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  With unhurried movements, Aomame returned her underthings and sanitary products to the pouch, zipped it closed, and replaced it in the bag. These guys are amateurs, she thought. What kind of bodyguard blushes at the sight of cute lingerie and a few tampons? If Tamaru had been doing this job, he would have searched Snow White down to the hairs of her crotch. He would have examined the bottom of that pouch if it meant digging through a warehouse’s worth of bras, camisoles, and panties. Things like that are nothing but rags to him—well, true, he’s as gay as they come. At the very least, he would have picked up the pouch to check its weight. And then he would have been sure to find the Heckler & Koch wrapped in a handkerchief (and weighing in at some 500 grams) and the small homemade ice pick in its hard case.

  These guys are amateurs. They may have some skill at karate, and they may have vowed absolute loyalty to their Leader, but they’re nothing but a couple of amateurs. Just as the dowager predicted. Aomame had assumed they wouldn’t go through a pouch stuffed with women’s things, and she had been right. It had been a gamble, of course, but she had not gone so far as to think about what she would do if the gamble hadn’t paid off. About all she could have done in that case was pray. But she knew this much: prayer works.

  Aomame went into the suite’s large powder room and changed into her jersey outfit, folding her blouse and cotton pants and placing them in the bag. Next she checked to see that her hair was pinned tightly in place. Then she sprayed her mouth with a breath freshener. She took the Heckler & Koch out of the pouch and, after flushing the toilet to mask the sound, she pulled back the slide to send a bullet into the chamber. Now all she would have to do was release the safety. Finally, she moved the case with the ice pick to the top of the bag where she could have immediate access to it. Once she had finished with these preparations, she faced the mirror and relaxed her tensed expression. Fine. I’ve kept my cool so far.

  Coming out of the powder room, Aomame found Buzzcut standing at attention with his back to her, speaking at low volume into a telephone. When he saw her, he cut his call short, quietly hung up the receiver, and gave her a once-over in her jersey outfit.

  “All set?” he asked.

  “Whenever you are,” Aomame said.

  “First I have a request to make,” Buzzcut said.

  Aomame gave him a token smile.

  “That you not say a word about tonight to anyone,” Buzzcut said. He paused a moment so that his message could sink in. It was as if he had scattered water on dry earth and was waiting for it to be absorbed and disappear. She watched him the whole time without saying anything.

  Buzzcut continued, “Pardon me if this sounds crass, but we are planning to offer you generous remuneration, and we may be requesting your services from time to time in the future. So we would like to ask you to forget anything and everything that happens here tonight. Whatever you see or hear. Everything.”

  “As you know,” Aomame said, adopting a somewhat frosty tone, “my work involves people’s bodies, so I believe I am well versed in the ways of professional confidentiality. No information of any kind regarding an individual’s body will leave this room. If that is what concerns you, I can assure you there is no need to worry.”

  “Excellent. That is what we wanted to hear,” Buzzcut said. “But let me just add that we would appreciate it if you would view this as a case that goes beyond professional confidentiality in the most general sense. Where you are about to set foot is, so to speak, a sacred space.”

  “A sacred space?”

  “It may sound a bit much, but, believe me, it is no exaggeration. The one you are about to lay eyes on, and to place your hands upon, is a sacred person. There is no other appropriate way to put it.”

  Aomame nodded, saying nothing. This was no time for remarks from her.

  Buzzcut said, “We took the liberty of running a background check on you. I hope you’re not offended, but it was something we had to do. We have our reasons for taking every precaution.”

  Aomame stole a glance at Ponytail as she listened. He was sitting motionless in a chair beside the door, his back perfectly straight, hands on his knees, chin pulled back. He could have been posing for a photo. His eyes were locked on her the whole time.

  Buzzcut looked down at his feet as if to check how worn out his black shoes might be, then raised his face and looked at Aomame again. “In short, we found no problems, which is why we have asked you to come today. You have a reputation as a talented instructor, and in fact people think very highly of you.”

