a posture toward her. I could end up sleeping with her. That is probably where all the confusion comes in. Which is not to say that I have anything against fat women. Confusion and repulsion are two different things. I ve slept with fat women before and on the whole the experience wasn t bad. If your confusion leads you in the right direction, the results can be uncommonly rewarding. But of course, things don t always take the right course. Sex is an extremely subtle undertaking, unlike going to the department store on Sunday to buy a thermos. Even among young, beautiful, fat women, there are distinctions to be made. Fleshed out one way, they ll lead you in the right direction; fleshed out another way, they ll leave you lost, trivial, confused. In this sense, sleeping with fat women can be a challenge. There must be as many paths of human fat as there are ways of human death. This was pretty much what I was thinking as I walked down the corridor behind this young, beautiful, fat woman. A white scarf swirled around the collar of her chic pink suit. From the fullness of her earlobes dangled square gold earrings, glinting with every step she took. Actually, she moved quite lightly for her weight. She may have strapped herself into a girdle or other paraphernalia for maximum visual effect, but that didn t alter the fact that her wiggle was tight and cute. In fact, it turned me on. She was my kind of chubby. Now I m not trying to make excuses, but I don t get turned on by that many women. If anything, I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. So when I do get turned on, I don t trust it; I have to investigate the source. I scooted up next to her and apologized for being eight or nine minutes late for the appointment. I had no idea the entrance procedures would take so long, I said. And then the elevator was so slow. I was ten minutes early when I got to the building. She gave me a brisk I-know sort of nod. A hint of eau de cologne drifted from her neckline. A scent reminiscent of standing in a melon patch on a summer s morn. It put me in a funny frame of mind. A nostalgic yet impossible pastiche of sentiments, as if two wholly unrelated memories had threaded together in an unknown recess. Feelings like this sometimes come over me. And most often due to specific scents. Long corridor, eh? I tried to break the ice. She glanced at me, but kept walking. I guessed she was twenty or twenty-one. Well-defined features, broad forehead, clear complexion. It was then that she said, Proust . Or more precisely, she didn t pronounce the word Proust , but simply moved her lips to form what ought to have been Proust . I had yet to hear a genuine peep out of her. It was as if she were talking to me from the far side of a thick sheet of glass. Proust? Marcel Proust? I asked her. She gave me a look. Then she repeated, Proust. I gave up on the effort and fell back in line behind her, trying for the life of me to come up with other lip movements that corresponded to Proust . Truest? … Brew whist? … Blue is it? … One after the other, quietly to myself, I pronounced strings of meaningless syllables, but none seemed to match. I could only conclude that she had indeed said, Proust . But what I couldn t figure was, what was the connection between this long corridor and Marcel Proust? Perhaps she d cited Marcel Proust as a metaphor for the length of the corridor. Yet, supposing that were the case, wasn t it a trifle flighty not to say inconsiderate as a choice of expression? Now if she d cited this long corridor as a metaphor for the works of Marcel Proust, that much I could accept. But the reverse was bizarre. A corridor as long as Marcel Proust? Whatever, I kept following her down that long corridor. Truly, a long corridor. Turning corners, going up and down short flights of stairs, we must have walked five or six ordinary buildings worth. We were walking around and around, like in an Escher print. But walk as we might, the surroundings never seemed to change. Marble floors, muffinwhite walls, wooden doors with random room numbers. Stainless-steel door knobs. Not a window in sight. And through it all, the same staccato rhythm of her heels, followed by the melted rubber gumminess of my jogging shoes. Suddenly she pulled to a halt. I was now so tuned in to the sound of my jogging shoes that I walked right into her backside. It was wonderfully cushioning, like a firm rain cloud. Her neck effused that melon eau de cologne. She was tipping forward from the force of my impact, so I grabbed her shoulders to pull her back upright. Excuse me, I said. I was somewhere else in my thoughts. The chubby young woman blushed. I couldn t say for sure, but she didn t seem at all bothered. Tozum sta, she said with a trace of a smile. Then she shrugged her shoulders and added, Sela. She didn t actually say that, but need I repeat, her lips formed the words. Tozum sta? I pronounced to myself. Sela? Sela, she said with conviction. Turkish perhaps? Problem was, I d never heard a word of Turkish. I was so flustered, I decided to forget about holding a conversation with her. Lipreading is very delicate business and not something you can hope to master in two months of adult education classes. She produced a lozenge-shaped electronic key from her suit pocket and inserted it horizontally, just so, into the slot of the door bearing the number <728>. It unlocked with a click. Smooth. She opened the door, then turned and bid me, Saum te, sela. Which, of course, is exactly what I did. Golden Beasts WITH the approach of autumn, a layer of long golden fur grows over their bodies. Golden in the purest sense of the word, with not the least intrusion of another hue. Theirs is a gold that comes into this world as gold and exists in this world as gold. Poised between all heaven and earth, they stand steeped in gold. When I first came to the Town it was in the spring the beasts had short fur of varying colors. Black and sandy gray, white and ruddy brown. Some were a piebald of shadow and bright. These beasts of every imaginable shade drifted quietly over the newly greening countryside as if wafted about on a breeze. Almost meditative in their stillness, their breathing hushed as morning mist, they nibbled at the young grass with not a sound. Then, tiring of that, they folded their legs under them to take a short rest. Spring passed, summer ended, and just now as the light takes on a diaphanous glow and the first gusts of autumn ripple the waters of the streams, changes become visible in the beasts. Golden hairs emerge, in scant patches at first, chance germinations of some unseasonal herb. Gradually whole fields of feelers knit out through the shorter fur, until at length the whole coat is gleaming gold. It takes not more than a week from start to finish for this ritual to transpire. They commence their metamorphosis almost at the same time; almost at once they are done. Within a week every animal has been completely transformed into a beast of gold. When the morning sun rises and casts newly golden over the world, autumn has descended upon the earth. Only that long, single horn protruding from the middle of their forehead stays white from base to slender tip. It reminds one less of a horn than a broken bone that has pierced the skin and lodged in place. But for the white of their horns and the blue of their eyes, the beasts are gold. They shake their heads, as if trying on a new suit, thrusting horns into the high autumn sky. They wade into the streams; they stretch their necks to nibble on the autumnal bounty of red berries. As dusk falls over the Town, I climb the Watchtower on the western Wall to see the Gatekeeper blow the horn for the herding of the beasts. One long note, then three short notes such is the prescribed call. Whenever I hear the horn, I close my eyes and let the gentle tones spread through me. They are like none other. Navigating the darkling streets like a pale transparent fish, down cobbled arcades, past the enclosures of houses and stone walls lining the walkways along the river, the call goes out. Everything is immersed in the call. It cuts through invisible airborne sediments of time, quietly penetrating the furthest reaches of the Town. When the horn sounds, the beasts look up, as if in answer to primordial memories. All thousand or more, all at once assume the same stance, lifting their heads in the direction of the call. Some reverently cease chewing the leaves of the broom trees, others pause their hoofs on the cobblestones, still others awaken from their napping in that last patch of sun; each lifts its head into the air. For that one instant, all is still, save their golden hair which stirs in the evening breeze. What plays through their heads at this moment? At what do they gaze? Faces all at one angle, staring off into space, the beasts freeze in position. Ears trained to the sound, not twitching, until the dying echoes dissolve into twilight. Then suddenly, as if some memory beckons, the beasts rise and walk in the same direction. The spell is broken and the streets resound with countless hooves. I imagine flumes of foam rising from underground, filling the alleyways, climbing over house walls, drowning even the Clocktower. But on opening my eyes, the flow immediately vanishes. It is only hoofbeats, and the Town is unchanged. The beasts pour through the cobbled streets, swerving in columns hither and yon, like a river. No one animal at the fore, no one animal leading. The beasts lower their eyes and tremble at the shoulders as they follow their unspoken course. Yet among the beasts registers some unshakable inner bond, an indelible intimacy of memories long departed from their eyes. They make their way down from the north, crossing the Old Bridge to the south bank, where they meet with others of their kind coming in from the east, then proceed along the Canals through the Industrial Sector, turn west and file into a passageway under a foundry, emerging beyond the foot of the Western Hill. There on the slopes they string along the elderly beasts and the young, those unable to stray far from the Gate, waiting in expectation of the procession. Here the group changes directions and goes north across the West Bridge until they arrive at the Gate. No sooner have the first animals plodded up to the Gate than the Gatekeeper has it opened. Reinforced with thick horizontal iron bands, the doors are rugged and heavy. Perhaps fifteen feet high, crowned with a bristle of spikes. The Gatekeeper swings the right of these massive doors toward him effortlessly, then herds the gathered beasts out through the Gate. The left door never opens. When all the animals have been ushered out, the Gatekeeper closes the right door again and lowers the bolt in place. This West Gate is, to my knowledge, the sole passage in and out of the Town. The entire community is surrounded by an enormous Wall, almost thirty feet high, which only birds can clear. Come morning, the Gatekeeper once again opens the gate, sounds the horn, and lets the beasts in. When they are back within the dominion, he closes the door and lowers the bolt. Really no need for the bolt, the Gatekeeper explains to me. Nobody but me is strong enough to open a gate this heavy. Even if people try teaming up. But rules are rules. The Gatekeeper pulls his wool cap down to his eyebrows, and there is not another word out of him. The Gatekeeper is a giant of a man, thick-skinned and brawny, as big as I have ever seen. His shirt would seem ready to rip at a flex of his muscles. There are times he closes his eyes and sinks into a great silence. I cannot tell if he is overcome by melancholy, or if this is simply the switch of some internal mechanism. Once the silence envelops him, I can say nothing until he regains his senses. As he slowly reopens his eyes, he looks at me blankly, the fingers of his hands moving vaguely on his lap as if to divine why I exist there before him. Why do you round up the beasts at nightfall and send them outside the walls, only to let them back in again in the morning? I ask the Gatekeeper as soon as he is conscious. The Gatekeeper stares at me without a trace of emotion. We do it that way, he says, and that is how it is. The same as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Apart from opening and closing the Gate, the Gatekeeper seems to spend his time sharpening tools. The Gatehouse is arrayed with all manner of hatchets, adzes, and knives, so that his every free moment is devoted to honing them on his whetstone. The honed blades attain an unnatural gleam, frozen white, aglow from within. When I look at the rows of blades, the Gatekeeper smiles with satisfaction, attentively following my gaze. Careful, one touch can cut, says the Gatekeeper, pointing a stocky finger at his arsenal. These are not toys. I made them all, hammered each one out. I was a blacksmith, and this is my handiwork. Good grip, perfect balance. Not easy to match a handle to a blade. Here, hold one. But be careful about the blade. I lift the smallest hatchet from the implements on the table and swing it through the air. Truly, at the slightest flick of the wrist at scarcely my thought of it the sharpened metal responds like a trained hunting dog. The Gatekeeper has reason to be proud. I made the handle, too. Carved it from ten-year-old ash. Some people like other wood, but my choice is ten-year ash. No younger, no older. Ten-year is prime grain. Strong and moist, plenty of flex. The Eastern Woods is my ash stock. What ever do you need so many knives for? Different things, says the Gatekeeper. In winter, I use them the most. Wait till winter, I can show you. Winter is mighty long here. There is a place for the beasts outside the Gate. An enclosure where they sleep at night, transversed by a stream that gives them drink. Beyond that are apple trees, as far as the eye can see, vast wooded seas that stretch on and on. Nobody but you watches the animals, says the Gatekeeper. You just got here, though. You get used to living here, and things fall into place. You lose interest in them. Everybody does. Except for one week at the beginning of spring. For one week at the beginning of spring, the Gatekeeper tells me, people climb the Watchtower to see the beasts fight. This is the time when instinct compels the males to clash after they have shed their winter coats, a week before the females bear young. They become so fierce, wounding each other viciously, one would never imagine how peaceful they usually are. These autumn beasts crouch in a hush, each to each, their long golden fur radiant in the sunset. Unmoving, like statues set in place, they wait with lifted heads until the last rays of the day sink into the apple trees. When finally the sun is gone and the gloom of night draws over them, the beasts lower their heads, laying their one white horn to earth, and close their eyes. So comes to an end one day in the Town. Rain Gear, INKlings, Laundry I WAS conducted into a big, empty room. The walls were a white, the ceiling a white, the carpet a mocha brown all decorator colors. Yes, even in whites, there are tasteful whites and there are crass whites, shades that might as well not be white. The opaque windows blocked all view to the world outside, but the light that was filtering in could only be sunlight. Which placed us somewhere above ground. So the elevator had risen. Knowing this put me at ease: it was as I had imagined after all. The woman motioned for me to sit on the leather sofa in the center of the room. I obliged, and crossed my legs, whereupon she exited by a different door. The room had very little furniture. Before the sofa was a low coffee table set with a ceramic ashtray, lighter, and cigarette case. I flipped open the cigarette case; it was empty. On the walls, not a painting, nor a calendar; nor a photo. Pretty bleak. Next to the window was a large desk. I got up from the sofa and walked over to the window, inspecting the desk as I passed by. A solid affair with a thick panel top, ample drawers to either side. On the desk were a lamp, three ballpoint pens, and an appointment book, beside which lay scattered a handful of paperclips. The appointment book was open to today s date. In one corner of the room stood three very ordinary steel lockers, entirely out of keeping with the interior scheme. Straight-cut industrial issue. If it had been up to me, I would have gone for something more elegant say, designer wardrobes. But no one was asking me. I was here to do a job, and gray steel lockers or pale peach jukebox was no business of mine. The wall to my left held a built-in closet fitted with an accordion door. That was the last item of furnishing of any kind in the room. There was no bookcase, no clock, no phone, no pencil sharpener, no letter tray, no pitcher of water. What the hell kind of room was it supposed to be? I returned to the sofa, recrossed my legs, and yawned. Ten minutes later, the woman reappeared. And without so much as a glance in my direction, she opened one of the lockers and removed an armload of some shiny black material, which she brought over to the coffee table. The black material turned out to be a rubberized slicker and boots. And topping the lot was a pair of goggles, like the ones pilots in World War I wore. I hadn t the foggiest what all this was leading up to. The woman said something, but her lips moved too fast for me to make it out. E… excuse me? I m only a beginner at lipreading, I said. This time she moved her lips slowly and deliberately: Put these on over your clothes, please. Really, I would have preferred not to, but it would have been more bothersome to complain, so I shut up and did as told. I removed my jogging shoes and stepped into the boots, then slipped into the slicker. It weighed a ton and the boots were a couple of sizes too big, but did I have a choice? The woman swung around in front of me and did up the buttons of my slicker, pulling the hood up over my head. As she did so, her forehead brushed the tip of my nose. Nice fragrance, I complimented her on her eau de cologne. Thanks, she mouthed, doing the hood snaps up to right below my nose. Then over the hood came the goggles. And there I was, all slicked up and nowhere to go or so I thought. That was when she pulled open the closet door, led me by the hand, and shoved me in. She turned on the light and pulled the door shut behind her. Inside, it was like any clothes closet any clothes closet without clothes. Only coat hangers and mothballs. It probably wasn t even a clothes closet. Otherwise, what reason could there be for me getting all mummied up and squeezed into a closet? The woman jiggled a metal fitting in the corner, and presently a portion of the facing wall began to open inward, lifting up like the door of the trunk of a compact car. Through the opening it was pitch black, but I could feel a chill, damp air blowing. There was also the deep rumble of water. There s a river in there, she appeared to say. The sound of the water made it seem as if her speaking were simply drowned out. Somehow I found myself understanding what she was saying. Odd. Up toward the headwaters, there s a big waterfall which you pass right under. Beyond that s Grandfather s laboratory. You ll find out everything once you get there. Once I get there? Your grandfather s waiting for me? That s right, she said, handing me a large waterproof flashlight with a strap. Stepping into total blackness wasn t my idea of fun, but I toughened up my nerve and planted one foot inside the gaping hole. I crouched forward to duck head and shoulders through, coaxing my other foot along. With all the bulky rain gear, this proved no mean effort. I turned and looked back though my goggles at the chubby woman standing inside the closet. She was awfully cute. Be careful. You mustn t stray from the river or go down a side path, she cautioned, stooping down to peer at me. Straight ahead, waterfall? I shouted. Straight ahead, waterfall, she repeated. As an experiment, I mouthed the word sela . This brought a smile and a sela from her, before she slammed the wall panel shut. All at once I was plunged into darkness, literally, without a single pinprick of light. I couldn t see a thing. I couldn t even make out my hand raised up to my face. I stood there dumbfounded, as if I d been hit by a blunt object, overcome by the chilling realization of my utter helplessness. I was a leftover wrapped in black plastic and shoved into the cooler. For an instant, my body went limp. I felt for the flashlight switch and sent a welcome beam of light straight out across nowhere. I trained the light on my feet, then slowly took my bearings. I was standing on a three-meter-square concrete platform jutting out over bottomless nothingness. No railing, no enclosure. Wish she d told me about this, I huffed, just a tad upset. An aluminum ladder was propped against the side of the platform, offering a way down. I strapped the flashlight diagonally across my chest, and began my descent, one slippery rung at a time. The lower I got, the louder and more distinct the sound of water became. What was going on here? A closet in an office building with a river chasm at the bottom? And smack in the middle of Tokyo! The more I thought about it, the more disturbed I got. First that eerie elevator, then that woman who spoke without ever saying anything, now this leisurely jaunt. Maybe I should have turned down the job and gone home. But no, here I was, descending into the abyss. And for what? Professional pride? Or was it the chubby woman in the pink suit? Okay, I confess: she d gotten to me, and now I had to go through with this nonsense. Twenty rungs down the ladder I stopped to catch my breath, then continued another eighteen rungs to the ground. At the bottom, I cautiously shined my light over the level stone slab beneath my feet and discovered the river ahead. The surface of the water rippled in the flashlight beam. The current was swift, but I could get no sense of the depth or even the color of the water. All I could tell was that it flowed from left to right. Pouring light into the ground at my feet, I slowly made my way upstream. Now and again I could swear something was moving nearby, but I saw nothing. Only the vertical hewnrock walls to either side of the river. I was probably anxious from the darkness. After five or six minutes of walking, the ceiling dropped low or so it seemed from the echo. I pointed my flashlight beam up but could not discern anything above me. Next, just as the woman had warned, I saw what seemed to be tunnels branching off to either side. They weren t so much side paths as fissures in the rock face, from which trickled veins of water that fed into the river. I walked over and shined my flashlight into one of the cracks. A black hole that got bigger, much bigger, further in. Very inviting. Gripping the flashlight tightly in my right hand, I hurried upstream like a fish midevolution. The stone slab was wet, so I had to step carefully. If I slipped now or broke my flashlight, that d be it. All my attention was on my feet. When I happened to glance up, I saw a light closing in, a mere seven or eight meters away. I immediately switched off the flashlight. I reached into the slicker for my knife and got the blade open, the darkness and the roar of the water making a perfect cover. The instant I switched off my flashlight, the yellowish beacon riveted to a pinpoint stop. It then swung around in an arc to describe two large circles in the air. This seemed to be a signal: Everything all right not to worry. Nonetheless, I stood poised on guard and waited for them to move. Presently, the light began to come toward me, waving through empty space like a giant glowbug coupled to a higher brain. I stared at it, right hand clutching the knife, left hand on the switched-off flashlight. The light stopped its advance scarcely three meters from me. It motioned upward and downward. It was weak. I eventually realized it was trying to illuminate a face. The face of a man wearing the same crazy goggles and slicker as I had on. In his hand was the light, a small lantern like the kind they sell in camping supply shops. He was yelling to me over the noise of the water, but I couldn t hear him; and because it was too dark, I couldn t I read his lips. … ing except that… time. Or you d… in that regard, since… the man appeared to be saying. Indecipherable. But he seemed to pose no threat, so I turned my flashlight back on and shined it on my face, touching a finger to my ear to signal that I could barely hear him. The man nodded several times, then he set down his lantern and fumbled with both hands in his pockets. Suddenly, the roar subsided from all around me, like a tide receding. I thought I was passing out. Expecting unconsciousness though why I should be passing out, I had no idea I braced myself for a fall. Seconds passed. I was still standing. In fact, I felt just fine. The noise of the water, however, had faded. I came t meet you, the man said. Perfectly clear. I shook my head, tucked the flashlight under my arm, folding the knife and pocketing it. Going to be one of those days, I could just tell. What happened to the sound? I asked the man. Oh yes, the sound. It was loud, wasn t it? I turned it down. Sorry about that. its all right now, said the man, nodding repeatedly. The roar of the river was now the babble of a brook. Well then, shall we? he said with an abrupt about-face, then began walking back upstream with surefooted ease. I followed, shining my flashlight in his steps. You turned the sound down? Then its artificial, I take it? Not at all, the man said. That s natural sound, that is. But how do you turn down natural sound? I asked. Strictly speaking, I don t turn it down, the man replied. I take it out. Well, I guess, if he said so. I kept walking, saying nothing. Everything was very peaceful now, thanks to his softening the sound of the water. I could even hear the squish-squish of my rubber boots. From overhead there came a weird grinding as if someone were rubbing pebbles together. Twice, three times, then it stopped. I found signs that those INKlings were sneakin in here. I got worried, so I came t fetch you. By rights INKlings shouldn t ever make it this far in, but sometimes these things happen. A real problem, the man said. INKlings? I said. Even someone like you, bet y wouldn t fancy runnin into an INKling down here, eh? said the man, bursting into a loud guffaw. I suppose not, I said. INKling or whatling, I wasn t up for a rendezvous in a dark place like this. That s why I came t get you, the man repeated. Those INKlings are bad news. Much obliged, I said. We walked on until we came within hearing of what sounded like a faucet running full blast. The waterfall. With only a quick shine of my flashlight, I could see it wasn t your garden variety. If the sound hadn t been turned down, it would have made a mean rumble. I moved forward, my goggles wet with spray. Here s where we go under, right? I asked. That s right, son, said the man. And without further explanation, he headed straight into the waterfall and disappeared. I had little choice but to head straight into the waterfall, too. Fortunately, our route took us through what proved to be a dry part of the waterfall, but this was becoming absurd. Even all suited up in this rain gear, I was getting drenched under sheets of water. And to think the old man had to do this every time he entered or left the laboratory. No doubt this was for information-security purposes, but there had to be a more graceful way. Inside the waterfall, I stumbled and struck my kneecap on a rock. With the sound turned down, I had gotten confused by the sheer discrepancy between the non-sounds and the reality that would have produced them had they been audible. Which is to say, a waterfall ought to have a waterfall s worth of sound. On the far side of the falls was a cave barely big enough for one man. Dead center was an iron door. The man pulled what looked like a miniature calculator out of his pocket, inserted it into a slot, and after he maneuvered it a bit, the door opened silently inward. Well, here we are. After you, said the man. He stepped in after me and locked the door. Rough goin , eh? No, uh… that wasn t… The man laughed, lantern hanging by a cord around his neck, goggles and hood still in place. A jolly ho-ho-ho sort of laugh. The room we d entered was like a swimming pool locker room, the shelves stacked with a half dozen sets of the same gear we had on. I took off my goggles and climbed out of the slicker, draping it over a hanger, then placed my boots on the shelf. The flashlight I hung on a hook. Sorry t cause you so much trouble, the man apologized, but we can t be slack on security. Got t take the necessary precautions. There s types out there lyin in wait for us. INKlings? I prompted. Yessir. And those INKlings, in case you were wonderin , aren t the only ones, said the man, nodding to himself. He then conducted me to a reception room beyond the lockers. Out of his slicker, my guide proved to be a kindly old man. Short and stout; not fat so much as sturdily built. He had good color to his complexion and when he put on his rimless spectacles, he was the very image of a major pre-War political figure. He motioned for me to sit on the leather sofa, while he himself took a seat behind the desk. This room was of exactly the same mold as the other room. The carpet, the walls, the lighting, everything was the same. On the coffee table in front of the sofa was an identical smoking set, on the desk an identical appointment book and an identical scattering of paperclips. Had I been led around in a circle back to the same room? Maybe in fact I had; maybe in fact I hadn t. Hard to memorize the precise position of each scattered paperclip. The old man looked me over. Then he picked up a paperclip and unbent it to scrape at a fingernail cuticle. His left index finger cuticle. When he d finished with the cuticle, he discarded the straightened paperclip into the ashtray. If I ever get reincarnated, it occurred to me, let me make certain I don t come back as a paperclip. Accordint my information, those INKlings are like this with the Semiotecs, said the old man. Not that they re in cahoots, mind you. INKlings re too wary, and your Semiotec s got his own agenda planned out way ahead. So cooperation s got t be limited to the very few. Still, it doesn t bode well. The fact that we ve got INKlings pokin around right here, where there oughn t t be INKlings tall, just shows how bad things are. If it keeps on like this, this place s goint be swarmin with INKlings day and night. And that ll make real problems for me. Quite, I concurred, quite. I hadn t the vaguest idea what sort of operants these INKlings were, but if for any reason they d joined forces with the Semiotecs, then the outlook wasn t too bright for me either. Which was to say that the contest between our side and the Semiotechnicians was already in a delicate balance, and the slightest tampering could overturn the whole thing. For starters, I knew nothing about these INKlings, yet they knew about me. This already tipped the scales in their favor. Of course, to a lower-echelon field independent like myself, not knowing about INKlings was only par for the course, whereas the Brass at the top were probably aware of them ages ago. Well, if its all right with you, lets get hoppin , said the old man. Absolutely, I said. I asked them t send round their crackest Calcutec, and seems you ve got that reputation. Everyone speaks mighty highly of you. You got the knack, got the gumption, you do a crack job. Other than a certain lack of team spirit, you got no strikes against you. An exaggeration, I m sure, I said. The old man guffawed again. And team spirit s no great shakes. The real question is gumption. You don t get t be a first-string Calcutec without your share of spunk. That s how you command such high wages, eh? Yet another guffaw. Then the old man guided me into an adjoining workroom. I m a biologist, he said. But the word biology doesn t begin t cover all that I do. Everythin from neurophysiology to acoustics, linguistics to comparative religion. Not your usual bag of tricks, if I do say so myself. These days I m researchin the mammalian palate. Palate? The mouth, son. The way the mouth s put together. How the mouth works, how it gives voice, and various related topics. Here, take a look at this. Whereupon he flicked a switch on the wall and the lab lights came on. The whole back of the room was flush with shelves, each lined with skulls. Giraffe, horse, panda, mouse, every species of mammal imaginable. There must have been three hundred or four hundred skulls. Naturally, there were human skulls, too. Caucasoid, Negroid, Asiatic, Indian, one male and one female of each. Got the whale and elephant in the storeroom downstairs. Take up a lot of space, they do, said the old man. Well, I guess, I said. A few whale skulls and there goes the neighborhood. All the skulls had their mouths propped open, a chorus ready for inspection; all stared at the opposite wall with empty sockets. Research specimens or no, the atmosphere in the room was not exactly pleasant. On other shelves, although not so numerous as the skulls, were jars of tongues and ears and lips and esophagi. What d y think? Quite a collection, eh? twinkled the old man. Some folks collect stamps, some folks collect records. Me, I collect skulls. Takes all kinds t make a world, eh? Er, yes. From early on, I had this interest in mammalian skulls, and I ve been buildin up the collection bit by bit. Been at it close t forty years. Unscramblin the skulls has taken me longer than I ever thought possible. Would ve been easier t figure out living flesh-andblood human beings. I really think so. Granted, of course, someone young as yourself s probably more interested in the flesh and nothing but, eh? the old man laughed. For me, its taken thirty years t get t where I can hear the sounds bones make. Thirty years, now that s a good long time. Sounds? I said. Bones produce sounds? Of course they do, said the old man. Every bone has unique sound. its the hidden language of bones. And I don t mean metaphorically. Bones literally speak. Research I m engaged in proposes t decode that language. Then, t render it artificially controllable. The details escaped me, but if what the old man said were true, he had his work cut out for him. Very valuable research, I offered. Truly, said the old man with a nod. That s why those types have all got designs on my findings. Fraid the word s out. They all want my research for their own ends. F r instance, suppose you could draw out the memories stored in bones; there d be no need for torture. All you d have t do is kill your victim, strip the meat clean off the skull, and the information would be in your hands. Lovely, I said. Granted, for better or worse, research hasn t gotten that far. At this stage, you d get a clearer memory log taking the brain out. Oh. Remove the skull, remove the brain, some difference. That s why I called for your services. So those Semiotecs can t steal my experiment data. Civilization, the old man pronounced, faces serious crises because science is used for evil or good. I put my trust in science for the sake of pure science. I can t say I understand, I said. I m here on a matter of pure business. Except my orders didn t come from System Central and they didn t come from any official agent. They came directly from you. Highly irregular. And more to the point, probably in violation of professional regulations. If reported, I could lose my license. I hope you understand this. I do indeed, said the old man. You re not without cause for concern. But rest assured, this request was cleared through the proper System channels. Only the business procedures were dropped. I contacted you directly t keep everything undercover. You won t be losin any license. Can you guarantee this? The old man pulled out a folder and handed it to me. I leafed through it. Official System request forms, no mistake about it. The papers, the signatures, all in order. Well enough, I said, returning the folder. I pull double-scale at my rank, you realize. Double-scale means Twice the standard fee, right? Fine by me. Fsct is, as a bonus, I m willint go to a full triple-scale. Very trusting of you, I must say. This is an important job. Plus I already had you go under the waterfall. Ho-ho-ho. Then may I see the data, I said. We can decide the calc-scheme after I see the figures. Which of us will do the computer-level tabulations? I ll be usin my computer here. You just take care of the before and after. That is, if you don t mind. So much the better. Saves me a lot of trouble. The old man stood up from his chair and pressed a coordinate on the wall behind him. An ordinary wall until it opened. Tricks within tricks. The old man took out another folder and closed the wall. Resealed, it looked like any other plain white wall. No distinguishing features or seams, no nothing. I skimmed the seven pages of numerics. Straightforward data. This shouldn t take too much time to launder I said. Infrequent number series like these virtually rule out temporary bridging. Theoretically, of course, there s always that possibility. But there d be no proving the syntactical validity, and without such proof you couldn t shake the error tag. Like trying to cross the desert without a compass. Maybe Moses could do it. Moses even crossed the sea. Ancient history. To my knowledge, at this level, never once has a Semiotec succeeded in securing illegal access. You re sayin a single-conversion trap s sufficient, eh? A double-conversion trap is too risky. It would effectively reduce the possibility of temporary bridging to zero, but at this point its still a freak stunt. The trapping process isn t solidly grounded. The research isn t complete. Who said anything bout double-conversion trapping? said the old man, working another paperclip into his cuticle. The right index finger this time. What is it you re saying, then? Shuffling, son. I m talkin shuffling. I want you to launder and shuffle. That s why I called on you. If it was simple brainwash laundry, there wouldn t have been any need t call you. I don t get it, I said, recrossing my legs. How do you know about shuffling? That s classified information. No outsider s supposed to know about it. Well, I do. I ve got a pretty open pipeline to the top of the System. Okay, then run this through your pipeline. Shuffling procedures are completely frozen at this time. Don t ask me why. Obviously some kind of trouble. Whatever the case, shuffling is now prohibited. The old man handed me the request folder once again. Have yourself a good look at the last page. Should be shuffling procedure clearance there somewhere. I opened the folder to the last page and ran my eyes over the documentation. Sure enough, shuffling clearance authorized. I read it over several times. Official. Five signatures, no less. What the hell could the Brass be thinking? You dig a hole and the next thing they say is fill it in; fill it in and they tell you to dig a hole. They re always screwing with the guy in the field. Could I ask you to make color copies of all pages of this request. I might find myself driven into a nasty corner without them. Fine, said the old man. Glad to make you your copies. Nothing to worry bout. Everything s on the up and up. I ll give you half your fee today, the other half on final receipt. Fair and square? Fair enough. Now, to get on with the laundry. After I m done, I ll take the wash home with me and do the shuffling there. Shuffling requires special precautions. I ll be back with the shuffled data when I m through. Noon, four days from now. It can t be any later. Plenty of time. I beg of you, son, whatever you do, don t be late, the old man pleaded. If you re late, something terrible will happen. World going to fall apart? I kidded. In a way, said the old man, yes. Not this time. I never come in late, I said. Now, if its not too much to ask, could I please trouble you for some ice water and a thermos of hot black coffee. And maybe a small snack. Please. Something tells me this is going to be a long job. Something told me right. It was a long, hard job. The numerics themselves were the proverbial piece of cake, but with so many case-determinant step-functions, the tabulations took much more doing than they first appeared to require. I input the data-asgiven into my right brain, then after converting it via a totally unrelated sign-pattern, I transfer it to my left brain, which I then output as completely recoded numbers and type up on paper. This is what is called laundering. Grossly simplified, of course. The conversion code varies with the Calcutec. This code differs entirely from a random number table in its being diagrammatic. In other words, the way in which right brain and left brain are split (which, needless to say, is a convenient fiction; left and right are never actually divided) holds the key. Drawn, it might look something like this: Significantly, the way the jagged edges do not precisely match up means that it is impossible to reconvert data back into its original form. Nonetheless, Semiotecs can occasionally decode stolen data by means of a temporary bridge. That is, they holographically reproduce the jagged edges from an analysis of the data-as-retrieved. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn t. The more we Calcutecs up our technologies, the more they up their counter-technologies. We safeguard the data, they steal it. Your classic cops-and-robbers routine. Semiotecs traffic illegally obtained data and other information on the black market, making megaprofits. And what s worse, they keep the most valuable bits of information for themselves and the benefit of their own organization. Our organization is generally called the System, theirs the Factory. The System was originally a private conglomerate, but as it grew in importance it took on quasigovernmental status. In the same way as, say, Ma Bell in America. We rank-and-file Calcutecs work as individual independents not unlike tax accountants or attorneys, yet we need licenses from the state and can only take on jobs from the System or through one of the official agents designated by the System. This arrangement is intended to prevent misuse of technologies by the Factory. Any violation thereof, and they revoke your license. I can t really say whether these preventative measures make sense or not. The reason being that any Calcutec stripped of his qualifications eventually ends up getting absorbed into the Factory and going underground to become a Semiotec. As for the Factory, much less is known. It apparently started off as a small-scale venture and grew by leaps and bounds. Some refer to it as the Data Mafia, and to be certain, it does bear a marked resemblance in its rhizomic penetration to various other underworld organizations. The difference is that this Mafia deals only in information. Information is clean and information makes money. The Factory stakes out a computer, hacks it for all its worth, and makes off with its information. I drank a whole pot of coffee while doing the laundry. One hour on the job, thirty minutes rest regular as clockwork. Otherwise the right-brain-left-brain interface becomes muddled and the resulting tabulations glitched. During those thirty-minute breaks, I shot the breeze with the old man. Anything to keep my mouth moving. Best method for repolarizing a tired brain. What are all these figures? I asked. Experiment data, said the old man. One-year s worth of findings. Numeric conversions of 3-D graphic-simulated volume mappings of the skulls and palates of various animals, combined with a three-element breakdown of their voices. I was tellin you how it took me thirty years t get t where I could tune in each bone s waveform. Well, when this here calculation s completed, we ll finally be able t extract that sound not empirically, but theoretically. Then it ll be possible to control things artificially? Right on the mark, said the old man. So we have artifical control where does that get us? The old man licked his upper lip. All sorts of things could happen, he said after a moment. Truly all sorts of things. I can t go spoutin off about them, but things you can t begin t imagine. Sound removal being only one of them? The old man launched into another round of his belly laugh. Oh-ho-ho, right you are, son. Tunin in the signal of the human skull, we ll take the sound out or turn it up. Each person s got a different shaped skull, though, so we won t be able t take it out completely. But we can turn it down pretty low, eh? Ho-ho-ho. We match the sound-positive to a sound-negative and make them resonate together. Sound removal s just one of the more harmless applications. Harmless? Fiddling with the volume was screwy enough. What was the rest going to be like? its possible t remove sound from both speakin and hearin , resumed the old man. In other words, we can erase the sound of the water from hearing like I just did or we can erase speech. You plan to present these findings to the world? Tosh said the old man, wiping his hands, now why would I want t let others in on something this much fun? I m keepin it for my own personal enjoyment. The old man burst out laughing some more. Ho-ho-ho. He even had me laughing. My research is purely for the specialist. Nobody s got any interest in acoustics anyway, the old man said. All the idiot savants in the world couldn t make head or tail of my theories if they tried. Only the world of science pays me any mind. That may be so, but your Semiotec is no idiot. When it comes to deciphering, they re genius class, the whole lot of them. They ll crack your findings to the last digit. I know, I know. That s why I ve withheld all my data and processes, so they wouldn t be pokin into things. Probably means even the world of science doesn t take me seriously, but what of that? Tosh, a hundred years from now my theories will alI ve been proved. That s enough, isn t it? Hmm. Okay, son, launder and shuffle everything. Yessir, I said, yessir. For the next hour, I concentrated on tabulations. Then took another rest. One question, if I might, I said. What s that? asked the old man. That young woman at the entrance. You know, the one with the pink suit, slightly plump… ? That s my granddaughter, said the old man. Extremely bright child. Young s she is, she helps me with my research. Well, uh, my question is… was she born mute that way? Darn, said the old man, slapping his thigh. Plum forgot. She s still sound-removed from that experiment. Darn, darn, darn. Got t go and undo it right now. Oh. The Library The Town centers around a semicircular plaza directly north of the Old Bridge. The other semicircular fragment, that is, the lower half of the circle, lies across the river to the south. These two half-circles are known as the North and South Plazas respectively. Regarded as a pair, the two can impress one only as complete opposites, so unlike each other as they are. The North Plaza is heavy with an air of mystery, laden with the silence of the surrounding quarter, whereas the South Plaza seems to lack any atmosphere at all. What is one meant to feel here? All is adrift in a vague sense of loss. Here, there are relatively fewer households than north of the Bridge. The flowerbeds and cobblestones are not well kept. In the middle of the North Plaza stands a large Clock-tower piercing skyward. To be precise, one should say it is less a clocktower than an object retaining the form of a clocktower. The clock has long forfeited its original role as a timepiece. It is a square stone tower, narrowing up its height, its faces oriented in compass fashion toward the cardinal directions. At the top are dials on all four sides, their hands frozen in place at thirty-five minutes past ten. Below, small portals give into what is likely a hollow interior. One might imagine ascending by ladder within but for the fact that no entrance is to be found at the base. The tower climbs so high above the plaza that one has to cross the Old Bridge to the south even to see the clock. Several rings of stone and brick buildings fan out from the North Plaza. No edifice has any outstanding features, no decorations or plaques. All doors are sealed tight; no one is seen entering or leaving. Here, is this a post office for dead letters? This, a mining firm that engages no miners? This, a crematorium without corpses to burn? The resounding stillness gives the structures an impression of abandonment. Yet each time I turn down these streets, I can sense strangers behind the facades, holding their breath as they continue pursuits I will never know. The Library stands in one block of this quarter. None the more distinguished for being a library, it is an utterly ordinary stone building. There is nothing to declare it a library. With its old stone walls faded to a dismal shade, the shallow eaves over the iron-grilled windows and the heavy wooden doors, it might be a grain warehouse. If I had not asked the Gatekeeper to explain the way there in some detail, I would never have recognized it as a library. Soon as you get settled, go to the Library, the Gatekeeper tells me my first day in town. There is a girl who minds the place by herself. Tell her the Town told you to come read old dreams. She will show you the rest. Old dreams? I say. What do you mean by old dreams ? The Gatekeeper pauses from whittling a round peg, sets down his penknife, and sweeps the wood shavings from the table. Old dreams are… old dreams. Go to the Library. You will find enough of them to make your eyes roll. Take out as many as you like and read them good and long. The Gatekeeper inspects the pointed end of his finished peg, finds it to his approval, and puts it on the shelf behind him. There, perhaps twenty of the same round pegs are lined. Ask whatever questions you want, but remember, I may not answer, declares the Gatekeeper, folding his arms behind his head. There are things I cannot say. But from now on you must go to the Library every day and read dreams. That will be your job. Go there at six in the evening. Stay there until ten or eleven at night. The girl will fix you supper. Other times, you are free to do as you like. Understand? Understood, I tell him. How long am I to continue at that job? How long? I cannot say, answers the Gatekeeper. Until the right time comes. Then he selects another scrap of wood from a pile of kindling and starts whittling again. This is a poor town. No room for idle people wandering around. Everybody has a place, everybody has a job. Yours is in the library reading dreams. You did not come here to live happily ever after, did you? Work is no hardship. Better than having nothing to do, I say. There you are, says the Gatekeeper, nodding squarely as he eyes the tip of his knife. So the sooner you get yourself to work, the better. From now on you are the Dreamreader. You no longer have a name. Just like I am the Gatekeeper. Understand? Understood, I say. Just like there is only one Gatekeeper in this Town, there is only one Dreamreader. Only one person can qualify as Dreamreader. I will do that for you now. The Gatekeeper takes a small white tray from his cupboard, places it on the table, and pours oil into it. He strikes a match and sets the oil on fire. Next he reaches for a dull, rounded blade from his knife rack and heats the tip for ten minutes. He blows out the flame and lets the knife cool. With this, I will give you a sign, says the Gatekeeper. It will not hurt. No need to be afraid. He spreads wide my right eye with his fingers and pushes the knife into my eyeball. Yet as the Gatekeeper said, it does not hurt, nor am I afraid. The knife sinks into my eyeball soft and silent, as if dipping into jelly. He does the same with my left eye. When you are no longer a Dreamreader, the scars will vanish, says the Gatekeeper, putting away the tray and knife. These scars are the sign of the Dreamreader. But as long as you bear this sign, you must beware of light. Hear me now, your eyes cannot see the light of day. If your eyes look at the light of the sun, you will regret it. So you must only go out at night or on gray days. When it is clear, darken your room and stay safe indoors. The Gatekeeper then presents me with a pair of black glasses. I am to wear these at all times except when I sleep. So it was I lost the light of day. It is in the evening a few days later that I go my way to the Library. The heavy wooden door makes a scraping noise as I push it open. I find a long straight hallway before me. The air is dusty and stale, an atmosphere the years have forsaken. The floorboards are worn where once tread upon, the plaster walls yellowed to the color of the light bulbs. There are doors on either side of the hallway, each doorknob with a layer of white dust. The only unlocked door is at the end, a delicate frosted glass panel behind which shines lamplight. I rap upon this door, but there is no answer. I place my hand on the tarnished brass knob and turn it, whereupon the door opens inward. There is not a soul in the room. A great empty space, a larger version of a waiting room in a train station, exceedingly spare, without a single window, without particular ornament. There is a plain table and three chairs, a coal-burning iron stove, and little else besides an upright clock and a counter. On the stove sits a steaming, chipped black enamel pot. Behind the counter is another frosted glass door, with lamplight beyond. I wonder whether to knock, but decide to wait for someone to appear. The counter is scattered with paperclips. I pick up a handful, then take a seat at the table. I do not know how long it is before the Librarian appears through the door behind the counter. She carries a binder with various papers. When she sees me, her cheeks flush red with surprise. I am sorry, she says to me. I did not know you were here. You could have knocked. I was in the back room, in the stacks. Everything is in such disorder. I look at her and say nothing. Her face comes almost as a reminiscence. What about her touches me? I can feel some deep layer of my consciousness lifting toward the surface. What can it mean? The secret lies in distant darkness. As you can see, no one visits here. No one except the Dreamreader. I nod slightly, but do not take my eyes off her face. Her eyes, her lips, her broad forehead and black hair tied behind her head. The more closely I look, as if to read something, the further away retreats any overall impression. Lost, I close my eyes. Excuse me, but perhaps you have mistaken this for another building? The buildings here are very similar, she says, setting her binder down by the paperclips. Only the Dreamreader may come here and read old dreams. This is forbidden to anyone else. I am here to read dreams, I say, as the Town tells me to. Forgive me, but would you please remove your glasses? I take off my black glasses and face the woman, who peers into the two pale, discolored pupils that are the sign of the Dreamreader. I feel as if she is seeing into the core of my being. Good. You may put your glasses on. She sits across the table from me. Today I am not prepared. Shall we begin tomorrow? she says. Is this room comfortable for you? I can unlock any of the other reading rooms if you wish. Here is fine, I tell her. Will you be helping me? Yes, it is my job to watch over the old dreams and to help the Dreamreader. Have I met you somewhere before? She stares at me and searches her memory, but in the end shakes her head. As you may know, in this Town, memory is unreliable and uncertain. There are things we can remember and things we cannot remember. You seem to be among the things I cannot. Please forgive me. Of course, I say. It was not important. Perhaps we have met before. This is a small town. I arrived only a few days ago. How many days ago? she asks, surprised. Then you must be thinking of someone else. I have never been out of this Town. Might it have been someone who looks like me? I suppose, I say. Still, I have the impression that elsewhere we may all have lived totally other lives, and that somehow we have forgotten that time. Have you ever felt that way? No, she says. Perhaps it is because you are a Dreamreader. The Dreamreader thinks very differently from ordinary people. I cannot believe her. Or do you know where this was? I wish I could remember, I say. There was a place, and you were there. The Library has high ceilings, the room is quiet as the ocean floor. I look around vacantly, paperclips in hand. She remains seated. I have no idea why I am here either, I say. I gaze at the ceiling. Particles of yellow light seem to swell and contract as they fall. Is it because of my scarred pupils that I can see extraordinary things? The upright clock against the wall metes out time without sound. I am here for a purpose, I am told. This is a very quiet town, she says, if you came seeking quiet. I do not know. She slowly stands. You have nothing to do here today. Your work starts tomorrow. Please go home to rest. I look up at the ceiling again, then back at her. It is certain: her face bears a fatal connection to something in me. But it is too faint. I shut my eyes and search blindly. Silence falls over me like a fine dust. I will return tomorrow at six o clock in the evening, I say. Good-bye, she says. On leaving the Library, I cross the Old Bridge. I lean on the handrail and listen to the the River. The Town is now devoid of beasts. The Clocktower and the Wall that surrounds the Town, the buildings along the riverbank, and the sawtooth mountains to the north are all tinged with the blue-gray gloom of dusk. No sound reaches my ears except for the murmur of the water. Even the birds have taken leave. If you came seeking quiet I hear her words. Darkness gathers all around. As the streetlights by the River blink on, I set out down the deserted streets for the Western Hill. Tabulations, Evolution, Sex Drive While the old man went back above ground to rectify the sound-removed state in which he d left his granddaughter, I plugged away in silence at my tabulations. How long the old man was gone, I didn t really know. I had my digital alarm clock set to an alternating one-hour-thirty-minutes-one-hour-thirty-minutes cycle by which I worked and rested, worked and rested. The clock face was covered over so I couldn t read it. Time gets in the way of tabulations. Whatever the time was now, it had no bearing on my work. My work begins when I start tabulating and it ends when I stop. The only time I need to know about is the one-hour-thirty-minutes-one-hour-thirty-minutes cycle. I must have rested two or three times during the old man s absence. During these breaks, I went to the toilet, crossed my arms and put my face down on the desk, and stretched out on the sofa. The sofa was perfect for sleeping. Not too soft, not too hard; even the cushions pillowed my head just right. Doing different tabulation jobs, I ve slept on a lot of sofas, and let me tell you, the comfortable ones are few and far between. Typically, they re cheap deadweight. Even the most luxurious-looking sofas are a disappointment when you actually try to sleep on them. I never understand how people can be lax about choosing sofas. I always say a prejudice on my part, I m sure you can tell a lot about a person s character from his choice of sofa. Sofas constitute a realm inviolate unto themselves. This, however, is something that only those who have grown up sitting on good sofas will appreciate. its like growing up reading good books or listening to good music. One good sofa breeds another good sofa; one bad sofa breeds another bad sofa. That s how it goes. There are people who drive luxury cars, but have only second- or third-rate sofas in their homes. I put little trust in such people. An expensive automobile may well be worth its price, but its only an expensive automobile. If you have the money, you can buy it, anyone can buy it. Procuring a good sofa, on the other hand, requires style and experience and philosophy. It takes money, yes, but you also need a vision of the superior sofa. That sofa among sofas. The sofa I presently stretched out on was first-class, no doubt about it. This, more than anything, gave me a warm feeling about the old man. Lying there on the sofa with my eyes closed, I thought about him and his quirks, his hokey accent, that outlandish laugh. And what about that sound-removal scheme of his? He bad to be a top-rank scientist. Sound removal wouldn t even occur to your ordinary researcher. And another thing you always hear about these oddball scientificos, but what kind of eccentric or recluse would build a secret laboratory behind a subterranean waterfall just to escape inquisitive eyes? He was one strange individual. As a commercial product, his sound-alteration technolo-gies would have all sorts of applications. Imagine, concert hall PA equipment obsolete no more massive amps and speakers. Then, there was noise reduction. A sound-removal device would be ideal for people living near airports. Of course, sound-alteration would be ripe for military or criminal abuse. I could see it now: silent bombers and noiseless guns, bombs that explode at brain-crushing volumes, a whole slew of toys for destruction, ushering in a whole new generation of refinements in mass slaughter. The old man had obviously seen this too, giving him greater reason to hide his research from the world. More and more, I was coming to respect the old guy. I was into the fifth or sixth time around in the work cycle when the old man returned, toting a large basket. Brought you fresh coffee and sandwiches, he said. Cucumber, ham, and cheese. Hope that s all right. Thanks. Couldn t ask for more, I said. Want t eat right away? No, after the next tab-cycle. By the time the alarm went off, I d finished laundering five of the seven pages of numeric data lists. One more push. I took a break, yawned, and turned my attention to food. There were enough sandwiches for a small crowd. I devoured more than half of them myself. Long-haul tabulations work up a mean appetite. Cucumber, ham, cheese, I tossed them down in order, washing the lot down with coffee. For every three I ate, the old man nibbled at one, looking like a terribly well-mannered cricket. Have as many as you like, said the old man. When you get t my age, your eatin declines. Can t eat as much, can t work as much. But a young person ought t eat plenty. Eat plenty and fatten up plenty. People nowadays hate t get fat, but if you ask me, they re looking at fat all wrong. They say it makes you unhealthy or ugly, but it d never happen tall if you fatten up the right way. You live a fuller life, have more sex drive, sharpen your wits. I was good and fat when I was young. Wouldn t believe it t look at me now. Ho-ho-ho. The old man could hardly contain his laughter. How bout it? Terrific sandwiches, eh? Yes, indeed. Very tasty, I said. The sandwiches really were very tasty. And I m as demanding a critic of sandwiches as I am of sofas. My granddaughter made them. She s the one deserves your compliments, the old man said. The child knows the finer points of making a sandwich. She s definitely got it down. Chefs can t make sandwiches this good. The child d be overjoyed to hear that, I m sure. We don t get many visitors, so there s hardly any chance t make a meal for someone. Whenever the child cooks, its just me and her eatin . You two live alone? Yessiree. Just us two loners, but I don t think its so healthy for her. She s bright, strong as can be, but doesn t even try t mix with the world outside. That s no good for a young person. Got t let your sex drive out in some constructive way. Tell me now, the child s got womanly charms, hasn t she? Well, er, yes, on that account, I stammered. Sex drive s decent energy. Y can t argue about that. Keep sex drive all bottled up inside and you get dull-witted. Throws your whole body out of whack. Holds the same for men and for women. But with a woman, her monthly cycle can get irregular, and when her cycle goes off, it can make her unbalanced. Uh, yes. That child ought t have herself relations with the right type of man at the earliest opportunity. I can say that with complete conviction, both as her guardian and as a biologist, said the old man, salting his cucumbers. Did you manage with her to… uh… did you get her sound back in? I asked. I didn t especially feel like hearing about people s sex drive, not while I was still in the middle of a job. Oh yes, I forgot t tell you, said the old man. I got her sound back t normal, no trouble. Sure glad you thought t remind me. No telling how many more days she would ve had t be without sound like that. Once I hole up down here, I don t generally go back up for a few days. Poor child, livin without sound. I can imagine. Like I was sayin , the child s almost totally out of contact with society. Shouldn t make much difference for the most part, but if the phone were t ring, could be trouble. She d have a hard time shopping if she couldn t speak. Tosh, shoppin wouldn t be so bad, said the old man. They ve got supermarkets out there where you can shop and not say a word. The child really likes supermarkets, she s always going to them. Office to supermarket, supermarket to office. That s her whole life. Doesn t she go home? The child likes the office. its got a kitchen and a shower, everything she needs. At most she goes home once a week. I drank my coffee. But say, you managed t talk with her all right, the old man said. How d you do it? Telepathy? Lipreading. I studied it in my spare time. Lipreading, of course, the old man said, nodding with approval. A right effective technique. I know a bit myself. What say we try carrying on a silent conversation, the two of us? Mind if we don t? I hastened to reply. Granted, lipreading s an extremely primitive technique. It has shortcomings aplenty, too. Gets too dark and you can t understand a thing. Plus you have t keep your eyes glued to somebody s mouth. Still, as a halfway measure, it works fine. Must say you had uncanny foresight t learn lipreading. Halfway measure? Right-o, said the old man with another nod. Now listen up, son. I m tellin this to you and you alone: The world ahead of us is goint be sound-free. Sound-free? I blurted out. Yessir. Completely sound-free. That s because sound is of no use to human evolution. In fact, it gets in the Way. So we re going t wipe sound out, morning to night. Hmph. You re saying there ll be no birds singing or brooks babbling. No music? Course not. its going to be a pretty bleak world, if you ask me. Don t blame me. That s evolution. Evolution s always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution, said the old man. He stood up and walked around his desk to retrieve a pair of nail clippers from a drawer. He came back to the sofa and set at trimming all ten fingernails. The research is underway, but I can t give you the details. Still, the general drift of it is… well, that s what s comin . You musn t breathe a word of this to anyone. The day this reaches Semiotec ears, all pandemonium s goint break loose. Rest easy. We Calcutecs guard our secrets well. Much relieved t hear that, said the old man, sweeping up his nail clippings with an index card and tossing them into the trash. Then he helped himself to another cucumber sandwich. These sure are good, if I do, say so myself. Is all her cooking this good? Mmm, not especially. its sandwiches where she excels. Her cooking s not bad, mind you, but it just can t match her sandwiches. A rare gift, I said. Tis, the old man agreed. I must say, I do believe it takes someone like you to fully appreciate the child. I could entrust her to a young man like you and know I d done the right thing. Me? I started. Just because I said I liked her sandwiches? You don t like her sandwiches? I m very fond of her sandwiches. The way I see it, you ve got a certain quality. Or else, you re missin something. I sometimes think so myself. We scientists see human traits as being in the process of evolution. Sooner or later you ll see it yourself. Evolution is mighty gruelin . What do you think the most gruelin thing about evolution is? I don t know. Tell me, I said. its being unable to pick and choose. Nobody chooses to evolve. its like floods and avalanches and earthquakes. You never know what s happening until they hit, then its too late. I thought about this for a bit. This evolution, I began, what does it have to do with what you mentioned before? You mean to say I m going to lose my powers of speech? Now that s not entirely accurate. its not a question of speaking or not speaking. its just a step. I don t understand. In fact, I didn t understand. On the whole, I m a regular guy. I say I understand when I do, and I say I don t when I don t. I try not to mince words. It seems to me a lot of trouble in this world has its origins in vague speech. Most people, when they go around not speaking clearly, somewhere in their unconscious they re asking for trouble. What say we drop the subject? said the old man. Too much complicated talk. It ll spoil your tabulations. lets leave it at that for now. No complaints from this department. Soon after, the alarm rang and I went back to work. Whereupon the old man opened a drawer and pulled out what looked like a pair of stainless-steel fire tongs. He walked over to the shelves of skulls and, like a master violinist examining his Stradivarius collection, picked up one or another of them, tapping them with the fire tongs to listen to their pitch. They gave out a range of timbre and tones, everything from the clink you might get from tapping a whiskey glass, to the dull thud from an oversized flower pot. To think that each skull once had skin and flesh and was stuffed with gray matter in varying quantities teeming with thoughts of food and sex and dominance. All now vanished. I tried to picture my own head stripped of skin and flesh, brains removed and lined up on a shelf, only to have the old guy come around and give me a rap with stainless-steel fire tongs. Wonderful. What could he possibly learn from the sound of my skull? Would he be able to read my memories? Or would he be tapping into something beyond memory? .1 wasn t particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don t have to die the next. All quite simple, if you want to look at it that waVrjfe s no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe s my own to fool with. Hence I can live with it. But after I m dead, can t I just lie in peace? Those Egyptian pharoahs had a point, wanting to shut themselves up inside pyramids. Several hours later, the laundry was finally done. I couldn t say how many hours it had taken, but from the state of my fatigue I would guess a good eight or nine hours. I got up from the sofa and stretched my stressed muscles. The Calcutec manual includes how-to illustrations for limbering up a total of twenty-six muscle groups. Mental wear-and-tear takes care of itself if you relieve these stress points after a tab-session, and the working life of your Calcutec is extended that much longer. its been less than ten years since the whole Calcutec profession began, so nobody really knows what that life expectancy ought to be. Some say ten years, others twenty; either way you keep at it until you the day you die. Did I really want to know how long? If its only a matter of time before you burn yourself out, all I can do is keep my muscles loose and my fingers crossed. After working the knots in my body out, I sat back down on the sofa, closed my eyes, and slowly brought my right brain and left brain together again. Thus concluded all work for the day. Manual-perfect. The old man had a large canine skull set out on his desk and was taking measurements with slide calipers, noting the figures on a photo of the specimen. Finished, have you? asked the old man. All done. You put in a very hard day, he said. I ll be heading home to sleep now. Tomorrow or the next day I ll shuffle the data and have it back to you by noon two days later. Without fail. Is that satisfactory? Fine, fine, said the old man, nodding. But remember, time is absolutely critical. If you re later than noon, there ll be trouble. There ll be real trouble. I understand. And I beg of you, make certain no one steals that list. If it gets stolen, it ll be both our necks. Don t worry. We receive quite thorough training on that count. There ll be no inadvertent straying of tabulated data. I withdrew a flex-metal document cache from a pocket behind my left knee, inserted the data list, and locked it. I m the only one who can open this. If someone tampers with the lock, the contents are destroyed. Mighty clever, the old man said. I slipped the document cache back behind my knee. Say now, sure you won t have any more to eat? There re a few sandwiches left. I don t eat much when I m caught up in research. Be a shame t let them go to waste. I was still hungry, so I squared away the remaining sandwiches. The old man poured me a fresh cup of coffee. I climbed back into rain gear, pulled on my goggles, took flashlight in hand, and headed back into the subterranean passage. This time the old man didn t come along. Already put out ultrasonic waves t drive those INKlings away, so shouldn t be any of them sneakin around for the time bein , the old man reassured me. Apparently, these INKlings were some kind of subterranean entity, which made me feel a bit squeamish about walking all alone out there in the dark. It didn t help that I didn t know a thing about INKlings, not their habits nor what they looked like nor how to defend myself against them. Flashlight in my left hand, knife in my right, I braced myself for the return trip. When I saw the chubby pink-suited young woman waving her flashlight and coming my way, I felt saved. I made it over toward her. She was saying something which I couldn t hear over the rumble of the de-sound-removed river. Nor could I see her lips in the darkness. Up the long aluminum ladder we went, to where there was light. I climbed/first, she followed. Coming down, I hadn t been ableTiTsee anything, so there was nothing to be afraid of, relatively speaking, but going back up was something else entirely. I could picture the height only too well a two- or three-story drop. I wanted to stop to regather my wits, but she was on my tail. Safety first, I always say, so I kept climbing. We made it through the closet back into the first room and stripped off our rain gear. Work go well? she asked. Her voice, now audible for the first time, was soft and clear. Well enough, thanks. I really appreciate your telling Grandfather about my sound-removal. I would have been like that for a whole week. Why didn t you tell me that in writing? You could have been straightened up a lot sooner, and I wouldn t have been so confused. She did a quick turn around the table without a word, then adjusted both of her earrings. Rules are rules, she said. Against communicating in writing? That s one of them. Hmph. Anything that might lead to devolution. Oh, I said. Talk about precautions. How old are you? she asked out of the blue. Thirty-five. And you? Seventeen. You re the first Calcutec I ve ever met. But then, I ve never met any Semiotecs either. You re really only seventeen? I asked, surprised. Yes, why should I lie? I m really seventeen. I don t look seventeen, though, do I? No, you look about twenty. its because I don t want to look seventeen, she said. Tell me, what s it like to be a Calcutec? We re normal ordinary people, just like everyone else. Everyone may be ordinary, but they re not normal. Yes, there is that school of thought, I said. But there s normal and then there s normal. I mean the kind of normal that can sit down next to you on the train and you wouldn t even notice. Normal. We eat food, drink beer oh, by the way, the sandwiches were great. Really? she said, beaming. I don t often get good sandwiches like that. I practically ate them all myself. How about the coffee? The coffee wasn t bad either. Really? Would you like some now? That way we could sit and talk a little while longer. No thanks, I ve had more than enough already, I said. I don t think I can manage another drop. And besides, I need to get myself home to bed quick. That s too bad. Too bad for me, too. Well, let me at least walk you to the elevator. The corridors a-e extremely complex. I bet you couldn t find your way on your own. I doubt it myself. The girl picked up what looked like a round hatbox, sealed several times over with wide adhesive tape, and handed it to me. What s this? I asked. A gift for you from Grandfather. Take it home and open it. I weighed the box in my hapds. It was much lighter than I would have guessed, and it would have had to be an awfully big hat. I shook the box. No sound. its fragile, so please be careful with it, the girl cautioned. Some kind of souvenir? I don t know. You ll find out when you open it, won t you? / Then the girl opened her pink handbag and gave me an envelope with a Bank check. Filled out for an amount slightly in excess of what I d expected. I slipped it into my wallet. Receipt? No need, she said. We exited the room and walked the same long maze of corridors back to the elevator. Her high heels made the same pleasant clicking on the floor, but her plumpness didn t make as strong an impression as it had at first. As we walked along together, I almost forgot about her weight. Given time, I d probably even get used to it. Are you married? she asked, turning to me. No, I m not, I said. I used to be, but not now. Did you get divorced because you became a Calcutec? I always hear how Calcutecs don t have families. That s not true. Some Calcutecs are fine family men. Though certainly, most seem to pursue their careers without a home life. its a nerve-racking line of work, sometimes very risky. You wouldn t want to endanger a wife and kids. Is that how it was with you? I became a Calcutec after I got divorced. The two had nothing to do with each other. Sorry for prying. its just that you re my first Calcutec and there re so many things I don t know. I don t mind. Well then, I ve also heard that Calcutecs, when they ve finished a job, that they get all pumped up with sex drive. I couldn t… umm… really say. Maybe so. We do work ourselves into a very peculiar mental condition on the job. At those times, who do you sleep with? A special somebody? I don t have a special somebody . So then, who do you sleep with? You re not one of those people who have no interest in sex. You re not gay or anything, are you? No, I m not, I said. So who do you sleep with? I guess I sleep with different women. Would you sleep with me? No. Probably not. Why not? That s just the way I am. I don t like to sleep with people I know. It only complicates things. And I don t sleep with business contacts. Dealing with other people s secrets like I do, you have to draw the line somewhere. Are you sure its not because I m fat or I m ugly? Listen, you re not that overweight, and you re not ugly at all, I said. She pouted. If that s the way you feel, then, do you simply pick up someone and go to bed with her? Well… yes. Or do you just buy a girl? I ve done that too. If I offered to sleep with you for money, would you take me up on it? I don t think so, I replied. I m twice your age. It wouldn t be right. It d be different with me. Maybe so, but no offense intended, I d really rather not. I think its for the best. Grandfather says the first man I sleep with should be over thirty. He also says if sex drive builds up to a particular point, it affects your mental stability. Yes, I heard this from your grandfather. Do you think its true? I m afraid I m not a biologist. Are you well endowed? I beg your pardon? I nearly choked. Well, its just that I don t know anything about my own sex drive yet, she explained. So I d like to try lots of different things. We reached the elevator. It waited with open doors. What a relief! / Until next time, then, she said. I got in theVelevator and the doors slid shut without a sound. I leaned against the stainless-steel wall and heaved a big sigh. matter is leached of whatever color it might originally have had. The jutting jaw is locked slightly open, as if suddenly frozen when about to speak. The eye sockets, long bereft of their contents, lead to the cavernous recesses behind. The skull is unnaturally light, with virtually no material presence. Nor does it offer any image of the species that had breathed within. It is stripped of flesh, warmth, memory. In the middle of the forehead is a small depression, rough to the touch. Perhaps this is the vestige of a broken horn. Shadow THE first old dream she places on the table is nothing I know as an old dream. I stare at the object before me, then look up at her. She stands next to me looking down at it. How is this an old dream ? The sound of the words old dream led me to expect something else old writings perhaps, something hazy, amorphous. Here we have an old dream, says the Librarian. Her voice is distant, aimless; her tone wants not so much to explain to me as to reconfirm for herself. Or it is possible to say, the old dream is inside of this. I nod, but do not understand. Take it in your hands, she prompts. I pick it up and run my eyes over the surface to see if I can find some trace of an old dream. But there is not a clue. It is only the skull of an animal, and not a very big animal. Dry and brittle, as if it had lain in the sun for years, the bone. Is this a skulTof one of the Town unicorns? I ask her. Yes. The old dream is sealed inside. I am to reacVan old dream from this? That is the work of the Dreamreader, says the Librarian. And what do I do with the dreams I read? Nothing. You have only to read them. How can that be? I say. I know that I am to read an old dream from this. But then not to do anything with it, I do not understand. What can be the point of that? Work should have a purpose. She shakes her head. I cannot explain. Perhaps the dream-reading will tell you. I can only show you how it is done. I set the skull down on the table and lean back to look at it. The skull is enveloped in a profound silence that seems nothingness itself. The silence does not reside on the surface, but is held like smoke within. It is unfathomable, eternal, a disembodied vision cast upon a point in the void. There is a sadness about it, an inherent pathos. I have no words for it. Please show me, I say. I pick the skull up from the table once again and feel its weight in my hands. Smiling faintly, she takes the skull from me and painstakingly wipes off the dust. She returns a whiter skull to the table. This is how to read old dreams, the Librarian begins. Watch carefully. Yet please know I can only imitate, I cannot actually read. You are the only one who can read the dreams. First, turn the skull to face you in this way, then gently place your hands on either side. She touches her fingertips to the temples of the skull. Now gaze at the forehead. Do not force a stare, but focus softly. You must not take your eyes from the skull. No matter how brilliant, you must not look away. Brilliant? Yes, brilliant. Before your eyes, the skull will glow and give off heat. Trace that light with your fingertips. That is how old dreams are read. I go over the procedure in my head. It is true that I cannot picture what kind of light she means or how it should feel, but I understand the method. Looking at the skull beneath her slender fingers, I am overcome with a strong sense of deja vu. Have I seen this skull before? The leached colorlessness, the depression in the forehead. I feel a humming, just as when I first saw her face. Is this a fragment of a real memory or has time folded back on itself? I cannot tell. What is wrong? she asks. I shake my head. Nothing. I think I see how. Let me try. Perhaps we should eat first, she says. Once you begin to work, there will not be time. She brings out a pot of vegetable stew and warms it on the stove. The minestra simmers, filling the room with a wonderful aroma. She ladles it out into two bowls, slices walnut bread, and brings this simple fare to the table. We sit facing each other and speak not a word as we eat. The seasoning is unlike anything I have ever tasted, but good nonetheless. By the time I finish eating, I am warmed inside. Then she brings us cups of hot tea. It is an herbal infusion, slightly bitter and green. Dreamreading proves not as effortless as she has explained. The threads of light are so fine that despite how I concentrate the energies in my fingertips, I am incapable of unravelling the chaos of vision. Even so, I clearly sense the presence of dreams at my fingertips. It is a busy current, an endless stream of images. My fingers are as yet unable to grasp any distinct message, but I do apprehend an intensity there. By the time I finally manage to extract two dreams, it is already past ten o clock. I return to her the dream-spent skull, take off my glasses, and rub my eyes. Are you tired? she asks. A little, I reply. My eyes are not accustomed to this. Drinking in the light of the old dreams makes my eyes hurt. I cannot look too long for the pain. I am told it is this way at first, she says. Your eyes are not used to the light; the readings are difficult. Work slowly for a while. Returning the old dream to the vaults, the Librarian prepares to go home. She opens the lid of the stove, scoops out the red coals with a tiny shovel, and deposits them in a bucket of sand. You must not let fatigue set in, she warns. That is what my mother said. Let your body work until it is spent, but keep your mind for yourself. Good advice. To tell the truth, I do not know this thing called mind , what it does or how to use it. It is only a word I have heard. The mind is nothing you use, I say. The mind is just there. It is like the wind. You simply feel its movements. She shuts the lid of the stove, takes away the enamel pot and cup to wash, and returns wrapped in a blue coat of coarse material. A remnant torn from a bolt of the sky, worn so many years that it too has lost memory of its origins. She stands, absorbed in thought, in front of the extinguished stove. Did you come from some other land? she asks, as if the thought had only then occurred to her. I think so. And what was that land like? I cannot remember, I say. I cannot recall a single thing. They seem to have taken all memory of my old world when they took my shadow. I only know it was far, far away. But you understand these things of mind? A little. My mother also had mind, she says. But my mother disappeared when I was seven. Perhaps it was because she had this mind, the same as you. Disappeared? Yes, she vanished. I do not want to talk about it. It is wrong to talk about people who have disappeared. Tell me about the town where you lived. You must remember something. I can only remember two things, I say. That the town I lived in had no wall around it, and that our shadows followed us wherever we walked. Yes, we all had shadows. They were with us constantly. But when I came to this Town, my shadow was taken away. You cannot come into Town with that, said the Gatekeeper. Either you lose the shadow or forget about coming inside. I surrendered my shadow. The Gatekeeper had me stand in an open space beside the Gate. The three-o clock afternoon sun fixed my shadow fast to the ground. Keep still now, the Gatekeeper told me. Then he produced a knife and deftly worked it in between the shadow and the ground. The shadow writhed in resistance. But to no avail. Its dark form peeled neatly away. Severed from the body, it was an altogether poorer thing. It lost strength. The Gatekeeper put away his blade. What do you make of it? Strange thing once you cut it off, he said. Shadows are useless anyway. Deadweight. I drew near the shadow. Sorry, I must leave you for now, I said. It was not my idea. I had no choice. Can you accept being alone for a while? A while? Until when? asked the shadow. I did not know. Sure you won t regret this later? said the shadow in a hushed voice. its wrong, I tell you. There s something wrong with this place. People can t live without their shadows, and shadows can t live without people. Yet they re splitting us apart. I don t like it. There s something wrong here. But it was too late. My shadow and I were already torn apart. ( Once I am settled in, I will be back for you, I said. This is only temporary, not forever. We will be back together again. The shadow sighed weakly, and looked up at me. The sun was bearing down on us both. Me without my shadow, my shadow without me. That s just wishful thinking, said the shadow. I don t like this place. We have to escape and go back to where we came from, the two of us. How can we return? We do not know the way back. Not yet, but I ll find out if its the last thing I do. We need to meet and talk regularly. You ll come, won t you? I nodded and put my hand on my shadow s shoulder, then returned to the Gatekeeper. While the shadow and I were talking, the Gatekeeper had been gathering up stray rocks and flinging them away. As I approached, the Gatekeeper brushed the dust from his hands on his shirttails and threw a big arm around me. Whether this was intended as a sign of welcome or to draw my attention to his strength, I could not be certain. Trust me. Your shadow is in good hands, said the Gatekeeper. We give it three meals a day, let it out once a day for exercise. Nothing to worry about. Can I see him from time to time? Maybe, said the Gatekeeper. If I feel like letting you, that is. And what would I have to do if I wanted my shadow back? I swear, you are blind. Look around, said the Gatekeeper, his arm plastered to my back. Nobody has a shadow in this Town, and anybody we let in never leaves. Your question is meaningless. So it was I lost my shadow. Leaving the Library, I offer to walk her home. No need to see me to my door, she says. I am not frightened of the night, and your house is far in the opposite direction. I want to walk with you, I say. Even if I went straight home, I would not sleep. We walk side-by-side over the Old Bridge to the south. On the sandbar midstream, the willows sway in the chill spring breeze. A hard-edged moon shines down on the cobblestones at our feet. The air is damp, the ground slick. Her long hair is tied with twine and pulled around to tuck inside her coat. Your hair is very beautiful, I say. Is it? she says. Has anyone ever complimented you on your hair before? No, she says, looking at me, her hands in her pockets. When you speak of my hair, are you also speaking about something in you? Am I? It was just a simple statement. She smiles briefly. I am sorry. I suppose I am unused to your way of speaking. Her home is in the Workers Quarter, an area in disrepair at the southwest corner of the Industrial Sector. The whole of this district is singularly desolate. No doubt the Canals once conducted a brisk traffic of barges and launches, where now-stopped sluices expose dry channel beds, mud shriveling like the skin of a prehistoric organism. Weeds have rooted in cracks of the loading docks, broad stone steps descending to where the waterline once was. Old bottles and rusted machine parts poke up through the mire; a flat-bottom boat slowly rots nearby. Along the Canals stand rows of empty factories. Their gates are shut, windowpanes are missing, handrails have rusted off fire escapes, walls a tangle of ivy. Past these factory row is the Workers Quarter. Betraying a former opulence, the estate is a confusion of subdivided rooms parceled out to admass occupation of impoverished laborers. Even now, she explains, the laborers have no trade to practice. The factories have closed, leaving the disowned with a meager livelihood, making small artifacts for the Town. Her father had been one of these craftsmen. Crossing a short stone bridge over the last canal brings us to the precinct of her housing block. A nexus of passageways, like medieval battlements, entrenches the cramped grounds between one building and the next. The hour approaches midnight. All but a few windows are dark. She takes me by the hand and leads me through this maze as if trying to evade predatory eyes. She stops in front of one building and bids me good-night. Good-night, I say. Whereupon I climb the slope of the Western Hill alone and return to my own lodgings. Skull, Lauren Bacall, Library Outside it was dark, it was drizzling, and the streets were filled with people going home from work. It took forever to catch a cab. Even under usual circumstances I have a hard time catching cabs. By which I should explain that in order to avoid potentially dangerous situations, I make a point of not taking the first two empty cabs that come my way. The Semiotecs had fake taxis, and you sometimes heard about them swooping off with a Calcutec who d just finished a job. Of course, these might have been rumors, since I don t know anyone it actually happened to. Still, you can t be too careful. That s why I always take the subway or bus. But this time I was so tired and drowsy that I couldn t face the prospect of cramming into a rush-hour train. I decided to take a taxi, even if it took longer. Once in the cab, I nearly dozed off several times and panicked to false alert. As soon as I got home to my own bed, I could sleep to my heart s content. A cab was no place to sleep. To keep myself awake, I concentrated on the baseball game being broadcast on the cab radio. I don t follow baseball, so for convenience sake I rooted for the team currently at bat and against the team in the field. My team was behind, 3-1. It was two outs with a man on second base when there was a hit, but the runner stumbled between second and third, ending the side without a run. The sportscaster called it rotten playing, and even I thought so too. Sure, anyone can take a spill, but you don t stumble between second and third in the middle of a baseball game. This blunder apparently so fazed my team s pitcher that he threw the opponent s lead-off batter an easy ball down the middle, which the guy walloped into the left-field bleachers for a home run. When the taxi reached my apartment, the score was 4-1. I paid the fare, collected my hatbox and foggy brain, and got out. The drizzle had almost stopped. There wasn t a speck of mail in the mailbox. Nor any message on the answering machine. No one had any business with me, it seemed. Fine. I had no business with anyone else either. I took some ice out of the freezer, poured myself a large quantity of whiskey, and added a splash of soda. Then I got undressed and, crawling under the covers, sat up in bed and sipped my drink. I felt like I was going to fade out any second, but I had to allow myself this luxury. A ritual interlude I like so much between the time I get into bed and the time I fall asleep. Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book. As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air. I d finished half my whiskey when the telephone rang. The telephone was perched on a round table two meters away from the foot of the bed. I wasn t about to leave my nice warm bed and walk all the way over to it, so I simply watched the thing ring. Thirteen rings, fourteen rings, what did I care? If this had been a cartoon, the telephone would be vibrating midair, but of course that wasn t happening. The telephone remained humbly on the table ringing on and on. I drank my whiskey and just looked at it. Next to the telephone were my wallet and knife and that gift hatbox. It occurred to me that I should open it. Maybe it was something perishable that I should put in the refrigerator, something living, or even something urgent . But I was too tired. Besides, if any of the above had been the giver s intention, you would think he d have told me about it. When the telephone stopped ringing, I bottomed-up my whiskey, turned off the bedside light, and shut my eyes. A huge black net of sleep that had been poised in ambush fell over me. As I drifted off, I thought, do you really expect me to know what s going on? When at last I awoke, it was half light out. The clock read six-fifteen, but I couldn t tell whether it was morning or evening. I pulled on a pair of slacks and leaned out my door to check the neighbor s doormat. The morning edition was lying there, which led me to conclude it was morning. Subscribing to a paper comes in handy at times like this. Maybe I ought to. So I d slept ten hours. My body still craved rest. With nothing particular that required my attention for the day, I could happily have gone back to bed. But on second thought, I got up. Rise and shine with the sun, I always say. I took a shower, scrubbing my body well, and shaved. I did my usual twenty-five minutes of calisthenics, I threw together breakfast. The refrigerator was all but plundered of its contents. Time to restock. I sat down with my orange juice and wrote out a shopping list. It filled up one page and spilled over onto a second. I dumped my dirty clothes into the washing machine and was busily brushing off my tennis shoes at the sink when I remembered the old man s mystery present. Dropping the shoes, I washed my hands and went to get the hatbox. Light as ever for its bulk a nasty lightness somehow. Lighter than it had any need to be. Something put me on edge. Call it occupational intuition. I did a quick scan of the room. It was unnervingly quiet. Almost sound-removed. But my test cough did sound like a cough. And when I flicked open my spring-action knife and whacked the handle on the table, the noise was right. Having experienced sound-removal, I had gotten suspicious. I opened a window onto the balcony. I could hear cars and birds. What a relief. Evolution or no evolution, a world ought to have sound. / I cut the tape, careful not to damage the contents of the box. On top was crumpled newspaper. I spread open a few sheets the Mainichi Shimbun, three weeks old, no news of note. I crumpled the pages up again and tossed them away. There must have been two weeks worth of wadded newspapers in the box, all of them Mainichi. With the newspapers out of the way, I now found a layer of those polyethylene? styrofoam? those pinkie-sized wormoids they use for packing. I scooped them up and into the garbage they went. This was getting to be one chore of a present. With half the plastic cheez puffs out of the way, there surfaced an item wrapped in more newspaper. I didn t like the look of it. I went into the kitchen and returned with a can of Coke. I sat on the edge of the bed and drank the whole thing. I trimmed a fingernail. A black-breasted bird appeared on the balcony and hopped around on the deck table, pecking spryly at some crumbs. A peaceful morning scene. Eventually, I turned my attention back to the newspaper-wrapped object and gently removed it from the box. The newspaper was wound with further orbits of tape, looking very much like a piece of contemporary art. An elongated watermelon in shape, though again, with hardly any weight to it. I cleared the table and undid the tape and newspaper. It was an animal skull. Great, I thought, just great. Did the old duffer really imag-ine I d be overjoyed to receive this? He had to have a screw loose, giving a skull for a present. The skull was similar to a horse s in shape, but considerably smaller. From my limited knowledge of biology, I deduced that the skull had been attached to the shoulders of a narrow-faced, hoofed, herbivorous, and not overly large species of mammal. lets see now. I checked my mental catalogue of animals matching that description. Deer, goat, sheep, donkey, antelope… I couldn t remember any others. I placed the skull on top of the TV. Very stylish. If I were Ernest Hemingway, I d have put it over the mantle, next to the moose head. But my apartment, of course, had no fireplace. No fireplace and no sideboard, not even a coat closet. So on top of the TV it was. I dumped the rest of the packing material into the trash. There at the bottom of the box was a long object rolled up in newspaper. Unwrapping it, I found a pair of stainless-steel fire tongs exactly like the ones the old man had used on his skull collection. I was reminded of the ivory baton of a Berlin Philharmonic conductor. All right, all right, I ll play along, I said out loud. I went over to the skull on the TV and tapped it on the forehead. Out came a mo-oan like the nasal whine of a large dog. Not the hard clunk that I expected. Odd, yes, but nothing to get upset about. If that whiny moan was the noise it made, who was I to argue? Tapping the skull got old quick. I sat down and dialed the System to check my schedule. My rep answered and told me he d penciled in a job four days hence, was that okay? No problem, I told him. I thought about verifying the shuffling clearance, but decided not to. It would have entailed a lot of extra talk. The papers were all in order, the remuneration already squared away. Besides, the old man said he d avoided going through agents to keep things secret. Better not complicate matters. Added to which, I was none too enthused with my rep. Tall, trim, thirtyish, the type who thinks he s on top of every-thing. I try my best to avoid talking with guys like that any more than I have to. I finished my business and hung up, then went into the living room and relaxed on the sofa with a beer to watch a video of Humphrey Bogart s Key Largo. I love Lauren Bacall in Key Largo. Of course, I love Bacall in The Big Sleep too, but in Key Largo she s practically allegorical. Watching the TV screen, my eyes just naturally drifted up to the animal skull resting on top. Which robbed me of my usual concentration. I stopped the video where the hurricane hits, promising myself to see the rest later, and kicked back with the beer, gazing blankly at the item atop the TV. I got the sneaking suspicion that Vd seen the skull before. But where? And how? I pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer and threw it over the skull so I could finish watching Key Largo. Finally, I could concentrate on Lauren Bacall. At eleven o clock, I left the apartment, headed for the supermarket near the station, stopping next at the liquor store for some red wine, soda water, and orange juice. At the cleaners I claimed a jacket and two shirts; at the stationery shop I purchased a pen, envelopes, and letter paper; at the hardware store, the finest-grain whetstone in the place. Then to the bookshop for two magazines, the electrical goods store for light bulbs and cassette tapes, the photo store for a pack of Polaroid film. Last, it was the record shop, where I picked out a few disks. By now, the whole back seat of my tiny coupe was taken up with shopping bags. I must be a born shopper. Every time I go to town, I come back, like a squirrel in November, with mounds of little things. Even the car I drove was purely for shopping. I only bought it because I was already buying too much stuff to carry home by myself. I was lugging a shopping bag when I happened to pass a used-car dealer and went in and saw all the different cars they had. Now I m not particulary crazy about cars, nor do I know much about them. So I said simply: I want a car, any make, nothing fancy, nothing big. The middle-aged salesman started to pull out a catalog, but I didn t want to look at any catalog. I only wanted a car for shopping, I told the guy, pure and simple. It didn t need go fast for the highway, didn t need to look smart for dates. No family outings either. I had no use for a high-performance engine or air-conditioning. No car stereo, no sun roof, no super radials. All I wanted was a decent compact that cornered well, didn t belch exhaust, wasn t too noisy, and wouldn t break down on me. And if it came in dark blue, so much the better. The car the guy showed me was yellow. I didn t think much of the color, but otherwise it was just what I described. And because it was an old model, the price was right. This is how cars were meant to be, said the salesman. If you really want to know, I think people are nuts. No argument from me. That s how I came to own my shopping car. I wound up my purchases and pulled into my convenient neighborhood fast-food restaurant. I ordered shrimp salad, onion rings, and a beer. The shrimp were straight out of the freezer, the onion rings soggy. Looking around the place, though, I failed to spot a single customer banging on a tray or complaining to a waitress. So I shut up and finished my food. Expect nothing, get nothing. From the restaurant window I could see the expressway, with cars of all makes, colors, and styles barrelling along. I remembered the jolly old man and his chubby granddaughter. No matter how much I liked them, I couldn t help thinking they had to be living in the outer limits. That inane elevator, the open pit in the back of a closet, INKlings, and sound removal I wouldn t believe it in a novel. And then, they give me an animal skull as a memento. Waiting for my after-meal coffee, I thought about the chubby girl. I thought about her square earrings and pink suit and pink high heels. I thought about her body, her calves and the flesh around her neck and the build of her face and… well, things like that. I could recall each detail with alarming clarity, yet the composite was indistinct. Curious. Maybe it was because I hadn t slept with an overweight woman in a while that I just couldn t picture a heavyset woman in the altogether. The last time I d slept with a fat female was the year of the Japanese Red Army shoot-out in Karuizawa. The woman had extraordinary thighs and hips. She was a bank teller who had always exchanged pleasantries with me over the counter. I knew her from the midriff up. We became friendly, went out for a drink once, andWled up sleeping together. Not until we were in bed did I notice that the lower half of her body was so demographically disproportionate. It was because she played table tennis all through school, she had me know, though I didn t quite grasp the causal relationship. I didn t know table tennis led to below-the-belt corporeality. Still, her plumpness was charming. Resting an ear on her hip was like lying in a meadow on an idyllic spring afternoon, her thighs as soft as freshly aired futon, the rolling flow of her curves leading gracefully to her pubis. When I complimented her on her qualities, though, all she said was, Oh yeah? After I left the restaurant, I went to the library nearby. At the reference desk sat a slender young woman with long black hair, engrossed in a paperback book. Do you have any reference materials pertaining to the mammalian skull? I asked. Huh? she said, looking up. References on mammalian skulls, I repeated, saying each word separately. Mam-ma-li-an-skulls? she repeated, almost singing. It sounded so lovely the way she said it, like the first line of a poem. She bit her lower lip briefly and thought. Just a minute, please. I ll check, she said, turned around to type the word mammal on her computer keyboard. Some twenty titles appeared on the screen. She used a light pen and two-thirds of the titles disappeared at once. She then hit the memory function, and this time she typed the word skeleton. Seven or eight titles appeared, of which she saved two and then entered into the memory alongside the previous selections. Libraries have certainly come a long way. The days of card pockets inside the backsleeves of books seemed like a faded dream. As a kid, I used to love all those withdrawal date stamps. While she was nimbly operating her computer, I was looking down at her long hair and elegant backside. I didn t know exactly what to make of her. She was beautiful and seemingly quite intelligent, what with her pentameter search system. There wasn t a reason in the world not to find her appealing. She pressed the copy button for a printout of the screen data, which she handed to me. You have nine titles to select from, she said. 1. A GUIDE TO MAMMALS 2. PICTORIAL ATLAS OF MAMMALS 3. THE MAMMALIAN SKELETON 4. THE HISTORY OF MAMMALS 5. I, A MAMMAL 6. MAMMALIAN ANATOMY 7. THE MAMMALIAN BRAIN 8. ANIMAL SKELETONS 9. BONES SPEAK I had an allowance of three books with my card. I chose nos. 2, 3, and 8. Nos. 5 and 9 did sound intriguing, but they didn t seem to have much to do with my investigation, so I left them for some other time. I m sorry to say that Pictorial Atlas of Mammals is for library use only and cannot be borrowed overnight, she said, scratching her temple with a pen. This is extremely important. Please, do you think it would be at all possible to lend it to me for just one day? I begged, I ll have it back tomorrow noon, I promise. I m sorry, but the Pictorial Atlas series is very popular, and these are library rules. I could get in trouble for lending out reference materials. One day. Please. Nobody will find out. She hesitated, teasing the tip of her tongue between her teeth. A cute pink tongue. / Okay. But it has to be pack here by nine-thirty in the morning. Thank you, I said. You re welcome, she said. Really, I m very grateful. May I offer you some token of my thanks. Anything special I could do for you? Yes, as a matter of fact. There s a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor across the way. I d love a double cone of mocha chip on top of pistachio. Would you mind? Mocha chip on pistachio coming right up! Whereupon I left the library and headed for the Baskin-Robbins. She was still not back with the books by the time I returned, so I stood there at her desk with ice cream cone in hand. Two old men reading newspapers took turns stealing looks at this curious sight. Luckily the ice cream was frozen solid. Having it drip all over the place was the only thing that could have made me feel more foolish. The paperback she d been reading was face-down on the desk. Time Traveller, a biography of H. G.Weils, volume two. It was not a library book. Next to it were three well-sharpened pencils and some paperclips. Paperclips! Everywhere I went, paperclips! What was this? Perhaps some fluctuation in the gravitational field had suddenly inundated the world with paperclips. Perhaps it was mere coincidence. I couldn t shake the feeling that things weren t normal. Was I being staked out by paperclips? They were everywhere I went, always just a glance away. Something went ding. Come to think of it, there d been a couple of dings lately. First animal skulls, now paperclips. It seemed as if a pattern was establishing itself, but what relationship could there be between skulls and paperclips? Before much longer, the woman returned carrying the three volumes. She handed them to me, accepting the ice cream cone in exchange. Thank you very much, she said. Thank you, I said. She held the cone low behind the desk. Glimpsed from above, the nape of her neck was sweet and defenseless. By the way, though, why all the paperclips? I asked. Pa-per-clips? she sang back. To keep papers together, of course. Everybody uses them. Don t you? She had a point. I thanked her again and left the library. Paperclips were indeed used by everyone. A thousand yen will buy you a lifetime supply. Sure, why not? I stopped into a stationery shop and bought myself a lifetime supply. Then I went home. Back at the apartment, I put away the groceries. I hung my clothes in the wardrobe. Then, on top of the TV, right next to the skull, I spread a handful of paperclips. Nice and artsy. Like a composition of down pillow with ice scraper, ink bottle with lettuce. I went out on the balcony to get a better look at my TV-top arrangement. There was nothing to suggest how the skull and the paperclips went together. Or was there? I sat down on the bed. Nothing came to mind. Time passed. An ambulance, then a rightwing campaign sound-truck passed. I wanted a whiskey, but I passed on that too. I needed to have my brain absolutely sharp. I went to the kitchen and sat down with the library books. First I looked up medium-sized herbivorous mammals and their skeletal structures. The world had far more mediumsized herbivorous mammals than I d imagined. No fewer than thirty varieties of deer alone. I fetched the skull from the TV, set it on the table, and began the long, laborious process of comparing it with each of the pictures in the books. One hour and twenty minutes and ninety-three species later, I had made no progress. I shut all three books and piled them up in one corner of the table. Then I threw up my arms and stretched. What to do? Put on a video of John Ford s Quiet Man. I was sprawled on the bed, ha&h-browned, when the doorbell rang. I looked through the peephole and saw a middle-aged man in a Tokyo Gas uniform. I cracked open the door with the chain still bolted. Routine safety check, said the man. One moment please, I replied, slipping into the bedroom to pocket my knife before opening the door. I smelled something fishy. There d been a gas inspector visit the month before. I let the guy in and went on watching The Quiet Man. The inspector pulled out a pressure gauge and proceeded to check the water heater for the bath, then went into the kitchen where the skull was sitting on the table. I left the TV on and tiptoed to the kitchen in time to catch him whisking the skull into a black plastic bag. I flicked open my knife and dived at him, circling around to clamp him in an armlock, the blade thrust right under his nose. The man immediately threw the bag down. I… I didn t mean any harm, he stammered. I just saw the thing and suddenly wanted it. A sudden impulse. Forgive me. Like hell, I sneered. Tell me the truth or I ll slit your throat, I said. It sounded unbelievably phony especially since the knife wasn t under his chin but the man was convinced. Okay, okay, don t hurt me. I ll tell the truth, he whim-pered. The truth is, I got paid to come in here and steal the thing. Two guys came up to me on the street and asked if I wanted to make a quick fifty-thousand yen. If I came through, I d get another fifty thousand. I didn t want to do it, but one of the guys was a gorilla. Honest. Please, don t kill me. I ve got two daughters in high school. Two daughters in high school? Y… yeah. Which high school? The older one s a junior at Shimura Metropolitan. The younger one just started at Futaba in Yotsuya, he said. The combination was odd enough to be real. I decided to believe him. As a precaution, I fished the man s wallet out of his pocket and checked its contents. Five crisp ten-thousand-yen bills. Also a Tokyo Gas ID and a color photo of his family. Both daughters were done up in fancy New Year s kimono, neither of them exactly a beauty. I couldn t tell which was Shimura and which Futaba. Other than that, there was only a Sugamo-Shinanomachi train pass. The guy looked harmless, so I folded the knife up and let him go. All right, get out of here, I said, handing back his wallet. Thank you, thank you, the gas inspector said. But what do I do now? I took their money but didn t come through with the goods. I had no idea. Those Semiotecs I m sure that s who they were weren t what you could call gentlemen. They did whatever they felt like, whenever. Which is why no one could read their modus operandi. They might gouge this guy s eyes out, or they might hand him the other fifty thousand yen and wish him better luck next time. One guy s a real gorilla, you say? I asked. That s right. A monster. The other guy s small, only about a meter and a half; he was wearing a tailor-made suit. Both looked like very tough characters. I instructed the man to leave the building through the parking garage. There was a narrow passage out back, which was not easy to detect. Probably he d get away without incident. Thank you very much, said the gas inspector. Please don t tell my company about this. Fine, I told him. Then I pushed him out, locked the door, and bolted the chain. I went into the kitchen and removed the skull from the plastic bag. Well, at least I d learned one thing: the Semiotecs wanted the skull. I considered the circumstances. I had the skull, but didn t know what it meant. They knew what/it meant or had a vague notion of what it meant but/didn t have the skull. Evensteven. At this point, I had two! options: one, explain everything to the System, so they d protect me from the Semiotecs and safeguard the skull; or two, contact the chubby girl and get the lowdown on the skull. I didn t like option no. 1. There d be pointless debriefings and investigations. Huge organizations and me don t get along. They re too inflexible, waste too much time, have too many stupid people. Option no. 2, however, was impossible. I didn t know how to go about contacting the chubby girl. I didn t have her phone number. Of course, I could have gone to the building, but leaving my own apartment now was dangerous. And how was I going to talk my way into that top-security building? I made up my mind: I would do nothing. I picked up the stainless-steel tongs and once again tapped the crown of the skull lightly. It made the same mo-oan as before. A hollow, pathetic cry, almost as if it were alive. How was this possible? I picked up the skull. I tapped it again. That mo-oan again. Upon closer scrutiny, the sound seemed to emanate from one particular point on the skull. I tapped again and again, and eventually located the exact position. The moaning issued from a shallow depression of about two centimeters in diameter in the center of the forehead. I pressed my fingertip into the depression. It felt slightly rough. Almost as if something had been broken off. Something, say, like a horn… A horn? If it really were a horn, that d make it a one-horned animal. A one-horned animal? I flipped through the Pictorial Atlas of Mammals again, looking for any mammal with a single horn in the middle of its forehead. The rhinoceros was a possibility, but this was not a rhinoceros skull. Wrong size, wrong shape. I got some ice out of the refrigerator and poured myself an Old Crow. It was getting late in the day, and a drink seemed like a good idea. I opened a can of asparagus, which I happen to like. I canapeed some smoked oysters on crispbread. I had another whiskey. Okay. For convenience sake, I agreed to entertain the remote hypothesis that the owner of said skull might be, conceivably, a unicorn. What else did I have to go on? I had a unicorn skull on my hands. Great, I thought, just great. Why were all these bizarre things happening to me? What had I ever done to deserve this? I was just your practical-minded, lone-wolf Calcutec. I wasn t overly ambitious, wasn t greedy. Didn t have family, friends, or lovers. I saved my money. When I retired, I was planning to settle down and learn the cello or Greek. How on earth did I get mixed up in this? After that second whiskey, I opened the telephone book and dialed the number. Reference desk, please, I said. Ten seconds later, the long-haired librarian was on the line. Pictorial Atlas of Mammals here, I said. Hello. Thank you for the ice cream, she said. You re welcome, I said. But could I ask you for another favor? A favor? she said. Depends on the species of favor. Can you look up what you ve got on unicorns? U-ni-corns? she repeated. Is that too much to ask? Silence. She was probably biting her lip. You want me to look up what about unicorns? Everything, I said. Please, its four-fifteen. The library gets very busy around closing time. Why don t you come around first thing tomorrow morning? Then you could look up all about unicorns or tricorns or whatever you like. This can t wait. I m afraid its exceedingly urgent. Oh, really? she said. How urgent? its a matter of evolution, I said. E-vo-lu-ti-on? She seemed to be caught off guard. By evolution, you wouldn t be referring to the evolving-over-mil-lions-of-years kind of evolution, would you? Excuse me if I misunderstand, but why then do you need things so quickly? What s one more day? There s evolution that takes millions of years and there s evolution that only takes three hours. I can t explain over the phone. But I want you to believe me, this is dead urgent. This will affect the next step in human evolution. Like in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Exactly, I said. I d watched it countless times on video. She didn t say anything. Can t decide if I m some kind of a maniac or a harmless nut? I took a shot. You got it, she said. I don t know how I m going to convince you, but I m really not crazy. A little narrowminded or stubborn maybe, but crazy I m not. Hmph, was all she said to that. Well, you talk normal enough. And you didn t seem too weird. You even bought me ice cream. All right, at six-thirty, meet me at the cafe across from the library. I ll bring you the books. Fair enough? Unfortunately, its not so simple. I, uh, can t go into details, but I can t leave my place unattended just now. Sorry, but You mean… she trailed off. I could her hear drumming her front teeth with her nails. Let me get this straight. You want me to bring the books to your doorstep? You must be crazy. That s the general idea, I said sheepishly. Though, of course, I m not demanding. I m requesting. You re requesting an awful lot. I know, I know, I said. But you wouldn t believe what s been going on. Another lengthy silence. I ve worked in this library for five years now and never have I come across any borrower as impudent as you, she fumed. Nobody asks to have books hand-delivered. And with no previous record! Don t you think you re being just a little high-handed? Actually, I do think so, too. I m very sorry. I realize its highly irregular, but I have no other choice. I don t know why I m doing this, she said, but I don t suppose you d want to tell me the way to your place? The Colonel I doubt you can regain your shadow, speaks the Colonel as he sips his coffee. Like most persons accustomed to years of giving orders, he speaks with his spine straight and his chin tucked in. It is greatly to his credit that his long career in the military has not made him officious. Rather, it has bestowed an order to his life, along with many decorations. Exceedingly quiet and thoughtful, the Colonel is an ideal neighbor for me. He is also a veteran chessplayer. As the Gatekeeper warned you, the old officer continues, one of the conditions of this Town is that you cannot possess a shadow. Another is that you cannot leave. Not as long as the Wall surrounds the Town. I did not know I would forfeit my shadow forever, I say. I thought it would be temporary. No one told me about this. No one tells you anything in this Town, says the Colonel. The Town has its own protocol. It has no care for what you know or do not know. Regrettable… What will become of my shadow? Nothing at all. It waits and then it dies. Have you seen it since your arrival? No. I tried several times and the Gatekeeper turned me away. For security reasons, he said. Predictable, the Colonel says, shaking his head. The Gatekeeper is entrusted with the care of shadows. He shoulders the entire responsibility. The Gatekeeper can be a difficult man; harsh when not called for, blind to his own faults. Your only move is to wait for his mood to change. Then I will wait, I say. Yet what does he have to fear from me? The Colonel finishes his coffee, then takes out a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. The white square of cloth, like his uniform, is worn but clean and pressed. He fears that you and your shadow will become one again. At that, he returns his attention to the chessboard. This chess differs from the game I know in its pieces and their movements. Hence the old officer always wins. Ape takes High Priest, you realize? Go ahead, I say. I move a Parapet to cover the Ape s retreat. The Colonel nods, then glares again at the board. The tides of fortune have almost swept victory to the old officer s feet. Even so, he does not rush into the fray as he compounds strategem upon strategem. For him, the game is not to defeat the opponent, but to challenge his own abilities. It is not easy to surrender your shadow and simply let it die, he says, deftly maneuvering his Knight between the Parapet and my King. This leaves my King vulnerable. He will have checkmate in three moves. No, it is not easy, stresses the Colonel. The pain is the same for everyone, though it is one thing to tear the shadow away from an innocent child who has not gotten attached tf> it, and quite another to do it to an old fool. I was in my sixtf fifth year when they put my shadow to death. By that age we already had had a lifetime together. How long do shadows live once they have Been torn away? That depends on the shadow, says the old officef Some shadows are fit and some are not. In this Town, severed shadows do not live long. The climate is harsh and the winters long. Few shadows live to see the spring. I study the chessboard and concede defeat. You can gain yourself five moWs, says the Colonel. Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over. Then give me a moment, I say. While I reassess my options, the Colonel walks over to the window and parts the thick curtains slightly to peer out. These few weeks will be the hardest for you. It is the same as with broken bones. Until they set, you cannot do anything. Believe me. You mean to say I am anxious because my shadow still is not dead? I do, the old officer nods. I, too, remember the feeling. You are caught between all that was and all that must be. You feel lost. Mark my words: as soon as the bones mend, you will forget about the fracture. You mean to say, as soon as my mind vanishes? The Colonel does not answer. Excuse me for asking so many questions, I say. I know nothing about this Town. How it works, why it needs the Wall, why the beasts are herded in and out every day. I do not understand any of it. You are the only one I can ask. Not even I know all the rules, says the old officer under his breath. There are things that cannot and should not be explained. But there is no cause for concern. The Town is fair in its own way. The things you need, the things you need to know, one by one the Town will set these before you. Hear me now: this Town is perfect. And by perfect, I mean complete. It has everything. If you cannot see that, then it has nothing. A perfect nothing. Remember this well. That is as much as anyone can tell you; the rest you must learn for yourself. Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can. If the Workers Quarter, where the Librarian lives, is a place of past brilliance, then the Bureaucratic Quarter, which spreads to the southwest, is a place of color fading into parched light. Here, the spectacle of spring has dissolved into summer, only to be eroded by the winter winds. All along the gentle slope known as the Western Hill stand rows of two-story Official Residences. The buildings, originally three-family dwellings with common entrance halls, are painted white. The siding and doors and window frames every detail is white. None of the these Official Residences have hedges, only narrow flower beds below tiny porches. The flower beds are carefully tended, with plantings of crocus and pansy and marigold in spring, cosmos in autumn. The flowers in bloom make the buildings look all the more tawdry. Strolling the Hill, one can imagine its former splendor: children playing gaily in the streets, piano music in the air, warm supper scents. Memories feign through scarcely perceived doors of my being. Only later did this slope become the Bureaucratic Quarter, which, as the name suggests, was an area for government officials, undistinguished ranks of officialdom lodged in mediocrity. They too have gone, but to where? After the bureaucrats came the retired military. Surrendering their shadows, cast off like molted insect shells, each pursues his own end on the windswept Western Hill. With little left to protect, they live a half dozen old majordomos to a house. The Gatekeeper indicated that I was to find my room in one of these Official Residences. My cohabitants proved to be the Colonel, four commissioned officers under him, and a sergeant, who cooks the meals and does the chores. The Colonel passes judgment on everything, as was his duty in the army. These career soldiers have known numerous battle preparations and maneuvers, revolutions and counterrevolutions and outright wars. They who had never wanted family are now lonely old men. Rising early each morning, they charge through breakfast before going their own way, as if by tacit order, to their respective tasks. One scrapes peeling paint from the building, one repairs furniture, one takes a wa£on down the Hill to haul food rations back up. Their morning duties done, they reassemble to spend the rest of the day sitting in the sun, reminiscing about past campaigns. The room assigned to me is on the upper story facing east. The view is largely blocked by hills in the foreground, although I can see the River and the Clocktower. The plaster walls of the room are stained, the window sills thick with dust. There is an old bed, a small dining table, and two chairs. The windows are hung with mildewed curtains. The floorboards are badly damaged and creak when I walk. In the morning, the Colonel appears from the adjacent room. We eat breakfast together, then repair to a dark, curtained room for a session of chess. There is no other way to pass the daylight hours. It must be frustrating. A young man like you should not be shut indoors on such a beautiful day, says the Colonel. I think so too. Though I must say, I appreciate gaining a chess companion. The rest of the men have no interest in games. I suppose I am the only one with any desire to play chess at this late date. Tell me, why did you give up your shadow? The old officer examines his fingers, sun-strafed against the curtains, before leaving the window to reinstall himself across the table. I wish I could say. It may have been that I spent so long defending this Town I could not walk away. If I left, my whole life would have been for nothing. Of course, it makes no difference now. Do you ever regret giving up your shadow? I have no regrets, speaks the old officer, shaking his head. I never do anything regrettable. I crush his Ape with my Parapet, creating an opening for my King. Good move, says the Colonel. Parapet guards against penetration and frees up the King. At the same time, it allows my Knight greater range. While the old officer contemplates his next move, I boil water for a new pot of coffee. Appetite, Disappointment, Leningrad While I waited for her, I fixed supper. I mashed an umeboshi salt plum with mortar and pestle to make a sour-sweet dressing; I fried up a few sardines with abura-age tofu-puffs in grated yama-imo taro batter; I sauteed a celery-beef side dish. Not a bad little meal. There was time to spare, so I had a beer as I tossed together some soy-simmered myoga wild ginger and green beans with tofu-sesame sauce. After which I stretched out on my bed, gazed at the ceiling, and listened to old records. The hour was well past seven, and outside it was quite dark. But still no sign of her. Maybe she thought better of the whole proposition and decided not to come. Could I blame her? The reasonable thing would have been not to come. Yet, as I was choosing the next record, the doorbell rang. I checked through the fisheye lens, and there stood the woman from the library with an armload of books. I opened the door with the chain still in place. See anyone milling around in the hall? I asked. Not a soul, she said. I undid the chain, let her in, and quickly relocked the door. Something sure smells good, she said. Mind if I peek in the kitchen? Go right ahead. But are you sure there weren t any strange characters hanging around the entrance? No one doing street repairs, or just sitting in a parked car? Nothing of the kind, she said, plunking the books down on the kitchen table. Then she lifted the lid of each pot on the range. You make all this yourself? Sure thing. I can dish some up if you want. Pretty everyday fare, though. Not at all. I m wild about this sort of food. I set out the dishes on the kitchen table. We sat down to eat, and I watched awestruck as she, with casual aplomb, lay the entire spread to waste. She had a stunning appetite. I made myself a big Old Crow on the rocks, flash-broiled a block of atsu-age fried tofu, and topped it with grated daikon radish to go along with my drink. I offered her a drink, but she wasn t interested. Could I have a bit of that atsu-age, though? she asked. I pushed the remaining halfblock over to her and just drank my bourbon. There s rice, if you like. And I can whip up some miso soup in a jiff, I said. Fabulous! she exclaimed. I prepared a katsuobushi dried-bonito broth and added wakatne seaweed and scallions for the miso soup. I served it alongside a bowl of rice and umeboshi. Again she leveled it all in no time flat. All that remained was a couple of plum pits. Then she sighed with satisfaction. Mmm, that was good. My compliments to the chef, she said. Never in my life had I seen such a slim nothing of a figure eat like such a terror. As the cook, I was gratified, and I had to hand it to her she d done the job with a certain allconsuming beauty. I was overwhelmed. And maybe a little disgusted, Tell me, do you always eat this much? I blurted out. Why, yes. This is about normal for me, she said, unembarrassed. But you re so thin. Gastric dilation, she confessed. It doesn t matter matter how much I eat. I don t gain weight. Must run up quite a food bill, I said. Truth was, she d gastrically dilated her way through tomorrow s dinner in one go- its frightening, she said. Most of my salary disappears into my stomach. Once again, I offered her something to drink, and this time she agreed to a beer. I pulled one out from the refrigerator and, just in case, a double ration of frankfurter links, which I tossed into the frying pan. Incredible, but except for the two franks I fended for myself, she polished off the whole lot. A regular machine gun of a hunger, this girl! As a last resort, I set out ready-made potato salad, then dashed off a quick wakame-tuna. combo for good measure. Down they went with her second beer. Boy, this is heaven! she purred. I d hardly touched a thing and was now on my third Old Crow on the rocks. While you re at it, there s chocolate cake for dessert, I surrendered. Of course, she indulged. I watched in disbelief, almost seeing the food backing up in her throat. Probably that was the reason I couldn t get an erection. It was the first time I hadn t risen to the occasion since the Tokyo Olympic Year. its all right, nothing to get upset about, she tried to comfort me. After dessert, we d had another round of bourbon and beer, listened to a few records, then snuggled into bed. And like I said, I didn t get an erection. Her naked body fit perfectly next to mine. She lay there stroking my chest. It happens to everyone. You shouldn t get so worked up over it. But the more she tried to cheer me, the more it only drove home the fact that I d flopped. Aesthetically, I remembered reading, the flaccid penis is more pleasing than the erect. But somehow, under the circumstances, this was little consolation. When was the last time you slept with someone? she asked. Maybe two weeks ago, I said. And that time, everything went okay? Of course, I said. Was my sex life to be questioned by everyone these days? Your girlfriend? A call girl. A call girl? Don t you feel, how shall I put it, guilt? Well… no. And nothing… since then? What was this cross-examination? No, I said. I ve been so busy with work, I haven t had time to pick up my dry-cleaning, much less wank. That s probably it, she said, convinced. What s probably it? Overwork. I mean, if you were really that busy… Maybe so. Maybe it was because I hadn t slept in twenty-six hours the night before. What s your line of work? Oh, computer-related business. My standard reply. It wasn t really a lie, and since most people don t know much about computers, they generally don t inquire any further. Must involve long hours of brain work. I imagine the stress just builds up and knocks you temporarily out of service. That was a kind enough explanation. All this crazihess all over the place. Small wonder I wasn t worse than impotent. Why don t you put your ear to my tummy, she said, rolling the blanket to the foot of the bed. Her body was sleek and beautiful. Not a gram of fat, her breasts cautious buds. I placed my ear against the soft, smooth expanse above her navel, which, uncannily, betrayed not the least sign of the quantities of food within. It was like that magic coat of Harpo Marx, devouring everything in sight. Hear anything? she asked. I held my breath and listened. There was only the slow rhythm of her heartbeat. I don t hear a thing, I said. You don t hear my stomach digesting all that food? she asked. I doubt digestion makes much sound. Only gastric juices dissolving things. Of course, there should be some peristaltic activity, but that s got to be quiet, too. But I can really feel my stomach churning. Why don t you listen again? I was content to keep in that position. I lazily eyed the wispy mound of pubic hair just ahead. I heard nothing that sounded like gastrointestinal action. I recalled a scene like this in The Enemy Below. Right below my ear, her iron stomach was stealthily engaged in digestive operations, like that U-boat with Curt Jurgens on board. I gave up and lifted my head from her body. I leaned back and put my arm around her. I smelled the scent of her hair. Got any tonic water? she asked. In the refrigerator, I said. I have an urge for a vodka tonic. Could I? Why not? Can I fix you one? You bet. She got out of bed and walked naked to the kitchen to mix two vodka tonics. While she did that, I put on my favorite Johnny Mathis album. The one with Teach Me Tonight. Then I hummed my way back to bed. Me and my limp penis and Johnny Mathis. How old are you? she asked, returning with the drinks. Thirty-five, I said. How about you? Almost thirty. I look young, but I m really twenty-nine, she said. Honestly, though, aren t you a baseball player or something? I was so taken aback, I spit out vodka tonic all over my chest. Where d you get an idea like that? I said. I haven t even touched a baseball in fifteen years. I don t know, I thought maybe I d seen your face on TV. A ball game. Or maybe you were on the News? Never done anything newsworthy. A commercial? Nope, I said. Well, maybe it was your double. You sure don t look like a computer person, she said, pausing. You re hard to figure. You go on about evolution and unicorns, and you carry a switchblade. She pointed to my slacks on the floor. The knife was sticking out of the back pocket. Oh, I said, in my line of work, you can t be too careful. I process data. Biotechnology, that sort of thing. Corporate interests involved. Lately there s been a lot of data piracy. She didn t swallow a word of it. Why don t we deal with our unicorn friends. That was your original purpose in calling me over here, wasn t it? Now that you mention it, I said. She unhanded me and picked up the two volumes from the bedside. One was Archaeology of Animals, by Burtland Cooper, and the other Jorge Luis Borges s Book of Imaginary Beings. Let me give you a quick gloss, she began. Borges treats the unicorn as a product of fantasy, not unlike dragons and mermaids. Whereas Cooper doesn t rule out the possibility that unicorns might have existed at one time, and approaches the matter more scientifically. Unfortunately neither one has much to report about the subject. Even dragons and trolls fare better. My guess is that unicorns never made much noise, so to speak. That s about all I could come up with at the library. That s plenty. I really appreciate it. Now I have another request. Do you think you could read a few of the better parts and tell me about them? She first opened The Book of Imaginary Beings. And this is what we learned: There are two types of unicorns: the Western variety, which originates in Greece, and the Chinese variety. They differ completely in appearance and in people s perception of them. Pliny, for instance, described the unicorn of the Greeks like this: His body resembles a horse, his head a stag, his feet an Elephant, his taile a boar; he loweth after an hideous manner, one black home he hath in the mids of his forehead, bearing out two cubits in length: by report, this wild beast cannot possibly be caught aliue. By contrast, there is the Chinese unicorn: It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and the hooves of a horse. Its short horn, which grows out of its forehead, is made of flesh; its coat, on its back, is of five mixed colours, while its belly is brown or yellow. The difference was not simply one of appearance. East and West could not agree on character and symbolism either. The West saw the unicorn as fierce and aggressive. Hence a horn one meter long. Moreover, according to Leonardo da Vinci, the only way to catch a unicorn was to snare its passions. A young virgin is set down in front of it and the beast is so overcome with desire that it forgets to attack, and instead rests its head on the lap of the maiden. The significance of the horn is not easily missed. The Chinese unicorn, on the other hand, is a sacred animal of portent. It ranks along with the dragon, the phoenix, and the tortoise as one of the Four Auspicious Creatures, and merits the highest status amongst the Three-Hundred-Sixty-Five Land Animals. Extremely gentle in temperament, it treads with such care that even the smallest living thing is unharmed, and eats no growing herbs but only withered grass. It lives a thousand years, and the visitation of a unicorn heralds the birth of a great sage. So we read that the mother of Confucius came upon a unicorn when she bore the philosopher in her womb: Seventy years later, some hunters killed a qilin, which still had a bit of ribbon around its horn that Confucius mother had tied there. Confucius went to look at the Unicorn and wept because he felt what the death of this innocent and mysterious animal foretold, and because in that ribbon lay his past. The qilin appears again in Chinese history in the thirteenth century. On the eve of a planned invasion of India, advance scouts of Genghis Khan encounter a unicorn in the middle of the desert. This unicorn has the head of a horse and the body of a deer. Its fur is green and it speaks in a human tongue: Time is come for you to return to the kingdom of your lord. One of the Genghis s Chinese ministers, upon consultation, explained to him that the t animal was a jiao-shui, a variety of the qilin. For four hundred years the great army has been warring in western regions, he said. Heaven, which has a horror of bloodshed, gives warning through the jiao-shui. Spare the Empire for Heaven s sake; moderation will give boundless pleasure. The Emperor desisted in his war plans. In the East, peace and tranquility; in the West, aggression and lust. Nonetheless, the unicorn remains an imaginary animal, an invention that can embody any value one wishes to project. There is, however, one species of porpoise called the narwhal or sea unicorn . It does not have a horn so much as an overgrown fang of the upper jaw protruding from the top of its head. The horn measures an average of two-and-half meters and is spiralled with a drill-like threading. This cetacean is rather rare and does not figure in medieval records. Other mammals resembling the unicorn existed in the Mesozoic, but gradually died out. She picked up the Archaeology of Animals and continued: Two species of ruminants existed during the Mesozoic Period, approximately twenty million years ago, on the North American continent. One is the cyntetokerus, the other is the curanokerus. Both have three horns, although clearly one of the horns is freestanding. The cyntetokerus is a smallish horse cum deer with a horn on either temple and a long Yshaped prong at the end of its nose. The curanokerus is slightly rounder in the face, and sprouts two deer-like antlers from its crown and an addi-tional horn that curves up and out in back. Grotesque creatures on the whole. Within the mammal class, single-horned or odd-number-horned animals are a rarity and even something of an evolutionary anomaly. That is to say, they are evolutionary orphans, and for the most part, odd-horned species like these have virtually perished from the earth. Even among dinosaurs, the three-horned giant tricerotops was an exception. Considering that horns are close-range weapons, three would be superfluous. As with the tines of forks, the larger number of horns serves to increase surface resistance, which would in turn render the act of thrusting cumbersome. Furthermore, the laws of dynamics dictate a high risk of triadic horns becoming wedged into mid-range objects, so that none of the three horns might actually penetrate the body of the opponent. In the event of an animal confronting several predators, having three horns could hamper fluidity of motion; extracting horns from the body of one for redirection to the next could be awkward. These drawbacks proved the downfall of the three-horned animal: the twin horn or single horn was a superior design. The advantage of two horns rests with the bilateral symmetry of the animal body. All animals, manifesting a right-left balance that parcels their strength into two ligatures, regulate their patterns of growth and movement accordingly. The nose and even the mouth bear this symmetry that essentially divides functions into two. The navel, of course, is singular, though this is something of a retrograde feature. Conversely, the penis and vagina form a pair. Most important are the eyes. Both for offense and defense, the eyes act as the control tower, so a horn located in close proximity to the eyes has optimum effectiveness. The prime example is the rhinoceros, which in principle is a unicorn . It is also extremely myopic, and that single horn is the very cause. For all practical purposes, the rhinoceros is a cripple. In spite of this potentially fatal flaw, the rhinoceros has survived for two unrelated reasons: it is an herbivore and its body is covered with thick armor plating. Hence it does not want for defense. And for that reason, the rhinoceros falls by body-type to the tricerotops category. Nonetheless, all pictures that exist of unicorns show the breed to be of a different stripe. It has no armor; it is entirely defenseless, not unlike a deer. If the unicorn were then also nearsighted, the defect could be disastrous. Even highly developed senses of smell or hearing would be inadequate to save it. Hunters would find it easy prey. Moreover, having no horn to spare, as it were, could severely disadvantage the unicorn in the event of an accident. Still another failing of the single horn is the difficulty of wielding it with force, just as incisors cannot distribute a force equivalent to that of molars due to principles of balance. The heavier the mass, the greater the stability when force is applied. Obviously, the unicorn suffers physio-dynamic defects. You re a real whiz at these explanations, aren t you? I interrupted her. She burst into a smile and trekked two fingers up my chest. Logically, she continued, there s only one thing that could have saved the unicorn from extinction. And this is very important. Any idea? I folded my hands where her fingers were and thought it over a bit, inconclusively. No natural predators? I ventured. Bingo, she said, and gave me a little peck on the lips. Now think: what conditions would give you no natural predators? Well, isolation, for one thing. Somewhere no hunter could get to, I hypothesized. Someplace, say, on a high plateau, like in Conan Doyle s Lost World. Or down deep, like a crater. Brill! she exclaimed, tapping her index finger now on my heart. And in fact, there is a recorded instance of a unicorn discovered under exactly such circumstances. I gulped. Uh-oh. She resumed her exposition: In 1917, the very item was discovered on the Russian front. This was September, one month prior to the October Revolution, during the First World War, under the Kerensky Cabinet, immediately before the start of the Bolshevik Coup. At the Ukranian front line, a Russian infantryman unearthed a mysterious object while digging a trench. He tossed it aside, thinking it a cow or an elk skull. Had that been the end of it, the find would have remained buried in the obscurity of history. It happened, however, that the soldier s commanding lieutenant had been a graduate student in biology at the University of Petrograd. He noted a peculiarity to the skull and, returning with it to his quarters, he subjected it to thorough examination. He determined the specimen to be the skull of a species of animal as yet unknown. Immediately, he contacted the Chairman of the Faculty of Biology at the University and requested that a survey team be dispatched. None, of course, was forthcoming. Russia was in upheaval at the time. Food, gunpowder, and medicine had first priority. With communications crippled by strikes, it was impossible for a scientific team to reach the front. Even if they had, the circumstances would not have been conducive to a site survey. The Russian army was suffering defeat after defeat; the front line was being pushed steadily back. Very probably the site was already German territory. The lieutenant himself came to an ignoble end. He was hanged from a telegraph pole in November that year. Many bourgeois officers were disposed of similarly along the Ukraine-Moscow telegraph line. The lieutenant had been a simple biology major without a shred of politics in him. Nonetheless, immediately before the Bolshevik army seized control, the lieutenant did think to entrust the skull to a wounded soldier being sent home, promising him a sizable compensation upon delivery of the skull, packed securely in a box, to the Faculty Chairman in Petrograd. The soldier was released from military hospital but waited until February of the following year before visiting the University, only to find the gates closed indefinitely. Most of the lecturers either had been driven away or had fled the country. Prospects for the University reopening were not very promising. He had little choice but to attempt to claim his money at a later date. He stored the skull with his brother-in-law who kept a stable in Petrograd, and returned to his home village some three hundred kilometers from the former Imperial Capital. The soldier, for reasons undetermined, never visited Petrograd again, and the skull lay in the stable, forgotten. The skull next saw the light of day in 1935. Petrograd had since become Leningrad. Lenin was dead, Trotsky was in exile, and Stalin was in power. No one rode horses in Leningrad. The old stablemaster had sold half his premises, and in the remaining half he opened a small hockey goods shop. Hockey? I dropped my jaw. In the Soviet thirties? Don t ask me. That s just what I read. But who knows? Post-Revolution Leningrad was quite your modern grad. Maybe hockey was all the rage. In any case, while inventorying his storeroom, the former stablemaster happened upon the box his brother-in-law had left with him in 1918. There in the box was a note addressed to the Chairman of the Faculty of Biology, Petrograd University. The note read: Please bestow fair compensation upon the bearer of this item. Naturally, the purveyor of hockey goods took the box to the University now Leningrad University and sought a meeting with the Chairman. This proved impossible. The Chairman was a Jew who had been sent to Siberia after Trotsky s downfall. This former stablemaster, however, was no fool. With no other prospect, rather than hold onto an unidentified animal skull for the remainder of his days and not receive a kopek, he found another professor of biology, recounted the tale, and prevailed upon him for a likely sum. He went home a few rubles richer. The professor examined every square millimeter of the skull, and ultimately arrived at the same conclusion as had the lieutenant eighteen years earlier to wit, that the skull did not correspond to any extant animal, nor did it correspond to any animal known to have existed previously. The morphology most closely resembled that of a deer. It had to have been a hoofed herbivore, judging by the shape of the jaw, with slightly fuller cheeks. Yet the greatest difference between this species and the deer was, lo and behold, the single horn that modified the middle of its forehead. The horn was still intact. It was not in its entirety, to be sure, but what remained sufficed to enable the reconstruction of a straight horn of approximately twenty centimeters in length. The horn had been broken off close to the three-centimeter mark, its basal diameter approximately two centimeters. Two centimeters, I repeated to myself. The skull I d received from the old man had a depression of exactly two centimeters in diameter. Professor Petrov for that was his name summoned several assistants and graduate students, and the team departed for the Ukraine on a one-month dig at the site of the young lieutenant s trenches. Unfortunately, they failed to find any similar skull. They did, however, discover a number of curious facts about the region, a tableland commonly known as the Voltafil. The area rose to a moderate height and as such formed one of the few natural strategic vantage points over the rolling plains. During the First World War, the German and Austro-Hungarian armies repeatedly engaged the Russians in bloody confrontations on all sides. During the Second World War, the entire plateau was bombarded beyond recognition, but that was years later. What interested Professor Petrov about the Voltafil was that the bones unearthed there differed significantly from the distribution of species elsewhere