After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

your
place.” 
“You might not find a 
person
that easily, but you could probably find a 
way
without too much trouble,” Aomame noted. 
The dowager looked at Aomame calmly, her lips forming a satisfied smile. “That 
may be true,” she said, “but I almost surely could never find anything to take the 
place of what we are sharing here and now. You are you and only you. I’m very 
grateful for that. More grateful than I can say.” 
She bent forward, stretched out her hand, and laid it on Aomame’s. She kept it 
there for a full ten seconds. Then, with a look of great satisfaction on her face, she 
withdrew her hand and twisted around to face the other way. A butterfly came 

---

79
fluttering along and landed on the shoulder of her blue work shirt. It was a small, 
white butterfly with a few crimson spots on its wings. The butterfly seemed to know 
no fear as it went to sleep on her shoulder. 
“I’m sure you’ve never seen this kind of butterfly,” the dowager said, glancing 
toward her own shoulder. Her voice betrayed a touch of pride. “Even down in 
Okinawa, you’d have trouble finding one of these. It gets its nourishment from only 
one type of flower—a special flower that only grows in the mountains of Okinawa. 
You have to bring the flower here and grow it first if you want to keep this butterfly 
in Tokyo. It’s a 
lot
of trouble. Not to mention the expense.” 
“It seems to be very comfortable with you.” 
“This little 
person
thinks of me as a friend.” 
“Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?” 
“It is if you first become a part of nature. You suppress your presence as a human 
being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It 
takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you can become friends quite 
naturally.” 
“Do you give them names?” Aomame asked, curious. “Like dogs or cats?” 
The dowager gave her head a little shake. “No, I don’t give them names, but I can 
tell one from another by their shapes and patterns. And besides, there wouldn’t be 
much point in giving them names: they die so quickly. These people are your 
nameless friends for just a little while. I come here every day, say hello to the 
butterflies, and talk about things with them. When the time comes, though, they just 
quietly go off and disappear. I’m sure it means they’ve died, but I can never find their 
bodies. They don’t leave any trace behind. It’s as if they’ve been absorbed by the air. 
They’re dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, 
search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps 
to some other world.” 
The hothouse air was warm and humid and thick with the smell of plants. 
Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in 
a stream of consciousness without beginning or end. Whenever she came in here, 
Aomame felt as if she had lost all sense of time. 
Tamaru came back with a silver tray bearing a beautiful celadon teapot and two 
matching cups, cloth napkins, and a small dish of cookies. The aroma of herbal tea 
mingled with the fragrance of the surrounding flowers. 
“Thank you, Tamaru. I’ll take over from here,” the dowager said. 
Tamaru set the tray on the nearby table, gave the dowager a bow, and moved 
silently away, opening and closing the hothouse door, exiting with the same light 
steps as before. The woman lifted the teapot lid, inhaling the fragrance inside and 
checking the degree of openness of the leaves. Then she slowly filled their two cups, 
taking great care to ensure the equality of their strength. 
“It’s none of my business, but why don’t you put a screen door on the entrance?” 
Aomame asked. 
The dowager raised her head and looked at Aomame. “Screen door?” 
“Yes, if you were to add a screen door inside the glass one, you wouldn’t have to 
be so careful every time to make sure no butterflies escaped.” 

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80
The dowager lifted her saucer with her left hand and, with her right hand, brought 
her cup to her mouth for a quiet sip of herbal tea. She savored its fragrance and gave a 
little nod. She returned the cup to the saucer and the saucer to the tray. After dabbing 
at her mouth with her napkin, she returned the cloth to her lap. At the very least, she 
took three times as long to accomplish these motions as the ordinary person. Aomame 
felt she was observing a fairy deep in the forest sipping a life-giving morning dew. 
The woman lightly cleared her throat. “I don’t like screens,” she said. 
Aomame waited for the dowager to continue, but she did not. Was her dislike of 
screens based on a general opposition to things that restricted freedom, or on aesthetic 
considerations, or on a mere visceral preference that had no special reason behind it? 
Not that it was an especially important problem. Aomame’s question about screens 
had simply popped into her head. 
Like the dowager, Aomame picked up her cup and saucer together and silently 
sipped her tea. She was not that fond of herbal tea. She preferred coffee as hot and 
strong as a devil at midnight, but perhaps that was not a drink suited to a hothouse in 
the afternoon. And so she always ordered the same drink as the mistress of the house 
when they were in the hothouse. When offered a cookie, she ate one. A gingersnap. 
Just baked, it had the taste of fresh ginger. Aomame recalled that the dowager had 
spent some time after the war in England. The dowager also took a cookie and 
nibbled it in tiny bits, slowly and quietly so as not to wake the rare butterfly sleeping 
on her shoulder. 
“Tamaru will give you the key when you leave,” the woman said. “Please mail it 
back when you’re through with it. As always.” 
“Of course.” 
A tranquil moment of silence followed. No sounds reached the sealed hothouse 
from the outside world. The butterfly went on sleeping. 
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” the woman said, looking straight at Aomame. 
Aomame lightly set her teeth against her lower lip and nodded. “I know.” 
“Look at what’s in that envelope,” the woman said. 
From an envelope lying on the table Aomame took seven Polaroid photographs 
and set them in a row, like unlucky tarot cards, beside the fine celadon teapot. They 
were close-up shots of a young woman’s body: her back, breasts, buttocks, thighs, 
even the soles of her feet. Only her face was missing. Each body part bore marks of 
violence in the form of lurid welts, raised, almost certainly, by a belt. Her pubic hair 
had been shaved, the skin marked with what looked like cigarette burns. Aomame 
found herself scowling. She had seen photos like this in the past, but none as bad. 
“You haven’t seen these before, have you?” 
Aomame shook her head in silence. “I had heard, but this is the first I’ve seen of 
them.” 
“Our man did this,” the dowager said. “We’ve taken care of her three fractures, but 
one ear is exhibiting symptoms of hearing loss and may never be the same again.” 
She spoke as quietly as ever, but her voice took on a cold, hard edge that seemed to 
startle the butterfly on her shoulder. It spread its wings and fluttered away. 
She continued, “We can’t let anyone get away with doing something like this. We 
simply can’t.” 
Aomame gathered the photos and returned them to the envelope. 

