Tengo had closed the door by reaching around behind himself, but he went on standing there in the entrance. Her bared ears and neck disoriented him as much as another woman’s total nakedness. Like an explorer who has discovered the secret spring at the source of the Nile, Tengo stared at Fuka-Eri with narrowed eyes, speechless, hand still clutching the doorknob.
“I took a shower,” she said to Tengo as he stood there transfixed. She spoke in grave tones, as though she had just recalled a major event. “I used your shampoo and rinse.”
Tengo nodded. Then, exhaling, he finally wrenched his hand from the doorknob and locked the door. Shampoo and rinse? He stepped forward, away from the door.
“Did the phone ring after I called?” Tengo asked.
“Not at all,” Fuka-Eri said. She gave her head a little shake.
Tengo went to the window, parted the curtains slightly, and looked outside. The view from the third floor had nothing unusual about it—no suspicious people lurking there or suspicious cars parked out front, just the usual drab expanse of this drab residential neighborhood. The misshapen trees lining the street wore a layer of gray dust. The pedestrian guardrail was full of dents. Rusty bicycles lay abandoned by the side of the road. A wall bore the police slogan “Driving Drunk: A One-Way Street to a Ruined Life.” (Did the police have slogan-writing specialists in their ranks?) A nasty-looking old man was walking a stupid-looking mutt. A stupid-looking woman drove by in an ugly subcompact. Nasty-looking wires stretched from one ugly utility pole to another. The scene outside the window suggested that the world had settled in a place somewhere midway between “being miserable” and “lacking in joy,” and consisted of an infinite agglomeration of variously shaped microcosms.
On the other hand, there also existed in the world such unexceptionably beautiful views as Fuka-Eri’s ears and neck. In which should he place the greater faith? It was not easy for him to decide. Like a big, confused dog, Tengo made a soft growling noise in his throat, closed the curtains, and returned to his own little world.
“Does Professor Ebisuno know that you’re here?” Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri shook her head. The professor did not know.
“Don’t you plan to tell him?”
Fuka-Eri shook her head. “I can’t contact him.”
“Because it would be dangerous to contact him?”
“The phone may be tapped. Mail might not get through.”
“I’m the only one who knows you’re here?”
Fuka-Eri nodded.
“Did you bring a change of clothing and stuff?”
“A little,” Fuka-Eri said, glancing at her canvas shoulder bag. Certainly “a little” was all it could hold.
“I don’t mind,” the girl said.
“If you don’t mind, of course I don’t mind,” Tengo said.
Tengo went into the kitchen, put the kettle on to boil, and spooned some tea leaves into the teapot.
“Does your lady friend come here,” Fuka-Eri asked.
“Not anymore,” Tengo gave her a short answer.
Fuka-Eri stared at Tengo in silence.
“For now,” Tengo added.
“Is it my fault,” Fuka-Eri asked.
Tengo shook his head. “I don’t know whose fault it is. But I don’t think it’s yours. It’s probably my fault. And maybe hers to some extent.”
“But anyhow, she won’t come here anymore.”
“Right, she won’t come here anymore. Probably. So it’s okay for you to stay.”
Fuka-Eri spent a few moments thinking about that. “Was she married,” she asked.
“Yes, and she had two kids.”
“Not yours.”
“No, of course not. She had them before she met me.”
“Did you love her.”
“Probably,” Tengo said. Under certain limited conditions, Tengo added to himself.
“Did she love you.”
“Probably. To some extent.”
“Were you having intercourse.”
It took a moment for the word “intercourse” to register with Tengo. It was hard to imagine that word coming from Fuka-Eri’s mouth.
“Of course. She wasn’t coming here every week to play Monopoly.”
“Monopoly,” she asked.
“Never mind,” Tengo said.
“But she won’t come here anymore.”
“That’s what I was told, at least. That she won’t come here anymore.”
“She told you that,” Fuka-Eri asked.
“No, I didn’t hear it directly from her. Her husband told me. That she was irretrievably lost and couldn’t come here anymore.”
“Irretrievably lost.”
“I don’t know exactly what it means either. I couldn’t get him to explain. There were lots of questions but not many answers. Like a trade imbalance. Want some tea?”
Fuka-Eri nodded.
Tengo poured the boiling water into the teapot, put the lid on, and waited.
“Oh well,” Fuka-Eri said.
“What? The few answers? Or that she was lost?”
Fuka-Eri did not reply.
Tengo gave up and poured tea into two cups. “Sugar?”
“A level teaspoonful,” Fuka-Eri said.
“Lemon or milk?”
Fuka-Eri shook her head. Tengo put a spoonful of sugar into the cup, stirred it slowly, and set it in front of the girl. He added nothing to his own tea, picked up the cup, and sat at the table across from her.
“Did you like having intercourse,” Fuka-Eri asked.
“Did I like having intercourse with my girlfriend?” Tengo rephrased it as an ordinary question.
Fuka-Eri nodded.
“I think I did,” Tengo said. “Having intercourse with a member of the opposite sex that you’re fond of. Most people enjoy that.”
