1Q84 (75 page)

“Probably,” Fuka-Eri said in a tiny voice.

“So, did they find out anything about your parents?”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. They still knew nothing about them.

“In any case, the organization is angry,” Tengo said. “And if the police find out that your disappearance was an act, they’ll be mad at you too. And mad at me for covering up for you even though I know the truth.”

“Which is precisely why we have to join forces,” Fuka-Eri said.

“Did you just say, ‘Which is precisely’?”

Fuka-Eri nodded. “Did I say it wrong?” she asked.

Tengo shook his head. “Not at all. The words sounded fresh, that’s all.”

“If it’s a bother for you, I can go somewhere else,” Fuka-Eri said.

“I don’t mind if you stay here,” Tengo said, resigned. “I’m sure you don’t have anyplace else in mind, right?”

Fuka-Eri answered with a curt nod.

Tengo took some cold barley tea from the refrigerator and drank it. “Angry hornets would be too much for me, but I’m sure I can manage to look after you.”

Fuka-Eri looked hard at Tengo for a few moments. Then she said, “You look different.”

“What do you mean?”

Fuka-Eri twisted her lips into a strange angle and then returned them to normal. “Can’t explain.”

“No need to explain,” Tengo said.
If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation
.

As he left the apartment, Tengo said, “When I call, I’ll let it ring three times, hang up, and call again. Then you answer. Okay?”

“Okay,” Fuka-Eri said. “Ring three times, hang up, call again, answer.” She sounded as if she could be translating aloud from an ancient stone monument.

“It’s important, so don’t forget,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri nodded twice.

Tengo finished his two classes, went back to the teachers’ lounge, and was getting ready to go home. The receptionist came to tell him that the man named Ushikawa was here to see him. She spoke with an apologetic air, like a kindhearted messenger bearing unwelcome news. Tengo flashed her a bright smile and thanked her. No sense blaming the messenger.

Ushikawa was in the cafeteria by the front lobby, drinking a cafe au lait as he waited for Tengo. Tengo could not imagine a drink less well suited to Ushikawa, whose strange exterior looked all the stranger amid the energetic, young students. Only the part of the room where he was sitting seemed to have different gravity and air density and light refractivity. Even from a distance, there was no mistaking that he looked like bad news. The cafeteria was crowded between classes, but not one person shared his six-person table. The students’ natural instincts led them to avoid Ushikawa, just as antelope keep away from wild dogs.

Tengo bought a coffee at the counter and carried it over to Ushikawa’s table, sitting down opposite him. Ushikawa seemed to have just finished eating a cream-filled pastry. The crumpled wrapper lay atop the table, and crumbs stuck to the corner of his mouth. Cream pastries also seemed totally unsuited to Ushikawa.

“It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it, Mr. Kawana?” Ushikawa said to Tengo, raising himself slightly from his chair. “Sorry to barge in on you again all of a sudden.”

Tengo dispensed with the polite chatter and got down to business. “I’m sure you’re here for my answer. To the offer you made the other day, that is.”

“Well, yes, that is true,” Ushikawa said. “In a word.”

“I wonder, Mr. Ushikawa, if I can get you to speak a little more concretely and directly today. What is it that you people want from me—in return for this ‘grant’ thing?”

Ushikawa cast a cautious glance around the room, but there was no one near them, and the cafeteria was so noisy with student voices that there was no danger of their conversation’s being overheard.

“All right, then. Let me give you our best deal and lay it all out with total honesty,” Ushikawa said, leaning across the table and lowering his voice a notch. “The money is just a pretext. For one thing, the grant is not all that big. The most important thing that my client can offer you is your personal safety. In other words, no harm will come to you. We guarantee it.”

“In return for which …?” Tengo said.

“In return for which all they want from you is your silence and forgetting. You participated in this affair, but you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into. You were just a foot soldier acting under orders. They won’t hold you personally responsible. So all you have to do is forget everything. We can make it as though nothing ever happened. Word will never get out that you ghostwrote
Air Chrysalis
. You are not—and never will be—connected with it in any way. That is what they want from you. And it would be to your advantage as well, I’m sure you see.”

