1Q84 (146 page)

The funeral director, his long fingers like insect legs, extracted a statement from a folder and passed it to Tengo. Tengo knew almost nothing about funerals, but he could see this was quite inexpensive. He had no objection. He borrowed a ballpoint pen and signed the agreement.

The lawyer came just before three and he and the funeral director stood there chatting for a moment—a clipped conversation, one specialist to another. Tengo couldn’t really follow their conversation. The two of them seemed to know each other. This was a small town. Probably everybody knew everybody else.

Near the morgue was an inconspicuous back door, and the funeral parlor’s small van was parked just outside. Except for the driver’s window, all the windows were tinted black, and the jet-black van was devoid of any sign or markings. The thin funeral director and his white-haired assistant moved Tengo’s father onto a rolling gurney and pushed it toward the van. The van had been refitted to have an especially high ceiling and rails onto which they slid the body. They shut the back doors of the van with an earnest thud, the funeral director turned to Tengo and bowed, and the van pulled away. Tengo, the lawyer, Nurse Tamura, and Nurse Omura all faced the rear door of the black Toyota van and brought their hands together in prayer.

Tengo and the lawyer talked in a corner of the cafeteria. The lawyer looked to be in his mid-forties, and was quite obese, the exact opposite of the funeral director. His chin had nearly disappeared, and despite the chill of winter his forehead was covered with a light sheen of sweat.
He must sweat something awful in the summer
, Tengo thought. His gray wool suit smelled of mothballs. He had a narrow forehead, and above it an overabundance of thick, luxurious black hair. The combination of the obese body and the thick hair didn’t work. His eyelids were heavy and swollen, his eyes narrow, but behind them was a friendly glint.

“Your father entrusted me with his will. The word
will
implies something significant, but this isn’t like one of those wills from a detective novel,” the lawyer said, and cleared his throat. “It’s actually closer to a simple memo. Let me start by briefly summarizing its contents. The will begins by outlining arrangements for his funeral. I believe the gentleman from Zenkosha has explained this to you?”

“Yes, he did. It’s to be a simple funeral.”

“Very good,” the lawyer said. “That was your father’s wish, that everything be done as plainly as possible. The funeral expenses will be paid out of a reserve fund he set aside, and medical and other expenses will come out of the security deposit your father paid when he checked into this facility. There will be nothing you will have to pay for out of your own pocket.”

“He didn’t want to owe anybody, did he?”

“Exactly. Everything has been prepaid. Also, your father has money in an account at the Chikura post office, which you, as his son, will inherit. You will need to take care of changing it over to your name. To do that, you’ll need the proof that your father has been removed from the family register, and a copy of your family register and seal certificate. You should go directly to the Chikura post office and sign the necessary documents yourself. The procedures take some time. As you know, Japanese banks and the post office are quite particular about filling in all the proper forms.”

The lawyer took a large white handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“That’s all I need to tell you about the inheritance. He had no assets other than the post office account—no insurance policies, stocks, real estate, jewelry, art objects—nothing of this sort. Very straightforward, you could say, and fuss free.”

Tengo nodded silently. It sounded like his father. But taking over his postal account made Tengo feel a little depressed. It felt like being handed a pile of damp, heavy blankets. If possible, he would rather not have it. But he couldn’t say this.

“Your father also entrusted an envelope to my care. I have brought it with me and would like to give it to you now.”

The thick brown envelope was sealed tight with packing tape. The obese lawyer took it from his black briefcase and laid it on the table.

“I met Mr. Kawana soon after he came here, and he gave this to me then. He was still—conscious then. He would get confused occasionally, but he was generally able to function fine. He told me that when he died, he would like me to give this envelope to his legal heir.”

“Legal heir,”
Tengo repeated, a bit surprised.

“Yes. That was the term he used. Your father didn’t specify anyone in particular, but in practical terms you would be the only legal heir.”

“As far as I know.”

