After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 22 
Tengo 
AS LONG AS THERE ARE 
TWO MOONS IN THE SKY
After climbing down from the slide and leaving the playground, Tengo wandered 
aimlessly through the streets of Koenji, from one block to the next, hardly conscious 
of where his feet were taking him. He tried to organize the jumble of ideas in his 
head, but unified thinking was beyond him now, probably because he had thought 
about too many different things at once while sitting on the slide: about the increase in 
the number of moons, about blood ties, about a new chapter in his life, about his 
dizzyingly realistic daydream, about Fuka-Eri and 
Air Chrysalis
, and about Aomame, 
who was probably in hiding somewhere nearby. With his head a confused tangle of 
thoughts, Tengo felt his powers of concentration being tested to the limit. He wished 
he could just go to bed and be fast asleep. He could continue this process in the 
morning. No amount of additional thinking would bring him any clarity now. 
Back at his apartment, he found Fuka-Eri sitting at his desk, intently sharpening 
pencils with a small pocketknife. Tengo always kept ten pencils in his pencil holder, 
but now there were at least twenty. She had done a beautiful job of sharpening them. 
Tengo had never seen such beautifully sharpened pencils. Their points were like 
needles. 
“You had a phone call,” she said, checking the sharpness of the current pencil with 
her finger. “From Chikura.” 
“You weren’t supposed to be answering the phone.” 
“It was an important call.” 
She had probably been able to tell it was important from the ring. 
“What was it about?” Tengo asked. 
“They didn’t say.” 
“But it was from the sanatorium in Chikura, right?” 
“They want a call.” 
“They want me to call them?” 
“Today. Even if it’s late.” 
Tengo sighed. “You don’t know the number, I suppose.” 
“I do.” 
She had memorized the number. Tengo wrote it down. Then he looked at the 
clock. Eight thirty. 
“What time did they call?” he asked. 
“A little while ago.” 

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492
Tengo went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Resting his hands on the 
edge of the sink, he closed his eyes and confirmed that his brain was functioning 
normally. Then he went to the phone and dialed the number. Perhaps his father had 
died. Or at least it was a life-and-death issue of some sort. They would not have called 
this late if it were not about something important. 
A woman answered the phone. Tengo gave his name and said he was calling in 
response to an earlier message. 
“Mr. Kawana’s son?” the woman asked. 
“Yes,” Tengo said. 
“We met here the other day,” she said. 
Tengo pictured the middle-aged nurse with metal-framed glasses. He could not 
recall her name. 
He uttered a few polite words, adding, “I gather you called earlier?” 
“Yes, I did. I’ll connect you with the doctor in charge so you can talk to him 
directly.” 
With the receiver pressed against his ear, Tengo waited—and waited—for the 
doctor to pick up. “Home on the Range” seemed as if it would go on playing forever. 
Tengo closed his eyes and pictured the sanatorium on the Boso Peninsula shore. The 
thickly overlapping pine trees, the sea breeze blowing through them, the Pacific 
Ocean waves breaking endlessly on the beach. The hushed entryway lobby without 
visitors. The sound of movable beds being wheeled down the corridors. The sun-
damaged curtains. The well-pressed white uniforms of the nurses. The thin, flat coffee 
in the lunchroom. 
Finally, the doctor picked up the phone. 
“Sorry to keep you waiting. I got an emergency call from one of the other 
sickrooms a few minutes ago.” 
“That’s fine,” Tengo said. He tried to recall what his father’s doctor looked like, 
until it occurred to him that he had never met the man. His brain was still not 
functioning properly. “So, is something wrong with my father?” 
The doctor paused a moment and then said, “Well, it’s not that something in 
particular happened today, just that his condition has not been good lately. I hate to 
tell you this, but he is in a coma.” 
“You mean, he’s completely unconscious?” 
“Exactly.” 
Tengo struggled to make his brain work. “Did he come down with something that 
made him go into a coma?” 
“Properly speaking, no,” the doctor said with apparent difficulty. 
Tengo waited. 
“It’s difficult to explain on the phone, but there is not one particular thing wrong 
with him. He does not have cancer or pneumonia or any other illness that we can 
name. Medically speaking, we can’t see any distinguishing symptoms. We don’t 
know what the cause might be, but in your father’s case, it appears that his natural 
life-sustaining force is visibly weakening. And since we don’t know the cause, we 
don’t know what treatment to apply. We are continuing to feed him intravenously, but 
this is strictly treating the symptoms.” 
“Is it all right for me to ask you a very direct question?” Tengo asked. 

