Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [9]
“No, what would probably be more difficult to handle than such an organization would be a nobody. A worthless cigarette butt tossed away in the street. The fated accident, as it were. This happens to be a true story: a certain head of a branch bank, who was reputed to be especially conservative among his naturally conservative fellow bank employees, had arrived at the age of retirement. On the day he left work, he happened to go to see a nude show and was instantly infatuated with one of the girls. She was just one of the chorus line, nothing much in particular. She had the habit of constantly gnawing at her fingernails. Even while she was performing on the stage she was liable to keep on biting at them—perhaps she didn’t care. Anyway, she made a rather poor showing. However, the fact that she bit her nails seemed to please him privately. After going back to the place for three days, he wrote a fan letter. On the fourth day, things seemed to be going pretty well, and he thought he would take her out to dinner or something. Then, suddenly on the fifth day things took an unexpected turn—a sensational double suicide in the girl’s room. It was done with something like a safetyrazor blade. The harder they are the easier they break, you know.”
Not the slightest change was visible in the girl’s expression. The bubbles in her glass were rapidly fading away. Seen from the side, the surface of the foam made one think of the top of a jungle in an aerial photograph. What was she seeing? I wondered. Suddenly there was a swelling, like freshly painted enamel, along her lower eyelid. A tear perhaps? I was disconcerted. I hadn’t really meant it that way.
“But, let me say … about the paper clip … perhaps, as you claim, it is proof he was really thinking about the documents. But whether he intended to deliver them to S—– station or not, as he had in fact promised, is another question, I think. Of course, it also depends on the contents of the documents.”
“He said no one knew what the contents were.”
Her answer had come back effortlessly, like a ball rebounding with its own momentum, but the tone of her voice did not differ in the slightest from before she had fallen silent.
“But was it company business?”
“It certainly wasn’t very important, I know.”
“I need the truth, not a conjecture like that. Now, about the documents … tomorrow I’ll go and investigate at the company. But I really don’t understand. You yourself claim to have no clues. Yet the fact that not a single concrete item was left—no diary, calling cards, or address book—is incomprehensible, since he was a most orderly man. There’s some contradiction here. You, his wife, have no clues, so you apparently want to believe that his disappearance was accidental. But aren’t the facts rather the opposite? ‘Flying birds leave no tracks’ would seem to fit the case somewhat better, I should think.”
“But there’s the clip. And then he absolutely didn’t touch the savings book.”
“Clip, clip, clip … If I may say so, how can you positively claim it wasn’t a feint in order to convince you? You can’t, can you? And then, maybe he was trying to say goodbye to you for the last time.”
“Certainly not. All the time I was looking for the clip he kept whistling in a funny way as he brushed his shoes.”
“Funny?”
“It was some television commercial, I guess.”
“Come, come, now. You’re welcome to pull the wool over your own eyes, but it serves no purpose to hoodwink me.”
“Well, then, maybe there was something. Maybe a book for addresses and phone numbers …”
For the first time she turned in confusion toward the corner of the room where the telephone was located, and just as she was on the verge of biting her thumbnail, she pressed her hand which she had doubled hastily into a fist against her lips. It was no use to hide it. Even though she fought against