The Ruined Map

by Kōbō Abe

  “You realize it’s to neither of our advantage to hold back information. It’s not only that you’ll have brought me on a fool’s errand, but also that it’s a waste of your money. Now then, tell me, what sort of a man was the fellow he got to buy the car?”

  “Very nice, really,” she said, looking at me frankly, as if suddenly regaining consciousness. “It’s not true that I hold back information. You know, if he’s somebody connected with my husband’s disappearance, either he’ll tell us something or he won’t appear at all. If I say nothing, the buyer’s the kind of person nobody’d pay any attention to.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He said he was a taxi driver.”

  “And what was the price of the car?”

  “I guess about a hundred thousand yen.”

  “Was the payment taken care of?”

  “Yes. He even showed me the receipt.”

  “I wonder if he was going to use that money to leave home on.”

  “He couldn’t have done that. That’s inconceivable.” Suddenly her smooth, waxlike expression became severe and rough, as if sprinkled with sand, and lines of small white wrinkles formed around her nipplelike lips. Unconcernedly she picked at her tooth with her thumbnail. “Don’t say such things. You’ve no proof.”

  “But proof is a part of fact, you know. What am I supposed to do … since you don’t seem to have much taste for facts?”

  “Well, I can’t believe he’d do that. I suppose it’s a fact that he did disappear, but the question is what was he escaping from, isn’t it. It wasn’t only from me. I think it wasn’t from me at all, in fact. It must have been from something else, something quite different.”

  I was suddenly dejected. I placed my briefcase on my lap and opened the flap. “Be that as it may, shall I show you my report? As you say yourself, only worthless facts.”

  Predictably she shifted in her seat, and with a tense expression, at first hurriedly and then more slowly, began to read with the intent watchfulness of someone crossing a stream on a single log.

  “Of course, the facts are like clams: the more you tease them the more tightly they keep their mouths shut, and there’s no way to pry them open. If you try to force them out they die, and you’ve lost the shadow as well as the substance. The only thing to do is wait until they open by themselves. The same with this newspaper. Perhaps the key is hidden, and looking back later, you’ll say: ‘Ah, so that was it!’ As things stand now, the newspaper’s no help. Why was it together with the matchbox? There would seem to be a reason for that too. Generally facts are not where you expect them.”

  She raised her face from the report. She had until now assumed any number of different expressions, but this time it was a new one that I had never seen before. The rims of her eyes reddened and her frightened, entreating breathing was labored, as if, inhaling, she would forget to let her breath out. Her first words were inaudible; then after a moment, she said: “There is a relationship. Please don’t misunderstand me.”

  “Bicycle racing or horse racing? Is that it?”

  “No. The telephone number.”

  “What about the telephone number?”

  “I really didn’t mean to conceal it or anything like that.”

  “What number?”

  “The same one as on the matchbox. Now where is it …?”

  Her finger ran irregularly, restlessly, like an ant with a broken neck, over the Help Wanted columns on the fourth page. The finger of a doll, unarticulated, slender, pliant—even though she lied—a fabricated finger without the slightest flaw.

  “You mean Help Wanted—Female Clerk?”

  “No, not that. Drivers … Here it is.”

  Her finger had at length stopped. Driver Wanted. Best salary. No age limit. Bring statement for interview or send same. May live in or out.

  The telephone number at the lower left of the page was indeed the same as that of the Camellia coffee house.

  “I didn’t lie, really,” she said, shaking her head back and forth, as if desperately supplicating. “I have no idea why I didn’t say something. Yes, you may be right, maybe I am afraid of facts.”

  “You don’t have to justify yourself, I’m not a prosecutor or a judge. I’m merely your employee, hired for money. Furthermore, I give preference to the protection and the interests of my clients over facts. If there is some terrible fact, tell me, please. It’s my responsibility to protect you from it. For heaven’s sake, can it be that bad?”

  “No, it’s not. It’s already been settled, anyway,” she said, lowering her eyes. Abruptly she arose. “Can’t I bring you a beer or something?”

  “All right … just to keep you company.”

  At this point it served no purpose to concern myself with her health. She needed beer. I needed the one who needed the beer. I was fed up with unnecessary setbacks. She darted into the kitchen beyond the curtain like a dog unleashed.

  “Yes, I might as well call the issue settled. I went myself to the coffee house and inquired. I was told that the owner was acting as an intermediary and had been asked by an acquaintance to hunt for a driver for a private car. Of course, they said that one had been decided on long ago. It wasn’t unreasonable. After all, the advertisement had appeared over a month before.”

  When she came back with the beer, flakes of white froth clung to the corners of her lips.

  “I wonder if he wasn’t acting as a middleman all along.”

  “It so happens that an acquaintance of his from home wanted a driver who knew Tokyo, so he acted as middleman to find one. If it hadn’t been some special case like that, the friend could have inserted the advertisement himself, I suppose.”

  “Yes, it does make sense.”

  Pouring the beer with the utmost care into two glasses, she smiled as if seeking my agreement and returned to her seat.

  “Well, that’s settled.”

  “What about that telephone number pinned to the edge of the curtain?”

  “The number …”

  “Why do you have it there?”

