Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [92]
I remained silent. Breaking in during his confession would only project my companion into another easy lie. I should profit from the momentum of his fall as long as it lasted. I kept walking. Before I was aware of it the streets were filled with a secretion of light—a wedge of artificial day was inserted into the night—the lunatic rhythm of time stimulated the passers-by, spellbinding them.
“Come on!” Tashiro’s throat was painfully tensed, his breathing labored. “Have you found out? I told another lie. Lies come out of my mouth naturally, in spite of me. It’s a sickness, I guess. Maybe I’m a compulsive liar. Even those pictures—to tell the truth, I took them myself. At this point there’s no use in trying to keep up appearances. The model’s not the same as the girl back there, of course. I took only back views because the feminine element is most obvious from the back. But I swear that’s the last lie. You probably won’t believe me even if I say so. Please, please do. I’m really ashamed. I have a terrible secret. I’m very upset. I go so far as to tell lies I don’t have to, trying to get away from the pressure of it. If I can just get someone to believe them, I feel they would become the truth. But I’m tired. I want to confess everything, I really do. I’d like you to give me back those pictures. They have nothing to do with Mr. Nemuro; they’re just things that add to my shame.”
I made no answer. The whirlpools of people were urged on by unseen goals under the night sky, where the neon was already sighing; a festival of darkness for fake runaways who, no matter how they regulated their speed, never pulled away more than three yards from strangers they did not know; imitation exercises for the eternal festival repeated every evening. I stepped to the edge of the sidewalk to hail a taxi. Tashiro made as if to turn in front of me, and as he spat a yellow spittle sprayed my earlobe.
“Please … listen to me. It’s a terrible secret. I saw him. I saw Mr. Nemuro. It’s not a lie. Why won’t you listen? It’s your business to find him, isn’t it? Don’t you believe me? Even if you don’t, can’t you at least listen? I saw him walking along with my own eyes.”
I paid no attention to Tashiro. Spotting the red For Hire sign on a cab, I raised my arm. The driver slammed on his brakes and cut his front wheels sharply, bringing the taxi to a clanking, tinny halt and opening the door with a thrust as if to cut me down. I neither invited nor repulsed Tashiro, who, clinging to the door, pushed in with me.
THE DRIVER was very excitable. Even when I told him my destination he did not so much as nod, much less answer, but violently jammed at his screaming gears, making the ancient motor cough and wheeze without any indication of sympathy for it. If the husband had ducked out the back way at the Camellia and escaped to a different world, was he spending his days like this driver, his nerves raw as slivers of glass? Was this world so unbearable that one had to go on eternally escaping until one could put up with such a life?
“I saw him.”
Tashiro’s glasses, as he peered at me from the side with an anxious expression, began to steam up as I looked at him; the heater made the car too hot. I felt suddenly light-headed as the tenseness left my cold-benumbed cheeks. Evidently the two and a half bottles of beer that I had downed were beginning to enter my blood under the stimulus of the rye.
“That’s