The Thief

by Fuminori Nakamura

  “What is?”

  “If you can’t do it, you die. That’s what I promised, isn’t it? Though I guess I’ll let the woman and her brat go.”

  “But if I don’t succeed, won’t that cause trouble for you?”

  He laughed again.

  “I didn’t think you’d be so attached to your life.”

  He was holding the receiver so close to his mouth that I could almost feel his breath in my ear. His voice crackled.

  “And no, it wouldn’t bother me too much. Anyway, apparently he’ll be going to Shinjuku again three days from now. Try again then. If you can’t do it, we’ll just have to kill him and snatch the envelope. It would be worth more if we could get it without killing him, but them’s the breaks. It’s no big deal.”

  “But….”

  “You knew if you failed you’d die. That was our agreement. I never change my mind. Fate shows no mercy. Yours is a cruel life. I’ve been checking up on you.”

  I caught my breath.

  “Don’t think so much. In the course of history billions of people have died. You’ll just be one more among them. It’s all a game. Don’t take life too seriously.”

  I tried to speak but nothing came out.

  “I told you, didn’t I? I’ve got your destiny inside my head. It’s addictive. Anyway, you’ve got four days. It’s unfortunate but it can’t be helped. People like you nearly always end up like this. Right, listen. It makes no difference to me whether you succeed or fail and die. I never change my mind, so if you fail I will kill you. It’s as simple as that. I’ve got dozens of people like you working for me. You’re just one among many. You’re just a tiny fraction of all the feelings that pass through me. Things that are trivial to the people at the top of the pyramid are matters of life and death to those beneath them. That’s the way the world works. And above all—”

  He paused for a second.

  “You do not make any demands. Do not ask any questions. Maybe you can’t understand me, but that’s how it is. Life is unfair. All over the world there are millions of children starving to death as soon as they’re born. Dying like flies. That’s just how it is.”

  Kizaki hung up.

  I RETURNED TO Shinjuku, to the office building where I’d lost track of Yonezawa. I didn’t expect that he’d still be there, and even if he was I probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Leaving the busy streets and the hotels behind, I came out in a residential area in the middle of nowhere, with rows and rows of apartment blocks. It was late at night but many of the windows were still lit up. I guess people were still awake because the next day was a holiday. The lights were soft and fuzzy in the darkness.

  As I looked up at them, feeling restless, I sensed something unfamiliar in the inside pocket of my coat. I took out a wallet I didn’t recognize and a silver Zippo lighter. The wallet contained 79,000 yen, various credit cards, a driver’s license and a golf club membership card. My vision contracted. A bloated dog eyed me, then slunk off watchfully. I saw a man walking towards me wearing a raincoat. It’s not raining, I thought, and when I looked again there was just a large stain on a wall. It wasn’t even shaped like a person.

  In a narrow alley off to the left I spotted the lights of a small bar. I tucked the wallet back inside my coat and put the lighter in the basket of a bike lying on its side. The place was tiny, its feebly illuminated sign faded to black. I couldn’t read the name.

  Inside there were four stools at the counter and two tables. I ordered a whiskey from the seedy bartender, who didn’t look at me, and took a seat at a table. An office worker who looked like a regular was passed out drunk, sound asleep with his forehead resting on the bar.

  Classical music was flowing out of small speakers and the barman moved absent-mindedly, as though listening to it was his sole purpose in life. A mongrel was tied up beside the counter, sprawled motionless on the floor, only its eyes moving. The man ignored me as he placed a scotch on the rocks on my table. Looking idly around the room, I figured this bar would never be popular.

  I soon finished my drink and asked for another. The barman put a bottle and ice on the table and went back behind the counter. Neither Ishikawa, who used to stop me from drinking too much, nor Saeko, who had urged me to drink more, was there, of course. I began to feel drunk and the glass in front of me seemed to grow dim, and then so did everything else.

