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  The heroine of Air Chrysalis was probably Fuka-Eri herself in the past. A ten-year-old girl, she lived in a special mountain commune (or commune-like place), where she was assigned to look after a blind goat. All the children in the commune had work assignments. Though the goat was old, it had special meaning for the community, so the girl’s duty was to make sure that no harm came to it. She was not allowed to take her eyes off it for a second. One day, however, in a moment of carelessness, she did exactly that, and the goat died. As her punishment, the girl was put in total isolation for ten days, locked in an old storehouse with the goat’s corpse.

  The goat served as a passageway to this world for the Little People. The girl did not know whether the Little People were good or bad (and neither did Tengo). When night came, the Little People would enter this world through the corpse, and they would go back to the other side when dawn broke. The girl could speak to them. They taught her how to make an air chrysalis.

  What most impressed Tengo was the concrete detail with which the blind goat’s traits and actions were depicted. These details were what made the work as a whole so vivid. Could Fuka-Eri have actually been the keeper of a blind goat? And could she have actually lived in a mountain commune like the one in the story? Tengo guessed that the answer in both cases was yes. Because if she had never had these experiences, Fuka-Eri was a storyteller of rare, inborn talent.

  Tengo decided that he would ask Fuka-Eri about the goat and the commune the next time they met (which was to be on Sunday). Of course she might not answer his questions. Judging from their previous conversation, it seemed that Fuka-Eri would only answer questions when she felt like it. When she didn’t want to answer, or when she clearly had no intention of responding, she simply ignored the questions, as if she had never heard them. Like Komatsu. The two were much alike in that regard. Which made them very different from Tengo. If someone asked Tengo a question, any question, he would do his best to answer it. He had probably been born that way.

  His older girlfriend called him at five thirty.

  “What did you do today?” she asked.

  “I was writing a story all day,” he answered, half truthfully. He had not been writing his own fiction. But this was not something he could explain to her in any detail.

  “Did it go well?”

  “More or less.”

  “I’m sorry for canceling today on such short notice. I think we can meet next week.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  After that, she talked about her children. She often did that with Tengo. She had two little girls. Tengo had no siblings and obviously no children, so he didn’t know much about young children. But that never stopped her from telling Tengo about hers. Tengo rarely initiated a conversation, but he enjoyed listening to other people. And so he listened to her with interest. Her older girl, a second grader, was probably being bullied at school, she said. The girl herself had told her nothing, but the mother of one of the girl’s classmates had let her know that this was apparently happening. Tengo had never met the girl, but he had once seen a photograph. She didn’t look much like her mother.

  “Why are they bullying her?” Tengo asked.

  “She often has asthma attacks, so she can’t participate in a lot of activities with the other kids. Maybe that’s it. She’s a sweet little thing, and her grades aren’t bad.”

  “I don’t get it,” Tengo said. “You’d think they’d take special care of a kid with asthma, not bully her.”

  “It’s never that simple in the kids’ world,” she said with a sigh. “Kids get shut out just for being different from everyone else. The same kind of thing goes on in the grown-up world, but it’s much more direct in the children’s world.”

  “Can you give me a concrete example?”

  She gave him several examples, none of which was especially bad in itself, but which, continued on a daily basis, could have a severe impact on a child: hiding things, not speaking to the child, or doing nasty imitations of her. “Did you ever experience bullying when you were a child?”

  Tengo thought back to his childhood. “I don’t think so,” he answered. “Or maybe I just never noticed.”

  “If you never noticed, it never happened. I mean, the whole point of bullying is to make the person notice it’s being done to him or her. You can’t have bullying without the victim noticing.”

  Even as a child, Tengo had been big and strong, and people treated him with respect, which was probably why he was never bullied. But he had far more serious problems than mere bullying to deal with back then.

  “Were you ever bullied?” Tengo asked.

  “Never,” she declared, but then she seemed to hesitate. “I did do some bullying, though.”

  “You were part of a group that did it?”

  “Yes, in the fifth grade. We got together and decided not to talk to one boy. I can’t remember why. There must have been a reason, but it probably wasn’t a very good one if I can’t even remember what it was. I still feel bad about it, though. I’m ashamed to think about it. I wonder why I went and did something like that. I have no idea what made me do it.”

  This reminded Tengo of a certain event, something from the distant past that he would recall now and then. Something he could never forget. But he decided not to mention it. It would have been a long story. And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words. He had never told anyone about it, and he probably never would.

  “Finally,” his girlfriend said, “everybody feels safe belonging not to the excluded minority but to the excluding majority. You think, Oh, I’m glad that’s not me. It’s basically the same in all periods in all societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.”

  “And those troubling things are all you can think about when you’re one of the few.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” she said mournfully. “But maybe, if you’re in a situation like that, you learn to think for yourself.”

  “Yes, but maybe what you end up thinking for yourself about is all those troubling things.”

  “That’s another problem, I suppose.”

