1Q84 (90 page)

“What finally happened to him?”

“I really don’t know. I ran away from the orphanage when I was fourteen and lived on my own after that. I headed straight for the ferry, crossed over to the main island, and I haven’t set foot in Hokkaido since then. The last I saw him, he was bent over a workbench, concentrating on his carving. You couldn’t get through to him at those times, so we never even said good-bye. If he’s still alive, I imagine he’s still carving rats somewhere. It was all he could do.”

Aomame kept silent and waited for the rest of the story.

“I often think of him even now. Life in the orphanage was terrible. They fed us next to nothing, and we were always hungry. The winters were
cold
. The work was harsh, and the older kids bullied us something awful. But he never seemed to find the life there all that painful. He appeared to be happy as long as he could carve. Sometimes he would go half mad when he picked up his carving tools, but otherwise he was a truly docile little fellow. He didn’t make trouble for anyone but just kept quietly carving his rats. He’d pick up a block of wood and stare at it for a long time until he could see what kind of rat in what kind of pose was lurking inside. It took a long while before he could see the figure, but once that happened, all he had to do was pull the rat out of the block with his knives. He often used to say that: ‘I’m going to pull the rat out.’ And the rats he
pulled out
looked as if they might start moving at any moment. He kept on freeing these imaginary rats that were locked up in their blocks of wood.”

“And you were the boy’s protector.”

“Yes, but not because I wanted to be. I just ended up in that position. And once you were given a position, you had to live up to it, no matter what. That was the rule. Say, if one of the other boys took away his carving tools just to be nasty, I would go and beat him up. Even if the other kid was older or bigger or there was more than one of them, I had to beat him up. Of course, there were times when
they
beat
me
up. Lots of times. But it didn’t matter whether I won or lost those fights: I always got the tools back for him. That was the main thing. See what I mean?”

“I think so,” Aomame said. “But finally you had to abandon him.”

“Well, I had to go on living. I couldn’t stay with him forever, taking care of him. I didn’t have that luxury, obviously.”

Aomame opened her right hand again and stared at it.

“I’ve seen you holding a little carved rat now and then. Did he make that?”

“Yes, he gave me a little one. I took it when I ran away. I keep it with me.”

“You know, Tamaru, you’re not the kind of guy who usually talks about himself. Why now?”

“One thing I wanted to tell you is that I often think of him,” Tamaru said. “Not that I want to see him again or anything. I really don’t. We wouldn’t have anything to talk about, for one thing. It’s just that I still have this vivid image of him ‘pulling rats out’ of blocks of wood with total concentration, and that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something—or tries to. People need things like that to go on living—mental landscapes that have meaning for them, even if they can’t explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things. That’s what I think.”

“Are you saying that they’re like a basis for us to live?”

“Maybe so.”

“I have such mental landscapes, too.”

“You’d better handle them with care.”

“I will.”

“I have one more thing to say, and that is that I will do everything I can to protect you. If there’s somebody I have to beat up, I’ll go out and beat them up. Win or lose, I won’t abandon you.”

“Thank you.”

A few tranquil seconds of silence followed.

“Don’t leave that apartment for a while. Just think of it as a jungle one step outside your door. Okay?”

“Got it,” Aomame said.

The connection was cut. Hanging up, Aomame realized how tightly she had been gripping the receiver.

What Tamaru wanted to convey to me was that I’m now an indispensable part of their family, that ties once formed will never be cut
, Aomame thought.
We are bound by artificial blood, so to speak
. Aomame was grateful to Tamaru for having delivered that message. He must have realized what a painful time this was for Aomame. It was precisely because he thought of her as a member of the family that he had begun to share some of his secrets.

To think that such a close connection could only be formed through violence was almost too much for Aomame to bear.
We can only share these deep feelings because of my unique circumstances: I’ve broken the law, killed several people, and now someone is after me and may even kill me. Would it have been possible to form such a relationship if murder had not been involved? Could we have formed such bonds of trust if I were not an outlaw? I doubt it
.

She watched the TV news, drinking tea. There were no more reports on the flooding of the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station. Once the water receded the next day and the trains were running normally again, it had become old news. The death of Sakigake’s Leader was still not public knowledge. Only a handful of people knew about that. Aomame imagined the large man’s corpse being consumed by the high-temperature incinerator. Tamaru had said that not a single bone would be left. Unrelated to either grace or pain, everything would become smoke and blend into the early-autumn sky. Aomame could picture the smoke and the sky.

There was a report on the disappearance of the seventeen-year-old girl who wrote the bestselling book
Air Chrysalis
. Eriko Fukada, or “Fuka-Eri,” as she was known, had been missing for over two months. The police had received a search request from her guardian and were carrying on a thorough investigation, but nothing had come to light as yet, the announcer said. The screen showed a stack of copies of
Air Chrysalis
in a bookstore, and a poster with the photo of the beautiful author hung on the store wall. A young female bookstore clerk was interviewed: “The book is still selling like crazy. I bought a copy myself and read it. It’s really good—very imaginative! I hope they find out where Fuka-Eri is soon.”

The report said nothing about a relationship between Eriko Fukada and Sakigake. The media were very cautious when religious organizations were involved.

In any case, Eriko Fukada was missing. She had been violated by her father when she was ten years old. They had had “ambiguous congress,” if Aomame was to accept his terminology. Through that act, they had led the Little People into him.
How did he put it, again? That’s it—they were Perceiver and Receiver. Eriko Fukada was the one who perceived, and her father was the one who received. Then the man started to hear special voices. He became the agent of the Little People and the founder of the religion called Sakigake. She left the religion after that. Then, as a force against the Little People, she teamed up with Tengo and wrote the novella
Air Chrysalis,
which became a bestseller. Now, for some reason or other, she has disappeared, and the police are looking for her
.

