Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [51]
When she came back with the beer, flakes of white froth clung to the corners of her lips.
“I wonder if he wasn’t acting as a middleman all along.”
“It so happens that an acquaintance of his from home wanted a driver who knew Tokyo, so he acted as middleman to find one. If it hadn’t been some special case like that, the friend could have inserted the advertisement himself, I suppose.”
“Yes, it does make sense.”
Pouring the beer with the utmost care into two glasses, she smiled as if seeking my agreement and returned to her seat.
“Well, that’s settled.”
“What about that telephone number pinned to the edge of the curtain?”
“The number …”
“Why do you have it there?”
“Well, I …” In one draught she downed a third of her glass. “There’s no particular reason. I really don’t know why I have it. I wonder why you’re so concerned about it.”
“You’re the one who’s concerned, I’m afraid. When I touched on the business of the classified ads in the paper, you were unusually upset.”
“That’s true, I suppose. I wonder why.” She held her glass in two hands as if she was going to lift it, and her eyes looked as if she had recalled something out of a distant past. “Really, I wonder why. It seems that my story always goes wrong somewhere. But even facts are not all that dependable. It’s all the same to me wherever he is, whatever he’s doing now. The fact is he’s not here. That alone is a fact. What I want is the explanation for it. Why did he go away? The problem is to explain that. That’s the question.”
“But there can be no explanation without some factual corroboration.”
“Just a simple explanation’s enough.”
“Your husband’s the only one who can provide that, isn’t he. The most I can do is locate him.”
“You’re awfully modest, aren’t you.”
“Modest?”
“Why did you choose such a profession? I wonder.”
“Is there really any point in answering that?”
“I’m fascinated. Just what is it when someone chooses something?”
“It’s not very important. Usually as soon as a missing person’s been discovered, he calmly goes back to his former haunts, as if he has suddenly recovered from some demonic possession. Motives or explanations are not so important as people assume.”
“Have you ever dealt with any other case like this?”
“Of course, but generally you have some clue from the be ginning … a specific girlfriend—almost all have girlfriends. These are cases that can be settled after three or four days of observing and collecting information. It takes money, and unless the subject of the investigation is already fairly clear no one would bring it to our office.”
“Is that right?”
“Was your husband a sensitive person?”
“He was rather nonchalant about things, I should say. Even about his clothes.”
“Was he compulsive?”
“Whatever, he was an extremely cautious person.”
“Don’t be inconsistent. The significance is entirely different, depending on whether a given disappearance is deliberate or accidental.”
“Anyway, it’s a fact that he was enthusiastic about everything … amazingly so.”
“What was he so enthusiastic about, then?”
“About everything. He was like a child.”
“About cars … or cameras?”
“Yes. And he had a mechanic’s license for fixing automobiles.”
“Was he enthusiastic about gambling too?”
“He was fond of licenses. He had a kind of license mania, I guess. He even carried two driver’s licenses—one for second-class trucks. And besides that, he was a radio operator, and electric welder, and a handler of explosives.”
“Was there any relationship between the qualification for handling explosives and working for Dainen Enterprises?”
“Yes, I think there was.”
“A very practical type, wasn’t he?”
For the first time I understood the meaning of the library, which had eluded me before. Electricity, communications, machinery, law statistics,