As he waited near the main gate of the school for the bus back to Tsudanuma Station, Ushikawa thought about his own teachers in elementary school. Did they still remember him? Even if they did, it wouldn’t make their eyes sparkle with a friendly glimmer.
What he had verified was very close to his hypothesis. Tengo was the top student in his class, and he was popular. Aomame had no friends and was ignored by everyone. There was little possibility that the two of them would have gotten close. They were simply too unalike. Plus, when she was in fifth grade Aomame moved out of Ichikawa and went to another school. Any connection was severed then.
If he had to list one thing they had in common in elementary school, it would be this: they had both unwillingly had to obey their parents. Their parents’ goals might have been different—proselytizing and fee collection—but both Tengo and Aomame were required to traipse all over town with their parents. In class they were in totally different positions, yet both of them must have been equally lonely, searching desperately for something. Something that would accept them unconditionally and hold them close. Ushikawa could imagine their feelings. In a sense, these were feelings that he shared.
Okay, Ushikawa said to himself. He was seated in an express train from Tsudanuma back to Tokyo, arms folded. Okay, now what? I was able to find some connections between Tengo and Aomame. Very interesting connections. Unfortunately, however, this doesn’t prove anything.
There’s a tall stone wall towering in front of me. It has three doors, and I have to choose one. Each door is labeled. One says Tengo, one says Aomame, and the third says the Dowager from Azabu. Aomame vanished, as they say, like smoke. Without a trace. And the Azabu Willow House is locked up tight as a bank vault. Nothing I can do to get in. Which leaves only one door.
It looks like I’ll be sticking with Tengo for the time being, Ushikawa decided. There’s no other choice—a perfect example of the process of elimination. So perfect an example, it makes me want to print it up in a pamphlet and hand it out to people on the street. Hi, how are you? Check out the process of elimination.
Tengo, always the nice young man. Mathematician and novelist. Judo champion and teacher’s pet. Right now he’s the only way to unravel this knotty tangle. The more I think about it, the less I seem to understand, like my brain is a tub of tofu past its expiration date.
So what about Tengo? Did he see the whole picture here? Probably not. As far as Ushikawa could make out, Tengo was doing things through trial and error, taking detours where he found the need. He must be confused himself, trying out various hypotheses. Still, he was a born mathematician. A master at fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. And he probably has a lot more pieces of the puzzle than I do.
For the time being I’ll keep watch over Tengo Kawana. I’m sure he’ll lead me somewhere—if I get lucky, right to Aomame’s hideout. Ushikawa was a master at sticking to somebody, like a remora to a shark. Once he made up his mind to latch onto someone, there was no way they could shake free of him.
Once he had decided, Ushikawa closed his eyes and switched off his thinking process. Time to get a little shut-eye, he thought. It had been a rough day, given that he had had to visit two elementary schools out in crummy old Chiba Prefecture and listen to two female schoolteachers, a beautiful vice principal and a teacher who walked like a crab. After that you need to relax. Soon his huge misshapen head began to bob up and down in time to the movement of the train, like a life-sized sideshow doll that spat out unlucky fortunes.
The train was crowded, but no one dared sit down beside him.
CHAPTER 11
Aomame
A SERIOUS SHORTAGE
OF BOTH LOGIC AND KINDNESS
On Tuesday morning Aomame wrote a memo to Tamaru explaining how the man calling himself an NHK fee collector had come again—how he had banged on the door and yelled, insulting Aomame (or a person named Takai who lived there), berating her. The whole thing was too much, too bizarre. She needed to remain vigilant.
Aomame placed the memo in an envelope, sealed it, and put it on the kitchen table. She wrote the initial T on the envelope. The men who delivered supplies would make sure it got to Tamaru.
Just before one p.m. she went into her bedroom, locked the door, lay down in bed, and continued where she had left off with Proust. At one o’clock on the dot the doorbell rang once. After a pause the door was unlocked and the supply team came inside. As always, they briskly resupplied the fridge, got the garbage together, and checked the supplies on the shelves. In fifteen minutes they had finished their appointed tasks, left the apartment, shut the door, and locked it from the outside. Then the doorbell rang once again as a signal—the same procedure as usual.
Just to be on the safe side, Aomame waited until the clock showed 1:30 before she came out of her bedroom and went to the kitchen. The memo to Tamaru was gone, replaced by a paper bag on the table with the name of a pharmacy printed on it. There was also a thick book Tamaru had gotten for her, The Women’s Anatomical Encyclopedia. Inside the paper bag there were three different home pregnancy tests. She opened the boxes one by one and read over the instructions, comparing them. They were all the same. You could use the tests if your period was a week or more late. The tests were 95 percent accurate, but if they were positive, the instructions said—in other words, if they did show you were pregnant—then you should be examined by a medical specialist as soon as possible. You should not jump to conclusions. The tests indicated merely the possibility that one was pregnant.
