“They drugged me again with chloroform or whatever, and when I woke up it was daybreak and I was lying on a bench in Jingu Gaien. It was the end of September, and the mornings were cold. Thanks to this I actually did wind up with a cold and a fever and I really was in bed for the next three days. But I guess I should consider myself fortunate if that’s the worst that happened to me.”
Komatsu seemed to be finished with his story. “Did you tell this to Professor Ebisuno?” Tengo asked.
“Yes, after I was released, and a few days after my fever broke, I went to his house on the mountain. I told him pretty much what I told you.”
“What was his reaction?”
Komatsu drained the last drop of his highball and ordered a refill. He urged Tengo to do the same, but Tengo shook his head.
“Professor Ebisuno had me repeat the story over and over and asked a lot of detailed questions. I answered whatever I could. I could repeat the same story as many times as he wished. I mean, after I last spoke with Buzzcut, I was locked up alone for four days in that room. I had nobody to talk to, and plenty of time on my hands. So I went over what he had told me and was able to accurately remember all the details. Like I was a human tape recorder.”
“But the part about Fuka-Eri’s parents dying was just something they claimed happened. Right?” Tengo asked.
“That’s right. They insisted it happened, but there’s no way to verify it. They didn’t file a death notice. Still, considering the way Buzzcut sounded, it didn’t seem like he was making it up. As he said, Sakigake considers people’s lives and deaths a sacred thing. After I finished my story, Professor Ebisuno was silent for a time, thinking it over. He really thinks about things deeply, for a long time. Without a word, he stood up, left the room, and didn’t come back for quite a while. I think he was trying to accept his friends’ deaths, trying to understand them as inevitable. He may have already half expected that they were no longer of the world and had resigned himself to that fact. Still, actually being told that two close friends have died has got to hurt.”
Tengo remembered the bare, spartan living room, the chilly, deep silence, the occasional sharp call of a bird outside the window. “So,” he asked, “have we actually backed our way out of the minefield?”
A fresh highball was brought over. Komatsu took a sip.
“No conclusion was reached right then. Professor Ebisuno said he needed time to think. But what other choice do we have than to do what they told us? I got things rolling right away. At work I did everything I could and stopped them from printing additional copies of Air Chrysalis, so in effect it’s out of print. There will be no paperback edition, either. The book already sold a lot of copies and made the company plenty of money, so they won’t suffer a loss. In a large company like this you have to have meetings about it, the president has to sign off on it—but when I dangled before them the prospect of a scandal connected with a ghostwriter, the higher-ups were terrified and in the end did what I wanted. It looks like I’ll be given the silent treatment from now on, but it’s okay. I’m used to it.”
“Did Professor Ebisuno accept what they said about Fuka-Eri’s parents being dead?”
“I think so,” Komatsu said. “But I imagine it will take some time for it to really sink in, for him to fully accept it. As far as I could tell, those guys were serious. They would make a few concessions, but I think they’re hoping to avoid any more trouble. Which is why they resorted to kidnapping—they wanted to make absolutely sure we got the message. And they didn’t need to tell me about how they secretly incinerated the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Fukada. Even though it would be hard to prove, desecration of bodies is a major crime. But still they brought it up. They laid their cards on the table. That’s why I think most of what Buzzcut told me was the truth. Maybe not every detail, but the overall picture, at least.”
Tengo went over what Komatsu had told him. “Fuka-Eri’s father was the one who heard the voice. A prophet, in other words. But when his daughter published Air Chrysalis and it became a bestseller, the voice stopped speaking to him, and as a result the father died a natural death.”
“Or rather he put an end to his own existence naturally,” Komatsu said.
“And so it’s critical for Sakigake to gain a new prophet. If the voice stops speaking, then the religion’s whole reason for existence is lost. So they don’t have the time to worry about the likes of us. In a nutshell, that’s the story, right?”
“I think so.”
“Air Chrysalis contains information of critical importance to them. When it was published and became widely read, the voice went silent. But what critical information could the book be pointing toward?”
