1Q84 (45 page)

He picked up his pen again and was still arranging words on paper when suddenly he remembered: tomorrow was the day his older girlfriend would be coming. She always showed up around eleven o’clock on Friday mornings. He would have to get rid of Fuka-Eri before then. Thank goodness she wore no perfume or cologne! His girlfriend would be sure to notice right away if the bed had someone else’s smell. Tengo knew how observant and jealous she could be. It was fine for her to have sex with her husband now and then, but she became seriously angry if Tengo went out with another woman.

“Married sex is something else,” she explained. “It’s charged to a separate account.”

“A separate account?”

“Under a whole different heading.”

“You mean you use a different part of your feelings?”

“That’s it. Even if I use the same body parts, I make a distinction in the feelings I use. So it really doesn’t matter. I have the ability to do that as a mature woman. But you’re not allowed to sleep with other girls and stuff.”

“I’m not doing that!” Tengo said.

“Even if you’re not having sex with another girl, I would feel slighted just to think such a possibility exists.”

“Just to think such a possibility exists?” Tengo asked, amazed.

“You don’t understand a woman’s feelings, do you? And you call yourself a novelist!”

“This seems awfully unfair to me.”

“It may be unfair. But I’ll make it up to you,” she said. And she did.

Tengo was satisfied with this relationship with his older girlfriend. She was no beauty, at least in the general sense. Her facial features were, if anything, rather unusual. Some might even find her ugly. But Tengo had liked her looks from the start. And as a sexual partner, she was beyond reproach. Her demands on him were few: to meet her once a week for three or four hours, to participate in attentive sex—twice, if possible—and to keep away from other women. Basically, that was all she asked of him. Home and family were very important to her, and she had no intention of destroying them for Tengo. She simply did not have a satisfying sex life with her husband. Her interests and Tengo’s were a perfect fit.

Tengo had no particular desire for other women. What he wanted most of all was uninterrupted free time. If he could have sex on a regular basis, he had nothing more to ask of a woman. He did not welcome the unavoidable responsibility that came with dating a woman his own age, falling in love, and having a sexual relationship. The psychological stages through which one had to pass, the hints regarding various possibilities, the unavoidable collisions of expectations: Tengo hoped to get by without taking on such burdens.

The concept of duty always made Tengo cringe. He had lived his life thus far skillfully avoiding any position that entailed responsibility, and to do so, he was prepared to endure most forms of deprivation.

In order to flee from responsibility, Tengo learned early on in life to make himself inconspicuous. He worked hard to negate his presence by publicly displaying very little of his true abilities, by keeping his opinions to himself, and by avoiding situations that put him at the center of attention. He had to survive on his own, without depending on others, from the time he was a child. But children have no real power. And so, whenever a strong wind began to blow, he would have to take shelter and grab onto something to prevent himself from being blown away. It was necessary for him to keep such contrivances in mind at all times, like the orphans in Dickens’s novels.

But while it could be said that things had gone well for Tengo so far, several tears had begun to appear in the fabric of his tranquil life since he first laid his hands on the manuscript of Fuka-Eri’s
Air Chrysalis
. First of all, he had been dragged almost bodily into Komatsu’s dangerous plan. Secondly, the beautiful girl who wrote the book had shaken his heart from a strange angle. And it seemed that the experience of rewriting
Air Chrysalis
had begun to change something inside of him. Now Tengo felt driven by a powerful urge to write
his own
novel. This, of course, was a change for the better. But it was also true that his neat, self-satisfied lifestyle was being tested.

In any case, tomorrow was Friday. His girlfriend would be coming. He had to get rid of Fuka-Eri before then.

Fuka-Eri woke up just after two o’clock in the morning. Dressed in his pajamas, she opened the bedroom door and came out to the kitchen. She drank a big glass of water and, rubbing her eyes, sat down at the kitchen table across from Tengo.

“Am I in your way,” Fuka-Eri asked in her usual style free of question marks.

“Not especially,” Tengo said. “I don’t mind.”

“What are you writing.”

Tengo closed the pad and set his ballpoint pen down.

“Nothing much,” Tengo said. “Anyway, I was just thinking of quitting.”

“Mind if I stay up with you a while,” she asked.

“Not at all. I’m going to have a little wine. Want some?”

The girl shook her head. “I want to stay out here a while.”

“That’s fine. I’m not sleepy, either.”

Tengo’s pajamas were too big on Fuka-Eri. She had the sleeves and cuffs rolled up. Whenever she leaned forward, the collar revealed glimpses of the swell of her breasts. The sight of Fuka-Eri wearing his pajamas made it strangely difficult for Tengo to breathe. He opened the refrigerator and poured the wine left in the bottom of a bottle into a glass.

“Hungry?” Tengo asked. On their way back to his apartment earlier, they had had some spaghetti at a small restaurant near Koenji Station. The portions had not been very big, and several hours had elapsed in the meantime. “I can make you a sandwich or something else simple if you’d like.”

“I’m not hungry. I’d rather have you read me what you wrote.”

“You mean what I was writing just now?”

“Uh-huh.”

Tengo picked up his pen and twirled it between his fingers. It looked ridiculously small in his big hand. “I make it a policy not to show people manuscripts until they’re finished and revised. I don’t want to jinx my writing.”

” ‘Jinx.’ ”

“It’s an English word. ‘To cause bad luck.’ It’s a kind of rule of mine.”

Fuka-Eri looked at Tengo for several moments. Then she drew the pajama collar closed. “So read me a book.”

