The Ruined Map (19 page)

I had the feeling of having tweaked the girl’s pug nose—as far as that goes, the proprietor’s too—with my conversation. Of course, from where I stood I could not make out her nose very well, for it was hidden by the wrist holding the radio. The proprietor’s face remained buried behind the newspaper and he was motionless. Immediately above his head the poster of the South American coffee plantation was comical, for one could suppose, in place of the lighting fixture discolored with dust, a sun scorching men and plants to a tawny yellow and gilding the distant mountain range. I could hear someone walking on the floor above. Slowly the sound of steps drew near, stopped directly over my head, and at the same rate withdrew again. I no longer stood motionless. When my surprise had passed, I regained my balance, like surf beating in on the shore, then returning to its original water line. His death had hurled the wave unexpectedly high, washing over my feet, sweeping away the slender line of road along the verge of the cliff, but when the water subsided there was nothing new, nothing to make much of a fuss about. In the final analysis, the burden I was charged with had simply been reduced to the limit of the first thirty thousand yen. The obligation remained for me
to carry on the investigation five days more. Yet I could not even guarantee that her attitude too might not suddenly change, that she would not simply propose a cancellation, saying she would like me to drop the matter this very day. That I was somewhat reluctant to do; it would leave an unpleasant taste. But as far as business accounts were concerned, it would be by far the best way. The chief would be satisfied too, I supposed, and would probably make no objection.

It suddenly occurred to me that this might be the real reason I was putting off telephoning her. I was overcome by a strange sense of shame, as if I were looking at myself peering through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars in front of a mirror. Though I had not been asked and I myself was unaware of having done it, had I unthinkingly signed a receipt for over thirty thousand yen? Ludicrous. Among my fellow investigators nothing would be considered so ridiculous. As the chief was always saying, a client’s not a person; think of him as food to stuff our craws. We’re a bunch of syphilitic curs.

Actually, binoculars, if used in a certain way, give the effect of X ray. For instance, you can read more expressions and characteristics from a single photo of a given person than you can by meeting him face to face. First you set the photo up vertically and if possible remove the ears and darken the background. Adjust the source of light so there is no reflection. Then kneel at a distance about twenty or thirty times the length of the diagonal of the photo. No, you don’t really have to kneel, but the picture should be at eye level. Use binoculars with a rather narrow angle of vision and a magnifying power of about fifty times. You can fill in the background any way you will by your imagination; and
any trembling of your hand, rather than being detrimental, will actually help in lending mobility to the expression. At first you see only a magnified picture at a distance of about a yard. You’ve got to keep at it at least ten minutes. Then about the time the strain makes the eyeballs feel hottish, an ordinary photo suddenly begins to take on a three-dimensional aspect and the skin becomes flesh-colored. When that happens, you’ve got it. You concentrate fixedly without blinking and you strain your eyes to the point of feeling pain. It’s as if your stare cannot be endured, and the eyes in the picture, or the corners of the lips, twitch spasmodically. If it’s a side view, the face will seem to look askance at you; if the face is looking directly at you it will avert its glance and repeatedly blink. Next, as if nerve tendrils were stretching out and commingling in the space between the picture’s eyes, its lips, and other elements of expression and your own, you begin to be able to read what lies beyond the expression as if it were your own mind. What is most important is that you see private things, things that are never exposed to others. (I had tried it once before going out, and I would never have overlooked the missing man even if I were to pass him on some escalator going in the opposite direction.) He—the husband—bit down hard on his right inner molar, projected his lower lip and half opened his eyes; his eyes moved unstably around his feet at a thirty-degree angle, and his feelings, not once ruffled, as usual carefully combed and held in place with oil, now rose up threateningly like the fur on a cat’s back in the face of an enemy. For an instant it
was
the husband, with a forlorn expression he had never exposed to anyone. The method was an original technique of observation I had thought up myself, and when I saw that among my fellow investigators it was rather well thought of,
I was quite pleased with myself. The chief thought differently. He thought any enthusiasm, as such, stupid.

Of course, ideally, the time of observation should be at night. And you’ve got to spend at least two hours at it. Furthermore, have an imaginary meal with the subject; be his superior and issue orders; be a colleague and listen to his complaints; be a subordinate and be reprimanded. If it’s a question of a woman try and sleep with her; if it’s a man be a woman and try and get on friendly terms. But I had not exerted myself to this extent with the husband. Something other than procrastination hampered my zeal, and I could do nothing because the fault lay with my client herself. As for me, the real motives of my client, and not the whereabouts of the missing husband, were by far the more suspicious and offensive element. Even more, my suspicion that the request for an investigation was a feint for the purpose of concealing the husband’s whereabouts had not been entirely erased.

And yet, the brother-in-law of the missing man had died, the one who had beclouded my view, who had scattered the seeds of suspicion like wind-blown pollen. The sky had for some time been rent by a strong wind, and after a long interval a frail sun was streaming through rifts in the clouds. And so, again, I attempted to look at the husband’s picture upside down.

                 T
HE PHOTOGRAPH
lay with its head toward me. Again I was at the window of the parking attendant’s shack. “Yes, eighty yen,” he said indolently. “I don’t want the change,” I said, throwing down a five-hundred-yen note … and on top of it the picture. The conspicuously uneven hair line, which he had apparently not had for long, had not yet grown sparse.

“There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

The old man had placed a blanket over his knees, and on it lay an open comic book; his lips moved incessantly. He pushed his preadamite glasses up on his forehead, and his reddened eyes looked suspiciously back and forth at the picture and the five-hundred-yen note.

