There are some things you can’t buy no matter how much you pay, Aomame thought. For example, the moon.
Aomame changed the subject. “Are you really planning to raise Tsubasa yourself?”
“Of course, I am quite serious about that. I intend to adopt her legally.”
“I’m sure you are aware that the formalities will not be simple, especially given the situation.”
“Yes, I am prepared for that,” the dowager said. “I will use every means at my disposal, do everything I can. I will not give her up to anyone.”
The dowager’s voice trembled with emotion. This was the very first time she had displayed such feeling in Aomame’s presence. Aomame found this somewhat worrisome, and the dowager seemed to read this in her expression.
“I have never told this to anyone,” the dowager said, lowering her voice as if preparing to reveal a long-hidden truth. “I have kept it to myself because it was too painful to speak about. The fact is, when my daughter committed suicide, she was pregnant. Six months pregnant. She probably did not want to give birth to the boy she was carrying. And so she took him with her when she ended her own life. If she had delivered the child, he would have been about the same age as Tsubasa here. I lost two precious lives at the same time.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Aomame said.
“Don’t worry, though. I am not allowing such personal matters to cloud my judgment. I will not expose you to needless danger. You, too, are a precious daughter to me. We are already part of the same family”
Aomame nodded silently.
“We have ties more important than blood,” the dowager said softly.
Aomame nodded again.
“Whatever it takes, we must liquidate that man,” the dowager said, as if trying to convince herself. Then she looked at Aomame. “At the earliest possible opportunity, we must move him to another world—before he injures someone else.”
Aomame looked across the table at Tsubasa. The girl’s eyes had no focus. She was staring at nothing more than an imaginary point in space. To Aomame, the girl looked like an empty cicada shell.
“But at the same time, we mustn’t rush things along,” the dowager said. “We have to be careful and patient.”
Aomame left the dowager and the girl Tsubasa behind in the apartment when she walked out of the safe house. The dowager had said she would stay with Tsubasa until the girl fell asleep. The four women in the first-floor common room were gathered around a circular table, leaning in closely, engaged in a hushed conversation. To Aomame, the scene did not look real. The women seemed to be part of an imaginary painting, perhaps with the title Women Sharing a Secret. The composition exhibited no change when Aomame passed by.
Outside, Aomame knelt down to pet the German shepherd for a while. The dog wagged her tail with happy abandon. Whenever she encountered a dog, Aomame would wonder how dogs could become so unconditionally happy. She had never once in her life had a pet—neither dog nor cat nor bird. She had never even bought herself a potted plant. Aomame suddenly remembered to look up at the sky, which was covered by a featureless gray layer of clouds that hinted at the coming of the rainy season. She could not see the moon. The night was quiet and windless. There was a hint of moonlight filtering through the overcast, but no way to tell how many moons were up there.
Walking to the subway, Aomame kept thinking about the strangeness of the world. If, as the dowager had said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives? Wouldn’t our genetic purpose—to transmit DNA—be served just as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?
A man who finds joy in raping prepubescent girls, a powerfully built gay bodyguard, people who choose death over transfusion, a woman who kills herself with sleeping pills while six months pregnant, a woman who kills problematic men with a needle thrust to the back of the neck, men who hate women, women who hate men: how could it possibly profit the genes to have such people existing in this world? Did the genes merely enjoy such deformed episodes as colorful entertainment, or were these episodes utilized by them for some greater purpose?
Aomame didn’t know the answers to these questions. All she knew was that it was too late to choose any other life for herself. All I can do is live the life I have. I can’t trade it in for a new one. However strange and misshapen it might be, this is it for the gene carrier that is me.
I hope the dowager and Tsubasa will be happy, Aomame thought as she walked along. If they can become truly happy, I don’t mind sacrificing myself to make it happen. I myself probably have no future to speak of. But I can’t honestly believe that the two of them are going to have tranquil, fulfilled lives—or even ordinary lives. The three of us are more or less the same. Each of us has borne too great a burden in the course of our lives. As the dowager said, we are like a single family—but an extended family engaged in an endless battle, united by deep wounds to the heart, each bearing some undefined absence.
In the course of pursuing these thoughts, Aomame became aware of her own intense urge for male flesh. Why, of all things, should I start wanting a man at a time like this? She shook her head as she walked along, unable to judge whether this increased sexual desire had been brought about by psychological tension or was the natural cry of the eggs stored inside her or just a product of her own genes’ warped machinations. The desire seemed to have very deep roots—or, as Ayumi might say, “I want to fuck like crazy.” What should I do now? Aomame wondered. I could go to one of my usual bars and look for the right kind of guy. It’s just one subway stop to Roppongi. But she was too tired for that. Nor was she dressed for seduction: no makeup, only sneakers and a vinyl gym bag. Why don’t I just go home, open a bottle of red wine, masturbate, and go to sleep? That’s it. And let me stop thinking about the moon.
One glance was all it took for Aomame to realize that the man sitting across from her on the subway home from Hiroo to Jiyugaoka was her type—mid-forties, oval face, hairline beginning to recede. Head shape not bad. Healthy complexion. Slim, stylish black-framed glasses. Smartly dressed: light cotton sport coat, white polo shirt, leather briefcase on lap. Brown loafers. A salaried working man from the look of him, but not at some straitlaced corporation. Maybe an editor at a publishing company, or an architect at a small firm, or something to do with apparel, that was probably it. He was deeply absorbed in a paperback, its title obscured by a bookstore’s plain wrapper.
