“Tomorrow afternoon at one,” Tengo said. “When that’s done, I’ll probably go straight back to Tokyo. I have to go back to work.”

“Will anyone else be at the cremation besides you, Tengo?”

“No, no one else. Just me.”

“Do you mind if I join you?” Kumi asked.

“At my father’s cremation?” Tengo asked, surprised.

“Yes. Actually I was pretty fond of him.”

Tengo involuntarily put his chopsticks down and looked at her. Was she really talking about his father? “What did you like about him?” he asked her.

“He was very conscientious, never said more than he needed to,” she said. “In that sense he was like my father, who passed away.”

“Huh,” Tengo said.

“My father was a fisherman. He died before he reached fifty.”

“Did he die at sea?”

“No, he died of lung cancer. He smoked too much. I don’t know why, but fishermen are all heavy smokers. It’s like smoke is rising out of their whole body.”

Tengo thought about this. “It might have been better if my father had been a fisherman too.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’m not really sure,” Tengo replied. “The thought just occurred to me—that it would have been better for him than being an NHK fee collector.”

“If your father had been a fisherman, would it have been easier for you to accept him?”

“It would have made many things simpler, I suppose.”

Tengo pictured himself as a child, early in the morning on a day when he didn’t have school, heading off on a fishing boat with his father. The stiff Pacific wind, the salt spray hitting his face. The monotonous drone of the diesel engine. The stuffy smell of the fishing nets. Hard, dangerous work. One mistake and you could lose your life. But compared with being dragged all over Ichikawa to collect subscription fees, it would have to be a more natural, fulfilling life.

“But collecting NHK fees couldn’t have been easy work, could it?” Nurse Omura said as she ate her soy-flavored fish.

“Probably not,” Tengo said. At least he knew it wasn’t the kind of job he could handle.

“Your father was really good at his job, wasn’t he?” Kumi asked.

“I think he was, yes,” Tengo said.

“He showed me his award certificates,” Kumi said.

“Ah! Darn,” Nurse Omura said, suddenly putting down her chopsticks. “I totally forgot. Darn it! How could I forget something so important? Could you wait here for a minute? I have something I have to give you, and it has to be today.”

Nurse Omura wiped her mouth with a napkin, stood up, and hurried out of the cafeteria, her meal half eaten.

“I wonder what’s so important?” Kumi said, tilting her head.

Tengo had no idea.

As he waited for Nurse Omura’s return, he dutifully worked his way through his salad. There weren’t many others eating dinner in the cafeteria. At one table there were three old men, none of them speaking. At another table a man in a white coat, with a sprinkling of gray hair, sat alone, reading the evening paper as he ate, a solemn look on his face.

Nurse Omura finally trotted back. She was holding a department-store shopping bag. She took out some neatly folded clothes.

“I got this from Mr. Kawana about a year or so ago, while he was still conscious,” the large nurse said. “He said when he was put in the casket he would like to be dressed in this. So I sent it to the cleaners and had them store it in mothballs.”

There was no mistaking the NHK fee collector’s uniform. The matching trousers had been nicely ironed. The smell of mothballs hit Tengo. For a while he was speechless.

“Mr. Kawana told me he would like to be cremated wearing this uniform,” Nurse Omura said. She refolded the uniform neatly and put it back in the shopping bag. “So I’m giving it to you now. Tomorrow, give this to the funeral home people and make sure they dress him in it.”

“Isn’t it a problem to have him wear this? The uniform was just on loan to him, and when he retired it should have been returned to NHK,” Tengo said, weakly.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Kumi said. “If we don’t say anything, who’s going to know? NHK isn’t going to be in a tight spot over a set of old clothes.”

Nurse Omura agreed. “Mr. Kawana walked all over the place, from morning to night, for over thirty years for NHK. I’m sure it wasn’t always pleasant. Who cares about one uniform? It’s not like you’re using it to do something bad or anything.”

“You’re right. I still have my school uniform from high school,” Kumi said.

“An NHK collector’s uniform and a high school uniform aren’t exactly the same thing,” Tengo interjected, but no one took up the point.

“Come to think of it, I have my old school uniform in the closet somewhere too,” Nurse Omura said.

“Are you telling me you put it on sometimes for your husband? Along with white bobby socks?” Kumi said teasingly.

“Hmm—now that’s a thought,” Nurse Omura said, her chin in her hands on the table, her expression serious. “Probably get him all hot and bothered.”

“Anyway …,” Kumi said. She turned to Tengo. “Mr. Kawana definitely wanted to be cremated in his NHK uniform. I think we should help him make his wish come true. Don’t you think so?”

Tengo took the bag containing the uniform and went back to the room. Kumi Adachi came with him and made up the bed. There were fresh sheets, with a still-starchy fragrance, a new blanket, a new bed cover, and a new pillow. Once all this was arranged, the bed his father had slept in looked totally transformed. Tengo randomly thought of Kumi’s thick, luxuriant pubic hair.

“Your father was in a coma for so long,” Kumi said as she smoothed out the wrinkles in the sheets, “but I don’t think he was completely unconscious.”

“Why do you say that?” Tengo asked.

“Well, he would sometimes send messages to somebody.”

Tengo was standing at the window gazing outside, but he spun around and looked at Kumi. “Messages?”

“He would tap on the bed frame. His hand would hang down from the bed and he would knock on the frame, like he was sending Morse code. Like this.”

Kumi lightly tapped the wooden bed frame with her fist.

“Don’t you think it sounds like a signal?”

“That’s not a signal.”

“Then what is it?”

“He’s knocking on a door,” Tengo said, his voice dry. “The front door of a house.”

“I guess that makes sense. It does sound like someone knocking on a door.” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “So are you saying that even after he lost consciousness he was still making his rounds to collect fees?”

“Probably,” Tengo said. “Somewhere inside his head.”

“It’s like that story of the dead soldier still clutching his trumpet,” Kumi said, impressed.

There was nothing to say to this, so Tengo stayed silent.

“Your father must have really liked his job. Going around collecting NHK subscription fees.”

“I don’t think it’s a question of liking or disliking it,” Tengo said.

“Then what?”

“It was the one thing he was best at.”

“Hmm. I see,” Kumi said. She pondered this. “But that might very well be the best way to live your life.”

“Maybe so,” Tengo said as he looked out at the pine windbreak. It might really be so.

“What’s the one thing you can do best?”

“I don’t know,” Tengo said, looking straight at her. “I honestly have no idea.”

CHAPTER 22

Ushikawa

THOSE EYES LOOKED RATHER FULL OF PITY

Tengo showed up at the entrance to the apartment building on Sunday evening, at six fifteen. As soon as he stepped outside he halted and gazed around, as if looking for something. First to the right, then the left. Then from left to right. He looked up at the sky, then down at his feet. But nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, as far as he was concerned.