To himself he said, She was very good at it. Just as every village has at least one farmer who is good at irrigation, she was good at sexual intercourse. She liked to try different methods.
“Are you sad she stopped coming,” Fuka-Eri asked.
“Probably,” Tengo said. Then he drank his tea.
“Because you can’t do intercourse.”
“That’s part of it, naturally.”
Fuka-Eri stared straight at Tengo again for a time. She seemed to be having some kind of thoughts about intercourse. What she was actually thinking about, no one could say.
“Hungry?” Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri nodded. “I have hardly eaten anything since this morning.”
“I’ll make dinner,” Tengo said. He himself had hardly eaten anything since the morning, and he was feeling hungry. Also, he could not think of anything to do for the moment aside from making dinner.
Tengo washed the rice, put it in the cooker, and turned on the switch. He used the time until the rice was ready to make miso soup with wakame seaweed and green onions, grill a sun-dried mackerel, take some tofu out of the refrigerator and flavor it with ginger, grate a chunk of daikon radish, and reheat some leftover boiled vegetables. To go with the rice, he set out some pickled turnip slices and a few pickled plums. With Tengo moving his big body around inside it, the little kitchen looked especially small. It did not bother him, though. He was long used to making do with what he had there.
“Sorry, but these simple things are all I can make,” Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri studied Tengo’s skillful kitchen work in great detail. With apparent fascination, she scrutinized the results of that work neatly arranged on the table and said, “You know how to cook.”
“I’ve been living alone for a long time. I prepare my meals alone as quickly as possible and I eat alone as quickly as possible. It’s become a habit.”
“Do you always eat alone.”
“Pretty much. It’s very unusual for me to sit down to a meal like this with somebody. I used to eat lunch here once a week with the woman we were talking about. But, come to think of it, I haven’t eaten dinner with anybody for a very long time.”
“Are you nervous.”
Tengo shook his head. “No, not especially. It’s just dinner. It does seem a little strange, though.”
“I used to eat with lots of people. We all lived together when I was little. And I ate with lots of different people after I moved to the Professor’s. He always had visitors.”
He had never heard Fuka-Eri speak so many sentences in a row.
“But you were eating alone all the time you were in hiding?” Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri nodded.
“Where were you in hiding?” Tengo asked.
“Far away. The Professor arranged it for me.”
“What were you eating alone?”
“Instant stuff. Packaged food,” Fuka-Eri said. “I haven’t had a meal like this in a long time.”
Fuka-Eri put a lot of time into tearing the flesh of the mackerel from the bones with her chopsticks. She brought the pieces of fish to her mouth and put more time into chewing them, as though she were eating some rare new food. Then she took a sip of miso soup, examined the taste, made some kind of judgment, set her chopsticks on the table, and went on thinking.
Just before nine o’clock, Tengo thought he might have caught the sound of thunder in the distance. He parted the curtains slightly and looked outside. The sky was totally dark now, and across it streamed a number of ominously shaped clouds.
“You were right,” Tengo said after closing the curtain. “The weather’s looking very ugly out there.”
“Because the Little People are stirring,” Fuka-Eri said with a somber expression.
“When the Little People begin stirring, it does extraordinary things to the weather?”
“It depends. Weather is a question of how you look at it.”
“A question of how you look at it?”
Fuka-Eri shook her head. “I don’t really get it.”
Tengo didn’t get it either. To him, weather seemed to be an independent, objective condition. But he probably couldn’t get anywhere pursuing this question further. He decided to ask another question instead.
“Do you think the Little People are angry about something?”
“Something is about to happen,” the girl said.
“What kind of something?”
Fuka-Eri shook her head. “We’ll see soon.”
Together they washed and dried the dishes and put them away, after which they sat facing each other across the table, drinking tea. He would have liked a beer, but decided it might be better to refrain from drinking today. He sensed some kind of danger in the air, and thought he should remain as clearheaded as possible in case something happened.
“It might be better to go to sleep early,” Fuka-Eri said, pressing her hands against her cheeks like the screaming man on the bridge in the Munch picture. Not that she was screaming: she was just sleepy.
“Okay, you can use my bed,” Tengo said. “I’ll sleep on the sofa like before. Don’t worry, I can sleep anywhere.”
It was true. Tengo could fall asleep anywhere right away. It was almost a talent.
Fuka-Eri only nodded. She looked straight at Tengo for a while, offering no opinions. Then she briefly touched her freshly made ears, as if to check that they were still there. “Can you lend me your pajamas. I didn’t bring mine.”
Tengo took his extra pajamas from the bedroom dresser drawer and handed them to Fuka-Eri. They were the same pajamas he had lent her the last time she stayed here—plain blue cotton pajamas, washed and folded from that time. Tengo held them to his nose to check for odors, but there were none. Fuka-Eri took them, went to the bathroom to change, and came back to the dining table. Now her hair was down. The pajama legs and arms were rolled up as before.
“It’s not even nine o’clock,” Tengo said, glancing at the wall clock. “Do you always go to bed so early?”
Fuka-Eri shook her head. “Today is special.”
“Because the Little People are stirring outside?”
“I’m not sure. I’m just tired now.”
“You do look sleepy,” Tengo admitted.