in that belt of land. It prompted the professor to conjecture that the present tableland had in ancient times not been an outcropping at all, but a crater, the cradle for untold flora and fauna. In other words, a lost world. A plateau out of a crater might tax the imagination, but that is precisely what occurred. The walls of the crater were perilously steep, but over millions of years the walls crumbled due to an intractable geological shift, convexing the base into an ordinary hill. The unicorn, an evolutionary misfit, continued to live on this outcropping isolated from all predation. Natural springs abounded, the soil was fertile, conditions were idyllic. Professor Petrov submitted these findings to the Soviet Academy of Sciences in a paper entitled A Consideration of the Lifeforms of the Voltafil Tableland, detailing a total of thirty-six zoological, botanical, and geological proofs for his lost world thesis. This was August 1936. It was dismally received. No one in the Academy took him seriously. His defense of his paper coincided with a power struggle within this august institution between Moscow University and Leningrad University. The Leningrad faction was not faring well; their purportedly non-dialectical research incurred a summary trouncing. Still, Petrov s hypothesis aside, there was the undeniably physical evidence of the skull itself. A cadre of specialists devoted the next year to excruci-ating study of the object in question. They were forced to conclude that it, indeed, was not a fabrication but the unadulterated skull of a single-horned animal. Ultimately, the Committee at the Soviet Academy of Sciences pronounced the embarrassing artifact a spontaneous mutation in Cervidce odocoileus with no evolutionary consequence, and as such not a subject fit for research. The skull was returned to Professor Petrov at Leningrad University. Thereafter, Professor Petrov waited valiantly for the winds of fortune to shift and his research to achieve recognition, but the onslaught of the German-Soviet War in 1940 dashed all such hopes and he died in 1943, a broken man. It was during the 1941 Siege of Leningrad that the skull vanished. Leningrad University was reduced to rubble by German shelling. Virtually the entire campus let alone a single animal skull was destroyed. And so the one piece of solid evidence proving the existence of the unicorn was no more. So there s not one concrete thing that remains? I said. Nothing except for photographs. Photographs? That s right, photographs of the skull. Professor Petrov took close to a hundred photos of the skull, a few of which escaped destruction in the war. They ve been preserved in the Leningrad University library reference collection. Here, photographs like this. She handed me the book and pointed to a black-and-white reproduction on the page. A somewhat indistinct photograph, but it did convey the general shape of the skull. It had been placed on a table covered with white cloth, next to a wristwatch for scale, a circle drawn around the middle of the forehead to indicate the position of the horn. It appeared to be of the same species as the skull the old man had given me. I glanced over at the skull atop the TV. The T-shirt covering made it look like a sleeping cat. Should I tell her? Nah, a secret s a secret because you don t let people in on it. Do you think the skull really was lost in the War? I asked her. I suppose, she said, teasing her bangs around her little finger. If you believe the book, the city of Leningrad was practically steamrollered, and seeing how the University district was the hardest hit, its probably safe to say that the skull was obliterated along with everything else. Of course, Professor Petrov could well have whisked it away somewhere before the fighting started. Or it could have been among the spoils carted off by the German troops… Whatever happened to it, nobody has spoken of seeing the skull since. I studied the photograph and slammed the book shut. Could the skull in my possession be the very same Voltafil-Leningrad specimen? Or was it yet another unicorn skull excavated at a different place and time? The simplest thing would be to ask the old man. Like, where did you get that skull? And why did you give it to me? Well, I was supposed to see the old prankster when I handed over the shuffled data. I d ask him then. Meanwhile, not to be worrying. I stared absently at the ceiling, with her head on my chest, her body snug against my side. I put my arm around her. I felt relieved, in a way, about the unicorn skull, but the state of my prowess was unchanged. No matter. Erection or not, she kept on drawing dreamy patterns on my stomach. The Wall ON an overcast afternoon I make my way down to the Gatehouse and find my shadow working with the Gatekeeper. They have rolled a wagon into the clearing, replacing the old floorboards and sideboards. The Gatekeeper planes the planks and my shadow hammers them in place. The shadow appears altogether unchanged from when we parted. He is still physically well, but his movements seem wrong. Ill-humored folds brew about his eyes. As I draw near, they pause in their labors to look up. Well now, what brings you here? asks the Gatekeeper. I must talk to you about something, I say. Wait till our next break, says the Gatekeeper, readdressing himself to the half-shaved board. My shadow glances in my direction, then resumes working. He is furious with me, I can tell. I go into the Gatehouse and sit down at the table to wait for the Gatekeeper. The table is cluttered. Does the Gatekeeper clean only when he hones his blades? Today the table is an accumulation of dirty cups, coffee grounds, wood shavings, and pipe ash. Yet, in the racks on the wall, his knives are ordered in what approaches an aesthetic ideal. The Gatekeeper keeps me waiting. I gaze at the ceiling, with arms thrown over the back of the chair. What do people do with so much time in this Town? Outside, the sounds of planing and hammering are unceasing. When finally the door does open, in steps not the Gatekeeper but my shadow. I can t talk long, whispers my shadow as he hurries past. I came to get some nails from the storeroom. He opens a door on the far side of the room, goes into the right storeroom, and emerges with a box of nails. I ll come straight to the point, says my shadow under his breath as he sorts through the nails. First, you need to make a map of the Town. Don t do it by asking anyone else. Every detail of the map must be seen with your own eyes. Everything you see gets written down, no matter how small. How soon do you need it? I say. By autumn, speaks the shadow at a fast clip. Also, I want a verbal report. Particularly about the Wall. The lay of it, how it goes along the Eastern Woods, where the River enters and where it exits. Got it? And without even looking my way, my shadow disappears out the door. I repeat everything he has told me. Lay of the Wall, Eastern Woods, River entrance and River exit. Making a map is not a bad idea. It will show me the Town and use my time well. Soon the Gatekeeper enters. He wipes the sweat and grime off his face, and drops his bulk in the chair across from me. Well, what is it? May I see my shadow? I ask. The Gatekeeper nods a few times. He tamps tobacco into his pipe and lights up. Not yet, he says. It is too soon. The shadow is too strong. Wait till the days get shorter. Just so there is no trouble. He breaks his matchstick in half and flips it onto the table. For your own sake, wait, he continues. Getting too close to your shadow makes trouble. Seen it happen before. I say nothing. He is not sympathetic. Still, I have spoken with my shadow. Surely the Gatekeeper will let down his guard again. The Gatekeeper rises. He goes to the sink, and sloshes down cup after cup of water. How is the work? Slow, but I am learning, I say. Good, says the Gatekeeper. Do a good job. A body who works bad thinks bad, I always say. I listen to my shadow nailing steadily. How about a walk? proposes the Gatekeeper. I want to show you something. I follow him outside. As we enter the clearing, I see my shadow. He is standing on the wagon, putting the last sideboard in place. The Gatekeeper strides across the clearing toward the Watchtower. The afternoon is humid and gray. Dark clouds sweep low over the Wall from the west, threatening to burst at any second. The sweat-soaked shirt of the Gatekeeper clings to his massive trunk and gives off a sour stink. This is the Wall, says the Gatekeeper, slapping the broad side of the battlements. Seven yards tall, circles the whole Town. Only birds can clear the Wall. No entrance or exit except this Gate. Long ago there was the East Gate, but they walled it up. You see these bricks? Nothing can dent them, not even a cannon. The Gatekeeper picks up a scrap of wood and expertly pares it down to a tiny sliver. Watch this, he says. He runs the sliver of wood between the bricks. It hardly penetrates a fraction of an inch. He tosses the wood away, and draws the tip of his knife over the bricks. This produces an awful sound, but leaves not a mark. He examines his knife, then puts it away. This Wall has no mortar, the Gatekeeper states. There is no need. The bricks fit perfect; not a hair-space between them. Nobody can put a dent in the Wall. And nobody can climb it. Because this Wall is perfect. So forget any ideas you have. Nobody leaves here. The Gatekeeper lays a giant hand on my back. You have to endure. If you endure, everything will be fine. No worry, no suffering. It all disappears. Forget about the shadow. This is the End of the World. This is where the world ends. Nowhere further to go. On my way back to my room, I stop in the middle of the Old Bridge and look at the River. I think about what the Gatekeeper has said. The End of the World. Why did I cast off my past to come here to the End of the World? What possible event or meaning or purpose could there have been? Why can I not remember? Something has summoned me here. Something intractable. And for this, I have forfeited my shadow and my memory. The River murmurs at my feet. There is the sandbar midstream, and on it the willows sway as they trail their long branches in the current. The water is beautifully clear. I can see fish playing among the rocks. Gazing at the River soothes me. Steps lead down from the bridge to the sandbar. A bench waits under the willows, a few beasts lay nearby. Often have I descended to the sandbar and offered crusts of bread to the beasts. At first they hesitated, but now the old and the very young eat from my hand. As the autumn deepens, the fathomless lakes of their eyes assume an ever more sorrowful hue. The leaves turn color, the grasses wither; the beasts sense the advance of a long, hungry season. And bowing to their vision, I too know a sadness. Dressing, Watermelon, Chaos The clock read half past nine when she got out of bed, picked up her clothes from the floor, and slowly, leisurely, put them on. I stayed in bed, sprawled out, one elbow bent upright, watching her every move out of the corner of my eye. One piece of clothing at a time, liltingly graceful, not a motion wasted, achingly quiet. She zipped up her skirt, did the buttons of her blouse from the top down, lastly sat down on the bed to pull on her stockings. Then she kissed me on the cheek. Many are the women who can take their clothes off seductively, but women who can charm as they dress? Now completely composed, she ran her hand through her long black hair. All at once, the room breathed new air. Thanks for the food, she said. My pleasure. Do you always cook like that? When I m not too busy with work, I said. When things get hectic, its catch-as-catchcan with leftovers. Or I eat out. She grabbed a chair in the kitchen and lit up a cigarette. I don t do much cooking myself. When I think about getting home after work and fixing a meal that I m going to polish off in ten minutes anyway, its so-o depressing. While I got dressed, she pulled a datebook out of her handbag and scribbled something, which she tore off and handed to me. Here s my phone number, she said. If you have food to spare or want to get together or whatever, give me a call. I ll be right over. After she left, carrying off the several volumes on mammals to be returned to the library, I went over to the TV and removed the T-shirt. I reflected upon the unicorn skull. I didn t have an iota of proof, but I couldn t help feeling that this mystery skull was the very same specimen of Voltafil-Leningrad renown. I seemed to sense, somehow, an odor of history drifting about it. True, the story was still fresh in my mind and the power of suggestion was strong. I gave the skull a light tap with the stainless-steel tongs and went into the kitchen. I washed the dishes, then wiped off the kitchen table. It was time to start. I switched the telephone over to my answering service so I wouldn t be disturbed. I disconnected the door chimes and turned out all the lights except for the kitchen lamp. For the next few hours I needed to concentrate my energies on shuffling. My shuffling password was End of the World . This was the title of a profoundly personal drama by which previously laundered numerics would be reordered for computer calculation. Of course, when I say drama, I don t mean the kind they show on TV. This drama was a lot more complex and with no discernible plot. The word is only a label, for convenience sake. All the same, I was in the dark about its contents. The sole thing I knew was its title, End of the World. The scientists at the System had induced this drama. I had undergone a full year of Calcutec training. After I passed the final exam, they put me on ice for two weeks to conduct comprehensive tests on my brainwaves, from which was extracted the epicenter of encephalographic activity, the core of my consciousness. The patterns were transcoded into my shuffling password, then re-input into my brain this time in reverse. I was informed that End of the World was the title, which was to be my shuffling password. Thus was my conscious mind completely restructured. First there was the overall chaos of my conscious mind, then inside that, a distinct plum pit of condensed chaos as the center. They refused to reveal any more than this. There is no need for you to know more. The unconscious goes about its business better than you ll ever be able to. After a certain age our calculations put it at twenty-eight years human beings rarely experience alterations in the overall configuration of their consciousness. What is commonly referred to as self-improvement or conscious change hardly even scratches the surface. Your End of the World core consciousness will continue to function, unaffected, until you take your last breath. Understand this far? I understand, I said. All efforts of reason and analysis are, in a word, like trying to slice through a watermelon with sewing needles. They may leave marks on the outer rind, but the fruity pulp will remain perpetually out of reach. Hence, we separate the rind from the pulp. Of course, there are idle souls out there who seem to enjoy just nibbling away on the rind. In view of all contingencies, they went on, we must protect your password-drama, isolating it from any superficial turbulence, the tides of your outer consciousness. Suppose we were to say to you, your End of the World is inhered with such, such, and such elements. It would be like peeling away the rind of the watermelon for you. The temptation would be irresistible: you would stick your fingers into the pulp and muck it up. And in no time, the hermetic extractability of our password-drama would be forfeited. Poof! You would no longer be able to shuffle. That s why we re giving you back your watermelon with an extra thick rind, one scientist interjected. You can call up the drama, because it is your own self, after all. But you can never know its contents. It transpires in a sea of chaos into which you submerge empty-handed and from which you resurface empty-handed. Do you follow? I believe so, I said. One more point, they intoned in solemn chorus. Properly speaking, should any individual ever have exact, clear knowledge of his own core consciousness? I wouldn t know, I said. Nor would we, said the scientists. Such questions are, as they say, beyond science. Speaking from experience, we cannot conclude otherwise, admitted one. So in this sense, this is an extremely sensitive experiment. Experiment? I recoiled. Yes, experiment, echoed the chorus. We cannot tell you any more than this. Then they instructed me on how to shuffle: Do it alone, preferably at night, on neither a full nor empty stomach. Listen to three repetitions of a sound-cue pattern, which calls up the End of the World and plunges consciousness into a sea of chaos. Therein, shuffle the numerical data. When the shuffling was done, the End of the World call would abort automatically and my consciousness would exit from chaos. I would have no memory of anything. Reverse shuffling was the literal reverse of this process. For reverse shuffling, I was to listen to a reverse-shuffling sound-cue pattern. This mechanism was programmed into me. An unconscious tunnel, as it were, input right through the middle of my brain. Nothing more or less. Understandably, whenever I shuffle, I am rendered utterly defenseless and subject to mood swings. With laundering, its different. Laundering is a pain, but I myself can take pride in doing it. All sorts of abilities are brought into the equation. Whereas shuffling is nothing I can pride myself on. I am merely a vessel to be used. My consciousness is borrowed and something is processed while I m unaware. I hardly feel I can be called a Calcutec when it comes to shuffling. Nor, of course, do I have any say in choice of calc-scheme. I am licensed in both shuffling and laundering, but can only follow the prescribed order of business. And if I don t like it, well, I can quit the profession. I have no intention of turning in my Calcutec qualifications. Despite the meddling and the raised eyebrows at the System, I know of no line of work that allows the individual as much freedom to exercise his abilities as being a Calcutec. Plus the pay is good. If I work fifteen years, I will have made enough money to take it easy for the rest of my life. Shuffling is not impeded by drinking. In fact, the experts indicate that moderate drinking may even help in releasing nervous tension. With me, though, its part of my ritual that I always shuffle sober. I remain wary about the whole enterprise. Especially since they ve put the freeze on shuffling for two months now. I took a cold shower, did fifteen minutes of hard calisthenics, and drank two cups of black coffee. I opened my private safe, removed a miniature tape recorder and the typewritten paper with the converted data, and set them out on the kitchen table. Then I readied a notepad and a supply of five sharpened pencils. I inserted the tape, put on headphones, then started the tape rolling. I let the digital tape counter run to 16, then rewound it to 9, then forwarded it to 26. Then I waited with it locked for ten seconds until the counter numbers disappeared and the signal tone began. Any other order of operation would have caused the sounds on the tape to self-erase. Tape set, brand new notepad at my right hand, converted data at my left. All preparations completed. I switched on the red light to the security devices installed on the apartment door and on all accessible windows. No slip-ups. I reached over to push the PLAY switch on the tape recorder and as the signal tone began, gradually a warm chaos noiselessly drank me in. A Map of the End of the World The day after meeting my shadow, I immediately set about making a map of the Town. At dusk, I go to the top of the Western Hill to get a full perspective. The Hill, however, is not high enough to afford me a panorama, nor is my eyesight as it once was. Hence the effort is not wholly successful. I gain only the most general sense of the Town. The Town is neither too big nor too small. That is to say, it is not so vast that it eclipses my powers of comprehension, but neither is it so contained that the entire picture can be easily grasped. This, then, is the sum total of what I discern from the summit of the Western Hill: the heights of the Wall encompass the Town, and the River transects it north and south. The evening sky turns the River a leaden hue. Presently the Town resounds with horn and hoof. In order to determine the route of the Wall, I will ulti-mately need to follow its course on foot. Of course, as I can be outdoors only on dark, overcast days, I must be careful when venturing far from the Western Hill. A stormy sky might suddenly clear or it might let loose a downpour. Each morning, I ask the Colonel to monitor the sky for me. The Colonel s predictions are nearly always right. Harbor no fears about the weather says the old officer with pride. I know the direction of the clouds. I will not steer you wrong. Still, there can be unexpected changes in the sky, unaccountable even to the Colonel. A walk is always a risk. Furthermore, thickets and woods and ravines attend the Wall at many points, rendering it inaccessible. Houses are concentrated along the River as it flows through the center of the Town; a few paces beyond these areas, the paths might stop short or be swallowed in a patch of brambles. I am left with the choice either to forge past these obstacles or to return by the route I had come. I begin my investigations along the western edge of the Town, that is, from the Gatehouse at the Gate in the west, circling clockwise around the Town. North from the Gate extend fields deep to the waist in wild grain. There are few obstructions on the paths that thread through the grasses. Birds resembling skylarks have built their nests in the fields; they fly up from the weeds to gyre the skies in search of food. Beasts, their heads and backs floating in this sea of grasses, sweep the landscape for edible green buds. Further along the Wall, toward the south, I encounter the remains of what must once have been army barracks. Plain, unadorned two-story structures in rows of three. Beyond these is a cluster of small houses. Trees stand between the structures, and a low stone wall circumscribes the compound. Everything is deep in weeds. No one is in sight. The fields, it would seem, served as training grounds. I see trenches and a masonry flag stand. Perhaps the same military men, now retired to the Official Residences where I have my room, were at one time quar-tered in these buildings. I am in a quandary as to the circumstances that warranted their transfer to the Western Hill, thus leaving the barracks to ruin. Toward the east, the rolling fields come to an end and the Woods begin. They begin gradually, bushes rising in patches amongst intertwining tree trunks, the branches reaching to a height between my shoulders and head. Beneath, the undergrowth is dotted with tiny grassflowers. As the ground slopes, the trees increase in number, variety, and scale. If not for the random twittering of birds, all would be quiet. As I head up a narrow brush path, the trees grow thick, the high branches coming together to form a forest roof, obscuring my view of the Wall. I take a southbound trail back into Town, cross the Old Bridge, and go home. So it is that even with the advent of autumn, I can trace only the vaguest outline of the Town. In the most general terms, the land is laid out east to west, abutted by the North Wood and Southern Hill. The eastern slope of the Southern Hill breaks into crags that extend along the base of the Wall. To the east of the Town spreads a forest, more dark and dense than the North Wood. Few roads penetrate this wilderness, except for a footpath along the river-bank that leads to the East Gate and adjoins sections of the Wall. The East Gate, as the Gatekeeper had said, is cemented in solidly, and none may pass through. The River rushes down in a torrent from the Eastern Ridge, passes under the Wall, suddenly appears next to the East Gate, and flows due west through the middle of the Town under three bridges: the East Bridge, the Old Bridge, and the West Bridge. The Old Bridge is not only the most ancient but also the largest and most handsome. The West Bridge marks a turning point in the River. It shifts dramatically to the south, flowing back first slightly eastward. At the Southern Hill, the River cuts a deep Gorge. The River does not exit under the Wall to the south. Rather it forms a Pool at the Wall and is swallowed into some vast cavity beneath the surface. According to the Colonel, beyond the Wall lies a plain of limestone boulders, which stand vigil over countless veins of underground water. Of course, I continue my dreamreading in the evenings. At six o clock, I push open the door, have supper with the Librarian, then read old dreams. In the course of an evening, I read four, perhaps five dreams. My fingers nimbly trace out the labyrinthine seams of light as I grow able to invoke the images and echoes with increasing clarity. I do not understand what dreamreading means, nor by what principle it works, but from the reactions of the Librarian I know that that my efforts are succeeding. My eyes no longer hurt from the glow of the skulls, and I do not tire so readily. After I am through reading a skull, the Librarian places it on the counter in line with the skulls previously read that night. The next evening, the counter is empty. You are making progress, she says. The work goes much faster than I expected. How many skulls are there? A thousand, perhaps two thousand. Do you wish to see them? She leads me into the stacks. It is a huge schoolroom with rows of shelves, each shelf stacked with white beast skulls. It is a graveyard. A chill air of the dead hovers silently. How many years will it take me to read all these skulls? You need not read them all, she says. You need read only as many as you can read. Those that you do not read, the next Dreamreader will read. The old dreams will sleep. And you will assist the next Dreamreader? No, I am here to help you. That is the rule. One assistant for one Dreamreader. When you no longer read, I too must leave the Library. I do not fully comprehend, but this makes sense. We lean against the wall and gaze at the shelves of white skulls. Have you ever been to the Pool in the south? I ask her. Yes, I have. A long time ago. When I was a child, my mother walked with me there. Most people would not go there, but Mother was different. Why do you ask about the Pool? It intrigues me. She shakes her head. It is dangerous. You should stay away. Why would you want to go there? I want to learn everything about this place. If you choose not to guide me, I will go alone. She stares at me, then exhales deeply. Very well. If you will not listen, I must go with you. Please remember, though, I am so afraid of the Pool. There is something malign about it. It will be fine, I assure her, if we are together, and if we are careful. She shakes her head again. You have never seen the Pool. You cannot know how frightening it is. The water is cursed. It calls out to people. We will not to go too close, I promise, holding her hand. We will look at it from a distance. On a dark November afternoon, we set out for the Pool. Dense undergrowth closes in on the road where the River has carved the Gorge in the west slope of the Western Hill. We must change our course to approach from the east, via the far side of the Southern Hill. The morning rain has left the ground covered with leaves, which dampen our every step. We pass two beasts, their golden heads swaying as they stride past us, expressionless. Winter is near, she explains. Food is short, and the animals are searching for nuts and berries. Otherwise, they do not go very far from the Town. We clear the Southern Hill, and there are no more beasts to be seen, nor any road. As we continue west through deserted fields and an abandoned settlement, the sound of the Pool reaches our ears. It is unearthly, resembling nothing that I know. Different from the thundering of a waterfall, different from the howl of the wind, different from the rumble of a tremor. It may be described as the gasping of a gigantic throat. At times it groans, at times it whines. It breaks off, choking. The Pool seems to be snarling, I remark. She turns to me, disturbed, but says nothing. She parts the overhanging branches with her gloved hands and forges on ahead. The path is much worse, she says. It was not like this. Perhaps we should turn back. We have come this far. Let us go as far as we can. We continue for several minutes over the thicketed moor, guided only by the eerie call of the Pool, when suddenly a vista opens up before us. The wilderness stops and a meadow spreads flat out. The River emerges from the Gorge to the right, then widens as it flows toward where we stand. From the final bend at the edge of the meadow, the water appears to slow and back up, turning a deep sapphire blue, swelling like a snake digesting a small animal. This is the Pool. We proceed along the River toward the Pool. Do not go close, she warns, tugging at my arm. The surface may seem calm, but below is a whirlpool. The Pool never gives back what it takes. How deep is it? I do not know. I have been told the Pool only grows deeper and deeper. The whirlpool is a drill, boring away at the bottom. There was a time when they threw heretics and criminals into it. What happened to them? They never came back. Did you hear about the caverns? Beneath the Pool, there are great halls where the lost wander forever in darkness. The gasps of the Pool resound everywhere, rising like huge clouds of steam. They echo with anguish from the depths. She finds a piece of wood the size of her palm and throws it into the middle of the Pool. It floats for a few seconds, then begins to tremble and is pulled below. It does not resurface. Do you see? We sit in the meadow ten yards from the Pool and eat the bread we have carried in our pockets. The scene is a picture of deceptive repose. The meadow is embroidered in autumn flowers, the trees brilliant with crimson leaves, the Pool a mirror. On its far side are white limestone cliffs, capped by the dark brick heights of the Wall. All is quiet, save for the gasping of the Pool. Why must you have this map? she asks. Even with a map, you will never leave this Town. She brushes away the bread crumbs that have fallen on her lap and looks toward the Pool. Do you want to leave here? she asks again. I shake my head. Do I mean this as a no , or is it only that I do not know? I just want to find out about the Town, I say. The lay of the land, the history, the people… I want to know who made the rules, what has sway over us. I want even to know what lies beyond. She slowly rolls her head, then fixes upon my eyes. There is no beyond, she says. Did you not know? We are at the End of the World. We are here forever. I lie back and gaze up at the sky. Dark and overcast, the only sky I am allowed to see. The ground beneath me is cold and damp after the morning rain, but the smell of the earth is fresh. Winter birds take wing from the brambles and fly over the Wall to the south. The clouds sweep in low. Winter readies to lay siege. Frankfurt, Door, Independent Operants AS always, consciousness returned to me progressively from the edges of my field of vision. The first things to claim recognition were the bathroom door emerging from the far right and a lamp from the far left, from which my awareness gradually drifted inward like ice flowing together toward the middle of a lake. In the exact center of my visual field was the alarm clock, hands pointing to ten-twenty-six. An alarm clock I received as a memento of somebody s wedding. One of those clever designs. You had to press the red button on the left side of the clock and the black button on the right side simultaneously to stop it from ringing, which was said to preempt the reflex of killing the alarm and falling back to sleep. True, in order to press both left and right buttons simultaneously, I did have to sit upright in bed with the thing in my lap, and by then I had made a step into the waking world. I repeat myself, I know, but the clock was a thanks-for-coming gift from a wedding. Whose, I can t remember. But back in my late twenties, there d been a time when I had a fair number of friends. One year I attended wedding after wedding, whence came this clock. I would never buy a dumb clock like this of my own free will. I happen to be very good at waking up. As my field of vision came together at the alarm clock, I reflexively picked it up, set it on my lap, and pushed the red and black buttons with my right and left hands. Only then did I realize that it hadn t been ringing to begin with. I hadn t been sleeping, so I hadn t set the alarm. I put the alarm clock back down and looked around. No noticeable changes in the apartment. Red security-device light still on, empty coffee cup by the edge of the table, the librarian s cigarette lying in a saucer. Marlboro Light, no trace of lipstick. Come to think of it, she hadn t worn any makeup at all. I ran down my checklist. Of the five pencils in front of me, two were broken, two were worn all the way down, and one was untouched. The notepad was filled with sixteen pages of tiny digits. The middle finger of my right hand tingled, slightly, as it does after a long stint of writing. Finally, I compared the shuffled data with the laundered data to see that the number of entries under each heading matched, just like the manual recommends, after which I burned the original list in the sink. I put the notepad in a strongbox and transferred it and the tape recorder to the safe. Shuffling accomplished. Then I sat down on the couch, exhausted. I poured myself two fingers of whiskey, closed my eyes, and drank it in two gulps. The warm feel of alcohol traveled down my throat and spread to every part of my body. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, drank some water, and used the toilet. I returned to the kitchen, resharpened the pencils, and arranged them neatly in a tray. Then I placed the alarm clock by my bed and switched the telephone back to normal. The clock read eleven-fifty-seven. I had a whole day tomorrow ahead of me. I scrambled out of my clothes, dove into bed, and turned off the bedside light. Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn t stop it. I was going to sleep. I replayed my usual fantasy of the joys of retirement from Calcutecdom. I d have plenty of savings, more than enough for an easy life of cello and Greek. Stow the cello in the back of the car and head up to the mountains to practice. Maybe I d have a mountain retreat, a pretty little cabin where I could read my books, listen to music, watch old movies on video, do some cooking… And it wouldn t be half bad if my longhaired librarian were there with me. I d cook and she d eat. As the menus were unfolding, sleep descended. All at once, as if the sky had fallen. Cello and cabin and cooking now dust to the wind, abandoning me, alone again, asleep like a tuna. Somebody had drilled a hole in my head and was stuffing it full of something like string. An awfully long string apparently, because the reel kept unwinding into my head. I was flailing my arms, yanking at it, but try as I might the string kept coming in. I sat up and ran my hands over my head. But there was no string. No holes either. A bell was ringing. Ringing, ringing, ringing. I grabbed the alarm clock, threw it on my lap, and slapped the red and black buttons with both hands. The ringing didn t stop. The telephone! The clock read four-eighteen. It was dark outside. Four-eighteen a.m. I got out of bed and picked up the receiver. Hello? I said. No sound came from the other end of the line. Hello! I growled. Still no answer. No disembodied breathing, no muffled clicks. I fumed and hung up. I grabbed a carton of milk out of the refrigerator and drank whole white gulps before going back to bed. The phone rang again at four-forty-six. Hello, I said. Hello, came a woman s voice. Sorry about the time before. There s a disturbance in the sound field. Sometimes the sound goes away. The sound goes away? Yes, she said. The sound field s slipping. Can you hear me? Loud and clear, I said. It was the granddaughter of that kooky old scientist who d given me the unicorn skull. The girl in the pink suit. Grandfather hasn t come back up. And now, the sound field s starting to break up. Something s gone wrong. No one answers when I call the laboratory. Those INKlings have gotten Grandfather, I just know it. Are you sure? Maybe he s gotten all wrapped up in one of his experiments and forgotten to come home. He let you go a whole week sound-removed without noticing, didn t he? its not like that. Not this time. I can tell. Something s happened to Grandfather. Something is wrong. Anyway, the sound barrier s broken, and the underground sound field s erratic. The what s what? The sound barrier, the special audio-signal equipment to keep the INKlings away. They ve forced their way through, and we re losing sound. They ve got Grandfather for sure! How do you know? They ve had their beady little eyes on Grandfather s studies. INKlings. Semiotics. Them. They ve been dying to get their hands on his research. They even offered him a deal, but that just made him mad. Please, come quick. You ve got to help, please. I imagined what it would be like coming face to face with an INKling down there. Those creepy subterranean passageways were enough to make my hair stand on end. I know you re going to think I m terrible, but tabulations are my job. Nothing else is in my contract. I ve got plenty to worry about as it is. I d like to help, honest, but fighting INKlings and rescuing your grandfather is a little out of my line. Why don t you call the police or the authorities at the System? They ve been trained for this sort of thing. I can t call the police. I d have to tell them everything. If Grandfather s research got out now, it d be the end of the world. The end of the world? Please, she begged. I need your help. I m afraid that we ll never get him back. And next they re going to go after you. Me? You maybe, but me? I don t know the first thing about your grandfather s research. You re the key. Without you the door won t open. I have absolutely no idea what you re talking about, I said. I can t explain over the phone. Just believe me. This is important. More than anything you ve ever done. Really! For your own sake, act while you still can. Before its too late. I couldn t believe this was happening to me. Okay, I gave in, but while you re at it, you d better get out of there. It could be dangerous. Where should I go? I gave her directions to an all-night supermarket in Aoyama. Wait for me at the snack bar. I ll be there by five-thirty. I m scared. Somehow it The sound just died. I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun. Was the rupture in the sound field spreading? I hung up, stepped into my trousers, threw on a sweatshirt. I did a quick onceover with the shaver, splashed water on my face, combed my hair. My puss was puffy like cheap cheesecake. I wanted sleep. Was that too much to ask? First unicorns, now INKlings why me? I threw on a windbreaker, and pocketed my wallet, knife, and loose change. Then, after a moment s thought, I wrapped the unicorn skull in two bath towels, gathered up the fire tongs and the strongbox with the shuffled data, and tossed everything into a Nike sports bag. The apartment was definitely not secure. A pro could break into the place and crack the safe in less time than it takes to wash a sock. I slipped into my tennis shoes, one of them still dirty, then headed out the door with the bag. There wasn t a soul in the hallway. I decided against the elevator and sidestepped down the stairs. There wasn t a soul in the parking garage either. It was quiet, too quiet. If they were really after my skull, you d think they d have at least one guy staked out. It was almost as if they d forgotten about me. I got in the car, set the bag next to me, and started the engine. The time, a little before five. I looked around warily as I pulled out of the garage and headed toward Aoyama. The streets were deserted, except for taxis and the occasional night-transport truck. I checked the rearview mirror every hundred meters; no sign of anyone tailing me. Strange how well everything was going. I d seen every Semiotec trick in the book, and if they were up to something, they weren t subtle about it. They wouldn t hire some bungling gas inspector, they wouldn t forget a lookout. They chose the fastest, most surefire methods, and executed them without mercy. A couple of years ago, they captured five Cal-cutecs and trimmed off the tops of their crania with one buzz of a power saw. Five Calcutec bodies were found floating in Tokyo Bay minus their skullcaps. When the Semiotecs meant business, they did business. Something didn t make sense here. I pulled into the Aoyama supermarket parking garage at five-twenty-eight. The sky to the east was getting light. I entered the store carrying my bag. Almost no one was in the place. A young clerk in a striped uniform sat reading a maga-zine; a woman of indeterminate age was buying a cartload of cans and instant food. I turned past the liquor display and went straight to the snack bar. There were a dozen stools, and she wasn t on any of them. I took a seat on one end and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. The milk was so cold I could hardly taste it, the sandwich a soggy ready-made wrapped in plastic. I chewed the sandwich slowly, measuring my sips to make the milk last. I eyed a poster of Frankfurt on the wall. The season was autumn, the trees along the river blazing with color. An old man in a pointed cap was feeding the swans. A great old stone bridge was on one side, and in the background, the spire of a cathedral. People sat on benches, everyone wore coats, the women had scarves on their heads. A pretty postcard picture. But it gave me the chills. Not because of the cold autumn scene. I always get the chills when I see tall, sharp spires. I turned my gaze to the poster on the opposite wall. A shiny-faced young man holding a filter-tip was staring obliquely into the distance. Uncanny how models in cigarette ads always have that not-watching-anything, not-thinking-anything look in their eyes. At six o clock, the chubby girl still hadn t shown. Unaccountable, especially since this was supposed to be so urgent. I was here; where was she? I ordered a coffee. I drank it black, slowly. The supermarket customers gradually increased. Housewives buying the breakfast bread and milk, university students hungry after a long night out, a young woman squeezing a roll of toilet paper, a businessman snapping up three different newspapers, two middleaged men lugging their golf clubs in to purchase a bottle of whiskey. I love supermarkets. I waited until half past six. I went out to the car and drove to Shinjuku Station. I walked to the baggage-check counter and asked to leave my Nike sports bag. Fragile, I told the clerk. He attached a red handle with care tag with a cocktail glass printed on it. I watched as he placed the bag on the shelf. He handed me the claim ticket. I went to a station kiosk. For two hundred sixty yen, I bought an envelope and stamps. I put the claim ticket into the envelope, sealed it, stamped it, and addressed it to a p.o. box I d been keeping under a fictitious company name. I scribbled express on it and dropped the goods into the post. Then I got in the car and went home. I showered and tumbled into bed. At eleven o clock, I had visitors. Considering the sequence of events, it was about time. Still, you d think they could have rung the bell before trying to break the door down. No, they had to come in like an iron wrecking ball, making the floor shake. They could have saved themselves the trouble and wrangled the key out of the superintendent. They could also have saved me a mean repair bill. While my visitors were rearranging the door, I got dressed and slipped my knife into my pocket. Then, to be on the prudent side, I opened the safe and pushed the erase button on the tape recorder. Next, I got potato salad and a beer from the refrigerator for lunch. I thought about escaping via the emergency rope ladder on the balcony, but why bother? Running away wouldn t solve anything. Solve what? I didn t even know what the problem was. I needed a reality check. Nothing but question marks. I finished my potato salad, I finished my beer, and just as I was about to burp, the steel door blew wide open and banged flat down. Enter one mountain of a man, wearing a loud aloha shirt, khaki army-surplus pants stained with grease, and white tennis shoes the size of scuba-diving flippers. Skinhead, pug snout, a neck as thick as my waist. His eyelids formed gun-metal shells over eyes that bulged molten white. False eyes, I thought immediately, until a flicker of the pupils made them seem human. He must have stood two meters tall, with shoulders so broad that the buttons on his aloha shirt were practically flying off his chest. The hulk glanced at the wasted door as casually as he might a popped wine cork, then turned his attentions toward me. No complex feelings here. He looked at me like I was another fixture. Would that I were. He stepped to one side, and behind him there appeared a rather tiny guy. This guy came in at under a meter and a half, a slim, trim figure. He had on a light blue Lacoste shirt, beige chinos, and brown loafers. Had he bought the whole outfit at a nouveau riche children s haberdashery? A gold Rolex gleamed on his wrist, a normal adult model guess they didn t make kiddie Rolexes so it looked disproportionately big, like a communicator from Star Trek. I figured him for his late thirties, early forties. The hulk didn t bother removing his shoes before trudging into the kitchen and swinging around to pull out the chair opposite me. Junior followed presently and quietly took the seat. Big Boy parked his weight on the edge of the sink. He crossed his arms, as thick as normal human thighs, his eyes trained on a point just above my kidneys. I should have escaped while I could have. Junior barely acknowledged me. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and placed them on the table. Benson & Hedges and a gold Dupont. If Junior s accoutrements were any indication, the trade imbalance had to have been fabricated by foreign governments. He twirled the lighter between his fingers. Never a dull moment. I looked around for the Budweiser ashtray I d gotten from the liquor store, wiped it with my fingers, and set it out in front of the guy. He lit up with a clipped flick, narrowed his eyes, and released a puff of smoke. Junior didn t say a word, choosing instead to contemplate the lit end of his cigarette. This was where tht Jean-Luc Godard scene would have been titled 1/ regardait le feu de son tabac. My luck that Godard films were no longer fashionable. When the tip of Junior s cigarette had transformed into a goodly increment of ash, he gave it a measured tap, and the ash fell on the table. For him, an ashtray was extraneous, About the door, began Junior, in a high, piercing voice. It was necessary to break it. That s why we broke it. We could have opened it more gentleman-like if we wanted to. But it wasn t necessary. I hope you don t think bad of us. There s nothing in the apartment, I said. Search it, you ll see. Search? pipped the little man. Search? Cigarette at his lips, he scratched his palm. And what might we be searching for? Well, I don t know, but you must ve come here looking for something. Breaking the door down and all. Can t say I capisce, he spoke, measuredly. Surely you must be mistaken. We don t want nothing. We just came for a little chat. That s all. Not looking and not taking. However, if you would care to offer me a Coca-Cola, I d be happy to oblige. I fished two cans of Coke from the refrigerator, which I set out on the table along with a couple of glasses. I don t suppose he d drink something, too? I said, pointing to the hulk behind me. Junior curled his index finger and Big Boy tiptoed forward to claim a can of Coke. He was amazingly agile for his frame. After you re finished drinking, give him your free demonstration, Junior said to Big Boy. its a little side show, he said to me. I turned around to watch the hulk chug the entire can in one go. Then, after upending it to show that it was empty, he pressed the can between his palms. Not the slightest change came over his face as the familiar red can was crushed into a pathetic scrap of metal. A little trick, anybody could do, said Junior. Next, Big Boy held the flattened aluminum toy up with his fingertips. Effortlessly, though a faint shadow now twitched on his lip, he tore the metal into shreds. Some trick. He can bend hundred-yen coins, too. Not so many humans alive can do that, said Junior with authority. I nodded in agreement. Ears, he rips em right off. I nodded in agreement. Up until three years ago, he was a pro wrestler, Junior explained. Wasn t a bad wrestler. He was young and fast. Championship material. But you know what he did? He went and injured his knee. And in pro wrestling, you gotta be able to move fast. I nodded a third agreement. Since his untimely injury, I ve been looking after him. He s my cousin, you know. Average body types don t run in your family? I queried. Care to say that again? said Junior, glaring at me. Just chatting, I said. Junior collected his thoughts for the next few moments. Then he flicked his cigarette to the floor and ground it out under his shoe. I decided no comment. You really oughta relax more. Open up, take things easy. If you don t relax, how re we have gonna have our nice heart-to-heart? said Junior. You re still too tense. May I get a beer? Certainly. Of course. its your beer in your refrigerator in your apartment. Isn t it? It was my door, too, I added. Forget about the door. You keep thinking so much, no wonder you re tense. It was a tacky cheapo door anyway. You make good money, you oughta move someplace with classier doors. I got my beer. Junior poured Coke in his glass and waited for the foam to go down before drinking. Then he spoke. Forgive the complications. But I wanna explain some things first. We ve come to help you. By breaking down my door? The little man s face turned instantly red. His nostrils flared. There you go with that door again. Didn t I tell you to drop it? he bit his words. Then he turned to Big Boy and repeated the question. Didn t I? The hulk nodded his agreement. We re here on a goodwill mission, Junior went on. You re lost, so we came to give you moral guidance. Well, perhaps lost is not such a nice thing to say. How about confused? Is that better? Lost? Confused? I said. I don t have a clue. No idea, no door. Junior grabbed his gold lighter and threw it hard against the refrigerator, making a dent. Big Boy picked the lighter off the floor and returned it to its owner. Everything was back to where we were before, except for the dent. Junior drank the rest of his Coke to calm down. What s one, two lousy doors? Consider the gravity of the situation. We could service this apartment in no time flat. lets not hear another word about that door. My door. It didn t matter how cheap it was. That wasn t the issue. The door stood for something. All right, forget about the door, I said. This commotion could get me thrown out of the building. If anyone says anything to you, just give me a call. We got an outreach program that ll make believers out of them. Relax. I shut up and drank my beer. And a free piece of advice, Junior offered. Anybody over thirty-five really oughta kick the beer habit. Beer s for college students or people doing physical labor. Gives you a paunch. No class at all. Great advice. I drank my beer. But who am I to tell you what to do? Junior went on. Everybody has his weak points. With me, its smoking and sweets. Especially sweets. Bad for the teeth, leads to diabetes. He lit another cigarette, and glanced at the dial of his Rolex. Well then, Junior cleared his throat. There s not much time, so lets cut the socializing out. Relaxed a bit? A bit, I said. Good. On to the subject at hand, said Junior. Like I was saying, our purpose in coming here was to help you unravel your confusion. Anything you don t know? Go ahead and ask. Junior made a c mon-anything-at-all gesture with his hand. Okay, just who are you guys? I had to open my big mouth. Why are you here? What do you know about what s going on? Smart questions, Junior said, looking over to Big Boy for a show of agreement. You re pretty sharp. You don t waste words, you get right to the point. Junior tapped his cigarette into the ashtray. Kind of him. Think about it this way. We re here to help you. For the time being, what do you care which organization we belong to. We know lots. We know about the Professor, about the skull, about the shuffled data, about almost everything. We know things you don t know too. Next question? Fine. Did you pay off a gas inspector to steal the skull? Didn t I just tell you? said the little man. We don t want the skull, we don t want nothing. Well, who did? Who bought off the gas inspector? That s one of the things we don t know, said Junior. Why don t you tell us? You think I know? I said. All I know is I don t need the grief. We figured that. You don t know nothing. You re being used. So why come here? Like I said, a goodwill courtesy call, said Junior, banging his lighter on the table. Thought we d introduce ourselves. Maybe get together, share a few ideas. Your turn now. What do you think s going on? You want me to speculate? Go right ahead. Let yourself go, free as a bird, vast as the sea. Nobody s gonna stop you. All right, I think you guys aren t from either the System or the Factory. You ve got a different angle on things. I think you re independent operants, looking to expand your turf. Eyeing Factory territory. See? Junior remarked to his giant cousin. Didn t I tell you? The man s sharp. Big Boy nodded. Amazingly sharp for someone living in a dump like this. Amazingly sharp for someone whose wife ran out on him. It had been ages since anyone praised me so highly. I blushed. You speculate good, Junior said. We re going to get our hands on the Professor s research and make a name for us. We got these infowars all figured out. We done our homework. We got the backing. We re ready to move in. We just need a few bits and pieces. That s the nice thing about infowars. Very democratic. Track record counts for nothing. its survival of the sharpest. Survival in a big way. I mean, who s to say we can t cut the pie? Is Japan a total monopoly state or what? The System monopolizes everything under the info sun, the Factory monopolizes everything in the shadows. They don t know the meaning of competition. What ever happened to free enterprise? Is this unfair or what? All we need is the Professor s research, and you. Why me? I said. I m just a terminal worker ant. I don t think about anything but my own work. So if you re thinking of enlisting me You don t seem to get the picture, said Junior, with a click of his tongue. We don t wanna enlist you. We just wanna get our hands on you. Next question? Oh, I see, I said. How about telling me something about the INKlings then. INKlings? A sharp guy like you don t know about INKlings? A.k.a. Infra-Nocturnal Kappa. You thought kappa were folktales? They live underground. They hole up in the subways and sewers, eat the city s garbage, and drink gray-water. They don t bother with human beings. Except for a few subway workmen who disappear, that is, heh heh. Doesn t the government know about them? Sure, the government knows. The state s not that dumb. Then why don t they warn people? Or else drive the INKlings away? First of all, he said, it d upset too many people. Wouldn t want that to happen, would you? INKlings swarming right under their feet, people wouldn t like that. Second, forget about exterminating them. What are you gonna do? Send the whole Japanese SelfDefense Force down into the sewers of Tokyo? The swamp down there in the dark is their stomping grounds. It wouldn t be a pretty picture. Another thing, the INKlings have set up shop not too far from the Imperial Palace. its a strategic move, you understand. Any trouble and they crawl up at night and drag people under. Japan would be upside-down, heh. Am I right? That s why the government doesn t mind INKlings and INKlings doesn t mind the government. But I thought the Semiotecs had made friends with the INKlings, I broke in. A rumor. And even if it was true, it d only mean one group of INKlings got sweet on the Semiotecs. A temporary engagement, not a lasting marriage. Nothing to worry about. But haven t the INKlings kidnapped the Professor? We heard that too. But we don t know for sure. Could be the Professor staged it. Why would the Professor do that? The Professor answers to nobody, Junior said, sizing up his lighter from various angles. He s the best and he knows it. The Semiotecs know it, the Calcutecs know it. He just plays the in-betweens. That way he can push on, doing what he pleases with his research. One of these days he s gonna break through. That s where you fit in. Why would he need me? I don t have any special skills. I m a perfectly ordinary guy. We re trying to figure that one out for ourselves, Junior) admitted, flipping the lighter around in his hands. We got some ideas. Nothing definite. Anyway, he s been studymgall about you. He s been preparing something for a long time now. Oh yeah? So you re waiting for him to put the last piece in place, and then you ll have me and the research. On the money, said Junior. We got some strange weather blowing up. The Factory has sniffed something in the wind and made a move. So we gotta make moves, too. What about the System? No, they re slow on the take. But give em time. They know the Professor real well. What do you mean? The Professor used to work for the System. The System? Right, the Professor is an ex-colleague of yours. Of course, he wasn t doing your kind of work. He was in Central Research. Central Research? This was getting too complicated to follow. I was standing in the middle of it all, only I couldn t see a thing. This System of yours is big, too big. The right hand never knows what the left hand is doing. Too much information, more than you can keep track of. And the Semiotecs are just as bad. That s why the Professor quit the organization and went out on his own. He s a brain man. He s into psychology and all kinds of other stuff about the head. He s what you call a Renaissance Man. What does he need the System for? And I had explained laundering and shuffling to this man? He d invented the tech! What a joke I was. Most of the Calcutec compu-systems around are his design. That s no exaggeration. You re like a worker bee stuffed full of the old man s honey, pronounced the little man. Not a very nice metaphor, maybe. Don t mind me, I said. The minute the Professor quit, who should come knock-ing on his door but scouts from the Factory. But the Professor said no go. He said he had his own windows to wash, which lost him a lotta admirers. He knew too much for the Cal-cutecs, and the Semiotecs had him pegged for a round hole. Anyone who s not for you is against you, right? So when he built his laboratory underground next to the INKlings, it was the Professor against everybody. You been there, I believe? I nodded. Real nuts but brilliant. Nobody can get near that laboratory. The whole place is crawling with INKlings. The Professor comes and goes. He puts out sound waves to scare the INKlings. Perfect defense. That girl of his and you are the only people who s ever been inside. Goes to show how important you are. So we figure, the Professor s about to throw you in the box and tie things up. I grunted. This was getting weird. Even if I believed him, I wouldn t believe it. Are you telling me that all the experiment data I processed for the Professor was just so he could lure me in? No-o, not at all, said the little man. He cast another quick glance at his watch. The data was a program. A time bomb. Time comes and booom! Of course, this is just our guess. Only your Professor knows for sure. Well, I see time s running out, so I think we cut short our little chit-chat. We got ourselves a little appointment after this. Wait a second, what s happened to the Professor s granddaughter? Something happened to the kid? Junior asked innocently. We don t know nothing about it. Can t watch out for everybody, you know. Had something for the little sweetheart, did you? No, I said. Well, probably not. Junior stood up from his chair without taking his eyes off me, swept up his lighter and cigarettes from the table and slipped them into his pocket. I believe it was nice getting to know you. But let me back up and tell you a secret. Right now, we re one step ahead of the Semiotecs. Still, we re small, so if they decide to get their tails in gear, we get crushed; We need to keep them occupied. Capisce? I suppose, I said. Now if you were in our position, what do you think d keep them nice and occupied? The System? was my guess. See? Junior again remarked to Big Boy. Sharp and to the point. Didn t I tell you? Then he looked back at me. But for that, we need bait. No bait, no bite. I don t really feel up to that sort of thing, I said quickly. We re not asking you how you feel, he said. We re in a bit of a hurry. So now its our turn for one little question. In this apartment, what things do you value the most? There s nothing here, I said. Nothing of any value. its all cheap stuff. We know that. But there s gotta be something, some trinket you don t wanna see destroyed. Cheap or not, its your life here, eh? Destroyed? I said. What do you mean, destroyed? Destroyed, you know… destroyed. Like with the door, said the little man, pointing to the thing lying blown off its twisted hinges. Destruction. What for? Destruction for the sake of destruction. You want an explanation? Why don t you just tell us what you don t want to see destroyed. We want to show them the proper respect. Well, the videodeck, I said, giving in. And the TV. They re kind of expensive and I just bought them. Then there s my collection of whiskeys. Anything else? My new suit and my leather jacket. its a U.S. Air Force bomber jacket with a fur collar. Anything else? That s all, I said. The little man nodded. The big man nodded. Immediately, Big Boy went around opening all the cupboards and closets. He found the Bullworker I sometimes use for exercising, and swung it around behind him to do a full back-press. Very impressive. He then gripped the shaft like a baseball bat. I leaned forward to see what he was up to. He went over to the TV, raised the Bullworker, and took a full swing at the picture tube. Krrblam! Glass shattered everywhere, accompanied by a hundred short sputtering flashes. Hey!… I shouted, clamoring to my feet before Junior slapped his palm flat on the table to silence me. Next Big Boy lifted the videodeck and pounded it over and over again on a corner of the former TV. Switches went flying, the cord shorted, and a cloud of white smoke rose up into the air like a saved soul. Once the videodeck was good and destroyed, Big Boy tossed the carcass to the floor and pulled a switchblade from his pocket. The blade sprang open. Now he was going through my wardrobe and retailoring close to two-hundredthousand-yen worth of bomber jacket and Brooks Brothers suit. But you said you were going to leave my valuables alone, I cried. I never said that. I said we were gonna show them the proper respect. We always start with the best. Our little pol-icy. Big Boy was bringing new meaning to the word destruction in my cozy, tasteful apartment. I pulled another can of beer out of the refrigerator and sat back to watch the fireworks. Woods IN due time, autumn too vanishes. One morning I awake, and from a glance at the sky I know winter is near. Gone are the high, sprightly autumn clouds; in their place a heavy cloud bank glowers over the Northern Ridge, like a messenger bearing ill tidings. Autumn had been welcomed as a cheerful and comely visitor; its stay was too brief, its departure too abrupt. The passing of autumn leaves a temporary blank, an empty hole in the year that is not of a season at all. The beasts begin to lose the sheen from their coats, lose their golden hue, bleaching slowly white. It is an announcement that winter draws near. All living things in the Town hang their heads, their bodies braced for the freezing season. Signs of winter shroud the Town like an invisible skin. The sound of the wind, the swaying of the grasses, the clack of heels on the cobblestones in the still of night, all grow remote under an ominous weight. Even the waters of the River, once so pleasant as they lapped at the sandbars, no longer soothe me. There is an instinctive withdrawal for the sake of preservation, a closure that assumes the order of completion. Winter is a season unto itself. The short cries of the birds grow thin and shrill; at times only the flapping of their wings disturbs the void. This winter promises to be especially harsh, observes the Colonel. You can tell from the look of the clouds. Here, see for yourself how dark they are. The old officer leads me to the window and points toward the thick clouds astride the hills. Each year at this time, the first wave of winter clouds stations itself along the Northern Ridge. They are the emissaries of the onslaught to come. Light, flat clouds mean mild temperatures. Thicker clouds, colder weather. Most fearsome of all are the clouds that spread their wings, like birds of prey. When they appear, a bitter winter is on its way. For example, that cloud there. Squinting, I scan the sky above the Northern Ridge. Faint though it is, I do recognize the cloud the old officer has described. Massive as a mountain, it stretches the entire length of the ridge, an evil roc ready to swoop down from the heights. Once every fifty or sixty years, there comes a killing winter, says the Colonel. You have no coat, do you? No, I do not, I say. I have only the light cotton jacket I was given when I first came to Town. The old officer opens his wardrobe and brings out a dark blue military coat. He hands it to me. The coat is heavy as stone, its wool rough to the touch. A little large, but it will serve you well. I procured it for you a short while ago. How is the size? I slip into the coat. The shoulders are too wide and the form somehow not right, but it will do. As the old officer has said, it will serve me well. Are you still drawing your map? the Colonel asks. I am, I say. There are some areas I do not know, but I am determined to finish it. I will not discourage you from your maps. That is your own concern, and it bothers no one. No, I will not say it is wrong, although after winter is here, you must stop all excursion into the Woods. Venturing far from inhabited areas is not wise, especially this winter. The Town, as you know, is not extensive, but you can lose your way. It would be better to leave your mapmaking for spring. I understand, I say. When does winter begin? With the snow. The first flakes of snow signal the beginning of winter. When the snow melts from the sandbars in the River, winter is at its end. We gaze at the clouds on the Northern Ridge, drinking our morning coffee. One more important thing, the Colonel resumes. Keep your distance from the Wall and from the Woods. In winter, they take on an awesome power. What is this about the Woods? What is it that they have? Nothing at all, says the old military man after a moment of reflection. Nothing at all. At least, it is nothing we need. For us, the Woods are an unnecessary terrain. Does no one live in the woods? The old officer lifts the trap on the stove and sweeps out the ash. He then lays in a few twigs of kindling and some coal. We may need to light the stoves beginning tonight, he says. Our firewood and coal are from the Woods. Yes, and mushrooms and tea and other provisions as well. So in that sense, the Woods are of use to us. But that is all. Other than that, nothing is there. Then there are persons in the Woods who make their living by shovelling the coal and gathering firewood and mushrooms? Yes, a few do live there. They bring their coal and firewood and mushrooms to Town, and in return we give them grain and clothing. There is a place where these exchanges take place weekly, but it is carried out only by specified individuals. No other contact with the Woodsfolk is to be had. They do not come near the Town; we do not go near the Woods. Their existence is wholly different from our own. How so? In every sense, says the old officer, they are different from us. But it is not wise to take an interest in them. They are dangerous. They can exert an influence over you. You are not yet formed as a person here. And until such time as various aspects of you are determined, I advise you to protect yourself from such danger. The Woods are but woods. You need merely write Woods on your map. Is that understood? Understood. Then, there is the Wall. The winter Wall is the height of danger. In winter, particularly, the Wall shuts the Town in. It is impenetrable and it encloses us irrevocably. The Wall sees everything that transpires within. Be careful to do nothing that takes you near the Wall. I must repeat: you are as yet unformed. You have doubts, you have contradictions, you have regrets, you are weak. Winter is the most dangerous season for you. All the same, before winter sets in, I must venture forth into the Woods. It will soon be time to deliver the map, as promised, to my shadow. He has expressly asked that I investigate the Woods. After I have done that, the map will be ready. The cloud on the Northern Ridge poses, lifting its wings, leaning forward as if to sail out over the Town. The sun is setting. The sky is overcast, a pallid cover through which the light filters and settles. To my eyes that are less than eyes, this is a season of relief. Gone, the days of brazen clear skies. There will be no headstrong breezes to sweep away the clouds. I enter the Woods from the riverside road, intending to walk straight into the interior, keeping parallel to the Wall so I do not to lose my way. Thus will I also sketch the outline of the Wall around the Woods. This does not prove easy. Mid-route there are deep hollows where the ground drops away. I step carefully, yet find myself plunged into thick blackberry brambles. Marshy ground thwarts passage; elsewhere spiders hang their webs to net my face and hands. An awning of enormous branches tinges the Woods in sea-bottom gloom. Roots crawl through the forest floor like a virulent skin disease. At times I imagine I hear movement in the dense undergrowth. Yet once I turn from the Wall and set foot in the forest interior, there unfolds a mysteriously peaceful world. Infused with the life breath one senses in the wild, the Woods give me release. How can this be the minefield of dangers the old Colonel has warned me against? Here the trees and plants and tiny living things partake of a seamless living fabric; in every stone, in every clod of earth, one senses an immutable order. The farther I venture from the Wall and proceed into the forest interior, the stronger these impressions become. All shades of misfortune soon dissipate, while the very shapes of the trees and colors of the foliage grow somehow more restive, the bird songs longer and more leisurely. In the tiny glades, in the breezes that wend through the inner woodlands, there is none of the darkness and tension I have felt nearer the Wall. Why should these surroundings make so marked a difference? Is it the power of the Wall that disturbs the air? Is it the land itself? No matter how pleasant this walk deeper into the Woods may be, I dare not relinquish sight of the Wall. For should I stray deep into the Woods, I will have lost all direction. There are no paths, no landmarks to guide me. I moderate my steps. I do not meet any forest dwellers. I see not a footprint, not an artifact shaped by human hands. I walk, afraid, expectant. Perhaps I have not traveled far enough into the interior. Perhaps they are skillfully avoiding me. On the third or fourth day of these explorations, coming to a point where the eastern Wall takes a sharp turn to the south, I discover a small glade. It is open space, which fans briefly outward from a tuck in the bend of the Wall. Inexplicably, it is untouched by the surrounding growth of dense forest. This one clearing is permeated with a repose that seems uncharacteristic so close to the Wall, a tranquillity such as I have known only in the inner Woods. A lush carpet of grass spreads over the ground, while overhead a puzzle-piece of sky cuts through the treetops. At one extreme of the glade stands a raised masonry foundation that once supported a building. The foundation suggests that the walls of this edifice had been laid out with meticulous precision. Tracing the floorplan, I find three separate rooms in addition to what I imagine were a kitchen, bath, and hallway. I struggle to understand why a home had been built so deep in the Woods, why it has been so completely abandoned. Behind the kitchen are the remains of a stone well. It is overgrown with grass. Would the occupants themselves have filled it in? I sit down, leaning against the well and gazing up at the sky. A wind blowing in off the Northern Ridge rustles the branches of the trees around me. A cloud, heavy with moisture, edges across the sky. I turn up my collar and watch it move slowly past. The Wall looms behind the ruins of the house. Never in the Woods have I been this close to the Wall. It is literally breathtaking. Here in this tiny clearing in the Eastern Woods, resting by this old well, listening to the sound of the wind, looking up at the Wall, I fully understand the words of the Gatekeeper: This Wall is perfect. A perfect creation. It rises as it has risen from the beginning. Like the clouds above, like the River etched into the earth. The Wall is far too grand to capture on a map. It is not static. Its pulse is too intense, its curves too sublime. Its face changes dramatically with each new angle. An accurate rendering on paper cannot be possible. I feel a futility in my attempt to do so in my sketchbook. I shut my eyes to doze. The wind swirls at an incessant pitch, but the trees and the Wall offer protection from the chill. I think about my shadow. I think of the map he has asked for. There is not much time left. My map is lacking in precision and detail. The inner reaches of the Woods are a near blank. But winter is almost here. There will be less and less opportunity to explore further. In the sketchbook I have drawn a general outline of the Town, including the location of landmarks and buildings. I have made annotations of facts I have learned. It is not certain that the Gatekeeper will allow me near my shadow, even as he has promised to let us meet once the days are shorter and my shadow is weaker. Now that winter is near, these conditions would seem surely to be fulfilled. My eyes still closed, I think about the Librarian. I am filled with sadness, although I cannot locate the source of these feelings. I have been seeing the Librarian daily, but the void in me remains. I have read the old dreams in the Library. She has sat beside me. We have supped together. I have walked her home. We have talked of many things. Unreasonably, my sorrow only seems to grow, to deepen. Whatever is the loss becomes greater each time we meet. It is a well that will never be filled. It is dark, unbearably so. I suppose these feelings are linked to forgotten memories. I have sought for some connection in her. I learn nothing in myself. The mystery does not yield. My own existence seems weak, uncertain. I shake these convoluted thoughts from my head and seek out sleep. I awake to find that the day is nearly over, that the temperature has dropped sharply. I am shivering. I pull niy coat tight around me. As I stand and brush off the grass, flakes of snow touch my cheek. I look up. The clouds are low, a forbidding gloom builds. There is a flurry of large snowflakes drifting gently down. Winter is come. Before I begin my way back, I steal one more glance at the Wall. Beneath the snowswept heavens, it rears up more stately, more perfect than ever. As I gaze up at it, I feel them peering at me. What are you doing here? they seem to say. What are you looking for? Questions I cannot answer. The short sleep in the cold has consumed all warmth in me, leaving my head swimming with abstract shapes. Do I occupy the body of another? Everything is so ponderously heavy, so vague. I race through the Woods, toward the East Gate, determined now not to look at the Wall. It is a long distance I must travel. The darkness gathers moment by moment. My balance degenerates. I stop again and again to stir up the strength to persevere, to press the numbness from my nerves. I feel the visit of night. I may hear the sounding of the horn in the Woods. It passes through my awareness without trace. At last I emerge from the Woods onto the bank of the River. The ground is clothed in blankness. No moon, no stars, all has been subdued by the flurries of snow. I hear the chill sound of the water, the wind taunting through the trees behind me. How much further to the Library? I cannot remember. All I recall is a road along the River, leading on and on. The willows sway in the shadows, the wind whips overhead. I walk and walk, but there is no end in sight. She sits me in front of the stove and places her hand on my forehead. Her hand is as ice. My reflex is to push it away, but I cannot raise my hand. For when I do, I feel a sudden nausea. You are fevered, she says. Where on the earth have you gone? I find it impossible to answer. I am without words. I cannot even comprehend what it is she asks. She brings several blankets and wraps me in them. I lie by the stove. Her hair touches my cheek. I do not want her to go away. I cannot tell if the thought is mine or if it has floated loose from some fragment of memory. I have lost so many things. I am so tired. I feel myself drifting, away, a little by little. I am overcome by the sensation that I am crumbling, parts of my being drifting, away. Which part of me is thinking this? She holds my hand. Sleep well, I hear her say, from beyond a dark distance. Whiskey, Torture, Turgenev Big BOY didn t leave one bottle unbroken. Not one lousy bottle of my collection of whiskeys. I had a standing relationship with the neighborhood liquor dealer who would bring over any bargains in imported whiskey, so it had gotten to be quite a respectable stash. Not any more. The hulk started with two bottles of Wild Turkey, moving next to one Cutty Sark and three I. W. Harpers, then demolished two Jack Daniels, the Four Roses, the Haig, saving the half dozen bottles of Chivas Regal for last. The racket was intense, but the smell was worse. I m getting drunk just sitting here, Junior said with admiration. , There wasn t much for me to do but plant my elbows on the table and watch the mound of broken glass pile up in the sink. Big Boy whistled through it all. I couldn t recog-nize the tune, supposing there was one. First high and shrill, then low and harsh, it sounded more like a scraping violin bow. The screech of it was insanity itself. Big Boy was methodical with the meaningless destruction. Maybe it made sense to them, not to me. He overturned the bed, slit the mattress, rifled through my wardrobe, dumped my desk drawers onto the floor, ripped the air-conditioner panel off the wall. He knocked over the trash, then plowed through the bedding closet, breaking whatever happened to be in the way. Swift and efficient. Then it was on to the kitchen: dishes, glasses, coffeepot, the works. Junior and I moved our seats to the living room. We righted the toppled sofa, which by a freak stroke of fortune was otherwise unscathed, and sat on opposite armrests. Now this was a truly comfortable sofa, a top-of-the-line model I d bought cheap off a cameraman friend who d blown his fuse in the middle of a thriving commercial career and split for the back country of Nagano. Too bad about the fuse, not so bad about the sofa I d acquired as a result. And there was a chance that the sofa would be salvageable still. For all the noise that Big Boy was making, not one other resident of the apartment building came to investigate. True, almost everyone on my floor was single and at work during the day a fact apparently not lost upon my visitors. These guys were thugs, but they weren t dumb. The little man eyed his Rolex from time to time as if to check the progress of the operation, while Big Boy continued his tour of destructive duty with never a wasted motion. He was so thorough, I couldn t have hidden away a pencil if I had wanted to. Yet, like Junior had announced at the beginning, they weren t really looking for anything. They were simply making a point. For what? To convince a third party of their attention to detail? And who might that third party be? I drank the rest of my beer and set the empty can on the coffee table. Big Boy had gotten to the food: salt, flour, and rice went flying everywhere; a dozen frozen shrimp, a beef filet, natural ice cream, premium butter, a thirty-centimeter length of salmon roe, my homemade tomato sauce on the linoleum floor like meteorites nosediving into asphalt. Next, Big Boy picked up the refrigerator and flipped it door-side down to the floor. The wiring shorted and let loose with a shower of sparks. What electrician was going to believe this? My head hurt. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the destruction stopped. No ifs, ands, or buts the demolition came to an instant halt, Big Boy standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, very nonchalant. How long had it taken him to total my apartment so exquisitely? Fifteen minutes, thirty minutes? Something like that. Too long for fifteen, too short for thirty. But however long it took, the way that Junior was proudly eyeing his Rolex suggested that Big Boy had made good time. As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to. Seems like you re gonna be busy cleaning up, Junior said to me. And paying for it too, I added. Money s no object here. This is war. Nobody would win a war if they stopped to calculate the cost. its not my war. Whose war don t matter. Whose money don t matter either. That s what war is. Junior coughed into a white handkerchief, inspecting it before putting it back into his pocket. Never trust a man who carries a handkerchief, I always say. One of many prejudicial rules of thumb. Now listen, Junior got serious, not too long after we leave, the boys from the System will be stopping by to pay their respects. You go ahead and tell them about us. Say we broke in and busted up the place hunting for something. Tell them we asked you where the skull was, but you didn t know nothing about no skull. Got it? You can t squeal about something you don t know and you can t fork over something you don t have. Even under torture. That s why we re gonna leave empty-handed as when we came. Torture? I choked. Nobody s gonna doubt you. They don t even know you paid a visit to the Professor. For the time being, we re the only ones who know that. So no harm s gonna come to you. A Calcutec like yourself with a Record of Excellence? Hell, they got no choice but to trust you. They re gonna think we re Factory. And they re gonna wanna do something about it. We got it all worked out. Torture? I choked again. What do you mean, torture? You ll find out soon enough, said the little man. What if I spilled the whole works to the folks at Headquarters? Just thought I d ask. Don t be dumb. You d get rubbed out by your own fellas. That s not an exaggeration. Think about it. You went to the Professor s place on a job, you didn t tell the System. You broke the freeze on shuffling. And worse, you let the Professor use you in his experiments. They gonna like that? You re doing a very dangerous balancing act, pal. Our faces met from either end of the sofa. I have a question, I said. How do I stand to benefit from cooperating with you and lying to the System? I know zero about you guys. What s in it for me? That s easy, Junior chirped. We got the lowdown on what s in store for you, but we re letting you live. Your organization doesn t know nothing about the situation you re in. But if they did, they might decide to eliminate you. I figure your odds are way better with us. Sooner or later, the System is going to find out about this situation, as you call it. I don t know what this situation is, but the System s not so stupid. Maybe so, said Junior. But that s later. This is now. If all goes according to schedule, you and us, we re gonna have our problems solved in the meantime. That s your choice, if you re looking for one. Let me put it another way: its like chess. You get checked, you beat a retreat. And while you re scrambling around, maybe your opponent will screw up. Everybody screws up, even the smartest players. Junior checked his watch again, then turned to Big Boy and snapped his fingers. Whereupon the hulk blinked to life, a robot with the juice switched on. He lifted his jaw and hunkered over to the sofa, positioning himself like a room divider. No, not a room divider, more like a drive-in movie screen. His body blocked the ceiling light, throwing me into a pale shadow, like when I was in elementary school and all the kids held up a pane of glass smoked with candle soot to view a solar eclipse. A quarter of a century ago that was. Look where that quarter of a century had gotten me. And now, he resumed, I m afraid we re gonna have to make things a little unpleasant. Well, maybe you re gonna think its more than a little unpleasant. But just remember, we re doing it for you. its not like we wanna do it. We re doing it because we got no choice. Take off your pants. I did as I was told. As if 7 had any choice. Kneel down. I kneeled down. I felt funny doing it in my sweatshirt and jockey shorts, but there wasn t much time for meditation as Big Boy swooped in behind me and pinned my wrists to the small of my back. Then he locked my ankles firmly between his legs. His movements were very fluid. I didn t particularly feel tied down, but when I tried to budge, a sharp pain shot through me. I was immobilized, like a duck sitting in a shooting gallery. Meanwhile, Junior found Big Boy s knife. He flicked the seven-centimeter blade open, then ran the blade through the flame of his lighter. This compact knife didn t look like a lethal weapon, but it was obviously no dime-store toy. It was sharp enough to slice a person to pieces. The human fruit is always ripe for peeling. After sterilizing the blade, Junior let it cool slightly. Then he yanked down the waistband of my jockey shorts and exposed my penis. Now this is going to hurt a little, he said. A tennis-ball-sized lump of air bounced up from my stomach and lodged in my throat. Sweat beaded up on my nose. I was shaking. At this rate, I d never be able to get an erection. But no, the guy didn t do anything to my cock. He simply gripped it to death, while he took the still-warm blade and glided it across my stomach. Straight as a ruler, a sixcentimeter horizontal gash, two centimeters below my navel. I tried to suck in my gut, but between Big Boy s clamp on my back and Junior s grip on my cock, I couldn t move a hair. Cold sweat gushed from every pore of my body. Then, a moment after the surgery was over, I was wracked with searing pain. Junior wiped the blood off the knife with a kleenex and folded the blade away. Big Boy let me drop. My white jockey shorts were turning red. Big Boy fetched a towel from the bathroom, and I pressed it to the wound. Seven stitches and you ll be like new, Junior diagnosed. It ll leave a scar, but nobody s gonna see it. Sorry we had to do it, but you ll live. I pulled back the towel and looked at the wound. The cut wasn t very deep, but deep enough to see pink. We re gonna go now. When your System boys show up, let em see this little example of wanton violence. Tell em when you wouldn t tell us where the skull was, we went nuts. But next time, our aims won t be so high, and we might have to go for your nuts, heh heh. You can tell em we said that. Anyway, you didn t know nothing, so you didn t tell us nothing. That s why we decided to take a rain check. Got it? We can do a real nice job if we want to. Maybe one day soon, if we have the time, we ll give you another demonstration. I crouched there with the towel pressed against my gut. Don t ask me why, but I got the feeling I d be better off playing their game. So you did set up that poor gas inspector, I sputtered. You had him blow the act on purpose so I would go hide the stuff. Clever, clever, said the little man. Keep that head of yours working and maybe you ll survive. On that note, my two visitors left. There was no need to see them out. The mangled frame of my steel door was now open for all the world. I stripped off my blood-stained underwear and threw it in the trash, then I moistened some gauze and wiped the blood from the wound. The gash throbbed pain with every move. The sleeves of my sweatshirt were also bloody, so I tossed it too. Then from the clothes scattered on the floor, I found a dark T-shirt which wouldn t show the blood too much, a pair of jockeys, and some loose trousers. Thirty minutes later, right on schedule, three men from Headquarters arrived. One of whom was the smart-ass young liaison who always came around to pick up data, outfitted in the usual business suit, white shirt, and bank clerk s tie. The other two were dressed like movers. Even so, they didn t look a thing like a bank clerk and movers; they looked like they were trying to look like a bank clerk and movers. Their eyes shifted all over the place; every motion was tense. They didn t knock before walking into the apartment, shoes and all, either. The two movers began immediately to check the apartment while the bank clerk proceeded to debrief me. He scribbled the facts down with a mechanical pencil in a black notebook. As I explained to him, a two-man unit had broken in, wanting a skull. I didn t know anything about a skull; they got violent and slashed my stomach. I pulled my briefs down. The clerk examined the wound momentarily, but made no comment about it. Skull? What the hell were they talking about? I have no idea, I said. I d like to know myself. You really don t know? the bank clerk probed further, his voice uninflected. This is critical, so think carefully. You won t be able to alter your statement later. Semiotecs don t make a move if they have nothing to go on. If they came to your apartment looking for a skull, they must have had a reason for thinking you had a skull in your apartment. They don t dream things up. Furthermore, that skull must have been valuable enough to come looking for. Given these obvious facts, its hard to believe you don t know anything about it. If you re so smart, why don t you tell me what this skull business is supposed to be about, I said. There will be an investigation, the bank clerk said, tapping his mechanical pencil on his notebook. A thorough investigation, and you know how thorough the System can be. If you re discovered to be hiding something, you will be dealt with commensurately. You are aware of this? I was aware of this, I told him. I didn t know how this was going to turn out, but neither did they. Nobody can outguess the future. We had a hunch the Semiotecs were up to something. They re mobilizing. But we don t know what they re after, and we don t know how you fit into it. We don t know what to make of this skull either. But as more clues come in, you can be sure we ll get to the heart of the matter. We always do. So what am I supposed to do? Be very careful. Cancel any jobs you have. Pay attention to anything unusual. If anything comes up, contact me immediately. Is the telephone still in service? I lifted the receiver and got a dial tone. Obviously, the two thugs had chosen to leave the telephone alone. The line s okay. Good, he said. Remember, if anything happens, no matter how trivial, get in touch with me right away. Don t even think about trying to solve things yourself. Don t think about hiding anything. Those guys aren t playing softball. Next time you won t get off with a scratch. Scratch? You call that a scratch? The movers reported back after completing their survey of the premises. We ve conducted a full search, said the older mover. They didn t overlook a thing, went about it very smoothly. Professional job. Semiotecs. The liaison nodded, and the two operants exited. It was now the liaison and me. If all they were looking for was a skull, I wondered out loud, why would they rip up my clothes? How was I supposed to hide a skull there? If there was a skull, I mean. They were professionals. Professionals think of every contingency. You might have put the skull in a coin locker and they were looking for the key. A key can be hidden anywhere. True, I said. Quite true. By the way, did these Factory henchmen make you a proposition? A proposition? Yeah, a propostion. That you go to work for them, for example. An offer of money, a position. If they did, I sure didn t hear it. They just demanded their skull. Very well, said the liaison. If anyone makes you an offer, you are to forget it. You are not to play along. If the System ever discovers you played ball with them, we will find you, wherever you are, and we will terminate you. This is not a threat; this is a promise. The System is the state. There is nothing we cannot do. I ll keep that in mind, I said. When I was alone again, I went over the story piece by piece. No matter how I stacked the essential details, they didn t lead anywhere. At the heart of the mystery was the Professor and whatever he was up to. If I didn t know that, I couldn t know anything. And I didn t have the vaguest notion what was whirling around in that old head of his. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had let myself betray the System. If they found that out and soon enough they would that d be the end, exactly as my smart-ass bank-clerk liaison had been kind enough to point out. Even if I had been coerced into lying like I did. The System wasn t known for making exceptions on any account. As I was assessing these circumstances, my wound began to throb. Better go to the hospital. I rang up for a taxi. Then I stepped into my shoes. Bending over to tie my laces, I was in such pain I thought my body was going to shear in two. I left the apartment wide open as if I had any other option and took the elevator down. I waited for the cab behind the hedge by the entranceway. It was one-thirty by my watch. Two and a half hours since the demolition derby had begun. A very long two-and-a-half hours ago. Housewives filed past, leek and daikon radish tops sticking up from supermarket bags. I found myself envying them. They hadn t had their refrigerators raped or their bellies slashed. Leeks and daikon and the kids grades all was right with the world. No unicorn skulls or secret codes or consciousness transfers. This was normal, everyday life. I thought, of all things, about the frozen shrimp and beef and tomato sauce on the kitchen floor. Probably should eat the stuff before the day was out. Waste not, want not. Trouble was, I didn t want. The mailman scooted up on a red Supercub and dis-tributed the mail to the boxes at the entrance of the building. Some boxes received tons of mail, others hardly anything at all. The mailman didn t touch my box. He didn t even look at it. Beside the mailboxes was a potted rubber plant, the ceramic container littered with popsicle sticks and cigarette butts. The rubber plant looked as worn out as I felt. Seemed like every passerby had heaped abuse on the poor thing. I didn t know how long it d been sitting there. I must have walked by it every day, but until I got knifed in the gut, I never noticed it was there. When the doctor saw my wound, the first thing he asked was how I managed to get a cut like that. A little argument over a woman, I said. It was the only story I could come up with. In that case, I have to inform the police, the doctor said. Police? No, it was me who was in the wrong, and luckily the wound isn t too deep. Could we leave the police out of it, please? The doctor muttered and fussed, but eventually he gave in. He disinfected the wound, gave me a couple of shots, then brought out the needle and thread. The nurse glared suspiciously at me as she plastered a thick layer of gauze over the stitches, then wrapped a rubber belt of sorts around my waist to hold it in place. I felt ridiculous. Avoid vigorous activity, cautioned the doctor. No sex or belly-laughing. Take it easy, read a book, and come back tomorrow. I said my thanks, paid the bill, and went home. With great pain and difficulty, I propped the door up in place, then, as per doctor s orders, I climbed into what there was of my bed with Turgenev s Rudin. Actually, I d wanted to read Spring Torrents, but I would never have found it in my shambles of an apartment. And besides, if you really think about it, Spring Torrents isn t that much better a novel than Rudin. I got up and went to the kitchen, where I poked around in the mess of broken bottles in the sink. There under spears of glass, I found the bottom of a bottle of Chivas that was fairly intact, holding maybe a jigger of precious amber liquid. I held the bottle-bottom up to the light, and seeing no glass bits, I took my chances on the lukewarm whiskey for a bedtime nurse. I d read Rudin before, but that was fifteen years ago in university. Rereading it now, lying all bandaged up, sipping my whiskey in bed in the afternoon, I felt new sympathy for the protagonist Rudin. I almost never identify with anybody in Dostoyevsky, but the characters in Turgenev s old-fashioned novels are such victims of circumstance, I jump right in. I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky s characters don t generate pathos, but they re flawed in ways that don t come across as faults. And while I m on the subject, Tolstoy s characters faults are so epic and out of scale, they re as static as backdrops. I finished Rudin and tossed the paperback on top of what had been a bookcase, then I returned to the glass pile in the sink in search of another hidden pocket of whiskey. Near the bottom of the heap I spied a scant shot of Jack Daniels, which I coaxed out and took back to bed, together with Stendhal s The Red and the Black. What can I say? I seemed to be in the mood for passe literature. In this day and age, how many young people read The Red and the Black? I didn t care. I also happened to identify with Julien Sorel. Sorel s basic character flaws had all cemented by the age of fifteen, a fact which further elicited my sympathy. To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age was, by any standard, a tragedy. It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon. Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom. Walls. A world completely surrounded by walls. I shut the book and bid the last thimbleful of Jack Daniels farewell, turning over in my mind the image of a world within walls. I could picture it, with no effort at all. A very high wall, a very large gate. Dead quiet. Me inside. Beyond that, the scene was hazy. Details of the world seemed to be distinct enough, yet at the same time everything around me was dark and blurred. And from some great obscure distance, a voice was calling. It was like a scene from a movie, a historical blockbuster. But which? Not El Cid, not Ben Hur, not Spartacus. No, the image had to be something my subconscious dreamed up. I shook my head to drive the image from my mind. I was so tired. Certainly, the walls represented the limitations hemming in my life. The silence, residue of my encounter with sound-removal. The blurred vision of my surroundings, an indication that my imagination faced imminent crisis. The beckoning voice, the everything-pink girl, probably. Having subjected the hallucination to this quick-and-dirty analysis, I reopened my book. But I was no longer able to concentrate. My life is nothing, I thought. Zero. Zilch. A blank. What have I done with my life? Not a damned thing. I had no home. I had no family. I had no friends. Not a door to my name. Not an erection either. Pretty soon, not even a job. That peaceful fantasy of Greek and cello was vaporizing as I lay there. If I lost my job, I could forget about taking life easy. And if the System was going to chase me to the ends of the earth, when would I find the time to memorize irregular Greek verbs? I shut my eyes and let out a deep sigh, then rejoined The Red and the Black. What was lost was lost. There was no retrieving it, however you schemed, no returning to how things were, no going back. I wouldn t have noticed that the day was over were it not for the Turgenevo-Stendhalian gloom that had crept in around me. By my keeping off my feet, the pain in my stomach had subsided. Dull bass beats throbbed occasionally from the wound, but I just rode them out. Awareness of the pain was passing. The clock read seven-twenty, but I felt no hunger. You d think I might have wanted to eat something after the day I d had, but I cringed at the very thought of food. I was short of sleep, my gut was slashed, and my apartment was gutted. There was no room for appetite. Looking at the assortment of debris around me, I was reminded of a near-future world turned wasteland buried deep in its own garbage. A science fiction novel I d read. Well, my apartment looked like that. Shredded suit, broken videodeck and TV, pieces of a flowerpot, a floor lamp bent out of shape, trampled records, tomato sauce, ripped-out speaker wires… Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy novels spattered with dirty vase water, cut gladioli lying in niemorium on a fallen cashmere sweater with a blob of Pelikan ink on the sleeve… All of it, useless garbage. When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal. But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn t make anything. Where does a busted videodeck get you? I went back to the kitchen to try to salvage a few more sips of whiskey, but the proverbial last drop was not to be found. Gone down the drain, to the world of the INKlings. As I rummaged through the sink, I cut a finger on a sliver of glass. I studied my finger as the blood fell drop by drop onto a whiskey label. After a real wound, what s a little cut? Nobody ever died from a cut on his finger. I let the blood run and drip. The bleeding showed no sign of stopping, so I finally staunched it with kleenex. Several empty beer cans were lying around like shell casings after a mortar barrage. I stooped to pick one up; the metal was warm. Better warm drops of beer than none, I thought. So I ferried the empties back to bed and continued reading The Red and the Black while extracting the last few milliliters out of each can. I needed something to release the tensions and let me rest. Was that too much to ask? I wanted to nod out for as long as it took the earth to spin one Michael Jackson turnaround. Sleep came over me in my wasteland of a home a little before nine o clock. I tossed The Red and the Black to the floor, switched off the light, and curled up to sleep. Embryonic amid devastation. But only for a couple of hours. At eleven, the chubby girl in her pink suit was shaking me by the shoulders. Wake up, please. Please! she cried. This is no time to be sleeping! She pounded on me with her fists. Please. If you don t get up, the world is going to end! The Coming of Winter I WAKE amidst reassuringly familiar smells. I am in my bed, my room. But the impression of everything is slightly altered. The scene seems recreated from memory. The stains on the ceiling, the marks on the plaster walls, small details. It is raining outside. I hear it, ice cold, striking the roof, pouring into the ground. The sounds could be coming from my bedside, or from a mile away. I see the Colonel sitting at the window, back as straight as ever, unmoving as he gazes out at the rain. What can there be to watch so intently in the rain? I try to raise my hand, but my arm refuses to move. I try to speak but no voice will issue; I cannot force the air out of my lungs. My body is unbearably heavy, drained. It is all I can do to direct my eyes to the old officer by the window. What has happened to me? When I try to remember, my head throbs with pain. Winter, says the Colonel, tapping his finger on the windowpane. Winter is upon us. Now you understand why winter inspires such fear. I nod vaguely. Yes, it was winter that hurt me. I was running, from the Woods, toward the Library. The Librarian brought you here. With the help of the Gatekeeper. You were groaning with a high fever, sweating profusely. The day before yesterday. The day before yesterday… ? Yes, you have slept two full days, says the old officer. We worried you would never awaken. Did I not warn you about going into the Woods? Forgive me. The Colonel ladles a bowl of soup from a pot simmering on the stove. Then he props me up in bed and wedges a backrest in place. The backrest is stiff and creaks under my weight. First you eat, he says. Apologize later if you must. Do you have an appetite? No, I say. It is difficult even trying to inhale. Just this, then. You must eat this. Three mouthfuls and no more. Please. The herbal stew is horribly bitter, but I manage to swallow the three mouthfuls. I can feel the strain melt from my body. Much better, says the Colonel, returning the spoon to the bowl. It is not pleasant to taste, but the soup will force the poisons from your body. Go back to sleep. When you awaken, you will feel much better. When I reawaken, it is already dark outside. A strong wind is pelting rain against the windowpanes. The old officer sits at my bedside. How do you feel? Some better? Much better than before, yes, I say. What time is it? Eight in the evening. I move to get out of bed, but am still dizzy. Where are you going? asks the Colonel. To the Library. I have dreamreading to do. Just try walking that body of yours five yards, young fool! he scolds. But I must work. The Colonel shakes his head. Old dreams can wait. The Librarian knows you must rest. The Library will not be open. The old officer goes to the stove, pours himself a cup of tea, and returns to my bedside. The wind rattles the window. From what I can see, you seem to have taken a fancy to the Librarian, volunteers the Colonel. I do not mean to pry, but you called out to her in your fever dream. It is nothing to be ashamed of. All young people fall in love. I neither affirm nor deny. She is very worried about you, he says, sipping his tea. I must tell you, however, that such love may not be prudent. I would rather not have to say this, but it is my duty. Why would it not be prudent? Because she cannot requite your feelings. This is no fault of anyone. Not yours, not hers. It is nothing you can change, any more than you can turn back the River. I rub my cheeks with both hands. Is it the mind you are speaking of? The old officer nods. I have a mind and she does not. Love her as I might, the vessel will remain empty. Is that right? That is correct, says the Colonel. Your mind may no longer be what it once was, but she has nothing of the sort. Nor do I. Nor does anyone here. But are you not being extremely kind to me? Seeing to my needs, attending my sickbed without sleep? Are these not signs of a caring mind? No. Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant. I close my eyes and try to collect my scattered thoughts. From what I gather, I begin, the mind is lost when the shadow dies. Is that not true? It is. If her shadow is dead, as she tells me, does this mean that she can never regain her mind? The Colonel nods. I have seen her records in the Town Hall. There has been no mistake. Her shadow died when she was seventeen. It was buried in the Apple Grove, as dictated. She may remember. Nonetheless, the girl was stripped of her shadow before she attained an awareness of the world, so she does not know what it is to have a mind. This is different from someone like me, who lost his shadow late in life. That is why I can account for the movements of your mind, while she cannot. But she remembers her mother. And her mother had a mind. Does that have no significance? He stirs the tea in his cup, then slowly drinks. No, says the Colonel. The Wall leaves nothing to chance. The Wall has its way with all who possess a mind, absorbing them or driving them out. That seems to have been the fate of her mother. Is love then a thing of mind? I do not want to see you disappointed. The Town is powerful and you are weak. This much you should have learned by now. The old officer stares into his empty cup. In time your mind will not matter. It will go, and with it goes all sense of loss, all sorrow. Nor will love matter. Only liv-ing will remain. Undisturbed, peaceful living. You are fond of the girl and I believe she is fond of you. Expect no more. It is so strange, I say. I still have a mind, but there are times I lose sight of it. Or no, the times I lose sight of it are few. Yet I have confidence that it will return, and that conviction sustains me. The sun does not show its face for a long time thereafter. When the fever subsides, I get out of bed and open the window to breathe the outside air. I can rise to my feet, but my strength eludes me for two days more. I cannot even turn the doorknob. Each evening the Colonel brings more of the bitter herbal soup, along with a gruel. And he tells me stories, memories of old wars. He does not mention the girl or the Wall again, nor do I dare to ask. On the third day, I borrow the Colonel s walking stick and take a long constitutional about the Official Residences. As I walk, my body feels light and unmanageable. Perhaps the fever has burnt off, but that cannot be all. Winter has given everything around me a mysterious weight; I alone seem an outsider to that ponderous world. From the slope of the Hill where stand the Official Residences, one looks out over the western half of the Town: the River, the Clocktower, the Wall, and far in the distance, the Gate in the west. My weak eyes behind black glasses cannot distinguish greater detail, although I have the impression that the winter air must give the Town a clarity. I remember the map I must deliver to my shadow. It is now finished, but being bedridden has caused me to miss our appointed day by nearly a week. My shadow is surely worrying about me. Or he may have abandoned hope for me entirely. The thought depresses me. I beg a pair of work boots from the Colonel. My shadow wears only thin summer shoes, I say. He will need these as winter gets colder. I remove the inner sole of one, conceal the map, and replace the sole. I approach the Colonel again. The Gatekeeper is not someone I can trust. Will you see that my shadow receives these? Certainly, he says. Before evening, he returns, stating that he has handed the boots to my shadow personally. Your shadow expressed concern about you. How does he look? I ask. The cold is beginning to diminish him. But he is in good spirits. On the evening of the tenth day after my fever, I am able to descend to the base of the Western Hill and go to the Library. As I push open the Library door, the air in the building hangs still and musty, more so than I recall. It is unlit and only my footfalls echo in the gloom. The fire in the stove is extinguished, the coffeepot cold. The ceiling is higher than it was. The counter lies under dust. She is not to be found. There is no human presence. I sit on a wooden bench for lack of anything to do. I wait for her to come. If the door is unlocked, as it was, then she will. I keep my vigil, but there is no sign of her. All time outside the Library has ceased. I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing. The room is heavy with winter, its every item nailed fast. My limbs lose their weight. My head expands and contracts of its own will. I rise from the bench and turn on the light. Then I scoop coal from the bucket to fuel the stove, strike a match to it, and sit back down. Somehow the light makes the room even gloomier, the fire in the stove turns it cold. Perhaps I plumb too deep. Or perhaps a lingering numbness in the core of my body has lured me into a brief sleep. When I look up again, she is standing before me. A yellow powder of light diffuses in a halo behind her, veiling her silhouette. She wears her blue coat, her hair gathered round inside her collar. The scent of the winter wind is on her. I thought you would not come, I say. I have been waiting for you. She rinses out the coffeepot and puts fresh water on to heat. Then she frees her hair from inside her collar and removes her coat. Did you not think I would come? she asks. I do not know, I say. It was just a feeling. I will come as long as you need me. Surely I do need her. Even as my sense of loss deepens each time we meet, I will need her. I want you to tell me about your shadow, I say. I may have met her in my old world. Yes, that may be so. I remember the time you said we might have met before. She sits in front of the stove and gazes into the fire. I was four when my shadow was taken away and sent outside the Wall. She lived in the world beyond, and I lived here. I do not know who she was there, just as she lost touch of me. When I turned seventeen, my shadow returned to the Town to die. Shadows always return to die. The Gatekeeper buried her in the Apple Grove. That is when you became a citizen of the Town? Yes. The last of my mind was buried in the name of my shadow. You said that the mind is like the wind, but perhaps it is we who are like the wind. Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying. Did you meet with your shadow before she died? She shakes her head. No, I did not see her. There was no reason for us to meet. She had become something apart from me. The pot on the stove begins to murmur, sounding to my ears like the wind in the distance. End of the World, Charlie Parker, Time Bomb PLEASE, cried the chubby girl. If you don t get up, the world is going to end! Let it end, I said, groaning. The wound in my gut hurt too much for me to care. Why are you saying that? What s wrong? What s happened here? I grabbed a T-shirt and wiped the sweat off my face. A couple of guys busted in and gave my stomach a six-centimeter gash, I spat out. With a knife? Like a piggy bank. But why? I ve been trying to figure that one out myself, I said. It occurred to me that the two guys with the knife might be friends of yours. The chubby girl stared at me. How could you think such a thing? she cried. Oh, I don t know. I just wanted to blame somebody. Makes me feel better. But that doesn t solve anything. It doesn t solve anything, I seconded. But so what. This had nothing to do with me. Your grandfather waved his hands, and suddenly I wind up in the middle of it. Another boxcar of pain rolled in. I shut my mouth and waited at the crossing. Take today, for example. First, you call at who-knows-what hour of the morning. You tell me your grandfather s disappeared and you want me to help. I go to meet you; you don t show. I come back home to sleep; the Dynamic Duo busts into my apartment and knifes me in the gut. Next the guys from the System arrive and interrogate me. Now you re here. Seems like you all have things scheduled. Great little team you got. I took a breath. All right, you re going to tell me everything you know about what s going on. I swear, I don t know any more than you do. I helped with Grandfather s research, but I only did what I was told. Errands. Do this, do that, go there, come here, make a phone call, write a letter, things like that. I don t really know anything else. But you did help with the research. I helped, but I just processed data. Technical stuff. I don t have the academic background, so I never understood anything more. I tried to regroup my thoughts. I needed to figure things out before the situation dragged me under. Okay, just now, you were saying the world was going to end. What was that all about? I don t know. its something Grandfather said. If I had this in me, it d be the end of the world. Grandfather doesn t joke about things like that. If he said the world is going to end, then honest, the world is going to end. I don t get it, I said. What s it supposed to mean, this end-of-the-world talk? What exactly did he say? Are you sure he didn t say, The world is going to be obliterated or The world is going to be destroyed ? No, he said, The world is going to end . More mental regrouping. So then, this… uh… end of the world has something to do with me? I guess so. Grandfather said you were the key. He started researching all about you a couple of years ago. A couple of years ago! I couldn t believe what I was hearing. What else? Anything about a time bomb? A time bomb? That s what the guy who knifed me said. That the data I processed for your grandfather was like a time bomb waiting to explode. Know anything about that? Only hunches, said the chubby girl. Grandfather has been studying human consciousness for a long time. And I don t believe shuffling is all there was to it. At least up until the time he came out with shuffling, Grandfather would tell me all kinds of things about his research. Like I said, I had practically no background, but Grandfather kept things simple, and it was really interesting. I used to love those little talks of ours. But then, once he finalized his system for shuffling, he clammed up? That s right. Grandfather shut himself up in his underground laboratory and never told me anything more. Whenever I d ask him about his research, he d change the subject. Didn t that strike you as odd? Well, it did make me unhappy. And very lonely. Then, looking me in the face, she asked, Do you think I could I get under the covers with you? its awfully cold in here. As long as you don t touch my wound or move around too much, I said. She circled over to the opposite side of the bed and slipped under the covers, pink suit and all. I handed her a pillow. She fluffed it up a bit before placing it under her head. Her neckline exuded the same melon scent. I struggled to shift my body to face her. So here we were, lying face to face in the same bed. This is the first time I ve ever been so close to a man, said the chubby girl. Uh-oh. I ve hardly ever even been out in town. That s why I couldn t find my way to that Aoyama supermarket this morning. I was going to ask you for better directions, but the sound went dead. You could have told any cab driver to take you there. I hardly had any money. I ran out of the building so quickly, I forgot to take more with me. So I had to walk. Don t you have any other family? I asked, not quite believing her. When I was six, my parents and brother were killed in an accident. A truck plowed into our car from behind and the gas tank exploded. They were burned to death. And you were the only who survived? I was in the hospital at the time. They were coming to visit me. Ah, yes, I said. Ever since then, Grandfather watched over me. I didn t even go to school, hardly ever went out, didn t have any friends… Why didn t you go to school? Grandfather said it wasn t necessary, she answered matter-of-factly. He taught me all the subjects English and Russian and anatomy, everything. Stuff like cooking and sewing, I learned from Auntie. Your aunt? Well, not my real aunt. She was the live-in lady who did the cleaning and chores. A really wonderful person. She died from cancer three years ago. Since Auntie died, its been just Grandfather and me. So you didn t go to school after you were six years old? That s right, but what difference does that make? I mean, I can do all sorts of things. I can speak four foreign languages, I can play piano and alto sax, I can assemble a wireless, I ve studied navigation and tightrope walking, I ve read tons of books. And my sandwiches were good, weren t they? Very good, I admitted. Grandfather always said school s a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either. Incredible, I said. But didn t you feel deprived not having friends your own age? Well, I can t really say. I was so busy, I never had time to think about it. And besides, I don t know what I could have said to people my own age. Hmm. On the other hand, she perked up, you fascinate me. Huh? I mean, here you are so exhausted, and yet your exhaustion seems to give you a kind of vitality. its tremendous, she chirped. I bet you d be good at sax! Excuse me? Do you have any Charlie Parker records? I believe so. But I m in no condition to look for them in this disaster zone. The stereo s broken, so you couldn t listen anyway. Can you play an instrument? Nope. May I touch you? No! I laid down the law. I m in too much pain besides. When the wound heals, can I touch? When the wound heals, if the world hasn t come to an end… lets just go back to what we were talking about. You said your grandfather clammed up after he invented his system of shuffling. Oh yes, that s right. From that point on, Grandfather seemed to change radically. He would hardly talk to me. He was irritable, always muttering to himself. Do you remember if he said anything else about shuffling? The chubby girl fingered one gold earring. Well, I remember him saying shuffling was a door to a new world. He said that although he d developed it as a method for scrambling computer data, with a little doing a person might scramble the world. Kind of like nuclear physics. But if shuffling is the door to a new world, why am I supposed to hold the key? I don t know. I longed for a big glass of whiskey on the rocks. Lots of luck around my place. lets try this again. Was it your grandfather s purpose to end the world? No. Nothing like that. Grandfather may be moody and a bit presumptuous and he may not like people in general, but deep down he really is a good person. Like me and you. Thanks. No one ever said that about me before. He was also afraid his research would fall into the wrong hands. He quit the System because he knew if he stayed on, the System would use his findings for anything they felt like. That s when he opened up his own laboratory. But the System does good, I said. It keeps the Semiotecs from robbing data banks and selling on the black market, thereby upholding the rightful ownership of information. The chubby girl shrugged her shoulders. Grandfather didn t seem too concerned about good or bad. Or at least, he said, it had nothing to do with claims of ownership. Well, maybe not, I said, backing off. Grandfather never trusted any form of authority. He did temporarily belong to the System, but that was only so he could get free use of data and experimental resources and a mainframe simulator. That so? Tell me, when your grandfather quit the System, did he, by any chance, take my personal file from the data bank with him? I don t know, she said. But if it did occur to him to do it, who would have stopped him? I mean, he was the head of Central Research. He had full clearance to do as he pleased with the data. So that was the deal. The Professor had walked out with the data on me. He d applied it to some private research project of his, with me as the sample on which to advance the principle of shuffling generations beyond anyone else. And now, as my friend Junior had suggested, the Professor was ready for me. His primary sample was to become his guinea pig. He d probably given me bogus data to shuffle, planting it with a code that would react in my consciousness. If that was in fact the case, then the reaction had already begun. A time bomb. What if Junior was right? I did a quick mental calculation. It was last night when I came to after the shuffling. Since then nearly twenty-four hours had passed. Twenty-four hours. I had no idea when the time bomb was set to go off, but I d already lost a whole day. One more question. You did say it was the world is going to end , didn t you? Yes, that s right. That s what Grandfather said. Would your grandfather have started this end-of-the-world talk before he got to researching my data? Or only after? After, she said. At least I think so. I mean, Grandfather just started saying the world is going to end quite recently. Why is it important? What s this got to do with anything? I m not sure. But I ve got a feeling there s a hook in it somewhere. My shuffling password is End of the World . Now I can t believe that s pure coincidence. What s your End of the World story about? I wasn t told. its part of my consciousness, but its inaccessible to me. The only thing I know about it is the code name, End of the World . Couldn t you retrieve it? Reverse the process or something? Impossible, I said. The process is safeguarded by System Central. A whole army division couldn t pry the information loose. Security is unbelievable. And Grandfather pulled the file? Probably. But I m only guessing. We d have to ask your grandfather himself. Then you ll help save Grandfather from the INKlings? Pressing my gut wound in, I got out of bed. My head lit up with pain like a busy switchboard. I don t have much choice, it seems, I said. I don t know what your grandfather s endof-the-world scenario means, but from the look of things, I don t think I can afford to ignore it. Either way, we have to help Grandfather. Because all three of us are good people? Of course, said the chubby girl. Dreamreading Unable to know my own mind, I return to the task of dreamreading. As winter deepens, I concentrate on this effort, and the sense of loss that haunts me is forgotten, albeit temporarily. On the other hand, the more old dreams I read, the more I apprehend my own helplessness. I cannot divine the message of the dreams. I read them without any understanding of them. They are as indecipherable texts passing before my eyes night after night. I could as well be gazing at the waters of the River. My dreamreading has improved. I have become proficient at the technique and can manage quantities of old dreams. But to what avail? What does dreamreading mean? I ask the Librarain. My job, as you have said, is to read the old dreams out of these skulls. But the dreams go through me, for no reason. I feel tired more and more. Even so, you read the dreams as if possessed. Is that not so? I don t know, I answer. There is also the fact that I concentrate as I do to fill my emptiness. As she has said, though, there is something in dreamreading that has me possessed. Perhaps the problem is in you, she says. A problem in me? I wonder if you need to unclose your mind. I do not understand things of the mind very well, but perhaps yours is too firmly sealed. The old dreams need to be read by you and you need to seek the old dreams. What makes you think so? That is dreamreading. As the birds leave south or north in their season, the Dreamreader has dreams to read. Then she reaches out across the table and places her hand on mine. She smiles. A smile that promises spring. Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams. In time I take up each old dream, and conscientiously give myself over to it. I select a skull from the long shelves and carry it to the table. She helps me, first, to wipe off the dust with a dampened cloth. With meticulous care, she then polishes it with a dry cloth until the skull becomes like sleet. I gently place both hands upon the skull and stare, waiting for a warm glow to emanate. When it reaches a certain temperature like a patch of sun in winter the white-polished skull offers up its old dreams. I strain my eyes and breathe deeply, using my fingertips to trace the intricate lines of the tale it commenees to tell. The voice of the light remains ever so faint; images quiet as ancient constellations float across the dome of my dawning mind. They are indis-tinct fragments that never merge into a sensate picture. There would be a landscape I have not seen before, unfamiliar melodic echoes, whisperings in a chaos of tongues. They drift up fitfully and as suddenly sink into darkness. Between one fragment and the next there is nothing in common. I experiment with ways to concentrate my energies into my fingertips, but the outcome never varies. For while I recognize that the old dreams relate to something in me, I am lost. Perhaps I am inadequate as a dreamreader. Perhaps the light has dimmed, the language eroded over untold years. Or again, are these dimensions of a different order? Does there exist an intractable chasm between my waking time and the dream time of the skulls? I watch the disparate fragments float up and disappear, without comment. To be sure, the skulls also show me scenes well within my ken. Grasses moving in the breeze, white clouds traveling across the sky, sunlight reflecting on a stream pure unpretentious visions. In my mind, however, these simple scenes summon forth a sadness that I can find no words for. Like a ship sailing past a window, they appear only to disappear without a trace. I read and the old dream slowly loses its warmth, like a tide receding, claimed back into the cold white skull it was. The old dream returns to its ageless sleep. And all the water of vision slips through the fingers and spills to the ground. My dreamreading is an endless repetition of this. When the old dreams are spent, I hand the skull to the Librarian and she lines it on the counter. In the pause I rest, both hands on the table, and unravel my powers. I have found that at most I can read six skulls in a night. More than that and my concentration fails; the dreams garble into noise. By eleven o clock, I can scarcely stand from fatigue. At the end of each session, she serves coffee. Occasionally we share biscuits or fruitbread she bakes at home. We do not speak as we eat. Am I hindering your dreamreading? she asks me. Perhaps your mind is hard shut because I cannot respond to you? As always, we sit on the narrow steps that lead from the Old Bridge down to the sandbar. A pale silver moon trembles on the face of the water. A wooden boat lashed to a post modulates the sound of the current. Sitting with her, I feel her warm against my arm. its not that way at all, I say. It is something in me. My mind is turning away from me. I m confused. Is the mind beyond you? I don t know, I say. There are times when the understanding does not come until later, when it no longer matters. Other times I do what I must do, not knowing my own mind, and I am led astray. How can the mind be so imperfect? she says with a smile. I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose. It may well be imperfect, I say, but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow. Where do they lead? To oneself, I answer. That s what the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere. I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall. Not one thing is your fault, I comfort her. Hamburgers, Skyline, Deadline WE decided to get something to eat before venturing off. I wasn t really hungry myself, but who knew when we d have a chance to sit down to a meal later. Anyway, the girl said she d only had enough money for a chocolate bar for lunch and was starving. I maneuvered my legs into jeans, trying not to aggravate the wound, pulled on a shirt over my T-shirt and a light sweater over that, then a nylon windbreaker over that. Her pink suit wasn t quite right for a spelunking expedition, but there was little in what was left of my wardrobe to fit her. I was ten centimeters taller than her; she was ten kilos heavier than me. I supposed we should get her a more appropriate outfit, but no stores were going to be open at this hour, so I got her to squeeze into my old Gl-surplus flight jacket. Her high heels presented a problem, but she said she had jogging shoes and galoshes at the office. Pink jogging shoes and pink galoshes. You seem to like pink, I said. Grandfather likes it. He says I look pretty in pink. You do, I said. And she did. Chubby girls in pink tend to conjure up images of big strawberry shortcakes waltzing on a dance floor, but in her case the color suited her. I dragged my knapsack out from under a pile of bedding, and after checking that it too hadn t been slashed, I packed it with a small flashlight, a magnet, gloves, towels, a large knife, a cigarette lighter, rope, and solid fuel. Next I went into the kitchen and scavenged bread and cans of corned beef, peaches, vienna sausage, and grapefruit from the holocaust on the floor. I filled my canteen with water, then stuffed all the cash I had in the apartment into my pocket. This reminds me of a picnic, said the girl. You bet. I stopped to take a last look at my scrap heap of an apartment. Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy. Sure, I d gotten tired of this tiny space, but I d had a good home here. In the time it takes to swill two cans of beer, all had sublimed like morning mist. My job, my whiskey, my peace and quiet, my solitude, my Somerset Maugham and John Ford collections all of it trashed and worthless. The splendor of the fields, the glory of the flowers, I recited under my breath. Then I reached up and pulled the breaker switch to cut the electricity. I was in too much pain, physically, to reflect more deeply on closing this chapter in my life. I hurt too much and I was too tired. Better not to think at all than to think halfway. We got into the elevator, went down to the basement garage, and put our things on the back seat of the car. I didn t even bother to look for hidden pursuers. They could be waiting in a stakeout, they could be tailing us, what did it matter now? And anyway, who the hell would they have been? Semiotecs? The boys from the System? That friendly tag team? Was it to be fun and games with all three? I love sur-prises. If they had a job to do, they could damn well do it. I didn t want to drive the car, the way I was hurting, but the girl didn t know how. Sorry. But I can ride a horse, she said. That s okay. You may need to ride a horse yet, I said. The fuel gauge read almost full. I nosed the car out. Winding our way out of the residential backstreets, we got to the main drag. It was surprisingly busy for this hour, mostly taxis. Why were so many people out racing around in the middle of the night? Why couldn t they just leave work at six o clock, go home, and lights-out by ten? But that, as they say, was none of my business, opec would go on drilling for oil, regardless of anyone s opinion, conglomerates would make electricity and gasoline from that oil, people would be running around town late at night using up that gasoline. At the moment, however, I had my own problems to deal with. I sat there at a red light, both hands on the wheel, and yawned. To the right of us was a white Skyline. In it sat a young man and woman, on their way to or back from a night on the town, looking vaguely bored. Duran Duran blared from the car stereo. The woman, two silver bracelets on the hand she dangled out the window, cast a glance in my direction. I could have been a Denny s restaurant sign or a traffic signal, it would have been no different. She was your regular sort of beautiful young woman, I guess. In a TV drama, she d be the female lead s best friend, the face that appears once in a cafe scene to say, What s the matter? You haven t been yourself lately. The light turned green, and in the time it took the truck ahead to gear up, the white Skyline zoomed off with a flamboyant show of exhaust. Watch the cars behind us, will you? I told the chubby girl. Tell me if you think anybody s following us. The girl nodded and turned around. Do you think we re in for a chase? No idea, I said. Just curious. How about a hamburger? It d be quick. Fine. I pulled the car into the first drive-in burger place I saw. A waitress in a red microminiskirt fastened trays to our windows, then asked for our orders. A double cheeseburger with french fries and a hot chocolate, said the chubby girl. A regular burger and a beer, I said. I m sorry, but we don t serve beer, said the waitress. A regular burger and a Coke, I corrected myself. What was I thinking? While we waited for the food to come, no cars entered the drive-in. Of course, if anyone were really tailing us, the last thing they d do is drive into the same parking lot with us. They d be somewhere out of sight, sitting tight, waiting for our next move. I turned my attention to the food that had arrived, and mechanically shovelled hamburger with its expressway-ticket-sized leaf of lettuce down the hatch. Miss Pink, on the other hand, relished each bite of her cheeseburger, while daintily picking at her fries and slurping her hot chocolate. Care for some french fries? she asked me. No thanks, I said. The girl polished off everything on her tray. She savored the last sip of hot chocolate, licked the ketchup and mustard from her fingers, then wiped her hands and mouth with the napkin. Now, then, about your grandfather, I said, we probably ought to go to his underground laboratory first. Yes. There might be something to give us a lead. But do you think we ll be able to get by the INKlings? The ultrasonic repel system is broken, isn t it? It is, but there s a small device for emergencies. its not very powerful, but if we carry it with us, the INKlings will stay away. Good, I said, relieved. The battery only lasts for thirty minutes, though, she added. After that, it has to be recharged. How long to recharge? Fifteen minutes. But for just going back and forth between the office and the lab, we should have time to spare. Okay, better than nothing. We left the drive-in, and stopped at an all-night supermarket for a couple cans of beer and a flask of whiskey. Whereupon I immediately drank both cans of beer and a fourth of the whiskey. There, that took the edge off things. I recapped the whiskey and passed it to the girl, who packed it in the knapsack. Why do you drink so much? she wanted to know. It makes me feel brave, I said. I m scared too, but you don t see me drinking. Your scared and my scared are two different things. What s that supposed to mean? she asked. As you get older, you don t recover from things so easy. And as you get older, you also get tired? Yeah, I said, you get tired. She turned toward me, reached out her hand, and touched my earlobe. its all right. Don t worry. I ll be by your side, she said. Thanks. I parked the car in the lot of her grandfather s office building. Shouldering the knapsack, I felt the wound throb sharply. Like rain, the pain would pass, I told myself, and loped after the girl. At the entrance to the building was a muscular young watchman who asked for her resident s ID. She produced a plastic card, which the watchman then inserted into a tabletop computer slot. After confirming her name and room number in the monitor, he flipped a switch to open the door. This is an extraordinary building, the girl explained to me as we cut across the large, open floor. Everyone in the building has some secret that needs protecting. Important research or business dealings, stuff like that. That s why all this security. They check you at the door, then they watch you with TV cameras to make sure you reach your room. So even if someone had been following us, they wouldn t be able to get to us inside. Do they know that your grandfather dug a shaft through the building? Probably not. Grandfather had the office specifically designed to connect directly to the sub-basement at the time the building went up. Only the owner of the building and the architect know about it. The construction crew was told it was a media well, a communications cortex that would house fiber-optic networks later. I think the blueprints are fudged also. I bet it must have cost. I m sure it did. But Grandfather s got oodles of money, said the girl. Me, too. I m very well-off. I multiplied my inheritance and the life-insurance money I got on the stock market. She took a key out of her pocket and opened the elevator door. Back into that overgrown vacu-pac elevator. Stock market? Sure, Grandfather taught me the tricks. He taught me how to choose among all the information, how to read the market, how to dodge taxes, how to transfer funds to banks overseas, stuff like that. Stocks are a lot of fun. Ever tried? Afraid not, I said. I d never opened a fixed-term com-pounded-interest account. The elevator moved at its requisite impossible ascending-or-descending speed. Grandfather says that schools are too inefficient to produce top material. What do you think? she asked. Well, probably so, I answered. I went to school for many years and I don t believe it made that much difference in my life. I can t speak any languages, can t play any instruments, can t play the stock market, can t ride a horse. So why didn t you quit school? You could have quit any time you wanted, couldn t you? I guess so, I said. I could have quit, but I didn t want to. I guess it didn t occur to me to do anything like that. Unlike you, I had a perfectly average, ordinary upbringing. I never had what it takes to make a first-rate anything. That s wrong, she declared. Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. its just a matter of drawing it out, isn t it? But school doesn t know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. its no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down. Like me, I said. No, you re different. I can tell there s something special about you. The emotional shell around you is so hard, everything inside has got to be still intact. Emotional shell? That s right, she said. That s why its not too late. After all this is over, why don t we live together? its not like we d have to get married or anything. We could move to Greece or Finland or somewhere easy-going like that and pass the time riding horses and singing songs. We d have plenty of money, and meanwhile you could be reborn as a firstrate human being. Hmm. Not a bad offer. The elevator came to a stop. She stepped out and I followed. She walked at a fast pace, as she had the first time we met, the click of her high heels echoing down the long corridor. Before my eyes, her pleasing wiggle, her flashing gold earrings. But suppose I took you up on the offer, I spoke to her back, you d be doing all the giving and I d be doing all the taking. That doesn t strike me as fair. She slowed her pace to walk beside me. There s bound to be something you can give me, she said. For instance? For instance, your emotional shell. That s something I really want to find out about. I want to know what its made up of and how it functions and stuff like that. its nothing to get excited about, I said. Everybody has more or less of an emotional shell if that s what you want to call it. You ve never been out in the world. You don t know how the mind of the ordinary person works. You act as if you re worthless! exclaimed the chubby girl. You can shuffle, can t you? Of course I can. But that s just a matter of practice. Not so different from using an abacus or playing the piano. That is not all there is to it, she said. Everyone thought that way at first. That with the necessary training, anyone anyone who passed the tests, that is could shuffle. Even Grandfather thought so. Well, twenty-six people happened to have the same surgery and training, and all of them got the ability to shuffle. In the beginning, there weren t any problems Hey, I never heard about any problems at all. I heard everything went according to plan. Officially, yes, she spoke with authority. But the truth is, out of these twenty-six, twenty-five died within a year and a half after training. Only one of them is still alive. What? You mean You. You re the only survivor after three years. You ve gone on with your shuffling, and you ve had no problems or breakdowns. Do you still think you re so ordinary? You are a most important person! I thrust both hands in my pockets and continued down the corridor. It was getting to be too much, the way the scale of this thing kept expanding. Why did the others die? I asked the girl. I don t think they know. There was no visible cause of death. Some brain malfunction, nothing clear. They must have some idea. Well, Grandfather put it like this. Really ordinary persons probably can t tolerate irradiation of their brain, which was done to catalyze the core consciousness. The brain cells try to produce antibodies and react with overkill. I m sure its more complicated than that, but that s a simple explanation. Then what s the reason I m alive? Perhaps you had natural antibodies. Your emotional shell . For some reason you already had a safeguard factor in your brain that allowed you to survive. Grandfather tried to simulate this shell, but it didn t hold up. I thought this over. This antibody factor or guard or whatever, is it an innate faculty? Or is it something I acquired? Part inborn and part learned, I seem to remember. But beyond that, Grandfather wouldn t say. Knowing too much could have put me in jeopardy. Although, according to his hypothesis, people with your natural antibodies are about one in a million to a million and a half. And even then, short of actually endowing them with shuffling, there s no way to single these people out. Which means, if your grandfather s hypothesis is correct, that my happening to be among those twenty-six was an incredible fluke. That s why you re so valuable as a sample. That s why you re the key. What did your grandfather have planned for me? The data he gave me to shuffle, that unicorn skull what was that all about? If I knew that, I could save you right here and now, said the girl. Me and the world. The office had been ransacked, not to the same degree as my apartment, but someone had done a number on the place. Papers were strewn everywhere, the desk overturned, the safe pried open, the cabinet drawers flung across the room, the Professor s and the girl s change of clothes pulled out of their lockers and tossed like salad over a bed of shredded sofa. The girl s clothes were, verifiably, all pink. An orchestration of pink in every gradation from light rose to deep fuchsia. Unforgivable! she cried. They must have come up from below. INKlings? No, not them. INKlings wouldn t come up this far above ground. And if they had, you could tell by the smell. What smell? A fishy kind of swampy kind of horrible smell. INKlings didn t do this. I bet they were the people who trashed your apartment. I looked around the room. In front of the overturned desk, a whole box of scattered paperclips glinted in the fluorescent light. There was something about them, I didn t know what. I picked one up from the floor and slipped it into my pocket. Was anything of importance kept here? I asked. No, she said. Practically everything here is expendable. Just account ledgers and receipts and general research stuff. Nothing was irreplaceable. How about the INKling-repel device? Is that still in one piece? She rooted through the debris in front of the lockers, throwing aside a flashlight and radio-cassette player and alarm clock and a can of cough drops to find a small black box with something like a VU-meter, which she tested several times. its all right, it works fine. They probably thought it was a useless contraption. Lucky for us, because the mechanism s so simple, one little whack could have broken it. Then the chubby girl went over to a corner of the room and crouched down to undo the cover of an electrical outlet. Pushing a tiny switch inside, she stood up, gently pressed her palms flat against a section of the adjacent wall, and a panel the size of a telephone directory popped open, revealing a safe within. Not bad, eh? Bet nobody would think of looking here, eh? she congratulated herself. Then she dialed the combination and opened the safe. Holding back the pain, I helped her right the desk and set out the contents of the safe. There was a thick rubber-banded bundle of bank books, a stack of stock certificates, a cloth bag holding something solid, a black leather notebook, and a brown envelope. She poured out the contents of the envelope: a gold ring and a discolored old Omega watch, its crystal crazed. A memento of my father, said the girl. The ring was my mother s. Everything else got burned. She slipped the ring and watch back into the envelope. Next, from the cloth bag, she removed an object in an old shirt; unwrapped, it turned out to be a small automatic pistol. It bore no resemblance to a toy. This was a real gun that shot real bullets. I m no expert, but my years of moviegoing told me it was either a Browning or a Beretta. With the gun was a spare cartridge and a box of bullets. I guess you Calcutecs are all good shots, said the girl. You ve got to be kidding. I ve never even held a gun before. Really? Shooting s another thing I learned by not going to school. I like it as a sport. Anyway, seeing as how you don t have any experience with a gun, I ll hold on to it. By all means. Just don t shoot me by mistake. I don t think I could stand any more damage to my body. Don t worry. I m very careful, she said, slipping the automatic into her pocket. She then opened the black leather notebook to a middle page and studied it under the light. The page was scribbled entirely in an unintelligible rune of numbers and letters. This is Grandfather s notebook, she explained. its written in a code that only he and I know. Plans, events of the day, he writes it all down here. So then what s this now? September 28th, you re down as having finished laundering the data. That s right. There s a (1) written there. Probably the first step. Then, he has you finishing the shuffling on the 29th or the 30th. Or is that wrong? Not at all. That s (2). The second step. Next, there s… uh, lets see… noon, the 2nd, which is (3). Cancel Program . I was supposed to meet your grandfather on the 2nd at noon. My guess is that he was going to disarm whatever program he d set inside me. So that the world wouldn t end. But a lot has changed. And something s happened to him. He s been dragged off somewhere. Hold on, she said, still reading the notebook. The code gets pretty involved. While she read, I organized the knapsack, making sure to include her pink jogging shoes. Slickers and boots were scattered about, but thankfully they weren t slashed or anything like that. Going under the waterfall without rain gear would mean getting soaked and chilled to the bone; it would also mean wonders for my wound. My watch read a little before midnight. The notebook is full of complicated calculations. Electrical charge and decay rates, resistance factors and offsets, stuff like that. I don t understand any of it. Skip it. We don t have much time, I said. Just decode what you can make out. There s no need to decode. Why not? She handed me the notebook and pointed to the spot. There was no code, only a huge scrawl: Do you suppose this marks the deadline? she asked. Either that, or its (4). Meaning, if the program is cancelled at (3), X won t happen. But if for some reason it doesn t get cancelled and the program keeps on reading, then I think we get to X. So that means we have to get to Grandfather by noon of the 2nd. If my guess is correct. How much time is left? Before the big bang… Thirty-six hours, I said. I didn t need to look at my watch. The time it takes the earth to complete one and a half rotations. Two morning papers and one evening edition would be delivered. Alarm clocks would ring twice, men would shave twice. Fortunate souls would have sex two or three times. Thirty-six hours and no more. One over seven-teen-thousand thirty-three of a life expectancy of seventy years. Then, after those thirty-six hours, the world was supposed to come to an end. What do we do now? asked the girl. I located some painkillers in the first-aid kit lying on the floor and swallowed them with a gulp of water from the canteen. Then I hiked the knapsack up on my shoulders. There s nothing to do but go underground, I said. The Death of the Beasts THE beasts have already lost several of their number. The first ice-bound morning, a few of the old beasts succumbed, their winter-whitened bodies lying under two inches of snow. The morning sun tore through the clouds, setting the frozen landscape agleam, the frosty breath of more than a thousand beasts dancing whitely in the air. I awake before dawn to find the Town blanketed in snow. It is a wondrous scene in the somber light. The Clocktower soars black above the whitened world, the dark band of the River flows below. I put on my coat and gloves and descend to the empty streets. There is not yet a footprint in the snow. When I gather the snow in my hands, it crumbles. The edges of the River are frozen, with a dusting of snow. There is no wind, no birds, no movement in the Town. I hear nothing but the crunching of snow under my feet. I walk to the Gate and see the Gatekeeper out by the Shadow Grounds. The Gatekeeper is under the wagon that he and my shadow repaired. He is lubricating the axles. The wagon is loaded with ceramic crocks of the kind used to hold rapeseed oil, all roped fast to the sideboards. I wonder why the Gatekeeper would have need for so much oil. The Gatekeeper emerges from under the wagon and raises his hand to greet me. He seems in a good mood. Up early, eh? What wind blows you this way? I have come out to see the snow, I say. It was so beautiful from up on the Hill. The Gatekeeper scoffs and throws a big arm around me as he has done before. He wears no gloves. You are a strange one. Winter here is nothing but snow, and you come down from your Hill just to see it. Then he belches, a locomotive cloud of steam, and looks toward the Gate. But I will say, you came at the right time, he smiles. Want to climb the Watchtower? Something you ought to see from there. A winter treat, ha ha. In a little while I will blow the horn, so keep your eyes open. A treat? You will see. I climb the Watchtower beside the Gate, not knowing what to expect. I look at the world beyond the Wall. Snow is deep in the Apple Grove, as if a storm cloud had specifically sought it out. The Northern and Eastern Ridges are powdered white, with a few darklimned crags to mar their complexion. Immediately below the Watchtower are the beasts, sleeping as they usually do at this hour. Legs folded under them, they huddle low to the ground, their horns thrust forward, each seeking sleep. All peacefully unaware of the thick coat of snow that has fallen upon them. The clouds disperse and the sun begins to illuminate the earth. Beams of sun slant across the land. My eyes strain in the brightness to see the promised treat . Presently, the Gatekeeper pushes open the Gate and sounds the horn. One long note, then three short notes. The beasts awaken at the first tone and lift their heads in the direction of the call. White breaths charge the air anew, heralding the start of the new day. The last note of the horn fades, and the beasts are risen to their feet. They prow their horns at the sky, then shake off the snow as if they had not previously noticed it. Finally they walk toward the Gate. As the beasts amble by, some hang their heads low, some paw their hooves quietly. Only after they have filed inside do I understand what the Gatekeeper has wanted me to see. A few beasts have frozen to death in their posture of sleep. Yet they appear not dead so much as deep in meditation. No breath issues from them. Their bodies unmoving, their awareness swallowed in darkness. After all the other beasts have gone through the Gate, these dead remain like growths on the face of the earth. Their horns angle up into space, almost alive. I gaze at their hushed forms as the morning sun rises and the shadow of the Wall withdraws, the brilliance melting the snow from the ground. Will the morning sun thaw away even their death? At any moment, will these apparently lifeless forms stand and go about their usual morning routine? They do not rise. The sun but glistens on their wet fur. My eyes behind black glasses begin to hurt. Descending the Watchtower, I cross the River and go back to my quarters on the Western Hill. I discover that the morning sun has done harm to my eyes, severely. When I close my eyes, the tears do not stop. I hear each drop fall to my lap. I darken the room and stare for hours at the weirdly shaped patterns that drift and recede in a space of no perspective. At ten o clock the Colonel, bringing coffee, knocks on my door and finds me face down on the bed, rubbing my eyes with a cold towel. There is a pain in the back of my head, but at least the tears have subsided. What has happened to you? he asks. The morning sun is stronger than you think. Especially on snowy mornings. You knew that a Dreamreader cannot tolerate strong light. Why did you want to go outdoors? I went to see the beasts, I say. Many died. Eight, nine head. No, more. And many more will die with each snowfall. Why do they die so easily? I ask the old officer, removing the towel from my face to look at him. They are weak. From the cold and from hunger. It has always been this way. Do they never die out? The old officer shakes his head. The creatures have lived here for many millenia, and so will they continue. Many will die over the winter, but in spring the survivors will foal. New life pushes old out of the way. The number of beasts that can live in this Town is limited. Why don t they move to another place? There are trees in the Woods. If they went south, they would escape the snow. Why do they need to stay? Why, I cannot tell you, he says. But the beasts cannot leave. They belong to the Town; they are captured by it. Just as you and I are. By their own instincts, they know this. What happens to the bodies? They are burned, replies the Colonel, warming his great parched hands on his coffee cup. For the next few weeks, that will be the main work of the Gatekeeper. First he cuts off their heads, scrapes out their brains and eyes, then boils them until the skulls are clean. The remains are doused with oil and set on fire. Then old dreams are put into those skulls for the Library, is that it? I ask the Colonel. Why? The old officer does not answer. All I hear is the creaking of the floorboards as he walks away from me, toward the window. You will learn that when you see what old dreams are, he says. I cannot tell you. You are the Dreamreader. You must find the answer for yourself. I wipe away the tears with the towel, then open my eyes. The Colonel stands, a blur by the window. Many things will become clear for you over the course of the winter, he continues. Whether or not you like what you learn, it will all come to pass. The snow will fall, the beasts will die. No one can stop this. In the afternoon, gray smoke will rise from the burning beasts. All winter long, every day. White snow and gray smoke. Bracelets, Ben Johnson, Devi! Beyond the closet opened the same dark inner sanctum as before, but now that I knew about the INKlings, it seemed a deep, chill horror show. She went down the ladder ahead of me. With the INKling-repel device stuffed in a large pocket of her slicker and her large flashlight slung diagonally across her body, she swiftly descended alone. Then, flashlight thrust in my pocket, I started down the slick rungs of the ladder. It was a bigger drop than I remembered. All the way down, I kept thinking about that young couple in the Skyline, Duran Duran on stereo. Oblivious to everything. I wished I could have been a little more oblivious. I put myself in the driver s seat, woman sitting next to me, cruising the late night streets to an innocuous pop beat. Did the woman take off her bracelets during sex? Nice if she didn t. Even if she was naked, those two bracelets needed to be there. Probably she did take them off. Women tend to remove their jewelry before they shower. Which meant, therefore, sex before showering. Or getting her to keep her bracelets on. Now, which was the better option? Anyway, I m in bed with her, with her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a pleasant muffled clinking on the sheets. I have a hard-on. Which, halfway down the ladder, is what I noticed. Just great. Why now? Why didn t I get an erection when I needed one? And why was I getting so excited over two lousy bracelets? Especially under this slicker, with the wcgld about to end. She was shining her light around when I reached bottom. There are INKlings about. Listen, she said. Those sounds. Sounds? Fins flapping. Listen carefully. You can feel them. I strained, but didn t detect anything of the kind. Once you know what to listen for, you can even detect their voices. its not really speech; its closer to sound waves. They re like bats. Humans can only hear a portion of their vocal range. So then how did the Semiotecs make contact with them? If they couldn t communicate verbally? A translation device isn t so hard to make. Grandfather could have, easy. But he decided not to. Why not? Because he didn t want to talk to them. They re disgusting creatures and they speak a disgusting language. Whatever they eat or drink has got to be almost putrified. They don t consume anything fresh? No. If they catch you, they immerse you in water for days. When your body starts to rot, they eat it. Lovely. I was ready to turn back, but we forged on. She knew every step of the way and scampered ahead. When I trained my light on her from behind, her gold earrings flashed. Tell me, do you take off your earrings when you take a shower? I spoke up. I leave them on, she slowed down to answer. Only my earrings. Sexy? I guess. Why did I have to go and bring up the subject? What else do you think is sexy? I m not very experienced, as I said. Nobody teaches you these things. Nobody will. its something you have to find out for yourself, I said. I made a conscious effort to sweep all images of sex from my head. Umm, I changed the subject, you say this device of yours emits ultrasonic waves that put off the INKlings? As long as the device is sending out signals, they won t come within fifteen meters of us. So you should try to stay close to me. Otherwise, they ll nab you and pickle you for a snack. In your condition, your stomach would be the first thing to rot. And their teeth and claws are razor sharp. I scooted up right behind her. Does your stomach wound still hurt? she asked. Only when I move, I replied. But thanks to the painkillers, its not so bad. If we find Grandfather, he ll be able to remove the pain. Your grandfather? How s he going to help? Simple. He s done it for me lots of times. Like when I have a terrible headache, he uses an impulse to cancel out my awareness of pain. Really, though, pain is an important signal from the body, so you shouldn t do it too much. In this case, its an emergency. I m sure he ll help. Thanks, I said. Don t thank me. Thank Grandfather. If we find him, she reminded. Panning her powerful light left and right, she continued upstream along the subterranean river. Moisture seeped out from between the rocks, running in rivulets past our feet. Slimy layers of moss coated wherever this groundwater trickled through. The moss appeared unnaturally green, inexplicable for these depths beyond the reach of photosynthesis. Say, do you suppose the INKlings know we re walking around down here now? Of course, they do, she said, without emotion. This is their world. They re all around, watching us. I ve been hearing noises the whole time we ve been down here. I swung my flashlight beam to the side, but all I saw were rocks and moss. They re in the cracks and boreholes, where the light doesn t reach, she said. Or else they re creeping up on us from behind. How many minutes has it been since you switched on the device? I asked. Ten minutes, she said, looking at her watch. Ten minutes, twelve seconds. Another five minutes to the waterfall. We re doing fine. Exactly five minutes later we arrived at the waterfall. Again the roar of the waterfall had been selectively suppressed; apparently the sound-removal equipment was still functioning. Odd, she remarked, ducking under the noiseless cascade. This sound removal means the laboratory wasn t broken into. If the INKlings had attacked, they would have torn the whole place apart. They hate this laboratory. Sure enough, the laboratory door was still locked. She inserted the electronic key; the door swung open. The labo-ratory interior was dark and cold and smelled of coffee. She anxiously shut the door behind us, tested the lock, and only then switched on the lights. It was true that the laboratory was basically a repeat of the upheaval in the office above: papers everywhere, furniture overturned, cups and plates smashed, the carpet an abstract expressionist composition of what must have been a bucket of coffee grounds. But there was a pattern to the destruction. The demolition crew had clearly distinguished between what was and was not to be destroyed. The former had been shown no mercy, but the computer, telecommunications console, sound-removal equipment, and electric generator were untouched. The next room was like that as well. A hopeless mess, but the destruction was carefully calculated. The shelves of skulls had been left perfectly intact, instruments necessary for experimental calibrations set aside with care. Less critical, inexpensive equipment and replaceable research materials had been dashed to pieces. The girl went to the safe to check its contents. The safe door wasn t locked. She scooped out two handfuls of white ash. The emergency auto-incinerator did its stuff, she said. They didn t get any papers. Who do you think did it? I asked. Humans, first of all. The Semiotecs or whoever may have had INKling help to get in here, but only they came inside. They even locked the door to keep the INKlings from finishing the job. Doesn t look like they took anything valuable. No. But they did get your grandfather, the most valuable property of all, I said. That leaves me stuck with whatever he planted inside me. Now I m really screwed. Not so fast, said the chubby girl. Grandfather wasn t abducted at all. There s a secret escape route from here. I m sure he got away, using the other INKling-repel device. How can you be so sure? Grandfather s not the type to let himself get caught. If he heard someone breaking in, he d get himself out of here. So he s safe above ground? Above ground, no, she corrected. The escape route is like a maze. At the very fastest, it d take five hours to get through, and the INKling-repel device only lasts thirty minutes. He s still in the maze. Or else he s been caught by the INKlings. I don t think so. Grandfather prepared an extra-safe shelter for himself, exactly for times like these. its the one place underground no INKling will go near. I bet he s there, waiting for us to show up. Where is that? Grandfather explained the way once, but there should be a shorthand map in the notebook. It shows all the danger points to look out for. What kind of danger points? The kind that you re probably better off not knowing. You seem to get nervous when you hear too much. Sure, kid. I didn t want to argue. How long does it take to reach that shelter? About a half hour to the approach. And from there, another hour or hour and a half to Grandfather. Once we make the approach we ll be okay; its the first half hour that s the problem. Unless we really hurry, the INKling-repel device s battery will run out. What happens if our porta-pack dies midway? Wish us luck. We d have to keep swinging our flashlights like crazy. Then we d better get moving, I said. The INKlings wouldn t waste any time telling the Semiotecs we re here. They ll be back any minute. She peeled off her rain gear and got into the GI jacket and jogging shoes I d packed. Meanwhile I stripped off my slicker and pulled on my nylon windbreaker. Then I traded my sneakers for rain boots and shouldered the knapsack again. My watch read almost twelve-thirty. The girl went to the closet in the far room and threw the hangers onto the floor. As she rotated the clothes rod, there was the sound of gears turning, and a square panel in the lower right closet wall creaked open. In blew cold, moldy air. Your grandfather must be some kind of cabinet fetishist, I remarked. No way, she defended. A fetishist s someone who s got a fixation on one thing only. Of course, Grandfather s good at cabinetry. He s good at everything. Genius doesn t specialize; genius is reason in itself. Forget genius. It doesn t do much for innocent bystanders. Especially if everyone s going to want a piece of the action. That s why this whole mess happened in the first place. Genius or fool, you don t live in the world alone. You can hide underground or you can build a wall around yourself, but somebody s going to come along and screw up the works. Your grandfather is no exception. Thanks to him, I got my gut slashed, and now the world s going to end. Once we find Grandfather, it ll be all right, she said, drawing near to plant a little peck by my ear. You can t go back now. The girl kept her eye on the INKling-repel device while it recharged. Then, when it was done, she took the lead and I followed, same as before. Once through the hole, she cranked a handle to seal the opening. With each crank, the patch of light grew smaller and smaller, becoming a slit, then disappearing. What made your grandfather choose this for an escape route? Because it links directly to the center of the INKling lair, she said, without hesitation. They themselves can t go near it. its their sanctuary. Sanctuary? I ve never actually seen it myself, but that s what Grandfather called it. They worship a fish. A huge fish with no eyes, she told me, then flashed her light ahead. lets get going. We haven t got much time. The cave ceiling was low; we had to crouch as we walked, banging our heads on stalactites. I thought I was in good shape, but now, bent low like this, each pitch of my hips stabbed an ice pick into my gut. Still, the pain had to be a hell of a lot better than wandering around here alone if I ever let her out of my sight. The further we traveled in the darkness, the more I began to feel estranged from my body. I couldn t see it, and after a while, you start to think the body is nothing but a hypothetical construct. Sure, I could feel my wound and the ground beneath the soles of my feet. But these were just kinesthesis and touch, primitive notions stemming from the premise of a body. These sensations could continue even after the body is gone. Like an amputee getting itchy toes. Thoughts on the run, literally, as I chased after the chubby girl. Her pink skirt poked out from under the olive drab GI jacket. Her earrings sparkled, a pair of fireflies flitting about her. She never checked to see if I was following; she simply forged ahead, with girl scout intensity. She stopped only when she came to a fork in the path, where she pulled out the map and held it under the light. That was when I managed to catch up with her. Okay up there? We re on the right path? I asked. For the time being at least, she replied. How can you tell? I can tell we re on course because we are, she said authoritatively, shining her light at our feet. See? Take a look. I looked at the illuminated circle of ground. The pitted rock surface was gleaming with tiny bits of silver. I picked one up a paperclip. See? she said, snidely. Grandfather passed this way. He knew we d be following, so he left those as trail markers. Got it, I said, put in my place. Fifteen minutes gone. lets hurry, she pressed. There were more forks in the path ahead. But each time, scattered paperclips showed us the way. There were also boreholes in the passage floor. These had been marked on the map, spots where we had to walk with care, with flashlights trained on the ground. The path wormed left and right but kept going further and further down. There were no steep inclines, only a steady, even descent. Five minutes later, we came to a large chamber. We knew this from the change in the air and the sound of our footsteps. She took out the map to check our location. I shone my light all around. The room was circular in shape; the ceiling formed a dome. The curved walls were smooth and slick, clearly the work of… human hands? In the very center of the floor was a shallow cavity one meter in diameter, filled with an unidentifiable slime. A tincture of something was in the air, not overpowering, but it left a disagreeable acid gumminess in your mouth. This seems to be the approach to the sanctuary, she said. That means we re safe from INKlings. For the time being. Great, but how do we get out of here? Leave that up to Grandfather. He ll have a way. On either side of the sanctuary entrance was an intricate relief. Two fishes in a circle, each with the other s tail in its mouth. Their heads swelled into aeroplane cowlings, and where their eyes should have been, two long tendril-like feelers sprouted out. Their mouths were much too large for the rest of their bodies, slit back almost to the gills, beneath which were fleshy organs resembling severed animal limbs. On each of these appendages were three claws. Claws? The dorsal fins were shaped like tongues of flames, the scales rasped out like thorns. Mythical creatures? Do you suppose they actually exist? I asked her. Who knows? she said, picking up some paperclips. Quick, lets go in. I ran my light over the carving one more time before following her through the entrance. It was nothing short of amazing that the INKlings could render such detail in absolute darkness. Okay, they could see in the dark, but this vision of theirs was otherworldly. And now they were probably watching our every move. The approach to the sanctuary sloped gradually upward, the ceiling at the same time rising progressively higher until finally it soared out of the flashlight s illumination. From here on, we climb the mountain, she said. Not a real mountain, anyway. More like a hill. But to them, its a mountain. That s what Grandfather said. its the only documented subterranean mountain, a sacred mountain. Then we re defiling it. Not at all. The reverse. The mountain was filthy from the beginning. This place is a Pandora s box sealed over by the earth s crust. Filth was concentrated here. And we re going to pass right through the center of it. You make it sound like hell. You said it. I don t think I m ready for this. Oh come on, you ve got to believe, said my pink cheerleader. Think of nice things, people you loved, your childhood, your dreams, music, stuff like that. Don t worry, be happy. Is Ben Johnson happy enough? I asked. Ben Johnson? He played in those great old John Ford movies, riding the most beautiful horses. You really are one of a kind, she laughed. I really like you. Thanks, I said, but I can t play any musical instruments. As she had forecast, the path began to get steeper, until finally we were scaling a rock face. But my thoughts were on my happy-time hero. Ben Johnson on horseback. Ben Johnson in Fort Defiance and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Wagonmaster and Rio Grande. Ben Johnson on the prairie, sun burning down, blue sky streaked with clouds. Ben Johnson and a herd of buffalo in a canyon, womenfolk wiping hands on gingham aprons as they lean out the door. Ben Johnson by the river, light shimmering in the dry heat, cowboys singing. The camera dollies, and there s Ben Johnson, riding across the landscape, swift as an arrow, our hero forever in frame. As I gripped the rocks and tested for foothold, it was Ben Johnson on his horse that sustained me. The pain in my gut all but subsided. Maybe he was the signal to put physical pain out of mind. We continued scaling the mountain in the dark. You couldn t hold your flashlight and still use your hands to climb, so I stuffed my flashlight in my jeans, she strapped hers up across her back. Which meant we saw nothing. Her flashlight beam bounced on her hip, veering off uselessly into space. And all I saw by mine were mute rock surfaces going up, up, up. From time to time she called out to make sure I kept pace. You okay? she d say. Just a little more. Then, a while later, it was Why don t we sing something? Sing what? I wanted to know. Anything, anything at all. I don t sing in dark places. Aw, c mon. Okay, then, what the hell. So I sang the Russian folksong I learned in elementary school: Snow is falling all night long Hey-ey! Pechka, ho! Fire is burning very strong Hey-ey! Pechka, ho! Old dreams bursting into song Hey-ey! Pechka, ho! I didn t know any more of the lyrics, so I made some up: Everyone s gathered around the fire the pechka when a knock comes at the door and Father goes to inquire, and there s a reindeer standing on wounded feet, saying, I m hungry, give me something to eat ; so they feed it canned peaches. In the end everyone s sitting around the stove, singing along. Wonderful. You sing just fine, she said. Sorry I can t applaud, but I ve got my hands full. We cleared the bluff and reached a flat area. Catching our breath, we panned our flashlights around. The plateau was vast; the tabletop-slick surface spread in all directions. She crouched and picked up another half dozen paperclips. How far can your grandfather have gone? I asked. Not much farther. He s mentioned this plateau many times. You mean to say your grandfather s come here out of choice? Of course. Grandfather had to cover this terrain in order to draw up his subterranean map. He knows everything about this place. He surveyed it all by himself? Certainly, she said. Grandfather likes to operate alone. its not that he doesn t like people or can t trust them; its just that nobody can keep up with him. I can believe it, I said. But tell me, what s the low-down on this plateau? This mountain is where the INKlings first lived. They dug holes into the rock face and lived together inside. The area we re standing on now is where religious ceremonies were held. its supposed to be the dwelling place of their gods, where they made living sacrifices to them. You mean those gruesome clawed fish? According to Grandfather, the fish are supposed to have led the INKlings ancestors here. She trained her light at our feet and showed me a shallow trough carved into the ground. The trough led straight off into the darkness. If you follow this trough, you get to the ancient altar. its the holiest spot in this sanctuary. No INKling would go near it. That s probably where Grandfather is, safe and sound-removed. We followed the trough. It soon got deeper, the path descending steadily, the walls to either side rising higher and higher. The walls seemed ready to close in and crush us flat any second, but nothing moved. Only the queer squishing rhythm of our rubber boots echoed between the walls. I looked up time and again as I walked. It was the urge to look up at the sky. But of course there was no sun nor moon nor stars overhead. Darkness hung heavy over me. Each breath I took, each wet footstep, everything wanted to slide like mud to the ground. I lifted my left hand and pressed on the light of my digital wristwatch. Two-twenty-one. It was midnight when we headed underground, so only a little over two hours had passed. We continued walking down, down the narrow trench, mouths clamped tight. I could no longer tell if my eyes were open or shut. The only thing impinging on my senses at this point was the echo of footsteps. The freakish terrain and air and darkness distorted what reached my ears. I tried to impose a verbal meaning on the sounds, but they would not conform to any words I knew. It was an unfamiliar language, a string of tones and inflections that could not be accommodated within the range of Japanese syllables. In French or German or English perhaps it might approximate this: Even through be shopped degreed well Still, when I actually pronounced the words, they were far from the sounds of those footsteps. A more accurate transcription would have been: Efgven gthouv bge shpevg egvele wgevl Finnish? Yet another gap in my linguistic abilities. If pressed to give a meaning, I might have said something like, A Farmer met the aged Devil on the road. Just my impression, of course. I kept trying to puzzle together various words and phrases as I walked. I pictured her pink jogging shoes, right heel onto ground, center of gravity shifting to tiptoe, then just before lifting away, left heel onto ground. An endless repetition. Time was getting slower, the clock spring running down, the hands hardly advancing. Efgven gthouv bge shpevg egvele wgevl Efgven gthouv bge shpevg egvele wgevl Efgven gthouv bge The aged Devil sat on a rock by the side of a Finnish country road. The Devil was ten thousand, maybe twenty thousand years old, and very tired. He was covered in dust. His whiskers were wilting. Whither be ye gang in sich aste? the Devil called out to a Farmer. Done broke me ploughshare and must to fixe it, the Farmer replied. Not to hurrie, said the Devil, the sunne still playes o er head on highe, wherefore be ye scurrying? Sit ye doun and eare m tale. The Farmer knew no good could come of passing time with the Devil, but seeing him so utterly haggard, the Farmer Something struck my cheek. Something flat, fleshy, not too hard. But what? I tried to think, and it struck my cheek again. I raised my hand to brush it away, to no avail. An unpleasant glare was swimming in my face. I opened my eyes, which until then I hadn t even noticed were closed. It was her flashlight on me, her hand slapping me. Stop it, I shouted. its too bright. It hurts. You can t fall asleep here like this! Get up! Get up! she screamed back. Get up? What are you talking about? I switched on my flashlight and shone it around me. I was on the ground, back against a wall, dripping wet. I had dozed off without knowing it. I slowly raised myself to my feet. What happened? One minute I m keeping pace, the next I m asleep. I have no recollection of sitting down or going to sleep. That s the trap, she said. They ll do anything to make us fall asleep. They? Whoever or whatever it is that lives in this mountain. Gods, evil spirits, I don t know them. They set up interference. I shook my head. Everything got so hazy. Your shoes were making those sounds and… My shoes? I told her about her Finnish footsteps. The old Devil. The Farmer That was all a trick, she broke in. Hypnosis. If I hadn t looked back, you probably would have slept there for… forages. Ages? Yes, that s right. You d have been a goner, she intoned. Too far gone for what, she didn t say. You have rope in the knapsack, don t you? Uh-huh, about five meters. Out with it. I unstrapped the knapsack from my back, reached inside among the cans, whiskey, and canteen, and pulled it out. She tied one end of the rope to my belt, winding the other end around her waist. There. That ought to do, she said. This way we won t get separated. Unless we both fall asleep, I said. Don t add to our problems. lets get going. And so off we went, tied together. I tried hard not to hear her footsteps. I maintained flashlight contact with the back of her GI jacket. I bought that jacket in 1971, I was pretty sure. The Vietnam War was still going on, Nixon and his ugly mug were still in the White House. Everybody and his brother had long hair, wore dirty sandals and armysurplus jackets with peace signs on the back, tripped out to psychedelic music, thought they were Peter Fonda, screaming down the road on a Chopped Hog to a full-blast charge of Born to Be Wild, blurring into I Heard It through the Grapevine. Similar intros different movie? What are you thinking about? asked the chubby girl. Oh nothing, I said. Shall we sing something? Do we have to? Well, then, think of something else. lets have a conversation. About what? How about rain? Sure. What do you associate with rain? It rained the night my folks died. How about something more cheerful? That s okay. I don t mind talking about it, she said. Unless you don t want to hear it. If you want to talk about it, you should talk about it, I replied. It wasn t really raining. The sky was overcast, and I was in the hospital. There was a camphor tree by the window. I lay in bed and memorized every branch. A lot of birds came. Sparrows and shrikes and starlings, and other more beautiful birds. But when it was about to rain, the birds wouldn t be there. Then they d be back, chirping thanks for the clear weather. I don t know why. Maybe because when rain stops, bugs come out of the ground. Were you in the hospital a long time? About one month. I had a heart operation. Funny, isn t it? I was the only one sick, now I m the only one alive. The day they died was a busy day for the birds. They had the heat turned up in the hospital, so the window was steamed up and I had to get up out of bed to wipe the window. I wasn t supposed to get out of bed, but I had to see the tree and birds and rain. There were these couple of birds with black heads and red wings. That s when I thought, how strange the world is. I mean, there must be millions of camphor trees in the world of course, they didn t all have to be camphor trees but on that one day, when it rained and stopped and rained and stopped, how many birds must have been flying back and forth? It made me really sad. It made you sad? Because, like I said, there s got to be millions of trees in the world and millions of birds and millions of rainfalls. But I couldn t even figure one out, and I d probably die that way. I just cried and cried, I felt so lonely. And that was the night my whole family got killed. Though they didn t tell me until much later. That must have been horrible. Well, it was the end of the world for me. Everything got so dark and lonely and miserable. Do you know what that feels like? I can imagine, I said. Her thoughts on rain occupied my thoughts. So much so I didn t notice that she d stopped and I bumped into her, again. Sorry, I said. Shh! She grabbed hold of my arm. I hear something. Listen! We stood absolutely still and strained our ears. At first, faint, almost imperceptible. A deep rumbling, like a tremor. The sound got louder. The air began to tremble. Everything told us something was about to happen. An earthquake? I asked. No, the girl shuddered. its much worse than that. Gray Smoke As the Colonel forewarned, one sees smoke almost every day. Gray smoke that rises from the vicinity of the Apple Grove and ascends into the clouds. If one watches long enough, the Apple Grove will seem itself to create these clouds. The first signs of smoke are visible at exactly three in the afternoon, and the burning goes on according to the number of dead. The day after a blizzard or a freezing night, a thick column of smoke will continue for hours. Why is there not a scheme to prevent the beasts from dying? Could not a shelter be built for them? I ask the Colonel while we play chess. Should they not be protected from the snow and wind and cold? A simple roofed enclosure would save many of them. It would do no good, is all he responds, never lifting his eyes from the chessboard. They would never take to the shelter. They would continue to sleep on the ground as always. They would sleep out in the elements, even if it means they die. The Colonel threatens, placing his High Priest directly before my King. To either side, two Horns are positioned in fire line. I wait for them to initiate the attack. It almost seems the beasts wish to suffer and die, I say. In a way, yes. That is natural to them. Cold and discomfort. That might even be their salvation. The Colonel falls silent, allowing me to entrench my Ape beside his Wall. Perhaps I can lure the Wallinto moving. The Colonel reaches to take the bait, only to pull back one of his Knights and fortify his defenses. Getting your wiles, are you now? says the military man with a laugh. Nowhere near you, of course. I also laugh. What do you mean by their salvation ? Odd to say, dying might be what saves them. They die and are reborn in the spring. As new young, that is. But then those newborn young grow to suffer and die all the same. Why must they suffer so? Because it is ordained, he pronounces. Your turn. You cannot win unless you eliminate my High Priest. After three days of snow appears a sudden sky of clarity. Rays of sun spill a blinding glare upon the frozen white Town. I hear snow falling from branches everywhere. I stay indoors and draw the curtains against the light, but I cannot escape. The ice-encrusted Town refracts like a huge, many-faceted jewel, sending knives of light to stab my eyes. I pass the afternoons face down on my bed. I strain to hear the songs of the birds that visit the windowsills for breadcrumbs the old men leave. I can hear the old men themselves sitting in front of the house, talking in the sun. I alone shun the warm bounty of sunshine. When the sun sets, I get out of bed and bathe my sore eyes in cold water. I put on my black glasses and descend the snowbanked slope to the Library. I cannot read as much as usual. After only one skull, the glowing of the old dreams pricks needles of pain into my eyeballs. The vague hollows behind my vision grow heavy, my fingertips lose their sensitivity. At these times, the Librarian brings me a cool towel compress for my eyes and some light broth or warm milk to drink. They are gritty on my tongue, wholly lacking in flavor. I grow accustomed to this, but I still do not find the taste agreeable. You are gradually adjusting to the Town, she says. The food here is different than elsewhere. We use only a few basic ingredients. What resembles meat is not. What resembles eggs is not. What resembles coffee only resembles coffee. Everything is made in the image of something. The soup is good for you. It warms you. Yes, it does, I say. My head is not so heavy, my body not as cold. I thank her and close my eyes to rest. Is there something else you require? she asks. What makes you say that? Surely there is something that v/ould help to unclose your winter shell. What I want is the sun, I say. Whereupon I remove my black glasses and wipe the lenses with a rag. But its impossible. My eyes can t tolerate light. Something more true than sunlight. Something perhaps from your former world that gave you comfort. I chase up the pieces of memory left to me, but none completes the puzzle. its no good. I cannot remember a thing. I ve lost it all. Something small, anything, the first thing that comes to you. Let me help you. My memory is solid rock. It does not budge. My head hurts. Losing my shadow, I have lost much. What is left is sealed over in the winter cold. She puts her hand on my temple. We can think about this later. Perhaps you will remember. Let me read one last old dream, I insist. You are tired. Should you not wait until tomorrow? There is no need to strain yourself. The old dreams will keep. No, I would rather read dreams than do nothing. At least then, I don t have to think about anything. She stands, and disappears into the stacks. I sit there, eyes shut, plunging into darkness. How long will this winter last? A killing winter, the Colonel has said. And it has only begun. Will my shadow survive? No, the question is, will I survive, uncertain as I am? She places a skull on the table and wipes it with a dampened cloth, as usual, followed by a dry cloth. I sit there, head resting on my hand, and watch her fingers at work. Is there nothing else I can do for you? she says, looking up unexpectedly. You do so much for me already, I say. She stays her hand and sits facing me. I mean something else. Perhaps you wish to sleep with me. I shake my head. I do not understand, she implores. You said you needed me. I do. But now it is not right. She says nothing and at length returns to polishing the skull. I look at the ceiling, at the yellowed light hanging from it. No matter how hard my mind becomes, no matter how winter closes me, it is not for me to be sleeping with her. It is the Town that wants me to sleep with her. That is how they would claim my mind. She places the polished skull before me, but I do not pick it up. I am looking at her fingers on the table. I try to read meaning from her fingers, but they tell me nothing. Tell me more about your mother, I say. My mother? Yes. Anything at all. Well, she begins, her hands on the skull, it seems I felt differently toward my mother than I did toward others. I cannot recall well, it was so long ago. Why that should be, I do not know. That s the way it is with the mind. Nothing is ever equal. Like a river, as it flows, the course changes with the terrain. She smiles. That seems wrong. That s the way it is, I say. Do you not miss your mother? I do not know. She moves the skull to stare at it from various angles. Is the question too vague? Yes, probably. Shall we talk of something else? I suggest. What sort of things did your mother like? Can you remember? Yes, I remember very well. On warm days we took walks and watched the beasts. The Townfolk do not often take walks, unlike you. Yes, I enjoy walking, I say. What else can you recall? When she was alone in her room, I would hear her talking, although I do not know if it pleased her. What sort of things did she say? I do not remember. It was not talking as one usually does. I do not know how to explain, but it seemed to have importance to Mother. Importance? Yes, the talking had a… an accent to it. Mother would draw words out or she would make them short. Her voice would sound high and low, like the wind. That is singing, I suddenly realize. Can you talk like that? Singing is not talking. It is song. Can you do it too? she says. I take a deep breath but find no music in my memory. I m sorry. I cannot remember a single song, I say. Is it impossible to bring the songs back? A musical instrument might help. If I could play a few notes, perhaps a song would cqme to me. What does a musical instrument look like? There are hundreds of musical instruments, all different shapes and sizes. Some are so large, four persons are needed to lift them; others will fit in the palm of the hand. The sounds are different as well. Having said this, I begin to feel a string of memory slowly unravelling inside me. There may be a musical instrument in the Collection Room. It is not really a collection, but there are many things from the past. I have only glanced in there. May we look? I ask. It seems I can do no more dreamreading today. We walk past the stacks of skulls to another hallway, arriving at frosted glass doors like those at the Library entrance. She enters, finds the light switch, and a dim illumination filters down over a confined space. The floor is cluttered with trunks and valises, piles of suitcases large and small. Too many to count, all are covered with dust. Among them are odd objects, either lying open or in fitted cases. Why are these things here? I kneel to open one of these cases. A cloud of white dust flies up. Inside sits a curious machine, with rows of round keys on its slanted face. It is apparently well used, the black paint flaked in places on its iron frame. Do you know what this is? No, she says, standing over me. Is it a musical instrument? No, this does not make music. It makes words. I think they called it a typewriter. I close the case on the ancient mechanism, moving now to the wicker basket next to it. I raise the lid and find a complete set of knives and forks, cups, plates, and yellowed napkins neatly packed. A large leather portmanteau contains an old suit, shirts neckties, socks, and undergarments. Between layers of clothing are a set of toiletries, the shaving brush caked with dirty soap, and a liquor flask devoid of odor. Each piece of luggage I open reveals a similar tawdry inventory. Clothes and some few sundry items, all seem to have been packed for a sudden journey. Yet each wants for identifying detail, each impresses as somehow unremarkable, lacking in particularity. The clothes are neither quality tailored items, nor tatttered hand-me-downs. They show differences in period, season, and gender, varying in their cut according to age, yet nothing is especially striking. They even smell alike. It is as if someone has painstakingly removed any indication of individuality. Only person-less dregs remain. After examining five or six suitcases, I relinquish the effort. If any musical instruments are to be found in the Town, they will not be here. lets go, I say. The dust scratches my eyes. Are you disappointed not to find a musical instrument? We can try looking somewhere else, I say. I bid her good-night and climb the Western Hill alone. The winter wind whips between the trees, driving at my back. I look behind me to find the moon hovering half-obscured over the Clocktower, the heavens boiling thick with cloud matter. In the less than lunar light, the River recedes black as tar. I remember seeing a warm scarf among the clothes in the Collection Room. It has more than a few moth holes, but wrapped around several times, it will stave off the cold. I must ask whether those suitcases have owners, and whether I might have use of the contents. Standing in the wind with no scarf, I shiver; my ears sting as if slashed. I shall visit the Gatekeeper tomorrow. I also must see after my shadow. I turn away to the Town, and resume my steps up the frozen incline toward the Official Residences. Holes, Leeches, Tower its not an earthquake, the girl shuddered. its much worse than that. Like what? She didn t answer, only swallowed her breath and shook her head in distress. No time for explanations now. Run! That s the only thing that can save us. You might rip your stitches, but its better than dying. Tethered by nylon rope, we ran full speed straight ahead. The light in her hand swung violently, tracing a jagged seis-mographic pattern between the walls. My knapsack bounced on my back. I d have liked to dump it, but there was no time. There was no way to slacken my pace; I was on a leash. The rumble grew louder the farther we got. We seemed to be heading directly into its source. What started as an underground tremor was now a grating, hissing, bubbling, rasping I don t know what else. I cringed as we ran my body wanted to go the other way but she was leading and I was following. Fortunately, there were no turns or obstacles. The trough was flat as a bowling alley. No boreholes or rocks to worry about. Then came a series of sharp creaks and cracks, like boulders scraping together with tremendous force. All was relentless noise; suddenly silence. A second of nothing at allThen everywhere was filled with a weird hissing, as if thousands of old men were sucking air between their teeth. A reedy whistling echoing through the darkness like the humming of thousands of subterranean insects triggered by the same stimulus. The sound did not wish us well. At the same time, I got the uncanny feeling that the sound was beckoning us, a beast lying in wait for its prey. Whatever horror was out there, it knew we were coming. Whatever it was, I had no idea. We d left my imagination a long way back. We kept running for how long? My sense of time was paralyzed. I ran and ran but felt no fatigue, my gut wound allocated to a far corner of my consciousness. My elbows felt stiff, but that was my only body sensation. I was hardly aware I was running. My legs flew and bounded. A dense mass of air was pushing me from behind. I was poetry in motion when she screamed out a warning, which I didn t hear. I smashed into her, knocking her to the ground. I continued my forward motion, falling in an arc over her. I didn t even hear myself hit. An instant after my head slammed into the hard rock slab, the thought occurred to me: it was as if I were sound-removed. Or was evolution creeping up on me? Next or more accurately, overlapping with this I was blinded with pain in my frontal lobe. The darkness exploded before my eyes. I was sure I had a concussion. Had I fractured my skull? Maybe I was brain-dead, and this was a vestigial lizard-tail of pain firing away in my cortex. That all passed in an instant. I was alive. I was alive and breathing. And breathing, I felt pain. I felt tears on my cheeks, streaming into the corner of my mouth and down onto the rock slab. I thought I would pass out, but I fastened the pain to the darkness. I d been doing something. Yes, I was running. I was running from something. I fell. In the cut ends of my memory, I labored to get to my knees. As awareness spliced together, I noted the nylon rope. I was a piece of laundry blown off the line by gale winds. I had developed a habit of transposing my circumstances into all sorts of convenient analogues. The next thing I realized was that my body was missing from the waist down. I reassessed the situation. My lower half was there, just unable to feel anything. I shut my eyes and concentrated. Trying to resurrect sensations below the belt reminded me of trying to get an erection. The effort of forcing energy into a vacuum. So here I was, thinking about my friendly librarian with the gastric dilation and the whole bedroom fiasco. That s where everything began going wrong, it now struck me. Still, getting a penis to erect itself is not the sole purpose of life. That much I understood when I read Stendhal s Charterhouse of Parma years ago. My lower half seemed to be stuck in some halfway strait. Or cantilevered out over empty space or… dangling off the edge of the rock slab. It was only my upper half that prevented me from falling. That s why my hands were clinging to the rope so desperately. I opened my eyes into bright light. The chubby girl was shining her flashlight in my face. I gripped the rope and struggled to drag my lower half up onto solid rock. Hurry up! yelled the girl, or we ll both be killed! My body was dead heavy, the ground slippery with blood. My wound had probably split open. I dropped the rope and arm-pressed myself up, agonizing. My belt caught on the edge of the rock slab, while the nylon rope wanted to pull me forward. Don t yank! I shouted at the approaching light. I ll manage myself. Don t touch the rope. Are you all right? All right enough. Belt still caught on the rock edge, I squeezed out all of my strength to throw one foot up. Sorry I couldn t help you, she said. I was trying to hold on to the rocks so the two of us wouldn t fall over the edge. That I don t mind, I said. But why didn t you tell me about this hole? There wasn t time. That s why I yelled for you to stop. I couldn t hear. lets not argue. We re almost there. We ve got to get out of here. If we don t, we ll get the blood sucked out of us. Blood? She shined her flashlight into the hole. It was perfectly round, about a meter in diameter. Then she panned the light, revealing rows of identical holes as far as the ey could see. We were walking on a honeycomb. Except that the ground appeared to be like shifting sand. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me after the blow to my head. But my hands, when held under the light, showed no particular sign of trembling. Which meant the ground really was moving. Leeches! she squealed. Zillions of leeches are crawling up from the holes. If we hang around here, they ll suck us dry. Uggh. I felt sick. Is this what s supposed to be worse than an earthquake? No. The leeches are only the beginning. The real incredible part comes later. Still leashed together, we ventured out onto the viscous surface, squashing leeches with every step. It made me squirm involuntarily. Don t slip. If you fall into a hole, that ll be the end of you. She clung to my elbow. I held onto the tail of her jacket. For anyone not accustomed to this sort of thing, stepping on thirty-centimeter wide sections of slick rock crawling with leeches in the dark is an experience likely to be memorable. The squashed leeches made a thick layer of sticky, gelatinous mush. Leeches must have gotten on me when I stumbled. I could feel a couple sucking on my neck and ears. I tried not to make too much of this because I couldn t stand the thought of it. Also, my hands were occupied. To be exact, I had a flashlight in my left hand and her in my right. I couldn t just stop to yank the damn things off. Each time I shined my flashlight on the ground, I saw a sickening ooze of leeches. They just kept coming. I ll bet the INKlings used to throw their sacrificial victims into these holes. You re very smart, she said. Aren t I, though, I answered. The leeches, Grandfather says, are acolytes of those fish. So the INKlings make offerings to the leeches too. Fresh meat, warm blood, humans dragged under from the surface world. Gasping noises seemed to be rushing up from the dark holes. Twisting whips of air, like feelers from below, completely enveloped us in a bristling night forest. The water is almost here, she announced. The leeches were only the beginning. Once they disappear, we get the water. It gushes up from the holes. We ve got to reach the altar before the water rises. You knew all this? Why the hell didn t you tell me? Because I didn t know, okay? its not like the water rises every day. It only happens once or twice a month. How was I to know today would be one of those days? There was no end to the holes. My shoes were so sticky with leech innards, I couldn t walk straight. Funny thing. Just a little more, she assured me. Just a little more and we ll be safe. It was too much trouble to speak. I nodded instead, which was less than meaningless in total darkness. Can you hear me? You okay? she called out. I feel like puking, but I m fine. I m not such a wimp usually, but a sundae of leeches, all squashed and sticky on top of darkness and fatigue and lack of sleep was testing the limits of my cool. Gastric juices backed up, acid sweet, into my throat. I didn t dare look at my watch. Thoughts of the sky intruded. Morning, trees, hot coffee,- newspaper… I wanted light, any light, real light. Once we get out of this spot, you can throw up all you want. Hang in there. She gripped my elbow. Not me. You won t see me throwing up. I only feel like it, I gurgled inside my mouth. It happens to everyone. I know its horrible, but its got to end sometime. Trust me, she said with irrepressible optimism. No, these holes could go on forever. And I would never get to read that morning edition. The fresh ink coming off on your fingers. Thick with all the advertising inserts. The Prime Minister s wake-up time, stock market reports, whole family suicides, chqwanmushi recipes, the length of skirts, record album reviews, real estate… The only thing was, I didn t subscribe to a newspaper. I d given up on newspapers three years ago. Why? I felt disconnected. Converting numbers in my brain was my only connection to the world. Most of my free time I chose to spend alone, reading old novels, watching old Hollywood movies on video, drinking. I had no need for a newspaper. Even so, deprived of light in this netherworld, I found myself longing for the morning edition. To sit down in a sunny spot and lap it up like a cat at its dish of milk, first page to last, to read every word of print. There s the altar, she said abruptly. Another ten meters. At that moment, as if to underscore her words, the air wheezing out of the holes stopped, cut off by a single giant razor stroke. No forewarning, no aftertones, all that noise pressure, gone. And with it the entire aural space, and my equilibrium. Total silence. Once the sound was severed, that was it. Both she and I froze in position, straining our ears for… what? I swallowed, but it sounded as raucous as a needle striking the edge of a turntable. The water s receded? I asked hopefully. The water s about to spew, she said. All that noise was the air being forced out of the water table. its all out now. The action comes after this. She took my hand as we crossed the last few holes. At last we were over the worst part. The leeches seemed to have fled in the opposite direction. Even if we drowned now, it beat a slow slimy death in a leech pit. I reached up to peel the sucker off my neck, but she stopped me. Don t! You ll tear your skin. A few leeches never hurt anyone, she said. Anyway, we have to climb the tower quick. Didn t they ever teach you about leeches in school? No, I admitted. That s me, dumb as the anchor under a buoy. A little farther on, she shined her light up at the the tower that rose before us. It was a smooth, featureless cylinder that loomed like a lighthouse, seeming to narrow from base to top. I couldn t tell its height, but it was very tall. Without a word, she started up the steps . I, of course, had to be pulled along. Seen from a slight distance in limited light, this tower had appeared to be a noble monument constructed over centuries, but close up, you realized it was a natural rock formation. And a rather crude stalagmite at that. Even the winding steps chiseled into this deceptive pylon were not quite stairs. Uneven and irregular, barely wide enough for one foot, sometimes missing entire footholds. We scrambled and fell and plastered ourselves against the rock face. After thirty-six steps I m a habitual step counter we were met by the sound of a loud slap, as if a huge cut of roast beef had been flung against a stone wall. Followed by a tentative half beat of quiet. The something was coming. It came. Torrents of water, gushing up from those hundreds of leech-infested holes. Tons of water, sluicing through darkness. In the next instant, I am a child in.a movie theater, watching a newsreel orthe inauguration of a dam. The floodgates are open, a massive column of water leaps from the screen. The governor, wearing a helmet, has done the honors and pushed the button. Billowing clouds of spray, a deafening roar. What are you doing down there? she barked. How high do you think the water will rise? I blinked awake and shouted up. High, was her pointed reply. The only sure thing is the water won t reach the top. How many more steps? Lots. Another nice answer. We kept climbing. Her flashlight swung about wildly by its shoulder strap. I gave up counting the steps after two hundred. The sound of the angry torrent slowed to a hungry maelstrom to a racy gurgle. No doubt about it, the water level was rising. At any moment now, the water would be licking my heels. Couldn t we swim? I asked her. We could float up. its got to be easier than this. No, she ruled. There s a whirlpool under the surface. If you get caught in the undertow, you re not going to do a whole lot of swimming. Which meant this way was the only way. Plodding up these miserable steps, not knowing when the water was going to get to us. I was sick of it. Back to the newsreel, arcs of water shooting across the screen, spillway emptying into the big bowl below. Dozens of camera angles: up, down, head on, this side, that side, long, medium, zoom in close-up on the tumbling waters. An enormous shadow of the arching water is cast against the concrete expanse. I stare, and the shadow gradually becomes my shadow. I sit there, transfixed. I know its my shadow flickering on the curve of the dam, but I don t know how to react as a member of the audience. I m a ten-year-old boy, wideeyed and afraid to act. Should I get my shadow back from the screen? Should I rush into the projection room and steal the film? I do nothing. My shadow stays on screen, a figure in the distance, unsteady through the shimmering heat. The shadow cannot speak, knows no sign language, is helpless, like me. The shadow knows I am sitting here, watching. The shadow is trying to tell me something. No one in the audience realizes that the shadow is really my shadow. My older brother, sitting next to me, doesn t notice either. If he had, he wouldn t miss the opportunity to box my ears. He s that kind of brother. Nor do I let on that its my shadow. No one would believe me anyway. Instantly the dam segment ends and the news changes to the coronation of a king. A team of horses with fancy headgear is pulling a fairy-tale carriage across a flagstone plaza. I search for my shadow in the procession, but all I see are shadows of the horses and carriage. There ended the memory. Though I couldn t be sure any of it had really happened to me. I had no recollection. Perhaps this was a hallucination induced by the sounds of the water in the darkness, a daydream dredged up in the face of extreme circumstances. But the image was too vivid. It had the smell of memory, real memory. This had happened to me, it came to me with a jolt. Until this moment the memory, it seemed, had been sealed off from the sludge of my consciousness by an intervening force. An intervening force? Or an operation, like the one done on my brain to give me shuffling faculty. They had shoved memories out of my conscious awareness. They had stolen my memories from me! Nobody had that right. Nobody! My memories belonged to me. Stealing memories was stealing time. I got so mad, I lost all fear. I didn t care what happened. I want to live! I told myself. I will live. I will get out of this insane netherworld and get back my stolen memories back and live. Forget the end of the world, I was ready to reclaim my whole self. A rope! she yelled out of nowhere. Rope? Quick, get on up here. There s a rope hanging down. I hurried up the next three or four steps to where she stood and felt along the rock surface with my hand. Most definitely, there was a rope, a length of mountaineering line, the end of which reached chest-high on me. I pulled at it to test its strength. It seemed to be secured at the other end. its got to be Grandfather s doing, she exclaimed. Grandfather s dropped a line for us. To give us a better start, lets go around once more. Exasperating as it was to keep checking each step, especially in my tennis shoes, we ascended one more circle around the tower and found the rope hanging in the same position. There were knots for footing every thirty centimeters or so. lets hope they went up all the way to the top. its Grandfather all right/Only he would think of such details. I ll say, I said. Can you climb rope? Of course, she retorted. I ve been a climber since I was a little girl. Didn t I tell you? Well then, you first, I said. When you get to the top flash me a signal with your light. Then I ll start my climb. But by then the water will have reached here. We d better climb together. No, one rope, one person. That s a mountaineering rule. There s the strength of the rope to consider, plus it takes more time for two people to climb the same rope. And even if the water does rise this high, as long as I hold onto the rope I ll be safe. You re braver than you look, she said. She was up the rope without so much as another word. I clung with both hands to the rocks and stared up at her swinging, like the assumption of a drunken soul. I craved a swig of whiskey, but it was in the knapsack on my back and the idea of twisting around to extract the bottle did not seem altogether wise. Nix on that. So I thought about having a drink instead. A quiet bar, MjQ s Vendome playing low, a bowl of nuts, a double whiskey on the rocks. The glass is sitting on the counter, untouched for a moment, just looked at. Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then its time to drink. This scene set up, it came to me I didn t have the right clothes. The two thugs had taken care of that. What to do? Get some new clothes. A dark blue tweed suit. Three buttons, natural shoulder, no taper, old-fashioned cut. A George Peppard number from the early sixties. The shirt, a lighter shade of blue, Oxford broadcloth, regular collar. The necktie, a two-color stripe, a subdued red with a might-be-blue-might-be-green storm-swept seafoam shade. The drink, Scotland s finest. Bringing the glass to my lips, I noticed that the sound of the water had stopped. Did this mean that the water had stopped gushing up from the holes? Or merely that the water level had risen to where it drowned out the sound? I no longer cared. The water could rise all it wanted. I was set to survive. To get back my memories. I would be manipulated no more. I d shout it out loud. I m mad as hell! Nobody s pushing me around any more! Do you hear! Not that it would do much good to shout it out while clinging to a rock in subterranean darkness. I decided to forgo the proclamations and craned my neck to look up again. The chubby girl had climbed a good three or four flights worth of department store steps. Up in the women s wear or kimono department. How tall was this mountain anyway? Why couldn t her grandfather be waiting for us in a saner, less baroque place? Finally, she signaled with her light that she d made it to the top. I signaled back, then shined the light downward to see how far the water had risen. I couldn t make out a thing. My watch read four-twelve in the morning. Not yet dawn. The morning papers still not delivered, trains not yet running, citizens of the surface world fast asleep, oblivious to all this. I pulled the rope taut with both hands, took a deep breath, then slowly began my climb. Shadow Grounds THREE days of clear weather have come to an end. I know it as soon as I awaken. I open my eyes with no discomfort. The sun is stripped of light and warmth, the sky is cloaked in heavy clouds. Trees send up crooked, leafless branches into the chill gray, like cracks in the firmament. Surely snow will fall through, yet the air is still. It will not snow today, the Colonel informs me. Such clouds do not bring snow. I open the window to look out, but cannot know what the Colonel understands. The Gatekeeper sits before his iron stove, shoes removed, warming his feet. The stove is like the one in the Library. It has a flat heating surface for a kettle and a drawer at the bottom for the ash. The front opens with a large metal pull, which the Gatekeeper uses as his footrest. The Gatehouse is stuffy from kettle steam and cheap pipe tobacco, or more probably some surrogate. The Gatekeeper s feet also smell. I need a scarf, I begin. I get chills in my head. I can see that, snorts the Gatekeeper. Does not surprise me at all. There are old clothes in the Collection Room at the back of the Library. I was wondering if I might borrow a few. Oh, those things, says the Gatekeeper. You can help yourself to any of them. Take a muffler, take a coat, take whatever you like. And the owners? Forget about the owners Even if the owners are around, they have forgotten about those things. But say, I heard you were looking for a musical instrument? He knows everything. Officially, the Town has no musical instruments, he says. But that does not rule out the possibility. You do serious work, so what could be wrong if you had yourself an instrument. Go to the Power Station and ask the Caretaker. He might find you something. Power Station? I ask, surprised. We use power, you know, he says, pointing to the light overhead. You think power grows on apple trees? The Gatekeeper laughs as he draws a map. You take the road along the south bank of the River, going upstream. Then after thirty minutes, you see an old granary on your right-hand side. The shed with the roof caved in and no door. You make a right turn there, and follow the road until you see a hill. Beyond the hill is the Woods. Go five hundred yards into the Woods, and there is the Power Station. Understand? I believe so, I say. But it is dangerous to go into the Woods in winter. Everyone tells me so. I fell ill the last time. Ah, yes, I nearly forgot. I had to carry you up the Hill, says the Gatekeeper. Are you better now? Much better, thank you. A little less foolish? Yes, I hope so. The Gatekeeper grins broadly and shifts his feet on the stove handle. You got to know your limits. Once is enough, but you got to learn. A little caution never hurt anyone. A good woodsman has only one scar on him. No more, no less. You get my meaning? I nod appropriately. No need to worry about the Power Station. It sits right at the entrance to the Woods. Only one path, you cannot get lost. No Woodsfolk around there. The real danger is deep in the Woods, and near the Wall. If you stay away from them, everything will be fine. Keep to the path, do not go past the Power Station. Is the Caretaker one of the Woodsfolk? Not him. Not Woodsfolk and not Townfolk. We call him nobody. He stays at the edge of the Woods, never comes to Town. Harmless, got no guts. What are Woodsfolk like? The Gatekeeper turns his head and pauses before saying, Like I believe I told you the very first time, you can ask whatever questions you please, but I can answer or not answer as I see fit. I open my mouth, a question on my lips. Forget it. Today, no answers, says the Gatekeeper. But say, you wanted to see your shadow? Time you saw it, no? The shadow is down in strength since winter come along. No reason for you not to see it. Is he sick? No, not sick. Healthy as can be. It has a couple of hours exercise every day. Healthy appetite, ha ha. Just that when winter days get short and cold, any shadow is bound to lose a little something. No fault of mine. Just the way things go. Well, let it speak for itself. The Gatekeeper retrieves a ring of keys from the wall and puts them in his pocket. He yawns as he laces up his leather boots. They look heavy and sturdy, with iron cleats for walking in snow. My shadow lives between the Town and the outside. As I cannot leave to go to the world beyond the Wall, my shadow cannot come into Town. So the one place we can meet is the Shadow Grounds, a close behind the Gatehouse. It is small and fenced in. The Gatekeeper takes the keys out of his pocket and opens the iron gate to the enclosure. We enter the Shadow Grounds. It is a perfect square, one side backed up almost against the Wall. In the center is an elm tree, underneath which is a bench. The tree is blanched with age; I do not know if it is alive or dead. In a corner stands a lean-to of bricks and building scraps. No glass in the window; only a rude wooden panel that swings up for a door. I see no chimney, so there must be no heat. That is where your shadow sleeps, says the Gatekeeper. Not as bad as it looks. Even got water and a toilet. Not quite a hotel, but it is shelter. Care to go in? No, I ll meet him here, I say, still dizzy from the stale air in the Gatehouse. Cold or not, it is better to be out in the fresh air. Fine by me, let me bring it outside. The Gatekeeper storms into the lean-to by himself. I turn up my collar and sit down on the bench, scraping at the ground with the heel of my shoe. The ground is hard, with lingering patches of snow where shaded by the Wall. Presently, the Gatekeeper emerges and strides across the Grounds, my shadow following slowly after. My shadow is not the picture of health the Gatekeeper has led me to believe. His face is haggard, all eyes and beard. I imagine you two want to be alone, ha ha, says the Gatekeeper. Probably got heaps to talk about. Well, have yourselves a nice, long talk. But not too long, if you know what I mean. I know what he means. My shadow and I watch the Gatekeeper lock the enclosure gate and withdraw to the Gatehouse. His cleats rasp into the frozen distance. We hear the heavy wooden door shutting behind him. Not until he is gone from sight does the shadow approach and sit next to me. He wears a bulky rough-knit sweater, work pants, and the boots I got for him. How are you holding up? I ask. How do you expect? says my shadow. its freezing and the food s terrible. But he said you exercise every day. Exercise? says my shadow. Every day the Gatekeeper drags me out and makes me burn dead beasts with him. Some exercise. Is that so bad? its not fun and games. We load up the cart with carcasses, haul them out to the Apple Grove, douse them with oil, and torch them. But before that, the Gatekeeper lops off the heads with a hackblade. You ve seen his magnificent tool collection, haven t you? The guy s not right in his head. He d hack the whole world to bits if he had his way. Is the Gatekeeper what they call Townfolk? No, I don t think he s from here. The guy takes pleasure in dead things. The Townpeople don t pay him any mind. As if they could. We ve already gotten rid of loads of beasts. This morning there were thirteen dead, which we have to burn after this. The shadow digs his heels into the frozen ground. I found the map, says my shadow. Drawn much better than I expected. Thoughtful notes, too. But it was just a little late. I got sick, I say. So I heard. Still, winter was too late. I needed it earlier. I could have formulated a plan with time to spare. Apian? A plan of escape. What else? You didn t think I wanted a map for my amusement, did you? I shake my head. I thought you would explain to me what s what in this Town. After all, you ended up with almost all our memories. Big deal, says my shadow. I got most of our memories, but what am I supposed to do with them? In order to make sense, we d have to be put back together, which is not going to happen. If we try anything, they d keep us apart forever. We d never pull it off. That s why I thought things out for myself. About the way things work in this Town. And did you figure anything out? Some things I did. But nothing I can tell you yet. Without more details to back it all up, it would hardly be convincing. Give me more time, I think I ll have it. But by then it might already be too late. Since winter came on, I am definitely getting weaker. I might draw up an escape plan, but would I even have the strength to carry it out? That s why I needed the map sooner. I look up at the elm tree overhead. A mosaic of winter sky shows between the branches. But there is no escape from here, I say. You looked over the map, didn t you? There is no exit. This is the End of the World. It may be the End of the World, but it has to have a way out. I know that for certain. Loojt at the sky. Where do those birds go when they fly over the Wall? To another world. If there was nothing out there, why surround the place with a Wall? It has to let out somewhere. Or maybe Leave it to me, I ll find it, he cuts me short. We ll get out of here. I don t want to die in this miserable hole. He digs his heel into the ground again. I repeat what I said at the very beginning: this place is wrong. I know it. More than ever. The problem is, the Town is perfectly wrong. Every last thing is skewed, so that the total distortion is seamless. its a whole. Like this My shadow draws a circle on the ground with his boot. The Town is sealed, he states, like this. That s why the longer you stay in here, the more you get to thinking that things are normal. You begin to doubt your judgment. You get what I m saying? Yes, I ve felt that myself. I get so confused. Sometimes it seems I m the cause of a lot of trouble. its not that way at all, says my shadow, scratching a meandering pattern next to the circle. We re the ones who are right. They re the ones who are wrong, absolutely. You have to believe that, while you still have the strength to believe. Or else the Town will swallow you, mind and all. But how can we be absolutely right? What could their being absolutely wrong mean? And without memory to measure things against, how could I ever know? My shadow shakes his head. Look at it this way. The Town seems to contain everything it needs to sustain itself in perpetual peace and security. The order of things remains perfectly constant, no matter what happens. But a world of perpetual motion is theoretically impossible. There has to be a trick. The system must take in and let out somewhere. And have you discovered where that is? No, not yet. As I said, I m still working on it. I need more details. Can you tell me anything? Perhaps I can help. My shadow takes his hands out of his pockets, warms them in his breath, then rubs them on his lap. No, its too much to expect of you. Physically I m a mess, but your mind is in no shape either. The first thing you have to do is recover. Otherwise, we re both stuck. I ll think these things out by myself, and you do what you need to do to save yourself. My confidence is going, its true, I say, dropping my eyes to the circle on the ground. How can I be strong when I do not know my own mind? I am lost. That s not true, corrects my shadow. You are not lost. its just that your own thoughts are being kept from you, or hidden away. But the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed your self. You must believe in your own powers. I will try, I say. My shadow gazes up at the sky and closes his eyes. Look at the birds, he says. Nothing can hold them. Not the Wall, nor the Gate, nor the sounding of the horn. It does good to watch the birds. I hear the Gatekeeper calling. I am to curtail my visit. Don t come see me for a while, my shadow whispers as I turn to go. When it comes time, I ll arrange to see you. The Gatekeeper will get suspicious if we meet, which will only make my work harder. Pretend we didn t get along All right, I say. How did it go? asks the Gatekeeper, upon my return to the Gatehouse. Good to visit after all this time, eh? I don t really know, I say, with a shake of the head. That s how it is, says the Gatekeeper, satisfied. Meal, Elephant Factory, Trap Climbing the rope was easier than climbing the steps. There was a strong knot every thirty centimeters. Rope in both hands, I swung suspended, bounding off the tower. A regular scene from The Big Top. Although, of course, in the film the rope wouldn t be knotted; the audience wouldn t go for that. I looked up from time to time. She was shining her light down at me, but I could get no clear sense of distance. I just kept climbing, and my gut wound kept throbbing. The bump on my head wasn t doing bad either. As I neared the top, the light she held became bright enough for me to see my whole body and surroundings. But by then I d gotten so used to climbing in the dark that actually seeing what I was doing slowed me down and I nearly slipped a couple of times. I couldn t gauge distance. Lighted surfaces jumped out at me and shadowed parts inverted into negative. Sixty or seventy knots up, I reached the summit. I grabbed the rock overhang with both hands and pushed up like a competition swimmer at poolside. My arms ached from the long climb, so it was a struggle. She grabbed my belt and helped pull me up. That was close, she said. A few more minutes and we d have been goners. Great, I said, stretching out on the level and taking a few deep breaths, just great. How far up did the water come? She set her light down and pulled up the rope, hand over hand. At the thirtieth knot she stopped and passed the rope over to me. It was dripping wet. Did you find your grandfather? Why of course, she beamed. He s back there at the altar. But he s sprained his foot. He got it caught in a hole. And he made it all the way here with a sprained foot? Yes, sure. Grandfather s in very good shape. I d imagine so, I said. lets go. Grandfather s waiting inside. There s lots he wants to talk to you about. Likewise here, I said. I picked up the knapsack and followed her toward the altar. This turned out to be nothing more than a round opening cut into a rock face. It led into a large room illuminated by the dim amber glow of a propane lamp set in a niche, the walls textured with myriad shadows from the grain of the rock. The Professor sat next to the lamp, wrapped in a blanket. His face was half in shadow. His eyes looked sunken in the half-light, but in fact he was chipper as could be. Seems we almost lost you, the Professor greeted me ever so gladly. I knew the water was goint rise, but I thought you d get here a bit sooner. I got lost in the city, Grandfather, said his chubby granddaughter. It was almost a whole day before I finally met up with him. Tosh, said the Professor. But we re here now and sail the same. Excuse me, but what exactly is sail the same? I asked. Now, now, hold your horses. I ll get t all that. Just take yourself a seat. First thing, lets just remove that leech from your neck. I sat down near the Professor. His granddaughter sat beside me. She lit a match and held it to the giant sucker feasting on my neck. It was big as a wine cork. The flame hissed as it touched the engorged parasite. The leech fell to the ground, wriggling in spasms, until she put it out of its misery. My neck felt seared. If I turned my head too far, I thought the skin would slip off like the peel of a rotten tomato. A week of this life-style and I d be a regular scar tissue showcase, like one of those full-color photos of athlete s foot posted in the windows of pharmacies. Gut wound, lump on the head, leech welt throw in penile dysfunction for comic relief. V wouldn t by any chance have brought along anything to eat, would you? the Professor asked me. Left in such a hurry, I didn t pack. I opened the knapsack and removed several cans, squashed bread, and the canteen, which I handed to him. The Professor took a long drink of water, then examined each can as if inspecting vintage wines. He decided on corned beef and peaches. Care t join me? offered the Professor. I declined. We watched the Professor tear off some bread and top it with a chunk of corned beef, then dig into it with real zest. Next he had at the peaches and even brought the can up to his lips to drink the syrup. I contented myself with whiskey, for medicinal purposes. It helped numb my various aches and pains. Not that the alcohol actually reduced the pain; it just gave the pain a life of its own, apart from mine. Yessir, that hit the spot, the Professor thanked me. I usually keep two or three days emergency rations here, but this time it so happened I hadn t replenished supplies. Unforgivable. Get accustomed to carefree days and you drop your guard. You know the old saying: When the sun leaks through again, patch the roof for rain. Ho-ho-ho. Now that you ve finished your meal, I began, there s a few things we need to talk about. lets take things in order, starting from the top. Like, what is it you were trying to do? What did you do? What was the result? And where does that leave me ? I believe you ll find it all rather technical, the Professor said evasively. Okay, then break it down. Make it less technical. That may take some time. Fine. You know exactly how much time I ve got. Well, uh, t begin with, the Professor owned up, I must apologize. Research is research, but I tricked you and used you and I put your life in danger. Set a scientist down in front of a vein of knowledge and he s goint dig. its this pure focus, exclusive of all view to loss or gain, that s seen science achieve such uninterrupted advances i . . You ve read your Aristotle. Almost not at all, I said. I grant you your pure scientific motives. Please get to the point. Forgive me, I only wanted t say that the purity of science often hurts many people, just like pure natural phenomena do. Volcanic eruptions bury whole towns, floods wash bridges away, earthquakes knock buildings flat Grandfather! interrupted his chubby granddaughter. Do we really have the time for that? Won t you hurry up a bit with what you have to say? Right you are, child, right you are, said the Professor, taking up his granddaughter s hand and patting it. Well, then, uh, what is it y want t know? I m terrible at explanations. Where should I begin? You gave me some numbers to shuffle. What were they all about? T explain that, we have t go back three years. I was working at System Central Research. Not as a formal employee researcher, but as a special outside expert. I had four or five staffers under me and the benefit of magnificent facilities. I had all the money I could use. I don t put much by money, mind you, and I do have something of an allergy t servin under others. But even so, the resources the System put at my disposal and the prospect of puttin my research findings into practice was certainly attractive. The System was at a critical point just then. That s t say, virtually every method of datascramblin they devised t protect information had been found out by the Semiotecs. That s when I was invited t head up their R&D. I was then and still am, of course the most able and the most ambitious scientist in the field of neurophysiology. This the System knew and they sought me out. What they were after wasn t further complexification or sophistication of existing methods, but unprecedented technology. Wasn t the kind of thinkin you get from workaday university lab scholars, publish-or-perishin and countin their pay. The truly original scientist is a free individual. But on entering the System, you surrendered that freedom, I countered. Exactly right, said the Professor. I did my share of soul-searchin on that one. Don t mean t excuse myself, but I was eagerer than anythint put my theories into practice. Back then, I already had a fully developed theory, but no way t verify it. That s one of the drawbacks of neurophysiology; you can t experiment on animals like you can in other branches of physiology. No monkey s got functions complex enough t stand in for human subconscious psychology and memory. So you used us as your monkeys. Now, now, lets not jump to conclusions. First, let me give you a quick rundown on my theories. There s one Kiven about codes, and that is there s no such thing as a code that can t be cracked. The reason bein that codes are composed accordin to certain basic principles. And these principles, it doesn t matter how complicated or how cxactin , ultimately come down to commonalities intelligible to more than one person. Understand the principle and you can crack the code. Even the most reliable book-to-book codes, where two people exchange messages denotin words by page and line number in two copies of the same edition of the same book even then, if someone discovers the right book, the game is up. That got me t thinkin . There s only one true crack-proof method: you pass information through a black boxt scramble it and then you pass the processed information back through the same black box t unscramble it. Not even the agent holdin the black box would know its contents or principle. An agent could use it, but he d have no understanding of how it worked. If that agent didn t know how it worked, no one could steal the information. Perfect. So the black box is the subconscious. Yes, that s correct. Each individual behaves on the basis of his individual mnemonic makeup. No two human beings are alike; its a question of identity. And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin from the aggregate memories of that individual s past experiences. The layman s word for this is the mind. Not two human beings have the same mind. At the same time, human beings have almost no grasp of their own cognitive systems. I don t, you don t, nobody does. All we know or think we know is but a fraction of the whole cake. A mere tip of the icing. Now let me ask you a simple question: are you bold, or are you timid? Huh? I had to think. Sometimes I get bold and sometimes I m timid. I can t really say. Well, there s your cognitive system for y t You just can t say all at once. Accordint what you re up against, almost instantaneously, you elect some point between the extremes. That s the precision programming you ve got built in. You yourself don t know a thing about the inner shenanigans of that program. Tisn t any need for you t know. Even without you knowin , you function as yourself. That s your black box. In other words, we all carry around this great unexplored elephant graveyard inside us. Outer space aside, this is truly humanity s last terra incognita. No, an elephant graveyard isn t exactly right. Tisn t a burial ground for collected dead memories. An elephant factory is more like it. There s where you sort through countless memories and bits of knowledge, arrange the sorted chips into complex lines, combine these lines into even more complex bundles, and finally make up a cognitive system. A veritable production line, with you as the boss. Unfortunately, though, the factory floor is off-limits. Like Alice in Wonderland, you need a special drug t shrink you in. So our behavioral patterns run according to commands issued by this elephant factory? Exactly as you say, said the old man. In other words Just a second. I have a question. Certainly, certainly. I get the gist. But the thing is, those behavioral patterns do not dictate actual surfacelevel behavior. Say I get up in the morning and decide whether I want to drink milk or coffee or tea with my toast. That depends on my mood, right? Exactly so, said the Professor with a nod. Another complication s that the subconscious mind is always changin . Like an encyclopedia that keeps puttin out a whole new edition every day. In order t stabilize human consciousness, you have to clear up two trouble spots. Trouble spots? I asked. Why would there be any trouble spots? We re talking about perfectly normal human actions. Now, now, said the Professor. Pursue this much fur-iher and we enter into theological issues. The bottom line liere, if you want t call it that, is whether human actions are plotted out in advance by the Divine, or self-initiated begin-nin to end. Of course, ever since the modern age, science has stressed the physiological spontaneity of the human organism. But soon s we start askin just what this spontaneity is, nobody can come up with a decent answer. Nobody s got the keys t the elephant factory inside us. Freud and Jung and all the rest of them published their theories, but all they did was t invent a lot of jargon t get people talkin . Gave mental phenomena a little scholastic color. Whereupon the Professor launched into another round of guffaws. Oh-ho-ho. The girl and I could only wait for him to stop laughing. Me, I m of a more practical bent, continued the Professor. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar s and leave the rest alone. Metaphysics is never more than semantic pleasantries anyway. There s loads t be done right here before you go drainin the reality out of everything. Take our black box. You can set it aside without so much as ever touchin it, or you can use its bein a black box t your advantage. Only paused the Professor, one finger raised theatrically, only you have t solve two problems. The first is random chance on the surface level of action. And the other is changes in the black box due t new experiences. Neither is very easy t resolve. Because, like you said, both are perfectly normal for humans. As long as an individual s alive, he will undergo experience in some form or other, and those experiences are stored up instant by instant. To stop experiencin is to die. This prompted me t hypothesize. What would happen if you fixed a person s black box at one point in time? If afterwards it were t change, well, let it change. But that black box of that one instant would remain, and you could call it up in just the state it was. Flashfrozen, as it were. Wait a minute. That would mean two different cognitive systems coexisted in the same person. You catch on quick, said the old man. It confirms what I saw in you. Yes, Cognitive System A would be on permanent hold, while the other would go on changin … a , a , a … without a moment s pause. You d have a stopped watch in your right pocket and a tickin watch in your left. You can take out whichever you want, whenever you want. We can address the other problem by the same principle: cut off all options open to Cognitive System A at surface level. Do you follow? No, I didn t. In other words, we scrape off the surface just like the dentist scrapes off plaque, leaving the core consciousness. No more margin of error. We just strip the cognitive system of its outer layers, freeze it, and plunk it in a secret compartment. That s the original scheme of shuffling. This much I d worked out in theory for myself before I joined the System. In order to conduct brain surgery? Yes, but only as necessary, the Professor allowed. No doubt, if I d proceeded with my research, I would have bypassed the need for surgery. Sensory-deprivation parahypnotics or some such external procedure t create similar conditions. But for now, there s only electrostimulation. That is, artificial alteration of currents flowin through the brain circuitry. Nothin fancy. Tisn t anythin more than a slight modification of normal procedures in current use on psychotics or epileptics. Cancel out electrical impulses emitted by the aberration in the… I take it I should dispense with the more technical details? If you don t mind, I said. Well, the main thing is, we set up a junction box t channel brain waves. A fork, as it were. Then we implant electrodes along with a tiny battery so that, at a given signal, the junction box switches over, click-click. You put electrodes and a battery inside my head? Of course. Great, I said, just great. No need for alarm. Isn t anythin so frightenin . The implant is only the size of an azuki bean, and besides, there s plenty of people walkin around with similar units and pacemakers in other parts of their body. Now the original cognitive system the stopped-watch circuit is a blind circuit. Once you enter that circuit, you don t perceive a thing in your own flow of thought; you have absolutely no awareness of what you think or do. If we didn t arrange it that way, you d be in there foolin with the cognitive system yourself. But there s got to%e problems with irradiating the core consciousness after its stripped. That s what one of your staff told me after the operation. All very correct. But we still hadn t established that at the time. We were workin on supposition. Well, we d done a few human experiments. Didn t want t expose valuable human resources such as you Calcutecs t any dangers right off the bat, y know. The System selected ten people for us. We operated on them and watched for results. What sort of people? The System wouldn t tell us. They were ten healthy males, with no history of mental irregularities. IQ 120 or above. Those were the only conditions. The results were moderately encouragin . In seven out of the ten, the junction box functioned without a hitch. In the other three, the junction box didn t work; they couldn t switch cognitive system or they confused them or they got both. What happened to the confused ones? We fixed them back the way they were, disconnected the junction box. No harm done. Meanwhile, we continued trainin the seven, until a number of problems became apparent: one was a technical problem, others had t do with the subjects themselves. First of all, the call sign for switchin the junction box was too codependent. We started off with a five-digit number, but for some reason a few of them switched junctions at the smell of grape juice. Found that out one lunchtime. The chubby girl giggled next to me, but for me it was no laughing matter. Soon after my shuffling actualization, I d been by disturbed by all sorts of different smells. For example, I could swear the girl s melon eau de cologne made me hear things. If your cognitive system turned over each time you smelled a different odor, it could be disaster. We solved that by dispersin special sound waves between the numbers. Call signs that caused reactions very similar t the reactions t certain smells. Another problem, depending on the individual, was that the junction box would kick over, but the stored cognitive system wouldn t operate. We found out, after investigatin all sorts of possibilities, that the problem lay with the subjects cognitive system from the very beginnin . The subjects core consciousness was unstable or too rarefied. Oh, they were healthy and sharp enough, but pyschologically they hadn t established an identity. Or rather, they had identity enough, but had put things in order accordint that identity, so you couldn t do a thing with them. Just because you got the operation didn t mean you could do shuffling. As clear as could be, there was a screenin factor at work here. Well, that left three of them. And in all three, the junction box kicked over at the prescribed call sign and the frozen cognitive system functioned stably and effectively. So we did additional experiments with them for one more month, and at that point we were given the go-ahead. And then, I gather, you proceeded with shuffling actualization? Exactly so. The next phase was t conduct tests and interviews with close to five hundred Calcutecs. We selected twenty-six healthy males with no history of mental disorders, who exhibited strong psychological independence, and who could control their own behavior and emotions. This all took quite some dbin . Seein as tests and interviews leave a lot in the dark, I had the System draw up detailed files on each and every one of you. Your family background, upbringin , school records, sex life, drinkin … anyway, every thin . Just one thing I don t understand, I spoke up. From what I ve heard, our core consciousness, our black boxes, are stored in the System vault. How is that possible? We did thorough tracings of your cognitive systems. Then we made v% simulations for storage in a main computer bank. We did it as a kind of insurance; you d be stuck if anything happened t you. A total simulation? No, not total, of course, but functionally quite close t total, since the effective strippin away of surface layers made tracin that much easier. More exactly, each simulation was made up of three sets of planar coordinates and holographs. With previous computers that wasn t possible, but these new-generation computers incorporate a good many elephant factory-like functions in themselves, so they can handle complex mental constructs. You see, its a question of fixed structural mappin . its rather involved, but t put it simple for the layman, the tracin system works like this: first, we input the electrical pattern given off by your conscious mind. This pattern varies slightly with each readin . That s because your chips keep gettin rearranged into different lines, and the lines into bundles. Some of these rearrangements are quantifiably meaningful; others not so much. The computer distinguishes among them, rejects the meaningless ones, and the rest get mapped as a basic pattern. This is repeated and repeated and repeated hundreds of thousands of unittimes. Like overlayin plastic film cells. Then, after verifyin that the composite won t stand out in greater relief, we keep that pattern as your black box. You re saying you reproduced our minds? No, not at all. The mind s beyond reproducin . All I did was fix your cognitive system on the phenomenological level. Even so, it has temporal limits a time frame. We have t throw up our hands when it comes to the brain s flexibility. But that s not all we did. We successfully rendered a computer visualization from your black box. Saying this, the Professor looked first at me, then at his chubby granddaughter. A video of your core consciousness. Something no-body d ever done. Because it wasn t possible. I made it possible. How do you think I did it? Haven t a clue. We showed our subjects some object, analyzed the electromagnetic reactions in their brains, converted that into numerics, then plotted these as dots. Very primitive designs in the early stages, but over many many repetitions, revisin and fillin in details, we could regenerate what the subjects had seen on a computer screen. Not nearly so easy as I ve described it, but simply put, that s what we did. So that after goin over and over these steps how many times, the computer had its patterns down so well it could autosimu-late images from the brain s electromagnetic activity. The computer s really cute at that. Next thing I did was t read your black box into the computer pre-programmed with those patterns, and out came an amazin graphic renderin of what went on in your core consciousness. Naturally, the images were jumbled and fragmentary and didn t mean much in themselves. They needed editin . Cuttin and pastin , tossin out some parts, resequencin , exactly like film editin . Rearrangin everything into a story. A story? That shouldn t be so strange, said the Professor. The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape. Mental phenomena are the stuff writers make into novels. its the same basic logic. Of course, as encephalodigital conversion, it doesn t represent an accurate mappin , but viewin an accurate, random succession of images didn t much help us either. Anyway, this visual edition proved quite convenient for graspin the whole picture. True, the System didn t have it on its agenda. This visualization was all me, dabblin . Dabbling? I used t before the War, that is work as an assistant editor in the movies. That s how I got so good at this line of work. Bestowin order upon chaos. I did the editin alone in my laboratory, without assistance from any other staff. Nobody had any idea what I had holed myself up doin . So of course, I could walk off with those visualizations without anybody the worse for knowin . They were my treasures. Did you render all twenty-six visualizations? Sure did. Did them all, for what its worth. Gave each one a title, and that title became the title of the black box. Yours is End of the World , isn t it? - You know it is. The End of the World . its a rather unusual title, wouldn t you say? We ll go into that later, said the Professor. The fact is, nobody knew I d succeeded in visualizin twenty-six consciousnesses. I never told anyone. I wanted t take the research beyond anythin related to the System. I d completed the project I was commissioned t do, and I d taken care of the human experiments I needed for my research. I didn t want t hang around there any longer. I told the System I wanted t quit. They didn t want me t quit; I knew too much. If I were t run over to the Semiotecs at this stage, the whole shuffling plan would come to nothin , or so they thought. Wait three months, they told me. Continue with whatever research I felt like in their laboratory. They d pay me a special bonus. In three months time, their top-secret protection system would be perfected, so if I was going t leave, hang around until then. Now, I m a free-born individual and such restrictions don t sit well with me, but, well, this wasn t such a bad deal. So I decided t hang around. Still, takin things easy doesn t lead to much good. With all this time and these subjects on my hands, I hit upon the idea of installin another separate circuit to the junction boxes in your brains. Make it a threeway cognitive circuitry. And into this third circuit, I d load my edited version of your core consciousness. Why would you want to do that? For one thing, just t see what effect it d have on the subjects. I wanted t find out how an edited consciousness put in order by someone else would function in the original subjects themselves. No such precedent in all of human history. And for another thing an incidental motivation, granted if the System really was tellin me t do whatever I liked, well then, by darn, I was goint take them at their word and do what I liked. I thought I d go ahead and concoct one more function they d never suspect. And for that reason, you screwed around in our heads, laying down those electric train tracks of yours? Well, a scientist isn t one for controlling his curiosity. Of course, I deplore how those scientists cooperated with the Nazis conductin vivisection in the concentration camps. That was wrong. At the same time, I find myself thinkin , if you re goint do live experiments, you might as well do something a little spiffier and more productive. Given the opportunity, scientists all feel the same way at the bottom of their heart. I was only addin a third widget where there already was two, slightly alterin the current of circuits already in the brain. What could be the harm of usin the same alphabet flashcards t spell an extra word? But the truth is, aside from myself, all the others who underwent shuffling actualization have died. Now why is that? That s somethin … even I don t know why, admitted the Professor. Exactly as y say, twenty-five of the twenty-six Calcutecs who underwent shuffling actualization have died. All died the same way, as if their fates were sealed. They went to bed one night; come morning they were dead. Well, then, what about me? I said. Come tomorrow, I might be dead. Now hold your horses, son, held forth the Professor from inside his blanket. All twenty-five of them died within a half-year of each other. Anywhere from one year and two months to one year and eight months after the actualization. And here you are, three years and three months later, still shuffling with no problems. This leads us t believe that you possess some special oomph that the others didn t. Special? In what sense, special? Now, now. Just a minute, please. Let me ask you this: since your actualization, you haven t suffered any strange symptoms, have you? No hearin things or hallucinatin or faintin or anythin like that? No, I said. Haven t seen or heard things. Except, as I said, I have become sensitive to fruit smells. That was common t everyone. Even so, that hasn t resulted in any auditory or visual hallucinations, has it? No sudden loss of consciousness? No. Hmm, the Professor trailed off. Anythin else? Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Something I d totally forgotten as ever having happened to me just came back to me as a memory. Up until now, I ve recalled only fragments of memories, so they didn t seem to call for attention. But as we were making our way here, I experienced one long, vivid continuity, triggered by the sound of the water. It was no hallucination. It was a substantial memory. I know that beyond a doubt. No, it wasn t, the Professor contradicted me flatly. You may have experienced it as a memory, but that was an artificial bridge of your own makin . You see, quite naturally there are going t be gaps between your own identity and my edited input consciousness. So you, in order t justify your own existence, have laid down bridges across those gaps. I don t follow. Not once has anything like that ever happened to me before. Why suddenly now does it choose to spring up? That s because I switched the junction to the third circuit, said the Professor. But, well, lets just take things in order. Make things difficult if we don t, and it d be even harder for you t follow. I took a gulp of whiskey. This was turning into a nightmare. When the first eight men died one after another, I got a call from System Central. Ascertain the cause of death, they said. Frankly, I didn t want t have any more t do with them, but since it was my technology, not t mention a matter of life and death, I couldn t very well ignore them. Anyway, I went t have a look. They briefed me on the circumstances of the deaths and showed me the brain autopsy findings. Like I told y , all eight had died of unknown causes in the same way. There was no apparent damage to brain or body; all had quietly stopped breathing in their sleep. You didn t discover the cause of death? Never found out. Naturally, I came up with a few hypotheses. If for any reason the junction boxes we implanted in their brains burnt out or just went down, mightn t the cognitive systems muddle together and overload brain functions? Or say it wasn t a junction problem, supposing there was something fundamentally wrong with liberatin the core consciousness even for short periods of time, maybe it was simply too much for the human brain? The Professor then paused to pull the blanket up to his chin. The brain autopsies didn t clear anything up? The brain is not a toaster, and it isn t a washing machine either. Codes and switches are pretty much imperceptible to the eye. All we re talkin about is redirectin the flow of invisible electrical charges, so takin out the junction box for testin after the subject s dead won t tell you anything. We can detect irregularities in a living brain but not in a dead brain. Of course, if there s hemorrhagin or tumors, we can tell, but there wasn t any. These brains were i lean. Next thing we did w ks t call in ten of the surviving subjects to the lab and check them all over again. Did brain scans, switched over cognitive systems t see that the junctions were working right. Conducted detailed interviews, asked them whether they had any physical disorders, any auditory or visual hallucinations. But none of them had any problems t speak of. All were healthy and kept up a perfectly unremarkable career of shuffling jobs. We could only conclude that the ones who died had had some a priori glitch in their brain that rendered them unsuitable for shuffling. We didn t have any idea what that glitch might be. That was something for further investigation, something t be solved before attemptin a second round of shuffling actualization. But as it turned out, we were wrong. Within one month, another five died, three of which had undergone our thorough recheck. Persons we had deemed fit on the basis of our recheck had up and died soon after without battin an eyelash. Needless t say, this came as quite a shock to us. Half of our twenty-six subjects were dead, and we were powerless t know why. This was no longer a question of fit versus unfit; this was a basic program design error. The idea of switchin between two different cognitive systems was untenable from the very beginning as far as the brain was concerned. At that point I proposed that the System freeze the project. Take the junction boxes out of the survivors heads, cancel all further shuffling jobs. If we didn t, we d lose everyone. Out of the question, the System informed me. They overruled me. They what? They overruled me. The shuffling system itself was extremely successful, and it was unrealistic t expect the System t return to square one. And besides, we weren t sure the rest would die. If any survived, they d serve as ideal research samples toward the next generation. That s when I stepped down. And only I survived. Correct. I leaned my head back against the rock wall and stroked my growth of beard. When was the last time I shaved? So why didn t I die? This is also only a hypothesis, resumed the Professor. A hypothesis built on hypotheses. Still I can t be too far off the mark. It seems you were operatin under multiple cognitive systems t begin with. Not even you knew you were dividin your time between two identities. Our paradigm of one watch in one pocket, another watch in another pocket. You probably had your own junction box that gave you a kind of mental immunity. Got any evidence? Deed I do. Two or three months ago, I went back and replayed all twenty-six visualizations. And something struck me. Yours was the least random, most coherent. Well-plotted, even perfect. It could have passed for a novel or a movie. The other twentyfive were different. They were all confused, murky, ramblin , a mess. No matter how I tried t edit them, they didn t pull together. Strings of nonsequential dream images. They were like children s finger paintings. I thought and thought, now why should that be? And I came to one conclusion: this was somethin you yourself made. You gave structure to your images. its as if you descended to the elephant factory floor beneath your consciousness and built an elephant with your own hands. Without you even knowin ! I find that very hard to believe, I said. I can think of many possible causes, the Professor assured me. Childhood trauma, misguided upbringin , over-objectified ego, guilt… Whatever it was made you extremely self-protective, made you harden your shell. Well, okay. What if its so, where does that lead? Nowhere special. If left alone, you d probably live a good, long life, said the Professor. But unfortunately, that s not goint happen. Like or not, you re the key to the outcome of these whole idiotic infowars. It won t be long before the System starts up a second-generation project with you as their model. They ll tweak and probe and buzz every part of you there is t test. I don t know how far they ll go, but I can assure you it won t be pleasant. I wanted t save you from all that. Wonderful, I groaned. You re to going to save me by boycotting the project, is that it? No, but you ve got to trust me. t Trust you? After you ve been deceiving me all this time? Lying to me, making me do those phony tabulations… I wanted t get to you before either the System or Semiotecs did, so I could test my hypothesis. If I could come up with positive proof, they wouldn t have t put you through the wringer. Embedded in the data I gave you was a call sequence. After you switched over to your second cognitive system, you switched one more click to the third cognitive system. The one you visualized and edited. Exactly, said the Professor, nodding. How exactly is that going to prove your hypothesis? its a question of gaps, answered the Professor. You ve got an innate grasp on your core consciousness. So you have absolutely no problem as far as your second cognitive system. But this third circuit, being something I edited, will be part foreign, and the difference should call up some kind of reaction on your part. From measuring that, I should have been able t obtain a complete electropic-tographic registration of your subconscious mind. Should have been able? Yes, should have been able. That was before the Semiotecs teamed up with the INKlings and destroyed my labo-ratory. They walked off with all my research materials, everything that mattered. Are you sure? We thought they left critical things alone. No, I went back to the lab and checked. There s not one thing of importance left. There s not a chance I could make meaningful measurements with what s left. So how does all this have anything to do with the world ending? An innocent question. Accurately speaking, it isn t this world. its the world in your mind that s going to end. You ve lost me, I said. its your core consciousness. The vision displayed in your consciousness is the End of the World. Why you have the likes of that tucked away in there, I can t say. But for whatever reason, its there. Meanwhile, this world in your mind here is coming to an end. Or t put it another way, your mind will be living there, in the place called the End of the World. Everythin that s in this world here and now is missin from that world. There s no time, no life, no death. No values in any strict sense. No self. In that world of yours, people s selves are externalized into beasts. Beasts? Unicorns, said the Professor. You ve got unicorns, herded in a town, surrounded by a wall. Does this have something to do with the unicorn skull you gave me? That was a replica. I made it. Pretty realistic, eh? Modelled it after a visualized image of yours. It took quite some doin . No particular significance to it. Just thought I d make it up on a phrenological whim, ho ho. My little gift to you. Now just a minute, please, I said. I m willing to swallow that such a world exists in the depths of my consciousness. I ll buy that you edited it into a clearer form and input it into a third circuit in my head. Next, you ve sent in call signs to direct my consciousness over there to do shuffling. Correct so far? Correct. Then, what s this about the world ending? Once the shuffling is over, isn t the third circuit going to break and my consciousness automatically return to circuit one? No. That s the problem, corrected the Professor. If it went like that, things d be easy, but it doesn t. The third circuit doesn t have an override function. You mean to tell me my third circuit s permanently engaged? Well, yes, that s the size of it. But right now I m thinking and acting according to my first circuit. That s because your second circuit s plugged up. If we diagram it, the arrangement looks like this, said the Professor. He sketched a diagram on a memo pad and handed it to me. This here s your normal state. Junction A connected to Input 1, Junction B to Input 2. Whereas now, continued the Professor, drawing another diagram on another sheet, its like this. Get the picture? Junction b s linked up with the third circuit, while Junction A is autoswitched t your first circuit. This being the case, its possible for you t think and act in the first circuit mode. However, this is only temporary. We have t switch Junction B back t circuit two, but soon. The third circuit, strictly speaking, isn t something of your own. If we just let it go, the differential energy is goint melt the junction box, with you permanently linked into circuit three, the electric discharge drawing Junction A over to Point 2 and fusin it there in place. It was my intention t measure the differential energy and return you back to normal before that happened. Intention! Yes, my intention, but I m afraid that hand s been played out for me. Like I said before, the fools destroyed my lab and stole my most important materials. You mean I m going to be stuck inside this third circuit with no hope of return? Well, uh, yes. You ll be livin in the End of the World. I m terribly, terribly sorry. Terribly sorry? The words veered out abstractly. Terribly sorry? Easy for you to say, but what the hell s going to become of me? This is no game! This is my life! I never dreamed anythin like this would happen. I never dreamed the Semiotecs and INKlings would form a pact. And now System Central s probably thinkin we ve got somethin goin on our own. That is, the Semiotecs, they ve had their sights on you, too. They as good as informed the System of that. And as far as the System s concerned, we betrayed them, so even if it meant settin back the whole of shuffling, they d just as soon eliminate us. And that s exactly what the Semiotecs have in mind. They d be delighted if our own Calcutecs did us in that would mean the end of the System s edge on Phase Two Shuffling. Or they d be happy if we went runnint them what could be better? Either way, they have nothint lose. Great, I said, just great. Then those two guys who came and wasted my apartment and slit my stomach had been Semiotecs after all. They d put on that song and dance of a story to divert System attention. Which meant I d fallen right into their trap. So its all a foregone conclusion. I m screwed. Both sides are after me, and if I stand still my existence is annulled. No, not annulled. Your existence isn t over. You ll enter another world. Interesting distinction, I grumbled. Listen. I may not be much, but I m all I ve got. Maybe you need a magnifying glass to find my face in my high school graduation photo. Maybe I haven t got any family or friends. Yes, yes, I know all that. But, strange as it might seem, I m not entirely dissatisfied with this life. It could be because this split personality of mine has made a stand-up comedy routine of it all. I wouldn t know, would I? But whatever the reason, I feel pretty much at home with what I am. I don t want to go anywhere. I don t want any unicorns behind fences. Not fences, corrected the Professor. A wall. Whatever you say. A wall, fences, I don t need any of it, I fumed. Will you permit me to get a little mad? Well, under the circumstances, I guess it can t be helped, said the Professor, scratching his ear. As far as I can see, the responsibility for all this is one hundred percent yours. You started it, you developed it, you dragged me into it. Wiring quack circuitry into people s heads, faking request forms to get me to do your phony shuffling job, making me cross the System, -putting the Semiotecs on my tail, luring me down into this hell hole, and now you re snuffing my world! This is worse than a horror movie! Who the fuck do you think you are? I don t care what you think. Get me back the way I was. The Professor grunted. I think he s right, Grandfather, interjected the chubby girl. You sometimes get so wrapped up in what you re doing, you don t even think about the trouble you make for others. Remember that ankle-fin experiment? You ve got to do something to help him. I thought I was doin good, honest. Except circumstances kept turnin worse and worse, the old man moaned. Things re completely out of my hands. There s nothing I can do about it any more. There s nothin you can do about it either. Just wonderful, I said. Tis a small comfort, I know, the Professor said meekly, but all s not lost. Once you re there in that world, you can reclaim everything from this world, everything you re goint have t give up. Give up? That s right, said the Professor. You ll be losin everything from here, but it ll all be there. Power Station Then I tell the Librarian of my intention to go to the Power Station, she is visibly distraught. The Power Station is in the Woods, she objects, dousing red coals in the bucket of sand. At the entrance to the Woods, I tell her. The Gatekeeper himself said there should be no problem. I do not understand the Gatekeeper. Perhaps the Power Station is not far, still the Woods are dangerous. I don t care. I will go. I must find a musical instrument. Having removed all the coals, she empties ash from the stove into the bucket. She shakes her head. I will go with you, she says. Why? You dislike the woods. I do not wish to put you in danger. I will not let you go alone. The Woods are cruel; you still do not understand. We set out under cloudy skies, walking due east along the River. The morning is a pleasant precursor of spring warmth. There is no breeze, the River sounds gentle. After a quarter of an hour, I take off my gloves and scarf. Spring weather, I say. Perhaps. But this is only for a day. Winter will soon be upon us again, she says. We leave the last houses along the south bank, and now only fields appear on the right side of the road. Meanwhile, the cobblestone road gives way to a dirt path. Furrows are crested with icy chips of snow. To our left the willows along the River drape branches into the flowing mirror. Tiny birds perch awkwardly on the bobbing limbs, shifting again and again before flying off. Her left hand is in my coat pocket, holding my hand. In my other hand I carry a valise containing our lunch and a few small gifts for the Caretaker. So many things will be easier in spring, I think as I feel her warmth. If my mind holds out over the winter, and if my shadow survives, I will be closer to my former self. We walk at an easy pace, hardly speaking, not for lack of things to say but because there is no need. We view the scenery: snowy contours hollowed into the land, birds with beaks full of red berries, plantings thick with winter vegetables, small crystal-clear pools in the river course, the distant snowcapped ridges. Each sight bursts upon us. We encounter beasts scavenging for food in the withered grasses. Their pale gold tinged with white, strands of fur grown longer than in autumn, their coats thicker. Yet their hunger is plain; they are lean and pitiful. Their shoulder blades underscore the skin of their backs like the armature of old furniture, their spindly legs knock on swollen joints. The corners of their mouths hang sallow and tired, their eyes lack life. Beasts in groups of three or four stalk the fields, but few berries or clumps of grass are to be found. Branches of tall trees retain perhaps some edible nuts, but far out of reach; the beasts linger by the trees and gaze up sadly at the birds that peck at even this meager offering. What keeps the beasts from eating the crops in the field? I ask. I myself do not know, she says. That is the way of things. The beasts stay away from food that is for the Town. Although they do eat what we feed them, they will not eat anything else. Several beasts crouch down on the riverbank, legs folded under them, to drink from a pool. We pass, but they do not look up. Their white horns reflect in the water like bones sunken to the river bottom. As the Gatekeeper has instructed, a half hour along the River past the East Bridge brings one to a turning point, to the right, a narrow footpath one might ordinarily miss. The fields are now engulfed by tall weeds on either side of the path, a grassy belt that extends between the cultivated areas and the Eastern Woods. The land rises slightly through this underbrush, the grass thinning to patches as the path angles to a rocky outcropping on its north face. None so steep, with steps cut into the rock. It is a soft sandstone and the edges of the steps are rounded with wear. After walking a few more minutes, we arrive at the summit, which is slightly lower than the Western Hill where I live. Thereon, the south face of the rock descends in a gentle grassy incline, and beyond that is the dark oceanic expanse of the Woods. We pause on the rock and gaze around us. The Town from the east presents a vista far different from my accustomed perspective. The River is surprisingly straight, without a single sandbar, seeming more a manmade channel. On the far side of the River, one sees the great Northern Swamp, its easterly spread invaded by isolated patches of woodlands; on this, the southern side of the River, one sees the fields through which we walked. There are no houses; even the Eastern Bridge looks deserted and forlorn. The Workers Quarter and Clocktower are as insubstantial as mirages. We are rested now and begin our descent toward the Woods. At the edge of the trees lies a shallow pond, its icy, murky bottom giving issue to the parched form of a giant skeletal stump. On it perch two white birds, fixedly observing our approach. The snow is hard and our boots leave no tracks. We proceed and find ourselves amidst massive oaks that tap the unfrozen depths of the earth to reach toward the cloud-dark sky. As we enter the Woods, a strange sound meets our ears. Monotonous, influctuant in pitch, the murmur grows more distinct as the path leads in. Is winter breathing through the trees? Yet there is no sign of moving air. The Librarian cannot place the sound any more than can I; it is her first time in these Woods. The path stops at a clearing. At the far end stands a structure like a warehouse. No particular sign betrays the building s identity. There are no unusual contraptions, no lines leading out, nothing save the queer droning that seems to emanate from within. The front entrance has double doors of solid iron; a few small openings ride high on the brick wall. This seems to be the Power Station, I say. The front doors, however, are locked. Our combined strength fails to budge them. We decide to walk around the building. The Power Station is slightly longer than wide, its side wall similarly dotted with clerestory vents, but it has no other door. One recognizes in the featureless brick walls something of the Wall that surrounds the Town, though on closer inspection these bricks prove much more coarse. They are rough to the touch and broken in places. To the rear of the building, we find a smaller house of the same brick construction. It has an ordinary door and windows hung with grain sacks for curtains. A soot-blackened chimney juts from the roof. Here at least, one senses human presence. I knock three times on the door, but there is no answer. This door is also locked. Over there is a way in, she says, taking my hand. I look in the direction she points. There, in the rear wall of the Power Station is a low portal with an iron-plate door ajar. I stand at the opening and remove my black glasses before entering. She stands back, not wanting to go in. The building interior is dark. There is no illumination in the Power Station how curious that it does not power a single light of its own and what scant light that does stray in reveals only empty space. My eyes are nocturnal creatures. I soon discern a figure in the middle of the darkness. A man, slight of build, faces what appears to be an enormous column. Apart from this central shaft of perhaps three yards width, extending from floor to ceiling, there is no generator. No geared machinery block, no whirring drive shafts. The building could well be an indoor riding stable. Or a gigantic kiln, the floor laid with the same brick as the walls. I am halfway to the column, before the man finally notices me. Unmoving, he turns his head to watch my approach. He is young, his years numbering perhaps fewer than my own. His appearance and manner are antithetical to the Gatekeeper in every way. Lanky and pale of complexion, he has smooth skin, with hardly a trace of beard. His hair recedes to the top of his broad forehead; his clothes are neat and well pressed. Good-day, I raise my voice over the noise. He looks at me, lips tight, then gives a perfunctory nod. Am I bothering you? I shout again. The man shakes his head, then points to a panel bolted fast to the column that has occupied his attention. I look through a glass peephole in the panel and see a huge fan mounted parallel to the ground, the blades driven by some great force. What fury is tamed here to generate power for the Town? Wind power? I can barely hear myself ask. The man nods, then takes me by the arm and conducts me back toward the portal. We walk shoulder to shoulder, he a half-head shorter than I. We find the Librarian standing outside, anxiously awaiting my re-emergence. The Caretaker greets her with the same perfunctory nod. Good-day, she says. Good-day, the man answers quietly. He leads us both to where the noise is less intense, behind the small house, to a cleared acre in the Woods. There we seat ourselves on crop stubble scythed close to the ground. Excuse me. I cannot speak loud, apologizes the young Caretaker. You are from Town, I suppose? That is right, I tell him. The Town is lighted by wind, he says. There is a powerful cry in the earth here. We harness it to turn the works. The man looks to the wintering ground at his feet. It wails up once every three days. There are great underground deposits of emptiness here. On days with no wind, I tighten the bolts on the fan, grease the shaft, see that the valves and switches do not freeze. And I send the power generated here to Town, again by underground. The Caretaker shifts his gaze about the clearing. We are walled in by tall, dark forest. The soil is black and tilled, but there is no sign of plantings. I like to do things with my hands. When I have time, I clear back the Woods. I am alone in this, so I cannot do large things. I work around the tall trees and choose less angering places. In spring, I grow vegetables. That is… Have you both have to come here to observe? Yes, something like that, I say. Townfolk almost never come here, says the Caretaker. No one comes into the Woods. Only the delivery man. Once a week he brings me food and necessities. So you live here alone? I ask. Why, yes. For some time now. I can tell the mood of the works just by its sound. I am talking with the apparatus every day. That is reasonable, I have been here so long. If the works are in good condition, then I am at ease… I also know the sounds of the Woods. I hear many voices. Isn t it hard, living alone in the Woods? Is living alone hard? the Caretaker says. I mind the Station. That is, I live here, in the Woods but not in the Woods. I do not know much further in. Are there others like you here? asks the Librarian. The Caretaker considers the question, then nods. A few. Much further in, I believe there are more. They dig coal, they clear trees. I rarely meet them, I have hardly spoken to them. They do not accept me. They live in the Woods, but I live here. That is… I go no deeper in and they almost never come out. Have you ever seen a woman around here? she asks. An older woman, perhaps, who looks like me? The Caretaker shakes his head. No, not one woman. Only men. I look at the Librarian, but she says nothing more. Encyclopedia Wand, Immortality, Paperclips JUST great, I said. So I m screwed. How far gone are these circumstances of yours? You mean the circumstances in your head? asked the Professor. What else? I snapped. How far have you wiped out the insides of my head? Well, according to my estimates, maybe six hours ago, Junction B suffered a meltdown. Of course, I say meltdown for convenience sake; its not as if any part of your brain actually melted. You see The third circuit is set and the second circuit is dead, correct? That s correct. So, as I was sayin , you ve already started bridging. In other words, you ve begun t produce memories. Or t fall back on our metaphor, as your subconscious elephant factory changes, you re makin adjustments via a channel to surface consciousness. Which I gather means that Junction A isn t fully functional? That information is leaking through from my subconscious? Strictly speakin , no, said the Professor. The channel was already in existence. Whatever we do t your cognitive circuits, we must never sever that channel. The reason bein that your surface consciousness, your first circuit developed on nurture from your subconsious that is, from your second circuit. That channel s the roots of your tree. Without it, your brain wouldn t function. But the question here is that with the electrical discharge from the meltdown of Junction B, the channel s been dealt an abnormal shock. And your brain s so surprised, its started up emergency adjustment procedures. Meaning, I ll keep producing more and more new memories? Fraid so. Or more simply, deja vus of sorts. Don t differ all that much in principle. That ll go on for a while. Till finally you reassemble a world out of these new memories. Reassemble a world? You heard correct. This very moment you re preparint move to another world. So the world you see right now is changin bit by bit t match up. Changin one percept at a time. The world here and now does exist. But on the phenomeno-logical level, this world is only one out of countless possibilities. We re talkin about whether you put your right foot or your left foot out changes on that order. its not so strange that when your memories change, the world changes. Pretty academic if you ask me, I said. Too conceptual. You re disregarding the time factor. You re reversing the order of things. No, the time paradox here s in your mind, said the Professor. As you create memories, you re creatin a parallel world. So I m pulling away from the world as I originally knew it? I m just sayin its not out of the realm of possibility. Mind you, I m not talkin about any out-of-this-world science-fiction type parallel universe. its all a matter of cognition. The world as perceived. And that s what s changin in your brain, is what I think. Then after these changes, Junction A switches over, a completely different world appears, and I go on living there. There s no avoiding that turnover I just sit and wait for it to happen? Fraid so. And for how long does that world go on? Forever, said the Professor. I don t get it, I said. What do you mean forever ? The physical body has its limits. The body dies, the brain dies. Brain dies, mind ceases. Isn t that the way it goes? No, it isn t. There s no time to tautologies. That s the difference between tautologies and dreams. Tautologies are instantaneous, everything is revealed at once. Eternity can actually be experienced. Once you set up a closed circuit, you just keep spinnin round and round in there. That s the nature of tautologies. No interruptions like with dreams. its like the encyclopedia wand. The encyclopedia wand? I was evolving into an echo. The encyclopedia wand s a theoretical puzzle, like Zeno s paradox. The idea is t engrave the entire encyclopedia onto a single toothpick. Know how you do it? You tell me. You take your information, your encyclopedia text, and you transpose it into numerics. You assign everything a two-digit number, periods and commas included. 00 is a blank, A is 01, B is 02, and so on. Then after you ve lined them all up, you put a decimal point before the whole lot. So now you ve got a very long sub-decimal fraction. 