Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [98]
Downy hair like expensive velvet, so soft and fine as to be almost invisible. The fine-textured skin of a young boy with a touch of brown. Of course, even though one might have the highest technical competence, color film was incapable of reproducing exactly the actual tones. At this point I had no intention of rejecting Tashiro’s confession, but if I was again suspicious of a lie based on another lie, it was not at all imposible that the first lie had become true. Moreover, it was true that she herself recognized that her husband was crazy about color photography. The possibility that this nude picture had actually been taken by the husband could really not be ruled out. Since I was suspicious of the way Tashiro had got excited and took back what he had said before, there was probably some question as to how he had come by the photos, When I thought about it—I do not know whether such analysis is possible—on the husband’s face creases characteristic of a peeping Tom seemed to have been etched. The inhabitant of an upside-down world, who could not believe in the existence of something until he had all alone completely absorbed the object into himself.
Thus, I still had reservations. In the first place, I wondered whether Tashiro had the know-how to use a wide-angle lens. Furthermore, there was the album—The Meaning of Memories. In it she had been composedly aware of being photographed and had even put on a performance: the picture of her, dressed in her peignoir, through which the contours of her body were visible. (Was it out of disinterest or absentmindedness, was she fully aware of what she was doing, or was it out of natural coquetry that she had calmly permitted herself to be exposed to my eyes as she did?) Yes, it was quite possible. The model in this picture was his wife, my client herself.
I had grown stiff. Leaving only the picture of the woman, I put the husband’s photo aside. Although I would have to be up early in the morning tomorrow, I had without being aware of it finished off a small bottle of whisky. The radio continued ceaselessly playing American folk songs. Under the blankets my body at last had gotten warm, and less and less was I able to take my eyes from the loquat. In my fancies she had almost become a young girl. The crevice in the loquat was glistening and moist, like the membrane between the toes of a frog. Certainly a very short, crimson dress would suit her well. She overlapped and was inextricably involved—precisely like the Picasso reproduction in her room—with my impression of the eccentric girl who helped in my wife’s shop. I was an acrobat indefatigably repeating my dangerous act, almost falling, on an absolutely safe rope stretched over level ground. How would it be if I took her with me to my wife’s shop to order a dress? Actually, I seemed to recall her saying she wanted to find a job. If I could get them to take her at my wife’s place, the membrane between the frog’s toes would be even more beautiful—like purple rubber. What was broken? What was left? Again the usual face appeared in the veneer ceiling printed with the straight-grain cypress wood … a laughing moon … why was the dream I had a couple of times every year, where I was pursued by a laughing full moon, so frightening? It was still a puzzle I could not understand no matter how I racked my brains.
4:56 A.M. Thinly, like emery paper, the ringing of the alarm clock impinged on my senses. My mouth was dry, and a thick phlegm stuck in my throat, making it impossible to smoke. Rather than a hangover, I seemed still to have last night’s inebriation;