Aomame thought she would like to go somewhere and have hot sex with him. She imagined herself touching his erect penis. She wanted to squeeze it so tightly that the flow of blood nearly stopped. Her other hand would gently massage his testicles. The hands now resting in her lap began to twitch. She opened and closed her fingers unconsciously. Her shoulders rose and fell with each breath. Slowly, she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.
But her stop was coming up soon. She had to get off at Jiyugaoka. She had no idea how far the man would be going, unaware that he was the object of her sexual fantasies. He just kept sitting there, reading his book, obviously unconcerned about the kind of woman who was sitting across from him. When she left the train, Aomame felt like ripping his damned paperback to shreds, but of course she stopped herself.
Aomame was sound asleep in bed at one o’clock in the morning, having an intensely sexual dream. In the dream, her breasts were large and beautiful, like two grapefruits. Her nipples were hard and big. She was pressing them against the lower half of a man. Her clothes lay at her feet, where she had cast them off. Aomame was sleeping with her legs spread. As she slept, Aomame had no way of knowing that two moons were hanging in the sky side by side. One of them was the big moon that had always hung there, and the other was a new, smallish moon.
Tsubasa and the dowager were also asleep, in Tsubasa’s room. Tsubasa wore new checke
d pajamas and slept curled into a tight little ball in bed. The dowager, still wearing her street clothes, was stretched out in a long chair, a blanket over her knees. She had been planning to leave after Tsubasa fell asleep, but had fallen asleep there. Set back from the street in its hilltop location, the apartment house was hushed, its grounds silent but for the occasional distant scream of an accelerating motorcycle or the siren of an ambulance. The German shepherd also slept, curled up outside the front door. The curtains had been drawn across the window, but they glowed white in the light of a mercury-vapor lamp. The clouds began to part, and from the rift, now and then two moons peeked through. The world’s oceans were adjusting their tides.
Tsubasa slept with her cheek pressed against the pillow, her mouth slightly open. Her breathing could not have been any quieter, and aside from the occasional tiny twitch of one shoulder, she barely moved. Her bangs hung over her eyes.
Soon her mouth began to open wider, and from it emerged, one after another, a small troupe of Little People. Each one carefully scanned the room before emerging. Had the dowager awakened at that point, she might have been able to see them, but she remained fast asleep. She would not be waking anytime soon. The Little People knew this. There were five of them altogether. When they first emerged, they were the size of Tsubasa’s little finger, but once they were fully on the outside, they would give themselves a twist, as though unfolding a tool, and stretch themselves to their full one-foot height. They all wore the same clothing without distinguishing features, and their facial features were equally undistinguished, making it impossible to tell them apart.
They climbed down from the bed to the floor, and from under the bed they pulled out an object about the size of a Chinese pork bun. Then they sat in a circle around the object and started feverishly working on it. It was white and highly elastic. They would stretch their arms out and, with practiced movements, pluck white, translucent threads out of the air, applying them to the fluffy, white object, making it bigger and bigger. The threads appeared to have a suitably sticky quality. Before long, the Little People themselves had grown to nearly two feet in height. They were able to change their height freely as needed.
Several hours of concentrated work followed, during which time the Little People said nothing at all. Their teamwork was tight and flawless. Tsubasa and the dowager remained sound asleep the whole time, never moving a muscle. All the other women in the safe house enjoyed deeper sleeps than usual. Stretched out on the front lawn, perhaps dreaming, the German shepherd let out a soft moan from the depths of its unconscious.
Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.
CHAPTER 20
Tengo
THE POOR GILYAKS
Tengo couldn’t sleep. Fuka-Eri was in his bed, wearing his pajamas, sound asleep. Tengo had made simple preparations for sleeping on the couch (no great imposition, since he often napped there), but he had felt not the slightest bit sleepy when he lay down, so he was writing his long novel at the kitchen table. The word processor was in the bedroom; he was using a ballpoint pen on a writing pad. This, too, was no great imposition. The word processor was undeniably more convenient for writing speed and for saving documents, but he loved the classic act of writing characters by hand on paper.
Writing fiction at night was rather rare for Tengo. He enjoyed working when it was light outside and people were walking around. Sometimes, when he was writing at night while everything was hushed and wrapped in darkness, the style he produced would be a little too heavy, and he would have to rewrite the whole passage in the light of day. Rather than go to that trouble, it was better to write in daylight from the outset.
Writing at night for the first time in ages, though, using a ballpoint pen and paper, Tengo found his mind working smoothly. His imagination stretched its limbs and the story flowed freely. One idea would link naturally with the next almost without interruption, the tip of the pen raising a persistent scrape against the white paper. Whenever his hand tired, he would set the pen down and move the fingers of his right hand in the air, like a pianist doing imaginary scales. The hands of the clock were nearing half past one. He heard strangely few sounds from the outside, as though extraneous noises were being soaked up by the clouds covering the city’s sky like a thick cotton layer.
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.
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