The Ruined Map (22 page)

“Do you have a pain somewhere?”

“I’ve got a broken molar.”

She grasped the brooch in the shape of a tiny box at her breast and opened the lid. “This is pretty good,” she said, taking out three small pills. “My regular medicine. I’ve had terrible headaches again lately.”

As if she had been waiting, the girl backed into the room, making the curtain billow. Her skin-tight tan miniskirt molded the fold of her buttocks, and her stockings with their woven design shone with a pearly light. Her collar had the rectangular cut of a military uniform, the cuffs bearing pearly buttons. Her great eyes were brimming with a teasing smile. The coffee cup that had been filled too much was about to overflow. She slowly turned around on heels the same tawny color as her skirt, glancing quickly at me, and began to advance cautiously in a sliding step. Each movement of the muscles in her buttocks I could clearly and directly feel in my palms. I could not but be charmed by the knowledge that my wife was able to cut clothes like this.

“Would you like some water?”

“No, the pain seems to have gone.”

Before I had realized it the aching had let up as if it had never existed. The girl bit her lower lip, mixing smile with tenseness. When she placed the cup on the table, she let it spill over as the liquid splashed up. She seated herself, laughing, in the chair immediately in front of me. Perhaps this innocence was a technique she used in selling herself. My wife, as if wanting her approbation, said: “My husband’s room is all ready, isn’t it, so that he can come back any time?”

The girl looked at me boldly and murmured, evidently pleased: “I like men.”

I could not, I thought, come back after all.

                 T
HE DRY
pavement of the freeway seemed both black and white at the same time. I was doing nearly seventy miles an hour, about five over the limit. The motor sputtered, making a sound like a piece of wire thrust into the blades of a fan; the tires screeched like adhesive tape being torn away. I was immersed to my very core in noise, but I heard nothing; it was as if I were in a great silence. All I could see was the concrete road running straight to the sky. No, it was not a road, it was a band of flowing time. I was not seeing but only feeling time.

I could not believe that a toll gate lay ahead. I could not
and, indeed, there was no need to believe it. My taking this freeway now was itself inexplicable. The hour when I was supposed to go back to the office and see the chief had long since passed. I had quite neglected contacting my client, too. I had no need to be here; there was no necessity of getting any place, I suppose. Pure time … time spent to no purpose. What a luxury. I pressed down on the accelerator. The speedometer steadily mounted … seventy-five. The wind began to affect the steering. I was a point of tenseness. I had the sensation of suddenly awakening on a calendarless day at a place that appeared on no map. You are free to call this sufficiency flight if you wish. When a pirate becomes a pirate and sets sail for unknown seas or when a brigand becomes a brigand and conceals himself in the depths of a city or a forest or an uninhabited desert, both—surely some place, some time—feel like this. Sympathy … no thanks, I’m nobody. It’s as absurd as a man dying of thirst in a desert shedding tears for one who is drowning.

But if this pure time was an awakening, then the sequel to the dream at once blocked the way. The toll gate. A long dream sequence after a short artificial awakening. Immediately I made a U-turn and entered the line of cars going toward the city. But for some reason my state of mind was no longer so euphoric as before. Was it because a red sports car passed me, trailing its faint humming? It was, I think, rather that my awareness of going back, of the futility of going back, which was my only choice, had let the air out of a bouncing rubber ball. Perhaps it had something to do with the sun being at my back. This time, the sky rather than the roadway stretched interminably before me. There were clouds here and there, but even so the blue was stretched taut like a sized piece of cotton cloth. Perhaps it
was a trick of perspective, but in the sky before me more clouds were gathering and it was growing dark. The town lay under the dappled sky. The town that I had left behind a half hour before stretched out a great scab-covered arm, waiting for me to come back. I was a pirate who had run his ship aground, a repentant brigand. Could it be that I was merely seeing mirages? No, that was not it. There was no proof that the town I had left was the same as the one I was coming back to. There was a really very slight one-micron discrepancy between the two, and I had been able to realize the difference perhaps because it was so small. Even one micron’s worth made a big difference. Just traveling on the toll road once a week away from town made a four-micron difference a month … forty-eight a year. If you went on for thirty years, it made 1440 microns … precisely one and a half millimeters. Since even Fuji was crumbling away faster, the figure was one you might as well accept without reservation.

The dirty part of the sky expanded and rose, pushing aside the blue. Again there was a slight twinge in my molar. Why should I have to be so apologetic? Was it in order to stress my own rightness vis-à-vis my wife? Or was it in order to explain to my client that I had played no role in her brother’s death? Or else was it in order to demonstrate to the chief that I had no desire to go deeper into the case than was necessary? But it was indeed a part of my work. “No good hunter pursues his quarry too far. Rather he puts himself in his quarry’s place as he looks for the path of flight; by pursuing himself he corners his quarry” (from
The Memoirs of a Sleuth
). Indeed, that seemed valid enough … yes, I wonder. Was I not, some place in my mind, intentionally competing with the missing husband? Could I be contending
with
him?
That would only justify my own quandary—in which I neither ran away nor came back, that is—vis-à-vis the husband who had simply gone off and never returned.

