12

S hirakawa’s office.

Naked from the waist up, Shirakawa is lying on the floor, doing sit-ups on a yoga mat. His shirt and tie hang on the back of his chair, his glasses and watch are lined up on his desk. Shirakawa has a slender build, but he is thick in the chest, and his midsection has no excess flesh. His muscles are hard and well defined. He makes a very different impression when undressed. His breaths are deep but sharp as he quickly raises himself from the mat and twists his torso right and left. Fine beads of sweat on his chest and shoulders shine in the light of the fluorescent lamps. A Scarlatti cantata sung by Brian Asawa flows from the portable CD player on the desk. Its leisurely tempo feels mismatched to the strenuousness of the exercise, but Shirakawa is subtly controlling his movements in time with the music. This all seems to be part of a daily routine whereby he prepares for his trip home after a night’s work by performing a lonely series of exercises on the office floor while listening to classical music. His movements are systematic and confident.

After a set number of deep knee bends, he rolls up the yoga mat and stores it in a locker. He takes a small white towel and a vinyl shaving kit from a shelf and brings them to the lavatory. Still naked from the waist up, he washes his face and dries it with the towel, which he then uses to wipe the sweat from his body. He performs each movement deliberately. He has left the lavatory door open and can hear the Scarlatti playing. He hums occasional passages of this music created in the seventeenth century. He takes a small bottle of deodorant from his shaving kit and gives each armpit a quick spray, then ducks his head to check for odor. He opens and closes his right hand several times and experiments with moving his fingers a few different ways. He checks the back of the hand for swelling. It is not bad enough to be noticeable, but he still feels a good deal of pain from it.

He takes a small brush from the bag and puts his hair in order. The hairline has retreated somewhat, but the well-shaped forehead gives no impression that anything has been lost. He puts his glasses on. He buttons his shirt and ties his tie. Pale gray shirt, dark blue paisley tie. Watching himself in the mirror, he straightens the collar and smooths the dimple below the knot.

Shirakawa inspects his face in the mirror. The muscles of his face remain immobile as he stares at himself long and hard with severe eyes. His hands rest on the sink. He holds his breath and never blinks, fully expecting that, if he were to stay like this long enough, some other thing might emerge. To objectify all the senses, to flatten the consciousness, to put a temporary freeze on logic, to bring the advance of time to a halt if only momentarily—this is what he is trying to do: to fuse his being with the scene behind him, to make everything look like a neutral still life.

Try as he might to suppress his own presence, that other thing never emerges. His image in the mirror remains just that: an image of himself in reality. A reflection of what is there. He gives up, takes a deep breath, filling his lungs with new air, and straightens his posture. Relaxing his muscles, he rolls his head in two big circles. Then he picks up his personal articles from the sink and places them in the vinyl bag again. He balls up the towel he used to dry his body and throws it in the wastebasket. He turns the light out as he exits the lavatory. The door closes.

Even after Shirakawa has left, our point of view remains in the lavatory, and, as a stationary camera, continues to capture the dark mirror. Shirakawa’s reflection is still there in the mirror. Shirakawa—or perhaps we should say his image—is looking in this direction from within the mirror. It does not move or change expression. It simply stares straight ahead. Eventually, however, as though giving up, it relaxes, takes a deep breath, and rolls its head. Then it brings its hand to its face and rubs its cheek a few times, as if checking for the touch of flesh.

 

A t his desk, thinking, Shirakawa twirls a silver-colored pencil between his fingers. It is the same pencil as the one on the floor of the room in which Eri Asai woke up, stamped with the name veritech. The point is dull. After playing with this pencil for a while, Shirakawa puts it down beside the pencil tray containing six identical pencils. These other pencils are sharpened to perfection.

He prepares to go home. He stuffs papers into a brown briefcase and puts on his suitcoat. He returns his shaving kit to his locker, picks up a large shopping bag that he had set down nearby, and carries it to his desk. He sits down and begins taking one item after another from the bag, examining each in turn. These are the pieces of clothing he stripped from the Chinese prostitute at Alphaville.

A thin cream-colored coat and red pumps. The shoe bottoms are worn out of shape. A deep pink, beaded crew-neck sweater, an embroidered white blouse, a tight blue miniskirt. Black pantyhose. Underthings of an intense pink with unmistakably synthetic lace trim. These pieces of clothing give an impression that is less sexual than sad. The blouse and the undergarments are stained with black blood. A cheap watch. Black fake-leather purse.

All the time he inspects the items from the bag, Shirakawa wears an expression as if to say, “How did these things get here?” His look is one of puzzlement, with a hint of displeasure. Of course he remembers perfectly well what he did in a room at the Alphaville. Even if he tried to forget, the pain in his right hand would keep reminding him. Still, nothing here strikes his eye as having any valid meaning. It’s all worthless garbage, stuff that has no business invading his life. He keeps the process going, however, impassively but carefully unearthing the shabby traces of the recent past.

He unfastens the clasp of the pocketbook and dumps its entire contents on his desk. Handkerchief, tissues, compact, lipstick, eyeliner, several smaller cosmetic items. Throat lozenges. Small jar of Vaseline, pack of condoms. Two tampons. Small tear-gas canister for use against perverts on the subway. (Fortunately for Shirakawa, she didn’t have time to take that out.) Cheap earrings. Band-Aids. Pill case containing several pills. Brown leather wallet. In the wallet are the three ten-thousand-yen bills he gave her at the beginning, a few thousand-yen bills, and some small change. Also a telephone card and a subway card. Beauty-salon discount coupon. Nothing that would reveal her identity. Shirakawa hesitates, then takes out his money and slips it into his pants pocket. Anyhow, it’s money I gave her. I’m just taking it back.

Also in the bag is a small flip phone. The prepaid type. Untraceable. The in-phone answering machine is set to receive. He turns it on and presses the playback button. A few messages play, but all are in Chinese. Same male voice each time. Each sounds like an angry outburst. The messages themselves are short. Shirakawa cannot understand them, of course, but he listens to them all before switching off the answering machine.

He finds a paper garbage bag and throws everything but the cell phone inside, crushes the bundle down, and ties the mouth of the bag. This he puts into a vinyl garbage bag, presses out the air, and ties the mouth of that bag. The cell phone stays on his desk, separate from the other things. He picks it up, looks at it, and sets it down again. He seems to be thinking about what to do with it. It might have some use, but he hasn’t reached a conclusion.

Shirakawa switches off the CD player, places it in the deep bottom drawer of his desk, and locks the drawer. After carefully cleaning the lenses of his eyeglasses with a handkerchief, he calls a cab, using the land line on his desk. He gives them his office address and name and asks them to pick him up at the service entrance in ten minutes. He takes his pale gray trench coat from the coat rack, puts it on, and stuffs the woman’s cell phone into the pocket. He picks up the briefcase and the garbage bag. Standing at the door, he surveys the office and, satisfied that there are no problems, turns off the light. Even after all the fluorescent lamps go out, the room is not completely dark. The light from street lamps and billboards filters in through the blinds, faintly illuminating the room’s interior. He closes the door and steps into the hallway. As he walks down the hall, hard footsteps resounding, he gives a long, deep yawn, as if to say, “So ends another day.”

He takes the elevator down, opens the service door, steps outside, and locks it. His breath makes thick white clouds as he stands there waiting. Soon a taxi arrives. The middle-aged driver opens his window and asks if he is Mr. Shirakawa. His eyes flick down to the vinyl garbage bag Shirakawa is holding.

“It’s not raw garbage,” says Shirakawa. “It doesn’t smell. And I’m going to throw it away near here.”

“That’s fine,” the driver says. “Please.” He opens the door.

Shirakawa gets into the cab.

The driver speaks to him in the rearview mirror. “If I’m not mistaken, sir, you’ve been in my cab before. I picked you up here just about this time. Let’s see…your home is in Ekoda?”

“Close. Tetsugakudo.”

“That’s it, Tetsugakudo. Would you like to go there today, too?”

“Sure. Like it or not, it’s the only home I’ve got.”

“It’s handy to have one place to go home to,” the driver says, and steps on the gas. “But working this late all the time must be rough.”

“It’s the recession. All that goes up are my overtime hours, not my pay.”

“Same with me,” the driver says. “The less I take in, the longer I have to work to make up the difference. But still, sir, I think you’ve got it better. At least the company pays your cab fare when you work overtime. I mean it.”

“Yeah, but if they’re going to make me work this late, they’re going to have to pay for my cabs. Otherwise, I couldn’t get home,” Shirakawa says with a sour smile.

Then he remembers. “Oh, I almost forgot. Can you go right at the next intersection and let me out at 7-Eleven? My wife wants me to do some shopping. It’ll just take a second.”

The driver says to the rearview mirror, “If we go right there, we’re gonna have to get onto some one-way streets and make a detour. There are lots of other convenience stores along the way. How about going to one of those?”

“That’s probably the only place that carries what she wants. And anyhow, I want to get rid of this garbage.”

“Fine with me. It might run the meter up a little extra, though. Just thought I’d ask.”

He turns right, goes partway down the block, and finds a place to park. Shirakawa gets out, holding the garbage bag, leaving his briefcase on the seat. The 7-Eleven has a mound of garbage bags out front. He adds his to the pile. Mixed in with a lot of identical garbage bags, his bag loses its distinctiveness instantaneously. It will be collected with all the others when the garbage truck arrives in the morning. Without raw garbage inside, it is not likely to be torn open by crows. He glances one last time at the pile of bags and enters the store.

