“Are you staying over somewhere tonight?” Nurse Tamura asked.

“I’m planning to stay over, but I haven’t made a reservation yet.”

“If you don’t mind, why don’t you stay in your father’s room? Nobody’s using it, and you can save on hotel costs. If it doesn’t bother you.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Tengo said, a little surprised. “But is it all right to do that?”

“We don’t mind. If you’re okay with it, it’s okay with us. I’ll get the bed ready later.”

“So,” Tengo said, broaching the topic, “what am I supposed to do now?”

“Once you get the death certificate from the attending physician, go to the town office and get a permit for cremation, and then take care of the procedures to remove his name from the family record. Those are the main things you need to do now. There should be other things you’ll need to take care of—his pension, changing names on his savings account—but talk to the lawyer about those.”

“Lawyer?” This took Tengo by surprise.

“Mr. Kawana—your father, that is—spoke with a lawyer about the procedures for after his death. Don’t let the word lawyer scare you. Our facility has a lot of elderly patients, and since many are not legally competent, we have paired up with a local law office to provide consultations, so people can avoid legal problems related to division of estates. They also make up wills and provide witnesses. They don’t charge a lot.”

“Did my father have a will?”

“I can’t really say anything about it. You’ll need to talk to the lawyer.”

“I see. Can I see him soon?”

“We got in touch with him, and he’ll be coming here at three. Is that all right? It seems like we’re rushing things, but I know you’re busy, so I hope you don’t mind that we went ahead.”

“I appreciate it.” Tengo was thankful for her efficiency. For some reason all the middle-aged women he knew were very efficient.

“Before that, though, make sure you go to the town office,” Nurse Tamura said, “get his name removed from your family record, and get a permit for cremation. Nothing can happen until you’ve done that.”

“Well, then I have to go to Ichikawa. My father’s permanent legal residence should be Ichikawa. If I do that, though, I won’t be able to make it back by three.”

The nurse shook her head. “No, soon after he came here your father changed his official residence from Ichikawa to Chikura. He said it should make things easier if and when the time came.”

“He was well prepared,” Tengo said, impressed. It was as if he knew from the beginning that this was where he would die.

“He was,” the nurse agreed. “No one else has ever done that. Everyone thinks they will just be here for a short time. Still, though …,” she began to say, and stopped, quietly bringing her hands together in front of her to suggest the rest of what she was going to say. “At any rate, you don’t need to go to Ichikawa.”

Tengo was taken to his father’s room, the room where he spent his final months. The sheets and covers had been stripped off, leaving only a striped mattress. There was a simple lamp on the nightstand, and five empty hangers in the narrow closet. There wasn’t a single book in the bookshelf, and all his personal effects had been taken away. But Tengo couldn’t recall what personal effects had been there in the first place. He put his bag on the floor and looked around.

The room still had a medicinal smell, and you could still detect the breath of a sick person hanging in the air. Tengo opened the window to let in fresh air. The sun-bleached curtain fluttered in the breeze like the skirt of a girl at play. How wonderful it would be if Aomame were here, he thought, just holding my hand tight, not saying a word.

.    .    .

He took a bus to the Chikura town hall, showed them the death certificate, and received a permit for cremation. Once twenty-four hours had passed since the time of death, the body could be cremated. He also applied to have his father’s name removed from the family record, and received a certificate to that effect. The procedures took a while, but were almost disappointingly simple—nothing that would cause any soul searching. It was no different from reporting a stolen car. Nurse Tamura used their office copier to make three copies of the documents he received.

“At two thirty, before the lawyer comes, someone will be here from Zenkosha, a funeral parlor,” Mrs. Tamura said. “Please give him one copy of the cremation permit. The person from the funeral parlor will take care of the rest. While he was still alive, your father talked to the funeral director and decided on all the arrangements. He also put enough money aside to cover it, so you don’t need to do anything. Unless you have an objection.”

“No, no objection,” Tengo said.

His father had left hardly any belongings behind. Old clothes, a few books—that was all.

“Would you like something as a keepsake? All there is, though, is an alarm clock radio, an old self-winding watch, and reading glasses,” Nurse Tamura said.

“I don’t want anything,” Tengo told her. “Just dispose of it any way you like.”

At precisely two thirty the funeral director arrived, dressed in a black suit. He moved silently. A thin man, in his early fifties, he had long fingers, large eyes, and a single dry, black wart next to his nose. He seemed to have spent a great deal of time outdoors, because his face was suntanned all over, down to the tips of his ears. Tengo wasn’t sure why, but he had never seen a fat funeral director. The man explained the main procedures for the funeral. He was very polite and spoke slowly, deliberately, as if indicating that they could take all the time they needed.

“While your father was alive, he said he wanted as simple a funeral as possible. He wanted a simple, functional casket, and he wanted to be cremated as is. He did not want any ceremony, no scriptures read, no posthumous Buddhist name, or flowers, or a eulogy. And he didn’t want a grave. He instructed me to have his ashes simply put in a suitable communal facility. That is, if there are no objections …”

He paused and looked entreatingly at Tengo with his large eyes.

“If that is what my father wanted, then I have no objection,” Tengo said, looking straight back at those eyes.

The funeral director nodded, and cast his eyes down. “Today would be the wake, and for one night we will have the body lie in state in our funeral home. So we will need to transport the body to our place. The cremation will take place tomorrow at one thirty in the afternoon in a crematorium nearby. I hope this is satisfactory?”

“I have no objection.”

“Will you be attending the cremation?”

“I will,” Tengo said.

“There are some who do not like to attend, and it is entirely up to you.”

“I will be there,” Tengo said.

“Very good,” the man said, sounding a little relieved. “I’m sorry to bother you with this now, but this is the same amount I showed your father while he was still alive. I would appreciate it if you would approve it.”

The funeral director, his long fingers like insect legs, extracted a statement from a folder and passed it to Tengo. Tengo knew almost nothing about funerals, but he could see this was quite inexpensive. He had no objection. He borrowed a ballpoint pen and signed the agreement.

The lawyer came just before three and he and the funeral director stood there chatting for a moment—a clipped conversation, one specialist to another. Tengo couldn’t really follow their conversation. The two of them seemed to know each other. This was a small town. Probably everybody knew everybody else.

Near the morgue was an inconspicuous back door, and the funeral parlor’s small van was parked just outside. Except for the driver’s window, all the windows were tinted black, and the jet-black van was devoid of any sign or markings. The thin funeral director and his white-haired assistant moved Tengo’s father onto a rolling gurney and pushed it toward the van. The van had been refitted to have an especially high ceiling and rails onto which they slid the body. They shut the back doors of the van with an earnest thud, the funeral director turned to Tengo and bowed, and the van pulled away. Tengo, the lawyer, Nurse Tamura, and Nurse Omura all faced the rear door of the black Toyota van and brought their hands together in prayer.