The Ruined Map (23 page)

The result was at once manifest in the attitude of the one with the pointed chin. His watchful attitude fell away like a fake mustache stuck on with spit.

“The man in charge should be out in front. I’ll get him at once.”

He hurried away, disappearing beyond the drapery as he spoke. But the one with the dark glasses, standing a step behind, his legs apart, waiting for us like baggage, made no attempt to conceal his hostility, which even the dark lenses could not screen. Maybe it was rancor at me for having torn away from him last night as I was escaping, knowing that he had come to the car to ask for help. Under his comical, Mercurochromed nose the muscles at the corners of his lips trembled unmanageably. Thinking it was time to go, I said: “Well, let’s go and pay our respects.”

“I already have.”

She could have been talking about eating. What on earth could be the relationship in her mind between this everyday calm about her brother’s death and her attachment to him, involved as she was with him, constantly bringing him up in her conversation? Of course, funerals, though not so much as weddings, were uninviting, unhappy events. The dead’s memory is nailed up so that the living can be at ease—a convenient ceremony indeed. Was it that indifference to the funeral basically signified indifference to the one who was dead, or else was it a case of loving the dead one too much
… beyond life and death? I was seized by a sinister premonition.

I took off my shoes and put on the slippers provided at the foot of the thick slab of wood that formed the bottom step. I mounted the five stairs. In front of the altar in the main chapel was a thick, scarlet cushion run through with gold threads and an uninviting plain wooden stand for burning incense. Having reached my seat, I realized I was still wearing my gloves and hastily drew them off. I offered some incense in the prescribed way, worrying all the while about wrinkling my trousers as I knelt, and then for the first time I looked up at the photograph on display at the front of the altar.—So that was it, I muttered to myself. As if waiting for me to leave my place, the priest stopped his chanting and hurriedly withdrew. When he had gone, the group of three men in attendance gave a sigh of relief and relaxed, simultaneously lighting cigarettes. The elderly man in the seat of honor who was called director at once roused from his nap, sniffling and spreading his hands over the electric heater, turning them over and back as if he were toasting something.

Unbeknown to me the pointed chin had appeared in the corridor through which the priest had disappeared, and now he was intently beckoning to me with his hand. Below the balustrade, to the left of the dais, my companion was deep in conversation with the noodle man. No, it was exclusively the noodle man who was doing the talking, and I did not know whether she was giving him her full attention as she fussed with the unaccustomed sleeves of her mourning kimono, letting them hang down in front, rolling them up from the bottom, and flipping them behind her. The sky
was again an unbroken mass of milky cloud, but the wind had almost completely died down.

I was led into a narrow cubicle beside the altar, apparently a waiting room for those taking part in the religious ceremonies. The old-fashioned gas stove sent forth a blue flame, and at once the muscles of my face began to relax. Directly beside the entrance sat a young man, his hands on his knees, waiting with bowed head. The pointed chin looked at me searchingly.

“May I …?”

I nodded and he left the room, swinging his shoulders. Of course, I had not foreseen such an abrupt introduction, and I had no idea at all what I should find out from this young man on duty. Yet whether the pointed chin was here or not didn’t matter one way or the other. I faced the young man from across a small black and gold tea table whose lacquer had begun to peel. Judging from his slender, youthful neck—perhaps he was the leader of the group of youths standing out in front—it would seem unsuitable to call him the man in charge. As I took my seat, he adjusted his position and looked up. The face was exactly as I had imagined it would be from the slender neck. His fine-textured young skin looked as if it had been polished with wax, and the line of the jaw was epicene, neither masculine nor feminine. Aside from the dark shadow of a beard, his features, especially his lips, were completely feminine. Even the nose was delicate. Only the eyes were strangely veiled and seemed like dangerous, flammable oil. Still, the muscles were frail. He did not seem to have at all the authority to control, to overawe young men. He was doubtless the lion in sheep’s clothing. If that was true, his position had collapsed with the
death of my client’s brother, and the long-cherished hatred of the other youths would now focus on him, ideal circumstances to get something out of him perhaps. However, aside from muscles, in handling a wild and lunatic switch blade he probably excelled the others in violence. Sports and contests of strength and killing demanded another kind of ability. Even the lion is no match for a famished dog.

Be that as it may, what in god’s name could her purpose be? What was the point of having me meet this boy? And the suddenness of it all; there had been opportunity enough to let me know in advance. The badge with the lightning design was exactly the same as the one the brother had worn. Perhaps it was the sign of the organization they called the Yamato Association. If this youth was the man in charge, the ones standing along the temple walk were perhaps the bodyguard directly responsible to the dead man. But just a minute! This boy’s badge was the same as the brother’s. It was identical with the one belonging to the fellow with the pointed chin as far as the design was concerned, but the color of the background was different. The dead man’s badge had been blue, and the one belonging to the pointed chin was beige. In age, the dead man had been somewhat older. So the difference in color probably did not mean a distinction between superior and subordinate, but a difference in division. Then, the dead man’s gang had perhaps become an independent organization within the Yamato Association.

What was she hoping for? I wondered.

Had it been a casual idea on the spur of the moment? Or had something occurred to make her put off bringing us together until the very last minute? Or had she reckoned she could use my unpreparedness to advantage by means of this unexpected encounter?

“Do you take turns being man in charge?”

“No.”