  There was no one else in the bar apart from the owner, still listening to his music, the unconscious man in the suit, and the dog, which looked bored out of its mind but didn’t seem to object to its leash. I thought about my own mortality, about what I had done with my life until now. Reaching out my hands to steal, I had turned my back on everything, rejected community, rejected wholesomeness and light. I had built a wall arround myself and lived by sneaking into the gaps in the darkness of life. Despite that, however, for some reason I felt that I wanted to be here for a little while longer.

  The barman was sitting on a chair behind the counter with his eyes closed. I knew nothing about music, so I just watched him as he listened. There were many things I didn’t like about my life, but there were also some things I didn’t want to lose, people I didn’t want to lose. The people I cared about didn’t live very long, though, their lives ending in heartbreak. I wondered what my life had meant, thought about it ending, thought about the moment of my death.

  The guy in the suit went on sleeping, and the bartender hadn’t moved a muscle. If I could, I planned to watch them until I fell asleep myself.

  16 When I was young, there was always the tower in the distance.

  In dirty lanes lined with row houses and low-rise apartments, every time I looked up I could dimly make it out. Covered in mist, its outline vague, like a spire in some ancient daydream. Solemn, beautiful, exotic, so tall that I couldn’t see the top and so far away that no matter how long I walked I’d never reach it.

  I would go into a store and slip a rice ball into my little pocket. Other people’s possessions weighed heavy in my hands, like foreign objects. Yet I never felt any guilt or wickedness in these actions. My growing body demanded a lot of food and I didn’t see how there could be anything wrong with taking and eating it. Other people’s rules were just something they’d invented for themselves. I put that weighty rice ball in my mouth, chewed and swallowed vigorously. Then I stared beyond the lines of power poles, beyond the grubby houses, beyond the trees on the low hill, at the high tower standing in that obscure realm. One day, perhaps, it would speak to me. Scratching my thighs, which poked out of my shorts, I was faintly aware of the stolen property sitting heavy in my stomach.

  I heard the laughing cries of a group of children my own age. A boy with long hair was holding a little toy car. It was bought overseas, he shouted in a piercing voice. Operated by a small controller he held in his hand, the sophisticated car sparkled brilliantly as it went racing around.

  My heart pounded when I saw it. The boy was boasting about something he hadn’t bought himself, that had been given to him. It was revolting. To cure his ugliness, I thought it would be good if he lost his car. I took it. Since the kids didn’t even know I was there, it was all too easy to take. For some reason items from other countries always reminded me of the tower.

  Alone in an unsealed alley I played quietly with the car, but it wasn’t as shiny as it had been before. Something felt wrong and I switched it off, distressed. I placed it further away, turned it on gingerly. When it moved I felt that something still wasn’t right. I turned it off again and moved it even further. Finally I threw the car into the muddy river bank. Far, far away, there stood the tower. It remained tall in the distance, silent and shrouded in mist.

  It never occurred to me to wonder why there was a tower outside my town. Perhaps I assumed that it had already been there when I was born. The world was fixed and rigid. It was as though time flowed at its own pace, anchoring everything, pushing me from behind, little by little moving me somewhere. When I reached out my hands for other peopl
e’s things, however, in the tension of the moment I felt I could be set free. I felt I could separate myself just a little from the unbending world.

  When I started elementary school, the boy who was chosen as class leader got hold of a glittering watch. “It’s my father’s,” he said, showing it furtively to the people around him. “It even works underwater.” The children all stared at this watch that kept going even when submerged. I stole it.

  Why did I drop it while everyone was looking at me? My hand had moved swiftly, and by the time it was halfway into my shorts pocket I thought I was home free. But it slipped out and fell with a crash. Everyone looked first at the watch, which had stopped working when it hit the floor, and then at me.

  “Thief!” the class leader shouted. “It’s broken. That was expensive. Too good for trash like you.”

  The din in the classroom grew louder. Hands reached out to seize my arms and legs. I was jostled and knocked over. Hearing the cries, the young teacher came over and grabbed my arm. He looked flustered by the children’s accusations.

