The Ruined Map

by Kōbō Abe

  “What do you mean?” Suddenly she laughed nervously, at the same time frowning suspiciously. “That’s silly. Not everybody, but most of us wear any wig the customer demands. Right now I’m wearing long black hair on order.”

  Abruptly she turned and looked at Tashiro over her shoulder, swinging her long tresses and lashing out the ends, which she grasped in her hands. I could not tell the meaning of her high-pitched woman’s voice. The expression on Tashiro’s face was hidden by the girl’s head before I could see it. Hmm. Had it been a wig? Then I could not state positively by the hair alone that this girl and the model in the pictures were one and the same person. I could not arbitrarily claim that a wig was impossible, even in the strange pose where she had passed the hair between her thighs. If, for instance, she had held firmly between her teeth the part of the wig that attaches to the head she could have assumed approximately a similar position.

  “Look. I’m sorry,” she said, comparing her thigh—the network of shallow bluish veins lent a unique feeling of transparency against the whiteness—with her hand resting on it like some great red spider. Her angry voice spat at me as I basked in a feeling of security that came through my hand. “I want you to stop these false accusations. You said pictures of me—which I find strange. I wouldn’t do that. Do you think we let pictures be taken that can be used as evidence later? I’m not an amateur. Look at this and you’ll see what I mean.”

  Abruptly she raised both bands to the base of her scalp and stripped off her hair as easily as if she were peeling a ripe peach. With the long tresses of the wig, which was transformed into a separate creature, she struck my arm sharply, and laying the wig on her thigh, she roughly scratched her short-clipped hair. The bartender, who was looking down at the sink, slightly changed the angle of his head, and in profile he seemed surprisingly broad and muscular. Perhaps because of the light, the area below his sideburns was shaded as if scooped out, maybe the scar from some cut. Was his gloomy expressionlessness only on the surface of his face or did it penetrate beneath … to his very heart … or was it some incurable disease …? Whichever, there was no call to waste any more time here in disregard of its warning. When I withdrew my hand from the girl’s thigh she seemed to notice it for the first time and jerked her leg and glared at me as if she were looking at an enemy.

  “I suppose I can’t expect to be invited to your wedding.”

  “What’re you going to do? If you’re coming back to the studio it’d better be quick. Time’s about run out.”

  The music changed. The moment of silence pierced my ears, and the girl’s last words cast a shadow over the whole bar like the wings of some enormous bird. The two men at the table by the entrance turned in surprise to look in our direction. The next record began with a guitar solo. It merely turned the atmosphere around us a pale white and did nothing to shut off the rest of the bar. I finished the remainder of my rye-and-water as I got down from the stool.

  “I’ll be leaving now. I suddenly thought of something I have to do.” As a tip besides the amount I owed, I placed a pile of hundred-yen pieces on the two thousand-yen notes that I had ready. “It’s too bad … since you’re all ready now. But since there seems to be a bit of time left, if it’s all right with you, I’ll let Tashiro here have it. You don’t have anything particular to do, do you?”

  The alcoholic blush had spread from Tashiro’s face to his neck; only his nose and his chin, as if separated from the rest of his features by a glass shield, remained whitish. His strange behavior, neither refusing nor accepting, was after all a kind of acceptance.

  “You’re a bachelor, I see …” Looking over her shoulder at Tashiro, the girl didn’t even attempt to dissimulate her frankly scornful laugh. “People wouldn’t make fun of you if you’d use the same color of thread to sew the buttons on your shirt.”

  But Tashiro remained standing as he was, bolt upright, saying nothing, rubbing the inside of his glasses with the tip of his finger. The bartender, silent as usual, gently dropped before me the paid bill for the drinks, which settled like a huge snowflake, and handed me the change. I passed by the two men at the table, as profoundly engrossed as before in their discussion, but just as I arrived at the door, the girl, noiselessly, had already caught up with me. The dusty smell of cheap cosmetics made me think of her comfortless bed.

