After dark - By Haruki Murakami Page 0,23

his right hand lightly on his helmet.

“Just let you know if we find him,” he echoes mechanically.

“That’s right.”

“Just let you know?”

Kaoru nods. “Just a little whisper in my ear. I don’t need to know what you do to him.”

The man is thinking hard. He gives the crown of his helmet two light taps with his fist. “If we find him, I’ll let you know.”

“I look forward to the news,” Kaoru says. “Do you guys still cut ears off?”

The man’s lips twitched slightly. “A man has only one life. Ears, he has two.”

“Maybe so, but if he loses an ear, he’s got nothing to hang his glasses on.”

“Most inconvenient,” the man says.

This brings their conversation to an end. The man puts his helmet on, gives his pedal a big kick, turns the bike, and speeds off.

Kaoru and Komugi silently watch the motorcycle go, standing in the street long after it has disappeared.

When she speaks finally, Komugi says, “I don’t know, he’s kind of like a ghost.”

“Well, it is the right time of day for ghosts, you know,” Kaoru says.

“Scary.”

“Yeah, really.”

The two walk into the hotel.

Kaoru is alone in the office. Her feet are on the desk. She picks up the photo and studies it again. Close-up of the man. Kaoru lets out a quiet moan and raises her eyes toward the ceiling.

7

A man is working at a computer. This is the man who was photographed by the surveillance camera at the Hotel Alphaville—the man in the light gray trench coat who took the key to room 404. He is a touch typist of awesome speed. Still, his fingers can barely keep up with his thoughts. His lips are tightly pursed. His face remains expressionless, neither breaking into a smile of satisfaction nor frowning with disappointment at the results of his work. The cuffs of his white shirt are rolled up to the elbows. His collar button is open, his tie loosened. Now and then he has to stop typing to scribble notes and symbols on a scratch pad next to the keyboard. He uses a long, silver-colored eraser pencil stamped with the company name: veritech. Six more of these silver pencils are neatly lined up in a nearby tray. All are of roughly the same length and sharpened to perfection.

The room is a large one. The man has stayed late to work in the office after everyone else has gone home. A Bach piano piece flows at moderate volume from a compact CD player on his desk. Ivo Pogorelich performs one of the English Suites. The room is dark. Only the area around the man’s desk receives illumination from fluorescent lights on the ceiling. This could be an Edward Hopper painting titled Loneliness. Not that the man himself feels lonely where he is at the moment: he prefers it this way. With no one else around, he can concentrate. He can listen to his favorite music and get a lot of work done. He doesn’t hate his job. As long as he is able to concentrate on his work, he doesn’t have to be distracted by practical trivia. Unconcerned about the time and effort involved, he can handle all difficulties logically, analytically. He follows the flow of the music half-consciously, staring at the computer screen, moving his fingers at full speed, keeping pace with Pogorelich. There is no wasted motion, just the meticulous eighteenth-century music, the man, and the technical problems he has been given to solve.

His only source of distraction is an apparent pain in his right hand. Now and then he interrupts his work to open and close the hand and flex the wrist. The left hand massages the back of the right hand. He takes a deep breath and glances at his watch. He grimaces ever so slightly. The pain in his right hand is slowing his work.

The man is impeccably dressed. He has exercised a good deal of care in choosing his outfit, though it is neither highly individualized nor especially sophisticated. He does have good taste. His shirt and necktie look expensive—probably name-brand items. His face gives an impression of intelligence and breeding. The watch on his left wrist is elegantly thin, his glasses Armani in style. His hands are large, fingers long, nails well manicured. A narrow wedding band adorns the third finger of his left hand. His facial features are undistinguished, but the details of his expression suggest a strong-willed personality. He is probably just about forty years old, and the flesh of his