But he may have been mistaken. Some of them may have actually been enjoying life to the fullest. Once they opened their doors, there was some breathtaking little paradise waiting just for them. Perhaps some of them were pretending to live a Spartan life to avoid getting audited by the Tax Bureau. This was possible. But through the telephoto lens, they all looked like dead-end city dwellers not going anywhere in life, clinging to a cheap apartment scheduled to be torn down.

That night Tengo didn’t make an appearance and Ushikawa saw no one who could be connected to him. When ten thirty rolled around, he decided to call it a day. He hadn’t quite settled into a routine and didn’t want to push it. There will be many days to come, he decided, so this is enough for now. He did a variety of stretches to loosen his stiff muscles, then ate a sweet anpan bun, poured coffee from his thermos into the cap, and drank it. He tried the faucet in the sink, and now the water was running. He washed his face with soap, brushed his teeth, and took a good, long pee. He leaned back against the wall and smoked a cigarette. He longed for a sip of whiskey, but he had decided that as long as he was here, he wouldn’t touch a drop of alcohol.

He stripped to his underwear and snuggled into the sleeping bag. The cold made him tremble slightly. At night the empty apartment was unexpectedly chilly. He thought he might need a small electric space heater.

As he lay shivering, alone in the sleeping bag, he recalled the days when he had been surrounded by his family. He didn’t particularly miss those days. His life now was so completely different that these memories merely popped up to illustrate that fact. Even when he was living with his family, Ushikawa had felt lonely. He never opened up to anyone and thought that his ordinary life would never last. Deep down he was convinced that one day it would all too easily fall apart—his busy days as a lawyer, his generous income, his nice house in Chuorinkan, his not-bad-looking wife, his cute daughters, both attending private elementary school, his pedigreed dog. So when his life steadily fell apart bit by bit and he was left all alone, he was actually relieved. Thank God, he thought. Nothing to worry about now. I’m back right where I started.

Is this what it means to go back to square one?

He curled up like a maggot in the sleeping bag and stared at the dark ceiling. He had sat in the same position for too long and his joints ached. Shivering in the cold, making do with a cold bun for dinner, standing watch over the entrance of a cheap apartment that was ready to be torn down, watching the unattractive people coming in and out, peeing into a wash bucket. Is this what it means to go back to square one? he asked again. He remembered something he had forgotten to do. He crawled out of the sleeping bag, poured the urine in the bucket into the toilet, pushed the wobbly handle, and flushed it down. The sleeping bag had just started to warm up, and he had hesitated to get out. Just leave it, he had thought—but if he happened to slip in the dark he would regret it. Afterward he crawled back into the sleeping bag and shivered in the cold again.

Is this what it means to go back to square one?

Most likely. He had nothing left to lose, other than his life. It was all very clear-cut. In the darkness, a razor-thin smile came to Ushikawa’s lips.

CHAPTER 14

Aomame

THIS LITTLE ONE OF MINE

For the most part, Aomame’s life had become filled with confusion. She felt as though she were blindly groping around in the dark. Ordinary logic and reason didn’t function in this 1Q84 world, and she couldn’t predict what was going to happen to her next. She felt sure, though, that she would survive the next few months and give birth to the baby. This was nothing more than a hunch, though a strong one. Everything was proceeding on the premise that she would give birth to this child. She could just sense it.

She remembered the last words that Leader had spoken. “You are fated to pass through great hardships and trials,” he had said. “Once you have done that, you should be able to see things as they are supposed to be.”

He knew something. Something vital. And he had tried—in vague and ambiguous terms—to give me this message, Aomame thought. The hardship he spoke of may have been when I took myself to the brink of death, when I took the pistol to that spot in front of the Esso sign, meaning to kill myself. But I came back, without dying, and discovered I was pregnant. This, too, might have been preordained.

As they entered December, the winds grew fierce for a few days. The fallen zelkova leaves whipped against the plastic screen on the balcony with a dry, biting sound. The cold wind let out a warning as it whistled between the bare branches of the trees. The caws of the crows grew sharper, keener. Winter had arrived.

Every day, she became even more convinced that the baby growing in her womb was Tengo’s child, until this theory became an established fact. It wasn’t logical enough to convince a third party, but it made sense to her. It was obvious.

If I’m pregnant without having had sex, who could the man possibly be other than Tengo?

In November she had begun putting on weight. She couldn’t go outside, but she more than made up for it by continuing to work out and strictly watching her diet. After age twenty she never weighed more than 115 pounds. But one day the scale showed she weighed 119, and after that her weight never dropped below it. She felt like her face, too, had rounded out. No doubt this little one wanted its mother to plump up.

Together with this little one she continued to keep watch over the playground at night, hoping to spot the silhouette of a large young man sitting alone on the slide. As she gazed at the two moons, lined up side by side in the early-winter sky, Aomame rubbed her belly through the blanket. Occasionally tears would well up for no reason. She would find a tear rolling down her cheek and falling to the blanket on her lap. Maybe it was because she was lonely, or because she was anxious. Or maybe pregnancy had made her more sensitive. Or maybe it was merely the cold wind stimulating the tear ducts to produce tears. Whatever the reason, Aomame let the tears flow without wiping them away.

Once she had cried for a while, at a certain point the tears would stop, and she would continue her lonely vigil. No, she thought, I’m not that lonely. I have this little one with me. There are two of us—two of us looking up at the two moons, waiting for Tengo to appear. From time to time she would pick up her binoculars and focus on the deserted slide. Then she would pick up the automatic pistol to check its heft and what it felt like. Protecting myself, searching for Tengo, and providing this little one with nourishment. Those are my duties now.

One time, as the cold wind blew and she kept watch over the playground, Aomame realized she believed in God. It was a sudden discovery, like finding, with the soles of your feet, solid ground beneath the mud. It was a mysterious sensation, an unexpected awareness. Ever since she could remember, she had always hated this thing called God. More precisely, she rejected the people and the system that intervened between her and God. For years she had equated those people and that system with God. Hating them meant hating God.

Since the moment she was born they had been near her, controlling her, ordering her around, all in the name of God, driving her into a corner. In the name of God, they stole her time and her freedom, putting shackles on her heart. They preached about God’s kindness, but preached twice as much about his wrath and intolerance. At age eleven, Aomame made up her mind and was ultimately able to break free from that world. In doing so, though, much had been sacrificed.