  “I’ll send you a special invitation to the wedding soon,” she murmured, as if nothing had happened. She opened her gown for a bare instant. She was stark naked. Her flesh was solid, but the belly was slack and gave one the feeling of being full of water. The faint frizzled shadow at her crotch was definitely not the same as the model’s in the photo.

  “It’s on the house,” she said, affecting a smile. “I’m unexpectedly conscientious, I guess. But I don’t want my fiancé coming to a place like this, not if I’m going to have a family. Drop in again … before the marriage … won’t you?”

  Tashiro stood rooted to the same spot as if he were some cleverly made doll. I lightly touched the girl’s fingers and pushed open the door. It screeched like a startled bird, and a chill wind struck at my collar and the openings of my sleeves. With each step the music receded and changed into the formless gray cacophony of the city, into a stammering like some auditory hallucination. My own senses, fusing with the darkness, continued to scatter. I hastened my steps in the direction of the area beneath the neon-lit sky. I strove to copy the gait of the pedestrians who were walking toward their own goals.

  BUT THE faster I walked the more I realized that still another step was pursuing me, undauntedly seeking its goal. The passers-by were not frequent, but in the main street in front of the movie theater, the flow of taxis was unbroken. I continued walking, perhaps because there was none free, but I also wanted to be quickly overtaken by those pursuing steps.

  At length a rapid breathing fell into step with me at my side. Without breaking my pace or looking around, I pretended to ignore it, as if it were my own shadow. A soft, pleading tone began to coil around my cold ear like a hungry snake.

  “What happened? Don’t you like that kind of woman? I think she has marvelous legs. Even in summer she gives the impression of being a soft, cool cushion. Really, I suppose tastes are different. Why don’t you say something? Ah, of course, you’re dumbfounded, aren’t you. Well, it can’t be helped. I didn’t mean any harm. Somehow I tried too hard to satisfy you. I wonder if I’m shy. I’ve come to hate myself. It’s always like this. I know very well I’ll regret it later … to the point of wanting to kill myself. Why was I born with a character like this? I hate myself. Do me the favor of forgetting the stuff about the blenders and waterers, if you can. I was talking out of turn. To tell the truth the average retailer is an honest fellow. They wouldn’t dare risk such dangerous acrobatics. As for shady dealing, they go about as far as keeping double accounts for getting around taxes. And even if they do water down bills, they’re so incredibly inept at it they get themselves caught. It’s true. Generally they set up a ghost business with only a name, and so even if they’re discovered they’ve taken precautions so that the main store’s never dishonored. So it’s useless, absolutely useless, no matter how you snoop around.”

  I made no answer. I neither concurred nor disagreed, but continued walking at exactly the same pace, urgently, like some night insect toward a man-made light; the pedestrians began to be more conspicuous. Tashiro had fallen silent but, at length out of patience, he resumed hurriedly: “There are two reasons why I have to make up stories like I did. I was afraid … you know what I mean … when I considered that Mr. Nemuro had disappeared for no reason, I realized I had been completely abandoned. No, I suppose that’s not quite right. Maybe I should call it an inferiority complex … or jealousy. The best things in life are kept from me, only me; I’m the only one who’s left out. So I explained the disappearance by any old reason … and I was satisfied. People react that way, don’t they. Then, one more thing … it’s hard to say … I’ve been worrying about this but haven’t men
tioned anything to anybody until now. Before I do, I’ve got to be more honest. I’m going to get it off my chest—I’d best confess everything now. To tell the truth, those pictures were fakes too. I’m sorry. Everything was a lie. I just happened to pick up the pictures in the street, as a matter of fact. They were interesting, and I looked at them a lot. Gradually they got all mixed up with my imagination. May be it was because of Mr. Nemuro’s wife. Say, what do you think about the wife? Seems to me she’s playing innocent, or taking people in, or some way looking down on you. Maybe it’s because she thinks of me only as Mr. Nemuro’s subordinate. I may be a subordinate, but why does she take such a supercilious attitude? One way or another it’s not my business, and I shouldn’t get so serious about it, I guess. But I’m involved with her some way. I wonder why?”

