The Ruined Map (30 page)

“Ha! You think I’m going to be taken in by that? You wanted me to say yes, and then you would ask how I had made out his expression walking behind him. Unfortunately I am telling the truth. You can’t catch me like that.”

“All right. But even so, you mean you let him go right by you?”

“Well … I guess so …”

“Is it as important as all that?”

“It’s a question of being qualified. We’ve decided that people have established residences and that we should put a chain or something around runaways’ necks and bring them home. But just how valid is such a concept? Who has the right to interfere with another’s living and against his wishes?”

“You leave one place and you’re bound to settle in another. It’s not a matter of will, is it? Rather you’ve got to consider your obligations and responsibilities to the first place you lived.”

“Perhaps even the abandonment of those obligations is itself an act of will.”

“When did you see him … and where?”

“The newspaper clipping I showed you a while ago claimed that missing persons run at the rate of one per thousand. One out of a thousand … and that includes people who can’t move of their own free will, like invalids and children. I think it’s serious. If you take into account the people who expect to run away but who have not yet done so, the figure’s astronomical. Those who don’t run away, rather than those who do, are the exception.”

“Was it in the summer … or after it got cold?”

“Before going into that, you’ve got to clear up the question of qualification.”

“Doesn’t the worry of the one left behind make any difference? You remember, I think, the story about Mrs. Nemuro’s brother being killed.”

“Does that have anything to do with the worry of someone left behind?”

“What was the color of the suit he was wearing at the time?”

“You know, I’m scared to death when I’m squeezed like a sardine in the streetcar in the morning. Just by being on friendly terms with a number of people—a hundred, a thousand—whom you know by sight, you feel you have your own place in the world. But the people who hem you in so tightly, so close to you, are all strangers; they’re by far the bigger number. No, I suppose what I’m really afraid of is that the streetcar will finally get to the end of the line.”

“Just tell me the color of his suit. If you go on like this, saying whatever comes into your head, I’ve come on a fool’s errand.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Suddenly he shrank back, ashamed, gulp
ing again and again. “The color of his suit … if I remember right … ah, yes, I think it was a raincoat, not a suit.”

“Are you certain?”

“It didn’t rain that day, but maybe it looked like rain. Anyway, Mr. Nemuro was always prudent. All of us used to laugh at his mania for licenses: license for driving, license for radio operator, license for stenography …”

“I know all about that.”

“I think all those things are related. Even if you’re alone among utter strangers you can manage not to be nervous … whether you’re in a crowded streetcar or lost in an unfamiliar town …”

“What was the color of the raincoat?”

“Very ordinary … let’s see, a yellowish-brown or beige, I guess … the color of any raincoat.”

“Was it new or did it look as if it had been worn a long time?”

“No, it wasn’t new. It was quite worn. It seems to me there were grease spots on the cuffs and the collar. Yes, I remember. It was one Mr. Nemuro had been wearing a long time. He was strong on repairing cars, and often instead of overalls he would wear the raincoat when he crawled under the car.”

I abruptly ordered the driver to stop. A darkened town, where only the streets were broad, bespeckled with street lights. A sign about night work on a water main was lit by a spotlight and shone red, while a number of helmets painted with a phosphorescent paint repeated again and again the same tedious motion.

“Let’s get out of here and cool off. You know the reason without asking.”

“How can I know?” he said, shrinking back defiantly. “I was just about to tell you everything.”

“Think it over until you do know. Come on … out you go.”

“You’ll be sorry.”

“That’s enough. Unfortunately, the raincoat I have right at hand in safe keeping. Start all over again after you’ve thought up a cleverer lie you can’t see through. Take an aspirin. Have a good night’s sleep.”

I jabbed him roughly in the neighborhood of his fifth rib with my index and middle fingers locked together. Tashiro gave a little grunt, twisting his body as the upper half fell forward. He sprang up on one leg, barely avoiding falling over, and, facing the closing door, shouted hoarsely: “I followed him! I followed him! I did!”

                 I
LEFT
the car at the top of the slope on the plateau where the housing development was situated. Besides the money I had spent for coffee with Tashiro, there was the unintentionally large tip I had given the taxi driver because I was drunk and the unexpected expense at the bar of the nude studio. What could I claim as justifiable expenses? I wondered. A claim had to fit with the contents of my report. Of course, I could not say that there was nothing
worthwhile at all to report on. Even killing time has some value. I thought that I should get a really first-rate eraser for the purpose of erasing the equivocal and useless lines which for over two hours had connected me with a potential pseudo-runaway.

But it was close to impossible to put together in an objective report that would be meaningful to others such vague results. Writing that a liar confessed he had lied was the same as writing nothing at all. Even in thinking it over the only thing that stood out clearly was the naked white thigh beneath the counter, only the feeling in the palm of my hand that seemed to adhere to it. As for the dissected parts of the girl, supposing I could fit them into the jigsaw picture without going any further than I had, then it would seem I could only seek the remaining parts behind the lemon-yellow curtains. Like some insect lured to a light trap, I again walked the street of the housing development in the direction of her window. I didn’t even particularly wonder at the fact that I had no reason, none worth the name, at least …

No, that was not quite true. My car, abandoned there near the steps that led up to her place, just beyond the second street light from here (I had left it on the pretext of being drunk and now I was even more so) became flimsier and flimsier as a reason. I walked over the trampled path in the dead grass, shortening the distance between me and the lemon-yellow window. At length, some thirty-two normal paces from the corner of Building 3, I raised my head, and the line of street lights, glass eyes that no longer knew how to blink, stood in a row like charms, summoning a festival procession that would never come; the faint rectangular light that burned in the window had long since given up such things as festivals. I was struck on the side of my face by a
wind like a wet mop, and as I stood there motionless I raised the collar of my coat. It was about here that the missing husband was said to have last been observed.

