The Ruined Map (18 page)

                 T
HE GIRL
next to me finished cutting up the picture. Tearing about an inch from the last page of my report pad, I quickly wrote a note: “I saw you. I’ll say nothing if you come along with me. If okay, crumble this paper into a ball and return.”

I folded the note in two and slipped it gently under the girl’s elbow. Startled, she shrank back and looked at me, but I began to clear the top of my desk, oblivious of her. She opened the paper and began to read in a flustered way; at once her stubby nose and plump cheeks were dappled with red. She ceased all movement, she seemed even to have suspended her breathing. I patiently awaited her answer, savoring the moment like a piquant spice.

At last, she shot me a tentative glance. Her shoulders relaxed and she heaved a sigh. Rolling the paper into a ball, she flipped it back to me with the tip of her fingernail. Her aim was bad and it fell to the floor. As I leaned over to pick it up I looked up at her. I had the impression that below her thick-set ankles the flat-soled black shoes, cracked and worn, were somehow not capable of supporting her weight. Only
the depression at the back of her knees created a shadow that was somehow feminine and clean. Adolescence drawing to a close, a time out of kilter, like catching a cold in the nose. She was apparently aware of my look, and the tendons in her legs tensed.

I picked up the paper ball and put it in my pocket, folded the photocopy of the newspaper, placed my pad and fountain pen in my briefcase, and stood up as if nothing at all had occurred. Without so much as a glance back, I headed across the overly waxed floor in the direction of the loan desk at a speed befitting a library. Having returned the newspaper, I looked only once in the girl’s direction, but she had not yet left her seat, and only her eyes peeped over the edge of the partition as she spied on me. I raised my hand slightly as a sign, and, seating myself on a little bench in the smoking area between the reading room and the exit, I lit a cigarette. I had barely taken four puffs when the girl appeared in front of the loan desk, walking stiffly. Nervously she was watching for me outside and did not seem to see where I was. She quickly returned her books and picked up her coat at the cloakroom, and just as she was hurrying toward the door she recognized me, the rhythm of her step faltering as if she had stumbled. Immediately I arose from my seat and went to the door. The girl followed with slightly shorter steps, making no attempt to flee.

When I brought the car round from the parking lot, the girl was standing in the middle of the steps, buried in her coat collar up to her nose. I drew up to her and opened the window on my side; she shifted her briefcase and with an agitated step came directly toward me. Her nose was bloodless, as if squeezed between two glass slides. Her discontented expression had assumed a weird glow, perhaps because of
the rush of blood or the cold. Only the green scarf that appeared above her coat collar was strangely gaudy and made one feel the inner pressure which propelled her. I half opened the door.

“Let me give you a lift. Which way are you going?”

“You mean
where
am I going?” Her voice was challenging and unexpectedly contained. “There’s no use my deciding that.”

Involuntarily I gave a forced smile, and she too contorted her features in a mirror image.

“Does that mean you’re ready for anything?”

“You’re a despicable person.”

Suddenly I slammed the door in the girl’s face. I put my foot on the gas; the tires churned up the gravel and the front end of the light car sprang up like a boat cresting a wave. The girl, abandoned, was dumbfounded, standing there as expressionless as a frozen fish.

                 I
WAS
standing around. Just standing around, outside of time, in front of the telephone at the corner of the counter in the Camellia coffee house.

“Is he dead?”

“It looks as if they tortured him slowly to death.” The strangely excited voice of the chief came ringing from the
diaphragm of the receiver. “Is anything wrong? Don’t tell me you don’t have an alibi.”

“How could I?”

“Well, anyway, get in touch with the client right away. She’s already called here three times since this morning.”

“Where did you get this information?”

“The client, of course.” Suddenly his tone changed. “Oh, do we get information any place else?”

“I was just asking. All right. I’ll get in touch with her immediately.”

“May I remind you once again that every one of us has to take the responsibility for his own complications.”

“Yes, I understand. I’ll show up at the office around noon.”

I stood motionless. He was dead! I replaced the receiver and stood motionless.

By this time the police were in an uproar no doubt. I wondered if, in the investigation, my existence might possibly come to their attention. Supposing it did, then the extending ramifications of the inquiry would reach to the M Fuel Suppliers. The man in the light car. The man who claimed he came from Dainen Enterprises. The inquiry would shift to Dainen Enterprises. And there again the man in the light car would come up. So whether I liked it or not my presence would come out. But it didn’t necessarily follow that this would mean trouble for me right away. First, I had no motive. And then, if they wanted a suspect there were lots of others. But if I could, I wanted to avoid getting involved.

Perhaps I needn’t worry. There was no reason for the police to entertain the wild fancy that, behind the dramatic events, M Fuel Supplier’s was involved. At this point, I was
sorry I had not been able to establish clearly what he intended to use as blackmail.

And there was something else, something that was basically changed by his death: the funds for paying the investigation expenses were cut off. Perhaps my work ran counter to the fundamental wishes of my client—which would mean that the curtain would fall all too soon, doubtless within the week.

Yet, wherever did this feeling of being balked in my expectations come from? I wondered. I returned to my seat, and as I stirred my lukewarm coffee, I began to be invaded by the gloomy and sentimental feeling that I had only myself to thank. Perhaps it was a feeling of sadness for the dead man. No, that couldn’t be. Beyond the black-mesh curtain lay, today too, the open-air parking lot, bleak as a head cold. If I remember right, yesterday about this time he had called to me from the second pillar there, his oily smell spreading like a gelatinous sap, especially from his stiffened shoulders. It had begun then, a prickliness like hives, created by my awareness of him and even now not in the least quenched.

