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by Haruki Murakami

  “Which is what you mean by more or less, in all sorts of forms.”

  “When morning comes you will be leaving here, Tengo. Before the exit is blocked.”

  “When morning comes I’ll be leaving here,” Tengo repeated the nurse’s words.

  Once more she rubbed her rich pubic hair against his thigh, as if to leave behind some sort of sign. “Air chrysalises don’t come from somewhere. They won’t come no matter how long you wait.”

  “You know that.”

  “Because I died once,” she said. “It’s painful to die. Much more painful than you imagine, Tengo. You are utterly lonely. It’s amazing how completely lonely a person can be. You had better remember that. But you know, unless you die once, you won’t be reborn.”

  “Unless you die once, you won’t be reborn,” Tengo confirmed.

  “But people face death while they’re still alive.”

  “People face death while they’re still alive,” Tengo repeated, unsure of what it meant.

  The white curtain continued to flutter in the breeze. The air in the classroom smelled of a mixture of blackboard erasers and cleaner. There was the scent of burning leaves. Someone was practicing the recorder. The girl was squeezing his hand tightly. In his lower half he felt a sweet ache, but he didn’t have an erection. That would come later on. The words later on promised him eternity. Eternity was a single long pole that stretched out without end. The bowl tipped a bit again, and again his brains sloshed to one side.

  When he woke up, it took Tengo a while to figure out where he was, and to piece together the events of the previous night. Bright sunlight shone in through the gap between the flowery curtains, while birds whistled away noisily outside. He had been sleeping in an uncomfortable, cramped position in the narrow bed. He found it hard to believe he could have slept the whole night in such a position. Kumi was lying beside him, her face pressed into the pillow, sound asleep. Her hair was plastered against her cheeks, like lush summer grass wet with dew. Kumi Adachi, Tengo thought. A young nurse who just turned twenty-three. His wristwatch had fallen to the floor. The hands showed 7:20—7:20 in the morning.

  Tengo slipped quietly out of bed, careful not to wake Kumi, and looked out the window through a crack in the curtains. There was a cabbage field. Rows of cabbages crouched stolidly on the dark soil. Beyond the field was the woods. Tengo remembered the hoot of the owl. Last night it had definitely been hooting. The wisdom of the night. Tengo and the nurse had listened to it as they smoked hashish. He could still feel her stiff pubic hair on his thigh.

  Tengo went to the kitchen, scooped up water from the faucet with his hands, and drank. He was so thirsty he drank and drank, and still wanted more. Other than that, nothing else had changed. His head didn’t hurt, and his body wasn’t listless. His mind was clear. But somehow, inside him, things seemed to flow a bit too well—as if pipes had been carefully, and professionally, cleaned. In his T-shirt and boxers he padded over to the toilet and took a good long pee. In the unfamiliar mirror, his face didn’t look like his own. Tufts of hair stood up here and there on his head, and he needed a shave.

  He went back to the bedroom and gathered up his clothes. His discarded clothes lay mixed in with Kumi’s, scattered on the floor. He had no memory of when, or how, he had undressed. He located both socks, tugged on his jeans, buttoned up his shirt. As he did, he stepped on a large, cheap ring. He picked it up and put it on the nightstand next to the bed. He tugged on his crew-neck sweater and picked up his windbreaker. He checked that his wallet and keys were in his pocket. The young nurse was sleeping soundly, the blanket pulled up to just below her ears. Her breathing was quiet. Should he wake her up? Even though they hadn’t—he was pretty sure—done anything, they had spent the night in bed together. It seemed rude to leave without saying good-bye. But she was sleeping so soundly, and she had said this was her day off. Even if he did wake her, what were they supposed to do then?

  He found a memo pad and ballpoint pen next to the telephone. Thanks for last night, he wrote. I had a good time. I’m going back to my inn. Tengo. He wrote down the time. He placed the memo on the nightstand, and put the ring he had picked up on top, as a paperweight. He then slipped on his worn-out sneakers and left.

