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by Haruki Murakami

  Had Aomame been the victim of domestic violence as a girl?

  Maybe she had, maybe she hadn’t. Even if she had, her parents most likely would not have seen this as abuse. Ushikawa knew very well how strict members of the Witnesses were with their children. In many cases this included corporal punishment.

  But would a childhood experience like that form such a deep wound that it would lead a person, after she grew up, to commit murder? This wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but Ushikawa thought it was pushing the limits of conjecture to an extreme. Carrying out a premeditated murder on one’s own wasn’t easy. It was dangerous, to begin with, and the emotional toll was enormous. If you got caught, the punishment was stiff. There had to be a stronger motivation behind it.

  Ushikawa picked up the sheaf of documents and carefully reread the details about Masami Aomame’s background, up to age eleven. Almost as soon as she could walk, she began accompanying her mother to proselytize. They went from door to door handing out pamphlets, telling people about the judgment to come at the end of the world and urging them to join the faith. Joining meant you could survive the end of the world. After that, the heavenly kingdom would appear. A church member had knocked on Ushikawa’s door any number of times. Usually it was a middle-aged woman, wearing a hat or holding a parasol. Most wore glasses and stared fixedly at him with eyes like those of a clever fish. Often she had a child along. Ushikawa pictured little Aomame trundling around from door to door with her mother.

  Aomame didn’t attend kindergarten, but went into the local neighborhood municipal public elementary school in Ichikawa. And when she was in fifth grade she withdrew from the Witnesses. It was unclear why she left. The Witnesses didn’t record each and every reason a member renounced the faith. Whoever fell into the clutches of the devil could very well stay there. Talking about paradise and the path to get there kept members busy enough. The righteous had their own work to do, and the devil, his—a spiritual division of labor.

  In Ushikawa’s brain someone was knocking on a cheaply made, plywood partition. “Mr. Ushikawa! Mr. Ushikawa!” the voice was yelling. Ushikawa closed his eyes and listened carefully. The voice was faint, but persistent. I must have overlooked something, he thought. A critical fact must be written here, somewhere, in these very documents. But I can’t see it. The knock must be telling me this.

  Ushikawa turned again to the thick stack of documents, not just following what was written, but trying to imagine actual scenes in his mind. Three-year-old Aomame going with her mother as she spread the gospel door to door. Most of the time people slammed the door in their faces. Next she’s in elementary school. She continues proselytizing. Her weekends are taken up entirely with propagating their faith. She doesn’t have any time to play with friends. She might not even have had any friends. Most children in the Witnesses were bullied and shunned at school. Ushikawa had read a book on the Witnesses and was well aware of this. And at age eleven she left the religion. That must have taken a great deal of determination. Aomame had been raised in the faith, had had it drummed into her since she was born. The faith had seeped into every fiber of her being, so she couldn’t easily slough it off, like changing clothes. That would mean she was isolated within the home. They wouldn’t easily accept a daughter who had renounced the faith. For Aomame, abandoning the faith was the same as abandoning her family.

  When Aomame was eleven, what in the world had happened to her? What could have made her come to that decision?

  The Ichikawa Municipal ** Elementary School. Ushikawa tried saying the name aloud. Something had happened there. Something had most definitely happened … He inhaled sharply. I’ve heard the name of that school before, he realized.

  But where? Ushikawa had no ties to Chiba Prefecture. He had been born in Urawa, a city in Saitama, and ever since he came to Tokyo to go to college—except for the time he lived in Chuorinkan, in Kanagawa Prefecture—he had lived entirely within the twenty-three wards of Tokyo. He had barely set foot in Chiba Prefecture. Only once, as he recalled, when he went to the beach at Futtsu. So why did the name of an elementary school in Ichikawa ring a bell?

  It took him a while to remember. He rubbed his misshapen head as he concentrated. He fumbled through the dark recesses of memory, as if sticking his hand deep down into mud. It wasn’t so long ago that he first heard that name. Very recently, in fact. Chiba Prefecture … Ichikawa Municipal ** Elementary School. Finally he grabbed onto one end of a thin rope.

