Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [13]
The tired old walls with traces of former shelving had been left just as they were. Fastened on one wall was a color print of a coffee plantation, maybe in South America. Dust had gathered on the turned-up corners. The person who put it up would certainly not remember that there ever had been such a picture. And yet, in it everyone was wearing widebrimmed straw hats—if you stood in front of it the sun seemed to be shining brilliantly. But from over here, where the bleak dregs of the February day lay stagnant on the other side of the meshed curtain, there was only the red flame of the kerosene stove, smoking away under a faded rubber tree. Furthermore, I was the only customer the whole time I was there. The sour-looking girl stayed bent over a weekly magazine beside the counter, and the proprietor, too, with a puffy face, as if he had a head cold, went around sluggishly wiping off the tables. Every time he finished a table, he would raise his eyes and look over those he had done and heave a long, reproachful sigh. If I must add something else, I suppose it would be the remark: Dead End. Anything more would be as ridiculous as searching the print of the coffee plantation with a magnifying glass. Not only Nemuro but also anyone else walking into this place would at once be struck with the thought of how fortunate he was to have a home to go back to. Under any circumstances there were no untruths in my report.
Using as a pretext the fact that the proprietor had reached the table next to mine, I closed my briefcase and left my seat. The shop extended along the street and was long and narrow. In order to make way for me, the proprietor had to wait for me to pass, standing sideways between the tables. With every step a black oil oozed up between the floorboards. I gave a two-hundred yen note to the girl, who raised a reluctant face from her magazine, and waited for the change. Well, I would give up visiting the other woman. I had told myself so many times that I had convinced myself not to go. But what about the brother? I thought it made little difference if I just wanted to inquire a bit into his past. Apparently, in the present instance, the advantages and disadvantages for the girl and her brother coincided, and even if there were no reason at all for me to include this in the report, the fraud, if there was one, would be unmasked by the facts and circumstances. In any case they would probably have a falling-out. She was the one who was the official client all the way, and I had no need to trouble myself about him.
A public telephone, the dial holes soiled with use, was located next to the cash register. I dialed the office and asked to be connected with the data section. I requested that they go round at once to the precinct office where the girl was originally registered, some place downtown, if I remembered rightly, and look up the brother in the family dossier. Then I deliberately mentioned the girl’s present name as well as her maiden one, wanting to be overheard. Neither the proprietor nor the waitress showed any reaction. It was natural that they should not, I suppose. Even if my worst conjecture proved true for the moment, it did not necessarily mean that they contacted each other by using a real name.
Caught in a fit of coughing, the proprietor was clearing my table. When I went out into the street, listening to the girl’s voice behind my back with its trace of Kantō dialect, the sky, a dirty white, was nonetheless dazzlingly bright. Immediately in front of the shop large buses squeezed by each other, cramped by the narrowness of the street. In a moment, when the flow of traffic slowed, I crossed the street and headed toward the parking lot. Three signs hung in a line on the barbed wire that enclosed it.
PARKING—ONE HOUR 70 YEN
SPECIAL