After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 14 
Tengo 
A PACKAGE IN HIS HANDS 
“Come here and hold me,” Fuka-Eri said. “The two of us have to go to the town of 
cats together one more time.” 
“Hold you?” Tengo asked. 
“You don’t want to hold me,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark. 
“No, that’s not it. It’s just that—I didn’t quite get what you were saying.” 
“This will be a purification,” she informed him in uninflected tones. “Come here 
and hold me. You put on pajamas, too, and turn out the light.” 
As instructed, Tengo turned out the bedroom ceiling light. He undressed, took out 
his pajamas, and put them on. 
When was the last time I washed these?
he wondered as 
he slipped into his pajamas. Judging from the fact that he could not remember, it must 
have been quite some time ago. Fortunately, they did not smell of sweat. Tengo had 
never sweated very much, and he did not have a strong body odor. 
But still
, he 
reflected, 
I ought to wash my pajamas more often. Life is so uncertain: you never 
know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed
. 
He got into bed and gingerly wrapped his arms around Fuka-Eri, who laid her head 
on Tengo’s right arm. She lay very still, like a creature about to enter hibernation. Her 
body was warm, and so soft as to feel utterly defenseless. But she was not sweating. 
The thunder increased in intensity, and now it was beginning to rain. As though 
crazed with anger, the raindrops slammed sideways against the window glass. The air 
was damp and sticky, and the world felt as if it might be oozing its way toward its 
dark finale. The time of Noah’s flood might have felt like this. If so, it must have been 
quite depressing in the violent thunderstorm to have the narrow ark filled with the 
rhinoceroses, the lions, the pythons, and so forth, all in pairs, all used to different 
modes of living, with limited communication skills, and the stink something special. 
The word “pair” made Tengo think of Sonny and Cher, but Sonny and Cher might 
not be the most appropriate pair to put aboard Noah’s ark to represent humanity. 
Though they might not be entirely inappropriate, either. 
There must be some other 
couple who would be a more appropriate human sample
. 
Embracing Fuka-Eri in bed like this, with her wearing his own pajamas, Tengo had 
a strange feeling. He even felt as if he might be embracing a part of himself, as if he 
were holding someone with whom he shared flesh and body odor and whose mind 
was linked with his. 
Tengo imagined the two of them having been chosen as a 
pair
to board Noah’s ark 
instead of Sonny and Cher. But even they could hardly be said to be the most 

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appropriate sample of humanity. 
The very fact of our embracing each other in bed like 
this is far from appropriate, no matter how you look at it
. The thought kept Tengo 
from being able to relax. He decided instead to imagine Sonny and Cher becoming 
good friends with the python pair on the ark. It was an utterly pointless thing to 
imagine, but at least it enabled him to relax the tension in his body. 
Lying in Tengo’s arms, Fuka-Eri said nothing. Nor did she move or open her 
mouth. Tengo didn’t say anything either. Even embracing Fuka-Eri in bed, he felt 
almost nothing that could be called sexual desire. To Tengo, sexual desire was 
fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual 
desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed 
inappropriate to him. He realized, too, that what Fuka-Eri was looking for was not his 
sexual desire. She was looking for