Fuminori Nakamura - The Thief

He was wearing blue shorts and a green windbreaker, but the fabric was shabby. After walking to the meat section, he paused briefly and then as quick as a flash seized some sliced meat and stuffed it in the bag. He chose the nearest packet and his movements were seamless. I felt as though the course of his life had been determined at birth, that he was constantly pushing against a powerful current.

Next he moved to the vegetables. Weaving his way through the cluster of housewives around the bargain bin, he used the blind spot they offered to pilfer some potatoes and onions. He was right-handed, and it only took him a split second to grab the goods and stash them in his bag. As I watched him I wondered which of us was more skillful at that age. But no matter how good he was, a child walking around a supermarket on his own stood out, and his choice of a paper bag was all wrong. A middle-aged woman pretending to be a customer was observing him, surely a detective hired by the store to catch shoplifters. It was a different woman this time, with long hair. She was tailing an old man who was acting suspiciously, but keeping her eye on the kid at the same time.

Unaware of her gaze, he stopped in front of the liquor shelves. He wavered, disconcerted, I was guessing, by the mismatch between what he was supposed to pinch and the size of his bag. The store detective’s attention was locked on him. I had an image of hundreds of arms reaching out to seize him. I pictured him standing tiny and defenseless, bombarded by accusing glares and whispers of pity and shock, exposed to the world as “that kind of kid.” I moved closer and stood beside him. Taken by surprise, he started to tremble slightly, keeping his face averted.

“You’ve been spotted,” I said. “Dump the bag and get out.”

He looked up at me helplessly.

“Same as before. You’ve been seen. Give it up.”

I walked towards the woman who was watching. When she noticed me she looked away, bending down and pretending to be choosing some sweets. But the boy put three cans of beer into his bag, one after the other, and then trotted to the dairy products. There his head moved from side to side, searching for what he wanted to steal — or rather, what he’d been told to steal. I followed him. Checking that the woman wasn’t looking, I quickly grabbed a basket and took his bag from him.

“That’s enough,” I said. “I’ll buy it for you.”

His first impulse was to fight back, but then he saw how much bigger I was and stopped. His face was dirty but his eyelashes were long, his eyes large and clear.

“What else do you need?”

He didn’t answer. I saw a scrap of paper peeking from his coat pocket, and I plucked it out and unfolded it. A shopping list, written in ballpoint. Untidy, slanting handwriting, probably his mother’s.

I put the groceries in the basket and moved on. The boy came with me. The woman caught up with us and looked curiously at me, this adult who had suddenly appeared beside the child. Then she looked at the things in the basket and set off in pursuit of the suspicious old man, who had disappeared round a corner. The boy trailed after me passively, without even a show of resistance. Since I was dressed for work, my clothes were much flashier than his. Maybe he was ashamed that his pilfering had been spotted by someone like me. I turned to face him.

“You’re good, but this is how you do it. Watch.”

The only thing left on the list was yogurt. I stretched my hand towards the shelves where it was displayed, acting like I was trying to make up my mind. Glancing left and right, I caught the lid with my middle finger and tipped it into my sleeve. Sliding my hand to the left, I snagged three more containers. He watched my fingers earnestly and then turned and stared at my face as though he was seeing a miracle. He was clearly impressed that the yogurts didn’t fall out when I lowered my arm.

“Now we buy the rest. Okay?”

Without waiting for an answer I went to the checkout and paid. We left the store and I transferred the purchases into his bag.

“You can’t come back here. They’ve got a look-out and she knows your face.”

The boy looked at me, one shoulder dragged down by the weight of the bag.

“Hiding things under the towel is a good idea, maybe. But you’d better stop. First, it doesn’t look natural for a kid to be carrying a paper bag, so people notice. And it’s small so you can’t fit much stuff in it. Your moves — you go for the target too obviously. When you’re shoplifting, you need to make some unnecessary movements as a diversion.”

I saw that his face had turned serious and I looked away.

“Okay, take those and go home.”

I walked away without looking back, chewing viciously on the gum I’d found in my pocket.

When I woke my neck and shoulders were drenched in sweat. I thought I’d been dreaming but I couldn’t remember clearly. There’d been a tower in the fog, a long way off beyond the houses and the power poles. A stone tower that had probably been standing there for centuries, its surface carved in geometric patterns. It stretched straight up, dim and massive.

I smoked two cigarettes and thought of Ishikawa. When I ran into Tachibana I could have questioned him more closely, but I couldn’t trust what he said. I didn’t like the idea of being manipulated by his lies. The office where Ishikawa had worked had been turned into a beauty spa.

Suddenly I felt uneasy, like I had to get outside. I tried to decide where to go — the lounge of some high-class hotel, an exclusive brand-name shop, even Haneda Airport, where I’d thought about going before but changed my mind. I opened the door, planning to think about it as I walked. The boy was sitting in the cracked hallway. He seemed right at home in an old dump like this. He looked up at me blankly in the doorway, waiting passively.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He showed no reaction. I knew he’d been following me after we parted, but I never thought he’d come all this way. In his hand he held a brown paper bag, bigger than the one he’d had before. I think he knew that size wasn’t the issue, though.

“What is it this time?”

He held out a piece of paper. It was a list in cramped, twisted writing on the back of a flier:

300g pork

ginger

lettuce

lotus root

carrot

3 × 500ml Super Dry

sliced squid

cup noodles (something you like)

Perhaps she was cooking for a male visitor.

“Impossible. These are no good for shoplifting. You should pick canned goods, processed veggies in packets, stuff like that.”

He was wearing the same blue shorts and filthy green windbreaker, and he was rubbing at his leg with his right hand. I couldn’t tell if he was doing it because of the cold or if it was unconscious, a deeply ingrained habit, but the movement of his arm was mesmerizing. When I went back inside for my bag he came in with me, still clutching his paper sack. Ishikawa would have laughed if he’d seen me now. I forced a brief smile. Then I hailed a cab, and as it pulled up the boy opened his mouth for the first time.

“Where to?”

His childish voice was high and pure, not yet worn down by his surroundings.

“You can’t go back to that supermarket. They’ll have their eye on you. We’ll go further away.”

I told the driver our destination and leaned back on the seat. For some reason the kid was staring avidly out the window at the passing scene as though he’d never seen anything like it before, his lips firmly shut.

WE ENTERED A giant supermarket in the basement of a department store and I got a basket. Then I picked up some sliced pork and slipped it in my bag, which was black with a slit hidden in the pattern so that I could put things inside without undoing the zip.