“Say, have you got a brazier going under that blanket? It’s bad for you, you know. Your eyes are so red because they’re irritated by the gas.”

“No, it’s electricity. Sorry …”

“Then it’s too dry.”

“I’ve got the kettle going.”

“Well, it’s entirely off the fire.” I laughed pleasantly, making my voice cheerful, and pushed the five-hundred-yen note closer to the old man. “I wonder if you don’t remember seeing the man in this picture. Maybe quite some time ago …”

“Why?”

“We’re looking for a stolen car,” I said at random. From the upside-down picture I suddenly sensed something aggressive. My decision, which until now had been to treat the husband naturally as the victim, began, surprisingly, to waver. There was no basis for assuming that he was a victim, and there was even a fifty-fifty chance that he was an aggressor. If I let my imagination run wild, he could actually be the one pulling the strings behind the brother’s killing. No, such detective-story events rarely happen. If it were a question of a game in a sealed room, the mystery man would have to sit in the chair right next to me; but in the actual world he would camouflage himself and conceal himself quietly beyond the horizon. Be that as it may, it seemed that this evening I would have to spend some length of time getting reacquainted with him through the binoculars. Even if it was too late, the leading man is the star after all.

“A stolen car, you say?”

“Not necessarily. I mean, maybe it was one that had been in an accident.” I gave in at once to the old man’s expression, which was like a rusted lock, and placed three more hundred-yen coins on the notes. “What’s the proportion between the monthly customers and the casual ones who use the parking lot?”

He looked indecisively from the enticement, which had increased to eight hundred yen, to the window of the Camellia, thus unwittingly revealing his real concern. He replied: “We have only the five-car space in this row open to casual customers.”

“Well, it’s pretty uneconomical to sit here all day for five cars.”

“Oh, I don’t know. If you’re at home all you do is sit around all day in front of TV drinking tea.”

“Don’t be bashful … Take the money.”

With a hand that seemed encased in a snakeskin glove, the old man unconcernedly scooped up his liberal, if unexpected, windfall. “Besides this row, by renting the monthly tenants’ eight spaces that are always empty during the day, we can take care of casual customers. It’s pretty good work for an old fellow on retirement. I’ve got rheumatism and my legs are pretty stiff, so I can’t complain. I get cigarette money out of it.”

“Even so, there’re a lot of cars parked. Almost the same ones as when I looked in yesterday. Are they all monthly?”

“The two rows over there are all by the month.”

“Strange. There doesn’t seem to be anything around here that really looks like an office, and as for the monthlies to be parking here like this during the day, well …”

Perhaps I had touched a delicate spot. The old man’s sluggish expression stiffened like weather-beaten rubber.

“Well, uh, it’s cheap … I guess … that’s why,” he stammered.

“Or else, could it be that there’re a lot of fellows whose business it is to use the cars after dark?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no reason to pay such close attention to things like that.”

“Anyway, do you recall having seen this man?”

I picked up the picture and slipped it into my note pad, which I returned to my pocket; again the old man’s face took on an expression of relief. Immediately I took him off guard.

“Say, are you that afraid of the owner of the Camellia?”
The old man’s wrinkled eyelids, which exuded an oily substance, curled up and the red edges exposed to the air were brilliant. “Well, don’t worry. In any case, I’ve been observed all along talking to you here. If you’re asked just say something about being all involved with the picture of some fellow you’ve never seen before. Actually, maybe you know him despite what you say.”

“I’ve been saying I
don’t
know him!” He struck his knees angrily with the comic book. Seeing that he was serious, I began to feel that perhaps he was speaking the truth, though the dead brother had described the old codger as being a wily fellow. “Am I supposed to remember every single face I see?”

“There! Here’s two hundred yen more. That makes exactly a thousand—a good place to stop. Shall we wind up the conversation too?” I followed the old man’s rueful gaze as it avoided me, placing my elbow on the window sill; I tossed two hundred-yen coins onto the blanket over his knees. “I’m not going to tell a soul you’ve taken a thousand yen. You and I’ll be the only ones to know. Well, be quick about it … speak up.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Does anyone take a thousand yen if he doesn’t have anything to say?”

“You gave it of your own free will, didn’t you?”

“The Camellia owner’s watching us. But will he believe your story about earning a thousand yen for nothing?”

“I’ll give them back. Then things’ll be okay.”

“Don’t force yourself. What kind of people keep their cars here? From what you’ve said I only know they aren’t people who live in this area, but …”

“You’re just guessing. Who said that? You left your own car here, didn’t you?”

“I’m talking about monthly customers, and you know it. It wouldn’t be especially strange for people to leave their cars during the day if they worked in some neighborhood shop and didn’t have a garage. But since you’re an honest fellow, you’re at a loss for an answer. And furthermore, you said you didn’t remember every single face you saw. That’s proof the customers—monthly or not—are not all that unchanging. When I glance around right now, it seems to me there are quite a few cars that weren’t here yesterday, aren’t there?”

“Say …,” he gasped in a voice that was hard to catch, as if he were stifling a fit of coughing, “I hope you’re not from the police.”

“Forget it. Do detectives pay for secret information on someone whose identity is unknowable? And furthermore, a thousand yen means serious business.”

“Serious business? What are you talking about? Every now and then the Camellia owner makes it possible for me to buy a racing ticket and play the pinball machines. You won’t know what it’s like to be old until you’re an old man yourself. Even my grandsons copy my daughter-in-law and grumble to my face about how dirty I am.”