0.173000631… Next, you engrave a mark at exactly that point along the toothpick. If 0.50000 s your exact middle on the toothpick, then 0.3333 s got t be a third of the way from the tip. You follow? Sure. That s how you can fit data of any length in a single point on a toothpick. Only theoretically, of course. No cxistin technology can actually engrave so fine a point. But ihis should give you a perspective on what tautologies are like. Say time s the length of your toothpick. The amount of information you can pack into it doesn t have anything t do with the length. Make the fraction as long as you want. It ll be finite, but pretty near eternal. Though if you make it a repeatin decimal, why, then it is eternal. You understand what that means? The problem s the software, no relation to the hardware. It could be a toothpick or a two-hundred-meter timber or the equator doesn t matter. Your body dies, your consciousness passes away, but your thought is caught in the one tautological point an instant before, sub-dividin for an eternity. Think about the koan: An arrow is stopped in flight. Well, the death of the body is the flight of the arrow. its makin a straight line for the brain. No dod-gin it, not for anyone. People have t die, the body has t fall. Time is hurlin that arrow forward. And yet, like I was sayin , thought goes on subdividin that time for ever and ever. The paradox becomes real. The arrow never hits. In other words, I said, immortality. There you are. Humans are immortal in their thought. Though strictly speakin , not immortal, but endlessly, asymptotically close to immortal. That s eternal life. And that was the real goal of your research? Not at all, not at all, said the Professor. its something that struck me only recently. I was just seein where my research would take me and I ran smack into this one. That expandin human time doesn t make you immortal; its subdividin time that does the trick. And so you decided to abandon me in immortality, is that it? No, no, no. That s completely by accident, too. Never intended that at all. Believe me. its the truth. I never meant t do anything of the kind. But if you act now, you can choose, if choice is what you want. There s one last hand you can play. And what might that be? You can die right now, said the Professor, very business-like. Before Junction A links up, just check out. That leaves nothing. A profound silence fell over us. The Professor coughed, the chubby girl sighed, I took a slug of whiskey. No one said a word. That… uh, world… what is it like? I brought myself to voice the question. That immortal world? Like I told you before, said the Professor. its a peaceful world. Your own world, a world of your own makin . You can be your self there. You ve got everythin there. And at the same time, there is nothin . Can you picture a world like that? Not really. Still, its your consciousness that s created it. Not some-thin just anyone could do. Others could be wanderin around forever in who-knows-what contradictory chaos of a world. You re different. You seem t be the immortal type. When s the turnover into that world going to take place? asked the chubby girl. The Professor looked at his watch. I looked at my watch. Six-twenty-five. Well past daybreak. Morning papers delivered. Accordint my estimates, in another twenty-nine hours and thirty-five minutes, said the Professor. Plus or minus forty-five minutes. I set it at twelve noon for easy reference. Noon tomorrow. I shook my head. For easy reference? I took another slug of whiskey. The alcohol didn t register. I didn t even taste it. My stomach had petrified. What do you plan to do now? asked the chubby girl, laying her hand on my lap. Hell, beats me, I said. But whatever, I want to get above ground. I can t see waiting it out down here for things to take their course. I m going up where the sun is out. Then I ll think about what comes next. Was my explanation enough for you? inquired the Professor. It ll do, thanks, I replied. S ppose you re still mad? Sure, I said. Though I guess anger won t do much for me now, will it? Besides, I m so blitzed, I still haven t swallowed the reality of it. Later on, when it hits me, I might get furious. But by then, of course, I ll be dead to this world. Really, I hadn t intended to go into so much detail, said the Professor. If I hadn t warned you, it d have all been over and done with before you even knew it. Probably would ve been less stressful, too. Still, its not like you re goint die. its just your conscious mind what s goint dis-appear forever. Same difference, I said. But either way, I d have wanted to know. At least where my life s concerned. I don t want some switch like that tripping on me without my knowing about it. I like to take care of my own affairs as much as I can. Now, which way to the exit, please? Exit? The way out of here, to above ground. It takes some time, takes you right past an INKling lair. I don t mind. At this point, there s not much that can spook me. Very well, said the Professor. You go down the mountain to the water, which is perfectly still by now, so its easy t swim. You swim to the south-southwest. I ll shine a light that way as a beacon. Swim straight in that direction, and on the far shore, a little ways up, there s a small openin . Through that you get to the sewer. Head straight along the sewer and you come to subway tracks. Subway? Yessir, the Ginza Line. Exactly midway between Gaien-mae and Aoyama Itchome. How did this all get hooked up with the subway? Those INKlings got control of the subway tracks. Maybe not durin the daytime, but at night they re all over the stations like they own the place. Tokyo subway system construction dramatically expanded the sphere of INKling activity. Just made more passages for them. Every once in a while they ll attack a track worker and eat him. Why don t the authorities own up to that fact? Cause then who d work for the subway? Who d ride the subway? Of course, when they first found out, they tried brickin over holes, brightenin the lightin , steppin up security, but none of that s goint hold back your INKling. In the space of one night, they can break through walls and chew up electrical cables. If it exits between Gaienmae and Aoyama Itchome, that would put us where right now? Somewhere under Meiji Shrine, toward Omotesando. Never pinpointed the exact spot. Anyway, there s only one route, you can t go wrong. its narrow, meanders a lot. From here you ll be headin in the direction of Sendagaya, toward the INKling lair, a little this side of the National Sports Arena. Then the tunnel takes a turn to the right, in the direction of the Jingu Baseball Stadium, then on past the Art Forum to Aoyama Boulevard to the Ginza Line. Probably take you bout two hours t reach the exit. Got it? Loud and clear. Get yourself past the INKling lair as quickly as possible. Nothin good can come of dallyin round there. Mind when you get to the subway. There s high-tension lines and subway cars. Be a pity t make it that far and get yourself hit by a subway car. I ll remember that, I said. But what are you going to do? I ll stay down here for a while. I sprained my foot. Anyway, if I surfaced now, I d only be chased by the System or Semiotecs. Nobody s goint come after me here. Fortunately, thanks to you, I ve got provisions. This all should keep me alive for three or four days, said the Professor calmly. You go on ahead. No need t worry bout me. What about the INKling-repel devices? It ll take both of them to reach the exit, which will leave you without a single porta-pack. Take my granddaughter along with you, said the Professor. The child can see you off, then return t fetch me. Fine by me, she said. But suppose something were to happen to her? What if she were caught or I won t get caught, she stated firmly. Not to be worryin , said the Professor. The child s really quite dependable for her age. I trust her. And its not like I m without special emergency measures. Fact is, if I have a battery and water and pieces of metal, I can throw together some makeshift INKling repellent. Quite simple, really, though short of the full effect of a porta-pack. All along the way here, didn t y notice? Those bits of metal I scattered? Keeps the INKlings away for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. You mean the paperclips? I asked. Yessir, paperclips are ideal. Cheap, don t rust, magnetize in a jiff, loop them t hang round your neck. All things said, I ll take paperclips. I reached into my windbreaker pocket, pulled out a handful of paperclips, and handed them to the Professor. Will these be enough? My, oh my, exclaimed the Professor with surprise. Just what the doctor ordered. I was actually a bit concerned. I scattered a few too many on the way here and I was thinkin I might not have enough. You really are a sharp one. We d better be going, Grandfather, said the girl. He doesn t have all that much time. Take care now. Step light, said the Professor, and don t let the INKlings bite. Ho-hoho. I ll be back for you soon, said the granddaughter, planting a peck on his forehead. I m truly sorry bout the way things turned out, the Professor apologized one last time. I d change places with you if could. I ve already enjoyed a full life. I d ve no regrets. But you, there s all that time you had comin . There s a lot of things you ll leave behind in this world. A loss greater than I would ever know, right? I said nothing. Still, its nothing t fear, the Professor philosophized. its not death. its eternal life. And you get t be yourself. Compared to that, this world isn t but a momentary fantasy. Please don t forget that. lets get going, said the girl, taking my arm. Musical Instruments THE young Caretaker of the Power Station invites us into his modest quarters. He checks the fire in the stove, then takes the boiling kettle into the kitchen to make tea. It is good to drink the hot infusion; we are cold from our day in the Woods. The wind-cry does not subside. I pick this herb in the Woods, the Caretaker tells us. I dry it in the shade all summer, and in winter I have it for tea. It stimulates and warms the body. The drink is fragrant, with an unassuming sweetness. What is the plant called? I ask. The name? I have no idea, he says. It grows in the Woods, it smells good, so I make tea with it. It has green stalks about yea high, blooms midsummer, I pick the young leaves… The beasts like to eat the flowers. The beasts come here? Yes, until the beginning of autumn. Toward winter, they will not come near the Woods. In warm weather, they come here in groups and I play with them and I share my rations… But winter, no. They know I will give them food, and still they do not come. All winter I am alone. Will you join us for lunch? the Librarian offers. We have brought sandwiches and fruit, too much for two. That is kind of you, says the Caretaker. I have not eaten the food of another in a long time… Oh yes, there are forest mushrooms I picked, if you care to try. Yes, very much, I say. We share her sandwiches and his mushrooms, and later have fruit and more tea. We hardly speak a word. In the absence of talk, the cry of the empty earth pours into the room and fills our silence. You never leave the Woods? I ask the Caretaker. Never, he replies, with a shake of his head. That is decided. I am to stay here always and man the Power Station… Always, until someone comes to replace me. When, I do not know. Only then can I leave the Woods and return to Town… But now is always, and I cannot. I must wait for the wind that conies every three days. I drink the last of my tea. How long has it been since the wind-cry started? Listening to its droning wail, one is pulled in that direction. It must be lonely to pass the winter here in the Woods. But you have come here to look at the Power Station? the young Caretaker remembers. We have come looking for musical instruments, I say. I was told you would know where to find them. He regards the knife and fork crossed on his plate. Yes, I have musical instruments here. They are old, I cannot say whether they will play… That is, you are welcome to them. I myself cannot play. My pleasure is to look at their shapes. Will you see them? Please, I say. He rises from his chair and we follow. This way. I have them in my room, he says. I will stay here and clean up, she says. The Caretaker opens a door, turns on the light, and invites me in. Over here, he says. Arranged along the wall are various musical instruments. All are old. Most of them are string instruments, the strings hopelessly rusted, broken or missing. Some I am sure I once knew, but do not remember the names; others are totally unknown to me. A wooden instrument resembling a washboard that sprouts a row of metallic prongs. I try to play it, but can make no song. Another, a set of small drums, even has its own sticks, yet this clearly will not yield a melody. There is a large tubular instrument, one obviously meant to be blown from the end, but how do I give breath to it? The Caretaker sits on the edge of his cot, its coverlet neatly tucked, and watches me examine the instruments. Are any of these of use to you? he speaks up. I don t know, I hesitate. They re all so old. He walks over to shut the door, then returns. There is no window, so with the door closed, the wind-cry is less intrusive. Do you want to know why I collected these things? the Caretaker asks. No one in the Town takes any interest in them. No one in the Town has the least interest. Everyone has the things they need for living. Pots and pans, shirts and coats, yes… It is enough that their needs are met. No one wants for anything more. Not me, however. I am very interested in these things. I do not know why. I feel drawn to them. Their forms, their beauty. He rests one hand on the pillow and puts his other hand in his pocket. If you wish to know the truth, I like this Power Station, he continues. I like the fan, the meters, the transformer. Perhaps I liked these things before, so they sent me here. But it was so long ago. I have forgotten the before… Sometimes I think I will never be allowed to return to Town. They would never accept me as I am now. I reach for a wooden instrument. It is hollow and sandglass-shaped, with only two strings remaining. I pluck them. A dry twang issues. Where did you find these instruments? I ask. From all over, he says. The man who delivers my provisions brings them to me. In the Town, old musical instruments sometimes lie buried in closets and sheds. Often they were burned for firewood. It is a pity… That is, musical instruments are wonderful things. I do not know how to use them, I may not want to use them, I enjoy their beauty. It is enough for me. Is that strange? Musical instruments are very beautiful, I answer. There is nothing strange about that. My eyes light upon a box hinged with leather folds lying among the instruments. The bellows is stiff and cracked in a few places, but it holds air. The box has buttons for the fingers. May I try it? I ask. Please, go ahead, the young Caretaker says. I slip my hands into the straps on either end and compress. It is difficult to pump, but I can learn. I finger the buttons in ascending order, forcing the bellows in and out. Some buttons yield only faint tones, but there is a progression. I work the buttons again, this time descending. What sounds! smiles the fascinated Caretaker. As if they change colors! It seems each button makes a note, I explain. Each one is different. Some sounds belong together and some do not. What do you mean? I press several buttons at once. The intervals are awry, but the combined effect is not unpleasing. Yet I can recall no songs, only chords. Those sounds belong together? Yes. I do not understand, he says. It seems I am hearing something for the first time. It is different from the sound of the wind and different from the voices of the birds. He rests his hands on his lap, as he looks back and forth between my face and the bellows box. I will give you the instrument. Please have any others you want. They belong with someone who can use them, he says, then turns his ear attentively to the wind. I must check the machinery now. I must see that the fan and the transformer are working. Please wait for me in the other room. The young Caretaker hurries away, and I return to where the Librarian waits. Is that a musical instrument? she asks. One kind of musical instrument, I say. May I touch it? Of course, I say, handing her the bellows box. She receives it with both hands, as if cradling a baby animal. I look on in anticipation. What a funny thing! she exclaims with an uneasy smile. Do you feel better that you have it? It was worth coming here. The Caretaker, they did not rid him of his shadow well. He still has a part of a shadow left, she whispers to me. That is why he is here, in the Woods. I feel sorry for him. Sorry? Perhaps he is not strong enough to go deeper into the Woods, but he cannot return to Town. Do you think your mother is in the Woods? I do not really know, she says. The thought occurred to me. The Caretaker comes not long thereafter. I open the valise and take out the gifts we have brought for him. A small clock and a cigarette lighter found in a trunk in the Collection Room. Please accept these. They are a token of my gratitude for the instrument, I say. The young Caretaker refuses at first, but eventually gives in. He studies the objects. You know how to use them? I ask. No, but there is no need. I will be fine, He says. They are beautiful in themselves. In time, I may find a use for them. I have too much time. At that, I tell him we will be leaving. Are you in a hurry? he asks sadly. I must return to town before sundown, then go to work, I say. I understand. I wish I could accompany you to the entrance to the Woods, but I cannot leave the Power Station. We part outside the small house. Please come back. Let me hear you play the instrument, he says. Thank you. Gradually, the wail of the wind weakens as we walk farther from the Power Station. At the entrance to the Woods, we do not hear it at all. Lake, Masatomi Kondo, Parity Hose THE girl and I wrapped up our belongings in spare shirts, and I balanced the bundles on our heads. We looked funny, but we had no time to laugh. We left behind the rations and whiskey, so our loads were not too bulky. Take care, said the Professor. In the scant light, he looked much older than when I first met him. His skin sagging, his hair going to seed like a scraggly shrub, his face blotched with liver spots. He looked like a tired old man. Genius scientist or not, everyone grows old, everyone dies. Good-bye, I said. We descended by rope to the water s surface. I went down first, signaled with my light when I reached bottom, then she followed. Plunging into water in total darkness was bound to be therapeutic. Not that I had a choice. The water was cold catharthis. It was plain, ordinary water, the usual aqueous specific gravity. Everything was still. Not air, not water, not darkness moved a quiver. Only our own splashing echoed back. Once in the water, it struck me that I d forgotten to ask the Professor to treat my wound. Don t tell me those clawed fish are swimming around in here, I called back in her general direction. Don t be silly. They re just a myth, she said. I think. Some reassurance. I imagined some giant fish suddenly surfacing and biting off a leg or two. Well, let em come. We swam a slow one-handed breaststroke, roped together, bundles on our head. We aimed for where the Professor trained his light like a beacon on the surface of the water. I swam in the lead. Our arms thrashed the water alternately. I stopped from time to time to check our progress and realign our course/ Make sure your bundle stays dry, she shouted this way. The repel device won t be worth a thing if it gets wet. No problem, I said. But in fact, it was a great struggle. I was swimming. Orpheus ferried across the Styx to the Land of the Dead. All the varieties of religious experience in the world, yet when it comes to death, it all boils down to the same thing. At least Orpheus didn t have to balance laundry on his head. The ancient Greeks had style. You aren t really mad at Grandfather, are you? asked the girl. An echo in the dark, it was hard to tell where the question was coming from. I don t know, but does it matter? I said, shouting, my voice coming back from an impossible direction. The more I listened to your grandfather, the less I cared. How can you say that? Wasn t much of a life anyway. Wasn t much of a brain. But didn t you say you were satisfied with your life? Word games, I dismissed. Every army needs a flag. She didn t respond. We swam on in silence. Where were those fish? Those claws were no figment of even a nonhuman imagination. I worried, after all, that they were cruising our way. I expected a slimy, clawed fin to be grabbing hold of my ankle any second. Okay, I may have been destined to disintegrate in the very near future, but I wasn t prepared to be pate for some creature from the black lagoon. I wanted to die under the sun. But you re such a nice guy, she said, sounding like she d just stepped fresh out of a bath. At least I think so. You re one of the very few, I said. Well, I do. I looked back over my shoulder as I swam. I saw the Professor s light retreating into the distance, but my hand had yet to touch solid rock. How could it be so far? Decent of him to keep us guessing. I m not trying to defend Grandfather, the girl started in again, but he s not evil. He gets so wrapped up in his work, he can t see anything else. He had the best of intentions. He wanted to save you before the System got to you. In his own way, Grandfather is ashamed of what he s done. Saying it was wrong did a hell of a lot of good. So forgive Grandfather, she said. What s forgiveness going to do? I answered. If he really felt responsible, he wouldn t create a monster and run off when it got ugly. He doesn t like working for big organizations, fine, but he s got lives hanging on his line of research. Grandfather simply couldn t trust the System, she pleaded. The Calcutecs and Semiotecs are two sides of the same coin. Tech-wise, maybe, but like I said before, one protects information while the other steals. But what if the System and Factory were both run by rhe same person? she said. What if the left hand stole and the right hand protected? Hard to believe, but not inconceivable. The whole time I worked for the System, I never heard anything about what went on inside System Central. We received directives; we carried them out. We terminal devices never got access to the CPU. True, it d be one hell of a lucrative business, I agreed. One side pitted against the other; you can raise your stakes as high as you like. No bottom dropping out of the market either. That s what struck Grandfather while he was in the System. After all, the System is really just private enterprise that enlisted state interests. And private enterprise is always after profit. Grandfather realized that if he went ahead with his research, he d only make things worse. So the System hangs out a sign: In Business to Protect Information. But its all a front. If the old man hands over technologies to reconfigure the brain, he seals the fate of humanity. To save the world, he steps down. Too bad about the defunct Calcutecs and me, who gets stuck in the End of the World. Were you in on this all along? I asked her. Well, yes, I knew, she confessed after slight hesitation. Then why didn t you tell me? What was the point? You could have saved me blood and time. I wanted you to see things through Grandfather s eyes, she answered. You wouldn t have believed me anyway. I suppose not, I said. Third circuit, immortality who d believe that straight out, cold? The next few breaststrokes brought my hand in contact with a stone wall. Somehow we d managed to swim across this subterranean lake. We ve made it, I announced. She pulled up next to me. We looked back to the tiny light in the distance and adjusted our position ten meters to the right. Should be about here, she said. An opening just above the water line. I carefully undid the bundle on my head and removed the pocket-sized flashlight, then shined it up the wall. I don t see a hole, I said. Try a little more to the right, she suggested. I swept the flashlight beam over the wall, but still no hole. To the right? Are you sure? A little further right. I inched to the right, my whole body shaking. Feeling my way along the wall, my hand touched a shield-like surface. It was the size of an LP record, with carvings. I shined my light on it. A relief, she said. Maybe so, but it was the same two evil-clawed fishes. The sculpted disk was a third submerged in the water. This is the way out, she said with authority. The INKlings must have placed these as markers at all exits. Look up. Shining my flashlight higher, I could barely make out a shadowy recession. I handed her the light and went to investigate. I couldn t really see the hole, but I felt a damp, mildewy air. I found it, I shouted down. Thank goodness! she exclaimed. I pulled her up. We paused there at the mouth of the passage, drenched and shivering. Undoing our bundles, we changed into dry tops. I gave her my sweater and threw away my wet shirt and jacket. This left me still sopping wet from the waist down, but I didn t have a change of slacks. While she checked the INKling repel device, I flashed a signal to the Professor that we d arrived safely. The yellow point of light blinked two times, three times, then went out. All was pitch black again. lets go, she prompted. I looked at my watch. Seven-eighteen. Above ground, morning news on every TV channel. People eating breakfast, cramming their half-asleep heads with the weather, headache remedies, car export trade problems with America. Who d know that I d spent the whole night in the colon of the world? Did they care that I d been swimming in stinking water and had leeches feeding on my neck, that I d nearly keeled over from the pain in my gut? Did it matter to anybody that my reality would end in another twenty-eight hours and forty-two minutes? It d never make the news. The passage was smaller than anything we had come through this far. We had to crawl on all fours. It led us through intestinal twists and turns, sometimes angling up near vertically, dropping back straight down or looping over like a roller coaster. Progress was hard. This was nothing the INKlings had bored out. Nobody, not even INKlings, would make a passage this convoluted. After thirty minutes, we exchanged INKling-repel porta-packs, then another ten minutes later the narrow passage suddenly opened up into a place with a high ceiling. Dead silent, it was dark and musty. The path split left and right, air was blowing from right to left. She trained her light on the divide. Each way led straight off into blackness. Which way? I asked. To the right, she said. Grandfather s instructions put us at Sendagaya, so a right turn should take us toward Jingu Stadium. I pictured the world above ground. We were directly under the Kawade Bookshop, the Victor Recording Studio, and those two landmark ramen shops Hope-ken and Copain. We re close to my barber shop, too, I said. Oh? she said without much interest. I thought about getting a haircut before the end of the world. It wasn t, after all, like I had lots of better things to do with twenty-four hours left. Taking a bath, getting dressed, and going to the barber shop were about all I could hope for. Careful now, she warned. We re getting close to the INKling nest. There s their voices and that awful stench. Stay with me. I sniffed the air. I couldn t smell anything. I couldn t hear anything either. We shortened the rope linking us to fifteen centimeters. Watch out, the wall s missing here, she spoke sharply, shining her light to the left. She was right: no wall, only a dark expanse. The beam shot off like an arrow and disappeared into thick black space, which seemed almost to be breathing, quivering, a disgustingly gelatinous consistency. Hear that? she asked. Yeah, I can hear them, I said. INKling voices. More like a ringing in my ears, actually. Cutting through like drill bits of high-pitched sound, like the humming of insects gone wild, the sound careened off the walls and screwed into my eardrums. Keep moving! she yelled in my ear. I hadn t noticed I wasn t. She yanked on the rope. We can t stop here. If we stop, we ll be dragged off and liquefied. I couldn t move. I was glued to the ground. Time was flowing backwards toward primeval swamps. Her hand came out of the dark and slapped me across the face. The sound was deafening. To the right! she barked. To the right! You hear? Right foot forward! Right, you lamebrain! My right leg creaked ahead. Left! she screamed. I moved my left foot. That s it. Slow and steady, one step at a time. They were after us for sure, piping fear into our ears, conniving to freeze our footsteps, then lay their slimy hands on us. Shine your light at your feet! she commanded. Back against the wall! Walk sideways, one step at a time. Got it? Got it, I said. Do not raise your light, under any condition. Why not? Because there are iNtdings. Right there, she lowered her voice. But you must never, ever, look at an INKling. If you set eyes on an INKling, you ll never look away. We proceeded sideways, one step at a time, light at our feet. Cool air licked our faces, leaving the rank odor of dead fish. I wanted to puke. It was like we were in the wormridden guts of a giant fish carcass. The INKlings whined, frenzied, disorientingly shrill. My eardrums turned to stone. Gulps of bile backed up my throat. My feet kept edging along by sheer reflex. Occasionally, she called out to me, but I could no longer hear what she was saying. The blue light of her INKling-repel device was still on, so I guessed we were still safe. But for how long? I noticed a change in the air. The stink grew less putrid; the pressure on my ears evaporated. Sounds resonated in a different way. The worst was over. We let out sighs of relief and wiped off a cold sweat. For the longest time, she didn t speak. Droplets of water echoed through the void. Why were they so mad? I asked. We intruded on their sanctuary. They hate the world of light and all who live there. Hard to believe the Semiotecs would work with them, no matter what the benefits. Her only response was to squeeze my wrist. Then after a bit: Know what I m thinking? No idea, I said. I m thinking it would be wonderful if I could follow you into that world where you re going. And leave this world behind? That s right, she said. its a boring old world anyway. I m sure it d be much more fun living in your consciousness. I shook my head, Hell, I didn t want to live in my own consciousness. Well, lets keep going, she said. We ve got to find the exit through the sewer. What time is it? Eight-twenty. Time to switch porta-packs, she said, turning on the other unit, then wedging the expended one clumsily into her waistband. It was exactly one hour since we entered the tunnel. According to the Professor s instructions, there ought to be a turn to the left under the tree-lined avenue toward the Art Forum. This was early autumn, I seemed to remember. The leaves would still be green. Sunshine, the smell of the grass, an early autumn breeze played through my head. Ah, to lie back and look at the sky. I d go to the barber, get a shave, stroll over to Gaien Park, lie down and gaze up at the blue. Maybe sip an ice-cold beer. Just the thing, while waiting for the end of the world. You suppose its good weather out? Beats me. How should I know? she retorted. Were the stars out when I left the house last evening? All I could remember was the couple in the Skyline listening to Duran Duran. Stars? Who remembers stars? Come to think of it, had I even looked up at the sky recently? Had the stars been wiped out of the sky three months ago, I wouldn t have known. The only things I noticed were silver bracelets on women s wrists and popsicle sticks in potted rubber plants. There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night. No car, no car stereo, no silver bracelets, no shuffling, no dark blue tweed suits. My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine. My first circuit must have been wearing thin. My real memories were receding into planar projection, the screen of consciousness losing all identity. The couple in the Skyline came to mind. Why did I have this fixation on them? Well, what else did I have to think about? By now, the two of them might be snoozing away in bed, or maybe pushing into commuter trains. They could be flat character sketches for a TV treatment: Japanese woman marries Frenchman while studying abroad; husband has traffic accident and becomes paraplegic. Woman tires of life in Paris, leaves husband, and returns to Tokyo, where she works in Belgian or Swiss embassy. Silver bracelets, a memento from her husband. Cut to beach scene in Nice: woman with the bracelets on left wrist. Woman takes bath, makes love, silver bracelets always on left wrist. Cut: enter Japanese man, veteran of student occupation of Yasuda Hall, wearing tinted glasses like lead in Ashes and Diamonds. A top TV director, he is haunted by dreams of tear gas, by memories of his wife who slit her wrist five years earlier. Cut (for what its worth, this script has a lot of jump cuts): he sees the bracelets on woman s left wrist, flashes back to wife s bloodied wrist. So he asks woman: could she switch bracelets to her right wrist? I refuse, she says. I wear my bracelets on my left wrist. Cut: enter piano player, like in Casablanca. Alcoholic, always keeps shot glass of gin, straight with twist of lemon, on top of piano. A jazz musician of some talent until his career went on the rocks, he befriends both man and woman, knows their secrets… Par for TV, totally ridiculous underground. Some imagination. Or was this supposed to be reality? I hadn t even seen the stars in months. I can t stand it any more, I spoke up. Can t stand what? she asked. The darkness, the moldy stink, the INKlings, you name it. These wet slacks, the wound in my gut. I can t even imagine the world outside. Not much longer, she said. We ll be out of here soon. My head s out of it already, I said, Ideas are warping off in weird directions. I can t think straight. What were you thinking about? Movie people. Masatomi Kondo and Ryoko Nakano and Tsutomu Yamazaki. Stop. Don t think about anything, she said. We re almost there. I tried not to think and my mind lowered to the clammy slacks clinging to my legs. When was the last time I took a leak? At the very least, I hadn t pissed since going underground. Before that? I was driving, ate a hamburger, saw the couple in the Skyline. And before that? I was asleep. Then the chubby girl came and woke me. We d headed out soon after. So before that? Probably I d used the toilet at the hospital, when they sewed me up. But if I d gone then, the pain would have been something to remember; the fact that I didn t remember meant I hadn t relieved myself for how long? Everything wheeled around closer and farther, closer and farther, like a merry-go-round. When was it those two had come and done their dirty work on my belly? It had to have been before I was sitting at the supermarket snack bar or no? When had I last pissed? Why did I care? Here it is, she proclaimed, tugging my elbow. The sewer. The exit. I swept all thought of urination from my head and directed my eyes toward that one section of wall illuminated by her flashlight beam. I could make out the squared mouth of a dust chute, just big enough for one person to squeeze through. That s not a sewer pipe, I observed. The sewer s beyond. This is a side vent. Just smell. I stuck my head in and took a whiff. A drainpipe smell, to be sure. After wandering in this stinking underground maze, even the smell of sewage was comforting. A definite wind was blowing from up ahead. Presently there came slight ground vibrations, accompanied by the far-off sound of subway cars. The sound kept up for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, then passed, like a tap turning off. Yes, this was the exit. We made it, she said, planting a peck on my neck. How do you feel? You had to ask, I said. I don t know myself. She crawled head first into the opening. Once her cushiony tail had disappeared into the hole, I followed suit. The narrow conduit led straight for a while. All my flashlight revealed was the wiggling of her bulbous behind. It reminded me of a head of Chinese cabbage in a wet skirt, tight over her thighs. Are you back there? she yelled out. Right behind you, I shouted. There s a shoe lying there. What kind of shoe? A man s black lace-up. It was an old shoe, the kind salarymen wear. Worn-out heel, mud caked on the toe. Do you suppose the INKlings… ? I wondered out loud. What do you think, she answered. There was nothing else for me to look at, so I kept my eye on the hem of her skirt. It would rise way up on her thighs, revealing unmuddied white flesh. Up where women used to affix their stockings, up in that band of exposed skin between their stockings and their girdles. This, of course, was before the appearance of panty hose. One thing led to another, and soon my thoughts were wandering down memory lane. Back to the days of Jimi Hendrix and Cream and the Beatles and Otis Redding. I started whistling the beginning riff to Peter and Gordon s Go to Pieces. Nice song, a hell of lot better than Duran Duran. Which probably meant I was getting old. I mean, the song was popular twenty years ago. And who twenty years ago could have predicted the advent of panty hose? Why are you whistling? she shouted. I don t know. I felt like it, I answered. What s the song? Something you probably never heard of. You re right. It was a hit before you were born. What s the song about? its about coming apart at the seams, I said simply. Why d you want to whistle a song like that? I couldn t come up with any cogent reason. It d just popped into my head. Beats me, I said. Before I could think up another tune, we arrived at the sewer. A concrete pipe, really. Maybe a meter and a half in diameter, with effluent running at the bottom, about twenty centimeters deep. The edge was covered with mossy slime. The sound of several passing subway cars came from up ahead. Quite loud, actually. I could even see a brief glimmer of yellow lights. What s a sewer doing connected to the subway tracks? its not really a sewer, she said. It channels ground-water into the track gutters. its full of seeping wastes. Okay, only a little further. But we can t let down our guard yet. The INKlings power extends all the way into the stations. You saw that shoe, didn t you? Sure did, I said. We followed the stream down the pipe, our shoes splashing in the liquid, dubbed over by the rumble of the trains. Never in my whole life had I been so happy to hear the subway. People boarding trains, reading papers and magazines, bound for work and pleasure. I thought about the color advertisements hanging over the aisles and the subway sys-tern maps over the doors. The Ginza Line is always yellow. Why yellow, I don t know, but yellow it is. When I think Ginza Line, I see yellow. It didn t take very long to reach the mouth of the pipe. There was an iron grill over the opening, with a hole torn just big enough for a person to pass. The concrete was gouged where an iron bar had been ripped out. INKling handiwork, happily for once. If the grill weren t broken, we d be stuck here with the outside world dangling before our eyes. Beyond the hole was a box for signal lanterns and other equipment. On the blackened row of oar-shaped columns between the tracks were lamps, the ones that always looked so faint when seen from the station platform but which now glared inordinately bright. We ll wait here until our eyes adjust to the light, she instructed. About ten minutes. Then we ll go a little bit further and pause until we get used to stronger light. Otherwise we ll be blinded. If the subway passes, do not look at it, not yet. She sat me down on a dry patch of concrete, then took her place next to me. When we heard a train approaching, we looked down and shut our eyes. A flashing yellow light streaked across my eyelids. My eyes began to water. I wiped away the tears with my shirt sleeve. its okay. You ll get used to it, she said, tears trailing down her cheeks as well. We ll just let the next three or four trains pass. Then our eyes will be ready for the station. Once we get there, we can forget about INKlings. I seem to remember this happening to me before, I said. Waiting in a subway tunnel? No, the light, the glare, my eyes tearing up. That happens to everyone. No, this was special light, special vision. My eyes had been altered. They couldn t tolerate light. Can you remember anything else? No, that s it. My recall is gone. Your memory is running backward, she said. She leaned against me. I was cold to my bones, sitting in my wet slacks. The only warmth on my body was where the bulge of her breasts touched my arm. Now that we re going above ground, I suppose you have plans. Places to see, things to do, maybe some person you want to see? she urged, looking over at my watch. You ve got twenty-five hours and fifty minutes left. I want to go home and take a bath, then go to the barber shop, I said. You ll still have plenty of time left. I haven t thought that far ahead, I said. May I go to your place with you? she asked. I d like to take a bath, too. Sure, why not. A second train was passing from the direction of Aoyama Itchome. We lowered our gaze and closed our eyes again. You don t need a haircut, she said, shining her light on my head. In fact, you d probably look better with longer hair. I m tired of long hair. Okay, but you still don t need to go to the barber. When was the last time you had a haircut? I don t remember, I said. I really couldn t remember. I couldn t even remember if I d taken a leak yesterday; what happened a few weeks ago was ancient history. Do you have any clothes I could fit into? Don t think so. Oh well, I ll think of something, she said. Are you going to use your bed? Use my bed? You know, call a girl over for sex? I hadn t exactly planned on it, I said. Well, can I sleep there? I d like to rest before going back for Grandfather. Fine by me, but the Semiotecs and System boys might barge in at any moment. I m still quite popular, you know. And I don t have a door. I don t mind, she said. A third train approached from the direction of Shibuya. I closed my eyes and counted slowly. I d reached fourteen by the time the last car went by. My eyes were hardly affected at all. She released my arm and stood up. lets get going. I rose to my feet and followed her down to the tracks toward Aoyama Itchome. Hole The following morning the events in the Woods seem like a dream. Yet there on the table lies the old bellows box, curled up like a hurt animal. Everything was real: the fan turning in the underground wind, the sad face of the young Caretaker, his collection of musical instruments. I hear a distinct, alien sound in my head. It is as if something has pushed its way into my skull. Some flat intrusion, ceaselessly tapping. Other than that, my head feels fine. The sensation is simply not real. I look around the room from my bed. Nothing out of the ordinary. Ceiling, walls, warped floorboards, curtains in the window. Coat and scarf hanging on the wall, gloves peeking out of the coat pocket. There is the table and there, the musical instrument on the table. I test each joint and muscle of my body. Every articula-tion is as it should be. There is no pain in my eyes; not a thing is wrong. In spite of which, the flat sound persists. Irregularly, compositely, a weave of varying tones. Where can the sound be coming from? Listen as I might, the source eludes me. I get out of bed and check the weather. Immediately below my window, three old men are digging a large hole, the points of their shovels scooping into the frozen earth. The air is so cold that the sound glances off, to the bewilderment of my ears. The clock reads close to ten. Never have I slept so late. Where is the Colonel? Save for those days when I was feverish, he has always awakened me at nine o clock without fail, bearing a breakfast tray. I wait for half an hour. When still the Colonel does not appear, I go down to the kitchen myself. After so many breakfasts with the Colonel, today I am without appetite. I eat half my bread and set aside the rest for the beasts. Then I return to my bed, wrap my coat about me, and wait for the stove to heat the room. What warmth we enjoyed yesterday has disappeared overnight. The Town is immersed in cold; the entire landscape has reverted to the depths of winter. From the Northern Ridge to the Southern Plain, the sky hangs unbearably low with snow-laden clouds. Below the window, the four old men are still digging in the open ground. Four men? Before there were three. The Official Residences, however, are populated with innumerable old men. Each stands silently in place as he digs the earth at his feet. Occasional gusts of wind flap through their thin jackets, but the old men show little sign of discomfort as they thrust their shovels relentlessly into the frozen earth. They are sweating, faces flushed. One of their number has even removed his jacket, draping it over a tree branch like molted skin. The room is now warm. I sit at the table with the musi-cal instrument in hand, slowly working the bellows. The leather folds are stiff, but not unmanageable; the keys are discolored. When was the last time anyone touched it? By what route had the heirloom traveled, through how many hands? It is a mystery to me. I inspect the bellows box with care. It is a jewel. There is such precision in it. So very small, it compresses to fit into a pocket, yet seems to sacrifice no mechanical details. The shellac on the wooden boards at either end has not flaked. They bear a filligreed decoration, the intricate green arabesques well preserved. I wipe the dust with my fingers and read the letters A-C-C-O-R-D-… This is an accordion! I work it, in and out, over and over again, learning the feel of it. The buttons vie for space on the miniature instrument. More suited to a child s or woman s hand, the accordion is exceedingly difficult for a grown man to finger. And then one is supposed to work the bellows in rhythm! I try pressing the buttons in order with my right hand, while holding down the chord keys with my left. I go once through all the notes, then pause. The sound of the digging continues. The wind rattles at the windowpane now and again. Do the old men even hear my accordion? I persist with this effort for one or two hours, until I am able to render a few simple chords without error. No melody comes. Still, I press on, hoping to strike some semblance of song, but the progressions of notes lead nowhere. An accidental configuration of tones may seem almost melodic, but in the next moment all vanishes into the air. Perhaps it is the sound of the shovelling outdoors that keeps the notes from forming into a melody. I cannot concentrate for the noise. A rasping, uneven rhythm, the shovels plunging into the soil, how clear it reaches inside here! The sound grows so sharp, the men are digging in my head. They are hollowing out my skull. The wind picks up before noon, intermingled with flur-ries of snow. White pellets strike the windowpane with a dry patter, tumbling in disarray along the sash, soon to blow away. It is a matter of time before the snowflakes swell with moisture. Soon the earth will be covered in white again. I give up my struggle for song, leave the accordion on the table, and go over to the window. The old men keep digging, heedless of the snow. They do not acknowledge the white specks falling on them. No one looks at the sky, no one stays his hand, no one speaks. The forsaken jacket clings to the branch, fluttering in the wind. There are now six old men; the hole is waist deep. One old man is in the hole, wielding a pick at the hard bottom with astounding efficiency. The four men with shovels toss out the dirt, and the last member of the team carts the dirt downhill with a wheelbarrow. I cannot discern a leader among them. All work equally hard, no one gives orders, no one assigns tasks. Something about the hole begins to disturb me. It is far too large for waste disposal. And why dig now, in the gathering blizzard? They apparently dig for some purpose, even though the hole will be completely filled with snow by tomorrow morning. I return to my chair and gaze absently at the glowing coals. I have an instrument. Will I never be able to recall a tune? Is the accordion on the table to remain beautiful but useless? I shut my eyes and listen to the shovelling as the snow softly hits the windowpane. It is time for lunch. The old men finally set down their work and go indoors, leaving pick and shovels on the ground. There is a knock on my door. The Colonel enters, wearing his usual heavy coat and a visored cap pulled down low onto his forehead. Coat and cap are both dusted in snow. Shall we have lunch? he asks. That would be wonderful, I say. A few minutes later, he returns and puts a pot on the stove. Only then does he shed his coat and cap and gloves. Last he takes a seat, rubbing his tousled frosted-white scalp. I was not able to be here for breakfast, says the old officer. I had tasks to attend to this morning. I had no time to eat. Were you digging the hole? The hole? No, that is nothing I do, answers the Colonel, with a hesitant laugh. I had business in Town. The pot is now hot. He ladles out two bowls and sets them on the table. A hearty vegetable chowder with noodles. He blows to cool it before taking a sip. Tell me, what is that hole for? I ask the Colonel. Nothing at all, he says, guiding a spoonful of soup to his mouth. They dig for the sake of digging. So in that sense, it is a very pure hole. I don t understand. It is simple enough. They dig their hole because they want to dig. Nothing more or less. I think about the pure hole and all it might mean. They dig holes from time to time, the Colonel explains. It is probably for them what chess is for me. It has no special meaning, does not transport them anywhere. All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, nowhere to get to. Is there not something marvelous about this? We hurt no one and no one gets hurt. No victory, no defeat. I think I understand. The old officer finishes one last spoonful of soup. Perhaps you do not understand. But our way is proper to us. It is proper, peaceful, and pure. Soon enough, it will begin to make sense to you. For many years, I led the life of a soldier. I do not regret that; it was a fine life. The smell of gunsmoke and blood, the flash of sabers, the call of the bugle. I sometimes still think about the drama. Yet I cannot recall what it was that sent us charging into the fray. Honor? Patriotism? A thirst for combat? Hatred? I can only guess. You are fearful now of losing your mind, as I once feared myself. Let me say, however, that to relinquish your self carries no shame, the Col&nel breaks off and searches the air for words. Lay down your mind and peace will come. A peace deeper than anything you have known. I nod quietly. I hear talk in Town about your shadow, says the Colonel. Your shadow is not well. He cannot hold down food, he has been sick in bed for three days, he may not have long. Will you see him one last time? If you have nothing against it, that is. I am sure he wants to see you. Of course, I will see him, I say. But will the Gatekeeper let me? Your shadow is on the verge of death. A person has the right to see his own shadow under these circumstances. There are rules about this. The Town observes the passing of a shadow as a solemn event, and the Gatekeeper does not interfere. There is no reason for him to interfere. I ll go over right away, I say, with only the slightest pause. Good. I knew you would, says the old soldier, drawing near to pat me on the shoulder. Best to hurry before evening, before the snow gets too thick. A shadow is the closest thing a person has. Take a long look and leave no remorse. See that your shadow dies well. It is for your own sake. Yes, I say. I don my coat, wrapping my scarf around my neck. Fares, Police, Detergent THE distance to Aoyama Itchome was not great. We walked along the tracks, hiding behind columns whenever a train passed. We could see all the passengers clearly, but none of them even looked outside. They read newspapers or stared blankly. Few in number, practically all had seats. The rush-hour peak had passed; still I seemed to remember the ten-o clock Ginza Line being more crowded. What day is it today? I asked the girl. I couldn t tell you, she said. Not many passengers for a weekday. Do you think it could be Sunday? And if it is Sunday? Oh, nothing. It d just be Sunday. The subway tracks were wide with no obstructions, a dream to walk. The fluorescent light on the walls gave off more than adequate illumination, and thanks to the ventilation system, there was plenty of fresh air. At least compared to-the dead air below. We let one Ginza-bound shuttle go past, then another heading in the opposite direction toward Shibuya. By then we were near enough to Aoyama Itchome to watch the station platform from the shadows. What a nuisance it d be to get caught on the tracks by a station attendant. A steel ladder led up onto the end of the platform, after which we only had to climb over a short barrier. We looked on as another Ginza-bound shuttle pulled to a stop at the platform, let passengers out, then took on new passengers. The conductor saw that all was in order and gave the signal to depart. The station attendants disappeared once the train was out of sight. lets go, I said. Don t run, just walk normal. Check. Stepping out from behind a pillar, we mounted the ladder at the end of the platform, nonchalant and disinterested, as if we did this sort of thing every day.We stepped around the railing. Several people looked our way, visibly alarmed. We were covered with mud, clothes drenched, hair matted, eyes squinting at the ordinary light I guess we didn t look like subway employees. Who the hell were we? Before they d reached any conclusions, we d sauntered past and were already at the wicket. That s when it occurred to me, we didn t have tickets. We ll say we lost them and pay the fare, she said. So that s what I told the young attendant at the gate. Did you look carefully? he asked. You have lots of pockets. Could you please check again? We stood there dripping and filthy and searched our clothes for tickets that had never been there, while the attendant eyed us incredulously. No, it seemed we d really lost them, I said. Where did you get on? Shibuya. How much did you pay? A hundred twenty, hundred forty yen, something like that. You don t remember? I was thinking about other things. Honestly, you got on at Shibuya? The line starts from Shibuya, doesn t it? How could we cheat on the fare? You could have come through the underpass from the opposite platform. The Ginza Line s pretty long. For all I know, you could have caught the Tozai Line all the way from Tsudanuma and transferred at Nihonbashi. Tsudanuma? Strictly hypothetical, said the station attendant. So how much is it from Tsudanuma? I ll pay that. Will that make you happy? Did you come from Tsudanuma? No, I said. Never been to Tsudanuma in my life. Then why pay the fare? I m just doing what you said. I said that was strictly hypothetical. By now, the next train had arrived. Twelve passengers got off and passed through the wicket. We watched them. Not one of them had lost a ticket. Whereupon we resumed negotiations with the attendant. Okay, tell me from where do I have to pay? I said. From where you got on, he insisted. Shibuya, like I ve been trying to tell you. But you don t remember the fare. Who remembers fares? Do you remember how much coffee costs at McDonald s? I don t drink McDonald s coffee, said the station attendant. its a waste of money. Purely hypothetical, I said. But you forget details like that. That may be, but people who say they ve lost tickets always plead cheaper fares. They all come over to this plat-form and say they got on in Shibuya. I already said I d pay whatever fare you want, didn t I? Just tell me how much. How should I know? I threw down a thousand-yen bill and we marched out. The attendant yelled at us, but we pretended not to hear. Who s going to argue over subway tickets when the world s about to end. And we hadn t even taken the subway. Above ground, fine needles of rain were coming down. On my last, precious day. It could rain for a whole month like in a J. G. Ballard novel, but let it wait until I was out of the picture. Today was my day to lie in the sun, listen to music, drink a cold beer. The rain, however, showed no sign of letting up. I thought of buying a morning edition and reading the weather forecast, but the nearest newsstand was back down in the subway station. Scratch the paper. It was going to be a gray day, whatever day it was. Everyone was walking with open umbrellas. Everyone except us. We ducked under the portico of a building and gazed out at the drizzly intersection streaming with cars of different colors. Thank goodness, its raining, said the girl. How s that? Easy on the eyes. Great. What do we do now? First we get something hot to drink, then head home for a bath. We went into a supermarket with the ubiquitous sandwich stand. The checker jumped when she saw us all covered in mud, but quickly recovered to take our orders. That s two cream of corn soups and one ham and egg-salad sandwich, is that right, sir? she confirmed. Right, I said. Say there, what day is it today? Sunday. What did I tell you? I said to the chubby girl. I picked up a copy of Sports Nippon from the adjacent stool. Not much to gain from a tabloid, but what the hell. The paper was dated Sunday, October 2. No weather forecast, but the racing page went into track conditions in some detail. Rain made it tough racing for quarterhorses. At Jin-gu Stadium, Yakult lost to Chunichi, 6-2. And no one the wiser that there was a huge hive of INKlings right under them. The girl claimed the back pages. Some seedy article which addressed the question Is Swallowing Semen Good for the Complexion? Do you like having your semen swallowed? the girl wanted to know. its okay, I answered. Listen to what it says here: The typical man enjoys it when a woman swallows his semen. This is a sign of total obeisance toward the man on the part of the woman. It is at once a ceremony and an affirmation. I don t get it, I said. Anyone ever swallow yours? Uh, I can t remember. Hmph, she pouted and dove back into her article. I read the batting averages for the Central and Pacific Leagues. Our order arrived. Anything would have tasted good. We left the place and caught a taxi. It was ages before we got one to stop, we were so dirty. The driver was a young guy with long hair, a huge stereoblaster on the seat next to him. I shouted our destination over the blare of the Police, then sank into the backrest. Hey, where you guys been? asked the driver. We had a knock-down drag-out fight in the rain, answered the girl. Wow, baad, said the driver. Oughta see yourselves. You look wild. Got a great bruise there upside your neck. I know, I said. Like I dig it, said the driver. How come? asked the girl. Me, I only pick up rockers. Clean, dirty, makes no difference. Music s my poison. You guys into the Police? Sure. I told him what he wanted to hear. In a company, they don t letcha play this shit. They say, play kayokyoku. No way, man. I mean, really. Matchi? Seiko? I can t hack sugar pop. But the Police, they re baad. Twenty-four hours, nonstop. And reggae s happenin , too. How re you guys for reggae? I can get into it, I said. After the Police tape, the driver popped in Bob Mar ley Live. The dashboard was crammed with tapes. I was tired and cold and sleepy. I was coming apart at the seams and in no good condition. I couldn t handle the vibes, but at least we got a ride. I sat back and watched the driver s shoulders bounce to the reggae beat. The taxi pulled up in front of my apartment. I got out and handed the driver an extra thousand yen as a tip. Buy yourself a tape, I told him. Get down, he said. You can ride with me anytime. Sure thing, I said. In ten, fifteen years, its gonna be rock taxis all over, eh? World s going to be baaad. Yeah, I said, real bad. As if I really believed that. It d been fifteen years since Jim Morrison died, and never once had I come across a Doors taxi. There are things that change in this world and things that don t. Department stores haven t stopped piping in Raimond Lefebvre Orchestra muzak, beer halls still play to polkas, shopping arcades play Ventures Christmas carols from mid-November. We went up in the elevator to find the apartment door propped up against the door frame. Why had anyone bothered? I pushed open the steel door like Cro-Magnon Man rolling the boulder from the mouth of his cave. I let the girl in first, slid the door back in place so that no one could see in, then fastened the door chain as a pretense of security. The room was neat and clean. For a second I thought I was in the wrong apartment. The furniture had been righted, the food cleaned from the floor, the broken bottles and dishes had disappeared. Books and records were back on the shelf, clothes were hanging in the wardrobe. The kitchen and bathroom and bedroom were spotless. More thorough inspection, however, revealed the aftermath of destruction. The imploded TV tube gaped like a short-circuited time tunnel. The refrigerator was dead and empty. Only a few plates and glasses remained in the cupboard. The wall clock had stopped, and none of the electrical appliances worked. The slashed clothes were gone, leaving barely enough to fill one small suitcase. Someone had thrown out just about everything that was beyond hope, leaving the place with a generic, no-frills look. My apartment had never seemed so spacious. I went to the bathroom, lit the gas heater, and after seeing that it functioned properly, ran the bathwater. I still had an adequate lineup of toiletries: soap, razor, toothbrush, towel, shampoo. My bathrobe was in one piece. While the tub filled, I looked around the apartment. The girl sat in a corner, reading Balzac s Chouans. Say, were there really otters in France? she asked. I suppose. Even today? Who knows? I took a seat in the kitchen and tried to think who it was that might have cleaned up the apartment. Might have been those two Semiotecs, might have been someone from the System. Even if it was one of them, I couldn t help feeling grateful. I suggested that the chubby girl bathe first. While she was in in the tub, I changed into some salvaged clothes and plopped down on what had been my bed. It was nearly eleventhirty. I had to come up with a plan of action. For the last twenty-four hours of my life. Outside, it was raining in a fine mist. If not for the droplets along the eaves, I wouldn t have been able to tell. Drowsiness was creeping up on me, but this was no time to sleep. I didn t want to lose even a minute. Well, I didn t want to stay here in the apartment. What was there to gain from that? A person with twenty-four hours left to live ought to have countless things to do, but I couldn t think of a single one. I thought of the Frankfurt travel poster on the supermarket wall. Wouldn t be so bad to end my life in Frankfurt, though it probably was impossible to get there in twenty-four hours. Even if I could, I d have to spend ten hours strapped into an airplane seat eating those yummy inflight snacks. Besides, posters have a way of looking better than the real thing: the reality never lived up to the expectation. I didn t want to end my life disappointed. That left one option: a fine meal for two. Nothing else I particularly wanted to do. I dialed the Library. Hello, answered my reference librarian. Thanks for the unicorn books, I said. Thanks for the wonderful meal, said she. Care to join me for dinner again tonight? Din-ner? she sang back to me. Tonight s my study group. Study group? My water pollution study group. You know, detergents getting into the streams and rivers, killing fish. Everyone s got a research topic, and tonight we present our findings. Very civic, I m sure. Yes, very. Couldn t we make it tomorow night? The library s closed on Monday, so we could have more time together. I won t be around from tomorrow afternoon. I can t really explain over the phone, but I m going far away. Far away? You mean travel? Kind of, I said. Just a sec, can you hold on? She broke off to answer a reference inquiry. Sunday library sounds came through the receiver. A little girl shouting and a father trying to quiet her. People borrowing books, computer keys clicking away. Refurbishing and/or reconstructing farmhouses, she seemed to be explaining to her inquirer, Shelf F-5, these three volumes… I could barely make out the inquirer s voice in response. Sorry to keep you waiting, she said, picking up the phone. Okay, you win. I ll pass on the study group. They ll all bitch about it, though. Give them my apologies. Quite all right. Heaven knows there s no river around here with fish still alive. Delaying my report a week isn t going to endanger any species. Shall I meet you at your place? No, my place is out of commission. The fridge is on the blink, the dishes are unusable. I can t cook here. I know, she said. You know? But isn t it much cleaner now? It was you who straightened the place up? That s right. I hope you don t mind. This morning I dropped by with another book and found the door ajar. The place was a mess, so I cleaned it up. Made me a little late for work, but I did owe you something for the meal. Hope I wasn t being too presumptuous. No, not at all, I said. I m very appreciative. Well, then, why don t you swing by here at ten past six? The library closes at six o clock on Sundays. Will do, I said. And thanks again. You re very welcome, said she, then hung up. I was looking through the closet for something to wear to dinner as the chubby girl emerged from the bathroom. I handed her a towel and my bathrobe. She stood naked before me a moment, wet hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks, the peaks of her ears poking out from between the strands. From the earlobes hung her gold earrings. You always bathe with your earrings on? I asked. Of course, didn t I say so? The girl had hung her underwear and skirt and blouse to dry in the bathroom. Pink brassiere, pink panties, pink panty hose, pink skirt, and pastel pink blouse. The last day of my life, and here I was, sitting in the tub with nothing else to look at. I never did like underwear and stockings hanging in the bathroom. Don t ask me why, I just don t. I gave myself a quick shampoo and all-over scrub, brushed my teeth, and shaved. Then I pulled on underpants and slacks. Despite all that crazy chasing around, my gut actually felt better; I hardly remembered the wound until I got into the tub. The girl lay on the bed, drying her hair with the drier, reading Balzac. Outside, the rain showed no more sign of stopping than it had before. Underwear hanging in the bathroom, a girl lying on the bed with a hair drier and a book, it all brought back memories of married life. I sat down next to her, leaned my head against the bed-stand, and closed my eyes. Colors drifted and faded. I hadn t had a full night s sleep in days. Every time I was about to fall asleep, I was rudely awakened. The lure of sleep swam before my leaden eyes, an irresistible undertow pulling me toward dark depths. It was almost as if the INKlings were reaching up to drag me down. I popped open my eyes and rubbed my face between my hands. It was like rubbing someone else s face. The spot on my neck where the leech had attached itself still stung. When are you going back for your grandfather? I asked. After I sleep and my things dry, she said. The water level down there will drop by evening. I ll go back the same way we came. With this weather, it ll be tomorrow morning before your clothes dry. Then what am I supposed to do? Ever heard of clothes driers? There s a laundromat near here. But I don t have any other clothes to wear out. I racked my brains, but failed to come up with any spark of wisdom. Which left me to take her things to the laundromat. I went to the bathroom and threw her wet clothes into a Lufthansa bag. . So it was that part of my last precious hours were spent sitting on a folding chair in a laundromat. Shadow in the Throes of Death I open the door to the Gatehouse and find the Gatekeeper at the back door splitting firewood. Big snow on the way. I can feel it in the air, says the Gatekeeper, axe in hand. Four beasts dead in this morning alone. Many more will die by tomorrow. This winter the cold is something fierce. I take off my gloves and warm my fingers at the stove. The Gatekeeper ties the splits into a bundle and tosses it onto a stack in the woodshed, then shuts the door behind him and props his axe up against the wall. Finally, he comes over and warms his fingers, too. From now on, looks like I burn the beasts alone. Made my life easier having the help, but everything has to end sometime. Anyway, it was my job to begin with. Is my shadow so ill as that? The thing is not well, answers the Gatekeeper, rolling his head on his shoulders. Not well at all. Been looking after it as best I can, but only so much a person can do. Can I see him? Sure, I give you a half hour. I have to go burn dead beasts after that. The Gatekeeper takes his key ring off the hook and unlocks the iron gate to the Shadow Grounds. He walks quickly across the enclosure ahead of me, and shows me into the lean-to. It is as cold as an icehouse. Not my fault, the Gatekeeper says. Not my idea to throw your shadow in here. No thrill for me. We got regulations, and shadows have to be put in here. I just follow the rules. Your shadow even has it better than some. Bad times, there are two or three shadows crammed in here together. Objection is by now beside the point. I nod and say nothing. I should never have left my shadow in a place like this. Your shadow is down below, he says. Down below is a little warmer, if you can stand the smell. The Gatekeeper goes over to a corner and lifts a damp wooden trapdoor to reveal not a staircase but a ladder. The Gatekeeper descends the first few rungs, then motions for me to follow. I brush the snow from my coat and follow him. Down below, the stale smell of shit and piss assaults the senses. Without a window, the air cannot escape. It is a cellar the size of a small trunkroom. A bed occupies a third of the floor. Beneath the bed is a crockery chamber pot. A candle, the sole source of light and heat, flickers on a tottering old table. The floor is earthen, and the dampness in the room chilling. My shadow lies in bed, unmoving, with a blanket pulled up to his ears. He stares at me with lifeless eyes. As the old Colonel has said, my shadow does not seem to have much time left. I need fresh air, says the Gatekeeper, overcome by the stench. You two talk all you want. This shadow no longer has the strength to stick to you. The Gatekeeper leaves. My shadow hesitates a moment, cautiously looking about the room, then beckons me over to his bedside. Go up and check that the Gatekeeper isn t listening, whispers the shadow. I steal up the ladder, crack open the trapdoor, see that no one is about. He s gone, I say. We have things to talk about, declares my shadow. I m not as weak as I appear. its all an act to fool the Gatekeeper. I am weak, that s true, but my vomiting and staying bedridden is pretend. I can still get up and walk. To escape? What else? If I wasn t making to get out of here, why would I go to all the trouble? I ve gained myself three days doing this. But three days is probably my limit. After that, I won t be able to stand. This stinking cellar air is killing me. And the cold it pierces to the bone. What s the weather like outside? its cold and snowing hard, I say, hands in my coat pockets. its even worse at night. The temperature really drops. The more it snows, the more beasts die, says the Shadow. More dead beasts mean more work for the Gatekeeper. We ll slip out when he s occupied, while he s burning the carcasses in the Apple Grove. You ll lift his keys, unlock the enclosure, and we escape, the two of us. By the Gate? No, the Gate s no good. He d be on top of us in no time. The Wall s no good either. Only birds can make it over the Wall. So how do we escape? Leave it to me. I ve got it worked out from the information I ve pieced together. I pored over your map enough to wear holes in it, plus I learned all sorts of things from the Gatekeeper himself. The ox took it into his head that I wasn t a problem anymore, so he was willing to talk about the Town. The Gatekeeper is right that I don t have the strength to stick to you. Not now anyway. But once we get out and I recover, we can be back together. I won t have to die here like this; you ll regain your memory and become your former self. I stare into the candle flame and say nothing. What s the matter? Out with it. Just what was this former self of mine? What s this now? Don t tell me you re having doubts, jeers my shadow. Yes, I have doubts, I say. To begin with, I can t even recall my former self. How can I be sure that self is worth returning to? Or that world? The shadow is about to say something, but I raise my hand to cut him short. Wait, please. Just let me finish what I have to say. It is not only that I may have forgotten how things used to be. I am beginning to feel an attachment to this Town. I enjoy watching the beasts. I have grown fond of the Colonel and the girl at the Library. No one hurts each other here, no one fights. Life is uneventful, but full enough in its way. Everyone is equal. No one speaks ill of anyone else, no one steals. They work, but they enjoy their work. its work purely for the sake of work, not forced labor. No one is jealous of anyone. There are no complaints, no worries. You ve forgotten no money or property or rank either. And no internal conflicts, says the shadow. More important, there s no growing old, no death, no fear of death. Tell me, then what possible reason would I have for leaving this Town? It all makes sense, what you say, he allows, extending a shadowy hand from under his blanket to touch his parched lips, on the face of it. The world you describe would truly be a Utopia. I cannot fault you that. You have every right to be taken with it, and if that s the case, then I will accept your choice and I will die. Still, you are over-looking things, some very important things. The shadow breaks into a cough. I wait for him to resume. Just now, you spoke of the Town s perfection. Sure, the people here the Gatekeeper aside don t hurt anyone. No one hurts each other, no one has wants. All are contented and at peace. Why is that? its because they have no mind. That much I know too well, I say. It is by relinquishing their mind that the Townfolk lose time; their awareness becomes a clean slate of eternity. As I said, no one grows old or dies. All that s required is that you strip away the shadow that is the grounding of the self and watch it die. Once your shadow dies, you haven t a problem in the world. You need only to skim off the discharges of mind that rise each day. Skim off? I ll come back to that later. First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope. Then, of course, there s love. Which surely makes a difference with this Library girl of yours. Love is a state of mind, but she has no mind for it. People without a mind are phantoms. What would be the meaning of loving someone like that? Do you seek eternal life? Do you too wish to become a phantom? If you let me die, you ll be one of the Townfolk. You ll be trapped here forever. A stifling silence envelops the cellar. The shadow coughs again. I cannot leave her here, I brave to say. No matter what she is, I love her and want her. I cannot lie to my own mind. If I run out now, I will always regret it. This is just great, my shadow says, sitting up in bed and leaning against the wall. You re an old, old friend. I know how stubborn you can be. You had to make an issue at the last minute, didn t you? What is it you want? It is impossible for you and me and the girl to escape, the three of us. People without a shadow cannot live outside of here. I know this too, I say. I wonder, why don t you escape alone? I will help you. You still don t understand, do you? says my shadow, wearily resting his head. If I run away and leave you behind, your life here would be sheer misery. That much the Gatekeper s told me. Shadows, all shadows, die here. Banished shadows all come back to die. Shadows that don t die here can only leave behind incomplete deaths. You d live out all eternity in the embrace of what s left of your mind. In the Woods. Those with undead shadows are driven out of Town to wander through the Woods forever and ever, possessed by their thoughts. You re acquainted with the Woods? He knows I am. Nor would you be able to take her to the Woods, my shadow continues. Because she is perfect, she has no mind no conflict in herself. Perfect half-persons live in Town, not in the Woods. You ll be alone, I promise you. But then, where do people s minds go? You re the Dreamreader, aren t you? retorts my shadow. I don t know how you haven t managed to figure that one out! I m sorry. I haven t… Fine, let me tell you. People s minds are transported outside the Wall by the beasts. That is what I meant by skimming off. The beasts wander around absorbing traces of mind, then ferry them to the outside world. When winter comes, they die with a residue of self inside them. What kills them is not the cold and not the lack of food; what kills them is the weight of self forced upon them by the Town. In spring, new young are born exactly the same number as the beasts that died and it happens all over again. This is the price of your perfection. A perfection that forces everything upon the weak and powerless. I cannot say a thing. I look down at my shoes. When the beasts die, the Gatekeeper cuts off their heads, my shadow goes on, unrelenting. By then, their skulls are indelibly etched with self. These skulls are scraped and buried for a full year in the ground to leech away their energy, then taken to the Library stacks, where •they sit until the Dreamreader s hands release the last glimmers of mind into the air. That s what old dreams are. Dreamreading is a task for newcomers to the Town people whose shadows have not yet died. The Dreamreader reads each spark of self into the air, where it diffuses and dissipates. You are a lightning rod; your task is to ground. Do you see? I believe I do. When the Dreamreader s shadow dies, he ceases to be Dreamreader and becomes one with the Town. This is how its possible for the Town to maintain its perfection. All imperfections are forced upon the imperfect, so the perfect can live content and oblivious. Is that the way it should be? Did you ever think to look at things from the viewpoint of the beasts and shadows and Woodsfolk? I have been staring at the candle flame for so long, my head hurts. I remove my black glasses and rub my watering eyes. I will be here tomorrow at three, I vow. All is as you say. This is no place for me. Rainy-Day Laundry, Car Rental, Bob Dylan ON a rainy Sunday, the four driers at the laundromat were bound to T>e occupied. So it came as no surprise to find four different-colored plastic shopping bags hanging on the door handles. There were three women in the place: one, a late-thirtyish housewife; the other two, coeds from the nearby girls dorm. The housewife was sitting in a folding chair, staring blankly at her clothes going around and around. It could have been a TV. The coeds were pouring over a copy of //. All three of them glanced up at me the moment I entered, but quickly found their wash and their magazine more interesting. I took a seat to wait my turn, Lufthansa bag on my knee. It looked like I was next in line. Great. A guy can only watch somebody else s clothes revolve for so long. Especially on his last day. I sprawled out in the chair and gazed off into space. The laundromat had that particular detergent and clothes-drying smell. Contrary to my expectations, none of the driers opened up. There are unwritten rules about laundromats and The watched drier never stops is one of them. From where I sat, the clothes looked perfectly dry, but the drums didn t know when to quit; I longed to close my eyes and sleep, but I didn t want to miss my turn. I wished I d brought something to read. It would keep me awake and make the time go faster. But then again, did I really want to make the time go faster? Better I should make the time go slow but in a laundromat? Thinking about time was torment. Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can t even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things. But what to do after leaving the laundromat? First, buy some clothes. Proper clothes. No time for alterations, so forget the tweed suit. Make do with chinos, a blazer, shirt, and tie. Add a light coat. Perfectly acceptable attire for any restaurant. That s an hour and a half. Which put me at three o clock. I d have three hours until I was supposed to pick her up. Hmm. What to do for three hours? Mind impeded by sleepiness and fatigue, mind blocked. The drier on the right ground to a halt. The housewife and college girls glanced at the machine, but none made a move. The drier was mine. In keeping with the unwritten rules of laundromats, I removed the warm mass of clothes and stuffed them into the bag hanging on the handle. After which I dumped in my Lufthansa bagful of wet clothes, fed the machine some coins, and returned to my chair. Twelve-fifty by the clock. The housewife and college girls stared at me. Then they stared at the laundry in the drier. Then they stared at me again. So I stared at the laundry in the drier myself. That was when I noticed my small load dancing in plain view for all to see all of it the girl s things, all of it pink. Better get out of here, find something else to do for twenty minutes. The fine rain of the morning didn t let up, a subtle message to the world. I opened my umbrella and walked. Through the quiet residential area to a street lined with shops. Barber, bakery, surf shop a surf shop in Seta-gaya? tobacconist, patisserie, video shop, cleaners. Which had a sign outside, All Clothes 10% Off on Rainy Days. Interesting logic. Inside the shop the bald, dour-looking proprietor was pressing a shirt. Electrical cables dangled from the ceiling, a thick growth of vines running to the presses and irons. An honest-to-goodness, neighborhood cleaners, where all work was done on premises. Good to know about. I bet they didn t staple number tags which I hate to your shirttails. I never send my shirts to the cleaners for that very reason. On the front stoop of the cleaners sat a few potted plants. I knew I knew what they were, but I couldn t identify a single one. Rain dripped from the eaves into the dark potting soil on which a lonely snail rolled along single- mindedly. I felt useless. I d lived thirty-five years in this world and couldn t come uKwith the name of one lousy ornamental. There was a lot I could learn from a local cleaners. I returned to the tobacconists and bought a pack of Lark Extra Longs. I d quit smoking five years before, but one pack of cigarettes on the last day of my life wasn t going to kill me. I lit up. The cigarette felt foreign. I slowly drew in the smoke and slowly exhaled. I moved on to the patisserie, where I bought four gateaux. They had such difficult French names that once they were in the box, I forgot what I d selected. I d taken French in university, but apparently it had gone down the tubes. The girl behind the counter was prim, but bad at tying ribbons. Inexcusable. The video shop next door was one I d patronized a few times. Something called Hard Times was on the twenty-seven-inch monitor at the entrance. Charles Bronson was a bare-knuckle boxer, James Coburn his manager. I stepped inside and asked to see the fight scene again. The woman behind the counter looked bored. I offered her one of the gateaux while Bronson battered a bald-headed opponent. The ringside crowd expected the brute to win, but they didn t know that Bronson never loses. I got up to leave. Why don t you stick around and watch the whole thing? invited Mrs. Video Shop. I d really have liked to, I told her, if it weren t for the things I had in the drier. I cast an eye at my watch. One-twenty-five. The drier had already stopped. She made one last pitch. Three classic Hitchcock pictures coming in next week. I retraced my steps to the laundromat. Which, I was pleased to find, was empty. Just the wash awaiting my return at the bottom of the drier. I stuffed the wash into my bag and headed home. The chubby girl didn t hear me come in and was fast asleep on the bed. I placed her clothes by the pillow and the cake box on the night stand. The thought of crawling into bed was appealing, but it was not to be. I went into the kitchen. Faucet, gas water heater, ventilator fan, gas oven, various assorted pots and pans, refrigerator and toaster and cupboard and knife rack, a big Brooke Bond tea cannister, rice cooker, and everything else that goes into the single word kitchen . Such order composed this world. I was married when I first moved in to the apartment. Eight years ago, but even then I often sat at this table alone, reading in the middle of the night. My wife was such a sound sleeper, I sometimes worried if she was still alive. And in my own imperfect way, I loved her. That meant I d lived for eight years in this dump. Three of us had moved in together: me and my wife and the cat. My wife was the first to move out, next was the cat. Now it was my turn. I grabbed a saucer for an ashtray and lit a cigarette. I drank a glass of water. Eight years. I could hardly believe it. Well, it didn t matter. Everything would be over soon enough. Eternal life would set in. Immortality. I was bound for the world of immortality. That s what the Professor said. The End of the World was not death but a transposition. I would be myself. I would be reunited with what I had already lost and was now losing. Well, maybe so. Not probably so. The old man had to know what he was talking about. If he said it was an undying world, then undying it was. Yet, none of the Professor s words had the ring of reality. They were abstractions, vague shadows of contingency. I mean, I already was myself, wasn t I? And how would someone who s immortal perceive his immortality? What was this about unicorns and a high wall? The Wizard ofOz had to be more plausible. So what had I lost? I d lost many things. Maybe a whole college chapbook full, all noted down in tiny script. Things that hadn t seemed so important when I let go of them. Things that brought me sorrow later, although the opposite was also true. People and places and feelings kept slipping away from me. Even if I had my life to live over again, I couldn t imagine not doing things the same. After all, everything this life I was losing was me. And I couldn t be any other self but my self. Could I? Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I d move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I d meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically whether actually more realistic or not I d tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn t going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing? Who knows? Maybe that was despair . What Turgenev called disillusionment . Or Dostoyevsky, hell . Or Somerset Maugham, reality . Whatever the label, I figured it was me. A world of immortality? I might actually create a new self. I could become happy, or at least less miserable. And dare I say it, I could become a better person. But that had nothing to do with me now. That would be another self. For now, I was an immutable, historical fact. All the same, I had little choice but to proceed on the hypothesis of my life ending in another twenty-two hours. So I was going to die I told myself for convenience sake. That was more like me, if I did say so myself. Which, I supposed, was some comfort. I put out my cigarette and went to the bedroom. I looked at the chubby girl s sleeping face. I went through my pockets to check that I had everything I needed for this farewell scene. What did I really need? Almost nothing any more. Wallet and credit cards and… was there anything else? The apartment key was of no use, neither were my car keys, nor my Calcutec ID. Didn t need my address book, didn t need a knife. Not even for laughs. I took the subway to Ginza and bought a new set of clothes at Paul Stuart, paying the bill with American Express. I looked at myself in the mirror. Not bad. The combination of the navy blazer with burnt orange shirt did smack of yuppie ad exec, but better that than troglodyte. It was still raining, but I was tired of looking at clothes, so I passed on the coat and instead went to a beer hall. It was almost empty. They were playing a Bruckner symphony. I couldn t tell which number, but who can? I ordered a draft and some oysters on the half shell. I squeezed lemon over the oysters and ate them in clockwise order, the Bruckner romantic in the background. The giant wall-clock read five before three, the dial supporting two lions which spun around the mainspring. Bruckner came to an end, and the music shifted into Ravel s Bolero. I ordered a second draft, when I was hit by the long overdue urge to relieve myself. And piss I did. How could one bladder hold so much? I was in no particular hurry, so I kept going for a whole two minutes with Bolero building to its enormous crescendo. It made me feel as if I could piss forever. Afterwards I could have sworn I d been reborn. I washed my hands, looked at my face in the warped mirror, then returned to my beer at the table and lit up a cigarette. / Time seemed to stand still, although in fact the lions had gone around one hundred eighty degrees and it was now ten after three. I leaned one elbow on the table and considered the clock. Watching the hands of a clock advance is a meaningless way to spend time, but I couldn t think of anything better to do. Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left? The hands of the clock reached half past three, so I paid up and left. The rain had virtually stopped during this beer interlude, so I left my umbrella behind too. Things weren t looking so bad. The weather had brightened up, so why not me? With the umbrella gone, I felt lighter. I felt like moving on. Preferably to somewhere with a lot of people. I went to the Sony Building, where I jostled with Arab tourists ogling the lineup of state-of-the-art TV monitors, then went underground to the Marunouchi Line and headed for Shinjuku. I apparently fell asleep the instant I took a seat, because the next thing I knew I was there. Exiting through the wicket, I suddenly remembered the skull and shuffled data I d stashed at the station baggage-check a couple days before. The skull made no difference now and I didn t have my claim stub, but I had nothing bet-ter to do, so I found myself at the counter, pleading with the clerk to let me have my bag. Did you look for your ticket carefully? asked the clerk. I had, I told him. What s your bag look like? A blue Nike sports bag, I said. What s the Nike trademark look like? I asked for a piece of paper and a pencil, drew a squashed boomerang and wrote Nike above it. The clerk looked at it dubiously and wandered off down the aisles of shelves. Presently he returned with my bag. This it? That s right, I said. Got any ID? My prize retrieved, it suddenly struck me, you don t go to out to dinner lugging gym gear. Instead of carrying it around, I decided to rent a car and throw the bag nonchalantly in the back seat. Make that a smart European car. Not that I was such a fan of European cars, but it seemed to me that this very important day of my life merited riding around in a nice car. I checked the yellow pages and jotted down the numbers of four car-rental dealerships in the Shinjuku area. None had any European cars. Sundays were high-demand days and they never had foreign cars to begin with. The last dealership had a Toyota Carina 1800 GT Twin-Cam Turbo and a Toyota Mark II. Both new, both with car stereos. I said I d take the Carina. I didn t have a crease of an idea what either car looked like. Having done that, I went to a record shop and bought a few cassettes. Johnny Matbis s Greatest Hits, Zubin Mehta conducting Schonberg s Verkldrte Nacht, Kenny Burrell s Stormy Sunday, Popular Ellington, Trevor Pinnock on the harpsichord playing the Brandenburg Concertos, and a Bob Dylan tape with Like A Rolling Stone. Mix n match. I wanted to cover the bases how was I to know what kind of music would go with a Carina 1800 GT Twin-Cam Turbo? I bagged the tapes and headed for the car rental lot. The driver s seat of the Carina 1800 GT seemed like the cabin of a space shuttle compared to my regular tin toy. I popped the Bob Dylan tape in the deck, and Watching the River Flow came on while I tested each switch on the dashboard control panel. The nice lady who d served me came out of the office and came over to the car to ask if anything was wrong. She smiled a clean, fresh TV-commercial smile. NFo problems, I told her, I was just checking everything before hitting the road. Very good, she said. Her smile reminded me of a girl I d known in high school. Neat and clear-headed, she married a Kakumaru radical, had two children, then disappeared. Who would have guessed a sweet seventeen-year-old, J. D. Salinger- and George Harrison-fan of a girl would go through such changes. I only wish all drivers were as careful as you. It would make our job a lot easier, she said. These computerized panels in the latest models are pretty complicated. Which button do I push to find the square root of 185? I asked. I m afraid you ll have to wait until the next model, she laughed. Say, isn t that Bob Dylan you have on? Right, I said. Positively 4th Street. I can tell Bob Dylan in an instant, she said. Because his harmonica s worse than Stevie Wonder? She laughed again. Nice to know I could still make someone laugh. No, I really like his voice, she said. its like a kid standing at the window watching the rain. After all the volumes that have been written about Dylan, I had yet to come across such a perfect description. She blushed when I told her that. Oh, I don t know. That s just what he sounds like to me. I never expected someone as young as you to know Bob Dylan. Hike old music. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix you know. We should get together sometime, I told her. She smiled, cocking her head slightly. Girls who are on top of things must have three hundred ways of responding to tired thirty-five-year-old divorced men. I thanked her and started the car. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again. I felt better for having met her. The digital dashboard clock read four-forty-two. The sunless city sky was edging toward dusk as I headed home, crawling through the congested streets. This was not your usual rainy Sunday congestion; a green sports compact had slammed into an eight-ton truck carrying a load of concrete blocks. Traffic was at a standstill. The sportscar looked like a cardboard box someone sat on. Several raincoated cops stood around as the wrecker crew cleaned up the debris. It took forever to get by the accident site, but there was still plenty of time before the appointed hour, so I smoked and kept listening to Dylan. Like A Rolling Stone. I began to hum along. We were all getting old. That much was as plain as the falling rain. Skulls I see birds flying. They strafe the white frozen slope of the Western Hill and vanish from my field of vision. I warm my feet and hands at the stove and drink the hot tea the Colonel has brought me. Are you going to read dreams tonight? The snow will be deep. It will be dangerous walking on the Hill. Perhaps you might rest a day, he suggests. / I cannot lose a day, I tell him. The Colonel shakes his head goesyout, and returns with a pair of snow boots. Here, wear these. At least you not will slip. I try them on. They fit well, a good sign. It is time to go. I wrap my scarf around my neck, pull on my gloves, borrow a cap from the Colonel. Then I slip the folded accordion into my pocket. I refuse to be without it. Take care, bids the old officer. As I had envisioned, the hole is filling with drifts of snow. Gone are the old men; gone too are their tools. If the snow continues like this, the hole will be brimming by tomorrow morning. I watch the bold white gusts, then begin down the Hill. Snow is falling thick and fierce. It is difficult to see more than a few yards ahead. I remove my glasses and pull my scarf to beneath my eyes. I hear birds crying overhead, above the squeak and crack of these boots. What do birds feel about snow? And the beasts, what do they think about this blizzard? I arrive at the Library a full hour early and find her waiting for the stove to heat the room. She brushes the snow from my coat and dislodges the snow caked between the spikes of the boots. Although I was here only yesterday, I am overcome with feelings of nostalgia at the yellow light through the frosted glass, the warm intimacy of the stove, the smell of coffee steaming out of the pot. Would you care to eat now? Or perhaps a little later? I don t want to eat. I m not hungry, I say. Would you like coffee? Yes, please. I pull off my gloves and hang them on the stove to dry. Then I thaw my fingers in front of the fire, while she pours two cups of coffee. She hands me a cup, then she sits down at the table to drink. Bad snow outside. I could hardly before me, I say. Yes. It will keep falling for the next few days. Until those clouds dead in the sky drop all their snow. I drink half my coffee, then without a word, take a seat opposite her. Looking at her, I feel myself overcome with sadness again. By the time it stops, there will be more snow on the ground than you have probably ever seen, she says. I may not be able to see it. She raises her eyes from her cup to look at me. What do you mean? Anyone can see snow. I will not be dreamreading today. lets just talk, the two of us, I say. There are many things I want to tell you and many things I want you to tell me. Is that all right? She folds her hands on the table and looks at me blankly. My shadow is dying, I begin. He cannot last out the winter. its only a matter of time. If my shadow dies, I lose my mind forever. That is why I must decide many things now. Things a bout myself, things that concern you. There is little time lefTto think about these things, but even if I could think as long as I liked, I m sure I would reach the same conclusion. That is, I must leave here. I take a sip of coffee and assure myself that my conclusion is not wrong. To be sure, either way I will be losing a part of me. I will leave the Town tomorrow, I speak again. Exactly how and from where I don t know. My shadow wil tell me. He and I will leave together and go back to our world. I will drag my shadow after me as I once did. I will worry and suffer, grow old and die. I doubt you can understand, but I belong in that world, where I will be led around, even led astray, by my own mind. She stares at me. No, she stares into the space I occupy. Do you not like the Town? In the beginning, you said that if it was quiet I wanted, I would like it here. Yes, I am taken with the peace and tranquillity of the Town. I also know that if I stay on at the expense of my mind, that peace and tranquillity will become total. Very likely, I will regret leaving this Town for the rest of my life. Yet I cannot stay. My mind cannot forgive my gain at the sacrifice of my shadow and the beasts. Even as my mind dwindles this very instant, I cannot lie to it. That is totally beside the point. What I lose would be eternal. Do you understand? She looks down at her hands for a long time. The steam has long since vanished from her coffee cup; not a thing in the room moves. Will you never come back here? I shake my head. Once I leave here, I can never come back. That is clear. And should I return, the Gate would never open for me. And does that not matter to you? Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but lose you. The room is silent again, except for the crackling of the coals. Hanging by the stove are my coat and scarf and hat and gloves items given to me here by the Town. I considered helping my shadow escape alone, then staying behind myself, I say. Yet I would be driven into the Woods, sure never to see you again either. You cannot live in the Woods. Only those whose shadows have not been completely exterminated, who still bear traces of mind, in them, can live in the Woods. I still have a mind. Not you. And for that reason, you can never need me. She shakes her head. No, I do not have this thing you call mind. Mother had mind, but I do not. And because Mother kept her mind, she was driven into the Woods. I never told you, but I remember very well when Mother was sent to the Woods. I still think about her from time to time. That if I had mind, too, I could be with Mother. And that if I had mind, I could want you as you want me. Even if it meant exile in the Woods? You would have a mind at such cost? She meditates on her hands folded on the table before her, then unclasps them. I remember Mother told me that if one has mind, noth-ing is ever lost, regardless where one goes. Is that true? I don t know, I tell her. But true or not, that is what your mother believed. The question is whether you believe it. I think I can, she says, gazing into my eyes. You can? I ask, startled. You think you can believe that? Probably, she says. No. Think it over carefully. This is very important, I say, because to believe something, whatever it might be, is the doing of theiründ. Do you follow? When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind. Do you know these things? She shakes her head. I cannot tell. I was merely thinking about Mother. Nothing more than that. I think that I can believe. Something in you must still be in touch with your mind! Although it is locked tightly in and cannot get out When you say I still have mind in me, do you mean that they did not really kill my shadow, the same/as with Mother? (. No, your shadow is dead and buried in the Apple Grove. But perhaps there are echoes of mind inside the memories of your mother, if you could only retrace them. All is hushed, as if the swirling snow outside has swallowed all sound from the room, as the Wall holds its breath, straining to listen in. lets talk about old dreams, I change the subject. Is it true that the beasts absorb what mind we give off each day? That this becomes old dreams? Why yes, of course. When our shadows die, the beasts breathe in mind. That means I should be able to read out your mind from the old dreams. No, it is impossible. Our minds are not taken in whole. My mind is scattered, in different pieces among different beasts, all mixed with pieces from others. They cannot be untangled. She is right. I have been dreamreading day after day and I have yet to understand even a fragment of one. And now, if I am to save my shadow, there are only twenty-one hours left. Twenty-one hours to gather the pieces of her mind. How can it be, here in this timeless Town, I have so little time? I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I must find the thread that pulls my concentration together, yet unravels the fabric. We must go to the stacks, I say. The stacks? We must think while we look at the skulls. We may discover something. I take her by the hand, and we step behind the counter to the door to the stacks. She turns on the dim light and the shelves of countless skulls float up through the gloom. Pallid shapes, covered thick with dust, jaws sprung at the same angle, eye sockets glaring vacuously, their silence hangs over the stacks like a ghostly mist. A chill creeps over my flesh again. Do you really think you can read out my mind? she asks me, face to face. I think so, I say, wishing to convince myself. There has to be a way. It is like looking for lost drops of rain in a river. You re wrong. The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things. If you believe in me at all, then believe this: I promise you I will find it. Everything depends on this. I believe you, she whispers after a moment. Please find my mind. Nail Clippers, Butter Sauce, Iron Vase IT was five-twenty-five when I pulled up in front of the library. Still early for our date, so I got out of the car and took a stroll down the misty streets. In a coffee shot, watched a golf match on television, then I went to an entertainment center and played a video game. The object of the game was to wipe out tanks invading from across the river. I was winning at first, but as the game went on, the enemy tanks bred like lemmings, crushing me by sheer number and destroying my base. An on-screen nuclear blast took care of everything, followed by the message game over insert coin. I slipped another hundred-yen fcoin into the slot. My base reappeared, completely unscathed, accompanied by a flourish of trumpets. Talk about a downhill struggle. I had to lose. If I didn t, the game would go on forever. Not to worry. I was soon wiped out again, followed by the same nuclear blast, followed by the same game over insert coin. Next door was a hardware store, with a vast assortment of tools in the window. Wrenchand-screwdriver sets, power tack-guns, and drills, as well as a cased precision tool kit made in West Germany. Next to that was a set of some thirty woodcarving knives and gouges. I walked in to the store. After the buzzing and booming of the entertainment center, the hardware store seemed as quiet as the interior of an iceberg. Next to the razor sets, I found nail clippers arrayed like entomological specimens. I picked up the most featureless of the lot and took it over to the register. The thin-haired, middle-aged man at the counter put down the electric eggbeater that he was dismantling and instructed me on the use of the clippers. Okay, watch carefully. He showed me the simple three-step procedure and handed the clippers back to me. Prime item, he confided. They re made by Henkel, they ll last you a lifetime. Never rust, good blade. Strong enough to clip a dog s claws. I put out two thousand eight hundred yen for the clippers. They came with a black leather case. The man immediately returned to his eggbeater disassembly. He had sorted screws of different sizes into clean white trays. They looked so happy. I returned to the car and listened to the Brandenburg Concertos while I waited. I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the egg-beater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy. On toward closing time, people started filing out of the library. Mostly high school students who were toting plastic sports bags like mine, but there were older people, too. At six o clock, a bell sounded. And for the first time since I could remember, I was ravenous. I d had very little to eat since the fun and games began. I pushed back the reclining seat and looked up at the low car ceiling as food of all kinds floated through my head. The screws on white trays became screws in white sauce alongside a few sprigs of watercress. Fifteen minutes later, my reference desk girlfriend emerged through the front door. She was wearing a dark blue velvet dress with a white lace collar and double-stranded silver necklace. Is this your car? she asked. Nope, a rental. What do you think? Okay, I guess. Though it doesn t really seem to be your style. I wouldn t know. It was what they had at the car rental. She inspected the car outside and in, opened the ashtray and checked the glove compartment. Then she asked, Whose Brandenburg is this? Trevor Pinnock. Are you a Pinnock fan? Not especially, I said. The tape just caught my eye. its not bad. Richter s is my favorite, but did you know Pablo Casals also has a version? . Casals? its not what you d expect the Brandenburg to sound like. its very interesting. I ll look for it, I said. Where shall we eat? How about Italian? Great. « I know a place that s not too far and is really good. lets go. I m so hungry I could eat screws. I m hungry too, she said, ignoring the screws. Hmm, nice shirt. Thanks. The restaurant was a fifteen-minute drive from the library, dodging cyclists and pedestrians on winding residential streets. Midway up a hill, amid homes with tall pines and Himalayan cedars and high walls, appeared an Italian restaurant. A white woodframe Western-style house that now functioned as a trattoria. The sign was so small you could easily have missed the place if you didn t know it was there. The restaurant was tiny three tables and four counter seats. We were shown to the table furthest back, where a side window gave us a view of plum trees. Shall we have some wine? she said. Why don t you choose, I said. While she discussed the selection with the waiter, I gazed out at the plum tree. A plum tree growing at an Italian restaurant seemed somehow incongruous. But perhaps not. Maybe they had plum trees in Italy. Hell, they had otters in France. Having settled on an aperitivo, we opened our menus. We took our time making our selections. First, for antipasti, we chose insalata di gamberetti alle fragole, ostriche al vivo, mortadella di fegato, sepie al nero, melanzane alia partni-giana, and wakasagi marinata. For primi, she decided on a spaghetti al pesto genovese, and I decided on a tagliateUe alia casa. How about splitting an extra maccheroni al sugo di pesceV she suggested. Sounds good to me, I said. What is the fish of the day? she turned to ask the waiter. Today we have fresh branzino that s suzuki, pronounced the waiter, which we steam in cartoccio and sprinkle with almonds. I ll have that, she said. Me, too, I said. And for contorni, spinaci and risotto al funghi. Verdure cotte and risotto alpomodoro for me. I think you will find our risotti quite filling, the waiter spoke up, a bit uneasily. Maybe so, but I ve barely eaten in days, and she s got gastric dilation, I explained. its a regular black hole, she confirmed. Very well, said the waiter. For dessert, I ll have granita di uva, crema fredda, suffle al limone, and espresso, she added before he could get away. Why not me too, I said. After the waiter had at last finished writing down our order, she smiled at me. You didn t have to order so much just to keep pace with me, you know. No, I really am famished, I said. its been ages since I ve been this hungry. Great, she said. I never trust people with no appetite. its like they re always holding something back on you, don t you think? I wouldn t know, I said. I really wouldn t. I wouldn t know seems to be a pet expression with you, she observed. Maybe so. And maybe so is another. I didn t know what to say. Why are all your thoughts so uncertain? I wouldn t know, but maybe so, Irepeated over and over in my head when the waiter arrived aruhwith the air of the court chiropractor come to treat the crown prince s slipped disc, reverently uncorked the wine and/poured it into our glasses. In U Etranger, the protagonist had a habit of saying its not my fault . Or so Iseem to recall. Umm what was his name now? Meursault, I said. That s right, Meursault, she repeated. I read it in high school. But you know, today s high school kids don t read anything of the kind. We did a survey at the library not so long ago. What authors do you read? Turgenev. Turgenev wasn t so great. He was an anachronist. Maybe so, I said, but I still like him. Flaubert and Thomas Hardy, too. You don t read anything new? Sometimes I read Somerset Maugham. There aren t many people who d consider Somerset Maugham new, she said, tipping back her glass. The same as they don t put Benny Goodman in jukeboxes these days either. I love Maugham. I ve read The Razor s Edge three times. Maybe its not a spectacular novel, but its very readable. Better that than the other way around. Maybe so, she laughed. That orange shirt suits you. Thank you very much, I said. You look beautiful. Thank yow, she said. I went home during lunch and changed. I don t live far from work so it was very convenient. Several of the appetizers arrived, and for the next few minutes we ate in silence. The flavors were light, delicate, subtle. The shrimp were consummately fresh, the oysters kissed by the sea. So did you finish with the unicorn business? she asked, as she let an oyster roll into her mouth. More or less, I said, wiping squid ink from my lips. And where were these unicorns? In here, I said, tapping my temple. The unicorns were all in my head. Symbolically speaking, you mean? No, not at all. Do I seem like the symbolic type? They really were living in my consciousness. Someone found them out for me. Well, I m glad they were found. Sounds very interesting. Tell me more. its not so very interesting, I said, passing her the eggplant. She, in return, passed me the smelt. Still, I d like to know more. Really I would. Well, its like this. Deep in your consciousness there s this core that is imperceptible to yourself. In my case, the core is a town. A town with a river flowing through it and a high brick wall surrounding it. None of the people in the town can leave. Only unicorns can go in and out. The unicorns absorb the egos of the townpeople like blotter paper and carry them outside the wall. So the people in the town have nou£go, no self. I live in the town or so the story goes. I don t know any more than that, since I haven t actually seen any of this with my own eyes. Well, its certainly original, I ll say that. River? The old man hadn t said anything about a river. But its none of my creation, at least not that I m aware of, I said. its still yours, isn t it? Nobody else made it. , Well, I guess. The smelt s not bad, eh? Not bad. All this does resemble a little that Russian unicorn story I read you, don t you think? she said, slicing through the eggplant. The Ukranian unicorns were supposed to have lived in a completely isolated community. its similar in that way, yes. Maybe there s some link… Just a second, I interrupted and reached into my blazer pocket. I have a present for you. I handed her the small black leather case. What is it? she asked, turning over the curious metal object she removed from the case. I ll show you. Watch carefully. She watched. Nail clippers? Right! Folds back in reverse order. Like this. Very interesting, she said. Tell me, though, do you often give nail clippers to women? No, you re the first. Just now while I was waiting, I went into a hardware store and felt like buying something. The woodcarving sets were too big. Thank you. I ll keep them in my bag and think of you every time I use them. The appetizers were cleared away and presently the entrees were served. My hunger had hardly subsided. Six plates of appetizers hadn t even put a dent in it. I shovelled a considerable volume of tagliatelle into my mouth in a relatively short period of time, then devoured half the macaroni. Having put that much under my belt, I could swear I saw faint lights looming up through darkness. After the pasta, we sipped wine until the bass came. By the way, she said, about your apartment, was the destruction done by some special machine? Or was it a demolition team? Maybe you could call him a machine, but it was the work of one person, I said. Must have had a lot of determination. You wouldn t believe. A friend of yours? A total stranger. It wouldn t have had anything to do with that unicorn business? she asked. It did. But nobody d bothered to ask me what I thought from the very beginning. And does that have something to do with your going away tomorrow? Mm… yeah. You must have gotten yourself caught in a terrible mess. its so complicated, I myself don t know what s what. Well, in my case, the simplest explanation is that I m up to here in information warfare. The waiter appeared suddenly with our fish and rice. I can t follow all this, she said, flaking her suzuki with the edge of her fork. Our library is full of books and everyone just comes to read. Information is free to everyone and nobody fights over it. I wish I d worked in a library myself, I said. The fish was exquisite, she purred, after we d finished off our entrees. Especially the sauce. butter sauce is an art, I said. It takes time. You minced shallots into melted butter, then heat it over a very low flame. No short cuts. Ah yes, you like to cook, don t you? Well, I used to. You need real dedication. Fresh ingredients, a discerning palate, an eye for presentation. its not a modern art. Good cooking has hardly evolved since the nineteenth century. The lemon souffle here is wonderful, she said, as the desserts arrived. You still have room? The grape ice was light, the souffle tart, the expresso rich and heady Once we d finished, the chef came out to greet us. Magnificent meal, we told him. It is a joy to cook for guests who love to eat, said the chef. Even in Italia, my family does not eat this much. Why, thank you. We took it as a compliment. The chef returned to the kitchen and we ordered another espresso each. You re the first person I ve met who could match my appetite, she said. I can still eat, I said. I have some frozen pizza at home, and a bottle of Chivas. lets do it. Her place was indeed near the library. A small prefab affair, but it had a real entryway and a yard, if only big enough for one person to lie down. Doubtless it got no sun, but there was an azalea bush over to one corner. There was even a second story. its really too much room for one person, she explained. We bought the house because my husband and I were planning to have kids. I paid back the loan with his life insurance. She took the pizza out of the freezer and popped it in the oven, then brought the Chivas Regal out to the living room table. While she opened a bottle of wine for herself, I selected a few tapes Jackie McLean and Miles Davis and Wynton Kelly and pushed the PLAY button on the cassette deck. We settled back to Bags Groove, followed by Surrey with a Fringe on Top, and drinks until the pizza was done. You like old jazz? she asked. When I was in high school, I listened to jazz all the time in coffee shops. And nowadays? A bit of everything. I hear what people play me. But you don t listen of your own choosing? Don t need to. My husband was something of a jazz buff. You probably had similar tastes. He was beaten to death in a bus, with an iron vase. He what? Some punk was using hair spray in a bus, and when my husband asked him to quit, the guy brained him with an iron vase. I didn t know what to say. What was the kid doing carrying an iron vase? Who knows? she answered. It was a pitiful way to die. The oven timer rang: the pizza was done. Sitting side by side on the sofa, we each ate half. Want to see a unicorn skull? I asked. A real one? she said. You honestly have one? A replica. Not the real thing. I went out to the car. It was a tranquil early October night. Here and there a patch of sky cut through the cloud cover to reveal a near-full moon. Fair weather tomorrow. lrreturned with the Nike sports bag and produced the towel-wrapped, skull. She set down her wine glass and examined the skull up close. Extremely well made, I ll say that much. It was made by a skull specialist, I explained, taking a sip of whiskey. its as good as real. I stopped the cassette deck, took the fire tongs out of the bag, and tapped/the skull. The skull gave off the same parchetijmo-oan. WhatVthat? Each skull has a unique resonance. And a skull expert can read all sorts of things from these sounds. Incredible! she exclaimed. She then tried striking the skull with the tongs herself. I can t believe this is a replica. She set the skull on the table and reclaimed her wine glass. We scooted together, raised our glasses, and gazed at the skull. Put on more music, she smiled suggestively. I chose another ceAiple of cassettes and returned to the sofa. Is here okay? Or shall we go upstairs? Here s perfect, I said. Pat Boone sang softly, I ll Be Home. Time seemed to flow in the wrong direction, which was fine by me. Time could go whichever way it pleased. She drew the lace curtain on the window to the yard and turned out the lights. We stripped by moonlight. She removed her necklace, removed her bracelet-watch, took off her velvet dress. I undid my watch and threw it over the back of the sofa. Then I doffed my blazer, loosened my necktie, and bottomed-up the last of my whiskey. She rolled down her panty hose as a bluesy Ray Charles came on with Georgia on My Mind. I closed my eyes, put both feet up on the table and swizzled the minutes around in my head like the ice in a drink. Everything, everything, seemed once-upon-a-time. The clothes on the floor, the music, the conversation. Round and round it goes, and where it stops everyone knows. Like a dead heat on the merry-go-round. No one pulls ahead, no one gets left behind. You always get to the same spot. It seems so long ago, I said, my eyes still shut. Of course, silly, she said mysteriously, taking the glass from my hand and undoing the buttons of my shirt. Slowly, deliberately, as if stringing green beans. How d you know? I just know, she said. She put her lips to my bare chest. Her long hair swept over my stomach. Eyes closed, I gave my body over to sensation. I thought about the suzuki, I thought about the nail clippers, I thought about the snail on the cleaners front stoop. I opened my eyes and drew her to me, reaching around behind to undo the hook of her brassiere. There was no hook. Up front, she prompted. Things do evolve after all. We made love three times. We took a shower, then snuggled together on the sofa under a blanket while Bing Crosby crooned away. Euphoria. My erections had been perfect as the pyramids at Giza. Her hair smelled fresh and wonderful. The sofa cushions were nice and firm. Not bad, from back in the days when sofas were sofas. I sang along with Bing: QhDanny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling From glen to glen, and down the mountain side. The summer s gone, and all the roses falling its you, its you must go, and I must bide. But come ye back when summer s in the meadow, Arid when the valley s hushed and white with snow. Its I ll be here in sunshine or in shadow, &hDannyJbcty, oh Danny Boy, I ll miss you so! A favorite of yours? she asked. Yeah, I like it well enough, I said. I won a dozen pencils in a school harmonica contest playing this tune. She laughed. Life s funny like that. A laugh a minute. She put on Danny Boy so I could sing it again. But if you fall as all the flowers re dying, And you are dead, as dead you well may be, I ll come and find the place where you are lying, And kneel and say an ave there for thee. But come ye back when summer s in The second time through made me terribly sad. Send me letters from wherever it is you re going, she said, touching me. I will, I promised. If its the sort of place I can mail letters from. She poured wine into both our glasses. What time is it? I asked. Night time, she answered. Accordion Do you truly feel you can read out my mind? she asks. Yes. Your mind has been here all along, but I have not known where to seek it. And yet the way must have already been shown to me. We sit on the floor of the stacks, backs against the wall, and look up at the rows of skulls that tell us nothing. Perhaps if you tried to think back. One thing at a time, she suggests. The floor is cold. I close my eyes, and my ears resound with the silence of the skulls. This morning, the old men were digging a hole outside the house. A very big hole. The sound of their shovels woke me. It was as if they were digging in my head. Then the snow came and filled it. And before that? You and I went to the Woods, to the Power Station. We met the Caretaker. He showed me the works. The wind made an amazing noise. Yes, I remember. Then I received an accordion from him. A small folding accordion, old, but still usable. She sits, thinking and rethinking. The temperature in the room is falling, minute by minute. Do you have your accordion? she asks. The accordion? hqutfstion. Yes, it may be the key. The accordion is connected to song, song is connected to my mother, my mother is connected to my mind. Could that be right? It does follow, I say, though one important link is missing from the chain. I cannot recall a single song. It need not be a song. I retrieve the accordion from the pocket of my coat and sit beside her again, instrument in hand. I slip my hands into the straps on either end of the bellows and press out several chords. Beautiful! she exclaims. Are the sounds like wind? They are wind, I say. I create wind that makes sounds, then put them together. She closes her eyes and opens her ears to the harmonies. I produce all the chords I have practiced. I move the fingers of my right hand along the buttons in order, making single notes. No melody comes, but it is enough to bring the wind in the sounds to her. I have only to give myself to the wind as the birds do. No, I cannot relinquish my mind. At times my mind grows heavy and dark; at other times it soars high and sees forever. By the sound of this tiny accordion, my mind is transported great distances. I call up different images of the Town behind closed eyes. Here are the willows on the sandbar, the Watchtower by the Wall in the west, the small tilled plot behind the Power Station. The old men sitting in the patch of sun in front of my quarters, the beasts crouching in the pooled waters of the River, summer grasses bowing in the breeze on the stone steps of the canal. I remember visiting the Pool in the south with the Librarian. I view the Abandoned Barracks near the north Wall, the ruins of the house and well near the Wall in the Woods. I think of all the people I have met here. The Colonel next door, the old men of the Official Residences, the Caretaker of the Power Station, the Gatekeeper each now in his own room, no doubt, listening to the blizzard outside. Each place and person I shall lose forever; each face and feature I shall remember the rest of my life. If this world is wrong, if its inhabitants have no mind, whose fault is that? I feel almost a… love… toward the Town. I cannot stay in this place, yet I do not want to lose it. Presently, I sense within me the slightest touch. The harmony of one chord lingers in my mind. It fuses, divides, searches but for what? I open my eyes, position the fingers of my right hand on the buttons, and play out a series of permutations. After a time, I am able, as if by will, to locate the first four notes. They drift down from inward skies, softly, as early morning sunlight. They find me; these are the notes I have been seeking. I hold down the chord key and press the individual notes over and over again. The four notes seem to desire further notes, another chord. I strain to hear the chord that follows. The first four notes lead me to the next five, then to another chord and three more notes. It is a melody. Not a complete song, but the first phrase of one. I play the three chords and twelve notes, also, over and over again. It is a song, I realize, that I know. Danny Boy. The title brings back the song: chords, notes, harmonies now flow naturally from my fingertips. I play the melody again. When have I last heard a song? My body has craved music. 1 have been so long without music, I have not even known my own hunger. The resonance permeates; the strain eases within me. Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering. The whole Town lives and breathes in the music I play. The streets shift their weight with my every move. The Wall stretches and flexes as if my own flesh and skin. I repeat the song several times, thto set the accordion down on the floor, lean back, and close-Hiyeyes. Everything here is a part of me the Wall and Gate and Woods and River and Pool. It is all my self. Long after I set down the instrument, she clings to me with both hands, eyes closed. Tears run down her cheeks. I put my arm around her shoulder and touch my lips to her eyelids. The tears give her a moist, gentle heat. A blush of light comes over her cheeks, making her tears gleam. Clear as starlight, yet a light not from the heavens. It is the room that is aglow. I turn out the ceiling lamp, and only then do I see the source of the glow. It is the skulls. An ancient fire that has lain dormant in them is now awakening. The phosphorescence yields pure to the eye; it soothes with memories that warm and fill my heart. I can feeF my vision healing. Nothing can harm these eyes any more. It is a wondrous sight. Quietude itself. Countless flecks of light fill the space. I pick up a skull and run my fingers over its surface. Here, I sense a glimmer, a remembrance of mind, an indication of her mind. Tiny sparks drift up into my fingertips, touching me, each particle bearing the faintest light, the merest warmth. There is your mind, I say. She stares at me, eyes tearful. Your mind has not been lost nor scattered to the winds. its here, and no one can take it away. To read it out, I must bring all these together. I kiss her again on the eyelids. I want you to leave me by myself, I say. It will take me until morning to read it all out. I cannot rest until then. She surveys the rows of softly glowing skulls before exiting the stacks. The door closes behind her. The flecks of light dance upon the skulls. Some are old dreams that are hers, some are old dreams of my own. My search has been a long one. It has taken me to every corner of this walled Town, but at last I have found the mind we have lost. Lights, Introspection, Cleanliness How long I slept, I dorft know. Someone was rocking my shoulders. I smelled the sofa. I didn t want to be awakened. Sleep was too lovely. Nonetheless, at the same time, something in me demanded to be roused, insisted that this was no time to sleep. A hard metal object was tapping. Wake up! Wake up! I sat up. I was wearing an orange bathrobe. She was leaning over me in a white men s T-shirt and tiny white panties, shaking me by the shoulder. Her slender body seemed fragile, insecure, childlike, with no sign of last night s Italian excesses. Outside was not yet dawn. The table! Look at the table! she exclaimed. A small Christmas tree-like object sat on the table. But it was not a Christmas tree: it was too small and this was the beginning of October. I strained my eyes toward this object. It was the skull, exactly where I d placed it, or she d placed it. In either case, the glowing object was my unicorn skull. Lights were playing over the skull. Perishing points of microscopic brilliance. Like a glimmering sky, soft and white. Hazy, as if each glowing dot were layered in a fluid electric film, which made the lights seem to hover above the surface. We sat and watched the minuscule constellations drift and whirl. She held onto my arm as I gripped my bathrobe collar. The night was deep and still. Is this your idea of a joke? she said. I shook my head. I d never seen the skull glow before. This was no phosphorescent lichen, no human doing. No manmade energy source could produce such soft, tranquil light. I gently disengaged her from my arm, reached out for the skull, and brought it over to my lap. Aren t you afraid? she now asked under her breath. No. For some reason, I wasn t. Holding my hands over the skull, I sensed the slightest ember of heat, as my fingers were enveloped in that pale membrane of light. I closed my eyes, letting the warmth penetrate my fingers, and images drifted into view like clouds on a distant horizon. This can t be a replica, she said. It has to be the real thing. The object was emitting light into my hands. It seemed somehow purposeful, to bear meaning. An attempt to convey a signal, to offer a touchstone between the world I would enter and the world I was leaving. Opening my eyes, I looked at the twINKling nebula at my fingers. The glow was without menace or ill will. It sufficed that I take the skull up in my hands and trace the subtle veins of light with my fingertips. There was nothing to fear. I returned the skull to the table and brought my fingers to her cheek. Your hands are warm, she said. The light is warm. I guided her hands over the skull. She shut her eyes. A^ field of white light gently enveloped her fingers as well. I do feel something, she said. I don t know what, but it doesn t make sense. I can t explain either, I said. I stooped to pick up my watch from the floor. Four-six teen. Another hour until dawn. / I went to the telephone and dialed my own number. It d been a long time since I d called home, so I had to struggle to remember the number. I let it ring fifteen times; no answer. I hung up, dialed again, and let it ring another fifteen times. Nobody. « Had the chubby girl gone back underground to get her grandfather? Or had the Semiotecs or the boys from the System paid her a courtesy call? I wasn t worried. I was sure she d come through fine. The girl was amazing. She was half my age, and she could handle things ten times better than me. I set down the receiver with a tinge of sadness, knowing I d never see her again. I was watching the chandeliers get carried out of a once-grand hotel, now bankrupt. One by one the windows are sealed, the curtains taken down. I returned to where she sat on the sofa. Is the skull glowing in response to you? she asked. It does seem so, doesn t it. The unwaking world was as hushed as a deep forest. I looked down and lost myself in my shirt and pants and tie, which lay scattered on the carpet among her dress and slip and stockings. They were the shed skin of a life of thirty-five years, its culmination. What is it? she asked. These clothes. Up until a little while ago, they were a part of me. But no longer. They re different clothes belonging to a different person. I don t recognize them as my own. « its sex that does it, she smiled. After sex, you get introspective. No, that s not it, I said, picking up my empty glass. I m not withdrawing into selfreflection. I feel as if I m tuning in on details, on the minute particulars of the world. Snails and the sound of the rain and hardware store displays, things like that. Should I straighten up? No, leave the clothes as they are. They seem quite natural. I reached for my pack of cigarettes and lit up with matches from the beer hall. Then I looked at our clothes again. Shirt sleeves stretched across stockings, velvet dress folded over at the waist, sweet nothing of a slip dropped like a limp flag. Necklace and watch tossed up on the couch, black shoulder bag on its side on a corner table. Even cast aside, clothes know a permanence that eludes their wearers. How d you decide to become a librarian? I asked. I ve always liked libraries, she said. They re quiet and full of books and full of knowledge. I knew I didn t want to work in a bank or a trading company, and I would have hated being a teacher. So the library it was. I blew cigarette smoke up at the ceiling and watched it drift away. You want to know about me? she asked. Where I was born, what I was like as a girl, where I went to school, when I lost my virginity, what s my favorite color all that? No, I said. You re fine as you are. I ll learn more as it comes. I d like to get to know more about you though, little by little. I was born by the sea, I said. I d go to the beach the morning after a typhoon and find all sorts of things that the waves had tossed up. There d be bottles and wooden geta and hats and cases for glasses, tables and chairs, things from nowhere near the water. I liked combing through the stuff, so I was always waiting for the next typhoon. I put out my cigarette. The strange thing is, everything washed up from the sea was purified. Useless junk, but absolutely clean. There wasn t a dirty thing. The sea is special in that way. When I look back over my life so far, I see all that junk on the beach. its how my life has always been. Gathering up the junk, sorting through it, and then casting it off somewhere else. All for no purpose, leaving it to wash away again. This was in your home town? This is all my life. I merely go from one beach to another. Sure I remember the things that happen in between, but that s all. I never tie them together. They re so many things, clean but useless. She touched my shoulder, then went to the kitchen. She returned with wine for her and a beer for me. I like the moments of darkness before dawn, she said. Probably because its a clean slate. Clean and unused. She snuggled up close next to me on the sofa, pulling the blanket up to her breasts, then took a sip of wine. I poured myself some beer and looked, glass in hand, at the skull on the table, its pale fires reflecting in the bottle. She rested her head on my shoulder. I watched you coming back from the kitchen just now, I said. Did I pass? You ve got great legs. You like them? A whole lot. She put her glass down on the table and kissed me below the ear. Did I ever tell you? she said. I love compliments. As dawn drew near, sunlight gradually diminished the cranial foxfires, returning the skull to its original, undistinguished bone-matter state. We made love on the sofa again, her warm breath moist on my shoulder, her breasts small and soft. Then, when it was over, she folded her body into mine and went to sleep. The sun shone brightly on the roofs of the neighboring houses, birds came and went. I could hear the sounds of TV News, hear someone starting a car. How many hours had I slept? I eased her head off my shoulder and went to the kitchen. I shut the door and turned the radio on low. An FM station on low, Roger Williams playing Autumn Leaves, that time of year. Her kitchen resembled mine. The appliances, the layout, the utensils, the wear, everything was normal. There were knives for various purposes, but their sharpening left something to be desired. Very few women can sharpen knives properly. I don t know why I was poking about in another person s kitchen. I didn t mean to be nosy, but everything seemed meaningful. Autumn in New York, by the Frank Chacksfield Orchestra, was next on the FM. I moved on to the shelves of pots and pans and spice bottles. The kitchen was a world unto itself. Orchestral stylings over, the FM hostess floated her silken voice over the airwaves: Yes, its time to get out the sweaters. I could almost smell them. Images out of an Updike novel. Woody Herman swinging into Early Autumn. Seven-twenty-five by the clocktimer. Twenty-five minutes after seven A.M., Monday, the third of October. The sky had broken, clear and deep, carved out with a sharp knife. Not a bad day for taking leave of this life. I put some water on to boil, took tomatoes from the refrigerator and blanched them to remove the skin. I chopped up a few vegetables and garlic, added the tomatoes, then stirred in some sausage to simmer. While that cooked down, I slivered some cabbage and peppers for a salad, dripped coffee. I sprinkled water on to a length of French bread, wrapped it in foil, and slid it into the toaster-oven. Once the meal was ready, I cleared away the empty bottles and glasses from the living room and woke her up. Mmm. Something smells good, she said. Can I get dressed now? I asked. I have this thing about not getting dressed before the woman does. It jinxes everything if I do. Maybe its just a civil gesture. How polite of you! she said, stripping off her T-shirt. The new morning light breathed across her breasts and stomach, highlighting the fine hairs on her skin. She paused to look herself over. Not bad. Her humble evaluation. Not bad at all, I said. lets eat. She pulled on a yellow sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table and started our breakfast. Compliments to the chef, she said. its delish, she said. How can you cook this well if you live alone? Doesn t it bother you? No, not really. I had five years of marriage, but now I can hardly remember what it was like. It seems as if I d always lived alone. You never thought of remarrying? Would it make any difference? She laughed. I looked at the clock. Half past eight. What are your plans for the day? she asked. lets leave here at nine, I said, and go to a park. I want to sit in the sun. Maybe have a couple of beers. Then around ten-thirty, I m thinking of going for a drive. I ll take off after that. What about you? I ll come home, do the laundry, clean the house, lie around thinking about sex. That sound okay? I envy you. While I washed the dishes, she sang in the shower. The dishwashing liquid was one of those ecological vegetable-based soaps that hardly sudsed at all. I wiped off the dishes and set them on the table. Then I borrowed a toothbrush. Did she have anything to shave with? In the upper right-hand corner of the cabinet, she said. His things should still be there. I located a Schick razor and a can of Gillette Lemon-Lime Foamy with a dry sputter of white around the nozzle. Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used. Find it? she called out. Yep, I said, returning to the kitchen with her husband s effects and a towel. I heated some water and shaved. Afterwards I rinsed the razor, and some of the dead man s stubble washed away with mine. She was still getting dressed, so I read the morning paper in the living room. There was nothing that would interest me in my last few hours. She emerged in beige slacks and a brown checked blouse, brushing her hair. I knotted my tie and slipped on my blazer. What do you want to do with the unicorn skull? she asked. its a present for you, I said. Put it out somewhere, as a conversation piece. Think it ll glow again? I m sure it will, I said. Then I hugged her one more time, to etch her warmth indelibly into my brain. Escape The glowing of the skulls grows faint with the light of dawn. Hazy gray, it washes down, as one by one the sparks die away. Until the very last ember fades, my fingers must race over the skulls, drawing in their glow. How much of the total light will I manage to read this single night? The skulls are many, my time short. I pay no heed to the hour as I ply my attentive touch to skull after skull. Her mind is at my fingertips, moment by moment, in distinct increments of heat. It is not a question of quantity. Not number nor volume nor ratio. There is no reading everything of a mind. The last skull returned to the shelves, I collapse. I can tell nothing of the weather outside. A subtle gloom drifts noiselessly through the stacks, lulling the skulls into their deep slumber once more. I yet feel a glimmering of their warmth when I put my fingers to my cheeks. I sit until the calm and cool has quieted my thoughts. Time is advancing with fitful irregularity, yet it is a constant morning that filters in, the shadows unmoving. Fleeting fragments of her mind circulate through my mind, mingling with all that is me, finding their way into my being. How long will it take to render these into coherent form? And then, how long to transmit that to her, to let it take root? I know I must see her mind returned to her. I leave the stacks to find her sitting alone in the reading room. In the half-light, her silhouette seems somehow faint. It has been a long night for her, too. Without a word, she rises to her feet and sets the coffeepot on the stove. I go to warm myself. You are tired, she says. My body is an inert lump; I can scarcely raise a hand. I have been dreamreading an entire night, and the fatigue now sets in. It is as she told me the first day: no matter how tired the body gets, one must never let the exhaustion enter one s thoughts. You should have gone home to rest, I tell her. You needn t have stayed. She pours a cup of coffee and brings it to me. It was my mind you were reading. How could I leave? I nod, grateful, and take a sip of coffee. The old wall clock reads eight-fifteen. Shall I prepare breakfast? No thank you, I say. You have not eaten since yesterday. I feel no hunger. I need sleep. Could you wake me at two-thirty? Until then, would you sit here, please, and keep watch over me? Can I ask you to do that? She brings out two blankets and tucks them in around me. As in the past when was it? her hair brushes my cheek. I close my eyes and listen to the coals crackling in the stove. How long will winter last? I ask her. I do not know, she answers. No one can say. I feel, perhaps, it will not last much longer. I reach out to touch her cheek. She shuts her eyes, she savors the touch. Is this warmth from my mind? What do you feel in it? It is like spring, she says. It is your spring, you must believe. Your mind will be yours again. Yes, she says, placing her hand over my eyes. Please sleep now. She wakes me at exactly half past two. I don my coat, scarf, gloves, and hat. Guard the accordion, I tell her. She takes up the accordion from the table as if to weigh it in her hands, then sets it back down. It is safe with me, she says. Outside, the wind is slackening, the snow diminished to small flurries. The blizzard of the previous night has blown over, though the oppressive gray skies hang low still. This is but a temporary lull. I cross the Old Bridge southward, then the West Bridge northward. I see smoke rising from beyond the Wall. Intermittent white swatches at first, gradually thickening into the dark billowing gray masses that burning corpses make. The Gatekeeper is in the Apple Grove. I hurry toward the Gatehouse. Everything holds its breath, all the sounds of the Town are lost under the snow. The spikes of my snow boots crunch into the newfallen powder with a disproportionately large sound. The Gatehouse is deserted. The stove is extinguished, but it is still warm. Dirty plates litter the table. The Gatekeeper s pipe is lying there as well. It seems that at any moment he will appear and place a giant hand on my shod-der. The rows of blades, the kettle, his smell, everything undermines my confidence. I carefully lift the keys from their wall hook and steal out the back door to the Shadow Grounds. There is not a footprint to be seen. A sheet of white extends to the one lone dark vertical of the elm tree in the center. It is too perfect, too inviolate. The snow is graced with waves written by the wind, the elm raises crooked arms in sleeves of white. Nothing moves. The snow has stopped, this whisper in the air but the afterthought of a breeze. Now is the moment I defile this peaceful but brief eternity. There is no turning back. I take out the keys and try all four in order; none fits. A cold sweat seeps from my armpits. I summon an image of the Gatekeeper opening this iron gate. It was these four keys, there can be no mistake. I remember counting them. One of them must be the right key. I put the keys into my pocket to warm them by hand; then I try again. This time, the third key goes in all the way and turns with a loud dry clank. The metallic sound echoes across the deserted enclosure, loud enough to alert everyone in the Town. I look nervously around me. There is no sign of anyone. I ease the heavy gate open and squeeze through, quietly closing it behind me. The snow in the enclosure is soft and deep. My feet advance across the enclosure, past the bench. The branches of the elm look down with menace. From somewhere far off comes the sharp cry of a bird. The air in the lean-to is even more chill than out. I open the trapdoor and descend the ladder to the cellar. My shadow sits on his cot waiting for me. I thought you d never come, say his white puffs of breath. I promised, did I not? I say. We need to get out of here, quick. The smell in here is overpowering. I can t climb the ladder, sighs the shadow. I tried just now, but couldn t. I seem to be in worse shape than I thought. Ironic, isn t it? Pretending to be weak all this time, I didn t even notice myself actually getting weaker. Last night s frost really got to my bones. I ll help you up. My shadow shakes his head. It won t do any good. I can t run. My legs will never make the escape. its the end of me. You started this. You can t bow out now, I say. If I have to carry you on my back, I will get you out of here. My shadow looks up with sunken eyes. If you feel that strong, then of course I am with you, says he. It won t be easy carrying me through the snow, though. I never thought this plan would be otherwise. I pull my exhausted shadow up the ladder, then lend a shoulder to walk him across the enclosure. The dark heights of the Wall look down on our two fleeing figures. The branches of the elm drop their heavy load of snow and spring back. My legs are almost dead, says my shadow. I exercised so they wouldn t wither from my being prone all the time, but the room was so cramped. I lead my shadow out of the enclosure and lock the gate. If all goes well, the Gatekeeper will not notice we have escaped. Where to from here? I ask. The Southern Pool, the shadow says. The Southern Pool? Yes. We escape by diving in. That s suicide. The undertow is powerful. We ll be sucked under and drowned. My shadow shakes and coughs. Maybe. But that s the only possible exit. I ve considered everything; you ll have to believe me. I m staking my life on it. I ll tell you the details along the way. The Gatekeeper s going to be coming back in another hour, and the ox is sure to give chase. We have no time to waste. There is no one in sight. There are but two sets of footprints my own approaching the Gatehouse and those of the Gatekeeper leaving. There are also the ruts left by the wheels of the cart. I hoist my shadow onto my back. Although he has lost most of his weight, his burden will not be light. It is a long way to the Western and Southern Hills. I have grown used to living free of a shadow, and I no longer know if I can bear the umbrage. We head east on the snowbound roads. Besides my own earlier footprints, there are only the wayward tracks of the beasts. Over my shoulder, the thick gray crematory smoke rises beyond the Wall, a malevolent tower whose apex is lost in the clouds. The Gatekeeper is burning many, many carcasses. The blizzard last night has killed scores of beasts. The time it will take to burn them all will grant us distance. I am grateful to the beasts for their tacit conspiracy. The snow packs into the spikes of my boots. It hinders my every step, causing me to slip. Why did I not look for a sleigh of some kind? Such a conveyance must exist in the the Town. We have already reached the West Bridge, however, and cannot afford to go back. I am sweating from the difficult trek. Your footprints give us away, says my shadow, casting a backward glance. I imagine the Gatekeeper on our trail, all muscle and no one to carry, charging over the snow. We must flee as far as we can before he returns to the Gatehouse. I think of her, who waits for me in the Library. Accordion on the table, coals aglow, coffeepot steaming. I feel her long hair brush my cheek, her fingers resting on my shoulder. I cannot allow my shadow to perish here, cannot allow the Gatekeeper to throw him back into the cellar to die. I must press onward, onward, while the gray smoke still rises beyond the Wall. We pass many beasts on our journey. They roam in vain search for such meager sustenance as remains under the snow. Their limpid blue eyes follow our struggle. Do they understand what our actions portend? We start up the Hill. I am out of breath. I myself have been without exercise. My panting forces out white and hot into yet new flurries of snow. Do you want to rest? asks my shadow from over my shoulder. Just five minutes, please. Of course, its all right. its my fault for not being able to walk. I ve forced everything on you. But it is for my own good, too. Is it not? You must never doubt that. I let my shadow down. I am so overheated, I cannot even feel the cold. But from thigh to toe, my legs are stone. And yet, muses my shadow, if I had said nothing to you and quietly died, you would have been happy. In your own way. Maybe so, I say. But I am not sorry to know. I needed to know. The shadow scoops up a loose handful of snow and lets it crumble. At first, it was only intuition that told me the Town had an exit, he says. For the very reason that the perfection of the Town must include all possibilities. Therefore, if an exit is our wish, an exit is what we get. Do you follow me? Yes. I came to understand that yesterday. That here there is everything and here there is nothing. My shadow gives me a firm, knowing look. The flurries are picking up. Another blizzard is moving in. If there has to be a way out, it can be found by process of elimination, he continued. We can count out the Gate, where the Gatekeeper would be sure to catch us. Besides, the Gate is the first place anyone would think to escape from; the Town would not allow an exit so obvious. The Wall is impossible to scale. The East Gate is bricked up, and it turns out there is an iron grating where the River enters. That leaves only the Southern Pool. We will escape where the River escapes. How can you be sure about that? I just know. Only the Southern Pool is left unguarded, untouched. There is no fence, no need for a fence. They ve surrounded the place with fear. When did you realize that? The first time I saw the River. I went to the West Bridge with the Gatekeeper. I looked down at the water. The River was full of life. I could feel this. There is nothing bad about it. I believe that if we give ourselves over to the water, the flow of the River will lead us out. Out of the Town and back to a real world. You must trust me. What you say does make sense, I respond. The River connects with whatever is out there, with our former world. Lately, I don t know why, I am starting to remember things about that world. Little things. The air, the sounds, the light. I am reawakened by songs. its not the best of all worlds, says my shadow. I make no promises, but it is the world where we belong. There will be good and bad. There will be neither good nor bad. It is where you were born and where you will live and where you will die. And when you die, I too will die. its the natural course of things. We look out upon the Town. The Clocktower, the River, the Bridges, the Wall, and smoke. All is drawn under a vast snow-flecked sky, an enormous cascade falling over the End of the World. We should be moving, says my shadow. The way the snow is coming down, the Gatekeeper may have to stop and return early. I stand up, brushing the snow from the brim of my hat. Popcorn, Lord Jim, Extinction EN route to the park, we stopped by a convenience store to buy some beer. I asked her preference, and she said any brand that had a head and tasted like beer. I had money to spare, but Miller High Life was the only import I could find. The autumn sky was as clear as if it had been made that very morning. Perfect Duke Ellington weather. Though, of course, Duke Ellington would be right even for New Year s Eve at an Antarctic base. I drove along, whistling to Lawrence Brown s trombone solo on Do Nothin Till You Hear from Me, followed by Johnny Hodges on Sophisticated Lady. Pulling to a stop alongside Hibiya Park, we got out of the car and lay on the grass with our six-pack. The Monday morning park was as deserted as the deck of an aircraft carrier after all the planes had flown. Not a cloud, I said. There s one, she said, pointing ta a cotton puff above Hibiya Hall. Hardly counts, I said. She shaded her eyes with her hand to take a better look. Well, I guess not. Probably should throw it back. We watched the cloudlet for a while. I opened a second can of beer. Why d you get divorced? she asked. Because she never let me sit by the window on trips. She laughed. Really, why? Quite simple, actually. Five or six summers ago, she up and left. Never came back. And you didn t see her again? Nope, I said, then took a good swig of beer. No special reason to. Marriage was that hard? Married life was great, I said. But that s never really the question, is it? Two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes, if you know what I mean. Uh-huh, I believe so. As a whole, humanity doesn t lend itself to generalizations. But as I see it, there are two types of people: the comprehensive-vision type and the limited-perspective type. Me, I seem to be the latter. Not that I ever had much problem justifying my limits. A person has to draw lines somewhere. But most people who think that way keep pushing their limits, don t they? Not me. There s no reason why everyone has to listen to records in hi-fi. Having the violins on the left and the bass on the right doesn t make the music more profound. its just a more complex way of stimulating a bored imagination. Aren t you being a tad dogmatic? Exactly what she said. Your wife? Yes. Clear-headed, but inflexible . Her exact words. Another beer? Please, she said. I pulled the ring on a can of Miller and handed it to her. But how do you see you? she asked. Ever read The Brothers Karamazov I asked. Once, a long time ago. Well, toward the end, Alyosha is speaking to a young student named Kolya Krasotkin. And he says, Kolya, you re going to have a miserable future. But overall, you ll have a happy life. Two beers down, I hestitated before opening my third. When I first read that, I didn t know what Alyosha meant, I said, How was it possible for a life of misery to be happy overall? But then I understood, that misery could be limited to the future. I have no idea what you re talking about. Neither do I, I said. Not yet. She laughed and stood up, brushing the grass from her slacks. I ll be going. its almost time anyway. I looked at my watch. Ten-twenty-two. I ll drive you home, I said. That s okay, she said. I ve got some shopping to do. I ll catch the subway back. Better that way, I think. I m going to hang around a bit longer. its so nice here. Thanks for the nail clippers. My pleasure. Give me a call when you get back, will you? I ll go to the library, I said. I like to check out people at work. Until then, she said. I watched her walk straight out of the park like Joseph Cotten in The Third Man. After she d vanished into the shade of the trees, I turned my gaze to a smartly dressed woman and her daughter throwing popcorn onto the grass, pigeons flying toward them. The little girl, three or four years old, raised both hands and ran after the birds. Needless to say, she didn t catch any. Pigeons are survivors by their own pigeonness. Only once did the fashionable young mother glance in my direction. It took her no time to decide that she wanted nothing to do with anyone lying around with five empty beer cans on a Monday morning. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the names of the Karamazov brothers. Mitya, Ivan, and Alyosha and then there was the bastard Smerdyakov. How many people in Tokyo knew the names of all these guys? I gazed up at the sky. I was in a tiny boat, on a vast ocean. No wind, no waves, just me floating there. Adrift on the open sea. Lord Jim, the shipwreck scene. The sky was deep and brilliant, a fixed idea beyond human doubt. From my position on the ground, the sky seemed the logical culmination of all existence. The same with the sea. If you look at the sea for days, the sea is all there is. Quoth Joseph Conrad. A tiny boat cut loose from the fiction of the ship. Aimless, inescapable, inevitable. So much for literature. I drank the last can of beer and smoked a cigarette. I had to think of more practical matters. There was little over an hour left. I carried the empty cans to the trash. Then I took out my credit cards and lit them with a match. I watched the plastic curl, sputter, and turn black. It was so gratifying to burn my credit cards that I thought of burning my Paul Stuart tie as well. But then I had second thoughts. The well-dressed young mother was staring at me. I went to the kiosk and bought ten bags of popcorn. I scattered nine on the ground for the pigeons, and sat on a bench to eat the last bag myself. Enough pigeons descended upon the popcorn for a remake of the October Revolution. It had been ages since I d last eaten popcorn. It tasted good. The fashionable mother and her little girl were at a fountain now. For some reason, they reminded me of my long-gone classmate, the girl who married the revolutionary, had two children, disappeared. She could never bring her kids to the park. Granted, she may have had her own feelings about this, but my own vanishing act made me feel sad for her. Maybe very likely she would deny that we shared anything at all in common. In taking leave of life, she d quit her life of her own will; I d had the sheets pulled out from under me in my sleep. She d probably give me a piece of her mind. What the hell have you ever chosen? she d say. And she d be right. I d never decided to do a single thing of my own free will. The only things I d chosen to do were to forgive the Professor and not to sleep with his grandaughter. And what was that to me? Did my existence offer anything against its own extinction? There was almost nothing left in frame at this point. Wide shot: pigeons, fountain, mother and child. I didn t want to leave this scene. I didn t care which world was coming next. I don t know why I felt this, but how could I just walk out on life? It didn t seem like the responsible thing to do. Even if no one would miss me, even if I left no blank space in anyone s life, even if no one noticed, I couldn t leave willingly. Loss was not a skill, not a measure of a life. And yet I still felt I had something to lose. I closed my eyes, I felt a ripple run through my mind. The wave went beyond sadness or solitude; it was a great, deep moan that resonated in my bones. It would not subside. I braced myself, elbows against the backrest of the park bench. No one could help me, no more than I could help anyone else. I wanted a smoke, but I couldn t find my cigarettes. Only matches in my pocket and only three left at that. I lit them one after another and tossed them to the ground. I closed my eyes again. The moaning had stopped. My head was empty of everything but a drifting dust of silence. Neither rising nor sinking, motion without dimension. I blew a puff of air; the dust did not disperse. A driving wind could not blow it away. I thought about my librarian. About her velvet dress and stockings and slip on the carpet. Had I done the right thing by not telling her? Maybe not. Who on earth wanted the right thing anyway? Yet what meaning could there be if nothing was right? If nothing was fair? Fairness is a concept that holds only in limited situations. Yet we want the concept to extend to everything, in and out of phase. From snails to hardware stores to married life. Maybe no one finds it, or even misses it, but fairness is like love. What is given has nothing to do with what we seek. I had my regrets, sure. Another form of rendering fairness, of tallying fairly. Yet why regret? Was it fair to everything I was leaving behind? Wasn t that what I wanted? I bought a pack of cigarettes, then phoned my apartment. Not that I expected anyone to answer, but I liked the idea of this being the last thing I did. I pictured the phone ringing on and on in an empty apartment. The image was so clear. After only three rings, however, the chubby girl in pink came on the line. You still there? I blurted out in surprise. You ve got to be kidding, she said. I ve gone and come back already. I wanted to finish the book I was reading. The Balzac? Right. its really fascinating. It was destined for me. Tell me, is your grandfather all right? Of course. Nothing to it. Grandfather was in top spirits. Sends his regards. Likewise, I said. So what did your grandfather decide to do? He s gone to Finland. Too many problems if he stayed in Japan. He d never get any research done. He s going to set up a laboratory in Turku. Says its nice and quiet there. They even have reindeer. And you didn t go with him? I decided to stay here and live in your apartment. In my apartment? Yes, that s right. I really like the place. I ll have the door fixed, put in a new refrigerator and video and stuff like that. Lots of broken things here. You wouldn t mind if I changed the sheets and curtains to pink? Be my guest. I think I ll subscribe to a newspaper. I d like to know what s on TV. You know, it might be dangerous there. The System boys and Semiotecs might show up. They don t scare me. They re only after Grandfather and you. What am I to them? Just now I sent away some gorilla and his little twerp of a trainer. Weird team. How d you manage that? I shot the big guy s ear off. Probably busted his ear-drum. Didn t people come running at the sound of a gun? No, she said. One shot could be a car backfiring. More than one shot would draw attention, but I know my stuff. One shot is all I need. Oh. By the way, once you lose consciousness, I m thinking of putting you in deep freeze. As you see fit. I sure won t know, I said. I m going to head out to Harumi Pier, so you can come and collect me there. I m driving a white Carina 1800 GT Twin-Cam Turbo. I can t describe the model, but there ll be Bob Dylan on the stereo. Bob Dylan? He s like, standing at the window, watching the rain I started to tell her, but then dropped it. A singer with a rough voice. With you in deep freeze, who knows? In time, maybe Grandfather will find a way to bring you back. I wouldn t get my expectations up, but its not outside the realm of possibility. With no consciousness, I won t be expecting anything, I pointed out. But who s going to do the freezing? You? No problem. Deep freezing s my specialty. I ve frozen dozens of live dogs and cats. I ll freeze you nice and neat and store you where no one will find you, she said. And if all goes well and you regain consciousness, will you sleep with me? Sure, I said. If you still feel like sleeping with me by then. Will you really? Using all available technologies, if necessary, I said. Though I have no idea how many years from now that might be. Well, at least I won t be seventeen. People age, even in deep freeze. Take care, she said. You too, said I. Good I got to talk to you. Have I given you hope for returning to this world? No, its not that. Of course, I m grateful, but that s not what I meant. I was just glad to be able to talk to you, to hear your voice again. We can talk longer. No, I don t have much time left. Listen, she spoke. Even if we lose you forever, I ll always remember you, until the day I die. You won t be lost from my mind. Don t forget that. I won t, I said. Then I hung up. At eleven, I went to a park toilet and did my business, then left the park. I started the car and headed out toward the Bay, thinking about the prospect of being deep-frozen. Crossing Ginza, I looked for my librarian friend among the crowds of shoppers. She was nowhere to be seen. When I got to the waterfront, I parked the car beside a deserted warehouse, smoked a cigarette and put Bob Dylan on auto-repeat. I reclined the seat, kicked both legs up on the steering wheel, breathing calmly. I felt like having a beer, but the beer was gone. The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that energy was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings of the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact. Was I any closer to appreciating Alyosha s insights? Some limited happiness had been granted this limited life. I wanted to think I gave the Professor and his chubby granddaughter and my librarian friend a little happiness. Could I have given happiness to anyone else? There wasn t much time left, and I doubted anyone would dispute those rights after I was gone, but how about the Police-reggae taxi driver? He d let us ride in his cab, mud and all. He deserved his share of happiness. He was probably bdhmd the wheel right now, cruising around to his rock cassettes. Straight ahead was the sea. Freighters, riding high in the water, their cargo unloaded. Gulls everywhere, like white smears. I thought about snails and suzuki in butter sauce and shaving cream and Blowing in the Wind. The world is full of revelations. The early autumn sun glinted on the water, an enormous mirror ground to powder and scattered. Dylan s singing made me think of the girl at the car rental. Why sure, give her some happiness too. I pictured her in her company blazer green, the color of baseball turf white blouse, black bow tie. There she was, listening to Dylan, thinking about the rain. I thought about rain myself. A mist so fine, it almost wasn t rain. Falling, ever fair, ever equal, it gradually covered my consciousness in a filmy, colorless curtain. Sleep had come. Now I could reclaim all I d lost. What s lost never perishes. I closed my eyes and gave myself over to sleep. Bob Dylan was singing A Hard Rain s A-Gonna Fall, over and over. Birds SNOW is falling heavily by the time we reach our destination. The sky presses, thick and solid, upon us. The mass of swirling flecks gravitates toward the Southern Pool, an unblinking eye in a world of white. Or does the Pool beckon the flurries down, only to drink them under? My shadow and I are speechless. How long we survey the scene, I do not know. The disquietive gurgling I heard the last time I was here is muffled under the moist air. The cloud ceiling sags so low, the darkened form of the Wall looms even higher, grim behind the snow. It is a landscape befitting the name the End of the World. My shoulders grow white as we stand there. By now the snow will have concealed our footprints. My shadow brushes off the snow periodically and focuses on the surface of the water. This is the exit. It must be, proclaims my shadow. Nothing can keep us in this Town any longer. We are free as the birds. My shadow looks up, then closes his eyes to receive a blessing of snowflakes. And as if heavy shackles have lifted away, I see my shadow regain strength. He walks toward me, however feebly, on his own. There s a whole world the other side of this Pool, he says. Ready to take the plunge? I say nothing as the shadow crouches to unlace his boots. We ll freeze to death standing here, so I guess we might as well do it. lets tie our belts together end to end. It won t do us any good if one of us doesn t make it. I remove my hat, this regimental issue from some past campaign, given to me by the Colonel. The cloth is worn and hopelessly faded. I brush off the brim, then put the hat back on my head. I have been thinking it over… I dredge up the words. I m not going. The shadow looks at me blankly. Forgive me, I tell my shadow. I know full well what staying here means. I understand it makes perfect sense to return to our former world, the two of us together, like you say. But I can t bring myself to leave. The shadow thrusts both hands in his pockets. What are you talking about? What was this promise that we made, that we d escape from here? Why did I have you carry me here all this way? I knew it, its the woman. Of course, she is part of it, I say. Part, though not all. I have discovered something that involves me here more than I ever could have thought. I must stay. My shadow sighs, then looks again heavenward. You found her mind, did you? And now you want to live in the Woods with her. You want to drive me away, is that it? No, that is not it at all, not all of it, I say. I have discovered the reason the Town exists. I don t want to know, he says, because I already know. You yourself created this Town. You made everything here. The Wall, the River, the Woods, the Library, the Gate, everything. Even this Pool. I ve known all along. Then why did you not tell me sooner? Because you d only have left me here like this. Because your rightful world is there outside. My shadow sits down in the snow and shakes his head from side to side. But you won t listen, will you? I have responsibilities, I say. I cannot forsake the people and places and things I have created. I know I do you a terrible wrong. And yes, perhaps I wrong myself, too. But I must see out the consequences of my own doings. This is my world. The Wall is here to hold me in, the River flows through me, the smoke is me burning. I must know why. My shadow rises and stares at the calm surface of the Pool. He stands motionless amid the falling snow. Neither of us says a word. White puffs of breath issue from our mouths. I cannot stop you, admits my shadow. Maybe you can t die here, but you will not be living. You will merely exist. There is no why in a world that would be perfect in itself. Nor is surviving in the Woods anything like you imagine. You ll be trapped for all eternity. I am not so sure, I say. Nor can you be. A little by little, I will recall things. People and places from our former world, different qualities of light, different songs. And as I remember, I may find the key to my own creation, and to its undoing. No, I doubt it. Not as long as you are sealed inside yourself. Search as you might, you will never know the clarity of distance without me. Still, you can t say I didn t try, my shadow says, then pauses. I loved you. I will not forget you, I reply. Long after the Pool has swallowed my shadow, I stand staring at the water, until not a ripple remains. The water is as tranquil and blue as the eyes of the beasts. I am alone at the furthest periphery of existence. Here the world expires and is still. I turn away from the Pool and begin the walk back. On the far side of the Western Hill is the Town. I know she waits for me in the Library with the accordion. Through the driving snow, I see a single white bird take flight. The bird wings over the Wall and into the flurried clouds of the southern sky. All that is left to me is the sound of the snow underfoot. 