“During those last four days of my confinement I thought a lot about that,” Komatsu said. “Air Chrysalis is a pretty short novel. In the story the world is filled with Little People. The ten-year-old girl who is the protagonist lives in an isolated community. The Little People secretly come out at night and create an air chrysalis. The girl’s alter ego is inside the chrysalis and a mother-daughter relationship is formed—the maza and the dohta. There are two moons in that world, a large one and a small one, probably symbolizing the maza and the dohta. In the novel the protagonist—based on Fuka-Eri herself, I think—rejects being a maza and runs away from the community. The dohta is left behind. The novel doesn’t tell us what happened to the dohta after that.”
Tengo stared for a time at the ice melting in his glass.
“I wonder if the one who hears the voice needs the dohta as an intermediary,” Tengo said. “It’s through her that he can hear the voice for the first time, or perhaps through her that the voice is translated into comprehensible language. Both of them have to be there for the message of the voice to take its proper form. To borrow Fuka-Eri’s terms, there’s a Receiver and a Perceiver. But first of all the air chrysalis has to be created, because the dohta can only be born through it. And to create a dohta, the proper maza must be there.”
“That’s your opinion, Tengo.”
Tengo shook his head. “I wouldn’t call it an opinion. As I listened to you summarize the plot, I just thought that must be the way it is.”
As he rewrote the novel, and afterward, Tengo had pondered the meaning of the maza and the dohta, but he was never quite able to grasp the overall picture. But now, as he talked with Komatsu, the pieces gradually fell into place. Though he still had questions: Why did an air chrysalis materialize above his father’s bed in the hospital? And why was Aomame, as a young girl, inside?
“It’s a fascinating system,” Komatsu said. “But isn’t it a problem for the maza to be separated from the dohta?”
“Without the dohta, it’s hard to see the maza as a complete entity. As we saw with Fuka-Eri, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what that means, but there is something missing—like a person who has lost his shadow. What the dohta is like without the maza, I have no idea. Probably they’re both incomplete, because, ultimately, the dohta is nothing more than an alter ego. But in Fuka-Eri’s case, even without the maza by her side, the dohta may have been able to fulfill her role as a kind of medium.”
Komatsu’s lips were stretched in a tight line for a while, then turned up slightly. “Are you thinking that everything in Air Chrysalis really took place?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m just making an assumption—hypothesizing that it’s all real, and going from there.”
“All right,” Komatsu said. “So even if Fuka-Eri’s alter ego goes far away from her body, she can still function as a medium.”
“Which explains why Sakigake isn’t forcing her to return, even if they know her whereabouts. Because in her case, even if the maza isn’t nearby, the dohta can still fulfill her duties. Maybe their connection is that strong, even if they’re far apart.”
“Okay …”
Tengo continued, “I imagine that they have multiple dohtas. The Little People must use the chance to create many air chrysalises. They would be anxious if all t
hey had was one Perceiver. Or the number of dohtas who can function correctly might be limited. Maybe there is one powerful, main dohta, and several weaker auxiliary dohtas, and they function collectively.”
“So the dohta that Fuka-Eri left behind was the main dohta, the one who functions properly?”
“That seems possible. Throughout everything that has happened, Fuka-Eri has always been at the center, like the eye of a hurricane.”
Komatsu narrowed his eyes and folded his hands together on the table. When he wanted to, he could really focus on an issue.
“You know, Tengo, I was thinking about this. Couldn’t you hypothesize that the Fuka-Eri we met is actually the dohta and what was left behind at Sakigake was the maza?”
This came as a bit of a shock. The idea had never occurred to Tengo. For him, Fuka-Eri was an actual person. But put it that way, and it started to sound possible. I have no periods. So there’s no chance I’ll get pregnant. Fuka-Eri had announced this, after they had had intercourse that night. If she was nothing more than an alter ego, her inability to get pregnant would make sense. An alter ego can’t reproduce itself—only the maza can do it. Still, Tengo couldn’t accept that hypothesis—that it was possible he had had intercourse with her alter ego, not the real Fuka-Eri.
