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.

“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 formalities that have to be taken care of.”

“Formalities,” Tengo said. “Is there anything in particular I should bring with me?”

“Are you Mr. Kawana’s only relative?”

“I’m pretty sure I am.”

“Then bring your registered seal. You might need it. And do you have a certificate of registration for the seal?”

“I think I have a spare copy.”

“Bring that, too, just in case. I don’t think there’s anything else you especially need. Your father arranged everything beforehand.”

“Arranged everything?”

“Um, while he was still conscious, he gave detailed instructions for everything—the money for his funeral, the clothes he would wear in the coffin, where his ashes would be interred. He was very thorough when it came to preparations. Very practical, I guess you could say.”

“That’s the kind of person he was,” Tengo said, rubbing his temple.

“I finish my rotation at seven a.m. and then am going home to sleep. But Nurse Tamura and Nurse Omura will be on duty in the morning and they can explain the details to you.”

“Thank you for all you’ve done,” Tengo said.

“You’re quite welcome,” Kumi Adachi replied. And then, as if suddenly remembering, her tone turned formal. “My deepest sympathy for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Tengo said.

He knew he couldn’t go back to sleep, so he boiled water and made coffee. That woke him up a bit. Feeling hungry, he threw together a sandwich of tomatoes and cheese that were in the fridge. Like eating in the dark, he could feel the texture but very little of the flavor. He then took out the train schedule and checked the time for the next express to Tateyama. He had only returned two days earlier from the cat town, on Saturday afternoon, and now here he was, setting off again. This time, though, he would probably only stay a night or two.

At four a.m. he washed his face in the bathroom and shaved. He used a brush to tame his cowlicks but, as always, was only partly successful. Let it be, he thought, it will fall into place before long.

His father’s passing didn’t particularly shock Tengo. He had spent two solid weeks beside his unconscious father. He already felt that his father had accepted his impending death. The doctors weren’t able to determine what had put him into a coma, but Tengo knew. His father had simply decided to die, or else had abandoned the will to live any longer. To borrow Kumi’s phrase, as a “single leaf on a tree,” he turned off the light of consciousness, closed the door on any senses, and waited for the change of seasons.

From Chikura Station he took a taxi and arrived at the seaside sanatorium at ten thirty. Like the previous day, Sunday, it was a calm early-winter day. Warm sunlight streamed down on the withered lawn, as if rewarding it, and a calico cat that Tengo had never seen before was sunning itself, leisurely grooming its tail. Nurse Tamura and Nurse Omura came to the entrance to greet him. Quietly, they each expressed their condolences, and Tengo thanked them.

His father’s body was being kept in an inconspicuous little room in an inconspicuous corner of the sanatorium. Nurse Tamura led Tengo there. His father was lying faceup on a gurney, covered in a white cloth. In the square, windowless room, the white fluorescent light overhead made the white walls even brighter. On top of a waist-high cabinet was a glass vase with three white chrysanthemums, probably placed there that very morning. On the wall was a round clock. It was an old, dusty clock, but it told the time correctly. Its role, perhaps, was to be a witness of some kind. Besides this, there were no furniture or decorations. Countless bodies of elderly people must have passed through here—entering without a word, exiting without a word. A straightforward but solemn atmosphere lay over the room like an unspoken fact.

His father’s face didn’t look much different from when he was alive. Even up close, it didn’t seem like he was dead. His color wasn’t bad, and perhaps because someone had been kind enough to shave him, his chin and upper lip were strangely smooth. There didn’t seem to be all that much difference from when he was alive, deeply asleep, except that now the feeding tubes and catheters were unnecessary. Leave the body like this, though, and in a few days decay would set in, and then there would be a big difference between life and death. But the body would be cremated before that happened.

The doctor with whom Tengo had spoken many times before came in, expressed his sympathy, then explained what had led up to his father’s passing. He was very kind, very thorough in his explanation, but it really all came down to one conclusion: the cause of death was unknown. None of their tests had ever determined what was wrong with him. The closest the doctor could say was that Tengo’s father died of old age—but he was still only in his mid-sixties, too young for such a diagnosis.

