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  She took a deep breath. Then she reached out toward the Heckler & Koch on the table and assured herself of its hardness. She imagined its muzzle being shoved into her mouth and her finger tightening on the trigger.

  A large crow suddenly appeared on her balcony, perched on the railing, and let out a number of piercing cries. Aomame and the crow observed each other through the glass. The crow moved the big, bright eye on the side of his head, watching Aomame’s movements in the room. He seemed to understand the significance of the pistol in her hand. Crows were intelligent animals. They knew that this block of steel had great importance. Somehow or other, they knew.

  The crow spread its wings and flew off as suddenly as it had arrived, apparently having seen what it was supposed to see. Once it was gone, Aomame stood up, turned off the television, and sighed, hoping that the crow was not a spy for the Little People.

  Aomame practiced her usual stretching on the living-room carpet. She worked her muscles to the limit for an hour, passing the time with the appropriate pain. One by one, she summoned up each muscle of her body and subjected it to an intense, detailed interrogation. She had the name, function, and quality of each muscle minutely engraved in her mind, missing none. She sweated profusely, working her lungs and heart to the fullest, and switching the channels of her consciousness. She listened to the flow of the blood in her veins, and received the wordless messages that her heart was issuing. The muscles of her face contorted every which way as she sank her teeth into the messages.

  Next she washed the sweat off in the shower. She stepped on the scale to make sure there had been no major change in her weight. Confirming in the mirror that the size of her breasts and the shape of her pubic hair had not changed, she scowled immensely. This was her morning ritual.

  When she was finished in the bathroom, she changed into a jersey sportswear top and bottom for easy movement. Then, to kill time, she decided to examine the contents of the apartment again, beginning with the kitchen: the foods and the eating and cooking utensils. She memorized each item and devised a plan for which foods she would prepare and eat in what order. She estimated that, even if she never set foot outside the apartment, she could live here for at least ten days without going hungry, and she could make it last two weeks if she was careful in parceling out the supplies. They had stocked the place with that much food.

  Then she went through the non-food items: toilet paper, tissues, laundry detergent, rubber gloves. Nothing was missing. The shopping had been done with great care. A woman must have participated in the preparations—probably an experienced housewife, judging from the obvious care that had been lavished on the task. Someone had meticulously calculated what and how much would be needed for a healthy thirty-year-old single woman to live here alone for a short time. This was not something a man could have done—though perhaps it would be possible for a highly observant gay man.

  The bedroom linen closet was well stocked with sheets, blankets, and spare pillows, all with the smell of new linen, and all plain white. Ornamentation had been carefully avoided, there being no need for taste or individuality.

  The living room had a television, a VCR, and a small stereo with a record player and a cassette deck. On the wall opposite the window, there was a waist-high wooden sideboard. She bent over and opened it to find some twenty books lined up inside. Someone had done their best to assure that Aomame would not be bored while hiding out here. The books were all new hardcover volumes that showed no evidence of having been opened. Most of them were recent, probably chosen from displays of current bestsellers at a large bookstore. The person had exercised some standards of selection—if not exactly taste—in choosing about half fiction and half nonfiction. Air Chrysalis was among them.

  With a little nod, Aomame picked it up and sat on the living-room sofa in the warm sunshine. It was not a thick book. It was light, and the type was large. She looked at the dust jacket and at the name of the author, “Fuka-Eri,” printed there, balanced the book on her palm to gauge its weight, and read the publisher’s copy on the colorful band around the jacket. Then she sniffed the book for that special smell that new books have. Though his name was nowhere printed on it, Tengo’s presence was here. The text printed inside it had passed through Tengo’s body. She calmed herself and opened to the first page.

  Her teacup and the Heckler & Koch were both where she could reach them.

  CHAPTER 18

  Tengo

  THAT LONELY, TACITURN SATELLITE

  “She might be very close by,” Fuka-Eri said after some moments of biting her lip in serious thought.

  Tengo unfolded and refolded his hands on the table, looking into Fuka-Eri’s eyes. “Very close by? You mean here, in Koenji?”

  “Within walking distance.”

  How do you know that? Tengo wanted to ask her, but he was at least prescient enough to know that he would not get an answer to such a question. She needed practical questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no.

  “Are you saying that I can meet Aomame if I look for her in this neighborhood?” Tengo asked.

  Fuka-Eri shook her head. “You can’t meet her just by walking around.”

  “She’s within walking distance, but I can’t find her just by walking around. Is that what you are saying?”

  “Because she’s hiding.”

  “Hiding?”

  “Like a wounded cat.”

  Tengo got an image of Aomame curled up under a moldy-smelling porch somewhere. “Why? Is she hiding from someone?” he asked.

  This, of course, she did not answer.

  “But the fact that she is hiding must mean that she is in some kind of critical situation, doesn’t it?”

  “Crit-i-cal sit-choo-ay-shun,” Fuka-Eri said, echoing Tengo, with a look on her face like that of a child being shown a bitter medicine. She probably didn’t like the sound of the words.

  “Like, someone is chasing after her,” Tengo said.

  Fuka-Eri cocked her head slightly, meaning she didn’t understand. “But she is not going to stay here forever.”