“Fuka-Eri has a distinct personality. And her own code of conduct. I sort of doubt an alter ego could have those.”
“Exactly,” Komatsu agreed. “If she has nothing else, Fuka-Eri does have her own distinct personality and code of conduct. I would have to agree with you on that one.”
Still, Fuka-Eri was hiding a secret, a critical code hidden away inside this lovely girl, a code he had to crack. Tengo sensed this. Which one was the real person and which one the alter ego? Or was the whole notion of classifying into “real” and “alter ego” a mistake? Maybe Fuka-Eri was able, depending on the situation, to manipulate both her real self and her alter ego?
“There are several things I still don’t understand,” Komatsu said, resting his hands on the table and staring at them. For a middle-aged man, his fingers were long and slender.
“The voice has stopped speaking, the water in the well has dried up, the prophet has died. What will happen to the dohta after that? She won’t follow him in death like widows do in India.”
“When there’s no more Receiver, there’s no need for a Perceiver.”
“If we take your hypothesis a step further, that is,” Komatsu said. “Did Fuka-Eri know that would be the result when she wrote Air Chrysalis? That Sakigake man told me it wasn’t intentional. At least it wasn’t her intention. But how could he know this?”
“I don’t know,” Tengo said. “But I just can’t see Fuka-Eri intentionally driving her father to his death. I think her father was facing death for some other reason. Maybe that’s why she left in the first place. Or maybe she was hoping that her father would be freed from the voice. I’m just speculating, though, and I have nothing to back it up.”
Komatsu considered this for a long time, wrinkles forming on either side of his nose. Finally he sighed and glanced around. “What a strange world. With each passing day, it’s getting harder to know how much is just hypothetical and how much is real. Tell me, Tengo, as a novelist, what is your definition of reality?”
“When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out—that’s the real world,” Tengo replied.
“Then this is most definitely the real world,” Komatsu said, and he rubbed his inner forearm. Pale veins rose to the surface. They were not very healthy-looking blood vessels—blood vessels damaged by years of drinking, smoking, an unhealthy lifestyle, and various literary intrigues. Komatsu drained the last of his highball and clinked the ice around in the empty glass.
“Could you go on with your hypothesis? It’s getting more interesting.”
“They are looking for a successor to the one who hears the voice,” Tengo said. “But they also have to find a new, properly functional dohta. A new Receiver will need a new Perceiver.”
“In other words, they need to find a new maza as well. And in order to do so, they have to make a new air chrysalis. That sounds like a pretty large-scale operation.”
“Which is why they’re so deadly serious.”
“Exactly.”
“But they can’t be going about this blind,” Tengo said. “They’ve got to have somebody in mind.”
Komatsu nodded. “I got that impression, too. That’s why they wanted to get rid of us as fast as they could—so we don’t bother them anymore. I think we were quite a blot on their personal landscape.”
“How so?”
Komatsu shook his head. He didn’t know either.
“I wonder what message the voice told them until now. And what connection there is between the voice and the Little People.”
Komatsu shook his head listlessly again. This, too, went beyond anything the two of them could imagine.
“Did you see the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?”
“I did,” Tengo said.
“We’re like the apes in the movie,” Komatsu said. “The ones with shaggy black fur, screeching out some nonsense as they dance around the monolith.”
A new pair of customers came into the bar, sat down at the counter like they were regulars, and ordered cocktails.
“There’s one thing we can say for sure,” Komatsu said, sounding like he wanted to wind things down. “Your hypothesis is convincing. It makes sense. I always really enjoy having these talks with you. But we’re going to back out of this scary minefield, and probably never see Fuka-Eri or Professor Ebisuno again. Air Chrysalis is nothing more than a harmless fantasy novel, with not a single piece of concrete information in it. And what that voice is, and what message it’s transmitting, have nothing to do with us. We need to leave it that way.”
“Get off the boat and get back to life onshore.”