  “Well, I …” In one draught she downed a third of her glass. “There’s no particular reason. I really don’t know why I have it. I wonder why you’re so concerned about it.”

  “You’re the one who’s concerned, I’m afraid. When I touched on the business of the classified ads in the paper, you were unusually upset.”

  “That’s true, I suppose. I wonder why.” She held her glass in two hands as if she was going to lift it, and her eyes looked as if she had recalled something out of a distant past. “Really, I wonder why. It seems that my story always goes wrong somewhere. But even facts are not all that dependable. It’s all the same to me wherever he is, whatever he’s doing now. The fact is he’s not here. That alone is a fact. What I want is the explanation for it. Why did he go away? The problem is to explain that. That’s the question.”

  “But there can be no explanation without some factual corroboration.”

  “Just a simple explanation’s enough.”

  “Your husband’s the only one who can provide that, isn’t he. The most I can do is locate him.”

  “You’re awfully modest, aren’t you.”

  “Modest?”

  “Why did you choose such a profession? I wonder.”

  “Is there really any point in answering that?”

  “I’m fascinated. Just what is it when someone chooses something?”

  “It’s not very important. Usually as soon as a missing person’s been discovered, he calmly goes back to his former haunts, as if he has suddenly recovered from some demonic possession. Motives or explanations are not so important as people assume.”

  “Have you ever dealt with any other case like this?”

  “Of course, but generally you have some clue from the be ginning … a specific girlfriend—almost all have girlfriends. These are cases that can be settled after three or four days of observing and collecting information. It takes money, and unless the subject of the
investigation is already fairly clear no one would bring it to our office.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Was your husband a sensitive person?”

  “He was rather nonchalant about things, I should say. Even about his clothes.”

  “Was he compulsive?”

  “Whatever, he was an extremely cautious person.”

  “Don’t be inconsistent. The significance is entirely different, depending on whether a given disappearance is deliberate or accidental.”

  “Anyway, it’s a fact that he was enthusiastic about everything … amazingly so.”

  “What was he so enthusiastic about, then?”

  “About everything. He was like a child.”

  “About cars … or cameras?”

  “Yes. And he had a mechanic’s license for fixing automobiles.”

  “Was he enthusiastic about gambling too?”

  “He was fond of licenses. He had a kind of license mania, I guess. He even carried two driver’s licenses—one for second-class trucks. And besides that, he was a radio operator, and electric welder, and a handler of explosives.”

  “Was there any relationship between the qualification for handling explosives and working for Dainen Enterprises?”

  “Yes, I think there was.”

  “A very practical type, wasn’t he?”

  For the first time I understood the meaning of the library, which had eluded me before. Electricity, communications, machinery, law statistics, philology—all mixed together; and yet they were not particularly highly specialized works, but primers, or questions for national licensing examinations. Somehow it had been hard to coordinate my impressions about the variety of titles, but her expression “license mania” had clarified the whole thing.

  “He also had a movie projectionist’s license and a secondary teacher’s license …”

  “A strange character.”

  “I suppose he just had to be tops in everything.”

  “What was the latest license he was concentrating on?”

  “When he disappeared … oh, yes … he said something about wanting to pass radio operator second grade. Whenever he had a free moment he was always tapping out something with his finger.”

  “Second-grade radio operator?”

  “If he got second grade, he said, he could ship on one of the big merchantmen. If he did that he claimed he’d get three times as much salary as he was getting. He was always counting his chickens before they hatched.”

  “I don’t mean to be impertinent, but about what was he getting with Dainen Enterprises?”

  “A little over fifty thousand a month.”

  “Well, even a taxi driver would make that much, I should imagine.”

  “But since his strong point was mechanics, he worked as a commission agent with second-hand cars.”

  “I know. I already heard that from your brother.”

  “My brother? Have you met?”

  “Curiously enough, we seem to see each other wherever we go. Actually, just before I came here, we had a friendly little drink together.”

  “That’s very curious.”

  “He’s a pleasant fellow. At the rate we’re going, we seem to be meeting ten times a day. Oh, yes, before I forget it, he promised to bring your husband’s diary over here for me tomorrow.”

  “A diary?”

  “It’s apparently of no value at all.”

  I observed her, trying to catch the slightest change in her expression when the subject of her brother came up. Her lips were slightly open, her brow knit. Was she confused, perplexed; or had misgivings about her brother suddenly come to her? But she just smiled mischievously, biting her lower lip.

  “My brother’s always taking people by surprise like that. That’s the way he’s always been.”

  “If I can read the diary, perhaps I can get some general idea of what sort of dreams your husband had.”

  “Dreams?”

  “For instance, did he dream of the sea, or something like that?”

  “My husband is a very matter-of-fact man. When he became section head he was very happy because he had somehow stopped sliding down the slope of life.”

  “But he did leave you, didn’t he.”

  “It wasn’t because of his dreams. He used to say licenses were the anchor of human life.”

  “Using so many anchors for such a small boat certainly puts him in the category of dreamers, doesn’t it? If he didn’t use them he’d float away.”

