Fuminori Nakamura - The Thief

Once the boy saw my hand move he kept glancing at the bag.

“Grab the edge of my coat,” I told him. “Pretend I’m your father and stay right beside me. Your body will help hide the bag.”

I put a couple of packed lunches into the basket as camouflage while I filled the bag. This time the store detective was a woman in glasses, close to retirement age. The basket of her shopping cart was loaded with stuff so she’d look like a normal customer, but since she had to be on duty for a long time there were no perishables among them. She was keeping an eye on a woman in her forties with dyed brown hair who was walking along the aisle, her long white down jacket swinging from side to side.

“Stay there, but watch that woman.”

Holding her basket in one hand, the woman in the white jacket quickly shoved a box of chocolates in her pocket. The security guard missed that one but kept following her as though she was sure the woman was up to something. They disappeared around the corner.

“Probably she’s sick.”

“Sick?”

“Stealing stuff without realizing it. There are people like that.”

I was careful to keep my expression neutral.

“Maybe it’s Pick’s disease. That’s also called early-onset dementia . But it’s strange, a complete mystery. Why does the subconscious mind make people steal? Why does it have to be stealing? Don’t you think it’s something deep-rooted in our nature?”

The boy shook his head to show that he didn’t know.

“But now’s our chance. It’s crowded and that store detective isn’t here.”

I put everything that was on the list into my bag, and beer, water and ham into the basket. Then we paid at the checkout and left.

WE WENT TO a park, and when I handed the boy one of the lunches he started eating without a word. I passed him a bottle of water but he barely touched it. Meat, omelet — he shoveled the food down so fast I thought he’d choke.

I opened a beer and chewed some ham. Dirty clouds were gradually closing in, blocking the light from the sun. In the distance a group of children clustered around a bench with Gameboys in their hands, all focused on the screens.

“As a kid, you have to choose what to take when you shoplift,” I told him. “Otherwise it’s too hard.”

He looked at me between mouthfuls.

“Sweets, or at most soft drinks. It’s pretty hard for you to take veggies from a supermarket.”

I touched his windbreaker.

“What you could do, for example, is sew a pouch inside your jacket. Then you make a hole in your pocket so that it opens into the pouch. Or you can make a slit along the zip in the front so that it’s hidden by the flap. You put everything in the pouch, and you stop before it gets too full.”

Before I knew it he’d finished his lunch.

“Or a bag. A school bag is too conspicuous. A satchel like you would take to cram school is good. If you make a cut in a bag like the one I was using, you can put all sorts of stuff in. Then there’s stealing. Wallets.”

“I’ve done that.”

He was watching the gang of kids on the other side of the park.

“On a crowded train with my mom.”

“Really?”

“This wallet was sticking out of an old guy’s pocket. I thought it looked like I could take that, I wondered if I could take it, and I took it. It had seven thousand yen in it. I’ve done it a few times since then. On trains by myself.”

“Let’s try it.”

I put my own wallet in my back pocket and stood up. He bumped my left leg, as if by accident. Shifting his weight to his left, he took my wallet with his right hand.

“Not bad, but you should stop. I mean, it’s still just for fun and you’re not used to it. Anyway, you really do it like this, with two or three fingers. You don’t use your thumbs like that. I guess you can’t help it, though, since your fingers are short and you still don’t have much strength.”

I finished my beer.

“You could use a tool. It’s got a tip like a fish-hook to snag the wallet.”

“Have you got one?”

“I don’t use tools. But there’s a famous pickpocket who did.”

“Who?” he asked, staring at me.

“A man called Barrington. An Irishman who lived in England a long time ago. He was in a theater company that was invited to noblemen’s houses, and he picked those rich people’s pockets like there was no tomorrow. He made the tools himself and was really good with them. He stole from ambassadors and Members of Parliament, even disguised himself as a priest. They call him the Prince of Pickpockets. He was brilliant, they say.”

“Anyone else?”

“Well, you probably don’t need to know about them.”

“Huh?”

He looked at me in surprise. Then he seemed embarrassed, as if he’d chattered too much, even though I was the one who’d been doing all the talking. His skinny legs poked out from his shorts and his shoes were covered with dirt.

“There was also this eccentric who’d put a card with his own name on it in the wallet he’d lifted and then put it back. A famous American pickpocket called Dawson. And an amazing man, Angelillo, who’s estimated to have stolen a hundred thousand wallets. A woman called Emilie was arrested for picking pockets and in the middle of her trial she pinched the judge’s glasses case. Apparently the whole court burst out laughing.”

The boy’s mouth twitched slightly.

“What about in Japan?”

“There was a really good one called Koharu. In the old days coin purses were popular. They had a clasp that would snap shut like this. Some people wore them hanging on a cord around their neck. This woman Koharu could undo their coats and take the money from inside the purse. A technique called ‘nakanuki.’ What’s more, the story goes that after she emptied the purse she’d close it again and button up their coat. Incredible skill.”

“Really?”

“Surrounded by misery, those people laughed at the whole world.”

Seeing the time on the big clock, the kids put away their games and left the park. A young couple went by, walking a dog. A little girl holding her mother’s hand was looking at us and saying something.

“There’s also someone who took ten million yen in one day.”

“Ten million yen?”

“Yeah, a guy I know. He’s dead, probably.”

The boy looked up at me. I remembered my last glimpse of Ishikawa’s face nodding at me, and the van’s red tail lights disappearing down the street.

“People like that generally come to a bad end. So don’t follow them. It’s not worth it.”

I showed him the 220,000 yen I’d taken from the old man with the grandson.

“I’m going to give you all of this. Next time you’re told to go to the supermarket and steal, use this cash to buy the stuff. Don’t come and see me again.”

“Why not?”

“I’m busy.”

I stood up from the bench. The boy walked in silence, moving closer to me and then moving away. When we parted he still didn’t say a word. By the time I got home I felt a chill. Even getting under the duvet didn’t warm me up, and I figured I’d caught a cold. Going out to buy medicine froze me even more, but I took some drugs and tried to sleep.

I spent most of the next two days huddled under the covers. The ringing of the doorbell woke me from a dream of Saeko. I ignored it but it didn’t stop. I couldn’t tell if it was early evening or the middle of the night. I lit a cigarette, though I couldn’t taste it. When I opened the door the boy’s mother was standing there.

She was wearing a short skirt with black patterned stockings. She stared at me suspiciously and then peered into my room, her gaze moving back and forth in bewilderment, even though she had come here of her own accord. She fiddled with the button on her bag, her right eye twitching fiercely, and finally looked up at me searchingly. When she did that she looked just like her son.