“As the attending physician I’m the one who fills out the death certificate,” the doctor said hesitantly. “I’m thinking of writing that the cause of death was ‘heart failure brought on by an extended coma,’ if that is all right with you?”

“But actually the cause of death was not ‘heart failure brought on by an extended coma.’ Is that what you’re saying?”

The doctor looked a bit embarrassed. “True, until the very end we found nothing wrong with his heart.”

“But you couldn’t find anything wrong with any of his other organs.”

“That’s right,” the doctor said reluctantly.

“But the form requires a clear cause of death?”

“Correct.”

“This isn’t my field, but right now his heart is stopped, right?”

“Of course. His heart has stopped.”

“Which is a kind of organ failure, isn’t it?”

The doctor considered this. “If the heart beating is considered normal, then yes, it is a sort of organ failure, as you say.”

“So please write it that way. ‘Heart failure brought on by an extended coma,’ was it? I have no objection.”

The doctor seemed relieved. “I can have the death certificate ready in thirty minutes,” he said. Tengo thanked him. The doctor left, leaving only bespectacled Nurse Tamura behind.

“Shall I leave you alone with your father?” Nurse Tamura asked Tengo. Since she had to ask—it was standard procedure—the question sounded a bit matter-of-fact.

“No, there’s no need. Thanks,” Tengo said. Even if he were left alone with his father, there was nothing in particular he wanted to say to him. It was the same as when he was alive. Now that he was dead, there weren’t suddenly all sorts of topics Tengo wanted to discuss.

“Would you like to go somewhere else, then, to discuss the arrangements? You don’t mind?” Nurse Tamura asked.

“I don’t mind,” Tengo replied.

Before Nurse Tamura left, she faced the corpse and brought her hands together in prayer. Tengo did the same. People naturally pay their respects to the dead. The person had, after all, just accomplished the personal, profound feat of dying. Then the two of them left the windowless little room and went to the cafeteria. There was no one else there. Bright sunlight shone in through the large window facing the garden. Tengo stepped into that light and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no sign of the dead there. This was the world of the living—no matter how uncertain and imperfect a world it might be.

Nurse Tamura poured hot roasted hojicha tea into a teacup and passed it to him. They sat down across from each other and drank their tea in silence for a while.

“Are you staying over somewhere tonight?” Nurse Tamura asked.

“I’m planning to stay over, but I haven’t made a reservation yet.”

“If you don’t mind, why don’t you stay in your father’s room? Nobody’s using it, and you can save on hotel costs. If it doesn’t bother you.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Tengo said, a little surprised. “But is it all right to do that?”

“We don’t mind. If you’re okay with it, it’s okay with us. I’ll get the bed ready later.”

“So,” Tengo said, broaching the topic, “what am I supposed to do now?”

“Once you get the death certificate from the attending physician, go to the town office and get a permit for cremation, and then take care of the procedures to remove his name from the family record. Those are the main things you need to do now. There should be other things you’ll need to take care of—his pension, changing names on his savings account—but talk to the lawyer about those.”

“Lawyer?” This took Tengo by surprise.

“Mr. Kawana—your father, that is—spoke with a lawyer about the procedures for after his death. Don’t let the word lawyer scare you. Our facility has a lot of elderly patients, and since many are not legally competent, we have paired up with a local law office to provide consultations, so people can avoid legal problems related to division of estates. They also make up wills and provide witnesses. They don’t charge a lot.”

“Did my father have a will?”

“I can’t really say anything about it. You’ll need to talk to the lawyer.”

“I see. Can I see him soon?”

“We got in touch with him, and he’ll be coming here at three. Is that all right? It seems like we’re rushing things, but I know you’re busy, so I hope you don’t mind that we went ahead.”

“I appreciate it.” Tengo was thankful for her efficiency. For some reason all the middle-aged women he knew were very efficient.

“Before that, though, make sure you go to the town office,” Nurse Tamura said, “get his name removed from your family record, and get a permit for cremation. Nothing can happen until you’ve done that.”

