247
the look on his face changed. Tengo liked the way this change of gears felt. It was like
moving from one room into another or changing from one pair of shoes into another.
In contrast to the time he spent performing daily tasks or writing fiction, Tengo
was able to attain a new level of relaxation—and even to become more eloquent—
when he entered the world of mathematics. At the same time, however, he also felt he
had become a somewhat more practical person. He could not decide who might be the
real Tengo, but the switch was both natural and almost unconscious. He also knew
that it was something he more or less needed.
As
a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students’ heads how voraciously
mathematics demanded logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning,
but once you had succeeded in proving something, the world’s riddles settled into the
palm of your hand like a tender oyster. Tengo’s lectures took on uncommon warmth,
and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to
practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously
presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed.
Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of
several of his female students, and he realized
that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His
eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their
backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears. Since meeting Fuka-Eri, however,
Tengo no longer felt sexual interest in such girls, nor did he have any urge to smell
their pajamas.
Fuka-Eri is surely a special being
, Tengo realized.
She can’t be compared with
other girls. She is undoubtedly someone of special significance to me. She is—how
should I put it?—an all-encompassing image projected straight at me, but an image I
find it impossible to decipher
.
Still, I’d better end any involvement with Fuka-Eri
. Tengo’s rational mind reached
this lucid conclusion.
I should also put as much distance as possible between myself
and the piles of
Air Chrysalis
displayed in the front of all the bookstores, and the
inscrutable Professor Ebisuno, and that ominously mysterious religious organization.
I’d also better keep away from Komatsu, at least for the time being. Otherwise, I’m
likely to be carried into even more chaotic territory, pushed into a dangerous corner
without a shred of logic, driven into a situation from which I can never extricate
myself
.
But Tengo was also well aware that he could not easily withdraw from the twisted
conspiracy in which he was now fully involved. He was no Hitchcockian protagonist,
embroiled in a conspiracy before he knew what was happening. He had embroiled
himself, knowing full well that it contained an element of risk. The machine was
already in motion, gaining too much forward momentum for him to stop it. Tengo
himself was one of its gears—and an important one at that. He could hear the
machine’s
low groaning, and feel its implacable motion.
Komatsu called Tengo a few days after
Air Chrysalis
topped the bestseller list for the
second week in a row. The phone rang after eleven o’clock at night. Tengo was
248
already in bed in his pajamas. He had been reading a book for a while, lying on his
stomach, and was just about to turn off the bedside light. Judging from the ring, he
knew it was Komatsu. Exactly how, he
could not explain, but he could always tell
when the call was from Komatsu. The phone rang in a special way. Just as writing
had a particular style, Komatsu’s calls had a particular ring.
Tengo got out of bed, went to the kitchen, and picked up the receiver. He did not
really want to answer the call and would have preferred to go quietly to sleep, to
dream of Iriomote
cats or the Panama Canal, or the ozone layer, or Basho—anything,
as long as it was as far from here as possible. If he didn’t answer the phone now,
though, it would just ring again in another fifteen minutes or half an hour. Better to
take the call now.
“Hey, Tengo, were you sleeping?” Komatsu asked, easygoing as usual.
“I was trying,” Tengo said.
“Sorry about that,” Komatsu said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “I just wanted to
let you know that
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