1Q84 (106 page)

It was the beginning of September. She was standing in a turnout on the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3, in the midst of a traffic jam, bathed in bright morning sunlight as she stuck the black muzzle of a Heckler & Koch in her mouth. Dressed in a Junko Shimada suit and Charles Jourdan high heels.

People were watching her from their cars, as if something was about to occur but they had no idea what. There was a middle-aged woman in a silver Mercedes coupe. There were suntanned men looking down at her from the high cab of a freight truck. Aomame planned to blow her brains out right before their very eyes with a 9mm bullet. Taking her life was the only way she could vanish from this 1Q84 world. That way she would be able to save Tengo’s life. At least Leader had promised that. He had promised that much, and sought his own death.

Aomame didn’t find it particularly disappointing that she had to die. Everything, she felt, had already been decided, ever since she was first pulled into this 1Q84 world.
I’m just following the plan that has already been laid out. Continuing to live, alone, in this unreasonable world—where there are two moons in the sky, one large, one small, where something called Little People control the destiny of others—what meaning could it have anyway?

In the end, though, she didn’t pull the trigger. At the last moment she relaxed her right index finger and removed the muzzle from her mouth. Like a person surfacing from deep under water she took a long breath, and exhaled, as if replacing every molecule of air within her.

She stopped moving toward death because she had heard a distant voice. At that point, she was in a soundless space. From the moment she put pressure on the trigger, all noise around her vanished. She was wrapped in silence, as if at the bottom of a pool. Down there, death was neither dark nor fearful. Like amniotic fluid to a fetus, it was natural, self-evident.
This isn’t so bad
, Aomame thought, and almost smiled. That was when she heard a voice.

The voice sounded far away, as if coming from a distant time. She didn’t recognize it. It reached her only after many twists and turns, and in the process it lost its original tone and timbre. What was left was a hollow echo, stripped of meaning. Still, within that sound, Aomame could detect a warmth she hadn’t felt for years. The voice seemed to be calling her name.

She relaxed her finger on the trigger, narrowed her eyes, and listened carefully, trying to hear the words the voice was saying. But all she could make out, or thought that she made out, was her name. The rest was wind whistling through a hollow space. In the end the voice grew distant, lost any meaning at all, and was absorbed into the silence. The void enveloping her disappeared, and, as if a cork had been pulled, the noise and clamor around her rushed in. And she no longer wanted to die.

Maybe I can see Tengo one more time at that little playground
, she thought.
I can die after that. I’ll take a chance on that happening. Living—not dying—means the possibility of seeing Tengo again. I want to live
, she decided. It was a strange feeling.
Had she ever experienced that feeling before in her life?

She released the hammer of the automatic pistol, set the safety, and put it inside her shoulder bag. She straightened up, put on her sunglasses, and walked in the opposite direction of traffic back to her taxi. People silently watched her, in her high heels, striding down the expressway. She didn’t have to walk for long. Even in the traffic jam, her taxi had managed to inch forward and had come up to where she was now standing.

Aomame knocked on the window and the driver lowered it.

“Can I get in again?”

The driver hesitated. “That thing you put in your mouth over there looked like a pistol.”

“It was.”

“A real one?”

“No way,” Aomame replied, curling her lips.

The driver opened the door, and she climbed in. She took the bag off her shoulder and laid it on the seat and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. She could still taste the metal and the residue of gun oil.

“So, did you find an emergency stairway?” the driver asked.

Aomame shook her head.

“I’m not surprised. I never heard of an emergency stairway anywhere around here,” the driver said. “Would you still like to get off at the Ikejiri exit?”

“Yes, that would be fine,” Aomame replied.

The driver rolled down his window, stuck his hand out, and pulled over into the right lane in front of a large bus. The meter in the cab was unchanged from when she had gotten out.

Aomame leaned back against the seat, and, breathing slowly, she gazed at the familiar Esso billboard. The huge tiger was looking in her direction, smiling, with a gas hose in his paw.
Put a Tiger in Your Tank
, the ad read.