  “Better not think about it too seriously,” Tengo said. “I doubt it’ll turn out to be that terrible. I’m sure there must be a few kids in her class who know how to use their brains.”

  “I guess so,” she said, and then she spent some time alone with her thoughts. Holding the receiver against his ear, Tengo waited patiently for her to gather her thoughts together.

  “Thanks,” she said finally. “I feel a little better after talking to you.” She seemed to have found some answers.

  “I feel a little better too,” Tengo said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Talking to you.”

  “See you next Friday,” she said.

  After hanging up, Tengo went out to the neighborhood supermarket. Returning home with a big bag of groceries, he wrapped the vegetables and fish in plastic and put them in the refrigerator. He was preparing dinner to the refrains of an FM music broadcast when the phone rang. Four phone calls in one day was a lot for Tengo. He could probably count the number of days that such a thing happened in any one year. This time it was Fuka-Eri. “About Sunday,” she said, without saying hello.

  He could hear car horns honking at the other end. A lot of drivers seemed to be angry about something. She was probably calling from a public phone on a busy street.

  “Yes,” he said, adding meat to the bones of her bare pronouncement. “Sunday morning—the day after tomorrow—I’ll be seeing you and meeting somebody else.”

  “Nine o’clock. Shinjuku Station. Front end of the train to Tachikawa,” she said, setting forth three facts in a row.

  “In other words, you want to meet on the outward-bound platform of the Chuo Line where the first car stops, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Where should I buy a ti
cket to?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “So I should just buy any ticket and adjust the fare where we get off,” he said, supplementing material to her words the way he was doing with Air Chrysalis. “Does this mean we’re going pretty far from the city?”

  “What were you just doing,” she asked, ignoring his question.

  “Making dinner.”

  “Making what.”

  “Nothing special, just cooking for myself. Grilling a dried mackerel and grating a daikon radish. Making a miso soup with littlenecks and green onions to eat with tofu. Dousing cucumber slices and wakame seaweed with vinegar. Ending up with rice and nappa pickles. That’s all”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I wonder. Nothing special. Pretty much what I eat all the time,” Tengo said.

  Fuka-Eri kept silent. Long silences did not seem to bother her, but this was not the case for Tengo.

  “Oh yes,” he said, “I should tell you I started rewriting your Air Chrysalis today. I know you haven’t given us your final permission, but there’s so little time, I’d better get started if we’re going to meet the deadline.”

  “Mr. Komatsu said so,” she asked, without a question mark.

  “Yes, he is the one who told me to get started.”

  “Are you and Mr. Komatsu close,” she asked.

  “Well, sort of,” Tengo answered. No one in this world could actually be “close” to Komatsu, Tengo guessed, but trying to explain this to Fuka-Eri would take too long.

  “Is the rewrite going well.”

  “So far, so good.”

  “That’s nice,” Fuka-Eri said. She seemed to mean it. It sounded to Tengo as if Fuka-Eri was happy in her own way to hear that the rewriting of her work was going well, but given her limited expression of emotion, she could not go so far as to openly suggest this.

  “I hope you’ll like what I’m doing,” he said.

  “Not worried.”

  “Why not?” Tengo asked.

  Fuka-Eri did not answer, lapsing into silence on her end. It seemed like a deliberate kind of silence, designed to make Tengo think, but try as he might, Tengo could come up with no explanation for why she should have such confidence in him.

  He spoke to break the silence. “You know, there’s something I’d like to ask you. Did you actually live in a commune-type place and take care of a goat? The descriptions are so realistic, I wanted to ask you if these things actually happened.”

  Fuka-Eri cleared her throat. “I don’t talk about the goat.”

  “That’s fine,” Tengo said. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just thought I’d try asking. Don’t worry. For the author, the work is everything. No explanations needed. Let’s meet on Sunday. Is there anything I should be concerned about in meeting that person?”

  “What do you mean.”

  “Well … like I should dress properly, or bring a gift or something. You haven’t given me any hint what the person is like.”

  Fuka-Eri fell silent again, but this time it did not seem deliberate. She simply could not fathom the purpose of his question or what prompted him to ask it. His question hadn’t landed in any region of her consciousness. It seemed to have gone beyond the bounds of meaning, sucked into permanent nothingness like a lone planetary exploration rocket that has sailed beyond Pluto.

  “Never mind,” he said, giving up. “It’s not important.” It had been a mistake even to ask Fuka-Eri such a question. He supposed he could pick up a basket of fruit or something along the way.

  “Okay, then, see you at nine o’clock Sunday morning,” Tengo said.

  Fuka-Eri hesitated a few moments, and then hung up without saying anything, no “Good-bye,” no “See you Sunday,” no anything. There was just the click of the connection being cut. Perhaps she had nodded to Tengo before hanging up the receiver. Unfortunately, though, body language generally fails to have its intended effect on the phone. Tengo set down the receiver, took two deep breaths, switched the circuits of his brain to something more realistic, and continued with the preparations for his modest dinner.

