Fuminori Nakamura - The Thief

He paused for a second.

“You do not make any demands. Do not ask any questions. Maybe you can’t understand me, but that’s how it is. Life is unfair. All over the world there are millions of children starving to death as soon as they’re born. Dying like flies. That’s just how it is.”

Kizaki hung up.

I RETURNED TO Shinjuku, to the office building where I’d lost track of Yonezawa. I didn’t expect that he’d still be there, and even if he was I probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Leaving the busy streets and the hotels behind, I came out in a residential area in the middle of nowhere, with rows and rows of apartment blocks. It was late at night but many of the windows were still lit up. I guess people were still awake because the next day was a holiday. The lights were soft and fuzzy in the darkness.

As I looked up at them, feeling restless, I sensed something unfamiliar in the inside pocket of my coat. I took out a wallet I didn’t recognize and a silver Zippo lighter. The wallet contained 79,000 yen, various credit cards, a driver’s license and a golf club membership card. My vision contracted. A bloated dog eyed me, then slunk off watchfully. I saw a man walking towards me wearing a raincoat. It’s not raining , I thought, and when I looked again there was just a large stain on a wall. It wasn’t even shaped like a person.

In a narrow alley off to the left I spotted the lights of a small bar. I tucked the wallet back inside my coat and put the lighter in the basket of a bike lying on its side. The place was tiny, its feebly illuminated sign faded to black. I couldn’t read the name.

Inside there were four stools at the counter and two tables. I ordered a whiskey from the seedy bartender, who didn’t look at me, and took a seat at a table. An office worker who looked like a regular was passed out drunk, sound asleep with his forehead resting on the bar.

Classical music was flowing out of small speakers and the barman moved absent-mindedly, as though listening to it was his sole purpose in life. A mongrel was tied up beside the counter, sprawled motionless on the floor, only its eyes moving. The man ignored me as he placed a scotch on the rocks on my table. Looking idly around the room, I figured this bar would never be popular.

I soon finished my drink and asked for another. The barman put a bottle and ice on the table and went back behind the counter. Neither Ishikawa, who used to stop me from drinking too much, nor Saeko, who had urged me to drink more, was there, of course. I began to feel drunk and the glass in front of me seemed to grow dim, and then so did everything else.

There was no one else in the bar apart from the owner, still listening to his music, the unconscious man in the suit, and the dog, which looked bored out of its mind but didn’t seem to object to its leash. I thought about my own mortality, about what I had done with my life until now. Reaching out my hands to steal, I had turned my back on everything, rejected community, rejected wholesomeness and light. I had built a wall arround myself and lived by sneaking into the gaps in the darkness of life. Despite that, however, for some reason I felt that I wanted to be here for a little while longer.

The barman was sitting on a chair behind the counter with his eyes closed. I knew nothing about music, so I just watched him as he listened. There were many things I didn’t like about my life, but there were also some things I didn’t want to lose, people I didn’t want to lose. The people I cared about didn’t live very long, though, their lives ending in heartbreak. I wondered what my life had meant, thought about it ending, thought about the moment of my death.

The guy in the suit went on sleeping, and the bartender hadn’t moved a muscle. If I could, I planned to watch them until I fell asleep myself.

When I was young, there was always the tower in the distance.

In dirty lanes lined with row houses and low-rise apartments, every time I looked up I could dimly make it out. Covered in mist, its outline vague, like a spire in some ancient daydream. Solemn, beautiful, exotic, so tall that I couldn’t see the top and so far away that no matter how long I walked I’d never reach it.

I would go into a store and slip a rice ball into my little pocket. Other people’s possessions weighed heavy in my hands, like foreign objects. Yet I never felt any guilt or wickedness in these actions. My growing body demanded a lot of food and I didn’t see how there could be anything wrong with taking and eating it. Other people’s rules were just something they’d invented for themselves. I put that weighty rice ball in my mouth, chewed and swallowed vigorously. Then I stared beyond the lines of power poles, beyond the grubby houses, beyond the trees on the low hill, at the high tower standing in that obscure realm. One day, perhaps, it would speak to me. Scratching my thighs, which poked out of my shorts, I was faintly aware of the stolen property sitting heavy in my stomach.

I heard the laughing cries of a group of children my own age. A boy with long hair was holding a little toy car. It was bought overseas, he shouted in a piercing voice. Operated by a small controller he held in his hand, the sophisticated car sparkled brilliantly as it went racing around.

My heart pounded when I saw it. The boy was boasting about something he hadn’t bought himself, that had been given to him. It was revolting. To cure his ugliness, I thought it would be good if he lost his car. I took it. Since the kids didn’t even know I was there, it was all too easy to take. For some reason items from other countries always reminded me of the tower.

Alone in an unsealed alley I played quietly with the car, but it wasn’t as shiny as it had been before. Something felt wrong and I switched it off, distressed. I placed it further away, turned it on gingerly. When it moved I felt that something still wasn’t right. I turned it off again and moved it even further. Finally I threw the car into the muddy river bank. Far, far away, there stood the tower. It remained tall in the distance, silent and shrouded in mist.

It never occurred to me to wonder why there was a tower outside my town. Perhaps I assumed that it had already been there when I was born. The world was fixed and rigid. It was as though time flowed at its own pace, anchoring everything, pushing me from behind, little by little moving me somewhere. When I reached out my hands for other people’s things, however, in the tension of the moment I felt I could be set free. I felt I could separate myself just a little from the unbending world.

When I started elementary school, the boy who was chosen as class leader got hold of a glittering watch. “It’s my father’s,” he said, showing it furtively to the people around him. “It even works underwater.” The children all stared at this watch that kept going even when submerged. I stole it.

Why did I drop it while everyone was looking at me? My hand had moved swiftly, and by the time it was halfway into my shorts pocket I thought I was home free. But it slipped out and fell with a crash. Everyone looked first at the watch, which had stopped working when it hit the floor, and then at me.

“Thief!” the class leader shouted. “It’s broken. That was expensive. Too good for trash like you.”

The din in the classroom grew louder. Hands reached out to seize my arms and legs. I was jostled and knocked over. Hearing the cries, the young teacher came over and grabbed my arm. He looked flustered by the children’s accusations.

“Say you’re sorry!” His voice was also loud. “If you really took it, say you’re sorry!”

Looking back on it now, perhaps this was a kind of liberation, because this was the first time my actions had been exposed to the outside world, with the exception of the tower. I felt a sense of freedom that I’d never experienced before. Overpowered, in the midst of my disgrace, I felt pleasure seeping through me. If you can’t stop the light from shining in your eyes, it’s best to head back down in the opposite direction.