1Q84 (31 page)

Amen.

It was after this that Aomame came to feel an intense periodic craving for men’s bodies.

Komatsu and Tengo had arranged to meet in the usual place, the cafe near Shinjuku Station. Komatsu arrived twenty minutes late as always. Komatsu never came on time, and Tengo was never late. This was standard practice for them. Komatsu was carrying his leather briefcase and wearing his usual tweed jacket over a navy-blue polo shirt.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Komatsu said, but he didn’t seem at all sorry. He appeared to be in an especially good mood, his smile like a crescent moon at dawn.

Tengo merely nodded without answering.

Komatsu took the chair across from him and said, “Sorry to hurry you. I’m sure it was tough.”

“I don’t mean to exaggerate, but I didn’t know whether I was alive or dead these past ten days,” Tengo said.

“You did great, though. You got permission from Fuka-Eri’s guardian, and you finished rewriting the story. It’s an amazing accomplishment for somebody who lives in his own little world. Now I see you in a whole new light.”

Tengo ignored Komatsu’s praise. “Did you read the report-thing I wrote on Fuka-Eri’s background? The long one.”

“I sure did. Of course. Every word. Thanks for writing it. She’s got a—what should I say?—a complicated history. It could be part of a roman-fleuve. But what really surprised me was to learn that Professor Ebisuno is her guardian. What a small world! Did he say anything about me?”

“About you?”

“Yes, did the Professor say anything about me?”

“No, nothing special.”

“That’s strange,” Komatsu said, evidently quite puzzled by this. “Professor Ebisuno and I once worked together. I used to go to his university office to pick up his manuscripts. It was a
really
long time ago, of course, when I was just getting started as an editor.”

“Maybe he forgot, if it was such a long time ago. He asked me to tell him about you—what sort of person you are.”

“No way,” Komatsu said with a frown and a shake of the head. “That’s impossible. He never forgets a thing. His memory is so good it’s almost frightening. He and I talked about all kinds of stuff, I’m sure he remembers…. Anyway, he’s not an easy guy to deal with. And according to your report, the situation surrounding Fuka-Eri is not going to be easy to deal with, either.”

“That’s putting it mildly. It’s like we’re holding a time bomb. Fuka-Eri is in no way ordinary. She’s not just another pretty seventeen-year-old. If the novella makes a big splash, the media are going to pounce on this and reveal all kinds of tasty facts. It’ll be terrible.”

“True, it could be a real Pandora’s box,” Komatsu said, but he was still smiling.

“So should we cancel the plan?”

“Cancel the plan?!”

“Yes, it’ll be too big a deal, and too dangerous. Let’s put the original manuscript back in the pile.”

“It’s not that easy, I’m afraid. Your
Air Chrysalis
rewrite has already gone out to the printers. They’re making the galleys. As soon as it’s printed it’ll go to the editor in chief and the head of publications and the four members of the selection committee. It’s too late to say, ‘Excuse me, that was a mistake. Please give it back and pretend you never saw it.’ ”

Tengo sighed.

“What’s done is done. We can’t turn the clock back,” Komatsu said. He put a Marlboro between his lips, narrowed his eyes, and lit the cigarette with the cafe’s matches. “I’ll think about what to do next. You don’t have to think about anything, Tengo. Even if
Air Chrysalis
takes the prize, we’ll keep Fuka-Eri under wraps. She’ll be the enigmatic girl writer who doesn’t want to appear in public. I can pull it off. As the editor in charge of the story, I’ll be her spokesman. Don’t worry, I’ve got it all figured out.”

“I don’t doubt your abilities, but Fuka-Eri is no ordinary girl. She’s not the type to shut up and do as she’s told. If she makes up her mind to do something, she’ll do it. She doesn’t hear what she doesn’t want to hear. That’s how she’s made. It’s not going to be as easy as you seem to think.”