  “Thank you very much,” Aomame said.

  “I understand you used to be a Society of Witnesses believer. Is that true?”

  “Yes, it is. Both of my parents were believers, and they naturally made me one, too, from the time I was born. I didn’t choose it for myself, and I left the religion a long time ago.”

  I wonder if their investigation turned up the fact that Ayumi and I used to go out man hunting in Roppongi? Oh well, it doesn’t make any difference. If they did find out, it obviously didn’t bother them. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here now.

  “We know about that, too,” Buzzcut said. “But you did live in faith at one time in your life—that especially impressionable time of early childhood. So I assume you have a good idea what I mean when I speak of something as ‘sacred.’ In any religion, the sacred lies at the very root of faith. We must never tread upon that world. There is a sacred region into which we dare not stray. The first step of all faith is to recognize its existence, accept it, and revere it absolutely. You do understand what I am trying to say, don’t you?”

  “I think so,” Aomame said, “though whether I accept it or not is another matter.”

  “Of course,” Buzzcut said. “Of course there is no need for you to accept it. It is our faith, not yours. But, transcending the question of belief or nonbelief, you are likely to witness special things—a being who is by no means ordinary.”

  Aomame kept silent. A being who is by no means ordinary.

  Buzzcut narrowed his eyes for a time, gauging the meaning of Aomame’s silence. Then, speaking unhurriedly, he said, “Whatever you happen to witness today, you must not mention it to anyone on the outside. For that would cause an ineradicable defilement of the holiness, as if a clear, beautiful pond were polluted by a foreign body. Whatever the world at large might think, or the laws of this world might stipulate, that is how we feel about it. If we can count on you, and if you will keep your promise, we can, as I said before, provide you with generous remuneration.”

  “I see,” Aomame said.

  “We are a small religious body, but we have strong hearts and long arms,” Buzzcut said.

  You have long arms, Aomame thought. I guess I’ll be testing to find out just how long they are.

  Leaning against the desk with his arms folded, Buzzcut studied Aomame, as if checking to see whether a picture hanging on the wall was crooked or straight. Ponytail remained motionless, never once taking his eyes off of Aomame.

  Buzzcut checked his watch.

  “Let’s go, then,” he said. He cleared his throat once, then moved slowly across the room with the careful steps of a pilgrim crossing the surface of a lake. He gave two soft knocks on the door to the connecting room and, without waiting for a response, pulled the door open, gave a slight bow, and entered. Aomame followed, carrying the gym bag. Sinking step after careful step into the deep carpet, she made sure that her breathing was under control. Her finger was cocked and ready to pull the trigger of the pistol in her imagination. Nothing to worry about. I’m the same as always. But still, Aomame was afraid. A chunk of ice was stuck to her spine—ice that showed no sign of melting. I’m cool, calm, and—deep down—afraid.

  We must never tread upon that world. There is a sacred region into which we dare not stray, Buzzcut had said. Aomame knew what he meant by that. She herself had once lived in a world that placed such a region at its core. In fact, I might still be living in that world. I just may not be aware of it.r />
  Aomame soundlessly repeated the words of her prayer with her lips. Then she took one deep breath, made up her mind, and walked into the next room.

  CHAPTER 8

  Tengo

  TIME FOR THE CATS TO COME

  Tengo spent the next week or more in a strange silence. One night, the man named Yasuda had called to tell Tengo that his wife had been lost and would never visit Tengo again. An hour later Ushikawa had called to tell him that Tengo and Fuka-Eri were functioning together as a carrier of a “thought crime” epidemic. Each caller had conveyed to Tengo a message containing (he could only believe that it did contain) a deep meaning, the way a toga-clad Roman would mount a platform in the middle of the Forum to make a proclamation to concerned citizens. And once each man had spoken his piece, he had hung up on Tengo.

  Not one person had contacted Tengo since those two nighttime calls. There were no phone calls, no letters, no knocks on the door, no carrier pigeons. Neither Komatsu nor Professor Ebisuno nor Fuka-Eri nor Kyoko Yasuda had anything at all they needed to convey to Tengo.

