'The proletariat,' Mr. Hagita said, taking his hands off the steering wheel and making a wide gesture. To Nakata they looked as massive as baseball gloves. 'The people who work hard, who earn their bread through the sweat of their brow, those are the proletariat. On the other hand you've got your guys who sit on their duffs, not lifting a finger, giving orders to other people and getting a hundred times my salary. Those are your capitalists.'
'I don't know about people who are capitalists. I'm poor, and I don't know anybody great like that. The greatest person I know is the Governor of Tokyo. Is the Governor a capitalist?'
'Yeah, I suppose. Governors are more likely to be capitalists' lapdogs, though.'
'The Governor is a dog?' Nakata remembered the huge black dog who took him to Johnnie Walker's house, and that ominous figure and the Governor overlapped in his mind.
'The world's swarming with those kind of dogs. Pawns of the capitalists.'
'Pawns?'
'Like paws, with an 'n'.'
'Are there any capitalist cats?' Nakata asked.
Hagita burst out laughing. 'Boy, you are different, Mr. Nakata! But I like your style. Capitalist cats! That's a good one. A very unique opinion you have there.'
'Mr. Hagita?'
'Yeah?'
'I'm poor and received a sub city every month from the Governor. Was this the wrong thing to do?'
'How much do you get every month?'
Nakata told him the amount.
Hagita shook his head disgustedly. 'Pretty damn hard to get by on so little.'
'That's not true, because Nakata doesn't use much money. Besides the sub city, I get money by helping people find their lost cats.'
'No kidding? A professional cat-finder?' Hagita said, impressed. 'You're an amazing guy, I have to say.'
'Actually, I'm able to talk with cats,' Nakata said. 'I can understand what they say. That helps me locate the missing ones.'
Hagita nodded. 'I wouldn't put it past you.'
'But not long ago I found out I couldn't talk with cats anymore. I wonder why.'
'Things change every day, Mr. Nakata. With each new dawn it's not the same world as the day before. And you're not the same person you were, either. You get what I'm saying?'
'Yes.'
'Connections change too. Who's the capitalist, who's the proletarian. Who's on the right, who's on the left. The information revolution, stock options, floating assets, occupational restructuring, multinational corporations- what's good, what's bad. Boundaries between things are disappearing all the time. Maybe that's why you can't speak to cats anymore.'
'The difference between right and left Nakata understands. This is right, and this is left. Correct?'
'You got it,' Hagita agreed. 'That's all you need to know.'
The last thing they did together was have a meal in a rest area restaurant. Hagita ordered two orders of eel, and when Nakata insisted on paying, to thank him for the ride, the driver shook his head emphatically.
'No way,' he said. 'I'd never let you use the pittance they give you for a subsidy to feed me.'
'Much obliged, then. Thank you for such a treat,' Nakata said, happy to accept his kindness.
Nakata spent an hour at the Fujigawa rest area asking drivers for a ride, but couldn't find anyone willing to take him. He didn't start to panic, though, or get depressed. In his mind, time passed very slowly. Or barely at all.
He went outside for some air and wandered around. The sky was cloudless, the surface of the moon clearly visible. Nakata strolled around the parking lot, which was filled with countless huge trucks, like giant beasts lined up shoulder to shoulder, resting. Some of the trucks had at least twenty giant tires, each one as tall as a man. So many trucks, all racing down the highway so late at night-what could they possibly be carrying inside? Nakata couldn't imagine. If he could read the writing on the sides of the trucks, he wondered, would he be able to figure it out?
After about an hour he spotted ten or so motorcycles parked in a corner of the lot where there weren't many cars. A clump of young men stood nearby in a circle, looking at something and yelling. Intrigued, Nakata approached them. Maybe they'd discovered something unusual?
When he got closer he saw that they had surrounded someone lying on the ground and were punching, kicking, and generally trying their best to hurt him. Most of the men were unarmed, though one of them had a chain in his hand. Another held a black stick that looked like a policeman's baton. They wore unbuttoned short- sleeved shirts, some in T-shirts, others in running shirts, most of them with hair dyed blond or brown, some with tattoos on their arms. The young man they were beating and kicking was dressed much the same.
As Nakata approached, tapping the asphalt surface with the tip of his umbrella, a couple of the men turned around and glared at him. They relaxed when they saw it was just some harmless old man. 'Why don't you beat it, Pops,' one of them growled.
Unperturbed, Nakata walked over even closer. The man on the ground seemed to be bleeding from his mouth. 'Blood's coming out,' Nakata said. 'He might die.'
Caught off guard, the men didn't react right away.
'Maybe we should kill you too, while we're at it,' the one with the chain said. 'Killing one or two-no skin off my nose.'
'You can't kill someone for no reason,' Nakata insisted.
'You can't kill someone for no reason,' one of them mimicked, and his friends laughed.
'We got our reasons, pal,' another man said. 'And it ain't got nothin' to do with you whether we kill him or not. So take your worthless umbrella and hit the road, before it starts raining.'
The man on the ground started crawling forward, and a young man with a shaved head came over and kicked him hard in the ribs with his work boots.
Nakata closed his eyes. He could feel something welling up inside him, beyond his control. He felt slightly nauseous. The memory of stabbing Johnnie Walker suddenly came back to him. His hand still remembered what it felt like to plunge a knife into a man's chest. Connections. Could this be one of those connections that Mr. Hagita was talking about? Eel = knife = Johnnie Walker? The men's voices sounded distorted, and he couldn't tell them apart anymore. Their voices blended together with the ceaseless drone of tires from the highway to make a strange tone. His heart surged blood to his extremities as night enveloped him.
Nakata looked up at the sky, then slowly opened his umbrella and held it over him. Very carefully he took a few steps backward, opening a space between himself and the gang. He looked around, then took a few more steps back.
The young men laughed when they saw this. 'Hey, look at the cool old guy!' one of them said. 'He's actually using his umbrella!'
But they didn't laugh for long. Suddenly, unfamiliar greasy objects began to rain down from the sky, striking the ground at their feet with a weird slap. The young men stopped kicking their prey and looked up at the sky. There weren't any clouds, but things were definitely falling one after another from a spot in the sky. At first in dribs and drabs, then gradually more and more fell, until before they knew it they were caught in a downpour. The objects pelting down from the sky were little black lumps about an inch and a half long. In the lights of the parking lot it looked like slick black snow falling on the men's shoulders, arms, and necks and sticking there. They desperately tried to yank the objects off, but couldn't.
'Leeches!' someone yelled.
As if given a signal, the men all shouted and raced across the parking lot to the restrooms. One of them, a young blond man, was knocked to the ground by a car he'd run in front of. He jumped up, slammed his fist on the hood of the car, and loudly cursed the driver. That was all, though, and he soon limped away toward the restrooms.
The leeches rained down hard for a time, then tapered off and stopped. Nakata folded up his umbrella, brushed off the leeches, and went over to see how the injured man was doing. A mound of the slimy creatures squirmed all around, so he couldn't get very close, and the man on the ground was buried in them. Looking
