1Q84 (125 page)

At the reception desk he wrote his name and the time in the visitors’ log. A young nurse he had never seen before was stationed at the reception desk. Her arms and legs were terribly long and thin, and a smile played around the corners of her lips. She made him think of a kindly spider guiding people along the path through a forest. Usually it was Nurse Tamura, the middle-aged woman with glasses, who sat at the reception desk, but today she wasn’t there. Tengo felt a bit relieved. He had been dreading any suggestive comments she might make because he had accompanied Kumi Adachi back to her apartment the night before. Nurse Omura, too, was nowhere to be seen. They might have been sucked into the earth without a trace. Like the three witches in
Macbeth
.

But that was impossible. Kumi Adachi was off duty today, but the other two nurses said they were working as usual. They must just be working somewhere else in the facility right now.

Tengo went upstairs to his father’s room, knocked lightly, twice, and opened the door. His father was lying on the bed, sleeping as always. An IV tube came out of his arm, a catheter snaked out of his groin. There was no change from the day before. The window was closed, as were the curtains. The air in the room was heavy and stagnant. All sorts of smells were mixed together—a medicinal smell, the smell of the flowers in the vase, the breath of a sick person, the smell of excreta—all the smells that life brings with it. Even if the life force here was weak, and his father was unconscious, metabolism went on unchanged. His father was still on this side of the great divide. Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells.

The first thing Tengo did when he entered the sickroom was go straight to the far wall, where he drew the curtains and flung open the window. It was a refreshing morning, and the room was in desperate need of fresh air. It was chilly outside, but not what you would call cold. Sunlight streamed in and the curtain rustled in the sea breeze. A single seagull, legs tucked neatly underneath, caught a draft of wind and glided over the pine trees. A ragged line of sparrows sat on an electrical line, constantly switching positions like musical notes being rewritten. A crow with a large beak came to rest on top of a mercury-vapor lamp, cautiously surveying his surroundings as he mulled over his next move. A few streaks of clouds floated off high in the sky, so high and far away that they were like abstract concepts unrelated to the affairs of man.

With his back to the patient, Tengo gazed for a while at this scene outside. Things that are living and things that are not. Things that move and things that don’t. What he saw out the window was the usual scenery. There was nothing new about it. The world has to move forward. Like a cheap alarm clock, it does a halfway decent job of fulfilling its assigned role. Tengo gazed blankly at the scenery, trying to postpone facing his father even by a moment, but he couldn’t keep delaying forever.

Finally Tengo made up his mind, turned, and sat down on the stool next to the bed. His father was lying on his back, facing the ceiling, his eyes shut. The quilt that was tucked up to his neck was neat and undisturbed. His eyes were deeply sunken. It was like some piece was missing, and his eye sockets couldn’t support his eyeballs, which had quietly caved in. Even if he were to open his eyes, what he would see would be like the world viewed from the bottom of a hole.

“Father,” Tengo began.

His father didn’t answer. The breeze blowing in the room suddenly stopped and the curtains hung limply, like a worker in the midst of a task suddenly remembering something else he had to do. And then, after a while, as if gathering itself together, the wind began to blow again.

“I’m going back to Tokyo today,” Tengo said. “I can’t stay here forever. I can’t take any more time off from work. It’s not much of a life, but I do have a life to get back to.”

There was a two- to three-day growth of whiskers on his father’s cheeks. A nurse shaved him with an electric razor, but not every day. His whiskers were salt-and-pepper. He was only sixty-four, but he looked much older, like someone had mistakenly fast-forwarded the film of his life.

“You didn’t wake up the whole time I was here. The doctor says your physical condition is still not so bad. The strange thing is, you’re almost as healthy as you used to be.”

Tengo paused, letting the words sink in.

