Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [36]
“AGAIN TODAY! The day’s pretty full of coincidences. I’m amazed.” He didn’t appear to be in the slightest. “I’m absolutely flabbergasted. I thought you’d sniff this place out in due time, but, well, don’t stand there … take a seat.”
“But why didn’t you say anything if you knew of the place?” Immediately I snapped on the tape recorder. “You know, it was written right there in the application for investigation: you were supposed to give me any and all information.”
“But you surely don’t expect me to report every single item, particularly those that have no informative value.” Nonchalantly, he called the office girl: “Be so kind as to give our guest a cup of tea.”
The girl silently rose from her seat. The wrinkled skirt, charged with static electricity, clung to the roundness of her buttocks.
“If you didn’t think it was necessary, you should have informed me beforehand, including your reasons.”
“Intolerably uncivil young lady,” he said, ignoring my words, crossing his legs and shifting to the side. “Makes you feel funny. Everywhere I go, as you can see, I’m the villain. It’s funny, if you’re treated like a villain long enough you get used to it, and in the end you get to feel like one.”
“What are you doing here, for heaven’s sake?”
“Well, well. What indeed?”
“You’re here just by accident, of course. Somehow, as you were walking along, you just happened to notice …”
“Chalk one up to you,” he said, smiling cheerfully and snapping his fingers. “No, it’s not a joke. Your suspicions are not unfounded. Actually, the various threads are all tangled up—in a very strange way.”
“If that’s what you think, you’d better explain.”
“If I could, I wanted to pretend I didn’t know, but … Well, when you looked at me in that dreadful way, I couldn’t help myself. I’m prepared to tell you everything—the whole truth. Frankly speaking, I came here for a shakedown.”
“A shakedown?”
“Yes, indeed. Not so, miss?”
The girl took the kettle from the kerosene stove in front of the shelves and poured the hot water into a large earthen teapot, her body rigid. She made no attempt to answer. But her very silence was a more eloquent response than anything she might have said. The brother continued in a calm tone.
“I notified them beforehand so they would have a check ready today. The boss took off and I have no idea where he is. This girl here sticks to her story that she doesn’t know anything about anything. Listen, miss, such an obvious tack won’t do you any good. You hold me up a day and I’ll just increase the interest by that much. Right. You’d better tell the boss just that. I’ve plenty of time, and until further notice I’ll be dropping in every day.”
The girl, admirably expressionless, placed on the table two cheap teacups, which she had filled to overflowing with a weak brew, and returned to her seat in silence. Evidently she had more spirit than one would have thought.
“Cold chick. Don’t get the wrong idea. A blackmailer’s a scoundrel. All right, but the person who’s being blackmailed here is just as bad.”
There was something extraordinary about his casually announcing on our second meeting, without batting an eye, that he was engaged in blackmail. What a nerve. I didn’t have to believe everything, but faced with this amazing situation I felt like a fly in a glue pot. I thought to myself that if I got the opportunity I was certainly going to show up this man for what he was. But I had never dreamt that my hope would materialize in this way. Somehow or other the fellow was an accomplice of my client. A privileged resident in forbidden territory. There was no need to let someone take him by the tail. Was he putting on a show? If that was the case, why? Or, could it be that he just liked to boast of his own wickedness? If so, he knew too little of his adversary.
“I’m sorry, but if things go on like this I can’t continue,” I said, although I realized it was to my disadvantage to become emotional. “In the first place, there seems to be some doubt as to just how serious the application