“Put a tiger in your tank,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?” the driver said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

I think I’ll stay alive here a bit longer, and see with my own eyes what’s going to happen. I can still die after that—it won’t be too late. Probably
.

The day after she gave up on killing herself, Tamaru called her. So Aomame told him that the plan had changed—that she was going to stay put, and not change her name or get plastic surgery.

On the other end of the line Tamaru was silent. Several theories noiselessly aligned themselves in his mind.

“In other words, you’re saying you don’t want to move to another location?”

“Correct,” Aomame replied. “I would like to stay here for the time being.”

“That place is not set up to hide someone for an extended period.”

“If I stay inside and don’t go out, they shouldn’t find me.”

“Don’t underestimate them,” Tamaru said. “They will do everything they can to pinpoint who you are and hunt you down. And you won’t be the only one in danger. It could involve those around you. If that happens, I could be put in a difficult position.”

“I’m very sorry about that. But I need a bit more time.”

“
A bit more time?
That’s a little vague,” Tamaru said.

“That’s the only way I can put it.”

Tamaru was silent, in thought. He seemed to have sensed how firm her decision was.

“I have to keep my priorities straight,” he said. “Do you understand that?”

“I think so.”

Tamaru was silent again, and then continued.

“All right. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. Since you insist on staying, you must have your reasons.”

“I do,” Aomame said.

Tamaru briefly cleared his throat. “As I have told you before, we have committed to take you someplace safe, and far away—to erase any trail, change your face and name. Maybe it won’t be a total transformation, but as close to total as we can manage. I thought we were agreed on this.”

“Of course I understand. I’m not saying I don’t like the plan itself. It’s just that something unexpected occurred, and I need to stay put for a while longer.”

“I am not authorized to say yes or no to this,” Tamaru said, making a faint sound in the back of his throat. “It might take a while to get an answer.”

“I’ll be here,” Aomame said.

“Glad to hear it,” Tamaru said, and hung up.

The phone rang the next morning, just before nine. Three rings, then it stopped, and rang again. It had to be Tamaru.

Tamaru launched right in without saying hello. “Madame also is concerned about you staying there for very long. It is just a safe house, and it is not totally secure. Both of us agree that it’s best to move you somewhere far away, somewhere more secure. Do you follow me?”

“I do.”

“But you are a calm, cautious person. You don’t make stupid mistakes, and I know you are committed. We trust you implicitly.”

“I appreciate that.”

“If you insist that you want to stay in that place for a
bit
longer then you must have your reasons. We don’t know what your rationale is, but I’m sure it’s not just a whim. So she is thinking that she would like to follow your wishes as much as she can.”

Aomame said nothing.

Tamaru continued. “You can stay there until the end of the year. But that’s the limit.”

“After the first of the year, then, I need to move to another place.”

“Please understand we are doing our very best to respect your wishes.”

“I understand,” Aomame said. “I’ll be here until the end of the year, then I will move.”

But this wasn’t her real intention. She didn’t plan to take one step out of this apartment until she saw Tengo again. If she mentioned this now, though, complications would set in. She could delay things for over three months, until the end of the year. After that she would consider what to do next.

“Fine,” Tamaru said. “We’ll deliver food and other necessities once a week. At one p.m. each Tuesday the supply masters will stop by. They have a key, so they can get in on their own. They will only go to the kitchen, nowhere else. While they are at the apartment, I want you to go into the back bedroom and lock the door. Don’t show your face, or speak. When they’re leaving, they will ring the doorbell once. Then you can come out of the bedroom. If there’s anything special you need, let me know right now and I’ll have it included in the next delivery.”

“It would be nice to have equipment so I could do some strength training,” Aomame said. “There’s only so much you can do exercising and stretching without equipment.”

“Full-scale gym equipment is out of the question, but we could supply some home equipment, the kind that doesn’t take up much space.”