“I don’t know if you can hear what I’m saying or not. Even if the words are vibrating your eardrums, the circuit beyond that might be shot. Or maybe the words I speak are actually reaching you but you’re unable to respond. I don’t really know. But I have been talking to you, and reading to you, on the assumption that you can hear me. Unless I assume that, there’s no point in me speaking to you, and if I can’t speak to you, then there’s no point in me being here. I can’t explain it well, but I’m sensing something tangible, as if the main points of what I’m saying are, at least, getting across.”

No response.

“What I’m about to say may sound pretty stupid. But I’m going back to Tokyo today and I don’t know when I might be back here. So I’m just going to say what’s in my mind. If you find it dumb, then just go ahead and laugh. If you
can
laugh, I mean.”

Tengo paused and observed his father’s face. Again, there was no response.

“Your body is in a coma. You have lost consciousness and feeling, and you are being kept alive by life-support machines. The doctor said you’re like a living corpse—though he put it a bit more euphemistically. Medically speaking, that’s what it probably is. But isn’t that just a sham? I have the feeling your consciousness isn’t lost at all. You have put your body in a coma, but your consciousness is off somewhere else, alive. I’ve felt that for a long time. It’s just a feeling, though.”

Silence.

“I can understand if you think this is a crazy idea. If I told anybody else, they would say I was hallucinating. But I have to believe it’s true. I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world that’s inside you.”

Again more silence.

“I took time off from my job, came to this town, rented a room at an inn, and have been coming here every day and talking to you—for almost two weeks now. But I wasn’t just doing it to see how you were doing or to take care of you. I wanted to see where I came from, what sort of bloodline I have. None of that matters anymore. I am who I am, no matter who or what I’m connected with—or not connected with. Though I do know that you are the one who is my father. And that’s fine. Is this what you call a reconciliation? I don’t know. Maybe I just reconciled with myself.”

Tengo took a deep breath. He spoke in a softer tone.

“During the summer, you were still conscious. Your mind was muddled, but your consciousness was still functioning. At that time I met a girl here, in this room, again. After they took you to the examination room she
appeared
. I think it must have been something like her alter ego. I came to this town again and have stayed here this long because I have been hoping I could see her one more time. Honestly, that’s why I came.”

Tengo sighed and brought his hands together on his lap.

“But she didn’t come. What brought her here last time was a thing called an air chrysalis, a capsule she was encased in. It would take too long to explain the whole thing, but an air chrysalis is a product of the imagination, a fictitious object. But it’s not fictitious anymore. The boundary between the real world and the imaginary one has grown obscure. There are two moons in the sky now. These, too, were brought over from the world of fiction.”

Tengo looked at his father’s face. Could he follow what Tengo was saying?

“In that context, saying your consciousness has broken away from your body and is freely moving about some other world doesn’t sound so farfetched. It’s like the rules that govern the world have begun to loosen up around us. As I said before, I have this strange sense that you are
actually doing that
. Like you have gone to my apartment in Koenji and are knocking on the door. You know what I mean? You announce you’re an
NHK
fee collector, bang hard on the door, and yell out a threat in a loud voice. Just like you used to do all the time when we made the rounds in Ichikawa.”

He felt a change in the air pressure in the room. The window was open, but there was barely any sound coming in. There was just the occasional burst of chirping sparrows.

“There is a girl staying in my apartment in Tokyo. Not a girlfriend or anything—something happened and she’s taking shelter there temporarily. A few days ago she told me on the phone about an
NHK
collector who came by, how he knocked on the door, and what he did and said out in the corridor. It was strange how closely it resembled the methods you used to use. The words she heard were exactly the same lines I remember, the expressions I was hoping I could totally erase from my memory. And I’m thinking now that that fee collector might actually have been you. Am I wrong?”

Tengo waited thirty seconds. His father didn’t twitch a single eyelash.

“There’s just one thing I want: for you to never knock on my door again. I don’t have a TV. And those days when we went around together collecting fees are long gone. I think we already agreed on that, that time in front of my teacher—I don’t remember her name, the one who was in charge of my class. A short lady, with glasses. You remember that, right? So don’t knock on my door ever again, okay? And not just my place. Don’t knock on any more doors anywhere. You’re not an
NHK
fee collector anymore, and you don’t have the right to scare people like that.”

