440
“I don’t know,” Fuka-Eri said, lightly creasing her brow. “A
lot.
”
Numbers
were not important to her, Tengo thought. Her “a
lot
” brought to mind
clover growing on a broad plane as far as the eye could see. The clover suggested
only the idea of “a lot,” but no one could count them all.
“A lot of people are reading
Air Chrysalis
,” Tengo said.
Saying nothing, Fuka-Eri inspected how well she had spread the jam on her toast.
“I’ll have to see Mr. Komatsu. As soon as possible,” Tengo said, looking at Fuka-
Eri across the table. As always, her face showed no expression. “You
have
met Mr.
Komatsu, haven’t you?”
“At the press conference.”
“Did you talk?”
Fuka-Eri gave her head a slight shake, meaning they had hardly talked at all.
Tengo could imagine the scene vividly. Komatsu was
talking his head off at top
speed, saying everything he was thinking—or
not
thinking—while she hardly opened
her mouth or listened to what he had to say. Komatsu was not concerned about that. If
anyone ever asked Tengo for a concrete example of two perfectly incompatible
personalities, he would name Fuka-Eri and Komatsu.
Tengo said, “I haven’t seen Mr. Komatsu for a
very
long time. And I haven’t heard
from him, either. He must be very busy these days. Ever since
Air Chrysalis
became a
bestseller, he’s been swept up in the circus. It’s
about time, though, for us to get
together and have a serious talk. We’ve got all kinds of problems to discuss.
Now
would be a good chance to do that, since you’re here. How about it? Want to see him
together?”
“The three of us?”
“Uh-huh. That’d be the quickest way to settle things.”
Fuka-Eri thought about this for a moment. Or else she was imagining something.
Then she said, “I don’t mind. If we can.”
If we can
, Tengo repeated mentally. It had a prophetic sound.
“Are you thinking we might not be able to?” Tengo asked with some hesitation.
Fuka-Eri did not reply.
“Assuming we can, we’ll meet him. Are you okay with that?”
“Meet him and do what?”
“ ‘Meet him and do what’? Well, first I’d return some money to him. A fairly
good-sized payment was transferred into my bank account the other day for my
rewriting of
Air Chrysalis
, but I’d rather not take it. Not that I
have any regrets about
having done the work. It was a great inspiration for my own writing and guided me in
a good direction. And it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. It’s been well
received critically and the book is selling. I don’t believe it was a mistake for me to
take it on. I just never expected it to blow up like this. Of course, I am the one who
agreed to do it, and I certainly have to take responsibility for that. But I just don’t
want to be paid for it.”
Fuka-Eri gave her shoulders a little shrug.
Tengo said, “You’re right. It might not change a thing. But I’d
like to make it clear
where I stand.”
“Who for?”
“Well, mainly for myself,” Tengo said, lowering his voice somewhat.
441
Fuka-Eri picked up the lid of the jam jar and stared at it as if she found it
fascinating.
“But it may already be too late,” Tengo said.
Fuka-Eri had nothing to say to that.
When Tengo tried phoning Komatsu’s office after one o’clock (Komatsu never came
to work in the morning), the woman who answered said that Komatsu had not been in
for the past several days. That was all she knew. Or,
if she knew more, she obviously
had no intention of sharing it with Tengo. He asked her to connect him with another
editor he knew. Tengo had written short columns under a pseudonym for the monthly
magazine
edited by this man, who was two or three years older than Tengo and
generally well disposed toward him, in part because they had graduated from the
same university.
“Komatsu has been out for over a week now,” the editor said. “He called in on the
third day to say he wouldn’t be coming to work for a while because he wasn’t
feeling
well, and we haven’t seen him since. The guys in the book division are going crazy.
He’s in charge of
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