Fuminori Nakamura - The Thief

“What do you want?” I said.

“Um.”

Her eye closed tightly once more.

“You live in a place like this?”

“What?”

I realized it was raining outside and she was carrying an umbrella. In the drizzle a foreigner in work clothes was smoking a cigarette as he crossed the dimly-lit alleyway.

“I’m here because my boy said you gave money to him. A hundred thousand yen!”

Suddenly I’d had enough.

“You’ve come to give it back?”

“No way. I’m not giving it back. But why’d you do it?”

“No reason.”

“It’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?”

No doubt it did seem creepy, but I couldn’t believe that was her only reason for coming all this way.

“It’s OK. Go home.”

“Let me in. Or I’ll scream.”

She twisted her lips, trying to force a smile. I went back inside and she took off her boots, grumbling to herself. The way her right eye flickered, her nervous tension, reminded me of Saeko. When she removed her white half-length coat she was wearing a close-fitting white sweater that emphasized her breasts.

I swept aside a tangle of clothes with my foot, planning to sit down, but she planted herself in the space before me. Money was scattered on the ironing board in the corner, mixed with scraps of paper. I went and sat on the bed.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked, still inspecting my room.

“None of your business. Now what do you want?”

“Why did you give him that much? Was it for that?”

“What?”

“I mean, you must have done something to him. If I went to the cops you’d be in trouble.”

She screwed up her face and glared at me as hard as she could. I grinned in amusement. She was too upset even to blackmail me properly.

“I’d never do anything like that.”

“But there must be a reason. You can’t fool me.”

“It’s because he looks like my dead son,” I lied.

She looked away for a second, uncertain. I continued, saying the first thing that came into my head.

“He’s the spitting image of my dead boy. I’ve got money, but houses and stuff don’t mean anything to me so I live here. I rent a bunch of places all over Japan. For me, a hundred thousand yen is nothing. I saw this poor kid shoplifting, so I gave him some money on an impulse. Like a donation. I was drunk. Anyway, you’re the one who can’t afford to go the cops.”

“But….”

She seemed to be thinking about something. She looked at the money tossed carelessly on the ironing board, then at the clothes in the closet.

“So you didn’t….”

“I didn’t.”

“But still…. Um, well, I wasn’t absolutely sure that’s what it was.”

She looked down and then faced me again, as if she’d decided to take the plunge.

“In that case, be my client. Business has fallen off lately. My boyfriend spends money like water and I’m really in the shit. I need cash by tomorrow. I know I said before that ten thousand yen would do, but I need about fifty thousand straight away. He looks like your dead son, doesn’t he?”

“I think I’ll pass.”

For some reason I sounded disgusted. She looked at me blankly, her right eye firmly closed. She was breathing heavily through her mouth.

“Are you kidding?” she shouted suddenly. “Don’t you fucking make fun of me!”

I was taken by surprise but tried not to show it. Unnatural wrinkles appeared on her face. She pounded the floor and made unintelligible gasping noises as if she couldn’t control herself. Her emotions didn’t seem to follow any predictable pattern. When I looked closely, I saw that her chin and shoulders were too thin for the rest of her body. Her neck and the backs of her hands were covered with red marks like she’d scratched herself.

“You were laughing at me. Like you can’t have sex with a pro. It’s not like I enjoy it. I haven’t done anything wrong. You suck.”

As I listened to her I felt something stirring inside me. My breathing quickened.

“No, I don’t think like that. For one thing, I’m a pickpocket. Can a pickpocket laugh at a hooker? Look, I—”

She was staring at me in amazement. I realized I was acting a bit strangely, so I lit a cigarette and tried to calm down.

“I really am a pickpocket, so I know what I’m talking about. If the kid carries on shoplifting like that, he’ll get arrested. If that happens the cops will be knocking at your door. Then you’ll be in trouble too. So don’t make him do it any more.”

“But….”

“If you need money, I’ll give you what I’ve got here. About two hundred thousand yen. If I’m lucky, I can get that in one day. So don’t make him.”

“Really?”

Her tired eyes shone and she turned slowly to stare at the money as if I wasn’t even there. At that moment she seemed to be lit by an overhead spotlight. Looking at her narrow shoulders, the curve of her body, the gentle gleam of her eyes, I felt a sense of panic.

“Take your clothes off. I’ve changed my mind. As payment.”

She smiled faintly in satisfaction. Then she looked at my face.

“Okay, I won’t make him steal anymore. And I’ll make sure he eats properly.”

Without hesitation she moved closer, taking off her sweater and undoing the hook of her skirt. Then she reached into her bag and took out some pills.

“These are great.”

I held up my hand in refusal. She looked like she was about to say something so I lied again.

“Pickpockets can’t do drugs.”

AS I PUSHED her down on the bed I was thinking of Saeko. I’d spent a lot of time with her until four years ago. Even though she had a husband and a child, she frequently came to my place. She often told me she should never have gotten married. When we had sex Saeko used to cry.

Sobbing, panting, shaking, grabbing my hair, repeatedly sticking her tongue in my mouth. Thin but beautiful, her body would catch the light, seeming to pulsate all over. Her mouth opened in a swallowing motion as she cried, and then unexpectedly she would laugh fit to burst, as if she was expelling some unspecified emotion.

“Sometimes I want to destroy everything around me that has any value. I wonder why. I know it doesn’t do me any good. Sometimes I don’t understand what I’m trying to do. Is there anything you wish for?”

Saeko never looked at me when she spoke.

“You’re a pickpocket, right? That’s cool. But you don’t do it for the money, do you?”

“Maybe the end,” I said abruptly.

“The end?”

“What will happen to me in the end. What happens to people who live the way I do? That’s what I’d like to know.”

That time Saeko didn’t laugh. For some reason she climbed on top of me without a word and starting making love to me again.

“I HAVE THIS dream. Even when I’m daydreaming, it’s always the same.”

Saeko told me this one month before she left me. We were lying on a bed under the red lamp of a hotel room, too lazy to get dressed, looking up at the walls and ceiling.

“It’s somewhere way, way underground. I’m surrounded by old rotting walls and it’s unbelievably damp. I’m falling, deeper and deeper, and at the very bottom there’s a bed. A bed with no one in it. Since someone’s put a bed there I know there’s nothing beneath, that it really is the bottom. The bed has a hollow, and my body fits that hollow perfectly. As I lie there the hollow slowly starts to squeeze me, like you guys wrap me in your arms. As the hollow in the bed squeezes me, like it’s comforting me, how can I put it, I get incredibly turned on. All sorts of conventional values are trampled and my body grows hot, like a flame, and I come again and again. I’m crying, laughing, smashing things, sticking out my tongue, and even though my body won’t stop spasming it’s like I’m still not forgiven. I pass out, then wake up again straight away. My outline becomes vague. I’m like gray smoke. But even in that state I’m still conscious. I can still feel every single one of those tiny gray particles and even beyond them so intensely that it hurts. And then I turn white with the heat. But at that moment this tall thing appears.”