  “Our time is limited.”

  “Yes, limited.”

  “But now she is sitting somewhere like a wounded cat, so she won’t be out taking walks.”

  “No, she won’t do that,” the beautiful young girl said with conviction.

  “In other words, I’d have to look for her someplace special.”

  Fuka-Eri nodded.

  “What kind of special place would that be?” Tengo asked.

  Needless to say, he received no answer.

  “You remember some things about her,” Fuka-Eri said after a short pause. “One of them might help.”

  “Might help,” Tengo said. “Are you saying that if I remember something about her, I might get a hint about where she is hiding?”

  Without answering, she gave a little shrug. The gesture might have contained an affirmative nuance.

  “Thank you,” Tengo said.

  Fuka-Eri gave him a tiny nod, like a contented cat.

  Tengo prepared lunch in the kitchen. Fuka-Eri was intently choosing records from the record shelf. Not that he had a lot of records there, but it took her time to choose. At the end of her deliberations, she took out an old Rolling Stones album, put it on the turntable, and lowered the tonearm. It was a record that he had borrowed from somebody in high school and, for some reason, never given back. He hadn’t heard it in years.

  Listening to tracks like “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Lady Jane,” he made rice pilaf using ham and mushrooms and brown rice, and miso soup with tofu and wakame. He boiled cauliflower and flavored it with curry sauce he had prepared. He made a green bean and onion salad. Cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always used it as a time to think—about everyday problems, about math problems, about his writing, or about metaphysical propositions. He could think in a more orderly fashion while standing in the kitchen and moving his hands than while doing nothing. Today, however, no amount of thinking wou
ld tell him what kind of “special place” Fuka-Eri had been talking about. Trying to impose order on something where there had never been any was a waste of effort. The number of places he could arrive at was limited.

  The two of them sat across from each other eating dinner. Their conversation was virtually nonexistent. Like a bored married couple, they transported the food to their mouths in silence, each thinking—or not thinking—separate thoughts. It was especially difficult to distinguish between the two in Fuka-Eri’s case. When the meal ended, Tengo drank coffee and Fuka-Eri ate a pudding she found in the refrigerator. Whatever she ate, her expression never changed. Chewing seemed to be the only thing she was thinking about.

  Tengo sat at his desk, and, following Fuka-Eri’s suggestion, he tried hard to recall something about Aomame.

  You remember some things about her. One of them might help.

  But Tengo could not concentrate. Another Rolling Stones record was playing. “Little Red Rooster”—a performance from the time Mick Jagger was crazy about Chicago blues. Not bad, but not a song written for people engaged in deep thinking or in the midst of seriously digging through old memories. The Rolling Stones were not a band much given to such kindness. He needed someplace quiet where he could be alone.

  “I’m going out for a while,” Tengo said.

  Studying the Rolling Stones album jacket in her hand, Fuka-Eri nodded, as if to say, “Fine.”

  “If anyone comes here, don’t open the door for them,” Tengo said.

  Tengo walked toward the station wearing a navy-blue long-sleeved T-shirt, chinos from which the crease had long since faded, and sneakers. Just before reaching the station, he turned into a bar called Barleyhead and ordered a draft beer. The place served drinks and snacks. It was small enough so that twenty customers filled it up. He had come here any number of times before. Young people made it quite noisy late at night, but there were relatively few customers in the hour between seven and eight, when the mood was nice and hushed. It was perfect for sitting alone in a corner and reading a book while drinking a beer. The chairs were comfortable, too. He had no idea where the bar’s name came from or what it meant. He could have asked one of the employees, but he was not good at small talk with strangers, and not knowing the source of the name didn’t really matter. It was just a pleasant bar that happened to be named Barleyhead.

  Fortunately, no music was playing. Tengo sat at a table by a window, drinking Carlsberg draft and munching on mixed nuts from a small bowl, thinking about Aomame. Picturing Aomame meant that Tengo himself became a ten-year-old boy again. It also meant that he experienced a major turning point in his life once again. After Aomame grasped his hand when they were ten, he refused to make any more rounds with his father doing NHK subscription collections. Shortly after that he experienced a definite erection and his first ejaculation. That was a watershed in his life. Of course, the transformation would have come—sooner or later—whether or not Aomame grasped his hand, but Aomame urged him on and promoted the change as if she had given his back a gentle shove.

  He stared at the open palm of his left hand for a long time. That ten-year-old girl grasped this hand and hugely changed something inside me, but I can’t give a reasonable explanation of how such a thing could have happened. Still, the two of us understood each other and accepted each other in a very natural way in every last particular—almost miraculously so. Such things don’t happen all that often in this life. For some people, they might never happen. At the time, however, Tengo had not been able to fully comprehend the event’s decisive meaning. And not just back then. He had not truly been able to understand its meaning until almost the present moment. He had only vaguely embraced the girl’s image in his heart over the years.

  She was thirty now, and her outward appearance might be very different from what he remembered from when they were ten. She must have grown taller, her chest developed, and her hairstyle must have changed. If she left the Society of Witnesses, she was probably wearing makeup. She might be sporting expensive, stylish clothing. Tengo found it hard to imagine Aomame striding down the street wearing a Calvin Klein suit and high heels. But such a thing was, of course, conceivable. People grow up, and when they grow up they change. She could be in this bar right this moment without my realizing it.

