Fuminori Nakamura - The Thief

I looked her in the face.

“Long, glistening, towering. It’s like I’m outside somewhere. Then as I’m looking at it I’m thinking, ‘What is that?’ It’s pure, higher than the clouds, the top hidden from sight. And then I realize that I can’t go there, that this hot smoky whiteness is my high point. But just because it’s my peak, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ll reach it. What I mean is, it’s my limit. It feels wonderful. I destroy all those values and I exist solely as sensation. I become unbearably hot and then vanish. That tall, shiny tower is a long way off, but I die happily under its ruins. Of course it’s high and beautiful, and I can’t help longing for it, but that’s because it represents my greatest desire.”

PERHAPS BECAUSE OF the pills, the woman cried out several times, digging her fingernails into my back, my shoulders, my stomach. After we finished she kept her tongue in my mouth for a while. I was still thinking about Saeko.

“Actual ruins, though,” she had said to me once, “aren’t abstract like that. Ruins are always boring. Solid, concrete and boring.”

When the woman finally got off me, she lit one of my cigarettes and inhaled deeply. She moved close again and put her hand on my heart. The rain had stopped and everything was quiet. In the distance I could hear a shrill siren.

“Um, will you see me again?” she said, resting her nose on my shoulder. “It wouldn’t have to cost this much, less would be fine.”

“No.”

“It was good, wasn’t it?”

Her voice grew louder. For a second it seemed to blend into Saeko’s voice and I looked away.

“It was good, wasn’t it? I bet it was. Absolutely.”

“It’s not that it wasn’t good,” I said. “You know they say that prostitution is the oldest profession?”

“The oldest? Hm. What’s the second oldest?”

“Pickpocket. Stealing. That’s the truth.”

“Picking pockets is a profession?”

I grinned.

“I don’t know, but if you’re going to screw up your life, do it on your own. Don’t get the boy involved.”

The siren grew gradually louder and finally stopped somewhere nearby.

“Okay. I won’t make him go shoplifting any more. I send him out when my boyfriend comes round. That’s all right, isn’t it? Sometimes he hits him, see.”

“Hits him?”

“Not badly. Just a tap, when he’s drunk.”

“Anyway, shoplifting is out.”

“Got it. But let’s get together again, eh?”

She looked at her watch, put on her clothes and snatched up the money.

• • •

EVEN AFTER SHE left I kept thinking about Saeko. When she told me she couldn’t see me any more, she was weeping.

“When I’m really fucked up — not that I’m not pretty fucked up now — but when I totally fall apart, then will you see me again?”

She certainly seemed to be serious. I didn’t look away, wanting to hold onto her face for just a little bit longer.

“Next time we meet,” I said, “I’ll be more screwed up too. As bad as you.”

Saeko smiled weakly.

“Yeah. I’d like that. Because you never look down on anyone.”

But she died alone without getting in touch with me. She disappeared and when her husband found her she’d overdosed. She didn’t leave a note.

The night I heard about it I went out in the street and stole indiscriminately from rich and poor alike. Burying myself in the crowd, I took wallets and cell phones, even gum and receipts and handkerchiefs. Breathing raggedly, with tension and pleasure running through me, I took them all. High overhead shone a white moon.

I ventured outside for the first time in ages. The wind was blowing a fine rain and everything looked blurry, like in a fog. I passed a group of foreigners in laborers’ clothes, then a woman in an extremely short skirt talking loudly on her phone. I realized that the kid was following me but kept on walking, figuring that if I ignored him he’d give up. For no particular reason I was clutching my cell phone. I bought a can of coffee from a vending machine and warmed my hands on it. My temperature had gone down but I still had a headache. I drank the coffee and tried to decide where to go.

I thought checking out a nearby hotel or sneaking into a function somewhere would be better than going to Haneda Airport. In a convenience store I bought a magazine to check out what was on. When I came out with my bag the boy was standing in the parking lot behind a small truck with muddy tires. I went into a run-down coffee shop to read my magazine and to make him give up. The interior was dark and damp with a low ceiling. I ordered a coffee, even though I’d just finished one.

The waitress was wearing a short skirt and black stockings. She reminded me of the boy’s mother. Just then he came into the shop. The glass door was wet from the drizzle. Like me, he had no umbrella.

He sat down at my table. When the woman in the miniskirt came over with a smile, he asked for an orange juice. I lit a cigarette and looked at his dirty clothes.

“Go home.”

He ignored me. Then he spoke in a small voice as if he was opening the conversation.

“She took my money.”

“Yeah?”

“But only a hundred thousand yen. That’s all she found. I’ve still got a hundred and twenty thousand left.”

“Ah.”

When his drink arrived he stared at it seriously, like it was precious to him, and stuck the straw in his mouth.

“I don’t care,” I said. “Go home. I’ve got things to do.”

He went on drinking as though the orange juice was the only thing in his world.

“Show me how you do it.”

“No. I told you. You’d get in the way.”

He finished his drink and looked at my coffee, fiddling with the paper wrapper the straw had come in.

“I’ll just watch from a distance. It can’t hurt if I just watch, can it?”

“Nothing doing.”

“Why not? If I’m a long way off, I won’t be in the way.”

He was a lot more talkative than before.

“If you don’t like being at home, go to the library and read a book or something.”

“Did you do it with my mom?”

The dim lights of the shop reflected off the surface of the water in my glass. I was a bit taken aback, but I kept my expression neutral. I breathed in slowly.

“Look, you know how it is. I’m not your guardian angel. I’m just like all those other guys.”

“It’s okay, I don’t care.”

He looked down, went on playing with the paper.

“I’m used to it. I’ve even seen them at it.”

“But I bet you don’t like it.”

“It’s gross. But….”

He rubbed his thighs, started to say something else and then changed his mind. The ice in his glass had melted into the little bit of orange juice that remained, and he sucked it up noisily with his straw. A Christmas song was flowing out of the speakers.

“Better you than him.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Don’t you like her?”

“What about your dad?”

“I don’t know him.”

I wondered why I was bothering to ask him questions. I picked up the tab and left. The kid came with me.

WE CAME OUT the east exit of Shinjuku Station and walked under the neon signs, avoiding the main crush of the crowd. When I leaned against the wall of an office building and lit a cigarette, my eyes met those of a homeless man walking toward me. The boy looked scared and mover closer. He started to clutch at my sleeve but then thought better of it. I gazed at the herd of people streaming by while I smoked.

“People don’t concentrate all the time. Every day they get distracted dozens of times.”

“Yeah.”

For some reason the kid had brought along the colored cardboard coaster from the coffee shop.