The test itself was simple. Just urinate into a clean container and then dip the indicator stick into it. Or, alternately, urinate directly onto the stick. Then wait a few minutes. If the color changes to blue you’re pregnant, if it doesn’t change color, you’re not. In one version, if two vertical lines appear in the little window, you’re pregnant. One line, and you’re not. The details might vary but the principle was the same. The presence or absence of human chorionic gonadotropin in urine indicated whether or not you were pregnant.
Human chorionic gonadotropin? Aomame frowned. She had been a female for thirty years and had never once heard that term. All this time, some crazy substance was stimulating her sex glands?
Aomame opened up The Women’s Anatomical Encyclopedia.
Human chorionic gonadotropin is secreted during the early stages of pregnancy, the book said, and helps maintain the corpus luteum. The corpus luteum secretes progestogens and estrogen to preserve the inner lining of the womb and prevent menstruation. In this way the placenta gradually takes form. In seven to nine weeks, once the placenta is complete, there is no more need for the corpus luteum and the role of the human chorionic gonadotropin is over.
In other words, this hormone was secreted from the time of implantation for seven to nine weeks. The timing was a little tricky in her case. One thing she could say was that if the test came back positive, she was without a doubt pregnant. If it was negative, then the conclusion wouldn’t be so clear-cut. It was possible that she had passed the time when she was secreting the hormone.
She didn’t feel the need to urinate. She went to the fridge, took out a bottle of mineral water, and had two glasses. But she still didn’t feel the need to go. Well, no need to rush it, she thought. She forgot about the pregnancy kits for a while and sat down on the sofa and concentrated on Proust.
It was after three when she felt the need to urinate. She peed into a container she found and stuck the test strip in it. As she watched, the strip changed color, until it was a vivid blue. A lovely shade of blue that would work well as the color of a car. A small blue convertible with a tan top. How great it would feel to drive along the coast in a car like that, racing through the summer breeze. But in the bathroom of an apartment in the middle of the city, in the deepening autumn, what this blue told her was the fact that she was pregnant—or, at least, that there was a 95 percent chance of it. Aomame stood in front of the mirror and gazed at the thin strip of paper, now blue. No matter how long she stared, the
color wasn’t about to change.
Just to be sure, she tried another test. This one instructed you to “urinate directly onto the tip of the stick.” But since she wouldn’t feel the need to pee for a while she dipped the stick into the container of urine. Freshly collected urine. Pee directly on it or dip it in pee—what is the difference? You would get the same result. Two vertical lines clearly appeared in the little plastic window. This, too, told Aomame she might be pregnant.
Aomame poured the urine into the toilet and flushed it down. She wrapped the test strip in a wad of tissue and threw it in the trash, and rinsed the container in the bath. She went to the kitchen and drank two more glasses of water. Tomorrow I will try again and do the third test, she thought. Three is a good number to stop at. Strike one, strike two. Waiting, with bated breath, for the final pitch.
Aomame boiled some water and made hot tea, sat down on the sofa, and continued reading Proust. She laid out some cheese biscuits on one of a set of matching plates and munched on them as she sipped her tea. A quiet afternoon, perfect for reading. Her eyes followed the printed words, but nothing stayed with her. She had to reread the same spot several times. She gave up, shut her eyes, and she was driving a blue convertible, the top down, speeding along the shore. The light breeze, fragrant with the smell of the sea, rustled her hair. A sign along the road had two vertical lines. These meant Warning: You May Be Pregnant.
Aomame sighed and tossed her book aside.
She knew very well there was no need to try the third test. She could do it a hundred times and the result would be the same. It would be a waste of time. My human chorionic gonadotropin would still maintain the same attitude toward my womb—keeping the corpus luteum intact, obstructing my period from coming, helping form the placenta. Face it: I’m pregnant. The human chorionic gonadotropin knows that. And so do I. I can feel it as a pinpoint in my lower abdomen. It’s still tiny—nothing more than a hint of something. But eventually it will have a placenta, and grow bigger. It will take nutrition from me and, in the dark, heavy liquid, grow—steadily, unceasingly.
This was the first time she had been pregnant. She was always a very careful person, and only trusted what she could see with her own eyes. When she had sex she made absolutely sure her partner used a condom. Even when she was drunk, she never failed to check. As she had told the dowager, ever since her first menstruation at age ten, she had never missed a period. Her periods were regular, never more than a day late. Her cramps were light. She merely bled for a few days, that was all. It never got in the way of her exercising or playing sports.
She got her first period a few months after holding Tengo’s hand in the elementary school classroom. Somehow, she felt that the two events were connected. The feel of Tengo’s hand may have stirred something inside her. When she told her mother she got her period, her mother made a face, like it was one more burden to add to all the others she carried. It’s a little early, her mother commented. But that didn’t bother Aomame. It was her problem, not her mother’s or anybody else’s. She had stepped into a brand-new world.
And now she was pregnant.
She thought about her eggs. Of my allotted four hundred or so, one of them (near the middle of the bunch, she imagined) went and got herself fertilized. Most likely on that September night, during the terrible storm. In a dark room when I murdered a man. When I stuck a sharp needle from the base of his neck into the lower part of his brain. But that man was completely different from the men I had killed before. He knew he was about to be murdered, and he wanted it to happen. I actually gave him what he wanted. Not as punishment, but more as an act of mercy. In exchange for which, he gave me what I was seeking. An act of negotiation carried out in a deep, dark place. Very quietly, fertilization took place that night. I know it, she thought.
