Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

The security guard in charge was a thickset man in his late fifties. He had beefy arms and a large head covered with a thick patch of coarse salt-and-pepper hair he’d plastered down with some cheap hair tonic, the best he could probably afford on his lowly security guard salary. The ashtray in front of him was overflowing with Seven Star butts. When I came in the room, he took off his black-framed glasses, wiped them with a cloth, and put them back on. Maybe his set way of greeting new people. With his glasses off, his eyes were as cold as moon rocks. When he put them back on, the coldness retreated, replaced by a kind of powerful glazed look. Either way, this wasn’t a look to put people at their ease.

The room was oppressively hot; the window was wide open, but not a breath of air came in. Only the noise from the road outside. A large lorry coming to a halt at a red light blatted out a hoarse air brake, reminding me of Ben Webster on the tenor sax in his later years. We were all sweating. I walked up to the desk, introduced myself, and handed the security guard my business card. He took it without a word, pursed his lips, and stared at it for a while, then placed it on the desk and looked up at me.

“You’re pretty young for a teacher, aren’t you?” he said.

“How long have you been teaching?”

I pretended to think it over and answered, “Three years.”

“Hmm,” he said. And didn’t say anything else. But the silence spoke volumes. He picked up my card and read my name again, as if re-checking something.

“My name’s Nakamura, I’m the chief of security here,” he introduced himself. He didn’t proffer a business card of his own. “Just pull up a chair from over there if you would. I’m sorry about how hot it is. The air conditioner’s on the blink, and no one will come out to fix it on a Sunday. They aren’t nice enough to give me a fan, so I sit and suffer. Take off your jacket if you’d like. We might be here for a while, and it makes me hot just looking at you.”

I did as he told me, pulling over a chair and removing my jacket. My sweaty shirt clung to my skin.

“You know, I’ve always envied teachers,” the guard began. A stillborn smile played around his lips, yet his eyes remained those of a deep-sea predator searching my depths for the slightest movement. His words were polite enough, but that was only a veneer. The word teacher sounded like an insult.

“You have over a month off in the summer, don’t have to work on Sundays or at night, and people give you gifts all the time. Pretty nice life if you ask me. I sometimes wish I’d studied harder and become a teacher myself. Destiny intervened and here I am—a security guard at a supermarket. I wasn’t smart enough, I suppose. But I tell my kids to grow up to be teachers. I don’t care what anybody says, teachers have it made.”

My girlfriend wore a simple blue, half-sleeve dress. Her hair was piled up neatly on top of her head, and she had on a pair of small earrings. White sandals with heels completed her outfit, and a white bag and small, cream-coloured handkerchief rested on her lap. It was the first time I’d seen her since I got back from Greece. She looked back and forth between me and the guard, her eyes puffy from crying. She’d been through a lot, it was clear.

We exchanged a quick glance, and I turned to her son. His name was Shin’ichi Nimura, but his classmates nicknamed him Carrot. With his long, thin face, his shock of unkempt, curly hair, the name fitted. I usually called him that, too. He was a quiet boy, hardly ever speaking more than was necessary. His grades weren’t bad; he rarely forgot to bring his homework and never failed to do his share of the cleaning up. Never got into trouble. But he lacked initiative and never once raised his hand in class. Carrot’s classmates didn’t dislike him, but he wasn’t what you’d call popular. This didn’t please his mother much, but from my point of view he was a good kid.

“I assume you’ve heard about what happened from the boy’s mother,” the security guard said.

“Yes, I have,” I replied. “He was caught shoplifting.”

“That’s correct,” the guard said and set a cardboard box that was at his feet on top of the table. He pushed it towards me. Inside was a collection of identical small staplers still in their packaging. I picked one up and examined it. The price tag said ¥850.

“Eight staplers,” I commented. “Is this all?”

“Yep. That’s the lot of it.”

I put the stapler back in the box. “So the whole thing would come to ¥6,800.”

“Correct. ¥6,800. You’re probably thinking, ‘Well, okay, he shoplifted. It’s a crime, sure, but why get so worked up about eight staplers? He’s just a school kid.’ Am I right?”

I didn’t reply.

“It’s okay to think that. ‘Cause it’s the truth. There are a lot worse crimes than stealing eight staplers. I was a policeman before I became a security guard, so I know what I’m talking about.”

The guard looked directly into my eyes as he spoke. I held his gaze, careful not to appear defiant.

“If this were his first offence, the store wouldn’t raise such a fuss. Our business is dealing with customers, after all, and we prefer not to get too upset over something small-scale like this. Normally I’d bring the child here to this room and I’d put a little of the fear of God into him. In worse cases we’d contact the parents and have them punish the child. We don’t get in touch with the school. That’s our store’s policy, to take care of children shoplifting quietly.

“The problem is, this isn’t the first time this boy’s shoplifted. In our store alone we know he’s done it three times. Three times!

Can you imagine? And what’s worse is both other times he refused to give us his name or the name of his school. I was the one who took care of him, so I remember it well. He wouldn’t say a word, no matter what we asked. The silent treatment, we used to call it in the police force. No apologies, no remorse, just adopt a crummy attitude and stonewall it. If he didn’t tell me his name this time, I was going to turn him over to the police, but even this didn’t raise a reaction. Nothing else to do, so I forced him to show me his bus pass, and that’s how I found out his name.”

He paused, waiting for it all to sink in. He was still staring fixedly at me, and I continued to hold his gaze.

“Another thing is the kind of things he stole. Nothing cute about it. The first time he stole 15 propelling pencils. Total value, ¥9,750. The second time it was eight compasses, ¥8,000 altogether. In other words, each time he just steals a pile of the same things. He’s not going to use them himself. He’s just doing it for kicks, or else he’s planning to sell it all to his friends at school.”

I tried conjuring up a mental image of Carrot selling stolen staplers to his friends during lunch hour. I couldn’t picture it.

“I don’t quite understand,” I said. “Why keep stealing from the same shop? Wouldn’t that just increase the chances you’d get caught—and worsen your punishment when you were? If you’re trying to get away with it, wouldn’t you normally try other shops?”

“Don’t ask me. Maybe he was stealing from other shops. Or maybe ours just happens to be his favourite. Maybe he doesn’t like my face. I’m just a simple security guard for a supermarket, so I’m not going to think out all the ramifications. They don’t pay me enough for that. If you really want to know, ask him yourself. I hauled him in here three hours ago and not a peep so far. Pretty amazing. Which is why I dragged you in here. I’m sorry you had to come in on your day off… One thing I’ve been wondering about since you came in, though. You look so tanned. Not that it’s relevant, but did you go somewhere special for your summer holidays?”