If there was anything at all strange, it was perhaps a variation of my impression of his pride which became arrogance. Definitely my client had paid her money to retain me; she was my employer. But she usually made eyes like a begging dog or else flashed her servile smile as if she somehow felt guilty. At such times, in order to make her feel at ease, I would smile servilely along with her, thinking that people were like that. I would show her I was willing to handle her dirty wash. Since within our hearts we secretly want everything in existence to be dirty, we always recover our self-respect and discover light and hope in life. But her brother made no effort to show the slightest bit of this wretchedness.
From the first, he did not try to conceal that he was covered with filth, but he stubbornly refused to let me see that filth, much less to touch it. He was quite different from the type of customer I had had up to now. It was true that he was a strange fellow, but I could not claim to be unprejudiced. When I realized this bias, I had the feeling of being able to recall, however, dimly, that I had overlooked—no, had actually tried to overlook—something. His earnest expression, for instance, the time he asked for my opinion of his “sister as a woman.” Or his thoughtfulness in details, as when he ordered a free egg from the owner of the microbus stall. If I hadn’t clung so to my preconceptions, if I had kept myself at the same level with him without deciding from the first that he was a wall obstructing my view, he might have surprised me by changing from a wall into a door, through which he might have invited me in.

Of course, the wall was no more. And with it the possibility of a door had vanished too.

It was already too late.

What he didn’t want to say as well as what he perhaps did want to say, as he crawled away through the dry grasses of the embankment like some broken umbrella, was now nonexistent. The puzzle ring forcibly taken apart has no more relation to a puzzle.

I glanced at my wrist watch. It was 11:08, but even if I entered that in my report sheets, there was nothing to write after it. No, it was not only this moment; I had practically no hope of anything to report on, even after an hour, three hours, or ten hours. Harassed by these thoughts, I downed the remaining coffee and rose. But what should I do? Was there something to be done? Again I stood there indecisively … just standing, like the girl I had left behind at the foot
of the library steps. Being dragged around in the dark, deprived of freedom, ignorant of one’s whereabouts or objective, was vexing enough, but suddenly being picked up on the street with neither explanation nor excuse was really insulting treatment.

Behind the counter the proprietor of the shop was buried up to his neck in his newspaper. The sulky waitress, her elbow on the cash-register stand, held to her ear a small radio, the volume low, as she stared vacantly outside. As she stood there her lips were contorted in an unconscious sneer—was she laughing at the radio program, or at me standing there so indecisively, or was she laughing at something else? Following her gaze, I looked out of the window and saw something terribly unnerving. A group of three men, apparently salesmen, were passing by, discussing something among themselves. Each carried the same kind of briefcase under his arm, each had an expression filled with hostility. Beyond them, the endless flow of cars. And beyond that, the parking lot—something that stirred my memory irritatingly, like the edge of a broken molar. Digits … seven digits at the bottom of the parking lot sign. The telephone number!

The matchbox label … the Camellia coffee house … the classified ad in the old newspaper … the little piece of paper pinned to a corner of the lemon-yellow curtains—the telephone number had appeared repeatedly on all of them.

At length I recovered my sense of time and, however faintly, my memory of the map. Without removing the radio from her ear, the girl pulled the lever of the cash register. “Do you take reservations for the parking lot over there?” I inquired, raising my voice.

Instead of answering, the girl merely looked sideways at the proprietor. The newspaper sank to the counter and the
man raised his eyes. When our eyes met there were sparks. He spoke in a high-pitched voice, ill-suited to his growth of beard.

“Full up, I guess. Sorry.” Ignoring me, he lowered his ill-humored face to the newspaper.

“You’ve got a lot of free time around here.”

“What’s that?” snapped the girl grimly, taking the radio from her ear, overly reacting quite as if I had played some trick on her. Though I was bewildered, my imagination was unexpectedly stimulated. My resentment was washed away: it was as if I was under a hot shower, grasping my penis … an urge for release that made me want to laugh like an idiot, welling, pulsating within me. Perhaps I really did laugh—just a little. With my eyes fixed on the girl’s face, I walked around the register and grasped the receiver. I dialed Dainen Enterprises and asked to be connected with the young clerk Tashiro.

—“Tashiro? I want to thank you for yesterday.…” When I identified myself, he had a moment of confusion before responding. For an instant, I suspected he might have already heard about the death, but apparently not. As soon as I recalled to him his promise to have a drink with me, his tone changed to one of friendliness and intimacy—perhaps he had little experience in sharing confidences like this with strangers. I stared at the thick line of hair behind the girl’s ears. “Let’s meet at S—– station … where you drew the map for me yesterday … hmm, the spot where you were supposed to meet Mr. Nemuro.… I’d just like to check it out. Let’s say seven o’clock, all right? Then, most important, I’d like you not to forget to bring along the … uh … those special nude shots.” The girl hastily brought the radio to her ear, but there was no sign that she had turned it on.
“After I’ve thoroughly gone over the nudes again, I’d like, if possible, to interview the model as soon as I can.…” Of course she could not hear the suddenly businesslike answers, so my exchange sounded quite meaningless. Then I lowered my voice and added—no, rather than an addition it was probably my real purpose: “Another thing I’d like you to think about: how would you go about blackmailing a fuel supplier? An ordinary fuel supply place … hmm … a retailer. I’d like your advice. What kind of blackmail is there? Think about it till we meet.”