1Q84 (40 page)

It was dark out. The sunroom was enveloped in silence. Aomame wondered if the moon was up. But she could not see it from where she was sitting.

“I intend to explain the situation to you in all possible detail. Before I do that, however, I have someone I would like you to meet. Shall we go now to see her?”

“Is she living in your safe house?”

The dowager inhaled slowly and made a small sound in the back of her throat. Her eyes took on a special gleam that Aomame had not seen before.

“She was sent here six weeks ago by our consultation office. For the first four weeks, she didn’t say a word. She was in some sort of dazed state and had simply lost the ability to speak. We knew only her name and age. She had been taken into protective custody when she was found sleeping in a train station in terrible condition, and after being passed around from one office to another she ended up with us. I’ve spent hours talking to her bit by bit. It took a long time for me to convince her that this is a safe place and she doesn’t have to be afraid. Now she can talk to some extent. She speaks in a confused, fragmented way, but, putting the pieces together, I’ve been able to form a general idea of what happened to her. It’s almost too terrible to talk about, truly heartbreaking.”

“Another case of a violent husband?”

“Not at all,” the dowager said drily. “She’s only ten years old.”

The dowager and Aomame cut through the garden and, unlocking a small gate, entered the adjoining yard. The safe house was a small, wood-frame apartment building. It had been used in the old days as a residence for some of the many servants who had worked for the dowager’s family. A two-story structure, the house itself had a certain old-fashioned charm, but it was too age worn to rent out. As a temporary refuge for women who had nowhere else to go, however, it was perfectly adequate. An old oak tree spread out its branches as if to protect the building, and the front door contained a lovely panel of ornamental glass. There were ten apartments altogether, all full at times but nearly empty at other times. Usually five or six women lived there quietly. Lights shone in the windows of roughly half the rooms now. The place was oddly hushed except for the occasional sounds of small children’s voices. The building itself almost appeared to be holding its breath. It lacked the normal range of sounds associated with everyday life. Bun, the female German shepherd, was chained near the front gate. Whenever people approached, she would let out a low growl and then a few barks. The dog had been trained—how or by whom it was not clear—to bark fiercely whenever a man approached, though the person she trusted most was Tamaru.

The dog stopped barking as soon as the dowager drew near. She wagged her tail and snorted happily. The dowager bent down and patted her on the head a few times. Aomame scratched her behind the ears. The dog seemed to remember Aomame. She was a smart dog. For some reason, she liked to eat raw spinach. The dowager opened the front door with a key.

“One of the women here is looking after the girl,” the dowager said to Aomame. “I’ve asked her to live in the same apartment and try not to take her eyes off her. It’s still too soon to leave her alone.”

The women of the safe house looked after each other on a daily basis and were implicitly encouraged to tell each other stories of what they had been through, to share their pain. Those who had been there for a while would give the newcomers tips on how to live in the house, passing along necessities. The women would generally take turns doing the cooking and cleaning, but there were of course some who wanted only to keep to themselves and not talk about their experiences, and their desire for privacy and silence was respected. The majority of women, however, wanted to talk and interact with other women who had been through similar trials. Aside from prohibitions against drinking, smoking, and the presence of unauthorized individuals, the house had few restrictions.

The building had one phone and one television set, both of which were kept in the common room next to the front door. Here there was also an old living room set and a dining table. Most of the women apparently spent the better part of each day in this room. The television was rarely switched on, and even when it was, the volume was kept at a barely audible level. The women preferred to read books or newspapers, knit, or engage in hushed tete-a-tetes. Some spent the day drawing pictures. It was a strange space, its light dull and stagnant, as if in a transient place somewhere between the real world and the world after death. The light was always the same here, on sunny or cloudy days, in daytime or nighttime. Aomame always felt out of place in this room, like an insensitive intruder. It was like a club that demanded special qualifications for membership. The loneliness of these women was different in origin from the loneliness that Aomame felt.

The three women in the common room stood up when the dowager walked in. Aomame could see at a glance that they had profound respect for the dowager. The dowager urged them to be seated.

