Aomame nodded.
“The next problem is that my muscles often go stiff,” the man said. “I quite literally ‘can’t move a muscle.’ They become rock hard and stay that way for hours. All I can do at such times is lie down. I don’t feel any pain. All the muscles of my body simply become immobile. I can’t even move a finger. The only thing I can manage to move, through sheer willpower, is my eyeballs. This happens once or twice a month.”
“Do you have any sign beforehand that it is about to happen?”
“First I have spasms. My muscles start twitching all over. That goes on for ten to twenty minutes. After that, my muscles go dead, as if someone has turned off a switch. During those ten or twenty minutes after the warning comes, I go to a place where I can stretch out, and I lie down. Like a boat seeking shelter from a storm in a cove, I wait there in hiding for the paralysis to pass over me. And though the paralysis is complete when it comes, my mind remains fully awake. No, if anything, it is awake with a special clarity.”
“You say you have no pain?”
“I lose all sensation. If you jabbed me with a needle, I wouldn’t feel it.”
“Have you consulted a doctor about that?”
“I have been to all the best hospitals and any number of doctors, but all they can tell me is that this is an unprecedented affliction for which current medical knowledge can do nothing. I have tried traditional Chinese remedies, osteopathic physicians, acupuncture, moxibustion, massage, hot spring cures—everything I could think of—but have had no results worth talking about.”
Aomame frowned slightly. “All my approach does is to stimulate the normal bodily functions. I doubt that it will have much effect on such severe problems.”
“Yes, I am quite aware of that as well. But I am trying to exhaust every possibility. Even if your method has no effect, that is not your responsibility. Just do to me what you always do. I would like to see how my body responds to it.”
Aomame pictured the man’s huge body lying motionless in some dark place like a hibernating animal.
“When was the last time you experienced the paralysis?”
“Ten days ago,” the man said. “And—this is a bit difficult to bring up, but—there is one more thing I should probably mention.”
“Feel free to tell me anything.”
“All the time my muscles are in that state of suspended animation, I have an erection.”
Aomame’s frown deepened. “You mean to say that your sex organ remains hard for hours at a time?”
“That is correct.”
“But you have no feeling.”
“None at all,” he said. “No sexual desire, either. I just harden up. Like a rock, the way my muscles do.”
Aomame gave her head a little shake and did her best to resume a normal expression. “I don’t believe I can do anything about that, either. It’s quite far from my area of expertise.”
“This is very difficult for me to talk about, and you probably don’t want to hear about it either, but may I tell you a bit more?”
“Please do. Your secrets are safe with me.”
“During this interval, it happens that I am physically joined with girls.”
“Girls?!”
“I have a number of females around me. Whenever I go into my paralytic state, they take turns mounting me and having sexual relations with me. I have no feeling at all. I feel no sexual pleasure. But I do ejaculate. With each of them.”
Aomame kept silent.
He continued, “All together, there are three girls, all in their teens. I am sure you must be wondering why I have such young girls around me and why they must have sex with me.”
“Could it be, perhaps, part of a religious practice?”
Still sitting cross-legged on the bed, the man took a deep breath. “It is thought that these paralyses of mine are a form of grace bestowed by heaven, a kind of sacred state. Thus, when I am visited by those states, the girls come to me and join their bodies with mine. They are trying to become impregnated. With my heir.”
Aomame looked at him, saying nothing. He also fell silent.
“So, then, what you are telling me is that the girls’ purpose is to become pregnant? To carry your child?” Aomame then asked.
“That is correct.”
“And during this several-hour period while you lie there paralyzed, you have three ejaculations with these three girls?”
“That is correct.”
Aomame could not help but realize that she had gotten herself into a terribly complicated situation. She was about to murder this man, to send him to the other side. Yet here she was, being given the strange secrets of his flesh.
“I don’t quite understand the precise nature of your problem. All the muscles of your body become paralyzed once or twice a month. When that happens, your three girlfriends come and have sex with you. True, that is not exactly normal in commonsense terms, but—”
“They are not my girlfriends,” the man said, cutting her short. “They serve me as shrine maidens. Joining their bodies with mine is one of their duties.”
“Duties?”
“It is a role that has been assigned to them—to become pregnant with my heir.”
“Assigned by whom?” Aomame asked.
“That would be a long story,” the man said. “The problem is that all of this is steadily leading toward the destruction of my flesh.”
“So, then, have they gotten pregnant?”
“No, not yet. And there is little possibility that any of them will. They have not started their periods. Still, they are hoping for a miracle through heavenly grace.”
“None of them have gotten pregnant. They are not menstruating,” Aomame said. “And your flesh is headed for destruction.”
“Little by little, the time of each paralytic episode is growing longer. And the episodes are increasing in number. They started seven years ago. Back then, I would have one episode in two or three months. Now it is once or twice a month, and after each paralysis ends, my body is racked by excruciating pain and exhaustion. I have to live this way for a week or more each time. I feel as if my whole body is being stabbed by thick needles. I have intense headaches and an overwhelming fatigue. I find it impossible to sleep, and no medicine has done anything to alleviate the pain.”
The man sighed. Then he continued, “The second week after the episode is better than the first, but still the pain never entirely goes away. Intense pain comes over me like a wave several times a day. I can hardly breathe. My organs don’t function properly. My joints creak like a machine that needs oiling. My flesh is being devoured and my blood sucked out. I can feel it happening. But what is gnawing away at me is neither cancer nor a parasite. I have had every test they can think of, but they can never find the cause. They tell me I’m the picture of health. Medical science cannot explain my torment. The only conclusion is that this is the price I must pay for the heavenly grace I experience.”
This man is surely on the road to destruction, Aomame thought. But she could find no hint of emaciation about him. He seemed sturdily built in every way and appeared to have the discipline to withstand intense pain. And yet she could sense that his flesh was headed for destruction. This man is diseased. I don’t know what his disease might be, but even if I don’t take steps to dispatch him right now, he will suffer intense pain as his flesh is slowly destroyed and he encounters inevitable death.
“I can’t stop its progress,” the man said, as if he had read Aomame’s thoughts. “Every part of me is being eaten away, my body hollowed out, and a horribly painful death awaits me. They’ll just throw me away like a useless old car.”
“ ‘They’?” Aomame asked. “Who are ‘they’?”
“I am talking about the ones who are eating away at my flesh like this,” the man said. “But never mind that. What I am looking for now is some way to have my very real pain eased to some extent. That is what I need more than anything, even if the solution is not complete. This pain is unbearable. At times—at certain times—the pain deepens dramatically, as if it has a direct link to the center of the earth. It is a kind of pain that no one else besides me can grasp. It has robbed me of many things, but in return it has given me much. Deep, special pain bestows deep, special grace—not that the grace alleviates the pain, of course. Nor can it prevent the coming destruction.”