Back in his room, he switched on the space heater. An orange light flickered into life and he felt an intimate warmth on his skin. It was not enough to fully heat the place, but it was much better than nothing. Ushikawa leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and took a short nap in a tiny spot of sunlight. A dreamless sleep, a pure blank in time.
He was pulled out of this happy, deep sleep by the sound of a knock. Someone was knocking on his door. He bolted awake and gazed around him, unsure for a moment of his surroundings. He spotted the Minolta single-lens reflex camera on a tripod and remembered he was in a room in an apartment in Koenji. Someone was pounding with his fist on the door. As he hurriedly scraped together his consciousness, Ushikawa thought it was odd that someone would knock on the door. There was a doorbell—all you had to do was push the button. It was simple enough. Still this person insisted on knocking—pounding it for all he was worth, actually. Ushikawa frowned and checked his watch. One forty-five. One forty-five p.m., obviously. It was still light outside.
He didn’t answer the door. Nobody knew he was here, and he wasn’t expecting any visitors. It must be a salesman, or someone selling newspaper subscriptions. Whoever it was might need him, but he certainly didn’t need them. Leaning against the wall, he glared at the door and maintained his silence. The person would surely give up after a time and go away.
But he didn’t. He would pause, then start knocking once more. A barrage of knocks, nothing for ten or fifteen seconds, then a new round. These were firm knocks, nothing hesitant about them, each knock almost unnaturally the same as the next. From start to finish they were demanding a response from Ushikawa. He grew uneasy. Was the person on the other side of the door maybe—Eriko Fukada? Coming to complain to him about his despicable behavior, secretly photographing people? His heart started to pound. He licked his lips with his thick tongue. But the banging against this steel door could only be that of a grown man’s fist, not that of a girl’s.
Or had she informed somebody else of what Ushikawa was up to, and that person was outside the door? Somebody from the rental agency, or maybe the police? That couldn’t be good. But the rental agent would have a master key and could let himself in, and the police would announce themselves. And neither one would bang on the door like this. They would simply ring the bell.
“Mr. Kozu,” a man called out. “Mr. Kozu!”
Ushikawa remembered that Kozu was the name of the previous resident of the apartment. His name remained on the mailbox. Ushikawa preferred it that way. The man outside must think Mr. Kozu still lived here.
“Mr. Kozu,” the man intoned. “I know you’re in there. I can sense you’re holed up inside, trying to stay perfectly quiet.”
A middle-aged man’s voice, not all that loud, but slightly hoarse. At the core his voice had a hardness to it, the hardness of a brick fired in a kiln and carefully allowed to dry. Perhaps because of this, his voice echoed throughout the building.
“Mr. Kozu, I’m from NHK. I’ve come to collect your monthly subscription fee. So I would appreciate it if you’d open the door.”
Ushikawa wasn’t planning to pay any NHK subscription fee. It might be faster, he thought, to just let the man in and show him the place. Tell him, look, no TV, right? But if he saw Ushikawa, with his odd features, shut up alone in an apartment in the middle of the day without a stick of furniture, he couldn’t help but be suspicious.
“Mr. Kozu, people who have TVs have to pay the subscription fee. That’s the law. Some people say they never watch NHK, so they’re not going to pay. But that argument doesn’t hold water. Whether you watch NHK or not, if you have a TV you have to pay.”
So it’s just a fee collector. Let him get it out of his system. Don’t respond, and he’ll go away. But how could he be so sure there’s someone in this apartment? After he came back an hour or so ago, Ushikawa hadn’t been out again. He hardly made a sound, and he always kept the curtains closed.
“Mr. Kozu, I know very well that you are in there,” the man said, as if reading Ushikawa’s thoughts. “You must think it strange that I know that. But I do know it—that you’re in there. You don’t want to pay the NHK fee, so you’re trying to not make a sound. I’m perfectly aware of this.”
The homogeneous knocks started up again. There would be a slight pause, like a wind instrument player pausing to take a breath, then once more the pounding would start, the rhythm unchanged.
“I get it, Mr. Kozu. You have decided to ignore me. Fine. I’ll leave today. I have other things to do. But I’ll be back. Mark my words. If I say I’ll be back, you can count on it. I’m not your average fee collector. I never give up until I get what is coming to me. I never waver from that. It’s like the phases of the moon, or life and death. There is no escape.”
A long silence followed. Just when Ushikawa thought he might be gone, the collector spoke up again.
“I’ll be back soon, Mr. Kozu. Look forward to it. When you’re least expecting it, there will be a knock on the door. Bang bang! And that will be me.”
No more knocks now. Ushikawa listened intently. He thought he heard footsteps fading down the corridor. He quickly went over to his camera and fixed his gaze on the entrance to the apartment. The fee collector should finish his business in the building soon and be leaving. He had to check and see what sort of man he was. NHK collectors wear uniforms, so he should be able to spot him right away. But maybe he wasn’t really from NHK. Maybe he was pretending to be one to try to get Ushikawa to open the door. Either way, he had to be someone Ushikawa had never seen before. The remote for the shutter in his right hand, he waited expectantly for a likely-looking person to appear.