“Please don’t stop what you’re doing. We just wanted to have a little talk with Tsubasa.”

“Tsubasa is in her room,” said a woman whom Aomame judged to be probably around the same age as herself. She had long, straight hair.

“Saeko is with her. Tsubasa still can’t come down, it seems,” said a somewhat older woman.

“No, it will probably take a little more time,” the dowager said with a smile.

Each of the three women nodded silently. They knew very well what “take more time” meant.

Aomame and the dowager climbed the stairs and entered one of the apartments. The dowager told the small, rather unimposing woman inside that she needed some time with Tsubasa. Saeko, as the woman was called, gave her a wan smile and left them with ten-year-old Tsubasa, closing the door behind her as she headed downstairs. Aomame, the dowager, and Tsubasa took seats around a small table. The window was covered by a thick curtain.

“This lady is named Aomame,” the dowager said to the girl. “Don’t worry, she works with me.”

The girl glanced at Aomame and gave a barely perceptible nod.

“And this is Tsubasa,” the dowager said, completing the introductions. Then she asked the girl, “How long has it been, Tsubasa, since you came here?”

The girl shook her head—again almost imperceptibly—as if to say she didn’t know.

“Six weeks and three days,” the dowager said. “You may not be counting the days, but I am. Do you know why?”

Again the girl gave a slight shake of the head.

“Because time can be very important,” the dowager said. “Just counting it can have great significance.”

To Aomame, Tsubasa looked like any other ten-year-old girl. She was rather tall for her age, but she was thin and her chest had not begun to swell. She looked chronically malnourished. Her features were not bad, but the face gave only the blandest impression. Her eyes made Aomame think of frosted windows, so little did they reveal of what was inside. Her thin, dry lips gave an occasional nervous twitch as if they might be trying to form words, but no actual sound ever emerged from them.

From a paper bag she had brought with her, the dowager produced a box of chocolates with a Swiss mountain scene on the package. She spread its contents on the table: a dozen pretty pieces of varied shapes. She gave one to Tsubasa, one to Aomame, and put one in her own mouth. Aomame put hers in her mouth. After seeing what they had done, Tsubasa also put a piece of chocolate in her mouth. The three of them ate chocolate for a while, saying nothing.

“Do you remember things from when you were ten years old?” the dowager asked Aomame.

“Very well,” Aomame said. She had held the hand of a boy that year and vowed to love him for the rest of her life. A few months later, she had had her first period. A lot of things changed inside Aomame at that time. She left the faith and cut her ties with her parents.

“I do too,” the dowager said. “My father took us to Paris when I was ten, and we stayed there for a year. He was a foreign service officer. We lived in an old apartment house near the Luxembourg Gardens. The First World War was in its final months, and the train stations were full of wounded soldiers, some of them almost children, others old men. Paris is breathtakingly beautiful in all seasons of the year, but bloody images are all I have left from that time. There was terrible trench warfare going on at the front, and people who had lost arms and legs and eyes wandered the city streets like abandoned ghosts. All that caught my eye were the white of their bandages and the black of the armbands worn by mourning women. Horse carts hauled one new coffin after another to the cemeteries, and whenever a coffin went by, people would avert their eyes and clamp their mouths shut.”

The dowager reached across the table. After a moment of thought, the girl brought her hand out from her lap and laid it in the dowager’s hand. The dowager held it tight. Probably, when she was a girl passing horse carts stacked with coffins on the streets of Paris, her father or mother would grasp her hand like this and assure her that she had nothing to worry about, that she would be all right, that she was in a safe place and needn’t be afraid.

“Men produce several million sperm a day,” the dowager said to Aomame. “Did you know that?”

“Not the exact figure,” Aomame said.

