1q84

by Haruki Murakami

  Is that what she should say?

  There should be something a little better.

  The other Aomame gave her an order: “Stay hidden on this balcony. There’s nothing more you can do. You know that. You struck a bargain with Leader last night: you would save Tengo and help him to go on living in this world by throwing away your own life. That was the gist of your bargain. The contract has been concluded. You have sent Leader to the other world and agreed to offer your own life. What good would it do you now to see Tengo and talk about the past? And what would you do if he didn’t remember you or if he knew you only as ‘that strange girl who used to say the creepy prayers’? Then how would you feel as you went to your death?”

  The thought made her go stiff all over. She began to shiver uncontrollably, as if she had caught a bad cold and might freeze to the core. She hugged herself for a time, shivering, but never once did she take her eyes off Tengo sitting on top of the slide and looking at the sky. He might disappear somewhere the moment she looked away from him.

  She wanted Tengo to hold her in his arms, to caress her with his big hands. She wanted her whole body to feel his warmth, to have him stroke her from head to toe and warm her up. I want him to take away this chill I feel in my body’s core. Then I want him to come inside me and stir me with all his might, like a spoon in a cup of cocoa, slowly, to the very bottom. If he would do that for me, I wouldn’t mind dying right then and there. Really.

  No, can that really be true? Aomame thought. If that really happened, I might not want to die anymore. I might want to stay with him forever and ever. My resolve to die might simply evaporate, like a drop of dew in the morning sun. Or then again, I might feel like killing him, shooting him first with the Heckler & Koch, and then blowing my own brains out. I can’t begin to predict what would happen or what I would be capable of.

  What should I do?

  Aomame could not decide. Her breathing became harsh. A jumble of thoughts came to her, one after another, tangled thoughts defying all her attempts to impose order upon them. What was right? What was wrong? She knew only one thing for sure: she wanted those thick arms of his to be holding her right now. What happened after that would happen: let God or the devil decide.

  . . .

  Aomame made up her mind. She went to the bathroom and wiped away the traces of her tears. She looked in the mirror and swiftly straightened her hair. Her face was an absolute mess. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her outfit was terrible—faded jersey workout clothes with a weird bulge in back where she had a 9mm automatic pistol shoved into her waistband. This was no way to present herself to the man for whom she’d been burning with desire for twenty years. Why wasn’t she wearing something a little more decent? But it was too late. She had no time to be changing clothes. She slipped on a pair of sneakers and ran down three floors on the condo building’s emergency stairway, crossed the street, entered the empty playground, and walked to the slide, where there was no sign of Tengo. Bathed in the artificial light of the mercury-vapor lamp, the top of the slide was deserted—darker, colder, and emptier than the far side of the moon.

  Could it have been a hallucination?

  No, it was no hallucination, Aomame told herself, out of breath. Tengo was there until a moment ago, without a doubt. She climbed to the top of the slide and stood there, looking all around. No sign of anybody. But he could not have gone very far. He was here until a very few minutes ago—four or five minutes at the most. If I run, I should be able to catch up with him.

  But Aomame changed her mind. She stopped herself almost by force. No, I can’t do that. I don’t even know which way he walked from here. I don’t want to be running aimlessly around the streets of Koenji at night. That is not something I should be doing. While Aomame had hesitated on the balcony, wondering what she should do, Tengo had climbed down from the slide and left. Come to think of it, this is the fate I have been handed. I hesitated and hesitated and momentarily lost my powers of judgment, and in that time Tengo went away. That is what happened to me.

  It’s just as well this way, Aomame told herself. It’s probably the best thing that could have happened. At least I succeeded in finding Tengo. I saw him just across the street. I trembled with the possibility of having his arms around me. If only for a few moments, I was able to taste that intense joy and anticipation. She closed her eyes and grasped the slide handrail, biting her lip.

  Aomame sat down on top of the slide in the same posture that Tengo had adopted. She looked up at the southwestern sky, where the two moons, large and small, hung side by side. Until only moments ago, she had been watching Tengo from the balcony of her apartment, where her deep hesitation seemed to be lingering still.

  1Q84: that is the name given to this world. I entered it six months ago without meaning to, and now I am about to leave it quite deliberately. Tengo will stay here after I am gone. I have no idea, of course, what kind of world it will be for Tengo. There is no way I can see it through to the end. But so what? I am going to die for him. I was unable to live for myself: that possibility had already been stripped from me. Instead, I will be able to die for him. That is enough. I can die smiling.

  This is no lie.

  Aomame struggled to feel whatever hint of Tengo’s presence might be left at the top of the slide, but no warmth of any kind remained there. The night wind, with its presentiment of autumn, cut through the leaves of the zelkova tree, removing all traces of Tengo. Even so, Aomame went on sitting there, looking up at the moons, bathed in their odd, emotionless light. The city sounds blended together into one urban noise surrounding her with its basso continuo. She thought of the little spiders that had spun their webs on the emergency stairway of the Metropolitan Expressway. Were those spiders still alive and maintaining their webs?

  She smiled.

