261
“I know what you mean,” Ayumi said, lightly pressing her
fingers against her
temples. “But still, even though you’re that much in love with him, you feel like
sleeping with strange men every once in a while.”
Aomame clicked her fingernails against the rim of the thin wineglass. “I
need
to do
it. To keep myself in balance as a flesh-and-blood human being.”
“And it doesn’t destroy the love you have inside you.”
Aomame said, “It’s like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the
values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But
true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn’t move.”
“Marvelous,” Ayumi said. “The Tibetan Wheel of the Passions, huh?”
And she drank down the wine remaining in her glass.
Two days later, a little after eight o’clock at night, a call came from Tamaru. As
always, he skipped the preliminary greetings and went straight to business.
“Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”
“I don’t have a thing in the afternoon. I can come over whenever you need me.”
“How about four thirty?”
Aomame said that would be fine.
“Good,” Tamaru said. She could hear his ballpoint pen scratching
the time into his
calendar. He was pressing down hard.
“How is Tsubasa doing?” Aomame asked.
“She’s doing well, I think. Madame is going there every day to look after her. The
girl seems to be growing fond of her.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yes, it
is
good news, but something else happened that is not so good.”
“Something not so good?” Aomame knew that when Tamaru said something was
“not so good,” it had to be terrible.
“The dog died,” Tamaru said.
“The dog? You mean Bun?”
“Yes, the funny German shepherd that liked spinach. She died last night.”
Aomame was shocked to hear this. The dog was maybe five or six years old, not an
age for dying. “She was perfectly healthy the last time I saw her.”
“She didn’t die from illness,” Tamaru said, his voice flat. “I found her this morning
in pieces.”
“In pieces?!”
“As if she had exploded. Her guts were splattered all over the place. It was pretty
intense. I had to go around picking up chunks of flesh with paper towels. The
force of
the blast turned her body inside out. It was as if somebody had set off a small but
powerful bomb inside her stomach.”
“The poor dog!”
“Oh, well, there’s nothing to be done about the dog,” Tamaru said. “She’s dead
and won’t be coming back. I can find another guard dog to take her place. What
worries me, though, is
what happened
. It wasn’t something that any ordinary person
could do—setting off a bomb inside a dog like that. For one thing, that dog barked
like crazy whenever a stranger approached. This was not an easy thing to carry off.”
262
“That’s for sure,” Aomame said in a dry tone of voice.
“The women in the safe house are scared to death. The one in charge of feeding the
dog found her like that this morning. First she puked her guts out and then she called
me. I asked if anything suspicious happened during the night.
Not a thing, she said.
Nobody heard an explosion. If there had been such a big sound, everybody would
have woken up for sure. These women live in fear even in the best of times. It must
have been a soundless explosion. And nobody heard the dog bark. It was an especially
quiet night, but when morning came, there
was the dog, inside out. Fresh organs had
been blown all over, and the neighborhood crows were having a great time. For me,
though, it was nothing but worries.”
“Something weird is happening.”
“That’s for sure,” Tamaru said. “Something weird is happening. And if what I’m
feeling is right, this is just the beginning of something.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Hell, no,” Tamaru said, with a contemptuous little snort. “The police are
useless—looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing. They’d just complicate
matters.”
“What does Madame say?”
“Nothing. She just nodded when I gave her my report,” Tamaru said. “All security
measures
are my responsibility, from beginning to end. It’s
my
job.”
A short silence followed, a heavy silence having to do with responsibility.
“Tomorrow at four thirty,” Aomame said.
“Tomorrow at four thirty,” Tamaru repeated, and quietly hung up.
