“I’m sure you’ve never seen this kind of butterfly,” the dowager said, glancing toward her own shoulder. Her voice betrayed a touch of pride. “Even down in Okinawa, you’d have trouble finding one of these. It gets its nourishment from only one type of flower—a special flower that only grows in the mountains of Okinawa. You have to bring the flower here and grow it first if you want to keep this butterfly in Tokyo. It’s a lot of trouble. Not to mention the expense.”

“It seems to be very comfortable with you.”

“This little person thinks of me as a friend.”

“Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?”

“It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite naturally.”

“Do you give them names?” Aomame asked, curious. “Like dogs or cats?”

The dowager gave her head a little shake. “No, I don’t give them names, but I can tell one from another by their shapes and patterns. And besides, there wouldn’t be much point in giving them names: they die so quickly. These people are your nameless friends for just a little while. I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them. When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear. I’m sure it means they’ve died, but I can never find their bodies. They don’t leave any trace behind. It’s as if they’ve been absorbed by the air. They’re dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps to some other world.”

The hothouse air was warm and humid and thick with the smell of plants. Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end. Whenever she came in here, Aomame felt as if she had lost all sense of time.

Tamaru came back with a silver tray bearing a beautiful celadon teapot and two matching cups, cloth napkins, and a small dish of cookies. The aroma of herbal tea mingled with the fragrance of the surrounding flowers.

“Thank you, Tamaru. I’ll take over from here,” the dowager said.

Tamaru set the tray on the nearby table, gave the dowager a bow, and moved silently away, opening and closing the hothouse door, exiting with the same light steps as before. The woman lifted the teapot lid, inhaling the fragrance inside and checking the degree of openness of the leaves. Then she slowly filled their two cups, taking great care to ensure the equality of their strength.

“It’s none of my business, but why don’t you put a screen door on the entrance?” Aomame asked.

The dowager raised her head and looked at Aomame. “Screen door?”

“Yes, if you were to add a screen door inside the glass one, you wouldn’t have to be so careful every time to make sure no butterflies escaped.”

The dowager lifted her saucer with her left hand and, with her right hand, brought her cup to her mouth for a quiet sip of herbal tea. She savored its fragrance and gave a little nod. She returned the cup to the saucer and the saucer to the tray. After dabbing at her mouth with her napkin, she returned the cloth to her lap. At the very least, she took three times as long to accomplish these motions as the ordinary person. Aomame felt she was observing a fairy deep in the forest sipping a life-giving morning dew.

The woman lightly cleared her throat. “I don’t like screens,” she said.

Aomame waited for the dowager to continue, but she did not. Was her dislike of screens based on a general opposition to things that restricted freedom, or on aesthetic considerations, or on a mere visceral preference that had no special reason behind it? Not that it was an especially important problem. Aomame’s question about screens had simply popped into her head.

Like the dowager, Aomame picked up her cup and saucer together and silently sipped her tea. She was not that fond of herbal tea. She preferred coffee as hot and strong as a devil at midnight, but perhaps that was not a drink suited to a hothouse in the afternoon. And so she always ordered the same drink as the mistress of the house when they were in the hothouse. When offered a cookie, she ate one. A gingersnap. Just baked, it had the taste of fresh ginger. Aomame recalled that the dowager had spent some time after the war in England. The dowager also took a cookie and nibbled it in tiny bits, slowly and quietly so as not to wake the rare butterfly sleeping on her shoulder.

“Tamaru will give you the key when you leave,” the woman said. “Please mail it back when you’re through with it. As always.”

“Of course.”

A tranquil moment of silence followed. No sounds reached the sealed hothouse from the outside world. The butterfly went on sleeping.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” the woman said, looking straight at Aomame.

Aomame lightly set her teeth against her lower lip and nodded. “I know.”

“Look at what’s in that envelope,” the woman said.

From an envelope lying on the table Aomame took seven Polaroid photographs and set them in a row, like unlucky tarot cards, beside the fine celadon teapot. They were close-up shots of a young woman’s body: her back, breasts, buttocks, thighs, even the soles of her feet. Only her face was missing. Each body part bore marks of violence in the form of lurid welts, raised, almost certainly, by a belt. Her pubic hair had been shaved, the skin marked with what looked like cigarette burns. Aomame found herself scowling. She had seen photos like this in the past, but none as bad.

“You haven’t seen these before, have you?”

Aomame shook her head in silence. “I had heard, but this is the first I’ve seen of them.”

“Our man did this,” the dowager said. “We’ve taken care of her three fractures, but one ear is exhibiting symptoms of hearing loss and may never be the same again.” She spoke as quietly as ever, but her voice took on a cold, hard edge that seemed to startle the butterfly on her shoulder. It spread its wings and fluttered away.

She continued, “We can’t let anyone get away with doing something like this. We simply can’t.”

Aomame gathered the photos and returned them to the envelope.

“Don’t you agree?” the dowager asked.

“I certainly do,” said Aomame.

“We did the right thing,” the dowager declared.

She left her chair and, perhaps to calm herself, picked up the watering can by her side as if taking in hand a sophisticated weapon. She was somewhat pale now, her eyes sharply focused on a corner of the hothouse. Aomame followed her gaze but saw nothing more unusual than a potted thistle.

“Thank you for coming to see me,” the dowager said, still holding the empty watering can. “I appreciate your efforts.” This seemed to signal the end of their interview.

Aomame stood and picked up her bag. “Thank you for the tea.”

“And let me thank you again,” the dowager said.

Aomame gave her a faint smile.

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” the dowager said. Her voice had regained its gentle tone. A warm glow shone in her eyes. She touched Aomame’s arm. “We did the right thing, I’m telling you.”

Aomame nodded. The woman always ended their conversations this way. Perhaps she was saying the same thing to herself repeatedly, like a prayer or mantra. “You don’t have anything to worry about. We did the right thing, I’m telling you.”

After checking to be sure there were no butterflies nearby, Aomame opened the hothouse door just enough to squeeze through, and closed it again. The dowager stayed inside, the watering can in her hand. The air outside was chilling and fresh with the smell of trees and grass. This was the real world. Here time flowed in the normal manner. Aomame inhaled the real world’s air deep into her lungs.