After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 21 
Tengo 
SOMEWHERE INSIDE HIS HEAD 
The phone was ringing. The hands on his alarm clock showed 2:04. Monday, 2:04 
a.m. It was still dark out and Tengo had been sound asleep. A peaceful, dreamless 
sleep. 
First he thought it was Fuka-Eri. She would be the only person who would 
possibly call at this ungodly hour. Or it could be Komatsu. Komatsu didn’t have much 
common sense when it came to time. But somehow the ring didn’t sound like 
Komatsu. It was more insistent, and businesslike. And besides, he had just seen 
Komatsu a few hours earlier. 
One option was to ignore the call and go back to sleep—Tengo’s first choice. But 
the phone kept on ringing. It might go on ringing all night, for that matter. He got out 
of bed, bumping his shin as he did, and picked up the receiver. 
“Hello,” Tengo said, his voice still slurry from sleep. It was like his head was filled 
with frozen lettuce. There must be some people who don’t know you’re not supposed 
to freeze lettuce. Once lettuce has been frozen, it loses all its crispness—which for 
lettuce is surely its best characteristic. 
When he held the receiver to his ear, he heard the sound of wind blowing. A 
capricious wind rushing through a narrow valley, ruffling the fur of beautiful deer 
bent over to drink from a clear stream. But it wasn’t the sound of wind. It was 
someone’s breathing, amplified by the phone. 
“Hello,” Tengo repeated. Was it a prank call? Or perhaps the connection was bad. 
“Hello,” the person on the other end said. A woman’s voice he had heard before. It 
wasn’t Fuka-Eri. Nor was it his older girlfriend. 
“Hello,” Tengo said. “Kawana here.” 
“Tengo,” the person said. They were finally on the same page, though he still 
didn’t know who it was. 
“Who’s calling?” 
“Kumi Adachi,” the woman said. 
“Oh, hi,” Tengo said. Kumi Adachi, the young nurse who lived in the apartment 
with the hooting owl. “What’s going on?” 
“Were you asleep?” 
“Yes,” Tengo said. “How about you?” 
This was a pointless question. People who are sleeping can’t make phone calls. 
Why did I say such a stupid thing?
he wondered. 
It must be the frozen lettuce in my 
head
. 

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720
“I’m on duty now,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Mr. Kawana just passed 
away.” 
“Mr. Kawana just passed away,” Tengo repeated, not comprehending. Was 
someone telling him he himself had just died? 
“Your father just breathed his last breath,” Kumi said, rephrasing. 
Tengo pointlessly switched the receiver from his right hand to his left. “Breathed 
his last breath,” he repeated. 
“I was dozing in the nurses’ lounge when the bell rang, just after one. It was the 
bell for your father’s room. He has been in a coma for so long, and he couldn’t ring 
the bell by himself, so I thought it was odd, and went to check it out. When I got there 
his breathing had stopped, as had his heart. I woke up the on-call doctor and we tried 
to revive him, but couldn’t.” 
“Are you saying my father pressed the call button?” 
“Probably. There was no one else who could have.” 
“What was the cause of death?” Tengo asked. 
“I really can’t say, though he didn’t seem to have suffered. His face looked very 
peaceful. It was like—a windless day at the end of autumn, when a single leaf falls 
from a tree. But maybe that’s not a good way to put it.” 
“No, that’s okay,” Tengo said. “That’s a good way of putting it.” 
“Tengo, can you get here today?” 
“I think so.” His classes at the cram school began again today, Monday, but for 
something like this, he would be able to get out of them. 
“I’ll take the first express train. I should be there before ten.” 
“I would appreciate it if you would. There are all sorts of