  “Say you’re sorry!” His voice was also loud. “If you really took it, say you’re sorry!”

  Looking back on it now, perhaps this was a kind of liberation, because this was the first time my actions had been exposed to the outside world, with the exception of the tower. I felt a sense of freedom that I’d never experienced before. Overpowered, in the midst of my disgrace, I felt pleasure seeping through me. If you can’t stop the light from shining in your eyes, it’s best to head back down in the opposite direction.

  I didn’t hide my smirk, I didn’t resist, I just lay there on the floor as they held me down. Through the classroom window I could see the tower. Perhaps now it will tell me something, I thought. Because it had been standing there for such a long, long time. But it still just stood there, beautiful and remote, neither accepting nor rejecting me as I took pleasure in my humiliation. I closed my eyes.

  I decided I would keep on stealing until I could no longer see the tower. Sinking lower and lower, deeper and deeper into the shadows. The more I stole, I believed, the further I would move away from the tower. Before long the tension of stealing became more and more attractive. The strain as my fingers touched other people’s things and the reassuring warmth that followed. It was the act of denying all values, trampling all ties. Stealing stuff I needed, stealing stuff I didn’t need, throwing away what I didn’t need after I stole it. The thrill that vanquishes the strange feeling that ran down to the tips of my fingers when my hands reached into that forbidden zone. I don’t know whether it was because I crossed a certain line or simply because I was growing older, but without my realizing it the tower had vanished.

  17 When I called the boy’s mother she said that she wanted to go to a hotel, so I took a taxi. We met in the middle of the day in front of a pachinko parlor, walked through the hotel district and picked one at random. As soon as we got to the room she started to undress, saying she knew that I’d call her again. I started to say something about the boy, but got into bed with her instead, partly because it would be hard to talk to her if I made her mad, but also because I had the wretched feeling that I was going to die soon and I wanted to touch a woman one last time. She climbed on top of me and, thanks to her tablets, just kept on coming, digging in her fingernails.

  Still naked, she got out of bed and opened the curtains a crack. Scratching her cheek, she told me that they’d built a new shopping mall over the road. She seemed to want to show it to me. Her clothes lay on the floor like a flattened corpse. A thin ray of sunlight peeped through the curtains. I raised myself slightly in the bed.

  “By the way,” I started, unsure if this was the right time or not. “How would you feel about giving up the boy?”

  Her face froze for a second as she turned.

  “To you?”

  For some reason she smiled as she said this.

  “No, a children’s home.”

  “Could I?”

  I thought she’d be angry, but she closed the curtains and came back to the bed.

  “Yes, you could. You’d need to do some paperwork.”

  “Yuck,” she said suddenly, turning away and lighting a cigarette.

  I guessed it was the probably the paperwork she was talking about.

  “I’ve got to disappear for a while. I won’t be able to see him again. It would be better if he didn’t live with you. If he wasn’t there, things would go more smoothly with your man, wouldn’t they? And if you put him in a home I’ll give you five hundred thousand yen. How about that?”

  “What?”

  Slowly she turned to face me. Like her lips, her eyes were faintly moist, with a sad gleam. I realized that I was getting turned on again and looked away.

  “My boyfriend, he’s been punching him lately. He probably won’t kill him, but it’s still abuse, isn’t it? You see it on the news. I’d hate it if that happened. The cops would come, wouldn’t they? Did you mean it?”

  “I’ve got plenty of money. It’s not that much to me. If you get in touch with the Child Guidance Center they’ll look after him. If they can’t, contact this foster home. You can trust them. But if you just take the money and don’t put him in care without a damn good reason, there’ll be trouble. I’m going away but I’ll be asking my friends to keep an eye on you. They’re yakuza. Get it?”

  I don’t know if she was listening or not, but suddenly she licked my lips.

