Silence.
“I can understand if you think this is a crazy idea. If I told anybody else, they would say I was hallucinating. But I have to believe it’s true. I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world that’s inside you.”
Again more silence.
“I took time off from my job, came to this town, rented a room at an inn, and have been coming here every day and talking to you—for almost two weeks now. But I wasn’t just doing it to see how you were doing or to take care of you. I wanted to see where I came from, what sort of bloodline I have. None of that matters anymore. I am who I am, no matter who or what I’m connected with—or not connected with. Though I do know that you are the one who is my father. And that’s fine. Is this what you call a reconciliation? I don’t know. Maybe I just reconciled with myself.”
Tengo took a deep breath. He spoke in a softer tone.
“During the summer, you were still conscious. Your mind was muddled, but your consciousness was still functioning. At that time I met a girl here, in this room, again. After they took you to the examination room she appeared. I think it must have been something like her alter ego. I came to this town again and have stayed here this long because I have been hoping I could see her one more time. Honestly, that’s why I came.”
Tengo sighed and brought his hands together on his lap.
“But she didn’t come. What brought her here last time was a thing called an air chrysalis, a capsule she was encased in. It would take too long to explain the whole thing, but an air chrysalis is a product of the imagination, a fictitious object. But it’s not fictitious anymore. The boundary between the real world and the imaginary one has grown obscure. There are two moons in the sky now. These, too, were brought over from the world of fiction.”
Tengo looked at his father’s face. Could he follow what Tengo was saying?
“In that context, saying your consciousness has broken away from your body and is freely moving about some other world doesn’t sound so farfetched. It’s like the rules that govern the world have begun to loosen up around us. As I said before, I have this strange sense that you are actually doing that. Like you have gone to my apartment in Koenji and are knocking on the door. You know what I mean? You announce you’re an NHK fee collector, bang hard on the door, and yell out a threat in a loud voice. Just like you used to do all the time when we made the rounds in Ichikawa.”
He felt a change in the air pressure in the room. The window was open, but there was barely any sound coming in. There was just the occasional burst of chirping sparrows.
“There is a girl staying in my apartment in Tokyo. Not a girlfriend or anything—something happened and she’s taking shelter there temporarily. A few days ago she told me on the phone about an NHK collector who came by, how he knocked on the door, and what he did and said out in the corridor. It was strange how closely it resembled the methods you used to use. The words she heard were exactly the same lines I remember, the expressions I was hoping I could totally erase from my memory. And I’m thinking now that that fee collector might actually have been you. Am I wrong?”
Tengo waited thirty seconds. His father didn’t twitch a single eyelash.
“There’s just one thing I want: for you to never knock on my door again. I don’t have a TV. And those days when we went around together collecting fees are long gone. I think we already agreed on that, that time in front of my teacher—I don’t remember her name, the one who was in charge of my class. A short lady, with glasses. You remember that, right? So don’t knock on my door ever again, okay? And not just my place. Don’t knock on any more doors anywhere. You’re not an NHK fee collector anymore, and you don’t have the right to scare people like that.”
Tengo stood up, went to the window, and looked outside. An old man in a bulky sweater, clutching a cane, was walking in front of the woods. He was probably just taking a stroll. He was tall, with white hair, and excellent posture. But his steps were awkward, as if he had forgotten how to walk, as if with each step forward he was remembering how to do it. Tengo watched him for a while. The old man slowly made his way across the garden, then turned the corner of the building and disappeared. It didn’t look like he had recalled the art of walking. Tengo turned to face his father.
“I’m not blaming you. You have the right to send your consciousness wherever you want. It’s your life, and your consciousness. You have your own idea of what is right, and you’re putting it into practice. Maybe I don’t have the right to say these things. But you need to understand: you are not an NHK fee collector anymore. So you shouldn’t pretend to be one. It’s pointless.”
Tengo sat down on the windowsill and searched for his next words in the air of the cramped hospital room.
“I don’t know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced. But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you can’t go around seeking it at other people’s doors. Even if it is at the place you’re most familiar with, and the sort of act that is your forte.”
Tengo gazed silently at his father’s face.
“I don’t want you to knock on anybody’s door anymore. That’s all I ask of you, Father. I have to be going. I came here every day talking to you in your coma, reading to you. And I think at least a part of us has reconciled, and I think that reconciliation has actually taken place in the real world. Maybe you won’t like it, but you need to come back here again, to this side. This is where you belong.”
Tengo lifted his shoulder bag and slung it across his shoulder. “Well, I’ll be off, then.”
His father said nothing. He didn’t stir and his eyes remained shut—the same as always. But somehow it seemed like he was thinking about something. Tengo was quiet and paid careful attention. It felt to him like his father might pop open his eyes at any moment and abruptly sit up in bed. But none of that happened.
The nurse with the spidery limbs was still at the reception desk as he left. A plastic name tag on her chest said Tamaki.
“I’m going back to Tokyo now,” Tengo told her.
“It’s too bad your father didn’t regain consciousness while you were here,” she said, consolingly. “But I’m sure he was happy you could stay so long.”