“Well, then I have to go to Ichikawa. My father’s permanent legal residence should be Ichikawa. If I do that, though, I won’t be able to make it back by three.”

The nurse shook her head. “No, soon after he came here your father changed his official residence from Ichikawa to Chikura. He said it should make things easier if and when the time came.”

“He was well prepared,” Tengo said, impressed. It was as if he knew from the beginning that this was where he would die.

“He was,” the nurse agreed. “No one else has ever done that. Everyone thinks they will just be here for a short time. Still, though …,” she began to say, and stopped, quietly bringing her hands together in front of her to suggest the rest of what she was going to say. “At any rate, you don’t need to go to Ichikawa.”

Tengo was taken to his father’s room, the room where he spent his final months. The sheets and covers had been stripped off, leaving only a striped mattress. There was a simple lamp on the nightstand, and five empty hangers in the narrow closet. There wasn’t a single book in the bookshelf, and all his personal effects had been taken away. But Tengo couldn’t recall what personal effects had been there in the first place. He put his bag on the floor and looked around.

The room still had a medicinal smell, and you could still detect the breath of a sick person hanging in the air. Tengo opened the window to let in fresh air. The sun-bleached curtain fluttered in the breeze like the skirt of a girl at play. How wonderful it would be if Aomame were here, he thought, just holding my hand tight, not saying a word....

He took a bus to the Chikura town hall, showed them the death certificate, and received a permit for cremation. Once twenty-four hours had passed since the time of death, the body could be cremated. He also applied to have his father’s name removed from the family record, and received a certificate to that effect. The procedures took a while, but were almost disappointingly simple—nothing that would cause any soul searching. It was no different from reporting a stolen car. Nurse Tamura used their office copier to make three copies of the documents he received.

“At two thirty, before the lawyer comes, someone will be here from Zenkosha, a funeral parlor,” Mrs. Tamura said. “Please give him one copy of the cremation permit. The person from the funeral parlor will take care of the rest. While he was still alive, your father talked to the funeral director and decided on all the arrangements. He also put enough money aside to cover it, so you don’t need to do anything. Unless you have an objection.”

“No, no objection,” Tengo said.

His father had left hardly any belongings behind. Old clothes, a few books—that was all.

“Would you like something as a keepsake? All there is, though, is an alarm clock radio, an old self-winding watch, and reading glasses,” Nurse Tamura said.

“I don’t want anything,” Tengo told her. “Just dispose of it any way you like.”

At precisely two thirty the funeral director arrived, dressed in a black suit. He moved silently. A thin man, in his early fifties, he had long fingers, large eyes, and a single dry, black wart next to his nose. He seemed to have spent a great deal of time outdoors, because his face was suntanned all over, down to the tips of his ears. Tengo wasn’t sure why, but he had never seen a fat funeral director. The man explained the main procedures for the funeral. He was very polite and spoke slowly, deliberately, as if indicating that they could take all the time they needed.

“While your father was alive, he said he wanted as simple a funeral as possible. He wanted a simple, functional casket, and he wanted to be cremated as is. He did not want any ceremony, no scriptures read, no posthumous Buddhist name, or flowers, or a eulogy. And he didn’t want a grave. He instructed me to have his ashes simply put in a suitable communal facility. That is, if there are no objections …”

He paused and looked entreatingly at Tengo with his large eyes.

“If that is what my father wanted, then I have no objection,” Tengo said, looking straight back at those eyes.

The funeral director nodded, and cast his eyes down. “Today would be the wake, and for one night we will have the body lie in state in our funeral home. So we will need to transport the body to our place. The cremation will take place tomorrow at one thirty in the afternoon in a crematorium nearby. I hope this is satisfactory?”

“I have no objection.”

“Will you be attending the cremation?”

“I will,” Tengo said.

“There are some who do not like to attend, and it is entirely up to you.”

“I will be there,” Tengo said.

“Very good,” the man said, sounding a little relieved. “I’m sorry to bother you with this now, but this is the same amount I showed your father while he was still alive. I would appreciate it if you would approve it.”