There are no customers inside. The young man at the register is involved in an intense conversation on his cell phone. A new song by the Southern All Stars is playing. Shirakawa goes straight to the dairy case and grabs a carton of Takanashi low-fat. He checks the expiration date. Fine. Then he takes a large plastic container of yogurt. Finally it occurs to him to pull the Chinese woman’s cell phone from his coat pocket. He looks around to make sure no one is watching him and sets the phone down next to the boxes of cheese. The little silver telephone fits the spot strangely well. It looks as though it has always been sitting there. Having left Shirakawa’s hand, it is now part of the 7-Eleven.

He pays at the register and hurries back to the taxi.

“Did you find what you wanted?” the driver asks.

“Sure did,” Shirakawa answers.

“Good. Now we head straight for Tetsugakudo.”

“I might doze off, so wake me when we get close, okay?” Shirakawa says. “There’s a Showa Shell station along the way. I get off a little after that.”

“Yes, sir. Have a nice snooze.”

Shirakawa sets the vinyl bag with the milk and yogurt next to his briefcase, folds his arms, and closes his eyes. He probably won’t manage to sleep, but he is in no mood to make small talk with the driver all the way home. Eyes closed, he tries to think of something that will not grate on his nerves. Something mundane, without deep meaning. Or possibly something purely abstract. But nothing comes to mind. In the vacuum, all he feels is the dull ache in his right hand. It throbs along with the beating of his heart, and echoes in his ears like the roar of the ocean. Strange, he thinks: the ocean is nowhere near here.

Having run for a while, the taxi with Shirakawa in it stops at a red light. This is a big intersection with a long red light. Also waiting for the light next to the taxi is the black Honda motorcycle with the Chinese man. They are less than a meter apart, but the man on the cycle looks straight ahead, never noticing Shirakawa. Shirakawa is sunk deep in his seat with his eyes closed. He is listening to the imaginary roar of the ocean far away. The light turns green, and the motorcycle shoots straight ahead. The taxi accelerates gently so as not to wake Shirakawa. Turning left, it leaves the neighborhood.

13

M ari and Takahashi sit in their swings in the deserted nighttime park. Takahashi is looking at her in profile. His expression says, “I don’t understand.” This is the continuation of their earlier conversation.

“‘She doesn’t want to wake up?’”

Mari says nothing.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

Mari remains silent, looking at her feet, as if she cannot make up her mind. She is not ready for this conversation.

“Wanna walk a little?” Mari says.

“Sure, let’s walk. Walking is good for you. Walk slowly; drink lots of water.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s my motto for life. ‘Walk slowly; drink lots of water.’”

Mari looks at him. Weird motto. She does not comment on it, however, or ask him about it. She gets out of the swing and starts walking. He follows her. They leave the park and head for a bright area.

“Going back to the Skylark now?” Takahashi asks.

Mari shakes her head. “I guess just sitting and reading in family restaurants is starting to bother me.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Takahashi says.

“I’d like to go back to the Alphaville if I can.”

“I’ll walk you over there. It’s right near where we’re practicing.”

“Kaoru said I could go there any time I wanted, but I wonder if it’s going to be a bother for her.”

Takahashi shakes his head. “She’s got a foul mouth, but she means what she says. If she told you to come over anytime, then it’s okay to come over anytime. You can take her at her word.”

“Okay.”

“And besides, they’ve got nothing to do at this time of night. She’ll be glad to have you visit.”

“You’re going back to do more practicing?”

Takahashi looks at his watch. “This is probably the last all-nighter for me. I’m gonna give it my best shot.”

 

T hey return to the center of the neighborhood. Hardly anyone is walking along the street, given the time. Four in the morning: slack time in the city. All kinds of stuff is scattered on the street: aluminum beer cans, a trampled evening newspaper, a crushed cardboard box, plastic bottles, tobacco butts. Fragments of a car’s tail lamp. Some kind of discount coupon. Vomit, too. A big, dirty cat is sniffing at a garbage bag, intent on securing a share for the cats before the rats can mess things up or dawn brings the ferocious flocks of crows. Over half the neon lights are out, making the lights of an all-night convenience store that much more conspicuous. Advertising circulars have been stuffed under the windshield wipers of cars parked along the street. An unbroken roar of huge trucks reverberates from the nearby arterial. This is the best time for the truckers to cover long distances, when the streets are empty. Mari has her Red Sox cap pulled down low. Her hands are thrust into the pockets of her varsity jacket. There is a stark difference in their heights as the two walk side by side.

“Why are you wearing a Red Sox cap?” Takahashi asks.

“Somebody gave it to me,” she says.

“You’re not a Red Sox fan?”

“I don’t know a thing about baseball.”

“I’m not much interested in baseball, either,” he says. “I’m more of a soccer fan. So anyway, about your sister…we were talking before.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t quite get it, but you were saying that Eri Asai wasn’t going to wake up?”

Mari looks up at him and says, “Sorry, but I don’t want to talk about that while we’re walking along like this. It’s kind of a delicate subject.”

“I see.”

“Talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Anything. Talk about yourself.”

“About myself?”

“Yeah. Tell me about yourself.”

Takahashi thinks for a moment.

“I can’t think of any sunny topics offhand.”

“Okay, so tell me something dark.”

“My mother died when I was seven,” he says. “Breast cancer. They found it too late. She only lasted three months from when they found it till when she died. Just like that. It spread quickly; there was no time for a decent treatment. My father was in prison the whole time. Like I said before.”

Mari looks up at Takahashi again.

“Your mother died of breast cancer when you were seven and your father was in prison?”

“Exactly.”

“So you were all by yourself?”

“Right. He was arrested on fraud charges and got sentenced to two years. I think he was running a pyramid scheme or something. He couldn’t get a suspended sentence because the damages were big and he had an arrest record from the time he was in a student-movement organization. They had suspected him of being a fund-raiser for the organization, but he really had nothing to do with it. I remember my mother took me to visit him in prison once. It was freezing cold there. Six months after they locked him up, my mother’s cancer was discovered, and she was hospitalized immediately. So I became a temporary orphan. Father in jail, mother in hospital.”

“Who took care of you during that time?”

“I found out later my father’s family put the money together for the hospital and my living expenses. My father had been cut off from his family for years, but they couldn’t just leave a seven-year-old kid to fend for himself, so one of my aunts came to see me every other day, halfheartedly, and people in the neighborhood took turns looking after me—laundry, shopping, cooking. We lived in the old working-class area then, which was probably good for me. They still believe in ‘neighborhood’ over there. But for the most part, I think I was pretty much on my own. I’d make myself simple meals, get myself ready for school and stuff. My memories are pretty vague about that, though, like it all happened to somebody else, far away.”

“When did your father come back?”

“I think maybe about three months after my mother died. Under the circumstances, they approved an early parole for him. Obviously, I was thrilled when my father came home. I wasn’t an orphan anymore. Whatever else he might have been, he was a big, strong adult. I could relax now. He came back wearing an old tweed coat. I still remember the scratchy feeling of the material and the tobacco smell.”

Takahashi pulls his hand from his pocket and strokes the back of his neck several times.

“But even though I was with my father again, I never felt really secure deep down. I don’t know how to put it exactly, but things were never really settled inside me. I always had this feeling like, I don’t know, like somebody was putting something over on me, like my real father had disappeared forever and, to fill the gap, some other guy was sent to me in his shape. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“Sort of.”

Takahashi goes silent for a while before continuing his story.

“So anyway, this is how I felt back then: that my father should never have left me all alone like that, no matter what. He should never have made me an orphan in this world. No matter what the reason, he should never have gone to prison. Of course, at that age, I didn’t quite know what a prison even was . I mean, I was seven years old. But I sort of got the idea that it was like some huge closet—dark and scary and sinister. My father should never have gone to a place like that.”

Takahashi breaks off his story. Then he asks Mari, “Has your father ever gone to prison?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Your mother?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re lucky. You should be grateful that’s never been a part of your life.” Takahashi smiles. “I don’t suppose you know that.”

“Never thought about it.”

“Most people don’t. I do.”

Mari glances at Takahashi.

“So, your father never went to prison after that?”

“No, he never had any more problems with the law. Or maybe he did. Come to think of it, he must have. He just wasn’t the kind of guy who could walk the straight and narrow. But at least he never got involved in anything bad enough to send him back to prison. Once was probably enough for him. Or maybe, in his own way, he felt some degree of personal responsibility toward my dead mother and toward me. Anyhow, he became a respectable businessman—though it’s true he operated in a kind of gray zone. He had some extreme ups and downs—filthy rich sometimes, barely scraping by at other times. It was like riding a roller coaster every day. Once he had a Mercedes-Benz with a chauffeur; another time he couldn’t buy me a bicycle. We sneaked out of one house in the middle of the night. We never settled down in any one place, so I had to change schools every six months or so. Of course, I could never make any friends. It went on pretty much like this until I entered middle school.”

Takahashi shoves his hands into his coat pockets again and shakes his head as if trying to thrust dark memories aside.

