After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 15 
Tengo 
NOT SOMETHING 
HE’S ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT
Tengo left the bar, Mugiatama, and wandered the streets, lost in thought. Eventually, 
he made up his mind and headed toward the small children’s playground—the place 
where he had first discovered two moons in the sky. 
I will climb the slide like last 
time
, he thought, 
and look up at the sky once more
. He might be able to see the moons 
from there again. And they might tell him something. 
As he walked, he wondered when exactly he had last visited the playground. He 
couldn’t recall. The flow of time wasn’t uniform anymore, the sense of distance 
uncertain. But it probably had been in the early autumn. He remembered wearing a 
long-sleeved T-shirt. And now it was December. 
A cold wind was blowing the mass of clouds off toward Tokyo Bay. The free-form 
clouds looked stiff and hard, as if made of putty. The two moons were visible, 
occasionally hiding behind the clouds. The familiar yellow moon, and the new, 
smaller green moon, both of them past full, about two-thirds size. The smaller moon 
was like a child hiding in its mother’s skirts. The moons were in almost the same 
location as the time he saw them before, as if they had been patiently waiting for 
Tengo’s return. 
There was no one else in the playground. The mercury-vapor lamp shone brighter 
than before, a cold, harsh light. The bare branches of the zelkova tree reminded him 
of ancient white bones. It was the sort of night when you would expect to hear an owl. 
But there were no owls to be found in the city’s parks. Tengo tugged the hood of his 
yacht parka over his head and stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. He 
climbed up the slide, leaned against the handrail, and gazed up at the two moons as 
they appeared, then disappeared, among the clouds. Beyond that, the stars twinkled 
silently. The amorphous filth that hangs over the city was blown away in the wind, 
leaving the air pure and clear. 
Right now, how many people besides me have noticed these two moons?
Tengo 
considered this. Fuka-Eri knew about it, because this was something that she initiated. 
Most likely. Other than her, though, nobody he knew had mentioned that the number 
of moons had increased. Have people not noticed? Or they don’t dare to bring it up in 
conversation? Is it just common knowledge? Either way, other than the friend who 
filled in for him at the cram school, Tengo hadn’t asked anybody about the moons. 
Actually, he had been careful not to bring it up in conversation, like it was some 
morally inappropriate subject. 
Why? 

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Perhaps the moons wanted it that way
, Tengo thought. 
Maybe these two moons are 
a special message meant just for me, and I am not permitted to share this information 
with anyone else
. 
But this was a strange way to see it. Why would the number of moons be a 
personal message? And what could they be trying to tell him? To Tengo it seemed 
less a message than a kind of complicated riddle. And if it’s a riddle, then who made 
it? Who’s 
not permitting
things? 
The wind rushed between the branches of the zelkova tree, making a piercing 
howl, like the coldhearted breath leaking out between the teeth of a person who has 
lost all hope. Tengo gazed at the moons, not paying much attention to the sound of the 
wind, sitting there until his whole body was chilled to the bone. It must have been 
around fifteen minutes. No, maybe more. His sense of time had left him. His body, 
initially warmed by the whiskey, now felt hard and cold, like a lonely boulder at the 
bottom of the sea. 
The clouds continued to scud off toward the south. No matter how many were 
blown away, others appeared to take their place. There was an inexhaustible source of 
clouds in some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed 
in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like 
bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows. 
Tengo looked at his watch. It was almost eight. The playground was still deserted. 
Occasionally people would walk by quickly on the street in front. People who have 
finished work and are on the way home all walk the same way. In the new six-story 
apartment building on the other side of the street the lights were on in half the units. 
On windy winter nights, a window with a light shining in it acquires a gentle warmth. 
Tengo looked from one lit window to the next, in order, like looking up at a huge 
luxury cruise liner from a tiny fishing boat bobbing in the night sea. As if by 
prearrangement, all the curtains at the windows were closed. Seen from a freezing-
cold slide in a park at night, they looked like a totally different world—a world 
founded on different principles, a world that ran by different rules. Beyond those 
curtains there must be people living their quite ordinary lives, peaceful and content. 
Quite ordinary lives? 
The only image that Tengo had of