The Nellie a cruising yawl swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails and was at rest. The flood had made the wind was nearly calm and being bound down the river the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom brooding motionless over the biggest and the greatest town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary but behind him within the brooding gloom.

Between us there was as I have already said somewhere the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation it had the effect of making us tolerant of each others yarns and even convictions. The Lawyer the best of old fellows had because of his many years and many virtues the only cushion on deck and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross legged right aft leaning against the mizzen mast. He had sunken cheeks a yellow complexion a straight back an ascetic aspect and with his arms dropped the palms of hands outwards resembled an idol. The Director satisfied the anchor had good hold made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky without a speck was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric hung from the wooded rises inland and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west brooding over the upper reaches became more somber every minute as if angered by the approach of the sun.

And at last in its curved and imperceptible fall the sun sank low and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat as if about to go out suddenly stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

Forthwith a change came over the waters and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has as the phrase goes followed the sea with reverence and affection than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin knights all titled and untitled the great knights errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure to be visited by the Queens Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale to the Erebus and Terror bound on other conquests and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford from Greenwich from Erith the adventurers and the settlers; kings ships and the ships of men on Change; captains admirals the dark interlopers of the Eastern trade and the commissioned generals of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame they all had gone out on that stream bearing the sword and often the torch messengers of the might within the land bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men the seed of commonwealths the germs of empires.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse a three legged thing erect on a mud flat shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky a brooding gloom in sunshine a lurid glare under the stars.