“Now, though, he’s pretty much settled down. He’s got that baby-boomer toughness. Like Mick Jagger being called ‘Sir’ now—it’s that generation, just hangin’ in there. He doesn’t do a lot of soul searching, but he learns his lessons. I don’t know what kind of work he’s doing now. I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell. But he never misses a tuition payment. And sometimes, if the mood strikes him, he’ll give me a little spending money. Certain things it’s better not to know.”

“Your father remarried, you said?”

“Yeah, four years after my mother died. He’s not the shining-hero type who raises his kid all by himself.”

“And he didn’t have any kids with his new wife?”

“Nope, just me. Which is maybe why she raised me as if I was hers. I’m really grateful for that. So the problem is all mine.”

“What problem?”

Takahashi smiles and looks at Mari. “Well, finally, once you become an orphan, you’re an orphan till the day you die. I keep having the same dream. I’m seven years old and an orphan again. All alone, with no adults around to take care of me. It’s evening, and the light is fading, and night is pressing in. It’s always the same. In the dream I always go back to being seven years old. Software like that you can’t exchange once it’s contaminated.”

Mari keeps silent.

“I try not to think about this stuff most of the time,” Takahashi says. “It doesn’t do any good to dwell on it. You just have to live one day at a time.”

“Walk a lot; drink your water slowly.”

“That’s not it,” he says. “Walk slowly; drink lots of water.”

“One’s as good as the other, I’d say.”

Takahashi thinks this over seriously. “Hmm,” he says. “You may be right.”

This brings their conversation to an end. They walk on in silence. Puffing white breath, they climb the dark stairway and come out in front of the Hotel Alphaville. Its gaudy purple neon lights now seem fondly familiar to Mari.

Takahashi stops at the entrance and looks straight at Mari with an unusually somber expression.

“I have a confession to make,” he says.

“What?”

“I’m thinking exactly the same thing you are. But today’s no good. I’m not wearing clean underwear.”

Mari shakes her head in disgust. “No more pointless jokes, please. They tire me out.”

Takahashi laughs. “I’ll come get you at six. If you like, we can have breakfast together. I know a restaurant nearby that makes a good omelet—hot and fluffy. Oh, do you think there’s some problem with omelets as food? Like, genetic engineering or systematic cruelty to animals or political incorrectness?”

Mari thinks a moment. “I don’t know about the political part, but if there’s a problem with chickens, I suppose there must be a problem with eggs.”

“Oh, no,” Takahashi sighs, wrinkling his brow. “Everything I like seems to have a problem.”

“I like omelets, too, though.”

“Okay, then, let’s find a point of compromise,” Takahashi says. “I promise you—these are great omelets.”

He gives her a wave and heads off toward the practice space. Mari resettles her cap and enters the hotel.

14

E ri Asai’s room.

The TV is switched on. Eri, in pajamas, is looking out from inside the screen. A lock of hair falls over her forehead. She shakes her head to sweep it away. She presses her hands against her side of the glass and begins speaking in this direction. It is as though a person had wandered into an empty fish tank at an aquarium and was trying to explain the predicament to a visitor through the thick glass. Her voice, however, does not reach our side. It cannot vibrate the air over here.

Something about Eri suggests that her senses are still numbed, as though she is unable to use the full force of her limbs. This is probably because her sleep was so very deep and long. She is trying, nevertheless, to gain some understanding, however limited, of the inscrutable circumstances in which she finds herself. Disoriented and confused though she may be, she is exerting all her strength to comprehend the logic underlying this place—the basis of its existence. Her emotional state communicates itself through the glass.

Which is not to suggest that she is shouting at the top of her voice or making an impassioned appeal. She seems exhausted from having done precisely that. She knows all too well that her voice will not get through.

What she is trying to do now is to transform what her eyes grasp and her senses perceive into the simplest and most appropriate words she can find. And so the words themselves emerge directed half at us and half at herself. This is no simple task, of course. Her lips move only sluggishly and intermittently. It is as though she were speaking a foreign language: her sentences are all short, and irregular gaps form between her words. The gaps stretch out and dilute the meaning that ought to be there. We train our eyes intently upon her from our side of the glass, but we can not clearly distinguish between the words and the silences that Eri Asai is forming with her lips. Reality spills through her slim fingers like the sands of an hourglass. Thus time is by no means on her side.

Eventually she tires of directing her speech outward and closes her mouth in apparent resignation. A new silence comes to overlay the silence that is already there. With clenched fists, she begins knocking lightly on her side of the glass. She is willing to try anything, but the sound fails to reach this side.

It appears that Eri is able to see what is on this side of the TV’s glass. We can guess this from the movement of her eyes. They seem to be shifting from item to item in her room (the room on this side): the desk, the bed, the bookcase. This room is where she belongs. She should be sleeping peacefully in the bed over here. But now it is impossible for her to pass through the transparent glass wall and return to this side. Some kind of agency or intent transported her to that other room and sealed her in there as she slept. Her pupils have taken on a lonely hue, like gray clouds reflected in a calm lake.

Unfortunately (we should say), there is nothing we can do for Eri Asai. Redundant though it may sound, we are sheer point of view. We cannot influence things in any way.

But—we wonder—who was that Man with No Face? What could he have done to Eri Asai? And where has he gone off to now?

Suddenly, before any answer can be given, the TV screen begins to lose its stability. The signal shudders. Eri Asai begins to blur and quiver slightly around the edges. Aware that something is happening to her body, she turns away and scans her surroundings. She looks up at the ceiling, down at the floor, and finally at her wavering hands. She stares at them as their edges lose their clarity. Her face looks apprehensive. What could possibly be happening? The harsh crackling sound of static rises. A strong wind seems to have picked up again on a distant hilltop somewhere. The contact point in the circuit connecting the two worlds is being shaken violently, threatening to obliterate the clear outlines of her existence. The meaning of her physical self is eroding.

“Run!” we shout to her. On impulse we forget the rule that requires us to maintain our neutrality. Our voice doesn’t reach her, needless to say, but Eri perceives the danger on her own. She tries to escape. She heads away with rapid strides—probably toward a door. Her image disappears from the camera’s field of view. The TV picture suddenly loses its earlier clarity, distorts, and all but disintegrates. The light of the picture tube gradually fades. It shrinks to a small, square window, and finally is extinguished altogether. All information gives way to nothingness, all sense of place is withdrawn, all meaning is dismantled, and the two worlds are divided, leaving behind a silence lacking all sensation.

 

A different clock in a different place. A round electric clock hanging on the wall. The hands point to 4:31. This is the kitchen of the Shirakawa house. Collar button open, necktie loosened, Shirakawa sits alone at the breakfast table, eating plain yogurt with a spoon. He scoops it directly from the plastic container to his mouth.

He is watching the small TV they keep in the kitchen. The remote control sits next to the yogurt container. The screen is showing pictures of the sea bottom. Weird deep-sea creatures. Ugly ones, beautiful ones. Predators, prey. Miniature research submarine outfitted with high-tech equipment. Powerful floodlights, precision arm. The program is called Creatures of the Deep. The sound is muted. His face expressionless, Shirakawa follows the movements on the screen while conveying spoonfuls of yogurt to his mouth. His mind, however, is thinking about other things. He is considering aspects of the interrelationship of thought and action. Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action? His eyes follow the TV image, but he is actually looking at something deep inside the screen—something miles beyond the screen.

He glances at the clock on the wall. The hands point to 4:33. The second hand glides its way around the dial. The world moves on continuously, without interruption. Thought and action continue to operate in concert. At least for now.

15

C reatures of the Deep is still on the screen, but this is not the TV in the Shirakawa kitchen. The screen is far larger. The set is in a guest room at the Hotel Alphaville. Mari and Korogi are seated in front of it, watching with less than full attention. Each is in her own chair. Mari has her glasses on. Her varsity jacket and shoulder bag are on the floor. Korogi frowns as she watches Creatures of the Deep, but she soon loses interest and starts surfing channels with the remote control. None of the early-morning programming seems worth watching. She gives up and turns the set off.

“You must be tired,” Korogi says. “Better lay down and get some sleep. Kaoru’s having a nice nap in the back room.”

“I’m not that sleepy,” Mari says.

“Then how ’bout a nice hot cuppa tea?”

“If it’s no trouble.”

“Don’t worry, tea’s one thing we’ve got tons of.”

Korogi makes green tea for two using tea bags and a thermos bottle.

Mari asks, “What time do you work to?”

“Me and Komugi are a team: we work from ten to ten. Straighten up after the overnight guests leave, and that’s that. We do take naps now and then.”

“Have you been at this job long?”

“Going on a year and a half, maybe. You don’t usually stay at one place a long time in this line of work.”

Mari pauses a moment, then asks, “Do you…mind if I ask a kind of personal question?”

“Ask all you want,” Korogi says. “Might not be able to answer some things, though.”

“You’re not going to feel bad?”

“Nah, don’t worry.”

“You said you got rid of your real name?”

“That’s right. I did say that.”

“Why did you do that?”

Korogi lifts the tea bag from Mari’s cup, drops it into an ashtray, and sets the cup in front of her.

“’Cause it would’ve been dangerous for me to go on using it. For all kinds of reasons. Tell you the truth, I’m running away from…certain people.”