The funeral director, his long fingers like insect legs, extracted a statement from a folder and passed it to Tengo. Tengo knew almost nothing about funerals, but he could see this was quite inexpensive. He had no objection. He borrowed a ballpoint pen and signed the agreement.

The lawyer came just before three and he and the funeral director stood there chatting for a moment—a clipped conversation, one specialist to another. Tengo couldn’t really follow their conversation. The two of them seemed to know each other. This was a small town. Probably everybody knew everybody else.

Near the morgue was an inconspicuous back door, and the funeral parlor’s small van was parked just outside. Except for the driver’s window, all the windows were tinted black, and the jet-black van was devoid of any sign or markings. The thin funeral director and his white-haired assistant moved Tengo’s father onto a rolling gurney and pushed it toward the van. The van had been refitted to have an especially high ceiling and rails onto which they slid the body. They shut the back doors of the van with an earnest thud, the funeral director turned to Tengo and bowed, and the van pulled away. Tengo, the lawyer, Nurse Tamura, and Nurse Omura all faced the rear door of the black Toyota van and brought their hands together in prayer.

Tengo and the lawyer talked in a corner of the cafeteria. The lawyer looked to be in his mid-forties, and was quite obese, the exact opposite of the funeral director. His chin had nearly disappeared, and despite the chill of winter his forehead was covered with a light sheen of sweat. He must sweat something awful in the summer, Tengo thought. His gray wool suit smelled of mothballs. He had a narrow forehead, and above it an overabundance of thick, luxurious black hair. The combination of the obese body and the thick hair didn’t work. His eyelids were heavy and swollen, his eyes narrow, but behind them was a friendly glint.

“Your father entrusted me with his will. The word will implies something significant, but this isn’t like one of those wills from a detective novel,” the lawyer said, and cleared his throat. “It’s actually closer to a simple memo. Let me start by briefly summarizing its contents. The will begins by outlining arrangements for his funeral. I believe the gentleman from Zenkosha has explained this to you?”

“Yes, he did. It’s to be a simple funeral.”

“Very good,” the lawyer said. “That was your father’s wish, that everything be done as plainly as possible. The funeral expenses will be paid out of a reserve fund he set aside, and medical and other expenses will come out of the security deposit your father paid when he checked into this facility. There will be nothing you will have to pay for out of your own pocket.”

“He didn’t want to owe anybody, did he?”

“Exactly. Everything has been prepaid. Also, your father has money in an account at the Chikura post office, which you, as his son, will inherit. You will need to take care of changing it over to your name. To do that, you’ll need the proof that your father has been removed from the family register, and a copy of your family register and seal certificate. You should go directly to the Chikura post office and sign the necessary documents yourself. The procedures take some time. As you know, Japanese banks and the post office are quite particular about filling in all the proper forms.”

The lawyer took a large white handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“That’s all I need to tell you about the inheritance. He had no assets other than the post office account—no insurance policies, stocks, real estate, jewelry, art objects—nothing of this sort. Very straightforward, you could say, and fuss free.”

Tengo nodded silently. It sounded like his father. But taking over his postal account made Tengo feel a little depressed. It felt like being handed a pile of damp, heavy blankets. If possible, he would rather not have it. But he couldn’t say this.

“Your father also entrusted an envelope to my care. I have brought it with me and would like to give it to you now.”

The thick brown envelope was sealed tight with packing tape. The obese lawyer took it from his black briefcase and laid it on the table.

“I met Mr. Kawana soon after he came here, and he gave this to me then. He was still—conscious then. He would get confused occasionally, but he was generally able to function fine. He told me that when he died, he would like me to give this envelope to his legal heir.”

“Legal heir,” Tengo repeated, a bit surprised.

“Yes. That was the term he used. Your father didn’t specify anyone in particular, but in practical terms you would be the only legal heir.”

“As far as I know.”

“Then, as instructed, here you go,” the lawyer said, pointing to the envelope on the table. “Could you sign a receipt for it, please?”

Tengo signed the receipt. The brown office envelope on the table looked anonymous and bland. Nothing was written on it, neither on the front nor on the back.

