Aomame’s occasional overwhelming need to sleep with men came, perhaps, from her wish to keep the Tengo she nurtured inside her as unsullied as possible. By engaging in wild sex with unknown men, what she hoped to accomplish, surely, was the liberation of her flesh from the desire that bound it. She wanted to spend time alone with Tengo in the calm, quiet world that came to her after the liberation, just the two of them together, undisturbed. Surely that was what Aomame wanted.
Aomame spent several hours that afternoon thinking about Tengo. She sat on the aluminum chair on her narrow balcony, looking up at the sky, listening to the roar of the traffic, occasionally holding a leaf of her sad little rubber plant between her fingers as she thought of him. There was still no moon to be seen in the afternoon sky. That wouldn’t happen for some hours yet. Where will I be at this time tomorrow? Aomame wondered. I have no idea. But that’s a minor matter compared with the fact that Tengo exists in this world.
Aomame gave her rubber plant its last watering, and then she put Janáček’s Sinfonietta on the record player. It was the only record she had kept after getting rid of all the others. She closed her eyes and listened to the music, imagining the windswept fields of Bohemia. How wonderful it would be to walk with Tengo in such a place! They would be holding hands, of course. The breeze would sweep past, soundlessly swaying the soft green grass. Aomame could feel the warmth of Tengo’s hand in hers. The scene would gradually fade like a movie’s happy ending.
Aomame then lay down on her bed and slept for thirty minutes, curled up in a ball. She did not dream. It was a sleep that required no dreaming. When she woke, the hands of the clock were pointing to four thirty. Using the food still left in the refrigerator, she made herself some ham and eggs. She drank orange juice straight from the carton. The silence after her nap was strangely heavy. She turned on the FM radio to find Vivaldi’s Concerto for Woodwinds playing. The piccolo was trilling away like the chirping of a little bird. To Aomame, this sounded like music intended to emphasize the unreality of her present reality.
After clearing the dishes from the table, Aomame took a shower and changed into the outfit she had prepared weeks ago for this day—simple clothes that made for easy movement: pale blue cotton pants and a white short-sleeved blouse free of ornamentation. She gathered her hair in a bun and put it up, holding it in place with a comb. No accessories. Instead of putting the clothes she had been wearing into the hamper, she stuffed them into a black plastic garbage bag for Tamaru to get rid of. She trimmed her fingernails and took time brushing her teeth. She also cleaned her ears. Then she trimmed her eyebrows, spread a thin layer of cream over her face, and put a tiny dab of cologne on the back of her neck. She inspected the details of her face from every angle in the mirror to be sure there were no problems, and then, picking up a vinyl gym bag with a Nike logo, she left the room.
Standing by the front door, she turned for one last look, aware that she would never be coming back. The thought made the apartment appear unbelievably shabby, like a prison that only locked from the inside, bereft of any picture or vase. The only thing left was the bargain-sale rubber plant on the balcony, which she had bought instead of goldfish. She could hardly believe she had spent years of her life in this place without question or discontent.
“Good-bye,” she murmured, bidding farewell not so much to the apartment as to the self that had lived here.
CHAPTER 6
Tengo
WE HAVE VERY LONG ARMS
The situation showed little development for a while. No one contacted Tengo. No messages arrived from Komatsu or Professor Ebisuno or Fuka-Eri. They all might have forgotten him and gone off to the moon. Tengo would have no problem with that if it were true, but things would never work out so conveniently for him. No, they had not gone to the moon. They just had a lot to do that kept them busy day after day, and they had neither the time nor the consideration to let Tengo know what they were up to.
Tengo tried to read the newspaper every day, in keeping with Komatsu’s instructions, but—at least in the paper he read—nothing further about Fuka-Eri appeared. The newspaper industry actively sought out events that had already happened, but took a relatively passive attitude toward ongoing events. Thus, it probably carried the tacit message, “Nothing much is happening now.” Having no television himself, Tengo did not know how television news shows were handling the case.
As for the weekly magazines, virtually all of them picked up the story. Not that Tengo actually read them. He just saw the magazine ads in the newspaper with their sensational headlines: “Truth about the enigmatic disappearance of the beautiful bestselling teenage author,” “Air Chrysalis author Fuka-Eri (17): Where did she disappear to?” “ ‘Hidden’ background of beautiful runaway teenage author.” Several of the ads even included Fuka-Eri’s photo, the one taken at the press conference. Tengo was, of course, not uninterested in what the articles might say, but he was not about to spend the money it would take to compile a complete set of weeklies. Komatsu would probably let him know if there was anything in them that he should be concerned about. The absence of contact meant that, for the moment, there had been no new developments. In other words, people had still not realized that Air Chrysalis had (perhaps) been the product of a ghostwriter.
Judging from the headlines, the media were focused on the identity of Fuka-Eri’s father as a once-famous radical activist, the fact that she had spent an isolated childhood in a commune in the hills of Yamanashi, and her present guardian, Professor Ebisuno (a formerly well-known intellectual). And even as the whereabouts of the beautiful, enigmatic teenage author remained a mystery, Air Chrysalis continued to occupy the bestseller list. Such questions were enough to arouse people’s interest.
If it appeared that Fuka-Eri’s disappearance was going to drag on, however, it was probably just a matter of time until investigations would begin to probe into broader areas. Then things might get sticky. If anyone decided to look into Fuka-Eri’s schooling, for example, they might discover that she was dyslexic and, possibly for that reason, hardly went to school at all. Her grades in Japanese or her compositions (assuming she wrote any) might come out, and that might naturally lead to the question of how a dyslexic girl had managed to produce such sterling prose. It didn’t take a genius to imagine how, at that point, people might start wondering if she had had help.
Such doubts would be brought to Komatsu first. He was the editor in charge of the story and had overseen everything regarding its publication. Komatsu would surely insist that he knew nothing about the matter. With a cool look on his face, he would maintain that his only role had been to pass the author’s manuscript on to the selection committee, that he had had nothing to do with the process of its creation. Komatsu was good at keeping a straight face when saying things he didn’t believe, though this was a skill mastered by all experienced editors to some degree. No sooner had he denied any knowledge of the deception than he would call Tengo and dramatically say something like, “Hey, Tengo, it’s starting: the heat is on,” as if he himself were enjoying the mess.
And maybe he was. Tengo sometimes felt that Komatsu had a certain desire for self-destruction. Maybe deep down he was hoping to see the whole plan exposed, a big juicy scandal blow up, and all connected parties blasted into the sky. And yet, at the same time, Komatsu could be a hardheaded realist. He would be more likely to cast his desire aside than to sail over the edge toward destruction.