by Kōbō Abe
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.”
“I won’t do anything to obstruct business, I promise you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I’m on the trail of the fellow whose photo I showed you.”
“Somebody said the same thing yesterday. Oh, yes … Seems to me he was an acquaintance of yours, wasn’t he. Really, there’s a lot of fellows going in and out of here. A lot of them don’t want their names … or their faces … known. I’ve already had two strokes and I’m a little feebleminded. I’ve got a loose tongue. So I don’t look at faces or try to remember names any more than I have to.”
“If it’s hard for you to talk just tell me where I can inquire … that’ll be fine.”
The old man’s troubled gaze, like a cornered mouse running around trying to find its hole, shifted in a triangle formed by me, the black window of the Camellia, and the burned spot in the blanket over his knees. He gave a short cough, plunged his hands under the blanket and then immediately withdrew them and rubbed them together. Resignedly, he wiped away the secretion from the corners of his eyes with the same finger he had used to wipe the dribble of his nose, and clicking his tongue, said: “Well then, please yourself. Try driving around here about seven in the morning.”
“Sort of accidentally …?”
“Yes, accidentally.”
Same day: 12:06 P.M.—Visited Mr. Toyama, the man to whom the person under investigation sold the car he had been using until two days before disappearing. Toyama was not at home, but I was told that he was expected for lunch, being under treatment for a stomach disorder. I decided to ask if I might not wait for him a while. Toyama’s house was not number 24, as my client had told me, but 42, and therefore it took me some time and pains to find it. Even so, I was obliged to wait. The silver lining to my cloud was that at least I reduced the waiting time.
It was a rather squalid corner of development housing. The fence was dilapidated. A ’63 Corona was nosed into the narrow yard. Perhaps that was the car Toyama had purchased from the missing man. It was in excellent condition and the tires almost new. Toyama’s wife is about thirty. Two children, two and four; both girls. In the yard there seemed to be something like a vegetable garden covered with vinyl—the whole complex revealed a thoroughly wholesome family atmosphere. For some time the sun had been shining and the garden was a pool of light. Since the temperature was such as to make me want to take off my coat, I declined the invitation to go in and asked if I might not sit on the verandah.
According to what Toyama’s wife said … (at this juncture there were two short toots of a horn; Toyama himself had apparently returned).
Same day: 12:19 P.M.—Toyama’s back. Since he seemed busy I took his deposition while he ate. Toyama’s meal consisted of bread and a souplike mush. He complained that he had to build up his strength a lot, that he had to watch out for his stomach, and that driving a taxi was exhausting. But he seemed genuinely concerned about the circumstances of the missing man and was most cooperative in answering my questions.
The following is the dialogue that took place between us:
Q. How did you happen to buy the car from Mr. Nemuro?
A. Through a friend who had bought one previously. It had
been highly recommended as being reasonable in price and the repair work was good. In fact, I considered it a good buy.
Q. Didn’t you meet with Mr. Nemuro at the Camellia coffee house?
A (Somewhat surprised expression). Yes, I did. Just about the time I left my job over something quite insignificant and had been doing temporary work and fronting for some time.
Q. What is fronting?
A. Fronting is when you go directly to an office and stand in front of the door to get temporary work. As a general rule, big companies don’t use the fronting system to hire drivers, but they do when they have to lay off a car because a driver’s sick or absent. You can’t ignore the loss. The fronters and odd jobbers are out to make money, so they don’t pay any attention to the law and work a full twenty-four-hour shift. If you go round to two or three places somebody’ll generally hire you.
Q. Does the Camellia have anything to do with fronting?
A (Slightly perplexed). I’m back at my old office and don’t have anything to do with the Camellia any more, but—it’s hard to say—some of the men are grateful to it because they don’t want to do anything against their fellow drivers.
Q. I would just like to get some clue as to what happened to Mr. Nemuro. In short, was the Camellia a private employment agency for temporary drivers?
A. Yes, it was. Besides having good coffee, it opened up early in the morning, so naturally it was a place the drivers hung around. That gave the owner the idea of the employment bit, I suppose.
Q. You said the drivers wanted to make money. About what is the difference in earning power as compared to what a regular man makes?
A. To make up for severance pay, set salary, and health benefits, they used a commission system for temporary work: from forty to forty-two percent of net income. If you work ten days a month you easily make forty to fifty thousand yen. I understand that those who specialize in temporary driving and know how to work tourist attractions, race tracks, and the big holidays make as much as a hundred thousand for three days’ work.
Q. Pretty good work.
A. If you’re young and unmarried and like flashy things, you don’t often have it so good. If you get sick or have your license suspended, well, it’s tough then, but if you can forget about tomorrow the world’s yours.
Q. Were there a lot of fellows like that in and out of the Camellia?
A. No, in Tokyo alone the taxi drivers amount to about eighty thousand. That may be a lot, but out of that number only a few came, say, twenty or thirty men. And furthermore, sixty per cent of the Camellia men were temporary like myself. No matter how easy it is, a man doesn’t live for ease alone, does he? Actually, those who used to work only for the money, though they looked carefree, gradually became depressed. You get in the habit of wearing first-class uniforms, the best shoes, and imported wrist watches, but in the end you get quarrelsome and irritable. After you’ve been a temporary driver for five years, you even look different. You can tell at a glance.
Q. Did Mr. Nemuro seem to notice the business behind the Camellia?
A. I remember having spoken to him about it.
Q. Are there other places like the Camellia?
A. Very probably there are. A little less than twenty per cent of drivers are temporary men. Just the other day, there was an article in the newspaper saying that some unlicensed agency had been raided.
