The Ruined Map (14 page)

What was that noise? It seemed to come from the vicinity of the kitchen just beyond the curtain. I could not help but hear the faint clinking of glass containers among the muffled noises … that peculiar, fricative sound of air and liquid. I did not realize that beer produced such a forlorn sobbing.

                 “Y
OU HAVE
nothing against a bottle of beer, I suppose?”

That had not been my reason for coming here especially. What had caused me to drop in at the microbus in the dry river bed was rather hunger. When I thought about it, I realized I had had only a bowl of noodles since morning. It did not mean there was a lack of eating places, for there were apparently some old-fashioned restaurants, of the kind
seen but rarely now, near where you come out on the main street in the third ward. But my appetite was piqued by the possibility of getting somewhat closer to the real character of the self-styled brother in the microbuses.

“In the red-lantern stalls, you’re pretty well known, I hear, aren’t you?”

“You’ve got sharp ears. I expected as much.”

There was not the slightest timidity in his arrogant laugh.

“When I took the examination for entering the company I wasn’t very good. Why was it only in collecting information that I got top marks? You find it strange? We have to be examined. For instance, I took a turn around a department store with the examiner, and then I had to say how many girls were wearing red skirts or what the color was of the shoes the man who was making a purchase at the tie counter had on. But the test on collecting information was a little different. Certain situations were given and I was supposed to answer true or false in each instance: whom one should ask, what should be asked, and how it was to be done. I answered everything with a cross. The examiner questioned me, of course, on why I did that. So I told him. The technique of collecting information is hard, but it’s even harder to stop up your ears.”

The road between the cliff and the embankment of the pear orchard was as black as a tunnel, and I had the illusion of having forgotten to turn on my headlights. I felt the steering wheel wrenched by a sudden gust of wind. The rising ground and the pear orchard ended in a short, abrupt slope. The road formed a T with the bank. At once I could see a cluster of lanterns. But it was quite different from what I had imagined. The various cars were not in a single line, nor were they connected by strings of lights, and there was
no music, no commotion as in a fair grounds. Red lanterns dangled saucily in the wind, and on the side of the broad, dry river bed several little buses, their gloomy, pale mouths open, were scattered here and there in a semicircle, irregularly spaced and facing in different directions.

But it was the view of the opposite side of the river, separated by the bank, that caught my attention. Until now it had not been visible, being concealed by the levee around the pear orchard, but a broad expanse of naked terrain clear of fields, houses, and woods was brilliantly illuminated from three sides, like a stage, by great projectors three feet in diameter. About a hundred yards to the left a field office and a number of mess buildings, like blocks of light, were brimming with animation; it was as bustling as a miniature city. Bulldozers and power shovels were biting into the front of the hill. Patterned stripes cut by the caterpillar trucks ran in and out among them. A dump road connected the highway with the work site. Suddenly the sound of a siren howled across the river bed, and the roar of motors and machinery that had reverberated through the black sky slipped into silence. Three trucks set out in the direction of the work site from the mess hall. Every truck, it appeared, had more than enough relief teams, and as I watched the ceaselessly lit area I realized that there were three reliefs working round the clock. “Now is the period of peak activity,” he said, raising his voice. I drove the car into the dry river bed.

When we drew near the site, I could sense an even greater animation than I had from the river bank. They had placed boards for shelter from the rain over the folding doors in the back of the buses, and the rear alcove was turned into a counter where, standing up, one could consume boiled vegetables, saké, hot dogs, and noodles. Behind the counter was
a gas range and, at the moment, what appeared to be a cook with a white apron was seated cross-legged on a rather thick cushion. As the counter rose only about four inches from the floor, one had to bend rather low to pick up the food.

There were six miniature buses in all—I wondered if the fuel supply workers had lied to me or whether only tonight there were fewer than usual—and three of the six had a number of customers. In the center of the semicircle of buses, three girls and two men stood round a bonfire burning in a drum. The men wore low black boots and quilted jackets with wild vertical stripes and tawny waistbands—no doubt about what kind of crowd they were. The girls were swathed in heavy coats up to their ears, and the tops of their heads were all one could see. Their vulgar hairdos, teased by the blaze that spurted from the drum, were quite appropriate for a dirty mattress. A young man, carrying kerosene drums in both hands, clumped heavily over the stones from the direction of the river. Perhaps he had gone for water. It might be a good idea to disinfect the boiled vegetables here with a little saká. He went straight toward the bus at the right-hand edge of the semicircle. For some reason no customers were there nor were the lanterns burning.

Indeed, as the fuel supply workers had said, he seemed quite well known. In the livid light, the cook’s yellow, conspicuously dropsical, unshaven face displayed a nonetheless friendly sloe-eyed smile as he wiped his hands on his apron.

“Pretty chilly.”

“What about a cup of warm saké?” said the brother invitingly.

“I’ll take noodles, since I’m driving.”

I was not bluffing or being particularly obstinate. I had the tendency to arouse a policeman’s antipathy more than
was necessary. Perhaps it was because in some way our professions seemed to have too many points in common. For my own protection, I should try not to hurt feelings. If I could drink I would, of course. But if I did, I would have to leave my car here. If tomorrow, with the trouble of coming all the way out here again, I could still make the money seem right on the books, well, that would be another story. Supposing, for instance, that by coming again I was clever enough to put my hands on M and be able to get hold of some conclusive testimony …

He put the noodles, newly made, which were cleverly wrapped around his chopsticks, into the boiling kettle, carefully stirring them so they would not spread out. The characteristic smell of lard and flour stung my nostrils pleasantly.