  He walked down the road for a while, until he came across a bus stop. He waited there for five minutes and soon a bus heading for the station arrived. The bus was full of noisy high school boys and girls, and he rode with them to the end of the line. The people at the inn took his unshaven eight a.m. arrival in stride. It didn’t seem to be that out of the ordinary for them. Without a word, they briskly prepared his breakfast.

  As he ate his hot breakfast and drank tea, Tengo went over the events of the previous night. The three nurses had invited him out and they went to have yakiniku. Then on to a bar, where they sang karaoke. Then he went to Kumi Adachi’s apartment, where they smoked Indian hashish, while an owl hooted outside. Then his brain felt like it had changed into hot, thick porridge. And suddenly he was in his elementary school classroom in winter, he could smell the air, and he was talking with Aomame. Then Kumi, in bed, was talking about death and resurrection. There were wrong questions, ambiguous answers. The owl in the woods went on hooting, people on a TV show went on laughing.

  His memory was patchy and there were definitely several gaps. But the parts he did recall were amazingly vivid and clear. He could retrace each and every word they spoke. Tengo recalled the last thing Kumi said. It was both advice and a warning.

  When morning comes you will be leaving here, Tengo. Before the exit is blocked.

  Maybe this was the right time to leave. He had taken off from his job and come to this town hoping to see ten-year-old Aomame inside the air chrysalis once more. And he had spent nearly two weeks going every day to the sanatorium, reading aloud to his father. But the air chrysalis had never appeared. Instead, when he was about to give up, Kumi Adachi had prepared a different kind of vision just for him. And in it he was able once more to see Aomame as a girl, and speak with her. Find me, Aomame had said. While there’s still time. Actually, it may have been Kumi who said that. Tengo couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered. Kumi had died once, and been reborn. Not for herself, but for someone else. For the time being, Tengo decided to believe what he had heard from her. It was important to do so. At least, he was pretty sure it was.

  This was the cat town. There was something specific that could only be found here. That’s why he had taken the train all the way to this far-off place. But everything he found here held an inherent risk. If he believed Kumi’s hints, these risks could be fatal. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

  It was time to go back to Tokyo—before the exit was blocked, while the train still stopped at this station. But before that he needed to go to the sanatorium again, and say good-bye to his father. There were things he still needed to clarify.

  CHAPTER 10

  Ushikawa

  GATHERING SOLID LEADS

  Ushikawa traveled to Ichikawa. It felt like quite a long excursion, but actually Ichikawa was just over the river in Chiba Prefecture, not far from downtown Tokyo. At the station he boarded a cab and gave the driver the name of the elementary school. It was after one p.m. when he arrived at the school. Lunch break was over and classes had just begun for the afternoon. He heard a chorus singing in the music room and a gym class was playing soccer outside. Children were yelling as they chased after the ball.

  Ushikawa didn’t have good memories of his own days in elementary school. He wasn’t good at sports, particularly any kind that involved a ball. He was short, a slow runner, had astigmatism, and was uncoordinated. Gym class was a nightmare. His grades in other classes were excellent, though. He was pretty bright and applied himself to his schoolwork (which led to passing the difficult bar exam when he was only twenty-five). But nobody liked him, or respected him. Not being good at sports may have been one reason. And then there was his face. Since he was a child, he had had this big, ugl
y face, with a misshapen head. His thick lips sagged at the corners and looked as if they were about to drool at any moment, though they never actually did. His hair was frizzy and unruly. These were not the sort of looks to attract others.

  In elementary school he hardly ever spoke. He knew he could be eloquent if necessary, but he didn’t have any close friends and never had the opportunity to show others how well spoken he could be. So he always kept his mouth shut. He kept his ears open and listened closely to whatever anyone else had to say, aiming to learn something from everything he heard. This habit eventually became a useful tool. Through this, he discovered a number of important realities, including this one: most people in the world don’t really use their brains to think. And people who don’t think are the ones who don’t listen to others.

