Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [82]
“I wonder if the news about your brother is in this eve ning’s paper. If it is, your husband may see it and get in touch with you quite normally.”
“Do you mean that my brother was the motive behind my husband’s disappearance?”
“That’s a silly idea, forget it. Anyway, it’s not good to have made up your mind to something. I myself was obsessed until just a while ago with the idea that the matchbox I had in my possession was material evidence definitely unfavorable to you. It contained both black and white sticks. Someone who valued the matchbox but who rarely frequented the shop had, in the course of events, replenished the matches. If he had gone to the shop regularly he could have got new matches any time. Now, what kind of situation can you assume? One, it was a man who went out but rarely. Two, he was someone interested in the telephone number printed on the label. Three, he was a man who needed a secret telephone contact.”
“Can’t you jot a telephone number down in a notebook?”
“If anything happened, an address book would be checked first thing, but no one’s going to pay any attention to a matchbox from a coffee house. But that album a little while ago quite removed any basis for suspicion. I was relieved. It was a real dilemma for me. The matchbox was a very troublesome item because we investigators can’t go around suspecting clients. A good example of having made up my mind in advance. Shouldn’t you try being more tolerant toward the relationship between your husband and your brother?”
“You’re the one who’s prejudiced against my brother.”
“Well, let’s drop your brother then. It’s time for me to be going. It’ll take me about ten minutes to S—– station by subway.”
She dropped her eyes and nervously bit twice at her thumbnail.
“SAY, THIS article was in the newspaper last year.” Young Tashiro peered through thick glasses as he presented me with a tattered newspaper clipping, barely waiting until I had sat down.
“I must say, your map was pretty hard to follow.”
“It says there were over eighty thousand missing persons. I was amazed. Mr. Nemuro’s case wasn’t particularly exceptional.”
“Were you the one who decided on this place?”
“Yes. The view’s rather interesting, don’t you think? You can see both the people going up and the ones going down the stairs when you look over there. You have the feeling of viewing the world absolutely privately, unnoticed by anyone, as if from some nonexistent hole in space. I really like this spot. It’s interesting, people walking around without even knowing they’re being watched.”
“Be that as it may, your map is wrong. I missed the corner four times. I’m nearly twenty minutes late.”
“It’s all right. It’s not so much the map … the underground passages are hard to follow.”
“It’s not all right.” I ordered coffee from a white-jacketed waiter who came to take the order. “With a map like this, it’s conceivable Mr. Nemuro might not have been able to get here.”
“You’re exaggerating. I waited exactly one hour and ten minutes. It may be complicated, but it’s not impossible. And he knew the name of the shop perfectly.”
“Was there about this much of a crowd that morning?”
“The morning rush hour’s not like this. You can’t see the floor for the people.”
“But there’s a considerable crowd now.”
I was seized by the hallucination that I had retrogressed three or four hours in time when I thought of the calm of her room. One had no idea of the direction governing these walking people, where they came from, where they were going. Perhaps it was because, with the tiled floors and the tiled pillars, all the lines of the passageways and stairs converged here, and anyone could follow the line of his choice.
“The people around now are most interesting … each one has his own way of walking … his own expression.”
“Well, let’s take a look at the pictures, shall we?”
“Do you think it’s all right? Here, I mean? They’re pretty hot.”
“We’re not going to pass them around, after all.”
“No, I suppose not, but …”
He passed a square envelope over to me with an air of secrecy. Opening it, I found a