Look at this, they say. Look at this and nothing else, they say. You are here. You can’t go anywhere else, they say. The message is played over and over.
This “attack” was a long one. Tengo closed his eyes, covered his mouth with his handkerchief as always, and gritted his teeth. He had no idea how long it went on. All he could do was guess, based on how worn out he felt afterward. He felt physically drained, more fatigued than he had ever felt before. Some time had to go by before he could open his eyes. His mind wanted to wake up, but his muscles and internal organs resisted. He might as well have been a hibernating animal trying to wake up in the wrong season.
“Tengo, Tengo!” someone was calling. The muffled voice seemed to reach him from the depths of a cave. It finally dawned on Tengo that he was hearing his own name. “What’s wrong, Tengo? Is it happening to you again? Are you all right?” The voice sounded closer now.
Tengo finally opened his eyes, managed to focus them, and stared at his own right hand gripping the edge of the table. Now he could be sure that the world still existed in one piece and that he was still a part of it. Some numbness remained, but the hand was certainly his. So, too, was the smell of sweat emanating from him, an oddly harsh odor like a zoo animal’s.
His throat was dry. Tengo reached for the glass on the table and drank half its contents, carefully trying not to spill any. After a momentary rest to catch his breath, he drank the remainder. His mind was gradually coming back to where it belonged and his senses were returning to normal. He set the empty glass down and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m okay now”
He knew that the man across from him was Komatsu and that they had been talking at a café near Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station. The sounds of other nearby conversations now sounded like normal voices. The couple at the neighboring table were staring at him, obviously concerned. The waitress stood by with a worried expression on her face as though she expected her customer to vomit. Tengo looked up and nodded to her, smiling as if to signal, “Don’t worry, no problem.”
“That wasn’t some kind of fit, was it?” Komatsu asked.
“No, it’s nothing, a kind of dizzy spell. A bad one,” Tengo replied. His voice still didn’t sound like his own, though it was getting closer.
“It’d be terrible if that happened while you were driving or something,” Komatsu said, looking directly at him.
“I don’t drive.”
“That’s good. I know a guy with a cedar pollen allergy who started sneezing at the wheel and smashed into a telephone pole. Of course, your thing is not just sneezing. I was shocked the first time. I’m more or less used to it now, though.”
“Sorry.”
Tengo picked up his coffee cup and gulped down what was left. He tasted nothing, just felt some lukewarm liquid passing down his throat.
“Want to order another glass of water?” Komatsu asked.
Tengo shook his head. “No, I’m okay now.”
Komatsu took a pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket, put one in his mouth, and lit up with the café’s matches. Then he glanced at his watch.
“What were we talking about again?” Tengo asked, trying to get back to normal.
“Good question,” Komatsu said, staring off into space, thinking—or pretending to. Tengo could not be sure which. There was a good deal of acting involved in the way Komatsu spoke and gestured. “That’s it—the girl Fuka-Eri. We were just getting started on her and Air Chrysalis.”
Tengo nodded. That was it. He was just beginning to give his opinion on Fuka-Eri and her novella, Air Chrysalis, when the “attack” hit him.
Komatsu said, “I was going to tell you about that odd one-word pen name of hers.”
“It is odd, isn’t it? The ‘Fuka’ sounds like part of a family name, and the ‘Eri’ could be an ordinary girl’s name: ‘Eri’ or ‘Eriko.’ ”
“That’s exactly what it is. Her family name is ‘Fukada,’ and her real first name is ‘Eriko,’ so she put them together: ‘Fuka’ plus ‘Eri’ equals ‘Fuka-Eri.’ ”
Tengo pulled the manuscript from his briefcase and laid it on the table, resting his hand atop the sheaf of paper to reaffirm its presence.
“As I mentioned briefly on the phone, the best thing about this Air Chrysalis is that it’s not an imitation of anyone. It has absolutely none of the usual new writer’s sense of ‘I want to be another so-and-so.’ The style, for sure, is rough, and the writing is clumsy. She even gets the title wrong: she’s confusing ‘chrysalis’ and ‘cocoon.’ You could pick it apart completely if you wanted to. But the story itself has real power: it draws you in. The overall plot is a fantasy, but the descriptive detail is incredibly real. The balance between the two is excellent. I don’t know if words like ‘originality’ or ‘inevitability’ fit here, and I suppose I might agree if someone insisted it’s not at that level, but finally, after you work your way through the thing, with all its faults, it leaves a real impression—it gets to you in some strange, inexplicable way that may be a little disturbing.”
Komatsu kept his eyes on Tengo, saying nothing. He was waiting to hear more.
Tengo went on. “I’d hate to see this thing dropped from the competition just because the style is clumsy. I’ve read tons of submissions over the years—or maybe I should say ‘skimmed’ rather than ‘read.’ A few of them were fairly well written, of course, but most of them were just awful. And out of all those manuscripts, this Air Chrysalis is the only one that moved me the least bit. It’s the only one that ever made me want to read it again.”