“You can get to sleep if someone reads you a book?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I suppose Professor Ebisuno has read you lots of books.”

“Because he stays up all night.”

“Did he read you
The Tale of the Heike
?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “I listened to a tape.”

“So that’s how you memorized it! Must have been a very long tape.”

Fuka-Eri used two hands to suggest a pile of cassette tapes. “Very long.”

“What part did you recite at the press conference?”

” ‘General Yoshitsune’s Flight from the Capital.’ ”

“That’s the part after the defeat of the Heike where the victorious Genji general Yoshitsune flees from Kyoto, with his brother Yoritomo in pursuit. The Genji have won the war against the Heike, but then the family starts fighting among themselves.”

“Right.”

“What other sections can you recite from memory?”

“Tell me what you want to hear.”

Tengo tried to recall some episodes from
The Tale of the Heike
. It was a long book, with an endless number of stories. Off the top of his head, Tengo named “The Battle of Dan-no-ura.”

Fuka-Eri took some twenty seconds to collect her thoughts in silence. Then she began to chant a decisive part of the final sea battle in the original verse:

The Genji warriors had boarded the Heike ships to find

The sailors and helmsmen pierced by arrows or slashed by swords,

Their corpses lying in the bilge, leaving no one to steer.

Aboard a small boat, New Middle Counselor Tomomori

Approached the Imperial Ship and said:

“And so it seems to have come to this.

Heave everything unsightly into the ocean.”

He ran from stem to stern, sweeping, scrubbing,

Gathering litter, cleaning everything with his own hands.

The ladies-in-waiting asked, “How goes the battle, Counselor?”

“Soon you will behold those marvelous men of the east,”

He replied with caustic laughter.

“How dare you jest at a time like this?” the women cried.

Observing this state of affairs, the Nun of Second Rank

Proceeded to carry out the plan

Upon which she had settled long before.

Hooding herself under two dark-gray robes,

She lifted high the hems of her glossy silk split skirt,

Tucked the Imperial Bead Strand under one arm,

Thrust the Imperial Sword under her sash,

And took the Child Emperor himself in her arms.

“Mere woman though I am, I shall never fall into enemy hands.

I shall go wherever His Majesty goes.

All you women whose hearts are with him,

Follow us without delay.” So saying,

She strode to the gunwale.

His Majesty had turned but eight that year,

Yet he exhibited a maturity far beyond his age.

His handsome countenance radiated an Imperial glow,

And his glossy black hair could cascade down his back past the waist.

Confused by all the commotion, he asked,

“Grandmother, where are you taking me?”

She turned to the innocent young Sovereign and,

Fighting back her tears, she said,

“Do you not know yet what is happening?

For having followed the Ten Precepts in your previous life,

You were born to be a Lord commanding

Ten thousand charioteers,

But now, dragged down by an evil karma,

Your good fortune has exhausted itself.

Turn first now to the east,

And say your farewell to the Grand Shrine of Ise.

Then turn toward the west and call upon Amida Buddha

That his heavenly hosts may guide you to the Western Pure Land.

This country is no better than a scattering of millet,

A place where hearts know only sadness.

I am taking you, therefore, to a wonderful pure land called ‘Paradise.’ ”

Her tears escaped as she spoke thus to him.

His Majesty wore a robe of olive-tinged gray,

And his hair was bound on either side in boyish loops.

Tears streaming from his eyes, he joined his darling hands.

First, he bowed toward the east

And spoke his farewell to the Grand Shrine of Ise.

Then he turned to the west and, once he had called upon Amida Buddha,

The Nun of Second Rank clasped him to her breast and,

Comforting him with the words,

“There is another capital beneath the waves,”

She plunged ten thousand fathoms beneath the sea.

Listening to her recite the story with his eyes closed, Tengo felt as though he were hearing it the traditional way, chanted by a blind priest accompanying himself on the lute, and he was reminded anew that
The Tale of the Heike
was a narrative poem handed down through an oral tradition. Fuka-Eri’s normal style of speaking was extremely flat, lacking almost all accent and intonation, but when she launched into the tale, her voice became startlingly strong, rich, and colorful, as if something had taken possession of her. The magnificent sea battle fought in 1185 on the swirling currents between Honshu and Kyushu came vividly to life. The Heike side was doomed to defeat, and Kiyomori’s wife Tokiko, the “Nun of Second Rank,” plunged into the waves holding her grandson, the child emperor Antoku, in her arms. Her ladies-in-waiting followed her in death rather than fall into the hands of the rough eastern warriors. Tomomori, concealing his grief, jokingly urged the ladies to kill themselves.
You’ll have nothing but a living hell if you go on like this
, he had told them.
You had best end your lives here and now
.

“Want me to go on,” Fuka-Eri asked.

“No, that’s fine. Thank you,” Tengo answered, stunned. He understood how those news reporters, at a loss for words, must have felt. “How did you manage to memorize such a long passage?”

“Listening to the tape over and over.”

“Listening to the tape over and over, an ordinary person still wouldn’t be able to memorize it.”

It suddenly dawned on Tengo that precisely to the degree she could not read a book, the girl’s ability to memorize what she had heard might be extraordinarily well developed, just as certain children with savant syndrome can absorb and remember huge amounts of visual information in a split second.

“I want you to read me a book,” Fuka-Eri said.

“What kind of book would you like?”

“Do you have the book you were talking about with the Professor,” Fuka-Eri asked. “The one with Big Brother.”