After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Wherever you go, whatever you 
do, you can never escape the pressure of this water. This memory defines who you 
are, shapes your life, and is trying to send you to a place that has been decided for 
you. You can writhe all you want, but you will never be able to escape from this 
power
. 
It suddenly occurred to Tengo: 
When I lifted the pajamas that Fuka-Eri wore from 
the washing machine and smelled them, I might have been hoping to find my mother’s 
smell. But why do I have to look for my departed mother’s image in, of all things, the 
smell of a seventeen-year-old girl? There should be a more likely place to look—in 
the body of my older girlfriend, for one thing
. 
. . . 
Tengo’s girlfriend was ten years his senior, but for some reason he never sought his 
mother’s image in her. Neither did he have any particular interest in her smell. She 
took the lead in most of their sexual activity. Tengo simply did as she directed, hardly 
thinking, making neither choices nor judgments. She demanded only two things of 
him: good erections and well-timed ejaculations. “Don’t come yet,” she would 
command. “Hold on a little longer.” And he would pour all his energy into holding 
on. “Okay, now! Come now!” she would whisper by his ear, and he would let go at 
precisely that point with as intense an ejaculation as he could manage. Then she 
would praise him, caressing his cheek: “Oh, Tengo! You’re wonderful!” Tengo had 
an innate knack for precision in all realms, including correct punctuation and 
discovering the simplest possible formula necessary to solve a math problem. 
It didn’t work this way when he had sex with younger women. He would have to 
think from beginning to end, making choices and judgments. This made Tengo 
uncomfortable. All the responsibilities fell on his shoulders. He felt like the captain of 

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a small boat on a stormy sea, having to take the rudder, inspect the setting of the sails, 
keep in mind the barometric pressure and the wind direction, and modulate his own 
behavior so as to boost the crew’s trust in him. The slightest mistake or accident could 
lead to tragedy. This felt less like sex than the discharging of a duty. As a result he 
would tense up and miss the timing of an ejaculation or fail to become erect when 
necessary. This would only increase his doubts about himself. 
Such mistakes never happened with his older girlfriend. She fully appreciated him. 
She always praised and encouraged him. After the one time he ejaculated 
prematurely, she was careful never to wear a white slip again. And not just slips: she 
stopped wearing any white lingerie at all. 
That day she was wearing black lingerie—a matching top and bottom—as she 
performed fellatio on him, fully enjoying the hardness of his penis and the softness of 
his testicles. Tengo could see her breasts moving up and down, enfolded in the black 
lace of her bra, as she moved her mouth. To keep himself from coming too soon, he 
closed his eyes and thought about the Gilyaks. 
They have no courts, and they do not know the meaning of “justice.” How hard it is 
for them to understand us may be seen merely from the fact that up till the present day 
they still do not fully understand the purpose of roads. Even where a road has already 
been laid, they will still journey through the taiga. One often sees them, their families 
and their dogs, picking their way in Indian file across a quagmire right by the 
roadway. 
Tengo imagined the scene: the shabbily dressed Gilyaks walking through the thick 
forest in line beside the road with their dogs and women, hardly speaking. In their 
concepts of time, space, and possibility, roads did not exist. Rather than walk on a 
road, they probably gained a clearer grasp of their own raison d’être by making their 
way quietly through the forest, in spite of the inconvenience.