After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Not a bad guess
, Tengo thought. 
One article called the author “a Françoise Sagan who has absorbed the air of 
magical realism.” This piece, though vague and filled with reservations, generally 
seemed to be in praise of the work. 
More than a few of the reviewers seemed perplexed by—or simply undecided 
about—the meaning of the air chrysalis and the Little People. One reviewer 
concluded his piece, “As a story, the work is put together in an exceptionally 
interesting way and it carries the reader along to the very end, but when it comes to 
the question of what 
is
an air chrysalis, or who 
are
the Little People, we are left in a 
pool of mysterious question marks. This may well be the author’s intention, but many 
readers are likely to take this lack of clarification as a sign of ‘authorial laziness.’ 
While this may be fine for a debut work, if the author intends to have a long career as 
a writer, in the near future she may well need to explain her deliberately cryptic 
posture.” 
Tengo cocked his head in puzzlement. If an author succeeded in writing a story 
“put together in an exceptionally interesting way” that “carries the reader along to the 
very end,” who could possibly call such a writer “lazy”? 
But Tengo, in all honesty, had nothing clear to say to this. Maybe his thoughts on 
the matter were mistaken and the critic was right. He had immersed himself so deeply 
in the rewriting of 
Air Chrysalis
that he was practically incapable of any kind of 
objectivity. He now saw the air chrysalis and the Little People as things that existed 
inside himself. Not even he could honestly say he knew what they meant. Nor was 
this so very important to him. The most meaningful thing was whether or not one 
could accept their existence as a fact, and Tengo was able to do this quite readily, 
which was precisely why he had been able to immerse his heart and soul in rewriting 
Air Chrysalis
. Had he not been able to accept the story on its own terms, he would 
never have participated in the fraud, even if tempted with a fortune or faced with 
threats. 
Still, Tengo’s reading of the story was his and his alone. He could not help feeling 
a certain sympathy for the trusting men and women who were “left in a pool of 

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335
mysterious question marks” after reading 
Air Chrysalis
. He pictured a bunch of 
dismayed-looking people clutching at colorful flotation rings as they drifted aimlessly 
in a large pool full of question marks. In the sky above them shone an utterly 
unrealistic sun. Tengo felt a certain sense of responsibility for having foisted such a 
state of affairs upon the public. 
But who can possibly save all the people of the world?
Tengo thought. 
You could 
bring all the gods of the world into one place, and still they couldn’t abolish nuclear 
weapons or eradicate terrorism. They couldn’t end the drought in
Africa or bring 
John Lennon back to life. Far from it—the gods would just break into factions and 
start fighting among themselves, and the world would probably become even more 
chaotic than it is now. Considering the sense of powerlessness that such a state of 
affairs would bring about, to have people floating in a pool of mysterious question 
marks seems like a minor sin
. 
Tengo read about half of the 
Air Chrysalis
reviews that Komatsu had sent before 
stuffing them back into the envelope. He could pretty well imagine what the rest were 
like. As a story, 
Air Chrysalis
was fascinating to many people. It had fascinated 
Tengo and Komatsu and Professor Ebisuno and an amazing number of readers. What 
more did it have to do? 
The phone rang just after nine o’clock Tuesday night. Tengo was listening to music 
and reading a book. This was his favorite time of day, reading to his heart’s content 
before going to sleep. When he tired of reading, he would fall asleep. 
This was the first time he had heard the phone ring in quite a while, and there was 
something ominous about it. This was not Komatsu calling. The phone had a different 
ring when it was from Komatsu. Tengo hesitated, wondering whether he should pick 
it up at all. He let it ring five times. Then he lifted the needle from the record groove 
and picked up the receiver. It might be his girlfriend. 
“Mr. Kawana?” a man said. It was the voice of a middle-aged man, soft and deep. 
Tengo did not recognize it. 
“Yes,” Tengo said cautiously. 
“I’m sorry to call so late at night. My name is Yasuda,” the man said in a neutral 
voice, neither friendly nor hostile, neither impersonal nor intimate. 
Yasuda? The name was ordinary enough, but he couldn’t think of any Yasudas he 
knew. 
“I’m calling to give you a message,” the man said. He then inserted a slight pause, 
rather like putting a bookmark in between the pages of a book. “My wife will not be 
able to visit your home anymore, I believe. That is all I wanted to tell you.” 
Yasuda! That was his girlfriend’s name. Kyoko Yasuda. She never had occasion to 
speak her name in Tengo’s presence, which accounted for the lag in recognition. This 
man on the phone was Kyoko’s husband. Tengo felt as if something were stuck in his 
throat. 
“Have I managed to make myself clear?” the man asked, his voice entirely free of 
emotion—or none that Tengo could hear. He spoke with a slight accent, possibly from 
Hiroshima or Kyushu. Tengo could not be sure. 
“Not be able to visit,” Tengo echoed the words. 

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336
“Yes, she will no longer be 
able
to visit.” 
Tengo mustered up the courage to ask, “Has something happened to her?” 
Silence. Tengo’s question hung in space, unanswered. Then the man said, “So 
what I’m telling you, Mr. Kawana, is that you will probably never see my wife again. 
I just wanted to let you know that.” 
The man knew that Tengo had been sleeping with his wife. Once a week. For a 
year. Tengo could tell that he knew. But the man’s voice was strangely lacking in 
either anger or resentment. It contained something else—not so much a personal 
emotion as an objective scene: an abandoned, overgrown garden, or a dry riverbed 
after a major flood—a scene like that. 
“I’m not sure what you are trying to—” 
“Then let’s just leave it at that,” the man said, before Tengo could finish. A trace 
of fatigue was discernible in his voice. “One thing should be perfectly clear. My wife 
is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form. That is what I am 
saying.” 
“Irretrievably lost,” Tengo repeated. 
“I did not want to make this call, Mr. Kawana. But I couldn’t sleep at night if I just 
let it go and said nothing. Do you think I like having this conversation?” 
No sounds of any kind came from the other end when the man stopped talking. He 
seemed to be phoning from an incredibly quiet place. Either that or the emotion inside 
him was acting like a vacuum, absorbing all sound waves in the vicinity. 
Tengo felt he ought to ask the man a question or two. Otherwise, it seemed, this 
whole thing would end as a collection of inscrutable hints. He mustn’t let the 
conversation die! But this man had no intention of informing Tengo of any situational 
details. What kind of question could he ask when the other person had no intention of 
revealing the actual state of affairs? What kind of words should he give voice to when 
facing a vacuum? Tengo was still struggling to discover any words that might work 
when, without warning, the connection was cut. The man had set down the receiver 
without saying anything and left Tengo’s presence. Probably forever. 
Tengo kept the dead receiver pressed to his ear for a time. If anyone else was 
listening in to the call, he might be able to grasp that person’s presence. He held his 
breath and listened, but there were no telltale sounds. All he could hear was the 
beating of his own heart. The more he listened, the more he felt like a thief who has 
crept into a stranger’s house at night, hidden in the shadows, holding his breath, and 
waiting for the family to fall asleep. 
He boiled some water in a kettle and made green tea to calm his nerves. Cradling 
the handleless cup in his hands, he sat at the kitchen table and mentally reviewed the 
telephone call. 
“My wife is irretrievably lost. She can no longer visit your home in any form. That 
is what I am saying.”