“Say, if you’re cold, I’ll borrow a muffler for you.” He turned to the unshaven cook and said: “Give him something.”

I had refused before the cook began searching the shelf behind him, whereupon the brother said hurriedly: “Come on, give us a raw egg on the house.” He stood up abruptly and walked off in the direction of the bonfire. The men there greeted him as they stood with their arms stiff by their sides, their legs apart, their shoulders back, only their heads bent. He simply nodded. Apparently, he was the leader. But the girls disinterestedly waved their hands. He was apparently more than a good customer. Well, the men at the fuel supplier’s had described him as a tough. This self-styled brother met the description.

“You in the same gang as that guy?”

“No, only a friend.”

The cook looked down at his hands; perhaps it was my imagination, but he seemed to be faintly smiling. With his
empty hand he vigorously began to scratch his crotch. In an instant my appetite left me—-but, well, his hand was on the outside and the crockery had apparently already been boiled. I would stand it this time.

If it were true that the brother was a thug, my intuition about him had been correct then. It was ridiculous of me to expect straight information from him. Of course, he had said he was going to use blackmail to get the money to pay for the expenses of the investigation. If the point of the investigation—or better, of its failure—was to give him an alibi for his wrongdoing, then it was a kind of vicious circle and he was not lying. There was no longer any room for me to do anything. As long as the investigation fee was not paid with a fake check or a rubber check—any money would do—it no longer had anything to do with me.

Standing round the bonfire, the brother and the men were talking casually together. The three girls remained aloof and indifferent. I had the feeling that somewhere, some place, I had witnessed precisely the same scene. The air holes pierced in the body of the drum shone green. A red pillar of flame spewed up into the black sky, scattering a fiery dust. The chill penetrated my body from my feet upward. I could not feel much of a wind, perhaps because we were cut off by the embankment, but directly above my head the sky resounded. It was like the static of a radio turned to full volume on no wave length of any station. A thousand shriveled fingers were strumming on the twigs and branches of the copse on the hill. I measured with my eye the position of the veneer partition with its tiny door beyond the unshaven cook. It seemed closer to the driver’s seat than to the center of the bus. Indeed, if that were really true, there would seem
to be enough room for a mattress. I flexed my toes in my shoes, trying to get the blood moving.

“Can you get it inside?”

“No, not here,” said the cook, skillfully scooping up the boiled noodles in a metal net and shaking them firmly to drain the water. He glanced at me probingly out of the corner of his eye. “Better drop it. You can’t call them women … coming to work in a place like this.”

“Well then, isn’t there any other kind of fun?”

“We just rent the room. It’s that guy’s regular pad. Unfortunately, I puke just seeing a female cat. I asked a doctor … said it was diabetes. I hate having a cat in heat hanging around: I want to club it to death. You can’t club people to death. What a laugh. Well, anyway, I wish I
had
had diabetes when I was young. Once I let those bitches in here, I’d never get out of it. These eggs here are raw and over there they’re hard-boiled. Besides, whether or not I let them use the place I have to pay squeeze money to the syndicate. So what’s the difference?”

I broke an egg in a bowl and warmed my palms on the hot porcelain.

“You think it’s interesting? Well, I wonder. I suppose I should thank my lucky stars if I can finish paying off the monthly installments by the time I shut this place down.”

“Are you in business with your own car?”

“It hasn’t been the paying work I expected. There’s a traffic law, you know. The Road Traffic Control Law, or something—anyway, even if you’ve got a car you can’t park just anywhere you want to do your business.”

“Pass the pepper.”

“After all, there’s a limit to places like this—a dry river
bed or the seashore—places where the traffic laws don’t apply. Besides, I’m on the lookout for a spot that’d be good for business. If I don’t give my contribution to the syndicate, I can’t open up. That’s the trick of it.”

“You’ve only got to get in the good graces of some syndicate some place, don’t you?”

“It’s pat or be eaten. Nobody leaves me alone. But I’m not saying this because you seem to know that guy. He’s not too hard on me. And he’s not always plucking the goose. Like he promised from the first, we depend on each other. Well, when I finish my monthly payments and if the car lasts that long, I’m going to the seashore in the country this summer and try to get something.”

The brother had said it was useless to look for traces of the husband here. The Dainen Enterprises’ director and the young clerk Tashiro had stressed the same thing. And now … Having checked M Fuel Supplier with my own eyes and walked myself through F—— Town, I too was inclined more and more to the same idea. It was the M Fuel Suppliers alone that connected F—— Town with him. It was merely a commonplace, ordinary relationship of wholesaler and retailer. Yet, inasmuch as it was commonplace, the appearance of the brother on the scene posed something of a problem. Other than being the brother-in-law of the missing husband, he had no business connection with him. He was indeed connected through F—— Town with the husband and that constituted a link; what in heaven’s name could it mean? Was this just one more of his “happenstances” he was so fond of?

Of course, the thought occurred to me that the link between F—— Town and the husband and the other link between F—— Town and the brother were quite unrelated and
independent, but then, the plot was too close to perfect. Since my client was the sister of the one and the wife of the other, both links possessed an inseparable point of contact. Maybe, by having joined the two links perfectly, I was producing more of a fiction. Even the director of Dainen Enterprises and young Tashiro had joined the accomplices by agreeing with what the brother had said, and it was conceivable that they might escape to some zone of safety out of my reach. If I wanted to follow the chief’s advice, I should take the attitude that I was getting money to stop my ears, not to listen for something; to close my eyes, not to look around; to nap the day away, not to accomplish anything.
Well …