  At any rate, his elementary school days were not a page of his life that Ushikawa enjoyed reminiscing over. Just thinking that he was about to visit an elementary school depressed him. Despite any differences between Saitama and Chiba prefectures, elementary schools were pretty much alike anywhere you went in Japan. They looked the same and operated on the same principles. Still, Ushikawa insisted on going all the way to visit this school in Ichikawa himself. This was important, something he couldn’t leave up to anyone else. He had called the school’s front office and already had an appointment for one thirty.

  The vice principal was a petite woman in her mid-forties, slim, attractive, and nicely dressed. Vice principal? Ushikawa was puzzled. He had never heard that term before. But it was ages ago when he graduated from elementary school. Lots of things must have changed since then. The woman must have dealt with many people over the years, for she didn’t blink an eye when faced with Ushikawa’s extraordinary features. Or perhaps she was just a very well-mannered person. She showed Ushikawa to a tidy reception room and invited him to take a seat. She sat down in the chair across from him and smiled broadly, as if wondering what sort of enjoyable conversation they were about to have.

  She reminded Ushikawa of a girl who had been in his class in school. The girl had been pretty, got good grades, was kind and responsible. She was well brought up and good at piano. She was one of the teacher’s favorites. During class Ushikawa spent a lot of time gazing at her, mainly at her back. But he never once talked with her.

  “I understand that you’re looking into one of the graduates of our school?” the vice principal asked.

  “I’m sorry, I should have given you this before,” Ushikawa said, and passed her his business card. It was the same card he had given Tengo, the one with his title on it: Full-time Director, New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. What he told the woman was the same fabricated story he had told Tengo. Tengo Kawana, who had graduated from this school, had become a writer and was on a short list to receive a grant from the foundation. Ushikawa was just running an ordinary background check on him.

  “That’s wonderful news,” the vice principal said, beaming. “It’s a great honor for our school, and we will do everything we can to help you.”

  “I was hoping to meet and speak directly with the teacher who taught Mr. Kawana,” Ushikawa said.

  “I’ll check into that. It’s more than twenty years ago, so she may be retired already.”

  “I appreciate that,” Ushikawa said. “If it’s all right, there’s one other thing I would like you to look into, if you would.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “There was a girl in the same year, I believe, as Mr. Kawana, a Miss Masami Aomame. Would you be able to check into whether she was in the same class as Mr. Kawana?”

  The vice principal looked a bit dubious. “Is this Miss Aomame in some way connected with the question of funding for Mr. Kawana?”

  “No, it’s not that. In one of the works by Mr. Kawana, there is a character who seems to be modeled on someone like Miss Aomame, and I have a few questions of my own on this topic that I need to clear up. It’s nothing very involved. Basically a formality.”

  “I see,” the vice principal said, the corners of her lips rising ever so slightly. “I am sure you understand, however, that in some cases we may not be able to give you information that might touch on a person’s privacy. Grades, for instance, or reports on a pupil’s home environment.”

  “Of course, I’m fully aware of that. All we are after is information on whether or not she was actually in the same class as Mr. Kawana. And if she was, I would appreciate it very much if you could give me the name and contact information for the teacher in charge of their class at the time.”

  “I understand. That shouldn’t be a problem. Miss Aomame, was it?”

  “Correct. It’s written with the characters for green and peas. An uncommon name.”

  Ushikawa wrote the name “Masami Aomame” in pen on a page on his pocket notebook and passed the page to the vice principal. She looked at it for a few seconds, then placed it in the pocket of a folder on her desk.

  “Could you please wait here for a few minutes? I’ll go check our staff records. I’ll have the person in charge photocopy whatever can be made public.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you with this when you are obviously so busy,” Ushikawa said.

  The vice principal’s flared skirt swished prettily as she exited the room. She had beautiful posture, and she moved elegantly. Her hairstyle was attractive too. She was clearly aging gracefully. Ushikawa shifted in his seat and killed time by reading a paperback book he had brought along.