Komatsu kept silent and went on turning over the matchbox in his hand. Then he said, “In any case, Tengo, we’ve come this far. All we can do now is make up our minds to keep going. First of all, your rewrite of
Air Chrysalis
is marvelous, really wonderful, far exceeding my expectations. It’s almost perfect. I have no doubt that it’s going to take the new writers’ prize and cause a big sensation. It’s too late now for us to bury it. If you ask me, burying a work like that would be a crime. And as I said before, things are moving full speed ahead.”

“A crime?!” Tengo exclaimed, looking straight at Komatsu.

“Well, take these words, for example,” Komatsu said. ” ‘Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.’ ”

“What is
that
?”

“Aristotle.
Nicomachean Ethics
. Have you ever read Aristotle?”

“Almost nothing.”

“You ought to. I’m sure you’d like it. Whenever I run out of things to read, I read Greek philosophy. I never get tired of the stuff. There’s always something new to learn.”

“So what’s the point of the quotation?”

“The conclusion of things is the good. The good is, in other words, the conclusion at which all things arrive. Let’s leave doubt for tomorrow,” Komatsu said. “That is the point.”

“What does Aristotle have to say about the Holocaust?”

Komatsu’s crescent-moon smile further deepened. “Here, Aristotle is mainly talking about things like art and scholarship and crafts.”

Tengo had far more than a passing acquaintance with Komatsu. He knew the man’s public face, and he had seen his private face as well. Komatsu appeared to be a lone wolf in the literary industry who had always survived by doing as he pleased. Most people were taken in by that image. But if you observed him closely, taking into account the full context of his actions, you could tell that his moves were highly calculated. He was like a player of chess or
shogi
who could see several moves ahead. It was true that he liked to plot outlandish schemes, but he was also careful to draw a line beyond which he would not stray. He was, if anything, a high-strung man whose more outrageous gestures were mostly for show.

Komatsu was careful to protect himself with various kinds of insurance. For example, he wrote a literary column once a week in the evening edition of a major newspaper. In it, he would shower writers with praise or blame. The blame was always expressed in highly acerbic prose, which was a specialty of his. The column appeared under a made-up name, but everyone in the industry knew who was writing it. No one liked being criticized in the newspaper, of course, so writers tried their best not to ruffle his feathers. When asked by him to write something, they avoided turning him down whenever possible. Otherwise, there was no telling what might be said about them in the column.

Tengo was not fond of Komatsu’s more calculating side, the way he displayed contempt for the literary world while exploiting its system to his best advantage. Komatsu possessed outstanding editorial instincts, and he had been enormously helpful to Tengo. His advice on the writing of fiction was almost always valuable. But Tengo was careful to keep a certain distance between them. He was determined not to draw too close to Komatsu and then have the ladder pulled out from under him for overstepping certain boundaries. In that sense, Tengo, too, was a cautious individual.

“As I said a minute ago, your rewrite of
Air Chrysalis
is close to perfect. A great job,” Komatsu continued. “There’s just one part—really, just one—that I’d like to have you redo if possible. Not now, of course. It’s fine at the ‘new writer’ level. But after the committee picks it to win the prize and just before the magazine prints it, at that stage I’d like you to fix it.”

“What part?” Tengo asked.

“When the Little People finish making the air chrysalis, there are two moons. The girl looks up to find two moons in the sky. Remember that part?”

“Of course I remember it.”

“In my opinion, you haven’t written enough about the two moons. I’d like you to give it more concrete detail. That’s my only request.”

“It
is
a little terse, maybe. I just didn’t want to overdo it with detail and destroy the flow of Fuka-Eri’s original.”

Komatsu raised the hand that had a cigarette tucked between the fingers. “Think of it this way, Tengo. Your readers have seen the sky with one moon in it any number of times, right? But I doubt they’ve seen a sky with two moons in it side by side. When you introduce things that most readers have
never
seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers
have
seen.”

“I get it,” Tengo said. Komatsu’s request made a lot of sense. “I’ll fill out the part where the two moons appear.”

“Good. Then it
will
be perfect,” Komatsu said. He crushed out his cigarette.

“I’m always glad to have you praise my work,” Tengo said, “but it’s not so simple for me this time.”

