Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [30]
Same day: 4:20 P.M.—Filled up the tank at a gas station (three gallons; receipt appended). To be on the safe side, questioned attendant about the streets. The whole west side, separated by the street, is the third ward of F—— City. In F—— Village which appears on my map (published in a previous year) there is no such division into wards, and the relative position of the streets appears to be quite different. When I inquired I found that they had decided to build near here an interchange for the turnpike at present under construction, that there was a lively buying and selling of land and subdividing into house lots, that the municipal cooperative movement was bearing fruit and was being extended to the present F—— City. So the place was crawling with heavy trucks filled with dirt.
The old F—— Village, where Mr. M’s house is locat ed, corresponds to the present first ward and is an area farther to the west screened by a lowish hill with scrub trees on the right of the highway. F.Y.I. I include below an abridged map of F—— City.
Same day: 4:28 P.M.—Right turn at the second bus stop after the gas station. I stopped the car at the first ward post office and inquired at the corner tobacconist’s. Mr. M’s house was the one to the right of the post office, visible diagonally in front of me. Long fence of building blocks. Garden with many trees. Ordinary residential house in a shopping neighborhood. Beside the gate, you can see a simple garage consisting of only a roof.
LEAVING MY car in front of the tobacconist’s, I decided first to take a look at the post office. A set of painted folding doors with brass handles was flanked by a small flower bed, where nothing was planted now, and a pillar letterbox. The floor was concrete; to the right was a small bench and to the left a public telephone booth. Between the two front windows, side by side, was written: Money Orders, Postal Savings, Postal Life Insurance. Dirty cotton curtains were hung over the windows and there was a sign in the shape of an obelisk: Closed Today. Only the window inscribed Stamps—Parcels—Telephone was open. An oldish man, doubtless the chief, who was cleaning or repairing the rubber stamps, looked up at me. There was the pungent odor of a kerosene stove functioning inefficiently. A ten-ton truck sped by, making the earth vibrate; it suddenly slowed down (perhaps because my car was in the way) and changed gears. As I casually requested ten five-yen stamps, I asked if it were true that at Mr. M’s place they had bought a car. I was posing as a salesman … an old trick in a case like this.
“A car?” The man slowly shifted his gaze from me to the next window place hidden behind the curtain. “Never heard that …”
“There’s no reason for him to have bought a car,” answered the muffled voice of a middle-aged woman unexpectedly from behind the curtain. As in most small post offices, a married couple was in charge here. “A man who goes around boasting about the number of alarm clocks he has is certainly not going to keep silent about buying a car, is he?”
“Oh. I’m relieved to hear it. Because a rather plausible rumor has come to my attention according to which Mr. M is driving around in a red car.”
“Impossible. The car next door is light blue,” said the man.
“Ordinary light blue. He’s really not a bad fellow, you know,” added the wife.
“Be that as it may, what about you yourselves? If you had a car you could enjoy life twice as much, that’s for sure. It’s a lot more advantageous than life insurance.”
“At our stage in life we’re too old to start driving. That’ll be fifty yen.”
I drew out a hundred-yen note and asked for small change. “But Mr. M’s business is apparently thriving, isn’t it?”
“Apparently it is. He used to be only a charcoal dealer,” the wife retorted dryly.
“With the increase in houses, he’s changed from a black-charcoal seller to a