Korogi takes a sip of her own tea. “You probably don’t know this, but if you’re seriously trying to run away from something, one of the best jobs you can take is helper at a love hotel. You can make a lot more money as a maid in a traditional Japanese inn—get lots of tips—but you have to meet people and talk to them. Working in a love hotel, you don’t have to show your face to guests. You can work in secret, in the dark. They’ll usually give you a place to sleep, too. And they don’t ask you for CVs or guarantors ’n’ stuff. You tell ’em you can’t give ’em your real name, and they say, like, ‘Okay, why don’t we call you Cricket?’ ’Cause they’re always short of help. You got a lot of people with guilty consciences working in this world.”

“Is that why people don’t usually stay in one place for long?”

“That’s it. You hang around in one spot too long and they find you sooner or later. So you keep changing places. There’s love hotels everywhere, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, so you can always find work. I’m real comfortable here, though, and Kaoru’s really nice, so I stayed on.”

“Have you been running away a long time?”

“Hmm…going on three years now, maybe.”

“Always taking jobs like this?”

“Yep. Here ’n’ there.”

“I suppose whoever or whatever you’re running away from is pretty scary?”

“You bet. Really scary. But don’t ask me any more about that. I try not to talk about it.”

The two are quiet for a time. Mari drinks her tea while Korogi stares at the blank TV screen.

“What did you used to do?” Mari asks. “Before you started running, I mean.”

“Back then, I was just another girl with an office job. Graduated from high school, went to work for a big trading company, nine to five, in a uniform. I was your age…around the time of the Kobe earthquake. Seems like a dream now. And then…something…happened. A little something. I didn’t think too much about it at first. But then it dawned on me I was stuck: couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back. I left everything behind: my job, my parents…”

Mari looks at Korogi, saying nothing.

“Uh, sorry, but what was your name again?” Korogi asks.

“Mari.”

“Let me tell you something, Mari. The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you’ve had it: things’ll never be the same. All you can do is go on living alone down there in the darkness.”

Korogi stops to think again about what she has just said and, as if in self-criticism, gently shakes her head.

“Of course, it could be just my own weakness as a human being—that events dragged me along because I was too weak to stop them. I should have realized what was going on at some point and woken up and put my foot down, but I couldn’t. I don’t have the right to be preaching to you…”

“What happens if they find you—I mean the ones that are chasing you?”

“Hmm…what happens, huh?” Korogi says. “Don’t know, really. Rather not think about it too much.”

Mari keeps silent. Korogi plays with the buttons on the TV remote control, but she doesn’t turn the set on.

“When I finish work and get in bed, I always think: let me not wake up. Let me just go on sleeping. ’Cause then I wouldn’t have to think about anything. I do have dreams, though. It’s always the same dream. Somebody’s chasing me. I keep running and running until they finally catch me and take me away. Then they stuff me inside a refrigerator kind of thing and close the lid. That’s when I wake up, and everything I’ve got on is soaked with sweat. They’re chasing me when I’m awake, and they’re chasing me in my dreams when I’m asleep: I can never relax. The only time it lets up a little is here, when I’m enjoying small talk with Kaoru or Komugi over a cup of tea…You know, Mari, I’ve never told this to anyone before—not to Kaoru, not to Komugi.”

“You mean that you’re running away from something?”

“Uh-huh. I think they kinda suspect, though…”

The two fall silent for a while.

“Do you believe what I’m telling you?” Korogi asks.

“Sure, I believe you.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“I could be making it all up. You wouldn’t know: we’ve never met before.”

“You don’t look like the kind of person who tells lies, Korogi,” Mari says.

“I’m glad you said that,” Korogi says. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Korogi pulls her shirt up, exposing her back. Impressed in the skin on either side of her backbone is a mark of some kind. Each consists of three diagonal lines like a bird’s footprint and appears to have been made there by a branding iron. The scar tissue pulls at the surrounding skin. These are the remnants of intense pain. Mari grimaces at the sight.

“This is just one thing they did to me,” Korogi says. “They left their mark on me. I’ve got other ones, but in places I can’t show you. These are no lie.”

“How awful!”

“I’ve never shown them to anyone before. Just to you, Mari: I want you to believe me.”

“I do believe you.”

“I just had that feeling, like I could tell you, it would be okay. I don’t know why.”

Korogi lowers her shirt. Then, as if inserting an emotional punctuation mark, she heaves a great sigh.

“Korogi?” Mari says.

“Uh-huh?”

“Can I tell you something I’ve never told anybody before?”

“Sure. Go ahead,” Korogi says.

“I’ve got a sister. My only sibling. She’s two years older than me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Just about two months ago, she said, ‘I’m going to go to sleep for a while.’ She made this announcement to the family at dinnertime. Nobody thought much about it. It was only seven p.m., but my sister always had irregular sleep habits, so it was nothing to be too shocked about. We said good-night to her. She had hardly touched her food, but she went to her room and got in bed. She’s been sleeping ever since.”

“Ever since?!”

“Yup,” Mari says.

Korogi knits her brows. “She never wakes up?”

“She does sometimes, we think,” Mari says. “The meals we leave on her desk disappear, and she seems to be going to the toilet. Every once in a while, she takes a shower and changes her pajamas. So she’s getting up and doing the bare minimum needed to keep herself alive—but really, just the bare minimum. None of us has actually seen her awake, though. Whenever we look in, she’s in the bed, sleeping—really sleeping, not just faking it. She seems practically dead: you can’t hear her breathing, and she doesn’t move a muscle. We shout at her and shake her, but she won’t wake up.”

“So…have you had a doctor look at her?”

“The family doctor comes to see her once in a while. He’s just a general practitioner, so he can’t run any major tests on her, but medically speaking, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her. Her temperature’s normal. Her pulse and blood pressure are on the low side, but not enough to worry about. She’s getting enough nourishment, so she doesn’t need intravenous feeding. She’s just sound asleep. Of course if this were a coma or something, that would be a huge problem, but as long as she can wake up once in a while and do what she has to do, there’s no need for special care. We consulted a psychiatrist, too, but there’s no precedent for symptoms like this. She announces ‘I’m going to go to sleep for a while’ and does exactly that: if she has such an inward need for sleep, he says, the best thing we can do is let her keep sleeping. Even if he was going to treat her, it would have to be after she woke up and he could interview her. So we’re just letting her sleep.”

“Don’t you think you should have her tested at a hospital?”

“My parents are trying to take the most optimistic view—that my sister will sleep as much as she wants to, and one day she’ll wake up like nothing ever happened, and everything’ll go back to normal. They’re clinging to that possibility. But I can’t stand it. Or should I say, every once in a while I can’t take it anymore—living under the same roof with my sister and not having any idea why she’s out cold for two months.”

“So you leave the house and wander around the streets at night?”

“I just can’t sleep,” Mari says. “When I try, all I can think of is my sister in the next room sleeping like that. When it gets bad, I can’t stay in the house.”

“Two months, huh? That’s a long time.”

Mari nods in agreement.

Korogi says, “I don’t really know what’s going on, of course, but it seems to me your sister must have some big problem she’s trying to deal with, something she can’t solve on her own. So all she wants to do is go to bed and sleep, to get away from the flesh-and-blood world for a while. I think I know how she feels. Or should I say, I know exactly how she feels.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters, Korogi?”

“Two brothers. Both younger.”

“Are you close to them?”

“Used to be,” Korogi says. “Don’t know now. Haven’t seen ’em for a long time.”

“To be completely honest,” Mari says, “I never knew my sister very well—like, how she was spending her days, or what she was thinking about, or who she was seeing. I don’t even know if something was troubling her. I know this sounds cold, but even though we were living in the same house, she was busy with her stuff and I was busy with my stuff, and the two of us never really talked heart-to-heart. It’s not that we didn’t get along: we never had a fight after we grew up. It’s just that we’ve been living very different lives for a long time.”

Mari stares at the blank TV screen.

Korogi says, “Tell me about your sister. If you don’t know what she’s like inside, tell me just the surface things, what you know about her in general.”

“She’s a college student. Goes to one of the old missionary colleges for rich girls. She’s twenty-one. Officially majoring in sociology, but I don’t think she has any interest in the subject. She went to college because that’s what she was expected to do, and she knows enough to pass her exams, that’s all. Sometimes she’ll throw a little money in my direction to write reports for her. Otherwise, she models for magazines and appears on TV now and then.”

“TV? What program?”

“Nothing special. Like, she used to be the one showing the prizes to the camera on a quiz show, holding them up with a big smile. That show ended, so she’s not on anymore. She was in a few commercials, too—one for a moving company. Stuff like that.”

“She must be really pretty.”

“That’s what everybody says. She doesn’t look the least bit like me.”

“Sometimes I wish I had been born beautiful like that. I’d like to try it, just once, see what it’s like,” Korogi says with a short sigh.

Mari hesitates a moment, then says as if sharing a confession, “This may sound strange, but my sister really is beautiful when she sleeps. Maybe more beautiful than when she’s awake. She’s like transparent. I may be her sister, but my heart races just seeing her that way.”

“Like Sleeping Beauty.”

“Exactly.”

“Somebody’ll kiss her and wake her up,” Korogi says.

“If all goes well,” Mari says.

The two fall silent for a time. Korogi is still playing with the buttons on the remote control. An ambulance siren sounds in the distance.

“Tell me something, Mari—do you believe in reincarnation?”

Mari shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she says.

