Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [69]
One of them, who was sharp of eye, recognized us and at once hurried down the side steps. His arms and legs were long and slender and he had a cleft in his pointed chin. He wore heavy dark glasses and was of sturdy build, his neck squat on his torso. He followed us with a staggering, unsure step. Either he was drunk or his foot was asleep. Somehow I remembered having seen those glasses. Yes, he resembled one of the gang of three who had been standing near the bonfire at the river bed last night. The one with the strikingly long sideburns, the ends of which curled up, the bow-legged, squashed-faced one. Moreover, the adhesive plaster on the forehead and the Mercurochrome on the nose were definitely souvenirs of the fight.
“Come in,” said the pointed chin, bowing deeply in front of my companion. “I’m sorry, but the vice-president of the association and the other association presidents had to leave early on urgent business. They send you their respects.” His glance fell on the dozing man in the seat of honor, and as he looked back he hurriedly scrutinized me from head to toe. “The director is taking care of everything so there’s nothing to be concerned about.”
My companion introduced me to the pointed chin: “I would like you to meet the man in charge of my brother’s association.”
Suddenly someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. “I see you made it safely. I warned you, didn’t I? It happened just as I said, didn’t it.”
Who was this little gray pig? I remembered the voice. Yes, indeed … the fellow who ran the microbus concession last night. If I had not heard the voice, I would probably not have recognized him. He wore a necktie and had trimmed his beard, and one could not imagine even the swollen and bloated face belonging to the one who had been cooking noodles in the river bed. Absently, I bent my arm and tensed my lips just to the point of a smile in response to the blandishments of the man. Just in case we should be suspected for some reason or other, an unspoken understanding was instantly forged between the two of us; as mutual witnesses we would form a united front.
The result was at once manifest in the attitude of the one with the pointed chin. His watchful attitude fell away like a fake mustache stuck on with spit.
“The man in charge should be out in front. I’ll get him at once.”
He hurried away, disappearing beyond the drapery as he spoke. But the one with the dark glasses, standing a step behind, his legs apart, waiting for us like baggage, made no attempt to conceal his hostility, which even the dark lenses could not screen. Maybe it was rancor at me for having torn away from him last night as I was escaping, knowing that he had come to the car to ask for help. Under his comical, Mercurochromed nose the muscles at the corners of his lips trembled unmanageably. Thinking it was time to go, I said: “Well, let’s go and pay our respects.”
“I already have.”
She could have been talking about eating. What on earth could be the relationship in her mind between this everyday calm about her brother’s death and her attachment to him, involved as she was with him, constantly bringing him up in her conversation? Of course, funerals, though not so much as weddings, were uninviting, unhappy events. The dead’s memory is nailed up so that the living can be at ease—a convenient ceremony indeed. Was it that indifference to the funeral basically signified indifference to the one who was dead, or else was it a case of loving the dead one too much … beyond life and death? I was seized by a sinister premonition.
I took off my shoes and put on the slippers provided at the foot of