  I’m ready, she thought. I’ve made my preparations.

  But there was one place she would have to visit first.

  CHAPTER 22

  Tengo

  AS LONG AS THERE ARE

  TWO MOONS IN THE SKY

  After climbing down from the slide and leaving the playground, Tengo wandered aimlessly through the streets of Koenji, from one block to the next, hardly conscious of where his feet were taking him. He tried to organize the jumble of ideas in his head, but unified thinking was beyond him now, probably because he had thought about too many different things at once while sitting on the slide: about the increase in the number of moons, about blood ties, about a new chapter in his life, about his dizzyingly realistic daydream, about Fuka-Eri and Air Chrysalis, and about Aomame, who was probably in hiding somewhere nearby. With his head a confused tangle of thoughts, Tengo felt his powers of concentration being tested to the limit. He wished he could just go to bed and be fast asleep. He could continue this process in the morning. No amount of additional thinking would bring him any clarity now.

  Back at his apartment, he found Fuka-Eri sitting at his desk, intently sharpening pencils with a small pocketknife. Tengo always kept ten pencils in his pencil holder, but now there were at least twenty. She had done a beautiful job of sharpening them. Tengo had never seen such beautifully sharpened pencils. Their points were like needles.

  “You had a phone call,” she said, checking the sharpness of the current pencil with her finger. “From Chikura.”

  “You weren’t supposed to be answering the phone.”

  “It was an important call.”

  She had probably been able to tell it was important from the ring.

  “What was it about?” Tengo asked.

  “They didn’t say.”

  “But it was from the sanatorium in Chikura, right?”

  “They want a call.”

  “They want me to call them?”

  “Today. Even if it’s late.”

  Tengo sighed. “You don’t know the number, I suppose.”

  “I do.”

  She had memorized the number. Tengo wrote it down. Then he looked at the clock. Eight thirty.


  “What time did they call?” he asked.

  “A little while ago.”

  Tengo went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Resting his hands on the edge of the sink, he closed his eyes and confirmed that his brain was functioning normally. Then he went to the phone and dialed the number. Perhaps his father had died. Or at least it was a life-and-death issue of some sort. They would not have called this late if it were not about something important.

  A woman answered the phone. Tengo gave his name and said he was calling in response to an earlier message.

  “Mr. Kawana’s son?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Tengo said.

  “We met here the other day,” she said.

  Tengo pictured the middle-aged nurse with metal-framed glasses. He could not recall her name.

  He uttered a few polite words, adding, “I gather you called earlier?”

  “Yes, I did. I’ll connect you with the doctor in charge so you can talk to him directly.”

  With the receiver pressed against his ear, Tengo waited—and waited—for the doctor to pick up. “Home on the Range” seemed as if it would go on playing forever. Tengo closed his eyes and pictured the sanatorium on the Boso Peninsula shore. The thickly overlapping pine trees, the sea breeze blowing through them, the Pacific Ocean waves breaking endlessly on the beach. The hushed entryway lobby without visitors. The sound of movable beds being wheeled down the corridors. The sun-damaged curtains. The well-pressed white uniforms of the nurses. The thin, flat coffee in the lunchroom.

  Finally, the doctor picked up the phone.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. I got an emergency call from one of the other sickrooms a few minutes ago.”

  “That’s fine,” Tengo said. He tried to recall what his father’s doctor looked like, until it occurred to him that he had never met the man. His brain was still not functioning properly. “So, is something wrong with my father?”

  The doctor paused a moment and then said, “Well, it’s not that something in particular happened today, just that his condition has not been good lately. I hate to tell you this, but he is in a coma.”

  “You mean, he’s completely unconscious?”

  “Exactly.”

  Tengo struggled to make his brain work. “Did he come down with something that made him go into a coma?”

  “Properly speaking, no,” the doctor said with apparent difficulty.

  Tengo waited.

  “It’s difficult to explain on the phone, but there is not one particular thing wrong with him. He does not have cancer or pneumonia or any other illness that we can name. Medically speaking, we can’t see any distinguishing symptoms. We don’t know what the cause might be, but in your father’s case, it appears that his natural life-sustaining force is visibly weakening. And since we don’t know the cause, we don’t know what treatment to apply. We are continuing to feed him intravenously, but this is strictly treating the symptoms.”

  “Is it all right for me to ask you a very direct question?” Tengo asked.

  “Yes, of course,” the doctor said.

  “Are you saying that my father is not going to last much longer?”

  “That might be a strong possibility if he stays in his current condition.”

  “So he’s more or less wasting away of old age?”

  The doctor made a vague sound into the phone. Then he said, “Your father is still in his sixties, not yet ready to ‘waste away of old age.’ He is basically healthy. We haven’t found anything wrong with him other than his impaired cognitive abilities. He gets rather good scores on the periodic strength tests we perform. We are not aware of a single problem he might have.”

  The doctor stopped talking at that point. Then he went on:

  “But … come to think of it … observing him these past few days, there may be some degree of what you call ‘wasting away of old age.’ His physical functions overall have declined, and he seems to be losing the will to live. Normally, these symptoms don’t emerge until the patient passes his mid-eighties. When a person gets that old, we often see him grow tired of living and abandon the effort to maintain life. But I have no idea why that should be happening to a man in his sixties like Mr. Kawana.”