  Tengo Kawana. That’s it—Tengo Kawana was from Ichikawa! And I think he attended a municipal public elementary school in town, too.

  Ushikawa pulled down from his document shelf the file on Tengo. This was material he had compiled a few months back, at the request of Sakigake. He flipped through the pages to confirm Tengo’s school record. His plump finger came to rest on Tengo’s name. It was just as he had thought: Masami Aomame had attended the same elementary school as Tengo Kawana. Based on their birthdates, they were probably in the same year in school. Whether they were in the same class or not would require further investigation. But there was a high probability they knew each other.

  Ushikawa put a Seven Stars cigarette in his mouth and lit up with his lighter. He had the distinct feeling that things were starting to fall into place. He was connecting the dots, and though he was unsure of what sort of picture would emerge, before long he should be able to see the outlines.

  Miss Aomame, can you hear my footsteps? Probably not, since I’m walking as quietly as I can. But step by step I’m getting closer. I’m a dull, silly tortoise, but I’m definitely making progress. Pretty soon I’ll catch sight of the rabbit’s back. You can count on it.

  Ushikawa leaned back from his desk, looked up at the ceiling, and slowly let the smoke rise up from his mouth.

  CHAPTER 8

  Aomame

  NOT SUCH A BAD DOOR

  Except for the silent men who brought supplies every Tuesday afternoon, for the next two weeks no one else visited Aomame’s apartment. The man who claimed to be an NHK fee collector had insisted that he would be back. He had been determined, or at least that was the way it sounded to Aomame. But there hadn’t been a knock on the door since. Maybe he was busy with another route.

  On the surface, these were quiet, peaceful days. Nothing happened, nobody came by, the phone didn’t ring. To be on the safe side, Tamaru called as little as possible. Aomame always kept the curtains closed, living as quietly as she could so as not to attract attention. After dark, she turned on the bare minimum number of lights.

  Trying to stay as quiet as possible, she did strenuous workouts, mopped the floor every day, and spent a lot of time preparing meals. She asked for some Spanish-language tapes and went over the lessons aloud. Not speaking for a long time makes the muscles around the mouth grow slack. She had to focus on moving her mouth as much as she could, and foreign language drills were good for that. Plus Aomame had long fantasized about South America. If she could go anywhere, she would like to live in a small, peaceful country in South America, like Costa Rica. She would rent a small villa on the coast and spend the days swimming and reading. With the money she had stuffed in her bag she should be able to live for ten years there, if she watched her expenses. She couldn’t see them chasing her all the way to Costa Rica.

  As she practiced Spanish conversation Aomame imagined a quiet, peaceful life on the Costa Rican beach. Could Tengo be a part of her life there? She closed her eyes and pictured the two of them sunbathing on a Caribbean beach. She wore a small, black bikini and sunglasses and was holding Tengo’s hand. But a sense of reality, the kind that would move her, was missing from the picture. It was nothing more than an ordinary tourist brochure photo.

  When she ran out of things to do, she cleaned the pistol. She followed the manual and disassembled the Heckler & Koch, cleaned each part with a cloth and brush, oiled them, and then reassembled it. She made sure the action was smooth. By now she had mastered the operation and the pistol felt like a part of
her body.

  She would go to bed at ten, read a few pages in her book, and fall asleep. Aomame had never had trouble falling asleep. As she read, she would get sleepy. She would switch off the bedside lamp, rest her head on the pillow, and shut her eyes. With few exceptions, when she opened her eyes again it was morning.

  Ordinarily she didn’t tend to dream much. Even if she did, she usually had forgotten most of the dream by the time she woke up. Sometimes faint scraps of her dream would get caught on the wall of her consciousness, but she couldn’t retrace these fragments back to any coherent narrative. All that remained were small, random images. She slept deeply, and the dreams she did have came from a very deep place. Like fish that live at the bottom of the ocean, most of her dreams weren’t able to float to the surface. Even if they did, the difference in water pressure would force a change in their appearance.

