Again Tengo remembered the time they had intercourse. The beautiful seventeen-year-old climbed on top of him and put his penis inside her. Her ample breasts moved lithely in the air, like ripe fruit. She closed her eyes in rapture, her nostrils flaring with desire. Her lips formed something that didn’t come together as actual words. He could see her white teeth, her pink tongue darting out from between them every now and then. Tengo had a vivid memory of that scene. His body may have been numb, but his mind was clear. And he had a rock-hard erection.

But no matter how clearly he relived the scene in his head, Tengo didn’t feel any stir of sexual excitement. And it didn’t cross his mind to want to have sex with her again. He hadn’t had sex for the nearly three months since that encounter. More than that, he hadn’t even come once. For him this was quite unusual. He was a healthy, thirty-year-old single guy, with a normal sex drive, the sort of desire that had to be taken care of one way or another.

Still, when he was in Kumi Adachi’s apartment, in bed with her, her pubic hair pressing against his leg, he had felt no desire at all. His penis had remained flaccid the whole time. Maybe it was the hashish. But that wasn’t the reason, he decided. On that stormy night when he had had sex with Fuka-Eri, she had taken something important away, from his heart. Like moving furniture out of a room. He was convinced of it.

Like what, for instance?

Tengo shook his head.

When he had polished off the beer, he ordered a Four Roses on the rocks and some mixed nuts. Just like the last time.

Most likely his erection on that stormy night was too perfect. It was far harder, and bigger, than he had ever experienced. It didn’t look like his own penis. Smooth and shiny, it seemed less an actual penis than some conceptual symbol, and when he ejaculated it was powerful, heroic even, the semen copious and thick. This must have reached her womb, or even beyond. It was the perfect orgasm.

But when something is so complete, there has to be a reaction. That’s the way things go. What kind of erections have I had since? Tengo wondered. He couldn’t recall. Maybe he hadn’t even had one. Or if he had, it was obviously not very memorable, a subpar hard-on. If his erection had been a movie, it would have been low budget, straight to video. Not an erection even worth discussing. Most likely.

Maybe I’m fated to drift through life with nothing but second-rate erections, he asked himself, or not even second-rate ones? That would be a sad sort of life, like a prolonged twilight. But depending on how you look at it, it might be unavoidable. At least once in his life he had had the perfect erection, and the perfect orgasm. It was like the author of Gone With the Wind. Once you have achieved something so magnificent, you have to be content with it.

He finished his whiskey, paid the bill, and continued wandering the streets. The wind had picked up and the air was chillier than before. Before the world’srules loosen up too much, he thought, and all logic is lost, I have to find Aomame. Nearly the only hope he could cling to now was the thought that he might run across her. If I don’t find her, then what value is there to my life? he wondered. She had been here, in Koenji, in September. If he were lucky, she was still in the same place. Not that he could prove it—but all he could do right now was pursue that possibility. Aomame is somewhere around here. And she is searching for me, too. Like two halves of a coin, each seeking the other.

He looked up at the sky, but he couldn’t see the moons. I have to go someplace where I can see the moon, Tengo decided.

CHAPTER 13

Ushikawa

IS THIS WHAT THEY MEAN

BY BACK TO SQUARE ONE?

Ushikawa’s appearance made him stand out. He did not have the sort of looks suited for stakeouts or tailing people. As much as he might try to lose himself in a crowd, he was as inconspicuous as a centipede in a cup of yogurt.

His family wasn’t like that at all. Ushikawa’s family consisted of his parents, an older and younger brother, and a younger sister. His father ran a health clinic, where his mother was the bookkeeper. Both brothers were outstanding students, attended medical school, and became doctors. His older brother worked in a hospital in Tokyo, while his younger brother was a research doctor at a university. When his father retired, his older brother was due to take over the family clinic in Urawa, a suburb of Tokyo. Both brothers were married and had one child. Ushikawa’s sister had studied at a college in the United States and was now back in Japan, working as an interpreter. She was in her mid-thirties but still single. All his siblings were slim and tall, with pleasantly oval features.

In almost every respect, particularly in looks, Ushikawa was the exception in his family. He was short, with a large, misshapen head and unkempt, frizzy hair. His legs were stumpy and bent like cucumbers. His popping eyes always looked startled, and he had a thick layer of flesh around his neck. His eyebrows were bushy and large and nearly came together in the middle. They looked like two hairy caterpillars reaching out to each other. In school he had generally gotten excellent grades, but his performance in some subjects was erratic and he was particularly hopeless at sports.

In this affluent, self-satisfied, elite family, he was the foreign element, the sour, dissonant note that ruined the familial harmony. In family photos he looked like the odd man out, the insensitive outsider who had pushed his way into the group and had his picture taken with them.

The other members of his family couldn’t understand how someone who didn’t resemble them in the least could be one of them. But there was no mistaking the fact that his mother had given birth to him, with all the attendant labor pains (her recollection was how particularly painful that birth had been). No one had laid him at their doorstep in a basket. Eventually, someone recalled that there was a relative who also had an oversized, misshapen head—Ushikawa’s grandfather’s cousin. During the war he had worked in a metal shop in Koto Ward in Tokyo, but he died in the massive air raid in the spring of 1945. His father had never met the man, though he had a photo of him in an old album. When the family saw the photo, they exclaimed, “It all makes sense now!” Ushikawa and his uncle were such peas in a pod that you would think that Ushikawa was the man reincarnated. The genetic traits of this uncle had, for whatever reason, surfaced once more.

The Ushikawa family of Urawa, Saitama Prefecture, would have been the perfect family—in both looks and academic and career achievements—if only Ushikawa hadn’t existed. They would have been the kind of memorable, photogenic family that anyone would envy. But with Ushikawa in the mix, people tended to frown and shake their heads. People might begin to think that somewhere along the line a joker or two had tripped up the goddess of beauty. No, they definitely must think this, his parents decided, which is why they tried their hardest to keep him out of the public eye or at least make sure he didn’t stand out (though the attempt was always pointless).

Being put in this situation, however, never made Ushikawa feel dissatisfied, sad, or lonely. He wasn’t sociable to begin with and usually preferred to stay in the shadows. He wasn’t particularly fond of his brothers and sister. From Ushikawa’s perspective, they were irretrievably shallow. To him, their minds were dull, their vision narrow and devoid of imagination, and all they cared about was what other people thought. More than anything, they were completely lacking in the sort of healthy skepticism needed to attain any degree of wisdom.