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People continued to stare at the two of them through the car windows. What are
these two looking at? And why are they clutching each other’s hand so tightly? A
number of them craned their heads, trying to see what the couple was staring at, but
all that was visible were white clouds and an Esso billboard.
Put a Tiger in Your
Tank
, the billboard tiger’s profile said, facing to the left, urging those driving by to
consume
even more gasoline, his orange-striped tail jauntily raised to the sky.
. . .
The clouds finally broke and the moon came into view.
There was just one moon. That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon
that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose—a gleaming,
round saucer—over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the
rooftops of fast-asleep houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore,
that softly shone on the fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night.
The moon that,
as a crescent, shaved slivers from the soul—or, as a new moon,
silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness.
That
moon. The moon was fixed in the
sky right above the Esso billboard, and there was no smaller, misshapen greenish
moon beside it. It was hanging there, taciturn, beholden to no one.
Simultaneously,
the two of them looked at the same scene. Wordlessly Aomame clutched Tengo’s
hand. The feeling of an internal backflow had vanished.
We’re back in 1984
, Aomame told herself.
This isn’t 1Q84 anymore. This is the
world of 1984, the world I came from
.
But is it? Could the world really go back so easily to what it was? Hadn’t Leader,
just before he died, asserted that there was no pathway back to the old world?
Could this be another, altogether different place? Did we move from one world to
yet another, third world? Where the Esso tiger shows us the left side of his face, not
his right? Where new riddles and new rules await us?
It might well be
, Aomame thought.
At least at this point I can’t swear that it isn’t.
But there is one thing I can say for sure. No matter how you look at it, this isn’t that
world, with its two moons in the sky. And I am holding Tengo’s hand. The two of us
entered a dangerous place, where logic had no purpose, and we managed to survive
some terrible ordeals, found each other, and slipped away. Whether this place we’ve
arrived in is the world we started out from or a whole new world, what do I have to
be afraid of? If there are new trials ahead for us, we just have to overcome them, like
we’ve done before. That’s all. But at least we’re no longer alone
.
Believing in what she needed to believe, she relaxed, leaning back against Tengo’s
large body. She pressed her ear against his chest and listened to his heartbeat, and
gave herself up to his arms. Just like a pea in a pod.
“Where should we go now?” Tengo asked Aomame after some time had passed. They
couldn’t stay here forever. That much was clear. But there
was no shoulder on the
Metropolitan Expressway. The Ikejiri exit was relatively close, but even in a traffic
jam like this it was too dangerous for a pedestrian to walk through the backup of cars.
They were certain, too, that holding out their thumbs to hitchhike wasn’t likely to get
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them any rides. They could use the emergency phone to call for help from the Japan
Highway Public Corporation, but then they would have to come up with a reasonable
explanation for why they were stranded. Even if they were able to make it on foot to
the Ikejiri exit, the toll collector would be sure to question them.
Going back down the
same stairs they had climbed up was out of the question.
“I don’t know,” Aomame said.
She really had no idea what they should do, or where they should go. Once they
had climbed the emergency stairway, her role was over. She was too drained to think,
or make a judgment call. There wasn’t a drop left in her tank. She could only let some
other power take over.
O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and
may Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins,
and bestow Thy
blessings upon our humble pathways. Amen.
The prayer flowed out from her like a conditioned reflex. She didn’t have to think
about it. Each individual word had no meaning. The phrases were nothing more than
sounds to her now, a list of signs and nothing more. Still, as she mechanically recited
the prayer, a strange feeling came over her, something you might even call reverence.
Something deep inside her struck a chord in her heart.
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