“No harm will come to
me
. In other words, harm
will
come to the other participants? Is that what you are saying?”

“That would be handled, uh,
‘case by case,’
as they say in English,” Ushikawa said with apparent difficulty. “I am not the one who decides, so I can’t say specifically, but some steps will have to be taken, I should think.”

“And your arms are both long and strong.”

“Exactly.
Very
long, and
very
strong, as I mentioned before. So, then, Mr. Kawana, what kind of answer can we hope for from you?”

“Let me first say that for me to accept money from you people is out of the question.”

Without speaking, Ushikawa reached for his glasses, took them off, carefully wiped the lenses with a handkerchief he produced from his pocket, and put them back on, as if to say that there might be some sort of connection between his vision and what he had just heard.

“Do I understand this to mean that you have rejected our offer?”

“That is correct.”

Ushikawa stared at Tengo through his glasses as if he were looking at an oddly shaped cloud. “And why would that be? In my humble opinion, it is by no means a bad deal for you.”

“In the end, all of us connected with the story are in the same boat. It’s out of the question for me to be the only one who runs away”

“I’m mystified!” Ushikawa said, as if truly mystified. “I can’t understand it. I maybe shouldn’t say this, but none of the others are the least bit concerned about you. It’s true. They throw a little spare change your way and use you any way they like. And for that you get dragged into the mess. If you ask me, you’d be totally justified to tell them all to go to hell. If it were me, I’d be fuming. But you’re ready to protect them. ‘It’s out of the question for me to be the only one who runs away,’ he says! Boat schmoat! I don’t get it. Why won’t you take it?”

“One reason has to do with a woman named Kyoko Yasuda.”

Ushikawa picked up his cold cafe au lait and winced as he sipped it. “Kyoko Yasuda?”

“You people know something about Kyoko Yasuda,” Tengo said.

Ushikawa let his mouth hang open, as if he had no idea what Tengo was talking about. “No, honestly, I don’t know a thing about a woman by that name. I swear, really. Who is she?”

Tengo looked at Ushikawa for a while, saying nothing, but he could not read anything on his face. “A woman I know.”

“Would she, by any chance, be someone with whom you have a
... relationship
?”

Tengo did not reply to that. “What I want to know is whether you people did something to her.”

“Did something? No way! We haven’t done a thing,” Ushikawa said. “I’m not lying. I just told you, I don’t know a thing about her. You can’t
do
anything to somebody you’ve never even heard of.”

“But you said you hired a capable ‘researcher’ and investigated every last thing about me. He even hit upon the fact that I had rewritten Eriko Fukada’s work. He knows a lot about my private life, too. It only makes sense that he should know about Kyoko Yasuda and me.”

“Yes, it’s true, we have hired a capable researcher. And he has been finding out about you in great detail. So it could be that he has discovered your relationship with Kyoko Yasuda, as you say. But even assuming he has discovered it, the information has not reached me.”

“I was seeing Kyoko Yasuda for quite some time,” Tengo said. “I used to see her once a week. In secret. Because she had a family. But suddenly one day, without saying a word to me, she disappeared.”

Ushikawa used the handkerchief with which he had wiped his glasses to dab at the sweat on the tip of his nose. “And so, Mr. Kawana, you think that, in one way or another, we have something to do with the fact that this married woman disappeared, is that it?”

“Maybe you informed her husband that she was seeing me.”

Ushikawa pursed his lips as if taken aback. “What possible reason could we have for doing such a thing?”

Tengo clenched his fists in his lap. “I keep thinking about something you said on the phone the last time we talked.”

“And what could that have been?”

“Once you pass a certain age, life is just a continuous process of losing one thing after another. One after another, things you value slip out of your hands the way a comb loses teeth. People you love fade away one after another. That sort of thing. Surely, you must remember.”

“Yes, I remember. I did say something like that the other day. But really, Mr. Kawana, I was just speaking in generalities. I was offering my own humble view of the pain and difficulty of aging. I certainly was not pointing specifically to What’s-her-name Yasuda.”

“But to my ears it sounded like a warning.”