“There’s one thing I would like to ask you,” Tengo said to the lawyer. “Did my father ever mention my name? Or use the word son?”

As he mulled this over, the lawyer pulled out his handkerchief again and mopped his brow. He shook his head slightly. “No, Mr. Kawana always used the term legal heir. He didn’t use any other terms. I remember this because I found it odd.”

Tengo was silent. The lawyer collected himself and spoke up.

“But you have to understand that Mr. Kawana knew you were the only legal heir. It’s just that when we spoke he didn’t use your name. Does that bother you?”

“Not really,” Tengo said. “My father was always a bit odd.”

The lawyer smiled, as if relieved, and gave a slight nod. He handed Tengo a new copy of their family register. “If you don’t mind, since it was this sort of illness, I would like you to check the family register so we can make sure there are no legal problems with the procedure. According to the record, you are Mr. Kawana’s sole child. Your mother passed away a year and a half after giving birth to you. Your father didn’t remarry, and raised you by himself. Your father’s parents and siblings are already deceased. So you are clearly Mr. Kawana’s sole legal heir.”

After the lawyer stood up, expressed his condolences, and left, Tengo remained seated, gazing at the envelope on the table. His father was his real blood father, and his mother was really dead. The lawyer had said so. So it must be true—or, at least, a fact, in a legal sense. But it felt like the more facts that were revealed, the more the truth receded. Why would that be?

Tengo returned to his father’s room, sat down at the desk, and struggled to open the sealed envelope. The envelope might contain the key to unlocking some mystery. Opening it was difficult. There were no scissors or box cutters in the room, so he had to peel off the packing tape with his fingernails. When he finally managed to get the envelope open, the contents were in several other envelopes, all of them in turn tightly sealed. Just the sort of thing he expected from his father.

One envelope contained 500,000 yen in cash—exactly fifty crisp new ten-thousand-yen bills, wrapped in layers of thin paper. A piece of paper included with it said Emergency cash. Definitely his father’s writing, small letters, nothing abbreviated. This money must be in case there were unanticipated expenses. His father had anticipated that his legal heir wouldn’t have sufficient funds on hand.

The thickest of the envelopes was stuffed full of newspaper clippings and various award certificates, all of them about Tengo. His certificate from when he won the math contest in elementary school, and the article about it in the local paper. A photo of Tengo next to his trophy. The artistic-looking award Tengo received for having the best grades in his class. He had the best grades in every subject. There were various other articles that showed what a child prodigy Tengo had been. A photo of Tengo in a judo gi in junior high, grinning, holding the second-place banner. Tengo was really surprised to see these. After his father had retired from NHK, he left the company housing he had been in, moved to another apartment in Ichikawa, and finally went to the sanatorium in Chikura. Probably because he had moved by himself so often, he had hardly any possessions. And father and son had basically been strangers to each other for years. Despite this, his father had lovingly carried around all these mementos of Tengo’s child-prodigy days.

The next envelope contained various records from his father’s days as an NHK fee collector. A record of the times when he was the top producer of the year. Several simple certificates. A photo apparently taken with a colleague on a company trip. An old ID card. Records of payment to his retirement plan and health insurance.… Though his father worked like a dog for NHK for over thirty years, the amount of material left was surprisingly little—next to nothing when compared with Tengo’s achievements in elementary school. Society might see his father’s entire life as amounting to almost zero, but to Tengo, it wasn’t next to nothing. Along with a postal savings book, his father had left behind a deep, dark shadow.

There was nothing in the envelope to indicate anything about his father’s life before he joined NHK. It was as if his father’s life began the moment he became an NHK fee collector.

He opened the final envelope, a thin one, and found a single black-and-white photograph. That was all. It was an old photo, and though the contrast hadn’t faded, there was a thin membrane over the whole picture, as if water had seeped into it. It was a photo of a family—a father, a mother, and a tiny baby. The baby looked less than a year old. The mother, dressed in a kimono, was lovingly cradling the baby. Behind them was a torii gate at a shrine. From the clothes they had on, it looked like winter. Since they were visiting a shrine, it was most likely New Year’s. The mother was squinting, as if the light were too bright, and smiling. The father, dressed in a dark coat, slightly too big for him, had frown lines between his eyes, as if to say he didn’t take anything at face value. The baby looked confused by how big and cold the world could be.