With these hands I took a man’s life, and almost simultaneously, a new life began inside me. Was this part of the transaction?
Aomame shut her eyes and stopped thinking. Her head empty, something silently flowed inside. And before she knew it, she was praying.
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our humble pathways. Amen.
Why would a prayer come to my lips at a time like this? I don’t believe in things like heaven or paradise or the Lord, yet the words are chiseled into my brain. Ever since I was three or four and didn’t even know what they meant, I could recite this prayer from memory. If I made the slightest mistake, I got the back of my hands smacked with a ruler. Though you couldn’t normally see it, when something happened it would rise to the surface, like a secret tattoo.
What would my mother say if I told her I got pregnant without having had sex? She might see it as a terrible sacrilege against her faith. In any case, it was a kind of immaculate conception—though Aomame was certainly not a virgin. But still. Or maybe her mother wouldn’t be bothered to even deal with it, not even listen to her. Because she sees me as a failure, someone who long ago had fallen from her world.
Let me think about it in a different way, Aomame thought. I won’t try to force an explanation on the inexplicable, but instead I’ll examine the phenomenon from a different angle, as the riddle that it is.
Am I seeing this pregnancy as something good, something to be welcomed? Or as something unwelcome, something inappropriate?
I can’t reach a conclusion no matter how hard I think about it. I’m still in a state of shock. I’m mixed up, confused. In certain ways I feel split in two. And understandably I’m having trouble swallowing this new reality.
Yet Aomame also had to recognize that she was watching this little heat source with a positive sense of anticipation. She simply had to see what happened to this thing growing inside her. Obviously she was anxious and scared. It might be more than she could imagine. It might be a hostile foreign entity that greedily devoured her from the inside. She could imagine all sorts of negative possibilities. But she was in thrall to a healthy curiosity. Like a sudden flash of light in the dark, a thought abruptly sprang to her mind.
Maybe this is Tengo’s child inside my womb.
Aomame frowned a bit and considered this. Why do I have to be pregnant with Tengo’s child?
How about looking at it like this? she thought. On that chaotic night, when so much took place, some process was at work in this world and Tengo sent his semen into my womb. Somehow, through a gap in the thunder and rain, the darkness and the murder, a special kind of passageway opened, through some logic I can’t understand. Just for an instant. And in that instant we took advantage of the passageway. I took that opportunity to greedily accept Tengo into me. I became pregnant. Egg 201—or was it 202?—grabbed onto one of his millions of spermatozoa, a single sperm cell that was as healthy and clever and straightforward as the one who produced it.
That’s a pretty wild idea. It doesn’t make any sense. I could try to explain it until I went hoarse and nobody would ever believe me. But the whole notion of me being pregnant itself doesn’t make any sense. But remember—this is the year 1Q84. A strange world where anything can happen.
What if this really is Tengo’s child? she wondered.
That morning at the turnout on Metropolitan Expressway No. 3 through Tokyo, I didn’t pull the trigger. I really went there, and stuck the muzzle in my mouth, planning to die. I wasn’t afraid of death, because I was dying to save Tengo. But some higher power acted on me and snatched me away from death. From far away I heard a voice calling my name. Maybe it called me because I was pregnant? Was something trying to tell me of this new life inside me?
Aomame recalled the dream, and the refined older woman who put her coat on her to cover her nakedness. She got out of her silver Mercedes and gave me her light, soft eggshell-colored coat. She knew then that I was pregnant, and she gently protected me from people’s stares, the cold wind, and other vicious things.
This was a good sign.
A
omame’s tight face relaxed, her expression returned to normal. Someone is watching over me, protecting me, she believed. Even in this 1Q84 world, I’m not alone. Probably.
Aomame took her now cold tea over to the window. She went out to the balcony and sank into the garden chair so no one could spot her, and gazed out through the gaps in the screen at the playground. She tried to think of Tengo. For some reason, though, today her thoughts just wouldn’t go to him. What she saw instead was the face of Ayumi Nakano. Ayumi was smiling cheerfully, a totally natural, unreserved smile. The two of them were at a restaurant seated across from each other, drinking wine. They were both pretty drunk. The excellent Burgundy in their blood gently coursed through their bodies, giving the world around them a faint purplish tinge.
“But still,” Ayumi said, “it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.”
“Oh well, no problem,” Aomame said. “The world’s going to end before we know it.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“And the kingdom is going to come.”
“I can hardly wait,” Ayumi said.
Why did I talk about the kingdom then, I wonder? Aomame found it odd. Why would I suddenly bring up a kingdom that I don’t even believe in? And not long after that Ayumi died.
I think when I mentioned the kingdom, the mental image I had was different from the kingdom the Witnesses believe in. Probably it was a more personal kind of kingdom, which is why the term could slip out so naturally. But what sort of kingdom do I believe in? What sort of kingdom do I think will appear after the world has been destroyed?