Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [27]
I wanted to talk with somebody I didn’t know about flying saucers. But detachment was the highlight of the place. Since I did not dislike the convention I felt compelled to slip my ten-yen piece into the nearest fortune machine.
Good luck. The sign of auspicious clouds in the south. Your horse is a slow walker, but there is promise of an open gate. You may act positively about turning over a new leaf and about love. Take care of rainy weather and a wallet with holes. What you seek is at your feet. There will be spring rains and radiation. Stay under an umbrella.
The drawback of a paper cup is that it leaks no matter how careful you are. Perhaps that was why the match simply would not obey me when I tried to light my cigarette. In the end I was exasperated. I had the idea of putting two match-sticks together when suddenly I became aware of the difference of the two heads. As I kept turning the screw of my tipsiness, somewhere a part of me awakened and forged a link. It occurred to me that this matchbox which had casually come into my possession, was in fact an important piece of evidence given me by my client. I wrapped it in a handkerchief and thrust it into an inside pocket.
But before I put it away, the significance of the two kinds of matchsticks had been branded deeply on my mind.
White heads
and
Black heads.
My thoughts penetrated like gamma rays through the various events and conditions, and suddenly I was headed straight for the solution. I could easily deduce simply from the damage to the matchbox and the label that he was not a regular customer, constantly coming to the Camellia. Had he been, he could have procured new matches at any time. However, it was also difficult to deny that he was not merely a casual customer, inasmuch as there were the sticks with two kinds of heads. That he was carrying the matchsticks around and even replenishing them was the same as his being a regular customer, even if he actually wasn’t. Otherwise, it was evident that there was an even greater tie-in. I emptied half of my third drink, lit an edge of the fortune slip—with other matches, of course—and pursued the cockroaches, who fled helter-skelter, but my thoughts continued in their straight line. A matchbox from a coffee house he rarely frequented. What conceivable interest could that have? The label design? Ridiculous! Well, then, the telephone number? Yes, conceivably the telephone number. Perhaps in the Camellia there was some doelike girl with a sign on her—“Caretaker Wanted”—that would put a middle-aged man into ecstasies. She would keep his interest alive by pretending to nibble at the bait he cast over the telephone.
At that same moment, my reasoning took such a sharp curve that the cart was almost upset. Don’t laugh. If such a girl really did exist, the very nosy brother would not have overlooked her. He would have got wind of that long ago, and the objective from the beginning would have been to follow her. Perhaps such a girl didn’t exist (and actually she didn’t). If I could believe my client’s words that the matchbox had come from the husband’s raincoat … No, the hypothesis was packed with ramifications. Let’s stop that. There was the business of the old newspaper being in the pocket with the matchbox, and also it might be well to look again into two or three of her explanations after I had cleared