The young father in the photo had to be Tengo’s father. He looked much younger, though he already had a sort of surprising maturity about him, and he was thin, his eyes sunken. It was the face of a poor farmer from some out-of-the-way hamlet, stubborn, skeptical. His hair was cut short, his shoulders a bit stooped. That could only be his father. This meant that the baby must be Tengo, and the mother holding the baby must be Tengo’s mother. His mother was slightly taller than his father, and had good posture. His father was in his late thirties, while his mother looked to be in her mid-twenties.

Tengo had never seen the photograph before. He had never seen anything that could be called a family photo. And he had never seen a picture of himself when he was little. They couldn’t afford a camera, his father had once explained, and never had the opportunity to take any family photos. And Tengo had accepted this. But now he knew it was a lie. They had taken a photo together. And though their clothes weren’t exactly luxurious, they were at least presentable. They didn’t look as if they were so poor they couldn’t afford a camera. The photo was taken not long after Tengo was born, sometime between 1954 and 1955. He turned the photo over, but there was no date or indication of where it had been taken.

Tengo studied the woman. In the photo her face was small, and slightly out of focus. If only he had a magnifying glass! Then he could have made out more details. Still, he could see most of her features. She had an oval-shaped face, a small nose, and plump lips. By no means a beauty, though sort of cute—the type of face that left a good impression. At least compared with his father’s rustic face she looked far more refined and intelligent. Tengo was happy about this. Her hair was nicely styled, but since she had on a kimono, he couldn’t tell much about her figure.

At least as far as they looked in this photo, no one could call them a well-matched couple. There was a great age difference between them. Tengo tried to imagine his parents meeting each other, falling in love, having him—but he just couldn’t see it. You didn’t get that sense at all from the photo. So if there wasn’t an emotional attachment that brought them together, there must have been some other circumstances that did. No, maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as the term circumstances made it sound. Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more.

Tengo tried to figure out if the mother in this photo was the mysterious woman who appeared in his daydreams, or in his fog of childhood memories. But he realized he didn’t have any memories of the woman’s face whatsoever. The woman in his memory took off her blouse, let down the straps of her slip, and let some unknown man suck her breasts. And her breathing became deeper, like she was moaning. That’s all he remembered—some man sucking his mother’s breasts. The breasts that should have been his alone were stolen away by somebody else. A baby would no doubt see this as a grave threat. His eyes never went to the man’s face.

Tengo returned the photo to the envelope, and thought about what it meant. His father had cherished this one photograph until he died, which might mean he still cherished Tengo’s mother. Tengo couldn’t remember his mother, for she had died from illness when he was too young to have any memories of her. According to the lawyer’s investigation, Tengo was the only child of his mother and his father, the NHK fee collector, a fact recorded in his family register. But official documents didn’t guarantee that that man was Tengo’s biological father.

“I don’t have a son,” his father had declared to Tengo before he fell into a coma.

“So, what am I?” Tengo had asked.

“You’re nothing,” was his father’s concise and peremptory reply.

His father’s tone of voice had convinced Tengo that there was no blood connection between him and this man. And he had felt freed from heavy shackles. As time went on, however, he wasn’t completely convinced that what his father had said was true.

I’m nothing, Tengo repeated.

Suddenly he realized that his young mother in the photo from long ago reminded him of his older girlfriend. Kyoko Yasuda was her name. In order to calm his mind, he pressed his fingers hard against the middle of his forehead. He took the photo out again and stared at it. A small nose, plump lips, a somewhat pointed chin. Her hairstyle was so different he hadn’t noticed at first, but her features did somewhat resemble Kyoko’s. But what could that possibly mean?

And why did his father think to give this photo to Tengo after his death? While he was alive he had never provided Tengo with a single piece of information about his mother. He had even hidden the existence of this family photo. One thing Tengo did know was that his father never intended to explain the situation to him. Not while he was alive, and not even now after his death. Look, here’s a photo, his father must be saying. I’ll just hand it to you. It’s up to you to figure it out.