“Then, as instructed, here you go,” the lawyer said, pointing to the envelope on the table. “Could you sign a receipt for it, please?”

Tengo signed the receipt. The brown office envelope on the table looked anonymous and bland. Nothing was written on it, neither on the front nor on the back.

“There’s one thing I would like to ask you,” Tengo said to the lawyer. “Did my father ever mention my name? Or use the word
son
?”

As he mulled this over, the lawyer pulled out his handkerchief again and mopped his brow. He shook his head slightly. “No, Mr. Kawana always used the term
legal heir
. He didn’t use any other terms. I remember this because I found it odd.”

Tengo was silent. The lawyer collected himself and spoke up.

“But you have to understand that Mr. Kawana knew you were the only legal heir. It’s just that when we spoke he didn’t use your name. Does that bother you?”

“Not really,” Tengo said. “My father was always a bit odd.”

The lawyer smiled, as if relieved, and gave a slight nod. He handed Tengo a new copy of their family register. “If you don’t mind, since it was this sort of illness, I would like you to check the family register so we can make sure there are no legal problems with the procedure. According to the record, you are Mr. Kawana’s sole child. Your mother passed away a year and a half after giving birth to you. Your father didn’t remarry, and raised you by himself. Your father’s parents and siblings are already deceased. So you are clearly Mr. Kawana’s sole legal heir.”

After the lawyer stood up, expressed his condolences, and left, Tengo remained seated, gazing at the envelope on the table. His father was his real blood father, and his mother was
really
dead. The lawyer had said so. So it must be true—or, at least, a fact, in a legal sense. But it felt like the more facts that were revealed, the more the truth receded. Why would that be?

Tengo returned to his father’s room, sat down at the desk, and struggled to open the sealed envelope. The envelope might contain the key to unlocking some mystery. Opening it was difficult. There were no scissors or box cutters in the room, so he had to peel off the packing tape with his fingernails. When he finally managed to get the envelope open, the contents were in several other envelopes, all of them in turn tightly sealed. Just the sort of thing he expected from his father.

One envelope contained 500,000 yen in cash—exactly fifty crisp new ten-thousand-yen bills, wrapped in layers of thin paper. A piece of paper included with it said
Emergency cash
. Definitely his father’s writing, small letters, nothing abbreviated. This money must be in case there were unanticipated expenses. His father had anticipated that his
legal heir
wouldn’t have sufficient funds on hand.

The thickest of the envelopes was stuffed full of newspaper clippings and various award certificates, all of them about Tengo. His certificate from when he won the math contest in elementary school, and the article about it in the local paper. A photo of Tengo next to his trophy. The artistic-looking award Tengo received for having the best grades in his class. He had the best grades in every subject. There were various other articles that showed what a child prodigy Tengo had been. A photo of Tengo in a judo gi in junior high, grinning, holding the second-place banner. Tengo was really surprised to see these. After his father had retired from
NHK
, he left the company housing he had been in, moved to another apartment in Ichikawa, and finally went to the sanatorium in Chikura. Probably because he had moved by himself so often, he had hardly any possessions. And father and son had basically been strangers to each other for years. Despite this, his father had lovingly carried around all these mementos of Tengo’s child-prodigy days.

The next envelope contained various records from his father’s days as an
NHK
fee collector. A record of the times when he was the top producer of the year. Several simple certificates. A photo apparently taken with a colleague on a company trip. An old ID card. Records of payment to his retirement plan and health insurance…. Though his father worked like a dog for
NHK
for over thirty years, the amount of material left was surprisingly little—next to nothing when compared with Tengo’s achievements in elementary school. Society might see his father’s entire life as amounting to almost zero, but to Tengo, it wasn’t
next to nothing
. Along with a postal savings book, his father had left behind a deep, dark shadow.

There was nothing in the envelope to indicate anything about his father’s life before he joined
NHK
. It was as if his father’s life began the moment he became an
NHK
fee collector.