  Tipping back his beer glass, Tengo took another look at his surroundings. She was somewhere close by. Within walking distance. Fuka-Eri said so. And Tengo accepted Fuka-Eri at her word. If she said it, it must be true.

  The only other customers in the room were a young couple, probably students, sitting at the bar, engaged in an intense and intimate conversation, their foreheads practically touching. Seeing them, Tengo felt a profound loneliness, the sort he had not experienced for a very long time. I’m alone in this world, he thought. I have no ties with anyone.

  Tengo closed his eyes and concentrated on the elementary school classroom once again. He had closed his eyes and visited that place last night, too—with a tremendously concrete sense of reality—when he and Fuka-Eri joined bodies during the violent thunderstorm. Because of that, the picture he conjured now came back with special vividness, as if it had been cleansed of all dust by last night’s rain.

  Unease and expectation and fear scattered to the farthest corners of the spacious classroom, and hid themselves in the room’s many objects like cowardly little animals. Tengo was able to re-create the scene in meticulous detail—the blackboard with its partially erased mathematical formulas, the broken pieces of chalk, the cheap, sun-damaged curtains, the flowers in the vase on the teacher’s podium (though he couldn’t tell what type), the children’s paintings pinned to the wall, the world map behind the podium, the smell of the floor wax, the waving of the curtains, the children’s shouts coming through the window. His eyes could trace each omen or plan or riddle they contained.

  During those several seconds when Aomame was holding his hand, Tengo had seen many things and accurately seared each image on his retinas, like a camera taking a photograph. These images comprised one of the basic landscapes that helped him survive his pain-filled teens. The scene always included the strong sensation of the girl’s fingers. Her right hand never failed to encourage Tengo during the agonizing process of becoming an adult. Don’t worry, I’m with you, the hand declared.

  You are not alone.

  She is in hiding, Fuka-Eri had said. Like a wounded cat.

  Come to think of it, this was a strange coincidence. Fuka-Eri herself was in hiding here. She wouldn’t set foot outside of Tengo’s apartment. In this same section of Tokyo, two women were lying low, running away from something. Both women had deep connections with Tengo. Could that be significant? Or was it a mere coincidence?

  No answers were forthcoming, of course, just an aimless bunch of questions. Too many questions, too few answers. It was always like this.

  When he finished his beer, a young waiter came over and asked him if he would like something else. Tengo hesitated a moment and then requested a bourbon on the rocks and another bowl of mixed nuts. “The only bourbon we have is Four Roses, if that’s okay.” Tengo said it would be okay. Anything at all. Then he went back to thinking about Aomame. The fragrance of a baking pizza wafted toward him from the kitchen.

  From whom could Aomame possibly be hiding? The police? But Tengo could not believe that she had become a criminal. What kind of crime could she have committed? No, it could not be the police who were chasing her. Whoever or whatever it might be, the law surely had nothing to do with it.

  Maybe they’re the same ones who are after Fuka-Eri, it suddenly occurred to Tengo. The Little People? Why would the Little People have to pursue Aomame?

  But if they are really the ones pursuing Aomame, am I at the center of this? Tengo of course had no idea why he had to be the pivotal figure in such a chain of events, but if there was a connection between the two women, Fuka-Eri and Aomame, it could not be anyone other than Tengo himself. Without even being aware of it, I may have been using some
kind of power to draw Aomame closer to me.

  Some kind of power?

  He stared at his hands. I don’t get it. Where could I have that kind of power?

  His Four Roses on the rocks arrived along with a new bowl of nuts. He took a swallow of Four Roses, and, taking several nuts in the palm of his hand, he shook them like dice.

  Anyhow, Aomame is in this neighborhood. Within walking distance. That’s what Fuka-Eri says. And I believe it. I’d be hard-pressed to explain why, but I do believe it. Still, how can I go about finding Aomame in her hiding place? It’s hard enough finding someone living a normal life, but the task obviously becomes more challenging when someone is deliberately hiding. Should I go through the streets calling her name on a loudspeaker? Sure, like that’s going to get her to step right up. It would just alert others to her presence and expose her to added danger.

  There must be something else I should recall about her, Tengo thought.

  “You remember some things about her. One of them might help,” Fuka-Eri had said. But even before she said that to him, Tengo had long suspected that he might have failed to recall an important fact or two regarding Aomame. It had begun to make him feel uneasy now and then, like a pebble in his shoe. The feeling was vague but persistent.

  Tengo swept his mind clean, as if erasing a blackboard, and started unearthing memories again—memories of Aomame, memories of himself, memories of the things around them, dredging the soft, muddy bottom like a fisherman dragging his net, putting the items in order and mulling them over with great care. Ultimately, though, these were things that had happened twenty years earlier. As vividly as he might recall them, there was a limit to how much he could bring back.

  It occurred to him to try thinking about lines of vision. What had Aomame been looking at? And what had Tengo himself been looking at? Let me think back along our moving lines of vision and the flow of time.