For the next thirty minutes, though, no one came into or out of the building. Eventually a middle-aged woman he had seen a number of times emerged and pedaled off on her bike. Ushikawa had dubbed her “Chin Lady” because of the ample flesh dangling below her chin. A half an hour later Chin Lady returned, a shopping bag in the basket of her bike. She parked her bike in the bike parking area and went into the building, bag in hand. After this, a boy in elementary school came home. Ushikawa’s name for him was “Fox,” since his eyes slanted upward. But no one who could have been the fee collector appeared. Ushikawa was puzzled. The building had only one way in and out, and he had kept his eyes glued to the entrance every second. If the collector hadn’t come out, that could only mean he was still inside.
He continued to watch the entrance without a break. He didn’t go to the bathroom. The sun set, it grew dark, and the light at the entrance came on. But still no fee collector. After six, Ushikawa gave up. He went to the bathroom and let out all the pee he had been holding in. The man was definitely still in the building. Why, he didn’t know. It didn’t make any sense. But that weird fee collector had decided to stay put.
The wind, colder now, whined through the frozen electric lines. Ushikawa turned on the space heater, and as he smoked a cigarette he tried to make sense of it all. Why did the man have to speak in such an aggressive, challenging tone? Why was he so positive that someone was inside the apartment? And why hadn’t he left the building? If he hasn’t left here, then where is he?
Ushikawa left the camera, leaned against the wall, and stared for the longest time at the orange filament of the space heater.
CHAPTER 17
Aomame
I ONLY HAVE ONE PAIR OF EYES
It was a windy Saturday, nearly eight p.m., when the phone rang. Aomame was wearing a down jacket, a blanket on her lap, sitting on the balcony. Through a gap in the screen, she kept an eye on the slide in the playground, which was illuminated by the mercury-vapor lamp. Her hands were under the blanket so they wouldn’t get numb. The deserted slide looked like the skeleton of some huge animal that had died in the Ice Age.
Sitting outside on a cold night might not be good for the baby, but Aomame decided it wasn’t cold enough to present a problem. No matter how cold you may be on the outside, amniotic fluid maintained nearly the same temperature
as blood. There are plenty of places in the world way colder and harsher, she concluded. And women keep on having babies, even there. But above all, this cold was something she felt she had to endure if she wanted to see Tengo again.
As always, the large yellow moon and its smaller green companion floated in the winter sky. Clouds of assorted sizes and shapes scudded swiftly across the sky. The clouds were white and dense, their outlines sharply etched, and they looked to her like hard blocks of ice floating down a snowmelt river to the sea. As she watched the clouds, appearing from somewhere only to disappear again, Aomame felt she had been transported to a spot near the edge of the world. This was the northern frontier of reason. There was nothing north of here—only the chaos of nothingness.
The sliding glass door was open just a crack, so the ringing phone sounded faint, and Aomame was lost in thought, but she didn’t miss the sound. The phone rang three times, stopped, then twenty seconds later rang one more time. It had to be Tamaru. She threw aside the blanket, slid open the cloudy glass door, and went inside. It was dark inside and the heat was at a comfortable level. Her fingers still cold, she lifted the receiver.
“Still reading Proust?”
“But not making much progress,” Aomame replied. It was like an exchange of passwords.
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s not that. How should I put it—it’s a story about a different place, somewhere totally unlike here.”
Tamaru was silent, waiting for her to go on. He was in no hurry.
“By different place, I mean it’s like reading a detailed report from a small planet light-years away from this world I’m living in. I can picture all the scenes described and understand them. It’s described very vividly, minutely, even. But I can’t connect the scenes in that book with where I am now. We are physically too far apart. I’ll be reading it, and I find myself having to go back and reread the same passage over again.”
Aomame searched for the next words. Tamaru waited as she did.
“It’s not boring, though,” she said. “It’s so detailed and beautifully written, and I feel like I can grasp the structure of that lonely little planet. But I can’t seem to go forward. It’s like I’m in a boat, paddling upstream. I row for a while, but then when I take a rest and am thinking about something, I find myself back where I started. Maybe that way of reading suits me now, rather than the kind of reading where you forge ahead to find out what happens. I don’t know how to put it exactly, but there is a sense of time wavering irregularly when you try to forge ahead. If what is in front is behind, and what is behind is in front, it doesn’t really matter, does it. Either way is fine.”
Aomame searched for a more precise way of expressing herself.
“It feels like I’m experiencing someone else’s dream. Like we’re simultaneously sharing feelings. But I can’t really grasp what it means to be simultaneous. Our feelings seem extremely close, but in reality there’s a considerable gap between us.”
“I wonder if Proust was aiming for that sort of sensation.”
Aomame had no idea.
