1Q84

Aomame continues to ponder the implications of the second moon in the sky, concluding, “This is different from just happening to miss some articles in the paper” (211).

In a flashback, Aomame recalls the evening she told the dowager about murdering Tamaki’s abusive husband. In response, the dowager revealed that her daughter committed suicide to escape an abusive marriage similar to Tamaki’s. Yet instead of murdering the husband, the dowager destroyed him socially; she also keeps tabs on him, so that if he ever begins to recover professionally or personally, she will take steps to halt this progress. The dowager went on to explain that shortly after her daughter’s death she set up a safe house for survivors of domestic abuse on a plot of land adjacent to Willow House. If a husband tried to forcibly remove his wife from the safe house, Tamaru intervened physically. Yet in some cases, there emerged situations where the only way forward is to “make [the husband] vanish one way or another” (219). That was when the dowager asked Aomame if she would contribute her talents to these efforts. Having concluded that she had nothing to lose, Aomame replied, “I would like to help in any way I can” (220).