After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 19 
Ushikawa 
WHAT HE CAN DO 
THAT MOST PEOPLE CAN’T
It was a quiet, windless Thursday morning. Ushikawa woke as usual before six and 
washed his face with cold water. He brushed his teeth as he listened to the NHK news 
on the radio, and he shaved with the electric razor. He boiled water in a pot, made 
instant ramen, and, after he finished eating, drank a cup of instant coffee. He rolled up 
his sleeping bag, stowed it in the closet, and sat down at the window in front of his 
camera. The eastern sky was beginning to grow light. It looked like it was going to be 
a warm day. 
The faces of all the people who left for work in the morning were etched in his 
mind. There was no need to take any more photos. From seven to eight thirty they 
hurried out of the apartment building to the station—the usual suspects. Ushikawa 
heard the lively voices of a group of elementary school pupils heading off for school. 
The children’s voices reminded him of when his daughters were little. His daughters 
had thoroughly enjoyed elementary school. They took piano and ballet lessons, and 
had lots of friends. To the very end, Ushikawa had found it hard to accept that he had 
these ordinary, happy kids. How could someone like him possibly be the father of 
children like these? 
After the morning rush, almost no one came in or out of the building. The 
children’s lively voices had disappeared. Ushikawa laid aside the remote control for 
the shutter, leaned against the wall, smoked a cigarette, and kept an eye on the 
entrance through a gap in the curtain. As always, just after ten a.m., the mailman 
came on his small red motorcycle and adeptly sorted the mail into all the boxes. From 
what Ushikawa could make out, half of it was junk mail, stuff that would be tossed 
away, unopened. As the sun rose higher, the temperature went up, and most of the 
people along the street took off their coats. 
It was after eleven when Fuka-Eri appeared at the entrance to the building. She 
wore the same black turtleneck as before, a gray short coat, jeans, sneakers, and dark 
sunglasses. And an oversized green shoulder bag slung diagonally across her 
shoulder. The bag was bulging with, no doubt, all sorts of things. Ushikawa left the 
wall he was leaning against, went over to the camera on the tripod, and squinted 
through the viewfinder. 
The girl was leaving there, that much he understood. She had stuffed all her 
belongings in that bag and was setting off for somewhere else. She would never be 
back there again. He could sense it. 
Maybe she decided to leave here
, he thought, 
because she noticed I was staking out the place
. The thought made his heart race. 

---

697
As she stepped out of the entrance, she came to a halt and stared up at the sky like 
she had done before, searching for something among the tangle of electric lines and 
the transformers. Her sunglasses caught the light and glittered. Had she found what 
she was looking for? Or maybe not? He couldn’t read her expression through the 
sunglasses. She must have stood there, frozen, for a good thirty seconds, gazing up at 
the sky. Then, almost as an afterthought, she turned her head and looked straight at 
the window behind which Ushikawa was hiding. She took off her sunglasses and 
stuck them in a coat pocket. She frowned and focused her gaze right on the 
camouflaged telephoto lens. 
She knows
, Ushikawa thought once again. 
The girl knows 
I’m hiding in here, that she’s being secretly watched
. And she was looking at him in 
the opposite direction, watching Ushikawa through the lens and back through the 
viewfinder. Like water flowing backward though a curved pipe. Ushikawa felt the 
flesh crawl on both his arms. 
Fuka-Eri blinked every few moments. Like independent, silent living creatures, her 
eyelids slowly went up and down in a studied way. Nothing else moved. She stood 
there like some lofty bird with neck twisted, staring straight at Ushikawa. He couldn’t 
pull his eyes away from her. It felt as if the entire world had come to a momentary 
halt. There was no wind, and sounds no longer made the air vibrate. 
Finally Fuka-Eri stopped looking at him. She raised her head again and gazed up at 
the sky, as she had done a moment before. This time, though, she stopped after a 
couple of seconds. Her expression was unchanged. She took the dark sunglasses out 
of her pocket, put them on again, and headed toward the street. She walked with a 
smooth, unhesitant stride.