Tengo lay faceup on the bare mattress and stared at the ceiling. It was a painted white plywood ceiling, flat with no wood grain or knots, just several straight joints where the boards came together—the same scene his father’s sunken eyes must have viewed during the last few months of life. Or maybe those eyes didn’t see anything. At any rate his gaze had been directed there, at the ceiling, whether he had been seeing it or not.

Tengo closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself slowly moving toward death. But for a thirty-year-old in good health, death was something far off, beyond the imagination. Instead, breathing softly, he watched the twilight shadows as they moved across the wall. He tried to not think about anything. Not thinking about anything was not too hard for Tengo. He was too tired to keep any one particular thought in his head. He wanted to catch some sleep if he could, but he was overtired, and sleep wouldn’t come.

Just before six p.m. Nurse Omura came and told him dinner was ready in the cafeteria. Tengo had no appetite, but the tall, busty nurse wouldn’t leave him alone. You need to get something, even a little bit, into your stomach, she told him. This was close to a direct order. When it came to telling people how to maintain their health, she was a pro. And Tengo wasn’t the type—especially when the other person was an older woman—who could resist.

They took the stairs down to the cafeteria and found Kumi Adachi waiting for them. Nurse Tamura was nowhere to be seen. Tengo ate dinner at the same table as Kumi and Nurse Omura. Tengo had a salad, cooked vegetables, and miso soup with asari clams and scallions, washed down with hot hojicha tea.

“When is the cremation?” Kumi asked him.

“Tomorrow afternoon at one,” Tengo said. “When that’s done, I’ll probably go straight back to Tokyo. I have to go back to work.”

“Will anyone else be at the cremation besides you, Tengo?”

“No, no one else. Just me.”

“Do you mind if I join you?” Kumi asked.

“At my father’s cremation?” Tengo asked, surprised.

“Yes. Actually I was pretty fond of him.”

Tengo involuntarily put his chopsticks down and looked at her. Was she really talking about his father? “What did you like about him?” he asked her.

“He was very conscientious, never said more than he needed to,” she said. “In that sense he was like my father, who passed away.”

“Huh,” Tengo said.

“My father was a fisherman. He died before he reached fifty.”

“Did he die at sea?”

“No, he died of lung cancer. He smoked too much. I don’t know why, but fishermen are all heavy smokers. It’s like smoke is rising out of their whole body.”

Tengo thought about this. “It might have been better if my father had been a fisherman too.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’m not really sure,” Tengo replied. “The thought just occurred to me—that it would have been better for him than being an NHK fee collector.”

“If your father had been a fisherman, would it have been easier for you to accept him?”

“It would have made many things simpler, I suppose.”

Tengo pictured himself as a child, early in the morning on a day when he didn’t have school, heading off on a fishing boat with his father. The stiff Pacific wind, the salt spray hitting his face. The monotonous drone of the diesel engine. The stuffy smell of the fishing nets. Hard, dangerous work. One mistake and you could lose your life. But compared with being dragged all over Ichikawa to collect subscription fees, it would have to be a more natural, fulfilling life.

“But collecting NHK fees couldn’t have been easy work, could it?” Nurse Omura said as she ate her soy-flavored fish.

“Probably not,” Tengo said. At least he knew it wasn’t the kind of job he could handle.

“Your father was really good at his job, wasn’t he?” Kumi asked.

“I think he was, yes,” Tengo said.

“He showed me his award certificates,” Kumi said.

“Ah! Darn,” Nurse Omura said, suddenly putting down her chopsticks. “I totally forgot. Darn it! How could I forget something so important? Could you wait here for a minute? I have something I have to give you, and it has to be today.”

Nurse Omura wiped her mouth with a napkin, stood up, and hurried out of the cafeteria, her meal half eaten.

“I wonder what’s so important?” Kumi said, tilting her head.

Tengo had no idea.

