Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [12]
No, it made no difference. I had absolutely no intention of poking and prying into the right and wrong of my client’s words. This was business, and so as long as I got my fee, I would work seriously even if I was dealing with a lie. But if I didn’t more or less grasp the outlines of the plot, I couldn’t play the role of dunce very well. Rather, the more stupid the character the more difficult the situation. And there was also the business of self-respect. A stupid impersonation was fine, but I couldn’t stand being treated as stupid from the beginning. Since the fee was thirty thousand yen, I would go that far but no further.
Putting my briefcase at my feet, I rubbed my sides with both hands through my coat pockets, all the time keeping my eyes on the lemon-yellow curtains. A taxi, chugging up the hill, gears screaming to the breaking point, stripped away the darkness and plunged deep into the precincts of the housing project. I would wait at least until the taxi returned. But supposing her shadow didn’t appear as I expected? Impossible—it must. The existence of this “brother” was most questionable. It is a lot easier and more natural to put a puzzle ring back together than to take it apart.
Somewhere, far away, the sound of a roughly closed iron door struck my ears like a sigh from the earth, reverberating back and forth through buried pipes. The feeble howling of a dog rent the air. I wanted to urinate. Involuntarily, my body began to tremble. I had apparently come to the end of my endurance. I thought that the snow had begun to sparkle, but it was manifestly an illusion from having strained my eyes too much in the darkness. Even when I shut my eyes, the snow kept falling behind my closed lids. But what was harder to believe than the snow was …
The taxi came back with the For Hire light on. What was so difficult to believe? Filled with unbelievable things, I no longer knew what I was trying to be suspicious of. My mental faculties seemed to be numb. The lemon-yellow curtains showed no change. A glass bead in the mouth when I wanted a piece of candy. Well, I was lucky I hadn’t munched on it. I shuddered as I finished urinating, picked up my briefcase, and returned to the car. The engine sputtered and groaned. If things had gone as I had anticipated the sound of the motor would have announced my triumph to her, but now it was simply irksome and depressing. Well, if she maintained what she said to be the truth, there was nothing to do but begin with that truth.
A photograph and a worn-out matchbox with advertising. There were too many blank spaces on the map. Therefore, I had no obligation to force myself to fill them in. I was no guardian of the law.
REPORT
12 February: 9:40 A.M.—I investigated the origin of the matchbox. About twenty minutes by foot from the client’s house, I faced in the direction of S—– station on the main road, and looking to the right at the subway station at the bottom of the hill below the housing project, I saw on the left an open-air parking lot. Immediately diagonally in front, I could see a sign bearing the word “Camellia,” just like the name on the matchbox. A very ordinary coffee house: capacity about eighteen seats. Besides the owner, there was one waitress … about twenty-two, more or less … fattish, with a round face and small eyes … traces of pimples on her forehead. She had a liking for showy things and wore patterned stockings, but she was an unattractive girl. She is doubtless outside the scope of this investigation. On the door there was a sign “Girl Wanted,” and I imagined that someone must have quit recently. I inquired directly of the proprietor, but it was not that. They simply needed a new girl. They had no reaction to the picture of the missing man, no special comment; at least both agreed in testifying that he had not been a regular customer. (N.B. eighty yen for coffee.)
THIS MORNING I was hung over. So, though I usually drink two cups of coffee, I decided to let it goat one.
There was no intentional negligence in my report