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493
“Yes, of course,” the doctor said. 
“Are you saying that my father is not going to last much longer?” 
“That might be a strong possibility if he stays in his current condition.” 
“So he’s more or less wasting away of old age?” 
The doctor made a vague sound into the phone. Then he said, “Your father is still 
in his sixties, not yet ready to ‘waste away of old age.’ He is basically healthy. We 
haven’t found anything wrong with him other than his impaired cognitive abilities. He 
gets rather good scores on the periodic strength tests we perform. We are not aware of 
a single problem he might have.” 
The doctor stopped talking at that point. Then he went on: 
“But … come to think of it … observing him these past few days, there may be 
some degree of what you call ‘wasting away of old age.’ His physical functions 
overall have declined, and he seems to be losing the will to live. Normally, these 
symptoms don’t emerge until the patient passes his mid-eighties. When a person gets 
that old, we often see him grow tired of living and abandon the effort to maintain life. 
But I have no idea why that should be happening to a man in his sixties like Mr. 
Kawana.” 
Tengo bit his lip and gave this some thought. 
“When did the coma start?” Tengo asked. 
“Three days ago,” the doctor said. 
“You mean he hasn’t awakened for three days?” 
“Not once.” 
“And his vital signs are gradually weakening?” 
The doctor said, “Not drastically, but as I just said, the level of his life-sustaining 
force is gradually—but visibly—going down, like a train dropping its speed little by 
little as it begins to stop.” 
“How much time do you think he has left?” 
“I can’t say for sure. If his present condition continues as is, he might have another 
week in the worst case,” the doctor said. 
Tengo changed his grip on the receiver and bit his lip again. 
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Tengo said. “Even if you hadn’t called, I was thinking of 
going there soon. But I’m glad you called. I’m very grateful to you.” 
The doctor seemed relieved to hear this. “Please do come. The sooner you see him 
the better, I think. He may not be able to talk to you, but I’m sure your father will be 
glad you’re here.” 
“He is completely unconscious, though, isn’t he?” 
“Yes. He is not conscious.” 
“Do you think he is in pain?” 
“For now, no, probably not. That is the one silver lining in all this. He is sound 
asleep.” 
“Thank you very much,” Tengo said. 
“You know, Mr. Kawana,” the doctor said, “your father was a very easy patient to 
take care of. He never gave anyone any trouble.” 
“He’s always been like that,” Tengo said. Then, thanking the doctor once again, he 
ended the call. 

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494
Tengo warmed his coffee and drank it at the kitchen table, sitting across from Fuka-
Eri. 
“You’ll be leaving tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked. 
Tengo nodded. “Tomorrow morning I have to take the train and go to the cat town 
again.” 
“You’re going to the cat town,” Fuka-Eri asked without expression. 
“You will be waiting here,” Tengo asked. Living with Fuka-Eri, he had become 
used to asking questions without question marks. 
“I will be waiting here.” 
“I’ll go to the cat town alone,” Tengo said. He took a sip of coffee. Then it 
suddenly occurred to him to ask her, “Do you want something to drink?” 
“White wine if you have some.” 
Tengo opened the refrigerator to see if he had any chilled white wine. In back he 
found a bottle of Chardonnay he had recently bought on sale. The label had a picture 
of a wild boar. He pulled the cork, poured some into a wineglass, and placed it before 
Fuka-Eri. After some hesitation, he poured himself a glass as well. He was definitely 
more in the mood for wine than coffee. It was a bit too chilled, and a bit too sweet, 
but the alcohol calmed Tengo’s nerves somewhat. 
“You’ll be going to the cat town tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked again. 
“I’ll take a train first thing in the morning,” Tengo said. 
Tipping back his glass of white wine, Tengo recalled that he had ejaculated into 
the body of the beautiful seventeen-year-old girl now sitting across the table from 
him. It had happened only the night before, but it seemed like something that had 
occurred in the distant past—almost a historical event. Still, the sensation of it 
remained as vivid as ever inside him. 
“The number of moons increased,” Tengo said, as if sharing a secret, slowly 
turning the wineglass in his hand. “When I looked at the sky a little while ago, there 
were two moons—a big, yellow one and a small, green one. They might have been 
there from before, but I never noticed them. I finally realized it just a little while ago.” 
Fuka-Eri had nothing to say regarding the fact that the number of moons had 
increased, nor could Tengo discern any sense of surprise at the news. Her expression 
had not changed at all. She did not even give her usual little shrug. It did not appear to