It took Aomame some time to comprehend what the dowager was telling her. She set her mind to work on the problem and put things in order.

“Is this a special group you are talking about?”

“Yes, indeed, a special group that shares a sick and narrow spirit.”

“A kind of cult, you mean?” Aomame asked.

The dowager nodded. “Yes, a particularly vicious and dangerous cult.”

Of course. It could only be a cult. People who do whatever they are ordered to do. People without individual character or powers of judgment. The same thing could have happened to me, Aomame thought, biting her lip.

Of course, people were not embroiled in rape in the Society of Witnesses. In her case at least, it never came to a sexual threat. The “brothers and sisters” around her were all mild-mannered, sincere people. They thought seriously about their faith, and they lived with reverence for their doctrines—to the point of staking their lives on them. But decent motives don’t always produce decent results. And the body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

Seeing Tsubasa reminded Aomame of herself at that age. My own will made it possible for me to escape back then. But when you’re as seriously wounded asthis girl, it may not be possible to bring yourself back. You might never be able to return your heart to its normal condition again. The thought sent a stab of pain through Aomame’s chest. What she had discovered in Tsubasa was herself as she might have been.

“I have to confess something to you,” the dowager said softly to Aomame. “I can tell you this now, but the fact is, though I knew it was a disrespectful thing to do, I ran a background check on you.”

The remark brought Aomame back to the present. She looked at the dowager.

“It was right after the first time I invited you to the house and we talked. I hope you’re not offended.”

“No, not at all,” Aomame said. “In your situation, it was a natural thing to do. The work we are engaged in is by no means ordinary.”

“Exactly. We are walking a very delicate, fine line. We have to be able to trust each other. No matter who the other person is, though, you can’t have trust if you don’t know what you need to know. So I had them look up everything about you. From the present all the way back into the past. I suppose I should say ‘almost everything,’ of course. No one can know everything about another person. Not even God, probably.”

“Or the devil,” Aomame said.

“Or the devil,” the dowager repeated with a faint smile. “I know that you carry cult-connected psychological scars from when you were a girl. Your parents were—and still are—ardent believers in the Society of Witnesses, and they have never forgiven you for abandoning the faith. That causes you pain even now.”

Aomame nodded silently.

“To give you my honest opinion,” the dowager went on, “the Society of Witnesses is not a proper religion. If you had been badly injured or come down with an illness that required surgery, you might have lost your life then and there. Any religion that would prohibit life-saving surgery simply because it goes against the literal word of the Bible can be nothing other than a cult. This is an abuse of dogma that crosses the line.”

Aomame nodded. The rejection of blood transfusion is the first thing pounded into the heads of Witness children. They are taught that it is far better to die and go to heaven with an immaculate body and soul than to receive a transfusion in violation of God’s teaching and go to hell. There is no room for compromise. It’s one road or the other: you go either to hell or to heaven. Children have no critical powers. They have no way of knowing whether such a doctrine is correct, either as an idea widely accepted by society or as a scientific concept. All they can do is believe what their parents teach them. If I had been caught in the position of needing a transfusion when I was little, I’m sure I would have followed my parents’ orders and chosen to reject the transfusionand die. Then I supposedly would have been transported to heaven or someplace who-knows-where.

“Is this cult you’re talking about well known?” Aomame asked.

“It’s called ‘Sakigake.’ I’m sure you’ve heard of it. At one point it was being mentioned in the paper almost every day.”

Aomame could not recall having heard the name ‘Sakigake,’ but rather than say so, she nodded vaguely to the dowager. She felt she had better just leave it at that, aware that she was no longer living in 1984 but in the changed world of 1Q84. That was still just a hypothesis, but one that was steadily increasing in reality with each passing day. There seemed to be a great deal of information in this new world of which she knew nothing. She would have to pay closer attention.

The dowager went on, “Sakigake originally started out as a small agricultural commune run by a core new-left group who had fled from the city, but it suddenly changed direction at one point and turned into a religion. How and why this came about is not well understood.”

The dowager paused for breath and then continued speaking.

“Very few people know this, but the group has a guru they call ‘Leader.’ They view him as having special powers, which he supposedly uses to cure serious illnesses, to predict the future, to bring about paranormal phenomena, and such. They’re all elaborate ruses, I’m sure, but they are another reason that many people are drawn to him.”

“Paranormal phenomena?”

The dowager’s beautifully shaped eyebrows drew together. “I don’t have any concrete information on what that is supposed to mean. I’ve never had the slightest interest in matters of the occult. People have been repeating the same kinds of fraud throughout the world since the beginning of time, using the same old tricks, and still these despicable fakes continue to thrive. That is because most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth. Their eyes may be wide open, but they don’t see a thing. Tricking them is as easy as twisting a baby’s arm.”

“Sakigake.” Aomame tried out the word. What did it mean, anyway? Forerunner? Precursor? Pioneer? It sounded more like the kind of name that would be attached to a Japanese super-express train than to a religion.

Tsubasa lowered her eyes momentarily when she heard the word “Sakigake,” as though reacting to a special sound concealed within it. When she raised her eyes again, her face was as expressionless as before, as if a small eddy had suddenly begun to swirl inside her and had immediately quieted down.

“Sakigake’s guru is the one who raped Tsubasa,” the dowager said. “He took her by force on the pretext of granting her a spiritual awakening. The parents were informed that the ritual had to be completed before the girl experienced her first period. Only such an undefiled girl could be granted a pure spiritual awakening. The excruciating pain caused by the ritual would be an ordeal she would have to undergo in order to ascend to a higher spiritual level. The parents took him at his word with complete faith. It is truly astounding how stupid people can be. Nor is Tsubasa’s the only such case. According to our intelligence, the same thing has been done to other girls in the cult. The guru is a degenerate with perverted sexual tastes. There can be no doubt. The organization and the doctrines are nothing but a convenient guise for masking his individual desires.”

“Does this ‘guru’ have a name?”

“Unfortunately, we haven’t learned that yet. He’s just called ‘Leader.’ We don’t know what sort of person he is, what he looks like, or anything about his background. No matter how much we dig, the information is not forthcoming. It has been totally blocked. He stays shut up in cult headquarters in the mountains of Yamanashi, and almost never appears in public. Even inside the cult, the number of individuals allowed to see him is highly restricted. He is said to be always in the dark, meditating.”