Supposing he were standing here now and not I … supposing he had come stealthily, concealed under the cover of darkness, looking up at the house he had abandoned, what would he be thinking? I tried as best I could to put myself in his position, but it would not work. I didn’t know why, but the silhouette of the driver of the taxi I had just taken forced itself before my eyes. That slimy, malicious runt, from whose entire body rose an animal stench, breathing dissatisfaction instead of air, circulating in his veins venom instead of blood. Such a man would not stand around here. He would have no time to compare stealthily his own fate with the lemon-yellow window. But it didn’t mean that all drivers were always like that. For instance, there were also family men like Toyama, who had bought the car. Of course, the husband had to be himself. He couldn’t let himself be replaced with someone else. The husband … he had tried to run from the filing cabinets of life, turning his back squarely on whatever hopes he had for festivals. Had he not wanted to set out for some eternal festival that could never be realized?

One day, unexpectedly, he had come upon a poster pasted on some wall or telephone pole … a broadside telling of a great festival, inconspicuous with its faded colors, and blanched by the wind and the rain. The time and place were blank, but that only served to stimulate his hopes. Without looking behind, he set out in search of the festival that was announced … he went toward an eternal festival, one that would end only with death, one that was different from the pseudo-fêtes each night that only the darkness and neon
lights could cover up. If darkness were indispensable for the festival ceremonies, it would be a world of perpetual night. He joined the unending, circling waltz, unrelated to the pieces of paper dancing in the wind, the sadness and fatigue that come after a festival.

Now he is standing here, balancing the weight of unfulfilled dreams with what he has lost. What will he do? I search and fumble for him … but in vain. This blackness I am seeking is after all merely my own self … my own map, revealed by my brain. I am the one standing here, not he. Properly speaking, the place where I should be standing is not here but in front of the board fence around the construction site from which the window of my wife’s room is visible. I stand trembling, seeking the window of a stranger who has only the accidental relationship with me of being my client. Perhaps the husband is standing under some unexpected window too, one that does not even appear on his own map. Is he sleeping now in that place, that place nobody else can ever reach? Or is he awake, is he laughing or crying … is he angry or bored … does he despair or is he in good spirits … is he helplessly drunk, does his tooth ache, is he frightened, is he fuming like a burning pot, is he all upset or is he relieved, has he lost his way, is he falling down with a crash, is he concentrating on counting out his pocket money, is he addicted to memories, is he gathering together his appointments for tomorrow, is he alone with his nightmares, is he tearing out his hair with remorse, or with faint breath does he keep forcing the blood from a deep wound?

But I was the one standing here now. There was no mistake, I was the one. I thought I was following the husband’s map, but I was following my own; I wanted to follow in his
steps and I followed my own. Suddenly I was frozen still. But it was not only because of the cold … nor was it the fault of the liquor alone, nor of my shame. My perplexity gave way to uneasiness, and that changed to fear. My gaze traveled along the corner of Building 3, running up and down; looking back, I counted the buildings from the end. Again, a second time, a third time I counted. My eyes continued like a madman’s up and down, down and up along the corner of the same building. It wasn’t there! The lemon-yellow window was gone! Curtains of white and brown vertical stripes, completely different, were hanging in the place where the lemon-yellow window should have been. What in the name of God had happened? If I wanted to know I had only to advance thirty-two paces, go up the stairs, and ring the bell at the left of the door on the second floor. But I could not. Since the curtains had changed so radically, the person who would come to greet me would doubtless have turned from lemon to zebra. Was not this striped curtain a flag indicating the husband’s return? There was one possibility in a thousand that, having seen the article in the evening edition, he had returned half out of dislike for the brother … that his one chance in a thousand had materialized. What a boring conclusion … a splendid disappointment. A very easy map to understand. A dialogue indistinguishable from talking to oneself. All right. Everything was perfectly resolved—not a thing was left in doubt. I could completely withdraw from the case with no unpleasant thoughts, although I should never be able to brag of my success.

Yet, there was not a single reason to be unhappy. Subconsciously, I may have wanted the case to go on forever, but the source of funds had been severed by the brother’s death, and no matter how much savings she might have
there was no reason for her to let and almost hopeless investigation go on any further. In the three and a half days left till the term of our contract expired, no matter how active I might be, it would not amount to much. There was no reason to be disappointed. Musing that I had just wanted my briefcase from the car, that I had made a detour for it, I withdrew with a heavy heart by the same path I had come. A dark path … too dark. Just one more time I turned to look at the altogether inappropriate, unsightly striped pattern and then went down the slope in the direction of the subway station. I passed a middle-aged couple going in the opposite direction, their necks sunk into their coat collars against the cold, their shoulders hunched timorously; between them a schoolboy dressed in a uniform was volubly discussing something or other. A number of small pieces of paper, each striving to be first, were being sucked into the entrance to the subway, scooped out by the brilliant illumination. For dinner I made do with curried rice with an egg and stew at a cheap restaurant just before the entrance. Although it was dead winter a huge green bottlefly, slipping and sliding, was buzzing as it tried to crawl up the shade over the electric light; it kept circling aroung but there was no need to worry: flies know the seasons better than humans, and their wisdom is great.