Ushikawa gave his head several vigorous shakes. “Nothing of the sort! It wasn’t even remotely meant as a warning. It was simply my personal view. Really, I swear, I don’t know anything at all about Mrs. Yasuda. She disappeared?”

Tengo went on, “And you also said this: if I go on refusing to listen to you people, it might have an undesirable effect on everyone around me.”

“Yes, I did say something like that.”

“Isn’t that a warning too?”

Ushikawa stuffed his handkerchief into his jacket pocket and let out a sigh. “True, it might have sounded like a warning, but there, too, I was speaking strictly generally. I’m telling you, Mr. Kawana, I don’t know anything about this Mrs. Yasuda. I’ve never even heard the name. I swear to all the gods and goddesses of heaven and earth.”

Tengo studied Ushikawa’s face again. This man really might not know anything about Kyoko Yasuda. The expression of bewilderment on his face certainly looked like the real thing. But even if
he
knew nothing, it didn’t necessarily mean that
they
hadn’t done anything to her. It could just be that they hadn’t told him about it.

“It’s none of my business, Mr. Kawana, but having an affair with a married woman is a dangerous business. You’re a young, healthy single male. You should be able to have any number of single young girls without doing such dangerous things.” Having said this, Ushikawa deftly licked the crumbs from the corner of his mouth.

Tengo watched Ushikawa in silence.

Ushikawa said, “Of course, male-female relationships don’t work by logic and reason. Even monogamous marriage has its own set of contradictions. I’m telling you for your own good, though, if she has left you, it might be best to let the situation stay as it is. What I’m trying to say is this: there are things in this world that are better left as unknowns. The business about your mother, for example. Learning the truth would just hurt you. And once you do learn the truth, you end up having to take on a certain responsibility for it.”

Tengo scowled, holding his breath for a few seconds. “You know something about my mother?”

Ushikawa flicked his tongue over his lips. “Yes, to some extent, I do. Our researcher investigated that area very thoroughly. So if you ever want to learn about that, I can hand you all the materials on your mother as is. As I understand it, you grew up knowing absolutely nothing about her. However, there might be some not-very-pleasant information included in the file.”

“Please leave now, Mr. Ushikawa,” Tengo said, pushing his chair back and standing up. “I have no desire to talk to you any more. And please don’t ever show your face to me again. Whatever ‘harm’ might be coming to me, it would be better than having to deal with you. I don’t want that ‘grant’ of yours or your guarantees of ‘safety.’ There’s only one thing I want, and that is never to see you again.”

Ushikawa showed no discernible reaction to this. Perhaps he had had worse things said to him any number of times. There was even a hint of a smile gleaming deep in his eyes.

“That’s fine,” Ushikawa said. “I’m glad I got your answer at least. A definite no. You have declined our offer. Clear and easy to understand. I will convey it to my superiors in that form. I am just a lowly errand boy. Now, simply because your answer is no, that doesn’t mean that harm will come to you right away. It just
might
, is all I am saying. It might never happen. That’s what I am hoping for. No, really, with all my heart. Because I like you, Mr. Kawana. I’m sure that’s the last thing you want—for me to like you—but that’s just the way it is. This nonsensical guy who shows up with nonsensical deals, terrible to look at. I’ve never had the problem of being liked too much. But the simple fact is that I have good feelings toward you, Mr. Kawana, as unwelcome as you may find them. And I hope that you go on to achieve great success in life.”

Having said this, Ushikawa proceeded to stare at his own fingers. They were short, stubby fingers. He turned them over a few times. Then he stood up.

“Well, then, I’ll be excusing myself. Now that you mention it, this will probably be the last time you see me. Yes, I will do my best to honor your wishes. May things go well for you in the future. Good-bye.”

Ushikawa picked up the worn-out leather case he had set on the chair and disappeared into the cafeteria’s crowd. As he walked, the mass of young male and female students parted naturally to make way for him, like medieval village children trying to avoid a fearsome slave trader.

Tengo dialed his own apartment from the public phone in the school lobby. He was planning to hang up after three rings, but Fuka-Eri picked up at the second ring.