---

81
“Don’t you agree?” the dowager asked. 
“I certainly do,” said Aomame. 
“We did the right thing,” the dowager declared. 
She left her chair and, perhaps to calm herself, picked up the watering can by her 
side as if taking in hand a sophisticated weapon. She was somewhat pale now, her 
eyes sharply focused on a corner of the hothouse. Aomame followed her gaze but saw 
nothing more unusual than a potted thistle. 
“Thank you for coming to see me,” the dowager said, still holding the empty 
watering can. “I appreciate your efforts.” This seemed to signal the end of their 
interview. 
Aomame stood and picked up her bag. “Thank you for the tea.” 
“And let me thank you again,” the dowager said. 
Aomame gave her a faint smile. 
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” the dowager said. Her voice had 
regained its gentle tone. A warm glow shone in her eyes. She touched Aomame’s arm. 
“We did the right thing, I’m telling you.” 
Aomame nodded. The woman always ended their conversations this way. Perhaps 
she was saying the same thing to herself repeatedly, like a prayer or mantra. “You 
don’t have anything to worry about. We did the right thing, I’m telling you.” 
After checking to be sure there were no butterflies nearby, Aomame opened the 
hothouse door just enough to squeeze through, and closed it again. The dowager 
stayed inside, the watering can in her hand. The air outside was chilling and fresh 
with the smell of trees and grass. This was the real world. Here time flowed in the 
normal manner. Aomame inhaled the real world’s air deep into her lungs. 
She found Tamaru seated in the same teak chair by the front entrance, waiting for her. 
His task was to hand her a key to a post office box. 
“Business finished?” he asked. 
“I think so,” Aomame replied. She sat down next to him, took the key, and tucked 
it into a compartment of her shoulder bag. 
For a time, instead of speaking, they watched the birds that were visiting the 
garden. There was still no wind, and the branches of the willows hung motionlessly. 
Several branches were nearly touching the ground. 
“Is the woman doing okay?” Aomame asked. 
“Which woman?” 
“The wife of the man who suffered the heart attack in the Shibuya hotel.” 
“Doing okay? Not really. Not yet,” Tamaru said with a scowl. “She’s still in shock. 
She can hardly speak. It’ll take time.” 
“What’s she like?” 
“Early thirties. No kids. Pretty. Seems like a nice person. Stylish. Unfortunately, 
she won’t be wearing bathing suits this summer. Maybe not next year, either. Did you 
see the Polaroids?” 
“Yes, just now.” 
“Horrible, no?” 
“Really,” Aomame said. 

---

82
Tamaru said, “It’s such a common pattern. Talented guy, well thought of, good 
family, impressive career, high social standing.” 
“But he becomes a different person at home,” Aomame said, continuing his 
thought. “Especially when he drinks, he becomes violent. But only toward women. 
His wife is the only one he can knock around. To everyone else, he shows only his 
good side. Everybody thinks of him as a gentle, loving husband. The wife tries to tell 
people what terrible things he’s doing to her, but no one will believe her. The husband 
knows that, so when he’s violent he chooses parts of her body she can’t easily show to 
people, or he’s careful not to make bruises. Is this the ‘pattern’?” 
Tamaru nodded. “Pretty much. Only this guy didn’t drink. He was stone-cold sober 
and out in the open about it. A really ugly case. She wanted a divorce, but he 
absolutely refused. Who knows? Maybe he loved her. Or maybe he didn’t want to let 
go of such a handy victim. Or maybe he just enjoyed raping his wife.” 
Tamaru raised one foot, then the other, to check the shine on his shoes again. Then 
he continued, “Of course, you can usually get a divorce if you have proof of domestic 
violence, but it takes time and it takes money. If the husband hires a good lawyer, he 
can make it very unpleasant for you. The family courts are full, and there’s a shortage 
of judges. If, in spite of all that, you 
do
get a divorce, and the judge awards a divorce 
settlement or alimony, the number of men who actually pay up is small. They can get 
out of it all kinds of ways. In Japan, ex-husbands almost never get put in jail for not 
paying. If they demonstrate a