  And Tengo felt as if he had lost all interest in those people. Nor was it just them: he seemed to have lost interest in anything at all. He didn’t care about the sales of Air Chrysalis or what its author, Fuka-Eri, might be doing now, or what was happening with Komatsu’s scheme or whether Professor Ebisuno’s coolly conceived plan was progressing well, or how close the media had come to sniffing out the truth, or what kind of moves Sakigake might be making. If the boat they were all riding in was plunging over the falls upside down, there was nothing to do but fall with it. Tengo could struggle all he wanted to at this point, and it would do nothing to change the flow of the river.

  He was, of course, worried about Kyoko Yasuda. He had no real idea what was happening to her, but he would spare no effort to help her if he could. Whatever problems she was facing at the moment, however, were out of his reach. There was nothing he could do.

  He stopped reading the papers. The world was moving ahead in a direction unconnected with him. Apathy enveloped him as if it were his own personal haze. He was so sick of seeing the piles of Air Chrysalis on display that he stopped going to bookstores. He would travel in a straight line from home to the school and back. Most people were enjoying summer vacation, but the cram schools had summer courses, which kept him busier than ever. He welcomed this schedule. At least while he was lecturing, he didn’t have to think about anything but mathematics.

  He gave up on writing his novel, too. He might sit at his desk, switch on the word processor, and watch the screen light up, but he couldn’t find the motivation to write. Whenever he tried to think of anything, snatches of his conversations with Kyoko Yasuda’s husband or with Ushikawa would come to mind. He couldn’t concentrate on his novel.

  My wife is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form.

  That was what Kyoko Yasuda’s husband had said.

  If I may use a classical analogy here, you people might have opened Pandora’s box and let loose all kinds of things in the world. The two of you may have joined forces by accident, but you turned out to be a far more powerful team than you ever imagined. Each of you was able to make up for what the other lacked.

  So said Ushikawa.

  Both seemed to be trying to say the same thing: Tengo had unleashed some kind of power before fully comprehending it himself, and it was having a real impact (probably not a desirable impact) on the world around him. Tengo turned off the word processor, sat down on the floor, and stared at the telephone. He needed more hints, more pieces of the puzzle. But no one would give him those. Kindness was one of the things presently (or permanently) in short supply in the world.

  He thought about phoning someone—Komatsu or Professor Ebisuno or Ushikawa. But he couldn’t make himself actually do it. He had had enough of their inscrutable, deliberately cryptic pronouncements. If he sought a hint concerning one riddle, all they would give him was another riddle. He couldn’t keep up the game forever. Fuka-Eri and Tengo were a powerful team. That’s all they needed to say. Tengo and Fuka-Eri. Like Sonny and Cher. The Beat Goes On.

  Day after day went by. Finally Tengo grew tired of staying holed up in his apartment, waiting for something to happen. He shoved his wallet and a paperback into his pockets, put on a baseball cap and sunglasses, and went out, walking with decisive strides as far as Koenji, the nearby station. There he showed his pass and boarded the Chuo Line inbound rapid-service train. The car was empty. He had nothing planned that day. Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him. It was ten o’clock on a windless summer morning, and the sun was beating down.

  Wondering if one of Ushikawa’s “researchers” might be following him, he paid special attention on the way to the station, stopping suddenly to glance behind him, but there was no sign of anyone suspicious. At the station, he purposely went to the wrong platform and then, pretending to change his mind all of a sudden, he dashed down the stairs and went to the platform for trains headed in the other direction. But no one else seemed to take those same maneuvers. He must be having a typical delusion of being pursued. Of course no one was following him. Not even Tengo knew where he was going or what he was about to do. He himself was the one who most wanted to watch his own forthcoming actions from a distance.