Tengo stood up, went to the window, and looked outside. An old man in a bulky sweater, clutching a cane, was walking in front of the woods. He was probably just taking a stroll. He was tall, with white hair, and excellent posture. But his steps were awkward, as if he had forgotten how to walk, as if with each step forward he was remembering how to do it. Tengo watched him for a while. The old man slowly made his way across the garden, then turned the corner of the building and disappeared. It didn’t look like he had recalled the art of walking. Tengo turned to face his father.

“I’m not blaming you. You have the right to send your consciousness wherever you want. It’s your life, and your consciousness. You have your own idea of what is right, and you’re putting it into practice. Maybe I don’t have the right to say these things. But you need to understand:
you are not an
NHK
fee collector anymore
. So you shouldn’t pretend to be one. It’s pointless.”

Tengo sat down on the windowsill and searched for his next words in the air of the cramped hospital room.

“I don’t know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced. But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you can’t go around seeking it at other people’s doors. Even if it is at the place you’re most familiar with, and the sort of act that is your forte.”

Tengo gazed silently at his father’s face.

“I don’t want you to knock on anybody’s door anymore. That’s all I ask of you, Father. I have to be going. I came here every day talking to you in your coma, reading to you. And I think at least a part of us has reconciled, and I think that reconciliation has actually taken place in the real world. Maybe you won’t like it, but you need to come back here again, to
this
side. This is where you belong.”

Tengo lifted his shoulder bag and slung it across his shoulder. “Well, I’ll be off, then.”

His father said nothing. He didn’t stir and his eyes remained shut—the same as always. But somehow it seemed like he was thinking about something. Tengo was quiet and paid careful attention. It felt to him like his father might pop open his eyes at any moment and abruptly sit up in bed. But none of that happened.

The nurse with the spidery limbs was still at the reception desk as he left. A plastic name tag on her chest said
Tamaki
.

“I’m going back to Tokyo now,” Tengo told her.

“It’s too bad your father didn’t regain consciousness while you were here,” she said, consolingly. “But I’m sure he was happy you could stay so long.”

Tengo couldn’t think of a decent response. “Please tell the other nurses good-bye for me. You have all been so helpful.”

He never did see bespectacled Nurse Tamura or busty Nurse Omura and her ever-present ballpoint pen. It made him a little sad. They were outstanding nurses, and had always been kind to him. But perhaps it was for the best that he didn’t see them. After all, he was slipping out of the cat town alone.

As the train pulled out of Chikura Station, he recalled spending the night at Kumi Adachi’s apartment. It had only just happened yesterday. The gaudy Tiffany lamp, the uncomfortable love seat, the TV comedy show he could hear from next door. The hooting of the owl in the woods. The hashish smoke, the smiley-face shirt, the thick pubic hair pressed against his leg. It had been less than a day, but it felt like long ago. His mind felt unstable. Like an unbalanced set of scales, the core of his memories wouldn’t settle down in one spot.

Suddenly anxious, Tengo looked around him. Was this reality actually real? Or had he once again boarded the wrong reality? He asked a passenger nearby and made sure this train was indeed headed to Tateyama.
It’s okay, don’t worry
, he told himself.
At Tateyama I can change to the express train to Tokyo
. He was drawing farther and farther away from the cat town by the sea.

As soon as he changed trains and took his seat, as if it could barely wait, sleep claimed him. A deep sleep, like he had lost his footing and fallen into a bottomless hole. His eyelids closed, and in the next instant his consciousness had vanished. When he opened his eyes again, the train had passed Makuhari. The train wasn’t particularly hot inside, yet he was sweating under his arms and down his back. His mouth had an awful smell, like the stagnant air he had breathed in his father’s sick room. He took a stick of gum out of his pocket and popped it in his mouth.