“Still, on the other hand,” Tamaru said, “time in this real world goes ever onward. It never stands still, and never reverses course.”
“Of course. In the real world time goes forward.”
As she said this Aomame glanced at the glass door. But was it really true? That time was always flowing forward?
“The seasons have changed, and we are getting close to the end of 1984,” Tamaru said.
“I doubt I’ll finish In Search of Lost Time by the end of the year.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tamaru said. “Take your time. It was written over fifty years ago. It’s not like it’s crammed with hot-off-the-press information or anything.”
You might be right, Aomame thought. But maybe not. She no longer had much trust in time.
“Is that thing inside you doing all right?” Tamaru asked.
“So far, so good.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Tamaru said. “By the way, you heard about the short balding guy who has been loitering outside the Willow House, right?”
“I did. Is he still hanging around?”
“No. Not recently. He did for a couple of days and then he disappeared. But he went to the rental agencies in the area, pretending to be looking for an apartment, gathering information about the safe house. This guy really stands out. As if that weren’t bad enough, his clothes are awful. So everyone who talked with him remembers him. It was easy to track his movements.”
“He doesn’t sound like the right type to be doing investigations or reconnaissance.”
“Exactly. With looks like those, he’s definitely not cut out for that kind of work. He has a huge head, too, like one of those Fukusuke good-luck dolls. But he does seem to be good at what he does. He knows how to pound the pavement and dig up information. And he seems quite sharp. He doesn’t skip what is important, and he ignores what isn’t.”
“And he was able to gather a certain amount of information on the safe house.”
“He knows it’s a refuge for women fleeing domestic violence, and that the dowager has provided it free of charge. I think he must also have discovered that the dowager is a member of the sports club where you worked, and that you often visited her mansion to do private training sessions with her. If I were him, I would have been able to find out that much.”
“You’re saying he’s as good as you are?”
“As long as you don’t mind the effort involved, you can learn how to best gather information and train yourself to think logically. Anyone can do that much.”
“I can’t believe there would be that many people like that in the world.”
“Well, there are a few. Professionals.”
Aomame sat down and touched the tip of her nose. It was still cold from being outside.
“And that man isn’t hanging around outside the mansion anymore?” Aomame asked.
“I think he recognizes that he stands out too much. And he knows about the security cameras. So he gathered as much information as he could in a short time and then moved on.”
“So he knows about the connection between me and the dowager, that this is more than just a relationship between a sports club trainer and a wealthy client, and that the safe house is connected, too. And that we were involved in some sort of project together.”
“Most likely,” Tamaru said. “As far as I can tell, the guy is getting close to the heart of things. Step by step.”
“From what you’re saying, though, it sounds like he’s working on his own, not as part of some larger organization.”
“I had the same impression. Unless they had some special ulterior motive, a large organization would never hire a conspicuous man like that to undertake a secret investigation.”
“So why is he doing this investigation—and for whom?”
“You got me,” Tamaru said. “All I know is he’s good at what he does and he’s dangerous. Anything beyond that is just speculation. Though my own modest speculation leads me to believe that, in some form or another, Sakigake is involved.”
Aomame considered this prospect. “And the man has moved on.”
“Right. I don’t know where he has gone, though. But if I had to make a logical guess I would say that he is trying to track you down.”
“But you told me it was next to impossible to find this place.”
“Correct. A person could investigate all he wanted and never discover anything that linked the dowager to the apartment. Any possible connection has been erased. But I’m talking about the short term. If it’s long term, chinks in the armor will appear, just where you least expect them. You might wander outside, for instance, and be spotted. That’s just one possibility.”
“I don’t go outside,” Aomame insisted. But this wasn’t entirely true. She had left the apartment twice: once when she ran over to the playground in search of Tengo, the other time when she took the taxi to the turnout on the Met
ropolitan Expressway No. 3, near Sangenjaya, in search of an exit. But she couldn’t reveal this to Tamaru.
“Then how is he going to locate this place?”
“If I were him, I would take another look at your personal information. Consider what kind of person you are, where you came from, what kind of life you have led up till now, what you’re thinking, what you’re hoping for in life, what you’re not hoping for. I would take all the information I could get my hands on, lay it all out on a table, verify it, and dissect it from top to bottom.”
“Expose me, in other words.”
“That’s right. Expose you under a cold, harsh light. Use tweezers and a magnifying glass to check out every nook and cranny, to discover patterns in the way you act.”
“I don’t get it. Would an analysis like that really turn up where I am now?”
“I don’t know,” Tamaru said. “It might, and it might not. It depends. I’m just saying that’s what I would do. Because I can’t think of anything else. Every person has his set routines when it comes to thinking and acting, and where there’s a routine, there’s a weak point.”
“It sounds like a scientific investigation.”
“People need routines. It’s like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic. In the present situation, you don’t want to move from where you are now. At least until the end of the year you have refused to move to a safer location—because you’re searching for something there. And until you find that something you can’t leave. Or you don’t want to leave.”
Aomame was silent.