His businesslike, unfeeling tone was, of course, put on. The resulting expressionlessness had ironed smooth the creases of feeling, so that within himself he adroitly balanced absolute submission against absolute resistance. Dealing with such a fellow outside a cage was next to impossible. Once in the cage together perhaps one would have to challenge him to a dangerous gamble: bite or be bitten. But I had no time to try that here.

“I imagine you’re at something of a loss … all of you … with your head man dying so suddenly.”

“Right.”

“Are you the only one left to take charge? Or will you get someone from outside to be head man?”

“Maybe we’ll split up.”

“Why?”

“The leaders of the Association had trouble with the dead boss. Because minors are easy to spot. Kids run away from home and form gangs of toughs who suck the blood of other runaways. Once they’re found out the police are on their tail, and they can’t do anything.”

Kids who run away from home … something passed through my mind, leaving shock waves in its wake. Kids who left home … If the brother had been the head of an organization that preyed on boys who ran away from home, it would be only natural for him to have a completely different point of view from us concerning the husband’s disappearance. I wondered if she knew this. Was it because she knew it that it occurred to her to have me meet this boy?

“I read the messages of condolence for the whole bunch.” He constantly shifted his body, perhaps trying to escape from
the stifling atmosphere, and abruptly he became defiant. “It made me cry. The boss really had a heart. It made me cry. No matter how many times we were raided we never let anything out. Not one of us wants to go back home. The leaders of the Association never understood. Everybody liked the boss. They really loved him. Wait and see. We’ll do something, one way or another; we’re not going to drop things here.”

“But the criminal has been arrested by the police, I heard.”

“Don’t be stupid. He was a scapegoat. The boss was done in with a pistol. How could workmen in temporary quarters have pistols?”

“Do you have anyone particularly in mind?”

“Well …”

“The Association head doesn’t approve, does he?”

“That’s why I said that maybe we’ll split up.”

“I wonder if the money’ll keep coming in.”

“Ah. Our customers are the best. The kids out front are all sexy, too.”

Perhaps at long last I was able to understand just what sort of work was involved. It was somehow unbelievable that there was not a single one of the gang at the microbus stand in the river bed, but … high-type customers … sexy kids. A gang of boys who were in the homosexual business, and the brother pulled the strings. If this one handled things cleverly, maybe he could get by without getting entangled with the law. But not just anyone could manage it. There’s got to be a marriage of taste and profit. Thinking of it in this way, I understood the meaning of the tawdry impression the funeral made. I would imagine everybody in the Association was embarrassed by this group. So the executives had quietly withdrawn, leaving only a director. From the view
point of profit alone, no one could shift these frenzied animals to some other pasture, unless he loved the boys and was loved by them …

“Do they all appear in set places?”

“Never,” he said, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “We’re different. I don’t think you get it … do you? You don’t look like you were one of us. Members of our club are all first-class patrons. Say, do you think I’m cute? Do I trouble you?”

“You’re a good-looking boy.”

“Well then. Want me to slap you around? Want to drink my piss? What about licking the soles of my shoes?”

I shrank back from his strangely set and unmoving eyes. “I think I’ll just pass that up.”

“I thought so. Dirty old men with gobs of money come around plenty … and every once in a while some television star, but …”

“I have something to ask you. You all would know, I think. Did your boss ever say anything about any fuel suppliers?”

“Fuel suppliers? You mean a customer of the club?”

“Well, don’t worry about it if you don’t know.”

“Questions I don’t like. They make me mad.”

“But just one more. Can you tell me where your boss usually stayed lately?”

“The boss was a square-dealer. He never padded down in any one place.”

“But I imagine he had some baggage, a briefcase or something where he kept his personal effects …”

“He would throw things out when he had used them, even underwear and toothbrushes. It was really something. He’d use something two or three times and sell it to us on the Q.T. for half price.”

“But he must have had something, something where he’d jot down things he needed, like a diary, for instance, or something like that … something he wouldn’t usually carry around with him.”

“I never saw anything.”

“I’m not questioning who has the right of possession. I had permission to borrow a diary. It’s something that has no value for you boys.”

“Everything we had was his, even the mattresses we slept on and the hair cream we used. We didn’t need to have anything.”

“Can’t I get you to give me a little more time?”

“Can’t do it.”

“What about your family?”

“Forget it. They all ask that.”

“What did the boss do if someone got homesick?”

“He was very observant. Even when he was just loafing around the square in front of the station, he noticed everything. Never made a mistake. Furthermore, he was a good teacher, so the boys soon got to like the business a lot.”

“Anyway, you boys are getting older.”

“Can’t be helped. When you think about it, nobody can help getting old. Well, sometime I’ll shake some old customers down. I’d really like to start up a snack bar or a gas station or something.”

                 “D
ID YOU
know what kind of fellows those boys were from the start?”

“Yes, I did. Just let me get close and they run away terrified. I don’t have a chance to say a word.”

She laughed, shrugging her shoulders as if joking, furtively moistening the edges of her lips with the beer. Again I was seated in front of the lemon-yellow curtains, and as it was still light outside, the room was filled with a lemon-yellow light. In it only the black mourning clothes were at odds, seeming to have been taken from a black and white photo album.

“About the diary. I tried sounding him out about that, but it was no use. The more I tried to get something out of him the tighter he kept his mouth shut.”

“Diary? What diary?”

“Your husband’s, of course. Your brother was supposed to bring it over here today.”

“Oh.”

Disinterestedly she continued steadily licking at her beer, like some kitten: it was I indeed who was so stirred up and angry that my chest ached.