Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [49]
“June fourth, is it? He certainly carried it around long enough, didn’t he.” Turning the page, I saw next a forecast of professional baseball. Under it, in large letters, appeared an advertisement for a cold medicine. On the upper half of the third page was the photograph of an up-and-coming singer next to a gossip column relating how things were going with his sweetheart or something to that effect. Underneath, divided into small boxes, appeared classified ads at a thousand yen a line: jobs, hotel guide, financials, apartments, and sundry others. The sundries, with the exception of dogs for sale, all dealt with venereal clinics and operations for sterility and redundant foreskins. Then, on the last page, horse- and bicycle-racing forecasts. Movie listings appeared side by side with radio and television programs. Underneath, again three bands of job advertisements. Only one was for a missing person, but it seemed unrelated to this case.
“Was it this worn from the first? Or have you handled it a lot yourself?”
“Yes, I have, but …,” she said, lifting her innocent, untroubled eyes from my hands, which she had been staring at. “You know, it was worn before I got hold of it.”
“When was the last time your husband used his raincoat? I suppose you don’t remember, do you?”
“He almost always used to leave it in his car … either as a precaution or because he was lazy. He used to say he’d be ready for the rain. If the person my husband sold the car to hadn’t gone to the trouble of bringing it back, I probably wouldn’t have been able to remember that there ever was such a coat, I suppose.”
“Car? He sold his car? When?”
Unconsciously my tone became insistent. One question followed on another, but she showed no signs of confusion as she slid the tips of her fingers along the edge of the table, as if in doubt. “It was the day before … or two days before. But it was about a week later that the coat was brought back. It had been forgotten in the trunk, he said.”
“But last night you said something altogether different.”
“Did I? Strange, isn’t it.”
“I definitely heard you say the car was in the repair shop, you remember.”
“Well, I meant that that was what my husband said.”
“Your brother must know the whereabouts of the car. Why was there any need to tell such a specious lie?”
Had I gone too far? I wondered. Had I cornered my client in an untenable position? Well, you reap what you sow. I had not set this trap for her. The fence by which she had been cornered was no more an obstruction for her than wet paper. She gave a weak, abashed smile.
“It looks as if I have the bad habit of saying things on the spur of the moment. I wonder if I don’t tend to be arbitrary. I’ve spent half the day since this morning searching the house … from the bottom of the book boxes to the sideboard. I’ve been going in circles, it’s like a game of hide-and-seek. I have the feeling my husband’s become an insect. I’ll try putting honey on paper and slipping it under the bed.”
Her lips compressed and her breathing was agitated. Thinking she was on the verge of tears, I was the more upset of the two of us.
“You realize it’s to neither of our advantage to hold back information. It’s not only that you’ll have brought me on a fool’s errand, but also that it’s a waste of your money. Now then, tell me, what sort of a man was the fellow he got to buy the car?”
“Very nice, really,” she said, looking at me frankly, as if suddenly regaining consciousness. “It’s not true that I hold back information. You know, if he’s somebody connected with my husband’s disappearance, either he’ll tell us something or he won’t appear at all. If I say nothing, the buyer’s the kind of person nobody’d pay any attention to.”
“What does he do?”
“He said he was a taxi driver.”
“And what was the price of the car?”
“I guess