“Something very basic would be fine,” Aomame said.

“A stationary bike and some auxiliary equipment for strength training. Would that do it?”

“That would be great. If possible, I’d also like to get a metal softball bat.”

Tamaru was silent for a few seconds.

“A bat has many uses,” Aomame explained. “Just having it next to me makes me calm. It’s like I grew up with a bat in my hand.”

“Okay. I’ll get one for you,” Tamaru said. “If you think of anything else you need, write it on a piece of paper and leave it on the kitchen counter. I’ll make sure you get it the next time we bring supplies.”

“Thank you. But I think I have everything I need.”

“How about books and videos and the like?”

“I can’t think of anything I particularly want.”

“How about Proust’s
In Search of Lost Time
?” Tamaru asked. “If you’ve never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing.”

“Have you read it?”

“No, I’ve never been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can’t read the whole of Proust.”

“Do you know anybody who has read the whole thing?”

“I’ve known some people who have spent a long period in jail, but none were the type to be interested in Proust.”

“I’d like to give it a try,” Aomame said. “If you can get ahold of those books, bring them the next time you bring supplies.”

“Actually, I already got them for you,” Tamaru said.

The so-called supply masters came on Tuesday afternoon at one p.m. on the dot. As instructed, Aomame went into the back bedroom, locked it from the inside, and tried not to make a sound. She heard the front door being unlocked and people opening the door and coming in. Aomame had no idea what kind of people these “supply masters” were. From the sounds they made she got the feeling there were two of them, but she didn’t hear any voices. They carried in several boxes and silently went about putting things away. She heard them at the sink, rinsing off the food they had bought and then stacking it in the fridge. They must have decided beforehand who would be in charge of what. They unwrapped some boxes, and she could hear them folding up the wrapping paper and containers. It sounded like they were wrapping up the kitchen garbage as well. Aomame couldn’t take the bag of garbage downstairs to the collection spot, so she had to have somebody take it for her.

The people seemed to do their work efficiently, with no wasted effort. They tried not to make any unnecessary noise, and their footsteps, too, were quiet. They were finished in about twenty minutes. Then they opened the front door and left. She heard them lock the front door from the outside, and then the doorbell rang once as a signal. To be on the safe side, Aomame waited fifteen minutes. Then she exited the bedroom, made sure no one else was there, and locked the dead bolt on the front door.

The large fridge was crammed full of a week’s worth of food. This time it wasn’t the kind of food you popped in the microwave, but mostly fresh groceries: a variety of fruits and vegetables; fish and meat; tofu, wakame, and natto. Milk, cheese, and orange juice. A dozen eggs. So there wouldn’t be any extra garbage, they had taken everything out of their original containers and then neatly rewrapped them in plastic wrap. They had done a good job understanding the type of food she normally ate.
How would they know this?
she wondered. A stationary bicycle was set down next to the window, a small but high-end model. The digital display on it showed speed, distance, and calories burned. You could also monitor rpms and heart rate. There was a bench press to work on abs, deltoids, and triceps, the kind of equipment that was easy to assemble and disassemble. Aomame was quite familiar with it. It was the newest type, a very simple design yet very effective. With these two pieces of equipment she would have no trouble keeping in shape.

A metal bat in a soft case was there as well. Aomame took it out of the case and took a few swings. The shiny, new silver bat swished sharply through the air. The old familiar heft of it calmed her. The feel of the bat in her hands brought back memories of her teenage years, and the time she had spent with Tamaki Otsuka.

All seven volumes of
In Search of Lost Time
were piled up on the dining table. They were not new copies, but they appeared to be unread. Aomame flipped through one. There were several magazines, too—weekly and monthly magazines—and five brand-new videos, still in their plastic wrap. She had no idea who had chosen them, but they were all new movies she had never seen. She was not in the habit of going to movie theaters, so there were always a lot of new films that she missed.