  The vice principal came back fifteen minutes later, a brown business envelope clutched to her breast.

  “It turns out that Mr. Kawana was quite the student. He was always at the top of his class as well as a very successful athlete. He was especially good at arithmetic and mathematics, and even in elementary school he was able to solve high-school-level problems. He won a math contest and was written up in the newspaper as a child prodigy.”

  “That’s amazing,” Ushikawa said.

  “It’s odd that while he was touted as a math prodigy, today he has distinguished himself in literature.”

  “Abundant talent is like a rich vein of water underground that finds all sorts of places to gush forth. Presently he is teaching math while writing novels.”

  “I see,” the vice principal said, raising her eyebrows at a lovely angle. “Unlike Tengo, there wasn’t much on Masami Aomame. She transferred to another school in fifth grade. She was taken in by relatives in Adachi Ward in Tokyo and transferred to a school there. She and Tengo Kawana were classmates in third and fourth grades.”

  Just as I suspected, Ushikawa thought. There was some connection between the two of them.

  “A Miss Ota was in charge of their class then. Toshie Ota. Now she’s teaching at a municipal elementary school in Narashino.”

  “If I contact that school, perhaps I will be able to get in touch with her?”

  “We have already made the call,” the vice principal said, smiling faintly. “When we explained the situation, she said she would be very pleased to meet with you.”

  “I really appreciate that,” Ushikawa said. She wasn’t just a pretty face, he thought, but an efficient administrator, too.

  On the back of her business card, the vice principal wrote down the teacher’s name and the phone number of the school, the Tsudanuma elementary school, and handed it to Ushikawa. Ushikawa carefully stashed the card in his billfold.

  “I heard that Miss Aomame was raised with some sort of religious background,” Ushikawa said. “We are a bit concerned about this.”

  The vice principal frowned, tiny lines forming at the corners of her eyes. The kind of subtle, charming, intelligent lines acquired only by middle-aged women who have taken great care to train themselves.

  “I’m sorry, but that is not a subject we can discuss here,” she said.

  “It touches on areas of personal privacy, doesn’t it,” Ushikawa asked.

  “That’s correct. Especially issues dealing with religion.” />
  “But if I meet with this Miss Ota, I might be able to ask her about this.”

  The vice principal inclined her slender jaw slightly to the left and smiled meaningfully. “If Miss Ota wishes to speak as a private individual, that is no concern of ours.”

  Ushikawa stood up and politely thanked her. She handed him the brown business envelope. “The materials we could copy are inside. Documents pertaining to Mr. Kawana. There’s a little bit, too, concerning Miss Aomame. I hope it’s helpful to you.”

  “I’m sure it will be. Thank you very much for all you have done. You’ve been very kind.”

  “When the results of that grant are decided, you’ll be sure to let us know, won’t you? This will be a great honor for our school.”

  “I’m positive there will be a good outcome,” Ushikawa said. “I have met him a number of times and he is a talented young man with a promising future.” Ushikawa stopped at a diner in front of Ichikawa Station, ate a simple lunch, and looked through the material in the envelope. There was a basic record of attendance at the school for both Tengo and Aomame, as well as records of awards given to Tengo for his achievements in academics and sports. He did indeed seem to be an extraordinary student. He probably never once thought of school as a nightmare. There was also a copy of a newspaper article about the math contest he had won. It was an old article and the photo wasn’t very clear, but it was obviously Tengo as a boy.

  After lunch Ushikawa phoned the Tsudanuma elementary school. He spoke with Miss Ota, the teacher, and made an appointment to meet her at four at her school. After four I’m free to talk, she had said.

  I know it’s my job, Ushikawa sighed, but two elementary schools in one day is a bit much. Just thinking about it made him depressed. But so far it had been worth the effort. He now had proof that Tengo and Aomame were classmates for two years—a huge step forward.