Contrition and repentance

    Tear the sinful heart in two.

    O that my teardrops may be

    A sweet balm unto thee,

    Faithful Jesus.

This was the meaning of the aria from the St. Matthew Passion that Fuka-Eri had sung the other day. He had wondered about it and listened again to his recording at home, looking up the words in translation. It was an aria near the beginning of the Passion concerned with the so-called Anointing in Bethany. When Jesus visits the home of a leper in the town of Bethany, a woman pours “very costly fragrant oil” on his head. The disciples around him scold her for wasting the precious ointment, saying that she could have sold it and used the money to help the poor. But Jesus quiets the angry disciples and says that the woman has done a good deed. “For in pouring this fragrant oil on my body, she did it for my burial.”

The woman knew that Jesus would have to die soon. And so, as though bathing him in her tears, she could do no less than pour the valuable, fragrant oil on his head. Jesus also knew that he would soon have to tread the road to death, and he told his disciples, “Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

None of them, of course, was able to change the future.

Tengo closed his eyes again, took a deep breath, found the words he needed and set them in a row. Then he rearranged them to give the image greater clarity and precision. Finally, he improved the rhythm.

Like Vladimir Horowitz seated before eighty-eight brand-new keys, Tengo curved his ten fingers suspended in space. Then, when he was ready, he began typing characters to fill the word processor’s screen.

He depicted a world in which two moons hung side by side in the evening eastern sky, the people living in that world, and the time flowing through it.

“Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

CHAPTER 5

Aomame

THE VEGETARIAN CAT

MEETS UP WITH THE RAT

Once she had managed to comprehend the sheer fact that Ayumi had died, Aomame went through a brief period involving a certain process of mental adjustment. Eventually, when the first phase of the process ended, she began to cry. She cried quietly, even silently, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders quivering, as if she wanted to be sure that no one else in the world could tell that she was crying.

The window curtains were shut tight, but still, someone might be watching. That night Aomame spread the newspaper on the kitchen table, and, in its presence, she cried without interruption. Now and then a sob escaped her, but the rest of the time she cried soundlessly. Her tears ran down her hands and onto the paper.

Aomame did not cry easily in this world. Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry—at someone else or at herself—which meant that it was rare for her to shed tears. Once they started pouring out of her, though, she couldn’t stop them. She hadn’t had such a long cry since Tamaki Otsuka killed herself. How many years ago had that been? She could not remember. In any case, it had been a long time before, and she had cried forever. It went on for days. She ate nothing the whole time, and stayed shut up indoors. Now and then she would replenish the water that she had cried out in tears, and then she would collapse and doze. That was all. The rest of the time she went on weeping. That was the last time she did anything like this.

Ayumi was no longer in this world. She was now a cold corpse that was probably being sent for forensic dissection. When that ended, they would sew her back together, probably give her a simple funeral, send her to the crematorium, and burn her. She would turn into smoke, rise up into the sky, and mix with the clouds. Then she would come down to the earth again as rain, and nurture some nameless patch of grass with no story to tell. But Aomame would never see Ayumi alive again. This seemed warped and misguided, in opposition to the flow of nature, and horribly unfair.

Ayumi was the only person for whom Aomame had been able to feel anything like friendship since Tamaki Otsuka left the world. Unfortunately, however, there had been limits to her friendship. Ayumi was an active-duty police officer, and Aomame a serial murderer. True, she was a murderer motivated by conviction and conscience, but a murderer is, in the end, a murderer, a criminal in the eyes of the law.

For this reason, Aomame had to make an effort to harden her heart and not respond when Ayumi sought to deepen their ties. Ayumi must have realized this to some extent—that Aomame had some kind of personal secret or secrets that caused her deliberately to put a certain distance between them. Ayumi had excellent intuition. At least half of her easy openness was an act, behind which lurked a soft and sensitive vulnerability. Aomame knew this to be true. Her own defensiveness had probably saddened Ayumi, making her feel rejected and distanced. The thought was like a needle stabbing Aomame in the chest.

And so Ayumi had been murdered. She had probably met a man in the city, had drinks with him, and gone to the hotel. Then, in the dark, sealed room, their elaborate sex game had begun. Handcuffs, a gag, a blindfold. Aomame could picture the scene. The man tightened the sash of his bathrobe around the woman’s neck, and as he watched her writhe in agony, his excitement mounted until he ejaculated. But the man tightened the sash with too much force. What was supposed to have ended at the point of crisis did not end.

Ayumi must have feared that such a thing might happen. She needed intense sexual activity at regular intervals. Her flesh needed it—and so, perhaps, did her mind. Like Aomame, she did not want a regular lover. But Ayumi tended to wade in deeper than Aomame. She preferred wilder, riskier sex, and perhaps, unconsciously, she wanted to be hurt. Aomame was different. She was more cautious, and she refused to be hurt by anyone. She would fiercely resist if a man tried such a thing; but Ayumi tended to respond to a man’s desire, whatever it might be, and she looked forward to finding out what he would give her in return. It was a dangerous tendency. These sexual partners of hers were, ultimately, passing strangers. It was impossible to find out what desires they possessed, what tendencies they were hiding, until the critical moment. Ayumi herself recognized the danger, of course, which was why she needed a stable partner like Aomame—someone to put on the brakes and watch over her with care.

In her own way, Aomame, too, needed Ayumi, who possessed abilities that she herself happened to lack—an open, cheerful personality that put people at ease, a friendly manner, a natural curiosity, a positive attitude, a talent for interesting conversation, large breasts that attracted attention. All Aomame had to do was stay next to Ayumi with a mysterious smile on her face. The men would want to find out what lay behind that smile. In that sense, Aomame and Ayumi were an ideal team—an invincible sex machine.

I should have been more open and accepting with that girl, Aomame thought. I should have reciprocated her feelings and held her tight. That was the one thing she was hoping for—to be accepted and embraced unconditionally, to be comforted by someone, if only for a moment. But I could not respond to her need. My instinct for self-preservation is too strong, and so is my determination to keep Tamaki Otsuka’s memory unsullied.