“So you don’t think there’s a life to come?”

“I haven’t thought much about it. But it seems to me there’s no reason to believe in a life after this one.”

“So once you’re dead there’s just nothing?”

“Basically.”

“Well, I think there has to be something like reincarnation. Or maybe I should say I’m scared to think there isn’t. I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it.”

“Nothingness means there’s absolutely nothing, so maybe there’s no need to understand it or imagine it.”

“Yeah, but what if nothingness is not like that? What if it’s the kind of thing that demands that you understand it or imagine it? I mean, you don’t know what it’s like to die, Mari. Maybe a person really has to die to understand what it’s like.”

“Well, yeah…,” says Mari.

“I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff,” Korogi says. “I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It’s so much easier to just believe in reincarnation. You might be reborn as something awful, but at least you can imagine what you’d look like—a horse, say, or a snail. And even if it was something bad, you might be luckier next time.”

“Uh-huh…but it still seems more natural to me to think that once you’re dead, there’s nothing.”

“I wonder if that’s ’cause you’ve got such a strong personality.”

“Me?!”

Korogi nods. “You seem to have a good, strong grip on yourself.”

Mari shakes her head. “Not me,” she says. “When I was little, I had no self-confidence at all. Everything scared me. Which is why I used to get bullied a lot. I was such an easy mark. The feelings I had back then are still here inside me. I have dreams like that all the time.”

“Yeah, but I bet you worked hard over the years and overcame those feelings little by little—those bad memories.”

“Little by little,” Mari says, nodding. “I’m like that. A hard worker.”

“You just keep at it all by yourself—like the village smithy?”

“Right.”

“I think it’s great that you can do that.”

“Work hard?”

“That you’re able to work hard.”

“Even if I’ve got nothing else going for me?”

Korogi smiles without speaking.

Mari thinks about what Korogi said. “I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my own world…over time…little by little. And when I’m inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I’m a weak person, that I bruise easily, don’t you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It’s like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere.”

“Have you got a boyfriend?” Korogi asks.

Mari gives her head a little shake.

“Still a virgin?”

Mari blushes with a quick nod. “Uh-huh.”

“That’s okay, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I know.”

“You just didn’t happen to meet anybody you liked?” Korogi asks.

“There’s one guy I used to see. But…”

“You didn’t like him enough to go all the way.”

“Right,” Mari says. “I had plenty of curiosity, but I just never felt like doing that. I don’t know…”

“That’s fine,” Korogi says. “There’s no sense forcing yourself if you don’t feel like it. Tell you the truth, I’ve had sex with lots of guys, but I think I did it mostly out of fear. I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That’s all. Nothing good ever came of sex like that. All it does is grind down the meaning of life a piece at a time. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“I think so.”

“Someday you’ll find the right person, Mari, and you’ll learn to have a lot more confidence in yourself. That’s what I think. So don’t settle for anything less. In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”

Mari nods.

Korogi scratches her earlobe with her little finger. “It’s too late for me, unfortunately.”

“Let me just say this,” Mari says with special gravity.

“Uh-huh?”

“I hope you do manage to get away from whoever’s chasing you.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I’m racing with my own shadow,” Korogi says. “But that’s one thing I’ll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow.”

“Maybe that’s not it,” Mari says. After a moment’s hesitation she adds, “Maybe it’s not your own shadow. Maybe it’s something else, something totally different.”

Korogi thinks about that for a while, then gives Mari a nod. “I guess you’re right. All I can do is try my best and see it through to the end.”

Korogi glances at her watch, takes a big stretch, and stands up.

“Time to get to work,” she says. “You should grab some shut-eye, and go home as soon as it gets light out, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Everything’s going to work out fine with your sister. I’ve got a feeling. Just a feeling.”

“Thanks,” Mari says.

“You may not feel that close to her now, but I’m sure there was a time when you did. Try to remember a moment when you felt totally in touch with her, without any gaps between you. You probably can’t think of anything right this second, but if you try hard it’ll come. She and you are family, after all—you’ve got a long history together. You must have at least one memory like that stored away somewhere.”

“Okay, I’ll try,” Mari says.

“I think about the old days a lot. Especially after I started running all over the country like this. If I try hard to remember, all kinds of stuff comes back—really vivid memories. All of a sudden out of nowhere I can bring back things I haven’t thought about for years. It’s pretty interesting. Memory is so crazy! It’s like we’ve got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other.”

Korogi stands there holding the remote control.

“You know what I think?” she says. “That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed ’em to the fire, they’re all just paper. The fire isn’t thinking, ‘Oh, this is Kant,’ or ‘Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,’ or ‘Nice tits,’ while it burns. To the fire, they’re nothing but scraps of paper. It’s the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there’s no distinction—they’re all just fuel.”

Korogi nods to herself. Then she goes on:

“You know, I think if I didn’t have that fuel, if I didn’t have these memory drawers inside me, I would’ve snapped a long time ago. I would’ve curled up in a ditch somewhere and died. It’s because I can pull the memories out of the drawers when I have to—the important ones and the useless ones—that I can go on living this nightmare of a life. I might think I can’t take it anymore, that I can’t go on anymore, but one way or another I get past that.”

Still in her chair, Mari looks up at Korogi.

“So try hard, Mari. Try hard to remember all kinds of stuff about your sister. It’ll be important fuel. For you, and probably for your sister, too.”

Mari looks at Korogi without saying anything.

Korogi looks at her watch again. “Gotta go.”

“Thanks for everything,” Mari says.

Korogi waves and slips out.

Alone now, Mari scans the room anew. A little room in a love hotel. No window. The only thing behind the Venetian blind is a hollow where a window should be. The bed is hugely out of proportion to the room itself. The head of the bed has so many mysterious switches nearby, it looks like something from an airplane cockpit. A vending machine sells graphically shaped vibrators and colorful underthings cut in extreme styles. Mari has never seen such odd items before, but she is not offended by them. Alone in this offbeat room, she feels, if anything, protected. She notices that she is in a tranquil mood for the first time in quite a while. She sinks deeper into the chair and closes her eyes, and soon she is asleep. Her sleep is short but deep. This is what she has wanted for a long time.

16

T he drab storage basement where the band is allowed to practice at night. No windows. High ceiling with exposed pipes. Smoking is prohibited here because of the poor ventilation. As the night draws to a close, the formal practice has ended and the musicians are jamming. There are ten of them altogether. Two are women: the pianist at the keyboard and the soprano-sax player, who is sitting this one out.

Backed up by electric piano, acoustic bass, and drums, Takahashi is playing a long trombone solo. Sonny Rollins’s “Sonnymoon for Two,” a midtempo blues. His performance is not bad, marked less by technique than by his almost conversational phrasing. Perhaps it is a reflection of his personality. Eyes closed, he immerses himself in the music. The tenor sax, alto sax, and trumpet throw in simple riffs every now and then. Those not playing are drinking coffee from a thermos jar, checking their sheet music, or working on their instruments as they listen. Some call out now and then to urge Takahashi on during the pauses in his solo.

Enclosed in bare walls, the music is loud; the drummer plays almost entirely with brushes. A long plank and tubular chairs comprise a makeshift table, on top of which are scattered takeout pizza boxes, the thermos jar of coffee, paper cups, sheet music, a small tape recorder, and saxophone reeds. The heating here is almost nonexistent. People play in coats and jackets. Some band members sitting out have donned scarves and gloves. It is a bizarre scene. Takahashi’s long solo ends, the bass takes a chorus, and the four horns join in for the final theme.

When the tune ends, they take a ten-minute break. Everyone seems tired after the long night of practice, and there is less chatting than usual. As they prepare for the next tune, one musician stretches, another takes a hot drink, another nibbles some kind of cookie, a couple go out for a smoke. Only the pianist, a girl with long hair, stays with her instrument during the break, trying out new chord progressions. Takahashi sits in a tubular chair, organizes his sheet music, dismantles his trombone, spills the accumulated saliva on the floor, gives the instrument a quick wipedown, and begins putting it into its case. He is obviously not planning to participate in the next jam.

The tall young bass player comes over and taps him on the shoulder. “That was a great solo, Takahashi. It had real feeling.”

“Thanks,” he says.

The long-haired young man who was playing the trumpet asks him, “Are you calling it a night, Takahashi?”

“Yeah, I’ve got something to do,” he says. “Sorry I can’t help with the clean-up.”

T he Shirakawa house kitchen. On the TV, a beep signals the hour and the NHK news begins. The announcer stares straight into the camera, dutifully reading the news. Shirakawa sits at the table in the dining area, watching the television at low volume. The sound is barely audible. Shirakawa has loosened his tie and is leaning back in his chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. The yogurt container is empty. He has no special desire to see the news. Nothing is likely to arouse his interest. He knows that. He just can’t sleep.

On the table, he opens and closes his right hand slowly. This is no ordinary pain he is feeling: it is a pain with memories. He takes a green-labeled Perrier bottle from the refrigerator and uses it to cool the back of his hand. Then he twists off the cap, pours himself a glass of water, and drinks it. He takes off his glasses and massages himself intently around the eyes. Still he feels no sign of sleepiness. His body is clearly suffering from exhaustion, but something in his head is preventing him from sleeping. Something is bothering him, and he can’t seem to get rid of it. He gives up, puts his glasses back on, and turns to the TV screen. The steel export dumping problem. Government measures to rectify the drastic rise of the yen. A mother who killed herself and her two children. She doused her car with gasoline and lit it. A shot of the blackened hulk of the car, still smoking. Time for the Christmas retail wars to begin.