  CHAPTER 7

  Aomame

  QUIETLY, SO AS NOT TO WAKE THE BUTTERFLY

  Just after one o’clock Saturday afternoon, Aomame visited the Willow House. The grounds of the place were dominated by several large, old willow trees that towered over the surrounding stone wall and swayed soundlessly in the wind like lost souls. Quite naturally, the people of the neighborhood had long called the old, Western-style home “Willow House.” It stood atop a steep slope in the fashionable Azabu neighborhood. When Aomame reached the top of the slope, she noticed a flock of little birds in the willows’ uppermost branches, barely weighing them down. A big cat was napping on the sun-splashed roof, its eyes half closed. The streets up here were narrow and crooked, and few cars came this way. The tall trees gave the quarter a gloomy feel, and time seemed to slow when you stepped inside. Some embassies were located here, but few people visited them. Only in the summer would the atmosphere change dramatically, when the cries of cicadas pained the ears.

  Aomame pressed the button at the gate and stated her name to the intercom. Then she aimed a tiny smile toward the overhead camera. The iron gate drew slowly open, and once she was inside it closed behind her. As always, she stepped through the garden and headed for the front door. Knowing that the security cameras were on her, she walked straight down the path, her back as erect as a fashion model’s, chin pulled back. She was dressed casually today in a navy-blue windbreaker over a gray parka and blue jeans, and white basketball shoes. She carried her regular shoulder bag, but without the ice pick, which rested quietly in her dresser drawer when she had no need for it.

  Outside the front door stood a number of teak garden chairs, into one of which was squeezed a powerfully built man. He was not especially tall, but his upper body was startlingly well developed. Perhaps forty years of age, he kept his head shaved and wore a well-trimmed moustache. On his broad-shouldered frame was draped a gray suit. His stark white shirt contrasted with his deep gray silk tie and spotless black cordovans. Here was a man who would never be mistaken for a ward office cashier or a car insurance salesman. One glance told Aomame that he was a professional bodyguard, which was in fact his area of expertise, though at times he also served as a driver. A high-ranking karate expert, he could also use weapons effectively when the need arose. He could bare his fangs and be more vicious than anyone, but he was ordinarily calm, cool, and even intellectual. Looking deep into his eyes—if, that is, he allowed you to do so—you could find a warm glow.

  In his private life, the man enjoyed toying with machines and gadgets. He collected progressive rock records from the sixties and seventies, and lived in another part of Azabu with his handsome young beautician boyfriend. His name was Tamaru. Aomame could not be sure if this was his family name or his given name or what characters he wrote it with. People just called him “Tamaru.”

  Still seated in his teak garden chair, Tamaru nodded to Aomame, who took the chair opposite him and greeted him with a simple “Hello.”

  “I heard a man died in a hotel in Shibuya,” Tamaru said, inspecting the shine of his cordovans.

  “I didn’t know about that,” Aomame said.

  “Well, it wasn’t worth putting in the papers. Just an ordinary heart attack, I guess. Sad case: he was in his early forties.”

  “Gotta take care of your heart.”

  Tamaru nodded. “Lifestyle is the important thing,” he said. “Irregular hours, stress, sleep deprivation: those things’ll kill you.”

  “Of course, something’s gonna kill everybody sooner or later.”

  “Stands to reason.”

  “Think there’ll be an autopsy?”

  Tamaru bent over and flicked a barely visible speck from the instep of his shoe. “Like anybody else, the cops have a million things to do, and they’ve got a limited budget to work with. They can’t start dissecting every corpse that comes to them without a ma
rk on it. And the guy’s family probably doesn’t want him cut open for no reason after he’s quietly passed away.”

  “His widow, especially.”

  After a short silence, Tamaru extended his thick, glove-like right hand toward Aomame. She grasped it, and the two shared a firm handshake.

  “You must be tired,” he said. “You ought to get some rest.”

  Aomame widened the edges of her mouth somewhat, the way ordinary people do when they smile, but in fact she produced only the slightest suggestion of a smile.

  “How’s Bun?” she asked.

  “She’s fine,” Tamaru answered. Bun was the female German shepherd that lived in this house, a good-natured dog, and smart, despite a few odd habits.

  “Is she still eating her spinach?” Aomame asked.

  “As much as ever. And with the price of spinach as high as it’s been, that’s no small expense!”

  “I’ve never seen a German shepherd that liked spinach before.”

  “She doesn’t know she’s a dog.”

  “What does she think she is?”

  “Well, she seems to think she’s a special being that transcends classification.”

  “Superdog?”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Which is why she likes spinach?”

  “No, that’s another matter. She just likes spinach. Has since she was a pup.”

  “But maybe that’s where she gets these dangerous thoughts of hers.”

  “Maybe so,” Tamaru said. He glanced at his watch. “Say, your appointment today was for one thirty, right?”

  Aomame nodded. “Right. There’s still some time.”

  Tamaru eased out of his chair. “Wait here a minute, will you? Maybe we can get you in a little earlier.” He disappeared through the front door.