Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

“No, nowhere special,” I replied.

Even so, he continued to scrutinize my face carefully, as if I were an important piece in the puzzle.

I picked up the stapler again and examined it in detail. Just an ordinary, small stapler, the kind you’d find in any home or office. An office supply about as cheap as they come. Seven Star cigarette dangling from his lips, the security guard lit it with a Bic lighter and, turning to one side, blew out a cloud of smoke.

I turned to the boy and gently asked, “Why staplers?”

Carrot had been staring the whole time at the floor, but now he quietly lifted his face and looked at me. But he didn’t say anything. I noticed for the first time that his expression was completely changed—strangely expressionless, eyes out of focus. He seemed to be staring into a void.

“Did somebody bully you into doing it?”

Still no answer. It was hard to tell if my words were getting through. I gave up. Asking the boy anything at this point wasn’t going to be productive. His door was closed, the windows shut tight.

“Well, sir, what do you propose we do?” the guard asked me.

“I get paid to make my rounds of the shop, check the monitors, catch shoplifters, and bring them back to this room. What happens afterwards is another matter entirely. Especially hard to deal with when it’s a child. What do you suggest we do? I’m sure you’re more knowledgeable in this area. Should we just let the police handle the whole thing? That would certainly be easier for me. Keep us from wasting our time when we’re just treading water anyway.”

Actually, at that moment I was thinking about something else. This dumpy little supermarket security room reminded me of the police station on the Greek island. Thoughts of which led straight to Sumire. And the fact that she was gone. It took me a few moments to work out what this man was trying to say to me.

“I’ll let his father know,” Carrot’s mother said in a monotone,

“and make sure my son knows in no uncertain terms that shoplifting is a crime. I promise he won’t ever bother you again.”

“In other words you don’t want this to be taken to court. You’ve said that over and over,” the security guard said in a bored tone. He tapped his cigarette on the ashtray, flicking the ash into it. He turned to me again and said, “But from where I sit, three times is just too many. Somebody’s gotta put a stop to it. What are your feelings about this?”

I took a deep breath, pulling my thoughts back to the present. To the eight staplers and a Sunday afternoon in September.

“I can’t say anything unless I talk to him,” I replied. “He’s a smart boy, and he’s never caused any problems before. I have no clue why he’d do something so stupid, but I’m going to spend time myself and get to the bottom of this. I really apologize for all the trouble he’s caused.”

“Yeah, but I just don’t get it,” the guard said, frowning behind his glasses. “This boy—Shin’ichi Nimura?—he’s in your class, right? So you see him every day, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“He’s in fourth grade, which means he’s been in your class for a year and four months. Am I right?”

“Yes, that’s correct. I’ve been in charge of his class since they were in third grade.”

“And how many pupils are in your class?”

“Thirty-five.”

“So you can keep an eye on them all. You’re telling me you never had any hint that this boy was going to cause trouble. No sign at all?”

“That’s right.”

“Wait a sec—as far as we know, he’s been shoplifting for a half year. Always alone. Nobody’s threatening him to do it. And it’s not spur of the moment. And he’s not doing it for the money either. According to his mother he gets plenty of pocket money. He’s doing it just to get away with stealing. This boy has problems, in other words. And you’re telling me there wasn’t any indication of this whatsoever?”

“I’m speaking as a teacher here,” I replied, “but especially with children, habitual shoplifting is not so much a criminal act as the result of a subtle emotional imbalance. Maybe if I’d paid a little more attention I would have noticed something. I fell down on the job, definitely. But with emotionally disturbed children there’s not always something outward to go on. If you separate the act from everything else and punish the child, the basic problem isn’t going to be cured. Unless you find the fundamental cause and treat that, the same problem will surface later on in a different form. Often children are trying to send a message by shoplifting, so even if it isn’t the most efficient way of handling the problem, it’s important to take the time to talk things out.”

The guard crushed out his cigarette and, mouth half open, stared at me for a long time, as if I were some odd-looking animal. His fingers resting on the tabletop were terribly thick, like ten little furry black creatures. The more I looked at them, the harder I found it to breathe.

“Is that what they teach you in college, in teacher-training or whatever you call it?”

“Not necessarily. It’s basic psychology. You can find it in any book.”

“You can find it in any book,” he said, repeating my words listlessly. He picked up his hand towel and wiped away the sweat from his thick neck.

“A subtle emotional imbalance—what’s that supposed to mean? When I was a policeman I spent every day, morning till night, dealing with characters who were imbalanced, all right. But there was nothing subtle about it. The world’s full of people like that. Ten a penny. If I took the time to listen to each and every one of the messages those people were sending out, I’d need ten more brains. And that still wouldn’t be enough.”

He sighed, and placed the box of staplers back under the desk.

“Okay—you’re absolutely right. Children have pure hearts. Corporal punishment is bad. People are all equal. You can’t judge people by their grades. Take the time to talk and work out a solution. I don’t have a major problem with that. But do you think that’s how the world will get to be a better place? No way. It’ll only get worse. How can people all be equal? I’ve never heard such a thing. Consider this—110 million people are elbowing one another out of the way every day in Japan. Try making all of them equal. It’d be hell on earth.

“It’s easy to say all these sweet words. Close your eyes, pretend not to see what’s going on, and pass the buck. Don’t make any waves, sing Auld Lang Syne’, hand the kids their diplomas, and everybody lives happily ever after. Shoplifting is a child’s message. Don’t worry about later on. That’s the easy way out, so why not? But who’s going to clean up the mess?

People like me, that’s who. You think we do this because we like it? You lot have this kind of hey-what’s-¥6,800?-look on your faces, but think about the people he stole from. A hundred people work here, and you better believe they take a difference of one or two yen seriously. When they add up the receipts for a cash register and there’s a ¥100 discrepancy, they work overtime to straighten it out. Do you know how much an hour the women who work the checkouts make here? Why don’t you teach your pupils that?”

I didn’t say anything. Carrot’s mother was silent, as was the boy. The security guard had worn himself out talking and sank back into the general silence. In another room a phone rang, and someone picked it up on the first ring. “So, what should we do?” he asked.

I said: “How about we string him upside down from the ceiling until he says he’s sorry?”

“I like it! ‘Course you know that we’d both be out on our ears.”