He opened the final envelope, a thin one, and found a single black-and-white photograph. That was all. It was an old photo, and though the contrast hadn’t faded, there was a thin membrane over the whole picture, as if water had seeped into it. It was a photo of a family—a father, a mother, and a tiny baby. The baby looked less than a year old. The mother, dressed in a kimono, was lovingly cradling the baby. Behind them was a torii gate at a shrine. From the clothes they had on, it looked like winter. Since they were visiting a shrine, it was most likely New Year’s. The mother was squinting, as if the light were too bright, and smiling. The father, dressed in a dark coat, slightly too big for him, had frown lines between his eyes, as if to say he didn’t take anything at face value. The baby looked confused by how big and cold the world could be.

The young father in the photo had to be Tengo’s father. He looked much younger, though he already had a sort of surprising maturity about him, and he was thin, his eyes sunken. It was the face of a poor farmer from some out-of-the-way hamlet, stubborn, skeptical. His hair was cut short, his shoulders a bit stooped. That could only be his father. This meant that the baby must be Tengo, and the mother holding the baby must be Tengo’s mother. His mother was slightly taller than his father, and had good posture. His father was in his late thirties, while his mother looked to be in her mid-twenties.

Tengo had never seen the photograph before. He had never seen anything that could be called a family photo. And he had never seen a picture of himself when he was little. They couldn’t afford a camera, his father had once explained, and never had the opportunity to take any family photos. And Tengo had accepted this. But now he knew it was a lie. They
had
taken a photo together. And though their clothes weren’t exactly luxurious, they were at least presentable. They didn’t look as if they were so poor they couldn’t afford a camera. The photo was taken not long after Tengo was born, sometime between 1954 and 1955. He turned the photo over, but there was no date or indication of where it had been taken.

Tengo studied the woman. In the photo her face was small, and slightly out of focus. If only he had a magnifying glass! Then he could have made out more details. Still, he could see most of her features. She had an oval-shaped face, a small nose, and plump lips. By no means a beauty, though sort of cute—the type of face that left a good impression. At least compared with his father’s rustic face she looked far more refined and intelligent. Tengo was happy about this. Her hair was nicely styled, but since she had on a kimono, he couldn’t tell much about her figure.

At least as far as they looked in this photo, no one could call them a well-matched couple. There was a great age difference between them. Tengo tried to imagine his parents meeting each other, falling in love, having him—but he just couldn’t see it. You didn’t get that sense at all from the photo. So if there wasn’t an emotional attachment that brought them together, there must have been some other circumstances that did. No, maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as the term
circumstances
made it sound. Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more.

Tengo tried to figure out if the mother in this photo was the mysterious woman who appeared in his daydreams, or in his fog of childhood memories. But he realized he didn’t have any memories of the woman’s face whatsoever. The woman in his memory took off her blouse, let down the straps of her slip, and let some unknown man suck her breasts. And her breathing became deeper, like she was moaning. That’s all he remembered—some man sucking his mother’s breasts. The breasts that should have been his alone were stolen away by somebody else. A baby would no doubt see this as a grave threat. His eyes never went to the man’s face.

Tengo returned the photo to the envelope, and thought about what it meant. His father had cherished this one photograph until he died, which might mean he still cherished Tengo’s mother. Tengo couldn’t remember his mother, for she had died from illness when he was too young to have any memories of her. According to the lawyer’s investigation, Tengo was the only child of his mother and his father, the
NHK
fee collector, a fact recorded in his family register. But official documents didn’t guarantee that that man was Tengo’s biological father.

“I don’t have a son,” his father had declared to Tengo before he fell into a coma.

“So, what am I?” Tengo had asked.

“You’re nothing,” was his father’s concise and peremptory reply.

His father’s tone of voice had convinced Tengo that there was no blood connection between him and this man. And he had felt freed from heavy shackles. As time went on, however, he wasn’t completely convinced that what his father had said was true.