  “If my parents were around I could leave him with them, but they’re not. I’ve been wondering what to do. You’re right, we could put him in one of those places. I hadn’t thought of that. So all I have to do is call them, right? Hey, with that much I could go on a trip!”

  She tucked the paper I’d given her into her purse. I took the money from my jacket, which I’d tossed in a heap on the floor.

  “You’re paying me now?” she asked, but immediately stowed it in her bag.

  One eye blinked tightly several times.

  “You’re great. Really awesome. I’m so happy! Now, what’ll I buy with this? I mean, what good are kids, anyway? Know what I mean? They’re only cute for the first couple of months, eh?”

  When I got out of the cab in front of my apartment, the boy was standing there. In his hands he held an open can of Coke and a can of coffee, the brand I usually drink. He passed it to me wordlessly, so I opened it there and then. He looked at my dyed hair but didn’t comment. The coffee was almost cold.

  I went inside briefly and when I came out again he followed me. A car sped by, startling him, and he grabbed the hem of my coat. It was low-slung, with mindless music blaring out at full volume. Coming towards us was a little girl clutching her father’s jacket in the same way. The boy and I passed by them without a word. The man said something to his daughter and she answered sulkily.

  We ambled along the side of a small river well outside the city. The banks were well tended but the water was murky, with plastic bottles and other trash floating in it. The kid looked like he wanted to say something but kept quiet, hesitant. I lit a cigarette and gazed out over the sluggish river.

  “I talked to her. You’re sure about going into a home, right? That would mean you’d be getting out of there.”

  “Yeah.”

  His voice was a bit stronger than before. I passed him a slip of paper.

  “If your mom tries to keep you at home and you still don’t like it, call this number. This agency will take care of everything.”

  He stared at the number like he was trying to memorize it.

  “You can still start over. You can do whatever you want. Forget about stealing and shoplifting.”

  “Why?”

  He was gazing up at me.

  “You’ll never find a place in society.”

  “But….”

  “Shut up. Just forget it.”

  My lifestyle certainly didn’t qualify me to be giving advice to children. I held out a small box.

  “I’m giving you this.”


  “What is it?”

  “In the end I didn’t need it. Open it when you need strength, or when you’re in real trouble. Like you’re done for and might as well die. Pretty cool, eh?”

  “But what if someone takes it away, too?”

  “Okay, let’s bury it somewhere.”

  I spotted a hiking trail and we headed up the dirt-colored road. Partway along we came across a stone statue of a woman laughing crazily. I used my empty can and my hands to dig a deep hole in the earth behind it. The inscription on the plinth was almost entirely worn away, but it seemed to be some kind of memorial. I didn’t think they’d be doing roadwork here, so no one was likely to dig the box up.

  “If you end up not needing it,” I told the boy, “give it to a kid like you.”

  We continued walking in silence. The sun was gradually sinking and the air grew chilly. When we came out into a clearing, I found a tennis ball someone had dropped. I picked it up casually and brushed off the dirt with my hands. On the other side of a bench we could see a boy playing catch with his father. He was about the same age as my kid, but his throw was weak and clumsy. Every time he threw, his dad said something to him. A digital camera and portable game console, probably theirs, were lying on the bench.

  “Are you any good at throwing a ball?”

  “Dunno.”

  “I bet you’re better than that useless brat.”

  I threw the ball a long way away. He hesitated for a second and then ran to fetch it. The others realized we were there and turned to look at us. The boy collected the ball and hurled it back at me. I felt it sting my fingers as I caught it. I threw it back even harder, but he caught it with two hands and returned it more powerfully than the first time. When he saw me fumble it he laughed. The father and son were watching us, and after a couple of minutes I worked out that it must be their ball. I thanked them like a regular person, tossed it back to them underarm. The boy ran back to me, a little out of breath.

  “Listen,” I told him. “I’ve got to go on a long trip, so I won’t be able to see you any more. But don’t waste your life. Even if there’s times when you’re miserable, you’ll always have the last laugh.”