  Tengo bit his lip and gave this some thought.

  “When did the coma start?” Tengo asked.

  “Three days ago,” the doctor said.

  “You mean he hasn’t awakened for three days?”

  “Not once.”

  “And his vital signs are gradually weakening?”

  The doctor said, “Not drastically, but as I just said, the level of his life-sustaining force is gradually—but visibly—going down, like a train dropping its speed little by little as it begins to stop.”

  “How much time do you think he has left?”

  “I can’t say for sure. If his present condition continues as is, he might have another week in the worst case,” the doctor said.

  Tengo changed his grip on the receiver and bit his lip again.

  “I’ll be there tomorrow,” Tengo said. “Even if you hadn’t called, I was thinking of going there soon. But I’m glad you called. I’m very grateful to you.”

  The doctor seemed relieved to hear this. “Please do come. The sooner you see him the better, I think. He may not be able to talk to you, but I’m sure your father will be glad you’re here.”

  “He is completely unconscious, though, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. He is not conscious.”

  “Do you think he is in pain?”

  “For now, no, probably not. That is the one silver lining in all this. He is sound asleep.”

  “Thank you very much,” Tengo said.

  “You know, Mr. Kawana,” the doctor said, “your father was a very easy patient to take care of. He never gave anyone any trouble.”

  “He’s always been like that,” Tengo said. Then, thanking the doctor once again, he ended the call.

  Tengo warmed his coffee and drank it at the kitchen table, sitting across from Fuka-Eri.

  “You’ll be leaving tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked.

  Tengo nodded. “Tomorrow morning I have to take the train and go to the cat town again.”

  “You’re going to the cat town,” Fuka-Eri asked without expression.

  “You will be waiting here,” Tengo asked. Living with Fuka-Eri, he had become used to asking questions without question marks.

  “I will be waiting here.”

  “I’ll go to the cat town alone,” Tengo said. He took a sip of coffee. Then it suddenly occurred to him to ask her, “Do you want something to drink?”

  “White wine if you have some.”

  Tengo opened the refrigerator to see if he had any chilled white wine. In back he found a bottle of Chardonnay he had recently bought on sale. The label had a picture of a wild boar. He pulled the cork, poured some into a wineglass, and placed it before Fuka-Eri. After some hesitation, he poured himself a glass as well. He was definitely more in the mood for wine than coffee. It was a bit too chilled, and a bit too sweet, but the alcohol calmed Tengo’s nerves somewhat.

  “You’ll be going to the cat town tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked again.

  “I’ll take a train first thing in the morning,” Tengo said.

  Tipping back his glass of white wine, Tengo recalled that he had ejaculated into the body of the beautiful seventeen-year-old girl now sitting across the table from him. It had happened only the night before, but it seemed like something that had occurred in the distant past—almost a historical event. Still, the sensation of it remained as vivid as ever inside him.

  “The number of moons increased,” Tengo said, as if sharing a secret, slowly turning the wineglass in his hand. “When I looked at the sky a little while ago, there were two moons—a big, yellow one and a small, green one. They might have been there from before, but I never noticed them. I finally realized it just a little while ago.”

  Fuka-Eri had nothing to say regarding the fact that the number of moons had
increased, nor could Tengo discern any sense of surprise at the news. Her expression had not changed at all. She did not even give her usual little shrug. It did not appear to be news to her.

  “I don’t have to tell you that having two moons in the sky is the same as the world of Air Chrysalis,” Tengo said. “And the new moon looks exactly as I described it—the same size and color.”

  Fuka-Eri had nothing to say. She never answered questions that needed no answers.

  “Why do you think such a thing has happened? How could such a thing have happened?”

  Still no answer.

  Tengo decided to ask her directly, “Could this mean that we have entered into the world depicted in Air Chrysalis?”

  Fuka-Eri spent several moments carefully examining the shapes of her fingernails. Then she said, “Because we wrote the book together.”

  Tengo set his wineglass on the table. Then he asked Fuka-Eri, “We wrote Air Chrysalis and published it. It was a joint effort. Then the book became a bestseller, and information regarding the Little People and mazas and dohtas was revealed to the world. As a result of that, you and I together entered into this newly altered world. Is that what it means?”

  “You are acting as a Receiver.”

  “I’m acting as a Receiver,” Tengo said, echoing her words. “True, I wrote about Receivers in Air Chrysalis, but I didn’t understand any of that. What does a Receiver do, specifically?”

  Fuka-Eri gave her head a little shake, meaning she could not explain it.

  “If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation,” Tengo’s father had said.

  “We had better stay together,” Fuka-Eri said, “until you find her.”

  Tengo looked at Fuka-Eri for a time, trying to read her expression, but as always, there was no expression on her face to read. Unconsciously, he turned aside to look out the window, but there were no moons to be seen, only an ugly, twisted mass of electric lines.