Eri’s eyes narrowed again, as if she were gazing at some distant scene.

“A friend from college asked me to go to a pottery class and I went along, kind of as a lark. And that’s where I discovered what I’d been searching for, after so long. Spinning the potter’s wheel, I felt like I could be totally honest with myself. Focusing on creating something helped me to forget everything else. From that day on, I’ve been totally absorbed in pottery. In college it was still just a hobby, but after that, I wanted to become a full-fledged potter. I graduated from college, worked part-time jobs for a year while I studied, then reentered school, this time in the industrial arts department. Goodbye novels, hello pottery. While I was working on my pottery, I met Edvard, who was in Japan as an exchange student. Eventually we got married and moved here. Life is a total surprise sometimes. If my friend hadn’t invited me to the pottery class, I’d be living a completely different life now.”

“You really seem to have a talent for it,” Tsukuru said, pointing to the pottery on the shelves. “I don’t know much about pottery, but I get a wonderful feeling when I look at your pieces, and hold them.”

Eri smiled. “I don’t know about talent. But my work sells pretty well here. It doesn’t bring in much money, but I’m really happy that other people need what I create.”

“I know what you mean,” Tsukuru said, “since I make things myself. Very different things from yours, though.”

“As different as stations and plates.”

“We need both in our lives.”

“Of course,” Eri said. She thought about something. The smile gradually faded from her lips. “I like it here. I imagine I’ll stay here for the rest of my life.”

“You won’t go back to Japan?”

“I’ve taken Finnish citizenship now, and have gotten a lot better at speaking the language. The winters are hard to get through, I’ll admit that, but then it gives me more time to read. Maybe I’ll find I want to write again. The children are used to Finland now and have friends here. And Edvard is a good man. His family’s good to us, too, and my work is going well.”

“And you’re needed here.”

Eri raised her head and looked fixedly at Tsukuru.

“It was when I heard that Yuzu had been murdered by somebody that I decided I could stay here the rest of my life. Ao called and told me. I was pregnant with my older girl then and couldn’t attend the funeral. It was a terrible thing for me. I felt like my chest was about to be ripped apart. Knowing that Yuzu had been killed like that, in some unknown place, and that she’d been cremated and was nothing more than ash. Knowing that I’d never see her again. I made up my mind then and there that if I had a girl, I’d name her Yuzu. And that I’d never go back to Japan.”

“So your daughter’s name is Yuzu?”

“Yuzu Kurono Haatainen,” she said. “A part of Yuzu lives on, in that name, at least.”

“But why did Yuzu go off by herself to Hamamatsu?”

“She went there soon after I moved to Finland. I don’t know why. We wrote letters to each other regularly, but she didn’t tell me anything about the reasons behind her move. She simply said it was because of work. But there were any number of jobs she could have had in Nagoya, and for her to move to some place she’d never been before, and live all alone, was the same as committing suicide.”

Yuzu was found inside her apartment in Hamamatsu, strangled to death with a cloth belt. Tsukuru had read the details in old newspapers and magazines. He’d searched online, too, to find out more about the case.

Robbery wasn’t involved. Her purse, with cash still in it, was found nearby. And there were no signs she’d been assaulted. Nothing was disturbed in her apartment, and there were no signs of a struggle. Residents on the same floor had heard no suspicious sounds. There were a couple of menthol cigarette butts in an ashtray, but these turned out to be Yuzu’s. (Tsukuru had frowned at this. Yuzu smoked?) The estimated time of death was between 10 p.m. and midnight, a night when it rained till dawn, a cold rain for a May night. Her body was discovered in the evening, three days later. She’d lain there for three days, on the faux tile flooring of her kitchen.

They never discovered the motive for the murder. Someone had come late at night, strangled her without making a sound, not stolen or disturbed anything else, and then left. The door locked automatically. It was unclear whether she had opened it from the inside or if the murderer had a duplicate key. She lived alone in the apartment. Coworkers and neighbors said she didn’t seem to have any close friends. Except for her older sister and mother, who occasionally visited from Nagoya, she was always alone. She wore simple clothes and struck everyone who knew her as rather meek and quiet. She was enthusiastic about her job, and was well liked by her students, but outside of work, she seemed to have no friends.

No one had any idea what had led to her death, why she had ended up strangled. The police investigation petered out without any suspects coming to light. Articles about the case grew steadily shorter, and finally vanished altogether. It was a sad, painful case. Like cold rain falling steadily until dawn.

“An evil spirit possessed her,” Eri said softly, as if revealing a secret. “It clung to her, breathing coldly on her neck, slowly driving her in a corner. That’s the only thing that can explain all that happened to her. What happened with you, her eating disorder, what happened in Hamamatsu. I never actually wanted to put it into words. It’s like, if I did, it would really exist. So I kept it to myself all this time. I decided to never talk about it, until the day I died. But I don’t mind telling you this now, since we’ll probably never see each other again. And you need to know this. It was an evil spirit—or something close to it. In the end, Yuzu couldn’t escape.”

Eri sighed deeply and stared at her hands on the table. Her hands were visibly shaking, rather severely. Tsukuru turned his gaze away and looked out the window, past the fluttering curtain. The silence that settled on the room was oppressive, full of a deep sadness. Unspoken feelings were as heavy and lonely as the ancient glacier that had carved out the deep lake.

“Do you remember Liszt’s Years of Pilgrimage? Yuzu used to play one of the pieces a lot,” Tsukuru said after a time to break the silence.

“ ‘Le mal du pays.’ I remember it well,” Eri said. “I listen to it sometimes. Would you like to hear it?”

Tsukuru nodded.

Eri stood up, went over to the small stereo set in the cabinet, selected a CD from the pile of discs, and inserted it into the player. “Le mal du pays” filtered out from the speakers, the simple opening melody, softly played with one hand. Eri sat back down across from him, and the two of them silently listened to the music.

Listening to the music here, next to a lake in Finland, it had a different sort of charm from when he heard it back in his apartment in Tokyo. But no matter where he listened to it, regardless of whether he heard it on a CD or an old LP, the music remained the same, utterly engaging and beautiful. Tsukuru pictured Yuzu at the piano in her parlor, playing the piece, leaning over the keyboard, eyes closed, lips slightly open, searching for words that don’t make a sound. She was apart from herself then, in some other place.

The piece ended, there was a pause, then the next piece began. “The Bells of Geneva.” Eri touched the remote control and lowered the volume.

“It strikes me as different from the performance I always listen to at home,” Tsukuru said.

“Which pianist do you listen to?”

“Lazar Berman.”

Eri shook her head. “I’ve never heard his version.”

“It’s a little more elegant than this one. I like this performance, it’s wonderful, but the style of this version makes it sound more like a Beethoven sonata than Liszt.”