  The train he had boarded passed Shinjuku, Yotsuya, Ochanomizu, and arrived at Tokyo Central Station, the end of the line. Everyone got off, and he followed suit. Then he sat on a bench and gave some thought to where he ought to go. I’m in downtown Tokyo now, Tengo thought. I have nothing planned all day. I can go anywhere I decide to. The day looks as if it’s going to be a hot one. I could go to the seashore. He raised his head and looked at the platform guide.

  At that point he suddenly realized what he had been doing all along.

  He tried shaking his head a few times, but the idea that had struck him would not go away. He had probably made up his mind unconsciously from the moment he boarded the inbound Chuo Line train at his station in Koenji. He heaved a sigh, stood up from the bench, went down the platform stairs, and headed for the Sobu Line platform. On the way, he asked a station employee for the fastest connection to Chikura, and the man flipped through the pages of a thick volume of train schedules. He should take the 11:30 special express train to Tateyama, transfer there to a local, and he would arrive at Chikura shortly after two o’clock. He bought a Tokyo–Chikura round-trip ticket and a reserved seat on the express train. Then he went to a restaurant in the station and ordered rice and curry and a salad. He killed time after the meal by drinking a cup of thin coffee.

  Going to see his father was a depressing prospect. He had never much liked the man, and his father probably had no special love for him, either. Tengo had no idea if his father had any desire to see him. His father had retired from NHK four years earlier and, soon afterward, entered a sanatorium in Chikura that specialized in care for patients with cognitive disorders. Tengo had visited him there no more than twice before—the first time just after the father entered the facility when an administrative procedural problem had required Tengo, as the only relative, to travel out there. The second time had involved a pressing administrative matter as well. Two times: that was it.

  The sanatorium stood on a large plot of land across the road from the shoreline. Originally the country villa of a wealthy family connected with one of the prewar zaibatsu—large, influential, family-controlled financial/industrial monopolies—it had been bought as a life insurance company’s welfare facility and, more recently, converted into a sanatorium primarily for the treatment of people with cognitive disorders. To an outside observer, it appeared to be an odd combination of elegant old wooden buildings and new three-story reinforced-concrete buildings. The air there was fresh, however, and aside from the roar of the surf, it was always quiet. One could walk along the shore on days when the wind was not too strong. An imposing pine grove lined the garden as a windbreak. And the medical facilities wer
e excellent.

  With his health insurance, retirement bonus, savings, and pension, Tengo’s father could probably spend the rest of his life there quite comfortably, all because he had been lucky enough to be hired as a full-time employee of NHK. He might not be able to leave behind any sizable inheritance, but at least he could be taken care of, for which Tengo was tremendously grateful. Whether or not the man was his true biological father, Tengo had no intention of taking anything from him or giving him anything. They were two separate human beings who had come from—and were heading toward—entirely different places. By chance, they had spent some years of life together, that was all. It was a shame that things had come to that, Tengo believed, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  Tengo knew that the time had come for him to visit his father again. He didn’t much like the idea, and he would have preferred to take a U-turn and go straight back to his apartment. But he already had his round-trip and expresstrain tickets in his pocket. He was all set to go.

  He left the table, paid his bill, and went to the platform to wait for the Tateyama express train to arrive. He scanned his surroundings once more, but saw no likely “researchers” in the area. His only fellow passengers were happy-looking families heading out for a few days at the beach. He took off his sunglasses, shoved them into a pocket, and readjusted his baseball cap. Who gives a damn? he thought. Let them spy on me all they want. I’m going to a seaside town in Chiba to see my father, who is suffering from dementia. He might remember his son, or then again he might not. His memory was already pretty shaky last time. It’s probably gotten worse since then. Cognitive disorders move ahead, never back. Or so I’ve been told. They’re like gears that can only move in one direction.

  When the train left Tokyo Station, Tengo took out the paperback he had brought along and started reading it. It was an anthology of short stories on the theme of travel and included one tale about a young man who journeyed to a town ruled by cats. “Town of Cats” was the title. It was a fantastical piece by a German writer with whom he was not familiar. According to the book’s editorial note, the story had been written in the period between the two world wars.