Komatsu telephoned after nine o’clock that night. Once again, Tengo knew it was Komatsu before he lifted the receiver. He was in bed, reading. He let the phone ring three times, eased himself out of bed, and sat at the kitchen table to answer the call.

“Hey, Tengo,” Komatsu said. “Having a drink?”

“No, I’m sober.”

“You may want to take a drink after this call,” Komatsu said.

“Must be about something enjoyable.”

“I wonder. I don’t think it’s all that enjoyable. It might have a certain amount of paradoxical humor about it, though.”

“Like a Chekhov short story.”

“Exactly,” Komatsu said. “ ‘Like a Chekhov short story.’ Well said! Your expressions are always concise and to the point, Tengo.”

Tengo remained silent. Komatsu went on.

“Things have taken a somewhat problematic turn. The police have responded to Professor Ebisuno’s search request by formally initiating a search for Fuka-Eri. I don’t think they’ll go so far as to actually mount a full-scale search, though, especially since there’s been no ransom demand or anything. They’ll probably just go through the motions so it won’t be too embarrassing for them if something really does come up. Otherwise, it’ll look as if they stood by with their arms folded. The media are not going to let it go so easily, though. I’ve already gotten several inquiries from the papers. I pretended to know nothing, of course. I mean, there’s nothing to say at this point. By now they’ve probably uncovered the relationship between Fuka-Eri and Professor Ebisuno, as well as her parents’ background as revolutionaries. Lots of facts like that are going to start coming out. The problem is with the weekly magazines. Their freelancers or journalists or whatever you call them will start circling like sharks smelling blood. They’re all good at what they do, and once they latch on, they don’t let go. Their livelihood depends on it, after all. They can’t afford to have little things like good taste or people’s privacy stand in their way. They may be ‘writers’ like you, Tengo, but they’re a different breed, they don’t live in your literary ivory tower.”

“So I’d better be careful too, I suppose.”

“Absolutely. Get ready to protect yourself. There’s no telling what they’ll sniff out.”

Tengo imagined a small boat surrounded by sharks, but only as a single cartoon frame without a clever twist. “You have to find something the Little People don’t have,” Fuka-Eri had said. What kind of “something” could that possibly be?

Tengo said to Komatsu, “But isn’t this working out the way Professor Ebisuno planned it from the beginning?”

“Well, maybe so,” Komatsu said. “Maybe it’ll turn out that he was just discreetly using us. But to some extent we knew what he was up to right from the start. He wasn’t hiding his plan from us. In that sense, it was a fair transaction. We could have said, ‘Sorry, Professor, too dangerous, we can’t get involved.’ That’s what any normal editor would have done. But as you know, Tengo, I’m no normal editor. Besides, things were already moving forward by then, and there was a little greed at work on my part, too. Maybe that’s why I had let my defenses down somewhat.”

There was silence on the telephone—a short but dense silence.

Tengo spoke first. “In other words, your plan was more or less hijacked by Professor Ebisuno.”

“I suppose you could say that. Ultimately, his agenda trumped mine.”

Tengo said, “Do you think Professor Ebisuno will be able to make things work his way?”

“Well, he certainly thinks he can. He knows how to read a situation, and he has plenty of self-confidence. It just might go his way. But if this new commotion exceeds even Professor Ebisuno’s expectations, he might not be able to control the outcome. There’s a limit to what one person can do, even the most outstanding individual. So you’d better tighten your seat belt!”

“Not even the tightest seat belt is going to do you any good if your plane crashes.”

“No, but at least it makes you feel a little better.”

Tengo couldn’t help smiling—if somewhat feebly. “Is that the point of this call—the thing that might not be all that enjoyable but might have a certain amount of paradoxical humor about it?”

“To tell you the truth, I am feeling sorry I got you involved in this,” Komatsu said in an expressionless voice.

“Don’t worry about me. I don’t have a thing to lose—no family, no social position, no future to speak of. What I’m worried about is Fuka-Eri. She’s just a seventeen-year-old girl.”

“That concerns me, too, of course. There’s no way it couldn’t. But we can rack our brains here and it won’t change anything for her. For now, let’s just think about how we’re going to tie ourselves down somewhere so this storm doesn’t blow us away. We’d better keep a close eye on the papers.”

“I’ve been making sure I check the papers every day.”

“Good,” Komatsu said. “Which reminds me, do you have any idea at all where Fuka-Eri might be? Nothing comes to mind?”

“Not a thing,” Tengo said. He was not a good liar. And Komatsu was strangely sensitive about such things. But he did not seem to notice the slight quaver in Tengo’s voice. His head was probably too full of himself at that point.

“I’ll get in touch with you if anything else comes up,” Komatsu said, terminating the call.

The first thing Tengo did after hanging up was pour an inch of bourbon into a glass. Komatsu had been right: he needed a drink.

On Friday Tengo’s girlfriend came for her regular visit. The rain had stopped, but every inch of the sky was covered in gray cloud. They had a light meal and got into bed. Even during sex, Tengo went on thinking one fragmentary thought after another, but this did nothing to dull his physical pleasure. As always, she skillfully drew a week’s worth of desire out of Tengo and took care of it with great efficiency. She experienced full satisfaction, too, like a talented accountant who finds deep pleasure in the complex manipulation of figures in a ledger. Still, she seemed to notice that something else was on Tengo’s mind.

“Hmm, your whiskey level seems to be going down,” she said. Her left hand rested on Tengo’s thick chest, enjoying the aftertaste of sex. Her third finger bore a smallish but sparkling diamond wedding ring. She was referring to the bottle of Wild Turkey that had been sitting on the shelf for months. Like most older women in sexual relationships with younger men, she was quick to note even tiny changes in his surroundings.

“I’ve been waking up a lot at night,” Tengo said.

“You’re not in love, are you?”

Tengo shook his head. “No, I’m not in love.”

“Your writing’s not going well, then?”

“No, it’s moving along—where to, I’m not sure.”

“But still, something’s bothering you.”

“I wonder. I just can’t sleep very well. That rarely happens to me. I’ve always been a sound sleeper.”

“Poor Tengo!” she said, caressing his testicles with the palm of the ringless hand. “Are you having nightmares?”

“I almost never dream,” Tengo said, which was true.

“I dream a lot. Some dreams I have over and over—so much so that I realize in the dream, ‘Hey, I’ve had this one before.’ Strange, huh?”

“What kind of dreams do you have? Tell me one.”

“Well, there’s my dream of a cottage in a forest.”

“A cottage in a forest,” Tengo said. He thought about people in forests: the Gilyaks, the Little People, and Fuka-Eri. “What kind of cottage?”

“You really want to know? Don’t you find other people’s dreams boring?”

“No, not at all. Tell me, if you don’t mind,” Tengo said honestly.

“I’m walking alone in the forest—not the thick, ominous forest that Hansel and Gretel got lost in, but more of a brightish, lightweight sort of forest. It’s a nice, warm afternoon, and I’m walking along without a care in the world. So then, up ahead, I see this little house. It’s got a chimney and a little porch, and gingham-check curtains in the windows. It’s friendly looking. I knock on the door and say, ‘Hello.’ There’s no answer. I try knocking again a little harder and the door opens by itself. It wasn’t completely closed, you see. I walk in yelling, ‘Hello! Is anybody home? I’m coming in!’ ”