Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [73]
Our eyes met in a strange look.
But she seemed to take no meaning from what I was saying or from what she herself said, and when she noticed the stiffening of my expression she was suddenly flustered. “It’s strange, isn’t it. My husband seemed to use the freeway a lot too. Of course, in his case it was to test the cars he had repaired. He said he used to go round and round on the freeway so much that he got tipsy. That was in the evenings when the iron roofs of the buildings still shone red in the sun, though the underparts were already darkened.”
“Perhaps what I was saying was just that.”
“He said that as he went up and down the freeway a hundred times, a thousand times, the exits gradually diminished in number, and that in the end he felt locked in.”
“When you’re driving, you never want to think of stopping. You want the moment to go on forever just as it is. But when it’s over, you shudder at a state like that, with no end. There’s a big difference between driving and thinking about driving.”
A faint smile hovered about her lips. It differed from her usual smirk, yet it was a worrisome smile, as if she were forcing herself to be agreeable. She again lowered her eyes and I had a feeling of frustration, like some salesman turned away from the door with excessive courtesy.
The momentum of my words carried me on: “So perhaps I needn’t be so concerned about the diary. The diary, after all, is imagining the driving; your husband is the one who actually drove.”
“Oh. The diary …”
“What did you think I was talking about?”
“I thought it had to do with a man and woman,” she said in an uninterested tone as if she were tossing aside an orange peel. Again she lowered her absent-minded gaze to her glass.
“Do you know anything about the contents?” At length I too was roused. “What is this business … your being so uninterested in your husband’s diary? I don’t know any more who to worry about.”
“But I don’t think even my brother made much of a point of the diary.”
“Did you trust your brother that far? Even more than your own judgment?”
“I’m all alone now.”
She closed her eyes, the upper part of her body slackened, and she seemed quite unaware of my presence. Yet I wondered whether deep in her heart a tempest was ravaging her.
“Well, have it your way. It’s none of my business. However you may think of your brother. But what in heaven’s name were the circumstances that got him in such a mess? Do you know, actually?”
“Oh, yes, that reminds me. I have to give you this.” She picked up a large, square, white handbag that she had put next to her chair, and which was somewhat ill-matched with her mourning clothes, and lifted it into her lap. Out of it she took a package wrapped in newspaper and slid it over the table toward me. It was a strangely shaped package, poorly done up. From the sound it made on the table it seemed rather heavy.
“What’s this?”
“The man who came to talk to me a while ago … the one with the heavy beard …”
“Oh. That’s the owner of the noodle place. He ran a spot in the dry river bed where the fight took place.”
“He said it was a memento of my brother’s.”
The paper tore as I was opening it, and a black metallic tube, gleaming dully, was revealed. A pistol! It at once occurred to me that I must not leave any fingerprints. I grasped it by the muzzle with an edge of the newspaper and gingerly drew it toward me across the table. A small buttonlike object, wrapped with the pistol, fell out. It was the badge.
“These things aren’t very much, but …”
She was quite imperturbable, and it was I who was thoroughly disturbed. For god’s sake, what kind of woman was she? What was her everyday world?
“Did you know this? It’s a six-shooter Browning.”
“Oh, it’s only a toy.”
“A toy?”
“Look. The barrel’s blocked up.”
I saw that it was indeed. The color, shape, and weight were perfect, and I could not tell it from a real revolver. Particularly the chill around the well-oiled trigger gave it an inorganic feel. For psychological effect, one needed nothing closer to the real thing.
“I heard the