And this also said Marlow suddenly has been one of the dark places of the earth.

He was the only man of us who still followed the sea. The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman but he was a wanderer too while most seamen lead if one may so express it a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay at home order and their home is always with them the ship; and so is their country the sea. One ship is very much like another and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores the foreign faces the changing immensity of life glide past veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest after his hours of work a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted) and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.

His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said very slow 

I was thinking of very old times when the Romans first came here nineteen hundred years ago the other day. . . . Light came out of this river since you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine what dye call em? trireme in the Mediterranean ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been too used to build apparently by the hundred in a month or two if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here the very end of the world a sea the color of lead a sky the color of smoke a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina and going up this river with stores or orders or what you like. Sandbanks marshes forests savages precious little to eat fit for a civilized man nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness like a needle in a bundle of hay cold fog tempests disease exile and death death skulking in the air in the water in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh yes he did it. Did it very well too no doubt and without thinking much about it either except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga perhaps too much dice you know coming out here in the train of some prefect or tax gatherer or trader even to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp march through the woods and in some inland post feel the savagery the utter savagery had closed round him all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest in the jungles in the hearts of wild men. Theres no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible which is also detestable. And it has a fascination too that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination you know. Imagine the growing regrets the longing to escape the powerless disgust the surrender the hate.

He paused.

Mind he began again lifting one arm from the elbow the palm of the hand outwards so that with his legs folded before him he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus flower Mind none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze and nothing more I suspect. They were conquerors and for that you want only brute force nothing to boast of when you have it since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence aggravated murder on a great scale and men going at it blind as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea something you can set up and bow down before and offer a sacrifice to. . . .

He broke off. Flames glided in the river small green flames red flames white flames pursuing overtaking joining crossing each other then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on waiting patiently there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood; but it was only after a long silence when he said in a hesitating voice I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh water sailor for a bit that we knew we were fated before the ebb began to run to hear about one of Marlows inconclusive experiences.

I dont want to bother you much with what happened to me personally he began showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to hear; yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there what I saw how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me and into my thoughts. It was somber enough too and pitiful not extraordinary in any way not very clear either. No not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.

I had then as you remember just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean Pacific China Seas a regular dose of the East six years or so and I was loafing about hindering you fellows in your work and invading your homes just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you. It was very fine for a time but after a bit I did get tired of resting. Then I began to look for a ship I should think the hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldnt even look at me. And I got tired of that game too.

Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America or Africa or Australia and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say When I grow up I will go there. The North Pole was one of these places I remember. Well I havent been there yet and shall not try now. The glamours off. Other places were scattered about the Equator and in every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres. I have been in some of them and . . . well we wont talk about that. But there was one yet the biggest the most blank so to speak that I had a hankering after.

True by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially a mighty big river that you could see on the map resembling an immense snake uncoiled with its head in the sea its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop window it fascinated me as a snake would a bird a silly little bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself they cant trade without using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water steamboats! Why shouldnt I try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street but could not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.

You understand it was a Continental concern that Trading society; but I have a lot of relations living on the Continent because its cheap and not so nasty as it looks they say.

I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh departure for me. I was not used to get things that way you know. I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldnt have believed it of myself; but then you see I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said My dear fellow and did nothing. Then would you believe it? I tried the women. I Charlie Marlow set the women to work to get a job. Heavens! Well you see the notion drove me. I had an aunt a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote: It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high personage in the Administration and also a man who has lots of influence with &c. &c. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat if such was my fancy.

I got my appointment of course; and I got it very quick. It appears the Company had received news that one of their captains had been killed in a scuffle with the natives. This was my chance and it made me the more anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards when I made the attempt to recover what was left of the body that I heard the original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes two black hens. Fresleven that was the fellows name a Dane thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain so he went ashore and started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh it didnt surprise me in the least to hear this and at the same time to be told that Fresleven was the gentlest quietest creature that ever walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause you know and he probably felt the need at last of asserting his self respect in some way. Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly while a big crowd of his people watched him thunderstruck till some man I was told the chiefs son in desperation at hearing the old chap yell made a tentative jab with a spear at the white man and of course it went quite easy between the shoulder blades. Then the whole population cleared into the forest expecting all kinds of calamities to happen while on the other hand the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad panic in charge of the engineer I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed to trouble much about Freslevens remains till I got out and stepped into his shoes. I couldnt let it rest though; but when an opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all there. The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted the huts gaped black rotting all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them men women and children through the bush and they had never returned. What became of the hens I dont know either. I should think the cause of progress got them anyhow. However through this glorious affair I got my appointment before I had fairly begun to hope for it.

I flew around like mad to get ready and before forty eight hours I was crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers and sign the contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulcher. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in finding the Companys offices. It was the biggest thing in the town and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over sea empire and make no end of coin by trade.

A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow high houses innumerable windows with venetian blinds a dead silence grass sprouting between the stones imposing carriage archways right and left immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks went up a swept and ungarnished staircase as arid as a desert and opened the first door I came to. Two women one fat and the other slim sat on straw bottomed chairs knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me still knitting with downcast eyes and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way as you would for a somnambulist stood still and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella cover and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting room. I gave my name and looked about. Deal table in the middle plain chairs all round the walls on one end a large shining map marked with all the colors of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red good to see at any time because one knows that some real work is done in there a deuce of a lot of blue a little green smears of orange and on the East Coast a purple patch to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager beer. However I wasnt going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the center. And the river was there fascinating deadly like a snake. Ough! A door opened a white haired secretarial head but wearing a compassionate expression appeared and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary. Its light was dim and a heavy writing desk squatted in the middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in a frock coat. The great man himself. He was five feet six I should judge and had his grip on the handle end of ever so many millions. He shook hands I fancy murmured vaguely was satisfied with my French. Bon voyage.

In about forty five seconds I found myself again in the waiting room with the compassionate secretary who full of desolation and sympathy made me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other things not to disclose any trade secrets. Well I am not going to.

I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such ceremonies and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy I dont know something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot warmer and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head had a wart on one cheek and silver rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought of these two guarding the door of Darkness knitting black wool as for a warm pall one introducing introducing continuously to the unknown the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again not half by a long way.

There was yet a visit to the doctor. A simple formality assured me the secretary with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows. Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow some clerk I suppose there must have been clerks in the business though the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead came from somewhere up stairs and led me forth. He was shabby and careless with ink stains on the sleeves of his jacket and his cravat was large and billowy under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too early for the doctor so I proposed a drink and thereupon he developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified the Companys business and by and by I expressed casually my surprise at him not going out there. He became very cool and collected all at once. I am not such a fool as I look quoth Plato to his disciples he said sententiously emptied his glass with great resolution and we rose.

The old doctor felt my pulse evidently thinking of something else the while. Good good for there he mumbled and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather surprised I said Yes when he produced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every way taking notes carefully. He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine with his feet in slippers and I thought him a harmless fool. I always ask leave in the interests of science to measure the crania of those going out there he said. And when they come back too? I asked. Oh I never see them he remarked; and moreover the changes take place inside you know. He smiled as if at some quiet joke. So you are going out there. Famous. Interesting too. He gave me a searching glance and made another note. Ever any madness in your family? he asked in a matter of fact tone. I felt very annoyed. Is that question in the interests of science too? It would be he said without taking notice of my irritation interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals on the spot but . . . Are you an alienist? I interrupted. Every doctor should be a little answered that original imperturbably. I have a little theory which you Messieurs who go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my country shall reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions but you are the first Englishman coming under my observation. . . . I hastened to assure him I was not in the least typical. If I were said I I wouldnt be talking like this with you. What you say is rather profound and probably erroneous he said with a laugh. Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you English say eh? Good by. Ah! Good by. Adieu. In the tropics one must before everything keep calm. . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . . Du calme du calme. Adieu.

One thing more remained to do say good by to my excellent aunt. I found her triumphant. I had a cup of tea the last decent cup of tea for many days and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would expect a ladys drawing room to look we had a long quiet chat by the fireside. In the course of these confidences it became quite plain to me I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary and goodness knows to how many more people besides as an exceptional and gifted creature a piece of good fortune for the Company a man you dont get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a two penny halfpenny river steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It appeared however I was also one of the Workers with a capital you know. Something like an emissary of light something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time and the excellent woman living right in the rush of all that humbug got carried off her feet. She talked about weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways till upon my word she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.

You forget dear Charlie that the laborer is worthy of his hire she said brightly. Its queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own and there had never been anything like it and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

After this I got embraced told to wear flannel be sure to write often and so on and I left. In the street I dont know why a queer feeling came to me that I was an impostor. Odd thing that I who used to clear out for any part of the world at twenty four hours notice with less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street had a moment I wont say of hesitation but of startled pause before this commonplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you is by saying that for a second or two I felt as though instead of going to the center of a continent I were about to set off for the center of the earth.

I left in a French steamer and she called in every blamed port they have out there for as far as I could see the sole purpose of landing soldiers and custom house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you smiling frowning inviting grand mean insipid or savage and always mute with an air of whispering Come and find out. This one was almost featureless as if still in the making with an aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle so dark green as to be almost black fringed with white surf ran straight like a ruled line far far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there grayish whitish specks showed up clustered inside the white surf with a flag flying above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old and still no bigger than pin heads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along stopped landed soldiers; went on landed custom house clerks to levy toll in what looked like a God forsaken wilderness with a tin shed and a flag pole lost in it; landed more soldiers to take care of the custom house clerks presumably. Some I heard got drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not nobody seemed particularly to care. They were just flung out there and on we went. Every day the coast looked the same as though we had not moved; but we passed various places trading places with names like Gran Bassam Little Popo names that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister backcloth. The idleness of a passenger my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact the oily and languid sea the uniform somberness of the coast seemed to keep me away from the truth of things within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure like the speech of a brother. It was something natural that had its reason that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks these chaps; but they had bone muscle a wild vitality an intense energy of movement that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away. Once I remember we came upon a man of war anchored off the coast. There wasnt even a shed there and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long eight inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth sky and water there she was incomprehensible firing into a continent. Pop would go one of the eight inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish a little white smoke would disappear a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives he called them enemies! hidden out of sight somewhere.

We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more places with farcical names where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers streams of death in life whose banks were rotting into mud whose waters thickened into slime invaded the contorted mangroves that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.

It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river. We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work would not begin till some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a start for a place thirty miles higher up.

I had my passage on a little sea going steamer. Her captain was a Swede and knowing me for a seaman invited me on the bridge. He was a young man lean fair and morose with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. Been living there? he asked. I said Yes. Fine lot these government chaps are they not? he went on speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes up country? I said to him I expected to see that soon. So o o! he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. Dont be too sure he continued. The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede too. Hanged himself! Why in Gods name? I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. Who knows? The sun too much for him or the country perhaps.

At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared mounds of turned up earth by the shore houses on a hill others with iron roofs amongst a waste of excavations or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people mostly black and naked moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare. Theres your Companys station said the Swede pointing to three wooden barrack like structures on the rocky slope. I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell.

I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the bowlders and also for an undersized railway truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery a stack of rusty rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked the path was steep. A horn tooted to the right and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground a puff of smoke came out of the cliff and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work going on.

A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. I could see every rib the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals and the outraged law like the bursting shells had come to them an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All their meager breasts panted together the violently dilated nostrils quivered the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches without a glance with that complete deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed the product of the new forces at work strolled despondently carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off and seeing a white man on the path hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured and with a large white rascally grin and a glance at his charge seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.

Instead of going up I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender; Ive had to strike and to fend off. Ive had to resist and to attack sometimes thats only one way of resisting without counting the exact cost according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. Ive seen the devil of violence and the devil of greed and the devil of hot desire; but by all the stars! these were strong lusty red eyed devils that swayed and drove men men I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby pretending weak eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be too I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I stood appalled as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill obliquely towards the trees I had seen.

I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasnt a quarry or a sandpit anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I dont know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasnt one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash up. At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment; but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped into a gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids were near and an uninterrupted uniform headlong rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove where not a breath stirred not a leaf moved with a mysterious sound as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible.

Black shapes crouched lay sat between the trees leaning against the trunks clinging to the earth half coming out half effaced within the dim light in all the attitudes of pain abandonment and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.

They were dying slowly it was very clear. They were not enemies they were not criminals they were nothing earthly now nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts lost in uncongenial surroundings fed on unfamiliar food they sickened became inefficient and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of eyes under the trees. Then glancing down I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me enormous and vacant a kind of blind white flicker in the depths of the orbs which died out slowly. The man seemed young almost a boy but you know with them its hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swedes ships biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and held there was no other movement and no other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge an ornament a charm a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.

Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One with his chin propped on his knees stared at nothing in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror struck one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees and went off on all fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand then sat up in the sunlight crossing his shins in front of him and after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.

I didnt want any more loitering in the shade and I made haste towards the station. When near the buildings I met a white man in such an unexpected elegance of get up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar white cuffs a light alpaca jacket snowy trousers a clear necktie and varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted brushed oiled under a green lined parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing and had a penholder behind his ear.

I shook hands with this miracle and I learned he was the Companys chief accountant and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment he said to get a breath of fresh air. The expression sounded wonderfully odd with its suggestion of sedentary desk life. I wouldnt have mentioned the fellow to you at all only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time. Moreover I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars his vast cuffs his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdressers dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. Thats backbone. His starched collars and got up shirt fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years; and later on I could not help asking him how he managed to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush and said modestly Ive been teaching one of the native women about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work. This man had verily accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books which were in apple pie order.

Everything else in the station was in a muddle heads things buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods rubbishy cottons beads and brass wire sent into the depths of darkness and in return came a precious trickle of ivory.

I had to wait in the station for ten days an eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard but to be out of the chaos I would sometimes get into the accountants office. It was built of horizontal planks and so badly put together that as he bent over his high desk he was barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to open the big shutter to see. It was hot there too; big flies buzzed fiendishly and did not sting but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor while of faultless appearance (and even slightly scented) perching on a high stool he wrote he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for exercise. When a truckle bed with a sick man (some invalided agent from up country) was put in there he exhibited a gentle annoyance. The groans of this sick person he said distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.

One day he remarked without lifting his head In the interior you will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz. On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was he said he was a first class agent; and seeing my disappointment at this information he added slowly laying down his pen He is a very remarkable person. Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in charge of a trading post a very important one in the true ivory country at the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together. . . . He began to write again. The sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.

Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard giving it up tearfully for the twentieth time that day. . . . He rose slowly. What a frightful row he said. He crossed the room gently to look at the sick man and returning said to me He does not hear. What! Dead? I asked startled. No not yet he answered with great composure. Then alluding with a toss of the head to the tumult in the station yard When one has got to make correct entries one comes to hate those savages hate them to the death. He remained thoughtful for a moment. When you see Mr. Kurtz he went on tell him from me that everything here he glanced at the desk is very satisfactory. I dont like to write to him with those messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letter at that Central Station. He stared at me for a moment with his mild bulging eyes. Oh he will go far very far he began again. He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They above the Council in Europe you know mean him to be.

He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased and presently in going out I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the homeward bound agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other bent over his books was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree tops of the grove of death.

Next day I left that station at last with a caravan of sixty men for a two hundred mile tramp.

No use telling you much about that. Paths paths everywhere; a stamped in network of paths spreading over the empty land through long grass through burnt grass through thickets down and up chilly ravines up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude a solitude nobody not a hut. The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to traveling on the road between Deal and Gravesend catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for them I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through several abandoned villages. Theres something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass walls. Day after day with the stamp and shuffle of sixty pair of bare feet behind me each pair under a 60 lb. load. Camp cook sleep strike camp march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness at rest in the long grass near the path with an empty water gourd and his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far off drums sinking swelling a tremor vast faint; a sound weird appealing suggestive and wild and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris very hospitable and festive not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep of the road he declared. Cant say I saw any road or any upkeep unless the body of a middle aged negro with a bullet hole in the forehead upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on may be considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion too not a bad chap but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides miles away from the least bit of shade and water. Annoying you know to hold your own coat like a parasol over a mans head while he is coming to. I couldnt help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. To make money of course. What do you think? he said scornfully. Then he got fever and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed ran away sneaked off with their loads in the night quite a mutiny. So one evening I made a speech in English with gestures not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me and the next morning I started the hammock off in front all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush man hammock groans blankets horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody but there wasnt the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals on the spot. I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However all that is to no purpose. On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again and hobbled into the Central Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side and on the three others inclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate it had and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings strolling up to take a look at me and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them a stout excitable chap with black mustaches informed me with great volubility and many digressions as soon as I told him who I was that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What how why? Oh it was all right. The manager himself was there. All quite correct. Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly! you must he said in agitation go and see the general manager at once. He is waiting!

I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now but I am not sure not at all. Certainly the affair was too stupid when I think of it to be altogether natural. Still. . . . But at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with the manager on board in charge of some volunteer skipper and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was to do there now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact I had plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about it the very next day. That and the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station took some months.

My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my twenty mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in complexion in features in manners and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes of the usual blue were perhaps remarkably cold and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an ax. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable faint expression of his lips something stealthy a smile not a smile I remember it but I cant explain. It was unconscious this smile was though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader from his youth up employed in these parts nothing more. He was obeyed yet he inspired neither love nor fear nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust just uneasiness nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing for initiative or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning and no intelligence. His position had come to him why? Perhaps because he was never ill . . . He had served three terms of three years out there . . . Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave he rioted on a large scale pompously. Jack ashore with a difference in externals only. This one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing he could keep the routine going thats all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause for out there there were no external checks. Once when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every agent in the station he was heard to say Men who come out here should have no entrails. He sealed the utterance with that smile of his as though it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping. You fancied you had seen things but the seal was on. When annoyed at meal times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence he ordered an immense round table to be made for which a special house had to be built. This was the stations mess room. Where he sat was the first place the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his boy an overfed young negro from the coast to treat the white men under his very eyes with provoking insolence.

He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the road. He could not wait. Had to start without me. The up river stations had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did not know who was dead and who was alive and how they got on and so on and so on. He paid no attention to my explanations and playing with a stick of sealing wax repeated several times that the situation was very grave very grave. There were rumors that a very important station was in jeopardy and its chief Mr. Kurtz was ill. Hoped it was not true. Mr. Kurtz was . . . I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz I thought. I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast. Ah! So they talk of him down there he murmured to himself. Then he began again assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had an exceptional man of the greatest importance to the Company; therefore I could understand his anxiety. He was he said very very uneasy. Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal exclaimed Ah Mr. Kurtz! broke the stick of sealing wax and seemed dumbfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know how long it would take to . . . I interrupted him again. Being hungry you know and kept on my feet too I was getting savage. How could I tell I said. I hadnt even seen the wreck yet some months no doubt. All this talk seemed to me so futile. Some months he said. Well let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair. I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of veranda) muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot. Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the affair.

I went to work the next day turning so to speak my back on that station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this station these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word ivory rang in the air was whispered was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! Ive never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible like evil or truth waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.

Oh these months! Well never mind. Various things happened. One evening a grass shed full of calico cotton prints beads and I dont know what else burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer and saw them all cutting capers in the light with their arms lifted high when the stout man with mustaches came tearing down to the river a tin pail in his hand assured me that everybody was behaving splendidly splendidly dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail.

I strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the thing had gone off like a box of matches. It had been hopeless from the very first. The flame had leaped high driven everybody back lighted up everything and collapsed. The shed was already a heap of embers glowing fiercely. A nigger was being beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in some way; be that as it may he was screeching most horribly. I saw him later on for several days sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick and trying to recover himself: afterwards he arose and went out and the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again. As I approached the glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two men talking. I heard the name of Kurtz pronounced then the words take advantage of this unfortunate accident. One of the men was the manager. I wished him a good evening. Did you ever see anything like it eh? it is incredible he said and walked off. The other man remained. He was a first class agent young gentlemanly a bit reserved with a forked little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand offish with the other agents and they on their side said he was the managers spy upon them. As to me I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk and by and by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to his room which was in the main building of the station. He struck a match and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silver mounted dressing case but also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears assegais shields knives was hung up in trophies. The business intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks so I had been informed; but there wasnt a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station and he had been there more than a year waiting. It seems he could not make bricks without something I dont know what straw maybe. Anyways it could not be found there and as it was not likely to be sent from Europe it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. However they were all waiting all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them for something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation from the way they took it though the only thing that ever came to them was disease as far as I could see. They beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that station but nothing came of it of course. It was as unreal as everything else as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern as their talk as their government as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading post where ivory was to be had so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on that account but as to effectually lifting a little finger oh no. By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick.

I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable but as we chatted in there it suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something in fact pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe to the people I was supposed to know there putting leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica discs with curiosity though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was astonished but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldnt possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was very pretty to see how he baffled himself for in truth my body was full of chills and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry and to conceal a movement of furious annoyance he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils on a panel representing a woman draped and blindfolded carrying a lighted torch. The background was somber almost black. The movement of the woman was stately and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.

It arrested me and he stood by civilly holding a half pint champagne bottle (medical comforts) with the candle stuck in it. To my question he said Mr. Kurtz had painted this in this very station more than a year ago while waiting for means to go to his trading post. Tell me pray said I who is this Mr. Kurtz?

The chief of the Inner Station he answered in a short tone looking away. Much obliged I said laughing. And you are the brickmaker of the Central Station. Everyone knows that. He was silent for a while. He is a prodigy he said at last. He is an emissary of pity and science and progress and devil knows what else. We want he began to declaim suddenly for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe so to speak higher intelligence wide sympathies a singleness of purpose. Who says that? I asked. Lots of them he replied. Some even write that; and so he comes here a special being as you ought to know. Why ought I to know? I interrupted really surprised. He paid no attention. Yes. To day he is chief of the best station next year he will be assistant manager two years more and . . . but I dare say you know what he will be in two years time. You are of the new gang the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also recommended you. Oh dont say no. Ive my own eyes to trust. Light dawned upon me. My dear aunts influential acquaintances were producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. Do you read the Companys confidential correspondence? I asked. He hadnt a word to say. It was great fun. When Mr. Kurtz I continued severely is General Manager you wont have the opportunity.

He blew the candle out suddenly and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures strolled about listlessly pouring water on the glow whence proceeded a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the moonlight the beaten nigger groaned somewhere. What a row the brute makes! said the indefatigable man with the mustaches appearing near us. Serve him right. Transgression punishment bang! Pitiless pitiless. Thats the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager . . . He noticed my companion and became crestfallen all at once. Not in bed yet he said with a kind of servile heartiness; its so natural. Ha! Danger agitation. He vanished. I went on to the river side and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear Heap of muffs go to. The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight and through the dim stir through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard the silence of the land went home to ones very heart its mystery its greatness the amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under my arm. My dear sir said the fellow I dont want to be misunderstood and especially by you who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldnt like him to get a false idea of my disposition. . . .

I let him run on this papier mache Mephistopheles and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt maybe. He dont you see had been planning to be assistant manager by and by under the present man and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked precipitately and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud of primeval mud by Jove! was in my nostrils the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver over the rank grass over the mud upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering glittering as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great expectant mute while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing or would it handle us? I felt how big how confoundedly big was that thing that couldnt talk and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it too God knows! Yet somehow it didnt bring any image with it no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain dead sure there were people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved he would get shy and mutter something about walking on all fours. If you as much as smiled he would though a man of sixty offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate detest and cant bear a lie not because I am straighter than the rest of us but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death a flavor of mortality in lies which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick like biting something rotten would do. Temperament I suppose. Well I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream making a vain attempt because no relation of a dream can convey the dream sensation that commingling of absurdity surprise and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. . . .

He was silent for a while.

. . . No it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life sensation of any given epoch of ones existence that which makes its truth its meaning its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live as we dream alone. . . .

He paused again as if reflecting then added Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me whom you know. . . .

It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For a long time already he sitting apart had been no more to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might have been asleep but I was awake. I listened I listened on the watch for the sentence for the word that would give me the clew to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night air of the river.

. . . Yes I let him run on Marlow began again and think what he pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did! And there was nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched old mangled steamboat I was leaning against while he talked fluently about the necessity for every man to get on. And when one comes out here you conceive it is not to gaze at the moon. Mr. Kurtz was a universal genius but even a genius would find it easier to work with adequate tools intelligent men. He did not make bricks why there was a physical impossibility in the way as I was well aware; and if he did secretarial work for the manager it was because no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors. Did I see it? I saw it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast cases piled up burst split! You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that station yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping down and there wasnt one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had plates that would do but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the messenger a lone negro letter bag on shoulder and staff in hand left our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it glass beads value about a penny a quart confounded spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.

He was becoming confidential now but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well but what I wanted was a certain quantity of rivets and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted if he had only known it. Now letters went to the coast every week. . . . My dear sir he cried I write from dictation. I demanded rivets. There was a way for an intelligent man. He changed his manner; became very cold and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus; wondered whether sleeping on board the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day) I wasnt disturbed. There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o nights for him. All this energy was wasted though. That animal has a charmed life he said; but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man you apprehend me? no man here bears a charmed life. He stood there for a moment in the moonlight with his delicate hooked nose set a little askew and his mica eyes glittering without a wink then with a curt Good night he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days. It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend the battered twisted ruined tin pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit tin kicked along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make and rather less pretty in shape but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit to find out what I could do. No I dont like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I dont like work no man does but I like what is in the work the chance to find yourself. Your own reality for yourself not for others what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show and never can tell what it really means.

I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft on the deck with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station whom the other pilgrims naturally despised on account of their imperfect manners I suppose. This was the foreman a boiler maker by trade a good worker. He was a lank bony yellow faced man with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin and had prospered in the new locality for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young children (he had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out there) and the passion of his life was pigeon flying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and his pigeons; at work when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white serviette he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank rinsing that wrapper in the creek with great care then spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry.

I slapped him on the back and shouted We shall have rivets! He scrambled to his feet exclaiming No! Rivets! as though he couldnt believe his ears. Then in a low voice You . . . eh? I dont know why we behaved like lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my nose and nodded mysteriously. Good for you! he cried snapped his fingers above his head lifting one foot. I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter came out of that hulk and the virgin forest on the other bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the managers hut vanished then a second or so after the doorway itself vanished too. We stopped and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks branches leaves boughs festoons motionless in the moonlight was like a rioting invasion of soundless life a rolling wave of plants piled up crested ready to topple over the creek to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. After all said the boiler maker in a reasonable tone why shouldnt we get the rivets? Why not indeed! I did not know of any reason why we shouldnt. Theyll come in three weeks I said confidently.

But they didnt. Instead of rivets there came an invasion an infliction a visitation. It came in sections during the next three weeks each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels of the donkeys; a lot of tents camp stools tin boxes white cases brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such installments came with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores that one would think they were lugging after a raid into the wilderness for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human folly made look like the spoils of thieving.

This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition and I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk however was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood greedy without audacity and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I dont know; but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.

In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close together in an everlasting confab.

I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. Ones capacity for that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said Hang! and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasnt very interested in him. No. Still I was curious to see whether this man who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort would climb to the top after all and how he would set about his work when there.

II

One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat I heard voices approaching and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again and had nearly lost myself in a doze when somebody said in my ear as it were: I am as harmless as a little child but I dont like to be dictated to. Am I the manager or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. Its incredible. . . . I became aware that the two were standing on the shore alongside the forepart of the steamboat just below my head. I did not move; it did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy. It is unpleasant grunted the uncle. He has asked the Administration to be sent there said the other with the idea of showing what he could do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that man must have. Is it not frightful? They both agreed it was frightful then made several bizarre remarks: Make rain and fine weather one man the Council by the nose bits of absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits about me when the uncle said The climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there? Yes answered the manager; he sent his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms: Clear this poor devil out of the country and dont bother sending more of that sort. I had rather be alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of with me. It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine such impudence! Anything since then? asked the other hoarsely. Ivory jerked the nephew; lots of it prime sort lots most annoying from him. And with that? questioned the heavy rumble. Invoice was the reply fired out so to speak. Then silence. They had been talking about Kurtz.

I was broad awake by this time but lying perfectly at ease remained still having no inducement to change my position. How did that ivory come all this way? growled the elder man who seemed very vexed. The other explained that it had come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an English half caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently intended to return himself the station being by that time bare of goods and stores but after coming three hundred miles had suddenly decided to go back which he started to do alone in a small dug out with four paddlers leaving the half caste to continue down the river with the ivory. The two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting such a thing. They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the dug out four paddling savages and the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters on relief on thoughts of home perhaps; setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness towards his empty and desolate station. I did not know the motive. Perhaps he was just simply a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake. His name you understand had not been pronounced once. He was that man. The half caste who as far as I could see had conducted a difficult trip with great prudence and pluck was invariably alluded to as that scoundrel. The scoundrel had reported that the man had been very ill had recovered imperfectly. . . . The two below me moved away then a few paces and strolled back and forth at some little distance. I heard: Military post doctor two hundred miles quite alone now unavoidable delays nine months no news strange rumors. They approached again just as the manager was saying No one as far as I know unless a species of wandering trader a pestilential fellow snapping ivory from the natives. Who was it they were talking about now? I gathered in snatches that this was some man supposed to be in Kurtzs district and of whom the manager did not approve. We will not be free from unfair competition till one of these fellows is hanged for an example he said. Certainly grunted the other; get him hanged! Why not? Anything anything can be done in this country. Thats what I say; nobody here you understand here can endanger your position. And why? You stand the climate you outlast them all. The danger is in Europe; but there before I left I took care to  They moved off and whispered then their voices rose again. The extraordinary series of delays is not my fault. I did my possible. The fat man sighed Very sad. And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk continued the other; he bothered me enough when he was here. Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things a center for trade of course but also for humanizing improving instructing. Conceive you that ass! And he wants to be manager! No its  Here he got choked by excessive indignation and I lifted my head the least bit. I was surprised to see how near they were right under me. I could have spat upon their hats. They were looking on the ground absorbed in thought. The manager was switching his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious relative lifted his head. You have been well since you came out this time? he asked. The other gave a start. Who? I? Oh! Like a charm like a charm. But the rest oh my goodness! All sick. They die so quick too that I havent the time to send them out of the country its incredible! Hm. Just so grunted the uncle. Ah! my boy trust to this I say trust to this. I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that took in the forest the creek the mud the river seemed to beckon with a dishonoring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death to the hidden evil to the profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling that I leaped to my feet and looked back at the edge of the forest as though I had expected an answer of some sort to that black display of confidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one sometimes. The high stillness confronted these two figures with its ominous patience waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion.

They swore aloud together out of sheer fright I believe then pretending not to know anything of my existence turned back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending a single blade.

In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They no doubt like the rest of us found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I was then rather excited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say very soon I mean it comparatively. It was just two months from the day we left the creek when we came to the bank below Kurtzs station.

Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream a great silence an impenetrable forest. The air was warm thick heavy sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on deserted into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert and butted all day long against shoals trying to find the channel till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once somewhere far away in another existence perhaps. There were moments when ones past came back to one as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants and water and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern mostly by inspiration the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a look out for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next days steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort to the mere incidents of the surface the reality the reality I tell you fades. The inner truth is hidden luckily luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight ropes for what is it? half a crown a tumble 

Try to be civil Marlow growled a voice and I knew there was at least one listener awake besides myself.

I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which makes up the rest of the price. And indeed what does the price matter if the trick be well done? You do your tricks very well. And I didnt do badly either since I managed not to sink that steamboat on my first trip. Its a wonder to me yet. Imagine a blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road. I sweated and shivered over that business considerably I can tell you. After all for a seaman to scrape the bottom of the thing thats supposed to float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it but you never forget the thump eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember it you dream of it you wake up at night and think of it years after and go hot and cold all over. I dont pretend to say that steamboat floated all the time. More than once she had to wade for a bit with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows cannibals in their place. They were men one could work with and I am grateful to them. And after all they did not eat each other before my face: they had brought along a provision of hippo meat which went rotten and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now. I had the manager on board and three or four pilgrims with their staves all complete. Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank clinging to the skirts of the unknown and the white men rushing out of a tumble down hovel with great gestures of joy and surprise and welcome seemed very strange had the appearance of being held there captive by a spell. The word ivory would ring in the air for a while and on we went again into the silence along empty reaches round the still bends between the high walls of our winding way reverberating in hollow claps the ponderous beat of the stern wheel. Trees trees millions of trees massive immense running up high; and at their foot hugging the bank against the stream crept the little begrimed steamboat like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small very lost and yet it was not altogether depressing that feeling. After all if you were small the grimy beetle crawled on which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I dont know. To some place where they expected to get something I bet! For me it crawled toward Kurtz exclusively; but when the steam pipes started leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened before us and closed behind as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly as if hovering in the air high over our heads till the first break of day. Whether it meant war peace or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the woodcutters slept their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly as we struggled round a bend there would be a glimpse of rush walls of peaked grass roofs a burst of yells a whirl of black limbs a mass of hands clapping of feet stamping of bodies swaying of eyes rolling under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us praying to us welcoming us who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms wondering and secretly appalled as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages of those ages that are gone leaving hardly a sign and no memories.

The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster but there there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly and the men were No they were not inhuman. Well you know that was the worst of it this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped and spun and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity like yours the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you you so remote from the night of first ages could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything because everything is in it all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy fear sorrow devotion valor rage who can tell? but truth truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder the man knows and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles wont do. Acquisitions clothes pretty rags rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row is there? Very well; I hear; I admit but I have a voice too and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course a fool what with sheer fright and fine sentiments is always safe. Whos that grunting? You wonder I didnt go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well no I didnt. Fine sentiments you say? Fine sentiments be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with white lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam pipes I tell you. I had to watch the steering and circumvent those snags and get the tin pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me and upon my word to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam gauge and at the water gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity and he had filed teeth too the poor devil and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank instead of which he was hard at work a thrall to strange witchcraft full of improving knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he knew was this that should the water in that transparent thing disappear the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst and take a terrible vengeance. So he sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu charm made of rags tied to his arm and a piece of polished bone as big as a watch stuck flatways through his lower lip) while the wooded banks slipped past us slowly the short noise was left behind the interminable miles of silence and we crept on towards Kurtz. But the snags were thick the water was treacherous and shallow the boiler seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it and thus neither that fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.

Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds an inclined and melancholy pole with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a flag of some sort flying from it and a neatly stacked woodpile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank and on the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil writing on it. When deciphered it said: Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously. There was a signature but it was illegible not Kurtz a much longer word. Hurry up. Where? Up the river? Approach cautiously. We had not done so. But the warning could not have been meant for the place where it could be only found after approach. Something was wrong above. But what and how much? That was the question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility of that telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing and would not let us look very far either. A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway of the hut and flapped sadly in our faces. The dwelling was dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there not very long ago. There remained a rude table a plank on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed in a dark corner and by the door I picked up a book. It had lost its covers and the pages had been thumbed into a state of extremely dirty softness; but the back had been lovingly stitched afresh with white cotton thread which looked clean yet. It was an extraordinary find. Its title was An Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship by a man Tower Towson some such name Master in his Majestys Navy. The matter looked dreary reading enough with illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures and the copy was sixty years old. I handled this amazing antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness lest it should dissolve in my hands. Within Towson or Towser was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of ships chains and tackle and other such matters. Not a very enthralling book; but at the first glance you could see there a singleness of intention an honest concern for the right way of going to work which made these humble pages thought out so many years ago luminous with another than a professional light. The simple old sailor with his talk of chains and purchases made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough; but still more astounding were the notes penciled in the margin and plainly referring to the text. I couldnt believe my eyes! They were in cipher! Yes it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him a book of that description into this nowhere and studying it and making notes in cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery.

I had been dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise and when I lifted my eyes I saw the wood pile was gone and the manager aided by all the pilgrims was shouting at me from the river side. I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.

I started the lame engine ahead. It must be this miserable trader this intruder exclaimed the manager looking back malevolently at the place we had left. He must be English I said. It will not save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful muttered the manager darkly. I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.

The current was more rapid now the steamer seemed at her last gasp the stern wheel flopped languidly and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the boat for in sober truth I expected the wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching the last flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a tree a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by but I lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence indeed any action of mine would be a mere futility. What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface beyond my reach and beyond my power of meddling.

Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight miles from Kurtzs station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked grave and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous that it would be advisable the sun being very low already to wait where we were till next morning. Moreover he pointed out that if the warning to approach cautiously were to be followed we must approach in daylight not at dusk or in the dark. This was sensible enough. Eight miles meant nearly three hours steaming for us and I could also see suspicious ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless I was annoyed beyond expression at the delay and most unreasonably too since one night more could not matter much after so many months. As we had plenty of wood and caution was the word I brought up in the middle of the stream. The reach was narrow straight with high sides like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees lashed together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth might have been changed into stone even to the slenderest twig to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep it seemed unnatural like a state of trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed and began to suspect yourself of being deaf then the night came suddenly and struck you blind as well. About three in the morning some large fish leaped and the loud splash made me jump as though a gun had been fired. When the sun rose there was a white fog very warm and clammy and more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there standing all round you like something solid. At eight or nine perhaps it lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the towering multitude of trees of the immense matted jungle with the blazing little ball of the sun hanging over it all perfectly still and then the white shutter came down again smoothly as if sliding in greased grooves. I ordered the chain which we had begun to heave in to be paid out again. Before it stopped running with a muffled rattle a cry a very loud cry as of infinite desolation soared slowly in the opaque air. It ceased. A complaining clamor modulated in savage discords filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of it made my hair stir under my cap. I dont know how it struck the others: to me it seemed as though the mist itself had screamed so suddenly and apparently from all sides at once did this tumultuous and mournful uproar arise. It culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive shrieking which stopped short leaving us stiffened in a variety of silly attitudes and obstinately listening to the nearly as appalling and excessive silence. Good God! What is the meaning ? stammered at my elbow one of the pilgrims a little fat man with sandy hair and red whiskers who wore side spring boots and pink pyjamas tucked into his socks. Two others remained open mouthed a whole minute then dashed into the little cabin to rush out incontinently and stand darting scared glances with Winchesters at ready in their hands. What we could see was just the steamer we were on her outlines blurred as though she had been on the point of dissolving and a misty strip of water perhaps two feet broad around her and that was all. The rest of the world was nowhere as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just nowhere. Gone disappeared; swept off without leaving a whisper or a shadow behind.

I went forward and ordered the chain to be hauled in short so as to be ready to trip the anchor and move the steamboat at once if necessary. Will they attack? whispered an awed voice. We will all be butchered in this fog murmured another. The faces twitched with the strain the hands trembled slightly the eyes forgot to wink. It was very curious to see the contrast of expressions of the white men and of the black fellows of our crew who were as much strangers to that part of the river as we though their homes were only eight hundred miles away. The whites of course greatly discomposed had besides a curious look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others had an alert naturally interested expression; but their faces were essentially quiet even those of the one or two who grinned as they hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short grunting phrases which seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman a young broad chested black severely draped in dark blue fringed cloths with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in oily ringlets stood near me. Aha! I said just for good fellowships sake. Catch im he snapped with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth catch im. Give im to us. To you eh? I asked; what would you do with them? Eat im! he said curtly and leaning his elbow on the rail looked out into the fog in a dignified and profoundly pensive attitude. I would no doubt have been properly horrified had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be very hungry: that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at least this month past. They had been engaged for six months (I dont think a single one of them had any clear idea of time as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time had no inherited experience to teach them as it were) and of course as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river it didnt enter anybodys head to trouble how they would live. Certainly they had brought with them some rotten hippo meat which couldnt have lasted very long anyway even if the pilgrims hadnt in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self defense. You cant breathe dead hippo waking sleeping and eating and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence. Besides that they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in river side villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages or the people were hostile or the director who like the rest of us fed out of tins with an occasional old he goat thrown in didnt want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So unless they swallowed the wire itself or made loops of it to snare the fishes with I dont see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honorable trading company. For the rest the only thing to eat though it didnt look eatable in the least I saw in their possession was a few lumps of some stuff like half cooked dough of a dirty lavender color they kept wrapped in leaves and now and then swallowed a piece of but so small that it seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didnt go for us they were thirty to five and have a good tuck in for once amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men with not much capacity to weigh the consequences with courage with strength even yet though their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that something restraining one of those human secrets that baffle probability had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest not because it occurred to me I might be eaten by them before very long though I own to you that just then I perceived in a new light as it were how unwholesome the pilgrims looked and I hoped yes I positively hoped that my aspect was not so what shall I say? so unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream sensation that pervaded all my days at that time. Perhaps I had a little fever too. One cant live with ones finger everlastingly on ones pulse. I had often a little fever or a little touch of other things the playful paw strokes of the wilderness the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being with a curiosity of their impulses motives capacities weaknesses when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity. Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition disgust patience fear or some kind of primitive honor? No fear can stand up to hunger no patience can wear it out disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition beliefs and what you may call principles they are less than chaff in a breeze. Dont you know the devilry of lingering starvation its exasperating torment its black thoughts its somber and brooding ferocity? Well I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. Its really easier to face bereavement dishonor and the perdition of ones soul than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad but true. And these chaps too had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me the fact dazzling to be seen like the foam on the depths of the sea like a ripple on an unfathomable enigma a mystery greater when I thought of it than the curious inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamor that had swept by us on the river bank behind the blind whiteness of the fog.

Two pilgrims were quarreling in hurried whispers as to which bank. Left. No no; how can you? Right right of course. It is very serious said the managers voice behind me; I would be desolated if anything should happen to Mr. Kurtz before we came up. I looked at him and had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his restraint. But when he muttered something about going on at once I did not even take the trouble to answer him. I knew and he knew that it was impossible. Were we to let go our hold of the bottom we would be absolutely in the air in space. We wouldnt be able to tell where we were going to whether up or down stream or across till we fetched against one bank or the other and then we wouldnt know at first which it was. Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a smash up. You couldnt imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether drowned at once or not we were sure to perish speedily in one way or another. I authorize you to take all the risks he said after a short silence. I refuse to take any I said shortly; which was just the answer he expected though its tone might have surprised him. Well I must defer to your judgment. You are captain he said with marked civility. I turned my shoulder to him in sign of my appreciation and looked into the fog. How long would it last? It was the most hopeless look out. The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. Will they attack do you think? asked the manager in a confidential tone.

I did not think they would attack for several obvious reasons. The thick fog was one. If they left the bank in their canoes they would get lost in it as we would be if we attempted to move. Still I had also judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable and yet eyes were in it eyes that had seen us. The river side bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the reach certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise of the cries we had heard. They had not the fierce character boding of immediate hostile intention. Unexpected wild and violent as they had been they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the steamboat had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained grief. The danger if any I expounded was from our proximity to a great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence but more generally takes the form of apathy. . . .

You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin or even to revile me; but I believe they thought me gone mad with fright maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys it was no good bothering. Keep a look out? Well you may guess I watched the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton wool. It felt like it too choking warm stifling. Besides all I said though it sounded extravagant was absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive it was not even defensive in the usual sense: it was undertaken under the stress of desperation and in its essence was purely protective.

It developed itself I should say two hours after the fog lifted and its commencement was at a spot roughly speaking about a mile and a half below Kurtzs station. We had just floundered and flopped round a bend when I saw an islet a mere grassy hummock of bright green in the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened the reach more I perceived it was the head of a long sandbank or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river. They were discolored just awash and the whole lot was seen just under the water exactly as a mans backbone is seen running down the middle of his back under the skin. Now as far as I did see I could go to the right or to the left of this. I didnt know either channel of course. The banks looked pretty well alike the depth appeared the same; but as I had been informed the station was on the west side I naturally headed for the western passage.

No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal and to the right a high steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks. The twigs overhung the current thickly and from distance to distance a large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well on in the afternoon the face of the forest was gloomy and a broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the water. In this shadow we steamed up very slowly as you may imagine. I sheered her well inshore the water being deepest near the bank as the sounding pole informed me.

One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just below me. This steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck there were two little teak wood houses with doors and windows. The boiler was in the fore end and the machinery right astern. Over the whole there was a light roof supported on stanchions. The funnel projected through that roof and in front of the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served for a pilot house. It contained a couch two camp stools a loaded Martini Henry leaning in one corner a tiny table and the steering wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad shutter at each side. All these were always thrown open of course. I spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore end of that roof before the door. At night I slept or tried to on the couch. An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor predecessor was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles and thought all the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you he became instantly the prey of an abject funk and would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a minute.

I was looking down at the sounding pole and feeling much annoyed to see at each try a little more of it stick out of that river when I saw my poleman give up the business suddenly and stretch himself flat on the deck without even taking the trouble to haul his pole in. He kept hold on it though and it trailed in the water. At the same time the fireman whom I could also see below me sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had to look at the river mighty quick because there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks little sticks were flying about thick: they were whizzing before my nose dropping below me striking behind me against my pilot house. All this time the river the shore the woods were very quiet perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of the stern wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag clumsily. Arrows by Jove! We were being shot at! I stepped in quickly to close the shutter on the land side. That fool helmsman his hands on the spokes was lifting his knees high stamping his feet champing his mouth like a reined in horse. Confound him! And we were staggering within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean right out to swing the heavy shutter and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly as though a veil had been removed from my eyes I made out deep in the tangled gloom naked breasts arms legs glaring eyes the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement glistening of bronze color. The twigs shook swayed and rustled the arrows flew out of them and then the shutter came to. Steer her straight I said to the helmsman. He held his head rigid face forward; but his eyes rolled he kept on lifting and setting down his feet gently his mouth foamed a little. Keep quiet! I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind. I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle of feet on the iron deck; confused exclamations; a voice screamed Can you turn back? I caught shape of a V shaped ripple on the water ahead. What? Another snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters and were simply squirting lead into that bush. A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward. I swore at it. Now I couldnt see the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the doorway peering and the arrows came in swarms. They might have been poisoned but they looked as though they wouldnt kill a cat. The bush began to howl. Our wood cutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder and the pilot house was yet full of noise and smoke when I made a dash at the wheel. The fool nigger had dropped everything to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini Henry. He stood before the wide opening glaring and I yelled at him to come back while I straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no room to turn even if I had wanted to the snag was somewhere very near ahead in that confounded smoke there was no time to lose so I just crowded her into the bank right into the bank where I knew the water was deep.

We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short as I had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting whizz that traversed the pilot house in at one shutter hole and out at the other. Looking past that mad helmsman who was shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the shore I saw vague forms of men running bent double leaping gliding distinct incomplete evanescent. Something big appeared in the air before the shutter the rifle went overboard and the man stepped back swiftly looked at me over his shoulder in an extraordinary profound familiar manner and fell upon my feet. The side of his head hit the wheel twice and the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away we were clear of the snag and looking ahead I could see that in another hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off away from the bank; but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that either thrown or lunged through the opening had caught him in the side just below the ribs; the blade had gone in out of sight after making a frightful gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still gleaming dark red under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing luster. The fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously gripping the spear like something precious with an air of being afraid I would try to take it away from him. I had to make an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand I felt above my head for the line of the steam whistle and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly and then from the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped a few dropping shots rang out sharply then silence in which the languid beat of the stern wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard a starboard at the moment when the pilgrim in pink pyjamas very hot and agitated appeared in the doorway. The manager sends me  he began in an official tone and stopped short. Good God! he said glaring at the wounded man.

We two whites stood over him and his lustrous and inquiring glance enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put to us some question in an understandable language; but he died without uttering a sound without moving a limb without twitching a muscle. Only in the very last moment as though in response to some sign we could not see to some whisper we could not hear he frowned heavily and that frown gave to his black death mask an inconceivably somber brooding and menacing expression. The luster of inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. Can you steer? I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm and he understood at once I meant him to steer whether or no. To tell you the truth I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. He is dead murmured the fellow immensely impressed. No doubt about it said I tugging like mad at the shoe laces. And by the way I suppose Mr. Kurtz is dead as well by this time.

For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of extreme disappointment as though I had found out I had been striving after something altogether without a substance. I couldnt have been more disgusted if I had traveled all this way for the sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with. . . . I flung one shoe overboard and became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing you know but as discoursing. I didnt say to myself Now I will never see him or Now I will never shake him by the hand but Now I will never hear him. The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadnt I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected bartered swindled or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together? That was not the point. The point was in his being a gifted creature and that of all his gifts the one that stood out pre eminently that carried with it a sense of real presence was his ability to talk his words the gift of expression the bewildering the illuminating the most exalted and the most contemptible the pulsating stream of light or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.

The other shoe went flying unto the devil god of that river. I thought By Jove! its all over. We are too late; he has vanished the gift has vanished by means of some spear arrow or club. I will never hear that chap speak after all and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the bush. I couldnt have felt more of lonely desolation somehow had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life. . . . Why do you sigh in this beastly way somebody? Absurd? Well absurd. Good Lord! mustnt a man ever Here give me some tobacco. . . .

There was a pause of profound stillness then a match flared and Marlows lean face appeared worn hollow with downward folds and dropped eyelids with an aspect of concentrated attention; and as he took vigorous draws at his pipe it seemed to retreat and advance out of the night in the regular flicker of the tiny flame. The match went out.

Absurd! he cried. This is the worst of trying to tell. . . . Here you all are each moored with two good addresses like a hulk with two anchors a butcher round one corner a policeman round another excellent appetites and temperature normal you hear normal from years end to years end. And you say Absurd! Absurd be exploded! Absurd! My dear boys what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes. Now I think of it it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am upon the whole proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh yes I heard more than enough. And I was right too. A voice. He was very little more than a voice. And I heard him it this voice other voices all of them were so little more than voices and the memory of that time itself lingers around me impalpable like a dying vibration of one immense jabber silly atrocious sordid savage or simply mean without any kind of sense. Voices voices even the girl herself now 

He was silent for a long time.

I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie he began suddenly. Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh she is out of it completely. They the women I mean are out of it should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own lest ours gets worse. Oh she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying My Intended. You would have perceived directly then how completely she was out of it. And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes but this ah specimen was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head and behold it was like a ball an ivory ball; it had caressed him and lo! he had withered; it had taken him loved him embraced him got into his veins consumed his flesh and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. Mostly fossil the manager had remarked disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the tusks sometimes but evidently they couldnt bury this parcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the steamboat with it and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see because the appreciation of this favor had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say My ivory. Oh yes I heard him. My Intended my ivory my station my river my  everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible it was not good for one either trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land I mean literally. You cant understand. How could you? with solid pavement under your feet surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a mans untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude utter solitude without a policeman by the way of silence utter silence where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil: the fool is too much of a fool or the devil too much of a devil I dont know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I wont pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a place to live in where we must put up with sights with sounds with smells too by Jove! breathe dead hippo so to speak and not be contaminated. And there dont you see? Your strength comes in the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in your power of devotion not to yourself but to an obscure back breaking business. And thats difficult enough. Mind I am not trying to excuse or even explain I am trying to account to myself for for Mr. Kurtz for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honored me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England and as he was good enough to say himself his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half English his father was half French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that most appropriately the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report for its future guidance. And he had written it too. Ive seen it. Ive read it. It was eloquent vibrating with eloquence but too high strung I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his let us say nerves went wrong and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites which as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times were offered up to him do you understand? to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph however in the light of later information strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites from the point of development we had arrived at must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings we approach them with the might as of a deity and so on and so on. By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded &c. &c. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent though difficult to remember you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence of words of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page scrawled evidently much later in an unsteady hand may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you luminous and terrifying like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: Exterminate all the brutes! The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum because later on when he in a sense came to himself he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of my pamphlet (he called it) as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career. I had full information about all these things and besides as it turned out I was to have the care of his memory. Ive done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it if I choose for an everlasting rest in the dust bin of progress amongst all the sweepings and figuratively speaking all the dead cats of civilization. But then you see I cant choose. He wont be forgotten. Whatever he was he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch dance in his honor; he could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted friend at least and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self seeking. No; I cant forget him though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman awfully I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well dont you see he had done something he had steered; for months I had him at my back a help an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me I had to look after him I worried about his deficiencies and thus a subtle bond had been created of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.

Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no restraint no restraint just like Kurtz a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers I dragged him out after first jerking the spear out of his side which operation I confess I performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the little door step; his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him from behind desperately. Oh! he was heavy heavy; heavier than any man on earth I should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped him overboard. The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass and I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it for ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the awning deck about the pilot house chattering at each other like a flock of excited magpies and there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging about for I cant guess. Embalm it maybe. But I had also heard another and a very ominous murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood cutters were likewise scandalized and with a better show of reason though I admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh quite! I had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten the fishes alone should have him. He had been a very second rate helmsman while alive but now he was dead he might have become a first class temptation and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides I was anxious to take the wheel the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business.

This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going half speed keeping right in the middle of the stream and I listened to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz they had given up the station; Kurtz was dead and the station had been burnt and so on and so on. The red haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that at least this poor Kurtz had been properly revenged. Say! We must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? What do you think? Say? He positively danced the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar. And he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man! I could not help saying You made a glorious lot of smoke anyhow. I had seen from the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew that almost all the shots had gone too high. You cant hit anything unless you take aim and fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired from the hip with their eyes shut. The retreat I maintained and I was right was caused by the screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz and began to howl at me with indignant protests.

The manager stood by the wheel murmuring confidentially about the necessity of getting well away down the river before dark at all events when I saw in the distance a clearing on the river side and the outlines of some sort of building. Whats this? I asked. He clapped his hands in wonder. The station! he cried. I edged in at once still going half speed.

Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A long decaying building on the summit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a background. There was no inclosure or fence of any kind; but there had been one apparently for near the house half a dozen slim posts remained in a row roughly trimmed and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls. The rails or whatever there had been between had disappeared. Of course the forest surrounded all that. The river bank was clear and on the water side I saw a white man under a hat like a cart wheel beckoning persistently with his whole arm. Examining the edge of the forest above and below I was almost certain I could see movements human forms gliding here and there. I steamed past prudently then stopped the engines and let her drift down. The man on the shore began to shout urging us to land. We have been attacked screamed the manager. I know I know. Its all right yelled back the other as cheerful as you please. Come along. Its all right. I am glad.

His aspect reminded me of something I had seen something funny I had seen somewhere. As I maneuvered to get alongside I was asking myself What does this fellow look like? Suddenly I got it. He looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown holland probably but it was covered with patches all over with bright patches blue red and yellow patches on the back patches on front patches on elbows on knees; colored binding round his jacket scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless boyish face very fair no features to speak of nose peeling little blue eyes smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a windswept plain. Look out captain! he cried; theres a snag lodged in here last night. What! Another snag? I confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly holed my cripple to finish off that charming trip. The harlequin on the bank turned his little pug nose up to me. You English? he asked all smiles. Are you? I shouted from the wheel. The smiles vanished and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment. Then he brightened up. Never mind! he cried encouragingly. Are we in time? I asked. He is up there he replied with a toss of the head up the hill and becoming gloomy all of a sudden. His face was like the autumn sky overcast one moment and bright the next.

When the manager escorted by the pilgrims all of them armed to the teeth had gone to the house this chap came on board. I say I dont like this. These natives are in the bush I said. He assured me earnestly it was all right. They are simple people he added; well I am glad you came. It took me all my time to keep them off. But you said it was all right I cried. Oh they meant no harm he said; and as I stared he corrected himself Not exactly. Then vivaciously My faith your pilot house wants a clean up! In the next breath he advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the whistle in case of any trouble. One good screech will do more for you than all your rifles. They are simple people he repeated. He rattled away at such a rate he quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of silence and actually hinted laughing that such was the case. Dont you talk with Mr. Kurtz? I said. You dont talk with that man you listen to him he exclaimed with severe exaltation. But now  He waved his arm and in the twinkling of an eye was in the uttermost depths of despondency. In a moment he came up again with a jump possessed himself of both my hands shook them continuously while he gabbled: Brother sailor . . . honor . . . pleasure . . . delight . . . introduce myself . . . Russian . . . son of an arch priest . . . Government of Tambov . . . What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent English tobacco! Now thats brotherly. Smoke? Wheres a sailor that does not smoke?

The pipe soothed him and gradually I made out he had run away from school had gone to sea in a Russian ship; ran away again; served some time in English ships; was now reconciled with the arch priest. He made a point of that. But when one is young one must see things gather experience ideas; enlarge the mind. Here! I interrupted. You can never tell! Here I have met Mr. Kurtz he said youthfully solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue after that. It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading house on the coast to fit him out with stores and goods and had started for the interior with a light heart and no more idea of what would happen to him than a baby. He had been wandering about that river for nearly two years alone cut off from everybody and everything. I am not so young as I look. I am twenty five he said. At first old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to the devil he narrated with keen enjoyment; but I stuck to him and talked and talked till at last he got afraid I would talk the hind leg off his favorite dog so he gave me some cheap things and a few guns and told me he hoped he would never see my face again. Good old Dutchman Van Shuyten. Ive sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago so that he cant call me a little thief when I get back. I hope he got it. And for the rest I dont care. I had some wood stacked for you. That was my old house. Did you see?

I gave him Towsons book. He made as though he would kiss me but restrained himself. The only book I had left and I thought I had lost it he said looking at it ecstatically. So many accidents happen to a man going about alone you know. Canoes get upset sometimes and sometimes youve got to clear out so quick when the people get angry. He thumbed the pages. You made notes in Russian? I asked. He nodded. I thought they were written in cipher I said. He laughed then became serious. I had lots of trouble to keep these people off he said. Did they want to kill you? I asked. Oh no! he cried and checked himself. Why did they attack us? I pursued. He hesitated then said shamefacedly They dont want him to go. Dont they? I said curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom. I tell you he cried this man has enlarged my mind. He opened his arms wide staring at me with his little blue eyes that were perfectly round.

III

I looked at him lost in astonishment. There he was before me in motley as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes enthusiastic fabulous. His very existence was improbable inexplicable and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed how he had succeeded in getting so far how he had managed to remain why he did not instantly disappear. I went a little farther he said then still a little farther till I had gone so far that I dont know how Ill ever get back. Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage. You take Kurtz away quick quick I tell you. The glamour of youth enveloped his particolored rags his destitution his loneliness the essential desolation of his futile wanderings. For months for years his life hadnt been worth a days purchase; and there he was gallantly thoughtlessly alive to all appearance indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like admiration like envy. Glamour urged him on glamour kept him unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist and to move onwards at the greatest possible risk and with a maximum of privation. If the absolutely pure uncalculating unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being it ruled this be patched youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame. It seemed to have consumed all thought of self so completely that even while he was talking to you you forgot that it was he the man before your eyes who had gone through these things. I did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz though. He had not meditated over it. It came to him and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say that to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon so far.

They had come together unavoidably like two ships becalmed near each other and lay rubbing sides at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience because on a certain occasion when encamped in the forest they had talked all night or more probably Kurtz had talked. We talked of everything he said quite transported at the recollection. I forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last an hour. Everything! Everything! . . . Of love too. Ah he talked to you of love! I said much amused. It isnt what you think he cried almost passionately. It was in general. He made me see things things.

He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time and the headman of my wood cutters lounging near by turned upon him his heavy and glittering eyes. I looked around and I dont know why but I assure you that never never before did this land this river this jungle the very arch of this blazing sky appear to me so hopeless and so dark so impenetrable to human thought so pitiless to human weakness. And ever since you have been with him of course? I said.

On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had been very much broken by various causes. He had as he informed me proudly managed to nurse Kurtz through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would to some risky feat) but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone far in the depths of the forest. Very often coming to this station I had to wait days and days before he would turn up he said. Ah it was worth waiting for! sometimes. What was he doing? exploring or what? I asked. Oh yes of course; he had discovered lots of villages a lake too he did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire too much but mostly his expeditions had been for ivory. But he had no goods to trade with by that time I objected. Theres a good lot of cartridges left even yet he answered looking away. To speak plainly he raided the country I said. He nodded. Not alone surely! He muttered something about the villages round that lake. Kurtz got the tribe to follow him did he? I suggested. He fidgeted a little. They adored him he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life occupied his thoughts swayed his emotions. What can you expect? he burst out; he came to them with thunder and lightning you know and they had never seen anything like it and very terrible. He could be very terrible. You cant judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No no no! Now just to give you an idea I dont mind telling you he wanted to shoot me too one day but I dont judge him. Shoot you! I cried. What for? Well I had a small lot of ivory the chief of that village near my house gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them. Well he wanted it and wouldnt hear reason. He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country because he could do so and had a fancy for it and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And it was true too. I gave him the ivory. What did I care! But I didnt clear out. No no. I couldnt leave him. I had to be careful of course till we got friendly again for a time. He had his second illness then. Afterwards I had to keep out of the way; but I didnt mind. He was living for the most part in those villages on the lake. When he came down to the river sometimes he would take to me and sometimes it was better for me to be careful. This man suffered too much. He hated all this and somehow he couldnt get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was time; I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes and then he would remain; go off on another ivory hunt; disappear for weeks; forget himself amongst these people forget himself you know. Why! hes mad I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldnt be mad. If I had heard him talk only two days ago I wouldnt dare hint at such a thing. . . . I had taken up my binoculars while we talked and was looking at the shore sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and at the back of the house. The consciousness of there being people in that bush so silent so quiet as silent and quiet as the ruined house on the hill made me uneasy. There was no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations completed by shrugs in interrupted phrases in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved like a mask heavy like the closed door of a prison they looked with their air of hidden knowledge of patient expectation of unapproachable silence. The Russian was explaining to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river bringing along with him all the fighting men of that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months getting himself adored I suppose and had come down unexpectedly with the intention to all appearance of making a raid either across the river or down stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of the what shall I say? less material aspirations. However he had got much worse suddenly. I heard he was lying helpless and so I came up took my chance said the Russian. Oh he is bad very bad. I directed my glass to the house. There were no signs of life but there was the ruined roof the long mud wall peeping above the grass with three little square window holes no two of the same size; all this brought within reach of my hand as it were. And then I made a brusque movement and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass and I saw my mistake. These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling striking and disturbing food for thought and also for the vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been even more impressive those heads on the stakes if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one the first I had made out was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may think. The start back I had given was really nothing but a movement of surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there you know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen and there it was black dried sunken with closed eyelids a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth was smiling too smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.

I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact the manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtzs methods had ruined the district. I have no opinion on that point but I want you clearly to understand that there was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts that there was something wanting in him some small matter which when the pressing need arose could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I cant say. I think the knowledge came to him at last only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. . . . I put down the glass and the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible distance.

The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried indistinct voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take these say symbols down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendency was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl. . . . I dont want to know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz I shouted. Curious this feeling that came over me that such details would be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtzs windows. After all that was only a savage sight while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors where pure uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief being something that had a right to exist obviously in the sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadnt heard any of these splendid monologues on what was it? on love justice conduct of life or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies criminals workers and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks. You dont know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz cried Kurtzs last disciple. Well and you? I said. I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can you compare me to . . .? His feelings were too much for speech and suddenly he broke down. I dont understand he groaned. Ive been doing my best to keep him alive and thats enough. I had no hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasnt been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I I havent slept for the last ten nights. . . .

His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of the forest had slipped down hill while we talked had gone far beyond the ruined hovel beyond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the gloom while we down there were yet in the sunshine and the stretch of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and dazzling splendor with a murky and over shadowed bend above and below. Not a living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.

Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared as though they had come up from the ground. They waded waist deep in the grass in a compact body bearing an improvised stretcher in their midst. Instantly in the emptiness of the landscape a cry arose whose shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp arrow flying straight to the very heart of the land; and as if by enchantment streams of human beings of naked human beings with spears in their hands with bows with shields with wild glances and savage movements were poured into the clearing by the dark faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook the grass swayed for a time and then everything stood still in attentive immobility.

Now if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had stopped too half way to the steamer as if petrified. I saw the man on the stretcher sit up lank and with an uplifted arm above the shoulders of the bearers. Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time I said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a dishonoring necessity. I could not hear a sound but through my glasses I saw the thin arm extended commandingly the lower jaw moving the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that nodded with grotesque jerks. Kurtz Kurtz that means short in German dont it? Well the name was as true as everything else in his life and death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze. I saw him open his mouth wide it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect as though he had wanted to swallow all the air all the earth all the men before him. A deep voice reached me faintly. He must have been shouting. He fell back suddenly. The stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again and almost at the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was vanishing without any perceptible movement of retreat as if the forest that had ejected these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn in a long aspiration.

Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms two shot guns a heavy rifle and a light revolver carbine the thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring as he walked beside his head. They laid him down in one of the little cabins just a room for a bed place and a camp stool or two you know. We had brought his belated correspondence and a lot of torn envelopes and open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the composed languor of his expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did not seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm as though for the moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.

He rustled one of the letters and looking straight in my face said I am glad. Somebody had been writing to him about me. These special recommendations were turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted without effort almost without the trouble of moving his lips amazed me. A voice! a voice! It was grave profound vibrating while the man did not seem capable of a whisper. However he had enough strength in him factitious no doubt to very nearly make an end of us as you shall hear directly.

The manager appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once and he drew the curtain after me. The Russian eyed curiously by the pilgrims was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance.

Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance flitting indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest and near the river two bronze figures leaning on tall spears stood in the sunlight under fantastic headdresses of spotted skins warlike and still in statuesque repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman.

She walked with measured steps draped in striped and fringed cloths treading the earth proudly with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee brass wire gauntlets to the elbow a crimson spot on her tawny cheek innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things charms gifts of witch men that hung about her glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb wild eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land the immense wilderness the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her pensive as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.

She came abreast of the steamer stood still and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the waters edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling half shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed and then she made a step forward. There was a low jingle a glint of yellow metal a sway of fringed draperies and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back. She looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the earth swept around on the river gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.

She turned away slowly walked on following the bank and passed into the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of the thickets before she disappeared.

If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to shoot her said the man of patches nervously. I had been risking my life every day for the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She got in one day and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I wasnt decent. At least it must have been that for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour pointing at me now and then. I dont understand the dialect of this tribe. Luckily for me I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care or there would have been mischief. I dont understand. . . . No its too much for me. Ah well its all over now.

At this moment I heard Kurtzs deep voice behind the curtain Save me! save the ivory you mean. Dont tell me. Save me! Why Ive had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe. Never mind. Ill carry my ideas out yet I will return. Ill show you what can be done. You with your little peddling notions you are interfering with me. I will return. I . . .

The manager came out. He did me the honor to take me under the arm and lead me aside. He is very low very low he said. He considered it necessary to sigh but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. We have done all we could for him havent we? But there is no disguising the fact Mr. Kurtz has done more harm than good to the Company. He did not see the time was not ripe for vigorous action. Cautiously cautiously thats my principle. We must be cautious yet. The district is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the whole the trade will suffer. I dont deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivory mostly fossil. We must save it at all events but look how precarious the position is and why? Because the method is unsound. Do you said I looking at the shore call it unsound method? Without doubt he exclaimed hotly. Dont you? . . . No method at all I murmured after a while. Exactly he exulted. I anticipated this. Shows a complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter. Oh said I that fellow whats his name? the brickmaker will make a readable report for you. He appeared confounded for a moment. It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief positively for relief. Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man I said with emphasis. He started dropped on me a cold heavy glance said very quietly He was and turned his back on me. My hour of favor was over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods for which the time was not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.

I had turned to the wilderness really not to Mr. Kurtz who I was ready to admit was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast the smell of the damp earth the unseen presence of victorious corruption the darkness of an impenetrable night. . . . The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling and stammering something about brother seaman couldnt conceal knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtzs reputation. I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals. Well! said I at last speak out. As it happens I am Mr. Kurtzs friend in a way.

He stated with a good deal of formality that had we not been of the same profession he would have kept the matter to himself without regard to consequences. He suspected there was an active ill will towards him on the part of these white men that  You are right I said remembering a certain conversation I had overheard. The manager thinks you ought to be hanged. He showed a concern at this intelligence which amused me at first. I had better get out of the way quietly he said earnestly. I can do no more for Kurtz now and they would soon find some excuse. Whats to stop them? Theres a military post three hundred miles from here. Well upon my word said I perhaps you had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages near by. Plenty he said. They are simple people and I want nothing you know. He stood biting his lips then: I dont want any harm to happen to these whites here but of course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtzs reputation but you are a brother seaman and  All right said I after a time. Mr. Kurtzs reputation is safe with me. I did not know how truly I spoke.

He informed me lowering his voice that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the steamer. He hated sometimes the idea of being taken away and then again. . . . But I dont understand these matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you away that you would give it up thinking him dead. I could not stop him. Oh I had an awful time of it this last month. Very well I said. He is all right now. Ye e es he muttered not very convinced apparently. Thanks said I; I shall keep my eyes open. But quiet eh? he urged anxiously. It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here  I promised a complete discretion with great gravity. I have a canoe and three black fellows waiting not very far. I am off. Could you give me a few Martini Henry cartridges? I could and did with proper secrecy. He helped himself with a wink at me to a handful of my tobacco. Between sailors you know good English tobacco. At the door of the pilot house he turned round  I say havent you a pair of shoes you could spare? He raised one leg. Look. The soles were tied with knotted strings sandal wise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old pair at which he looked with admiration before tucking it under his left arm. One of his pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges from the other (dark blue) peeped Towsons Inquiry &c. &c. He seemed to think himself excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness. Ah! Ill never never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry his own too it was he told me. Poetry! He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights. Oh he enlarged my mind! Goodby said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night. Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him whether it was possible to meet such a phenomenon! . . .

When I woke up shortly after midnight his warning came to my mind with its hint of danger that seemed in the starred darkness real enough to make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hill a big fire burned illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the station house. One of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks armed for the purpose was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within the forest red gleams that wavered that seemed to sink and rise from the ground amongst confused columnar shapes of intense blackness showed the exact position of the camp where Mr. Kurtzs adorers were keeping their uneasy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out from the black flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive and had a strange narcotic effect upon my half awake senses. I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail till an abrupt burst of yells an overwhelming outbreak of a pent up and mysterious frenzy woke me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at once and the low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. I glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was burning within but Mr. Kurtz was not there.

I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I didnt believe them at first the thing seemed so impossible. The fact is I was completely unnerved by a sheer blank fright pure abstract terror unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger. What made this emotion so overpowering was how shall I define it? the moral shock I received as if something altogether monstrous intolerable to thought and odious to the soul had been thrust upon me unexpectedly. This lasted of course the merest fraction of a second and then the usual sense of commonplace deadly danger the possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre or something of the kind which I saw impending was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me in fact so much that I did not raise an alarm.

There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair on deck within three feet of me. The yells had not awakened him; he snored very slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore. I did not betray Mr. Kurtz it was ordered I should never betray him it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone and to this day I dont know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar blackness of that experience.

As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail a broad trail through the grass. I remember the exultation with which I said to myself He cant walk he is crawling on all fours Ive got him. The grass was wet with dew. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon him and giving him a drubbing. I dont know. I had some imbecile thoughts. The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself upon my memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the other end of such an affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting lead in the air out of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would never get back to the steamer and imagined myself living alone and unarmed in the woods to an advanced age. Such silly things you know. And I remember I confounded the beat of the drum with the beating of my heart and was pleased at its calm regularity.

I kept to the track though then stopped to listen. The night was very clear: a dark blue space sparkling with dew and starlight in which black things stood very still. I thought I could see a kind of motion ahead of me. I was strangely cocksure of everything that night. I actually left the track and ran in a wide semicircle (I verily believe chuckling to myself) so as to get in front of that stir of that motion I had seen if indeed I had seen anything. I was circumventing Kurtz as though it had been a boyish game.

I came upon him and if he had not heard me coming I would have fallen over him too but he got up in time. He rose unsteady long pale indistinct like a vapor exhaled by the earth and swayed slightly misty and silent before me; while at my back the fires loomed between the trees and the murmur of many voices issued from the forest. I had cut him off cleverly; but when actually confronting him I seemed to come to my senses I saw the danger in its right proportion. It was by no means over yet. Suppose he began to shout? Though he could hardly stand there was still plenty of vigor in his voice. Go away hide yourself he said in that profound tone. It was very awful. I glanced back. We were within thirty yards from the nearest fire. A black figure stood up strode on long black legs waving long black arms across the glow. It had horns antelope horns I think on its head. Some sorcerer some witch man no doubt: it looked fiend like enough. Do you know what you are doing? I whispered. Perfectly he answered raising his voice for that single word: it sounded to me far off and yet loud like a hail through a speaking trumpet. If he makes a row we are lost I thought to myself. This clearly was not a case for fisticuffs even apart from the very natural aversion I had to beat that Shadow this wandering and tormented thing. You will be lost I said utterly lost. One gets sometimes such a flash of inspiration you know. I did say the right thing though indeed he could not have been more irretrievably lost than he was at this very moment when the foundations of our intimacy were being laid to endure to endure even to the end even beyond.

I had immense plans he muttered irresolutely. Yes said I; but if you try to shout Ill smash your head with  There was not a stick or a stone near. I will throttle you for good I corrected myself. I was on the threshold of great things he pleaded in a voice of longing with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. And now for this stupid scoundrel  Your success in Europe is assured in any case I affirmed steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of him you understand and indeed it would have been very little use for any practical purpose. I tried to break the spell the heavy mute spell of the wilderness that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone I was convinced had driven him out to the edge of the forest to the bush towards the gleam of fires the throb of drums the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And dont you see the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head though I had a very lively sense of that danger too but in this that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had even like the niggers to invoke him himself his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air. Ive been telling you what we said repeating the phrases we pronounced but whats the good? They were common everyday words the familiar vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them to my mind the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul I am the man. And I wasnt arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not his intelligence was perfectly clear concentrated it is true upon himself with horrible intensity yet clear; and therein was my only chance barring of course the killing him there and then which wasnt so good on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness it had looked within itself and by heavens! I tell you it had gone mad. I had for my sins I suppose to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to ones belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself too. I saw it I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint no faith and no fear yet struggling blindly with itself. I kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at last stretched on the couch I wiped my forehead while my legs shook under me as though I had carried half a ton on my back down that hill. And yet I had only supported him his bony arm clasped round my neck and he was not much heavier than a child.

When next day we left at noon the crowd of whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious all the time flowed out of the woods again filled the clearing covered the slope with a mass of naked breathing quivering bronze bodies. I steamed up a bit then swung down stream and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splashing thumping fierce river demon beating the water with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air. In front of the first rank along the river three men plastered with bright red earth from head to foot strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came abreast again they faced the river stamped their feet nodded their horned heads swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce river demon a bunch of black feathers a mangy skin with a pendent tail something that looked like a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd interrupted suddenly were like the response of some satanic litany.

We had carried Kurtz into the pilot house: there was more air there. Lying on the couch he stared through the open shutter. There was an eddy in the mass of human bodies and the woman with helmeted head and tawny cheeks rushed out to the very brink of the stream. She put out her hands shouted something and all that wild mob took up the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated rapid breathless utterance.

Do you understand this? I asked.

He kept on looking out past me with fiery longing eyes with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer but I saw a smile a smile of indefinable meaning appear on his colorless lips that a moment after twitched convulsively. Do I not? he said slowly gasping as if the words had been torn out of him by a supernatural power.

I pulled the string of the whistle and I did this because I saw the pilgrims on deck getting out their rifles with an air of anticipating a jolly lark. At the sudden screech there was a movement of abject terror through that wedged mass of bodies. Dont! Dont you frighten them away cried someone on deck disconsolately. I pulled the string time after time. They broke and ran they leaped they crouched they swerved they dodged the flying terror of the sound. The three red chaps had fallen flat face down on the shore as though they had been shot dead. Only the barbarous and superb woman did not so much as flinch and stretched tragically her bare arms after us over the somber and glittering river.

And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck started their little fun and I could see nothing more for smoke.

The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtzs life was running swiftly too ebbing ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time. The manager was very placid he had no vital anxieties now he took us both in with a comprehensive and satisfied glance: the affair had come off as well as could be wished. I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone of the party of unsound method. The pilgrims looked upon me with disfavor. I was so to speak numbered with the dead. It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partnership this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms.

Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last. It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart. Oh he struggled! he struggled! The wastes of his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images now images of wealth and fame revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression. My Intended my station my career my ideas these were the subjects for the occasional utterances of elevated sentiments. The shade of the original Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow sham whose fate it was to be buried presently in the mold of primeval earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions avid of lying fame of sham distinction of all the appearances of success and power.

Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He desired to have kings meet him at railway stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere where he intended to accomplish great things. You show them you have in you something that is really profitable and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability he would say. Of course you must take care of the motives right motives always. The long reaches that were like one and the same reach monotonous bends that were exactly alike slipped past the steamer with their multitude of secular trees looking patiently after this grimy fragment of another world the forerunner of change of conquest of trade of massacres of blessings. I looked ahead piloting. Close the shutter said Kurtz suddenly one day; I cant bear to look at this. I did so. There was a silence. Oh but I will wring your heart yet! he cried at the invisible wilderness.

We broke down as I had expected and had to lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay was the first thing that shook Kurtzs confidence. One morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photograph the lot tied together with a shoe string. Keep this for me he said. This noxious fool (meaning the manager) is capable of prying into my boxes when I am not looking. In the afternoon I saw him. He was lying on his back with closed eyes and I withdrew quietly but I heard him mutter Live rightly die die . . . I listened. There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep or was it a fragment of a phrase from some newspaper article? He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again for the furthering of my ideas. Its a duty.

His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. But I had not much time to give him because I was helping the engine driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders to straighten a bent connecting rod and in other such matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust filings nuts bolts spanners hammers ratchet drills things I abominate because I dont get on with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I toiled wearily in a wretched scrap heap unless I had the shakes too bad to stand.

One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously I am lying here in the dark waiting for death. The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur Oh nonsense! and stood over him as if transfixed.

Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before and hope never to see again. Oh I wasnt touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride of ruthless power of craven terror of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire temptation and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image at some vision he cried out twice a cry that was no more than a breath 

The horror! The horror!

I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess room and I took my place opposite the manager who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance which I successfully ignored. He leaned back serene with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp upon the cloth upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the managers boy put his insolent black head in the doorway and said in a tone of scathing contempt 

Mistah Kurtz he dead.

All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained and went on with my dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However I did not eat much. There was a lamp in there light dont you know and outside it was so beastly beastly dark. I went no more near the remarkable man who had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth. The voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am of course aware that next day the pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole.

And then they very nearly buried me.

However as you see I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself that comes too late a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness with nothing underfoot with nothing around without spectators without clamor without glory without the great desire of victory without the great fear of defeat in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism without much belief in your own right and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hairs breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself I understand better the meaning of his stare that could not see the flame of the candle but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up he had judged. The horror! He was a remarkable man. After all this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor it had conviction it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best a vision of grayness without form filled with physical pain and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True he had made that last stride he had stepped over the edge while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom and all truth and all sincerity are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry much better. It was an affirmation a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats by abominable terrors by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last and even beyond when a long time after I heard once more not his own voice but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.

No they did not bury me though there is a period of time which I remember mistily with a shuddering wonder like a passage through some inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other to devour their infamous cookery to gulp their unwholesome beer to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importance. I dare say I was not very well at that time. I tottered about the streets there were various affairs to settle grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons. I admit my behavior was inexcusable but then my temperature was seldom normal in these days. My dear aunts endeavors to nurse up my strength seemed altogether beside the mark. It was not my strength that wanted nursing it was my imagination that wanted soothing. I kept the bundle of papers given me by Kurtz not knowing exactly what to do with it. His mother had died lately watched over as I was told by his Intended. A clean shaved man with an official manner and wearing gold rimmed spectacles called on me one day and made inquiries at first circuitous afterwards suavely pressing about what he was pleased to denominate certain documents. I was not surprised because I had had two rows with the manager on the subject out there. I had refused to give up the smallest scrap out of that package and I took the same attitude with the spectacled man. He became darkly menacing at last and with much heat argued that the Company had the right to every bit of information about its territories. And said he Mr. Kurtzs knowledge of unexplored regions must have been necessarily extensive and peculiar owing to his great abilities and to the deplorable circumstances in which he had been placed: therefore I assured him Mr. Kurtzs knowledge however extensive did not bear upon the problems of commerce or administration. He invoked then the name of science. It would be an incalculable loss if &c. &c. I offered him the report on the Suppression of Savage Customs with the postscriptum torn off. He took it up eagerly but ended by sniffing at it with an air of contempt. This is not what we had a right to expect he remarked. Expect nothing else I said. There are only private letters. He withdrew upon some threat of legal proceedings and I saw him no more; but another fellow calling himself Kurtzs cousin appeared two days later and was anxious to hear all the details about his dear relatives last moments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that Kurtz had been essentially a great musician. There was the making of an immense success said the man who was an organist I believe with lank gray hair flowing over a greasy coat collar. I had no reason to doubt his statement; and to this day I am unable to say what was Kurtzs profession whether he ever had any which was the greatest of his talents. I had taken him for a painter who wrote for the papers or else for a journalist who could paint but even the cousin (who took snuff during the interview) could not tell me what he had been exactly. He was a universal genius on that point I agreed with the old chap who thereupon blew his nose noisily into a large cotton handkerchief and withdrew in senile agitation bearing off some family letters and memoranda without importance. Ultimately a journalist anxious to know something of the fate of his dear colleague turned up. This visitor informed me Kurtzs proper sphere ought to have been politics on the popular side. He had furry straight eyebrows bristly hair cropped short an eye glass on a broad ribbon and becoming expansive confessed his opinion that Kurtz really couldnt write a bit but heavens! how that man could talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith dont you see? he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party. What party? I asked. Any party answered the other. He was an an extremist. Did I not think so? I assented. Did I know he asked with a sudden flash of curiosity what it was that had induced him to go out there? Yes said I and forthwith handed him the famous Report for publication if he thought fit. He glanced through it hurriedly mumbling all the time judged it would do and took himself off with this plunder.

Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of letters and the girls portrait. She struck me as beautiful I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie too yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features. She seemed ready to listen without mental reservation without suspicion without a thought for herself. I concluded I would go and give her back her portrait and those letters myself. Curiosity? Yes; and also some other feeling perhaps. All that had been Kurtzs had passed out of my hands: his soul his body his station his plans his ivory his career. There remained only his memory and his Intended and I wanted to give that up too to the past in a way to surrender personally all that remained of him with me to that oblivion which is the last word of our common fate. I dont defend myself. I had no clear perception of what it was I really wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious loyalty or the fulfillment of one of these ironic necessities that lurk in the facts of human existence. I dont know. I cant tell. But I went.

I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every mans life a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage; but before the high and ponderous door between the tall houses of a street as still and decorous as a well kept alley in a cemetery I had a vision of him on the stretcher opening his mouth voraciously as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me the stretcher the phantom bearers the wild crowd of obedient worshipers the gloom of the forests the glitter of the reach between the murky bends the beat of the drum regular and muffled like the beating of a heart the heart of a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness an invading and vengeful rush which it seemed to me I would have to keep back alone for the salvation of another soul. And the memory of what I had heard him say afar there with the horned shapes stirring at my back in the glow of fires within the patient woods those broken phrases came back to me were heard again in their ominous and terrifying simplicity. I remembered his abject pleading his abject threats the colossal scale of his vile desires the meanness the torment the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected languid manner when he said one day This lot of ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it. I collected it myself at a very great personal risk. I am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though. Hm. It is a difficult case. What do you think I ought to do resist? Eh? I want no more than justice. . . . He wanted no more than justice no more than justice. I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor and while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel stare with that wide and immense stare embracing condemning loathing all the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry The horror! The horror!

The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty drawing room with three long windows from floor to ceiling that were like three luminous and bedraped columns. The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood massively in a corner with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a somber and polished sarcophagus. A high door opened closed. I rose.

She came forward all in black with a pale head floating towards me in the dusk. She was in mourning. It was more than a year since his death more than a year since the news came; she seemed as though she would remember and mourn for ever. She took both my hands in hers and murmured I had heard you were coming. I noticed she was not very young I mean not girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidelity for belief for suffering. The room seemed to have grown darker as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair this pale visage this pure brow seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless profound confident and trustful. She carried her sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow as though she would say I I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves. But while we were still shaking hands such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me too he seemed to have died only yesterday nay this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time his death and her sorrow I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together I heard them together. She had said with a deep catch of the breath I have survived; while my strained ears seemed to hear distinctly mingled with her tone of despairing regret the summing up whisper of his eternal condemnation. I asked myself what I was doing there with a sensation of panic in my heart as though I had blundered into a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a human being to behold. She motioned me to a chair. We sat down. I laid the packet gently on the little table and she put her hand over it. . . . You knew him well she murmured after a moment of mourning silence.

Intimacy grows quick out there I said. I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.

And you admired him she said. It was impossible to know him and not to admire him. Was it?

He was a remarkable man I said unsteadily. Then before the appealing fixity of her gaze that seemed to watch for more words on my lips I went on It was impossible not to 

Love him she finished eagerly silencing me into an appalled dumbness. How true! how true! But when you think that no one knew him so well as I! I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.

You knew him best I repeated. And perhaps she did. But with every word spoken the room was growing darker and only her forehead smooth and white remained illumined by the unextinguishable light of belief and love.

You were his friend she went on. His friend she repeated a little louder. You must have been if he had given you this and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to you and oh! I must speak. I want you you who have heard his last words to know I have been worthy of him. . . . It is not pride. . . . Yes! I am proud to know I understood him better than anyone on earth he told me so himself. And since his mother died I have had no one no one to to 

I listened. The darkness deepened. I was not even sure whether he had given me the right bundle. I rather suspect he wanted me to take care of another batch of his papers which after his death I saw the manager examining under the lamp. And the girl talked easing her pain in the certitude of my sympathy; she talked as thirsty men drink. I had heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasnt rich enough or something. And indeed I dont know whether he had not been a pauper all his life. He had given me some reason to infer that it was his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there.

. . . Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once? she was saying. He drew men towards him by what was best in them. She looked at me with intensity. It is the gift of the great she went on and the sound of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds full of mystery desolation and sorrow I had ever heard the ripple of the river the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind the murmurs of wild crowds the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness. But you have heard him! You know! she cried.

Yes I know I said with something like despair in my heart but bowing my head before the faith that was in her before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her from which I could not even defend myself.

What a loss to me to us! she corrected herself with beautiful generosity; then added in a murmur To the world. By the last gleams of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes full of tears of tears that would not fall.

I have been very happy very fortunate very proud she went on. Too fortunate. Too happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy for for life.

She stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a glimmer of gold. I rose too.

And of all this she went on mournfully of all his promise and of all his greatness of his generous mind of his noble heart nothing remains nothing but a memory. You and I 

We shall always remember him I said hastily.

No! she cried. It is impossible that all this should be lost that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them too I could not perhaps understand but others knew of them. Something must remain. His words at least have not died.

His words will remain I said.

And his example she whispered to herself. Men looked up to him his goodness shone in every act. His example 

True I said; his example too. Yes his example. I forgot that.

But I do not. I cannot I cannot believe not yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again that nobody will see him again never never never.

She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure stretching them black and with clasped pale hands across the fading and narrow sheen of the window. Never see him! I saw him clearly enough then. I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live and I shall see her too a tragic and familiar Shade resembling in this gesture another one tragic also and bedecked with powerless charms stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream the stream of darkness. She said suddenly very low He died as he lived.

His end said I with dull anger stirring in me was in every way worthy of his life.

And I was not with him she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.

Everything that could be done  I mumbled.

Ah but I believed in him more than anyone on earth more than his own mother more than himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh every word every sign every glance.

I felt like a chill grip on my chest. Dont I said in a muffled voice.

Forgive me. I I have mourned so long in silence in silence. . . . You were with him to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear. . . .

To the very end I said shakily. I heard his very last words. . . .
I stopped in a fright.
Repeat them she said in a heart broken tone. I want I want something something to to live with.

I was on the point of crying at her Dont you hear them? The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. The horror! The horror!

His last word to live with she murmured. Dont you understand I loved him I loved him I loved him!

I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.

The last word he pronounced was your name.

I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. I knew it I was sure! . . . She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen I wonder if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadnt he said he wanted only justice? But I couldnt. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark too dark altogether. . . .

Marlow ceased and sat apart indistinct and silent in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. We have lost the first of the ebb said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

I
MOTHER died today. Or maybe yesterday; I cant be sure. The telegram from the
Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP
SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.
The Home for Aged Persons is at Marengo some fifty miles from Algiers. With
the two oclock bus I should get there well before nightfall. Then I can spend the
night there keeping the usual vigil beside the body and be back here by tomorrow
evening. I have fixed up with my employer for two days leave; obviously under the
circumstances he couldnt refuse. Still I had an idea he looked annoyed and I said
without thinking: Sorry sir but its not my fault you know.
Afterwards it struck me I neednt have said that. I had no reason to excuse myself;
it was up to him to express his sympathy and so forth. Probably he will do so the day
after tomorrow when he sees me in black. For the present its almost as if Mother
werent really dead. The funeral will bring it home to me put an official seal on it so
to speak. ...
I took the two oclock bus. It was a blazing hot afternoon. Id lunched as usual at
Célestes restaurant. Everyone was most kind and Céleste said to me Theres no
one like a mother. When I left they came with me to the door. It was something of a
rush getting away as at the last moment I had to call in at Emmanuels place to
borrow his black tie and mourning band. He lost his uncle a few months ago.
I had to run to catch the bus. I suppose it was my hurrying like that what with the
glare off the road and from the sky the reek of gasoline and the jolts that made me
feel so drowsy. Anyhow I slept most of the way. When I woke I was leaning against
a soldier; he grinned and asked me if Id come from a long way off and I just
nodded to cut things short. I wasnt in a mood for talking.
The Home is a little over a mile from the village. I went there on foot. I asked to
be allowed to see Mother at once but the doorkeeper told me I must see the warden
first. He wasnt free and I had to wait a bit. The doorkeeper chatted with me while I
waited; then he led me to the office. The warden was a very small man with gray
hair and a Legion of Honor rosette in his buttonhole. He gave me a long look with
his watery blue eyes. Then we shook hands and he held mine so long that I began to
feel embarrassed. After that he consulted a register on his table and said:
Madame Meursault entered the Home three years ago. She had no private means
and depended entirely on you.
 
 
I had a feeling he was blaming me for something and started to explain. But he
cut me short.
Theres no need to excuse yourself my boy. Ive looked up the record and
obviously you werent in a position to see that she was properly cared for. She
needed someone to be with her all the time and young men in jobs like yours dont
get too much pay. In any case she was much happier in the Home.
I said Yes sir; Im sure of that.
Then he added: She had good friends here you know old folks like herself and
one gets on better with people of ones own generation. Youre much too young; you
couldnt have been much of a companion to her.
That was so. When we lived together Mother was always watching me but we
hardly ever talked. During her first few weeks at the Home she used to cry a good
deal. But that was only because she hadnt settled down. After a month or two shed
have cried if shed been told to leave the Home. Because this too would have been a
wrench. That was why during the last year I seldom went to see her. Also it would
have meant losing my Sunday not to mention the trouble of going to the bus
getting my ticket and spending two hours on the journey each way.
The warden went on talking but I didnt pay much attention. Finally he said:
Now I suppose youd like to see your mother?
I rose without replying and he led the way to the door. As we were going down
the stairs he explained:
Ive had the body moved to our little mortuary so as not to upset the other old
people you understand. Every time theres a death here theyre in a nervous state for
two or three days. Which means of course extra work and worry for our staff.
We crossed a courtyard where there were a number of old men talking amongst
themselves in little groups. They fell silent as we came up with them. Then behind
our backs the chattering began again. Their voices reminded me of parakeets in a
cage only the sound wasnt quite so shrill. The warden stopped outside the entrance
of a small low building.
So here I leave you Monsieur Meursault. If you want me for anything youll
find me in my office. We propose to have the funeral tomorrow morning. That will
enable you to spend the night beside your mothers coffin as no doubt you would
wish to do. Just one more thing; I gathered from your mothers friends that she
wished to be buried with the rites of the Church. Ive made arrangements for this; but
I thought I should let you know.
I thanked him. So far as I knew my mother though not a professed atheist had
never given a thought to religion in her life.
I entered the mortuary. It was a bright spotlessly clean room with whitewashed
walls and a big skylight. The furniture consisted of some chairs and trestles. Two of
the latter stood open in the center of the room and the coffin rested on them. The lid
 
 
was in place but the screws had been given only a few turns and their nickeled heads
stuck out above the wood which was stained dark walnut. An Arab woman a
nurse I supposed was sitting beside the bier; she was wearing a blue smock and
had a rather gaudy scarf wound round her hair.
Just then the keeper came up behind me. Hed evidently been running as he was a
little out of breath.
We put the lid on but I was told to unscrew it when you came so that you could
see her.
While he was going up to the coffin I told him not to trouble.
Eh? Whats that? he exclaimed. You dont want me to ...?
No I said.
He put back the screwdriver in his pocket and stared at me. I realized then that I
shouldnt have said No and it made me rather embarrassed. After eying me for
some moments he asked:
Why not? But he didnt sound reproachful; he simply wanted to know.
Well really I couldnt say I answered.
He began twiddling his white mustache; then without looking at me said gently:
I understand.
He was a pleasant looking man with blue eyes and ruddy cheeks. He drew up a
chair for me near the coffin and seated himself just behind. The nurse got up and
moved toward the door. As she was going by the keeper whispered in my ear:
Its a tumor she has poor thing.
I looked at her more carefully and I noticed that she had a bandage round her head
just below her eyes. It lay quite flat across the bridge of her nose and one saw hardly
anything of her face except that strip of whiteness.
As soon as she had gone the keeper rose.
Now Ill leave you to yourself.
I dont know whether I made some gesture but instead of going he halted behind
my chair. The sensation of someone posted at my back made me uncomfortable. The
sun was getting low and the whole room was flooded with a pleasant mellow light.
Two hornets were buzzing overhead against the skylight. I was so sleepy I could
hardly keep my eyes open. Without looking round I asked the keeper how long hed
been at the Home. Five years. The answer came so pat that one could have thought
hed been expecting my question.
That started him off and he became quite chatty. If anyone had told him ten years
ago that hed end his days as doorkeeper at a home at Marengo hed never have
believed it. He was sixty four he said and hailed from Paris.
When he said that I broke in. Ah you dont come from here?
I remembered then that before taking me to the warden hed told me something
about Mother. He had said shed have to be buried mighty quickly because of the
 
 
heat in these parts especially down in the plain. At Paris they keep the body for
three days sometimes four. After that he had mentioned that hed spent the best part
of his life in Paris and could never manage to forget it. Here he had said things
have to go with a rush like. Youve hardly time to get used to the idea that
someones dead before youre hauled off to the funeral. Thats enough his wife
had put in. You didnt ought to say such things to the poor young gentleman. The
old fellow had blushed and begun to apologize. I told him it was quite all right. As a
matter of fact I found it rather interesting what hed been telling me; I hadnt
thought of that before.
Now he went on to say that hed entered the Home as an ordinary inmate. But he
was still quite hale and hearty and when the keepers job fell vacant he offered to
take it on.
I pointed out that even so he was really an inmate like the others but he wouldnt
hear of it. He was an official like. Id been struck before by his habit of saying
they or less often them old folks when referring to inmates no older than
himself. Still I could see his point of view. As doorkeeper he had a certain standing
and some authority over the rest of them.
Just then the nurse returned. Night had fallen very quickly; all of a sudden it
seemed the sky went black above the skylight. The keeper switched on the lamps
and I was almost blinded by the blaze of light.
He suggested I should go to the refectory for dinner but I wasnt hungry. Then he
proposed bringing me a mug of café au lait. As I am very partial to café au lait I
said Thanks and a few minutes later he came back with a tray. I drank the coffee
and then I wanted a cigarette. But I wasnt sure if I should smoke under the
circumstances in Mothers presence. I thought it over; really it didnt seem to
matter so I offered the keeper a cigarette and we both smoked.
After a while he started talking again.
You know your mothers friends will be coming soon to keep vigil with you
beside the body. We always have a ‘vigil here when anyone dies. Id better go and
get some chairs and a pot of black coffee.
The glare off the white walls was making my eyes smart and I asked him if he
couldnt turn off one of the lamps. Nothing doing he said. Theyd arranged the
lights like that; either one had them all on or none at all. After that I didnt pay much
more attention to him. He went out brought some chairs and set them out round the
coffin. On one he placed a coffeepot and ten or a dozen cups. Then he sat down
facing me on the far side of Mother. The nurse was at the other end of the room
with her back to me. I couldnt see what she was doing but by the way her arms
moved I guessed that she was knitting. I was feeling very comfortable; the coffee had
warmed me up and through the open door came scents of flowers and breaths of
cool night air. I think I dozed off for a while.
 
 
I was wakened by an odd rustling in my ears. After having had my eyes closed I
had a feeling that the light had grown even stronger than before. There wasnt a trace
of shadow anywhere and every object each curve or angle seemed to score its
outline on ones eyes. The old people Mothers friends were coming in. I counted
ten in all gliding almost soundlessly through the bleak white glare. None of the
chairs creaked when they sat down. Never in my life had I seen anyone so clearly as
I saw these people; not a detail of their clothes or features escaped me. And yet I
couldnt hear them and it was hard to believe they really existed.
Nearly all the women wore aprons and the strings drawn tight round their waists
made their big stomachs bulge still more. Id never yet noticed what big paunches
old women usually have. Most of the men however were as thin as rakes and they
all carried sticks. What struck me most about their faces was that one couldnt see
their eyes only a dull glow in a sort of nest of wrinkles.
On sitting down they looked at me and wagged their heads awkwardly their lips
sucked in between their toothless gums. I couldnt decide if they were greeting me
and trying to say something or if it was due to some infirmity of age. I inclined to
think that they were greeting me after their fashion but it had a queer effect seeing
all those old fellows grouped round the keeper solemnly eying me and dandling their
heads from side to side. For a moment I had an absurd impression that they had come
to sit in judgment on me.
A few minutes later one of the women started weeping. She was in the second row
and I couldnt see her face because of another woman in front. At regular intervals
she emitted a little choking sob; one had a feeling she would never stop. The others
didnt seem to notice. They sat in silence slumped in their chairs staring at the
coffin or at their walking sticks or any object just in front of them and never took
their eyes off it. And still the woman sobbed. I was rather surprised as I didnt know
who she was. I wanted her to stop crying but dared not speak to her. After a while
the keeper bent toward her and whispered in her ear; but she merely shook her head
mumbled something I couldnt catch and went on sobbing as steadily as before.
The keeper got up and moved his chair beside mine. At first he kept silent; then
without looking at me he explained.
She was devoted to your mother. She says your mother was her only friend in the
world and now shes all alone.
I had nothing to say and the silence lasted quite a while. Presently the womans
sighs and sobs became less frequent and after blowing her nose and snuffling for
some minutes she too fell silent.
Id ceased feeling sleepy but I was very tired and my legs were aching badly. And
now I realized that the silence of these people was telling on my nerves. The only
sound was a rather queer one; it came only now and then and at first I was puzzled
by it. However after listening attentively I guessed what it was; the old men were
 
 
sucking at the insides of their cheeks and this caused the odd wheezing noises that
had mystified me. They were so much absorbed in their thoughts that they didnt
know what they were up to. I even had an impression that the dead body in their
midst meant nothing at all to them. But now I suspect that I was mistaken about this.
We all drank the coffee which the keeper handed round. After that I cant
remember much; somehow the night went by. I can recall only one moment; I had
opened my eyes and I saw the old men sleeping hunched up on their chairs with one
exception. Resting his chin on his hands clasped round his stick he was staring hard
at me as if he had been waiting for me to wake. Then I fell asleep again. I woke up
after a bit because the ache in my legs had developed into a sort of cramp.
There was a glimmer of dawn above the skylight. A minute or two later one of the
old men woke up and coughed repeatedly. He spat into a big check handkerchief and
each time he spat it sounded as if he were retching. This woke the others and the
keeper told them it was time to make a move. They all got up at once. Their faces
were ashen gray after the long uneasy vigil. To my surprise each of them shook
hands with me as though this night together in which we hadnt exchanged a word
had created a kind of intimacy between us.
I was quite done in. The keeper took me to his room and I tidied myself up a bit.
He gave me some more white coffee and it seemed to do me good. When I went
out the sun was up and the sky mottled red above the hills between Marengo and the
sea. A morning breeze was blowing and it had a pleasant salty tang. There was the
promise of a very fine day. I hadnt been in the country for ages and I caught myself
thinking what an agreeable walk I could have had if it hadnt been for Mother.
As it was I waited in the courtyard under a plane tree. I sniffed the smells of the
cool earth and found I wasnt sleepy any more. Then I thought of the other fellows in
the office. At this hour theyd be getting up preparing to go to work; for me this was
always the worst hour of the day. I went on thinking like this for ten minutes or so;
then the sound of a bell inside the building attracted my attention. I could see
movements behind the windows; then all was calm again. The sun had risen a little
higher and was beginning to warm my feet. The keeper came across the yard and
said the warden wished to see me. I went to his office and he got me to sign some
document. I noticed that he was in black with pin stripe trousers. He picked up the
telephone receiver and looked at me.
The undertakers men arrived some moments ago and they will be going to the
mortuary to screw down the coffin. Shall I tell them to wait for you to have a last
glimpse of your mother?
No I said.
He spoke into the receiver lowering his voice. Thats all right Figeac. Tell the
men to go there now.
 
 
He then informed me that he was going to attend the funeral and I thanked him.
Sitting down behind his desk he crossed his short legs and leaned back. Besides the
nurse on duty he told me he and I would be the only mourners at the funeral. It was
a rule of the Home that inmates shouldnt attend funerals though there was no
objection to letting some of them sit up beside the coffin the night before.
Its for their own sakes he explained to spare their feelings. But in this
particular instance Ive given permission to an old friend of your mother to come
with us. His name is Thomas Pérez. The warden smiled. Its a rather touching little
story in its way. He and your mother had become almost inseparable. The other old
people used to tease Pérez about having a fiancée. ‘When are you going to marry
her? theyd ask. Hed turn it with a laugh. It was a standing joke in fact. So as you
can guess he feels very badly about your mothers death. I thought I couldnt
decently refuse him permission to attend the funeral. But on our medical officers
advice I forbade him to sit up beside the body last night.
For some time we sat there without speaking. Then the warden got up and went to
the window. Presently he said:
Ah theres the padre from Marengo. Hes a bit ahead of time.
He warned me that it would take us a good three quarters of an hour walking to
the church which was in the village. Then we went downstairs.
The priest was waiting just outside the mortuary door. With him were two
acolytes one of whom had a censer. The priest was stooping over him adjusting the
length of the silver chain on which it hung. When he saw us he straightened up and
said a few words to me addressing me as My son. Then he led the way into the
mortuary.
I noticed at once that four men in black were standing behind the coffin and the
screws in the lid had now been driven home. At the same moment I heard the warden
remark that the hearse had arrived and the priest starting his prayers. Then
everybody made a move. Holding a strip of black cloth the four men approached the
coffin while the priest the boys and myself filed out. A lady I hadnt seen before
was standing by the door. This is Monsieur Meursault the warden said to her. I
didnt catch her name but I gathered she was a nursing sister attached to the Home.
When I was introduced she bowed without the trace of a smile on her long gaunt
face. We stood aside from the doorway to let the coffin by; then following the
bearers down a corridor we came to the front entrance where a hearse was waiting.
Oblong glossy varnished black all over it vaguely reminded me of the pen trays in
the office.
Beside the hearse stood a quaintly dressed little  man whose duty it was I
understood to supervise the funeral as a sort of master of ceremonies. Near him
looking constrained almost bashful was old M. Pérez my mothers special friend.
He wore a soft felt hat with a pudding basin crown and a very wide brim he
  
 
whisked it off the moment the coffin emerged from the doorway trousers that
concertinad on his shoes a black tie much too small for his high white double collar.
Under a bulbous pimply nose his lips were trembling. But what caught my attention
most was his ears; pendulous scarlet ears that showed up like blobs of sealing wax
on the pallor of his cheeks and were framed in wisps of silky white hair.
The undertakers factotum shepherded us to our places with the priest in front of
the hearse and the four men in black on each side of it. The warden and myself came
next and bringing up the rear old Pérez and the nurse.
The sky was already a blaze of light and the air stoking up rapidly. I felt the first
waves of heat lapping my back and my dark suit made things worse. I couldnt
imagine why we waited so long for getting under way. Old Pérez who had put on his
hat took it off again. I had turned slightly in his direction and was looking at him
when the warden started telling me more about him. I remember his saying that old
Pérez and my mother used often to have a longish stroll together in the cool of the
evening; sometimes they went as far as the village accompanied by a nurse of
course.
I looked at the countryside at the long lines of cypresses sloping up toward the
skyline and the hills the hot red soil dappled with vivid green and here and there a
lonely house sharply outlined against the light and I could understand Mothers
feelings. Evenings in these parts must be a sort of mournful solace. Now in the full
glare of the morning sun with everything shimmering in the heat haze there was
something inhuman discouraging about this landscape.
At last we made a move. Only then I noticed that Pérez had a slight limp. The old
chap steadily lost ground as the hearse gained speed. One of the men beside it too
fell back and drew level with me. I was surprised to see how quickly the sun was
climbing up the sky and just then it struck me that for quite a while the air had been
throbbing with the hum of insects and the rustle of grass warming up. Sweat was
running down my face. As I had no hat I tried to fan myself with my handkerchief.
The undertakers man turned to me and said something that I didnt catch. At that
same time he wiped the crown of his head with a handkerchief that he held in his left
hand while with his right he tilted up his hat. I asked him what hed said. He pointed
upward.
Suns pretty bad today aint it?
Yes I said.
After a while he asked: Is it your mother were burying?
Yes I said again.
What was her age?
Well she was getting on. As a matter of fact I didnt know exactly how old she
was.
  
 
After that he kept silent. Looking back I saw Pérez limping along some fifty yards
behind. He was swinging his big felt hat at arms length trying to make the pace. I
also had a look at the warden. He was walking with carefully measured steps
economizing every gesture. Beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead but he
didnt wipe them off.
I had an impression that our little procession was moving slightly faster. Wherever
I looked I saw the same sun drenched countryside and the sky was so dazzling that I
dared not raise my eyes. Presently we struck a patch of freshly tarred road. A
shimmer of heat played over it and ones feet squelched at each step leaving bright
black gashes. In front the coachmans glossy black hat looked like a lump of the
same sticky substance poised above the hearse. It gave one a queer dreamlike
impression that blue white glare overhead and all this blackness round one: the sleek
black of the hearse the dull black of the mens clothes and the silvery black gashes
in the road. And then there were the smells smells of hot leather and horse dung
from the hearse veined with whiffs of incense smoke. What with these and the
hangover from a poor nights sleep I found my eyes and thoughts growing blurred.
I looked back again. Pérez seemed very far away now almost hidden by the heat
haze; then abruptly he disappeared altogether. After puzzling over it for a bit I
guessed that he had turned off the road into the fields. Then I noticed that there was a
bend of the road a little way ahead. Obviously Pérez who knew the district well had
taken a short cut so as to catch up with us. He rejoined us soon after we were round
the bend; then began to lose ground again. He took another short cut and met us
again farther on; in fact this happened several times during the next half hour. But
soon I lost interest in his movements; my temples were throbbing and I could hardly
drag myself along.
After that everything went with a rush; and also with such precision and matter offactness
that I remember hardly any details. Except that when we were on the
outskirts of the village the nurse said something to me. Her voice took me by
surprise; it didnt match her face at all; it was musical and slightly tremulous. What
she said was: If you go too slowly theres the risk of a heatstroke. But if you go too
fast you perspire and the cold air in the church gives you a chill. I saw her point;
either way one was in for it.
Some other memories of the funeral have stuck in my mind. The old boys face
for instance when he caught up with us for the last time just outside the village. His
eyes were streaming with tears of exhaustion or distress or both together. But
because of the wrinkles they couldnt flow down. They spread out crisscrossed and
formed a smooth gloss on the old worn face.
And I can remember the look of the church the villagers in the street the red
geraniums on the graves Pérezs fainting fit he crumpled up like a rag doll the
tawny red earth pattering on Mothers coffin the bits of white roots mixed up with it;
  
 
then more people voices the wait outside a café for the bus the rumble of the
engine and my little thrill of pleasure when we entered the first brightly lit streets of
Algiers and I pictured myself going straight to bed and sleeping twelve hours at a
stretch.
  
 
II
ON WAKING I understood why my employer had looked rather cross when I asked
for my two days off; its a Saturday today. I hadnt thought of this at the time; it only
struck me when I was getting out of bed. Obviously he had seen that it would mean
my getting four days holiday straight off and one couldnt expect him to like that.
Still for one thing it wasnt my fault if Mother was buried yesterday and not today;
and then again Id have had my Saturday and Sunday off in any case. But naturally
this didnt prevent me from seeing my employers point.
Getting up was an effort as Id been really exhausted by the previous days
experiences. While shaving I wondered how to spend the morning and decided that
a swim would do me good. So I caught the streetcar that goes down to the harbor.
It was quite like old times; a lot of young people were in the swimming pool
amongst them Marie Cardona who used to be a typist at the office. I was rather keen
on her in those days and I fancy she liked me too. But she was with us so short a
time that nothing came of it.
While I was helping her to climb on to a raft I let my hand stray over her breasts.
Then she lay flat on the raft while I trod water. After a moment she turned and
looked at me. Her hair was over her eyes and she was laughing. I clambered up on to
the raft beside her. The air was pleasantly warm and half jokingly I let my head
sink back upon her lap. She didnt seem to mind so I let it stay there. I had the sky
full in my eyes all blue and gold and I could feel Maries stomach rising and falling
gently under my head. We must have stayed a good half hour on the raft both of us
half asleep. When the sun got too hot she dived off and I followed. I caught up with
her put my arm round her waist and we swam side by side. She was still laughing.
While we were drying ourselves on the edge of the swimming pool she said: Im
browner than you. I asked her if shed come to the movies with me that evening.
She laughed again and said Yes if Id take her to the comedy everybody was
talking about the one with Fernandel in it.
When we had dressed she stared at my black tie and asked if I was in mourning. I
explained that my mother had died. When? she asked and I said Yesterday. She
made no remark though I thought she shrank away a little. I was just going to
explain to her that it wasnt my fault but I checked myself as I remembered having
said the same thing to my employer and realizing then it sounded rather foolish.
Still foolish or not somehow one cant help feeling a bit guilty I suppose.
Anyhow by evening Marie had forgotten all about it. The film was funny in parts
but some of it was downright stupid. She pressed her leg against mine while we were
in the picture house and I was fondling her breast. Toward the end of the show I
kissed her but rather clumsily. Afterward she came back with me to my place.
  
 
When I woke up Marie had gone. Shed told me her aunt expected her first thing
in the morning. I remembered it was a Sunday and that put me off; Ive never cared
for Sundays. So I turned my head and lazily sniffed the smell of brine that Maries
head had left on the pillow. I slept until ten. After that I stayed in bed until noon
smoking cigarettes. I decided not to lunch at Célestes restaurant as I usually did;
theyd be sure to pester me with questions and I dislike being questioned. So I fried
some eggs and ate them off the pan. I did without bread as there wasnt any left and
I couldnt be bothered going down to buy it.
After lunch I felt at loose ends and roamed about the little flat. It suited us well
enough when Mother was with me but now that I was by myself it was too large and
Id moved the dining table into my bedroom. That was now the only room I used; it
had all the furniture I needed: a brass bedstead a dressing table some cane chairs
whose seats had more or less caved in a wardrobe with a tarnished mirror. The rest
of the flat was never used so I didnt trouble to look after it.
A bit later for want of anything better to do I picked up an old newspaper that
was lying on the floor and read it. There was an advertisement of Kruschen Salts and
I cut it out and pasted in into an album where I keep things that amuse me in the
papers. Then I washed my hands and as a last resource went out on to the balcony.
My bedroom overlooks the main street of our district. Though it was a fine
afternoon the paving blocks were black and glistening. What few people were about
seemed in an absurd hurry. First of all there came a family going for their Sundayafternoon
walk; two small boys in sailor suits with short trousers hardly down to
their knees and looking rather uneasy in their Sunday best; then a little girl with a
big pink bow and black patent leather shoes. Behind them was their mother an
enormously fat woman in a brown silk dress and their father a dapper little man
whom I knew by sight. He had a straw hat a walking stick and a butterfly tie. Seeing
him beside his wife I understood why people said he came of a good family and had
married beneath him.
Next came a group of young fellows the local bloods with sleek oiled hair red
ties coats cut very tight at the waist braided pockets and square toed shoes. I
guessed they were going to one of the big theaters in the center of the town. That was
why they had started out so early and were hurrying to the streetcar stop laughing
and talking at the top of their voices.
After they had passed the street gradually emptied. By this time all the matinees
must have begun. Only a few shopkeepers and cats remained about. Above the
sycamores bordering the road the sky was cloudless but the light was soft. The
tobacconist on the other side of the street brought a chair out on to the pavement in
front of his door and sat astride it resting his arms on the back. The streetcars which
a few minutes before had been crowded were now almost empty. In the little café
  
 
Chez Pierrot beside the tobacconists the waiter was sweeping up the sawdust in the
empty restaurant. A typical Sunday afternoon. ...
I turned my chair round and seated myself like the tobacconist as it was more
comfortable that way. After smoking a couple of cigarettes I went back to the room
got a tablet of chocolate and returned to the window to eat it. Soon after the sky
clouded over and I thought a summer storm was coming. However the clouds
gradually lifted. All the same they had left in the street a sort of threat of rain which
made it darker. I stayed watching the sky for quite a while.
At five there was a loud clanging of streetcars. They were coming from the
stadium in our suburb where there had been a football match. Even the back
platforms were crowded and people were standing on the steps. Then another
streetcar brought back the teams. I knew they were the players by the little suitcase
each man carried. They were bawling out their team song Keep the ball rolling
boys. One of them looked up at me and shouted We licked them! I waved my
hand and called back Good work! From now on there was a steady stream of
private cars.
The sky had changed again; a reddish glow was spreading up beyond the
housetops. As dusk set in the street grew more crowded. People were returning from
their walks and I noticed the dapper little man with the fat wife amongst the passersby.
Children were whimpering and trailing wearily after their parents. After some
minutes the local picture houses disgorged their audiences. I noticed that the young
fellows coming from them were taking longer strides and gesturing more vigorously
than at ordinary times; doubtless the picture theyd been seeing was of the wild West
variety. Those who had been to the picture houses in the middle of the town came a
little later and looked more sedate though a few were still laughing. On the whole
however they seemed languid and exhausted. Some of them remained loitering in
the street under my window. A group of girls came by walking arm in arm. The
young men under my window swerved so as to brush against them and shouted
humorous remarks which made the girls turn their heads and giggle. I recognized
them as girls from my part of the town and two or three of them whom I knew
looked up and waved to me.
Just then the street lamps came on all together and they made the stars that were
beginning to glimmer in the night sky paler still. I felt my eyes getting tired what
with the lights and all the movement Id been watching in the street. There were little
pools of brightness under the lamps and now and then a streetcar passed lighting up
a girls hair or a smile or a silver bangle.
Soon after this as the streetcars became fewer and the sky showed velvety black
above the trees and lamps the street grew emptier almost imperceptibly until a time
came when there was nobody to be seen and a cat the first of the evening crossed
unhurrying the deserted street.
  
 
It struck me that Id better see about some dinner. I had been leaning so long on
the back of my chair looking down that my neck hurt when I straightened myself
up. I went down bought some bread and spaghetti did my cooking and ate my meal
standing. Id intended to smoke another cigarette at my window but the night had
turned rather chilly and I decided against it. As I was coming back after shutting the
window I glanced at the mirror and saw reflected in it a corner of my table with my
spirit lamp and some bits of bread beside it. It occurred to me that somehow Id got
through another Sunday that Mother now was buried and tomorrow Id be going
back to work as usual. Really nothing in my life had changed.
  
 
III
I HAD a busy morning in the office. My employer was in a good humor. He even
inquired if I wasnt too tired and followed it up by asking what Mothers age was. I
thought a bit then answered Round about sixty as I didnt want to make a
blunder. At which he looked relieved why I cant imagine and seemed to think
that closed the matter.
There was a pile of bills of lading waiting on my desk and I had to go through
them all. Before leaving for lunch I washed my hands. I always enjoyed doing this at
midday. In the evening it was less pleasant as the roller towel after being used by so
many people was sopping wet. I once brought this to my employers notice. It was
regrettable he agreed but to his mind a mere detail. I left the office building a
little later than usual at half past twelve with Emmanuel who works in the
Forwarding Department. Our building overlooks the sea and we paused for a
moment on the steps to look at the shipping in the. harbor. The sun was scorching
hot. Just then a big truck came up with a din of chains and backfires from the
engine and Emmanuel suggested we should try to jump it. I started to run. The truck
was well away and we had to chase it for quite a distance. What with the heat and
the noise from the engine I felt half dazed. All I was conscious of was our mad rush
along the water front amongst cranes and winches with dark hulls of ships alongside
and masts swaying in the offing. I was the first to catch up with the truck. I took a
flying jump landed safely and helped Emmanuel to scramble in beside me. We were
both of us out of breath and the bumps of the truck on the roughly laid cobbles made
things worse. Emmanuel chuckled and panted in my ear Weve made it!
By the time we reached Célestes restaurant we were dripping with sweat. Céleste
was at his usual place beside the entrance with his apron bulging on his paunch his
white mustache well to the fore. When he saw me he was sympathetic and hoped I
wasnt feeling too badly. I said No but I was extremely hungry. I ate very
quickly and had some coffee to finish up. Then I went to my place and took a short
nap as Id drunk a glass of wine too many.
When I woke I smoked a cigarette before getting off my bed. I was a bit late and
had to run for the streetcar. The office was stifling and I was kept hard at it all the
afternoon. So it came as a relief when we closed down and I was strolling slowly
along the wharves in the coolness. The sky was green and it was pleasant to be outof doors
after the stuffy office. However I went straight home as I had to put some
potatoes on to boil.
The hall was dark and when I was starting up the stairs I almost bumped into old
Salamano who lived on the same floor as I. As usual he had his dog with him. For
eight years the two had been inseparable. Salamanos spaniel is an ugly brute
  
 
afflicted with some skin disease mange I suspect; anyhow it has lost all its hair
and its body is covered with brown scabs. Perhaps through living in one small room
cooped up with his dog Salamano has come to resemble it. His towy hair has gone
very thin and he has reddish blotches on his face. And the dog has developed
something of its masters queer hunched up gait; it always has its muzzle stretched
far forward and its nose to the ground. But oddly enough though so much alike
they detest each other.
Twice a day at eleven and six the old fellow takes his dog for a walk and for
eight years that walk has never varied. You can see them in the rue de Lyon the dog
pulling his master along as hard as he can till finally the old chap misses a step and
nearly falls. Then he beats his dog and calls it names. The dog cowers and lags
behind and its his masters turn to drag him along. Presently the dog forgets starts
tugging at the leash again gets another hiding and more abuse. Then they halt on the
pavement the pair of them and glare at each other; the dog with terror and the man
with hatred in his eyes. Every time theyre out this happens. When the dog wants to
stop at a lamppost the old boy wont let him and drags him on and the wretched
spaniel leaves behind him a trail of little drops. But if he does it in the room it
means another hiding.
Its been going on like this for eight years and Céleste always says its a crying
shame and something should be done about it; but really one cant be sure. When I
met him in the hall Salamano was bawling at his dog calling him a bastard a lousy
mongrel and so forth and the dog was whining. I said Good evening but the old
fellow took no notice and went on cursing. So I thought Id ask him what the dog had
done. Again he didnt answer but went on shouting You bloody cur! and the rest
of it. I couldnt see very clearly but he seemed to be fixing something on the dogs
collar. I raised my voice a little. Without looking round he mumbled in a sort of
suppressed fury: Hes always in the way blast him! Then he started up the stairs
but the dog tried to resist and flattened itself out on the floor so he had to haul it up
on the leash step by step.
Just then another man who lives on my floor came in from the street. The general
idea hereabouts is that hes a pimp. But if you ask him what his job is he says hes a
warehouseman. One things sure: he isnt popular in our street. Still he often has a
word for me and drops in sometimes for a short talk in my room because I listen to
him. As a matter of fact I find what he says quite interesting. So really Ive no
reason for freezing him off. His name is Sintès; Raymond Sintès. Hes short and
thick set has a nose like a boxers and always dresses very sprucely. He too once
said to me referring to Salamano that it was a damned shame and asked me if I
wasnt disgusted by the way the old man served his dog. I answered: No.
We went up the stairs together Sintès and I and when I was turning in at my door
he said:
  
 
Look here! How about having some grub with me? Ive a black pudding and
some wine.
It struck me that this would save my having to cook my dinner so I said Thanks
very much.
He too has only one room and a little kitchen without a window. I saw a pinkand white
plaster angel above his bed and some photos of sporting champions and
naked girls pinned to the opposite wall. The bed hadnt been made and the room was
dirty. He began by lighting a paraffin lamp; then fumbled in his pocket and produced
a rather grimy bandage which he wrapped round his right hand. I asked him what the
trouble was. He told me hed been having a roughhouse with a fellow whod
annoyed him.
Im not one who looks for trouble he explained only Im a bit short tempered.
That fellow said to me challenging like ‘Come down off that streetcar if youre a
man. I says ‘You keep quiet I aint done nothing to you. Then he said I hadnt any
guts. Well that settled it. I got down off the streetcar and I said to him ‘You better
keep your mouth shut or Ill shut it for you. ‘Id like to see you try! says he. Then I
gave him one across the face and laid him out good and proper. After a bit I started
to help him get up but all he did was to kick at me from where he lay. So I gave him
one with my knee and a couple more swipes. He was bleeding like a pig when Id
done with him. I asked him if hed had enough and he said ‘Yes. 
Sintès was busy fixing his bandage while he talked and I was sitting on the bed.
So you see he said it wasnt my fault; he was asking for it wasnt he?
I nodded and he added:
As a matter of fact I rather want to ask your advice about something; its
connected with this business. Youve knocked about the world a bit and I daresay
you can help me. And then Ill be your pal for life; I never forget anyone who does
me a good turn.
When I made no comment he asked me if Id like us to be pals. I replied that I had
no objection and that appeared to satisfy him. He got out the black pudding cooked
it in a frying pan then laid the table putting out two bottles of wine. While he was
doing this he didnt speak.
We started dinner and then he began telling me the whole story hesitating a bit at
first.
Theres a girl behind it as usual. We slept together pretty regular. I was keeping
her as a matter of fact and she cost me a tidy sum. That fellow I knocked down is
her brother.
Noticing that I said nothing he added that he knew what the neighbors said about
him but it was a filthy lie. He had his principles like everybody else and a job in a
warehouse.
  
 
Well he said to go on with my story ... I found out one day that she was letting
me down. He gave her enough money to keep her going without extravagance
though; he paid the rent of her room and twenty francs a day for food. Three
hundred francs for rent and six hundred for her grub with a little present thrown in
now and then a pair of stockings or whatnot. Say a thousand francs a month. But
that wasnt enough for my fine lady; she was always grumbling that she couldnt
make both ends meet with what I gave her. So one day I says to her ‘Look here why
not get a job for a few hours a day? Thatd make things easier for me too. I bought
you a new dress this month I pay your rent and give you twenty francs a day. But
you go and waste your money at the café with a pack of girls. You give them coffee
and sugar. And of course the money comes out of my pocket. I treat you on the
square and thats how you pay me back. But she wouldnt hear of working though
she kept on saying she couldnt make do with what I gave her. And then one day I
found out she was doing me dirt.
He went on to explain that hed found a lottery ticket in her bag and when he
asked where the moneyd come from to buy it she wouldnt tell him. Then another
time hed found a pawn ticket for two bracelets that hed never set eyes on.
So I knew there was dirty work going on and I told her Id have nothing more to
do with her. But first I gave her a good hiding and I told her some home truths. I
said that there was only one thing interested her and that was getting into bed with
men whenever shed the chance. And I warned her straight ‘Youll be sorry one day
my girl and wish youd got me back. All the girls in the street theyre jealous of
your luck in having me to keep you. 
Hed beaten her till the blood came. Before that hed never beaten her. Well not
hard anyhow; only affectionately like. Shed howl a bit and I had to shut the
window. Then of course it ended as per usual. But this time Im done with her.
Only to my mind I aint punished her enough. See what I mean?
He explained that it was about this he wanted my advice. The lamp was smoking
and he stopped pacing up and down the room to lower the wick. I just listened
without speaking. Id had a whole bottle of wine to myself and my head was buzzing.
As Id used up my cigarettes I was smoking Raymonds. Some late streetcars passed
and the last noises of the street died off with them. Raymond went on talking. What
bored him was that he had a sort of lech on her as he called it. But he was quite
determined to teach her a lesson.
His first idea he said had been to take her to a hotel and then call in the special
police. Hed persuade them to put her on the register as a common prostitute and
that would make her wild. Then hed looked up some friends of his in the
underworld fellows who kept tarts for what they could make out of them but they
had practically nothing to suggest. Still as he pointed out that sort of thing should
have been right up their street; whats the good of being in that line if you dont
  
 
know how to treat a girl whos let you down? When he told them that they suggested
he should brand her. But that wasnt what he wanted either. It would need a lot of
thinking out. ... But first hed like to ask me something. Before he asked it though
hed like to have my opinion of the story hed been telling in a general way.
I said I hadnt any but Id found it interesting.
Did I think she really had done him dirt?
I had to admit it looked like that. Then he asked me if I didnt think she should be
punished and what Id do if I were in his shoes. I told him one could never be quite
sure how to act in such cases but I quite understood his wanting her to suffer for it.
I drank some more wine while Raymond lit another cigarette and began
explaining what he proposed to do. He wanted to write her a letter a real stinker
thatll get her on the raw and at the same time make her repent of what shed done.
Then when she came back hed go to bed with her and just when she was properly
primed up hed spit in her face and throw her out of the room. I agreed it wasnt a
bad plan; it would punish her all right.
But Raymond told me he didnt feel up to writing the kind of letter that was
needed and that was where I could help. When I didnt say anything he asked me if
Id mind doing it right away and I said No Id have a shot at it.
He drank off a glass of wine and stood up. Then he pushed aside the plates and the
bit of cold pudding that was left to make room on the table. After carefully wiping
the oilcloth he got a sheet of squared paper from the drawer of his bedside table;
after that an envelope a small red wooden penholder and a square inkpot with
purple ink in it. The moment he mentioned the girls name I knew she was a Moor.
I wrote the letter. I didnt take much trouble over it but I wanted to satisfy
Raymond as Id no reason not to satisfy him. Then I read out what Id written.
Puffing at his cigarette he listened nodding now and then. Read it again please
he said. He seemed delighted. Thats the stuff he chuckled. I could tell you was a
brainy sort old boy and you know whats what.
At first I hardly noticed that old boy. It came back to me when he slapped me on
the shoulder and said So now were pals aint we? I kept silence and he said it
again. I didnt care one way or the other but as he seemed so set on it I nodded and
said Yes.
He put the letter into the envelope and we finished off the wine. Then both of us
smoked for some minutes without speaking. The street was quite quiet except when
now and again a car passed. Finally I remarked that it was getting late and
Raymond agreed. Times gone mighty fast this evening he added and in a way
that was true. I wanted to be in bed only it was such an effort making a move. I must
have looked tired for Raymond said to me You mustnt let things get you down.
At first I didnt catch his meaning. Then he explained that he had heard of my
  
 
mothers death; anyhow he said that was something bound to happen one day or
another. I appreciated that and told him so.
When I rose Raymond shook hands very warmly remarking that men always
understood each other. After closing the door behind me I lingered for some
moments on the landing. The whole building was as quiet as the grave a dank dark
smell rising from the well hole of the stairs. I could hear nothing but the blood
throbbing in my ears and for a while I stood still listening to it. Then the dog began
to moan in old Salamanos room and through the sleep bound house the little
plaintive sound rose slowly like a flower growing out of the silence and the
darkness.
  
 
IV
I HAD a busy time in the office throughout the week. Raymond dropped in once to
tell me hed sent off the letter. I went to the pictures twice with Emmanuel who
doesnt always understand whats happening on the screen and asks me to explain it.
Yesterday was Saturday and Marie came as wed arranged. She had a very pretty
dress with red and white stripes and leather sandals and I couldnt take my eyes off
her. One could see the outline of her firm little breasts and her sun tanned face was
like a velvety brown flower. We took the bus and went to a beach I know some
miles out of Algiers. Its just a strip of sand between two rocky spurs with a line of
rushes at the back along the tide line. At four oclock the sun wasnt too hot but the
water was pleasantly tepid and small languid ripples were creeping up the sand.
Marie taught me a new game. The idea was while one swam to suck in the spray
off the waves and when ones mouth was full of foam to lie on ones back and spout
it out against the sky. It made a sort of frothy haze that melted into the air or fell back
in a warm shower on ones cheeks. But very soon my mouth was smarting with all
the salt Id drawn in; then Marie came up and hugged me in the water and pressed
her mouth to mine. Her tongue cooled my lips and we let the waves roll us about for
a minute or two before swimming back to the beach.
When we had finished dressing Marie looked hard at me. Her eyes were
sparkling. I kissed her; after that neither of us spoke for quite a while. I pressed her to
my side as we scrambled up the foreshore. Both of us were in a hurry to catch the
bus get back to my place and tumble on to the bed. Id left my window open and it
was pleasant to feel the cool night air flowing over our sunburned bodies.
Marie said she was free next morning so I proposed she should have luncheon
with me. She agreed and I went down to buy some meat. On my way back I heard a
womans voice in Raymonds room. A little later old Salamano started grumbling at
his dog and presently there was a sound of boots and paws on the wooden stairs;
then Filthy brute! Get on you cur! and the two of them went out into the street. I
told Marie about the old mans habits and it made her laugh. She was wearing one of
my pajama suits and had the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her
again. A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no
meaning really; but I supposed I didnt. She looked sad for a bit but when we were
getting our lunch ready she brightened up and started laughing and when she laughs
I always want to kiss her. It was just then that the row started in Raymonds room.
First we heard a woman saying something in a high pitched voice; then Raymond
bawling at her You let me down you bitch! Ill learn you to let me down! There
came some thuds then a piercing scream it made ones blood run cold and in a
moment there was a crowd of people on the landing. Marie and I went out to see. The
  
 
woman was still screaming and Raymond still knocking her about. Marie said
wasnt it horrible! I didnt answer anything. Then she asked me to go and fetch a
policeman but I told her I didnt like policemen. However one turned up presently;
the lodger on the second floor a plumber came up with him. When he banged on
the door the noise stopped inside the room. He knocked again and after a moment
the woman started crying and Raymond opened the door. He had a cigarette
dangling from his underlip and a rather sickly smile.
Your name? Raymond gave his name. Take that cigarette out of your mouth
when youre talking to me the policeman said gruffly. Raymond hesitated glanced
at me and kept the cigarette in his mouth. The policeman promptly swung his arm
and gave him a good hard smack on the left cheek. The cigarette shot from his lips
and dropped a yard away. Raymond made a wry face but said nothing for a moment.
Then in a humble tone he asked if he mightnt pick up his cigarette.
The officer said Yes and added: But dont you forget next time that we dont
stand for any nonsense not from guys like you.
Meanwhile the girl went on sobbing and repeating: He hit me the coward. Hes a
pimp.
Excuse me officer Raymond put in but is that in order calling a man a pimp
in the presence of witnesses?
The policeman told him to shut his trap.
Raymond then turned to the girl. Dont you worry my pet. Well meet again.
Thats enough the policeman said and told the girl to go away. Raymond was
to stay in his room till summoned to the police station. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself the policeman added getting so tight you cant stand steady. Why youre
shaking all over!
Im not tight Raymond explained. Only when I see you standing there and
looking at me I cant help trembling. Thats only natural.
Then he closed his door and we all went away. Marie and I finished getting our
lunch ready. But she hadnt any appetite and I ate nearly all. She left at one and then
I had a nap.
Toward three there was a knock at my door and Raymond came in. He sat down
on the edge of my bed and for a minute or two said nothing. I asked him how it had
gone off. He said it had all gone quite smoothly at first as per program; only then
shed slapped his face and hed seen red and started thrashing her. As for what
happened after that he neednt tell me as I was there.
Well I said you taught her a lesson all right and thats what you wanted isnt
it?
He agreed and pointed out that whatever the police did that wouldnt change the
fact shed had her punishment. As for the police he knew exactly how to handle
  
 
them. But hed like to know if Id expected him to return the blow when the
policeman hit him.
I told him I hadnt expected anything whatsoever and anyhow I had no use for
the police. Raymond seemed pleased and asked if Id like to come out for a stroll
with him. I got up from the bed and started brushing my hair. Then Raymond said
that what he really wanted was for me to act as his witness. I told him I had no
objection; only I didnt know what he expected me to say.
Its quite simple he replied. Youve only got to tell them that the girl had let
me down.
So I agreed to be his witness.
We went out together and Raymond stood me a brandy in a café. Then we had a
game of billiards; it was a close game and I lost by only a few points. After that he
proposed going to a brothel but I refused; I didnt feel like it. As we were walking
slowly back he told me how pleased he was at having paid out his mistress so
satisfactorily. He made himself extremely amiable to me and I quite enjoyed our
walk.
When we were nearly home I saw old Salamano on the doorstep; he seemed very
excited. I noticed that his dog wasnt with him. He was turning like a teetotum
looking in all directions and sometimes peering into the darkness of the hall with his
little bloodshot eyes. Then hed mutter something to himself and start gazing up and
down the street again.
Raymond asked him what was wrong but he didnt answer at once. Then I heard
him grunt The bastard! The filthy cur! When I asked him where his dog was he
scowled at me and snapped out Gone! A moment later all of a sudden he
launched out into it.
Id taken him to the Parade Ground as usual. There was a fair on and you could
hardly move for the crowd. I stopped at one of the booths to look at the Handcuff
King. When I turned to go the dog was gone. Id been meaning to get a smaller
collar but I never thought the brute could slip it and get away like that.
Raymond assured him the dog would find its way home and told him stories of
dogs that had traveled miles and miles to get back to their masters. But this seemed
to make the old fellow even more worried than before.
Dont you understand theyll do away with him; the police I mean. Its not
likely anyone will take him in and look after him; with all those scabs he puts
everybody off.
I told him that there was a pound at the police station where stray dogs are taken.
His dog was certain to be there and he could get it back on payment of a small
charge. He asked me how much the charge was but there I couldnt help him. Then
he flew into a rage again.
  
 
Is it likely Id give money for a mutt like that? No damned fear! They can kill
him for all I care. And he went on calling his dog the usual names.
Raymond gave a laugh and turned into the hall. I followed him upstairs and we
parted on the landing. A minute or two later I heard Salamanos footsteps and a
knock on my door.
When I opened it he halted for a moment in the doorway.
Excuse me ... I hope Im not disturbing you.
I asked him in but he shook his head. He was staring at his toe caps and the
gnarled old hands were trembling. Without meeting my eyes he started talking.
They wont really take him from me will they Monsieur Meursault? Surely they
wouldnt do a thing like that. If they do I dont know what will become of me.
I told him that so far as I knew they kept stray dogs in the pound for three days
waiting for their owners to call for them. After that they disposed of the dogs as they
thought fit.
He stared at me in silence for a moment then said Good evening. After that I
heard him pacing up and down his room for quite a while. Then his bed creaked.
Through the wall there came to me a little wheezing sound and I guessed that he was
weeping. For some reason I dont know what I began thinking of Mother. But I had
to get up early next day; so as I wasnt feeling hungry I did without supper and
went straight to bed.
  
 
V
RAYMOND rang me up at the office. He said that a friend of his to whom hed
spoken about me invited me to spend next Sunday at his little seaside bungalow
just outside Algiers. I told him Id have been delighted; only I had promised to spend
Sunday with a girl. Raymond promptly replied that she could come too. In fact his
friends wife would be very pleased not to be the only woman in a party of men.
Id have liked to hang up at once as my employer doesnt approve of my using the
office phone for private calls. But Raymond asked me to hold on; he had something
else to tell me and that was why hed rung me up though he could have waited till
the evening to pass on the invitation.
Its like this he said. Ive been shadowed all the morning by some Arabs. One
of thems the brother of that girl I had the row with. If you see him hanging round the
house when you come back pass me the word.
I promised to do so.
Just then my employer sent for me. For a moment I felt uneasy as I expected he
was going to tell me to stick to my work and not waste time chattering with friends
over the phone. However it was nothing of the kind. He wanted to discuss a project
he had in view though so far hed come to no decision. It was to open a branch at
Paris so as to be able to deal with the big companies on the spot without postal
delays and he wanted to know if Id like a post there.
Youre a young man he said and Im pretty sure youd enjoy living in Paris.
And of course you could travel about France for some months in the year.
I told him I was quite prepared to go; but really I didnt care much one way or the
other.
He then asked if a change of life as he called it didnt appeal to me and I
answered that one never changed his way of life; one life was as good as another and
my present one suited me quite well.
At this he looked rather hurt and told me that I always shilly shallied and that I
lacked ambition a grave defect to his mind when one was in business.
I returned to my work. Id have preferred not to vex him but I saw no reason for
changing my life. By and large it wasnt an unpleasant one. As a student Id had
plenty of ambition of the kind he meant. But when I had to drop my studies I very
soon realized all that was pretty futile.
Marie came that evening and asked me if Id marry her. I said I didnt mind; if she
was keen on it wed get married.
Then she asked me again if I loved her. I replied much as before that her question
meant nothing or next to nothing but I supposed I didnt.
If thats how you feel she said why marry me?
  
 
I explained that it had no importance really but if it would give her pleasure we
could get married right away. I pointed out that anyhow the suggestion came from
her; as for me Id merely said Yes.
Then she remarked that marriage was a serious matter.
To which I answered: No.
She kept silent after that staring at me in a curious way. Then she asked:
Suppose another girl had asked you to marry her I mean a girl you liked in the
same way as you like me would you have said ‘Yes to her too?
Naturally.
Then she said she wondered if she really loved me or not. I of course couldnt
enlighten her as to that. And after another silence she murmured something about
my being a queer fellow. And I daresay thats why I love you she added. But
maybe thats why one day Ill come to hate you.
To which I had nothing to say so I said nothing.
She thought for a bit then started smiling and taking my arm repeated that she
was in earnest; she really wanted to marry me.
All right I answered. Well get married whenever you like. I then mentioned
the proposal made by my employer and Marie said shed love to go to Paris.
When I told her Id lived in Paris for a while she asked me what it was like.
A dingy sort of town to my mind. Masses of pigeons and dark courtyards. And
the people have washed out white faces.
Then we went for a walk all the way across the town by the main streets. The
women were good lookers and I asked Marie if she too noticed this. She said
Yes and that she saw what I meant. After that we said nothing for some minutes.
However as I didnt want her to leave me I suggested we should dine together at
Célestes. Shed have loved to dine with me she said only she was booked up for
the evening. We were near my place and I said Au revoir then.
She looked me in the eyes.
Dont you want to know what Im doing this evening?
I did want to know but I hadnt thought of asking her and I guessed she was
making a grievance of it. I must have looked embarrassed for suddenly she started
laughing and bent toward me pouting her lips for a kiss.
I went by myself to Célestes. When I had just started my dinner an odd looking
little woman came in and asked if she might sit at my table. Of course she might. She
had a chubby face like a ripe apple bright eyes and moved in a curiously jerky way
as if she were on wires. After taking off her closefitting jacket she sat down and
started studying the bill of fare with a sort of rapt attention. Then she called Céleste
and gave her order very fast but quite distinctly; one didnt lose a word. While
waiting for the hors doeuvre she opened her bag took out a slip of paper and a
pencil and added up the bill in advance. Diving into her bag again she produced a
  
 
purse and took from it the exact sum plus a small tip and placed it on the cloth in
front of her.
Just then the waiter brought the hors doeuvre which she proceeded to wolf down
voraciously. While waiting for the next course she produced another pencil this
time a blue one from her bag and the radio magazine for the coming week and
started making ticks against almost all the items of the daily programs. There were a
dozen pages in the magazine and she continued studying them closely throughout
the meal. When Id finished mine she was still ticking off items with the same
meticulous attention. Then she rose put on her jacket again with the same abrupt
robot like gestures and walked briskly out of the restaurant.
Having nothing better to do I followed her for a short distance. Keeping on the
curb of the pavement she walked straight ahead never swerving or looking back
and it was extraordinary how fast she covered the ground considering her smallness.
In fact the pace was too much for me and I soon lost sight of her and turned back
homeward. For a moment the little robot (as I thought of her) had much impressed
me but I soon forgot about her.
As I was turning in at my door I ran into old Salamano. I asked him into my room
and he informed me that his dog was definitely lost. Hed been to the pound to
inquire but it wasnt there and the staff told him it had probably been run over.
When he asked them whether it was any use inquiring about it at the police station
they said the police had more important things to attend to than keeping records of
stray dogs run over in the streets. I suggested he should get another dog but
reasonably enough he pointed out that hed become used to this one and it wouldnt
be the same thing.
I was seated on my bed with my legs up and Salamano on a chair beside the
table facing me his hands spread on his knees. He had kept on his battered felt hat
and was mumbling away behind his draggled yellowish mustache. I found him rather
boring but I had nothing to do and didnt feel sleepy. So to keep the conversation
going I asked some questions about his dog how long he had had it and so forth.
He told me he had got it soon after his wifes death. Hed married rather late in life.
When a young man he wanted to go on the stage; during his military service hed
often played in the regimental theatricals and acted rather well so everybody said.
However finally he had taken a job in the railway and he didnt regret it as now he
had a small pension. He and his wife had never hit it off very well but theyd got
used to each other and when she died he felt lonely. One of his mates on the railway
whose bitch had just had pups had offered him one and he had taken it as a
companion. Hed had to feed it from the bottle at first. But as a dogs life is shorter
than a mans theyd grown old together so to speak.
He was a cantankerous brute Salamano said. Now and then we had some
proper set tos he and I. But he was a good mutt all the same.
  