“Can you read me a book or tell me a story in bed,” Fuka-Eri asked.
“Sure,” Tengo said. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
It was a hot and humid night, but as soon as she got into bed, Fuka-Eri pulled the quilt up to her chin, as if to form a firm barrier between the outside world and her own world. In bed, somehow, she looked like a little girl no more than twelve years old. The thunder rumbling outside the window was much louder than before, as though the lightning were beginning to strike somewhere quite close by. With each thunderclap, the windowpanes would rattle. Strangely, though, there were no lightning flashes to be seen, just thunder rolling across the pitch-dark sky. Nor was there any hint of rain. Something was definitely out of balance.
“They are watching us,” Fuka-Eri said.
“You mean the Little People?” Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri did not answer him.
“They know we’re here,” Tengo said.
“Of course they know,” Fuka-Eri said.
“What are they trying to do to us?”
“They can’t do anything to us.”
“That’s good.”
“For now, that is.”
“They can’t touch us for now,” Tengo repeated feebly. “But there’s no telling how long that will go on.”
“No one knows,” Fuka-Eri declared with conviction.
“But even if they can’t do anything to us, they can, instead, do something to the people around us?” Tengo asked.
“Maybe so.”
“Maybe they can make terrible things happen to them?”
Fuka-Eri narrowed her eyes for a time with a deadly serious look, like a sailor trying to catch the song of a ship’s ghost. Then she said, “In some cases.”
“Maybe the Little People used their powers against my girlfriend. To give me a warning.”
Fuka-Eri slipped a hand out from beneath the quilt and gave her freshly made ear a scratching. Then she slipped the hand back inside. “What the Little People can do is limited.”
Tengo bit his lip for a moment. Then he said, “Exactly what kinds of things can they do, for example?”
Fuka-Eri started to offer an opinion on the matter but then had second thoughts and stopped. Her opinion, unvoiced, sank back into the place it had originated from—a deep, dark, unknown place.
“You said that the Little People have wisdom and power.”
Fuka-Eri nodded.
“But they have their limits.”
Fuka-Eri nodded.
“And that’s because they are people of the forest; when they leave the forest, they can’t unleash their powers so easily. And in this world, there exist something like values that make it possible to resist their wisdom and power. Is that it?”
Fuka-Eri did not answer him. Perhaps the question was too long.
“Have you ever met the Little People?” Tengo asked.
Fuka-Eri stared at him vaguely, as though she could not grasp the meaning of his question.
“Have you ever actually seen them?” Tengo rephrased his question.
“Yes,” Fuka-Eri said.
“How many of the Little People did you see?”
“I don’t know. More than I could count on my fingers.”
“But not just one.”
“Their numbers can sometimes increase and sometimes decrease, but there is never just one.”
“The way you depicted them in Air Chrysalis.”
Fuka-Eri nodded.
Tengo took this opportunity to ask Fuka-Eri a question he had been wanting to ask her for some time. “Tell me,” he said, “how much of Air Chrysalis is real? How much of it really happened?”
“What does ‘real’ mean,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.
Tengo had no answer for this, of course.
A great clap of thunder echoed through the sky. The windowpanes rattled. But still there was no lightning, no sound of rain. Teng
o recalled an old submarine movie. One depth charge after another would explode, jolting the ship, but everyone was locked inside the dark steel box, unable to see outside. For them, there was only the unbroken sound and the shaking of the sub.
“Will you read me a book or tell me a story,” Fuka-Eri asked.
“Sure,” Tengo said, “but I can’t think of a good book for reading out loud. I don’t have the book here, but I can tell you a story called ‘Town of Cats,’ if you like.”
“ ‘Town of Cats.’ ”
“It’s the story of a town ruled by cats.”
“I want to hear it.”
“It might be a little too scary for a bedtime story, though.”
“That’s okay. I can sleep, whatever story you tell.”
Tengo brought a chair next to the bed, sat down, folded his hands in his lap, and started telling “Town of Cats,” with the thunder as background music. He had read the story twice on the express train and once again, aloud, to his father in the sanatorium, so he knew the plot pretty well. It was not such a complex or finely delineated story, nor had it been written in a terribly elegant style, so he felt little hesitation in altering it as he pleased, omitting the more tedious parts or adding episodes that occurred to him as he recited the story for Fuka-Eri.
The original story had not been very long, but telling it took a lot longer than he had imagined because Fuka-Eri would not hesitate to ask any questions that occurred to her. Tengo would interrupt the story each time and give her careful answers, explaining the details of the town or the cats’ behavior or the protagonist’s character. When they were things not described in the story (which was usually the case), Tengo would make them up, as he had with Air Chrysalis. Fuka-Eri seemed to be completely drawn in by “Town of Cats.” She no longer looked tired. She would close her eyes sometimes, imagining scenes of the town of cats. Then she would open her eyes and urge Tengo to go on with the story.
When he was through telling her the story, Fuka-Eri opened her eyes wide and stared at Tengo the way a cat widens its pupils to stare at something in the dark.
“Did you go to a town of cats,” Fuka-Eri asked Tengo, as if pressing him to reveal a truth.