Tengo couldn’t think of a decent response. “Please tell the other nurses good-bye for me. You have all been so helpful.”
He never did see bespectacled Nurse Tamura or busty Nurse Omura and her ever-present ballpoint pen. It made him a little sad. They were outstanding nurses, and had always been kind to him. But perhaps it was for the best that he didn’t see them. After all, he was slipping out of the cat town alone.
As the train pulled out of Chikura Station, he recalled spending the night at Kumi Adachi’s apartment. It had only just happened yesterday. The gaudy Tiffany lamp, the uncomfortable love seat, the TV comedy show he could hear from next door. The hooting of the owl in the woods. The hashish smoke, the smiley-face shirt, the thick pubic hair pressed against his leg. It had been less than a day, but it felt like long ago. His mind felt unstable. Like an unbalanced set of scales, the core of his memories wouldn’t settle down in one spot.
Suddenly anxious, Tengo looked around him. Was this reality actually real? Or had he once again boarded the wrong reality? He asked a passenger nearby and made sure this train was indeed headed to Tateyama. It’s okay, don’t worry, he told himself. At Tateyama I can change to the express train to Tokyo. He was drawing farther and farther away from the cat town by the sea.
As soon as he changed trains and took his seat, as if it could barely wait, sleep claimed him. A deep sleep, like he had lost his footing and fallen into a bottomless hole. His eyelids closed, and in the next instant his consciousness had vanished. When he opened his eyes again, the train had passed Makuhari. The train wasn’t particularly hot insi
de, yet he was sweating under his arms and down his back. His mouth had an awful smell, like the stagnant air he had breathed in his father’s sick room. He took a stick of gum out of his pocket and popped it in his mouth.
Tengo was sure he would never visit that town again—at least not while his father was alive. While there was nothing in this world that he could state with one hundred percent certainty, he knew there was probably nothing more he could do in that seaside town.
When he got back to the apartment, Fuka-Eri wasn’t there. He knocked on the door three times, paused, then knocked two more times. Then he unlocked the door. Inside, the apartment was dead silent. He was immediately struck by how neat and clean everything was. The dishes were neatly stacked away in the cupboard, everything on the table and desk was neatly arranged, and the trash can had been emptied. There were signs that the place had been vacuumed as well. The bed was made, and no books or records lay scattered about. Dried laundry lay neatly folded on top of the bed.
The oversized shoulder bag that Fuka-Eri used was also gone. It didn’t appear, however, that she had remembered something she had to do or that something had suddenly come up and she had hurriedly left. Nor did it look like she had just gone out for a short time. Instead, all indications were that she had decided to leave for good, that she had taken her time cleaning the apartment and then left. Tengo tried picturing her pushing around the vacuum cleaner and wiping here and there with a wet cloth. It just didn’t fit her image at all.
He opened the mail slot inside the front door and found the spare key. From the amount of mail, she must have left yesterday or the day before. The last time he had called her had been in the morning two days earlier, and she had still been in the apartment. Last night he had had dinner with the three nurses and had gone back to Kumi’s place. What with one thing and another, he had forgotten to call her.
Normally she would have left a note behind in her unique cuneiform-like script, but there was no sign of one. She had left without a word. Tengo wasn’t particularly surprised or disappointed. No one could predict what the girl was thinking or what she would do. She just showed up when she wanted to, and left when she felt like it—like a capricious, independent-minded cat. In fact, it was unusual for her to have stayed put this long in one place.
The refrigerator was more full of food than he had expected. He guessed that a few days earlier, Fuka-Eri must have gone out and done some shopping on her own. There was a pile of steamed cauliflower as well, which seemed to have been cooked recently. Had she known that Tengo would be back in Tokyo in a day or two? Tengo was hungry, so he fried some eggs and ate them with the cauliflower. He made some toast and drank two mugs of coffee.
Next he phoned his friend who had covered for him at school and told him he expected to be back at work at the beginning of the week. His friend updated him on how much they had covered in the textbook.
“You really helped me out. I owe you one.”
“I don’t mind teaching,” the friend said. “I even enjoy it at times. But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself.”
Tengo had often had an inkling of the same thing.
“Anything out of the ordinary happen while I was gone?”
“Not really. Oh, you did get a letter. I put it in a drawer in your desk.”
“A letter?” Tengo asked. “From whom?”
“A thin young girl brought it by. She had straight hair down to her shoulders. She came up to me and said she had a letter to give to you. She spoke sort of strangely. I think she might be a foreigner.”
“Did she have a large shoulder bag?”
“She did. A green shoulder bag. Stuffed full of things.”
Fuka-Eri may have been afraid to leave the letter behind in his apartment, scared that someone else might read it, or take it away. So she went directly to the cram school and gave it to his friend.
Tengo thanked his friend again and hung up. It was already evening, and he didn’t feel like taking the train all the way to Yoyogi to pick up the letter. He would leave it for tomorrow.
Right afterward he realized he had forgotten to ask his friend about the moon. He started to dial again but decided against it. Most likely his friend had forgotten all about it. This was something he would have to resolve on his own.