Komatsu nodded. “You got it. I’ll go to work every day, gathering manuscripts that don’t make a difference one way or another in order to publish them in a literary journal. You will go to cram school and teach math to promising young people, and in between teaching, you’ll write novels. We’ll each go back to our own peaceful, mundane lives. No rapids, no waterfalls. We’ll quietly grow old. Any objection?”
“We don’t have any other choice, do we?”
Komatsu stretched out the wrinkles next to his nose with his finger. “That’s right. We have no other choice. I can tell you this—I don’t want to ever be kidnapped again. Being locked up in that room once is more than enough. If there were a next time, I might not see the light of day. Just the thought of meeting that duo again makes my heart quake. They only need to glare at you and you would keel over.”
Komatsu turned to face the bar and signaled with his glass for a third highball. He stuck a fresh cigarette in his mouth.
“But why haven’t you told me this until now? It has been quite some time since the kidnapping, over two months. You should have told me earlier.”
“I don’t know,” Komatsu said, slightly inclining his head. “You’re right. I was thinking I should tell you, but I kept putting it off. I’m not sure why. Maybe I had a guilty conscience.”
“Guilty conscience?” Tengo said, surprised. He had never expected to hear Komatsu say that.
“Even I can have a guilty conscience,” Komatsu said.
“About what?”
Komatsu didn’t reply. He narrowed his eyes and rolled the unlit cigarette around between his lips.
“Does Fuka-Eri know her parents have died?” Tengo asked.
“I think she probably does. I imagine at some point Professor Ebisuno told her about it.”
Tengo nodded. Fuka-Eri must have known about it a long time ago. He had a distinct feeling she did. He was the only one who hadn’t been told.
“So we get out of the boat and return to our lives onshore,” Tengo repeated.
“That’s right. We edge away from the minefield.”
“But even if we w
ant to do that, do you think we can go back to our old lives that easily?”
“All we can do is try,” Komatsu said. He struck a match and lit the cigarette. “What specifically bothers you?”
“Lots of things around us are already starting to fall into strange patterns. Some things have already been transformed, and it may not be easy for them to go back the way they were.”
“Even if our lives are on the line?”
Tengo gave an ambiguous shake of his head. He had been feeling for some time that he was caught up in a strong current, one that never wavered. And that current was dragging him off to some unknown place. But he couldn’t really explain it to Komatsu.
Tengo didn’t reveal to Komatsu that the novel he was writing now carried on the world in Air Chrysalis. Komatsu probably wouldn’t welcome the news. And Sakigake would certainly be less than pleased. If he wasn’t careful, he might step into a different minefield, or get the people around him mixed up in it. But a narrative takes its own direction, and continues on, almost automatically. And whether he liked it or not, Tengo was a part of that world. To him, this was no longer a fictional world. This was the real world, where red blood spurts out when you slice open your skin with a knife. And in the sky in this world, there were two moons, side by side.
CHAPTER 19
Ushikawa
WHAT HE CAN DO
THAT MOST PEOPLE CAN’T
It was a quiet, windless Thursday morning. Ushikawa woke as usual before six and washed his face with cold water. He brushed his teeth as he listened to the NHK news on the radio, and he shaved with the electric razor. He boiled water in a pot, made instant ramen, and, after he finished eating, drank a cup of instant coffee. He rolled up his sleeping bag, stowed it in the closet, and sat down at the window in front of his camera. The eastern sky was beginning to grow light. It looked like it was going to be a warm day.
The faces of all the people who left for work in the morning were etched in his mind. There was no need to take any more photos. From seven to eight thirty they hurried out of the apartment building to the station—the usual suspects. Ushikawa heard the lively voices of a group of elementary school pupils heading off for school. The children’s voices reminded him of when his daughters were little. His daughters had thoroughly enjoyed elementary school. They took piano and ballet lessons, and had lots of friends. To the very end, Ushikawa had found it hard to accept that he had these ordinary, happy kids. How could someone like him possibly be the father of children like these?
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