“Another case of a violent husband?”

“Not at all,” the dowager said drily. “She’s only ten years old.”

The dowager and Aomame cut through the garden and, unlocking a small gate, entered the adjoining yard. The safe house was a small, wood-frame apartment building. It had been used in the old days as a residence for some of the many servants who had worked for the dowager’s family. A two-story structure, the house itself had a certain old-fashioned charm, but it was too age worn to rent out. As a temporary refuge for women who had nowhere else to go, however, it was perfectly adequate. An old oak tree spread out its branches as if to protect the building, and the front door contained a lovely panel of ornamental glass. There were ten apartments altogether, all full at times but nearly empty at other times. Usually five or six women lived there quietly. Lights shone in the windows of roughly half the rooms now. The place was oddly hushed except for the occasional sounds of small children’s voices. The building itself almost appeared to be holding its breath. It lacked the normal range of sounds associated with everyday life. Bun, the female German shepherd, was chained near the front gate. Whenever people approached, she would let out a low growl and then a few barks. The dog had been trained—how or by whom it was not clear—to bark fiercely whenever a man approached, though the person she trusted most was Tamaru.

The dog stopped barking as soon as the dowager drew near. She wagged her tail and snorted happily. The dowager bent down and patted her on the head a few times. Aomame scratched her behind the ears. The dog seemed to remember Aomame. She was a smart dog. For some reason, she liked to eat raw spinach. The dowager opened the front door with a key.

“One of the women here is looking after the girl,” the dowager said to Aomame. “I’ve asked her to live in the same apartment and try not to take her eyes off her. It’s still too soon to leave her alone.”

The women of the safe house looked after each other on a daily basis and were implicitly encouraged to tell each other stories of what they had been through, to share their pain. Those who had been there for a while would give the newcomers tips on how to live in the house, passing along necessities. The women would generally take turns doing the cooking and cleaning, but there were of course some who wanted only to keep to themselves and not talk about their experiences, and their desire for privacy and silence was respected. The majority of women, however, wanted to talk and interact with other women who had been through similar trials. Aside from prohibitions against drinking, smoking, and the presence of unauthorized individuals, the house had few restrictions.

The building had one phone and one television set, both of which were kept in the common room next to the front door. Here there was also an old living room set and a dining table. Most of the women apparently spent the better part of each day in this room. The television was rarely switched on, and even when it was, the volume was kept at a barely audible level. The women preferred to read books or newspapers, knit, or engage in hushed tête-à-têtes. Some spent the day drawing pictures. It was a strange space, its light dull and stagnant, as if in a transient place somewhere between the real world and the world after death. The light was always the same here, on sunny or cloudy days, in daytime or nighttime. Aomame always felt out of place in this room, like an insensitive intruder. It was like a club that demanded special qualifications for membership. The loneliness of these women was different in origin from the loneliness that Aomame felt.

The three women in the common room stood up when the dowager walked in. Aomame could see at a glance that they had profound respect for the dowager. The dowager urged them to be seated.

“Please don’t stop what you’re doing. We just wanted to have a little talk with Tsubasa.”

“Tsubasa is in her room,” said a woman whom Aomame judged to be probably around the same age as herself. She had long, straight hair.

“Saeko is with her. Tsubasa still can’t come down, it seems,” said a somewhat older woman.

“No, it will probably take a little more time,” the dowager said with a smile.

Each of the three women nodded silently. They knew very well what “take more time” meant.

Aomame and the dowager climbed the stairs and entered one of the apartments. The dowager told the small, rather unimposing woman inside that she needed some time with Tsubasa. Saeko, as the woman was called, gave her a wan smile and left them with ten-year-old Tsubasa, closing the door behind her as she headed downstairs. Aomame, the dowager, and Tsubasa took seats around a small table. The window was covered by a thick curtain.

“This lady is named Aomame,” the dowager said to the girl. “Don’t worry, she works with me.”

The girl glanced at Aomame and gave a barely perceptible nod.

“And this is Tsubasa,” the dowager said, completing the introductions. Then she asked the girl, “How long has it been, Tsubasa, since you came here?”

The girl shook her head—again almost imperceptibly—as if to say she didn’t know.

“Six weeks and three days,” the dowager said. “You may not be counting the days, but I am. Do you know why?”

Again the girl gave a slight shake of the head.

“Because time can be very important,” the dowager said. “Just counting it can have great significance.”

To Aomame, Tsubasa looked like any other ten-year-old girl. She was rather tall for her age, but she was thin and her chest had not begun to swell. She looked chronically malnourished. Her features were not bad, but the face gave only the blandest impression. Her eyes made Aomame think of frosted windows, so little did they reveal of what was inside. Her thin, dry lips gave an occasional nervous twitch as if they might be trying to form words, but no actual sound ever emerged from them.

From a paper bag she had brought with her, the dowager produced a box of chocolates with a Swiss mountain scene on the package. She spread its contents on the table: a dozen pretty pieces of varied shapes. She gave one to Tsubasa, one to Aomame, and put one in her own mouth. Aomame put hers in her mouth. After seeing what they had done, Tsubasa also put a piece of chocolate in her mouth. The three of them ate chocolate for a while, saying nothing.

“Do you remember things from when you were ten years old?” the dowager asked Aomame.

“Very well,” Aomame said. She had held the hand of a boy that year and vowed to love him for the rest of her life. A few months later, she had had her first period. A lot of things changed inside Aomame at that time. She left the faith and cut her ties with her parents.

“I do too,” the dowager said. “My father took us to Paris when I was ten, and we stayed there for a year. He was a foreign service officer. We lived in an old apartment house near the Luxembourg Gardens. The First World War was in its final months, and the train stations were full of wounded soldiers, some of them almost children, others old men. Paris is breathtakingly beautiful in all seasons of the year, but bloody images are all I have left from that time. There was terrible trench warfare going on at the front, and people who had lost arms and legs and eyes wandered the city streets like abandoned ghosts. All that caught my eye were the white of their bandages and the black of the armbands worn by mourning women. Horse carts hauled one new coffin after another to the cemeteries, and whenever a coffin went by, people would avert their eyes and clamp their mouths shut.”

The dowager reached across the table. After a moment of thought, the girl brought her hand out from her lap and laid it in the dowager’s hand. The dowager held it tight. Probably, when she was a girl passing horse carts stacked with coffins on the streets of Paris, her father or mother would grasp her hand like this and assure her that she had nothing to worry about, that she would be all right, that she was in a safe place and needn’t be afraid.