A Wild Sheep Chase (17 page)

“Will you be returning to your office? Or to somewhere else?” the chauffeur asked. It was the same chauffeur from the trip out, but his manner seemed a bit more personable now. Guess he took to people easily.

I gave my arms and legs a full stretch on the roomy backseat and considered where I should go. I had no intention of returning to the office. Technically I was still on leave, and I wasn’t about to try to explain all this to my partner. I wasn’t about to go straight home either. Right now I needed a good dose of regular people walking on two legs in a regular way in a regular place.

“Shinjuku Station, west exit,” I said.

Traffic was jammed solid in the direction of Shinjuku. Evening rush hour, among other things. Past a certain point the cars seemed practically glued in place, motionless. Every so often a wave would pass through the cars, budging them forward a few inches. I thought about the rotational speed of the earth. How many miles an hour was this road surface whirling through space? I did a quick calculation in my head but couldn’t figure out if it
was any faster than the Spinning Teacup at a carnival. There’re many things we don’t really know. It’s an illusion that we know anything at all. If a group of aliens were to stop me and ask, “Say, bud, how many miles an hour does the earth spin at the equator?” I’d be in a fix. Hell, I don’t even know why Wednesday follows Tuesday. I’d be an intergalactic joke.

I’ve read
And Quiet Flows the Don and The Brothers Karamazov
three times through. I’ve even read
Ideologie Germanica
once. I can even recite the value
of pi
to sixteen places. Would I still be a joke? Probably. They’d laugh their alien heads off.

“Would you care to listen to some music, sir?” asked the chauffeur.

“Good idea,” I said.

And at that a Chopin ballade filled the car. I got the feeling I was in a dressing room at a wedding reception.

“Say,” I asked the chauffeur, “you know the value
of pi
?”

“You mean that 3.14 whatzit?”

“That’s the one. How many decimal places do you know?”

“I know it to thirty-two places,” the driver tossed out. “Beyond that, well …”

“Thirty-two places?”

“There’s a trick to it, but yes. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing really,” I said, crestfallen. “Never mind.”

So we listened to Chopin as the limousine inched forward ten yards. People in cars and buses around us glared at our monster vehicle. None too comfortable, being the object of so much attention, even with the opaque windows.

“Awful traffic,” I said.

“That it is, but sure as dawn follows night, it’s got to let up sometime.”

“Fair enough, but doesn’t it get on your nerves?”

“Certainly. I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when I’m in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated is to lose our way in life.”

“That sounds like a religious interpretation of a traffic jam if there ever was one.”

“I’m a Christian. I don’t go to church, but I’ve always been a Christian.”

“Is that so? Don’t you see any contradiction between being a Christian and being the chauffeur for a major right-wing figure?”

“The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve met God?”

“Certainly. I telephone Him every night.”

“Excuse me?” I stammered. Things were starting to jumble up in my head again. “If everyone called God, wouldn’t the lines be busy all the time? Like directory assistance right around noon.”

“No problem there. God is your simultaneous presence. So even if a million people were to telephone Him at once, He’d be able to speak with everyone simultaneously.”

“I’m no expert, but is that an orthodox interpretation? I mean, theologically speaking.”

“I’m something of a radical. That’s why I don’t go to church.”

“I see,” I said.

The limousine advanced fifty yards. I put a cigarette to my lips and was about to light up when I saw I’d been holding the lighter in my hand the whole time. Without realizing it, I’d walked off with the sheep-engraved silver Dupont. It felt molded to my palm as naturally as if I’d been born with it. The balance and feel couldn’t have been better. After a few seconds’ thought, I decided it was mine. Who’s going to miss a lighter or two? I opened and closed the lid a few times, lit up, and put the lighter in my pocket. By way
of compensation, I slipped my Bic disposable into the pocket of the door.

“The Boss gave me it a few years ago,” said the chauffeur out of nowhere.

“Gave you what?”

“God’s telephone number.”

I let out a groan so loud it drowned out everything else. Either I was going crazy or they were all Looney Tunes.

“He told just you, alone, in secret?”

“Yes. Just me, in secret. He’s a fine gentleman. Would you care to get to know Him?”

“If possible,” I said.

“Well, then, it’s Tokyo 9-4-5-…”

“Just a second,” I said, pulling out my notebook and pen. “But do you really think it’s all right, telling me like this?”

“Sure, it’s all right. I don’t go telling just anyone. And you seem like a good person.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “But what should I talk to God about? I’m not Christian or anything.”

“No problem there. All you have to do is to speak honestly about whatever concerns you or troubles you. No matter how trivial you might think it is. God never gets bored and never laughs at you.”

“Thanks. I’ll give him a call.”

“That’s the spirit,” said the chauffeur.

Traffic began to flow smoothly as the Shinjuku skyscrapers came into view. We didn’t speak the rest of the way there.

By the time the limousine reached its destination, a pale indigo dusk had spread over the city. A brisk wind blew between the buildings bearing tidings of summer’s end, rustling the skirts of women on their way home from work.