  I remained silent. Breaking in during his confession would only project my companion into another easy lie. I should profit from the momentum of his fall as long as it lasted. I kept walking. Before I was aware of it the streets were filled with a secretion of light—a wedge of artificial day was inserted into the night—the lunatic rhythm of time stimulated the passers-by, spellbinding them.

  “Come on!” Tashiro’s throat was painfully tensed, his breathing labored. “Have you found out? I told another lie. Lies come out of my mouth naturally, in spite of me. It’s a sickness, I guess. Maybe I’m a compulsive liar. Even those pictures—to tell the truth, I took them myself. At this point there’s no use in trying to keep up appearances. The model’s not the same as the girl back there, of course. I took only back views because the feminine element is most obvious from the back. But I swear that’s the last lie. You probably won’t believe me even if I say so. Please, please do. I’m really ashamed. I have a terrible secret. I’m very upset. I go so far as to tell lies I don’t have to, trying to get away from the pressure of it. If I can just get someone to believe them, I feel they would become the truth. But I’m tired. I want to confess everything, I really do. I’d like you to give me back those pictures. They have nothing to do with Mr. Nemuro; they’re just things that add to my shame.”

  I made no answer. The whirlpools of people were urged on by unseen goals under the night sky, where the neon was already sighing; a festival of darkness for fake runaways who, no matter how they regulated their speed, never pulled away more than three yards from strangers they did not know; imitation exercises for the eternal festival repeated every evening. I stepped to the edge of the sidewalk to hail a taxi. Tashiro made as if to turn in front of me, and as he spat a yellow spittle sprayed my earlobe.

  “Please … listen to me. It’s a terrible secret. I saw him. I saw Mr. Nemuro. It’s not a lie. Why won’t you listen? It’s your business to find him, isn’t it? Don’t you believe me? Even if you don’t, can’t you at least listen? I saw him walking along with my own eyes.”

  I paid no attention to Tashiro. Spotting the red For Hire sign on a cab, I raised my arm. The driver slammed on his brakes and cut his front wheels sharply, bringing the taxi to a clanking, tinny halt and opening the door with a thrust as if to cut me down. I neither invited nor repulsed Tashiro, who, clinging to the door, pushed in with me.

  THE DRIVER was very excitable. Even when I told him my destination he did not so much as nod, much less answer, but violently jammed at his screaming gears, making the ancient motor cough and wheeze without any indication of sympathy for it. If the husband had ducked out the back way at the Camellia and escaped to a different world, was he spending his days like this driver, his nerves raw as slivers of glass? Was this world so unbearable that one had to go on eternally escaping until one could put up with such a life?

  “I saw him.”

  Tashiro’s glasses, as he peered at me from the side with an anxious expression, began to steam up as I looked at him; the heater made the car too hot. I felt suddenly light-headed as the tenseness left my cold-benumbed cheeks. Evidently the two and a half bottles of beer that I had downed were beginning to enter my blood under the stimulus of the rye.

  “That’s what I wanted from the start. Why haven’t you given me such important information until now?”

  “But am I qualified to do that?”

  “Qualified?”

  “The section head I saw in town seemed like a different man. Not a thing withdrawn or pitiful about him. His step made you think he felt life was worth living.”

  “I take it you mean he was walking?”

  “I was so surprised I almost stopped breathing. I was just on the point of speaking to him, but seeing his expression, I somehow felt timid. I wondered if I really had the right to interfere.”

  “Was the street wide … or narrow?”

  “An ordinary one … about like this sidewalk.”

  “Did he give you the feeling of brooding or nervousness? He might have seemed vigorous at first glance …”

  “Absolutely not. I made no mistake. He was just the opposite of nervous. He was carefree and seemed to be fully enjoying his walk.”

  “Then I wonder why he didn’t notice you. You had plenty of time to study his expression. Funny, don’t you think?”