“Well, well,” Komatsu said, and then, as if he found this all rather boring, he released a stream of smoke through his pursed lips. Tengo had known Komatsu too long to be deceived by such a display, however. Komatsu was a man who often adopted an expression that was either unrelated to—or exactly the opposite of—what he was actually feeling. And so Tengo was prepared to wait him out.
“I read it, too,” Komatsu said after a short pause. “Right after you called me. The writing is incredibly bad. It’s ungrammatical, and in some places you have no idea what she’s trying to say. She should go back to school and learn how to write a decent sentence before she starts writing fiction.”
“But you did read it to the end, didn’t you?”
Komatsu smiled. It was the kind of smile he might have found way in the back of a normally unopened drawer. “You’re right, I did read it all the way through—much to my own surprise. I never read these new writer prize submissions from beginning to end. I even reread some parts of this one. Let’s just say the planets were in perfect alignment. I’ll grant it that much.”
“Which means it has something, don’t you think?”
Komatsu set his cigarette in an ashtray and rubbed the side of his nose with the middle finger of his right hand. He did not, however, answer Tengo’s question.
Tengo said, “She’s just seventeen, a high school kid. She still doesn’t have the discipline to read and write fiction, that’s all. It’s practically impossible for this work to take the new writers’ prize, I know, but it’s good enough to put on the short list. You can make that happen, I’m sure. So then she can win next time.”
“Hmm,” Komatsu said with another noncommittal answer and a yawn. He took a drink from his water glass. “Think about it, Tengo. Imagine if I put it on the short list. The members of the selection committee would faint—or more likely have a shit fit. But they would definitely not read it all the way through. All four of them are active writers, busy with their own work. They’d skim the first couple of pages and toss it out as if it were some grade school composition. I could plead with them to give it another try, and guarantee them it would be brilliant with a little polishing here and there, but who’s going to listen to me? Even supposing I could ‘make it happen,’ I’d only want to do that for something with more promise.”
“So you’re saying we should drop it just like that?”
“No, t
hat is not what I’m saying,” Komatsu said, rubbing the side of his nose. “I’ve got something else in mind for this story.”
“Something else in mind,” Tengo said. He sensed something ominous in Komatsu’s tone.
“You’re saying we should count on her next work as a winner,” Komatsu said. “I’d like to be able to do that, too, of course. One of an editor’s greatest joys is nurturing a young writer over time. It’s a thrill to look at the clear night sky and discover a new star before anybody else sees it. But to tell you the truth, Tengo, I don’t believe this girl has a next work in her. Not to boast, but I’ve been making my living in this business for twenty years now. I’ve seen writers come and go. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s how to tell the difference between writers who have a next work in them, and those who don’t. And if you ask me, this girl doesn’t have one. Her next work is not going to make it, and neither will the one after that or the one after that. First of all, look at this style. No amount of work is going to make it any better. It’s never going to happen. And the reason it’s never going to happen is that the writer herself doesn’t give a damn about style: she shows absolutely no intention of wanting to write well, of wanting to improve her writing. Good style happens in one of two ways: the writer either has an inborn talent or is willing to work herself to death to get it. And this girl, Fuka-Eri, belongs to neither type. Don’t ask me why, but style as such simply doesn’t interest her. What she does have, though, is the desire to tell a story—a fairly strong desire. I grant her that. Even in this raw form, it was able to draw you in, Tengo, and it made me read the manuscript all the way through. That alone is impressive, you could say. But she has no future as a novelist. None. I hate to disappoint you, but that’s my honest opinion.”
Tengo had to admit that Komatsu could be right. The man possessed good editorial instincts, if nothing else.
“Still, it wouldn’t hurt to give her a chance, would it?” Tengo asked.
“You mean, throw her in, see if she sinks or swims?”
“In a word.”
“I’ve done too much of that already. I don’t want to watch anybody else drown.”
“Well, what about me?”
“You at least are willing to work hard,” Komatsu said cautiously. “As far as I can tell, you don’t cut corners. You’re very modest when it comes to the act of writing. And why? Because you like to write. I value that in you. It’s the single most important quality for somebody who wants to be a writer.”
“But not, in itself, enough.”
“No, of course, not in itself enough. There also has to be that ‘special something,’ an indefinable quality, something I can’t quite put my finger on. That’s the part of fiction I value more highly than anything else. Stuff I understand perfectly doesn’t interest me. Obviously. It’s very simple.”
Tengo fell silent for a while. Then he said, “Does Fuka-Eri’s writing have something you don’t understand perfectly?”
“Yes, it does, of course. She has something important. I don’t know what it is exactly, but she has it, that much is clear. It’s obvious to you, and it’s obvious to me. Anybody can see it, like the smoke from a bonfire on a windless afternoon. But whatever she has, Tengo, she probably can’t carry it on her own.”
“Meaning, if we throw her in the water, she’ll drown?”
“Exactly.”
“And that’s why you don’t want to put her on the short list.”
“That is exactly why.” Komatsu contorted his lips and folded his hands on the table. “Which brings us to a point in the conversation where I have to be very careful how I express myself.”
