Sitting on the train seat, Tengo closed his eyes and tried to reach some kind of conclusion as to how he should deal with the situation. But no conclusion was forthcoming. No one split with confusion could possibly produce a reasonable conclusion.

“Does Azami take down exactly what you say?” Tengo asked.

“Exactly what I tell her.”

“You speak, and she writes it down.”

“But I have to speak softly”

“Why do you have to speak softly?”

Fuka-Eri looked around the car. It was almost empty. The only other passengers were a mother and her two small children on the opposite seat a short distance away from Tengo and Fuka-Eri. The three of them appeared to be headed for someplace fun. There existed such happy people in the world.

“So they won’t hear me,” Fuka-Eri said quietly.

“ ‘They’?” Tengo asked. Looking at Fuka-Eri’s unfocused eyes, it was clear that she was not talking about the mother and children. She was referring to particular people that she knew well and that Tengo did not know at all. “Who are ‘they’?” Tengo, too, had lowered his voice.

Fuka-Eri said nothing, but a small wrinkle appeared between her brows. Her lips were clamped shut.

“Are ‘they’ the Little People?” Tengo asked.

Still no answer.

“Are ‘they’ somebody who might get mad at you if your story got into print and was released to the public and people started talking about them?”

Fuka-Eri did not answer this question, either. Her eyes were still not focused on any one point. He waited until he was quite sure there would be no answer, and then he asked another question.

“Can you tell me about your ‘Professor’? What’s he like?”

Fuka-Eri gave him a puzzled look, as if to say, What is this person talking about? Then she said, “You will meet the Professor.”

“Yes, of course,” Tengo said. “You’re absolutely right. I’m going to meet him in any case. I should just meet him and decide for myself.”

At Kokubunji Station, a group of elderly people dressed in hiking gear got on. There were ten of them altogether, five men and five women in their late sixties and early seventies. They carried backpacks and wore hats and were chattering away like schoolchildren. All carried water bottles, some strapped to their waists, others tucked in the pockets of their backpacks. Tengo wondered if he could possibly reach that age with such a sense of enjoyment. Then he shook his head. No way. He imagined these old folks standing proudly on some mountaintop, drinking from their water bottles.

In spite of their small size, the Little People drank prodigious amounts of water. They preferred to drink rainwater or water from the nearby stream, rather than tap water. And so the girl would scoop water from the stream during daylight hours and give it to the Little People to drink. Whenever it rained, she would collect water in a bucket because the Little People preferred rainwater to water gathered from the stream. They were therefore grateful for the girl’s kindness.

Tengo noticed he was having trouble staying focused on any one thought. This was not a good sign. He felt an internal confusion starting. An ominous sandstorm was developing somewhere on the plane of his emotions. This often happened on Sundays.

“Is something wrong,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark. She seemed able to sense the tension that Tengo was feeling.

“I wonder if I can do it.”

“Do what.”

“If I can say what I need to say.”

“Say what you need to say,” Fuka-Eri asked. She seemed to be having trouble understanding what he meant.

“To the Professor.”

“Say what you need to say to the Professor,” she repeated.

After some hesitation, Tengo confessed. “I keep thinking that things are not going to go smoothly, that everything is going to fall apart,” he said.

Fuka-Eri turned in her seat until she was looking directly at Tengo. “Afraid,” she asked.

“What am I afraid of?” Tengo rephrased her question.

She nodded silently.

“Maybe I’m just afraid of meeting new people. Especially on a Sunday morning.”

“Why Sunday,” Fuka-Eri asked.

Tengo’s armpits started sweating. He felt a suffocating tightness in the chest. Meeting new people and having new things thrust upon him. And having his present existence threatened by them.

“Why Sunday,” Fuka-Eri asked again.

Tengo recalled his boyhood Sundays. After they had walked all day, his father would take him to the restaurant across from the station and tell him to order anything he liked. It was a kind of reward for him, and virtually the only time the frugal pair would eat out. His father would even order a beer (though he almost never drank). Despite the offer, Tengo never felt the slightest bit hungry on these occasions. Ordinarily, he was hungry all the time, but he never enjoyed anything he ate on Sunday. To eat every mouthful of what he had ordered—which he was absolutely required to do—was nothing but torture for him. Sometimes he even came close to vomiting. This was what Sunday meant for Tengo as a boy.

Fuka-Eri looked into Tengo’s eyes in search of something. Then she reached out and took his hand. This startled him, but he tried not to let it show on his face.

Fuka-Eri kept her gentle grip on Tengo’s hand until the train arrived in Kunitachi Station, near the end of the line. Her hand was unexpectedly hard and smooth, neither hot nor cold. It was maybe half the size of Tengo’s hand.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s not just another Sunday,” she said, as if stating a well-known fact.

Tengo thought this might have been the first time he heard her speak two sentences at once.

CHAPTER 9

Aomame

NEW SCENERY, NEW RULES

Aomame went to the ward library closest to home. At the reference desk, she requested the compact edition of the newspaper for the three-month period from September to November, 1981. The clerk pointed out that they had such editions for four newspapers—the Asahi, the Yomiuri, the Mainichi, and the Nikkei—and asked which she preferred. The bespectacled middle-aged woman seemed less a regular librarian than a housewife doing part-time work. She was not especially fat, but her wrists were puffy, almost ham-like.

Aomame said she didn’t care which newspaper they gave her to read: they were all pretty much the same.

“That may be true, but I really need you to decide which you would like,” the woman said in a flat voice meant to repel any further argument. Aomame had no intention of arguing, so she chose the Mainichi, for no special reason. Sitting in a cubicle, she opened her notebook and, ballpoint pen in hand, started scanning one article after another.

No especially major events had occurred in the early autumn of 1981. Charles and Diana had married that July, and the aftereffects were still in evidence—reports on where they went, what they did, what she wore, what her accessories were like. Aomame of course knew about the wedding, but she had no particular interest in it, and she could not figure out why people were so deeply concerned about the fate of an English prince and princess. Charles looked less like a prince than a high school physics teacher with stomach trouble.

In Poland, Lech Walesa’s “Solidarity” movement was deepening its confrontation with the government, and the Soviet government was expressing its “concern.” More directly, the Soviets were threatening to send in tanks, just as they had prior to the 1968 “Prague Spring,” if the Polish government failed to bring things under control. Aomame generally remembered these events as well. She knew that the Soviet government eventually gave up any thought of interfering in the situation, so there was no need for her to read these articles closely. One thing did catch her attention, though. When President Reagan issued a declaration meant to discourage the Soviets from intervening in Polish internal affairs, he was quoted as saying, “We hope that the tense situation in Poland will not interfere with joint U.S.-Soviet plans to construct a moon base.” Construct a moon base? She had never heard of such a plan. Come to think of it, though, there had been some mention of that on the TV news the other day—that night when she had sex with the balding, middle-aged man from Kansai in the Akasaka hotel.