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My wife is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form
.
That was what Kyoko Yasuda’s husband had said.
If I may use a classical analogy here, you people might have opened Pandora’s
box and let loose all kinds of things in the world. The two of you may have joined
forces by accident, but you turned out to be a far more powerful team than you
ever imagined. Each of you was able to make up for what the other lacked
.
So said Ushikawa.
Both seemed to be trying to say the same thing: Tengo had unleashed some kind of
power before fully comprehending it himself, and it was having a real impact
(probably not a desirable impact) on the world around him. Tengo turned off the word
processor, sat down on the floor, and stared at the telephone. He needed more hints,
more pieces of the puzzle. But no one would give him those. Kindness was one of the
things presently (or permanently) in short supply in the world.
He thought about phoning someone—Komatsu or Professor Ebisuno or Ushikawa.
But he couldn’t make himself actually do it. He had had enough of their inscrutable,
deliberately cryptic pronouncements. If he sought a hint concerning one riddle, all
they would give him was another riddle. He couldn’t keep up the game forever. Fuka-
Eri and Tengo were a powerful team. That’s all they needed to say. Tengo and Fuka-
Eri. Like Sonny and Cher. The Beat Goes On.
Day after day went by. Finally Tengo grew tired of staying holed up in his apartment,
waiting for something to happen. He shoved his wallet and a paperback into his
pockets, put on a baseball cap and sunglasses, and went out, walking with decisive
strides as far as Koenji, the nearby station. There he showed his pass and boarded the
Chuo Line inbound rapid-service train. The car was empty. He had nothing planned
that day. Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him.
It was ten o’clock on a windless summer morning, and the sun was beating down.
Wondering if one of Ushikawa’s “researchers” might be following him, he paid
special attention on the way to the station, stopping suddenly to glance behind him,
but there was no sign of anyone suspicious. At the station, he purposely went to the
wrong platform and then, pretending to change his mind all of a sudden, he dashed
down the stairs and went to the platform for trains headed in the other direction. But
no one else seemed to take those same maneuvers. He must be having a typical
delusion of being pursued. Of course no one was following him. Not even Tengo
knew where he was going or what he was about to do. He himself was the one who
most wanted to watch his own forthcoming actions from a distance.
The train he had boarded passed Shinjuku, Yotsuya, Ochanomizu, and arrived at
Tokyo Central Station, the end of the line. Everyone got off, and he followed suit.
Then he sat on a bench and gave some thought to where he ought to go.
I’m in
downtown Tokyo now
, Tengo thought.
I have nothing planned all day. I can go
anywhere I decide to. The day looks as if it’s going to be a hot one. I could go to the
seashore
. He raised his head and looked at the platform guide.
352
At that point he suddenly realized what he had been doing all along.
He tried shaking his head a few times, but the idea that had struck him would not
go away. He had probably made up his mind unconsciously from the moment he
boarded the inbound Chuo Line train at his station in Koenji. He heaved a sigh, stood
up from the bench, went down the platform stairs, and headed for the Sobu Line
platform. On the way, he asked a station employee for the fastest connection to
Chikura, and the man flipped through the pages of a thick volume of train schedules.
He should take the 11:30 special express train to Tateyama, transfer there to a local,
and he would arrive at Chikura shortly after two o’clock. He bought a Tokyo–Chikura
round-trip ticket and a reserved seat on the express train. Then he went to a restaurant
in the station and ordered rice and curry and a salad. He killed time after the meal by
drinking a cup of thin coffee.
Going to see his father was a depressing prospect. He had never much liked the
man, and his father probably had no special love for him, either. Tengo had no idea if
his father had any desire to see him. His father had retired from NHK four years
earlier and, soon afterward, entered a sanatorium in Chikura that specialized in care
for patients with cognitive disorders. Tengo had visited him there no more than twice
before—the first time just after the father entered the facility when an administrative
procedural problem had required Tengo, as the only relative, to travel out there. The
second time had involved a pressing administrative matter as well. Two times: that
was it.
The sanatorium stood on a large plot of land across the road from the shoreline.
Originally the country villa of a wealthy family connected with one of the prewar
zaibatsu—large, influential, family-controlled financial/industrial monopolies—it had
been bought as a life insurance company’s welfare facility and, more recently,
converted into a sanatorium primarily for the treatment of people with cognitive
disorders. To an outside observer, it appeared to be an odd combination of elegant old
wooden buildings and new three-story reinforced-concrete buildings. The air there
was fresh, however, and aside from the roar of the surf, it was always quiet. One
could walk along the shore on days when the wind was not too strong. An imposing
pine grove lined the garden as a windbreak. And the medical facilities were excellent.
With his health insurance, retirement bonus, savings, and pension, Tengo’s father
could probably spend the rest of his life there quite comfortably, all because he had
been lucky enough to be hired as a full-time employee of NHK. He might not be able
to leave behind any sizable inheritance, but at least he could be taken care of, for
which Tengo was tremendously grateful. Whether or not the man was his true
biological father, Tengo had no intention of taking anything from him or giving him
anything. They were two separate human beings who had come from—and were
heading toward—entirely different places. By chance, they had spent some years of
life together, that was all. It was a shame that things had come to that, Tengo
believed, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Tengo knew that the time had come for him to visit his father again. He didn’t
much like the idea, and he would have preferred to take a U-turn and go straight back
to his apartment. But he already had his round-trip and expresstrain tickets in his
pocket. He was all set to go.
353
He left the table, paid his bill, and went to the platform to wait for the Tateyama
express train to arrive. He scanned his surroundings once more, but saw no likely
“researchers” in the area. His only fellow passengers were happy-looking families
heading out for a few days at the beach. He took off his sunglasses, shoved them into
a pocket, and readjusted his baseball cap.
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