“Well, of course, I don’t know the exact figure, either. It’s more than anyone can count. And they come out all at once. The number of eggs a woman produces, though, is limited. Do you know how many that is?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“It’s only around four hundred in the course of her lifetime,” the dowager said. “And they are not made anew each month: they are all already stored inside the woman’s body from the time she is born. After her first period, she produces one ripened egg a month. Little Tsubasa here has all her eggs stored inside her already. They should be pretty much intact—packed away in a drawer somewhere—because her periods haven’t started. It goes without saying, of course, that the role of each egg is to be fertilized by a sperm.”

Aomame nodded.

“Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come from differences in their reproductive systems. From a purely physiological point of view, women live to protect their limited egg supply. That’s true of you, of me, and of Tsubasa.” Here the dowager gave a wan little smile. “That should be in the past tense in my case, of course.”

Aomame did some quick mental calculations.
That means I’ve already ejected some two hundred eggs. About half my supply is left inside, maybe labeled “reserved.”

“But Tsubasa’s eggs will never be fertilized,” the dowager said. “I asked a doctor I know to examine her last week. Her uterus has been destroyed.”

Aomame looked at the dowager, her face distorted. Then, tilting her head slightly, she turned toward the girl. She could hardly speak. “Destroyed?”

“Yes, destroyed,” the dowager said. “Not even surgery can restore it to its original condition.”

“But who would do such a thing?” Aomame asked.

“I’m still not sure,” said the dowager.

“The Little People,” said the girl.

Komatsu phoned after the press conference to say that everything had gone well.

“A brilliant job,” he said with unusual excitement. “I never imagined she’d carry it off so flawlessly. The repartee was downright witty. She made a great impression on everybody.”

Tengo was not at all surprised to hear Komatsu’s report. Without any strong basis for it, he had not been especially worried about the press conference. He had assumed she would at least handle herself well. But “made a great impression”? Somehow, that didn’t fit with the Fuka-Eri he knew.

“So none of our dirty laundry came out, I suppose?” Tengo asked to make sure.

“No, we kept it short and deflected any awkward questions. Though in fact, there weren’t any tough questions to speak of. I mean, not even newspaper reporters want to look like bad guys grilling a sweet, lovely, seventeen-year-old girl. Of course, I should add ‘for the time being.’ No telling how it’ll go in the future. In this world, the wind can change direction before you know it.”

Tengo pictured Komatsu standing on a high cliff with a grim look on his face, licking his finger to test the wind direction.

“In any case, your practice session did the trick, Tengo. Thanks for doing such a good job. Tomorrow’s evening papers will report on the award and the press conference.”

“What was Fuka-Eri wearing?”

“What was she wearing? Just ordinary clothes. A tight sweater and jeans.”

“A sweater that showed off her boobs?”

“Yes, now that you mention it. Nice shape. They looked brand new, fresh from the oven,” Komatsu said. “You know, Tengo, she’s going to be a huge hit: girl genius writer. Good looks, maybe talks a little funny, but
smart
. She’s got that air about her: you know she’s not an ordinary person. I’ve been present at a lot of writers’ debuts, but she’s special. And when I say somebody’s special, they’re really special. The magazine carrying
Air Chrysalis
is going to be in the bookstores in another week, and I’ll bet you anything—my left hand and right leg—it’ll be sold out in three days.”

Tengo thanked Komatsu for the news and ended the call with some sense of relief. They had cleared the first hurdle, at least. How many more hurdles were waiting for them, though, he had no idea.

The next evening’s newspapers carried reports of the press conference. Tengo bought four of them at the station after work at the cram school and read them at home. They all said pretty much the same thing. None of the articles was especially long, but compared with the usual perfunctory five-line report, the treatment given to the event was unprecedented. As Komatsu had predicted, the media leapt on the news that a seventeen-year-old girl had won the prize. All reported that the four-person screening committee had chosen the work unanimously after only fifteen minutes of deliberation. That in itself was unusual. For four egotistical writers to gather in a room and be in perfect agreement was simply unheard of. The work was already causing a stir in the industry. A small press conference was held in the same room of the hotel where the award ceremony had taken place, the newspapers reported, and the prizewinner had responded to reporters’ questions “clearly and cheerfully.”