Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [78]
“My husband and my brother got along very well.”
“Yes, of course. To the point of being purple with rage about a toy gun.”
I came to the last page of the album … a light sepia cardboard with nothing on it. It was the one I kept looking at longest of all. Slowly I closed the album, and again there appeared the words: The Meaning of Memories.
“My brother of course knew of my pregnancy.”
“If I were a police detective, as a matter of course I would have been suspicious even of your aborted child, you know.”
She raised her eyes from the foam in her glass. For an instant the thin, translucent ice shone blue between her eyebrows; with the next sparkle it had already melted. It would take considerable courage not to protect this woman. That was the only point I could understand about the missing husband. Anyway, the husband had had that courage. Even if one didn’t question whether that courage was one of life or death … She continued to stare directly at me. The line of her cheek became like moistened sand on a beach, the softness and hardness delicately mingled as she sat against the lemon-yellow curtains that had gradually begun to fade. The color of her skin was that of a mellowed piece of unpainted furniture in which age and freshness smoothly fused. As we sat there the color of evening deepened, and the freckles on her face blended into her skin. She said nothing. The hem of her mourning kimono formed a link with the dark floor; it was as if she had become some plant. From window to window a street peddler was crying his wares through a portable microphone. “The second time I met your brother …,” I began, lowering my voice slightly, following the progress of her eight fingers (the two thumbs were invisible) creeping like some optical illusion along the edge of the table. I continued: “No, I’m not talking about the place where the fight occurred. It was a little before that. It was right there in town, at the M Fuel Supplier’s about a mile from where the fight happened … the place I mentioned last in my report last night. Again it was a repeat of the same fishy accidental meeting. I had gone there to make inquiries, because I had the feeling that the documents your husband had arranged to give Tashiro on the day he disappeared were very probably destined for M Fuel Supplier’s. And then there he was again … it gave me a very funny feeling. We could wrap the case up pretty quickly if we could say that the fellow I was pursuing was the brother and not the husband. Do you have any idea what your brother was doing there?”
“Yes, if it concerns M, I do.”
“Oh, did you know M?”
“I’ve told you a hundred times,” she replied tonelessly. Was she stifling her feelings or was it something not worth expressing her feelings about? “The fact is that my brother was very cooperative with my husband in his work.”
“Do you mean that it was your brother who started the business with M Fuel Supplier?”
“He said it was really big business.”
“Yes, of course. But it looks like the business last evening wasn’t so above-board. It comes to the same thing, I suppose. In the end, it’s for the two of you. Yes, perhaps so. If you don’t know the means he used it doesn’t make any difference.”
“I wonder what the business was.”
“Blackmail.”
“Blackmail?”
Her faint voice and pursed lips gave the impression she was sucking on some ripe fruit. For her even blackmail was preserved in sweet syrup. When I thought about it, the very sound of “blackmail” conjured up in my mind the small fruit of some tree.
“Do you plan on my going on with the investigation after this week?”
“Yes, if I can.”
“In that case I suppose you had arranged with your brother about the expenses, hadn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly she had trouble breathing, as if she were choking on the beer. But the glass was on the table, softly reflecting the last faint