Tengo picked up his coffee cup and stared at the puddle inside. Then he put the cup down again. Komatsu still had not spoken. Tengo asked, “Is this where I find out what you mean by ‘something else’?”
Komatsu narrowed his eyes like a teacher gazing upon his prize pupil. He nodded slowly and said, “It is.”
There was something inscrutable about this man Komatsu. You couldn’t easily tell from his expression or tone of voice what he was thinking or feeling. He appeared to derive a good deal of pleasure from keeping others guessing. Mentally, he was very quick, that was for certain. He was the type of man who had his own sense of logic and reached his own conclusions without regard to the opinions of others. He did not engage in pointless intellectual display, but it was clear that he had read an enormous amount and that his knowledge was both wide-ranging and deep. Nor was it simply a matter of factual knowledge: he had an intuitive eye both for people and for books. His biases played a large role here, but for Komatsu bias was an important element of truth.
He never said a great deal, and he hated long-winded explanations, but when necessary he could present his views logically and precisely. He could also be quite caustic if he felt like it, aiming a quick and merciless jab at his opponent’s weakest point. He had very strong opinions about both people and literature; the works and individuals he could not tolerate far outnumbered those he could. Not surprisingly, the number of people who disliked him was far greater than those who thought well of him—which was exactly what he hoped for. Tengo thought that Komatsu enjoyed the isolation—and even relished being openly hated. Komatsu believed that mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.
At forty-five, Komatsu was sixteen years older than Tengo. A dedicated editor of literary magazines, he had established a certain reputation as one of the top people in the industry, but no one knew a thing about his private life. He met with people constantly in his work, but he never spoke of anything personal. Tengo had no idea where he was born or raised, or even where he lived. They often had long conversations, but such topics never came up. People were puzzled that a difficult man like Komatsu was able to solicit manuscripts from writers—he had no friends to speak of and displayed only contempt for the literary world—but over the years he managed, almost effortlessly, to obtain work by famous authors for the magazine, and more than a few issues owed their contents to his efforts. So even if they didn’t like him, people respected him.
Rumor had it that when Komatsu was a student in the prestigious University of Tokyo’s Department of Literature in 1960, he had been one of the leaders of the huge leftist demonstrations against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. He was said to have been near fellow student Michiko Kanba when she was killed by riot police, and to have suffered serious injuries himself. No one knew if this was true, but there was something about Komatsu that made the stories seem convincing. He was tall and gangly, with an oversized mouth and an undersized nose. He had long limbs and nicotine-stained fingers, reminiscent of those failed revolutionary intellectuals in nineteenth-century Russian novels. He rarely smiled, but when he did it was with his whole face. Not that it made him look especially happy—he was more like an old sorcerer chuckling to himself over an ominous prophecy he was about to reveal. Clean and decently groomed, he always wore a tweed jacket, white oxford cloth or pale gray polo shirt, no tie, gray pants, suede shoes—a “uniform” meant to show the world he didn’t care about these things. Tengo imagined a half-dozen three-button tweed jackets of a subtly different color, cloth, and pattern that hung, carefully brushed, in Komatsu’s closet. Perhaps Komatsu had to attach number tags to distinguish one jacket from another.
Komatsu’s fine, wiry hair was beginning to show a touch of gray in front. Tangled on the sides, it was long enough to cover his ears, and it always stayed that length, about a week overdue for a haircut. Tengo wondered how such a thing was possible. At times Komatsu’s eyes would take on a sharp glow, like stars glittering in the winter night sky. And if something caused him to clam up, he would maintain his silence like a rock on the far side of the moon. All expression would disappear from his face, and his body seemed to go cold.
Tengo first met Komatsu five years earlier when he was short-listed for the new writers’ prize competition of Komatsu’s magazine. Komatsu called and said he wanted to get together for a c
hat. They agreed to meet in a café in Shinjuku (the same one in which they were now sitting). Komatsu told Tengo there was no way his work would take the prize (and in fact it did not). Komatsu himself, however, had enjoyed the story. “I’m not looking for thanks, but I almost never say this to anyone,” he said. (This was in fact true, as Tengo came to learn.) “So I’d like you to let me read your next story before you show it to anyone else.” Tengo promised to do that.
Komatsu also wanted to learn about Tengo as a person—his experience growing up, what he was doing now. Tengo explained himself as honestly as he could. He was born in the city of Ichikawa in nearby Chiba Prefecture. His mother died of an illness shortly after he was born, or at least that was what his father told him. He had no siblings. His father never remarried but raised Tengo by himself, collecting NHK television subscription fees door to door to make a living. Now, however, his father had Alzheimer’s disease and was living in a nursing home on the southern tip of Chiba’s Boso Peninsula. Tengo himself had graduated from Tsukuba University’s oddly named “School 1 College of Natural Studies Mathematics Major” and was writing fiction while teaching mathematics at a private cram school in Yoyogi. At the time of his graduation he could have taken a position at a prefectural high school near home, but instead chose the relatively free schedule of the Tokyo cram school. He lived alone in a small apartment in the Koenji District west of downtown Tokyo, which gave him an easy half-hour commute to school.