 
I said he looked well bred and that evidently pleased the old man.
Ah but you should have seen him before his illness! he said. He had a
wonderful coat; in fact that was his best point really. I tried hard to cure him; every
mortal night after he got that skin disease I rubbed an ointment in. But his real
trouble was old age and theres no curing that.
Just then I yawned and the old man said hed better make a move. I told him he
could stay and that I was sorry about what had happened to his dog. He thanked me
and mentioned that my mother had been very fond of his dog. He referred to her as
your poor mother and was afraid I must be feeling her death terribly. When I said
nothing he added hastily and with a rather embarrassed air that some of the people in
the street said nasty things about me because Id sent my mother to the Home. But
he of course knew better; he knew how devoted to my mother I had always been.
I answered why I still dont know that it surprised me to learn Id produced
such a bad impression. As I couldnt afford to keep her here it seemed the obvious
thing to do to send her to a home. In any case I added for years shed never had
a word to say to me and I could see she was moping with no one to talk to.
Yes he said and at a home one makes friends anyhow.
He got up saying it was high time for him to be in bed and added that life was
going to be a bit of a problem for him under the new conditions. For the first time
since Id known him he held out his hand to me rather shyly I thought and I
could feel the scales on his skin. Just as he was going out of the door he turned and
smiling a little said:
Lets hope the dogs wont bark again tonight. I always think its mine I hear. ...
  
 
VI
IT was an effort waking up that Sunday morning; Marie had to jog my shoulders and
shout my name. As we wanted to get into the water early we didnt trouble about
breakfast. My head was aching slightly and my first cigarette had a bitter taste. Marie
told me I looked like a mourner at a funeral and I certainly did feel very limp. She
was wearing a white dress and had her hair loose. I told her she looked quite
ravishing like that and she laughed happily.
On our way out we banged on Raymonds door and he shouted that hed be with
us in a jiffy. We went down to the street and because of my being rather under the
weather and our having kept the blind down in my room the glare of the morning
sun hit me in the eyes like a clenched fist.
Marie however was almost dancing with delight and kept repeating What a
heavenly day! After a few minutes I was feeling better and noticed that I was
hungry. I mentioned this to Marie but she paid no attention. She was carrying an
oilcloth bag in which she had stowed our bathing kit and a towel. Presently we heard
Raymond shutting his door. He was wearing blue trousers a short sleeved white
shirt and a straw hat. I noticed that his forearms were rather hairy but the skin was
very white beneath. The straw hat made Marie giggle. Personally I was rather put off
by his getup. He seemed in high spirits and was whistling as he came down the stairs.
He greeted me with Hello old boy! and addressed Marie as Mademoiselle.
On the previous evening we had visited the police station where I gave evidence
for Raymond about the girls having been false to him. So they let him off with a
warning. They didnt check my statement.
After some talk on the doorstep we decided to take the bus. The beach was within
easy walking distance but the sooner we got there the better. Just as we were starting
for the bus stop Raymond plucked my sleeve and told me to look across the street. I
saw some Arabs lounging against the tobacconists window. They were staring at us
silently in the special way these people have as if we were blocks of stone or dead
trees. Raymond whispered that the second Arab from the left was his man and I
thought he looked rather worried However he assured me that all that was ancient
history. Marie who hadnt followed his remarks asked What is it?
I explained that those Arabs across the way had a grudge against Raymond. She
insisted on our going at once. Then Raymond laughed and squared his shoulders.
The young lady was quite right he said. There was no point in hanging about here.
Halfway to the bus stop he glanced back over his shoulder and said the Arabs
werent following. I too looked back. They were exactly as before gazing in the
same vague way at the spot where we had been.
  
 
When we were in the bus Raymond who now seemed quite at ease kept making
jokes to amuse Marie. I could see he was attracted by her but she had hardly a word
for him. Now and again she would catch my eye and smile.
We alighted just outside Algiers. The beach is not far from the bus stop; one has
only to cross a patch of highland a sort of plateau which overlooks the sea and
shelves down steeply to the sands. The ground here was covered with yellowish
pebbles and wild lilies that showed snow white against the blue of the sky which
had already the hard metallic glint it gets on very hot days. Marie amused herself
swishing her bag against the flowers and sending the petals showering in all
directions. Then we walked between two rows of little houses with wooden balconies
and green or white palings. Some of them were half hidden in clumps of tamarisks;
others rose naked from the stony plateau. Before we came to the end of it the sea
was in full view; it lay smooth as a mirror and in the distance a big headland jutted
out over its black reflection. Through the still air came the faint buzz of a motor
engine and we saw a fishing boat very far out gliding almost imperceptibly across
the dazzling smoothness.
Marie picked some rock irises. Going down the steep path leading to the sea we
saw some bathers already on the sands.
Raymonds friend owned a small wooden bungalow at the near end of the beach.
Its back rested against the cliffside while the front stood on piles which the water
was already lapping. Raymond introduced us to his friend whose name was Masson.
He was tall broad shouldered and thick set; his wife was a plump cheerful little
woman who spoke with a Paris accent.
Masson promptly told us to make ourselves at home. He had gone out fishing he
said first thing in the morning and there would be fried fish for lunch. I
congratulated him on his little bungalow and he said he always spent his week ends
and holidays here. With the missus needless to say he added. I glanced at her and
noticed that she and Marie seemed to be getting on well together; laughing and
chattering away. For the first time perhaps I seriously considered the possibility of
my marrying her.
Masson wanted to have a swim at once but his wife and Raymond were
disinclined to move. So only the three of us Marie Masson and myself went down
to the beach. Marie promptly plunged in but Masson and I waited for a bit. He was
rather slow of speech and had I noticed a habit of saying and whats more
between his phrases even when the second added nothing really to the first. Talking
of Marie he said: Shes an awfully pretty girl and whats more charming.
But I soon ceased paying attention to this trick of his; I was basking in the
sunlight which I noticed was making me feel much better. The sand was beginning
to stoke up underfoot and though I was eager for a dip I postponed it for a minute or
two more. At last I said to Masson: Shall we go in now? and plunged. Masson
  
 
walked in gingerly and only began to swim when he was out of his depth. He swam
hand over hand and made slow headway so I left him behind and caught up with
Marie. The water was cold and I felt all the better for it. We swam a long way out
Marie and I side by side and it was pleasant feeling how our movements matched
hers and mine and how we were both in the same mood enjoying every moment.
Once we were out in the open we lay on our backs and as I gazed up at the sky I
could feel the sun drawing up the film of salt water on my lips and cheeks. We saw
Masson swim back to the beach and slump down on the sand under the sun. In the
distance he looked enormous like a stranded whale. Then Marie proposed that we
should swim tandem. She went ahead and I put my arms round her waist from
behind and while she drew me forward with her arm strokes I kicked out behind to
help us on.
That sound of little splashes had been in my ears for so long that I began to feel Id
had enough of it. So I let go of Marie and swam back at an easy pace taking long
deep breaths. When I made the beach I stretched myself belly downward beside
Masson resting my face on the sand. I told him it was fine here and he agreed.
Presently Marie came back. I raised my head to watch her approach. She was
glistening with brine and holding her hair back. Then she lay down beside me and
what with the combined warmth of our bodies and the sun I felt myself dropping off
to sleep.
After a while Marie tugged my arm. and said Masson had gone to his place; it
must be nearly lunchtime. I rose at once as I was feeling hungry but Marie told me I
hadnt kissed her once since the early morning. That was so though Id wanted to
several times. Lets go into the water again she said and we ran into the sea and
lay flat amongst the ripples for a moment. Then we swam a few strokes and when
we were almost out of our depth she flung her arms round me and hugged me. I felt
her legs twining round mine and my senses tingled.
When we got back Masson was on the steps of his bungalow shouting to us to
come. I told him I was ravenously hungry and he promptly turned to his wife and
said hed taken quite a fancy to me. The bread was excellent and I had my full share
of the fish. Then came some steak and potato chips. None of us spoke while eating.
Masson drank a lot of wine and kept refilling my glass the moment it was empty. By
the time coffee was handed round I was feeling slightly muzzy and I started smoking
one cigarette after another. Masson Raymond and I discussed a plan of spending the
whole of August on the beach together sharing expenses.
Suddenly Marie exclaimed: I say! Do you know the time? Its only half past
eleven!
We were all surprised at that and Masson remarked that wed had a very early
lunch but really lunch was a movable feast you had it when you felt like it.
This set Marie laughing I dont know why. I suspect shed drunk a bit too much.
  
 
Then Masson asked if Id like to come with him for a stroll on the beach.
My wife always has a nap after lunch he said. Personally I find it doesnt agree
with me; what I need is a short walk. Im always telling her its much better for the
health. But of course shes entitled to her own opinion.
Marie proposed to stay and help with the washing up. Mme Masson smiled and
said that in that case the first thing was to get the men out of the way. So we went
out together the three of us.
The light was almost vertical and the glare from the water seared ones eyes. The
beach was quite deserted now. One could hear a faint tinkle of knives and forks and
crockery in the shacks and bungalows lining the foreshore. Heat was welling up from
the rocks and one could hardly breathe.
At first Raymond and Masson talked of things and people I didnt know. I
gathered that theyd been acquainted for some time and had even lived together for a
while. We went down to the waters edge and walked along it; now and then a longer
wave wet our canvas shoes. I wasnt thinking of anything as all that sunlight beating
down on my bare head made me feel half asleep.
Just then Raymond said something to Masson that I didnt quite catch. But at the
same moment I noticed two Arabs in blue dungarees a long way down the beach
coming in our direction. I gave Raymond a look and he nodded saying Thats
him. We walked steadily on. Masson wondered how theyd managed to track us
here. My impression was that they had seen us taking the bus and noticed Maries
oilcloth bathing bag; but I didnt say anything.
Though the Arabs walked quite slowly they were much nearer already. We didnt
change our pace but Raymond said:
Listen! If theres a roughhouse you Masson take on the second one. Ill tackle
the fellow whos after me. And you Meursault stand by to help if another one
comes up and lay him out.
I said Right and Masson put his hands in his pockets.
The sand was as hot as fire and I could have sworn it was glowing red. The
distance between us and the Arabs was steadily decreasing. When we were only a
few steps away the Arabs halted. Masson and I slowed down while Raymond went
straight up to his man. I couldnt hear what he said but I saw the native lowering his
head as if to butt him in the chest. Raymond lashed out promptly and shouted to
Masson to come. Masson went up to the man he had been marking and struck him
twice with all his might. The fellow fell flat into the water and stayed there some
seconds with bubbles coming up to the surface round his head. Meanwhile Raymond
had been slogging the other man whose face was streaming with blood. He glanced
at me over his shoulder and shouted:
Just you watch! I aint finished with him yet!
Look out! I cried. Hes got a knife.
  
 
I spoke too late. The man had gashed Raymonds arm and his mouth as well.
Masson sprang forward. The other Arab got up from the water and placed himself
behind the fellow with the knife. We didnt dare to move. The two natives backed
away slowly keeping us at bay with the knife and never taking their eyes off us.
When they were at a safe distance they swung round and took to their heels. We
stood stock still with the sunlight beating down on us. Blood was dripping from
Raymonds wounded arm which he was squeezing hard above the elbow.
Masson remarked that there was a doctor who always spent his Sundays here and
Raymond said: Good. Lets go to him at once. He could hardly get the words out
as the blood from his other wound made bubbles in his mouth.
We each gave him an arm and helped him back to the bungalow. Once we were
there he told us the wounds werent so very deep and he could walk to where the
doctor was. Marie had gone quite pale and Mme Masson was in tears.
Masson and Raymond went off to the doctors while I was left behind at the
bungalow to explain matters to the women. I didnt much relish the task and soon
dried up and started smoking staring at the sea.
Raymond came back at about half past one accompanied by Masson. He had his
arm bandaged and a strip of sticking plaster on the corner of his mouth. The doctor
had assured him it was nothing serious but he was looking very glum. Masson tried
to make him laugh but without success.
Presently Raymond said he was going for a stroll on the beach. I asked him where
he proposed to go and he mumbled something about wanting to take the air. We 
Masson and I then said wed go with him but he flew into a rage and told us to
mind our own business. Masson said we mustnt insist seeing the state he was in.
However when he went out I followed him.
It was like a furnace outside with the sunlight splintering into flakes of fire on the
sand and sea. We walked for quite a while and I had an idea that Raymond had a
definite idea where he was going; but probably I was mistaken about this.
At the end of the beach we came to a small stream that had cut a channel in the
sand after coming out from behind a biggish rock. There we found our two Arabs
again lying on the sand in their blue dungarees. They looked harmless enough as if
they didnt bear any malice and neither made any move when we approached. The
man who had slashed Raymond stared at him without speaking. The other man was
blowing down a little reed and extracting from it three notes of the scale which he
played over and over again while he watched us from the corner of an eye.
For a while nobody moved; it was all sunlight and silence except for the tinkle of
the stream and those three little lonely sounds. Then Raymond put his hand to his
revolver pocket but the Arabs still didnt move. I noticed the man playing on the
reed had his big toes splayed out almost at right angles to his feet.
Still keeping his eyes on his man Raymond said to me: Shall I plug him one?
  
 
I thought quickly. If I told him not to considering the mood he was in he might
very well fly into a temper and use his gun. So I said the first thing that came into my
head.
He hasnt spoken to you yet. It would be a lowdown trick to shoot him like that
in cold blood.
Again for some moments one heard nothing but the tinkle of the stream and the
flute notes weaving through the hot still air.
Well Raymond said at last if thats how you feel Id better say something
insulting and if he answers back Ill loose off.
Right I said. Only if he doesnt get out his knife youve no business to fire.
Raymond was beginning to fidget. The Arab with the reed went on playing and
both of them watched all our movements.
Listen I said to Raymond. You take on the fellow on the right and give me
your revolver. If the other one starts making trouble or gets out his knife Ill shoot.
The sun glinted on Raymonds revolver as he handed it to me. But nobody made a
move yet; it was just as if everything had closed in on us so that we couldnt stir. We
could only watch each other never lowering our eyes; the whole world seemed to
have come to a standstill on this little strip of sand between the sunlight and the sea
the twofold silence of the reed and stream. And just then it crossed my mind that one
might fire or not fire and it would come to absolutely the same thing.
Then all of a sudden the Arabs vanished; theyd slipped like lizards under cover
of the rock. So Raymond and I turned and walked back. He seemed happier and
began talking about the bus to catch for our return.
When we reached the bungalow Raymond promptly went up the wooden steps
but I halted on the bottom one. The light seemed thudding in my head and I couldnt
face the effort needed to go up the steps and make myself amiable to the women. But
the heat was so great that it was just as bad staying where I was under that flood of
blinding light falling from the sky. To stay or to make a move it came to much the
same. After a moment I returned to the beach and started walking.
There was the same red glare as far as eye could reach and small waves were
lapping the hot sand in little flurried gasps. As I slowly walked toward the boulders
at the end of the beach I could feel my temples swelling under the impact of the light.
It pressed itself on me trying to check my progress. And each time I felt a hot blast
strike my forehead I gritted my teeth I clenched my fists in my trouser pockets and
keyed up every nerve to fend off the sun and the dark befuddlement it was pouring
into me. Whenever a blade of vivid light shot upward from a bit of shell or broken
glass lying on the sand my jaws set hard. I wasnt going to be beaten and I walked
steadily on.
The small black hump of rock came into view far down the beach. It was rimmed
by a dazzling sheen of light and feathery spray but I was thinking of the cold clear
  
 
stream behind it and longing to hear again the tinkle of running water. Anything to
be rid of the glare the sight of women in tears the strain and effort and to retrieve
the pool of shadow by the rock and its cool silence!
But when I came nearer I saw that Raymonds Arab had returned. He was by
himself this time lying on his back his hands behind his head his face shaded by the
rock while the sun beat on the rest of his body. One could see his dungarees steaming
in the heat. I was rather taken aback; my impression had been that the incident was
closed and I hadnt given a thought to it on my way here.
On seeing me the Arab raised himself a little and his hand went to his pocket.
Naturally I gripped Raymonds revolver in the pocket of my coat. Then the Arab let
himself sink back again but without taking his hand from his pocket. I was some
distance off at least ten yards and most of the time I saw him as a blurred dark form
wobbling in the heat haze. Sometimes however I had glimpses of his eyes glowing
between the half closed lids. The sound of the waves was even lazier feebler than at
noon. But the light hadnt changed; it was pounding as fiercely as ever on the long
stretch of sand that ended at the rock. For two hours the sun seemed to have made no
progress; becalmed in a sea of molten steel. Far out on the horizon a steamer was
passing; I could just make out from the corner of an eye the small black moving
patch while I kept my gaze fixed on the Arab.
It struck me that all I had to do was to turn walk away and think no more about it.
But the whole beach pulsing with heat was pressing on my back. I took some steps
toward the stream. The Arab didnt move. After all there was still some distance
between us. Perhaps because of the shadow on his face he seemed to be grinning at
me.
I waited. The heat was beginning to scorch my cheeks; beads of sweat were
gathering in my eyebrows. It was just the same sort of heat as at my mothers
funeral and I had the same disagreeable sensations especially in my forehead
where all the veins seemed to be bursting through the skin. I couldnt stand it any
longer and took another step forward. I knew it was a fool thing to do; I wouldnt get
out of the sun by moving on a yard or so. But I took that step just one step forward.
And then the Arab drew his knife and held it up toward me athwart the sunlight.
A shaft of light shot upward from the steel and I felt as if a long thin blade
transfixed my forehead. At the same moment all the sweat that had accumulated in
my eyebrows splashed down on my eyelids covering them with a warm film of
moisture. Beneath a veil of brine and tears my eyes were blinded; I was conscious
only of the cymbals of the sun clashing on my skull and less distinctly of the keen
blade of light flashing up from the knife scarring my eyelashes and gouging into my
eyeballs.
Then everything began to reel before my eyes a fiery gust came from the sea
while the sky cracked in two from end to end and a great sheet of flame poured
  
 
down through the rift. Every nerve in my body was a steel spring and my grip closed
on the revolver. The trigger gave and the smooth underbelly of the butt jogged my
palm. And so with that crisp whipcrack sound it all began. I shook off my sweat
and the clinging veil of light. I knew Id shattered the balance of the day the
spacious calm of this beach on which I had been happy. But I fired four shots more
into the inert body on which they left no visible trace. And each successive shot was
another loud fateful rap on the door of my undoing.
  
 
Part Two
I
I was questioned several times immediately after my arrest. But they were all formal
examinations as to my identity and so forth. At the first of these which took place at
the police station nobody seemed to have much interest in the case. However when
I was brought before the examining magistrate a week later I noticed that he eyed
me with distinct curiosity. Like the others he began by asking my name address
and occupation the date and place of my birth. Then he inquired if I had chosen a
lawyer to defend me. I answered No I hadnt thought about it and asked him if it
was really necessary for me to have one.
Why do you ask that? he said. I replied that I regarded my case as very simple.
He smiled. Well it may seem so to you. But weve got to abide by the law and if
you dont engage a lawyer the court will have to appoint one for you.
It struck me as an excellent arrangement that the authorities should see to details
of this kind and I told him so. He nodded and agreed that the Code was all that
could be desired.
At first I didnt take him quite seriously. The room in which he interviewed me
was much like an ordinary sitting room with curtained windows and a single lamp
standing on the desk. Its light fell on the armchair in which hed had me sit while his
own face stayed in shadow.
I had read descriptions of such scenes in books and at first it all seemed like a
game. After our conversation however I had a good look at him. He was a tall man
with clean cut features deep set blue eyes a big gray mustache and abundant
almost snow white hair and he gave me the impression of being highly intelligent
and on the whole likable enough. There was only one thing that put one off: his
mouth had now and then a rather ugly twist; but it seemed to be only a sort of
nervous tic. When leaving I very nearly held out my hand and said Good by; just
in time I remembered that Id killed a man.
Next day a lawyer came to my cell; a small plump youngish man with sleek
black hair. In spite of the heat I was in my shirt sleeves he was wearing a dark
suit stiff collar and a rather showy tie with broad black and white stripes. After
depositing his brief case on my bed he introduced himself and added that hed
perused the record of my case with the utmost care. His opinion was that it would
need cautious handling but there was every prospect of my getting off provided I
followed his advice. I thanked him and he said: Good. Now lets get down to it.
  
 
Sitting on the bed he said that theyd been making investigations into my private
life. They had learned that my mother died recently in a home. Inquiries had been
conducted at Marengo and the police informed that Id shown great callousness at
my mothers funeral.
You must understand the lawyer said that I dont relish having to question
you about such a matter. But it has much importance and unless I find some way of
answering the charge of ‘callousness I shall be handicapped in conducting your
defense. And that is where you and only you can help me.
He went on to ask if I had felt grief on that sad occasion. The question struck me
as an odd one; Id have been much embarrassed if Id had to ask anyone a thing like
that.
I answered that of recent years Id rather lost the habit of noting my feelings and
hardly knew what to answer. I could truthfully say Id been quite fond of Mother 
but really that didnt mean much. All normal people I added as on afterthought had
more or less desired the death of those they loved at some time or another.
Here the lawyer interrupted me looking greatly perturbed.
You must promise me not to say anything of that sort at the trial or to the
examining magistrate.
I promised to satisfy him but I explained that my physical condition at any given
moment often influenced my feelings. For instance on the day I attended Mothers
funeral I was fagged out and only half awake. So really I hardly took stock of what
was happening. Anyhow I could assure him of one thing: that Id rather Mother
hadnt died.
The lawyer however looked displeased. Thats not enough he said curtly.
After considering for a bit he asked me if he could say that on that day I had kept
my feelings under control.
No I said. That wouldnt be true.
He gave me a queer look as if I slightly revolted him; then informed me in an
almost hostile tone that in any case the head of the Home and some of the staff
would be cited as witnesses.
And that might do you a very nasty turn he concluded.
When I suggested that Mothers death had no connection with the charge against
me he merely replied that this remark showed Id never had any dealings with the
law.
Soon after this he left looking quite vexed. I wished he had stayed longer and I
could have explained that I desired his sympathy not for him to make a better job of
my defense but if I might put it so spontaneously. I could see that I got on his
nerves; he couldnt make me out and naturally enough this irritated him. Once or
twice I had a mind to assure him that I was just like everybody else; quite an ordinary
  
 
person. But really that would have served no great purpose and I let it go out of
laziness as much as anything else.
Later in the day I was taken again to the examining magistrates office. It was two
in the afternoon and this time the room was flooded with light there was only a
thin curtain on the window and extremely hot.
After inviting me to sit down the magistrate informed me in a very polite tone
that owing to unforeseen circumstances my lawyer was unable to be present. I
should be quite entitled he added to reserve my answers to his questions until my
lawyer could attend.
To this I replied that I could answer for myself. He pressed a bell push on his desk
and a young clerk came in and seated himself just behind me. Then we I and the
magistrate settled back in our chairs and the examination began. He led off by
remarking that I had the reputation of being a taciturn rather self centered person
and hed like to know what I had to say to that. I answered:
Well I rarely have anything much to say. So naturally I keep my mouth shut.
He smiled as on the previous occasion and agreed that that was the best of
reasons. In any case he added it has little or no importance.
After a short silence he suddenly leaned forward looked me in the eyes and said
raising his voice a little:
What really interests me is you!
I wasnt quite clear what he meant so I made no comment.
There are several things he continued that puzzle me about your crime. I feel
sure that you will help me to understand them.
When I replied that really it was quite simple he asked me to give him an account
of what Id done that day. As a matter of fact I had already told him at our first
interview in a summary sort of way of course about Raymond the beach our
swim the fight then the beach again and the five shots Id fired. But I went over it
all again and after each phrase he nodded. Quite so quite so. When I described the
body lying on the sand he nodded more emphatically and said Good! I was tired
of repeating the same story; I felt as if Id never talked so much in all my life before.
After another silence he stood up and said hed like to help me; I interested him
and with Gods help he would do something for me in my trouble. But first he
must put a few more questions.
He began by asking bluntly if Id loved my mother.
Yes I replied like everybody else. The clerk behind me who had been typing
away at a steady pace must just then have hit the wrong keys as I heard him pushing
the carrier back and crossing something out.
Next without any apparent logical connection the magistrate sprang another
question.
Why did you fire five consecutive shots?
  
 
I thought for a bit; then explained that they werent quite consecutive. I fired one
at first and the other four after a short interval.
Why did you pause between the first and second shot?
I seemed to see it hovering again before my eyes the red glow of the beach and to
feel that fiery breath on my cheeks and this time I made no answer.
During the silence that followed the magistrate kept fidgeting running his fingers
through his hair half rising then sitting down again. Finally planting his elbows on
the desk he bent toward me with a queer expression.
But why why did you go on firing at a prostrate man?
Again I found nothing to reply.
The magistrate drew his hand across his forehead and repeated in a slightly
different tone:
I ask you ‘Why? I insist on your telling me. I still kept silent.
Suddenly he rose walked to a file cabinet standing against the opposite wall
pulled a drawer open and took from it a silver crucifix which he was waving as he
came back to the desk.
Do you know who this is? His voice had changed completely; it was vibrant
with emotion.
Of course I do I answered.
That seemed to start him off; he began speaking at a great pace. He told me he
believed in God and that even the worst of sinners could obtain forgiveness of Him.
But first he must repent and become like a little child with a simple trustful heart
open to conviction. He was leaning right across the table brandishing his crucifix
before my eyes.
As a matter of fact I had great difficulty in following his remarks as for one
thing the office was so stiflingly hot and big flies were buzzing round and settling on
my cheeks; also because he rather alarmed me. Of course I realized it was absurd to
feel like this considering that after all it was I who was the criminal. However as
he continued talking I did my best to understand and I gathered that there was only
one point in my confession that badly needed clearing up the fact that Id waited
before firing a second time. All the rest was so to speak quite in order; but that
completely baffled him.
I started to tell him that he was wrong in insisting on this; the point was of quite
minor importance. But before I could get the words out he had drawn himself up to
his full height and was asking me very earnestly if I believed in God. When I said
No he plumped down into his chair indignantly.
That was unthinkable he said; all men believe in God even those who reject Him.
Of this he was absolutely sure; if ever he came to doubt it his life would lose all
meaning. Do you wish he asked indignantly my life to have no meaning?
Really I couldnt see how my wishes came into it and I told him as much.
  
 
While I was talking he thrust the crucifix again just under my nose and shouted:
I anyhow am a Christian. And I pray Him to forgive you for your sins. My poor
young man how can you not believe that He suffered for your sake?
I noticed that his manner seemed genuinely solicitous when he said My poor
young man but I was beginning to have enough of it. The room was growing
steadily hotter.
As I usually do when I want to get rid of someone whose conversation bores me I
pretended to agree. At which rather to my surprise his face lit up.
You see! You see! Now wont you own that you believe and put your trust in
Him?
I must have shaken my head again for he sank back in his chair looking limp and
dejected.
For some moments there was a silence during which the typewriter which had
been clicking away all the time we talked caught up with the last remark. Then he
looked at me intently and rather sadly.
Never in all my experience have I known a soul so case hardened as yours he
said in a low tone. All the criminals who have come before me until now wept when
they saw this symbol of our Lords sufferings.
I was on the point of replying that was precisely because they were criminals. But
then I realized that I too came under that description. Somehow it was an idea to
which I never could get reconciled.
To indicate presumably that the interview was over the magistrate stood up. In
the same weary tone he asked me a last question: Did I regret what I had done?
After thinking a bit I said that what I felt was less regret than a kind of vexation 
I couldnt find a better word for it. But he didnt seem to understand. ... This was as
far as things went at that days interview.
I came before the magistrate many times more but on these occasions my lawyer
always accompanied me. The examinations were confined to asking me to amplify
my previous statements. Or else the magistrate and my lawyer discussed
technicalities. At such times they took very little notice of me and in any case the
tone of the examinations changed as time went on. The magistrate seemed to have
lost interest in me and to have come to some sort of decision about my case. He
never mentioned God again or displayed any of the religious fervor I had found so
embarrassing at our first interview. The result was that our relations became more
cordial. After a few questions followed by an exchange of remarks with the lawyer
the magistrate closed the interview. My case was taking its course as he put it.
Sometimes too the conversation was of a general order and the magistrate and
lawyer encouraged me to join in it. I began to breathe more freely. Neither of the two
men at these times showed the least hostility toward me and everything went so
smoothly so amiably that I had an absurd impression of being one of the family. I
  
 
can honestly say that during the eleven months these examinations lasted I got so
used to them that I was almost surprised at having ever enjoyed anything better than
those rare moments when the magistrate after escorting me to the door of the office
would pat my shoulder and say in a friendly tone: Well Mr. Antichrist thats all for
the present! After which I was made over to my jailers.
  
 
II
THERE are some things of which Ive never cared to talk. And a few days after Id
been sent to prison I decided that this phase of my life was one of them. However as
time went by I came to feel that this aversion had no real substance. In point of fact
during those early days I was hardly conscious of being in prison; I had always a
vague hope that something would turn up some agreeable surprise.
The change came soon after Maries first and only visit. From the day when I got
her letter telling me they wouldnt let her come to see me any more because she
wasnt my wife it was from that day that I realized that this cell was my last home
a dead end so to speak.
On the day of my arrest they put me in a biggish room with several other
prisoners mostly Arabs. They grinned when they saw me enter and asked me what
Id done. I told them Id killed an Arab and they kept mum for a while. But
presently night began to fall and one of them explained to me how to lay out my
sleeping mat. By rolling up one end one makes a sort of bolster. All night I felt bugs
crawling over my face.
Some days later I was put by myself in a cell where I slept on a plank bed hinged
to the wall. The only other furniture was a latrine bucket and a tin basin. The prison
stands on rising ground and through my little window I had glimpses of the sea. One
day when I was hanging on the bars straining my eyes toward the sunlight playing
on the waves a jailer entered and said I had a visitor. I thought it must be Marie and
so it was.
To go to the Visitors Room I was taken along a corridor then up a flight of steps
then along another corridor. It was a very large room lit by a big bow window and
divided into three compartments by high iron grilles running transversally. Between
the two grilles there was a gap of some thirty feet a sort of no mans land between
the prisoners and their friends. I was led to a point exactly opposite Marie who was
wearing her striped dress. On my side of the rails were about a dozen other prisoners
Arabs for the most part. On Maries side were mostly Moorish women. She was
wedged between a small old woman with tight set lips and a fat matron without a
hat who was talking shrilly and gesticulated all the time. Because of the distance
between the visitors and prisoners I found I too had to raise my voice.
When I came into the room the babel of voices echoing on the bare walls and the
sunlight streaming in flooding everything in a harsh white glare made me feel quite
dizzy. After the relative darkness and the silence of my cell it took me some
moments to get used to these conditions. After a bit however I came to see each
face quite clearly lit up as if a spotlight played on it.
  
 
I noticed a prison official seated at each end of the no mans land between the
grilles. The native prisoners and their relations on the other side were squatting
opposite each other. They didnt raise their voices and in spite of the din managed
to converse almost in whispers. This murmur of voices coming from below made a
sort of accompaniment to the conversations going on above their heads. I took stock
of all this very quickly and moved a step forward toward Marie. She was pressing
her brown sun tanned face to the bars and smiling as hard as she could. I thought she
was looking very pretty but somehow couldnt bring myself to tell her so.
Well? she asked pitching her voice very high. What about it? Are you all right
have you everything you want?
Oh yes. Ive everything I want.
We were silent for some moments; Marie went on smiling. The fat woman was
bawling at the prisoner beside me her husband presumably a tall fair pleasantlooking
man.
Jeanne refused to have him she yelled.
Thats just too bad the man replied.
Yes and I told her youd take him back the moment you got out; but she
wouldnt hear of it.
Marie shouted across the gap that Raymond sent me his best wishes and I said
Thanks. But my voice was drowned by my neighbors asking if he was quite fit.
The fat woman gave a laugh. Fit? I should say he is! The picture of health.
Meanwhile the prisoner on my left a youngster with thin girlish hands never said
a word. His eyes I noticed were fixed on the little old woman opposite him and she
returned his gaze with a sort of hungry passion. But I had to stop looking at them as
Marie was shouting to me that we mustnt lose hope.
Certainly not I answered. My gaze fell on her shoulders and I had a sudden
longing to squeeze them through the thin dress. Its silky texture fascinated me and I
had a feeling that the hope she spoke of centered on it somehow. I imagine
something of the same sort was in Maries mind for she went on smiling looking
straight at me.
Itll all come right youll see and then we shall get married.
All I could see of her now was the white flash of her teeth and the little puckers
round her eyes. I answered: Do you really think so? but chiefly because I felt it up
to me to answer something.
She started talking very fast in the same high pitched voice.
Yes youll be acquitted and well go bathing again Sundays.
The woman beside me was still yelling away telling her husband that shed left a
basket for him in the prison office. She gave a list of the things shed brought and
told him to mind and check them carefully as some had cost quite a lot. The
youngster on my other side and his mother were still gazing mournfully at each
  
 
other and the murmur of the Arabs droned on below us. The light outside seemed to
be surging up against the window seeping through and smearing the faces of the
people facing it with a coat of yellow oil.
I began to feel slightly squeamish and wished I could leave. The strident voice
beside me was jarring on my ears. But on the other hand I wanted to have the most I
could of Maries company. Ive no idea how much time passed. I remember Maries
describing to me her work with that set smile always on her face. There wasnt a
moments letup in the noise shouts conversations and always that muttering
undertone. The only oasis of silence was made by the young fellow and the old
woman gazing into each others eyes.
Then one by one the Arabs were led away; almost everyone fell silent when the
first one left. The little old woman pressed herself against the bars and at the same
moment a jailer tapped her sons shoulder. He called Au revoir Mother and
slipping her hand between the bars she gave him a small slow wave with it.
No sooner was she gone than a man hat in hand took her place. A prisoner was
led up to the empty place beside me and the two started a brisk exchange of
remarks not loud however as the room had become relatively quiet. Someone
came and called away the man on my right and his wife shouted at him she didnt
seem to realize it was no longer necessary to shout Now mind you look after
yourself dear and dont do anything rash!
My turn came next. Marie threw me a kiss. I looked back as I walked away. She
hadnt moved; her face was still pressed to the rails her lips still parted in that tense
twisted smile.
Soon after this I had a letter from her. And it was then that the things Ive never
liked to talk about began. Not that they were particularly terrible; Ive no wish to
exaggerate and I suffered less than others. Still there was one thing in those early
days that was really irksome: my habit of thinking like a free man. For instance I
would suddenly be seized with a desire to go down to the beach for a swim. And
merely to have imagined the sound of ripples at my feet the smooth feel of the water
on my body as I struck out and the wonderful sensation of relief it gave brought
home still more cruelly the narrowness of my cell.
Still that phase lasted a few months only. Afterward I had prisoners thoughts. I
waited for the daily walk in the courtyard or a visit from my lawyer. As for the rest
of the time I managed quite well really. Ive often thought that had I been
compelled to live in the trunk of a dead tree with nothing to do but gaze up at the
patch of sky just overhead Id have got used to it by degrees. Id have learned to
watch for the passing of birds or drifting clouds as I had come to watch for my
lawyers odd neckties or in another world to wait patiently till Sunday for a spell of
love making with Marie. Well here anyhow I wasnt penned in a hollow tree trunk.
There were others in the world worse off than I. I remembered it had been one of
  
 
Mothers pet ideas she was always voicing it that in the long run one gets used to
anything.
Usually however I didnt think things out so far. Those first months were trying
of course; but the very effort I had to make helped me through them. For instance I
was plagued by the desire for a woman which was natural enough considering my
age. I never thought of Marie especially. I was obsessed by thoughts of this woman
or that of all the ones Id had all the circumstances under which Id loved them; so
much so that the cell grew crowded with their faces ghosts of my old passions. That
unsettled me no doubt; but at least it served to kill time.
I gradually became quite friendly with the chief jailer who went the rounds with
the kitchen hands at mealtimes. It was he who brought up the subject of women.
Thats what the men here grumble about most he told me.
I said I felt like that myself. Theres something unfair about it I added like
hitting a man when hes down.
But thats the whole point of it he said; thats why you fellows are kept in
prison.
I dont follow.
Liberty he said means that. Youre being deprived of your liberty.
It had never before struck me in that light but I saw his point. Thats true I said.
Otherwise it wouldnt be a punishment.
The jailer nodded. Yes youre different you can use your brains. The others
cant. Still those fellows find a way out; they do it by themselves. With which
remark the jailer left my cell. Next day I did like the others.
The lack of cigarettes too was a trial. When I was brought to the prison they took
away my belt my shoelaces and the contents of my pockets including my
cigarettes. Once I had been given a cell to myself I asked to be given back anyhow
the cigarettes. Smoking was forbidden they informed me. That perhaps was what
got me down the most; in fact I suffered really badly during the first few days. I
even tore off splinters from my plank bed and sucked them. All day long I felt faint
and bilious. It passed my understanding why I shouldnt be allowed even to smoke; it
could have done no one any harm. Later on I understood the idea behind it; this
privation too was part of my punishment. But by the time I understood Id lost the
craving so it had ceased to be a punishment.
Except for these privations I wasnt too unhappy. Yet again the whole problem
was: how to kill time. After a while however once Id learned the trick of
remembering things I never had a moments boredom. Sometimes I would exercise
my memory on my bedroom and starting from a corner make the round noting
every object I saw on the way. At first it was over in a minute or two. But each time I
repeated the experience it took a little longer. I made a point of visualizing every
piece of furniture and each article upon or in it and then every detail of each article
  
 
and finally the details of the details so to speak: a tiny dent or incrustation or a
chipped edge and the exact grain and color of the woodwork. At the same time I
forced myself to keep my inventory in mind from start to finish in the right order
and omitting no item. With the result that after a few weeks I could spend hours
merely in listing the objects in my bedroom. I found that the more I thought the
more details half forgotten or malobserved floated up from my memory. There
seemed no end to them.
So I learned that even after a single days experience of the outside world a man
could easily live a hundred years in prison. Hed have laid up enough memories
never to be bored. Obviously in one way this was a compensation.
Then there was sleep. To begin with I slept badly at night and never in the day.
But gradually my nights became better and I managed to doze off in the daytime as
well. In fact during the last months I must have slept sixteen or eighteen hours out
of the twenty four. So there remained only six hours to fill with meals relieving
nature my memories ... and the story of the Czech.
One day when inspecting my straw mattress I found a bit of newspaper stuck to
its underside. The paper was yellow with age almost transparent but I could still
make out the letter print. It was the story of a crime. The first part was missing but I
gathered that its scene was some village in Czechoslovakia. One of the villagers had
left his home to try his luck abroad. After twenty five years having made a fortune
he returned to his country with his wife and child. Meanwhile his mother and sister
had been running a small hotel in the village where he was born. He decided to give
them a surprise and leaving his wife and child in another inn he went to stay at his
mothers place booking a room under an assumed name. His mother and sister
completely failed to recognize him. At dinner that evening he showed them a large
sum of money he had on him and in the course of the night they slaughtered him
with a hammer. After taking the money they flung the body into the river. Next
morning his wife came and without thinking betrayed the guests identity. His
mother hanged herself. His sister threw herself into a well. I must have read that
story thousands of times. In one way it sounded most unlikely; in another it was
plausible enough. Anyhow to my mind the man was asking for trouble; one
shouldnt play fool tricks of that sort.
So what with long bouts of sleep my memories readings of that scrap of
newspaper the tides of light and darkness the days slipped by. Id read of course
that in jail one ends up by losing track of time. But this had never meant anything
definite to me. I hadnt grasped how days could be at once long and short. Long no
doubt as periods to live through but so distended that they ended up by overlapping
on each other. In fact I never thought of days as such; only the words yesterday
and tomorrow still kept some meaning.
  
 
When one morning the jailer informed me Id now been six months in jail I
believed him but the words conveyed nothing to my mind. To me it seemed like
one and the same day that had been going on since Id been in my cell and that Id
been doing the same thing all the time.
After the jailer left me I shined up my tin pannikin and studied my face in it. My
expression was terribly serious I thought even when I tried to smile. I held the
pannikin at different angles but always my face had the same mournful tense
expression.
The sun was setting and it was the hour of which Id rather not speak the
nameless hour I called it when evening sounds were creeping up from all the
floors of the prison in a sort of stealthy procession. I went to the barred window and
in the last rays looked once again at my reflected face. It was as serious as before;
and that wasnt surprising as just then I was feeling serious. But at the same time I
heard something that I hadnt heard for months. It was the sound of a voice; my own
voice there was no mistaking it. And I recognized it as the voice that for many a day
of late had been sounding in my ears. So I knew that all this time Id been talking to
myself.
And something Id been told came back; a remark made by the nurse at Mothers
funeral. No there was no way out and no one can imagine what the evenings are like
in prison.
  
 
III
ON THE whole I cant say that those months passed slowly; another summer was on
its way almost before I realized the first was over. And I knew that with the first
really hot days something new was in store for me. My case was down for the last
sessions of the Assize Court and those sessions were due to end some time in June.
The day on which my trial started was one of brilliant sunshine. My lawyer
assured me the case would take only two or three days. From what I hear he
added the court will dispatch your case as quickly as possible as it isnt the most
important one on the Cause List. Theres a case of parricide immediately after which
will take them some time.
They came for me at half past seven in the morning and I was conveyed to the law
courts in a prison van. The two policemen led me into a small room that smelled of
darkness. We sat near a door through which came sounds of voices shouts chairs
scraping on the floor; a vague hubbub which reminded me of one of those smalltown
socials when after the concerts over the hall is cleared for dancing.
One of my policemen told me the judges hadnt arrived yet and offered me a
cigarette which I declined. After a bit he asked me if I was feeling nervous. I said
No and that the prospect of witnessing a trial rather interested me; Id never had
occasion to attend one before.
Maybe the other policeman said. But after an hour or two ones had enough of
it.
After a while a small electric bell purred in the room. They unfastened my
handcuffs opened the door and led me to the prisoners dock.
There was a great crowd in the courtroom. Though the Venetian blinds were
down light was filtering through the chinks and the air stiflingly hot already. The
windows had been kept shut. I sat down and the police officers took their stand on
each side of my chair.
It was then that I noticed a row of faces opposite me. These people were staring
hard at me and I guessed they were the jury. But somehow I didnt see them as
individuals. I felt as you do just after boarding a streetcar and youre conscious of all
the people on the opposite seat staring at you in the hope of finding something in
your appearance to amuse them. Of course I knew this was an absurd comparison;
what these people were looking for in me wasnt anything to laugh at but signs of
criminality. Still the difference wasnt so very great and anyhow thats the idea I
got.
What with the crowd and the stuffiness of the air I was feeling a bit dizzy. I ran
my eyes round the courtroom but couldnt recognize any of the faces. At first I could
hardly believe that all these people had come on my account. It was such a new
  
 
experience being a focus of interest; in the ordinary way no one ever paid much
attention to me.
What a crush! I remarked to the policeman on my left and he explained that the
newspapers were responsible for it.
He pointed to a group of men at a table just below the jury box. There they are!
Who? I asked and he replied The press. One of them he added was an old
friend of his.
A moment later the man hed mentioned looked our way and coming to the dock
shook hands warmly with the policeman. The journalist was an elderly man with a
rather grim expression but his manner was quite pleasant. Just then I noticed that
almost all the people in the courtroom were greeting each other exchanging remarks
and forming groups behaving in fact as in a club where the company of others of
ones own tastes and standing makes one feel at ease. That no doubt explained the
odd impression I had of being de trop here a sort of gate crasher.
However the journalist addressed me quite amiably and said he hoped all would
go well for me. I thanked him and he added with a smile:
You know weve been featuring you a bit. Were always rather short of copy in
the summer and theres been precious little to write about except your case and the
one thats coming on after it. I expect youve heard about it; its a case of parricide.
He drew my attention to one of the group at the press table a plump small man
with huge black rimmed glasses who made me think of an overfed weasel.
That fellows the special correspondent of one of the Paris dailies. As a matter of
fact he didnt come on your account. He was sent for the parricide case but theyve
asked him to cover yours as well.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say That was very kind of them but then I
thought it would sound silly. With a friendly wave of his hand he left us and for
some minutes nothing happened.
Then accompanied by some colleagues my lawyer bustled in in his gown. He
went up to the press table and shook hands with the journalists. They remained
laughing and chatting together all seemingly very much at home here until a bell
rang shrilly and everyone went to his place. My lawyer came up to me shook hands
and advised me to answer all the questions as briefly as possible not to volunteer
information and to rely on him to see me through.
I heard a chair scrape on my left and a tall thin man wearing pince nez settled the
folds of his red gown as he took his seat. The Public Prosecutor I gathered. A clerk
of the court announced that Their Honors were entering and at the same moment two
big electric fans started buzzing overhead. Three judges two in black and the third in
scarlet with brief cases under their arms entered and walked briskly to the bench
which was several feet above the level of the courtroom floor. The man in scarlet
took the central high backed chair placed his cap of office on the table ran a
  
 
handkerchief over his small bald crown and announced that the hearing would now
begin.
The journalists had their fountain pens ready; they all wore the same expression of
slightly ironical indifference with the exception of one a much younger man than
his colleagues in gray flannels with a blue tie who leaving his pen on the table was
gazing hard at me. He had a plain rather chunky face; what held my attention were
his eyes very pale clear eyes riveted on me though not betraying any definite
emotion. For a moment I had an odd impression as if I were being scrutinized by
myself. That and the fact that I was unfamiliar with court procedure may explain
why I didnt follow very well the opening phases: the drawing of lots for the jury the
various questions put by the presiding judge to the Prosecutor the foreman of the
jury and my counsel (each time he spoke all the jurymens heads swung round
together toward the bench) the hurried reading of the charge sheet in the course of
which I recognized some familiar names of people and places; then some
supplementary questions put to my lawyer.
Next the Judge announced that the court would call over the witness list. Some of
the names read out by the clerk rather surprised me. From amongst the crowd which
until now I had seen as a mere blur of faces rose one after the other Raymond
Masson Salamano the doorkeeper from the Home old Pérez and Marie who gave
me a little nervous wave of her hand before following the others out by a side door. I
was thinking how strange it was I hadnt noticed any of them before when I heard the
last name called that of Céleste. As he rose I noticed beside him the quaint little
woman with a mannish coat and brisk decided air who had shared my table at the
restaurant. She had her eyes fixed on me I noticed. But I hadnt time to wonder
about her; the Judge had started speaking again.
He said that the trial proper was about to begin and he need hardly say that he
expected the public to refrain from any demonstration whatsoever. He explained that
he was there to supervise the proceedings as a sort of umpire and he would take a
scrupulously impartial view of the case. The verdict of the jury would be interpreted
by him in a spirit of justice. Finally at the least sign of a disturbance he would have
the court cleared.
The day was stoking up. Some of the public were fanning themselves with
newspapers and there was a constant rustle of crumpled paper. On a sign from the
presiding judge the clerk of the court brought three fans of plaited straw which the
three judges promptly put in action.
My examination began at once. The Judge questioned me quite calmly and even I
thought with a hint of cordiality. For the nth time I was asked to give particulars of
my identity and though heartily sick of this formality I realized that it was natural
enough; after all it would be a shocking thing for the court to be trying the wrong
man.
  
 
The Judge then launched into an account of what Id done stopping after every
two or three sentences to ask me Is that correct? To which I always replied Yes
sir as my lawyer had advised me. It was a long business as the Judge lingered on
each detail. Meanwhile the journalists scribbled busily away. But I was sometimes
conscious of the eyes of the youngest fixed on me; also those of the queer little robot
woman. The jurymen however were all gazing at the red robed judge and I was
again reminded of the row of passengers on one side of a tram. Presently he gave a
slight cough turned some pages of his file and still fanning his face addressed me
gravely.
He now proposed he said to trench on certain matters which on a superficial
view might seem foreign to the case but actually were highly relevant. I guessed
that he was going to talk about Mother and at the same moment realized how odious
I would find this. His first question was: Why had I sent my mother to an institution?
I replied that the reason was simple; I hadnt enough money to see that she was
properly looked after at home. Then he asked if the parting hadnt caused me
distress. I explained that neither Mother nor I expected much of one another or for
that matter of anybody else; so both of us had got used to the new conditions easily
enough. The Judge then said that he had no wish to press the point and asked the
Prosecutor if he could think of any more questions that should be put to me at this
stage.
The Prosecutor who had his back half turned to me said without looking in my
direction that subject to His Honors approval he would like to know if Id gone
back to the stream with the intention of killing the Arab. I said No. In that case
why had I taken a revolver with me and why go back precisely to that spot? I said it
was a matter of pure chance. The Prosecutor then observed in a nasty tone: Very
good. That will be all for the present.
I couldnt quite follow what came next. Anyhow after some palavering among the
bench the Prosecutor and my counsel the presiding judge announced that the court
would now rise; there was an adjournment till the afternoon when evidence would
be taken.
Almost before I knew what was happening I was rushed out to the prison van
which drove me back and I was given my midday meal. After a short time just
enough for me to realize how tired I was feeling they came for me. I was back in the
same room confronting the same faces and the whole thing started again. But the
heat had meanwhile much increased and by some miracle fans had been procured
for everyone: the jury my lawyer the Prosecutor and some of the journalists too.
The young man and the robot woman were still at their places. But they were not
fanning themselves and as before they never took their eyes off me.
I wiped the sweat from my face but I was barely conscious of where or who I was
until I heard the warden of the Home called to the witness box. When asked if my
  
 
mother had complained about my conduct he said Yes but that didnt mean
much; almost all the inmates of the Home had grievances against their relatives. The
Judge asked him to be more explicit; did she reproach me with having sent her to the
Home and he said Yes again. But this time he didnt qualify his answer.
To another question he replied that on the day of the funeral he was somewhat
surprised by my calmness. Asked to explain what he meant by my calmness the
warden lowered his eyes and stared at his shoes for a moment. Then he explained
that I hadnt wanted to see Mothers body or shed a single tear and that Id left
immediately the funeral ended without lingering at her grave. Another thing had
surprised him. One of the undertakers men told him that I didnt know my mothers
age. There was a short silence; then the Judge asked him if he might take it that he
was referring to the prisoner in the dock. The warden seemed puzzled by this and the
Judge explained: Its a formal question. I am bound to put it.
The Prosecutor was then asked if he had any questions to put and he answered
loudly: Certainly not! I have all I want. His tone and the look of triumph on his
face as he glanced at me were so marked that I felt as I hadnt felt for ages. I had a
foolish desire to burst into tears. For the first time Id realized how all these people
loathed me.
After asking the jury and my lawyer if they had any questions the Judge heard the
doorkeepers evidence. On stepping into the box the man threw a glance at me then
looked away. Replying to questions he said that Id declined to see Mothers body
Id smoked cigarettes and slept and drunk café au lait. It was then I felt a sort of
wave of indignation spreading through the courtroom and for the first time I
understood that I was guilty. They got the doorkeeper to repeat what he had said
about the coffee and my smoking.
The Prosecutor turned to me again with a gloating look in his eyes. My counsel
asked the doorkeeper if he too hadnt smoked. But the Prosecutor took strong
exception to this. Id like to know he cried indignantly who is on trial in this
court. Or does my friend think that by aspersing a witness for the prosecution he will
shake the evidence the abundant and cogent evidence against his client? None the
less the Judge told the doorkeeper to answer the question.
The old fellow fidgeted a bit. Then Well I know I didnt ought to have done it
he mumbled but I did take a cigarette from the young gentleman when he offered
it just out of politeness.
The Judge asked me if I had any comment to make. None I said except that
the witness is quite right. Its true I offered him a cigarette.
The doorkeeper looked at me with surprise and a sort of gratitude. Then after
hemming and hawing for a bit he volunteered the statement that it was he whod
suggested I should have some coffee.
  
 
My lawyer was exultant. The jury will appreciate he said the importance of
this admission.
The Prosecutor however was promptly on his feet again. Quite so he boomed
above our heads. The jury will appreciate it. And they will draw the conclusion that
though a third party might inadvertently offer him a cup of coffee the prisoner in
common decency should have refused it if only out of respect for the dead body of
the poor woman who had brought him into the world.
After which the doorkeeper went back to his seat.
When Thomas Pérez was called a court officer had. to help him to the box. Pérez
stated that though he had been a great friend of my mother he had met me once
only on the day of the funeral. Asked how I had behaved that day he said:
Well I was most upset you know. Far too much upset to notice things. My grief
sort of blinded me I think. It had been a great shock my dear friends death; in fact
I fainted during the funeral. So I didnt hardly notice the young gentleman at all.
The Prosecutor asked him to tell the court if hed seen me weep. And when Pérez
answered No added emphatically: I trust the jury will take note of this reply.
My lawyer rose at once and asked Pérez in a tone that seemed to me needlessly
aggressive:
Now think well my man! Can you swear you saw he didnt shed a tear?
Pérez answered No.
At this some people tittered and my lawyer pushing back one sleeve of his gown
said sternly:
That is typical of the way this case is being conducted. No attempt is being made
to elicit the true facts.
The Prosecutor ignored this remark; he was making dabs with his pencil on the
cover of his brief seemingly quite indifferent.
There was a break of five minutes during which my lawyer told me the case was
going very well indeed. Then Céleste was called. He was announced as a witness for
the defense. The defense meant me.
Now and again Céleste threw me a glance; he kept squeezing his Panama hat
between his hands as he gave evidence. He was in his best suit the one he wore
when sometimes of a Sunday he went with me to the races. But evidently he hadnt
been able to get his collar on; the top of his shirt I noticed was secured only by a
brass stud. Asked if I was one of his customers he said Yes and a friend as well.
Asked to state his opinion of me he said that I was all right and when told to
explain what he meant by that he replied that everyone knew what that meant. Was
I a secretive sort of man? No he answered I shouldnt call him that. But he isnt
one to waste his breath like a lot of folks.
The Prosecutor asked him if I always settled my monthly bill at his restaurant
when he presented it. Céleste laughed. Oh he paid on the nail all right. But the bills
  
 
were just details like between him and me. Then he was asked to say what he
thought about the crime. He placed his hands on the rail of the box and one could see
he had a speech all ready.
To my mind it was just an accident or a stroke of bad luck if you prefer. And a
thing like that takes you off your guard.
He wanted to continue but the Judge cut him short. Quite so. Thats all thank
you.
For a bit Céleste seemed flabbergasted; then he explained that he hadnt finished
what he wanted to say. They told him to continue but to make it brief.
He only repeated that it was just an accident.
Thats as it may be the Judge observed. But what we are here for is to try such
accidents according to law. You can stand down.
Céleste turned and gazed at me. His eyes were moist and his lips trembling. It was
exactly as if hed said: Well Ive done my best for you old man. Im afraid it
hasnt helped much. Im sorry.
I didnt say anything or make any movement but for the first time in my life I
wanted to kiss a man.
The Judge repeated his order to stand down and Céleste returned to his place
amongst the crowd. During the rest of the hearing he remained there leaning
forward elbows on knees and his Panama between his hands not missing a word of
the proceedings.
It was Maries turn next. She had a hat on and still looked quite pretty though I
much preferred her with her hair free. From where I was I had glimpses of the soft
curve of her breasts and her underlip had the little pout that always fascinated me.
She appeared very nervous.
The first question was: How long had she known me? Since the time when she
was in our office she replied. Then the Judge asked her what were the relations
between us and she said she was my girl friend. Answering another question she
admitted promising to marry me. The Prosecutor who had been studying a document
in front of him asked her rather sharply when our liaison had begun. She gave the
date. He then observed with a would be casual air that apparently she meant the day
following my mothers funeral. After letting this sink in he remarked in a slightly
ironic tone that obviously this was a delicate topic and he could enter into the
young ladys feelings but and here his voice grew sterner his duty obliged him to
waive considerations of delicacy.
After making this announcement he asked Marie to give a full account of our
doings on the day when I had intercourse with her for the first time. Marie
wouldnt answer at first but the Prosecutor insisted and then she told him that we
had met at the baths gone together to the pictures and then to my place. He then
informed the court that as a result of certain statements made by Marie at the
  
 
proceedings before the magistrate he had studied the movie programs of that date
and turning to Marie asked her to name the film that we had gone to see. In a very
low voice she said it was a picture with Fernandel in it. By the time she had finished
the courtroom was so still you could have heard a pin drop.
Looking very grave the Prosecutor drew himself up to his full height and
pointing at me said in such a tone that I could have sworn he was genuinely moved:
Gentlemen of the jury I would have you note that on the next day after his
mothers funeral that man was visiting the swimming pool starting a liaison with a
girl and going to see a comic film. That is all I wish to say.
When he sat down there was the same dead silence. Then all of a sudden Marie
burst into tears. Hed got it all wrong she said; it wasnt a bit like that really hed
bullied her into saying the opposite of what she meant. She knew me very well and
she was sure I hadnt done anything really wrong and so on. At a sign from the
presiding judge one of the court officers led her away and the hearing continued.
Hardly anyone seemed to listen to Masson the next witness. He stated that I was a
respectable young fellow; and whats more a very decent chap. Nor did they pay
any more attention to Salamano when he told them how kind Id always been to his
dog or when in answer to a question about my mother and myself he said that
Mother and I had very little in common and that explained why Id fixed up for her
to enter the Home. Youve got to understand he added. Youve got to
understand. But no one seemed to understand. He was told to stand down.
Raymond was the next and last witness. He gave me a little wave of his hand and
led off by saying I was innocent. The Judge rebuked him.
You are here to give evidence not your views on the case and you must confine
yourself to answering the questions put you.
He was then asked to make clear his relations with the deceased and Raymond
took this opportunity of explaining that it was he not I against whom the dead man
had a grudge because he Raymond had beaten up his sister. The judge asked him if
the deceased had no reason to dislike me too. Raymond told him that my presence
on the beach that morning was a pure coincidence.
How comes it then the Prosecutor inquired that the letter which led up to this
tragedy was the prisoners work?
Raymond replied that this too was due to mere chance.
To which the Prosecutor retorted that in this case chance or mere coincidence
seemed to play a remarkably large part. Was it by chance that I hadnt intervened
when Raymond assaulted his mistress? Did this convenient term chance account
for my having vouched for Raymond at the police station and having made on that
occasion statements extravagantly favorable to him? In conclusion he asked
Raymond to state what were his means of livelihood.
  
 
On his describing himself as a warehouseman the Prosecutor informed the jury it
was common knowledge that the witness lived on the immoral earnings of women. I
he said was this mans intimate friend and associate; in fact the whole background
of the crime was of the most squalid description. And what made it even more odious
was the personality of the prisoner an inhuman monster wholly without a moral
sense.
Raymond began to expostulate and my lawyer too protested. They were told that
the Prosecutor must be allowed to finish his remarks.
I have nearly done he said; then turned to Raymond. Was the prisoner your
friend?
Certainly. We were the best of pals as they say.
The Prosecutor then put me the same question. I looked hard at Raymond and he
did not turn away.
Then Yes I answered.
The Prosecutor turned toward the jury.
Not only did the man before you in the dock indulge in the most shameful orgies
on the day following his mothers death. He killed a man cold bloodedly in
pursuance of some sordid vendetta in the underworld of prostitutes and pimps. That
gentlemen of the jury is the type of man the prisoner is.
No sooner had he sat down than my lawyer out of all patience raised his arms so
high that his sleeves fell back showing the full length of his starched shirt cuffs.
Is my client on trial for having buried his mother or for killing a man? he asked.
There were some titters in court. But then the Prosecutor sprang to his feet and
draping his gown round him said he was amazed at his friends ingenuousness in
failing to see that between these two elements of the case there was a vital link. They
hung together psychologically if he might put it so. In short he concluded
speaking with great vehemence I accuse the prisoner of behaving at his mothers
funeral in a way that showed he was already a criminal at heart.
These words seemed to take much effect on the jury and public. My lawyer merely
shrugged his shoulders and wiped the sweat from his forehead. But obviously he was
rattled and I had a feeling things werent going well for me.
Soon after this incident the court rose. As I was being taken from the courthouse to
the prison van I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a
summer evening out of doors. And sitting in the darkness of my moving cell I
recognized echoing in my tired brain all the characteristic sounds of a town Id
loved and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The
shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air the last calls of birds in the
public garden the cries of sandwich vendors the screech of streetcars at the steep
corners of the upper town and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down
  
 
upon the harbor all these sounds made my return to prison like a blind mans
journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart.
Yes this was the evening hour when how long ago it seemed! I always felt so
well content with life. Then what awaited me was a night of easy dreamless sleep.
This was the same hour but with a difference; I was returning to a cell and what
awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned
that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons
as to innocent untroubled sleep.
  
 
IV
IT is always interesting even in the prisoners dock to hear oneself being talked
about. And certainly in the speeches of my lawyer and the prosecuting counsel a
great deal was said about me; more in fact about me personally than about my
crime.
Really there wasnt any very great difference between the two speeches. Counsel
for the defense raised his arms to heaven and pleaded guilty but with extenuating
circumstances. The Prosecutor made similar gestures; he agreed that I was guilty but
denied extenuating circumstances.
One thing about this phase of the trial was rather irksome. Quite often interested
as I was in what they had to say I was tempted to put in a word myself. But my
lawyer had advised me not to. You wont do your case any good by talking he had
warned me. In fact there seemed to be a conspiracy to exclude me from the
proceedings; I wasnt to have any say and my fate was to be decided out of hand.
It was quite an effort at times for me to refrain from cutting them all short and
saying: But damn it all whos on trial in this court Id like to know? Its a serious
matter for a man being accused of murder. And Ive something really important to
tell you.
However on second thoughts I found I had nothing to say. In any case I must
admit that hearing oneself talked about loses its interest very soon. The Prosecutors
speech especially began to bore me before he was halfway through it. The only
things that really caught my attention were occasional phrases his gestures and
some elaborate tirades but these were isolated patches.
What he was aiming at I gathered was to show that my crime was premeditated. I
remember his saying at one moment I can prove this gentlemen of the jury to the
hilt. First you have the facts of the crime; which are as clear as daylight. And then
you have what I may call the night side of this case the dark workings of a criminal
mentality.
He began by summing up the facts from my mothers death onward. He stressed
my heartlessness my inability to state Mothers age my visit to the swimming pool
where I met Marie our matinee at the pictures where a Fernandel film was showing
and finally my return with Marie to my rooms. I didnt quite follow his remarks at
first as he kept on mentioning the prisoners mistress whereas for me she was just
Marie. Then he came to the subject of Raymond. It seemed to me that his way of
treating the facts showed a certain shrewdness. All he said sounded quite plausible.
Id written the letter in collusion with Raymond so as to entice his mistress to his
room and subject her to ill treatment by a man of more than dubious reputation.
Then on the beach Id provoked a brawl with Raymonds enemies in the course of
  
 
which Raymond was wounded. Id asked him for his revolver and gone back by
myself with the intention of using it. Then Id shot the Arab. After the first shot I
waited. Then to be certain of making a good job of it I fired four more shots
deliberately point blank and in cold blood at my victim.
That is my case he said. I have described to you the series of events which led
this man to kill the deceased fully aware of what he was doing. I emphasize this
point. We are not concerned with an act of homicide committed on a sudden impulse
which might serve as extenuation. I ask you to note gentlemen of the jury that the
prisoner is an educated man. You will have observed the way in which he answered
my questions; he is intelligent and he knows the value of words. And I repeat that it
is quite impossible to assume that when he committed the crime he was unaware
what he was doing.
I noticed that he laid stress on my intelligence. It puzzled me rather why what
would count as a good point in an ordinary person should be used against an accused
man as an overwhelming proof of his guilt. While thinking this over I missed what
he said next until I heard him exclaim indignantly: And has he uttered a word of
regret for his most odious crime? Not one word gentlemen. Not once in the course of
these proceedings did this man show the least contrition.
Turning toward the dock he pointed a finger at me and went on in the same
strain. I really couldnt understand why he harped on this point so much. Of course I
had to own that he was right; I didnt feel much regret for what Id done. Still to my
mind he overdid it and Id have liked to have a chance of explaining to him in a
quite friendly almost affectionate way that I have never been able really to regret
anything in all my life. Ive always been far too much absorbed in the present
moment or the immediate future to think back. Of course in the position into which
I had been forced there was no question of my speaking to anyone in that tone. I
hadnt the right to show any friendly feeling or possess good intentions. And I tried
to follow what came next as the Prosecutor was now considering what he called my
soul.
He said hed studied it closely and had found a blank literally nothing
gentlemen of the jury. Really he said I had no soul there was nothing human about
me not one of those moral qualities which normal men possess had any place in my
mentality. No doubt he added we should not reproach him with this. We cannot
blame a man for lacking what it was never in his power to acquire. But in a criminal
court the wholly passive ideal of tolerance must give place to a sterner loftier ideal
that of justice. Especially when this lack of every decent instinct is such as that of the
man before you a menace to society. He proceeded to discuss my conduct toward
my mother repeating what he had said in the course of the hearing. But he spoke at
much greater length of my crime at such length indeed that I lost the thread and
was conscious only of the steadily increasing heat.
  
 
A moment came when the Prosecutor paused and after a short silence said in a
low vibrant voice: This same court gentlemen will be called on to try tomorrow
that most odious of crimes the murder of a father by his son. To his mind such a
crime was almost unimaginable. But he ventured to hope justice would be meted
out without paltering. And yet he made bold to say the horror that even the crime of
parricide inspired in him paled beside the loathing inspired by my callousness.
This man who is morally guilty of his mothers death is no less unfit to have a
place in the community than that other man who did to death the father that begat
him. And indeed the one crime led on to the other; the first of these two criminals
the man in the dock set a precedent if I may put it so and authorized the second
crime. Yes gentlemen I am convinced here he raised his voice a tone that you
will not find I am exaggerating the case against the prisoner when I say that he is also
guilty of the murder to be tried tomorrow in this court. And I look to you for a
verdict accordingly.
The Prosecutor paused again to wipe the sweat off his face. He then explained
that his duty was a painful one but he would do it without flinching. This man has
I repeat no place in a community whose basic principles he flouts without
compunction. Nor heartless as he is has he any claim to mercy. I ask you to impose
the extreme penalty of the law; and I ask it without a qualm. In the course of a long
career in which it has often been my duty to ask for a capital sentence never have I
felt that painful duty weigh so little on my mind as in the present case. In demanding
a verdict of murder without extenuating circumstances I am following not only the
dictates of my conscience and a sacred obligation but also those of the natural and
righteous indignation I feel at the sight of a criminal devoid of the least spark of
human feeling.
When the Prosecutor sat down there was a longish silence. Personally I was quite
overcome by the heat and my amazement at what I had been hearing. The presiding
judge gave a short cough and asked me in a very low tone if I had anything to say. I
rose and as I felt in the mood to speak I said the first thing that crossed my mind:
that Id had no intention of killing the Arab. The Judge replied that this statement
would be taken into consideration by the court. Meanwhile he would be glad to hear
before my counsel addressed the court what were the motives of my crime. So far
he must admit he hadnt fully understood the grounds of my defense.
I tried to explain that it was because of the sun but I spoke too quickly and ran my
words into each other. I was only too conscious that it sounded nonsensical and in
fact I heard people tittering.
My lawyer shrugged his shoulders. Then he was directed to address the court in
his turn. But all he did was to point out the lateness of the hour and to ask for an
adjournment till the following afternoon. To this the judge agreed.
  
 
When I was brought back next day the electric fans were still churning up the
heavy air and the jurymen plying their gaudy little fans in a sort of steady rhythm.
The speech for the defense seemed to me interminable. At one moment however I
pricked up my ears; it was when I heard him saying: It is true I killed a man. He
went on in the same strain saying I when he referred to me. It seemed so queer
that I bent toward the policeman on my right and asked him to explain. He told me to
shut up; then after a moment whispered: They all do that. It seemed to me that the
idea behind it was still further to exclude me from the case to put me off the map. so
to speak by substituting the lawyer for myself. Anyway it hardly mattered; I already
felt worlds away from this courtroom and its tedious proceedings.
My lawyer in any case struck me as feeble to the point of being ridiculous. He
hurried through his plea of provocation and then he too started in about my soul.
But I had an impression that he had much less talent than the Prosecutor.
I too he said have closely studied this mans soul; but unlike my learned
friend for the prosecution I have found something there. Indeed I may say that I
have read the prisoners mind like an open book. What he had read there was that I
was an excellent young fellow a steady conscientious worker who did his best by
his employer; that I was popular with everyone and sympathetic in others troubles.
According to him I was a dutiful son who had supported his mother as long as he
was able. After anxious consideration I had reached the conclusion that by entering a
home the old lady would have comforts that my means didnt permit me to provide
for her. I am astounded gentlemen he added by the attitude taken up by my
learned friend in referring to this Home. Surely if proof be needed of the excellence
of such institutions we need only remember that they are promoted and financed by
a government department. I noticed that he made no reference to the funeral and
this seemed to me a serious omission. But what with his long windedness the
endless days and hours they had been discussing my soul and the rest of it I found
that my mind had gone blurred; everything was dissolving into a grayish watery
haze.
Only one incident stands out; toward the end while my counsel rambled on I
heard the tin trumpet of an ice cream vendor in the street a small shrill sound
cutting across the flow of words. And then a rush of memories went through my
mind memories of a life which was mine no longer and had once provided me with
the surest humblest pleasures: warm smells of summer my favorite streets the sky
at evening Maries dresses and her laugh. The futility of what was happening here
seemed to take me by the throat I felt like vomiting and I had only one idea: to get it
over to go back to my cell and sleep ... and sleep.
Dimly I heard my counsel making his last appeal.
Gentlemen of the jury surely you will not send to his death a decent hardworking
young man because for one tragic moment he lost his self control? Is he not
  
 
sufficiently punished by the lifelong remorse that is to be his lot? I confidently await
your verdict the only verdict possible that of homicide with extenuating
circumstances.
The court rose and the lawyer sat down looking thoroughly exhausted. Some of
his colleagues came to him and shook his hand. You put up a magnificent show old
man I heard one of them say. Another lawyer even called me to witness: Fine
wasnt it? I agreed but insincerely; I was far too tired to judge if it had been fine
or otherwise.
Meanwhile the day was ending and the heat becoming less intense. By some vague
sounds that reached me from the street I knew that the cool of the evening had set in.
We all sat on waiting. And what we all were waiting for really concerned nobody
but me. I looked round the courtroom. It was exactly as it had been on the first day. I
met the eyes of the journalist in gray and the robot woman. This reminded me that
not once during the whole hearing had I tried to catch Maries eye. It wasnt that Id
forgotten her; only I was too preoccupied. I saw her now seated between Céleste and
Raymond. She gave me a little wave of her hand as if to say At last! She was
smiling but I could tell that she was rather anxious. But my heart seemed turned to
stone and I couldnt even return her smile.
The judges came back to their seats. Someone read out to the jury very rapidly a
string of questions. I caught a word here and there. Murder of malice aforethought
... Provocation ... Extenuating circumstances. The jury went out and I was taken to
the little room where I had already waited. My lawyer came to see me; he was very
talkative and showed more cordiality and confidence than ever before. He assured
me that all would go well and Id get off with a few years imprisonment or
transportation. I asked him what were the chances of getting the sentence quashed.
He said there was no chance of that. He had not raised any point of law as this was
apt to prejudice the jury. And it was difficult to get a judgment quashed except on
technical grounds. I saw his point and agreed. Looking at the matter dispassionately
I shared his view. Otherwise there would be no end to litigation. In any case the
lawyer said you can appeal in the ordinary way. But Im convinced the verdict will
be favorable.
We waited for quite a while a good three quarters of an hour I should say. Then a
bell rang. My lawyer left me saying:
The foreman of the jury will read out the answers. You will be called on after that
to hear the judgment.
Some doors banged. I heard people hurrying down flights of steps but couldnt
tell whether they were near by or distant. Then I heard a voice droning away in the
courtroom.
When the bell rang again and I stepped back into the dock the silence of the
courtroom closed in round me and with the silence came a queer sensation when I
  
 
noticed that for the. first time the young journalist kept his eyes averted. I didnt
look in Maries direction. In fact I had no time to look as the presiding judge had
already started pronouncing a rigmarole to the effect that in the name of the French
people I was to be decapitated in some public place.
It seemed to me then that I could interpret the look on the faces of those present; it
was one of almost respectful sympathy. The policemen too handled me very gently.
The lawyer placed his hand on my wrist. I had stopped thinking altogether. I heard
the Judges voice asking if I had anything more to say. After thinking for a moment
I answered No. Then the policemen led me out.
  
 
V
I HAVE just refused for the third time to see the prison chaplain. I have nothing to
say to him dont feel like talking and shall be seeing him quite soon enough
anyway. The only thing that interests me now is the problem of circumventing the
machine learning if the inevitable admits a loophole.
They have moved me to another cell. In this one lying on my back I can see the
sky and there is nothing else to see. All my time is spent in watching the slowly
changing colors of the sky as day moves on to night. I put my hands behind my
head gaze up and wait.
This problem of a loophole obsesses me; I am always wondering if there have
been cases of condemned prisoners escaping from the implacable machinery of
justice at the last moment breaking through the police cordon vanishing in the nick
of time before the guillotine falls. Often and often I blame myself for not having
given more attention to accounts of public executions. One should always take an
interest in such matters. Theres never any knowing what one may come to. Like
everyone else Id read descriptions of executions in the papers. But technical books
dealing with this subject must certainly exist; only Id never felt sufficiently
interested to look them up. And in these books I might have found escape stories.
Surely theyd have told me that in one case anyhow the wheels had stopped; that
once if only once in that inexorable march of events chance or luck had played a
happy part. Just once! In a way I think that single instance would have satisfied me.
My emotion would have done the rest. The papers often talk of a debt owed to
society a debt which according to them must be paid by the offender. But talk of
that sort doesnt touch the imagination. No the one thing that counted for me was the
possibility of making a dash for it and defeating their bloodthirsty rite; of a mad
stampede to freedom that would anyhow give me a moments hope the gamblers
last throw. Naturally all that hope could come to was to be knocked down at the
corner of a street or picked off by a bullet in my back. But all things considered
even this luxury was forbidden me; I was caught in the rattrap irrevocably.
Try as I might I couldnt stomach this brutal certitude. For really when one came
to think of it there was a disproportion between the judgment on which it was based
and the unalterable sequence of events starting from the moment when that judgment
was delivered. The fact that the verdict was read out at eight P.M. rather than at five
the fact that it might have been quite different that it was given by men who change
their underclothes and was credited to so vague an entity as the French people 
for that matter why not to the Chinese or the German people? all these facts
seemed to deprive the courts decision of much of its gravity. Yet I could but
recognize that from the moment the verdict was given its effects became as cogent
  
 
as tangible as for example this wall against which I was lying pressing my back to
it.
When such thoughts crossed my mind I remembered a story Mother used to tell
me about my father. I never set eyes on him. Perhaps the only things I really knew
about him were what Mother had told me. One of these was that hed gone to see a
murderer executed. The mere thought of it turned his stomach. But hed seen it
through and on coming home was violently sick. At the time I found my fathers
conduct rather disgusting. But now I understood; it was so natural. How had I failed
to recognize that nothing was more important than an execution; that viewed from
one angle its the only thing that can genuinely interest a man? And I decided that if
ever I got out of jail Id attend every execution that took place. I was unwise no
doubt even to consider this possibility. For the moment Id pictured myself in
freedom standing behind a double rank of policemen on the right side of the line
so to speak the mere thought of being an onlooker who comes to see the show and
can go home and vomit afterward flooded my mind with a wild absurd exultation. It
was a stupid thing to let my imagination run away with me like that; a moment later I
had a shivering fit and had to wrap myself closely in my blanket. But my teeth went
on chattering; nothing would stop them.
Still obviously one cant be sensible all the time. Another equally ridiculous
fancy of mine was to frame new laws altering the penalties. What was wanted to my
mind was to give the criminal a chance if only a dogs chance; say one chance in a
thousand. There might be some drug or combination of drugs which would kill the
patient (I thought of him as the patient) nine hundred and ninety times in a
thousand. That he should know this was of course essential. For after taking much
thought calmly I came to the conclusion that what was wrong about the guillotine
was that the condemned man had no chance at all absolutely none. In fact the
patients death had been ordained irrevocably. It was a foregone conclusion. If by
some fluke the knife didnt do its job they started again. So it came to this that 
against the grain no doubt the condemned man had to hope the apparatus was in
good working order! This I thought was a flaw in the system; and on the face of it
my view was sound enough. On the other hand I had to admit it proved the
efficiency of the system. It came to this; the man under sentence was obliged to
collaborate mentally it was in his interest that all should go off without a hitch.
Another thing I had to recognize was that until now Id had wrong ideas on the
subject. For some reason Id always supposed that one had to go up steps and climb
on to a scaffold to be guillotined. Probably that was because of the      Revolution;
I mean what Id learned about it at school and the pictures I had seen. Then one
morning I remembered a photograph the newspapers had featured on the occasion of
the execution of a famous criminal. Actually the apparatus stood on the ground; there
was nothing very impressing about it and it was much narrower than Id imagined. It
  
 
struck me as rather odd that picture had escaped my memory until now. What had
struck me at the time was the neat appearance of the guillotine; its shining surfaces
and finish reminded me of some laboratory instrument. One always has exaggerated
ideas about what one doesnt know. Now I had to admit it seemed a very simple
process getting guillotined; the machine is on the same level as the man and he
walks toward it as he steps forward to meet somebody he knows. In a sense that too
was disappointing. The business of climbing a scaffold leaving the world below so
to speak gave something for a mans imagination to get hold of. But as it was the
machine dominated everything; they killed you discreetly with a hint of shame and
much efficiency.
There were two other things about which I was always thinking: the dawn and my
appeal. However I did my best to keep my mind off these thoughts. I lay down
looked up at the sky and forced myself to study it. When the light began to turn
green I knew that night was coming. Another thing I did to deflect the course of my
thoughts was to listen to my heart. I couldnt imagine that this faint throbbing which
had been with me for so long would ever cease. Imagination has never been one of
my strong points. Still I tried to picture a moment when the beating of my heart no
longer echoed in my head. But in vain. The dawn and my appeal were still there.
And I ended by believing it was a silly thing to try to force ones thoughts out of
their natural groove.
They always came for one at dawn; that much I knew. So really all my nights
were spent in waiting for that dawn. I have never liked being taken by surprise.
When something happens to me I want to be ready for it. Thats why I got into the
habit of sleeping off and on in the daytime and watching through the night for the
first hint of daybreak in the dark dome above. The worst period of the night was that
vague hour when I knew they usually come; once it was after midnight I waited
listening intently. Never before had my ears perceived so many noises such tiny
sounds. Still I must say I was lucky in one respect; never during any of those periods
did I hear footsteps. Mother used to say that however miserable one is theres
always something to be thankful for. And each morning when the sky brightened
and light began to flood my cell I agreed with her. Because I might just as well have
heard footsteps and felt my heart shattered into bits. Even though the faintest rustle
sent me hurrying to the door and pressing an ear to the rough cold wood I listened
so intently that I could hear my breathing quick and hoarse like a dogs panting 
even so there was an end; my heart hadnt split and I knew I had another twenty four
hours respite.
Then all day there was my appeal to think about. I made the most of this idea
studying my effects so as to squeeze out the maximum of consolation. Thus I always
began by assuming the worst; my appeal was dismissed. That meant of course I was
to die. Sooner than others obviously. But I reminded myself its common
  
 
knowledge that life isnt worth living anyhow. And on a wide view I could see
that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and
ten since in either case other men and women will continue living the world will
go on as before. Also whether I died now or forty years hence this business of dying
had to be got through inevitably. Still somehow this line of thought wasnt as
consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a
galling reminder! However I could argue myself out of it by picturing what would
have been my feelings when my term was up and death had cornered me. Once
youre up against it the precise manner of your death has obviously small
importance. Therefore but it was hard not to lose the thread of the argument
leading up to that therefore I should be prepared to face the dismissal of my
appeal.
At this stage but only at this stage I had so to speak the right and accordingly I
gave myself leave to consider the other alternative; that my appeal was successful.
And then the trouble was to calm down that sudden rush of joy racing through my
body and even bringing tears to my eyes. But it was up to me to bring my nerves to
heel and steady my mind; for even in considering this possibility I had to keep some
order in my thoughts so as to make my consolations as regards the first alternative
more plausible. When Id succeeded I had earned a good hours peace of mind; and
that anyhow was something.
It was at one of these moments that I refused once again to see the chaplain. I was
lying down and could mark the summer evening coming on by a soft golden glow
spreading across the sky. I had just turned down my appeal and felt my blood
circulating with slow steady throbs. No I didnt want to see the chaplain. ... Then I
did something I hadnt done for quite a while; I fell to thinking about Marie. She
hadnt written for ages; probably I surmised she had grown tired of being the
mistress of a man sentenced to death. Or she might be ill or dead. After all such
things happen. How could I have known about it since apart from our two bodies
separated now there was no link between us nothing to remind us of each other?
Supposing she were dead her memory would mean nothing; I couldnt feel an
interest in a dead girl. This seemed to me quite normal; just as I realized people
would soon forget me once I was dead. I couldnt even say that this was hard to
stomach; really theres no idea to which one doesnt get acclimatized in time.
My thoughts had reached this point when the chaplain walked in unannounced. I
couldnt help giving a start on seeing him. He noticed this evidently as he promptly
told me not to be alarmed. I reminded him that usually his visits were at another
hour and for a pretty grim occasion. This he replied was just a friendly visit; it had
no concern with my appeal about which he knew nothing. Then he sat down on my
bed asking me to sit beside him. I refused not because I had anything against him;
he seemed a mild amiable man.
  
 
He remained quite still at first his arms resting on his knees his eyes fixed on his
hands. They were slender but sinewy hands which made me think of two nimble
little animals. Then he gently rubbed them together. He stayed so long in the same
position that for a while I almost forgot he was there.
All of a sudden he jerked his head up and looked me in the eyes.
Why he asked dont you let me come to see you?
I explained that I didnt believe in God.
Are you really so sure of that?
I said I saw no point in troubling my head about the matter; whether I believed or
didnt was to my mind a question of so little importance.
He then leaned back against the wall laying his hands flat on his thighs. Almost
without seeming to address me he remarked that hed often noticed one fancies one
is quite sure about something when in point of fact one isnt. When I said nothing
he looked at me again and asked:
Dont you agree?
I said that seemed quite possible. But though I mightnt be so sure about what
interested me I was absolutely sure about what didnt interest me. And the question
he had raised didnt interest me at all.
He looked away and without altering his posture asked if it was because I felt
utterly desperate that I spoke like this. I explained that it wasnt despair I felt but
fear which was natural enough.
In that case he said firmly God can help you. All the men Ive seen in your
position turned to Him in their time of trouble.
Obviously I replied they were at liberty to do so if they felt like it. I however
didnt want to be helped and I hadnt time to work up interest for something that
didnt interest me.
He fluttered his hands fretfully; then sitting up smoothed out his cassock. When
this was done he began talking again addressing me as my friend. It wasnt
because Id been condemned to death he said that he spoke to me in this way. In his
opinion every man on the earth was under sentence of death.
There I interrupted him; that wasnt the same thing I pointed out and whats
more could be no consolation.
He nodded. Maybe. Still if you dont die soon youll die one day. And then the
same question will arise. How will you face that terrible final hour?
I replied that Id face it exactly as I was facing it now.
Thereat he stood up and looked me straight in the eyes. It was a trick I knew well.
I used to amuse myself trying it on Emmanuel and Céleste and nine times out of ten
theyd look away uncomfortably. I could see the chaplain was an old hand at it as
his gaze never faltered. And his voice was quite steady when he said: Have you no
  
 
hope at all? Do you really think that when you die you die outright and nothing
remains?
I said: Yes.
He dropped his eyes and sat down again. He was truly sorry for me he said. It
must make life unbearable for a man to think as I did.
The priest was beginning to bore me and resting a shoulder on the wall just
beneath the little skylight I looked away. Though I didnt trouble much to follow
what he said I gathered he was questioning me again. Presently his tone became
agitated urgent and as I realized that he was genuinely distressed I began to pay
more attention.
He said he felt convinced my appeal would succeed but I was saddled with a load
of guilt of which I must get rid. In his view mans justice was a vain thing; only
Gods justice mattered. I pointed out that the former had condemned me. Yes he
agreed but it hadnt absolved me from my sin. I told him that I wasnt conscious of
any sin; all I knew was that Id been guilty of a criminal offense. Well I was
paying the penalty of that offense and no one had the right to expect anything more
of me.
Just then he got up again and it struck me that if he wanted to move in this tiny
cell almost the only choice lay between standing up and sitting down. I was staring
at the floor. He took a single step toward me and halted as if he didnt dare to come
nearer. Then he looked up through the bars at the sky.
Youre mistaken my son he said gravely. Theres more that might be required
of you. And perhaps it will be required of you.
What do you mean?
You might be asked to see ...
To see what?
Slowly the priest gazed round my cell and I was struck by the sadness of his voice
when he replied:
These stone walls I know it only too well are steeped in human suffering. Ive
never been able to look at them without a shudder. And yet believe me I am
speaking from the depths of my heart I know that even the wretchedest amongst
you have sometimes seen taking form against that grayness a divine face. Its that
face you are asked to see.
This roused me a little. I informed him that Id been staring at those walls for
months; there was nobody nothing in the world I knew better than I knew them.
And once upon a time perhaps I used to try to see a face. But it was a sun gold face
lit up with desire Maries face. I had no luck; Id never seen it and now Id given
up trying. Indeed Id never seen anything taking form as he called it against
those gray walls.
  
 
The chaplain gazed at me with a sort of sadness. I now had my back to the wall
and light was flowing over my forehead. He muttered some words I didnt catch;
then abruptly asked if he might kiss me. I said No. Then he turned came up to the
wall and slowly drew his hand along it.
Do you really love these earthly things so very much? he asked in a low voice.
I made no reply.
For quite a while he kept his eyes averted. His presence was getting more and
more irksome and I was on the point of telling him to go and leave me in peace
when all of a sudden he swung round on me and burst out passionately:
No! No! I refuse to believe it. Im sure youve often wished there was an
afterlife.
Of course I had I told him. Everybody has that wish at times. But that had no
more importance than wishing to be rich or to swim very fast or to have a bettershaped
mouth. It was in the same order of things. I was going on in the same vein
when he cut in with a question. How did I picture the life after the grave?
I fairly bawled out at him: A life in which I can remember this life on earth.
Thats all I want of it. And in the same breath I told him Id had enough of his
company.
But apparently he had more to say on the subject of God. I went close up to him
and made a last attempt to explain that Id very little time left and I wasnt going to
waste it on God.
Then he tried to change the subject by asking me why I hadnt once addressed him
as Father seeing that he was a priest. That irritated me still more and I told him he
wasnt my father; quite the contrary he was on the others side.
No no my son he said laying his hand on my shoulder. Im on your side
though you dont realize it because your heart is hardened. But I shall pray for
you.
Then I dont know how it was but something seemed to break inside me and I
started yelling at the top of my voice. I hurled insults at him I told him not to waste
his rotten prayers on me; it was better to burn than to disappear. Id taken him by the
neckband of his cassock and in a sort of ecstasy of joy and rage I poured out on
him all the thoughts that had been simmering in my brain. He seemed so cocksure
you see. And yet none of his certainties was worth one strand of a womans hair.
Living as he did like a corpse he couldnt even be sure of being alive. It might look
as if my hands were empty. Actually I was sure of myself sure about everything far
surer than he; sure of my present life and of the death that was coming. That no
doubt was all I had; but at least that certainty was something I could get my teeth
into just as it had got its teeth into me. Id been right I was still right I was always
right. Id passed my life in a certain way and I might have passed it in a different
way if Id felt like it. Id acted thus and I hadnt acted otherwise; I hadnt done x
  
 
whereas I had done y or z. And what did that mean? That all the time Id been
waiting for this present moment for that dawn tomorrows or another days which
was to justify me. Nothing nothing had the least importance and I knew quite well
why. He too knew why. From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow
persistent breeze had been blowing toward me all my life long from the years that
were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people
tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I then was living through. What
difference could they make to me the deaths of others or a mothers love or his
God; or the way a man decides to live the fate he thinks he chooses since one and
the same fate was bound to choose not only me but thousands of millions of
privileged people who like him called themselves my brothers. Surely surely he
must see that? Every man alive was privileged; there was only one class of men the
privileged class. All alike would be condemned to die one day; his turn too would
come like the others. And what difference could it make if after being charged with
murder he were executed because he didnt weep at his mothers funeral since it all
came to the same thing in the end? The same thing for Salamanos wife and for
Salamanos dog. That little robot woman was as guilty as the girl from Paris who
had married Masson or as Marie who wanted me to marry her. What did it matter if
Raymond was as much my pal as Céleste who was a far worthier man? What did it
matter if at this very moment Marie was kissing a new boy friend? As a condemned
man himself couldnt he grasp what I meant by that dark wind blowing from my
future? ...
I had been shouting so much that Id lost my breath and just then the jailers
rushed in and started trying to release the chaplain from my grip. One of them made
as if to strike me. The chaplain quietened them down then gazed at me for a moment
without speaking. I could see tears in his eyes. Then he turned and left the cell.
Once hed gone I felt calm again. But all this excitement had exhausted me and I
dropped heavily on to my sleeping plank. I must have had a longish sleep for when
I woke the stars were shining down on my face. Sounds of the countryside came
faintly in and the cool night air veined with smells of earth and salt fanned my
cheeks. The marvelous peace of the sleepbound summer night flooded through me
like a tide. Then just on the edge of daybreak I heard a steamers siren. People were
starting on a voyage to a world which had ceased to concern me forever. Almost for
the first time in many months I thought of my mother. And now it seemed to me I
understood why at her lifes end she had taken on a fiancé; why shed played at
making a fresh start. There too in that Home where lives were flickering out the
dusk came as a mournful solace. With death so near Mother must have felt like
someone on the brink of freedom ready to start life all over again. No one no one in
the world had any right to weep for her. And I too felt ready to start life all over
again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean emptied me of hope
 
and gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars for the first time the
first I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like
myself indeed so brotherly made me realize that Id been happy and that I was
happy still. For all to be accomplished for me to feel less lonely all that remained to
hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators
and that they should greet me with howls of execration.