1Q84 (109 page)

“What kind of person?”

“An
N—H--K
person.”

“A fee collector from NHK?”

“Fee collector,” she asked, again without the question mark.

“Did you talk to him?” Tengo asked.

“I did not understand what he was saying.”

She apparently had no idea what
NHK
was. The girl lacked some essential cultural knowledge.

“It will take too long to explain over the phone,” Tengo said, “but basically it’s a large organization. A lot of people work there. They go around to all the houses in Japan and collect money every month. You and I don’t need to pay, because we don’t receive anything from them. I hope you didn’t unlock the door.”

“No, I did not unlock it. Like you told me.”

“I’m glad.”

“But he said, ‘You are a thief.’ ”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Tengo said.

“We have not stolen anything.”

“Of course we haven’t. You and I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Fuka-Eri was again silent on the other end of the line. “Hello?” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri didn’t reply. She might have already hung up. Though he didn’t hear any sound that indicated this.

“Hello?” Tengo repeated, this time more loudly.

Fuka-Eri coughed lightly. “That person knew a lot about you.”

“The fee collector?”

“Yes. The
N—H--K
person.”

“And he called you a thief.”

“No. He didn’t mean me.”

“He meant me?”

Fuka-Eri didn’t reply.

“Anyway,” Tengo said, “I don’t have a TV. So I’m not stealing anything from
NHK
.”

“But that person was very angry that I didn’t unlock the door.”

“It doesn’t matter. Let him be angry. But no matter what happens, no matter what anyone tells you, never, ever unlock the door.”

“I won’t unlock it.”

After saying this, Fuka-Eri suddenly hung up. Or perhaps it wasn’t so sudden. Perhaps for her, hanging up the phone at that point was an entirely natural, even logical act. To Tengo’s ear, though, it sounded abrupt. But Tengo knew that even if he were to try his hardest to guess what Fuka-Eri was thinking and feeling, it wouldn’t do any good. As an experiential model.

Tengo hung up the phone and went back to his father’s room.

His father had not been brought back to his room yet. The bed still had a depression in it from his body. No air chrysalis was there. In the room, darkened by the dim, chill dusk, the only thing present was the slight trace of the person who had occupied it until moments ago.

Tengo sighed and sat down on the chair. He rested his hands on his lap and gazed for a long while at the depression in the sheets. Then he stood, went to the window, and looked outside. The rain had stopped, and the autumn clouds lingered over the pine windbreak. It would be a beautiful sunset, the first in some time.

Tengo had no idea why the fee collector
knew a lot
about him. The last time an
NHK
fee collector had come around had been about a year ago. At that time he had stood at the door and politely explained to the man that there was no TV in his apartment. He never watched TV, he continued. The fee collector hadn’t been convinced, but he had left without saying any more, muttering some snide remark under his breath.

Was it the same fee collector who had come today? He had the impression that that man had also said something about his being a
thief
. It was a bit odd that the same collector would show up a year later and say he
knew a lot
about Tengo. They had only stood at the door and chatted for five minutes or so, that’s all.

Whatever. What was important was that Fuka-Eri had kept the door locked. The fee collector wouldn’t be paying another visit anytime soon. He had a quota to meet and had to be tired of standing around quarreling with people who refused to pay their subscription fees. In order not to waste time, he would skip the troublesome customers’ places and collect the fees from people who didn’t have a problem paying.

Tengo looked again at the hollow his father had left in the bed, and he remembered all the pairs of shoes his father had worn out. As his father had pounded the Tokyo pavement collecting fees, he had consigned countless pairs of shoes to oblivion. All of the shoes looked the same—cheap, no-nonsense leather shoes, black, with thick soles. He had worn them hard, until they were worn out and falling apart, the heels warped out of shape. As a boy, every time Tengo saw these terribly misshapen shoes it pained him. He didn’t feel sorry for his father, but for the shoes. They reminded him of a pitiful work animal, driven as hard as possible and hovering on the verge of death.

