After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 18 
Tengo 
THAT LONELY, TACITURN SATELLITE 
“She might be very close by,” Fuka-Eri said after some moments of biting her lip in 
serious thought. 
Tengo unfolded and refolded his hands on the table, looking into Fuka-Eri’s eyes. 
“Very close by? You mean here, in Koenji?” 
“Within walking distance.” 
How do you know that?
Tengo wanted to ask her, but he was at least prescient 
enough to know that he would not get an answer to such a question. She needed 
practical questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no. 
“Are you saying that I can meet Aomame if I look for her in this neighborhood?” 
Tengo asked. 
Fuka-Eri shook her head. “You can’t meet her just by walking around.” 
“She’s within walking distance, but I can’t find her just by walking around. Is that 
what you are saying?” 
“Because she’s hiding.” 
“Hiding?” 
“Like a wounded cat.” 
Tengo got an image of Aomame curled up under a moldy-smelling porch 
somewhere. “Why? Is she hiding from someone?” he asked. 
This, of course, she did not answer. 
“But the fact that she is 
hiding
must mean that she is in some kind of critical 
situation, doesn’t it?” 
“Crit-i-cal sit-choo-ay-shun,” Fuka-Eri said, echoing Tengo, with a look on her 
face like that of a child being shown a bitter medicine. She probably didn’t like the 
sound of the words. 
“Like, someone is chasing after her,” Tengo said. 
Fuka-Eri cocked her head slightly, meaning she didn’t understand. “But she is not 
going to stay here forever.” 
“Our time is limited.” 
“Yes, limited.” 
“But now she is sitting somewhere like a wounded cat, so she won’t be out taking 
walks.” 
“No, she won’t do that,” the beautiful young girl said with conviction. 
“In other words, I’d have to look for her someplace special.” 
Fuka-Eri nodded. 

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459
“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. 

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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