Perhaps so. If I were told it was true, I should begin to feel it was. Even if it were, I had been shaken by his brother-in-law’s death, and this was far better than my attitude up to this point: to put the essential him out of my mind.

Perhaps the husband’s silhouette had come into view. In some corner of the superimposed town landscapes there were empty black holes. Shadows of the nonexistent husband, he was not alone; there was a limitless number of different hims. Mine, hers, his. Apparently in my mind some great change was beginning to take place.

I drove into a rest area where there was a public telephone. No sooner had I got out of the car than the sun, as if it had been brushed away, went behind the clouds. Nevertheless, in the booth it was still warm and damp, and, doubtless because of its infrequent use, there was a pungent smell of mold.

                 “S
ORRY
. I’m late in getting in touch with you.”

“It’s just as well. I’m exhausted with crying. I’m just about out of tears.”

The hoarse tone in her voice was quite the same as usual and she was unpleasantly self-contained, but the cause doubtless lay in the beer rather than in the passage of time.

“Everyone will be upset if you’re late, I imagine.”

“They’re not concerned about me at all. Of course, the expenses all come from the association. You’d think they were closer blood relations than I am. I got these mourning clothes at a rental place.”

“They suit you. I suppose it’s curious to say so, but black becomes you.”

A sharp slope cut across the high ground of the housing development to the south. There, a long flight of stone stairs lay between clumps of bamboo on either side. I could see the slender nape of her neck as she led the way down.

“Have you asked anyone yet about the conditions and the reason that such a thing would happen to your brother?”

“I can hardly believe it was my brother. After all, I really didn’t know anything about him.”

“It happened right after he left me last evening, apparently. I feel responsible in a number of ways.”

“But no one has mentioned anything about your being with him.”

“It’s getting chilly, isn’t it. Cloudy again.”

The bamboo gave way to a graveyard, immediately to the right where the stairs left off. There a small old temple was situated, only the roof tiles of which had any luster. The circumstances of the town had radically changed, the parishioners had decreased, and now, probably, the only source of income was funerals. The little temple was so dilapidated that braces were attached with heavy rope to the pillars, which had been eaten away by termites. Indeed, the growth in population had meant a proportionate increase in fu
nerals. Perhaps the desolation was the fault of irresponsible financial management on the part of the chief priest, or else a measure to avoid taxes.

When we passed through the gate we could see the black and white mottled funeral drapery suspended in front of the temple. On either side of the path that led from the information desk to the hanging, holding their cold hands over small hibachi stoves, stood youths, who gave the impression of still being children. The intervals between them were as regular as the spaces between telephone poles. Every time we approached one, he bowed his head low, one following the other like machines. Their overly formal manner, their hands on their thighs and their legs slightly apart, made an eerie impression, but one which was also comical. In our office we had people who were syndicate-oriented like that too, but one didn’t expect to see such old-fashioned ritual.

Inside the curtain, it was still and hushed. The depressing fragrance of the rising incense suggested the smell of death. A lone priest kept up the soft, lazy droning of a sacred text. There were four wreaths and on each one were written the words Yamato Association. It would seem that the funeral was the second cheapest type.

In front and extending to the left and right of the main chapel was a wooden dais for those taking part in the services. Only the unoccupied cushions were conspicuous. In the right-hand seat of honor a plump, middle-aged man, who, it was clear at a glance, was from the top echelon of the syndicate, sat with his eyes closed in front of an electric heater, apparently dozing. To his left four or five swarthy men dressed in black, evidently bigwigs, were kneeling in a formal fashion.

One of them, who was sharp of eye, recognized us and
at once hurried down the side steps. His arms and legs were long and slender and he had a cleft in his pointed chin. He wore heavy dark glasses and was of sturdy build, his neck squat on his torso. He followed us with a staggering, unsure step. Either he was drunk or his foot was asleep. Somehow I remembered having seen those glasses. Yes, he resembled one of the gang of three who had been standing near the bonfire at the river bed last night. The one with the strikingly long sideburns, the ends of which curled up, the bow-legged, squashed-faced one. Moreover, the adhesive plaster on the forehead and the Mercurochrome on the nose were definitely souvenirs of the fight.

“Come in,” said the pointed chin, bowing deeply in front of my companion. “I’m sorry, but the vice-president of the association and the other association presidents had to leave early on urgent business. They send you their respects.” His glance fell on the dozing man in the seat of honor, and as he looked back he hurriedly scrutinized me from head to toe. “The director is taking care of everything so there’s nothing to be concerned about.”

My companion introduced me to the pointed chin: “I would like you to meet the man in charge of my brother’s association.”

Suddenly someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. “I see you made it safely. I warned you, didn’t I? It happened just as I said, didn’t it.”

Who was this little gray pig? I remembered the voice. Yes, indeed … the fellow who ran the microbus concession last night. If I had not heard the voice, I would probably not have recognized him. He wore a necktie and had trimmed his beard, and one could not imagine even the swollen and bloated face belonging to the one who had been cooking
noodles in the river bed. Absently, I bent my arm and tensed my lips just to the point of a smile in response to the blandishments of the man. Just in case we should be suspected for some reason or other, an unspoken understanding was instantly forged between the two of us; as mutual witnesses we would form a united front.