But come to think of it, wasn’t his father now like a work animal about to die? No different from a worn-out pair of leather shoes?

Tengo gazed out the window again as the colors of the sunset deepened in the western sky. He remembered the air chrysalis emitting a faint, pale light, and Aomame, as a young girl, sleeping inside.

Would that air chrysalis ever appear here again?

Was time really a straight line?

“It seems I’ve reached a deadlock,” Tengo mumbled to the wall. “There are too many variables. Even for a former child prodigy, it’s impossible to find an answer.”

The walls didn’t have a response. Nor did they express an opinion. They simply, and silently, reflected the color of the setting sun.

Ushikawa found it hard to get his head around the idea that the elderly dowager who lived in a mansion in Azabu could somehow be involved with the assassination of Sakigake’s Leader. He had dug up background information on her. She was a well-known figure in society, so the investigation had not taken much effort. Her husband had been a prominent businessman in the postwar era, influential in the political sphere. His business focused mainly on investments and real estate, though he had also branched out into large-scale retail stores and transport-related businesses. After her husband’s death in the mid-1950s, the woman had taken over his company. She had a talent for managing business, as well as an ability to sense impending danger. In the late 1960s she felt that the company had overextended itself, so she deliberately sold—at a high price—its stock in various fields, and systematically downsized the business. She put all her physical and mental strength into the remaining areas. Thanks to this, she was able to weather the era of the oil shock that occurred soon after with minimal damage and set aside a healthy amount of liquid assets. She knew how to turn other people’s crises into golden opportunities for herself.

She was retired now and in her mid-seventies. She had an abundance of money, which allowed her to live in comfort in her spacious mansion, indebted to no one. But why would a woman like that deliberately plot to murder someone?

Even so, Ushikawa decided to dig a little deeper. One reason was that he couldn’t find anything else that even resembled a clue. The second reason was that there was something about this safe house that bothered him. There was nothing especially unnatural about providing a free shelter for battered women. It was a sound and useful service to society. The dowager had the financial resources, and the women must be very grateful to her for her kindness. The problem was that the security at that apartment building—the heavy locked gate, the German shepherd, the surveillance cameras—was too tight for a facility of its type. There was something excessive about it.

The first thing Ushikawa did was check the deed for the land and the house that the dowager lived in. This was public information, easily ascertained by a trip to city hall. The deed to both the land and the house were in her name alone. There was no mortgage. Everything was quite clear-cut. As private assets, the property tax would come to quite a sum, but she probably didn’t mind paying such an amount. The future inheritance tax would also be huge, but this didn’t seem to bother her, which was unusual for such a wealthy person. In Ushikawa’s experience, nobody hated paying taxes more than the rich.

After her husband’s death, she continued to live alone in that enormous mansion. No doubt she had a few servants, so she wasn’t totally alone. She had two children, and her son had taken over the company. The son had three children. Her daughter had married and died fifteen years ago of an illness. She left no children behind.

This much was easy to find out. But once he tried to dig deeper into the woman’s background, a solid wall loomed up out of nowhere, blocking his way. Beyond this, all paths were closed. The wall was high, and the door had multiple locks. What Ushikawa did know was that this woman wanted to keep anything private about her completely out of public view. And she had poured considerable effort and money into carrying out that policy. She never responded to any sort of inquiry, never made any public statements. And no matter how many materials he raked through, not once did he come up with a photograph of her.

The woman’s number was listed in the Minato Ward phone book. Ushikawa’s style was to tackle things head on, so he went ahead and dialed it. Before the phone had rung twice, a man picked up.

Ushikawa gave a phony name and the name of some investment firm and said, “There’s something I would like to ask the lady of the house about, regarding her investment funds.”

The man replied, “She isn’t able to come to the phone. But you can tell me whatever she needs to know.” His businesslike tone sounded mechanical, manufactured.

