Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [44]
“Come on, I’ll have a drink too. It’s okay if you park around here, isn’t it? I can’t stand this cold.”
“Very commendable precaution,” he said, looking up at me cunningly. “As far as this place is concerned, you can have confidence in me. You can park here, if you want. There’s no ceiling, but I control this side of the embankment practically like my own house.”
“Maybe so, but …,” the cook muttered inaudibly, sliding the mug in front of me.
“What do you mean by that?” Grimly the brother took him to task. “For Christ’s sake, what are you griping about? Come on, speak up.”
“I’m not griping,” he replied indolently, swinging his body. “And don’t say I am.”
“Well, speak up then. What’s the matter tonight?”
Like a bored monkey, the cook continued to swing his body.
“Hey! Look! Looks like the customers made a damn good start this evening. Maybe a little too good.”
“A fine business.”
“Really, haven’t you heard anything?”
“What?”
“Well …” For the first time the cook seemed worried and raised his bloated face, looking directly at the brother. “I’m talking about the rowdiness around here tonight for some reason. Just when the construction chief is absent.”
“Come on, let’s have exactly what’s on your mind.”
“I don’t know. It’s just hearsay. There are no girls around and I’m relieved about that. But, what I don’t like is that the girls aren’t the only ones taking off. If what they say is true, they must be a bit short-handed, aren’t they? Of the young boys in your gang only three showed up this evening, didn’t they.”
“So what’s the rumor? I’m asking.”
“Everybody knows. Well, since it’s about you, I count on you taking the necessary precautions. Boy, it’s really bad when you don’t know what they’re saying.”
Our bus was the only one where customers had not gathered. In the space of several minutes, as we were absorbed in our saké, around each lantern four or five men—at the most seven or eight—welled up, as it were, out of the darkness and formed a human fence. But I did not sense a particularly uneasy atmosphere, perhaps because I did not know the usual pattern. Everyone of them, in the same hunched-over stance, merely pecked at his dish of boiled vegetables and gulped down his saké. If I were forced to find something worrisome, it would be, I suppose, the number of men wearing work helmets, although they were off duty. But even so, the helmets might be simply to keep out the cold. The five silhouettes, their stance unchanged, stood quietly around the bonfire. It looked as if no one was still bantering with the girls.
Suddenly, a sharp tensing appeared in the muscles of the brother’s throat. He seemed to stretch his neck forward slightly, like a bird ready to strike, his hands still clasping the unfinished glass of saké. Abruptly he strode off in the direction of the bonfire. He walked on the balls of his feet, trying to keep from stumbling on the stones, and his back, swallowed by the larger darkness, was no longer like a wall.
“What’s going to happen with those guys?”
“He’s not a bad fellow,” said the cook, beginning to shake his head in his usual fashion and taking another cigarette. “He’s not bad, really, but he’s not likable. And since he knows a thing or two, he’s even worse. It was especially stupid for him to let the guys in the bunkhouse order food and drink on credit. He’s been giving hush money to the head clerk in the office, you know. He gets him to take what they owe on credit out of their salaries.”
“I see.”
“It’s no fun leaving home to work in a place like this. And when you can buy on credit, even though you know you’re going to regret it later on, like it or not, the purse strings manage to loosen.”
“But it’s funny to go on a rampage because of that, isn’t it?”
“Well, you see, payday’s after tomorrow—the fifteenth. What about another sniff?”
“Well, okay … for cash …”
Placing his cigarette on a corner of the range, the cook chuckled, and when I looked, drawn toward a section of the frame of the chassis where he had glanced, I could see