The night is nearly over, but for him the night will not end so easily. Soon his family will be getting up. He wants to be asleep by then for sure.

A room in the Hotel Alphaville. Mari is sunk deep in a chair, napping. Her feet, in white socks, rest on a low glass table. In sleep, she wears a look of relief. Her thick book lies facedown on the table, spread open at the halfway point. The ceiling lights are on. The brightness of the room is apparently of no concern to Mari. The TV is switched off and silent. The bed is made. The only sound is the monotonous hum of the heater on the ceiling.

E ri Asai’s room.

Eri Asai is back on this side now. She is sleeping in her own bed in her own room again. Face turned toward the ceiling, she lies utterly still. Even her breathing is inaudible. This is the same view we had the first time we entered this room. Heavy silence, sleep of frightening density. Waveless, mirrorlike surface of the waters of thought. She floats there face-up. We can find no hint of disorder in the room. The TV screen is cold and dead, like the far side of the moon again. Could she have succeeded in escaping from that enigmatic room? Could a door have opened for her somehow?

No one answers our questions. Our question marks are sucked, unresisting, into the final darkness and uncompromising silence of the night. All we know for sure is that Eri Asai has come back to her own bed in this room. As far as our eyes can tell, she has managed safely to return to this side, her outlines intact. She must have succeeded in escaping through a door at the last moment. Or perhaps she was able to discover a different exit.

In any case it appears that the strange sequence of events that occurred in this room during the night has ended once and for all. A cycle has been completed, all disturbances have been resolved, perplexities have been concealed, and things have returned to their original state. Around us, cause and effect join hands, and synthesis and division maintain their equilibrium. Everything, finally, unfolded in a place resembling a deep, inaccessible fissure. Such places open secret entries into darkness in the interval between midnight and the time the sky grows light. None of our principles have any effect there. No one can predict when or where such abysses will swallow people, or when or where they will spit them out.

Free of all confusion, Eri now sleeps decorously in her bed. Her black hair fans out on her pillow in elegant, wordless significance. We can sense the approach of dawn. The deepest darkness of the night has now passed.

But is this actually true?

I nside the 7-Eleven. Trombone case hanging from his shoulder, Takahashi is choosing food with a deadly serious look in his eye. He will be going back to his apartment to sleep but will need something to eat when he wakes up. He is the only customer in the store. Shikao Suga’s “Bomb Juice” is playing from the ceiling speakers. Takahashi picks up a tuna sandwich packed in plastic and a carton of milk. He compares the expiration date on this carton with those on other cartons. Milk is a food of great significance in his life. He cannot ignore the slightest detail where milk is concerned.

At this very instant, a cell phone on the cheese shelf begins to ring. This is the phone that Shirakawa left there shortly before. Takahashi scowls and stares at it suspiciously. Who could possibly have left a cell phone in a place like this? He glances toward the cash register, but there is no sign of the clerk. The phone keeps ringing. Takahashi finally takes the small silver phone in his hand and presses the talk button.

“Hello?”

“You’ll never get away,” a man’s voice says instantly. “You will never get away. No matter how far you run, we’re going to get you.”

The voice is flat, as though the man is reading a printed text. No emotion comes through. Takahashi, of course, has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Takahashi says, his voice louder than before. But his words seem not to reach the man at the other end, who goes on talking in those same unaccented tones as though leaving a message on voice mail.

“We’re going to tap you on the shoulder someday. We know what you look like.”

“What the hell…”

“If somebody taps you on the shoulder somewhere someday, it’s us,” the man says.

Takahashi has no idea what he should say in response to this. He keeps silent. Having been left in a refrigerator case for a while, the phone feels uncomfortably cold in his hand.

“You might forget what you did, but we will never forget.”

“Hey, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m telling you you’ve got the wrong guy,” Takahashi says.

“You’ll never get away.”

The connection is cut. The circuit goes dead. The final message lies abandoned on a deserted beach. Takahashi stares at the cell phone in his hand. He has no idea who the man’s “we” are or who was meant to receive the call, but the sound of the voice remains in his ear—the one with the deformed earlobe—like an absurd curse that leaves a bad aftertaste. He has a smooth, cold feeling in his hand, as if he has just grabbed a snake.

Somebody, for some reason, is being chased by a number of people, Takahashi imagines. Judging from the man’s declarative tone, that somebody will probably never get away. Sometime, somewhere, when he is least expecting it, someone is going to tap him on the shoulder. What will happen after that?

In any case, it has nothing to do with me, Takahashi tells himself. This is one of many violent, bloody acts being performed in secret on the hidden side of the city—things from another world that come in on another circuit. I’m just an innocent passerby. All I did was pick up a cell phone ringing on a convenience-store shelf out of kindness. I figured somebody called because he was trying to track down his lost cell phone.

He closes the phone and puts it back where he found it, next to a box of Camembert cheese wedges. Better not have anything to do with this cell phone anymore. Better get out of here as fast as I can. Better get as far away from that dangerous circuit as I can. He hurries over to the register, grabs a fistful of change from his pocket, and pays for his sandwich and milk.

T akahashi alone on a park bench. The little park with the cats. No one else around. Two swings side by side, withered leaves covering the ground. Moon up in the sky. He takes his own cell phone from his coat pocket and punches in a number.

The Alphaville room where Mari is. The phone rings. She wakes at the fourth or fifth ring and looks at her watch with a frown. She stands up and takes the receiver.

“Hello,” Mari says, her voice uncertain.

“Hi, it’s me. Were you sleeping?”

“A little,” Mari says. She covers the mouthpiece and clears her throat. “It’s okay. I was just napping in a chair.”

“Wanna go for breakfast? At that restaurant I told you about with the great omelets? I’m pretty sure they have other good stuff, too.”

“Practice over?” Mari asks, but she hardly recognizes her own voice. I am me and not me.

“It sure is. And I’m starved. How about you?”

“Not really, tell you the truth. I feel more like going home.”

“That’s okay, too. I’ll walk you to the station. I think the trains have started running.”

“I’m sure I can walk from here to the station by myself,” Mari says.

“I’d like to talk to you some more if possible. Let’s talk on the way to the station. If you don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mari says.

Takahashi cuts the connection, folds his phone, and puts it in his pocket. He gets up from the park bench, takes one big stretch, and looks up at the sky. Still dark. The same crescent moon is floating there. Strange that, viewed from one spot in the predawn city, such a big solid object could be hanging there free of charge.

“You’ll never get away,” Takahashi says aloud while looking at the crescent moon.

The enigmatic ring of those words will remain inside Takahashi as a kind of metaphor. “You’ll never get away…. You might forget what you did, but we will never forget,” the man on the phone said. The more Takahashi thinks about their meaning, the more it seems to him that the words were intended not for someone else but for him—directly, personally. Maybe it was no accident. Maybe the cell phone was lurking on that convenience-store shelf, waiting specifically for him to pass by. “We,” Takahashi thinks. Who could this “we” possibly be? And what will “we” never forget?

Takahashi slings his instrument case and his tote bag over his shoulder and starts walking toward the Alphaville at a leisurely pace. As he walks, he rubs the whiskers that have begun to sprout on his cheeks. The final darkness of the night envelops the city like a thin skin. Garbage trucks begin to appear on the streets. As they collect their loads and move on, people who have spent the night in various parts of the city begin to take their place, walking toward subway stations, intent upon catching those first trains that will take them out to the suburbs, like schools of fish swimming upstream. People who have finally finished the work they must do all night, young people who are tired from playing all night: whatever the differences in their situations, both types are equally reticent. Even the young couple who stop at a drink vending machine, tightly pressed against each other, have no more words for each other. Instead, what they soundlessly share is the lingering warmth of their bodies.

The new day is almost here, but the old one is still dragging its heavy skirts. Just as ocean water and river water struggle against each other at a river mouth, the old time and the new time clash and blend. Takahashi is unable to tell for sure which side—which world—contains his center of gravity.

17

M ari and Takahashi are walking down the street side by side. Mari has her bag slung over her shoulder and her Red Sox hat pulled low over her eyes. She is not wearing her glasses.

“You’re not tired?” Takahashi asks.

Mari shakes her head. “I had a little nap.”

“Once after an all-night practice like this, I got on the Chuo Line at Shinjuku to go home, and I woke up way out in the country in Yamanashi. Mountains all around. Not to boast, but I’m the type who can fall fast asleep just about anywhere.”

Mari remains silent, as if she is thinking about something else.

“Anyhow, to get back to what we were talking about before…about Eri Asai,” Takahashi says. “Of course, you don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to. But just let me ask you something.”

“Okay.”

“Your sister has been sleeping for a long time. And she has no intention of waking up. You said something like that, right?”

“Right.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but could she be in a coma or some kind of unconscious state?”

Mari falters briefly. “No, that’s not it,” she says. “I don’t think it’s anything life-threatening at the moment. She’s…just asleep.”

“Just asleep?” Takahashi asks.

“Uh-huh, except…” Mari sighs. “Sorry, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it.”

“That’s okay. If you’re not ready, don’t talk.”