  She slowly returned the glass, which she had raised to her lips, to the table and fell into silence as if her thoughts were someplace else. Like a withering flower photographed at high speed, her two eyes hollowed as I watched her, her nose constricted, and even the color of her soft skin lost its vitality like an old chamois skin. I was beginning to feel a deep remorse for what I had said. Those to whom murder is legal are only executioners and soldiers on the battlefield; doctors have no right to practice euthanasia no matter how much they are badgered by the patient.

  The clock on the wall told me it was one in the morning.

  REPORT

  13 February: 10:20 A.M.—Went to the library and checked a photo copy of the newspaper. Rainy days before 4 August, the day the man under investigation disappeared, were 28 and 29 July. But rain on the 28th had been forecast as cloudiness the day before, and since late in the afternoon there was a shower, he used his raincoat on the 29th for the last time …

  My hand stopped writing and I closed my eyes with an unbearable feeling of weakness. It wasn’t only my eyes; I wanted to shut off my nerves, my senses, my whole being. The reading room of the library was almost full, but it was almost as hushed as if no one were there. There was only now and then a sound of sniffling, of the turning of a page, of the shuffling of a foot. My nostrils caught the smell of the cheap wax with which the floor had been buffed.

  Behind my closed eyes, all turned lemon-yellow. I could imagine the contours of her ear, bright with lemon-yellow, luminous with the light reflected from the lemon-yellow curtains. Lemon-yellow fragrance. Lemon-yellow … Ridiculous. Why not say banana-yellow or squash-yellow freckles? Yes, this was not a battlefield or an execution. I had no right to harm her by even so much as a hypodermic puncture. All that I could do was go on writing my reports. The client is always right. Even if he tells a lie, for instance, if he says it’s the truth the truth it is. But facts were no longer necessary; it was even unreasonable to demand only motives and omit the facts. If I went on ferreting out facts, I could expect nothing but my client’s despair. I keep circling at a distance round senseless facts, trying to explain the unexplainable.

  Suddenly the student seated to my left, a girl, pushed her body against the desk beyond the partition between us, and leaning inward, slashed at a photograph with a razor blade. I too leaned forward again behind the partition and in embarrassment continued writing my report.

  … it may be concluded. However, there is no evidence he used his raincoat that day. There is simply a strong possibility he did not, since in the week from the 29th until his disappearance the weather turned relatively clear and the temperature was quite high. We must consider that the said newspaper and matchbox (or the telephone number on it) had already been used before then. These facts demonstrate that we cannot deny that the disappearance of the man under investigation was certainly not unexpected and that there is a possibility he had laid plans and made preparations in advance.

  THE GIRL next to me finished cutting up the picture. Tearing about an inch from the last page of my report pad, I quickly wrote a note: “I saw you. I’ll say nothing if you come along with me. If okay, crumble this paper into a ball and return.”

  I folded the note in two and slipped it gently under the girl’s elbow. Startled, she shrank back and looked at me, but I began to clear the top of my desk, oblivious of her. She opened the paper and began to read in a flustered way; at once her stubby nose and plump cheeks were dappled with red. She ceased all movement, she seemed e
ven to have suspended her breathing. I patiently awaited her answer, savoring the moment like a piquant spice.

  At last, she shot me a tentative glance. Her shoulders relaxed and she heaved a sigh. Rolling the paper into a ball, she flipped it back to me with the tip of her fingernail. Her aim was bad and it fell to the floor. As I leaned over to pick it up I looked up at her. I had the impression that below her thick-set ankles the flat-soled black shoes, cracked and worn, were somehow not capable of supporting her weight. Only the depression at the back of her knees created a shadow that was somehow feminine and clean. Adolescence drawing to a close, a time out of kilter, like catching a cold in the nose. She was apparently aware of my look, and the tendons in her legs tensed.

  I picked up the paper ball and put it in my pocket, folded the photocopy of the newspaper, placed my pad and fountain pen in my briefcase, and stood up as if nothing at all had occurred. Without so much as a glance back, I headed across the overly waxed floor in the direction of the loan desk at a speed befitting a library. Having returned the newspaper, I looked only once in the girl’s direction, but she had not yet left her seat, and only her eyes peeped over the edge of the partition as she spied on me. I raised my hand slightly as a sign, and, seating myself on a little bench in the smoking area between the reading room and the exit, I lit a cigarette. I had barely taken four puffs when the girl appeared in front of the loan desk, walking stiffly. Nervously she was watching for me outside and did not seem to see where I was. She quickly returned her books and picked up her coat at the cloakroom, and just as she was hurrying toward the door she recognized me, the rhythm of her step faltering as if she had stumbled. Immediately I arose from my seat and went to the door. The girl followed with slightly shorter steps, making no attempt to flee.

  When I brought the car round from the parking lot, the girl was standing in the middle of the steps, buried in her coat collar up to her nose. I drew up to her and opened the window on my side; she shifted her briefcase and with an agitated step came directly toward me. Her nose was bloodless, as if squeezed between two glass slides. Her discontented expression had assumed a weird glow, perhaps because of the rush of blood or the cold. Only the green scarf that appeared above her coat collar was strangely gaudy and made one feel the inner pressure which propelled her. I half opened the door.