  But after coming to live in this hiding place, she dreamed every night. And these were clear, realistic dreams. She would be dreaming and wake up in the middle of a dream, unable to distinguish whether she was in the real world or the dream world. Aomame couldn’t remember ever having had this experience before. She would look over at the digital clock beside her bed. The numbers would say 1:15, 2:37, or 4:07. She would close her eyes and try to fall asleep again, but it wasn’t easy. The two different worlds were silently at odds within her, fighting over her consciousness, like the mouth of a river where the seawater and the fresh water flow in.

  Not much I can do about it, she told herself. I’m not even sure if this world with two moons in the sky is the real reality or not. So it shouldn’t be so strange, should it? That in a world like this, if I fall asleep and dream, I find it hard to distinguish dream from reality? And let’s not forget that I’ve killed a few men with my own hands. I’m being chased by fanatics who aren’t about to give up, and I’m hiding out. How could I not be tense, and afraid? I can still feel the sensation, in my hands, of having murdered somebody. Maybe I’ll never be able to sleep soundly the rest of my life. Maybe that’s the responsibility I have to bear, the price I have to pay.

  The dreams she had—at least the ones she could recall—fell into three set categories.

  The first was a dream about thunder. She is in a dark room, with thunder roaring continuously. But there is no lightning, just like the night she murdered Leader. There is something in the room. Aomame is lying in bed, naked, and something is wandering about around her, slowly, deliberately. The carpet is thick, and the air lies heavy and still. The windowpane rattles slightly in the thunder. She is afraid. She doesn’t know what is there in the room. It might be a person. Maybe it’s an animal. Maybe it’s neither one. Finally, though, whatever it is leaves the room. Not through the door, nor by the window. But still its presence fades away until it has completely disappeared. She is alone now in the room.

  She fumbles for the light near her bed. She gets out of bed, still naked, and looks around the room. There is a hole in the wall opposite her bed, a hole big enough for one person to barely make it through. The hole isn’t in a set spot. It changes shape and moves around. It shakes, it moves, it grows bigger, it shrinks—as if it’s alive. Something left through that hole. She stares into the hole. It seems to be connected to something else, but it’s too dark inside to see, a darkness so thick that it’s as if you could cut it out and hold it in your hand. She is curious, but at the same time afraid. Her heart pounds, a cold, distant beat. The dream ends there.

  The second dream took place on the shoulder of the Metropolitan Expressway. And here, too, she is totally nude. Caught in the traffic jam, people leer at her from their cars, shamelessly ogling her naked body. Most are men, but there are a few women, too. The people are staring at her less-than-ample breasts and her pubic hair and the strange way it grows, all of them evaluating her body. Some are frowning, some smiling wryly, others yawning. Others are staring intently at her, their faces blank. She wants to cover herself up—at least her breasts and groin, if she can. A scrap of cloth would do the trick, or a sheet of newspaper. But there is nothing around her she can pick up. And for some reason (she has no idea why) she can’t move her arms. From time to time the wind blows, stimulating her nipples, rustling her pubic hair.

  On top of this—as if things couldn’t get any worse—it feels like she is about to get her period. Her back feels dull and heavy, her abdomen hot. What should she do if, in front of all these people, she starts bleeding?

  Just then the driver’s-side door of a silver Mercedes coupe opens and a very refined middle-aged woman steps out. She’s wearing bright-colored high heels, sunglasses, and silver earrings. She’s slim, about the same height as Aomame. She wends her way through the backed-up cars, and when she comes over she takes off her coat and puts it on Aomame. It’s an eggshell-colored spring coat that comes down to her knees. It’s light as a feather. It’s simple, but obviously expensive. The coat fits her perfectly, like it was made for her. The woman buttons it up for her, all the way to the top.

  “I don’t know when I can return it to you. I’m afraid I might bleed on it,” Aomame says.