“I’m tired, and I can’t get my head straight. And my voice doesn’t sound like my voice to me.”

“That’s okay. Some other time. Let’s drop it for now.”

“Okay,” Mari says with obvious relief.

For some moments, they don’t talk about anything at all. They simply walk toward the station. Takahashi quietly whistles a tune.

“I wonder what time it starts to get light out,” Mari says.

Takahashi looks at his watch. “At this season…hmm…maybe six forty. This is when the nights are longest. It’ll stay dark a while.”

“When it’s dark, it really makes you tired, doesn’t it?”

“That’s when everybody’s supposed to be asleep,” Takahashi says. “Historically speaking, it’s quite a recent development that human beings have felt easy about going out after dark. It used to be after the sun set, people would just crawl into their caves and protect themselves. Our internal clocks are still set for us to sleep after the sun goes down.”

“It feels like a really long time since it got dark last night.”

“Well, it has been a long time.”

They walk past a drugstore with a large truck parked out front. The driver is unloading the truck’s contents through the store’s half-open shutter.

“Think I can see you again sometime soon?” Takahashi asks.

“Why?”

“Why? ’Cause I want to see you and talk to you some more. At a more normal time of day if possible.”

“You mean, like, a date?”

“Maybe you could call it that.”

“What could you talk about with me?”

Takahashi thinks about this. “Are you asking me what kind of subject matter we have in common?”

“Aside from Eri, that is.”

“Hmm…common subject matter…put it to me like that all of a sudden, and I can’t think of anything concrete. Right this second. It just seems to me we’d have plenty to talk about if we got together.”

“Talking to me wouldn’t be much fun.”

“Did anybody ever say that to you—like, you’re not much fun to talk to?”

Mari shakes her head. “No, not really.”

“So you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I have been told I’ve got a darkish personality. A few times.”

Takahashi swings his trombone case from his right shoulder to his left. Then he says, “It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don’t think you have a particularly dark character.”

Mari thinks about Takahashi’s words. “I am a coward, though,” she says.

“Now there you’re wrong. A cowardly girl doesn’t go out alone like this in the city at night. You wanted to discover something here. Right?”

“What do you mean, ‘here’?”

“Someplace different: someplace outside your usual territory.”

“I wonder if I discovered something—here.”

Takahashi smiles and looks at Mari. “Anyhow, I want to see you and talk to you again at least one more time. That’s what I’d like to do.”

Mari looks at Takahashi. Their eyes meet.

“That might be impossible,” she says.

“Impossible?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You mean you and I might never meet again?”

“Realistically speaking,” Mari says.

“Are you seeing somebody?”

“Not really, now.”

“So you just don’t like me?”

Mari shakes her head. “I’m not saying that. I won’t be in Japan after next Monday. I’m leaving for Beijing. To be a kind of exchange student there until next June at least.”

“Of course ,” Takahashi says, impressed. “You’re such an outstanding student.”

“I applied on the off chance they’d pick me—and they did. I’m just a freshman, I figured there was no way I could get in, but I guess it’s a kind of special program.”

“That’s great! Congratulations.”

“So, anyhow, I’ve just got a few days till I leave, and I’ll probably be so busy getting ready…”

“Of course.”

“Of course what?”

“You’ve got to get ready to leave for Beijing, you’ll be busy with all kinds of stuff, and you won’t have time to see me. Of course,” Takahashi says. “I understand perfectly. That’s okay, I don’t mind. I can wait.”

“But I won’t be coming back to Japan for six months or more.”

“I may not look it, but I can be a very patient guy. And killing time is one of my specialties. Give me your address over there, okay? I want to write to you.”

“I don’t mind, I guess.”

“If I write, will you answer me?”

“Uh-huh,” Mari says.

“And when you come back to Japan next summer, let’s have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we’ll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find.”

Mari looks at Takahashi again—straight in the eyes, as if to verify something.

“But why should you be interested in me?”

“Good question. I can’t explain it myself right this second. But maybe—just maybe—if we start getting together and talking, after a while something like Francis Lai’s soundtrack music will start playing in the background, and a whole slew of concrete reasons why I’m interested in you will line up out of nowhere. With luck, it might even snow for us.”

When they reach the station, Mari takes a small red notebook from her pocket, writes down her Beijing address, tears the page out, and hands it to Takahashi. Takahashi folds it in two and slips it into his billfold.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll write you a nice long letter.”

Mari comes to a halt before the automatic ticket gate, thinking about something. She is unsure whether she should tell him what is on her mind.

“I remembered something about Eri before,” she says, once she has decided to go ahead. “I had forgotten about it for a long time, but it came back to me all of a sudden after you called me at the hotel and I was spacing out in the chair. I wonder if I should just tell you about it here and now.”

“Of course you should.”

“I’d like to tell somebody about it while the memory is fresh,” Mari says. “Otherwise, the details might disappear.”

Takahashi touches his ear to signal his readiness to listen.

“When I was in kindergarten,” Mari begins, “Eri and I once got trapped in the elevator of our building. I think there must have been an earthquake. The elevator made this tremendous shake between floors and stopped dead. The lights went out, and we were in total darkness. I mean total : you couldn’t see your own hand. There was nobody else on the elevator, just the two of us. Well, I panicked: I completely stiffened up. It was like I turned into a fossil right then and there. I couldn’t move a finger. I could hardly breathe, couldn’t make a sound. Eri called my name, but I couldn’t answer. I just fogged over: it was like my brain went numb and Eri’s voice was barely reaching me through a crack.”

Mari closes her eyes for a moment and relives the darkness in her mind.

She goes on with her story. “I don’t remember how long the darkness lasted. Now it seems awfully long to me, but in fact it may not have been that long. Exactly how many minutes it lasted—five minutes, twenty minutes—really doesn’t matter. The important thing is that during that whole time in the dark, Eri was holding me. And it wasn’t just some ordinary hug. She squeezed me so hard our two bodies felt as if they were melting into one. She never loosened her grip for a second. It felt as though if we separated the slightest bit, we would never see each other in this world again.”

Takahashi leans against the ticket gate, saying nothing, as he waits for the rest of Mari’s story. Mari pulls her right hand from the pocket of her varsity jacket and stares at it for a while. Then, raising her face, she goes on:

“Of course, Eri was scared to death, too, I’m sure. Maybe even as scared as I was. She must have wanted to scream and cry. I mean, she was just a second-grader, after all. But she stayed calm. She probably decided on the spot that she was going to be strong. She made up her mind that she would have to be the strong big sister for my sake. And the whole time she kept whispering in my ear stuff like, ‘We’re gonna be okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m here with you, and somebody’s gonna come and help soon.’ She sounded totally calm. Like a grownup. She even sang me songs, though I don’t remember what they were. I wanted to sing with her, but I couldn’t. I was so scared my voice wouldn’t come out. But Eri just kept singing for me all by herself. I entrusted myself completely to her arms. The two of us became one: there were no gaps between us. We even shared a single heartbeat. Then suddenly the lights came on, and the elevator shook again and started to move.”

Mari inserts a pause. She is backtracking through her memory, looking for the words.

“But that was the last time. That was…how should I say it?…the one moment in my life when I was able to draw closest to Eri…the one moment when she and I joined heart to heart as one: there was nothing separating us. After that, it seems, we grew farther and farther apart. We separated, and before long we were living in different worlds. That sense of union I felt in the darkness of the elevator, that strong bond between our hearts, never came back again. I don’t know what went wrong, but we were never able to go back to where we started from.”

Takahashi reaches out and takes Mari’s hand. She is momentarily startled but doesn’t pull her hand from his. Takahashi keeps his gentle grip on her hand—her small, soft hand—for a very long time.

“I don’t really want to go,” Mari says.

“To China?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I’m scared.”

“That’s only natural,” he says. “You’re going to a strange, far-off place all by yourself.”

“I know.”

“You’ll be fine, though,” he says. “I know you. And I’ll be waiting for you here.”

Mari nods.

“You’re very pretty,” he says. “Did you know that?”

Mari looks up at Takahashi. Then she withdraws her hand from his and puts it into the pocket of her varsity jacket. Her eyes drop to her feet. She is checking to make sure her yellow sneakers are still clean.

“Thanks. But I want to go home now.”

“I’ll write to you,” he says. “A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel.”

“Okay,” Mari says.

She goes in through the ticket gate, walks to the platform, and disappears into a waiting express train. Takahashi watches her go. Soon the departure signal sounds, the doors close, and the train pulls away from the platform. When he loses sight of the train, Takahashi picks his instrument case up from the floor, slings the strap over his shoulder, and heads for his own station, whistling softly. The number of people moving through this station gradually increases.

18

E ri Asai’s room.

Outside the window, the day is growing brighter. Eri Asai is asleep in her bed. Her expression and pose are the same as when we last saw her. A thick cloak of sleep envelops her.

Mari enters the room. She opens the door quietly to avoid being noticed by the other members of the family, steps in, and closes the door just as quietly. The silence and chill of the room make her somewhat tense. She stands in front of the door, examining the contents of her sister’s room with great care. First she checks to be sure that this is indeed the room as she has always known it—that nothing has been disturbed, that nothing or no one unfamiliar is lurking in a corner. Then she approaches the bed and looks down at her soundly sleeping sister. She reaches out and gently touches Eri’s forehead, quietly calling her name. There is absolutely no response. As always. Mari drags over the swivel chair from its place by the desk and sits down. She leans forward and observes her sister’s face close-up as if searching for the meaning of a sign hidden there.