As he waited for Nurse Omura’s return, he dutifully worked his way through his salad. There weren’t many others eating dinner in the cafeteria. At one table there were three old men, none of them speaking. At another table a man in a white coat, with a sprinkling of gray hair, sat alone, reading the evening paper as he ate, a solemn look on his face.

Nurse Omura finally trotted back. She was holding a department-store shopping bag. She took out some neatly folded clothes.

“I got this from Mr. Kawana about a year or so ago, while he was still conscious,” the large nurse said. “He said when he was put in the casket he would like to be dressed in this. So I sent it to the cleaners and had them store it in mothballs.”

There was no mistaking the NHK fee collector’s uniform. The matching trousers had been nicely ironed. The smell of mothballs hit Tengo. For a while he was speechless.

“Mr. Kawana told me he would like to be cremated wearing this uniform,” Nurse Omura said. She refolded the uniform neatly and put it back in the shopping bag. “So I’m giving it to you now. Tomorrow, give this to the funeral home people and make sure they dress him in it.”

“Isn’t it a problem to have him wear this? The uniform was just on loan to him, and when he retired it should have been returned to NHK,” Tengo said, weakly.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Kumi said. “If we don’t say anything, who’s going to know? NHK isn’t going to be in a tight spot over a set of old clothes.”

Nurse Omura agreed. “Mr. Kawana walked all over the place, from morning to night, for over thirty years for NHK. I’m sure it wasn’t always pleasant. Who cares about one uniform? It’s not like you’re using it to do something bad or anything.”

“You’re right. I still have my school uniform from high school,” Kumi said.

“An NHK collector’s uniform and a high school uniform aren’t exactly the same thing,” Tengo interjected, but no one took up the point.

“Come to think of it, I have my old school uniform in the closet somewhere too,” Nurse Omura said.

“Are you telling me you put it on sometimes for your husband? Along with white bobby socks?” Kumi said teasingly.

“Hmm—now that’s a thought,” Nurse Omura said, her chin in her hands on the table, her expression serious. “Probably get him all hot and bothered.”

“Anyway …,” Kumi said. She turned to Tengo. “Mr. Kawana definitely wanted to be cremated in his NHK uniform. I think we should help him make his wish come true. Don’t you think so?”

Tengo took the bag containing the uniform and went back to the room. Kumi Adachi came with him and made up the bed. There were fresh sheets, with a still-starchy fragrance, a new blanket, a new bed cover, and a new pillow. Once all this was arranged, the bed his father had slept in looked totally transformed. Tengo randomly thought of Kumi’s thick, luxuriant pubic hair.

“Your father was in a coma for so long,” Kumi said as she smoothed out the wrinkles in the sheets, “but I don’t think he was completely unconscious.”

“Why do you say that?” Tengo asked.

“Well, he would sometimes send messages to somebody.”

Tengo was standing at the window gazing outside, but he spun around and looked at Kumi. “Messages?”

“He would tap on the bed frame. His hand would hang down from the bed and he would knock on the frame, like he was sending Morse code. Like this.”

Kumi lightly tapped the wooden bed frame with her fist.

“Don’t you think it sounds like a signal?”

“That’s not a signal.”

“Then what is it?”

“He’s knocking on a door,” Tengo said, his voice dry. “The front door of a house.”

“I guess that makes sense. It does sound like someone knocking on a door.” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “So are you saying that even after he lost consciousness he was still making his rounds to collect fees?”

“Probably,” Tengo said. “Somewhere inside his head.”

“It’s like that story of the dead soldier still clutching his trumpet,” Kumi said, impressed.

There was nothing to say to this, so Tengo stayed silent.

“Your father must have really liked his job. Going around collecting NHK subscription fees.”

“I don’t think it’s a question of liking or disliking it,” Tengo said.

“Then what?”

“It was the one thing he was best at.”

“Hmm. I see,” Kumi said. She pondered this. “But that might very well be the best way to live your life.”

“Maybe so,” Tengo said as he looked out at the pine windbreak. It might really be so.

“What’s the one thing you can do best?”

“I don’t know,” Tengo said, looking straight at her. “I honestly have no idea.”