After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Air Chrysalis
.” 
Fuka-Eri nodded. 

---

403
Tengo took this opportunity to ask Fuka-Eri a question he had been wanting to ask 
her for some time. “Tell me,” he said, “how much of 
Air Chrysalis
is real? How much 
of it really happened?” 
“What does ‘real’ mean,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark. 
Tengo had no answer for this, of course. 
A great clap of thunder echoed through the sky. The windowpanes rattled. But still 
there was no lightning, no sound of rain. Tengo recalled an old submarine movie. One 
depth charge after another would explode, jolting the ship, but everyone was locked 
inside the dark steel box, unable to see outside. For them, there was only the unbroken 
sound and the shaking of the sub. 
“Will you read me a book or tell me a story,” Fuka-Eri asked. 
“Sure,” Tengo said, “but I can’t think of a good book for reading out loud. I don’t 
have the book here, but I can tell you a story called ‘Town of Cats,’ if you like.” 
“ ‘Town of Cats.’ ” 
“It’s the story of a town ruled by cats.” 
“I want to hear it.” 
“It might be a little too scary for a bedtime story, though.” 
“That’s okay. I can sleep, whatever story you tell.” 
Tengo brought a chair next to the bed, sat down, folded his hands in his lap, and 
started telling “Town of Cats,” with the thunder as background music. He had read 
the story twice on the express train and once again, aloud, to his father in the 
sanatorium, so he knew the plot pretty well. It was not such a complex or finely 
delineated story, nor had it been written in a terribly elegant style, so he felt little 
hesitation in altering it as he pleased, omitting the more tedious parts or adding 
episodes that occurred to him as he recited the story for Fuka-Eri. 
The original story had not been very long, but telling it took a lot longer than he 
had imagined because Fuka-Eri would not hesitate to ask any questions that occurred 
to her. Tengo would interrupt the story each time and give her careful answers, 
explaining the details of the town or the cats’ behavior or the protagonist’s character. 
When they were things not described in the story (which was usually the case), Tengo 
would make them up, as he had with 
Air Chrysalis
. Fuka-Eri seemed to be completely 
drawn in by “Town of Cats.” She no longer looked tired. She would close her eyes 
sometimes, imagining scenes of the town of cats. Then she would open her eyes and 
urge Tengo to go on with the story. 
When he was through telling her the story, Fuka-Eri opened her eyes wide and 
stared at Tengo the way a cat widens its pupils to stare at something in the dark. 
“Did you go to a town of cats,” Fuka-Eri asked Tengo, as if pressing him to reveal 
a truth. 
“Me?!”
“You went to 
your
town of cats. Then came back on a train.” 
“Is that what you feel?” 
With the summer quilt pulled up to her chin, Fuka-Eri gave him a quick little nod. 
“You’re quite right,” Tengo said. “I went to a town of cats and came back on a 
train.” 

---

404
“Did you do a purification afterward,” she asked. 
“Purification? No, I don’t think so, not yet.” 
“You have to do it.” 
“What kind of purification?” 
Instead of answering him, Fuka-Eri said, “If you go to a town of cats and don’t do 
anything about it afterward, bad stuff can happen.” 
A great thunderclap seemed to crack the heavens in two. The sound was increasing 
in ferocity. Fuka-Eri recoiled from it in bed. 
“Come here and hold me,” Fuka-Eri said. “We have to go to a town of cats 
together.” 
“Why?” 
“The Little People might find the entrance.” 
“Because I haven’t done a purification?” 
“Because the two of us are one,” the girl said. 

---

405