Meanwhile, last night, using a specially made ice pick, I killed Eriko Fukada’s father, leader of the religion called Sakigake. People from the religion transported his corpse from the hotel and secretly “disposed” of it
. Aomame could not imagine how Eriko Fukada would deal with the news of her father’s death.
It was a death that he himself asked for, a painless “mercy killing,” but the fact is that I used these hands of mine to end the life of a human being. A person’s life may be a lonely thing by nature, but it is not isolated. To that life other lives are linked, and I surely have to bear some responsibility for those as well
.

Tengo is also deeply involved in these events. The Fukadas—father and daughter—are what bind us together: Perceiver and Receiver. Where could Tengo be now, and what is he doing? Could he have something to do with the disappearance of Eriko Fukada? Are the two of them still working together? The television news, of course, tells me nothing about Tengo’s fate. So far, no one seems to know that he was the actual writer of
Air Chrysalis.
But
I
know
.

It appears that he and I are narrowing the distance between us bit by bit. Circumstances carried us into this world and are bringing us closer together as though we are being drawn into a great whirlpool. It may be a lethal whirlpool. But Leader suggested that we would never find each other outside such a lethal place, just as violence creates certain kinds of pure relationships
.

She took a deep breath. Then she reached out toward the Heckler & Koch on the table and assured herself of its hardness. She imagined its muzzle being shoved into her mouth and her finger tightening on the trigger.

A large crow suddenly appeared on her balcony, perched on the railing, and let out a number of piercing cries. Aomame and the crow observed each other through the glass. The crow moved the big, bright eye on the side of his head, watching Aomame’s movements in the room. He seemed to understand the significance of the pistol in her hand. Crows were intelligent animals. They knew that this block of steel had great importance. Somehow or other, they knew.

The crow spread its wings and flew off as suddenly as it had arrived, apparently having seen what it was supposed to see. Once it was gone, Aomame stood up, turned off the television, and sighed, hoping that the crow was not a spy for the Little People.

Aomame practiced her usual stretching on the living-room carpet. She worked her muscles to the limit for an hour, passing the time with the appropriate pain. One by one, she summoned up each muscle of her body and subjected it to an intense, detailed interrogation. She had the name, function, and quality of each muscle minutely engraved in her mind, missing none. She sweated profusely, working her lungs and heart to the fullest, and switching the channels of her consciousness. She listened to the flow of the blood in her veins, and received the wordless messages that her heart was issuing. The muscles of her face contorted every which way as she sank her teeth into the messages.

Next she washed the sweat off in the shower. She stepped on the scale to make sure there had been no major change in her weight. Confirming in the mirror that the size of her breasts and the shape of her pubic hair had not changed, she scowled immensely. This was her morning ritual.

When she was finished in the bathroom, she changed into a jersey sportswear top and bottom for easy movement. Then, to kill time, she decided to examine the contents of the apartment again, beginning with the kitchen: the foods and the eating and cooking utensils. She memorized each item and devised a plan for which foods she would prepare and eat in what order. She estimated that, even if she never set foot outside the apartment, she could live here for at least ten days without going hungry, and she could make it last two weeks if she was careful in parceling out the supplies. They had stocked the place with that much food.

Then she went through the non-food items: toilet paper, tissues, laundry detergent, rubber gloves. Nothing was missing. The shopping had been done with great care. A woman must have participated in the preparations—probably an experienced housewife, judging from the obvious care that had been lavished on the task. Someone had meticulously calculated what and how much would be needed for a healthy thirty-year-old single woman to live here alone for a short time. This was not something a man could have done—though perhaps it would be possible for a highly observant gay man.

The bedroom linen closet was well stocked with sheets, blankets, and spare pillows, all with the smell of new linen, and all plain white. Ornamentation had been carefully avoided, there being no need for taste or individuality.

The living room had a television, a
VCR
, and a small stereo with a record player and a cassette deck. On the wall opposite the window, there was a waist-high wooden sideboard. She bent over and opened it to find some twenty books lined up inside. Someone had done their best to assure that Aomame would not be bored while hiding out here. The books were all new hardcover volumes that showed no evidence of having been opened. Most of them were recent, probably chosen from displays of current bestsellers at a large bookstore. The person had exercised some standards of selection—if not exactly taste—in choosing about half fiction and half nonfiction.
Air Chrysalis
was among them.

With a little nod, Aomame picked it up and sat on the living-room sofa in the warm sunshine. It was not a thick book. It was light, and the type was large. She looked at the dust jacket and at the name of the author, “Fuka-Eri,” printed there, balanced the book on her palm to gauge its weight, and read the publisher’s copy on the colorful band around the jacket. Then she sniffed the book for that special smell that new books have. Though his name was nowhere printed on it, Tengo’s presence was here. The text printed inside it had passed through Tengo’s body. She calmed herself and opened to the first page.

Her teacup and the Heckler & Koch were both where she could reach them.

“She might be very close by,” Fuka-Eri said after some moments of biting her lip in serious thought.

Tengo unfolded and refolded his hands on the table, looking into Fuka-Eri’s eyes. “Very close by? You mean here, in Koenji?”

“Within walking distance.”

How do you know that?
Tengo wanted to ask her, but he was at least prescient enough to know that he would not get an answer to such a question. She needed practical questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no.

“Are you saying that I can meet Aomame if I look for her in this neighborhood?” Tengo asked.

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “You can’t meet her just by walking around.”