“It’s company policy not to reveal these things to anyone other than the client,” Ushikawa explained, “so if I can’t speak with her directly now, I can mail the documents to her. She will have them in a few days.”

“That would be fine,” the man said, and hung up.

Ushikawa wasn’t particularly disappointed that he couldn’t speak to the dowager. He wasn’t expecting to. What he really wanted to find out was how concerned she was about protecting her privacy. Extremely so, it would appear. She seemed to have several people with her in the mansion who kept a close guard over her. The tone of this man who answered the phone—her secretary, most likely—made this clear. Her name was printed in the telephone directory, but only a select group could actually speak to her. All others were flicked away, like ants who had crawled into the sugar bowl.

Pretending to be looking for a place to rent, he made the rounds of local real estate agencies, indirectly asking about the apartment building used as the safe house. Most of the agents had no idea there was an apartment building at that address. This neighborhood was one of the more upscale residential areas in Tokyo. These agents only dealt with high-end properties and couldn’t be bothered with a two-story, wooden apartment building. One look at Ushikawa’s face and clothes, too, and they essentially gave him the cold shoulder. If a three-legged, waterlogged dog with a torn-off tail and mange had limped in the door, they would have treated it more kindly than they treated him.

Just when he was about to give up, a small local agency that seemed to have been there for years caught his eye. The yellowed old man at the front desk said, “Ah, that place,” and volunteered information. The man’s face was shriveled up, like a second-rate mummy, but he knew every nook and cranny of the neighborhood and always jumped at the chance to bend someone’s ear.

“That building is owned by Mr. Ogata’s wife, and yes, in the past it was rented out as apartments. Why she happened to have that building, I don’t really know. Her circumstances did not exactly demand that she manage an apartment building. I imagine she mostly used it to house their employees. I don’t know much about it now, but it seems to be used for battered women, kind of like those
kakekomidera
, temples in the old days that sheltered wives running away from abusive husbands. Anyway, it isn’t going to fatten a real estate agent’s wallet.”

The old man laughed, with his mouth shut. He sounded like a woodpecker.

“A
kakekomidera
, eh?” Ushikawa said. He offered him a Seven Stars cigarette. The old man took it, let Ushikawa light it for him with his lighter, and took a deep, appreciative drag on it. This is exactly what the Seven Stars must long for, Ushikawa mused—to be enjoyed so thoroughly.

“Women whose husbands smack them around and run away, their faces all puffed up, they—they take shelter there. They don’t have to pay rent.”

“Like a kind of public service,” Ushikawa said.

“Yes, that sort of thing. They had this extra apartment building so they used it to help people in trouble. She’s tremendously wealthy, so she could do whatever she wanted, without worrying about making money. Not like the rest of us.”

“But why did Mrs. Ogata start doing that? Was there something that led up to it?”

“I don’t know. She’s so rich that maybe it’s like a hobby?”

“Well, even if it is a hobby,” Ushikawa said, beaming, “that’s a wonderful thing, to help people in trouble like that. Not everyone with money to burn takes the initiative to help others.”

“Of course it’s a nice thing to do,” the old man agreed. “Years ago I used to hit my old lady all the time, so I’m not one to talk.” He opened his mouth, showing off his missing teeth, and guffawed, as if hitting your wife every once in a while were one of life’s notable pleasures.

“So I take it that several people live there now?” Ushikawa asked.

“I go past there when I take a walk every morning, but you can’t see anything from outside. But it does seem like a few people are living there. I guess there will always be men in the world who beat their wives.”

“There are always far more people in the world who make things worse, rather than help out.”

The old man guffawed again loudly, his mouth wide open. “You got that right. There are a lot more people who do bad things than do good.”

The old man seemed to have taken a liking to Ushikawa. This made Ushikawa uncomfortable.

“By the way, what sort of person is Mrs. Ogata?” Ushikawa asked, trying to sound casual.