I went to the top of a high-rise hotel, entered the spacious bar, and ordered a Heineken. It took ten minutes for the beer to come. Meanwhile, I planted an elbow on the armrest of my chair, rested my head on my hand, and shut my eyes. Nothing came to mind. With my eyes closed, I could hear hundreds of elves sweeping out my head with their tiny brooms. They kept sweeping and sweeping. It never occurred to any of them to use a dustpan.

When the beer finally arrived, I downed it in two gulps. Then I ate the whole dish of peanuts that came with it. The sweeping had all but stopped.

I went over to the telephone booth by the register and tried calling my girlfriend, her with the gorgeous ears. But she wasn’t at her place and she wasn’t at mine. She’d probably stepped out to eat. She never ate at home.

Next I tried my ex-wife. I reconsidered and hung up after the second ring. I didn’t have anything to say to her after all, and I didn’t want to come off like a jerk.

After them, there was no one to call. Smack in the middle of a city with a million people out roaming the streets, and no one to talk to. I gave up, pocketed the ten-yen coin, and exited the booth. Then I put in an order with a passing waiter for two more Heinekens.

And so the day came to an end. I could hardly have spent a more pointless day. The last day of summer, and what good had it been? Outside, an early autumn darkness had come over everything. Strings of tiny yellow streetlamps threaded everywhere below. Seen from up here, they looked ready to be trampled on.

The beer came. I polished off the one, then dumped the dish of peanuts into the palm of my hand and proceeded to eat them, bit by bit. Four middle-aged women, finished with swimming lessons at the hotel pool, sat at the next table chatting over colorful tropical cocktails. A waiter stood by, rigidly upright, crooking his neck to yawn. Another waiter explained the menu to a middle-aged American couple. After the peanuts, I moved on to my third Heineken. After it was gone, I didn’t know what to do with my hands.

I fished the envelope out of the hip pocket of my Levi’s, tore open the seal, and started to count the stack of ten-thousand-yen notes. It looked more like a deck of cards than a bound packet of new bills. Halfway through, my fingers began to tire. At ninety-six, an elderly waiter came to clear away my empty bottles, asking whether to bring another. I nodded as I continued counting. He seemed totally uninterested in what I was doing.

There were one hundred and fifty bills. I stuck them back into the envelope and shoved it back into my hip pocket just as the new
beer came. Again I ate the whole dish of peanuts, and only then did it occur to me that I was hungry. But why was I so hungry? I’d only eaten one slice of fruitcake since morning.

I called the waiter, ordered a cheese and cucumber sandwich. Hold the chips, double the pickles. Might they have nail clippers? Of course, they did. Hotel bars truly have everything you could ever want. One place even had a French-Japanese dictionary when I needed it.

I took my time with this beer, took a long took at the night scenery, took my time trimming my nails over the ashtray. I looked back at the scenery, then I filed my nails. And so on into the night. I’m well on the way to veteran class when it comes to killing time in the city.

A built-in ceiling speaker called my name. At first it didn’t sound like my name. Only a few seconds after the announcement was over did it sink in that I’d heard the special characteristics of my name, and only gradually then did it come to me that my name was my name.

The waiter brought a cordless transceiver-phone over to the table.

“There has been a small change in plans,” said the voice I knew from somewhere. “The Boss’s condition has taken a sudden turn for the worse. There is not much time left, I fear. So we are curtailing your time limit.”

“To how long?”

“One month. We cannot wait any longer. If after one month you have not found that sheep, you are finished. You will have nowhere to go back to.”

One month. I thought it over. But my head was beyond dealing with concepts of time. One month, two months, was there any real difference? And who had any idea, any standard, of how
much time it should take to find one sheep in the first place? “How did you know to find me here?” I asked.

“We are on top of most things,” said the man.

“Except the whereabouts of one sheep,” I said.

“Exactly,” said the man. “Anyway, get on it, you waste too much time. You should take good account of where you now stand. You have only yourself to blame for driving yourself into that corner.”

He had a point. I used the first ten-thousand-yen note out of the envelope to pay the check. Down on the ground, people were still walking about on two legs, but the sight no longer gave me much relief.

Returning to my apartment from the hotel bar, I found three pieces of mail together with the evening paper in my mailbox. A balance statement from my bank, an invitation to what promised to be a dud of a party, and a direct-mail flyer from a used-car dealership. The copy read: “
BRIGHTEN UP YOUR LIFE—MOVE UP TO A CLASSY CAR
.” Thanks, but no thanks. I put all three envelopes together and tore them in half.

I took some juice out of the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table with it. On the table was a note from my girlfriend: “Gone out to eat. Back by 9:30.” The digital clock on the table read 9:30. I watched it flip over to 9:31, then to 9:32.

When I got bored with watching the clock, I got out of my clothes, took a shower, and washed my hair. There were four types of shampoo and three types of hair rinse in the bathroom. Every time she went to the supermarket, she stocked up on something. Step into the bathroom and there was bound to be a new item. I counted four kinds of shaving cream and five tubes of toothpaste. Quite an inventory. Out of the shower, I changed into jogging
shorts and a T-shirt. Gone was the grime of one bizarre day. At last I felt refreshed.

At 10:20 she returned with a shopping bag from the supermarket. In the bag were three scrub brushes, one box of paperclips, and a well-chilled six-pack of canned beer. So I had another beer.