After drinking a fresh cup of coffee, he went to the bathroom and shaved while listening to a baroque music program on the FM radio: Telemann’s partitas for various solo instruments. This was his normal routine: make coffee in the kitchen, drink it, and shave while listening to Baroque Music for You on the radio. Only the musical selections changed each day. Yesterday it had almost certainly been Rameau’s keyboard music.

The commentator was speaking.

Telemann won high praise throughout Europe in the early eighteenth century, but came to be disdained as too prolific by people in the nineteenth century. This was no fault of Telemann’s, however. The purposes for which music is composed underwent great changes as the structure of European society changed, leading to this reversal in his reputation.

Is this the new world? he wondered.

He took another look at his surroundings. Still there was no sign of change. For now, there was no sign of disdainful people. In any case, what he had to do was shave. Whether the world had changed or not, no one was going to shave for him. He would have to do it himself.

When he was through shaving, he made some toast, buttered and ate it, and drank another cup of coffee. He went into the bedroom to check on Fuka-Eri, but she was still in a very deep sleep, it seemed: she hadn’t moved at all. Her hair still formed the same pattern on her cheek. Her breathing was as soft as before.

For the moment, he had nothing planned. He would not be teaching at the cram school. No one would be coming to visit, nor did he have any intention of visiting anyone. He could spend the day any way he liked. Tengo sat at the kitchen table and continued writing his novel, filling in the little squares on the manuscript paper with a fountain pen. As always, his attention became focused on his work. Switching channels in his mind made everything else disappear from his field of vision.

.    .    .

It was just before nine when Fuka-Eri woke. She had taken off his pajamas and was wearing one of Tengo’s T-shirts—the Jeff Beck Japan Tour T-shirt he was wearing when he visited his father in Chikura. Her nipples showed clearly through the shirt, which could not help but revive in Tengo the feeling of last night’s ejaculation, the way a certain date brings to mind related historical facts.

The FM radio was playing a Marcel Dupré organ piece. Tengo stopped writing and fixed her breakfast. Fuka-Eri drank Earl Grey tea and ate strawberry jam on toast. She devoted as much time and care to spreading the jam on the toast as Rembrandt had when he painted the folds in a piece of clothing.

“I wonder how many copies your book has sold,” Tengo said.

“You mean Air Chrysalis?” Fuka-Eri asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t know,” Fuka-Eri said, lightly creasing her brow. “A lot.”

Numbers were not important to her, Tengo thought. Her “a lot” brought to mind clover growing on a broad plane as far as the eye could see. The clover suggested only the idea of “a lot,” but no one could count them all.

“A lot of people are reading Air Chrysalis,” Tengo said.

Saying nothing, Fuka-Eri inspected how well she had spread the jam on her toast.

“I’ll have to see Mr. Komatsu. As soon as possible,” Tengo said, looking at Fuka-Eri across the table. As always, her face showed no expression. “You have met Mr. Komatsu, haven’t you?”

“At the press conference.”

“Did you talk?”

Fuka-Eri gave her head a slight shake, meaning they had hardly talked at all.

Tengo could imagine the scene vividly. Komatsu was talking his head off at top speed, saying everything he was thinking—or not thinking—while she hardly opened her mouth or listened to what he had to say. Komatsu was not concerned about that. If anyone ever asked Tengo for a concrete example of two perfectly incompatible personalities, he would name Fuka-Eri and Komatsu.

Tengo said, “I haven’t seen Mr. Komatsu for a very long time. And I haven’t heard from him, either. He must be very busy these days. Ever since Air Chrysalis became a bestseller, he’s been swept up in the circus. It’s about time, though, for us to get together and have a serious talk. We’ve got all kinds of problems to discuss. Now would be a good chance to do that, since you’re here. How about it? Want to see him together?”

“The three of us?”

“Uh-huh. That’d be the quickest way to settle things.”

Fuka-Eri thought about this for a moment. Or else she was imagining something. Then she said, “I don’t mind. If we can.”

If we can, Tengo repeated mentally. It had a prophetic sound.

“Are you thinking we might not be able to?” Tengo asked with some hesitation.

Fuka-Eri did not reply.

“Assuming we can, we’ll meet him. Are you okay with that?”

“Meet him and do what?”

“ ‘Meet him and do what’? Well, first I’d return some money to him. A fairly good-sized payment was transferred into my bank account the other day for my rewriting of Air Chrysalis, but I’d rather not take it. Not that I have any regrets about having done the work. It was a great inspiration for my own writing and guided me in a good direction. And it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. It’s been well received critically and the book is selling. I don’t believe it was a mistake for me to take it on. I just never expected it to blow up like this. Of course, I am the one who agreed to do it, and I certainly have to take responsibility for that. But I just don’t want to be paid for it.”

Fuka-Eri gave her shoulders a little shrug.

Tengo said, “You’re right. It might not change a thing. But I’d like to make it clear where I stand.”

“Who for?”

“Well, mainly for myself,” Tengo said, lowering his voice somewhat.

Fuka-Eri picked up the lid of the jam jar and stared at it as if she found it fascinating.

“But it may already be too late,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri had nothing to say to that.

When Tengo tried phoning Komatsu’s office after one o’clock (Komatsu never came to work in the morning), the woman who answered said that Komatsu had not been in for the past several days. That was all she knew. Or, if she knew more, she obviously had no intention of sharing it with Tengo. He asked her to connect him with another editor he knew. Tengo had written short columns under a pseudonym for the monthly magazine edited by this man, who was two or three years older than Tengo and generally well disposed toward him, in part because they had graduated from the same university.

“Komatsu has been out for over a week now,” the editor said. “He called in on the third day to say he wouldn’t be coming to work for a while because he wasn’t feeling well, and we haven’t seen him since. The guys in the book division are going crazy. He’s in charge of Air Chrysalis and so far he’s handled everything himself. He’s supposed to restrict himself to the magazine side of things, but he ignored that fact and hasn’t let anybody else lay a finger on this project, even when it went into book production. So if he takes off now, nobody knows what to do. If he’s really sick, I suppose there’s nothing we can say, but still …”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know. All he said was he’s not feeling well. And then he hung up. Haven’t heard a word from him since. We wanted to ask him a few things and tried calling him, but all we got was the answering machine. Nobody knows what to do.”

“Doesn’t he have a family?”

“No, he lives alone. He used to have a wife and a kid, but I’m pretty sure he’s been divorced for a long time. He doesn’t tell anybody anything, so I don’t really know, but that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Anyhow, it’s strange that he’s been out a week and you’ve only heard from him once.”