  “But it was terrifically crowded. The offices were just letting out.”

  “Well then, I suppose you were in the position of following after him, weren’t you?”

  With two fingers, Tashiro jammed onto his face the glasses he had finished wiping with a wrinkled handkerchief, grinning broadly at me.

  “Ha! You think I’m going to be taken in by that? You wanted me to say yes, and then you would ask how I had made out his expression walking behind him. Unfortunately I am telling the truth. You can’t catch me like that.”

  “All right. But even so, you mean you let him go right by you?”

  “Well … I guess so …”

  “Is it as important as all that?”

  “It’s a question of being qualified. We’ve decided that people have established residences and that we should put a chain or something around runaways’ necks and bring them home. But just how valid is such a concept? Who has the right to interfere with another’s living and against his wishes?”

  “You leave one place and you’re bound to settle in another. It’s not a matter of will, is it? Rather you’ve got to consider your obligations and responsibilities to the first place you lived.”

  “Perhaps even the abandonment of those obligations is itself an act of will.”

  “When did you see him … and where?”

  “The newspaper clipping I showed you a while ago claimed that missing persons run at the rate of one per thousand. One out of a thousand … and that includes people who can’t move of their own free will, like invalids and children. I think it’s serious. If you take into account the people who expect to run away but who have not yet done so, the figure’s astronomical. Those who don’t run away, rather than those who do, are the exception.”

  “Was it in the summer … or after it got cold?”

  “Before going into that, you’ve got to clear up the question of qualification.”

  “Doesn’t the worry of the one left behind make any difference? You remember, I think, the story about Mrs. Nemuro’s brother being killed.”

  “Does that have anything to do with the worry of someone left behind?”

  “What was the color of the suit he was wearing at the time?”

  “You know, I’m scared to death when I’m squeezed like a sardine in the streetcar in the morning. Just by being on friendly terms with a number of people—a hundred, a thousand—whom you know by sight, you feel you have your own place in the world. But the people who hem you in so tightly, so close to you, are all strangers; they’re by far the bigger number. No, I suppose what I’m really afraid of is that the streetcar will finally get to the end of the line.”

  “Just tell me the color of his suit. If you go on like this, saying whatever comes into your head, I’ve come on a fool’s errand.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Suddenly he shrank back, ashamed,
gulp ing again and again. “The color of his suit … if I remember right … ah, yes, I think it was a raincoat, not a suit.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “It didn’t rain that day, but maybe it looked like rain. Anyway, Mr. Nemuro was always prudent. All of us used to laugh at his mania for licenses: license for driving, license for radio operator, license for stenography …”

  “I know all about that.”

  “I think all those things are related. Even if you’re alone among utter strangers you can manage not to be nervous … whether you’re in a crowded streetcar or lost in an unfamiliar town …”

  “What was the color of the raincoat?”

  “Very ordinary … let’s see, a yellowish-brown or beige, I guess … the color of any raincoat.”

  “Was it new or did it look as if it had been worn a long time?”

  “No, it wasn’t new. It was quite worn. It seems to me there were grease spots on the cuffs and the collar. Yes, I remember. It was one Mr. Nemuro had been wearing a long time. He was strong on repairing cars, and often instead of overalls he would wear the raincoat when he crawled under the car.”

  I abruptly ordered the driver to stop. A darkened town, where only the streets were broad, bespeckled with street lights. A sign about night work on a water main was lit by a spotlight and shone red, while a number of helmets painted with a phosphorescent paint repeated again and again the same tedious motion.

  “Let’s get out of here and cool off. You know the reason without asking.”

  “How can I know?” he said, shrinking back defiantly. “I was just about to tell you everything.”

  “Think it over until you do know. Come on … out you go.”

  “You’ll be sorry.”

  “That’s enough. Unfortunately, the raincoat I have right at hand in safe keeping. Start all over again after you’ve thought up a cleverer lie you can’t see through. Take an aspirin. Have a good night’s sleep.”