  Without a word, the woman shakes her head, then weaves her way back through the cars to the Mercedes coupe. From the driver’s side it looks like she lifts her hand in a small wave to Aomame, but it may be an illusion. Wrapped in the light, soft spring coat, Aomame knows she is protected. Her body is no longer exposed to anyone’s view. And right then, as if it could barely wait, a line of blood drips down her thigh. Hot, thick, heavy blood. But as she looks at it she realizes it isn’t blood. It’s colorless.

  The third dream was hard to put into words. It was a rambling, incoherent dream without any setting. All that was there was a feeling of being in motion. Aomame was ceaselessly moving through time and space. It didn’t matter when or where this was. All that mattered was this movement. Everything was fluid, and a specific meaning was born of that fluidity. But as she gave herself up to it, she found her body growing transparent. She could see through her hands to the other side. Her bones, organs, and womb became visible. At this rate she might very well no longer exist. After she could no longer see herself, Aomame wondered what could possibly come then. She had no answer.

  At two p.m. the phone rang and Aomame, dozing on the sofa, leapt to her feet. “Is everything going okay?” Tamaru asked.

  “Yes, fine,” Aomame replied.

  “How about the NHK fee collector?”

  “I haven’t seen him at all. Maybe he was just threatening me, saying he would be back.”

  “Could be,” Tamaru said. “We set it up so the NHK subscription fee is automatically paid from a bank account, and an up-to-date sticker is on the door. Any fee collector would be bound to see it. We called NHK and they said the same thing. It must be some kind of clerical error.”

  “I just hope I don’t have to deal with him.”

  “Yes, we need to avoid any kind of attention. And I don’t like it when there are mistakes.”

  “But the world is full of mistakes.”

  “The world can be that way, but I have my own way of doing things,” Tamaru said. “If there is anything that bothers you—anything at all—make sure you get in touch.”

  “Is there anything new with Sakigake?”

  “Everything has been quiet. I imagine something is going on below the surface, but we can’t tell from the outside.”

  “I heard you had an informant within the organization.”

  “We’ve gotten some reports, but they’re focused on details, not the big picture. It does seem as if they are tightening up control of the faith. The faucet has been shut.”

  “But they are definitely still after me.”

  “Since Leader’s death, there has clearly been a large gap left in the organization. They haven’t decided yet who is going to succeed him, or what sort of policies Sakigake should take. But when it comes to pursuing you, opinion is unwavering and unanimous. Those are the facts we have been able to find out.”

 
; “Not very heartwarming facts, are they.”

  “Well, with facts what’s important is their weight and accuracy. Warmth is secondary.”

  “Any way,” Aomame said, “if they capture me and the truth comes to light, that will be a problem for you as well.”

  “That is why we want to get you to a place they can’t reach, as soon as we can.”

  “I know. But I need you to wait a little longer.”

  “She said that we would wait until the end of the year. So of course that’s what I’ll do.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “I’m not the one you should be thanking.”

  “Be that as it may,” Aomame said. “There is one item I’d like to add to the list the next time you bring over supplies. It’s hard to say this to a man, though.”

  “I’m like a rock wall,” Tamaru said. “Plus, when it comes to being gay, I’m in the big leagues.”

  “I would like a home pregnancy test.”

  There was silence. Finally Tamaru spoke. “You believe there’s a need for that kind of test.”

  It wasn’t a question, so Aomame didn’t reply.

  “Do you think you might be pregnant?” Tamaru asked.

  “No, that isn’t the reason.”

  Tamaru quickly turned this over in his mind. If you were quiet, you could actually hear the wheels turning.

  “You don’t think you’re pregnant. Yet you need a pregnancy test.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sounds like a riddle to me.”

  “All I can tell you is that I would like to have the test. The kind of simple home test you can pick up in a drugstore is fine. I’d also appreciate a handbook on the female body and menstruation.”

  Tamaru was silent once more—a hard, concentrated silence.

  “I think it would be better if I called you back,” he said. “Is that okay?”

  “Of course.”