Some five minutes go by. Mari stands up, takes off her Red Sox cap, and smooths out her crumpled hair. Then she removes her wristwatch and lays it on her sister’s desk. She takes off her varsity jacket, her hooded sweatshirt, and the striped flannel shirt under that, leaving only a white T-shirt. She takes off her thick sport socks and blue jeans, and then she burrows softly into her sister’s bed. She lets her body adapt to being under the covers, after which she lays a thin arm across the body of her sister, who is sleeping face-up. She gently presses her cheek against her sister’s chest and holds herself there, listening, hoping to understand each beat of her sister’s heart. Her eyes are gently closed as she listens. Soon, without warning, tears begin to ooze from her closed eyes—large tears, and totally natural. They course down her cheek and moisten the pajamas of her sleeping sister.

Mari sits up in bed and wipes the tears from her cheeks with her fingertips. Toward something—exactly what, she has no concrete idea—she feels that she has committed some utterly inexcusable act, something she can never undo. The emotion has struck with great suddenness, and with no tangible connection to what has come before, but it is overwhelming. The tears continue to pour out of her. She catches them in the palms of her hands. Each new falling tear is warm, like blood, with the heat from inside her body. Suddenly it occurs to Mari: I could have been in some other place than this. And Eri, too: she could have been in some other place than this.

To reassure herself, Mari takes one more look around the room, and then again she looks down at her sister. Eri is beautiful in her sleep—truly beautiful. Mari almost wishes she could preserve that face of hers in a glass case. Consciousness just happens to be missing from it at the moment: it may have gone into hiding, but it must certainly be flowing somewhere out of sight, far below the surface, like a vein of water. Mari can hear its faint reverberations. She listens for them. The place where they originate is not that far from here. And Eri’s flow is almost certainly blending with my own, Mari feels. We are sisters, after all.

Mari bends over and briefly presses her lips to Eri’s. She raises her head and looks down at her sister’s face again. She allows time to pass through her heart. Again she kisses Eri: a longer, softer kiss. Mari feels almost as if she is kissing herself. Mari and Eri: one syllable’s difference. She smiles. Then, as if relieved, she curls up to sleep beside her big sister—to bond with her if possible, to share the warmth of their two bodies, to exchange signs of life with her.

“Come back, Eri,” she whispers in her sister’s ear. “Please come back.” She closes her eyes and allows the strength to leave her body. With her eyes closed, sleep comes for her, enveloping her like a great, soft wave from the open sea. Her tears have stopped.

The brightness outside the window is increasing with great speed. Vivid streaks of light stream into the room through gaps in the shade. The old temporality is losing its effectiveness and moving into the background. Many people go on mumbling the old words, but in the light of the newly revealed sun, the meanings of words are shifting rapidly and are being renewed. Even supposing that most of the new meanings are temporary things that will persist only through sundown that day, we will be spending time and moving forward with them.

In the corner of the room, the TV screen seems to flash momentarily. Light might be rising to the surface of the picture tube. Something might be starting to move there, perhaps the trembling of an image. Could the circuit be trying to reconnect? We hold our breath and watch its progress. In the next second, however, the screen is showing nothing. The only thing there is blankness.

Perhaps what we thought we saw was just an optical illusion, a mere reflection of a momentary fluctuation in the light streaming through the window. The room is still dominated by silence, but its depth and weight have clearly diminished and retreated. Now the cries of birds reach our ears. If we could further sharpen our auditory sense, we might be able to hear bicycles on the street or people talking to each other or the weather report on the radio. We might even be able to hear bread toasting. The lavish morning light washes every corner of the world at no charge. Two young sisters sleep peacefully, their bodies pressed together in one small bed. We are probably the only ones who know that.

I nside the 7-Eleven. Checklist in hand, the clerk is kneeling in an aisle, taking an inventory. Japanese hip-hop is playing. This is the same young man who received Takahashi’s payment at the cash register. Skinny, hair dyed rusty red. Tired at the end of his night shift, he yawns frequently. He hears, intermingled with the music, the ringing of a cell phone. He stands up and looks around. Then he checks each of the aisles. There are no customers. He is the only one in the store, but the cell phone keeps ringing stubbornly. Very strange. He searches all parts of the store and finally discovers the phone on a shelf in the dairy case.

Who in the hell forgets a cell phone in a place like this? Must be some crazy dude. With a cluck of the tongue and a look of disgust, he picks up the chilled device, presses the talk button, and holds the receiver to his ear.

“Hello,” he says.

“You probably think you got away with it,” announces a male voice devoid of intonation.

“Hello?!” the clerk shouts.

“But you can’t get away. You can run, but you’ll never be able to get away.” A short, suggestive silence follows, and then the connection is cut.

A llowing ourselves to become pure point of view, we hang in midair over the city. What we see now is a gigantic metropolis waking up. Commuter trains of many colors move in all directions, transporting people from place to place. Each of those under transport is a human being with a different face and mind, and at the same time each is a nameless part of the collective entity. Each is simultaneously a self-contained whole and a mere part. Handling this dualism of theirs skillfully and advantageously, they perform their morning rituals with deftness and precision: brushing teeth, shaving, tying neckties, applying lipstick. They check the morning news on TV, exchange words with their families, eat, and defecate.

With daybreak the crows flock in, scavenging for food. Their oily black wings shine in the morning sun. Dualism is not as important an issue for the crows as for the human beings. Their single most important concern is securing sufficient nourishment for individual maintenance. The garbage trucks have not yet collected all of the garbage. This is a gigantic city, after all, and it produces a prodigious volume of garbage. Raising raucous cries, the crows soar down to all parts of the city like dive bombers.

The new sun pours new light on the city streets. The glass of high-rise buildings sparkles blindingly. There is not a speck of cloud to be seen in the sky, just a haze of smog hanging along the horizon. The crescent moon takes the form of a silent white monolith, a long-lost message floating in the western sky. A news helicopter dances through the sky like a nervous insect, sending images of traffic conditions back to the station. Cars trying to enter the city have already started lining up at the tollbooths of the Metropolitan Expressway. Chilly shadows still lie over many streets sandwiched between tall buildings. Most of last night’s memories remain there untouched.

O ur point of view departs from the sky over city center and shifts to an area above a quiet suburban residential neighborhood. Below us stand rows of two-story houses with yards. From above, all the houses look much alike—similar incomes, similar family makeup. A new dark blue Volvo proudly reflects the morning sun. A golf practice net set up on one lawn. Morning papers freshly delivered. People walking large dogs. The sounds of meal preparations from kitchen windows. People calling out to each other. Here, too, a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper.

We choose one house from among all the similar houses and drop straight down to it. Passing through the glass and the lowered cream-colored shade of a second-story window, we soundlessly enter Eri Asai’s room.

Mari is sleeping in the bed, cuddled against her sister. We can hear her quiet breathing. As far as we can see, her sleep is peaceful. She seems to have warmed up: her cheeks have more color than before. Her bangs cover her eyes. Could she be dreaming? Or is the hint of a smile on her lips the trace of a memory? Mari has made her way through the long hours of darkness, traded many words with the night people she encountered there, and come back to where she belongs. For now, at least, there is nothing nearby to threaten her. Nineteen years old, she is protected by a roof and walls, protected, too, by fenced green lawns, burglar alarms, newly waxed station wagons, and big, smart dogs that stroll the neighborhood. The morning sun shining in the window gently envelops and warms her. Mari’s left hand rests on the black hair of her sister spread upon the pillow, her fingers softly opened in a natural curve.

And as for Eri, we can see no change in either her pose or her expression. She seems totally unaware that her little sister has crawled into bed and is sleeping beside her.

Eventually, Eri’s small mouth does move slightly, as if in response to something. A quick trembling of the lips that lasts but an instant, perhaps a tenth of a second. Finely honed pure point of view that we are, however, we cannot overlook this movement. Our eyes take positive note of this momentary physical signal. The trembling might well be a minuscule quickening of something to come. Or it might be the barest hint of a minuscule quickening. Whatever it is, something is trying to send a sign to this side through a tiny opening in the consciousness. Such an impression comes to us with certainty.

Unimpeded by other schemes, this hint of things to come takes time to expand in the new morning light, and we attempt to watch it unobtrusively, with deep concentration. The night has begun to open up at last. There will be time until the next darkness arrives.

ALSO BY HARUKI MURAKAMI

FICTION

After the Quake

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Dance Dance Dance

The Elephant Vanishes

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Kafka on the Shore

Norwegian Wood

South of the Border, West of the Sun

Sputnik Sweetheart

A Wild Sheep Chase

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

NONFICTION

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Translation copyright © 2007 by Haruki Murakami

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

Originally published in Japan as afut d ku by Kodansha, Tokyo, in 2004. Copyright © 2004 by Haruki Murakami

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Murakami, Haruki, [date]
[Afutadaku. English]
After dark / by Haruki Murakami; translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin.

p. cm.

I. Rubin, Jay II. Title.

PL856.U673A6613 2007

895.6'35—dc22      2007004828

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

eISBN: 978-0-307-26701-6

v3.0