Tengo went out and aimlessly sauntered down the twilight streets. With Fuka-Eri gone, his apartment was too quiet and he couldn’t settle down. When they had been living together he didn’t really sense her presence all that much. He followed his daily routine, and she followed hers. But without her there, Tengo noticed a human-shaped void she had left behind.
It wasn’t because he was attracted to her. She was a beautiful, attractive young girl, for sure, but since Tengo first met her he had never felt anything like desire for her. Even after sharing the same apartment for so long, he never felt anything stirring within his heart. How come? Is there some reason I shouldn’t feel sexual desire for her? he wondered. It was true that on that stormy night they had had intercourse. But it wasn’t what he had wanted. It had all been her doing.
Intercourse was exactly the right word to describe the act. She had climbed on top of Tengo, who had been numb and unable to move, and inserted his penis inside her. Fuka-Eri had seemed to be in some transcendent state then, like a fairy in the throes of a lewd dream.
Afterward they lived together in the tiny apartment as if nothing had happened. The storm had stopped, morning came, and Fuka-Eri acted like she had completely forgotten the incident. And Tengo didn’t bring it up. He felt that if she really had forgotten, it was better to let her stay that way. It might be best if he himself forgot it too. Still, the question remained—why had she suddenly done such a thing? Was there some objective behind it all? Or had she been temporarily possessed?
There was only one thing Tengo knew for sure: it wasn’t an act of love. Fuka-Eri had a natural affinity for Tengo—that seemed certain. But it was farfetched to believe that she loved him, or desired him, or felt anything even close to these emotions. She felt no sexual desire for anyone. Tengo wasn’t confident in his powers of observation when it came to people, but still he couldn’t quite imagine Fuka-Eri passionately making love with a man, her breath hot and heavy. Or even engaged in not-so-passionate sex. That just wasn’t her.
These thoughts ran through his head as he walked the streets of Koenji. The sun had set and a cold wind had picked up, but he didn’t mind. He liked to think while he walked, then sit down at his desk and give form to his thoughts. That was his way of doing things. That was why he walked a lot. It might rain, it might be windy, he didn’t care. As he walked he found himself in front of a bar called Mugiatama—“Ears of Wheat.” Tengo couldn’t think of anything better to do, so he popped inside and ordered a Carlsberg draft beer. The bar had just opened and he was the only customer. He stopped thinking for a while, kept his mind a blank, and slowly sipped his beer.
But just like nature abhors a vacuum, Tengo wasn’t afforded the leisure of keeping his mind blank for long. He couldn’t help thinking of Fuka-Eri. Like a scrap of a dream, she wended her way into his mind.
That person may be very close. Somewhere you can walk to from here.
Fuka-Eri had said this. Which is why I went out to look for her. And came inside this bar. What other things did she say?
Do not worry. Even if you cannot find that person, that person will find you.
Just as Tengo was searching for Aomame, Aomame was searching for him. Tengo hadn’t really grasped that. He had been caught up in himself searching for her. It had never occurred to him that Aomame might be looking for him too.
I perceive and you receive.
This was also something Fuka-Eri had said. She perceives it, and Tengo receives it. But Fuka-Eri only made clear what she perceived when she felt like it. Whether she was operating on some principle or theory, or merely acting on a whim, Tengo couldn’t tell.
Again Tengo remembered the
time they had intercourse. The beautiful seventeen-year-old climbed on top of him and put his penis inside her. Her ample breasts moved lithely in the air, like ripe fruit. She closed her eyes in rapture, her nostrils flaring with desire. Her lips formed something that didn’t come together as actual words. He could see her white teeth, her pink tongue darting out from between them every now and then. Tengo had a vivid memory of that scene. His body may have been numb, but his mind was clear. And he had a rock-hard erection.
But no matter how clearly he relived the scene in his head, Tengo didn’t feel any stir of sexual excitement. And it didn’t cross his mind to want to have sex with her again. He hadn’t had sex for the nearly three months since that encounter. More than that, he hadn’t even come once. For him this was quite unusual. He was a healthy, thirty-year-old single guy, with a normal sex drive, the sort of desire that had to be taken care of one way or another.
Still, when he was in Kumi Adachi’s apartment, in bed with her, her pubic hair pressing against his leg, he had felt no desire at all. His penis had remained flaccid the whole time. Maybe it was the hashish. But that wasn’t the reason, he decided. On that stormy night when he had had sex with Fuka-Eri, she had taken something important away, from his heart. Like moving furniture out of a room. He was convinced of it.
Like what, for instance?
Tengo shook his head.
When he had polished off the beer, he ordered a Four Roses on the rocks and some mixed nuts. Just like the last time.
Most likely his erection on that stormy night was too perfect. It was far harder, and bigger, than he had ever experienced. It didn’t look like his own penis. Smooth and shiny, it seemed less an actual penis than some conceptual symbol, and when he ejaculated it was powerful, heroic even, the semen copious and thick. This must have reached her womb, or even beyond. It was the perfect orgasm.
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