and you a professional detective. I thought you would get something out of him. I had great expectations. He’s a clever fellow, I suppose, though he doesn’t look it.”—“Well then, you, as director, are concerned about something, aren’t you?”—“I have no reason to be. I merely take a little pride in the company’s men. But, all right, I feel better thanks to you. There’s a weight off my chest. Of course, I have no clue, but on occasion I do have a prick of conscience. Even so, Nemuro’s wife went to the trouble of engaging you and that’s proof she herself knows nothing of her husband’s whereabouts. Fine. Fine. No, I sympathize with everybody directly involved. A sad affair. But if Nemuro happens to have some understanding with his wife, he might be trying to hide his whereabouts from me alone. Such doubts do linger on in a corner of my mind.”—“Is there any concrete basis for them?”—“My god, if I’m to be caught up on each little remark, I’ll end up by being tongue-tied. An unintentional mistake isn’t all that strange.It’s a trait of mine to worry. Appearances are deceiving in my case.” Then he heaved a long sigh and clasped the short, fat fingers of both hands in his portly lap. “Can you really go so far as to toss your family aside and completely vanish? I don’t understand Nemuro. He didn’t seem to have that kind of courage at all.”—“Courage, you say?”—“Well, yes. Even though I can understand how relieved a man might feel in doing what he did, I couldn’t have done it myself. I could never do a thing like that. I’m going to stay right here till I die unless I’m forced out. A man eats and defecates. It’s a handicap to move away from the place where you get your food. And it’s always a lot better to defecate in the same place too.”
S OMEONE WAS following me. Paying no heed, I continued to walk.
Leaving Dainen Enterprises, I went about two blocks south, down the main street, turned right, and climbed the abrupt incline. I came to a railroad crossing with no gate. The street which lay alongside the tracks on the other side was, in this neighborhood, the only place where parking was possible. A line of cars stretched almost solid from there to the next main street. Most of the parked cars were small-sized trucks, since the whole area was crowded with small factories. Every time a train came by, it would raise a metallic dust, and here even the road appeared rusty-red.
My car was parked at the end of the street. When I turned and looked over my shoulder, the figure of the man shadowing me had vanished. There was nothing to get excited about. He would, I suspected, soon reappear. I got in the car and shoved the seat back as far as it would go, inserted a carbon between two sheets of paper on top of my briefcase, which I propped on my knees, and lit a cigarette. Putting records in order in places like this was a habit in which we had had to acquire some skill. The same was true for information and shadowing techniques. Yet, after the few lines of stereotyped opening, the following sentences simply didn’t come. “No results,” I wrote—an incredibly wretched expression that only corroborated my alibi. Fortunately I did have thesheet with the map of the meeting place at S—– station, which I had had young Tashiro draw up, a sketch like a plumber’s draft for some water conduit. That was something to pad out the report with. Nothing is so devastating at such times as one’s own incompetence. Well, maybe I was really incompetent. Had I ever once been competent? I wondered. Once in a long while, when my words flowed, when I was able to draw out my “No results” over thirty lines, I had the illusion of competency. Since I took a rather aggressive attitude toward my abilities, there was no need to be particularly competent. I would manage some way to forget about my inefficiency.
Tearing off a length of Scotch tape, I
S OMEONE WAS following me. Paying no heed, I continued to walk.
Leaving Dainen Enterprises, I went about two blocks south, down the main street, turned right, and climbed the abrupt incline. I came to a railroad crossing with no gate. The street which lay alongside the tracks on the other side was, in this neighborhood, the only place where parking was possible. A line of cars stretched almost solid from there to the next main street. Most of the parked cars were small-sized trucks, since the whole area was crowded with small factories. Every time a train came by, it would raise a metallic dust, and here even the road appeared rusty-red.
My car was parked at the end of the street. When I turned and looked over my shoulder, the figure of the man shadowing me had vanished. There was nothing to get excited about. He would, I suspected, soon reappear. I got in the car and shoved the seat back as far as it would go, inserted a carbon between two sheets of paper on top of my briefcase, which I propped on my knees, and lit a cigarette. Putting records in order in places like this was a habit in which we had had to acquire some skill. The same was true for information and shadowing techniques. Yet, after the few lines of stereotyped opening, the following sentences simply didn’t come. “No results,” I wrote—an incredibly wretched expression that only corroborated my alibi. Fortunately I did have thesheet with the map of the meeting place at S—– station, which I had had young Tashiro draw up, a sketch like a plumber’s draft for some water conduit. That was something to pad out the report with. Nothing is so devastating at such times as one’s own incompetence. Well, maybe I was really incompetent. Had I ever once been competent? I wondered. Once in a long while, when my words flowed, when I was able to draw out my “No results” over thirty lines, I had the illusion of competency. Since I took a rather aggressive attitude toward my abilities, there was no need to be particularly competent. I would manage some way to forget about my inefficiency.
Tearing off a length of Scotch tape, I
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