“You have suddenly matured,” Komatsu said slowly, as if pausing for emphasis. “You have matured both as a manipulator of language and as an author. It should be simple enough for you to be glad about that. I’m sure rewriting
Air Chrysalis
taught you a lot about the writing of fiction. It should be a big help the next time you write your own work.”

“If there is a next time,” Tengo said.

A big grin crossed Komatsu’s face. “Don’t worry. You did your job. Now it’s my turn. You can go back to the bench and take it easy, just watch the game unfold.”

The waitress arrived and poured cold water into their glasses. Tengo drank half of his before realizing that he had absolutely no desire for water. He asked Komatsu, “Was it Aristotle who said the human soul is composed of reason, will, and desire?”

“No, that was Plato. Aristotle and Plato were as different as Mel Torme and Bing Crosby. In any case, things were a lot simpler in the old days,” Komatsu said. “Wouldn’t it be fun to imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea who would lose that one.”

“What I like about you,” Komatsu said, raising an index finger, “is your sense of humor.”

This is not humor
, Tengo thought, but he kept it to himself.

After leaving Komatsu, Tengo walked to Kinokuniya, bought several books, and started reading them over a beer in a nearby bar. This was the sort of moment in which he should have been able to relax most completely.

On this particular night, though, he could not seem to concentrate on his books. The recurring image of his mother floated vaguely before his eyes and would not go away. She had lowered the straps of her white slip from her shoulders, revealing her well-shaped breasts, and was letting a man suck on them. The man was not his father. He was larger and more youthful, and had better features. The infant Tengo was asleep in his crib, eyes closed, his breathing regular. A look of ecstasy suffused his mother’s face while the man sucked on her breasts, a look very much like his older girlfriend’s when she was having an orgasm.

Once, out of curiosity, Tengo had asked his girlfriend to try wearing a white slip for him. “Glad to,” she replied with a smile. “I’ll wear one next time if you’d like that. Do you have any other requests? I’ll do anything you want. Just ask. Don’t be embarrassed.”

“Can you wear a white blouse, too? A very simple one.”

She showed up the following week wearing a white blouse over a white slip. He took her blouse off, lowered the shoulder straps of the slip, and sucked on her breasts. He adopted the same position and angle as the man in his vision, and when he did this he felt a slight dizziness. His mind misted over, and he lost track of the order of things. In his lower body there was a heavy sensation that rapidly swelled, and no sooner was he aware of it than he shuddered with a violent ejaculation.

“Tengo, what’s wrong? Did you come already?” she asked, astounded.

He himself was not sure what had just happened, but then he realized that he had gotten semen on the lower part of her slip.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t planning to do that.”

“Don’t apologize,” she said cheerily. “I can rinse it right off. It’s just the usual stuff. I’m glad it’s not soy sauce or red wine!”

She took the slip off, scrubbed the semen-smeared part at the bathroom sink, and hung it over the shower rod to dry.

“Was that too strong?” she asked with a gentle smile, rubbing Tengo’s belly with the palm of her hand. “You like white slips, huh, Tengo?”

“Not exactly,” Tengo said, but he could not explain to her his real reason for having made the request.

“Just let big sister know any time you’ve got a fantasy you want to play out, honey. I’ll go along with
anything
. I just
love
fantasies! Everybody needs
some
kind of fantasy to go on living, don’t you think? You want me to wear a white slip next time, too?”

Tengo shook his head. “No, thanks, once was enough.”

Tengo often wondered if the young man sucking on his mother’s breasts in his vision might be his biological father. This was because Tengo in no way resembled the man who was supposed to be his father—the stellar
NHK
collections agent. Tengo was a tall, strapping man with a broad forehead, narrow nose, and tightly balled ears. His father was short and squat and utterly unimpressive. He had a narrow forehead, flat nose, and pointed ears like a horse’s. Virtually every facial feature of his contrasted with Tengo’s. Where Tengo had a generally relaxed and generous look, his father appeared nervous and tightfisted. Comparing the two of them, people often openly remarked that they did not look like father and son.