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“What kind of special place would that be?” Tengo asked.
Needless to say, he received no answer.
“You remember some things about her,” Fuka-Eri said after a short pause. “One of
them might help.”
“Might help,” Tengo said. “Are you saying that if I remember something about
her, I might get a hint about where she is hiding?”
Without answering, she gave a little shrug. The gesture might have contained an
affirmative nuance.
“Thank you,” Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri gave him a tiny nod, like a contented cat.
Tengo prepared lunch in the kitchen. Fuka-Eri was intently choosing records from the
record shelf. Not that he had a lot of records there, but it took her time to choose. At
the end of her deliberations, she took out an old
Rolling Stones album, put it on the
turntable, and lowered the tonearm. It was a record that he had borrowed from
somebody in high school and, for some reason, never given back. He hadn’t heard it
in years.
Listening to tracks like “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Lady Jane,” he made rice
pilaf using ham and mushrooms and brown rice, and miso soup with tofu and
wakame. He boiled cauliflower and flavored it with curry sauce he had prepared. He
made a green bean and onion salad. Cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always
used it as a time to think—about everyday problems,
about math problems, about his
writing, or about metaphysical propositions. He could think in a more orderly fashion
while standing in the kitchen and moving his hands than while doing nothing. Today,
however, no amount of thinking would tell him what kind of “special place” Fuka-Eri
had been talking about. Trying to impose order on something where there had never
been any was a waste of effort. The number of places he could arrive at was limited.
The two of them sat across from each other eating dinner. Their conversation was
virtually nonexistent. Like a bored married couple, they transported the food to their
mouths in silence, each thinking—or not thinking—separate thoughts. It was
especially difficult to distinguish between the two in Fuka-Eri’s case. When
the meal
ended, Tengo drank coffee and Fuka-Eri ate a pudding she found in the refrigerator.
Whatever she ate, her expression never changed. Chewing seemed to be the only
thing she was thinking about.
Tengo sat at his desk, and, following Fuka-Eri’s suggestion, he tried hard to recall
something about Aomame.
You remember some things about her. One of them might help
.
But Tengo could not concentrate. Another Rolling Stones record was playing.
“Little Red Rooster”—a performance from the time Mick Jagger was crazy about
Chicago blues. Not bad, but not a song written for people engaged in deep thinking or
in the midst of seriously digging through old memories. The Rolling Stones were not
a band much given to such kindness. He needed someplace quiet where he could be
alone.
“I’m going out for a while,” Tengo said.
460
Studying the Rolling Stones album jacket in her hand,
Fuka-Eri nodded, as if to
say, “Fine.”
“If anyone comes here, don’t open the door for them,” Tengo said.
Tengo walked toward the station wearing a navy-blue long-sleeved T-shirt, chinos
from which the crease had long since faded, and sneakers. Just before reaching the
station, he turned into a bar called Barleyhead and ordered a draft beer. The place
served drinks and snacks. It was small enough so that twenty customers filled it up.
He had come here any number of times before. Young people made
it quite noisy late
at night, but there were relatively few customers in the hour between seven and eight,
when the mood was nice and hushed. It was perfect for sitting alone in a corner and
reading a book while drinking a beer. The chairs were comfortable, too. He had no
idea where the bar’s name came from or what it meant. He could have asked one of
the employees, but he was not good at small talk with strangers, and not knowing the
source of the name didn’t really matter. It was just a pleasant bar that happened to be
named Barleyhead.
Fortunately, no music was playing. Tengo sat
at a table by a window, drinking
Carlsberg draft and munching on mixed nuts from a small bowl, thinking about
Aomame. Picturing Aomame meant that Tengo himself became a ten-year-old boy
again. It also meant that he experienced a major turning point in his life once again.
After Aomame grasped his hand when they were ten, he refused to make any more
rounds with his father doing NHK subscription collections. Shortly after that he
experienced a definite erection and his first ejaculation. That was a watershed in his
life. Of course, the transformation would have come—sooner or later—whether or not
Aomame grasped
his hand, but Aomame urged him on and promoted the change as if
she had given his back a gentle shove.
He stared at the open palm of his left hand for a long time.
That ten-year-old girl
grasped this hand and hugely changed something inside me, but I can’t give a
reasonable explanation of how such a thing could have happened. Still, the two of us
understood each other and accepted each other in a very natural way in every last
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