Q. Are they strictly regulated?
A. They’re in violation of the labor law. They’re treated the same as crooks, and that’s about it.
Q. Was the Camellia linked with some organization too?
A. I don’t know. I didn’t look that closely—and didn’t want to.
Q. Can’t we suppose the possibility that Mr. Nemuro was under some obligation to the Camellia or to some similar agency?
A (Surprised and thoughtfully serious). Well, Mr. Nemuro, if I remember correctly, was a division head in a legitimate business. If he was up to some shenanigans, then I could understand the obligation. Of course, there are all kinds of off-beat types among the drivers: men who used to be school-teachers, fishermen, priests, painters. It’s hard work physically, but it’s different from other work; the relationship between the men is not troublesome. It’s a good job for someone who finds it congenial always to be his own master … no matter what crowd he may be in. But you can’t have aspirations for the future. All year long you keep running for other people’s purposes, and you get to feel pretty insecure, wondering where in the world you yourself are going to get. They used to have what they called pirate taxis, and they really were pirates. To some people on the outside they were considered regular men of the world sailing from one corner of the earth to the other, but they weren’t at all. Such a queer profession … A street’s a street whether it’s a noisy main street or a quiet back one. And a customer’s a customer, man, woman, rich or poor. The customer’s usually a piece of baggage mouthing trivialities more than another human being. Every day you run around jostling hundreds and thousands of beings, yet you get to long for them as if you were running through some uninhabited desert. Since I’m a fellow that such a life appeals to, no matter how disgusted I get I probably wouldn’t take another job if it was offered. You need that much more determination to plunge into this taxi business. If to start with you drive, say, a small private truck, you can probably get by by just shifting into another category of driver, but in Mr. Nemuro’s case, it would be a little hard unless he had a real reason to do that.
Q. Supposing that he had taken the plunge. What about it, would there be a good way of locating him?
A. That’s a hard question. Reputable firms do a thorough character check at the time you take the job test, so the company wouldn’t look askance at such an investigation, but if it was some place like the Camellia …
Q. Is it difficult?
A. Between them and the drivers there’s a mutual agreement not to ask for names, to say nothing of one’s past.
Q. Even if I explained the circumstances?
A. If the circumstances are known they protect their men all the more.
Q. Supposing you were still working for the Camellia, even if you were asked to give information would you refuse?
A (After a moment’s thought). Why does the world take it for granted that there’s a right to pursue people? Someone who hasn’t committed any crime. I can’t understand how you can assume, as if it were a matter of course, that there is some right that lets you seize a man who has gone off of his own free will.
Q. By the same reasoning the one left behind might insist that there was no right to go away.
A. Going off is not a right but a question of will.
Q. Maybe pursuit is a matter of will too.
A. Then, I’m neutral. I don’t want to be anyone’s friend or enemy.
“HOW BLUE it is!” exclaimed the uniformed schoolboy in an amazed voice as he looked up at the sky. Following his gaze, his companions, taking deep breaths, their mouths open, narrowed their eyes as if abashed.
“Boy! That’s really blue!”
But with the deepening of the blue of the sky, the wind increased, and the boys held down their flapping coat hems with the briefcases they were carrying. With their free hand they grasped the brim of their caps and leaned into the wind, waiting for the railroad barrier gate to rise. Directly to the left of the crossing stood the interurban station. The ticket puncher’s box was higher than the street by only four concrete steps. Right at the top of the stairs was a newsstand, and on a projecting shelf newspapers and weekly magazines covered with a thin sheet of vinyl were set out side by side. A middle-aged woman with a thick turban around her head was struggling with hands, arms, and even her breasts to hold down the fluttering vinyl. The sky sparkled metallically as if dusted with aluminum, and across it clouds like lightly strewn cotton floss scuttled from the northwest toward the southeast. The sun slanted to the right and all the shadows lay perpendicular to the road.
In the sky, the clouds were sail
ing at full speed; on the ground the wild rush of irregular pieces of paper caught the eye. It was unbelievable that so many could be scattered over the road. Of course, one never thinks of streets as being clean. But this was the first time I had seen wastepaper upstaging the scenery. Some were white, but most of them were weathered to the color of dead leaves and, having lain in windrows for some time, were covered with dust. Now the papers came dancing over the tracks in the middle of the street. Somehow they did not rise more than two yards from the ground, weaving and frisking between people and cars, again and again repeating their complex movement. They cheated one’s expectation, caught one by surprise, suggesting the swimming of certain kinds of fish. By them one was made aware that air was matter. Just as they seemed to be gliding smoothly over the surface of the ground, they suddenly changed and rose upward, flew horizontally, plastered themselves against the side of some car, then gently slid to the ground and pinned themselves beneath it. But when the car passed, they were no longer in view; unnoticed they had crossed to the other side of the street and were following along, puppylike, after pedestrians.
Naturally, a gritty dust streamed and whirled with the pieces of paper, so that the structure of the wind was like lace. It blended with the dirt of my car, which somehow seemed unexpectedly conspicuous. Perhaps it was not dust that swirled in whirlpools, but light which assumed the form of dust. The odor and taste of February dust suggests something springlike. To me, the light today was the color of cream. In order not to stand out, I had not had the car washed for more than a fortnight, leaving it to collect dirt, but perhaps it should be cleaned the next time I stopped for gas.
The alarm stopped ringing and the arrow indicating the train direction went out; the barrier gate, wide for the four-track bed used for express trains, sprang up. The human wave, like the sand in an hourglass, flowed through the constriction, while the cars, fending the surge of people, slowly began to cross over. Before the head car had finished going over, the second alarm began to ring. I was the last car to make it across.
