Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [23]
“Complete secrecy is an obligation I have to observe in my work.”
“Actually, he had a side to him people didn’t know. He had one slightly strange quirk. He was all wrapped up in pictures—photographs—of nudes.”
“You mean he collected them?”
“No, he takes them. He always seemed to be going to a studio. But I imagine I’m the only one who knows that. It so happens I introduced him to a friend who rents a darkroom.”
“Did there seem to be some particular model?”
“Well, I can’t go so far as to say a particular one.” At length his voice loosened up, and even his expression became relaxed and comfortable, like an old shoe. “Apparently there was one girl he liked a lot.”
“Do you know her name or anything?”
“I know where the studio is. And I’ve got the pictures too. Shall I show them to you next time? They’re amateurish, but the amateurishness itself gives them a lot of feeling, you know. If he had passed out such pictures to his customers, they’d have loved it.”
“We might as well go on over to your place after this.”
“I can’t. I used lunch as an excuse to get away and come over here. It’s really quite impossible—the section manager eloping with that girl. He wouldn’t ever do that. I really don’t think he liked people. When I was invited for a drink—once in a long while—it was impossible. It didn’t bother him at all not to say a word for ten or twenty minutes.”
Suddenly someone was slapping at the window on my side with a wet sponge. I wiped the window with my hand and looked out. A young boy about ten, dressed in a skimpy uniform, with a large bald spot on the left side of his head, was looking sheepishly up at me as if he would burst out crying at any moment. I half lowered the window. “I’m sorry, mister,” he said in confusion, preparing to take to his heels and pointing under the car. “My ball fell in that hole.”
“You’re a lot of trouble. Do I have to move the car?”
“If you don’t mind me squeezing under, then you don’t have to.”
“All right. Go on.”
A fine, almost invisible drizzle was changing the russet surface of the ground into the color of crude oil. Certainly the elbows and knees of the boy would be soaked to the same hue. At length he came crawling out, holding the ball in one hand. “How many miles do you get to a gallon, mister?” “Sixty.” “Oh, yeah!” he muttered derisively, sliding down the slope on the opposite side of the tracks. I burst into laughter in spite of myself, drawing my young companion into my hilarity. Without knowing why, I was relieved. It might be well to spend more time with young Tashiro and get to be friends.
While I was closing the window, I started the motor and turned on the heater. The cold two-cylinder engine set up a racket like a bad percussion instrument.
“Say. Are you a drinker?”
“Well, maybe I can take a couple of highballs …”
“All right. Shall we plan on tomorrow night … with Mr. Nemuro’s nudes? Let’s get in touch by phone tomorrow about time and place.”
THE CHIEF, sprawling flaccidly over his chair, his back to an enormous progress chart in which the investigators’ names formed a vertical column cut by horizontal lines for dates and days, gave one the feeling of a wrinkled balloon bulging with water. If it had not been for the movement of his fingers clasped on his stomach one could only suppose he was napping. A profusion of deep wrinkles were etched like embedded strings in the slackened flesh of his chin, and traces of pimples stood side by side like the warts on a prickly pear.
Without stirring, the chief half opened a wary eye and gave a sarcastic chuckle. In a rasping voice, rather like a dog with a cold, he snapped: “You’ve gotten damn serious about this.”
“Why shouldn’t I be serious?”
“Well then. Do you have a little hope?”
“I don’t, no.”
“I thought so. It’s better not to get too deeply involved in this kind of case.”
“She’s just letting her