After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 22 
Ushikawa 
THOSE EYES LOOKED RATHER FULL OF PITY 
Tengo showed up at the entrance to the apartment building on Sunday evening, at six 
fifteen. As soon as he stepped outside he halted and gazed around, as if looking for 
something. First to the right, then the left. Then from left to right. He looked up at the 
sky, then down at his feet. But nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, as far as he 
was concerned. 
Ushikawa didn’t follow him then. Tengo was carrying nothing with him. His hands 
were stuffed in the pockets of his unpleated chinos. He had on a high-neck sweater 
and a well-worn olive-green corduroy jacket, and his hair was unruly. A thick 
paperback book peeped out of a jacket pocket. Ushikawa figured he must be going out 
to eat dinner in a nearby restaurant. 
Fine
, he decided, 
just let him go where he wants
. 
Tengo had several classes he had to teach on Monday. Ushikawa had found this 
out by phoning the cram school. Yes, a female office worker had told him, Mr. 
Kawana will be teaching his regular classes from the beginning of the week. Good. 
From tomorrow, then, Tengo was finally going back to his normal schedule. Knowing 
him, he probably wouldn’t be going far this evening. (If Ushikawa had followed him 
that night, he would have found out that Tengo was on his way to meet with Komatsu 
at the bar in Yotsuya.) 
Just before eight, Ushikawa threw on his pea coat, muffler, and knit hat and, 
looking around him as he did, hurried out of the building. Tengo had not yet returned 
at this point. If he was really eating somewhere in the neighborhood, it was taking 
longer than it should. If Ushikawa was unlucky, he might actually bump into him on 
his way back. But he was willing to run the risk, since there was something he 
absolutely had to do, and it had to be done now, at this time of night. 
He relied on his memory of the route as he turned several corners, passed a few 
semi-familiar landmarks, and though he hesitated a few times, unsure of the direction, 
he eventually arrived at the playground. The strong north wind of the previous day 
had died down, and it was warm for a December evening, but as expected, the park 
was deserted. Ushikawa double-checked that there was no one else around, then 
climbed up the slide. He sat down on top of the slide, leaned back against the railing, 
and looked up at the sky. The moons were there, almost in the same location as the 
night before. A bright moon, two-thirds full. Not a single cloud nearby. And beside it, 
a small green, misshapen moon snuggled close. 
So it’s no mistake, then
, Ushikawa thought. He exhaled and shook his head. He 
wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. Two moons, one big, one small, were definitely 

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visible there, above the leafless zelkova tree. The two moons looked like they had 
stayed put since last night, waiting for him to return to the top of the slide. They knew 
that he would be back. As if prearranged, the silence around them was suggestive. 
And the moons wanted Ushikawa to share that silence with them. 
You can’t tell 
anybody else about this
, they warned. They held an index finger, covered with a light 
dusting of ash, to their mouths to make sure he didn’t say a thing. 
As he sat there, Ushikawa moved his facial muscles this way and that, to make 
sure there wasn’t something unnatural or unusual about this feeling he was having. He 
found nothing unnatural about it. For better or for worse, this was his normal face. 
Ushikawa always saw himself as a realist, and he actually was. Metaphysical 
speculation wasn’t his thing. If something really existed, you had to accept it as a 
reality, whether or not it made sense or was logical. That was his basic way of 
thinking. Principles and logic didn’t give birth to reality. Reality came first, and the 
principles and logic followed. So, he decided, he would have to begin by accepting 
this reality: that there were two moons in the sky. 
The rest of it he would think about later. He sat there, trying not to think, 
completely absorbed in observing the two moons. He tried to get used to the scene.