“Which means—” Aomame said.

“Which means that there’s a strong possibility that the fee collector who came to your place was a fake—someone pretending to be from NHK. The person I talked to on the phone was concerned about this too. The last thing they want are phony NHK collectors popping up. The person in charge asked to see me and get more details. As you can imagine, I turned him down. There was no actual harm done, and I don’t want it to get all blown out of proportion.”

“Maybe he was a mental patient? Or someone who’s after me?”

“I don’t think anyone pursuing you would act like that. It wouldn’t do any good, and would actually put you on your guard.”

“If the man was crazy, I wonder why he would choose this particular door. There are lots of other doors around. I’m always careful to make sure no light leaks out, and I’m very quiet. I always keep the curtains closed and never hang laundry outside to dry. But still that guy picked this door to bang on. He knows I’m hiding inside here—or at least he insists he knows that—and he tries whatever he can to get me to open up.”

“Do you think he’s going to come back?”

“I don’t know. But if he’s really serious about getting me to open up, I’m betting he’ll keep coming back until I do.”

“And that unsettles you.”

“I wouldn’t say it unsettles me, exactly,” Aomame replied. “I just don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it either, not one little bit. But even if that phony collector comes back again, we can’t call NHK or the police. And if you call me and I race over, he will probably have vanished by the time I get there.”

“I think I can handle it myself,” Aomame said. “He can be as intimidating as he wants, but all I have to do is keep the door shut.”

“I’m sure he will use whatever means he can to intimidate you.”

“No doubt,” Aomame said.

Tamaru cleared his throat for a moment and changed the subject.

“Did you get the test kits all right?”

“It was positive,” Aomame said straight out.

“A hit, in other words.”

“Exactly. I tried two tests and the results were identical.”

There was silence. Like a lithograph with no words carved on it yet.

“No room for doubt?” Tamaru asked.

“I knew it from the start. The tests merely confirmed it.”

Tamaru silently rubbed the lithograph for a time with the pads of his fingers.

“I have to ask a pretty forward question,” he said. “Do you plan to have the baby? Or are you going to deal with it?”

“I’m not going to deal with it.”

“Which means you will give birth.”

“If things go smoothly, the due date will be between June and July of next year.”

Tamaru did the math in his head. “Which means we will have to make some changes in our plans.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“No need to apologize,” Tamaru said. “All women have the right to give birth. We have to protect that right as much as we can.”

“Sounds like a Declaration of Human Rights,” Aomame said.

“I’m asking this again just to make sure, but you have no idea who the father is?”

“Since June I haven’t had a sexual relationship with anyone.”

“So this is a kind of immaculate conception?”

“I imagine religious people would get upset if you put it that way.”

“If you do anything out of the ordinary, you can be sure someone, somewhere, will get upset,” Tamaru said. “But when you’re dealing with a pregnancy, it’s important to get a specialist to check you over. You can’t just stay shut up in that room waiting it out.”

Aomame sighed. “Let me stay here until the end of the year. I promise I won’t be any trouble.”

Tamaru was silent for a while. Then he spoke. “You can stay there until the end of the year, like we promised. But once the new year comes, we have to move you to a less dangerous place, where you can easily get medical attention. You understand this, right?”

“I do,” Aomame said. She wasn’t fully convinced, though. If I don’t see Tengo, she thought, will I really be able to leave here?

“I got a woman pregnant once,” Tamaru said.

Aomame didn’t say anything for a time. “You? But I thought you were—”

“Gay? I am. A card-carrying homosexual. I have always been that way, and I imagine I always will be.”

“But still you got a woman pregnant.”

“Everybody makes mistakes,” Tamaru said, with no hint of humor. “I don’t want to go into the details, but it was when I was young. I did it once, but bang! A bull’s-eye.”

“What happened to the woman?”

“I don’t know,” Tamaru said.

“You don’t know?”

“I know how she was up to her sixth month. But after that I have no idea.”

“If you get to the sixth month, abortion is not an option.”

“That’s my understanding.”

“So there’s a high possibility she had the baby,” Aomame said.

“Most likely.”

“If she really did have the baby, don’t you want to see it?”

“I’m not that interested,” Tamaru said without missing a beat. “That’s not the kind of life I lead. What about you? Would you want to see your child?”

Aomame gave it some thought. “I am someone whose parents threw her away when she was small, so it’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like to have my own child. I have no good model to follow.”

“Still, you’re going to be bringing that child into the world—into this violent, mixed-up world.”

“It’s because I’m looking for love,” Aomame said. “Not love between me and the child, though. I haven’t reached that stage yet.”

“But the child is part of that love.”

“I think so, in one way or another.”

“But if things don’t turn out like you expect, and that child isn’t part of the love you’re looking for, then he’ll end up hurt. Just like the two of us.”

“It’s possible. But I don’t sense that will happen. Call it intuition.”

“I respect intuition,” Tamaru said. “But once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality. You would do well to remember that.”

“Who said that?”

“Wittgenstein.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Aomame said. “If your child was born, how old would it be?”

Tamaru did the math in his head. “Seventeen.”

“Seventeen.” Aomame imagined a seventeen-year-old boy, or girl, shouldering morality.

“I’ll let Madame know about this,” Tamaru said. “She has been wanting to talk with you directly. As I have said a number of times, however, from a security standpoint I am none too happy about the idea. On a technical level I’m taking all necessary precautions, but the telephone is still a risky means of communication.”

“Understood.”

“But she is very concerned about what has happened, and is worried about you.”

“I understand that, too. And I’m grateful for her concern.”

“It would be the smart thing to trust her, and follow her advice. She is a very wise person.”

“Of course,” Aomame said.

But apart from that, Aomame told herself, I need to hone my own mind and protect myself. The dowager is certainly a very wise person. And she wields a considerable amount of power. But there are some things she has no way of knowing. I doubt she knows what principles the year 1Q84 is operating on. I mean—has she even noticed that there are two moons in the sky?

After she hung up, Aomame lay on the sofa and dozed for a half hour. It was a short, deep sleep. She dreamed, but her dream was like a big, blank space. Inside that space she was thinking about things. And she was writing, with invisible ink, in that pure white notebook. When she woke up, she had an indistinct yet strangely clear image in her mind. I will give birth to this child. This little life will be safely born into the world. Like Tamaru had put it, as an unavoidable bearer of morality.

She laid her palm on her abdomen and listened. She couldn’t hear a thing. For now.